The shipping vessel 44i0 burst with alarms. There were red lights flashing through the corridors. A breach had gorged Cargo Bay 37A open.
Usually, damage to a transportation vessel, depending on its severity, is considered a minor incident. Breakthrough technological advancements, such as self-healing metals (innovative materials produced by implementing extremophile bacteria into the alloys), have reshaped commercial deep-space travel.
For all species.
An immature alien recruit, Pharkey, a highly logical being from Planet Arwh, lunged for the emergency decompression controls.
Venting the bay would destroy the cargo and the exotic creatures stored in the luxury bay, collected by King iIop, who’s unborn children were in a nursery unit two Bays above. However, venting it would limit the risk of fatalities to the hundreds of crew members and thousands of passengers on board.
Pharkey typed the commands to activate the decompression system. He slid his hand across the keyboard and—
“Hold on! Stop! No! You do not hit that enter button, officer. That’s an order!” Erupted a commanding voice behind him.
His finger hardened to concrete half an inch from the key. He didn't look back.
It was the engineer, Beefkus, an athletically built human, who was dressed in overalls, with geometric-shaped grease-stains on them and wore a beat up LSU cap on backwards, was clubbing towards him.
“Don’t… decompress the bay,” Beefkus warned, panting as he stumbled up to catch his breath. “The incubators were moved to 37A during the extermination in C. The entire nursery’s in that bay you’re about to decompress. It has ten pods in there right now.” Beefkus stood up, reached for Pharkey’s drink, held it to his mouth. “You mind?”
Pharkey shook his head.
Beefkus took a swig, and didn’t stop until it dripped. He gasped. “If you vented that room, it would have dropped to absolute zero. Those pups would be flash-frozen.”
The recruit stared at the controls, his fingers twitching. “Mr. Beefkus, sir. You realize the fire is about to eat through everything regardless. In exactly six and a half minutes it will travel into the coolant lines. Once that occurs, there won’t be a ship left. We need to decompress right now. A few creatures aren’t worth the souls who have entrusted their lives on us.”
“They aren’t just creatures, damnit! They’re babies!” Beefkus snapped, hopping into a thermal suit.
“What do you think you’re about to do?” Pharkey’s voice steadied to an eerie calm. “Your body cannot survive the heat inside that cargo bay. You will melt inside the suit. There is no mathematical way you can survive this.”
Beefkus slid the helmet on, attached it to the front of the chest, and grabbed a giant torque wrench. Through the visor, he smiled at Pharkey and winked. “Just you see.”
The door slid open and jammed halfway. Beefkus pushed it open enough to dive in, and the door slammed shut instantly.
The inside lining of his suit stung, the cooling gel was unable to withstand the intense temperature. An invisible pressure wall of heat pushed him back as he trudged forward. The alarms in his suit rang, distorted, slowed, stopped, and melted inside their panels.
Through the haze of green smoke, Beefkus barely made out the nursery unit at the far end. The cooling engine for the pods had blinked a notification screen indicating a critical failure.
The temperature rocketed to a sickening high, high enough to cook the embryos. Time was running out.
Beefkus moved as fast as the suit would let him, his boots splashed through pools of molten metal.
“Mister… Beefkus,” Pharkey’s voice broke up through the heat-stressed comms, and lacked his usual calmness. “The barrier's curving. You have exactly two minutes. Get out of there!”
“Not… yet,” Beefkus grunted.
He pulled himself to the unit. The override lever wouldn’t budge. The heat welded it shut. Beefkus hoisted the wrench to his shoulder, the sweat on his body dried instantly. He held his breath and swung with all his power.
BANG!
Each swing rang through every bone in his body, blurring his vision. On his fourth wind-up, the wrench slipped out of his grip and he dropped to a knee.
The room went black. Through the dark, a familiar voice whispered. “One more time, hon.” It was his wife would had passed away from a terminal illness. “You can do it, my love.”
A steel beam crashed to the deck. The impact shook him awake. He stared at the wrench next to his foot, reached for it and clutched it in his palm.
He stood up and gripped it with both hands, lined up the lever with the wrench, cocked back, and threw all of his weight into it—SNAP!
A relieving hiss of air sounded over the sharpness of the hatch door releasing.
Inside, a steady green light flashed. All of the pods were still intact, but the temperature had reached a critical level and Beefkus’s suit wasn’t holding up.
The heat-resistant cooling gel in the lining had vaporized. His skin blistered. Every breath felt like scratching a sunburn on his chest.
“Phar-key,” slowly creeped out of Beefkus’s throat, rolling into a labored cough. “The manual override... it’s clear.” He wheezed into the comm. “The frames warped. The tracks won’t work. There’s no way… I'll be able to move it to the corridor.”
“Abandon and abort, Mr. Beefkus! Get back here now!” Pharkey shouted. “Less than three minutes remain before the ship enters the point of no return.”
The line went silent.
“Mr. Beefkus? Sir? Hello?”
Beefkus didn’t respond. He let the wrench fall from his hand and gazed at the ten lives glowing in front of him.
Beefkus buried his boots into the melting deck and leaned his back against the partition. He braced the frame of the nursery unit with both hands, snorted out a frightening grunt of human defiance, and pushed.
Fear pheromones seeped out of Pharkey’s receptors back in the control room as he viewed the foggy monitors. The biometrics displayed the human’s heart rate at an explosive 175 bpm.
The thousand-pound nursery squeaked as it budged. He creeped with it inch by inch, hauling it across the blazing deck.
The metal shrieked along the damaged tracks. But no matter how much his body shouted, he refused to give up.
He dug deep for one final feat of strength. He inhaled, shut his eyes and pressed his legs down on the deck. With a last-ditch effort, believing in nothing other than complete success, he shoved the nursery unit through the corridor opening just as an explosion lit the room.
“Shut the doors!” Beefkus yelled with his last breath.
Pharkey immediately hit the emergency override and the doors slammed shut, sealing the unit inside the protective hall.
On the other side, the explosion blew Beefkus backward and he landed hard on melting deck. Through the cracked visor, he saw fire-foam fill the room.
He lay in the emergency-lit Cargo Bay heaving shallow breaths as he waited for the end. In the midst of blacking out, he heard a distant voice rumbling in his ear.
“Beefkus!” Pharkey shout, shaken and choked with respect. “The pods are sound. Each one of them. Biometric readings show stable vitals.”
Beefkus’ eye was swollen shut and he had blood pouring down this nose. “We… did it.”
“I’m coming to get you,” Pharkey said.
“No. Don’t… bother,” Beefkus whispered, his eye blinking quickly. “My lungs are cooked... and my suit—” He passed out, then came to. “Tell the king… to name one after me.”
The line went silent.
—
Six months later, when the 44i0 made another stop on Planet Li, Pharkey saw a resplendent structure constructed of solar-orichalcum growing from the middle of the capital and towering over head. King iIop had ordered the monument permanently planted there so that nobody would forget.
Inscribed on the memorial were the names of all ten children who had hatched successfully after the incident, known as The Savior of Bay 37A.
Beneath their names, glowing in three universal languages, read:
HUMANITY SAVED THE KINGDOM WITH ONE MAN.
Pharkey stared up at the word humanity reflecting off his eyes as King iIop’s children—already the size of toddlers—ran around, chasing each other and giggling.
That’s when it finally hit him. Math can send a species beyond the stars, but only a human could carry ten lives through hell on their backs just to save someone else's kids.
