“She’s got a head start on us. A couple of hours. Let’s just hope we’re not too late when we get there. She hasn’t hit the FTL drive yet. Leslie said it wasn’t charging when they landed, since they hadn’t been planning on leaving quickly. That gives us the advantage. Maybe,” I said.
Clare confirmed this. “We can hit the drive in a few minutes. It should be enough to get us there first.”
I looked at the estimated time of arrival to our new destination, a derelict Deltra station from fifty Earth years ago, and it said one hundred and sixty hours. Almost a week of twiddling our thumbs. A week to stew in anger at the betrayal. I sat down in the captain’s chair for the first time, hardly aware that I’d done so. I was exhausted, and my clothing stank.
If she was just going to leave us, why save me at all? She’d risked herself again for me in the swamp. Was it just for show? Did she think the others would turn back if I was killed?
Someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I looked up to see Slate there.
“Let’s get something to eat,” his mouth said, but his eyes said he wanted to talk to me about something. I obliged and followed him down the hall.
“Slate, start the coffee. I’ll be there in two.” I headed for my bunk and grabbed a fresh uniform before hopping into the shower for a quick rinse-off. I rushed, hardly letting myself dry before suiting up and getting back to the kitchen.
“You’d make a good military man. That was as fast as any I’ve seen.” He laughed, and I found myself joining in with him. I found myself really liking the quiet man. I’d expected him to be a lot like Magnus, but instead of the boisterous confidence of my Scandinavian friend, Slate gave off an aura of quiet confidence.
“I brought sandwiches to the bridge. Want one?” he asked, and I picked up a PB and J from the small stack in the middle of the table.
My stomach growled just at the sight of the food, and I ate half quickly, no words needed.
“Dean, I have a feeling when we get there, we’ll be fighting. I don’t know if Mae will be able to contact reinforcements, and at this time, we don’t even know whose side she’s on.”
Don’t trust her.
“The Bhlat,” I said, my gut spitting out the name. “It has to be. There’s no one left. If she’s not with the hybrids, and we ended the Kraski, that leaves the Bhlat. We always said if the Deltra were able to infiltrate the hybrids’ core, the Bhlat could have too.” Kareem had told us more about the alien race, and I almost wished he hadn’t. They moved from system to system, destroying lives, using slaves to mine each planet for minerals so they could expand their reign of terror. So far, they looked to be centuries from coming near Alpha Centauri or our solar system, if ever. Kareem stated that the chances of them even bothering were low, but a race of humans that managed to stave off the fleeing Kraski might entice them to visit.
“I agree. I just want to see where your head’s at. Can you pull a trigger if you see Mae’s face in the crosshairs?” He asked the question so softly I had to lean in to hear him.
Janine’s face. Mae’s face. Could I? I nodded, saying I could and would, but words were one thing. Action was another.
“Good. What do you say we continue our training after some sleep? I’m going to relieve Mary from the bridge, and you two can get some rest.” He didn’t even look tired, and there I was, ready to fall asleep at the table.
“Thanks, Slate.” He left me sitting there alone until a couple minutes later, when an equally tired-looking Mary came to join me.
“Let’s get some sleep, babe,” she said, coming over to me. I pushed my face into her stomach, and she ran her hands through my still-wet hair.
“I love you,” I said, my voice muffled by her uniform.
“I love you too. Just think of the stories we’re going to be able to tell our children,” she said.
It was the first time she’d mentioned kids, and until then, I hadn’t even realized they were a possibility. Maybe there was room for another life on our new world.
Standing up, I kissed her. “Take some pictures. There’s no way they’ll believe half of it.”
__________
I hit the ground hard, having been at the receiving end of Slate’s demonstration.
“Now you try,” he said, motioning Nick forward. The wiry doctor came at me, feigning a low kick, and struck out with his fist. I spun, mostly avoiding the impact, and followed through, momentum doing most of the work as I flipped Nick onto his back and pushed my knee onto his chest.
“Very good!” Slate yelled, clapping his hands together.
“Yeah, very good,” the doctor said, his words short and terse.
I got up and gave him my hand, which he hesitated to grab.
“Do I really need to learn this? I mean, I’m a healer, not a hunter.” Nick rubbed his chest with his palm.
“We don’t know what we’re up against. Nick, you’ve never told us your story. Why are you here?” Slate asked, surprising the doctor.
“I told you why. They needed a volunteer and I stuck my hand up.”
“We get that, but what drove you to stick your hand up?” I asked, genuinely curious.
We sat on the crates, drinking water, and Slate tossed us a couple of towels. I was covered in sweat and laid the towel over my head while he talked.
“I suppose a lot of my life decisions led me to that point. Where do you want me to start?” he asked.
“We have another four days before we get there. Go as far back as you want,” Slate said, leaning against the wall. “Tell us about your life. You know… before.”
It was hard for some people to go back to that life. To dwell on what was, because so much had changed with the Event. Nick’s eyes had that look to them, and that was probably why he was so tight-lipped about himself.
“I always wanted to help people. Even as a little kid. Where others would shy away from blood, it fascinated me. It was inside us, and if enough leaked out, we died. A weird thing for an eight-year-old to think, and my questions sometimes had my parents worried. They were simple folks from the Midwest. She worked part-time at a bank, and my pa had a small construction company. I remember the day he asked me if I wanted to take over his business. I told him I couldn’t because I was going to be a doctor. He looked crestfallen, but he never told me he was disappointed. They both supported me, and while I worked summers and part-time anything jobs while I went to school, they paid the lion’s share of my tuition.” His gaze had taken on a longing look to the far side of the room as he spoke, and I didn’t have to ask if his parents had survived the Event. They hadn’t.
“That’s great. That isn’t far off my own story,” I said. “Where did you go to school?”
“Medical degree at Stanford. I moved to California after pre-med for a life-changing experience. It sure was. I loved the beaches and people, but eventually got home-sick and went back to Indiana for my residency.” He took a drink of water before continuing. “I ended up joining the military ten years ago.”
“What made you do that?” Slate asked.
“A girl… rather, a woman, but aren’t we all just boys and girls at the end of the day?” he asked, a grim smile on his face.
“I suppose we are. Especially when it comes to following the heart,” I said.
“We went to Iraq. Different stations, and she was killed by a goddamn suicide bomber before I ever told her I loved her.” He stared at the wall, as if looking either of us in the eyes would open the bottled-up floodgates that were inevitably there.
Slate came over and rested his hand on Nick’s shoulder. He didn’t say a word, just let it sit there a moment before heading back to the spot he’d been leaning on.
“Not that any of that matters anymore after we got taken. The world was always an upside-down place. Now we just have to turn around with it, so we can see straight.”
The perspective on things was a good one. “When was that?” I asked.
“Two years before they came. I was a wreck.
When I got back from the tour, I could hardly function. I started drinking too much and almost lost my job.” He stopped, just staying quiet for a few moments. “Then they came and changed it all. I was up there with people dying around me, everyone fighting each other like wild animals trapped in a corner. I helped save a few lives up there, and I got it back. That urge to survive, and to help others survive. It was like I needed that shock to bring me back to being myself. Anyway, here we are. I guess someone heard about my efforts on vessel twenty-six, and I was recruited to the cause.”
It was a great story, and I found myself liking the already affable man a lot more for hearing it.
“Want to get back to it?” he asked. “I’m ready to learn to fight. Thanks for making me talk it out.”
We got up, me doing a little stretch on my tightening back, and we got back into position.
“Go!” Slate called.
__________
“Everyone to the bridge.” Slate’s voice carried over the comm-system.
“Mary, time to get up,” I said, pushing the blankets off my body. The floor was cool under my bare feet, and in moments, I had the uniform on, socks included.
“Just five more minutes, Mom,” she said, her eyes still closed.
“I’ll see you up there,” I said, leaving her in bed but turning the lights on. Oldest trick in the book.
Nick came out of the kitchen, shrugging at me as we made our way down the corridor onto the bridge.
“What’s up?” I asked. Clare was at the helm, with Slate on the console next to her. Their faces were grim.
“Asteroid field. That bitch led us into it,” Clare said. Hearing someone call Mae something derogatory stung for a moment, until I remembered she’d betrayed us. I still clung to a glimmer of hope she hadn’t, that she had a good reason for what she’d done. My gut told me otherwise.
We were out of the FTL, stars slowed on the viewscreen, and the computer zoomed to pick out a few large chunks of rock, highlighting them in blue on our screens.
“They look easy enough to avoid. Let’s go around,” I said, sitting down.
Clare took us around them, the computer calculating a trajectory for each of the asteroid chunks, a stream of blue lines covering our viewscreen.
“She’s heading right for them,” Slate said, standing as he watched. “She must have a death wish.”
We were only a day away from the location of the space station Kareem had told us about. What games was Mae playing?
We kept going, Mae’s icon blinking along a thousand kilometers behind us now. She was getting awfully close to one of the asteroids. We saw her darting in and out of clusters, before the ship went straight toward a large chunk a few hundred meters across. Her ship’s icon blinked rapidly and disappeared from the screen.
“What the hell was that? Did she make impact?” I asked. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked back to see Mary standing there, dressed, her hair in a tight ponytail. Concern etched across her face, and I knew she’d been clinging to the idea Mae might still be on our side too.
“Looks that way. The tracking is far more advanced on this vessel. You remember those ships. They have a proximity sensor more than exact calculations. She must not have seen it coming, or thought she could sneak by it,” Clare said.
“Keep going,” I said, my hand mopping my face. The urge to yell at someone surged through me, but there was nothing anyone did wrong. Mae had been the culprit, and now she was dead, and I’d never be able to ask her what her truth was. I knew we wanted to stop Mae from making contact, but I still thought I was going to be sick. My eyes shut, only to see the icon lights of her ship still blinking on the back of my eyelids. It all felt so anti-climactic. That was life sometimes.
“We’re clear of the debris field. Activating the drive now,” Clare said. Otherwise, the room was silent.
NINETEEN
“Let’s bring it in slowly,” I said, standing behind Mary’s chair. Our cloaking shield was running, making us look like the stars around us from a distance. Up close we would appear like an anomaly, and anyone seeing us would most likely investigate the disturbance.
Kareem claimed he’d abandoned the station over fifty Earth years ago. The translation wasn’t clear, but it made sense with how long he’d been on that planet. They’d been fleeing a Bhlat sentry ship, which apparently caught on that the Deltra were in possession of some new weapon. He didn’t know if the station still existed, but they wouldn’t have the code to start the engines.
He’d had every intention of getting back to it, but by the time he’d made planetside, he wanted to put it all behind him. To live a quiet life away from the war. His wife and child were with him, and that was enough for him to stay hidden.
“Is this worth it? I mean, now that Mae is gone, and the hybrids don’t want to sell us out?” Nick asked us for the tenth time since yesterday.
“If this thing will do what Kareem says it does, then yeah. It could secure our safety from invasion,” Mary said, creeping our ship toward the system. A ringed planet hung in the distance, a gorgeous juxtaposition to the ugliness I was feeling. A large moon was nearby, and just where we were told the station would be, it stayed, orbiting the planet beside the moon, its massive wheel-shaped rim spinning still.
“It might still have gravity,” Clare said, staring at the viewscreen, taking in the amazing piece of technology.
It had to be a hundred times the size of our ship, with no lights of any sort on the outside of it. It looked like what it was: abandoned. I couldn’t take my eyes off the circular space station, rotating so slowly, but that was probably because of the size of it. It was flat dark gray in color, patches of different material on the outside layers. It looked like there was an unfinished section in the center of it, a section probably closed off from the interior.
It gave off a coldness, looking at it. For some reason, the station made me think of visiting my father’s grave after he’d passed away, and I didn’t like the comparison in my mind. Nothing about it should have made me feel that way; nonetheless, it did.
“I have a bad feeling,” Slate said, mirroring my thoughts.
“Me too,” Mary whispered.
We slowed the ship, all silently watching the massive stationary vessel’s turbine slowly rotate.
“No signs of anything nearby?” I asked, knowing there wasn’t, because the map showed no vessels flying out there.
“Nothing within range,” Clare said.
“Okay, let’s do this. We stick to the plan. Clare, you stay here with Nick. Mary, Slate, let’s suit up.” I walked past them, to the hall.
“Dean,” Nick said, “take care, and good luck out there.”
I turned and forced a smile. “Thank you. Should be back in a jiffy. I wouldn’t mind a beer after all of this is over. Can you put some on ice?” I joked.
“We mean it. Be careful,” Clare said.
“We will. We have each other’s back. Right, Slate?” Mary asked, nudging him with her elbow.
“Right,” he said, his face set in grim determination.
With that, we exited the bridge in a line, and made our way past the storage area to the prep room, where our three suits hung on the wall, already prepared over the week. The lapels had the buttons attached to them. I hadn’t green-beamed through any walls for a while, and frankly, I wasn’t looking forward to it. The last time had been stressful enough. At least this time we were going into an empty ship, and the imminent death of millions of people wasn’t looming over our heads.
Our suits were much like the ones we’d used from the Kraski ship last year, only there were five fingers for the hands, and they fit us since they were custom-built. The material was light and thin, though protective from radiation and, as we’d learned, almost melt-proof. As I slid into the suit, I thought back to when Mae and I had harnessed up and shot toward the vessel heading for the edge of the sun, clipping it and saving countless lives. Why had she done it?
“Ready?”
Slate asked. His helmet was clipped in, and he checked ours, ensuring they were sealed properly.
“I think so,” I said.
“You remember all the training we’ve gone over?” he asked us both.
Mary nodded, and he handed her the pulse rifle from the weapons cache. We were strapped with a handgun, and Slate had an arsenal of other weapons: concussion grenades, clubs, knives, and anything else he could carry on his person. He made for quite the imposing soldier.
“Overkill?” Mary asked him. “Expecting company?”
He answered with a toothy smile. “You can never be too prepared.”
I keyed into the storage room computer tablet on the wall, and we watched the viewscreen feed as Clare approached the Deltra vessel. Kareem had told us where the best spot to enter would be, and Clare hovered our ship just above it.
“Love you, Mary,” I said, grabbing her hand and squeezing it for a second.
“Love you too,” she replied.
“What about me? Am I chopped liver?” Slate asked, laughing at his own joke. It was nice to see him cracking a funny one, and suddenly I didn’t miss having Magnus beside me quite as much.
“We love you, Slate,” we said in unison, getting a laugh and an eye roll for our trouble.
We strapped the lanyards to the harness clip on our suits’ waists, safety cords should something go wrong between here and there. We had to travel through a few meters of space, and I didn’t want the beam to drop me out there.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, pushing the pinned button on his suit’s collar. Green light enveloped him, and he pushed off the bar as we lowered from the ceiling. He passed through the floor with ease, and we followed.
Mary went next, glancing up at me just as she was leaving through the floor. I couldn’t help but smile at her as I pressed my own pin, green light covering me. It was surreal to be doing this again. I pushed and had the odd sensation of crossing through something solid, as my particles bounced around super-fast.
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