Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [64]
Beyond the final frontier, as well as a nonfiction book (Dark Eye: The Films of David Fincher), James also wrote the Sundowners series of original steampunk westerns (Ghost Town, Underworld, Iron Dragon, and Showdown), the Blood Angels duology (Deus Encarmine and Deus Sanguinius), The Butterfly Effect, and novels based on characters from 2000 AD, Britain’s longest-running SF comic book (Judge Dredd: Eclipse, Rogue Trooper: Blood Relative, and Judge Dredd: Whiteout). His short fiction appears in the anthologies What Price Victory, Something Changed, and Silent Night, and his other credits include scripts for video games and audio dramas.
James Swallow lives in London, and is currently at work on his next book.
Neelix tried to take a breath and almost choked. Instead of air, his lungs filled with stone dust and powdered earth, snatching away his gasps into strangled wheezes. The shock of it made him drop to his knees. He coughed and spat, one hand pressed to his chest where the cavern’s atmosphere cut him inside like razors. The Talaxian blinked dust motes from his eyes, and presently the pain beneath his ribs ebbed. He got up and took some careful steps, puffing like an old man. The rumble was dying away, an echo of the sound fading into silence down the tunnels. The ground beneath his feet seemed solid again; seconds earlier it had shaken like the deck of a boat on high seas.
“Oh,” he managed. The lining of his throat felt like it had been run through a cheese grater and stuffed back inside him. Gritting his teeth, Neelix forced himself to stave off the daze that threatened to overcome him and move forward. His boots made broad prints in the layer of pumice-like sand the tremor had deposited on the ground. Patting his pockets brought a sour grimace to his usually pleasant and open face. His tricorder was gone, probably having fallen out of his coat when the rockslide had begun. There was a pile of glittering fragments near his feet, all that remained of the device shattered beneath a flat boulder. He sighed; the mix of peculiar ores in the cavern walls played havoc with the delicate sensors, anyway. Beyond anything but point-blank range, the portable computers had proven useless down here in the deeps.
Best to search the old-fashioned way. “Seven!” Almost instantly Neelix was coughing again, the shout irritating his lungs. “Gah,” he snarled, and then called her name once more. He was rewarded by the sound of something shifting on the rocks, and then a groggy, weak noise-less a voice, more a feeble mew.
Not far. The Talaxian’s hearing was perfect for this sort of thing, the minute perturbations in the air tickling the lobes of his ears and the whiskers of his beard. “Seven?” he repeated, and this time she spoke.
“Here,” There was a faint glow coming from the palm beacon she had dropped, and Neelix took it up, turning the beam on the Borg drone. He was briefly glad that she couldn’t see his expression behind the bright light. The grotesque gash across the woman’s pale face was wet with blood, her skin ripped around the silver comma of her optical implant. The wound was messy and it turned his stomach.
“Are you all right?” he asked, and instantly regretted the obviousness of his question. Neelix quickly set to work moving a pile of small stones from where they had buried Seven’s right leg.
The woman ran a hand over her face and torso, a very human gesture for someone who had so long been inhuman. “My…” She seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “My function is impaired….”
Neelix’s hand closed around something square among the rubble and he seized it eagerly. The casing on Seven’s tricorder was broken but the device was still operating. He waved the sensor head over her body, watching the march of data as the unit scanned her.