The navigator, p.45
The Navigator, page 45
Quill was halfway up to the ceiling, clinging to one of the rungs on the bare, metal walls. Petal was a few dozen rungs above her, sharply off to the left, just below the top exit hatch. Quill could hear the hatch's access pad beep softly, three times, as Petal held her hand up to it.
In all of their time together, Quill never realized how agile Petal was. Now, inside the Tear Drop, Petal's natural agility could shine. Her small, sprightly body enabled her to climb circles around Quill. She could deftly scramble up the spiraling rungs that swirled across the lower recesses of the Tear Drop with the skill and grace of an acrobat.
Quill watched her fleet movements from several feet below, awestruck by her strength and nimbleness.
I guess this place was designed for Khoi to move around in.
Petal fidgeted at the top of the quasi-ladder, waiting for the exit hatch to open. Once it did, she dove through it and darted into the next room. She then backtracked, poking her head over the top rung, waving for Quill to follow.
Quill clumsily plodded her way up the rungs. She felt like a cow - unbalanced, ungainly, and bottom-heavy. She'd never been particularly sensitive about her weight so much as her shape. She thought she looked like a child's bop bag: thick thighs, a big butt, and a thin, weak upper body. Having to cling to the ladder rungs and continually support her weight reminded her that very soon her body was going to balloon up from pregnancy. She cringed at the thought of becoming an even heavier, mom-shaped pear.
It took so long for her to reach the top rung, that by the time she did, the hatch had closed.
Petal backtracked to reopen it.
"Sorry."
Quill mouthed the word to Petal, embarrassed at how out of shape she was. She ducked down to fit inside the hatch and wiggled through it.
The room on the other side was a sinuous, spiraling stairwell. The right side was a solid, gray wall. The left side was made of clear, one-way glass windows that looked out on the stratosphere. The stairwell meandered its way around the edge of the Tear Drop, wrapping across the side of the station like a coiled python.
Quill walked up to the windowed wall, peering out at the sky. The surrounding stratosphere still looked orangish-pink in the late afternoon. A puffy plain of clouds a few miles below obscured the sea. The dark sky above the station twinkled with stars in an otherworldly perma-dusk.
Quill backed away from the windows and sniffed the stale air. It had an odd, recycled smell that reminded her of being inside the observation deck in Kowloon Tower - Khai Shen's tallest sky scraper. That tower was roughly one thousand feet tall. Quill guessed that the height of the Tear Drop was about twenty-five times higher.
Petal tapped her on the arm, motioning for her to follow her up the stairs. Quill nodded in agreement, and the girls began to wind their way up the Tear Drop.
After five minutes ascending the stairs, Quill noticed a series of gnarled, black streaks that randomly cut across the station walls. They were organic looking, jagged and highly irregular with the appearance of a blacktop-like crust that had oozed out from the station's interior. It didn't look like the crust had been part of the original make up of the Tear Drop. It looked like the hard gunk had accumulated or grown on top of the station's veneer slowly, over the years, like a spreading dry rot or a fungus.
After seeing six streaks of this strange crust, Quill grabbed Petal's jacket and motioned her over to one of them.
Petal hadn't noticed the intermittent black streaks. She'd been looking out the windows, trying to go up the stairwell silently. When she turned her head, she was surprised to see Quill frantically pointing at some growth that had leached out from the wall and ossified. She walked over to it for closer examination.
Up close, the crust looked like dried asphalt. Its surface was dotted with little bubbles that appeared to be trapped pockets of air. Strange indentations smattered the crust. They seemed to be the skeletal imprints of tiny, alien-looking creatures.
Petal squinted at one of the little imprints in the crust. It looked like a fossil of a finger-long flatworm. She leaned forward so the imprint was only a few inches away from her eyes. She exhaled slightly while studying its intricate details.
The moment her warm breath blew across the crust, it began to crack and crumble like it was boiling.
Petal retreated from the wall, backing into Quill. Both girls watched, horrified, as the crust continued to creak and shift. Finally, a small ball of several black worms wriggled out from it and fell onto the stairs. The worms writhed on the steps, separating, and slithering toward them.
Quill's fight or flight instinct kicked in the second she saw the little worms pop out of the crust. She grabbed Petal and dragged her up the stairwell.
"Were those Aii?" Petal whispered the words into Quill's ear.
Quill shrugged, continuing to push Petal forward from a few steps back, careless as to how much noise her footsteps were making.
Petal began to worry that their hasty pace was, in fact, making too much noise. When she and Quill reached the next black streak on the wall, it was already crumbling.
The girls ignored the danger and flew up the steps, two-at-a-time. Just as they were about to exhaust themselves, they came upon something that looked like a landing.
Quill stopped to catch her breath. She hunched over and leaned against the windows, looking down at the clouds as she wheezed. She lifted her head up and stared at the opposite wall.
On the wall was another black streak. This streak was larger and thicker than those she'd seen previously. It went up from the floor to the ceiling. The blackish tar that made up the streak jutted out several feet.
Encased inside of this protruding bulge of crust was something that looked like a head. It was the size of a car tire and had ten, empty eye sockets. Its exposed jaws were full of hundreds of long, needle-thin teeth. Under this empty, alien head were two spindly arms tipped with razor-sharp claws. All together, the bulge looked like a dinosaur skeleton that had fossilized in thick asphalt.
The crust surrounding the skeleton's demonic skull began to crumble. A few pieces flaked off its jaws and shattered like glass on the stairs. The skeleton's claws twitched up and down in response to the noise, mimicking the sickening, post-mortem spasms of a crushed insect.
Quill screamed.
Petal jammed her hands over Quill's mouth so she couldn't make any noise beyond a muffled squeal. She leaned her body into hers, trying to shove her forward.
Quill was barely able to snap out of her shock. She regained her wits and led Petal up the remainder of the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible.
By the time the girls reached the top of the station, Quill swore she could hear the slow, lumbering footsteps of the demonic tar-beast echoing their way up from the landing.
- 70-
At the zenith of the Tear Drop was a three-story glass dome. Its apex formed the crimped end of the Tear Drop. The sun shone directly in through the windowed walls of the dome, brilliantly illuminating the top of the station.
Quill looked up at the glass ceiling from the top of the stairwell. The dome looked like a greenhouse. On the floor were long rows of raised planters that at one time supported some kind of vegetation. Little irrigation drip-nozzles dangled over the planters every two feet or so. Scattered between the planters were several giant pots that formerly held trees and bushes.
All of the greenhouse-like structures that crowded the dome were overgrown with the same black crust that had oozed out from the stairwell walls. These tar-like growths suffocated all the former foliage, leaving behind spindly, tar-encased fossils of their remains.
At the center of the greenhouse was another spiraling stairwell, similar to the one the girls had used to get there. That stairwell had no outer walls; it looked like an RNA-helix that twisted its way up to a narrow terrace, slightly below the dome's apex. Petal could see a large golden structure sitting atop the terrace, basking in the sun. She grabbed Quill's hand and pointed to it, trying to signal she wanted to go up there.
Quill grimaced. To get there, she and Petal would have to walk through the forest of tar-choked planters. There was no safer path to the stairwell, and little else inside of the dead greenhouse, except for an ominous-looking set of gray double-doors that lay clear across from where they were standing.
The girls walked step-by-step through the dead greenhouse, the tar-caked planters a few inches away, on either side of them. They had to put their feet down softly with each step to avoid making any unnecessary noise.
Petal grasped her nanite-kit tightly, white knuckled, trying to prevent it from clanking against her side as she inched her way forward.
Quill was terrified that if she so much as hiccupped, a horde of demonic creatures would rise up from the surrounding tarbeds and immediately consume them.
By taking their time, both girls were able to make it through the maze of planters without incident. Despite this, Petal was certain that she'd heard a few of the soft, telltale cracks of crumbling tar. She and Quill didn't react. They silently made their way up the narrow, spiraling steps, to the central terrace.
The only thing on top of the terrace was a golden pedestal. Petal assumed it was the computer. It didn't have a monitor or a screen, but at the top of it were six rows of evenly-spaced golden squares. She walked up to the pedestal and stared down at the squares. Each square had a different symbol printed on it. She innately recognized that she was looking at a keyboard. The various symbols stood for different sounds which she could now vaguely remember. She detached the nanite-kit from her jacket, gingerly put it on the floor, and went to open it.
Quill glanced down at the dead tar gardens, trying to make sure none of them were reanimating. As her eyes swept across the tar's craggy, irregular facade, she heard a faint noise echo up from the stairwell. Her heart fluttered. She pictured the demonic tar creature from the landing bursting through the greenhouse door.
Petal opened the nanite-kit and retrieved one of the jade cubes. She held the cube over the top of the pedestal, unsure where to insert it. Clueless, she put the cube down on top of the keypad and then checked either side of the pedestal for a slot or a drive. Much to her surprise, the cube changed color from jade green to lemon yellow the moment it came in contact with the keypad. It then began to melt, oozing its way between the keys, sinking into the interior of the pedestal.
Petal backed away, shocked her nanite-kit cube melted. She looked over at Quill in bewilderment.
"OOOOONNNNG! Chatajeri-halatha maherikimera! Sinthre fi hakthier!"
Quill ducked when she heard the deafening 'ong' of the alarm, followed by an alien announcement which blared out from an unseen loudspeaker. The tar gardens below began to crack and crumble.
"What the fuck was that?" she seethed in a whisper.
"Something about an 'intrusion' or an 'unauthorized' something - I - I don't know,'" Petal stammered. A fountain of green light jetted out from the top of the golden pedestal, and a holographic projection of Cynax's squid-tree body appeared in the air in front of her.
"Crewman Fatima," Cynax crackled into her ear. "You have been successful. I now have full control over the Tear Drop."
A very large lump of tar shattered to pieces a few feet below. Petal cringed.
"You - you triggered an alarm, Cynax! The Aii are waking up! What do we do? Hurry! Tell me!"
"Please remain calm. I am analyzing an exit route for you as we speak. . .Analysis complete. On the southern wall of this dome there should be a gray-double door. That door is a sky lift. Enter the lift. It will take you down to the Tear Drop's lower hangar. There is one, operable Shearwater craft inside of Hangar Bay 4. Enter that craft as quickly as possible."
The communication device clicked off. Petal charged down the spiral stairway.
"Wha - what? Where are you going? What are we doing?" Quill spluttered.
"This way! Follow me! Now!" Petal barked, no longer caring about her volume.
The tar-caked planters continued to heave and shift as the two girls raced down the staircase and wove their way through them.
When the girls reached the middle of the gardens, halfway to the sky lift, the tar bed's hard surfaces finally cracked and thousands of black, beetle-like organisms scurried out from them.
Quill threw a fit. A swarm of alien beetles spilled onto the greenhouse floor. She clawed at her hair, shaking her arms and legs, as if the beetles were already crawling all over her.
Petal sprinted forward, reaching the doors well before Quill. They chimed at her approach and whooshed open.
Petal was startled by the whooshing noise of the door. She instinctively drew her Khoi pistol and pointed it into the newly revealed chamber.
On the other side of the doorway was a tiny empty room, similar to the interior of an elevator. Both girls charged inside the empty lift as the swarm of black beetles amassed in the center of the greenhouse.
Quill had never been more frightened in her life than she was at that instant. She huddled against the back of the sky lift, waiting for the doors to close. The swarm of black beetles in the center of the dome began to swirl as the beetles that comprised it bonded to one another, forming three, brooding superorganisms. These new, oversized black creatures bristled with hundreds of little needle-thin spines and sharp, mandible-like pincers.
Petal aimed her pistol at one of the new super-creatures, her thumb digging into the weapon's trigger pad. The alien creature stared back at her with twenty, honeycombed, insectoid eyes. A large mouth cavity took shape at the center of the creature's pulsating body.
The elevator doors snapped closed.
Quill nearly fainted. She felt the negative gees from the sky lift's rapid descent, and shoved Petal's pistol away, collapsing into her, hugging her.
"Holy shit! HOLY SHIT! What do we do? We have to get out of here!"
Before Petal could respond, the sky lift doors whooshed open, revealing a new section of the Tear Drop. The girls darted out of the elevator and studied their new surroundings.
The girls were now in a long corridor. Each end split into two hallways, giving this section of the Tear Drop the shape of a giant "H."
Petal jogged down the right side of the H-shaped corridor, staring down each side of the spilt. Both passageways ended with a large door. She scanned the doors - each had a large Khoi symbol stenciled across it. She knew the symbols on the doors were numbers, but she was so panicked and high on adrenaline she couldn't remember what they meant.
"Where are we? Where do we go?' Quill cackled from the middle of the corridor. "Tell me what's going on!"
"Uh. . .uh . . ." Petal's eyes darted from door to door as she racked her brain for a quick translation. "There! That - that one's four! To the left - come with me!"
"For? 'For' what?"
Quill chased after her, running to the door on the far left, marked 'џҢҩ'.
The door slid open automatically, revealing a small airlock. The girls sprinted inside. Once they entered the chamber, a hatch at the other end of the airlock hissed loudly and opened. Opposite the airlock was the interior of a school-bus-sized aircraft. Petal and Quill rushed inside of the strange craft and ogled its futuristic, alien interior.
The craft was twenty feet long and ten feet wide, with an obvious windshield at one end and a cargo hold at the other. The front of the craft was jam-packed with dials, knobs, and blank computer screens. Behind this collection of electronics were three copper chairs. On either side of the chairs were a series of large portholes.
Quill stepped further into the craft, peering through the port holes that lined the purple walls. Her head brushed up against the craft's ceiling. It seemed unusually low, as if it was made for transporting children.
Petal followed Quill, entranced. Cynax's voice crackled against her eardrum.
"Crewman Fatima, I am in the process of overloading the Tear Drop's reactor. The station will self-destruct momentarily. Please strap yourself into one of the seats inside of this shearwater and I will pilot you down to the surface."
"Quill, quick!" Petal hopped into a chair. "Sit down and strap in. We're flying out of here."
"You know how to fly this thing?"
Quill stumbled over to an adjacent chair. She sat down and picked up a ball of straps that was lying across the seat - a rather tangled harness. While she tried to untangle the straps and fasten them around her waist, the walls and floor surrounding the craft retracted. Daylight cascaded in through the side portholes and windshield.
"OOONG! Onshut hiwu machutama - 'prepare for rapid, free-fall descent.'"
Petal listened to the alien announcement echo out from a speaker that lay hidden somewhere in the hodgepodge of alien dials in front of her seat. She heard the sound of something detaching from the roof of their craft.
