Echoes In The Grey

by David Allan Hamilton

  Mary stood and headed over to the scooter. Her gaze followed Kate’s arm. Beyond the horizon, the only bright object in the void was the planet Earth. Mary’s jaw dropped. The entire European continent and Northern Africa sat under a cloudless sky. She watched the shadowy day-night line carve the Atlantic Ocean in half from north to south. Solar flares had charged up the magnetic field, and dim, green shifting sheets of auroras bathed the poles.

  “Earth is beautiful, don’t you think?” Kate’s voice, although strained, filled her helmet audio.

  “It’s like the most glorious thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Keep trying, Mary, don’t give up yet. There’s some kind of. . . of intelligence in there, or around us. . . keep trying.”

  She hopped back to the hull, investigated the structure one more time with her diagnostic filters and, registering no changes, she knelt again and pulled out the wrench.

  Help us, please.

  Mary gazed at the blue light, immobile, mocking her from the safety of the sky.

  What more do you want?

  THIRTY

  Carter

  “Plot a course for the Titanius lab, Captain Powell, and take us there as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Carter marched back toward the flight seats where Esther, Jim, Ishani and Dub had removed their gloves and helmets and waited for him. They took turns detailing what they’d found, and all agreed Kate and Mary had likely returned to the lab site, despite numerous scooter trail signatures crisscrossing the area in all directions. Atteberry expressed some hesitation, thinking out loud that perhaps they had gone elsewhere, but there was no logical reason for that.

  Carter listened in silence, arms folded across his chest, as Ishani finished her report from the mining outbuildings. Beneath him, the Echo’s vertical thrusters engaged, and the ship rose into the dark sky.

  He punched the transmit tab on the comms panel beside the seats. “Captain, maintain low altitude and keep scanning for survivors.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Esther peered at the viewscreen as the ship cruised over the moonscape. “How long to get to the lab?”

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes at this velocity.”

  “Can’t we go any faster?” Atteberry sounded tired but no less defiant.

  Carter eased into his seat. “Of course, but we might miss them. Our sensors are efficient, Jim, but not limitless, so we rely a lot on visual investigations.”

  Atteberry nodded but maintained a puzzled, angry look on his face. He turned to the viewscreen and kept standing while the others took their flight seats.

  Carter’s estimate of the travel time to the lab site proved accurate: they arrived in just under sixteen minutes. Captain Powell flew in a large elliptical path around the imploded structure and debris field, allowing Carter and the crew to survey the extent of the damage.

  “Sweet Jesus. . .” Atteberry muttered to himself, leaning in to the viewscreen. Esther gasped when she saw the remains of the lunar habitat.

  Carter’s face tightened. “Bridge, any signs of other ships in the area?”

  “Stand by.”

  Esther asked, “Did a ship do this?”

  He shook his head. “It seems unlikely, but I don’t want to take any chances. If the Rossians are here, we must be prepared to engage them.”

  Jenson’s voice came through the intercom. “Mr. Carter, no ships other than the ones we’ve been tracking.”

  “Good. What about life signs?”

  “Negative, but there aren’t any . . . carbon signatures either.”

  Atteberry looked at him and was about to speak when Carter cut him off. “Is it possible we missed them en route?”

  “Mr. Carter? Powell here. That is a possibility. There’s an inordinate amount of interference and it’s affecting out scanners more than I thought.”

  “How can that be?”

  “Well, we’re still testing out various systems on board and bio-readers are one of those we haven’t completed yet. Plus, the solar flare activity is strong right now, which impacts data integrity and reliability. Nothing we can do about that.”

  Atteberry smiled.

  “Something funny, Jim?”

  “Oh, no, it’s just that Kate would know how to filter out that noise.”

  “Well, perhaps she’ll be able to one of these days.” Then turning back to the comms, he said, “Bring us in for a landing, Captain.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The Echo slowed and hovered over a clear area to the north of the lab site, then immediately descended, kicking up dust in its path.

  “You four head out and look for any indications of what happened to our lost crew.”

  Ishani took charge of the group and they hurried to the airlock, their heavy boots clacking on the floor grates as the Echo settled on the surface.

  Carter returned to the bridge. “Where are those Prussian cruisers, Captain?”

  Powell cycled through to the tracking screen and pulled it up on the main viewer. Various terran ships continued on their journey to Luna, except for the aging corvette, the Nachtfalke, which had come to a full stop in the face of the Malevolent that was now staring her down.

  “Sir, Captain Russo has been apprising us of Malevolent’s actions. She says the Nachtfalke has backed down, which you can see on the screen here,” he pointed to the ship’s icon, “and it’s having the desired effect.”

  “How so?”

  “The Volmar has diverted from its course to Luna and is heading toward the standoff, as is the Edelgard from the Martian run.”

  Carter stroked his chin, then leaned on the back of the captain’s chair. “The timing is critical here, John. How long before Volmar is in weapons range with Malevolent?”

  “Approximately an hour at current speed.”

  “And the Edelgard?”

  “Couple hours, minimum.”

  “Good, now what about the other cruiser, the second Brandenburg class?”

  “It’s over here.” Captain Powell pointed to another icon on the right-hand side of the screen. “She’s maintaining her course to Luna and continues to run dark.”

  “Time?”

  “Twenty minutes or less until she achieves high lunar orbit.”

  He frowned. “That doesn’t give us much time to salvage the area or find the other two.”

  “No, sir, and little time to hunt that alien ship.”

  Carter turned to a secondary monitor displaying the ruined lab site. The four crew from the Echo had fanned out to cover the ruins. Their names and critical suit data followed them on the screen. Ishani and Dub focused on the habitat where the scientific computers would have been. She knew what to search for. Esther and Jim appeared to be following tracks through the debris field, stopping frequently to inspect various pieces of equipment and saving what they could on the antigrav sled.

  “Quigg, open a channel to the group.”

  The comms officer toggled a switch and pressed a button on his dash. “Channel open, sir.”

  “Esther, Jim, what have you found?” He watched them stop moving and then Esther turned to face the ship.

  “Some odd clues here, Clayton. Lots of footprints that must have been made by Kate and Mary. When the habitat blew, a fresh layer of dust fell. Over here,” she pointed to her right, “they pulled something from the debris, and scooter trails are everywhere. Not sure you can see from there, but one of them conducted a search pattern.”

  Carter had noted the geometric patterns in the area when the ship performed its reconnoitering fly-by. “Any idea where they went from here?”

  Esther and Atteberry conferred and waved at several areas in the zone.

  “It’s hard to tell. Jim believes they must have gone northeast, but there are also lots of other trails heading that way, too.

  Captain Powell turned and said, “Their last surveys were on the limb, near the Mare Marginis, sir. Could be from that.”

  Carter worked his jaw,
considering the information. “All right, keep looking for anything interesting.” Then, “Ishani, you there?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He drew a deep breath. “I’d like you to focus on retrieving our computers and any data pods that may have survived. Any proprietary tech must be retrieved as well even if it’s destroyed. We can’t let any of it fall into the wrong hands.”

  “Understood.”

  “Echo out.”

  Carter leaned against one of the metal support beams. The whereabouts of the two women remained unknown. They should have been at the abandoned mining habitat, but weren’t. Or they should have been here, but aren’t. The only other place Kate and Mary could be was with the aliens. That being the case, if he could find them, he would undoubtedly discover what he truly coveted.

  The most curious riddle had nothing to do with the survivors’ location. What kind of destructive power had blasted the lab to bits leaving no scorch marks? The implosion could have been caused by a malfunction in the oxygenator, but that likelihood was slim. These proven pieces of equipment simply did not contain that much energy to create a blast radius this size. No, something else was at play here, something never seen before.

  If the Rossians were responsible for this destruction, why did they destroy it and where are they now?

  He turned to Captain Powell.

  “Are the weapons still online?”

  “Aye, sir, nice and warm.”

  “Good. Keep a sharp eye out, John. We’re not alone up here.”

  Kate

  The chime ringing in her ears was the 10 minute O2 depletion alarm, but in Kate’s mind, polluted with heavy narcotics to dull the throbbing of her injuries, it reminded her of the confused, haunted tolling of the Saint Paschal carillon in Villareal.

  Ten minutes. . . the pain will. . . end.

  “Disable. . . all further oxygen warnings.” They were redundant now.

  A voice, too, somewhat familiar, rattled around in her mind. Her mother? Her eyes fluttered open and struggled to focus on the shape standing before her.

  “Kate, you awake?”

  “Hm? Um. . .” She shook her head and inhaled.

  Mary knelt down beside her. “Listen, it’s no use. My oxygen’s just about spent with all the exertion, and I’m spent.”

  “You must keep trying. . .”

  “No. No, I’m done.”

  “Let me see.”

  Mary shifted Kate’s body to a new angle, propping her again. In her line of vision, the dark hull of the alien craft shone like amber gunmetal. Directly overhead, the blue light maintained its silent vigil, and just over the horizon, the Earth glowed like a jewel against the black sky. She caught her breath at the site.

  “Can you move me onto the hull?”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t give up. . . I . . . need to find a way in . . . to save us.”

  Mary sighed and lowered her head, but otherwise remained motionless, so she dug her heels into the dust and, using her good arm for support, pulled herself along the surface toward the ship.

  “Kate, please. . .”

  A moment later, Mary’s arms wrapped around her, jostling her onto the hull. “Lay me on my back.”

  “Sure.” She eased her down, so she again faced the sky.

  “Give me the wrench.”

  “Whatever for, Kate?”

  “Please. . . the wrench.” She opened her hand and within moments, she felt the weight of the tool in it.

  The first strikes were weak, but she gathered her strength, raised her forearm at the elbow, and swung hard. She repeated the blow, then tapped out the H2O code.

  “Knock, knock.”

  She turned her head and saw Mary sitting beside her

  “Don’t be sad. Look. . . what we found buried in the grey dust. In a few. . . minutes. . . we’ll be off on a new. . . adventure.” Kate’s voice sounded hoarse and dry to her, but as she continued tapping out the code, losing track of the pattern and falling into a series of rhythmic thumps, a warm peace settled over her.

  This is. . . only the beginning.

  “My oxygen’s done, Kate.”

  Mary’s arm reached over and dropped on her chest. She released the wrench by her leg and put her hand over Mary’s. Between the narcotics and the thickness of the envirosuit and gloves, she felt nothing but an unbearable heaviness, a sense of being or presence around her. This wasn’t like a human touch. It was almost better, safer, more complete.

  Mary blacked out first. In a few minutes, her brain would cease functioning and she’d die in her sleep. Kate shifted her weight on to her good side and gazed over the moonscape at Earth. She smiled, then darkness writhed around her, and she fell down supine again. She passed in and out of consciousness, staring now at the blue light as it danced and flickered across the sky. When the aroma of baking bread wafted through her mind so real she could taste it, the last vestiges of logic and memory made her realize the end had come.

  Kate closed her eyes; the beautiful Earth’s perfect isolation filled her remaining lucid thoughts. As she drifted into the shimmering black, she sensed her body suddenly afloat, as if being carried away.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Kate

  Voices and images reverberated together in the black hollow of Kate’s consciousness until that moment when, between the dream state and a tenuous foothold in reality, she understood without a doubt and as impossible as it seemed, that she was still breathing.

  The dull ache in her side hit her first, causing her heavy eyelids to grind open, and she realized the envirosuit had disappeared. The searing pain of her broken wrist stabbed at her brain. Her terrifying scream, sounding distant and detached, pierced the last vestiges of sleep, and the wisps of dreams faded into the darkness.

  Where the hell am I?

  Kate knew where. She saw no farther than a meter in front of her. Everything fell under a cloak of thick gloom. The cold floor below her sent shivers through her body, but fresh air filled her lungs, and in a moment, she regained strength and soothed her pain.

  “He—hello?”

  Her throat stung, and she did not recognize her own voice as it croaked into the surrounding black.

  “Mary?”

  She held her breath and listened for any sounds, but the only noise was a weak, low-level hum consistent with the background thrum of a ship, or some kind of machine. Kate had no doubt she was inside the alien vessel. How she got in remained a mystery, but the last thing she recalled was blacking out on the ship’s hull, followed by a sensation of being carried.

  Could the aliens have picked me up and brought me in? If so, what did they do with Mary?

  In a few moments, her eyes adjusted slightly to the darkness, and she made out a few rudimentary shapes, but nothing familiar. Behind her, less than a meter away, stood a wall extending upward into the black—the ship’s side, perhaps. She dragged herself over to it and, fighting against the agony penetrating her body, inched her way up against it and dropped her head back.

  “Hello? Mary, are you there?”

  No sign of anyone or anything else presented itself in that space. Despite years of working in life-threatening situations followed by intense isolation on Luna, Kate felt a deep fear the likes of which she hadn’t experienced before. Previously, a human element ran through the work: either people around her or technology built by them. This ship, however, was something other, and whether or not she liked it, being on board an alien craft filled her with a strong desire to go home—to be back on Earth teaching, or programming, or helping Jim discover oddball signals in space.

  If only he was here. I’d tell him so much.

  A scrabbling sound pulled her out of her thoughts. A movement—or was it her imagination—in the dark.

  “Is someone there? Mary, is that you?”

  The pain in her shattered wrist shot up through her shoulder with an intensity that almost caused her to pass out, and despite the cool air around her, beads of sweat peppered her
face.

  I’ve got to find her. Work the problem, Kate.

  She leaned back and stared at the nothingness surrounding her. First, she needed to establish her bearings, and that meant moving, mapping the area with her good hand to create a mental image of the place. With luck, she’d find Mary in the gloom, too. Every breath she gathered put more strain on her ribcage. Even shallow panting held no promise of comfort. Worse, without the pressure of her envirosuit, her wrist swelled up like a balloon.

  She began mentally imaging the space with the smooth wall behind her. It curved into the floor—no corners or hard angles—as if the room had been hollowed out of some thicker material. Then, she dragged herself along the wall’s base, estimating the distance she covered and searching for any kind of reference on the structure. If this was, indeed, the Rossian vessel, the technology to run it remained a mystery. The only sound she heard was that uniform hum in the background.

  The elapsed time since she blacked out on the hull and woke up here was unknown. If the point of living in this inky darkness was to disorient, then mission accomplished. She continued mapping with her finger tips moving, then resting, and noticed a few more blurred shapes ahead.

  That’s where I’ll go.

  She caught her breath, wiped the sweat from her forehead, then prepared to move again. As she placed her weight on her good hand to pull herself along, a new sound hit her, a click-click noise, faint, coming from the blurred shapes. She strained her eyes to see better, but her pupils only dilated so much. A moment passed. No other noise came.

  The wall swept inward, and Kate followed it along, noting it remained completely smooth, like the floor, and the hull. No rivets, switches, handles. . . nothing you’d find on a terran vessel. As she inched her way closer to the objects, she called out for Mary again with no response.

  Could she still be on the surface?

  Then a set of amber lights appeared, dimly glowing in the shadows. Two of them, in a horizontal line. Finally, something different, a sign of life, a reference point. . . perhaps a way out. With renewed vigor, she pulled herself along the wall toward the pair of lights, wondering if they formed part of a command panel or sensor array.