by JE Gurley
It was illogical, but he held Ivers at fault for the Abraxas’ distress call that placed his ship and crew in danger. He needed somebody to blame and Ivers was handy. The U.N. Navy was not.
The entire crew squeezed into the small wardroom watching the Marine sergeant down half a pot of coffee and two plates of ham and scrambled liquid egg concentrate. Dax hadn’t eaten in hours, but the smell of food nauseated him. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to eat again. The crew was unnaturally subdued, visibly upset, and curious about Nate’s death. Words had failed him when he had tried to explain. He prided himself on being a hard man, but losing Nate had hit too close to home. He had been the first to join the Fortune’s Luck crew. He had been the solid core of the ship; the ‘old man’ at fifty-one the crew could bring their problems to, allowing Dax to maintain his carefully honed façade of aloofness. The others had not yet come to grips with Nate’s death. The pain and heartbreak would set in soon.
Ivers finished his third biscuit and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked up at Romeo, who stood hovering over the starving sergeant, his pride as a cook reinforced by the sergeant’s prodigious appetite.
“Thanks. I was stuck in that weapons locker for sixteen hours with no food or water and damn little air.”
Dax wasn’t interested in Ivers’ hardships. “Did you kill that thing in the forward cargo hold?”
Ivers smiled. “It was a real monster all right, but a hand-held rocket launcher blew a hole in its head. It didn’t die easy though. It tore up a lot of real estate and killed too many damn good men before it died. It trapped me in the locker.”
He asked the question uppermost in his mind. “What are they?”
Ivers shrugged and pushed his clean plate away. Dax fought the impulse to line up the fork and knife Ivers had dropped haphazardly onto the plate. “Hell if I know. One of the scientists on Loki called it a xenomorph, but he also said it was dead, so what’s his word worth.”
“How did it get aboard your ship?” Dax asked. He couldn’t understand how two large creatures had boarded a Navy frigate. They could only have arrived on a shuttle. What were they thinking?
“We brought it aboard. We loaded two of the creatures in shipping containers to return to Earth for study. They looked mummified at that time, about two-thirds the size they are now. They looked like damned fossils. Something brought them out of dormancy. They tore through the ship during the night watch like a shore leave party in a whorehouse. One made it to the engine room and brought us out of Skip Space before we sealed it inside. When the power went and the artificial gravity failed, things got really dicey.” He held up a fork and pointed it at Dax. “I have a few choice words for Doctor Rathiri, the director of Station K124 on Loki.”
Dax and Andy glanced at each other. Ivers noticed the silent exchange. “What?”
“We lost contact with Loki. Our last contact was two days ago. Maybe they have problems of their own.”
Ivers’ mien turned grim. “You still headed to Loki?”
“That’s the plan. I’ve got a hold full of supplies for them.”
“Good.”
Dax stared at the sergeant. “Why are you so interested?”
His dark eyes caught Dax’s and held them in his gaze. “They found four of those things.”
Dax felt the hairs on the nape of his neck rising. “You think they’re awake too.”
Ivers nodded. “Seems likely. Whatever they are, a civilian research station isn’t equipped to deal with them.”
Dax was aghast at what he thought Ivers was suggesting. “You think we are?”
“You’ve got Wasp Sting missiles. I brought an ion disruptor. I imagine you have a few other lethal items stored somewhere onboard. Most independent cargo vessels do. There are a dozen people on Loki. Do you propose just leaving them there?”
“Hell yeah! I intend to drop their supplies at the front door and hightail it back to Kinta as fast as I can. Anyone still alive who wants a lift can join me. I’m not afraid to admit when I’m in over my head. I’ve already lost one man today.” He cast a searing look at Ivers. “I won’t lose anyone else.”
“Then leave me your missiles,” Ivers growled, “and I’ll deal with them.”
“Yeah, I saw how well the Navy did against those things. You think you can do any better?”
“I’ve got to try. I killed one of them.”
“And got locked in a closet with no air for your trouble,” Dax reminded him. “Why didn’t you bring a rocket launcher with you?”
“Because, dammit, I ran out of rockets, and I didn’t think you wanted to hang around long enough to find more.”
The two men glared at each other across the table like two pit bulls sizing each other up. Ivers was a big man – slightly taller than Dax, broader in the shoulder, and more muscular. Dax wasn’t afraid of a good brawl, and the sergeant’s size didn’t intimidate him. Finally, Dax nodded. “You can have my missiles in exchange for the Abraxas logs. What was she doing way out here instead of at Sirius B?”
“We received a message from UNNCC dispatching us to Loki ASAP to transport cargo. I thought it odd Central Command would bypass the usual procedures, but I’m just a sergeant, so what do I know. We were there two hours. That in itself was strange. We hadn’t seen a port for twelve weeks. Even a research station at the ass-end of nowhere was a change of scenery, but we didn’t have time to exchange pleasantries. We picked up the two crates and left. Twelve hours later, the first of those things woke up and busted free. We fought them off for a little over an hour.” When he paused, his jaw twitched. He clenched it to stop the tremors. “You saw the results.”
“I’m sorry about your buddies, I really am, but all that doesn’t matter to me. I understand your need for revenge, but we’re civilians. I won’t place my crew in danger, at least not in more danger than we’re used to dealing with. I’ve learned my bitter lesson.”
Ivers face clouded and he half-rose from his seat. Dax tensed, ready to fight if necessary. “Revenge? You think I’m doing this out of some twisted desire for revenge.” He eased back down into his seat. Dax relaxed. “Those creatures aren’t native to Loki, something about their chemistry and their body morphology, the scientists said. If they didn’t get there on their own, somebody brought them there. You think it’s a coincidence the Huresh went underground and then disappeared without a trace? Think about it.”
“That was two thousand years ago.”
“I don’t want to take the chance that whoever did in the Huresh are still out there somewhere. What if they target Earth? It’s my job to find out what happened. Earth needs information.”
“You can send a message to your command to inform them of the situation. Maybe they’ll send a ship.”
“I’ll do that, but that could take weeks. The Abraxas was closest to the area. That’s why the Navy assigned her to the mission. I can’t wait. There could be survivors on Loki. Can you just leave them there with those things running loose?”
Dax pounded his fist on the table to emphasize his words. “It’s not our job.”
Tish placed her hand on his shoulder to calm him. He shrugged it off and stormed from the room. He didn’t like anyone questioning his courage, least of all to his face. He was cautious and calculating, but not a coward. He didn’t want to leave the personnel of K124 to their fates any more than Ivers did, but he had the safety of his crew to consider. They always came first. They depended on him to make the right calls. Risking all their lives against those creatures seemed like a bad call. He had already made one bad call, and it cost Nate his life. He wouldn’t repeat his mistake, not for people he barely knew.
If the xenomorphs on Loki had roused at the same time as the ones on the Abraxas, they had been awake for over twenty-four hours. Even pushing Fortune’s Luck as hard as he dared, they could not reach the station for two more days. The armed crew of the Abraxas hadn’t lasted seventy-two minutes against the creatures. He held out no hope that
unarmed civilians could last seventy-two hours. A rescue attempt was insanity, just what he would expect from the military.
Dax stood on the bridge thinking it would be a simple matter to reverse course. Ivers could do nothing about it. It would cost him his delivery fee, but he could find another job for the Luck, one that didn’t involve four-meter-tall, man-eating monsters. He stared out the forward view port into the darkness of space and felt the darkness seeping inside, nibbling at his soul. The blue sun in the middle of the screen, Asgard, looked like a cold Siren beckoning him on to disaster. He could see tragedy looming in the Luck’s future.
His hand hovered over the control console. It hand itched to reset the course. Then, he clenched his fist and dropped it to his side. He would deliver Ivers. Beyond that … he didn’t know. He turned to leave. Tish stood at the hatch watching him.
“No one would blame you,” she said, guessing what was on his mind, but he saw the doubt in her eyes.
“No one but me,” he replied.
“Like you said, it’s not our job. Let the Navy handle it.”
He sighed. “I’ve never failed to make a delivery yet.”
Her features softened and the corners of her lips lifted slightly in a half-smile. “I thought you protested too much.”
“Don’t get me wrong. This is strictly a business decision. A cargo ship can’t afford to miss a delivery.”
“Nate’s death wasn’t your fault. That thing –”
He cut her off. “The hell it’s not. I took him over there. When I saw what condition the ship was in, I should have left right then, but all I saw were credits floating before my eyes for her salvage fee. I made it back. He didn’t.”
“You saved Ivers.”
“It doesn’t even out in my books. Nate was a friend. He was crew. Ivers is … Ivers is military.”
She moved closer and laid her head against his chest. Her perfume wafted to his nostrils. The way it affected him, he wondered if it was pheromone based, or if danger got his hormones roiling. He wanted to take her right there against the flight console, but she was in a consoling mood of her own. The comfort she offered didn’t include sex. Besides, it didn’t seem right so soon after Nate’s death.
“You’ve always seen us through,” she said.
“It only takes once, baby, to break a winning streak.”
Nate’s death now had him obsessing about death. He felt an impending doom settling over him. The air on the bridge felt too thick to breathe. His worst fear was something happening to his crew. Now, it was no longer just a crazed obsession. It had started. He would do anything to prevent it. He would not let Ivers draw him into a dangerous situation. He wished he could just space the sergeant through the airlock, but he drew the line at murder, even of the military.
5
“I’m worried, Myles. They were supposed to be here long before now, and I can’t raise them on the radio.”
Cici Adar sat in front of the radio, staring out the window at the bleak landscape outside, hoping for just a whisper of an answer to her repeated calls to the main base. She twirled a lock of her long, auburn hair absentmindedly with two fingers as she spoke. She was worried. Ambrose Rathiri, the by-the-book project director of K124, or K, as the station personnel called it, ran a tight station. The supply shuttle was hours late to pick them up and drop off their replacements, and she had not heard from the station since their regularly scheduled contact yesterday. The ominous radio silence was uncharacteristic and a little disquieting.
“Maybe it’s atmospherics. We had a big dust blow last night.” He pointed out the window, where the air still swirled with reddish-ocher dust from the last vestiges of the nocturnal dust storm. “Or maybe it’s trouble with the shuttle. I wouldn’t worry too much about it if they’re a few hours late.”
The words of her companion, Myles Benson, did not reassure her. “Almost eight hours late,” she corrected him.
“We have sufficient work to keep us occupied until they arrive.”
Sometimes the easy-going climatologist’s British imperturbability irritated her. He seemed to take nothing seriously unless it directly affected his field of study. “Aren’t you even curious about the new find they reported?”
“Cici, I’m here to study weather patterns, nothing more. Whatever they find down in the Catacombs does not interest me.”
“Well, it does me. I’m a xenobiologist. It intrigues me that in spite of an oxygen-rich environment, Loki has almost no flora or fauna. If the Lokians originated here, how? What happened to their world to change it into a nearly sterile dust ball? If they migrated here from somewhere else, from where did they come?” She pointed to her comp pad where she had been scribbling notes. “I’ve found nothing out here over the past two weeks except a few microorganisms, same as I found at the ruins. If they’ve uncovered something new, some previously sealed level, I need to be there.”
“Sira Chang can handle it. She’s competent enough.”
Cici sighed. By his tone, Myles thought she was being jealous and petty. It was no secret that Sira had made moves on her. Cici found the biologist fun and good company, but her compass didn’t swing that way. Maybe she was being petty, but she wanted to do her job. She had been away from Earth for nine months, and she had nothing to show for it but her mounting irritation. “Sira is a good biologist, but she has no xeno experience.”
“They’ll get here. In the meantime, I’ll brew some tea.”
“Tea!” Cici snapped. “Tea is your answer to everything – slice your hand on a sharp rock, have a cup of tea. Drop a culture dish and ruin two days work, have a cup of tea. Sprain your ankle, have a cup of tea. Lose contact with the main base, have a cup of goddamned tea!” She shouted the last word at him.
Myles remained nonplussed at her outburst. “I’m British. Tea is a panacea for all problems that fretting cannot solve.” He cocked his head to one side and smiled at her in that way that annoyed her. “Tea?” he asked.
She swore under her breath, and then replied, “Yes, damn it. I’ll take a cup of tea.”
She hated giving in so easily, but Myles was right, even if he was a complete ass at times. Whatever the problem, she could nothing about it. K124B or ‘KB’, as most of the personnel referred to it, was 2,000 kilometers from K124. Driving there across the desert and the shattered terrain in the solar-powered rover would take three days, and it meant camping out at night where the temperatures could drop to -5 Celsius in a few hours, or a dust storm could blow in from nowhere and block the sun for days. The trip in the rover would coop her up with Myles even more than in the cramped quarters of the remote base.
She had been at KB for two weeks, and she missed the camaraderie of the others in the group. Myles, despite his or perhaps because of his perfect manners and lackadaisical attitude, got on her nerves. She was getting antsy and eager to leave. The delay annoyed her.
While he brewed a pot of Willard’s of Chelsea tea, his favorite brand, she tried the com channel again, this time using the emergency frequency. Myles handed her a steaming cup of dark tea, and she almost dropped it when the speaker squealed.
“This in CG1905 Fortune’s Luck to Loki Station K124. Over.”
“It’s the cargo supply ship.” She grabbed the mic. “This is K124B. Come in Fortune’s Luck.” Her heart raced with excitement. The arrival of the supply ship was always a big event, even more so now.
“You’re wasting your time,” Myles told her.
She shot him a shut-the-hell-up snarl. “Come in Fortune’s Luck,” she repeated.
“This is CG1905 Fortune’s Luck to K124. Please respond.”
“This is K124B. Hello? Hello?” She glanced at Myles. “What’s wrong?” she shouted.
He set his tea on the table. “They can’t hear you. We don’t have enough power to send a signal off planet.”
“The frigate UNN Abraxas was destroyed by your cargo. We are inbound to you. Our ETA is 36 hours. If you are receiving, please respond.”
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She tried again. “This is K124B at 112024’15” latitude by 64015’10” longitude. Our GPS frequency is …”
“I’ll try again later, K124. Fortune’s Luck out.”
She slammed the mic against the table. “Damn! They didn’t hear me.” She stared at Myles, who, for the first time since she had known him, looked flustered. “A Navy ship destroyed? Why didn’t they inform us a ship had arrived? My God! What did they find down there?”
Myles removed his glasses and rubbed his temple, as he shook his head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. They must have had a reason.” When he looked at her, some of his perfect aplomb had faded from his face. “I’ll hook the extra solar cells for the rover to the radio and extend the antennae range with some heavy-gauge wire from our supplies. When the cargo ship gets close enough, we can try again.”
“How long?”
He shrugged. “I can rig everything in a couple of hours, but it will be thirty-four or thirty-five hours before they can receive us.” He saw her frown and added, “They’ll have to be out of Skip Space to pick up our signal, but they will pass over us to reach the base. It should be enough.”
“My God,” she repeated. “What in God’s name happened?” She had a horrible thought. “Are they all dead back at the base?”
“Let’s not make things darker than they appear,” he answered, but she noticed the haunted look in his eyes. “After I rig the extra antennae and solar batteries, we can try the base again. The ionization should have dissipated somewhat by then. We’ll get through.”
“Thanks,” she said, more for his attempt to calm her than for his ingenuity with the radio. She felt a darkness growing deep in her soul that his words could not quell. She knew they were dead. Everyone she had lived and worked with for nine months, except Myles, was dead. They had unearthed something deadly deep down in the lava tubes, the Catacombs, as a few jokingly called the ruins. The joke didn’t seem so humorous now.
* * * *
Gregor Pavlovich crouched beside a crumbled pressed-earth wall in the darkness, praying that he was invisible. The creatures were blind, but their sense of hearing and smell more than compensated for their lack of sight. He had spent the last two years at K studying the ruins of the vanished race who called themselves Huresh, but everyone at the station called Lokians. Little remained of their writing to explain what fate had befallen them, but the extensive ruins topside and the harsh conditions on the surface had led him to believe that a global catastrophe had driven the survivors underground to inhabit the vast network of lava tubes. He now believed that assumption had been erroneous. When they had opened up Level 5 and discovered the mummified remains of four large, decidedly alien creatures, small pieces of the puzzle concerning the inhabitants’ disappearance began to fit neatly in place.