My stomachs clench in fear. “How long do we have?” Maybe there’s a chance we can fix the boosters and thrusters to get out of here before the asteroids arrive.
“Estimated impact in T-minus thirty-nine seconds.”
I meet Houston’s eyes once more, and I can feel the fear between us. I get to my feet in an instant and start running towards the cockpit. Houston is right behind me,
“Why didn’t your ship detect an asteroid field earlier?” he yells.
Humans, always wanting a why instead of figuring out how to fix a problem. “A planet or a larger asteroid could have just exploded,” I tell him. “Any number of things. Have you ever fired a weapons system before?”
Houston stops. “Uh…”
I glare at him. “You play Earthian virtual reality simulations, correct?”
“You mean video games? Yeah.”
I point to the weapons station. “It’s the exact same thing.”
I have no idea if that is truthful. I must be getting better at sarcasm or, if it’s not sarcasm, I just said that to stop his protest. Either way, we don’t have enough time to bicker.
He’ll be fine.
Houston doesn’t need any more instruction than that, and he sits in the defense systems chair that’s way too big for him, facing the deep, coldness of space. As he looks at the controls and holds the triggers in his hands.
“They’re coming, Kear’yl!” he yells.
The Sli’vier Biel shudders as the first asteroid slams into the ship. Houston punches the trigger and the plasma blasts shoot out from the cannons. He whoops in excitement. “Just like Star Wars, baby!”
I practically leap into the captain’s chair, already punching in the sequence to enter faster-than-lightspeed, or FTL. “Evasive maneuvers commencing in…” I blink at the console, remembering how we don’t have thrusters. “Sh’vieth.” I hit the command sequence to fire up the boosters. “Houston, we have a problem.”
He snickers as he fires off three shots in succession.
“Why is that so funny?” I demand angrily. Here we are in a life or death situation and he’s taking the time to laugh. And I’m wasting precious time asking him a stupid question.
“Nothing,” he answers, although he keeps smiling.
I don’t get it, but humans are strange anyways, so I keep talking. “We can’t fly out of here without our thrusters or hyperdrive. I’m going to have to use the boosters to avoid space rock. And…” My voice trails off.
“And?” Houston asks as another rock pummels the ship.
“…And hope that this isn’t too big of an asteroid field and that it’s not too dense,” I finish for him. “Otherwise, we are going to die.”
“Heh, just when things were getting interesting. Just my luck.”
I wonder what he means by that, but we don’t have time.
“Sli’vier,” I command, “assist in evasive maneuvers. Map out probabilities for asteroid collision as far out as possible. Reinforce the shield.”
“Soldier Kear’yl,” Sli’vier says, “keep your booster efficiency energy drain under 30% or else I will have to divert power from the shields.”
That kind of scenario always seems to happen.
I set my jaw as I grip the controls. “Noted. Let’s do this.”
The change in the ship’s vector is immediate as I fire the small boosters, using inertia to propel the ship through the asteroid field. Houston and I shout at each other, warning the other to act if we spot something heading our way. To my surprise, Houston isn’t a bad shot and keeps us from close calls. He is also adept at directing me where to go if a chunk of rock is heading towards us.
Sli’vier fills in the gaps as much as possible, yet as I watch my screen, wave after wave of asteroids are headed towards us. The ship rocks under the onslaught, because we can’t blast or evade all of them. Warning sirens go off. Steam spews behind us.
And, once again, the oxygen system fails.
Just a little longer, I tell myself. I’m fatigued from such intense concentration, yet I remind myself that this is nothing compared to the battle of Maxillian XIV. Granted, half the Vzekian squad perished, but I can handle anything after that.
Maybe.
“K—Kear’yl!” Houston starts, his voice panicked.
“Soldier Kear’yl,” Sli’vier says, her calm voice a stark contrast against the human’s. “Incoming asteroid for direct impact.”
I look up at my viewscreen to see the rock headed straight towards us. There is no way I can fly out of the way in time. And there’s no way that the weapons system can shoot enough power to render the asteroid harmless.
We’re going to die.
“Divert all power to forward shields now!” I yell.
I look over to Houston, see his pallid, frightened face, before the asteroid hits. Too late, I realize that I have not buckled myself into the captain’s chair.
I’m torn from my seat at the impact. I strike my head on something hard, and the world goes black, but not before I hear Houston scream my name. It echoes and echoes in my head as I fall to a place darker than the deepest depths of space.
Chapter Seven
“KEAR’YL…KEAR’YL, GODDAMMIT, PLEASE WAKE UP.”
Please? If it was an order from my commanding officer, it would be so much easier for me to wake up. As it is, it feels like I’m trying to tear my way out of a Zespyrrian worm to break free from the clutches of darkness.
Houston’s face swims above mine. My head must be in his lap, although why, I’m not sure. There is a large wound on his head, purpling as if he bumped it. I gingerly reach out, fascinated by the human body when it’s harmed. The motion takes too much effort, and I grimace, my hand falling to my side again.
He notices that I have moved. “Kear’yl!”
I ignore the flutter in my stomach that he’s so happy to see me. I can imagine the thought of being stranded alone in space must be terrifying for a human who has never been off-world before. It’s certainly not because he’s worried about me. Even if I do hope that is true.
He’s holding a rag to my head, and I see that it’s blue with my blood. I’m injured. Badly, it seems.
“Sli’vier, status report,” I groan to my AI.
“All systems are down,” Sli’vier says. “Power is at 20%. Back-up generator is at 65%...”
She rattles off the stats for the ship. Individually, each system being down isn’t a problem, but together, they’re all creating a major threat to our survival. When she gets to the air supply, I whip my head up in alarm, and immediately pay the price. Houston holds me firmly against him as I fight momentarily.
“Kear’yl, your head is split open, you shouldn’t be moving,” he grunts.
I still, heaving shallow breaths. “Repeat that last one, Sli’vier?” I ask in a strangled voice.
“There is a leak in the oxygen tank on the exterior of the craft, and the ship is currently leaking atmosphere,” the AI says in her calm, monotonous voice. “It must be patched from the outside if your survival is to last beyond 0938 hours.”
External repairs mean spacewalking. And with how unpredictable events like asteroid fields are, that is one of the most dangerous things I can think of doing right now.
The thought terrifies me, because that’s how my mother died. Spacewalking to make repairs on this very ship.
“Sh’vieth,” I mutter.
“What?” Houston asks.
I try forcing myself to sit up, but again, he holds me fast. I fight him for a moment, but even that much exertion exhausts me. I lay back on his lap with a cry. I feel the moisture prickling at the corners of my eyes yet again, and I wonder how humans get anything done with emotions like this.
“We need to make repairs,” I tell him.
There’s no way I can spacewalk in this condition, which means that he’ll have to do it if we have any hope of surviving past this point. Despite everything, there’s this protective side of me that wants him nowhere near the
vacuum of space. I want to keep him safe.
Some fine job you’re doing of it, Kear’yl.
Now I definitely recognize that as sarcasm.
“I know we have a shitload of repairs to do,” Houston says. He looks around, and I follow his gaze, noting that the lights are off, with the emergency backup systems flashing red beams. Steam is still spewing out of some pipes and all the screens are dark.
After working so hard to fix my ship, we’re worse off than we were. Far worse.
And this is how my Ep’pa died.
I shake my head and immediately regret it as my vision spins. I close my eyes, shutting off the world and will myself to stop floating. Houston’s hands holding my head in place steady me, and I manage to peek up at him without feeling like I’m going to lose my brekkist.
“These repairs, Houston,” I tell him. “These repairs are going to be much harder.”
He snickers. “What else is new?”
“No, I mean, they’ll be much more dangerous. One of us will have to spacewalk to fix the hole in the ship.”
He pales at my statement. “You mean, put on a suit and go out into space?” All that bravado melts away with the very real threat of what’s to come.
I fight the urge to nod. “Yeah. And we don’t have much time. We’re leaking atmosphere. That’s why I have to get up.”
I watch him gulp nervously. “Don’t.”
“Houston, I have to do it.”
“I’ll do it.”
I blink up at him, and then I do manage to shake my head without feeling like I’ll vomit. “You? But Houston, you have your heart condition and you’ve never—”
“And your brains are practically spilling out on the floor Kear’yl,” he tells me firmly. “So out of the two of us, I think I’m the best candidate.”
“He is the best candidate, Soldier Kear’yl,” Sli’vier says.
He smirks. “Even Sli’vier agrees.”
“You, shut up,” I growl at the AI system. “And you,” I tell him, “you’d have no idea what you’re doing.”
He arches an eyebrow, meaning to be funny, but it makes something inside me ache. “And you think you do?”
“I can assist,” my AI system says. “There’s a shortwave comm in the space helmets that will allow me to instruct him. Passenger Houston Eastwood has a 36.7% chance of success while Soldier Kear’yl in her current state has an 11.3% chance.”
“Never tell me the odds,” Houston says, although there is a lopsided smile on his face as he says so. That must be an inside joke for humans, because it goes over my head. If anything, I like knowing my chances for success. “How long do I have, Sli’vier?”
“Approximately twenty-four minutes before the interior atmosphere is depleted and both passengers expire.”
Houston looks back at me. Some hair has fallen across his bruised forehead, and this time, when I reach out to play with those few strands, I’m ready for the effort it takes from my body. His breath hitches in his throat as he closes his eyes.
“When I get back,” he says, his voice strained, “we’ll continue right where we left off. At the breakfast table.”
“I’m sure brekkist was ruined when the asteroid impacted the ship.”
He laughs. “That’s not what I was talking about.”
Before I can ask further, he pushes me to a sitting position and helps me to my feet. Our height difference is now a problem as I lean heavily on him to walk over to my captain’s chair.
“Buckle up, sweetheart,” he says. “We’re in for a bumpy ride.” The cadence of his voice has changed and it takes me a moment to realize that he’s mimicking something, an Earthian television show maybe.
I slip my arms through the restraints. “Yes, I don’t think I’ll ever sit in this chair without strapping myself in ever again.”
His fingers brush my jawline as he continues pressing the rag to the cut on my head. “Just hold this until I get back,” he whispers.
I take it from him, feeling woozy as I do so. And then he catches my lips with another kiss and I feel even woozier at the spark between us.
“Twenty-one minutes, Passenger Eastwood,” Sli’vier says, interrupting our moment.
Houston breaks the kiss and looks intensely into my eyes once more. “I’ll be right back,” he promises.
And then he turns to leave. Without my monitors functioning, I won’t be able to see what’s happening unless he passes directly by my viewscreen. I’ll only be able to talk to him through the comm channel while he’s space walking.
“Sli’vier,” I say, “please watch over him.”
“Yes, Soldier Kear’yl,” she says.
It seems like it takes a full year-cycle on Vzeik before I hear Houston’s voice on the comm systems, filling the cockpit with his wonderful voice. “Eastwood here. Testing one, two, three.”
“I can hear you, loud and clear,” I say.
“Don’t sound so distressed, Kear’yl.” There’s some humor in his voice.
“I am distressed.”
“Me too. All right, Sli’vier, tell me how to do this.”
I hold my breath as the AI system talks him through welding a piece of scrap metal to the ship’s air supply. I’ve spacewalked plenty of times before to make repairs, but never under such duress or time constraints. If there’s the slightest hole in the hull, then we’re all dead.
Houston talks to me as he works, letting me know that he’s alive at all points. My hearts pound in my chest at the thought of him being put through such trauma to save both of our lives. It should be me out there. I’m the captain, I should be the one putting myself through such danger.
“Kear’yl, talk to me,” he says.
“What?” I ask, blinking.
“You just need to let me know that you haven’t passed out yourself,” he says. I realize that he’s worried about me as well.
I’ll have to ask him why when he’s back on the ship. What’s happening to us? Why do I feel so protective over him right now?
“I’m fine. I just want every passenger on my ship to arrive safe and alive.”
“Right,” he says in a smug voice.
I suck in a deep breath. I’ve gotten used to his mannerisms, most of them at any rate. “Sli’vier, status report on any objects in our immediate vicinity,” I say, worried that another asteroid field is going to pass right over us with him so exposed.
“None that I can detect. Although my systems are limited to a standard deviation of—”
“That will do,” I tell her, cutting off her stats. I don’t want to hear about any other risks he may have. Right now, I can pretend that he will be all right.
“Soldier Kear’yl, if I may speak to you privately,” Sli’vier says.
I flip the switch on the console, putting our conversation on a private channel. “Speak.”
“While Passenger Eastwood is spacewalking and repairing the exterior of the ship, there is the possibility that he could repair the solar panels. With the fuel reserves at a critical low and our proximity to the nearest star, we could store enough solar power to use the boosters to fly to Spaceport Bravo XXI-G for further repairs.”
I frown. “Why didn’t you say this until just now?”
“I have been running the numbers since before the asteroid storm,” Sli’vier says. Is there a hint of irritation in her voice? “The chance for success is 3.87%. Yet, at this moment, that is your highest chance for survival.”
“What are Houston’s chances for survival while repairing those panels?”
“With the further exposure to the elements without guidance systems and our position within the solar system, his odds of survival currently sit at 7.8%,” Sli’vier obliges. “The biggest risk is the strain on his heart in these conditions. It could put him into atrial fibrillation.”
“So my odds are that low, huh?” Houston’s voice says, breaking into our conversation.
I close my eyes. I would put my head in my hands if it didn’t feel
like my head was splitting apart. “Sh’vieth, I switched us to a closed channel, Sli’vier.”
“Apologies,” the AI says, “yet since this is a matter that concerns all living passengers, I required deception to have both participate in the decision.”
“I can do it,” Houston says.
“No, absolutely not. I can’t have you do this,” I tell him. “Not when it puts you in danger.”
“Kear’yl,” he says, “nothing is more dangerous to my heart than you.”
I blink, processing what he said. There’s no way I’d do anything dangerous to his heart; what he says makes absolutely no sense.
“What the blackhole does that mean?” I ask.
There’s no answer, and I scream angrily. “Dammit, Houston, answer me when I’m speaking to you!”
Still no answer.
“He has turned off communication with you, Soldier Kear’yl,” Sli’vier says. “I am now instructing him on finishing the repairs on the hull.”
“Sli’vier, I am going to kill you,” I mutter.
“You can’t do that, Soldier Kear’yl, for I am a computer. But I do have a modicum of self-preservation, as you can see.”
I groan. This must be what it’s like for Houston to talk to me. “Can you keep me updated on his progress, please?” Otherwise, I am going to fret this entire time, and my headache is already bad enough.
“Of course, Soldier Kear’yl.”
I think back to when I found out about my mother’s death. I’d been sent away to Space Corps school as a young Vzekian child, yet my parents visited me and took me on leave every chance they had. Unlike other children, I had a relationship with my parents. I still remember when my father didn’t come for a scheduled pick-up. How I was told by my teacher about my mother’s death.
I didn’t cry. Vzekians do not cry, which is why it was such a shock when I had moisture falling from my eyes. I didn’t mourn my mother’s death. Not like I should have.
My father was never the same after that, turning into a cold, Vzekian commander, even more so than normal. He became the ultimate machine for the Space Corps, assimilating planets into the alliance, sending soldiers off to battle.
Baby, it's Cold in Space: Eight Science Fiction Romances Page 31
