“None of this is useful,” Raph said through clenched teeth.
I put down the box of supplies and dug out an injection unit to pass to Chloe. She entered a sequence and pressed the unit into the bicep of each of his arms. Each press made a small whooshing noise.
The tension in Raph’s face eased, and he closed his eyes with a small sigh. “Thank you.”
Chloe turned to me. “That’s most of what I know. They are always borrowing jewelry for big events and bragging about it. Like advertising or something. It is their biggest export after reality shows, but it’s all intermeshed. I tried to look up the pricing on a bracelet, and it was a year’s wages.”
“But the locals can buy it?”
“No. Technically, no one on Cerulea owns any of the material. It all goes to the king to export, though he sometimes loans it out. I need you to help me with this.” She had unpacked a thin plastic mesh. “I need to set some supports on his arms for the next twenty-four hours. The fractures aren’t bad, but I need to do this correctly, so they heal properly.”
I nodded and stepped up to be her assistant. She moved my hands into place, and I held his fingers and elbow at the exact angle she instructed.
Raph kept his eyes closed, and his skin was cold and clammy. His only reaction was the barest of movements at the corner of his mouth as Chloe worked. The mesh would allow air through and was washable while still being light and strong.
Using a portable UV light, she set the material that would stay stiff until cut off. Within fifteen minutes, we were done, and Raph, still under the effects of the painkiller, was more relaxed. Chloe set two bone-growth-acceleration nodes over each end of the fracture and activated them, which would help cut the healing time exponentially.
With an additional follow-up check on the rest of us, Chloe gave her final verdict. “We are in pretty good shape. It could have been much, much worse.”
An alarm flashed on the panel as a warning blared.
Raph took a quick look. “Shields are at fifty percent. Extreme corrosive agents detected on one hundred percent of the exterior surface. Exterior breach expected in twenty minutes.”
It was much worse. We were about to be liquidated.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“What’s happening?” Horton shouted as he clung to Chloe’s arm. In spite of his large size and impressive physique, he acted like a small child clinging to his mother for comfort.
I wouldn’t have minded doing the same, but I was in charge and the only one who really had all the information. “We are inside a large aquatic animal that can digest metal. I noticed the way the pursuing ships hung back at the coast, and I had a split second to see the creature breach the surface. I activated the grappling hooks, and it appears…”
I ran my fingers over the panel, but nothing in its programming prepared it for diagramming whale anatomy. “Well, we are somewhere inside it. If it digests metal, it’s going to eat right through the hull, compromise the ship’s integrity, then digest us.” That wasn’t exactly how I preferred my final moments to occur. I had thought we were going to have a lot more time to come up with a solution. “Chloe, do you know anything more from your shows?”
“Not really. Can’t we do a data search?”
I shook my head and glanced around. “The reception is lousy in here.”
Chloe giggled, eyes dancing. “Can’t we, like, blow it up?”
Raph was at the panel, working on the screen. “We don’t have much firepower, but I can try. Everyone buckle up as best you can. Chloe, Horton, pick different seats.”
“But I want to be able to see,” said Chloe.
“And I don’t want you to die,” Raph fired back.
I did my best to anchor myself into my chair. “New seats have unfired airbags.”
“Oh,” said Chloe, sobering quickly. “What about you and Raph?”
“We have no choice. It is what it is. Now, let us focus, and if you want to help, pray.”
I pulled up the scan I had run onto the area, though it was about what I figured. We were anchored by the grappling equipment to something fleshy shaped in what was essentially a long tube. I was going to guess the throat, where digestion enzymes existed but probably weren’t as strong as the main stomach area of the creature. We might have had more time if we hadn’t been hit so many times by the pursuing shuttles.
Raph lowered his voice. “I’m not sure that we could fire our way out of a paper bag, let alone this meat suit we are trapped in. Nothing here is going to do much more than tickle a creature this big.”
“Tickle, eh?” I patted the book at my thigh. “I think that will be perfect. Hold on back there. I have an idea, and if it works, things are going to get pretty violent.”
“What’s up, Cap?”
“Everyone locked in?” I shouted.
Once everyone answered in the affirmative, I lowered the gravity in the ship. We shifted to the left and slightly forward as the planet’s gravity took over. Then, as I suspected, the ship rolled for a few seconds, then a quick couple of shakes left and right happened before the vibrating occurred again.
“I’m going to be sick,” moaned Horton.
“You’re not the only one, and that might be exactly what saves us,” I said over my shoulder before turning to Raph. “You ever had something stuck in your throat like a pill or bit of food? You try to swallow and maybe shake your head. That is what the animal is doing.”
“Can’t it cough us up?”
“Not if it has a blow hole. The respiration system is probably not connected to its digestion. Anyway, animals like that only have one way to clear their throat if something is stuck and bothering them.”
Raph’s eyes lit up. “I get it. So we are going to wait until it throws us up then fly out lickety-split?”
“Right idea, but I don’t think we can risk waiting around. Let’s irritate its throat a bit more.” My hand hovered over the arsenal panel.
The swinging motion increased.
“Oh yeah, now you’re talking.” Raph adjusted his seat to get closer to the panel and winced at the movement. “Release the grappling hooks. I can do this.”
I glanced at him. “You sure you got this?”
He met my look with a firm nod. “Definitely.”
“Hey, guys! After we get vomited up, then what? Like, can this shuttle swim?”
“Water falls within the range of atmospheric conditions that shuttles are built for, but we’re going to be at a big disadvantage.” I readied the grappling hooks. “Goal one is going to be to get out of the water. Goal two is to land someplace hidden and assess the situation. I want far away from these creatures.”
“Can’t we just leave the planet?” asked Chloe.
“I’m not going to risk another encounter with whoever was chasing us, given our shield capacity.”
Raph didn’t look up from his screen. “Cap, I’m ready.”
“Fire at will,” I said.
Raph fired off a variety of rounds at the surrounding surfaces, spacing the shots for maximum irritation. The throat of the creature spasmed and jerked with each hit. After the last hit, there was a brief silence, then a deep rumble started, rising in volume and pitch. A wall of sticky yellow mucus appeared at the end of the tunnel, approaching rapidly.
“Brace yourself!” I screamed as I released the hooks.
The wave of liquid hit us, and we vibrated so hard my vision doubled. The safety system kicked in, and the movement lessened for a moment before we shot out of the mouth of the creature. We were close to the surface, and I was briefly blinded by the return of natural light.
The engines roared to life, and Horton let out a feral cry that lifted the hairs on the back of my neck. I joined him with an animalistic noise of my own.
Tears of happiness pooled in the corners of my eyes. “Great work!” I shouted as I pulled up the map that the shuttle was creating of the surrounding area. Land was close by. “Seventy-five degrees to the coast.”
&nbs
p; Raph banked hard. “I’m not getting eaten again.”
We saw the deep cave at the base of the cliff at the same time.
I pointed. “Raph—”
“Got it!”
There was some structure at the top of the cliff, but my main concern was the large dark opening at the bottom. I watched the water below, unwilling to fully breathe until we had flown over the glittering red sand and pulled into the sheltering rocks.
“Cut power! I don’t want to be seen.”
“I’ve got it handled.” Raph ran through the sequence to cloak the ship just as a shuttle flew past and disappeared out over the horizon.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I took a second to start the exterior perimeter evaluation before unbuckling to stand up to face my crew. “Right. We are totally off the books at this point. I don’t know who we can trust because someone helped those Ceruleans get me off board. The only ones I trust are the three of you. Chloe, I want you to figure out everything we have onboard: supplies, medical gear, extra clothes, everything. We need to know what we are working with.”
Raph turned to the panel. “I can do a system’s check. See what shape the ship is in.”
“Horton can do that. Take my chair, Raph.”
He turned to me in surprise. “My hands are—”
“It’s not that. I know that you have some… ways of getting information that are not a hundred percent on the up-and-up. Do you think you could use the shuttle to get in touch with the ship without them knowing?”
Realization crossed his face as his hands moved back to the panel. “Yes, I can do that. What do you want to know?”
“Everything.” I blew out a long breath. “Any communications between the officers on the ship and fleet headquarters. Any scrap of information you can get on Cerulea. I do not want to be caught off guard again. Focus on general planet information, anything that might help. See if any of your favors have sent back information yet.” I rubbed my forehead where a headache had formed two days ago and never gone away.
“Hey,” Raph said.
I turned to look at him. “What?”
“You’re doing a good job. We all are. I doubt there is a shipping crew in the universe that could run a better retrieval unit and few explorer crews that would do half as well inside a sea creature. We’re kicking butt.”
I nodded abruptly, my throat tight. “Thank you, Raph.”
Chloe had pulled supplies from the wall cabinets.
I grabbed a couple of waters to pass out to my crew. “Stay hydrated,” I told everyone.
While I drank the clear, clean liquid, I checked the secondary screens. There were no living creatures, poisonous liquids, or physical dangers detected for over a thousand yards. Temperatures, humidity, and air conditions were all suitable for human life. I set the oxygen concentrators to active so they would replenish our supply inside the shuttle, then I unsealed the door.
When I stepped out, the heat immediately hit me. It was still bright outside, but the cave overhead shaded me. I found the temperature to be more comfortable than when I had last been outside. How many hours ago was that? It couldn’t have been too long ago, though without my work unit, I had lost all sense of time.
I stifled a yawn and wondered when I had last slept. I didn’t think being knocked unconscious by a ban counted as restful sleep, but I couldn’t justify taking a nap. Although if pushed beyond my limits, I could make a decision that would risk all our lives. We were injured and in enemy territory.
I walked to the edge of the cave, still hidden in the shadows, and looked out toward the ocean as another shuttle patrol flew by. It was way above the top of the cliff, following the coastline. Maybe the flyovers were standard, or maybe they were still looking for us. It was hard to tell.
With the shuttle powered down, the silence was deafening. After a lifetime of living on a ship, I could sense the absence of the comforting hum that meant that everything was okay. It made me subtly uneasy. In its place, I heard waves crashing on a foreign shore from an ocean that had nearly taken us forever into its black depths.
When I attended advanced flight school, most people had assumed I would take the military track like my parents. They were war heroes, and they’d paid the highest possible price for their service. But people forgot I had already paid that price twice over.
I loved and missed them. I’d thought my destiny was to discover new worlds, new life, and new hope. But here I was in a hostile land with a crew to protect and a life-or-death mission. Destiny claimed us no matter what we did.
I slid the small pocket Bible from the side of my thigh and opened it to the middle, searching for the section that had been my father’s favorite. I found the passage and said a quick prayer of thanks to the God that had brought us this far. I read the passage out loud, each word as comforting as a song I knew by heart. “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.”
There was a noise behind me, and I closed the book and slid it into my pocket. I ad-libbed a few lines of my own. “A time to see a murder, and a time to be accused of murder; a time to be kidnapped, and a time to be rescued; a time to be swallowed by a large sea creature, and a time to be vomited up together.”
Raph exited the shuttle with Chloe and Horton behind him. As he strode over to me, Chloe and Horton looked around.
Chloe fanned herself. “It’s hotter than a basilisk’s belly out here and just as red.”
Horton stretched his short arms just barely over his head, his fabric-wrapped box still in one hand. “Feels amazing. Like being next to a volcano during the lava harvests.”
“I’m downloading the information you asked for, but the shuttle’s evaluation was complete. I think we need to talk.” He held out a brown rectangle to me.
For a split second, I thought it was a work unit, though all of ours had been confiscated. “What is this?”
“Let’s just say that there was a time I wanted to keep information off my work unit, and it is a good thing because when your ex took all our units, he didn’t find this.”
It looked just like the fleet-issued work unit except that it was chunkier and heavier and the sides and back were a smooth brown material with darker lines. “Is this wood?”
He nodded. “Makes it undetectable from scans. Ship scanners tend to get easily confused by anything that comes from living organisms, making it a good way to hide technology. Sometimes, the old-fashioned ways are the best.”
“So this is how you have been getting all your secret information. Do you guys have one too?”
Horton avoided my eyes.
Chloe squirmed a little. “I would never use it for anything dangerous. I just like my shows.”
Over the past few years, since the turnoff from the previous administration, data had been reduced to a need-to-know basis. I struggled to get new books, and if it wasn’t for my interest in fleet ship designs, I would run out of things to read halfway through every trip. I couldn’t blame any of them. “Okay.”
I could almost feel them sigh with relief, though I was a little insulted that they thought I would pick a fight over something so stupid while we were trying to stay alive. I was also a little annoyed that no one thought I might want one of the fake units.
“What did you find out?” I asked Raph.
“The officers had sent a message to fleet headquarters, asking for additional assistance, but they did not update them on anything that happened. The original backup was responsible for escorting the crew back to base. The ship appears to be unmanned right now with no one still on board. I’m also downloading everything I can about Cerulea, focusing on the environment and political situation. The original searches I started when we were onboard were halted, so I restarted them. Plus I relayed a message to some friends that specialize in… unconventional trading to see if they know anything about Cerulea that might be useful.”
“Smart. Chloe, what did you find?”
“Lots of supplies but mostly for short-term emergencies. Water, food, and basic survival supplies for a day or two. Some emergency transponders, but they can only communicate with fleet headquarters. A bag of medical stuff, though we put a reasonable dent in it. We have enough basic painkillers for a few more days.”
“That should be enough. Horton, can the shuttle get us back to the ship?”
He juggled the square package in his arms to use another of the knockoff work units. “The shields are in rough shape. The grappling hooks caught on something as we exited the creature. Looks like part of a tooth?” He gestured toward the shuttle.
The thing he had referred to was thin and as long as my forearm. It was dark green, but when I moved closer, I could see the color shift subtly from a bright spring green to a deep emerald to a shade that bordered on blue. It came to a point that wasn’t terribly sharp until one considered the force that would have been exerted by the terrible jaw where it had resided. The leading edge was sharp enough to put a thin nick in my fingertip when I ran it down the length. The bottom was broken like a snapped branch, the color seeping all the way through the tooth rather than just a surface feature.
“It’s gorgeous. If this is how the whole skeletal structure is, I can see why it is so valuable. It was caught on the grappling hook? Didn’t it retract when it was released?”
“Whatever gunk that thing had in its throat had already eaten most of the way through the mechanism. Somewhere along the way, the opening caught the tip of the tooth and snapped it off. Unfortunately, that same stomach acid got into the opening, and it is slowly eating its way into the ship. It will be compromised within twelve hours.”
I opened my mouth to ask a question, but he continued.
“The orbit of the planet is such that our ship is moving farther from our location. See?” He pointed out over the ocean. “Near the left edge of the cave about thirty degrees above the horizon, there is our ship. The spin of the planet is such that the distance is going to increase. If we leave right now, it will take us ten hours to arrive.”
Space Murder Page 8
