Stasis (Alpha Ship One Book 1)

by L. D. P. Samways

  He stared deep into my eyes and said, “Why destroy your race from afar when we can use you to get up close and personal?”

  He then turned around and walked back to his throne. He pulled himself onto the seat and relaxed as he shooed us away. I had many more questions that needed answering, but they’d have to wait. We were escorted away from the King’s chambers and back out into the darkness. We made our way through the alleys but changed direction. I was worried. We were going to a new place. A place I didn’t recognize. But after a few minutes of stomach-churning anxiety, my dread faded.

  We arrived at a shipyard, and smack bang in the middle was the Alpha Ship One. She was being worked on by many different Ursines. They were all wearing construction gear, goggles and high visibility clothing. It was truly a sight to behold. Aliens wearing health and safety gear, working on a human ship. I’d seen many things in my time in space, but I’d never seen so much in such a little period of time since landing on this planet. And I had a feeling that there were plenty more surprises in store for us.

  “Congratulations stupid humans,” I heard one of our guards say under his hood. He was wearing a translator box, just like the king. “You have made it out alive from the prison. Now your new home is your old ship. But things change. Things change much. You will see how much things change.”

  With that, we were marched toward our ship. Dale, Jess and I were in front, while the Spanish--or whatever they were--recruits were trailing in the back. I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t glad to see her again. The ship looked wonderful. And it felt like seeing home for the first time in many many years. But as the guard had said in his broken up English, things had changed. Not only on the ship, but with us.

  We were no longer a spaceship crew running missions for money. We were a spaceship crew delivering Armageddon to the people of Earth.

  Chapter Twelve

  “I guess that’s the new engine,” I said, pointing at the huge hulking mass as I climbed off the ladder going down into the engine room below the bridge. Dale had joined me for the inspection of the ship. We’d been left to our own devices by the Ursines. They elected to stay outside of the ship, standing guard, while we were allowed to have a peek at the new and improved Alpha Ship One.

  “What sort of metal is this thing made out of?” Dale asked as he clunked his big fist against the top of the new engine unit that was placed in the middle of the dark room. It was literally twice the size of our old unit. But that was not the only thing different about the new engine. It was a new color. A strange color. The old engine was metallic, so it didn’t really have a color. The metal we used on our ship was a grayish washed-out color. But this engine was bright red and purple. The different shades of color seemed to change every few seconds. The material it was made from had a dynamic surface, meaning that it moved. The engine itself didn’t actually move, but the colors seemed to float about on the surface of the engine much like an old school lava lamp.

  “Huh?” I said, realizing that Dale had asked me a question and that I’d gotten a little too distracted to answer it.

  “I said, what sort of metal is the engine made out of? I mean, it doesn’t even look metallic to me. What sort of metal flashes different colors like that?” Dale asked, thumping it again. “But it does feel like metal,” he added.

  “I don’t know Dale, but it does look a little organic to me, so I wouldn’t risk bashing it about like that, it might bite back.”

  Dale looked at me and frowned. He then turned toward the engine and stared at it for a good few seconds. Then he took a few steps back as if he was airing on the side of caution.

  “What do you mean organic? You saying that thing is alive?” he asked.

  “You never know. Some alien races infuse technology with organic matter and create super computers that can both think and calculate like other technology. Something seems to happen to metal and computer chips when they meet flesh.”

  Dale didn’t say anything; he just stared at the metal hybrid engine and blinked. I could see that his imagination was getting the best of him, so I decided to cheer him up a little. I grabbed him by the shoulders, pushed him into the engine and roared as loud as I could.

  “Mmmm, tasty human, yum yum yum!” I said. The sound of my voice combined with him being pushed into the engine made Dale jump out of his skin. And for a big guy, it was quite a sight seeing him freaking out like a little girl. I guess I learned something then. Everyone has fears, even big strong muscly gunners like Dale.

  “You’re lucky you’re my Captain, or I’d push you back!” Dale said, smiling at me. His teeth were stained yellow. Probably something to do with him not ever brushing them. But I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him to do so now, was I?

  “Hey,” a voice said from behind us. We both turned around and, standing at the foot of the ladder was none other than Jess, my former second-in-command. She looked absolutely stunning. Her wavy blonde hair gently bounced on her shoulders as she approached us. We made way for her, splitting to the side like the Red Sea in that famous Bible story.

  Dale and I didn’t say anything at first. We just stared at her as she ogled the new engine. The engine room itself was dark and dingy, the only illumination coming from the red warning lights above our heads. But now with the multicolored engine in place of the old one, it illuminated the room somewhat, making it much easier to see. I even noticed that the Ursines had put strip lights on every second rung of the ladder. It put a smile on my face. I found it amusing that even a barbaric alien race like them had health and safety rules!

  “What the hell’s up with this engine?” Jess asked, her back turned to us. I watched as she surveyed the engine in front of her and wondered if I should even give her the satisfaction of a reply. I was in no mood to talk to her. In my eyes, what she did was still unforgivable, and what made it worse was that she was trying to worm her way back into our good books. And as far as I was concerned, she’d never be back on the same book shelf as us, let alone the same page. She was on her own from now, and I wasn’t willing to waste my time talking to her. So I turned around and made my way back up the ladder. My head poked through the partition, and I pulled myself up on to the bridge. I stretched myself out, adjusting my neck, clicking it and made my way to the captain’s chair. I collapsed onto it and watched the screens in front of me. An idle picture of the outside stared back at me. I examined the surroundings of the shipyard and noticed the many air vehicles that were passing us. I saw that a lot of these vehicles looked like war ships. They were heavily equipped and looked the part. Meanwhile, they were being filled with fuel and taxied off to some area out of shot from the ships front cams. I fiddled around on the controls, and brought up the side cameras. They turned on and projected an image that made me nearly jump out of my seat.

  “What the heck…?” I found myself saying as I saw the image of about a thousand war ships lined up on a runway next to us. They were all pointing in the same direction and looked as if they were ready to take off. But in actual fact, they were idle. On closer inspection I noticed that the ships were empty and the engines were turned off. The Alpha Ship One scanners weren’t picking up any heat signatures off the ships.

  “That’s a lot of fire power,” I heard Dale say from beside me. He was standing behind a line on the bridge floor. It was a line that only the Captain could cross, and it was nice to see that the big meathead knew his place.

  “Yeah, just think what they’re planning to do with all of this. Call me paranoid, but I think they have a Plan B if we fail to detonate this so-called MEGATON bomb.”

  Before Dale could say anything, we were interrupted by the three new crew members that the Ursines had stuck us with. They didn’t speak a lick of English and to make things worse, one of them was standing over the red line on the floor. I looked down at her feet, and they were a good four inches over the line. Any former crew member on a human ship would know that crossing the red line was a grave violation. But this ch
ica seemed to be oblivious as to what sort of protocol to adhere to on a merc ship. It was then that I realized that those three foreigners were going to be useless on the Alpha Ship One. They did they not speak our language, and they weren’t experienced crew members on any ship. So it begged the question, why the hell were they given to us in the first place by the Ursines? Did they think that we’d be able to teach them how to speak English and fly a ship in the six months that it would take us to get to Earth?

  “Step back over the line,” I said, shoeing the young lady that was staring at me. She was ogling the big screens in front of us. I guess she also found the number of alien ships next to us alarming.

  “Dios mío, eso es una gran cantidad de naves espaciales,” she said, which I guess roughly translated to looks like we’re screwed. I agreed with the girl. She was right. We were screwed. Very screwed. Not only were we expected to fly this ship with a nuke on it for six months, with no stasis sleep, but we were also expected to end the lineage and lives of our own species. It was a pretty crappy situation to be in. But I wasn’t giving up that easily. I was determined to find a way to get things back in our favor. But if we were going to get out of this alive, we’d have to put all of our heads together.

  The problem was this:

  The three of us that remained were divided. One was accountable for the death of one of our crewmembers. The other was a meathead gunner that was quick-tempered and easily fooled and the third, that’s me, was a captain of a flagging ship that had seen both better days and a better crew.

  Then there were the three amigos that we didn’t know how to communicate with or if they were going to be of any use on this mission.

  So to sum up the war effort against the Ursines was simple. If things continued the way they were going, then we were going to lose.

  Pure and simple.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Okay, listen up,” I said, after calling my original two crewmembers to join me behind the line. Usually, nobody would be allowed over the line, but the circumstances that we were in far outweighed protocol, so I’d called them over. Jess seemed surprised that I’d decided to include her in the team talk, but I didn’t have much choice. If she wasn’t included, then there would only be two English-speaking crew members on the ship who were in on the plan. I had no other choice but to include her. Or losing Raj wouldn’t be the only issue we had. Losing her as well would mean that only two Alpha Ship One crew members stood between the Ursines and the destruction of Earth. And that obviously wasn’t the best strategy to employ against our enemies.

  “Glad you’re seeing reason,” Jess said as she sidled up to me. I was sitting in my flight seat, surveying the live feed on the big screens in front of me. The ships had started to move and they were taking off one by one. I didn’t know if they were country wide flights below orbit or if they were space flights. But I was willing to guess that the ships taking off all of a sudden had something to do with our mission. They were battle cruisers after all, and battle cruisers didn’t usually provide commercial flights. So I was certain that calling a meeting between myself and the other two was not only necessary but of the utmost importance. Because time was definitely of the essence. With all those ships taking off, you could bet your bottom credit that crap was about to get real.

  “I still don’t forgive you for Raj’s execution,” I said, replying to Jess who had obviously grown impatient in waiting for my response. But I was preoccupied. The alien ship deploying in front of us was messing with my head. The Ursines had told us that there’d only be two ships tailing us and that they’d be cloaked. But I’d counted twenty-six ships taking off in the last minute alone. They were fast and efficient, and it would only be a matter of time before we’d also have to take off.

  “That being said, you did what you had to do. I understand that more than anybody. Hell, it took balls to do what you did,” I said, turning to face Jess. My chair swiveled to the right and I relaxed into the soft fabric. It felt good to get this off my chest. “But you have to understand that as the captain, I was supposed to have made that decision. And I had decided that were were going to disobey them and take the punishment. You should have listened to my commands. They were there to not only protect you but to protect Raj. We had no way of knowing whether or not they were bluffing. If for some reason they were, then we’d have all pulled out of it alive. And that I’m afraid Jess, is all that any Capitan ever wants.”

  I didn’t say anything else, I just watched what I said sink into her skull. For some reason, Jess had been on the defensive, as if I somehow blamed her for Raj’s death. I didn’t. It had nothing to do with that. But I did have a problem with the way she’d handled the whole ordeal. It was unbecoming of the second-in-command. That’s why I had busted her out of her rank.

  “I still don’t get it,” she finally said, looking around. The bridge was quiet. The Ursines were still guarding the outside of the ship and the other three crew members, the ones that didn’t speak English, were in the mess hall below deck.

  “What don’t you get?” I asked.

  She looked at me and then averted her eyes to the floor.

  “Why was Raj so willing to give up his own life and die for the team, while I was so willing to oblige and take his life with no questions asked?” she said, a tear rolling down her cheek as she suppressed her emotions.

  “I don’t know, Jess. That’s something that only you’ll know how to answer in time. But it’s also something you’ll have to live with.”

  She nodded her head and looked back toward me. Her eyes were red, and her fringe was sticking to her forehead. She’d definitely seen better days. I think we all had. But the way we looked was far from either of our minds.

  “Talking of living with it, how are we going to live with nuking Earth?” Dale asked, finally saying something. He’d been quiet on account of me and Jess sorting out our differences. He was standing behind her. He’d stayed firmly behind the line.

  “Get closer so nobody can hear what you’re saying,” I said, ushering him over with my left hand. He did as he was told, but only after a few seconds of consideration though. He’d looked at the floor, then at the line on the floor, then at me. He gulped and walked forward gingerly, as if something violent and unexpected would happen if he crossed the line on the floor. My heart sank a little as I watched a usually strong and brave man teeter on the edge of childishness. But I didn’t ridicule Dale. Nor did I chew him out for taking his sweet time. Dale was the type of man that had faced enough ridicule in his life. He could go one day without it. Especially given the circumstances.

  “If we are going to get through this, we all need to work as a team. That means we have to put our differences aside, and get what needs to be done, done,” I said, looking at both Dale and Jess as I spoke. I wanted them to get what I was trying to put across. This was do or die for us. There would be no retries. If we messed this up, then Earth would be obliterated.

  “What is it that you have planned, boss,” Jess said, whispering slightly. I could hear the Ursines outside, thumping and banging on the ship. They were obviously doing maintenance of some kind. When we’d awoken from stasis a week or so ago, we were told that we’d been on the ship for six years. In that time, we’d passed through our galaxy, a few of the neighboring galaxies and wound up on the Ursines’ doorstep. The conditions of space would have taken its toll on the ship, so I was half glad that at least somebody was maintaining it.

  “It’s going to take us six months to get back to the Milky Way. Another week or so to get to Earth. And after that, it’s game over. We will have to act on our plan by then,” I said, both Dale and Jess nodded along. But Dale looked a little confused. I could sense that there was a question coming.

  “How the heck are we going to get back to the Milky Way in six months? You really think that this thing can travel at twice the speed of light?” Dale asked.

  I shrugged. I wasn’t usually one to take anybody’s word for anything
, but I figured that the Ursines wouldn’t lie about how fast the ship could go now that they’d installed their organic alien engine in it.

  “If they lied, then that means that we have plenty of time to come up with a plan,” I said.

  Jess nodded.

  “Yeah, six years on course to planet Earth. We’d have to be absolute idiots to not be able to form a plan in that time,” she said, smiling for the first time since the final test. I could see in her eyes that she was generally sorry. They contained a slight dimness to them. A dimness that was usually reserved for grieving wives or husbands. She felt bad for what she did. And maybe I’d overreacted. After all, Raj had voluntarily given up his life. He’d given us the go-ahead. And instead of focusing on how he died, or who had killed him, we should have been focusing on why he died. I’d given the act too much thought, and let the underlying reason he died slip on by without much consideration.

  “The Ursines will pay for everything they have done. You mark my words. Once we’re up in the air, we’re no longer in their control. We’ll have their trailing ships behind us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t hash a plan out without them knowing,” I said.

  “Maybe we disarm the nuke somehow,” Dale said, but before I could say anything in rebuttal, one of the side doors leading to the outside swooshed open, and three heavily armed Ursines walked in. They turned toward us and stopped a few meters shy of our little huddle. I felt nervous. To many humans, the way the three of us were grouped together would look suspicious. And questions would be asked regarding the reason behind such shady behavior. But luckily we were in the company of bear creatures that hardly had a brain cell between them when it came to understanding humans and their behavior. Sure, they’d managed to maintain and build a very impressive civilization. But it was obvious that these creatures were not social animals, so they wouldn’t recognize scheming when it was so blatantly in front of them.