Frozen Heck: A not-remotely-scary sci-fi horror novel
Chapter 1: Failure to communicate
Alone in the universe. All alone … and dreaming about chocolate brownies.
I gazed up at the midnight black of space beyond the glass dome. When we were in warp, the stars didn’t do like they did on telly. They didn’t, you know, voom. They just kind of blurred around the edges.
To be fair, I wasn’t even alone. The others weren’t actually gone – they’d just retired to their rooms. Both BB and Spock slept more than I did, so it was fairly normal for me to be awake when they weren’t. Bexley, Henry, and Aurora all required less rest than I did, so it was unusual for me to be the only one awake. But it happened occasionally.
And I wasn’t even alone in the room. Spock was curled up on the sofa with me – but she was sound asleep, so it didn’t really count. I’d woken up at half three in the morning and had been unable to get back to sleep. Bexley talked in her sleep sometimes.
So I came up here to gaze at the stars.
Under the room’s clear dome was my favourite spot to stand and gaze at the universe. I loved seeing the stars in all their glory.
We’d been working for Megaboulder and the Accountants of Doom, the band that had won last year’s Space Eurovision. Our job was ferrying the band between shows. I’d seen plenty of recordings of their shows – I’d even watched the band doing sound checks and they’d done a few jam sessions on the Teapot. But I’d still never seen them play live. Always somewhere else to be, something else to do. This time, we were going to make the time to see the show on Felspoon.
Megaboulder had given us front-row seats. The horta was terrifying to look at – just big piles of animate rocks. But she was genuinely one of the nicest people I’d ever met.
Taking care not to wake Spock, I got up and walked to the outer edge of Ten Backwards – our crew lounge and meeting space.
‘Ow!’ Less than a metre from the window, something jolted me. ‘Bloody bollocking bastard!’ I shouted as I tripped. Searing pain tore through my face.
Pulling myself into a sitting position, I… Wait, why am I on the ground? I pressed my hand to my face and squinted up at the glass. Not glass. Transparent aluminium. Or something. Whatever.
I was seeing stars. Except something was off. The stars weren’t normally in the room with me. I squinted at the window. Where’d all that red paint come from? Who paints a window anyway?
Pain bit into my face a second time and I reached up to put a hand to my nose. All at once, I tasted blood, felt warm liquid down my front, and saw my hand coated in red. ‘Wha’ habbuh?’
Spock – ever the dutiful German shepherd – was at my side, sniffing my face. ‘Lem okay?’ She licked the blood from my hand. Gross.
‘We have dropped out of warp,’ said Holly, my personal AI and universal translator.
‘Eh wuv a wewowica kwesha.’ I put a hand to my lip. Blood flowed freely through my fingers.
‘Please repeat that,’ replied my idiot chatbot of an AI.
Except I wouldn’t be pronouncing the words rhetorical or question for a while. I hobbled to the loo to rinse my mouth out. Two and a half teeth fell into the sink. My teeth! And I was pretty sure my nose hadn’t been … there. It was distinctly to the left of where it had been the last time I looked. I grabbed a towel to stem the bleeding. Biting down on it, I ducked to get a good look in the mirror. Maybe someday we’d get human-height mirrors, but probably not today. I peeled the edge of the towel carefully away just enough to get a look at what was happening.
In addition to my nose’s spontaneous relocation, my bottom lip was split and a red stain marred the soft cotton-like towel. It was still spreading. The front and sleeves of my hoodie – my original Earth-made hoodie – were coated in blood.
‘Hawwuh, kuh kah suh fuh meh, puzh?’ As in, Holly, can you call someone for me, please?
‘Please repeat the question,’ said Holly unhelpfully.
Great. How am I supposed to call for help when I can’t bloody speak properly? The pun left me biting back a chuckle that would undoubtedly hurt like a bastard. I stepped back into the main room, holding the towel to my face with one hand and fumbling my phone with the other, trying to text someone for help. Only the device was slick with blood and impossible to hold onto.
Spock ran over and sniffed at my face. She pushed me backwards until I landed on my arse on the sofa, then stood astride me, licking my face. ‘Lem broken.’
The door whooshed open, admitting both BB and Henry.
‘What have you done to the ship, sandwich?’ said the robot. ‘And why is your ducking user interface leaking?’
Still standing over me, Spock turned. In doing so, her paw dug into me – it felt like she was trying to push all the way through to my kidney. ‘Lem broken,’ she repeated over the sound of my cries.
BB clucked her beak as she prodded at me. ‘Oh dear, Lem! What have you done to yourself? Is your body trying to kill you again?’
‘Whuh oo do hee?’ That time I was nearly coherent, I was sure of it. I looked up at the doc so she could get a look at me.
‘I’ve no idea what you just said.’ The overhead lights in the room came on as BB took the towel from my hand and peeled it back slowly so she could inspect my injury. ‘But if you’re asking what I’m doing here, the answer is that Spock called me. She said it was a medical emergency. If you’re asking how bad it is … well, you’ll live. Probably. I assume. But we should get you to the medlab so I can patch you up. And, Henry’ – BB looked over my shoulder – ‘we’ll need you to print a replica of some of Lem’s mouth bones.’
Henry’s smooth, posh tones responded. ‘You don’t think maybe I should investigate why the bollarding ship suddenly came to a complete halt in the middle of frolicking nowhere, do you?’
‘Emergency! Wake everyone.’ Spock’s voice was calm but authoritative.
The lights flashed purple. ‘Mauve alert,’ said Holly in my ear. ‘All hands to Ten Backwards. Mauve alert.’
Did Spock really just put the Teapot into some sort of alert mode? Because I bonked my noggin?
Henry wheeled over to where I was sitting. Her featureless blue cylinder glowed purple in the flashing alarm lights. ‘What did you do to make us drop out of clucking warp like that, anyway, meatsack?’
I jerked my face out of BB’s talon, sending another spurt of blood down my chest. ‘Bee?’
BB flapped one wing in Henry’s direction, warning her to back off. ‘Lem will answer your questions just as soon as I’ve patched her up.’
We headed for the lift, meeting Bexley and Aurora as they exited. Bexley’s normally lustrous, wavy blond mane stood up in every direction. Aurora was a nebulous cloud of sentient rainbow-hued glitter gas. Depending on her mood or emotions, certain colours rose to prominence or receded. Right then, her rainbow hues had given way to a mix of turquoise and pale blue glitter gas – worry and curiosity.
Bexley rubbed her eyes with the back of one of her hooves. ‘What’s going on? Why have we stopped—’ Her already large eyes opened even larger – making her look like a My Little Pony doll. ‘Holy crap, Lem! What happened to your face? Are you leaking? What’s that red fluid? Is that ichor? Oh! Is it lymph?’
BB guided me into the lift. ‘Let me deal with my patient. We’ll return as soon as I’ve patched her up. Henry’s in Ten Backwards. She’ll tell you what she knows. We’ll join you in a bit.’ Spock followed us into the lift.
‘Bib ou pine bye peeve?’ I should have known better than to try to ask if she’d found my teeth.
BB squinted at me. ‘I can’t tell whether you’ve suffered a brain injury that’s making you delirious or if your injuries are preventing you from speaking coherently. Either way, I suggest you stop trying to talk for the time being. I’ll get your lip sewn up and give you an injection to bring the swelling back down and then we can check your cognitive abilities.’
Still holding the towel to my face, I nodded.
‘Good.’ She patted my arm.
When we got to the medlab, BB got me positioned on a chair and shone a light in my face as she waved something like a tricorder over me.
She studied the readings for a moment before speaking. ‘How the devil did you manage this, Lem? Your nose is broken, your lip is torn open, two of your mouth bones are entirely missing, and another is chipped.’
I didn’t even try to answer as she left me and went to rummage around in a cupboard, before spending a few minutes doing things I couldn’t see. Before long, she wheeled over a small tray with a variety of bizarre implements. The first thing she picked up looked like a pen. ‘This is a hypospray. I’ve loaded it with a substance that will temporarily block pain sensations in’ – she waved a taloned hand at my bust and bloody face – ‘your beak region.’
Before Spock would let her work, she insisted on sniffing the implement. Apparently satisfied, she lay down next to me.
BB placed the pen to my jaw and waved it around, covering every inch of my face. Everywhere the pen-thing moved, my pain dropped away instantly. Then she told me to open up, and she repeated the process inside my mouth. I hadn’t even had time to think about how much my face hurt – until it didn’t.
Once she was happy with the results, she hefted a whirring tool about the size of a can of beer. ‘This one will realign your beak and stitch up the torn bits of flesh. Now, hold very still please. It shouldn’t hurt but you may feel a bit of pressure.’
Instead of sniffing this one, Spock whimpered and backed away.
She needn’t have worried. There was no pain – not once the painkiller pen had done its magic. BB was right, though. Having your nose unbroken and your lip sewn back together using – I don’t know – ultrasonic frequencies or nanoparticles or whatever… It feels strange. If you’ve never been through it, I don’t know how to describe it to you other than to say it’s just plain weird.
Once she finished repairing the torn flesh, BB stood back up and studied my face. ‘I must say, this bloating makes you look a lot smoother. Well, that is, we could make it permanent if you liked.’
‘Boating?’ I parroted. Not having gaping holes in my face or blood streaming everywhere made my words a bit closer to what I was trying to say—
‘Marine transport? Oh dear. Maybe you are delirious.’
—but apparently not close enough.
Waving both hands at my face, I tried again. ‘Bwoa— No, newer mine.’
‘A modern site of excavation?’
I brought my fists to my face and started over again. ‘Can ou fif it?’
BB cocked her to one side. ‘My translator says there’s a sixty-three per cent chance you’re asking if I can fix it.’
I made a noise that sounded nothing like the word ‘yes’. Trying to speak coherently with your face and tongue swollen to double their normal size was difficult enough without having to worry about sibilants.
BB picked up something that looked like a pen and waved it. ‘You’re in luck. This will reduce the inflammation.’
As before, she waved it around my face and in my mouth – once Spock had inspected the thingamy. ‘Now, this drug doesn’t work as quickly as the other,’ BB said. ‘But in a minute or so, you should feel the swelling start to come down. I’ll tidy up and, by the time I’m done, you should notice a difference. Then we’ll do a quick scan to ensure you’re functioning normally.’
A little more than half an hour later, the three of us returned to Ten Backwards. After fixing the damage and running a few scans, BB helped me clean myself. We’d even stopped by my quarters so I could change into a clean jumper. My swelling was down and my pain was gone. The teeth would have to wait. At least I could speak again – now with added lisp thanks to the missing teeth.
BB crossed the room and climbed up onto her perch.
‘Hey!’ Bexley ran over and cupped her hooves around my jaw. ‘Oh my gosh. Are you okay, Lem? What happened? Was it related to the other ship?’ She sniffed at my face carefully.
For a moment, I just stood there gawping at her, unsure of how to explain or where to start. ‘Uvva ship?’ The words felt strange in my teeth-reduced mouth.
Spock padded over to the sofa and climbed up, where her abandoned brain lay. I’d bought the pink plush squeaky toy for her at a science fiction convention in London the day before we met at a dog shelter. It was her most treasured possession – also her only possession. Well, she also had her translator. She curled up on the sofa, brain clutched between her front paws.
‘Yes, another ship,’ said Henry. ‘That jolt you felt when the warp drive cut out was the deflector fields of the two ships colliding.’
My hands fell slack by my side. ‘We crashed into another ship?’
‘We look ficus dead to you, pancake?’ Henry turned in impatient circles.
‘Yeah, no, for sure.’ Bexley brushed her forelock down over her long, horsey nose. ‘If our deflector shields weren’t working, we totally would have crashed. Basically, we have these, like, sensors and fields of repellent energy that surround our ship. When the sensors detect any matter in our path, the shields sort of like… well, you know.’
I didn’t know. But now seemed the wrong time to ask for a science lesson. And I knew the result well enough.
Aurora floated across the room to her spouse, her nebulous edges gently ruffling BB’s feathers. ‘Henry’s just been explaining it all to us. No one’s quite sure yet why we fell out of warp, but when we did, we came very close to a derelict vessel.’
Bexley grabbed my hand and dragged me to the sofa. I was too tired to resist. ‘A mostly derelict ship. Mostly being the key word. It’s way warmer than it ought to be. Like, way above the freezing point of air – barely even below the freezing point of water. Anyways, it’s so exciting. Oh, and it looks like it might have an atmosphere.’
‘Okay, that’s … weird. Are there any life signs on board?’ I could hear myself mispronouncing my Rs, Ss and THs. I hoped everyone’s translators could parse my words more easily than they had managed earlier.
Bexley tilted her head and BB stopped preening herself. Both of them looked at me. If I couldn’t talk to anyone until I got my teeth fixed, this was going to be a problem.
‘Life signs?’ Bexley repeated.
So they could understand me. ‘Yeah, are we picking up any … life…’ I ran my hand over the back of my neck. ‘That’s not a thing we can do, is it? Right, so what should we do? We should call the space police, yeah?’
‘Well, we would do.’ Henry spun her wheels. ‘Except our ansible went down at the same time as our engines.’
I pulled my knees up to my chin, careful not to make contact with my damaged lip. ‘So, now we’re dead in the water, floating next to a maybe-derelict spaceship. Have I got that right?’
Bexley tossed her mane over her shoulders. ‘What? We’re not dead. You know that, right?’
‘And no one’s mentioned any water.’ BB stroked her chin. ‘Are you sure you didn’t injure your brain when you fell? Maybe we need to run some more tests.’
