Zombie Road | Book 8 | Crossroads of Chaos

by Simpson, David A.

  They talked for hours; he was too excited about piloting the ship, about seeing all manner of aliens and going to a real space port to sleep. When he finally nodded off, she walked her corridors one last time. She wasn’t sentimental, or she wasn’t supposed to be, but she felt sadness in leaving. She hadn’t opened any of the private rooms since she’d been attacked and destroyed but now, she did. The bodies still floated in the icy blackness and she collected things she thought they might need from the long dead soldiers. She didn’t remember them as individuals as she once would have. Now they were parts of her broken self that she was leaving behind. Nothing more. Nothing less.

  She watched him sleep their last night on the Madroleeka, their last night on the only home she’d ever known, and for once he was peaceful. Many nights he was restless and she understood. She didn’t sleep, didn’t dream, but knew what they were. When he tossed and turned, she dredged up the worst memories inside her and relived them. Felt the horror and the fear. The helplessness and hopelessness. She wondered which one he was reliving as he jerked in his sleep but the human mind didn’t always have nightmares about things that had already happened. It was quite adept at creating fresh new horrors.

  Jessie strapped himself in, made the final checks, flipped the antigravity switch and eased the ship off the ground. Maddy released the air pressure from the bay and activated the door. It groaned open and she calculated the battery drain it used. They wouldn’t be coming back, there wasn’t enough juice left in them to power the life support systems back up. In a little over a month, they’d burned through all the energy it had taken thousands of years to collect.

  Jessie gripped the oversized controls tightly and steadied the ship. It had been pretty sleek until he started modifying it. The aerodynamics were mostly for aesthetics, there wasn’t any air, and any drag, in space. The humans from this galaxy were similar to the humans of earth in many respects. They liked nice things and they liked glamorous trappings. The captain’s ceremonial ship and had been designed to impress and entertain officials. The locals on backwater planets would marvel at the shiny craft with a long fuselage, swept back wings and richly appointed amenities.

  They had ruined its impressive silhouette with the addition of extra thrusters in the rear. They had broken up its clean design with the gun turrets stripped off the escort ship. They hadn’t bothered to repaint anything and the scorch marks from the welders and cutters were left alone. Space ships were pretty basic once he understood the systems. They had advanced technology but it was contained in various modules. If one broke, you replaced it. The ion thrusters, the plasma cannon loads, the shield power and most other things swapped in and out as easy as changing a fuse. A giant fuse to be sure but as long as the craft itself was airtight, everything else went together like Legos.

  “Can these be run in a series?” he asked her when adding the ion generator modules from the transport ship. “Will it make us go faster?”

  “It is ill advised.” She said. “The ships are designed to maintain the same speed as all others. If they moved at different speeds in the shipping lanes, there could be collisions.”

  It was an argument they had that ran for weeks even as Jessie was gutting the luxuriously decorated sleeping quarters and the living and entertaining areas befitting a warship captain. He stripped anything he considered superfluous and replaced it with hardware, spare modules and supply containers.

  “I don’t need a virtual reality entertainment room or whatever that thing is.” He’d argued. “I don’t know what’s out there, I need guns and ammo. I need food and water. I need to be fast in an atmosphere and I need to be fast out in space. What if we run into a bunch of those dinosaur looking guys and they’re hungry? I want laser cannons to aim at them, not offer them a relaxing massage bath.”

  She knew how he was thinking, he had survived on his planet because of his machine. His Mercury. It kept him alive and kept him safe. He wanted the same thing again. She helped him because in the end it was her job to protect him, not keep him comfortable.

  The ship used an anti-gravity projector to maneuver when they were planet side and thruster bursts when they were near spaceports. To travel from one planet to the next inside a solar system they had a hyper drive system with ion propulsion. It could move them along at close to a hundred and fifty thousand miles an hour so moving between planets inside a system could usually be done in a week or so. To get between systems they had to use wormhole jump gates, every system had a few scattered around left over from the Great War.

  Once he was miles away from the bay doors, clear of any floating debris, Jessie turned the transporter and took in the majesty of the giant, wrecked ship. It was still slowly spinning, still tumbling from the devastating blasts that hit it thousands of years ago.

  “It will keep going forever.” Maddy said. “Like a bullet shot from one of your earth guns, it will never stop. If scrappers don’t find it, it will continue until a million years from now gravity from a planet or star will suck it down to its surface.”

  Jessie shook his head. “I still can’t believe you pulled me in like you did. What are the odds? Gotta be a million to one.”

  “They are incalculable,” she said. “I can’t count that high.”

  Jessie looked at her. “Did you just make a joke?”

  She looked puzzled for a moment then smiled. “Yes, I did. It must be a joke because it is untrue. I can count forever.”

  The Madroleeka had been drifting for millennia, slowly spinning away from the jump gate where she had been attacked and into open space where no one traveled. Her tumbling had slowed but like anything in the vacuum of space, once she had been set in motion she had kept going. They were a billion miles from any systems when Jessie turned his ship away from the spinning hulk, locked the coordinates onto the nearest spaceport and engaged the hyper drive. It would take them months to arrive and it was impossible to tell if they were moving by looking at the outside screens. They were in the vast blackness of nothing. A minuscule pinprick, a single grain of sand in an ocean. The ship accelerated smoothly, reached the maximum speed within minutes and the only way they knew they were moving was by watching the display tick off numbers.

  “We will arrive in two hundred seventy-one days.” She said.

  “Not if these work the way I think they will.” Jessie said and flipped the switch to turn on one of the extra hyper drive thrusters. They watched as the speed climbed and the ETA fell. The ship still felt smooth, no crazy vibrations or funny noises.

  “There appears to be no change in hull integrity.” Maddy said as she scanned through screens and readouts “but I would advise against engaging the fourth engine.”

  “Noted.” Jessie said and flipped the switch.

  They couldn’t tell the ship picked up speed, there may have been a little more vibration, but it was moving through the void at nearly three hundred thousand miles an hour. The ETA counter displayed a little over three months.

  There wasn’t much to do until they got closer to shipping lanes between planets and the space port, so they flipped on the auto pilot. Jessie spent the time learning the universal language, teaching himself to read and working with the gun turrets. He wanted to practice flying the ship, maybe land on an asteroid or empty planet but there was nothing. The only thing outside of a solar system was an occasional rare comet and microscopic dust particles. The rest of space was just nothingness. Black, empty, cold nothing. He’d found a sheaf of paper like material and started writing down some of the things that had happened. He wasn’t planning on keeping a journal but he felt a little closer to her when he wrote. Scarlet had kept one and other than the locket, he had nothing from her, only the memories. The machine Scarlet had said they knew how to time travel, it was basic knowledge even though it was outlawed everywhere. There had to be better machines, more accurate, than the one under the Tower. He needed to find one and figure out some way to get back to where he belonged. Back to her. There must be a way t
o bypass the disrupters for a few seconds or take it far out into space and use it. He still ached for her and in the quiet moments, when his mind wasn’t consumed with learning new things or simply in awe of his situation, he remembered and his heart hurt.

  24

  Spaceport

  Jessie had been in the pilot’s seat for hours as he watched the planets get closer. They had entered the solar system and now that there was something to gauge their speed, he could finally tell that the ship was actually moving. They passed the outer ice ball planets, the systems jump gate and aimed for the sun and the inhabitable worlds. Maddy had only been able to monitor the high-powered signals from the Madroleeka but now that they were within the system, they were receiving thousands. She spent most of her time listening, deciphering and learning. Much had changed since her time. The rebuilding had used much of the old technology but there wasn’t a strong galactic force that enforced the council’s rulings. Most systems had their own enforcers and from the chatter, some were better than others. The Federation only held sway over a handful of systems, those closer to the hub.

  “We can’t land on any of the planets here.” Maddy said. “All ships are required to dock at the space port and travel down on shuttles.”

  “Crap. Why is that?” Jessie asked.

  “Security is the official reason.” She answered. “There is a prison planet and a forced servitude planet. They don’t want any escapees. However, most of the chatter I’m picking up are complaints about the vacation world. It’s overpriced, the dock fees are high and you are forced to use their shuttles. Which are overpriced, also.”

  “Okay.” Jessie said and licked his lips. “Sounds like home. Except there were free shuttles at Disney World.”

  He had been prepared to land on a planet, it gave him time to practice a little in a gravity environment. There was probably plenty of room to maneuver, he imagined big open fields with giant helipads and big painted X’s to mark the spot. He wasn’t sure about a space port. It was spinning and moving around the biggest planet, he was moving in at a different speed and angle, there wasn’t any gravity to ease into and he was doubting his ability to land without smashing through a control tower. The closer they got, the more nervous he became.

  Over the past months Maddy had taught him about the galaxy before and the current state of things. She had shifted into the various lifeforms so he wouldn’t be shocked when he saw them, spoke in their native tongue and made him practice the universal language. She was obstinate and refused to speak English until he grudgingly tried to start learning.

  “It is for the best.” She’d said. “You are foolhardy and reckless. Knowing the language will help in many situations.”

  “I don’t want many situations.” He’d complained. “Yeah, it’ll be cool to check things out for a while but I need to get back. All I want to do is find out how to get access to a time machine and return to earth. I have unfinished business there.”

  By listening to the other ships, they figured out the protocol and when they were near enough to the port Maddy hailed them and asked for permission to dock. The port was enormous, the size of a sprawling city and without the blinking lights to guide him and Maddy to tell him which ones were meant for him, he never would have figured it out on his own. Jessie took a deep breath, tried to ignore everything else going on around him and guided the vessel into the assigned zone that was flashing amber. As they neared, he could see a shimmer of the bubble they would pass through and tried to line his ship up so when they breached it, the gravity wouldn’t slam them down too hard. He cut the forward thrusters and tapped the ones on the bottom to slow the decent but was still moving forward and at an angle.

  “Crap.” He muttered and tried to correct but sent the ship spinning just as they slipped through the gravity barrier.

  The jump ship was small, a fraction the size of most transporters and that was the only reason they didn’t smash into the receiving building. It spun, slammed into the pad, bounced and slid sideways, almost to the edge of the platform, before groaning to a stop a long way from the center.

  “I wasn’t expecting that.” Jessie said as Maddy answered the radio. Someone was yelling at them, half in universal, and half in something else. He didn’t understand exactly what they were saying but he was pretty sure he was getting cussed out.

  “I’m going to adjust.” He said and fired the thrusters before she could advise him to leave it alone. He had a better feel for operating in gravity and eased the ship back to the center of the platform before setting it down and breathing out a heavy sigh.

  He grinned at her, excited to be alive, on a spaceport and getting ready to meet new and interesting people. He lowered the gangway and checked for damages on the landing legs but nothing seemed broken or bent. A burly creature with an oversized mouth looked angry and confused as he stared at the ship.

  “They give flying lessons.” He said in a gravelly voice. “You should take them.”

  “Yeah, sorry.” Jessie said in his bad universal. “My first time here.”

  The vaguely lizard looking man shook his head then looked at the ship.

  “Never seen one of these before.” he said and slapped the metal box he was holding against the hull. It stuck and a series of digits displayed, started slowly counting.

  “What’s that?” Jessie asked

  The lizard man eyed them both. They were slightly built, the male wore a jacket made of tanned animal skins and had unusual weapons on his hips. Both had damaged faces and from the jagged looks of the scars, they weren’t done under the skillful hand of a skin carver. They weren’t beauty marks.

  “I figured you two for some kind of skin jobs, never seen anything quite like you, but that’s not it. This is your first time in a port? What kind of backwater system are you from?”

  “Aljeeda Three” Maddy said. “We were on a colony ship.”

  “That explains a lot.” The man said and nodded his oversized head. “I heard there were explorer ships sent out before the galactic wars. You finally made it and built your gate, eh? The galaxy isn’t the same one your ancestors left. It isn’t so neat and clean. Well, just so we understand each other, the platform is twenty credits a day. You try to leave without paying, your ship blows up. You try to remove my timer; your ship blows up. You try to rip me off in any way, your ship blows up. We clear?”

  They nodded and he stared at them for a while longer before shaking his head. “Another thing. You need to get a transponder on this rickety old tub if you didn’t bring it here to scrap it. If you’re planning on going near the hub, the first federation patrol that scans you is going to have questions and they might open fire first before asking them. Only outlaws and smugglers run without transponders.”

  He waited, looking at them expectantly.

  “We weren’t aware.” Maddy said smoothly. “Do you know where we can acquire one?”

  “Yeah.” The man said. “Fifty credits, I’ll have it installed before you leave.”

  “This is acceptable.” She said.

  He looked at both of them again, grunted, shook his oversized head and returned to his office.

  “Do we have any credits?” Jessie asked

  “No.” Maddy said “But if this is like any other port my crew visited, there is a trade bazaar where everything that can be bought or sold is bought and sold. We should have something of value we can barter. It is also a good place to start searching for information to get you home.”

  They gathered a few things they thought they could sell and went through the doors of the lizard man’s office, the only way out to the main terminal. He was watching a hologram show with a younger version of him laughing at the antics.

  “Hey.” He called to them and turned off the holo, his tone a little softer. They were fresh off a colony voyager, simpletons who could barely fly a ship and had never visited an outpost. They might think they looked tough with their animal skins and ancient blasters, they may have even been thr
ough some hardships judging from the scars they bore, but they were about to walk into a cesspool of slavers, thieves and freshly released prisoners. It wouldn’t do him any good to be stuck with their ship if they never returned, the boy dead from bumping into the wrong person and her carted off as an interesting sex toy.

  “You gotta be careful out there.” He said. “Stay away from the older levels, get your supplies and buy your tickets to the pleasure planet up here. Don’t go down below. It’s not safe for tourists.”

  “We’re looking for the trader’s market.” Jessie said. “We don’t have any credits; we need to sell a few things.”

  The lizard man didn’t think he could be any more surprised but these two had absolutely no idea what they were getting into. Maybe life was rosy on a colony ship, maybe everyone was happy and smiley and wouldn’t cut your throat for a ration of water but they were in for a rude awakening. They didn’t belong on the outskirts of the civilized galaxy, they needed to be in a system that was heavily patrolled and the inhabitants were enlightened.

  “It’s down below. You’re going to get swindled and then what few credits you get will be stolen. They’ll never find your bodies because no one will be looking.”

  He shook his head and jerked a thumb over his shoulder at their ship. “I’ll give you a day. If you’re not back, it’ll be sold for scrap.”

  “People disappear from down there all the time.” The younger one said. “Dad says to never ever go below Three.”

  “He’s right.” The creature said and made an annoyed clicking sound. “Show me what you’ve got. Maybe I can tell you who’s buying what you’re selling. Can’t imagine there’s much demand for anything off a colony ship, though.”

  Maddy opened her backpack and pulled out the things she’d taken from her soldiers. There were coins of the Federation, Shock trooper belt buckles and insignia, fine game pieces and various adornments they wore when they were off duty. The lizard man made a different clicking sound at the back of his throat and looked at them closer.