They faced each other, separated by a flight of stairs.
“Security?” Declan asked, “Will they kill us like the others?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, descending the remaining stairs, “But I can’t help you just the same as I couldn’t help the others.”
“Where’s the captain? We want to talk to him,” Oscar said.
Her eyebrows jumped, seemingly shocked at his statement.
“Are you kidding? You’re asking to be killed!” she said.
“But they can’t kill us,” Declan said, drawing the amulet out from beneath his shirt, “We’re protected thanks to your buddy Stephen. Am I right?”
She stared at the silver object dangling from his thumb, then nodded.
“True, but we don’t-”
“But what’s going on, Tami?” Declan cut her response off, suddenly dangling the broken amulet from his other hand.
She stared at the broken amulet much longer than Declan expected. Declan grinned at her, but she remain stoic.
“Let’s just skip ahead to the point where you tell us what’s going on, and then you kill us,” Oscar growled, “I’ve watched enough of those movies. I’m sure that’s how this all ends. That’s probably how it ended fifty times before.”
“Stephen is playing us,” she whispered, taking the broken amulet from Declan’s hand, “How long has he been playing me?”
“You don’t know about this?” Declan asked, maintaining the smirk that invaded his face moments ago, “You didn’t know that we were running around unprotected?”
“Are you kidding?” she replied, lifting her hands defensively, “I’m working to save myself here along with everyone else. Who do you think is living again in Sierra’s body downstairs? If I knew this…”
“Then let us see the captain. We’re going upstairs with or without you,” Oscar insisted.
“Unprotected? Are you joking?” she argued, dangling the broken amulet before him.
Oscar leapt forth, wrapping her torso in the cup of his left arm, then taking a hold of her head in his right. It took a moment for Declan to realize he had the sharp bolt of a crossbow jabbed dangerously close to her jugular.
“Shock me now and I’ll tense up,” he stated, “I don’t think you want that.”
Declan was taken aback, trying to visualize a safe outcome to the sudden redirection.
“Get your hands off me,” she snarled, clutching his wrist.
“What are you doing, Brodie?” Declan asked.
“Ensign Rowe has just volunteered to take us to see the captain,” he replied.
“This is insane,” she sputtered, “We’ll all die.”
Oscar locked eyes with Declan and tipped his chin up the stairs. Declan nodded in agreement and started up the stairs.
“Where are you going?” she choked, keeping a firm grasp on Oscar’s wrist as they all started up the stairs together, “The captain isn’t up there.”
“Unless you tell us which direction to go, we’re just heading toward the upper levels where you came from,” Oscar replied.
“We should be looking for Stephen instead,” she choked out, “He’s the one who seems to be playing us all for fools.”
“What is today, Ensign?” Declan said.
“W-what do you mean?”
“What is the date? The exact date!” he shouted.
“I don’t know! It’s Thursday…” she paused, trying to keep the bolt from jamming into her neck as they slowly proceeded up the stairs, “January 16th, 2338.”
“January 16th? Yesterday was my birthday and you didn’t even get me a cake?” Declan asked.
“W-what is this?” she sputtered, “Is this all a game to you?”
“Why didn’t you at least get me a cake? You knew it was my birthday because you reminded me that we shared the same birthday,” Declan stated, leading the way up the final flight of stairs, “Did you get any presents yesterday because I sure didn’t.”
“Are you losing your mind? I’m living in Ensign Rowe’s body,” she said, “No one knew about my birthday yesterday and frankly I don’t plan on celebrating anymore until we get out of here. Would you mind getting your friend to release me?”
Declan turned to them, waiting for them to catch up with him on the final landing.
“I’d probably ask him to, but there’s just one huge problem here,” Declan said, his face inches from hers, “My birthday is March 10th, same as Tami Guzman’s. As you can see, we have quite a predicament here, Ensign Rowe.”
They continued in silence through the abandoned passageways of the upper level. Declan pressed the blue buttons by every door that they passed, hoping to find something or someone of interest beyond the doors.
“Where is everyone, Ensign?” Declan asked, “A ship this size should have people somewhere.”
She remained silent until Oscar stopped and jabbed the bolt harder, pushing dangerously at the soft flesh of her neck.
“Answer!” Oscar demanded, “Where’s the crew? Where’s this security force that’s coming for us?”
“Okay already!” she cried, “They’re up ahead… through the double silver door.”
“The crew?” Declan asked, watching the pained expression on her face.
The door to the stairwell several meters back suddenly opened. Declan and Oscar turned, keeping a firm hold on the ensign. Sierra and Juliet appeared, looking mildly embarrassed suddenly at being caught.
“We… we wondered what was going on,” Sierra explained.
Before the door had a chance to close, Charlie and Delta also slithered into the passage.
“Uh, this ain’t lookin’ good at all,” Charlie muttered, nodding toward the ensign, “Are we takin’ over the ship or somethin’?”
“We’re just trying to find out what’s really going on,” Declan said, turning to Ensign Rowe, “And if you or your people get it in your heads to shock or kill any of us, you’re dead. And for the record, I remember where all those chips are, so if you die here, you won’t be coming back – ever.”
“Come on if you’re with us,” Oscar said, turning back to the direction they had originally been headed.
“Does the crew know we’re coming?” Declan asked the ensign, “If so, you might want to warn them off if they’re planning an attack of some sort.”
The four Indentures who had been following from a distance now rushed forward to join Oscar and Declan.
“They know you’re coming and as I’ve tried to tell you before, I don’t have as much control as you think,” she said, “Unfortunately, there’s no chance of a pleasant outcome for anyone anymore.”
“What the heck is that supposed to mean?” Charlie asked, “What was gonna be pleasant about 20 years of slavery?”
“You’re about to find out,” she snickered, “It would have been worth it for everyone, but now…”
Declan paused at the silver double-doors, his hand hovering over the blue touch pad. He glanced back at his fellow Indentures, then his eyes locked with Ensign Rowe’s.
“Are they going to be shooting when I open this door?” Declan asked.
She released a long exhale, and rolled her eyes as her expression changed to one of resignation.
“Just open it. No one cares anymore,” she said.
Declan pressed the blue button, opening the double doors in front of them. They were faced with a giant half-circle of a room located under an amazing display of the Earth. The captain had his back to them, hands clasped behind his back while looking outward toward the blackness of space.
As they entered the room, it became immediately evident that the room was domed in windows. Above them, all the windows were filled with a brilliant close-up display of the Earth and ahead of them were windows filled with stars and a portion of the moon.
“That looks like Earth,” Juliet stated, arching her head toward the ceiling, “That’s Africa that just passed by.”
Declan was too busy with identifying the positi
on of all the adversaries in the room. Captain Ross seemed indifferent to them, much the same as Stephen who was seated in the corner watching their reactions. The two security guards who were responsible for the deaths of Tango, Golf, and Alpha were pacing near the windows on the right.
“Where’s the crew?” Oscar asked, loud enough for all to hear.
“You’re looking at it,” the captain replied, turning to them, “You can drop the weapon. We’re not going to kill you.”
“Yeah?” Oscar laughed, “I think I’ll just keep it like this for now. Why don’t you tell us what that planet is up above us? Is that Hydrus?”
Captain Ross replied only with a smirk. The two security guards got tired of pacing and seated themselves at two of the many control panels in the room. Stephen maintained that bored expression of indifference he had from the moment they entered the room.
“Can we at least sit down while you jam this bolt into my neck?” the ensign complained.
Oscar glanced around the room and located a large chair near one of the control panels. He dragged the ensign toward the chair and sat down with her clamped in his lap, never wavering from his deadly threat on her life.
“In 2292, one of our local Science Exploration Ships on a trip to Bernard’s Star detected a signal coming from the direction of Beta Hydri. They reported this find to the USSC which would then be investigated further,” the captain stated, propping himself against one of the chairs, “The signal was confirmed as definitely coming from a planet circling Beta Hydri and oddly enough, the signal was being transmitted in a language very similar to English. The language was much too similar to have evolved independent of our own English language.”
“For the idiots in this room, that means there was a human ship out there at a place we’ve never been to. It was something impossible,” Ensign Rowe added.
“The message was essentially ‘Here we are – is anyone out there?’ We did the same thing for several decades hoping to contact an alien civilization if it existed. But the weirdest thing was their similar language,” Captain Ross said, “We had the means to visit these people at the time with our subluminal spacecraft, but it would involve many years transit in both directions. No one was really willing to sacrifice the time or the money for such a trip until the Hydrus Signals as we called them became more specific. They were transmitting information about their planet, their lifestyles, and welcoming any alien visitors who happened to be passing,
“This changed everything. Now we knew for certain that there was a life-sustaining planet and not just some random ship out there. The amount people willing to invest in such a venture skyrocketed. By 2320, we had a ship built, crewed, and ready to make the trip, but then something happened. A technology group that had been working on a theoretical ‘Jump Drive’ for the previous decade had claimed success. They promised to provide this superluminal booster to the USSC for a disgustingly high price and the USSC accepted – but only if they could test it first. That’s where we came in.”
“So they put this Jump Drive on this ship?” Sierra asked.
“It only took a year to get it installed and ready for action. We left the solar system in early 2322 and arrived immediately in the outskirts of the Beta Hydri System. Immediately! The Jump Drive was perfect and would change the whole concept of interstellar travel – heck intergalactic travel – for all mankind. Who could ask for anything more?”
“If it wouldn’t have completely fried itself,” Stephen added.
“Yes, the whole Jump Drive was rendered useless and its main components became so irradiated that we had to eject the whole system from the ship. Obviously an engine component isn’t designed in such a way as to be ‘ejected,’ so this whole effort was a 3-month chore that cost the lives of twenty-three people,” the captain stated, “But that’s not why you discovered our ship to be nearly empty of a crew. That’s a whole different story.”
“Which is?” Declan asked.
Stephen rose from his seat, raising a hand to stop the captain from answering. He smiled politely at the Indentures, then clasped his hands together and cleared his throat.
“A few months transit brought us to the planet we had now named Hydrus. It had the right atmosphere, a reasonable amount of water, and plenty of plant life. The temperatures were a little more tropical than Earth, but who were we to complain? But the craziest thing was this – it was completely devoid of any life forms larger than a small housecat. There were no humans or humanoid life forms of any sort. There were also no satellites or electronics that could transmit messages across the stars,” Stephen said.
“If Hydrus was perfect, why are we here?” Delta asked, pointing up toward the image of Earth rotating slowly overhead.
Stephen laughed, “We are a Colonial Establishment Cruiser designed for establishing the beginnings of an Earth colony on another planet. And although we have what it takes to establish the beginnings of a colony, we don’t have what it takes to sustain them. If we drop a group of people on a planet with a half-dozen supply pods to get them started, we can’t guarantee their survival. That comes from the follow-up ships that arrive in ten to fifteen years. If the initial colony couldn’t really manage, they would have at least had enough to survive until the rescue of the follow-up vessel.”
“Dear God,” Declan muttered.
“What?” Sierra asked, turning to Declan, wondering if she had missed something.
Before Declan could continue, Stephen interjected with the same false smile, “We lost all contact with Earth. Even at the distance of 24 light years, we should have at least heard some kind of background noise from home, but there was nothing. Considering the kind of ship we were, there were obviously enough brainiac scientists on this ship to work together to figure what was going on. They came to the conclusion that the Jump Drive did exactly what any superluminal drive should technically do – it moved the ship backward in time. Their calculations stated it should have only been a few decades at the most, but according to the lack of electronic noise coming from Earth, it had to be something significantly more. We traveled to a moment very far in the past.”
“How far?” Oscar asked.
“At the time, we had no idea,” Stephen replied, “But we knew it was definitely to a pre-technological time. Either way, it was scary. But that wasn’t the scariest part. We had a ship full of nearly a thousand people. Using our maximum subluminal speed, we could return to Earth in about 8 years. With a thousand people aboard, we could feed them for about half of that time. We were stuck and there was nothing anyone could do to help us.”
A silence fell upon the room. Then finally Delta spoke up.
“That signal you first detected from the Beta Hydri system… it was from the descendants of this particular crew, wasn’t it?” he asked.
“Apparently, because now we know that we have made it back to somewhere between the years 1400 to about 1460. Thanks to the lack of calendars posted on people’s walls, we can’t determine an exact date,” Stephen replied, “But that planet you see above you has never seen a space ship or any of the other technology we possess.”
“Swords and crossbows,” Oscar laughed, “You were training your slaves to perform like an army of ancient history. What did you expect us to do - storm some castle in France or England? Were we supposed to be the warriors that would put you into power over these countries?”
“Really! You expected us to show up with these magical swords that could cut through their armor? Were we supposed to be the magicians and ‘Merlins’ of yore?” Declan added, “And you, obviously, their kings and queens?”
Stephen simply shook his head, then brushed a hand against the captain’s shoulder. Captain Ross returned a subtle nod before turning to the Indentures.
“Where’s the rest of the crew?” Juliet asked, “Are they all on Hyrdus?”
“Yes, they are all working together to start a colony on a very fertile planet” the captain replied, “And as we know from the signal we rece
ived in 2292, we know they thrived, so please don’t waste any time judging us for the decisions we’ve made. And as for the stupid question from Foxtrot, no we weren’t going to establish some magical kingdom. Come on! Yes, we needed you to learn the weapons necessary to ensure our survival, but ultimately, we intended on fading into the background so as not to change history in any defining way. We were grooming Foxtrot to gain our trust through Ensign Rowe and to eventually lead you and your people to assisting our cause.”
“And you figured that when we show up with our glowing blue swords and exploding arrows, history wouldn’t change at all,” Oscar said, “I’d like to know how you even came to hold the position of captain. I’m willing to bet that’s not the position you held at the beginning of this journey.”
“I’d propose that none of you were even part of the original command of this vessel. Like maybe you all escaped from some prison or insane asylum aboard this ship,” Declan added, turning to Ensign Rowe, “And I’d like to know how you knew most of Tami’s stories? How did you know enough to trick me?”
She snickered, pushing angrily at Oscar’s arm.
“Get this thing out of my neck!” she spat, “Tami isn’t the tough girl she’d have you to believe. Back when you all were doing your best to fight for your independence in the Beta Hydri system, you were screwing things up for everyone. But you only cared about yourselves, very much like today. But there was a time when we got a hold of your precious little Tami and once we started gradually taking off fingers and toes, she gave us what we needed.”
Oscar, apparently as disgusted as Declan in that instant, jammed the bolt all the way into her neck, killing her almost instantly with barely a squeal from her. Declan knew they lost their upper hand in that moment and quickly dove for the captain, catching his throat in a fully locked choke hold just as a shock ripped through his body. Declan screamed out, squeezing tighter on the captain’s neck. Oscar fell backward, crying out in pain, followed by the rest of the Indentures falling to the floor in pain.
As the intense pain refused to subside, Declan believed that death was now imminent, so he used the remaining control he had to snap the captain’s neck. That loud pop brought an end to his pain but he knew the freedom wasn’t going to last long. The screams and wild thrashings coming from his fellow Indentures continued. He released the captain’s limp body, then leapt instantly to his feet trying to shake off the ghost pains that still shivered in his bones.
The Mystic Saga Omnibus (Books 1 - 5) Page 8
