by JE Gurley
The ship slowed and stopped, creaking from the strain and heat from friction with the sand. Another sound impinged on his consciousness, a cry for help – Tish. He recognized her voice. His legs were wobbly as he strode down the corridor. Locker doors had opened from impact, spilling their contents around the deck. Smoke billowed from the engine room. One of the ATVs had broken loose and jammed in the cargo bay door halfway into the corridor.
He passed Cici and Plia struggling to release their harnesses, saw that they were okay. He found Tish in her cabin. The safety harness over her bed had wrenched from the wall on impact. She had slammed into the bulkhead when the ship bounced. Blood dripped from her mouth and streamed from a laceration on her forehead. She lay groaning on the floor. His heart broke at the sight of her broken and bleeding body.
“Tish!” He knelt beside her and cradled her head in his lap. Her eyes barely focused on him, but she recognized his voice.
“Dax,” she moaned. “I hurt.”
“I’ll get the med kit.” He started to lay her head back on the deck.
She gripped his arm tightly and squeezed. “No, please don’t leave me.”
“Okay,” he promised. He yelled for help. “Someone bring the med kit to Tish’s quarters!”
Her breathing was ragged, and blood spilled from the corners of her mouth each time she coughed. Her flesh was so cold to the touch it frightened him. The gash on her forehead looked bad, but he suspected her pain came from internal injuries. He prayed they were not too serious for the ship’s limited auto-surgeon to repair.
“I have to get you to the automed,” he said. “We’ll fix you right up.”
She shook her head. “I’m not hurting now.” She coughed up bright red blood and shivered. A sharp grimace belied her claim of no pain. “I’m cold, Dax.”
“I’ll get a blanket.” He looked at the color of the blood with dismay. Even with his limited medical knowledge, he knew it was arterial blood. At the very least, she had a punctured lung. The automed could not deal with such severe trauma.
“No, don’t let go,” she begged. “Hold me, Dax.”
She passed out, going limp in his arms. Her color drained away, and her breathing grew shallow. He checked her wrist, but her pulse was too weak to detect. She was rapidly slipping away from him. He had so much he wanted to tell her, but it was too late. She would never hear him. Romeo walked in with the med kit and knelt beside her. Dax shook his head. He held Tish until she gasped out her last breath, and continued to hold her until Romeo finally touched his shoulder.
“Come on, Dax. The Luck’s hurt, too.”
He nodded. He lifted her lifeless body from the floor and lowered her gently to her bed. He covered her with a blanket from her bed, the silly one covered in smiling Teddy bears he had bought for her in a shop at Kinta Station. “Goodbye, Tish,” he whispered in her ear; then kissed her cold forehead.
Romeo, Cici, and Plia gathered just outside the door. Romeo and Cici wept openly. Plia clenched her fists by her side and bit down on her lower lip.
“Where’s Ivers?” he demanded.
“Outside checking the damage,” Plia answered.
“That’s where you should be,” he snapped. “Me too. Come on. Let’s go see if the Luck will ever fly again.”
15
As he looked at his battered ship, Dax knew he should have felt something, some sense of loss. He had killed Nate, Andy, and Tish – half his crew – and now his ship, but he was numb inside. Emotional burnout. That’s what they call it. He had suffered too much for too long. His mind could not cope with the stress. Later, it might get a handle on it; try to pigeonhole his feelings, but not now. He didn’t know if he could deal with it. Plia still crawled around beneath the ship, checking the bent landing struts, the half-buried thrusters, and the cracked nacelle for the Skip Drive; as if she held out hope, she could make the repairs. Even her considerable skills would not suffice. Fortune’s Luck wasn’t going to fly again without a major refit. He had no way to get her to a shipyard, even if he had the credits to pay for it. That meant she was now just so much scrap metal.
The tortured metal popped as it cooled, punctuating his pangs of mental anguish. A steady stream of water leaked from the freshwater tank through the cracked hull. The desert sand lapped up the water eagerly, an unexpected feast in a ravaged land. He should have ordered Plia to find something to catch the precious water, but he could not bring himself to issue another order. He was through giving orders. He was unfit for command.
He didn’t have to issue an order. Plia crawled from beneath the ship. “Do you want me to catch the water?”
When he didn’t respond, she stared at him a moment with something akin to sympathy in her eyes before saying, “I’ll go get a container, and then see if I can stop the leak.”
When she walked away, Ivers came over. He had come to the same conclusion about the Luck as Dax had. “Any idea where we are?” he asked.
“Does it matter?” he answered sharply. Ivers stared at him. Dax sighed. “I took a reading of K124 B’s beacon when we cleared the storm. We’re roughly ninety kilometers east and a little south of the station.” He pointed to the towering cliffs on each side, an unbroken wall of layered ocher, white, and red sandstone that continued for kilometers. “This is the same canyon that runs beside it. It’s a long walk, and we didn’t kill all the Ravers. Remember what I said earlier about our situation?”
“That we’re fucked.”
Dax kicked at the sand with his boot. “Well, we’re fucked-er, if that’s a word.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“It should be.”
Ivers cast once last glance at Fortune’s Luck and scanned the canyon bluffs. “We’ll never scale those. Do we wait here or try for the station? We still have the ATVs.”
“One of them. The other one is lodged in the cargo bay door. I wouldn’t give it a 50-50 chance of still being operational.”
“One will do.”
Dax grimaced. “Thanks for reminding me of how few we are.”
Ivers looked away nervously. Dax didn’t expect any comforting platitudes from him. Ivers had lost men under his command without breaking. He accepted the responsibility and expected Dax to as well. The difference was that Ivers had lost soldiers; Dax had lost friends.
“I’m sorry about Tish, Dax. She was good people.”
Dax sighed. “You didn’t kill her. I did. Chalk up one more tombstone for ex-Captain Dax Wyldd.”
“The Navy won’t be here for a day or two,” he said. “Station B has a radio.”
Going back to Station B sounded foolish to Dax. “We would be headed straight back toward the Ravers.” He looked eastward down the canyon. “I say we go that way, stay ahead of the Ravers until the Navy arrives.” Unlike Ivers, he thought they would be on their own for more than a couple of days.
“We’ll have to stop to recharge the batteries at some point. What then?”
Ivers had a point. They could never outrun the creatures. They would not stop until they caught up. They were like the proverbial Sword of Damocles hanging over their head. The creatures never seemed to tire, and having just awakened from a 2,000-year nap, they had no need for sleep. And the bastards can think, he added mentally.
He wasn’t thinking straight. His mind hurt. As much as it pained him, he had to forget about Tish for the moment and concentrate on saving the others. He could commemorate Tish another time. “We might as well wait for them. At least we won’t have a long trip to deal with.”
Ivers nodded. “My sentiments exactly. Maybe they won’t come. Their goal might have been the station, drawn by detecting the power grid or something. We power down the ship and hope they ignore us.”
“Fat chance of that.”
Ivers scratched his head and grimaced. “Yeah, well …”
Romeo stuck his head out the cargo hatch. “I made some coffee and sandwiches. Better eat them now. The refrigerator’s busted.”
Anot
her casualty to place at my feet.
“Make more of both. We’re going to power down and play hide and seek.”
Romeo frowned and disappeared back into the ship.
Dax said, “We had better inform them of the situation. They get a vote. I’m not making the decision for them.” He glanced at the Luck. “I’m not in command anymore. I’m a captain without a ship, a ground-pounder.”
* * * *
They sat around the wardroom table in an air of stunned silence. The empty seats where Nate, Andy, and Tish usually sat haunted Dax. He added Myles and Director Rathiri to the litany of the missing. Cups of coffee and half-eaten sandwiches lay on plates in front of them. Like him, they had no appetite. He could barely look into their faces as he apprised them of the situation. Plia, as usual, maintained her air of stoic acceptance. Her face was unreadable, but he suspected even she had her limits. Romeo looked frightened, but he said nothing. He trusted his captain. Dax regretted that act of blind faith. He did not deserve it. Of them all, Cici surprised him most. She took their situation in stride.
“KB is an inflatable dome sprayed with a thin shell of concrete. It can handle a normal sandstorm, but it wouldn’t keep out a Raver for two minutes. At least the ship is metal.”
“It won’t keep them out for long,” Dax reminded her.
“I vote we stay,” she said.
He nodded. “Okay. Romeo?”
Romeo shrugged his thin shoulders. “Whatever you say, captain.”
Dax winced and shook his head. “No, not this time.”
Romeo looked uncomfortable. “Oh, okay. I vote we stay with the Luck. She’s my home.”
“Plia?”
Her face became grim. Her dark eyes flashed angrily. She shook her head. Through lips thinned to a tight straight line, she said, “I’m not leaving. I’ll face them here.”
Ivers spoke for him. “I guess it’s decided. We stay. Cici, will you see if you can access the satellite and spot the Ravers, see how much time we have? Plia, round up all the weapons and ammo and recharge the lasers and the disruptor. The cargo hatch is the weakest point. We’ll meet them there and fall back to the bridge. The bulkhead steel is thickest there.”
Plia looked at Dax for confirmation. He stared at each of them, moving from face to face. “Look, I won’t lie to you. We’re in a bad situation here. We’ve got nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. You know what these things are capable of. The Navy won’t be here for days at the earliest. The Luck’s bad busted. She’s not flying again.”
He was surprised how much it hurt to utter that declaration. It seemed to negate his entire life. “We’re stuck here. If the Ravers get inside, we’re dead.” He decided he was being too grim even for him. They all knew the odds. He forced a grin. “I’m planning on taking a few of the shiny little bastards down before I let them screw around with my coffee.”
Cici pulled down a satellite image on her computer. She zoomed in and pointed to a dot in a long, winding canyon – Fortune’s Luck. “We’re here.” She moved her finger across the screen and pointed to a small dot on the edge of the cliff. “KB is here.”
Dax gazed at the map. The storm was still blowing. Within the hour, it would engulf K124B. It might miss them, but with their luck, it probably wouldn’t.
“Zoom in on K124B,” Ivers said. Cici increased the magnification as far as she could. He could see the remote station’s ATV and even a folding table and two chairs. “Something’s wrong here,” he said.
“What?” she asked.
Curious, Dax leaned in closer as well.
“Where are the Ravers? They should have reached KB by now, but it’s still intact.” He pointed to a spot west of KB covered by the dust storm. “That’s where we first landed for repairs, correct, Captain?”
Dax looked at the image and nodded. “Near enough.” As Ivers scanned the area around K124B, Dax took a closer look at the map. Something bothered him. He drew a mental line from K124 to the landing site, and the remote station. “Zoom in on the head of the canyon,” he told Cici. Ivers gave him a questioning look, which he ignored. The image changed. Dax immediately recognized three dots moving down the canyon a few kilometers east of the station as the Ravers headed directly for the Luck. “They bypassed the remote station. Why?”
“They know we’re here,” Cici said.
“No. They spent three days travelling to the remote station; and yet they changed course. Hmm.” He used one of Andy’s vid entertainment magazines as a straight edge and laid it along the dots from K124 to K124B. The point where they had first landed for repairs was well south of the line. Next, he laid it along the path between K124 and the Luck’s present position. The line split their first landing site and their present one down the middle, the same line the Ravers now followed.
“They weren’t headed for the remote station,” he said with sudden realization. He looked at Cici. “What’s out this direction?”
She looked pensive for a moment. “Nothing, a small ruin we haven’t investigated yet. It’s so far out and sits by itself; we didn’t think it was important.”
Dax hated coincidences. This rang of a big coincidence. “Where is it?”
She pointed to the image. “About here, maybe twenty kilometers east of us, at the bottom of the canyon.” When she looked up at him, her eyes reminded him of Tish’s when she thought he was on to something. “Do you think it’s important?”
“The Ravers do.” He thought a minute, trying to drive the doldrums from his head. He needed to think clearly. “Was there anything different about this ruin?”
“I haven’t seen it in person. We sent a drone out to photograph it. I’m just a xenobiologist, but it seemed much older than any of the other ruins were. The architecture is different, more decoration. Ambrose …” Her voice cracked at the mention of the dead director’s name. “Ambrose planned on exploring it more thoroughly later this year. He, Doctor Hokomida, and Bob Rosenthal, two of our archaeologists, visited the site two months ago in the shuttle for a few hours. They seemed excited when they returned, but we already had so much to do that took precedence. Do you think the ruins are important?”
Dax rubbed his chin, wincing when he popped a blister on his finger. “I’m not sure. I’m just grasping at straws.” Dax noticed the expression of bewilderment on Cici’s face. “Why, do you know anything about them?”
“I know the three of them discussed the site a few times in private, which seemed odd given the amount of work before us. Ambrose … Doctor Rathiri wanted to tell me something important about the Huresh and the Ravers. He wanted to tell you too, but he was so weak and somewhat delirious, I ignored him.” She put a knuckle in her mouth and bit down. “I should have listened to him.”
Ivers had been listening closely to the exchange between him and Cici. “What do you have in mind?”
“I think we should check out these ruins. Even more so with what you just told me,” he said to Cici.
“You mean go out there where they are?” Romeo sputtered.
Romeo’s last close encounter with the Ravers had been enough for him. Dax didn’t blame him. Leaving the ship was a risk, but the odd behavior of the Ravers concerned him. If the director and the archaeologists had found something at the new site … He bit down on his blistered lip. He was doing it again. He had just abdicated taking responsibility, and once again, he was making decisions for the group. He turned to Ivers.
“It’s up to you, Sergeant, but I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Ivers nodded, but the corners of his eyes wrinkled, as if he realized what Dax was doing. “If we’re going, we had best do it soon. We don’t have much time.” He looked around the table. “Everyone suit up. Load food, water, and weapons in the serviceable ATV. We don’t have time to repair the other one.”
“It holds four people,” Romeo said. “Do you want someone to stay here with the ship?”
“No,” Dax replied, noting Romeo’s disappointment at his answer. “We stick toge
ther. Switch on our beacon and leave a message indicating where we’re going. If we don’t get back to the ship, the Navy will know where to look for us.”
He didn’t know if the new site had a sanctuary or walls more solid than the Luck, but he would not let the Ravers trap him without food or water again. His gut told him the site was important. Rathiri’s comment to Cici only heightened his resolve to investigate. The key to understanding the creatures might be at the new site. If he was wrong, they would die slightly earlier than if they remained with Fortune’s Luck. He considered the odds acceptable.
“Do we have time to bury Tish?” Romeo asked.
Dax suppressed a shudder at the reminder that she was gone. She deserved better than she had gotten. She deserved someone better than him. “No, we don’t have time for a funeral. She won’t mind. We’ll conduct a proper ceremony later.” If we’re still alive, he added silently.
Thirty minutes later, the five of them jammed into the ATV with all the supplies they could carry lashed to the top, and drove eastward down the valley. He glanced back at his crippled ship glinting in the sun. Fortune’s Luck would eventually become part of the landscape. In two thousand years, she would be rusted hulk buried beneath the sand waiting for another team of archaeologists to unearth her. What would they determine about her crew? That they enjoyed good coffee. That they were a happy crew until their captain killed them. The Luck had been a good ship with good memories. Now, the ghosts of her dead crew haunted her tainted corridors. She should remain buried. The earth was a fitting last resting place for her.
The first thing he noticed about the ruins was their placement on a rocky shelf ten meters above the canyon floor. Two millennia ago, it was probably a riverside building, though why its builders would place it in such an inaccessible spot, he couldn’t figure. The dilapidated ruins possessed symmetry different from the other ruins, reminding him of a flattened Mayan pyramid. He had not studied the Huresh cities, but the ruins appeared older, megalithic, a structure designed to last for millennia. The shaped stones looked Neolithic, but it had taken modern technology to shape the massive stones and place them atop of one another. The smallest stone was three times as heavy as the fifteen-ton red granite blocks used inside the Khufu Pyramid at Giza. Manpower and earthen ramps would not have sufficed.
