Chapter 71

  Dalexia found this all very strange. One moment, she had been delivering all manner of death and destruction to anything and everything in sight, bashing her way through the ship with reckless abandon. Now she was having a tense if not unpleasant chat with an actual person. Given the aliens had been totally silent except for limited moaning, she didn’t know what to make of it. If her reserves of ammunition and combat gel had held out a little longer, she might have blown up Pelp without even knowing he was near.

  “Well hold on now,” Pelp said, putting his arms on his hips and giving her a stern look. “You haven’t said who you are yet.” He stroked his beard and narrowed his eyes at the towering robot. “Though truly, I’m more interested in what you are.”

  Dalexia almost opened the front of the cockpit to show him there was a human inside, but she thought better of it. Pelp didn’t seem threatening, but she didn’t know what she was dealing with.

  Before Dalexia could answer, Seventh chimed in and said, “Scans indicate Pelp’s elemental composition is consistent with materials found in the Gaia BH1 system. There are no elements foreign to this system present in his body, meaning he is likely a native lifeform.”

  “That seems unlikely,” Dalexia said. “He looks like a normal human, just quite a bit shorter than the average.”

  “His physiology is indeed not human. There are many similarities, but there are also some key differences. As for why he looks so similar to what you are accustomed to, it is a topic that will take longer to explain.”

  Pelp waved a hand at Dalexia. “Hello? Are you still there?”

  “Sorry,” Dalexia said, “My name is Dalexia. And I’m human, if that means anything to you. I’m just operating this machine temporarily.”

  Pelp took a step back and raised one arm in a defensive posture. “Human?” He looked around at his surroundings. “Is this a dragon’s lair?”

  Dalexia muted herself for Pelp. “Dragon? Did that translate right?”

  “I believe so,” Seventh said.

  After unmuting herself, she said, “No, I wouldn’t call this a dragon’s lair. It’s actually hard to believe you could make it here without knowing where you are.”

  “I’m sorry if I’m intruding,” Pelp said. “Is it your lair? Do you own this dungeon?”

  Dalexia chuckled. “No. No, I do not. In fact, I’m in the middle of trying to destroy it.”

  “Was that what all that commotion was about?”

  “Probably. How did you get here? Do you have a way out?”

  Pelp shook his head. “I’ve been wandering through room after room, trying to find the exit to this dungeon. I expected to encounter monsters or traps, but it’s all empty space and objects I don’t understand. You’re the first creature I’ve come across since I dug out that pocket of darklight in the firmament and fell into this place.”

  Except for that last part, Dalexia was having a remarkably easy time following what Pelp was saying. Dungeons, monsters, and traps were all familiar to her. How a person so many light years away from Earth could know these words and concepts, she couldn’t say.

  “Don’t call me a creature,” Dalexia said.

  Pelp flushed. “I apologize. Your giant machine makes it difficult to—” He froze, eyes staring past the starmech’s legs at something behind Dalexia. “Lead in the water!” he cursed. “What are those things?”

  A camera flicked on in the starmech’s cockpit, showing Dalexia the space behind her. Hundreds of zombies were pouring through the hole in the wall she had just made. Some of them carried weapons, but most of them were empty handed. Dalexia turned around and slammed one of the starmech’s palms down on the mass of gray flesh, crushing ten of the zombies with one blow. The rest swarmed past her hand and toward her legs, some of them attempting to climb up her arm. She shook them off and started smashing and stomping on the swarm of vaguely human bodies.

  A few of the zombies ran past her, trying to reach Pelp.

  “Hey now,” he shouted, warding them off with a hand, “whoever you are, I don’t want any part of this.”

  They clearly weren’t stopping, so he pulled his pickaxe from behind his back and shouted, “I’m warning you! This pick cracks skulls as well as stone!”

  Luckily, the ones chasing after him didn’t carry any weapons or they probably would have blown a hole through him while he tried to negotiate. The first zombie reached him, and Pelp swung his pick at its head, piercing its brain. The zombie went limp, but Pelp’s pick was stuck in its skull. He struggled to pull it out while more of the gray men rushed toward him. Dalexia turned around and squished them with the starmech’s giant fingers. With her other hand, she snatched Pelp off the floor and lifted him high into the air.

  “Whoa, what are you doing!” he shouted.

  “Just relax,” Dalexia said. “You don’t want these things to touch you.”

  She held him behind the starmech’s body as the zombies with weapons shot at her. Most of their fire bounced off the mech’s shields, but a few were inside its forcefield and their energy bolts splashed against the robot’s armor.

  The zombies started to pile up around her legs as they attempted to clamber up the starmech. Dalexia kicked off the piles and backed away from the swarm. She clutched Pelp closer to the mech’s chest as she smashed through another wall, looking for escape from the endless onslaught of zombies.

  “What in Gaia Omega is happening!?” Pelp shouted.

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  “Honestly,” Dalexia said, “your guess is as good as mine.” She tapped into her connection with the E7. “Seventh, I’m starting to think I made a mistake.”

  “You do seem to be in dire straits. However, I have a new target for you. I have located an energy hub that is likely critical to the unknown faction flagship’s power supply. If it were destroyed, we may stand a chance of crippling their command functionality and defeating their fleet.”

  “If you’re sure,” Dalexia said.

  “I am not sure. There is a forty-seven percent chance this hub is actually for ventilation. I will not know for a certainty until you lay eyes on the device I have detected.”

  “I guess that’ll have to do.”

  It sounded better than just tearing down random walls and punching everything in sight. Seventh marked the location of the device on the starmech’s heads up display. Dalexia marched through the ship with Pelp clutched in her hand for a few minutes before she decided she might as well just let him inside her cockpit. He was clearly out of place among the zombies and other alien elements of the ship.

  She touched the button to pop the cockpit.

  “Don’t—” Seventh started to say, but before he could finish, the cockpit was open and Dalexia started moving Pelp toward the opening. Dalexia’s ears popped. Strangely, she was suddenly having trouble breathing. She opened her mouth and only coughed.

  “Wait, wait!” Pelp shouted. “Don’t eat me!”

  Dalexia managed to stuff him in the cockpit and close the hatch. The air quality in the cockpit slowly returned to normal so she could breathe again. Did that mean there wasn’t any oxygen inside the flagship, but some other concentration of gases? If Pelp was so similar to humans, how had he been breathing?

  Pelp fell to the floor screaming, throwing his arms over his head and closing his eyes.

  “Relax,” Dalexia said, “you weren’t eaten.”

  He stopped screaming but didn’t open his eyes. He reached out to blindly touch the walls of the cockpit. One of his hands grabbed Dalexia’s leg.

  “Hey, watch it!”

  Pelp finally opened his eyes. “Sorry.” He looked around in a daze. “You didn’t eat me?”

  “I just brought you into the machine with me. It’s safer that way.”

  His eyes landed on her and his jaw dropped. “Oh wow. You’re beautiful.”

  “That’s definitely not something I’m used to hearing,” Dalexia said. “Calm down there, mister.”

  He stood up and watched on the camera screens as the starmech traversed through the ship toward Seventh’s waypoint. “This is incredible. You can see everything, even though we’re surrounded by solid iron.”

  “I don’t think there’s any iron in it, but that’s not important. Were you able to breathe normally out there? When I opened the cockpit, the atmosphere was all wrong.”

  “Atmosphere? Do you mean the air? If you dig through darklight too much, you always run into pockets without air. I’m publicized to be able to go without breathing for four hours. Is there air in here?”

  Dalexia nodded. “There is. Assuming you and I breathe the same thing.” She paused and asked, Publicized?”

  Pelp didn’t seem to recognize she had asked a question. He was too busy admiring the view passing by outside the starmech.

  Seventh chimed in to say, “Had I thought there was a chance you would open the cockpit, I would have made sure you understood the atmosphere of the unknown faction’s flagship was not fit for human survival.”

  “Okay, that’s my bad,” Dalexia said. “Do you know what he’s talking about with that ‘publicized’ bit?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Pelp turned away from the camera screens and asked, “Who are you talking to?”

  “A friend,” Dalexia said. “If we get out of this alive, you might meet him.”

  She checked her progress towards the waypoint. She was moving too slowly. She activated the starmech’s sub-light thrusters and let them carry her off her feet as she plowed through compartment after compartment, picking up speed. Most of what she passed through was empty space inside the ship. Like the E7, the enemy flagship was probably meant to primarily store materials. Occasionally, she blew through some sensitive-looking machinery or a strange biological construct fused to the ship’s structure, but she didn’t stick around long enough to see what they might do. Some of the compartments were even full of water, perhaps meant to cool high temperature parts.

  The ship was packed to the gills with zombies now. Mostly, Dalexia just splattered them as she went through the ship, but they were starting to get bigger and stronger. Some of them bounced off the starmech's armor without getting pulverized.

  A kilometer from her destination, Dalexia barged into an enormous chamber filled with water. A second later, she realized it wasn’t water at all, but some other blueish liquid. It rushed past her through the hole she had made in the wall, buffeting the starmech. A glow at the center of the chamber drew her attention. It coincided with the waypoint Seventh had given her, and so Dalexia surged through the liquid toward it.

  The chamber was so big it could fit a small city, and the liquid was thick. It slowed her progress toward the power hub.

  “The chances this is a negligible target are now only ten percent,” Seventh said.

  “This definitely seems important,” Dalexia said.

  “Do you see that?” Pelp asked.

  “Do I see what?”

  “There’s something moving in the water.” He pointed to one of the camera screens. “See? There!”

  A shadow moved through the liquid off the starmech’s right side. Dalexia pushed the thrusters harder, trying to reach what she could now confidently call a glowing orb of light. Struts sprang out of the walls at four places to connect to the orb, possibly feeding power to the rest of the ship.

  The shadow kept pace with Dalexia and then suddenly grew larger, as if lunging toward the starmech. Dalexia stopped and raised her fists, but they were sluggish in the liquid.

  Thick tentacles shot out of the murk to wrap around the starmech’s left arm and right leg. The tentacles pulled in opposite directions, trying to wrench the mech apart. More tentacles reached for the mech’s other appendages, but Dalexia managed to grab hold of one with her free hand and tear its tip off. Something writhed on the other side of the tentacle, a still-shadowy mass connected to the slimy, grasping limps.

  Dalexia used the starmech’s right arm to free its left, mangling the tentacle that had been holding on to her. She latched on to the mutilated limb and started pulling herself toward the central mass of the creature. It lashed out at her, whipping the starmech in a panic. As Dalexia got closer, the creature she was contending with became clearer. It resembled a giant octopus, three times the size of the starmech. On its bulbous body was a mouth like a beak and two eyes with irises like black bars.

  “A kraken!” Pelp burst out.

  Dalexia did not know if this was just another manufactured biological weapon like the zombies or if this was one of the actual aliens. Either way, it was slowing her down. She felt a little bad killing the creature without even knowing what it was, but it seemed bent on violence.

  Dalexia pulled against its tentacle, launching herself toward the octopus’s right eye with the help of her thrusters. The octopus tried to back away from her, but she moved too quickly. She reached out with one of the starmech’s fists and crashed straight into the creature’s open eye, punching through the globular organ and smashing a mass of gooey matter that might have been its brain.

  The octopus went limp. Dalexia backed her fist out of the creature’s mantle and floated in the liquid, completely still. The corpse of the octopus drifted away from her with the current, floating toward the opening Dalexia had made in the distant wall of the chamber.

  Pelp covered his mouth as he watched. “That didn’t feel right,” he said, his voice muffled. “Are you sure you should have done that?”

  “Not really,” Dalexia said. “But I promise you I tried to talk things through first.”

  “Talk? To a kraken?”

  “It’s complicated. I don’t know what you mean by kraken, but I can guarantee you that thing wasn’t what you think it was. You’re just going to have to trust me that it was a choice between us or it.”

  Dalexia looked toward the glowing orb. The job wasn’t finished, and there might be more octopi lurking in the murk. She swam through the liquid toward the orb. The camera screens in the cockpit dimmed as the starmech got closer and the light intensified.

  When she reached the orb, the waypoint showing her the way disappeared, confirming she was at the right spot. She reached out with the starmech’s hand and felt the orb’s surface. Like brittle glass, it cracked at just her touch.

  “This is the device,” Seventh said. “It seems it should not take much force to destroy it.”

  Dalexia made a fist and punched the orb. It shattered completely, and the light vanished. The starmech floated in complete darkness for a few seconds before one of the struts that had connected the orb to the flagship burst with an explosion. The shockwave rippled through the water and pushed the starmech back.

  “That did it,” Seventh said. “I am detecting energy fluctuations all across the unknown faction’s flagship. I recommend you escape to a safe distance. The ship will explode momentarily.”

  Dalexia turned back the way she had come and propelled the starmech to full speed. “Now he tells me.”