A Year Underfoot Read online

  The scampering continued.

  The creature was close, very close.

  The air became very still. In fact, the gentle flow of air through the duct had stopped all together. My worst fear was coming to fruition. The airflow was reversing. Now I was upwind of the creature.

  I held the gun out in front, waiting for the charge I knew was surely coming. And, seconds later my worst fears were confirmed when I saw a trio of menacing red eyes rushing toward me out of the darkness. I hadn’t a split second to waste and pulled the trigger repeatedly.

  A shrill scream filled the airshaft. My bullets had found the alien creature’s soft skull, making mince meat of its brain and shredding its nervous system as well. The creature was dead before it even fell upon me.

  I pushed the fifty–pound possum–like creature off me and rolled the other away. I reloaded my gun and poked at the strange animal. He was dead, no doubt. Four rounds had taken out its skull, while another had ripped open its soft underbelly, and the stench it now emanated was exponentially worse than before.

  I crawled away, and even after putting a few hundred feet of distance between us, I still couldn’t escape the smell. The fetid odor of the creature was stained upon me, but my discomfort and annoyance at the fact was soon tempered by the realization I now had a “natural” mask. No longer could the Threak smell the human on me.

  I put my head down and kept moving. An hour later and I’d cleared the bend with only straight and open ventilation shaft lying before me.

  Half a ship to go and I was already whipped to the bone. At this point I’d been on the go for over thirty hours and my tank was running on empty. I needed a bite to eat, a swallow off the canteen and a quick “pep” nap. I couldn’t be sloppy. I couldn’t be haphazard. I couldn’t take unnecessary chances. I had to rest. I had to sit for a spell.

  Thirty minutes later I woke with a start.

  A loud hum enveloped the ducting system and one by one the red shafts of light that had stood as signposts along the way began to shut off one by one. I looked over to the one to my immediate right. What was happening?

  A flushing of the system?

  Once the thought sprang to mind, I knew it to be true. I had to get out of there, and fast, otherwise, I’d be blown out into space.

  I shoved the barrel of the .357 into the slatted grate just as it was snapping shut. Automatically, the slats reopened and would remain open until the impediment was removed. The trick fro me was to keep the gun in place while I dropped through the grate without it snapping shut, – and before a live body came to check on why the louvered grate wouldn’t close in the first place.

  I squatted next to the vent, keeping the gun pressed against the edge of the grate. Throwing caution to the wind I dropped through the opening and the slats snapped shut above me as I hit the ground. I lay on my back staring up at the ceiling as a loud wash of air blew through the shaft.

  I stood and looked up at the grate. The slats had sprung back open, but with the ceiling being some thirty odd feet above my head, getting back into the ventilation system wasn’t going to be an easy task.

  Thinking quickly, I managed to maneuver a round table over to the corner of the room and gazed back at a number of same–sized square cases stacked neatly across the room. If I could stack them like a pyramid, they just might reach.

  But, before I could make a move, the door handle turned. I dove under the table and rolled into the corner, pressing myself against the wall and clung to the shadows.

  The handle stopped moving, – and fell back to its original position.

  I held still until I was sure the danger had passed and got back to work. I flew across the room and grabbed a hard case. I’d just dodged a bullet and it was only a matter of time before one creature, or another, came through that hatch.

  I redoubled my efforts and ten cases later and I’d built myself a nice stairway to the air duct.

  But, I knew it wasn’t enough to just get back in the shaft, I needed to continue hiding my presence as well. I needed to get rid of the pyramid, but how?

  In the corner of the room I spotted a large pole with a hook on one end that would fit the bill nicely. I jumped off the table, snatched up the twenty–five foot pole and climbed back up the cases. I pushed the pole up into the shaft and then pulled myself up alongside it. Laying on my stomach, and looking down upon the room, I eased the pole back through the grate and positioned the hook along side the bottom of the pyramid. One well–placed thrust and all ten cases would come crashing to the ground.

  But, would it be too loud?

  It was chance I’d have to take.

  I pushed hard against the base of the pyramid and the cases came tumbling down. They bounced off each other, – and the table as well, before they came crashing to the floor. The racket was loud, but not loud enough to draw any unwanted attention from outside of the room.

  Now safely back in the ventilation system, I went about my business with renewed vigor. I had another quarter mile to cover before I reached the bow and another quarter mile of climbing until I reached the bridge.

  I had a lot ground to cover. But again, I had plenty of time to cover it. I wasn’t up against a clock, nor was I striving to meet someone else’s deadline. As long as I remained calm, cool and collected I would be all right, – at least until I reached the bridge, then all bets were off.

  I’d only crawled another few hundred yards when klaxons began blaring throughout the ship. My first reaction was that I’d been discovered, but how? I was careful not to leave any human evidence back in the room. And, anything I might have inadvertently left behind in the vent, be it a hair, a thread, or a piece of cloth, it would’ve been blown out into space when the system was flushed. No, I decided, my presence hadn’t been compromised. I had to keep pressing on. The bells did not toll for thee.

  I was so close, no need to turn paranoid now.

  I kept moving and soon found myself at an intersection of two main corridors. I peered down through a louvered grate and saw that an elite squad of troopers lined the hallways.

  Seconds later, I heard footsteps falling in time coming up from behind me and then three standard bearers carrying the Royal crest marched beneath me. I inched closer for a better look as a member of the Royal family passed below and I drew my .357, but thought better of popping off a couple of rounds and giving myself away. I’d cause far more damage to their cause by taking out whole ship, rather than just one single entity.

  Instead, I aimed a forefinger and thumb and fired an imaginary bullet at the back of the Royal’s head.

  Incredibly, he stopped, and slowly turned around.

  I’ll admit it, a cold chill ran down my spine.

  It was the Emperor.

  I slunk back in the shaft as he tilted his head back and purposely sniffed the air. He stood still, closing his eyes as he did so, and, ever so slowly, he lowered his head and continued on his way.

  Adrenaline charged my soul. The Threak Emperor was on board.

  The pot had just been sweetened.

  With a renewed sense of purpose I pressed on. A few thousand feet later I reached a major junction where the airshaft split into four separate directions, – port, starboard, top and bottom. The bridge lay above me, but how I’d get up there became a concern. The square shaft was smooth on all four sides. How was I to climb?

  I stood up in the space and peered up into the darkness. I pulled myself up and placed my back against one wall and extended my legs and pressed them against the opposite wall. And, with my knees a half of a foot from my face, I inched my way up the shaft one shuffle–step at a time. As long as I kept myself wedged into the tight space I’d be all right, but heaven help me if I lost my footing and went careening back down. Depending on my progress, it could be a long way down to an awfully unforgiving surface.

  I inched up in total darkness, keeping my body engaged at all times. It was hot and I was sweating heavily, – my head throbbed and my body ached, but wo
rst of all, I felt my calf muscles beginning to tighten. Dehydration was taking hold.

  I pushed the pain aside until I couldn’t move another foot. I didn’t know how far I still had to go, but I had pretty good idea of how far I had to fall, so I held my ground until I could move once more.

  Inch by inch, foot by foot, despite my ever–tightening calf muscles, I kept climbing. My perseverance was finally rewarded when I came to a point where the shaft opened to accommodate a right angle feeder duct. Once I felt the slight breeze on the back of my head, I knew I had found a spot to lie out and stretch. Which is exactly what I did.

  I willed my body up and into the feeder duct and pushed myself back in the shaft, rubbing loose my rock–hard calves and happy to be stretching out my overworked and undernourished body for the final push.

  I finished the last of my water and carefully slipped back into the vertical shaft. I climbed on in darkness, my muscle issues of the past few hours were behind me and the end of my odyssey was now in sight. The darkness above my head was turning a familiar shade of smoky red and I knew I was close, very close.

  The bridge lay a few feet above me.

  Slowly, carefully, deliberately, I inched my way up to the louvered grate and peered through. I’d come up in the southeast corner of the expansive room and had a clear view of the elevated bridge, and of the dozens of officers who operated the ship’s command consoles. I smirked and shuddered, as I gazed upon them, – they would be among the first to die.

  I studied the grate and found it to be firmly secured to a bracket imbedded in the sub–flooring. I couldn’t remove it, but I could cut through the synthetic slats and gain access to the bridge that way. Using my jackknife, I sawed through the alien material and after only a few minutes I’d cut away enough material to allow me to slip through.

  I poked my head up through the opening and scanned the room. Two things stood out, – I was knee deep in Threak and the object of my desire, the power core module, an offshoot of the ship’s main power core, sat off to the right of the command consoles.

  I dropped my head as the officers snapped to attention and a hush fell across the room. This reaction couldn’t be for the captain alone, no, I surmised, the Emperor must be with him.

  I rose up and had a look. Sure enough, the Captain and the Emperor stood side by side on the bridge. That ought to draw and hold the attention of the troopers standing guard.

  I rose up from the shaft and committed myself to action. I reached into my vest pocket and pulled out the small cloth sack containing the substance the Retratti promised me would bring this great ship down, – dirt. Yes, good ‘ol dirt. Terra Firma. A handful of home.

  After all, what is dirt? Only the result of millions of years of natural, earth–centric organic decay. Even the tiniest of particles contained the basic elements of life, – the nutrients intrinsic to fostering life on this planet.

  The dirt was the Earth, and in the end the Earth would prove to be her best defense. The life, the building blocks of a planet, stored inside a few ounces of Southern California topsoil, would be more than enough upset the delicate balance of the alien plasma inside the containment vessel. And the reaction, according to the Retratti, would prove to be a fatal one for the power core.

  The plasma, once corrupted, would breakdown. No longer in balance, but feeding on itself just the same, the new concoction would generate untold heat and energy. In due time, the super–energized plasma would reach a frenzied point well above what the containment vessel could handle, and when that happened, when that critical mass was achieved, well, the explosion would tear the ship apart. Simple, swift and sweet. Just small bits and pieces of her shooting through space was all that would be left.

  And, if I couldn’t find a way off, I would be included in that “small bits and pieces” shooting through space, so be it.

  But, first things first, I had to deliver the package.

  With the Emperor on the bridge my job actually became easier. He commanded the room’s attention. There wasn’t a trooper in the room whose gaze was not fixated on their beloved leader, and as he paraded about the room, all their doomed alien eyes followed him.

  He proved to be the perfect diversion.

  As he made his way to the starboard side of the bridge, I lost sight of him behind the power core. The troopers closest to me had lost sight of him as well, and as they inched to their right to keep their eyes on their beloved Emperor, a blind alley opened up to the power core module.

  I had to take it.

  I pulled myself up the rest of the way out of the shaft and took off running for the power core module. I was five healthy strides into my mad dash when the shooting started. The core was still one hundred feet away, and for the first time since I’d embarked on what most would consider a fool’s errand I felt like I wasn’t going to make it. The module was too far away, and the troopers too numerous and positioned far too close to miss.

  But, much to my surprise, the shooting stopped. I was in line with the power core and one errant blast to the module, the containment vessel, and my work would have been done for me.

  I kept running, my head down, my legs churning, my left hand gripping the sack of dirt.

  Fifty feet.

  Forty feet.

  Instead of blasters, I got brawn. A dozen troopers converged on me and I dodged and weaved as best I could. The Threak, for the most part, are huge and cumbersome, traits I’d learned to take advantage of. I could evade them just fine, but what I couldn’t evade, or more precisely, had a hard time mixing it up with, were the smaller sized versions, the ones only slightly larger than myself. They moved quicker than their counterparts, but still much slower than I.

  I saw the first one coming in from the right and I juked and sidestepped him, but the effort put me on a collision course with the leg of a full sized trooper. I spun off and was knocked to the ground by one of my smaller adversaries, but quickly found my feet and scrambled for the glass–like module.

  The Emperor moved away from the power core and the troopers formed a circle around him. I almost couldn’t believe my luck, they weren’t protecting the power–core, they were protecting the Emperor. They had no idea my designs were on their power supply, not their beloved Leader. The further he backed away, the less crowded my field of contention became.

  As they backed away, I continued for the core.

  I reached across my chest and pulled my .357 out of my shoulder holster. I had six shots left. I aimed at the glass–like module housing the power core and started firing away. Round after round struck the glass and a crack appeared and began to grow. At first, it was just a sliver, but by the sixth shot, the sliver had become a quarter inch sized crack, large enough to breach the core.

  Twenty feet.

  I was almost there. I could see my reflection clearly in the clear red–hued containment module. I could see the plasma surging in and out of the pencil thin crack in the glass.

  I was going to make it.

  Ten feet.

  I was tackled from behind. One of the smaller Threak got me. He hit me low and hard and the cloth sack flew out of my left hand. I hit the ground with the beast on top of me and I rolled onto my back to fight him off and out of the corner of my eye I saw the sack spilling open, the precious dirt filling the air in direct line with the growing crack.

  Would it be enough, could enough get inside? Would any get inside? From where I lay the prognosis did not look good.

  But, then it happened. The sack of dirt fell at the right angle, at the right speed and close enough to the crack in the clear module to get sucked in through the ever widening crack.

  The entire sack! The entire sack slipped inside!

  It was better than I had hoped.

  I scrambled to my feet and kept low to the ground. A trooper lunged at me from my right and another came in from the left. I squirted through the pair and was met head on by one of the smaller ones, but I was ready for him and I flew at him feet first with
a lunge kick to the abdomen. He buckled and I rolled off to the right and kept moving.

  All the while, inside the power core, the seeds of destruction were germinating. The dirt, – millions of years of the Earth’s rock, dead plant, insect and animal life mixed with the alien plasma. The result was catastrophic.

  Small explosions tore through the containment module and spread throughout the ship. The genie was out of the bottle. Molten plasma spikes shot across the bridge from the pulsating pile of angry terrian–alien stew, skewering the troopers trying to contain the module and sending the rest for cover.

  I saw only one way out. The same way I came in.

  I ran for the vent as another explosion rocked the bridge. I hid my face from the blast and as a result I didn’t see the trooper charging at me from my right until it was too late. He dove and caught me by the right ankle. I fell forward and tried to crawl away, but he reached out and grabbed me, pulling me back toward him. And, though I fought, I couldn’t hold my ground. He drew me closer and the blood lust in his eyes told the whole story. He was going to tear me from limb to limb.

  And, he most certainly would have, but the Universe had other plans.

  Another explosion rocked the bridge and I was thrown to my left. The force of the blast loosened the trooper’s grasp and I squirmed my way across the floor as many more molten spikes of plasma flew all around. The vent lay no further than forty feet away and I scrambled to my feet and launched myself toward the corner of the room.

  I slid head first across the floor. The hole in the floor loomed large ahead and I was sure I’d made it when another huge fist clawed at my ankles, stopping me just short of the open vent.

  I looked back at the trooper, his body engulfed in flames and in the throes of death, but, still he had me by the leg, and he held on tightly. Mercifully, he was not long for this, or any other Universe and his grasp loosened as he died and I pulled away and crawled for the vent.

  A deep blast rocked the ship, but, unlike the previous explosions, this blast was not centered on the bridge. The deep, lumbering, ship–shaking event was centered many decks below, in the belly of the power core, crippling the massive vessel and sealing its fate as a casualty of war.