“Five months,” he said aloud as he worked with the stubborn screw.
The extended stay on Beta Earth had been enough time for Karr to discover just how much he’d been missing by spending a lifetime in the skies.
It wasn’t entirely his fault. Earth was dying, and had been since 2052. The atmosphere had been torn to shreds, wild seas raged and continents drowned. Food sources had depleted, and people lived on bioengineered crops and pills meant to supplement their systems into survival. Something had gone wrong in the development of the crops along the way.
It had resulted in a disease called RP-53, more commonly dubbed the Reaper’s Disease, for once it came calling, none survived.
Karr’s parents had fled Earth, years ago, to escape the Reaper. Like countless other travelers, they spent their lives working for the ITC, searching other planets in hope of finding some sort of substance that would turn into the miracle cure. Karr was born in the skies, in the Starfall, during that endless search. He’d never had a chance to get to know a home planet.
But Beta Earth had given him that chance. It was new. Alive.
A terraformed wonder that was fresh on the market, only a few years open to residents, and the place where Karr wanted to spend the rest of his days.
The streets of the docking sector on the northern continent were packed with hundreds of thousands, both native and alien, every race and religion and language in the galaxy mixing together like a glorious nebula. The buildings towered on all sides of him as he walked, or took a taxi ship, soaring through rows of blinking traffic lights looming over the city like dying stars, the smoke-filled, drink-laden clubs…
Beta Earth was a place made of adventure.
A destination planet where people came and saw and lived. Where those who hailed from old Earth had a chance to start anew.
It was on Beta that Karr had also discovered freedom.
For once, he could get away from the Captain of the Starfall and decide for his own damned self what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it.
The Captain ran his crew like a pocketful of straight-backed soldiers, and Karr was always first to feel the burn.
Stand taller, Karr.
Polish your boots, Karr.
Go back and do it right, before you spend the rest of your time in the brig.
His personal favorite?
Shut your rutting mouth, before I eject you out the crapper tube, Karr.
Perhaps it was his age. Perhaps it was his attitude.
But when the sudden announcement was made that the Starfall was miraculously cleared, not a single bit of the drugs that lined the interior walls of the ship discovered, their pilot’s license renewed to head back out into the depths of outer space… Karr did what every crew member wished they could do when they were sick of the rules and the grueling schedule.
He’d thrown a complete and total fit.
He might have burst into Jeb’s holo bar, a recent purchase in the shadiest borough of the north continent, where black-market smugglers, pirates and privateers drank until the day’s end. Karr had stumbled inside with whiskey on his breath and a hell of a hangover already on its way.
He’d gone right up to Jeb before anyone could stop him, shoved the drinks on the table aside, and planned to give him a piece of his mind.
I’m not going back on that damned ship, he’d started, though the words came out slurred and uneven.
The last thing he saw was Jeb’s wicked half-smile, before someone cracked him over the head with the butt of his own Hammer rifle.
He’d awoken in his own cabin on the Starfall, the doors jammed from the outside. A trick he’d learned how to bypass, though it had taken quite some time with the hangover muddling his thoughts. He’d snuck his way through the ship, down to the storage bay, where he now sat.
And the damned lump on his head wouldn’t stop throbbing.
All his life, Karr had done things without thinking of the consequences. It was what made good explorers, but even better thieves. Only this time, he wished he’d stopped for one second.
He wished he’d actually presented the Captain with something concrete before trying to make a stand against Jeb. Like, for instance, a completed application for the art school that he’d discovered during his stay, mere blocks away from the very bar where everything had gone to hell in a puke puddle.
Karr slammed his fist on the outer door of the escape pod. His father’s old ring, hammered gold with a small ruby, clanged against the metal with a sound like a tolling bell.
“Come off, you Son-of-a-Saturn’s…” And just like that, the screw finally popped loose. He yanked it from its hole and frowned at its condition. “Stripped.”
Karr tossed it aside.
There was a single porthole next to the pod, just large enough to shed streaks of starlight on him as he worked. He leaned his head against the door, relishing the feel of something solid and cool on his skin.
And here he sat, staring out at the planet that was next on their manifest.
Dohrsar.
A glowing orb in the sky, surrounded by five colorful rings that reminded him of a curved rainbow. There was a single main continent on the dwarf planet, split into three distinct shades that set each place apart: the north, a frozen milky and mountainous white, tinged with bits of blue. The middle, the largest portion of the continent, was pale brown and red, a massive expanse of desert lined with a jagged range of purple and red mountainous land down its center. Beneath it, the only strip of green, leading into what could only be a tropical climate that spilled into the sea.
Pretty, from the outside. Beautiful, even.
But it was no surprise to Karr that the planet had yet to be colonized by outsiders.
It would require an armored S2—a spacesuit capable of blocking out Dohrsar’s poisonous atmosphere. Many planets they’d visited required the S2s, but the Atmos ratings on Dohrsar were off the charts.
No suit, no survival.
Karr didn’t plan on donning an S2. Not again.
While the crew was busy going over the manifest, he’d take this pod and soar away. If he programmed it right, it would get him back to a habitable planet in the next system. From there, he’d smuggle himself onto a transport freighter and head to Beta Earth.
Karr set back to work, looking for any weak points in the pressure seal, when a bang sounded from the doorway.
“KARR!” Another bang. “OPEN THIS DOOR, YOU LITTLE—”
Karr hissed and dropped his screwdriver. Greasy strands of hair fell into his eyes as he heard the telltale screech of metal, then another bang.
Karr had just enough time to squeeze himself in the shadowed space between the pod and the ship’s curved metal wall before the door screeched open. A grunt sounded out, followed by footsteps.
Shock swept over him. How in the hell had they gotten through the bypass?
“You’re smart, Karr,” a voice said. A pair of boots glided into the storage bay. Polished to perfection, the laces tied evenly.
The Captain.
Karr sank deeper into the shadows.
“Smart.” The Captain took a few lazy steps forward, past storage crates and massive Rover vehicles and rows of blood-red S2s. “But not smart enough. I’m the one who taught you that little trick with the airlocks.”
It didn’t matter how many turns he took, how many side trails he left for the Captain to find. The man was like a bloodhound, and Karr was always captured prey.