“SHHHH!” she blushed.
Dozer towered over Sheila, she was tall for a woman, hair so blond it looked white. Sheila Lewis was nearly forty years old but in great physical condition due to working on cargo ships for almost twenty years. Dozer was younger, seven years her junior, muscular and had skin the color of cocoa. His real name was Dwayne Reynolds but Captain Bronson nicknamed him Dozer for being as big and strong as the tractors used to plow new territory on the colonies. He was needed for his muscle and got paid very well to use them on a daily basis. Captain Bronson looked the other way when it came to the tryst going on between them as long as it never interfered with their commands, he knew all too well how lonely it could be working out in the black voids.
“Tufty was probably watching us, playing with his worm.” Dozer whispered.
“Shut your mouth!” She laughed.
“Probably watchin’ that fine ass!” He continued to tease her.
She threw her hand over his mouth. “HUSH!”
He pulled her hand away and kissed her. “Let’s get back. I want to get some sleep.”
“Did I wear you out?” Sheila asked.
“Every time!” he said.
The lighting was set to conservation mode so the bottom deck was only half lit, leaving their route dim. Ahead of them the sound of a steel door creaking open halted them. Dozed protectively stepped in front of Sheila, she peered around him to see the shadow of someone exiting the cargo hold. As the figure passed beneath an emergency light they could see that it was Samuel Tufty, the assistant to the two archaeologists aboard The Maiden.
“Those assholes sent him down here in the dark to make sure everything is ready for the haul.” Sheila surmised.
“They’re sure look down their noses at us all.” Dozer said.
“I can’t wait until it’s all done.” She whispered, running her hands up Dozer’s sides.
He turned to hold her. “We talked about this. It’s gonna be quick.”
“I know.” She said, her voice cracked like she might cry.
“That’s enough of those tears. Don’t make me take you back to the laundry room.”
She sighed, wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed him.
“Remember the promise?”
“I promise to get back in one piece.” He said.
“Good! That’s an order!” Sheila said.
She was his superior and could delegate duties to him, he never knew when he first met the second in command that those jobs may include making love to her in the darkened nooks of The Maiden. He now knew that he would never disobey her commands.
Tufty shuffled over to an elevator and punched the button.
“Hold the door!” A deep voice hailed him.
Tufty jumped, fell forward and gripped his chest.
“You nearly sent me into cardiac arrest!” he complained.
Sheila and Dozer came quickly to join him before the door could close.
“Bosses got you down here preparing for the landing?” Sheila asked.
“Yes.” Tufty answered in his usual tight lipped way.
“What are you down here for?” Tufty asked.
“Security check.” Dozer answered.
The old man nearly laughed in Dozer’s face, he knew what was going on. If they had truly done a security sweep they would have caught him feeding two ticks in the cargo hold.
***
The two archaeologists, Cambridge and Lotello, slept in their bunks in the guest quarters unaware Tufty was sitting in his own, wide awake and yet still dreaming. His mind was on the tomb beneath the mountain, he had touched her when they warned him not to, her voice spoke only to him, urged him to return to her…and to bring more sustenance before carrying her into a place where the sun’s rays would not burn her.
***
Ming nodded off beside of Captain Bronson who’s eyes stared out at their approaching destination, the poisoned planet, earth. He was born there and watched it, like an aging mother, growing grey as life faded from it. He was brought to the colonies as a young boy aboard a gleaming ship known as the Screaming eagle. His fondest memories were of sneaking to the bottom deck to spy on the scientists working on the Ark project, those men and women were desperately trying to keep earth animals alive while the ship powered its way to their new home. He was heartbroken at the absence of his mother but those creatures soothed him. That journey sowed the seed in Daniel Bronson’s mind of one day becoming a captain of a ship of his own.
“Get some sleep, Ming.” The captain whispered.
The young man snorted and sat forward startled. “Sorry, Cap!” he said, wiping a drop of drool that threatened to slide down his chin.
“Go rest. We’re going to be busy soon.” Bronson said.
“What about you?” Ming asked.
“Lewis will relieve me in four hours.”
“Alright. I can keep her on course if you want to go sleep for a while.” Ming offered.
“No need. You know I never sleep.” Bronson smiled. “Go on, Lulu needs you.”
The young ship hand left Bronson alone to his thoughts, to admire the vision of earth through the massive window before him. It looked more like a painting hanging on a black wall. Painful memories always came with viewing it, when he watched his mother grow sick, her eyes were grey spheres set into deep sockets in her hollow cheeks. How he cried when she told him that she was far too sick to take the flight to the colonies.
“I promise you that I will be up there among the stars with you…always.” She said before wheezing as if she saved the last of her breath just to tell him those final words.
It wasn’t the plague that claimed her but a progressive form of brain cancer, even with all the medical advances that were made there was still no cure for what his mother had. Daniel often looked around him and wondered if she truly was there, amongst the cold black cradle of space, lost in the farthest reaches of the galaxy…if her god was there too. There were many, many others that died from the outbreaks of sicknesses that the world had never seen, fast moving viruses that caused people’s lungs to bleed. The population of earth was steadily drowning in their own blood. His father knew there was no other way but to look skyward, to the colonies of Cielo, Haven, and New Hope.
***
She slept blanketed in the soot of pyres, the scattered ashes of a thousand dead. She wore the remains of earth like a burial shroud, in a single breath she could cast them to the wind. The nameless one waited for a familiar heartbeat to echo across the land of hastily filled graves, a beacon of reawakening. The deathless mother, incubating her young in a cold womb. She sought more than a doomed world to birth them, more than a dying planet to become their kingdom. How could she allow them to live in a place with only corpses to slake their hunger? Beyond the void, beyond the stars, beyond the burning eye of the sun she was shown a vision of a place of hope and renewal, a dream to the lost…
Every realm of fable needed its monsters and every dream could become a nightmare in a single heartbeat, like the beating beneath the ribcage of Samuel Tufty. She felt him drawing near and would hold him to his promise, and fulfill hers by making him the father of a new generation.
***
“Setting coordinates.” Lewis said.
The control room collectively held their breath as they always did when approaching a landing. This time even more so, it was the longest stint on any planet they had worked and it happened to be in a remote area and not the usual three hours on a military base.
“Make ready for retrieval.” Captain Bronson instructed. “We have exactly twenty-four hours to get the job done then we’re sky bound again.”
“It’s creepy down here, like one big graveyard.” Gonzalez said.
“Make ready, gentlemen.” Bronson spoke into the intercom to the archaeologists preparing themselves in the cargo hold.
“All ready.” Tufty answered.
“They’re some really weird fucks, lucky us that we get to accompany t
hem, right, Ming.” Dozer said.
The young man sat quiet, his nerves eating at him.
“I’ll suit up.” Lewis said.
“No.” Dozer and Bronson answered her in unison.
“Not a chance.” Dozer reiterated.
“It freaks me out.” Ayana said staring out as grey dust engulfed the ship.
“It’s a ghost town. Just one big archaeological dig for these assholes.” Dozer said.
“Couldn’t describe it better if I tried.” Bronson agreed. “But this is how we make our pay, so look alive.”
***
The view cleared as Dozer and Ming went to gather the three men sent to retrieve the contents of a recent dig. The Maiden usually collected artifacts left behind in libraries and museums but this load was out in the field, beside of a crater that bit into a mountainside. It looked like a dried lake to Bronson and the two crew members at his side.
Ayana shivered. “I don’t like this.”
“Why didn’t the operation just bring back these artifacts after they dug them up?” Lewis asked.
“The report stated that three crew members contracted red lung, including two archaeologists, and had to take an emergency pod back to Cielo.”
“Did they bring that shit back to the colonies?” Gonzalez asked.
“No…They never made it back. Only their exploratory vessel and the archaeological assistant were recovered.” Bronson said.
“Located it by the distress beacon?” Lewis asked.
“Yes. Tufty was rescued here and spent months in quarantine to make sure he didn’t carry blood lung before the government agreed to let him come back.” Bronson continued. “The other two were recruited to lead him in bringing back some artifacts dating back to five hundred years before the earth started to die.”
“That’s why we’re getting paid so much.” Lewis said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“They assured me that the previous crew were VERY careless. We don’t play around when we’re on the job.” Bronson answered. “Those boys made serious mistakes, didn’t even wear breathing units.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Lewis agreed. “We’re not that incompetent.”
“The digging is done, we just need to load it up and get our asses out of here.” Lewis said.
“Damn right.” Bronson agreed looking out at the desolation around them.
Protruding from the earth was the broken trunks of what once was an entire forest, scorched fields and in the distance the devastated remains of some small village.
“Do you think it’s haunted?” Gonzalez asked. “What if there are mutants or alien lifeforms here?”
“Everyone and everything is haunted.” Lewis said. “And our colonial exploratory ships are seeking those alien lifeforms as we speak. You gotta get tougher than that, Ayana.”
“I’m not scared, just superstitious, I guess.” Gonzalez said.
“Don’t get all superstitious on me now.” Bronson spoke. “Save it until we get back into the black.”
Gonzalez rolled her eyes. “Aye, aye, Captain.”
Chapter Two
“Nuclear war, catastrophic weather and finally the plague…they combined to wipe mankind off the face of the earth.” Ming spoke into his helmet intercom.
It echoed into the control room, sending chills up Ayana’s spine. On a monitor played a live recording of everything the group on the ground encountered. It jiggled and bounced as he rode beside of Dozer who drove the rover across the fields of ash.
“Mythology from those times blamed the one god himself, a cleansing, some called it.”
He continued as they plowed over broken piles of bone, the remnants of a corpse fire, the futile efforts to stop the red lung from spreading. “That was until even the faithful began to die.”
“He’s incredibly smart.” Lewis remarked of the mechanic.
“He was well schooled.” Bronson said. “He’ll be piloting a ship one day instead of repairing it.”
Ming’s voice became a commentary to what was shown on the screen to those in the control room.
“Besides a handful of men left on a few military bases this planet is empty. No animals dwell here anymore, she’s shutting down, like a failing organ.”
The sound of his respirator, filling his helmet with fresh air punctuated the point of his speech.
Bronson recalled the laments of old men left alive after the follies of earth, how they grieved their former lifestyle, their ignorant pride. They laughed bitterly into their drinks in colony taverns of the tombs of long forgotten kings inscribed with words proclaiming their greatness being sanded smooth by the power of rippling bomb blasts while disease stole the breath from self-righteous lungs. His own father told him stories of earth’s demise while they sat alone in the darkness of a foreign planet…their new home. It all overwhelmed him, the remembrance of memorials broadcast across the galaxy of lonesome mass funerals, of suicides, cremation by their own hand, infanticide committed out of mercy. Many lit small candles in memoriam of those left to recite prayers for the dead from their own dying lips. He wondered how hopeless they felt, those infected, who looked up beyond the poisoned skies to the stars beyond, they couldn’t help but feel that even god had abandoned them to die a miserable demise. He was relieved his mother passed on before the worst had come. Bronson felt a sadness fill him, it happened every time he landed on earth, sitting there in the maiden was the closest he would ever get to visiting his mother’s grave. That thought wouldn’t escape him.
***
Dozer watched the small screen in the dashboard of the rover as a small green blip of a marker urged him to keep driving, they were getting close to their destination. The rescue team of the Columbus left it behind for those seeking the location of the dig.
“Approaching the site.” He spoke, behind him sat Tufty, Cambridge and Lotello. They silently nodded.
Ming felt the trailer behind the rover bounce as it corrected itself while navigating the littered field. The speeds they were reaching started to concern him yet he knew that Dozer was nervous and would push them all to their limits just to be done with the haul. The young mech-hand didn’t blame his crew mate one bit, all he wanted was to see earth being put far behind them. He remembered learning about mother earth and her once blue skies, her green fields, what he saw now was far from that description and could be much more comparable to what most humans would call an alien planet. A forbidding, barren landscape stretched out before the rover. Ahead of them he could see the crater that ate into the mountain, it looked like a gateway to another dimension, somewhere darker than space and much more dangerous. His heart sank knowing that was where he would be working for an entire day.
***
She lay in a state of rest, statuesque, her skin the color of stone. Centuries before her hidden tomb was sealed in the mountain, the guardian of the door was now a mummified shell. It was opened in the last days of man, when a mega bomb was dropped on the starving inhabitants of the valley at the foot of the mountain. Those primitive men who fought with sharpened swords and rusted rifles were buried by the technology of men who wore pristine white lab coats. For a moment she could feel the faint stir of her children within her sallow womb, they awaited the warmth of human flesh and blood, anticipated the delicate marrow and grey matter that facilitated the urge to hate, to kill without mercy, it was beneath those human hides that they could grow rapidly. Tufty had returned, and her time had come.
***
They watched from Dozer’s helmet camera as the five men entered the opening of the dig site. He towered over the other four. Spotlights cast illumination upon a wide cavern, one of the men darted directly across it to an opening at the far end.
“This way!” Tufty demanded as the others followed more cautiously. “We named this Selene’s tomb because she reminded us of the paintings and carvings of the mythical goddess of the moon with all the constellations crudely depicted on the walls of her resting place.”
“He wants in and out.” Lewis noted.
“Good. Let’s waste no time.” Gonzalez said.
Bronson pressed a button and began speaking directly into Ming’s helmet.
“Keep your eyes open, we don’t want any cave ins. Make this quick and we’ll celebrate tonight.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” He answered.
As they approached the uneven doorway a figure came into view. He was seated, leaning against a pile of stoned beside the opening. Dozer took two steps closer, recording the dusty visage of a man…a sentinel guarding the ancient tomb beyond the door.
“Take a look at this motherfucker.” He said, knowing that his captain and crew mates were now observing the same decrepit face before his protective helmet.
“Never gave up on his job. That’s dedication.” Lewis said.
“If this was your tomb, I’d guard it for all eternity too.” Dozer answered.
The control room erupted in embarrassing giggles.
“Don’t forget we’re not alone!” Sheila reminded him.
“Stop messing around.” Tufty yelled. “Get in here. She’s ready to be crated.”
Dozer and Ming stepped into a room carved in stone, in the center lay the statue of a woman. Dust motes danced in the light of their helmets.
“There against the wall is the crate we hadn’t assembled yet.” Tufty said turning to Dozer. “Get to work.”
Cambridge and Lotello stood beside of Tufty, admiring the statue of Selene.
“This carving was done by a master craftsman.” Lotello noted as his own camera rolled for documentation,
“Luckily she was unharmed by the blast.” Cambridge agreed, running his gloved hand along her stone cheek.
Galactic - Ten Book Space Opera Sci-Fi Boxset Page 149
