Former Champion (Vanderbrook Champions Book 5)

by Edmund Hughes

  Tapestry took a deep breath.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I just… don’t do enclosed spaces so well.”

  Malcolm nodded.

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “But we’ll be okay. It kind of reminds me of our old headquarters. At least, the ambience of it.”

  “Kind of.” She smiled, probably more at the fact that he was trying to cheer her up than anything. Malcolm noticed that her animosity for him seemed to fade as soon as they were under pressure, and felt guilty for appreciating the change.

  “Does the article you have contain a map of the ship, by any chance?” asked Malcolm.

  Tapestry shook her head. “We’ll have to find the spacesuits on our own. I’m guessing they’d be near the airlock, or possibly the crew quarters.”

  Malcolm frowned. “Speaking of which, where is the crew?”

  The question hung in the air between them. Malcolm had heard only a few details about the sabotage that had befallen the Jupiter III, just enough to know that the ship wouldn’t be able to complete its mission. But this didn’t match up with what he’d been expecting.

  He’d assumed that the astronauts aboard would either still be alive and just stranded on a damaged ship, or they’d all be dead, trapped inside a sarcophagus in space. But as far as he could tell, there was no trace of them whatsoever. No bodies, no blood, not even any signs of struggle.

  “Maybe Multi had someone hack the ship,” suggested Tapestry. “Maybe he created a fake emergency, lured them into an airlock, and flushed them into deep space.”

  “Maybe,” said Malcolm. “Or maybe he came through a portal, just like we did.”

  “We’d see more traces of a violent confrontation if that was the case,” said Tapestry. She scowled, crossing her arms over her breasts. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

  “Let’s just find the space suits and go from there,” said Malcolm.

  He wanted to keep Tapestry’s mind off the fact that they’d arrived on the ship through a portal, and would need a return portal to stand any chance at getting home. He wanted to keep his own mind off it too, he realized.

  Malcolm pulled himself along the handholds, moving through the circular connecting hallway toward what he assumed to be the front section. It led to the ship’s main command center, where the astronauts strapped themselves in and did the real work of the journey. There was window set into the front of the command center, smaller than Malcolm would have expected, but with a view that more than made up for it. He gasped as he stared out into space.

  Jupiter loomed in the distance, at least four or five times the size of the Moon in the night sky on Earth. He could see the Great Red Spot staring back at him, like an incomprehensibly massive eye, watching the approach of their ship.

  It made the hair on the back of Malcolm’s neck stand up straight. He guessed that they were a couple of days out from the planet, calculating that it was a six-month round trip, launched nearly three months earlier.

  “Wow,” he said. He looked over his shoulder at Tapestry, who was making a concentrated effort to keep her gaze from the window.

  “The spacesuits aren’t in here,” she said. “We have to keep looking.”

  The next connecting hallway they went down ended with a series of four heavy hatches, two of them open, two of them closed. The open ones led to large storage rooms containing dozens of cryptically labeled supply crates. Malcolm glanced around, still not seeing what they’d come for. Tapestry’s anxiety was slowly beginning to infect him, too, but he did his best to shake it off.

  Another hallway led to the crew’s sleeping area, which was an arrangement clearly designed with zero gravity in mind. Instead of beds, sleeping bags hung on tethers, with straps at the top to secure a person inside. Malcolm pictured what it would be like to sleep inside one, and it reminded him a bit of being a strand of seaweed, slowly swaying along with the current, tied down to the ocean bottom.

  There was a hatch in the back of the sleeping area that led to a small exercise room, with a selection of different pieces of equipment. Some of them, like the stationary bike and elliptical, looked like anything else one might find back on Earth. Others were stranger, like a weird configuration of balls that Malcolm couldn’t guess at the proper usage of, and a long harness that would have made sense as a resistance line for squats, but was attached to the wall instead of the floor.

  “Interesting,” said Malcolm. “I guess they really care about staying in shape.”

  “They have to exercise to keep up muscle and bone density,” said Tapestry. “Weightlessness isn’t healthy for long periods of time. At least not if you’re planning on coming back to Earth.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and closed her eyes. Malcolm put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

  There was one more hatch in the back of the exercise area, and it led to a tiny chamber barely big enough for a single person. The lights were completely off inside, and Malcolm couldn’t guess what it was for.

  The sensation of floating was incredibly distracting, and Malcolm almost lost his sense of direction as they drifted back toward the main chamber. He found himself comparing being weightless to his wind manipulation. However, although they were superficially similar, the two couldn’t have been more different. It was like comparing a sketch with a statue.

  They went down the last connecting hallway and finally found what they were looking for. The spacesuits, along with a wide variety of tools, medical supplies, and repair parts, were in a small room with a sealed hatch on one end that Malcolm could only assume led to the airlock.

  “Well, here we are,” said Malcolm. “This is what we came for.”

  It took him a minute to figure out how to release the suit from the latch holding it and pull it down. He passed it Tapestry, and then pulled one down for himself.

  “We should head back to the room we first came in through to wait,” he said.

  Tapestry nodded, but didn’t meet his eye.

  Getting the bulky suits through the cramped hallways was challenging, but they managed it. When they returned to the conference room, Malcolm sat down at the table and strapped himself into one of the chairs. Though he was securely fastened into an upright position, he still felt loose and uncomfortable, his body shifting in the zero-gravity environment.

  Lacking any other option, the two of them waited for something to happen. Malcolm kept thinking he’d glimpsed the return portal out of the corner of his eye, but when he spun his gaze to find it, it was never there. Slowly, over the course of an hour, he came to the realization that there would probably be no portal back to Earth.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Multi discovered us,” said Tapestry. “That’s what the commotion was in the hospital, right before we left. We were fools to go through that portal when we did.”

  Malcolm shrugged, an underwhelming gesture in zero gravity.

  “What other choice did we have?” he asked. “Stay, and let Multi capture or kill us? It’s not like we have our powers anymore, Tapestry. We couldn’t have fought our way out.”

  “We could have gotten Jade to open a portal to somewhere else,” she said. “Somewhere safe.”

  Malcolm frowned at her. “When have you been the type for regrets?”

  She looked at him, and he saw a heartbreaking amount of despair in her expression.

  “Ever since I led us both into a death trap, billions of miles away from Earth, with no way back,” she said.

  Malcolm shook his head.

  “First of all, we might still have a way back,” he said. “The fact that Jade hasn’t opened another portal doesn’t mean that she can’t. Just that she’s chosen not to.”

  “Or that Multi’s killed her,” said Tapestry.

  “Unlikely,” he said. “This isn’t the worst case scenario, remember? She could have opened up a portal for Multi and let him onto the ship to attack us, if she’d wanted.”

  “And why doesn’t she?” asked Tape
stry. “Who says she isn’t just waiting for more Multis to arrive on the scene so that she can do just that?”

  “I do,” said Malcolm. “We trusted her to portal us here safely. That’s got to count for something.”

  Tapestry looked like she was considering his logic, but her eyes remained dark. Malcolm had never seen her like this before. It was as though the hope had been burned out of her.

  “This is all hypothetical,” she whispered. “It’s far more likely that Jade hasn’t opened a portal because she can’t. Because she’s dead. And so are we.”

  “No, we aren’t,” said Malcolm. “We’re safe. At least for now.”

  “Really?” Tapestry gestured to the LEDs, which seemed to be running on less than full power, resulting in the dim lighting conditions. “This doesn’t look like a ship in working condition to me, Malcolm.”

  “Hey,” he said. “Don’t give up so easily.”

  Despite his words, her cynicism was infectious. There wasn’t much either of them could actively do to improve their situation, and Tapestry was right. There was something wrong with the ship, and what chance did the two of them have of diagnosing it, let alone fixing it?

  And even if the ship had been in pristine condition, what then? They weren’t astronauts. Working the instruments in the cockpit would be a guessing game.

  If it’s a guessing game, then let’s go get lucky with a good guess.

  “Come on,” said Malcolm. “If we’re stuck here anyway, let’s get familiar with all our options.”

  He took Tapestry’s hand and pushed off in the direction of the hallway that led up to the command station. It was obvious which one was meant for the captain, given how it was oriented directly toward the observation window and had, by far, the most buttons and instruments on the panels on either side of it.

  Malcolm settled himself into the seat, pulling the seatbelt across his stomach and chest, and then examined his surroundings. He’d been hoping for something obvious, perhaps a dimmer switch with “POWER” written beside it only turned up halfway. No such luck.

  “Alright,” he said. His heart was pounding faster in his chest. What if he pressed the wrong button? He could damage the ship, and put them in even more dangerous circumstances…

  “Don’t press anything,” said Tapestry. “Look, maybe… we passed by a manual, or something.”

  “Maybe,” said Malcolm. “But I’m guessing the astronauts spent years learning the ins and outs of their roles.”

  There was a red button. That was tempting. He let his finger hover over it, considering why a button might be colored red, and what that might imply it would do when pressed.

  It probably shoots the lasers.

  “Uh…” Malcolm scratched his head. “Hmm. Okay, here we go.”

  He settled his finger onto a series of buttons labeled, helpfully, one, two, three, etc.

  You wouldn’t need that many buttons labeled in sequence for something that could be potentially dangerous, right?

  “I’m going to press one of them,” said Malcolm. “Okay?”

  “Why are you asking me?” Malcolm could see Tapestry’s reflection in the observation window. She had her arms crossed, and was chewing on her lower lip.

  “I just want to make sure you’re on board,” said Malcolm. “No pun intended.”

  Tapestry didn’t say anything. Malcolm took her silence for assent, and pressed his finger down on the first of the labeled buttons. One of the monitors to the right of his chair turned on, but didn’t show anything except a black screen.

  “Well, that’s encouraging,” said Malcolm.

  Tapestry frowned. “How is that encouraging?”

  “We’re still alive,” he said. “Nothing bad happened.”

  He pressed the second button. Nothing happened. He pressed third, fourth, and then the fifth.

  A bald man appeared on the screen. Malcolm furrowed his brow.

  “Hello?” he called. “Hello? Can you hear us?”

  There was a tiny webcam built into the top of the monitor. Malcolm waved his hand in front of it, trying to get the attention of the bald man on the other side.

  “He’s not going to react right away,” said Tapestry.

  “Why not?” asked Malcolm. “Do you think the webcam is off?”

  “Malcolm,” said Tapestry, in the voice of a patient teacher. “We are billions of miles away from Earth, at the moment. So far away that there is a communications delay measured in minutes, rather than seconds.”

  “How many minutes?”

  Tapestry shrugged.

  “I guess we’ll have to wait and find out,” she said.

  CHAPTER 18

  The two of them waited. Malcolm was hungry, and he started to wonder about some of the crates that had been labeled as food back in the storage room. He was about to pitch opening one of them to Tapestry when the bald man on the monitor reacted.

  It was reminiscent of watching someone have a heart attack. The man pushed his chair back and brought a hand to his chest. Malcolm and Tapestry could hear him gasping in surprise. The man shook his head in disbelief, and then finally focused his attention back on his own webcam.

  “How… is this possible?” he asked. “Is this some kind of prank?”

  “It’s not a prank,” said Malcolm.

  “He’s not going to hear you for another half hour,” said Tapestry. “Let me do the talking.” She floated over Malcolm in his seat and crouched beside him. “Hello, whoever is on the other end of this connection? My name is Aubrey Kennison, and this is Malcolm Caldwell. We’re both former members of the Champion Authority who were transported here by a spryte with teleportation abilities.”

  She went on to explain what their original plan had been, pausing each time the man spoke so they could listen. It was surreal, a conversation where neither party was able to listen to the other in real time, but both were desperate to get information across.

  “Don’t press anything else,” said the man, who’d introduced himself as Melvin. “Wait! No! Actually, press the fourth button from the left on the third row. It should look a bit like the space bar on a computer. Then press the button directly to the right of it twice.”

  Malcolm glanced at Tapestry. She gave a small nod, as though giving him permission. He pressed the button sequence.

  The LEDs lighting the ship switched to full power, and a new, gentle hum came from some newly activated machine.

  “We have power,” said Malcolm. “Thanks, Melvin.”

  “You’re in a very tricky situation,” said Melvin, his words still out of sync with the moment. “We don’t know how the crew was lost. Ground control doesn’t have feeds from the cameras outside of the cockpit, so I don’t know the current state of things. If their bodies are aboard, you will need to dispose of them”

  “We haven’t seen any bodies,” said Tapestry, talking quickly as not to speak over Melvin as he continued.

  “It will take time for me to run a full diagnostic of the ship,” said Melvin. “I’ll have to call in the rest of the ground control team. We were not expecting… We’d given up the mission. This is so impossible, but so wonderful. We might be able to accomplish this! The first manned mission to Europa!”

  Tapestry frowned.

  “We aren’t interested in completing the mission,” she said. “Look, please, we came here through a portal. There is a spryte in Halter City, at the Lady of Mercy Hospital. If you go there and find her, she can bring us back.”

  Malcolm listened, but he could already tell from the excitement he saw on Melvin’s face that it would be a dead end.

  He’s not going to do that. He’ll give us an excuse as to why it’s too dangerous.

  The conversation continued in a confusing, delayed back and forth for close to two hours. By the end of it, Melvin had given them a list of things they should and shouldn’t do. At the top of the list was for the two of them to stay calm.

  The ship’s features were more automated than Malcol
m had expected. Melvin explained that it might actually be possible for them to fulfill the crew’s original mission if they were very attentive and listened to the instructions of the ground control team.

  Tapestry fumed at Melvin’s refusal to even acknowledge her request to find Jade Portal. Malcolm tried to lighten the mood a little with his jokes, but she was clearly in no mood for them.

  “That’s all I can do for you, for now,” said Melvin. “I have to meet with the rest of my team. It might take several hours for us to come up with a solidified plan for you. Don’t do anything in the mean time! Actually, perhaps it would be good for the two of you to get some rest. I know this is a lot to take in.”

  The connection cut off. Tapestry made a noise and glared at the black monitor. Malcolm squeezed her shoulders from behind.

  “Hey,” he said. “This is good. We’re making progress. At least now we have hope.”

  “Malcolm,” said Tapestry. “We’re still days out from Jupiter, and that’s only the halfway point for this mission. If we don’t get a portal out of here, we’ll be stuck on this ship for more than three months.”

  He wasn’t sure what to say to that, so instead, he gave her an awkward, zero gravity hug.

  “It will be okay,” Malcolm finally managed.

  “For you,” said Tapestry. “What about Melanie?”

  Malcolm scowled.

  What about Rose? What’s she going to think if she starts remembering me, and I’m nowhere to be found?

  “It’s not an ideal situation for either of us,” he said. “But we don’t have another choice right now. And I hate to rub it in… but this was your idea.”

  Tapestry glared at him.

  “Yes, I’m sure you hate to rub it in, don’t you?” she said.

  Malcolm rolled his eyes as she floated down the connecting hallway. He took another look around the cockpit, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the extent of the controls, despite Melvin’s reassurance.

  The interior of the spaceship felt very different with the power reengaged. Before, it had bordered on being creepy, given what little they knew of the crew’s disappearance and the poor lighting.