by Tammy Salyer
All the captives have been tossed together and I scan the filthy room, trying to assess who may be the best assets in case an opportunity for escape appears.
“Hey, kid,” I whisper to the survivor from the other salvaging crew who’d boarded the Galatea, “mind telling me what the hell your crew was thinking when they cycled up that derelict’s engines? Because, I don’t know about you, but I would have preferred dying of old age to being made mincemeat by a bunch of half-lunatic cannibals.”
He looks up at me from where he sits with his chin on his knees across the shack. The dirt covering his face and the wide-eyed, almost guileless, expression on his face make him really look like a kid barely old enough to join the Academy. For someone like me, adapting to a war wasn’t that hard—I’ve always been a soldier of one kind or another. But his life now must be one-eighty from what it had been two years ago. I’m too busy figuring out how we’re going to survive this to spare much sympathy at the moment.
“Hurley, my boss, wanted to know if it had enough power to bother trying to salvage it,” he finally says after giving the question time to sink through his undeniable shock. “We couldn’t get the feedback gauges to work, so he thought he could force output from the engines, which should have back-fed their specs to the flight deck.” He pauses. “I guess he got his wires crossed…or maybe the ship’s systems weren’t working right.”
“You think? Maybe you should have assessed the damage before…” I stop myself. This kid isn’t the reason I’m pissed. He’s just a convenient scapegoat for my frustrations. “Anyway, did either of the other crew with you make it?”
“I don’t know,” he says simply.
“You two want to cut the chitchat?” another one of the captives says. “We don’t want to draw attention.”
I turn my head to glare at the speaker, the shed’s dim interior light vaguely illuminating a medium-sized man with blond hair and thick limbs resting against the wall farthest from the door. He doesn’t hold my eyes.
“Kid.” I get his attention again after a second. “Want to help me with something?”
Luckily, he’s still aware enough that I’m able to recruit him to help me find structural weaknesses in the shack, at least somewhere we can punch out an opening to try getting some fresh air and hopefully a visual of what awaits us on the outside. Keeping busy helps me do two things: take my mind off the small, crowded space, and hold off the muscle soreness the crash caused that lies in ambush just at the edge of my nerves.
The Teibo and Orika crews know we went down; there’s no doubt of that. But the low chance of them being able to locate us easily doesn’t leave me with much hope. Even if we weren’t in hot water at the moment, Eruo Pium is a reasonably big moon, and our e-pod’s trajectory lost some of its predictability thanks to whatever we’d hit that knocked us out of our dive. V and I are going to have to get out of this mess on our own.
The sound of metal sliding against metal freezes me from trying to work free the edge of one of the thinner steel sheets welded to the wall, then a shaft of light comes through the doorway at head height.
“Everyone back up.” The short barrel of a carbine appears in the peephole to help us make the right decision. Almost everyone moves toward the rear wall, but the two men with Blondie linger near the door, planning to attack anyone who opens it.
“I see nine bodies and I know there’s eleven in there.” The small space erupts with the carom of a shot being fired, and one of the prisoners at the back falls to his knees, grasping his shoulder. The rest of us hit the deck in a panicked knot of limbs.
“Get over here!” someone cries, and the two hiding out of the peephole’s sight back into the throng carefully.
“Good.” The door is pulled open. A group of three, all armed, stand outside with their weapons pointed. One of them enters and trains his rifle barrel at me where I half squat against the wall. “Come.”
Why me? Do I just have a face that begs to be interrogated? I certainly can’t look that appetizing, having barely more meat on my bones than the locals. Vitruzzi and I exchange a glance, her eyes looking dead, and I step outside.
They walk me to a gazebolike structure, the journey enough to let me take a good, long look around the camp. In truth, it’s more of a semisquare compound, about two hundred meters end to end. With the exception of the prisoner confines—only three total—most of the structures are barely standing, and the ones constructed out of primarily steel components are badly rusted, making the place a tetanus incubation hot spot. However, they’ve used this to their advantage and built a shambling, shoulder-high barricade around the area that’s clogged with spikes and sharp corners. Getting out could be just as hard as getting in.
We pass by a lander discarded against the barrier, displaying the same eight-digit ship ID as the Galatea derelict. The hull is battered with small-arms fire, and it looks like one of the engines flared out, incapacitating it. I guess now I know why the transporter’s crew didn’t make it back.
One of the scavs notices me looking around and backhands me across the mouth. The skin of my top lip splits and bleeds, then I’m pushed onto a stool and surrounded by gun-toting savages on three sides.
The biggest of the three stands in front of me, looking me over. His face and the backs of his hands poking out of his ragged sleeves are badly scarred, an obvious indication of having once been, but most likely no longer, a sun-head. Given the lack of civilization on this planet, I doubt there’s much of the drug to be found anymore. The real surprise is he’d survived the detox.
He asks, “Who are you?”
“Your fairy godmother.”
This is followed by a protracted silence that allows me enough time to think up a brief will and testament, then he begins to laugh in short, choppy grunts that quickly prove whatever mind he has left is missing a few important bits. Just as quickly, he stops, and says seriously, “You must be Corps.”
I give him a short, disgusted chuckle. “Don’t you get it? There is no Corps anymore.”
Since the end of the major fighting, the Spectras have been left to themselves, and what’s happening right now is the reason why. Anyone who lands in a Corps ship or wearing Corps uniforms is attacked. The Spectres don’t trust anyone who used to be part of the Admin, and who can blame them? Problem is, the only long-range ships that are still operational and have energy are either overtaken or abandoned Corps ships. Consequently, since no one likes their search-and-rescue or salvaging op to turn into a suicide mission, the Spectres have been left to fend for themselves. Enclaves of scavs that have turned to cannibalism, like this one, are the result.
“No one is Corps, or Admin, or a soldier. We’re all just survivors, like you,” I go on, not expecting any sympathy.
“We saw the ship—” Another pause, this time punctuated by a massive twitch in his right cheek, as if the skin is trying to jump off his face in a gruesome rebellion. I can’t help but be a little horrified. After a second, he slaps that side of his face, then grips the flesh with his hand, apparently trying to get it under control. Oh, yeah, he’s a poster child for the delights of being a solar stoner. “—go down. Straight into the ocean,” he finally finishes, pointing with his free hand out toward the west. “A big one, like a fleet transport.”
Interesting. The ship had gone down at sea, and Eruo Pium only has one. Whatever previous crew owned the Galatea are lucky they weren’t still on it. If not treated, the water on this moon is toxic to humans. Even too much water vapor from waves or wind can be harmful. This fact also explains a little about why the scavs here have turned to cannibalism; they can’t eat the sea life, and I didn’t notice any Mr. and Mrs. Pioneer–type vegetable gardens.
“Yeah, so? Like I said, the Corps is history. If you’re worried about anyone coming in and threatening your, uh, settlement, don’t. There’s no one else up there, and Eruo Pium isn’t exactly anyone’s idea of a fun getaway.”
His un-twitchy eye glares at me ferociously for
a few seconds. One of the other abductors—a hunched, squat man with enough loose skin, dirt caked into its jiggling folds, that it is clear he’d once been on the fat side of corpulent—encircles one of my wrists with his own hand. The skin around his fingertips looks gnawed and infected, like maybe they’ve become his new favorite after-dinner snack. Yanking my wrist free earns me a snarl, and he raises his fist, ready to strike.
“Bulgaç, hands off,” Twitch says. “This one knows something. She just needs some incentive to tell us.”
Relaxing more and getting comfortable—I could be here awhile—I say, “What could I know? You saw what happened. My crew was in the ship that went down. You picked us up. I’ve never been to Eruo Pium”—and hope to Christ I never have to come back—“and don’t know a goddamn thing about the planet except the sea’s poisonous to humans. Besides wanting to get the hell off this rock, I don’t know a single. Other. Thing.”
“Wrong!” His breath assaults my face like a rancid acid bath as he leans over me. “We picked up chatter. There are other ships, and they’re coming. We want to know where you’re meeting them.”
Picked up chatter? “You mean a transmission? Is there a satellite in your orbit?”
That broken laugh again, like he’s gagging with every breathy expulsion. I know I’m gagging on his every breath. “Ha-ha. I like this one. She thinks like a scav.”
Without a hint of what’s coming, his broad hand is at my throat, lifting me off the seat, and hurling me to the ground like a sack of shredded meat. My knees and elbows groan in protest. “Take her back to the shed and bring me the other one. The one we picked her up with. The juicy one.”
As I roll over, a boot connects with my diaphragm, sending every molecule of air spewing from my lungs in one giant spasm. Clenching my guts with my hands, I writhe in the dirt for a second, black spots doing the cha-cha-cha in front of my eyes. “…f’n bas…tard.”
Someone wrenches my arms up behind me and drags me to my feet. “Walk.”
Forcing my legs into a shamble, I do as he says, encouraged by an occasional shove. As soon as my abdomen unlocks and air starts to flow back into my system, my vision clears. Vitruzzi is in no shape to be interrogated. She hasn’t said a word since she came apart at the crash site. If they get their hands on her, she’s as good as lunch for them.
Twitch follows behind. Too busy calculating the odds of getting to either his or Fingernails’s sidearms before getting myself turned into the appetizer, I almost miss the sound of a tracker engine approaching. It isn’t until a voice coming from the cab yells, “Ferenzi,” and a hand on my shoulder stops my progress that I notice it.
The tracker—the same one they’d picked all of us up in—stops at an idle about ten meters away, and a woman jumps out.
“Hold her,” Twitch tells the two men with us and skulks over to the truck.
An animated conversation takes place between him and the driver, her hands waving frantically at the rusted barrier between us and the sea beyond. I’d smelled its somewhat fetid odor as soon as Vitruzzi and I landed, and the occasional flurry of a breeze confirms we’re just southeast of it.
“Close the barrier!” Twitch suddenly cries, turning to us. Neither of my other two captors does anything for a moment, so Twitch pulls out his sidearm—a modified Bowker O9, it looks like—and points it at them. “MOVE IT, YOU FUCKWITS!”
Dumping me like last night’s stale beer, they start running to an opening in the barrier, waving their arms to advise what few other scavs are in the area. The tracker’s driver follows them, leaving the vehicle where it sits. Twitch spears me in the back with the Bowker’s barrel, directly on top of the scar left by Rajcik, and propels me toward the shed. Whatever’s going on has him spooked, which, despite the situation, gives me a tiny spark of hope. Enjoyment even. Survivor of the war or not, this is one vile scav who’s just wasting oxygen.
We reach the shed. Trying to save myself another cheap shot in the kidneys, I fall to my knees and cower, giving him a comfort zone to fish for the keys to the heavy chain and lock holding the door closed. That and the noise of the barrier gate clanking shut and being fortified with a backfill of whatever junk they can find distract Twitch enough for me to suddenly shift around, sweep my fist up to nail him in the crotch, and follow through by gripping the butt of the Bowker he’s reholstered.
TEN
Smashing in his surprised grill with the stock turns out all his lights, and he crumples next to me. None of the scavs notices, and I crouch to retrieve the key Twitch has dropped to the dirt. Quickly unlocking the chain, I swing the door wide and whisper-shout inside, “Everyone, get out and find cover. We’re taking over the camp.”
Shock peeks through the grime streaking most of their faces, and I hold up the Bowker, pointed skyward, to help them grasp the situation. “This is it, people. Time to run!”
Vitruzzi is the first up, slipping through the opened door with all the stealth and reflexes I’ve come to expect from her. She spots the downed scav and quickly rifles through his filthy jacket and pants cargo pockets, coming up with a folding knife. Opened, it’s about the length of a butter-knife blade, but looks sharp enough to carve up much tougher material. It’ll have to do.
I steal another look at the group of scavs working on the barrier—
And my heart goes into a tailspin.
“Aly, what the name of bloody Christ are those things?” Vitruzzi gasps, but my brain is barely able to interpret what my bulging eyes are seeing.
A torrent of some kind of multilegged crustaceans, like crabs but with long, scorpionlike bodies complete with hooked tails, pours over the wall en masse. It looks like a waterfall of ocean vermin, except their bodies are the size of German shepherds. They have four eyestalks that seem to retract until the eyes wave only centimeters above a hard-shelled, thick forebody, and two sets of hand-sized gripper claws extending from their flanks about half a meter to either side. As gross as they are, and as many as there are, they still don’t look all that capable of doing much damage.
Then why are all the scavs screaming?
The first wave, at least a dozen of them, has hit the dirt inside the compound before I unfreeze. And I finally see it. One of them seems to rear up, almost like a Sufi doing a backbend, and long, wickedly jagged plated pincers unfold from its thorax, grabbing ahold of a scav with each and sawing through the unlucky bastard’s leg and neck with the ease of a surgical knife.
Ah, that’s why the screams.
The things move faster than I could have dreamed possible, almost floating over the ground on who knows how many centipede legs. The twenty or so scavs begin to scatter like terrified rabbits, the monsters in pursuit.
“Get to the tracker!” I manage to yell, and bolt.
A meter and a half from the tracker’s still-open door, a creepy-crawly darts at me. My first shot blows off at least two eyestalks but doesn’t penetrate the shell. At least it slows down—just enough for it to do its bizarre rearing thing. Those pincers start to reach out, and I shoot straight below the plates they’re connected to. As I do, a hole, maybe a mouth, opens near the top of its underbelly and spits at me.
A cloud of tiny white darts emits, and I spin sideways to try and avoid them, feeling, nonetheless, a few of them sink into my side. The pain is like white-hot needles being rammed into my ribs and the back of my firing arm. But my shot hit a soft spot and the thing tumbles forward, greenish-red ichor beginning to saturate the ground beneath it.
The shot draws the attention of the scavs, and when they realize I’m not one of them, three begin running toward the tracker. Vitruzzi jumps into the cab and I pull myself in behind her, closing the door and leaning from the side window to aim at the scavs. I don’t need to fire, however, as their sprint is easily overtaken by the local fauna.
Vitruzzi is hammering on the control console, and I risk a glance behind me.
“There,” she says as the whine of the opening rear cargo doors drifts into the cab. �
��Get us closer to the shed.”
The engine is still running and I follow her directions, hearing the satisfying crunch of a crushed crab shell as I drive over the one that came at me. The rest of the creatures have spread out, following anything that’s running, but haven’t keyed in on the tracker yet. I get the vehicle as close to the open shed as I can, and V shouts, “Get in the back! Hurry!”
Once the other abductees start to come out, telling them to hurry is wasting breath. One look at the crab-things and they rush into the back, three of them carrying the unconscious woman.
“Go to the other sheds,” V says. “We have to help.”
“We have to get the hell out of here!”
“Just do it!”
The tiny crab darts stuck in my side make my skin feel as if it’s being slowly peeled from my body, and I’m grateful the tracker has a steering ball instead of a wheel as I spin toward the next shack. V jumps out and gets lucky with the key from our cell’s shed on the lock while I cover her with the Bowker. But there are nothing but bodies inside. Inside the third shed, we find…
Four kids. Jesus. Vitruzzi and another of the prisoners haul the kids inside the back of the tracker, then V jumps into the cab and closes the rear door. Her face has gone intensely pale and slightly greenish, like sea foam.
“Go.”
My tour of camp had given me the impression that the barrier’s thinnest spot is its northeast wall, so I maneuver the steering ball toward it and press it down for acceleration. It isn’t a fast vehicle, but the heavy steel body keeps out the monstrosities teeming through camp—both kinds. The scav with an appetite for his own fingers breaks from his cover as we pass, grabs the rear bumper, and uses the cargo door’s hinges to pull himself up. As I’m watching through the rearview screen, a crab grips one of his legs and climbs him before he can get all the way aboard. Severed bits of him leave a trail behind, and what’s left finally comes free and drops to the ground as I push the tracker into the barrier. Drooping skin folds or not, the guy had had a hell of a grip.
