by Jason Kent
Ian started to answer when Jennifer grabbed his arm.
“No,” Jennifer breathed. “Don’t go in the water…” She coughed again. “They were both bleeding.” Emphasizing her words, Jennifer repeated, “Don’t go in the water!”
Ian exchanged glances with the man named Mason. He looked back at Jennifer and said, “Okay, honey. Don’t worry, we’re not going in the water.”
The Soosuri extended an arm with a human-like hand out of the water and laid it on Jennifers leg. The translator spoke his words, “Good-bye, Jennifer, taio of Suse and feti’i of the Soosuri. Go with your people and may the Great Father watch over you.”
Ian watched the aliens disappear one by one, leaving the humans alone in the cavern.
Thuros Rider joined Mason and Ian at Jennifer’s side. “Kalil’s dead. Stupid kid didn’t realize he’d taken up sides with a madman.” He leaned over and carefully examined Jennifer’s wrappings. “Looks like the little squids got it good and tight. I suggest we get her to your ship as soon as possible before trying anything fancy. Your doctor can do more than we can here.” Rider gestured his hand at their rough camp.
It took Ian a moment to respond as a feeling of helplessness swept through him, “There’s no doctor on board.”
Thuros looked from Jennifer to Ian then stood, pulling Ian away. “She probably needs surgery,” he breathed, his back turned to Jennifer. “What do mean you don’t have a doctor?”
“It’s a small crew,” Ian whispered back. “Ghost or Robin might know more about field treatments, they learn that stuff as SOF. There’s also a fully equipped infirmary…but…” He glanced over his shoulder at Jennifer. “We’ve got to get her back to Earth Space.”
“There’s twelve of them, right?” Rider persisted. “Someone will know what to do.”
Ian shook his head. “It’s just me, Ghost and Robin back on the ship. The commanding officer was killed when we were attacked four systems out from Earth.”
“Crud,” Thuros muttered. After a moment’s thought, he said, “She still needs more than we can offer here.”
Ian nodded and gathered himself and looked around the camp. After just two weeks, the marooned crew had managed to arrange things to at least serve as a functional outpost with the equipment they had at hand and some things they had obviously obtained from the locals. “Is there anything you need?”
“Give me two minutes,” Thuros said. “Mason! Grab those sample bags and the data pads. We’re leaving.”
Tom was thoroughly lost. He had only been out in the water a handful of times and never this far from the base camp. He slowed, falling behind Quade. His arms were tired from the breast strokes he was forced to use to compensate for his useless leg.
“Sushi,” Tom muttered. “The next one I meet will be sushi.”
“Up here,” Quade said over the local net.
Tom gathered his strength and managed to kick and paddle his way out of the underwater tunnel they had been following and into a broader open area. Looking up, he could see daylight piercing the green water. “Thank, God,” he breathed. “Let’s get out of here.”
“We need medical supplies,” Quade said, holding up his arm. The deep gash was still trailing thin strings of blood into the water. “It’ll heal if I can get it bandaged.”
“No kidding,” Tom muttered as he gently touched his wounded leg. “Should’ve grabbed the med-kit. Cripes this hurts.” The harpoon was lodged firmly in the meat of his thigh. There was a gaping, ugly wound around the short end of the broken shaft protruding from his leg. With every heartbeat, a small cloud of blood blossomed into the water. He tried to close the wound with both hands.
“AHHH!” Waves of pain washed over Tom and continued even after he had let go of his leg. He cursed and tried to swim up. “I need to get this fixed.”
Quade grabbed Tom’s arm and tugged him upwards. “Come on, we can’t do anything down here.”
Tom grimaced in pain as the stronger Quade pulled him upwards. He glanced around, noting how the rocky walls widened out on all sides until he could barely see the far walls. Quade angled over to the far side of the pool, looking for a decent place to exit the water.
Tom was having trouble concentrating. His mind was filled with alternating thoughts of grilling sushi and slicing up Jennifer. The side dish for the meal of revenge would be the head of those two interlopers. “Five more minutes,” Tom muttered. “Five minutes and I could have fixed everything.”
Pain screamed through Tom’s leg as Quade accidentally kicked him. The pain brought a little clarity to Tom’s thinking. He was in no condition to take on anyone. “First things first.”
“What?” Quade asked.
“Get to the surface, fix my leg, take their ship,” Tom grunted. It was as much of a plan as his muddled mind could formulate. “Then we take care of them all.”
“I’m not getting stuck on this forsaken rock,” Quade said in way of agreement. “We’re almost to the edge.”
The echoing call sounded three times before Tom took notice of it.
“What was that?” Tom looked around, confused. His eyes finally focused on Quade’s eyes through his face mask.
Even through the green-tinged water, Tom could tell Quade had gone very pale. He was staring off at a deeper portion of the sea floor.
Tom followed Quade’s gaze and saw the two dark shapes moving in fluid motions directly toward them.
Quade gave a single curse, let go of Tom, and kicked hard for the rocky shoreline twenty-five meters away.
Left spinning on his own in Quade’s wake, Tom called out, “Coward!” He glanced back at the approaching shapes, growing more distinct as they circled closer.
A third creature was now approaching from Tom’s left.
Tom turned and tried to catch up with Quade. Pain shot up his leg, causing Tom to gasp. He was not going to make it to the shore before those things reached him. Tom spun to face the creatures and breathed, “Come on, friend. The water’s fine.”
A fourth creature, all grasping tentacles, teeth, and muscled body heaved into Tom’s peripheral vision. He spun just in time to see it snatch Quade into a four-armed grip.
“Son-of-a…” Quade screamed then was cut off as razor-sharp claws easily severed his head from his body.
The creature ripping into Quade let out a warbling cry of victory.
Stunned, Tom stared at the beast and carnage blocking his path to the shore.
A shadow passed over Tom. He looked up in time to see his own hunter sweeping down on him.
Tom spat, “Thanks for nothing, Jennifer, you stinking…” Four blade-like claws piercing his body stole Tom’s breath and most of his throat. Tom was alive long enough to realize at least three creatures were fighting over the severed pieces of his body. The prize for the winner; the contents spilling from his gut.
Ian and Rider managed to get Jennifer out of the caves and back into the open. Not taking his attention from the stony footing, Ian called back, “How’s it look, Ghost?”
“Not a sign of ‘em, sir.” Ghost was bringing up the rear. He carried both his and Ian’s pistols. Ian had suggested Ghost take Tom’s automatic rifle, but the experienced SOF member had declined, saying, ‘never take an untested weapon into battle.’ Instead, Ghost had expertly dismantled the rifle, Tom’s pistol, and even the spear gun. For good measure, he had then tossed all the components into the pool of water after making sure there were no Soosuri still lingering about.
“Robin,” Ian called, “prep the ship, we’re dusting off as soon as everyone’s on board.”
“Copy that, Captain,” Robin radioed back. “Um, I have you on camera and you are not wearing your environmental gear. Protocol states…”
“Give me a sec,” Ian grunted back. They had loaded Jennifer up in a makeshift litter back in the cave. His wife may be slim, but she sure seemed to weigh a lot as dead weight. They reached the Reaper sitting on the rocky shelf.
Ghost reached for the hatch con
trols.
“Hold one, Ghost,” Ian said. He turned to Mason and Rider. “Okay. You guys were part of the scientific team, right?”
Rider nodded.
“We have not been properly introduced,” Mason said, holding out his hand. “I am…”
Ian cut the man off. “Sorry, time for that on the ride home. The big question is, can we get on board and head back to Earth or are we going to pass on some alien bug and kill half the planet?”
Mason gave a short laugh. “My good man, if there were anything to hurt humans, we would not be here now. My specialty is genetics and from what I’ve seen, there is nothing on this planet nor harbored in our systems which could harm us. The poly-nucleotide strands just aren’t fully compatible…”
“Robin,” Ian interrupted, “the Professor out here thinks we’re safe to come on board. But, let’s run a decom in the airlock just to be sure and we’ll see what they want to do with us when we’re back in Earth Space.”
“Okay,” Robin said. “I just hope you guys are fun while we sit in quarantine for six weeks.”
The decision made, it took five minutes to cycle through the airlock with the complete decontamination procedure. As Ian huddled in the lock holding Jennifer, he wondered if the antiseptics and ultraviolet bath would kill anything inside them. They had breathed the air and who knows what Jennifer had swallowed while diving or eating any of the local food.
Inside, Robin helped Ian get Jennifer to the infirmary – really just a fancy name for the medicine cabinets and auto-surgeon stowed to one side of the common room.
Robin converted the table to a bed and Ian set his wife gently down.
Ian jumped when he heard a hiss and felt a sharp pinch on his arm. He looked over to see Robin holding a massive auto-injector. His arm began to burn.
“Crap, Robin,” Ian shouted, suddenly angry. “What the heck was that?”
“Let’s just call it a Close Encounter Cocktail,” Robin said. She moved past Ian and delivered an identical dose to Jennifer.
Jennifer moaned and turned her head to one side.
“Maybe we should’ve waited on her,” Ian said, leaning over Jennifer.
“Don’t worry, Captain,” Robin said. “She just got three full-spectrum antibiotics, her vitamins for a month and enough nannites to neutralize anything that should not be inside a human body. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get the rest of our guests on board.”
Mason and Ghost were next. Rider insisted on staying outside until the end.
When Rider finally made it on board, Ghost was already in the pilot’s seat, ready to go. He called back over the intercom, “What’s the plan, sir?”
Robin activated a suspension field around Jennifer. She looked at Ian, “Sir, you want to try and take care of her now with the auto-surgeon or head for orbit?”
“What about Tom and Quade?” Mason asked from a corner of the common room. “We can’t just leave them.”
Ian looked down at Jennifer, her pale face a sharp contrast to her dark hair falling from its tight braid. He hit the intercom button.
“Get us out of here, Ghost.”
Ian ignored Mason’s sputter and looked over at Robin. Nodding at the auto-surgeon tucked quietly away in its mount, he asked, “You know how to run that thing?”
“That’s the beauty of it,” Robin said, “I don’t have to.”
“Grab a seat,” Ghost called out from the bridge.
Robin hurried forward to help Ghost at the controls. Ian settled into a small seat next to Jennifer while Mason and Rider strapped in on a bench seat across the small room.
Mason leaned forward to examine Jennifer’s bindings then twisted around to look at the auto-surgeon. “Yes, excellent,” the older man murmured.
Ian rocked in his seat as the Reaper lifted off. He stroked Jennifer’s hair and asked, “What?”
Mason had to speak up to be heard above the noise of the thrusters cutting through the atmosphere. “You have an first-rate auto-surgeon, better than the one they demonstrated to us in my pre-med days.”
“You’re a medical doctor?” Ian said. He grabbed Mason’s arm. Ian would have kissed the man if he were not strapped down for the lift-off.
“Not exactly,” Mason said. “But, I think I remember enough to prep Jennifer for surgery. As your crew-member said, the auto-surgeon will take care of the rest.”
Ian looked down at Jennifer, his hope soaring for the first time since he had seen her lying beside the pool back in the cave.
“You better get up here, sir,” Robin called back.
Rider let his head fall back against the wall behind his bench seat. “That can’t be good.”
The Reaper had stopped shaking and the thrusters had cut out for the moment, meaning they had achieved orbit and zero-gee.
Ian shrugged off his shoulder harness and pulled himself the short distance to the bridge.
Once there, he needed only one look at the main display to see the problem.
A Soosuri ship hung in space.
“Crud,” Ian muttered. He pushed himself into the command chair and started to strap in. “Ghost, if you are not already reading my mind…”
“AM drive at one hundred percent,” Ghost said. “We are running.”
“But where?” Robin said.
“How soon until they can fire at us?” Ian said.
“Not sure,” Ghost replied. “They’re only forty thousand klicks out.”
“Get the planet between us and them,” Ian said. He leaned around his chair and forsaking the intercom, shouted, “Professor, Rider, stay strapped in.” Ian faced forward again. “We’re going for a little ride.”
On the display, Ian watched as the alien ship altered its course to pursue the Reaper.
“Looks like our little friends down there called for back-up,” Ghost said.
“No,” Ian said, remembering the Soosuri in the pool. “If both Jennifer’s ship and their attacker were destroyed in a fight, these guys are probably trying to find out what happened. If we had a ship overdue for a few weeks, we’d send out someone to take a look.”
“We might be overdue if we don’t do something,” Ghost said. Belatedly, he added, “Sir.”
Ian thought for a moment before speaking.
“How far to our wormhole, Robin?”
Robin checked the nav computer and shook her head. Two hours at max speed.
“Maybe we should fight,” Ghost said.
“No,” Ian said. “We got lucky last time. They were as surprised by us showing up as we were at finding them.”
“They are closing the gap,” Robin noted.
“Find us a hole,” Ian said. “Find it fast.”
Robin went to work. Just two minutes later she said, “There’s a wormhole threshold three minutes away.”
“We don’t know where it goes,” Ghost said.
“Maybe they don’t know either,” Ian said. “Power up the jump drive and take us in.” He thought wryly of Six’s jump from Earth Space out to Saturn Space.
“Powering up,” Robin said.
An alarm sounded on Ghosts console. Ian felt the lateral thrusters kick in and the ship entered a violent roll maneuver.
“Proximity alert,” Ghost reported coolly. “They’re shooting at us.”
“They’re too far away,” Ian said.
Concentrating on his console, Ghost said. “I’m lining up for the threshold.”
“Ninety seconds,” Robin said.
Ian tightened his shoulder straps as the Reaper began to rattle. His thoughts drifted back to Jennifer. All he wanted to do was put enough space between him and the enemy so they could get her the care she desperately needed.
“Three, two, one, threshold!” Robin called.
Seconds later, Ian found himself staring at a gas giant. “Are we in the same system?
Robin and Ghost both checked the sensors.
Ghost was nodding.
“We’re back out at the wormhole cluster from jump sixte
en,” Robin said. “Same system.” She continued tapping on the control board. “Our planned jump point is two minutes away. I’m resetting the wormhole drive.”
“Are we going to be gone before the other ship gets to our new shortcut?” Ian asked.
“It’ll be close,” Ghost called. “If I may, sir?”
“Now is not the time to be timid, Lieutenant,” Ian replied.
“I can send a self-guided cruiser back toward the exit,” Ghost suggested.
“Mine the wormhole,” Ian said and nodded. “Do it.”
It took Ghost only a few taps on his console to ready the weapon. “Cruiser has been released and is heading to the threshold.”
“One minute,” Robin called. “Everything looks good.”
“What’s the yield on that warhead,” Ian asked.
“Nineteen kilotons,” Ghost replied, not looking up from his board.
“Cripes,” Ian said, “remind me to check the rest of the manifest when we have a free moment.”
“Active wormhole!” Ghost called out. “It’s them.”
“The missile?” Ian checked his control board. A cruiser was designed to be undetectable until its passive sensors picked up a target. It did not register even with the Reaper’s sensors.
“We’ll find out in a second,” Ghost said.
Just as Ghost finished speaking, the cruiser lit up their sensors as its boost motor ignited. The Alien ship had no time to respond.
The screens darkened as the nuclear blast disintegrated the alien ship.
“Twenty seconds,” Robin called out.
“Please tell me we’re not going to get caught in a debris field, radiation blast, or something equally horrendous,” Ian said.
Ghost looked from his sensors back to Ian. “Not if we get to the wormhole first.”
“Robin?” Ian said.
“I can’t go any faster,” Robin said in a sing-song voice. “Okay, three, two, one, threshold!”
Ian was shoved back in his seat by the now familiar but still unpleasant sensation of wormhole travel. When it was over and they found themselves one jump closer to home, Ian rolled out of the harness and headed off the bridge. Over his shoulder he called back, “Ghost, give it an hour quiet time and get us to the next jump. Robin, you’re the expert on the auto-surgeon. Mason says he can help prep.”
