Chapter Thirty-Four
FENN
I have nothing to fight with. All my bots and drones have been crushed into oblivion.
“Hana!” I yell, but I can barely speak for what I’m seeing. The container full of radioactive boules is torn from her grasping hands. A wave of blue takes her, slips her sideways, immerses her. Her helmet is being pulled off as the image goes partly dead.
“Hana! I’m coming!” I yell as the image goes completely blank, and I start running.
I run like I’ve never run before, and no matter how painful it is, I’ll go faster. Because nothing matters. This is the end, the end that I knew was coming, though we’d pretended we could try to outwit Cyclo, outwit our own sense of doom, to keep hoping.
My airways sear from breathing so hard, and my muscles burn with angry pain as I finally reach the northwest quadrant. I’m met with an impenetrable wall of hostile red matrix. As soon as it sees me coming, it pours down a steaming, caustic layer of brown and green liquid. I cough as the fumes hit me, and my eyes water and nose burns. I can’t even get within ten feet of the wall, and beyond that wall is Hana. Wave after wave of coughing incapacitates me, and my eyes tear until my vision is nothing but a blur. I can’t even think, and I’m slowly asphyxiating.
I drop to my knees, coughing, dry heaving. The gas flowing from the chemicals is only getting thicker. I drag myself away from it. From the lack of oxygen, stars and lights pop in my vision. They only get brighter, threatening to completely bleach my retinas before I pass out.
Wait. The bright light is only when my eyes are open. I shield my face, holding my shirt up to my mouth to filter the air, and look around me through the gassy fog. A few plastrix-embedded windows to my left are blasted full of flickering light.
It’s a ship.
It’s a damned ship.
Doran. He actually made it here, after all!
I’m in the alpha ring right now, as is Hana. Which means when this thing comes crashing in, Hana’s going to die if the ship crashes into her. I go to the window, still coughing, still gagging, and gesticulate wildly to tell the ship to dock closer to the southern quadrant. But it’s too late. The ship is small, and it’s already backed up to get enough distance to ram itself into Cyclo’s exoskeleton. And if I’m here when that happens, I’ll either be flattened, or dead from being exposed to the atmosphereless cold of space.
In my head, I scream at myself. Run, Fenn. Run because this time your life depends on it, and Hana’s, too, if there’s any chance left on this damned ship to save her.
So I half shuffle, half run down the hallways, watching as the ship accelerates forward. I take the first hallway that veers upward to beta, climbing the stairs and galloping crookedly because of the low g, and head south. I barely make it before the ship crashes into the hull.
I go flying and land on my back. All the air leaves me in a whoosh, and I immediately cradle my head as splinters of white endoskeleton and meaty chunks of beige and pale blue matrix fall around me. A loud creak reverberates through the floors and ceilings and right into my jawbone, like metal pressing relentlessly against wood. The sound is so loud and excruciating I cover my ears.
And then it’s silent.
I get to my knees, and then slowly stand. I haven’t broken any bones, but my ears are still ringing. I can breathe, but I thank the stars that I don’t feel that irresistible, terrifying suck of decompression. So whatever crashed into Cyclo has managed to seal off the breaks in the exoskeleton.
I stagger to the end of the hallway, surveying the damage. Chunks of endoskeleton and oozing, rotting matrix the color of curdled blood lie here and there. I step over them and make my way back down to alpha, going slowly around the corridor, dodging larger shards and jagged pieces of Cyclo that have broken from the impact.
Beyond that, a small oval ship, silver colored, has embedded itself into Cyclo’s hull. The hull of the ship isn’t metal—like Cyclo, it ripples with different colors—purple, flecks of metallic white—and it’s exuding a biological stratum of a deeper gray color that’s adhered to the ship and the broken hole it’s made in Cyclo’s exoskeleton. A side door near the nose has opened, and I hold my breath, waiting to see my savior. Hana’s savior.
The first thing I notice is that he comes out of the door wearing a full protective suit, along with what looks like breathable air tanks, which is smart. Because if I was landing on Cyclo now, I’d assume the air wasn’t breathable. It wasn’t for me a few moments ago. I wonder if the suit is also radiation proof.
The second thing I notice is that Doran is really small.
He sees me, but I can’t see him through his mirrored helmet, and after he looks around (and probably realizes the air is more or less okay), the visor on his helmet slides up. And this is where I realize I’ve made several mistakes. Because it’s not Doran at all.
It’s a woman, who’s so petite, she’s probably shorter than Hana. Her hair is gray and black, shorn close to the head, and her eyes look tired and angry and wise, all at once. She looks like a much older, angrier version of Hana, and she looks like she’s about to yell at me. I have about two million things I want to say to her, but my mouth twists and stays shut because I’m overwhelmed with gratefulness that she’s here. I step forward, my arms beseeching her, the first movement that precedes the “I’m Fennec and please get me and my girlfriend off this evil ship,” but she beats me to the punch.
She pulls out a large plasma gun I hadn’t noticed was holstered to her leg and points it straight at my face.
“Where is my daughter?” she asks with a cold fury.
I swallow air and cough about ten times before I can answer her.
“You…you’re Dr. Um? You’re Hana’s mother?” I croak.
“Yes. Where is she?”
“A fallacy, obviously.”
“But…how did you…”
“You’re from the Selkirk? One of the—” She stops herself from attaching a label to me—convict? Left-for-dead? Boy? Narrowing her eyes, Dr. Um doesn’t lower her weapon for a moment. I guess now is not the time to tell her that I’m also Hana’s boyfriend.
“Yes. And Hana needs help. She’s in northwest alpha, and Cyclo’s trapped her there.”
“Trapped? What do you mean?” The tip of her gun wavers for a second. “You have about one minute to explain everything. This ship is about to collapse.”
So I explain so fast I nearly trip over my own tongue. How we’re the only survivors. How Cyclo has killed off the other crew members, and we tried harvesting radioisotopes to refuel the Selkirk (here she interrupts to tell me this is a terrible, useless idea) which is when Hana got caught.
“Cyclo knows she’s dying. She wants to die with Hana. It’s some sort of death wish of the ship.” I pause for a luxurious second. “Listen, we’re both trying to survive. I’m not the enemy here. So can you point that thing somewhere else?”
Dr. Um’s eyes go from hostile to regretful, and she reholsters her gun. “I’m sorry. They told us you were all convicts.”
“We are. We were. It doesn’t matter.” There’s no time to explain myself. “Cyclo’s built a wall, and the gases around it are toxic. I can’t get through it, and I have no protective gear. Hana’s on the other side.”
Dr. Um drops her face shield back down. A comm speaks to me from her suit, digitizing her voice. “Are you aware that the other half of this ship is having a nuclear meltdown?”
“Er, yes. That was sort of our fault.”
Dr. Um raises her face shield just briefly enough to give me the angriest scowl I’ve ever received (and this includes the criminals I’ve done business with. Note to self: don’t mess with mothers) and walks around the nose of her ship.
“Stay here. Don’t you dare touch my ship. It’ll know if you do, and it’s been programmed to retaliate.”
At this, the skin of her silvery ship flashes a big red X on its skin/hull that looks vaguely like a skull and crossbones. This one has a sense of humor, albeit a pretty dark one. I hold both my hands up.
“I’m at your mercy. For God’s sake, just save Hana.”
At this, Dr. Um pulls a shoulder-launching ion cannon off the large pack on her back. “I intend to.”