Nomad

by Jamie Nash

  Suddenly, I’m slammed against the wall. Taylor is in my face. Her fists knotted up in my wetsuit. “Stupid girl! What have you done?”

  My head rings but it doesn’t stifle my anger.

  I spit in her face.

  She doesn’t even blink, as if she’s some android that’s programmed to be resistant to acts of humiliating defiance. “You killed my friend, bitch.” I squirm, but her grip is strong. My effort earns me another slam into the wall.

  “Hey!” Shaft grabs Taylor’s shoulder.

  Taylor whirls on him and punches his throat. She hits with practiced precision, the kind you hone in some Special Forces kung-fu class. Shaft’s hands go straight to his neck. He croaks for air and collapses against the wall. She fires a sharp kick into the back of his knee. He drops straight to the ground.

  She had to let go of me to do it. I go for it, whip out my scalpel and wave it at her. “Stop!” Taylor spins around in a fighting stance. I can almost see her calculating fifteen ways to disarm me, some Chuck Norris shit. The scalpel quivers in my hand. “Back up!” I yell, but my confidence is draining. This little knife isn’t fooling anybody.

  Taylor straightens, softens, playing nice. “Put down the scalpel.”

  “Why? So, you can kill us?”

  “I do not want to hurt you.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “Stupid child.” She stops. Again, she adjusts her tone. “I just saved you both.”

  “You sent us up that tower to die.”

  “And you let the beast loose. You killed those people.”

  My muscles tense. She’s right. Maybe I’m not a murderer like her, but my impulsiveness took their lives. Their blood is on my hands. “I didn’t know,” I want to cry, but I fear if I do, she’ll knock me on my ass and shove me in a cryopod.

  “You have no idea what is going on,” she says.

  “I know more than you think. Jelena.”

  She flinches at the name. “Jelena? Who is that?”

  “I’ve seen your file. Your prison record.”

  She laughs defiantly but it feels more for show. She knows exactly what I’m talking about.

  “You’re a murderer.” I poke the knife in her general direction. “And you’re dead.”

  Shaft fixes me a look. He thinks I’m completely out of my mind. Taylor doesn’t blink. She knows what I’m talking about. She just goes on with her threats. “This is your last warning. Put the knife down.”

  “Well, this is your last warning.” I ease toward the bulkhead, and without taking my eyes off Taylor, I quickly punch in the first two numbers on the keypad.

  She cocks a brow. She’s legit confused.

  I move to punch in the last number.

  “Wait,” she says. She’s getting it. I might not be able to fight her, but I can let the monster in, see how her third-degree black belt shit works against an alien worm with fangs. She frowns. Maybe she’s disappointed I’d be this suicidal.

  “I’ll do it,” I say. I’m not sure if I will. But if she comes flying at me with fists of fury, my finger might twitch, and then it’ll be too late for all of us.

  “That would be foolish,” she says.

  We can hear the beast still outside, fighting to get in. “You’re going to give us some answers, or I’m going to let that motherfucker in.” She stares at me for five full seconds, then drops the fight stance. She realizes I’m insane enough to do it. She’s right, too. And until I get some real answers, I’m not moving from the keypad. “Who’s your friend with the beard?” I ask.

  She squints. “I do not know this man.”

  I laugh. “Well, he knows you. He had a lot to say about you.”

  She takes a second before she speaks. “He was lying.”

  “I don’t think so. We had a swell conversation. Then he tried to bash my head in with a pool stick.” I glare at her. “He told me you’d try to put us back in the pods and that you’re a liar. And as psychotic as he is, I’m inclined to believe him. He killed Tony, by the way. I know you’re all broken up about that.”

  She cocks a brow, clueless as to who that is. Shaft’s even more confused. “My friend.” My voice rattles with emotion. “He fell right into your trap. We both did. He didn’t make it.” Taylor turns back to the control room, not able to meet my eyes, apparently feeling the pain of responsibility. Good. She is responsible. His blood is on her hands. I don’t let up. “He’s dead. Because of you. Because of your lies.”

  “I am sorry.” There’s sadness in her voice. Real sadness.

  “I know about the little gray man. The Roswell guy. I saw the team photo,” I say. “What is it? What is that thing outside?”

  Taylor throws up her hands. “We do not have time.”

  “Then give us the short version.” Shaft stretches his neck. “We can help.”

  Her eyes take him in like he just asked for a pet monkey. We’re babies in her eyes. Know-nothings. The growls and slams of the monster have dimmed a bit, reducing my leverage. She’s going to attack, and I’m going go ahead with my threat and unleash a massive stretch of anticlimactic, dark, snarling nothingness. “I am part of this vessel’s crew,” she begins.

  I jerk my head back at the door. “Like those people back there?”

  She searches my eyes checking to see if I believe her. I’m about fifty-fifty. She solemnly nods. “We performed maintenance, ran troubleshooting checks while the ship traveled to some preprogrammed destination. Then we went into cryo.”

  “Where were we going?” Shaft asks.

  She pauses for a bit. Her head shakes ever so slightly. “I do not know. There were secrets. Even from us.”

  Barf. ‘There were secrets’ isn’t cutting it. “I want to know about Mork from Ork,” I say. She wrinkles her forehead. She has no clue what I’m talking about. “The alien. In the group picture.”

  “The Nomad.” Her body sags in surrender. “There was a crash. In the United States.”

  Shaft raises a brow. “Like Roswell?”

  “This started before that. The one in the photo … this is his creation.”

  “Bullshit.” Shaft points to a smashed computer. “Those are Playboys over there. In English. They don’t have centerfolds on Mars. This ship is from Earth.”

  She closes her eyes in frustration. “Your kind could not make something like this. The Nomad was the architect. He needed to get home. He taught us how to do this.”

  Your kind? It’s a weird choice of words. Is she not … our kind?

  Shaft doesn’t pick up on it or at least doesn’t mention it. “So, this thing created Commodore 64s?”

  “He nudged things along. The world leaders made a trade. In return for all his knowledge and advancement, they constructed this ship. The Nomad called the shots. It used materials from your world. What it had at its disposal.”

  “Why would they pick a career criminal from Prague as a crew member of a spaceship?” I ask.

  She turns to the large window and stares at it as if she can see right through its closed shutters. “This project—this mission—was secret. The world would not understand.”

  “What wouldn’t they understand?” Shaft says.

  Finally, she faces us. “The crew would not be coming back. It was a death sentence. They chose people who the world would not miss. People who could just vanish.”

  Expendables.

  We’re the ones no one cared about. It’s good news and bad news. I’m happy that there’s no one back on Earth to miss me, but sad for old me. Friendless me. The one who didn’t have pallbearers at her fake funeral.

  “So, what? They just faked our deaths?” I ask.

  Taylor shrugs. “In some cases.”

  “How come you remember all this, and we don’t?” Shaft asks.

  I glance at her uniform. “We’re not part of the crew, are we?” She stares down at her fancy flight suit. “Then what are we? Snacks?” I ask. My words hang in the air. She doesn’t answer. She either doesn’t know or i
s protecting us from the truth. “The man upstairs.” I nod to the ceiling. “Is he crew? Or … cargo?”

  “I do not know him. The computers must have kicked me out of the cryopods when he set the fires. I was able to trick him, lock him in the upper deck. Then I hit the emergency button. Triggered your pods to open.” Her eyes are moist and desperate. Her lips quiver. “I want you to live. I swear it.”

  I actually believe that part. It’s the rest of her story that’s hard to swallow. That’s the secret to a good lie—tell the truth, but leave out some key pieces, like that scar etched on the side of her skull. The same one Phantom has.

  The lights around us flicker. The room shudders. A deep growl of metal rattles the floor, the ceiling, the surgery tools in the lab. Shaft falls back against the wall. I catch myself against the bulkhead. Taylor’s face grows ashen. “What’s he doing?” I ask. “Blowing up the ship?”

  “No,” she says. “He is moving it.”

  Taylor scrambles to a large, untouched control panel near the front of the room. It reminds me of the complicated soundboard I sat behind once at a Duran Duran concert. Simon Le Bon, may you rest in peace. It’s a miracle it survived the robot’s destructive attack. Or maybe it’s not a miracle. Maybe the robot’s puppeteer stayed clear of it, knowing its importance. Taylor flips switches, checks monitors, and punches buttons. She knows every inch of this gizmo and this place. But as her hands dance around the board in a practiced choreography, a frustration is evident. Things aren’t working quite like they’re supposed to. “He’s taken control of the navigation,” she says. She spins to face the medical lab and steps to the still spying camera, addressing it. “You are not in charge of this.”

  Shaft turns to me as if I know who she’s talking to. I have suspicions of course. I think I’ve met the dude, chewed his brains in fact. Still, I just shrug.

  “Turn off the boosters. Now.” She speaks sternly. “Killing us all proves nothing.”

  Suddenly, I can’t swallow. He’s killing us? Now? I thought he was turning us around.

  The hull’s metallic moan settles. The rumbling eases and then stops completely. Its default hum sings in our ears again. Her little speech worked. We’ve stopped turning. I guess that means we’re safe.

  But Taylor’s body language hardly projects peace and tranquility. She stands at attention, tight and wound, with her fists clenched and her eyes glaring. I don’t even think she’s breathing at the moment. She spins back to the wide window and the closed steel shutters. Some horrible sight lies beyond the shutters, but she wants to spend at least a few more moments in sweet denial before she confirms it.

  I have no such patience. I march past her and hit the large red plunger.

  The shutters snap open. Daggers of blinding light stab between the slats. I squint. The radiant, purple sphere fills every inch of the window, blocking the vast, infinite expanse of space beyond. We’re closer to the planet than before. It’s hard to tell, given the scope of what I’m gazing at, but I think we’re drifting toward it. A collision course. “Are we landing?” I ask.

  “No,” Taylor says.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because this spacecraft was not built to land.”

  A shrill squeal stabs my ears. Feedback from a microphone. A loudspeaker above of us crackles awake. The Phantom’s gravelly voice booms out from it. “You brought me to this.” His creepy baritone squeals through the speaker like a high school morning announcement. “We’ll hit the atmosphere in less than an hour. Everything will be destroyed.”

  “This isn’t you,” Taylor calls back to the small square speaker. “I’ve taught you better.”

  “You’ve left me no choice,” the voice responds. “You promised me I had more time. You said you were going to show me places. Great places. You lied.”

  “You lasted longer than most. You knew it wasn’t forever.”

  “I’m not asking for forever!” He shouts. “You threw me away without even a goodbye. Like garbage.”

  Taylor is locked in on the speaker. It’s as if Shaft and I are not even here. Her voice is gentle, a whisper. “You were always special. You know that. I was wrong.” She gets no response. “We can fix this.”

  The speaker squeals with feedback. “I want to believe,” he says. It’s garbled. His words are soft, and the audio system seems to be having a hard time picking it up.

  I want to yell “Speak up,” but it would kill the mood.

  Taylor eases toward the cheap intercom, tears in her eyes. “We must talk. Salvage this.”

  Shaft and I hang back. We’re kids watching our parents negotiate a divorce. Dad isn’t willing to give up, and Mom just wants to keep the good china and stop the spaceship from smashing into the approaching planet. Taylor will say anything. She’s in survival mode, pure and simple.

  The speaker pops loudly again. The madman’s voice follows. It’s firm and clear like some DJ introducing the latest Phil Collins single. “And what about them?”

  He means us of course. Awkward.

  Taylor doesn’t answer. She doesn’t look at us either. We’re listening, and whatever horrible fate she has planned for us, she can’t say it out loud. Instead, she keeps it vague, “They have nothing to do with this.”

  Phantom’s voice hisses out, “They can’t do what I do. They can’t replace me!”

  “Enough! Come down here. Right now.” Taylor’s face burns red. Her fists are balled. “I command you!” Her words ring through the tight chamber. “Stop this.”

  The speaker hums. He’s still there but there’s no voice. No breathing. His breath lingering like some pervert making a crank call.

  “It can be like before, it can be better,” Taylor says. “But this has to stop.”

  The intercom squeals again. Phantom’s breathy voice rides a ribbon of static. “I’m gonna need proof. Destroy the others. All of them. Show me that I mean as much to you as you mean to me.”

  “No.” She turns and stares at us. “That is impossible.”

  The speaker goes silent, even its loud hum quiets, as if he’s flipped an off switch.

  Taylor huffs and stares, but she knows the conversation is over. She marches to the far corner of the control room. There, she faces the wall, talking to herself. I catch some of it. “He is nothing. He’ll pay.” It’s intense and weird, and totally betrays the ‘under control’ personality she’s been trying to feed us. She abruptly stops, composes herself, and moves to the bulkhead.

  “Whoa!” I call out as I race to stop her. “There’s a monster out there.”

  She hesitates but doesn’t turn to face me. I’m just the annoying kid asking too many questions. “I need to get to the navigation,” she says.

  Shaft casts his arms wide. “I thought this was navigation.”

  “This is just the control room. Interior controls. Life support, lights, things that keep us comfortable.”

  “Yeah, it’s doing a great job at that.” Shaft says.

  Taylor continues, “If I get to the bridge, I can plot a new course and avoid impact.”

  Shaft nods. “Avoiding impact is good.”

  “But getting eaten by a space worm isn’t,” I say. “And what if this is all a trick? Your buddy on the speaker, he’s probably hiding up there in shadows waiting to bash our brains in.”

  She waves an arm at the window. “That’s no trick.” She touches the bulkhead, mulling her options.

  I still don’t trust her. She’s got something up her sleeve—probably another syringe. I don’t want to let her out of my sight. “We’ll come too,” I say.

  She shakes her head emphatically. “If he sees you, he will kill you. But he will not hurt me. He would never hurt me.”

  “How long do we have?” Shaft says.

  “At best, thirty minutes. Maybe an hour.” Taylor says.

  “What’s the plan?” I ask. “We’re gonna take him out, right?”

  She pauses, probably deciding how much she wants to share. “Ther
e are weapons. We can arm ourselves.”

  “Show me.” I spread the map out before Taylor.

  She taps on the room labeled “Armory.” “It’s here, right next to the Crew Cryos.” The Crew Cryos, great. Back to the slaughterhouse. Back to the monster. She turns to the bulkhead assuming it’s all settled.

  “Wait!” Shaft shouts. “What about the big, man-eating thing that’s right outside the door?” A distant growl echoes beyond the bulkhead, almost on cue. It sounds far away. Maybe she means to sneak by it. I hope not. That’s the worst plan ever.

  She gazes at me with pleading eyes. “I need you to go out there and lure it back.”

  “No way.” Shaft jumps to my defense. “That’s suicide.”

  Damn straight. She’s sending me to my death. We should at least be drawing straws for who gets to die, or playing one potato, two potato.

  “I would do it. But I cannot.” She turns to Shaft. “You are still recovering from your injuries and your second cryo-awakening … and getting kicked in the knee.”

  “Yeah. Thanks for that.” Shaft leans against the wall as if the reminder has weakened him.

  The creature is faster than me. It’s angry. It’s hungry. The odds are not great for me. On the other hand—the encroaching planet. We can sit back and hope crazy murderer guy comes to his senses. It’s a lesser of two evils deal. “This better work,” I say, agreeing to the dumbest plan ever in the history of plans.

  “It will,” she says with zero emotion, not exactly the pep talk I needed.

  Shaft grabs my arm. “This is stupid.”

  Duh, he’s just getting that. This whole thing is stupid. “Just don’t turn your back on her,” I say. “And don’t let her jab a syringe in you this time. I’ve saved your butt enough today.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he says.

  “Use sound,” Taylor says. “Call to it. It is dangerous but stupid. It hails from a planet of darkness. This is not its element.”

  Yeah, it’s not exactly mine either.

  The monster lets out a distant wail. I stare down the door, psyching myself up, picturing the shadows and the metal pathways. Preparing, mentally rehearsing. It’s just like playing tag in the backyard. I’ll lure it out, get to the base. Be safe. So long as I don’t get tagged, I win. In this case, tagged means eaten—digested.