Something rough and wet raked across Auri’s face. It smelled disgustingly of fish and carrot. She groaned, raising a hand to knock it away.
Except the fingers attached to the hand refused to move.
The wrist wouldn’t bend.
She crashed into full consciousness with a start, eyes tearing open. They stung, as if Birdie’s tongue had loosened a seal.
The poodle stood over her, whining and pacing in a circle. Auri knew that dance well.
She sat up, and the world promptly exploded.
Lights flashed behind her eyes and a wave of queasiness made a cold sweat break out on her skin. She doubled over, locking her head between her knees until her vision steadied.
It took three attempts to stand. Once she was on her feet, some of the pirouetting black spots retreated. Error messages continued to flood the corners of her c-tacts, all warnings from her cyborg parts. She blinked them away, already too aware that something was terribly wrong.
The escape pod had landed on its side, the ceiling hatch now a circular door level with the ground. Birdie led the way over to it, favoring a hind leg. Concern lanced through Auri, but bending for a closer examination brought the black dots back.
“I’ll take a look when we get outside,” she whispered to Birdie. Her throat felt like she’d swallowed a handful of glass shards. She found the door control button, now on the floor, and stamped down on it.
The hatch hissed as it swung open. Sunlight burst into the tiny pod, making Auri squint. Hot air ruffled the sweaty curls around her face, bringing the smells of dirt and carrion. The stench did little to ease her stomach.
Birdie shot out of the pod and vanished into the planetscape beyond. Auri moved at a slower pace, using her hand to brace herself against the rounded side as she staggered outside. Her boots landed on hard-packed earth. She cradled her destroyed robotic arm and scrutinized the world around her, eyes scrunched against the sun’s glare.
A few meters away, Birdie relieved herself behind a scrubby tree. Ridged, grassless hills rose from the earth in every direction. Badlands, she realized. Her high school planet geography teacher had said Kaido, or the Western Planet, had more desert-like badlands than arable earth. Cattle ranches populated the arid planet, districts small and scarce. She connected her c-tacts to Kaido’s grid to determine her exact location.
Sudden nausea brought her to her knees, and she vomited. Pain lanced her skull with each heave, centering on her scalp where the captain struck her. Tears streamed down her cheeks, drying before they hit the ground.
When her stomach had emptied itself, she rolled away to lean against the escape pod. The sun-warmed metal soothed the sore muscles in her back. Her sweat-soaked jacket clung to her, but she was too exhausted to take it off.
Birdie trotted back, the limp already improving with use. In the bright sunlight, Auri grimaced at the scarlet staining the poodle’s muzzle. She blinked away the memory of Birdie tearing out the pirate’s throat.
At the thought of the pirates, loss hit her anew. She reached up to probe her shredded ear. Dull pain throbbed along the skin, but the blood had dried into a crusty scab. She was missing a centimeter-sized chunk of flesh.
Her robotic arm was worse. The wound was hideous, the skin peeling away in ribbons, the gash revealing the ugly secret parts of her. The fingers curled in on themselves, and attempting to move them resulted in the pinky giving the barest twitch. How would she be able to function with just one hand? And trying to access the grid again brought her nausea barreling back. She immediately stopped, taking deep breaths to regain control over her stomach.
The direness of her situation crowded around her. Invisible spectators shouted their disapproval, proclaiming her failures to the empty badlands, laughing at her stupidity and utter uselessness.
“Shut up!” she shouted at the personified doubts. Birdie’s ears quirked back at the sudden noise. Shut up, shut up, shut up echoed through the landscape, bouncing off rock and stone.
She let out a slow breath. “Think, Auri. Think.” The sound of her hoarse voice grounded her. She continued to talk aloud, to work through a plan. “The pod has an SOS signal I can activate. And there should be emergency supply kits.” Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as she spoke, a sign of approaching dehydration. “Water first.”
Auri was relieved when the dizziness didn’t hit as hard when she stood. Vomiting must’ve helped. She still moved like a zombie, shuffling back into the pod. Emergency supplies were tucked under each of the four seats, totaling twelve MREs and four full canteens of water, plus an empty tactical backpack and limited medical supplies. The backpack was about half the size of her rucksack, so it would take some finagling to get everything to fit. With just her and Birdie, the supplies would last two days, more if she rationed.
Auri poured water for Birdie, using a square supply container as a makeshift bowl. The poodle guzzled while Auri sipped from the canteen more slowly. The water tasted stale and hot but soothed her parched throat. After quenching her thirst, she used two antiseptic wipes and gauze to clean the gash on her forehead and the missing chunk of her ear. Rather than be subjected to the atrocity of her robotic arm, she wrapped the remaining gauze around the wound. Feeling a smidgen more confident and more like a human being, she stood to tackle the next problem.
The escape pod lacked a dashboard or any manual controls, but it did have a shoebox-sized wall screen. The screen had limited use, but she knew from training it contained a GPS and emergency broadcast signal.
She tapped it.
Nothing.
She tapped it again.
Still nothing.
Hysteria crowded out any coherent thoughts in her brain. If she couldn’t find her location, she would wander Kaido until she ran out of water.
Auri slammed her palm against the screen. “Please!”
The symbol of the Ancora Federation flickered onto the black screen. The rising sun interlaced with an eagle soaring, a ribbon gripped in its beak reading “res novae animus” was the most beautiful sight in the world.
She sobbed in relief. The logo blinked out, replaced by a map of the solar system, depicting eight planets, even uninhabitable Roanleigh. The screen buffered as it found her location, zooming in on the planet Kaido and then its individual districts. A red dot flashed her current location: Arrowhead Badlands.
Before she studied the map further, she tapped the bottom icon on the screen labeled “Emer. B. Signal.” Red letters popped up immediately: OPTION UNAVAILABLE.
“Kuso.” She gritted her teeth. Okay. That’s what the pirates had taken. They sold for a decent price. No big deal. At least the map was functional.
Auri dragged her finger across the screen, searching for the bright yellow dots that symbolized districts or the black ones that marked military bases. Three klicks southeast was a tiny district with a bisecting road that led to the nearest base. Nearest being a relative term. From the district, the base was over ten klicks away. With the battered shape of her body, she’d be lucky to make the walk to base in four hours. The district was a better target. She could do that in an hour or so.
Auri ignored the crowing remarks from her fearful and hopeless inner voice and focused on the route she needed to take to reach the district. Something about the name was familiar, but it was all she could do to get her muddled brain to focus on the map.
With the map fixed in her mind, she gathered her supplies. The tactical bag bulged three times its flattened size once she shoved everything inside it. She had to use her knee to force the belabored zipper closed. The only thing missing from the emergency supplies that she would kill a pirate for was a compass. She vaguely remembered a fifteen-minute lecture during monsoon season when PT was cancelled. Something about using the sun to gauge direction? But she didn’t have time to wait around for dawn with a stick. She’d have to trust her intuition.
After fortifying herself and Birdie with a chicken noodle soup MRE, the pair set off. Auri sucked on a strawberry hi-chew candy as she walked, both to keep her mouth moist and her mind engaged. Every so often she checked the sun’s location, just in case she needed to find her way back to the pod.
As meters turned into kilometers and the food and water worked through her system, Auri’s muggy mind started to clear. In another circumstance, the natural beauty of the badlands would’ve left her breathless. Now she jumped at the movement of every tumbleweed, suspicious shadow, or skittering lizard. The pirate attack had awoken a primal fear that couldn’t be quenched by hollow reassurances. Lurking at the back of her mind was the torturous question: Did Auri not have the wits to survive a mission past Krugel’s Curve, like the GIC believed?
And worse, what if she died out here proving him right?