"What are you doing?" Nick asked as I ran aft.
"Going for Tabby," I said. "Go. We'll be okay." Nick turned for the grav lift but before he could jump through, I caught his eye. "Don't," I said sternly. "Run the play that's called."
"Stupid rule," he said, but turned away.
At 3g, the grav lift didn't do much to cushion my drop from the top deck. Unlike everyone else, I'd been wearing my grav-suit even while on Mars. I couldn't figure out how anyone lived without a suit on. I'd had some sort of second-skin on my whole life and felt naked without it. I was sure without the suit’s grav assist, I wouldn't have been able to continue toward Tabby.
As I approached engineering, I could see a cherry red glow where Tabby attempted to cut through the armor of the aft-hatch. The hatch, which separated living space from the cargo hold, was designed to withstand unauthorized boarders who somehow managed to breach the hold. The metal wouldn't hold forever, but with the increasing g-forces and countdown to FTL, it might well be a lifetime.
"Stand back. I've an idea," I said, flinging open the door into the armory, which was just to the starboard of the aft hatch.
"Thirty seconds. Liam Hoffen, Tabitha Masters, you are in danger. Report immediately to an inertial suspension chamber. This is not a drill."
I grabbed a familiar, but now exceedingly heavy blaster rifle. My HUD linked with the gun and a familiar menu appeared. I was glad for the ocular detection that allowed me to spin through the menus without actually moving my hands. I switched the weapon to explosive rounds.
"You clear?" I asked, noticing the hatch still glowed.
"Clear enough," Tabby said.
I blooped three sticky grenades at the door and dove into the armory. Well, to be truthful, I more stumbled and then allowed the crushing gravity to drag me to the deck. An explosion tore through the hallway, flames licking into the armory.
"Fifteen seconds," the ship hounded us over comms.
"Overkill much?" Tabby asked, leaning over me.
"I didn't know how much armor that door had," I said, pushing against the deck. I felt like I was trying to lift an asteroid.
A strong hand grabbed my arm and pulled me upward. Tabby grunted as the two of us worked our way back to the gravity lift. The intensity of the downforce was such that there was no jumping that would get us back to the bridge deck and the safety of the inertial suspension vats.
Tabby grabbed the metal rungs and climbed. When I grabbed hold, I realized there was no way I'd be able to make it.
"Shite," I said, panting from exertion. "Keep going. I'll be just a second."
Tabby pushed off and landed heavily next to me. "Sure. That's how that was going to go, dumbass."
"Go. Frak. We don't need to both get turned into paste," I coughed, trying to grab a breath. The exertion just to stand was overwhelming. "Ship, are there suspension tanks on this level?"
"There is a tank within the engineering bay. It is now available for use," the ship responded.
Tabby did the unthinkable: she leaned over and pulled me onto her shoulders. "Rings. Of. Saturn. But. You're. Heavy." She grunted out a word with each movement.
"Excessive gravity warning. Danger." The ship said almost cheerfully.
I was browning out by the time I sank into the viscous fluid. I felt a heaviness in my chest not caused by the force of gravity, certain that Tabby had given up her own life for mine.
Waking up from a near death experience while suspended in fluid is a bit trippy. Worse yet, it wasn't the first time for me, which contrary to what you might think, doesn't make it any better. It's a rookie mistake to try talking with tubes down your throat, but that never got in my way. Blissfully, I didn't recall the dire events that had placed me within the fluid on this first awakening.
I drifted off to sleep and when I awoke again, noticed I was surrounded by a reddish, translucent fluid. I'd been in the med tank several times before and recognized it for what it was. A human-shaped outline appeared above me and a moment later someone knocked on the wall of my liquid tomb. My mind leapt to Tabby and I smiled. We'd made it. Then the memory of her last act flooded my consciousness. It couldn’t be Tabby. She’d died saving my life.
Still, hope fueled me. My friends were masters of survival. Maybe she had found a way. I pushed my hand out to the side and knocked back. My muscles ached at the small movements, but the pain barely registered. Whoever was out there started shouting.
I slowly moved my arms, searching for controls of any sort. My hand brushed a protrusion just above my face and I explored it with my fingers. A bright glow appeared and instantly my head ached from its intensity.
"Can you hear me?" There were now two people peering into the tank. Since my rescuers didn’t seem to be moving fast enough, I refocused on the panel I'd discovered. Two glowing green buttons five centimeters apart had the outline of thumbs. It didn't take a genius to understand what that implied, so I pushed them simultaneously.
At first, nothing happened, so I did what any rational person would do, I kicked at the bottom of the tank with my legs. Knowing such a childish act should have no effect only added to my surprise when the bottom broke open and the fluid cascaded out. I was left lying there like a fish in a puddle.
"He's in here!" The low voice belonged to a young man in his early twenties, his voice filled with excitement.
"Careful, son," a man answered. Where the boy's voice had been familiar, I recognized the man's voice. It was Nick.
"Frak, get me out of here," I called after pulling a tube out of my throat. I tried but was mostly unsuccessful at scooching out the bottom of the tank. My muscles betrayed me and I wondered just how much injury I'd experienced.
"Careful," Nick said. "He's probably weak and disoriented."
"We gotta get moving," the young man said. "Those Scatters have picked up our tracks by now."
"Let me look," Nick said. "Yeah, they're two clicks out. Get him out of there. Sorry old buddy, no time to explain just yet. We've got incoming."
Large hands enveloped my ankles and suspension fluid sloshed up onto my torso as I was dragged from the end of the tank. My eyes burned from the light and I closed them tightly. Instead of setting me down, I was tossed unceremoniously over my rescuer’s shoulder.
"Gotta move, Dad." His voice was deeper than Nick's and my confusion began to take hold.
"Go!" Nick said. "Off the back of the mountain. We'll meet up with the girls."
"Is it really him?" my captor slash taxi asked, breaking into an easy jog.
"It really is," Nick answered.
As my awareness increased, I realized my face rested on thick fur and each step of the man's stride caused me no end of discomfort.
"Jupiter piss, can we stop already?" I coughed after about ten minutes of the abuse.
"Yeah. We're probably okay for a second," Nick said, his voice closer. "Frak, Liam, you have no idea how good it is to see you."
The man holding me leaned forward and with strong arms set me gently on the ground. My world spun as I looked into his face. There was no mistaking the family resemblance to Marny and Nick. I leaned over and threw up. I wasn’t sure why I had that reaction, except it was equal odds I either couldn’t handle the junk I'd ingested in the tank or the incongruity of what stood before me.
"Little Pete? What in blazes?" " I asked, squinting up at him.
The man's grin was all Marny, as were the mounds of muscle on the two-meter tall giant. "That's right, Cap," he said. "Welcome back."
Chapter 4
Reunion
"Cap?" I asked.
"That's what Mom calls you," Pete said. "I guess this is all pretty messed up through your peepers." His speech pattern was off and I couldn't quite pin down what I found odd about it.
From my peripheral vision, I noticed something else. My arm was thin beyond recognition. With significant effort, I lifted it for further inspection. The grav-suit's glossy skin had retracted to surround it, but my arm seemed not much mo
re than skin and bone.
Hearing something I didn't, Pete cocked his head. He opened his mouth and whistled a short sequence of chirps. Instinctively I blinked, bringing up my HUD. Two unidentified figures were approaching from magnetic north of whatever planet we were on. I gestured with my hands, directing my grav-suit to lift. The movement was painful, but the suit responded just as I'd have expected.
Sensing movement, Pete turned back to me with a startled look on his face. He scrambled away from me and picked up a long wooden bow.
"Someone's coming," I said, not sure what Pete's issue was. I pointed to the north and down the hill. "Forty meters. There are two of them."
"It's okay, Peter," Nick said. "Liam's wearing a grav-suit. We've talked about them. Remember?"
Pete exhaled sharply. "Right. Talking and seeing are really different."
A return whistle similar to Pete's came from the approaching figures. I clenched my hand and felt the familiar weight of my ring, loose on my finger. With my thumb, I reached over and tapped the side of the ring, finding the familiar indention where a quantum resonance crystal chip had been imbedded.
"Liam!" I heard a shout from thirty meters out as my ring vibrated in response. At the same time, one of the two red dots on my HUD accelerated on a direct bee-line to our position.
I urged my suit to take me in that direction and my heart leapt as Tabby emerged, racing up the side of the mountain, her long coppery hair flowing out behind her. Like Pete, she wore animal skin coverings, although not fur. The sleeveless, thin leather dress came to just about mid-thigh and she wore boots that came to just below her knees. Her skin was darker than I'd ever seen it and she was moving faster than I could imagine.
Tabby leapt from five meters and tackled me, pulling me out of my mid-air hover. The pain of impact was exquisite, and I used every ounce of my strength to direct the grav-suit to keep us from crashing onto the rocky soil beneath.
"Is it really you?" Tabby asked, grabbing my cheeks with both hands and staring into my face. She didn't waste a moment and pulled me into a kiss. Despite myself, I groaned. With every movement, my body felt like it was being pulled apart. "What's wrong? Are you hurt. You're so small. Where have you been? You smell like medicine."
"Slow down," I said, feebly pushing her back. "It's me."
Her face had lines and old scars I didn’t recognize. Moreover, her hair, while still full, was thinner and lines of dark grey streaked through it.
"Tabby," Nick said. "Liam was still in the suspension chamber. Pete found it on the mountain and must have hit the wake-up sequence. The tank was completely depleted. We're lucky Liam's alive."
"Oh, frak," Tabby said, pushing off. I couldn't help but be impressed with how shapely her bronzed arms were. "I'm so sorry. Did I hurt you?" She rubbed her hand along my scalp and it was then I realized I had no hair on my head.
"I'll live. I hope," I said.
"As I live and breathe. Liam Hoffen cheats death once again." Marny's voice caused a lump to form in my throat.
I urged my suit to help me into a seated position and looked over to the approaching woman. While Tabby had changed little, a few scars and greying hair, Marny had changed significantly. Gone were her thick muscles. In their place were smaller, tight bands of well-defined muscle. Instead of a short-cropped military cut hair, her hair hung to her shoulders and was steel-gray with wisps of sandy-brown. Like Tabby, her skin was bronzed, but most significantly, I could read in her face the peace that had always drawn me to her.
"Marny," I said. Tears itched at my eyes, but I had none to give. "What happened?"
"Not the best place for a reunion," Nick said, crouching in front of me. It was then I realized that he was sporting a beard to beat all beards. His thick black hair curled at his cheeks and dripped off his chin. The only interruption in the beard was a single finger-wide streak of white that ran down the left side. "We're being tracked by a tribe. Not their fault, we're trespassing, but it'd be better if they didn't catch us. Can you move?"
"I can carry him, Dad," Pete offered.
I lifted off the ground and hovered away from the burly youth. "Let's not. My insides haven't recovered from the last run." I urged my AI to scan the area as I lifted a few meters off the ground. "There are seven approaching from the southeast. Forty meters out, moving four meters per second."
"And he shows up with a grav-suit and working AI." Marny chuckled to herself as the four broke into an easy run down the side of the mountain.
I scanned the terrain, mostly looking for potential threats. We were right at the tree line of a tall mountain and my HUD showed us at twenty-nine hundred meters elevation. The planet's gravity was .95g and the air smelled sweet but was thin, due to our elevation. The forest we were entering filled the bowl of the mountainside as far as the eye could see with the exception of a deep blue lake twelve kilometers to the northwest.
At six meters per second, the run down the mountain seemed to be at a breakneck pace. The fact was, other than Nick, everyone else easily kept that pace. Nick had never been a natural runner, but if anything, he was in the best shape of his life. He attacked the hill and seemed determined to pound the trail into dust. On the other end of the spectrum, Tabby and Pete ran side by side, taking joy in the physical exertion. Where Pete was working at staying on the trail, Tabby added difficulty by periodically leaping up and trying to tag me as I sailed near them.
"How long can you float with your black skin?" Pete finally asked as I glided up next to him.
"Grav-suit," I corrected. "It gains energy from gravitational fields and solar radiation. I can float like this forever, pretty much."
"I'll be honest," he said. "I kind of thought Dad was just making some of this stuff up."
I grinned. "Big jokester now, is he?"
The comment earned me a sidelong glance from Pete. "Right. Not really."
"You know, the last time I saw you, you were an infant," I said. "That was yesterday."
"I don't remember you, although for as much as Mom and Dad talk about you, I might as well," he said.
"You've been here your whole life?"
"Yeah," he said. "Dad's been trying to narrow down where the ship crashed."
"He’s been working on that for your whole life?" I started to understand the magnitude of what had occurred.
"It's not the only thing we've done," he answered, defensively. "Living on Fraxus is hard. You'll see. Snow season is coming."
"Fraxus? Is that the name of the planet?"
"Sounds like frakked us," Tabby said, gracefully running up next to us. "It was funnier twenty stans ago."
My mind reeled. I knew time had passed, but hadn’t really thought about a number yet. A red warning throbbed on my HUD, but I was too stunned to look for the problem. A moment later, I clipped a heavy tree branch and was knocked to the ground. The hit was almost more than I could handle and I was powerless to stop myself from crashing to the boulders below. My body was so weak that this final insult put me in a bad spot.
"I've got you, babe," Tabby said, gently scooping me from where I lay, groaning. "I know it's a lot to take in. You've been missing for almost half my life and now I've got you back. I'm going to take care of you."
"You've gone native. Why?" I managed as Tabby took off at a run, easily overtaking the others even though she carried me.
"No technology on Fraxus," she said.
"What about Ada?" I asked.
"Nothing yet," Tabby said.
"Hotspur?"
"Don't know," she said. "Best we can piece together is that we came under fire and somehow made it to this planet. The ship ejected our suspension chambers and we think it crashed somewhere on the planet. We've looked but can't find it. We got lucky when we found you."
"How?"
"Shh," she said. "We'll talk when we get back to camp."
As soon as I relaxed, I fell into a troubled slumber.
I awoke after nightfall lying atop thick furs next to Tabby. I wa
s starving and needed desperately to relieve myself, but I didn't want to give up the feeling of peace I had. The smell of smoke permeated the eight-meter-square room. In the center of the opposite wall was a stone fireplace and chimney with a thick slab of unevenly shaped iron for a hearth. I smiled. Nick must be blacksmithing if he'd made an iron hearth. A dwindling fire crackled, pushing heat into the room. It was a cool evening, but my grav-suit had no trouble keeping me warm.
As gently as I could, I rose from the bed, using my grav-suit to lift away from Tabby. She'd positioned herself between me and the rest of the room, trapping me against the wall. I suspected it was both a protective move as well as a desire not to let me slip away. She'd always been a heavy sleeper and didn't stir as I re-oriented myself to vertical. Without touching the ground, I floated to the thick outside door.
The enclave was surrounded by forest. Gurgling water nearby told of a river that I couldn't see in the starlight. Next to Tabby's cabin was another, larger cabin and then a third, much larger building that was no doubt Nick's workshop. The cabins were dark, but light flickered out between the cracks of the shop’s shuttered windows. I took care of business and then made my way over to the building, knocking on the thick slab door before pushing it open.
"You're up," Nick said, sliding off a stool that sat next to a rough-hewn workbench. "Everything okay?"
"I imagine you're hungry," Marny said, walking into the candlelight from the shadows. "You can't know how good it is to see you, Cap."
"For me, we just took off from Mars yesterday," I said.
"Liam, you need to sit," Nick said. "Marny ground some sweet grain. Your body will have trouble processing, but you need to get back onto real food. As you've probably figured out, the suspension chambers on Hotspur were for more than inertial dampening. You were in stasis. As far as you're concerned, you did leave Mars yesterday."
"Here you go, Cap," Marny said, sitting next to me on a low bench and handing me a wooden bowl as she wrapped an arm around my shoulders. "Just try a spoonful or two."
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