Chapter 6

Ava stared up at the tunnel. It was infested with creatures of iridescent skin, the same as the inkasum, only they were smaller with bony front legs and furry scalps. Their bellies cast dim purple glows on the ground.

Something’s not right.

“Open fire,” yelled Zef.

Almost everyone from the group stepped back, pulled out their pistols, and took aim. Everyone except for Ava, who was fixated on the inkasum’s faces.

Small teeth.

The more she looked, the more she saw the difference. The creatures’ features were smaller because they were younger. They shined brighter because they hadn’t lived long enough to have their energy ripped from them.

These are…

“Stop!” Ava shouted.

The guns fired and beams zapped through the air. The inkasum exploded, one by one. Blood spattered the walls and ceiling gruesomely, organs spilling.

… children….

It wasn’t the gore that made her squeamish this time; the team had just murdered a mother and her babies. Innocent lives taken away in the blink of an eye. She took a deep breath.

“Is everyone alright?” asked Jack.

It didn’t take long for Crook to answer. “Am I dying?”

“Not yet you’re not.” Jack got down on one knee, drew the hose from the other side of his holster, raised it above Crook’s wound, and tapped his Echo. A brown liquid streamed from the hose into the wound. Alcohol, a moonshine of sorts.

“Christ!” Crook sucked the pain through his teeth in laboured heaves, doing his best not to let any groans slip out. Blood continued to river down his boots, creating a crimson puddle on the ground.

The hairs along Ava’s arms and legs tingled as heat spread across her body. It had been so long since she’d seen human blood like this. All she could think about was the nightmarish image of Maxim Heart’s bodyguards. The brain splatter. The endless stream of blood that flowed from the exit holes in their skulls, and the smell of burnt flesh. Her stomach twisted, but she couldn’t look away. She was a coloniser. Blood came with the territory.

Jack pulled out a gauze from his pocket and began wrapping it around Crook’s leg. “All of you start moving out. Keep your guns sharp and your minds sharper.”

“They damn well came out of nowhere,” said Tucker. This was the first time Ava had heard a hint of panic in his voice. Even when training on the SS Constellation, Tucker had always maintained that humorous, optimistic tone, and if not for Crook’s terrified whines, he might have even made a joke, something along the lines of him crying like a little girl. It was the Irish way after all. This must have put him on edge.

“That’s the problem,” said Jack, and he brought Crook up to full height.

Crook shifted his weight onto his strong leg as he leaned on Jack's shoulder for support, groaning. “Going down that hill’s gonna be a real problem, Terrygrew. A real problem.”

“Then man up,” said Zef. “If you think that’s gonna be the most pain you’ll experience as a coloniser for the Federation—ha!—you’re in for a bad time, pal.”

“Relax,” said Jack. “Don't worry about the hill. You'll be fine so long as you don't start screaming again. You do that and there's gonna be problems.”

“Come on,” Zef said, and he began making his way across the corpses of inkasum babies, one gut-squishing step at a time. “We return at dawn, no later. We’ll be better prepared next time.”

Hopefully that would be true. Everything was so great up until this point. Where did things go wrong? Why would the inkasum come down here if they were supposedly afraid of loud noises? It didn’t make sense to Ava. Surely, it went against their nature, right? Apparently not. Saying that a mother leading her children into danger could be chalked up to the inkasum’s unpredictable behaviour was also a massive stretch. Most species knew better than to endanger their offspring, and the few that didn't were likely insects, or perhaps very small rodents, but that was all.

[https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/633010914945400867/1078350642575319130/chapter6.png]

The team followed Zef up through the cave tunnels for at least twenty minutes. Ava had memorised only a little bit of the layout on the way down, and was worried that Zef might have led them in the wrong direction, but when she saw the creeping sunlight at the brow of the cave some distance ahead, she knew they hadn’t missed a step. They left the cavern and made their way across the giant atmos-machine before treading down the hill. Ava didn't notice this until now, but when she looked up and saw that the sky was no longer shrouded by those dark lava clouds, she realised that the SS Constellation was visible among the many different galactic stations. She was amazed by its many intricate details, noticeable even from this far away. She’d never had a good view of her home station ever. There were images on the internet, yes, but they were few in number and not particularly generous with their quality.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

This was it alright, skinnier than the others to account for the lack of accommodation, which it more than made up for with its giant landing ports along the inner and outer circles.

I hope she's okay.

“Question for you, Ava—I can call you Ava, right?” Jade’s voice startled her, but only for a moment.

Ava hooked her fingers in her backpack straps as they made their way down the hill. “Yeah. What's up?”

“When Zef told us to shoot those… well, inkasum… someone shouted stop. Was that you?”

Ava saw where this was going. “Uh-huh.”

“What was that about? I’m just curious.” She laughed a little awkwardly.

Ava debated whether or not she should tell Jade, or if it was even worth mentioning. Telling lies was always an exhaustive procedure, which was why she rarely ever did it, but at the same time she didn’t want to let the others know that they’d just destroyed an innocent family. Killing the innocent was terrible, no matter the animal. Though, once the Colonisation Officials heard about this—that the inkasum were actually attracted to loud noise—one of the scientists would figure it out, that the much larger inkasum was indeed a mother, and the small creatures infants. Still, she preferred not to tell her, not now at least. “I was just a little frightened by the gunfire,” she said. “After what happened with Zef and all, I wanted to move out of the way first.”

“That makes sense,” said Jade, sounding optimistic. “I’ve never heard you shout like that before. You’re always so quiet back at base. Why is that?”

Ava shrugged. “I guess I’m not much of a talker. I like to think about things.”

“I’m not much of a thinker,” said Jade, chuckling. “But that’s interesting. I always see you carrying those books around, especially back on the SS. Quantum mechanics, right? You’re really into that deep quantum stuff?”

“Aren’t you?”

“I’m more hands-on,” she said. “A lot of the time when I can’t fix something, I want to learn more about it so I can figure out how to. I’ve also been told I’m very good with my hands, creatively. I used to do a lot of projects at home.”

Ava raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Well when I was twelve I made my own kitchen cabinet with my father’s tool-set.”

“Was it difficult back then?”

She shook her head. “Not at all. I had videos to help me.”

Ava chuckled. “That’s how I started. But it was more so videos on the explanations of why things operate the way they do in our universe.”

“That’s my point,” grinned Jade. “There’s two types of people in this world—the doers and the thinkers. Sometimes there’s someone like you, a mix between both. They call those engineers.”

That made Ava laugh out loud, a nice sound right from the chest. “We’re really the backbone of society, aren’t we?”

“You betcha, Ava.” Jade patted her shoulder. “Didn’t you say your father was part of the Crimson Collective? One of the team’s head engineers?”

The smile on Ava’s face faded as quickly as summer rain. “Um.” She glanced at Jade, then back at Jack and Crook who were slowly making their way down the top of the hill. They were still a good bit behind. “He was… a long time ago.”

“Those were the people who inspired me to become an astroengineer in the first place,” Jade said.

“That so?”

A nod. “Too bad they appointed Zef as the head engineer in this crew. That guy doesn’t help at all.”

“He likes to act as if he’s in charge.”

“Exactly,” said Jade. “But look, if you don’t mind me asking, what’s your father up to nowadays? I know the CC were discontinued after what happened. Is he operating on some of the—”

“He’s dead, Jade,” said Ava.

There followed an intense, preternatural silence.

“I’m sorry,” Jade said finally.

“It’s fine,” said Ava. “But let’s not talk about it any further, okay?”

“Of course.”

There was that feeling of guilt again, falling from her chest to her stomach like a gelatinous ooze. She took her mind off of it by keeping her eyes ahead and absorbing as much of the beautiful scenery as possible: the trees; the colourful flowers of red, orange, and purple; and the foliage, which crunched loudly beneath her boots.

After a while, they were back in the station buggy and driving towards Site 101. It was a rough ride and she was nearly certain that this would be the time she would puke. She could feel her vegan sandwich making its way up her esophagus. The vehicle squeaked to a stop. They were back, but it didn’t help ease the feeling. Not this time.

When they made it through the decontamination chamber and removed their spacesuits for cleaning, Ava hurried towards the girls’ dorms before the others even had a chance to notice. She took the elevator this time. Floor 14. Ding. She hurried past the many different ladies in the corridors until stopping at the door that read GX-27 and swiping her key card through the activation slot.

“You good, girly?” a woman’s voice said, but Ava didn’t even bother turning around. She ran through the sliding door and made a beeline for the bathroom at the back.

The vomit was hot and building. She pushed the door open, got down on all fours, and puked all in and over the toilet. The sick came out in violent, greenish-yellow spurts, but when it was gone, she felt a lot better, at least physically. She lay there with her head over the toilet rim, coughing and sniffling.

Is he dead?

After what she saw in the cave, she wasn't so sure anymore.