Horizon Alpha: Transport Seventeen

by D. W. Vogel

  Of course not.

  We pulled again, each bracing a foot against the transport wall, pulling with all our strength.

  “Rusted shut?” I asked.

  Shiro shrugged. “Guess so. Gotta find another way in.”

  All of Horizon’s transports had landed hard on this planet. Some were more wrecked than others, but none would ever take off from where they landed. This one was missing both wings, torn off as it broke through the trees three years ago, I assumed. We had been inside this transport and it was dry, so I knew the wings hadn’t left an open hole through the whole fuselage. But the jungle was already growing lighter. We needed to get inside.

  “You go fore, I’ll go aft?”

  Shiro nodded and we split up. I crept around to the right, moving toward the back of the ship. It was well dug into the dirt all the way around. I remembered the first time we had been here. The thing was full of shrews. If they found a way in, so would we.

  Part of the tail sat at a slight angle toward me, the metal crumpled and folded in. I shined my light up and down the hull, looking for a break but saw nothing. Around the aft. On the other side of the tail piece, a jagged crack poked up about two feet out of the dirt. It wasn’t wide enough to stick my head inside, but it got wider as it went down, disappearing into the soil at my feet.

  The jungle was light enough that I could see Shiro in the distance, examining the hull at the front of the ship. I flashed my light at him twice and started digging. If we didn’t get inside soon we’d have to climb a tree for the day. None of the trees around us had the kind of low branches that made for easy climbing.

  “That’s pretty small,” Shiro said, kneeling next to me.

  “Did you find anything better?”

  “Nope.” He joined me digging at the damp soil.

  Soon we had excavated down far enough that the crack widened. Jagged metal lined the edge, and it was barely wider than my shoulders. We’d have to lie on the ground and wiggle through.

  “Line it with these.” Shiro handed me the extra empty packs we had brought and I wrapped them around the sharpest edges.

  I looked at him and nodded, lay down on my left side, reached up and started pulling myself through the cracked hull.

  It was thick, with layers of twisted metal torn in shards all around me. I kicked with my feet and Shiro pushed from the outside, inching me along. I couldn’t spare a hand for a light and was quickly swallowed by the darkness. A musty smell hit my nostrils.

  My leg caught on a sliver of metal and I had to back out a few inches and reposition, slithering on my side like a demented snake. Please don’t get stuck. Please don’t get stuck. Of all the ways I thought I might die on Tau Ceti e, starving to death stuck halfway inside this transport was not one of them.

  Finally my hands felt free air. I gripped the inside edge and pulled, freeing my head, shoulders, and torso from the narrow gap. I wiggled forward until I could free my light, and shone it around the room I was halfway into, still laying on the floor with my legs in the wall.

  My light played around a dusty, dark room filled with empty shelves. I craned my neck backwards to see what was behind me.

  A dusty human skull looked back at me, empty eye sockets black in the darkness.

  Chapter 36

  I screamed like a little girl.

  Scrambling out into the dark room, I crashed into the empty shelves, stirring up dust that shimmered in the beam of my light.

  “What is it? ‘Saurs?” Shiro called in from outside.

  My heart was pounding as I looked around the rest of the room. “No,” I shouted, feeling silly. “It’s . . . it’s okay.”

  I laid my light on the floor, shining into the gap, and lay on my stomach to reach in. After a few minutes of cursing, Shiro grabbed my hand and I hauled him inside.

  “So . . . I guess I found some of the crew.”

  He stood up and turned around, picking at a tear in his shirt. When his light caught the bones, he froze. “Oh boy. Here they are all right.”

  Six skeletons lay in pieces around the small room. Whatever little shrews or tiny scavenger ‘saurs had been able to get in here had picked the bones clean long ago, scattering them around the dirty floor. Shiro and I examined the skulls.

  “All adults. None of them look damaged.” He set a skull carefully on a pile of bones.

  Thank the stars. I didn’t want to see a child’s skeleton. Or a baby’s.

  “What do you think happened?”

  Shiro picked up another skull and added it to the pile. “Who knows? There had to be more people than this aboard when they landed. But we never heard from them at Eden.”

  I joined him gathering up the bones and arranging them together. “Maybe some of them went out into the jungle.”

  “And never came back,” Shiro agreed.

  “Maybe these were the last.”

  We gathered all the bones together into a more dignified pile. Better than being strewn all around the room. Our people weren’t sentimental about body care, but it just didn’t seem right to leave them scattered all over.

  I looked around the dim room, daylight filtering in from the crack we had crawled through. The single hatch leading out of this room was closed behind me. These people had come in here and closed the door behind them. And then what? Had they starved in here, too frightened of the jungle’s predators to venture outside looking for food? Had they died of thirst in this hot, airless oven?

  Shiro knelt down and picked something off the floor. He blew the dust off to reveal a small plastic bottle.

  I read the label and shook my head.

  They took the pills.

  Probably all together, huddled in this empty room, surrounded by the terrifying sounds of the Tau Ceti forest, they each swallowed a single pill and drifted off to sleep.

  “I wonder who they were?” Shiro murmured. “We were so close to them.”

  “A week’s walk. But they couldn’t have known we were there, or which way to go.” A distant screech rattled the walls. “And they probably wouldn’t have made it to Eden anyway. At least they didn’t suffer.”

  Shiro flipped off his light. “Fly free, old friends.”

  “Fly free,” I echoed.

  We left the room, heading toward the front of the ship.

  Most of the transport was one open space. They weren’t meant for comfort, but to safely carry everything we’d need down from Horizon to the planet’s surface. Some of them had been packed for the trip, and others were in the process, but we had to evacuate hours before the first transports should have launched, so none of them were truly ready. Small portholes on each side let in enough light that we didn’t need our flashlights.

  It was a mess of wooden and metal crates. This transport didn’t have seats and wasn’t meant for passengers. Whoever the skeletons in the back once were, they would have been Horizon’s flight crew. My dad’s crew.

  The crate of ammunition was right where I had left it: near the door that was rusted shut, and next to the empty crate that had once housed the power core. We sifted through it, choosing the boxes of bullets that fit the pistols and rifle we had, stuffing our packs until they were almost too heavy to pick up.

  I shuffled to the closed door.

  A dark stain was still visible on the inside, dried black in the heat.

  Jack.

  He’d been like a brother to me, and he had died right here, ripped away from us by a Rex who reached in the open door and snatched him out. I touched the dark stain and flakes drifted down to the floor.

  “Jack would have loved the caves,” Shiro said from behind me.

  “Yeah. Especially those bloodsucker ‘saurs.”

  Shiro snorted. “I meant Carthage, our caves. But yeah,” he said, “he would have loved the bloodsuckers.”

  We rummaged in the crates for any cloth we could pile into a bed to sleep out the day.

  “Wonder why we don’t have them in our caves?” I asked.

  Shir
o pulled a length of canvas out of a box and dragged it across the floor. I shoved boxes out of the way.

  “I bet there were,” he said. “I bet the birdmen exterminated them when they moved in.”

  We folded the canvas and plopped down on it. “Maybe they ate them all.”

  “Yuck.”

  I lay back, sweating in the still air. It would be difficult to sleep, but for the first time in weeks, I felt truly safe. I took a long drink from my canteen, knowing my bladder wouldn’t let me oversleep. Tonight we would crawl back outside and meet the rest of the party on the hillside by sunrise.

  Hours later a sharp vibration jolted me awake.

  The filtered sun slanting through the portholes told me it was late afternoon. We had slept through most of the day.

  The vibration rattled through the ship, sending dust motes swirling in the light.

  “Shiro,” I whispered. “Shiro, wake up.”

  He mumbled and rolled over. I punched him in the shoulder as the vibration rippled through the ship again.

  “Shiro!” I raised my voice as loud as I dared. “Rex!”

  The word made him bolt upright.

  We waited for the vibration of its footfall. When it came it wasn’t a deep, ground-shaking thump, but a rumble. We felt it through our boots before the noise thundered out through the jungle.

  It was coming from the port side. We dashed to the portholes, pressing our faces to the glass.

  A herd of ‘saurs burst through the trees. They were like nothing I’d ever seen before. Running on two muscular legs, they stood half again taller than the tallest human at the shoulder. Their bodies were long, with stubby tails that wouldn’t touch the ground and rounded chests that stuck out when they ran. Long skinny necks carried tiny heads with eyes that darted around the trees and short, spiky red crests that lay flat down their backs. They looked almost comical, darting around the transport.

  The ship shook with the thunder of their passing. The herd parted as they approached the transport, splitting into two lines that poured around the ship like a stream flowing around a stone.

  We watched the last of them racing by and turned to climb over the crates to the other side of the ship so we could see the group re-form through the starboard portholes.

  We were halfway across when the unmistakable roar of a Rex sounded right behind us.

  Chapter 37

  We dropped to our knees, slapping our hands over our ears. When the roar finally stopped we bolted to the portholes.

  The Rex was in the middle of the herd, its enormous head reaching down to snap at a smaller ‘saur.

  The ‘saurs nearest the Rex laid their necks backwards over their spines, heads looking straight up. They rammed into the Rex with their huge round chests, hitting its tree-trunk legs.

  My mouth dropped open. “What are they doing?”

  Shiro grinned. “Fighting back.”

  The Rex’s tail whipped around, sending several of the ‘saurs flying. Shiro and I jumped back as one of them bashed into the side of the transport next to our porthole.

  “They’re just smashing into him!”

  It would have been funny, the strange-looking ‘saurs hurtling toward the Rex, necks curved backward to expose the battering ram of their chests. They must have some kind of huge, strong bones in there to smash into him like that.

  The Rex snapped down, grabbing one of the ‘saurs and crunching it in its huge jaws. It dropped the dead ‘saur and spun around, grabbing at another.

  A group of ‘saurs hit the Rex from the far side and it stumbled back, crashing into the nose of our transport. I fell backwards as the whole ship bucked underneath our feet, spinning it a few meters in the heavy dirt. All the feelings of safety I’d felt inside this metal can evaporated. That Rex could crush us.

  But there was nothing to do but ride it out. We couldn’t possibly crawl out now.

  In another few moments it was over. Dead ‘saurs littered the ground around the Rex’s feet. The rest of the herd stampeded off into the jungle. The Rex roared after them, shaking leaves from the trees.

  We peered through the portholes, just meters away from the deadly predator. Really glad that hatch doesn’t open anymore.

  I remembered what Sara had said. Rexes were territorial.

  “Do you think . . . do you think that’s the same one?” I murmured.

  “The one that got Jack?”

  I nodded.

  We hadn’t gotten a good look at it that horrible night. The image of its clawed front leg dragging Jack out through the hatch was burned into my brain forever, but it was dark, and we never saw the rest of the beast. They all looked the same to me anyway.

  “Might be,” Shiro said. “Yeah, maybe.”

  I watched it eat, ripping the dead ‘saur in half with a foot on its body and the neck in its mouth.

  “Do you think it can smell us in here?”

  Shiro shook his head. “Not over all that ‘saur smell out there.”

  I sighed, heart still pounding.

  “When it’s done eating it should move off,” Shiro said. The jungle had darkened since the attack began, early evening falling around us.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the feeding Rex. There were still at least three dead ‘saurs on the ground that I could see. But it wouldn’t take the Rex long to finish them all. I had no doubt it could.

  There was no warning.

  I didn’t hear a thing, and the Rex obviously didn’t either.

  Like a flash of black lightning, something huge burst out of the trees behind the Rex. It was so fast I couldn’t get a good look at it, but in an instant the Rex was down.

  Thick black coils wrapped around the Rex’s body.

  A single word danced through my mind, part of Rogan’s endless litany of dinosaur names. This one had caught my attention and stuck with me.

  “Titanoboa.”

  The enormous snake reared back, keeping its head out of reach of the Rex’s snapping jaws. The Rex got a claw into one of the coils and kicked the boa off, leaping to its feet and roaring a challenge. Beneath our feet the transport shook.

  “This is going to be bad.”

  Its scales were black but shone iridescent rainbows when the light hit them. I couldn’t even guess how long it was, but it was twice as thick as I was tall. It coiled into a pile and raised its huge head to hiss at the Rex.

  We were peeking through the Rex’s legs, its tail almost touching the side of the transport. The Rex crouched down in front of us, blocking our view of the Boa.

  Shiro grabbed my arm. “Hang onto something.”

  We gripped the metal shelves bolted to the transport walls and pressed our noses to the glass.

  The Boa struck.

  It smashed into the Rex from the front, both beasts careening into the transport. Our ship tipped sideways, and for a moment my porthole showed the treetop canopy before it crashed back down, slamming my head into the wall. I tasted blood.

  Boa and Rex rolled away from the transport, thrashing through the trees. Coil by coil the black Boa wrapped itself around the Rex from the neck down. It had its teeth sunk into the Rex’s shoulder and nothing the Rex did could dislodge it. The Rex kicked, shoving them back toward the transport. If I could have reached through the porthole at that moment, I could have stroked the shining midnight scales.

  The Rex kicked again, pushing away from the transport, which squealed and popped as it smashed into a tree.

  We held on to the shelves and stared as the Rex kicked again, and once more. Its tail flopped up and crashed down.

  The Rex went still.

  In a few moments the Titanoboa uncoiled and slithered off the Rex, which lay silent on the ground. The snake’s movement was soundless as it approached one of the ‘saurs the Rex had killed, miraculously intact after the crushing battle around its body.

  Titanoboa opened its jaws wide. The lower jaw unhinged and dropped, scooping under the ‘saur. It pushed forward, inching its mouth around t
he body. In a few minutes the dead ‘saur’s stubby tail disappeared into the Boa’s jaws, and a giant bulge gulped into the neck, undulating down the Boa’s body. It swallowed the ‘saur whole.

  Air moved behind me and I whipped around to see that the blows to the transport had knocked the hatch open.

  At least we wouldn’t have to crawl back out the tail.

  The forest was nearly dark by the time the Boa finished swallowing the other three ‘saurs from the Rex’s kill. It slithered past the still body of the Rex, which was apparently too big for the Boa to eat. We watched its black tail disappear silently between the trees.

  Chapter 38

  Shiro finally broke the silence.

  “We can’t stay here.”

  I peered out the porthole, looking up toward the sky. “It’s pretty dark, but not near cool enough. We should wait a while longer.”

  Shiro shook his head. “Something’s going to come to eat that dead Rex. We don’t want to be here when it does.”

  A chill shook me as I pictured what it could be. A pack of Wolves, drawn to the smell of blood? Whatever that horned thing was? Were ‘saurs particular about what they ate, or would any meat-eater relish the chance to dine on the King of the Night?

  We hoisted the heavy packs full of ammunition, checked our pistols and extra magazines, and stepped through the transport hatch.

  “Wait. I need to see it.” Shiro broke away from me and headed toward the front of the ship.

  “What? Shiro, come back . . .”

  He ignored me and crept around, so I had to follow. The Rex lay just meters away, unmoving on the blood-soaked ground. Night cries hooted through the trees, reassuring me that no big predator was near. No live one, anyway. A deep call thumped through the ground, a bass note to the treble squeals around me.

  The Rex lay on its side, head facing me. I sidled around in front of it. The mouth hung open, eye staring at the sky. A rotten, putrid odor hung in a cloud around its teeth, bits of bloody ‘saur stuck between them. Blood oozed from the wounds left by the Boa’s razor teeth in its shoulder.

  The bass call thumped again.

  I never thought I’d be so close to a predator like this. My fingertips touched the thick, scaled skin, crisscrossed with the scars of a lifetime’s violence. It felt warmer than I imagined.