Salvage Merc One: The Daedalus System (10 page)

“The bot has been eaten,” he said quietly.

“Something jumped out of the lake of boiling blood and grabbed it, didn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mgurn answered. “That is unfortunate. I liked that bot.”

“Is the thing that ate it still on the hull?” I asked. “Or did it drop back into the lake of boiling blood?”

Mgurn took a deep breath. I was really getting to him with the lake of boiling blood thing. Truth was that I was already bored with saying it, but it annoyed Mgurn so I kept at it. I don’t know why I wanted to annoy him so much. I blame it on the horns.

Mgurn tapped at the console for a minute until an external vid feed came up on the view screen.

“It’s still on the hull,” I said as we watched one of the lake of boiling blood creatures gnaw on the left wing. “Hungry little bugger. Can we shock it off with the shields?”

“If the shields have not effected it yet then the answer to that question is no,” Mgurn said.

“Now who’s being patronizing?” I smirked.

“Condescending,” Mgurn said. “I was being condescending, not patronizing. Patronizing would be me telling you it was a good guess, and I hope the thinking didn’t hurt your brain too much.”

“That would just be asshole,” I said.

“Yes,” Mgurn said, “that too.”

We watched the thing grind its teeth against the ship’s wing. A few teeth fell out and tumbled to the lake of boiling blood below, but a few got stuck in the ship’s carbon alloy hull, piercing it with surprising ease.

“Uh oh,” I said. “Might need to send out another bot.”

“No, I might not,” Mgurn said and fired up the thrusters.

“Whatcha doing, buddy?” I asked.

“Shaking this abomination loose from the ship,” Mgurn said. “Keep an eye on it.”

“What the hell else am I going to watch?” I responded.

The ship rocketed forward then Mgurn sent it into a steep dive. Just before we hit the surface of the lake of boiling blood, he pulled up and spun us around again and again. The dampeners kept my stomach from escaping through my throat, but just barely.

Mgurn stopped the spinning, and I shook my head.

“The leech is still hanging on,” I said. In fact, it looked like it was making some progress with its damage. “What else you got?”

“The power of space,” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “No idea what that is, but you go for it.”

He did.

The ship climbed sharply, and Mgurn pushed the thrusters to full power. The view screen was filled with the planet’s atmosphere, which was filled with blood-red clouds. I tried not to think of what made up those clouds, but it stood to reason that if the lakes on the planet were filled with blood, then perhaps the clouds were also. It was a blood cycle instead of a water cycle. Which was totally gross. But totally cool because blood cycle.

We burst through the blood clouds and into a breathtaking scene of stars and the deep black-blue of the upper atmosphere. The creature was still clamped to our wing, but it wasn’t chewing any longer. It looked like it was just trying to hang on.

Then we left the atmosphere, and its jaws let go. It floated off into space, and I watched as moisture crystals froze across the surface of its skin. Bloody moisture crystals.

“We should shoot it,” I said. “Can we shoot it?”

“You may do what you please, Joe,” Mgurn said. “This is your ship.”

“Damn right it is,” I said and took control of the weapons system. I took aim and fired one plasma bolt. The creature exploded into a billion tiny, frozen pieces. “Hell yeah!”

“Was that fun?” Mgurn asked.

“Sure was, buddy,” I said.

“Good,” Mgurn responded and frowned. “This will not be.”

He pushed the ship into a dive and aimed back at the planet. Not a gradual reentry, not an angled dive, but a straight down, hell at your heels, full powered, holy crud we are going to die, dive.

“If that smaller creature could do that to us then the larger one will destroy this ship in seconds,” Mgurn said before I could ask what the bloody hell he thought he was doing. “I do not plan on letting that happen.”

“Um, but what about the crashing and dying part of this strategy?” I asked. “I’m no rocket scientist, but I was good at physics in high school, and I am willing to bet this ship is not going to handle smashing into a lake of boiling blood very well.”

“I agree,” Mgurn said.

“Oh, good,” I replied. “But you aren’t slowing down.”

“No, I am not,” Mgurn said. “I am going faster.”

“Okey dokey,” I said. “It’s too bad that with these horns my head can’t fit through my legs.”

Mgurn took a second to look over at me, completely confused.

“You know,” I continued, “so I can kiss my ass goodbye.”

Ten

There it was, that mighty lake of boiling blood, directly below and racing up at us so fast that I was afraid to blink. I wasn’t afraid to scream, though. That was totally happening.

“Joe! Please!” Mgurn yelled. “I need to concentrate!”

“Concentrate on what?” I shouted. “How much concentration does it take to crash us into a lake of boiling blood?”

“It takes a lot of concentration when crashing is not the objective!” Mgurn yelled.

“Oh! I didn’t know that crashing wasn’t the objective since it sure as fo looks like crashing is the objective!” I shouted.

“It is not!” he yelled.

“Good to know!” I shouted back.

The view screen was filled with blood. Nothing but blood. All I saw was blood. Then something else. The big one. The huge monster that waited for us just under the surface. I couldn’t see a head, but I was sure it knew we were coming right at it. It had to. My screaming alone should have alerted it to our impending smashy smashy into the lake of boiling blood.

In the many, many tomes of the Eight Million Gods, there is a reference to a leviathan. Also a behemoth and other big things, but I don’t remember any of that. I think the behemoth was on land or something, and there was an air monster too. I don’t know. I skipped Sunday-Monday-Tuesday school. Those nuns just weren’t that fun to hang around with.

But, if I remembered my leviathan myth correctly, one of the Eight Million Gods fought it until it drowned. Not sure if the leviathan drowned or the god drowned. Huh. That would be good to know. But there was a big fight and lots of blood and drowning.

Not sure where my brain was going with that train of thought. Probably just trying to be a distraction while my heart stopped from pure terror and panic. My brain used to look out for me like that. Good brain.

The ship was so close to impact that I thought I had just taken my very last breath. Then Mgurn pulled up, using all four arms and both his legs to leverage the flight controls. You didn’t need to physically yank on them like that since they had coded emergency response gyros in them, but I applauded his effort.

Seriously. I applauded. Felt right at the time.

The view of blood began to change. I actually saw the horizon, a far-off line of hills that had a weird purple haze to them. The lake was no longer directly in front of us, but slowly, painfully, below us. Mgurn’s voice cracked and gave out as he screamed at the top of his Leforian lungs, his entire body straining so hard that I thought he’d pop his carapace off right there on the bridge.

We were level with the surface of the lake of boiling blood, every proximity alarm blaring at full volume, as the view screen expanded to show the sides of the ship. Not sure why it did that, maybe something Mgurn did in between wrestling with the flight controls and his silent, gasping screams. He did have four hands, so totally possible.

On either side of us was a wall of lake blood. It shot up into the air at the tips of the ship’s wings. The munched-on wing, the one we had to shake the monster off of, didn’t look so hot, but it held together. My head whipped back and forth, from one wave to the other, watching in awe as the blood towered over us. I kept expecting it to come crashing down, but we were flying so fast, with so much force, that the air just pushed the blood waves higher and higher. Then it hit me what Mgurn was doing.

I tapped at the console in front of me, bringing up the image of the lake below. I gasped as I stared at the lake bottom, a blood-stained gash of blackish rock and mud. That wasn’t all. The leviathan was there, flopping and twisting in the open air. It was too huge for me to see its head, but I could tell by its thrashing that it was not happy with what was happening to it. Probably felt kinda naked. I get that. We can all be a little shy at times.

Mgurn relaxed, a little, into the pilot’s seat and angled the ship back up into the sky. He brought us around quickly so we could see the full extent of his work. A quarter of the lake of boiling blood had burst from its shores and coated the landscape around it. The kilometer high waves crashed back to the lake bed and the brief view I had of the leviathan was gone.

“Holy crud, buddy!” I whooped. “Way to foing go!”

“Thank you,” Mgurn gasped. “I was not sure the maneuver would work.”

“Yeah, don’t admit that,” I said. “You’re ruining the magic. I’m a little shook up, so the magic is what’s keeping me from going totally bonkers right now.”

“Then, in order to keep you from going bonkers, I will say that I had it all under control from the very beginning,” Mgurn replied.

“Thanks,” I said and patted him on the shoulder. “I appreciate the lie.”

“It is not so much a lie as perhaps a stretching of the truth,” Mgurn said. “I did believe we had a fifty-fifty chance of surviving. While I could not fully predict the outcome, I did have a good deal of control over it since I was piloting the ship.”

“Nope, go back to the full lie,” I said. I tapped my head then winced as I pricked my finger on a horn again. “My brain likes the full lie.”

“Yes, of course,” Mgurn said.

Below us, the lake of boiling blood had filled back in. The giant waves were gone, and the leviathan was mostly submerged. It was so big, and we’d expelled so much lake blood, that it couldn’t fully hide itself. I could make out a lot more of its length and breadth. That didn’t help with the not-going-bonkers part either.

I shook my head, nearly fell out of my seat because of the unexpected weight of the horns, which seemed to be getting much denser than when I had first woken up, and took a deep breath.

“We’re going to have to do that again, aren’t we?” I asked.

“We are,” Mgurn said. “It is how we will void the lake of its contents.”

“Boiling blood contents,” I said.

“Yes, Joe, boiling blood contents,” Mgurn sighed. “We will void the lake of its boiling blood contents.”

“Cool,” I said. “How many more passes will we have to make?”

Four more passes. That’s what it took to turn the lake of boiling blood into a puddle of steaming blood. Yeah, sure, some of the blood pooled enough in parts of the lake bottom where it could still boil and bubble, but most of it just sort of simmered.

But neither of us cared about the simmering blood, or the still-boiling pools. All we cared about was the flopping, raging, really, really big monster that arched its back and roared up at us as we flew pass after pass over it while the sensors took a billion readings.

“It is flesh, blood, and bone,” Mgurn stated when we finished our final pass. “It can be killed.”

“Then let’s kill it,” I said. “We kill it and we get sent to the next level or phase or inning or whatever is in store for us.”

I started to take aim with the plasma cannons, but Mgurn stayed my hand. He gave a shake of his head and nodded at the view screen.

“No, I do not believe we kill it,” Mgurn said. “I believe it must die of its own accord.”

“And you believe this why?” I asked. “We’re in the killing business, Mgurn. We aren’t in the waiting for stuff to die business.”

“No, Joe, we are in the salvage business,” Mgurn corrected. “When you were in the Fleet Marines, you were in the killing business.”

“Yeah, but we still kill things,” I said. “Been doing it for a while now. Things get in our way, things get killed. Lather, rinse, repeat.”

“I am unsure as to why your personal hygiene is a factor in this,” Mgurn responded. “I am thankful that you know how to properly wash your hair, but how does that apply to this situation?”

“It’s a saying, Mgurn,” I sighed.

“Oh,” Mgurn replied. “That is a new one to me.”

“Probably because your race doesn’t have hair on your heads, so the whole…” I trailed off. “You know what? Never mind. Not important.” I felt the horns on my head. They were very solid horns. “These are important and still attached to my noggin. You think they will disappear when the thing down there dies?”

“I could not say,” Mgurn responded.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Why aren’t we killing it again?”

“Because I do not believe the talking tree was talking to you,” Mgurn said.

“No, it was talking to me,” I replied. “I may not have a lot of experience with talking trees, but I do know when one is talking to me. Yes, it was a freaky dream vision thing, but the tree was for sure talking to me.”

“Then it was not talking about you,” Mgurn said. “It was talking about the monster. Stare into the void and drown, was that it?”

“Close enough for hand grenades,” I replied. Mgurn furrowed his brow, and I waved a hand. “Never mind. You were saying?”

“Look at the poor creature,” Mgurn said and pointed at the view screen. “Its home has been voided and now it is drowning. It is not drowning in liquid, but in the air it is exposed to.”

“It’s not the only one,” I said and pointed as well. I wagged my finer at the dozens of smaller monsters that flopped and wriggled on the empty lake bottom. “Those little guys, and I say ‘little’ with all irony, ain’t doing so hot either.”

“No, they are not,” Mgurn said. “So sad.”

“Yeah, I’m not feeling the sadness like you,” I said. “Maybe it’s because I have bull horns on my head or maybe it’s because I just don’t have empathy for lake of boiling blood monsters that try to eat my ship. Either way, better them than us.”

“Hmmm,” Mgurn responded.

“Nope,” I said. “Not taking the bait. I have my feelings, you have yours. They are all irrelevant because it doesn’t matter how we feel about what’s happening down there, it only matters that it is happening.”

“Hmmm,” Mgurn responded again.

“I hate you sometimes,” I said and leaned back in my seat.

We watched the monsters flop about for an hour without any new developments. Just a lot of flopping.

“Do not say it,” Mgurn warned.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” I replied.

“Yes, you were,” Mgurn said. “I could hear the change in your breathing. You were about to tell me that I may be wrong, and we should reconsider blasting the creatures.”

“What? Me say that?” I replied. “No way. I would never suggest such a thing.”

“It is crossing my mind as well,” Mgurn admitted.

“Is it now,” I said. “Interesting.”

“But, I believe we should give it more time,” Mgurn said.

“That’s what you believe?” I asked, trying not to sound too sarcastic. “Okey dokey.”

I decided to ignore the monsters going all floppity floppity and study the lakeshore instead. There wasn’t much to see except a whole lot of blood. Drying blood. Mist rose off it as the sun beat down and baked the fluid into slowly drying rivulets of yuck. I was sure as fo glad that we couldn’t smell what was happening down there. Between the exposed aquatic life and the evaporating blood, it had to be quite the olfactory assault.

It was weird how the blood wasn’t draining back into the lake. The shore was angled enough, and there was certainly a good volume of the red stuff, so it would stand to reason that some of the blood would have made its way back into the empty lake bed. Yet none of it did.

Bizarre.

It started to make sense (ha!) after a couple of minutes, and the last of the blood seeped into the ground surrounding the empty lake. I detected movement and zoomed in, targeting a specific area about five meters from the shore. It was subtle, just a quivering of the ground, but it was there.

“What is it, Joe?” Mgurn asked. “What do you see?”

“Not a clue,” I responded, my eyes locked onto the image, not daring to glance over at Mgurn and miss something important.

And it was certainly going to be important. I could feel it. Literally. The horns sprouting from my head began to tingle and vibrate, almost in rhythm with the movement I saw happening below. I reached up and felt my horns and drew my fingers away quickly. They were scorching hot. I licked my fingers to cool them then concentrated on the view screen again.

“Sensors do not detect anything,” Mgurn said, joining me in the staring. “I see the movement, but according to the ship there is no movement.”

“Not surprised,” I said. “Are you?”

“No, I am not,” Mgurn said. “The strangeness of our mission defies all logic and reason.”

“Strangeness is one way to put it,” I said.

Something poked up from the blood-stained ground. Black with a sharp, pointed end, the object pushed through the red dirt. It began to widen as it grew, and it only took me a couple of seconds to realize what I was seeing.

“There they are,” I said. “Took them long enough.”

I switched up the view so it included the entire lakeshore. All around the empty bed was movement. The tips of black branches began to shove out of the ground, all in unison as if they were being pushed up from below by a single platform. Or perhaps the ground was falling down around what was already there. I don’t know. You could look at it both ways.

All I saw, and all that mattered, was that trees were appearing. The trees from my vision. Slit-mouthed and ugly as crud.

When they stopped growing, each shook itself, again in unison, then the slits opened and began to speak. We couldn’t hear any of it since we were up in the ship.