Hell Off-World
Holding Down the Fort

Atlas reactivated the moment the suns began to shine over the horizon. They had seen Amy last night. What did it mean? Was Amy being held captive by the cephalopodic natives? Or perhaps the natives had simply shared Amy’s fate, and meant as little harm as she did. Either way, Atlas definitely wouldn’t be powering down the following night.

They checked on their receiver device. It had completed the translation programme, although the natives didn’t use any kind of vocal or written language, Atlas’ machine had been able to decode their electronically transmitted brainwaves and translate them into Galactic Human Standard, the language the crew spoke, taking roots in English, Mandarin, and South Aborixean, as well as hundreds of other languages across the galaxy.

Even with the language fully translated, Atlas could only read the information randomly, one conscious thought at a time, with no guarantee any one would be even remotely helpful. Even with their processing power, it could take days to search the entire network for all useful information. They got to work. Almost immediately, they began learning about the society. They had been a colonisation crew from another galaxy, their society was billions of years old, sure enough, they spoke via telepathy, the settlement had lasted for a hundred years before...

Atlas focused their search what little they could. Something terrible had happened. There was no doubt that it wasn’t the passage of time which had wiped out this city, uploads had ground to a halt, almost overnight. A lot of panicked thoughts had been uploaded overnight, and suddenly, the whole city seemed to be screaming for help, and fleeing from something massive and terrible.

“Morning Atlas.” Atlas jumped and turned to see the rest of the crew emerging from the ship. “Ghost-free night, I hope?”

“I saw Amy.” Atlas replied, matter-of-factly.

Blaine and Monty shared a worried look. Theresa, on the other hand, surprised the android.

“I believe you.” She said, immediately.

“You saw her too?” Atlas asked, hopefully.

“No. We were all asleep before the suns set, but I’ve been thinking hard since I woke up, about how I’ve been responding to your behaviour. I treat you like a person because that’s what you are, Atlas. In fact, sometimes I even forget that you’re a machine at all, and I forget that you’re methodical, efficient, and always see the world as it is. I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

Atlas didn’t care to correct the Captain. They simply nodded their head slightly in appreciation.

“Did... did Amy say anything?” Theresa asked, nervously.

“As per your instructions, I deactivated upon seeing her, but her behaviour beforehand seemed inconsistent with a hallucination.”

“What does that mean?” Blaine asked.

“I have a theory, that the entities we’re witnessing at night are individuals who have fallen victim to the portals in the spire, and are acting of their own will.”

“So... the irrational fear and paranoia we were feeling two nights ago?” Monty signed, quizzically.

“Perfectly ordinary reaction to being spontaneously introduced to the concept of telepathy, with a potential added affect of temporary brain chemistry alteration as a result of alien stimuli. Either way, I’m confident that there won’t be a repeat of what happened on our first night here.”

Theresa nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, well as a precaution, I want Blaine and Monty sedated again tonight, Atlas and I will take the nightshift. In the mean time, Atlas, how’s this going?” She gestured to the receiver Atlas had built.

“The language was fully translated last night, I’m currently in the process of downloading information on the city’s society.”

Atlas filled the crew in on what they had learnt, down to the attack from, what atlas had now learnt to be, thirteen citizens who had mutated horribly and gone on a rampage, slaughtering their fellow citizens without mercy. The local army had mobilised, but the monsters were fast, strong and well-organised. Although a small number of attackers had been killed in the retaliation, another citizen would inevitably undergo the transformation and take their place. At a precise moment during the attack, the monsters had stopped killing people, and began taking them in alive. They herded the citizens like sheep, by launching fireballs from their mouths, which turned into blazing barriers, and snatched the stragglers with their bare hands. Without access to their technological amplifiers, the locals had been unable to record what had become of them after they were captured, or what had ultimately become of the monsters.

“Wow...” Theresa breathed, at the conclusion of the story.

“So... whatever happened to the locals, is what happened to Amy.” Blaine reasoned. “They were forced through those portals by the monsters. Then, however many years later, the monsters had died out, and Amy... I still don’t understand how she got pulled through there.” He realised.

By way of an explanation, Atlas lifted a data pad to the crew, showing the brief footage they had of the other side of the portal, courtesy of Amy’s drone, before she was dragged through. Atlas froze the video, revealing a small herd of the alien buffalo in the distance. “There is local fauna on the other side of the portal. It seems likely that something mistook Amy’s drone for prey, and dragged it from the portal.”

Blaine seemed offended by Atlas’ lack of alarm. ” And you don’t think that same thing could have thought of Amy as prey too!?”

“I trust Amy’s ingenuity and resourcefulness.” Atlas said sternly. “Besides which, when I saw Amy last night, a blood-soaked bandage was just visible, beneath her jacket.”

“What... what’s your point?” Blaine asked, unappreciative of a fresh reminder of what he had accidentally done.

“It stands to reason that any other mutilation would be apparent on the vision I saw, but there was none. Amy is fine, for the time being.”

Blaine seemed to wordlessly accept Atlas' logic.

“But as for your statement, yes, I do believe the monsters responsible for this mess are long gone. We just have to find a way to deal with what they...” Atlas trailed off and turned to face their receiver device.

“What is it?” Asked Theresa.

“A blip...” Atlas muttered. They walked over to the device and connected a wire from the bottom of it to the back of their head, and suspended the search of the planet’s network, in favour of the new arrival. Looking around, Atlas realised the crew were staring at them, waiting for them to elaborate. “Oh... It’s been scanning the radio waves for existing data but... it’s like there’s something new being uploaded, except it’s... There’s another one!”

“Could there be a local still alive somewhere?” Theresa theorised.

“I don’t think so, that would be akin to one person in a dead civilisation, updating their social media status. These locals don’t have a very big range on their own. I’m going to try adjusting the frequency...”

Suddenly, Atlas shot upright and spun around in shock.

“What?” All three of Atlas’ crewmates demanded, sharing his alarm.

“As soon as I said that, the signal came again, even stronger...” Atlas looked around, nervously. “Can... can you hear me...?” A pause. “There it is again!”

“Once for yes. Twice for no.” Theresa suggested. “Understand?”

Atlas twisted a knob on their device and it began emitting static. Suddenly, it hissed in a much higher pitch for a second. Atlas nodded their head.

“Amy...?” Theresa breathed, nervously.

HISS.

Theresa broke into a relieved smile that lasted only a second. “Are you okay?” There was a pause and no answer. “No, of course, stupid question. Are you in immediate danger?”

HISS HISS HISS HISS.

“Four hisses...?” Monty signed, confusedly. “What does that mean?”

“Amy...” Blaine began nervously. “Are we in immediate danger?”

HISSSS! The most urgent static hiss yet came before Blaine even finished speaking.

Unbeknownst to any of the crew on the higher dimension, Amy wasn’t alone. Surrounding the android and their sensor, were hundreds of squid people. The hope had been that Atlas could simply read the thoughts of hundreds of squid, communicating the same thing at the same time, but Amy had had to improvise, and instead simply had them shouting gibberish at the top of their brains, on Amy’s cue.

“Atlas, get your gadget on the ship, I want that new frequency fully translated. Blaine, get in...” Theresa was interrupted by another two static hisses. “No? You need Atlas to stay here?”

“Close to the portal?” Atlas guessed.

HISS.

“Okay, you... two... keep yourselves safe. The rest of us will get in the Comet and stay in the air, flying around the city. Whatever this danger is, we’ll be ready to engage. And Amy? I’m glad you’re still alive. We’ll leave the Tank with you, Atlas.”

Theresa raced towards the ship as the engines roared into life, with Blaine at the controls. With a simple few taps of the cockpit interface, the Tank hopped out of the hangar door, and automatically made its way over to its newly designated pilot. The cable from Atlas’ receiver disconnected as the Comet took off, and Atlas pulled the plug towards themself and plugged it into the Tank, instead.

“Amy, keep talking.” Atlas instructed. “The more I hear, the closer I get to decrypting the new frequency you’re talking on.”

“Okay, you hear that, everyone?” Amy asked, genuinely uncertain if the squids could hear Atlas, or anyone else on the higher dimension. “You need to keep talking, eventually, they’ll be able to understand us, and we’ll finally be able to communicate with the others!”

Amy winced and pulled her headdress down slightly as the psychic chatter intensified.

Some of the smaller and younger squids had begun retreating through the portal, tagging in others waiting outside. In such large numbers, the squids didn’t need to worry about the ostriches. They had a defence mechanism which had served them well ever since the swamps of their home planet. Just as they inadvertently had with Amy, the squids were able to overload non-squid entities’ minds with telepathic input, but they couldn’t keep it up forever.

Amy looked at Atlas working and frowned. She hadn’t liked asking them to remain on the ground, but without their information, the entire crew could be killed or infected by the Reapers. While the last of the planet’s society was crumbling under the Destroyer’s wrath, a squid scientist had been working on a vaccine for the effects of the Destroyer’s spores. If a single Reaper was killed before everyone on the planet had taken the vaccine, then the Reaper would be reborn at the expense of an environmental analyst.

The vaccine had done little good. Although it was proven to work, there was no way to administer it to the entire population of the planet, in the midst of an attack. The doctor had ultimately been captured by the Reapers, and, more recently, was hiding out in the sanctuary the squids had built in the red dimension. Although the vaccine was long gone, the instructions for constructing it were safely stored on a hard drive in the doctor’s lab. With the extensive information on the Comet’s medical bay’s capabilities, which the doctor had extracted from Amy’s head, they were confident that, with just a few local ingredients, the vaccine could be rebuilt in a matter of hours.

And so, a checklist began to form.

1- Help Atlas bridge the communication barrier between the two dimensions.

2- Guide the crew of the Comet in crafting a vaccine for the effects of the Destroyer spores.

3- Persuade the crews of the RG Wyvern and Star Skipper to take the vaccine.

4- Kill all of the Reapers, ideally before they come out of hibernation. (Improbable.)

5- Find a way to widen the portals to allow trips to higher dimensions.

The last two goals seemed optimistic, if not downright impossible, but it felt good to know exactly what it was that they needed to do. And the first goal turned out to be much easier that expected.

“Amy!?” Atlas called out, hopefully.

HISS

“Amy?”

HISS

“Amy.” Atlas was beginning to lose hope in each individual attempt, although giving up wasn’t even close to being an option.

“…..as.”

“Amy!?” Atlas fine-tuned the decryption further.

“Atla...!”

“I’ve almost got you...” Atlas muttered, as they fiddled with the device. With a direct, wired connection to the device, Atlas’ camera lenses whirred back and forth. Even though there was no light reflecting off Amy and her friends, Atlas’ receiver was transmitting its new data to their CPUs via their cameras and auditory receivers. As such, a simulation of Amy and the squid people was rendered from Alas’ memory, standing in the places they were actually located.

“Amy!” Atlas remarked, not with desperation, but relief.

“Atlas!”

The two friends ran towards each other, arms outstretched, only to phase through one another, without contact.

“Right...”

“Yeah, alternate dimension... Anyway, Atlas, we’ve got a lot of work to do!”

Amy and Atlas briefly caught each other up on what they’d discovered while they’d been apart, impressed to discover it was mostly the same.

“Okay, you know the Reapers?” Amy quickly explained.

“The monsters that the citizens turned into?”

“Right, well they’re hibernating, and they could wake up any second!”

“Well we should kill them before they do! They’re not indestructible, right?”

“No, but if you kill them, someone else on the planet will take its place, maybe even one of you. First, you need to go to the co-ordinates I’m about to give you, and find a hard drive with the recipe for a vaccine on it. Make the vaccine and make sure everyone on all three ships’ crews takes it.”

As Amy talked, a faint tremor ran through the ground. Atlas noticed it first, followed by the squids. Amy only noticed when she realised how agitated everyone was. Like a swarm of locust, the psychic buzz in Amy’s head increased tenfold as the squids started panicking. Atlas’ machine started screeching in response. Like water down a drain, the squids slithered for the portals.

Amy had no doubt what had caused the commotion, but she wasn’t leaving yet.

“CO-ORDINATES!” She screamed, trying her hardest to think the word as well.

A withered and comparatively dry tentacle rested on her shoulder. For the first time, Amy recognised one of the squids, because of its aged features. The doctor projected a stream of numbers into Amy’s head and she relayed them to Atlas.

“539-510-893” She said.

Without another thought, the doctor threw another tentacle over Amy’s other shoulder, and began ushering her to the portals with the others.

“Good luck Atlas!” Amy called, over her shoulder. “Oh, and RUN!"

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