The Calibray Job, Episode Ten [Novella]

The crew of the Sol find themselves in deep trouble after the Calibray job goes up in flames

The Calibray Job is a sci-fi/horror serial. This is the tenth episode: ‘Stranded’.

Previously: The crew of The Sol have arrived on Calibray to steal something from an abandoned science facility. Now they’ve found themselves without a ship and no way to make contact.

<Previous Episode | Index | Next Episode Coming 16-08-23>

0001.

She opened her eyes onto Beck staring down at her through a thick layer of dust and grime, face streaked with raindrop tears. The ringing in her ears pulsed with her heartbeat like the thrum of the gravity engine on Doraketh. Somewhere behind Beck, in the faded distance just out of focus, a blue fire raged, reaching long ghostly fingers high into the darkness.

“Nera?” Beck said, “Are you with me?”

She started to feel again. First, her hands, stinging from an all-consuming cold. A cold that spread like rumour across her body until she realised she was neck deep in water.

“What…” she said the sting of the water stealing away her words.

Beck, running on adrenaline, hunched over her and pulled her out of the water.

As she clambered to her feet she started to feel the burning again. Like the skin on her leg had been scored by acid and then wrapped in leather. She stumbled as they made their way back onto the dock.

“My leg…” she said.

“You’ve been burned,” Beck replied. “But it looks like you’ve got all your parts.”

Nera leaned all her weight on Beck, surveying the extent of the damage. Harben was nearly entirely erased from the face of Calibray. In its place were charred wooden husks. The bones of a town that had finally and completely died.

“The Sol,” Nera said. “He destroyed it.”

“We’ll worry about that when we’ve dealt with your leg,” Beck said.

“Well fuck,” Jaark shouted, an open wound on his head sending a waterfall of blood down his face. “What the fuck do we do now?”

Stranded

Bits of the Sol were everywhere. Guts splayed out, simmering and hot in the midnight air. The rain had subsided, leaving behind a sticky heat made worse by the still-burning blue fire.

Beck took off her jacket and wrapped it around Nera’s leg, gently patting away what was left of the fire that had torn through the skin on her right shin.

Nera’s leg, although no longer actually on fire, felt worse than it had when she’d woken in the water. Her mind was filled with all the stories she’d heard as a child of those who had been slowly digested by the gravity engine that kept the two disparate pieces of her homeworld together. Stories she’d been told to keep her afraid of the dangers that lurked at the heart of her home.

“Everyone in one piece?” Beck asked.

“Mostly,” Sama said, Lera leaning on her shoulder with a smoke-smeared face and two emerald green eyes peering out from behind a nest of dirty blonde hair.

“Can you walk?” Beck said, resting a hand just above the burn on Nera’s leg.

“Let’s find out together,” she replied before struggling to her feet. Her leg buckled under her weight, skin screaming where the fire had blistered and melted away layers of flesh.

“You good?” Beck said.

“Golden,” she replied.

Nera steadied herself. She tore the sleeve off of Beck’s jacket and tied it just above the burn on her leg, tight enough that it pinched at the unburnt skin on her thigh.

“That’s my favourite jacket, you know?”

“I’ll buy you a new one when we get off this fucking rock.”

Beck turned to survey the scene. The explosion had left behind a crater in the centre of Harben, still smoking where the Sol had once sat.

“Feeling up for a swim?” Beck asked.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Raea said. “After that, you still want to dive down there?”

“How else do you plan on getting out of here?” Beck said.

“Lera, please tell me the long-range comms survived the blast?” Sama asked.

Lera shook her head.

Avar looked at the wreckage, “I thought you’d taken the long-range scanner with you?”

“I did,” Lera said. “And now it’s in there somewhere.” She gestured to the rubble behind her, eyes wide and lips pressed into a thin line on her face.

“So we’re fucked?” Jaark said.

“Not if we try for the facility,” Beck replied.

“We don’t even know if there’s a ship down there,” Raea said.

“The old man said that some of the science types never made it out, so their ships must still be down there,” Beck said.

“The same old man that just blew our ship to oblivion,” Raea said.

“You got a better idea?”

“Lera could try and rebuild the comms?” Sama said, “Nera and I could help.”

Beck turned to look at Lera, “Is that possible?”

Lera felt all eyes turn to her and she didn’t much care for it. “I mean, I’m pretty sure there are pieces of it everywhere but I could try and fix something up.”

“Right,” Beck said, “So we try and repair the comms. If that doesn’t work, we’ll head to the facility.”

Nobody replied. They’d all lost interest in the makeshift democracy that had been blown apart along with the Sol.

“We’re still a crew, even if we don’t have a ship.”

0002.

Lera gathered everything that resembled the long-range comm unit and laid it out on a, remarkably still intact, table they’d pulled from the rubble. Nera, who’d fashioned a bandage around her leg using what was left of Beck’s jacket, limped around the table to survey the parts.

“This is, maybe,” she paused, “half of it?”

“Try a quarter,” Lera said. “We don’t even have the display.”

“Shit,” Sama said.

“Wait, do we need that? We’re not scanning or mapping we just need to get a message out, right?” Nera said.

“We’d likely need the array from the Sol to piggyback a signal off of but I guess we could rig something,” Lera said.

“How long will it take?” Sama said.

“Hours, weeks?” Lera replied, “Who knows.”

Nera looked at the two others and sighed.

“Here’s the deal,” she told Beck, “Lera can fix the comm but she can’t do it quickly.”

Beck ran her hand through her hair and looked out at the lake.

“You’re saying we’ll need to try for the facility?” Beck said.

“I’m saying, that some of us should hold back, help Lera fix up the comms while the rest of us go for the facility.”

“By rest of us, you’re including you?” Beck asked.

“Those ships, if there are ships down there, will be beaten to shit. You’ll need me to fix them.”

“And me to fly them,” Sama said approaching the pair away from the others.

“What about Lera?” Beck said.

“She’s safer here fixing that,” Sama said.

“I’ll stay with her,” Raea said.

Beck nodded, “Okay then.”

0003.

Beck gathered the rest of the crew around the table all looking down at the guts of the comms system.

“Here’s the deal,” Beck began, “as you can see, this ain’t an easy fix. Lera will need time. Time we don’t have given our food was all just blown to shit along with the town. Nera, Sama and I plan on making a break for the facility to try and find a ship. I totally get it if you just want to stay here——”

Jaark let out one long, very exaggerated sigh, “Fine, I’ll go.”

He nudged Oren in the back.

“Same,” Oren said.

“We’ll need someone to use as a human shield for all the monsters anyway,” Jaark said with a snorted laugh.

“Raea and Avar, you stay with…”

“What the fuck?” Lera interrupted. “You’re just going?”

She looked up at Sama, their height difference more noticeable when they were face to face.

“I have to go pilot the ship,” Sama said.

“If you find one,” Lera replied, “and we both know that Cap can fly.”

“Fine, I need to protect you,” Sama said.

“How fucking chivalrous.”

“I can’t let you go down there and I can’t just stand by and wait for us to die up here,” Sama said.

Lera nodded, tears streaking through the dirt and dust caked on her skin.

She wiped away at her nose with the sleeve of her shirt and set about organising the parts on the table.

“You better not fucking die.”

Sama nodded and forced a smile before kissing Lera’s forehead.

“Get some rest,” Beck said, “we leave at first light.”

Nera turned away from the group and saw the child standing in front of her.

“You okay?” Nera asked, wiping away a smear of blood from above her eye.

“Don’t go down there,” the girl said. “You’ll die if you go down there.”

0004.

Their attempts at rest amounted to them all waiting amongst the wreckage, in silence, for the sun to finally breach the horizon. The purple hue radiated out across the lake and, for the first time since they’d arrived here, Calibray looked almost beautiful.

“You can swim, right?” Lera said, holding Sama’s face in her hands.

“Of course I can fucking swim,” Sama said, her mouth rolling into a smile.

“Be careful,” Lera said, “I’m not in the mood to come fish you out of the lake.”

Lera kissed Sama and reluctantly let go. Nera stood, adjusting the makeshift bandage around her leg, at the edge of the water. She glanced back at the child that stood a few feet behind.

“We’re sure that this is a good idea, right?” she said to Beck.

“It’s the only idea,” Beck replied.

Beck turned to look back at the others gathered on the shore and then back at Nera.

“Don’t hate me for this, okay?” Beck said.

“For what?”

Beck stepped out of the water and wrapped both arms around the girl, picking her up and tightening her grip.

“Hold your breath,” Beck said to the girl.

Fear ripped through the crowd as Beck dove into the lake dragging the girl down with her, the beginning of a scream stifled by the water.

“What the fuck did she do,” Sama said. “What the fuck did she just do.”

Nera watched the water ripple outwards where Beck had entered, the shock sapping all feeling from her body.

“We’re all going die here,” Nera said, to no one in particular.

Sama didn’t say anything else, she just tied her hair back and jumped into the water, a near-perfect dive that might have gotten a smile out of Lera under any other circumstances. Nera looked down at her feet and felt that familiar pang of guilt.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”