Of Bravery and Bluster

by Scott Kelemen

  He stood there, pretending to try and crack open the safety locks, conveniently forgetting the illegal pass-codes he had been given which had let him set up the hot-box atmosphere in the first place.

  They deserved whatever they got.

  ***

  Sam slipped on the steam-soaked deck. The small trip didn’t cost him all his balance, but he felt his weight tug on the oxygen hose leading up into the ceiling. “Damn thing! The soles on these clean-suits aren’t exactly magnetic boots.”

  Brenna shifted uncomfortably in her own white containment suit. “They aren’t meant for extremes like this. They regulate your body heat to protect delicate experiments, not for hazardous duty.”

  Another drop of sweat flowed down Sam’s cheek, confirming Brenna’s assessment. It was more than a hundred degrees cooler inside the suits, but their cooling system was already starting to get overwhelmed. His skin felt like it was sticking to the suit’s interior. They had barely managed to finish the seals and get the internal fans working, so neither of them had worried about modesty. Being naked in the suits didn’t matter. If the clean-suit insulation failed, they would be dead in less than a minute whether they wore uniforms or not.

  Brenna squinted against the still-glaring lights. “If we could shut some of these heat sources down, we’d last longer. Maybe long enough for someone to realize we’re in here boiling.”

  Sam added, “We can’t count on the alarms. If the fire suppression sensors were working, they would have already tripped the alarm systems and help would be on the way. You know what that means, right?”

  Brenna nodded, more and more worried. “This had to be deliberate. Environment systems fail, everything turned on high, and now the warning sensors are down? This is a death trap.”

  “Right. That means someone will have to directly look at the temperature gauge to realize things are off in here. If they haven’t seen it yet, then I’d lay poor odds that anyone will see it before morning.”

  She moaned. “We can’t wait that long. Our suits will melt long before then.”

  Sam tried to think. “There should be a manual way to open the doors. A hand crank, in case the automatic systems fail. You can’t lock that out, not unless it was a prison.”

  Brenna agreed, “But this isn’t our station. The basic emergency procedures didn’t cover that.”

  Sam had pulled a computer terminal to him, but he ended up pushing it away in frustration. “Of course, local access to the computers is shut down. I can’t even call up the schematics for the station to figure it out.” He strode over to the door. “This can’t be that hard to figure out. It’s meant to let people escape easily!”

  He felt along the edges of the maintenance panel, then cracked open the seal. Narrowing his eyes against the brilliant lighting, working as much by feel as by sight, he managed to find what he was looking for. With a brief cry of delight, he pulled the hand pump into position. He gave it a few solid thrusts, expecting to see the door grind apart.

  Nothing.

  Sam rammed a foot into the mechanism. “You’ve got to be kidding me. How could this not work? This is a hard-hydraulic line right into the door. Someone would have to be right outside stopping me from pumping it open! That, or they’ve cut the line and bled the system out.”

  Brenna gaped at him. “That’s insane. If this is deliberate, then whoever did it would try and make it look like an accident, right? It can’t look like flat-out murder! Not unless they’ve lost their minds.”

  Sam closed his eyes, trying to blot out the lights and think. “Punishing them later isn’t going to help us now. Let’s assume no override or computers is going to help us. The alarms are shut down, so we can’t alert anyone.”

  Brenna brightened. “Well, not up on the bridge or in engineering, but people will come running if they hear something. What if we do something with a little more punch. We could blow the door open.”

  “An explosion?”

  “Sure. Not only should the noise bring people running, but maybe enough heat will leak out to set off the corridor alarms. Those might not have been silenced.”

  “Not enough to cool this place down.”

  Brenna shrugged, “Could it really make anything any worse?”

  Sam eyed the door. “That’s durasteel. If we had an explosive charge, I might be able to create a canister to shape the blast into the door. Might not break it off its hinges, but it might punch a hole through it. Might not even kill us in the backlash.”

  Brenna smirked, “You keep claiming to be this tactical god. I won’t accept ‘might’ on that last one. Are you going to let me down?”

  “Alright, fine. If you can tell me you can make something explode, I’ll stake my reputation on making it go in the right direction.”

  Brenna struck a heroic pose, using the last of her good humor. “I suck at biology. I’m much better at chemistry. I can whip up a mix with a few ingredients that don’t play nicely with each other.”

  “Not too much, please. You don’t set off bombs on space stations for a reason.”

  Brenna stepped into his arms, then reached up to cup either side of his clean-suit helmet as if she could stroke his actual cheek. “You’ll have to trust me to get the recipe right. Besides, it’ll take everything I can do to dent a durasteel door off its hinges, much less peel open anything else. I said I was good, but I’m not going to be crafting any fusion bombs in here or anything.”

  Sam took her word. “Alright. Hurry. I swear I can see the plastic on these suits starting to melt, and my fingers and toes are getting hot.”

  “As long as your other extremities are safe.”

  Warm thoughts flushed Sam’s dark lips into a grin that dripped with the memory of her taste. “Fine for now, but you better hurry for the sake of all three of us.”

  ***

  Hairs stood up on the back of Korey’s neck.

  He turned his head. Then, he craned his head around to look down the corridor. Had he heard someone coming? The other cadets should have found someone by now, unless they had been more drunk than he thought. Could they have gotten distracted? Lost?

  Nothing. The corridor was quiet. He swore he had heard something. Or had he imagined it? He walked to the front of the lab door, peering down at the center seal.

  Those two couldn’t still be alive in there.

  Could they?

  A shriek of distressed metal screamed out of the door and blew in his ear drums. A heartbeat later, the center seal’s main plate ripped free and slammed into his gut with quite literally explosive force. He was launched against the far wall. A sickening crunch was drowned out by the echo of the blast rocketing up and down the corridor. Korey’s body was crushed to the ground, buried under the ruined metal plate.

  In the wake of the explosion, a steamy cloud formed around the new opening into the boiling-hot lab. The circulation of the station’s main ventilation drew the heat out and cleared it away, fighting to maintain a normal temperature in the corridor.

  The face-mask of a white clean-suit peered through the hole. The muffled voice of Sam called out, “I can’t squeeze through that.” He didn’t even see Korey lying broken across from him.

  A shuffle of movement, and then Brenna appeared. She tried to angle herself in a few different ways, but there was no way to slip out. Especially not without ripping open the suit. Half hanging inside the lab, a suit breach might be enough to kill them as scorching air rushed out past them. “We’re still trapped.”

  “Was it enough?”

  Sam asked the question, but it wasn’t Brenna who answered. Instead, an alarm honked into life. It wasn’t the strident blare of a battle call, rather the impatient but non-panicked sound of an administrative alert telling the station technicians that it had detected an inefficiency for which it couldn’t compensate.

  In the distance, voices were raised. Boots began to pound steel decks as help raced in toward them.

  They both heard the telltale sounds. Kept separ
ate by their clean-suits, the two hugged as well as they could.

  Brenna laughed softly into him, “Seems we can make a good team when we try.”

  Sam chuckled back just loudly enough to reach her ears through the suit barriers between them. “I’ve always been better at destroying than building.”

  She pulled back far enough to let him see the playful dance behind her eyes. “So am I. And if you tell anyone what I’m not wearing under here, guess what I’ll destroy next?”

  “Not sure how to break this to you, but you know an investigation is going to follow.”

  “It better! I want to know who wanted us dead. What’s your point?”

  Sam hated to be the one to spell this out, though he couldn’t prevent a helpless laugh, knowing that he wasn’t going to escape the embarrassment either. “Unless the video feed failed a long time before the rest of the other systems went down, they’re going to watch the hours leading up to the failure to piece it all together.”

  “Oh shit.”

  Sam chuckled at the rather unladylike reaction. “I’d promise to wipe it out of existence for you, but I might get reprimanded for destroying evidence.”

  She cuddled in closer. “Wouldn’t you go to jail for me?”

  He shook his head, not quite believing how she could tempt even in a moment like this. “Have I mentioned how dangerous you are?” Whatever his words, his hands clasped with hers as they waited for their rescuers to pull them out before the heat overwhelmed them completely.

  Neither of them heard Cadet Korey Lanyen shudder away his final breath.

  Chapter 19

  The trio of cadets staggered to a stop at a crossroads. The markings were clear enough. They were a deck above the power core buried under the nest of computer servers and power substations that re-routed information and energy alike into the rest of the moon station.

  Paula asked, “Right, left or straight?”

  A brutal bang of flesh on metal echoed down from the right.

  Johanna answered with the now obvious. “That way.”

  Nadia sighed. “Sure. Let’s run toward the sound of waiting death. When did this plan sound sane, at any point in time? Following your lead is going to be the death of us all, Johanna.”

  What was meant as a joke cut into Johanna a little deeper than intended. She knew she didn’t see the galaxy like others saw it. Since the first moments at the Academy, that above all other things made her question whether she had a right to be a leader in the Alliance Navy. If she didn’t see things like others, why should she be the one to pick the path they had to follow?

  But here they were, two of her friends, following her into what might be serious danger. Her prototype was untested, and might not translate well enough to be understood. No guarantee that the Adonlaeydians would pause long enough to try. Only instinctive belief that she was on the right path. For whatever reason, the other two were choosing to follow. She wouldn’t turn back because she couldn’t promise them safety.

  Without weapons or anything resembling a means to defend themselves, their plan had the virtue of simplicity. They ran right in, homing in on the sounds of the searching aliens. They began to pass doors scarred by claw marks on the painted surfaces, all the damage that flesh and blood could really do against durasteel construction.

  Nadia spoke what they were all thinking, “They think they are close. They’re trying to break through these doors, but the station is locked down. They pried open the lift shaft back there, but these doors are far stronger.”

  Johanna slowed to walk as a loud grinding sound squealed from the corridor ahead of them. She took another half dozen paces and stopped.

  Paula hissed, “What, now we’re going to stop and rethink if this is a good idea?”

  Johanna cocked her head to one side in thought. “I am considering if we should shout at them or appear in front of them.”

  Nadia quipped back, “Choice between distance and not? I take distance.” Without waiting, she screamed out over the claw-on-metal screeching. “Hey! We’re here to help!”

  Johanna didn’t object. She had no better choice of words, and none of them would be understood anyway. They had the right effect. From around the corner ahead, one of the spherical spider-aliens swayed into view and let out a chitter of surprise along with a splotch of violet and yellow patterning over its lower belly.

  The visor of Johanna’s prototype provided her with the rudimentary meaning of the designs and sounds. “Recognize! Human younglings from horrid place! Followed! Come to hurt!”

  Johanna had been trying to decide what to start with, but the racing thoughts of the Adonlaeydian made the choice for her. She tapped in two letters, nothing more. “No!” She made the negation hue as pure as she could, without ambivalence. A single sword stroke of a word meant to cut right through any doubt.

  The symbol blazed into view on her chest plate. Johanna strode out ahead of the others, trying to make it more prominent. No hiding. Hiding wouldn’t solve anything.

  The Adonlaeydian latched onto the real, meaningful color pattern coming from one of their captors like a lifeline. More patterns formed on the body of the first alien. They must have been a summons, for the others emerged from the around the corner. Their coloring radiated questions and confusion.

  It was not an instant shift to violence. That was all Johanna could ask for. She raced to ask again the question she had tried to pass back in the lab. “What are you looking for?” The phrasing was simplistic, probably childlike, but she felt certain she had gotten the point across.

  The Adonlaeydians fixated on each other. A rainbow of communication was exchanged until one turned to Johanna and very deliberately glowed a specific, straight-forward pattern of green and yellow her way. “Family. Lost. In pain. No trust. Why help?”

  Johanna glanced at Paula and Nadia. She hated to speak for them, but this was not the time to explain the historical context for complex galactic xenophobic tendencies. So, she flashed back, “Not all of us the same. Ask for belief. We will help find lost. Must be quick!” She wasn’t sure if the emphasis came through, sure she could not possibly capture the nuance of humanity’s many personalities and differences. She only hoped they had the same sort of diversity to relate.

  Once again, the aliens’ skin came alive with a blizzard of color too intricate for Johanna’s prototype to process. She immersed herself in their conversation as the chromatic light bathed her skin, searching for understanding. Whether through the patterns or her instinct alone, she knew their answer before they directed a simpler phrase her way. “Yes. Still no trust. But we test you. How we help?”

  Johanna flashed back, “You find door that hides lost ones. We open.”

  Her message wasn’t even fully transmitted when they turned and stormed back around the corner.

  Paula was wide-eyed, totally captivated by what she was seeing. “They understood you!”

  Nadia gestured at the retreating aliens, “Did they just decide not to kill us? That’s good, right?”

  Johanna began to run after them. “Yes. They’re trying to show us the way!”

  The trio didn’t have far to go. The Adonlaeydians had already located the shortest point between them and their lost family. They were huddled around an innocuous door marked ‘Auxiliary Machinery Room’ on the door plate.

  Paula glanced at Johanna, “How sure are we about this? This isn’t exactly what a hidden lair of doom is supposed to look like.”

  Nadia couldn’t help a smile. “What, did you want a sinister, booming voice with a door surrounded by fire and coated with poison?”

  Paula flickered a grin her way. “Maybe something a little darker than being cozied in between a supply cabinet and a tool crib.”

  Not in the most patient of moods, the largest of the Adonlaeydians slashed a claw along the supposed machinery room’s door, scouring a line in the paint.

  Paula asked, “Johanna, can you back them off? I don’t need them throwing a tantrum while I
try and unseal the door.”

  Again, Johanna didn’t force the issue of trying to get Paula to see the Adonlaeydians as individual persons. She was helping, and that was enough for now. She just coded in a message to the four aliens, trying to ease them away.

  Paula kept her distance from them, but managed to slip next to the door’s access panel. She tried a few simple commands, but quickly realized the truth. “Magnetically sealed, and I don’t have the access to crack it open. This isn’t just a one-level lock-out to keep out troublemakers. There is some serious security in place here.”

  Johanna stepped up and lent her own expertise. Paula had not gotten it wrong. Given time, she might have pierced the protections they had in place, but it would take more than a matter of hours. Days, or even weeks would be needed. And a dedicated supercomputer at her beck and call.

  Nadia looked disappointed. “So, we risked all this to get stopped by a door? Security can’t be more than a few minutes away! Thermal sensors are probably all screwy down here with the power core and heat off the engines, but they’re going to figure out to where these four snuck away. Especially if they realize they aren’t trying to get away.”

  Johanna gave a slight shake of her head. “I have a back-up plan.” She turned to the Adonlaeydians, and flashed them a single sign. “Need trust now.”

  That done, she peeled her uniform back and produced the MAAC pistol that had ended one of the alien’s lives. They immediately recoiled a few steps, but again Johanna sent “Need trust now!” through her prototype with a little added emphasis in the form of a deliberate growl from the onboard speakers.

  The aliens didn’t flee. That was more than she hoped.

  Paula objected, “You said I couldn’t have a weapon!”

  Johanna didn’t even have to think, having already formed a smooth reply in advance. Paula was as introverted and shy as Johanna was liable to misjudge a social situation on any given day. Paula’s used the firing range as her personal solace in the same way Johanna used the martial arts dojos and gymnastics studios to retreat from those who just couldn’t understand. Now, Johanna reversed her grip and flipped the pistol to the self-taught markswoman. “I didn’t want us to be armed for battle. This is a tool. Can you take out the mag-lock drivers?”