Written in the Stars: Science Fiction Romance Anthology

by Megan Alban

  I stood a distance away, shaking. “If anyone can hear me, please respond,” my voice echoed back into my ears. Then I clenched my fists. “Damnit. Damn it to hell. What the hell happened here? Whoever or whatever did this needs to pay…” I cried through ground teeth.

  A moment passed. I imagined Aippaq was monitoring my vitals about now, worried about me. But I didn’t care about me. I cared about the lives that were gone before me. Wasted. And for what? I didn’t want to believe such injustice could exist.

  But each time I glanced out that fishbowl helmet, my eyes gleamed the same horrific sight. Five astronaut miners were slain before me, and there was nothing I could do.

  “Do not be so hard on yourself. These wounds appear to have been made more than an hour ago. There is nothing we could have done,” Aippaq said.

  The tension in my face melted. My expression stretched long. “That might be true, Aippaq. But there’s certainly something we can do now. We can get to the bottom of this and make whoever did this pay.”

  I glanced at my life support indicators. Only ten percent reserves now. My time was running out.

  “Aippaq can you detect any life force in this area?” I asked. “You said earlier you could detect something dark.”

  Aippaq looked back at me, “Yes. This pit is enormous. I started the pre-analysis as soon as we set foot on the ground. “There is an excavation hole to our right of the hologram communication device, which seems to be freshly made. The life force appears to come from there.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and edged inch by inch according to Aippaq’s advice. When I saw the holographic recording device tipped on its side, I was brought back to the lecture theatre earlier that day, and the green fuzzy bust of Manuel Carrera.

  The Chief Miner. The one who could call all the shots. I pressed my eyelids shut and shook my head. Could it be?

  The flare went out in my hand. I pointed my blinding white torch into the tunnel ahead. It was just newly made, judging by the dust particles suspended in the air.

  “Carrera,” I whispered, “what happened here?”

  Chapter 15

  Aippaq and I ran through the new tunnel.

  While my feet moved, questions ran through my head. Could it be that Carrera, the only man who wasn’t dead or injured, the mastermind of all this? And if so, what could have made him do this?

  “There, ahead,” Aippaq cheered.

  I saw the back of the machinery that was parked in place. My footsteps slowed as it stood taller with each step I made toward it. I recognized it.

  “Miss Pepperfield do not get so close!” Aippaq called out.

  I spun to him and asked. “Do you believe a rogue machine can exist?”

  Aippaq’s frizzly fur calmed down. “On second thought no. But I am afraid for your safety, regardless.”

  I stepped forward slowly. My torchlight reflected on its side. “It’s the Galactic Bertha. I recognize it from the photos near my desk,” I said in wonderment as I peered under it to see its intestinal mix of gears and transmission hoses.

  “But why is it here? In the middle of a new tunnel?” Aippaq asked.

  Good question. I approached the driver’s side of the vehicle carefully. Then I stepped back and peered upward toward the dusty window there. “It’s empty. Whoever drove the GB here isn’t here anymore,” I said. And whoever it was couldn’t be too far away, dead or alive.

  Aippaq bounced toward me at the front of vehicle as I examined it closer.

  “Oh God,” I paused. Something sticky was against my foot. I glanced down. My eyes widened. And I let out a panicked scream.

  Blood pooled near the enormous crushing gears at the front of the machine. And the gears themselves glinted red, as my torch jerked side to side with me trying to get away.

  “We must be careful,” Aippaq said, staying by my side. The look of his blue and black fur kept me grounded. It was certain. Evil did indeed exist among us.

  I gathered myself up, keeping my fragile pieces close. The tunnel ahead reflected the purple glow from the crystals abundant on the planet. Except it was no longer Bertha-sized. It narrowed down into a dark doorway narrow enough for one human width. “Let’s go,” I whispered and walked.

  We took small steps through the small corridor that looked like it had been built with the help of many miners. But after a right angled turn to the right, there was a glowing orange light at the end.

  The tunnel ahead broke out into a chamber the size of an office. And in the middle, facing away, was the silhouette of a crouched human.

  “Aippaq!” I gasped and raced forward.

  “Miss Pepperfield, please be careful!”

  The closer I got, it was clear that the human was kneeling down, hands on the front edge of a stone table. And when I was feet from the doorway, I knew from the coloration on his silver shoulders that it was one of our miners. Everything about him identified him as an Alpha Station miner, except the spider-like metallic helmet addition that looked like an alien parasite over him.

  I approached slowly, switching my radio to a broadcast frequency. “Hello. Are you okay? My name is Alyse Pepperfield, I’m here to help.”

  The man continued kneeling, hands pressed into the stone table. Slowly, a crackling came through my speakers. I rejoiced when he spoke, “Alyse?”

  It was him! I let out a breath of relief.

  “I’m glad you made the trip down here. I knew you would,” he continued. But his voice was soft and echoey. He was there, right in front of me, but seemed to be lightyears away.

  “Of course I’d come for you, Carrera. After the meteorite shower, there was nobody to put together a rescue team. So I’m here. Do you have any oxygen supplies? I’m running low-” I stepped through the doorway and put hands on Carrera’s shoulders. But in an instant, my vision filled with purple as a glowing above me lit everything bright.

  The muscles in my neck relaxed, and I glanced up. Stars shone in the ceiling like there was a view out to the Universe above us. Like I was back on the surface of SH-17, the Outpost lux-gardens or even Mars. In that moment I felt I wasn’t encased in a hundred feet of amethyst. The Universe was captured in the plane above me.

  “I-Impossible,” I whispered.

  Aippaq’s mechanical translation buzzed in my right ear, “Miss Pepperfield. Please be careful! The dark energy I sensed comes from Carrera.”

  “Carrera, do you see this? This is amazing! Oh my goodness,” I asked him gently, shaking my hands against his shoulder.

  But he replied. Sordid. “I saw it,” his throat made a weeping hiccup, “but it’s all for nothing.”

  “What do you mean? My god, this is the entire Universe mapped out on the ceiling here. I can see the Milky Way, Triangulum, Andromeda. Everything is here in the middle of this mine! This is a true discovery, Carrera. Like we always wanted to make!” I cheered like a schoolgirl.

  I felt him shake his head under my hand. “I thought the human race was on the cusp of a big discovery. That’s why we came all the way out here. To find the source of the broadcast, right?”

  He shook his head and breathed out hard, “we got here four Earth-years ago and I thought it was the start of something fantastic. I thought this planet, SH-17 was alive, full of hope and discovery for us to make. But one mine pit after another, year after year, we never got anywhere. Yes, we learned that the crust moved with the meteorites, which set us back many times. But we never found the reason for the broadcast...”

  I retorted with care, “but Carrera, we’re here. Do you see this ceiling? You found it. After digging through the entire surface of this crystal planet. This room, this stone table right here. It’s all proof that there’s intelligent life beyond our race. This is a discovery that eclipses our entire evolution.”

  Carrera took in a sharp, short breath. His body jerked up and down. And then my speakers blasted with the tearing tone of his lungs. “No!” He screamed with his entire lung capacity.

  I cried out
in shock and fell back, planting a hand behind my butt just before I toppled over. My heart pounded in my ears. When I heard more of his sobs I knew he was done. “Carrera, what’s gotten into you?”

  “You don’t get it, Alyse. This isn’t a discovery. At all. We’ve found nothing of the sort!” He sobbed into his hands harder, then his hand pointed up to the ceiling.

  My eyes returned to our place once again on the expansive map. Our trifecta of galaxies forming a small corner in the ceiling.

  Among the bright stars, the ceiling was partitioned into logarithmic lines. Pinprick edges inside the crystals suggested where suns and whole galaxies were, and the darkness the same void that seemed everywhere around us. It charted more than just the Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy itself. An entire, vast volume of time and space that I knew we could never experience in a lifetime.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Carrera…” I replied.

  “Look past the fucking ceiling!” Carrera yelled.

  I glanced side to side and all about the room. Then felt every hair and goosebump on my arms shiver cold. The map extended impossibly past what we knew as the known Universe. Spectral lights glinted back at me from the walls, in spectacular, unnamable colors from the void they came from. The map was not only of the human-known Hubble Volume, but of what lay beyond the threshold of space and time.

  “It’s over. It’s over,” Carrera’s hands pushed forward on the stone before him, and his head dropped again.

  I stumbled forward, speechless. And put my hand on the stone before him too. But then I peered at the stone table closely. Etches all over it looked like an ancient alphabet, both swirled and straight at the same time. And then I realized the stone altar was in fact a case of sorts, and Carrera had pushed its lid ajar, letting me to peer inside at a clawed up, black hand that had seven decayed fingers.

  “Oh my god,” I jumped backward, hands on my helmet near my mouth.

  “Miss Pepperfield what is it?” Aippaq asked in fear.

  Before I could will myself to speak, Carrera stood and turned. He faced me, silver shining lights in his eyes. He approached and I stepped back, away from the ceiling and the tomb in the centre of the room.

  Carrera spoke, “You see it now, don’t you? This map on the ceiling reveals places far beyond our understanding of the Universe. Far beyond what we think is the end of the Universe. This map shows us what’s beyond the antimatter we think is there! Truly impossible.”

  I gasped at his use of the word. Young Manuel Carrera, always the calm and rational science lover. And the boy I’d grown up with. His face showed a distress I’d never seen on him before. Even as I held him after his first boyfriend Jethur dumped him at the Outpost lux-gardens on the eve their first year anniversary. Or when his University thesis was destroyed in an unprecedented meteor shower. Both those times, I’d managed to convince him there was time to heal and recover. A better world ahead. Hope. But this time, I could see only darkness and despair in his eyes. A seeing of our tiny speck of significance in a Universe so vast, that he could never unsee it. It could drive anyone insane.

  I held out my suited hand, “Please Carrera. Even so, this is a discovery you’ve made. And knowledge we could use. Please come with me, so we can make it back to the surface. We can talk about everything there.”

  His downturned face lifted up to me. Wrinkles of rage gouged deep into his olive skin. “I won’t.”

  “What?” I spluttered.

  “This planet’s secret destroys everything we know about us. I can’t. You can’t go back Alyse,” Carrera said. He lifted his hand. It was clutched around something. “I can’t let anyone know about this room. And I can’t let you go. It was a mistake to come to SH-17, Alyse. I have to erase this planet’s secrets forever. For the sake of the human cause.”

  My jaw dropped and my heart raced as I recognized the thing inside Carrera’s hand. At the same time, the flared out tentacles on the thing on his head revealed all I needed to know. Carrera had forged Fuzzario technology. And he was the one controlling the Galactic-Bertha.

  “Carrera, think about it. Look at the history of this Universe. It’s all in this ceiling here. This is knowledge not even our greatest telescopes and square light-year arrays can fathom. If we can study this, we can find out so much more about the Universe. We can find where the alien in that tomb came from!” I backed away, feeling the planet’s vibrating core through my body. The Bertha had already been activated.

  Carrera shook his head. The spider-like helmet covering his crown glowed blue. “Alyse, don’t be foolish. If we follow this abomination of a map, then we humans aren’t making our own path anymore. We humans will forge their own path and our own destiny. And I’ll make sure that that happens!”

  Chapter 16

  Carrera had gone mad. He was going to destroy the transmission room with the help of his bombs and kill us both.

  “We need to move!” Aippaq’s voice screeched through my ears.

  But I was frozen in my place, watching the walls and ceiling with intense care. No. Carrera was a fucking idiot. Destroying the knowledge of aliens. Delaying human discovery back by how many more goddamn millenia?

  “Don’t!” I screamed.

  “You don’t get to decide,” Carrera seethed.

  I watched in absolute terror as the man lifted his right hand to the ceiling. The blue glow over his head engulfed his body. Then I felt the quake in the compacted ground under my feet.

  An awful rumbling cracked through the centre of the room’s floor.

  “No!” I screamed. I took one last glance at the ceiling. The multitude of knowledge in its spots and twinkling lights. The ground underneath me and Aippaq lurched, tipping me backward off balance. Then with a burst of rock and dust in the middle of the room, the chewing gears of the Galactic-Bertha ground up the wall behind Carrera.

  “Run!” Aippaq squeaked.

  This time I did. I hightailed it out of the room, feeling the Bertha’s quaking on my heels. Like a mole tunneling for its prey, it sought me out with its jaws.

  “The Cavern is ahead. Stay close, and keep up,” I cried out.

  We reached the cavern and rolled to the right just before the Bertha crashed through the ground like a sea serpent. The hole it left behind through the ground looked like the same vertical chasm created near old man Gensworth.

  “Aippaq, can you confirm what Carrera is using to control that thing?”

  The Fuzzario piqued up, “yes, from the first day, Chief Miner Carrera always took an interest in us. In his first few years he has spent a lot of his time studying Fuzzario biology and the technology we use to interface with the computers. I believe he is using the telepathic amplifier helmet to control the machine! I should have known...” he growled.

  I nodded to him.

  “Alyse Pepperfield?” A man’s voice called for me. Oh god, it was smooth like butter. And such a relief to my pounding heart.

  My heart pulsed. I focused my eyes forward to the chasm where Aippaq and I had floated down earlier. A smile spread across my face at the sight of Darner’s heavily armed group of marines. “Captain!”

  “What is going on here?” Darner and the others raced toward me. God he was such a sight for my oxygen-depleted sight.

  The shuddering ground brought me back to reality. I didn’t have time to enjoy the look of happiness on his face. I held my hands up, “wait. Be careful! Carrera’s gone mad. He’s going to collapse the entire mine!”

  Their faces quickly shifted away from me, upward. And then I saw the men’s eyebrows raise.

  The rumbling up my legs told me all I needed to know. I didn’t have to turn around to know the Bertha was bursting up close by.

  My feet brought me to the left.

  “Men, fire,” Captain Darner raised his weapons and shot at the machinery, and then bounced off in all directions.

  “Oof!” My body flew into the air, launched by the splintering ground under my feet. Captain
Darner came over to me as the vibrating from the machine once again vanished into the planet’s depths.

  I let my breaths slow down and spun around to make sure Aippaq was okay with me. Then I looked at Captain Darner. His warm eyes furrowed in the middle as his firm grip on my shoulders helped me up.

  “Are you okay?” He asked.

  I knew I was passing out from lack of oxygen. My voice raced to get it all out, “I am. But I won’t be for long if that bastard Carrera gets to me again,” my eyes twinkled as we gazed into each others’ eyes, “I’ll write you a report later, I promise.”

  He laughed. “Are you being serious with me now?” His smile showed me his appreciation. His wide, blue eyes were so perfectly framed by his manly stubble.

  “I know how to stop him. But I could do with some help,” I said.

  “What do you need?” Darner didn’t hesitate.

  The ground shook again. The digging machine was coming back for more. It wouldn’t relent until its controller’s wishes were fulfilled. And that’s where its weakness was. The wurm crashed from the ground upward and curved over beside the group of men who fired lasers and covered each other from the other side of the room.

  “Carrera is using telepath technology with the Bertha,” I explained. “He’s hiding out in that tunnel. And it’s me he wants. I can lure him out. But if you can distract him enough to get me an opening, I can get that thing off his head.”

  “Typical Carrera. He always kept to himself in his off-swings,” Darner said. He lifted his laser rifle and shot a few, powerful rounds toward the machinery.

  “Watch out!” Aippaq yelled, looking behind me again.

  Instinctively I jumped to my feet. I watched as the Bertha crashed from the ceiling, planting its grinders in the spot right in the middle of our group huddle. Darner, Aippaq and I split in all three separate directions, and missed the machine’s deadly jaws.

  “God dammit, that thing’s pissing me off,” Darner snarled. “Men, set up a hold by that tunnel Miss Pepperfield just came from, and wait for my command.”