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CHAPTER TWO

-Clay-

THE STARS AROUND us winked out. At the same time, the lights on the ship shut off, along with the vibration from the engines and thrusters. I felt like my head had been plunged underwater, the sudden eerie silence and stillness pressing against my ears. Then, just as suddenly, the ship jolted violently like it had been hit by something. It shuddered and twisted, screaming in protest. The impact ripped me from my chair; my half-tightened safety straps doing nothing but to jar me painfully as the momentum wrenched me free and I collided with the hard surface of my console. My head slammed against the metal edge. Everything spun into total darkness. I heard a high-pitched ringing.

Someone was shouting something about a ship…another ship. We shook again, violently enough that I felt myself lifted off the floor. Something hard cracked the side of my head and I thought I saw the stars reappear, but they were just points of flashing light dancing in front of my eyes.

Was this what dying felt like? It was taking far too long. At this point, it didn’t seem like we were going to be crushed to death, which would actually be preferable to the sickening pounding slicing through my head.

Just as suddenly as the tremors started, they stopped again. Nothing moved or made a sound, and I lay still just trying to breathe for a moment.

Was it over?

Once I was sure I wasn’t going to be flung around again, I blinked my eyes open. Nothing but blackness surrounded me. For a panic-filled second I thought I was blind, that the bang to my head had done some terrible damage to my brain, but then the emergency lights kicked in. The carnage was bathed in a sickening red hue and I blinked against the pain it caused in my head. Just as quickly I wanted the darkness again.

Light is bad, I thought.

I looked around. I was on the floor underneath the control panel. I couldn’t feel anything broken or out of place, but that may have been the adrenaline still rushing through my blood doing the talking. As I lay on the floor trying to piece myself back together, something warm trickled into my ear.

A shaky voice called through the smoke that now filled the cabin. “Is everyone ok?” It was the captain.

I tried to move, and then held onto my head and squinted against the pain.

Moving is bad .

The side of my head was hot and wet to the touch. I could feel warmth running down the side of my face, some of it trickling onto the corner of my mouth and I licked at it without thinking. At the coppery tang of blood my stomach twisted, trying to expel the re-fried eggs I had that morning. I closed my eyes, clenched my jaw, and tried not to think about it. I’ve never been good with blood or gore of any kind, and throwing up right now would not be a good idea.

When the urge to vomit passed, I rolled onto my stomach and dragged myself inch by painful inch from underneath the console. I had to stop a few times when the floor was bored of being the floor and wanted to be the ceiling instead, swallowing bile again.

When I was out, I looked around to get my bearings, trying not to move my head too much. Caldwell was still in his seat, held fast by his straps and looking dazed. He spotted me on the floor and spoke in a tremulous voice.

“Clay? I’m gonna be so pissed if you died saving me.”

“I’m not dead. Yet,” I said, and instantly grimaced at the sharp pain it caused in my head. Speaking is bad too. Everything is bad .

But lying around on the floor wasn’t going to help anything. I pushed myself up on wobbling arms and my stomach twisted, threatening to roll up my throat. I concentrated, swallowed bile, and pulled myself upright on the console. I didn’t trust my legs to hold me, so I slumped back into my chair, one hand to my throbbing head.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“No, no, I’m fine. I think,” he said. Then his eyes landed on my head and widened. “Shit, Clay, are you ok?”

“Uh...” I said eloquently.

The deck swung around me in an unsettling way, and I blinked again at the blood stinging my eyes. Head wounds just bled a lot, everyone knew that. I just needed to get my breath back and I’d be fine. I concentrated on filling my lungs as Caldwell unclipped himself and leaned over me, peering at my head. He winced, his face a queasy pink in the light.

“How does it look?” I said.

“Um… like you really banged your head.”

“Yeah, I’m starting to feel it now.” I groaned and pulled my hand away. It was sticky with half-congealed blood. Caldwell’s face looked shocked and pale, but I couldn’t tell if it was just the red light washing him out. “Is it bad?”

Caldwell’s mouth opened and closed again, his eyes round. I tried to stand and wavered on my feet, my knees suddenly too weak to support me. I collapsed back into the chair, my head spinning. Caldwell put his hand on my shoulder, pressing me back

“Just stay there, bud. How—how much blood have you lost?”

“I don’t know, not much I think.”

“Ok, ok. Just er…stay still. Don’t panic,” he said, sounding very panicked. “You’re fine. You’re gonna be fine.” Then he raised his head and shouted over my shoulder. “I need help over here. Clay’s really seriously hurt.”

His awful bedside manner almost made me laugh, but that would probably be a bad idea judging by the steady pounding behind my eyes. And I was sure laughing wasn’t the right response in this situation anyway.

I stared out through the view screen, dazed, and realized I could see stars. Actual stars this time, not just the ones dancing in front of my eyes. Real stars…but they looked wrong. Almost like the stars I was used to, but different, like I was seeing them from the other side. A murky thought swam across my mind. Where were we?

Cursing brought me back as a blurry figure appeared in front of me and I tried to blink it into focus.

“What happened?” said the blob that morphed into the medical officer; a short woman with a dark bob.

“I think I hit my head,” I said weakly.

“He hit his head,” Caldwell supplied unhelpfully.

She inspected me with a critical eye, before straightening. The dark look in her eyes told me what I didn’t want to hear. “Ok, don’t move, I need to go get my—”

A screech of static made me flinch, and at the same moment dazzling white light filled the cabin. The medic stared wide-eyed over my head, and I turned enough to see the communication screen on the far side of the deck fizz with static. Black spiderwebs of cracks criss-crossed the screen , and a fuzzy image blurred across it, fizzing back and forth. I blinked my eyes, trying to clear my vision, before I realized it was the screen itself that was blurry. All I could make out was a vaguely humanoid figure filling the whole screen.

“What the fuck is that?” I whispered.

The sound on the communicator must have been working fine, because suddenly a booming voice filled the deck, making me wince.

It said words I couldn’t understand. Judging by the confused faces of the crew, it wasn’t just my concussion affecting my ears; whoever it was was speaking an alien language.

No one moved or spoke, and after a few moments of silence, the voice spoke again, this time with words I understood.

“Who are you?” the booming voice demanded. “You are trespassing on Aldar territory.”

My stomach dropped. I had heard stories about all the different species lurking in dark and unexplored areas of the galaxy.

Please, don’t let these be the cannibalistic shape-shifters, I thought. Oh God, or the insectoids that plant eggs in your brain. My head hurts enough as it is without the grub of some six legged alien chewing away inside it.

But the voice had spoken in fluent Panlin, hadn’t it? The pangalactic language used on most advanced planets. That had to be a good sign, even if it was spoken with a heavy accent that I’d never heard before. Maybe they would help us, give us medical aid and get us back to our station. My hopes lifted momentarily.

“Entering our territory is an act of war, and is punishable by death.”

My hopes crashed around my feet. A murmur rose over the cabin as everyone looked between the screen and each other with panic.

Captain Turner stood, wobbling slightly on his feet as blood trailed from a graze on his cheek, and directed his reply at the screen, his hands held up in placation.

“There has been a huge misunderstanding. We don’t mean any harm. We were near an anomaly, studying it, and there was…some kind of accident—”

The voice cut him off, growing louder until it crackled with static. “We do not suffer intruders. Why would you cross our borders, unless you are intending to invade our territory, steal our resources, or spy on us?”

Captain Turner shook his head desperately. “No. We’re just scientific explorers, that’s it. We—we were researching an anomaly—a strange wormhole that appeared at the edge of our space, and we got pulled in—”

“Prepare to be boarded,” the voice boomed.

With that, the screen went dead.

Captain Turner slumped back into his chair and swore as frantic murmuring broke out across the deck. The navigator leaned over her controls and started to cry loudly.

Caldwell and I looked at each other again, his face carved with fear. I probably had the same expression.

“What do we do?” I said, trying to stop my voice from wavering. Surely we weren’t just going to sit here wetting ourselves while aliens took over our ship? But what could we do? Fight them? Even though we couldn’t see the guy on the screen, he gave off a definite muscle-man vibe. No one with a voice that gravelly could be puny. And this was a scientific exploration vessel, we weren’t prepared for a fight. Most of the crew were specialists in their scientific fields. The only weapons on board belonged to the two security personnel, a man and a woman, both on their first assignments. My vision had cleared enough for me to see both of them huddled at the back of the room white-faced and wide-eyed. If we tried to fight, the aliens would probably pulverize us in five seconds.

I looked around again. Out of everyone here, I was the most in shape–apart from the fact that the deck felt like it was swaying gently under me and I was finding it hard to stop my eyelids from drooping–with Caldwell a close second. I was tall and I kept myself fit, apart from the occasional all-nighter. If it was just one alien, maybe I could surprise it, and then…well I’d just have to cross that bridge when we came to it. With any luck it’d be deathly allergic to human blood, then all I’d have to do was rub myself on it. Yeah, maybe…

Far too soon, muffled sounds grew louder as something came up the passage towards the bridge, pushing through fallen debris, and all eyes turned towards the door. I caught Caldwell’s eye, shot him a look, and closed my hand around a piece of metal piping that had fallen across my console. Caldwell looked up at me, eyes widening—

Don’t do it.

I’m gonna do it.

He closed his eyes for a second, jaw tight, then nodded minutely and snatched up a piece of metal at the base of my chair, gripping it tight in his hand. Then we both focused back on the door, tense and ready—and, in my case, swaying.

A hiss. The squeal of warped metal. The door slid open.

I stared, mouth slack, and gulped against my suddenly dry throat.

We were so fucked .