My eyeballs still had a layer of ice on them when my lids snapped open to shrill, beating light.
My body was hit with wake-up juice and jabs of electricity from the bed. I couldn’t scream because my throat wouldn’t work. My body was a bruise–being beaten.
Emergency revival.
Across from me, in a frosty tube like mine, Jad’s terror-torn eyes were blazing wide. His blood was being quick-heated, too.
My voice came back in mid-scream, jagged against the dimpled diamond and titanium glass of the crystallic cryo-bed.
I gained control as our tubes slid open.
Jad gasped. He’d never awakened from deadsleep. And this was no routine awakening.
I coughed. “Severance. Status.”
My ship answered in her lilting, Andrusian-inspired purr, “Boarders, Rye. Eleven unknown life-forms. They’re in aft cargo–hold four.”
The gut-flame and dizzying cramping of my brain began to subside. I tested my limbs. “Show me.”
The screen above Jad flickered on. Eleven, purple, wormlike things with long, filament-limbs–lots of them–slithered around in one of my cargo holds. Nothing important in there–a few thousand plants from various systems, farming equipment, and eight million square tons of Earth Nineteen topsoil.
Just crap for those idiots who decide that living on a planet called Eden Flame, in the Inferno-Six System, is a good idea. Damned sun burns every natural thing off the surface every seven turns, sterilizing what soil doesn’t fuse into stone. They just import dirt and start over. Whatever that white sunlight does to their crops to make it super-food, is apparently worth the occasional mega-solar flare.
I watched the invaders. They didn’t seem to be doing much. I turned my attention to my new shipmate as my muscles stopped twitching.
“Jad, how ya doin’?” He looked a little wild.
“I’m good, Rye. Gettin’ there.” His eyes focused on mine.
“See those things in hold four?” I pointed with my eyes to the screen over my head.
I didn’t see any breaches in the cargo bay. “Severance, how did they get in?”
“Unknown.”
We watched the wormy things flop around in a cluster, butted up against the containment field for the dirt.
Severance announced, “You’re within healthy parameters.”
“Thank you, Severance. Where are we?”
“Midway.”
Midway is a huge system, seventy-eight planets and all their moons, three suns dancing in the most intricate display of solar physics known in the galaxy.
One of those planets is my home. I grew up just outside the biggest spaceport there has ever been. I studied at The University, with two hundred and sixty-seven different races. I’d never even seen an image of the things invading my ship.
“Severance, how big are those things?”
“One point four meters tall. Average weight is twenty-one kilograms. Rudimentary internal systems.”
“Big worms with lots of legs.”
“Yuck,” said Jad, stretching.
I walked to the control panel and did some stretching and bending. “Well, let’s go see.”
We snapped on some electromag cuffs. I didn’t want to stroll in there naked and discover that the worms could shoot lasers from their mouth-parts or something. I like being under the protective blanket of my own personal shield, anyway. I wear the cuffs most days in space–just in case. We took some guns, too.
We got there quick enough.
The worms all stopped wriggling around the bay when we came through the hatch. They gathered up in a knot. I noticed a hole in the dirt’s containment field behind them.
One of the critters slither-skipped toward us. We raised our guns.
It stopped a respectable distance away and reared its worm head. It had a big mouth for a top, with one tooth-looking lip hanging over another. Black hair waggled in and out of its mouth as it blathered something at us.
“Severance, can you translate that?”
One whole minute passed. “I can’t, Rye. I’m sorry.”
Another worm broke from the group to join us. It carried a small metal box. Our guns remained trained.
It put the box on the ground and went to work on it with sixty or so legs in a whispery blur. When it was done, the worm slithered upright and made some nasty sounds.
The box spoke. “We are Ferl. Free us from this enclosure and you will not be harmed.”
“What?”
The box translated sloppy worm sounds, “You may mistakenly believe you have a claim to this world. You’re wrong. The Ferl have resided within this earth since our sun was new. We have been in cryo-suspension for seven million orbits.”
Jad and I exchanged a glance.
The box said, “We will allow your people to live. By obeying our rule.”
“Oh, really?” I asked the worm.
Another glance was exchanged between my newest partner and I. This time I blinked code. I heard his gravity boots snick to the deck in synch with mine.
“Correct. Our colony is a small one, but only one of countless nests. Apparently you are unaware of the trillions of Ferl in the soil beneath your surface-trodding feet. Solar radiation has dropped to acceptable levels and we are awakening. Though you’ve temporarily cut us off from communications, we have no doubt our people are amassing at this moment to overthrow whatever puny civilization you’ve managed to–”
The box chittered away in its tinny whine.
“Severance, open the bay door. Keep it open.”
The rush of the vacuum emptying the cargo bay boomed outside the electromagnetic shield surrounding my body. The bay depressurized, ejecting its atmosphere and anything not locked down, straight into space. In the wave of emptiness, the worms imploded. Their flattened guts trailed them out the bay door.
Jad and I went back to sleep after sending a message to Earth Nineteen and throwing the dirt to the open expanse. We jettisoned the plants, too. I didn’t want our remaining eleven years of deadsleep interrupted by an invasion of aggressive aphids, bullying butterflies, or some other hibernating horror.
Worth the loss to keep sleeping.
Cryogenic suspension is something Kevin Shamel likes to explore. Written with EDF in mind, this story is one of many written, or milling about in his head, about freezing people and what that might do.
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19 Responses to “EMERGENCY REVIVAL • by Kevin Shamel”
Comments
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March 7th, 2008 at 5:50 am
Yeah, let’s hear it for pulp sci-fi. Way to go, Kevin. Could you have tweaked it just a bit to answer the question of whether the future still doesn’t care about ibndigenous creatures? I was rooting for the worms to get a fair hearing.
March 7th, 2008 at 6:29 am
The heck with the worm creature and a fair hearing. The thing plainly needed to die! And die it did in a cool way. TFTS!
March 7th, 2008 at 7:08 am
Wonderful stuff - I was riveted. Reminded me of my youth - misspsent reading lots of sci-fi. Really liked the premise, and it was well delieverd.
March 7th, 2008 at 7:24 am
I enjoyed this — the description of waking from cryogenic suspension was particularly excellent. I was expecting it to conclude with an ominous suggestion that it may have been a mistake to ignore the worms’ threats; that might have added a pleasing level of complexity to the story (and set up the sequel!).
One minor quibble/question: When the chamber is depressurized, wouldn’t the worms EXplode, not implode?
March 7th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Wake up juice–that’s what I call coffee and Mountain Dew.
Very entertaining, Kevin. Thanks.
March 7th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Let’s hear it for cryogenic suspension. I could use one good nights sleep, but eleven years is not within my realm of thinking!
Seriously, I loved the story.
March 7th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I’m glad you’re enjoying the story.
About implosion– An obvious stupid assumption on my part. I’ve been reading this morning, and from what I can tell the worms would EXplode, and not immediately implode.
Implosion can occur, but first all the gasses in the body have to get out, since the inside pressure is greater than the outside.
Apparently, it’s all those SF writers out there, screwing up our sensibilities with false information…
So thank you. From now on it will be only realistic damage due to vacuum exposure. The reality is more colorful anyway.
March 7th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Loved this one, lots of fun!
March 7th, 2008 at 10:24 am
I guess another title could have been Catcher in the Rye
March 7th, 2008 at 10:40 am
You ROCKED it Kevin!
March 7th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Great story. The worms deserved no less.
March 7th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Actually, I think a vacuum causes your juices to figuratively boil up before exploding. But that’s okay. I got the picture.
March 7th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Thank you, everyone, for all the great comments. You all helped contribute to a fabulous day.
Thanks to EDF for their editing wisdom. And for this whole comment thing–it’s just so cool to get instant feedback.
March 7th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Yeah, I found out some crazy stuff about exposure to a vacuum today.
This site has an interesting article: http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=741
March 10th, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Highly enjoyable! I laughed reading the penultimate line. Good, simple sci-fi with a strong character. Can’t believe the stupid worms fell for the old vacuum trick.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Kevin,
Great job! DUNE!
And have you heard James Taylor’s Frozen Man?
mike
March 11th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Thanks, GMoney and Mike.
“The old vacuum trick” cracks me up. Someone should use that line in a story.
It is a little Dune-like. I’ve had a bit of that on my mind lately, come to think of it. I’ve not heard Frozen Man, but I’ll seek it out now.
Thanks again!
March 18th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Kevin, Kevin, Kevin!
Loved it! Gravity boots and cargo doors are always a kick in the ass! Keep up the good work. Looking forward to your next piece.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
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