Chapter 7

Elizabeth stood at the door of the escape pod, as ready as she would ever be. She head a heavy backpack slung over her shoulder, for carrying both David's head and a few essentials she thought she might need on her visit to the crashed ship, including several small cylinders of oxygen, a first aid kit, and a large, heavy flashlight. She was dressed in a spacesuit that most likely had belonged to Vickers, given that it was sized for a much taller woman. The arms and legs were too long for her and bagged up in the ankles and wrists, but it would do. After all, it wasn't like she could take a pair of scissors and shorten them, the way she had done with the shirts and sweatpants she'd put on after her much-needed shower earlier. She'd almost considered looking for some of Weyland's clothes, but decided that she didn't really want to run around dressed like an old man. Then again, it wasn't like there was anyone around who would comment on it. Olunnhar certainly had no idea what the current women's fashions were.

Olunnhar. She watched him out on the desolate landscape, dark and bestial looking in that strange spacesuit he wore, slowly climbing a gentle rise in the landscape as he made his way toward the crashed ship. She decided that when he topped that rise, she would leave the escape pod and start after him. She wanted to keep him in her sight, but also wanted him far enough away so he wouldn't hear her behind him. Although it didn't look like he could hear a thing in that elephant-helmet of his, she knew that looks could be deceiving and that his people's tech was leagues ahead of anything she was familiar with. She was certain he would be able to hear her if she didn't keep her distance.

She tensed as she saw him reach the top of the slope. It was time. If she waited too much longer, she might lose sight of him, or worse, miss seeing how he got inside the ship. Then she'd be stuck, with nothing left to do but go back to the escape pod like an idiot.

She pressed the button to open the airlock and it slid open with a soft puff of air. All at once, she felt a terrible dread stir in the pit of her belly at the thought of leaving what had become her safe, cozy little haven for the past few days. Out here…so much could go wrong. Getting lost or trapped in the ship, getting caught in a sudden storm…even the air around her was deadly out here. She was suddenly confronted with the very real possibility that she might never return to this safety once she stepped out of it.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed her fear as far to the back of her mind as it would go and stepped outside the escape pod.

For a moment, she sensed nothing other than the soft hiss of the door sealing shut behind her. The, slowly, her bearings returned to her and she began to notice things. It was windy. The sun was on her left. The ground was muddy beneath her feet. There was a set of larger footprints in the mud very near where she was standing. Olunnhar's tracks.

Mundane things, but assessing them made her feel less helpless and calmed her fears. She looked back up at Olunnhar's retreating silhouette, a comforting shape against the hostile landscape. He didn't appear to be having any trouble out here. She would be okay.

She hurried after him, hoping to close a bit of the distance between them. Her feet slipped and skidded on slippery mud and she wondered if there had been a storm last night. Hard to believe she would have slept through something as loud as the windstorms that buffeted this moon, even in the windowless supply room, but maybe not every storm on this moon was as bad as the two she'd lived through. In any event, the sky was clear and blue now, with no trace of any oncoming weather.

She continued on, still doing her best to keep up with Olunnhar. It was actually a bit harder than she thought it would be. She had to take several steps for every one of his simply to keep up with him, so actually catching up with him had her at a slow jog.

At least it was a bit easier to keep her footing now that she was nearing higher ground. The mud had been replaced by broken rocks and a constantly shifting layer of sand that she assumed had been unearthed by the Engineer spaceship's takeoff and subsequent crash. The wind carried it everywhere, twirling it in little dust devils, blasting her with a staccato ratatatatat sound, piling it in little dunes against the larger rocks. It was everywhere, but it muffled her footfalls, for which she was grateful. She hurried a bit faster now, topping the slight rise, and starting down the slope after Olunnhar.

She headed to the left; toward a series of large rocks that she thought might provide cover if he suddenly decided to turn around. He didn't though, at least for now. He approached the ship and she followed him, ducking from rock to rock, hoping to get close enough to see how he got inside.

Once there, he turned away from her and began walking toward her right. An irritated growl rose in her throat. To follow him now meant leaving her shelter.

But to not follow him meant possibly being stuck outside the ship. Elizabeth ducked out from behind the last rock and began creeping after him, doing her best to resist the urge to tiptoe. He walked for a bit longer before finally stopping at large circular doorway.

She crept closer as he turned to an oval shaped control panel to the right of the doorway. Three symbols were etched into the metal. The top one was shaped like a "V," although the right side of it was thicker than the left. The middle symbol consisted of two narrow, upside-down triangles side-by-side. The bottom symbol looked a bit like a "T," but with two short arms sprouting up from either end of the top part, and a small circle between them. Elizabeth watched as Olunnhar pressed the bottom symbol twice, then the top symbol, then the middle, and finally, the bottom symbol again. The round door rose upward to reveal a dark hallway as the swirling sand around the ship was pushed back by the escaping puff of air from inside. Apparently not wanting the oxygen inside to escape, Olunnhar hurried inside and a moment later the door slid closed again.

Bottom. Bottom. Top. Middle. Bottom. Elizabeth repeated the combination to herself over and over as she hurried toward the doorway. One there, however, she forced herself to wait for a while, just in case Olunnhar was lingering in the entryway trying to get his bearings or something. Finally, after she must have repeated the combination to herself fifty times, she allowed herself to punch it in on the control panel. She nearly fainted in relief when the door started opening, and then again when it revealed that the hallway beyond was empty.

She hurried inside and the door slid shut behind her automatically, for which she was thankful, since she didn't know how to make it close on her own. She was also relieved to see that ship's lights were on. She'd expected the entire ship to be powerless and dead, but either it had never lost power during the crash or Olunnhar had managed to get it working again during his last visit. The corridors around her were lit with a sterile, bluish glow that revealed everything clearly, but somehow still seemed dim and inadequate. It made the enormous, black, ribbed hallways feel small and oppressive, as though she were making her way down the throat of some giant abomination. Still, she could see where she was going, which was more than she had hoped for. Even so, she decided to carry her flashlight in her hand, since it was better for making out details and since there was no guarantee that the lights would be on in every area of the ship or that they would stay on the entire time. She set down her pack and rummaged around until she found the flashlight, then zipped the pack back up and left it there beside her while she removed her helmet and gave herself a few moments to catch her breath.

Once she was ready to continue on, she looked both ways down the hallway that branched off from the entryway. Both sides appeared identical, and she wondered how she was going to figure out where to go. She doubted this was the same door she and the others had entered through during their last visit, and even if it was, she could no longer remember the route they had taken clearly. And the sameness of the alien architecture left her with no landmarks to orient herself with or to mark her passage. She couldn't help wondering how the Engineers…no, the Mala'kak found their way around. Perhaps some of the odd hieroglyphs on the wall were signs pointing the way-Bathrooms: two doors on the right, Cafeteria: straight ahead, Rec Room on second floor-that sort of thing. But even if that was true, they were useless to her because she couldn't read them.

Still, she could make some educated guesses as to where to go. The altercation had taken place in what appeared to be the cockpit, and she guessed that the cockpit would be at the middle of the horseshoe-shaped ship. She had entered into one of the "legs" of the horseshoe…she could tell that much from the way the ship looked from the outside. The end of the "leg" had been to the left of her, which meant that the right side of the hallway would take her up the "leg" of the horseshoe and then either curve out toward the top of the "arch," or intersect with a hallway that did.

Now with a plan of action in mind, Elizabeth leaned over to pick up her pack. As she grabbed a hold of the straps, a piece of darkness detached itself from the pack and scurried off into the hallway. She bit back a shriek of alarm and fumbled her flashlight on. Aiming the beam in the direction the movement had gone, she swept it widely over the floor of the hallway. The beam was able to penetrate the thick and heavy shadows made by the lights and architecture and picked up the movement again, on the far side of the hallway where the curve of the wall flowed outward to make the floor.

Whatever it was was narrow, roughly the length and width of her finger. When the light hit it, it scurried up the wall a few feet and then stopped again.

She approached it slowly and carefully, doing her best to keep the light steady so she didn't startle it into moving higher. As she got closer, she could see that it was vaguely insectoid, with ten pairs of long, multijointed legs running down the sides of its body, making it look a bit like a centipede. Its skin, however, was not hard and shiny like that of a centipede from earth. Instead, it was gray and soft looking, and covered in tiny bumps, reminding her of a plucked chicken. Its body narrowed a bit toward what looked to be the head, with then flared outward again, giving the little creature a distinct neck. The head was completely smooth lacking either bumps, or any appendages like antennae or mandibles. Instead, its only feature was a small white dot directly in the center, possibly a simple eye or mouth of some sort.

For a moment, she could only stare at it in fascination, while a barrage of questions tumbled over one another in the back of her mind. What was it? Where did it come from? Was it native to this moon or had it hitched a ride from the Mala'kak's homeworld. If it was the latter, how was it still alive? Perhaps the creatures infested Mala'kak dwellings and ships the way mice or roaches did to humans on earth, but this ship had lain there for over two millennia, empty and uninhabited. How could it have survived so long without a source of food?

Then again, it was an alien. Perhaps member of its species were able to lie dormant for enormous amounts of time, or maybe their eggs could survive that long. She remembered how archaeologists had found viable seeds inside the pyramids back on earth, and they had lain there nearly as long. She supposed other creatures in the universe could be similarly durable.

Maybe the flurry of activity on the ship and its subsequent crash had provided enough of a signal for these little creatures to wake up, or hatch from their eggs. And now, they were running around the ship, and would be until they either starved to death or went back into hibernation.

Or maybe there was a source of food around here, a source that she didn't recognize because it wasn't something her species could eat. They had found those grub-like creatures in the caves, after all, and there hadn't been an observable source of food there. It could be the same for these creatures. Who could know?

Except Olunnhar, of course. The thought filled her with misgiving and reminded her that she really ought to get going. He could be anywhere on this ship, and while she couldn't control whether she blundered into him by accident, she didn't have to stand in one place out in the open, practically waiting for him either. Although she no longer feared he might hurt her, she still didn't want to make him angry. Their friendship was tenuous, after all, and their lines of communication even more so, and him getting angry with her would jeopardize both. It was time to stop acting like Millburn and concentrate on what she had come here for.

The thought of Millburn filled her with a fierce nostalgia for…well, for only a few days ago, when the crew had been alive and there was no terror or despair or grief…only the excitement of exploring the discovery of a lifetime. With Charlie…

She abruptly tore herself away from her new discovery and turned and headed down the hallway in the direction she'd chosen. She didn't need to be getting weepy and upset any more than she needed to be studying space centipedes. She could cry for Charlie later. Right now, she had a task to do.

She followed the hallway for quite some time, alert for any intersecting corridors that might lead toward the cockpit. Most of the side passages she saw were much smaller than the hallway down which she traveled, and most of them were closed. Elizabeth had no desire to go poking around in any of them, focused as she was on the task at hand. Eventually though, she did come across an open, dark doorway that gave her pause. Not so much because of its appearance, for it was like most of the other open doorways, other than being a little wider. No, it was the overpowering stink that issued from within that made her stop and flick her flashlight beam into the unlit doorway.

The light glinted off of a large, round object positioned at the center of the back wall. Elizabeth stepped closer for a better look and saw that it was another stone head like the one they had found in the caves. It was much smaller, in order to fit the room, but otherwise looked identical. There were intricate carvings on the wall on either side of it, each depicting a bipedal creature with long, slender limbs and an elongated head. The shape of it pulled at her memory in an unpleasant way, and she flicked the beam away from the carving with a frown. She remembered seeing a similar carving in the room back in the caves, but that wasn't the memory that was bothering her.

In fact, the entire room was very similar to the one back in the caves, she realized. Like a miniature version of that room. There was no sign of any of those vases of black goo, however. Instead, the room was empty, with the exception of a large, lumpy form lying on the floor in front of the head statue.

She shined her flashlight on it and sent three centipedes scurrying away into the darkness. The beam hit mottled gray flesh and her stomach did a flip-flop as she realized where the stink was coming from. She slid the light along the contours of the thing, following them downward and then gasping as they spread out into several long, limp tentacles. In between them was a familiar, toothy, vertical mouth. As she watched, a centipede scampered up to the mouth and crawled eagerly inside it.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, both to stifle a cry of disgust and to keep herself from throwing up. It was the squid-monster. It was her "child." It was here. And…and…

Helplessly, as if pulled by a force beyond her control, she slid the flashlight beam to the ground.

And there it was.

The "baby," the one that had come out of the squid-creature, the little horror that had first drawn her in with its cries and then mocked her concern by revealing itself to be a bestial abomination. It lay on its back in front of the squid creature, legs out straight, tiny arms folded, as if it were lying in a little coffin. On either side of it was a large green crystal, the same kind as the ones they had found in the caves.

The sight was unnerving enough on its own, but what bothered her was that the little creature's form pulled at her memory in the same was the carving on the wall had, and even before she had shined her flashlight back on it, her mind had already put two and two together.

They were the same kind of monster.

She moved. She ran down the hall without even realizing what she was doing, as if driven by a primal need to get away from the objects of her disgust. As she charged down the corridor, all she could register was that there were more of those monsters, big ones, and that the Engineers had made them or worshipped them or both and that she had made one, her and Charlie both, and Olunnhar had brought its body, and the squid's body, back to the ship and laid them "in state," in what looked to be his people's equivalent of a church.

And that made her hate him, and his people and herself and Charlie and David and everyone who had ever played a part in the creation of those twisted monsters.

Then, suddenly, she was skidding to a halt as a large hallway opened to her left. It was much larger than any of the other passages she'd passed, although still a bit smaller than the hallway through which she travelled. She looked down it as she leaned heavily against the wall, trying to catch her breath and calm herself down. She didn't know if it was the hallway she was looking for, or where it led, or why Olunnhar had brought her dead "children" back here to worship…

Stop it! she told herself. You have to calm down and focus! The monsters are dead and you know what happened wasn't your fault or Charlie's, and you don't know why Olunnhar brought them here. There could be a valid explanation, and right now, there's no way to know, so concentrate on the things you CAN figure out. Like finding the cockpit.

"All right," she whispered to herself as she took several deep breaths to calm down. "All right. I can do this." She took a few hesitant steps into the new hallway, trying to figure out if it was the one she wanted. It was fairly large, and went in the correct direction, but the main hallway also continued on ahead of her. If this new hallway was the one that led to the cockpit, why would the main hallway keep going? Did it dead-end shortly ahead? Or did it keep going and eventually intersect with the hallway she really wanted?

She supposed the only way to find out was to pick a hallway and keep going. She flicked her flashlight beam down the new passageway, but didn't see anything of interest. Still, that didn't mean it didn't lead somewhere important. Everything on this ship looked the same, after all. She supposed it wouldn't hurt to go down it a little ways, just to see where it led. She could always turn around and come back, if it wasn't where she wanted to go.

She started down the hallway, alert for any significant "landmarks" that might tell her something about the nature of this area of the ship. Strangely enough, though, this part of the vessel was even more sterile than the hallway she had just left, with no sign of any side passages or doorways. She supposed that whatever was at the end was the main purpose of this hall, rendering other additions extraneous, but was it the cockpit or something else?

Another centipede scurried across the floor in front of her. She made a face as she followed it halfheartedly with her flashlight beam until it disappeared out of range of the light. This ship was crawling with the little monsters. She wondered why she hadn't seen any of them when she and the crew had entered this ship before. Where they all still dormant then? Scared of the larger group of people? Maybe they were only bold enough to come out when a person by themselves, cut off from the rest of their group…

She shuddered involuntarily, even though she knew the creature was far too small to be a threat. Unless it was venomous. But then, it wasn't like she had any intention of letting it crawl up her leg. There was no need to be jumpy. She was simply feeling squeamish after what she'd seen back in the "church." That, plus the darkness and silence, were getting to her, that was all.

Then again….she paused as she realized that it wasn't silent anymore. She could actually hear a soft rustling, like autumn leaves blowing in the wind. She looked all around, shining her flashlight every which way, but didn't see any source of the noise, only another centipede scurrying up the wall. She wondered if the noise could be coming from the machinery of the ship. Perhaps Olunnhar had gotten something working again. Perhaps the noise was even coming from the cockpit. Which meant that she was getting close to it. Maybe this tunnel was the correct one after all.

She started walking again, and almost jumped when she saw the centipede scurry away from her foot. She didn't know if what she did next was instinctive or simply because she'd reached the end of her rope. Whatever the reason, she lunged at it and slammed her foot down on top of it. There was no satisfying crunch beneath her boot, like there would have been if she'd squished an Earth bug, but instead a sickening gush of fluids escaping its body and then a feel of slimy gristle as she ground the body into the floor below.

Against, her better judgment, she looked down at her handiwork. Nothing remained of the centipede but a smear of watery white blood with a few chunks of flesh in it. All at once she could taste her scrambled eggs and orange juice in the back of her throat as her body decided for the second time that hour that it didn't want them anymore. She pressed a hand over her mouth as she fought the nausea and scraped her boot against a clean portion of the floor to get the rest of the guts off it.

She wiped her foot until it no longer squeaked wetly but instead scuffed dryly against the floor, and then started off down the hall as soon as her upset stomach passed. Smashing the centipede made her feel slightly bolder for some reason, and she picked up her pace. The soft sound of the machinery grew louder as she continued on, and she felt sure she must be getting near the cockpit. The soft scuffling had resolved itself into a constant, soft, ratatatatatat that made her think of soft breezes rustling through ventilation shafts. Maybe it was the central heating/cooling system she was getting closer to, rather than the cockpit.

A yawning blackness suddenly reared up before her at the end of the hallway. A doorway. A huge doorway, for what was certainly a huge room. But was it the cockpit or someplace else? There were no lights on inside, and the door was half closed, as though it was supposed to be shut but malfunctioned or got knocked open again in the crash.

She shined the light inside and saw, just as she'd expected, an enormous room, with a high ceiling and three stout pillars supporting it. The pillars were strangely bumpy, and the odd texture of them jogged her memory. She and the others had passed through a room just like this one the last time they had been in the ship. Those bumps on the pillars were thousands and thousands of vases, stacked up neatly in an intricate pattern.

A storage room for black goo. That what it was. That's where this hallway led. She bit back an irritated growl as she realized she would have to go back. She'd not only followed the wrong hallway, she'd almost walked right into danger too, since a quick sweep of the room revealed dozens of overturned and broken vases on the floor, and the glint of dark liquid surrounding them.

The rustling was louder though. Was there some kind of machinery in there too? It was awfully quiet machinery, if so. She was standing right in the doorway…the noise should be deafening. Unless Engineer machinery was much quieter and more refined than that made by humans. Still, she remembered that the noise and vibrations when the ship had taken flight had been tremendous. Of course, it wasn't flying now, so…

She gasped when something as large as a rat came crawling over one of the broken vases and then dashed off toward a dark corner of the room.

The rustling had grown even louder. And more distinct as well. A constant, delicate tapitty tapitty tapitty, as though hundreds of little legs were moving in-

"Oh no…" she whispered in horror.

She backed slowly, almost robotically away from the doorway, swinging her flashlight in a wide arc, not wanting to see but knowing she didn't have the luxury of ignorance. Dozens of pieces of blackness had detached themselves from the darkness of the doorway and were now flowing over the walls, up toward the ceiling, and down toward the floor. They were centipedes, centipedes the size of mice, of rats, even one as large as a cat. There were probably hundreds of them in that room, newly hatched, newly freed and probably famished. And they'd been crawling through that black goo, and it had done something to them, the way it had done something Charlie and Fifield. It had made them grow, and now they were huge and moving toward her and there were more crawling out of the room every second…

That was when she felt the tickle against her ear. At any other time, she would have brushed it off as a stray hair, but not now. No, now she left out a blood-curdling shriek and slapped frantically at her head and neck. The centipede fell to the ground, bleeding white liquid from three empty leg sockets, and she slammed her foot down on it.

Acrid smoke hissed up from her boot and she lifted her foot in horror. The creature's blood and guts were eating away at the floor and at the sole of her boot as well. It had acidic blood, just like the squid-creature had had. Even in death, the spindly-legged monsters could be dangerous.

Then she jumped and screamed again when she felt a delicate tickling against her legs. She kicked wildly, doing some kind of crazy dance as she tried to dislodge the two rat-sized centipedes that were crawling up her legs. Her foot slipped on centipede guts and she went down with a shriek.

Legs tickled her arm. She jerked her arm violently, dislodging the centipede and flinging it aside, and then flinched as a smaller centipede took advantage of her distraction and crawled onto her cheek, where it began to poke interestedly at one of her nostrils.

They want to get IN me, they want to get inside, they must like the warmth or maybe they can only eat the inner tissues of their prey or maybe they lay their eggs inside and-

That was enough to unhinge her. She screamed and thrashed, smacking at herself, pulling at her face, her hair, her suit, trying to get them off of her without crushing them she had to get them off she had to get them off get off get off get off get OFF!

Then, what she had mistaken for just another ridge on the intricately decorated wall suddenly detached itself and started moving down the wall toward herm, revealing itself to be a centipede as long as her arm and almost as thick. . She swung her flashlight at it, but it was too far out of range and all her attack did was make it rear back slightly and raise a short collar-like crest on the back of its head, a crest that looked like a shortened version of a triceratops's frill.

Hook-like legs dug into the flesh of her lip as another centipede pushed against her mouth. She pulled it away and cried out as its legs tore the delicate skin of her lip. Tears of pain welled up in her eyes as she tasted blood and then she felt the giant centipede start crawling up her leg, her thigh, as it searched out a warm place to crawl into.

Nearly sobbing in disgust and terror, Elizabeth tried to kick at it, but its wiry legs held onto her in a painfully tight grip and she could not dislodge it. The heel of her boot did raise a glistening black bruise against its skin, which reminded her that even if she did manage to kill it, she would most likely lose her leg.

Then it didn't matter anymore because the creature's head was pressing against her, trying to force its way through her suit and all she could do was scream

"Oh, God!" she howled, nearly mad with revulsion. "Oh God, help me!"

Suddenly, she was rising from the floor, as something pulled her up by the leg. Or rather, by the centipede that was still hanging onto her leg. Floor and ceiling and walls spun dizzyingly around her as she dangled there, but she felt the centipede being pulled away from her and caught glimpses of a large dark figure looming above her, with rubbery skin and a dark-eyed, elephant-like head.

Olunnhar.

Her Engineer had come for her.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

Should have brought a can of Raid with you, Elizabeth :P

Anyway, I'd like to give a big apology for leaving everyone waiting for so long. I truly appreciate your patience, and I really regret it took so long for me to get back to this story. I am back for good now, and I promise this story will have updates once a month until it is finished. Thanks again for being understanding, everyone.