by C. R. Turner
I’m halfway through testing for viral infections and chemical agents, and my eyes are getting sore. I can’t rub them, so instead settle for a solid squint.
“What’s wrong?” Bradley asks.
“I’m starting to go cross-eyed.”
“Doesn’t lab equipment like this normally have auto-search functions?”
I raise my eyebrows. “How do you know that?”
“I heard you geeking out with Miller one day.”
“Oh … yeah they do,” I reply. “But the touch screen’s all in gibberish.”
Bradley chuckles. “Why don’t you ask one of these fellas how to use it?”
I laugh. “You’ve been hanging around Sam and I too long.”
“Why’s that?” Bradley asks with both a frown and a smile.
“You’re coming over to the dark side.”
After an hour of testing, I place the last slide into the nanoscope. More hybrid nanoids but no viral infections or chemical agents, just like the others. I sit back. Sample tubes, slides and used syringes litter the bench. I pull my hood off and go to breathe some fresh air when the foul stench of the room hits me.
“Stinson, what are you doing?” Bradley asks.
“There’s no viral infections and all the hybrid nanoids are deactivated. I’m sure it’s safe,” I reply.
Bradley removes his hood. I turn my Core-link off and Bradley follows suit.
“Do you think we should test Marcus’ theory about electrolytes?” I ask.
“Do you think it will work?” Bradley asks.
“No,” I reply, “but I’d like to test it, just to shut him up.”
Bradley gives me a thin smile as he nods.
I get a new syringe and needle out of my backpack and draw some blood from my left arm. After depositing a small sample on one of the slides, I place it back into the nanoscope.
I watch for a couple of minutes. “Nope … nothing.”
“Alright, pack it up. I’ve seen enough,” Bradley orders.
Once I’ve cleaned up, I make sure the ten sample tubes are properly sealed before packing them into my backpack.
“What are you doing?” Bradley asks.
“I wanted to take the samples home with us. I thought SI could run DNA sequencing on them to be used as evidence. Plus, I thought the nanoids could be studied.”
“Are you sure that’s safe?”
“I’m sure. They’re in a biohazard bag, and none of the nanoids are active.”
“Alright … good thinking, Stinson.”
We return to the Hurricane and remove our hazmat suits.
As we pack our gear away, I ask, “Has Marcus always been so arrogant?”
Bradley glances up. “Yeah. Although, now he seems bitter.”
“Do you think it’s from his time in prison?” I ask.
Bradley nods. “Probably.”
I stop packing our gear. “Can I ask you something?”
Bradley deadpans. “The fact you have to ask permission to ask worries me.”
I finally pluck up the courage. “Why do you father me?”
Bradley freezes with pursed lips. When he glances away, I see his eyes glisten. My heart sinks.
We lock eyes as he replies sombrely, “Because you’re the age my son would have been if he were still alive. You remind me of him sometimes.”
“Oh … I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No … that’s alright.”
I smile inwardly.
“What?” Bradley asks.
“Oh … it’s just … you’re roughly the same age my father would have been. You’re each polar opposites in most ways, but from time to time I see a side of you that reminds me of him.”
We share a smile as we finish packing.
Back at the flight deck, the rest of the team stop and look up as Bradley and I walk back down the ramp. I hold up my palm to shield the blinding glare from Barchee’s star, still low on the horizon as it rises. Damn, the days are long on this planet. We’ve already been at it for hours.
“How did you go?” Marcus asks.
“There’s no sign of a pathogen and we couldn’t get the nanoids to reactivate,” I say.
“So how did they die?” Hawkins asks.
I shrug. “The only thing I can say is that with the absence of any viruses, it’s highly likely the nanoids are the culprit, but without a full autopsy, I don’t think we’ll be able to determine the cause of death.”
“Could it be chemical?” Hawkins asks.
“I don’t think so. The Chem-tracer didn’t detect anything. I guess it’s possible the chemical was non-persistent, but why would they all be huddled in the infirmary like that?”
Bradley glares at Marcus. “Have you got this bird ready for lift-off yet?”
Marcus looks up. “Pos, sir.”
Bradley orders the Cosmic Origin flight crew to leave and wait for us in space as Marcus, Sam, Taylor and Emerson busy themselves for lift-off. The noise of the colliders fills the bridge. Hawkins joins me and we stand together patting Max and Jade. I think Hawkins admires the canines just as much as Sam and me.
The Cosmic Origin catches my eye as it flies out of the fighter bay. When it’s clear of the Timberwolf, it shoots into the sky. A sonic boom thuds against the bridge’s thick glass and my heart skips a beat. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard a starship break the speed of sound and for a second there, I thought something had gone horribly wrong.
The Timberwolf lifts off and after a minute we’re on our way, the colliders sounding as if they’re running flat out as we ascend. The blue sky fades to black.
Bradley looks squarely at Marcus. “You’re sure the Cosmic Origin knows we’re going to Te Enthai?”
“Yes,” Marcus replies. “I’ve double-checked it, and Samantha went down there when it was docked and physically checked the catalogue entry.”
There’s an awkward silence.
“Sir … we’re waiting for your command,” Marcus says.
“Dive,” Bradley orders.
I glance at the Cosmic Origin to our port side, wondering if this is the last time we’ll ever see it. I know every time we head off-world there’s a real possibility one or more of us won’t return, but heading to a planet on the other side of the galaxy just seems fraught with danger.
The bridge plunges into darkness, and I lean against one of the flight deck consoles to steady myself. The dive feels as if it takes twice as long as normal, and when we arrive in the Te Enthai system, we all gaze upon a huge gas giant off the port side. There’s a rich variety of earthly creams, tans and brown bands wrapping around the immense sphere. Several huge cream spots have brown eddies of gas swirling around them. With how close we emerged from the Bridgeport, I wonder if Te Enthai orbits this gas giant.
I wander over to Sam and Marcus, who are talking animatedly. “What’s wrong?”
Sam’s eyebrows are pushed hard together. “Te Enthai’s not appearing on the Timberwolf’s sensors.”
Marcus walks over to Sam’s console, sits next to her and they both look up at the holograph.
“This can’t be right,” Marcus says.
“Don’t tell me we went to the wrong system?” Bradley asks.
Marcus screws his face up. “This can’t be. It should be here.”
The holograph suddenly changes, and the ship veers off course. Marcus runs back to his console.
“Sir,” Emerson yells. “I’ve lost control from this console.”
Marcus and Emerson frantically punch away at the controls, but nothing they do seems to have any effect.
Marcus’ panicked face is slowly evolving into one of resignation. “We’ve lost all control.”
“What?” Bradley scowls.
I walk to the forward windscreens wondering where the Timberwolf is taking us, while the rest of the team keep trying desperately to regain control of the situation. Something up ahead of the ship has my eye, but I can’t quite work out what I’m looking at.
I stare into the black emptiness of space. Bradley and Hawkins join me.
“What are you looking at?” Hawkins asks.
“Straight ahead … the stars are disappearing.”
“Marcus,” Bradley hollers.
The rest of the team join us. The ship flying by itself with no one at the controls is really disconcerting.
“What?” Marcus asks.
“There … the stars are disappearing,” I repeat.
“What?” Marcus’ face is so contorted he looks completely beside himself.
Stars over the bow disappear one by one. They’re in a tight group, as if they’re all being affected by the same thing. The team are rendered silent. We just stand there for a few minutes in a trance.
I hear Marcus swallow and then splutter, “It’s like … there’s something in front of the ship blocking out the stars, some kind of black-body that’s absorbing all the light.”
Sam’s voice cracks. “Could it be a black hole?”
Marcus shakes his head. “No. This is … something …”
The rate the stars disappear increases. There’s now a giant disc of darkness in front of us. Something tells me we’re just along for the ride now. The stars are disappearing so fast now that whatever it is, we must be about to run into it or be devoured by it – I’m not sure which.
Bradley’s jaw is ajar, his eyes narrowed in a heavy frown. “What the hell is that?”
The Timberwolf’s bow disappears as though we’re passing through some kind of barrier. In a fraction of a second, everything forward of the bridge disappears. A bright flash fills the bridge, and I shield my eyes. The surface of a planet is dead ahead. It must be Te Enthai, surely! Sunlight from Te Enthai’s star glares from behind us, and there’s blue sky as far as the eye can see. A storming bow wave grows as we build speed, then fades a minute later as the Timberwolf slows.
There’s not much in the way of oceans on this planet – the surface is like one giant city. The Timberwolf levels out at around ten thousand feet and changes course. Everyone’s speechless. The cityscape is impressive: tall city buildings, a spaceport, massive factories and huge energy canons every few square miles. The planet looks as heavily weaponised as the Timberwolf. As we slow to a few hundred miles an hour, we approach a huge spaceport with dozens of starships of all shapes and sizes parked up. Marcus places his hand on Sam’s shoulder to get her attention. They head back to their consoles together. Emerson and Taylor join them. As we descend toward the vast expanse of concrete, a realisation hits me: I don’t see any people. There are no other starships in the air, no vehicles driving around the spaceport and no one walking about.
I turn to Bradley. “Where is everyone?”
He scans the spaceport, shakes his head, then heads back to the flight deck. I follow.
“Can you pick up any signs of life on the ship’s scanners?” Bradley asks.
“We’re still locked out, sir,” Sam replies. “We can’t access any of the ship’s functions.”
“Will we even be able to exit the ship?” Bradley asks.
“I don’t know, sir,” Sam says. “I don’t think so, not yet at least.”
“What was that that we passed through?” I ask.
Marcus shakes his head. “It must be some kind of black-body cloak. The whole planet must be beneath it.”
“What would it be for?” I ask.
Marcus briefly looks up. “I’d say it cloaks the entire planet by absorbing all electromagnetic radiation so that a ship’s sensors can’t detect it. It must just let through the radiation you need to support life.”
The holograph changes once again, and the ship heads toward a landing pad: a huge rectangular area covered in black and yellow stripes. The Timberwolf slows and lands itself.
I run up the ramp to the centre of the bridge and take in the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. We’re surrounded by ships, but there’s not a single person.
I run back down to the flight deck. “I don’t understand … No signs of war, yet no people. Do you think they’re all dead, like the flight crew?”
“Sir, I have control of the Timberwolf again,” Emerson calls out.
“Are you able to take off if need be?” Bradley asks.
“Pos, sir.”
“Alright. Miller, run an EMR scan,” Bradley orders.
The team gather near Sam as she works at her console. An anxious minute of silence goes by.
“EMR scan complete, sir. No detectable signs of life: no EM fields, no radio transmissions and no IR blooms.”
“What? That’s the kind of EMR scan result you’d expect from Barchee, not a planet with a civilisation,” Bradley says.
Marcus and Sam nod. What feels like another minute goes by in silence, and I get a sinking feeling. I hope they’re not all dead. What are we supposed to do now?
Bradley scans the sky for Te Enthai’s star. “Taylor, is that star rising or setting?”
“Sir, I found a map of Te Enthai on the ship’s computer and a clock that reset when we landed … I think it’s setting.”
“Alright people, it’ll be getting dark in a few hours, I guess,” Bradley says. “I know we haven’t been up that long, but try to get some sleep. We’ll rotate night-watch shifts, and in the morning, we’ll head out and see if we can make contact.”
Chapter 6
The gas giant that Te Enthai orbits rises, its diameter stretching for hundreds of miles along the horizon. The star at the centre of the solar system is rising behind the gas giant in a breathtaking display, filling the bridge with sunlight. Max stands by my side, head raised and ears pricked, as though he’s on watch as well. I never would have imagined that, all those years ago when I left my hometown of Bessomi, I would be standing in the bridge of an alien starship on the other side of the galaxy, alongside a Canine Maximus. The road less travelled is less travelled for a reason: it’s bumpy as hell.
I’ve travelled through cities decimated by war. They had a distinct lack of people, but there’s something deeply unsettling about seeing an untouched city completely void of life. The only thing I’ve seen similar is the centre of Paelagus before it was rebuilt, and that’s not even close to the scale of this place.
“Hey.” Hawkins’ deep voice is always somewhat deeper first thing in the morning.
“Hey.”
We stand in silence for a short while, then I ask, “What will happen to the Te Enthai people’s starships, their weapons and their planet, if they’re all dead?”
Hawkins puffs and shakes his head. “I don’t know. I can’t say we’ve ever come across the situation before. It would no doubt raise a stack of ethical questions.” Hawkins looks down. “Do you think they’re all dead?”
“I don’t know … I hope not.”
We watch the sunrise for a while. Then Hawkins asks, “Did you ask Bradley why he fathers you?”
I turn to him, shielding my eyes from the glare. “Yeah, he said I reminded him of his son.”
Hawkins nods and looks back toward the horizon.
“Did you know?” I ask.
“I suspected.” Hawkins pauses for a moment. “You know, before Bradley met you, he was broken … after losing his son and daughter in the pandemic … he never smiled, never laughed. He used to funnel all his energy into his job, I guess so as to leave no spare time to think about what he’d lost. But then you joined the team, and … well, you know the rest.”
I fill with warmth. I never expected to find a father figure in a Union soldier, but Bradley always has my back and has the same caring way, just like my father. And Hawkins feels like the brother I never had.
Bradley stands next to the bollard, Ashra in hand, as the last of the team climb into the two Hurricanes on the lift floor. Sam and I get Max and Jade into position. This lift must have some serious grunt to handle all this weight.
When we reach the ground floor, Sam and I get out first, struck by the chilling breeze while we wait for the Hurricanes to reverse out. It’s sunny
, but it does little to warm the icy air. Bradley takes the lead, and I trot along on Max, Sam and Jade by our side, as we head toward the edge of the spaceport. Many of the starships littering the tarmac are military starships covered with energy weapons.
We come to a perimeter fence with razor wire wound around the top rail. The gate’s wide open. A truck is parked outside, its driver still in their seat, obviously dead. Max and I approach while the others hang back. I’m guessing the driver was a male by the size. His skin, a blackish-brown dried husk, clings to a skeletal frame. He’s wearing similar clothing to the flight crew of the Timberwolf. My heart sinks. I guess we’ll find more now, lots more. I turn Max around and head back to the group.
Bradley lowers his window. “Should we be in hazmat suits?”
I unclip my Chem-tracer from my belt and run it through its paces.
I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”
“What are the chances this guy went out the same way as the Timberwolf’s flight crew?” Bradley asks.
I shrug and raise my hands, then look to the horizon as I consider. “Correlation doesn’t equal causation. The flight crew could have died from a different cause.” I glance at the skeleton then back at Bradley. “But having said that … this guy’s been dead for seven or eight years. Wouldn’t that put his time of death at around the same time as the flight crew?”
Bradley nods. “Yeah, that’s right.”
As we move forward, we pass more decomposed corpses – in vehicles, slumped up against buildings, down alleys, lying in the middle of the street. Further down the road, we pass a building with dozens of corpses on the footpath out front, the doors jammed open by the dead. Bold red signage above the front doors. By the sheer number of deceased, I’m guessing it’s a hospital. Sam’s stare only breaks when her neck can no longer turn. Our eyes meet as our heads bob with Max’s and Jade’s trots. I don’t know how much of this sort of thing you can witness without it destroying your soul. We’ve only been on a dozen missions, and I already feel changed, older. I now fully understand what Doctor Lister was saying – some things can’t be unseen.
The Hurricanes suddenly pull up ahead, outside a two-storey building fronted by a large set of steps leading to the front doors. Everyone climbs out of the vehicles and stands looking at the building. Sam and I catch up, and I approach Taylor.
