by Joyce Lavene
Kat began to piece together a shield that would keep the noxious gas away from Gael's inert body. The Fargan boy's voice continued to scream at them, bright tears wetting his face. He stopped and looked to one side. A high-pitched whine replaced him. Then the link went dead. The power that had passed them flowed back to the planet's surface.
Kat felt the strength, heard the screams of the freighter as its outer hull was breached, the inner hull divided. The Guardsman freighter with all her remaining crew was gone. He felt their surprise, saw their desperate efforts to stay alive, tasted their fear. Then there was nothing. Close to fifteen hundred people were dead. Their death throes burned through his mind even as he tried to save Gael. He pushed them away, tried to concentrate.
The impact of their combined terror and pain was too strong. He stabilized one part of his mind only to have another embrace the chaos. The shield was weak, ineffective. Gael's breathing was shallow and pained as the gas began to destroy the tissue in her lungs. He called to her, trying to pull her back. By combining their strength, they could hold the shield. She had to hear him. Frantically, he pushed at the outer edge of her consciousness but couldn't find a way to enter. She was closed to him, dying. He felt the velvet blackness coming slowly over him and he fought it back. No! She couldn't die. He wouldn't let her go, would never find another --
The crewmen gathered around him as he slid slowly to the floor.
***
Gael awakened slowly, her body in a cramped, fetal position. She couldn't move. She tried to draw breath into her burning lungs only to cough it out again. Kat?
There was no response. In all that dark space, there was only emptiness. She was drowning, gasping, trying to get up. Something was pinning her tautly to the processor floor. She opened her eyes and saw a face close beside hers. She imagined that round black eyes looked at her quizzically through a haze of smoke.
Gael reached out her hand to touch the face and it moved quickly away. She closed her eyes again and surrendered to the lack of oxygen in her brain. The noise of the processor settled down to ominous silence around her.
Chapter Thirteen
Kat wasn't conscious, yet he felt the pull to reality. He floated in between both worlds and wondered who had called to him. It was a definite summons, a command to return. His eyelids felt weighted and his brain was filled with cobwebs and shadows. In all of his life, he'd never fully lost consciousness. It was a function of Rian brain patterns not to allow full loss. But he could find no other answer. Time had passed, time he could not account for inside of himself.
Carefully, he slowed his breathing and quieted his heart. His body was cool and unmoving as he left it. He had been lying in a corner of the cargo area as though thrown there to be out of the way.
He would never know the struggle a few had put up not to have him thrown off the cruiser after he'd passed out. The crew had finally agreed to put him in the cargo area and had taken possession of the cruiser. They were arguing about how long the effects of the gas would last in the air as he passed them, going between them. There was enough food and water on the cruiser for several days for the two it was meant to hold. For the entire crew, the rations would last only a few days, at most.
A COM officer had already discovered that without the freighter to relay their messages, the cruiser's link wasn't strong enough to reach outside the immediate area of the planet. They were confused and didn't understand what had happened to the freighter.
Duty argued with Kat that he should stay and talk with the survivors. He could have allayed their fears and soothed their panic. But he found that he had to know what had happened before he could help anyone else. He left his body there and went to find Gael.
He called her name and heard no response, not even anger. He attempted to locate her in the plant but there was no imprint of her being there. It was as if she'd vanished, leaving no energy trace. Even if she were dead, there would have to be some psi memory of her. There was nothing.
He entered the processor area, terrified of what he'd find. The operation had shut down. Probably with the freighter's destruction. He felt the darkness in his soul as well as around him. What had gone wrong? Repeat of the incident suggested some sort of power surge between the ore processor and the freighter. Yet he found it hard to believe there could be enough power there to destroy the ship.
Near the COM link, he found Senfald's body. The gas had overcome him. His narrow face was a pasty gray color, withered by the gas fumes. He turned away. He found Gael just off to the side of the processor unit where the blast had thrown her. The red of her uniform was barely visible under a thick shell that covered her. She was pulled up tightly, knees to her chest, head tucked down. He couldn't tell if she was alive or dead.
Most importantly, even though he could see her, he couldn't feel anything from her. It was as though; whatever the shell was that covered her, prevented even energy from escaping. It wasn't a mind shell but a translucent wall around her body. He called to her again but there was no movement. No response.
With a thought, he returned to the cruiser. Re-entering his body was not the traumatic experience it had been for Gael. As a child, he was taught the right way to exit and the only way to re-enter. Impatience made him angry at the intolerable slowness of recovery. To regain use of his arms and legs took too long. It was a process he'd never been anxious with before. He couldn't blame Gael's emotional energy mesh for the feelings that engulfed him. Pushing himself to the limit, he walked out the cargo room door. There was no time then to understand what his impatience meant. There was barely time to return and help Gael.
Three of the men in the front were fighting. One man pulled out his laser knife. His hand hit the COM panel, sending up a shower of sparks. Most of the crew was cheering the fight on and barely noticed Kat's entry.
"Enough!" He stopped the fight as they turned to look at him.
"There's nothing on this damn planet and the freighter won't answer the COM."
"The gas'll kill us way before we have to worry about it."
He looked each worker in the face steadily. "The freighter is gone. It was destroyed when the processor started up. For now, we're alone on the planet. We'll have to try and survive until help can get here."
"How long do you think that will be?"
"Perhaps two days. Perhaps more."
"What kind of answer is that?" The frightened survivors wanted answers.
Kat was impatient to reach Gael. "The only kind you're likely to receive. For now, the air has cleared. We don't have to be confined here any longer."
"It's only been three days." The questions continued, gaining strength from the group. "How do we know if the air is clear?"
Kat was stunned. Three days! What had happened to him? He would have to deal with the immediate issues first. "Have you checked the sensors?"
The group watched him as he made a show of going to the control panel and pressing a few buttons.
"There. You see? The air is clear." He smiled at them as though they were children. Then he opened the cruiser door. They watched him carefully as he walked outside, half expecting him to start choking. But when he advanced confidently towards the plant, the group left the cruiser quickly.
Glad that there were no mechanics that would have known that the sensory equipment was offline, Kat made for the processing unit. He was followed by a few of the crew that were looking for Senfald, noticing that he hadn't been on the cruiser. They stopped at his body, leaving Kat alone to find his own dead. No one had failed to miss the bright ENDO red uniform.
It would have to be a miracle for Gael to be alive. Kat steeled himself for the moment. Yet something told him that she wasn't dead. Not yet. Hurry!
The gas was deadly poison. The substance around her was unknown but it was doubtful that it could have kept the gas out. When he touched it, Kat quickly drew back his hand. It burned as though it were on fire. Some living creature had given its life to construct this membrane that house
d Gael's unmoving body.
"What is that?" The crewmen left Senfald's body and joined him.
"Looks like some kind of...wait a minute. It's that same stuff that's all over here. Just that this is whole or whatever." The other man bent down and lifted a piece of the glossy resin-like substance from the floor. He held it up to the one that was in place there and the pieces matched.
Kat took it from him and held it lightly, feeling that same awareness. This had been part of a living entity once. The pieces on the floor were older. Life had been gone longer from them. The larger shell had only been dead a short time. Probably since the freighter had been destroyed.
"Is she alive?"
Kat tapped at the shell with a hand tool from the floor but there was no movement.
"We could try this." The younger man held a laser knife. He plunged it into the hard matter and tried to move it in and out. There was no real progress. But there was a crack in the field.
***
Gael had been dreaming.
There was a beautiful green mountain near a sparkling stream. The water was crystal pure. Sunlight dappled its gray depths and tiny green plants waved along the rocky bottom. There were flowers everywhere. She had never seen so many colors or smelled so many sweet fragrances. There were more mountains in the distance, pale mauve against a brilliant blue sky.
She looked again and the blue of the sky was there in a man's eyes as he watched her. She was drawn to him, walking slowly, sure that she knew him but not certain of his identity or her own. "Hello." She didn't recognize her voice.
Kat closed his eyes just an instant to thank whatever, whoever had graciously kept her alive. He felt an answering reply. Like a chime it filled his mind and then was gone. He looked at Gael again, standing close to him in the sunlight. Her eyes were searching his face. "Do you know me?"
She stared at him a little more closely. "I think so but I'm not sure. Do you know me?"
"As I do my own soul. Gael Klarke, Lieutenant, ENDO. Fargan birth. Bane and joy of my life. Do you remember?"
She frowned. Her gaze flew to encounter his own. "I remember seeing someone. A face with round black eyes. I was choking. The gas -- "
"I believe the lack of oxygen has placed you in a coma. It will take effort on your part to revive."
"I tried to wake up before." Her voice held a quiet dignity. "I couldn't find the way back."
"You must try again. Take my hand. I can lend you strength."
She shook her head slowly and backed away from him a step. "I have to do this alone. I've always done everything alone. Can't you see that this is important to me?"
"Can't you see that you are no longer alone? That you will never be alone again?"
She stared at him silently for an instant. The clouds shifted in her mind. It had nearly been lost to her but she suddenly remembered this man. She reached forward and took his outstretched hands. "Let's go. I have a feeling I'm going to have a terrible headache."
He smiled, then was serious. "You'll have to concentrate. Your consciousness is buried deeply; only a spark keeps you alive at this moment. It will be hard to fight your way back."
She held his hands tightly. "Thank you for coming for me, Kat."
"Always." He nodded solemnly.
She closed her eyes and tried to find her way into her body. She could feel its stiff, cold form on the hard floor. There was some pain, a blinding flash of light that cut through her like a knife. At first, the nearly dead being she was being asked to reanimate repelled her. The body was damaged, not so severely as it had seemed but it had been inactive for almost too long.
She forced herself into the blackness. For one long moment, she was alone in that darkness and fought to breathe. Then she heard Kat calling her name. Slowly she opened her eyes, making them focus, pushing life back into her limbs. She was looking out at Kat and a few of the plant crew through a tapered window. The view was fuzzy. There were colors where there shouldn't have been any. She tried to move but she was trapped in something hard that enfolded her lovingly. There wasn't much air inside the shell. So this is how a fish feels.
This isn't the time for humor, please. We can't break the shell from the outside. You must try from within.
Gael pulled her leg up a little closer to her chest and kicked as hard as she could. The little dome gave some but not enough. She tried both legs, kicking hard. The reverberation through her body was terrible. She balled up her hands and punched at it but it remained firm around her.
She examined the shell from her vantage point, the angles and the curves of the sides where it met the floor and vanished. She closed her eyes again, drawing from a remote well of anger and frustration as she'd taught countless recruits. She flattened her hand and drew breath into her lungs. Now!
Kat couldn't hear the cry she made through the shell but when her hand pierced through, he grasped it firmly, adding his strength to hers. She ripped through in another spot then peeled back the rest of the covering. Taking a great lungful of air, she pushed through, feeling Kat's hands pull her free. Being born was no easy task.
Kat didn't let her go. He picked her up and carried her, despite her weak protests. All that had remained of her strength had gone into that birthing. She saw Senfald's body as they passed him.
"He was a good man," she murmured and felt Kat agree.
He took precious water from their stores and a few mouthfuls of food. The workers, he noted, watched but didn't speak. Their eyes followed him resentfully. That was enough, even without sensing their feelings. Most of them resented that they'd found her alive. One less mouth to feed.
"I can't believe it's been three days." Gael hated the slight quiver in her voice. She'd been equally angry when her legs had given out on her after getting out of the shell.
Kat looked up into the gray sky. "Not even a residue of gas left in the air. It's as though it didn't happen."
"How is it possible?" She drank water slowly. "Even that small amount of gas should have taken a week to clean up."
"And you." He looked back at her. "You're something more than a miracle."
"Why me and not Senfald? Why am I still alive?"
"Certainly there's a reason. I'm sure we'll know before we leave here."
"Kat." She swallowed hard, trembling despite her best intentions. "Tell me again about the freighter."
In a few words, he explained again that surge of energy that had passed between the planet and the freighter. "It was as if the boy knew what was going to happen."
"Or knew what preceded it anyway." Her mouth was bitter with the sense of Toine's loss.
"What could've happened? What sort of power surge could that thing give off to cause that kind of damage?"
There wasn't time to reply as an angry group of workers came upon them.
"Senfald's dead." The worker spoke without preliminary. "That makes you two in charge. So? What do we do besides wait to die?"
Gael stood on shaky legs that she hoped she did a good job of disguising. Kat stood just behind her. "We'll divide up into two groups to work on our two main problems."
"Two?" The livid scar across the front of the worker's face stood out like a red weal.
"Water and food. And a way off this planet." She glanced at Kat, knowing there was no time then to continue their conversation. "We'll divide into two groups. Half of you with Officer Astri, the other half with me. Anyone with com link experience?"
Survival had become paramount in everyone's mind.
Chapter Fourteen
Kat and his group of the remaining crew took Senfald's body to be buried in the rough, acrid soil. Then they started out to scour the area for anything that would help keep them alive until they were rescued.
Gael took the other group to work on the cruiser. Fortunately, one of the men had worked on COM equipment before. She had him working on the idea of hiking the range of the link to reach the closest civilization.
Trying to repair the ruptured hull was a waste
of time but it gave everyone else something to do besides panic. The one real hope was that the freighter had time to get out some small message before it was destroyed. Even that was a thin reality. Gael squinted up into the listless sun that hung overhead.
When she'd heard that she'd been trapped in that shell for three days, she'd done a quick mental calculation. Help would have already arrived if the freighter had sent out a signal. That meant that some alert person, possibly Menor when he didn't receive a report from her, would have to send out a team for them. But it would most likely take more time than they had food or water.
Already tempers were high and tolerance low. The entire group had the stench of doom about it. The crew had never spent much time in survival training or maintaining any form of discipline besides doing the hard labor on mining sites to repair processors. They didn't work well as a team and their respect for Gael or Kat wasn't the kind that would allow them to make or carry out decisions for the good of everyone. There had already been thefts from the food stores and bullying by the meanest of them to take what little some of the others possessed.
Gael had to physically pull two men apart as they were working on the hull and had received a knife wound for her trouble. She resisted the temptation to beat the scar-faced man with the nearest rock. He'd started the fight as he had several others. She could tell by his brooding glances that it wasn't over between them.
As darkness fell, Kat and his team returned with a few more precious drops of water. The rain had washed away on the top of the barren soil almost as fast as it had fallen. There was no sign of food.
"Biggest damn brown bunch of nothin' I ever saw." One of the female workers snorted as she returned with Kat.
"We're gonna die here." Another worker spat into the tense air.
"Maybe so." Gael pushed her way through the rapidly gathering group. "But we might as well eat first."
They passed out the rations slowly, everyone aware of the meager portion and the small amount that was left. There was some grumbling but everyone was too tired to do much of anything but eat and fall asleep. Kat took half of the group into the processor for the night. The others would sleep in the cruiser that night then switch off the next. By doing that, Gael hoped to give each group a good night's sleep. Morning was going to come too quickly for empty stomachs and short tempers.