Vetch climbed through the airlock-style hatches at the aft end of the greenhouse, choosing to emerge onto the desert bleakness behind cover. At one time, the main entrance to her subterranean home had also been concealed behind natural boulders, but that precaution had long since been ground away by time.
Her father, Vincent, despite all his brilliance and energy, was anything but consistent. He sometimes joked that he was the perfect archetype of the “absent-minded scientist,” a joke Vetch still didn’t understand.
So after years of fighting the futile battle against her father and entropy united, she finally gave in to convenience. Today though, she was glad this seldom used exit had remained hidden. An inexplicable unease gripped her from the inside, an undefined fear that resisted explanation or even investigation. It was almost as though she could sense a malevolent presence nearby, as absurd as that thought was.
Vetch instantly spotted the motionless figure standing atop the nearest dune, its sun-bleached bones standing out even more brightly than the glaring sand. The skeleton would have alarmed most, but it reassured the sixteen year old girl that was currently living alone in an underground house that seemed far too large.
Vincent had tried to explain that the skeletons were compelled by a “geas”, a sort of enchantment that forced them to protect anything buried in the great desert. He didn’t believe this was intentional. Nor did he believe the reanimation itself was intended. It was all just a side effect of some ancient cataclysm that had scoured the land clean, altered the weather patterns to eternally render the area lifeless, and left a subtle aura of “negative energy”.
When they first crashed here, before Vetch’s earliest memories, Vincent had chosen to bury the remains of their ship and convert it to the dwelling they had now. That act, chosen simply to conserve power and water, had luckily tapped into the ancient geas. When Vincent first encountered the skeletons, dozens of them converging on his half-completed shelter, he had been astonished to discover that they came as protectors.
So she and her father lived alone in a desert that practically repelled life. Every day she used remnants of technology thousands of years more advanced than anything else on the planet. Far to the north, there was magic to rival that technology, something her father said was pure fantasy in the universe of her birth. And here, she was surrounded by an undead horde that would sacrifice itself to the last scrap of existence to protect her. This was all perfectly normal to her, for she’d lived no other life.
This would never be home to Vincent however. He remembered another world. Not just another country, or planet, he had tried to explain. They had come from another universe entirely, a universe ruled by The Imperium of Man, which Vincent still served. He was duty bound to find a way home, to report his discoveries to the relevant authorities.
This duty, combined with his natural curiosity, drove Vincent on his expeditions. He was convinced that he would discover remnants of a more advanced civilization if he dug down far enough. Whether the backbone of that civilization would turn out to be science, or the ubiquitous magic that currently pervaded this universe, he wouldn’t hazard a guess. Either way, he believed he would find the clues necessary to reconstruct the high technology of an ancient civilization, one powerful enough to ruin planets, or perhaps to punch through space-time itself and return him home.
The skeletons would normally drive away anyone that attempted such archeological excavations, but Vincent was a special case. He lived beneath the surface, and was almost like a buried artifact himself, something to be protected. So the undead creatures tolerated his behavior, but they watched him closely. If he ever actually found what he was looking for, all bets were off.
Vetch didn’t think the warrior skeletons would hurt her father, even if he did find something. He was just as safe in their company as she was, perhaps even more so. Yet that didn’t mean he couldn’t fall prey to other dangers. He’d been known to become so engrossed in a problem that he wouldn’t eat or sleep for days. If Vetch hadn’t kept a full mug of tea within his reach, he might have succumbed to dehydration. If he sank into such a trance out at one of his dig sites, would the skeletons forcefully drag him back to reality? Vetch didn’t know.
And he’d been gone much longer than usual. He’d never left her alone for more than a week past his scheduled return before, but this time he’d been missing more than three times that length. It might be that he was finally acknowledging her as an adult. He’d mentioned sixteen as an official milestone on most planets of the Imperium. Then again, he might be in trouble. As much as the solitary skeleton on the sand ridge comforted her, Vetch wished it were the figure of her father instead.
Vetch climbed back into the airlock, but hesitated before entering the greenhouse below. There were plenty of ways to kill time in the controlled environment of her home, from gardening to maintenance of the complicated air and water recycling systems, to simply reading. Her father had hand-copied more than a dozen books from the digital library to scraps of parchment he’d gotten from the skeletons, and the tactile sensation of holding those books usually exerted a strong calming influence.
Today, Vetch didn’t think that would help her however. Her unease continued to grow, a tiny alarm that chewed and chewed at her, slowly eating away until only worry would remain. The natives of this world would probably call it a premonition, but Vincent had explained many times that neither of them had such talents.
Vetch couldn’t stop thinking about her father. Everything about this world simply was to her. But to him it was novel and vitally important. It was almost as if between the two of them, he were the child. Just recently he’d been lecturing her about the importance of planetary rotation and orbital periods.
“There are thousands of inhabited worlds in The Imperium of Man, so you need a standard reference for basing your calendar. Days that are just so long, and years that are just so many days. We have that, based on an old system devised for the birth planet of our species. We also have ten thousand local ways of counting time.
“You see, we’re an adaptable race. We can live almost anywhere. So if you found a previously unknown planet that happened to be inhabited by creatures much like us, you wouldn’t be able to make any strong predictions about the length of their years and days.
“Yet here we are, in a universe with laws of physics different than our own, on a planet that appears to have been inhabited by humans for tens of thousands of years at least, with orbital and rotational characteristics within a percentage point of our homeworld. Do you see what this all means?!”
“No,” she’d answered flatly.
“Neither do I,” he’d blurted. “But it has to mean something. Maybe it’s even connected to whatever happened here in the past to create this desert. Whatever the connection is, I’m going to find it.”
And he would, if it were possible. That was something Vetch had to admit about her father. He didn’t have just one area of expertise, one specialty in which his accumulated knowledge made him someone worth listening to. He was a true genius, someone who made intuitive leaps over and over again, breaking through walls that had held back hundreds of billions of lesser minds for centuries. Even the boundary of the universe itself had parted under his scrutiny.
There was something between universes though, something he hadn’t anticipated, and it had somehow reacted to their passage. What worked once wouldn’t work again, and the jump engines that had previously folded space refused to reverse their course. Modifications would be needed, new equations for a field of physics yet undreamt of. Either that or a huge ass power boost, what Vincent called the “sledgehammer approach.” It was one of those solutions that he searched for, slowly sifting an entire desert of sand by the bucketful.
Before duty, before curiosity even, there was guilt. Vincent had failed to predict something completely unknowable, and in the process he’d stranded his baby daughter in an alien universe. Never mind that this was her home now. He’d spent the last fourteen years constantly searching for the key to undo that action, and he’d continue searching until it killed him.
Vetch finally made up her mind and reemerged from the hatch. She would talk to the skeleton. Even if it couldn’t clear away her anxiety, the conversation might prove interesting. Bits and pieces of the former life were sometimes retained by the undead, their brainless skulls magically holding onto remnants of identity. Vincent had talked about probability clouds and magically entangled fields of uncertainty once, but Vetch hadn’t really listened. It was simply the way the magic worked.
To her surprise there were three skeletons atop the dune now, all armed with bent and rusted swords. While they came and went according to their own inexplicable drives, they rarely converged here since first concluding that Vincent and his daughter weren’t threats to their imperative. A trio of the warriors suggested a potential threat had been detected nearby.
Vetch climbed towards them, ascending the mound of flowing earth almost effortlessly. It never occurred to her that such a simple act set her apart, that even well conditioned soldiers were usually left panting after such a quick ascent.
Augmentation systems, networks of drugs and stem cells guided by nanotech implants, were common in the Imperium, but unheard of here. Vetch’s system had been designed by her father however, and he’d once boasted that it was as beyond Imperium tech as their the Imperium was beyond this world.
Living with only her father and the undead for companions, this had never quite sunk in. In her heart, this was just another thing that simply was, and she couldn’t hold onto the idea that other humans might be any different.
“Have you seen or heard from my father recently?” Vetch looked at each skeleton in turn as she asked her question. They were odd creatures, barely sentient, and if she weren’t obvious with her intent they might ignore her.
The skeletons stared back, or at least appeared to. Peering into eyeless sockets that followed you everywhere, it was impossible to tell what actually held their attention. Finally, one spoke, it’s jaws swinging up and down out of habit even though the sound was produced magically. Lacking both lungs and tongues, there was no way the creatures could physically produce speech.
“I observed him at his exploration site. He was well when last I saw him, three days ago.”
Her father’s current dig was at least five day’s march away. Vetch conceded the skeletons could travel faster than she or her father, as they never needed any form of rest. Still, it sounded like it had walked directly here, perhaps even jogging part of the way. This was far from their usual random stumbling.
“Why are you here?”
“To protect you.” A different skeleton answered that time. “An agreement with your father.”
“Protect me from what,” Vetch asked, panic creeping into her voice.
Despite the barrage of questions she hurled at the trio of undead, Vetch was unable to elicit any further response. When she finally turned back and slid down the dune, she regretted ever approaching the skeletal warriors.
Far from offering reassurance, or at least answers, the skeletons had only exacerbated her uneasiness. Why had her father sent them back to protect her, and what had he offered them in return? Since when did the skeletons even know the word “hypothetical”? What did their sudden silence on the subject mean?
After cycling through the airlock, Vetch decided to take matters into her own hands. She could survive in the desert as well as anyone. As soon as it was dark she’d leave the safety of her home and head for the dig.
The desert was cool at night, often cold even, but that would work to her advantage. It would allow her to walk a brisk pace without overheating and sweating. Her augmentation system could adjust her pores to conserve water once she became slightly dehydrated, but she didn’t intend to need that trick. By traveling at night, and burying herself during the day, she could easily stretch the water in her pack to fifteen days.
Or, ten days for herself and five for her father, if she found him in need of rescue. The skeletons had helped him carry several drums of water and dehydrated vegetables to the dig site, but Vetch had no proof the stores were still there. For all she knew, there had been some accident three days ago that left Vincent trapped and devoid of supplies. That could be what “well when last I saw him” meant.
Vetch didn’t remember falling asleep, but she woke half an hour after sunset, exactly when her internal alarm had been set. Just one more perk of technology that she took for granted, complete control over sleep and wake cycles.
Her pack had already been prepared, and the only thing to add was the book that had knocked her out, a pompous tome on why humanity was alone in the cosmos. This was perfect, the most boring object in her father’s entire collection, both physical and digital. There was no way she’d finish it before reaching her father. It would put her to sleep each morning, ensuring she didn’t waste her rest period worrying.
Vetch cycled through the airlock, unsure why she didn’t want the skeletons to see her departing. If they did, they would only follow her. She was under their protection so they couldn’t possibly stop her. They couldn’t even touch her if she didn’t wish it. Still, the unease that had dogged her earlier was back, even stronger. It insisted discretion was vital.
So Vetch made sure to switch off the lights before opening the outer hatch, even though she wasn’t sure if skeletons saw light. They observed their environment certainly, but they didn’t have any sensory organs so the how of it remained an unsolved mystery. They just sort of magically knew where things were.
The instant the outside door began to slide open, Vetch heard a faint sound, something almost like a hiss but somehow reeking of the unnatural. She cocked her head, trying to locate the source of the noise while remaining otherwise motionless. Pops and crackles broke the monotony of the hiss, but so faintly that Vetch almost wondered if she were imagining it all.
It was so faint, and the volume so constant, that it was an easy sound to ignore. After a few seconds Vetch could convince herself it had faded to nothing. She stepped outside the now fully open hatch and quickly crouched down behind her concealing boulder. She risked a quick glance over the top, expecting to see a trio of figures atop the nearest ridge of sand, gleaming in the light of the crescent moon. She was momentarily startled to see nothing but emptiness, lifeless sand rising unperturbed to meet inky sky.
A moment of reflection told her that this was expected. The skeletons, if they were truly on the equivalent of guard duty, would occasionally circle around her home rather than stand eternally in one spot. This worked to her advantage, as this was the direction she intended to travel, and now she wouldn’t need to circle behind the house and far out of her way to bypass the sentries.
Vetch loped up the hill, hurrying to pass over to the far side before the skeletons circled back around. Her augmented muscles made short work of the climb, even with her heavy pack. In barely an instant she reached the crest and started her descent. She only made two skidding steps down before spotting the shards of white jutting from the soil.
Bones. Shattered. Enough for three full humanoid skeletons. And just a little further down the slope, rusty iron glinted where something had struck the old blade hard, hard enough to scrape below all the tarnish.
The skeletons fought without heed to pain or injury. They fought until their pieces were too pulverized to hold together any longer, not even the magical aura pervading them capable of granting further mobility. A human warrior wouldn’t have a chance against one of them, let alone three.
At that moment, the hissing sound returned, louder and clearer than before. It reminded Vetch of static, the sound she’d heard as a child when her father allowed her to play with the useless radio equipment. A startling realization followed. The sound came from inside her own head, not from the external world. That was why it had been impossible to pinpoint its origin earlier. Some invisible signal was interacting with the control nodes in her brain, the computers that directed her augmentation system. It was triggering excitation of nearby neurons, creating auditory hallucinations.
The source of the signal was learning as it went, fine tuning the connection by the second, even though Vetch didn’t see how it could be acquiring any sort of useful feedback. And yet, the truth was there, being broadcast straight into her head.
It was the sound of the ocean now, waves crashing and receding, with unintelligible words buried in each crescendo. She could make out those words, if she just focused hard enough, she was sure. Was this her father, finding a way to reach out to her? Was this a call for help?
There was pain and desperation in that signal, powerful emotions somehow being transmitted at a deeper level, bypassing the outer layers of tissue and shooting right into her amygdala.
Then came words, the first that she understood. “Join me.”
The entity was absolutely not her father. Somehow, it had forged a deeper connection than should be possible through radio. Its mind brushed against hers, giving her a glimpse of understanding. It was a pulsing web of contradictions, simultaneously ancient and newborn. It would patiently wait a billion years, but it couldn’t control its impulse for a handful of seconds.
Terror spread across Vetch’s mental landscape like wildfire as she realized it must also be able to sense her. Even as she realized this, an alien tendril of consciousness stroked the wave of fear, attempting to turn it back and twist it into something else.
Nanocytes surged through Vetch’s brain, commandeering legions of glial cells and sending the makeshift army surging through the neuronal forest. Some pathways were activated while others were suppressed, and the reinforcements, a chemical cocktail of neurotransmitters and their precursors, joined the battle mere seconds later. Like the immune system attacking a pathogen, the invader was repelled.
Vetch had no idea what her augmentation system had just done, for it had never shown any such ability in the past. Then again, such potential had never been called upon.
What she did know was that the foreign presence had been banished from her mind. The sound of static remained, but it was attenuated, almost as faint as the first moment she’d heard it.
The sound began to grow once more, and she realized she’d only been granted a short reprieve. She turned and sprinted back to the hatch, hoping that she’d be safe inside. The sound might not be coming from the external environment, but she had good reason to suspect it would still be blocked by the walls of her home. Her home had been made from a spaceship after all, and the hull was designed to absorb or reflect nearly the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
She squeezed through the outer airlock door without waiting for it to slide more than a fraction of the way open. She pulled the emergency override lever to immediately halt the door’s motion and allow her to physically roll it back closed, something she’d never done before. Years of operational lifespan were sacrificed for mere seconds, but she didn’t care.
The static vanished the instant the door sealed, confirming her hopes and suspicions. This was not escape however. Her momentary respite had been extended, but she was still trapped, still alone with a monster that could sense her presence the moment she tried to flee.
More skeletons would arrive to protect her, maybe dozens, but she knew that wouldn’t be enough. Her glance into the creature’s mind had revealed something that relished opposition. Somehow, the more forced that were sent against it, the stronger it would become. She hadn’t seen how, but she’d seen its certainty. She’d felt the arrogance of a creature that couldn’t be defeated, that believed itself invincible.
Vetch didn’t waste the following day simply pacing back and forth, waiting for the end. She experimented, playing with vents and environmental controls, tinkering with ducts and hatches. Every time the metallic shell of her home was compromised with an opening larger then approximately two inches, the crackling sounds of the monster returned. When there were no gaps that size, regardless of the thickness of the hull, the signal vanished. Even a wire mesh placed across an open ventilation shaft could block it.
Vetch was grateful her father had tried to teach her the physics of her homeworld. Until now, she’d never seen any use for a Faraday Cage. But Vincent had shown her how it would block radio signals, preventing one of the useless devices from playing music that had been broadcast only half a room away. Thanks to that almost forgotten demonstration, she knew how to block the creature from infiltrating her mind.
Vetch began construction a suit based upon those principles, sewing copper mesh between two layers of cloth. Boots. Gloves. She made sure every square inch of her body would be covered. It was an ugly creation, and the cloth helmet, with its mesh coated faceplate, hindered her sight. But hopefully it would render her invisible to the creature. As long as it was expecting to reach into her mind as soon as she left her house, it might not be employing any other senses. There was a chance it would just stake out the buried ship until the end of time, while Vetch lived a long and peaceful life thousands of miles away.
Vetch pulled her hood into place, snapping it against the collar of her suit and finally sliding down the faceplate. She reopened one of the larger vents, the first true test of her Faraday suit. She held her breath, almost imagining she could the faintest whispers of an alien mind. But it was nothing except stirring currents of air. The suit worked.
Vetch waited for nightfall once more, but this time she didn’t attempt to leave shortly after sunset. She waited until just a few hours before dawn, when she knew even the thin moon would be below the horizon, and the night would be at its darkest.
Vetch grabbed her pack, still ready from before, and began to pass through the greenhouse before a sudden doubt hit her. The rear exit was concealed, but it was also the one she had used before. Wouldn’t the creature, if it were nearby, have positioned itself where it could observe that location? Wouldn’t the front door, exposed as it was, offer a better chance at undetected egress?
She remained undecided for what felt like ages, unable to convince herself that one choice was clearly superior to the other. Just when she felt she was nearing a resolution, a horrible thought struck her. The creature had seen into her mind. What if it understood her thought processes better than she did? What if her decision didn’t matter? What if no matter which door she chose, it would be waiting, having already predicted her movements.
Vetch finally settled on a coin flip, introducing a degree of randomness the monster couldn’t alter. The coin, a worthless relic of a universe she couldn’t remember, landed on the worn face of a long forgotten ruler, sending Vetch towards the front door.
There would be no concealment if the creature waited, but the odds were on her side. There was an even chance it would be at the rear hatch, watching the greenhouse, and some indeterminate probability that it wouldn’t be within sight at all. It might be stalking around miles away, attacking random skeletons.
Vetch took a deep breath and shoved the front door open with all her might, acting quickly before her fear could overcome her courage. The door squealed, just another act of routine maintenance that had lost the battle against entropy, and she cringed at the harsh sound. It didn’t matter.
She couldn’t move, couldn’t even breathe. It stood not twenty feet away, clearly visible even in the meager starlight. It didn’t move, perhaps confused that it couldn’t sense her mind. Perhaps it was even unaware of her presence, disdainfully refusing to use the senses that would have detected her.
As the seconds passed uneventfully, Vetch regained her composure and took a good look at the monster. It was shaped like a man, and could even pass for one in the darkness. Metal plates covered most of its body like armor, while pipes and tubing projected from the rare gaps. Some sort of coolant or gas exchange system perhaps.
Two large shadows resolved themselves as they crept forward to flank their motionless master. Though Vetch had never seen dogs in the flesh, she knew immediately that something was wrong with them. They were far too emaciated to live, barely skeletons with scraps of skin and tendon stretched tightly across their frames. Bits of metal protruded from their joints, almost like they’d been assembled from parts and bolted together. Their jaws were mismatched, filled with teeth that belonged to another species.
With growing horror, Vetch realized these things had been assembled. The bones came from the bodies of fallen skeleton warriors, while the bolts and screws were reshaped iron, swords and shields that had been dismantled for this task. The scraps of organic tissue… please don’t let that be my father.
The master, the humanoid appearing figure, tilted its head as it finally acknowledged Vetch’s presence. The plates began sliding and the tubes rolled in and out, as it reshaped itself right before her eyes. Its chest expanded and a lump formed where its throat should be. Then it spoke, its voice rough and toneless.
“Join me.”
Vetch slammed the door closed just as the pair of hounds leaped, grateful that her house was built of an advanced iron alloy, meant to withstand the rigors of space travel. The hounds began scratching, almost like real dogs begging to be let in. But the screech of metal against metal betrayed them. No natural animal had iron claws.
By morning the creatures had ceased all obvious attempts to gain entry. This told Vetch that despite the monster’s capability, it wasn’t very bright. It was true that the crude iron of this world had little chance of even scratching the stronger Imperium alloy. But there were a dozen ways for a creature that could change form to invade the spaceship-turned-home. Instead of hounds, it could send snakes through the vents. It could dig beneath the sand and attack the thinner sections below. It could poison the air and water recycling systems to flush Vetch out.
Instead, it was content to wait, to simply outlast Vetch. It was strong, durable, sure of ultimate success. It was not, however, much of a thinker. And why should it be, Vetch reasoned. Why would an organism waste resources in the pursuit of creativity, when it could just reach into the mind of its prey and steal all that it needed to know?
She’d clearly caught it by surprise with her Faraday suit. Despite her terror, it had reacted far more slowly than she had, pathetically slowly in fact. It was only poor luck that she’d picked the wrong door and it had been waiting for her. An unfortunate toss of the coin had cost her that crucial advantage.
But maybe it had been replaced with another one. The creature knew it couldn’t sense her, and might not she be able to turn that to her advantage? Before, she had intended for it to assume her absence. Now, why not trick it into assuming her presence instead?
The creature was bound to get inside eventually. Better to let it in now, on her schedule, while its dim wits were still handicapped by ignorance of the location. While it walked in one door, she would be walking out the other, and it would never realize she’d escaped. Perhaps she could even trap it inside. None of the doors or hatches operated by remote, nor had they for years, but the potential was still there. The circuitry was still waiting for the right signals.
And Vetch had two radios and plenty of spare parts, boring and useless toys that her father had insisted she master. She never would have guessed that they would now be the key to saving her life.
The plan that eventually formed was simple. She would rig a remote for the rear airlock and disable the primary controllers between the doors. Once that was done, she’d open the outer hatch and simply wait until the monster took the bait. When it stepped inside to investigate, she’d close hatch behind, trapping it in the tiny space. Then she’d grab her pack and leave through the front. Even if the creature somehow broke through one of the airlock doors, it would have to spend days crawling through every hidden inch of the house before it could be sure she was gone.
The beginning of her plan went off without a hitch. Fashioning a remote and breaking the manual controls beyond the possibility of a quick repair was child’s play. The ancient lessons from her father swam to the surface as though they had occurred only hours ago. Her nearly perfect memory was just one of the many augmentation benefits that she’d never needed yet always taken for granted.
Vetch pushed the button in her hand, smiling as she heard the outer hatch swing open. She prepared for a long wait, expecting that it might take a full day or more before the alien noticed the change and moved in to investigate. She was delighted to see it appear almost immediately, having been drawn to the sound. So it did have the equivalent of ears. She had suspected as much, based on its ability to create speech, but she hadn’t been positive.
Another push of the button closed the hatch behind the monster, trapping it in the airlock. Just as Vetch grabbed her pack and mentally congratulated herself, the plan began to go wrong.
The front door shook as she approached, nearly torn off its hinges by a sudden impact. Howls and screams reached her ears, the sounds easily transmitting through the thick metal barrier. The hounds.
Vetch cursed herself, wondering how she could have forgotten the creatures. She’d just been ignoring them, foolishly thinking they’d be non-factors without their leader to control them. For all she knew, it was controlling them, using some means other than radio that wasn’t blocked by the airlock doors.
The door shook again, struck with far more force than either of the emaciated creatures should be capable of generating. Metal screeched as it tore, and shiny claw tips pierced the material as their owner scratched and dug.
Somehow, the hounds had been altered. Where soft iron had been grafted to them, they now possessed the stronger alloy of The Imperium of Man. The creatures had been altered at the molecular level, specific atoms injected into their bones and claws in just the right quantities to form a more powerful frame.
It shouldn’t be possible. It required fabrication technology this universe simply didn’t have, and sensor equipment far too large to hide inside a man-sized being.
Vetch grabbed a short sword, long ago given to her by the skeletons of the desert, and rushed back through the length of the house, and the attached greenhouse, to the airlock, unsure what she planned to do. It had killed three skeletons, even before it made the hounds. Surely she couldn’t fight her way past.
To her horror, the monster had torn into the wall and exposed the wiring beneath. It was repairing the broken control system, tracing circuits and reconnecting them as though it perfectly understood the technology.
It couldn’t possibly be doing this. It was stupid, far too stupid to understand Imperium technology. She barely understood it herself. And yet, the proof was right before her. In minutes, either it would open the back door, or its minions would tear through the front one.
Once again, her augmentation system activated long dormant abilities, adjusting her brain chemistry in ways that could not have been predicted. As though the circuitry were alive, and not just the connection to a computer program that ran according to set rules, it acted. Like a desperate animal backed against the wall, attempting to save itself through attack, it used Vetch as its fangs and claws.
Fear turned to anger, which in turn became hate. Her primary goal was no longer escape, but to kill. She couldn’t stand this vile abomination. Its very existence turned her stomach, and compelled her to violence. This… virus… couldn’t be allowed to spread. She would destroy it, somehow, right here.
Both the master organism and its hounds were single-mindedly trying to get inside. So she would let them. But she’d make sure they never got back out.
This was a house now, a pair of buried bedrooms and a greenhouse, but it hadn’t always been. The core, incessantly generating the power to maintain climate control, filter and purify waste, and even pull spare water molecules out of the desiccated air, was capable of far more. It had once ripped holes in the fabric of space-time, and the antimatter that provided such enormous bursts of energy still patiently waited in its containment modules. Only the slimmest reserves had been used, in all the years Vetch had lived here.
Vetch ran to the core, pulled back the cover plates that protected the control circuitry, and attacked the delicate systems beneath with her sword. She had no time for subtlety. Sparks flew and smoke billowed, which encouraged her to greater efforts. Horns blared and lights flashed, warnings she’d never heard before. All this she took as proof her plan might actually work.
The hounds crashed against the front door again, in unison this time, and almost sent it flying inwards. It still held, somehow, but it was now warped so badly that it had split apart from its frame in several places. The openings were large enough for one of the hounds to squeeze its misshapen head through. It snapped and growled, oblivious to the skin that scraped from its face as it rubbed against the jagged metal. Blood oozed, but it was darker and thicker than it should be, almost tar-like.
“Containment failure imminent,” an emotionless voice warned. It practically shouted from dozens of hidden speakers, but it could hardly be heard over the din of the hounds.
The hounds’ master finally freed itself from the airlock. It walked slowly but deliberately through the greenhouse, clearly visible through the sliding plastic barrier that alone kept it from Vetch now.
Vetch retreated through a side door, backing into her father’s tiny bedroom to buy a few precious minutes of life. This door wasn’t nearly as strong as an exterior portal, but it was still made of Imperium metal. It would hold for a moment or two. Hopefully that would be enough. The antimatter should contact the walls of its container and explode any second now. She wasn’t sure what such a blast would feel like, but she hoped she would die quickly. At any rate, she would destroy this monster with her, and avoid the sickening fate of joining it, becoming transformed into a grotesque mockery of life such as the hounds.
As Vetch locked the door and backed across the cramped room, she brushed a panel of switches and levers. Inspiration struck, as she realized her father had always been able to control every facet of the ship-turned-home from his room. There was even a hypothetical escape route, though it had never been tested, nor even primarily intended as such.
Beneath Vincent Vesper’s bed was an access hatch to the entire circulating water supply. The pipes had been repurposed, but they’d always carried water. Once they’d coiled between the outer hull and an inner, lighter barrier. The liquid had served many purposes: sustenance for the crew, reaction mass for maneuvering when jump engines were offline, and protection against radiation.
Rather than a single reservoir, the water flowed through a series of thick curled tubes that could be isolated in the event of a breach. That way the entire supply wouldn’t be lost to space due to a single penetration of the hull.
The piping was twenty four inches in diameter, far larger than necessary her father had once explained. Everything the Imperium mass produced was designed for access by Remoras in case of damage. Robots could do all the repair work, cheaper and faster, but mankind had long distrusted artificial intelligence. Progress had been stalled for a thousand years Vincent claimed, all because humans feared creating something more intelligent than themselves.
He had never explained exactly what Remoras were, leaving Vetch to imagine some sort of dwarflike technician. Whomever or whatever they were, they could crawl through the pipes that now ran directly beneath Vincent’s bed. And, realized Vetch, she could fit as well.
Whether there had ever been a reason behind mankind’s irrational fear, and whether her father had rebuilt the water system according to a burst of inspiration, she neither knew nor cared. It could all be ignorance and blind luck, but either way it culminated in her salvation.
Vetch flipped the bed against the wall with one hand, practically shattering the poor frame thanks to the adrenaline surging through her system. She spun the wheel below until it practically flew open. Then she hit the switches on the control board to initiate a high pressure purge, something her father had drilled into her head when she was still small. It was a desperate measure, designed to use air pressure to completely empty the system of water. Vincent had told her it was only to be employed if some toxin or contagion contaminated the water supply, some agent that their augmented bodies couldn’t cope with. She didn’t think he’d argue with her claim that the alien hounds and their humanoid master counted as contagion.
Vetch took a deep breath and dove head first into the pipe. She stretched her arms forward and worked her shoulders as she struggled to make the ninety degree turn that would leave lined up along the tube. As she wormed her body into the pipe by inches, she started to wonder just how long she could hold her breath, and whether the purging system was still operational after all these years. Drowning, trapped halfway in a pipe with her legs still waving in the air above, was only marginally better than letting the monster catch her.
Just then rusty pumps managed to fill leaky canisters with enough air to trigger dying pressure sensors. A burst of nitrogen and oxygen drove into the water system, relentlessly driving the liquid before it. Vetch felt herself pulled completely into the tube by the current, one of her legs painfully smashing against the rim of the access portal in the process. Then she shot through the curved lines like a bullet, scraping and banging against the metal walls every second of the way, until she emerged nearly senseless at the ejection site hundreds of yards away.
Rapid recovery was another advantage bestowed by Imperium technology. Despite a battering that would have left most men half dead, Vetch regained full awareness in a matter of minutes. Seconds after that, she was back on her feet, gazing back towards her origin.
Vetch looked at the pillars of smoke rising from the ruins of her home. Fire climbed high, before becoming lost in the clouds of swirling black. Vetch was disappointed at first, having expected a shocking, crater forming explosion. Obviously, the antimatter containment system had some type of safeguard she didn’t know about. In hindsight, it seemed stupid not to have guessed it. Such power wouldn’t be left in a form so uneasily unleashed.
Had she known just how powerful an antimatter explosion would be, had she actually worked through the physics that her father had drilled into her head, she would have been grateful. She was far from a safe distance from such a blast, and further away still, beyond the reach of the shockwave, she would have suffered a flash of gamma radiation that even her augmentation system couldn’t defend against. Death would have come slowly then, as her cells died and her body dissolved from within and without simultaneously.
She didn’t realize all this, but her disappointment still turned to relief as she realized the temperatures involved at the heart of that inferno. Thousands of degrees, if not tens of thousands. It would be hot enough to destroy even Imperium alloys, which meant hot enough to destroy the monster that had pursued her.
Just then, she realized her Faraday suit had been shredded as high pressure water forced her through the pipe system. The barrier was now useless, but she felt no alien presence rooting through her mind. The creature, whatever it had been, was dead.
Relief turned to resignation, as Vetch realized just how hopeless her situation remained. She was alone in the desert, with a broken leg and nothing but a few tatters of fabric and wire mesh clinging to her body. She would begin the long, limping walk to her father’s dig site, but without water she would never make it.
