Galactic Thunder

by Cameron Cooper

  Dalton reached and tapped the pad to open the door. Nothing. There was no system sub-routine to obey the command.

  “Lyssa,” I whispered. “There’s a hatch in engineering, in a casing over some high pressure equipment with radiation and high voltage warnings. Can you find it? Open it? There’s something alive in there.”

  “Inside a radiation shield? That’s probably why the scan didn’t pick them up. Opening.”

  The door popped and wavered open a few centimeters. Dalton hooked a finger over the top of the door and pulled it fully open.

  The two wolves inched closer, their snarling picking up in volume. Drool dripped from Darb’s chops.

  The small child inside the casing screamed and threw their arms over their head, shuddering. The screams continued, louder than the parawolves’ snarls.

  “Vara! Darb! Lie down!” I shouted, as Vara gave the preparatory little wiggle of her butt that said she was about to leap.

  Vara didn’t look around, but she didn’t launch herself at the casing, either.

  “Fiori!” I snapped.

  Fiori put the shriver back on her belt and moved toward the wolves. She hesitated, because she would have to step in front of them. She looked at Dalton doubtfully.

  Dalton straightened. “Darby, here.” He pointed with his finger.

  Darb looked as though he was trying to decide if he would ignore Dalton or not.

  “Darb!” Dalton shouted.

  The child inside the casing was still screaming, each scream punctuated by a harsh drawing of breath. It was a dreadful sound that made my gut roil. “Vara!” I called.

  Vara rose to her feet as Darb did and walked stiffly over to me. Her ruff was lifted, making a collar of stiff fur around her neck.

  It was little wonder the child was terrified. Not everyone got to see a parawolf in their lifetime, not live and up close like this, not ready to pounce and tear them apart.

  Darb sat beside Dalton, watching the casing with an unwavering wariness.

  Fiori plucked the child out of the casing, still curled up into a frightened ball, their arms over their head. She wrinkled her nose and held the child out in front of her. “Stars and dust…the poor thing!” She brought the child over to where I stood.

  “I’m not taking him,” I said instantly, for now I could smell what Fiori had objected to. Stale urine and feces. “How can we stop him screaming?” For the screams were continuing. Softer now, but hysteria drove them.

  “A sedative,” Fiori said firmly.

  “No, we need to talk to him,” I said, just as firmly.

  “Then you’ll have to calm him down first,” Fiori shot back. Her jaw rippled. The medic disapproved.

  She rested the child on the waist-high bank of whatever-they-were I stood next to and gave him a little shake. “Hey! Hey!”

  Dalton came over. “Do you think he’s been in there all along?” he breathed to me, staring at the child. “Maybe he hid away when the ship was boarded, then was trapped in there when the systems were wiped.”

  I stared at the child, horrified. “What in the stars were they thinking, bringing a child into this?”

  “The wildcatters live and die on their ships,” Fiori said, as she stroked the child’s filthy arm, which was still wrapped protectively around its head. It was impossible to tell the gender of the child. I had settled on ‘he’, until further information changed my mind.

  Days trapped inside a casing, hearing nothing, after hearing whatever sounds he’d heard? Then one parent or both would have failed to return….

  “Food…” I breathed, feeling stupid.

  “Water, first,” Fiori said, unclipping the flat canteen on her belt. She broke the seal on it and tapped the boy’s arm. “Do you want some water, little one?” Her voice was soft. Gentle.

  The endless screaming didn’t even pause.

  “And food,” I said, using the same crooning tone Fiori had used. I pulled out the energy bar from the pocket on the outside of my suit and tore the wrapper, which made a loud crinkly sound.

  The screaming checked.

  “Here,” Fiori said, and dripped a few drops of water on the back of the boy’s hand.

  His arms shifted. One red-rimmed enormous blue eye glanced at us.

  I held up the bar and gave him my best non-threatening smile.

  He looked at Fiori. She smiled, too and he lowered his arms.

  Fiori held out the canteen. “You must wet your mouth and lips and throat, first,” she told him. “Sips, as many as you want, but just sips. Do you understand?”

  He reached for the canteen eagerly, showing no sign of comprehension.

  Fiori let him get his hands on the canteen, but kept a grip on it and tried to lower it slowly toward him. “No, no, slowly!” she protested. “Damn, he’s strong!”

  “Uqup,” Dalton said loudly, and rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t know Common,” he added to me. “He didn’t respond to anything you said. Just the sound of your voices and the bar being opened. Lyssa, can you interpret for us? Tell him he must sip, or he’ll be sick.”

  He pushed his forearm with the control panel closer to the boy and slid his finger along it to raise the volume.

  Lyssa said something full of throat-straining glottal stops and rasping sounds.

  The boy lifted his head up. He looked to be perhaps six years old. He looked at us one by one, then at Dalton’s sleeve.

  Fiori relaxed and let him draw the canteen to his lips and eased it up to let a trickle emerge. He licked his lips and swallowed, then opened his mouth for more.

  After three mouthfuls, I said, “Lyssa, ask him if he would like to eat something.”

  I held out the bar toward the boy as Lyssa gave another vocal chord-straining speech.

  The boy grabbed at the bar and took an enormous bite. He chewed, the large mouthful distorting his hollow cheek. His face was as filthy as the rest of him except where tears had washed clean tracks down to his jaw. His hair might have been brown or sweat-darkened blond. It was hard to tell in the emergency lighting down here.

  He swallowed, then bit into the bar again.

  I let him take a third bite, swallow that, and reach for the water again before I stirred and said, “Lyssa, ask him what happened to the ship. Gently.”

  “Maybe start by asking his name and telling him ours,” Dalton added, with a glance at me.

  I grimaced. “We don’t have endless time to coddle him into cooperating.”

  “A few kind words won’t take too long,” Dalton chided me.

  Lyssa launched into a speech that seemed to go on forever. The boy paused in his chewing to look at the panel, then at each of us once more. Then he chewed and swallowed. He spoke in the same choppy language, which sounded smoother, coming from him.

  “His name is Ophir,” Lyssa announced. “His father calls him Ophie.”

  I gave a winding up gesture with my hand. “And?”

  “And I’m getting to that,” Lyssa said patiently. “You said to be gentle,” she reminded me.

  I sighed.

  Lyssa spoke more Uqup.

  Ophir lowered the bar, his eyes growing big. Fear bloomed in them. He began to tremble.

  I patted his arm, as he moaned and hunched in on himself, the food and water forgotten. Fiori only just got her hand underneath the tumbling canteen.

  He covered his head with his arms and spoke in a panic-filled voice. I could hear the repetitions of sounds. “What is he saying?” I demanded.

  “He says monsters came and took everyone, but he hid. Bad monsters. Black monsters.”

  “Monsters?” Dalton said. He rolled his eyes. “To a five-year-old, that could be anyone but his father.”

  Lyssa said something. It was a question, for her voice flexed upward.

  The boy didn’t lower his arm, but he spoke from beneath it, breathlessly, the fear making his voice shake.

  “I might be interpreting him incorrectly,” Lyssa said. “It is a difficult language—context
and intonation change meanings. He insists it was monsters. Let me try again.” She spoke again.

  So did the boy.

  “Lyssa?” I asked, when she did not immediately interpret.

  “I think…it is possible he might have meant…”

  “What?” Dalton demanded.

  “Aliens,” Lyssa finished, sounding embarrassed for having said it aloud. “Bad ones.”

  —11—

  We took Ophir with us. Fiori pulled on her suit gloves and held out her hands. “Give him to me. A little pee won’t hurt me.”

  It was more than a little pee, but I handed him over as instructed. He settled on Fiori’s hip and clung to her suit with two tight fists, his eyes still enormous and fear-filled.

  I ignored how that made me feel. “Just hurry,” I urged. “I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.” Which was a flat out lie. I’d felt hemmed-in since I stepped aboard the Ige Ibas. I was anxious to leave.

  “Lyssa, status update,” Dalton murmured.

  “Nothing,” she said calmly. “It’s as empty out here as it was when we arrived.”

  It wasn’t reassuring.

  “Still jumpy, boss?” Dalton asked softly.

  “More than ever,” I admitted and pushed on Fiori’s shoulder to get her moving. We crossed the maze-like engineering compartment, stepping around banks of mechanized and motorized whatevers. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for where things sat. At least on the Lythion there were labels and heads-up displays, along with full step-by-step explanations about how to fix things. And there was always Lyssa with her construction bot strength to tackle the heavier jobs.

  I climbed the steep metal steps ahead of Fiori, my shriver out. “Hurry,” I repeated, as we rounded the railing at the top of the stairs and moved down the central corridor.

  Every speaker on our suits and the ones inside our helmets blasted out a warning klaxon at full volume. Ophir screamed and I winced and put my spare hand over my ear.

  “Incoming! Incoming!” Lyssa shouted at us. “They appeared out of nowhere! No warning! They’re right on top of us!”

  “Run!” I screamed and pounded down the corridor.

  The two wolves stayed with me, whining at the loud noise, which had to be painful for them to listen to with their sensitive hearing.

  “Shut the alarm off!” I screamed.

  “I’m coming in!” Lyssa shouted back. “They’re fast! I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  The klaxon shut off abruptly.

  “Analyze later!” I shouted back. I turned into the entry foyer. The two airlock doors were still locked open, for which I was profoundly grateful. I ran at them, fumbling for my helmet. Then I gave up on it. No time.

  I paused at the edge of the outer door. The tunnel was still in place, the lights around the doorframe on the shuttle glowing green—but I didn’t need the lights to know the tunnel was still there. We would be experiencing explosive decompression if it wasn’t.

  I waved Dalton and Fiori on. “I’ll steer Vara!”

  Fiori didn’t hesitate. She sprinted through the two lock doors and launched herself across the tunnel with a grunt of effort, with Ophir clinging to her, his face buried in her shoulder. She sailed across, letting inertia do the work.

  Dalton and Darb pounded after her. Dalton thrust his fingers into the fur behind Darb’s neck as he pushed off with a powerful thrust of his legs.

  I didn’t wait to watch them make the crossing. I gripped Vara by the scruff and hurled her out into the tunnel and pushed off myself. I dared to glance to the right and then the left. The unnamed blue sun was lifting up over the edge of the planet behind us. Its cold light glinted off a sight I will never forget.

  The ship was unlike anything I’d ever seen, and in my lifetime, I have seen hundreds of starships, some of them highly experimental and futuristic. This ship looked like it had been created from the ground up by deliberately eschewing every sensible ship design decision.

  I had no time to stare at it. I got a single, startled glimpse of unfocused details, including the huge size of the thing—it was easily three times the size of the Lythion—then the nose of the shuttle hid it from my view.

  Vara scrabbled uselessly with her paws, trying to paddle her way across the tunnel. We were barely a meter from the lip of the shuttle door.

  “Danny!” Dalton cried and thrust out his right arm to point in the direction I hadn’t been looking.

  I snapped my head around.

  A small ship, so small I suspected it to be a one-man fighting craft, hovered thirty meters away, sitting between the Ige Ibas and the shuttle. A dozen more of the little craft were screaming in to form up behind it.

  The front of the craft was a clear, flat canopy, giving the pilot an unobstructed three-sixty degree view of what lay ahead of him.

  And I could see him, too. Or her.

  Or it.

  It was bipedal and stood upright, with two arms reaching toward controls in front of it. I couldn’t see what it had for hands. The entire creature was encased in a shiny carapace that glinted very dark blue in the light from the rising sun. Its head was truly alien, with an elongated snout that ended in a circular mouth that showed a red interior, and teeth around the edge in two concentric circles. Sharp, angular spines rose up in a line over the high head, and disappeared behind. The eyes were enormous and blank.

  The thing worked the controls in front of it while I floated with my mouth open, my heart pistoning overtime.

  Something shot out from a maw in the craft’s fuselage beneath the front window, trailing a line.

  I didn’t know what the thing or the line were for, but primitive instincts gibbered in fear. I could feel my teeth trying to chatter.

  The thing at the end of the line had intelligence. I watched it change directions as I tried to paddle my way over to the shuttle, just like Vara. I’d lost all good sense. I tried to pull myself together, to act smart. But all I wanted to do was get inside the shuttle, shut the door and curl up in the corner. Maybe wrap my arms over my head like Ophir.

  The little boy was screaming and pounding his fists against Fiori’s shoulder. His eyes were so wide and so filled with primordial fear that a clear border of white showed around the irises.

  The thing on the end of the line pushed through the molecular barrier and I held my breath, waiting for the air to evaporate, but the barrier held.

  The thing shot toward Fiori, who had just reached the ship, and whipped itself around her ankle. The line snapped taut, jerking her away from the ship.

  Now I knew what the thing was for.

  As soon as Fiori felt the tug on her ankle, she wrenched Ophir away from her and threw him at the open door of the shuttle. The little boy sailed through the meter of space until the gravity of the shuttle caught him and sent him rolling across the interior floor.

  Dalton gripped the edge of the door with one hand and shoved Darb into the pull of the gravity. Then he slapped his other hand over Fiori’s wrist and hauled against the pull of the line.

  I had nothing to hang on to, to push Vara forward. All we could do was float slowly toward the shuttle. Any attempt to swim faster would push us backward.

  Vara yipped and growled in high, frightened notes, which didn’t help stop my teeth from chattering.

  Fiori reached for Dalton with her other hand, her eyes as huge as Ophir’s. She was being drawn inexorably backward by the line. The alien controlling it watched us struggle with what looked like utter disinterest.

  “Nearly there!” Lyssa cried from the speakers.

  Vara was slightly ahead of me and the shuttle’s gravity field extended a half meter from the ship itself. Vara scrambled as she felt the pull of gravity, trying to move faster.

  I was close enough now that I could reach out and grab Dalton’s boot, and haul myself up the length of his body. I hooked my knee over his, anchoring myself. “Don’t let go,” I told him.

  “Hurry,” he said through gritted teeth.
The tendons in his neck were standing out as he strained to hang on to Fiori.

  I unhooked the torrent shriver and raised it. “Everyone, be ready. The tunnel is going to collapse.”

  I aimed right at the motherfucker’s face. He had to see what I was doing, but he didn’t seem concerned about it.

  I didn’t hesitate. I fired, holding the trigger down, so the shriver fired continuously.

  The molecular barrier collapsed with a popping sound.

  Wind screamed at us from the interior of the shuttle, before the barrier could form over the open doorway and hold it in.

  A pad—I think it was mine—whipped through the door with the speed of a percussion bullet and shot passed my arm.

  I felt the sharp sting and even sharper cold of absolute vacuum.

  I blew out my breath—one of the hardest things a spacer had to learn to do, because it went against the survival instinct.

  The alien ship lit up with blue fire dancing over every surface. The pilot convulsed.

  The craft drifted sideways, burning merrily.

  The line around Fiori’s leg grew slack. Her head lay inside the barrier, her body hung from the door.

  I shoved her through the door, and she scrambled away from it on her hands and knees.

  Dalton gripped my elbow and hauled me into the ship.

  As soon as I had gravity under me, I jammed my boot on the floor and pulled him in after me.

  I shut the door as soon as he was inside and threw myself into the copilot chair.

  I felt dizzy from the exposure to vacuum, but fear kept me grounded enough to do what had to be done.

  “Lyssa!” I cried.

  “I’m nearly to you!”

  Fiori leaned over the back of my chair, pawing at my arm.

  “I’m trying to get us out of here!” I wrenched my arm away from her.

  “You’re bleeding! Lemme at it. I have to staunch it.”

  “Dalton!” I shouted. If I couldn’t get us out of here, he had to.

  “On it!”

  He didn’t slide into the chair. He leapt over the back of it and dropped into it and instantly grabbed the controls.