Into the Fire

by Mark Tufo

  That gave them plenty of battery power, but that was not Paul’s primary concern.

  “Alright, if we don’t use the buckle drive, just regular propulsion, how long to get back to Earth?” Paul asked, dreading the answer he was expecting. He placed his right hand in his pocket hoping no one would notice that he had crossed his fingers in anticipation.

  Again there was another pause as the man on the other side thought out his answer. “Twenty-two years and three months, give or take a week.”

  Beth gasped. Paul’s stomach felt like he’d been punched.

  “Twenty-two years to get back to Earth.” Paul had been standing, now he sat down heavily in one of the abandoned chairs at the control panel.

  “Do we have enough food?” Beth questioned.

  “We’ve got the food stores, but what difference does it make? By the time we make it back, there will be nothing worth saving. I should have stayed. At least we could have become a battering ram and made some sort of lasting impression on those bastards. I’m going to my quarters. Grimmons, let me know once you can get into the coupling room and then give me a more thorough update.”

  Beth started to follow Paul out.

  “I’d rather be alone,” he told her.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Paul had a litany of things he wanted to tell her, some involved finding an open hatch. He wisely said nothing as he left.

  “What have I done?” Paul asked as he sat on his bed. He was in the same position when Grimmons contacted him three hours later.

  “Fire is out, sir, and I’ve surveyed the damage. It’s about as bad as I thought it would be. I can have us operational in a couple of hours, but the buckle drive is off-grid unless we find a spaceship parts store somewhere in the vicinity.”

  “Fine,” Paul replied. Curtly shutting down his comms gear, he’d thought about berating the man for his attempt at humor. Though what was the point? He had the next couple of decades to make the man pay.

  Beth came in just as Paul settled down on the bed, his fingers interlaced under his head as he stared up at the ceiling.

  “Do you think Mike made it?”

  “Why did you even bother marrying me?” he asked without turning to look at her.

  “If he made it, he’ll come looking for us.”

  “In what, Beth? Not too many interstellar spaceships lying around he could use.”

  “Can’t we use the fighters to get back?”

  “They’re faster than this ship on regular thrust, but they don’t use buckle drives. You’d maybe shave a couple of years off that time frame if you had the power to make it, which they don’t.”

  “I don’t want to die out here, Paul.”

  “None of us do. If you have any ideas, I’m listening.” She said nothing. “The one time I want you to say something you’re silent, should have figured.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “What about this is fair? Want to know what this is? This is payback for getting Mike and Tracy killed, that’s what this is. Karma coming full circle. How could I have listened to you? Mike didn’t want to run things; he wasn’t conspiring in the wings trying to figure out how to get rid of me. I let your poisonous thoughts worm themselves into my head, and now this is the outcome. They’re dead and we’re exiled.”

  “I didn’t want Mike dead,” she said vehemently.

  “No, that’s right, you wanted Tracy dead. Bet you didn’t figure he would go running headlong into danger to find her. No, you were going to stay with him and help him through that difficult time, console him even. Be that shoulder to cry on. He showed you, he showed all of us what he was all about though, didn’t he? Does someone who cares solely for power endanger himself to the point of death to save another? I have no one to blame but myself. You may have been whispering in my ear, but I’m the one who listened to you. Everything you did was not to protect me, but rather to get back with Mike. How could I be so blind? It was all right there in front of me.”

  Beth was again silent, as he’d finally let the truth blaze through. She’d wondered how long she’d be able to play the game before he saw it for what it was. Her hope was that she would be with Mike by the time he’d figured it out. She’d fallen woefully short of her goal. Now, her fear was that she was going to die alone in space. “It’s not like that, Paul. Yes, I cared for him.” She moved closer.

  “Don’t…don’t even think of getting on this bed.”

  Beth halted her progress but not her words. “We’re…we’re all each other has right now.”

  “Wrong, you’re all you have right now, and knowing your selfish tendencies that should be plenty. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass when you leave, you don’t want any damage to that asset while you go and look to fuck someone else’s life over.”

  Beth was shaking in impotent rage, her fists clenched as she looked down upon her husband. “Mike wouldn’t have given up. Mike would be able to get me out of this!” And with that, she turned and left.

  Chapter 3

  CHAPTER THREE – MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 2

  “I have detected something,” one of the Stryvers said.

  Was it alienist of me that I couldn’t tell them apart? I had no desire to learn the species well enough to discern the differences; just looking at them was psychological warfare. Again, I couldn’t tell if this was broadcast for everyone or just them. I did my best to not react to his words just in case. I knew this was the right thing to do when Tracy and BT did not say anything.

  “Do you think they have food on this thing?” BT asked me.

  “I’m sure they do. Are you sure you would want to eat anything they might have?” I responded.

  “I didn’t even think of that.” He seemed sad; although, how you could think about eating after looking at those monstrosities was a mystery. It would be like eating steak while watching an autopsy. Again…who does that shit?

  There was a prompt from the Stryver commander to explain what the other had found.

  “It is the sign of a ship, but it is too faint to detect the actual signature. Do you wish me to plot a course to follow?”

  I didn’t know it until Tracy said something, but I was softly repeating the word “yes.”

  “Mike, are you alright? I’m talking about checking BT’s wound and you’re mumbling yes over and over like you’re thirteen and you’re going to get your first look at a female breast.”

  “What? Breasts? I mean, they are important.” I was trying to follow two conversations. How could I tell them I could hear the Stryvers’ hidden communications? The commander told him to plot a course.

  I held up two fingers.

  “What the hell, Mike?” Tracy asked.

  “Two words,” I told them.

  They got that quick enough.

  I tilted my hand back like I was drinking something, and then I staggered.

  “Drinking a soda,” Tracy blurted out like she was going to get points.

  “More like beer…you’re drunk,” BT added.

  “Sort of.”

  “There’s no talking in charades.”

  “Really, honey? Okay, how about this, where would one potentially play charades and drink beer?”

  Tracy’s eyebrows furrowed. “A party?” she asked.

  I touched my nose like we were still friggin’ playing. Old habits die hard.

  “Maybe a lame ass white person party. You’d never see me playing that game.”

  “Yet you seem to know all the visual cues,” I told him. He flipped me off. “Okay, so we have ‘party’. I then slashed the air with my index finger from right to left.

  “Line?” Tracy asked instantly.

  “Don’t put the two together, I don’t know if they would understand the reference. Certainly no need to test it though,” I told them. Both were looking at me in a questioning manner. “It’s like I have one (meaning ‘party line’) and I spend my Saturdays in the kitchen on the phone checking things out.” It was vague
but all the pieces were there.

  Tracy found the meaning before BT. “Are you kidding me? How?”

  I shook my head then shrugged.

  “Wait I don’t get...oh fuck, now I do. How bad is it?”

  “Worse than you can imagine, but not immediately.”

  “That’s horrifying, that’s like waking up to a group of cats encircling your bed,” Tracy said.

  BT and I first looked at each other and then her. “Does that happen to you a lot?” he asked.

  “Childhood nightmare.”

  “White people.” He sighed.

  “Me and you are going to talk about that one later when we have some time. I cannot believe I have to live with the imagery of that from now on,” I told her.

  “So now what?” BT asked.

  “I would imagine it is going to get interesting real soon.”

  “Interesting how? Like becoming a meal interesting?”

  “No wait...” I held a finger up. While we were talking amongst ourselves I had been monitoring the Stryvers’ conversation as well. I cannot even begin to acknowledge how difficult this was for me. I’m the type of person that if I am on the phone and someone talks to me where I’m at, I will lose both conversations. My finger was still precariously hanging in the air. I rapidly put it down. “And go.”

  Just then the commander spoke with us. “We have detected your Guardian’s trail. We are going to dock with our forbearer ship and then begin pursuit.”

  Tracy gasped, maybe from the news but more likely from my newfound superpower.

  “Does this make me more appealing to you?”

  “Because you can spider whisper? Less.”

  BT laughed.

  “How?” I asked the commander. I guess that was what he was. I couldn’t really call him “giant-ass spider meshed with centaur thingy that makes my insides quake like jelly.”

  “We will perform small buckle leaps until we pick up a stronger trail. If we were to buckle past their location it could take an inordinate amount of time to backtrack and pick their wake up again.”

  It seemed to me it would be easy enough to just backtrack to the last known location, but obviously I have no idea how shit works in space.

  “How long does something like this take?”

  “It depends on how long they stay in the buckle and where they go. Certain spots in the universe have strange properties that can make following extremely difficult. We could be upon them in hours or months.”

  “Hours, I vote for hours.” It was out of my mind and mouth before I could stop it.

  “This is not a situation that is resultant on a vote,” the commander told me.

  “Good one,” BT said to me when the commander went back to what he had been doing.

  “Mike, if we’re up here for months what about Travis?” Tracy looked like I’d gut punched her.

  “It won’t be months. The Guardian is banged up, he only had to go as far as needed to get away and lick his wounds.” That’s what I hoped anyway. There was no way I could know for certain. Maybe the buckle drive was stuck and even now he was racing to the edge of the galaxy and preparing to fall off the side.

  Chapter 4

  CHAPTER FOUR – DRABABAN

  “It has been two weeks, little one. I wish I knew where your parents were.” Drababan was sitting on the front deck. Travis would alternate between sitting on the giant’s lap and racing around the large enclosed porch, playing with his toys that were scattered all around.

  “How are you doing?” Tony, Mike’s father, asked as he walked out the door.

  “I am concerned for the safety and welfare of Michael and his mate.”

  “Tracy.”

  “Yes, I know her name.”

  Tony shook his head. “Well, I’ll admit I’m more than a little concerned myself. Those reports coming over the ham radio about a nuclear explosion outside of Los Angeles are upsetting.”

  They’d been listening nightly to the ad-hoc reporters talk about the Genogerian uprising and how the Genos had been running through and over everything set in their path. Then the talk turned to how the Marines and some gangs had stopped them in their tracks. Drababan had known the instant he’d heard that, that Mike had something to do with it. It had filled his heart with pride, hope, and then dread as the reports once again turned dark. The barricades had fallen, and as a last resort, a nuke had been detonated. Losses on both sides had been astronomical. He knew deep down that Mike would set that bomb off only if no other alternative presented itself.

  “I need to go out west, Mike’s sire.”

  “Tony, my name is Tony.”

  “I know this. That, however, does not alter my mission.”

  “What could you possibly find out, Drababan? You’d never be able to get close enough. The ground around there is going to glow for years. Even if you could, there will be no evidence for you to discern who lived and who died. If Mike is alive, which I choose to believe by the way, he will do all in his power to make it back here.”

  “What if he is injured?”

  “Do you have a beacon mounted to him?”

  “I do not. He would never allow it, although I would like to do so.”

  Tony smiled. “Yeah, I suppose I’d like to have had one on him as well for all those times I thought he was studying and he was out getting in trouble instead. He would have figured out how to hack it and make it look like he was at the library all the time anyway.”

  Travis looked up and yelled just as a flock of birds alit from a tree a few hundred yards off. Sixty or more of them squawked as they took flight. Immediately afterward a small tremor shook the house.

  “Earthquake?” Tony asked. “In Maine? That’s pretty unusual.”

  “Not an earthquake.” Dee stood. “Ordinance.”

  “From cannons or ships?” Tony was looking around.

  “Spaceship. The Progerians have returned. How far is your largest population center?”

  “Bangor or Portland I suppose. An hour for the first and two for the second.”

  “It was Portland. If Bangor had been struck we would have felt it more.”

  “Are you sure? How could we possibly feel an impact to something over a hundred miles away?”

  Birds now littered the sky as all sought refuge in the air. The porch once again vibrated, this time much more heavily. It caused the plants that were hung on hooks to rock back and forth. Travis ran towards Dee with his arms outstretched. Dee picked him up and pulled him close.

  “That was Bangor,” Dee informed him.

  Chapter 5

  CHAPTER FIVE – MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 3

  We were on a forbearer ship. But it’s difficult to call it anything resembling a vessel. I’ll try, though. I’d watched a documentary by National Geographic once where some scientist had the smart idea to fill an anthill with molten aluminum. It was somewhere in Africa with those giant ants, and I can’t remember exactly how many gallons of material he’d used, but it had been a crazy amount. I remember thinking at the time that the ants probably weren’t too keen on this, but what I wouldn’t have done for a giant drum of the aluminum to put into the thing I was looking at right now. Anyway, once they’d killed all the ants and the aluminum cooled and hardened, a team of grad students began to dig out this monolithic structure. It was enormous, with huge tunnels that led to a multitude of separate pods and rooms designed for a variety of reasons. There was a central large hub that branched out into hundreds of offshoots in varying sizes. All of it had looked like a random jumble to one who suffers from OCD. For the Stryvers, it was their forbearer ship. We’d be on that cluster-fuck of hallways and entryways for a couple of weeks.

  We’d no sooner docked and left the shuttle than I made some concerns known. I hoped the meat of me didn’t get mechanically separated for the trouble. If we, as a world, still made chicken nuggets, that reference would make more sense, as you could look at the back of the package and the ingredients. Nothing says delicious like “me
chanically separated chicken.” Who knew robots could be assholes, too.

  “Umm, Commander? At some point we are going to need basic necessities like food, water, and preferably something more forgiving than whatever this metal type stuff is to rest on,” I said, slowly approaching.

  “They are an ungrateful, needy little species, are they not?” one of them sneered.

  “Perhaps we should feed the female one to the two males. Her nourishment should be enough to sustain them until we can get their taint off of our ship. It disturbs me to no end to look upon them.”

  I was the width of a baby’s hair from telling him, “likewise.”

  “Yes, we have not taken care of your needs,” the commander said, and that was it for a good ole long while. I wasn’t going to bring it back up in case they made good on their threat to feed us Tracy. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t appreciate that.

  It was at least fifteen minutes later when he spoke to his subordinate. “Get them some water and protein packets.” Then he turned to me. “We have water and food in the form of protein.”

  I was thinking that protein comes in many forms, from beans to hamburgers to fucking crickets. Who knew what the hell or where the hell they got their protein from. We could go a good long while without food as long as we had water. I was coming to terms with the fact that I was going to be hungry for a while. I wondered how many days I could go before a bag of spider food started to sound good. A fucking bunch.

  “Thank you,” I told him.

  “We cannot do much about your biological needs. We function very differently as a species. Our elimination facilities would not be suitable for any of you. As well, the sleeping that you require will have to be on the floor. We do not sleep so much as rest, and when we do, we stay standing.”

  “Fair enough. The water and food will be more than sufficient, thank you. We’ll use the bags for waste.”

  “I’m not peeing in a bag, Talbot,” Tracy complained.