ARC: Under Nameless Stars (19 page)

TWENTY-ONE

The ruddy light pouring in through the rising airlock door crept above Zenn’s knees, and the heat climbed with it, hot, then hotter. By the time, the door was up high enough for them to move into the
Prodigious
, the temperature had soared. Zenn’s shivering quickly ceased. Even with the scrim’s protection, the air burned Zenn’s cheeks and forehead, making her feel as if her skin was cooking. The scrim’s shape was visibly deformed as they entered the heavy atmosphere of the ship, and they had to duck even lower to remain beneath the top of the shimmering bubble.

“Like I said,” Charlie said, scurrying along behind Treth, “five-suns hot.”

“Stay together. Jules, keep up,” Treth called out as they moved ahead. Jules made a high-pitched squeaking noise and tried to move faster. But he was forced to stoop over awkwardly to remain below the scrim, and he bumped into Zenn, almost pushing her out of the scrim’s field.

“Sorry. Most sorry,” he squawked. “I’m so clumsy…”

“Jules, don’t worry. I’ll lean over so you can see where you’re going.” The act of speaking drew a draught of searing air into Zenn’s throat. Breathing through her nose helped, but only a little. Sweat ran down her forehead in rivulets, stinging her eyes. Then she realized the scrim bubble was slowly filling with steam – it was the water from the misters on Jules’s walksuit, vaporizing into a hot, wet fog.

As they settled into an erratic, fast-walking rhythm, Zenn squinted to see ahead in the orange-brown gloom. The deck they were on had a high, curved ceiling of heavy, red-bronze-colored plating, giving her the feeling of moving through a gigantic artery. Huge pipelines and runs of tubing twisted along the walls before disappearing into irregularly spaced holes. A low-frequency pulsating sound pounded at them from somewhere, like a distant heartbeat at first, but growing steadily louder as they went deeper into the ship.

They rounded a corner, and something moved in the heat-shimmered murk ahead of them. The shape dodged into a dark recess behind a small forest of piping. The thing was flat, glossy black, eight or ten feet long. Zenn thought she’d glimpsed pincers.

“Did you see that?” Liam said, moving close behind Zenn. “What was it?”

“Fire-mite,” Charlie said.

“Dangerous?” Liam asked.

“They hunt… in packs,” Charlie said, spacing out his words to keep from burning his throat. “If this one… is alone… won’t… bother us.”

“What do they… hunt?” Liam wondered, wiping his sweat-soaked hair from his face. Zenn knew but didn’t want to inhale the hot air it would take to tell him: native predators of the Vhulk homeworld of Dante Nine, fire-mites ate only live or recently killed prey. Zenn also wanted to say there shouldn’t be fire-mites running loose in a passenger ship.

“We must not… waste breath,” Treth barked. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the thunderous din coming at them in ever-stronger waves. “We will pass through… an engineering bay ahead. Then bear to the right.”

The cavernous room they entered next was at least five hundred feet long. No ceiling was visible in the burning smog above them. Through the swirling haze, Zenn could now see the outlines of three large, squat forms in the distance, laboring before a bank of huge structures that took up the entire center of the space. As they hurried to cross the vast room, more details emerged. The three forms gradually resolved into identifiable creatures: Dantean Vhulks, their heavily muscled, silica-plated bodies well equipped to survive the heat and pressure of their nightless triple-star home planet.

Looking something like giant, prehistoric ground sloths, the Vhulks squatted before four plasma-fusion furnaces big as buildings, their huge, armored arms working at massive lever-type controls mounted in front of them. One of the furnaces was unattended; it bore the marks of an explosion, its metal walls ripped outward, leaving a ragged, still-smoldering hole.

In unison, the three Vhulks swiveled their heads, gazing at Zenn and the others with baleful, slightly bioluminescent eyespots set deep into their blunt-nosed faces.

“Are they… friendly?” Liam asked.

“Their concern… is the plasma boilers that heat the ship,” Treth said over the noise from the blazing furnaces. “They should have… no quarrel with us.” As they drew closer, the Vhulks lumbered away from their stations, and went as a group to stand looking at something hidden behind the damaged furnace. One of the creatures motioned at them to approach.

Zenn saw then that the three Vhulks had gathered around another of their kind. It lay on the floor, its upper body leaning against a bulkhead wall, eyespots dimmed, body still, except for labored breathing. The Vhulk’s massive right arm was badly mangled and burned, the thick armor-like epidermal layer of skin charred black. A viscous gray fluid oozed freely from the wound’s carbonized surface.

Zenn put a hand on Treth’s shoulder. “It’s hurt,” she shouted, trying to ignore the pain from the scalding air. “The arm is burned… it looks bad.”

The largest of the three Vhulks reached down to gently lift the arm of his wounded comrade, as if to display its injury.

“It’s asking… for our help,” Zenn said. “It will die… unless we do something.”

“Five-suns hot,” Charlie croaked. “No time.”

“Treth, it will only… take a minute. Long enough… to seal the wound.”

“Zenn Scarlett,” Jules said, his overheated Transvox circuitry hissing with static. “It is too hot in temperature. Can you truly succeed in this?”

She didn’t know. But she had to try. “Treth,” she pleaded. “Please.”

One of the other Vhulks raised its arms up towards them, in what to Zenn was an obvious gesture of desperation. This was too much even for Treth. The Groom held up her hand and brought them to a halt.

“Quickly, then. This way. Stay together.”

Treth maneuvered them next to the fallen Vhulk until the creature’s upper torso and damaged arm were brought within the edge of the scrim field. Its body radiated heat into their protective bubble, raising more steam, making it even harder to breathe. Zenn slipped off her backpack. Katie poked her nose out of her cloth wrapping, then withdrew again with a short, sharp squeak.

Sweat now pouring from her face, Zenn wiped at her eyes and bent over the appendage of the unconscious Vhulk. A foot-long section of skin had third-degree burns oozing fluid. This was worse than she’d thought. Maybe Jules was right. Maybe this was beyond her abilities. Panic wrapped around her thoughts like a constricting serpent, pulling tight, tighter. No! She pushed back against the fear.

It’s not about me! Not about my fear! She silently repeated the mantra Otha had drilled into her during classes. It’s about this patient! It’s about what I can do for this patient, here, now!

It worked. The words and the memory of Otha, the image of him standing over her, guiding her, stilled her tumbling thoughts.

Yes. She did know what to do! She’d trained for similar wounds. Not exactly the same, but close enough. She conjured up the details of Otha’s lecture on extremophile skin structure. A small oasis of calm bloomed and spread within her. She could do it. She would help this patient. She could only hope the artificial gelled skin she had would set up quickly enough to resist the heat and pressure outside the scrim.

Working as fast as she dared, she cut along the bleeding edge of the wound with the caut-shears, sealing the wound as she went, removing a large swath of dead skin and muscle, which she dropped onto the floor.

“That it?” Liam gasped. “You saved it. Good work. Can we… go now?”

“No. Just a little… longer.”

The raw slash of subdermal tissue she’d exposed quickly filled with gray-green blood. Using dissolvable hema-clips, she pinched off the few bleeding vessels she’d missed with the caut-shears, blotted up the excess blood with several absorbent pads and took up the canister of dermoplast. Making certain the artificial skin was adhering to the edges of the wound, she sprayed the substance back and forth until the entire damaged area was covered.

Jules wavered on his mech-legs.

“Not breathing… well…” he said. “Breathing… badly.”

“Almost… finished,” She grabbed the largest gage pneuma-ject in her kit, shoved a vial of broad-spectrum anti-viral and stimulant into its barrel and injected the solution into the intact portion of the Vhulk’s arm.

“We must go. Now,” Treth said.

“Done.” Zenn stood back from the Vhulk, slipped her pack on.

As they started to move, Zenn tapped the dermoplast patch with her knuckle. The patch felt hard and firm. It might just hold.

After they’d gone a short distance, she looked back to see one of the creatures helping the wounded one to sit up. It was coming to, the stimulant taking effect. The Vhulk lifted its arm to its face, examined it, turning it this way and that. The arm flexed normally, the seal unbroken. The plast seemed to be holding. Then all was lost in the thick haze as they hurried on.

Before they had traveled a hundred feet, Treth called out, pointing ahead. “There. Our way out.”

Zenn could see nothing but superheated smog. But as the hallway leading to the airlock appeared in the wall ahead, she heard a bubbling, gasping sound from behind her.

“I’m sorry… but my… breathing,” Jules wheezed. He was slowing down, having trouble walking. She could hear Liam also breathing hard and glanced back to see that he was supporting Jules under one of his mech-arms. Treth noticed too and had no choice but to slow down. Underneath the static of the Transvox, Jules’s already high-pitched dolphinese now rose into an even higher register. “My breath… not… adequate.” Zenn was startled to see a thin film of mucus bubbling up at the blowhole on top of his head. His tail flukes seemed to be spasming in short, jerky muscular contractions.

“It’s the heat,” Zenn said, “…his bronchial linings… going edemic.” If the air burned her own lungs as she spoke, Zenn could only imagine what it was doing to the dolphin’s delicate membranes.

“What is it… that ails him?” Treth said.

“His airways… swelling shut… excess fluid.”

“He must… keep going,” Treth said.

“It isn’t much farther… Jules, you have to–” Zenn stopped speaking. In front, Treth had raised her arm to stop them again. Out of the seething mist, blocking the way forward, Zenn saw a low black shape scuttling from shadow to shadow. A piercing, inhuman scream knifed through the air. It was answered by another scream somewhere in the smoking mists.

Another shape appeared – but made no move to hide. Then there were three, then six of them. Flattened ten-foot bodies slung low to the ground, serrated pincers held at the ready, the fire-mites raised and lowered themselves on a tangle of slithering legs, their six spider-like predator’s eyes following every move of the prey before them.

“Are they…?” Liam sputtered.

“A hunting pack,” Charlie cried. “Mites hunt in packs.”

TWENTY-TWO

“Everyone… stay still,” Treth said as she drew Pokt’s plasma weapon from her belt. She brought it to bear on the nearest mite. “After I fire… we will run… for the airlock.”

The Groom squeezed the stick, and the lightning stream arced through the haze. It caught the fire-mite squarely in its central thorax – and glanced harmlessly off the creature’s thick chitin armor. The mite shook itself and, unfazed, began to creep toward them.

“Fire again,” Charlie screeched. “Fire, fire!”

Treth aimed and squeezed off another shot, striking the creature on one of its large claws but still with no visible effect. Zenn could’ve told Treth why: fire-mites were extremophiles, and their armor had evolved to withstand precisely the sort of super-heated energy the plasma weapon produced.

“We must find… another way. Go back.” As Treth spoke, four more mites crept up behind them, cutting off retreat.

A rasping intake of air sounded behind Zenn and Jules lost his balance, teetered momentarily and tipped forward, falling into Zenn and Treth. Liam grunted with the effort of trying to keep Jules from knocking them all out of the scrim’s protective dome. Huddling up closer to her, Charlie whimpered pitifully.

The circling pack drew in from all sides. The closest mite was almost inside the scrim. Zenn could hear the sound of its claws, the serrated pincers clacking inches from her face. Then Liam was pressing up next to her; he was trying to put himself between her and the approaching creature.

Then the snapping claws, and the mite they were attached to, were gone. Zenn shifted just enough to see around Jules and Liam. A few feet away, one of the Vhulk stokers held the attacking fire-mite in one massive paw. Lifting the struggling predator as if it were weightless, the Vhulk hurled it into the murky air and out of sight. It landed somewhere with a crunch of cracking chitin and a loud screech. Zenn saw that two more Vhulks had also waded into the pack and were flinging away any creature that hadn’t already retreated into the shadows.

When there were no more mites to be seen, the three Vhulks stood waiting until Zenn and the others reached the corridor leading to the airlock. Then the Vhulks lumbered off into the hellish miasma and were gone.

“Stay with me,” Treth shouted, moving close enough to the bulkhead to allow the scrim’s outer boundary to make contact with it. “Charlie…” The Loepith popped the cover off the control panel and began rewiring the circuits inside.
“Treth,” Zenn shouted, pointing to the scrim above their heads. “Look.” The thin, purple-green bubble that surrounded them had begun to show tiny gaps on its surface, as if the delicate web were being broken apart in a dozen places.

“The scrim. It’s tearing,” Liam said.

“Get closer,” Treth said. “Move in… closer to me.”

Through the holes appearing in the scrim, the shocking heat stabbed like scalpel tips penetrating Zenn’s face, the back of her neck, her hands. She felt as if the hair on her head was about to combust. Charlie frantically spliced together one last pair of wires, then punched at the airlock keypad.

“Simple as that,” he said.

Nothing happened.

“Bad luck. All bad,” Charlie muttered. He twisted another pair of wires, punched at the pad again.

Zenn’s next breath seethed like molten metal poured down her throat. She didn’t dare inhale again. Her consciousness began to stutter and fade. She was passing out.

Seconds later, she was lying on her side in the dark, gulping air into her lungs – stinging draughts of wondrous, delicious, ice-cold air. They’d made it! They were in the
Symmetry Dancer
. But after the
Prodigious
, it felt as if she was tasting air from the subfreezing Martian icecaps. It was glorious beyond words.

She rolled to a sitting position and saw Jules tipped against the nearest wall, his flanks heaving as he greedily sucked in the cooling air and expelled it rapidly through his blowhole. Liam sat next to him, head hanging down between his knees, chest pumping. Charlie lay flat on his back, also savoring the
Dancer
’s air. Beyond him in the corridor stood Treth, leaning with one arm on the bulkhead. Zenn no longer felt the chilling effect of the antipyretic; the intense heat must have forced their bodies to dissipate it quickly, but it had apparently lasted long enough to be of some help.

Zenn felt Katie squirming in the backpack. She reached behind her to undo the flap, and the rikkaset hopped to the floor.

“Friend-Zenn,” she signed irritably. “Too hot for Katie. No fun. Stinky.”

“Sorry,” Zenn signed, and stroked Katie’s tufted ears.

“Are you better now?” she asked Jules. “Getting enough air?”

“Enough, yes. Much better now,” he replied, walking over to where she sat. “I must report I am very happy to be out of that place. I thought for a moment you would need to leave me behind. That was a frightful moment.”

Zenn stood. She pulled the dolphin’s smooth, velvety head down toward her with both hands and rested her forehead against his chin.

“You know I would never leave you,” she told him quietly. “You know that, right?”

“You can never tell what another will do,” he told her, not moving from her grasp. She held his beak in her hands and looked into his eyes.

“Well, unless they’re your friend. And I’m telling you that I wouldn’t have left you. I couldn’t leave you. Do you know why?”

“Why then?”

She gave his smiling beak a gentle shake. “Because I won. And you owe me ten units.”