Stowaway (Redleg in Space Book 1)

by Z D Dean

  In the split second following the initial volley, Zade could hear Jorloss’s garbled screams coming from somewhere behind him. More than anything he wanted to help is fallen comrade, but he knew if he didn’t first neutralize the threat, there would be no need to patch up his friend. As he gingerly peaked over the surrounding berms, Zade could see that the SSILF had caught each other in a crossfire. One in the south team was completely disabled, laying in a heap, and another must have had its legs taken out, because it was firing from the prone position.

  “Jorloss. Jorloss! I need you to focus. Do you know how to use a tourniquet?” Zade said as he detached his first aid pouch and tossed it in the direction of Jorloss’s screaming.

  “Yes,” was all Jorloss could manage through gritted teeth.

  “I tossed you my first aid kit. Tourniquet which ever limb was hit, tighten it until the bleeding fucking stops, then get Samix on god-damned voice communications. She needs to know what the hell is going on. I have to deal with these fuckers, or they’ll smoke us both,” the adrenaline of the ambush had thrown Zade back into his combat lexicon.

  After giving his instructions, Zade sprang into action. The first priority was the two SSILF to the north. They were the closest and they had fire superiority. He slid to the north-facing berm and rolled onto his back. Prepping one of the new therm grenades, Zade pulled up the northern SSILFs’ feeds and stuck his hand up. He could see the clear red signature of his arm, which appeared to be just over 50 feet away, meaning that he had to land the grenade between 20 and 50 feet from his position. With a deep breath, he tossed the grenade over his head and watched to see where it landed on the SSILF feed. The blinding flash, the deafening boom, and fact that both SSILF feeds went dark meant that he nailed them.

  Moving back to the center of the depression, he could see that the lone remaining SSILF had not moved and was still firing blindly at their position. The SSILF was targeting their current location, which was near the western end of the hole. Zade slowly crawled to the far end of the depression, ensuring that no part of his body silhouetted above the berm. As he passed Jorloss, he could see that the scientist was missing the lower portion of his left arm, but was able to staunch the bleeding. The scientist had taken on the same washed out pallor he had when Zade first scared him, and he seemed to be unresponsive.

  Shit, he’s going into shock.

  Zade didn’t have time to help him, and instead continued to the eastern side of their location. Slowly, he peaked his head over the berm. The SSILF was still firing at Zade’s previous location. Initially, Zade planned on using his last grenade, but the SSILF had positioned itself directly in front of the path the team cut through the dense jungle. The grenade would make the area impassable. Jorloss’s condition meant that Zade would have to carry him back to the ship. He did not have the time to bushwhack through the dense jungle, nor the additional arm required to carry the scientist and cut a new path. Zade was left with only the option to engage with his rifle. Slowly Zade raised the rifle to the top of the berm and settled his targeting reticle on the SSILF’s chest. As he squeezed the trigger, nothing happened. Retreating back behind the relative safety of the berm, Zade turned the rifle to examine its display. It read, “Administrative Lock,” making the rifle nothing more than a paper weight. The only entity authorized to administer a weapons lock was Mur. The mastermind of this attack was now clear, but the purpose was still a mystery.

  Zade tossed the rifle aside and began trying to figure out how he would handle the remaining enemy. Grenades were out of the question, and his sidearm was too small to do any damage. As he let his hands fall to his sides in near resignation, Zade felt the handle of his buzz saw. It would be a bold move, but he was in a drastic situation. Zade grabbed the buzz saw and launched himself, out of the depression, towards the remaining SSILF. As he closed the distance, Zade could see the arc flickering on and off. Every time the ground lost contact the arc would stop. When he was almost on top of the oblivious SSILF, Zade made his move, swinging the buzz saw down into the robot’s torso. The force of the swing lifted the ground into the air, and the buzz saw harmlessly struck the SSILF’s shoulder. As soon as the ground landed, the arc fired, and Zade ripped it back out of the SSILF, leaving a molten gash from sternum to shoulder. Preparing for another strike, Zade slid his right foot onto the tether to ensure he would maintain an arc. His next swings took the SSILF’s left arm, right arm, and head in quick succession.

  With the remaining threat neutralized, Zade headed back to help Jorloss. Upon inspection of the injury, Zade could see a black ichor oozing through the stump below the tourniquet. This black fluid was clearly Jorloss’s equivalent of blood, and the growing pool on the ground meant that he had lost more than he could afford to lose. The first thing Zade did was tighten the tourniquet to stop the blood loss, then he began trying to wake Jorloss up. Water, a sharp slap, nothing was working. Zade reached for his first aid kit, and broke open smelling salts. Unsure if they would bring Jorloss back to consciousness after blood loss, or even whether Jorloss had a nose, Zade began waving them in front of the scientist’s face. With a gasp Jorloss’s bulbous green eyes flew open.

  “Welcome back to the land of the living,” Zade said as he loaded the scientific samples into his own assault pack.

  “I’m cold and thirsty,” Jorloss forced out.

  “We’re getting back to the ship. I’m going to carry you, but you have to do something for me,” Zade said as he stood and hoisted Jorloss onto his back.

  “What’s that?” Jorloss asked weakly.

  “Stay awake, Jorloss,” Zade said, straightening himself and moving Jorloss to a better carrying position. “Tell me a story. Tell me about how you and Samix know each other.”

  Zade started toward the ship at full sprint, but quickly slowed to a walk, to minimize how much he jarred Jorloss around. While running, Zade tried to contact Samix, but as he had feared, communications were being jammed, most likely by Mur. As he slowed to a slower pace, a narrative began populating in his interface. Jorloss had chosen to communicate via interface as opposed to the more difficult talking.

  My family was very poor when I was growing up. As I’m sure you’re aware if you did any research, my species comes from a jungle world much like this one. Years of living in the jungle made my people specialize in biology and medicine. My parents, both gifted botanists, traveled throughout Unity space doing freelance work. When I got older, I planned to help them with their work. As freelancers, my parents couldn’t afford to send me to school, so they were providing a homeschool of sorts, teaching me botany.

  Samix’s family hired my parents to tend their gardens around the same time they adopted Samix. As the only other child at their home, Samix and I became friends quickly. Every day after she completed school, she would search my family’s quarters and the gardens until she found me. If it was a slow day, and my parents were done teaching me their trade, they would let me go and play. Initially, I was never allowed into the house to play, but after Samix was adopted, it wasn’t an issue.

  As summer slowly turned to winter, our friendship grew. The harsh Xi’Ga winter kept everyone non-indigenous to the planet inside, but Samix would come by my family’s quarters every day to play. As hired help, our house wasn’t very big, maybe slightly larger than the ship’s galley, common area, and two of the quarters combined. My family never complained; most of the help lived in houses that held four or five families. As skilled help, we got a smaller house all to ourselves. As the winter dragged on, Samix tired of our small play area and began petitioning her parents to let me come into her house. Eventually they caved under her relentless persistence, and I was allowed to go visit her in the big house.

  As a very class-oriented species, my parents would never allow me to go visit Samix on my own. They considered it presumptuous. She always had to invite me first, and then I could go play. Her parents eventually warmed up to me, and started letting me take meals with Samix and occasionally spend
the night. Years went by with this arrangement. Samix grew and advanced her education, while I grew and learned more about my family’s trade. By the fifth or sixth year my parents had slowed down, and I had taken up most of their work on the property.

  It was around this time that Samix, not one for class division as an orphan, demanded that both families sit down and hash out our differences. One day while I was working in the south gardens, my parents returned home to an official envelope propped against our door. It simply contained a time and instructions for us all to be at the front entrance of the main house. I remember I was terrified; my parents had never even looked at the main house, which meant that I did something to warrant the note. That night we changed into our best clothes and waited on the stoop. My father demanded that we arrive 10 minutes early. At the prescribed time, the front door opened, and we were invited in. The man and woman of the house had invited us to dinner.

  It was a stuffy formal dinner, but after a while the families began talking. By the time drinks were served after desert, the adults were laughing and joking, finally realizing that my family and I were not the run of the mill peons they usually hired. While the adults talked, Samix and I retreated to her game room where she explained that she had set up the dinner so I could come and go as I pleased. By the end of the night, my family had been moved out of the workers’ quarters and into one of the full-sized guest houses on the property, and I had been enrolled at Samix’s school.

  The guest house was amazing. I had spent my entire life living aboard a ship, or in very spartan quarters that contained only the barest of necessities. The new house had a full kitchen, luxury showers, and full-sized beds. It was nicer than anything I had ever seen. Samix’s parents took me out to get new clothes for school, which was starting the following week, and Samix showed me the layout of her school so I wouldn’t be lost. After we got home her father showed me the library in the house and told me I could use any book in it any time I wanted. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me, and it was the point at which the trajectory of my life turned. Up until this point, I was destined for freelance botany work; now I could be anything I wanted to be.

  I spent the rest of the week pouring through books as fast as I could read them. When I started school, I had to take placement tests to determine which classes would best develop me, and I had to get my nanite immunizations and interface. To everyone’s surprise, I placed into all of Samix’s classes, and advanced biology. To celebrate the news, my family was again invited over for dinner. This time it was a much more enjoyable event. During dinner, Samix’s father extended a job offer to mine. It was to be a senior botany research scientist at a private company that Samix’s family owned.

  School was amazing, and with the interface I could talk with Samix any time I wanted to. When we both got old enough, we even got to go on outings together. It was the first time I got to experience life outside of the narrow world I was exposed to during my earlier years. Towards the end of primary school, Samix was accepted to the Unity Standard Military Academe. Her acceptance would only hold if Samix could pass her tougher science classes. One day, while in the library, her father overheard me tutoring Samix in chemistry and biology and suggested that I would be a good candidate for the Academe as well.

  Initially, I was hesitant, but after learning about all of the different opportunities the Academe offered, I applied as well. Exactly one week after I applied, I was accepted. Samix and I completed our primary education and left for the Academe on the same flight. Shortly after we both left for the Academe, Samix’s father got new employment relocating her family to the capital. Luckily for my family, they chose to keep the old house as a place to vacation, meaning that mine didn’t have to leave. To my amazement, we were both put in the same training company for the basic portion of the Academe. When we graduated the basic phase, I got orders for the science corps, which I wanted, and Samix got orders for the exploration corps.

  It was the first time we had been apart since we were children, but we talked every day. Both of us earned top marks in our specialty training, and onboard training. Because of this, we were both selected to crew the XES01 mission, her as captain, me as medical officer and chief biologist. Now, here we are, wandering through space with a stray, getting attacked on every planet we touch down on.

  About halfway through Jorloss’s story, Zade heard the ship’s engines fire up. He had picked up the pace but still got to the landing site long after the ship left. Zade knew that Jorloss needed to lay still to recover but he also knew that there was a village 10 miles north of their current position that was probably curious about the raucous they had caused. The men would have to move as far south, away from the village, as they could to minimize detection.

  Zade set Jorloss down gingerly and propped his head up with his assault pack. Before he was comfortable moving, Zade needed to get a few things organized. Zade sprinted back to the objective, and after retrieving the heads of the two remaining SSILF, buried the bodies and any other paraphernalia that could lead to their discovery. Zade then returned to Jorloss and made a skid out of four small trees, two uniform tops, and some cord he carried in his assault pack.

  After gently placing the again unconscious Jorloss on the skid, Zade brought up a map of the area he stored in his interface prior to the mission and searched for a place for them to go to ground and recover. To the south and east, the jungle opened to desert, to the west he could see the marker that indicated there was a cave. As Zade searched, he felt the data connection between his interface and the ship snap; the ship had left the system they were currently in.

  Zade set a marker on the cave and began preparations to move out. If anyone were to come investigate, he wanted to utilize every bit of misdirection he could, so he began cutting an opening through the underbrush on the southeast side of the landing zone. Zade hoped that if anyone came to investigate, they would see the opening and assume that Zade had continued southeast. With the decoy set, Zade headed into the jungle, towards the cave, careful not to disturb anything that would give away their direction of travel.

  The hike to the cave was uneventful and Jorloss seemed to regain some of his color during the trip. Zade set the skid down, checked to see that Jorloss was still alive, and entered the cave to ensure it wasn’t occupied. The cave was pitch black, but with his improved night vision, Zade saw it as clear as day. The first bad sign was the musky aroma that wafted out the mouth of the cave, indicative of occupancy. He drew his sidearm and crept deeper into the abyss. Bones littered the floor, and at the very back was a large furry creature fast asleep. Knowing that one muffled gunshot most likely wouldn’t give their position away, Zade crept closer to the animal. Even at 10 feet away, he couldn’t tell where the animals head was.

  Zade picked up a rock and hurled it towards the beast. As the rock struck, the animal lifted its head to see what had just accosted it. It was the perfect opportunity. Zade leveled his weapon and with one explosive shot, dispatched the large animal. Inside the confines of the small cave, the gunshot was deafening, but luckily for Zade, his pain block kicked in at the first hint of discomfort. Afraid that the smell of fresh blood might draw animals, Zade drug the lifeless body out of the cave and when safely away from their new domicile set to skinning it. If Jorloss was in shock, he would need something to keep him warm and Zade didn’t have anything to help.

  Night was closing in as Zade returned to the cave to situate Jorloss. The skid he was occupying easily converted to a stretcher after its ends were propped up on rocks. Confident that Jorloss wouldn’t topple onto the floor, Zade draped the animal hide, fur side down, over him and changed focus to security.

  Zade grabbed the two severed SSILF heads and sat down outside the cave. As he had hoped both optical sensors were functional and the emergency power source was still intact. With the ship off world, Zade could once again connect with the optical sensors using his interface. Zade dismantled the heads and removed the components he
needed, tossing the rest back into the cave. Using his interface, he quickly checked to ensure their optical feeds worked and could be patched directly to him. With both sensors working Zade wrote a rough program that would alert him if either sensor detected movement.

  Setting the sensor to wide angle, 210-degree view, Zade placed them near the entrance of the cave. He positioned them so their fields of view overlapped, ensuring nothing could get near the mouth of the cave without him noticing, and headed inside to grab some sleep. Zade laid down between the entrance and Jorloss. He used his assault pack as a pillow, curled up in the damp, cold, cave and tried to fall asleep.

  Chapter 11

  Samix watched the landing team start into the jungle before she headed to the command deck to monitor their progress. As she walked to the front of the ship, the last thing Zade said to her played on loop in her mind. After seeing Zade dismember the dogs during the repair stop, she had pegged him as a creature solely driven by primal desires. She could still remember the look in his eyes as he dispatched the last dog. It was pure, primal rage. He had moved through the chaos with an efficient frenzy that bordered on demonic. Outnumbered and apparently outmatched, Zade, without hesitation, entered the fray. In that moment, to an onlooker, Zade was an artisan and death was his medium.

  Samix only knew of a handful of men in civilized space who would have acted the same way. Most were gladiators who reveled in the entertainment of death and dismemberment. All were clinically insane, tagged as psychopaths, and tossed in the arena. These men were driven by rage and lust alone, and Zade mirrored their actions perfectly. The debrief with Axis confirmed her assessment of Zade. Axis described Zade’s actions during the mission as, insane and barbaric in nature, although heroic. To try and get a better picture, Samix had planned the mission on the ice planet, where she tried to get a better idea of who Zade really was. During the mission, Zade opened up about who he was and what drove him. Her mind was put at ease by Zade’s tale. She saw that he wasn’t a bloodthirsty monster, but she also saw that he did lust after the adrenaline that accompanied combat. It was a unique trait that both enticed and terrified Samix. Zade’s last comment before leaving for mission showed Samix that he actually cared about her, turning her initial assessment of him on its head.