NaNoWriMo Day 7

The fire burned the rest of the day. Adrien did her best the quench the flames in the cockpit, but the bomb she had rigged burned incredibly hot and it was all they could do to save the rest of the shuttle.

Damien kept the others busy carrying sand and water to throw on the fire. For as long as they had a task to perform they wouldn’t start panicking. Damien was already trying to formulate a plan for after the fire went out.

No one found any evidence of the infected crew members reforming or escaping, but no one doubted that they would be back. There was also the matter of the Captain going insane after losing his wife and Tobias’ expedition with Kendra to go find him. If none of them returned they would be down to only five survivors.

Finally, as the sun was setting and the fire was dying down, a very confused Tobias and Kendra returned to the camp. It fell to Damien to explain what had happened. Retelling the story did not make it sound any better, in fact, it seemed to make everyone realize how incredibly screwed they were. No one even cared that Tobias and Kendra had found another type of metal that looked like copper. Everyone shambled about as though they were already dead.

That night Damien called a meeting with the Antonov siblings, the three of them were the surviving officers on the expedition.

“We need to figure out what to do tomorrow,” Damien told them.

Benji just stared into space as though he hadn’t heard. Adrien sighed. “I can start trying to repair the shuttle, but it’s going to take a lot of time and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to get it working well enough to leave the atmosphere again.”

Damien nodded. He had figured as much. “That means we are going to have to survive for the next twenty-nine days. Our first progress report was due then and we’ll be missed.”

“Make it thirty-nine days. It will take at least ten days for them to launch a rescue mission. And that’s a best case scenario,” Adrien said in a rather unenthusiastic tone. Damien could see her trying to envision a way for them to avoid contact with the metal thingies for the next six weeks when there had been two attacks in twelve hours.

“You burned them up real good, hopefully that will give us time to relocate to a more secure location.”

“Relocate? You want to give up on the shuttle?”

“Can you fix it in twenty-nine days?”

Adrien shrugged. “I don’t know yet. I haven’t had time to inspect the interior.”

“Well right now we are in just about the least defensible position imaginable. They can come at us from any direction and we’ll have no warning at all with all the trees around. We need to find a cave up in the mountains where they can only get in through one entrance and we can see them coming from a long ways off.”

Adrien sighed. She looked at her brother sitting there like a lump.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He had a thing going with Larissa. He seems to be taking her death pretty hard.”

“Good God! Just what we need. Was everyone on the mission romantically involved? What part of no dating the other crew members did you people not understand?”

She rolled her eyes. “Give it a rest, you sound like a crotchety old man! You aren’t even that old, you’re what, thirty-five?”

“Your age doesn’t matter if you have no discipline.”

Adrien grabbed him by the collar and shook him. “You are not in the army anymore! You are dealing with untrained geeks who are terrified! You need to lead them not berate them! Good Lord, what the hell happened to you that made you such an insufferable ass?”

“Dunbar.”

“Dunbar-shmunbar! You need to forget about what nearly killed you in the past and focus on what’s going to kill you in the future if you don’t quit trying to make everyone hate you! We need someone to lead us, and as you can see,” she punched her brother so hard he fell off his chair and onto the floor, “it isn’t going to be him! I need to work on the shuttle, figure out if it’s fixable and then start either repairing or salvaging. Understood?”

Damien grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

They stepped out of his tent. Damien nearly slapped himself in the face, but at the last second remembered that his hand was completely coated in iron now.

Bill, who appeared to be drunk, was brandishing his copper coated right hand and shouting, “Now there are two of us who can fight them! You all saw Damien beat one of them into a pile of goo and not get infected! We can go and fight them now! Everyone else get a gun, we’re going monster hunting!”

The others muttered to themselves skeptically.

“Alright, Bill, that’s enough of that.” Damien walked up beside him. “What happened to your hand?”

“I was in the lab with the samples and I accidently put my hand in the copper metal. It bonded to me like the iron bonded to you! I’m going to get super strong now and we’re going to fight them together like superheroes!”

Damien could smell the booze on Bill’s breath. He was this close to screaming his brains out at Bill, but then he remembered what Adrien had said. “Sounds great, buddy. But even superheroes need to be well rested. So I want you to go sleep off whatever it is you drank and the two of us will go monster hunting in the morning.”

“You mean all of us! The others are going to take the guns and we’re all going! Safety in numbers, you know.”

“Absolutely!” Damien said patronizingly. “Right after you have a good, long nap.”

Damien convinced the rest of the crew to get some sleep as well. No one argued. Damien went back to his own tent and tried to sleep. He failed, naturally. Too many options, scenarios, and contingency plans raced through his mind as he lay in his cot.

They needed some place to hide, but where? Should they just start marching in one direction and hope the metal ooze creatures never caught up with them? Should they try to find an easily defensible cave in the mountains? Assuming Bill’s drunken rant about the two of them being immune to infection was correct, did that change anything? No, Damien decided, Bill could be counted on for less than nothing.

Sometime after midnight, Phoenix came to call on him. “I knew you’d be awake still.”

“When I was a grunt I slept like a rock whenever I had a spare second. It wasn’t until I was promoted that I stopped being able to sleep.”

Phoenix nodded sympathetically. “Officers have to worry about what’s going to happen next. They have to constantly plan their next move so that the men depending on them don’t buy the farm just because their officer was careless.”

“You father taught you well.”

She sighed. “Not well enough.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know what to do next. I always thought I would be a leader, just like my dad, but here I am in the midst of a crisis and I’m no more use that the rest of the nerds.”

Damien laughed. “Hardly! You and Adrien are the only ones who have kept your heads in this whole mess.”

“But what are we going to do next? It doesn’t matter how well you keep your cool if you don’t have a plan!”

“Oh yes it does. The second you panic, you’re lost. I’ve seen men turn and run when they’re overcome with fear and the second they do they’re dead. Whether it’s immediate or if it takes time for the enemy to chase them down, it doesn’t matter. Once fear has you then you’ve already bought the farm.”

Phoenix sat down hard beside him on the cot. “Then you might as well shoot me now, because I’m terrified.”

“Hey, now! Being scared is completely different from giving in to fear. You’re still here and you’re still trying to find a way to fight these things. You haven’t run. You haven’t given in. Stick with me and I’ll get you through this, I promise.” Damien’s stomach lurched as he said the words. He had sworn that he would never promise to keep one of his soldiers safe in combat ever again.

Phoenix looked into his eyes for a long time. “Damien?”

“Yes?”

“I have a crazy idea.”

“Alright, let’s hear it.”

“Okay, but hear me out before you say no.”

“Very well.”

“The Metalloids have always come from the northwest, right?”

“The what?”

“That’s what Kendra has started calling the crew members infected by the black ooze metal.”

“I see. Yes, they have always come from the northwest.”

“The four we know are infected are most likely weak from Adrien blowing them up, right?”

“I suppose. We don’t really know anything about them.”

“Yes, but it does seem to take time for them to reform into human shapes after being blown up.” She took an anticipatory breath. “So I think we should do what Bill said. Go on the offensive and try to kill or contain them while they’re weak. We’ll never get a better chance than we have now. We have no shot of getting rescued for over a month and there is no way Adrien can repair the shuttle, I don’t care how good she thinks she is. I think it’s this or wait until the Metalloids pick us off one by one.”

Damien groaned. “No.”

“No? How can you say no? We’ll never have this kind of advantage again! The next time they come for us Captain Kharn will be infected and the other four will be back to full strength!”

“They could be back to full strength now. And even if they aren’t we have no idea what can kill them or even contain them. We have absolutely no intelligence on an enemy familiar with the local terrain. We need to find a defensible position and wait there for reinforcements.”

“A defensible position? You want to hide? What was all that about not running away or giving into fear?” Phoenix stood up, obviously upset with him.

“Phoenix, can’t you see that it’s you who is giving into fear? You don’t know what to do so you’ve decided to act rashly rather than think through the situation. We need to gather intelligence if possible and protect our people if that’s not possible.”

“Listen to yourself! You really do think you’re an old man, don’t you? Well not all of us lost our nerve on Dunbar! Tobias, Kendra, and I are taking Bill to go find the Metalloids and kill them at dawn!”

Then she stormed out. The next morning Bill, Phoenix, Tobias, and Kendra were gone. Benji spent the day in his tent, Adrien cursed at the shuttle as she assessed the damage and began repairs, and Damien kept his eyes on the mountains to the northwest.

The sun reached its zenith and began to fall. The afternoon wore on with Adrien swearing violently as she worked and Damien silently keeping watch. Finally, as the sun was setting, Bill returned.

Alone.

*

“Where the hell are the others?” Damien growled.

Bill looked over his shoulder as though he were surprised by the news that he had returned without his companions.

Damien grabbed Bill by his shirt and lifted him off the ground. “Where are they? Where is Phoenix?”

“I—I don’t know! They were right behind me when I started running!”

“Running?” Damien shook Bill violently.

“The metals! They give you different powers! I can run super-fast instead of having super strength—urk—like you!”

Damien dropped Bill violently. “Tell me exactly what happened!”

“They came out of nowhere! The Metalloids, they just appeared!  We were up in the mountains. I tried to fight them, but I punched one and nothing happened. Then the black Metalloid took a swing at me and everything slowed down. It felt like I could still move at normal speed, but they were all in slow motion. I dodged, but they kept coming at me, so I ran! I thought the others were right behind me so I didn’t stop until I got back here. I didn’t know I left them behind!”

Damien wasn’t sure if the sound he let loose was a growl or a groan or a scream, but it was loud. “Adrien! I need more grenades!”

“Why?” Adrien called from the shuttle where she was still working.

“Bill left the others out there and I need to go after them!”

“The hell you do, it’s nearly dark!”

“This is not negotiable, dammit!”

“The hell it is!”

“I’m going after her!”

“Her?” Adrien screamed. “What do you mean her? We’re missing three people and you’re talking about a her?”

Damien ground his teeth. “I promised Phoenix I would keep her safe.”

“Tough titties!” Adrien shot back. “You shouldn’t have made a promise you couldn’t keep!”

“I’m going, dammit!”

“The hell you are!”

“Just try and stop me!” Damien turned to tell Bill to lead him back to where he had lost the others when something hard hit him in the back of the head. He turned to see Adrien standing on the shuttle ramp with another hunk of metal in her hand.

“I swear to God the next one will explode when it hits you!”

“What is wrong with you?”

“YOU! You who were so God-damn impersonal before and now someone is missing that you give a damn about! You need to stop, think about this rationally, and realize that there is nothing we can do to help the others because they are already infected.”

“I won’t believe that.”

“Bill said that he left them in the middle of an ambush by the Metalloids. Get it through your thick, iron skull that they are dead! We need to fix the shuttle, get back to the starship, and get the hell back to Earth!”

“Then stay and fix it! Bill and I are going!” Damien grabbed Bill by the ear and started dragging him until he followed.

“Dammit, wait!” Adrien shouted. She had grabbed Benji by the elbow and thrown a satchel over her shoulder.

“Coming after all?”

“Someone needs to watch your back and I sure as hell don’t trust Bill to do it.”

Bill led them back through the darkness up into the mountains. He stopped on a short plateau and shrugged. “This is where they attacked us.”

Damien studied the multitude of tracks crisscrossing the area. “There are two sets of tracks leading away from the plateau. One goes this way.” He pointed to the west, down into a valley. “And the other goes this way.” He pointed north, farther up the mountain.

“Which way do we go?” Bill asked.

“You and Benji follow the tracks down into the valley. Adrien and I will head up the mountain.”

“And if we lose the trail?” Bill gulped nervously.

Damien clenched his iron fist. “You don’t want to do that.”

“Right! Off we go, come on Benji!” Bill grabbed Benji by the elbow and led him off down into the valley.

Adrien and Damien followed the other trail north towards the mountain’s peak.

“So what the hell crawled up your ass, you and Phoenix have some kind of thing going on? I find that highly ironic after your rant at me about my brother and Larissa.”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Then why the hell am I up here in the mountains in the dark with you?”

“I told you, I promised her I’d get her through this safely!”

“Why in the hell would you do that? I wouldn’t promise another person I could get them down the stairs safely!”

“You don’t understand!” Damien shouted.

“Hence my desire for you to explain your seemingly irrational actions to me!” Adrien shouted back.

“I have left men to die on thirteen worlds! I swore, swore! That I would never do that again, but I broke that promise on Dunbar. I watched ninety percent of my command die, and for what? So I could lose yet again!”

Adrien cocked her head to the side, perplexed. “Lose? The Union won the Battle of Dunbar.”

“That I know all too well.”

Adrien gasped. “You were a Free Alliance soldier, a rebel!”

“We were fighting for our freedom. Earth was small, distant, and arrogant. I had never seen the place, what right did they have to order me about? That was how I felt before my homeworld was destroyed by their nuclear missiles. After that, I fought for vengeance. In the end though, the Free Alliance killed more of its own soldiers than Earth did with its Super-Soldier program. I could never understand why I was always being given a new crop of fresh recruits just when I had gotten my old squad battle-hardened.” Damien shook his head sorrowfully. He had thought he was over these feelings, but here they came, back to the surface, gushing out once more. “My squad was always rotated back to Dunbar for ‘additional training!’ The Alliance was trying to mutate them into Super-Soldiers! I sent my men home for what I thought was some well-deserved R & R, but they were being sent back to labs where science-types like you were torturing them to death!”

“The Alliance leaders, they say they went mad at the end of the war,” Adrien muttered.

“Of course they say that! Earth would say anything to demonize its enemies!” Damien shouted. “But they leave out the fact that they nuked half a dozen habitable planets and about three billion people before the Alliance became desperate enough to launch the Super-Soldier program! And do you know what haunts me at night? I would have done the same thing! I would have sacrificed thousands to try and turn the tide of the war against an enemy willing to vaporize billions of civilians! So excuse me if I want to finally try and save someone after all these years!”

Adrien stared at him for a moment. Eventually, she said, “What the hell are you waiting for?” Then she continued up the mountain, following the trail.

“Why don’t you go back and keep working on the shuttle?” Damien asked as he began walking again.

“Because you don’t get to give a speech like that without inspiring at least one person to follow you anywhere.”

“You’re the only person who can fix the shuttle. You should go back. If I die then you guys are on your own to survive without the guy who used to run around with a gun every day, but if you die, then the others are dead unless they survive to see the rescue team arrive; which I highly doubt they can do without either of us.”

Adrien kept walking.

“Well, don’t you have a witty response?”

“Do you see that?”

Damien started to ask, “What?” before he saw it. A blacker than black hole in the mountainside. “What is it?” He asked.

“I’m guessing we’ll find out once we’re inside.”

Damien followed Adrien down into the tunnel that appeared to have its walls made entirely out of the black Metalloid ooze that composed their vicious attackers.

*

Black metallic ooze dripped constantly from the roof of the tunnel. The walls writhed and squirmed. With each step they took the floor reached up feebly to grab at their shoes. The tendrils of Metalloid ooze seemed unable to latch onto them and spread the way it did when spreading from an infected person to a fresh victim.

“It must need a host to have any real strength,” Adrien said nervously.

“Good to know, but the Metalloids have still reformed after being blown up a lot faster than we thought they would.”

“That’s true,” she admitted glumly. “Do you think the Captain has been infected yet?”

“I wouldn’t bet on him not being infected. Hang on!” Damien thought he saw something move in the darkness ahead, but when he looked again there was nothing but ooze.

“Damien?”

“Yes?”

“Was there a tunnel leading off to the right when we went past?” She pointed at the wall about ten feet behind them.

Damien frowned. “No, there wasn’t.”

“What do we do? Can we leave some kind of trail to find our way back?”

Damien shook his head. “We keep going. The slime on the walls can’t hurt us and being out in the forest in the dark is no safer than being down here.”

Adrien nodded. “Lead the way, then.”

They made their way down deeper into the cave. As they moved through the tunnels, the tunnels began to shift more violently. Forks in the tunnel started to appear and they had to decide whether to go left or right. Sometimes caverns appeared with four or more possible exits that closed and opened as they watched.

“Have you seen any sign that the others were down here?”

Damien shook his head. “I don’t know how I could with the floor moving like this.”

It was when Damien entered one of the caverns that the tunnel abruptly closed behind him with Adrien on the other side.

“Adrien!” Damien shouted as he pounded on the wall as hard as he could. His hand went into the wall and slid back out, but when he tried to walk through the wall it pushed him back out. His heart began to beat faster.

“Calm down, Damien,” a deep voice rumbled from behind him.

Damien turned to see the source of the voice. It was a nine foot tall, hulking man-shaped mass of Metalloid ooze. “Move this wall so I can get to Adrien!”

The Metalloid laughed. “Iron Metalloids are always so angry and stubborn. I assure you, there is no cause for alarm.”

“No cause for alarm? My people are missing, I don’t know if they’re alive or dead!”

“And yet, here you are fighting for them against astounding odds.”

“You’re damn right I’m fighting for them! And you’re going to hand them over right now!”

The Metalloids chuckled at the implied threat. “Or what?”

“Or this!” Damien threw himself at the giant creature, punching and kicking. The iron had spread to cover both arms, his entire torso, and most of his legs down to the knees. Each blow was incredibly powerful, he felt three times as strong as he had when he fought Matilda. Chunks of black ooze flew everywhere, but the Metalloid just laughed as it took the punches without offering any resistance.

“I’ll give you one thing, iron has strength. Of character and physical strength. That’s why she wants you.”

That last part took Damien aback. “She?”

It nodded its massive head. “Our queen. Our master. Our creator.”

“And this creator of yours, she wants me for what exactly?”

“She is meant to rule over all creation. You are meant to serve her. You are honored above all of your companions for the opportunity she has offered you to be first among her servants!”

“And if I refuse?” Damien chose his words carefully. A plan was forming.

The Metalloid chuckled again. “Can you refuse to let the sun rise or set? She is a force of nature now. There is no refusing, only service.”

“Very well,” Damien said happily. “I will serve your queen as soon as I know that my people are safe. Particularly Phoenix.”

The Metalloid drew itself up menacingly. “You demand payment?”

“No, no, nothing like that!” Damien told it soothingly. “What I meant is that I will be a poor servant if I am distracted by the worry that my companions are missing.”

Damien did not have time to duck as the Metalloid swung its gargantuan fist at his face. He was lifted off the ground and sent flying end over end to crash into the cavern wall.

“You deceiver! You scum! You are not worthy of the honor she has heaped upon your worthless head!”

Damien leapt to his feet to defend himself. He threw a punch at the Metalloid, but the thing was so huge that it didn’t slow down at all. It grabbed Damien’s shoulder and tossed him across the cavern as though he were a doll.

Damien hit the cavern wall hard and slumped to the floor. For as strong as Damien had become since the iron fused to him, this Metalloid was ten times stronger than he was. Fighting Matilda had been so effortless, but now Damien was certain he was going to die.

Still, he struggled to his feet to face this nine foot Metalloid.

“Good, very good,” the Metalloid said gloatingly. “Face your death with some dignity. Perhaps that will in some small way redeem you for tossing aside the greatest honor imaginable.”

“I’ve seen thousands die. Maybe tens of thousands. And do you want to know the one thing I’ve learned about death?”

“Enlighten me,” its booming voice dripping with condescension.

While the Metalloid had its guard down to better insult him, Damien threw himself forward, puncturing its chest with his iron fists, and tearing outward.

The Metalloid screamed and thrashed as the top half of its torso toppled backwards to the cavern floor.

“The one thing,” Damien said in between deep gasps for breath, “that I’ve learned about death,” he tried to stand, but fell right back down, “is that you should never give it the opportunity to take you by surprise!”

His back felt like one giant bruise from where he had hit the wall and his face was throbbing from the beating he had taken. Damien had no doubt that the Metalloid would have killed him. Then Damien saw something that made him wish he had let the Metalloid kill him quickly.

The Metalloid was reforming. It had been just lying there as though dead, but now it had started to pull itself back together.

Every muscle screamed at him as Damien stood once more to fight an enemy he had no hope of defeating.

“You give good advice,” the Metalloid said calmly. Then it backhanded Damien viciously across the face.

Damien hit the wall and landed hard. He tried to rise, but his body failed him.

Purple spots still sprinkling his vision from the last blow, Damien watched as the Metalloid picked him up and flung him at the ceiling. What hurt worse, hitting the ceiling or falling with a crash back to floor, Damien wasn’t quite sure.

It picked him up by the foot and began to spin. Around and around and around it went. Then it let go and Damien careened into the cavern wall head first.

Blood pouring from his mouth and nose, Damien’s head swam. He had no idea whether or not he was still conscious, or even if he was still alive. The pain had stopped. Everything seemed to have stopped. The whole world was fading to black.

Then Kendra stepped into his vision and smiled at him.