Cripple Wolf Read online

  Jasper chuckled as his lungs began to shutdown.

  In the house of dogs, Herbert thrashed around on his bed while white foam poured out of his mouth and blood welled of out his eye-sockets.

  The cats and dogs joined each other in a howl of mourning for their dying masters.

  By the time the sun rose, both men were dead.

  The demolition crew never came that day. They were supposed to but they never showed. Nor did they come the day after that. The houses were left by themselves, with their masters dead inside.

  Soon the mourning turned to hunger. The houses had not been fed in days.

  The house of cats was the first to break. They could smell Jasper’s flesh rotting in the center of them all and their eyes had no choice but to look straight at the meat. The hundreds of starving cats wiggled as one toward the body, their restraints slackening around their malnourished bodies. The house imploded and the cats tumbled toward Jasper.

  The cats had been bound for so long that they had forgotten how to use their legs. Some lucky ones fell onto the corpse and they immediately began to feast. Their tiny mouths tearing into the soft, just beginning to rot, flesh. The other cats wiggled over the ground, and each other, toward the body.

  The ravenous cats quickly consumed the corpse but it didn’t satisfy them. The combination of Jasper’s death and hunger had snapped the felines’ collective mind. They only had one thought. One directive.

  Feed.

  They turned on each other, consuming every speck of flesh, bone, and fur, eating each other while they themselves were being eaten.

  The sounds of the feeding frenzy incensed the dogs. Each dog shook with a collective desire.

  Food.

  The house of dogs collapsed inwards and the dogs made short work of Herbert’s bloated mass. Then, they too, turned on each other. Their vicious jaws tearing skin and muscle easily away from any neighboring dog.

  The two masses of teeth, blood, and hunger tore and feasted at themselves. They thrashed, writhed, and swallowed until there was not one cat or dog left. The clearing, once wild flowers and grass, was just a wet puddle of blood, viscera, and clumps of fur.

  Eventually the ground soaked it up and that too was gone.

  The men, drunk on boredom, blood lust, and bathtub wine, cheered on the two combatants in the center of the ship’s hangar.

  Most planet-dwellers have heard of space badgers, but have never seen one in real life. They’re nasty little buggers. They have claws, sharp teeth and are completely fearless. They look very much like Earth’s honey-badger, but wear tanks of air on their backs. A hose connects each tank to a clear, glass, fish-bowl helmet covering the badger’s head. These pieces look like equipment, but they are actually part of the space badger’s body. The species evolved these appendages to survive in both the vacuum of space and in pressurized environments. Darwin never saw these little bitches coming.

  Whereas sailors have to deal with rats stowing aboard ships—spacemen have to deal with space badgers. The feisty little creatures build nests inside of machinery and fuck up the workings of all sorts of internal systems if they’re not immediately dealt with. Nothing is more annoying than to suddenly lose main power for a day or two and be stuck dead in space just because you’ve got a family of space badgers getting all cozy in the reactors.

  Therefore, most people who work in space have no patience or sympathy for the little fuckers. It’s considered standard practice to kill all space badgers on sight. Or if you don’t kill them right away, you catch them and keep them for space badger fights.

  Like the one the maintenance crew was watching.

  They gathered around a barrel full of water, placing bets on which of the two space badgers trapped inside it would survive.

  While space badgers can survive and navigate fairly well in vacuums, they really hate water. They can barely swim and their air pack only lasts for a short period of time before they need to refill it in an oxygen rich atmosphere.

  There was no way either badger could escape the barrel. A small platform, big enough for just one space badger body, was the only safe haven above waterline. That’s what they were fighting for.

  The two thrashed about in the water; claws slashing and splashing, glass helmets clinking off each other and the platform. As one badger climbed, the other jumped on top of him, pushing him down under the water.

  Each badger had a stripe painted down its back—one was red, the other blue. Red Stripe perched himself firmly atop the platform. Blue Stripe desperately clawed at him from below.

  “Gentlemen, we may have ourselves a winner soon,” yelled Lieutenant Hanson over the cheering men.

  Blue kept trying to climb up to safety but Red swatted him with his strong paws and sent Blue tumbling back into the water. Stunned and tired, he struggled to move. Red’s little chest heaved and sighed as he tried to catch his breath.

  Blue made one final mad dash at Red, but Red easily caught Blue’s helmet between his claws. Blue attempted to thrash free but Red held on tight and smashed Blue’s helmet against the platform.

  Clink, clink, clink, and then—CRACK!

  Shards of glass plopped into the water as Blue’s helmet shattered. The space badger fell limp. His head began to expand like a balloon until it almost completely filled what was left of the helmet.

  POP!

  The space badger’s head exploded, spraying some of the men standing close by with blood, bone, and brains. They roared even louder.

  “Red is the winner, settle up!” yelled Hanson over the cacophony.

  Commander Gaines handed two hundred credits over to Hanson.

  “Not your lucky day, eh, Commander?” Hanson said, grinning while taking the money.

  “I’m lucky when it counts, Lieutenant.”

  Ensign Walker went to the barrel with a hammer in his hand. The winning space badger was soaking wet and shivering. Its eyes darted around at the crew, pleading, searching in vain for some method of escape. It saw Walker looking at it and swiped its claws along the side of the platform while hissing as loud as it could.

  Walker smirked. He raised the hammer above his head and smashed it down on the space badger’s helmet. The glass shattered almost completely away—all that remained was a jagged ring of shards around its neck. Its head expanded, and then—POP—it exploded.

  The normal reward for the winning badger.

  “Alright ladies, play time’s over,” yelled Gaines above the excitement.

  The men quieted down and snapped to attention.

  “Clean this shit up and get back to work,” he continued. “We have a ship to keep working. I’ll be on the bridge if anyone needs me.”

  Gaines grabbed a nearby toolkit and headed to the turbolift. Before reaching the door, he turned back to his men.

  “And someone find out where those fucking space badgers are comin’ from. Find them and burn them alive.”

  The U.S.S. Davis was a Super Freighter, capable of transporting several million tons of cargo across more than twice the distance of a standard freighter ship. Commander Gaines had been the chief engineer of the ship for more than two decades. His job was to oversee the ten person engineering department and keep the ship moving, the air flowing, and the gravity going. On most missions, the worst he had to deal with were a few blown out connectors and some loose wires.

  The doors to the turbolift opened and Gaines stepped onto the bridge. It wasn’t much of a bridge—nothing like the ambassador and war ships had—just a few tech stations that monitored the status of the ship, and a view screen that took up the entire front wall. Right now, it displayed only empty space and pinpoint stars.

  Four officers monitored the display screens and Captain Ingles stared at the view screen. Bored.

  Gaines went over to the navigation station. Lately it had been acting up a bit and was calculating their arrival at Depot Station 23 about two hours later than what other calculations were determining. That’s not off by much, especial
ly not for the three month mission they were on (transporting 350 million barrels of quadrotriticale). But you really don’t want the navigation system acting up at all. The last thing they needed was to get lost, with the nearest starship over fifty systems away.

  Gaines kneeled down and popped off the circuit panel. He looked over the mess of wires and bolts but nothing was obviously damaged. That meant he was going to have to check each circuit manually until he found the problem.

  Shit. This is going to take hours.

  “Captain, a large object has been detected three hundred meters off our starboard bow. About two hundred meters across, four hundred long.”

  “That’s almost as big as us,” said the Captain. “How’d it get that close without our sensors picking it up? View screen, now.”

  A gigantic creature filled the view screen. It looked like a blue whale—the kind of animal one would normally see swimming peacefully on Earth. But this beast had three rows of teeth in its gaping maw. Its body glowed a strange and unnatural neon blue. The monster flapped its four pairs of flippers slowly in space and turned to face the ship.

  Gaines had heard of these creatures but he never thought he’d actually see one—a Behemoth.

  A spaceman’s nightmare, the Behemoth was the most feared creature in space. Nobody really knows how many ships have been lost to Behemoth attacks over the years. The space whales have some way of evading ships’ sensors. Only two ships have been known to escape a direct Behemoth attack.

  The monster darted forward with astonishing speed straight for the freighter ship.

  “Evas—” began the Captain, but was cut off as the ship shook violently. The men on the bridge went tumbling. One of the officers flew head first into the computer screens. His head whipped back and twisted around—snapping his neck. The corpse fell to the floor.

  The main lights went out and the emergency lights turned on, bathing everything in a red glow.

  Then the female robotic voice of the ship’s warning system began. “Warning. Warning. Extreme structural damage sustained. Engine core overload imminent. Crew is advised to evacuate. Crew is advised to evacuate.” The message repeated itself.

  Gaines looked around the bridge and locked eyes with the Captain. There was a large cut across his forehead, spilling blood down his face. The ship shook again as the Behemoth continued its attack.

  “You heard the lady,” said the Captain, smiling. “Time to—”

  His windpipe was crushed before he could finish. The paneling above him gave way and several tons of metal, wire and other duct work fell on top of him, instantly mashing him to a gooey pulp.

  Gaines bent down and picked up his toolbox. He wasn’t sure why—he just operated on autopilot. He hopped into the turbolift and punched the button for the flight deck. Repeating the steps he had memorized in emergency drills.

  When he reached the deck, he had to crawl under metal beams and through loose wires to get into the corridor. He singed his hair on a small fire burning in a fallen air duct. When reached the evacuation area, the escape pod doors all glowed green, indicating that the pods were present and ready to launch. Either Gaines was the first one to get there, or no one else was going to make it off the ship.

  He ran straight for the nearest green oval-shaped door and was ten feet away when his feet caught on something and he fell flat on his face. He looked back and saw Lt. Hanson. The officer was trapped beneath a heavy sheet of metal. It covered most of his body, which was why Gaines hadn’t seen him lying there. Hanson gripped a hold of Gaines’ feet.

  “—Warning. Warning. Extreme structural damage sustained—”

  The computer continued its alert.

  Gaines tried to shake his feet free, but the injured man held tight.

  “Let go,” yelled Gaines as he kicked.

  “Help. . .” Hanson whispered.

  There was no time. Gaines swung the toolkit into Hanson’s head. There was a loud crack and the man moaned. Gaines sat up and brought the metal box down again and again and again. Hanson’s body began to convulse and Gaines hit harder and faster. Each blow emitted a wet slushy plop, but still the grip on his feet did not weaken.

  “—Crew is advised to evacuate. Crew is advised to evacuate—”

  He stopped hitting when there was almost no more head left to smash. Gaines reached down and pried the dead man’s hands from his feet. Finger by finger.

  Gaines stumbled to a standing position, toolkit still in hand, and the ship lurched to one side tossing him into the wall, right next to the pod.

  “Warrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnn ssssssssssd—”

  The warning system shut off and the red emergency lights went out. The only source of illumination was the green glow of the escape pod doors. Gaines hit the button on the door and it rose up smoothly. He threw himself in and the door slid shut.

  The computer system inside the pod whirled to life.

  “Ignition in 3, 2, 1 . . .”

  The pod jerked as it separated from the U.S.S. Davis. Gaines looked out a porthole and saw the Behemoth biting huge chunks out of the freighter. There was almost nothing left of it—nothing worth salvaging anyway.

  A blinding flash of white light exploded from the center of the wreckage. Gaines backed away from the porthole rubbing his eyes. They burned, and all he could see were throbbing white clouds.

  The pod pitched suddenly. First down and then up, hard. Gaines’ feet left the floor and he was hurled through the air. His head hit something and his body crumpled down.

  He tried to stand but he could not get his limbs to work. His vision was obscured by white blurs, then grey, then black.

  Gaines sat up rubbing the back of his head. His hand brushed a hard bump the size of a walnut and sharp pain shot through his head. He winced and brought his hand where he could see it. Blood. Cradling his head in both hands, he inspected the wound with his fingertips. He gently poked. It felt like an ice pick to the brain every time his fingers made contact but he was relieved to find nothing serious.

  He stood up, and while his legs felt wobbly, he didn’t appear to be injured in any other way.

  He went back to the porthole and looked out. The U.S.S. Davis was gone. Millions of tiny hunks of mangled metal floated aimlessly in space. The engine must have gone nuclear.

  There was no sign of the Behemoth.

  The interior of the escape pod was about twelve feet wide by twenty feet long with an eight foot clearance. It was one long room with a cockpit with a hyper-strong glass shield surrounding it. The walls were storage cabinets and computer banks; all colored the same shade of metallic gold as the floor and ceiling. The porthole in the docking door was the only other view outside.

  Gaines went to the cockpit and sat down. A quick glance at the control panel showed all the pod’s systems at normal operational levels. The blast from the ship didn’t seem to have damaged the escape pod. Thank God.

  He did a scan of the surrounding space for life signs or emergency signals from other escape pods. It took the computer under a minute to complete its operation. Nothing. It appeared that Gaines was the only one who made it off the ship.

  He plotted a course for the nearest starbase. It would be a long trip—about two weeks stuck in that tin can. But the pod was stocked with food and water. He would be fine. He finished entering the coordinates and hit ENGAGE.

  Nothing happened. ENGINE FAILURE flashed in bright red letters across the screen.

  “Shit,” he muttered. Maybe the blast did damage his pod.

  According to protocol, his next course of action was to send out a distress call. He recorded a brief message giving his name, title, ship of service, location and request for immediate assistance. When he finished he pushed SEND.

  MESSAGE FAILURE.

  “Shit!”

  He sat back from the panel. He couldn’t move the ship and he couldn’t call for help. He spun around in the chair to look over the escape pod and see if he could think of anything else to do.


  His eyes immediately latched onto the toolkit that was lying on its side in the far corner. He could fix the pod. It might take a while but he knew he could do it.

  If he worked quickly, he figured he might still have enough supplies to get him to the starbase, even with the extra time spent fixing the ship. The standard escape pod was stocked with thirty days worth of food and water along with a variety of medical supplies.

  Medical supplies . . .

  Gaines remembered the lump on the back of his head. He touched it. It still hurt just as bad but the bleeding stopped and the swelling was going down. He should wash it off.

  He opened the first cabinet. It was empty. There were a few brown crumbs and an empty energy bar wrapper but nothing else. He went to the next cabinet and opened it—it too was empty. And so were the next two cabinets.

  “What the fuck . . .” said Gaines, as he looked from empty cabinet to empty cabinet. Every escape pod was inspected before leaving dock to make sure they were properly outfitted. There’s no way this should be possible. Yet here he was.

  He had no choice but to get to work on fixing the pod.

  He grabbed the toolkit and took out his screwdriver. The access panel to the main circuitry was located in the center of the floor. It was purposefully easy to access just for situations like this. Gaines unscrewed the four bolts that held it in place and hoisted up the heavy metal panel.

  At first, he couldn’t make sense of what he saw. Where there should have been a mess of wire and motherboards, there was a solid, heaving mass of brown fur. Suddenly a dozen little heads in glass helmets popped up.

  Space badgers.

  They hissed at Gaines.

  He calmly placed the metal panel back in place and screwed the four bolts back in place. He could hear the space badgers on the other side, scratching with their heavy, sharp claws.