by Chris Lowry
The terrified Tech cowered under the General's glare.
“We can't Sir. Everything is on automatic until they dock with the Lucas.”
Houston watched the monitor in horror. One of his staff members stepped up next to him.
“Sir?”
“What have we done?” the General asked the screen.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Carver was shoved back into the deep cushions of the launch seat as nine thousand pounds of rocket fuel shot them through the atmosphere. He tried to scream, but the giant fist that pressed down on his chest wouldn't let him catch a breath. All he could do was keep his mouth open and be ready for when he could breath, when he could scream.
Thirty seconds of torture before the rockets detached and propelled the black shuttle through the higher reaches of the upper atmosphere.
He can finally scream so he draws a wonderful deep breath, but it felt so good he sighed it out and drew another. He used this one to scream.
Dawes stared out of the view screen in open mouth wonder at the cool darkness of space, a tiny million pinpricks of starlight twinkling in the distance.
Carver yelled at him, but Dawes was so entranced he can't hear him. Or he just ignored him.
Carver reached over and swatted him in the arm to get his attention. Dawes finally turned to look at him. Carver's mouth was moving but no sound came out. He glanced around the heads up display in his helmet, the blinking lights on the left pretty easy to make out. One was shaped like a microphone so he worked out to how to key it.
“What?”
Carver's mouth kept moving. Still no sound.
“Cue your microphone,” the cowboy told him.
No luck. Carver cussed up a storm by the looks of the lip reading. He couldn't make out every word, but every other word his lips formed the letter F, so Dawes was pretty sure he knew what he was saying.
After a minute, Dawes pointed on the side of his helmet. He was in zero gravity and took a moment to wonder at how light his arm felt, how it moved in space. He remembered Carver before he got too lost in the amazing situation he found himself in and motioned to the microphone display.
Carver screamed. Nothing.
Dawes blew out his lips in a frustrated sound. He glanced around the cockpit and saw a black felt dry erase marker attached to a whiteboard with Velcro. He eased forward to grab it, popped the cap and scribbled on Carver's faceplate so he can read it from the inside.
Cue mic and an arrow pointing to the heads-up display.
Carver spied the icon and chinned it.
“Can you hear me now?” Dawes asked.
“Don't you ever draw on my face again boy! Man, what the hell were you thinking? Get this shit off me.”
Dawes capped the marker and let it go to float in the cockpit.
“Sorry,” he shrugged.
He reached up with a gloved hand and smeared the ink all over the faceplate.
“Look out, you're smudging it. Get out of here, let me do it.”
He batted Dawes' hand away.
“Have you figured out what's going on?” Dawes asked as his gaze was drawn back out through the view screen.
“We've been shanghaied, Man. Abducted. I read about this shit online. My momma told me not to drive through the desert by myself. Aliens get you that way.”
“They didn't look like aliens,” Dawes offered.
“Shut up man what do you know? That's what they want you to think. They zap you with their mind rays and you see what they want you to see.”
“They didn't zap my mind,” Dawes sulked.
“How do you know?”
“I think I would have felt it.”
“Man, you don't know nothing. If they zapped your mind, they would have made you think you ain't been zapped. Think man. You've got to think.”
Dawes nodded as he tried to wrap his mind around being abducted and zapped by aliens posing as people. Then a new thought popped in.
“What if they didn't zap you to make you think you were zapped?”
“What?” Carver shouted. “Man, shut up.”
Dawes was wishing he hadn't shown Carver where the radio mike was in his helmet, but he kept that to himself. It was really nice in outer space if he could block on the whining and mutterings of his companion. He settled back into the thick cushioned seat and wished he had his cowboy hat.
It had been with him for years, covered thousands of miles, kept the rain off his face, and gave him shade when the sun was too bright. He wouldn't admit it to too many people but that hat was kind of like a security blanket and even though space was beautiful, he was also scared about what was going on. He didn't need it or anything, like a kid needs their blankie to go to sleep, but it sure would be nice to have it around. He wondered if the Techs were taking care of it.
“It sure is pretty up here,” he said when Carver finally stopped talking.
Dawes reached up and fumbled with the fasteners on his helmet.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking my helmet off.”
“Didn't you see that movie? Your head is going to explode.”
Dawes reached up and tapped a digital readout where it should be on Carver's faceplate. It showed cabin pressure.
“We should be alright.”
“If your head pops I ain't cleaning it up.”
Dawes pulled his helmet off and took a deep breath. Carver had his eyes squeezed shut just in case while he waited to feel a spray of goop across his space suit.
He cracked open one eye and relaxed in relief. Dawes was busy running his fingers over the control panel, hovering over the buttons without pressing any of them.
Carver struggled with his helmet and finally got it off. He dropped it on the cushion next to him.
“How long we gonna be up here?”
“Four hours,” Dawes answered.
“Four hours!” he stuttered. “How do you know?”
Dawes tapped a digital timer that counted down from three minutes and twenty seconds.
“Damn man, four hours up here and we don't know what the hell we're getting into.”
Dawes hummed the same country song from the truck under his breath as he continued to study the panel layout.
“Hell no, man. Hell no,” said Carver.
“This isn't your cousin's truck,” Dawes reminded him.
He sang louder as Carver sank into the cushioned seat and tried to bury his head in his arms to block out the sound.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The silence came back when Dawes got tired of teasing Carver. The automated systems in the shuttle meant they didn't have to do anything, but the lack of training and preparation meant they didn't know where to look for food or water or anything. Neither man wanted to touch anything on the off chance that it would open a door and shoot them out into the vast vacuum of space.
So they sat in silence watching the starlight sprinkle through the view screen. Dawes dozed, but it was restless sleep without his hat. Carver was bored. Bored with the silence, bored with space, bored with his partner. But mostly he was bored with being alone.
He knew he liked to talk a lot. He grew up with a Daddy that didn't let him talk much and for a smart mouthed boy that was an oppression he couldn't wait to escape. When he finally hit eighteen, he moved in with his cousin, started talking and rarely shut up since. Folks just had to deal with it, was his philosophy. If the good Lord didn't want people to talk he wouldn't have made voice boxes and speech.
“Where did you grow up?” he asked Dawes when the silence became too much.
“Dallas.”
“Redneck,” he said.
“I should have been a cowboy,” Dawes offered. “You?”
“Cali-,” said Carver. “Straight outta Compton.”
“I can tell by our accent.”
“You ever heard of Bad Leroy Brown?”
“From a song about Chicago.”
Carver put his feet up on the panel and settled back into the cus
hion, all confidence and cockiness.
“I kicked his ass,” he bragged. “No bullshit.”
“That's why you picked your feet up, cause it's getting deep in here.”
“You don't believe me? Hell I was the baddest ass in my hood. Did y'all ever play king of the hill growing up.”
“On every pile of dirt we could find.”
“I did too. Once. I stood on top of that hill and used my Nine on anyone that tried to knock me down. I'm that crazy. I must have killed about thirteen, maybe fifteen people.”
“That many?”
“Fifteen!” Carver grinned. “Fifteen. Maybe more.”
“Sounds like you're a tough hombre.”
“You have no idea,” Carver agreed. “I'm the baddest man in the whole damn town.”
“Then you can be in charge.”
“Yeah, in charge,” said Carver. “Wait, what? Hold on. In Charge of what?”
“A tough guy like you should be able to handle this mission. You're the boss.”
Dawes turned his head away and settled back into his doze.
“Damn right I'm the boss,” Carver nodded.
He wasn't quite sure what that meant up here but he liked the way it sounded.
CHAPTER NINE
Space is beautiful and cold and deadly and boring. Dawes finally got tired of staring through the window at the twinkling stars. Mostly he was tired of Carver fidgeting in the seat next to him, sighing every thirty seconds in long loud huffs that made sleep impossible.
“Damn man, there ain't nothing to do in here.”
“Go for a walk,” suggested Dawes. “Let me get my helmet first.”
“Ha ha very funny,” Carver said. “What if I opened the door and died?”
“I could get some sleep.”
“That ain't right man. I haven't wished you dead.”
“Sorry.”
“Yet.”
Dawes adjusted in the cushion so he could see the panel and Carver from the corner of his eyes.
“We could read the briefs.”
“I'm wearing boxers,” said Carver.
“They took mine off.”
“No man, I'm just playing with you. Damn, ain't you got a sense of humor.”
“Briefs on the computer,” Dawes said ignoring him. “We could try to figure out what's going on.”
“I know what's going on. We're sitting on our asses going who knows where and there ain't nothing to do.”
Dawes reached up, clicked on a button. A monitor slid up out of the panel and lit up with blocks of text.
“Is that them?”
“I think so.”
“They ain't got no pictures?”
Dawes scrolled through the thick blocks of tiny text.
“Just words.”
Carver made a disgusted sound.
“You read them. That's what the boss says,” he kicked back in the seat again.
“I ain't ever been too good at reading. I can do it,” he said. “I just don't like it.”
“I believe you.”
“I don't give a damn if you believe me or not. My thing was track. I could run like the wind. All-State three years in a row. I could have gone to the Olympics.”
“Why didn't you?”
“Man, did you run in school?”
“Depended on who was chasing me.”
“Football, right? You rednecks love football. Like it's the only sport out there.”
“Football. Wrestling. Chicken.”
“You wrestled chickens?”
“Only when I caught them. They were running from the track team.”
“Man, shut up. What kind of wrestling? Like Hulk Hogan and the Rock?”
“Real wrestling, like the Olympics.”
“Two guys covered in grease rolling around on the floor?”
“Yeah, but we had nicknames though,” said Dawes.
“What was your wrestling name? Mr. Sleeps-a-lot?”
“They couldn't fit that on my jersey,” said Dawes. “I was Dawes. #27.”
He looked down at his chest.
“Or 72. I took a few hits in practice.”
Carver watched him for a minute to see if he was kidding. Dawes gave him a half grin to let him know he was.
“Man you so crazy.”
CHAPTER TEN
Carver rustled in his seat and edged forward so he could access the control panel too.
“Don't touch that,” Dawes warned.
“I ain't touching it.”
“I can see your fingers on the keys.”
“My hands are over the keys,” Carver explained. “I wasn’t touching them though.”
“Just stop doing it,” Dawes said.
“Stop what? This?”
Carver waved his and over the board and pretended to mash a couple of keys.
“Don't mess it up.”
“Man, I was just playing with you. I wasn't going to fuck it up.”
Miniature rockets on the front of the ship lit up with long blasts of flame that throw them against their restraints. Carver's fingers jam into the keyboard, lighting up several buttons. He jerked his hand back like he had touched something hot and stared over at Dawes with wide eyes as the monitor and control panel flickered into darkness.
“What did you do?” Dawes breathed.
“That wasn't my fault, man,” Carver said quickly. “The damn rockets kicked on.”
Dawes tapped the keyboard in a futile gesture, more hope than anything.
“Damn it,” he sighed.
“Look man, you've just got to relax,” Carver began speaking quickly. “My Auntie's got a computer that does this shit all of the time. Here, let me look at it.”
He leaned up to the monitor and punched the side of the screen. It flickered and the lights came back up.
“See there, it's all in the wrist.”
“What did you do?” Dawes asked with a crease between his eyebrows.
“I fixed it. It was broke. Now it's fixed.”
“It's different,” said Dawes.
“It ain't different-”
Carver trailed off. The blocks of text were replaced by a blue screen that was blank.
“Course it's different,” Carver shrugged. “I gave it an upgrade.”
“I think it's worse,” said Dawes as he glanced around the cabin of the shuttle. The darkness was deeper as exterior lights on the black shuttle winked out.
“Man, what do you know? You know anything about computers? Are you a geek?”
“No,” stuttered Dawes, still worried about the dimming lights in the cabin making it as dark as the exterior.
He reached for his helmet without looking, wanting it close at hand on a just in case basis.
“I didn't think so,” said Carver. “This is perfectly natural thing that's going on right here. This is what it's supposed to look like. This-”
The Shuttle engine whined as the body started shaking. The interior lights flickered with a surge of power and shut off, bathing them in complete darkness.
“Is this perfectly natural?”
“Yeah?” Carver stuttered. “Yeah. Everybody knows you can't drive a car at night with the lights on inside. You can't see. Now it's better cause we can see outside.”
“What do you see?”
Carver peered through the view screen into the quiet vacuum of space.
“Nothing.”
“Do our headlights work?” he asked after a few moments.
“I don't think we have headlights.”
“Headlight, spotlight, night light whatever the hell you want to call it. Look around and tell me if they got a switch for some outside lights?”
Dawes clicked on the heads up display in his helmet and washed the control panel with meager light from the inside.
“Ha!” Carver shouted in triumph and pressed a button.
A spotlight on the nosecone of the shuttle lit up and pierced the blackness of space. It splashed over a dark hull of an enormous ship that
filled the view screen as it barreled toward them.
“Is that what you want?” Dawes whimpered.
Carver scrambled for the switch.
“How do you turn it off?”
Outside of the shuttle the spotlight played across the sleek hull of the ship. It slid across a name LUCAS painted in giant black block letters larger than the shuttle. The light moved up the dark ship floating like a derelict in space. It's lean and symmetrical a triumph in engineering.
Except something that looked off about it. Something other than the lifeless hulk sitting against a star scape backdrop. The light touched on a structure on the stern, an alien vessel latched onto the Lucas like a parasite.
Dawes and Carver watched the ship in fear and a mixture of wonder as it closed in on them. Or they closed in on it. They weren't sure.
“I think this is where we're supposed to be,” said Dawes.
“I think we need to get out of here,” Carver gulped.
Dawes tapped on the keyboard.
“I can't.”
The Lucas loomed closer blotting out the stars.
“Come on man, do something.”
Dawes punched the keyboard, trying different combinations. Nothing happened except the Lucas crawling closer each second.
“You do something.”
Carver leaned up and slugged the monitor. The whine of the engine changed as the Shuttle slowly rolled over and began flying upside down.
“Do something different,” Dawes shouted.
The Shuttle kept rolling in a tight spiral as it lined up with a docking clamp. It latched onto the larger ship with a tight metallic clank.
The monitor flickered to life and showed the systems of the shuttle powering down one by one until all that was left was a faint golden glow from the screen. It bathed the faces of Dawes and Carver as they sat in the cockpit and wondered what was going to happen next.
“What now?”
The locking mechanism on the hatchway rolled open and unlocked as the doorway folded open and up into a dark corridor on the ship.
Dawes unstrapped from the seat and pushed his way toward the hatch. Carver followed him, muttering as they lined up on either side of the opening and peered through into the darkness.
