---Gut---
---Tcakqaal’s perspective---
“Victor?… Victor!?… What’s going on!?” I demand into the comm channel.
“IT WAS A TRAP, CAP!… THIS HALLWAY HAD AIR IN IT!… WE GOT THROWN INTO THE BACK WALL BY THE SUDDEN RECOMPRESSION.” he bellows.
“Are any of you hurt?!” I say, the bottom dropping from my stomach.
“ALL GOT THE WIND KNOCKED OUT OF US BUT ALL ALIVE…”
I furrow my browtufts and ask “Why are you shouting Victor?”
“I’M SHOUTING?”
“Yes… You’re shouting!”
“SORRY, CAP… I THINK MY EARDRUMS’VE BURST FROM THE CHANGE IN PRESSURE. SOUNDS LIKE I’M SPEAKIN’ NORMAL TO ME BUT I CAN ONLY HEAR MY VOICE THROUGH MY SKULL… I’M ONLY GETTIN’ WHAT YOU’RE SAYIN’ FROM MY TRANSLATOR…”
“So you’re all deaf right now?!” I ask, alarmed.
“TUUN, SAMUS, THRAN, CAN YOU HEAR…?” the four of them briefly confer before he confirms “…THRAN THINKS HER LEFT EARDRUM’S STILL IN TACT… OTHER THAN THAT WE’RE ALL DEAF.”
“That’s extremely concerning.”
“NOT REALLY… WE WOULDN’TA BEEN ABLE TO HEAR IN A VACUUM ANYWAY. ASIDE FROM THE PAIN, BEIN DEAF DON’T MAKE THAT MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE… I’M MORE WORRIED ABOUT WHO SET THE BOOBYTRAP FOR US!… THAT HALL WEREN’T MARKED AS ‘UNDER VACUUM’ BY ACCIDENT! IF WE’D BEEN GARDENWORLDERS, WE’D ALL’VE BEEN DEAD FROM A TRAP LIKE THAT!”
“I agree… I think you ought to disengage and come back to the Bright Plume, Victor. Whoever’s aboard clearly doesn’t want to be rescued!”
“TRIED THAT… WE’RE LOCKED IN… THE STATION WON’T LET US GO!”
“Twila.” I say, immediately, toward the ceiling.
“Yes, Captain?” she responds from the room’s speakers.
“Is there anything you can do remotely?”
“I’ve already been trying to recall the Swift Claw for a minute and a half… I don’t think so, Captain.”
“Alright, Victor… Sit tight while we come up with a plan for how to get you four back…”
---The ????????’s perspective---
I̶̥̿ ̷̹̏a̶̰̓w̴̜͝a̴͔͌ḱ̷̝e̵̙̊n̷͓͊.̷̺̈́
Ḭ̶̅n̸̜͘t̶͎͂ṛ̷̎ù̸̻d̸̻͑ė̵͍ŕ̸͍s̵̫̏…̸̠͆
T̷̤̽ḥ̸͒é̶͖ř̴͙e̸̖͋ ̸͎̎å̷̭r̴͓̈́e̶̮͝ ̵̲̄t̸͈̎͝ȑ̵̩e̴̎̕ͅs̷͔̟̑͝p̵̢̄a̴͍̕͝ͅs̵͙͋š̸̖͈ě̶̲ŕ̵̟͈s̸̯̫̏ ̵̟̈́í̵͖n̸͔͑ ̴̛̭m̶͕͑ÿ̶̪́ ̶̝͘h̴͚̾o̶͍̒m̸̩̉ẽ̷͜.̵̲̂
Ǔ̵̘ņ̴̋f̷͈̀a̸̜͑m̷̥͋i̶̩̊l̵͖̕i̷̩̋a̶͜͝r̵̜̃ ̸̤̓s̸͚͂p̵̝͗ë̴̡c̸̩̒i̶̥̽ȇ̸̱s̴͍͝.̷̞̏
T̴̮̓h̸͕́e̷̹͊y̶͖͗ ̵̰́m̶̡̄u̵̳͠s̵̹̀ť̶̘ ̵̯̍b̵̠̅e̶̡̛ d̶̝̯̣̠̙̞̥̥̗̄͊̐̀̽͋͘ͅͅe̶̘̬̜̘͒̌̉̅̿͑͆à̸̢̨̪̮͖̺̱̊͑͝ļ̷̥͈̮͕̳̗̩͍͂̓̓̒̉͆̈́̍t̶̨̢̤̙̲͇̮̫̪̻̀͒̊͂͗̅͒͜͜͝ w̴̢̄͛í̸͇͂t̶͔̺̽h̴̖̹͒.̵̺̯́̈́
---Brunhilda’s perspective---
“I do not like this plan, Victor!”
“Not wildly keen on it myself(!)… You’re welcome to suggest alternatives if you got ’em!” he answers, his words being injected directly into my brain, no meaning able to pass my agonising, destroyed eardrums.
“You know I don’t but…” I take my right hand off my gun to gesture up the grimy, grotty, dark hallway ahead, only lit by the torches on our guns and helmets “…that doesn’t mean that walking 5km across these fucking Sevastopol-Station-arse corridors to get to the exfil point is a good idea!”
That maintenance woman who looks like a 4m tall, bipedal Nightfury’s apparently gonna jury-rig an umbilical from the Bright Plume to a hole she’s gonna cut in the side of the station.
When I asked if there was a way for them to do it closer to where we are, I got a lot of jargon about structural integrity and closest safe approaches but it all amounted to ‘no’.
That would be too easy(!)
No, we’ve got to spend an hour walking right the way across the creepiest place I’ve ever been(!)
A place that we already know is inhabited by at least one hostile being!
And we’ve got to do it all while feeling like we’ve had 6cm nails hammered into our earcanals(!)
My back is definitely bruised from being thrown into the wall like that but… doesn’t feel like anything’s broken at least!
“This place is like I always imagined Helheim…” observes Tuun “…dark… empty… cold… it feels like a place that belongs to the dead…”
“Niiice and cheery(!)” I quip, turning around to see her walking backwards, her four handguns illuminating the space behind us.
Good girl! Sharp!
We do not want to get snuck up on and, with only one working ear between the four of us (even if that ear belongs to a Neanderthal with Neanderthal level senses… Even if that ear belongs to Thran ‘Gimli’ Hunter… the Neanderthalest Neanderthal to ever Neanderthal(!)), there’s a strong chance we wouldn’t hear things coming up behind us.
I turn back to look at Cuddles, scanning the hallway ahead of us with his shotgun’s torch.
“How did you know, Victor?”
“How did I know what?” he asks without looking at me.
“You were warning us about the air before the door opened… How did you know?”
“Ah… The honest answer to that, Samus, is that I ain’t got a clue how I knew…”
I scoff inaudibly and say “No… You knew! You were shouting at us to empty our lungs, get down and brace! You must’ve known!”
“Yeah… I knew… but I don’t know how…”
“That doesn’t make sense! How can you know something without knowing how you know it?!”
His chuckle comes across the translator as he seems to completely change the subject “You ever heard of Stanislav Petrov?”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Nope.”
“He’s the man whose gut saved Earth from Nuclear annihilation…”
“How’d that happen?!” I laugh, causing me to immediately wince at the pain in my damaged sinuses.
“He was a soldier in the military of the Soviet Empire in the late 20th Century. His job was monitorin’ for nuclear launches from the Stateser Empire… If his warning system said the Statesers had launched an attack, his only job was to call Moscow and tell them. Then, one day in 1983, was a false alarm. The detection system said that the Statesers had launched 5 or 6 missiles at them.”
“So… what? He was taking a shit or…(?)”
“*sigh*…His gut feelin’ saved the world!… He didn’t trust it… he spent 20 minutes troubleshootin’ the machine before confirmin’ it had bugged out… Those 20 minutes would’ve been the difference between the Soviets bein’ able to strike back or not… but he knew, if he passed it up the chain like he was supposed to, the folk above him wouldn’t even consider it bein’ a false alarm…The funny thing was, when folk asked him later why he didn’t trust it… he couldn’t tell ’em!… Buncha stuff occurred to him after the fact… like, the software was new and unproven in its reliability, 5 or 6 warheads would be a really weird number for the Statesers to launch if they wanted to destroy their rivals! Even if they annihilated the 6 largest cities in the Soviet Empire, they still would’ve been able to strike back in revenge! The aim of a nuclear war is to wipe your opponent out before they have time to retaliate… But… in the moment… he just had a gut reaction and he trusted it.”
“So, you’re saying ‘always trust your gut’? Isn’t that a bit superstitious for a supposed atheist, Cuddles(?)” I smirk.
“Ain’t superstitious… Your brain takes in tens of millions of points of data every day… you’re only consciously aware of a few thousand of ’em… if you get a bad feeling in your gut… it likely means that your subconscious has put somethin’ together that your conscious hasn’t! Maybe, it was the way the light passed through the air just a little different from how it would pass through a vacuum that tipped me off… maybe there was some sorta external indicator light that I noticed without noticing… Don’t know what it was that let me know… I just had a gut feelin’…”
“You say that, Cuddles, but-Oof!”
Midsentence, he darts toward me and tackles me backward like lightning!
For the second time in the last hour, my back impacts a solid surface, hard!
Was I pissing him off so much that he decided to teach me a lesson?!
That doesn’t sound like him!
I start to scramble to my feet but, partway up, I see the space where he was.
He’s vanished…
Thran too…
Where they stood is a hole in the floor, rapidly closing back up.
“VICTOR!?” says Tuun, wheeling around, the translator letting me know she’s screaming.
“Fucking hell…!!!” I sigh.
---Thran’s perspective---
Victor and I fell a long way before we finally hit the ground.
If it weren’t for the low gravity we would definitely have been badly hurt.
He’s already scrambling to his feet.
“Y’ALRIGHT THRAN?” I hear him shouting with my good ear.
“I’m alright, Victor.” I groan as I pick myself up.
“CAP? TWILA? SAMUS? TUUN? ANYONE, COME IN!” he yells into the open comm channel.
“I hear you, Victor. What happened?” answers the Captain over the coms.
“ME AND THRAN FELL DOWN A PITFALL TRAP! WE’RE SEPARATED FROM TUUN AND SAMUS!”
“More indication of the resident’s or residents’ ill intent toward you… Are you injured?”
“NO MORE ’AN BEFORE… JUST GOTTA EITHER FIND OUR WAY OUT OR TO WHERE SAMUS AND TUUN ARE NOW!”
“Alright, Twila will send you revised directions to the extraction point with a rendezvous with Tuun and Brunhilda if possible… Oh! They’re calling us on another channel… I’ll let them know the two of you are safe… Be careful, Victor!”
“WE’LL TRY TO BE, CAP… OVER AND OUT.” he ends the call and turns to me “WE SHOULD…”
But at that exact moment, I spot something looming in the darkness at the end of the hallway.
My hand whips up to point to the shape and he immediately cuts himself off to look where I indicate.
Our helmet lights fall on the thing and my blood runs cold!
The claustrophobic anxiety I’ve had since I put the helmet on soars to the point of near terror at the sight…
Fully nude and more than 3m tall, the being standing facing us has spindly, yellowy-white hooved legs and long, gangling arms that come down to well below its ankle joints, the long fingers of its tetradactyl hands nearly at the floor.
Its torso is long, narrow and shaped like a very sharp V, its pelvis around 20cm wide and around 1.7m below its 60cm wide shoulders.
Its skin is a glossy, reflective, black colour.
Its large head has no visible ears, eyes or nose with a lipless mouth full of teeth, each about half the size of my palm, stretching almost all the way from one side to the other.
Blending seamlessly with the sides of its head are a pair of sleek, thick, S-curved, black horns that more than double the diagonal length of its skull.
“OI!” shouts Victor “YOU MIND EXPLAININ’ WHAT EXACTLY THE FUCK IS GOIN’ ON HERE!?”
He begins walking forward but my hand involuntarily shoots out to close around his wrist.
“Victor…” I say, trying to speak loudly and clearly but unable to do much more than whisper “…there’s something wrong with it!”
He looks from the thing to me, his head cocked, and gestures to it “HE’S JUST AN AGEK, THRAN… I KNOW THEY LOOK A BIT CREEPY AN’ XENOMORPHY BUT THEY AIN’T A THREAT TO US… AGEK RAL IS A CLASS 4… JUST LOOK AT HIS BODY!… THAT’S A LOW GRAVITY BUILD IF I EVER SAW ONE!”
“Could you try to speak quieter, Victor?… I know it looks like an Agek but I’m telling you there’s something wrong with it!”
He looks back to the thing and then back to me.
Reducing his volume by less than I’d like, he asks “What makes you say that?”
My mouth opens and closes a few times before I settle on “My gut…”
He looks back at the eerily unmoving thing blocking our path and studies it for a few seconds.
Eventually, he asks “Can’t see his chest movin’… Can you hear him breathin’, Thran?”
I turn my left ear towards it, trying not to turn my head too far so that I don’t lose sight of it.
“I can’t, Victor…” I whisper.
“Would you be able to at this distance?” he asks at the louder end of normal speaking volume.
“I would!” I hiss, trying my best not to panic from my overwhelming claustrophobia.
Victor gives a weary sigh and says “OK… looks like we might have a case of some kinda hive mind/mind control/zombification shit goin’ on here… Ain’t my first time!… Try to be gentle with him, just in case the poor bastard’s still alive and ain’t irreversibly lobotomised!”
With that, he begins walking towards it.
“Wait! Victor!? What are you doing!?” I whisper frantically, my panic finally setting in.
He turns back to me and shrugs his shoulders, raising his cradled shotgun with the motion “I’m gonna incapacitate him and bring him back to the ship with us… See if we can’t get him back to normal…”
“Victor… that thing’s…!” I trail off as my words die in my throat.
He raises an upturned palm to the soulless body at the end of the hallway and I hear him puff a few times through his nose.
“Thran… look at him!… Same fuckin’ mistake people trynna build mind controlled armies always make! They choose folk who look scary over folk who’ve got any actual solidity to their bones and muscles!… Don’t think this guy’d be able to actually hurt us if he swung a full force punch right into our unhelmeted faces(!)… Just relaaaaax… OK?… You’re the strongest woman in the galaxy! You’re armoured from head to toe (even if it is just a vacuum helmet you’re wearin’)! You got a plasmabec in your left hand and (for what it’s worth(!)) I’m here too!” he raises his shotgun and turns his scabbard bearing hip to me “I think we can take this guy(!)”
Still not at all comfortable with the situation but unable to find any fault in his reasoning, I unhappily grunt for him to go ahead.
He turns to the ghoul and, in a loud commanding voice, announces “IF THE PUPPET MASTER IS LISTENIN’, I’M WARNIN’ YOU: YOU MAKE THIS MAN HURT HIMSELF FIGHTIN’ US, YOU’LL ANSWER TO ME!… I DON’T TEND TO GET ON WELL WITH FOLK WHO THINK ZOMBIFYIN’ OTHER FOLK IS ACCEPTABLE, SO I’M ALREADY PRETTY PISSED OFF!!!… I’D SAY YOUR BEST HOPE’S RELEASIN’ AS MANY THRALLS AS YOU GOT FROM YOUR CONTROL, IF YOU’RE ABLE, SURRENDERIN’ YOURSELF AND COMIN’ QUIETLY… IF Y’DON’T, THING’S COULD GET REAL FUCKIN’ UG…”
At exactly that point, the thing positively flashes forwards at a speed that no deathworlder could ever hope to match, let alone a gardenworlder!
Its creepy, long fingered hand closes around Victor’s neck, easily wrapping all the way around!
Its momentum cuts him off, midsentence, and both knocks him off his feet and launches him backward through the air!
It slams him into the ground (hard enough to dent the floor panel) and pins him there by his throat!
Its monstrous face underlit by Victor’s helmet light, it opens its horrific, lipless mouth and lets out an unearthly, unnatural, shrieking scream like I’ve never heard in my life!
I’m screaming too…