Smoke.
Smoke was everywhere, and Mitch coughed outrageously as he struggled to get his bearings, blinking and wiping away tears from his stinging eyes. He was strapped to his chair but dangling against the belts, which cut painfully into his chest and ribs.
He was hanging above the open crew cabin. His chair had spun away from the controls that had been before him—a safety protocol meant to protect the crew during an impact—and now apparently he was facing the new “down.”
Shock had dulled him a bit, and he was struggling to understand everything he was seeing and hearing. A screech of noise ripped through his ears and into his brain, and in some part of his mind, he knew what it meant. Fire alarms were blaring. The module was on fire.
He coughed and sputtered. His side hurt, bruised by the impact with a chair arm and a safety harness. He winced as he fumbled with the harness release, but thankfully stopped himself before unlatching it. Get your brain in gear, moron, he thought. If he released the restraints he would fall into the open cabin, possibly hurting himself and some of the other crewmembers in the process.
He struggled now to get a grip on the arm of the seat. He flicked the release on the harness and felt himself drop momentarily, catching himself on the seat arm and dangling high above the crew cabin.
The smoke was getting thicker, gathering at the top of the chamber. Which was, incidentally, where he now found himself. He had to get down somehow or he’d suffocate here.
Working his way around he managed to grab hold of one of the support legs for the console above him. His hand gripped the support just below the brass plate engraved with the words “Taggart Industries,” the company that built most of the equipment that Mitch relied on from day to day. Now he was relying on it to hold his weight and keep him from plummeting to, at best, a debilitating injury or, at worst, a painful, impaled death.
Dangling from the leg of the console, he managed to move hand-over-hand from one leg to another—rather like climbing on a jungle gym. He’d never had the chance to do that when he was a kid, but he’d seen vids. Who knew he’d be using it as a survival skill someday? He was making slow progress, one leg at a time, and finally found himself dangling above the pilot’s station.
This station was surrounded by a guardrail, and Mitch lowered himself to stand on it while he checked on Reilly. She was unconscious, hanging limp from her harness. There was a nasty looking cut on her forehead, where she had apparently met her console at high speed before the safety mechanism had kicked in and rotated her seat. Mitch unhooked the harness and gently lowered her to rest on the guardrail.
“Hey,” he said, gently slapping her cheek. “Hey.” He wasn’t sure what else he should do. He was certain he’d need her help, but he wasn’t sure of the best way to wake someone who was unconscious. “Hey, Reilly,” another gentle slap.
“Wha … ” she mumbled. She made a squinting, annoyed expression and turned her face from him slightly. “Stop slappin’ me,” she said, her voice weak. Her eyes fluttered as she opened them and looked up at him.
“We’re down,” he said. “In more ways than one.”
“Alive?” she asked.
“I’m going with that, yes,” he said. He glanced around the crew cabin. Smoke was everywhere, and there were people moving about, unhooking themselves from harnesses, struggling to lower themselves safely. There was coughing and moaning all about. “It looks like the module’s landing system kicked in. She’s upright. But the shuttle is still attached to the Citadel module. It didn’t release, so we’re sticking straight up. And there’s a fire somewhere. All I can see is smoke.”
Reilly sat up, with Mitch’s help, and immediately burst into a coughing fit.
“Commander Marcos … ” she sputtered.
Mitch looked around. He was nowhere to be found.
“He must have fallen,” Mitch said, glancing below them.
She shook her head, managing to tamp down the coughing. “Dead,” she said. She blinked a few times, tears in her eyes, and reached up to her forehead. She winced and took her fingers away quickly, looking at the bright red blood on her fingertips. “He’s dead,” she said again. “I saw him. He was blown outside during decompression.”
Mitch took this in. “He had to release the clamps manually?”
“Something happened to the release, I think,” she said.
Mitch nodded. Later, they could grieve for Marcos and anyone else who didn’t survive the crash. For now, if the rest of them were to get out alive, it was vital to start moving. “Let’s concentrate on getting everyone out of here, ok?”
She nodded in return and struggled to her feet.
There was moaning everywhere, and the sound of electricity arcing in places. From deep within the smoke Mitch could hear a firm voice giving orders, telling people to remain calm, and organizing them to gather the wounded and find a way out of the module.
It was Captain Somar.
“Captain!” Mitch cried out, using the title, even though the alien was not part of the Earth Colony Fleet. “There’s an escape hatch in the aft section, starboard.”
There was a pause. “I am sorry, crewman, I do not know these terms.”
Mitch blinked and couldn’t help smiling a little. These were ancient Earth nautical terms. The alien Captain would have no frame of reference. “Rear of the module on the right side if you’re facing the front of the shuttle.”
“Thank you,” the Captain called back and began directing the crew toward the hatch. There was a clank and a sudden WHOOSH as the hatch opened and the pressurized air of the crew chamber gushed outward into the planet’s atmosphere. The smoke was carried with it, and the room cleared enough, momentarily, for Mitch to see where the fire was.
Flames danced insanely around the oxygen scrubbers, directly below him.
“Out!” Mitch cried. “Everyone out now! The O2 tanks are going to go!”
The orderly evacuation being organized by the alien Captain now became frenzied and chaotic as everyone struggled to exit the crew chamber.
Somar picked up immediately, “Grab anyone who is injured. I need two people on the door assisting people who exit. You! And you!”
Mitch was impressed by the alien’s capacity to lead, even in this chaotic situation. He remained calm but driven.
In the meantime, Mitch found that he and Reilly were in a bad situation. They were resting on the guardrail several feet above the oxygen scrubbers, which meant that if the scrubbers went, he and Reilly would be the very first casualties. It also meant there was no fast way down. Even if they risked it and dropped, they’d land in the flames and be seriously injured, if not killed.
Mitch twisted and turned, desperate to see a way down. They were on the port side, across the chamber from the exit. There was another hatch on this side, but it was currently surrounded by flames and arcing electricity.
“Up,” Reilly said, coughing. “We have to go up.”
“I just came from there,” Mitch protested, half joking.
“The forward emergency hatch,” she said. “It’s in the floor, just above us.”
Mitch looked up. True enough, the pull ring for the hatch was in plain sight, only a few feet above the pilot’s station. He helped Reilly to her feet, and the two of them clamored up, scaling the station supports. It was grueling, and the bruising in his side felt like he’d taken a missile hit to the ribs. He pushed through the pain, hoisted Reilly up to one of the cross beams for the guardrail, and then pulled himself after. When they were close enough to the hatch, Reilly reached up, twisted the release, and let the panel fall open. Before she could grab it, the hatch pulled free and fell past them.
“Look out below!” she cried. The panel clanged and rang against the guardrail and was deflected outward, landing just short of the O2 tanks. Mitch let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Freak out later,” Reilly said. “Exit now.”
He could hardly argue with that kind of logic. He helped Reilly up and through the hatch before struggling through it himself.
Coughing, eyes stinging, Thomas helped the alien guide people out of the aft hatch. His arm hurt. It didn’t seem to be broken, but it might be a sprain. Otherwise he felt like he was in decent enough shape for just having crashed on an alien planet.
The stinging in his eyes became too much and he paused to wipe them with the sleeve of his jumpsuit. The chaos around him, the coughing and groaning and sounds of fire and electricity, gave him an unwelcome sense of déjà vu. Of course, he knew he’d never been here or even in this situation before. But he’d seen a similar scene in his mind so many times that this one felt utterly familiar. It was a sound—a sound that could only be imagined but nevertheless haunted him—that rang most clearly in his ears.
The sound of two-hundred-thousand souls crying out as they were consumed by flame.
“Crewman,” the alien said, “I need you.”
Thomas snapped out of the trance, shook himself, and moved to the alien’s side, helping one of the injured Blue Collars through the hatch. Most of the crew was now making its way through the emergency exit, and it wouldn’t be long before they were all safely on the ground. They were going to make it.
This was his fault for playing the part of a modern engineer. What had he been thinking? He was completely out of his element here. His expertise was in systems that were antiques here. Ironic, considering that antiquated-looking mechanical systems, like something out of a Jules Verne story, had experienced a rebirth side-by-side with advanced technology. He had thought that, with his background, he could easily catch up. He had thought that he could wing it. He had been wrong.
His ineptitude had caused the chaos around him. The lives lost here would be on his head. He was proving to be every bit the villain he was accused of being.
Some new start.
“Help,” came a weak voice from above.
Thomas peered up through the thickening smoke and saw a young woman, still strapped in her seat. Blood covered her face, and she seemed unable to make her hands work properly. Concussion, Thomas thought.
“Help,” she said again in a voice that was now barely audible.
Thomas leapt upward and snagged one of the seat backs. It reclined, causing him to nearly lose his grip, but he held on and pulled himself up with a huge effort. His arm screamed at him. A bolt of pain, like molten lava, ran from his shoulder up into his neck and then back down to the tips of his fingers. He clinched his jaw and pulled.
“Crewman!” the alien shouted.
“There’s someone up here!” he called back.
“The last of the crew is out, I will assist you.”
“No!” Thomas called. “Get outside and get the others to safety. They need you,” he said.
The alien looked at him briefly, then nodded. “Blessings,” he said, then exited the craft.
“Look out below!” came a cry from far above. Thomas watched as a floor panel clanged and rebounded from the guardrails, barely missing the scrubber tanks. That was a close one, he thought. He continued to haul himself upward until he was eye-level with the injured woman.
“I’ll get you out of here, ok?”
She nodded weakly and struggled with her harness. Thomas reached over her and pulled the release. He then pulled her free of her seat, bracing himself while keeping her close to him. He gasped from the pain in his arm, had a fleeting mental image of shredded muscle and cartilage, and pushed through to hold on to both the girl and the seat. He began the climb down with her clinging to his aching shoulders.
There was a pop and hiss, followed almost instantly by a sudden explosion.
One of the smaller tanks near the fire had finally had enough, and the explosion sent shards of hot metal sailing across the room. Whatever had been in the tank was liquid and extremely flammable. It spread like napalm and covered the surface directly below him.
“Damn,” Thomas said, surprisingly calm.
They would have to scale their way over to the exit and drop down directly in front of it. This was going to be tough, since there were no seats in that area and the drop from one of the guardrails cleared a good fifteen feet at that point.
Thomas held the woman tight as he climbed across seats. Again, one of the seatbacks reclined suddenly, throwing the two of them downward at an alarming rate. The girl screamed as he caught both of them by grasping an armrest. His shoulder bellowed its protest, and his left arm, which felt sprained before, now felt like it was ready to snap.
There was nothing for it now. It wasn’t possible for him to climb back up with the weight of both of them on an already-injured arm and shoulder. That left only one choice—drop into the flames below.
He took a couple of deep breaths, grasped the injured woman tightly, and let go of the armrest.
They hit with a thud, but he managed to keep his feet under him. Flames leapt onto the legs of his jumpsuit and caught the material almost instantly.
Actually, Thomas realized after a few seconds, the material was fine. It was resisting the fire, but it was covered in the burning liquid.
A sound was coming from behind him, like a metal balloon stretching to its limits. There was a pop and a whine as one of the seals on the oxygen tanks burst. There was no time left!
Thomas clutched the woman to him and ran full on towards the hatch. He leapt, diving for the opening with no idea what would be on the other side.
It has to be safer than here.
The tanks blew at that moment, and the concussive force funneled out of the exit behind them, propelling them both outward into open air.
The module had landed nose up with the hatch several hundred feet off the ground. The outward thrust of the explosion launched Thomas and the woman into the treetops, and the two crashed their way through a lattice of small limbs into the brush below.
Somar was scrambling down the side of the module when the explosion rocked the craft, nearly shaking him loose and hurtling him to the ground. He saw two figures flung from the ship, vanishing into the treetops—the crewman and the woman he had bravely stayed behind to save. Somar prayed that they lived through the impact in the forest.
As he reached the bottom rung and finally stepped down onto the alien soil, he looked around at the surrounding chaos. Many of the humans were injured and lying on the hard-packed ground among splintered trees and upturned brush. The sounds of moaning and anguished cries filled the air around him.
The explosion of the oxygen tanks had been completely contained within the crew chamber of the shuttle, high atop the Citadel module. The module itself had managed to right itself for landing, settling into the towering position that would have been its default in a normal landing. Considering the half-crash/half-landing, the module was in relatively good shape. Spires of gleaming metal, a communications array, jutted upward into the sky in a way that Somar thought was almost majestic. Like the points of a crown.
The crewmembers were organizing and tending to the injured, getting people to safety and dressing wounds with the few med kits that had been hastily retrieved from the module before the mass exodus of the crew. Somar spotted three Blue Collars who had helped one of their crewmates into the shade of the trees.
“Crewmen,” he said, gesturing for them. “We need to form a rescue party. Two of the crew were thrown clear by the explosion. I believe they landed in that … ”
“We’re not taking orders from you, scrub,” one of the males said belligerently.
Somar blinked. He had heard the term “scrub” before. It was a derogatory term, short for “scrub brush.” It was a slang term that referenced the plant-based nature of Somar’s people. “Forgive me, but we must … ”
“You heard me. We don’t take orders from a walking salad. So why don’t you just go take root somewhere nice and let the real humans do their work, ok?”
Somar was unsure how to proceed. It was essential to act quickly. The crewmembers were likely injured and could die if not found soon. But he was unaccustomed to his orders being ignored and wasn’t sure where this sudden hostility was coming from.
“I am a Captain of the Esool Fleet and an acting Captain for the Earth Colony Fleet. I am the only ranking officer present. Please assist me in finding these injured crewmen.”
“I said we’re not taking orders from you!” The crewman stepped forward menacingly, squaring off with Somar. His body language was practically screaming hostility. “Our commander is First Commander Marcos, and we’ll only take orders from him.”
Somar was unsure how to proceed. If he engaged this crewman in hand-to-hand combat, he would surely prevail, but it would waste precious time and conceivably damage his position with the crew. Luckily, he was spared from the decision by a male voice from behind.
“Marcos is dead.”
Everyone turned to look at the newcomer. Somar recognized him as Mitch Garrison, one of the Chief Engineers. He was helping the female pilot, Reilly, to hobble toward the group.
“Like hell,” one of the Blue Collars said.
“It’s true,” Reilly reported. She wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her uniform, smearing dirt across her tear-moist cheek in the process. “He had to hit the release clamps manually. He was blown out during decompression.”
There was a moment of silence as the group absorbed this information. “So … who’s in charge?”
Mitch nodded towards Somar. “Like the man said, he’s the ranking officer. And you, gentlemen, will follow the chain of command. Is that going to be a problem, Jack?” he said, turning to address the belligerent crewman.
The other crewmen looked at each other, plainly irritated by this turn of events. Jack openly stared at Mitch, then looked to his friends and nodded. When they turned back to Somar, they saluted, although a bit resentfully. “Your orders … Captain,” Jack, practically spat.
Somar simply repeated, “We need to form a search party. I want three people to scout that brush. There are at least two crewmembers in there, possibly injured. Bring them back to this area.”
The crew nodded and three men, including Jack, left to enter the brush. A moment later, another Blue Collar crewmember hurried after them, a young human that Somar had not seen before.
Somar looked around and indicated several more members of the crew, most of which had gathered at the first sign of a conflict. “We must establish a camp. You,” he indicated several men and women. “See to food and shelter. The rest of you will tend the wounded. Bring them all to this location and make sure they are shaded and provided with water and treatment.”
The crew now split up into their various duties.
Somar turned to Mitch and Reilly. “Thank you for defusing the situation,” he said.
Mitch nodded. “You’re welcome. I saw how you got everyone out of that chamber. You may have saved most of their lives, even if they don’t want to admit it. You deserve respect,” he said.
Somar nodded perfunctorily. He then helped Mitch to lower the injured Reilly into a shaded spot. He spared a glance at the Citadel module, standing high and gleaming under an alien sun. The shuttle, their only means of transport out of the atmosphere, was smoldering at the top of the tower. It might or might not be able to function again. But since they had no way, at present, to know if the orbital module had managed to survive, it could be a moot point anyway. Space might just be permanently out of reach.
Somar turned back to the injured and dazed crew. Space, at this point, was the least of their worries.
Jack and the others stomped off into the woods. The scrub had given them an order, and the Chief had backed it. Mitch Garrison was a good guy, and Jack would follow his lead. If he said do what the sprout ordered, then that was what Jack would do. For now.
He and two of his crew had just entered the brush when Alan Angelou raced up to join them without a word. More the better, Jack thought.
Alan was an odd kind of guy—Jack wasn’t too sure how he felt about him. He was a good worker and was always on time. When he had first joined Captain Alonzo’s crew, he was as green as Esool blood, but he was smart, and he worked hard to get up to speed. In fact, he seemed to know more than he let on. He picked up everything so fast that Jack was sure he had at least some kind of background in it.
It was funny because even though Alan was a Blue Collar, he sometimes acted like a White. He read things. Whenever he wasn’t on duty, you could almost always find him in the galley or in his bunk, reading something from a handheld. When they were at faster-than-light, he would read from one of the old paper books, the rare ones that they came across sometimes during trades. Jack had seen the boy trade a perfectly good wrench for a stack of worthless, rotting books once. He had torn into him for that one, but later Alan showed him his collection of tools, all good quality and all cared for regularly. The boy could spare one wrench, which had suddenly not looked up to snuff in the comparison.
Jack didn’t trust Alan entirely, but that was true for most people. Trust had to be earned, Jack felt. But the kid did his work and kept his mouth shut—and that wasn’t true for most people. The books were a big waste of time, Jack could have told him, but he couldn’t see much harm in them. If the boy started to get too big for his britches, thinking he was a White Collar, Jack and his crew could always teach him a lesson. A bunk raid in the middle of the night was usually enough to make most guys give up on trying to be above everyone else.
They had been in the brush for a while now, plowing through as branches and brambles snagged on their clothes and tripped them up. Jack was starting to feel that every step, every slap of a branch, every time his clothes snagged, was a slap in the face from the alien scrub.
Damn the scrub! Why wasn’t he the one sweating and dragging through this stuff? Jack cursed as more branches slashed at him and more brambles grabbed him.
They were going blind, using only the general direction the alien had pointed in as their guide. Probably a big mistake. What would the scrub care if four real men died out here in the brush? He was in charge. As long as he had a few pet humans to boss around, why should he care if he lost a handful?
As they moved, they suddenly heard someone calling from within the brush. It was faint, muffled by the growth of the forest. “Hey! Hey, we’re here! Over here!”
“You hear that?” one of the guys asked.
“That way,” Jack nodded, honing in on the voice. Alan stepped in beside him as they moved further in. The kid was breaking through the bramble and limbs through sheer will.
“Here!” they heard the male voice call again, closer. “Here in the brush!” They finally broke through to a small clearing where a White Collar was tending to an injured woman on the ground. Jack looked closer and saw that it was Lissa Martin. She was a Blue Collar who worked in ship’s services, mostly running errands between modules, checking gauges, that sort of thing. She and Jack had given it a go a few times, taking advantage of long shifts by keeping each other “company.”
She looked to be in bad shape. They’d have to get her back to the landing module quickly.
There was movement to his side. Jack glanced over to see Alan. He seemed to be looking at the White Collar. No, not just looking—staring. It seemed to Jack that Alan recognized the man, but he couldn’t be sure. Alan glanced quickly at Jack and then his expression changed. He was, once again, the same old stoic Alan, and before Jack could ask him anything, the young man pushed into the clearing, moving to help the injured pair.