Star Wanderers: Tales of the Far Outworlds (Omnibus V-VIII)

by Joe Vasicek

  The markers to the shelter, she realized. If I can get him there, we’ll be all right. She put her hand over the faceplate and waited a second for him to take one last breath, then lifted it to her mouth and took a deep breath of the blessed oxygen.

  The jungle was about fifteen meters now, across stony ground. The rocks were sure to scrape Lucca as she dragged him away, but that was the least of their worries right now. The beasts were flying a lot closer, and the longer they waited the more would come.

  Summoning every ounce of her strength, she grabbed beneath Lucca’s arms and pulled. He winced as they went over the sharp rocks, but kicked out with his feet to make them move faster. He left a bloody trail across the ground, but there was nothing she could do about that. They’d gone for almost fifteen seconds now, so she took a deep breath and put the mask over Lucca’s face.

  The largest beast that Mariya had yet seen landed right in front of her, not a meter away from where they had been just a moment ago. Its skin was a deep red, with streaks of yellow across its wings and belly. Its claws were as long as her forearm, and its mouth was large enough to snap her in half.

  It looked her in the eye and roared. Without thinking, she screamed—promptly losing any air that was left in her lungs.

  The beast lashed out with a claw, knocking her to the ground. She gasped, and her throat burned as if she had just breathed fire. She tried to cough it out, but that only made it worse. Scrambling on the ground, her vision began to cloud and her mind went light-headed—

  The beast turned from her to Lucca, rearing its head as if to strike.

  “No!” she screamed as she raised the energy pistol. Her shot hit the monster square in the jaw, just as it opened its toothy mouth. It let out the strangest gurgling cry, as if choking on its own vomit. Mariya fired again and again, until the pistol ceased firing and the monster lay in a heap behind them.

  Her arms weak, she fumbled for the mask and grabbed it as quickly as she could. The oxygen felt like a soothing balm, clearing her head and renewing her strength. Her breath came in short, desperate bursts, but there was no time to recover—the beasts would soon be back.

  “Go!” Lucca whispered as she reached down to hand him the mask. He shook his head, telling her to make a run for it.

  With the mask strapped securely to her face, she lifted him up again for one last desperate push for safety. Her weakened muscles screamed out in protest, but she forced them to move, losing every last ounce of adrenaline. Twice, she stumbled on the rocks, but then she was in the ferns, and moments later, beneath the thick, shady leaves.

  We made it, she thought, collapsing in a heap next to Lucca. We’re out of danger. We’re going to be okay.

  That was when she saw that he’d gone unconscious.

  “Lucca?” she said, shaking him by his uninjured arm. “Lucca!”

  She gave him the mask again, but there was no indication that he was still breathing.

  * * * * *

  The last thing Lucca remembered before passing out was the red-skinned beast that had seized him, a monster among those winged creatures and quite possibly the mother of them all. Mariya fired, and her shot was true—truer than if Lucca himself had fired it. The beast fell back, and writhed as she fired again, and again. Then, his world turned to blackness.

  When he woke up again, he found that she had dressed his wound with strips of fabric torn from his tattered jumpsuit. The pressure told him that the bleeding had all but stopped. He coughed, and the air he breathed was clean—the mask was firmly on his face.

  A hand covered the glass, and he took a deep breath of the clean, blessed oxygen. Moments later, Mariya lifted the mask from his face and fitted it to her own.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Can you walk?”

  Mariya, the girl who had saved him. The girl who had stood over him and fought off almost half a dozen of those nightmarish creatures all on her own. How stupid he’d been to think of impressing her with his show of brazen arrogance! It was only because of her that he wasn’t dead right now.

  He nodded and sat up. A sharp pain made him wince and fall back, and she hastily put the mask back over his face.

  “It is not bad,” he said. “Just some cracked ribs. It will heal.”

  She took back the mask and breathed before speaking. “Can you move? This tank is running low.”

  “Of course,” he said when he gave her back the mask. “Come, help me up.”

  His body screamed in pain as she helped him to his feet, but he grit his teeth and endured it. By leaning heavily on her for support, he was able to take a few short steps. With the tank slung across her other shoulder, they passed the oxygen mask between them, taking one feeble step at a time.

  The sun was beginning to set by the time they reached the shelter. He could tell by the way the sky turned red and orange through the leafy canopy, coloring the white inflatable walls a light shade of pink. It was a beautiful sight, though he was in no condition to enjoy it.

  Since the airlock couldn’t fit them both at the same time, it took a bit of fumbling to get in. Lucca went first, and collapsed on the floor after sealing the door shut. Mariya followed a few moments later and knelt by his side, as if unsure what to do.

  “The healant,” he croaked, pointing to the locker.

  As she searched for it, he unzipped his jumpsuit and gingerly began pulling it down to his waist. It was slow going, even with the fabric in pieces. His ribs ached with pain, and the gash in his shoulder made his arm almost useless.

  “Hold still,” said Mariya, kneeling by his side. She peeled back the jumpsuit and carefully removed the press. The blood around the wound had dried, forming a thick crust with bits of cloth and grass. He winced as she opened it again, but before the bleeding could start, she took a sponge and began to apply the gel-like healant. The effect was immediate: like a soothing balm on a serious burn, it relieved the pain and helped his body to relax.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Let it soak, then wash and apply again.”

  “What about the rest of you? Is anything broken?”

  He felt at his stomach, gingerly pressing the swollen areas where his bones had broken. “It is just cracked ribs, I think,” he said, his head swimming from the pain. “You can apply healant—but gently, please.”

  She nodded and unzipped his jumpsuit down to the waist. A large purple bruise just above his abs showed where the ribs were broken. She pulled his clothes aside carefully, as if the merest touch could kill him. It took longer than he would have liked, but soon she was dabbing the lifesaving healant all over the wound. He closed his eyes as relief washed over him.

  “That was the scariest moment of my life,” she said softly, still applying the healant gel. “I don’t ever want to go through anything like that again.”

  “You did well,” he reassured her. “Very well.”

  “Yeah. Well, I guess that makes us even. You saved me, and now I saved you.”

  “No.” He opened his eyes and looked straight at her until she met his gaze. “It is not just even—it is more. If I had not rescued you, colonists would when they arrive in just few days. But you—I owe you my life.”

  She blushed—or had she been blushing the whole time? With the pink and purple hues of the deepening sunset through the walls of the shelter, it was difficult to tell.

  “Would you even be down here if it weren’t for me? No. It’s because of me that we crashed on this horrible planet in the first place—if not for me, you’d probably be on your way out of the system right now.”

  “Horrible planet? I thought you were colonist. Does that not make this place your home?”

  “Home,” she said bitterly. “I don’t even know what that word means anymore. At first, it meant the place I was born, but famine struck and now everyone back there is dead. I never really fit in at Alpha Oriana, but at least I still had family—until they all went Coreward, and my parents brought me out here to this starforsaken rock of a world.”

/>   “How old are you?”

  “By standard Earth years? Sixteen. Where I’m from, though, that’s not very young.”

  “Interesting. I do not know much about ways of your people.”

  “That’s probably because everyone hates us, at least in the Oriana Cluster. Our culture, our way of life—but mostly, it’s our religion they despise.”

  “Why is that?”

  She hesitated, as if the topic made her uncomfortable. “I don’t know, honestly. Maybe because they think we’re heretics? I just know that they hate us.”

  “Hatred is stupid,” said Lucca, easing himself up to a sitting position. “Why do we hate each other, just because we are from different stars? Did not our fathers all come from Holy Earth? And the stars that shine on us, they are all same, no matter at which one we live. It is foolish, this hatred of those who are different.”

  Mariya’s face brightened. “You really mean that?”

  “Of course. I have been traveling for many years, and seen many different cultures and worlds. But I have never hated one of them—not one. Always there is something good in them. If others cannot see this, it is always because they do not wish to see it.”

  The look on her face told him that he’d said something right. She seemed about ready to throw her arms around him and kiss him. With his wounds still tender, though, he was glad she held back.

  “My people believe very strongly in families,” she said. “A strong family shines brighter than all the stars—that’s one of our most important sayings. So it was really hard when all my aunts and uncles left for the Coreward Stars.”

  “Are you betrothed?”

  “No,” she said quickly—a little too quickly, perhaps. “I mean, I was, but he left with the others.”

  “Who?”

  “Just one of my cousins. He’s gone now, of course. We’re out so far, I’ll probably never see him again.”

  “Do you miss him?”

  She shrugged. “I’m over it, I guess. But it’s just so frustrating. I used to know exactly what my life was going to be like—who I was going to marry, how we would raise our children, where we were going to live and what we were going to be. Then the famine happened, and we fled to Oriana Station, but there was still our family, our traditions—at least some security. Then we came here, and everything changed. Everything.”

  “Security,” said Lucca, chuckling to himself. “It is just illusion, is it not? Well, I have something better.”

  “You do? What is that?”

  “Luck.”

  His answer made her frown. “Luck? How do you mean?”

  “It is simple. Nothing in life is certain, so why should I seek security if it is only illusion? But luck—luck is not illusion. It is very real.”

  “But how can you trust in something like luck?”

  He paused for a second to consider her question. “Perhaps ‘trust’ is not right word. I trust in myself, and make my own luck.”

  “What do you mean, you ‘make’ your own luck? How is that possible?”

  She was staring intently at him now, her whole being focused on him. It was clear that this was something she felt very strongly about—something that had worried her for a long time. And from the look on her face, it seemed that his answers were boggling her mind.

  “Ah, Mariya,” he said. “I think you worry too much. You obsess about future, as if knowing what will happen is most important thing. But who knows what will happen in future? No one—and that is good thing. If future was certain, we would have no choice—no freedom. We would have no chance to make things better when everything goes wrong.”

  “Maybe—but what if things didn’t go wrong in the first place?”

  “That is impossible. If there is good, there must be bad. If there is happiness, there must also be sorrow. Luck is what keeps the balance. It is like pendulum, which swings from one side to the other—sometimes very fast, sometimes very slow. To make luck, you must simply be ready for when it swings in other direction.”

  “That’s it, then? That’s how you do it?”

  He chuckled. “Yes. That is how I make my own luck.”

  “But—but it can’t be like that. It’s too simple. Suppose something terrible happened, and you died?”

  “Then I die.”

  “But how can you stop that? How can you make it so that that won’t happen?”

  “I cannot. It is how universe works.”

  “If you can’t control something as basic as that, how can you possibly claim to make your own luck?”

  Lucca reached for the food synthesizer and filled up a drinking bottle with water. “You make mistake,” he said as the bottle filled. “It is not about control—with luck, it is never about control. It is about position and leverage.”

  “Position? Leverage?”

  “Yes. I cannot stop death, but I can take steps to avoid it. And I cannot make good things happen, but I can put myself in good position to take advantage when they do.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as this shelter,” he said. He stopped to take a drink of the pure, filtered water—so refreshing, after all that they’d just been through. “Why do I have this shelter, when my ship is starship and not shuttle? Because it is better to have it and not need than to need it and not have. It is for when luck is bad. But why did I rescue you? Because if luck is good, it is better to have girl and win than to win and be alone.”

  “Yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Some luck I’ve brought you.”

  “Ah, but you have. See? You have saved my life. Because of you, I am alive.”

  “Because of me, we’re stranded here with no way off except by contacting the pirates. If the other colonists fail when the Hope of Oriana docks with the station, we’ll all be as good as dead.”

  He looked at her and smiled. “I do not think so. Remember how luck is like pendulum?”

  “Yeah,” she said, meeting his gaze.

  “It is my belief that before things get very, very good, they must first be very, very bad. And yes, things have been bad for us—very bad. But that is just sign that soon things will be very good. And I think that will happen because of you.”

  “You’re just saying that to make me feel better, aren’t you?”

  “Is it working?”

  She grinned. “Maybe a little.”

  “But that is not only reason why I say it. I say it because I think it is true.”

  Her cheeks flushed red, this time much more than before. From that and the way she smiled at him, he knew that he’d said exactly the right thing.

  Chapter 22

  Mariya’s heart fluttered as she climbed out the hatchway onto the top of the ship. The vertigo still gripped her as she scanned the skies for any sign of the giant raptor-beasts, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been when they’d landed. The cloud-covered skies were empty, so she tossed the bag of supplies down to the ground and prepared to descend the ladder.

  Strange, to think how difficult the climb had been just a few days ago. Now, it wasn’t the vertigo that terrified her so much as the raptor-beasts. Yesterday, she’d watched the sky from the underbrush for nearly an hour, until they had started to come out in the afternoon. This early in the day, there was no sign of them. She climbed down the ladder as quickly as she could, and dragged the bags to the safety of the underbrush.

  After waiting for her heart to calm down somewhat, she took a deep breath through the oxygen mask and prepared to set out for the camp. Lucca was getting better, but he was in no shape to come outside yet, and she needed to stay with him as much as possible. Besides, he was horrible at preparing food, and she didn’t want him to attempt to make lunch before she had a chance to rescue it.

  Some luck, she thought as she walked though the broad, leafy ferns. In spite of all that had happened to them, Lucca was in remarkably good spirits. It was almost as if the universe had a big cosmic joke, and he was one of the only ones in on it. If he ever took anything seriously
, she couldn’t tell.

  And yet, in spite of all that, things really did seem to be working out for them. At least, they were doing all right so far. If she were by herself here, she probably would be dead by now. But with Lucca, everything seemed to work out somehow. It was crazy, because he never made any plans for the future, or seemed to even think about it. But even though they were stranded on an uninhabited planet in the Far Outworlds with a poisonous atmosphere, with no way off and the pirates in orbit cutting off their only hope of rescue, she somehow felt that they were going to be all right. Certainly Lucca felt that way, and because he was so confident about it, she couldn’t help but feel the same.

  I wonder if he’ll settle down with us when all of this is over, Mariya thought to herself. It was a crazy, wishful thought, but one that she couldn’t put out of her mind. She liked the way she felt when she was with him—the confidence that he helped her to feel. As crazy as his philosophies on luck were, she’d never met a man who made her feel so secure.

  The thought made her laugh. “I must be going crazy,” she said aloud, then laughed some more. She’d never been in so much danger—how could one man possibly make her feel this way? Yet it was true. She’d never felt it so strongly in her life.

  Which led to other problems. The things she’d told Lucca were only partially correct. Yes, she’d been betrothed once, and that betrothal was definitely off, but there was another one now—one of her own making. Ever since Jeremiah had showed up with his wife at Oriana Station, the three of them had been extremely close—close enough that it didn’t seem wrong for her to marry him as well. It made a lot of sense, even if it was a little unusual for a man to have two wives. In the Far Outworlds, though, arrangements like this were not unheard of. They already knew each other, they already leaned on each other for support, and they were already close friends, so why couldn’t they make it work? It was certainly safer than waiting for some stranger to come sweep her off of her feet. On a world as far removed from civilization as Zarmina, a lifetime could pass before anything like that ever happened.