The Survivor

by BRIDGET TYLER

I yank the earbud out. I don’t need to relive this moment again in real life any more than I need to have nightmares about it.

  “You pulled the recording from the flyer?” I guess.

  Beth gestures to the flex in her lap.

  “I synced up as much of the audio with the footage from the flyer’s exterior cameras as I could during the flight here.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  She shrugs a big, shaky breath. “I’m just trying to understand.”

  I hug her. She hugs me back, burying her head in my shoulder.

  I don’t know how long we sit that way before the gentle growl of velcro draws my attention to the tent.

  Dr. Brown steps out. She’s wearing a faded ISA uniform that hangs loose on her thin body. Something about her posture is different. Or maybe it’s the sharpness of her gaze. She looks more like the woman I expected her to be, back when I was obsessively reading her books on interstellar exploration in the Academy.

  “Can you come in here, Beth?” she says quietly. “I need your help.”

  I’m not invited, but I follow them inside anyway. I’m tired of secrets.

  Neither of them objects.

  Dr. Brown has all four of the touchscreen canvas walls of her tent in notebook mode. The whole interior is covered in handwritten notes, diagrams, and equations. It’s overwhelming, like stepping into a whirlwind of information.

  “What is all of this?” I ask.

  “Earth’s atmospheric filtration system,” Beth says, her eyes skipping through the equations.

  “Hubris is what it is.” Dr. Brown sighs. “I should have put a stop to it when Eric first proposed the idea. But the others were so convinced, and we built in so many fail-safes . . .”

  “Not enough, apparently,” Beth says.

  “No!” Dr. Brown insists. “They were enough. More than enough. The sequence of events Tarn described to me should have been impossible. But he only has secondhand information. That’s why I need your help, Beth. I need to know exactly what the failure point was.”

  Unease prickles up the back of my neck.

  “Why are you doing this, Dr. Brown?” I ask.

  “She’s trying to understand,” Beth says, pulling a tightly folded flex from her pocket. “Just like me.” She hands the flex to Dr. Brown. “That contains everything I could find in the Prairie’s databases about the cascading failure in the Earth’s atmospheric filtration system.”

  Dr. Brown shakes out the flex, and what has to be a hundred files fade up on its screen.

  “You just happen to have all the available data on the apocalypse in your pocket?” I ask Beth as Dr. Brown scrolls through them.

  She shrugs. “I was in the middle of reviewing it for the eighth time when we left camp, so it was in my harness.”

  “You read all that eight times?” I gasp.

  “More like seven and a half,” she says. “Compulsive behavior, I’ll admit. I keep meaning to recycle that flex, but then . . .” She shrugs again and looks to Dr. Brown. “The algorithmic error is easy to find. It’s a simple miscalculation based on a faulty date. So simple that it was overlooked until it was too late. By the time they fixed it, the system was suffering from a series of cascading failures that couldn’t be contained. It all makes sense. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something.”

  “Because you are,” Dr. Brown says, looking up from Beth’s flex. “There’s no way an error like this could have been simply overlooked. The atmospheric filtration system was too dangerous to just—”

  “Wakey, wakey, cutie-pies!”

  Lieutenant Emily Shelby’s voice slices through the tent walls like a crystal shard, cutting Dr. Brown off. Then a crackling boom slaps through the air, shaking the tent around us.

  “Oh shit.” I gasp, diving for the tent flap.

  Outside, the shield projector pylons are on fire. The force field is gone. My friends are still scrambling to their feet. Except Leela. She’s already up, with her stun gun pointed at Shelby.

  Shelby has a gun the size of a Sorrow war hammer pointed back at her.

  “Hiya, Junior!” the Lieutenant chirps, madly. She’s in even worse shape than we are. Filthy, beat up, and spattered with burns. What’s left of her blond hair tangles across patches of red, blistered scalp. “The look on y’all’s faces. Priceless. I’d take a picture but I lost my flex somewhere.”

  Jay jumps off the wing of the flyer behind Shelby and points Corporal Green’s rifle at her back. “Put the gun down, Lieutenant,” he says.

  Shelby tsks. “I thought it wasn’t fair to shoot folks in the back, Lim.”

  “Shoot her, Jay,” Leela demands.

  Shelby barks a savage laugh. “As if he could get one off before I kill you.”

  “So?” Leela hisses.

  Shelby swipes at her face, smearing a streak of bright blood through the drying mud that coats her skin. “I like you, Divekar. Did I ever tell you that? You’re not that bright, but I like you.” She looks past Leela to Dr. Brown, who has just emerged from the tent behind me. “You should consider coming quietly, Lucille. I don’t know how well you know these kids, but they’re stubborn little assholes. I’m pretty sure I’ll have to kill them all to get to you, and that would be a real shame.”

  “You’re not going to hurt them,” Dr. Brown says, stepping past me.

  “No, Dr. Brown!” I grab her arm, trying to pull her behind me again. “Don’t! We can’t risk you.”

  “See?” Shelby says. “Stubborn. But don’t you worry. I am going to finish this mission. Whether Junior likes it or not.”

  “This is between you and me, Lieutenant,” Dr. Brown says, shaking me off. She walks slowly toward Shelby, hands out placatingly at her sides. Her voice is level and cool, but I can see her trembling. “These juveniles aren’t responsible for the deaths of your team.”

  “Spare me!” Shelby snarls. “These little traitors started this, running off to help their glow worm buddies.”

  “Joanna did not start this war,” Tarn says, stepping to Dr. Brown’s side. “I did.”

  “True, ya creepy mo-fo,” Shelby snarls. “But if Junior had just stayed in her lane, then Dr. Brown here would be having lonely s’mores with her pet carnivorous tree and my squad would be back in River Bend with their kids now.” She hurls a glare past them to me. “But your precious bleeding hearts couldn’t handle a little harsh reality, so here we are. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to follow my orders and kill this bitch. Then I have to go tell Isis Green’s wife some crazy woman fed them to a tree.” She coughs violently and spits up a gob of bloody phlegm. “I really, really hate this planet. You know that?”

  I barely hear her words. “The squadron is still at River Bend?” I ask, realization ping-ponging through my head. “And your families. They’re all still on the planet, aren’t they?”

  “Only planet we’ve got, at the moment,” Shelby says. She sneers at Tarn. “Sorry ’bout that, bro.”

  “She doesn’t know about the scrubbers,” Beth says slowly. “The squadron isn’t a part of this. He’s just using them.”

  “Of course the admiral is using us, Mendel,” Shelby snarls. “That’s what commanding officers do.”

  “No, you don’t under—” I cut myself off midword and backtrack. “The Vulcan has a nanobot system programmed to search and destroy Earth-based organics. The Rangers used it to make sure they weren’t accidentally contaminating planets they explored. Grandpa is planning to use it against us. All of us. That’s why he needs to kill Dr. Brown. The system won’t activate if her ID implant reports that she’s alive and on the planet. Once she’s dead, he’s going to kill us all. Including you and your squadron and their families.”

  I always thought jaw dropped was just a figure of speech, but that’s exactly what happens as Shelby processes the implications of what I just said.

  Then she bursts out laughing.

  “Junior, you have a wild imagination, you know that? Killer nanobots. That’s
hysterical.”

  “Hysterical right up until they break you into your component molecules,” Chris snaps.

  “You’re telling me the admiral is going to compost us all?” Shelby snorts. “Including his own family? You kids really need a more believable story.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  The discordant harmony in Nor’s voice is like a thrown brick. It makes Shelby stagger back a step. She twists to glare at Nor, and the green Sorrow flings a fistful of something glittery into Shelby’s face.

  Shelby throws her gun arm up to protect her eyes. The cloud of razor dust shreds the sleeve of her uniform instead, and tiny points of blood well all over the skin underneath. Shelby howls in pain and fires blindly toward Nor, who ducks, evading the wild shots.

  “Please.” I’m startled to hear my own begging voice cut through the gunfire. “Please, Grandpa, you can’t deploy the scrubbers. That will kill every human being on Tau.”

  I spin to see Beth holding up her flex. It’s playing the recording of Grandpa and me on the arch.

  “I designed them,” Grandpa says on the screen. “I know what they do.”

  Beth pauses the recording.

  “I can play the rest for you,” she says, “if you want to watch my grandfather lose his mind in real time.”

  I can see the truth assembling in Shelby’s shocked eyes. Dr. Brown can see it, too.

  “There you have it, Lieutenant,” she says. “Straight from the source. The question is what you’re going to do about it.”

  “Jesus,” Shelby says, still staring at the frozen image of Grandpa on Beth’s flex. “Jesus Christ.”

  “You can keep your people safe,” I say. “But only if you let Dr. Brown live. Please, Lieutenant Shelby. Help us. Help your people. Don’t do this.”

  She just stares at me. Wide-eyed. Overwhelmed.

  “My team was killed,” Dr. Brown says very quietly. “Years ago. Phytoraptors ripped them apart right in front of my eyes.”

  She takes a step toward Shelby.

  Shelby doesn’t move.

  “I know what you’re feeling right now,” Dr. Brown continues. “I know the anguish. The grief. The guilt of survival.”

  She takes another step. When Shelby doesn’t react, Dr. Brown reaches out to grip the barrel of Shelby’s gun. They’re eye to eye now. Shelby starts to shake, but she doesn’t remove her finger from the trigger.

  “I am also intimately familiar with the unquenchable greed of vengeance,” Dr. Brown says without changing her tone at all. “I let vengeance make my choices for years. People have suffered because of it. Everything that’s happening now . . .” She shakes her head. “But it’s useless to consider what might have been. Suffice it to say, you have what I didn’t have, all those years. You have a reason to do better. The living need you now, more than the dead.”

  Shelby drops her gun.

  My knees almost buckle with the sudden release of tension as Dr. Brown lets the huge weapon fall to the mud and kicks it away from them.

  “You’re a strong woman, Lieutenant,” Dr. Brown says. “Hardly a surprise, given the formidable team you led here to capture me. I am deeply sorry that the admiral wasted their lives this way.”

  “Yeah,” Shelby says. “Me too.”

  With that, she turns and walks away into the jungle.

  We all just stand there and watch her go for a long beat.

  “That’s it?” Chris says. “She’s just walking away?”

  “I doubt it,” Dr. Brown says. “I pity the admiral, if she gets her hands on him.” She bends to pick up Shelby’s rifle. “We’re going to recycle this. We’re going to recycle every single one of these on the whole—”

  The gun and Dr. Brown’s hand disappear in a spray of blood and screaming.

  “No!” I scream as a huge blur of creature drops on Dr. Brown again. This time it stays, driving the tip of one of its many clusters of razor-thin legs into her belly and wicking blood up its opalescent carapace.

  It’s an ant-bird the size of a jeep.

  It’s eating Dr. Brown.

  Before I can move, or think, Shelby is there. She bolts past me, sending me stumbling into Tarn as she hurls herself at the massive bird and punches it in the head.

  With a hard flutter, the creature shoots up again, disappearing into the canopy.

  Dr. Brown curls into a ball, screaming in agony.

  “Where is my gun?” Shelby shouts.

  “The bird ate it!” I yell back.

  Shelby swears copiously as I scramble to Dr. Brown. Blood is pouring from the stump of her arm and the hole in her abdomen. “Keep breathing. Please, keep breathing.”

  I don’t know if I’m chanting the words out loud or just in my head as I rip at my thermal and try to tie a tourniquet around Dr. Brown’s stump. Yellow light tints the world as Tarn crouches beside me, pressing his trijointed hands to the wound in Dr. Brown’s belly in an effort to stanch the blood.

  “Can you heal her?” I beg him.

  Dr. Brown grabs at my hands, digging jagged nails into my skin. “Stupid,” she coughs, blood bubbling at her lips. “Took armor off. Fresh start.”

  She gasps for air.

  “Hate. Irony.”

  That’s when I hear the clattering of wings.

  I dive forward, throwing my body over Dr. Brown. But before the creature’s needle feet connect with my back . . .

  WHAM!

  I look up as the giant bird slams into the nearest swamp solace. Nor stands above us holding her staff like she’s just hit a home run. She just saved my life.

  The ant-bird screams.

  Shelby screams back in wordless defiance, and tackles it head on, fighting the enormous bloodsucking creature with her bare hands.

  “Go!” Tarn shouts, scooping Dr. Brown up in his arms and bolting, with Nor hard on his heels.

  “We gotta get to 3212,” Jay shouts as we race after him through the glowing trees. “It’s our only shot.”

  He’s right, but we’ll never make it. It’s too far. There’s no way Shelby can hold that thing off long enough.

  Without warning, Shelby’s enormous gun drops out of the trees in front of us. Dr. Brown’s hand is still shriveled around the grip, like a piece of dried fruit.

  “Crap!” Jay swears, hurling himself sideways to avoid stepping on it.

  I’m almost as surprised as Jay when I snatch up the gun and run back to where we left Shelby.

  I find her lying at the foot of a swamp solace, covered in blood.

  “Don’t be stupid, Junior!” she rasps. “Get out of—”

  Shelby’s voice is drowned out by the clatter of wings as the ant-bird dive-bombs her again.

  I get closer. I’m a terrible shot and I’m only going to get one chance. I have to be right on top of that thing.

  Shelby screams in pain.

  I raise the huge gun and spray the bird with bullets.

  Rainbow-sheened blood explodes from the creature as it collapses beside Shelby. I throw myself backward, but it’s too late—the blood spatters over me and immediately starts eating through my flight suit. I roll, shrieking, as I rip at the fasteners and tear myself free of the quickly melting fabric.

  I hurl the dissolving suit away and sprawl in my thermal and shorts, heaving for breath.

  Shelby rolls on her back, choking on what sounds remarkably like laughter. “Jesus. I hate this planet.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Dr. Brown is dead.

  Tarn tried to save her when they got her back to 3212, but it was too late. By the time Shelby and I limped into the burned-out clearing around the shuttle, she was gone.

  But we’re not giving up.

  We have a plan. It’s not a good plan, but it’s the only one we’ve got.

  Assuming the scrubbers went live the moment the Vulcan registered Dr. Brown’s death, Beth calculates that we have five hours and twenty-three minutes before the nanobots saturate the atmosphere and initiate their programming. After that, everythi
ng and everyone with Earth-based DNA will be disintegrated.

  The only way to stop that from happening is to cut power to the Vulcan’s computers with simulation twelve. Grandpa is still jamming our satellite communications, so we’re going to have to go into orbit and intercept the Vulcan.

  Trying to dock with another ship in orbit is complicated even when both pilots are working together, and Grandpa definitely isn’t going to cooperate. I’m going to have to outfly him, which is just ridiculous. I might be younger, but he’s got decades more experience than I do. He’s actually seen space combat before. And won.

  I’ve never even beat him at chess.

  I want to get this over with. If I could run from here into orbit, I would. I’d rather do that than sit here, waiting for our launch window. But space doesn’t hurry. If we take off now, it’ll actually take us longer to get to the Vulcan than it will if we let Tau bring us to her. So I’m sitting on 3212’s bridge trying to be patient and watching Leela run the preflight checks.

  “All systems are green,” Leela says, swiping at the flex that’s mounted on the arm of the copilot’s seat. “Do you really think we can pull this off?”

  “What choice do we have?” I say.

  We sit there for a while, side by side, staring at the three-sixty view of the jungle around us on the wall screens.

  “Jo,” she says.

  “Yeah?” I say.

  “I love you, you know,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know. I love you, too.”

  The words don’t change anything. But they matter.

  “I’ve done what I can.” Tarn’s voice breaks through the moment as he, Jay, and Nor duck into the little bridge. “The lieutenant will live.”

  Nor makes an acidic comment in Sorrow that carries the tingling satisfaction of really excellent sarcasm. She didn’t want Tarn to heal Shelby, and I don’t blame her. Shelby is a xenophobic murderer who tried to destroy the Sorrow’s city and kill us all. She hasn’t even stopped referring to Tarn and Nor as “glow worms.” But if we let her die slowly from wounds she got trying to help us save Dr. Brown, then how are we any better than Grandpa?

  “She’s tethered into one of the bunks,” Jay says.

  “By which you mean hog-tied, I hope,” Leela says.