Erika wanted to sink to the floor and cry. She wanted to sit by the airlock until she heard the shuttle’s engine again, because Petra decided to return.

  But that’s not gonna happen, is it?

  Erika took deep breaths. Once she felt good enough to walk, she dragged herself to the ladder.

  Theo climbed down as Erika approached. His gaze scanned the halls before falling onto Erika.

  “I heard the shuttle,” Theo said.

  Erika sighed.

  Mi-Cha and Aymeric came down the ladder.

  “It’s a good sign the shuttle stopped making noise, yeah?” Aymeric said.

  “Petra ran,” Erika stated.

  Aymeric reeled.

  “Ran? Wait, in the shuttle?” He said.

  Erika nodded.

  “But that’s–how the hell did she–” Aymeric gave up speculating with a huff.

  Theo marched through the group and down the hall. Erika followed. Aymeric and Mi-Cha took up the rear.

  Theo stepped around the corner, to the lab airlock. The plate for the Aranea’s food was still on the ground, and still untouched. Something new was on the ground, though. It was a grate to a vent. There was a hole where that grate used to be.

  Petra must have crawled through the vents to get to the shuttle bay and bypass the Captain’s Override. She was smart. And, because she was smart, the Ark no longer had a shuttle to escape to.

  “That fucking bitch,” Mi-Cha muttered. “We could have used the shuttle, and she just…fucked us right in the ass!”

  “The shuttle could only support a single person back to Earth,” Theo said.

  “Yeah, so the last person alive would have…” Mi-Cha trailed off. She either ran out of steam, or realized how bleak her own outcome was.

  Erika glanced over the survivors and waited for someone to say something comforting, the way Petra would. Silence answered.

  No one on this ship is going to live. Petra will be the only person to make it back home.

  Erika took a deep breath through her nose, then exhaled through her mouth. Maybe everyone else would die, but Erika wasn’t going to sit down and wait for something to kill her. There was still work to do.

  “Did you three get anything else working?” Erika asked.

  “We’re just gonna ignore Petra?” Mi-Cha spat.

  “We still need to get the Captain’s Override lifted,” Theo said.

  “Okay, you keep doing that,” Erika said. “I’ll finish up that Aranea anesthetic, then we can–”

  The lights flickered.

  Erika tensed.

  The lights returned. Without the shuttle to siphon power from, the ship must be relying on its screwed up reactor. It needed to be fixed soon.

  “So we just carry on like nothing happened?” Aymeric said.

  “Do we have a better option?” Erika snapped. She hadn’t meant to snap, but the frustration leaked into her voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Erika mumbled.

  “Nah, we get it,” Aymeric said. “Theo? What’s next?”

  Erika left the three and returned to the kitchen. Her work was just where she’d left it spread across the counter. It would be helpful to have another person working on the formula with her. It would be nice if Petra was there, so they could talk and keep each other’s spirits up.

  Erika sighed, stepped up to the counter, and continued where she’d stopped.

  ? ? ?

  The missing grate jolted Theo’s brain into action. Erika, Petra, and Clive had slipped by the Captain’s Override to enter the labs. Petra slipped through the vents to reach the shuttle bay.

  “There is a console in the shuttle bay that controls power to the Ark’s systems,” Theo said. “We will go in there to use this console.”

  “For a system reboot!” Aymeric grinned, but the smile was short-lived. “We can take the vent and…fuck, why did we never think of this before?”

  The thought of using the vents simply never crossed Theo’s mind. If it occurred to either Aymeric or Mi-Cha, they’d kept quiet about the idea.

  What if they kept quiet on purpose? What if they wanted the ship to stay unpowered?

  “Why are we standin’ around; let’s fix this fucker,” Mi-Cha cut in. For once, Theo was glad for her loud and abrasive nature.

  The group crawled through the vent, with Theo going first. The vent was a tight squeeze, though Theo managed to haul himself into the shuttle bay. When he dropped into the room, he stared at the empty center, where the shuttle should be.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Mi-Cha and Aymeric popped out of the vent next.

  Mi-Cha wrinkled her nose at the empty spot.

  “That was my ship,” she said. “And where did that little bitch learn to fly? I don’t give out lessons.”

  Theo ignored her, and headed to the edge of the bay, where a console waited in its cage.

  Theo unlocked the door, and stepped inside the bars with the computer. He opened the console, and pulled up the reboot sequences. It took him a minute to find what he wanted, because Theo had never rebooted the Ark’s systems before.

  Theo tried the reboot sequence only to get an error message. The Captain’s Override stopped him from turning the computers off.

  Theo forced himself to keep a neutral expression.

  Aymeric looked over Theo’s shoulder, then swore.

  “The Override should have locked the shuttle down, too,” Mi-Cha muttered.

  The three maneuvered around the computer and its systems in search of a way to counteract the Override. Half an hour turned up nothing the group hadn’t seen before from the bridge servers.

  Theo checked a clock on his IRIS. It counted down the time before the Ark drifted into the asteroid field. Only an hour and a half remained.

  Theo stepped back from the computer.

  Could you move the ship another way? Maybe you could manually fire thrusters to turn the ship toward civilization. That would be a slow, and likely futile process. Even if Clive was still there, Theo wouldn’t be able to activate enough thrusters at once to change the course of the Ark.

  Aymeric frowned at the computer.

  “We could crash it,” he stated.

  “Why?” Theo asked.

  “Because computers reboot in safe mode when they crash,” Aymeric said. “Only essential systems come back up–the stuff we want. But the Override?”

  “That ain’t essential,” Mi-Cha finished.

  “There is also a chance the systems don’t return,” Theo said.

  “Then we all die, but that’s gonna happen anyway, yeah?” Aymeric said.

  Theo couldn’t argue against that. He opened his mouth to agree to the plan, but screeching metal stopped him.

  He listened, and tried to determine where the noise came from.

  “Okay, now what?” Aymeric muttered.

  Theo stepped away from the computer.

  Another metallic squeal pierced the air. It echoed through the room, making it hard to pinpoint, but Theo was certain the noise came from the airlock room.

  “You put the dead alien in the cryo pods, correct?” Theo said.

  “Right,” Aymeric whispered.

  A fleshy tentacle burst through the doors of the airlock room. A creature smashed through the opening.

  “The Lamia?” Aymeric choked.

  The creature on the far side of the room was not the same as the Lamia. The back of its body was the color of raw meat, and spikes protruded from its heavy form.

  The creature swung its arm in an arc.

  Something thudded into the metal wall. It was one of the spikes.

  “Run!” Aymeric hauled himself into the vent.

  The monster swung its limb again, and a second spike flew out. It was coming for Theo’s face. He ducked, and let the projectile embed itself into the wall.

  Mi-Cha scrambled into the vent.

  The monster thundered forward.

  Theo climbed into the vent. He squeezed himself in, and scrambled forward. Mi-Cha and Aymeric banged against the vents ahead, out of sight.

  A tentacle wrapped around Theo’s ankle, and the spikes cut against his leg. The Lamia pulled him backward.

  Theo kicked, but the tentacle kept its grip. The slime around it soaked into the bottom of Theo’s pants.

  He pressed himself against the vent, and scrambled forward.

  The tentacle slipped down Theo’s leg, and took his shoe with it. The creature moaned.

  Theo reached the other side of the airlock. Mi-Cha and Aymeric waited for him in the hall. Theo made sure his expression was empty, then climbed out of the vent. His pant leg was torn up, and his calf throbbed in pain.

  “You lost your shoe?” Mi-Cha said.

  The creature moaned.

  Mi-Cha and Aymeric froze.

  Theo stared at the airlock doors for the shuttle bay. If the creature ripped those doors off and thundered after everyone, there would be no way to stop it.

  That’s not the real problem though, is it? The monster was with the computer. The trick was not to escape the Lamia, but to get by it.

  A thump came from the shuttle bay.

  Aymeric pulled up his IRIS, and opened a call with Erika.

  “Yes? Is everything okay?” She answered.

  “The Lamia’s alive again,” Aymeric said.

  “It’s–what?”

  “We need to know how to defeat it. Or get around it,” Theo said.

  Erika sighed over the call.

  “We can squish it with a door again, right? No biggie,” Mi-Cha said.

  “The Lamia might have adapted to that kind of damage,” Erika said. “I’m sorry; I think hiding is our best option for now.”

  “We need to get around it. That’s the only way we disable the Override,” Theo said.

  “I…”

  Theo looked over Aymeric and Mi-Cha. He might not be the best at reading expressions, but their terror was obvious.

  “Both of you, return to Erika,” Theo stated.

  Mi-Cha hurried to the ladder.

  “What are you planning?” Aymeric asked.

  “Someone has to disable the Override,” Theo said.

  Aymeric’s eyes widened a fraction, then he became calm.

  “Okay. Good luck.” Aymeric went to the ladder.

  “What’s happening?” Erika asked.

  “I’m going back into the shuttle bay, and I’ll disable the Override,” Theo said.

  “What? But the Lamia will kill you! Theo, we’re going to find a better–”

  Theo turned the call off. Erika was not going to convince Theo to back off; her voice would only be a distraction.

  Theo climbed back into the vent, and crawled. He found his shoe halfway through the vent, grabbed it, and pushed forward.

  The Lamia smashed around the shuttle bay. It shouldn’t be able to hear Theo over the noise, but Theo still moved deliberately. He didn’t want to take any chances.

  Theo reached the opening into the shuttle bay. The Lamia was on the other side of the room, smashing its limbs against the walls. It dented the metal.

  What the hell are you doing? That thing is going to kill you, and for what? Isn’t your life more valuable than the others?

  Theo pushed that thought out of mind, and slipped into the shuttle bay.

  The Lamia groaned.

  Theo hurried to the computer.

  The Lamia wasn’t moving anymore.

  Theo quickly maneuvered through the system, racing to crash the machine.

  The Lamia was moving again. It was moving toward Theo.

  He finished the final command. The computer froze up. Theo started the reboot sequence.

  The Lamia was close now. It rose a limb.

  Theo ducked.

  The Lamia swung its arm out, and sent a projectile whistling through the shuttle bay.

  Theo jumped off the railing, and landed in the open area the shuttle should sit. The Lamia scrambled to the side. It stood between the vent and the airlock. There was no escape.

  Dread rattled in Theo’s chest. He knew, going in, that this was a suicide mission, but he still expected to make it out alive and well. Other people were supposed to make the heroic sacrifice.

  The Lamia swung its arm.

  Theo dodged another spike.

  The Lamia lumbered forward. It was going to corner Theo, then crush him into a pulp.

  Does that mean you’re going to stand still and let it happen?

  No.

  The Lamia was going to kill Theo, but he did not have to make it easy.