by Jack Porter
And then all I would need to do was somehow cobble together a coms unit capable of piercing the interstellar gulf and wait for a rescue.
Still laughing, acknowledging to myself that my true odds were slimmer than a sheet of gold leaf dancing in the wind, I nevertheless heaved up to my feet.
My chances were bleak. I knew that better than most. But I wasn’t the type to give up, especially without even mounting a fight.
And I had certain advantages that others in the same situation might lack.
Besides, I’d survived some sort of calamitous event. Part of the transport had held together long enough to bring me to the ground in one piece.
Perhaps there were other parts of the transport that had touched down as well.
Who knew? There might even be other survivors.
“Come on, Adam,” I said to myself. “Get your shit together. You can do this.”
Chapter 3
The first thing I did was toggle my sensory augmentations back on, and immediately my vision began filling up with a number of readings. Gravity: zero point nine two standard. Atmosphere: oxygen/nitrogen mix within normal tolerance. Temperature: 37°C. 99°F. Basic stuff that was nevertheless still useful to know.
I looked to my health readings, and saw about what I expected given the cryo-sleep I had endured, as well as the crash.
Effectively, I had a few bruises and burns, a headache, and could do with a drink of water or I risked dehydration. Surprisingly, there was no mention of the lingering nausea I’d felt upon waking, and in truth, as I thought about it, I realized that most of that had passed.
All in all, my health was about as good as I could expect. I nodded to myself, regretting that I hadn’t signed up for further augmentations when I had the chance.
There were some who had sensors that would literally scan the environment for potential threats on an ongoing basis.
Mine were simpler. They could describe the basic realities of an environment, could define my own health, and were pretty good for checking if something was dangerous or safe to eat or drink. Beyond that, it was like having in-built binoculars and basic mapping software, and that was about it.
Having confirmed that I wasn’t about to keel over and die, it was relatively easy to figure out what to do next.
Climb a hill. See if I could see anything useful. Like more of the EVE transport.
I set to it right away, making my way up the nearest available hill, which was more of a low rise made of sand and rock.
It took longer than it should have to make it to the top. With my feet bound and the sand shifting beneath my boots, I was already hot and sweaty when I was done, and starting to breathe harder than I otherwise might.
Slowly, keeping my eyes peeled, I turned in a complete circle.
Sand, hills, and rocky outcroppings. That was about the size of it, in every direction.
Discouraged, I toggled the settings on my visual sensors to their max, looking into the distance, and that’s when things grew more interesting.
There was a band of green right at the edge of my vision. The way it seemed to hang in the air, it looked like to could have been a mirage, an image of something a lot further away, far beyond what I could have normally seen even from the top of the hill.
It could have been nothing. An accident of atmospheric conditions. Or it could have been what I was hoping it was, a green belt made up of plants and wildlife.
Something that suggested surviving on this world wasn’t out of the question, if I couldn’t find some way to call for help.
Other than that, I saw only a couple of other things of interest. The first was a dark smudge in the sky that seemed to be moving on its own accord. A winged beast of some kind, too far away for me to see clearly.
The second thing of interest could have been just another outcropping of rocks.
But the way the sunlight glinted from it suggested not rock, but metal.
It could have been anything. But to my mind, it had to be another part of the transport, perhaps a sealed supply unit with everything I needed to help me survive.
And the scar it seemed to have left behind in the sand was, to me, proof enough of the crash.
I’d already decided to make for it before checking my sensors. I wanted to find out how far away it was, and that was the type of information they could provide.
5.1km. 3.2 miles.
On a good day, I could jog that distance in not much more than twenty minutes. But with the sun beating down on me, with this sandy soil shifting under my feet and the restraints to contend with as well, it was going to be a tough ask.
Especially as I was already well on my way to being dehydrated.
“Fuck it,” I said. It could have been far, far worse.
I must have been the luckiest son of a bitch to ever draw breath.
I could do this. I could not only survive on this world, but I could bend it to my will.
So thinking, I squared my shoulders and started to shuffle down the hill, keeping the direction firmly in mind.
Chapter 4
With my ankles chained as they were, it was slow, torturous, exhausting going. Nevertheless, I kept at it, placing one foot in front of the other, my purpose unwavering, my gaze largely fixed on my target.
The landscape I hobbled my way through seemed mostly arid, a barren desert with nothing more than sand and rocks in every direction. But it soon proved to be more than that. It was also a land of occasional mud pools, of geysers, of sulfurous smells, and of terraced rock formations in shades pinks and yellows.
My first thought was that where there was mud, there was water. Yet while the ground was wet in more than one place, my sensors stated unequivocally that there was still nothing to drink. Not unless I felt like drinking some surprisingly powerful acids that would very quickly turn my innards into soup.
Perhaps that would be better than a lingering death from dehydration, but I had a long way to go before I made that decision.
As to whether that acid was strong enough to eat through my chains….
I tried it, dipping the chain between my wrists in a likely-looking pool for five whole minutes, only to pull them back out when it seemed that I would grow old and gray before the acid did any good.
Interestingly, I saw evidence of life in the mud pools. Sinuous shapes that fled from the vibrations of my feet, too quickly for my sensors to even try to define what they were.
Nor were those black, slimy things the only life I could see. Something large and sinuous slithered just beneath the surface of the sand near where I walked.
There were plants here and there as well. Low, grassy things that were more yellow than green. They seemed to grow outwards rather than up, and looked like nothing more than a clump of long hair tangled up in a drain.
Somewhere, I could hear creatures calling to one another, like the croaks of a frog. And more than once, that dark smudge I’d seen flying high in the sky returned, although it never came close enough for me to study in detail.
Nevertheless, I was more than happy to see such signs of life. Perhaps there was hope for me in this hellish world as well.
So I continued on my way, hobbling as fast as my chains would let me, bringing the wreckage of the transport a little closer to me with every step.
It was another chunk of wreckage. Many pieces, some of them smaller, but one that looked like a good chunk of the ship.
With every weary, restricted step I took, I grew more certain. It was indeed a large section of the transport. An EVE class interstellar carrier that had split up, crashed on impact, and still somehow managed to keep me alive.
And not just me. I wasn’t the only survivor.
There were people moving about, next to the biggest part of the wreckage.
I found myself breaking into a grin. Well before they could possibly hear me, before they resolved from little more than mobile shapes, I began to call out.
“Hello!” I shouted as loudly as my parch
ed throat would let me. “Hello!”
I found myself putting in greater effort, doing my best to close the distance between us, and even felt my heart skip a beat.
It had taken far longer than I’d expected to get even this far, nearly two hours in total, and as I’d walked, I had considered the odds of finding other survivors.
My conclusion: not great.
I didn’t have any data from the transport. Didn’t know how it had crashed, or why, or anything.
But the impact must have been horrendous, to rip off the end section like that and send it spinning into the dirt.
I’d been lucky to survive. Luckier still to walk out of that fiery ruin with no more than a few blisters to complain about. To expect others to have been equally lucky, I thought, was unrealistic.
And yet, they were there.
“Hello!” I bellowed.
Eventually, my calls attracted attention.
A tall woman, athletic, slim, with dark, curly hair was closest. She’d been inspecting a random piece of wreckage, tossed away from the rest, when she looked up and saw me, still some distance away.
Her response was immediate. She turned over her shoulder and called out. “Uma! Sydney! There’s another survivor!”
Without waiting for either Uma or Sydney to appear, the tall woman hurried toward me as if I was her best friend whom she hadn’t seen for weeks.
But as she drew closer, her expression faltered. She looked me up and down, her gaze pausing at my feet and my wrists.
She stopped perhaps a dozen paces away.
“Who are you?” she said, and there was little of welcome in her voice. “What do you want?”
I kept my expression neutral and continued toward her, shuffling in as non-threatening a manner as I could.
“My name is Adam Mayfield, and what I want…” I allowed myself a quiet chuckle. “Well, I’d like a vacation. Perhaps a meal in a nice restaurant, and maybe a room with a view.”
I couldn’t help but look the woman up and down, and knew that in different circumstances, I might have tried my luck. The practical, green top and dark trousers couldn’t hide the slim, feminine curves within.
“But for the moment, I’ll settle for your help,” I finished.
In the time I’d been speaking, I hadn’t stopped my advance. Perhaps without consciously deciding to do so, the woman took a step back.
“Stay there,” she said, holding out a hand as if to stop me.
The gesture told me that she didn’t have any weapons. Which meant that I didn’t need to stop if I didn’t want to.
But by then, a number of others were approaching.
The woman had called out only two names. Uma and Sydney.
Yet there were four people heading my way. All women. The nearest had black, wavy hair and was tall, nearly as tall as the athletic woman I’d been talking to, but looked solid and strong, and something about her suggested military.
A shorter woman accompanied her, with long, sandy-colored hair and a twinkle in her eye that suggested she was never far from a smile.
Uma and Sydney, I was willing to wager, although at this stage I didn’t know which was which.
Behind them were two others, a big-eyed woman with red hair, who would have been luminously beautiful were it not for the smudges of grease on her face, and another, with purple hair, her arm in a sling and an expression filled with concern.
For their sake, and because I didn’t want to make this any more difficult than it had to be, I complied with the first woman’s request. I stopped where I was and waited.
The first woman turned to the strong-looking woman with the military presence.
“He said his name is Adam Mayfield. Do you know anything about him?”
The black-haired woman nodded.
“He was a prisoner held in the back section, away from the others. There should have been guards with him.”
She turned and addressed me directly. “Where are the guards?” she asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “All I know is that when I woke up, everything was on fire. If the guards even made it to the ground, I never saw them.”
The black-haired woman studied me with a calculating expression.
“Mr. Mayfield, you present me with a quandary,” she said.
“Call me Adam,” I said.
“Mr. Mayfield, according to the information I’ve been given, you are a dangerous man, and we find ourselves in a precarious position. Our survival on this world is far from guaranteed. What would you do if you were in my place, and one such as you walked out of the wastelands?”
I found myself smiling at the woman. She didn’t mince words, this Uma or Sydney, whoever it was. This was a woman who was used to command.
“I would offer that man water and food if you have it, and then assess how he might be of help in your quest for survival.”
Uma or Sydney didn’t react. Neither did the sandy-haired woman, or the taller, athletic one. But the purple-haired woman with her arm in a sling did.
“He’s dangerous,” she said, her voice high and anxious. “We should chase him away. Leave him to die.”
The others turned toward her, several of them starting to speak at once, but I made myself heard.
“You see a prisoner before you, but I have been convicted of nothing. Would you so easily condemn an innocent man to his death?” I asked her.
At the same time, I didn’t think it would be my death if they did chase me away. I’d seen enough of this world already to know that it might be possible for me to survive, even with the chains that bound me. But I also knew that my best chance of getting rid of those chains rested within the broken EVE transport before me.
“And besides, unless I miss my guess, this is the Captain standing before me,” I continued. “She is responsible for the lives of everyone on board. Including my own. Am I right?”
As if in answer, the black-haired woman shook her head.
“No. I’m not the Captain. He died in the crash, along with the rest of the crew, and several of the passengers.” She considered what I’d said. “But in essence, you are correct. With the Captain no longer with us, his responsibilities do pass to me.”
“Then feed me, if you have the supplies to do so. Give me water. It’s your duty to do so, to make sure I stay healthy until a rescue ship arrives.”
The women’s reaction wasn’t what I expected. I saw uncertainty on some of their faces. Consternation.
Disquiet.
“What?” I said.
The not-Captain sighed. “There isn’t going to be any rescue ship.”
The others said nothing. This wasn’t news to them.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She gestured toward the wreckage. “There was a little life in the systems after the crash. Just enough that I could try to figure out what happened, and where we are. Somehow, we’re not anywhere near where we should be. Best I can figure, we went through some sort of portal that brought us here.”
I stared at her. “Where are we?” I asked.
“A million light years away from civilization. Give or take.”
A million light years.
I didn’t know if she’d just picked a random number to emphasize the distance, or if she was being literal.
“And if we set off a distress beacon?” I asked.
“We can’t. Nor can we send out any other sort of message. The communications array—well, it no longer exists.”
“And even if it did, it would still take forever for anyone to receive that message,” I added, thinking it through.
She nodded, and I was beginning to understand the enormity of the situation.
We were on a random chunk of rock so far away from the rest of humanity that to even hope for a rescue was madness.
I understood that for these women, that reality would be hard to accept. As for me, I was in two minds. Sure, I didn’t have any desire to be recaptured. But for there to be no chance of gettin
g off this rock at all….
I shook my head and brought the conversation back to the original topic: me.
“So, what are you going to do?” I asked the not-Captain.
She seemed to hesitate, as if she hadn’t yet made up her mind. But that’s when the other woman spoke. The red-haired woman with the big eyes.
“We can’t turn him away,” she said, her voice surprisingly ethereal and delicate. “We need him. If he isn’t with us, we will not survive.”
The not-Captain immediately turned toward her. “You’ve seen this?”
The big-eyed woman nodded, and I turned to study her.
Eyes that were larger than those of most others. Delicate bone structure. Ears that were slightly pointed at the top. Even the way she was dressed, in clothes that flowed all around her, seemed vaguely otherworldly.
Interesting. There were rumors of experiments done by the Company. Illegal experiments that included whispers of alien DNA.
This big-eyed woman, whoever she was, had a tiny amount of that alien DNA within her. Of this, I was almost certain. I’d met one or two like her in the past, and knew from anecdotal evidence that some like her were psychic.
It seemed that this woman, whoever she was, could be one of them.
The woman with her arm in a sling spat out a curse. Her expression was a mix of anger and fear. She didn’t want me anywhere near her or the others. But it wasn’t her who made the decisions.
“What were your crimes?” the athletic woman said, out of nowhere. I decided that I really did need to find out their names.
“Being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” I said.
Then I turned my attention back to the not-Captain.
“So,” I said. “What’s it to be?”
I didn’t mention that I intended to look through the remains of the transport no matter what she said. But perhaps she saw my intent in the glint in my eye. Either way, she nodded.
“Mr. Mayfield is right. His life is my responsibility. There have been too many deaths on this journey already. We will give him water and food.”
Then she turned a hard look my way. “Don’t make me regret my decision,” she said.
