by Adam Moon
As soon as all the pods were disconnected, Crusoe told the troops to follow him. He led them to the storage rooms and said, “Everyone gets a suit. Strap them on and then grab a pod.”
Some of the soldiers were visibly shaking, but none of them dared tell Crusoe to go screw himself, so they dutifully, albeit reluctantly, suited up and awaited further orders.
To Molly, Crusoe said, “I want Jack and Jane down here.” To Sarah he said, “You’ll need to suit up too, Admiral.”
Sarah thought she was nervous before but now she was petrified.
Jack and Jane suited up at Crusoe’s insistence, but neither of them looked happy about it.
Crusoe said to everyone, “I will show the crew what to do, then I’ll lead parties to each of the ships with the pods. The crew will do this one time. After that, I expect each of you to know exactly what to do. There’s no room for error here, so pay attention.”
Sarah didn’t know if any of her crew had any experience with spacewalking, but she sure as hell didn’t.
Crusoe led the crew to the airlock and stopped. He turned to the soldiers and said, “We’ll be back shortly. If anyone tries to stage a coup, I suggest the rest of you kill him or her immediately, because if I come back here and find mutineers, I’ll kill you all.”
The soldiers at the front nodded vigorously. They all knew what happened when Crusoe wanted you dead.
The soldiers were more than a little surprised when Crusoe entered the airlock without a suit or even a helmet. The crew followed him in and then he shut the inner doors.
Sarah felt like she might wet herself, so she was comforted when Jane said, “I just peed my suit.”
And Jack said, “That’s okay, I think I’m about to shit myself.”
Crusoe laughed. “Your suits have limited maneuverability, but it’s more than sufficient to do what we’re about to do. Trust me, you’re all going to survive this.”
Crusoe opened the outer doors and they felt the atmosphere rush past them, even through the suits. The new ships were surprisingly close, which gave them all a sigh of relief. One of the ships was a mere twenty feet from them.
Crusoe looked at each of them, and then he launched himself out of the airlock. He floated for only a couple of seconds and then fell inside the open airlock of the ship next to them. He waved his arm in a beckoning motion for them to follow.
Being the newly minted admiral, Sarah felt like it was her responsibility to lead the way, so she fought the urge to pass out and launched herself towards Crusoe. In her peripheral vision, she saw just how formidable these new ships really were.
Suddenly she felt a hand grasp her wrist and pull her forward. She allowed Crusoe to maneuver her inside the airlock and saw him beckon the others to follow suit.
Jack took Jane’s hand and they both came rushing towards Crusoe and Sarah. Crusoe reached out lightning fast and grabbed Jack by the suit. Once he’d pulled them inside the airlock, he shut the doors and told them to remove their helmets.
“Time for a quick tour. The warships are each slightly different so that the Velors will have a harder time finding our weaknesses, but they’re pretty close in design to the Seeder.” He opened the inner doors and they followed him inside. The ship was remarkably similar to the Seeder except that it was brand new and had a few alien flairs, courtesy of its alien designer.
The ship’s voice called out over the loudspeakers, “Welcome back, Crusoe, and welcome aboard, Captain Jane Hotchkiss.”
Jane’s mouth fell open. “This is my ship?”
“Yep. Once we get the pods aboard I’ll need you to move it to make way for Jack's ship.”
“I’ve never flown a real ship before.”
“And you probably won’t need to fly this one either until we start fighting. The navigation programming is impeccable. But if something unexpected occurs, you’ll need to make the necessary adjustments.”
He led them to the command station, which looked identical to the one on the Seeder. Sarah’s jealousy reared its ugly head again. Crusoe had a knack for anticipating this. He assured her, “Sarah, you’re flying the Seeder because it’s not as space-worthy as the ships I built. Do you understand?”
She did. She actually knew how to pilot a ship. The Seeder was flawed, so a seasoned captain would be needed to fly it straight, and she was the only one who had that kind of extensive training and on the job experience. She nodded as though she wasn’t bothered getting stuck with the tub of the fleet. It made sense.
“Captain Hotchkiss will remain here. I’m sending the troops over first. Once they’re aboard, we’ll launch the pods over and then you’ll need to move out of the way. Do you understand?”
Jane looked worried even though she had trained to captain a ship before.
Crusoe reassured her: “If you need anything at all, just tell Molly here and she’ll patch you through to all the other ships.”
Sarah snorted. “You called this ship’s computer Molly too?”
“For consistency, yes.”
Jane’s demeanor changed. “My own ship? I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.”
“You won’t be thanking me when we’re in the midst of battle.”
They left her as she got comfortable in the command station.
They got in the airlock, suited up, and launched themselves back towards the Seeder with renewed confidence.
Preparation
It took them eleven hours of backbreaking work to offload the pods to each of the ships, but they did it with only minor mishaps. Three of the soldiers missed their mark and tumbled off into space, but that was kept secret from the others so as not to worry them. Sarah wasn’t upset that they’d died out in the void, she was upset that they might’ve survived. They had some of Crusoe’s DNA inside their cells and Crusoe couldn’t die from oxygen deprivation or starvation, or old age. What if those soldiers just kept on tumbling forever, awake the whole time? That thought scared the shit out of her. They’d also lost about a dozen pods, but they had extras so that wasn’t a big deal. All told, it was a success.
Jack was aboard his very own ship now too, so they each had a contingent of several hundred hybrid superhuman soldiers but no crew. Sarah rectified that immediately after scouring the rosters for rank.
She appointed a man named Robert Smith as her second in command since he was the highest ranking soldier. He didn’t like the idea that he’d been promoted, but screw him. They had a mission and it superceded his loyalty to the military. When she told him he’d get to retain his rank, he seemed to come around.
There was a need for a technician too, just in case of malfunctions on board the Seeder during the long trip. She brought a young, attractive redhead into the fold to take on those duties. Her name was Becky Gibson. Becky accepted the role happily. Sarah already liked her. Redheads were even rarer than blondes, so she really stood out against the sea of brunettes, especially where she was also a gear-head grease monkey.
Sarah hoped Jack and Jane had the foresight to promote their own crews, but she knew they would. It would be stupid not to.
Crusoe paired jobs to personnel for all of the ships. Some would be gunners, others would be involved in flight control and systems operations.
The job that terrified them all was infiltrator. These poor bastards were expected, if necessary, to jump from their ship and try to get inside enemy vessels.
Crusoe had taken some time with a small group of soldiers and showed them how to infiltrate under most circumstances, but no one was comfortable even after dozens of trial runs from the Seeder to one of the other ships and then back again. They all seemed capable in the semi-controlled environment, but none of them were dumb enough to think the battle to come would be quite so organized.
They knew they were to be sacrifices, but once again, none of them had the guts to tell Crusoe no.
As soon as the last of the soldiers went back into stasis, Crusoe bid Sarah farewell and set off for his own ship.
She missed him the moment he left. He alone seemed to know what to do under any circumstance. He was brilliant, infinitely strong, resourceful, and his hatred of the Velors was infectious. She needed that hatred to help propel her forward; otherwise she might stop and wonder: Why not just go around them and find another planet to colonize? But she knew the answer to that. There was nowhere else in the galaxy to go, at least nowhere that any of them knew of. The seed planet was an oasis in the desert. All the other observed planets would kill them within minutes, and some in mere seconds, either from poisonous atmosphere, total lack of atmosphere, temperature, or crushing gravity. Crusoe’s hatred helped to kindle the hatred in her own heart too. The Velors had laid a deadly trap. Hopefully it was about to backfire.
Sarah did a quick systems check, walked the ship to make sure everyone was locked up in stasis, then stripped naked and crawled inside her pod.
She told Molly to alert Crusoe that she was going to sleep and then closed the lid to the pod. The IV’s pumped their liquids into her veins and the air was evacuated. The oily mist filled her pod and the freeze took her instantly.
Jason
Sarah was abruptly woken by the voice of Molly and the voice of Crusoe. They were both urgent.
She tumbled out of her pod and started to dress when Crusoe said, “Jason Rodriguez has woken from stasis. According to Molly, he’s still in Pod Bay Two. He’s opened at least two other pods. You must hurry and you must use caution. I’m circling back to your coordinates but it will take some time to reach you. By then I fear it will be too late. Good luck, Admiral.”
Sarah was stunned. She thought Molly had been ordered to never let Jason escape his frozen bonds. Then again, Molly had done some counterintuitive things during the journey already. Had she deliberately disobeyed orders? Had she been corrupted somehow by Jason when he tweaked her databases? Maybe the pod had simply malfunctioned?
She slipped her shoes on and wished like crazy that she had a firearm. She’d shoot him on sight. Not only was he the enemy, bent on their destruction, but he was a fanatic, willing to give his own life to make sure they all died. Worse, he was a hybrid, far more convoluted than anything she’d seen yet. He was part Velor, part human, and part whatever the hell Crusoe was.
She told herself to stop thinking about it. She had to act.
The bay hatch was still closed, which was fortuitous. She ordered Molly to open it, and as soon as it opened enough to allow her to slip through, she rushed inside.
The bay was dark as always, but she saw movement the second she came in. A figure stood up and ran out of view. When she moved towards where the figure had knelt, she nearly screamed. There was blood and gore everywhere. Then when she saw who it belonged to, she was confused.
Two bodies lay on the floor at her feet. One was the Prime Minister of Great Britain and the other was the French Premier. They had both used their political clout and probably greased some palms to get on board. She hadn’t even known they were on her ship until the flight had been well underway. But why had Jason decided to kill two old useless men?
A voice from behind startled her and she knew she’d made a mistake. She should’ve chased Jason down right away instead of getting distracted, allowing him to get the jump on her.
He said ominously, “Your two highest ranking leaders are now dead. I was going to kill them in stasis, but I wanted to see the looks on their faces as I did it.”
Sarah laughed out loud and then quickly stood and whirled around on him. “Those old goats were not our leaders. They were the leaders of my old, long dead world. They bought their way on board because there’s no way their presence here could be justified. They’re completely useless.”
Jason looked bemused as he tried to discern whether she was lying or not. “If that’s true, then so what? I’m about to kill you, then your crew, and then every soldier and colonist on this ship. I started with the leaders because that’s how I was trained, but it doesn’t matter in the long run.”
Sarah smiled a fake smile. “If you kill us all off, who’s going to fly this thing to its destruction?”
“I will sacrifice myself for the good of my people. I’ll fly the Seeder to its glorious end and my people will rejoice and hail me as a hero. I won’t tell them you’re already dead. The end will be the same either way. I’ll be accorded a special place in the legends of the Velors.”
“Posthumously, of course,” said Sarah. “But you should know that we’ve decided to run right into the ambush your stupid people set for us. We’ve built a fleet to give us a chance.” She didn’t say this to supply him with intel, but to make him stop and think it through.
While he was figuring out the ramifications of what she said, she punched him square in the face. He hit the floor like a sack of potatoes. His face was caved in slightly and gushing blood all over her shoes. She’d been rendered super strong and extra quick by Crusoe’s alteration to her DNA.
Jason clutched at her calf and crawled up her body, hand over hand. How was he still conscious? His face was already morphing back to normal, a result of Crusoe’s DNA tampering, no doubt. A cruel smile was starting to play on his disfigured lips when she hit him again, harder this time. He fell down again, and before he could get back to his feet, she stomped down on his head with all her might. But she knew he’d recover despite the brutality of what she’d done. Crusoe had taken him apart, and yet here he was, alive and well.
She grabbed him by the throat and started to drag his body from the pod bay. She had to get him off the ship or else he’d kill everyone.
Now she wished she hadn’t told him about the fleet. If he’d gotten the upper hand, he would’ve gone after the other ships.
Using her new super strength, she was able to move him quickly, but not quickly enough. He snatched at her wrist with both hands, and with a wrenching motion, broke it like a twig.
She felt the pain ,but she also felt something else, something soothing. She dropped Jason and watched in awe as her wrist straightened itself out. She heard the bones pop as they ground over each other until they were back in place. Then she felt a burning sensation. The instant swelling was already going down. Within just half a minute, she was good as new.
But so was Jason. He leapt to his feet and punched her in the forehead. Her vision swam, but she kept her feet under her.
Jason took a step back. The look on his face was full of fright. “Why are you still on your feet? What the hell are you?”
Sarah took the opportunity to attack. She sprang forward and slugged him in the abdomen. When he bent double, she took his head in her hands and twisted it clear around. He fell to the floor with a dull thud. He was on his stomach, but he was face-up. He blinked at her and his leg twitched, but the bastard just would not die.
Sarah twisted his head even further around, but it was clear it was going to take more than ruining individual parts of his body to kill him.
She grabbed his head in both hands and, walking backwards, dragged him towards the airlock. As she walked, she twisted his head around and around so his body couldn’t get the chance to heal itself.
She got him inside the airlock, threw him against the outer doors, and then ran out. She shut the inner doors and then opened the airlock up to the vacuum of space.
She stood there breathing rapidly, trying to get her head straight. She took little solace in the fact that she’d survived. That just meant there was another deadly encounter right around the corner. There always was on this ship.
She was about to close the outer doors when the sirens started to blare. Before she could ask Molly what was going on, the inner doors began to open, bit by bit. The atmosphere rushed past her, whipping her hair and clothes as it went by. In the two inch gap of the inner doors was Jason’s fingers. He had managed to stay in the airlock and now he was prying the doors apart with inhuman strength.
She gasped but quickly recovered. She knew what to do.
She stood and waited for him to open the doors. Wh
en he’d got them almost a foot apart, she put a palm on either side of the gap and then she stomped him right in the chest. He saw it coming, and held on tighter and remained in the airlock, but Sarah reeled back and stomped him again. He lost grip with one of his hands, and before he could recover she pried at the fingers of the other hand. He was stronger than she expected, though, and kept a tight grip.
Sarah didn’t even think about it. She bent down and bit his fingers clean off, one by one. He tried in vain to reach through with his other hand, but he was too late. She spat the last digit at her feet and watched Jason as he floated off into the void.
In his case, she kind of hoped he’d suffer an endless life floating through space aimlessly, his altered body refusing to die.
Recovery
Sarah entered the command station and hailed Crusoe. “I took care of him. He’s off the ship. You can resume course.”
“Excellent work, Admiral. I was worried.” Crusoe was barely lit on the monitor. He truly was flying a worthless piece of junk with no amenities, including oxygen or sufficient lighting. He said, “It must have been a hell of a fight. You look terrible. I can’t believe you survived that.”
She said, “What do you mean?”
He pointed at his own forehead and then he pointed into the screen. “Molly, show her what she looks like.”
The monitor changed to a mirror image of Sarah. She looked like a mutant from the movies. The entire top half of her head was completely caved in, with blood seeping out and dripping down her hair.
Crusoe said reassuringly, “Give it some time. You’ll recover. I’m just surprised you survived an attack like that.”
Sarah thought about telling him that she hadn’t even gone down when it happened, but she thought that might be bragging.
