SUNSCREEN (2025 *)
Dahl pressed her thin body against the nose cone, holding on using nothing but her weeping fingertips. The pressure on her still tender nail beds made them sting in protest. She lost her grip, warbled around and drove her feet into Lockspur's shoulders.
"Watch it," Lockspur grumbled, almost dropping her. He had two blown out discs, no cartilage in his knees and a stubborn nervous system unwilling to transmit anything other than pain. He scowled at Moss and thought, how is it I keep ending up on the bottom of the stack?
Dahl peeked over the bottom edge of the windscreen frame, awestruck by the expansive compartment inside, trying not to give herself away. Light flooded the compartment. She was certain nothing would be on the other side of the polycarbonate. But why take chances? Dahl wiped a thin layer of dust off the surface, cupped her hands against the polycarbonate and pressed her face into her hands as if looking through a pair of binoculars. "Holy shit," she said, looking at Moss. "This bridge is enormous."
"Told you," Lockspur said.
They were both right. Their entire ship could have fit in the cockpit with room to spare. For that reason alone, most of the outer colonies had banned the old galaxy class star freighters from entering their inner systems. At cruising speeds, those juggernauts could blow through most planetary defenses with ease. Their sheer mass, combined with 2 oversized nuclear power plants, turned them into unstoppable nukes. In the early heyday of space travel, several crippled freighters looking for repairs had exploded in high orbit over several populated planets, resulting in trillions of dollars of infrastructure repairs and a loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.
Dahl had never seen a ship this size. It was a vestige of an era of shipbuilding that was no longer needed. Long before faster than light travel, huge freighters roamed the galaxy non-stop; massive starships designed to carry millions and sometimes billions of metric tons of goods from fertile worlds to the less fortunate outer colonies. It was a ghostly reminder of space travel during a time when journeys measured in generations. Some crews lived their entire lives in space, from birth to death, without ever stepping foot on solid ground. Those brave men and women dedicated their lives to the sole purpose of colonizing the galaxy. In the years since their sacrifices, FTL travelers had only opened 3 percent of the galaxy. Space is a big place.
Lockspur grimaced in pain as the hard rubber heels of Dahl's combat boots ground into the soft skin above his collarbones. He cursed Moss for giving them to her. "Come on, dammit," he snapped. "Is it safe or not?" Lockspur shoved Dahl's foot towards the meaty portion of his shoulder. His back was killing him. Sweet relief, he thought as the abrasive stinging subsided.
"Hey," Dahl shrieked, warbling around in a comical belly dance gone wrong. She righted herself with a final arm flapping maneuver that left her pancaked against the poly like a bug splattered on a car's windshield. She peeled herself off the nose cone, rubbing her cheek. "Maybe, but the hatch is open. Anything can come through." The jittery uncertainty in her voice did little to quell her teammates' growing concerns.
"Keep looking." Moss snapped. He gestured for his sneering, red-faced comrade to keep Dahl up there long enough time to investigate. Lockspur's glare turned into an unspoken barrage of squinting expletives and Moss fought back an incoming smirk.
"Probably... ish," she answered, shrugging off the question.
Dahl's unwillingness to answer his question gave birth to a momentary fantasy wherein Lockspur tossed her in the dirt and stood over her, laughing. The childish fantasy drained any attention from his eyes.
"Yo, compadre," Moss said, snapping his fingers in front of Lockspur's vacant eyes. "Are you in there?" He snapped his fingers again. "Hey, ground control to Major Tom. Can you hear me, Major Tom?"
"Funny," Lockspur said, staring at the fingers in front of his face as if wanting to snap them. The last thing they needed was an unfocused team surprised by a pop up raptor. Although Moss thought it would serve his teammates right if something jumped out. At least, it would never happen again.
"You perving on me?" Dahl teased, feigning a scowl of disgust as Lockspur looked up between her legs. She knew he would never. He had been like a dad to her. In fact, she was only as good at hand to hand because he had spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours training her. But she couldn't resist. And it wasn't the region or some residual stasis fog making her say it. It was in her nature to tease. Even if she wanted everyone to think she was a badass. She still wanted to be one of them.
Lockspur jerked Dahl around, almost toppling her for real as his reddening face forbade the impending cloud of dust in her nearing future. But, seeing Moss' warning glare, he froze. "Get off," he demanded in a low growl.
"Not until you do," Dahl countered, having one last laugh at his expense.
Just before Lockspur tossed her on her ass in the dirt, he saw Moss's mouth fall open and eyes bulged in horror. His weapon hit his shoulder and terror seize his face. Lockspur fought off the sudden urge to arm himself. That would leave Dahl defenseless and falling towards the ground. So, he gripped her like a vise as three words escaped his lips, "Get down now."
She looked from Lockspur to Moss, saw the change in her teammate's demeanors and felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck bristle. Dahl reeled towards the poly, came nose to snout with a giant beast staring out at her and screamed like a 9-year-old girl. The raptor's 8 inch, razor-sharp teeth dripped a sticky syrup. A frigid spasm of terror coursed up Dahl's slender frame. The raptor's head was three times wider than the last raptor they encountered. The thick poly fogged between them, masking the creature. It butted the poly and mouthed a silent scream that, if not for the thick poly, would have made her eardrums bleed.
The giant raptor leapt forward, slammed i to poly, and she screamed, "What the..." Her arms flailed as she toppled backwards into the hot, dry air.
Moss had a split second to react. He lunged forward, releasing his weapon, and ran beneath her. She landed in his outstretched arms, wriggling like a fish out of water. If the situation hadn't been as dire, he would have thought the convulsive fall hilarious. As it was, Moss almost pissed his pants.
Dahl rolled out of his arms, landed on her feet, and threw up her weapon. Moss grabbed his rifle and moved to her sides. The frozen duo aimed up at the sightless juggernaut, eight feet above them and two yards to their front. The chance to chance to go u seen had come and gone. It's here, Lockspur thought. The enemy snuck in and the battle had begun before any of us were ready.
"I thought these things couldn't tolerate direct light." Lockspur yelled. He stepped to the right, dragging Dahl off to the side with him as visions of the creature jumping out filled his mind. It was huge, and he believed if it wanted out, it might get out.
Moss and Dahl looked at one another, eyebrows raising in shock. "They can't," Dahl said to herself.
"Are you sure?" Lockspur asked, gesturing at the windscreen with the business end of his rifle. He let out a sarcastic laugh and added, "Because someone forgot to tell this fucker he's not supposed to be in there."
The beast stood behind the window, surveying the arid scenery outside. It seemed to have no sense of unease or urgency. It wasn't behaving as though it saw them. In fact, it didn't seem to notice anything at all. It just stood there, tapping the surface of the poly with its snout. Every so often, it mouthed a muted snarl, silenced by the thick windscreen. It was clear to each of them; the creature had no intention of retreating soon or trying to get out to eat them. It just stood there teetering its head as if looking at something an inch in front of its own snout.
"Oh... for fuck's sake." Moss groaned, letting his weapon fall to his side and stepping closer. Dahl and Lockspur looked at him as if he'd lost his mind. He shook his head and gestured at the creature. "The company coated the windscreen with a UV blocker."
"Duh." Dahl replied, letting the barrel of her weapon drop as the sudden understanding of why the creature could stand unaffected in the daylight. "No eyes." Dahl said to herself. "It doesn't register light the same way we do."
"We assumed it's the visible light spectrum that burns them, but it's UV rays." Moss said, voicing what he and Dahl suspected. None of them considered the higher UV output in the binary system was their saving grace.
"Put your weapons up." Lockspur shouted, taking a step back, still pointing at the creature as if it were going to burst out at any moment. "The goddamn thing's right there." Lockspur wasn't prepared to take the chance the raptor was unaware of their presence.
"It can't see us," Dahl said, swinging her weapon over her shoulder. "It doesn't have eyes, and the UV coating is preventing it from seeing out."
"Its right there," Lockspur warned, gesturing at the unfastened windscreen collar. "The poly could fall and it could get out."
"If it falls, the UV will either put it down, or it will run back into the darkness." Dahl said.
Moss watched the creature as if it were a specimen in a zoo. He marveled at the sheer size and savage construction of the beast. It weighed 2,500 pounds.
"What's it doing?" Lockspur asked, watching the creature stare out.
"Echolocation," Dahl said to herself, waving a hand at the windscreen. After a few swipes of trying to get the creature's attention, she stopped. She jumped up and down and shouted, "Hey!" The creature did nothing. It just stood there peering out.
"What are you doing?" Lockspur yelled, grabbing her shoulder, preventing her from jumping any further. "Did you forget what happened the last time you called out to one of those things?" The sudden recollection gave her pause.
Ut the beast did not respond to Dahl's efforts to provoke a reaction. It just stood there, studying something only it saw in the poly. "Look. The poly's smooth." Dahl said. "The sound-waves are bouncing back like a mirror reflecting light rays."
"It sees itself." Moss said, walking up to the nose cone and waving at it. He turned back to Lockspur and Dahl. "It can't see out."
"Well, shit," Lockspur said, still refusing to lower his rifle.
"Always with the negativity, grandpa." Moss said and chuckled.
"Hey, amigo. Fuck you." Lockspur said, gesturing at the windscreen. "There's a one ton eating machine between us and those data drives, and all it wants to do is stand there admiring its own reflection. Our job just went from impossible to fucked beyond belief."
"It doesn't know what it's looking at," Dahl said. "We can use that against it."
"How so?" Lockspur asked, pressing his mag latch and letting a twenty round clip land in the dirt. He removed a 30 round mag and slid it in place.
"Not sure," Dahl answered. "But I think it's deciding if it should attack. They must feed on smaller creatures."
"What happens when a raptor comes up against an opponent of equal size?" Moss asked.
"Does it matter?" Dahl answered. "We need those back-up drives and it's in the way."
"Well... this is just out-fucking-standing," Lockspur said. "Any ideas how to deal with our little friend?" The creature butted the poly hard enough to make it tip out at the top and then fall back again.
"I have an idea," she said, taking aim at the loose fitting collar. "But no one's gonna like it." She let her rifle swing down at her side.
"Wait." Moss said, cutting in before Dahl could reveal her plan. He gestured for Lockspur to get up on the front of the ship. "Grampa says he knows these ships. He can go in and get the drives. We'll wait out here. That way, there won't be too much noise."
"Wait? What? By myself," Lockspur said, as if he hadn't heard him correctly. "Are you shitting me?"
"Yes," Dahl replied, rolling her eyes at them both as if now wasn't the best time for another juvenile male bonding ritual. Moss shrugged, and to Lockspur's relief, Dahl added, "No one's going in there alone."
"You're damn right no one is going in there," Lockspur agreed, lifting his rifle again. The sounds of reason coming out of someone's mouth brought a smile to his face. Going in there was just a bad idea.
"Because we're going to get it to come out here," she continued, looking at him with an apologetic shrug. She knew Lockspur didn't want to hear that. Hell, she didn't want to hear it. None of them did, but it was the only logical course of action. They couldn't get the windscreen off without alerting every raptor for a kilometer around.
"Are you shitting me?" both Moss and Lockspur blurted in disbelieving unison. Their eyes widened, minds conjuring a horde of blood curdling scenarios splattered with guts and severed limbs.
"What's with all the shitting? You know we need those drives. And to do that, we need it out of there." Dahl explained, gesturing to the cockpit. "It makes sense to let it come to us."
"Not to me, it doesn't," Lockspur replied, gawking up in disbelief.
"He has a point. Luring it out here sounds… risky," Moss replied, no longer thinking about how the beast was an evolutionary marvel. "Of course." He stared up at the creature's dripping fangs and every childhood nightmare he had ever experienced stared back at him. But Dahl was right. They needed it gone. "That's our only option?"
"Bullshit," Lockspur snapped, staring up at the creature butting the windscreen with a maw big enough to swallow its victims whole. He turned to Dahl and Moss and asked, "How do you suggest we lure the fucking thing out here?" He imagined the forearm length teeth lining the raptor's enormous mouth were there to keep its victims from crawling back out.
"With these." Moss answered, holding up his rifle. He gestured up at the slobbering raptor, hissing at its own threatening image. "If we fire at the windscreen, we may provoke a response."
"May?" Lockspur countered, looking at the creature butting the poly in a more aggressive manner.
"You asked for ideas. You never said they had to be good ones."
"There's no good idea here." Moss said. "But we may yet complete our mission."
The raptor's constant butting churned up a fine cloud of dust that wafted out from the loose windscreen's seams.
Moss considered siding with Lockspur and walking away. Screw the money, he thought, there will be more runs. There's an entire galaxy filled with outlaws, escaped cons and easy bounties. Why invite death? But he would never run. And neither would Lockspur; it wasn't in their natures to turn from a fight. And Lilith knew that before she sent them. She could trust they would see it through. All three of them.
Lockspur took aim at the windscreen, fearing the hostile beast might dislodge the heavy windscreen before they prepared to defend themselves. None of them had the slightest inkling of their enemy's strengths. Shit, they hadn't even been right about their weaknesses. "I still say this is a terrible idea."
"Because it won't work?" Dahl asked.
"Because it might." Lockspur replied, sighting in on his target. "And what if the UV doesn't put it down?"
"Empty your mag and then run like hell," Dahl replied, ushering him further off to one side. She smiled weakly and lifted her weapon waist high, pointing it at the raptor's snout.
Moss stared over his sights as large beads of sweat ran down his forehead into his blurry eyes. He looked at his rifle mag accessing the number of rounds inside and did some quick math. "That poly is 6 inches thick. Even our combined efforts may not be enough to transmit the impacts through to the other side."
"Just get ready." Dahl said, signaling Lockspur to get his weapon up. "The windscreen is sitting on the lower lip. The bullet strikes should resonate through the poly."
"And if they don't?" Lockspur thought out loud.
"Then we get something that will."
Lockspur stared at the creature butting into the poly. The monstrous creature had a scorpion-like lower body grafted onto the midsection of an enormous bull with the skull of a hammerhead shark. "And what if it takes every round we have just to provoke a response, and then it gets out and we're dry?" he asked, eyes widening at the horrific thought.
"Like I said," Dahl answered, flipping her selector to fire. "Shoot first; run later."
"It might as well be a mile between us and the ship. And the tailgates closed." Lockspur warned, looking over his shoulder at the ramp in the near distance. "And we don't know how fast these things can run."
"Fast." Dahl said. She envisioned it chasing them like a cheetah using its outstretched tail to balance through the sharp turns. "If we're lucky, the sunlight will slow it down."
"And if it doesn't?"
Dahl took a deep breath, aimed at a point on the windshield in front of the creature's snout, and said, "Then you'd better be able to run faster than me, grandpa."
"Hey, compadre. I've got an idea." Moss grinned at Dahl as the click of his flipping selector filled the eerie silence. "You run now. That way, when our little friend in there comes out to play, he will already have a moving target to go after."
"Dicks," Lockspur said.
"Remember," Dahl cautioned, sighting in on her target. "Aim for center mass and stay away from the front of the ship. If that windscreen hits you, you won't have to worry about the raptor getting you." She looked at them both. "Ready?"
"Do I look ready?"
"Me neither." Dahl admitted, firing a single round into the windscreen. The round bounced off the poly as the creature's head cocked to the side. It heard something. Not quite frightened, it moved in closer, snout sniffing the poly.
Lockspur and Moss joined in at the same time. Their combined efforts sent up a storm of spiky shards exploding out of the mouth of the giant raptor's reflection like an angry challenge to its twin inside. The reverberation struck the unsuspecting beast in the face. Its thick hide registered the assault. It reared up on its massive leathery hind legs, slammed the glass with its bony snout, knocking the top out a foot. The poly teetered for a moment, then fell back into place as the creature ran out of sight. The outer housing collar slid down the front of the poly, hooking the jagged lower edge of the nose cone and flipped in a lazy spiralling arc. It struck the ground, breaking in two. One half slicing a deep cut in Dahl's face and flipping away. The second sank into the parched soil 10 feet behind the trio. They had failed. The beast didn't want to come to play. Dahl grabbed her face as blood poured down her armor.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Lockspur raged, yanking out a clean skull cap and pressing in against Dahl's cheek. When he pulled it away, the blood flow had slowed to a weeping trickle. "We need to get back to the auto doc or this is going to leave a nasty scar."
"We scared it," Moss said, examining her injury. None of them had considered the behemoth might run away. Great, he thought, from bad to worse. He realized every step of their mission ended the same way. In failure.
"Who knew it would go for help?" Dahl asked, holding her face and stifling a nervous laugh. She moved forward, but the closer she moved toward the nose cone, the less she could see inside.
"Can't see shit," Lockspur said, turning back to Dahl and Moss with a grimace.
The trio inched closer, holding their weapons at the ready, trying to get a better view inside. But the bottom of the windshield was 8 feet above the ground and the closer they came, the less they could see. After a few tense moments, the trio stood with their backs against the ship's nose cone. They stared at one another wide-eyed and ashen faced, with no idea of what to do next.
"What now?" Moss asked no one in particular. Nothing had gone to plan, if they had a plan. He thought the recon had turned into a fiasco of epic proportions. Every time they tried to get inside the ship, the beasts were there and ready to stop them. It was as if something was trying to keep them out.
Moss stared at their ship in the distance. If it took 10 minutes to walk there, they should be able to run back in 2 minutes. But if they were being chased by one of those things, 2 minutes might as well have been 2 years. Trying to outrun a raptor out in the open was sheer folly at best. The thought of how much could go wrong in such a short time-span led him to another disturbing thought. How fast are these things? He let his head lay back against the hot nose cone, peering up at the gas giants in the sky. How could a place so beautiful contain so much death?
"What did we get ourselves into this time?" Lockspur asked. He wanted to be anywhere but there. "This shit used to be fun," he said and laughed. He pulled his skull cap off, used it to wipe the caked-on dirt off the back of his neck and stared at Dahl. "Someone's gonna have to look inside," he said with a raised brow.
"Me." she said, holding her face. She couldn't lift anyone in her condition.
"Hey, it's your plan." Moss said, pressing his back into the nose cone to present as small a target as possible. He longed to move away, certain the heavy poly would topple out at any second and crush them into a bloody pulp that drained into the parched landscape. Moss wanted to lob a grenade through the fist-sized hole in the windscreen, but that could destroy the data drives. "You check."
"What about not wanting to tell Johns I'm dead?" Dahl asked, eyes squinting into a beam of laser-like expletives.
Lockspur leaned forward, looking around Dahl at Moss. "At least we'd still be alive."
Dahl's mouth fell open. "You dicks."
Moss laughed, and Lockspur laughed. "Definitely."
Dahl just stared at them.
"Oh... Sweet baby Jesus." Lockspur said, getting up and leaning his rifle against the nose cone. "Young lady, I may love you like a daughter, but you are very high maintenance."
She gasped, and Moss laughed. "Like you didn't know."
"Take a knee." Lockspur said.
"What?" she replied, in a near whisper.
"Get down on one knee. I need a step up," he commanded, jerking her upright and then shoving her to the ground. "Put your right foot forward."
"I'm not a ladder."
"No. You're a pain in the ass," he snapped.
"Hey, that's my line." Moss said.
"You shut up. And you put your damn leg out, unless you'd like to get up there and check?" Dahl did as instructed, and Lockspur stepped on her thigh, using it as a step stool to shimmy up the nose cone. He jammed his fingertips in the thin seam beneath the windscreen, placed his right foot on her shoulder and peered down with a tenuous smile. He crouched low, preparing to peek over the edge.
Moss watched Dahl, trying to avoid the crotch jammed in her face, and Dahl said, "If you tell anyone about this, I'll..."
"Yeah. Yeah." Moss said with a giant grin. "You'll braid my testicles."
"Shut the fuck up," Lockspur interrupted in an exaggerated whisper. He lifted his head, peering over the edge into the murky cockpit inside. "All the sex talk doesn't seem so funny now, does it?" he asked, staring down at Dahl with a how-do-you-like-it sneer that made her wish she hadn't teased him.
The entire ship vibrated as if caught in an earthquake and Lockspur fell backwards, knocking Dahl to the ground with him. An enormous crash filled the deafening silence and the 2-ton windscreen flew outward, landing in the dirt 20 yards away, with the enormous beast sliding on it like a surfer riding a huge dirt wave. The raptor jumped off 50 yards ahead of them, spun around and screamed in agony as the UV rays seared its thick, slimy gray hide. The famished beast roared in excruciating pain, still focusing on its targets. Gone was the mirror image. In its place were three tasty morsels ripe for harvest.
"Shit." Moss bellowed, yanking Dahl to her feet and stuffing her weapon in her hands. "Shoot."
They threw up their rifles, pulling their triggers and click. The sound of metal hammers striking the empty chambers filled the quiet. Their ship was a hundred yards on the other side of the ravenous beast. The 2 to 3 minutes it would take to get there was no longer an issue. They were defenseless. Lockspur pointed his rifle at the bellowing raptor, pulled his trigger, and heard nothing but the sound of empty doom. His worst fear realized. The time it would take them to reload would be all the time the beast needed to be on them.
The beast heard Lockspur's hammer strike nothing, locked in on its closest target and dropped its snarling head low to the ground. It was twice the size of a prize bull and three times as deadly.
"Run." Lockspur blurted.
"Wait!" Dahl screamed, grabbing his arm as the beast scratched at the dirt and snorted. "Stand to the sides," she ordered, gesturing for Lockspur and Moss to go to opposite corners of the nose cone.
"Are you nuts?"
"Go!" she bellowed, shoving him towards the port side nose cone.
As they moved off, the beast watched them, choosing its prey. Dahl screamed, waved her hands and yelled, "Here."
The creature locked in on the waving target, reared up on his hindquarters, kicked at the sky with its front legs, and then slammed back down. It had chosen its target, locked the meal in its sights. Time to feed.
It took off at a full charge, gaining speed faster than any of them would have believed possible. Dahl dropped to one knee, dug at the dirt, and screamed in rage. Her teammates stared at each other, thinking she had lost her mind. The beast's speed increased. Its focus pinpointed its prey. Attack and devour.
"Come get me!" she hollered, waving like a matador in-sighting an angry foe.
Dahl's weapon of choice cast little reflection, its narrow razor-sharp surface casting no discernable shadow. The creature lowered its 8 foot wide head like a plow skimming the soil. The beast screamed out in rage. Its head ramming the jagged metal collar sticking out of the dirt, puncturing its thick skull above its snout. It fell to the ground, skidding to a writhing stop at Lockspur's feet as it ran in a twitching circle with the steel protruding from its tiny brain. The three terrified comrades stared at one another in utter disbelief as blue blood splattered the beige soil. It was dead.
"Please tell me I'm not the only one who just shit his pants." Lockspur said, as his almond skin tone faded to an ashy dismay.
Moss and Dahl stared at Lockspur for a quick moment and then, flooded by adrenaline, laughed. The unbridled relief coursing through their shaking bodies washed away the fears of earlier events. The giant beast lay dead at their feet.
Lockspur didn't say another word. He just snatched up the loose 20 round mag he dropped earlier, reloaded his weapon, and walked back towards the ship in silence. Moss looked from Dahl to his shrinking comrade with a grin and yelled, "Bring back a power supply when you're finished wiping your..." Moss stopped mid-sentence, breaking into uncontrolled laughter again and slid into a seated position against the nose cone wiping tears from his eyes. Dahl stood beside Moss, looking at the steel sticking out of the dead raptor's head and thought, how do you like it? Her face had stopped bleeding, but the pain of the cut remained, and would for quite a while.
Lockspur didn't turn around; he didn't reply; he just threw up his middle finger and kept walking away, adjusting his pants as Dahl struggled not to join in the laughter, filling the dead silence.
Moss looked at her and said," Okay. Now that he's gone. Just to be clear, you pissed your pants, too, right?" A second later they broke into redoubled hysteria that lasted until they were hoarse.