by J. N. Chaney
“Sir, I have opened the port-side crew door amidships…” Lars paused, then added in a rather whimsical tone, “and it seems I have inadvertently let the dog out. My apologies.”
Tiny leaped from the port-side door and started bounding toward us. While I was thrilled to see the damn dog, this was hardly the place or time to enact a meaningful reunion. At the rate Tiny was closing the distance, however, I imagined his final leap into my chest being something that would knock me off my feet, and probably cause further harm to Rachel.
“Get back inside!” I yelled, hoping the dog would hear me above the sounds of grinding metal. But he was on a mission.
“Sir, please be aware—”
“That Tiny’s left the ship? Thanks, Captain Obvious.”
“No, that you are being pursued.”
I slowed and then cast a quick glance over my shoulder. Two security guards emerged from the tower and stepped onto the platform, shakily raising their weapons. I was pretty sure they were shouting something, but I couldn’t make it out.
Suddenly, Tiny bolted around Rachel and me, took three more long strides, and then leaped into the air. The foremost security guard fired a shot, but it did nothing more than ricochet against the metal platform and spin off into the canyon. Tiny slammed into the man’s chest, throwing him to the ground, and bit into the soft tissue around the guard’s neck.
The second security guard raised his rifle and fired at Tiny. But instead of hitting my dog, the bullet struck the first guard in the shoulder—at least that’s how it appeared from my position.
“I must insist you keep moving, sir,” Lars said.
I hadn’t even realized we’d stopped to watch Tiny attack the two new assailants. “On it,” I replied, and began moving forward again with Rachel.
Still, I felt compelled to know how Tiny was. Another glance over my shoulder showed that he had left his first target and was assaulting the second, biting into the guard’s outstretched hands and forearms. Tiny’s sharp teeth where turning the man’s skin and muscle into ribbons. Blood gushed from the assailant’s arms as he wrestled with the animal. But the fight was over once the guard lost his footing and tripped backward. Tiny seized the opportunity and fell upon the thug’s neck, piercing his jugular vein with a vicious snap.
“Lars, can you patch my voice through the ship’s external sound system?” I asked.
“Of course, sir, though there is a significant risk of feedback resulting from—”
“Do it!”
“Please proceed, sir.”
“Tiny!” I said, suddenly overwhelmed by the sound of my own voice blasting over the Horizon’s external speakers. Rachel winced as a shrill ring began to build.
“I am adding an audio gate and limiting,” Lars said. “Please try again.”
“Tiny, come!” I ordered, this time without the ring. Tiny lifted his head up, dripping with his victim’s bloody gore, then cocked it at me as if deciding whether or not he wanted to leave his two kills. “Come on, buddy. Back in the ship.” Again, his head twisted the other way, ears perked, and then he started scampering toward us. “Good boy.”
We crossed the remaining distance and proceeded to the crew door, but not before Tiny scooted around us and charged through the opening. I helped Rachel inside and then pulled myself through. Lars started closing the hatch the moment my feet touched the anti-slip plating inside the ninety-degree-turned corridor.
Once inside, I gave Lars the order to begin the launch sequence.
“But, sir,” he said, “you’re not secured.”
“We will be, buddy. Just get us out of here!”
“As you wish, sir.”
A few seconds later, I could feel the drive core begin cycling up and the loud vibrations of the main engines igniting from their startup sequence.
Rachel and I limped along the port corridor, passed through a bulkhead, and stepped into a cargo hold with articulating crash couches that were designed to swivel for just such a launch angle. Greeting us on the far side was Monty’s familiar face. He unbuckled his harness and leaped up to help us.
“Sit your ass back down,” I commanded.
“Yes, sir,” Monty replied.
I eased Rachel into a crash couch and helped secure her harness, careful not to bump her arm. “Thanks,” she said, giving me a tepid smile.
Then I took some cargo netting and wrapped it hastily around Tiny. He lay bound to the floor, apparently sensing the impending launch. I clipped the webbing to two anchor points on the wall and gave him a pat on the head. The harness was crude, but it would serve its purpose. The dog could take up his complaint with me later.
“Please be seated for launch,” Lars said.
I sat down beside Rachel and strapped myself in—and not a moment too soon. It was almost as if Lars had waited for me to strap in before initiating launch. I heard the sound of the last buckle click, and then Lars said, “Launching.”
I grunted as the ship lurched skyward, throwing me back in my seat. Rachel let out a sharp yelp as her broken arm formed around her chest. I looked over to see her eyes clamped shut in pain. Beyond her, Monty shared an intense look of concern with me.
Suddenly, a holo display popped to life not three meters ahead of us—technically above us—showing multiple camera views from outside the ship. The nose camera showed several cumulus clouds, while the side cameras showed views of the post docking platform and the starboard canyon wall respectively. But it was the aft facing camera feed that was the most interesting.
Aside from the cones of fire in the lower section of the frame, the ground was undulating in a strange rolling motion. I confirmed that this wasn’t just distortion generated by the heat waves by looking at the docking platform that was disappearing to our aft. The metal sheets that comprised the surface flexed up and down like the surface of a turbulent lake.
“My gods, Flint,” Rachel said in awe. “Look at that!”
I looked back at the aft camera and noticed something break through the ground. Just as we’d seen beneath Ozzie’s office, the ground split apart to reveal a giant worm emerging into the daylight.
No, not one worm. Two worms.
“Great mystics of Agathon,” I said in dismay. The two worms burst from the hole and strained toward the light of our engines. The Distant Horizon surged upward, shaking us in our crash couches. My guess was that Lars had diverted all power to the engines, as per my implied order, which meant the dampers hadn’t been engaged. But if being shaken in our seats meant getting off planet and avoiding being eaten by those worms, I was all for it.
The three of us watched in awe as the worms lunged toward the Horizon. I doubted the massive beasts were aiming for us on purpose. Just as Ozzie had been nothing more than a tiny flea to the worm that swallowed him, I couldn’t imagine our ship was anything more than a small fly to the two that strained for us. Still, it looked like the monsters were bent on swallowing us whole.
The Horizon surged skyward in what felt like a painstakingly slow climb. Granted, I knew we were exceeding several hundred kilometers an hour in the last few seconds alone. But relative to the worms growing larger in the holo feed, we weren’t going nearly fast enough for my liking.
“LARS!” I yelled. “CAN’T YOU GO ANY FASTER?”
“We are at maximum thrust, sir.”
The ship rattled like the worst junker I’d even been on. I gripped the arms on my crash couch, willing myself not to black out from the intense pressure, and grunted to keep the blood flowing to my head. “This is gonna be close!”
The worms were about to swallow the camera and—therefore—us. Their giant mouths closed, filling the frames with blackness save for the orange flare of the engines. Suddenly, the ends of their mouth flaps appeared in the frame, forming cylindrical cones and terminating in withered tips. At the same time, they seemed to fall away from the Horizon as we pulled clear of their reach.
I let out a wild hoot of celebration. Monty did the same, and Rach
el smiled—she didn’t seem able to manage much more.
“Lars! Divert power to dampeners.”
“Right away, sir.”
Within a second, the jostling lessened, as did the relentless press of the ship’s violent battle against inertia. I watched Rachel’s face begin to ease as the pressure came off her broken forearm. I reached a hand toward her and felt her take it in her own.
“Now we can celebrate,” I said.
She smiled at me. “We made it.”
Damn, did we ever.
“Sir,” Lars said.
“Yes, pal?”
“I’m detecting an energy spike from within the planet.”
In our mad rush to escape the worms, I’d forgotten about the buried ship. “How big?” I asked Lars.
“That big…” Rachel replied, pointing to the holo.
Cracks of light splintered across the mountain in all directions, thinning as they descended toward the desert valley floor. There was a momentary hiccup, as if the landscape had been on a bed sheet that someone had shaken out. The mountain seemed as it might fall in on itself. But then the cracks of light released their energy. Giant shafts of light shot between the gaps in the ground.
Suddenly, the mountain peak exploded. A massive ball of light decimated the landscape, blowing out the camera feed and turning our holo screen white.
“Compensating,” Lars said. The image’s brightness and contrast changed until we could see details of the energy ball that flared like a tiny star. It expanded outward, sending flaming rocks streaking through the air, denoted by their long white-streaked tails. The orb of light continued to blossom, and I wondered if it would ever stop.
Finally, source energy spent, the explosion dissipated. Dark clouds curled over on one another, rich with the neutron explosion’s fallout. But as the debris field began to disperse, I noticed a crater in the planet’s surface like the remains of a giant popped pimple. Countless lava flows began filling the bowl, tracing the new craggy outlines with their liquid light.
“My gods,” Rachel said, putting words in all of our mouths.
“Lars,” I said, “what was in that ship?”
“It seems we will never fully know, sir. But clearly, it had a big dick.”
Rachel and I shared a bemused look. “What was that, pal?” I asked.
“I said, it seems we will never—”
“We heard you,” Rachel said, hardly able to contain the chuckles coming from her belly. “But, a big dick?”
Lars hesitated for a moment. “Is that not the proper idiom and application for when a person or personified object behaves robustly?”
“It is now,” I said, laughing with Rachel.
When the laughter finally died down, I relaxed and let the vibration of the engines massage my aching body. As the Horizon raced closer to the edge of space, I watched the explosion clear the atmosphere. But then, far below, I noticed long lines lunging away from the mountain’s remains.
“The worms,” I said, nodding to the display. “Check it out.”
Rachel and Monty watched with me as the massive beasts raced away from ground zero, fleeing in all directions. There were more than I ever could have imagined. And they were longer than I could have guessed too.
Despite all the death that mine had bred, life—it appeared—would keep going. The worms would find new homes in new soil, and they’d keep pissing in the ground, or whatever it was they did, making myst for some future generations to harvest. Life went on and humans found new ways to get high.
“They’re magnificent,” Rachel said at last, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Yeah,” said Monty, “and they really do have big dicks.”
Epilogue
The journey to the space station above Vega Two took three days. Had it not been for Victor’s civilian light freighter, that would have been impossible for the miners to survive. The rockets lacked water, food, and proper waste management for the roughly 250 passengers in each ship. It was bad enough that they had to be locked in those tubes for two hours as it was. However, they were miners, which meant they understood being trapped in tight spaces. And, worse, they’d been slaves, which meant they knew all about deplorable living conditions.
Though, I’d hardly call riding in a rocket’s cargo bay deplorable. Uncomfortable, sure. And going to the bathroom in bags that were then tossed out the airlocks? Yeah, that was not ideal. But it sure beat where’d they’d been just hours before.
To the miners’ credit, Lars said that not a soul complained. And, when I thought about it, why should they? They were free. For most of them—the large majority, as I understood it—this was their first time out of the myst mines, let alone the first time in space. I only wished their ships would have had one porthole so they could have witnessed the launch or seen the stars. But they’d get to see planets and stars aplenty once we got to Vega Station.
The initial transfer from the rockets to Victor’s ship above Meldorn went as smooth as I could have hoped for. Lars docked us on top of Deloris, leaving the larger two docking port and starboard clamps to handle the behemoth cargo haulers. Once secured, we connected the airlocks, and I climbed down the access ladder that led from the Horizon into Victor’s ship, wincing on every rung.
“You really need to get to sickbay,” Rachel said, stepping beside me onto the metal grates.
“And, what, you don’t?” I asked, tipping my head toward her arm. She held it in a sling made from a piece of torn shirt.
“There will be plenty of time for Doctor Lars to work his magic once we make sure everyone’s secure.”
“My thoughts exactly,” I said. “Now, make yourself useful and go check in on the transfers. Gods know what sort of messes Victor will need us to clean up before we’re ready to get underway.”
“And what about you?” Rachel asked as I helped Monty descend the last few rungs.
“Me? While you’re busy cleaning up the ship, I’m gonna go clean up the pilot.”
“Good luck.”
“Thanks, I’ll need it.”
“What about me, Mr. Flint?” Monty asked. He jumped down the remaining meter and spun around to face me.
“You go help Miss Rachel. And stick by your mother’s side, copy?”
He nodded. “Copy, Mr. Flint. Then you want me to start documenting the artifacts’ translations?”
I glanced at Rachel and then back at the kid. There hadn’t been time to discuss this universe-shaking fact yet—a kid who could translate artifacts? “Yeah, we’d like that very much. Hopefully you can get a lot done before we get to Vega Station.”
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Flint.”
“I know you will, kid.”
Of course, I had no idea how long it took to translate scribbles on artifacts. Hells, I didn’t even know the scratches were a language until the kid said something. But with any luck he’d be fast, and Lars would be able to pick up where the kid left off.
“Are you not staying long at the station once we get there?”
“Nah, we gotta get going.”
“Why?”
“Well, we’ve told the Union we’ve got a few hundred refugees for them to sort out. But once they start asking questions and investigating where you all came from…well, let’s just say I don’t like being on the wrong side of an interrogation.”
“So you’re on the run from the Union?”
“Not exactly, kid.” I looked at Rachel.
“We’re just trying to keep a low profile,” Rachel interjected.
“Yeah,” I said, liking how she put it. “A low profile. So the sooner we can get everyone settled and secure on the station, the faster we can be on our way. Anyway, you’ve got yourself about three days that you can work with Lars on the artifacts. It’ll be… ya know, fun.”
Truth was, I had no clue if translating artifacts was fun for Monty. But he was mechanically inclined and way smarter than I was at his age. Damn, he might be smarter than I was right now, but I wasn
’t gonna say that much out loud.
“Sure, Mr. Flint. Whatever you need.”
“Thanks, kid. Now, get outta here. You need a shower and you’re stinkin’ up Deloris.”
“Well, you need two showers, Mr. Flint.”
Rachel gave a raised eyebrow. “You do,” she said.
“Whatever! Get the hells out of here, both of you.”
Victor was on the bridge, crawling under one of the control consoles. The entire room was painted in olive drab, and smelled of grease, old cigarettes, and bad coffee. If the bridge was any indication of the rest of the ship, the entire bucket of bolts needed a professional cleaning crew and a solid week to air out.
“Permission to enter, captain?” I asked, already walking toward Victor’s outreached legs. The sound of my voice caused him to bash his head on the underside of the console.
“That you, Mr. Hammer?” Victor asked.
I’d nearly forgotten about the moniker I’d provided to him back in Falco’s club. “That’s me.”
Victor emerged from a tangle of wires dressed in the same beige jumpsuit I’d seen him wearing when we met. Despite the black stains around his cheeks and forehead, the man had cleaned himself up. His face was freshly shaven and his brown hair was combed into a respectable wave. Now that I thought about it, he wasn’t a bad looking guy. That, and he also didn’t appear to be drunk.
“Pleased to see you again.” Victor extended a grease-covered hand. I shook it, and then he handed me a rag. “Sorry about that.”
“Hey, listen, if you’re keeping Deloris here ship shape, that’s fine with me.”
“She needs some TLC, Mr. Hammer.”
“You don’t say.”
“Truth is,” he said, sliding back under the console, “I’ve been a little out of it these last few months.”
“You don’t say,” I repeated, this time with a smirk. He hadn’t exactly been the picture of confident starship commander when we met. Confident drinking companion, on the other hand?