Expecting my victims to recover, I had wisely kept the taser in claw, but with mother choking me from behind, I didn't have anything convenient to zap.
I aimed for her face, but she snatched the device out of my grip, crushing it to little pieces.
I attempted to pry her digits from my neck, but she was too strong.
Hissandra stirred.
"Oh Lord, please help me!" I whispered.
The sound of crutches rapidly clicking down the concrete told me Brice had wasted no time getting down the hallway. "C'mon, kids! We'll cut through life support!"
I stared. Severing life support? That didn't sound safe! Still, I didn't want to stand in his way if he had a plan.
Sydjea still held down Hissandra, but our enemy squirmed beneath her. I doubted we could restrain her much longer.
"Please, Lord," I whispered. "Help them."
Mom threw me into a wall. "I told you I didn't want to see you again!"
Her claws tightened around my throat. "I know you're my daughter, and," she fought down a cough. "I love you, but I can't let this continue!"
Mom pressed her dome against mine. "I'm sorry, my dear young hatchling, but you're going to have to die!"
She sniffed, her expression reflecting a different kind of displeasure. "You smell like ssogdisfi."
Flip click. Flip click.
A light flashed behind us. Sydjea climbed up on mother's shoulder, showing her a burning orb with a sparking wick.
"Hey, look mom! An M80!" She gave a mad purr. "There's more lit ones on the floor!"
Mother let out an outraged shriek.
I wiggled out of the big Ss'sik'chtokiwij's distracted grip just seconds before the powerful firework exploded, but when I landed on the concrete, I got hit by fragments from a string of other detonations.
Mom roared in pain.
When the smoke cleared, I found Hissandra gone, Sydjea sprawled on the floor, unconscious.
"I will not forget this!" mother yelled, stomping away.
I followed her, though at a cautious distance.
I lurked behind a corner, watching where she went, then dove behind a section of pipe to continue trailing before she disappeared from sight.
Mom glanced back a few times, making me wonder if this deception had been worthwhile. I decided I didn't care as long as she didn't hurt me or my friends.
A metallic clanging sound and frustrated growling indicated my friends had found safety.
I needed to keep my family within sight at all times. To go after other humans, or just wander, would be unwise.
Although I wanted to be with my friends, this wasn't a good time. Even if Brice and the girls were dumb enough to let me in, I'd only make it easy for mom and Hissandra to follow me and kill them. I might as well bow and say, "After you."
"What did I miss?" Sydjea hissed in my audio receptor.
"Nothing. Shh!"
Not knowing what to do, I hurried back to the cafeteria to get advice.
"Mrs. Hansen!" I said to a monitor displaying a waveform graph. "(Satan! No, shut up, stupid voice)! Ms. Hansen, I need your help! Brice and the girls are in danger! Mom and Hissandra are (manna) are trying to get in! They went looking for a Life Support!"
"They are in Life Support, sweetie." A map and a photo of the area appeared on the screen. "And another Ss'sik'chtokiwij is already inside. I'll try to help, but it might already be too late. You must hurry!"
Following her directions, I raced across the second floor promenade to the room shown in the picture.
The angry swearing and shrieks told me I'd found the right place.
A suite of computers hummed and flashed in the small cinder block of a room, regulating and monitoring the base's systems, temperature control, air filtration, oxygen distribution, water, sewage, electricity. Due to the size of the base, this machinery had a lot to process.
A fair amount of people appeared to be alive in the north end of the complex, as evidenced by high levels of usage.
Banks of security cameras dutifully monitored just about everything, even areas outside the base, possibly for crime prevention or education (an earth classroom might possibly have use for a documentary on space life, I don't know). I'm certain any surviving recordings they had afterwards would scare people away from Archeron for a very long time.
Adjacent to this equipment stood something called the First Alert Forecast System, a refrigerator sized machine displaying humidity (a constant zero), temperature, aerial storm trajectories, seismographs, magnetic and solar movements.
This whole set of systems had once been manned by a single narrow bodied African American man, but now his mutilated corpse now lay sprawled across a desk and keyboard in a pool of blood and spilled coffee.
The room contained more desks than chairs. I imagined the man spent most his day standing up and sitting down as he moved from monitor to monitor.
Mother growled curses, scratching and pounding on the rear door.
I heard the sound of something being ripped out of the door, but it remained closed. A jumble of knotted wires and what appeared to be a tiny metal horse inside the door's security panel indicated a possible reason why mom hadn't come bursting in already.
A waveform graph appeared on a toppled monitor. "Honey, you forgot to close the outer door to the kitchen."
"Shit," I cried.
"Not to worry. I have it secured. You shouldn't curse. It's unladylike."
That last comment made me smile a little.
I couldn't see the girls, just Brice, flat on his back, Ahxalybij gnawing on his bloody leg. The man seemed oddly calm about it.
"You're an ugly son of a bitch, aren't you?" he said, digging into his bag. "No, really. I always wanted to know what it was like to be a fucking chew toy!"
He drew a knife and a steel bottle, seemingly oblivious to the alien tearing into his leg like a piece of chicken. "You know, I never thought I'd be thankful for being dead below the waist, but if he, or she, or it exists, I gotta give the Supreme Being props on this one."
"Oh great," Ahxalybij groaned. "I get dinner and conversation." The jab, of course, got lost on the non-Ss'sik'chtokiwij speaker.
Brice opened the bottle. I could smell the strong chemical odor wafting out, even from my vantage point at the door. "I've got a theory. Your blood and saliva appear to be acidic, which makes it fucking inconvenient for me to slice open your (God condemned) cockroach brains."
He shook the container dramatically. "What I have here is bleach."
Ahxalybij looked up, but seemed unimpressed.
"You know anything about chemistry at all? Well, no matter. Let's try this out while you try to suck out my (God condemned) bone marrow."
He stabbed Ahxalybij in the head, drew the knife back, opening a hole in her skull.
The acid sprayed him. Brice let out an agonized growl as he suppressed screams of pain, dumping the bleach on my sister's wounds.
The man's pained expression faded as the gash on Ahxalybij's head bubbled and foamed like a volcano in a kid's science fair project.
The Ss'sik'chtokiwij let out an outraged roar, clawing at Brice's face.
I charged in, knocking Ahxalybij to the floor.
Ahxalybij threw me into a desk. A pair of monitors displaying storm movements struck me in the head.
Brice, in the meantime, cinched his belt tight around his wounded leg, forming a tourniquet.
The rear door made a low hissing sound. A smoking dot told me that mother and my other sister were trying to melt their way through.
"Where's the children?" I called to the bearded victim. "(Egypt). Where?"
"Little wiring duct. Goes out to the floor."
"Get yourself out of here!" I cried, picking myself up. "I'll try to (Hazarenon) hold them off!"
With a nod, Brice secured his tourniquet, hopping up on his crutches.
Ahxalybij rushed to attack him, but I grabbed her. "Sydjea! Help me!"
The two of us beat and clawed our enemy.
Sydjea reached for the knife stuck in Ahxalybij 's head, but Ahxalybij yanked it out first, stabbing the corroded blade into my ally's shoulder.
When Sydjea tried to remove the blade, it broke off at the handle.
I glanced back. Brice had escaped, though the trail of blood would pose a problem.
My foe took advantage of my distraction, attempting to pry my skull patches loose with her claws.
Sydjea raked Ahxalybij out of the way, but our enemy growled, hurling us into the desks. Monitors shattered as they hit concrete.
The children hid within a little compartment the size of a dog door. Seeing a blonde head peering out the opening, I quickly shoved a desk in front of it.
"Ahxalybij," I shouted. "It doesn't have (yes) doesn't have to be this way!"
"The time for talking is over, you worthless plant eating ssogdisfi!"
Sydjea pulled the broken piece of metal out of her shoulder, throwing it to the floor. "It is wrong that you acquire meat through cruelty. There is a better way."
"So says the one who killed and ate three of the horned creatures."
I and Sydjea stared at each other.
"That was the old Sydjea," I said.
"Yes," Sydjea agreed. "The old me."
"Why must you (halleluiah) harass my friends in this way?" I demanded. "Don't you still have another full grown human corpse to eat downstairs?"
"I like to get a variety. You know, sample a few things off each one instead of getting fat on one human." Ahxalybij said this indifferently, like someone making a casual decision to put an extra item on their plate at a buffet. She brushed herself off. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to catch dinner."
Inspired by the passive resistance of Gandhi, I stepped in her path, nonviolently blocking her from leaving.
The noises behind the door fell silent. Their absence disturbed me more than their presence. What were they doing?
"Out of my way!" my sister yelled.
I growled no.
Ahxalybij tossed me aside, stomping to the doorway.
Sydjea roared and leapt, knocking her down, but got thrown just as easily.
"Hey!" a familiar voice shouted. "Ahxalybij!"
The vocalizations of my dead sister. A chill ran down my back.
A monitor dangling upside down from a desk displayed the right side up image of a dreadlocked Ss'sik'chtokiwij."
"Kiarsshkoy!" Ahxalybij cried. "But you're dead!"
"Leave the humans alone," she answered.
Her voice sounded irregular. Choppy. Her image did not mouth the words correctly, but it actually made it scarier.
"But," Ahxalybij blurted.
Kiarsshkoy's voice grew angrier. "Leave them alone!"
The dead can come back and communicate with the living? Kiarsshkoy forgives me? It all sounded too good to be true.
The jerky motions of the video hinted at something amiss.
But she spoke in the tongue of Ss'sik'chtokiwij! How could any human trickster accomplish such a deception?
A silver hemisphere with vibrating bristles hummed through the doorway, sucking up the trail of Brice's blood.
Floorbot 850. One of Boger's favorite toys.
The machine distracted Ahxalybij as much as I, her attention briefly departing from our ghostly visitor.
When our attention returned to the monitor, Kiarsshkoy's speech and motions normalized, all the out-of-context vocalizations ...contextualized once more.
"Hey! Ahxalybij, this is a sorry state we are in, isn't it? Alone in these wretched prison cells! Imprisoned by humans! Creatures of food flesh! It is we who should be imprisoning them!"
Ahxalybij's recording replied, "You are right, sister. What kind of self respecting Ss'sik'chtokiwij allows herself to be ruled by food?"
"They are careless. Eventually one of them will leave one of their devices unguarded. Their flesh will belong to us!"
It was all Memo Rex! The dead hadn't spoken after all!
Well, technically they still did, but nobody gets too frightened by recordings of dead actors like Fred Astaire and Groucho Marx, so a home movie from the lab didn't cause me to shiver quite so much. It just made me sad.
"What trickery is this!" Ahxalybij roared, raking a claw across the screen.
"Stop!" digital Kiarsshkoy protested, but the display just sparked and burned out.
"Yo! Bernie!"
A giant blinking eye filled one of the monitors. "Psst! Bernie! Can you hear me?"
The camera rolled around a jumble of architectural features, eventually focusing on Brice's bearded head. "When you're done screwing around with your little friend there, we could use some help. Nothing major, just your killer bitch mother and another one of your cute little sisters breaking through the door to crew quarters and fucking trying to kill us. But hey, no pressure, right?"
"Where are you?" I asked anxiously. "(Thanks)."
"I'm down in the tool room, getting together some weapons and setting up a barricade."
He frowned. "Duck."
As I stared in confusion, Ahxalybij smashed my head into the floor.
Sydjea knocked my enemy sideways with a head-first ramming attack.
The moment I got back up, Brice spoke again. "Is there any way at all you can run interference for a few hours? Maybe send the kin folk to the other end of the base?"
"I'll see what I can do."
Sydjea sailed backwards into the First Alert machine, equipment crashing to the concrete.
I frowned at the screen. "How are you contacting me? (Judas). How did you make a dead Ss'sik'chtokiwij speak?"
"I've got Mrs. Data plugged into a power converter. Sometime this century would be nice, Bernie!"
As we pinned our adversary to the floor, I whispered my plans to Sydjea.
"Go," she said. "I'll take care of Ahxalybij."
"Are you sure? We can (amen) barely handle her as a team!"
"Go! They need your help! I'll do what I can here!"
I thanked her, bolting into the hallway.
A steel door rasped loudly shut behind me.
Mara, I thought as the locks shot into place. She must be controlling the machinery like she did the monitor.
That's one way to get Ahxalybij out of the picture. At least for a few minutes.
I rushed downstairs through crew quarters, following the growls and banging to a feeble looking metal door.
Mother and sis had already ripped out the wires, but it seemed Brice or Mara had done something to the electronics, for the door remained closed.
Getting a running start, I rammed my head into my mother like a football player.
Despite her size and strength, I caused her to lose her balance and topple to the floor.
Her claw shot up, clamping around my neck. My exoskeleton cracked.
Mom's lips curled back, teeth grinding together with the effort. "This is going to hurt you a lot more than it's going to hurt me!"