Trial by Fire - eARC

by Charles E Gannon

  “Interesting theory, but there’s still atmosphere and heat on board. So what killed them?”

  “Maybe they were all in a chamber that depressurized; I don’t know. If any of the crew survived, why let us get this far in without trying an ambush?”

  Trevor’s forced grin was visible through his visor. “Let's go find out. Slow approach, no helmet lights.”

  Caine silently counted off ten seconds as they drifted toward the opening at the end of the corridor. A faint glow within outlined large structures and confused silhouettes that resembled tangled spider webs. Trevor nodded to the handgun, pointed into the darkness, then tapped his helmet's lights. Caine nodded, secured the weapon in a two-handed grasp, the targeting laser aimed just below the level of the doorway, poised to elevate swiftly to engage a target. Trevor aimed his helmet lights through the doorway, turned them on.

  Cables hung down from the ceiling, draped across an object that looked like a cross between a chaise lounge and a bathtub: evidently an Arat Kur acceleration couch. Beyond the bathtub-couch was another, similar shadow, except its upper surface was made uneven by a distinctly lumpy silhouette. If that couch was still occupied, its occupant was no longer moving. Beyond that, and framed by other debris from the ruined bridge, the stars glimmered faintly through a transparent panel that was a match in size and shape for the opaque cockpit blister they had noted on their approach.

  Trevor’s light swung slowly across the dense clusters of power conduits and narrower command cables that drifted in tangled spools and tentacles. “Looks like a convention of spider plants in there.” He snapped off the light.

  “Looks like a tomb to me.”

  Trevor nodded. “Yeah, I saw the silhouette in the far couch.”

  Caine kept staring into the darkness. “Of course, another one might still be in there.”

  “Possible, but why let us get so close? As you pointed out, the best time to ambush us was when we were moving up the corridor, trapped in a narrow space and without cover.”

  Caine squinted into the darker regions where the wires were thickest. “Still—”

  “Yeah, we still need to play it safe. But we've also got to finish checking out this bridge. Cover me.” Trevor swam into the room. His helmet lights swept back and forth across the clutter of cables and filaments like headlights roving along Spanish moss.

  “Talk to me, Trevor.”

  “Not much to talk about. I think this is a pretty large chamber, but I can't be sure with this wiring all over the place.” Trevor drifted farther into the room, keeping his distance from the long, low Arat Kur acceleration couches and using the mass of cables for cover.

  “What about the controls?”

  “Can't see anything from here. I'm going in to check out the first acceleration couch.”

  “Hold it, Trevor.”

  Trevor, already moving toward the long silhouette to his right, arrested his drift by grabbing a handful of cables. “Holding. What's up?”

  “I don’t think you should move directly to the acceleration couch. Use the cables for concealment, approach obliquely. That also gives me a clear field of fire if anything is lurking near the couches themselves.”

  “Will do. Ready to start my move.”

  Caine reangled the ten-millimeter until its targeting laser was painting a small, red circle on the nearest acceleration couch. “Go ahead.”

  Trevor half rotated in space, swimming to the left and using handfuls of wiring to aid his progress—which halted suddenly. “Damn,” he muttered. His lights flickered through the sinuous shapes, painting shadow-snakes on the far wall.

  “What is it, Trevor?”

  “Almost got tangled. The cables are heavier in this part of the room, and I'm not seeing all of them. The helmet lights are too narrow-beam.”

  Yes, it’s pretty dark where he is. Damn nuisance, too. Every other room in the entire vessel had some illumination, if only the emergency lights. But on the bridge even those were dark—

  —Shit shit shit! “Trevor, kill your lights!”

  “What—?”

  “Kill your—!”

  The ambush didn’t unfold the way Caine expected. No shot in the dark: not even that much warning. One moment, Trevor’s floating silhouette was resuming its forward motion, left hand tugging a cable he’d wrapped around his wrist for purchase; the next, there was a blinding sputter of blue-white sparks just above his handhold. Trevor bucked backward, suddenly rigid, immobilized by the electric current that had raced up his arm and into his body.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Caine saw a darker shadow rise up from behind the second acceleration couch, the one probably occupied by an enemy corpse. He swung the ten-millimeter’s aimpoint over—but the shadow ducked down behind the couch again.

  Tricky little bastard: a faulty wire, rigged as a trap. Probably command activated and probably dozens of other wires similarly rigged. And figuring that out has cost a precious tenth of a second. So think—fast.

  Trevor’s paralyzed. Every second gives your enemy the opportunity to finish him off. The alien is probably armed, behind solid cover, and waiting for you to expose yourself. Meaning you’ve got no good options, except—

  Caine snapped back the ten-millimeter's ammo feed selector with his thumb: set for armor-piercing rounds. He grabbed his emergency's suit's safety lanyard, slammed the carabineer clip across one of the cruciform handles on the wall beside him. As the clip snapped into place, he brought up the gun, eyes tracking with the laser aimpoint. He thumbed the propellant switch over to maximum as the red circle jumped up along and above the couch, then up a short stretch of wall—

  —keep that death-grip on the cable, Trevor. For just one more second—

  Caine squeezed the trigger when the red aimpoint reached the cockpit blister. The ten-millimeter Unitech bucked savagely, although the report was muffled by his helmet. The smooth surface of the cockpit blister star-cracked but did not shatter. Caine swung the aimpoint back to the center of the radiate fracture lines and squeezed the trigger again.

  He didn't hear the second report, or rather, he couldn't distinguish it. The cockpit panel blasted outward with a howl that swallowed the ten-millimeter's feeble voice into the cacophonic cyclone of air, stray wires, and papers that maelstromed out into the vacuum of space.

  Caine felt himself yanked in that direction, then yanked to an equally abrupt halt: the suit lanyard and carabineer clip squealed under the pull of his vacuum-sucked mass. But they held.

  Trevor was still mostly motionless. The wrist-wrapped cable and tangled masses of wiring were holding him fast. However, the lump atop the second acceleration couch—a limp creature shaped like an oversized horseshoe crab-cockroach hybrid—went spinning out the breach in the cockpit blister. A moment later, a second, similar object, its outline made more vague by some sort of spacesuit, tumbled upward from behind the same couch, clutching frantically with six stunted ventral limbs. One of the rear limbs caught a slender wire, slipped, fumbled, clutched again—but weakly.

  As the rush of air started to diminish, Caine raised the ten-millimeter, centered the red aimpoint on the struggling horseshoe-crab shape—

  Nearby motion distracted him: Trevor had unwrapped his wrist from the cable mooring him in place. Caine’s breath caught. No, not yet! Grab another cable—just a few seconds more!

  But Trevor’s movements were purposeful, even though they were unsteady. His left arm dangling, he rode the rapidly weakening current of outgushing atmosphere toward the jagged hole in the cockpit blister. As he swept over the acceleration couches, he simultaneously kicked downward and reached up with his good arm. His feet connected with the top of the second couch and pushed him up toward the horseshoe-crab shape. Trevor slammed into it and tried to get a firm grip, but the decompressive currents began tugging him away. He was pulled feet-first toward the hole, but his right hand found a length of cable and locked on—even as his left hand reached toward the alien. The creature’s multiple ap
pendages grabbed it violently, then fought for purchase on Trevor’s suit and helmet, and, once secure, began to contract. Forcefully.

  For one brief instant, Caine could not look away from the surreal scene of Trevor being hug-crushed by a crab-roach. Then reflex and adrenaline took over. Caine uncoupled the carabineer clip, and, with the decompressive flow almost gone, he aimed himself at Trevor and kicked at the wall.

  Too oblique and too hard. Caine went corkscrewing toward the floor, instead, hit the deck at an angle, and bounced. He swam through a slow, spastic cartwheel. Between frantic curses and calls to Trevor, his own breath echoed loudly in his ears. Only when he came to a stop—upside down and with his legs tangled in the hanging garden of cables—did he realize that Trevor was answering his calls.

  “Caine, I'm—okay. Take it—easy. Reorient—yourself.”

  “Reorient myself, hell! Christ, Trevor, what were you thinking? That damn thing might have killed you. Might still intend to.”

  “Caine, we—can't h-hurt—it. It’s rigged—the bridge. Could have—r-rigged engineering. With a—bomb. Need it—alive.”

  Damn it, he’s right—and I’m a fool for not realizing the same thing. Caine kicked his legs free and somersaulted to turn himself over and reassume an up-down orientation that matched Trevor’s. He was vaguely aware that he had performed this tricky zero-gee maneuver with the surety of a pro.

  The alien’s six-limbed grasp on Trevor was tight, but not dangerously so. It was, however, immobilizing. One of the alien's legs had wrapped around the upper part of Trevor’s left armpit, jamming that arm in an awkward, elevated position. Trevor’s right arm was pinned to his side by another appendage, and while his legs were free, they were out of reach from any surface against which to push.

  Oddly, the Arat Kur—for it was certainly not a Ktor or a Hkh’Rkh—seemed less capable of movement than Trevor. Although dominating the human with a grapple that would have been the envy of any collegiate wrestling star, the exosapient was motionless. Caine drifted closer cautiously, thumbed the ammunition selector back over to the setting that loaded antipersonnel rounds. He laid the gun against the side of the Arat Kur's thorax.

  “Might as well—aim at—head.” There was a grunt of extra effort in Trevor's voice.

  “As if we have any indication that’s where its brain is. And I thought you said you were all right. Your voice: you can hardly breathe. That damn thing is crushing you.”

  “No—not the—the reason.”

  “What do you mean, not the reason?”

  “Not the r-reason for my—voice. Shock;—everything stiff. Hurts. Hard to talk. Can't m-m-move well, either.”

  Caine looked for and found clinical signs consistent with the aftermath of electrical trauma. A small, but high-speed tremor in Trevor's right arm was visible even though the Arat Kur's claws held it in a viselike grip. There was also a faint intermittent twitch in his friend's left arm and more pronounced involuntary motions in his right leg. At least there was still movement, but that didn't preclude more serious internal damage. “Trevor, read off your biomonitor values.”

  “Already—checked. Pulse and temperature high. All—all others, nominal. I'll be—okay. J-just get—get this guy—off me.”

  Caine extended his arm, pushing himself a meter back from the tethered amalgam of human and alien. Detaching the Arat Kur necessitated an initial inspection of its physiology—or, rather, of its bulky, podlike vacuum suit.

  The fabric of the suit was tougher and more rigid than that used in human suits. Each limb covering was comprised of separate, well-articulated segments, making it unnecessary to ensure mobility by using more pliable materials. Reasonable. The Arat Kur body seemed to have no waist, no hips, no long limbs: in short, it was only capable of limited movement. With less of a demand for flexibility, Arat Kur garment designers could focus more on strength and durability.

  It also seemed that Arat Kur didn't have heads, simply a cluster of sensory organs on their front-facing surface. Accordingly, the alien's spacesuit was topped by a wide, shaded dome, flanked by a brace of small, highly distorting mirrors. Caine considered his own fun-house reflection for a moment. No head meant no neck. No way to reposition the visual sensory organs without repositioning the whole body to face the object to be observed—unless the visual field was expanded by using mirrors. Hmmm. I’ll bet these bastards spent a lot of evolutionary time worrying about, and being terrified by, threats from their rear. Possibly a useful tactical and psychological factor.

  Mounted just beneath the Arat Kur helmet-dome were two well-articulated sleeves, each ending in a set of cruciform mechanical claws. The claws were heavier and blunter than he would have expected in a tool-using species, but then he reconsidered his conclusion. Vacuum gloves turned even the slenderest human hand into a clumsy, bloated paw. The same could certainly be expected of alien space garments.

  There were a few external control surfaces visible, all of which were in recessed pits ringing the rim of the helmet-dome. Glyphs were visible under each touch-sensitive panel. More were printed on the small, dorsally-mounted life-support unit. All of which were absolutely meaningless to Caine.

  Not discovering anything particularly useful to the purpose of prying the Arat Kur apart from Trevor, Caine started with the most basic approach: brute force. However, repeated attempts to lever open the alien's claws, or to cause its limbs to relax, were completely unproductive. “Maybe it’s died. Maybe rigor mortis has already set in.”

  Trevor's voice, sounding somewhat more relaxed, disabused Caine of that notion: “No, it's alive.”

  “How can you tell?”

  Trevor’s teeth chattered once before he replied. “It's sh-shaking s-slightly.”

  Trevor sounded like he was growing cold, probably going into shock. And the exosapient was obstructing access to the manual overrides for Trevor’s suit thermostat—

  —Suit thermostat? Hmm. That might be a better way of getting the Arat Kur to move: fiddle around with the life-support unit on its suit. But adjusting the alien’s life-support pack might also kill it. The device was a mystery of orange and green lights, recessed indicators, and small access panels, all linked to the rear of the helmet-dome—

  Wait. The rear of the helmet dome. Of course. That gives me an even simpler option. Caine maneuvered to a position behind the exosapient, keeping his gun trained on the center of its thorax as he produced a pry bar from his own toolkit.

  “Wh-what are y-you doing, C-Caine?” Trevor did not sound good at all.

  “Conducting a psychological warfare experiment.” Keeping the handgun tight against the exosapient's midriff, Caine ran the pry bar along the center of the alien's life-support unit. Then again, slowly, softly from the bottom up to the top. Let’s see how you feel about having a hostile alien constantly tapping and bumping at your back.

  There was no immediate reaction. Might be time to increase the implied threat from behind. On the next pass of the pry bar, Caine let it graze the rear edge of the helmet-dome.

  The exosapient’s limbs flexed convulsively, released Trevor in its attempt to scrabble away along other, nearby wires.

  But, anticipating that, Caine clung to the alien's back. Avoiding the grabbing legs, he pulled himself forward until the top half of his visor was level with the alien's helmet dome. He still couldn't see anything inside; the material was too dark. No matter; obviously, the Arat Kur could see outward. Well enough, at least, to make out the ten-millimeter handgun that Caine laid against the helmet-dome. The alien's movements became more frantic. Caine tapped the muzzle against the dome twice and then left it pointing directly inward. The alien's movement ended abruptly; all six legs went limp. Caine smiled. It was nice to know that some concepts—such as a loaded gun—were capable of transcending even the barriers of species and language.

  He looked over toward Trevor, who was making adjustments to his suit’s life-support unit. “What’s wrong?”

  “Just setting the temperature
a few degrees higher.”

  Caine bound their prisoner with lengths of cable and wiring. Meanwhile, Trevor haltingly moved to hunch in front of what appeared to be the wreck's central computer console.

  “Anything interesting?”

  “G-God, no. This writing looks l-like tortured s-spa-spaghetti trying to m-mate with cock-eyed d-d-dominoes. Be-besides, we don’t speak their language. That’s why-why I h-h-had to sa-save the little b-bastard. Whoev-ever he is.”

  “An Arat Kur?” ventured Caine. “We’ve seen the Hkh’Rkh already, and the Ktor live in those big tanks on treads. And no other species seemed hostile at Convocation.”

  “Arat Ku-Kur sounds r-right.”

  Caine helped Trevor to drift away from the enemy ship’s bridge console. “So, we’ve caught an Arat Kur. Maybe. But whatever he is, you’re right: we have to find a way to communicate with him. Until we do, we can’t even dock this wreck with the Auxiliary Command module to pool the two vehicles' resources. And without those combined resources, we’re just a pile of a junk heading into deep space.”

  Caine stared past Trevor’s tremoring nod and trembling shoulder. The trussed exosapient was once again motionless. Maybe even smug. And perhaps it had a right to be. The alien might be their prisoner, but they were now hostages to its knowledge.

  Chapter Twelve

  Adrift off Barnard’s Star 2 C

  Caine’s voice startled Trevor out of his daze. “You feeling any better?”

  “Sure. Fine.” Trevor clenched his torso against the shiver that coursed through him.

  Caine frowned. “Even though your temp and pulse are back to normal, you’re still cold from shock and exhibiting impaired movement, particularly in the left arm.”

  “You done, doc?”

  Caine leaned back. “I’m just trying to help.”

  And that is of course true, and I’m just pissed that I had to depend on a rookie to get back here to our module. That impairment had made for an interesting return from the alien wreck: semiconscious EVA veteran Trevor Corcoran riding piggyback on EVA neophyte Caine Riordan for more than a minute. If my old SEAL instructor Stosh had seen it, I’d never hear the end of it.