by Tammy Salyer
Twenty minutes later we hear them make contact. Judging by the lack of possible landing zones we’d observed on our own pass, they’ve chosen the same spot to cling on that Venus had. Time seems to pass at the rate of ice freezing in hell before the first three come through the opening. My weapon’s sight locks on the instant the leading helmeted head becomes visible.
They immediately see Vitruzzi and company holding weapons at the ready. The visiting trio pause, taking in the rest of the bay, then wisely show their empty hands. Vitruzzi gestures for them to approach. There’s no mistaking their disgust at getting to the ship too late to claim the salvage—not to mention having guns pointed at them.
When they’re closer to Vitruzzi, she signals to them to turn on their coms, then says, “Sorry to say it isn’t your lucky day, folks. This ship is ours.”
The one in the middle tries to negotiate. “We’ve come a long way, lady. Any chance we could split some of the take?”
And there we have it. Admission that this isn’t their ship to begin with. All that’s left is a peaceful resolution to the situation—or whatever kind of resolution they’ll take—and Vitruzzi can send them on their way.
A subtle flicker in my peripheral vision distracts me from their conversation, and I look around in time to catch another stranger coming through the upper bay hatchway. He doesn’t see me nestled between hull reinforcement struts and moves to a flanking position near the rail, drawing a weapon of his own.
Dumbass.
He’s just a kid, about twentyish. Old enough to be brave but not old enough to be smart. I don’t want to kill someone who really doesn’t have to be, so I give him a chance. Sneaking up and placing my gun barrel on the back of his helmet—where I apply just the right amount of pressure to grab his undivided attention—I lean near enough for him to hear me through the helmet and say, “That’s a very clever idea. Exactly what I would do, in fact—find the high ground and get the drop on us.”
I can see Karl across the bay with his hand in the air, asking for a status update. I raise a gloved thumb, then take a step around the kid so that he can see my face. But I don’t lighten the pressure of the barrel against his head. “Now ask yourself this question. Are you ready to be remembered as a clever dead guy that used to be on their crew?”
I see the shock in his face, but he doesn’t stall when putting his weapon out in front of him and releasing it. It floats there, unconcerned with the reasons why it’s become suddenly weightless. I take a swipe and gently nudge it behind us and out of reach. “We’re just going to stand by until they figure it out, roger?”
He nods. Not so dumb after all.
“So you just want the cargo? We get anything else on the ship?” one of the guys below is saying.
“That’s right,” Vitruzzi answers.
The three of them appear to confer while taking not-quite-surreptitious glances at the upper walkway. I pull my new friend to his feet and we wave down at them. “Deal,” says the first, finally convinced to see things our way.
They regroup and start scouring the rest of the derelict while we linger in the hold, waiting for the Orika and Teibo. My O2 meter has dropped uncomfortably close to red by the time they arrive and we’ve filled them in on what had gone down. The other salvaging crew doesn’t bother us, and we make quick work out of getting the cargo lines set up and the equipment moved aboard the ’Bo.
Vitruzzi and I are still in the hold, just getting ready to jump out with the last large cargo bin. She’s untying the line from the deck as I prepare to hail Karl to get ready for us when my feet suddenly begin to feel funny. Not funny exactly, more as if they’re vibrating. As if, in fact, the derelict’s engines are being cycled for flight. The other salvagers can’t be trying to initiate flight operations. Can they?
SEVEN
I turn to Vitruzzi in alarm, about to warn her that we need to get out of here posthaste, but the next second I’m lifted to the top of the bay, shot from the floor like a cannonball. Vitruzzi gets pushed up against the ceiling next to me, and the cargo tether, bin still attached, zings out of the hold like a harpoon. There’s a rumbling explosion from the direction of the engines, and I realize, somehow, impossibly, the ship is moving.
Frantically, I yell, “What the hell, V? Are we diving? Don’t they realize this boat has no flight controls? Or airlock?”
Realize it or not, the fact of the matter is that we’ve been blown out of stasis. What had I said about them not being dumb? Scratch that. I don’t know which direction we’re going, but I do know we have to get off this beast before it disintegrates. The foredeck beyond the cargo bay had evac pods, and I grab Vitruzzi’s suit, pointing in that direction.
“Come on! We’ll be able to set up a transponder when we’re outside so the crew can find us.” If we’re lucky.
At least one engine is online, but the ship’s not moving too fast for us to pull ourselves through to the foredeck. The evac pods are two-seaters, and Vitruzzi and I shove ourselves into one. It’s like putting sausage into a sausage casing, our bulky suits making the fit, already claustrophobic, worse than my worst nightmare shoved inside a coffin. But there’s no other choice.
We’re fumbling with the safety harnesses like idiot orangutans when the ship is suddenly hit by what feels like a planet. The hull absorbs most of the impact, and the e-pod’s close confines protect us, but the jolt isn’t what I’d call pleasant.
“Shit,” V says. “We just broke through atmosphere.”
We’re on a one-way trip to Eruo Pium—not my first choice for an impromptu vacation—with maybe four minutes until impact. Her harness is latched and she reaches over to slam mine closed, then pulls the manual lever that releases us from the ship’s belly, gambling that there’s still enough time to escape before gravity smears us over the moon’s face.
The velocity of our launch is instant and brutal. I feel as if I’ve swallowed my teeth, and the pressure on my chest makes breathing impossible until the pod’s auxiliary pressure stabilizes. Slowly, the speed reduces to within the range of what human bodies can tolerate, and the light outside our pod window port grows brighter.
I’m just about to relax and start pondering what our next step is going to be when something slams into us, jarring both Vitruzzi and me hard enough to make my jaw clack, and knocking us into a new trajectory. A few red lights blink on the small control console, letting us know that things are going—or have already gone—awry. The only thing left to do is hang on and hope the speed dampeners still work.
A minute later another jolt pulls our descent up short, then we’re drifting. The e-pod’s base thunks to earth, and we slowly tilt over. My stomach lurches as my last meal threatens to evacuate. Then it relaxes, letting me off with a warning.
The impact is far less jarring than I’d expected. For just a second, we both remain motionless, taking in the newfound stillness and silence, the contrast almost unbelievable after the chaos of the last…Jesus, has it only been ten minutes?
Yanking my helmet off, I take a greedy gulp of air. At the moment, I don’t feel much pain, but I know that’s going to change later. The torque on the emergency pod and our helplessly suspended bodies, caused by whatever had hit us just after crashing into Eruo Pium’s atmosphere, hammered my muscles and joints hard, but it hadn’t killed us. That’s something at least. Still, the minute I have a chance to do a full assessment, I have no doubt I’m going to be sorer than I care to imagine. I might even cry.
“Aly, we’re down. Can you move?”
“That sucked,” I groan.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, don’t think so. You?”
“I’m all right.”
She tries getting the coms up and running to see if either of our shuttles is near while I crank at the harness to get it off. They’ll know we went down, but the likelihood they’ll be within com range is narrower than my firing group. As for the other salvagers, they may be down here somewhere too, but there’s no telling. If
I remember my Corps training well enough, the type of bug-out we’d just had could sometimes result in as much as a 50 percent casualty rate. V and I made it, so the math isn’t in their favor.
She curses and gives up on the com when the control console’s last light goes dark. “Dammit. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
My gloved fingers fumble clumsily at the harness lock, but depressing the release button results in stubborn resistance. It feels jammed, probably from playing bumper ships. As I struggle with the straps, the feeling of being buried alive starts to settle over me like so much stale grave dirt. My throat begins to close up and my hands tug frantically, not doing any good, but there’s no stopping them. I can’t handle small spaces, and the present small space is getting more stifling by the second thanks to this goddamn harness.
“Hey, hey, Aly, calm down. Let me help.” Vitruzzi reaches for the buckle over my chest and deftly cuts me free with the blade she keeps in the space suit. The straps holding me in loosen, but it barely helps. We’re inside what amounts to a bullet casing for humans. The only way I’ll ever be okay in a capsule this small is when they put me in my burn box for cremation. Even that thought makes cold sweat ooze from my armpits.
“Open the hatch, V,” I whisper through a throat that feels stuffed with sand. “I gotta get out of here now.”
She unbuckles and searches for the hatch handle. We were lucky; the pod fell over with the hatch faceup to the sky. Vitruzzi pulls on the release and nothing happens. She yanks harder, then resorts to kicking at the base of it, trying to jar it free. Whatever had struck us must have jammed the release mechanism; the thought makes the muscles in my jaw clench painfully. Did we survive the destruction of the cruiser just to die trapped inside this metal coffin?
Need to get out, need to escape before it’s too late. Need some air. Need—
My focus starts to collapse into tiny pinpoints of light as the volume of panic inside my head goes up another few decibels. Without thinking, I reach for the T-Max I’d tucked between my knees and point it at the release mechanism, ready to shoot my way free if that’s what it’s going to take.
Before I pull the trigger, Vitruzzi shouts, “No!” and yanks it from my grip. “The frame’s buckled. If you do that, you’re just going to waste your charge. Take a deep breath and let me think, Aly.”
Easy for her to say. I need some—Calm down, Aly—I need some air—Just cool it, okay. You’re going to be okay—NO! I need some fucking air! This mantra continues, my brains heating to a boil, about to spill over.
Putting one knee into the seat, Vitruzzi turns around and gets into a half-standing, half-squatting position in order to reach into the containment bin overhead. Need some air—Chill out. While I tightly grip the material of my pants just above my kneepads and think about breathing in, breathing out, she searches inside. Hurry up, V. Hurry up. HurryuphurryuphurryUP!
“Got it,” she says, then gets back into her seat. “Put your oxygen back on. I’m going to burn through the hatch.”
“What?” I’m barely holding myself together and she wants me to put something even more constricting over my face?
“You have to. The fumes will make you sick. Here…” She reaches over to help me with the helmet, and I grip her wrist.
“No. I’ll…I’ll do it. Just be quick.”
There must have been a toolkit or emergency prep box in the bin because she has about two fistfuls of E-10 wax that she quickly rolls into long strips and sticks to the shell in a circle big enough for us to crawl through. While I stare at the circle of wax hard enough to ignite it with pure freak-out urgency, she pulls her own helmet on and shocks the wax with the igniter. As it eats through the layers of metal, insulation, and thermal tiling, acrid blue smoke fills the cabin, and my heartbeat finally starts to slow. Surviving spacecraft explosions, firefights, atmospheric reentry in a tin can, and near-fatal midair collisions are all child’s play compared to being turned into a human sardine. I keep telling myself it’s all in my head. It doesn’t help, but when daylight starts to shine through the circumference of Vitruzzi’s homemade hatch, my throat begins to loosen up and let more oxygen actually reach my brain. Sweet Jesus, air!
Before the burn-through stops, she pushes herself almost into my lap—the hatch is on her side—and kicks the disconnected metal outwards. It gives after three good punts, and I have to stop myself from wrestling her to get outside first.
Where apparently the fun is just beginning.
We’ve barely put our feet on the ground when dirt kicks up in an abrupt flurry just a couple of meters away. At first, I think I must be suffering from aftereffects of the claustrophobia, but then more dirt swirls into the air and I don’t need a lessons-from-the-war manual to know what it is. We’re being shot at.
We both dive down beside the pod, but I catch a quick glimpse of who’s firing. An open-topped hover-runner is about fifty meters away, closing the gap between us at its top speed. My brain does an automatic calculation, and I take a knee and bring my T-Max up for a shot in one fluid motion. I’d seen two people in the cab, a man driving and a woman standing up and firing at us from above the front dust shield. My first shot hits home, and she flies backward into the HR’s cargo area.
My second shot goes into the vehicle’s body. It apparently takes out the steering electronics board because the thing keeps moving at top speed—right over the top of us. Just before I duck, I see the driver working frantically to get the vehicle turned, but it doesn’t happen. The base of it clips the pod’s shell and the whole thing first gains a couple more meters of lift, then tilts over sideways. Its magnetic power mechanism blows and the HR crashes down just past us.
Vitruzzi closes on the driver and puts a bullet between his eyes before he has a chance to apologize.
And I thought the Admin was hostile.
I walk up to the HR and look inside. Both occupants are dead, their blood splattered about the cab. The woman looks to be in her early to mid-forties and the driver just a touch more. Neither wears any kind of uniform, and they’re both emaciated, so it’s probable they’re just settlers or scavengers; the system is full of them now. Without a second thought, I strip them of their weapons. The woman had a carbine AK-80 like mine, which I lament is still on the ’Bo. The activator that limits its users to only soldiers is disabled, shedding a ray of light on an otherwise gloomy situation. The man had only a laser-firing sidearm, which is out of charge and useless.
Stepping away from the disabled vehicle, I comment, “What a mess. Let’s get the transponder up. I’ll stand watch if you want to work on it.”
She doesn’t say anything, and I turn to see if she’d heard me. She’s kneeling by the dead man, staring into his face intensely.
“V?” I try again. “We need to let them know where we are. There’s no telling how long it will take them to find us, and there could be more scavs around.”
I catch a sound and jerk my head up to scan the area. We’re in a relatively flat plain, most of the ground around us dry but covered in a stunted, crackly grass. The landscape rises into a line of foothills about a kilometer to the north, and with the dampness in the air, I’m betting Eruo Pium’s ocean lies on the other side. Sparse signs of people are evident, mostly just crisscrossing vehicle tracks that extend east–west. These, and the way the hover-runner had arrived so quickly, tell me that we must be close to some sort of outpost or settlement. Another glance at the dead couple is all it takes to hammer a nail of dread deep in my gut.
Then I see the source of the sound; a track vehicle lumbers toward us from the northeast. They can’t go faster than a few kilometers per hour, but they’re coming from the same direction as the HR. They’ll be here within a couple of minutes. There’s nowhere within a reachable distance for us to run, and our only cover is the pod and the overturned HR. Track vehicles usually have thick steel bodies and are very, very hard to penetrate with regular arms. Dammit, I did not plan to spend my day in multiple firefights. I shoul
d never have left Keum Libre.
“More company. Get ready,” I tell Vitruzzi as I crouch with her behind the HR and dig in to wait. The newly acquired carbine has an almost full energy clip, so I should have enough rounds between it and my T-Max to keep the tracker crew occupied. For a while.
The tracker grows noisier, then suddenly quieter as the engine cuts to an idle. I look around the rear of the HR and see the passenger door of the cab swing open.
“You all okay?” a man shouts from the opened door. “We saw you coming down. Anyone hurt?”
So their angle is to check us out and see if we need help. I’m touched. I nudge Vitruzzi’s shoulder—she still hasn’t said anything—to indicate she should follow my lead, and keep my eye on the tracker. If we stay quiet, we should be able to draw at least one of them out and reduce their numbers.
“We have a medkit if you need it. Don’t be afraid. Our settlement’s just a little way from here. Food, water, aid, whatever you need. Hello?”
No one climbs out of the tracker, so I try to entice them. “My friend’s injured. Looks like a broken ankle. Do you have a splint?”
“Yeah. Yeah! We have that. Come on over and I’ll get it for you.”
“No. I can’t leave her here; please bring it.”
No one moves or says anything. Then, to my utter surprise, a man jumps down from the cab and starts walking toward us with a splint in one hand. I don’t see any weapons on him. Despite the tracker and the med supplies, the man looks like he could recently have been napping in a pile of dirt. He’s filthy and ragged and as thin as the other two we’d shot.