Intergalactic Pest Control

Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Sector 12 Transgalactic Station

Sublevel five felt like a tomb. It was cold, echoed, and smelled like dead ass. Cody kept thinking a zombie was about to jump out from behind every corner. If they did, he hoped this level was plagued with the old zombies, the dumb ones that shambled around, moaning, walking into walls and falling in holes. If it was fast zombies, he’d be f****d. He wasn’t outrunning anything with this crick in his neck or all the gear strapped to his back.

“Positivity,” he whispered to himself. Reggie was always going on about the power of positive thinking.

Right. Like he could just think his way out of a situation with thousands of hideous space roaches, and keep them from gnawing his legs off. If he had that sort of power, Cody would be thinking himself onto a beach right then. He could see himself with a tropical drink in hand and his head in the lap of a curvaceous woman as she ran her fingers through his hair and told him he was a genius.

Actually, with the creepy darkness lurking before him, he’d settle for a pizza and some battle armor.

His kill zone wasn’t far from the elevator. There was a control hub for this level’s automated movers a few yards ahead. Sublevel five was a sorting level. Cargo was brought down here, sorted according to its shipping destination and then moved to the appropriate loading dock. The sorting and moving were all automated, so this floor was loaded with bots designed to lift and carry. The ShimVens loved sucking on cables and fuse boxes and power stations.

Cody moved swiftly down the hall and ducked into the room on the left—the control hub. It was in the shape of an octagon, and the control panel lined the back of the room. Dormant bots stood in a line along the right side. Some of them were bipedal; a few newer models ran on treads. All of them had two arms with large, grabbing claws on the end.

From the state of the room, it looked like the swarm had yet to visit, which is what the guys had assumed. The bulk of the swarm they encountered had been working their way down from the main floor—this was evident from the fact that some of the sublevels had its infrastructure largely intact.

Cody hoped it would remain that way.

He plugged into the main control panel and quickly took over the system. The firewalls in this place were laughable. One would think such a cornerstone of galactic commerce would safeguard itself a little better from cyber attack.

He dumped the rations in the center of the floor and activated the cooling fans meant to keep the servers from overheating. The wind blew over the rations and through Cody’s hair. The fans would blow the scent of the rations and his sweaty flesh into the hall, and once the bugs got a whiff of that and felt the energy pumping through the machines, they’d be down to feast.

Cody kneeled by the main control panel, his wristcom jacked in. He raised his flamethrower and waited.

Joel moved through sublevel six like a ninja. Disappearing into the shadows. Rolling around corners. Stepping as lightly as an autumn leaf falling from a tree. He even yelled, “Hiyah!” and side-kicked a garbage can that had the audacity to jump out at him.

He laughed to himself and continued stepping lightly, feeling weightless. Because why should sneaking through the bowels of an abandoned space station and hunting a swarm of devil bugs not be fun?

Joel knew it was an act. In truth, he was seconds away from pissing himself. But he needed to keep up the charade, or the fear would take over and paralyze him. Then the bugs would nibble him to death as he lay in the fetal position and cried.

Sublevel six was the machine shop. After his ninja act lost its luster, he focused on that fact. Typically, the machine shop of a space station of this size would have been a playground for Joel. So many broken things for him to put back together. He would have been like an elf in a demented Santa’s workshop. This was the place all the bots went for repairs. All the tools and tech and transports, too. Everything. Machine guts were spewed across workbenches. Bot corpses were stacked in heaps. Mountains of spare parts loomed like dormant volcanoes ready to erupt at any moment.

It was heaven.

The main workshop was a few hundred yards into the sublevel. He reached it after having shrieked with alarm only twice. Both times at shadows, but those shadows were total assholes that were out to get him. He sent them both to hell in a blast of fire. Flamethrower works, at least. He was glad to know that before he set himself like cheese in a rat trap.

It was a shame Joel wasn’t stepping into that workshop under different circumstances. He could have entertained himself for hours. There were so many half-built contraptions, bots in need of repair and spare parts lying about in desperate need of being turned into something awesome. It could have been his happy place. But it’s hard to find joy when facing painful death and/or bad Intergalactic Yelp reviews.

It would read: ‘Contractor not only failed to eradicate the ShimVens infestation, but I had to hire another contractor to clean up the mess his eviscerated body left behind,’ and Joel and the guys would never work again. Also, he’d be dead, which was arguably worse.

Joel dropped the rations in a heap on the floor and set up his portable fan behind it to push the scent. There was nothing to do but wait for the bugs to come after the bait. He perused the workshop to kill the time. As he sorted through the junk, his mind flooded with glorious ideas, automatically fitting the parts together like puzzle pieces, joining them to create a wondrous machine that murdered bugs.

When his brain started flashing blueprints, he couldn’t stop himself anymore.

He set about putting the parts together as the skittering started to echo in the vents.

When Reggie had been back in the elevator, the panic took over. He couldn’t get out of his head. Alone in the elevator on the way down to sublevel seven, all he could think about was Cody and Joel, and how they were probably pissed at him for taking this job.

He had been too eager. Reggie had jumped at the chance for a real, paying job, and had agreed to unreasonable terms. He half-hoped he’d die on this station so he wouldn’t have to tell the guys how much they were getting paid. Thinking about it now, it absolutely was not enough.

But no matter what, he was pressing forward. He couldn’t tell if it was out of pure stubbornness, or if he really did care about creating a reputation. Regardless of the pay, if they were successful on this job, it would set them up. It was a hell of a resume builder.

Not if they were dead, though. And he would definitely get dead if he didn’t put his head on straight.

He again ran his fingers along the pincers tucked into his belt. He’d earned plenty of trophies during his gaming career, but this was different. He’d ripped the pincer off his enemy with his bare hands while dripping with bug blood. These proved he had what it took to get the job done.

Sublevel seven was a literal dump—the garbage level. That was obvious the moment Reggie stepped off the elevator, and into ankle-deep trash. Joel had explained to him a little bit about how these areas worked on space stations. Chutes led to the floor from every level above it, dropping garbage in massive heaps throughout the day. At specified times, the incinerator would activate. The floor was one large conveyor. When running, it pulled all the garbage toward the center of the level, which dropped away into one huge incinerator shaft. The fumes were then vented out into space.

The smell hit Reggie in the face like a steel-toed boot. The station had been abandoned for a few days now, meaning this trash should have been burned days ago but had been sitting and stewing instead. Reggie tried not to think of what he was walking in as he trudged through the level. However, as his pants became soaked with garbage soup, he couldn’t think of anything else. His guts gurgled, and he tasted bile in the back of his throat.

“It’s fine,” he said to himself. “Totally cool. I got this. Just garbage water. No, just water. I’m walking along the beach. A beautiful, scenic, trash beach.” His stomach cramped as he barely fought the urge to vomit.

The chutes that connected to each level were labeled. He found the one marked “Sub-level five” and set about baiting his trap. He tied a bunch of rations in the opening. Then he did the same to the chute for sublevel six. He contacted Cody, who then hacked into the controls for the chute system and reversed the suction flow, turning it on the lowest level possible, just high enough to pump the scent of the rations onto each level. The tactic should split the swarm pretty evenly between the three kill zones.

“All right, guys,” Reggie said into his comm. “You ready to do this?”

“Hell yeah,” they both said.

Reggie readied his flamethrower.

The first bug crawled down the chute two minutes later. The first hundred came through just seconds after that.