Coyote's Luck

The Coyote awoke.

He reached up, tapped the light-switch above his bunk, and swung his feet to the floor. Something was wrong; he should not have awakened for an hour yet. Closing his eyes and cocking his head, he listened; the sounds of the ship filtered through his open doorway. The ventilators, sending breezes skittering across his skin; the transformers, humming away in the maintenance corridor just outside his quarters; the Drive unit, far aft, humming deep subsonics as it sailed the currents of space.

Something was wrong, he could hear it--

The explosion shook the ship, sending the eerie rumble of the Drive an octave up, two, before it cut out and the ship jerked. Klaxons began their keening wail.

Coyote raised an eyebrow and and entered the maintenance corridor. The door to Engine Containment was closed; heat radiated from it. Raising the other eyebrow, he headed for the Bridge.

His ship was small; the route to the Bridge lay less than two dozen feet in length, and he crossed the distance with practiced ease. He was alarmed by the wailing klaxons and the explosion, yet he was not rushed; the event would be dealt with when he arrived, and no sooner.

Alarms were louder here, where the hemispherical glass enclosure offered a one-hundred and eighty degree view of space, where every control surface, every thruster, every computer bank, every weapon was watched by the master AI. Red lights flashed, turning silvery-black consoles into blood-red boards. He killed the alarms and the lights.

The stars beyond the hemisphere streamed and rotated--Coyote's ship was spinning.

The AI board lit up, a Christmas tree of red and yellow indicators. In its cool, contrabass voice, it spoke; calm, unhurried, but with an underlying layer of urgency.

"The main drive has developed a fault in the turbines. We are powerless but for maneuvering thrusters."

Coyote waited. He did not grace the AI with a response. He knew it would respond in ten-point-five seconds, as its programming dictated.

It waited. He waited. Ten-point-five seconds later, it went on:

"We are also locked in the gravity well of a large moon." True to its word, the ship's spin had brought the mottled rock-bound sphere into view. It grew larger at a perceptible rate. "There is insufficient power left in the drive flywheels to escape. There is a colony on the moon that may be able to provide aid. Do you wish me to attempt a landing?"

Coyote grinned. If the AI had been human, it would have been faintly alarmed.

"No. Give me manual controls."

He settled into the chair and expected the AI to disgorge the guidance joystick into his hands. He waited.

"There is an eighty-five percent chance that an AI unit would be able to land with more precision than a human being--"

"Override. Give me manual controls."

The controls slid from their housing with a sigh, moving at a pace that seemed reluctant, doubting. Coyote grabbed them and smiled.

"Sorry," he said towards the AI's microphone. "Your calculations are incorrect.

"You didn't factor in Coyote's Luck."

***

It couldn't quite be described as a landing. A more accurate description would've been 'semi-controlled crash'. But it was dead on target, either from Coyote's skill or his luck.

The ship was whole; the hemisphere was intact, the hull held no breaches. The landing skids had sheared off sometime in those last critical seconds, leaving stumps of metal, but they were hardly necessary to the ship's operation. Mere aesthetic damage.

Coyote had brought the ship down on the rocky plain to the south of the colony's cargo-airlock complex. The ship had touched down and slid on its belly, to come to a stop fifteen meters from the outer wall. Another few meters-per-second of velocity, and his ship would have breached the colony wall with the cruel efficiency of an oversized bullet.

Coyote left the Bridge to survey the damage to the Drive.

Every surface within Engine Containment radiated intense heat; Coyote was forced to assess the damage from the doorway. The squat Drive unit, sitting on its pedestal, appeared to be intact. If the shielding had been breached, he would not be here to regard its fate; the gram of antimatter contained within the Drive held enough potency to blow a sizable new crater in the moon. At the far rear of the room lay the turbines; their housing was ripped, the metal curling away from blackened internal components. They would have to be replaced before his ship flew again.

The colony would have the parts he needed. He would simply apologize for tearing up their moonscape (The ship had carved a shallow but nonetheless noticeable divot through the eons of moon-dust, creating a mar that would last quite awhile) and purchase new turbines. He had the funds available. He would be in space again within a week.

Coyote lived for space. There had been a time, years past, when he had craved the land and the sea and the trees. There had been a time when he had left the surface of the worlds he so desired, headed out into deep space on a USC cruiser, protecting Earth from the vagrants of outer space. And each passing day he had grown to love the stars over his beloved Earth.

Once he had lived under a different name, back when he was still green from the Academy and his stripes not yet earned. The Tarot Rebellion of 4022, the Siege of Asienfield V--he had seen them, lived them, fought them. And he had walked away with nary a scratch. His friends began to call him the Coyote--"He's got that uncanny luck!" they'd laughed. And Coyote had built up his life and reputation around that luck, that strange way that events and reality managed to twist about and come out favoring him. Luck or skill--there was no difference for Coyote. His luck was his skill, and his skill was his luck.

Coyote returned to the bridge and began hailing the colony on the short-range radio. No sense in wasting effort on a spacewalk if they could get a rover out to his ship.

***

His hails went unanswered. Fifteen minutes later, he had the AI take over and began slipping into his aging environmental suit, fastening in the right places, hefting the bulky air-module and connecting it with care.

Coyote cycled the airlock and climbed out into the harsh glare of the lunar landscape, taking the transition from ship-gravity to lunar gravity as a person might step from one room to another. The filters on his visor reflected the beautiful, eye-searing glare of the sun away from its occupant's eyes, and the microfilters in his chestplate hummed with a sedate buzz. He checked the gauges on his wrist; the air-modules read full. He had a day's worth of air in the air-modules, plus a half-hour reserve in the suit. More than sufficient.

The colony airlock complex lay sprawling to the north; three tubular causeways extended from a central dome, each ending at an airlock tower and landing tarmac. As he approached, he noted the age of the facility--the tarmac was burned and scorched from years of hot-reactor takeoffs; the causeways gleamed, but were adorned by many dents and ill-matched repair patches. The airlock towers stood tall and proud as he approached the base of the nearest and studied the airlock mechanism. Standard USC; it would respond to overrides. Coyote tapped a command into the keypad. The light flashed green; a moment later the airlock opened, granting him access. He began cycling the lock.

With a groan, the inner door retracted into the wall. Coyote took the aging, shuddering elevator up to the causeway level and crossed to the dome.

The airlock hub-dome was empty. A cargo elevator shaft yawned wide in the center of the room; the elevator platform was docked far below. Any sounds within the dome were masked and muffled by his helmet. No person lay in view to greet him.

He found that mildly annoying.

Coyote checked the gauge on his suit again, for old habits died hard. Still right at the full mark. Taking a calculated risk, Coyote popped the seal around his neck.

He had no instruments to verify the atmosphere, and likely would have not used them if he had possessed them. Instruments had a tendency to break. He took a cautious sniff, shrugged, and removed his helmet. No use wasting canned air if a decent atmosphere lay all around him. If it contained toxins, he was a walking dead man; he could stay in his suit and return to the ship, but then what? Without the Drive operating, the oxygen aboard the ship would run low, and he would die a death by hypoxia. Better to die fast than slow.

The air smelled musty, of mold and cold metal, but it seemed fresh. Cold air drafted upwards from the elevator shaft. Coyote set his helmet down and pressed an ear to the cold steel decking. He wanted to hear the colony.

Sounds began to emerge. The hum and whir of fans (An octave or so deeper than on his ship; larger, more powerful); the rumble of fluids and steam through conduits (Probably for the colony's reactor, deep underground); the buzz and whine of superconductors, the clicks and clacks of relays and switches.

There was no sound that indicated human activity. No footsteps, no muffled voices, no laughter, no shouts. Curious.

Coyote picked himself off the ground and headed towards the main causeway. Beyond lay the colony proper.

***

The room was covered in blood.

The ceiling, the floor, the walls; all of it soaked red. Blood trickled from the shelves and dripped from the desks.

Coyote froze, hand dropping to grasp a sidearm that wasn't there, hadn't been there for years. He moved into the room, senses on maximum alert, ears straining, eyes probing the corners, under the desks, anywhere an enemy could lurk.

There were none.

He looked around. The colony's administration center was in utter disarray; desks were scattered, papers littered the floor, and much of the furniture lay under a coat of vermilion. Chairs lay in splinters. A light panel flickered.

Coyote smelled gore.

He stepped over and around the blood as best he could, but nonetheless his boots were coated in blood by the time he reached the stairwell and began to climb, one cautious step at a time. He overrode the door control on the second floor and eased the panel open, peering out and preparing to duck into the stairwell and slap the Emergency Close button.

The hallway lay silent, empty. He left the stairwell door open behind him as a precaution.

As Coyote moved, he strained to hear beyond his own breath, the sounds of his own clothes, his movements. Though the fans hummed, and the light panels buzzed, and the computers clicked, the entire building felt empty, inhumanly empty. Like a crypt.

The thought occurred to him then: a crypt has bodies. So where did this blood come from? Coyote had not seen a single body in the entire colony.

The lack of a weapon bothered him. He had not needed to wield a weapon in years, yet now he felt exposed without one, a bug with a magnifying glass above his head.

He spied a maintenance closet. On a hunch, Coyote opened it, rummaged inside, and emerged, victorious, with a wooden mop in hand. Aiming with care, he snapped off the head, leaving a sharp point on the pole. A pointed stick. It'd do.

He'd made do with less in the past.

Somewhat reassured, Coyote resumed his exploration. All of the rooms he came across lay in a similar state: disarrayed, painted in liquid ruby He was about to give up his exploration of the administration center when he spied a yellow-rimmed door marked "Security". He approached it--

Crack!

He spun about, brandishing his stick at--

--nothing. The corridor was devoid of life. Further down, a flickering light panel tried to activate a second time and was rewarded with another sharp crack and a puff of smoke.

Heart pounding, he activated the security door. The cramped Security room lay in a state that bordered on absolute destruction. Screens were cracked and destroyed; consoles lay in shambles. Chairs were unidentifiable. A wall-mounted overview of the colony was splattered with blood. The floor-to-ceiling airduct over in the corner had been split down the middle, and a moist, charred odor rode on the air that wafted from the opening.

Coyote held his nose and peered into the opening. Blood dripped down from the darkness of the duct above into the shaft below.

He spent a half-hour trying to coax a usable picture out of one of the screens. The resulting video was crackled, fuzzy, distorted, but it had both audio and visual. His hands worked at the half-destroyed keyboard, resetting the playback date to a week past.

People walked the corridors of the administration center. There was insufficient resolution to make out any sort of detail, however, Coyote did not need detail to see the colony had been very much alive and active a week ago.

He scrolled forward two days.

Nothing unusual. He scrolled forward two more days--and froze.

Bodies lay in the corridor, sprawled in death. Coyote leaned forward, his face mere inches from the screen, scanning for any sort of clue--

A human ran towards the camera, legs and arms pumping, gasping for breath. He tripped--

A dark, liquid shape, a thing with too many legs, turned the corridor, saw the human, and pounced. Blood splattered the camera. The thing drew the body off-screen.

Coyote heard screams. He flicked the playback off.

His hand gripped the mop-handle tighter, and the feeling of vulnerability returned in spades. He needed a real weapon, a handgun, a rifle.

For the first time in years, he felt very much alone.

Kicking debris out of the way, he peered at the colony overview on the wall, scraping dried blood off the plastic and glass. The sheet displayed a top-down schematic of the colony; a facility would surely have an armory or weapons cache, and it would be marked.

And it was. In parentheses below the notation for the colony's reactor facility lay the words "Emergency Weapons Cache".

***

Coyote wasn't quite sure why the armory had been placed in the underground warren of tunnels surrounding the colony's aging reactors. He spent little time wondering; his senses were stretched to the max as he approached the blast-doors that sealed the squat, angular entrance to the reactor complex. His breath sounded unnatural and rasping to his ears, his steps echoing and gargantuan.

He could feel eyes on his back.

Coyote sidled up to the control panel mounted in the bulkhead, scanning every tunnel entrance, each building, the trees, the framework lining each panel of the isometric dome that protected the colony's main town from hard vacuum. His eyes probed the shadowy recesses, searching for the slightest anomaly, any sign that might indicate the many-legged thing was near.

Nothing moved.

He turned to the door panel, tapped the activator. A clanging, clattering shriek cut through the air as the dilapidated doors furled themselves up and to the sides. Coyote winced as the sound reverberated off the far side of the dome, echoing down the long corridor that curved down into the reactor complex. Clutching his mop-handle, he crossed the threshold of the door and began his descent down the ramp.

He managed not to wince when the blast door slammed itself shut a minute later.

Coyote found the armory with ease. Navigation within the complex was aided by colored strips running along the floor; he simply followed the red line to the security door and overrode the lock.

Light bars illuminated the tiny armory with the harsh blue glare of arc lamps, gleaming from the metal surfaces, glinting off the barrels of rifles, the bodies of blasters. The room was cold, and drafts whipped the legs of his pants about as he strode across the grilled flooring. He stopped before the main rack of weapons.

"Hello, darling," he whispered, as his hands stroked the stocky body of a rifle with reverence. Coyote had held similar rifles, years ago; he had trusted them, fired them, cleaned them. He no longer felt alone. The sensation of vulnerability vanished like smoke as he grabbed a clip and shoved it into the rifle.

In addition to the rifle and several clips of ammunition, Coyote grabbed a blaster sidearm, a high-explosive grenade, and a light armor chest-plate. All of the equipment was familiar, it all felt familiar. His hands gripped the rifle and sought out the perfect balance points with unconscious precision.

He was about to disengage the lock and exit the armory when he stopped. Perhaps it was the near-imperceptible difference between the color of the package and the equipment surrounding it. Maybe it gleamed with a subtle glare that set it apart from its companions. Curious, Coyote crossed the room and examined the shoebox-sized package. It lay heavy in his hands as he hefted it, flipped it over in search of markings.

He raised an eyebrow.

On the bottom of the package was the inscription: "Tactical mininuke warhead. Radioactive. Do not drop." A small control panel with a timer was set in the corner. The bomb was plastered with radiation warnings.

Coyote set it down with care. That was a little more firepower than he needed; he wanted protection, not utter annihilation. It would be a waste of effort to haul the bomb along with him.

He moved into the corridor with care, rifle at ready, long-dormant habits directing his motions without thought. He started to move back towards the surface--

Crack!

He spun again, pulse pounding, just in time to see a flowing black shape disappear around the corner at end of the corridor. Brandishing his rifle, he followed, rounded the corner--

The blast door came quite close to slicing him in half as it closed. Swearing, he activated the toggle again, but by now the monster would have a head start--

Coyote peered over the stairway balcony with caution, staring into the depths of the facility. The rectangular staircase descended straight through five levels. A warm, putrid breeze wafted towards him.

Something fluid and black moved out of sight at the bottom.

He covered all five levels in a little less than a minute, reaching the bottom landing and scanning the area for danger. Coyote moved cautiously off the landing, rifle held ready.

The staircase descended into the center of a vast machine room. Pipes crisscrossed the ceiling, the floor, the walls; cables adorned boxy pieces of equipment. Enormous fans spun lazily behind their grills. His ears were assaulted by a rumbling, growling hum that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

The odor was worse here.

He spent a good half-hour searching for the shape, heart pounding, finger held ready above the trigger. Sweat trickled down his face, beading on his neck. The stench crawled up his nose and stuck there. He crawled between pipes, under platforms, between buzzing transformers and rushing pumps, up ladders and across catwalks.

Splash.

Coyote looked down.

He'd stepped into the crawlspace between two raised platforms, and a thin trail of slime trailed away out of sight. He touched it.

The trail was still warm.

He followed the trail, ducking beneath pipes, pushing bundles of wires aside. The slime ended at a door hidden between two enormous cooling tanks; it was not visible from the stairwell.

Coyote tightened his grip on the rifle, taking comfort in the contoured metal of the handle. Taking a deep, calming breath, he tapped the door activator.

The shape launched itself towards his face. Eyebrows raised, Coyote squeezed the trigger, but not fast enough--

***

The bullets impacted in the monster with a series of sickly thumps. It howled, the scream echoing through the chamber, right before it hit Coyote and they both went down in a heap.

Coyote caught fleeting glimpses, impressions of razor-sharp claws oozing slime, fangs glistening with drool, ferocious eyes glinting with malevolence. The monster moved fast; inhumanly fast, impossibly fast, and Coyote fought to get clear long enough for a clean shot.

He managed to roll to his feet and aim. But before he could fire, the creature screeched, jumped again. Coyote dove to the ground, and the creature overshot its target and ducked behind a cluster of pipes.

He followed it.

The equipment chamber formed a maze of pipes and cables, spaces that the monster could reach where Coyote couldn't. It slipped beneath pipes, dodging his shots; it leaped over tanks, out of his line of sight; it used every bit of cover to its advantage.

It was obviously intelligent.

They played a deadly game of hide-and seek, darting between pipes and tanks, leaping to catwalks and ledges. The creature was capable of traveling in great bounds and leaps. Coyote's figher-mind calmly realized that he would be at a disadvantage in open spaces.

The creature leaped over a great, boxy transform unit. Coyote followed, skirting the rumbling, buzzing machinery, and stopped.

The fluid shape was gone.

Coyote looked carefully around. The area beyond the transformer was dominated by a deep, rectangular pit, ringed by low railings (The sign mounted in the pit wall said 'coolant pond' and was flanked by radiation symbols). Large pumps surrounded the pit. He looked down. 'Pond' was quite an appropriate word, for the fetid, still water at the bottom was covered in part by algae and fungus. Two great pipes descended from an opening high up in the wall, their open ends surrounded by a catwalk hanging a foot or so above the surface of the liquid. Great sheets of plant life had covered the gaping maws of the suction pipes beneath the surface of the water; the pumps surrounding Coyote were inert. A panel marked "Pump control" was mounted at the edge of the pit. The pool was obviously the source of the noxious odor.

Coyote listened. The giant transformer blocked much of the sound from the machinery; he could only hear the rasp of his breath, the rumble of the transformer, and an eerie, gentle bubbling from the coolant pond. There was no sign of the creature.

He swung the rifle in a full circle, searching for any clue of its whereabouts.

Coyote had underestimated its intelligence. The creature waited until his back was turned before it chose to leap from its well-hidden niche in the maze of pipes. His only warning was a not-quite whisper of air, a ghost of a murmur as its jaws spread wide--

--he ducked!--

--and the creature overshot Coyote. Its momentum carried the creature in a graceful arc that terminated at the surface of the coolant pond.

It screamed. Coyote watched as the creature thrashed about, disturbing thick, viscous layers of muck and algae as it tried in vain to escape. Had it managed to float to the catwalk surrounding the two pipes, it might have lived. As it was, its claws dug into the surface of the scum blocking the suction pipes, seeking purchase.

The surface of the scum broke.

Coyote, in a flash of inspiration, dashed to the control panel and punched the start button.

All at once, Coyote was surrounded by the clicking of relays; the sudden clack-whiiiiir as the pump motors started, the rush of water through the pipes. Clear coolant began to dump from the two pipes descending from the walls, filling the pool.

The monster barely had time to scream before the suction drew it under the surface of the pond with a viscous sucking noise. It vanished into the maw of the drain, faster than the eye could blink.

Coyote heard a WHAM from one of the boxy pumps, followed by an angry buzz from the motor unit. It struggled, turned over once, twice, and started climbing back to full speed.

The coolant that flowed from the pipes turned green. Little chunks of flesh bounced into the water. Coyote shut the pumps off.

He retraced his steps with care, returning to the door between the coolant tanks. Coyote wondered if the creature had been guarding something; he hoped that it was the only creature. Rifle held ready, he tapped the activator again.

He raised an eyebrow. The room beyond was a small equipment bay, but he paid little care to the machinery inside. His attention was focused on the inhabitants: the chamber was swarming with small, fat creatures with too damn many legs and a mottled, green-brown hide. They collected around an odd blue...thing...that stood taller than a man.

It looked uncomfortably anthropomorphic, if not capable of movement.

Coyote's hand reached for the grenade, primed it, and tossed it towards the congregation in one smooth, precise motion. His other hand slapped the door activator again, and his legs carried back to the staircase even as the grenade detonated with a muffled thump.

He almost missed the little brown creature as it charged him at the base of the stairs--

***

The creatures were extraterrestrial, they had to be; no creature of Terran origin could have so many legs, or such a xenophobic construction. They must have adapted to a higher level of gravity, allowing them to move about with such speed, to leap with such height. Not from Earth. Aliens. Hostile aliens. Coyote would not allow them to spread, for he knew the Human race would be doomed if they were to reach the colonies...or Earth.

He planned his actions with care. He fought his way to the armory and fetched the mininuke he had left behind, strapping it to his back. He replenished his ammo and headed for the surface blast door.

It refused to open.

Shit, he thought, and he turned, and the aliens that had been stalking him attacked. He fought his way back down the tunnel, guns blazing, backing his way into the first doorway he could find. He shot one of the brown creatures dead, encouraged a larger alien to flee with a burst of bullets, and activated the door. Coyote wound his way through corridor after corridor, rooms filled with equipment and rooms filled with nothing at all; he conserved his ammunition and focused on fleeing the complex.

He found another armory near the cargo airlock, and inside lay salvation: A portable superluminal radio transmitter. "Portable" was, of course, a relative term; the radio weighed on the order of fifty pounds. It was festooned with giant heat sinks and control panels and even a large warning that said "Danger! Do not open! Unstable power core!". A folding antenna was attached to one end (Complete with its own warning--"Do not touch when in operation!") and the entire device had built-in handles.

A powered cargo platform was just outside the armory. He fetched it, set the transmitter on the cart, and drove towards the airlock. He suited up and cycled through the airlock, and soon he was again out on the harsh landscape of the planetoid.

The system's primary star beat down upon the landscape; Coyote had to increase his suit's fans to wick away the sweat on his face. His face was slick with sweat; he knew that his actions would soon be irrevocable.

He followed the divot in the landscape, and he brought the bomb inside his ship. Wrestling it through the airlock and to the engine room, he set the nuke atop the Drive housing, with its dangerous contents of antimatter, and began to set the timer. Coyote took one last look around his ship before he armed the bomb and locked the controls. He pressed the final button, and 2:00:00 appeared on the readout. It began counting down.

He ran like hell--didn't even bother evacuating the airlock, let decompression shave a few moments off his escape time--climbed aboard the cargo platform, and drove hard for the distant craggy hills.

***

The colony blew two hours later. First went the bomb in his ship. The antimatter flare came several seconds later. And the deed was done.

Coyote waited ten minutes before poking his head out of the cave he had found. The colony was gone; in its place was a sizable crater. Nothing moved.

Satisfied, he dragged the transmitter from the darkness of the cave and set it up. Unfold part A, attach part B, hook cable X to plug Y--the portable transmitter was ready in minutes. He flipped out the little keypad, typed in a standard distress message, and pressed send.

The antenna unfurled itself, and Coyote stood back as the machine began to scream a distress call on the universal standard hyper-frequency. A ship would receive it within moments; it should take no more than a day for rescue to reach the planet--

The transmitter died.

Coyote bent over to examine it. He touched the screen, examined the power pack...and then he laughed. The giant heatsinks, so adept at dispelling heat to the surrounding air, were nothing more than molten blobs of metal. There had been no air to cool them; vacuum was an insulator of heat, not a conductor. Coyote couldn't help himself; it was so deliciously ironic! To have battled the terrible aliens and survive...to suffer a slow death by suffocation?

He couldn't help but wonder: had Coyote's luck finally run out?

***