“What the hell?!” I yelled, my drink flying out of my hand to crash against the bar.
I instinctively grabbed at the edge of the counter to steady myself as the whole ship lurched to the side. Something had blasted a hole the size of a dinner plate in the side of the cabin, the impact sending shrapnel zipping through the area. The host, who had been standing almost directly in front of the impact, was missing half of his face.
“Android,” I mumbled, for the first time realizing the crew member was a cybernetic construct. They could make them look so life-like these days. It was often hard to tell what was cybernetic and what wasn’t. Sparks sputtered from the gaping side of the host’s face as he attempted to give directions. “The transport haaassss suuuussuuuustained daaaamaaage....”
He didn’t make if far before his circuits completely fried and the droid fell inert to the floor. Really helpful, I thought. All of this took place in the span of a minute, after which the hole left in the side of the ship started to depressurize and suck air from the cabin. The air grew thin and the force of the suction threatened to pull most occupants off their feet. I clung to the side of the bar once again, this time for leverage against the vacuum.
Luckily, the transport had safety shields that activated automatically seconds later to seal off the breach. All around me, people were coughing and gasping as the pressure in the cabin stabilized and life support systems pumped oxygen rapidly back into the area. Looking around, I noticed several were severely injured from the flying shrapnel; others had taken hard knocks from the jolting impact.
I stumbled toward the breach, keeping low and near a bulkhead in case there was another blast. I could see the charred edges of the hole and the streams of light through the hole that indicated we were still moving through space. We would have to do something about the breach. Those shields were designed to be temporary fixes at best. It probably wouldn’t hold long enough to land on the nearest planet, much less survive the strain of reentry.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who understood the precariousness of our situation. A huge, muscular man with a shaved bald head had made his way to the bulkhead opposite the hole from me. I could see his eyes lingering on the scorched edges of the breach, as well. We shared a glance, both silently acknowledging that the damage wasn’t the result of a stray space rock. It had been an attack, most likely from some sort of plasma weapon.
“I’m Skye,” I offered by way of greeting.
“Theodoric Cash,” he responded, over-emphasizing his name like it should have more significance to me than it did. “But people just call me Cash.”
We were joined by my drinking partner from earlier—the sexy brooding one, not the lightweight, wannabe-action-hero.
“Dick,” he said simply.
“We need to get to the nearest planet but that safety shield won’t hold,” I said, pointing to the breach.
“I think I can repurpose one of these interior metal panels to make a patch.”
“Good enough to hold for reentry?” I asked.
“Maybe,” said Cash. “As long as the shield is still operational, too.”
“I’ll let the pilot know the situation here and offer my help,” said Dick. “I’ve got some experience with flying ships.”
I watched him saunter away in his too tight leather trousers. Not the time, Skye, I admonished myself silently, then turned to Cash.
“I’ll see what’s happening with the rest of the passengers. I saw some injuries. Careful though, that might not be the last of it.”
Cash nodded and turned to examine a nearby interior wall-panel for removal. I made my way carefully through the explosion debris to a woman across the passenger cabin. She had green skin and blonde hair. Her expression intently focused as she administered some type of healing ability to an injured man on the floor.
“I’m Skye,” I greeted her as I approached. “Any way I can help?”
“Minerva,” she said, introducing herself. Her concentration never wavered from her task. “I almost have this one stable, but he’s in bad shape. Can you locate anyone else that might need healing while I finish up here?”
I glanced around, my eyes landing on two other people lying around the cabin interior. One was slumped over a lounge chair face down. Another was in a fetal position on the floor near the bar, not moving. I glanced back at Minerva, gesturing to the two injured people questioningly.
“Not them,” she said solemnly. “I’ve already checked them. They’re dead.”
“I’ll look around for anyone else,” I said, nodding. “Try to stay clear of the outer sides in case there’s more trouble.”
“You think the accident wasn’t isolated?” she asked, finally looking up at me with a startled expression.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“I think it wasn’t an accident,” I said simply and left to check the other passengers.
There were a couple people with head injuries. One, a man of some reptilian race origin, had what amounted to a severe concussion. Another woman of feline race was bleeding profusely from a cut on her forehead. I directed them both to the corner where Minerva was setting up triage.
Lizard guy, whose name turned out to be Vomero, was helping me carry another passenger with a broken leg to the first-aid area when the front hallway entrance swooshed open. Dick stood at the entrance, glancing around slowly. Something about his expression made me think something was wrong. His blue eyes locked with mine from across the room and the hair on the back of my neck stood up from the intensity of his gaze.
After depositing the guy that I was helping on a chair near Minerva, I made my way to the front of the passenger lounge where Dick was still surveying the room from the doorway. I met Cash on the way as he was also moving in that direction. A quick glance back toward the breach confirmed he had patched the hole.
“Trouble from the pilot?” I asked, keeping my voice low as I spoke to Dick. If something was wrong, I didn’t want to panic the others.
“You could say that,” said Dick. His casual tone from earlier had changed. It was now hard and evasive, as if he was reluctant to share information with me all of a sudden. I realized I didn’t have much experience talking with him previously against which to judge him. Maybe this was just his normal tone when he wasn’t trying to pick up some chick at the bar.
“Was he not able to find a suitable planet to land?” asked Cash.
“I couldn’t ask him,” said Dick. “He’s dead.”
A frustrated swear word was halfway out of my mouth when a loud commotion from the back of the cabin interrupted our conversation. The door leading to the back cargo area and lavatory slid open with a thud and a stumbling Ryuuk emerged from the hallway, eyes red and feathers ruffled as if he had just up-chucked his “lug wrench” into the toilet.
“Ya’ll...probably don’t wanna go in there,” the avian man said shakily, pointing toward the bathrooms down the hall before flopping into a nearby chair and clutching his stomach in pain. “I think I’m dyin’! The whole ship felt like it was shakin’...and the vomit...it felt like it just explod—”
He stopped talking as if just becoming aware of his surroundings and noticing the demolition of the passenger cabin. His eyes darted from the patched hole, dead android host, injured passengers and the three of us standing in the front glaring his way.
“Wait...what’d I miss?”
* * *
Dick, Cash and I stood over the lifeless body of the pilot. He was leaning back over his chair, eyes agape, staring blankly at the control room ceiling. A long, thin slit across his throat indicated the cause of death.
“FUCK!”
I groaned the word in frustration as the mounting tension of our situation boiled over. As a free-spirited Sagittari, it was in my nature to roll with the punches, never letting anything affect my jovial mood too severely. As complications continued to pile up, however, it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain my equilibrium.
When Dick first told us that the pilot was dead, I initially thought it must have been some accident resulting from the blast. The impact had rocked the ship and knocked a lot of loosely secured items around the area, so my first thought was an unlucky mishap. Instead, the guy’s slit throat was definitely no accident, meaning we were now stranded on a hobbled-together transport with a murderer. This day just kept getting better.
“He was like this when I came to check on him,” said Dick. “So, I have no idea how long ago this happened.”
“From the looks of the body,” said Cash, glancing up and down the pilot’s corpse closely, “I’d guess less than 30 minutes.”
Dick and I both turned to him with questioning gazes. Being able to guess the time of death from looking at a body wasn’t something just anybody could do.
“What?” asked Cash defensively. “I--umm—have some experience with this kind of thing.”
“Look, I’m not the federation,” I said, my voice picking up speed as I talked. “I don’t have any interest in solving crime or digging into how the hell you know that. All that matters to me is that we’re stuck out here with no pilot to get us safely planet side. Now, we could radio for help and hope the cavalry arrives before whoever shot at us in the first place comes back to finish the job, but that seems unlikely. I also don’t want to give whoever offed this guy a chance to up his kill count.”
“Well, at least now we have a clear picture of what we shouldn’t do,” Cash said sarcastically. “Got any actual good ideas?”
I closed my eyes and took a deep, calming breath. My outburst had released some of the tension I was fighting to control, allowing me to calm down and think. Snapping my eyes open, I glanced at Dick.
“Hot-pants here said he’s got some flying experience,” I said. “Does that include the ability to safely navigate us through reentry and land us in any state other than a fiery pile of space junk?”
Dick sneered sexily at me, apparently not missing the doubtful challenge in my tone. He leaned in close to reply, close enough for his breath to warm my cheek as his voice dropped to a low, slow tone.
“I think you’ll find the way I handle a ship more than adequate to suit our needs, you might even describe it as masterful,” he said, and I felt sweat forming between my shoulder blades. Then Dick turned back toward the control panel, checking the various systems on the display. “And just for future reference,” he continued, his voice now the brisk, all-business tone of before, “I’d like to point out that my eyes are up here, sweet-cheeks.”
At his last words, my eyes snapped up from where they were, in fact, checking out his ass as he bent over the control panel to collide with his smug emerald gaze. I tried to adopt an innocent expression as I examined a navigation screen nearby. Focus, Skye! Stranded! Explosions! Not. The. Time. Hell, for all you know he murdered that pilot. I pushed that last thought out of my mind until much later. Right now, he was really the only hope I had of not dying in this gods-forsaken transport.
“Uuummm, so what do we do with the pilot?” Cash said, breaking the silence.
“You’re going to have to move him out of the way,” I said. “At least out of the control room, maybe not in the passenger area with everyone else. The last thing we need is another reason for them to be hysterical and terrified.”
“Why me?!” Cash whined.
“Bro, look at these guns,” I said, slapping him encouragingly on the bicep. “The dead guy looks like he weighs at least 220. I can’t lift him, and Dick’s flying the ship. Consider it your contribution to the plan.”
Cash looked reluctant for a moment more as he considered my words. Then he shrugged and nodded.
“I mean, these muscles are pretty massive.”