by David Ryker
I could hear the scraping of the line under me, feel it digging into my skin. Everett cried out, crashing into the pile of crates at the bottom. A second later, I clattered into her. Pain rushed up from my feet and plumed inside my head. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed, but either way, darkness came, and it swallowed me whole.
I regained consciousness sometime during the night and reached blindly upward. I could feel Everett’s body under mine, warm, but I was shivering. I touched something soft and pulled it toward me. It wouldn’t budge. I tugged it again and everything shifted. Some boxes fell and the fabric came free. I pulled it over us and felt as the fallen boxes settled over it, entombing us. But it didn’t matter, we were warm, and safe.
I let sleep find look for me again, cocooned next to Everett in the darkness.
Her breath was slow and warm on my neck, her arm around my ribs. I held her head and pressed my face against her hair, breathing deeply, burying myself in the feeling of safety I found in her arms.
Soon after, the shivering stopped, and sleep came back.
I dreamt of claws and teeth, and when morning dragged itself over the horizon, the reality of things wasn’t much better.
3
“Just stick it in,” she said, looking me dead in the eye.
I was shaking. “I don’t know about this, Dem.”
“Just do it, before I change my mind,” she urged.
“But, I—”
“Look, here,” she said, pointing with her finger. “Right there.”
The needle hovered above her darkened skin. I could see the rib broken and jutting out against the surface and she wanted me to jam the needle right into the break.
She was holding the hem of her shirt up, breathing quickly. I didn’t like this, and the stem-gel wasn’t designed for this sort of application, though it’d seemed to have worked on my shoulder, and we didn’t really have any other options.
“Do it or get the fuck off me,” she growled, her eyes suddenly hard.
“It’s going to hurt like—”
“Just stick it in the fucking break—”
I plunged it into her skin between my thumb and forefinger, pushing down with my left hand on the surrounding ribs. The plunger fell and injected the stem-gel right into the gap between the bones.
My palm pressed the snapped ends back into place and I felt them grind against the needle as the break closed.
She howled and writhed under me. We’d decided that me straddling her would be the best way to keep her still if she tried to fight me off, and she was.
I dragged the needle out and kept pressure on with my left hand, blood spilling out of the little hole and over my knuckles. I tossed the syringe over my shoulder and leaned backward out of the way of a swipe, grabbing her wrist with my right hand. I had her left pinned under my knee.
I couldn’t imagine the sort of pain she was in, but her knees hitting me in the back, her heels clanging against the steel floor of the living quarters, and the scream that was as good as deafening me went some way to conveying it. But I had to keep pressing. If I let up, the bones wouldn’t be aligned when they knit. The stem-gel would do its work, bonding them, but they needed to be straight first.
She yelled herself raw and then fell quiet, breathing hard, her eyes rolling in her head as she she passed out from the pain.
I’d jammed the needle right between the broken bones and then shoved them all back together — and I’d not done it gently. I was surprised she’d lasted as long as she had. At least my shoulder was already back in place when she’d injected me — and that still hurt like a motherfucker. She’d put stem-gel right into my cuff on the thin basis that it would help repair the localized damage. She was right. It had.
I counted to a hundred, like she’d done, and then gingerly released pressure, seeing whether the bones would spring back out. They didn’t. The gel was taking hold. It wasn’t a permanent fix by any means, but temporarily, it would work. At least until we could figure out how the hell to get off-world.
I sighed and rolled off her, breathing hard, massaging my aching shoulder. When we’d come to in the morning, we were cocooned in boxes and clothes. The crates that were in the hold, all full of the civilian clothing that we’d taken to Notia, along with the crates containing our own belongings and clothing, our emergency supplies and rations, all the spare bedding for the living quarters, as well as all the crates with our equipment; they’d all been thrown around and blasted open. Everything inside, including the foam padding, had come loose. A bunch of it had flown out, but there was still enough to form a decent sized pile underneath the catwalk next to the door to the living quarters, and when we’d woken up, that’s where we were, among it all in a pile of laundry. But, stinking or not, it’d kept us warm enough not to slip into hypothermia in the night.
We’d unfurled ourselves from each other and dug our way out, shaking a thick layer of frost off everything.
I helped Everett up, glanced out at the rear doors, still open, the morning sun already burning down on the plains, and turned back to the ship. The cockpit door was overhead, half open, the interior dark. The nose was buried in the ground, so no light was coming in through the windows.
“You okay?” I said as Everett stood up next to me, knee deep in clothing and upended crates.
She nodded, touching at her stomach and ribs. “Yeah, I’m okay—” she hissed and swore, lifting her shirt. The bruises were darkening, the raised lumps of broken ribs even more pronounced. “I need to deal with this,” she said pragmatically, her eyes moving to my shoulder, my arm still held across my chest. “You good?”
“Dislocated — but I popped it back in.”
She thought for a second, and then nodded. “Come on. If we can find the first aid kit, we might be ok.” She smirked a little. “Old field-trick I learned, though it won’t be a party.”
I sighed. “When is it ever?”
I stared down at Everett, unconscious on the floor of the living quarters, her ribs still exposed, bruised and swollen — but not broken. I breathed a sigh of relief and stretched out my shoulder. It was still hurting, but at least I had some mobility. I flexed my hand slowly, feeling the gauze tight around my knuckles. I massaged them gently, letting my eyes drift up. Everett had dosed my hand with stem-gel too, but it was far from fighting-ready. We were right under the cockpit, but neither of us had dared venture up. Everett had steered us straight toward the first aid kit, and we’d both concerned ourselves with that. But now, in the silence of the moment, I was suddenly aware that just a few meters above us, Volchec’s corpse was probably sitting in the pilot’s chair, mangled and —
I cut off the train of thought and sucked in a deep breath, forcing down the wave of nausea rising in my guts. I cleared my throat and knelt next to Everett, pulling her shirt back down. I laid her arms on her stomach and pushed her folded-up jacket under her head. She was breathing quickly, but she seemed stable.
I watched her for a few more seconds, wishing that she’d wake up so that we could both ignore the cockpit together, but she didn’t.
I kept rubbing my knuckles and then went back to the door, climbing up the slope toward it. I pulled myself through and leaned back. The ship was tilted at nearly thirty degrees. Just moving around was a task, and with the crates and debris, it was practically impossible. We’d cleared a little gap in front of the door, but it didn’t make much difference. I was just thankful that the interior of the ship was cool. Outside it was sweltering. I could feel the temperature steadily rising in the hold, the sun heating the ship’s metal shell. The nose was buried in the earth, which would keep the living quarters liveable, at least.
I lingered at the door, looking out at the crosscut of yellowed sky beyond the rear doors. Where the hell were the others?
I rapped on the steel rail of the catwalk steps and sighed. There was no getting away from it anymore. It was time.
I climbed the staircase and levered myself toward the h
alf-open cockpit door, slipping through the gap.
Inside was dark and cold, the air thick with dust. The windshield had been blown in and the controls were all piled over with dirt at the front. The four chairs stood stoically, facing the earth. The space smelled of death.
I swallowed, clenching my shaking fist and let myself down the slope toward the seat Mac had been in. Those last moments, spinning down through the atmosphere, flashed in my mind. I watched as Mac unbuckled himself and ran for the door. I looked at Fish’s seat and he did the same.
I stepped around it and stumbled down to Everett’s, my hands curling around the headrest. I knew Volchec was there, in my peripheral, but I couldn’t bear to turn. The soil crunched and ground against the steel under my boots, my breath quiet in my ears.
A sound behind me snapped my attention back to the door and I spun right past what was in the pilot’s seat.
“Red,” Everett said, her voice small in the distance. She was leaning against the frame, her hand on her ribs, a permanent wince on her face. She looked tired. I felt tired.
I watched as her eyes slowly drifted to the back of Volchec’s chair. They stayed there. I urged them to come back, but they didn’t. I knew I had to look.
I turned slowly, someone else’s hands moving my head.
She was slumped forward in her harness, hands still at the controls, up to her elbows in dirt. She was steering until she’d hit the ground, and then probably after. But I had no idea why. Why hadn’t she gone for the door after we were out? She could have made it. I swallowed, looking at her, head on her chest, strained against the harness. Her hair was flopped over, covering her face.
I stayed there, listening as Everett limped down the slope, going from chair to chair like I had. I lifted my arm without looking and she took it, standing against me. We both stared at Volchec, neither of us really sure what to do, half expecting her to draw breath and sit up straight, say something to ease our tension. To cut the stagnant air and open up a vein to the surface. To let in some freshness, some life. Though there wasn’t much of that outside as it was.
I exhaled slowly and reached out.
“What are you doing?” Everett said, her voice hushed.
I swallowed. “We have to get her out of here.”
“And then what?”
I couldn’t tear my eyes from Volchec, the vague outline of her bruised cheek showing between the strands of her matted hair. “I don’t know… Bury her?”
“In that earth out there?” It came out strained. “It’s rock hard — and fifty degrees. You’d pass out from heat exhaustion before you even broke ground.”
“Then we wait until—”
“Dark?” She basically scoffed that one. “You really want to risk that again?”
My hand paused, centimeters from Volchec’s face.
“We’ve got basically no water — most of the rations are gone, lost in the fall. We’re in trouble, Red — we’re in serious trouble.” She was grave. Cold. Honest. “We don’t know where we are — what planet we’re even on. We don’t know if anyone’s coming — we don’t know if anyone else is alive. We have to be smart about this.” She sighed. “I don’t want to leave her here any more than you do, but… What other choice do we have?”
My hand didn’t drop. It just hovered.
She swallowed, still standing against me. “We’ve got bigger things to worry about now. Water. Shelter. Surviving. We could be here for a while — maybe indefinitely. We need to focus, see what we can salvage from the ship, figure out what the hell we’re going to do, because we need to do something, or we’re not going to last another night.”
My hand started to close slowly, but then it stopped. I reached out, brushing her hair aside, pushing my fingers against her cold neck. Nothing was moving under the skin, the blood stagnant in her veins.
“What are you doing?” Everett asked.
I let my hand fall away, hanging my head. “Nothing,” I muttered. “Just checking.”
4
On the second day, we decided to conserve our energy. We were both beaten up, and we had enough food for a few more. Water was our main issue, but going out in the heat was a great way to exhaust ourselves, and without being at our best, we doubted we’d get very far. The fall and the first trek had really taken it out of us. We needed rest. On top of that, if the others were heading back, there was no point wasting our energy or time going for water — which meant going back to the forest — when they could do it in far fewer steps, with AC, and carry much more back. The closest I got to physical activity was climbing up the hull to the ramp and standing in the shade of the tail, looking out into the heat haze for any sign of them.
There wasn’t any.
The only thing that I could see was an endless desert, and evidence that if they’d gotten a better shot at me, those creatures would have torn me limb from limb. My trousers were ripped up, but it looked like the tough leather of my boot had taken the brunt of the swipe. It was cut nearly right through and they were rated as both stab and bulletproof. I ran my fingers down the gouge in the material, and then knelt at the edge of the ramp and touched the claw marks there. One had reached up and gone for me, hitting only steel, and yet it had still cut into it. I wasn’t sure if it was the depth or the width of them that unnerved me more. I swallowed and traced the lines off the edge, looking at all the cut marks in the hard ground underneath us. Three meters didn’t seem very high all of a sudden.
I couldn’t tell whether it was just a few of them moving around a lot, or a lot of them moving around a little bit. Either way, it sent chills down my spine.
I patted at my ribs instinctively, reminding myself that the Arcram was there. Footsteps behind me dragged my eyes from the claw marks and I turned to help Everett up the last stretch of slope and onto the flat of the ramp. She was still in pain, but seemed to be doing better. The stem-gel was doing its work.
She held up a device like a remote control with two prongs on the end of it and waved it gently in the warm current of air flowing across the tail. The machine beeped and she brought it down in front of her and tapped a few things into the little screen, sighing. I couldn’t tell if it was a good or a bad one.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Just checking some things,” she said quietly, squinting into the haze. “I still don’t know where the fuck we are, but this thing was in what was left of the survival kit.” She shook the device.
“And what is that, exactly?”
She pursed her lips and stared at it. “A machine that’s very well equipped to tell us exactly how fucked we are.”
I laughed a little. “Oh?”
She held it up for me to see. “Atmospheric makeup — seventy-six percent nitrogen, seventeen percent oxygen, five percent carbon dioxide — the rest…” She groaned. “Well, it’s not good. That’s why you can’t catch your breath. It’s also why it’s so fucking hot. A hundred fifteen degrees already, and it’s not even noon. Days are longer here, too.” She shook the device again. “Tells us where we are on the planet, the rotational speed, temperature, other stuff like that.”
I sucked in a deep lungful of thick air. She was right, I couldn’t catch my breath. It was like I’d just run ten kilometers. “Is there any good news?”
She smiled. “Yeah, well, the good news is that we’re pretty close to the pole.”
“And how is that good news?”
“Because it’s nearly twice as hot at the equator. We’d have died in seconds if we’d have landed just a few hundred clicks south.”
I set my teeth. “And which way is south?”
She looked at me for a second, and then pointed in the direction of the trench, toward the forest.
“Well, shit.” I shook my head. If that was the direction we came in, then it meant that Alice, Mac, and Fish had all been dropped out south of us, where it was hotter. If that was the case, then maybe they’d all have fried already. No, I couldn’t think like that. “What else?�
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She bit her lip, cracked half a smile, not saying what both of us were thinking, and then started tapping into it again. “It’s called a Survival Meter.”
“Catchy.”
“Does a lot of stuff, but not much of it useful for us right now.” She turned it around and I looked at the screen. I could see a planet spinning, the angle of axis showing above it, as well as the time it took to rotate, the distance from the sun, the temperature, and other readouts. It looked like the planet hadn’t cooled or developed a sufficiently thick enough atmospheric shell for total habitation. That was bad news in itself, because it meant that there wouldn’t be a Federation Colony here. There wouldn’t be anything here.
I reached out and tapped a few buttons. The words ‘Water Divination Mode’ flashed up and the meter started beeping softly. “At least we have that,” I said, gesturing to it.
Everett turned it around and started mouthing the instructions. “All we have to do is put the prongs in the ground.” She flicked one of the metal spikes on top gently and waves danced across the screen before settling again. “It detects subterranean water flow through vibrations in the earth.”
“That’s something, at least.”
She scoffed. “You want to go down there and dig for it?”
“We can rock-paper-scissors for it?”
“Or I could just order you to — I am technically in command now.” She smiled at me from under her sweat-slicked bangs.
“We’re a little past that, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I know,” she mumbled, powering off the meter. She stared at me for a few seconds. “Seems pointless now, doesn’t it?”
“What does?”
She shrugged. “Everything. The Federation, the Free — ranks, promotions, missions…” She trailed off and stared wistfully into the baking plains.
I thought for a second. “Yeah, it kind of does.”
I reached down and took her hand, stepping closer. She looked up, meeting my eyes, and I kissed her. Not forcefully, or passionately even. I pressed my lips to hers, and she returned it.