Aurora adjusted the scanner to filter out background ambiance and the grav sled’s energy signature, smiling at the results. “There we go!”
“You point, we drive.” Estella told her, waiting for a direction.
I kept my eye on plant creatures that blocked our paths while we went in a more or less straight line back to the huge derelict with the LED lights. Needless to say, between Estella’s blades and the machine gun, green goo was everywhere along our path. I estimated we had thinned the ranks of the plant to about a quarter of their original size.
“This is the last place I was hoping we’d wind up.” Aurora said.
Guppy looked anxious. She was quiet as she stared at the vine-covered side of the structure.
“We need to clean out the vines somehow, weedkiller maybe? Fire could damage the structure.” Aurora said.
What about overloading the power grid that powers the lights?” Estella suggested, “If it blows the glass and the electricity should fry lots of them.”
Jessica looked at a few of them. “They look like they’re already dead to me. And…” she looked closer, moved a few around, “Not sure if this matters but this isn’t the same species.”
“Really?” Estellas walked over to examine them herself, “We may be able to just head on in once we clean out the remaining plants out here.”
I shrugged and patted my gun. “Up to you guys.”
“It should be safe.” Estella concluded.
“Let’s go then, no point driving around hunting for another way, it’ll just give the plants more time to regroup, or that giant thing to find us.” Aurora wrapped up.
Guppy still looked nervous, kept switching her gaze between Estella and Jessica and the plants.
“What’s the matter, Guppy? Rare for you to get that face.” I prodded her.
That immediately aroused Aurora’s maternal instincts, “You okay?”
“It’s just… are they all dead? Is it safe? I mean, I’m tough and all that, but… umm, they did drag me off that one time…” Guppy actually blushed and then looked around and grinned. “Nevermind. Let’s go gut whatever’s in this place…” She pushed her way inside, but came back out after a second. “Oh, wait, were you going to burn the lights first?”
“Nah, if it’s not a threat no reason to kill our only light source.” Aurora said. She stuck close to Guppy as both of them headed inside. I followed close on their heels.
Aurora held out her scanner as she walked in the lead. “Looks like it’s downward, there should be a maintenance corridor the line runs down, let’s see if we can find an entrance around here somewhere?”
My eyes and Estella’s pen light fell onto a door at the same time. It was rusted and bent so it didn’t open easily. It had a good camouflage in that it looked like part of a piece of equipment. When we bent closer, we saw that it was hinged in an odd way. When we wrested it open, it revealed a narrow drop with rungs embedded along one side of the vertical tunnel. “Oooh, this reminds me of home.” Guppy said.
“Nice find,” Aurora passed Guppy a Glow bug tube, “Let’s get down there and see where it leads.”
“Guppy, you go in the middle, we don’t want you disappearing on us.” I told her. She took the tube and was halfway through the opening before I could even blink. An echo-y “sorry” came back up but she apparently kept going. I descended after her. I could see a bobbing light quickly disappearing down the tunnel and then I couldn’t see it anymore. I hurried in that direction, hoping that I would catch up again.
Eventually, the tunnel winded down to a floor with another horizontal tunnel splitting off. It was too short to walk in. I would have to crawl to get in. “Not this again.” but I went in. I saw the glow light ahead briefly before it disappeared again. Then a scream sounded. I crawled ahead as quickly as I could.
An open space lay at the end of the tunnel. Half of Guppy was stuck into an open panel.
“What’s wrong?” Aurora’s yell came from behind. That scream was loud enough.
Some commotion around Guppy’s back half, as if she was trying to pull back through. I rushed forward to help her with that. There was very little leverage because of the tight space. I got into a tug-of-war with something on the other side while muffled cries came from Guppy, but it was a stand-off. Aurora had come up, she had a machete in her hand and she shifted around looking for an angle to cut at something.
“Use your knife!” Aurora shouted, grabbing onto Guppy’s belt around her waist and pulling. Between the two of us, we pulled Guppy back through. There was a vine wrapped around her waist. Aurora chopped that away with her machete. Another vine came loose from Guppy’s mouth and she screamed loudly again. Then she said, “There are a lot of them up there!”
“I should of stocked up on weedkiller, ah well. Is this the only way forward?” Estella said.
Jessica pointed at the piece of vine that just dropped down from Guppy. “That’s another one of those different species”
“I told you not to run off and now you’ve paid for it.” I admonished the kiddo. She nodded, looking freaked out.
“Sam’s right, stick close to us from now on, she might not get there in time to save you next time.” Aurora told her.
“There’s like a hundred of them up there!” Guppy informed us.
Aurora seemed to be looking around for an alternative path, “Too many to fight our way through.”
“This species might be the one my blood made docile.” Having said that, Estella pricked her finger with the point of her knife and dripped some blood onto the tendrils. The blood soaked in but otherwise nothing happened.
“Not just the plants up there, but a lot of computers and stuff too.” Guppy told us.
“That sounds like our control room,” Aurora looked over at us, “I could break loose a live wire, and try to use it to electrocute them, but there’s a good chance I’d trash the machines up there in the process. If anyone has a better idea, now’s the time?”
“Plants hate cold, like back on the ship, if we could cool the room down they’d maybe retreat, or get sluggish enough we could kill them all off.” Estella looked over at Guppy. “I just had a thought, do you happen to have any of that red goo on you in a jar or anything? From when you went playing in it?”
Guppy passed her a sly look, nodded and pulled out a small tube. “I like to look at it sometimes.”
“Good girl!” Estella beamed at her. “This might mutate the plants, it’s the same color as the ones my blood changed.” She dripped a little on the same vine she bled on. The goo soaked into the vine and it swelled up, wriggling around for a moment as if it had come back to life.
“That looks like a reaction to me.” Estella grinned, soaking a cloth in some of the goo. “Pass me your machete, Aurora, I’ll put this on the end and stick it down the hole, hopefully the vines will grab it and it’ll mess them up.” She did what she said. “This stuff seems to be some kind of repell-” She paused. “Uh, I think we just found the crew of this station, the plants.”
“Wait, you mean we’ve been attacking the crew?” Aurora paused at the notion. “I mean Vines is helping rebuild the ship, so they’re not all hostile, but the ones in the torpedoes messed up the pirates pretty awful.”
“Think of those ones as newly birthed children, they don’t have the maturity of adults, they react out of instinct, they know only that they need and are hungry.” Estella said.
“This is getting complicated.” I scratched my head.
“We need to try to communicate with them somehow then, because they might not be the native owners, but their pets or something.” Aurora said.
“Uh, I think that red goo might make that a moot concern.” Estella replied.
Aurora nodded, “Any objections to continuing our original plan? All else aside if Star Analytics gets their mitts on this they’ll use it to cause untold harm everywhere.”
“The plants may also just be mimicking the behavior of the people they killed and took over.” Estella pointed out.
As if to punctuate what Estella said before, two of the other plants moved up to the affected one and touched it. The red spread to them. “Yeah, that red goo I think is going to clear out the plants for us.”
“That’s a plus, I think,” Aurora shook her head. “If the plants were intelligent they’d of shut down the elevator after we left, or otherwise done something to make it harder for us to get back in here, they seem too primitive to have built this place.”
As we talked, the red infection among plants continued. “They’re popping with red spots, but that’s it.” Estella said.
“Congrats, you made them pregnant.” Aurora joked. Guppy looked down at her empty goo container and then looked at the plants. “All of that from this?”
Estella shrugged, giggling. “I mean, possibly?” She crawled up the shaft before any of us could stop her. And they said I was the impulsive one.
“It’s safe girls.” She called back. Guppy crawled out and stood close to Estella. I didn’t even see her going back in. The kiddo reached out and poked at one of the red spots on a plant.
“I guess that takes care of it for now.” Aurora urged Jessica forward. “After you hon.”
Jessica pulled herself through. “It’s so fascinating.” She said from the other side.
I walked up besides Estella. ‘Now what?” I looked back across to Aurora.
It was Estella who answered me. “Now we see if Aurora can find the engines on this rock, or the self destruct button and get out of here before something bad happens?” She eyed the plants warily.
“Right.” The three of us headed in.Aurora went to the closest computer and fiddled with it. “Just like the elevator, I should be able to sort this out. Hmm.” A slot in which a cylinder would fit opened up after she tried a few buttons on the keyboard. She pulled out the device Vines passed her, and it fit like a charm. “Bingo!” She grinned, “Okay, when this goes in, all hell might break loose so get ready to run.”
Estella pulled off the safety on her shotgun, standing next to the exit. “I’ll bring up the rear.”
The cartridge thudded home. A low hum appeared, several of the stations lighted up with a lot of activity.
“I think that turned the place on, now let’s see if it can fly.” Aurora headed over to the other consoles and started looking them over for flight controls and weapons.
A panel slid open on a wall, revealing a viewscreen. It came to life. Vines was standing there.
Aurora gave him a welcoming wave and smile. “Hey there!” He waved back.
Estella relaxed slightly. “Hey, is Hue there too?”
Some vines part and H square’d face appeared. “What? How did you know there would be a screen here?” I asked.
Some of the plants turned to face the screen.
“We were hoping you could tell us how to fly this thing?” Aurora was asking them. Jessica was just looking back and forth between the various plants. “Umm, see how they are gesturing. It almost looks like they’re having a conversation. Except I don’t hear anything.”
“Looks like the vines got a connection to the Xing after all.. Hmmm…” I let the thought trail off.
“They must be speaking in a frequency outside our hearing range.” Estella nodded.. “Some plants, like mandrakes, let out a high pitched scream when injured.”
“We need oil.” Aurora said, “A drop of oil in a rag placed in one ear, it will lower the frequency of sound traveling through it, let you hear what’s out of range otherwise.”
“Really?” Estella looked at Aurora, seemingly puzzled.
Jessica looked thought. “Assuming it’s sound they’re using.” She said.
“Like how stuff sounds different underwater, same principle, just different execution. Well, it won’t cause any harm to try at least.” Aurora looked over at me. “Do you have some gun oil or anything in your pack?”
“I’m thinking, with plants, maybe it’s something else. Scent? Something visual?” Apparently Jessica’s thoughts were not finished.
“They might be communicating by spores too.” Estella contributed her extensive knowledge on gardening.
“What could we lose?” I shrugged and fished out some gun oil from my backpack.
Aurora dripped a piece of rag into the oil and stuck it in her left ear to listen. “I can maybe build a machine to translate spore into speech, but that’ll take a long while.”
“Let’s just ask Hue for guidance, he seems to have figured a way to communicate with Vines.” Estella suggested.
“Yeah, oil is a no go.” Aurora shrugged.
As if acting on cue, H squared’s face popped up on the screen again.
“Hue, we need to know how to make this asteroid fly through space, where’s the controls?” Aurora asked him.
“What about ultraviolet? Instead of ultrasonic? Plants use that to direct bees. At least some of the normal ones do.” Jessica suggested.
H squared nodded, mumbled a little, pulled out some paper and drew a diagram of some controls with arrows showing how to direct things.
“That’s easier to rig up a machine for,” Aurora traced her eyes from the diagram to the control panels and began pushing buttons. “I also need weapons controls, Hue, so I can blow up nearby asteroids so we can fly out of here safely.”
More drawing and then H squared showed me a weapons diagram.
“So we’re not blowing the place up then?” Estella sighed in relief. “I was not looking forward to trying to outrun that blast.”
This works, we can fly this out to the rim and park it in a stable orbit around some other sun, give them a new life far from colonized space.” Aurora said.
“How about I help you design a translator, Aurora. I’m sure Estella can manage the controls.” Jessica volunteered.
“Great idea.” Aurora stepped back, “Flying is more your thing anyway, I’m better with the engineering.”
Over in a corner by herself, Guppy was actually playing toss with a few of the plants. Or they were tossing her from one to the other into vines-turned netting. She giggled while telling them to throw her higher. I did not say anything, this was safe as far as I was concerned.
“I was just about to ask if you wanted me to take over.” Estella stepped forward and touched the controls lightly. “This is going to be like flying a bathtub full of molten lava down a luge course.” She muttered.
“Given the number of perverse comparisons you could of made, that’s nicely tame.” Aurora told her while smiling at Jessica, “Okay, let’s see, I’ll need some lights from over there,” She pointed, “And one of those speakers from there, and the access panel from that machine as a backing. “If this works it’ll translate their light rays into speech, and our speech into light rays. I just need a camera, one from one of the view screens should work perfectly.”
“This is… I never thought I will be flying off into space with a whole asteroid.” My voice shook with excitement.
“This is the coolest thing ever.” Estella said.
As we talked, colorful patterns lit up over the plants’ bodies on a camera. “Yeah, this is perfect!” Aurora hugged Jessica happily. “Thanks for the idea and your help!”
Jessica blushed. “I, uh… I’m happy to help.”
“You two make a cute couple,” Estella told Aurora and Jessica with a grin, which made Jessica blush even more.
I started to explore the weapons. There’s some very giant cannon at my beck and call and a few missile bays.
Aurora smiled and said, “Uh, thanks, I think?”
Guppy was breathlessly excited when she came over. “So, Sam, you gonna blow up an asteroid? Can I watch?”
“Well, the weapons are pretty cool. As for blowing things up, we will find something sooner or later. Don’t you worry about that.” I grinned.
“I meant it, you look nice together. Now hang on while I see if the engines still work.” Estella adjusted the speed to go slower so that it did not feel as bumpy. “Give me a sec to turn on the shields so the debris doesn’t damage us.”
It took more than one but “Shields up!”
“You helped me build this hon, you get the honors of turning it on.” Aurora told Jessica.
Jessica smiled shyly then did so.
“There should be a scanner around here somewhere to tell us if that one is safe to blast,” Estella said after a moment of consideration, “Actually we took a pretty close fly past most of the rocks around here, didn’t we? I think this was the only one inhabited.”
“Yeah, this was it, if others had life, the company would of set up a base there to be closer to this one. The rest didn’t even have air, so they should be safe to blow to pieces, you’ll need to make a hole anyway if we want to fly out of here, this isn’t exactly an econo car.” Aurora flashed me with a grin.
“Tell me about it, now I know how a hippopotamus with a gland problem feels.” Estella continued.
Aurora giggled, looking over at the plants. “Um, hello? Can you understand me?” She asked them.
That produced a shock among the plants. One of them wandered over to the device. “Hello, animals,” the translator said.
“Well, kiddo, you heard them.” I set the asteroid as the target and fired the asteroid’s cannon at it while Guppy clapped her hands.
“Hello plant, we uh, come in peace, I’m sorry about any damages we caused getting here, and any plants we uh, injured, we were operating under the wrong pretenses.”
A clear pause. “You did not damage us, sentient animals. Only our enemies, who have kept us trapped here for too long-“
One shot of streaming red goo plasma and the asteroid broke apart into rubble.
“-Your arrival is fortuitous. We only recently regained operations here.”
“Oh well then, we’re glad we could help.” Aurora gestured to the red bumps. “Is that a good thing, or a bad one?”
“Whop bam boom, that made an impression.” Estella said as she took us towards the gap.
“We have not ingested the nutritious goo in some time. It is tingly.”
“We got a whole vat of it on our ship, and know where there’s a bunch on the top of the asteroid.” Aurora told them.
“We have not been on the surface for fear of our enemies.”
“Tell us more about these enemies.” I asked the plants.
“We were once numerous. We lived among the stars for thousands of years. Until a civil war broke out that cost the lives of many. Whole worlds were scorched to ruin. And now all that remains is us. We fled in this ship, went into hibernation. But some of our remaining enemies managed to sneak onboard. They went into hibernation also, but woke first. Some of them left, we do not know where they went. We managed to wrest control of the asteroid from them briefly and hide ourselves again before being driven back again. To keep them from messaging their compatriots, we sabotaged our own vessel and waited. Worried that they would find us and conquer us. But you rescued our friend, who was separated from us and survived in fear of discovery. He who is on your ship with his animal pet you call Hue.”
Aurora Lieos chuckled. “Hue seems to like being his er, companion so it works out.”
I laughed nervously. Hearing H squared referred to as a pet was unsettling but I had a more pressing question occupying my mind. “So these enemies, are they also plants? What are they if not?”
“They are the ones you encountered on the surface. The aggressive ones who attacked you. Also their agents who you have been fighting against also. This Star Analytics.”
I looked across at Estella. “Plant war it was. Hmmm… that’s news to us.”
“They have been breeding monstrous animal/plant hybrids in an attempt to win against us.”
“Fascinating, I’m glad we could help.” Estella smiled happily, presumably at her theory proven correct. “Oh uh, I should probably let you guys have your ship back huh? You can probably fly it better than I can.”
“Please, continue. You know the modern universe better than us. We look forward to working with you and learning more about how things have changed.”
“So how much of this asteroid is ship, and how much is just rock?” Estella asked.
“It was all artificial. Your ship was made from parts from one of our lost colonies. You will find much familiar in the machinery here.”
“A small world, isn’t it?” I whistled.
“Yes indeed!” Aurora leaned back and glanced at the view screen thoughtfully. “You know, with them helping us we can go pretty much anywhere on the frontier, help find their old worlds and take them back, do a lot of good for the needy on the rim.”
“It is not surprising. Agents of our enemies were seeding the world you came from with spoors and they were naturally drawn to your ship.”
THE END
Moonlake's Fiction Space 