It came to me in that nightmare. I should have known from the start. I guess I’d just forgotten. The escape pods on this kind of craft were built around the uncertainty that launched it. The last relic to a cold war. The last statement in a war of words fought over the proliferation of who had the biggest and most powerful bombs. The uncertainty of a new technology married to a dying one. With the trust placed in the old and not the new. The reliable old.
The escape pods were wired to return to the motherland. To Russia. And they were powered by another curious mixture of technologies. A more basic and slower hyper dive along with gallons upon gallons of rocket fuel. That was how we could get out of here. The escape pods on this ship had to be just that. There was no rescue when this thing first launched. It was among the first of it’s kind. The first deep space craft from which there was little return. There would have been no rescue. If escapees needed to get to safety then they had to get all the way to safety. I had to get her there.
‘Did you sleep okay?’ Lucy asks me softly when I finally manage to open my eyes. I don’t want to talk about it. That was a crazy nightmare. It was horrible. Not often do I dream and even less so are they so vivid. It had me a little shaken. Shake it off. I thought. Got to keep moving. No need thinking about silly dreams like that. The answer had just come to me on how to get the hell out of here. I needed to take that ticket and not get upset about a nightmare.
‘I didn’t get much.’ I lie like usual. ‘How about you? Dream about anything?’
‘Just about you.’ Wow. That made a change. Instead of sending the usual shiver down my spine whenever she said anything. It warmed me. Made me feel useful and wanted for a change. I needed to focus on that and carry that wave of energy to the end of this living nightmare.
‘What about me?’ I smile. Openly for the first time in a while and not a forced one either.
‘Just that you make it. That you figure it out and get out of here.’ Her own smile and openly playful demeanor suddenly changes but I miss it. The conversation moves on and I don’t have time to think anything more of it. I just want to stay positive and ride the energy she had given me in those simple few words.
‘Well.’ I smile more broadly still. ‘Funny you should say. I remembered where the escape pods are.’
‘You remembered?’ She spits at me almost sarcastically and openly derogatorily.
‘Yeah.’ I recoil. ‘I guess it just came to me in my sleep.’ I explain but it was almost an excuse. It sounded like one anyway. She just rolls her eyes at me. Like a dumb kid or something. I wish I hated her for it. But I must be so smitten with her I just liked her more for it.
‘Hey, I haven’t seen one of these before and it’s been a long time since I had the time to drool over it’s blueprints like I did when I was a kid.’
‘We’ve been trawling through this ship on our last legs for days and you suddenly “remember” where the escape pods are!’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘What!’ She grew a bit aggressive but I like it. I don’t see her as a guard anymore. I see her as a friend or something more I guess. I don’t find her attitude threatening at long last. I found it all… cute.
‘I never said I knew where they were.’ I’m poking fun at her and I like it even more as she bites. ‘I said I remember it has them. Not that I know where they are.’ At last I break her. She just punches me as hard as she can in the shoulder and starts smiling. I guess that steak has lifted our moods. The sleep will have helped too.
I stand up and stretch as tall as I can. My back has recuperated a little during the night, or whenever it was that we slept, but still aches. My armor flexes and bows under my moves and I wish I could take it off at long last but no such luck just yet. Time to get going. The fire that I cooked on last night, if it even was night, has died out completely and I really have no way to know how much time has gone since we fell asleep. I pull myself out of the carriage and out into the now cold tunnel.
There must have been an intense snow flurry during the time we had been asleep. There had been more than one hole in the hull along the rafters of the tunnel. Through those gaps newly fallen snow had trickled in and blanketed the place in thin and slippery layer. I make sure to watch my step but gradually slip out of the gap in the carriage I had blown up myself. At least there were no more monsters. And at least the lights were still working. Thin streams of light ebbed in through the roof too. It was nice to see a bit of natural light too. I must have caused most of those holes myself. The explosion might have been a fair bit bigger than I had planned on or realized in the immediate aftermath. The tracks up above had buckled and broken too. To be expected.
Lucy follows. Her hair is a mess but I like that too. I just chuckle at her and she knows immediately what I’m getting at. She frantically pulls at it and tries to flatten it down a touch but it does little good.
‘Relax.’ I urge her and take her hand to help her unnecessarily over the lip of the window frame. ‘It looks nice.’
‘Oh great! A guy who likes the way I look in the morning.’ She makes light of it and stops trying to flatten it out.
The blast door up ahead had been ripped right down the middle. Just like I planned. I let go of her, she’s fine on her own after all, and make my way over the rubble towards it. I climb slowly and carefully. Still not quite awake and no matter how long I had been asleep for, it wouldn’t have been enough to recover from all of the things I’ve been through.
I don’t want to slip over in the thin but slick layer of gradually melting snow and make myself look a bigger idiot than I already had. I think back to what Lucy had said about her dream. And also to what a mess I had made of the place. I like the feeling it gives me. That I had clawed some of it back. Some of that battered and bruised ego that had taken one too many hits over the days I had spent on this horrid planet.
It’s nice to know that when things get really heated I can hold my own and even protect another. I can’t help it from wandering. My thought chain turns to Kolt. And I think he might even have been proud of me. I was changing here. I was coming out of my skin or becoming a new man. Either one. I don’t care. I like it.
The metal that once lined the roof litters the way I need to go. It’s warped and twisted by the fire I had caused. But cold now to the touch. I make my way precariously through the mire of twisted girders and over to the door. Good thing Kolt had taught me how to climb. Or I’d have no chance of getting up and over the door.
The tear in it was half way up. It was going to be a difficult climb of a slippery and slick surface to reach the opening my explosion had caused. But I think I can do it. I wait a while for Lucy to catch up. She looks, and sounds, a little groggy today. So I give her space and time to wake up.
‘Maybe we can use some of this metal to build a staircase of some kind.’ She must have seen it from a distance and had started thinking of possible solutions to the problem at hand. I have other ideas.
‘Nah.’ I reach up to a small crack in the metal and test my grip on it. ‘I can climb this. So can you.’ The heat of the flame must have warped the steel into a nice rounded hold and there were more like it to use as hand and feet holds in order to scale it. It probably looked further than it was. Shrapnel from flying pieces of steel, bits of track and dinosaur parts, must have slammed into the sheet metal of the door and made tiny incisions and dents into it. We can use them to hold onto.
I feel strong. She makes me feel strong. So I keep hold of that first hold without breaking for rest and move onto the next, and the next and the one after that too.
There are splits in the metal too. Designed ones. Around access ports and maintenance docks. They will make the climb easier and help me to trust my decisions. Lucy is climbing behind me. Not as enthusiastically as me but climbing nonetheless. I’m within reaching distance of the first part of the rip in the steel but not quite able to get hold of it at full s
tretch.
No choice. I bravely jump and grab hold of the frayed metal. I felt it cut into my skin, even through the glove I had put back on, but I held on anyway. I pull hard and swung my feet up to another small hold where I could lever my whole body weight in. The door is thick. And the explosion had torn right through it. But it’s wide enough for me to stand in and not feel worried about slipping down either side, into either half of the tunnel.
I need to help Lucy make that last move. She’s probably stronger than me but I don’t think she is as tall. So the jump will be more daunting for her. I lay down in the crack and lower my hands down. As soon as she is close enough I tell her to jump. She doesn’t even hesitate. She must be able to trust me that much. That feels nice too. Her hands clasp into mine and I grip for my life and hers too. I pull hard and she does the same. She runs her boots up the wall and I unceremoniously grab at her belt and tug at it to pull her up beside me.
‘Thanks.’ She says but blushes. I know why. But say nothing. She shifted her pants back to normal and held onto me tight in the small space we found ourselves propped inside of. It was a tight squeeze and not too comfortable either. The metal shards that had been ripped asunder by the explosion dug into our backs. I slowly ease myself toward the open space behind me. Towards the other side of the tunnel. That’s the way we need to go and hopefully where we might find the escape pods.
I slip. Lucy isn’t fast enough to catch me, and I push instinctively back against her to make sure she stayed on her feet and safe.
I fall. So fast I don’t have time to think about it. So quickly that I don’t have time to try and save myself or even find the best landing spot. I hit the bottom of the dark hall and blacked out with the searing pain immediately. I hit the floor right on my back. Right where it hurt the most.
‘Sam! Sam!’ I awoke slowly and not so softly to the sound of my own name yelled again and again. It doesn’t take me long to recognize the voice as Lucy’s. I thought it had killed me. It feels like it had back on the rig when I first came to after the crash. It feels like it had in my dream too. Like I was dead. I can’t explain the relief that surges through me as I slowly open my eyes. It could have killed me. It should have too. So many times I had escaped a gruesome fate on this world. What was one more?
Her voice is distant. It sounds distant, as you would expect any voice would when you awake from the wrong side of consciousness, but as I slowly open my eyes I can see that she hasn’t made the climb down yet. I mustn’t have been out for long. I want to call to her. Let her know I’m okay. Even though that’s a stretch of the truth in itself. But I can’t. It feels like my jaw is welded shut and I daren’t even draw in a deep breath for the sake of the ever present pain in my spine. Any small jolt might paralyze me. I’m lucky to have avoided it so far.
‘Hold on, I’m coming!’ I wish I could shout to her to be careful. I don’t want her to fall too. I was careless. Proud and pent up on my brief track record of success. I wasn’t paying attention. I messed up and now I’m paying for it. I can’t see her climb. It’s too dark and my eyes are too strained. I can hear the odd clunk and each one makes my heart flutter. I hope she is okay. And it frustrates me out of my mind that it’s all I can do.
At least I can still feel my heartbeat. At least I can feel something. I wish I could move my toes or my legs or something but I can’t. I’m trying so hard to focus but I can’t. It fills me with dread and fear. My throat closes up and I can feel my tongue swell. My heart races and I can’t stop sweating. Is this is? Is this how it ends? All I can do is blindly trust in blind faith that it will pass. That I just haven’t recovered from the shock of the fall yet. The feeling will come back. It has to. It just has to.
Before I even have time to process everything, I feel Lucy jump down from her last step of the climb and run over. I can feel it. The tremors through the floor when she jumped. That has to be good. She rushes to my side all a flutter and places two desperate open palms across my chest. And I can feel that too. Another lucky escape. Or is something else happening here?
‘Are… are you still alive?’ She sobs over me in floods of tears. But what a question. I have no idea. I really don’t.
‘My legs.’ I manage only two basic syllables. I want her to touch them. To run her hands over them so I can see if I have any sensation in them. Even though I can’t articulate it, she senses it anyway and does what I want.
It’s hard through my armor to feel anything at all, let alone her soft and gentle hands. And it’s all to easy to think I can feel something but I really can’t. It’s too easy for our minds to play tricks on us like that. Kolt thought he was alive when he wasn’t. Let that be a true representation of how much power the mind has over our matter. Dead or alive. To convince itself that it can feel, that it still exists but exists no longer. But despite all of that, or maybe even in advocacy of it, I am certain that I can feel her caress my aching legs. And I can feel her teardrops slash gently against my hands.
I don’t need her to be weak right now. I need her to be the strong girl I met out on that snowfield. I can’t move. No way can I stand. I like that she cries for me. I like that she cares about me enough to. But I need her to be the hard as nails guard I used to know. Or at least that I thought I knew.
‘Come on!’ Again she reads my thoughts and dries her eyes. I know how strong she is. I know she can carry me but I still have something left. I still have an insurmountable power of will. And I swear that even if it bleeds me dry I’m going to use it.
I push her arms aside and roll onto my side. It hurts. Like a blistering heat mixed with an icy cold thrashing through my mortal frame. But I do it anyway. I growl against her advances and she backs away. And I stand up despite everything. Despite the crushing weight of defeat and death, in defiance of all of it, I stand on my own. Tears roll freely down my cheeks as I dig deeper and deeper to a power source I didn’t know that I had. And I’m proud. But it doesn’t last. It couldn’t have.
I reach out to her side and fall limp onto her. She dutifully catches me and takes most of my weight. It’s a welcome respite. But I know what I have to do now. I know what’s happening here. I know I’m part of it. But there is still one thing that I have to do and there is nothing that is going to stop me.
‘Let’s get you out of here.’ I say, with both of my heavy arms wrapped around her sweaty neck.
‘I was just gonna say that to you.’ She sobbed but responded immediately.