by Tom Shepherd
Tyler splashed ashore. “Suzie, drop the hatch, fire up the engines!”
Nothing happened.
He hightailed it, buck naked, across wet sand, past discarded clothes and untapped beer cans, toward the parked scout ship, three hundred meters up the beach. Behind him, the creature’s spiked limbs impacted the tide-smoothed lips of the sea. It was gaining on him. Tyler’s impulse was to break for the cliffs, hide in the bushes where beach met rock wall, but he resisted the temptation to abandon hard, wet sand for fluffy powder where he would fight for every step.
“Suzie, drop the goddamned hatch!” No response—still beyond range of the ship’s external audio ports.
Or was he?
A moment of panic overcame him as his mind flashed on the memory of shutting down all audio communication with the computer. He quickly assured himself it affected only her response bleeps, not his ability to give voice commands. She had to hear him. Soon.
Or did she?
External audio receivers were useless in the vacuum of space; he’d never used them before. Did the system have to be activated internally?
“Dammit, Suzie, drop the hatch!”
Clattering thumps on the wet sand grew louder, but he dared not waste a second to turn and look. Then he reached the rock by the water’s edge, with no choice but to pivot upslope into the soft sand. Feet pumping, he lost footing and leaned forward to stabilize himself and gain traction.
The delay proved disastrous. Hard-shelled pincers grabbed his shoulder and lifted him, legs kicking, toward a wicked set of chewing mandibles that glinted like butcher blades.
His life would end on an unknown world far from home in the death grip of a giant crustacean. He cursed himself for stupidly landing here without adequate planetary surveys. The stench of sea drains clogged with decayed kelp and rotten fish engulfed him as the snap-snap mandibles opened to receive his skull. He screamed and pissed like a fountain into the sky, but instead of crushing his brains, the creature paused, raised its black eyes, and dropped Tyler on the beach.
Not waiting for an explanation, he hit the wet sand running for the ship, still a hundred meters away. Abruptly, the treetops on the forested bluff erupted with a flight of creatures the size of full grown eagles. Wings glistened forest green; the newcomers resembled a cross between fat wasps and swordfish, with thick, pointed proboscises. Insect, bird, or something else—he didn’t slow down to take notes for the exobiologists. The newcomers buzzed, hovered, moved into a ball formation, and dove at Tyler like fighter craft as he fled the crustacean.
“Suzie, open up, start up!” Still no response. Almighty God, could I get a little help here?
Tyler shouted and ran until he slipped in the sand. Now the flying creatures buzzed like a million bad circuits, and his body reflexes took over. He dropped to the smooth beach and covered his head with both arms, expecting instant death. Again.
But the deadly swarm whisked by so closely he felt the air-wash from rapid, invisible wings. He rolled onto his back to raise his head. The flying creatures zipped around the clawed behemoth and jabbed lancer beaks at the seams of its mouth. The crustacean swatted fat pincers at its tormentors, but too sluggishly to hit a fast-moving target.
Up and running, Tyler didn’t wait for the outcome of a battle in which the victor might decide he’d make a nice dessert. He shouted again for Suzie, but nothing.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck—fuck!”
He closed the remaining distance to the Sioux City’s stern, where a thick metal hatch should have deployed its access ramp. Tyler shouted until his voice cracked like a pubescent boy and he pounded on the sealed drop-hatch, to no avail. He slipped around starboard, looked for a manual release handle on the airlock. Found it! Tore away the hand guard, yanked—fuck! The mechanism failed to activate. He yanked repeatedly until the grip broke loose from its housing.
“Double fuck!” The discarded handgrip cover indicated fourteen years since its last scheduled maintenance. He slid around to the rear hatch and pounded on the metal. “Suzie, I’m sorry. I’ll never disregard your beeping again. I’ll get you all cleaned up. Let me in or we’ll both rot on this planet!”
He heard a whack and turned sharply to the sound. A flailing killer bug sailed from the wildly swinging clubs of the crustacean’s pincers like a hard-hit ball. Lucky shot. Tyler smiled, until the batted insect sailed right at him. He dove to the sand starboard of the stern. The insect smashed into the closed access hatch, shattered, and spewed yellow-green bug blood across the corroded metal of Suzie’s backside.
Instead of cooperatively bleeding to death like a mammal, the insect broke into two parts at the jointure of thorax and abdomen and promptly went into full berserk mode. It hobbled after Tyler on damaged forward legs and dragged broken wings through sand gooey-smeared by mustard colored body fluids. Unfortunately, the front half had javelin jaws and a bad attitude and seemed to identify Tyler as the cause of its suffering.
“Get away—I didn’t do nothin’ to you!”
Tyler fled down Suzie’s starboard and looped around the bow to portside. All the way, he banged on the ship and implored the computer to let him aboard. The hissing half-creature closed on him, and Tyler had no idea how long the swarm would continue to bedevil the big crab when smaller prey awaited. He passed the stern and began a second lap with the bug in hot pursuit. Then a creak and a thud, followed by frantic squeals, which faded quickly.
Suzie had dropped the hefty ramp on the unlucky insect, crushed it to death. Tyler scampered aboard naked as a newborn, crusted with sand and bleeding from the crab’s pincer wounds. He activated Suzie’s voice-text interface.
“What took you so long?”
You shut me down! I couldn’t hear anything until my collision sensors felt you banging on the—
“Just go, go, go—orbit!”
Tyler’s bare butt chafed like diaper rash on the rough upholstery of the pilot’s seat as Suzie powered up the engines and lifted off the beach, but he wasn’t stopping to get dressed until the Sioux City cleared the atmosphere en route to the Jump Gate.
“Did you kill that bug intentionally?”
What bug?
“Never mind.” He sniffed the air. “Do you smell coconuts?”
Tyler caught his breath and watched land and sea drop away, and soon clear blue atmosphere changed to black space. M-double-I departure protocols required a high-speed decontamination sweep at sub-orbit to burn away hitchhiking microorganisms before leaving the biosphere of an uncharted world, but he refused to spend another minute at this planet. He overrode the presets and went for escape velocity.
His wounds began to sting. Eyes closed, he allowed himself to sink into the seat, scratchy or not, and made an official log entry to mark his discovery with an asterisk: “Pilot advisory. Any personnel going to the surface of Tyler-4 needs to pack serious bug spray and big harpoons.” Tyler sketched the bare details of the hostile life forms, attached his declaration of ownership for Matthews Interstellar Industries, but held back on full disclosure.
Maybe I’ll skip the part about the beach party that turned into a creature feature. If The Old Man wants to explore Tyler-4, he can send his goddamn survey ships and do it by the book.
“My planet has a mean side, Suzie. Killer crabs and buzz-bomb mosquitoes. The only thing that beach didn’t have was snakes.”
Why do you think I closed the hatch? Look up.
Tyler found himself eye-to-eye with a green and blue serpent that dangled from the overhead instrument package. It smelled strongly of coconuts. He shrieked and swatted the reptile against the bulkhead, where it fell to the deck, motionless.
“Quick scan—is it venomous?”
Odd readings, but no indication the species is harmful to humans.
“So why did you freak out?”
I am programed to avoid serpents.
“Oh, for God’s sake—you made me murder it!” Tyler closed all text functions. He liked her better as white noise, anyway.
>
A pair of beeps announced the Sioux City had cleared the bio-sphere and achieved low orbit. He sighed deeply. Safe at last. His shoulder throbbed, and for the first time, he realized his upper body bore claw marks and tracks of dried blood. He promised himself a healing shower en route to the jump point.
“Okay, snake-killing Sue, let’s slither back to the Gate—”
A cacophony of alarms went off, dominated by the sputtering yellow alert claxon.
“Now what?” He shut off the clangors and buzzers and checked the instruments. He did not like what he found.
Two
A single object approached at high speed, following Tyler’s orbital path. Space debris, meteor fragments? A few keystrokes, and he had it on visual. Not a rock, a starship.
Increased magnification revealed a red spacecraft with bright blue contour stripes along its elliptical hull. Lousy color sense, but who knew what shade nuances their eyes perceived, or if they had eyes at all? It displayed as cruiser size, midway between battle wagons and small frigates. Suzie’s scans confirmed heavy external plating and forcefield shields, and the garish brute bristled with weaponry.
This was not the Welcome Wagon.
Tyler checked the database of all known FTL cultures. He groaned when the MLC found a match. “The fucking Rek Kett—dried cow patties with no sense of humor.”
He climbed toward escape velocity and they pursued. Powerful scanners swept the Sioux City data network. They were reading Suzie’s files, probably searching for hidden, onboard weapons systems and cultural data. It’s what Tyler would have done. Their comm-link came through raspy and oddly accented, like a Norwegian parrot speaking Arabic. Only the language was perfect Terran Standard. The transmission allowed two-way video, and Tyler impulsively punched Accept.
A mud-faced creature appeared on the main viewscreen. Brown epidermis with a dried riverbed appearance. Avocado green battle armor with a tawny animal skin cloak draped over the shoulders. It seemed to frown, but who knew when a meadow muffin was displeased?
“Hi, guys. I’m Tyler Matthews, just an innocent explorer.”
It clearly scowled at the sight of Tyler’s nude image. “Does your species not wear clothes?”
Tyler leaned back and lazily scratched his balls. “Hey, if you looked like this, would you cover it up?”
“I am Senior Captain Zalaar-17. Why have you landed on a protected world of the Rek Kett Empire? Terran space is eight thousand light years away. Are you lost?”
“This is a Rek Kett world? Now, that is strange. According to my star charts, your territory ends fourteen thousand light years from here.”
“We are expanding. We claim this world.”
Tyler considered his options. Too many guns. Too much pursuit power. Time to negotiate a settlement.
“Is there a day fee for visitors?” Tyler said. “My father has money.”
The Rek Kett squinted at the monitor. “Are you attempting to export unauthorized wild game from this planet?”
“Wild game—oh! You mean the snake? It stowed away, but unfortunately died of natural causes. You can have the body.” Tyler turned his head. The blue-green serpent had climbed onto the jump seat behind the pilot’s console where it happily sat on its coils like a puppy riding shotgun. “Okay, maybe not entirely dead.”
“You have committed a grave offense. That animal is sacred to our people.”
“No problemo. I’ll gladly return your little icon.”
The snake reacted by scooting under an engineering console. Nonchalantly, Tyler re-activated the text-only interface and silently ordered Suzie to spool up for FTL. He accessed the bookmark for TCG-4893 and started the countdown. A cold start to FTL capability required 1,200 C, which it took twelve minutes. If the mixing chambers retained 600-plus degrees Celsius, maybe half that time. The mixers indicated fifty-three percent startup temperature. Six minutes to light-plus.
“Your ship’s registry declares itself the property of Matthews Interstellar Industries.”
“It’s my property,” Tyler said. “But that’s complicated.”
Zalaar-17 balked. “You committed starship theft?”
“No, no. My family owns the company. I told you it’s complicated.” He checked the FTL countdown. At least another five minutes. “Anything else I can do for you?”
“We have determined that you transported alcoholic beverages to the surface. Is that true?”
“I started a six pack, but something was eating me, so I had to run after only one beer. Ruined a great beach party. But I’m not flying under the influence.”
“Alcohol is illegal in the Rek Kett Empire. Your ship is confiscated. You are under arrest.”
“Wait a minute! Before you get all Pontius Pilate on me, where are those rules posted?”
The Rek Kett commander replied slowly, as if he had never heard that question before. “Everyone knows our Empire is unsullied by intoxicants, dedicated to work, prayer, and service to the Emperor.”
“I’m all for your Mormon paradise, fella, but you failed to give reasonable notice of this planet’s ownership, much less your rules about alcohol consumption on its surface.”
“Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
“That tired old cliché? Look, Captain—”
“Senior Captain.”
“—the prevailing galactic standard is ‘reasonable expectation of notice to visitors from alien civilizations,’ which you failed to provide. So, absent any demonstrable culpability—”
“Are you a lawyer?”
“I am an attorney, sir. And you have no grounds to seize—”
“Practice of law has been a criminal offense in the Rek Kett Empire for a thousand generations. You are guilty. Your sentence is death.”
“I want to appeal!”
“What does that mean?”
“Suzie, we’re outa here!” He cut the transmission, swung the scout ship’s blunt nose toward the largest moon, and hit full thrusters.
Bolts of blue-green energy slammed into Suzie’s shield package, and Tyler decided he liked those colors better in warm sea shallows.
The next burst hit the Sioux City so hard it knocked her off trajectory. Instead of slipping between the planet’s small satellites, the little ship plummeted into the thin atmosphere of the planet’s biggest moon, toward a dead end in a crater. Suzie’s anti-collision alarms screamed. Her autopilot engaged, swooped the scout ship out of the deadly plunge, and zoomed into open space beyond the moon belt.
In hot pursuit, Rek Kett laser cannons whittled Suzie’s aft shields to the edge of collapse. One more shot, and Tyler was dead. Again. He wondered if anything about this planet didn’t want to kill him, just to ruin Founder’s Day.
If only I had weapons aboard. But, noooo. Dad doesn’t trust the Wolf with implements of destruction. I need nuclear warheads instead of—wait a minute! Captain Dirt Bag doesn’t know Suzie isn’t armed. The Rek Kett are paranoid enough to assume Terran weaponry is somehow disguised. Why not play upon their mistrust of lawyers?
Tyler opened a voice-only channel. “Ahoy, Rek Kett Captain. Terran ethics require me to inform you I am about to deploy deadly force in my defense. I take this justifiable action because, item one—I fear for my life, and item two—you have refused me the basic civil rights recognized by all civilized cultures. You have one Terran minute to depart or die.”
“I see no evidence—”
Tyler snapped off the transmitter and armed every survey probe in the inventory—twenty-four left, minus the Columbus. He checked the position of the pursuit ship. Still there, but the Rek Kett vessel had stealthily slipped back a little. Still within energetic weapons range, but Captain Cow Patty gained room to maneuver if fired upon.
Tyler checked the FTL drive. Eighty-six percent power-up to light-plus capacity. Two minutes more. The Rek Kett cruiser maintained the gap, probably readying a grand finale laser barrage. Tyler activated all probes and set them to launch by pairs in ten-second intervals. He
took a deep breath and ejected the first pair of dud bombs.
The effect was dramatic. Whoever flew the Rek Kett cruiser swerved hard to avoid incoming missiles as their defensive package blasted Tyler’s harmless probes with pinpoint shots. Tyler spent the next two minutes playing dodge ball with the aliens. Fortunately, they were pretty good at torpedo evasion, because the probes would have bounced off their shield array and dispelled his illusion of attack. As the last pair fired, FTL status pulsed green, and Tyler punched the Sioux City through the light wall into hyperspace.
When he was certain nobody had followed him into the Cumberland Tunnel, he allowed himself a long, luxurious, healing and decontamination shower. His muscular body had taken a beating from Crabzilla, but the lacerations to his chest, shoulder, and back proved surprisingly shallow and healed quickly under accelerated cell growth stimulation.
However, medical scanners mounted in the shower unit detected over four hundred virulent pathogens, including ninety-seven unknown viruses, several hundred forms of potentially dangerous bacteria, and eleven micro-parasitic life forms that defied the bio-computer’s attempt to classify them. Imperceptible bio-filters bathed Tyler’s insides and skin, targeted and destroyed the intruders while jets of warm water washed his body surface.
He lingered in the shower’s warm embrace, to scrub away the memory of that ill-fated dip in a tropical sea. Dripping wet, he finally stepped onto the washroom deck and towel dried. Tyler carefully combed his hair and dressed in a clean yellow Matthews Interstellar jumpsuit. He pulled on soft shoes, strolled to the galley, and struck a blow for freedom by gobbling a crab cake sandwich for dinner. He finished it off with a slab of gouda goat cheese and chilled white wine—his favorite snack from the limited menu of the Sioux City’s food dispenser.
He spent the remaining hours in hyperspace reading briefing papers for his court appearance Monday. Another damned patent violation lawsuit, Matthews v. Yínhé Chūkǒu, a Chinese Conglomerate. Dispute over design similarities in the bulkhead surfaces of starship access shafts. About as exciting as inspecting sewage lines. Tyler was grateful when the warning light flashed, destination in five minutes. He closed his laptop and returned to the flight deck.