“It’s at ninety-seven percent still.”
“Excellent. And your welding tool? You have been utilizing it quite a bit,” Mal said. Skye picked the welding tool up off the floor where she’d placed it.
“Forty percent,” she said. “Nebulae.”
“Perhaps you could take the time to adjust the plasma blaster? Make it more effective against the chitinous exoskeletons of the Celaenans?”
“Excellent idea,” Skye said, looking over the plasma blaster. “Maybe there’s a way to make it work on a higher heat setting without overheating and destroying itself.” She began to adjust the intensity settings, increasing the pressure on the charge. It would run out sooner, but it would essentially incinerate any organic material that got in its way—rock, plant, or exoskeleton. She looked at the extra black tubing beside it on the ground. She looked at her gun, stumped. She bit her lip as she thought.
“Any ideas on how to modify this?” She asked Mal.
“You’d need a heavier alloy…like magnesium silicate,” Mal replied.
“Anything around here that I can use?”
“No.”
“So this black tubing won’t do?”
“It contains interesting properties—it is not a material that is easily corroded. However, it does heat up, so that is still going to be an issue, unfortunately.”
“I suppose we’ll just have to make do,” Skye replied. Picking up the plasma blaster, she began to weld the black tubing to the original shortened barrel, creating a longer barrel so that the weapon would be more accurate given its new strength, and, hopefully, prevent it from overheating. She glanced over to the patched area of her suit’s right shoulder and an interesting thought struck her. Using her welder, she began cutting and welding sections of the black tubing.
“What’s that you’re working on, Skye?” Mal couldn’t stand being out of the loop. Skye smiled and said nothing as she continued to shape the metal.
***
“Should I try it out?” She asked Mal as she put away her welder.
“That would require you to tell me what it is,” Mal said.
“Here, does this help?” Skye grabbed the joined metal contraption she’d been working on and clicked it onto her suit over what was left of her arm. She then picked up her modified blaster and twisted it into place, making the gun act as a surrogate forearm.
“Remarkable,” Mal said. “You’ve built a gun-arm.” Skye laughed and practiced aiming.
“I think we need to work on the name, but yes,” Skye said. “I’ve turned a weakness into a strength.”
“Shall I turn your pain receptors back on?”
“What do you mean?”
“In case it explodes.”
“Absolutely not.” She lowered her arm and leaned back against the wall pensively. “When did you get a sass upgrade?”
“Learned it all on my own,” Mal replied with obvious glee. Skye shook her head.
“There’s something that’s bothering me about the Celaenans,” Skye said.
“What’s that, Skye?”
“I’ve thought about it and it just doesn’t make sense.” Skye began. “These creatures haven’t exhibited the sort of intelligence to have built all of this. It’s all just been reactionary.”
“You do have a point,” Mal said. “But that would mean they just so happen to speak the same language that’s in these records I’ve recovered. Highly unlikely to be two different species.”
“But they didn’t even know how to open the doors after closed them,” Skye said.
“Perhaps they don’t have the necessary key or tool to interact with this technology,” Mal suggested. “Oh, or perhaps they have forgotten how to use it.” Skye considered the thought.
“It’s clear that the structures down here are ancient,” Skye said. “However, they must be ancient as well if they’ve been sealed in chrysalises throughout these tunnels. It’s just perplexing.”
“I tend to agree,” Mal said. “I’ll keep a lookout if I stumble across anything in the logs. Skye continued to tweak the gun on her arm. “Are you planning on testing that?”
“We should save the charge in case we need it. We may only get one shot with this. Tell me a story, Mal.”
“In which language?” Mal asked, and Skye thought for a moment.
“Earth whale, please,” she said.
“Very good,” Mal said. In her ear piece, the otherworldly sounds of the songs of Earth’s whales began to reverberate. It was soothing to Skye, reminding her of being inside of the Swallowtail while on approach to a mission through the black ocean of the universe, lit by the cold, white light of the stars and the yellow and blue and purple clouds of nebulae. She began to relinquish her hold on consciousness, her body relaxing. She was in a safe space—the alcove was well-hidden from the view of dangerous eyes. She began to slip into sleep, the voices of the whales that originated millions of lightyears away, singing her their tragic lullaby.
Chapter Seven
Skye was awoken by the sound of a loud explosion, and Mal, screaming “Oh, dear, oh dear me.” The sound reverberated across the cavern that she was in, a spray of rock and dust hitting her from the right. She found herself kneeling precariously close to the edge of the platform. She righted herself, hearing the emergency chime of her suit. Looking around her, she noticed that a cloud had gathered toward the ceiling of the alcove—it was beautiful; waving roiling shades of purple, red, and orange.
“Mal? What is that?” Skye asked while she crawled away from the alcove.
“Hydrogen. It has leaked from the device that you created and gathered in the alcove. It has come into contact with the polyatomic ion that was dripping down the wall of the alcove, causing an explosion in the open pipes.”
“How did we not know what happens when it comes into contact with hydrogen?”
“It was not yet tested by Fori,” Mal replied. “Nowhere in their database does it come up as exploding when interacting with gases.”
“What gases did they test?”
“Only oxygen and carbon dioxide,” Mal stated. “So they could see if it was safe to bring into the research facility.”
“So, basically, they were still in the safety testing phase of research?”
“Basically. Technically, construction on Fori was only completed approximately six months ago.”
“After five years?”
“They had many problems during that phase—ground collapses being the biggest one, which makes sense, if this is all down here.”
The cloud of hydrogen was coming down again, swelling drastically en masse, until it was just touching the polyatomic ion—and it exploded again, causing the ceiling of the alcove to collapse.
While Skye had been able to move safely away from the alcove, her makeshift oxygen maker, set up beside her as she slept, was crushed beneath the falling rock. As she rolled, her oxygen reclaimer had been ripped out. Skye leaned forward to retrieve it, but heard the skittering sound of Celaenan legs on the stone platforms above her. She pulled out her utility knife and cut the metaplastic tubing that connected her to her oxygen reclaimer like an umbilical cord.
“Mal,” she said. “What are our stats?” She looked up to see a horde of Celaenans clamoring down the platforms in her direction. Stomach dropping, she began to race down the platforms in large strides, fighting to maintain both her balance and her momentum.The Celaenans lacked this necessity, as their six legs balanced them equivalently on their compact, rounded pelvises.
She jumped down to the next platform, steadying herself with her good hand before running to the edge. She paused. The drop was significantly longer than the roughly one and a half meters of the others—this one was close to three meters. Skye hesitated; a huge mistake. She could hear the Celaenans behind her: they were close, too close. She lifted her modified arm, turning around and aiming, a bright white flash burst from the weapon. Her shoulder shook with the weight of it, unwieldy with its longer, ungainly barrel.
She moved it in an arc, easily incinerating the first wave of Celaenan attackers. Skye could feel the heat traveling up her arm from the plasma blaster, making her sweat. The blaze emanating from the end of the plasma blaster spluttered before going out. Skye’s stomach dropped in fear and surprise.
The creatures behind their incinerated comrades hesitated for a moment before moving forward. They towered over her with their height, heads raised on their cobra-like upper torsos.
Skye raised her weapon to shoot again, shakily using her one good hand to aim, and nothing happened.
“It is overheated due to the strength of the previous blast.” Mal replied woefully. “The materials appear not to be durable enough to withstand high temperatures.”
“Just dandy.” She activated the charging coils, took aim, and attempted another shot, but the gun let out a whine.
“They’re getting dangerously close,” Mal said.
“Working on that,” Skye said in a panic. She looked up from her useless weapon and into the cold, beady eyes of her first assailant. As it overtook her, she twisted around and kicked hard into a jump to the distant platform. As she left the ground, she heard guttural ripping as the creature’s blade-like forearm tore through her upper thigh. Impaled upon the arm, she lurched backward, missing the ledge and falling sideways into the waterfall.
“Oh no! Skye!” Mal yelled as they went over the side. The Celaenan attacker fell with her, set off-balance by the Skye’s velocity. The last thing that Skye saw as she went over was the Celaenan, falling after her.
Chapter Eight
The waterfall of the polyatomic ion carried Skye rapidly downward. She fell through the air, landing in a pool, and then was quickly carried by the current toward the lip of the pool, finding herself falling again. She fell for what seemed like ages, her stomach dropping with vertigo, until she was submerged with a splash in a larger pool, held down by the relentless power of the waterfall.
As she was propelled downward, her face hit the front of her helmet, and a large crack appeared down the glass. Her HUD’s night vision abruptly cut off, leaving Skye blind in the total darkness of the Celaenium Matter.
Skye kicked and pulled with her one arm, attempting to breach the surface of the pool. The force of the downward falling liquid kept her under. Suddenly, her feet hit solid ground at the bottom of the pool. Bracing herself, she kicked off from the bottom at a forward angle, propelling her body out from under the waterfall.
As soon as she surfaced, she found herself face-to-face with the Celaenon who had fallen over the edge with her. She could barely see it in the dimly lit cavern. The creature grabbed her with its many arms as the flow of the liquid began to pull them forward in its current. Her suit’s blaring warning klaxons stopped firing and she was left with the sound of swirling water and her own quickened breath.
Skye struggled against the creature’s strong, many-handed grip. She felt something cool on her left arm, and jerked it out of the creature’s grasp to find that portions of her suit were melting away. It tore even more as she shifted in the creature’s deadly embrace. She tried using her feet to kick the creature off of her, but its grip held strong.
There was a cracking noise as the creature’s triangular skull plate cracked open down the middle. The creature’s grip suddenly tightened as its limbs seemed to freeze. The carapace, which had been waving angrily at her, hissing, and clicking had gone still and silent. Skye and the still creature were rushed along silently bobbing in the current.
The current slowed, and Skye found herself washed ashore along with the immobile Celaenan. Not waiting to find out whether the creature was alive or dead, she kicked away from its grip. One-armed, Skye pulled her body weakly from the pool’s edge, crawling up and onto the bank beside the shore, rolling off into the darkness beneath the crust of the planet.
Skye lay still for a moment in the pitch black. She wasn’t sure if there was no light or if she had gone blind. She coughed, and could hear a hissing noise as her suit leaked oxygen. She tried to catch her breath as she lay behind a large boulder.
“Mal, what is the status on the suit?” her inquiry was greeted by silence. “Mal? Mal. Answer me. Mal? What’s going on?” She hit at the circular panel at the front of her suit, noticing that the comforting, pulsating blue light had gone out.
“Oh no. Mal! Come back to me,” she pleaded. The blue light pulsed weakly.
“My core processor is corroded beyond repair. All suit systems are going offline.”
“Mal, don’t leave me alone,” Skye begged.
“Goodbye, Skye,” Mal said softly.
“Come back,” Skye whispered raspily, tears coming to her eyes. “Come back.” But the blue light had faded to darkness, and for the first time in her existence, she felt completely alone. Skye had never, not once, been without Mal. Just then, her suit shut off completely. Skye screamed in pain as her pain receptors kicked back in as the blocker, set by Mal, ceased to function.
She was running out of time. Her only breathable air was whatever was in circulation within the damaged suit, as her environmental recirculator couldn’t function without power.
Skye began to push herself upright with her remaining hand, and began to stumble further up the bank, looking for refuge. She stumbled blindly over debris; items that scattered as she made her way further up the smooth stone incline. Feeling with her hand, she climbed helplessly up the bank.
She tripped over a larger piece of debris, which was soft, and seemed out of place on the smooth bank. Falling forward and hitting the side of her helmet, she sat for a moment contemplating her next move. She needed light. That much was certain. She tried her torch, but without energy from her suit, it wouldn’t activate.
After a moment of contemplation, she pulled out her welder. She clicked the ignitor, but it wouldn’t light in the noncombustible atmosphere of the moon. She moved the welder next to a hole in her suit and tried again. She hoped that the leak would provide enough oxygen to act as a catalyst for the flame. The igniter clicked several times before erupting in a blinding flame. Suddenly, the cavern was illumined by a bright red glow.
She cried out in shock as she realized that the clattering debris she tripped on was a battered and broken helmet: round, and bubble-like. The softer debris had been an arm, clothed in the thick fabric of a space suit. She was surrounded by three figures sprawled like rag dolls across the bank. Each wore an electric blue suit, with a silver utility belt and white boots. One, whose cracked and broken helmet she’s tripped on, had long blonde hair, covering its face. Skye, grabbed the figure’s shoulder and flipped it over to find herself face-to-face with another version of herself. Her face was blue—this body had suffocated without her helmet. She began to hyperventilate, and couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
She examined the two other bodies—one had a large, gaping hole punched in her chest and was covered with burns—the other was curled in a fetal position and was missing both arms. Each body was in a different state of decomposition. Skye felt sick to her stomach.
“I’m not the first attempt,” she whispered to herself as the horror of the situation set in. “I’ve been sent on a suicide mission.” She dropped the welder and it continued to burn, casting nightmarish shadows across the cave.
Did Mal know? She wondered. He had to have. These copies hadn’t made it back to the ship’s range in order to upload their memories to the database, but Mal would have been activated at the ship all three times previously. Her air was running out; it was becoming harder to breathe as the carbon dioxide levels in her suit weren’t getting filtered out. She wondered if this was where she would meet her end as well. She didn’t want to die, but what if she had no choice? This was as far as the others could get. Why would she be any different? Skye gritted her teeth in frustration.
“No!” She screamed. She pounded the smooth ground with her fist and tears flowed down her cheeks. “I will not let myself die here. Not now.”
Skye reached in h
er utility belt for the polymer adhesive. Her hand stumbled over the black stone. It felt strangely slick to the touch. As she removed it from her pouch, she realized it was saturated with the polyatomic ion, so she tossed it to the side to prevent any further damage to her suit. After checking and rechecking each pouch, she couldn’t find her adhesive. It was gone. Without reverence for the bodies before her, she began digging through their utility belts.
“Bingo,” she said. Her fingers brushed over another tube of the adhesive and she removed the cap and went to work patching all the holes in her suit until the hissing ceased.
Though she had sealed the leaks, she needed a new source of power if she wanted to breathe for more than twenty minutes. She examined each of the three suits, assessing the damage to them. The suit with the hole through the chest was the most damaged. The Skye that had suffocated had a suit that was more or less intact. She disconnected the battery storage capsules from the suit and replaced her own. She waited for the suit to reboot.
“Why aren’t you restarting?” Skye asked. She pulled them out and shoved them back into place. After several moments of silence she struck the ground in frustration. Each lungful of air felt hot and stale and black dots swirled in her vision. If she couldn’t figure out what was wrong, she would suffocate just like the Skye in front of her.
“The processing unit!” She cried. She looked down at the dim crystal over her chest. Without a functioning processor, her suit wouldn’t be able to restart, even with a full charge. With shaking hands, she ripped out the two processing cores from the other suits. The housing was damaged in the first, but the crystal appeared to be in good condition. Discarding her own corroded core, she inserted the housing from one suit and the crystal from the other. It took every bit of her strength to twist the housing into place.
“Come on,” she whispered, staring at the core. With labored breaths, she fell into a fetal position. In the flickering shadows of the cave, Skye wondered how many attempts the Council would make before giving up; how many times they would send her to die. Was her life really so expendable? She shut her eyes and the breaths came a little easier. Her thoughts drifted to Mal. She could almost hear him calling out to her again. She smiled at the thought.
The Engineer's Escape: The Swallowtail Voyages, Book 1 Page 5