Bad Luck Charlie

by Scott Baron

  “You haven’t answered how this junk will get us water.”

  “Simple, really. You know how there’s condensation on your windows early in the morning?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it’s like that, only instead of a window, we’re using this plastic sheeting.”

  “But that’s a negligible amount of water.”

  “From a window, yes. But we’re going to dig a series of holes deep enough to reach the damp soil. That’s our water source. Then we place one of these drawers in the bottom to act as a catch basin. We run the tube from the bottom of the drawer out of the hole––that’s our straw, letting us get to the water without disassembling the still––and then we stretch out the plastic over the hole and seal the edges with dirt and rocks.”

  “Hang on. So we use the evaporation of the moisture in the soil as a water source?”

  “Yeah. The plastic will catch the condensation as the suns rise and heat up the ground. It’s like evaporative distillation. All we need to do is put a small rock in the middle of the plastic to make it drip downhill.”

  “Right into the catch basin,” she finished for him.

  “Exactly.”

  Rika smiled approvingly. “Not bad.”

  “One more thing,” Charlie said.

  “What?”

  “We need to have everyone save their urine.”

  “I am not drinking piss, Charlie.”

  “Not to drink. To recapture the water by evaporation. It’s like the waste reprocessing systems on the ship, only a far cruder version. Nevertheless, we can reclaim the water many times over if we’re diligent about it.”

  “But that’s not only gross, it’s also not going to last.”

  “I know. This is little more than a Band-Aid, when we need a whole lot more. But at least it should buy us some time.”

  Rika mulled over his plan, then looked at the injured crew lying out in the warm air.

  “It’s a good idea, Charlie. But I think for now, we need to get everyone out of the sun and conserve energy and water.”

  “Agreed. Once the first sun sets, the temperature will drop, and we’ll be able to dig a bunch of solar still holes. Then tomorrow, before first light, we’ll head out to do a more thorough salvage to see what we can find. If we’re lucky, we’ll have some more food, and maybe even meds before the second sun gets too high and heats things up.”

  Rika gave him an appreciative smile as they helped the others into the shade.

  “You know something, Charlie? For a guy who had absolutely no desire to come on this mission, you’re proving to be something of a godsend. Our very own Robinson Crusoe.”

  Charlie just smiled and continued sorting through the salvaged supplies. A small pang of guilt twisted in his gut at her comment, though, just for a moment. It was silly, after all. Anyone would feel the same in his shoes. But still, with the thoughts flashing through his mind, he couldn’t help feeling a little like a traitor.

  Even knowing what the crew was faced with, if given a choice, he wondered if he’d just as soon leave them all behind if he could be back home on Earth.

  Chapter Twelve

  “What about that one?” Rika asked.

  Charlie came to a halt, the jury-rigged sled they had formed out of a piece of the ship’s hull, a few lengths of wire, and padding from one of the flight chairs, settling into the disturbed soil of the crash trench.

  He looked where she was pointing. The corner of a storage locker was poking out of the loose soil. Another night with winds like they’d experienced the prior day and it might have been totally hidden from sight.

  “Good eyes, Rika. That looks relatively intact, from what I can see,” he said, rushing to start digging it out.

  “Hey, slow down.”

  “But there might be useful stuff in here.”

  “I know, but we should talk about what else might be buried around here.”

  “You don’t mean––”

  “Bodies, Charlie. I’m talking about our friends.”

  “Oh,” he said, his digging hands slowing their pace. “Right.”

  “Yeah,” she said, softly. “Look, we may not find any, but you just need to be aware of what may be under there. Under anywhere, for that matter.”

  “Trust me, I know. I mean, I didn’t say anything, but I already found a leg yesterday.”

  “A leg? Whose?” she asked.

  “I couldn’t tell. It was severed mid-femur. A woman, from the look of it.”

  “Inez, maybe?”

  “I don’t know. The point is, I’ve already stumbled upon bits, so I can handle it. But what about you?”

  “Charlie, I’m a seasoned pilot, and second-in-command on this mission. I’ve seen a lot of things, and just because I have a double-x chromosome, it doesn’t mean I’m going to puke at the sight of any more death.”

  He hadn’t mentioned his reaction the previous day, and he had no intention of doing so now.

  “Okay. Right. Let’s get back to it, then,” he said, then began digging with renewed vigor, though wary of what unpleasantness he might uncover.

  “What did you do with it?” she asked as she saw the storage locker’s form become more visible with every scoop of his hands. “The leg, I mean.”

  “I buried it.”

  Rika nodded once in grim approval, but didn’t say anything further for several minutes, until the locker doors were finally dug out and exposed. She tried the handle and found it unwilling to open.

  “Come on!” she yelled, yanking the doors hard, but the keypad remained dark, and the locker’s contents remained untouchable. “Dammit!” she blurted in frustration, punching down, the door ringing with a hollow clang.

  “Hang on, you’ll just break your hand doing that.”

  “I know. I’m getting really pissed off, is all.”

  Charlie thought a moment. “You know, I’ve got something that just might do the trick,” he said, digging in the small pack of tools he’d salvaged. After a little searching through the unorganized mess, he pulled out a small bypass device with alligator clips and a voltmeter.

  “There’s no power, Charlie. You can’t run a bypass without power.”

  “You mean there’s no power yet,” he replied with a knowing grin.

  He turned and began rummaging through the equipment and supplies they had loaded onto the sled he’d been pulling until he found what he was looking for.

  “You can’t use a spectrometer to open a lock.”

  “It’s actually a hybrid mass spectrometer. And no, you can’t. But this beauty runs on its own rechargeable power cell,” he said as he unfastened the housing. “And if I were to tap into that power cell and feed a line into the access panel on the locker––”

  “You’d be able to power up a bypass sequence.”

  “More or less. I’d have used the mediscanner, but we didn’t find its recharging cradle to go with it, so I don’t know exactly how many uses we’ll get out of it. Gotta save ’em and make them count.”

  Rika set to work opening the protective panel on the locker’s face, tucking a length of metal beneath the narrow opening and prying hard when her makeshift ratchet stripped a bolt.

  “Careful. I wouldn’t want to have to patch you up, too.”

  “Then you’d be the only beast of burden around here,” she joked.

  “Well, to be fair, I am kind of hoping the others will heal up enough to lend a hand. Their injuries are bad, but not life-threatening.”

  “Except Jamal,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “Except Jamal.”

  Putting all of her weight onto the length of metal, Rika bounced on its end one last time, using every inch of leverage to force the metal apart. The panel groaned and squealed, like an angry animal having its meal stolen from it, until finally, with a sudden pop, the lone, reticent bolt snapped free. She tumbled to the ground, landing square on her ass with a dusty whump.

  “You okay?”

&nbs
p; “Yeah, I’m fine, just had to try. One more reason to thank Grandma for these genes. A nice bit of cushioning,” she said with a wry grin as she dusted herself off.

  Charlie’s expert fingers found their way inside the workings of the mechanism, his small alligator clips locking into place on the appropriate terminals. He then ran a separate lead to the exposed power cell of the spectrometer.

  “Okay, here goes nothing.”

  He flipped the relay switch, sending a charge to the locking mechanism. The display panel flickered, then streamed a series of numbers. Moments later, the latch could be heard sliding free with a faint click.

  “Now, let’s hope this wasn’t a toilet paper locker,” he said as he gripped the handle.

  “It wouldn’t be in a locked one. Unless it’s TP made of gold or something.”

  “Yes, Rika, I know. That was a joke.”

  He noted the amused crinkling at the corners of her eyes.

  “Oh, ha-ha. I’ll remember that if there actually is gold TP in here.” He yanked hard. After a moment, the grit-filled hinges finally gave way, allowing the door to swing open.

  “Holy shit,” Rika gasped.

  “You said it.”

  “Uh, what should we do with that?” she asked, looking at the rifle, machine guns, and pair of pistols nestled firmly in their storage racks.

  “We take them with us,” he said, gathering up the boxes of ammunition and adding them to his sled along with the weapons. “I hope to hell we won’t need them, but better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them, right?”

  Rika dug farther into the locker’s contents, pulling out an extendable baton, a can of what appeared to be pepper spray, and a few dozen pairs of zip-tie handcuffs. “Jamal came prepared, I’ll give him that.”

  “But for what? I mean, the odds of finding little green men on a simple test flight to the moon were pretty much zero.”

  “I know. But like you said, better to have them and not need them, right?”

  “A man after my own heart,” he replied. “But this isn’t going to help us with our immediate problems. The solar stills should be producing enough for bare-minimum survival hydration, but we need more than that. Anything else useful in there?”

  “Actually, this might be,” she said, holding up a tub of post-workout protein powder.

  “Excellent. All we need is a whole ton of water to mix it in.”

  “Still, better than nothing, right? At the very least, people can eat a spoonful here and there for nutrition.”

  “And with only a sip of water to wash it down,” he said with a shudder. “But you’re right. It’s better than nothing.”

  Charlie rose to his feet and scanned the vast expanse surrounding them. The twin suns had risen quite high in the sky, and while the rays didn’t seem to be enough to cause serious damage, the two of them were beginning to get a decent sunburn.

  “Come on, let’s head back.”

  “I think we should keep going. We need supplies, Charlie.”

  “Yeah, but the sun is getting intense.”

  “Hey, I’m in command now, so I say we keep going.”

  “Rika, this isn’t the time to be stubborn. If we use up all our energy now, we’ll be of no use to anyone.”

  She thought about his point a moment. “I agree, to an extent, at least. So, we keep going for another half hour. Then we turn back.”

  “Thank you, oh fearless leader.”

  “I’m more of a benevolent dictator,” she said with a chuckle. “Now come on, let’s get a move-on.”

  They made fair time, but with the discovery they came upon after only fifteen minutes, she found herself wishing she’d heeded his advice.

  “We should bury them,” Charlie said, staring at the broken bodies of their friends, lying motionless in the red soil where they’d landed. “We can do it on our own. The others don’t need to know about this. We can just say we never found them.”

  “Yeah,” Rika agreed, swallowing hard. “I-I’ll cover them up until we’ve made a grave.”

  Charlie began digging, while she threw a tarp over the broken bodies of their crewmates. Two of them, to be exact, though with the jumble of limbs, they almost wondered if a third might be in there somewhere.

  They’d been thrown clear of the crash. If the impact itself had not killed them, the rapid deceleration as they hit the ground certainly had.

  Their shoes even came off, Charlie found himself noting, morbidly. That’s how you know it’s a bad accident.

  They worked in silence, piling up the red soil until a shallow grave lay empty.

  “I’ll do it,” Charlie said, sliding the twisted bodies into a hole.

  They then piled the dirt until a little mound was the only sign of anything amiss in the wasteland.

  “I should say something,” Rika muttered. “But I don’t know what to…” She trailed off.

  “It’s okay,” Charlie comforted. “I’ll do it.”

  He proceeded to give the eulogy he’d had building in his head since he buried an unidentified leg the day prior. This time he had names to put with the remains, their uniforms making the identities clear enough. He kept it brief, then, without further ceremony, turned the sled around and began heading back.

  “Let’s walk topside out of the trench on the way back. I think we’ve pretty much picked over everything down here, don’t you think?”

  “Whatever,” Rika replied. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  The pair trudged along the torn ground of the crashed ship’s final landing, scavenging bits and pieces from time to time, but, fortunately, not encountering any further bodies.

  They both knew they’d have many more to bury once they returned to the others. The living needed it, and the dead deserved it.

  Sunburned, exhausted, and covered in red soil, Rika and Charlie set down their loads and sipped from the solar stills as soon as they reached their camp. The makeshift devices had worked, and even in the heat, a mouthful of hot water had never tasted better.

  Despite their aching bodies, they then set back to work, digging holes away from the camp and moving remains. By nightfall, all of the dead were buried.

  Charlie finally lay his weary body down to rest a bit, while Rika decided to make a quick run into the belly of their ship. Looking at the mounds of freshly dug soil, he couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be until the rest of them joined their fallen shipmates.

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was hard work, moving through the interior of the wrecked ship nearest the top cargo bay, but the interior lights were mostly functional, thanks to Charlie’s clever rerouting. Even so, Rika carried a portable light as well as a backup. She had no desire to be stuck in the belly of the beast in the dark. Especially if the hull shifted and she had to make a quick escape.

  Hazards abounded as she plodded along, and much of her time was spent crawling through narrow spaces while avoiding jagged bits of metal and other debris that could cause all manner of unpleasantness if she wasn’t careful.

  It was dangerous, but she pushed on, slowly squeezing past toppled equipment blocking the starboard corridors as she edged her way even farther inside.

  While some of the passageways in the section were intact and passable, far more were either entirely collapsed, or dangerously near. That meant Rika had to be particularly careful as she maneuvered her way through the tangled mess. Even with Charlie’s remote-controlled rover, it had been a bit of a chore scoping out a suitable––and safe––route.

  The lower levels had been much easier to access during the rescue attempt, and, as that had been where the bulk of the crew was located when the event occurred, that was where they had aimed all of their search-and-rescue efforts.

  Now that the survivors were accounted for, the ship’s second-in-command was trying to access something other than crew and supplies. Something that could prove quite valuable, if it was indeed still functional.

  The giant m
ech was pretty damn solid, designed to operate in both the vacuum of space as well as the hostile environmental conditions of Mars. In its travel configuration, its systems were even more robustly protected. She just hoped the electromagnetic clamps holding it in place hadn’t failed during the crash.

  Rika jammed her small pry-bar into the airlock door separating sections of the corridor and pulled hard. The buckled hull had thrown off the alignment all throughout the ship, and there were several seemingly intact doors that she felt likely wouldn’t open without blasting charges or a plasma cutter. This one, however, had some give to it.

  “That’s more like it,” she grunted as the door began to slowly creak open, reluctantly giving up its treasures to the determined woman.

  “Oh, fuck,” she said as she squeezed inside.

  The mech was intact, as she had hoped, and the mag clamps had indeed held it in place during the crash. It was the rest of the equipment that had not fared so well.

  The power cell storage racks had ripped from the walls. Their bolts appeared to have snapped free, sent flying like the hastily discarded buttons popped from the male stripper’s shirt she’d seen in that show in Vegas years ago.

  The units had been thrown all over the place and had battered the compartment, destroying the recharge dock and trickle lines keeping the mech on standby for the flight.

  The main power cells themselves had been removed from the machine for the voyage. It had been deemed safer to store them separately, re-installing them upon arrival. Unfortunately, their steel housings were all bent to hell. There was no chance of them fitting into their cradles in the mech’s massive body. Even with a healthy amount of elbow grease, there was no chance they’d be able to bend them back to straight.

  Rika checked over the metal casings carefully.

  “At least there are no ruptures.” She sighed with relief. A broken cell would mean contamination of the area, and she still wanted to have a better look at her baby.

  She climbed up the side of the mech, popping open the pilot’s access hatch and sliding down the ladder into the belly of the machine. Everything was intact, and the internal backups had kept all systems in low-power standby mode.