by Aaron Bunce
Lex shimmied forward, moving like a worm for fear of the hot pipes to either side. But the darkness seemed to close in around her, the waves of heat gaining substance until they felt like palm fronts slapping against her head, back, and legs.
Her right hand crawled out and hit something hard. The first X member brace, she thought, stopping, and tentatively searching the space. She traced the warm titanium up towards the ceiling, then stopped as the heat grew on her skin. She tried to recreate the space in her mind, visualize it from touch.
Lex skipped around the smaller pipe crisscrossing just above eye level and found the brace again. It extended down and to her left, forming what felt like a sizable gap before the radiant heat of the left coolant line told her to go no further. She moved to pull herself through that space, only to have her head bump into something hard unexpectedly. She pulled back and reached out to find the object–warm metal, not hot, but rigid and unyielding.
Just move around it.
Squirming to the right, Lex followed the same process, searching and mapping the space with her hands. She found the gaps at the bottom and top of the brace, but they were too small. She’d be lucky to fit her head through, let alone shoulders or hips. She tried anyway, smashing her head through, the pressure jamming her cheek into the slimy ground. Her head got stuck, and only just pulled free.
“Square peg, round hole.”
Then she found the right gap. It felt larger than the left, or so she thought. But as she swung her hand blindly through the darkness, it struck something rigid–another vertical support, just like on the other side.
Sucking in an unpleasantly warm breath through her nose, Lex blinked several times and forced her eyes open as wide as they would go, struggling, forcing them to see something, register some hint as to how she could progress in her hot, lightless hell. But there was just…nothing.
She’d lost the light. And she was starting to realize that she’d lost her chance to save them all.
-3:42 Until Entry
Anna ran back through the galley to the bridge, retracing the route she had taken six times already in the past ten minutes. She didn’t know exactly what she was or should be doing. But if she stopped moving, then she wasn’t sure she would be able to start again. It all just felt like too much–work, pressure, uncertainty. They had decided on a plan, but it didn’t exactly feel like it workable.
“What can I do?” she asked, talking to herself.
Lana’s response hadn’t exactly filled her with optimism. What if she couldn’t pilot the ship once they got in there–if they were able to at all? Could they realistically undo what had taken them days to do before? Rewire a complicated, sensitive network of feedback computers and linked aerodynamic flight systems? With only one weak flashlight, one person that knew what she was doing–Lana, and another that sort of did–her?
“Anna! Anna!” Lana yelled from somewhere in the darkness behind them.
“Yes?” she called back.
“Anna, do you have my data point? Where is my data point? It has all the wiring schematics on it. I can do a function breakdown of what we would need under two hypothetical situations–one, I isolate the systems I’ll need to enter the atmosphere and land, and two, at minimum, what do we need to reconnect for the NavCom to function. We can use that to prioritize what we reconnect…ugh, give us something to do so we’re not just standing around with our thumbs in our dirty holes. Besides, we’ve got a dozen harnesses with a hundred pins each that we’ll have to sort through. We’ll never have time to get through them without schematics.”
“Yeah. Give me a sec,” she yelled back and stopped. She turned around in a circle, using the light to illuminate the bridge, specifically the pilot consoles. She shone it on the seats, then lifted it to the lone, glowing panel–the short-range radio receiver. Her memory finally caught up with her feet and hands, and it immediately made her stomach clench.
Erik has it. He has the freaking data point. Shit! He had it in his hand when he went to the maintenance passage with Shane.
“Can we sort through the harnesses without it? You have a multi-meter, right?”
Anna turned as Lana tromped into the bridge behind her, her hands going up to shield her face from the light.
“Well, yeah. You know we have a multi-meter; you were using it. But why…?”
Anna watched comprehension dawn on Lana’s face.
“Erik doesn’t have my data point! No…” She spun to the left, then the right, and immediately started searching. She popped open every storage compartment within reach, cursing under her breath, then disappeared into the dark galley.
Anna followed, shining the weak light just ahead of her.
“He doesn’t have it. No. He doesn’t. Can’t. Nope.”
“Doesn’t have what?” Soraya asked, appearing from the starboard births. “Anna, do you need this? Will this help?” She held up Anna’s headset and tool pouch, approaching apprehensively.
“Yes! Where on earth did you find those?”
“Shit-Shit-Shit. This is it. We’re screwed, guys. I can’t…we can’t work around that one, too. There’s too much to do, too many sources of data and no way to efficiently work through all of them. That’s it. We’re dead. Frozen, suffocated, dead. Or…or…I’m not a pilot. Not like Erik. How am I supposed to know how to use his setup back there? Dead. I’m going to die.”
“Okay. I found those under Erik’s pile of dirty laundry yesterday. Or I think it was yesterday, I’m losing track of days at this point. I moved it so I wouldn’t have to smell it. Then there they were,” Soraya said, turning a wary eye on Lana. “And I thought we had a plan. Why is she losing her mind?”
“Erik took her data point with him when he…ya know.”
“Damn. And we needed that, didn’t we?”
“Does a fish need water? An eagle, air? A freaking Tyrannosaurus, longer arms? This is it. We’re dogmeat, ladies. I don’t think we can…I can’t…”
“The first two, yes. The last one, less so. Breathe, Lana. Breathe, before you hyperventilate. We’ll figure it out, one step at a time,” Soraya replied, turning and trying to calm the brunette.
“You don’t get it. We gutted this ship’s maneuvering systems. Then Erik–working behind our backs, no less–gutted everything else and routed it to the back of the ship. We’ve got no way to connect anything, no way to check on power feeds, switching lines, or feedback sensors. It is all on my data point. The instructions…the freaking blueprints for how we do this thing. And since we don’t trust Erik–and I mean we shouldn’t, cause he’s like a psycho, killer, freak-ado now. And I don’t know how to…well, pilot whatever hotwired, jury-rigged setup he’s got going on. I don’t even need to see it. I can feel it. Can’t do it. We need-NEED that computer!”
An idea struck Anna, despite the toxic, nervous energy bleeding off Lana. She turned away to try and purge the contagious nerves. Then, after reaching up to scratch her nose, caught sight of the neural glove’s former circuitry, now grown into her flesh.
She held it up between them just as Lana took a breath.
“Lana, what do we absolutely need? Like, the bare bones to even consider this entry. Think!”
“Oh, geez. Yeah, you would ask me that, wouldn’t you? Well, I mean…it’s easy enough. I guess…” Lana rambled, then stopped and rubbed her eyes. “Reactor control, battery output, gyroscopic sensors, thrusters, and landing gear for starters. But there could be more, I mean, all that stuff is written into the atmospheric entry sequence in my damned data point. It’s mirrored from the navigational computer. And we don’t have…”
Anna turned and sprinted for the bridge, leaving the others in the dark. But she didn’t have time to bring them up to speed, her thoughts were firing at too fast a rate, and trying to put them into words would just slow her down.
She dodged around the first row of pilot’s seats and hurdled the second, casting her light right on the center, forward console, and the void where the n
avigational computer should sit. Anna fumbled her headset on and tapped the power button. Nothing happened.
“Come on. Just work,” she hissed and tapped it again. A tone sounded in her ear and the small light blinked on. “Yes. Something works.” Turning off her flashlight and stowing it in a pocket, Anna dug into the console. She pushed a chunky wiring harness off to the side, a bundle of dozens of colored wires sticking out the back.
“Shit, Anna, that wasn’t cool. You just left us in the dark,” Lana groused, coming up behind her. “What bit you in the ass? Why did you run off like that? I’m already freaked out enough without that.”
Anna found a thick, red wire and pulled, sorting through the tangled maze to find the end. She pulled four, five, then a sixth tangle out of the way, and finally, found the shiny, silver plug.
“What if we don’t need your data point. It’s like you said, it’s mirrored from everything already programmed into the NavCom. Lex gets in, subdues Erik, and gets it for us. We power it up and let it guide us to everything we need.”
Lana snorted loudly, the noise morphing into a shoulder-shaking laugh.
“You’re smart, but come on, girl. Erik went through all this trouble to screw us. Why would he leave the power wire to the NavCom hot? He’s not going to miss something freaking small and stupid like that! We’ll have to source power from a hot circuit and pull a wire at the least.”
“You said it yourself, Lana. The NavCom wiring is still in place. We routed around it. If there is power, then all we must do is hook it up and chase down the faults. That whittles our list of things we need to check and troubleshoot from a hundred down to potentially ten, maybe twelve. I don’t know exactly, but it is a smaller number.”
She held the power cord up and touched it to her finger. Nothing happened.
“Are you happy now?” Lana asked, “I told you. He wouldn’t let a little thing like that slip by. Just think about it, he depressurized the freaking passageway to the maintenance passage to keep us out…”
It’s a grounded plug, you idiot, Anna thought, and immediately pinched the plug between her thumb and forefinger. A tingle shot up her hand, the neurological relays immediately receiving, adapting, and firing data to her brain. A number formed in her mind, shifting upwards by a hundredth, before stabilizing.
120.001 vAC
“A little thing like one hundred and twenty volts?”
Lana froze, her mouth hanging open.
“It’s hot? It’s still live?”
Anna nodded.
“Holy shit. I mean…well, that means. Damn sakes, Anna. You’re right. I guess. But we just need the NavCom. We don’t have the freaking NavCom. Erik will still have control at that point, but maybe with that fancy…hand-brain thingy, you can use the NavCom to block him out. Wait. What am I talking about? Lex will deal with him. But yeah…the computer should be able to compile all available feedback and we would just need to rundown the faults. It’s going to be a lot of faults, though. Need to hope it doesn’t crash because of them, or that crazy virus or A.I. Damn…this could work. I need the…the…the,” Lana held her hand out towards her, fingers twitching as she seemingly tried to find the word.
Anna reached into her pocket, fished out the small flashlight, and slapped it into her palm. Then she turned, sprinting for the galley, almost bowling Soraya over in the process. Soraya moved forward in Lana’s absence, only the small work light illuminating them then.
“Was she this…before?”
“Hyper?” Anna offered.
Soraya laughed uncomfortably. “Yeah. I was going to say spastic. But hyper sounds nicer.”
“Not really. I mean, she got a little excited sometimes when she had too much coffee. But nothing like that.”
Soraya breathed dramatically. “Say. We haven’t really had a chance to talk about it. But to be fair, I’ve sort of been avoiding everyone for some time now. But I wanted to make sure we got a chance.”
Anna watched Soraya struggle, in a way not too dissimilar to Jacoby when he wanted to talk about something but didn’t know how to bring it up. It was kind of adorable.
“You’ve got a mean jab. Honestly, I was only mad about that for a little while. I was just afraid of the way everyone was looking at me after it happened…like some robotic-monster-alien beast thing would come tearing out of their body if I got close enough to touch them with my monster hand. Or that I might incinerate them with my laser eyes.”
Soraya laughed, this time the bundled tension visibly releasing in her shoulders and neck. “You can do that? Cause I’m not going to lie, that just might be pretty handy.”
“Not yet. I’ll ask Poole about it if we make it through this.”
“Nice. I should start a list of my own now that you mention it. Can I be honest? After that thing took my thumb off back there on the station, that’s kind of what I was afraid would happen to me! So…yeah. I’m sorry. I freaked out and lost my damned head. It hasn’t just been you. Lex and I have been bitching at each other, too. I’m pretty sure she is ready to kick my ass.”
“No hard feelings. Unless a killer robot alien bursts out of your body and burns me alive. Cause I would definitely hold that shit against you,” Anna joked.
“Okay. Good–”
“What are you two do standing around, chatting! Get the F in here and help me!” Lana screamed from the darkness.
-3:15 Until Entry
“You have to keep moving. Get up! I can only compensate against this heat for so long!” Poole said.
Lex grunted and shoved blindly at the X-brace. She pushed to try and widen it, despite the irrational notion of bending titanium with her bare hands. Jacoby could do it. He dismembered those creatures on Hyde with his saw, tore others apart with his bare hands. Hell, when they’d been trapped on the way to the docks, he tore through a reinforced steel door like an inbound Tomahawk missile, then punched and dented a foot-thick exterior hatch on the docks. She just needed to tap into that fire–the heat that violently pumped through her body–when her anger flared just a bit ago with Poole.
She wrapped one hand around the bottom of one brace leg and the other on its opposite, set her jaw, and filled her mind with irritations, vexations, and annoyances–the sound of people chewing, mouth breathers, stubborn jack-wads that insisted on shoving their political and religious beliefs everyone else, phony self-help gurus, all hypocrites–and pulled.
Her muscles bunched and knotted, the strain building up inside her as heat. It pushed outwards, hitting, and rebounding off her already fevered skin.
Come on, Lex…you are strong enough to do this! She thought as her desperation peaked, but the muscles in her back and shoulders gave out and she slumped, defeated, her face slapping the slimy ground.
“Why did you stop. You are so close. I can feel it,” Poole said. His voice echoed from the darkness ahead, as if he lay on the other end of the brace blocking her path.
“Then you obviously can’t feel shit,” she snapped. He went quiet and she lay there for a moment, panting in the uncomfortably hot air.
“Jacoby should have done this. He could have used his strength to make a path.”
“And how would he have squeezed himself through. You said it yourself, he is too big.”
“Then Soraya maybe, with her speed, or Anna. Maybe she could interface with something and learn something I can’t. Or Lana. She’s so thin. I’ll bet she could just slide right through this gap.”
“How would speed help Soraya through a barrier? And what would Lana do when she came face to face with Erik? He’d pull the trigger faster on her than anyone else. You came because you knew it had to be you. The others knew it, too, that’s why they didn’t fight it.”
“Then help me,” Lex snarled and punched the brace. Pain erupted in her knuckles and shot up her arm. “Ow, damnit. Give me something to work with. You unlocked Jacoby’s strength, melded Anna’s glove with her brain so she could talk to computers and made Soraya faster. Give me something to wo
rk with here. Please! Unlock my strength…make me glow like Jacoby. Just do it so we can have a chance!”
“I…you have to understand…ugh,” Poole started to say, but groaned in frustration. “Jacoby’s strength manifested as a natural side effect of refining his genetic structure. Yes, I took credit for it. Soraya’s speed came about the same way. Those attributes are natural inclinations, traits held in dominate position within their genetic codes. Anna put on the glove and, it just clicked. I’m learning during this whole process now, too. His glow, that is a cellular bond forming between his physical and astral form. That is where he draws his strength from. Energy, power has to come from somewhere. It cannot simply be created out of thin air. I couldn’t see that part of the equation until Jacoby nearly splattered his melon. But I’m starting to understand. I’ve combed through your DNA just like the others, but nothing popped out to me. I’m sorry, I just…”
Lex immediately felt her insides drop, the illusion of Poole’s seemingly omniscient, god-like status shriveling up and dying.
“You don’t know what to do?” she gasped, finishing his thought.
“I…I…” Poole whispered.
“Maybe it is because you don’t know me. Not really. You unlocked Jacoby’s strength because you are in his head…his entire makeup is right there at your fingertips. Anna and Jacoby are practically family. They knew Soraya well before this all happened. There was already a network for you to use and build off of. It makes so much sense now. They don’t know me. Neither do you. That’s why you can’t help.”
Lex’s face felt hot and wet, but she could not be sure if it was the heat slowly roasting her alive, or if she was crying. It was probably both. It was all moot anyway. When Ayo came forth in the station, she genuinely believed he was back, that maybe a small piece of him survived in her and then, by extension, through Poole. But that was a lie. A face Poole put on to keep her going, and then bring out occasionally, just to tease her with. The thought triggered something inside her, and before she knew it, her anger rippled to life.