by Jack Porter
It wasn’t the industrial tool I had been hoping for, but rather a miniature, battery-operated thing that I was sure would be better suited to crisping the top of a crème brûlée than anything else.
Yet it was all I had to work with, and I wasn’t in a position to complain.
I just hoped it had enough power to do the job.
“See anything?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Uma replied, and for the first time, I sensed a note of worry in her voice.
“When you do, let me know,” I said.
With that, I sparked the power cutter to life, and bent low, playing the power-flame over the join between the chain and the steel cuff over my left ankle.
I could cope with my wrists chained, but the chain at my feet was far too short for comfort. It hampered my movements like nothing else, and could well be the difference between survival and not.
Slowly, too slowly for comfort, the link changed color, turning blue before moving toward red. I knew I needed to get it hotter than that before activating the power cutter itself, and gritted my teeth against the heat against my flesh.
“Adam,” Uma said, calling me by my name. “I can see them.”
I snarled, not at the Commander’s words, but at the realization that this power cutter wasn’t up to the task. It was too small, too weak to really do the job, and I needed more time.
“I’ll be right there,” I said, and kept the torch where it was.
“Adam,” Deeve said. “They’re coming. They look dangerous.”
I’d already seen them through my augmented senses. I knew she was right. They did look dangerous. But I wasn’t yet ready.
“Just a few moments more,” I said.
Both Uma and Deeve stood their ground. They knew how important this was, how badly we needed the supplies, if that’s what these wolf-things were after. If they were not, if they were after our own tender flesh, then that only made the peril more urgent.
There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Sure, we could climb up to the top of the ruined transport, but if we could do that, chances were so could they.
This was going to be a fight for our very survival, and the two women knew it as clearly as I did.
“Adam!” Uma said.
The time had come. Do or die. The wolf-things had arrived.
I sensed more than saw Uma lash out with her club, caught Deeve’s swift movement out of the corner of my eye. At the same time, I touched a button that turned the power cutter from just a battery-powered flame into something more, and instantly the steel chain turned white.
I kept the cutter in place, squinting in an effort to protect my sight, and held on for one second, two seconds, and done.
I dropped the power cutter to the ground, reached down and gripped the chain with both hands, wrenching upward with all of my strength.
The power cutter hadn’t cut all the way through. But it had done enough. The white-hot metal that still connected the chain to the cuff was malleable.
My efforts pulled it apart.
With my legs now separated, I lunged toward my dropped club, picked it up with both hands, and with a roar, I hurled myself into the fray.
Chapter 7
“Ha! Get out of here!” I yelled, bringing my club around in an arc that caught the nearest wolf-beast a solid hit in the side of the head.
My effort knocked the creature sprawling, but I’d angled the spike in the wrong direction. Instead of driving the spike through its skull, I just gave it a headache.
But I didn’t have time to consider my mistake. Uma was facing two of the creatures, keeping them both at bay with wild swings, but three more had surrounded Deeve. One of those three had a deep gash in its shoulder, and I could see dark blood glistening of the athletic woman’s blade. But she was spinning around, trying to keep all three attackers in view, and I knew that wasn’t the best situation for her to be in.
Without hesitation, screaming wordless cries in an effort to scare the wolf-things, I launched myself at one of the three, hammering my club down in the middle of its back.
I connected with a satisfying crunch, and the wolf thing went down with a yelp, then started to howl in pain.
By the looks of it, I’d shattered its spine, assuming it had roughly the same anatomy as most other similar beasts. Then I leapt toward the second of Deeve’s attackers, intending to deal to it in the same way that I’d dealt to the first.
But there had been seven of these monsters when I’d first seen them in the distance.
And so far, during this battle, I’d accounted for only six.
The seventh had been slow to arrive. Or maybe it was just more cunning than its pack mates. Either way, it waited until my back was turned and came out of nowhere.
The first thing I felt was the creature’s weight on my back.
I heard the monster’s slavering jaws next to my ear, and knew that the creature could rip through my throat with ease.
I had only moments within which to react. I could have spun in place, trying to throw the thing off me. I could have tried to reach over my head.
Instead, I dropped straight down, hurling myself onto my back in an effort to crush the creature between me and the ground.
The wolf-thing proved quicker, and too smart to be caught like that. It managed to get itself out from between us and might have run away, perhaps to join those attacking Deeve or Uma, perhaps to find its way into the wreckage, and launched itself at Kia, Sydney, or Jayloo.
But I didn’t let it.
Still on the ground, my club somehow missing, I launched myself at the foul creature.
All at once, I learned that this wolf thing could have taught a porcupine a thing or two. The spines on its back weren’t just passive defense. They were active as well.
The awful wolflike beast sent a couple of hundred sharp spines toward my face, my chest, and my stomach.
It was all I could do to bring my arms up and catch most of the spines on my forearms. More than a few deflected off the metal cuffs that I wore, others caught on the chain. But those that did not buried themselves as much as they could in my flesh.
I knew that if it weren’t for the subdermal mesh I’d been gifted, the spines would have done considerable damage. As it was, they were merely an annoyance.
I brushed as many of them away as I could, snarled out loud, and hurled myself onto my target again.
Without my club, I wrapped my chain around the creature’s throat. With me pressed against the monster’s back, its quills were largely negated, and it snarled and gnashed its teeth at me as it struggled to get free.
I had no intention of letting it do so.
With a surge of strength, I pulled my chain tight, cutting off the monster’s air, turning its throat into mush. I kept the pressure on, pulling even tighter, and shortly, I felt the thing shudder.
Only when I was certain it was dead did I let it go, and even then I wasn’t yet done.
Uma had bludgeoned one of the creatures attacking her, but Deeve still faced her two, although both of them bled for their efforts. I looked around, spotted my club, and picked it up.
Once again, I helped Deeve first, teeing off at one of the wolf-thing’s hind quarters as is I was playing golf.
Because I’d noticed something.
Just like their earth equivalents, the males of this alien species kept their balls out on display.
My aim was true.
And this time, I had angled the spike on my club in just the right way.
My swing was strong enough that I launched the back end of the wolf-thing high into the air. It let out a yelp and somersaulted through the air before landing hard on the ground.
It looked at me with an expression almost of horror as it realized what I had done.
Then it set let out a sequence of high-pitched, pain-filled whimpers, and tried to drag itself away from the fight.
As if that one blow was one too many, the surviving wolf-things gave up on the spot.
They turned and fled into the wasteland, yipping and yelping as they went.
I wasn’t in any mood to take any risks. So I moved from wounded wolf-thing to wounded wolf-thing, and smashed each one on the head with my club.
Chapter 8
“Are you okay?” I asked Deeve. The tall, athletic woman was breathing hard, and her forehead glistened with sweat. But she nodded readily enough.
I gestured toward the green top she wore, and she looked down at herself.
“It isn’t my blood,” she said.
But that wasn’t what I had noticed. “The quills,” I said.
Then she looked again.
“Shit.” She dropped one of her blades and gently tugged at one of the quills that had pierced her side. At first, it didn’t seem to want to come out, but then it did, and she grimaced.
“Ow,” she said, but seemed to be more annoyed than truly hurt.
“You have others,” I said.
“Yeah, so I do.” She looked back toward me. “But not as many as you.”
She was right. Despite my advantages, I still had more than a dozen of the quills sticking into me.
“There should be some antiseptic cream in the med kit,” Uma said. She had approached us as we’d been speaking, her own bloody club still gripped in her hands.
The Commander had fared better than either Deeve or me, at least as far as the quills were concerned. If anything, she seemed buoyed by the battle, as if fighting against the wolf-things had been satisfying to her on a primal level.
As I moved to pluck the quills from my torso and one thigh where they had struck, she nodded to me as if to an equal.
“Thank you for your help,” she said. “Those things might have proved troublesome for just me and Deeve to deal with.”
“You are welcome,” I replied.
Then, without waiting for permission, I turned back to where I’d dropped the power cutter, and set about removing the chain completely from where it still dangled from one of my ankles.
As I did so, the Commander went back inside, perhaps to check on the others, or perhaps to continue looking for items to salvage.
But Deeve stayed with me.
“What should we do with the corpses?”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“Those things we killed,” she gestured. “Should we, I don’t know, cook them? Or bury them, maybe?”
As the chain at my ankle started to glow red, I noted that Deeve was already looking to me for guidance. I didn’t comment on that, however, instead just answering her question.
“Do you see any wood around here for a fire?”
The tall woman shook her head.
“Well, unless you want to try eating alien wolf raw, then I’d suggest the first option is out of the question.”
As I spoke, I knew that there was wood, or this world’s equivalent, around. I’d staggered past a few things that might have generously been called shrubs, although the wood that made up the stems had seemed more like driftwood than anything else.
From that, I figured I could reasonably expect to find wood enough to cook with. But not yet. Not there in the wastelands where the transport had crashed.
I shrugged. “As for burying them, it was probably the scent of death from the crash that had drawn the wolf-things toward us. I don’t think it would do us much good to bury these things now. Instead, I’m thinking it might be best if we just left them all behind us.”
“Left them behind?” Deeve asked, repeating my words.
I looked at her. “There’s no water here. No easy source of food. All we have is shelter, in the form of the transport, and apparently that won’t last for much longer. We can’t stay here.”
The athletic women seemed thoughtful. “Where would we go?”
I’d been using “we” with deliberate intent, and noted that she instinctively did likewise, as if we were already all part of the same team.
As we were, to some extent. Perhaps I would find it easier to survive on my own. Certainly, it would be easier to forage for one than to try to feed six in total. But this seemed to be a harsh, dangerous world.
What dangers might try sneaking up on me in the night?
Having someone keep a lookout while I slept wasn’t a bad idea.
And besides, I couldn’t just leave these women to fend for themselves. Sure, Uma seemed capable, as did Deeve. But did they really have what it took to survive?
I already knew that I would do everything I could to help them.
“That way,” I said, pointing to where I had seen the green band before.
Then I fumbled about with the power cutter, trying to use a two-handed tool in one hand. I’d finished with the chain at my ankle and was going to work on the one connecting my wrists.
Deeve watched for a few moments, then moved closer.
“Give it to me,” she said, taking the tool out of my hands. “Hold still,” she said, and aimed the torch expertly at the appropriate link.
I knew then that I had won Deeve’s trust at least, even if I hadn’t fully convinced the Commander, and I knew Jayloo would have preferred to let me wander among the sand.
The athletic woman was standing close enough to me that I caught a hint of her natural perfume. To me, she smelled like the ocean. The saltiness of seaweed, combined with that sense of space and sense of freedom.
Just that hint was enough to draw me closer to her than I otherwise might. I’d always been drawn to the sea. If I hadn’t gone into space instead, I would have made my life in the water, perhaps on a charter fishing boat or some such.
Deeve had already cut through one end of the chain at my wrists and was working on the other when Uma returned with the others.
The Commander, Sydney, and Kia were all carrying folded up lengths of canvas that they’d scavenged from somewhere. I couldn’t help but nod in approval is they added the canvas to the pile, knowing how useful it could be in the future.
Jayloo wasn’t carrying anything. Instead, she still looked surly, unhappy that I was still there.
“What are you doing?” she demanded of Deeve.
The taller, athletic woman didn’t flinch.
“What does it look like?” she returned.
“It looks like you’re helping a dangerous criminal out of his chains.”
I decided that I didn’t like the surly woman’s attitude. Sure, she had good reason to be on edge. She’d just survived a catastrophic event that could have killed her. At the same time, I wanted to nip her antagonism in the bud.
I turned to her and said, in as reasonable a tone as I could muster, “I’ve never been convicted of anything.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re not guilty. What was it? Rape? Murder? Both?”
They’d asked me something similar before, and I had just as little intention of providing an answer this time.
“I’m not what you think I am,” I said. “I don’t eat babies for breakfast, nor do I spend my every waking moment planning my next kill.” I shrugged my shoulders even though I should have been keeping my left wrist still for Deeve to work.
“But consider this. If I did plan on murder and rape, then I could do so as easily with these chains as I could without. Nor did I need to announce my presence when I found you all. I could have kept my distance and waited for an opportunity.”
I pasted a friendly smile on my face as I said it, then hammered my point home.
“I could have taken the power cutter from the toolbox at any time, and none of you would have known any different. Instead, I played it straight, and even helped to fight off the wolves.”
It seemed that some of my words were getting through, but Jayloo wasn’t willing to let go of her animosity so quickly.
“None of that means a damn thing—” she began.
“Thank you for that, by the way,” Kia said, cutting the other woman off. “If not for you, those things might have been too much.”
The Commander turned to
the psychic. “You saw that?” she asked. “The wolves beating us?”
But Kia shook her head. “More like a sense of doom that lifted when Adam showed up.”
All the while, Deeve had been heating the chain up, and I’d been ignoring the smell of burnt flesh that was starting to waft up from where the metal cuff touched my skin.
Finally judging it ready, she hit the plasma button, and a few seconds later, I was free.
Sure, it looked as if I would be wearing steel cuffs around my wrists and ankles for the foreseeable future, but at least now I had my full range of movement back.
Not bad, all things considered. And besides, I could see a situation or two where having a wide steel chunk of metal protecting my wrists might be a good thing. For one, the wolf creature’s teeth and quills would never have pierced it.
“Thank you,” I said to Deeve.
The tall woman turned off the power cutter.
“You’re welcome.” Then she addressed the others. “Adam says we should move from this place.”
“He does, does he?” Uma replied. She seemed to already be thinking of me as a threat to her position, but I decided to ignore that potential issue for the time being.
“I do. The sooner the better. The longer we stay where we are, the fewer resources we’ll have to support us as we look for greener pastures.”
I looked pointedly toward the dead creatures still bleeding on the ground. “And there’s still the scent of fresh meat in the air. I’m not sure we want to find out if there are other creatures around that might be attracted to such things.”
I was careful to make it sound like I was offering advice rather than making a decision. Getting on the wrong side of Uma would be the wrong thing to do.
The Commander seemed to consider my words. “And where do you suggest we go?”
“That way,” I said, indicating for the second time. “I caught a hint of green in the distance. Maybe there’s water there, and more life.”
Again, the Commander nodded slowly. “Perhaps we’ll sleep on it. See if anyone comes up with any better ideas during the night.”