Invasive Species

David found himself wandering the empty corridors of the station. Darkness dominated the space. Consumed it. Not even the emergency lights were on. How he could see at all was a mystery. Nothing was disturbed. No bodies. No bulkheads eaten away. Everything was as it was before. But the station was empty. Powered down. Cold.

We walked the halls calling the names of his fellow survivors. But no answer. Even his voice didn’t come back to him. Like he was yelling into the vacuum of space. He heard someone running down the hallway behind him, but saw nothing when he turned. He followed the footsteps around the corner and it happened again. Someone running down the hall he had just left.

A scream. Seemingly from every direction at once. It was a woman. “Tamsyn!? Maria!? Mandy!?” But again his voice seemed to stay in his head. Another scream, this time a man. “Sam! Dalton!” The emergency lights came on, and the whole world groaned. The walls flexed. There was a loud pop and a hiss. A stream of fluid sprayed through a seam in the bulkhead with immense pressure. The halls suddenly filled with klaxons as the hazard strobes blinked to life, giving the stream a solid appearance. Sticking his hands into the stream he realized that it was not water colored by the emergency strobes. It was blood.

The bulkhead groaned again. The seam ripped open pouring gallons of blood into the hall. Overwhelming him. He was washed away and rushed to his feet, scrambling for the nearest pressure hatch. The flashing lights made it difficult to see how far he was getting. He leaped for the door, but it sealed itself. He rushed around the corner, bursting all around him. He reached another pressure door. Again, too late. By the time he reached the junction, the blood was to his knees. Every direction seemed to be sealed off. The blood was at his chest and he was floating. He was suddenly reminded of his terror as a child watching an old earth film about a sinking ship at sea. The claustrophobic nature of water rushing into a closed space. He tried to find high ground. Hopeless. He pressed his face against the ceiling gasping for one last breath of air, before carnage and the darkness consumed him.

When David awoke, his first breath gave him the impression that he was breathing through a sponge saturated in hot water. Once he was sure he was no longer dreaming, he took stock of his environment. The temperature had risen by at least 40 degrees and the humidity appeared to be near 100 percent. A Glance around the room made it clear that everyone was sweat drenched and miserable. Tamsyn had shed her jacket and tied it around her waist, but her skin still glisten with moisture.

David discarded his own over shirt on the desk and stretched out the aches and stiffness from his less than optimum sleeping position before he walked to a nearby cabinet. Opening the doors he puffed a sigh of relief when he saw there was enough equipment to go around.

He pulled out a harness and tossed one to each of them before securing his own and tossing the rail attachment over his shoulder. “We’re taking a shortcut through the station core. We’ll have to slide across the rails that the shipping containers move on until we find somewhere to climb down to the top floor of section fourteen. The gravity is minimal, so try not to bounce around too much.”

“Excellent. I’ve been meaning to lose some weight,” Tamsyn replied as she fastened her harness and un-holstered her pistol. Her witty remark seemed to brighten everyone’s mood, so David decided it was as good a time as any to get moving.

He turned the hatch and kneed the door open so his rifle was ready in case of attack. To his disbelief, the air that rushed in was hotter and more humid than the air in the office, but there was no sign of the creatures, so he didn’t complain.

As they slowly made their way down the stairs, Tamsyn whispered over his shoulder, “did the life-support system fail?”

“I don’t think so. Temperature would go down, not up. Something else is causing this.” They made their way down the corridor and found with relief that the temperature dropped slightly the closer they got to the core, but the walls were still sweating is if trying to regulate their own.

David nearly jumped out of skin his when he was hit in the neck with a large drop of slime. In one quick motion, he crouched and turned towards the apparent source above. What he found was a large oozing bulge on the surface of the ceiling. It was difficult to fully analyze the black mass in the shadows, but it was at least two meters in diameter and visibly torn as if something it had contained had ripped its way out. He shined is light around it and found that the entire ceiling as well as the walls were covered in the torn slimy sacks.

“What the fuck are those things,” Dalton said.

“How the hell am I supposed to know,” David snapped.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” It took a moment for everyone to realize that it was Tamsyn who said it. Her tone was ominous and almost primal. She was visibly shaken, and didn’t appear to be stating the obvious about an unknown variable being added to an already dangerous situation. David got the uneasy feeling that she sensed without a doubt that the danger had increased tenfold.

The rest of the team began examining the formations more closely. David used the barrel of his pistol to pull aside the hanging flaps on one of the sacks to peer inside, and found a cavity that went well beyond what was once the surface of the wall. Whatever had been inside could have been larger than the average car.

“Look at this one,” Dalton called from down the hall. Both the volume of his voice and the distance he had wandered from the group made David a bit angry. He forgave him immediately, remembering that growing up on Zuhause made him very irritable in the heat. She. The team caught up with Dalton he reached towards Mandy. “Can I borrow your knife?”

“What is it,” David asked as he passed Mandy’s knife to him.

“This one hasn’t been opened’” Dalton replied, and prepared to stab into the surface of the sack.

“Dalton, don’t,” Maria shrieked. Her tone was less of the general fear she had been displaying recently, than of direct concern for Dalton’s safety.

“If we want to know what these things are, we won’t have a better chance than now.”

“He’s right,” David said, nodding. “Go ahead. We’ve got you covered.”

Dalton nodded. He drove the knife through the surface of the sack and changed his grip to slice it from top to bottom. A flood of black slime pushed him to the floor, and when it cleared away, a large white spindly creature seemed to be pinning him down. He screamed and pushed the creature up, stabbing it repeatedly before throwing it aside and rushing to his feet.

The rest of the team rushed over to the creature for closer examination. It seemed sickly. Incomplete. David couldn’t understand. He had seen nothing like it before. Yet it still looked deformed. Three long skeletal legs. A shapeless body. Large swatches of loose leathery skin protruding from its back. Its color a patchy off-white.

“Cocoons,” Tamsyn murmured. “They must be taking their adult form.”

David thought for a moment. “That must be why it got so hot and humid.” Maria moaned in disgust.

“I’m with you on that one, Maria. We may have a new challenge ahead, but it doesn’t change our goal.”

“It absolutely does,” Tamsyn chimed in. If those things go through metamorphosis that means the slugs were babies. But now, they’re old enough to breed. We need to move faster.”

“I know what they are,” Maria said with a gasp of realization.

“What do you mean? How,” Mandy said.

“Mandallums. That’s what my grandfather called them. He was an archeologist. One of the first on Recluse.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before,” Tamsyn asked, trying to keep the accusation out of her voice.

“I didn’t recognize the larva form. He always said he thought they had one but, he never found any fossils. It was like none of them failed to reach adulthood.”

“That’s just not natural,” David said. “So…what are we looking at here? This one obviously wasn’t finished.”

“They get a lot bigger. Eight legs. And those flaps of skin…”

“Please don’t tell me they can fly…”

Maria only grimaced in reply.

“I don’t mean to be rude or anything, but is there a point to this academic lecture,” Sam sighed.

“This is really bad news for us,” Maria snapped. David couldn’t help but smile at her new found assertiveness. “My grandfather said these things wiped out all other life on their planet within a decade of them evolving into their current form. The population was close to seven billion by the time their mass extinction was over.”

“At that rate, this station could be over run in a day or two,” Tamsyn said.

“Alright. Point taken,” David conceded. “We’ll move faster. Let’s get-“ There was a ripping sound coming from both directions of the perpendicular hall. More unopened sacks were tearing open. David wasn’t sure if it was a colony instinct and more under developed Mandallums would be attempting to attack the threat that had opened one of their cocoons, or they would be dealing with full grown adults. Neither seemed pleasant. “Move!”

***

David was relieved when he opened the hatch that led to the track, and found the area clear of both the slugs and the sacks. As everyone caught their breath, he approached the precipice where the track turned downward and into a slope leading to the core, and seeing no immediate danger attached his harness to the rail.

Sam and Mandy watched the other customs agents attach theirs and then clumsily followed suit, but Tamsyn was the first after David to have hers secured; as if she had done it many times before. David was amazed by how Tamsyn seemed to do everything as naturally as breathing, and started to ask where she learned to use an inspection harness, but decided there wasn’t time.

When everyone was sufficiently secured, he turned forward. “Keep your feet in front of you so you don’t slam into the wall when the track goes vertical. We’re going to pick up a lot of speed, so hit your brakes early.”

He took a deep breath and held it to calm his nerves. He’d only been into the core on two previous occasions, and it was equal parts thrilling and terrifying. He let himself fall into the support of the harness and gave one good push off before lifting his feet. He glided across the chasm and planted his feet firmly against the wall as he felt a brief sensation of weightlessness. The rail caster slid in front of him, and he free-fell down the chute till the track gradually curved back to its horizontal position.

The transition from the chute to the core was a site that still made David’s stomach drop. It was an incomprehensibly large spherical room. One that reminded David of a piece by Escher, with shipping containers facing all different directions, no regard for the apparent orientation of gravity.

Stopped on the rail ahead was a container that had nearly made it to the other side before the power went out. He pulled the handbrake on the caster, gliding to a stop by the edge of the container. Swinging himself onto the ladder and detaching his caster, he pulled Tamsyn closer and climbed up.

He did a spin as the others followed his lead, trying to find the best path to their destination. It was going to be a tough and indirect journey, but it would still be quicker than walking around the core, and was the only way he knew of to transcend the sections without the omnivator.

Mandy was the last to join them and glanced over the side as she dusted her hands off “Looks like this one was full of them,” she said.

David put his weight on his back foot and glanced over side of the container. It was almost entirely chewed away. “This is where the infestation started. Half of the Charlotte’s cargo was already here in the core when they hatched. Must have figured out that nothing they wanted was in here and spread to the rest of the station.”

“So, where do we go from here,” Sam asked.

“We need to descend a few levels and get as close to that side-” He stopped as the core was filled with the familiar clicking sound. The echo made it difficult to determine its source, but David was relieved that it seemed to be alone.

Everyone had their firearms out and ready, muzzles pointed in every conceivable direction. The clicking noise was replaced with a sound like rain on a tin roof. Something, or many somethings tapping on the metal of the shipping containers. The second sound stopped as well, and there was a loud bang on the shipping container above and in front of theirs. David’s heart stopped as he looked up into the face of a full grown adult Mandallum.

Eight spider like legs held up a hardened black body. On its back, an eight foot span of wings. He could see in the trunk that swung from its torso, the same organic blender of teeth sported by its larva form. It stood on its hind two legs, revealing a circle of a blue spots that seemed to glow against it’s black exoskeleton.

David had hardly noticed the barbs shooting from them before every muscle in his body contracted. Searing pain among numbness. An electric charge passed through him in the rhythm of its clicking teeth. Collapsing onto the container, he lost sight of the creature. Flashes of blue and crimson. But no end to the pain. Some leaped over him. It was Mandy. He heard another guttural screech and his body finally relaxed.

He shook for what seemed like hours. Tamsyn grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet. He still felt weak. Looking back toward the creature, he saw Mandy standing over it. Her blade still stuck in its torso. Several of its limbs appeared to be broken or amputated. “You still with us David,” Tamsyn asked.

David tried to speak, but couldn’t. He nodded instead.

Maria swept her rifle in front of him to pull the barbs from his skin. The silky strands resisting her pull. “Looks like our guns just became useless,” she said.

David finally felt well enough to force a word through. “What?”

“The exoskeleton is too tough for plasma,” Mandy said, yanking her knife out. “It knocks them back, and does some damage to their legs. That gave me the chance to stab it.”

“So the guns aren’t completely useless. But, we can’t count on killing them all that way. Just have to hold them off and run.”

The shakes stopped, and David began to feel like himself again. “Than that’s what we’ll do. Not giving up now.” David started in their intended direction, but stopped when a new sound filled the core. It was as if a hurricane were roaring through the corridors around it.

“Other way, now” Tamsyn shouted. Not ready to question Tamsyn’s intuition under the circumstances, David followed her agile leaps over the containers. They made it a hundred yards before the deafening roar became a distinguishable chorus of buzzing wings. The core grew dark as it was at last filled with a vortex of thousands of the flying Mandallums. Inexplicably, Tamsyn was the only one to notice one of the creatures dive at the team from behind. She turned mid-jump and fired a shot that sent it spinning off course and into the side of a container, then skillfully rolled on her back and landed on her feet again. “In here,” she shouted, and blew the lock off of a nearby container. The doors flew open, and she jumped in, followed by the rest of the team.

Slamming the doors behind them, they were cast into darkness. Even with the muffling effect of the doors and the heavy breathing of everyone in the container, the sound of buzzing wings outside was still a nearly deafening roar. “If they saw where we went, we won’t last long. They’ll chew through these walls in seconds,” David panted.

“They go off scent. You can tell by the way they move. They don’t seem to know where we are,” Tamsyn said.

“Regardless, we can’t stay here forever,” David snapped. “And, now we’re on the wrong side and two levels above where we need be.”

“Are you sure there is no way to get down to the next section without the omnivator,” Tamsyn asked calmly. “If I could get us down one level, is there hatch or vent or something?”

“No there isn’t...wait.” David brought up the station layout on his wrist comp. “Dalton your grandfather helped design this place right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Then you’ve probably seen the old plans. Do you remember where the old access hatches to the conduit are?”

“Northern hemisphere… highest and lowest level of every section.”

“What’s the conduit,” Sam asked

“It’s a pipeline that runs the entire height of the planet. Power distribution, plumbing, a bunch of other stuff. We’ll have to cut open the hatch though, they sealed the pedestrian access a couple decades ago when some crook killed himself to evade capture by the military.”

“He laughed all the way down,” Tamsyn said absentmindedly.

By the glow of the hologram, David could see that her eyes were glazed over and her mind seemed to be somewhere else entirely. “Most of us weren’t even born yet. How could you know that?”

She snapped back into reality, but avoided eye contact. “My parents must’ve told me the story.”

David knew she was lying; not only by the subtle tells of her face and body, and the way her voice changed tone when she was concealing something, but the story didn’t add up. David had taken a great interest in the incident when he first came to the station, read the old news stories and the security reports. Even talked to some of the station employees who had been there that day. But he had never heard that detail before.

He decided that now was not the time to pursue the issue and tried to push it out of his mind. “So, you have a plan to get us down to the next level?”

Tamsyn closed her eyes briefly as if meditating, then they shot open again. She walked deeper into the container and turned, posing herself to start a sprint. “Get ready to follow me, and someone will need to give me cover fire. I’ll be too busy to defend myself.” She un-holstered her pistol again, pulled back and locked the slide, and moved the discharge setting to sustained beam, Firmly grasping the rail caster in her other hand, she closed her eyes again, and they remained closed as she charged forward, busting through the container doors. She flew through the air and reattached the caster to the rail, at speed.

David followed, but nearly missed in spite of not having to do it blind. He could only hope that the rest were able to make it, as he was immediately preoccupied with fending off the swarm. Tamsyn fired a steady constant beam at the rail ahead till it melted away, and did the same to the railing above near stopped container. By the time David turned his attention forward, again the container from above was crashing through the freshly burned hole, and Tamsyn’s gun was holstered. Her hand was stretched forward as if willing it into its unnaturally stable fall, hitting the rail just enough to bend it at a 45 degree angle.

It was then that David realized she wasn’t making a futile gesture for luck. The heavy, unbalanced object was actually responding to her command. He didn’t have long to think about the epiphany before he was gliding off the railing in Tamsyn’s wake. Having not taken care to control his angle, he ended up landing in the alcove on his back. Mandy landed with a combat roll, Sam with a flat footed thump, and Maria managed a graceful walking stop. Only Dalton remained

As soon as David was on his feet, panic set in. Dalton didn’t have enough momentum and was too busy defending himself from the flying beasts to notice. When he came off the rail, David leaned out while reaching behind him for someone’s arm to keep him from falling over. But, he couldn’t reach far enough to grasp Dalton’s arm. He tumbled through thin air and into the razor-sharp jaws of a flying Mandallum below.