Overload Flux

by Carol Van Natta

  As she’d hoped, Luka’s knowledge of the ship gave them a better way to open the unit than assaulting it with the pry bar, and they soon had Adams out and floating in the water. He was unconscious but alive.

  Completely unexpectedly, Adams had shared the autodoc with a high-end sniper’s railgun, and had jammed a case of ammunition and the xenobiological sampling kit into the end near his head. Had either gotten loose, it could have injured or killed him. He’d been stupid to take the chance, but she admired his dedication to duty.

  By her estimation, Adams only had about thirty minutes of breathing mix left. They were running out of time.

  They only had intermittent emergency lighting, which was enough for Mairwen to function, but Luka was mostly blind. They couldn’t communicate except by gesture and lip reading, which neither she nor Luka was good at. She went looking for a safe path.

  Getting out of the ruined ship was alternately frustrating, harrowing, and tedious. The worst part came when she had to dive completely underwater and search through jagged metal for a route that would accommodate pulling unconscious bodies through without risking the exosuits that were keeping them dry and breathing. The suits were designed to resist tears and punctures, but it paid to be cautious.

  The only thing that terrified her more than being in open water was being in enclosed water, like a flooded ship. She focused on her strong desire to get Luka and the others to safety, telling herself she could fall apart later. She finally found a route that would take them to a spot beyond the hull, where they could float to the surface. Then they could tackle the next hurdle of finding dry land.

  She swam back to Luka and found him propping up a shaky but now awake Adams. Adams grinned weakly when he saw her, which surprised her because no one but Luka ever did that, until she realized Adams hadn’t known until then that she’d survived the crash.

  It was easier to keep Haberville’s form moving with Adams helping, though he insisted on taking his railgun and the xeno kit with them instead of coming back for them, and Luka did the same with the medical kit. It seemed to take forever to escape the wreck, and they nearly lost the xeno kit more than once because Adams was still impaired.

  Once in open water, they used the buoyancy of the waterproof kits to lead them to the surface. It was either dawn or dusk, she couldn’t tell which. All she could see as she treaded water were oily patches and floating debris. The exosuit made movement awkward, and a part of her mind was still gibbering in the corner about being in the water. She looked for a bigger piece of flotsam that could help support Haberville so Luka didn’t have to keep holding up her weight.

  Luka had other ideas. He began swimming with purpose, towing Haberville’s exosuit by the conduit harness he’d rigged. Mairwen let Adams go next, and followed in case he needed assistance. She narrowed her focus to just following, just swimming, so she wouldn’t have to think about the surrounding water that might stretch for endless kilometers.

  It came as a surprise when her foot hit something sloped, and she looked up to realize they’d reached a sandy, rock-strewn shore. The increased light told her they’d landed at dawn. Adams was struggling with the kit, and ahead, she saw Luka dragging Haberville and the medical kit in the silty mud. She helped Adams first, then Luka.

  They ended up sitting on dry ground among some scraggly shrubs, about six meters from the water’s edge. Behind them was what looked like the edge of a forest, but it was still too dark to see details. Luka got her and Adams’s attention, then unsealed his own exosuit and took a deep breath of air. They both unsealed their suits, and Adams took several deep breaths. They helped steadily improving Haberville with hers.

  “The planet’s oxygen levels are a little high, but probably not enough to hurt us,” said Luka, reading from his exosuit’s display.

  “I never want to get that close to flatlining my air supply again,” said Adams feelingly. “And no more ship crashes, either. My head hurts.”

  Luka laughed sympathetically, and the sound soothed Mairwen, though she couldn’t have said why, since he was obviously alive and unhurt. Perhaps because she wasn’t in the water anymore and could hear him.

  “I’ve never blacked out like that before,” said Haberville. “Maybe my blood pressure bottomed out or something. I’m still dizzy.”

  “Maybe syncope,” said Luka. When both Adams and Haberville gave him a blank look, he added, “Sudden loss of blood to the brain. That final bounce was intense.”

  Luka and Adams helped Haberville stand so she could try walking, but she couldn’t reliably stay upright when they let go. She kept tilting over to her left, like her sense of balance didn’t know which way was up.

  Trusting they’d ask for her help if needed, Mairwen stepped away and turned up her senses, trying to get a feel of the sounds and smells of their new environment. The lapping water had a rhythm to it, like ocean tides, but shallower, and it smelled slightly salty. She hadn’t seen or heard any insect or bird sounds, but that presumed the hybrid planet’s fauna was terra-like. The air was warm, even though it was dawn and near water. From what Haberville’s scan data had indicated, heat could become a problem.

  The smells were all new and complex. All Mairwen could do was start tagging them in her memory for later association with sources.

  The light breeze shifted and brought a whiff of lubricant and fluids from the ship, which in the increasing light, appeared to be about a hundred meters from the shore. From its silhouette, it looked like it was stuck in the lakebed at an angle, with the nav and engine pods at the waterline. She imagined the ship’s manufacturers hadn’t envisioned a crash landing on a lakeshore when they advertised the ship as being “wilderness ready.”

  She went back to where Luka and Adams were. Haberville was still sitting, looking pale and nauseated. The scents of Luka and the others were comfortingly familiar.

  “Luka, where did we land?” she asked. Since he’d unerringly taken them to shore, she assumed he’d seen visuals after they’d hit the atmosphere.

  He gave her a quick smile, perhaps because she’d unthinkingly called him by his first name in public, if Adams and Haberville counted as public.

  “On a peninsula. Haberville aimed the ship for it, but we hit some trees and tumbled in just short. I saw the shore as we went in. The lake is big, probably a hundred and sixty kilometers across and five hundred kilometers long. We’re about sixteen kilometers from what looked like a large building and a landing field with an interstellar ship. The base was well lit.” He pointed vaguely toward the trees. “We have the coordinates, so we should be able to find it with the xeno kit’s readers. This part of the continent has low-energy geoposition transmitters about every six hundred kilometers or so, in a grid pattern.”

  He made eye contact with Adams and Haberville. “The installation may not be the safest place to go, but the alternatives are worse.”

  Adams and Haberville nodded their agreement. Mairwen nodded, too, for their benefit. Luka already knew she’d go wherever he was going.

  She didn’t see any way to avoid going back into the ship to look for salvageable supplies they’d need to stay alive, and that meant going back into the inky brown water. Despite the temperature control in her exosuit, she shivered. She decided she could at least wait until there was more sunlight.

  “Adams, Haberville,” asked Luka, “did your gunnin training include wilderness survival skills?”

  Adams snorted. “Just the basics, like don’t drink unpurified water and stay away from predators.” His sweeping wave indicated the crashed ship in the lake and the trees. “It sure as hell didn’t cover anything like this.”

  Haberville just shook her head, then winced and put her fingers to her temples to rub.

  Mairwen sighed. She’d have preferred not to admit any knowledge at all, but they needed her expertise to survive. “I have training. I participated in planet-fall expedition challenges.”

  It was the best excuse she’d been able to come up with
to explain her skills. She’d actually been on one once, but only because it gave her access to a target.

  At this rate, she should just issue a press release to the top newsfeeds that she was a legendary death tracker and get it over with.

  CHAPTER 16

  * Planet: Insche 255C * GDAT 3237.042 *

  Luka couldn’t help but smile at Mairwen’s cover story as Adams expressed amazement and interest.

  Actually, Luka kept wanting to smile ever since he’d seen Mairwen’s face above him through the nav pod door she’d pried open. It had taken the heart-freezing fear of losing her to realize he was deeply and madly in love with the woman. She was ferociously competent with the extraordinary, and quirkily awkward with the simplest of things, especially human interactions. He had no idea how to make it happen yet, but he wanted her to be a part of his life and wanted to be a part of hers. But first, they had to get off this planet alive.

  “I have to go back to the ship,” she was saying. “We need water containers and edible food, and if we’re lucky, weapons and camp gear.” Something in her tone made him look at her more closely, and he thought he detected uneasiness. Knowing how reserved she was, he probably wouldn’t get a straight answer out of her if he asked directly.

  “Adams,” he said, “how much breathing mix has your suit regenerated?”

  “About ninety minutes’ worth,” Adams said, peering at the display. “Call me Jerzi, by the way. I figure fellow crash survivors should use first names.”

  Luka nodded his acknowledgment. “Call me Luka.”

  “I’m Eve,” said Haberville, then gave Adams a coy look. “We could have been Adams and Eve.” Adams looked puzzled, clearly not understanding the reference. Eve gave an exasperated sigh.

  Luka waited for Mairwen to give them her first name, but she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t care. He smiled at her. “Breathing mix?”

  “Seven hours, forty-one minutes.”

  He nodded. “Mine says six hours plus a little.” He turned back to Jerzi. “If we swap rebreather units, are you up for another swim? Since Morganthur is our survival expert, you and I should become her security detail.”

  He heard her soft snort and gave her an amused smile in reply. He ignored Eve’s peeved frown, which had become her current default expression. She probably had a killer headache.

  “Fine with me,” said Jerzi, and started peeling out of the suit so the rebreather could be removed and replaced. “Too bad we don’t have dive gear. That’d be more fun.”

  Once out of the suit, Jerzi took off down the shore to go relieve himself, claiming he hated the way it felt in the exosuit.

  Luka took the opportunity to ask Mairwen if there was any reason they should wear exosuits on their upcoming trek.

  She looked toward the trees, then back to him and Eve. “No,” she said. “It’ll make you clumsy, and if the temperature controls fail, you’ll overheat too fast. But keep your armor on. Don’t roll up your sleeves, and keep your cuffs and collar tight if you can.” She looked at the forest again. “I want a closer look at the trees.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Luka. He wasn’t willing to let her out of his sight again so soon.

  He looked at Eve. “Jerzi can help you get your suit off when he comes back.”

  “Good,” she said, massaging her neck and wincing as she eyed the lake. “It’s not safe out here. We need to get to that base.”

  He and Mairwen walked in companionable silence over the hardened sand to the tree line. She was looking intently her surroundings, as if all her extraordinary senses were fully engaged. He imagined no one but other trackers had ever seen her like that. He glanced back to see Jerzi just returning to Haberville’s position on the shore, about fifty meters from where they stood.

  “Why are you nervous about going back to the ship?” he asked quietly.

  She looked away, then down. “I dislike deep water,” she said. Her mild words belied the brief glimpse of fear he saw in her eyes. It was the first time he’d ever seen her afraid, or at least the first time she’d ever let him see it.

  “Then I’ll go...” he started to say, but she cut him off.

  “I’m better suited for it.” She had the quietly stubborn look he’d come to know well.

  He sighed, knowing she wouldn’t let him put himself in danger. She didn’t seem to understand he felt the same way about her, especially since she’d admitted the lake scared her.

  With another quick look to make sure Jerzi and Eve were distracted, Luka closed the distance to Mairwen and cupped her face in his hands. “You are a wonder,” he said softly, then kissed her thoroughly, letting her needy response nourish his soul. He stepped back, though not as far away as he had been. The slightly dazed look and small smile she gave him made him almost light-headed.

  Ultimately, it took three trips back and forth, but Mairwen and Jerzi managed to salvage a fair amount of useful gear and additional weapons, mostly personal hand weapons and one rifle. Each time she was gone, Luka worried, and each time she came back, he found a way to touch her, and once even steal a brief kiss while Jerzi and Eve weren’t looking.

  An hour after sunrise, the temperature had already ramped up to sweaty hot, so they rigged a temporary sled and dragged the gear into the shade of the trees. There, they spread everything out to take inventory and figure out how to make packs of it. Jerzi and Mairwen removed and packed their exosuits, but kept the grey flexin armor, the same as Luka and Eve already had. Although the suits made their packs heavier, they were their only protection from possible future inhospitable conditions. Under her armor, Mairwen wore a black shirt and pants. The color combination reminded Luka of the first time he’d met her, and he was startled to realize it had been only two weeks ago. It seemed like he’d known her for months or longer. How had he fallen in love with her in such a short amount of time?

  If they were going to make it to the installation, their first need was potable water beyond what they’d gleaned from the ship. The lake water was too salty to drink, so Mairwen told them to look for puddles, cupped leaves, and the like. She also had Jerzi find broad-spectrum antibiotics in the medical kit and made them each take a dose.

  “None of us has immunity to anything on this planet,” she explained. “Try not to swallow or inhale anything, or get stung or bitten.”

  Jerzi was amused. “No drinking, no breathing. Got it.”

  Luka grinned when he saw that it took Mairwen a moment to realize she was being teased, and laughed aloud when she raised an eyebrow at him in mild exasperation.

  The xeno kit had three geoposition readers, and Luka used one of them to calibrate the kit’s two compasses, one of which he gave to Mairwen. They’d been able to salvage a few hand lights, but not enough to allow them to walk safely in the dark. They were close enough to the planet’s equator that they should have about twelve or thirteen hours each of light and dark, since the axial tilt was close to Earth standard.

  By tacit agreement, they took turns swapping out the heaviest pack, except for Eve, who still had balance problems. Jerzi refused to let anyone carry his railgun, but he grudgingly let Luka take the ammo case for part of the journey. Away from the lake, the terrain grew rockier and less flat, making the travel hard going in some spots. The trees blocked the worst of the heat, but the high humidity made for hot, thirsty travel. They’d stopped for a rest after a particularly difficult section in early afternoon, and Eve asked for a meal pack. She’d been gamely keeping up and apologized that she wasn’t in as good physical shape as the rest of them.

  While Jerzi and Haberville dug for meal packs, Mairwen drew Luka aside near a tree a few meters away.

  “I want to scout ahead for the easiest path,” she said quietly. “Give me thirty minutes.”

  “Okay.” He helped her unload her pack so she carried only what she considered essential. When she shouldered the pack and started to leave, he stopped her and turned her to face him.

  “Be careful,” he said, emphasi
zing each word. He clasped both her hands and brought them together between their bodies. He gave her fingers a gentle squeeze. “I worry about you.”

  “I know.” She gave him a small smile. “It’s nice.” She raised their joined hands up and kissed his knuckles before letting go and vanishing into the trees.

  Her tender gesture was such a little thing, but coming from her, it meant a lot.

  He turned back to Jerzi and Eve, glad that only Jerzi had noticed Mairwen’s affection. He didn’t want a renewal of Eve’s hostility, which he suspected was owed somewhat to her suspicion that his impartiality was compromised.

  * * * * *

  Mairwen dropped into half-tracker mode and ghosted through the trees, looking for a tall one to climb. The canopy overhead was high and rainforest-like, but it was eerily silent at ground level. She saw mosses, and the leaves of the low-growing ferns and shrubs looked simple, though her botany training had only focused on identifying useful poisonous plants. She also heard the low buzz of insects, though she had yet to see any, and the distant sounds of tumbling water suggested a stream or river to the northeast. The humidity level suggested they should prepare for rain.

  She selected a likely tree at the top of an incline. She attached the climbing spurs they’d salvaged to her boots and wrists, adjusted her pack, and started up the tree. The wood where she’d gouged it started leaking a sticky, pungently acidic sap, and soon clouds of tiny flies hovered around the drips and the residue on her spurs. Fortunately, the flies weren’t interested in her sweat or eye moisture, but their numbers made them a nuisance. They also weren’t the right frequency for the buzz she’d been hearing, so she was deliberately cautious about moving leaves and vine tendrils as she climbed, not wanting to disturb a hidden insect nest.

  When she’d gone as high as she could without chancing broken limbs, either the tree’s or hers, she let time come to normal speed and surveyed the terrain. The wind at that height was hot, humid, and gusty. The canopy went on for kilometers in every direction except back toward the lake. About three hundred meters to the east, she saw a winged creature with a long tail zoom up and back down, too fast and too far away for her to make out any details. It was the first non-insect animal life she’d seen.