I looked toward Juliana, but I had read all of the manuals she had. The defense field was supposed to protect us from harm, data disruption, and intruders. The main airlock was guarded, but we hadn’t seen a thing since we passed through Earth’s atmosphere.
It could have been an alien. It could have been something or someone worse. There were other ships just like ours. What if something went wrong and one found us? What if they were waiting to board our ship, one by one? Or maybe… they already had.
I stood up and wiped the compounding sweat off my forehead. Searching through the rubble and discarded packages, it wasn’t obvious what was stolen, but a cold chill ran through my heart.
“Somebody’s on the ship.” Did the words come from my mouth? Yes. But I didn’t feel them.
Panic.
I searched around the room, hands covered in the thick substance. I couldn’t concentrate. My heart raced at a million miles per second. Who the fuck was on board? What was?
An oily paste dripped from the edges of the pipes in the ceiling, black as blood, but it didn’t appear to be of human source.
I turned to Juliana for answers, but she shook her head. “No. No way.”
“You have to tell them. We’ve been invaded,” I said.
“If we tell them, they’ll go crazy. I’ll have a fucking mutiny on my hands, and don’t for a second think you won’t be involved,” she whispered.
Manny threw his set of tools across the room. “All of our fuel cells were in those boxes. Not to mention, our food.”
I bent to pick up Manny’s mess and found a lone frag grenade. If one was to go off, it would decimate the entire shuttle. I quickly pocketed it.
“The real question is what has come in?” With her arms outstretched, Juliana looked vulnerable.
I took a deep breath, falling back with slight dizziness before wrapping my palm around the exit ladder. Juliana knew what was going on. We all did. It was an invasion.
What was it, though? A stalker. An alien. A giant fucking cockroach that managed to scurry underneath the cracks of our sink?
Everywhere I turned, I saw nothing, but I felt the presence lurking. Was it benevolent? When was an alien ever benevolent? I tried to think of all the movies I had seen in the 90’s, but reciting the lines of Independence Day wasn’t going to save my life.
Judging by the massive handprints pressed into some of the metal carriers, I’d say that it was something inhuman. I wasn’t so sure they were the balloon-headed gray alien type. In fact, I imagined much worse. Then again, could anyone be worse than Cade?
I doubled back and climbed the ladder, smacking the red emergency lockdown button. I heard Manny and Juliana’s pounding footsteps behind me, heard them screaming my name to get me to stop, but I was gone. The prisoners’ rooms would latch and secure automatically, but they would re-open in approximately thirty minutes.
I had to initiate the lockdown. Otherwise, everyone would have been in danger. That thing was in here somewhere, most likely above us. I couldn’t let it get to the others.
We would reconvene in the cafeteria. That was the rule. It was safe there. It was an okay place to gather, but none of this was sitting well with me, and that thing could have already made it to the dining tables.
“Mia!” Juliana stopped, heaving in huge breaths of synthetic oxygen. “Mia, what are you doing?”
I focused on the circular hallway in front of her, lit up by iridescent lights and sequenced displays of color from the mach
ines. How could everything around us be so silent and peaceful when there was an intruder stalking us and waiting for one of us to fuck up?
“We meet in the dining hall,” I said.
“We gave Cade a heavy dose. He might be zonked out,” she said.
“Then, we’ll get someone to drag him in. I want everyone in that room.”
Juliana sighed, but she looked completely lost. She was a great navigator, but when it came to dealing with this type of danger, she was a novice. They should have hired soldiers to stand guard.
Quickly, we ran to the cockpit. I gazed at the navigation systems. The planet we were supposed to call our new home was suddenly nowhere on the display. Nowhere. All I could see was an empty screen and the occasional field of debris. My bad feeling got worse.
“You good with calling the shots now, captain?” Juliana asked. “Are you sure you can handle this?”
Manny laughed. “Maybe the alien came to get an insight on the birthing process...”