by David Liss
I grabbed one of the food packs, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat yet. I needed to get a better sense of what I was dealing with. I had a weapon, and I wasn’t going to die of hunger or thirst in the next few days, so that sort of counted as good news. The next issue was figuring out what I’d be dealing with on the planet itself, and things there were less cheery. The pod’s database had no detailed information about the world I was about to call home for an indefinite amount of time. It only listed it as “uninhabited and undesirable.” I was going to a place Phands found undesirable, and that did not fill me with hope. On the other hand, I was sure they would find a candy store undesirable, so maybe the planet would be a wonderland of chocolate.
The pod rumbled as it entered atmosphere, and then I felt the automatic attitude controls kick in. I was then able to activate both a topographical map, which would be useful for helping me to find the most ideal landing sites, and a viewscreen that provided images of the surface.
The chocolate-wonderland theory was not holding up. I saw mostly desert and vast oceans whose water, the computer told me, was undrinkable. I surveyed the planet for possible landing sites, but I lacked a clear sense of what I was looking for. There wasn’t a whole lot of variety in the terrain—sun-blasted valleys, rocky outcroppings, waterless mountains. I then scanned for Confederation technology. Whatever Captain Qwlessl and her team had been doing here, they must have left some of their equipment behind. Their camp might contain useful supplies. There might even be some Confederation comm beacons I could use to let them know what had happened to me. I doubted if those things could get me off-world in time to help the others, but at least they would know they needed to save me after they were done saving civilization.
I picked up what might have been residual signs of Confederation technology. They were faint and indistinct—certainly not something that would scream out to a passing Phand vessel, but I was running a thorough search for something I thought might be hidden away. I scanned the surrounding areas, and the ship’s database told me that there was a suspected Former historical site nearby. There were no guarantees, but I figured I had a pretty good idea of where the dig might have been. I next selected a reasonable place to land within hiking distance. I found a place with a high density of vegetation, which was of the tough, desert variety, but this was better than nothing. Also, this area seemed especially light on the carnivorous plants that appeared to be the planet’s dominant life form.
There was no avoiding the fact that I was heading into the desert—not like Sahara sand dunes, but more like the expansive scrubland that I’d passed through when traveling across New Mexico: rolling hills of dirt and sand, hardy (and likely inedible) plants, little water, and few animals. However, my scans detected the presence of underground springs, and I downloaded the information to my bracelet. There were a few places where a strategic blast or two with my PPB pistol would get me plenty to drink.
I was feeling marginally less miserable, but the move from total to mild desperation didn’t bring me a ton of comfort. I was still alone, isolated, worried about the others, and hoping against hope I would find . . . what? Another fully operational spaceport like the one at the Hidden Fortress? There had been one, I supposed, so there was no reason to believe there could not be another. On the other hand, if there had been that much technology lying around, the Phands would not have ignored this planet, which was on the border of their territory. I had no idea what Captain Qwlessl had been doing here, but it must have been important for her to let it occupy her time in this period of crisis. It seemed like a safe bet that she hadn’t been looking for emergency transport.
Maybe she’d found something. Maybe what she’d learned would lead her to a place where she and her crew would discover technology that would utterly crush the Phands or Junup—technology like we had discovered, and destroyed, at the Hidden Fortress. It would be nice, but none of that felt exciting to me. I wanted to bring Junup down. Now. I didn’t want to spend my time digging through the dust of a forgotten planet while the real battle was being waged elsewhere, while my friends were in danger. Frustration seethed inside me, ready to explode, but I had to keep calm. I couldn’t let my feelings take control. If I let the cork out of that bottle, I’d never be able to survive.
I tried to clear my mind, to calm my breathing, while the autopilot worked its way through the planet’s atmosphere. I opened the cap of the food packet, which was a long tube made of some synthetic material similar to plastic. I braced myself for the worst—the package boasted that it was made with 100 percent genuine carapace!—and squeezed the contents into my mouth.
It was not terrible. It tasted like a blander version of peanut butter, though I was getting slight notes of beetle. There were only a few spoonfuls in the pack, but I guessed it was nutrient dense, since my hunger more or less vanished after the first taste, leaving me free to concentrate on all the ways my life was now a complete disaster.
Finally I thudded to a soft landing in the planet’s soil. I sat very still for a moment, looking at the flashing lights of the readout, trying to clear my mind. I didn’t want to think about how this was the worst situation I’d ever been in. I had never been so helpless and so alone. I didn’t want to listen to the voice inside my head telling me I was going to be lost forever. I didn’t want to give in to the fear and the anger and the misery. I silently chanted that I was going to get through this.
I clenched my teeth and took a deep breath, and then I got to work.
First I performed a series of environmental scans to make sure the air was safe, there was no dangerous radiation, and no Zeke-devouring predators. As near as I could tell, I wouldn’t run into anything but small creatures once I stepped outside—nothing larger than a rabbit. Many of these animals were poisonous, but if I didn’t step on, kick, or otherwise antagonize them, the data suggested they were likely to leave me alone.
The hopelessness of my situation washed over me again, but I pushed it back. Feeling sorry for myself, or worrying about Tamret and the others, was not going to help me survive, and it was not going to help me find a way to get back in the game. If there was a way to do that, it was outside this pod, and so saying, I opened the doors and prepared to go out and find it.
I felt the rush of warm, fresh air, the sharp scent of herbs, utterly unfamiliar but somehow not unlike things I had smelled before. Light, impossibly bright, streamed into the pod, and I had to squint and turn away. I already felt thirsty, so I grabbed a couple of moisture packs and stepped out the door.
Sand, rocks, weeds. Repeat in one direction toward rocky hill, and in the other toward rocky valley. The heat felt like it was weighing down on me, like it was penetrating all the way to my bones. The sun itself, looming bright and orange and unrelenting in the sky, somehow gave the impression of being twice the size of Earth’s. Gravity was about normal, typical for a Former world, but otherwise everything about this place was miserable. It felt used and dried up, like I was visiting it a few billion years after its prime.
I was about to begin a preliminary exploration of my landing site when I heard it. The slight mechanical whir and click of a compartment opening. It was coming from inside the pod itself.
I spun, hardly knowing what to expect, but ready for anything. I raised my pistol as my heart pounded in my chest. Without my upgrades, combat was completely terrifying.
One of the emergency medical bays was sliding open with excruciating slowness. Someone or something had been in the pod with me. Had there been Phands on board the ship the whole time? Had whoever was in that medical compartment helped Ardov get free? I backed up, ready to make my escape if I needed to. I tried to steady my arm, and make myself ready to fire. The door continued to creak open, lifting inch by painful inch.
Then I saw his familiar tall form, his goofy face grinning with bewildered good cheer. Villainic poked his head out. “Is it safe for me to emerge?”
I’d thought there was nothing worse than being utterly alon
e on a dead world, but now, it seemed, I had discovered that I was wrong.
CHAPTER NINE
* * *
I tried to compose myself. I could not, after all, be angry with Villainic for having found a place to hide during Ardov’s attack. I would have preferred for him to have found another place, any place other than where I was, but it wasn’t as though this situation was his fault. I was now saddled with him, which meant someone completely useless would be using up my limited supplies, but there was no helping that.
“How did you even get in there?” I demanded, trying to make sense of this impossible situation.
“As soon as the difficulties began, I realized the escape pod was where I wished to be. This containment unit must have opened automatically as the power switched off, and I wedged myself within so that I would not float away while the gravity was not working.”
Given that he had no abilities he could have used to help us, and that he might have otherwise just been in the way, I had to admit that it had been a reasonable thing to do.
“When the power returned,” he continued, “the door to the unit closed. I called out to you, but by then you could not hear me. I saw through the video feed that your pistol was out, however, so I knew there was danger. That was why I decided to activate the emergency jettison option.”
A ball of rage, ice cold, began to build inside my gut. The sound of my breathing made me think of a rhino about to charge. I slowly turned to Villainic, unable to believe what I was hearing. “You jettisoned the escape pod?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“Oh, yes!” He looked incredibly pleased with himself. “I knew we would want to get away from the danger as quickly as possible, and I thought it best to get far from the ship. Are you not so very pleased with me?”
And that, your honor, was when I shot him.
• • •
Okay, I didn’t shoot him, but given that I was holding a pistol, not shooting Villainic at that moment was among the most incredible acts of restraint ever shown in the history of galactic life. If Villainic had not launched the escape pod, I would still be on board that ship, still with my friends, still able to stop Ardov and join the fight against Junup. Instead we were now alone, in a brutal desert. We were on the outer fringes of nowhere while the beings I cared about were at Ardov’s mercy.
I put my pistol down so I would not be tempted to do something I might later not regret. “You are a complete idiot!” I may have shouted this part. “We’re stuck here because of you.”
“I think you have not considered the matter very carefully,” he said, sounding sad about my inability to keep up with his reasoning. “Ardov would not have attempted to take control of the ship unless he had a reasonable chance of success. Everyone else up there is in possession of many wonderful skills, but you and I are ordinary people. We are more brothers than ever, united in our uselessness. Had we remained, we would only have been in the way.”
We were in no way equally helpless. At least, that’s what I wanted to believe. “We might have helped them,” I snapped. “You can’t convince me that abandoning our friends and running away is the right thing to do.”
“Of course it is,” he assured me. “You clearly haven’t thought this through. As soon as they are done dealing with Ardov, they will come rescue us, and we will be on our way. It is really quite simple.”
“It’s not simple,” I told him through clenched teeth, “because they tunneled out of this system. Ardov was able to send them somewhere, and assuming they can get control of the ship and then escape from whoever is waiting for them at the other end of that tunnel, then they are going to have more important things to worry about than rescuing us.”
He looked momentarily concerned, but then rediscovered his trademark chipper attitude. “Surely the pod is equipped with a distress beacon. We must launch it so someone else can rescue us.”
“We’re on the border of Phandic space,” I snapped. “Who do you think is going to respond to a beacon?”
“Oh,” he said, for a moment unable to come up with anything to say. He stepped out of the portal and cast a look at the desert scrub surrounding us, blinking at the brutal brightness. “You certainly picked a desolate place for us to land.”
“This is the garden spot of this stupid planet!” I shouted at him.
“Then how are we supposed to survive here, Zeke?” he demanded, hands on hips, as though he had not been paying attention to the rest of our conversation and somehow missed that it was his fault we were here. “What shall we do for food and water?”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you launched the pod!”
“There is no need to raise your voice at me,” he said, sounding infuriatingly calm. “I am just trying to explain to you the difficulties we face.”
“I’m aware of the difficulties we face,” I grunted. I wanted to say more, but there was no point. I’d already learned that there were diminishing returns in talking to Villainic, especially about his own behavior. I had braced myself for being a story of survival, like The Martian, but now, suddenly, it was an unlikely- buddy story. It was District 9, only I was the cool shrimp alien and Villainic was the clueless corporate stooge.
There was nothing to do about it, though. The mission remained the same. I had to find out everything I could about this place, especially the Former dig, and figure out a way to get off-world. It was just that I now had the additional challenge of not killing Villainic, which so far I’d been remarkably good at. I would have to find a way to keep that up.
I stepped back inside the pod and Villainic followed me, like a puppy eager to see what game we would play next. When he saw me stuffing supplies into a backpack, he came over and peered at me. “What are you doing?”
“I’m getting ready to go exploring,” I said in a tone that could best be described as “civil under the circumstances.”
“Oh, that’s an excellent idea,” he agreed. “Well done, Zeke. Pack me a bag as well and I shall help you explore.”
I made the strategic decision of not looking at him. “Do I look like your servant?”
“Deities, no!” he said with an easy laugh. “My servants are Rarels—and they have much better manners. Still, there is no one else to do it.”
“There’s you,” I pointed out.
“I am unused to packing my own things,” he said mournfully.
I stood up and glowered at him. “You’d better get used to it. It’s just the two of us on this planet, for I don’t know how long. Whether we live or die, stay here or escape, depends on us being smart and resourceful. You are going to have to step up and figure out how to contribute or you are going to become a liability to me, and that’s not going to be pretty. Do you hear me?”
“Of course I hear you,” he said with a sad shake of the head. “How could I not with your voice so loud? You certainly like making speeches. Perhaps that energy could be put into packing my supplies.”
“I’m going to wait outside,” I told him, “where the chances of strangling you are lower. If you’re not out and ready to go in five minutes, I’m leaving without you, and I’ll see you when I get back. Assuming I decide to return.”
Villainic stared at me as if daring me to actually make him pack his own supplies, and when I turned away from him, he actually gasped.
Outside the pod, the air was hot and dry. I took off the reeducation-school blazer and tossed it back inside the pod. The sun was above us, so at least this heat—bad but not unendurable—was likely the worst we’d have to face. Still, there might be other problems down the road. On Earth, deserts get cold at night, and I had no way of knowing how low the temperature was going to drop. I also didn’t know where we were in this part of the planet’s seasonal cycle. If this was the middle of winter, it meant that the summers we would later face could be brutal. I hated the idea that I would still be on this world months from now, but I knew it was a genuine possibility, and the sooner I resigned myself to it, the better
.
Maybe my friends would be back to pick us up soon. Maybe they never would. I could shut out the implications of what complete abandonment would mean, but not the burdens that would fall on me. I had to stay alive and I had to get away, and now, as much as I hated it, I was responsible for keeping Villainic alive. A better version of the story might be keeping him alive until I needed to kill him for food, but somehow I didn’t think I could bring myself to do that. Roast Villainic sounded even less appealing than 100 percent carapace. At least it did at the moment. A few months down the line could be a different story.
While waiting for Villainic, I spent a few minutes exploring the area surrounding the pod, moving in widening circles. I had synched my data bracelet to the database on the escape pod’s limited computer, and I’d adjusted for my own physiology as best I could—a sloppy, trial-and-error method of listing foods I could and could not eat—so I was able to scan plants for food and medicinal value. So far my bracelet was telling me that everything that grew here would either, in a best-case scenario, cause me to vomit painfully, or, less good, produce painful vomiting followed by death. One plant would cause death followed by corpse reanimation. Great. I’d found a zombie plant. I made a mental note to make sure Villainic didn’t eat it. It would be just my luck to have him follow me around after he was already dead.
He took an inexplicably long time to pack his bag. A blind goldfish could have completed the task more quickly. He finally emerged fifteen minutes later, his pack slung jauntily over his shoulder, beaming with satisfaction. “My bag,” he announced with a great deal of pride, “is packed!”
Knowing I could be trapped with him for an unspecified amount of time, I decided to hold back any commentary about how long the packing had taken Villainic. We were going to have to get along, and, unlikely as it might sound, my life might at some point depend on his help. I didn’t need him nursing any grudges.
