I stepped on a slug’s head and slipped, falling hard to the ground, face-first. Slate and Rulo were already over me, and my friends slowed to pull me to my feet.
“Thanks,” I said, checking over my shoulder to see the slugs moving fast toward us. They were hungry, and I had it on good authority we were on the menu. I fired behind me, striking a few of them as we exited the cave into the smaller tunnel.
“Please don’t be more ahead,” Slate was whispering over and over. It was a mantra I could stand behind. If they were ahead as well as behind, we’d have to fend them off from inside this compact tunnel, and I didn’t see that ending well for any of us.
“The portal,” I said, remembering the device would open a doorway onto our ship. I grabbed it from my pocket and tried to activate it. Nothing happened, but I’d wasted a good ten seconds trying to get it to work. The slugs were almost at my feet, and I managed a good look at them.
They had no armor, probably because they had no predators out here on a rock in space. They had two forearm-sized tentacles emerging from the fronts of their tiny heads, and these wavered around, perhaps acting as eyes or noses, I wasn’t sure which. Maybe both.
I shot one in the head, being rewarded with three more taking its place. They were coming in droves, and if the portal wasn’t going to work, I needed to run. Slate and Rulo were already long gone. Broker had warned there was a limited distance the portal encircled, and I seem to have stretched past that boundary.
I chased after Slate and saw the bottoms of his boots as he hurried ahead of me. We entered another cavern, and more slugs dropped from the ceiling. One landed on me, knocking me to the ground, but Slate was there to kick it off and offer me his hand.
They kept coming. Hundreds of them now. It was something out of a nightmare. I always thought slugs to be slow, methodical creatures, but those were the ones in my parents’ garden, the slugs hiding under a two-by-four or a rock. These were something else: huge, fast, and with a mission.
We emerged out of the corridors and into the open cavity below the crater. I knew I could use the portal, but there wasn’t time to stop and set it up. I didn’t have ten seconds to spare. The mass of seething slime monsters was literally on our heels. None of us said a word as we pumped our legs, carrying our frantic bodies forward, past the Yuver ship and toward the ropes at the end of the room.
I glanced back, only to see the hundreds of slugs rising to the ceiling, covering the walls and the entire surface of the cavern behind us. There was no fighting them. There were too many to beat.
Rulo reached the ropes first, and she pulled them twice, the winch above doing its job, drawing her up quickly. Slate and I clipped in and did the same. We both fired at the ceiling and floor, where the slugs were approaching us as we were lifted toward the surface of the crater and our waiting ship.
Rulo grabbed us each under the armpit and tugged us up, making quick work of it in the near-zero gravity. The enemy was eagerly hunting us, and they scurried onto the surface in hot pursuit. The ship was a few hundred yards away and I ran for it, faster than I’d ever moved in my life, my weighted feet barely touching the ground.
“The ramp! Open the ramp!” I was shouting into my earpiece, and the incline began lowering. A quick look over my shoulder showed me we were cutting this close. There had to be a thousand of the creatures chasing us, tentacles wavering above beady heads, slime everywhere.
We arrived at the ship before the ramp was all the way open, and Slate jumped, rolling onto it. He spun and grabbed Rulo’s and my arms, helping us up, and we scrambled up the ramp as it began to close.
I was on my butt, firing at the slugs trying to climb on board. Slate was doing the same, Rulo making quick work of them with her minigun. We had to be careful not to damage our ship, as the ramp was nearly closed.
One last slug pressed through just as the door sealed, cutting it in half. The top half of it kept moving, coming toward us. The tentacles reached forward, and it shrieked before stopping suddenly and deflating.
My heart was pounding so hard, I couldn’t even hear what Suma was saying.
The ramp opened again, and I panicked before realizing we were above the surface, far away from the attackers. Slate kicked the slug through the containment field, and all that was left was a pile of ooze where it had died.
“Well, that was one for the books, hey, boss?” Slate gave my suit a light punch, and I forced a smile. It had been close. Too close.
“Are you guys okay?” Karo was there at my side, helping me take off my suit. I took deep breaths of the ship’s air as the gore-covered helmet hit the floor. Slate and Rulo were likewise drenched in blood and guts.
“Remind me never to answer a distress call again,” Rulo said as she piled her armor suit to the side of the room.
“We need to destroy that rock,” I whispered, catching my breath.
“He’s right,” Karo said. “We didn’t shut off the transmission.”
“Someone else could be attacked by those things,” Suma said.
“W,” I said into my earpiece. “Bank toward the asteroid. I’m coming to the bridge.”
I was in my sweat-soaked jumpsuit, my socked feet plodding down the hall on wavering legs. I hopped into the co-pilot’s seat and W stared straight forward. “Good to see you, Captain. That was… unexpected.”
“You can say that again.” I activated the pulse cannons and took aim as we neared the asteroid. Even from here, I could see the writhing mass of slugs filling the crater. I fired at them and didn’t stop until the entire asteroid was floating around in countless pieces. I wasn’t sure if that would end the danger of these particular slugs, but it sure made me feel better.
“I need a beer,” Slate said from behind me.
“I need a shower.” This from Rulo.
“I need both.” I laughed now and was joined by my teammates.
“Life is never dull around you all,” Rulo said, clapping Slate and me on the shoulders. “I like that.”
“I’m glad someone does,” I said. “Hey, when we tell Mary this story later, can we not let her know how close we actually came to dying?”
“Speak for yourself. We were fine,” Slate said, and I recalled the look on his face when we rescued him from the attacking slugs.
“Sure. I’ll tell myself that too,” I said. “Suma, let’s have a look at our new guest.”
The Shimmali girl nodded with a smile.
____________
A month passed without incident: just our daily routine of eating, working out, playing games, talking, and attempting to create a viable plan for a multitude of scenarios. That was the worst part, guessing what might have happened to Fortune. There were so many things that could have occurred, it was extremely hard to speculate any reasonable situations.
I spent most of my nights wide awake, staring at the ceiling of my room, thinking about my family back home. What kind of trouble was Jules getting herself into while I was away? Was Mary doing okay with my absence?
My thoughts often drifted to the Alliance of Worlds, and how the colony on Haven was going during its extreme growth period. Then, when I finally fell asleep, I’d have nightmares of Iskios, Lom of Pleva, and now I could add alien space slugs to the ever-growing fears within my restless mind.
I must have mumbled in my sleep again, because I was being shaken, someone softly saying my name. “Mary?” I asked, blinking my sleep-covered eyes to see Suma’s silhouette.
“Dean, we’re almost there,” she said softly.
She didn’t have to say where there was. Magnus had made a stop on his journey, and it was one of the last locations from which he’d been able to send messages to the Keppe. It was probably where he’d been the last time we’d spoken over our communicators.
My nightstand had the hand-held communicator on top of it now, and I tried it at least once a day, in the off chance I could reach Magnus with it. So far, I’d gotten no response. I hadn’t let myself consider the fact that the entire crew of Fo
rtune could have disappeared for good. I couldn’t do it. Magnus, Natalia, Dean, and Patty were fine, along with the five hundred Keppe on board the exploratory vessel. They were alive, and we were going to find them at any cost.
“Thank you, Suma,” I said, and swung my legs out of the blankets, sitting up. “I’ll be right there.”
She left me alone in the room, and I tried to remember the dream I’d been having. It had involved Mary and Jules being trapped on the other side of a portal stone. I shook the cobwebs clear from my sleep-addled brain and went to the Kraski bathroom, where I used their version of a steam shower. I emerged a few minutes later feeling like a new man, and donned a basic jumpsuit before heading to the bridge.
Everyone was present, and Slate passed me a cup of coffee, which I graciously accepted, smelling the roasted bean water before taking a sip. If there was one thing a two-month trip on a cramped ship needed, it was a good cup of coffee, and we at least had that. It was the one thing I’d remembered to bring with me from New Spero, and apparently so had Slate, because we hadn’t needed to dig into the Keppe version yet. It was acceptable in a pinch, but not quite the same thing.
“What are we looking at?” I asked, taking a peek at the viewscreen. The screen showed a planet directly in its center, a space station between us and the world.
“This” – Suma was beside W, and she tapped the console, zooming on the world beyond the station – “is where Magnus last sent any location information. We’re far out in space and honestly didn’t expect to find a space station here, let alone what appears to be the right class of planet for human, Shimmali, and even Keppe life.”
“Maybe he didn’t leave,” I said. The surface was taupe, the color of a desert, but water filled half our view of the world now.
W shook his head from the pilot’s seat, not turning around to look at me. “It is doubtful. They were gone when the last message was sent to the Keppe about the system with the missing star.”
“But that was less than a month’s travel from this location, maybe less given the unknown timeline. They could have returned damaged. The Keppe vessels have lifeboats, right?” I knew they did, because Hectal had shown them to Mary and me on Starbound. They were almost as big as the Kraski ship we were in now.
“Dean, you’re a genius. The lifeboats have a locator built into them!” Rulo was excitedly explaining to Suma how to input the tracking into the Kraski computer.
“I’m amazed you know how to do that,” Slate told Rulo, who shot an accusatory scowl at him in return.
“I’ve been on my share of rescue missions, and more often than not, we end up using these to track the missing boats after the warship has been disabled… or destroyed,” Rulo said.
“Sorry. Sometimes I forget how much you and your people have been through.” Slate offered the olive branch, and she took it.
“No problem. You’re human. How can I expect you to act civilized?” Rulo’s insult was punctuated with a sharp-toothed grin.
While they were working, I asked W to scan the station. It was circular, rotating of its own volition.
“I’m not picking up any life forms, Captain. There are also minimal energy readouts. It is dead as a doornail. I’ll never understand human colloquialisms,” W said.
“Neither will I, Dubs. So the station’s dead. How about the planet?” I asked.
“We would have to send probes, but I do not see any on this vessel,” he said.
“The ones on our fleet’s ships now have been added as a modification. The original Kraski ships didn’t have them,” Slate reminded us.
“No sign of a Keppe lifeboat… wait… what’s that?” Suma asked. “I’m getting a faint reading from the surface. It could match the signature, but there’s something in the atmosphere blocking the readouts properly.”
“I think that is one. I know we only got a flicker, but I recognized the nomenclature, I’m sure of it,” Rulo said.
I was excited by the idea of discovering a real clue to Magnus’ disappearance. Finding someone in space was like a needle in a haystack... if the needle was the size of a proton and the haystack was… well, space. We needed concrete leads to get us anywhere, especially since the trail grew dry after this stop along the map.
“We’re going in, team. W, be careful with the descent. If the atmosphere is causing issues with the readouts, then I want you to exert extreme caution lowering us through it,” I ordered.
“Yes, Captain,” W answered, and flew us by the space station. I watched it grow larger in the viewscreen before our trajectory changed and we left it behind us as we made for the planet.
“You sure we shouldn’t explore that space station? If I know Magnus, and I do, he’ll have stopped there to check it out,” Slate said.
He was right, but I didn’t want the detour. “That can be a last resort. First things first. Check to see if this blip we got really was a Keppe signature.”
Slate crossed the bridge. “Could it have been from Fortune?”
I watched Rulo’s expression and caught something before she frowned and waved a dismissive hand at Slate. “No. I don’t think so. It might be nothing.”
If that was Magnus’ ship, then I didn’t expect it to be intact. The vessel was too large to land on a planet’s surface without dire consequences. If they’d made an emergency landing through this atmosphere, that could be why they weren’t able to leave or transmit.
Maybe they were down there. The minutes felt like hours as W traversed the distance to orbit. From here, the landscape below was much of the same. Sandy, desert-like, with oceans abounding.
“We’re on the wrong side. W, take us around orbit, and we’ll enter in twelve minutes,” Suma said, and W nodded his agreement.
The twelve minutes went by slowly, and I found myself pacing the bridge like a caged animal. “I’ll be right back,” I said, and took off through the hallway and into the bunk room. The communicator was where I left it on the nightstand, and I picked it up, pressing the icon. “Magnus, if you’re nearby, respond. It’s Dean. Respond.”
The communicator sat cold and soundless in my palm. “Damn it,” I whispered to myself, setting it beside the bed. I had an inkling that if he was on the planet below, he might be able to answer, since we were so close now. It didn’t mean the Fortune wasn’t there, but it did make my mind spin in speculation even more than it had been.
The ship shook violently, throwing me against the ceiling before dropping me onto the bed with a thud. I narrowly missed hitting my head on the end table, and after a few more shakes, the room calmed to a stop.
“Everyone okay?” I asked as I regained my composure and ran to the bridge.
Slate was on the ground, Rulo bent over him. “That’s one hell of an entry, Dubs.” Slate’s voice was muffled, and I saw why. His nose was bleeding, and he tilted his head up.
Karo was in the far corner, rubbing his elbow. “You okay, Karo?” I asked the Theos, and he nodded.
“My pride is more wounded than my elbow, I fear,” he said softly. “How about you?”
“I’m fine. And to think I always complain about how hard the mattresses are. I won’t ever again,” I said.
“I am sorry, everyone. The atmosphere was thick, the composition unfavorable to entry, but we are in the clear henceforth,” Dubs said. I looked out the viewscreen, watching the dunes rising and falling below. It was an amazing sight. Wind blew, casting sand around, creating fog-like conditions the lower we drifted.
W lifted us above it, and we searched for a less blustery region to ground the ship in. We found it after a few minutes, and Suma was pleased with how close we were to the blip they’d discovered from above.
“It was nearby. Within two kilometers. Who wants to go on an adventure?” she asked.
No one replied, and Suma’s shoulders sank as she stood solemnly. “I assume you won’t be convinced to stay on board again this time, Suma?” I asked.
She shook her head and lifted her short snout. �
�You have to be kidding me. I need to stretch these little legs out. Slate’s bleeding, so he should probably stay put.”
“Hey, it’s just a nosebleed. I’m as good as new… see?” Slate removed his hand to expose a red and swollen nose.
“Uhm, Slate… you’re out. Stay with W and be our eyes and ears on the ship.” I was already moving to the rear of the ship and ignored his efforts to persuade me to reconsider. “And hurry up. I want to see if there are any clues and get back here within two hours.”
Seventeen
“I hate this world,” I said as I stepped forward, my EVA boots sinking half a foot into the sand. There wasn’t much worse than walking on sand while wearing a heavy space suit. The gravity was close to Earth’s, but even stronger, making the venture all the more strenuous. The only one not complaining was Suma, who weighed the least, and therefore had the easiest time maneuvering through the endless sandy landscape.
“I do as well, Dean,” Karo said. He pointed forward, and I squinted, attempting to decipher through the sandstorm. The winds had eased up, but not enough to make visibility a non-issue.
“What do you see?” I asked him. His voice carried into my earpiece. If we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t even have been able to hear one another a foot apart in the whistling wind.
“There’s something sticking out of the sand ahead.” Karo pointed again, and it came into my sight.
“I see it too,” Rulo said. She bounded ahead of us, and I struggled to keep up as sand battered against my helmet. “It’s one of ours. It’s a Keppe lifeboat!” she yelled.
I spotted it then, an elongated rectangle. A corner of it was jutting out from the sand; otherwise, it appeared like the lower half was concealed. It was heavily damaged, broken on one side.
Even though we’d found it, the trek across the rolling dunes took another ten minutes, and by the time we arrived at its edge, my legs were screaming at me. It was a good thing we trained every day, because I’d be on the ground covered by sand if I wasn’t in decent shape.
Rulo didn’t waste any time. She was at the hatch near the front of the lifeboat, prying it open with a hard tug. Karo assisted her to pull it open, displacing sand into a pile beside us.
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