by S. E. Smith
“Mission Control, turning over control for core rendezvous and docking sequence,” Ash said, jerking Josh back to the present.
“Copy,” Mission control responded.
“We can see the pictures. Three hundred meters and closing. Begin fly around,” Ash responded.
“We see thrusters are working and we are moving to docking assembly. Copy,” Mission Control responded.
Josh watched on the screens as the docking mechanism came into view. Mission control continued to give them information as the two docking assemblies lined up. A few minutes later, there was a soft jerk and the sound of the docking assembly locking.
“Locking assembly has engaged, Gliese 581. Welcome aboard your new home,” Mission Control stated.
“Copy that, Mission Control,” Ash responded with a grin as he finished the final shut down and prepared to open the connecting hatch. “Let’s go take a look at our new home.”
Five days later, Josh stood in front of the huge virtual window, looking down at the Earth. Two of the crew members from the International Space Station had departed an hour before with the capsule that had brought them here. The two cosmonauts would dock with the outlying structure that had been used as a base during construction of the Gliese 581. They would release the last of the tethers. The remaining base would be joined to the International Space Station. At the moment they were waiting for final approval from Mission Control to begin a voyage unlike anything man has ever done before.
“It is good to know that the artificial gravity works,” Julia commented as she gripped the handhelds near the doorway and lowered her feet to the floor before stepping inside the main control and living area. “Though, I have to admit floating is fun.”
“It is more than fun,” Mei laughed as she came up behind Julia. “I missed this part of being in space.”
“Not as much as I missed watching you bounce off of things,” Sergi retorted with a grin.
Mei turned and pushed Sergi backwards when he tried to come into the control room. Grabbing the handheld, she nimbly lowered her feet to the floor and stepped into the area with the artificial gravity. She glanced over her shoulder and grinned when Sergi stumbled.
“It’s not as easy as it looks,” he grumbled, flashing a quick grin.
Mei tossed her braid over her shoulder and laughed. “You are just clumsy,” she retorted, darting out of Sergi’s reach when he started to grab for her braid. “And slow.”
Josh couldn’t keep the amused grin from escaping. He wondered if those two would be like this the entire journey. Turning back, he stared down at the Earth again as the others slowly made their way over one at a time to join him.
“I wonder if we will ever see it again,” Mei asked in a soft voice.
“I don’t see why not,” Josh replied, shooting a glance at Julia’s calm face. “We get out there, find out what the object is, and come back.”
“Almost three years in space, a trillion million miles from any other living soul, and totally self-reliant on a massive piece of equipment that looks great on paper, but has never been put to the test,” Sergi reflected, rubbing his chin before he dropped his hand and shrugged. “It will be a piece of pie. I would say we have a billion to one chance of making it back in one piece.”
“It is a piece of cake,” Mei growled, turning and punching Sergi in the arm. “I’m going to go check on my plants.”
“What?! What did I say this time? Mei!” Sergi groaned. “Chinese women are too difficult to understand.”
Josh watched as Ash hastily moved aside as Mei swept past him. Ash’s eyebrows rose when Sergi quickly followed. A grin curved Josh’s lips when he saw the expression on Ash’s face. It wouldn’t be long before his friend joined in the fun.
“What’d I miss this time?” Ash asked.
“Mei asked if we would ever see Earth again,” Julia replied before Josh could say anything.
“And Sergi’s answer was…?” Ash asked, glancing back at the other two members of the crew who had disappeared through the doorway.
“A rundown of how far we are going in a prototype spaceship with no backup if something were to go wrong,” Julia answered with a brief glance at Josh. “I have some tests to run before we get too much further away. Please, excuse me.”
Ash and Josh watched as Julia disappeared in the opposite direction. Each person had to deal with the reality of their decision. It didn’t matter that they had been training non-stop for the past eighteen months for this mission.
In the end, all the talk, all the planning, couldn’t quite prepare them mentally for what was ahead. If something happened, there wouldn’t be a damn thing anyone on Earth could do to save them. The knowledge that they would have to depend on each other, and a never-before-tested spaceship on a maiden voyage into the unknown, was unsettling and it would take time for each person to come to terms with it.
Josh understood this. It was one of the things his dad had talked to him about before each mission. For the first time in his life, he could finally appreciate what his father had been trying to tell him. His father’s quiet voice rang through his memory.
“Every mission could be your last, son,” Edward Manson said. “You can’t go into it thinking about that. You focus on what needs to be done. In the back of your mind, there is always the thought of what could go wrong, that is why we train for it, but we don’t let it consume us. If you do, if you quit, then you are doomed to failure, and failure in space means death.”
Josh jerked back to the present when he felt Ash touch his arm. He pressed his lips into a firm line and nodded. He turned when he heard the sound of the communications console chime.
“Call the others,” he ordered. “It’s time to go.”
Command Decision
Sample of Abducting Abby
Synopsis:
Abby Tanner is content to live on her mountain creating works of art and enjoying the peace and quiet. All of that changes when a golden space ship crash lands with the King of the Valdier inside, desperately hurt…
Excerpt
Zoran Reykill pushed the body of the dead guard off him. He paused to draw in a sharp breath as pain sliced through his battered body. He had been in captivity for the past month, and there wasn’t a place on his body that didn’t hurt from the numerous cuts and bruises from the beatings and torture he had lived through.
He forced himself to roll the guard over and pulled the guard’s clothes off his body. His own clothes had been taken not long after he was brought down to the hell they called a cell. This was the first opportunity he had to escape. He had been watching and waiting for his captors to make a mistake, and they finally had, thinking he was too beaten down to fight.
The guard Zoran had killed had come in to play, thinking he would relieve the boredom of standing guard over a chained prisoner by beating him some more. Instead, the guard found him hanging lifeless from the wall by his wrists and ankles.
When the guard unlocked his wrists, Zoran had grabbed him, breaking his neck immediately, so he couldn’t fight or call out. Zoran knew he would not have survived long in a fight. He was too weak. It took everything in him to push the guard off and find the release on the locking mechanism to release his ankles.
Struggling into the guard’s clothes, he pulled the laser pistol and blade from the guard, checking to make sure both were fully charged. He reached down and yanked the security badge from the guard’s neck. He knew it was late, and there wouldn’t be many guards about at this time of the night. Closing the solid door behind him, he moved down the darkened corridor. The dark did not bother him as he shifted to allow his night vision to take over.
His people were renowned for their ability to adapt to the dark. As a dragon shifter, he felt the beast inside him straining to get out. He hadn’t dared shift while in captivity. Without his symbiot to help shield him, he would have been too vulnerable.
He fought to control his inner self as he moved through the prison maze. Even t
hough he had only been half conscious when he was brought to the prison, he knew the way out, having played it over and over in his mind during the last month. Even if he hadn’t been conscious, he would have smelled the night air as it called to him.
He was Zoran Reykill, leader of the Valdier. He was the most powerful of his kind, matched only by his brothers.
He had been enjoying time on a remote planet on the outer rim of his own solar system, hunting and enjoying the favors of some of the women brought there for such things. Ordinarily, he would have bypassed pleasure, but he had been gone from his own world for two months on a diplomatic mission.
He spent two days hunting in the thick forests of the planet before heading into the city complex. He did not suspect anything until after the meal, when he started to feel very lethargic. He only had time to send a message to his symbiot that he was in danger.
He woke, chained in a Curizan spaceship. That was a month ago. The Curizans hoped to ransom him back after they obtained information about the symbiotic relationship his people enjoyed with a living metal organism capable of changing shape and harnessing enormous power. The relationship allowed his people to enjoy many attributes, including longevity, the ability to heal at a faster rate, and unbelievable space travel.
Zoran was worried his symbiot would be captured and made sure it remained hidden until he could escape. He knew he would need it when the time came.
The Valdier lived on the outer rim of the Zion cluster of planets. Only in the past three hundred years had they developed a relationship with neighboring star systems. At first, the Valdier were very careful about who was allowed to visit.
They were very protective of the interaction of their species with the symbiot. It was not until other species tried to capture and use the golden metal organism, only to have the symbiot attack and kill whatever species tried to touch it, that the Valdier felt more comfortable interacting with other species.
This presented a problem, since there was not an abundance of females on Valdier, and the symbiot was not very tolerant of females from other species. It forced many males to limit their time with females who were not from their own planet.
Zoran had yet to find a mate, although he had many females who could pleasure him should he desire a companion at the palace. The symbiot could live separate from the host for brief periods. His own symbiot divided so a small part of it could find him in the prison cell, healing his body and giving him enough strength to survive the beatings and torture. The symbiot then returned to the main body to replenish it with his essence. If not for that, both would have perished.
Now, he felt the strength of it calling to him. He rounded a corner near the entrance. Two guards stood talking quietly back and forth in the tongue of the Curizan. Zoran pulled the laser pistol and quickly disposed of both of them. He could only hope there were no other guards outside the entrance.
Holding his ribs against the burning he felt, he swiped the guard’s badge over the scanner and stood back as the door slid open. Peering outside, he moved into the shadows heading for the landing area.
His symbiot was waiting for him there in the form of a space fighter. It took on the reflective surface, making it invisible to all around it. It was only their connection that guided Zoran to it. Within moments, he was climbing into the cockpit of the Valdier fighter. With a wave of his hand, gold bands formed up his arms, sliding under his skin until he was one with the golden creature.
“Get us out of here,” Zoran murmured softly, trying to hold onto consciousness. He was hurt much worse than he originally thought. He could feel the bones in his ribs rubbing against each other.
The symbiot glowed gold as it began rising out of the compound. Shouts and hisses erupted as the symbiot lost its cloak of invisibility. Moving smoothly, the golden fighter rose and moved out of the compound moving with blinding speed.
Zoran knew he needed to stay conscious until he could find a safe place to land and let his body heal. Warnings sounded in his mind as Curizan fighters scrambled to pursue him. Zoran was not concerned, knowing that as soon as they reached the outer orbit of the planet, his symbiot could move faster than the speed of light.
Focusing on using defensive moves to get away from the pursuing fighters, he commanded the symbiot to plot a course to a quadrant of the galaxy unknown to the Curizan. He would never make it back to his own world in the shape he was in.
He sent a message out to his brothers, hoping they would receive it before he lost consciousness. Zoran gave the final command to leap as soon as they cleared the planet’s atmosphere. It was the last thing he remembered.
Another bolt of lightning flashed, and then thunder rolled across the sky, shaking the cabin walls. The electricity had gone out over an hour ago, and Abby had lit a couple of candles to light the interior, although the way the lightning was flashing, she probably didn’t need to.
Bo had taken refuge under the bed in her bedroom. Every once in a while she would hear him whine, and she would call out soft reassurances to him. Gloria was tucked up in the barn nice and safe. Abby hoped there wouldn’t be too much damage, but wasn’t too optimistic from the sounds raging outside.
She did what she could to prepare. Rain fell in sheets limiting the view outside to just a few feet. It was going to be a long night. Abby sat at the small table, staring out the kitchen window when another bolt of lightning flashed. It was strange; but, she could have sworn there was something else in the thunder that followed. She caught a glimpse of something in the sky with that last flash.
Bo whined again, this time coming out from under the bed to put his head on Abby’s knee. He still had his tennis ball in his mouth. Abby reached down and absently petted Bo’s head, scratching behind his ears.
Sighing, Abby leaned over and dropped a soft kiss on the top of Bo’s head, “Come on. Let’s go to bed. Watching the storm isn’t going to make it pass any faster, and I have a feeling there is going to be plenty of cleanup work to do tomorrow. Maybe we can find you a couple of sticks to carry back.”
Abby stood up and blew out the candle on the table, then picked up the one in the living room to carry with her into the bedroom. She brushed out her hair and changed into a pair of pajama pants and matching tank top that had little pictures of dogs on it. She climbed into the full-size bed and scooted over, patting next to her for Bo to jump up.
“You can help keep me warm tonight, big guy,” Abby whispered as she wrapped an arm around the soft fur snuggled up against her.
The next morning was bright, and she saw that the storm had cleared away everything in its path. Abby sipped a cup of coffee as she walked down the front steps of the cabin. There were bits of limbs everywhere. A tree had fallen behind the barn, but it hadn’t done any damage. Bo ran down the steps and raced around the yard smelling all the branches to see if the storm had brought anything fun to play with. Abby opened the door to the barn and moved to the stall holding Gloria. Gloria leaned her head over the door of the stall looking droopy-eyed at Abby.
“Did the storm keep you up last night, girl?” Abby asked as she ran her hand behind one of Gloria’s ears, then down along her jaw. “Come on, let’s get you outside to enjoy the beautiful weather.”
Abby moved into the stall and opened the sliding door at the back of the stall, which led into the corral. After making sure everything was still secure, she picked up a brush and brushed Gloria before closing the gate.
“Come on Bo. Let’s take a walk and see what else needs to be done,” Abby called as she moved down the path to her workshop.
She would check it out before heading toward the meadow farther up the mountain, where she had seen the weird light last night. She had dreamed about it. She couldn’t really remember much of her dream, just a nagging feeling that she needed to check it out.
Her workshop had survived the storm just fine. She was glad, since she had several thousand dollars’ worth of materials inside, not to mention the piece she was almost finished
with. Bo pranced around, wagging his tail and marking just about everything. Abby laughed at the male need to mark. It reminded her a little of Clay when he followed her around town glaring at anyone who looked her way.
Bo ran ahead down the path. Abby was a bit slower as she stopped to move some of the bigger branches out of her way. She liked to hike up to the meadow during the summers and just enjoy the scenery. She was lifting a really large branch to the side when she heard Bo barking excitedly.
“Hold on, boy. I’m coming,” Abby yelled. She pushed the limb out of the way and jogged up the path.
Abby stopped suddenly, her mouth hanging open, as she stared at the huge golden ship in the middle of the meadow. Bo was walking around it. As he moved closer, the ship seemed to shudder and move away from him. It was almost like it was alive. Abby moved slowly toward the golden ship.
“Bo, come here, boy. I think you’re scaring it,” Abby said softly.
Bo took one more sniff of the golden ship before taking off on another adventure. Abby walked around the ship, watching as it shivered when she stepped closer to it. It wasn’t very big, maybe about the size of a large SUV, but it was absolutely beautiful. She looked at the sleek design. Different colors swirled through the outer coating, making the golden ship almost invisible as it took on the colors around it.
Abby slowly reached out to touch the ship’s surface. It shimmered a bright gold, almost as if in warning. It reminded Abby of some of the wildlife she had seen up in the mountains. She and her grandparents sometimes came across frightened or wounded animals over the years and they nursed many back to health before releasing them back to the wild.
“It’s okay, baby. I’m not going to hurt you,” Abby whispered softly. “It’s going to be all right.”
