Slightly more expansive than their previous route, this new passageway offered enough room for a human to completely stand up with room to spare. As for the climbing cleats, which were so numerous before, they were now clustered along in small tracts along the length of the ceiling.

  Having spent the last hour conjuring up wild and disturbing images, Justine found it strange to be suddenly free of tight corners as her destination drew closer. This feeling of calm excitement kept her moving quickly forward.

  Well, at least until she saw what lay beyond the mouth of the long corridor. And what lay beyond stopped the normally unflappable agent dead in her tracks. “What the hell?” Justine skidded to a halt on the polished metal floor.

  Just behind her, oblivious to her concerns, the 8-ball overshot her position by ten feet before screeching to a mid-air halt. As the tiny orb righted itself, she treaded forward a few tenuous steps before training her weapon around to locate any potential threats.

  “Joseph,” her voice was as sharp as a razor. “I thought you said this part of the level would be liquid free?!”

  About forty feet behind her, Joseph’s breathless voice echoed down the corridor with an answer to her query, “It is.”

  “That can’t be true.” Justine took a couple more steps. “Because right now I’m looking at a fish tank full of water?”

  A heartbeat later, Foster came to an unsteady stop beside the tense agent. He was followed shortly by a visibly winded Joseph. He took a quick look around before responding to her very weird question.

  “That’s not water,” gasping for air, the deputy rested his hands upon his knees to catch his breath. “It’s a dampening solution.”

  “Dampening solution?” Foster asked, marveling silently at what lay before him, like a kid in a candy store. “What is that used for?”

  “If I had to guess,” Joseph stood up a little straighter. “It’s used in the engine room.”

  “The engine room?”

  A few feet away, the corridor opened into a space shaped like a hollowed-out horseshoe. This outer shell consisted of two different corridors that were wrapped around a large inner core. This inner core was protected by a large, curved, see-through partition made from the same material as the porthole.

  Inside this ‘alien aquarium’ rested a huge oval pot at least forty feet wide and twenty feet tall. Finished from what looked like refined copper ore, the container had a long, grey cable which curled up in small concentric spirals toward the tank’s ceiling. And just like Joseph said, the whole inner core was brimming with that slight murky dampening solution.

  “This… is amazing,” Foster puffed out, still winded from the short run.

  Justine smirked as the two out of shape men who tried desperately to regain their composure. “Have either of you two heard of jogging? Maybe some free weights.”

  Without allowing either of them to defend themselves, she took two steps to her right and glanced down along the outside edge of the tank. And again, she was greeted by a bevy of those antiquated controls that complemented most of this level’s outdated design. The same aesthetic also applied to the left side of the tank.

  But as familiar as both sides were to what had come before. There was something very different about this new space. And that difference came in the form of two massive control stations placed at the center of both long hallways.

  Just over five feet tall and broad like a bookshelf, each control station was surrounded by about twenty metallic bars that were welded together to form a web-like structure. Just looking at their irregular design conjured up images of strange alien creatures. Only, there were no alien creatures to be seen. Only two and a half humans searching for answers.

  “Ok,” with the area cleared, Justine walked back to the entrance and pointed at the tank. “So, what’s a dampening solution?”

  “Technically,” Joseph had regained enough of his breath to begin explaining. “The liquid is a viscous medium designed to inhibit the effects of a Popper drive.” He pointed to the golden cauldron eerily floating behind the thick, clear material.

  “Popper drive?” Foster was still taking deep, exaggerated breaths. “That’s not what it’s really called, is it?”

  “The official term, like many terms in my language, is not suitable for human ears or tongues. That’s why I prefer to call it a Popper driver.”

  Justine absent-mindedly lowered her weapon and placed a hand on Foster’s shoulder. He saw her gesture for what it was but quickly waved away her pity. She couldn’t help but smile. “That’s a bit underwhelming.”

  “Like the term ‘warp drive’ is a monumentally precise thing, Agent Rushing,” he responded defiantly, ignoring the dismissiveness in her voice.

  As most fans would, Justine instinctively took a step toward the deputy, ready to defend her beloved franchise to the death. But at the last second, Foster grabbed her by the wrist before she could get a good head of steam going. Shocked by his forcefulness, Justine stood frozen for a second before pulling free of his grip.

  “I…” the veins in her neck were beginning to bulge. “Can’t believe…”

  “How does it work?” Foster interjected, trying desperately to distract her from both slights.

  “In simple terms, this engine works surprisingly like a popcorn popper. Hence the name.”

  “You’re pulling our legs, right?” Her laughter echoed throughout the empty chamber. The previous tension evaporated as she pondered the idea of Orville Redenbacher being a scientific genius.

  On the other hand, Joseph remained deadly serious. “No, see here?” He traced the popper’s oval-shaped outline on the container wall with his finger. “The pot was specifically designed to act as a vessel for what my kind refers to as a kernel.” Justine rolled her eyes. “Not a popcorn kernel, Agent Rushing. No. This kernel is an unstable piece of matter from a collapsing star.”

  “You mean like a black hole?” Foster remembered the perilous position they all found themselves in and shuddered. “That thing has a black hole in it.”

  “No,” Joseph said quickly. “Book 48… a black hole is just one of the many, brief iterations which makes up a star’s almost eternal life span. Eventually, as all things must do, the dangerous threat we currently hover over will keep weakening and collapsing until the phenomena perishes. No, the popper drive runs on what we call a kernel.”

  “A kernel…” Foster’s mind began to work out the intricacies of what might be occurring within that pot. “It’s like a black hole in reverse? Like the formation of another sun, like a big bang?”

  “Yes. But the kernel isn’t from a black hole per say,” Joseph tried his best to remember his trips to the Great Forge’s ship museum. “It’s closer to a white dwarf than a black hole. Although that’s not exactly right either.” For a second, he did his best to remember what the records said about Popper Drives. “Let’s just say it contains a portion of a dying star.”

  “A dying star?”

  “Yes. At least that’s what our engineers used to tell us anyway. Though, I was never around long enough to see one of these things fired up.”

  “You know, we still haven’t talked about how you know all this stuff.” Justine prodded.

  “I know a little about a lot of things, Agent Rushing.” Joseph looked at the massive tank and sighed. “Think of me as someone who builds what smarter people than me dream up.”

  “Kind of like the guys at Ft. Meade,” she said playfully. “Right, Foster?”

  Too lost in his own thoughts to answer, Foster pressed his face up to the partition. The pot seemed to vibrate ever so slightly against the viscous medium with every popping sound. Then, a theory began to form about how such a device may function.

  “That’s why there are popping sounds. The fragment is slowly splitting apart and colliding against the vessel’s walls.” Joseph smiled at how quickly this human had grasped the concept. “How long does one of these things last?”

  “How long does a star last? Remember, my people only live for two of your years. So, as far as I know, none of my kind has ever seen one of them run out of gas. If they did, no one bothered to tell us about it.”

  As with the elevator buttons, the two men hovered around and compared theories about the device and its inner workings. And again, Hoover helped them out by running some holographic simulations. Yet, all their banter led to little more than speculation and conjecture. After all, it’s not like they could tear the thing apart and look inside of it.

  Bored with all the theoretical numbers talk, Justine wandered over to the nearest control console for a little harmless investigating. Being careful not to touch anything, she poured over the dozens of simplistically designed panels. Full of switches, knobs, and buttons, this station could have been at home in a steampunk anime.

  Still, she wondered, where were all the touch controls like in her favorite movies?

  Unable to come up with a good answer, Justine’s attention momentarily shifted away from her disappointment to the twisting jungle gym which surrounded the station. Almost instantly, another obvious observation popped into her head. “If there are no engineers left, who’s been maintaining these systems?”

  “Maintaining?” Joseph appeared perplexed by the question as he poked at a rather crude holographic depiction of the pot. “There’s not much around here that needs maintaining once the drive is operational. These babies were designed to last for years with minimal personnel.”

  “Minimal?” Foster had learned over the past couple of days not to doubt Justine’s instincts. Plus, ever since they crawled into the first corridor, something had felt off to him. “You said the tank near the entrance looked abandoned. And most of the substations we’ve been through were covered in years of neglect. Heck, most of everywhere we’ve been looks like it could use a good cleaning. But I’ve noticed significantly less dirt and grime in here.”

  “That’s true,” Joseph snapped out of his fog long enough to agree with the scientist’s assessment. “This room is a lot cleaner than the ones we’ve been trudging through.”

  “Hoover,” Foster turned off the tablet, and the rough hologram disappeared. He gave Justine a look that signaled she might be on to something. “Are you reading any other computer systems in this area? Maybe even some kind of central operating system.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Hoover scanned through the same frequencies which he had utilized on the small alien tablet and the rudimentary computers in the docking bay.

  “Just the same basic subsystems as before. Joseph is right about one thing, though. This Popper drive doesn’t have an on and off switch like a normal engine does. And the corridors you’ve been slogging me through for the past hour only channel energy, they don’t control it.”

  “That’s right,” Joseph hurried over to the panel Justine was standing next to and began taking note of each, individual meter reading. “These drives are mainly fitted to large, long haul transportation barges. They’re not something you would want to leave parked for any length of time.”

  “Transportation barges,” Justine became excited by the talk of what sounded like another type of spaceship. “What’s a transportation barge?”

  “Mammoth ships used for travel between two highly populated star systems. They’re not the fastest things in the universe. But their reliable enough to never have to stop hauling.”

  “Never?” Foster asked with a hint of doubt. “How do you load them?”

  “They use faster, short-haul ships to deliver crew and cargo to the larger ones.” Joseph methodically compiled the data from the gauges. Quickly, he deduced from the numbers shown on the power flow regulator that the whole system would soon have to be adjusted. “I don’t understand how this thing is still operating without the engineers.”

  “You said that these drives were designed to operate with minimal personnel.”

  “I did.” Joseph stood back up and stared at the whole console. “But minimal doesn’t mean zero.”

  Before anyone had a chance to ponder a possible explanation, the constant popping from the drive was replaced by the sounds of flicking switches and turning knobs. “Who’s doing that?” Joseph asked, turning around to blame one of the earthlings for touching things they didn’t understand.

  To his surprise, Foster and Justine were nowhere near the other console.

  “Doing what?” She said, meaning to resolve his previous slight on Star Trek. When once again, Foster grasped hold of her wrist and tugged. “Foster,” her tenor was near seething. “If you grab my hand one more time, I won’t be responsible for what happens to you. And when I say, ‘what happens to you’, I mean I will break your wrist.”

  She turned toward him, eyes alight with menace, ready to pounce. Surprisingly, his attention wasn’t focused on her wrath, but on something in the opposite direction.

  “I hope that’s just my imagination,” he said timidly, without meeting her eyes, “Because I don’t really know what to make of that.”

  Without having to see the thing in question, Justine raised her Slinger to fire and was thrice interrupted by a forceful hand. “Don’t do that, Agent Rushing,” Joseph pleaded, stepping in between her and the alien creature dangling gracefully from the other control panel’s jungle gym. “That’s an engineer.”

  With ten powerful, elongated appendages affixed to a bulbous body, this creature hung effortlessly from the metal scaffolding by four muscular arms. Stunned, they watched with horrific fascination as the engineer utilized its other six arms made a series of delicate manipulations to the panel’s various controls.

  After a minute, Foster’s human mind realized that he was looking at a space octopus.

  “That is disgusting,” Justine remarked. Her finger was still hovering over the Slinger’s trigger. “It looks like something out of a Lovecraft novel.”

  Since Joseph had never read a Lovecraft novel before, the only explanation he could offer was a keen observation. “What makes them perfect for this kind of work, is the fact their kind hates wasting appendages.”

  “Yeah, I bet they’re great at multitasking,” Justine offered with a sour look on her face. “So, what do we do now?”

  Curiosity pulled them forward when suddenly the squid/engineer/nightmare pulled back and wrapped its tentacles around the bars directly above the console. Then, with the speed of a jumping spider, the engineer propelled itself upward, latching onto the ceiling by means of the climbing cleats.

  “Don’t shoot it!” Foster shouted. And against her instincts, Justine remained steady as this alien maneuvered over their heads like a monkey swinging from tree to tree in the jungle. If the whole situation hadn’t been so tense, Justine might have found the creature graceful in a disgustingly slimy way.

  Eventually, the alien octopus centered itself above the other console and lazily dropped down. “That thing is begging to be shot,” Justine finally said when the engineer went back to adjusting the Popper’s controls. “I thought you said these things couldn’t exist away from water for long periods?”

  “They can’t.” Joseph leaned forward and speculated. “There could be another tank. Or this might be a different species than the one I’m thinking about.” Aided by the orb’s harsh light, he made a rather curious observation. “Which would make sense, since the creature’s the wrong color.”

  “The wrong color?” Justine squinted at its undulating black, almost synthetic skin. “What’s the right color?”

  “All the ones I ever saw back at the shipyards were variations of pale silver.”

  “Pale silver, huh?” Foster eased around the control console, hoping for a better look at the engineer. Unexpectedly, he could make out what appeared to be the creature’s head. Though, the visage had no eyes to see or mouth to speak. “How does this thing know what it’s doing without eyes?”

  Joseph wanted to address all the ‘things’ being thrown around by these two insensitive humans. But stopped when he reminded himself that their perspective on ‘things’ was quite limited on a universal scale.

  “Most aquatic species are telepathic, Foster. Hence, these gauges should be linked to a central psychic projector. One that broadcasts their current levels.” Confused by the term psychic projector, Justine and Foster could only stare at the deputy. “Try to imagine a wireless router for the mind. As for the switches… they’re where they asked them to be.”

  “Amazing.” Foster drew even closer to the control panel. The engineer’s tentacles were now moving so fast he could barely keep up with what they were doing. He thought to himself, there was something oddly beautiful and purposeful in the way the creature went about its work, almost dignified. “Are they a dangerous species?”

  “No,” Joseph was quick to say, knowing Justine was standing by and ready to act at any moment. “The Attaxans aren’t a hostile race in the least. They just like to keep busy.”

  “Now I can see why you didn’t tell me what they looked like.” Justine lowered her weapon and allowed herself to appreciate it on a pure geek level. “If I would have met up with one of those things crawling around one of those passageways, I would have probably shot the damn thing without thinking twice.”

  “Not everything in the universe is a monster.”

  She raised a curious eyebrow at the Deputy’s insinuation. “So that means some things in the universe are?”

  “Of course, Agent Rushing,” Joseph said solemnly. “The universe is a big place. Why wouldn’t it have monsters?”

  Finally, Justine took notice of Foster’s dangerously stupid curiosity. “What are you doing?” She said, scolding him with her eyes. “Didn’t you learn anything from the docking bay?”

  Again, Joseph was the first to answer. “I told you, Agent Rushing. These creatures aren’t dangerous.”

  “You don’t know our boy very well, do you?” She turned a discerning gaze toward Foster. “He has a nasty habit of making people around him, not like him very much.”

  “That’s a hurtful, but accurate thing to say,” Foster said from behind a half dozen powerful arms. “Of course, that’s coming from the mouth of someone who has her own special way of making people feel uncomfortably dead.”

  “What can I say, Foster? You piss them off. I finish them off.”

  Laughing at her turn of phrase, Foster began to pull away from the engineer’s dexterity and head back to the others when a panel flashed bright green. Intrigued, he leaned in closer to see what the instrument was measuring. So close in fact, that the engineer took serious notice of him and his intrusion.

  With blinding speed, the creature struck at Foster with one of its powerful arms to shoo him away. Like a discarded doll tossed onto an empty bed, his body went flying across the room and crashing into a set of dormant control boards.

  Justine watched the first arch of his impossible flight in startled awe before her mind kicked back into gear. “Foster!”

  Joseph, more concerned about the Popper drive than Foster’s health, tried to say something calming over the sound of his limp body tumbling to the floor. But her anger had overwhelmed her senses. Pass the point of waiting for anyone’s permission, she leveled the Slinger on the alien’s tensed up body and opened fire with a rapid volley of blue plasma.

  Hell rained all around the console as sparks of cobalt lightning erupted after each hit. But every time her aim was close enough to make contact, the engineer’s lithe form found a way to snake its way free of death.

  “Foster!” She called out once more, as the creature leapt from the now glowing console to the ceiling cleats just above. Its dramatic feat of acrobatics was followed closely by another barrage of blue plasma.

  “Check on him!” She commanded toward a shell-shocked Joseph as more shots kept the engineer pinned down.

  Mindful of his previous encounter with Justine’s dark side, the deputy scrambled forward, staying well behind her firing position to the spot where Foster lay crumpled on the floor.

  “He’s still breathing!” His sweaty hands fumbled around for a pulse as more consoles erupted under Justine’s nonstop shooting. “But you’ve got to stop shooting, Agent Rushing! This place is barely stable. If you hit too many critical systems, we’ll all fry!”

  “Stay with him!” She barked again, paying little attention to his warnings. The engineer coiled, then leapt backward toward the rear of the horseshoe. “I thought you said these things weren’t dangerous!”

  “They’re not!” Joseph strained to make out the slippery form in the ever-growing billows of smoke coming from at least a dozen scorched control panels. Ever the engineer, he knew that gunfight needed to stop right now. But he didn’t dare physically make a move to stop her. “Stop shooting… please!”

  Justine’s finger relaxed for a fraction of a second to allow time for the smoke to clear. In the absence of hostility, the engineer made a break for the exit. Unfortunately for it, her target was forced to hug the transparent partition as it swung wildly from cleat to cleat.

  “Don’t even think about it!” Joseph screamed while he cradled Foster’s still unconscious head in his hand. “You puncture that partition, and we’re all dead.”

  Once again, Justine disregarded his words and retook the advantage with another quick volley. But every shot arrived a split second late. And the highly charged plasma ricocheted off the tank like splattered paint.

  “Jesus Christ!” Joseph fearfully exclaimed as his hand slipped free from under Foster’s head. It went crashing against the floor with a dull bang. “You’re going to kill us all!”

  Finally, anticipating the creature turning left for the long corridor, one of her shots connected with a nearby climbing cleat. The resulting explosion caused the engineer to lose its grip. With no place to go, the thing hung in midair for a long second, frantically searching for another handhold.

  Until, like Foster, the creature’s powerful body landed on the floor with a pelting thud.

  Acting seemingly out of fear and instinct, the engineer scrambled back toward the console where it wrapped itself around one of the supports for protection. Justine lunged forward to deliver the kill shot when the engineer’s figure melted away into a pool of black liquid.

  “That’s not an engineer!” she called back to a near incoherent Joseph, who was too busy assessing all the damage she wrought. “It’s one of those things from the docking bay.”

  Joseph craned his head around to see the small pool of sludge start to move slowly along the metal floor plating back toward the open passageway. He and Justine watched in amazement as this formless thing tried to escape.

  “That is the same thing from the docking bay… isn’t it?” She looked at the deputy’s stunned face for answers. “Hoover… can you analyze this thing?”

  The orb still hovered near the entrance to the engine room. So as the liquid doppelganger slowly slithered away, Hoover hurriedly ran every scan the 8-ball could perform. Afterword, he chirped. “It will take a while to crunch the numbers, but I’ve got all the data I need.”

  “Good.” Justine thumbed the Slinger to level nine and fired one more shot at the retreating puddle of goo. This time, the creature had no wily move to make. Her shot found its intended mark, and the faux engineer disappeared in an explosion of blue flame.

  “Foster!” Justine raced back to the other console, expecting to find him still unconscious. When she arrived, her heart unexpectedly skipped a beat to find him sitting up and stretching out his back.

  “That thing sure packs a punch.” He looked around the room for his would-be attacker like he had just woken up from an all-night keg party. All that greeted his eyes was the tell-tale sign of wanton destruction. “I guess I don’t have to ask where it went.”

  “Agent Rushing…” Joseph blurted out while collapsing to the floor. He thrust a single finger in the direction of the corridor where billows of smoke were rising into the already smoky air. “Right over there, she killed it.”

  “Killed?” Foster’s head was still throbbing from being smacked into the console, but he couldn’t let her get away with that completely unscathed. “You didn’t start an interstellar war while I was out? Did you?”

  “No,” she laughed at his bad joke. “It wasn’t even an actual engineer. It was another one of those things from the docking bay pretending to be one.”

  “Docking bay?” His mind was fuzzy, though it still worked well enough to recall what had almost attacked them in front of the elevator. “Are there any more of them?”

  In her haste to check on him, the trained FBI agent had forgotten to clear the space of any potential threats. Frantically, Justine ran around both sides of the damaged control room, searching in every darkened corner and under both consoles.

  “I think we’re safe,” she finally concluded, returning to where the other two were resting on the floor. “Though, we better start making our way back to the elevator just in case any more of those things decide to show up.”

  “Yeah.” Joseph helped Foster get back to his feet, and with his help, took a few unsteady steps toward the exit. Along the way, he took stock of the damaged components. “We got lucky. I don’t think anything vital was damaged. But I don’t think this place could stand another visit from them if you’re still around.”

  “Wow,” Foster took another tentative step forward then winced. “You can’t seem to play nice with anyone. Can you, Agent Rushing?”

  “That’s not true,” she said as the thought of something happening to Foster surprisingly made her tear up. Thankfully, this sudden detour into emotion could be easily blamed on the many electrical fires slowly dying out around her. “I haven’t shot you yet.”

  They both laughed at her flippant observation.

  “If you ask me,” Hoover responded, unwilling to be so generous with his trust as he spoke only in Foster’s ear. “It’s only a matter of time.”