Aetheral Space

"This is a bad idea," said Bruno, as they stepped inside the star-yacht.

Ruth frowned. "Don't knock it until we've heard the strategy, Bruno. Skipper definitely has a way for us to win one-hundred percent."

"Yeah," said Dragan, earning himself another glare from Bruno. "Give it a chance."

This is a bad idea, thought Dragan. Diving into old, abandoned Gene Tyrant ruins in search of some twisted experiment … it was the kind of scenario that horror videographs were built on. It was more than a bad idea - it was a horrible idea. Suicidal, even.

And yet Bruno was against it, and to be honest he'd been irritating Dragan recently.

"Give it a chance?" said Bruno, as if Dragan had just started talking about the medicinal benefits of drinking mercury. "What happens after we give it a chance, and we're left a bunch of corpses lying on the floor?"

"I have faith in Skipper," lied Dragan. "He'll see us right."

Bruno's glare intensified, hands clenched into fists at his side. "Oh, you're so full of shit," he growled.

Dragan blinked, suppressed the urge to click his tongue in frustration. Bruno had been able to see through him - that was something he didn't like very much at all. His lying and ability to delegate hard work were all he had going for him, so someone who those abilities didn't work on was the most annoying thing in the world.

"I'm not full of shit," Dragan said calmly, full of shit. "I just think we need to have a little faith."

"Kid gets it!" came Skipper's distant shout from the Veritas' kitchen. The instant they'd come in, he'd made his way to the ship's automatic minifridge. He'd formed a close relationship with it ever since they'd stolen the vessel.

Their captain returned, holding a can in his hand, it's surface wet with condensation. For a moment, Dragan thought it was alcohol - which didn't inspire that much faith in whatever plan was going to come out of Skipper's mouth - but then he saw the label:

DOC ORANGE'S CITRUS JUICE FOR KIDS - GROW UP BIG AND STRONG

Dragan rolled his eyes.

"So!" said Skipper, taking a big slurp from the can. "We've got ourselves a bug on the loose! Needless to say, this isn't an ideal situation."

Bruno spoke up: "We should just leave. That's the solution to the problem."

Skipper wagged a finger. "Not so fast, Bruno. I'd rather not sail this ship before the repairs are done."

"Well," said Bruno, clearly getting heated. "I'd rather not get eaten by a giant fly."

Bruno switched with Serena, who spoke with a grin. "Don't worry, Bruno! I'll protect you!"

"See?" said Skipper, matching the grin. "It's fine. She'll protect you."

Bruno reasserted himself, brow furrowing into an angry 'v'. "That's not my point."

"What is your point, then?" said Ruth, speaking up for the first time in a while. She leaned against the wall, looking at Bruno.

"My point," began Bruno angrily - only to stop and repeat himself more quietly, more calmly. "My point is that we're being reckless. We're taking unnecessary risks for no good reason. That's my point."

With the words unnecessary risks, Bruno glanced at Dragan. Clearly, del Sed still didn't trust him. Thinking logically, Dragan couldn't really blame him at all - Dragan was basically some rando who'd gone from hostage to crewmember while Bruno wasn't looking.

Emotionally, though, Dragan was offended. He'd shot a Special Officer in the back, pretty much signed his own death warrant. What more could he do? How many times did you have to save people's lives before they trusted you?!

"I think -" Dragan began.

"Nobody cares what you think," snapped Bruno.

Dragan glared back at Bruno, gritted his teeth, growled. Ruth and Skipper glanced at each other uncomfortably. "I think," he said again. "We should know exactly what we're dealing with before we do anything."

"That's…" Bruno frowned, clearly frustrated by the fact that Dragan was agreeing with him. "Well, yeah, but…"

Dragan ignored him, turning back to Skipper. "You said this thing was maybe a descendant of one of the Gene Tyrants' experiments. How would that work? History says that most of the Gene Tyrants' creations - except the human subspecies, obviously - were sterile. They were supposed to be pretty big on that law."

Skipper rubbed his chin - and as he did so, he let himself fall backwards into a decadently comfortable position on the nearest couch. "Life, uh, life finds a way, I guess," he said.

"So you don't know."

"I do know. I just told you. Life finds a way."

Dragan groaned. "Anyway, that's not even the point - what I'm wondering is how many of these things there are. I'm barely up for fighting one, let alone a horde."

He heard Bruno speak up from behind him once again. "Who said you'd be fighting? Don't think you can volunteer yourself for that."

Could Bruno just let him speak without butting in with his needless comments? It was seriously getting on Dragan's nerves.

"If there was a whole bunch of fly-monsters lurking around," said Ruth. "I think we woulda seen them by now."

"You think," said Dragan, waving a finger to punctuate his points.."You think. Nobody knows anything."

"Then we need to find these things out," Skipper shrugged his lopsided shrug. "We need to test things. Experiment."

The crew looked at Skipper, identical concern on each of their faces. Despite their own individual opinions, it was clear to all of them that Skipper getting excited about this wouldn't end well at all. He looked like a kid in a candy store, except the store was an ancient ruin and the candy was a man-eating monster.

"Think about it," he continued, nestled between the cushions on the couch. "That thing went after, uh, Dian, right? His name's Dian?"

Dragan nodded.

"It went after Dian," Skipper said. "And Dian went into the ruins earlier that same day. Deep into them, from what I heard. That thing only came out after someone went all the way into the palace. Maybe it was meant as a guard."

"So it was hunting down an intruder," Bruno nodded. "That makes sense."

"So," concluded Skipper, slapping his hand on the arm of the couch as punctuation. "If it goes after people who've intruded into the ruin, it seems to me we have the perfect bait!"

All eyes turned to Dragan. He idly wondered if Muzazi would be willing to forgive him if he begged on his hands and knees.

-

"You're doing great, kiddo!" came Skipper's tinny voice over the communicator. They'd provided a compact headset with which to stay in contact.

"I'm just sitting down," Dragan said, voice flat, eyes glaring straight forward resentfully.

"And you're doing great at it."

Indeed, he was just sitting down. He was sitting down in the middle of the great hall of the palace, waiting for a genetic abomination to come try to eat him. It wasn't the most relaxing sit down he'd ever had. After all he'd done for these people, he'd been reduced to bait. God truly loved to punish the good.

"We're right with you," said Ruth, irritatingly cheerful. "Anything happens, we can be there in a second!"

"Gee, thanks," said Dragan, voice still monotone.

"No problem!" said Serena, triggering Rikhail flashbacks. She clearly had an impenetrable defense when it came to sarcasm.

Dragan sat there, cross-legged, cleared his throat. Dust hung thick in the air like a fog - a fog all too eager to coat the inside of your mouth given the chance. He got the feeling that, if he sat there long enough, the dust would settle over his body and turn him into a statue.

He closed his eyes to spare them the stinging.

Breathe in through your nose, breathe out through your nose. Just take things easy, Dragan told himself. A giant monster's gonna come and kill you any second, but just take it easy. Imagine Bruno tripping over a rake.

He chuckled silently to himself, then opened one eye to watch his surroundings. Still no monster. He couldn't see Skipper and the others, either, now that he thought about it. They were supposed to be hiding in cover, but still. Shouldn't he be able to see a foot sticking out or something?

Had they left him to get eaten by a giant bug? Unlikely, there'd be no benefit in it for them.

But still … shouldn't he be able to see them? Where were they?! Were they messing with him?! He put a hand to the ground to push himself back up to his feet, and -

Something clicked menacingly from a short distance behind him.

Oh fuck.

Slowly, reluctantly - as if the danger would only really come into existence once Dragan saw it - he turned to look behind him. His eyes widened in horror as he saw the source of the sound. Saw the hulking figure moving out of the shadows, closer than what seemed possible.

It was the size of a fucking bear. A colossal insectoid creature that looked like someone had taken every bug people had phobias about and mashed them into a single magnum opus of awful.

The thing had a black, swollen body with the vaguest shape of a spider - and asymmetrical numbers of legs, at least twenty in all, splayed out on either side. They twitched and flexed like fingers, and a feeling of nausea rose up on Dragan's throat just looking at them.

A huge stinger, warped into a cruel scythe-like blade, swayed from side to side behind the creature. A vivid green fluid dropped from it. Doubtless some kind of venom.

The head, a deformed protrusion sprouting from the front of the creature's body, was covered in eyes and teeth, with no discernable pattern. Eyes on its face, eyes in its mouth, eyes on its teeth.

And the teeth themselves - needle-like fangs took position next to brickish crushers took position next to soft, slab-like gums. It was as if someone hadn't been able to decide what kind of tooth they liked the best, and had simply elected to include them all.

Three spike-like proboscises sprouted from between the gaps in the beast's teeth, each long enough and sharp enough to run a man through. To run Dragan through.

The creature's jaw creaked open, revealing even more teeth, a veritable forest of them. Dragan froze. Even with the danger in front of him, he didn't dare move. This was a unique organism: he had no idea what would set it off. He had no data to work with.

A croaking sound poured from the insectoid maw, growing in volume and structure until they formed words.

The creature spoke. "Inn-true-duh…" Three syllables, repeated mindlessly. Just listening to it, Dragan could tell that it had no true intelligence, no true motivation or desire. It did these things because that was what it was designed to do.

It was all theatre. That was the worst part: any attempt to deduce information about the creature only told Dragan about it's creator. The thing had been made to look like this, to evoke fear and disgust. Every deformity was built-in, every horror purposeful and exaggerated for maximum effect.

It was like a parody of itself. A cartoon monster.

Dragan opened his mouth to say something - to shout that the quarry had arrived, to communicate his deductions, to ask Skipper what the hell was taking him so long. But he didn't say any of that.

In the end, all he could do was scream.