Josh Roseman - The Clockwork Russian and Other Stories

This story’s fun fact: parts of it were inspired by some Star Trek: Voyager fanfic I read at the time I was writing it. And no, I won’t give you a copy.

Wen slumped against a crystal formation and stared up at the dark sky, lit only by greenish-gold auroras. Sweat ran down into her eyes and made her clothes cling in uncomfortable places. She wanted to sit down, wanted to take off the pack for a few minutes, but the last time she’d done that, her feet had ached even worse for the respite.

No. Better to stay standing.

She caught her breath before taking a measured swallow from the canteen that hung at her side. Gulping the water would be a mistake; in this state, she’d just throw up. Staying calm, that was the key.

One more swallow, though she ached to drain the whole thing, and then back onto its clip.

Wen’s borrowed comm pinged. Four hours to sunrise. Four hours until the witchlight above her head gave way to the burning white orb that would blast her with heat and radiation until she was nothing but a memory.

Four hours to live.

She shoved the comm back into her pocket, stood up straight, and started to run again.

Well, jog, anyway.

It was the best she could do.

The rich kids had chartered an interplanetary liner for their high school graduation party. Wen had been invited because she was friends with someone who was friends with someone whose father owned a big chunk of one of the moons. She knew no one liked her — no one ever really liked the fat kids, not even the other fat kids — but she’d be leaving in a few weeks anyway, to one of the top universities in the system. Why not at least try to have a little fun?

And Bess had insisted. Bess, her friend, who had begged Missy Hallen to let Wen come along.

Bess had also insisted Wen have a few drinks — they were out of orbit, and the rules didn’t apply. “Come on, Wen! Lighten up!”

Wen hadn’t liked whatever Bess had pressed into her hand, and she’d soon begged off and stumbled down the corridor to the little medical bay.

When the collision alarms had sounded, Wen had managed to strap herself in despite a blinding headache and a growing urge to vomit.

Then the ship had crashed, and when Wen came to, she’d stumbled along the tilted corridor until she’d seen the damage.

The ship had been ripped in half, and the other part of it was on fire, maybe half a kilometer away.

Between her and that blaze was a field of bodies.

Her hand went to her mouth and she stumbled backward, trying not to scream.

Wen heard a noise — one that didn’t sound like her body crushing tiny crystals under her feet — and immediately dropped to her knees. She stifled a groan, then lowered herself flat. The second planet, Sidqiel, was home to all sorts of dangerous wildlife, and though Wen had a blaster — part of the liner’s emergency supplies — she had no way to know what was coming.

So she calmed herself. She tried to breathe more quietly.

And she listened, clutching the blaster in her left hand, waiting for whatever was out there, wasting what little time she had left.

Wen had screwed up her courage and tried to go out among the bodies strewn across the debris field. She’d taken a scanner from the medical bay, hoping she could find someone still alive, someone who could help her.

After seeing the third mangled corpse, though, she’d given up on that and returned to the ship. She found some painkillers in the broken-open pharmacy locker and took one; the headache fled in abject terror, which allowed her to think clearly.

“Where am I?”

Well, that one was easy enough. Wen reached for her comm—

No. She reached for her pocket, but her comm was gone.

She found it in the corner of the medical bay, screen shattered, unwilling to even turn on. “Well, that’s brilliant.” Wen’s voice was scratchy in her ears — had she screamed as the ship had crash-landed? She didn’t remember.

Wen had to shove open the door of the next compartment — people were often surprised how strong she was, but then, it took a lot of muscle to move all that body around. At least, that’s what she told people. Once she’d managed to open the door, she found more bodies: a popular girl named Laka and her boyfriend Akito. Their clothes were strewn around the room — apparently Laka had made good on her promise to bed Akito before graduation — but as Wen knelt to check and see if they were alive — they weren’t — she found Laka’s comm, undamaged, sticking out of a jacket pocket. No signal, but at least it was working. Small favors.

She moved on to the next compartment.

Tiny scaled creatures no bigger than Wen’s hand slithered past, through the crystal debris, clearly fleeing something. Wen risked a peek above the patch of crystalline bushes that hid her, but saw nothing.

Then a noise, high-pitched and horribly discordant, drove her to the dirt again. She looked up, but saw nothing. So she climbed to her feet, checked her comm, and started to jog again.

And was nearly mauled by huge, heavily-scaled serpent that had been hiding in a hollow in the ground. It rammed into her backpack, knocking her flat on her face. She spat a mouthful of crystal pebbles and got to her knees once more. The serpent was staring at her, tensed, ready to attack again.

Wen looked into its huge blue eyes. It blinked, and she blinked. She guessed it wasn’t used to its prey getting up again.

Holding its eyes with hers, Wen slowly brought up the blaster until it was pointed at the serpent.

Then, without warning, it attacked.

At this distance, she didn’t even have to aim. One shot from the blaster blew its head clean off. The rest of the body knocked her to the hard ground yet again, her head thumping hard against the top of the backpack, but the thing was clearly dead.

She shoved the remains of the serpent to one side, stood up again, and got moving.

Wen made her way through the ship, waving Laka’s comm in slow arcs, trying to get a signal. She had no idea where the ship had crashed; the impact had flattened everything for half a kilometer, and although she had seen stars when she’d gone outside—

Stars. Stars, just barely peeking through the clouds and the auroras.

Wen found the nearest emergency door and opened it, then jumped down onto the hard ground. Her knees and ankles let her know just how bad an idea that had been, but she didn’t care; she activated the comm and pointed its visual pickup at the star-speckled sky.

It pinged a couple of seconds later.

Wen read its screen and swallowed hard.

Sidqiel. They’d crashed on Sidqiel.

She was as good as dead.

Wen checked the comm: only a kilometer to go before she reached the old substation. Though she was dripping with sweat and aching in ways she never knew her body could ache, she picked up her pace, trying to move faster, trying to get to safety before the sun’s radiation blasted her like she’d blasted the serpent.

Soon enough, she burst free from the crystal forest and into a clearing. In the distance, she saw the dark, blocky shape of the substation.

And right in front of her, the ground stopped short, falling away into a chasm.

Wen tried to stop, but lost her footing and fell hard on her ass. She struggled to her feet and tried to slow her breathing. She stared into the chasm. It was farther across than she could ever dream of jumping. It stretched to her left and her right, with no end in sight.

“Well, this is just great,” Wen said. “Now what?”