Fat Girl in a Strange Land (7 page)

And Bess had insisted. Bess, her friend, who had begged Missy Hallen to let Wen come along.

Bess had also insisted Wen have a few drinks — they were out of orbit, and the rules didn’t apply. “Come on, Wen! Lighten up!”

Wen hadn’t liked whatever Bess had pressed into her hand, and she’d soon begged off and stumbled down the corridor to the little medical bay.

When the collision alarms had sounded, Wen had managed to strap herself in despite a blinding headache and a growing urge to vomit.

Then the ship had crashed, and when Wen came to, she’d stumbled along the tilted corridor until she’d seen the damage.

The ship had been ripped in half, and the other part of it was on fire, maybe half a kilometer away.

Between her and that blaze was a field of bodies.

Her hand went to her mouth and she stumbled backward, trying not to scream.

Wen heard a noise — one that didn’t sound like her body crushing tiny crystals under her feet — and immediately dropped to her knees. She stifled a groan, then lowered herself flat. The second planet, Sidqiel, was home to all sorts of dangerous wildlife, and though Wen had a blaster — part of the liner’s emergency supplies — she had no way to know what was coming.

So she calmed herself. She tried to breathe more quietly.

And she listened, clutching the blaster in her left hand, waiting for whatever was out there, wasting what little time she had left.

Wen had screwed up her courage and tried to go out among the bodies strewn across the debris field. She’d taken a scanner from the medical bay, hoping she could find someone still alive, someone who could help her.

After seeing the third mangled corpse, though, she’d given up on that and returned to the ship. She found some painkillers in the broken-open pharmacy locker and took one; the headache fled in abject terror, which allowed her to think clearly.

“Where am I?”

Well, that one was easy enough. Wen reached for her comm—

No. She reached for her pocket, but her comm was gone.

She found it in the corner of the medical bay, screen shattered, unwilling to even turn on. “Well, that’s brilliant.” Wen’s voice was scratchy in her ears — had she screamed as the ship had crash-landed? She didn’t remember.

Wen had to shove open the door of the next compartment — people were often surprised how strong she was, but then, it took a lot of muscle to move all that body around. At least, that’s what she told people. Once she’d managed to open the door, she found more bodies: a popular girl named Laka and her boyfriend Akito. Their clothes were strewn around the room — apparently Laka had made good on her promise to bed Akito before graduation — but as Wen knelt to check and see if they were alive — they weren’t — she found Laka’s comm, undamaged, sticking out of a jacket pocket. No signal, but at least it was working. Small favors.

She moved on to the next compartment.

Tiny scaled creatures no bigger than Wen’s hand slithered past, through the crystal debris, clearly fleeing something. Wen risked a peek above the patch of crystalline bushes that hid her, but saw nothing.

Then a noise, high-pitched and horribly discordant, drove her to the dirt again. She looked up, but saw nothing. So she climbed to her feet, checked her comm, and started to jog again.

And was nearly mauled by the huge, heavily-scaled serpent that had been hiding in a hollow in the ground. It rammed into her backpack, knocking her flat on her face. She spat a mouthful of crystal pebbles and got to her knees once more. The serpent was staring at her, tensed, ready to attack again.

Wen looked into its huge blue eyes. It blinked, and she blinked. She guessed it wasn’t used to its prey getting up again.

Holding its eyes with hers, Wen slowly brought up the blaster until it was pointed at the serpent.

Then, without warning, it attacked.

At this distance, she didn’t even have to aim. One shot from the blaster blew its head clean off. The rest of the body knocked her to the hard ground yet again, her head thumping against the top of the backpack, but the thing was clearly dead.

She shoved the remains of the serpent to one side, stood up again, and got moving.

Wen made her way through the ship, waving Laka’s comm in slow arcs, trying to get a signal. She had no idea where the ship had crashed; the impact had flattened everything for half a kilometer, and although she had seen stars when she’d gone outside—

Stars. Stars, just barely peeking through the clouds and the auroras.

Wen found the nearest emergency door and opened it, then jumped down onto the hard ground. Her knees and ankles let her know just how bad an idea that had been, but she didn’t care; she activated the comm and pointed its visual pickup at the star-speckled sky.

It pinged a couple of seconds later.

Wen read its screen and swallowed hard.

Sidqiel. They’d crashed on Sidqiel.

She was as good as dead.

Wen checked the comm: only a kilometer to go before she reached the old substation. Though she was dripping with sweat and aching in ways she never knew her body could ache, she picked up her pace, trying to move faster, trying to get to safety before the sun’s radiation blasted her like she’d blasted the serpent.

Soon enough, she burst free from the crystal forest and into a clearing. In the distance, she saw the dark, blocky shape of the substation.

And right in front of her, the ground stopped short, falling away into a chasm.

Wen tried to stop, but lost her footing and fell hard on her ass. She struggled to her feet and tried to slow her breathing. She stared into the chasm. It was farther across than she could ever dream of jumping. It stretched to her left and her right, with no end in sight.

“Well, this is just great,” Wen said. “Now what?”

Wen searched every compartment of what was left of the ship until, in a cabinet behind the rear galley, she found the emergency transmitter. Heavily insulated against just about anything, from impact to explosion, from deep-water pressures to the vacuum of space, she knew she could use it to call for help.

Not that anyone could make it to Sidqiel in seven hours, which was all the time she had left before sunrise, according to Laka’s comm. At least she could tell someone what had happened.

The unit was easy enough that even a lacrosse star could use it. Wen was about six times smarter than any of
them
— or, at least, she told herself that every time one said something about her size. She swallowed hard — she’d wished they’d stop making fun of her, but she’d never wished them dead — and jammed her thumb on the activator.

The box powered up quickly, a small screen unfolding from the top. Wen keyed it to transmit, then spoke into the audio pickup.

“This is Gwendolyn Yee Irons from Montgomery City, Hemingway Province. My ship crashed. Is anyone reading this?”

Nothing for several long seconds. She tried again.

“Can anyone hear me? This is Gwendolyn Yee Irons from Montgomery City—”

“Miss Irons, this is Sergeant Salzman at Orbital Station 3. Do you read?”

“I read you!” Wen felt tears prickle her eyes and a lump form in her throat. She forced it down. “Sergeant, the ship I was on… it crashed on Sidqiel. I couldn’t find any other survivors.”

Another interminable silence. Then Salzman spoke again. “We’ve triangulated your signal. You only have about seven hours until local dawn. Can you get out of the sun?”

“I can stay in the ship—”

“No,” he said, cutting her off. “Without shields, without power, you’ll cook in there.”

“Then what am I supposed to do? I’m not stupid, Sergeant; you can’t get here for almost ten hours.”

“Please remain calm, Miss Irons.”

“Remain calm?” She kicked the transmitter, but that only hurt her foot. The unit remained unperturbed. “I’m going to die down here, and you want me to remain calm?”

“Stand by.”

“Stand by? Stand by for what?”

No one answered.

Wen dropped to the floor, back against the wall, and let herself cry. She was going to die, alone, among the bodies of her classmates and… well, they weren’t friends, but they were still people. Of all of them, why had only she survived?

“Miss Irons.” Salzman’s voice. “Miss Irons, are you there?”

Wen wiped her face with the back of her hand and struggled to her feet. “What do you want?”

“Miss Irons, there’s an old research substation about thirty-five kilometers from your position, bearing one-six-three. Can you get there in seven hours?”

Wen did the math in her head, then burst out laughing. It was either that or start crying again.

“Miss Irons? What is it?”

Still laughing in little hiccups, Wen found the button that activated the unit’s visual pickup. “Look at me, Sergeant. Do you think I can make it even five kilometers? And on those crystal plains out there, I’ll be on my ass half the time!”

A pause. “Miss Irons, it’s either run or die. We’re launching a rescue ship right now, but if you don’t get to that substation, there won’t be anything for us to find except your body.”

Wen took a couple of deep breaths, then stared at the pickup. “I’m going to die out there.”

“You will
not
die,” Salzman snapped. “Do you understand me?”

“Sure, yeah, whatever you say.”

“It’s your choice. Which would you rather do: sit there and die, or fight for a chance to live?”

Wen used her blaster to blow apart the base of a huge crystal formation at the edge of the forest. It was just luck that the towering pillar didn’t fall on her, that it fell toward the chasm.

But it wasn’t long enough. Not even for her to make a jump if she got a running start. “Damn it,” she growled, sitting on the fallen crystal and staring at the chasm. “Damn it! Damn it all!”

She was going to die.

She said it out loud: “I’m going to die.”

She got to her feet and stood at the edge of the chasm. “I’m going to die!” she screamed.

Then she looked down. The gold-green witchlight of the aurora wasn’t bright enough to see the bottom — for a moment, Wen considered jumping in; whatever was down there, it was probably nice and sharp and would probably kill her pretty damn efficiently when she landed on it.

The aurora pulsed brighter, which she’d seen happen on occasion during her flight from the ship, and she got a good, long look at the far wall of the chasm. Nothing but crystal boulders and, below that, darker rocks. Rocks as far as her eyes could see.

No. That wasn’t right. Wen pulled the flashlight out of her pack and turned it to its highest setting. The chasm was about seven meters across, and the beam just managed to pick out hollows in the rocks.

“Caves,” Wen whispered. Then, a cry of delight: “Caves!”

“All right,” Wen said after a long, quiet moment. “All right. I’ll try. I’ll try to get to the damn substation.”

“Good. We’ll send the rescue ship there first. Just get to the subterranean levels and see if you can get emergency power working. Even without it, you should survive until we get there; the ship will extend a shield over the entire area.”

“All right,” Wen said one more time. “Let me give you my comm frequency.” She read off a string of numbers. “Do you have it?”

Salzman repeated the numbers to her, and she confirmed them. “Miss Irons,” he said, his voice gentle, “it’s not going to be an easy trip. Not even for someone in perfect health. But it’s the only way you’re going to survive. No matter what happens, just keep going. Can you do that for me?”

Wen made a nasty sound with her mouth. “Don’t patronize me, and don’t try to be my friend. Just get the damn ship here.”

Another one of those pauses. “Very well,” Salzman said finally. “Are there any emergency supplies? They should be near this transmitter.”

“Hang on.” Wen rooted through several more cabinets until she found three large backpacks, each one clearly marked IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. “Got ‘em.”

“Good. Put one on.”

Wen struggled into the straps. “This thing weighs a ton!”

“Bring it with you anyway.”

“But I won’t be able to run even without it—”

“It has water, rations, flashlights, and tools. What if something goes wrong with our rescue ship and you have to stay in the substation longer than a few hours? You’ll want the supplies then, Miss Irons.”

“Fine, fine, I’ll carry it.”

Salzman explained to her how to activate the water canister and reminded her to drink when she needed it. Then he said, “Be careful, Miss Irons. Move quickly, but not recklessly.”

“I figured that part out.” She grinned. “And my name’s Wen.”

“Wen,” Salzman said. “Wen, leave the transmitter running, and as soon as you get to the substation, put your comm on full broadcast mode. We’ll come get you. I promise.”

“You’d better.”

“We will. Salzman out.”

Wen stared at the transmitter, then turned and made her way out of the ship. Her comm directed her to 163, and she began to walk, setting the device as she went, until finally its little screen showed her destination and the time she had until the sun fried her.

Then she started to run.

Wen breathed a silent thanks to Sergeant Salzman and his insistence on her taking the emergency supply pack when she’d left the ship. It had included a thick spool of microfilament attached to a heavy support belt, and although Wen had never climbed anything except the occasional flight of stairs, she buckled the belt around her waist and and tied a loop around the base of another crystal formation. She circled the pillar and knotted the line so many times that, by the time she was done, she had a clump of microfilament half the size of her comm.

Then it was time to climb.

Which, Wen realized, she had no idea how to do.

“Okay,” Wen said. “Okay, I can do this. I can figure this out.”

Truthfully, there wasn’t much to figure out. Wen looped the microfilament around her thighs to form a sort of harness; dim memories of adventure movies that she knew were probably wrong, but it was better than nothing. She cut off the sleeves of her shirt with a utility knife and wrapped them around her hands. Then she sat on the edge of the chasm and tried to descend.