COUNTERPOINT
CHAPTER 2: THE PILOT
PART 6
By Mya Thevendra
Silver flecks of scattered dust and debris hurtled past, as the ragged shuttle held its course. Far away against the silent blackness of space, the edges of the distant nebula reached outwards like curling, sea green tendrils.
Kimiko gripped her flight yoke ever more tightly as it shuddered and jerked, and used the stars at the window's edges as reference points. The last sixteen hours of steady flight had taken the cadets far out of the Phyrriad system, but the twin suns of Cid Fleiis were still little more than hazy amber pinpricks, and there was perhaps only seven hours worth of breathable air left inside the shuttle's environment tanks.
Kimiko tilted her head across towards Valerie, who was sat tiredly studying one of the display screens.
"Velocity?"
She had asked twice in the last hour, and there had been little change since.
"One zero eighty." said Valerie, grimly.
With only one of the primary thrusters left functioning, the shuttle's maximum travelling speed had been reduced drastically. The collar thrusters, and those thermal vents arranged along the shuttle's hull designed to reduce inertia and aid manoeuvring, had all been shut off, so that every available measure of speed could be gleaned from what little propulsion they had left.
"Are they still asleep?" Asked Kimiko, as she refocused on the forward window.
Valerie turned, and gave a brief glance backwards into the cabin; there was nothing to be seen. Some hours ago, the cadets had cast woollen blankets over their fallen classmates, and under Carol's direction, had retired to the front of the cabin to get some rest; at the very least, it would help stretch their air supply a little further. Torches had been switched off, and a noiseless gloom was all that lay beyond the hatchway.
"I think so," answered Valerie, "I can't see anything."
For a short time, while Kimiko kept the shuttle on its course, Valerie simply stared out of her side window, her head occasionally bobbing forward as sleep took her for short seconds at a time. Kimiko felt that same exhaustion swelling in her, clouding her mind and slackening her grip, and she struggled to focus her thoughts, and maintain control.
"Hey Mailer, don't go to sleep, damn it."
"I'm not," mumbled Valerie, her head lolling, even as she spoke.
"Hey! Come on, wake up!"
Valerie rubbed her face and looked over, her eyes dreary and dim.
"All right, I'm okay. How…how much further do you think it is?"
"Too far," Replied Kimiko weakly. "We haven't got enough speed, or enough air, and there's too much distance to cover. Mailer, I…don't think we're going to make it."
"What? Of course we will," said Valerie, almost on the point of collapsing. "We've just got to keep going, s'all."
"Mailer, I'm serious. It's, it's too far. We'll never make it there before our air runs out."
"God, don't say that, Satomi. Just, don't say that. Keep, keep going."
"Isn't there anything else out here? Mailer, talk to me! Isn't there anywhere else we can go?"
"No, there's nowhere." Valerie had slumped forward over her flight yoke, and her eyes were slowly drawing shut.
"Mailer!"
There was no amount of shouting that would cut through her fatigue, and so, undoing her safety belt, and with one hand left on her controls, Kimiko slid sideways out of her seat and delivered a savage kick to Valerie's shin.
"Eeeaagh!"
"Wake up!" yelled Kimiko.
Valerie almost fell from her seat as she jerked reflexively, and she grasped her leg in pain.
"Oww, you bitch! What the hell was that for?"
"Listen to me, Mailer! There's no way we're going to make it to the rally point, we've got to find somewhere else to go!"
"Where?" bawled Valerie, still rubbing her shin. "There's nothing out here!"
"What about traders?"
"There won't be any! Not now, not after those things broke through the front line. There's no way any trader'll come within a hundred light years of this system."
"Junkyards, then! Monitoring stations, anything!" cried Kimiko, reaching desperately for hope. Valerie covered her mouth, and shook her head.
"There's nothing here. Just space. Oh God, we're going to die," she whimpered.
"No we're not, stop it. Stop it!"
But there was little use in Kimiko's scolding; Valerie slumped forward again, not out of exhaustion but out of grief, as their probable fate became all too apparent. Kimiko stared forward stoically, and bit her lip. A shiver passed through her, and she felt her resolve diminish. She panted, as anguish swelled in her, and tightened her stomach; and her eyes, reddened and clouded by weariness, slowly began to close.
As if from a dream, there then appeared an object, dull and obscure against the black veil of space. Kimiko's eyes fluttered, and opened long enough for her to realise that it was no figment or illusion, but real, and that the distance between them was being closed at considerable speed. Another moment, and Kimiko's nodding mind recognized that the object was, in fact, lying still in space; and that the speed of the shuttle was carrying them straight towards it. The realisation came slowly, and in another second, they were upon it. With a shocking thud, the object impacted against the front window, obscuring its view with a curtain of seeping, muddy red. Both Kimiko and Valerie jerked upright, their distress, and their drowsiness momentarily banished.
"Jesus Fuckin' Christ!" cursed Kimiko. "What the fuck is that?!"
Valerie couldn't answer, and sat stunned, her chest heaving with fright. Across the front of the shuttle, there was strewn a ghastly blanket of what was apparently some kind of biological matter. It was sopping with gore and fragments of what looked to be bone; and great flaps of thick, leathery tissue stretched across the window at the front, and round to those at the side.
"Ge-Get it off!" stuttered Valerie, "Slow down!"
Kimiko quickly drew the throttle bar backwards, cutting off power to the main thrusters; and as the engine's guttural thrumming subsided, Valerie fired up the shuttle's collar thrusters and forward heat vents. With inertial control back in place, the shuttle quickly began to decelerate, and the two shell-shocked flight cadets watched as the gruesome mess detached from the window, and carried on forward under its own momentum. A patchy covering of deep crimson blood had been left across the window, but the girls could see enough through it to glimpse the appalling object now tumbling away from them. Whatever it was, or once had been, it was large; at least twenty feet from end to end, and as horribly mangled as it was, there could be seen along it's flanks what appeared to be a pair of wings: great, rubbery, claret coloured wings, with wickedly barbed edges.
"Oh, God" whispered Valerie, "It's, it's one of them."
"Holy shit, is it dead?"
Squinting through the blood-spattered window, they could see no sign of life from the beast's carcass, and like some disgusting, fleshy tarpaulin, it floated lifelessly away into the distance. It was at this point, however, as the cadets gazed outwards, that the rest of the creatures came into view. Spread thinly about the region of space in front of them, they lay broken and torn; all appeared to be dead, and presented a sickening sight indeed, some little more than charred lumps of meat. Scattered amidst them were also fragments of metallic wreckage, and the signs were clear that a small skirmish had occurred here.
"I saw them." Said Valerie quietly.
"What?"
"I saw them. When we were attacked. Right before the blast panels went down over the windows, I saw them. Them. They killed everyone."
"I think they got their punishment," said Kimiko, "these ones, at least."
"What happened?" asked Valerie.
Kimiko shook her head, and looked out at the grisly spectacle.
"I don't know. Are they the same ones that attacked the fleet?"
"They must be."
"Well, they must have run into some of ours. Our reinforcements probably, or another fleet." Said Kimiko.
"So where is everybody?"
Kimiko turned to Valerie, and shrugged.
"Probably at the rally point."
Valerie shook her head, and then stared suddenly into the setting in front.
"Hey," she muttered, "What…what's that?"
Kimiko looked around to see what she was looking at, but found nothing.
"What's what?"
"That! What, are you blind? Look! Over there!"
Kimiko narrowed her eyes and searched closely through the wreckage, when a flicker of movement abruptly caught her eye.
"Oh, shit."
Not tumbling inertly through the weightlessness of deep space, but twitching, and convulsing with growing vigour, one of the creatures had apparently managed to survive the engagement. Left grievously wounded, but still very much alive, it now twisted feverishly, and some strange semblance of a mouth flexed open and shut, as it vomited thin spurts of blood.
"We've got to go faster, now." Said Valerie, almost entranced by the beast's writhing display.
"Shit, hold on!"
Kimiko shoved the throttle bar forward, and with a sharp jolt, the shuttle gathered speed once again. As they drew up to it, and began to pass underneath, they saw the creature in all its horrid detail; its wings unfurled to reveal a torso shaped like some massive, serrated maggot, its tail curved, and its mouth gaping like a dreadful, carnivorous fish. As they passed, even in the blink of an eye, it seemed as though its blasted flesh was knitting together, contracting and pulsing as the damage done to it was rapidly healed.
"Oh God damn it, this isn't good." Gasped Kimiko, as they cleared the debris field.
"What's it-"
Valerie was cut short as a dull thump sounded out from the shuttle's rear. With blood still trailing from its body, the hideous creature flew past them from above; it's jagged body scraping across the hull as it went. Moving through the void by some perverted form of gas expulsion, it soared away, and upwards, before rolling around, and diving back towards the hapless shuttle and its terrified pilots. With a speed belying its size, it came on; and from its hellish maw, a sickly jet of bile coloured fluid rained forth onto the back of the shuttle. Kimiko and Valerie both cried out in shock, and heard a sound like rain falling onto a tin roof from the cabin's ceiling behind. Screams suddenly rose from the passengers, as they awoke petrified from their slumber.
"What's going on?" screamed Suzie Palmer through the hatchway. Kimiko glanced backwards and yelled.
"Get down, damn it!"
The creature had hurtled past to the shuttle's rear, and out of sight; inside the cockpit, Valerie scanned quickly over the damage displays.
"Oh God, the hull…"
"What?"
"The roof, the whole roof of the shuttle's turning red grade! If it hits it again, it's going to breach!"
"Oh, shit! Okay…hang on!"
The shuttle groaned as Kimiko pushed it into a forward dive; and with straining arms, she rolled the ship. Far above, they could see the winged beast bearing down, snaking its way towards them.
"What are you doing?" shrieked Valerie, "We've got to get away from it!"
"We can't just head straight, it's too fast! We won't stand a chance!"
"What the hell are you going to do? We can't fight it, we don't have any weapons!"
"No, but we have a hull," said Kimiko wrathfully, "I'm gonna ram it!"
"Are you nuts?"
Before Kimiko could give an answer, the creature tore past, clipping the shuttle with its wing and sending it spinning. With a cry of force, Kimiko wrenched her controls to try and level the ship. As they pulled slowly out of their roll, there came a ringing screech, as their vile pursuer scraped along the ship's belly, before wheeling away ahead of them. Kimiko rammed the throttle bar forward, and while the creature swung around to the right, for another attack, she brought the shuttle ahead of it, leading its movement.
"Now it's our turn!" hollered Kimiko.
The shuttle's engines rumbled laboriously beneath, as they closed on their target. At the last instant, the creature caught sight of the approaching shuttle, and with a spasm of movement, attempted to escape its path; but it was too late. A thunderous crunch shot through the forward hull as the shuttle careered headlong into the beast; its broken, twitching form was flung brutally across the ship's front, before bouncing off to the side. Kimiko and Valerie sat staring, dazed by the impact.
"Ha ha! Take that, you fuck nugget!" squealed Kimiko, peering through the left window.
But her celebrations were premature, and as Kimiko brought them around, they could see the creature thrashing with its massive wings, attempting to right itself. It had been stunned, but was still very much alive.
"No! It's still there!" wailed Valerie, "Come on, hit it again!"
As they drew in to ram it a second time, the creature bolted downwards, and out of the path of the lumbering shuttle. A short second passed; and before Kimiko had even turned her wheel to bring the shuttle around, a shrill grating sound ripped along the rear of the shuttle. The single functioning alarm in the cockpit began to bleep, and as Kimiko regained control of the ship, Valerie searched frantically through the damage screens.
"Oh Jesus, the air! The environment tanks, they've been torn open!"
"What? Oh Christ, how much-"
Metal screamed again as the shuttle's stern was rent, and the frenzied sounds of panic rang out from the cabin. Kimiko stole a look over her shoulder; the shuttle veered, and she saw their precious air supply escaping as a billowing, cloudy trail behind them. Time began to slow, as blood rushed, and suddenly, Kimiko felt her head go light.
A monster, a terrible monster would be the end of them. In her mind, she could hear it roar. No sound escaped the selfish, desolate vacuum around them, but in her head, a monster with barbed wings and a bladed body cried out. It was a foul sound, a nightmarish howl that cut into her, freezing her solid. As the sound of Valerie's crying voice became dim and lost, and her shouts obscured into a distant murmur, she saw it. Almost in awe, she watched, as death stood close, and clouded her vision. It swooped ahead, far ahead and with twisted grace, it turned, and came. Kimiko's hands fell away from her controls, and landed limp at her sides, and with barren eyes, she watched. Valerie had fallen out of her seat, held awkwardly by her safety straps. Was she dead? The world tipped on its side as Kimiko's head lolled. As her eyes drooped, she watched. A flash of light, a cloud of red, and it was all over.