Excerpt

I’ve got this little story I’ve been playing around with that I’ve tentatively named “Rascal Brand” after the titular character. It’s kind of a “space hippie marooned on an alien planet desperate to survive” story.

Blurb: “There’s an intergalactic war happening between the Terran Empire and the Nyxti, but it’s very far away from Cal’s world view. He’s twenty-seven years old and he’s run away from his dead end job to join the Reclamation Squadron (which is basically the Peace Corps of the future). He loves helping people, but he was shipped out with Commander Steve “Ruins Everything” Sarta, the guy that blew up Bermuda Base. Ordered to the fringe worlds, they were assigned a flashy ship that turned out to be a refurbished model built on mostly recalled parts. Piloting a literal death trap, it seemed inevitable that they would crash land on an alien world. A world where peace loving Cal must survive alone.”

He woke to the smell of singed hair and the sense that something was very wrong. The air was stifling hot and the heat level was rising even as he tried to blink his head clear.

There was the blaring of warning alarms and everything was cast in hues of orange, the cockpit looking nightmarish and strange. “Wha…” he coughed, his lungs filling with acrid smoke. It smelled like toxic chemicals, and his confused brain tried to remember if the ship’s interior was made out of anything that was going to kill him as it melted.

Cal felt strange, his hands awkward as he fumbled his crash harness off. He grabbed the handle of the emergency kit and pulled it out from under his seat, slinging the strap over his shoulder crosswise so it wouldn’t get lost. There were other things he felt like he should grab and some part of him didn’t want to leave the “safety” of the ship at all, which was currently a burning deathtrap; he forced himself to move.

He stumbled passed Steve’s already bloating corpse, the slanted angle of the deck nearly sending him tumbling. “Sorry, buddy,” he rasped. The smoke was rising to choking levels and he covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve. The slick material of his shipsuit didn’t breathe very well, and as a result neither did he, but it wasn’t like he had much choice. He had to get out of the ship.

His eyes stung and burned as he left the cockpit and faced a small inferno. For a second he was terrified–the entire aft section was nothing but flames and oily black smoke. The fire systems hadn’t even tried to kick in, the little hatches firmly sealed, and he vowed to track down the guys from Hephaestus Corp and kick their asses. A malfunctioning fire suppression system was a bit more serious than the nonstandard sized cup holders. His anger at the company was tinged with hysteria. There was a good chance he was going to die scrabbling at the door like a rat.

Coughing and fighting the urge to retch, he stumbled to the emergency hatch. The skin on the right side of his body felt like it was trying to curl in on itself away from the heat of the flames. He might have thought the sight beautiful if he wasn’t the one currently facing death by roasting–orange and yellow and purple and green flames writhing and twining amongst the supposedly fire resistant seat cushions.

He reached out to grab the door handle, then cursed and jerked back as he felt his skin sizzle. The handle was burning hot and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed that the plasticene sheath had melted off, leaving just the bare metal.

Tears stung his eyes and the heat and smoke levels were rising. The panicked alarm had risen to a teeth jarring squall and the orange warning light was blink-blink-blinking, urging him to get the hell out before it was too late.

He pulled his sleeve down over his right hand and reached out quickly to grasp the handle and gave it a hard shove down. Tears stung his eyes at the pain in his already burned hand but he was running on survival instinct. He was not letting himself burn to death, not without a hell of a fight.

He jerked on the handle, then hurriedly let go. His sleeve had melted and pulled away with gooey strings fluttering like the tentacles of a clarphod.

With the release of the handle, the door sensors kicked in and he briefly saw a scrolling message pass over the glossy blue material: “Brace yourself for saturation.”

He didn’t have time to puzzle out what that was supposed to mean before the door blew off its seams with a muffled explosion and shot away into the darkness. And about a million gallons of seawater rushed in.

There was no chance to brace himself as the wave hit him and slammed him against the far bulkhead, the back of his head bouncing against the wall painfully. Water choked down his throat before he managed to close his mouth and he coughed and gagged as more flooded in to fill the ship.

First death by burning, now death by drowning. At least the fire’s gotta be out, he thought.

Rushing water was battering against him and it was a battle to keep his feet, but he knew that if he let himself get swept to the far end of the ship he would drown long before he managed to swim his way to freedom. All he could do was reach up with his good hand, grip the railing over the top of his head, and hold on.

Bracing himself in the doorway, water rushing all around him, stinging where it touched his burnt skin, Rascal Brand once again wondered what he’d been thinking when he’d joined the Service.

You thought you were going to help save the universe. You’d travel from planet to planet setting up food processing plants and teaching savages how to read Galactic Standard. He tightened his grip on the railing and closed his eyes. How was I supposed to know it was going to be like this? Partnered up with the biggest loser in the Service and stuck with the worst ship, the jinx; it’s a surprise we lasted as long as we did. And now I’m going to die here.

Cal tightened his lips. No, he refused to die like this, helpless and afraid, doing nothing to save himself.

He waited until the water stopped rushing past him, sucking in a last lungful of air before the water passed over the top of his head and he was fully submerged. Hoping desperately that the ship hadn’t sunk too far down, he released the rail and swam through the airlock toward the mysterious outside, bubbles caressing against his sides as the ridiculously outdated ship continued to pump oxygen.

Cal swam toward the surface as well as he could manage–he’d never been the best of swimmers and the murky water was thick with biologicals. He saw the shadow of creatures swimming around him and was vaguely terrified that he was going to be snatched up and eaten by some kind of aquapod. Mostly, he just wanted to breathe.

He released small bursts of air as he kicked his feet and arrowed his body up and up, or at least in the direction that he hoped was up. Knowing his recent string of luck, he wouldn’t be surprised if he hit bottom rather than reaching the surface. The last bit of irony before he died.

Cal dragged himself through the water, the emergency kit knocking against his hip with every furious kick. The slight amount of pain motivated him to keep moving even as his lungs burned and his head spun with spots and dizziness.

Kick, ow, kick, ow. As long as that pain was there, he knew that he was still moving, still desperately trying to survive. His ears were rushing and he could feel his consciousness beginning to fade. His kicks were losing their power and he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He was going to pass out any second and his body was going to drift down and down, picked apart by scavengers or left to rot away far from home. His mother was never going to know what happened to him. She would just assume that he’d screwed up one last time and gotten himself killed.

Clenching his teeth, he kicked and kicked and kicked until his legs seemed to disconnect from the rest of him. His world was contracting down into a pinprick, a narrow desperation for air. His lungs burned and he wanted more than anything to open his mouth and draw in a breath, but all he would get was a quicker death.

He’d rather go out fighting.

There was a strange, heady moment just before blacking out from oxygen deprivation. It felt as though his arms and legs were getting lighter and there was a sensation of drifting effortlessly through the water. Consciousness was fading, and to his oxygen starved brain it didn’t seem so bad. To stop and rest awhile. To close his eyes and just let go…

He broke the surface and greedily sucked in air. He floated on his back, his exhausted body a weight pulling down at him. He tipped his chin up to keep his mouth and nose out of the water. It was too much for him to swim anymore. He would drift awhile, at least until he got some energy back. Just a little while.

/EXCERPT