“What the hell are you doing?” screamed Olivia, picking herself up as the ride smoothed out tremendously.

  “Trying to keep us alive!” he growled as he steered the ship past an outcropping of rocks.

  “Don’t you know that you can’t take a space ship under water?? They’re designed to handle air pressure pushing out, not water pressure pushing in!” She sounded like she was going to hyperventilate. Was she scared of water too? He remembered the first time he met up with her, and how she couldn’t swim worth shit.

  “Don’t worry, that’s only if we go too deep. I don’t plan to do that.”

  She grumbled to herself, but moved back to the bench seat and buckled herself in.

  Glancing at one of the panels to his left, Dustin saw that the alien vessels that had been chasing them, had followed into the water, and were shooting missiles at them. Diving deeper, he kept a tight grip on the steering, while keeping a close eye on the pressure gauges.

  A flash of something in front of him, caused him to jerk the ship to the right, and Olivia gave a short shriek behind him.

  “Do you even know how to fly?” she complained, grabbing the bag and strapping it into the seat next to her.

  Dustin ignored her as he veered further right, as a huge mouth, from some underwater monstrosity, tried to take a bite of the ship. He veered under the jaw and flew down the length of the monster. It didn’t go down for very far, before it curved back up, and suddenly, he was out of the water, flying through a huge underground cavern.

  Of the ships that had been following him, only one managed to follow him. However, as it paused just above the water, no doubt looking for him, the monster surged out of the water, and swallowed it whole.

  Dustin didn’t wait to be the next bite. There were some tunnels that looked vaguely familiar, that were large enough for the ship, but not for the monster. He darted for one, just as the water splashed from it, as it came for them.

  As he paused in the tunnel, shining the ship lights over the walls and further down the tunnel, he caught his breath. He could hear small hysterical giggles coming from Olivia. She would never have survived, he’s pretty sure. She freaked out way too easy.

  Flying down the tunnel, he realized it was dug by one of the same tunneling worms that he had stolen the genetic material from, only much, much bigger. What could a worm of this size possibly eat?

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  Hoping the answer wasn’t them, he made sure that the ship didn’t brush the ground anywhere. He needed to find a dead end, so he could park without worrying about something sneaking up on them while he worked on the ship.

  Turning around a bend, he pulled the ship up short. He was staring at the tail end of a worm so massive, he was afraid to sneeze. A tunnel on the side, became visible as the worm continued tunneling, and he wasted no time in darting down it. It angled down, then turned back, until they were heading back in the same direction they had come from.

  He didn’t fly for very long, before he came across a weird sight. There was water lapping at a pool, and sticking up out of the water, was the tail end of a worm, but it wasn’t moving. In fact, it looked dead, with the skin sloughing off. There was a greasy slime forming on the surface of the water, and he decided this may be what he was looking for.

  As he settled the ship down, Olivia piped up from the back.

  “What are we doing here? I thought we were trying to get off this planet?”

  “You’re the one who told me that this thing has a self-destruct trigger if we fly too high,” he snapped, turning towards her.

  “Oh, yea, sorry. I forgot.”

  He looked at her for a moment, really thinking about laying into her, then shook his head. “I have work to do, try not to bother me too much.”

  She sighed, then, laying the bag of guns on the floor, she stretched out on the bench for a nap. Dustin got busy, pulling panels off and seeing what went where. This was way more complicated than the small tech he remembered working on, but that just made it all the more fun.

  Time flew, and when she woke with a start, cursing with tears in her eyes, he had torn the entire interior apart. She just sat there gaping in surprise.

  “So, I’ve disabled the antennae that lets the shuttle talk with the Josagn, and I think I’ve found the self-destruct trigger. The bad news is that it’s tied into the life support system. It’s probably going to take me days to figure out or rewire the ship.”

  “Well, I’m starving. This thing doesn’t happen to have any food in it, does it?”

  “Probably not, and I wouldn’t try eating that dead worm outside either.”

  “Let me check in the bench,” she said, standing up and lifting the seat up. There were several large bundles that she pulled out.

  Dustin came over to see what they were, because he was starving too.

  There were two sets of armor, similar to what they were already wearing, as well as a couple of laser pistols.

  “This might come in handy,” she said, lifting up two rebreathers.

  “I’ve not seen those before, what do they do?”

  “They pull breathable air out of the surrounding air, so that in times of emergency, you can survive longer.”

  “We could try and use those, if I disabled the life support system for air, but that won’t help us stay warm.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. It will get cold fast.”

  “I guess there’s nothing for it. We’re going to have to go hunting.”

  “But everything out there wants to kill us! It’s death to go out there!”

  “Yep. If we try to wait until it’s time to go to the space station, we’ll be too weak from lack of food to be able to fight well. I don’t intend to get that far, just to have them kill me because those things out there want to kill me.”

  She stood up and sighed. Taking one of the pistols, she threw the other one to him. Dustin wished he could use his PED to change to something more appropriate, but that wasn’t an option anymore.