“Are you all right? Is there anything we can do for you?”
I looked down at the hand on my arm, and clearing my throat, turned to the other two. “Yes, now that you three have had your fun and got to run around my ship, I request that you return everything you have taken from here and leave. I would also strongly recommend that you don’t come back.”
“Did you say…your ship?” the girl whispered. “Are we actually standing inside a spacecraft?”
I nodded and smiled politely. “That’s correct. She might have had a bit of a rough landing, but we’ll get her repaired and back into the stars. Now, I reiterate my offer for you to leave…now!”
“Are you insane?” cried the annoying one. “Do you have any idea what is out there? We almost got eaten just getting here! We’re not going back out there until our bloody ship comes back, and that’s final. Besides, have you taken a good look at your ‘ship’ since you woke up, Rip Van Winkle? It’s a derelict, buried in a hill with trees growing out of it! Junk! I’ll grant you, it might have some technology that could be useful, but that’s for our military to decide. I’m pretty sure there is no way in hell we’re going to give up a discovery as important as this!”
Not give up something as important as this ship? The hothead actually said that as if he had some say about it. I felt rather than heard Kalaya’s displeasure through my implants, and I have to say in this instance I agreed with her one hundred percent. She isn’t a girl you want to piss off.
“What’s the matter, kid? Afraid of a little wildlife? Big bad monsters out to scare you?” I taunted. I figured that if this was going to turn into a fight, it would be best for me if it was a fistfight. At least then, he wouldn’t be able to use the firearm.
His eyes narrowed and he gritted his teeth. It looked like I had hit a nerve. “Yeah, well, screw you. If you’re so damn superior, why does your ship look like a rat hole in the side of a hill? I think you’re just a stupid, crazy old coot who talks to himself. You’ll be singing a different tune when our marines land, and if it were up to me…”
“Enough, Maxwell! I will not tolerate this behavior from you!” the older man interrupted with authority.
“But…”
“I said enough!”
The boy slunk over to the far wall and hunched down in defeat, pretending to be interested in some safety posters that still clung to the bulkhead. The idiot couldn’t possibly read them, but the pictures were nice. The older man walked over to me with some confidence at least. He held out his hand in front of him for some reason. “My name’s Drik; it’s an honor to meet you.” I looked down in puzzlement at his outstretched hand.
“Take his hand,” Kalaya nudged me verbally.
Why would I do that? Must be a human thing, I guess. Reluctantly, I did as instructed and took his hand. The man smiled. “Got a firm grip there, I can respect that. Let me apologize for young Maxwell over there. This is his first mission and he has watched far too many space opera vids for his own good. That and his mouth outpaces his brain frequently.”
“I can see that.”
“Yes, well…” He looked around for a second, evidently searching for something else to break the ice. His eyes finally landed on the girl. “Ah, yes, let me introduce Laree, here.”
She had backed up a bit when her brother had gone off on his tangent, but now she waved shyly and smiled. “Hi.”
“She is the xenobiologist of our little team, and Maxwell is supposed to be our research assistant but sees himself as security for some reason.” The boy huffed again from the corner. “But, regardless, what he said is indeed true; our camp was overrun and we were almost killed several times on our way here, even with transport.”
“And your lack of readiness concerns me, how?”
Drik frowned. “Right, straight to the point then. We will surely be eaten if we go out there to wait for our ship to return. And you are absolutely right about us being trespassers, but I urge you to forgive us and let us stay here with you until our ship returns.”
A smart idea on their part, at least, but hardly fair. “And what do I get out of all this? From the sound of things, you are the only ones who would benefit.”
He nodded. “That is true; the outcome would be in our favor. However, if it will help, we will gladly lend our assistance to you and your attempt to rebuild your ship here. You did state you plan to rebuild, correct?”
“At this point, I don’t know. There are still a lot of things to be sorted out. How long until your ship returns?”
“A little over two of this world’s weeks.”
Two weeks, huh? Long time to have to watch over a batch of humans.
Kalaya spoke up through my headset, “I can’t say I like it, but I recommend you accept his offer. If we boot them out, they will undoubtedly be killed by the local fauna. Upon its return in two weeks, the Geoffrey Laird will probably launch an exhaustive search for them and the Aurora would be uncovered yet again. If we treat them fairly and deliver them unharmed, the human government is more likely to believe they can gain the secrets of the Aurora through diplomacy and negotiation rather than come in guns blazing immediately. This will buy us time to rebuild. But, Kodo, have no illusions, the humans will do everything in their power to take this vessel and I cannot allow that.”
A sound argument and one I could agree with. The Aurora was never built to be a warship, even against humans, it could still be at a disadvantage.
“Acknowledged,” I muttered under my breath, and then looked the one called Drik in the eye. “You can stay, but I have a few rules. You take nothing from here, you touch nothing from here and, most important of all, if you see a door that won’t open or one that is red that happens to be open, you cannot go in there. Am I clear?”
“Thank you, we will try to follow your rules, don’t worry.”
“Uh-huh, right. Well, I have some things I need to look at, so I’ll be leaving for a while.” I walked out of the room and back down the hall to the cryogenics room. Even as I was leaving, I could hear the Max boy griping about something.
I remember this room from when the ship was built. I had been within its walls dozens of times in its various stages of construction: bare frames, hardcoded wiring, gas ports, and final finish. I even recall the day they set the pods in here for the first time. The Dry dock foreman, Caleaney, swore up and down that not all ten would fit, but in the end, my staff shoehorned them in.
Now the place looked much different; it was no longer neat and orderly. Cables, pieces of machinery, and tattered bits of uniform were scattered all over the floor. Nine pods looked depressingly empty, burned out, or both. Only one was relatively untouched.
I pulled up a small bench and sat down staring blankly at the pod that had saved my life, just to doom me to a possibly worse fate. I watched a light blink on its control panel, indicating that someone had left a message for me. I pushed the button that would, hopefully, provide a logical explanation for all this.
Instantly, the vid screen suspended from the ceiling above the pod crackled to life, and a face appeared from off-camera and leaned into the picture. At first, I couldn’t make the connection, my mind’s eye having a tough time reconciling the video to anyone I knew. Then the man in the picture grinned sheepishly and I knew. It was Royson, our mission leader, and that grin hid a sharp intellect. He was one of those naturally charismatic people who attracted others in droves. The kind of boss that made you want to do your best at all times, just so you wouldn’t disappoint him. I had known him a very long time; in fact, we had lived in the same neighborhood. Royson was the one I could thank for tracking me down and recruiting me into this mission in the first place.
There he was, old, gray, and impossibly wrinkled. A few scars lined his cheeks and forehead that I couldn’t remember ever seeing before, but the same man I had always admired stood before me.
“Kodo, my old friend, it has been a long time since we could talk…perhaps a bit longer for me than you.” He
smiled and waved a self-depreciating hand toward himself. “If you are seeing this vid, you are still hale and in the prime of your life, and no doubt wondering why. Please bear with an old man while I attempt to explain.
“I will try to speak plainly; as one gets older, the niceties of flowery speech loses its appeal. When one’s time is short, there is no time to waste on such frivolities. My life is nearly over, the few other survivors and I have tried to prolong our spans as much as possible. But in the end, there is no fighting the biological clock. Life here these past years has been interesting, to say the least.” Royson ran his fingers along the deep furrow of a healed scar on his cheek, then shook his head absently as tears filled his eyes and he turned aside briefly to blink them away. Finally, he gathered himself and moved back into sharp focus.
“Enough…enough…you, no doubt, want to know what happened. Well, the truth is we aren’t entirely sure, but our best guess is that the Aurora was betrayed. Believe me, we talked about little else for years, ran modeling tests, and plotted out damage radiuses, and it all points to sabotage of the darkest sort. Explosives, probably space mines, were attached to her at our last port of call before we journeyed out. We would have all been tucked safely–we thought–into our cryo-chambers several days before that, so we have no firsthand knowledge of what happened. The ship launched as scheduled and our years of cold sleep went exactly as planned.”
He paused and took a shaky drink of some liquid from a glass off camera. “The instant we dropped back into real space, all hell broke loose. Multiple detonations targeted flight controls, crew quarters, and communications. The flight crew pods were destroyed instantly; fortunately, this ship you built is a tough old girl and the back-up to the back-up navigation and flight controls computer managed to get her down on the ground. How it ever accomplished it, I will never know, as it was fried beyond repair in the crash. The impact damaged power systems, engines, and life support; almost anything you care to name. Those of us who survived in the pods were dumped out on the floor on our asses due to the resulting power loss and surges. The rest weren’t so lucky; some were electrocuted, others burned, and a few suffocated…only your original prototype pod remained intact. It was undamaged except for the master control switch that would give the signal to wake all the pods upon landing. It, too, overloaded and was destroyed.
“When the dust settled, there were only six of us and you left of our original thirty-six-member crew. At first, we expected the colony ship to arrive any day and lend assistance, but they never showed up. True to our mission, we attempted to build an infrastructure base for the new city that would rise from the ashes. We even jokingly started to refer to the Aurora as the Phoenix. The foundation is in and a base has been set up as well at a suitable location for a city. Those drones of yours are very good at their jobs.
“Speaking of drones, when the explosions occurred, a pair of communication drones was forcibly jettisoned into space, active but without programming. They lapsed into passive mode and just floated around the system until gravitational forces pulled them into the grip of two small space bodies that circle the far reaches of this system. Over the years we have received several of those FTL probes from the drones that the eggheads at the academy cooked up and have been able to contact them sporadically. but only when they are relatively close, as our long range transmitters were irreparably damaged in the explosions. Remember that detail as it becomes important later on in my story.
“As you know, our job was to arrive here and prepare a safe haven before our paired colony ship arrived, but the Surety missed their scheduled arrival. Years passed, and our concern grew, cut off from communication with the home world and our fleet. The few of us left did what we could to rebuild our communications capabilities. Days before we were about to test our restored system, one of those lost drones sent a probe that came within range and we downloaded the information it had collected. Before the transmission was complete, it was interrupted…cut off in midstream, and we never heard from that drone again.
“The information we did recover was disturbing. Throughout its travels, the little drone had dutifully recorded everything it heard. Its oldest recordings chronicled desperate distress calls from several of our sister ships to the home world and our various mining colonies. Apparently, the Aurora was not the only victim of treachery. I will not sadden you further with the horrific details, but we had heard enough to conclude that our plans to save our civilization had failed. A few months after the initially recorded transmissions, all communication from our sister ships, defense fleet, colonies, and the home world abruptly stopped. Suddenly, our situation looked even bleaker, more ominous.
“Kodo, this was not an accident. Some entity out there was actively hunting us down and attempting to destroy all traces of our people. You and I both are aware of the usual suspects, but we had no idea they were powerful enough to pull this off. In a fair fight, I would have liked our odds, but this was treachery, pure and simple. Perhaps we were too preoccupied with leaving our dying home world and we let our guard down; I doubt we’ll ever know exactly what happened.
“Paranoia set in and we immediately began undoing most of the work we had already performed. We reduced to rubble or covered the city infrastructure. We even ordered the construction drones to bury this ship in an attempt to shield us from scans. We shut down the reactors so their presence wouldn’t give us away. By then, our numbers had dwindled down to three, and none of us were techs, so rebuilding the ship was out of our reach. Repairing the pods and returning to cryo-sleep was also out of the question, as we would never have survived the process. We were screwed.
“A few years after we completed our camouflage project, we detected an alien satellite loitering in the system. I am convinced it was looking for us. If it had friendly intentions, it would have broadcast its goodwill, but it stayed dark, silent, and searching. We hunkered down in our makeshift burrow even more.
“And now the part of the story you are no doubt anxious to hear most. The reason I didn’t wake you. Believe me, Kodo, I wanted to. It was the hardest decision of my life. If anyone could have resurrected the Aurora, it would have been you and Kalaya. You two were our ace-in-the-hole, as it were. There were a dozen times when I had resolutely decided to wake you the next morning, and a dozen times, I changed my mind.
“As powerful as this ship is, she is no battleship, nor is she the fastest ship in the galaxy. When it became apparent that there were powerful forces aligned against us, it seemed that discretion being the better part of valor, we should hide and live to fight another day.” He chuckled. “A lot of clichés to stomach, I know. Forgive an old man for rambling…anyway, you became our shining symbol of hope for the future. Our knowledge that you, Kalaya, and the Aurora would have the chance to wait out this time of darkness and emerge from it someday. It was what gave the rest of us the spirit to carry on day-to-day. I hope that after seeing this vid, you will use this opportunity to find out if any of our race continues to live. Rally them and provide a new beginning. Forgive me if you hate me for this decision, it is a lot to put on your and Kalaya’s shoulders, I know.
“I have programmed your pod to wake you at the one-thousand-year mark after Aurora’s launch. Any less and I couldn’t be sure it was safe…anymore and you would have died in stasis. Of course, if a Quetanae ship enters orbit around this planet, all bets are off, and it will wake you instantly. Kalaya is still asleep as well, and she will awake based on other criteria. Even without the reactors, your minimal power supplies should last that long.
“Back on track; a few days ago, I received a surprising transmission. It came from the second drone released during the explosions. Apparently, its meanderings took it quite a bit farther out into the void. Anyway, its long-range scans picked up a bounce reading from a very odd, very distant system at the end of a spiral arm. I say it’s odd because of the age of the stars that are there. This cluster of systems has stars that are much older than the blue stars th
at are common in the vast distances at the outer edges. There are several suitable stars in the area, which is vast and remote. It contains several seemingly habitable systems or, at least, close enough to habitable. I think this location would be a prime target for our new home world. Or should I say your new home world. I left the coordinates in the database.”
He stood up straighter and smoothed out the uniform top that was wearing. “To sum up, your orders are to repair the ship and get her back into space. Locate any survivors of our race and transport them to this promising new system to restart the New Seed Initiative.” He slumped back down into a more comfortable stance and smiled shyly. “Those were your final words from your boss; now I want to say a few things as your friend. I know the burden I have placed upon you will cause you great pain, but I haven’t left you alone either. Kalaya should be awake and hearing this as well. Even though her help would have been invaluable to us during the initial construction and the deconstruction, I couldn’t bring myself to bring her to consciousness knowing that she would never be able to go to sleep again. With her longer lifespan, it would have been cruel to leave her alone and powerless on the ship like that. Besides, you two have always gotten along, so perhaps you can prevent each other from going insane.” He smiled as if remembering a private joke. “Not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse, though; that girl is an odd one to be sure.
“Well, I think I’ve taken up enough of your time. I’m sure you have other things that need your attention. But, Kodo, take it easy, we live for a long time and you are still young. If it takes you a few years to get the ship running again, then so be it. I want you to promise me that you will take things easy and only do what must be done in the next couple of weeks. I felt like shit when I got out of my pod and that was only after a few years. I can’t imagine what you must feel like. Oh, before I forget, I’ve left quite a few of these messages around the ship to help you with what was going on in that area. Some are recent, but most were from when I was still young and didn’t know what the hell I was doing. So if I am acting strange, just ignore that part and go straight to the information that you need. Good luck, Kodo and Kalaya; we’re all counting on you. And Kalaya…take good care of Kodo, he’s going to need you.” He managed a halfway snappy salute, and with that, the screen went blank. I just sat there dumbly with tears streaming down my face and stared at it as I tried to process everything he said.
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