Quarantined Planet

by John Allen Pace

  Chapter Twelve

  Several meters from the alien bunker rests Lilith with her engines ablaze. The ship’s interior is similar to Sephora’s, but it’s newer and better taken care of. Unlike Sephora, Lilith is organized and clean.

  Earl walks slowly in stocking feet through the spotless bridge, running his fingers along its seats. He stops at a handprint of dried Alien Grey blood on one chair and rubs it with furious determination.

  Frey surprises him by saying, “Are you not eating?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll feel normal again.”

  “I’m fine. Tell the others to split my portion.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure,” Earl says, walking away. He has become so accustomed to hunger that the sensation doesn’t bother him anymore. It was homesickness for the sights, tastes, and smells of Earth that left him with a sick, empty feeling. Every piece of alien fruit and that horrible protein substance they tried to pass off as meat only made him more desperate to get back. He opens the hatch to Lilith’s midsection.

  “They may be having second thoughts, I think,” Frey says with some hesitation and begins working to get the bloodstain out. He has seen Earl, a clean freak, become enraged over such things and wants to prevent another flip out.

  “And you?” Earl asks. “You’re having second thoughts now?”

  “No. No, I think we’re doing the right thing by these people, of course.”

  “Then we don’t need the others.”

  Frey watches with concern as his captain steps into the ship’s middle and pauses to examine several glowing metallic cylinders.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Clara Meeks passes a watercolor creation to her husband John Meeks. Both are beautiful and impeccably dressed, as if they’d just returned from an evening at the symphony. John examines the painting.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful, Chloe,” he tells his six-year-old daughter.

  “We have an artist in the family.” Clara smiles.

  Chloe sits on the floor, legs folded under a coffee table in the middle of a large and beautifully furnished room. A sizable collection of paints and brushes are spread out before her. A glass of water is darkened to brown from many brush cleanings. She’s beaming from the praise as her father kneels.

  “Is that a barn?”

  “It’s Grandma’s house,” she replies matter-of-factly.

  John hands the watercolor to Clara. “Well, yes, it is. I see it now—how perfect. Come on, Bopper, time for bed.”

  “Okay.” She gleefully runs out of the room with Mom and Dad not far behind.

  Chloe jumps into bed, throws up the covers, and begins to bury herself in them.

  “Where’s Chloe?” Dad begins to poke around, purposely missing the cave his little girl has made for herself. “Is that Chloe—no?”

  She giggles from under the blankets. Clara smiles and tidies up an already perfect room, fit for a princess. “Is this Chloe?” John continues. “No.”

  Under the blankets, Chloe continues to dodge her father’s hands, laughing hysterically. Then suddenly, there’s nothing. Even the small amount of light filtering through her covers begins to dim. Chloe’s smile goes away with the long silence. “Daddy, find me.”

  The light disappears completely. Chloe’s breathing becomes labored, and her little heart pounds. “Daddy?” Someone is walking around her bed, maybe more than one person, but it doesn’t sound like Mom or Dad. She jumps at the clang of metal on metal. The covers are stripped away. Chloe is on a black surgical table surrounded by three Alien Greys. They reach for her, and she screams.

  With a gasp, Chloe wakes.

  “You okay, love?” Gordon asks, concerned.

  She takes a second to check her surroundings. “Sure,” she says with a deep breath. Tivis is glaring at her. “What?”

  He shrugs and returns to flying the ship.

  Directly across is Nix, fast asleep. She doesn’t know anyone who can sleep as easily and peacefully as he can. The nightmares and survivor’s guilt that seem to plague everyone else never bother him. He is just Nix, uncomplicated and untroubled in an almost child-like way.

  It does annoy her at times. “Nix. Wake up.”

  He opens one eye. “Are we there yet?”

  “No, we’re not there yet.”

  “What’s goin’ on?”

  “I had that dream again.”

  “Oh yeah, which one was that?”

  “You know the one I always have.”

  He hesitates. “Umm, I don’t…”

  “You know.” She looks at him as if to say, come on, this is an easy one.

  “Well…”

  “You know,” she continues after a frustrated sigh, “the one where I’m running naked along the beach.” He perks right up. “And you’re trying to catch up to me, and then a huge wave comes in and sucks you out to sea.”

  Nix thinks for a moment. “Really?”

  She chuckles and gives him a friendly smile. “No.”

  Tivis is staring at her again.

  “What?” She glares back.

  “Hold on,” Gordon pipes up, getting everyone’s immediate attention. “I think we found our ship.”

  Sephora slows as it approaches the smooth, tube-shaped Alien Grey supply ship, now spinning slowly.

  Nix and Chloe release their straps to get a closer look out the ship’s forward ports, while Tivis glances over his shoulder at Chloe’s abandoned station. He deciphers the alien symbols flashing across her computer screen. “They’re not transmitting anything,” he says, “and her engines are cold. I’ll send them an automated greeting.”

  There’s a long silence as they wait for a response. Jane asks the question on everyone’s mind. “So…are we going aboard?”

  “We should have guns,” Nix says, wringing his hands.

  “Yes,” Tivis sneers, “you with a gun, Nix, would give me great comfort.”

  “Swellhead.”

  “Knock it off,” Gordon shushes them. He knows they’re all waiting for a definite answer from him and maybe a comforting word or two, but he says nothing.

  Chloe is suddenly aware of her loud, nervous breathing and holds it in for a few seconds. “Why would we need guns?” she asks with a crack in her voice.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sephora is docked with the larger alien vessel, and both spin slowly in an ocean of stars.

  Gordon, Nix, Jane, and Chloe, in space suits, creep cautiously down a dimly lit corridor of the massive supply vessel. The younger three bunch together a few paces behind their captain. They’re able to communicate through wireless headsets in their helmets.

  “Maybe they had some bad space chicken,” Nix clicks on, “and they’re all dead of food poisoning.”

  Chloe can’t help but laugh. “Bad space chicken…Nix.”

  “Or maybe some horrible virus turned their brains to mush.”

  The suggestion makes Jane stop walking. “Gordon, we haven’t considered something like that.”

  “Everyone, shut it,” Gordon demands as he rounds a corner. He’s soon on top of Earl’s first two victims. “Oh, bloody hell. They’ve been shot.”

  “Oh, my God.” Chloe puts a hand over her heart.

  After kneeling to examine the bodies, a feeling of dread comes over Gordon—the sick feeling that he knows who is responsible. “Jane, Chloe, back to the ship.”

  Gordon and Nix press on. After several twists and turns and a couple of dead ends, they find the craft’s flight deck. Her helm is alive with flashing lights and buttons that Earl’s laser blasts didn’t shatter.

  Nix hovers near the open door while his captain ventures inside and discovers more dead aliens. “Careful, Gordon, there’s someone else.”

  Before the Brit can react, the ship’s altered human translator surrenders to him. “I’m alone,” he says, putting his hands up. “The rest are dead.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Back on Sephora’s flight deck, the sup
ply ship’s hull is visible through her forward ports as is New Earth’s sun, perceptibly quite distant now. Gordon and his crew have gathered around the translator, but Chloe can’t believe what he’s saying.

  “Amon did not do this,” she says, pacing. “Why would he do this? It’s not him.”

  “Chloe.” Gordon frowns. “Calm down.”

  “He’s going back there, to the third planet,” the translator reveals.

  “If there are other planets out here,” Nix asks, completely detached, “can we live on ‘em?”

  “Nix,” Gordon interrupts, trying to keep the chatter focused. “Why is he going there?

  “He wouldn’t say,” the translator continues, “but he took several anti-matter cells.”

  “What would he need those for? Not to power his ship.”

  “They could be turned into awful weapons.”

  Chloe is getting more unsettled. “No, this isn’t true. It just can’t be true.” She knew Amon Earl better than the rest. She knew him intimately.

  Gordon puts a reassuring hand on the young woman’s shoulder. “Look, Chloe—you, Nix, and Jane stay here.”

  “It isn’t true, Gordon,” she appeals as he motions Tivis and the translator into Sephora’s midsection.

  Inside the ship’s storage and holding compartment, Gordon is quick to speak, barely allowing time for the door to close. “We’re going after him.”

  Tivis rolls his eyes. “Will we be taking the children home first?”

  “No.” Gordon turns his attention to the half-man, half-alien. “You know where he’s going. Can you help us get there?”

  The translator nods with his half-mechanical head.

  ***

  Nix sits down on the ship’s helm as Jane re-fastens a loose helmet to the rear wall. Chloe presses an ear to Sephora’s midsection door.

  “We’ll need guns to stop him,” Nix says, staring blankly out into space.

  Chloe sighs, feeling queasy. “Is that your answer for everything, Nix? Let’s go get some guns?”

  “Hey, guns have solved a lot of problems through history.”

  “For the winners, I guess.” She faces him defiantly from across the room. “I keep hoping we’ll outgrow the need for them.”

  He smirks. “You’re so naive.”

  ***

  In Sephora’s midsection, Gordon and Tivis face each other standing a few inches apart.

  “We’re no match for Earl,” Tivis tells the other man, stopping him from opening the door, “or a saucer full of slates, should we run into one. They won’t be at all happy we’re out here—might even think we’re responsible.”

  Gordon isn’t listening. “I’ve made my decision.”

  “Shouldn’t we ask Carver first?”

  “No time, yeah? We need those power cells. Regardless of what Earl has in mind for ‘em.”

  “Well, I object.”

  “This isn’t a bloody democracy.”

  ***

  Chloe, ear pressed to the door again, scrambles away as Gordon and the translator burst through.

  “Things have taken a turn for the unreal,” Gordon addresses his crew. “There’s no time to get Carver’s approval, so we’re just going to do this. We’re going after Earl. Nix, let’s go get some guns.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Nix has abandoned his seat to see the dark, cloudy world with its disfigured moon trailing all those rocky pieces behind. How he’d made it to this place and time was as unlikely as his very existence. The result of a night of backseat passion between two people who had confused physical intimacy for love, he was a mistake. It didn’t make him sad. In fact, the young man had found it liberating in a strange way, sort of like he is crashing a party.

  The translator stands behind Chloe and looks over her shoulder. Gordon and Tivis slow their ship, the third planet quickly filling her forward ports.

  “This planet have a name?” Gordon asks.

  “Yes, they have a name for it, but it doesn’t translate,” the altered human replies.

  “I think there’s a ship ahead,” Tivis says.

  Chloe squints at her screen. “Yes, but its engines are cold, no transmissions.”

  “Seems eerily familiar,” Jane chimes in from the rear of the cabin.

  “There is something,” the alien hybrid says, “coming from the planet, a signal of some kind. It’s a Grey data transmission with landing instructions.”

  “Maybe how he found whatever it is he found,” Nix adds, straining for a glimpse of the lifeless saucer coming into view.

  “Yeah,” Gordon agrees.

  Chloe’s monitor displays topographical images of the planet’s surface as the translator works her control pad. “Sending to your station, Gordon,” he says.

  Chloe touches the hybrid’s arm. “Do you have a name?”

  He pulls away. It’s been a long time since another human has touched him. “Michael.”

  “Michael,” she smiles warmly while inside she’s troubled by the surgical changes to his appearance, “sorry for not asking sooner—weird day…”

  “So, Mike,” Tivis interrupts, “do you have any idea what’s down there at all?”

  “Earl’s down there,” Gordon answers.

  Sephora drifts into the shadow of the massive saucer-shaped alien craft. Chloe joins Nix at one of the small, rectangular side portals. From her seat in the back, Jane, who remains strapped down tight, bobs and struggles for a glimpse too.

  “There’s burn marks around her docking ring,” Nix observes, “couple of small windows missing glass.”

  Gordon stares down Tivis for a reaction, but all the man says is, “Hooray, he’s here.”

  “Nix, Chloe, Michael. Strap in,” Gordon orders.

  Sephora’s engines fire, and she rockets toward the planet, zipping around, over, and through a thick layer of metallic debris, all of it covered in a rusty film. A couple of chunks bounce harmlessly off the ship’s hull.

  Jane holds on to her seatbelts like someone on a roller coaster about to go over the first hill. Nix is finally sitting. The tiny craft hits atmosphere, and fire fills her forward ports. She plummets into murky, electrically charged clouds. It’s difficult for anyone to see what’s ahead.

  “What the hell is that?” Gordon leans forward as his small vessel dashes toward a pink and orange bubbling mass. “That’s no bloody cloud.”

  “Go around it,” Nix says, leaving his seat.

  “They’re animals or birds or something,” Chloe interjects.

  Tivis agrees, “I think she’s right.”

  At the ship’s present speed, there isn’t time for her pilots to react, and Sephora plows right into a sea of floating, jellyfish-like creatures quite at home in the turbulent sky.

  Gordon had once owned the foulest mouth on New Earth, but when Chloe joined his crew, he banned any and all swearing onboard. “Shit! Hold on.”

  Great arcs of electricity erupt all around Sephora. Sparks flare up from her helm controls, and she rocks violently. Power flickers off and on.

  Jelly creatures splatter the forward ports with a horrible thud, and Jane puts her hands up, expecting one might come right through. Another hard bounce and Nix is thrown to the deck.

  "Nix,” Chloe begins releasing her seatbelts, “you okay, Nix?”

  “Yeah, stay there.”

  The ship’s engines sputter and whine as Gordon and Tivis struggle to keep her aloft. The jelly splatters stop, but the forward ports are now covered in a thick goo. The men are forced to fly by instrumentation alone and, not accustomed to it, ignore a critical proximity alarm.

  Sephora, trailing alien jellyfish goo and billowing smoke, barrels toward a valley of crooked trees. The dark forest soon swallows her up.

  A few moments later, Gordon and Chloe are the first to be roused. Smoke fills the powerless cabin, and all is quiet except for an occasional electric spark. Battery back-up lights click on.

  Gordon with all he can muster pulls himself up and atte
nds to Tivis, who’s lying across the helm in a pool of blood. “T, show me some life, mate.”

  Jane rushes to the injured man’s side. “Tivis—Tivis, honey, wake up.”

  “Anyone else injured?” the Brit says after a cough. “Chloe, love?”

  “I don’t know yet.” She winces, having been tossed from her seat.

  “Nix?”

  “Never better, Gordon.” Ignoring his own pain, he hustles to help the dazed young woman stand up. “Chloe, you okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, trying to catch her breath and tucking that swoop of hair behind an ear. “Everything hurts.”

  “Anything hurt more than anything else?”

  “No, I’m okay, Nix…I think. I think I’m okay.”

  He puts his arms around her. “How many crash landings can this boat take? I mean there has to be a limit…”

  “Shh, shh. Engines are off. We’re going to be out of air soon.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  A jagged chunk of stone finds its way through the hole in Gaea’s protective rock-stopping grid. It strikes the world’s serene sky and splinters into several smaller pieces.

  A large crowd gathered outside Center Saucer pauses to watch the meteorites arc across the sky. Jacques, the city’s reporter is a scruffy, unshaven man holding a handmade notepad. He’s perched atop the ramp at its main hatch and crouches to confer with another note-toting guy. They exchange pieces of paper.

  Jacques addresses everyone as the other man disappears inside the ship. “Question was, ‘Has there been any communication with Sephora?’ The answer is, ‘No.’ Next question...”

  Inside the saucer, an agitated and ragged bunch fill Carver’s sparsely furnished office.

  Among them is Ailee Durand, an attractive French girl Chloe’s age. Carver and McKenna face the excited gathering, and both are visibly shaken. As he speaks, the governor is aware it won’t take much for this impromptu meeting to get out of control. “Everyone, stay calm, please. Ailee?”