CH8

“Ok… ok! We can handle it,” I tried to assure myself while forgetting for a moment how ridiculous was this whole situation. “How many of these creatures are there?”

There was no response to my question, so I turned around. Our new best friend have sat on the floor, his body shivering . Not a good sign. Not at all. I came closer and grabbed his hand to get his attention.

“Hey, easy boy.” Or maybe girl? Or something else? Fuck it, I was not going to look under its fancy suit to find out this particular detail. ”We won’t hurt you, as long as you cooperate, that is. Do you understand? If you help us you will be safe, ok? I’m a soldier of the Brotherhood and I give you my word. Can you hear me?”

“…He—He’s dead… I didn’t want him… I—I told… He wouldn’t listen…” And so the song continued…

“Listen to me. Listen!” I started losing my patience. “We have no time for that. You will help us. One way or another. Only you can decide how long it will take us to convince you; and how unpleasant it will be for you.”

That, at least, seemed to grab his attention. I could not tell what thoughts lurked behind these creepy red eyes, but when I looked into them this time they were more… focused.

“…fourteen,” he whispered after a moment

“What?”

“There are… There were fourteen Sa’der on this ship.”

I sighed relieved. Not that I had no doubts about Blue being honest with us, but the time was crucial. We needed every bit of help we could get. Besides, I had a feeling that this creature would have to be more of an actor than I would give him a credit for.

“Good decision,” I heard Draco’s voice over my shoulder.

“I thought you were supposed to watch the door,” I tried to sound annoyed.

“You know how the tunnel looks. We will see them coming anyway,” he shrugged.

True enough. When we came out of the freighter, after our encounter with that messy midget, we found ourselves in what looked like a hangar or hold. A really big one. There had been only one way for us to follow. A long tunnel which - after a ten minutes’ walk - split into two. We took the left branch as none of us had had any better ideas. That led us to a dead end. Or rather to what have looked like a dead end. Only after Blaze had found some weird marks on the wall we started to suspect that this may have been something more.

And we were right. It appeared that Blue had been the one who opened it for us. What is important, though, is that we have not seen even one other living being – of any shape – while we have been walking. Seemed absurd when you look at how huge this place must have been, but that would made sense considering what Blue had said.

“How many bullets do you have?” I hoped we could take them off without resorting to melee. The remnants of my vest were a clear testament of how poor of an idea it has been to fight hand-to-hand with them. Or hand-to-claw.

“Should be enough,” my brother sighed. “The question is, how many they have? We are outnumbered, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were also outgunned. Those creatures seems fairly intelligent, I don’t think they will come at us with only their claws this time.”

Good point. Lucky, we had someone who could dispel some of our doubts, or so I hoped. But first thing first.

“Hey you, what is your name?” I had no desire to refer to the guy as Blue for the rest of our conversation only because of his skin color. It seemed kinda racist.

“I-Ilminerelitore of Westa Station,” he answered, not even looking at me.

…

Cute.

“Ok, Ilmine. Can I call you that?” No reaction. “Can you tell us where we are?”

“On…on a bridge.”

Oh, shit.

“You mean like on a bridge of a spaceship?” I inquired.

He nodded. Double shit. Did we find the winner?

“Ilmine, you… You’re not a human, are you?” I whispered, already knowing the answer.

He shook his head.

Ding! Ding! Ding! And the pile of shit goes to…!

Dammit!

“I see movement,” Blaze’s voice tore through my thoughts.

I got up and went to the doors. There was something in the tunnel, but I couldn’t make out any shapes. I didn’t know what that half-lizard-half-bird had done, but the lights on the bridge and in the tunnel stayed dimmed, as if we were short on power. There were only few places in the tunnel where the weak light originated from, while the rest stayed cowered in darkness.

“Ilmine, can you close this door?” If only we could hold them off and buy some time…

“I don’t know. The AI isn’t responding. I don’t know what’s going on!” At least this time there were some other emotions in his voice beside fear and despair.

“I assure you, you’re not the only one,” I gritted my teeth. “But I would advise you to figure something out. And do it fast!”

“Try the console,” Draco interjected. “It seemed it’d worked for Shorty.”

As Ilmine reluctantly got up from the floor, I stared into the shadows of the tunnel. Something lurked on the other end. But it did not look like one of the Sader – I think that’s how our new friend called them – as it appeared even smaller.

“Hurry up, Ilmine.” I had some bad feeling.

“It’s madness. Nothing’s working here! Teo must’ve done something with the AI!”

Yeah, that told me a lot. I looked again into the darkness. Whatever was there, it was coming closer. The sound of its steps echoed in the tunnel.

Stuk-stuk-stuk. Stuk-stuk-stuk.

Finally, we saw it stepping into a circle of light.

“By the Pope’s hairy tits… Is that a spider?!”

It certainly looked like one. Six legs were supporting its rotund torso. But the thing looked abnormal, even for a dog-size spider. It had no head to speak of and the whole body was strangely symmetrical, as if that thing had no front and back concept. Not only that, the spider-like creature was also entirely black, in such a way that one could almost imagine ink would start dripping from its legs; must be why we could not see it cowering in the shadows.

I wanted to warn Draco, but my brother did not way for me to speak. He raised his gun and fired two times, both bullets connected with the creature’s torso. And, from what I saw, did not even as much as scratch spiderfucker.

“He brought friends with him,” my sister almost sang.

Indeed, more of them was coming out of the darkness with each second. And it looked they were speeding up.

“ILMINE!” I shouted.

“I’m trying, but…”

The first creature was less than five meters from us. And then it jumped. I tried to dodge cowering my head, not even hoping to fight head-on with something that could take bullets as if they were raindrops.

I had once tried to wrestle with the UG’s soldier wearing a full combat suit. Not my best memory.

Fortunately, at least this time I had help. Before that fucker was able to touch me I saw the door sliding from both sides, catching him in midair. Or maybe catching was not the best word. The door cut cleanly through the dark shape. Its severed half landed beside me with a laud *DUN* sound.

“What. The. Fuck.” Draco’s comment perfectly summed up my feelings.

I crouched, examining what was left of our little monster. The beast was heavy and - just after I turned it around - I found why. Its guts accounted for entanglement of wires and some othe high-tech junk. So, murderous robo spiders we had.

“These are repair drones!” Ilmine exclaimed in surprise. “The crew must’ve hack them manually, just as I did with the door. The AI would never hurt anybody on the ship.”

“Oh, but I’m about to hurt someone really bad.” I promised grimly and looked at the alien, his hands still trembling over the consol. ”Is there any other way they could get to us?”

“N-no… It’s the only entrance to the bridge.”

“Good, so for now we’re safe.” Or trapped. It depends how you look at it.

If there was only a way to get to the rest of the midgets, without fighting with those spiders… As our first encounter have shown Sader were no warriors.

God, I’m tired, I thought as I let my body slid to the floor. I did not know how long ago I had awaken, but it must have been several hours. Besides, resurrected would be a better word – drugs induced coma had nothing in common with real sleep. It gave no rest.

I recalled the first moments when realized we were on a spaceship. How foolish I was, thinking it could not be much worse.

And then something came to my mind.

“Ilmine? How did you kill all this guards?”

“Hmm?!” My question certainly caught him off guard.

“Relax, I’m not angry, just curious. There were around twenty guard on our ship. When we found their bodies I thought they suffocated… But I still don’t understand how.”

The alien seemed more blue for a moment, but finally spoke.

“…It was all Teo’s fault. He thought the ship you were flying on was fully automated, with no living beings on board. That’s how your system identified itself. Unmanned freighter with some heavy equipment for the planetary colony. But we were wrong… terribly wrong…”

Huh, that would even make sense. The Government must have done a lot of work to hide our transport from Brothers’ eyes.

“Continue.”

“That idiot thought himself clever, but when the freighter was already in the hold the AI scanned it. When Teo found out there were Earthens on that ship he panicked. He ordered the AI to decompress your ship by force and inject it with poisonous gas that the AI normally uses to clean the reactor. After… After that… He just cleaned the ship and told me not to worry… That he will take care of everything…” At the end of his speech Ilmine’s voice was barely a whisper.

“That would explain the holes,” Draco said with a sneer.

“Yeah, it would. But I have one more question,” I stood up feeling new energy circling through my body. “Is there a chance you could pull this off again?”