Lost Valor

by Kal Spriggs

  The doors closed behind him and I heard them lock, the sound ominously loud.

  ***

  Chapter 8: The Best Of A Lot Of Bad Options

  “Are you sure about this?” Ted asked, his voice practically squeaking with nervousness.

  “No,” I answered. I’d passed him the note a few minutes earlier as I stood next to the prototyping machine. I was cooking up the first batch of quicksilver. I wasn’t sure about anything I was doing. But we were out of time. Vars had said that Wessek would be here to see the fruits of our labors in the morning. It was-- I glanced at the clock --just after four in the morning. We had two to three hours before Vars or his father would be in. Well, probably their guards first, Wessek didn’t seem to be much of a morning person, but still.

  While my parents’ had scrubbed much of their notes and data on how to manufacture quicksilver, they hadn’t cleared out the stand-alone prototyping machine’s memory. It had taken me an hour or more to find it, but that had given me a place to start.

  Vars had said that he could get me “anywhere” with the kill order on my slave implant. I had to assume that meant that it would receive the command through the planetary network, somehow. Since I was certain we were on Drakkus, it was a very real threat. Drakkus, or at least, what I’d heard of it, was highly industrialized and my chances of avoiding an area with the planetary network were slim to none. I needed a way to shield myself.

  Among the properties of quicksilver was an ability to receive and therefore absorb signals. It could also be programmed and my parents had samples of code they’d used to give it orders, having it assume various shapes and to even act almost like a living thing. They’d even had video of it crawling through the sand like a snake, directed by wireless impulses, to the point that they’d had it burrow through sand and a number of other tricks.

  Those properties gave me an idea. I couldn’t remove the implant. From what I could guess, it was probably lodged near my spinal cord and it was certainly tapped into my nervous system. But I could program the quicksilver to seek out metal inside my body and to envelop it and block any signals.

  The idea was more than a little crazy. I had no way to know if this stuff was toxic or hazardous or even lethal. It was going to be flowing through my body, where my body might attack it or have some kind of allergic reaction. It could kill me. It would probably hurt a lot. There was the risk of infection, the chance that it wouldn’t work at all…

  “You know what to do if... if the worst happens?” I asked Ted in a low voice that I hoped the whirring of machinery would hide from any monitors.

  He gave me a shaky nod. We had to assume that we were being monitored so all the preparations we’d made were done in such a way as to look harmless. The various “cleaning” solvents were prepared to load into the prototyping machine. The tools and other equipment had been stashed. We’d even been asking for late night snacks and drinks to continue through the night and the late-night shift of guards had helpfully left us a few ration bars each night... which had found their way into one of my dad’s satchels we’d stashed under the table.

  This part, though, was sort of the make-or-break. If it worked, then the slave implants they’d given us wouldn’t receive signals. If it didn’t work or worse, if it killed me, then at least Ted would know how to finish things here in the lab so that the pirates didn’t get anything out of it.

  The prototyping machine beeped and I moved over and opened the door. The ceramic bowl inside looked empty at first and I had to swallow my disappointment, barely restraining a groan. But then I saw the fluid in the bottom, so reflective that it blended in with the plain white ceramic.

  I pulled the syringe out of my pocket. That had been the hardest thing to find. But my mom had one, for sucking dust out of crevices on artifacts she was inspecting and while the needle was frighteningly large, I hoped it would do the trick.

  I typed in commands on the wireless datapad, first, careful to screen what I was doing from the cameras. The quicksilver rippled as I finished the upload, almost like a living thing. This was the formula that my parents had uncovered from the alien site, rather than their more refined later tests where they’d done modifications. I didn’t have that formula, after all, since they’d moved on to classified research at that point. I hoped that this stuff reacted as well as their later projects had.

  I’d made ten ounces of the material, which was the most that I could assemble out of the stocks we had. I hoped that five ounces would be enough for me and the same would work for Ted, assuming I didn’t die in agony, of course. I drew five ounces up in the syringe and then turned away from the prototyping machine, keeping the quicksilver concealed in my hand until I passed it off to Ted. “Well, that worked. I think I’m going to try to get some rest.”

  Ted didn’t reply. I lay down on the cot next to the table, which we’d asked to be moved in for when we had late nights. I turned on my side and Ted knelt down next to me. I half expected him to hesitate or ask me if I really wanted to do this. To his credit... he didn’t.

  I felt a jab and then a jolt of pure agony as he drove the needle right into the back of my neck, square over the scar from my implant and I felt pressure as he pushed the quicksilver out the syringe and into my flesh. I clenched my teeth, barely holding in a hiss of pain. The quicksilver felt oddly cool... and then it began to move.

  It was an indescribable sensation as the stuff crawled through my veins and flesh. I could feel it homing in on the implant, then a horrid tearing sensation as it reached the scar tissue and enveloped the implant, cutting it away from my flesh with crawling, horrible slowness. It was all I could do to lie still, my arms and legs trembling, my fists clenched in agony.

  I felt hot tears run down my face and I moved my hand to my mouth, biting my fist to keep from screaming. After what felt like eternity, the horrible crawling sensation eased and the stabbing pain became a dull ache.

  I felt completely wrung out. I wasn’t sure if it was even done, but I waited a minute or two, before pulling out my dad’s datapad and checking it. The quicksilver was in place, it had followed its programming.

  I wasn’t dead yet, so that was good.

  I sat up. Ted was a few meters away, working on my mom’s terminal.

  “I guess I couldn’t sleep after all,” I said for the benefit of the monitors. I gave him a thumbs up to show it had worked.

  He gave me a big, not quite entirely faked yawn, “Oh, you know, if you’re awake, I guess I’ll try to get some sleep.”

  I got up from the cot and he passed me the syringe. He’d already wiped it down and filled it up. This wasn’t really a very sanitary process, I just hoped neither of us was giving the other some kind of horrible virus or some other parasite picked up here at the pirate’s less-than-clean-base and ship.

  He laid down on the cot. I reached over to the table and grabbed a small wooden handle. “For your mouth,” I whispered as I passed it to him.

  His eyes went a bit wide, but he gave me a nod and put it between his teeth. Then he rolled over, showing me his back.

  I knelt behind him, hoping the table and my body would screen what I was doing. The guards hadn’t come yet, so here was to hoping.

  I took a deep breath, jammed the needle in, and then I shoved down on the syringe, pushing the quicksilver into him in a quick movement. I could see the skin over the back of his neck bubble up and then I could see the stuff writhe under his skin. It was horrifying to watch and I stood up quickly. Ted’s body began to jerk and twitch and I saw the muscles of his jaw clench on the wooden handle. I hoped he could keep in any screams of pain.

  I hoped I hadn’t just killed him.

  I turned away, moving to check our preparations. Ted had loaded the cleaning solvents already and queued up the cleaning cycle as I’d told him, complete with the blow-dry phase. I keyed it to start the cycle and hoped that I remembered my training from Academy Prep School correctly. I moved over to the bigger, newer one, counting off th
e seconds to what I thought would be about right. I hit start on the program I’d loaded on it earlier, bypassed the alerts it popped up, and then started it.

  I checked our other preparations, the ones on my mom’s computer especially. All this depended on so many assumptions, so many guesses. It should have terrified me, but I was beyond committed at this point. It would either work and Ted and I would be free... or we’d both die within the next few hours.

  Ted sat up about thirty minutes later. He had a spreading bruise over the back of his neck and he was pale and trembling. But he gave me a nod. I checked the display on my datapad and it looked as if the stuff had worked as planned. So far, anyway.

  Seeing Ted’s neck made me think of mine and even just thinking about it, the pain felt far, far worse. I had to lean on a table for a moment as the pain hit me. I really hoped that wasn’t a bad sign of things to come.

  Ted and I worked for about another hour or so. At this point, I could acknowledge to myself that I was puttering, just trying to look busy and kill time. Now and then the pain would hit an almost unbearable point and I’d have to sit and catch my breath, but the moment would pass and I’d go back to “working.”

  Finally, though, the doors to the lab opened.

  “Well, well,” Wessek came inside, followed by Vars and four of their guards. “I hear you’ve been up all night, working hard for me.” Wessek smiled behind his black beard, “Stuff like that is going to get you good in my book.” He looked over at his son, “Maybe we should make examples of bad employees more often, eh?”

  “Good idea,” Vars stared at me as he said it. Just in case I didn’t know you wanted to kill me...

  “So, Will, what do you have for me?” Wessek asked.

  “A couple of things,” I shot a glance over at the prototyping machine as I said it. The preheat cleaning cycle still had a few minutes to run. I had to delay him a little longer. “First off, Ted and I have made a lot of progress translating the alien symbols...” I went over to my mom’s computer and showed him some of the diagrams that I’d legitimately decoded. I tapped in a couple of keystrokes that looked like I was bringing up the translation, but in actuality, I’d just triggered the translation program with very special instructions.

  “That’s nice,” Wessek didn’t look all that impressed. “Still, it’s taken you weeks, and I want some tangible results. I’ve got someone I answer to, myself, you know.” He flashed me a friendly smile that I trusted about as far as I could throw him.

  “We’ve also uncovered additional videos of the chamber that you were interested in,” I noted, moving to my dad’s computer and hitting a few keystrokes. Those keystrokes started the same translation software on my dad’s computer, running in the background as I played one of the sample videos.

  Wessek waited for the video to finish before he shrugged, “That’s old news, kid.” He shook his head, “You’re starting to disappoint me. That’s not good,” he grinned at Vars, “I get mean when I get disappointed, right?”

  “Yeah,” Vars stared at me. “That would be terrible.” The tone of his voice made it plain that he wasn’t sincere.

  I opened my mouth to respond, to delay, and then the prototyping device dinged to signal it was complete. I felt an icy calm settle over me, even as I started counting off seconds. “Well, there you are,” I waved in the direction of the device.

  “What’s that?” Wessek asked suspiciously.

  “My parents didn’t clean the design parameters out of the prototyping equipment,” I pointed at the older device, then the bigger, newer one that was still working away. “So I was able to get them both running, creating quicksilver material for you.” I was hoping that none of them would remember that the big prototyping machine was brand new and that my parents’ hadn’t even unwrapped it.

  “This is that smart material, right?” Wessek looked at Vars, who gave him a shrug. He looked back at me, “Is it valuable?”

  “It’s a nano-fluidic material, according to my dad’s notes,” I answered, doing my best to appear helpful. “It can flow like a liquid or harden into a solid on command. It can assume different shapes with programming.”

  “Sounds like something we can sell, nano-tech is always nice, not as rare, here as back on your planet, but if it’s new, it might be useful.” Wessek shrugged. He waved at one of his guards, “Go get it.”

  I had hoped that Wessek himself would be the one to open it, or maybe Vars.

  Ted had moved over near the door and I eased back a bit as well. My gaze went to Wessek and Vars. Vars started to frown, looking between me and Ted and then back to the machine.

  As the goon reached for the door, Vars opened his mouth, “No, wait!”

  It was too late. The pirate opened the door, popping the seal on it and the pressure inside did the rest. The various solvents Ted and I had mixed in there exploded outwards in a broad spray that liberally coated the man who’d opened it and caught the guard nearest the door as well.

  The stuff was not just highly corrosive, but it was severely noxious as well. A cloud of stinging, toxic haze flooded the room, droplets burning my skin where they touched... and the two pirates who’d caught the brunt of it screamed as it ate into them.

  Ted and I ran for the door as Wessek, Vars, and their two remaining guards coughed and waved, trying to see what was going on.

  I kept my eyes closed, still counting as I moved. I scooped up the bag of ration bars with my dad’s datapad inside and ran through the hatch and slammed it shut behind me. I didn’t pause to try and lock it, there wasn’t time. Ted was ahead of me and I sprinted to catch up... just as the lights flickered and died.

  “That would be the generator and the network,” I coughed. The fumes made me want to wretch. I stumbled down the corridor, my eyes burning and Ted and I groped around in the sudden darkness.

  Somewhere in the confusion, I lost count. Back in the lab, the second prototype machine wasn’t cooking up quicksilver, it was heating up and circulating a very special mix of chemicals along with forcing air through, over and over again, atomizing it all and pressurizing it until...

  I heard the doors somewhere behind us slam open and shouting and coughing as someone, probably Vars or Wessek by the sound, stumbled out into the hallway. Looking back, I thought I saw a flashlight, aimed in our direction. A moment later, I saw a flash and heard the sharp crack of a gunshot, and I felt as much as heard the bullet whip past my head.

  “Move!” I shouted to Ted, shoving him down the side corridor that led to the incinerator chute. Why hadn’t the other device gone off yet? Had I miscalculated? Had it not worked?

  I didn’t finish the thought.

  There was a world-ending noise as the pressurized mix of explosive vapors finally reached critical mass and then the arc-welding arm inside the device triggered. A wall of hot air picked me up and slammed me into the ground. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t hear, I could barely think. I flailed around, trying to figure out which way was up, to find Ted, to stand. I lost all rational thought and all I could think of, all that mattered now, was escape.

  The network was down. The generators were controlled by the network, so the the generators should be down. The incinerator ran off waste heat from the generators... and it had to dump somewhere. We had to go.

  One of my hands found something soft and I grasped an arm. I tugged and Ted tugged back. I managed to get to my knees and then my feet. Red flashing lights had begun to strobe, either for the fire or explosion, I didn’t know which. There might be alarms wailing, too, but there could have been a brass marching band behind me for all that I would have known.

  I helped Ted to his feet and we moved onward. It was only a short distance, thirty meters or so at most, but we stumbled as if we were drunk, pausing to lean against walls and falling here and there. It felt as if it took forever.

  Finally, under the flashing red lights, we reached the garbage holding area. I touched the hatch and flinched, it was still hot to the touch. I p
ulled my towel out of the satchel. We’d wet the towels and our spare clothing for this purpose, back at the lab. I pulled the hatch open. Heat boiled out, but there was no glow of superheated gasses.

  Ted was wrapping one of his spare shirts around his face and rags around his hands. I started to do the same. “Ready?” I shouted at him. I don’t know if he heard me or not. I took a deep breath, draped the damp towel over my head and shoulders like some sort of cape. I put one foot up on the edge of the hatch, wincing at the heat, caught the top part of it, and then I flung myself down the chute.

  ***

  Chapter 9: Feeling The Burn

  I kept my eyes closed, afraid I’d burn them or boil them or something horrible. I couldn’t fall down that sloped shaft without touching burning hot surfaces and over and over again I’d bump into something that would singe my skin through the thin cloth and rags that protected me.

  About midway down, I struck some kind of grill or grate or something. I wasn’t sure if it was to stop an escape like ours or just to catch larger bits of garbage so the incinerator could burn it up. The impact jolted me all the way up my spine. I bounced back, slamming my back into the scalding-hot wall and I screamed in pain and fear.

  I kicked down at the grate and either my impact or age had weakened it. I felt it give, ever so slightly. I kicked at it again and a third time... and then a heavy weight slammed into me from above, driving me down into the grate that held for just a moment before it gave way under the combined weight of Ted and I.

  I’d told him to give me some time, but apparently I’d used all of that. We tumbled down the last bit of the chute, bouncing and rattling down until we both slammed into a pile of slag and ash. The combined impact of hitting the ground and then Ted slamming into me drove all the air out of my lungs and might have cracked or broken my ribs. I lay there, gasping for air, my mouth agape, my chest in agony, as Ted rolled off me.