Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63580 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 318(@200wpm)___ 254(@250wpm)___ 212(@300wpm)
The water is now up around my waist. I am doing my very best not to freak out. You have to stay calm in situations like these. Maybe I can patch the leak with chewing gum or something. I think the gum is submerged too.
“Activate SOS, Clive! Call for help!”
“I’m wet,” he says. “Water detected in sixty percent of cells and electrics. Please initiate drying protocol.”
“Activate SOS!”
“I would, but my SOS parts are damp,” Clive says. “Wait thirty minutes for them to dry out.”
“In thirty minutes, they will still be wet, and I will have been dead for at least twenty minutes,” I tell him. “You’re supposed to facilitate my survival at all costs.”
I hear a loud thud as something hits the side of my ship.
“What’s that?” I ask Clive the question. I don’t know why. He hasn’t been useful since water started pouring into the ship’s electronics. Arguably, he wasn’t useful before that either. I was the one who input the coordinates and flew the ship. I was even the one who docked, which might have been a mistake. I am guessing that I must have knocked something wrong, pierced a tank, initiated unmitigated water production. Could be the dihydrogen unit over-functioning due to a short somewhere…
“And the name of the ship was a Billy of Tea…” Clive hums.
There is a sound of rending, twisting, shearing metal. I close my eyes for a moment, thinking my world is about to implode because surely nothing good comes from a sound like that.
I open them again to see a large set of claws coming through the wall of the ship. They are long and translucent, with a blue hue to them. They move around, gripping bits of the ship and yanking them out into a world I thought I’d never get to see. Whatever beast is outside is tearing into my spaceship as if the whole thing is made of cardboard.
Underneath their vicious ministrations, the ship’s front is falling off, and that is deeply unusual. I watch, stunned and amazed by this turn of events, not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Am I being saved, or am I being peeled out of my flooding vessel like a sardine soaked in brine?
“Stay back! I’m coming in!”
Someone says those words in perfect, unaccented human galactic, which is strange as hell because this is clearly not a human. But it is something that can speak human.
Clive has started to scream, throwing error codes I don’t think anybody has heard in millennia. “Are you writing a letter? I can help with that! Unapproved item in the bagging area!”
It’s a relief when the claws slash through the wiring to his mic.
A hole big enough for the water to drain through is made, and through that hole steps a big, blue male alien. He is absolutely covered in scales, spikes, and scars, and he is only wearing a very tight pair of black shiny alien underwear.
He looks at me with golden eyes, glances at the state of my flooded ship, then one of his massive hands shoots out and grabs me.
“Come on,” he says. “We gotta go.”
I do not object. And as it happens, it wouldn’t matter if I had.
He slings me upon his shoulder, hauls us both out of the hole he made, and keeps running. I have to cling onto him not to fall hundreds of yards to what would most likely be my death.
The shipyards flash by in a matter of minutes. He is running and throwing himself around like a primate. His big, clawed hands grip metal bars and scaffolding set up to facilitate the handling of large cargo and other such structures.
The station is the size of a very large city, or a very small island. The population is around three million, so we are flecks against a cosmic skyline.
When he finally reaches the ground, we are in what the station would call civilization. There are bars, food places, stores, mechanics. There’s a big round bar that is selling noodles with fried meats and bits of vegetables. It smells so good.
I really never thought I would live to smell food this good again. I feel absolutely elated, like I just won every prize in every competition that ever existed.
“Thank you!” I say as he sets me down. “Thank you so much, I swear to god I was about to die. That ship was…”
“I heard you screaming on the way past,” he says.
“I was screaming? I don’t remember screaming,” I say. “I thought I was staying very calm.”
“You were calm enough,” he says. I know he’s indulging me, but I let him.
“You were amazing. Let me buy you lunch,” I say.
Thank god all my banking information is engraved on my retina caps. It would be the worst if I relied on anything that had to be physically stored.