by T. Y. Carew
All at once, Drew felt very dizzy. The darkness got even darker and blessed unconsciousness overtook him.
***
“Colonel Finlay, why is it disaster shows up wherever you go?” General Kelton didn’t sound very happy.
“Sir, we received a distress signal and responded to render assistance. It was our duty. Nothing that happened after that was anybody’s fault, except the Beltine's.” Xander had enough marks on his record, he didn’t need the loss of the Carson going down as somehow his fault.
“The loss of a valuable crew member under your command is your responsibility no matter who else was involved. Besides, you had orders. What were your orders?”
Xander groaned inwardly. It was like a lecture from his mom when he forgot to feed the dog or take out the trash. “We were to orbit Planet Nine-Five-Nine A and survey the geology and topography for the possibility of finding Adamanta and then secure the planet for incoming exploration crews.”
“And is that what you are doing?”
“Yes, sir. No. No, sir, but—.”
“I don’t want to hear it, Finlay. Speaking frankly, and off the record, of course, I applaud what you did, abandoning your post to render assistance. I’m a traditionalist. I still believe in all the old military values, but I’m not at the top of the food chain. For our investors, it’s all bottom line stuff and having too many people in the organization thinking for themselves costs time and money. This isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation.”
General Kelton paused, but Xander could tell it wasn’t his turn to speak.
“There are already ships on the way. Several are responding to the initial distress call and they should be there in a little over a day.”
“But sir,” Xander said, “Drew is out there and we are his best hope of survival.”
“I understand that. You have forty-eight hours from the time the lifeboats launched and then I want you back on your assigned station. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Xander said. “Thank you, General Kelton.”
“The Carson was assigned to protect a commercial development on Alton Three. I expect you to take over that role until you are relieved. Recovering pods is secondary. I want you to make a visit planet-side first thing and see that they are unharmed. Then you can get back to your humanitarian efforts. Are we clear?”
“Yes, General.”
“Your orders should be coming through now.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The general signed off in the middle of Xander’s words.
Xander pulled himself together, smoothed his uniform and made his way to the cockpit.
“Do we have our orders?” he asked Trey.
“On your monitor now,” Trey said.
Xander took his station and called up the file onscreen.
“General Kelton has generously granted us two days to look for Drew. But only after we make a visit to Alton Three and see how the developers are doing.” Xander wasn’t surprised by the groan that greeted those words. “He didn’t say we couldn’t search between here and the planet. Trey, do you think you can pick up Drew’s comm signal?”
“I’m already on it, sir.”
“Good. Tyra, the quicker we get to the planet surface, the quicker we can get back to work finding Drew.”
“Aye, sir!” Tyra gave him a reptilian grin. “Landing Our Lady will be quicker than taking a shuttle.” As usual, she set a course before Xander could respond.
***
Finding any survival pods in the small distance to the planet was a long shot that didn’t pay off. The tiny lifeboats'd had a good head start and were likely well beyond the area.
There were no responses to Xander’s attempts to communicate with the planet surface. He wondered what they were walking into.
From orbit, the planet was a dull brown, with some blue patches and just the faintest traces of green.
As the ship settled onto the surface, Xander could see that the inhabited area of Alton Three was a huge construction site. Towering cranes hoisted sections of framework for robotic welders to attach to the structures already in place. Work proceeded on the skeletons of buildings and domes for as far as Xander could see. There was a large landing area, but no docking bays. That meant the crew of Contessa would have to walk to the nearest airlock.
Xander hated wearing a breathing mask. To him it seemed as bad as he imagined it was like being in a rescue pod. The strong gravity weighed on him before he even left his ship.
If there were any other ships on the planet, they were not visible. A Beltine craft might well be hidden from any craft coming in for landing. As for human ships, maybe they were in hangars or underground somewhere. Xander found it puzzling.
No one came to greet Contessa’s crewmembers as they disembarked. Their only welcome were signs and arrows stenciled on the synthetic landing surface directing them to the ‘Project Office.’
As they trudged the half a mile or so to the entrance, Xander was surprised that no security personnel or even curious construction workers came to meet the new arrivals. Had the Beltine already been to the surface? If so, it seemed like there would be physical damage apparent. Then again, with miles of building fragments in every direction, it would be hard to tell.
***
Trey felt tense. Nothing he saw made sense. The place was a ghost town. Nobody challenged them and there were no ground vehicles in evidence. He could tell that his twin, Tyra, also felt uncomfortable, but that might just be nervousness at leaving her beloved ship unoccupied and unprotected. This was a breach of protocol, but the landing crew needed a tech officer and General Kelton had specified Tyra fill the void created by Drew’s absence.
If he were pressed for an answer, Trey would have to admit that he sometimes found Drew a little annoying. There were times when the techie became so excited at having data to collect that he completely neglected his own personal safety. Of course, it was Trey’s job to see to the security of the crew, but most of them tried not to walk off cliffs.
“Colonel, I think we should proceed with caution. This doesn’t seem right.”
Mattie stopped and faced Xander. “I agree,” she said. “We might be walking into a trap.”
“Tyra?” Xander said.
“Agreed,” the pilot answered.
“Then it’s unanimous. I’ve never seen anything like this. There must be people here somewhere—but where?”
Trey stopped and surveyed the area in a complete circle. Nothing seemed amiss, but nothing seemed right, either. At least the cranes and welders continued to work.
A gigantic forklift zipped by in front of them carrying a huge stack of girders. It passed between two cranes and disappeared from sight.
“Purely robotic,” Trey said. “That machine must be operated by a central computer that coordinates the entire operation.”
He expected he would feel some apprehension if they were walking into danger, but none of his old familiar alarm bells was going off. The unaccustomed pull of gravity was weighing him down, forcing him to keep to a slow pace. It felt like the strange planet was stealing time that Drew couldn’t spare.
***
The trek from the ship to the project office seemed to take forever, but their destination was finally at hand. Xander took a deep breath and let it out.
“I think we should go in with weapons ready,” he told the crew. They all armed themselves.
Trey and Matt stood on either side of the outer airlock hatch and Xander and Tyra hung back. The door slid open revealing an empty airlock. The inner door had a transparent panel and Xander could see no one inside. The outer hatch closed and the inner door opened as soon as the air had time to cycle. The planet had an atmosphere, so they were spared the tedium of waiting for the lock to pressurize. It was a simple matter of flushing one atmosphere with another.
The group carefully exited the airlock in a combat-ready stance, checking in all directions. They found no danger awaiting them. Xa
nder had half expected to see a swarm of Dairos.
Hallways branched off from the lock in two directions.
Matt already had two swords in the air and her tiny cameras moving forward.
Xander exchanged glances with Trey, who shrugged. “Well, then, let’s be alert and get this over with.”
Feeling a bit freer with his mask stowed, Xander considered his next course of action. They could split up and take separate directions, or they could stick together and flip a coin on which way to go first. At this point, Xander was not willing to let any of his crew out of his sight. Until Drew was back in the fold, Xander intended to keep the others close.
“Left,” he said at last.
Matt took point and Xander followed, with the twins covering the rear.
“This is creepy,” Matt said. “Where is everyone?”
The hallway curved to the right and a door appeared ahead.
“Combat positions,” Xander said unnecessarily. “I go through the door first.”
“Xander, I don’t think—I mean, Colonel,” Mattie began.
“No argument,” Xander said. His newfound protective streak was tugging at him.
“Xander,” Trey said, “this hatch has no lock, no touchpad and no biometrics.”
Xander gave him a puzzled glance and reached out to the door. It swung open easily. The four rushed in ready for a fight, but there were no signs of life. At least not the kind they were expecting.
The door opened into a room with bunk beds lining two walls, and footlockers under the bunks. The beds were unmade. Covers hung in messy tangles. The footlockers were ajar. Clothes littered the floor.
Down the center of the room were card tables and chairs. Playing cards were scattered on one table and a chessboard with pieces in disarray sat in the center of the other. Plates and glasses were stacked at the corners and under the tables.
There was a wide doorway at the other end of the room. Matt and Tyra cautiously entered.
Xander and Trey poked through the mess for any clues.
“This room appears to have been ransacked.” Trey said.
“I don’t think so,” Matt said, returning from the other room. “The bathroom and showers don’t appear to have been cleaned for years. I think these people just live like pigs.”
“It certainly isn’t a military operation,” Tyra said, lifting a wrinkled pair of khakis with the toe of her boot. “And with a mess like this, we have to assume this place was occupied by humans.” She grinned.
Xander turned back to the hallway. “If this is the crew quarters, what’s down the other way?”
Xander somehow doubted they would encounter any danger after what he had seen, but he kept his guard up anyway.
Chapter 3
03 hours, 45 minutes, 53 seconds
Drew awoke to a fuzzy state of consciousness. How long have I been out? he wondered. He sniffed the air. Not too long, I guess. The air still smells good. Low humidity. Easy to breathe, so there must be a low carbon dioxide level. He laughed at himself. Always taking readings, even without instruments. That thought caught him off guard. Drew hadn’t used his own senses like that in many, many years. He always had meters and testers, and didn’t bother with his body’s own observations.
If only he could see something. In a state of weightlessness, with no visual references, Drew could not tell much about his situation. Was he spinning? There was no way to tell. He might be tumbling end over end. There was no way to know. Was he hurtling through space at fifty thousand miles per hour, or hanging stationary—perhaps even orbiting some body like a planet or asteroid. Was he flying head first or feet first? Or sideways? Face up or face down? Was there even such a thing in space? He’d never thought about it before. In Contessa they had artificial gravity, so he knew the floor was the floor and the ceiling was the ceiling. If the ship rolled one hundred and eighty degrees, he was still right side up, because the floor was still the floor and the ceiling was still the ceiling.
As for day or night, there was no such thing in space even if you weren’t stuck in a capsule with no windows. Clocks were not even very relevant. On board the ship, you lived on ship’s time. For the sake of normalcy, everyone worked a common shift and then took four-hour watches, so someone was always monitoring the bridge. But ship’s time was a meaningless construct. Once upon a time, all ships were synced with Earth time—a thing called Greenwich Mean. Drew barely remembered what that meant, but it referred somehow to the position of a home star in relation to the rotation of a planet, specifically Earth around Sol, although later other planets in other star systems had their own time schemes.
If there was no clock in his little box, did that mean that time did not exist? A grim thought occurred. In his tight little space, time was counted by the CO2 level in the air. Eternity was a mere forty-eight hours, give or take. Time ticked off in breaths, not seconds.
Drew tried to push such thoughts from his mind, but couldn’t keep them out. Again and again he found himself trying to calculate the number of breaths in a forty-eight hour period. He was probably lucky that he didn’t know the precise volume of his prison or the specs of the rebreather system.
All at once, Drew’s thinking shifted from the technical to his friends. ‘You think too much with your head and not enough with your heart.’ Trey had said that to Drew one time. It was a puzzling statement back then. Especially coming from such a no-nonsense person as Trey. Obviously, Trey had a sensitive side. He must, if he was able to communicate silently with his twin and join her in healing injured humans. Come to think of it, Trey always seemed to know when I was feeling down and come to cheer me up. It saddened Drew to think that he hadn’t been as good a friend to Trey.
Mattie was another one. Drew wished he hadn’t been so annoying. She was a complicated person full of grief, anger and drive, and Drew just wanted her to lighten up. Or open up. Mattie was a hard person to get to know. Drew hoped he would get out of his current situation so he could make amends for how he acted.
Tyra was great. Drew always felt like he could open up to her. Maybe it was because she was a woman and he felt safe being vulnerable, or maybe it was because she knew when to be sensitive and when to joke around. He would have to thank her for that.
Xander was a tough one. He had the air of command, although he was rarely harsh, but Drew found himself constantly trying to please the colonel and constantly feeling that he had fallen short. He would have to try harder to live up to Xander’s expectations.
There were probably others Drew could name, but no one he spent as much time around as his teammates. They were his family and he hoped they were safe.
***
The corridor to the right of the airlock ended in another door. This one had a small window at face level. Xander was surprised to again find no lock or touch pad. What kind of operation were they running here? Peeking cautiously through the glass, he saw no sign of danger. He nodded for Matt and Trey to go in, and then followed with Tyra.
The door swung open into a big room of electronics. Row upon row of computer frames crowded narrow aisles. Directly ahead was a curved wall, covered in computer screens and video monitors. The screens scrolled constantly, probably displaying status reports and other data. The monitors showed close-ups of the various construction activities in progress.
As he scanned the room, Xander saw the other walls similarly outfitted.
Directly ahead in the room was a single high-backed chair.
“Hello?” Xander called out. It seemed an odd but appropriate thing to do under the circumstances.
The chair slowly began to turn. Tyra and Trey dropped to combat stances and Matt sent two of her zappers into flight.
“Oh, hello.” A handsome man with a thick wave of blond hair blinked and then broke into a toothy smile. “How may I help you?” He jumped to his feet so suddenly that Xander almost squeezed the trigger of his pistol. The man rushed forward. “I’m Otto Provis,” he said, grabbing Xander’s hand in bot
h of his and pumping furiously. He gave each member of the crew the same treatment. Tyra looked at her hand in apparent distaste.
“Colonel Finlay,” Xander said. “And this is the crew of the Lady Contessa.” Xander didn’t bother with individual introductions; he didn’t plan to be around long enough for it to matter.
“Welcome to Provis Paradise!” the man said, spreading his arms as though he was showing them the latest model of ground cruiser. “I know it doesn’t look like much now, but in a matter of months this will be the place you’ll want to visit, vacation and retire. It is going to be grand. The greatest!” He spun around to a wall of displays. “Show rendering.”
The screens joined in one wall-sized image of a gleaming city of glass, with tall buildings, shiny domes, lakes and green grass and trees far into the distance. It was much different from the bleak, rocky landscape Xander had seen on the way in.
“Are you here alone?” Trey asked.
“Oh, no,” Otto said, beaming his big smile. “I have a crew of a dozen or so—I haven’t counted lately. They’re out setting up terra-forming stations. I stayed behind to supervise construction. It’s going along perfectly. The whole project is pre-programmed, so I only have to watch for little glitches—or I can make changes if I need to. I’ve made quite a few.”
Xander felt his anger welling up. “This isn’t a colony?”
“Oh, no,” Otto said. “Not in the strictest sense. No, this is my city, my planet, my world! Mostly. I have a group of investors and stockholders, but this is my concept. It’s going to make un-dreamed-of amounts of money. If you want, you can get in on the ground floor. You’ll increase your investment ten to the tenth power!”
“So this is a private commercial operation. Are you aware that an entire carrier ship with two hundred crew was blown out of the sky protecting your project?” Xander was beside himself with anger.
“Why, no. I don’t pay attention to all that stuff. It doesn’t interest me.”
Xander couldn’t even speak.
“The Beltine could be swarming all over this place,” Mattie said. “Where’s your security?”
