said finally. “I don’t-“
He was interrupted by the sound of metal being struck then bending. The Black Hole shifted, slowly at first, then rapidly as whatever happened succumbed to the damage it had taken. All three fell from the chairs to the deck as the ship angled and slammed into the ground. Alarms went off throughout the bridge, lights flashing and klaxons sounding.
“ What the fuck?” Aran shouted.
Lizzie screamed, no words, just raw terror. She curled into a ball and slid beneath her station, rocking herself and sucking on her lip piercings so hard she could taste blood.
“ It knocked out a landing strut,” Ling said a moment later, breaking through Lizzie’s panic induced fugue. “Son of a bitch tore out a landing strut! We’ve got minor breeches, just enough for atmosphere loss, and all sorts of damage to electrical and hydraulic systems.”
“ What about that…that thing?” Lizzie asked, pulling herself together enough to uncurl from her fetal position. She stared around, expecting a great gash in the wall of the bridge to open up and the fanged beak to reach in and snatch her out.
“ I don’t know,” Ling responded. The display was out, the short distance crash having shorted out the connections to it. “But we’re okay…for now.”
Aran swore and pulled himself back into the pilot’s chair that was bolted to the floor. He swiveled in it to account for the canted angle of the ship and rubbed his hip. “Can we fix it?”
Ling glanced at Lizzie, letting her see the hopelessness in his eyes. It caused a chill to go down her spine, but she managed a weak smile in spite of it for him. Ling had always been nice to her. He’d talked to her and even helped her with one of her piercings. The least she could do was show him a little support.
“ Where are the others?” Ling asked, turning back to him.
Aran grunted. “No idea. We got separated when that thing came at us. I thought maybe Cooper made it back here, he disappeared earlier.”
Lizzie felt as much as heard the breath suck through her teeth. Cooper was bad news, especially if he was unsupervised. Nobody knew exactly what was off about him but the rumors were that he either liked being rough with his women or something far, far worse.
“ Without Sasha it’ll take a long time,” Ling let his concern tinge his voice. Lizzie felt her stomach twist, then she clamped down on it. Sasha was her crewmate too, she should be just as upset if something happened to her. Lizzie’s concerns unnoticed, Ling continued, “Can fix just about all the electrical shorts. Most of the hydraulics too probably. Hull breaches maybe, but not without us being in a proper dock. No way of getting in one either, not without some major equipment.”
“ Couldn’t we fire the reaction thrusters or something?”
Ling glanced at Lizzie again. This time she saw a thoughtful and, maybe, even a hopeful light in his wide open eyes. “Yeah…yeah, that might work. We’ have to be real careful, then figure out how to rig up a temporary strut to have in place, and figure out how to get it there, but there’s a chance. Maybe one in a hundred, but I’ve had worse.”
“ Get started!”
“ You’re not Captain Hildebrand.” Lizzie saw Ling’s back straighten and his shoulders rise.
“ No, but I’m second in command and after what we all just saw, we have to accept that the Captain won’t be returning.”
Lizzie whimpered, then clamped her hand over her mouth. She never had been very good at dealing with death and violence. Being squeamish was bad for someone who served on a ship that specialized in forced salvage operations, but Klous liked her and made sure he kept her clear of anything that got messy.
Ling nodded after a moment. “I’ll get started because that’s what the Captain would want. I’m not trying anything that might make it worse until we know, for sure, whether he’s coming back or not.”
Aran scowled. “Fine, but if we don’t hear from him in twenty four hours you’ve got your answer.”
“ Fine.”
Lizzie looked back and forth between them. She thought about crawling back under her desk but decided instead to suck a lip piercing between her teeth. Ling looked at her and offered a weak smile. She tried, and failed to return it. He nodded towards her station and she nodded in return. She was no engineer but she knew enough about emergency electronics that she could help. She keyed in some quick tests to run on the system and frowned at how quick the results came back. They had a lot of work to do, if what her diagnostics and what Ling said were even halfway accurate.
Chapter 7
“ Tarn, who’s this?”
The muscle bound man guarding Klous and Sasha turned his head to watch another man stride quickly and confidently across one of the rope bridges to the hollow in the tree that they sat in. The new man was thinner but still had the look of someone who was lean and dangerous.
“ Said their names were Klous and Sasha. She called him Captain.”
The new arrival walked over to stare at Sasha and then Klous. He lashed out, driving his fist into Klous’s jaw and rocking the surprised man’s head back. Sasha yelped and jumped to her feet. Klous shook his head to clear it and tested with his tongue to see if anything had been knocked loose. Some blood was all he found. “What’s that for?”
“ That’s for shooting up my ship! We wouldn’t be trapped here if it wasn’t for you!” He snarled.
“ You must be the Captain of the Rented Mule.”
“ Jonathon Sharp,” He said, nodding. “Except the Mule is a submersible these days. Again, thanks to you.”
“ You let us go and you can join my crew,” Klous offered.
Tarn glanced at his Captain. Sharp just snorted. “Not interested in losing my title. Easier for us to just take your ship and leave you here.”
Sasha gasped beside him, but Klous ignored her. “Sasha, sit down, you’re making our new friends nervous.”
Tarn smirked but did not let the barrel of his energy rifle move a fraction of an inch from where it pointed at her. Sasha returned to the carved wooden stump with an unhappy groan. Klous stared at Sharp. “All right, let us go and we’ll take you to a port back in the rim systems. We’ve got plenty of extra chambers after your people killed several of my men.”
“ Next time I’m going to have Tarn hit you,” Sharp said. “You’re here, now get used to it. Expect a high protein diet, unless I decide to have you killed.”
“ You don’t strike me as the killing type,” Klous dared to say.
“ I’m not, but I wouldn’t push me if I were you. I already don’t like you.”
“ What was that thing?” Sasha interrupted. “It was…”
“ Big? Scary? About to eat you? Right on all accounts,” Sharp said. She nodded. “We’ve killed a couple of them when we have to, but mostly we try to avoid them. Been calling them Chickasaurus because we don’t know what else to use.”
Klous snorted at the ludicrous name. “A dinosaur chicken?”
“ They got beaks and feathers. Plenty of muscle but something that big on too legs that can move that fast? Even here that’s not normal. Their bones are light too, just like a bird. So yeah, a dinosaur chicken.”
“ Feathers?”
“ Thick hollow hair or some kind of feathers, it reflects light. Makes energy weapons less effective, keeps ‘em cool in the sun, and adds some camouflage so they can hide or hunt better,” Tarn said.
“ No wings though, they can’t get up here?” Klous peered out to the rope bridge thoughtfully.
“ Don’t worry, there’s plenty of nasty critters that live in the trees around here too. We got most of ‘em scared of us but we still post guards at night.” Sharp turned away from them to look out the opening of the tree. He returned a moment later. “You seen enough to know your odds of surviving out there on your own are close to zero.
