The Void

CHAPTER 39

Alex slowed. He was close, and he needed to use the utmost stealth. The huge creatures ‒ the Morg ‒ could see far better and were far stronger than him, but he had to assume they weren’t expecting anyone to come so quickly — or at all.

He crouched behind a slime stump, looked up and winced — the already weak light was fading. The sun had to be going down, and that meant it was going to get a whole lot more complicated. He turned to watch as one of the things lumbered by. At first, he thought the Morg was hunching forward, but then he saw that its head had strangely sunk into its shoulders, and was now little more than a large lump, covered in multiple dark eyes and mouths.

He knew these Morg were hard to hurt, let alone kill. But even if their bodies were like iron, and internal organs so protected as to be near impenetrable, if they had eyes, then it meant the brain was close by.

Alex closed his own eyes, concentrating on shutting everything else out, and soon images began to form — in the rear the craft several of the creatures were moving about. He couldn’t hope to fight and win against them all. Even one would slow him down and then allow the rest to swarm him.

He also detected a human presence, but just one. Which one? Who’d lived and who’d died? Or did one woman escape. He concentrated — no — the other was still there. Her presence still lingered along with the ghost of her agonized demise.

He needed to get inside and draw them away. He would have only seconds. Alex opened his eyes and looked along the outside of the craft and saw that the door was wedged shut, and there was debris scattered about. He saw what he needed. The other vital ingredient was luck — that would either be with him or against him. If not, this was where it all ended.

Alex began to coil his muscles. His heart rate rose, enormously, beating faster than any normal man’s. He centered himself, concentrating on his core and drawing in strength, focusing on the task ahead, seeing in his mind how he wanted it to play out.

Time was the one factor he could buy no more of — or cheat or steal or beat back. This worked the first time, or it didn’t work at all. He drew in a lung full of breath, and let his mind work the distance and speed he would need to close the gap. He lowered his head for a few seconds, saying a small prayer.

An image of Aimee and Joshua formed in his mind, lying on soft, green grass in the warm sunshine, smiling, safe. That was all that mattered. She nodded to him, and Joshua tilted his head, his gaze direct and his small cherubic lips moving with words: Kill them all.

Alex exploded forward.

Around him, time lagged. One of the flying insectoid creatures drifted by in slow motion, and got pulled slightly off course by the eddy he created in the air. The slime beneath his feet was kicked up, but he was long gone before it even fell back to the earth.

He was traveling so fast, he had become a bullet train hurtling toward his destination that was the makeshift door wedged into the broken hatch opening. Just before he arrived, Alex engaged his shield, held it up and struck the metal panel like a battering ram. His mass, momentum, and force all brought to bear on the door, and he exploded the metal sheet from the opening, blowing it into the cabin and knocking over one of the creatures just inside.

I’m in. Alex only had fractions of seconds to take everything in — three monstrous Morg, one now down, and one woman huddled to the rear who immediately came upright at seeing him.

In one smooth motion, he snatched up a metal pole from among the debris, sighted one of the huge creatures glaring at him, and launched it javelin style. It hit dead center between the clusters of glassy black eyes, making a crunching sound as it penetrated the chitinous shell-like skin.

He yelled for the woman to stay down, as there came an unearthly shriek from one of the Morg — he had their attention.

Alex turned and ran.

Morag was paralyzed in disbelief as the makeshift door was blown inwards by the impact. The creature that had grabbed her was struck by the edge of the door and knocked back to the rear of the bay area. The journalist stayed kneeling, mouth hanging open as her already strained nerves struggled with the new shocks.

In the broken doorway, framed within the furiously swirling mist, was one of the HAWCs. He stood, one foot forward, fists balled, and head lowered. Even though he was more than a head smaller than the monstrous beasts in the cabin, the raw energy almost crackled around him and made the creatures back up a step.

She went to crawl toward him.

“Stay there!”

The roar rooted her to the spot, but she recognized the voice — Alex Hunter — she almost cried as relief surged through her.

The HAWC leader disengaged his shield, and she could see the muscles bunch in his shoulders beneath his suit. But then instead of charging into battle, he did the opposite of what she hoped for — he turned and ran.

“Nooo,” she screamed, getting to her knees.

The remaining creature then seemed to overcome its surprise, and charged after him. She was left alone with the dead Morg with the long spike embedded in its horrifying face, and the Mitch-thing that had been knocked down by the door when Alex had burst in, and now with the side of its head dented.

She licked dry lips. There was silence, and she slowly turned, hearing a viscous popping and sliding from behind her. The fragment of asteroid had sent out long tendrils and they lovingly touched on the two downed Morg. They quickly gave up on the dead one, but began to work furiously on the Mitch one. The creature jerked.

Oh god. Morag’s eyes widened as she watched the Mitch-Morg sit up, the revolting tendrils touching, penetrating, and working on the area of his head that was damaged where the door had struck him. The Mitch-Morg got to its feet, leaning over the fragment as the tendrils drew away with the softest of sticky caresses. It then turned its alien face toward her.

Stupid. I should have run when I had the chance. She looked at the pile of slime-soaked protective clothing that had once been Anne. Gloops of muck still pulsed from the holes in the suit. The mess seemed to slide by itself, moving like a school of giant slugs.

The Mitch-Morg began to move toward her, and she held up the small piece of broken bone. It was every nightmare she had had as a little girl in the dark with her sheets pulled up over her head. These were monsters from the most feverish of bad dreams. The bone shook in her hands.

No, please, no. Morag started weep. She looked down momentarily at the sharp tipped bone, knowing it would be useless against the thing, and then thinking it might be better if she turned it on herself. I have seconds to decide.

She did.

No. Fuck it, I’ll fight. She held it up, sharp end pointed at the monstrosity as it came at her.

Alex sprinted harder and faster than he ever had in his life. The Morg were unnaturally fast, but the crowded sludge forest was becoming difficult to navigate, and their bodies would have had trouble wedging between some of the slime boughs.

He darted in and out for several minutes, accelerating as he went, and then made a big loop back to the Orlando. He only hoped Morag was still there when he returned — there was no time to mount a search if she had sprinted off into the jungle miasma.

He increased his speed for another few moments and then began to slow on his approach to the shuttle. There was nothing following him, however he could sense life forms inside. But it was a confused clump of signals — the buzzing insect like thrum in his head began to increase, whiting out his senses.

He came to the opening in the skin of the craft and never slowed down.

A missile flew in at the Morg like a huge cannonball. The collision was enormous in the small bay area of the shuttle and Morag jumped, frog-like, to get out of the way as the huge bodies came together with a thump of flesh, bone, and armor plating.

She tried to make herself small, and kept her arms up for protection. She was in disbelief at the sheer ferocity of the attack, not just of the bestial Morg creature that had once been a human being, but by Alex Hunter, as he punched, kicked, and rained blows upon the thing with fist, boot, and shield.

Alex seemed unparalleled in hand-to-hand combat techniques, made even more lethal by his blinding speed and brute strength. He spun, lunged, and threw himself at the Morg over and over again. Morag winced as Alex ducked low and twisted to use the edge of his shield to slice across one of the creature’s trunk-like legs. There was a satisfying squeal of pain, and a gash opened right to the bone that poured dark blood to the ground. But almost immediately, it meshed back together, and the Morg increased the intensity of its attack.

Alex spun away, rolled, but not quick enough. He was grabbed then, and hurled into the bulkhead wall with such force the entire hull rang like a bell.

The Morg’s lumbering foot kicked up something that made Morag’s eyes widen with hope.

“The gun,” she yelled, pointing at the weapon.

Whether Alex heard or not, she didn’t know. But the HAWC RG3 gun that one of the Morg had brought back with them still lay on the ground. She had to get it and tried to work out how to sneak beneath their legs and snatch it up.

She still held the length of bone and thought she might be able to use it to hook the weapon.

The next massive impact drew her eyes back to the fight. She felt like she was watching a battle that might have played out at the dawn of time, when two titanic beasts using tooth, claw, and raw fury, tried to tear each other to pieces. And Alex was just as ferocious as the thing he fought.

He used the shield to deflect one blow, but the Morg swiped at him with the other hand open and long claws extended, and the only thing that stopped the HAWC from being shredded was the armored suit he wore.

Morag saw her chance, and scuttled across the floor to the gun. She snatched it up, and began fiddling with it, trying to determine how it worked.

The Morg lurched closer. She pointed the gun and fired — nothing happened.

“Shit!” She began frantically pressing buttons and spinning dials on the device, but nothing she did could get the gun to work.

Alex was thrown to the ground and he quickly got to one knee as the Morg brought hammer-like blows down on top of him. He managed to keep the shield up over himself, but the thumps on the whirring disc began to make the shield distort and fragment in the air. The blows were so powerful, she even saw Alex start to sink down into the metal flooring of the shuttle.

Morag ripped the weapon back up, and drew in a breath to calm herself and focus — there, a small near-hidden button beside the trigger. She pressed it, and immediately a tiny light went green.

“Bingo.” She held up the gun, fired — and missed. There was no recoil, but a softball sized hole opened in the fuselage over the Mitch-Morg’s head. She tried to re-aim, but the frenzied movements began again, making it impossible to follow the pair, and she knew that if she hit the HAWC leader it’d be all over for them both.

The Morg clasped its hands together into a club and brought them down with lightning speed. Alex used the shield to block the blow, but he was fatiguing, and this time only just managed to get the shield up over his head.

The next blow was so hard that the shield finally dissipated, some sort of warning light lit up on the gauntlet he wore, and then the shield simply vanished.

With a squeal of triumph, the Mitch-creature lunged at Alex, grabbing him by the still-raised arm, and began to swing him around like a rag doll, his body going from floor to ceiling and then wall in seconds. The entire craft rung from the impacts, and Alex’s body became looser with every hit.

Morag knew no human being could sustain the amount of damage that was being inflicted on the man, and he must have multiple broken bones, if he could even survive. Alex Hunter was then lifted and thrown against the wall. The metal of the ship actually dented outwards, and when he fell, this time he stayed down.

With Alex out of the way, now was her chance. She sucked in a huge breath, aimed…

“Hey, motherfucker!”

The thing rounded on her, and she fired. This time, she hit it. The thing’s eye cluster disappeared in a spray of shell, mottled flesh, and black blood.

“Yeah!”

Its mouth sagged open and the Morg staggered around drunkenly for a moment before collapsing.

Morag stared, keeping the RG3 pointed at it for several seconds, before her head snapped around to Alex. He still lay unmoving against the inner wall of the Orlando. She dropped the gun and scrambled toward his broken body, lifting him and cradling his head and shoulders in her arms.

“Alex.” She shook him gently. “Alex, please wake up.” She felt the bones poking out at unnatural angles beneath his suit and knew he was severely hurt. “Oh no.” She knew she’d never be able to carry or drag him back, and guessed she’d be out of air anyway, long before she even got half way.

She pulled his upper body further onto her lap, sitting there, and beginning to rock back and forth. She shifted toward the opening in the craft that was turning black with the thick vapor hanging in dense sheets.

Morag sighed. “Yeah, why don’t we just sit here for a while?”

There was a popping sound, and then from under her hands there was a weird sliding sensation from within Alex’s body. She jerked her hands away. Looking down she saw one of the jutting bones sticking from his shoulder pull back into place with the sound of cracking wood.

“What the hell?”

Alex got hot, real hot. She felt the heat right through his suit, to the point of it becoming unbearable against her.

“I don’t believe it,” she whispered as he groaned. These beings called HAWCs weren’t normal men and women. They were like the Morg, a species apart. They were brutal giants, titans, bred for war and conflict.

He’s different, Sam Reid had said.

Alex breathed in and out deeply, as if sleeping or in a coma.

She began to smile, but it immediately dropped when she heard the gentle liquid sound behind her. She spun in time to see the long sticky tendrils edging out of the asteroid fragment to gently touch on the Mitch-Morg creature again.

“Oh, fuck no.” Her eyes went to the gun, and she cursed herself for dropping it.

The tendrils felt along the body, found the head and then the massive hole in the sunken face. They stopped moving for a moment, before pulling back slightly. With a sound like pulling a foot from a sucking bog, the mass in the asteroid fragment started to lift itself free.

To Morag’s horror, from inside the meteorite fragment a solid gelatinous mass that was all lumps, folds, and branching veins rose. Repulsively, it throbbed, like a heart, or — she grimaced behind her mask — a giant brain.

The long tentacles had given up on the obliterated body of the Morg and began to reach toward her and Alex. She couldn’t see any eyes or sensory organs on the thing, but somehow it knew they were there. And she also knew that it saw them both. Her problem was the feelers were now between her and the gun.

She started to shake the still-groggy Alex. “Come on, wake up. I need you.”

Morag turned back, seeing the pulsating mass that had been a deep purple when it rose, was now glowing red on the side closest to them. The tendrils started to extend like long elastics toward them. She had seen what happened to Anne when they took hold of her, and she was damned sure it wasn’t going to touch her.

She needed more time. Morag grabbed at Alex and started to yank him along the ground, feeling her back pop and complain as she jerked the extremely heavy man through the debris and slime.

“Come…”

— tug —

“on…”

— tug —

“…you, heavy bastard.”

He slid, only a few inches at a time, but she was managing to at least keep them away from the questing tendrils. She kept at it, until she heard a wet plop, and she looked up.

“Shit.”

The thing was gone from the meteorite fragment.

Morag let Alex go and came upright. She spun about. The inside of the craft was in near darkness due to the spore mist coupled with the fading natural light, plus there were no windows other than the door that Alex had blown inward when he arrived.

“Oh no, no, no.” She backed up a step, and then stopped to hold her breath and listen.

There was no sound, nothing. A few drops of slime still came from the edge of the meteorite fragment, and there was a spattered pile of it underneath where the thing had obviously landed, but there was no trace. There wasn’t even a telltale slime trail.

She licked her lips, but her tongue felt like a dry stick in her mouth. The upside of the thing being gone from the rock was the gun was still lying where she had left it and not blocked by the long ropey tendrils. She swallowed dryly. She could get it now.

“Okay.” She looked down at Alex. His eyelids fluttered, as he slowly came to. “Okay.” She repeated to calm herself. She’d get the gun, and then she’d either drag Alex outside, or damn well wake him up one way or another.

Morag looked toward the opening on the side of the craft — half a dozen steps at most — easy. Maybe the thing had already fled. She winced, not knowing what was worse, the thing maybe being outside waiting for them, or it still being inside here, hiding and waiting to strike.

Stupid question — inside here with us was worse. She’d be like greased lightning, get the gun, and then get the fuck out. She’d taken out one Morg, and she could drill a hole right through the fucking blob thing too if it got in her way. Morag looked down at Alex one last time.

“Back soon, handsome.”

She started toward the gun. One foot in front of the other, treading lightly, concentrating on listening. The gun was only six steps away, five, four, just three more and it’d be hers. She took another step and heard a droplet.

She paused. She heard another — no — felt another. She held up her hand and looked down seeing a drop of slime fall onto her suit’s arm.

“Oh, shit.” She looked up. The thing was on the ceiling — right over her.

It dropped.