Neverwylde (The Rim of the World Book 1)

by Mooney, Linda

  Dayall looked around in confusion. A huge knot was already growing on the side of his head where he’d either bang it against the bulkhead, or was struck by something flying loose.

  “Where’s the captain?”

  “Last I knew, he was in his seat,” Jules answered.

  She and the navigator followed Dayall as he tried to walk over the mess of broken hull and displays. He fell once, uttering a profanity Kelen didn’t think the man had ever used. When they reached the area where the captain’s seat should be located, they began removing the heavy pieces. They soon found Nathan Arvey, or what was left of him. A piece of what appeared to have been part of a wall had sliced him diagonally from his right neck to his left hip. By the lack of blood no longer oozing from the gash, she could tell it must have happened upon impact. Glancing around the area, it made her wonder how long they’d been down.

  “Guess that means you’re in charge,” Jules noted to the commander.

  Dayall glanced around. “Let’s see who is still alive. You two try to find Bertriol. I’m going to see if I can reach anybody via the intercom.”

  “Power’s completely out,” Kelen informed him.

  “The emergency systems appears to be working,” Dayall pointed out, looking at the blue lights. “I should at least be able to do an all-call. Even if they can’t respond, they can meet us at a designated location.”

  Kelen nodded. “Where will that be, sir? We don’t know what condition the rest of the ship’s in.”

  “Found him!” Jules called from the other side of where his navigational console used to be.

  “Is he alive?” Dayall asked.

  Jules checked, then nodded. In the dim blue light, he resembled an iridescent ghost. “He seems to be breathing okay. I think he was just knocked unconscious like the rest of us.”

  “See if you can wake him and get him on his feet. We can’t stay here.” The man reached for the intercom located next to the captain’s chair and swiveled it around to where he could use it. Swiping the screen, he spoke into the microphone. “This is Commander Dayall. If anyone can hear me, please try to make your way to the nearest intercom and respond. Let us know if you’re injured, and how many of you survived. I repeat. This is Commander Dayall. Please try to answer this summons. Or try to make some noise if you’re trapped or unable to move. We’ll try to make our way through the ship to rescue you.”

  “Commander?”

  Dayall glanced up to where Kelen was standing over by the sensors monitor. “What? What do you see?”

  She continued to stare in disbelief at the readings. Her gut tightened at the realization of how bad things really were at the moment. “We’re at six percent oxygen, Commander. The ship’s lost all reserves, and every system is dead.” She looked over at him just as the emergency lights began to grow noticeably dimmer. “The ship is dead, Commander. Totally dead,” she whispered.

  A moment later, they were engulfed in total darkness.

  Chapter 3

  Damage

  “Let’s head for the docking bay,” Dayall ordered. “We need to get our protective gear on ASAP. There’s no telling what kind of radiation or other organisms may be creeping into this ship. We have to assume the Manta is no longer safe.”

  He started toward the doors leading to the rest of the ship, blindly feeling his way amid the debris field. Kelen knew she could also find her way to any place on the vessel blindfolded. But the massive chunks of broken metal and other debris, and the twisted pieces that had once been a warship, made the going suicidal. To give herself a little more protection, she ripped off another piece of her shirt and wrapped her other hand.

  “What are you doing?” Jules whispered from somewhere to her left.

  “Wrapping my hands so I don’t cut them up any further.”

  “Good idea,” Dayall remarked. Both men stopped to follow her suggestion.

  She and Jules supported the injured systems operator between them. Bertriol faded in and out of consciousness, but remained cognizant enough to move his feet, without them needing to carry or drag him. Kelen could smell blood coming from the man. But without any light or medical supplies, there was no way she could help him.

  The place was eerily silent. The gentle hum and vibration she was accustomed to feeling emanating from the ship was no longer there. Kelen fought the dizziness that threatened to overtake her as she and Jules followed Dayall out of the bridge and into the main corridor.

  Normally, a Corsair warship held a compliment of anywhere from a dozen to sixteen crewmembers. It was a bare bones operation. Every crew member held qualifications two, sometimes three highly skilled positions to keep staffing to a minimum.

  Ahead of her, she could hear Dayall breathing heavily as he stumbled around in the dark. Being second in line to the captaincy was not the man’s actual position. His primary job was communications. For every function needed to run the ship, one person manned it, and another person was trained to take over for him in the event an injury or accident left someone incapacitated. She paused to get a handle on how Jules was faring. Although he was the ship’s navigator, he was also the backup pilot. Same as she had been trained to be the backup navigator should something happen to him.

  Bertriol’s arms felt limp across her shoulders. His hand flapped against her neck. “How you doing, Nave?”

  “Just peachy, Kel.” The man’s voice sounded thick. She could tell he was fighting consciousness.

  Ahead of them, she heard Dayall stop and begin pounding on a doorway. “Fuck. It won’t open without power,” he commented.

  Kelen tried to get a sense of her surroundings. They should be near the medical bay. “What if we try to pry it open?”

  “Could Sandow still be alive?” Jules questioned.

  In answer, the commander pounded on it again. “Sandow! Can you hear me? Kuralt?” They paused to wait for a response. There was none.

  Kelen heard a movement. Something metal slid across metal.

  “Jules, come help me with this. I think I have it in the slit. Push away from you. Let’s see if we can’t bust this door open.”

  She felt the navigator brush past her, leaving the systems operator to lean heavily against her. She struggled against the man’s weight and stepped away to give the two men room. Her back pressed against the bulkhead behind her, and she reached out to touch the bulging hull. A shiver went through her. In her mind’s eye she could imagine how damaged the ship was on the inside. It made her wonder what the damage looked like from the outside. More importantly, she wondered if there was any chance they could repair the vessel.

  And do what? Return home? How? The last thing she remembered before blacking out was the all-encompassing, bottomless throat of that wormhole that sucked the Manta down like it was a juicy drink inside a straw.

  There was a squeal as the door protested against the makeshift crowbar. Then a crack. What followed was the almost silent hiss of the portal being slid into the wall recess. Immediately, the smell of chemicals assailed them, forcing Kelen to cover her nose with her sleeve.

  “Think they could still be alive in there?” Jules asked, his voice muffled. She heard him and the commander cough.

  “We have to be sure,” Dayall told him.

  “How are we going to breathe in there? The fumes…”

  Dayall took a deep breath and tried to enter the medical bay. But within seconds he was back, wheezing.

  “If they were in there, they wouldn’t have survived,” he admitted. “Help me close this door. We have to keep the air as pure as we can.”

  The two men struggled with the door, but it proved futile. The noxious odors continued to pour out of the lab. Eventually, Kelen felt a tug on her arm as Dayall led them away, toward the mess hall.

  The term mess hall was a misnomer on a ship the size of the Manta. It was actually a small room containing food replicators and four tables, each table sporting four seats. When it wasn’t in use for dining, it served as a meeting room, as i
t could hold all of the ship’s crew at one time.

  Finding the door already separated from the wall, they managed to squeeze inside. A bright beam of light suddenly appeared from somewhere inside the room. Whoever was holding it held kept the light aimed toward the floor, but it still took Kelen and the others a few seconds for their eyes to adjust.

  “Who the…” Dayall exclaimed, holding a hand up to shield his face.

  “Commander?”

  “Dox?”

  “Yes! Dox!” The light moved over to land upon Kelen, then Jules. It shone out into the hallway as Dox checked to see who else was with them. “Where is the captain?”

  “Captain Arvey’s dead. I’m in charge. Is there anyone else in here with you? Where’s Mellori?”

  “With the engines. He’s fighting the engines,” the little man answered.

  “Dox, have you seen anyone else? Or heard from them?” Kelen asked.

  “Sid. I heard Sid. He talked to Paul.”

  “Are you alone in here?” Dayall inquired.

  “Yes. You said to meet, so I came to the meeting room.”

  The little man made perfect sense, Kelen realized. When the commander sent out the message, he did say they should meet. To Dox, that meant the mess hall.

  Carefully, she and Jules managed to lower Bertriol to the floor. The man grunted with pain. Dox waved the tube light over the man’s body, allowing Kelen to finally see the large patch of blood around the man’s middle. A piece of metal was sticking out from between his ribs. Jules also saw the triangular section, and reached for it. She slapped the navigator’s hand out of the way before he could touch it.

  “If you pull it out, it could bleed out,” she told him.

  The man nodded. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking straight. Sorry.”

  A noise came from outside the room. Everyone stopped to listen, to try and figure out what could be causing the sounds.

  “That’s Paul,” Dox announced matter-of-factly.

  Dayall and Jules hurried over to shove the door further open as the engineering and weapons specialists came into the room, their arms weighed down with equipment. Right behind them was Finn Sandow, the ship’s physician.

  “Finn! You’re alive!” Kelen cried out with relief.

  “Just barely,” the middle-aged doctor replied. He quickly scanned each individual, checking for injuries, when he spotted Bertriol. Immediately, he knelt in front of the man to tend to him.

  “We passed Cooter on the way here,” Fullgrath informed them. “He was going to check on the terrain. See what we’re up against. He said he’d meet us by the airlock. Where’s the captain?”

  “He didn’t make it,” Kelen replied. “What about Perth?”

  “That part of the ship completely pancaked,” Mellori said. “There’s no way I could get to her to see if she survived. Not without some heavy-duty equipment to lift all that mess off of her.”

  “Do you know if Kuralt made it?” Sandow questioned. He paused and glanced up at the commander. “I take it you stopped by medical on the way here?”

  Dayall nodded. “We tried, but the place was filled with fumes. We couldn’t go in to check. We assumed you and Kuralt were dead.”

  The doctor sadly shook his head. “I was in engineering tending to a burn on Stout’s leg when I blacked out.” He sighed. “We’re lucky any of us made it. What happened?”

  “We went through a wormhole,” Kelen explained. “We got caught in some kind of gravitational pull when we entered that anomaly, and the damn thing sucked us into it.”

  Sandow looked at Jules. “Any idea where we are now?”

  Jules gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Your guess is as good as mine. We could be in the same general vicinity, or parsecs from where we were.”

  “One thing’s for certain. We can’t stay in this ship. The engines are damaged to the point where they could become lethal.”

  “Well, if we’re going to go anywhere, I need to take care of Nave’s injury first. Everyone take off your vests and hand them to me so I can use them as compresses,” the doctor ordered.

  They removed their outer vests and handed them to Sandow, who murmured encouragement to the systems operator.

  “Are you going to take that piece of shrapnel out of him?” Jules asked softly.

  “Not until I can get him under a good light so I can examine him. Luckily, my portable scanners seemed to have survived the crash. Commander? You’re next. Come over here so I can wrench that shoulder back into place.”

  Mellori produced two more tube lights from his belt and handed one to Jules as Fullgrath dumped what they’d been carrying onto the floor. Kelen recognized the transparent skins.

  “I want everyone into a suit. We’ve lost all power, including our oxygen regenerator, and it’s already getting stuffy in here,” Dayall commented.

  Kelen sniffed the rankness as she reached for a skin. The carbon dioxide would continue to build up, making the ship’s atmosphere unbreathable within a very short span of time.

  “One problem,” Dox pointed out. “Not enough O2 in the suit. It will be gone in six hours.”

  “He’s right,” Mellori said. “We have to find someplace else, and quickly.”

  “What about supplies? Food? Water? Weapons?” Dayall asked.

  “I managed to salvage a few hand stars, but that’s all,” Fullgrath told them.

  “I’ll see if I can find the emergency rations,” Kelen offered. “Let’s hope they’re still viable.”

  “I’ll help you look,” Jules added, and turned to begin searching behind the panel doors.

  With Dox’s assistance, the three of them were able to scrounge up several cartons of foodstuffs, including half a dozen packets of water. Dayall scrutinized the haul and sighed. Inside the transparent suit, his voice sounded distant.

  “It’s not much, but we’ll make do. Bertriol, can you walk? Or do we need to carry you out?”

  The man gave him a weak grin. “I can manage with a little help.”

  This time, Mellori and Fullgrath hoisted the man to his feet. As they led him out of the mess hall, Kelen and the rest loaded up a trundle with the food and water, and followed them.

  Once they reached the bay where the two ground crafts were stored, they could see more of the ship’s destruction. One sub ship lay on its side. The other was upside down. The head of security was crawling out of the smaller craft as they arrived. “Forget about using them,” he informed the group. “They’re permanently out of commission.”

  “Okay. Great. Now what?” Jules commented.

  Kelen slowly pivoted around as the others flashed their tube lights around, surveying the damage. She paused, unable to believe what she was seeing, then pointed her finger overhead.

  “Hey, guys? Look.”

  The lights were shut off as everyone paused to stare in amazement at what was overhead. A large fissure had broken open in the hull. From where they stood, stars swam in sharp contract in the blackness of space.

  “Check your monitors,” Bertriol gasped.

  Kelen looked at her readout. “There’s an atmosphere!”

  “Dox, don’t!” Sandow yelled, but the little man had already undone the transparent hood on his suit. A beatific smile creased his face as he closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.

  “Smells good.”

  They waited another few seconds to make sure the engineer didn’t have any adverse reactions. Then, slowly, one at a time, they each removed their hoods.

  Kelen breathed deeply. The air had a distinctive smell, but she couldn’t pinpoint what caused the odor. At that moment, it didn’t matter. What was important was that they had landed on an oxygen-rich planet that had a gravity they could withstand. Because they had air, the threat of death didn’t hover as close as it had. But there remained the problem of food and water. When those ran out, they’d find themselves back at square one. And that wasn’t counting what they’d find on this new world. What dangers would they encount
er? What would the coming hours reveal?

  “What do you say we open the airlock and see what it looks like outside?” Dayall suggested.

  Kelen glanced at the readout on her space skin. “It’s twenty-two degrees Celsius outside.”

  “If you’re thinking of shucking your protective skin, Lieutenant, I strongly suggest otherwise,” the commander remarked. “I’d rather we not take any chances…other than what’s already been done.” He glared at Dox, making his meaning clear.

  Rather than argue with the man that noting the ambient temperature wasn’t implying they remove their suits, Kelen bit her lip and watched with a mixture of excitement and trepidation as Fullgrath and Mellori tackled the airlock, without any luck. Disgusted, the weapons master let go with a swear word and threw down the panel they’d used to try and pry open the door.

  “Well, that way’s a no go,” Mellori remarked. “Any suggestions what we do now?”

  “Yes!”

  They turned to see Dox pointing upward at the fissure.

  “That way.”

  Dayall snorted. “All right. Unless someone has a better idea, let’s gather what we can and build a ladder. And, Dox? Because it was your suggestion, you get to go first.”

  Kelen laughed as the little man gave a cheer and hurried off to find adequate material.

  Chapter 4

  Signals

  He came out of his stupor at the sound of someone calling his name. Kyber tried to sit up, but a heavy weight prevented him from moving. As feeling came back into his arms, he managed to bring them underneath his chest. Bracing against whatever he was lying on, he pressed upward.

  The weight shifted, then slid to one side. The crash sounded muffled. Kyber glanced up as bright light swept across his face and shoulders. Squinting, he held up a hand to keep from being blinded.