by M. D. Cooper
“You can do it, Rogers.” She whispered encouragement as her teeth were chattering together. Why was she so cold all of a sudden?
“She’s going into shock,” Rogers said.
“Uh-huh, she is; but telling me that ain’t gonna make any of this go faster, blow hard.”
One of them must have pulled something else from inside, because a flash of heat flared in her chest.
“Here, have some whiskey,” Rogers said, touching a bottle to her lips.
“Thins the blood,” Nadine whispered.
“So you don’t want it?” Rogers asked with a small smile on his lips.
Nadine rolled her eyes and nodded silently, opening her mouth. Rogers poured some in and Nadine swallowed it quickly. “Stars that burns…give me another.”
Rogers poured another few drops down her throat and Nadine swallowed gratefully.
“OK, it’s cleared out,” Winter said. “Grab the biofoam, Rogers.” Winter’s face came into view. “Sorry, Nadine, this is going to hurt.” He sounded desperate and earnest. Nadine couldn’t remember the last time he had sounded like that.
She closed her eyes, willing herself to return to her dreams, whispering, “You can do it, boys. I have faith in you.”
Then there was pain, and she remembered nothing more.
* * * * *
There was so much damn blood that the floor was slick with it. Rogers could barely believe Nadine was still alive at all. Even in her unconscious state she moaned, her head turning slowly from one side to the other. Rogers shoved his jacket under her matted hair to cushion it as Winter finished wrapping the bandages around her chest.
“We can’t leave her here on the floor,” Rogers said.
“For the moment that’s exactly what we damn well do. We move her, she might die. Shock might kill her or something might tear open again. The fact she’s still with us at all is a friggin’ miracle.”
Rogers watched silently as Winter grabbed a clean cloth and began wiping Nadine’s face, cleaning out the scratches on her cheek and forehead. “Who knew you were such a Florence Nightingale?”
“Who?” Winter scowled.
“Now who’s the uncultured one?” Rogers asked. “What the hell happened in the dark layer? I’ve never felt anything like it.”
Winter sighed and threw his cloth on the ground beside him. “I don’t know. Whatever got us, it wasn’t a ship.”
“Animal?” Roger shook his head. “In the dark layer?”
“You hear rumors, right? Pilots out in space too long, too close to the DL for too long, they get a little funny.”
“If this was the funny version, I hate to see the serious one. Whatever got us had teeth…or something. I just hope whatever it is didn’t follow us out,” Rogers said, his voice anxious.
“Nadine said she cleared it. She got whatever it was off.”
Which just brought Rogers to another point. “She seemed to know a lot about it for someone who’d only ever been a pampered princess—when we met her, she was green, dude. So how’d she learn about whatever attacked us, and how to get rid of it?”
Winter shrugged. “Look, if she survives, we can ask her. Until then I’m not getting pulled into your made-up High Terra soap opera.” Winter stood. “I’m going to clean up the medbay so we can move her in there. Why don’t you inspect the ship? See if you can get power back up along with comms?”
“Shouldn’t someone stay with her?”
Outside something squawked, and further aft the ship groaned.
Winter sighed. “No time, dude. It’s just the two of us. We gotta get ready for whatever’s coming.”
Rogers rose to his feet on stiff legs, his head still spinning more than he’d like. Too bad, Rogers. He’d have to find a way to power through it. “Let’s just hope that wherever the captain is, things are going better for her than for us.”
“Rogers, she was abducted, remember?”
“Well, let’s just hope she didn’t get abducted and then shot out of the black in that battle back at The Futz.”
Winter nodded. “We can hope. ‘Bout all we have right now.”
Wasn’t that the damn truth?
Rogers looked at the smashed comm console. He wasn’t going to fix anything on the bridge. He gave Nadine one last look and scrambled back over the debris toward the secondary comm terminals rear of the galley.
As he walked through the passageway, one arm trailing along the bulkhead to steady himself on the slanted deck, he came upon a section of the overhead where the hull had been torn open.
But not torn in the traditional sense, more like it had been twisted, as though the metal and plas had begun to disintegrate into smoke, and then re-solidified afterward.
If it didn’t sound utterly crazy, he would have said it looked like something had tried to inhale the ship. Enough of the ship was gone that Rogers could see clear out of the vessel to the trees and hillside beyond.
Whatever that thing had been, it had been real close to getting inside the ship and devouring it.
Rogers wasn’t sure if he’d feel safe in the dark layer ever again.
* * * * *
The secondary comm terminals were mostly intact, but offline. Their connections to emergency power backups must have been severed.
Rogers traced the failures further back in the ship until he got to the engineering bay—which was in utter disarray, but not a lost cause. The SC Batts were intact and still had power. He just had to bypass the main relays, which were fried. Normally this was Winter’s sort of work, but Rogers knew the big guy wouldn’t be able to concentrate unless he was prowling about, ready to attack the thing that threatened them.
“There,” he said aloud as he made the final connection, slid the panel back in place, and entered the command for the SC Batts to deliver power into the system. “Here goes nothing.”
The overhead illumination came on, and the emergency lights winked off. The holodisplay over the console next to him came to life, and Rogers flipped through the systems status until he came to the internal network.
Half the transceivers weren’t responding, but enough had come online that the Link should reestablish. Rogers tried to reach Winter.
The response came a moment later,
Rogers eyebrows rose.
Rogers could agree with that. He was about to say so when he heard a thud and a scraping sound on the outside of the bay. Something was on the Dauntless’s hull. Something big enough to hear through all the ablative plating, metal, and plas above him.
Well, Winter was fired up.
Rogers strode out of the engine bay and headed toward the medbay. Winter had cleared off the operating table and Nadine lay on it, wrapped in a thick blanket.
He approached quietly and felt her forehead. It seemed cooler than before, and her breathing was slow and steady. With power restored, Rogers activated the monitoring systems, checking her vitals.
The system flagged a host of things wrong with her, but she was stable for now. Heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen intake, all better than he could have hoped for. Maybe she’d pull through this after all.
That wasn’t just a win, it wasn’t just the first real good thing he had heard in the
past few days, it was a damn miracle.
SOMETHINGASAURUS
STELLAR DATE: 09.24.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Equatorial Valleys, Jericho
REGION: Gedri System, Silstrand Alliance
Rogers wasn’t telling tall tales when he’d said the hull had been breached. Shit, he’d been underselling it. There were gaping holes torn in the metal where something nasty had attached itself. Whatever it had been, it had left long marks—but not sharp. More…soft and soupy. How does something like that rend holes in the Dauntless?
Damn. Whatever had done this, Winter hoped to high hell he didn’t meet the beast face to face.
The old girl’s hull was so twisted, Winter didn’t think it had been an animal at all. It was as if the steel had been melted and reshaped while they had flown through the DL. What kind of crazy mofo could do something like that? Winter had heard rumors spread by old junkers about hulls like this, lifeless things drifting in the void.
Winter had always thought them to be ghost stories meant to scare rookie spacers, but looking at the skin of the ship, Winter thought maybe the stories had more truth to them than some made up shit.
Staring at the ship wasn’t going to do him a lot of good. Winter climbed up onto the hull, and saw the most gigantic lizard he had ever laid eyes on. So, that’s what was making all that racket. Damn thing wasn’t natural at all with his long torso and giant paws. Its head and tail were covered in spikes, probably poisonous too, knowing Winter’s luck. The overgrown lizard stomped its massive clawed feet on the hull, then tore at the metal with a mouth full of serrated teeth. The more excited it got, the louder it roared. Stupid thing was having fun—on their only way off this barren rock.
Damn terraformers believing they were gods all the time. Not only did they change the structure of planets, they reinvented nature just because they could. So they could stick a studded collar on it and call it a pet? Bullshit.
Now what? It’d be Winter’s job to put it into the ground?
Fuck that.
Gotta do what you gotta do. Winter sighed and brought up his pulse rifle. If he could scare it off, that’d go best and it could buy him some time. Quietly as possible, he aimed his weapon and slowly released the safety.
Somehow the lizard heard the tiny click and the thing whipped its giant head around with an angry snort. Its giant eyes bulged as it took in the sight of Winter. Damn, here they went. The game was officially on.
It let out a deep growl and turned toward him, bouncing lightly on its wide feet. The thing moved with far more grace than Winter would have thought possible, and he could feel the hull shudder from the force of its thrashing tail.
“Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, buddy,” Winter whispered and fired a pulse blast directly at the beast. The concussive wave hit the thing right in the face, and Winter thought it would stumble, or at least fall back. That it would do something.
The thing didn’t even twitch, the beast’s tough hide absorbed the blast without flinching. The lizard narrowed its eyes and growled, scratching at the Dauntless with its claws, long tail swishing back and forth.
Damn thing was going to pounce on Winter like he was nothing but a chew toy.
“Easy, boy,” Winter whispered and held up one hand while he swung the gun over his shoulder. “You want a treat? Want something fun? I got something just for you.” He drew the projectile weapon at his hip and took aim as the lizard charged for him.
Time to dance.
The beast moved a lot faster than Winter had expected. He backpedaled and let off a pair of shots, but the lizard’s hide deflected those as well and its long snout slammed into him, throwing Winter back into the jungle. He couldn’t help but give a startled shout as he flew backward, sliding across the ground, tearing at the ground cover until his back crashed into the trunk of a broad tree. His head slammed into the rough bark, and he shook it, trying to clear his vision. He reached for his gun, but it had fallen from his grasp and now lay a meter away.
The underbrush blocked his view, but Winter could hear a dull thud as the thing leapt off the Dauntless and pushed its way into the foliage. He moved as quietly as possible to his handgun and lay prone, taking aim at the source of the sounds. First the massive lizard’s head appeared above him, and then its soft underbelly.
“Sorry, dude.” Winter took aim at the thing’s ribs. A long exhale and three shots later, and the creature’s body had three new holes, each pouring blood like a macabre rain shower.
And that’s how it is, my friend. Too bad no one was around to see how he had handled the beast.
The lizard fell against a tree, the dull thud reverberating through the loamy earth. It moaned and pawed at the air, a confused look on its face.
Winter’s breath was labored as he holstered his weapon and stared down at the creature. “I got no beef with you. Didn’t have to end this way, huh? Stupid beast.” Winter gave it a kick for good measure.
But now that it was dead….
He slapped his hands together and gripped the tail with both hands.
* * * * *
Nadine’s eyes snapped open and a groan escaped her lips as she peered up at the ceiling. She could tell by the dent on the overhead near one of the lights that she was in the medbay. That was good news because it meant she wasn’t dead yet. Being dead, as far as she was concerned, was a bad thing. A very bad thing.
She struggled to sit up and felt a stab of pain in her chest.
The strength went out of her limbs and her head hit the pillow once more. Nadine breathed out another long groan and touched her sternum, learning two things in the process. One, her arms did indeed still work. Two, her chest hurt like hell, but seemed to still be in one piece. That meant she’d recover.
The nano in her body would fix her up in no time—far faster than the junker tech in the ship’s medbay. Still, her nano couldn’t have fixed her if she’d bled to death. She guessed Winter was the one who had patched her up—it certainly wouldn’t have been Rogers. He could barely apply a sticky bandage to his finger.
She probably owed Winter a beer. Rogers too, since the ship still appeared to be intact.
Good job, boys.
She heard footfalls in the passageway and then Rogers voice. “You’re awake!” he said, and rushed to her side. “Oh man, Nadine, I thought…”
“I know,” Nadine smiled at him meekly. It was good to see his face. He appeared to be uninjured. “How’s the ship? The repairs?”
“Gotta love your dedication to the cause. Well, we’re on backup power and basic environmental is running. As for the ship herself…” Rogers got that far-away look on his face he often got when the ship was in danger, the way a kid would get if they lost their precious puppy.
“The hull?” Nadine guessed.
Rogers nodded gravely. “I doubt the Dauntless will ever be spaceworthy again. With what we have here I don’t see how we can get her off the ground to even limp to dry-dock.”
“Oh, Rogers,” Nadine whispered. She felt his anguish, and her sorrow was genuine as well. She loved this ship, it had been her home for five years, after all. “Where are we? Any ideas?”
“In one of the deep valleys near Jericho’s equator.”
“You’re joking!” Nadine said, her eyes wide.
Rogers shook his head. “I wish I was. We’re about two kilometers down from the surface. Air’s thick enough down here that there’s still vegetation, and you can breathe it if you don’t mind the smell. But there’s no easy way out. Up top, the air’s too thin to survive.”
“How safe are we down here?”
Rogers shrugged. “Not bad if you aren’t worried about the wildlife and the outcasts.”
Nadine had heard of what lived in Jericho’s deep valleys. Criminals so vile they were kicked out of pl
aces like Montral. Not to mention smuggler’s outposts, and creatures that had once lived in the menageries of Jericho’s old families before the biosphere had died and everyone had moved into the domed cities.
Given how the Dauntless had fallen from space, it was only a matter of time before one of those three groups found them.
When. Not if.
Nadine gave sitting up another try, and this time met with success. She drew in a shallow breath and moaned softly before swinging her legs over the side of the bed.
Rogers’ eyes widened. “What the hell are you doing? Nadine, you can’t—”
“We’re already living on borrowed time, Rogers. We have to get out of here. Before it’s too late.” Nadine slid forward, but when her feet hit the floor, everything in her seized up. Rogers caught her gently by the hips and saved her from a major wipeout.
“You can barely move. I don’t think—”
“No time for that, Rogers. Grab the hyposprays—the ones for adrenaline. I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t be fine.” Rogers eyes narrowed. “You just narrowly avoided death. You’ve been patched up for less than five hours. There’s no way I’m letting you—”
The Dauntless shifted and groaned. Nadine fell back against the table, while Rogers stared her down, his hands still on his hips. “Sounds worse than it is; she’s been doing that every so often. We’re just settling into the ground.”
But the problem was they weren’t just settling into the ground. “Rogers, I’m going to find Winter, if you care about me at all, grab the damn hyposprays.”
Nadine pushed past him but it took concentrated effort not to fall against the wall. One foot in front of the other; take each with careful precision. She held her arm out, fingertips brushing against the wall to remind her which way was up. She made it into the passageway, the sounds of Rogers rummaging through one of the drawers fading behind her.
Around the corner and two doors down was the galley. She took careful steps, holding her breath against the pain as she finally made it to the room and leaned against the doorframe.
