Colony by Benjamin Cross (best way to read books .TXT) 📕

He located what appeared to be the ignition key and turned it. To his relief, the fans roared into life and the craft rose up on its air cushion. “I’d buckle up,” he called out, bringing the craft around. “Here goes nothing.”

He cranked the throttle and the hovercraft burst forward.

2

Volkov limped along the tunnel. Besides the pain in his buttock, he felt exhausted. Weak. Humiliated. His world was now composed of two states: dark and less dark. In some ways it was a very simple place. Frighteningly simple. Dark he took to be space; less dark he took to be rock. He carried on a few more paces through the dark, hands outstretched, testing out his theory. Was the tunnel opening out? Possibly. Only time would tell.

He took another step. This time his heel did not connect with anything. Instead it dropped down into a void, taking the rest of him with it. He cried out as his body tumbled down a slope and came to rest.

Things scattered before him. Inanimate things, he hoped. They clacked and rattled across the floor. They crunched underneath him; plates of something hard, which bit into his flesh.

The thought that he may have damaged his spine took over and he stayed down, forcing himself to breathe shallowly. Paralysis would be a death sentence. As he lay there, he could hear creeping sounds. Gnawing sounds. The percussive crunch of whatever lay beneath him.

He blocked out all noise and focussed on the stars floating before him. Too late. They were extinguishing, one after another, until they had vanished. All except for one.

He narrowed his eyes and stared towards the remaining dot of light. But it was no imaginary star. It was real. Could it be? His heart leapt. Daylight! Perhaps this was all just a blip after all. Perhaps he would still come out on top.

He felt at his top pocket. He still had the data stick.

He began testing out the movement in his limbs. There seemed to be no obvious new impairments. As smoothly as he could manage, he climbed back to his feet and limped towards the light. He waved his hands ahead of him to avoid being sucker-punched by a hidden fist of rock and tested the ground underfoot.

As he moved, the room morphed from a place of darkness to a place of mere gloom. The walls became visible in outline. They were ribbed, uneven and further apart than he’d imagined. The ceiling was lower, only just above head height, and the floor—

He stopped. The objects covering the floor were now visible, more as shadows than anything. But there was no mistaking what they were. Skulls. A sea of skulls was peering up at him, their sockets yawning, their jaws either absent or clenched. They weren’t human, he could tell that much. But precisely what they were eluded him. And the fact that they were animal was meagre consolation as they sprang at him from the shadows.

As his eyes adjusted further, he realised that the skulls were not alone. They were only the most prominent parts of the several hundred skeletons that he could now see piled around the chamber. Most were only partially articulated – a spine here, a ribcage there. But a number of those that were lying on top of the jumble appeared full. Volkov could recognise the tusked crania of walruses, as well as a number of more gracile seal skeletons, their segmented flipper bones poised like unnaturally long fingers.

Did walruses and seals journey to ancestral graveyards to die? He wasn’t certain. But even if they did, it struck him as unlikely that the two species would share such a place.

Warning bolts of pain flashed behind his eyes. He reached a shaky hand into his pocket and removed his pill dispenser. The chrome flashed in the dim light as he tipped what he knew to be the last two pills into his mouth. It was an odd sensation. For the first time, his mouth was bone dry, and he actually missed the bitterness of the pills beginning to dissolve on his tongue.

As he struggled to swallow them, the light ahead flickered. Then again. He stared towards the opening just as something leapt onto the lip of the crevice. It held its position briefly, before bounding into the chamber.

He kept perfectly still as a train of little creatures followed on, one after the other. They weren’t clear to him, but he was relieved that they didn’t resemble the monsters in the magma chamber. They were way too small for one thing. Even so, he reached down and selected a large shaft of bone to use as a club, and he also took a smaller dagger of splintered rib and secured it in his belt. It was a far cry from his beautiful combat knife, which had slit so many throats with such precision. But it would do.

There was no longer any sign of the little creatures. A few more paces and he would arrive at the crevice. The blip would be over.

His leg wound flared up suddenly and he spun around to see a chicken-sized version of the monster that had slashed him before. It was standing boldly in front of him. Its head was cocked and it was chewing on a mouthful of flesh. The sudden realisation that it was his flesh caused him to vomit.

Before he had time to collect his thoughts, he felt another stab of pain. This time the sensation was accompanied by a ripping sound. He turned back to see a second creature, blood staining its jaws, feasting on another mouthful of his buttock meat. He reached back and felt the blood spilling out over his fingers again from the reopened gash. To his horror, he could even hear the profuse bleeding as it rained down onto the carpet of bones beneath him.

Bones. His grip tightened around the long bone club and he brought it down towards the creature. With a chirrup,