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Kan’n grabbed a handful of soft leather cloths, the Xarc’n equivalent of chamois. “Will this work?”
“Good enough for now. Thank you.” It was great padding, but it still wouldn’t protect Pip from being crushed.
I grabbed the metal container Jask’l had been using to hold odds and ends in his cart and dumped everything out while Kan’n held me up. I lined the bottom with the soft leather, placed Pip inside, and then packed the space around, folding the final piece on top before closing the lid. It was the best I could do.
I started toward the door but only managed a single wobbly step, cursing at the pain that shot through my left ankle as I rolled it, before Kan’n swept me up into his arms.
“You are slow, human, and your body needs more oxygen than mine to function. I will carry you.” His large steps took us quickly down the corridor toward the escape pods.
The stench as we approached a joining hallway was atrocious. The scourge’s fungus! I would recognize that even in my sleep.
“Take my mask,” Kan’n ordered. He adjusted his hold on me just long enough to remove the mask that he had pushed up onto his forehead right under the base of his horns.
I undid the clasp, grabbed it and put it over my face. It didn’t fit well, but hopefully it was enough. Xarc’n warriors had a natural resistance to the fungal spores, but humans were particularly susceptible since it wasn’t something we’d ever had to protect ourselves against.
I peeked down the corridor through a clear portion of the mask. My god. It no longer looked like the corridors of a ship but rather like the inside of a nest. I’d controlled one of the drones that scouted and mapped the inside of the Franklin nest when they’d gone in to destroy it. How had the fungus grown so much in such a short time?
It must have been the energy from the blast. Somehow, the fungus had learned to harness it to accelerate its growth. I’d always believed that the fungus was our true enemy rather than the scourge, and this only confirmed my beliefs. We couldn’t let this mutated fungus anywhere near Earth.
I thought of the mining detachment. Ror’k had managed several good hits on it, as had the other mothership. The last I’d seen, a blast had knocked it off course, and it didn’t look able to aim itself back toward Earth, probably because Ror’k had damaged its thrusters. Was it enough to stop it from reaching our planet?
When Kan’n finally set me down, it was in front of what looked like a small one-man pod. Well, more like one-hunter pod. I was sure two humans could fit in comfortably.
“Can you stand?”
I was about to give him a witty reply, but a wave of light-headedness stopped me. Lack of oxygen was no joke. I pulled the mask up off my nose and mouth. “Yes. But I’m dizzy.”
The ship chose that moment to cut the gravity, leaving us floating. Having not expected the sudden change to zero-G, I clutched at Kan’n’s arm. The mask which had been sitting atop my head floated away.
Kan’n climbed into the pod with me in tow and had me sit in his lap. “We should both fit under the harness.”
I caught just a glimpse of the fungus crawling into view as the door to the pod closed. Had it managed to follow us in?
I shuddered at the thought of intelligent fungus. Mind you, we’d known of fungal intelligence before all this. We had it naturally on Earth, in the shape of the networks connecting the roots of trees underground so they could communicate. The scourge’s fungus displayed it often, finding ingenious ways to get back into their hosts and providing them with a meal in the form of infested animals at the same time.
I silently prayed for the pod to launch before the fungus reached us. There must be a God out there, because it did. Then, the harness snapped down over me, and I was no longer floating up high enough to see out the only window.
We were soon hurtling through space toward the blue-green planet below.
Back on the mothership, I’d had missions to keep my brain occupied: first disconnecting the ship’s weapons, then rescuing Pip. Now that I had nothing to do but sit and stare at the extremely simple console in front of me, the fear and doubt started to creep in.
Needing something to do, I tapped on the screen. It was the only thing in the pod except for the plain curved walls and single tiny window that showed the vast expanse of space and beyond. We weren’t even facing Earth, so I couldn’t look at the planet and calm myself. The screen reacted to me and lit up; there were several alien glyphs on it, but I could only read one of them:On.
“Well yeah, the pod better beOn,” I murmured, as I tried to navigate to another screen.
“The pod is automated,” Kan’n said from behind me. “You can’t control it. That says that the signal for rescue is on.” He pointed to a section of the screen that appeared to be counting down. “This shows the distance to the destination. The other countdown is the number of hours of life support left if used at the current rate.”
“I see. So we are literally just in a tin can, hurling through space. Brilliant.”
“It is more than a tin can. It has…” Kan’n gestured to the screen.
“Right. It also counts down our demise. Perfect.”
My ankle, which had only hurt a little when I twisted it trying to escape the ship, was throbbing now. I was useless. I couldn’t even run for my life when it counted.
A feeling of helplessness consumed me. I was a do-er, not a sit-around-and-wait-er. It was the way I coped with difficultsituations. Forced to sit and do nothing, I felt the threads of hysteria take hold. The smallest of sobs escaped my lips.
Kan’n’s arms tightened around me. “Do not be frightened. I will protect you.” He started purring, the soft rumbling filling the tiny space. “Also, this is not a tin can. We are not sardines.” He bent his head to sniff at the side of my head. “But you do smell good like them.”
