Skinner heard another crack from the room behind him, accompanied by a steady dripping of liquid on the chamber floor. That creature was going to get loose any second. He snatched up the rifle from where he’d dropped it and began to fire at the console Cutlep had been using prior to his evaporation. The recoil on the weapon was worse than he’d anticipated, but he landed several shots on the terminal. Smoke billowed out as a cascade of sparks fountained from the wounds he’d inflicted.

It took a moment, but the static in the chamber containing the Gaither Key began to lessen. The artifact seemed to fold in on itself, collapsing inwards until it was a simple octahedron again. Skinner let out a breath before speaking. “How are we looking, Lumos?”

“The pseudo-gravity well is weakening,” she said. “I am priming the main engines.”

“What about the things coming up the mountainside?” he asked. “Still advancing?”

“If anything, they have increased their pace,” Lumos said. “They seem to be responding to the artifact in the structure.”

“Yeah, no kidding. The minute Cutlep started messing with it they started moving,” he said as he ejected the weapon’s clip and popped a new one in. The rifle was Taeski manufacturing and they never had a lot of rounds in a magazine. “How long until we take off?”

“Three minutes at maximum, Captain,” Lumos said. “I recommend retrieving the artifact and returning to the Dangerous as soon as possible.”

Skinner stopped in mid-step. “Wait, you want me to grab this thing?!” he asked, gesturing to the Gaither Key even though he knew Lumos couldn’t see him. “What for?!”

“The contacts outside have a vested interest in it,” Lumos said. “With such a display of power, it does not seem wise to allow it to fall into enemy hands.”

Skinner ground his teeth. “Fine, you have a point, but I don’t like it. This thing vaporized Cutlep in a split second. How do we know it won’t do the same thing on the Dangerous?”

“I doubt you will be experimenting on it as he was,” Lumos said. “Retrieve the artifact and return to the Dangerous before we are overwhelmed.”

“Okay! Yes Mother, I’ll do it… geez…” he turned back towards the Gaither Key, resting his rifle on his shoulder as he cautiously reached out to pick it up.

Just as he was about to lay his hand on the Gaither Key, he heard the one sound he didn’t want to hear – the sound of glass breaking in the other room. He whirled around, lifting his weapon to his shoulder. “Oh hella beans no! No, nonono!” he said, hating how much his voice shook. His heart rate skyrocketed as he kept his gaze fixed on the doorway.

For a moment, nothing happened – perhaps he had imagined the sound. After all, he was under quite a bit of stress. He’d just watched an Erythian get vaporized by an artifact neither of them knew very much about. That was when he saw the liquid slowly pooling in the doorway and dripping from one chamber into the next. He swallowed thickly and took a step back, keeping his rifle aimed at the opening.

A bony white hand grasped the inner edge of the door frame as the creature pulled itself over the threshold. Out of the tank it seemed infinitely more terrifying. It swept that flat, expressionless face from side to side like a sensor until it ‘saw’ him. It made an eerie trilling noise—like a bird trying to tweet underwater—and Skinner watched in horror as that featureless visage split vertically into three sections. All of them pulsed and rippled to create the sound; a trio of vertical mouths.

That was all the incentive he needed to open fire. He squeezed the trigger and caught the thing in the chest just as it came through the doorway. It squealed, the vertical flaps opening wider for a moment as it stumbled back. Although two bleeding holes appeared in its torso, it seemed more distraught by the fact that it had been pushed back from its prey. It struck the wall, limbs flailing, before regaining its footing and lunging towards him.

If he’d expected it to run at him, Skinner was sorely mistaken. It threw itself forward onto all four limbs, scuttling like a crab. Skinner gasped in horror, trying to step back as it advanced. He tripped into a rack of Cutlep’s tools and landed hard on the ground, barely managing to get the rifle up between him and his opponent before it was on top of him. The pale creature grabbed the rifle in both of its clawed fists, trying to wrest it away from him. Skinner got an up close and personal look at the thing’s face—something he could have gone without for the rest of his life—and almost threw up into his helmet.

He’d been mistaken – they weren’t mouths. The left and right flaps on the creature’s face were some kind of protective covering for its eyes—more like vertical eyelids than mouths. The eyes weren’t symmetrical, however. The eye on the left was at the normal height for a human eye, but the one on the right was down near where the corner of the mouth should be. Both eyes were jet black with yellow irises that seemed to bore into his soul. It was only the central flap that was a mouth – complete with what looked like a single row of incisors that had been badly and randomly spaced.

Skinner kicked it as hard as he could in the stomach. It had some effect, as the creature opened its mouth and squealed in pain and frustration. He kicked it again, managing to dislodge one of the creature’s hands from his rifle. He headbutted the other, relying on the thick metal of his helmet to break his assailant’s fingers. “Get off me you freak!” he roared, headbutting it again in the face.

That had the desired effect of knocking the unnatural creature off him completely. It struck the ground to his right, scrabbling with all four limbs for purchase like an insect caught on a slippery slope. Skinner didn’t hesitate this time, pointing the rifle at its head and emptying the magazine of its remaining shots. Eight rounds in total splattered through the wiry monstrosity’s skull, ripping it to bits and spraying blood and bone across the floor. Skinner didn’t wait to see if that had actually killed it, scrambling to his feet and snatching the Gaither Key from its cradle.

“Lumos! What’s the situation – I got a little held up,” he gasped, once again ejecting the magazine from the rifle and popping in his last one. Ten more rounds to get him from here to the Dangerous. He didn’t like those odds if there were more of those things. He had a nagging suspicion that the organic motion on the sides of the mountains were just that – more of these horrifying human-but-not things.

“The Dangerous is ready to go,” she announced. “Two white, inorganic objects are scanning the crater quite thoroughly – primarily focusing on the exterior of your structure. I recommend—”

“Shoot them down,” Skinner ordered. “Use the main guns if you have to – I don’t have the ammo to shoot my way to the ship. I need a clear path.”

“Captain, if I fire upon these targets, I am also aiming at you. There is a chance I will catch you in the crossfire.”

“Yeah, but I don’t really have much of a choice. Like I said, I don’t have the ammo to play around. Just do it!” he bolted towards the airlock he’d entered from. “Track my vitals if you can and warn me if I’m in immediate danger.”

“Yes Captain. Commencing firing – heading two-two-four-point-six.”

The sound of his ship’s main guns echoed through the corridors. Glass exploded from the windows in the chamber behind him, venting the pressurized atmosphere with a woosh. Skinner grabbed hold of a doorframe, snarling in frustration. He’d forgotten about that. The force almost dragged him backwards for a moment until the depressurization was complete. He got his footing again and began to belt towards the exit closest to his ship.

“Captain,” Lumos said over the sound of gunfire. “Multiple unknown contacts breaching the crater wall. Analysis indicates that their genetic makeup is human, but—”

“Yup. I know all about them, trust me. Got nicely acquainted with one in here while trying to get the Gaither Key,” Skinner said. “How many?”

“Too many for me to track,” she responded. “You do not have very much time.”

“Thanks. No pressure,” he said sarcastically as he used his rifle to bash out the window closest to the Dangerous. Screw the airlock – like Lumos said, there wasn’t time. The structure was depressurized anyway, thanks to the barrage of gunfire. As he climbed out of the window, he happened to look up. “Lumos, what is that?!” he asked, his eyes widening.

Hanging in the air above them was an enormous sphere of whitish-gold light. The same color as the Gaither Key had been emitting. It was spinning rapidly, throwing sparks in every conceivable direction and pulsing just like the core of the key. “Please tell me that’s not dangerous.”

“I have no way of determining that, Captain,” Lumos said. “Although it is emitting Type-II radiation in increasing pulses. I have been monitoring the frequencies and have reason to believe it is a countdown.”

“Can this get any better?” he yelled in frustration, dropping down onto the glassy crater floor and running towards the Dangerous as quickly as he could. “Get the doors open now!” he said. “Or there’s not gonna be a ‘me’ to let in.”

Lumos hadn’t been kidding. The far wall of the crater was a sea of white as more of the scuttling creatures poured over the sides. They moved like an endless wave of ants, crawling one behind the other towards the Dangerous. The two oblong orbs that Cutlep had mentioned were hovering in the area, kept at bay by Lumos’s precise gunfire. The moment he was out in the open, both of them attempted to move towards his position. “Lumos!”

“Port side doors are open, Captain,” Lumos said. “Please hurry – I cannot keep them at bay for long.”

“Trust me, I’m trying,” Skinner said as he stumbled up the stairs and threw himself through the doors. He landed hard on his stomach, grunting with exertion as the door hissed shut behind him. “Thanks, Lumos, I owe you one… now let’s get out of here!”

“Please choose a destination, Captain,” she said as he picked himself up and made for the bridge.

“Take us up to orbit,” he said. “We’ll figure it out then. Just get us off the ground before something explodes!”

The Dangerous lifted off the ground just as he reached the bridge, ripping off his helmet and throwing himself into the captain’s chair with little prelude. Dozens of the pale creatures had latched onto the exterior of the hull like parasites and he watched with satisfaction as they slid off. Lumos prepared to accelerate just as something enormous and white lifted above the crater wall. Skinner screamed reflexively, gripping the edges of his seat.

He’d seen the two oblong devices on the ground while running towards his ship. They’d been about a meter wide at worst and crawled around like horrid white crabs. The only reason he hadn’t paid them more mind was that Lumos had been doing an excellent job of keeping them at bay. This creature, though, could only be the massive one picked up on the scanners.

It was huge and egg-shaped, easily over a hundred meters in height and probably forty or fifty in diameter. It walked on six enormous feet that weren’t attached to the body at all. Instead, there was some kind of invisible attraction between the main body and the limbs that kept everything anchored together. It had no other discernible features save for an enormous eye in the exact center of the body and two enormous dorsal ridges along the ‘back’. These extended upwards an additional twenty meters above the gigantic object, giving it a sinister appearance. “Lumos?!”

“Preparing evasive maneuvers,” she announced. “The object is charging some kind of weapon. Cherenkov radiation levels are rising in the lens area.”

“Get us out of here,” Skinner yelled as Lumos dropped an emergency harness around his shoulders.

“In progress, Captain,” she said. There were days Skinner wished he was a CI. No matter the situation, Lumos almost always seemed calm and unfazed. Even now, staring into the eye of a skyscraper-sized monstrosity that was undoubtedly charging some kind of death ray, she barely sounded more than irked.

The Dangerous entered a steep climb just as a ray of reddish-gold light shot from the titan’s eye. It missed the ship completely and scored a deep channel in the ground beneath them. The trail of devastation bit cleanly through Cutlep’s old research facility, slicing it in half. Skinner didn’t wait to see if it was charging again, closing his eyes and placing his trust in Lumos. “Please just keep us alive,” he whimpered, trying to sound braver than he felt. He hated how cowardly he was at times, but self-preservation won out over just about everything else.

“Captain, we are already achieving orbital escape velocity,” Lumos assured him. “We are going to be fine.”

“Can that giant monster hit us up here?” he asked.

“While it is likely that it can observe us, that weapon is magnetohydrodynamic in nature. It is not faster than light and therefore can be avoided quite easily at long ranges.”

Skinner let out a sigh of relief. “That’s good to know,” he said. “Are we in the clear?”

“I believe so, Captain,” she said. “Although that sphere of unidentified light is still visible, even from orbit. I am unable to determine what it actually is… wait…” Lumos trailed off. “…Captain?”

“What’s going on, Lumos?” Skinner asked, divesting himself of the emergency harness and standing up.

“I am reading some disturbing changes in the surrounding energy levels,” she said. “In fact, neutrino readings in the immediate vicinity just plunged into the negative.”

“How? How can there be negative neutrinos in an area?!” he spluttered. “How can there be negative anything in an area?”

Skinner jumped out of his seat and moved over to the window, looking down at Schunston from above. He could see the pinpoint of light down on the planet’s surface, twinkling like a tiny star. All around it for several kilometers, the atmosphere was distorted. It was difficult for his brain to quantify, but it was almost as if the planet’s surface looked warped and inverted; like a photo negative viewed through a badly distorted digital filter. “Lumos, what’s going on?”

“I have no idea, Captain.”