by David Ryker
“I’m not going without you!”
“Goddamnit, Maddox! I said get out!”
Everett unfastened her belt and slammed into the console, pushing herself to a weak stance. She looked up at me, her hair slicked to her head with sweat, eyes wide with fear. She could barely stand.
I unclipped myself and leaped forward, grabbing onto the back of Fish’s chair. I stretched out my arm and she staggered toward me, lunging across the gap. Her hand hit my wrist and I locked onto hers. My right hand around the headrest was howling at me, but it didn’t matter.
I dragged her into my chest and clamped my arms around her shoulders, both of us flying backwards towards the door.
“Get Everett out of here!” Volchec shrieked.
“I’m coming back for you!” I roared as the doorway flashed past.
We clattered into the rail on the catwalk and plunged down the steps, pinned against the wall by the force of the spin. The others were already in their rigs, clomping toward the back of the ship.
Greg was in a loose heap. The straps had clean snapped and he was piled like scrap in the corner. I wanted to get to him, but I couldn’t. I had Everett wrapped around me, and if her ribs were broken before, I couldn’t imagine what she was going through just then.
“Parachutes!” she shouted in my ear, pointing quickly to the bench along the wall.
We dropped to our knees, ripping them out with our free hands, our arms still over each other's shoulders.
Mac hit the manual door release and fiery air swirled through the cabin, choking us. I gasped and shoved the shoulder strap of the parachute over Everett’s head. She fumbled for the clasps and I did my own.
Another flap broke off and the ship pitched. Alice, Mac, and Fish all smashed against the side of the hull and the ship began to roll over.
I slid backward and then went weightless in the hold.
The door was nearly fully open and I heard a clanging like bells as Mac tumbled out, closely followed by Fish. Alice scraped along the ceiling and then disappeared into the air outside. Greg followed, nearly within reach for an instant, and then he was gone.
I locked eyes with Everett for a second and then she disappeared too, sucked into the baking air.
My eyes were streaming, my skin on fire. Everything was burning. I had one arm in the parachute, my left, holding it against my shoulder. I couldn’t see anything. Pain lanced through my back as I clattered into the wall, and then there was nothing.
I was spinning, falling. I could feel the air on my skin, in my lungs, cool, fresh. My eyes shot open and I gasped for air. I was outside the Tilt-wing, and plunging towards the surface.
My heart was racing, my legs and arms flailing. I could feel the pack buffeting against my back, but I only had one arm in. I had no idea how high I was, where I was. I flung my right arm over my head, searching for it in the air. It hit my fingers and then disappeared. I grabbed at it again, felt the strap, and pulled it down over my shoulder.
I was swimming in white, the clouds thick and bright. And then the ground was there, close and flat.
I wasn’t secured, but I had to pull the chord. I reached to my shoulder and ripped it. A loud pop echoed in my head and a blinding pain surged through my arm. My shoulder — dislocated. I was wailing, looking wildly around through tears. I couldn’t see anything except a jagged and dark smoke trail. I followed it downward as quickly as I could, the chute fighting the wind above me.
I caught up with the Tilt-wing just in time to see it pummel the earth and disintegrate in a huge fireball. The noise hit me, the shockwave from the explosion sending me into another spin. “Volchec!” I was yelling, but to who I didn’t know.
The cords tangled above me and I felt the wind pick up as I accelerated. I looked up, seeing the canopy tattered and speckled with widening holes. I was plunging toward the earth, faster with every second.
And then I hit.
My legs buckled beneath me and I slumped backward into a pool of pain and dust. It plumed into the air around me, filthy against the white clouds.
I sucked in ragged breaths, my shoulder in agony, my legs throbbing, chest raw, but alive.
The chute fluttered to the ground out of sight and I lay there, staring up at the black line of smoke that traced the way to the crash. To Volchec. To her grave. There was no way she could have gotten out.
I swallowed hard, choking on dust, and blinked. Above, the clouds swirled, milky and white. And below, I lay in the dirt. A tear cut its way through the dust on my cheek and speckled the yellow earth.
I coughed, and then cried, curling sideways into a ball, cradling my shoulder against my chest, and wondering whether anyone else got out with their lives.
We were stranded and without a ship, in the heart of what looked like Free central command, and that was if anyone else had survived.
It took a long time for night to come, and even longer for sleep to find me.
I dreamt of Genesis, of the tube that had birthed me, and of the endless red plains filled with toxic air, and I missed it. I missed that meager life, that sad life.
But there was no going back now. There was only this. Right now. Right there on that yellow, dusty planet. Only the mission. Only getting up and carrying on, and finding the others, and finishing what we started. And there was still a long, long way to go yet.
1
By the time the smoke cleared, they were all gone.
I remember staring up at the clear yellow sky, the waning sun casting streaks of red across it, like long strokes with a bloodied brush, and seeing nothing but the faint glow of stars.
They shone and twinkled, close and distant, heralding dusk. And though they filled the sky, they were all that was there. The Free space station — gone. The destroyer — gone. Every other ship — gone. Dozens and dozens, hundreds, maybe. We didn’t get a good look before the destroyer hit us. They all just… vanished. Except they didn’t ‘vanish,’ because they went somewhere. The question was just where that was, though. We all felt the waves of energy wash down to the surface, rippling through the atmosphere and blowing apart the thick white clouds, and one by one, opening portals, and slipping through them, until there were none left. Katherine Fox and her army were out of reach once more, and we were left alone, stranded, and without a ship, on a planet that none of us recognized, in a system that could be a billion light years from Notia or any sort of rescue.
By all accounts, the situation was grim, and we were all fucked.
I dragged my face out of the dirt with the light of the baking sun still hot on my side and sat up, my right arm cradled limply in my lap. I could flex my fingers, barely — my knuckle was still broken — but my shoulder was still of the socket. The pain was blinding. Throbbing. I had to fix it.
I took a couple of deep breaths and reached across to my wrist. My left hand closed around it and I gritted my teeth, willing myself to do it.
I swallowed, lifted, and pulled it hard out in front of me. I felt the tendons grind over each other, and then the swift pop as it slammed back into the socket. Pain exploded in my arm and neck, bowling me over. My legs thrashed, kicking dust into the air.
I was screaming before I could stop myself, clutching my arm to my chest, my heels scraping on the earth as I tried to scramble away from the pain.
“Red!”
Someone’s voice cut through the rushing of blood in my head and I stopped, my breathing labored.
“Red? Is that you?” It was Everett — close, maybe a hundred meters or something.
I hacked and spat and rolled over, still holding my forearm with my left hand, pushing myself to my knees with my good elbow. “Everett?” I called hoarsely, squinting through the rising dust. “Everett! Is that you?” The sweat was running off my nose, the last dregs of sun still burning my face.
“Red!” Relief broke in her voice and I heard her footsteps growing, a limping gait, but moving.
I turned toward them and staggered to a stance, my ankle
howling. I must have hurt it in the fall, but I could put weight on it, thankfully. My Arcram was digging into my ribs, still buttoned in its holster; my jacket had thankfully kept it attached in the tumble. “Everett,” I sighed, seeing her looming out of the dust.
Her face was bloodied, her cheek and temple grazed. Her clothes were tattered and torn, twigs and leaves sticking out of the holes. Her forearms were cut and nicked raw, and her hair was ruffled and flowing out of the loose bobble that had tied it up, one half hanging over her eyes, wide and filled with fear. She’d come down hard, same as me, but must have landed in the trees. My eyes flitted over her shoulder. Down the rise I could see a forest; tall, gnarled trees with a thick canopy of pale leaves. The earth was dry and cracked in all directions, the landscape bathed in unrelenting sunlight judging by the lack of greenery. The ridge I was on was less of a hill and more of a dune, with just a few sparse patches of browned desert grass clinging to life.
She stumbled toward me and flung her arms out, burying her head in my shoulder. My shoulder sang with pain but it didn’t faze me. My free arm circled her back and we held each other, breathing hard, her body pressed against mine. I felt her shudder, a few retching sobs escaping her lips. Her arms squeezed harder, the skin of her cheek hot against my neck.
“I thought you were dead,” she squeezed out between ragged breaths.
I let my eyes close, softening into her embrace. “Me too.”
How long we stayed like that, I couldn’t say, but it wasn’t until the first wave of energy rippled through the atmosphere that we untangled ourselves and looked up.
The thick haze of white cloud overhead, not thick enough to dull the onslaught of sun, rolled like the waves of an upended sea and thinned, the first glimpses of the open sky above showing through. Our arms stayed around each other, our eyes turned upward. We couldn’t see which ship had opened a wormhole, but we knew that one had. Neither of us needed to say it.
I turned to face her, studying the lines of dried blood running down her face, the beads of sweat on her skin following them. The heat was palpable, the air thick like soup. I sucked in heavy lungfuls, feeling the sun prickling on my skin. “We need to get out of this heat,” I croaked, my throat suddenly dry.
She swallowed and looked at me, nodding.
The world crashed back into being around us and we prized ourselves apart, arms still linked, and looked around.
On one side was the darkened forest, and on the other, an endless plain stretched out; gently undulating hills of scorched earth and grass, unbroken, and definitely without any hope of water or shade. My throat was chalky just looking at it.
We kept panning around, stopping only when both of our eyes came to rest on the column of black smoke billowing from beyond the trees, a few clicks to the north.
“Volchec,” we both said in unison, the word hushed, like saying it was going to make what we both feared come true.
We were moving before either of us realized, lurching down the slope toward the treeline, arm in arm for support.
We reached the trees and Everett hissed, her toe catching an exposed and bulbous root. She staggered, clutching at her midriff and swearing before she leaned back against the knobbled trunk.
I turned, my hands hovering at her sides as she prodded herself, feeling along her ribs with gentle precision. She’d had them broken by the Tenshi back on Notia, and I didn’t want to think about what the crash and the fall had done. My shoulder was out of place, my knuckle cracked at best, but I couldn’t imagine how much pain Everett was in, or what sort of damage was going on under the skin.
She unzipped her jacket and I moved forward, helping her out of it. She was doing her best to keep her shit together, but even as tough as she was I could tell it was hurting her. The fact that she’d dragged herself up at all and followed my mewling up the hill was a testament to just how much of a tough motherfucker she was.
She peeled the hem up, exposing a flat and muscled stomach, but what drew my attention was the patchwork of black and purple starting at her navel and moving up under her knuckles around the fabric bunched below her armpit. I could see a few uneven ridges under the skin and gently ran my thumb along the line of her bottom rib. She pulled away, doubled up and growled in pain before I even touched it. The Tenshi had broken it, and the fall had damn near shattered what was left. I didn’t get a chance to check the others, and anyway, there was nothing I could do — not there at least. The ship was our best bet — if it was intact, in any sort of sense, then we’d be able to get at the first aid stuff, maybe even send out a signal for help.
My eyes met Everett’s, wide and scared, sheened with tears of pain and I set my jaw. “We have to keep moving.”
She let her shirt down and nodded. “Yeah.”
She lifted her arm and I put my neck under it so she could lean on me, and then we set off, picking our way carefully through the forest.
The trees were stout, hard-wooded, and dark. Their twisted trunks, growing in braids, rose out of the orange earth, their thick leathery roots spreading widely, intermingling with those of the next like a huge, boned carpet. The shade afforded from the canopy was something, at least, the wide, stiff leaves keeping most of the sun off. I stared up at them, seeing as the low hanging sun glistened off the spines that ran down their edges. They looked sharp, judging by how the light was hitting them, and by the grazes and cuts on Everett’s body. She’d plowed right through, like hitting a layer of knives, and hadn’t said a word about it.
A quiet babbling cut through the forest, and we stopped, panting in the hot air. Water, running somewhere nearby. I pricked my ears and turned toward it, honing in. I realized only then that there wasn’t any other sound — no birds, or animals, no wind. Nothing. Just the stoic graveyard silence of the ancient trees, the slow beating of my heart in my chest, and the minute drops of sweat as they ran down my temples and fell onto the baked earth.
“You hear that?” I said, my throat parched.
She nodded, using her free hand to gesture deeper into the woods.
We set off again, even slower this time, the progress painful. I was weakening, and Everett was becoming more of a dead weight with each step. I patted myself on the thighs for the tenth time just to make sure, but my communicator definitely wasn’t in my pockets. When the Tilt-wing had come down, it had flown out. I wasn’t surprised with all the spinning. Whether it was on the ship or in the air, I couldn’t have guessed. I didn’t remember it going, but I didn’t have it, so it was somewhere either in the wreckage of our ship, or out there in the plains. Either way, I wasn’t getting it back most likely. I just hoped the others, if they made it down safely, would be heading to the wreck, too.
We picked our way around a colossal tree and noticed that the dried strands of dead grass underfoot were giving way to green shoots. They thickened and got taller as the sound of the water grew, and before we knew it we were up to our waists in green. Another wave of energy rippled through us, shaking the leaves of the trees overhead. They rustled and then settled like a gust of wind had swept through.
We both stared up at them for a second, and then regained ourselves, pressing forward.
The ground softened underfoot and all at once we were sloshing through mud.
Everett went down first, to her knees, and then onto her hands. We splashed down into the water, a thin and silty creek threading its way through the trees.
The water was cool, and it took everything I had not to plunge my face into it and drink my fill. I didn’t know what the hell was in it — I didn’t even know what planet this was.
Everett swallowed, licking her lips, and stared at the shimmering surface.
“Don’t,” I said, my throat scratchy and dry.
She sighed. “I know — it’s just so damn hot.”
I lay on my side in the water, submerging my injured shoulder, and let the coolness seep in, easing the pain. Everett did the same and we both lay there for a few minutes, letting the water
wash over us.
I could see the sun moving beyond the leaves, sending white needles through gaps in the canopy.
“We should move,” Everett said between tired breaths. “It’ll be dark soon, and I don’t want to find out what’s lurking in this forest after dark.”
I levered myself up, dripping and muddy, and looked around, feeling the droplets running down my neck and under my collar. “Okay.”
I pulled myself to a stance and waded to the boggy shore, offering my good hand and pulling Everett to her feet. She put her arm around my neck again and we set off again. In minutes, the heat had sucked all the moisture out of our clothes and skin. We were dry and cooking before we’d made it out of earshot of the stream.
Two more waves hit us by the time the trees started to thin. Overhead, the clouds had started to disperse like milky sprays on a yellow canvas. Beyond, we could see the vague shapes of the Free armada. There were less of them than when we’d come through the wormhole. I didn’t think every ship had the ability — but one was opening a portal and they were slipping through a few at a time.
We both came to a halt and surveyed the scene beyond. The forest was a band that followed the stream, providing enough meager moisture to sustain the trees. It had hidden the crash site from us, but now that it was staring us in the face, there was no getting away from the devastation.
The ship had come down hard, still spinning, and had carved a chunk of the tree tops out, churning into the dry ground, exhuming the clay-rich and dark earth beneath.
The impact crater was three times the size of our Tilt-wing, and the deep trench leading to the wreckage was hundreds of meters long. I shuddered to think how fast it must have been going when it hit. Did Volchec get out? Could she have?
I couldn’t make out any details of the wreck from where we were standing; all I could see was the thick trail of black smoke and the dim glow of flames.