COUNTERPOINT
CHAPTER 2: THE PILOT
PART 3
By Mya Thevendra
With a stabbing pain in her shoulder, and the taste of blood in her mouth, Kimiko awoke. What it was that she awoke to, however, was not immediately obvious. There was nothing to be seen; all around was a stifling pitch-blackness, but from within came the thin sound of voices weeping. As she lay on the floor of the cabin, Kimiko could feel a weight on top of her; it was not metal, and was too light to be any part of the interior framework or a bulkhead. As she shifted herself beneath it, she felt it give, and running her hand over the object, it became clear that it was a person's body. Scrabbling around in the dark, her hand touched cold wet flesh, and for a brief moment, panic took her. She screeched out, kicking the unseen corpse away from her, and stumbled backwards onto her rear. A voice called out from somewhere in front.
"Who's that?"
Squinting ahead, but seeing nothing, Kimiko replied.
"It's me, Satomi! Is that…is that you, Drickson?"
"Yeah, it's me. Are you okay?"
"I…yeah, I think so."
"Oh God, what happened?" asked the voice of Cadet Suzie Palmer.
"Were we attacked?"
"Jesus, we must have been."
"By, by the...?"
The stunned survivors could hardly even bring themselves to say the name, but they were all thinking it. All that they knew of them was what had been taught by military reports and mission logs; these nightmarish creatures that had always seemed so far away, had now made their first, terrible introductions to the young cadets.
Kimiko could feel the twisted hunks of wreckage about her; the remains of seats and broken sections of the cabin's floor, and knew that the lifeless bodies of her fellow students lay amongst and beneath them. Had it been her first taste of death, anguish might have overwhelmed her as it had some of the others; but it was not.
"Oh shit," cursed Kimiko, "where's Buxton?"
"We can't find her." replied one of the others.
In the background a girl's whimpering cries continued.
"Oh Jesus, we're gonna die." Cried another voice weakly.
"No we're not! Now shut up!" The ruthless tone was hard to mistake.
"Hey, take it easy Valerie." said Drickson.
"I will NOT take it easy! We're in a Goddamned unarmed shuttle, and there's who knows what flying around out there! We, we've got to…."
"We've got to find Buxton" said Kimiko, "or Laswell."
Another cadet spoke out from the gloom.
"I was sitting just behind Mr. Laswell. I felt him, he's…I don't think he's alive."
The sound of splattering sounded across from one side of the cabin, as one of the cadets emptied his stomach. The acrid smell of vomit and bloodied flesh sifted between them, and cries of disgust and despair broke out.
"Damn it, look, we have to find Buxton!" shouted Kimiko, "Now, she was sitting just across from Laswell, just over on the other side. What's over there?"
There followed the sound of careful crawling as Palmer felt her way through the blackness. Another cadet tripped, and yelled out as he fell onto the broken remains of one of his classmates.
"I, I can't feel anything." said Palmer, "Just metal. It's one of the bulkheads, I think. Hey wait."
"What?"
"I think I heard something. Oh shit, she's under here! Quick, gimme a hand!"
The students who were able trampled frantically over towards the wreckage at the far end, stumbling in the dark. They found lying across the floor a fair sized chunk of the cabin's ceiling panel, and feeling for its edges, they hoisted it up.
"All right, careful!" shouted Drickson, "Okay, put it over there, over towards the aisle. Hang on! Okay, careful..."
"Oww!"
"I said careful didn't I? Okay, now put it down, slow. There!"
With the uppermost piece of debris removed, the students groped around below, carefully feeling for their teacher's body.
"Hey, I think I've found her," said a voice, "I…I think it's her."
"Miss Buxton?"
A weak groan returned from the floor.
"Unh, are - are you kids okay?"
"We're okay, Miss Buxton, but some of the others, they, they didn't..."
"Oh God damn it. Damn it." Whispered Carol.
"Can you make it up?" Asked Palmer.
Carol grunted, and the rest of the debris above her rattled as she tried to pull herself free.
"No, I - I'm pinned. My leg, ahhh! Damn it! Nnng, I think my leg's broken."
The students pulled aside what small fragments they could, but a heavy mesh of twisted metal continued to press down on Carol's midsection, and would not be moved.
"Miss Buxton, what are we gonna do?"
"Huunh, you've, you've got to get into the cockpit. We're still breathing, so the hull around the cabin must still be intact. The…the bulkheads must have broken loose when we were hit. We'll be okay in here for a little while, but the air's not going to last forever, we've got to try and get out of here. The emergency access hatch at the front of the cabin, one of you has to crawl through into the cockpit and check on the pilots."
A silent moment passed in the darkness.
"So who's gonna go?" Asked one of them.
Kimiko was just as terrified as the others; she wanted to be far away, safe from peril, safe from fear, but at that moment, it was as if her lips moved almost of their own accord, and she heard herself say:
"Ahh, Jesus fuckin' H, I'll do it."
At that moment, she was glad for the darkness, for she very much doubted that she looked as brave as she sounded.
"Kim, good girl." said Carol, "There's a flashlight in the wall compartment. I think it's just over there, on my right. Can you get to it?"
Kimiko shuffled over the pile of broken fixtures and fumbled about until her hand brushed against the locker handle. Inside, the long, tube shape of the flashlight was easy to find, and with a press of a button, a glimmering light bathed the cabin wall in front of her. She brought the flashlight's beam around, and probed the cabin's interior. The bloody, squinting faces of the other cadets became visible at last, and they began to see the extent of the damage, as the darkness was broken. Debris lay piled around, and at one point, the ceiling dipped low and sharp as if the shuttle had been held in some giant vice. The hull had obviously buckled from the attack, but as yet remained unbreached.
As the light continued its arc, the students quailed as the shattered bodies of their friends were revealed; they lay limp and pale, and stained with blood, and the survivors' fear burgeoned as grief overcame them.
With a weaker bond of friendship to those students killed than the others, Kimiko was spared some of their loss, and she tried to focus on the job at hand. She picked her way through the aisle, towards the front end of the cabin, and drew the torchlight over the partition.
"No, Kim," called out Carol, "it's down there, down on your left."
"Oh, yeah, I got it."
Kimiko crouched down, and tested the hatch's release switch; with no power in the cabin, and as was expected, the shutters remained firmly closed. An emergency panel to the right opened up to reveal a manual release handle, but even with both hands, she was unable to shift it. Drickson stepped up beside her, and stooped down.
"Here, keep a hold on it," he said, "I'll give you a hand."
With the weight of both cadets now drawing on the handle, it began to ease out; Kimiko had braced one of her feet against the wall, and nearly toppled backwards when it at last unlocked. With a heavy hiss, the hydraulics securing the hatch were released, and Kimiko reached in with her hands and prised it open. Another couple of the cadets came forward to take a look while she shone the flashlight inside; the passageway was less than ten feet in length, and ended in another hatch, but beside it, on the wall of the passage, could be seen the dim reddish light of the safety panel. It was a good sign that at least some power was still being fed to the cockpit from the shuttle's generators; with a nod to the others, and with her flashlight held out in front, she crawled forward through the hatchway.
Shuffling through the tunnel with somewhat less grace than might have been expected from someone of her smallish stature, Kimiko brought herself to the far end and held the torchlight over the panel. Palmer called out From the darkness behind.
"Can you do a pressure scan?"
"Yeah, all right, keep your panties on!" said Kimiko over her shoulder.
Tapping in a series of commands, she accessed the internal safety scanner, and set the onboard computer to scan the cockpit for pressure levels and air content. Within a few seconds, the panel displayed the results.
"It's okay. Pressure's good, air's good. There's only partial power, but the hatch hydraulics at this end are working. I'm gonna go in."
Holding her breath, Kimiko pushed the hatch release, and braced herself. With a whistle of suction, the hatchway opened, and immediately the smell of burning drifted into the passage; edging forward, she peered inside.
Some of the emergency lights in the cockpit were still functional, and a dim yellow glow spread across the small compartment. It was clear that at least one of the pilots was dead; she lay slumped in her seat, less than three feet away, her head lolled to one side, her eyes open and lifeless. The primary instrument panel in front of her was a charred wreck, evidently there had been some electrical disruption and the console had exploded, sending shrapnel tearing through her chest. The co-pilot lay face down on the floor, almost below the hatchway and there was a gruesome wound on the back of his head. It looked as though he had been standing when the ship had been hit, and had cracked his skull on the side panel during the impact.
Kimiko took a few deep breaths to try and push back her growing nausea, and then crept forward, and down onto the floor of the cockpit.
On looking closer, she found that the co-pilot was still alive; his eyes fluttered weakly beneath their lids. The back of his head was a mess of gory, splintered bone and matted hair, and spying the first aid compartment next to the co-pilot's seat, Kimiko took a crouching step forward, at which point her eyes were drawn to the front window of the cockpit. Although there was no blood to be seen in the vastness of space, no gore, no pallid lifeless faces like those of her deceased classmates and the shuttle's pilot, what lay beyond the windows at the front and sides was a sight many times more appalling.
The stars drifted slowly upwards as the shuttle revolved in space, and all around, scattered across hundreds of kilometres, were the devastated remains of the 12th stellar training fleet.
Like so much flickering astral junk, the debris hung in every direction; the shredded husk of one of the fleet's carriers lay away off to the right, a giant, drifting wreck. Fires flared from within and along its bow as plasma ignited, and then suffocated in the vacuum. The smaller fleet frigates had fared no better, and as the shuttle rolled, the Guiding Hand came into view. Even at a distance, the damage was horrific; great hunks of the ship had been blasted away, its flanks were scorched and melted, and the hull glimmered as flames ripped through the decks. Kimiko looked, but could see no sign of the Saint Elizabeth, the flagship of the fleet; instead she found only enormous fragments of wreckage, rolling and twisting in the light of the Phyrriad sun.
"Hey, Satomi! What's going on?" called Valerie from behind, "Have you found them?"
"Yeah." replied Kimiko, "Yeah, I found 'em."