by Diane Carey
He’d had no problem standing up to the alien, but somehow standing up to Adam surprised him about himself. He hadn’t expected those words to come out, or this resolve.
The other boy was taller, Ned noticed, but for this particular moment Adam seemed surprisingly young, unsure of himself for the first time. Still he had a bit of swagger about him and Ned came to think maybe he was going along to get away from the challenge of the captain’s rocky countenance.
Adam met his eyes, but said nothing. He just shrugged his brows in a kind of surrender. But what kind?
Measuring the ups and downs of rejecting the offer, Ned came to think that more was better.
“Then swallow your heart,” he said to him, “for here we go.”
18
“Okay, that’s it, they’re dead. Now what are the rest of you going to do?”
Thomas Pangborn spoke words right on the closing of the view bay hatch. He watched the postures of the children around him, gauging which ones he would target for manipulation. He was smarter than a kid, he knew that, and sooner or later they would turn to him, because they knew it too.
“They’re not dead!” Pushing to her feet with her foster child cuddled against her youthful breast, Robin suddenly had a woman’s countenance as she challenged Pangborn’s declaration. “Ned knows what he’s doing! He’s faced down every ram, every stag, every bull, and every stallion on the Isle!”
“Good for him. This is a little different. It’s time to let me loose so I can do what should’ve been done all along.” Pangborn lowered his tone to swallow up her rising one. He’d found that such a tactic worked well. When others start yelling, get quieter. “Even if your brother succeeds in rescuing that clothespin, and the chances are microscopic, don’t you think we should have another operation in action to save our ship and our lives? It won’t hurt to have more, but it could hurt to have less. Don’t you know anything about tactics?”
“You’re not a military tactician,” Stewart charged. “You’re the captain of a freight ship.”
“Every space captain has military background. Didn’t you know that?”
They all fixed on him, rapt with doubts and soaking up what he said like little sponges.
“It’s a requirement,” he added now that he had them. “I wasn’t just a captain. I was a colonel in the Colonial Marines.”
“Why aren’t you still there, then?” Chris asked.
“I had an injury. In the line of duty.”
He watched their faces very carefully. The fact that he didn’t elaborate with details actually worked in his favor. Sometimes less really is more.
“Wherever the aliens developed, the competition must be shocking. Like prehistoric raptors—if they were so good, why didn’t they decimate everything around them? It was because everything around them was also good at defending and killing. Better than we are. Nothing else matters now. Not the animals in those crates, not the ship or anything. All that matters is survival. I’m going to tell you what survival involves. It works without resting. Without whining. Without hesitating. It works by having a leader and following orders. That’s not you and it’s not you and it’s not you.”
“What’s your plan?” Chris asked.
“Who bloody cares?” Dan countered. “I’m staying right here! Ned’s got a plan and I’m gonna let him have a go at it before I make any moves on my own!”
“Ned’s plan is to save the girl,” Pangborn said. “My plan is to save the ship. Which one does you more good?”
Mary sniffed. “What is the plan?”
“To get to the charthouse or the generator room and put the ship on full squawk.”
Mary glanced at Chris, then asked, “What’s that?”
“It puts us on a course to the first chance of rescue— the nearest established spacelane or the nearest planetary settlement with the capability to help us. The ship goes to emergency beacons, screams through space at full speed, broadcasting a mayday siren. It suggests a catastrophe has happened and the crew is disabled, but may be still alive. It says, ‘Help me, help me, do anything you can to change my situation.’ You think people haven’t already thought of this? In case a ship is compromised and a crew is disabled? We’re all set for this kind of thing. Setting the ship on full squawk also opens the Umiak’s control system to accept remote protocol signals. Other captains or the Guard or anybody with the right equipment can stop the ship and control it, then they can board and save us.”
“How’ll they know what they’re up against?!” Dan bellowed.
“Stand down!” Pangborn matched the boy’s tone. “Don’t speak to me that way on my ship!”
The power of his presence backed the boy off, but didn’t cool the heat in Dan’s face. There was confusion at work, Pangborn could tell.
“They’ll figure it out and board prepared for action,” he added, because he liked the sound of it.
Dan digested that, then shook his head. “I’m doing what Neddy told me to do. Anybody else going with me?”
“I will,” the Mank’s sister said. No surprise.
“Come on.”
She held her baby tightly and stood up. “Where are we off to?”
“I have to get to a terminal so I can track the thingies.”
“Good luck,” Pangborn said, managing not to laugh.
The two kids left and he fully assumed never to see them alive again.
He looked in turn at Chris, Mary, and Stewart. “They’ve made their choice, and I think you’ve made yours. Two plans are better than one. I mean to broadcast to the whole sector what’s happening and get some professional help for us. Now come over here and unlock these manacles and let’s get to work.”
* * *
Ned’s skin prickled as he led the way out into the twisted companionways of the ship. The corridors were darkened now, because the captain had told them to go to emergency status, red alert, and now there was no bright overhead lighting, but only a soft red glow from emergency lighting along the deck. Had it been a trick? Was he working against them? Was Adam right about him?
“It’s dark,” Dylan murmured. “I don’t like this…”
“It’s for our eyes,” Leigh said. “No dilation. Now, shh!”
They were as defenseless as babes in a jungle. Even with their baking soda and their cleaver, and the headset Ned now wore so he could communicate with Dan, they were just naked pink things lurking about in a mine field. His stomach knotted.
They got down two levels through the maze of arteries and corridors and began to work their way aft. Leigh led the way, as bravely as could be, and she was quick too, quick with confidence in the map in her brain. Through the forward chambers, the salon, the crew quarters… past the sleeping adults who could tomorrow be slaughtered in their beds.
Ned adjusted the headset on his ear and whispered, “All right, Dan, you there?”
“Ned… Ned, come in…”
“I’m here!”
“Righto—we’re reading you, boy.”
“What’ve you got for us?”
Dan’s voice through the mechanism was quiet, just above a whisper, so that Ned almost had trouble hearing. “Mate, I got the high decibel level goin’ down the corridor one level under you… moving aft… I’m readin’ about four moving forms coupled with that noise. No… make it three.”
“You’re sure they’re the dragons?”
“Nothing else can make that noise, Neddy boy.”
“Very well. Lead me on, but quietly.”
“Will do.”
The com unit fell quiet.
They dropped down the metal stairway that led one level down, and as his foot struck the walkway Ned was engulfed with the idea of how bad it was to actually be pursuing these creatures. Every fiber of his existence demanded that he go in the other direction. Standing an animal down was one thing. Following it into its web was another indeed.
“Pangborn’s lying about wanting to help us,” Adam said, keeping his voice down as they rounded a nerve-w
racking corner. “He’s in jail if we’re rescued. He’s smuggling those things. You don’t think that’s legal, do you? There are probably ten million laws against transporting dangerous things like that. If we’re rescued, he knows he’ll go to jail for the rest of his life!”
“This isn’t helping,” Leigh growled.
“We just have to keep him tied up. I’m saying he has a stake in making sure that he’s the only one who surviv—”
Leigh let out an involuntary scream, a short high sound, and bumped backward into Ned. He dragged her back and lashed forward to defend her against the menace.
But the corridor blew wild with pink-white flapping and loud honking, not slashing and stabbing. Swans!
And no small Easter-card birds they were, but huge and dominant, their great long necks writhing, giant wingspans spread, glowing pink in the red-alert lights, for they were as startled as the teens to have been stumbled upon. They honked and pivoted their wings in a dramatic display, then retreated down the corridor in the other direction, followed in a dreamlike punctuation by three beautiful peacocks and two peahens.
Leigh leaned against Ned, one hand on her pounding chest. “Wow! Did you see that?”
“May all our encounters be so meaningful,” Ned said. “Work the oars and let’s move on.”
Leigh led the way, with Ned behind her, then Dylan with his cleaver, then Adam with the two cans of baking soda, not at all looking as if he knew what to do with them.
Ned braced up against a wall once they rounded a second corner and came into a small-motor repair area about the size of a king-sized bed. “Dan! Where now?!”
“Keep moving aft. I’m getting some sound markers ahead of you, but can’t make out the specific location. Keep your fists up!”
“When we find her, what do we do?” Leigh asked.
“I’ve an idea or two,” Ned said. “Mostly involving distractions and hoping for divine intervention. You ready, Dylan?”
“Just get me to the container repair zone!”
“Leigh?”
“This way!” The cornrows in her hair were fiercely delineated by the red emergency lights.
They skittered through the small-motor area and into another corridor which bent sharply left and was crowded with big thick-wooled sheep.
I can’t get through them!” Leigh cried after trying to cross the corridor. The sheep were up to her thighs and each one weighed more than she did.
“Here’s how to do it.” Ned put each hand on a sheep’s back, knotted his hands into the wool, pushed himself up, lifted his legs clear, then hopped over the next sheep, then did it again.
Leigh shook her hands, then embedded them into the thick wool, grabbed two fistfuls, and imitated his motions. She was not so practiced, but it got her ahead. The other two boys imitated the movements and gradually they managed to move against the stream of shifting animals going down the corridor as if through a farm chute.
Ned moved with great confidence now. He felt protected in the crowd of other mammals and birds, distractions, and with Leigh to make sure they made no wrong turns, for he knew he would be lost by now.
“Here!” Dylan shouted suddenly.
“Quiet, Hobbit!” Adam warned.
“No—here! Look!” Ducking into an indescribable tool chamber that Ned had never visited before, Dylan rushed with renewed vigor to a long rack and pulled from it a gun-like device.
“Is it a rifle?” Adam asked.
“It fires liquid metal!” Dylan shouldered the strange-looking bright orange firing mechanism with a big unwieldy tank hanging from its midsection. It was shaped like a gun, but had many tubes and hoses twisting around it, as if it were being consumed by snakes. “To make the tops of the containers magnetic! Remember?”
“No, actually, I don’t—”
“Trust me!” He tucked the not-so-small metallic sprayer under one arm, crossed the narrow work area, and hunted for—and found—a hand-sized control unit of some kind. “Remote for the loaders!”
“What, exactly, do you think you’ll be loading?” Adam chided.
“Let’s go,” Ned said. “We’re doing well. Let’s not fudge the luck.”
He ducked out first and they crowded after him.
“That way,” Leigh said, pointing through a rather ominous-looking portal.
That door had a vexed look about it. There was only darkness on the other side, no comforting red lights, but as they approached there was only a weird green glow muddling the shapes of storage units and computer terminals inside. Yes, the ugly glow came from some of the terminals in the shutdown area, which were on a holding pattern.
Ned felt over the coaming with his right toe, then his leg followed. He stepped inside, feeling Leigh’s hand on his shoulder. Dylan and Adam followed. Never once in his life had Ned thought of himself as a leader, yet today he had followers. What an odd thing.
They were halfway across the room, heading for the open hatchway outlined in an orange glow at the far end, when they first heard the long low throaty growl of warning.
They weren’t alone.
19
Like the rumble of a timpani drum, the growl began and did not end. The warning rolled around the cadets, heating their skin with that ancient sensation all creatures recognize. We are too close.
Ned would be glad that none of them made a sound as they turned to their left and saw what they saw. No squeaks, no gasps, just stunned silence.
He put out both arms and maneuvered himself so that the others were behind him. He felt Leigh huddle against his spine and Dylan crouch a bit beside him and brandish his metal sprayer. Somehow Dylan managed to hold back and not open fire.
Adam took hold of Ned’s arm, but otherwise froze in place, as did they all, out of instinct.
Before them loomed a monstrous form, bigger than any photo ever suggested, with a head as wide as a chair. A grizzly bear… one of the most dangerous predators on Earth, with claws longer than Ned’s hands. In their hurry to think about the aliens, they had forgotten about something else—other innate killers loose in their midst.
The bear looked at them and shook its head in that quintessential grizzly manner, rotating its skull quickly in both directions. Its silvery bristled neck ruff, glossy with blood, wagged in the other direction from the head, creating a storm of threat.
“Oh—I’m the world’s own fool,” Ned gasped. His chest seemed to collapse under the words. Why hadn’t he thought of this? Why had he let so many animals go without considering this? He had tripled the danger! They were going to get slashed by a bear before ever reaching the worst of the worst.
But the bear was down on its haunches, sitting over a kill already. It didn’t charge, but only snapped its jaws once in warning. This is mine. You can’t have it.
On the deck below the grizzly was a crushed husk of an alien. The bear was bloodied from many lacerations, sitting among tufts of its own ripped-out fur, which sizzled in alien acid blood, but most of the acid had apparently gone sideways, for there was a huge jagged hole dissolved through the side of the chamber beside the bear. The alien’s head case was crushed under one plate-sized paw, its secondary set of jaws lying on the deck like a tongue.
“It killed one!” Adam’s whisper almost tore Ned’s ear off. He moved his hand to Ned’s shoulder and tried to pull him back.
The bear’s paws were burning with acid, its hair smoldering.
Without speaking, Ned held out one hand toward Leigh. A can of baking soda appeared in his grip. He thumbed the plastic lid off, swung the canister in an arch, and doused the bear and the deck and the dead alien.
The acid blood of the alien immediately began to fizz and neutralize. The bear shifted back and forth, stomping the powder into the deck, and sufficiently coating its paws. At least it wouldn’t have its feet worn away to stumps.
“Takeanedge,” Ned murmured to the others. “Sideways… move sideways.”
He inched to his right, moving the whole group with him. Th
ey shimmied toward the other hatch and Ned pushed Leigh out of the chamber, then Dylan after. The bear shook its ruff again, then went back to what it was doing—not eating the disgusting flattened alien, but licking its own lacerated foreleg. The bear was wounded in a dozen places, but victorious and passive in its win.
Adam lingered, still watching the bear. “How did it kill one?”
“That’s its job. It knows how.” Taking a firm grip on Adam’s arm, Ned drew him through past the bear and out the other hatch, then pulled the hatch shut in case the bear got any last-minute ideas.
They followed Leigh through two more chambers, and there she paused to point at the next-on hatchway, some twenty feet beyond.
“That’s the bay! The starboard bay!”
“Yes, I can smell it,” Adam said.
Indeed there was a wafting odor now—manure! And the scent of moist wool and other animal smells. And sounds, plenty of them. Baaing and honking and baying and snorting, like a farm or a petting zoo!
But there was more. Horrid shrieks and the stomping of hooves in panic, confusion—attack!
“Neddy!” Dan’s voice came over the transceiver. “You’re mighty close to some of them!”
Leigh got to the hatchway first and peeked in, instantly drawing back to press against a utility cabinet. “They’re in there—they’re in there!” she gushed, more mouthing than speaking. She was terrified, her eyes ringed with tears. She had seen more than young eyes should have to see.
Ned elbowed her aside and looked into the bay. He was chilled by the sight of a crowding herd of sheep and goats, behind them several horses and three camels, all shuffling and slamming to get away from two of the knob-headed aliens posturing over them, slashing wildly. Bloody parts of animals went flying, as if there were a food processor going in the middle of the herd, chewing up flesh and horn and hoof.
And efficient they were. Slaughtered animals skidded into containers and walkway railings, spattering like loaded sponges. The animals bolted, crowded, changed direction as a single group, as herding animals will do, and displayed the perfect unison panic of a stampede.