Star Raider Season 2

by Jake Elwood

  She was bracing the tip of the knife against the plastic cover on the light when the door to the lounge slid open. Hally peered in, scowled when she saw what Lark was doing, and stomped into the room.

  Lark dropped the knife, pointed the stunner at Hally, and pulled the trigger. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened. She threw the stunner, making the woman duck, and grabbed the knife. It made a poor weapon, the blade too dull to slice bread, the point too rounded to be really dangerous. Still, it would leave a bruise if she jabbed hard enough.

  Hally picked the stunner up off the floor and turned to Lark. Lark raised the knife high and charged.

  Hally pulled the trigger, and a red spark shot out of the barrel, dissipating in the air. Lark smelled ozone as Hally stepped back, then slashed at Lark with the barrel of the gun. Lark stopped just in time, the barrel whipping past a centimeter from her nose. She backed away, knife up, wondering what to do next.

  The woman glared at her, putting her whole face into it, scrunching her eyes and twisting her lips. Even her ears twitched. She took a step toward Lark, who backed away. Then Hally stopped, looking at the stunner in her hand. "What did you do to my gun?" She pointed the stunner at Lark, squeezed the trigger one more time, and got another fat red spark. She stared at the stunner, looking puzzled. Then she tilted it in her hand, peering down the barrel.

  The stunner went off, an eruption of red flame that washed against the side of Hally's face. Hally screamed and dropped the stunner, clapping a hand to her left eye.

  Lark stared at her, horrified. It took long moments for her next thought to trickle in. She would have held me still while Hearne did the same thing to me. While Cassie watched. To make Cassie do something bad.

  Hally looked like she was about to collapse, so Lark grabbed the chair and stuck it behind the woman just in time to catch her. Hally collapsed, sobbing, into the seat.

  "I'll get the first aid kit," Lark said, and dug around in a cabinet under one of the bench seats. The kit was a compact cylinder as long as her arm, solidly made. "Here it is. I can't reach. Lean toward me. Hally! Concentrate! Lean this way. Good. Now tilt your head to the left. No, the other way."

  Hally, moaning, tilted her head left, exposing the angle of her jaw on the right side. Her eyes were pressed tightly shut, tears leaking out. She didn't see a thing as Lark drew back the first aid kit, took a deep breath, and swung with all her might.

  The first aid kit connected with Hally's jaw. Lark felt the impact all the way to her heels. Hally stopped moaning, flopping sideways. Lark barely managed to catch her before she fell out of the chair.

  The smell of burned flesh was awful, absolutely the worst thing Lark had ever smelled. She tried not to look at the burns on Hally's face as she shoved hard against the woman's shoulders, keeping her in the chair as she wheeled the chair toward the door. Lark got the chair as close as she could to the touch plate. When Hally's knees were against the doorframe Lark took the woman's limp wrist in her hand and pressed Hally's palm against the plate.

  The door slid open. Lark scrambled over the unconscious woman and into the corridor.

  "Hally? Is everything all right?" Hearne's voice was faint with distance. Lark froze, then gave her best imitation of Hally's throaty drawl. "Yeah."

  "Don't damage the kid too badly, all right? We might still need her."

  Lark grimaced and stuck her tongue out in Hearne's general direction. Then she turned the other way and started walking.

  Blank doors lined a narrow corridor. It was more like being on a spaceship than a skimmer. After three closed doors Lark found a hatch marked "Emergency."

  Well, if this doesn't qualify as an emergency, I don't know what does. She palmed the hatch open.

  She'd never seen a skimmer with an escape pod before, but this skimmer had one at the end of a short corridor. It looked like there might be room for four people in the tiny metal ovoid, if they weren't claustrophobic.

  A rack of survival suits decorated one wall. She counted six of the suits, each one a simple coverall with booties and gloves dangling from the ankles and sleeves. A power pack thickened the waist of each suit, and she leaned close to read the notice on the closest pack.

  The suits, apparently, had a liter of water each and a heating system suitable for temperatures down to ten degrees below freezing. In the event of a mid-air evacuation, there was even an emergency antigrav system to lower you gently to the ground. There was an hour of air in a bladder built into the back of the suit, and a mask.

  She spent a long time looking at the escape pod and thinking about her options. Finally she leaned forward and stuck her head through the hatch.

  "Welcome," said a prim electronic voice. "Is evacuation necessary?"

  "Not yet," Lark said. "Are you the escape pod AI?"

  "Yes. How can I be of assistance today?"

  "I'm, ah, doing a safety audit. I have some questions for you."

  "Very well."

  Lark scratched her head, thinking. "Once you're launched, can you be recovered from the skimmer? Can it make you turn around and come back?"

  "No. Docking with a skimmer in flight is beyond my navigational abilities. I can be made to land on solid ground within two meters of a selected target."

  "Great." She nodded. "Can someone aboard the skimmer make you land somewhere?"

  "Yes. Skimmer crew can select my target for me."

  That wasn't so good. "What if you had a passenger?" Lark said. "What if the passenger wanted you to go one place, and the skimmer crew wanted you to go somewhere else?"

  "Ultimately I am guided by the skimmer's AI," the pod told her. "The AI for the skimmer will take its instructions from the crew."

  Lark scowled, staring into the pod. Then she dragged a survival suit from the rack, pulled it on, fitted the mask over her face, and made sure she understood the controls. She took all the other suits out of the rack as well, rolling them together into a sloppy bundle. It was heavy but not unmanageable.

  She pulled the mask off, put her head back into the pod, and said, "AI?"

  Two voices spoke almost in unison, the familiar voice of the pod and a deeper voice, equally electronic. Both voices said, "How can I be of service?"

  "I need to talk to the escape pod AI," Lark clarified. "Ship AI, please stop listening." It would still listen, of course, but it would ignore whatever she said until she actually tried to get its attention.

  "How can I be of service?" repeated the escape pod AI.

  "This is a serious emergency," Lark said. "I need you to launch and fly to Kingstown on Aristotle Plateau."

  "I understand," the AI said. "Please get on board."

  "No passengers," Lark said. "Launch empty."

  "That is not my function."

  "The skimmer is in distress," Lark said. "The crew can't all fit in you. You have to get to Kingstown so someone will know we're in trouble."

  It sounded weak to her, but the AI was apparently on the gullible side. "Stand clear," it said, and a smooth curved hatch came sliding down. Lark pulled back and, just like that, the pod fell away in front of her. An alarm blared, wind whipped her hair around her face, and she clutched the edge of the hatch in front of her, staring out across the sky of Zemoth. The pod fell straight down, then hovered for a moment. It headed away from her, moving quickly, and she tried to get a sense of direction. It was heading toward Aristotle Plateau, and that was where she had to go.

  In seconds the pod was gone from sight. Lark turned away, grabbed up her bundle of survival suits, and stepped up to the hatch.

  "Hally, the kid's loose!" Hearne's bellow echoed through the corridor. "Hally!"

  Lark grinned, took a step forward, teetered on the edge of the hatch, then remembered at the last instant that her mask was down under her chin. She dropped the bundle, pulled the mask over her mouth and nose, scooped up the survival suits again, and flung herself through the hatch.

  Chapter 21

  It scared her worse than she ever would have gue
ssed. Knowing that the antigrav in the suit would save her didn’t help. She screamed as she fell, losing her grip on the bundle of extra suits, thrashing her arms and pedalling her legs as if she were trying to run.

  The worst of the terror ended in a few seconds as the antigrav kicked in and the fabric of the suit pulled at her. For several more seconds she tumbled downward, alternating between exhilaration and terror. She was flying!

  The extra suits slammed into the ground below, sending up a puff of dust, and she winced. She needed the air stored in those suits. If they were damaged her odds of survival went down. She couldn’t stay alarmed, though. Not with the whole wide world spinning in front of her face.

  All too soon it was over. The ground, an indistinct blur of brown and green, was suddenly crisp and sharp, each Devil’s Weed made of its own web of distinct leaves so close she could make out the serrations along the edges. She squirmed around and got her feet under her just in time for her shoes to thump against the dirt.

  She wasted several seconds just standing there, letting the terror of the fall subside. Finally she thought to look up, barely in time to see the skimmer go zipping across the sky and vanish over the horizon.

  Lark smiled. Hearne was chasing the escape pod. He would follow it all the way to Kingstown if he didn’t realize he could override her instructions. He didn’t seem like a man who missed much. Still, what could he do? He had to assume Lark was aboard. He could instruct the pod to crash in the depths of the toxic plains and leave her to suffocate. If he wanted to retrieve her, though, he’d have to fly the pod to the nearest plateau, set it down somewhere isolated, and land beside it. She chuckled as she thought of the time he’d waste.

  With any luck he didn’t know his exact position. Once he figured out what Lark had done, she’d be very difficult to find.

  Well, either he would catch her again or he wouldn’t. She seemed to hear Cassie’s lecturing voice in her head. Never mind the things you can’t change. Focus on what you can control. Do what you can do and let the rest take care of itself.

  Lark nodded to the imaginary Cassie and dropped her gaze from the empty sky, turning in a slow circle, trying to spot the dropped survival suits.

  The suits, vivid red in color, weren’t hard to spot against the brown desert soil. Lark trudged over, moving between intermittent Devil’s Weeds. She’d never seen them so big. The ones back home were the size of dinner plates with leaves just a bit thicker than her thumbs. These ones were huge, leaves almost as long as she was tall radiating outward from the center. Each leaf started thicker than her leg before tapering to a point. She knew only too well how sharp those leaves could be, and she was careful not to brush the plants in passing.

  There was no way to remove the oxygen bladders, which were built into the fabric of each suit. Fortunately the suits themselves were quite light. Lark collected the scattered suits, rolled them back into a bundle, hoisted it in her arms, and looked around, trying to remember which way the escape pod had gone. More or less west, she remembered. It was late morning, and sunlight had glittered on the back of the pod as it raced away from her.

  Well, Aristotle Plateau made a huge target. It wasn’t as if she had to be precise in her navigation. She turned until her shadow stretched out in front of her, and she started to march.

  It didn’t take long to realize that she wouldn’t be carrying her bundle of survival suits for very long. Her arms ached before she’d taken a dozen steps, and a dozen steps after that the bundle fell from her numb hands. She took a moment to shake her arms, then frowned and tried to figure out what to do.

  The urge to leave the suits behind and just start walking was strong. After all, Aristotle might be twenty minutes away, and she would walk faster without a burden. If it took more than an hour, though, she would die.

  With a sigh she stooped, took an empty suit, and draped it over her shoulders. She put another suit over it, then another. She grabbed the last two suits by the collars, one in each hand, the sleeves and legs dragging. And she resumed walking.

  The weight of one suit was inconsequential. The weight of five, plus the one she was wearing, soon began to wear on her.

  When she passed too close to a plant, the dragging suits would snag, forcing her to stop and tug them loose. She started circling wider around the plants, which made her journey a meandering one. Back and forth she went, zig-zagging around Devil’s Weeds, until the plants grew thicker and she could no longer avoid them.

  She wrapped one suit around her waist, tying the arms and legs together, and gathered the other suit in her arms. She was able to lace her fingers together so her arms didn’t take much strain. That was all right for a while. She could pass close to the plants now, sometimes even stepping over or on top of the tips of longer leaves. She moved in a straighter line, and she went faster.

  The suit around her waist slid down. She retied it. Before long it slid down again. Once more she dragged it up to her waist and re-tied the arms and legs. What she needed, she decided, was proper hips. Her body was pretty much a straight line from armpits to knees.

  A suit draped over her shoulders slid down, and when she tried to tug it back up, all three suits fell. Lark dropped to her knees, panting for breath, and started untangling the mess around her. She couldn’t seem to get her breath, though. When a minute of rest only made things worse she finally realized her suit was out of air.

  Well, that was one less suit she had to carry. She unsealed the suit, her fingers clumsy and slow, then took a deep breath and held it. She stripped off the suit, tossed it far to one side so she wouldn’t pick it back up by accident, and clapped a fresh air mask to her face. She wanted to take a moment to re-oxygenate, but the reminder of her dwindling resources badly frightened her. She squirmed into the next suit as quickly as she could. It was wretchedly awkward to get her limbs into the suit without breaking the seal on the mask. The suits weren’t designed for swapping in the field.

  After that she unsealed one suit, stuffed the remaining three suits inside, and re-sealed it. She wrapped the legs around her waist and held them. The arms dragged behind her, but they didn’t spread too far to either side. She was able to walk with only a minimum of snagging on the weeds.

  When the ground rose her spirits rose with it. Higher altitude meant good air. It probably meant Aristotle. Her thighs burned and the breath sawed in her throat, but she toiled on, undaunted. Cassie was going to be so impressed when she learned Lark had escaped! Grinning in her air mask, Lark toiled up the slope, peering eagerly ahead, searching for a sign of civilization.

  When the slope levelled out she was too relieved by the easier walking to be worried. It was only when the ground began to slope downward again that fear wormed her way into her mind. She stopped, stared around, and noticed for the first time a tiny glowing light on the top of her air mask, right between her eyes. Once she saw it the light was unmistakable, even distracting, but she wasn’t sure how long it had actually been lit. She was pretty sure it was a low air indicator.

  “No, way.” She stared indignantly at the light, feeling her eyes cross. “It hasn’t been an hour yet.” No, but she’d been climbing a ridge with a burden, panting every step of the way.

  Her air was going to last a lot less than six hours at this rate.

  She changed suits again. Another suit went flying into the weeds. She briefly wondered if Hearne might use the trail of bright red survival suits to track her down. She didn’t have the energy to bury the suit, though. Besides, being recaptured might be better than suffocating all alone in the desert.

  That thought offended her, and she made a face in her mask, wrinkling her cheeks so fiercely that a hint of rotten egg smell found its way in. "I’m not giving up," she declared. "And I’m not getting caught, either." She shoved the discarded suit under the leaves of a Devil’s Weed, adjusted her course slightly to allow for the movement of the sun, and continued on her way.

  The ground sloped gently away before her, and she plodde
d along, down and down, telling herself that it was a relief to be descending. She knew, though, that every meter of elevation she lost would have to be regained.

  The slope grew steeper, and the devil's weed thickened until she could no longer maneuver between plants. The serrated leaves pulled at her ankles, scratching her through the thin fabric of the survival suit and her own trousers. The bundle of suits behind her snagged again and again, and finally she tied the legs of the outer suit around her waist and the arms around her neck. She had to press a hand to each knot to keep them tied, but the bundle stayed in place like a child riding piggy-back.

  The endless scratches against her ankles stung, the pain growing worse and worse until she was biting her lip and fighting tears. It was hard to balance with the weight of the suits on her back and her hands on the knots, and finally she fell, pitching forward into a mass of Devil's Weed. Her hands went out to catch herself, and she cut her palms and wrists on the sharp leaves. The edge of one leaf even scraped across her forehead, a bright drop of blood landing on the air mask just above her nose.

  She gave in to her tears then, lying face-down with the taste of dirt in her mouth and the smell of rotten eggs in her nostrils. She fiddled with the air mask until it seemed to be sealed, and then she bawled. With no one to see her she let herself go, wailing and kicking her feet and sobbing. For several long minutes she indulged herself, shrieking her pain and fear at an uncaring universe.

  At last the storm of emotion spent itself and she lay there, spent, feeling a little silly. Her nose was running, which was awkward in an air mask. She decided it would have to wait until the next suit change.

  After that she stomped through the weeds, grinding the stupid plants underfoot. When a leaf caught her ankles she let herself moan. She only had so much courage to call on, and she needed it for better things than hiding her pain when there was no one there to see it.