by Geoff North
“They’ll be coming, boss.” Sulafat lowered the helmet visor into place and started back into the security section.
One by one, each man climbed up over the broken lockers and bent bulkheads, through the gaping tear in the ship’s hull, out onto the snow blown surface. They stood in a tight cluster, fighting the howling wind by digging their boots into the building drifts. Sulafat set out first, hopping down a few feet at a time to the bits of hull still left exposed. They walked away from the transport ship in a line, slogging through pale green crystals that reached up to their knees. Sulafat pointed with his rifle to a hill not that far away. They headed up it, sinking deeper into the swirling drifts. By the time they’d made it to the top, the snow was up to their waists.
It was here where all four men realized the absolute hopelessness of their situation. The transport ship—what remained of it—was almost completely buried. In another hour, perhaps two, it would be completely entombed beneath the snow, frozen and lost forever.
Wez opened his helmet visor a crack and yelled over the wind. “Always thought my body would be shot out into space after I died—towards Canis Major, like all the other Canises before me. Being buried in ice for the rest of eternity shouldn’t bother me, but it does.”
Sulafat nodded. His parents too, had taken their final journeys out into the vastness of space in coffins headed for the constellation of Lyra. Every man and woman that had lived and served aboard Ambition for the last four centuries set out on that eternal voyage for the star or constellation they’d been named after. “In space, in ice… at least we’ll have died as free men, not prisoners.”
The cold had already started to work its way through the thermalized suits. The Alderamin sun was setting into a distant ridge of jagged glaciers, its pale light a dying smear in the churning sea of green and purple sky. Lightning forked down from the clouds, and thunder followed seconds after. The muffled sound of it rattled inside their helmets and shook the endless drifting dunes.
Hadar started back down for the ship. “Then let’s die where it’s warmer and where we can breathe the air a little longer.”
They watched him go. There was another flash of lightning. Sulafat saw the snow split open less than five meters ahead of Hadar. He screamed out to him, but the warning was lost in thunder and wind. Something started to emerge from the newly formed crevasse; arms as long as a man stood tall shot out from the split ice and grasped at the sharp edges. It pulled itself up into the remaining light, clawing into the hard-packed snow with ten-inch long claws.
The Prime Hunn, Sulafat thought. It’s found us already.
But it wasn’t the Prime Hunn, he realized, as it stood up on its hind legs. This thing was twice the size, and its massive head wasn’t featureless. The monster opened its mouth, revealing teeth longer and sharper than its claws. It roared at Hadar, knocking him back into the snow.
The thing lunged. Sulafat raised his rifle and fired a second too late. The bullet grazed off its shoulder as the teeth tore into Hadar’s midsection. It ripped through his suit in a frenzy, digging into the skin and soft organs beneath. Sulafat, Tor, and Wez charged down through the snow, firing their rifles. Wez fell halfway down, losing his weapon in the snow. His arms became hopelessly stuck in the deep drifts as he tried to work his way back up. A second creature shot up out of the ice less than four meters away and went for him.
“Save Hadar!” Sulafat screamed. “I’ll go for the boss!”
Tor kept running and firing. He knew it was too late for Hadar Cen. The man had been shredded, his arms and legs torn away from his body. Tor slowed, plopped down on his chest and took careful aim for the creature’s gore-smeared face. The round punched into the right side of its skull, splattering most of its brains onto the snow in a dozen smaller steaming piles. The monster teetered another moment with half of its head missing, and finally fell back inside the ice crack it had climbed out from.
Sulafat fired six quick shots into the second creature’s stomach, cutting it in almost in two. The top half landed on the squadron boss’s boots. Claws pierced into Wez’s leg just below the knee. He howled in agony as Sulafat hooked his gloves under his armpits and started dragging. The thing convulsed one last time, the claws dug in deeper. Sulafat pulled harder, and Wez’s leg stayed behind.
Tor was with them seconds later. They dragged Wez back through their deep tracks towards the ship. Sulafat hesitated when they reached Hadar’s grisly remains. “We can’t leave him out here like this! Get Wez back inside, I’ll be right behind you!”
“No time for that,” Tor yelled. “more coming!”
Half a dozen hulking forms appeared on top of the hill they had ascended minutes earlier. They started charging down through the snow. Sulafat and Tor lowered Wez down into the security cabin and jumped in after him. Sulafat pulled him the rest of the way on his own into the passenger transport section as Tor struggled to close the door behind them. One of the things smashed its head into the other side as the door fell into place. He grabbed the manual lock lever and yanked it down.
Wez had gone silent. Blood was pooling on the cabin floor. His face was white, and dark rings had begun to form under his eyes. “We have to stop the bleeding,” Sulafat said, throwing his helmet into an empty bench.
They ripped a long section of Wez’s suit free at the leg. The material had a rubberized feel to it, and stretched nicely, allowing a tight fit above Wez’s knee. Sulafat wrapped it around a few more times, tightening it even further. The blood loss was no longer gushing, it had slowed to an ooze.
“It won’t be enough,” Tor said. “We need to stop the bleeding altogether, cauterize the wound.”
The two men began searching for a source of flame through the only sections left in the ship they had access to. More creatures were filling into the open security cabin. They were throwing their massive frames into the door. The thick metal had begun to buckle inwards.
A part of Sulafat prayed Wez would bleed to death before they made it through.
Chapter 29
Kella could feel the baby’s tiny hand grip tighter around her finger as the shuttle rose. She rubbed at it gently with her thumb as they moved towards the atmosphere shield half a kilometer in the distance. She stared out the small portside window and watched her home begin to slip by for the last time. “This isn’t right. Drac and the others should never have agreed to give up on Ambition.”
Hail adjusted the straps on Nova’s shuttle seat, tightening them just a little snugger. “They didn’t have much of a choice.” He leaned over Nova, sitting between them, and whispered. “You heard the rumors in the line up… Ambition was going to be salvaged whether Captain Drac agreed to it or not. We’re lucky Edmund decided to let us transport over at all.”
“More reason we should’ve fought back. We outnumber them fifty to one.”
“Hard to fight if there’s no air to breathe.”
The shuttle picked up speed. Kella saw a few more dozen people entering the last wave of transport shuttles left in the bay. They looked lost, confused. They looked scared. “They won’t treat us any better on Retribution. It’ll be hell over there, Hail, you’ll see.”
“We’ll be alive, that’s all that matters.”
“Does it?” The shuttle passed through the green shielding. The interior of their world vanished, and the blackness of space enveloped them. Kella pressed the side of her head against the window for a better look at what lay ahead. She saw Retribution a few moments later. The silver hull gleamed in Ambition’s light. Massive turrets jutted out like claws, each housing dozens of missile-launch tubes, PG laser cannons, and heavy plasma cannons. It was a floating fortress, a cold and hostile creature of the cosmos—not a place to raise a child. Kella rested her thumb against Nova’s tiny knuckles. “It isn’t right… it just isn’t.”
***
This isn’t right.
Ma Ades stared out through the open shuttle hatch, and watched the ships lift off out into space. The atm
osphere shield flickered as each one passed through. It wasn’t a spectacular effect, in fact, it was barely noticeable, but she could see it—a slight color variance, a shimmer of yellow at the edges. What was it doing to the people seated inside, she wondered?
Ma had two big fears; the first was heights, and the second was space. She had never set foot inside a transport shuttle, and she had never been off Ambition in her life. It was a ridiculous fear, the logical part of her knew. She was a speck living in a slightly bigger speck, surrounded by endless vacuum. There was no escaping it. But the part of Ma that couldn’t deal with the reality of her fear was real—so real that it had influenced many of the decisions in her life. She had avoided careers in military services, engineering, ship maintenance—any job involving even the smallest chance of flying out into the blackness for whatever reason.
At the age of twenty-two, Ma had taken over the Black Hole, one of Ambition’s less savory watering holes—not because she wanted to serve alcohol to belligerent crew members for the rest of her life, but because of its location. It was situated on the sixtieth level, near the center of Ambiton’s forward section. There was more than a kilometer of ship running in any direction from the bar to the nearest point of outer hull. She had avoided and eluded her biggest fear for the last sixteen years, staying put in the guts of Ambition.
Until now.
This isn’t right. I can’t go out there.
An old woman climbed up the shuttle steps and sank into the cabin seat next to Ma. She looked to be around a hundred and twenty, maybe older, clutching a bag of personal belongings against her chest. The woman rested a wrinkled hand on Ma’s lap and spoke in a voice that sounded like metal scraping over glass. “Isn’t this just the most exciting thing ever?”
Ma couldn’t take her eyes off the withered claw digging into her leg. “Pardon me?”
“This. In all my years, I never dreamed we would leave Ambition and head off for a new home, but now it’s happening, it’s really come to pass. Always figured if I did somehow manage to live long enough, we would’ve resettled on Pega, not another ship, but what can you do? I wish Gruis was here to see it.”
“Gruis?”
“My husband. He died twelve years ago.”
Ma finally tore her gaze from the brown-spotted hand and looked back out the shuttle doorway. There were less than a hundred people left on the bay floor, scrambling to board the last few shuttles. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
The old woman sighed. “He had a good long life, made it to a hundred and forty. Nothing to feel sorry for… still, it would’ve been nice to travel over with him.”
“It’ll be a short trip, less than two minutes. He won’t have missed much.” Ma realized she was trying to comfort herself more than the woman.
“You misunderstand me, girl.” She made a strange grunting sound, a laugh. “I don’t expect to settle on that new world for long. Those bastards across the way will pick us off one by one, you’ll see. They’ll give us funny looking pills to swallow that’ll put us to sleep forever. If that doesn’t work, pillows pushed over our faces will get it done.”
“They’re not going to hurt us,” Ma tried assuring her. “We’re going to become part of their crew.”
“They can’t support all of us… not for long. That Edmund is a devil. He’ll extinguish all of us in time, you’ll see.” She settled back in her seat and started struggling with the restraint buckles. “Not even sure why I’m bothering with this damn thing. They’re probably blasting the shuttles to pieces out there.”
A lump had grown in Ma’s throat. She swallowed it down with difficulty. “You just said you were excited for this.”
“Sure am. I’m travelling over to be with my Gruis once again.” She finally managed to click her belts into place. “We’re going to the stars, young lady. Soon we’ll be with all of our loved ones once again.”
This isn’t right.
The two security guards standing outside their shuttle were helping a family of four secure their luggage in the cargo hold beneath. Their backs were turned to the open doorway. There were only three empty seats left in the travel cabin. One of the two children would have to sit on a parent’s lap. Ma unfastened her belts and stood. They’ve already checked me in. They won’t even notice.
Ma crept down the stairs and worked her way into the remaining crowd. She made it to the last shuttle in the line. A few moments after that, she slipped through a door at the front of the bay, and vanished into the corridors of Ambition.
Chapter 30
Cold.
Charm had never felt so miserable and cold in her short life. She tried to open her eyes, but the lids remained shut. A dull panic rose, she attempted to scream, and a weak moan escaped from her dry throat. Charm lifted her arms. They, too, resisted momentarily. She put more effort into it and heard the cloth of her jacket make a tearing sound. It hurt to bend her elbows and wrists. Her hands were like stones as they thudded against her cheeks. She felt at her eyes with numb finger tips. Something was stuck in the lashes. She scraped at it. Ice crystals, she realized as one lid popped open revealing a clear sky of dying red.
Charm’s entire body was stuck in a sheet of thin ice. She had to clamp onto either side of her head with both hands and pull to work it up from the frozen ground. She yelped, a bit louder this time, as some strands of hair tried to stay behind.
It took another minute to dislodge herself completely and get up on her feet. Her clothes felt funny. They were hard, like cardboard. She flexed her arms, twisted her waist from one side to the other, and squatted up and down a few times to work the worst of it out. It hurt to move. Charm’s body was one big ache. She wriggled her toes in her boots and flexed her fingers. They were beginning to tingle. More pain. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, she thought. She’d learned in school that pain was the body’s way of warning you something was wrong. If you could feel anything, that meant there was still time to do something about it.
Charm knew she would freeze to death if she didn’t keep moving, and that’s exactly what she did. She stumbled across the remaining bit of puddle ice and stepped up onto a ridge of dirt and rocks. Ten meters below her a stream was gurgling along in small ravine. It had been running much faster and higher not that long ago, she thought. The sand along the steep banks was still smooth and wet. She stepped down it carefully. The air got stinky the further she went. That’s what it had smelled like when the sewage water had run into them down in the tunnels. It had gotten into her mouth and up into her nostrils as she was washed away. She remembered trying to hold her breath and gagging at the same time.
Charm finally plugged her nose with a finger and thumb near the bottom. She was too stiff and cold to start retching again. She stepped carefully over the narrow band of brown water to the other side. It was steeper there, and the bank was twice as high as the one she’d just come down. Charm dug into the stiffening mud with the tips of her boots and the ends of her fingers. Up she struggled, two meters, five, ten. The last few centimeters were the hardest. The pink sand had curled back towards her along the edge. It broke away in large chunks when Charm tried to climb over. She slid back down tow meters, but remained determined. Finally, she crawled through the broken part of ridge and made it out onto the flat plain above.
It hurt to breathe. Her mouth and throat were so dry. She rested on her hands and knees, trying to force more cold air into her lungs. It was like she couldn’t get it in fast enough. Don’t panic, she told herself. Charm looked back up into the sky. There were no clouds. She had never seen a sky without clouds, except on those rare nights when the wind blew so hard it took the clouds away, leaving behind Venus, Earth, Jupiter and a handful of dim stars. Breathe slow. Breathe deep. The air will come.
On her fourth slow inhalation, the air filled her lungs—not completely, but enough to calm her down some. The breaths after that came a bit easier. Charm stood back up and searched for Deimos City. All she saw were endless rocky plains to
the east and the south. In the west and north were distant ranges of mountains and extinct volcanoes. No cities. No factory chimneys. Not a single road or footpath.
Where was she? Where was Loke? Charm started to whimper thinking about her brother. He didn’t make it. He’d drowned, or worse… August had caught up to him somewhere, and finished him off.
“No,” she croaked. “He’s not dead.”
Charm started for the mountains. She would find him. They would find Deimos City together. She went ten steps and stopped. Deimos City wasn’t that way. You could see those same mountains from anywhere in the city if you were facing north. Two choices remained. Walk to the right, or walk to the left.
To the right. Against the flow of the stream that dropped me off here.
She set off to the right, more determined than ever.
Charm dropped to her knees three and a half kilometers later. The tingly feeling in her fingers and toes was gone. The deep ache in all her bones had left as well. This isn’t so bad, she thought, as she curled up on her side in the red dirt. I’m not hungry, and I’m not so thirsty anymore. All I need is a little rest… close my eyes… catch my breath.
Something was rattling. It sounded like a tiny fan sputtering at half strength. The sound got stronger, closer. The sound pressed up against Charm’s face, and rubbed along her cheek, wet and warm. She opened her eyes and saw the cat she’d rescued from the streets of Deimos City staring contentedly back at her.
Loke was sitting a few feet away from the purring animal, poking a stick into a small fire. Charm sat up. She was still aching all over, perhaps even in more pain than before, but she was warmer. The inside of her mouth was too dry to speak. She pounded a fist into the hard ground to get his attention.
He turned and the flames lit up his eyes. “You’re awake!” He grabbed a plastic bottle and handed it to her. Charm’s fingers were too stiff to hold it. Loke held it up to her cracked lips. “Its water. I found it here with a bunch of other stuff.”