by Jake Bible
The ship came up out of the tunnel at full speed. I cut the thrusters and shook my head for a second, getting rid of the sudden vertigo that assaulted me as the expected orientation didn’t occur. The ship had been falling, diving down, but when it reached the end of the tunnel, it came up and out, like we’d been flying up through a hole, not down through one.
But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was what we came up out of.
A wave of blood-red water cleared from the view screen as I set the ship to hover in the air. I hovered there and checked and double checked all of the readings coming from the scanner console. Yep. I was exactly where I thought I was. Not that I knew the coordinates, just recognized the scenery. It wasn’t water.
“Hey, what do you know?” I huffed. “A lake of boiling blood. What a foing surprise. I never would have guessed we’d end up here. Yay…”
The ship’s bridge was silent. No more klaxons. No more warnings that I was going to kill us. No more strange asides from the navigation system AI. I took that as a good sign and set the controls to autopilot and left the ship to hover where it was as I went down to check on Mgurn.
Another good sign was seeing Mgurn with his eyes open and staring at me as I came into the med bay. He gave a little wave then sighed.
“I failed you, Joe,” Mgurn said. “I was supposed to protect you. I was supposed to assist you. Instead, I fell to my knees and succumbed to the force of this planet.”
“That planet,” I corrected.
“What planet?” he asked.
“That planet,” I repeated. “You’re talking about a planet we left. We aren’t there anymore. I don’t think…”
I tapped at my wrist and brought up a holo of the planet we were currently on. Yep, I was right. We were no longer on the black planet with the scorched creatures. We were halfway across the Daedalus System on a whole other planet.
“Yeah, totally new planet,” I said. “Oh, and guess what?”
“Lake of boiling blood?” Mgurn asked.
“Bingo, buddy,” I said, giving him a thumbs up and a wink. “You win the foing prize.”
“I do not believe being on a planet with a lake of boiling blood would be considered winning a prize,” Mgurn said. “But you are Salvage Merc One, and I am just your assistant, so I will defer to your interpretation.”
“It was a joke,” I said. “A bad one.”
“Can you help me out of this med chamber?” Mgurn asked. “I am feeling much better.”
“Are you?” I asked and opened the chamber. “How about you sit up and show me.”
He sat up. Then fell back.
“I am not as well as I thought,” he admitted.
“No crud, buddy,” I said. “You took quite the psychic punch back there. What was that all about? You kept saying sorrow over and over.”
“It was horrible, Joe,” Mgurn replied, covering his eyes with all four hands. “I could feel their pain, their grief, their—”
“Sorrow?” I smirked.
“Don’t mock them, Joe,” Mgurn said. “They have been like that for millennia. Waiting. All alone. Cold, hungry, confused, in great pain. Never allowed to die. They waited and waited for us to arrive. We were their salvation.”
“Then why the fo did they try to kill us?” I asked. “Not much thanks for salvation, if you ask me.”
“That was their sorrow,” Mgurn said. “We had come to set them free, but they had been left to kill us. They did not want to, but they could not stop themselves.”
“Bummer,” I said. “So why could you feel all of that and I couldn’t?”
“I do not know,” Mgurn answered. “Either I am more attuned to an experience such as that or you are shut off to it. Perhaps it would affect anyone, but because you hold the artifact inside, you did not feel their pain and sorrow.”
“Or because I’m the bull man,” I said. I held up my hand and wiggled my fingers. “Or I was.”
“It is good to see that your affliction has not returned,” Mgurn said. He sighed and shifted in the chamber. “I think I will sleep some more. I am not as well as I had first thought.”
“Yeah, you said that,” I responded.
I walked to him and patted him on the shoulder.
“Good job out there,” I said.
“Do not patronize me,” he muttered, but was already falling back asleep.
“I wasn’t,” I said. “You’re still alive, so I call that a good job.”
He didn’t respond, and after a few seconds, he began to snore. Leforians snoring is just so damn cute. And annoying since their nasal passages produce a sound like two tubas on helium. But still cute as hell because their mandibles flutter like bony leaves. It cracks me up every time I see it happen.
I closed the med chamber just in case it could do a little more work on him, checked the readings to make sure it was running properly, then stumbled my way out of the med bay and down the corridor. I was ten kinds of exhausted and needed to get some sleep. If anything weird happened, ha ha ha, the ship would let me know. I had shields at full and sensors dialed up to eleven.
Down two more corridors, up a ladder, down another corridor, and I was at the door to my quarters. I barely got the door open and my boots off before I collapsed sideways across my bed. Screw my armor, screw my environmental suit, screw my uniform. I was not getting up from that bed.
At least I had already taken my helmet off. Also a good thing the environmental suit could filter and cycle out urine because I had to pee like a race gump and I was not getting up.
Sleep hit me like a ton of space bricks, and I was out, out sweet candle.
Nine
I had no idea what time it was, just that I felt a fo ton better when I woke up.
I also felt sticky. But sticky was easy to handle.
I got up from my bed and stumbled into the bathroom. I was able to unclasp my battle armor and let that fall away. I unzipped my environmental suit and slid out of that, kicking it into the pile with my armor. My uniform was a little trickier since it was kind of damp and stuck to me in places I had to be careful of when pulling it off.
It took me a while, but I was finally able to get naked and into the shower. I steamed for a good thirty minutes, just letting the moisture coat every single millimeter of my body. If I could have let it seep into my soul, I would have. But getting my body clean was good enough.
Stepping out of the steam, I felt like a new man. The blast drier kicked in, and I turned in a lazy circle as the warm air dried all the moisture from me. I was clean, warm, and ready for the day.
I wiped the condensation from the bathroom mirror and took a look at myself. A little bruised and banged up, but my body looked fine. Nothing I hadn’t healed from before. And with the artifact in me, I probably wouldn’t be seeing a trace of the bruises by the next day. I smiled at myself and gave my image a thumbs up. I was ready to check on Mgurn, check on the ship, and figure out what the hell I needed to do on a planet with a lake of boiling blood.
Then I noticed the problem. Huh. Well…poop.
I frowned at my image and gingerly reached up to touch them. They were sharp as crud. I was surprised that they weren’t heavier than they were. My head should have been tilting to one side or the other each time I turned my neck. But they felt perfectly natural and balanced.
“New day, new problem,” I said to my image. “I better get dressed.”
Getting undressed had been easy. Everything slid from my shoulders down. Nothing had to go over my head. I wanted to pull on a t-shirt, but that wasn’t happening, so I just reversed the previous process and slipped into a fresh uniform, zipped it up, took a deep breath, and left my quarters.
My first stop was the med bay, but the chamber was empty, and Mgurn was gone. I had half-expected that. Without me there to stop him, I’m sure he woke up in the night and crawled his ass up to the bridge. That would be a very Mgurn thing to do.
So, second stop was the bridge. I found him there sitti
ng in the pilot’s seat, going over scanner readings and checking ship diagnostics.
“Hey, buddy,” I said. “Feeling better?”
“Quite,” Mgurn replied without turning around.
“Been here long?” I asked and waited for him to look back at me.
“Only a couple of hours,” Mgurn said. “I know you disapprove of me being here so fast, but my body is in good working order, so I might as well get back to work.”
“Yeah, um, your body isn’t my number one priority at the moment,” I said. “I’m kinda thinking about myself.”
Mgurn’s shoulders sagged. “Of course you are, Joe.”
“I don’t think you get what I mean,” I said. “Mgurn? Would it be possible for you to tear your attention away from the scanners and look at me?”
He sighed and made a big production of having to be torn away from his work and turn around. As alarming as things were, I did get a good deal of amusement from seeing the look on his face as he stared at me, mandibles wide, eyes wider, completely stunned.
“Are those…?” he asked.
“Yep,” I replied.
“Did you wake up with them?” he asked.
“Yep,” I said.
“Do they hurt?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I replied.
“Joe…you have horns,” he said.
“Very aware of that, buddy,” I said and reached up to touch the sharp tips. “So don’t piss me off today, or I’ll gore you to death.”
“That is less funny than the joke you told last night,” Mgurn said. “In fact, I find nothing funny about this.”
“At least I don’t have hooves for hands,” I said and wiggled my fingers. “Horns are easy to deal with, hooves not so much.”
“But we do not have a suit helmet that can adapt to horned heads,” Mgurn said. “Our multi-species suits are for non-horned species. We’ll never get anything to fit.”
“Good thing I’m inside a ship and don’t need a helmet,” I said.
“But what about when you do need a helmet?” Mgurn exclaimed. He was getting a little panicked. “This is your quest, Joe. You have to go outside the ship at some point to complete it.”
“Then let’s hope the atmosphere of this planet is hospitable,” I said.
He stared at me, blinking rapidly.
“It’s not hospitable is it?” I asked.
“No, it is not,” he replied. “The carbon dioxide levels would kill you with one breath.”
“Huh,” I responded. “That’s not good.”
“That is only one of the not goods,” Mgurn said. “Sit down. I’ll show you.”
I sat down. He showed me.
“Size estimation?” I asked.
The readout in front of me told me the creature was close to a kilometer long and a quarter of that wide. It swam just below the surface of the lake of boiling blood, its back breaching now and again, but that was all. It never came up to breathe, it never showed its head at all. Around it swam smaller creatures, a fraction of the big one’s size, but no less deadly. They did show their heads every once in a while, and surprise, surprise, surprise there was a lot of teeth.
So many teeth.
Teeth so long and sharp and chaotic that they sprung from out of the creatures’ lips, piercing their flesh here and there. It was like a toddler’s drawings had come to life and the things were dropped in a lake of boiling blood because why the hell not, right?
“We don’t know that I have to do anything with those creatures,” I said. “In this part of my vision, I turned away from the lake of boiling blood and had a chit chat with a talking tree.”
“There are no trees on the shore,” Mgurn said. “I cannot find signs of any vegetation on this planet at all. Unless it is under the surface of the lake.”
“The lake of boiling blood,” I said.
“You do not need to keep referring to it like that,” Mgurn said. “Calling it a lake will suffice.”
“But lake of boiling blood is fun to say,” I responded. “And I need something fun right now or I’m going to lose my mind.”
“I believe the horns will keep your mind inside your skull, so you need not worry about losing it,” Mgurn said.
“Okay, that was a good one,” I said.
“Thank you,” Mgurn replied. He sighed. It was expected. “You figured out the last part, you will figure out this part.”
“Yeah, but how much time do I have?” I asked and pointed up at my horns. “I’m obviously behind schedule if these things showed up.”
I nodded my chin at the view screen.
“And I can’t go out there without a helmet,” I continued. “So I’m sort of stuck.”
“Perhaps you are not,” Mgurn said. “We may be looking at this the wrong way, Joe.”
“Is there a right way to look at it?” I asked.
Mgurn looked confused. “Of course there is. Do not be absurd. There is always a right way. What kind of question is that?”
“Chill, buddy,” I said. “Just a little sarcasm.”
He shook his head. “Well, stop it. I am being serious.”
“Yes, you are,” I said and nodded. “About what?”
“About not having to go outside,” Mgurn said. He patted the arm of the pilot’s seat. “This may be exactly where we are supposed to be.”
“Go on,” I said and plopped into the co-pilot’s seat.
“The last stop went bad as soon as we set foot on the planet,” Mgurn said. “There had been no need to even leave the ship. You proved that by diving us straight into the ring of fire. A portal opened, and we ended up on this planet.”
“So we just need to fly around and find the next portal, is that it?” I asked. “That could take a lot longer than I have, buddy.”
“Then we must solve this part of the quest,” Mgurn said. “We must pass this trial soon.”
“Good idea,” I said. I leaned back in the chair and lifted my feet up onto the console. Mgurn smacked them off. “Sorry.”
“The talking tree?” Mgurn asked. “What did it say to you in your vision?”
I thought back to the first time I’d been witness to the lake of boiling blood. The tree with the slit for a mouth.
“You stare into the void and drown,” the tree slit had said.
“It said I stare into the void and drown,” I replied. “It said I would drown more than a few times, actually. It was all about me drowning.”
“You stare into the void and drown,” Mgurn mused, one of his hands stroking his chin. Which he didn’t have. A set of quad-jaws, but no chin. “Stare into the void and drown…”
“I think it was just being a dick,” I said. “It was kind of a dickish tree.”
Mgurn ignored me, lost in thought. The ship hovered in place above the lake of boiling blood, the massive creature below showing its back now and again. I stared at the churning red until my eyes began to sting and my head ached. I reached up to rub my head, but ended up pricking my finger on the end of a sharp horn.
“You stare into the void and drown,” Mgurn muttered. “You stare into the void and drown.”
“What void?” I asked. “I remember looking up into the sky and seeing absolutely nothing. It was empty. Did it mean that void?”
“Void,” Mgurn kept muttering. “Void, void, void… Hold on.”
“You got something, buddy?” I asked. I swung my head towards him and he flinched.
“Careful with those, please,” Mgurn said. He thought for a second longer. “What if it is not a noun?”
“What if it isn’t?” I asked, playing along. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.
“What if it is a verb?” Mgurn asked. “What if it is the act of voiding? What if what we have to do is void this lake?”
“Void the lake?” I asked. “Like what? Pull the drain plug and let all the boiling blood swirl down to the sewer?”
“I am unsure if there is an actual sewer,” Mgurn responded. “But, yes,
that would be the idea.”
“Huh,” I said. “What do the scanners say?”
“About what?” Mgurn asked.
“A giant foing drain plug at the bottom of the lake of boiling blood?” I said.
“Oh, there is no giant drain plug,” Mgurn said and pointed at the scanner readings. “I would have seen it. I did not see it.”
“But we have a big ol’ lake of boiling blood monster and its tiny sidekicks, so we’ve got that going for us,” I said. “Yippee.”
“We may have to fight them to get to the bottom of the lake,” Mgurn said.
“Yeah, I was already thinking that,” I responded.
“I do not know what we are supposed to do when we reach the bottom,” Mgurn said.
“Yeah, already thinking that too,” I said.
“I could be wrong,” he continued.
“Again with the already thinking,” I said. “But I’m not coming up with any better ideas, and these horns aren’t just going to go away on their own. I didn’t have to complete the last trial for my fingers to go back to normal, I just needed to be starting it. Maybe if we start this, and it turns out right, we’ll know because my horns go away.”
“Maybe,” Mgurn said.
“That’d be cool if they just shrunk back into my head,” I said. “No, wait! Better would be if they fell off, and I could keep them! We could make cups out of them and drink all of the beer from my horns!”
“That would be disgusting,” Mgurn said. “I would not drink from your horns.”
“Terpigcrud,” I said. “You’d totally do it because it would look badass.”
“While I do not want to waste time arguing the point, I must insist that I will never drink from one of those horns, Joe,” Mgurn said. “Never.”
“Well, you’re no foing fun,” I said and pouted. “Fine. I’ll have a horn for each hand. Neener neener.”
“Neener neener? I do not know what that means,” Mgurn said. He turned to the ship’s controls. “We should get moving before other things spring from your body and you insist I consume beer from them.”
