Nova Wars

The corridors were dark and empty. Despite the fact they were scrubbed clean to the point that even the black metal shined in the dim red lights, it had the feeling of age and neglect to the trio. It felt as if there should be cobwebs in the ceiling corners and dust so thick it was more like dirt along the edges where the wall met the floor. The lights felt like they should be even dimmer, maybe flickering, lit by candles rather than the burning red of micro-LEDs.

They moved carefully, peeking out of the holographic red walls or boxes to the next section of the corridor, all the while following the red arrow. Their HUDs were displayed only as shades of red with silver outlines, their comlinks only tuned to one another across old analogue bands.

It gave even the armor the feeling of age and neglect, even through they had seen it printed from a fabricator that had ground and shuddered as it worked.

Three times they stopped, waiting for a creature of line-art to move by. Twice, the creature blocking their way just drifted through the empty bay, making low moaning noises. It had no legs, just trailing pale whitish-gray mist below the waist, its face a blank mask except for the black eyes with the red pinpoints in the middle.

They followed Emry's advice. They sat down, two napping while one stood guard, eating the nutripaste or drinking.

"This paste isn't too bad," W44 said. He took another pull. "Tastes like berries and sweetener."

N44 nodded. "Better than... better than..." he frowned. "I almost had it. Better than the nutripaste in the packages, on the table, other people there," his frown got deeper. "We're laughing, drinking narcobrew," he looked up at W44. "You're there."

W44 just shrugged. "You're familiar."

D44 looked at the two males. "What about me? Am I familiar?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.

Both looked at each other then at her, then shook their heads. "No, sorry."

"Kind of, but not really. I've seen you before. I just don't know where," W44 said.

They kept moving, twice nervously standing in elevators while the whole thing filled with red light, with red holograms on the walls, ceiling, and floor.

They all nervously checked the bottom of their feet to make sure the red paint was still holding as the elevator went down.

The way to where Emry's "survival core" was located was winding, and the inertial and laser scanning map their armor built showed them heading outward from the elevators, where before they had been moving inward.

They rested again, fatiguing easy. Twice the world shuddered and the grinding noise filled the world, even getting through the high volume filters on their armor. The lights dimmed at the beginning and got brighter, almost painfully bright at the peak of the grinding noise. They dimmed as the grinding sound faded.

W44 groaned as memories suddenly welled up, a confusing welter of images and sounds, most of them disconnected.

My name is Wrixet...

He looked up and it clicked.

His name is Naxen...

...we're Fifth Streeters.

He stared at the female.

Nothing.

"Naxen," he said carefully.

The other Telkani made a groaning noise and put his hands against the visor of his helmet. After a moment he looked up, staring at Wrixet.

"Fifth Street for life," he said. "You're Wrixet."

Wrixet nodded, looking at his arm that had the bracelet on it. "W, for Wrixet."

Naxen held up his arm. "N for Naxen."

The Telkani stayed silent for a moment. "What do you think D stands for?"

The two males shrugged.

They sat quietly, their legs, spine, and shoulders aching. After a while Wrixet stood up, stretching.

"We need to get moving again."

The others groaned but got to their feet, Naxen helping D44 to her feet.

"I know I had parents, a mom, a dad, a broodcarrier," D44 said softly. "I know I was in advanced schooling for something, but I don't know what or where."

The two males nodded.

They stopped and waited for two of those line-art things to move through the wall.

It took a bit. It was gradual, subtle, but all too soon Wrixet held his arm out to stop the other two.

"What?" Naxen asked.

"Look at the passageway," Wrixet said.

"What about it?" Naxen asked, looking around.

"Ohhh," D44 said. She pointed up. "Uh, when did it start looking like that?"

Naxen looked up and saw immediately what the Telkani was talking about.

The passageway was four meters tall, three meters wide. The ceiling had supports for the last meter, strange flowing supports. The ceiling was rippled, wavy. Chains were attached to the supports, moving up to heavy bolts driven into the ceiling. Pipes that twisted in and out of the ceiling, many of them looking ancient and corroded.

"We better get a move on," Wrexit said. "I don't like the way that looks."

"Why would they make it look like that?" Naxen said.

Wrexit shrugged.

"I don't think they did," D44 said. She pointed at a hanging chain with barbs hanging from rings on each link. "That's weird. There's no reason for it. Emry said we're on a space station, space stations don't have things that aren't needed."

"All the reason to pick up the..." Wrexit started.

One of the things lunged out of the wall, grabbing his shield. He could feel it tugging on it, a weird sensation, like a memory of having his arm tugged on.

D44 turned and chopped twice at its back while Naxen pushed his shield against it.

It screamed and suddenly fell into clear gel onto the floor.

Wrexit shivered. "I'm never going to get used to that."

"They look like Emry, only made of white lines," D44 said, looking around. "They move through solid objects except for red and iron," she shivered slightly. "And wherever they touch gets colder."

"Maybe they're like Emry, only bad?" Wrexit guessed.

"Maybe," Naxen said.

They started moving through. According to their HUD they only had a little under fourteen hundred meters to go.

Still, the trip was winding.

At one intersection they stopped so Wrexit could pan his shoulder mounted light up and down the hallways.

They were showing more and more signs of strangeness. The holograms were red, strange runes full of points and eye watering swirls. Thick gray mist had started lifting up from the floor, swirling around their feet. When the line-art creatures crossed it, their lower bodies lost cohesion, melding with the mist.

"How far?" D44 asked, shivering. "Mine started saying "ERROR" a few minutes ago."

Naxen swallowed. "Mine says 'you will die here' since two corners ago."

"Mine says two hundred meters but that we'll never make it," Wrexit said. He shook his head. "I don't care. We'll keep following it."

They moved slightly closer to one another, moving in the middle of the wide passage.

"Why do you think the passageways are so large?" Naxen asked.

Wrexit just shrugged.

"So something big can move through. Maybe someone bigger than us, like Emry is bigger than us?" D44 asked.

Two more turns and the corridor stopped at a heavy blast door.

Wrexit saw the number for the doorpad appear on his HUD. The numbers didn't match the runes on the keypad, but his HUD was highlighting a number. He carefully punched it in. Another number was highlighted.

He started working through the number string.

Halfway through there was a shriek from behind them.

More shrieks echoed through the hallways.

"We've got company," Naxen said.

"Hurrying. It's twenty-six digits," Wrexit said.

The keypad suddenly buzzed.

"And I fumblefingered it," he griped.

He could hear the other two grunting, hear the screeching behind him, but he concentrated on pressing the buttons in the order they were highlighting.

The whole world shuddered as the loud grinding wound up, peaked, then faded.

The numbers and runes didn't match. The readout didn't match was he was putting in, the crimson runes burning balefully on the LEDs.

"I got you!" Naxen suddenly yelled.

Four more.

"Get him, get him," D44 shouted.

He felt something strike his back, cold with the memory of being hit hard enough to break bones.

Two more.

"More coming!" D44 yelled.

The door suddenly lifted up and receded into the corners at 45 degree angles, with an interior door pulling to each side and a door beyond lifting up and receding into the floor.

They rushed through.

Wrexit hit the "emergency close" as D44 threw their last mist grenade into the hallway.

Two of the creatures hit the mist spewed by the grenade. Their lines flashed into burning embers and they screamed as they dissolved.

"Made it," D44 said.

"Not until we've spent the money on narcobrew and joygrils and lawsec has something better to do," Wrexit said.

D44 frowned. "That's a weird thing to say."

Naxen shrugged. "Sounds right to me."

The room was huge, cavernous. The ceiling vanished into the darkness. Cranes, gantries, lifts, all hung from heavy beams. Chains hung from the ceiling and the walls. Silent machinery lined the walls, were sitting in the middle of the floor, and was hidden by the dim red lights.

"This way," Wrexit said, leading the other two through the winding path between huge crates. Many of them looked like they had started to rust at the corners and the bottom edges.

By one wall was a stack of heavy looking cubes, all of them nearly as tall as the trio, sitting on a metal pallet.

One cube had a flashing light and a lit datapad on the side.

They moved up and looked at it.

"HEY GUYS" the top line read.

It was instructions on what to do to get Emry free, where to take him, and what to do then.

"I'm not going down that hallway on the map," D44 said. "My armor map says the whole thing was covered in chains hanging from the ceiling."

"We'll have to find somewhere else," Wrexit said. He moved over and grabbed the grav-dolly. It took twice to turn it on. When it powered up, hidden runes flared to life, burning with orange, purple, and red fire.

They carefully moved Emry's "Fairy Day Disaster Survival Core" case to the grav-dolly. Even through the gloves of the armor one side of the case was uncomfortably hot, with flashing red lights and runes on a small data strip. Once they got it on the grav-dolly, the datapad loaded information to their armor.

"We'll have to figure out another path," Wrexit said. "He needs a power lead, a data tap, and a nanoforge to create the safety cables."

"What about that big eating area?" Naxen asked. "It's a little ways, but it's outside of the chains and weird stuff."

There was the grinding shudder again. The lights brightened, runes appeared, flickered, disappeared. The lights dimmed as the grinding wound down.

"We'll go for it," Wrexit said. He pushed the grav-dolly a little ways. "It's heavy. We'll switch off."

D44 just nodded.

The red lights kept flickering, or were too dim to do much more than just suggest the boundaries of the passageways. More than a few of the holoemitters that had formed impenetrable walls to the creatures were now gone. Some had been replaced by strange patterns of interlinked runes.

"It feels greasy when we go through those," D44 said, shuddering, after they passed through an interlinked wall of runes. She paused, stopping to pant and let her armor's circulation cool her off. "I'm spent."

"Stops those things though," Wrexit said. "I'll push."

He switched to the dolly, while Naxen moved up to the lead and D44 grabbed the towing strap and pulled on it.

The corridors slowly returned to normal. The holograms springing from the walls either pale white or red bracketed by white. Normal, clean red, not the greasy feeling red of the runes or the warped holograms.

They steered the heavy grav-dolly through the passages, twice taking breaks.

One of the times Naxen held his head as more disconnected memories lanced through it. D44 had a minor seizure, the only outward clue was the way she banged the back of her helmet against the wall she was leaning against. Wrexit found himself on his side, D44's hands keeping him steady. The inside of his helmet stunk of vomit, but his faceshield was clear.

"Remember anything new?" D44 asked.

Wrexit just shook his head. "Nothing connected," he gave a chuckle. "More than a few memories of sitting in a lawsec cell with him."

"I snag your narcobrews when you aren't looking," Naxen chuckled. He looked at D44. "You?"

She shook her head. "No. Just memories of cuddling with a broodcarrier."

The two males sighed enviously and started pushing the grav-dolly.

The door to the eating area was marked "COMMUNCAL MILITARY DINING HALL 57553" on the holograms that were springing from it. The door opened as soon as D44 waved her fingertips near the hologram.

Together, they pushed the grav-dolly over to where there was a series of sockets labeled "datatap - secure/unsecure", where there were power leads.

While Naxen and D44 rested, Wrexit went over to one of the devices on the wall. He'd seen them before, he knew. Not personally. In vids of rich people. Well, maybe once, but it had been putting out unflavored nutripaste and he was wearing an orange baggy jumpsuit.

He followed the directions carefully, quickly navigating away from food and drink and into hidden menus. He printed up "HIGH THREAT SECURE DATACORD" and "HIGH THREAT SECURE UNIDIRECTIONAL POWER CABLE - HIGH VOLTAGE/AMP/WATT" and waited while the machinery spooled out two long heavy cables.

D44 and Naxen helped him drag it over to the box, then carefully plug it in. First to the wall, then to the box.

After the power conduit was connected a holoemitter on the case spun up.

"Hey, we made it," Emry said. He looked around. "Chow hall. Why not the emergency locker I had on the map?"

"The corridors were weird," Naxen said.

"They felt dangerous," D44 said.

"Let me see. Put your palms on the flat induction pads," Emry said.

All three took turns.

"Let me look," Emry said. "OK, standard, standards, that hallway's... oh. Oh. Oh no."

"What?" D44 asked.

"I know why the computer coding and the data corruption keeps growing," Emry said. "Oh, no. Oh, no no no."

"What?" Naxen asked.

"Pull the plug! Pull it!" Emry shouted, pointing at the data cable.

Naxen reached out and yanked it free.

Emry sat down on top of the box.

"We're in trouble," he said.

"You keep saying that. Why?" Naxen asked.

"We've got ongoing Hellspace corruption."