Vaughn Heppner - The Lost Starship

“Are we going to land?” Keith asked.

“Not yet. We want to stay high in order to sweep as wide an area as possible.”

“You don’t see him on that gizmo yet?” Keith asked.

Maddox adjusted controls. The locator seemed to be working. “Head west,” he suggested.

Keith turned the flitter, and they headed in a different direction, west. They traveled for fifteen minutes.

“North,” Maddox said. “Go north.”

Without a word, Keith turned north.

Maddox watched the locator, willing it to show him Riker. The sergeant was a good man, if overly quarrelsome at times. The old man was resourceful. That’s what Maddox appreciated about him the most.

He almost told the ensign to try east when a faint beep sounded.

Keith glanced at the locator. “Is that him?”

Maddox flexed his fingers. He’d been fearing that Riker was dead. Yet, the signal should be stronger. The bug inside the sergeant was powered by a person’s body heat.

“Go lower,” Maddox said.

Keith tapped controls, and the flitter began to sink.

Until Maddox exhaled, he hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. The signal came in louder than before. Sergeant Riker was alive.

“We have him,” Maddox said, triumphantly.

Keith grinned.

“Down,” Maddox said. “Go down. We don’t know what kind of trouble he’s gotten himself into.”

“Aye-aye, sir,” the pilot said.

Maddox kept studying the locator. Soon, the jungle became visible as one. The treetops showed billions of shimmering leaves with swooping bat-like creatures plowing through dense swarms of hovering gnats, or the Loki equivalent of them.

Maddox frowned and shook the locator.

“Is something wrong, sir?” Keith asked.

“I don’t understand. The sergeant is moving fast down there. Do they have cars, horses, what?”

Keith checked his controls. “We’ll reach the trees in thirty seconds, sir. What do you want me to do?”

Maddox nodded. That was a good question. Why, and how, did Sergeant Riker move so fast across the landscape?

Sergeant Treggason Riker, formerly of Star Watch Intelligence, coughed explosively as he gripped a steering oar under his sole armpit. He only had one arm, and he negotiated a dirty dugout canoe as it shot down whitewater rapids. His head wove this way and that as he dodged dipping branches. Going this fast, they acted like slicers.

Riker’s lungs hurt every time he inhaled. He’d contracted Loki Prime spores, what the Scorpions so colorfully had called red rot .

The sergeant hated the prison planet with its foul insects, funguses and infested inmates. Oh yes, he’d had a short discussion with the brigadier back on Earth about the mission. She’d told him Captain Maddox would be on his way to break him out of Loki Prime. O’Hara wanted to use Caius Nerva’s premature death as a path onto yet another preposterous operation.

Why did I ever agree to this? The duel with Caius Nerva—Maddox went too far. I should have just let him…

Riker grunted as a branch slashed his left check. He’d missed seeing it because his bionic eye had short-circuited twelve hours ago. Something in the atmosphere—a lousy spore or germ—had infected who knew what inside the eye. This place devoured technical equipment, rendering it inoperative better than cyber-warriors could dream. No wonder no colonists had committed to settling this hellhole. Or if they had, the unlucky sods were long dead, fertilizing the gloomy abode.

Of course, the penal authorities had taken his bionic arm. Then they’d dropped him from orbit before departing to their cozy quarters. The Scorpions found him several hours later. The beginning of a long and painful initiation into Loki society had begun soon thereafter.

The prisoners, the Scorpions as they called themselves, had flintlocks—wooden barrels firing hard knots of wood. They had primitive huts and a brutal pecking order. The worst offenders were the ones who used poisons, both natural and concocted. Those criminals possessed blow darts and “claws” affixed to their fingers, the tips glistening with killing toxins.

The Scorpions were on the bottom of the giant mountain, the lowest strata of criminals. The little time he’d been with them, Riker had learned they mostly thought of ways to invade higher country. The higher one went here, the less funguses and hot bacterium there was. The Scorpions were too diseased, though, to fight on equal footing against the higher tribes. The lower one went on Loki Prime, the more deadly everything became to human existence.

Yet that’s where Riker went: down. Behind him, Scorpions shrieked their war cries.

Riker glanced back. He saw them, ravaged individuals wearing cloth masks. Many had open sores on their bodies. The masks were wet with foul toxins, helping to keep out things like red rot. The toxins in the mouth-cloths made the wearers high and extra-savage. It was the trade-off for protection.

I would have stayed in their compound, but I think they planned cannibalism. These scoundrels knew I wasn’t one of them. They kept calling me a weasel, a snitch .

Riker dearly wanted to blame Captain Maddox for his fix. The youngster seldom stayed on script with anything. Yet, the captain had great instincts for making the right moves. Brigadier O’Hara had explained that Maddox would be coming for him. The tech boys were putting a bug in him, the safe technical kind. The captain would use a locator to find and retrieve him.

The youngsters will find me if I can stay free long enough . Riker had to believe that. It was the only thing giving him hope to continue.

Behind him, a musket boomed. Something hard and fast slashed leaves inches above Riker’s head. A second musket fired, and a waterspout appeared beside the dugout, splashing his check.

Riker snarled with frustration. He wasn’t going to outdistance them on the river. He had a steering arm. They had paddles, plunging their crafts faster.

I’m too old for these games. My lungs are on fire and I’m tired. I wish I’d stolen a flintlock .

Riker twisted his body to move his steering oar, aiming the dugout for the nearest shore. The whitewater shoved his craft, and he failed to spy a hidden rock in his path. Wood splintered as the dugout struck the river stone. Rushing water shoved hard. It lifted the back end of the boat, catapulting Riker over the rock, hurling him into the air and against the shore. He hit, grunting, with his legs dangling in the water. The raging current began to tug him in.

Making a mewling noise, Riker scrambled, slithering higher. Mud stained his overalls. Branches scratched his face and gray hair. Insects whirled around him. He hated their squishy forms.

“There, boys!” a Scorpion shouted. “The weasel is running onto land. We almost have him.”

Riker’s lips peeled back. His body felt aflame with aches and pains. He wheezed, as his lungs seemed to fill with fluid.

Keep moving. Trust the captain to produce another miracle. He needs me. I know he does. No one else has ever kept him grounded to reality as I do. The man believes he can do anything that he sets his mind to. He’s quite mad.

The sergeant slipped and slid on wet moss. From the river behind him, another flintlock boomed. The wooden pellet slashed his side, ripping the fabric of his overall and spilling blood.

That would stir the insects.

Riker snarled again. He lowered his head and recklessly plunged through the growth. He was so tired, so spent, that it was impossible to think. At this point, it would be good to simply lie down and go to sleep.

They’ll eat your flesh, Treggason. Think about that, my boy .