Project U.L.F. (36 page)

At first, all of this relief had overcome him. When he had originally entered the cockpit and he had been alone, he had sobbed huge sobs that shook his body in the seat. He had not cried, he had long forgotten how to, but the tears would not have come anyway. He realized that he was exhausted; for the first time in days he had been able to lower his guard, no longer did he have to look over his shoulder. He was tired, so tired, but now was when they needed him most. Now was his time, his turn to be the hero. Maybe now the others would show him a little respect. He had gathered himself and begun to interrogate the ship’s computer.

“How’s it going, kid?”

Chris looked round but could only see a pair of boots on the floor beside his legs. They were Byron’s, he concluded from the voice that accompanied them. “Okay,” he said in a strained voice. “Just gotta get this retaining bolt off the unit and then I’ll be able to take a good look at it for you.”

“Good,” the body-less boots replied, “Well, if you need a hand with anything, let us know.”

“Thanks. I’ll bear it in mind.” Chris returned his attention to the bolt and tried once more to get some kind of purchase on it with the best suited tool he had for the job. The feet clomped away from him and out of the shuttle.

“Gotcha,” Chris whispered to the bolt as the tool snapped shut around it. With a grunt he turned the tool in his hand and the bolt with it. It was stiff, locked into place through years of inaction, but fortunately yielding. After three or four turns, he was able to be turn it by hand and he spun it free.

With the bolt removed, Chris lifted the lid on top of the hyperdrive housing. Dirty black clouds of smoke belched out of it and Chris banged his head on the floor above him trying to avoid them. He wriggled out of his hole and staggered out of the ship coughing and spluttering, partially blinded by the smoke. The others all looked up in surprise.

“Well?” asked Wyatt.

Chris rubbed his eyes with the back of a dirty hand. “I’d say your hyperdrive’s pretty knack….” he began to nobody in particular, and then, remembering himself, he addressed Wyatt. “The hyperdrive has suffered some damage, sir, but as yet I haven’t been able to find out exactly what that is.”

The others looked at each other and then back at Chris who was unaware that the sooty smoke had blackened his face and hands. He was a comical sight. They began to laugh. So much for respect, Chris thought scratching the back of his head. He discovered a lump was appearing there already to replace the one he had just lost.

Failing to see what was so funny, he shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and disappeared back into the ship to waft the smoke out with waves of his arm.

The next time Chris emerged from the shuttle, more than two hours had elapsed. He walked confidently but his face looked troubled. Byron saw the furrowed brow on the youngster before the others even noticed him approaching, and he immediately felt sorry for him. He guessed that Chris had found the problem but that the news was not good.

At the sound of Chris’ footfalls Wyatt turned and then stood, grateful for the chance to take the weight off his aching behind. Chris’ face was still black with soot from earlier except for his forehead where he had wiped away the sweat, and some dirty lines on his cheeks. Wyatt looked upon that face now and no longer found it cause for amusement. The look he got back prompted his first question.

“How bad is it?”

“Well, sir, it could be worse,” Chris said, trying to sound optimistic. “There’s damage in the cockpit, mainly wiring associated with the hyperdrive controls – that accounts for the explosions you talked about. I’m going to need to replace all that.” He paused, and then added, “That’s the good news.”

“And the bad?”

“Well, basically, sir, there was a small fire in the hyperdrive unit. Hence this…” He pointed to his blackened face with black hands. “It would appear that it was over-loaded and over-heated which then caused it to spontaneously combust.”

There was a groan of dismay from behind him and he carried on quickly. “Now fortunately the unit is sealed so the fire used up all the oxygen and extinguished itself pretty quickly, but it did cause some damage.”

Wyatt indicated with his hand that Chris should continue. The explanation was over, now it was the time for hard facts. The youngster’s face became serious. “To repair it we’re going to need two integrated neuro-electric logic boards, three large capacitors and the coil from the hyperdrive unit of the other ship.”

“Is that easy?’ Wyatt was lost. “I mean, can we do that?”

“No reason why not,” Chris said enthusiastically. “Due to the nature of hyperspace travel, hyperdrive units are standard on all ships, regardless of size. Mass isn’t important; they work by distorting space-time and gravity fields. The mining ship should have a unit identical to the unit in this shuttle.

“Should?” Kit asked skeptically.

“Okay, well, I’m pretty certain it will have,” Chris defied him. This was his field of expertise and he was not afraid of taking comments from any quarter, even someone as aggressive as Kit.

“Haven’t we got this all the wrong way around?” Kate asked. “I mean, why don’t we just get Chris to fix the radio, then we can call for help?”

“It’d take too long,” Wyatt said quickly, his voice flat.

“What? To fix the radio?” Kate could hardly believe what she was hearing.

“For the rescue attempt to reach us.” He was already two questions ahead of her in her thinking. “It would take weeks for someone to reach us, assuming they have a ship ready to send, and assuming they’d come anyway. We just don’t have enough supplies to last that long.”

“But they wouldn’t just leave us here,” Kate pleaded reason. The look she got told her she was being very naïve.

“Look at it,” Wyatt nodded towards the shuttle. “It was a search and rescue mission. Quickly in, quickly out. Two or three days’ duration at most, I would think.” He shook his head. “Now that they’ve failed, I doubt anyone will be coming near this place again, not even the CSETI.”

Kate suddenly realized that regardless of who had put them here, they would be abandoned by everyone. The shock hit her like a slap in the face. No one would come to this place now. Everyone who knew of this place was afraid to come here, and that fear now took a hold of her, permeated her very being like ice spreading through her veins. She shivered. Only now did she realize the true severity of their predicament, its absoluteness. It was them against the world, this world and their own. It was them against the known universe.

“Anyway,” Wyatt said, “We can stand here and talk about the likelihood of whether we’ll be rescued or not until hell freezes over.”

“Or somethin’ like that,” Kit muttered.

“Either way, if someone did try to rescue us or not, if we sit here and do nothing to help ourselves, then Mannheim gets what he wants.”

“Mannheim?” Kate asked distantly, her mind still reeling.

“You wouldn’t like him,” Wyatt responded as if that was explanation enough. He carried on as if the question had been a minor irritation and he’d swiped at it with an answer. “So we need volunteers to find the other ship. Two people.”

“I’ll go,” said Byron.

“Thanks, mate.”

“I’ll need to go, too,” Chris said eagerly, “I know which components we need.”

“And what about Bobby? Who’ll look after her?”

Chris shrugged. “I don’t know, but whoever goes to find the other ship will need medical support as well, in case there’s trouble.”

“No. We need you here.” Chris’ face dropped. “Besides, we need you to fix the hyperdrive and we can’t risk you getting hurt when you’re currently our greatest asset.” The youngster’s face brightened again at the compliment.

“Kit?” Wyatt asked.

Kit snorted in amusement. “Why don’t you go, seeing as you’re in charge? Lead from the front, and all that trumped-up management bullshit. Forget it,” he said in disgust.

Wyatt thought about telling Kit that because he was in charge he had the right to decide who went where and when, but he knew that
was
trumped-up bullshit and the big man would see right through it. He decided against it. The truth was, well, Wyatt did not want to admit to Kit what the truth was. He would happily have gone to find the other ship, in fact he considered it his duty, but more and more in recent times Wyatt had caught Kit leering at Kate while she was unawares. Kit was the problem. Wyatt did not trust him out of his sight. Wherever Kit was, he was going to be. He had expected such a response from Kit but he needed his suspicions confirmed. This way of going about it seemed more tactile than singling out Kit to be by his side or somewhere other than where Kate was.

“Par?” he asked.

“I’ll go if you need me too,” the Swede said.

“I do.”

“Okay, then I’m there.”

“We’ll leave in the morning, Wyatt,” Byron told him, while glancing at Par for nodded agreement. “It’s a day’s hike at least and it’s almost dusk now. There’s no point in us trying to cross terrain like this in the dark, it’ll only make the trek longer and harder.”

Wyatt nodded his agreement. His old friend spoke wisely, as always. “Okay, good. In the meantime I suggest we make the most of the remainder of the day. It’s the first time we’ve been able to relax a little, and it could be the last time for a while, so get your heads down while you can.”

The others wasted no time in complying with his suggestion. After claiming a space as their own on the shuttle floor they lay themselves down to rest. Almost as soon as they closed their eyes the comforting velvety blackness of sleep embraced them.

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There would be no such comfort for Wyatt. Out of the blackness of his subconscious the familiar images appeared, at first just greens and browns, but then the leaves and branches of the forest materialized. He knew this place. He had been here many, many times before.

He heard the howl in his head, the unearthly sound of a creature from another world, and he knew that it was close. He turned to look but only saw the branches swinging back into place behind him and beyond that, a darkness. He tried to look into that void. There was the hint of something alive in there, something consisting of the blackness itself. It seemed to feed on his fear, to grow and coalesce, and then, when the darkness had taken on form, a thousand white teeth flashed suddenly and brilliantly and the creature was upon him.

He jumped awake and checked his forehead and his chest for the sweat which always accompanied the images. The night air which seeped through the slightly open shuttle door was chill and he shivered. He took a quick look around. The greens and browns were gone and the night was only conducive to pale blues, blacks and grays. By the shuttle door he could make out the sleeping bodies of Byron and Par. If they had not left he figured it was sometime in the middle of the night. He cursed the nightmare under his breath. He needed his rest if he was going to be making decisions on which peoples’ lives depended. There was no room for error or sloppiness, he knew, and Byron had told him so.

He turned over to face Kate, asleep beside him, and wondered how she could sleep so soundly, someone like her, so unpolluted by the harsh realities of life who now, like him, had become the victim of something ugly and corrupt. This whirlwind of adventure, danger and horror had taken its toll on her, but she had weathered the storm well. He had seen her grow from a beautiful girl into a beautiful young woman, and he saw that beauty now in everything she was. Not just in her face or her body or her hair. He heard it in her voice, felt it in her thoughts, recognized it in her character. He admired her. She still clung to her ideals and her dreams, refusing to let them be washed away by a wave of cynicism. She defied that wave, rose above it and rode the crest of it, and Wyatt knew she would ride it to whatever distant shore that it, and her own will, would take her to.