Salvage Conquest Read online

  He shrugged. “Don’t know yet. But it promised something I’d appreciate. And, honestly, it could’ve eaten me that first time, so keeping my life is plenty reward so far.”

  The numbness was nearly gone now, and I made it to my feet.

  “Now, now,” Chark growled. He raised the stunner pistol.

  A roar, the loudest one yet, echoed up from the pit.

  This seemed to get Chark’s attention, and maybe caused him to realize I had been stalling him. He’d been wasting time, conversing with the creature’s intended meal.

  I had no choice. I had to act and act now. I ran at him, zigzagging, covering the short distance between us in only a handful of seconds. He wasn’t expecting that, apparently, and didn’t react quickly at all. Maybe the hypnotic effects of the creature’s lair behind him affected him more than he knew. He finally got off a shot, but it mostly missed; the invisible stun beam passed me by to one side. My left arm lit up like I’d stuck my finger in a pulse generator, but I ignored it. I leapt at him before he could fire again.

  We collided and went down on the hard, rocky ground, trading blows all the while.

  My primary goal was to get that stun pistol in his right hand away from him. So while he swung his left fist at my head, I grasped his right wrist and smashed that hand down on the ground repeatedly. After the third effort he dropped the gun, then we were tumbling again. I brought my foot back and kicked up at him, hard, and it drove him away, giving me a moment of separation. Now I was facing the cliff edge and, as he clambered to his feet, his back was to it. The pistol lay on the ground nearby, a bit closer to him than to me.

  He went for the gun. I went for him.

  For what seemed like a mere moment—how long it actually was, I’ll never know—I took a little nap. Just fell asleep, or rather unconscious, in mid-stride. Presumably, he must have gotten to the stun gun and aimed it in my general direction and hit me with it. It didn’t serve me up anything like a full dose, though. Maybe I got lucky, and he mostly missed. Maybe he hit me full-on, but the battery in his gun had been depleted from all the times he’d used it against my crew. For whatever reason, all the stunner did was send me to snoozing for a few seconds. But that was very nearly long enough.

  The sound of the roaring below me, the smell of my hair sizzling on the back of my neck, and the look in Randall Chark’s black eyes—those were the things I became aware of, all at once, as reality reasserted itself and I awoke. Instantly, I realized that he had me by the throat, holding me out over the oval mouth of the cave, the pit, and orange light flared up all around me, accompanied by blood-curdling roars.

  The thing in the pit was still hungry, even after devouring my entire crew, and I was about to be the dessert.

  Frantically I kicked out, catching him by surprise; he must have assumed I was thoroughly stunned, as I’m sure the others had been, before he’d thrown each of them over the side and to their dooms. My boot connected with his crotch in that very special way, his eyes bugged out, and he let loose a sudden exhalation of all his breath, along with my neck. I fell, and for a sickening second I was certain I was going straight down to where he’d planned to throw me anyway. But I got lucky again: When I’d kicked him, he’d doubled over, lurching away from the pit, and that movement alone pulled me back over solid ground, just enough. I hit the ground half within the cave mouth and half outside of it. Frantically, I scrabbled at the rocky soil and managed to grab hold. I pulled myself up and out of the pit and spun around and kicked him again before he could recover from the first one.

  We both got to our feet at the same instant, and now he had the stunner in his hand again.

  Was it depleted? Or had he simply missed before?

  I couldn’t take the chance that it was the latter. I had to do something, fast.

  I rushed him, plowing into him, tackling him evenly, driving him back.

  He shifted as he stumbled backward, and we came free of one another. He lashed out with a fist, striking me a glancing blow to my face and disorienting me. My momentum drove me on another two steps, stars spinning around me, and then it was too far and too late. Over the cliff I went, falling onto the rough slope, tumbling madly downward, head over heels, ass over teakettle.

  I knew bones were breaking every time I impacted one of the huge boulders partly embedded in the cliff face. I grabbed for the occasional scrubby bush but either ripped them out or lost my grip every time. At last, after an interminable time that must have taken mere seconds but felt like hours, I smashed into a flat rock set at an angle. It had the effect of arresting the last of my momentum and bringing me to an abrupt and extremely painful halt. I lay gasping for breath, bleeding, my every nerve screaming in pain. For several seconds, I whimpered and my head spun and I tried to remember who I was and exactly what had just happened.

  And then I remembered Chark. His image shoved its way into my mind, pushing past the pain. Where was he? Had he fallen too?

  I wanted to just lie there in a little sea of pain and ignore everything else, but the danger was too great. I forced my eyes open, one at a time, and immediately saw that I was lying across a broad, flat rock, just behind two other, shorter boulders. Those two were effectively shielding me from view of the surface high above—the point from which I had fallen. Through the crack between the two boulders, though, I could just see the top. There stood Chark, one hand above his brow, shielding his eyes from the almost-setting sun, gazing down. Looking for me.

  Not seeing me.

  “You alive down there, Kanadee?” he called.

  Even if I had wanted to answer—and I did not—I doubt I could’ve managed it.

  “Kanadee?” he repeated, louder.

  Another long pause.

  “You must be dead,” he said then. “And if you’re not, you surely will be soon enough. Probably before I could climb all the way down there, find you, and drag you all the way back up here.”

  I feared he was right about that.

  “And the thing in the pit…Well, see, it doesn’t like its food to be already dead.”

  Somehow this bit of news didn’t encourage me.

  “But, anyway, I’ve got places to go, myself. On the clock, as it were.”

  Finding more victims to entice to come here—to become the next meal for the creature? Probably, I thought.

  “Soooo…” he concluded, “If you are still alive and can hear me, enjoy your little respite. I reckon I’ll just leave you down there, and let nature sort things out. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  My ears were ringing, blood was running down into my eyes, and the world was spinning around me. The last thing I remember seeing, visible through the narrow crack between two boulders, was Chark gazing down, looking for me one last time, then finally giving up and turning away. His shuttle must have lifted off a short while later, but by then I had passed out.

  * * *

  I awoke at some point in the depths of the night. My body was on fire, and I was sure I’d lost a good bit of blood. But I wasn’t dead. Not yet.

  I fought to move my right arm, and lo and behold, it moved. My left arm was slightly more problematic, mainly because it felt like a rib or two on that side was broken. My right leg was twisted at a bad angle, and I wouldn’t have wanted to look at it, even if I could have seen it in the pitch blackness of the Eightball night.

  Slowly, I started to crawl, inch by inch, moving steadily upward, back up the slope.

  It was incredibly difficult going. The cliff wasn’t vertical, but then it wasn’t exactly horizontal, either. I had to reach out with one hand and feel for a solid, secure, embedded rock to grab onto, then pull myself up a few inches, then stop and gasp for breath as the waves of pain hit me. Then do it all again. And I couldn’t see a thing around me.

  I’d been at it for at least an hour, the stars cold and dispassionate in the heavens above, when whatever it was attacked.

  It came at me in a rush, almost silently. Biting with sharp teeth, hissing, it
nearly took my hand off. I recoiled from it—from its snapping fangs, its fetid breath—despite the agony of doing so, of moving like that. It attacked again, this time with claws. A cold, wet pain nearly overcame me as its razorlike nails gouged through my coveralls and scraped me to the bone. Again they came at me, scraping deeper. I screamed.

  Whatever it was, it seemed to draw back then, perhaps assaying its killing stroke to come. Then I heard its movement as it rushed at me.

  I swung a fist out wide at it, impacting a scaly snout. It yelped and leapt back momentarily. My hand continued around, and I opened my fingers so I could catch myself on the ground—but the ground didn’t feel right. It felt like heavy cloth, canvas or synthetics.

  A pack. I’d inadvertently found one of our packs.

  My fingers closed on the bag, and I brought it around wildly, swinging it like a weapon, and by some miracle, a hard object inside the bag connected with the head of the beast just as it rushed me again. It yelped, and I could hear its feet dancing on the rocks as it moved back from me. By now, I had a sense of its patterns of movement and the sounds it made, and I anticipated its next attack. I swung the backpack and, again, the hard object inside struck the beast on the head, this time even harder.

  The beast stumbled backward, went down with a thud, lay there a moment, whined, then skittered away.

  Gasping for breath, I lowered the pack to the ground next to my head, though I kept a firm grasp of it. My back was on fire now, in addition to my limbs and my chest.

  I passed out again.

  * * *

  The beast didn’t return. I slept through the remainder of the night and awoke with the sunrise.

  Eightball looked as bleak, as miserable, as it had the previous day. And now it was my home, at least for the time being—at least until Chark came back, or someone else stumbled upon the planet and the beacon. Or until I died.

  Every part of my body ached and throbbed. Every movement was a new experience in agony. Yet I knew I had to move. My only chance, though it was plainly a tiny one, was to get back up to the beacon and try to use it to signal for help.

  Who I might signal, here in the absolute middle of nowhere, I had no idea. But at least it gave me a long-term goal.

  My short-term goals were far simpler in concept, though equally difficult in execution.

  Breakfast was first. A search of the pack I’d found the night before uncovered four meal packs. I ate half of one immediately and stashed the others away. They would do me for a few days, at least.

  Goal two was to get out of the ravine. And if, along the way, I could find any more of my crew’s packs, I’d bring those along.

  Inch by inch I crawled my way across and up the rugged slope of the ravine. It took most of the day to make it halfway. The going was as rough as you might imagine. No, worse.

  Partway along, I came across Inga’s pack. I spotted it thanks to the colorful little decorative patches she’d sewn onto it—flowers and horses and whatnot. They shone clearly among the monotonous gray of the rocks. We’d kidded her unmercifully about adding them to her pack before. Now I wanted to kiss her for it.

  Inside I found more food and a thermos of water, along with her micro tool set. I consolidated my findings into her pack and tossed the other aside, then continued crawling.

  Soon enough the sun sank and darkness encroached. I worried about the little bitey-beastie returning to have a second go at me, so I dragged myself up with my back against a boulder and slept lightly, the backpack gripped tightly in my right hand, the thermos inside it positioned to serve as a bludgeon. The vicious little bastard didn’t come for another visit, though. Maybe I’d been successful enough at convincing him I would be a problematic snack.

  The next day’s dawn hit me square in the face. Groaning, feeling increasingly feverish from my wounds, I started crawling again. By noon I was nauseous and didn’t much feel like eating any of the rations. I searched around in the pack and found some medicines and swallowed most of them, hoping something in there would help. It didn’t, though; not enough, at least.

  By the time nightfall of the third day arrived, I’d made it to the top of the ravine. Moving more sluggishly than ever at this point, I dragged my broken body over the edge and lay there, panting, gasping, wanting to vomit but unable to. My head was pounding, and my arms and legs felt like logs.

  All along, I’d hoped Chark would return soon, so that I could have another shot at him. Now, I had to admit I hoped he didn’t. The state I was in, he would have taken me down easily. Then, over the edge I’d go, right down into the pit.

  So I lay there, groaning, thinking about what I actually did want.

  The beacon. That was my only hope. Find it, break into it, use it to somehow send a signal for help.

  The fever raged within me now. I was seeing things. Hallucinating. I saw a big white rabbit with short ears and pink eyes emerge from the rocks across from me. It just sat there, staring back. I blinked my eyes and rubbed them but it was still there.

  Groaning deep in my throat, I dug around in Inga’s pack for the other half of the pills and swallowed them dry. Then I rolled over, leaned myself against a big rock and conked out.

  At some point I dreamed a big silver vessel was passing overhead. The roar from it was enough to bring me out of my stupor—unless the whole thing was just a part of that stupor; a fever-dream. I waved my hands and called out to it but it ignored me, zooming away into the pitch-black sky. Then I passed out again. The next time I awoke, I’d pretty much forgotten about it.

  * * *

  Awake, alert, my skin crawling. I opened one eye cautiously, absolutely certain I was not alone. I could feel it.

  The sun was rising over the distant hills, the sky above it red streaked with orange and brown. I congratulated myself on surviving another night.

  The temperature had dropped, and for the first time since our arrival on this planet I was cold.

  Cold. But not fever-ridden cold. Just regular cold.

  My fever must have come down, at least a bit.

  I opened the thermos and took a careful sip of water, then remembered the feeling when I’d awakened. Not alone.

  Pulling myself up on my left elbow, making no sudden moves, I looked around. What I saw then made me question if the fever had gotten worse rather than better.

  The rabbit—the big white rabbit with short ears and pink eyes—was back. Or it was still there, never having left. It sat on its haunches in front of a pile of rocks off to my left.

  Seeing as how it refused to disappear when I squeezed my eyes closed twice, I concluded it might possibly be real and not a construction of my fevered brain, so I addressed it.

  “Hello there,” I called. My voice sounded so hoarse and ragged, I barely recognized it as my own.

  The creature stared back, absolutely unmoving. I’ve been calling it “big,” but that’s just in relation to an actual rabbit. Relative to me, it was pretty small; less than a meter tall.

  “Who are you?” I tried. “What are you?” And, “You from around here?”

  Nothing.

  “You don’t happen to own a spaceship, do you?” I asked, chuckling, then wincing at the pain in my ribs when I did.

  Still nothing.

  I went on like this for several minutes, trying to get some kind of response, but the strange creature might as well have been a statue. Finally I gave up and decided to have breakfast.

  Into the pack I reached, finding a couple of Inga’s energy bars. Unwrapping the first one, I gnawed on it. Chocolate and some kind of nuts, all glued together. Not terrible. I smacked away.

  That got the little creature’s attention. I looked up and saw that it had moved—come a few steps nearer—and was watching with great interest as I ate.

  Maybe it wondered how the food tasted. Or maybe how I tasted. Certainly, every other entity on this planet wanted to eat me; why not this one?

  But it wasn’t sizing me up. It was staring squarely at the en
ergy bar.

  Slowly I picked up the other one and held it out.

  “You hungry?”

  Honestly, I hoped the little guy would say no. After all, I had a finite supply of food. But, on the other hand, I had to be honest with myself and admit my chances of getting off this planet alive were pretty slim. If this creature could help me in any way, I needed to make friends with it as best I could, even if it meant handing over part of my food supply.

  Peeling back the wrapper on the other bar, I held it out again. “It’s all yours,” I said.

  The creature was closer now, but still nowhere close enough to touch.

  I set the half-unwrapped bar down on a rock and relaxed back against the boulder behind me.

  Minutes passed with neither of us moving. Finally, though, the white creature crept toward me, one slow step at a time. When it was close enough, it reached out and snatched up the energy bar, then turned tail and dashed back to where I’d first seen it. A few seconds of slobbering later, the bar was gone.

  “I guess you liked it,” I said.

  The rabbit-creature regarded me for several long seconds, no longer acting quite as cautious as before. Then it scampered into the rocks and vanished. After a couple of minutes I began to wonder if I’d hallucinated the whole thing.

  “Yeah,” I muttered to myself. “I’m definitely going to die here. But at least I’m going to lose my mind first.”

  * * *

  The rest of that day consisted of a long, agonizing crawl back in the direction of where Chark had landed his shuttle. I made it about halfway, then stopped and dug around in Inga’s pack, locating her collapsable mini-tent. This had been the coldest day yet, and I anticipated the night would be worse. I needed some protection. I managed to get the tent erected just as the sun vanished below the horizon. I dragged my ruined body inside and pulled the zipper closed.

  The day that followed was much like the previous one. More crawling. More aching. More complaining to nobody. Not a single appearance by my new friend, the white rabbit-creature—assuming it existed at all. So I pressed on, doggedly. And then, with probably an hour to go before nightfall, I reached the landing site and the beacon.