by Aaron Bunce
Lex stepped out of her suit’s padded exo-layer, the cold air so much more noticeable through the tight body suit.
Anna held out the brighter of the two flashlights. “Oh, wait,” she said, then reached back and pulled a pair of work gloves out of her back pocket, “these might help…in case you’ve got to grab onto hot stuff.”
“Thanks,” Lex said, accepting both, then moved to the wall, knelt, and shone the light up into the wall space. It looked impossibly small now, the shiny, clad piles running up and into the darkness.
“It should be a straight run, Lex. There will be another panel access door like this on the other end. Exactly like it,” Lana said and pointed to the catch releases located on the back of the door they’d removed.
“I got it,” Lex said, and then to keep her mind off how she would open them by herself, she said, “I get in, I get the weapon away from him, and I open the doors for you. What about after that?”
“Uh, open the door, we rush in. Yeah, sounds good,” Lana said.
“I mean with Titan, and what we’re going to do next,” Lex said, fighting hard to hide her irritation. Erik had turned their ship upside down, on top of the more difficult notions like, was it safe to touch down on Titan, or should they find some way to limp their way somewhere else. “I don’t want this to sound mean, but I’m not the kind of person that operates well without a solid plan. What is our next move? I need to know.”
They all looked to each other, the silence stretching until Poole moved forward out of the darkness.
“Listen to Jacky-Boy. He’s got thoughts. They’re bold, definitive, with a splash of crazy.”
Jacoby winced and cleared his throat. “You get those doors open and get the navigational computer. It sounds like Lana isn’t sure she will know how to pilot the Betty using…whatever cobbled together system Erik has put together back there. But maybe she can. We’ll see. I say, we get in. She looks at it. If she isn’t one hundred percent confident it’s doable, we hook the NavCom back up and let it take us to the surface.”
“What? Excuse me? Um, no,” Lana yelled, “forget the fact that the software is corrupted. It took us working around the clock for days to pull and bypass everything. Even with us all working together, we wouldn’t be able to hook it back up in anything less than, I don’t know, eight to ten hours.”
“Erik is out. That means we have you. Can you pilot the Betty to the surface without it? How long do we have to work with?” Soraya asked, cutting in.
“Well, I mean. It would depend on…how can you even consider this?” Lana sputtered.
“We’ve got three, maybe four hours, max,” Anna said.
“No. I mean, why…how? That’s fucking insane. You’re really prepared to trust…whatever is on that computer? We would have to be crazy…”
“Oh, Lana-banana, I think the ship has sailed on that one,” Poole said, answering for the group. “You’re on a jacked up crazy train, screaming towards the grand-freaking-Central Station of everything’s-freaking-possibleville. I can’t think of an organism–meat sack or not, better equipped to take us the rest of the way in.”
“This is madness.”
“You missed the freaky bone creatures and the giant killer worm beast with the exploding brain sac. Count yourself fortunate for that,” Lex said, and threw Lana a wink.
“Okay. Fine,” Lana said, stomping her foot. Lex thought she looked faintly reminiscent of a little girl having a tantrum. “Get me in there and I’ll look at what he’s got. Then we can see what we’re working with. And since we’re on crazy. We have to seal this end of the passage up after you get in there. The one on the other end won’t open unless this one is closed.”
“Why would I expect any different? Alright, I’ll see you all on the other side…maybe.” And before she could hesitate, Lex crawled into the dark opening.
-4:02 Until Entry
Lex stooped into the tight wall space and carefully stood, her finely tuned senses spreading out and over the space around her. It wasn’t anything supernatural, mind you, although she had to consider that Poole had been modifying and enhancing them behind the scenes. It was a survival instinct, an outwardly extending spiderweb designed to perceive details she might otherwise miss.
It was the only way a soldier could survive when crawling through otherwise abysmal conditions–throat-closing, choking smoke, stiflingly humid jungle overgrowth, blinding fog, or cold, strength-sapping rain. She remembered what her survival tactics training officer used one morning, as he and a dozen other training officers ran down the row of cots, blowing air horns, tipping over beds, and banging on garbage can lids. Two and a half hours before reverie.
“It’s dark, it’s loud, its smokey, you’re on fire, you’re bleeding, your bones are broken. You’re dying but not dead. One sense is your enemy. Rely on it and it’ll stab you in the back. Use them all, trust them all. You’re not dead until you’re dead.”
She looked down, clamped the small light between her teeth, and pulled on the gloves. Then she leaned back, braced her foot against the wall behind her, and reached for a bracket two feet straight up. She didn’t really understand what he’d mean by “use them all, trust them all” for some time. But once it made sense, well, things changed.
Lex grunted, the small light rolling precariously in her mouth. She heaved her weight up, fighting to push both feet outwards and hold her position. With a snort, she extended her left arm, pushing with both legs and grabbed another bracket.
She managed another pull, the routine becoming more fluid in her mind. Although it wasn’t easy, akin to a one armed pull up in a space with no room to swing her lower body, while caged in by potentially scalding hot, radioactive pipes on either side.
The heavy, lead-lined panel popped back into place beneath her, a horrible black replacing the intermittent flickering of Anna’s light. It was on now. Full forward and no retreat.
Her breath fogged the space, only the exertion and coursing blood helping her to fight off the chill. But that was just another of the eight hundred things she was trying not to think about now that she was locked inside–how many REM of radiation she was absorbing, if that even mattered, if Erik knew how to handle her rifle, or if the heavy, lead-line panel ahead of her would even open. Working in concert, her and Lana had struggled to open the first, would she…
Too preoccupied by her thoughts, Lex missed a handhold on the next bracket. She swung down on her right arm, just managing to keep her hold. The momentum carried her right into the coolant line. The pipe didn’t move, although the insulation crumpled loudly. Fighting, she pulled herself upright again, found purchase with her legs, and lurched up to the next bracket.
“Not hot…thank you for not being hot,” Lex whispered after bracing against the wall and pulling the flashlight out of her mouth. She was a drooling mess, but that hardly mattered. Who would see it?
“I do, my lovely. And you look like an adorable red-headed Labrador, just slobbering all over the place. So…cute,” Poole said, suddenly, once again bursting the illusion that she was ever actually alone.
“Don’t you have anyone else to annoy right now?”
“Actually, no,” he replied, his tone, as usual, brighter than the situation dictated. “It’s scramble-scramble, work-work-work, hurry up or we’re all going to die with that ‘other’ crowd right now. Besides, Lana runs logic circles in her head. She’s like a hyper puppy that chases its tail until it gets dizzy. After it barfs on carpet, it does it all over again. How are things with you? Getting in a good pump? Feeling swole?”
“I’m not exactly…in a place…where I can chat,” Lex grunted, struggling to talk around the flashlight in her mouth. She fought for another handhold, slid back down, and just managed to get her fingers around the next bracket. Her forearms were cramping already, the same fire shooting through her shoulders, abs, thighs…pretty much her entire body.
Breathe through it. Rest when you can. Air is important. Breathe.
“I can help with that. My connectivity with you has increased exponentially over the last hour or so, since…well, you know, growing my biological network within the J-man’s body back up. Take a breather and let Daddy-P work.”
“No time to rest,” Lex snarled and heaved herself up again. She tilted her head back, casting the beam as far into the claustrophobic space as possible. But she could only bend so far and tilt her head so far back in the tight space. Lana said it was a straight shot, but she didn’t delude herself that it would literally be straight. Nothing on spacecraft ever was.
Lex’s muscles tingled as she hung from the bracket. It felt oddly like they were falling asleep…except not quite. When she kicked off for the next hold, the strength and speed took her off guard and she almost overshot the mark.
“You’re almost to the top of the run, then it’ll be a nice little crawl and far less mountain climbing,” Poole said, and although his voice bounced and echoed off the space around her, she could not see him. Was that on purpose?
“How do you…know that?”
“Trust me. When it comes to dusty, dark, vacuous spaces, I’m kind of an authority.”
A shudder passed through the space around her. The vibration, however subtle, resonated out through the wall, brackets, and into the coolant pipes. The metal seemed to hum in the confines around her.
That is normal. I’m just going to tell myself that is normal. Move, Lex.
Lex wrenched herself up another bracket, a backwards tip of the head revealing a junction in the passage just above. She forced herself up another segment, chiding her inner desire to stop, to catch her breath and savor a moment of rest. But they couldn’t afford to waste those precious moments, however few or necessary they were.
“What is your plan for when you get in there? Some stealthy combat rolls, leaping from shadow to shadow, then a well-placed karate chop to the neck to immobilize your prey? Rambo-style?”
The Betty shuddered around her, the vibration resonating through the brackets and pipes increasing. Then something gurgled above and to her right. The noise moved, seemingly flowing over the junction as if some unseen deluge of water would appear and crash down onto her at any moment.
“You’re adorable. But no,” she replied, looking up and seeing nothing.
The noise–not unlike her stomach rumbling when she was hungry–grew louder, echoing from the pipe to her right. Then the insulation started to crinkle.
“Ignore it. Keep moving. You’re doing great. I have the utmost faith in you,” Poole said.
A wave of heat rolled over her, the dark space noticeable warmer than even a few moments ago. Lex wiped her nose, then moved to pull herself up, just as a droplet of something cold and wet hit the top of her head.
Plink. Another droplet fell from somewhere above, landing in the darkness below.
“I’m glad one of us does,” Lex grunted, and heaved herself up to the final bracket before the junction. She switched handholds, shaking her right out to force some blood back into the fingers, then pulled the flashlight out of her mouth and eyed the space above. Her breath rose into the light beam, a glossy sheen of moisture covering the junction’s ceiling. She doubted it was all from her, and after watching it for a moment, realized it was a healthy layer of ice.
Plink-Plink.
“Few confrontations happen close enough for one person to grab another. I need to be able to get that damned access panel open on the other end. And if I can, will I be able to do it without making so much noise he hears me, then get out of this sardine can before he runs me through the meat grinder.”
Shit, she thought, watching as the drops seemed to droop from the ceiling above, stretch, and then detach. One fell and landed on her forehead. She talked to keep her mind moving and her panic at bay. But it didn’t entirely work. The light revealed that the junction wasn’t just a dogleg but a “T” intersection, meaning it wasn’t the straight shot Lana claimed it to be. And on top of that, she was hanging from the last bracket. Only a ledge hovered above, offering no easy handholds or grip points on either side.
“Straight shot is a relative phrase. Up and to the right. How does that sound? That will take us in the general direction of where we want to go,” Poole said, and she silently agreed.
Even without the melting ice, Lex could feel the heat continue to build, radiating off the coolant pipe to her right. The gurgling liquid and shrinking insulation practically sang a song of danger.
“Once more into the breach,” she grunted and heaved herself up. Her hand hooked the edge, but her fingers immediately squirmed, not finding the secure purchase she desperately needed. Fingers sliding, arm shaking, her hand slid against the leaded paint.
Lex let her hand drop, her weight shifting back to her right arm as she inspected the glove on her left. It wasn’t just covered in dust, but a sloppy, slimy paste created by the moisture raining down from above.
“Cool, because that makes this so much easier.”
She brushed the glove against her thigh, switched grip hands, and coiled her legs.
“Fast. Use your legs, crisscross beneath you and push,” Poole said, a flicker of shadow catching the light.
Lex counted down silently from three and leapt upwards, pushing with all the strength in her legs while pulling with her right. She caught the ledge, throwing her arm up and over to the elbow, then swung her other up and hooked the ledge. Feet scrabbling, legs kicking, she hung there for a moment, neither gaining any ground nor sliding back.
The light danced from right to left as she kicked, illuminating a curving run of insufferably tight crawl space ahead. Except it wasn’t open like the climb beneath her, it was bracketed by the large coolant lines on either side, but also crisscrossed with dozens of smaller pipes and X-shaped bracing members. She tensed just as her hands started to slide.
Lex kicked and pushed, her boots catching, finding purchase, and slipping again. One hand clawed forward, slid back, and the other took its place.
“No, you…son of a…biscuit.” She fought for leverage as her weight methodically pulled back and down.
“Kick your right foot further up and behind you. Then push yourself forward,” Poole said.
“I’m…trying. Legs…too long,” she gasped, flailing with her right leg, but the space was too cramped. “Grab onto me. Pull me up!”
Lex felt solid hands wrap around her wrists, the sensation odd when she couldn’t see him. The skin grew tight, as if he were trying to pull.
“Damnit. I can only exhibit force on you, but I have no purchase with the environment around us,” he growled, “come on. You can do this. Fight!”
She did fight–her feet kicking and scrabbling against the walls, her hands clawing, slipping, and lashing against the ground. But she couldn’t seem to make any headway. It felt like doing a pullup on a greased slip-n-slide and she was forced to only use her shoulders.
“This isn’t the end of your story, soldier! Get up onto that ledge! Come on, move-move-move, Alex! This is your beachhead, your parachute-drop behind enemy lines. Show me some grit!”
She only passively heard him, the subtle but distinctive shift in his voice–Jacoby’s gruff baritone smoothing into a silkier tenor. But he called her “Alex” and that flipped a switch.
Lex slapped her left foot up against the wall, wrenching it higher until the leg bent awkwardly. She jammed her hips forward and up, cramming the contorted leg a little higher each time. Finally, it stuck like a wedge, the unnatural position sending stabbing pains down to her foot and up into her pelvis. She stopped sliding for a moment and fought to capitalize.
“That’s it! Use the space. If it won’t give you leverage, then you take it!” He was not just Ayo in voice anymore, but she could smell him, his smooth hands still wrapped around her wrists.
Lex pulled with one arm and jabbed the other out as far as she could reach. She didn’t pull this time, but splayed her elbow out, widening her base. Her momentum changed, and she stopped s
liding. Kicking off the wall, Lex threw her other arm forward, kicking out her elbow again.
She heard her arm contact the coolant line to her left, her legs pushing through for several seconds before the pain hit. It felt like something bit her at first, then it flashed incredibly cold, and finally, unbelievably hot.
Her head flinched to the left, towards the pain. “Shit!” Lex gasped, her breath erupting in a rush and popping the flashlight right out of her mouth in the process. It hit her arm, rolled crazily, and before she could move, tumble back and into the darkness beneath her.
“No!” she yelled, her left arm pulling away, only to push right back into the screaming-hot coolant pipe. The pain ripped up her arm, but she pushed against it, using the leverage to wrench her weight forward. Her right arm splayed further under the pressure, the heat burning her triceps just before it touched.
Poole was there, in her mind, in her ear, and all around…she felt him absorbing as much of the pain as possible, but that just made it worse. There was a point where her body said enough is enough and blocked it out. She found it while hanging in her harness from that tree after the Thicc Girl went down. It kept her from spiraling into pain induced madness, from giving up. But it wasn’t happening now. She felt every nerve ending searing closed, the moisture burning out of her skin, and the muscle contracting.
Lex snarled and cried, kicking to hurt the wall, squeezing her body up and onto the ledge. She slid onto her stomach, one final kick clearing her thighs as well. With a disparaged grunt, Lex pulled one arm into her body and then the other.
The coolant gurgled and rushed through the pipes, the space around her now suffocatingly dark and hot. She used the pain to keep moving, as fuel to push her body through the increasingly intense waves of radiant heat.
One arm bunched up beneath her, then the other, spasms making her fingers twitch against the ground. That was fine, she didn’t need fine motor skills anyway.
