Chapter 3
This wasn’t a plan. This wasn’t a plan, I reminded myself for the 1000th time as I ran down the corridor toward the docking bay. I was following the equivalent of a well-spoken strawberry in a robe to my certain death at the hands of something that wasn’t there.
I’d never done anything like this before. I had nothing to draw on from my years of experience: no adventures, no skills, no training. I hadn’t gone through the school of hard knocks, hadn’t roughed it as a GAM recruit, hadn’t even been to the Rim of known space. I was a waitress!
That didn’t matter. The alien was convinced I was the only thing standing between this station and horrible destruction at the hands of a Twixt. But I wasn’t standing; I was shaking like ticker tape attached to the engine vents of a sonic cruiser. I still didn’t even know the monk’s name.
I didn’t know my way around this part of the station, either – I never had any call to come down here. This was the domain of grease-faced engineers, smugglers, and legless crew who were too drunk to make it back to their complimentary quarters on the station.
It was darker and narrower, felt far more like I was in a tin can with nothing but a couple of feet of metal protecting me from the ravages of space. There wasn’t the controlled lighting, the pleasant temperature, even the neat fixtures that the rest of the station enjoyed. It was stark, cold, and reminded me of some remote moonscape prison where you’d keep the galaxy’s hardest criminals.
There wasn’t anyone around – it was as dead as a ghost ship sailing alone in the uncharted space between galaxies. Maybe I was used to the crowds of the personnel decks, but shouldn’t there be at least someone down here? The only sounds I could hear were the uneven patter of my feet against the metal walkway and the harsh percussion of my breath.
I trusted that the monk knew where he was going. I didn’t fancy the idea of running around stupidly for a half-hour, only to take a brief rest against some cold metal wall and be grabbed from behind by the shadow of death. Even if we did manage to find the ghost ship in time, then what? If the alien was right, and the GAM were about to board her, wouldn’t they object to letting the waitress and monk tag along for fun? Wouldn’t they boot us off this deck faster than a meteor slicing through the atmosphere?
The monk seemed to know what he was doing, and he continued along a walkway, trotted over to a section of the wall, and pulled off a panel. He disappeared along a service duct.
I made a face. Did I want to go crawling through a dirty service tunnel in my uniform? I was still wearing it – my blue flouncy skirt and white blouse with the holo-pin of “Marty’s Space Diner” blinking excitedly. Was that the outfit someone wore to save the galaxy from Twixts? It still smelt mildly of rotten fish.
The moment passed quickly. What was I thinking? Standing around wasting time on costume questions. Would I be any better off if I had thick, jet-black GAM armor, or at least a pair of slacks? No. This was still an impossible mission, so the fishy uniform would do.
I got down on my hands and knees and followed the monk into the duct. I tugged down on the back of my skirt compulsively though there wasn’t a soul behind me. “Where are we going?” I asked as he set off at an easy jog, me at a painful crawl.
“We are not going through the front door but via an alternative route.”
I frowned. Yes, I could tell this wasn’t the usual way they got into docked ships. More detail would have been nice. Like “We’re going to pop out in Main Engineering, so be careful not to stick your head in a fusion reactor.” Or “We’ll likely jump right into the cargo bay, so don’t be surprised when the Twixts cover you in perpetual darkness.”
I didn’t say anything, just concentrated on crawling. My bare knees were starting to smart, and I’d already cut one of my palms on a rough patch of metal grating. I was bloody and bruised even before the fight had begun – this wasn’t a good sign.
As the service duct wound on, I started to concentrate on what was ahead. I felt like I was spiraling down into a bottomless pit. I was going to die, wasn’t I? This wasn’t going to end any other way. I was heading onto a ghost ship to fight something that shouldn’t even exist and was the stuff of galactic nightmares.
“Looks like a ghost ship to me, sir,” a voice said from beneath me.
I jumped, as best as you can on all fours, and hit my head on the top of the duct above.
“What was that?”
My heart entered hyper speed from the shock of those unexpected, disembodied voices.
“Be quiet,” the monk whispered. “When you are startled, you make noise, and it travels through the bulkheads. We are above the docking doors of the station; those are GAMs below us. Soon we will reach a secondary airlock that attaches the station’s ventilation system to the ship – we will travel through this.”
I only just caught his words, and I hoped like hell the GAMs below didn’t catch anything. I didn’t want to be shot at like a rat in the rafters. “But,” I tried to make my voice as silent as rose petals falling on water, “What about the station’s sensors? Won’t they catch us?”
“I disabled them.”
He did what?! Oh no, this was great. Even if I did manage to get out of this alive – or more realistically, it turned out this alien had somehow made the whole thing up – I would be going straight to prison. Turning off the station’s internal sensors was like punching the Chief of Staff of the GAM right in the nose and spitting on a picture of his wife.
“This way.” The alien wasn’t about to give me any time to change my mind. And heck, I couldn’t change my mind now – I’d ruined my skirt crawling through these tunnels.
The rest of our trek was a blur. Perhaps my mind was starting to truly fathom its imminent doom because my body had begun to tingle like I’d jumped into a bath with a couple of live wires. My heart was racing, mind twirling, body jumping at the slightest shadow that drifted into my peripheral vision. I was frantic by the time we’d made it into the ghost ship, down another ventilation duct, and out into what looked like the engineering room.
Main power had obviously been switched off in this section as the lights were dim and running off secondary feeds. Which was the worst thing I could think of. Darkness was one thing – but darkness didn’t show up the shadows. Dim light, on the other hand, made shadows deep and in some places indistinguishable from the light.
It didn’t help that this engineering room would have been creepy even in the full light of day, packed with happy smiling nuns, teddy bears, cupcakes, and other things that generally posed little threat. It was old, and the style of panels and railings was of the jutting, painful corner kind. The ship’s core was a megalith that pulsed bone-shatteringly in the center of the room. The pallet was of browns and military grays. It felt like walking through some stark, unstable cave.
I wanted to ask “What now?” but my voice had apparently stayed on the station. I didn’t want to make a single noise – bringing a horde of Twixts or surprised GAMs my way.
“Now,” apparently the monk was a mind reader as well as a hair snatcher, “We engage in battle.”
“Sorry?” I found my voice. “I don’t have a weapon,” I hissed. “And I don’t know how to fight!”
“This is a less-than-ideal situation, yes, but we must push on.”
Push on? This wasn’t a minor setback, like forgetting to pack the forks for the picnic. This was going into a battle with the most feared monsters in the galaxy with nothing but a diner uniform!
I started to cast around for a stick, not that I would find a stick on a space ship, but I needed something that resembled a weapon. I didn’t fancy my chances of winning a fistfight with a shadow, not that I had any chance of winning, anyway.
There was a boom, and it translated up through the floor like an earthquake from below.
“What was that?”
“The airlock opening,” the monk said calmly.
“That was the airlock opening?” Oh lord, I couldn’t do thi
s. I couldn’t even stomach the background noises, let alone engage in the full score of space battle. Something else caught my ears; something far more subtle, something far more worthy of fear.
It was a hiss – not an intake or expiration of air – something else. It was coming from behind me.
I didn’t think. I wrapped an arm around the middle of the monk, hauled him forward and out of the engineering doors.
“What are you doing?” His voice bobbed with surprise as I hurtled down the corridor, more than thankful that the Main Engineering doors had closed behind us.
“It’s back there—” I huffed, my sudden burst of adrenaline fading. “That thing, it’s back there!”
So it had begun. I was off to a running start.
“We have to go back. We have to face it!”
“No!” I wailed. There wasn’t anything on this ship, this station, this entire galaxy, that would see me go back in that room.
The pricks of electricity had picked up all along my skin, and now it was more like the energy was discharging from me – flowing out as if I were a collection of storm clouds on a hot summer’s day.
I ducked through a door to my right, heading for it even before it had opened fully. I snagged my blouse on the corner, and it ripped cleanly. I didn’t care.
I dropped the monk when my arms gave way, and I fell against a table, huffing for breath.
We were in the mess hall, I realized. Which, in a way, was about as familiar ground as I could hope for on this ship.
“We have to go back!” the monk said, voice quick and excited.
“No, no, no, no – I don’t have a weapon!” I was shifting back from the door, watching it like it was literally the Gates of Hell.
I heard gunfire. In an instant, the monk dashed over to some com-panel, and the sounds of the firefight reverberated through the room as clear and sharp as if they were happening right here.
“What the hell is that?” someone screamed.
“Move back. Move back!”
I put a hand to my mouth. That was Jason. I recognized the voice, and I couldn’t be wrong.
“Get out of range. Move back—”
The sound of laser blasts cut in, desperate screams audible in the background.
No.
Oh no.
“You have to get out there – you must go. Only you can see the enemy. Those men are fighting blind – they will surely perish soon. They don’t have the eyes to look, and their sensors won’t help them – go, go!”
I went. I didn’t run straight toward the door – I detoured to the kitchen bar to the left. I still needed a weapon. I grabbed the first thing that came to hand, which just so happened to be a cast-iron frying pan. Old school, but they were hardly going to have plasma rifles next to the vegetables – so it would have to do.
“I don’t know where they are,” I shrieked as I made for the door, frying pan in hand, tattered blouse slipping down my arm.
“Follow me.”
So I did. I followed the alien monk through the corridors of a ghost ship to fight the shadows that live in-between things, with naught but a frying pan.
As we wound through the halls, the sounds of battle increased until it felt like the whole ship shook with each blast. The screams that echoed down the corridor grew until they reverberated like a church bell by my ear.
There was an open doorway before us – its sides jammed open as an electrical fault in the panel gave off a sea of sparks. Smoke, shouts, and blasts waited for me within.
I gripped the handle of the frying pan like a devout pilgrim clutching their book of god.
Something came out between the sparks and smoke – a shape headed through the door.
I knew what it was well before it shrieked. It sounded like the distorted scream of metal fatigue. Though it filled my ears to bursting, I could tell that no one heard it but me.
The sounds of gunfire and shouts didn’t cease from the other room – they continued as wild as ever. They couldn’t see that the creature wasn’t there anymore.
It started to pull in on itself like the tide receding as it heralds a tsunami.
Then it charged at me. I threw myself to the side, hoping the thing’s momentum would carry it past me. It didn’t. It stopped dead in space as if the laws of physics didn’t apply to shadows.
It jerked toward me, and my hand, much quicker than my brain, brought the frying pan up in a swinging arc.
It struck home. Somehow, the iron managed to hit the amorphous dark, and a spark of light erupted from the impact.
This was all people would see, some part of me realized. A woman in a ripped waitress outfit swinging a pan around until it struck the invisible and sparked.
I didn’t even blink as I brought the pan around for another serving. This time the creature tipped backward, unfettered by balance, and snapped back into me with impossible speed. Its body felt like cryo fluid eating my skin, sucking out the heat. It covered and overwhelmed me like a thousand blankets pushed over my face.
I struck out with the pan, bringing it around in a backhand.
Another spark and the thing stumbled to the side.
“Finish it!” I heard the monk shout over the gunfire that still rang out.
How? Hit it to death with a frying pan? I may be able to startle it for a bit, but it wasn’t alive – how could I kill it?
Call it a vision, call it serendipity, call it the light of a long-lost memory buried somewhere in that other side of me. Light chases away dark, doesn’t it? Sparks – sparks are powerful, sudden sources of light.
If I hit it enough, could that work? Could the sparks it produced chase it away? It was clear the light snapping from the broken panel above the doorway didn’t bother it. Nor had the full light in my quarters harmed the Twixt the monk had shown me. That was because they weren’t between, were they? The light coming from the Twixt’s body, that was – those sparks came right out of the middle. Betwixt light.
The thing rushed for me again. This time I ducked to the side with a surprising elegance and ease I had never felt before. I twisted the frying pan around in my grip brought it into the full of the thing’s back. It let out a spark, brighter than before, enough to play along the metal of my pan like fire along a grate.
The Twixt dropped to the ground, and for the smallest nanosecond, I thought that was it. I even leaned forward – which was when it sprang straight up like a jack in a box.
It struck my chest with one of its arms, knocking the air from me and pitching me backward into a wall. I couldn’t even groan; I didn’t have the time, didn’t have the breath. It was still upon me.
Out of pain and surprise, I dropped the pan onto the ground, and it clanged like a bell toll.
This was it. This was it. It was all over. I was going to die here.
The human side of me was beside herself – so full of terror, so full with the idea of impending death that it ground to a halt. Which left that other side of me.
I slammed my arm forward, palm flat, until it struck the underside of the thing’s chin, forcing it backward. I dropped to the ground, rolled like the monk had, and collected the pan as I bounced to my feet.
I may not have been able to breathe, but that didn’t matter. I may not have been able to think, but that also didn’t matter. Some part of me could still feel and see, and that was all I needed.
With both hands on the handle, I brought the pan around, its surface vertical, and struck the Twixt’s head with all my might.
It sparked, boy did it spark. It was like burning magnesium, a sudden solar flare, or the light of a supernova.
The Twixt wobbled and started to pull in on itself in a quick implosion that left nothing but a sharp pop in my ears.
… It was over.
I wobbled, stumbling backward until my back reached the wall. I slid down it like water down a windowpane.
I was aware, vaguely aware, that the bangs of gunfire and screams of desperate men had stopped from the other
room. The only sound to break my heavy breathing was the constant spark of the broken door panel.
I wanted to melt on the spot, every wisp of energy gone.
The monk, face alight, rushed toward me. “We have to leave,” he whispered, “Before they find us.”
I looked at him, dead as the shadow I’d slain. Before they find us?
He grabbed my arm and pulled me with surprising strength. I stumbled to my feet. I even let him pull me along the corridor.
I dropped the frying pan, just let it slip as my sweat-caked hands lost all strength.
“Now, now, now,” the little alien mumbled to himself as he escorted me along, “We’ve come too far to give up now. You’ve come so far. I saw that other half of you, saw the light in her eyes. I knew it was in you. I knew you were capable of it, with encouragement.”
Encouragement? A pat on the back was encouragement; making me face off a Twixt with a cooking utensil was attempted murder.
He took me back to the engine room and back through the ventilation shaft. It was all a blur, everything was, up until the point we made it through the doors to my own quarters and I let myself sink to the floor.
I was barely aware of Hipop bounding my way as I lay spread-eagled on the faintly cold carpet. He didn’t take any notice of the monk, hopped right up to my head, and started sniffing at my hair and licking my nose.
I didn’t have the heart or energy to push him off.
“What a wonderful creature,” the monk proclaimed, pressing his hands together like a devotee at prayer. “What name does it have?”
I let out a soft groan. It wasn’t at the spread of sharp pain in my chest and the general, suffocating weariness. It was at the bizarreness of it all. This alien, whose name I still didn’t know, had gotten me back to my quarters after the fight of the century only to comment on my pet. He should be ministering to my injuries or explaining what this was about – who I was, what had happened, what would happen next.
“Hipop,” I managed.
“Hipop, interesting.”
I tried to let out a laugh but made it only to a pained splutter. “Shouldn’t you be helping me? I need to go to a doctor or something.”
“I’m afraid you cannot. We cannot risk them finding out about you. Plus, I would wager that your injuries are not life threatening.”
Oh, oh, how comforting. “I want to go to a doctor.” I couldn’t believe I was saying those words, but it was the truth. I wanted painkillers and a long, long sleep.
“Yet you cannot. It is of vital importance that I do not lose you at this point. There is much I have left to teach you if you are, as your destiny dictates, to fight this war.”
He didn’t want to lose me, so he was stopping me for seeking medical attention while I was crumbling into a pile of practically dead. I was starting to wonder if this alien was mad. He’d been right about the Twixts, sure, but that didn’t mean he was a couple of cores short of a hyperdrive.
“It is a fine game we have to play.” He paced in front of me, hands clasped behind him. “A fine game, indeed. We must not draw the attention of the authorities too soon. They will not believe us, and they will hinder our task.”
By hinder, if he meant, “Put in prison for violating station security codes,” he was right.
“For many years, the bureaucracy of the Central Government has kept the truth of the Twixts buried. They have forgotten, intentionally, the great wars of the last millennium. They have stamped it out until nothing remains. Yet the old races remember. Those of us who were space faring at the time, who witnessed the horrors directly, we will never forget.” He stopped and stared up out of a porthole. “It was our duty to keep this truth alive until the time came where it would be the difference between life and death.”
Hipop settled down, curling up right by my head and watching the monk with sleepy interest. I watched him, too. Half of me wanted to laugh though it felt like I would shatter a rib. The other half? It was listening.
“So that is why we cannot risk bringing you to their attention – not yet. I trust their knees will jerk, and they will throw you away with the key.”
I couldn’t help but smile at his misuse of analogies.
“No, we must forge on alone for the time being, until we know for sure we can count on the support of others. It is a lonely life for a warrior who battles for those who know nothing of her sacrifices, but you have no other choice.”
“How can I do this?” I found my voice, but it crackled like a burst of static. “There was only one Twixt back there, and it almost killed me. How can I fight a war alone and unarmed? I…” I sighed through a groan, “Even left my frying pan behind.”
“Precisely. You cannot fight a war without a weapon. The great BeTwixt Wars were not fought with circles of iron with small handles—”
I chuckled painfully at that description.
“They were fought with the weapons of your people. The weapons of…” he trailed off, apparently lost in thought.
“That was long ago,” I was finally starting to catch my breath, “But this is now. How are we going to fight now?”
“Oh, the weapons still exist; they are indestructible.”
I started to push myself up, careful not to disturb Hipop. “Indestructible?”
“Practically.”
“So where are they?”
“Here and there, scattered throughout this great galaxy.”
“Scattered?” I kept my tone as dull as an overcast day. “Throughout the galaxy? How are we supposed to find them?”
“I know of one, but it may be impossible to obtain. It was your mother’s own staff. There are others, and we will find them, somehow. Until then, you will have to improvise. With more round bowls of iron, you will be able to overcome the Twixt.”
I felt like I was tipping backward under the weight of all this new information, that and I’d had the worst physical beating of my life. “I can’t fight the Twixt with frying pans.”
“It is not ideal, but—”
“No. None of this is ideal – none of this is real.” I flailed a hand at the monk, the pressure of the day catching up with me. I was emotional, tired, and injured, and now an alien monk was telling me to take on the most fearsome warriors in the galaxy with cooking utensils. This couldn’t be happening.
“Let us pray that we find you a weapon before we next see the Shadows.”
“Couldn’t I use a gun?” I asked desperately, arms hanging limply from my shoulders as I sat there like a dejected puppet.
“They make such terrible noises, and some of them are frightfully dangerous.”
“What? So I could use a gun?”
“Well, technically—”
“Why are we even having this conversation?”
“Guns will not be effective. They will startle, of course, and with repeated fire, they will destroy a Twixt. They are not of the caliber of your own people’s weapons. Perhaps one Twixt you could manage, but you will need a weapon of far greater power to take on an army.”
An army? An army?
I decided to push that impossible thought from my head for now. “How do I get a gun?”
“I suppose you buy one—”
“Where? If these things are supposed to be coming back, I want a gun, and I want one now!” a part of me was aware of how silly I sounded, how unlike myself. I couldn’t have imagined demanding a gun from a monk a week ago. My life had never necessitated anything other than a smile. Now I had to equip myself or be left holding the frying pan when the next Shadow came from between.
“I confess, I do not know. My people have always abhorred such things. They are inelegant, crude – the tools of the unenlightened.”
I took a slow, slow breath. I had to do this myself, didn’t I? I had to find a gun. Where to look?
There was only one place to get a gun without a license – gunrunners.
My life had officially gone to hell.