Ends, Means, chapter 21 (Patreon)

Desperation. Panic.  “We need to head for the hidden stairs. Now!” Tyce said in a rough whisper. His gut roiled with the knowledge that something was undone. Unfinished. He felt like he was going into his academy finals and he hadn’t studied. 

Plat looked at him oddly. “How do you—” Plat took a step backward and the barrel of his weapon moved subtly toward Tyce.

“Through the probes the ship sometimes send feelings or vague impressions, and right now it’s screaming that enemy are coming. Dangerous enemy.”

“The ship says that?” Joahan asked.

“No fucking way.” Plat brought his weapon up. “I get that it’s not your fault that you’re compromised, but you are not fit to lead if you have aliens whispering in your ear.”

“I’m equally as disturbed,” Joahan said, “but if Imshee are coming, we need to run. And if they’re not, then we still need to get back to Ama’s position.” 

“But if we believe him, then he has an alien ship telling him what to do. I’m thinking we might want to do the opposite. After all, we’re the ones who blasted a hole in the ship, so it has every reason to kill us.” Plat seemed to ignore that he was the only one who had been part of that insanity. The Dragon crew did as little damage as possible. “It might be telling us to walk into a broken airlock.”

The panic intensified, and Tyce fought to push the foreign emotions aside. He sympathized with Plat because he understood him and his fear. “The ship can’t communicate more than vague warnings and emotions, so it’s not telling me anything.” Not exactly, anyway. “But so far all of the impressions I’ve received have been helpful.”

Plat shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. This is an alien ship, and aliens don’t have the same brain structures.” He tapped his own skull. “How the hell could an alien ship connect to your brain? And even if something is sending you messages, how well could you actually interpret them?” Plat made excellent points, ones that Tyce would be happy to explore at another time. Hell, if they were safely inside a secure perimeter, Tyce might even agree on the implausibility of the whole situation. However, right now he had to rely on the facts, and so far this ship had guided him right every time.

“We’ll debate this once we’re safely upship.” Tyce moved toward the spiral stair as fast as he could while still clearing any cross passages of enemy. He might believe his gut instinct, but he wasn’t going to count on it to watch his six.

“Hey!” Joahan caught his arm and then used the momentum to get ahead of him. “You aren’t running point. Idiot.” He added the last word under his breath, but still loud enough for Tyce to hear him. Plat continued to watch, his expression far more wary now.

“It’s not like you didn’t know I had alien probes in my brain,” Tyce said before he followed Joahan. 

“I didn’t know they talked to you,” Plat muttered.

Tyce ignored the taunt. He couldn’t explain why this ship was able to communicate with him, and he understood the unlikely series of coincidences required to even make it possible. The aliens would have to possess emotions comparable to humans and they would have to have a similar enough brain structure that the computer probes could activate neurons in the correct order. Logistically it made more sense to suggest that this was a human ship from some time-traveling faction who left Earth thousands of years in the future and traveled back to this point.

Actually, that might not be entirely impossible. The theory made as much sense as anything else Tyce could come up with. 

They had covered half the distance back to the stair when Plat called out “Hold” in a low voice. Joahan whirled around and went to one knee, his weapon braced against his shoulder.

“What?” Tyce asked.

Plat shook his head and frowned. “I thought I heard something.”

Joahan took that as an invitation to switch positions, and he came trotting back. Tyce put his back to one of the many alcoves formed by doorways and watched their rear.

“What?” Joahan asked. He took the opposite side of the hall from Plat and watched the curve of the corridor. Tyce kept glancing back, but he had to keep his attention on his end of the hallway. The damn curve meant that an enemy could be damnably close before appearing. This design might work well for gravity loss, but it was hell on small-weapons fighting. Maybe these aliens didn’t have wars.

That would be novel, and it didn’t make sense given the destruction wrought by the ship’s external guns.

“I heard that,” Joahan said. 

“What?” The sense of dread intensified in Tyce’s gut.

“Scratching,” Joahan answered. “Like equipment getting dragged across a floor.”

“Or claws,” Plat added. The Imshee had huge claws on their front two legs. When Tyce had seen one on the camera, it had struggled to keep the front legs together as the claws slid across the floor.

“Move,” Tyce said. He double timed it away from that sound, but then a whine of a weapon sent him diving for the shallow cover of another alcove. 

“Fuck!” Plat returned fire and backed away from the enemy. Tyce took a step toward them, but Joahan had taken cover in the next alcove, so if Tyce left his, he wouldn’t have another place to take cover. The doors here were wide, but not wide enough for two men, especially not when the edging offered the only cover. Joahan was pressed tight against it, his body flattened.

“Plat!” Tyce called. “Retreat!”

Plat darted across the hall so the curve of the corridor gave him more cover. Then Joahan started firing. Tyce stepped into the hall, his own weapon raised.

“Negative,” Plat yelled. “Hold the rear!” Tyce knew that a smart enemy would send a second attacker and Tyce needed to watch for that, but he felt fucking useless staying so far back that he couldn’t even see the enemy.

Joahan laid down heavy line of fire, but Plat yelled over the thrumming of the weapons discharge. “It won't work! Don't waste the energy!” Tyce retreated into his shallow cover as the Imshee sent another round of weapon fire down the hall. The alcoves would not save any of them for long.

Joahan stopped firing. “What will work?”

“We had started aiming for limbs and eyes last time.”

“Did it work?” Joahan asked. Maybe the Imshee had retreated because neither of them was firing. Then Tyce heard the dull staccato beats of something hard against the deck. His gut told him the damn alien was communicating. Maybe it was deaf. Maybe vibrations were the only form of communication it possessed. Maybe Tyce needed a fucking xenosociologist to help him sort out tactically significant details from random crap because the tapping might be the alien equivalent of burning off adrenaline. 

“No one has hit an eye, but shoot at the legs and it'll trip,” Plat said.

As strategies went, that did not seem particularly effective. Tyce preferred killing enemies over tripping them like a schoolyard prank. “Is that supposed to be helpful?” Tyce asked.

The tapping vibrations vanished, and Tyce’s gut developed a knot. Plat called back, “When they trip, run like hell.” He hadn’t even finished before the reverberation of the alien weapon sang through the air again. Running was a strategy. Right now, it was a great strategy.

“Do it!” Tyce shouted over the noise. 

When the enemy had superior defenses, unknown offenses and no known vulnerabilities, running seemed like a damn fine idea. Plat and Joahan were both firing, but Tyce could only watch their rear and curse the curve of the ship as he waited to see a target.

“As soon as the thing goes down, be prepared to run,” Plat said.

Tyce spotted a single claw jammed against the edge of the corridor. He split his attention between the known enemy and watching their rear. When the rest of the leg appeared, Tyce came out of cover and fired several shots. The leg was an easy target, massive and stuck right out front; however, the alien either had shielding or tough skin, because it only paused before it moved forward again, those massive front legs sprawled out like a porn vid. But the odd posture made sense when the belly arms returned fire with two separate weapons.

Tyce flattened himself against the locked door and blew out a shaky breath. He was not convinced they were going to survive this. However, Platt's plan gave them the best chance because Tyce could see the flaws in the anatomy. The creature’s front claws looked predatory, primitive. If that were an alien pet, Tyce would call the claws the real threat. However, as a sentient creature, it had the odd design of functional hands under the belly.

If they could trip that bastard, the Imshee's own body would block it from firing. Plat popped out of his alcove and fired off several shots. 

“Go!” he yelled even though the creature hadn’t gone down. When Joahan took off for the alcove behind Platt without sparing a glance toward the Imshee, Tyce realized that Joahan had lost his cover. Plat was closer to the Imshee, but he had the curve of the ship on his side. Now Joahan was across from Tyce and only a few feet closer to the creature. That left Plat too damn close to the enemy. 

A whine of alien weaponry made Plat flatten himself against his door. Tyce stepped out of cover and opened fire. The huge eye, white and red and patterned like shattered glass, was a tempting target. However, if career soldiers had tried and failed to disable the Imshee that way, Tyce suspected shielding. At least kneecapping the monster had tripped it in the past. So that’s the strategy Tyce used. He tried placing his shots as close to the front legs as possible. 

He knew the energy of his weapon was hitting because the grayish-green hair quivered with each shot. However, the beast refused to go down. Plat only had to lean forward to fire—that’s how little cover he had. The alien swung his gun toward Plat and fired.

Plat slammed back against the door, and Tyce took a step forward, firing. On his left, Joahan fired. The creature gave a chittering cry and backed up. Tyce suspected the creature wanted to draw them out, but he resisted the bait. His gun was not a match for the alien.

“Are you okay?” he called to Plat.

“Surface burns. That weapon is nasty.” His grimace suggested that he was hurt worse that he wanted to say.

“Get your ass behind me,” Tyce said. Plat gave him an odd look, but Tyce was not up to the task of dealing with command assumptions and prejudices. Tyce never left someone behind. He occasionally shot his own people in the back, but unless Plat had a history as a serial rapist and sometime killer, he didn’t have to worry about that.

“Both of you get behind me,” Joahan said as he stepped into the middle of the corridor and started walking forward, his weapon held up.

“Joahan!” Tyce hissed. The asshole ignored him. 

“Plat?” In that one word, Joahan asked a lot. Plat pressed his lips together and nodded. Joahan edged forward, and Tyce moved to cover the rear. It was all he could do, although when this was over, Tyce planned to have Ama lecture the snot out of him and then Yoss could hit him harder than usual during training. Tyce had a few fantasies that included Joahan and vivid, violent bruising.

Plat clipped his weapon to his vest and cradled his burned arm at the elbow. Joahan snapped his weapon up and started firing, and Plat ran for Tyce’s end of the hall.

“Joahan!” Tyce yelled. Joahan started backing away, still firing, but then Tyce heard a scrambling. As a child, his family had owned a dog, and when someone opened a food packet when he was lying on the tile floor, his toenails made the same skittering as he tried to bolt to his feet. “Joahan! Tyce screamed. 

Joahan abandoned decorum, turned and bolted. Tyce moved to the wall and opened fire before the monster had even appeared. Two great, clawed legs appeared, each braced on an opposite side of the hall, and then the creature lurched forward with an awkward leap that left it bouncing off the ceiling.

Backing up as fast as he could, Tyce continued to fire. One of the front knees wobbled, and Tyce redoubled his efforts to kneecap the bastard, but then he tripped. His weapon flew off to one side, and Tyce wind milled his arms as he fell backward. When his ass hit the floor, he realized he’d tripped over Joahan. The man lay panting, one side of his body red and damaged. 

Tyce grabbed Joahan’s vest and dragged him backward, but as each second passed, he waited for death. The creature swung his massive head toward Tyce, and those huge eyes rotated in their sockets. The voice of the ship, the ghost feelings and sense of otherness all vanished, as if the ship itself had abandoned Tyce rather than suffer death with him.

Then Plat was at his side, firing with his burned hand as he grabbed Joahan’s pant leg. “Run!”

Tyce didn’t need a second invitation. He lurched up and took off, dragging Joahan with him, and doing God knows how much damage in the process. Even with the two of them dragging Joahan, he was fairly sure they were not going to make it. The scrabble of claws seemed right behind them, but he didn’t look. Tyce’s weapon had slid toward the Imshee, and he didn’t have time to unfasten Joahan’s from the strap. Plat continued firing, and had now started to shout profanities. 

The noise kept Tyce from hearing the distinctive whistle. The first he knew of a problem was when the edge of his shirt lifted away from his arm. Tyce whirled around, and at the same time, Plat stopped firing. The Imshee stood with its claws stretched wide, but its hair flowed straight back. It looked like a cartoon of a monster walking into a strong headwind.

Every shipper’s nightmare included starving after losing hyperdrive engines and hull breeches. Maybe that’s why Tyce’s brain refused to connect all the relevant dots. There was no fucking way the universe would add a hull breech on top of an alien invasion.

“Run.” Tyce had wanted to sound authoritative and firm, but his voice came out a thready whisper. Plat obeyed anyway. Still dragging Joahan by the leg, he practically dashed for the opening to the spiral stair, leaving Tyce struggling to keep up.