Page 36 of My Alien Bughead
He heaves a shaking sigh. “I don’t want to put you in danger, not for my sake.”
“D’Aakh…” I warn, my hand roving over my tool belt in search of something to hit him with that won’t immediately kill him.
“Fine.” He huffs out a frustrated breath. “Just so you know, you’re the annoying one here. You need to… Oh…” D’Aakh tenses up as a violent tremble runs through him and he groans in pain. “Fuck. This sucks. You need…you need the plasma torch. Grab that piece of metal and use it to…heat the ore and separate some of the base rock from the crylonite. It won’t be perfect but it should work.” His hand shakes so hard I barely see which direction he indicates.
I’m following D’Aakh’s instructions but he’s pausing a lot, struggling with full-body shudders and convulsions along with frequent groans of pain that he thinks he’s hiding from me. It’s clear he’s fighting to stay conscious and focused. It’s also clear he doesn’t believe he’ll survive even if we do manage to blast our way out of here, which is where he’s wrong. He will live. Like I said before, he hasn’t seen me at my most stubborn yet.
Finally managing to collect five small blobs of melted crylonite, I mix them with the fluid from D’Aakh’s plasma torch. “Alright, what next? Do I just toss these at the wall and hope for the best?”
He doesn’t reply.
“D’Aakh?!”
Alarmed, I rush to his side. His body is convulsing, eyes rolled back into his head and he’s definitely not breathing. “Fuck!” I yell as I roll him onto his back. I know jack shit about first aid but even I know that breathing is necessary.
Finding a soft spot between the chitin plates on his chest, I start pumping up and down like those sexy doctors in the TV shows my Nana used to watch. It’s probably not the right spot,his heart must be somewhere further up, but I can’t exactly perform CPR on armored plating.
“Don’t you fucking die on me, D’Aakh,” I growl. My cheeks are damp and my eyes blurry from the tears as I run my forearm over them before returning to my foolish attempt to keep D’Aakh alive. “I don’t hate you. I kind of even like you, even if you are an annoying bughead. I definitely like your cock. It’s a good cock, even if it’s attached to your snarky attitude. Do not die!”
There’s a wheezing sound. Then a gasp. D’Aakh’s body jerks under me as he desperately takes in air.
I’m torn between the urge to slap him or kiss him, but force myself to focus on the rescue plan. “D’Aakh! What do I do next? Come on. You said it was almost done. Tell me.”
“The…” He moans in pain as another convulsion consumes him. There’s foam coming out of his mouth. His back arches, fingers digging into the tunnel floor.
Screaming in frustration, I can only stand here like an idiot while he’s dying in front of me because I don’t know what to do.
D’Aakh’s hand jerks toward his tool belt. At first, I think it’s just an involuntary movement, but when he does it again, I realize he’s trying to point at something. “... fuse …” he wheezes. “Ion sphere…”
Ion sphere? My panicked brain takes a second to piece his words together, but eventually, it clicks. Our flashlights.
Alien torches don’t use lightbulbs. They use ion sphere arrays. Tiny balls of ionized plasma held together by a magnetic field. Perfectly safe if wielded right. Dangerously unstable if someone messes with it.
My fingers tremble almost as hard as D’Aakh’s when I turn off his flashlight and pop it open. There’s only one ion sphere, and he made me create five crylonite blobs. Do I use them all? Or maybe…?
Examining the horizontal shaft leading to the other tunnel, I realize that I don’t need to blow up the entire wall between the tunnels. All I need is to make the connecting shaft wide enough for us to crawl through. If I could spread the crylonite along the shaft and then blow it up all at once, would it work? Was that what D’Aakh had in mind?
One look at him lets me know I won’t be getting any more answers from him. He’s curled up on the floor, semi-comatose, his breathing so shallow it’s barely noticeable. I need to hurry the fuck up.
“Alright. Let’s blow this shit,” I mumble to myself, gathering the crylonite up before approaching the shaft. It’s only about one foot wide and I’m not sure I’ll be able to get the crylonite blobs all the way to the other end but I have to try.
There’s a rustling sound from the darkness on the other side. I lean closer to listen to it, then shriek in absolute terror as something crawls right into my face.
“WHAT THE FUCK!”
I raise my plasma torch. Whatever alien monster thinks it can have my face for dinner will get cut to ribbons. I’m so fucking done with this fucking tunnel!
Then the creature gets closer and I recognize its blue, triangular head. “Cricket?!”
The Serramorph youngling chirps excitedly. He eases himself out of the shaft and skitters down the wall. Sniffing at my legs, he lets out more chirps and squeals, which are echoed from the other side of the shaft.
“Guys?!” I shout, hoping to hear something other than excited insect noises. No such luck. It seems that the Serramorphs are here alone and I don’t want to think on the reasons why. Hopefully, there’s no fighting going on up on the station yet. Damn, I have to get up there and stop people from doingsomething stupid. After I save D’Aakh, that is. And get us out of this stupid tunnel. That’s a fairly long list.
“Alright, Cricket? Can you carry these blobs through that shaft and space them out evenly?”
Head tilted to the side at an alarming angle, the young Serramorphsniffs at the crylonite in my hand. He bristles and hisses, but cautiously picks the blobs up with his pincers.
“Thank you, Cricket. You’re such a sweetheart. If this works, I’ll help you fix everything in your biosphere so that you have the most amazing home in the galaxy. If it doesn’t, well… I guess I won’t be around to deal with any complaints.”
