deface | ch2

Like anyone new to space travel, Vanadi had some initial misgivings about the idea of it. He had quickly learned just how vast, empty, and thoroughly inhospitable space was, outside the atmosphere of planets. And it turned out that planets were very few and far between. That meant there were unimaginable stretches of lightless nothing between them where just one breached hull could spell death for everyone aboard the vessel. All told, space travel wasn’t an inherently comfortable idea to Vanadi.

He had been reassured again and again that his worries were laughable naive. There were countless safeguards in place, and in the event that one of them failed, the other dozen would step up to ensure the safety of the crew and passengers of an intergalactic ship. In the very rare instances that something did fail, he was told, rarely was anyone even aware of it outside of the maintenance crew. He had nothing at all to worry about.

He supposed there was some dark humor in all this, then. Like a comedy of errors, he had been reassured time and time again his fears were unfounded and frankly endearingly archaic, only to finally find himself face to face with the worst of them. Of course, he didn’t feel much like laughing at the moment.

The ship was under attack and being boarded; the report ran like unchecked and hungry flames through the entire population aboard. Pirates, some said, or mercenaries, or the militia of some territory they’d unknowingly entered — no one had the details, but as far as Vanadi was concerned he didn’t need them. The gist of it all was more than enough. Without so much as a backward glance at the bag dropped in his room when he’d dashed out of it after those initial rumblings, he’d rushed for escape pods.

He knew escape pods, of course. The concept was familiar, every ship of any size worth mentioning on his planet had something similar, it was a universal concept. And with his healthy dose of wariness regarding space travel, Vanadi made it a point to familiarize himself with the whereabouts of every ship’s pods.

He’d pushed through the panicked halls that surged in every direction and made it just in time. Vanadi slipped aboard one of the last pods, claiming the very last spot available in this particular life saver of a little space vessel. The other seven passengers had already locked themselves down into the tall and narrow tanks that lined the singular circular room. Vanadi thought their alien faces looked very peaceful through the slitted windows, already fogging over with the gasses to bring them down into sleep. Peaceful, for a group who had narrowly escaped an attack in deep and empty space.

The pod rumbled as its neighbor jettisoned. Each had exactly one window, an octagonal panel fitted into the ceiling above its eight cryochambers, and through it Vanadi watched what looked to him like an enormous egg float serenely by. The escaping neighbor in question, of course. It may not be a very dignified mode of travel, but these eggs were programmed to take their peacefully frozen riders to the nearest licensed civilization, be it planet, port, or another ship, and that was good enough for him.

He tugged open the door of his tank, slipped in, and leaned against the padded back wall behind him. It was a tight fit, but again thanks to that large universal standard, not as tight as it could be. The door clicked shut and a hiss told him the required gas was beginning to fill the pod, his lullaby into a peaceful sleep and a potentially long, long travel to this little group's next stop.

It seemed no one had told his heart that this was all meant to be serene and pacifying. It beat against his ribs like a drum frantic to escape the melody, and his breathing caught wind of its panic and joined in with a ragged, uneven tempo. Vanadi pressed his head back against the padding that cushioned his back and shoulders, willing these two rebels to quiet, willing his tightly clutched hands to lay placidly at his sides. None of them obliged him.

Although his eyes were closed, Vanadi watched the white-clad figure of a human woman pass in front of him. They were so similar, the kitrites of Vanadi’s race and humans. Humans came in larger sizes, and they had broader faces, larger hands, eyes that missed a dozen things a kitrite would see but seemed to pick up on another dozen that Vanadi would never notice. This one had blond hair, a color rarely seen among kitrites, and the most strikingly vivid blue eyes. Those strikingly blue eyes had an unnerving ability to skewer him through, though, and Vanadi had never found any ounce of warmth within them. He would have found her very attractive if he’d met her anywhere else.

Unfortunately, the first time he’d seen her he’d been immobilized and missing both of his legs. Medically restrained for your safety, she had told him, and, You may find this process jarring.

She wasn’t here of course. Vanadi knew that. And while he was at knowing that, he kicked out with his right leg, just to reassure himself that he could. That it was there. The toe of his boot thudded dully against the bottom of his tank, and Vanadi clung to the sound as a comfort. It sounded again, louder, but this time Vanadi hadn’t caused it. His eyes flew open, his brain fighting off the effects of the fog that was beginning to fill his tank. The pod around him and the seven other sleeping passengers was shuddering. The thud sounded again, more like a clank, and when he craned his neck forward to bring the overhead window into sight, he spotted another egg-ship taking off from its host. It came from the opposite side that the first had; the pods to either side of them had released. Shouldn’t they have released, then?

That clank came again, and Vanadi’s mind was full of what he imagined the release mechanisms must look like: smooth metal that he would never quite understand, fitting and folding together, releasing. Except it wasn’t. It was catching, shuddering, and clanking. It, and they, were stuck.

He could feel the gas tugging at his consciousness, but Vanadi fought it. He wondered if the pod being stuck may have lessened the flow — surely he wasn’t simply immune to whatever mixtures the sensors had told the system would work best on him, from his understanding these things weren’t built to underestimate. He lifted his left hand, the heavy one, balled a fist, and thudding it against his slitted window.

“Hello?” he called, and his own voice was deafening in the little space. He pounded on the window again, calling louder, loudly enough to make himself wince. There was no answer. Of course there was no answer, he was shut into a pod with seven sleeping strangers, cut off from anyone in the ship. And he doubted they would be particularly concerned by this malfunction, even if he was heard. It didn’t stop him from trying a third time, because his clouding mind was struggling to offer up any other suggestions.

He was missing something.

That clank-shudder came again, and his gaze shot to the window overhead. The sliver he could see of the flank of the ship they were still attached to was unmoving. His view of silent stars didn’t change in the slightest. He wondered what the worst that could happen could be as his fuzzy, blurring attention wandered. Would they be taken prisoner? That would be nothing new, would it?

A new sound: a screech. It was metal on metal, Vanadi would know it anywhere, and as he watched, a flurry of sparks blossomed from the little hatch he’d dropped in through. He blinked, not sure what to make of it when the sparks cut a doorway of the locked hatch, or when that doorway dropped in to bounce off of the floor and a little machine entered through the hole it had created. It consisted mainly of a little round body, and its six legs functioned as cutting tools and claspers when needed. Vanadi could tell that by the way it put away its sawing blades and hoisted its way into the pod.

Had he seen that before? He didn’t think so, but seeing as his eyes were drooping shut under the weight of the gas, he wasn’t certain he could trust his judgment. He shook himself fully awake and pounded again with his fist on the window.

“Hello! If this is a rescue it’s impressively well-timed — ” He cut himself off mid sentence as his mind caught up with him — of course this wasn’t a rescue; the ship was being attacked, not rescued. If this robot was meant to do any good, it would have sliced them off of the ship and sent them on their way, not cut in through the door. Vanadi bit his lip, but was glad to see the robot didn’t respond to his voice in the slightest. Its attention was taken by the first tank of the little pod.

It had scuttled straight up the front of the tank, and while four of its legs secured its position, one of them widened into some kind of scanning device. It pressed that to the screen of the window and went still for several seconds. Vanadi couldn’t imagine what it was waiting for, but had to keep reminding himself to keep his eyes on it when all they wanted to do was shut. He had just told himself that shutting his eyes for just a few seconds was fine, he would listen to the metal creature outside, when another metallic screech jolted them open.

It was the robot. Its sixth limb, not in use in holding it there nor in scanning whoever was sleeping inside that tank, had shifted itself into a cutting implement. It was sawing into the pod.
It cut itself a little doorway as it had into the ship, and for a wavering, uncertain moment Vanadi wondered if it really was going to rescue whoever was inside that pod. But the cutting didn't stop once it had achieved its entry portal. From the sparks at the pod's casing came a new color: a fountain of dark, almost inky blue. It was blood, Vanadi knew it immediately. His own came in red, but he recognized the cold chill of certainty that told him he was definitely watching a sleeping pod passenger be hacked into. The gas still fought to tug his mind down into it, but quite suddenly Vanadi didn't feel the slightest bit sleepy.

ch2

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