Abyssal Ascent (Part III)

“Your partner’s gone quiet,” Friedrich swipes his station ID card before an airlock connected to a wing of the station labeled Engineering & Atmospherics in rust colored print. “Cat’s got her tongue?”

“More like a big ugly bug,” Ingvar complained but couldn’t deny that Ramona had gone quiet.

The now mute cyborg’s eyes were burning with a deep, brooding fury, beaming through the back of Friedrich’s head with utter contempt. Ingvar knew and he felt it too.

Engineering resembled the rest of the station; carpeted in webbing, cocoons of varying sizes and shapes, and inhuman skittering and growling from the ventilation systems. It seemed as if this research station was already Friedrich’s personal laboratory of what were once human specimens, a prototype for a twisted Garden of Eden.

“This should be the workshop,” the mad scientist held up a hand to stop the two space pirates in their tracks. A smug smirk flashes their way, “Here it should be easy to put together a vox transceiver with the materials. Especially for a genius of my caliber.”

Ingvar scowls at the skittering shadows, chrome fingers itching at the trigger of his weapon. “And your mutant pets will leave us alone while you do this?”

“As long as you don’t give them reason to think I’m in any danger,” the grinning businessman leads the two into a workshop. All of the workbenches are draped in that ever present spider silk. But Friedrich seems to pay it no mind, pulling out a switchblade and carefully carving through the alabaster threads to try and scavenge bits and pieces. “So my wriggling flies, my plan is thus: I’ll jury rig a vox transceiver for Miss Reyes. Will you need help installing it?”

Ramona Reyes extends her clawed middle finger.

“Mein gott. Rude.” Friedrich scoffs, “That’s a no I take it.”

Ingvar rubs at his temples with his steel fingertips. The gruff older man wasn’t sure how much of this self-important suit he could take. “Just keep talking about your plan.”

“Fine. We’ll split up after that: one of you will head to the breaker room.” Friedrich freed a toolbox with his switchblade from the relentless webbing. “And one of you will rendezvous with me and my hive. We’ll surround the Restaurant that my Project is holed away in. And-”

Finally, Ramona’s distorted voice chimes in through Ingvar’s comms unit, “Not happening, puto.”

“-ah, finally you speak.” Friedrich rolled his eyes. “What’s your issue, Pirate?”

“I’m not splitting with Ingvar in hostile territory,” Ramona snapped back through distorted transmission, “That’s just bad tactics, bad survival.”

“Oh, how cute,” A maliciously knowing grin crept across Strauss’s lips, “You think you stand a better chance together than alone. My darling miscreant if I wanted you two dead, we wouldn’t be having this sparkling conversation. I’d tell them to feast.”

“I bet you tell that to all your hostages,” Ingvar’s hands ball up into tight knuckled fists. “Mona, you go with the crazy bug Doctor. I’ll hit the breaker. We don’t have a choice if we want to get out of here.”

“And you were griping on me for having no sense of self preservation, cabrón?” Ramona willed her complaint through her mental connection to the comms channel. “You’re the former Officer, you know splitting our forces in hostile territory is tactical suicide.”

The gruff older man sighs and tosses his shoulders, “We don’t have a choice. Doctor Hivemind here has us by the balls.”

“It’s good that one of you at least has a brain,” Friedrich turns around with a jury-rigged device in his right hand and extends his arm to Ramona. “Vox tranceiver’s finished. No need to thank me, bitte. Just remember you owe your voice to me in debt.”

“Chinga tu madre, puto! Your bugs took my voice in the first place!” Ramona’s distorted voice seethed through Ingvar’s comms. The cyborg snatches the transceiver and rips out her own damaged vox. It was so mangled that it took several tugs to wrench free, the cyborg worried she mangled her ports as it snapped out. An audible popping noise crackles through the comms as she removes the device.

“Now as I said, one of you, apparently Mister Sturluson, will split off to go and hit the circuit breaker so the Restaurant loses its power supply,” the mad doctor folded his arms behind his back, projecting the confidence of someone who was used to speaking quite often and at length. “One of you, apparently Miss Reyes, will come with me for the actual assault on the Restaurant. We’ll recover my Project. Then we’ll depart this doomed station on the Black Argonaut.”

A stony frown was carved into the wrinkles of Ingvar’s expression, “When you say we, you mean the four of us: you don’t mean any of your mutant bug buddies do you?”

“Rude,” the mad doctor scoffs. “Yes, yes. Just you, Miss Reyes, my Project, and myself.”

The dark wrinkles in Ingvar’s frown only deepen under the flickering fluorescent lights of the workshop “Fine. Where do I find this circuit breaker?”

“When you leave this workshop,” Friedrich pointed out the door they’d entered in from, “Follow the signs for a sub-department labeled ‘Electrical’. The different breakers should be labeled so you can easily discern and disable the Restaurant’s power. Then you return to us for the assault. Any questions, lowlife scum?”

Ramona doesn’t answer verbally or physically. Her eyes continue to bore contemptuous holes sheer through the mad doctor’s thick skull. Ingvar was starting to understand what hostage negotiators felt like, as well as the hostages. “None.”

“Good. Now then, I’ll be waiting outside Engineering, Miss Reyes.” Friedrich turned and faced the exit. Immediately Ramona and Ingvar both felt a shuddering mass of mutant bodies bounding through the air ducts above and below, the webbing undulating as their forms slither away under the silken skin. “Don’t tarry, bitte. My hive will be gathering for the final assault.”

“Before you go doc… those spiders you were talking about,” Ingvar glances around at the shapes crawling under the silken covering, funnelling out of Engineering en masse with a mess of scratching noises that fester in the mind’s eye unto a psychic white noise. “They turned your crewmates into these mutants?”

“Arachnomorphs,” Friedrich corrects with a dissatisfied pout, “You keep calling them mutants, spider-things, monsters, they’re called Arachnomorphs. And they are a higher form of being than you’ll ever understand. They’re utterly divine.”

A burdensome silence oppressed both the pirates and the mad doctor himself in that moment as both sides quietly gauged another. Ramona looked down at the transceiver Strauss crafted for her and felt something primordial waver.

Finally the eccentric Friedrich Strauss smiled, “But yes, the spiders ascended them into their perfect state of being.”

“And you’ve placed these same spiders into yourself?” Ingvar’s lower lip twitched, something didn’t add up with this mad scientist. “Why aren’t you one of these mon-er… one of your Arachnomorphs?”

Friedrich’s eyes narrow in zealous fervor but his smile doesn’t abate in the slightest, “Two reasons. One, I haven’t been bound into a cocoon. That’s where physiology changes. Second, mine was a very special spider. As I said earlier, I am the Queen.” His expression flattened deadpan, “Now any more questions or must I prepare a bloody presentation?”

“Nah, give a lady space to install her own voice,” the older man waved Friedrich off with his steel hand. He sighs with relief as the cruel presence of those countless creatures hiding in webbed shadows, apparently called arachnomorphs, emptied out of Engineering.

Friedrich smiled once more and turned to take his leave.

Ramona waited until the mad scientist was gone to inspect the jury-rigged vox transceiver she’d been handed. Though she had her doubts, she could not count on a wireless link to her partner’s comms, she needed her own voice back. Even if it was built by a self-important prick she would be ill advised to trust. She stabbed the jury-rigged voice into the wound in her throat and tried to ignore the sound of metal scratching metal.

“Little jank on the installation,” Ingvar winces at the display. “Does it hurt?”

“Cyborgs don’t really feel pain unless their inhibitors are on the fritz,” finally Ramona could hear the sound of her own voice coming through her own lips. “Thanks I guess for letting me use your comms.”

“You’re thanking me?” the older man bursts into raucous laughter, oblivious to Ramona’s visible disapproval. “Haven’t heard you show gratitude to anyone or anything since we were young.”

Ramona scoffs and scowls, “Yeah well don’t get used to it, cabrón. And don’t get taken out by one of these mutants. I don’t care what the Doc calls ‘em. They’re ugly.”

“And dangerous,” Ignvar plants a metallic hand on his comrade’s shoulder. “Remember, you don’t know much about these monsters. But we know they can damage military grade cyborg parts. To say little of what they’d do to organics like myself. You’re going to be with the bulk of the hive.”

Again the cold comfort of that familiar dissonant silence unites the two of them. Their gazes, stony and sullen, locked recognizing something else between them.

Ramona sighs and takes her leave after Friedrich, “Note taken. We’ll both be careful.”

“Good. See you later, Mona.” Ingvar turns and starts heading out of the workshop.

“Good. I better see your sorry ass later, Var,” he stopped short in his tracks, gawking back at Ramona as she passed on by him towards the shadows beyond.

“My old nickname… wait, Mona! Does…” the older man finds his words bunching into a lump in his throat, “Does that mean you remember?”

The cyborg pulls out her pack of Lucky Star cigarettes and flicks it open. She wasn’t sure why she held onto these things. Her system could effectively neutralize the nicotine. What was there to be addicted to anyway? She flicks a claw against the bottom of the pack and fingers out a single deathstick placing it between her chrome teeth.

“Who knows?”

Ramona lit her cigarette and calmly closed and put the pack away as she vanished into cloying depths of the dark station, leaving Ingvar with his unanswered questions and the pungent scent of cheap chemically preserved tobacco.

(To be continued)