Do you know what’s worse than a creepy dark tunnel? A creepy intermittently dark tunnel. You step forward, your systems just about adjusting to the darkness, then there’s a flicker from the lights and you’re back to square one. It isn’t fun.
“Relly any idea where the power systems are in here? Because I reckon getting power back is likely the best place to start.”
“Negative Captain in****** *n si*a*.”
“Great, seems our communications patch hasn’t worked out too good. Once we get back to the surface.” I grumbled, I had seen enough horror movies to not like that one little bit, apart from anything else even if it was salvage we were using an entanglement comms system. If anything was interfering with that it was because it was supposed to. Also that it was capable of it at all was definitely not good.
“You know if we find anything remotely egg-shaped down here I’m outta here right?” Nara quipped. She never had forgiven me for pulling the Aliens movies out of the archives and was the kind to get freaked out at a spider. (Well in all fairness heavy G worlds like the place she was born weren’t exactly insect-friendly, so she had probably been kinda freaked out by the idea of predatory creatures that are basically mini hydraulic systems. Things on her birth-world needed to be buff as hell to survive, I’d been there once, and even the RATS looked like they were doing steroids. If there had been any birds there then they would have been super freaky.)
“totally fair,” I replied. “Bleyk, what exactly does that gun of yours do? I’m not going to be dealing with explosive slime or something am I?”
“Restraining foam Captain, my supply is limited, but for now it should prove useful. It’s a quick-set expanding foam, and responds to resistance by stretching with equal force.”
“So basically it’s non-Newtonian goop?” I asked.
“Heh non gootonian.” Nara chimed in.
“Looking at Jenel at that moment it was clear that she was undecided whether to chuckle or gently smack Nara for punning up the place. She just knew that name would stick and was probably sore that she didn’t think of it herself. Personally, I found Nara’s little jokes reassuring. At least when she wasn’t making them in the middle of a firefight, at those times I really wished she’d focus more on, ya know? not getting shot?
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“OK Bleyk, you’re a little taller than us, but I’d really not have that stuff shot over us if it’s all the same to you since if it lands on us we won’t be able to retreat. So mind taking up the right side of the frontline? Jenel you’re our heavy hitter, but you’ve got a slow reload time, so you’re best in the back opposite Bleyk, Nara you’re in the middle. pass out ammo, and aim for joints with that pistol of yours. I’ll take front left, and hit anything that needs hitting, we clear?”
“Understood.” I don’t know when the team started using that, but it seems that it was going to stick. It would appear Relly was rubbing off on them. Everybody slid into their new positions and I drew my pistol and close-quarters weapon. Then toggled my ocular implant to night vision mode. In times like this, I was kinda glad I still had at least one stock eye. Sure seeing night vision on one side, and normie vision on the other was gonna give me one hell of a headache. But better that than being blind half the time right?
We started off down the passage and soon came to another door. That was not reassuring. The first door looked like something out of an old bank, and they felt what was down here needed two layers? I was beginning to regret my decision here. But it was a bit late to back out now. So I hooked up to the new door, and carefully unlocked it too.
Strangely it seemed like this door wasn’t fighting me as much as the one before. So getting through only took a few minutes. sure it tried to fight me at first, then scanned my software, and suddenly opened up in a moment. I wasn’t entirely sure that was a good sign as a line from a creepy old poem crept into my mind.
“Won’t you step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly, tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy,” I muttered to myself.
The lights all flicked on at once, almost blindingly bright. I winced and turned my implant off night vision mode as quickly as I could, but I just knew that I would be seeing spots for a week. The lights were definitely not reassuring though as they revealed row upon row of stasis failed pods, and the overwhelming smell of decay assaulted our nostrils. Each pod was displaying the power failure light above it. Just behind me, I heard Nara retch. Not that I blamed her, it was at times like this I wished I could turn off a few of my senses, as the smell hit like a wall. I quickly pulled a respirator from my side and fastened it in place. Making a mental note to be sure to always do so before opening mystery doors in the future. The next time something like this happened the special surprise could be more terminal, and less corpse y.
I quickly checked on Nara, the others seemed OK, But she had her own reasons this was bad for her. I helped her fasten her respirator in place, then carefully walked over to examine the pods. Weapon drawn of course. A quick scan of the logs indicated that these pods had been geared for short-term survival. An interruption in the power supply had meant these people went in for a quick nap (just six more months Mom) and the systems had just not woken them up when their nutrients ran out.
“Sweetie, that poem earlier? What happens at the end?”
Behind us, we heard an ominous hiss as the door slammed shut. Goddamn it.
“The fly gets eaten by the spider.” I groaned