Page 7 of Exiles on Earth
“We really need to get in there,” Arture says, voice calm as he shuffles closer.
“I know!” Gara snaps back.
I keep an eye on the remaining bot, which has to pull in its legs to follow us.
“We’re nearing a planet.” Nevare leans against the wall, eyes wide as he casts his senses out. “It’s occupied.”
“Double drok,” I curse. If we crash-land on a planet occupied by a sentient species, there’s no telling what will happen tous. We could end up as food, slaves, or tortured for our alleged superior knowledge. We could be sacrificed to forces of nature or revered as gods. It’s a more uncertain fate than being dropped on a bare rock; but if a planet catches us in its gravity, there’s nothing we can do.
Behind, the bot drags itself toward us, and ahead is a dead end as the ship speeds on a collision course with an apparently colonized planet. It all comes down to one sealed door between my crew and their lives.
Gerverstock strength floods me, lighting all their faces with a deadly red sheen from my scales. They flash a deep bronze, the glow as molten as lava in the hottest depths of Oloria.
Arture and Gara shuffle aside as much as they can as I push forward, no time to waste, fingertips digging for a hold on the tiny magnetic blocks which fit together so tightly not even an atom of hydrogen can get through. Not the right course of action; I reel back then shove all my strength into a single punch. Fire shoots across my shoulders, but the cubes shatter, fresh alarms blazing as I fall into the cockpit.
Arture darts in to get to the console, and Gara grabs hold of me as I stagger upright.
“Is he alright?” Dom grunts, voice like a bag of rusty gears.
Before I can answer, a beam of green light flashes past us and into the cockpit. Laser beam!
“Down!” I shout, but the bot isn’t aiming for my crew; it hit the navigation panel with a shower of sparks, and Arture faces a set of smoking controls.
With a grimace, Arture pulls off the panel below to access the hydraulics. “That’s suboptimal.”
“Get in, I’ll block the door.” My words are a mere rasp. More fire shoots across my nerves, muscles sending spikes of sharp pain into my shoulders and back. I pulled too much strength, and if I try again, my muscles will rip themselves right off my bones.
Gara’s hard glare warns what a bad idea this is, but I turn my face away. If I die saving them, that will be a good death.
Herding them in, I turn and brace against the shattered door, scales clicking as they fuse into a thick shield all over my body. Time to learn if a robot can shoot through Gerverstock scales at full hardness.
The shuttle shudders, then gravity shuts off. Both me and the bot at the end of the corridor flail as we lift off the floor. I grind my teeth. Now there’s nothing to push against; I won’t be able to block the doorway! “Arture! Get the grav back on.”
“Rerouting that system for necessary power,” my pilot says, utterly focused on his task.
“I can hear them,” Nevare cries out.
“Hear what?” Arik asks. “The bots?”
“Chatter outside. It’s loud, so much. In the waves of light, the invisible spectrum, short hops to one another.”
I try to parse that information quickly. Nevare might talk differently than the others, but his insights are always spot on. “Primitive short-range comms, it has to be. Can you turn them away from us, Nevare?”
“Already done,” he says serenely.
We’re going to crash soon if we are close enough to brush through short wave comms. “Aim us toward a place not populated by sentients,” I order Arture.
Arik scans the output on the readers. “Dihydrogen monoxide everywhere.”
A waterworld? “Somewhere without sentients that we can land on and not drown,” I amend.
“And within our current trajectory. I can only move us a few hundred meters in any direction,” Arture adds. Then, as if an afterthought, “I’ve failed.”
“No. You’ve all done well.” The shuttle balks, and Nevare shouts, “Go left!”
Arture grunts, hauling at the hydraulics. I go to help him,keeping an eye on the bot in the corridor as it spins. The increased gravity as we approach the planet works in its favor and it resumes its course, clacking and clicking up the corridor toward us. I have some time before it reaches us, but not much.
I put my hand next to Arture’s and pull hard on the broken pipes spewing oil, fingers slippery. The roaring around us turns deafening as the ship skims the atmosphere of the unsuspecting planet we’re about to crash into, and gravity returns with a vengeance, crashing us all to the floor. I can’t tell if we’ve slowed the ship enough, but we’ve done all we can.
