The Forbidden Spacemage

by Dan Oakley

  I wiped my visor clear of blood and pulverized lizard.

  “That was a close call,” Bobby said. “Did you do that, Tomas?”

  I took a shaky breath and nodded looking around at our casualties.

  We’d lost Ensign Borrack and Ensign Marteen. There was no sign of Zarak, but no remains either.

  I looked around, wondering if he’d even made it into the room.

  “Where is Zarak?”

  Bobby looked around and then shrugged. “No idea. He was standing right next to me when we came in and started shooting.”

  “Okay, it looks like I’m the most senior man here,” Draylan said. “Who is still with us?”

  The hulking blood-splattered forms of Bayliss and Cartwright got up in unison from their shooting positions. Bobby and I stepped forward, and I pointed at the large metal shelving where I’d hidden Trella.

  “I need to check on Trella, but I think she’s okay. She got knocked out.”

  “Okay, you do that. Defense squad protocol means we should barricade ourselves in the room so we can regroup, but I don’t much fancy staying here.”

  I looked around the room and had to agree with him. The room was covered with our colleagues’ blood as well as lizard remains.

  I walked over and knelt beside Trella. I touched her shoulder, and she stirred, blinking.

  “What happened?” she asked, sitting up quickly and then putting a hand to the side of her helmet, looking distinctly woozy.

  “You were hit by the lizard’s tail. Got knocked out,” I explained.

  She put her hands out and tried to pull herself up using the wall for support. I was going to suggest she take it easy but then thought better of it. We needed to get out of there before the smell of blood attracted more lizards.

  When she straightened up, she looked around the room, taking in the chaos and devastation. I heard her sharp intake of breath.

  “What happened here?” Her gaze focused on the mess that used to be Ensign Marteen on the floor. “Oh no,”

  “The ElectroLaser guns didn’t work against the lizard,” I explained. “They barely slowed the thing down. Ensign Borrack is dead, and so is Ensign Marteen. There’s no sign of Zarak either. We don’t know what happened to him.”

  Before I could explain further, there was a creaking sound, and one of the small cupboards in the base of the unit next to Bobby opened.

  We all turned to look, guns trained on the opening door.

  “Don’t shoot!” Zarak said, curling himself out of the cupboard.

  It was astounding to see that a fully grown man had managed to squeeze into such a small hiding place.

  “You hid?” Bobby asked, his voice incredulous. “Our teammates were dying, and you hid.”

  “I was acting as a sniper,” Zarak said defensively. “I figured I could get some good shots in if the lizard couldn’t see me.”

  That was blatantly untrue. The cupboard door had been shut securely, so there was no way he would be able to shoot from there. He had hidden to keep out of danger.

  I wanted to tell Zarak he disgusted me, but I felt Trella’s hand on my shoulder. “We need to get out of here. There was a reason the scientists left. This administration building should be a place of safety, but somehow it seems to attract the lizards.”

  “We need to get back to the ship,” Zarak said. “It’s carnage down here. We’ve lost half of our team, and we don’t have a leader anymore. They can’t expect us to continue the mission.”

  “Our mission is to continue until zero men standing,” Trella said.

  “What does that mean?” Zarak scowled.

  “It means we do or die. Either we find the scientists, or we die trying.”

  “I can’t believe this!” Zarak shouted. “I would never have agreed to come on the mission if I’d been told that!”

  Bobby was silently staring at the ground. I couldn’t help thinking we’d all been tricked into doing this mission. I still didn’t understand why there were no senior members of staff with us. Maybe they didn’t want to risk essential personnel, but then why risk Trella? Why were they willing to sacrifice Trella when she was the ship’s mage. Without her, they would be lost.

  “I can see why the commander wouldn’t care about the survival of a bunch of rookies,” I said quietly to Trella. “But you’re important. Without a jump mage, the Morellic can’t jump clear of any danger.”

  Trella didn’t answer and wouldn’t meet my gaze. What was I missing here? Why were they prepared to sacrifice Trella?

  “We’ll discuss all this later. First, we need to finish searching this building and then leave. We stick together from now on.” She turned to Zarak. “I’m in charge, and I say no more hiding in cupboards.”

  Zarak looked outraged. He flushed red behind his visor.

  “Hang on a minute,” Draylan said. “I should be in charge. You’re just a mage.”

  “Just a mage?” Trella’s tone made Draylan hold up his hands.

  “What I meant was I’m part of the defense squad so I should lead.”

  “I know what you meant, but you are incorrect. I will lead the rest of this mission. Now, let’s get out of this room and search the rest of the building before we get any more lizards sniffing around.”

  We left the room, gingerly stepping around Ensign Borrack’s remains and the blood on the floor. My heart was beating triple time as we checked the rest of the building, but we found nothing. No scientists, and thankfully, no more lizards.

  When we assembled back down in the lobby area, Draylan turned to Trella. “So, Mage, what do we do now?”

  Trella looked out of the large transparent doors and pointed towards the jungle. “We go back out there.”

  Chapter 21

  Last time we’d entered the jungle, I’d been reluctant and wary, but that paled in comparison to how I felt now.

  Since then, we’d found out our ElectroLasers were practically worthless against the lizards. If Trella was taken out, we were done for, not only because she alone could jump us back to the ship, but because she was the only one who could consistently stop the lizards with her magic.

  If this had been a training scenario, I’d be patting myself on the back right about now. After all, I’d obliterated a lizard very effectively. I still had blood and guts splattered all over my armor to prove it. The trouble was, my magic hadn’t worked quickly enough to save the lives of the rest of the team. And even worse, I didn’t know if I could repeat it if we came across another mutant lizard.

  I tugged at my uncomfortable suit of armor and swatted flies as we marched across the clearing towards the perimeter of the jungle. The armor was clunky and heavy, and to add insult to injury, it didn’t seem to be effective.

  I checked the battery power on my suit and saw it was already half depleted. The cooling system was guzzling a lot of energy. I felt bad for Bobby having to do all this without any cooling at all.

  Trella insisted we go the long way, looping around the other side of the building to make sure there weren’t any unwanted surprises.

  But there was nothing untoward. No bodies or bones, just the dark green plants and vines squeezing through cracks in the stone as the jungle pushed its creeping tendrils into the clearing.

  As we reached the perimeter, Draylan holstered his weapon and said, “Hang on a minute, guys. What’s this?”

  I turned and saw he was pointing to some wire fencing. It was almost transparent. He didn’t touch it but ripped a leaf from a nearby vine and threw it at the fence. I guess it had once been electrified, and he wanted to check if there was power running through it.

  When nothing happened to the leaf, he took a closer look.

  “It’s been severed…”

  Trella inspected the remains of the fence. “Interesting. It’s not a clean cut, and there’s no sign of corrosion.”

  “You mean this wasn’t cut with tools, and it didn’t happen naturally,” I said. “You think it was the lizards?”

&
nbsp; I stared at the fence in horror, imagining a pack of large lizards tearing through the fencing with their teeth as the scientists ran for their lives.

  The power must have already been down by then.

  “It’s solar powered, right?” I asked. “So why wasn’t the protective fence working?”

  Trella dropped the fragment of the fence she’d been holding. “That’s a good question, Tomas.”

  But she didn’t answer. Instead, she turned away and led us onwards into the jungle.

  It wasn’t long before Bobby started to wilt. Vines as thick as my arms blocked our route. Zarak walked out front with Draylan and the other defense squad men, using laser knives to slash through the dense growth. Trella walked behind them, and I held up the rear with Bobby. We should have had the easiest time of it with the others clearing the path, but tripping on roots and snake-like vines was inevitable.

  I was trying to take most of Bobbie’s weight and support him as we trekked through the jungle. The heat had zapped his energy. I knew he was fit. The fight in the combat room had shown me that.

  “I’m slowing everyone down,” Bobby said. “Maybe I should hole up somewhere.”

  He must have known as well as I did that what he was suggesting would be a death sentence. Alone, he couldn’t hope to fend off a lizard attack. We didn’t even do a good job when it was the whole team against one lizard let alone one-on-one.

  “It’s not much further,” I said, even though I had no idea how much further we had to travel. “Anyway, you’re probably the fittest guy I’ve ever known. You ran rings around me during that combat session. What’s your secret?”

  Bobby took a shaky breath. “EPO. Erythropoietin. It’s part of our regime in the defense squad. Some of the planets we go to have low oxygen. The EPO helps us work at low levels.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize. What other stuff do they give you?”

  Bobby took a deep breath. “A few different things. Mainly vaccines against the common diseases. Some silver adjuncts to fight off bacteria, that kind of thing.”

  I shifted his arm so he was leaning heavily on my shoulders.

  “I don’t think I can make it, Tomas,” Bobby said after another few minutes.

  I thought for a moment. “Hold up,” I called to the others through the comms system. “I’m exchanging headsets with Bobby for a while to give him a break.”

  Despite Bobby’s protests, I gingerly took off my headset, and Trella stopped to help Bobby with his. As soon as my helmet was removed, I was shocked by the humidity in the air. It felt like a hot, sticky soup traveling down to my lungs when I inhaled. The air smelled earthy and damp, but even so, it was a relief to take that thing off my shoulders. The flaming helmet weighed a ton.

  It only took Bobby a couple of minutes with the cooling system and the air filtration to start feeling better.

  He must have thanked me over a dozen times. But I shrugged it off, feeling bad I hadn’t come up with the idea earlier. I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and thought about a freezing night on Terrano to keep myself cool. It didn’t work, of course. I was sweating buckets, but I could put up with that for a while to give Bobby a break.

  I thought it would be a good idea for all the team to take a turn with the dodgy headset so no one person suffered too much. Although I had a feeling Zarak wouldn’t like that plan.

  “We are heading to the center of the mining operation,” Trella said. “The main building there contains the communications hub as well as the officers’ residences. It’s the last secure place the scientists could have hidden.”

  “If we don’t find them there, can we jump back to the ship?” Zarak whined.

  “If we don’t find them there, we will report to the commander, and let him know. He’ll decide what we do next,” Trella rebuffed.

  “This is all because his flaming sister is on the planet,” Zarak said. “One person, and we will have to risk our lives to save her just because she’s the commander’s sister. This sucks.”

  Zarak and I didn’t agree on many things, but I had to admit that this did suck. There was something about the situation that concerned me too. It seemed to be common knowledge that the commander’s sister was one of the scientists on the mission. That was why he was so dedicated to getting her back, but in that case, why had he sent a rookie mage, two rookie defense force team members and a couple of ensigns to Tor. We had no high-ranking person to lead the search, and though I was confident in Trella’s abilities. I found it strange.

  But I was too hot to dwell on it.

  When we reached the mine, my spirits sank. Most of the mine was ruined. Plants grew through the brickwork of the buildings, decimating them. One large tree had grown entirely through a section of the compound, lifting the roof high above the existing building. The area was filled with discarded motorized carts and wagons. The opening of the mineshaft was almost covered up by massive weaving, tangled vines. The jungle was reclaiming its territory here too. There were plenty of objects scattered around the place but no sign of the human scientists or their defense squad escort. The area had a desolate feel.

  I leaned against a lump of hard sheetrock to catch my breath. The sweat dripping from my forehead stung my eyes.

  Draylan tapped the device on his wrist and announced there were no signs of human life. Then paused, frowned at the device and said, “Hang on a minute, I’ve got something.”

  “Signs of life?” Trella asked.

  He nodded. “Yes…they are moving in that building over there.” He pointed to a square, two-story building that looked mostly intact.

  “Are you so sure it’s human?” Zarak asked nervously. “It could be another one of those lizards.”

  He shook his head. “No, the vital signs definitely match a human. This device only tracks humans. It measures their exact body temperature, and the electromagnetic radiation signature they emit.” He shook his head in disbelief and then smiled. “We have a survivor.”

  It was amazing how that piece of news galvanized us and gave us the energy to carry on. Morale had been severely dented by the horror we’d seen less than an hour ago, but if we managed to get one person safely returned to the Morellic, perhaps this mission wasn’t a total disaster.

  “Keep your guard up,” Trella warned. “And when we locate the survivor set your headsets to vocalize, or they won’t be able to hear us.”

  “I just hope it’s the commander’s sister,” Zarak said. “Then we can go back to the ship.”

  I was looking forward to getting back to the ship and off this planet just as much as Zarak. They might want to repeat the rescue mission to recover the bodies, but they’d need heavier artillery and a larger team to fight off the creatures next time.

  We stepped inside the squat building and did a quick reconnaissance. Cartwright used his wrist device to send out a harmless penetrating beam to work out the layout.

  “Nine corridors,” he said. “And twenty-seven large rooms.”

  “It looks like our survivor is at the far end of the building,” Draylan said, pointing to the miniature screen on Cartwright’s wrist device.

  We all set off together, keeping our weapons ready in case of an attack.

  As he neared the end of the corridor, Draylan turned back to look at us. He smiled. “This must be it,” he said, wrapping his fingers around the door handle.

  He pushed open the door, and I waited for sounds of relief from the person inside, cries of thanks that they’d been rescued. But there was nothing but silence.

  Cartwright and Bayliss stepped inside, too, and Trella followed.

  Still more silence.

  “Oh, I wish they would just get this over with so we can get back,” Zarak said through gritted teeth. “Every second we spend on this planet puts our lives at greater risk.”

  I didn’t fancy listening to Zarak’s moaning and decided to check out our survivor for myself.

  I stepped in after Trella, but there was nothing ther
e. It was a room filled with boxes of prepackaged food and water tanks.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Draylan began tapping the device on his wrist. “I don’t know. Just a minute ago it said there was a human in this very room and now they’ve gone.”

  Trella put her hands on her hips. “Maybe you were mistaken.”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t. I saw it.”

  Maybe he’d seen what he wanted to see. After everything we’d been through, perhaps he wanted a positive outcome so much he’d imagined detecting a human survivor.

  Obstinately, he shook his head again. “This makes no sense. Is there any silver in here? Or silver alloy? Sometimes that can block the sensors.”

  “I can’t see any,” I said.

  We searched the room, even looking in the smaller boxes of prepackaged food, but there was nothing there. I checked the expiry date on one of the meals.

  “Maybe we should eat?” The water pack in my suit was nearly empty too. “We should fill up with water.”

  Trella nodded. “Good idea. The tanks look good.” She turned to Bayliss. “Can you check the water is okay before we fill up our tanks?”

  He nodded, kneeled down beside one of the tanks and filled a small bottle from the tap, he shook the container, and the water remained clear. “It looks ok to me. No bacterial or algal contamination.”

  He began to fill up the section of his suit that stored his water.

  When he’d finished, I filled my own integrated water storage sack and then unwrapped one of the meals. I had no idea what it was supposed to be, but it tasted like beef jerky. Not exactly tasty, but it would keep my energy levels up, and that was the main thing.

  While everyone else replenished their water supplies and had something to eat, I walked back out into the corridor to check we were still alone.

  The corridor was empty, but I had a strange urge to look upwards, and as I did, there was a slight movement. But it was so minor I wasn’t sure whether or not I’d imagined it.

  I frowned and raised my weapon.

  It looked like some pipes ran along the ceiling behind a metal grid.