Lifeboat: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 2)

by Felix R. Savage

  The Krijistal wear flower-patterned suits, or else black ones, Eskitul had said. We’ll have blue bands around our limbs, so you can tell us apart.

  It turned out that the rrikstis’ suits were only white for purposes of camouflage on Europa. They had chameleon functionality, and right now they were stealthed black, except for the identification bands. These ironically turned out to be the shade of blue favored by the UN, which also made an appearance in the SoD’s logo. In the blacked-out cargo hold, they were invisible, anyway.

  “Velocity five meters per second,” Keelraiser said calmly in their headsets, having relayed the same information to the rriksti in their own language.

  Jack cradled his blaster in his free arm. It was on a tether attached to a belt around his waist. He also had wrist rockets: tubes of compressed CO2 strapped to his forearms, for maneuvering in freefall. It was humbling to bear in mind that all this fantastic kit was merely odds and ends left over from the rrikstis’ ten-year survival feat. The Cloudeater had had mobility pods originally, but they’d been dismantled for materials.

  “Velocity three meters per second,” Keelraiser said.

  They were rising up alongside the gargantuan Lightbringer. The plan was for Keelraiser to drop them right into the massive hole in the side of the ship. It was unknown, apparently, what kind of resistance they might meet. Keelraiser refused to dock the Cloudeater with the Lightbringer. The shuttle was unarmed, so it was going to stand off, out of reach of any man-portable weapons the Krijistal might have.

  “I see the SoD,” Keelraiser said. “It’s docked on the edge of the hole.”

  Alexei shouted, “Docked?!”

  “There are cables connecting the two ships.” Keelraiser paused. “They have begun harvesting resources from the SoD. There are Krijistal around it …”

  Eskitul’s deep voice broke in. “We continue with the operation. We will board the Lightbringer and put an end to this. However, if the humans wish to return to their ship …”

  “They’ll die,” Keelraiser said. “Look at that! The schleerps are shooting at us!” Its voice scaled up into the rriksti frequencies and was lost to hearing.

  Jack grimaced. It sounded as if Keelraiser was getting a bit windy. But Jack had made his own mind up on the spot. The situation was worse than he’d expected. There was no time to spare. “We’ll get off here, Eskitul,” he said. “Thanks for the lift.”

  “I cannot offer you any backup.”

  “Chuck Norris spits on backup,” Alexei said.

  “I completely understand,” Jack said more diplomatically. “You take care of your own business. We’ve got this.”

  He pushed off and flew towards the loading door at the rear of the shuttle. It was just like a C-130. He might even get splinters in his arse sliding down that ramp, if there were any gravity. Jupiter-light shone in like a stormy sunset. Jack beheld the Lightbringer, a steel crag tilted at a crazy angle, close enough to hit with a well-flung rock. Jesus, Keelraiser was cutting it close! What a madman! Mad alien, I mean!

  Another human-sized figure flew past Jack. That was Alexei. His rriksti suit trapped his splinted right arm against his side, leaving him free to move it from the elbow down. He held his blaster in his left hand. CO2 vapor spurted from his wrist rockets. Jack reached for the twist-dials of his own rockets, eager not to get left in Alexei’s dust.

  Then he flipped in the air so he was flying backwards. He scanned the figures strap-hanging against the walls.

  There.

  He changed direction with a flourish of his arm, and zoomed at the small weedy figure trying to hide among the tall ones.

  He grabbed Skyler’s arm.

  Skyler struggled wildly.

  “You,” Jack said, voice thick with contempt, “are not getting out of this.”

  He kicked off from the wall and flew headlong for the exit, dragging Skyler with him.

  Sparks flashed off the roof of the cargo bay.

  The Krijistal were shooting into the shuttle.

  The ramp started to close.

  Jack opened the throttles of his wrist rockets all the way and hurtled out over the top of the ramp, instinctively diving to put the SoD’s main hab between himself and the aliens.

  *

  The shuttle meandered onward over the vast crater in the Lightbringer’s side.

  As Jack and Skyler fell, the SoD’s main hab rose up like a steel moon and hid the Cloudeater from sight.

  Jack let go of Skyler. He transferred both hands to his blaster and got both index fingers around the trigger.

  A black-suited alien flew over the top of the main hab, silhouetted against Jupiter.

  Jack squeezed the trigger. He saw exactly what happened next in horrifying detail.

  The alien started to come apart at one side of its torso, like a paper doll ripped by an angry child. Blood jetted into the vacuum, shining red, turning to spears of dark ice. The rip opened wider. Jack’s invisible beam was raking across the alien’s body. A linear gout of blood spurted out. The two halves of the body separated.

  The top half drifted away across Jupiter’s disk.

  A javelin of frozen blood flew past Jack’s head, followed by the alien’s bottom half.

  He distantly heard Skyler screaming in his headset.

  He flew after the alien’s top half and recovered the weapon still clutched in its hand. It looked like a Super Soaker water pistol, but Jack felt sure it did something supremely nasty.

  While he was up there he had a look for Alexei. He didn’t see him, but he spotted more aliens heading his way. They’d been hanging out near the storage module. Now they were spreading out to circle around the main hab.

  A spot on the rim of the hab began to glow red-hot.

  Then another.

  Jack returned fire, first with his captured Super Soaker, then with his blaster. He didn’t think he hit anything. If hitting a moving target while you yourself were moving was hard on Earth, it was an order of magnitude harder in zero-gee, where every action induced an equal and opposite reaction. Jack’s first kill had been pure luck. But for the same reasons, the Krijistal weren’t hitting him, so it was a wash.

  “Alexei! Alexei, where are you?” he yelled.

  “Hold still so we can kill you,” purred an unknown rriksti voice.

  “No thanks.”

  Jack flipped and dived back behind the main hab.

  Skyler had not even tried to engage the enemy. He’d made straight for what must look to him like safety. He was crawling over the outside of the bridge module, heading for the airlock hatch.

  Jack flew towards him, glancing at his captured Super Soaker to see if he could make out how many more shots it had in it.

  The bridge airlock opened. A Krijistal bounded out. It grabbed the edge of the hatch for stability and leveled its weapon at Skyler.

  Jack slammed into it from behind. Catching it by the gun arm, he pressed his blaster into the back of its neck and sawed its head off.

  The blood spurted up so high it looked like the Krijistal had turned into a Golden Flower Fountain firework, except the flowers were red.

  “Remember, remember, the fifth of November,” Jack muttered, letting the body go.

  “What?” Skyler shouted, after he stopped screaming.

  “Gunpowder, treason, and plot,” Jack told him. “Don’t get the idea I saved your life on purpose. The bastard was in the way, that’s all.”

  Skyler dropped feet-first into the airlock chamber. Jack joined him before the little twat could slam the hatch. Tight squeeze! He wriggled around so his head was alongside Skyler’s feet.

  Then they had to wait out the pressurization cycle.

  “The inside of the outer hatch,” said Skyler, who could see it, “is starting to glow red.”

  “They’re wasting juice,” Jack said. “Once the cycle finishes, they’ll be able to come in the usual way, by opening the hatch. I wish we could lock it from the inside. I suppose the designers never envisioned this.
They should have, though, shouldn’t they? They should have.”

  The cycle finished. Jack undogged the inner hatch and hurtled into the bridge, sweeping it with his Super Soaker.

  The bridge had only one occupant.

  Kate.

  She floated in a slowly spreading aurora of blood and fluid globules. Jack couldn’t see any gaping wounds on her. However, he had never seen such bruises and contusions on a living human being. He wouldn’t even have known it was Kate if not for her short blonde hair.

  “All dead, or mostly dead?” he muttered, in a trance, riding out his own horrified reaction. “If it’s the former, there’s only one thing to do …”

  “Go through their pockets for loose change,” said Alexei, in his headset. “I’m in the storage module. I hid until the fuckers got out of the way, and then sneaked in. There was one in the engineering module. I killed it. These blasters are great. Hannah’s not here. The reactor is running flat out; I don’t want to touch anything. Where are you?”

  “Bridge,” Jack said. “With Skyler.” Alexei sounded pumped. A happy warrior. How was Jack going to tell him Kate was dead? The pressure door in the aft wall of the bridge was open. UV light shone down the tube from the main hab, a heartbreaking touch of normality.

  “Is Kate there?” Alexei asked.

  Get it over with, Jack told himself. “Alexei, she’s dead, I’m afraid. I’m very sorry.”

  Alexei let loose a stream of Russian. The bits Jack understood were filthy, the tone highly emotional.

  “Just think about how many of them you’re going to kill for her,” he shouted, and then Skyler waved to attract his attention.

  “She’s alive!” Skyler exclaimed. “Guys, she’s trying to say something!”

  “Fuck, you scared me!” Alexei said. “I’m coming! Stay there! I’ll go through the main hab.”

  “No, stay where you are,” Jack shouted, knowing Alexei would ignore him. He flew over to Skyler and Kate.

  Her eyelids trembled. Her split, swollen lips seemed to be forming words.

  With their rriksti suits on, Jack and Skyler couldn’t hear anything from the outside world.

  Jack turned the inside of his left wrist up. He found the rough spot Hriklif had showed him and pressed twice, quickly. His suit flowed down to his waist. He inhaled the rank air of the SoD. The familiar noise of the fans drowned out Kate’s groans.

  “Guard the keel tube,” Jack snapped at Skyler. He flew to the first-aid locker. He tore into the trauma kit and found a syringe of auto-regulated morphine, a safe painkiller developed by DARPA. The only thing he could do for Kate right now was relieve the incredible pain she must be suffering. “Make a fist, love.”

  “Didn’t tell them,” she croaked.

  “The bastards who did this to you? We’re going to destroy them.”

  “Destroy them? After we came all this way?” Kate’s lips twitched as if she were trying to smile.

  Jack bowed his head and pressed Kate’s fist against his forehead. “You were right. We should have nuked the bloody thing the moment we got here.”

  “Damn skippy.”

  “Go on, say it: ‘I told you so.’”

  She freed her hand and weakly tweaked his earlobe, an old trick of hers. “Better late than never, Killer.”

  Jack cast an uneasy glance up at the airlock hatch. It was about time for the Krijistal to burst in, if they were going to. Sure enough, the pressure indicator showed that the airlock was cycling.

  In a hurry, Jack searched for a vein on Kate’s horrifically bruised arm, pushed the syringe in, and pulled it back a little. Not enough blood. Missed the damn vein. He turned her over and injected her in one buttock, hating that he was hurting her more.

  “Oh, that feels cold,” she rasped. “Kinda like what they do, before they hit you again.”

  “Sssh. Don’t try to talk.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “This should kick in within a few seconds.”

  “Didn’t tell them how to … operate the guns.” Kate smiled. Blood welled from her lips. “Told them to … get fucked.”

  “You’re a rock star, ma’am,” Jack said. “We’re going to deal with the ones trying to get in here, then we’ll stand off and nuke ‘em.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  Her smile faded. “They took … Hannah.”

  “Oh God, Kate.”

  “Giles … too. Aboard … Lightbringer.”

  “We’ll get them back,” Jack said, praying that Eskitul’s boarding operation succeeded. He withdrew the syringe from Kate’s backside. Letting her go, he grabbed his blaster and frantically adjusted the beam strength.

  The airlock hatch opened. An otherworldly shriek pierced the air.

  CHAPTER 41

  Two aliens swam into the bridge, firing their Super Soakers. The weapons made an absolutely horrible noise, as if the invisible beams emitted from their muzzles tortured the very air molecules they encountered.

  Skyler dived for the keel tube.

  Cowardly twat.

  Molten droplets sprayed from the aft wall, adding the reek of burning plastic to the ozone smell of ionized air.

  Several priorities competed in Jack’s mind.

  Kill kill kill, but—

  Shooting up the bridge of the SoD would be just disastrous as getting shot by the Krijistal, in the longer term.

  With this in mind he had already dialed his blaster’s beam power back to minimum. He held down the trigger and swung the beam across the aliens’ black-shrouded faces.

  The beam left a visible track in the air, because the air was so damn dirty. It ignited dust and flies. It caught the empty syringe Jack had dropped and made it glow. Floating globules of Kate’s blood boiled into vapor.

  The aliens dropped their weapons and clutched their faces … blinded.

  Now they could no longer see, they fired wildly, making red-hot holes in the aft wall.

  Jack hugged the ceiling and drilled Super Soaker shots into the tops of their heads.

  The Super Soaker hollowed out the insides of their skulls, vaporizing the contents into thin air. A faint blue glow dispersed. Interesting.

  The aliens’ suits tried to seal over the holes. Smart material? Not so smart after all, trying to save the dead.

  An indicator on the life-support console flashed. A buzzer sounded. The environmental radiation monitoring system had just picked up a spike in radioactivity.

  Jack floundered over to the console and silenced the annoying buzzer. The movement caused him to rebound into the middle of the bridge. Pushing the Krijistal corpses away, he squinted up into the empty airlock chamber.

  “Close it,” Kate rasped.

  She sounded a bit more together. The morphine must be kicking in. And she hadn’t been hit. The day was looking up.

  “I was just wondering if I should go out and head them off before they try that again,” Jack said. “These water-pistol efforts seem to give off quite a lot of radioactivity.”

  “Screw that, Killer. Close the airlock and prepare to launch. We’ll back off so they can’t board us again.”

  “They’ve been stealing our water, haven’t they? Have we got enough left to move the ship?”

  “Dunno. Try.”

  Jack moved his headset’s mic closer to his mouth. “Alexei! I’m up to four. I’m beating your kill count, you pussy.”

  No answer.

  Jack’s heart sank. “Kate, I’m just going to check on Alexei’s progress.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “I hope so,” Jack muttered. He flew to the keel tube and floated down the padded tunnel, gripping his blaster in both hands in front of him.

  A shadow blotted out the light at the end of the tunnel. Jack’s fingers spasmed.

  The blaster’s stiff trigger pull saved Skyler’s life. Before Jack could complete the pull, Skyler cannoned into him, empty hands stretched out to break his fall. His momentum pushed them both back into the bridge.
<
br />   Jack kicked Skyler aside and flew back to the tube, just in time to drill a Krijistal in the face. He was not fast enough to stop it from getting off a shot.

  Behind him, Kate screamed.

  Skyler flew to the pressure door crank and twirled it frantically. The pressure door slid out of its housing in the aft wall and began to close..

  Another Krijistal shouldered into the keel tube behind the one Jack had killed.

  Head down on the aft wall, toes tucked through a grab handle on the ceiling, Jack squeezed off one more blaster shot through the closing door.

  The heavy steel door sighed shut.

  Alexei suddenly shouted in their headsets, “I’m falling back to the storage module!”

  “There are fucking thousands of them!” Jack bellowed. “Are you hit?”

  “It’s only a scratch,” Alexei grunted. “Closing the pressure door now. Oh, you fucker! Svoloch!”

  Jack pushed off from the aft wall, flipping in the air, to check on Kate.

  Hot liquid splashed into his face. He tasted blood, and dashed it out of his eyes.

  Kate bucked spasmodically.

  The Krijistal’s shot had caught her on the thigh.

  Arterial blood skipped across the bridge in bright red zero-gee ropes.

  Jack gathered her into his arms, wedged her upper body between his chest and thighs, clamped his hands over the wound.

  Blood jetted out between his fingers.

  “Get me the first aid kit!” he bawled. “SKYLER! I need a tourniquet! Bandages! Right fucking now!”

  Skyler didn’t react. Just floated near the ceiling, eyes bugging out.

  Kate died in Jack’s arms.

  “Oh Jesus,” Jack said. “Oh, ma’am. This is a bad day.”

  He hugged her tightly and then let go of her. Her blood was all over the bridge. It was going to get into the electronics.

  He screamed at Skyler until his voice cracked, ordering him to clean the blood up since he was completely fucking unfit for any other imaginable purpose. While he yelled, he was collecting all the loose weapons floating around—two blasters, three Super Soakers—and clipping them to his belt like some kind of piratical hula skirt. After a while he noticed that Alexei was shouting in his headset, desperate to know what had happened.