Free Bastion Saturn by C. Chase Harwood

out in the middle of nowhere. The second ship was thirty meters away, a Hanson Design shuttle. Pretty new from the look of it. The rear loading ramp was up, but that didn’t mean it was locked. Glancing back toward the cave entrance, he still couldn’t see well enough to ease his terror. Then he cursed, remembering that his helmet was equipped with a starlight enhancer. Fool . He switched over to starlight mode and the area around him transformed into a sharp green landscape. Nothing was coming at him from the cave. He skipped over to the shuttle, opened the exterior door control panel and stood dumbly staring at the keypad lock. He reflexively brought his hands up to lace his fingers across the bridge of his nose (something that he did when he stopped to think) and was startled by his hands smacking into his visor.
    Keeping one eye on the cave, he skipped back to the cop ship. Unlike the piece of junk that he had been issued, this one was a battle-ready model with the full complement of paramedic and rescue gear. The external tool-locker opened easily enough, and he pulled out a shovel. Even if he saved Jennifer and revived everyone aboard his ship, the only way they were getting out was through the buried airlock door. Getting out to what, he didn’t know. But he was out of options. His ship wrecked, the two good ones inaccessible. That left moving into the cave–regardless of whomever had been rude enough to slaughter a pile of people and stacked them out in the airlock. If he was going to do that, he needed some backup. He was going to have to dig.
    The dirt fell away quickly, and Caleb felt a mild sense of embarrassment as he cleared the an area around the crashed shuttle’s hatch. Rather than fumbling about in the dark and scary, he could have dug out the airlock hatch with his bare hands and been done with it. If his suit’s air supply alarm hadn’t been beeping incessantly, he would have allowed himself a morbid laugh. There was no guarantee that there was any air left inside the shuttle. His progress was hampered by a constant stream of dirt slowly sliding down on the hatch, tripling his work load. The entry controls were lit up nicely, which meant the fuel cells were still good. He punched in the code that he had set to forget—123—satisfied to see the bright red No-Go light turn to amber. It took about ten seconds for the airlock to go through its diagnostics and make certain that no valuable air would be lost when he opened the door. While he waited, he muttered curses aimed at his exosuit for not letting him manually turn off the warning beep. A man fights to the last breath for to get to some more air, and the effing suit turns a fasten-seatbelt chime into a death knell. The airlock light turned green. He yanked the open handle, cringed at the gray dirt sliding inside, then fumbled with trying to clear off the seal without causing more dirt to slide, and finally pulled the door shut. The info panel on the inside flashed a warning that the seal was not complete. He would have to try again. With a mounting headache, sweat seeping from every pore, and that goddamn fucking chime merrily beeping and beeping and beeping, he carefully opened the hatch again, only to have more dirt gently rain down on his helmet. The ship was buried at an awkward angle for him to stand, one foot on the inner door and another on the floor. A glance down at his footing allowed him to see the entry observation porthole. He got the second biggest scare of his life when he saw Jennifer’s bloody face. She was yelling something, so at least she wasn’t dead. He tapped the side of his helmet and shook his head, so she could deduce the fucking obvious. She shook her head, then drew her finger across her neck frantically and repeatedly, but he was beyond paying attention, the oxygen indicator in his helmet rapidly blinking its last bar. Carefully, while holding the door open with one hand, he swept his fingers along the edge of the