Thirteen Minutes to Kill

By Taylor Rae

One of us will die today, and it’s sure as hell not gonna be me.

I’m a billion miles from home, crouched under a pile of ice boulders. Methane rain pours from Titan’s dark orange clouds.

The LCD screen on my forearm pulses red.

THERMAL COIL DAMAGED

REGULATED TEMPERATURE REMAINING: 00:13:24

EXTERIOR TEMPERATURE: -179°C

SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY

But I wait, listening.

Beyond the rain and the wind and my howling heart, there are no footsteps. Not yet.

Then Johnson calls out, amplified by his hab-suit’s megaphone setting, “I know you’re out there, Eris.”

Dammit.

Rage grips my gut. How does he know I’m still alive?

Elliott Johnson. My co-researcher. The only other living thing on this moon. We came here as subcontractors for Eterna-Energy, gathering samples and physiological bio-data to assess the moon’s mining potential. Small mission, small crew.

This contract introduced us, and I thought he was trustworthy. Until ten minutes ago when we loaded the ship, gave Titan a final goodbye, and Johnson shoved me into the methane lake.

Liquid methane is gasoline-grey and colder than you can fathom. Even with my hab-suit’s dense layers, icy knives stabbed into my bones as I plunged into perfect darkness.

I thrashed to the empty shore and fled, but the damage was done. The methane froze my hab-suit’s thermal coil, and now I’m living on borrowed heat.

“Please,” Johnson says. “I can explain.”

Eleven minutes.

I pull the icepick from my belt. Armed and aching, I crawl forward and peer out.

Titan is twilight-dark. Beyond the orange methane clouds, Saturn’s silhouette looms like an angry god. The shuttle’s a blob on the horizon, surrounded by witch-finger dunes.

No Johnson.

Maybe he’s following my boot prints through gritty, hydrocarbon slush.

Maybe he’ll appear around the ice any second now.

I take inventory: the icepick and half an emergency thermal shelter kit including canvas sheets, poles, a few dozen zip-ties.

Like an idiot, I’d let Johnson carry the thermal generator. He’d joked, I gotta pull my weight around here somehow.

He planned this before we left the shuttle. Maybe even before we left Earth.

Ten minutes now.

I could reach the shuttle in five minutes, easy. Titan’s gravity is so light, it launches you like an Olympic runner.

But ten minutes isn’t enough to escape an ambush.

I assess the massive ice-pile I’m hiding under. My mind spins together a plan. I may be a glorified geologist with a pilot’s license, but I know physics, and I know gambling.

Never bet small on your last hand.

So I spread out the poles and two sheets of canvas: a pair of triangles, each about a meter wide and one-third meter long.

His voice draws closer. “C’mon. You gotta be cold. Let me help you.”

I move faster, puncturing holes along the canvas edges with my icepick. Zip-ties click tight against the metal poles.

When I finish, I have two wings and seven minutes left. I fasten the wings above my elbows and shoulders and make zip-tie hand loops so I can still bend my arms.

Then, I start climbing the ice.

I scrabble, the canvas wings heavy and awkward, climbing until I stand at the icy precipice, maybe six meters off the ground. The rain pisses down, and the wind tugs toward my distant shuttle.

Five minutes.

There’s Johnson, maybe one hundred meters from my hiding place. He stands in my boot prints and waves.

“What’re you doing up there?” His visor’s black, but I hear the smile in his voice.

I don’t smile back.

“Don’t be mad, sweetheart. I told you. I can explain.”

“So explain.”

“I promised a few oil execs I could procure Titan samples under the table, but the ship can’t support your weight and the extra cargo. You needed to have a tragic accident. You understand?”

He’s swaggering closer.

“Oh, I do.” I spread my wings, gripping the zip-tie hand loops.

Four minutes.

“What’s your plan, Eris?” He laughs, staticky. “Going to fly home?”

“Something like that.”

I bend my knees and launch off the ice, into the open air.

My amygdala pumps hot fight-or-flight panic through me. The wind yanks at my wings, and I’m soaring, oily rain slicking my visor, the ground blurring past.

For a perfect, weightless second, gliding over that obsidian lake, I feel nothing but wonder.

As the shuttle draws closer, I fold my arms, dip my head, and hope I don’t screw this up.

I land hard on my shoulder, sliding across puddles of methane. But I don’t slow down to register the pain, because I’ve only got two minutes before the oxygen freezes in my lungs.

I bolt up the ladder, into the ship’s airlock.

Over my shoulder, Johnson’s sprinting across the hydrocarbon sand.

I spare half a second, thinking. The airlock won’t seal before he reaches the ship. He won’t need Titan’s bitter cold to kill me.

There. The red AED unit on the wall. I grab it and hunker behind the ladder. He’ll have to expose his back to me to climb aboard.

Boots crunch outside.

The machine whines as I grip the defibrillator paddles.

Johnson’s gloves appear on the ladder rungs, then his methane-streaked helmet. His thermal unit hums on his back.

One-and-a-half minutes.

“I gotta admit,” he says, “that wasn’t as stupid as I expected.”

“Thanks.”

I smack the “administer shock” button and press both paddles to his back. They let out a vicious jolt, and then…

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Sometimes you go all-in, and you still lose.

Johnson cackles, ascends another rung. “Was that really your best idea?”

Smoke rises from his hab-suit, and I grin. “Better than yours.”

Johnson scoffs, and that’s when his thermal unit chugs and dies. He gasps. Sways. Ice crackles over his visor, and he falls backward, board-stiff, frozen inside out.

Fifty-eight seconds.

I close the airlock and collapse, panting. The ship’s artificial atmosphere needs a full minute to boot up.

I watch my life tick down and pray I was fast enough.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Taylor Rae is a professional mountain troll, hidden in the mountains of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. She writes about lost culture, sassy gods, and wrecked spaceships. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming with Pseudopod, Flash Fiction Online, and Fit for the Gods from Vintage Books. She is the editor and founder of Space Fantasy Magazine. Outside of writing, she’s drawn to ukulele, rock climbing, longboarding, and any other irresponsible hobby for someone without health insurance.

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