David Gunn: Day of the Damned

Of course, that means anyone down there has cover too. Only the gun says the sole life sign inside the cruiser is on the edge of flickering out.

A section of tail fin lies in the dirt. A name stencilled beneath a number, both crudely painted out. The angle of the sun makes the name visible.

Olber’s Paradox.

No idea who Olber was. Not too sure what a paradox is either.

The first casualty lies a hundred and fifty paces from the wreck. The cargo loader’s guts make a pattern in the dirt, what’s left of them. The arrangement looks accidental. His head rests twenty paces beyond.

Blowflies rise, furious at being disturbed. Only to resettle. There’s a stink to the air. The heat isn’t being kind to the corpses.

This is nasty.

A crew member stares at the sky. Her eyes poached white by the sun. Her pistol is in its holster. The handle of a dagger juts from her boot. Although her neck is broken and the back of her head pulped, the blood on a rock behind her says her death is an accident.

‘Still getting life signs?’

‘They’re fading,’ the SIG says.

It directs me towards a middle section. This obviously flipped on impact and came to rest upside down. A wide scar in the dirt shows where it spun before hitting a massive boulder that brought it to an abrupt halt.

I’m surprised anything is alive in there at all.

‘Hollow-point,’ I say.

The SIG swaps clips.

Stepping up to a wall of ripped metal, I swing myself round its edge and sweep the inside. A dozen bodies lie at my feet. They’re even ranker than those outside. Eight chairs and a table are bolted to the floor over my head.

Broken beer bottles. Dried blood.

A naked girl no bigger than a kitten whirls six inches from a cracked holo watch belonging to one of the bodies. Every time she reaches between her thighs, she vanishes in a crackle of static, only to reappear and start again.

Seems I’ve found the crew quarters.

One of the beds is occupied.

Its owner hangs limp from the fat strap that kept him locked down and alive when Olber’s Paradox crashed. A hard habit to break. Buckling yourself in. Speaks to me of a life spent planet-hopping. Since the man can’t release his belt without smashing everything left unbroken in his body, I have to go to him.

‘Make it fast,’ the SIG says.

Punching a hole in the wall gives me my first foothold and lets me stretch for a handhold above. It would sever the fingers of anyone normal. But I’m using my prosthetic arm and aiming for a safer hold above that.

My arm’s combat issue. No idea how many people have used it before me.

The real problem comes when I reach the top. Eight beds are bolted in a row. The one I want is in the middle. The bolts securing the nearest bed hold when I reach for it and swing free. After that, I swing myself from one metal bed frame to another. Takes me a couple of minutes to reach the last person alive in this ship.

‘You in there?’

Something flutters behind his eyes.

‘Wake up . . .’

He doesn’t.

‘Sven,’ the SIG says. ‘Bad choice.’

OK, I’m not going to slap him awake. In the end I work my way to the side of his bed and reach for the buckle of his safety belt. It’s jammed, obviously. So I’m hanging from an upside-down bed, trying to free someone who’s bent double like a piece of wet washing.

‘Admit it. You’re enjoying yourself.’

Reaching between my shoulder blades, I find my throwing knife and half cut the strap. There’s a story to that blade. But now’s not the right time for it. Dropping the blade to find later, I reach forward and yank at the weakened strap.

He falls as the strap snaps. And so do I, almost.

At the last second, I tense my arm, and the bar, the bolts and my bones are strong enough to stop us hitting the floor.

Leaving my survivor in the shade, I search the rest of his ship.

Another dozen crew members are in various states of corruption. A small cage is full of those creatures that attacked earlier. Another cage is ripped open. The ceiling above the first one did a good job of introducing itself to the floor, and it looks like a dead monster sandwich.

Sheet metal. Smashed creature. Sheet metal.

Works for me.

A quick trawl of the rest produces nothing useful. I had in mind gold, diamonds, body armour or at least some interesting weapons. The things legionnaires dream about, when they’re not dreaming about beautiful young tribal women willing to remove their clothes.

Used to live in the desert. Probably shows.

And the only tribeswomen willing to take off their clothes did it for money, and were neither young nor beautiful. They were sullen and silent, and regarded us with something between fear, hatred and contempt.

Aptitude comes running. Only to stop when she sees me scowl.

‘What?’ she demands, chin up and eyes narrowing.

She really is ridiculously beautiful. Even wearing her father’s old combat jacket and desert boots. I wonder about the jacket, before realizing it has a temperature-controlled lining and she’s been baking up there in the truck.

‘You didn’t know it was safe to come down.’

‘The gun said there was only one thing left alive in there. You’re holding him. How can it not be safe?’

She’s angry at being told to wait.

Probably angrier still at working herself into a state because she thought I was dead. Then discovering I wasn’t. Several women who know me would get angry about that.

‘Aptitude-’

She glares at me.

‘Let’s get him deeper into the shade.’

Taking his legs, she helps me up the hill, although I take most of the weight. We dump him in the shadow of the truck and Aptitude goes to find a first-aid kit. She does it without being told. She’s not the kid I think.

That’s half the problem.

‘Morphine,’ Anton tells her.

Aptitude’s already on it. She hands me a hypodermic with a tiny needle and a tube that needs squeezing. Might be old-fashioned. But battlefield morphine works and it’s cheap and you can buy it anywhere.

Much like Kemzin 19s. The cookie-cutter SLR of choice for skinflint dictators everywhere. Anonymous, efficient, near impossible to break. Our glorious leader loves the Kemzin 19. Not that I’m suggesting for one minute that our leader . . .

The crew carried Kemzins.

Now why would the crew of a cargo carrier be armed? Leaning close to the injured man, I take a better look and swear.

‘What?’ Aptitude demands.

I ignore her.

Pumping a second syringe into his neck, I watch the crew-man’s eyes roll back and his breathing steady. He’s luckier than he deserves. A handful of smashed ribs, from where the strap compressed his chest on impact. A dislocated leg and cracked hip. A broken arm. Some ugly bruising. Could be worse.

The dehydration is killing him.

And we can deal with that.

‘Let me,’ Aptitude says, dropping to a crouch. She has a bag of saline solution in her hand. As we watch, she slides a needle into his wrist, lets the blood flow back to rid it of air bubbles and attaches a plastic tube, turning a petcock to let the liquid flow.

‘Where did you learn to do that?’

‘School,’ she says.

Anton’s watching with amusement.

‘So,’ Aptitude says, when her father disappears to fetch a splint. ‘Who is he?’

His name is Carl and he’s a cargo skipper. The last time we met I swapped my coat, ex-Death’s Head, ballistic-lined, for passage into Farlight from an off-world orbit. I didn’t know it then but I was on my way to kill her.

Aptitude . . .

Anton’s only daughter.

The one who’s wondering what my scowl means this time.

No idea what Carl’s second name is. Probably doesn’t have one. Most people I know don’t. I do only because Debro gave me one.