“The bad news is, we’re dead in space.”
It was a hell of a way to begin a briefing, but it got his crew’s attention immediately and Captain Hyeon Bak wasn’t one to waste anyone’s time, especially when they had no time to waste.
“What’s the good news?” asked Blodwen Clarke. The blond communications officer was busily pecking at a terminal, checking on the Ketumati’s systems for herself and starting to look as frustrated as Bak felt.
“We aren’t dead yet,” Bak said.
Clarke adjusted her glasses. “That’s a pretty low bar for good news.”
“What do you mean, ‘dead in space’? We are still moving.” Kiann Das looked out one of the viewing portholes and wrinkled his brow.
Anika Hassan rolled her eyes. “First of all, you couldn’t notice the ship’s movement with the naked eye while looking out of a window, because of the vast distances in space.” She rested a hand on the conference table. “Second of all: we’re still moving, but the engines aren’t functioning.”
“You are sure?” Das ran a hand through his dark, curly hair, which was sticking out comically in all directions and making it that much harder to take him seriously. After two months, three weeks, three days, and seven point five hours in stasis, they all had major bedhead and a certain amount of disorientation. And after just under a month in training beforehand, many of them were already sick of each other, which didn’t bode well for a happy community on Babylon.
“I’m chief engineer, so yes, I’m sure,” she said.
“Then how are we moving?”
“We’re drifting, because of momentum,” she snapped. “An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an opposing force. Friction. But there’s no friction in space.”
Only between people, Bak thought.
Hassan sighed. “And even though you’re just a fucking florist, I feel like you should have a better grasp of the basics of spaceflight before you go on an interstellar mission.”
“Hey. Easy,” Bak interjected. “We all have an important role here.”
“Exactly. I’m a hydroponic specialist.” Das sniffed. “Our mission is building a colony. We were supposed to be sleeping through the spaceflight part.” He glared at Bak as though it were his fault he wasn’t still cozy in his cryotube. “I was having a beautiful dream,” Das said.
That was technically Bak’s fault. When the Ketumati’s computer, gAIa, had abruptly roused him from hypersleep a month too early, it was his decision to wake the rest of his senior crew.
“We all were,” Bak said. He’d been dreaming about walking around the Seoul Grand Park Zoo with Amelia on a warm spring day. They had gone together the day before leaving Earth, only the real thing had been less idyllic: it was a cold, drizzly morning, and they’d been having an argument.
You and your partner weren’t supposed to go to sleep angry, and it seemed like a particularly bad idea when neither of you would wake up for eight months—to start your lives together on a new planet.
“I notice you’re dressed, Captain,” Clarke said. The rest of the crew suddenly realized it too: they were still in their sleepwear, but Bak was in uniform. “How long have you been awake?”
“A few days,” Bak said.
“Why did you wait so long to wake us?” Hassan asked.
“I hoped I wouldn’t have to. But I can’t fix this myself. The engines have been disabled. Near as I can tell, it isn’t a mechanical problem.” Bak let the words hang there for a moment.
“Software?” The pilot, Gunpei Iwata, sat up. He was the silent type, a man of few words who preferred to sit back and let conversations take place around him. Flying was the one thing he did well, and right now, he couldn’t do it.
“It’s gAIa,” Bak said. “Some kind of embedded subroutine. She can’t tell me what’s wrong or how it happened, only that something is wrong. Very, very wrong. And we’re locked out of the controls so we can’t bring navigation systems back online. Or propulsion.”
“Or communications,” Clarke said. “A bug?”
“Possibly. But given what’s at stake here, I’m betting on sabotage.”
He studied the crew’s reactions. Das looked even more stressed than he had a moment ago. Clarke betrayed genuine surprise, followed by determination; now that she knew what was wrong, she could try to fix it. Singh looked like he wanted to punch someone. Hassan looked concerned.
“You think one of us did it,” Hassan said.
Bak grimaced. “Either this was accomplished before we left, or the saboteur is on board—and awake. But we can sort that out later. If there is a later. I’ve activated a distress beacon, but to be honest, I don’t expect anyone to respond out here.”
Just then an alarm went off and gAIa’s perversely calm voice interrupted: “Another vessel has been detected and is on approach. ETA: ten minutes.”
“Looks like somebody heard us,” Singh said.
“Thank goodness,” Das said.
Clarke shook her head. She pointed at the screen, where a wireframe scan of the other ship was rotating. It was small, most of its bulk comprised of three thrusters port, starboard, and aft. It seemed built for speed, stealth, and short distances. Sharp fins beneath the vessel gave it a distinctly sinister look.
“It’s clearly not one of ours,” Singh said gravely.
“Pirates?” Das squeaked.
“Worse,” Clarke said, examining the record. “The details are scant, but that vessel is flagged as extremely hostile. ‘Do not engage. Run. If you cannot run, do not resist.’”
They sat in silence for a moment.
“What does that mean?” Das asked.
“We’re fucked,” Hassan said.
* * *
Running wasn’t an option. The Ketumati was locked onto its course, but without gAIa making minute adjustments along the way, they might miss Babylon entirely, and even if they arrived they wouldn’t be able to land. Unless nav and propulsion systems came back online, they would float endlessly in space until they ran out of food or power, or collide with something they couldn’t avoid. And there was no guarantee they could ride it out in hypersleep until they were rescued and evacuated safely.
But none of that might matter, depending on what happened when their mysterious visitor arrived.
Although the warning in the ship’s database said not to resist, the crew couldn’t understand why they shouldn’t fight back against an enemy.
Bak and Singh, the only two with combat training, handed out laser pistols and showed the others how not to accidentally shoot themselves or one another, though no one liked the idea of handing Das a gun—least of all Das.
“Why don’t we wake the security forces? Isn’t this their job?” Das asked.
“Not enough time to thaw them,” Singh said. “It’s up to us.”
As the vessel approached, scans showed only a single life sign. It did not answer their hails, but it didn’t attack either. Instead, it docked. As security officer, Singh went to meet their visitor at the airlock while the rest of them monitored from the bridge.
Clarke switched on the interior cameras to show Singh standing in front of the open airlock door. They all leaned in close to the monitor to get a better look at the grainy, dark shape standing in front of him.
The humanoid creature stood two heads above the burly, six-foot-tall Fijian. Its face was obscured by a smooth mask with two black eyeholes. Dreadlocks cascaded over its shoulders which were covered with scaly armor, like a bug’s carapace.
“It’s armed and dangerous,” Singh whispered. “Blades on its wrists. A spear on its back. It’s holding something that looks like a sniper rifle. I don’t think it wants to be friends.”
“Try talking to it,” Bak said.
“Hello! What are your intentions here? Who are you?” Singh said in an exaggeratedly cheerful voice.
Hassan groaned. “We’re so fucked.”
They heard a series of clicking sounds and the creature moved, so fast it was a blur. It lunged toward Singh.
“Shit!” Singh fired three times. Somehow, he missed the creature twice at point blank range, but the third shot hit it in the side. The alien jolted and bellowed. Then it flickered and disappeared. Singh looked around frantically.
“Where’d it go?” Das asked.
“Some kind of cloaking field?” Singh fired again. And again.
They heard his heavy breathing. Another laser blast. Then another. Then Singh’s gun went flying out of his hands.
“Fuck!” Singh turned and ran, filling the channel with a string of “fucks.”
“Get out of there,” Bak said uselessly. He found himself squeezing the armrests of his chair with both hands.
They followed Singh across multiple cameras as he ran through the corridors. They heard a loud pop, like a bottle of champagne being opened, followed by the sound of metal pinging off metal.
“What was that?” Bak asked.
“It’s shooting at me!” Singh shouted.
“Try to get into a service duct,” Clarke said. “It may be too big to follow you.”
They heard another pop. Singh grunted.
“Are you hit?” Bak peered at the camera. Something stuck out of Singh’s left shoulder. The projectile was long with fletching on the end, like an arrow.
Singh lurched forward and fell face-down. He stopped moving.
“Singh?” Bak said, his voice taut. “Do you read?”
The creature reappeared, looming over John Singh’s body. It reached down, and lifted him by his head with one hand. The man’s body dangled like a rag doll and his comm went dead. Then the enemy looked straight at the camera.
“Hello!” it said in Singh’s voice, audible over the security feed. Then it tossed something at the camera and the feed cut out.
Das whimpered.
The rest of the crew were quiet for a long time. Finally, in a soft, trembling voice, Clarke said, “What now, Captain?”
Bak licked his dry lips. He still felt chills from hearing Singh’s voice coming from that creature. Did that mean it could understand them? Its vessel was in their database. Someone had logged the warning to run. It stood to reason that some humans had encountered its kind before, and vice versa.
“We can take a stand on the bridge,” Bak considered aloud. “Maybe overpower it together. That’s the whole reason we’re out here, isn’t it? ‘Stronger together’?”
“Maybe we surrender,” Das said. “Like the computer said. ‘Do not resist.’”
“Maybe you surrender,” Hassan said. “We’ll wait and see what happens.”
“This isn’t productive,” Bak said.
“We can hide. No one knows the Ketumati better than we do,” Clarke said.
“It can become invisible,” Hassan said.
“What are our other options?” Bak asked.
“We have emergency escape vehicles. We should use them,” Das said.
“You don’t know about inertia, but you’re familiar with the EEVs. Why am I not surprised?” Hassan locked eyes with Bak. “I’m going to engineering. If we can’t get the Ketumati moving, it doesn’t matter whether that thing kills us or we die in a life pod. We will have failed in our mission.”
Bak nodded. “If I can get to the interface room and access gAIa’s mainframe directly, maybe I can talk some sense into her,” Clarke said.
“I’ll join you,” Iwata said. “If it works, I can pilot the ship from there.”
“Okay. Priority one is defending the ship and the fifteen hundred souls on ice in cryo-storage. I’ll head down there. Right now they’re more vulnerable than any of us.”
Everyone looked at Das.
“Das, you head for the EEV,” Bak said. “Someone should let the folks back home know what happened if we don’t make it. If that thing finds you, hide. If you can’t hide—fight.”
“Then what?” Das asked.
“Survive. That’s an order for everyone. And keep an open channel. Good luck.”
* * *
“It just entered the hydroponics bay,” Das whispered over the open channel.
“What does it want in hydroponics?” Clarke asked.
“I think it followed me.”
“Well, what are you doing there? Trying to save your plants?”
“He’s hiding,” Hassan said.
“Which is what he’s supposed to do.” Bak resisted the urge to head to hydroponics to help Das. Instead, he picked up his pace. If the alien was in hydroponics, he needed to take advantage of the distraction and get to cryo-storage quickly while he could do so without being detected.
The channel went quiet.
“Das, do you read? What’s your twenty?” Bak asked.
Das sobbed, whispering a prayer to himself in a low, trembling voice.
They heard the same pop as before and then glass shattered.
“Stop! Don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!” Das called. “Look, I’m unarmed.” Bak heard his weapon clatter to the floor. “I surrender.”
Pop. Das cried out and they heard his body thump against the floor.
“Oh no,” Clarke said softly.
Das’s communicator went offline.
“Shit,” Hassan muttered.
Bak cleared his throat. “No telling where it will go next. Watch out for yourselves. And for each other.” He continued moving down the corridor.
* * *
By tacit agreement, the surviving command crew kept chatter to a minimum, to avoid drawing their enemy’s attention.
Bak jumped when he heard a loud pop in his ear and pressed himself against a bulkhead, looking for the alien. Then he realized the sound had come from his earpiece.
“Clarke?” Iwata said. “Damn.”
“What happened?” Bak asked. He could see cryo-storage from here. It sounded like the alien was still far away, near the computer’s interface room. He ran and slapped the panel to open the cryo-storage doors.
“It got her.” More shots from the alien. Iwata cursed and Bak heard returning laser fire. “Oh my god. It’s huge.” Then louder. “I give up! Don’t—”
Bak listened to Iwata die as he waited impatiently for the cryo-storage doors to open. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t be sorry,” Hassan spat. “Make it count. I just reached engineering. That thing must be close by, I heard Iwata’s shouts without the comm. I’ll try to get systems online while you… What are you going to do, Captain?”
Bak looked out at the rows of occupied hypersleep chambers stretching into the distance in the cavernous room. They looked like high-tech coffins in a 135-degree reclining position, their sides bejeweled with flashing status lights. Windows in the upper half emitted a soothing white glow that provided most of the illumination in the dimly lit space.
“I’ll keep an eye on our passengers,” Bak said.
“And how are they?”
“Sleeping like the dead.”
“I kind of envy them,” Hassan said.
“If we don’t make it, they’ll never know what hit them.”
Wish I could crawl into my own chamber and go back to sleep, he thought. If he was lucky, he would find his way back to that beautiful dream with Amelia, without a care for whatever was happening on the ship.
At the very least he could see his wife in person, one last time. To say good-bye.
He followed gAIa’s directions to locate Amelia’s capsule among hundreds of identical capsules, identifiable only by a number linked to the computer’s passenger manifest.
But when he got there, it was empty.
“Captain.” Hassan spoke in his earpiece. Her voice was low and urgent.
Bak spun around in a panic, eyes searching the shadows of cryo-storage. Where was Amelia?
“Captain?” Hassan spoke again.
“Go ahead.” He knelt down to peer under the rows of capsules.
“It’s in here. Engineering,” Hassan said.
“Shit,” he said.
“This alien has found each of us, one after one, several times now. It’s like it knows where we are.”
Bak blinked, forcing himself back into this moment, remembering his rank and purpose here. “What are you suggesting? Is it tracking us with sensors?”
He heard the now familiar pop of the alien’s weapon and a muffled hiss of air. “Hassan?”
“I turned out the lights in here.” She lowered her voice so he could barely hear her. “Figured I would even the playing field, since I can’t see it. But it can still see me. I’m thinking it has night-vision goggles or thermal imaging in its helmet. So if we can damage it—”
“We blind it. But that’s a big if.”
“It’s all we’ve got.”
Bak set his jaw. “I’m coming to you.”
“Don’t be stupid. Sir. You won’t get back to me in time. And if this thing does rely on infrared vision, you’re in the one place where it might not be able to find you.”
Bak nodded. Cryo-storage was the coldest area of the ship. “Good point. But if you’re ever going to follow one of my orders, don’t forget my last one.”
“Survive. Working on it, Captain.”
Hassan went silent. Bak muted his comm and spoke to the computer. “Where is Amelia Hamilton, gAIa?” he said aloud.
The computer took a long time to respond. “Unknown.”
“That’s not good enough,” he said. He hurried through the aisles, looking inside each capsule to see if she was there. Amelia could have ended up in a different hypersleep chamber than the one assigned.
Or had the brass discovered her and pulled her out just before takeoff, without him knowing? He couldn’t be sure her chamber had still been occupied when they left Earth.
It wasn’t long before he heard Hassan again: a string of angry curse words that was abruptly cut short.
Bak breathed in and out, feeling a mixture of sadness, anger, and fear. He hadn’t known Hassan and the others long, but they had trained together. They had shared their belief in this mission and the hope for a brighter future that they would build with their own hands on a new world. And just like his hypersleep dream three days earlier, it was all slipping away.
Each of his crewmates’ deaths had hit the captain hard, but there were many other lives hanging in the balance. He was surrounded by innocent people who were all counting on him. As much as he wanted to find Amelia, it was up to Bak to stop the alien—or die trying.
* * *
It was nearly three hours before the cryo-storage doors opened. Bak thought he saw a faint shimmer in the flashing emergency lights from the corridor and then the doors closed. Seemingly no one had entered, but the hairs on Bak’s neck rose and his skin tingled with the sensation that he was being watched.
The alien was in there with him. He ducked down behind a hypersleep chamber in the center row and peeked down the narrow aisle to the entrance. The fact that it had taken the alien such a long time to find him gave credence to Hassan’s theory that it was tracking them by body heat, although if it was simply scanning for life signs, the sleeping bodies around him also might have masked Bak’s presence for a time. The alien might not even be certain Bak was in here.
He pressed himself closer to the chamber, feeling the cool metal against his skin. He was still the warmest body in this room.
Or was he? He noticed a strange whirling pattern at the far end of his corridor, a mist forming when cold air hit something warmer, and it was vaguely humanoid shaped.
Got you. Bak aimed his laser pistol at the center of the pattern. Then, remembering Hassan’s idea, he aimed a little higher; the alien was about a foot and a half taller than Singh had been, judging by the security cameras. He pulled the trigger.
He heard a terrible scream and the creature reappeared as it tumbled backward, its cloak flickering out. Bak had scored a head shot, but not a killing one. A scorch mark on the alien’s helmet smoldered just above the right eye, but it didn’t seem injured. Only pissed.
This was the first he had seen the hunter up close and in living color. It was huge, towering well above Bak, its body lean and muscular. Its skin was yellowish brown and its dreadlocks were a dingy gray. It had plated forearms and shin guards and its scaly, reptilian body was covered only in tight netting. It swept the room with the short scoped rifle in its right hand.
With all its deadly gear, why had it been limiting itself to such an archaic weapon?
Maybe he should have aimed lower after all, Bak thought, noting the one wound the Ketumati’s crew had managed to inflict: a gash in its side from Singh’s laser pistol. Its armor was still stained with bright green blood. That was going to be his next target.
Bak rose to his feet and stood across from the alien. It aimed the old-style projectile weapon. He dove behind a hypersleep chamber and rolled under the entire row of them to emerge on the left side of the room. He hid behind another chamber, watching the hunter scan the room for him. It spotted him and its weapon fired. Bak ducked and he felt something whiff past his ear. It struck the metal bulkhead behind him and then clattered to the floor.
He turned and located a dent in the wall. That was close. He searched around him until he found a wicked looking metal dart the length of his hand, its barbed tip coated in a yellow substance. Poison?
It’s doing this for sport, Bak realized. If it just wanted to kill them, it obviously had the technology and weaponry to do that much more quickly and efficiently. Hell, it could have simply fired on their unarmed, disabled ship and wiped them out.
The revelation only made Bak angrier, and more determined to survive. And if he couldn’t survive, he was going to take the monster out with him, so the others at least would have a chance to make it.
Another pop and the capsule above Bak’s head cracked. Coolant spewed from the broken glass around the embedded dart. He heard Hassan’s voice echo around the room. “They’ll never know what hit them.”
A chill went through Bak that had nothing to do with the temperature. It had recorded his engineer’s words and was taunting him with them. He tried to get eyes on the hunter again, but it was gone. No, not gone—cloaked again. And stalking toward him, based on the barely perceptible shimmering that caught the light from the cryotubes it passed between. The faint mist surrounding it like a wispy aura and the damaged capsule behind him gave Bak an idea on how to take the thing out, or perhaps slow it down a little.
“gAIa, reactivate hypersleep chambers Alpha-001 through 006,” he whispered.
“Planning to take another nap, Captain?” gAIa responded.
“Trying to avoid the big sleep,” he muttered. “Just do it.”
“Working on it.”
He crouch-ran over to the chambers he and his senior crew had recently vacated, certain the hunter would see him and pursue. He pretended to stumble and fall, then lay still in at the end of the row, just ten meters from the empty coffins.
“Now, gAIa,” Bak muttered.
Through his eyelashes, Bak saw the hunter reappear and advance cautiously toward him. It suspected a trap. Because this was one.
The hunter was in position, but the chambers were still dark. Come on, gAIa. What are you waiting for?
The chamber’s lights flickered to life. The alien paused and studied them suspiciously. Bak bolted up and fired his laser blaster, but not at the hunter. Instead, he squeezed off two shots on either side of it, blowing open the hypersleep chambers flanking it. Coolant spewed all over the alien. White frost spread over the hunter’s body, freezing it in place. He heard a pop and hissing air.
Bak felt a sharp pain in his chest. He looked down and saw a dart protruding from it, inches from his heart. He pulled it out with a scream; the barbed tip was dripped with a viscous mix of the yellow poison and his own blood. It slipped from his hands.
He stared at the hunter, trying to focus through blurring vision. His chest burned and a numbing sensation spread through his body. The ice covering his enemy was already melting—it must have some way of regulating the temperature of its armor.
Bak dropped to the floor, this time for real. As blackness crept over the edges of his vision, he saw someone run out from the shadows and someone calling his name.
Amelia.
* * *
Hyeon Bak and Amelia Hamilton stand in front of the Siberian tiger cage, searching the dark caves, trees, underbrush. No sign of the large wild cats. They had long been extinct, of course, pushed out and exterminated by people nearly a century ago. But Seoul Grand Park had cloned them and this was the last place on the planet to see one alive—supposedly.
“Enjoying the honeymoon?” Bak asks Amelia.
“It’s not what I always dreamed about.” She looks around. “I thought it would involve more sex.”
Bak grins. “Save it for Babylon.”
Her cheerful expression fades.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.” She turns away, rubbing the back of her neck.
“Don’t do that.” He touches her arm lightly. “Married two hours, and we’re already keeping secrets from each other?”
She sighs. “You’re right. It’s just—I appreciate what you’re doing for me, but I’m still not sure how I feel about it.”
“I didn’t marry you as some kind of charity case. I did it—we did it—for us. Right?”
She nods.
“And you belong on this mission. It’s not your fault the higher-ups pitched a tantrum.”
The United Americas had just completely pulled out of the InterUnited Space Agency. They were angry that they couldn’t have more representation on the Babylon colony and that the IUSA had rejected their choice for the command crew. They claimed the Three World Empire and Union of Progressive People were trying to marginalize the Americas and claim more of the planet’s valuable resources for their own nations’ benefit.
Truth was, the UA hadn’t played well with the other nations for a long time; they’d sat out the War for Korean Independence, leaving the 3WE to come to Korea’s aid in fighting the UPP. The Americas weren’t interested in being a team player anymore, but they still wanted to be on the team, and the Space Agency was doing everything it could to prevent them from owning a controlling interest in Babylon. Once the UA withdrew, they had unceremoniously dumped every American from their program—except those who were spouses of approved crew and colonists.
“I still think you should be our hydroponic specialist,” Bak says. “You’re more experienced than Kiann Das. Maybe when we’re planetside…”
“So you’re saying there are some benefits to sleeping with the captain.” Amelia leans in close.
“Aside from the obvious. Yeah.” He puts his arms around her shoulders and bends his head to kiss her.
“I hope no one else heard that. Could be bad for your career.”
“Screw my career.” He’d never wanted to be an officer, let alone captain. But when Korea Aerospace calls you to serve, you answer. And he hadn’t been about to turn down a trip to a new world, and a new life with the woman he loves.
Amelia closes her eyes as their lips meet. It gives Bak an electric thrill, just like their first kiss. They’d met each other in interstellar training, and though they’d only known each other for a few months, he had no doubts about spending the rest of his life with her. Good thing, too, because it was a one-way trip to the Babylon colony.
Bak feels eyes watching them. He slowly pulls away from Amelia and looks at the cage from out of the corner of his eye. A tiger is watching them.
“She’s beautiful,” Amelia breathes.
“She’s hungry,” Bak says.
* * *
As Bak stirred to wakefulness, he felt even worse than he had when coming out of hypersleep. His head pounded, his lips were dry and stuck together, and his mouth was cottony and tasted like sour milk.
He opened his eyes. He was outside, lying in a patch of blue-green grass. He couldn’t tell what time of day it was, but there was a sky, cloudless with a yellow tinge to it.
Babylon? How?
He sat up. Three people were huddled nearby, talking in low voices. They didn’t notice he was awake, which gave him time to process what he was seeing.
John Singh, Anika Hassan, and Blodwen Clarke. They were alive.
Or he was dead.
“Am I still dreaming?” he muttered. Maybe everything back on the Ketumati had been the dream. The alien hunter who had come on board and slaughtered them all.
“Captain Bak!” Hassan leapt up and hurried over. “Are you all right?”
“Depends. Are we dead?”
“Negative, sir.”
He drew in a breath. “But I heard you all die.”
She shook her head. “Tranquilizers. The intruder hunted us and sedated us and brought us here.”
“Why?” Bak asked. He looked around for signs of the rest of the colonists. This might not be the planet they’d intended to land on, but it seemed it could sustain them. “Why track us throughout the ship only to spare our lives?”
Clarke and Singh joined them. Singh held out a hand and pulled him up. Bak tested the strength of his legs, and the gravity. He felt lighter than he had on Earth and on the ship. That would take some getting used to.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“This is an artificial environment. You can see the seams if you look hard enough, and the horizon is just a projection.” Hassan pointed, and now that Bak looked again, knew what to look for, he could indeed see a faint grid pattern surrounding them, delineating the edges of an enclosed space. A cage.
The air was still and smelled nearly sterile. Despite the lush plant life surrounding them, the place didn’t feel alive—more like being inside the Ketumati’s hydroponics bay. The lighting was flat and dull, and it didn’t generate any warmth; it had to come from some hidden source above, not from a nearby sun.
“We aren’t approaching anything like this technology on Earth,” Hassan went on. “Whoever created this must be incredibly advanced.”
“Did that alien create all this for us? Why? Have you seen it since we got here?”
“It isn’t very chatty,” Clarke said. “It doesn’t speak English, but it seems to understand us. It communicates through recordings. I think it calls itself ‘Keeper.’ It kept playing that word and pointing to itself.”
“So it’s… peaceful?” Bak said.
Singh snorted. “When it pointed at us, it played the word ‘trophy.’ We’re prisoners, Captain. Whether Keeper killed us on the ship or lets us die a slow death here, it’s all the same.”
Clarke frowned. “I’d still rather live as long as I can.”
“You may change your mind when we find out what it plans to do with us. Hunter trophies are usually dead.”
“What about Das?” Bak asked. “Iwata?”
They shook their heads.
“Why choose us and leave them behind? Because they didn’t fight back?” Bak wondered.
“So then what? It only wanted us because we were harder to capture?” Hassan said.
Bak shrugged. “And the colonists?”
“Still on the ship as far as we know,” Clarke said quietly.
Bak cursed. “It could have saved them too!”
“I wouldn’t describe us as ‘saved,’” Hassan said. “We don’t know what Keeper wants with us. Are we food? Entertainment? It seems to have collected a variety of different lifeforms here, in adjoining… cells.”
“And some of them are pretty nasty,” Singh said.
“Where is Keeper now?” Bak asked.
“An alarm sounded and it left in a hurry, maybe half an hour ago.”
“That could be good for us, if it’s distracted,” Bak said. “We need to figure out how to escape. Keeper has a ship—maybe we can steal it and get back to the Ketumati.”
“There’s one more thing,” Clarke said.
“Of course there is. What?”
“Amelia’s here. Though I don’t know how.”
Bak clenched his hands into fists. So he hadn’t imagined seeing her back in cryo-storage, attacking Keeper just before he lost consciousness. And apparently she’d been deemed worthy enough to join them as part of the alien’s collection.
“Where is she?”
Hassan jerked her head in a direction. “Over there, on the edge of the cell just past that rock outcrop. She’s been studying something in the next cage over.”
* * *
Bak found his wife standing at a strange demarcation in the terrain: the grassy plains ended in a straight line and on the other side was a barren desert. From the middle of the rocky wasteland rose something Bak had never seen before: a glistening, gray mound covered in whorls and patterns with large dark holes marring its surface. It reminded him of the giant hornet nest he had discovered in his backyard as a kid.
“Hello, love,” Amelia greeted him when he approached. “See that?” She pointed into the shadows of one of the entrances but he didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking for. He turned to face his wife.
“All I see is a traitor,” Bak said.
She sighed. “I have my reasons.”
Bak closed his eyes. He’d hoped he was wrong, that she would laugh it off and say, “What are you talking about?”
“I’d love to hear why you sabotaged our ship.” He shook his head. “Was it always the plan, or is this some kind of revenge for leaving United Americas on the sidelines?”
She turned to him. “I was supposed to make sure the mission failed and prevent the Ketumati from reaching Babylon—so the UA could get there first with their own colony ship.” She turned and squinted back at the nearby nest. Bak reached out and his fingertips met resistance: a force field, keeping the two environments, and their occupants, separate. He was relieved. He didn’t know why, but whatever was on the other side of the barrier filled him with dread. Or maybe he was just transferring the unease and betrayal he felt from Amelia to what was probably nothing.
“Even if it meant killing yourself along with the rest of us.”
“‘We all have a role to play.’ You were always saying that in training. Always trying to be the peacekeeper, the voice of reason.”
“You got close to me because I was the Ketumati’s captain. And then when you were barred from the mission, you used me—our marriage—to get aboard anyway.”
He waited, expecting her to tell him that it wasn’t just that. She truly had feelings for him, or she’d come to love him. She regretted what she’d done, had almost changed her mind. He wouldn’t have believed her, but he wanted to hear it anyway.
“That’s right,” she said. “It was just business, dear. Nothing personal.”
Nothing personal. That’s how she had summed up their relationship, their marriage. He wondered how long she would have carried out the deception if the ship had made it to the colony. Would they have raised children together, and then one day, she would have just disappeared? Or he would have?
The ground shuddered beneath him and he heard the muffled sound of an explosion somewhere in the distance. The gravity shifted for a stomach-dropping moment and something changed in the air. He smelled something pungent and dusty. Now what?
“Captain!” Hassan appeared not far off, flanked by Singh and Clarke.
He held up a hand, warning them off. He needed another minute.
“But why?” Bak asked. “Once you left Earth, you didn’t owe the UA anything.”
She pressed her lips together. “I’m a patriot. But I may have found something even more valuable than the mining opportunities on Babylon.” She nodded at the ominous structure across from them, which looked like a blemish on the landscape. “If that’s what I think it is, there are people back home who’ll send a ship to get me, if they could bring it back as a souvenir.”
Bak shook his head. “I still don’t see—”
Clarke screamed. At that moment, something leapt out of the sand on the other side of the barrier and flew toward them. It latched onto Amelia’s face. She went down. Bak stared at it, trying to understand what was happening.
The creature was pale, segmented, with eight legs and a long tail, like a cross between a spider and scorpion. Amelia struggled, pulling at it with white knuckled fingers, while the tail wrapped firmly around her throat.
The barrier—how did it get past it? Bak reached out, but the forcefield was gone. He saw a large, dark shape unfurl itself in the shadows at the entrance of the cave. Something large, humanoid, with a bulbous head that was shiny like a beetle carapace and a long, segmented tail. It had been watching them. Other, smaller shapes scuttled in the sand toward him.
He backpedaled quickly. Then he turned to see Hassan and the others running to help Amelia.
“No! There’s more of them. Go!” He ran toward them. They hesitated.
“Weapons?” he asked.
Singh shook his head grimly.
“What’s happening?” Hassan asked.
“I don’t know. Those creatures are attacking us and something shut down the forcefields,” Bak shouted.
He looked over their shoulders and saw Keeper.
No, this was a different one of its kind: taller, leaner, more muscular. It had shorter, darker dreads. And it wasn’t wearing a mask, revealing a grotesque, pinched face with a gaping maw, beady eyes, and four mandibles.
It stared at him and then tossed something which landed, bounced, and rolled in the grass toward them.
“Holy shit,” Hassan said.
It was Keeper’s head and spine—Bak noticed the burn mark his laser pistol had left on its mask.
“Why would they kill their own?” Clarke asked.
Bak thought about humanity’s history of war and how Earth and its colonies were balanced on a knife-edge between peace and war. It often seemed to stem from the same conflict: a fundamental difference in beliefs. Why should Keeper and its people be any different?
Bak watched Amelia, lying still on the ground, the thing on her face pulsing like it was breathing with her.
“Maybe Keeper was a traitor,” Bak said.
“What do you mean?” Clarke asked.
“They’re clearly hunters. Killers. We should be dead, but we’re not.” He gestured at Keeper’s head. “I don’t think it was supposed to keep its trophies alive.”
“What’s that?” Singh asked.
Bak followed his gaze. The other alien, a massive, nightmare creature, was slinking its way toward them.
“That is the reason why dangerous game shouldn’t be kept in a zoo.”
“Captain,” Clarke said in a trembling voice. “What do we do?”
The two aliens weren’t interested in the humans—for now. On Bak’s left, the hunter that had killed Keeper charged the plasma cannon on its shoulder, clicking angrily, mandibles flaring. On his right, the dark monster whipped its tail back and forth and unleashed a soul-rending screech, mouth wide open to reveal sharp teeth. The two titans advanced toward each other.
Bak and his crew were caught between them. The humans would either be killed in the impending battle, or they would have to deal with the victor, which would surely be the deadliest of the combatants. If he had a choice, which would he choose to face?
Neither.
“This is our chance to escape, while they’re fighting each other,” Bak said. “Run!”
They ran. Bak led Clarke, Hassan, and Singh in the direction from which the hunter had arrived, hoping to find an exit from their cage.
Clarke stumbled. Bak stopped to help her up, glanced behind him. The monster and the hunter were grappling with each other. The hunter twisted and hurled the monster over its shoulder. It landed on its feet and dashed forward again, only to be blasted by the hunter’s plasma cannon. But the creature’s endoskeleton seemed to protect it from the energy weapon and it kept coming, gnashing its teeth and spitting yellow goo at the hunter.
The hunter went down, clawing at its face which smoked from contact with the acidic venom. And then the monster was on it. It straddled the hunter and clutched it in its claws—opened its mouth and a probe darted out, piercing the hunter’s skull.
When the hunter’s death spasms ended, the monster dropped its limp body.
Then the creature looked at Bak and gnashed two horrific pairs of teeth.
Bak yanked Clarke to her feet and pulled her along with him. Two more hunters ran past the humans, firing plasma canons at the monster as they closed in on it. How many of them were there?
The monster shrank back on all fours, its head swiveling to look at each of them. And behind it, more black nightmares moved in the shadows, emerging from openings in the massive nest. Two, four, seven… a whole swarm. They shrieked and the air vibrated with terror.
The humans didn’t stop running until they stumbled out of the Earthlike environment and found themselves in a long, dim passageway. Its smooth gray walls had been carved from solid rock.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Subterranean caverns?” Singh mused. Sounds from the battle reverberated all around. “I can’t tell if we’re beneath a planet, inside a moon, or on a space station.”
“Whatever it is, we got in, so there has to be a way out. And there have to be a couple of ships somewhere,” Bak said. “We don’t stop until we find it and get out of here or…” He left it at that, picked a direction, and they kept moving, urged on by the screams and blasts echoing behind them.
And ahead of them: a pack of four animals that resembled small dinosaurs. Bak held up a hand to halt his team. The lizards’ heads swiveled toward them and the two groups considered each other.
The lizards backed up slowly, then turned tail and bolted away. Bak breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness not everything down here meant them harm.
“Other trophies?” Singh asked.
“Who knows what Keeper brought back here,” Hassan said.
“We shouldn’t leave them here,” Clarke said.
“We don’t even know if we can save ourselves,” Bak said. He couldn’t even save Amelia. But she’d been beyond saving, once she had made the decision to strand everyone on the ship.
“The more living things there are between us and whoever wins the fight back there, the better,” Hassan said.
“Assuming something else just as nasty or worse wasn’t freed from its cell too,” Singh said.
“All the more reason to keep moving,” Bak said.
They pressed on. The sounds of the battle grew more distant, but they kept jumping at sounds and shadows. They passed other doors to cages and entrances to tunnels splitting off to the side, but they stuck to what Bak considered the main passage. It gradually sloped upward, which seemed encouraging.
“I see something! It looks like a shuttle bay!” Clarke started running.
“Clarke! Wait!” Bak called. He and the others ran after her. She was right—the corridor was widening and brightening, and at the end of it: two ships. One of them he recognized as Keeper’s, the one that had brought them there. The second was blue with one central rear thruster, four massive cannons, and an alien glyph adorning the front.
“Anyone know how to pilot an alien vessel?” Bak asked.
Hassan put her hands on her hips. “I’m no substitute for Iwata, but one of the many reasons I’m a great chief engineer is not only do I know how to keep a spaceship functioning, I also know how to operate it. Give me a few minutes to study the controls and I’ll get us out of here.”
She marched up the gangway of Keeper’s ship and disappeared inside. Bak grinned and followed.
Once they recovered the Kenumati and restored its systems, they would make the call together: to continue on to Babylon or return home with the sleeping colonists. It had been a mistake to split up on the ship—and he was beginning to wonder if Earth should be spreading out among the stars, leaving small groups of people to face the unknown horrors of space and ultimately die alone.
All things considered, Bak didn’t even know if he wanted to be off-world anymore. At least they were familiar with the problems on Earth. At least the enemies there were other humans, and they fought over territory or ideologies, rather than being hunted for sport or killed by savage aliens.
Amelia may have shaken his trust, but Bak believed more than ever that humanity was stronger together. He only hoped her self-imposed fate and the senseless deaths of Iwata and Das would make the UA finally see that too.