The Lost Wreck of the Spero

by Nemo West

Table of Contents

Chapter 4: Celomander

A panicked shriek snapped Chelle awake in the middle of the night. The subsequent hiss and distinctive jaw-snap of a celomander jolted her upright. By reflex, she shouted a voice command at her Digit. “Lita, lights on!”

Cool blue radiance obediently filled the cabin, emanating from the palm-sized device beside her pillow. An urgent glance around the room revealed that the celomander wasn’t inside, to her immediate relief. However, she also noticed that Triss’s sleeping bag was empty. Chelle leapt to her feet.

Beside her, Sam was just beginning to push himself upright, awakened by the noise as well. “What’s going on?” he mumbled.

“Celomander,” Chelle answered, already digging into her pack. “And Triss is missing.”

Sam spun to her, eyes wide as saucers. “What?!”

By then, Chelle already had her glowing Digit in one hand and, in the other, her enpulse wand, an essential tool for anyone venturing into Toboso Marsh. “Come on!” she commanded as she raced toward the door.

Chelle burst into the chill, damp night and snapped, “Lita, flashlight!” Her Digit obediently shifted from a lantern glow to a focused beam. As she swept that beam through the prop-roots, tall, lanky shadows leapt and loomed all around her. “Triss, where are you?” Chelle shouted.

“Back here!” a terrified voice answered.

Chelle immediately dashed into the swamp and heard Sam scurrying along a few paces behind her. Based on the direction of the shouting, Chelle guessed that Triss had gone to relieve herself at the old outhouse and a roaming celomander had caught her by surprise. Those massive beasts were the bane of Toboso.

During the early terraforming of Etruria, a handful of common lizards had piggybacked to the planet with a livestock import. As the stowaways adapted to their new environment, some atavistic mutation reactivated long-dormant strands of their genes. Within a few generations, the descendent population had regained many of its ancestral features, including much of its primordial saurian size. Soon afterward, the saber-taloned and vise-jawed celomanders established themselves as Toboso’s apex predators.

Once Chelle rounded the last clutch of prop-roots on the path to the latrine, the beam from her Digit glinted off a hulking reptilian back. Although only a juvenile, the creature already stood as tall as the colony’s broad-shouldered Calvana cattle. Reacting to the light, it half-turned in Chelle’s direction and cocked open a jaw large enough to engulf her torso. Chelle skipped back a step and raised her enpulse wand toward a prehistoric maw lined with jagged teeth.

A moment later, Sam skittered up beside her, clutching his own wand. “Oh, good, it’s only a little one,” he panted with relief. “But where’s Triss?”

“Up here!” her voice replied from the thick darkness around them.

Chelle angled the beam of her Digit and soon revealed Triss clinging to the trunk of a mangrove overhead. She’d clearly scrambled up the prop-roots to escape the celomander. Alarmingly, her legs and hips were streaked with blood. “Are you alright?” Chelle shouted.

“No!” Triss replied anxiously.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you down!”

“Okay,” Triss whimpered.

Just then Sam tapped Chelle’s shoulder. “It’s coming our way,” he warned.

Chelle quickly returned her full attention to the celomander. Sure enough, it had begun shifting on the narrow path between the prop-roots to face her and Sam, and it was advancing toward them. That malevolent jaw remained cocked, and Chelle knew it could snap shut with enough force to cleave a small tree. She promptly aimed her wand at the beast’s foreleg.

Sam gawked at her. “What are you doing?”

Chelle paused in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Aim for the head!” he insisted.

“But... I don’t want to hurt it.”

Sam frowned impatiently and shook his head. “You’ve spent too much time away from Toboso.” He then leveled his own enpulse wand directly at the mouth of the approaching celomander and toggled the trigger. An invisible energy pulse lanced through the air. As soon as it struck the beast, the current jangled its nerves. That monstrous mouth promptly snapped shut, and the creature thrashed to the ground with a loud hiss.

The nerve-targeting, energy-pulse weapon, or enpulse for short, was the preferred non-lethal protection of choice for many colonial settlements. Most shoot-to-kill weapons required good aim to land a hit that could stop a charging beast. By contrast, enpulse weapons required far less precision and could halt any living creature in its tracks. The energy current forced nerves to seize in painful spasms that could knock even a hybrid mammoth to the ground. Additionally, poor aim with a lethal weapon could cripple an animal, or condemn it to a slow, anguished death from a festering wound. Enpulse weapons, however, inflicted no permanent harm, providing a crucial benefit for colonies anxious to preserve the wildlife in developing ecosystems.

Sam released the trigger on his wand now but kept the weapon poised. As it regained control of its muscles, the celomander cocked its jaw again in a display of aggression but quickly backed away.

Holding his wand in front of him, Sam advanced toward the creature, driving it to retreat farther. Once he’d chased it safely away from beneath Triss, Sam turned and waved Chelle forward. “Alright, help her down,” he instructed. “Then let’s get back to the cabin.”

“On it!” Chelle acknowledged. She raced forward and scrambled up the prop-roots. “I see a lot of blood,” she said as she climbed up beside Triss. “Where did it get you?”

Visibly trembling, Triss held out her left arm. Two fingers and a good chunk of her hand were missing. “I-it almost got my whole arm,” she stuttered, her voice still quivering with fear.

“My God!” Chelle gasped. She immediately slid her own arm under Triss’s opposite shoulder to help her down. “Come on, hurry! Let’s get you back inside so we can wrap this up.”

“O-okay,” Triss nodded, sagging heavily onto Chelle.

Working together, Chelle and Sam got Triss to the ground. “Why did that thing even come after you?” Sam asked. “Didn’t you bring a squealer fob with you to the latrine?”

Just like the larger pylons rimming Toboso, a pendant-sized squealer fob provided an excellent deterrent for celomanders. Sam always traveled with several and made certain to station one at the door of Cavender’s Cabin whenever he was in residence.

“I forgot,” Triss mumbled.

“How could you forget something like that?” Chelle gawked. “We spent half of our childhood in this marsh. You should’ve known better.”

“It’s alright,” Sam intervened. “She’s been gone a long time. Don’t be too hard on her.” Glancing at her wound, he added, “Besides, we have more important things to worry about right now.”

Chelle relented with an apologetic nod, and they quickly ushered Triss back to the cabin. Once there, Sam dug out his first aid supplies. After washing Triss’s wound, he applied soothing anesthetic balm and a dose of regenerative stem gel. Then he gently wrapped what remained of her hand. As her pain ebbed, Triss gradually recovered her wits.

“How are you feeling now?” Sam asked.

“Better,” Triss answered. She offered the others a meek, grateful smile. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

“Of course!” Sam replied.

“Anytime,” Chelle assured.

“Get some rest now,” Sam said. “We’ll head back to New Tuscany first thing in the morning.”

Triss blinked. “What?”

“We’ll head back tomorrow.”

“No, we most certainly will not!”

Sam furrowed his brow. “Um... what?”

“We’re going to find the Spero,” Triss insisted.

“But... your hand. We need to get you to the infirmary.”

Triss shook her head. “The infirmary can wait. You patched me up good enough to last a few more weeks out here. Besides, after we find the amrathyte, I can easily afford regenerative surgery.”

Chelle couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Triss, are you serious? A celomander just took off half your hand. You need medical attention.”

Triss focused a resolute expression on Chelle. “The damage is already done. Besides, New Tuscany doesn’t have the facilities to regrow what I’ve lost anyway. Our infirmary won’t be able to do much more for me than Sam already has. If I want to fix my hand properly, I’ll have to go offworld.” She shrugged. “And it won’t matter if I wait a few more weeks to make that trip.”

Puzzled, Chelle sat back. She turned to Sam, who could only shrug. His expression showed he was just as perplexed as she was. After chewing on the matter for a moment, Chelle finally challenged Triss, “Alright, what’s really going on here?”

Triss looked up from her bandaged hand. “What do you mean?”

“The other day, you didn’t want anything to do with the legend of the Spero, and you barely wanted anything to do with me and Sam,” Chelle said. “But now you suddenly want to stay out here with us, even after a celomander almost took your arm?” She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

Triss faced Chelle steadily for a long moment. Then she turned to Sam and asked, “Do you want to find the Spero?”

Surprised, and uncomfortable at being put on the spot, Sam wriggled his shoulders noncommittally. “Well, yeah, of course I do, but—”

Triss cut him off and turned to Chelle. “And do you want to find it?”

Chelle blinked. “I... I guess.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Triss asked. “We’re just going to finish what we started and do something we all want to do. Why should my injury stop us?”

Sam cleared his throat, “I see your point, but Chelle’s right; this... just doesn’t seem like you.”

“Why does that matter?” Triss scowled defensively. “Did we come out here to find the Spero or to find ourselves?”

With a wounded expression, Sam hung his head. “Well, it looks like you came out here only to find the Spero.”

Triss’s brow wrinkled. “Was there something else we were supposed to be looking for?”

Sam shook his head. “Never mind. If you want to keep going, that’s fine; we can keep going.”

“Good. Then we’ll keep going.” She frowned at her mangled hand. “And I’ll make sure not to wander off without a squealer fob again.”

Sam sighed and flashed a brief, defeated glance at Chelle. Then his gaze slid to the floor. “Whatever you want, Triss. Get some rest, I guess. We’ll head out at first light.”

“At first light,” she agreed with a nod.

Without much else to say, the trio eventually settled back to sleep.

Proceed to chapter 5...

Copyright © 2022 by Nemo West

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