Escape from Enceladus (Stark Raven Voyages Book 1) Page 6

  The hatch slid open. The lock was empty, and she let her shoulders sag in relief.

  Then a writhing, squirming form came boiling around the edge of the hatch. Liz had time for one brief scream, and then it was on her.

  Chapter 6

  "This is bad. This is very bad. Oh, Gaia, this is really bad."

  "Shut up, Vogel," Chan snapped. "I'm trying to think."

  Vogel opened his mouth as if he wanted to argue. Then his eyes slid to Joss, who was staring at him with wide, solemn eyes, and he flushed and closed his mouth.

  "What the hell is she playing at?" Singh muttered. "I knew she was cold-blooded, but leaving us here?"

  "It doesn't matter," Chan snapped. "Maybe she'll be back. Maybe she won't. What we need to figure out is what to do next."

  "We're going to die," said Vogel in a small voice. Chan looked at him, and Vogel lowered his eyes. After a moment he cleared his throat. "Sorry, Captain. So, what do we do next?"

  Chan, to his dismay, found that all three of them were looking at him. I'm a glorified janitor, for Buddha's sake! What makes you think I know what to do about monsters in a secret base on Enceladus? I'm only captain because claiming an abandoned lifeboat was my idea. Considering how it's worked out, that should make you less likely to follow me, not more.

  He stared back at them, waiting for someone to take charge, someone who actually knew what to do. The moment stretched out, and nobody moved. When he couldn't stand it any longer he said, "All right. First thing we'll do is go back to the office area and send a message, call for help. Then we'll come back here. The airlock is the strongest place on the entire base. We'll just wait inside the lock until help arrives."

  They nodded as if his plan wasn't full of holes and followed him back into the base.

  No one said a word as they worked their way through the dormitory section. When they reached the door to the office area, Chan held his hand up and everyone froze. He leaned close to the door and listened.

  There was a distinct dragging sound. All four of them heard it. But it didn't come from the offices. It came from behind them, in the changing room. Chan stared at the others, seeing his horror reflected in their faces, trying to tell himself that it was nothing to be afraid of. It was another survivor, or the same man coming back. But that dragging noise, now mixed with a quiet snuffling, sounded like nothing human.

  His mind flashed to the other door leading from the dressing room, the one they had never opened. They had made too much noise, and something on the other side had come to investigate.

  Well, it wasn't a mistake he was about to repeat. He was silent now, all four of them were. He didn't move. In fact, he didn't think he could make his rigid muscles move if his life depended on it.

  It turned out he was wrong. Something rubbed against the door between the dressing room and the dorm area. The door rustled, then creaked as the pressure increased. When the door frame started to crack, Chan tore open the door in front of him and launched himself through it.

  He bounded through the office area, stooping low as he nearly hit the ceiling, eyes scanning frantically for a place to hide, a door strong enough to keep out a creature that could rip a woman's head from her body.

  Terror makes one percent gravity the same as zero gee. Chan passed through the office without touching the floor, grabbing at corners and doorknobs and desktops to propel himself forward. The others were right behind him, bumping into him when he turned corners. He had no idea if they were being followed, but he tore along as if monsters were on his heels. He sailed through the meeting room with the bullet-riddled walls, passing over the severed tentacle, and pulled himself through a doorway on the far side.

  There was a security booth of some sort, and a door with a turnstile. He went over the turnstile in a low dive, rolled to his feet, and darted into a corridor that opened on the right. He went through the first doorway he came to. It opened on a room full of chrome and gleaming white paint. There were no other exits, so he dove over a counter and huddled on the floor on the far side. More bodies came flying over the counter. In moments the four of them were a tangle of limbs, clinging to one another and staring around, the only sound their panicky breathing.

  After a while Chan whispered, "What was behind us? Did anybody see it?"

  Silence.

  "Did anyone see anything?"

  "No," said Vogel, "but I heard it. Oh, my good Gaia, this is not good."

  "Don't start that again," Chan snapped. "Where are we?"

  Their close huddle broke apart, and the four of them re-arranged themselves. Singh had landed on his stomach with Vogel on top of him, and he rose to a crouch, giving Vogel a dirty look and smoothing his vac suit.

  They were in a narrow gap between a counter and a wall. The room was brightly lit. Every surface seemed to be stainless steel or stark, antiseptic white plastic.

  "I think it's some sort of lab," Joss whispered, examining the shelves under the counter. There were metal trays, forceps, and bottles with stoppers. She lifted her head just high enough to see over the counter, gave the room a quick scan, and ducked back down. "Definitely a lab."

  "Did you see a data terminal?" Chan asked. "The sooner we get a message out, the better."

  "I'm not sure," she said. "We may have to stand up."

  "I'm not standing up!" Vogel hissed. "Are you crazy?"

  "We can't stay here," Chan replied. "Face it, this isn't much of a hiding place. If something is looking for us, it's going to find us. We have to get a message out." He looked at the others. No one argued. Great. Chan took a deep breath and stood.

  The room was free of monsters, for the moment at least. He walked around the counter, his boots making low scuffing noises on the linoleum, and surveyed the room. A glass-walled cubicle filled one corner. There was a long steel table with instruments dangling from the ceiling above it, a row of sinks along one wall, and a little desk with a data terminal and a couple of chairs. He picked up one chair, stepped over to the open door, eased the door shut as quietly as he could, and braced the chair under the knob.

  "There's no outside connection," Joss announced. She was sitting at the terminal. "Let me see..."

  Chan walked over and stood behind her chair as she tapped the screen. She found a file menu and started to explore. There were cryptic documents full of technical jargon about Hox genes and protein transcription, all of it far over Chan's head. It seemed to be vaguely medical in tone, though. She brought up diagrams of complex molecules and spreadsheets of data with incomprehensible labels.

  Eventually she found a letter, obviously an early draft, filled with corrections and margin notes. Some of it was too technical to understand, using words that Chan was willing to bet were made up. One section of the letter was only too clear.

  The transition to human subjects has been more successful than we ever could have anticipated. Although we continue to experience challenges, they are no more than what must be expected for such a revolutionary breakthrough. Fatality among test subjects has fallen below 30%, and more than half of subjects successfully reach Stage 3.

  It is difficult to overstate the ramifications of our discoveries. Test subjects are able to survive extremes of temperature from -120 degrees to in excess of 225 degrees, and pressures below 0.1 atmospheres. Six subjects have survived in hard vacuum for an average of over nineteen minutes, none less than twelve minutes and one for nearly thirty minutes.

  We are nearing a point where our findings and our methods can be made public. Soon we will reach a threshold where the significance of what we have accomplished will be enough to trivialize the legal and ethical concerns which the public may express.

  Joss pushed her chair back from the terminal. "Good God," she said. "Thirty percent fatality among test subjects? Ethical concerns?"

  Chan thought of the severed head in the office area and sincerely hoped it belonged to the author of this letter.

  Vogel shook his head. "So, that tentacle? It came from some kin
d of, what? Altered human being?" The others stared at him, not answering, and he shuddered. "That's sick!"

  "It's pretty illegal, too," Joss said. "When we get to a console with a live connection, we better think carefully about who we call."

  Vogel turned to her. "You must know some people in your spy agency. We can call them, right?"

  Chan told himself he was imagining the furtive look in her eyes as she nodded. "We can contact Solar Force, yes. That's a good idea."

  Singh snickered, and she ignored him, turning back to the terminal. After a moment she brought up another document.

  Subject: Technician Warshawski

  Date: May 3

  Test subject 58 escaped from confinement during Level 2 treatment and proved quite difficult to contain. A security team eventually managed to destroy Subject 58, but one of our technicians suffered skin lacerations from direct contact with the appendages of Subject 58.

  Technician Warshawski began to display symptoms of the Barnes Effect almost immediately. He died 76 hours after first exposure. Physical changes were inconsistent, and concentrated near the site of the lacerations. Successful conversion seems unlikely when contagion is introduced in such a haphazard manner.

  The unfortunate demise of Technician Warshawski has provided a wealth of data. Still, we have modified our security procedures to ensure there are no more unscheduled exposures.

  There was a photograph below the text. Warshawski was a young man, thin and pale, his eyes open and blank in death. The left side of his body looked perfectly normal except for some bruises on his ribs and thigh. His right leg was almost normal, with a strange lump just below his hip.

  After that, all normality ended. His right arm was gone. It seemed to have split, forming a pair of tentacles, gray skin showing through as pink human skin peeled away.

  Smaller tentacles erupted from the side of his neck, just above where his shoulder should have been. His rib cage was deformed, growths sprouting across his chest and stomach. Something was in his abdomen, stretching the skin outward on his right side. His navel had been pulled several centimetres to the right, the skin stretched so tight it looked ready to tear.

  Half of his face looked normal, and his eyes and forehead were unchanged, but the skin was gone from the right side of his jaw, and the jawbone was deformed, twisting downward like nothing Chan had ever seen.

  "Holy Hell," breathed Vogel. "That girl in the office. The severed head. She was lucky."

  "We definitely need to think about leaving," Singh said. "I say we throw the door open and make a run for it." He strode to the door, put a hand on the back of the chair, and froze. He leaned closer to the door, frowning in concentration.

  And the door vibrated as something thumped against it from outside.

  "On second thought," Singh said, "let's keep the door closed." He backpedalled, scanning the room as if an exit might have appeared while they were talking. Then he headed for the glass-walled booth in the corner.

  Chan stood frozen, his thoughts chasing themselves in a terrified circle, and Vogel pushed past him, heading for the door. Chan had a bad moment, thinking that the boy was panicking, and he started after Vogel, knowing he would be too late.

  But Vogel grabbed the chair and wedged it harder under the doorknob, then held it steady. The door thumped again and again, but so far it was holding.

  Chan reached Vogel's side and pressed his hands against the door. The faux wood surface thrummed through his gloves as something battered away on the far side. He thought of the woman's head, ripped from her body, and wondered how long the door would last.

  "I'm sorry," Vogel murmured, barely loud enough for Chan to hear.

  "Sorry? For what?"

  "About before. I was scared. I let you down."

  Chan stared down at the top of Vogel's head, nonplussed. Finally he said, "Don't be silly. And anyway, you've made up for it now."

  Vogel looked up at him, something like wistfulness in his eyes. He looked impossibly young, and Chan was filled with a fierce and hopeless urge to keep him safe. "Really?" he said.

  Something slapped against the door, the plastic hit Chan's palms hard enough to sting through his gloves, and the chair slid several centimetres across the floor. Vogel kicked it back into place and wedged a knee against the front of the seat, his face white with strain.

  "When something needed to be done, you were the first one there," Chan said. "You were the only one heading toward danger instead of away from it."

  Vogel turned his attention from the door long enough to flash an uncertain grin at Chan. Then he took a deep breath and leaned hard on the chair.

  The door shook with the biggest blow yet. A horizontal crack appeared just below Chan's hands, running from just above the middle hinge to the center of the door. A moment later the door seemed to jump toward them. There was a loud cracking noise, and Vogel straightened up, his eyes wide, the back of the chair in two pieces in his hands.

  Chan grabbed him, dragged him to the side, and the remains of the chair sailed across the room as the door swung inward. Chan, acting on impulse, wrapped his arms around Vogel and pulled him against the wall. The fractured door hit them, and he let go of Vogel, grabbing the doorknob. They stood breathless, half hidden, as monsters from a nightmare came swarming in.

  At first it seemed like a horde, dozens if not hundreds of twisted creatures. Eventually Chan realized there were only three of them. He would have taken them for aliens if he hadn't known better. Nothing noticeably human remained. Each creature had about the mass of a man, and a torso with a head above it. Everything else was changed. Limbs sprouted everywhere, and they writhed across the floor instead of walking. The lack of legs made them shorter, but tentacles that sprouted straight upward and waved in the air gave an illusion of height.

  For some reason, tentacles sprouted thickest where a human neck should have been. Each creature had a misshapen head with bulbous eyes and an elongated jaw, surrounded by a ring of squirming blue worms.

  A quiet corner of Chan's brain reported signals of pain coming from his right hand. He was squeezing the doorknob as if he meant to crush it. He was distantly grateful for the vac suit, because his bladder was releasing itself. In the corner of his eye he could see Vogel, mouth open, frozen.

  The creatures squirmed past, no more than half a metre from the cowering men, and kept on going. Singh was inside the glass-walled booth, and Joss gave a shriek and sprang in behind him. The door of the booth clicked shut behind her an instant before the creatures arrived. Tentacles slammed against the glass, all three creatures battering madly, their attention focused on Singh and Joss.

  The door to the booth opened outward. The creatures were effectively holding the door shut, but the glass was already cracking beneath their blows. Joss had the big wrench high over her head, trembling as she waited for the glass to break.

  It's time to go. Come on, James, you can do it. Two steps will take you around the door and out of the room. You can't save Singh and Joss. But you can save Vogel. You just have to move. Move!

  Every muscle in his body was rigid. Chan wasn't sure he was even breathing. Then he caught a flicker of motion in the corner of his eye. Vogel swallowed, then took a deep breath. The boy was about to panic, to scream or make a run for it, and Chan opened his mouth to whisper a quiet warning.

  He never got the chance. Vogel moved, deliberately and without panic. He strode across the floor, directly toward the creatures.

  Chan watched him go. His mind scrambled through a thousand scenarios. He could charge after the boy, achieve nothing, and die with his friends. He could slip outside while the creatures were distracted, and try to live with himself afterward. His eyes flicked over the contents of the room, searching for a weapon. His pipe wrench lay on the counter, but against these creatures? He might as well use harsh language.

  His eyes fell on a bright green button protected by a plastic case just inside the doorway. He'd seen the same thing on Coriolis Station, a
nd on various spaceships. It was a gas-based fire suppression system. It would be enough to suffocate every human being in the room. These creatures, though, could survive twenty minutes of hard vacuum.

  They were, for all practical purposes, indestructible.

  Vogel reached the creatures and threw himself forward in a dive. He extended his arms, catching two of them where a human might have had a waist. In an instant there were tentacles around his arms, his legs, his head. He screamed, "Run, Joss!" Then the tentacles tightened, and he just screamed.

  Chan reached the doorway in two steps. He thought he was leaving until he saw his hands flip the plastic casing up. He slapped his palm down on the green button.

  The result was instantaneous. Vogel's screams were drowned out by the peal of a siren. A gray fog came jetting from a dozen hidden nozzles in the ceiling. Chan dropped to his knees, coughing, as the room filled with billowing gray clouds.

  Something screamed, a voice completely inhuman, and a shape emerged from the fog. Chan flinched back, and a tentacle brushed him as one of the creatures fled the lab. The second one was just a disturbance in the mist as it went by. He heard the third creature hit the door frame, the tentacles gripping the wall for an instant before the creature flitted outside.

  Chan pressed his cheek to the floor, sucked in a breath, and banged his forehead on the floor as he started to cough. He reached out blindly, fumbled until he felt the doorframe, and dragged himself into the hall.

  Clouds of gas billowed from the lab, but the air in the corridor was mostly clear. Chan stayed on hands and knees long enough to take three or four good, deep breaths, then stood.

  The creatures were gone. The corridor was empty.

  He took a deep breath, stepped to the doorway of the lab, and stuck his head inside. Almost immediately he saw Singh, sagging against the wall and coughing. Chan held his breath, kept a hand on the doorframe, and reached in, grabbing Singh by the wrist. He dragged Singh into the hallway, where the other man dropped into a sitting position, coughing and gasping.