Escape from Enceladus (Stark Raven Voyages Book 1)

by Jake Elwood

  After that, Chan spent a long moment staring into the gas-filled lab, hoping to see Joss and Vogel come staggering out. Five seconds was enough to persuade him that he was only making things worse, and for him to work up his nerve. He breathed deeply, oxygenating his blood, then took a deep breath, held it, and charged into the fog.

  He almost immediately tripped and fell sprawling. He groped blindly, trying to make sense of what he'd hit. He discovered he'd landed on top of Vogel, who was stretched full-length on the floor. Joss was on her knees by his shoulders, sagged forward with her forehead against the floor. She must have been dragging him toward the door when she collapsed.

  He scooped her up. He couldn't see the doorway, but he could see eddies in the fog that told him where the doorway had to be. Three strides brought him to the corridor, where he dropped her. A moment later he was back with Vogel.

  Chapter 7

  The siren shut itself off and the gas stopped pumping as they carried Vogel into the next room. It was another lab, this one filled with state-of-the-art 3-D imaging equipment. They set Vogel on a projector table and Singh set to work removing his suit. The boy didn't look good. His face was white and bloodless, except for a crimson line across his left temple where the skin was torn. He was limp, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow. He didn't react as Singh moved him back and forth, working the suit down over his shoulders.

  "There's an emergency station in the hallway," Singh said, not lifting his eyes from his work. "There's probably a first aid kit."

  Joss hurried out. Chan didn't move. He felt drained, lifeless. All he could do was stare at Vogel's slack face.

  "Get his head," Singh snapped, and Chan moved to the end of the table. He supported Vogel's head and shoulders while Singh worked the vac suit down over the boy's body.

  "You have no business being in command if you're going to fall apart in a crisis." There was real venom in Singh's voice. "Who put you in charge, anyway?"

  Joss came in with a first aid kit in one hand and a fire axe in the other. She dropped the axe by the door and opened the kit. Chan set Vogel's head down and stepped back as Singh gave terse orders, asking for parts from the kit.

  There were more lacerations across Vogel's chest and left shoulder. None of it looked deep, but bright red blood was pooling on the table top. Chan watched, numb, as Singh sprayed the wounds first with an antiseptic, and then with a coagulant.

  Chan picked up the axe and stepped into the hallway, telling himself that he couldn't help, that he was only in the way. His hands tightened on the axe handle. He wanted to find the creatures, to lash out, to DO something.

  Somewhere behind him Vogel moaned, and Chan set off down the hall, desperate to be out of earshot. He was filled with a sudden yearning for the honest smell of sludge. Life on Coriolis Station had been bad, but it had been life. Vogel had been there, alive, healthy.

  He had a sudden, bitter memory of their last conversation on the station. Vogel, his eyes shining, had been so grateful. "I can't tell you what this means to me, James. It's a brilliant idea. If I never come back to this station again, it'll be because of you."

  Another moan echoed down the corridor, and Chan squeezed the axe handle until his knuckles cracked. He threw open the next door in the corridor, telling himself he was scouting, desperate to distract himself.

  He was in a morgue. It wasn't what the room had been designed for, but that was the use it served now. He wasn't sure how many bodies he saw. More than ten, fewer than twenty, but bodies of every description. He could almost trace how things had gone wrong by the changes in the corpses.

  Three of them were zipped neatly into white body bags. Once they might have been laid out on gurneys, but now they were laid out side-by-side on the floor in one corner. They had been moved because the gurneys were needed. There were four gurneys. A young Chinese woman in a blue medical gown lay peacefully, eyes closed, with a tag around her big toe. Next to her was a stocky white man, also in a hospital gown. There was a line of stitches along his cheek, tracing the path of a half-healed gash. His neck bulged. Chan could see five or six different points where growing tentacles were on the verge of bursting through. He was strapped to the gurney, with lines of bruise on his arms and legs where he'd tried to break free. No one had bothered to close his eyes or tag his toe.

  The third gurney held a woman with fresh lacerations on her arms and hands. There were no stitches. No one had tried to close the wounds, or even cleaned the blood from her hands. She wore blue scrubs, and he could see a bullet hole between her breasts.

  The last gurney was a mess. He thought it might have once contained a brawny young man in green fatigues. The legs were still largely intact, held down by a broad canvas strap. There were more restraints, but they were in tatters. The upper part of the body was a shredded mess. Chan could see tentacles, and chunks of tentacles. Someone had sprayed the body with bullets until there wasn't much left. The gurney sagged in the middle, so full of holes that, even in microgravity, it could barely support itself.

  After that, the survivors must have been too busy for body bags and gurneys. The rest of the corpses were in two piles, one for humans and one for monsters.

  Chan shivered. At first he thought it was nerves, until he noticed his breath misting in front of him. Someone had turned off the heat to this room. It was the excuse he needed to get out of there. He headed for the door, turning his back on the carnage, wishing he could erase it from his mind's eye.

  The corridor ended in a hairpin turn. The building had to be triangular, then. Pretty soon he would reach the other airlock, the one with the body blocking the hatch. There were three doors in this section of the corridor, and he opened them one at a time. There was a storage room full of mysterious boxes and bottles, and a mechanical room with the base's surprisingly small power plant.

  The third door opened onto a staircase. There was a pool of blood under the stairs, as if some hurt person had gone there to hide. A trail of blood, trickles and spatters, led from the pool of blood up the stairs.

  Chan shifted his grip on the axe and followed.

  He found a body at the top of the stairs. It was a woman of about sixty, dressed in a lab coat. Her left hand was a mangled mess with the stubs of tentacles beginning to show. She was huddled in a corner of the landing with her knees drawn up to her chest and a pistol in her hand. She had shot herself in the throat.

  Chan just looked at her for a while. Liz would say that she deserved it, he supposed. She might even be right. Still, this woman who reminded Chan of his mother had died alone and afraid, with as much courage and dignity as she could muster.

  He took the gun from her hand. It was an old-school gunpowder weapon with lead slugs. Chan slid it into the pouch on his thigh. Then he looked at the hatch at the top of the stairs.

  Escape pod.

  The text on the hatch was simple and to the point. Beyond the hatch was a one-person escape pod with enough power to escape the gravity of Enceladus and at least get moving toward Coriolis Station. Chan stared at the hatch for a long time, yearning to open it.

  "Who the hell planned this?" he muttered. "Thirty people on the base, and there's an escape pod for one?" He shook his head, turned his back on the hatch, and clumped his way down the stairs.

  A side corridor led to another changing room. A figure in a vac suit lay sprawled on the floor, halfway into the airlock, keeping the hatch from closing. Chan hit the hatch controls, opening the door fully, and dragged the body out of the way. He dropped the body in the corner of the dressing room without looking at the face inside the helmet. He'd seen enough.

  Then he stopped, hands on his hips, thinking. In his mind he traced the route he'd taken through the base. Most of the rooms he'd gone through had been up against the outside walls. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that there was a large triangular area in the center of the base that he hadn't explored.

  He retraced his steps and returned to the lab where he'd left
the others. He found Singh and Joss slumped in chairs, looking haggard and spent. Vogel was stretched on the table, a silver emergency blanket covering him from toes to chin. His face was still bone-white, his eyes still closed, but his lips were moving. He was murmuring, and occasionally moaning, and sometimes his head thrashed from side to side. His hands and feet twitched, making the blanket rustle. He was not resting easy.

  There was relief in Joss's eyes when she looked up at him, and that disturbed him. Couldn't she see that he was in over his head?

  "What now?" he said. They just looked at him, not speaking, so he sighed. Waiting for the creatures to come back wasn't an idea with much appeal. This lab didn't have a fire suppression system, either. The next encounter with the monsters would be the last.

  "We can't stay here," he said. "Let's carry Vogel to the airlock, like we talked about before. Then I'll go over to the office area and call for help." He glanced uneasily at the boy as he thrashed on the table. If Vogel was going to turn into one of those creatures, in the close confines of an airlock or a rescue ship...

  Well, he wasn't going to leave the boy behind. He walked to the end of the table. "Somebody get his feet."

  Joss said, "Maybe we should go to the safe room instead."

  He stared at her blankly. "The what?"

  She gestured to the doorway, and he turned. There was a little map, less than fifteen centimetres square, beside the door. He had a vague memory of seeing the same thing in several different rooms. It was just part of the furnishings, invisible until he made himself look at it.

  It was a map of the base, with the lab they were in outlined in blue. A dotted red line led from their lab, down the corridor to the left, past the escape pod stairwell, through a door that Chan hadn't noticed, and into a red-outlined triangular room in the center of the base. The triangular room was labeled "Safe Room."

  "Now that you mention it," said Chan, "let's go there."

  They left Singh with Vogel. Chan led the way, axe in hand, with Joss right behind him. She was armed with the pipe wrench this time. They moved down the corridor, trying to be quick but quiet, Chan cringing every time their boot magnets clanked on the floor. The base was eerily quiet, and he wondered where the creatures had gone. A safe room should have sturdy doors, though. And communication equipment, and likely food and water and first aid equipment. They might be home free in a matter of moments. They would scout the room, then bring Vogel over. If the monsters would just stay in hiding for a few more minutes…

  "What's in there?" Joss gestured at the door with the staircase.

  "Death," Chan said, and kept walking.

  In the corner of the building the corridor made a tight turn. Chan had missed a doorway on the inside of the curve. He opened it now, and stepped into a short corridor. A solid-looking steel hatch filled the opposite end of the corridor.

  A wheel was set in the middle of the hatch, and he gave it a twist. The hatch was already unlocked. He put a hand on the hatch and pushed.

  The hatch swung inward, and he caught a brief glimpse of the interior. Benches lined the walls, there were rows of cabinets, and he thought he saw a simple kitchen. Then motion caught his eye. A familiar shape was writhing across the floor toward him. Another shape sprang from behind a cabinet, and a tentacle dropped from the ceiling, reached through the hatch, and snaked toward his wrist.

  With a hoarse cry, Chan slammed the hatch shut on the tentacle. He dropped the axe, pulling on the wheel with both hands, and the creature made a bestial squealing noise. The tentacle flailed, the tip no more than a couple of centimetres from the back of his hand, and he brought his foot up, bracing it against the frame of the hatch. He pulled for all he was worth.

  Joss reached under his leg to pick up the axe. There wasn't much room to swing, but she did her best. She grazed his head with her first chop, and he swore, leaning down and to one side to give her room. She swung with a will, aiming for the point where the tentacle was caught between the hatch and the frame. She hit the frame, the steel rang like a church bell, and Joss swore. She swung again, and the axe hit the tentacle, denting it but not breaking the gray skin.

  "Hit it like you mean it," Chan grunted, and she swung again. This time the skin broke, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the spray of blood. He kept his eyes shut as she chopped and chopped. Finally the hatch moved toward him, and he heard Joss say, "There. It's shut."

  He spun the wheel clockwise, locking it, then held on with one hand while he used the sleeve of his suit to wipe his face. He heard the clack of footsteps as Joss hurried away, then returned a moment later. She pushed something into his hand, and he touched it to his face. It was some sort of tissue, and he used it to wipe his face clean. Only then did he open his eyes.

  The hatch was spattered with blood, and a strip of flesh hung from the top edge. The rest of the tentacle was on the floor at his feet, still twitching. There was blood all over the front of his suit, and he could feel more of it dripping down his neck.

  "Are you all right?" she asked, and he nodded.

  "Thanks, Joss. I'm glad you were here."

  The compliment seemed to fluster her, so he changed the subject. "Hand me that pipe wrench, would you?"

  The hatch couldn't be locked from the outside, but he tightened the wrench on the wheel with the wrench handle against the frame of the hatch. "That should hold them," he said.

  They trudged back to the lab, limp and spent in the aftermath of the adrenaline surge. "I think that's all of them," Chan said. "It better be. I don't know how much more I can take."

  They heard Vogel long before they reached the door. He was moaning, almost wailing, and Chan felt his stomach churn. He pushed open the door of the lab.

  Singh had put a canvas strap across Vogel's chest, and it was the only thing keeping the boy on the table. Vogel thrashed and flailed, his eyes open, staring unseeing at the ceiling. He was covered in sweat, and fresh blood seeped from his wounds.

  "Hey," said Chan, making himself approach the table. "Hey, kid, hang in there. It's going to be all right." He took Vogel's hand, shocked by how hot the boy's skin was. "It'll be all right."

  There was a smell coming from Vogel. There was sweat and blood and the astringent tang of the antiseptic, but there was something else. A sickly-sweet smell that made him think of compost-rich soil. He looked at Vogel's hand, then ran his eyes up the boy's arm to the seeping gash on his shoulder.

  Something moved under Vogel's skin.

  Chan flinched, fighting the urge to recoil. Vogel moaned again, and Chan squeezed his hand. "It's going to be all right," he lied. "Everything is going to be okay."

  Then he let go of Vogel's fever-hot hand and hurried out of the lab. Joss said something as he brushed past her, he couldn't make out the words, and he ignored her, desperate to be out of that awful, stifling little room.

  Things had quieted down in the lab next door. The splintered door hung half open, and the air inside was clear. He could smell the gas, like a greasy taste on the back of his tongue, but he had no trouble breathing. He marched past the lab without stopping.

  He dropped into a chair in the office area and tapped the screen in front of him. He looked for a coms icon, and frowned. The familiar microphone symbol was surrounded by a circle with a bar across it. No connection.

  Chan switched to the desk Singh had used and tapped the screen to wake it up. The same symbol appeared. He tapped the microphone image anyway, and the screen filled with an error message. No connection possible at this time. Contact your technical lead.

  It took him ten minutes to track the problem down. A tiny closet between two cubicles contained a rat's nest of cables and half a dozen network components. The uplink box was the key element for off-planet transmissions. It was a simple plastic box no bigger than Chan's two gloved hands, and it was broken. Not accidentally, either. Someone had rammed a screwdriver through the case.

  He stared at the uplink box for a long time, lost in thought. If Vogel had ev
en a ghost of a chance, it depended on rapid intervention by a good medical team. He didn't really believe that anything in the solar system could save the boy now, but he still had hopes that the rest of them could survive. All they had to do was call for help.

  Without the uplink box, all three of them were dead. Well, two of them were, anyway. The third person would presumably survive, rescued by whoever was behind it all. One member of the team still had a chance.

  Whoever it was who had destroyed the uplink box.

  He plodded back through the office, his mind whirling, trying to find another conclusion. The simple fact, though, was that they were alone in the station. Liz had never made it inside. The wild-eyed scientist hadn't spent more than five seconds in the office area as he tore through on the way to the airlock.

  The saboteur was Vogel, or Singh, or Joss.

  He thought of the pistol in his thigh pocket. He thought about killing the others. Everyone who was innocent was doomed. Shooting everyone was the only way to be sure the guilty one didn't get away.

  He chuckled grimly. "That's some stellar leadership, buddy. Shoot everyone who follows you. Great plan."

  The gravity on Enceladus was so slight as to be inconsequential, but Chan felt as if he weighed a thousand kilos. Every step was an effort. He left the office block and opened the door to the lab area, wondering if things could possibly get worse.

  Things were worse. Vogel was screaming now. Chan heard it as soon as he opened the door. The screams grew louder with every step he took, and when he pushed open the door to the lab, he wanted to cover his ears.

  Singh was doing exactly that, sitting by the wall, staring at his feet, hands pressed over his ears. Joss was holding one of Vogel's hands in both of hers, and it took both of her hands to maintain a grip as he thrashed and flailed. Vogel's face was bright red, and flecks of spittle flew from his mouth as he convulsed. The skin was stretched tight over several protrusions in his shoulder, and there were lumps growing under the skin of his neck.