“What the hell is that for?” Aster asked. “A gymnasium?”
“Could be. Training facility? The Velibar are large creatures. Maybe they’re into fitness.” Varn lifted his arm, like he was flexing.
“I guess we’ll find out.” Luther went first again, cautiously moving into the secondary hallway. They all appeared the same, and I was glad we had a map. Otherwise, it would be quite simple to get lost in the labyrinth of the corridors. This was why I preferred the smaller haulers like Capricious, or the much more compact Racer like Pilgrim. This monster was a behemoth that shouted war machine, instead of exploration vessel.
Something blinked on my PersaTab, and I only caught it from the corner of my eye as we walked slowly toward this cavernous room. “What was that?” I asked, staring at the screen.
“I didn’t notice anything,” Varn said.
“R11, can you check back on my feed? Did another light appear?” I asked the robot.
He replayed the feed in my HUD, showing a red dot flickering ahead before it vanished. “There! You guys see that?”
“Might be a glitch. You’re getting farther from Pilgrim. With the radiation around us and the distance, as well as the materials they constructed this Squid from, numerous things could affect the readouts,” Jade said.
Easy for her to say from the comfort of our cockpit. I kept that to myself, and we moved on. Then I saw it once more. A flash of maybe fifty red dots, then nothing.
The Velibar were inside the room we were approaching. “This is bad.”
Luther watched the feed again, and shrugged. “Arlo, we have to check this out. There’s no way that fifty Velibar are behind that door. R11 said this ship’s been deserted for a decade. No power. It’s unreasonable to think there’s anything left but a bunch of frozen corpses. Maybe that’s what we’ll find.”
“If you say so.” I started forward, trying to believe my friend. Whatever this was, I was anxious to return to Pilgrim and continue our mission to Refuge. “Jade, what percentage?”
“We’ve downloaded seventy-three percent,” she answered. Almost done.
Luther stopped at the end of the hall and faced a ten-foot metal door slab. “Do you mind?” he asked Varn, who used the electrical device to operate the panel.
My flashlight shone inside the room as the door opened, and it reflected off an odd surface. The beam refracted from the material, and I walked closer, trying to understand what we’d encountered. This side of the room had a pedway, with a waist-high railing preventing you from falling over. I peered up to a deck above. Below was another matching footpath.
“This is water,” Aster whispered, and I saw what she meant. The room was a giant cavern, covering ten decks from top to bottom. The surface of the water floated a foot in front of my face, held in by an invisible barrier.
Varn was the first to it, sticking his finger out. He poked the water, and his hand went inside. He removed it, and water dripped off his glove. He glanced at us and grinned. “Why would they have water on their ship like this? For drinking?”
I didn’t answer before the red dots appeared on my PersaTab again. I aimed my gun ahead, trying to spot the enemy, but none of them were visible. One of the dots shifted closer to our position, and we scrambled around, frantically trying to find evidence of a Velibar.
“Behind you!” Jade shouted, seeing something on our feeds. I spun to stare at the rippling vertical wall of water just in time for the thick arm to reach out of it, drops falling from the suction cup-covered fingers. The Velibar grabbed Varn, dragging him toward the water.
“Help me!” he shouted, his voice a piercing scream.
Luther wasted no time, firing behind Varn at the blurry image of the Velibar. Aster shot as well, and I clutched Varn’s outstretched hand, gripping it tightly. I managed to snatch a rope from my own belt, clipping it to the railing near the doorway. I secured it to Varn’s belt with a five-thousand-kilogram carabiner. He stopped as the rope went taut, and smiled at me.
It all happened so fast. Luther shot the Velibar’s arms, and one of the fingers fell to the floor. It released Varn and vanished deeper into the vertical pool. Varn rushed over, pressing his back against the door as we watched for signs of the enemy. Their red dots drifted around the map now, as if they were somehow alive within this water source.
“Now we know why the water’s here,” I said through heaving breaths.
“Thanks for saving my life,” Varn exclaimed.
“Don’t thank me yet. We still need to make it out alive.”
With my gaze on the shimmering surface, we reversed out of the room, sealing the door closed.
“Arlo, we’ve completed the download,” Jade said. “Everyone okay?”
Luther retreated back the way we’d come. “We’re fine.”
“Wait. We have an issue,” Jade told us.
“What is it?” I asked, and we paused, waiting for her response.
“The data is incomplete. We were hoping to discover information on Velibar’s home planet, as well as their colonies.” Jade sounded irritated.
“Okay, where do we find that?” Aster asked, leaning against the bulkhead.
“The bridge.” Jade’s voice was quiet.
I glanced at the room that held the Velibar in a pool of water, and shrugged. “Bridge it is.”
SEVEN
I wasn’t comfortable knowing there were a few dozen Velibar on board, but so far, they hadn’t fled their safe zone. We assumed they needed to stay inside it to survive, so we could use that to our advantage. As the blueprints told us, the bridge was indeed an independent spacecraft within this Squid. The central
