Project Columbus: Omnibus

by J. C. Rainier

  “Fine,” Cal said with a sigh and opened his eyes. His fingers scrabbled at his thigh until he got a good grip, then clenched down as hard as he could. His eyes shot wide and he tried to stifle a yelp of pain.

  “Told you.”

  Cal laughed nervously at first. He tried to comprehend the fact that he was awake, and arguing with a clone of himself that was not bound by the laws of physics. As the realization sunk in, his laughter took on a chilling maniacal tone for almost two minutes, before it broke down into a pathetic sobbing.

  “Oh God, it happened. I broke…. I’m broken. She’s never going to forgive me. She’s never going to love me,” Cal spluttered through his tears. “No, no… I can’t face her like this. I can’t…”

  “Worry about yourself before you worry about that girl, idiot. She’s the reason you’ve done oh, I’d say about two thirds of the dumb crap you have since you got on board.” The patience in the voice of his specter was growing thin.

  Cal shook his head hard and tried to bite his tongue, hoping that the pain would somehow make it all go away. His mind raced to the milky white skin of Alexis’s cheeks, to her long, unbound hair, and to her soft red lips. Lips that seemed alight to Cal. Irresistible. He felt drawn to them like a moth to a flame. The world began to spin around him as the thought of one more kiss with her consumed him.

  “Hey, what are you dreaming about in there?” taunted his twin.

  “Her.”

  “Give it a rest. She’s locked up until you reach the planet.”

  “No, Dayton promised that he’d wake her up during the final approach cycle.”

  Echoing laughter in his own voice filled his head. “He also promised to let you study for the entire approach cycle. How did that work out, exactly? Let me see here. Oh, that’s right. He screamed at you, told you to shut up, and had his medical officer put your sorry ass back to sleep.” The hackles on Cal’s neck rose as his tormentor leaned in next to his ear and whispered, “A great way to keep a promise, don’t you think?”

  Cal snarled and lunged with his hands towards the throat of his alter ego, but the restraints held him fast, like a dog at the end of a leash. After a moment of grunting and straining, he gave up, and the restraints went slack.

  He’s right. Dayton broke his promise to me.

  “And there it is. You’ve finally seen the light.”

  “God damn it, get out of my head. That’s really starting to piss me off.”

  “I’m sorry, Calvin, what was that?” asked Dr. Taylor from just out of sight.

  His specter snickered. “Ooh, company, this could be fun. Let’s see how this plays out, huh mush brain?”

  Cal let out a long growl of frustration. His fingers locked like talons as anger coursed through him nearly unchecked. Somewhere deep inside of him, a voice of restraint called out, mostly drowned out by his rage.

  “I said get out, I don’t want you here. Is that too hard to understand?”

  Cal’s twin spoke at the same time as Dr. Taylor, and the discordant overlapping of their voices made him cringe. He could not understand either of them, but he couldn’t wrap his mind around how strong his imaginary assailant’s words were against the doctor’s voice. Cal growled again, this time both anguished and enraged.

  “Please, try to calm down. I don’t want to have to sedate you again.”

  “No,” Cal screamed. “No more. That won’t help.”

  “Then you need to calm down. Take a deep breath, Calvin.”

  As much as he didn’t want to talk to Dr. Taylor, Cal did his best to heed her advice. He began to draw in deep breaths of air, and let them out in a regular pattern. His anger started to ebb, and he relaxed his hands.

  “Aww, isn’t that cute,” his specter mocked. “A couple words and you’re playing lap dog to Dayton’s lap dog.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Calvin, I didn’t say anything,” said Dr. Taylor. She floated into view and to the edge of the sleeper. She edged over, and the right side of her body occupied the same space as that of the left side of Cal’s doppelganger. His form morphed at the point where the two came together, distorting his body in a hideous manner. Cal’s stomach lurched and he had to fight the urge to throw up. “You look sick, are you sure I can’t get you anything?”

  Cal shook his head and swallowed hard. “I.. I just need…” he searched for an excuse to get rid of her. “I just need to be alone for a minute, okay?”

  “Fine, I can take a hint,” said his doppelganger, feigning indignity. Cal blinked and only Dr. Taylor remained when his eyes opened. His stomach settled almost at once.

  “Are you sure? You’re definitely not yourself, and I don’t want you to get hurt,” Dr. Taylor said softly.

  Cal sighed. “What does it matter? I failed. Two thousand people are going to die because of me, and Colonel Dayton couldn’t care less.”

  “No one is going to die because of you. You’ve just been acting really strange since you came out of biostasis, and now I’m starting to get the idea that something is truly bothering you. Would you care to explain it to me?”

  “You know all about my dreams when I’m in stasis.”

  Dr. Taylor nodded.

  “There was one I had that was disturbingly real. I’ve had dreams with gravity, or with people I knew, or with the ship, but never in such a combination, or such…” his voice trailed off.

  Dr. Taylor stared at him for a moment before breaking the silence. “What? Go on, please.”

  “Everything was so real: the feel of the grass, the smell of the air, and the voices of the crew. We landed on Demeter, and came on the wreck of a sleeper ship. God, there was so much fire and smoke. I wanted to help, but you and Hunter held me back while the colonel gave a speech. When you guys left, I searched the ship. I didn’t find anyone.”

  “No one was left alive?”

  Cal thought for a moment. “No, there just was no one. No bodies, no survivors. Just a burning wreck.” He caught her looking over her shoulder as she fidgeted. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. It’s time to start your treatment.”

  “No,” he said sternly. “There’s something you’re not telling me. I may be nuts, but I still have the right to know.”

  “Look, you’re stressed out and exhausted, to say the least. Let’s just…”

  “No, God damn it,” he yelled. “Tell me what it is.”

  Dr. Taylor sighed. Even floating in the air in front of him, she looked deflated. Her eyes met his and he could see a deep sorrow within them.

  “When we woke from stasis, Sergeant Drisko picked up the automated beacon from Raphael giving information on the planet and its moons, as well as the landing site they had chosen. Then we found something else, recorded in the com system. A distress call from Raphael.”

  Cal felt his heart drop into his feet. His nightmare had been realized, yet he knew he needed to hear confirmation, just to be certain.

  “We haven’t been able to contact Raphael since receiving the distress call. From what I know, and I didn’t ask too much, they suffered a catastrophic failure. Colonel Dayton is proceeding under the assumption that there are no survivors.”

  Then that’s it. There’s truly nothing that can be done.

  “How many people were on Raphael?”

  “Just over twenty two hundred. She was the biggest ship in the fleet.”

  More than two thousand. Gone like that, and it’s on my hands.

  “I know you think that this could have been avoided,” she continued. “Hunter told me about the rest of your rant. The fact is there was nothing we could have done. He tells me that the incident likely happened about a week ago, before we woke up.” She hesitated for a moment. “I’m sorry. Now let’s just focus on getting you better.”

  Cal swallowed and nodded. As Dr. Taylor drifted away from the opening, he again became lost in his thoughts. There was a nagging sense somewhere deep inside that, while he was going to receive treatment for his psychosis, tha
t Colonel Dayton was simply going to shuffle Cal aside until the landing.

  He broke his promise to you, he thought. Your plan to make amends just got crushed. So what now?

  “It’s not right,” he blurted.

  “What’s that?” Dr. Taylor called.

  “He screwed me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Colonel Dayton. He made a promise, and now he’s breaking it. He’s got me tied up here so his crew doesn’t have to see me.”

  “He’s only making the decisions he feels is best for the crew and the mission. You had a pretty spectacular outburst. Do you even remember it?”

  “Most of it.”

  “So you can appreciate why he had me sedate you, right?”

  He thought for a moment and couldn’t deny the logic behind it. “Still, I don’t appreciate being strapped in here like an animal. It’s not right, and it’s not fair.”

  She returned with a large syringe full of a cloudy concoction. There was no needle at the end, he noticed. Dr. Taylor brought it up to his face. “Here, drink this and go back to sleep. I’ll see what I can do about your grievances.”

  He shied away for a moment. “Not more sedatives, right?”

  “No, this is an anti psychotic agent. It’ll probably taste terrible, but it should help you with the symptoms you’re having.”

  “Like the other me that comes and has a chat with me?”

  Dr. Taylor stopped for a moment, seemingly stunned. “Let’s hope so. I want to know every time he shows up, okay?”

  “Fine,” he said, and opened his mouth to accept the medication. It splashed across his tongue and he almost gagged from the bitterness, but managed to choke it down.

  “I’ll be back later to check on you.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  She moved out of sight. The lights dimmed slightly, and Cal was left once more, alone and restrained. He waited for what seemed like hours for Dr. Taylor to check on him, or even to come back and talk. His eyelids became heavy and he eventually gave up on the hope of talking to anyone but himself, and shut his eyes.

  1st Lt Darius Owens

  4 April 2058, 13:00

  Gabriel

  This is the task that I have been dreading, Darius thought as he passed the desolate maw of pod one. I should have done this sooner, Eriksen’s orders be damned.

  While Darius understood his commanding officer’s reasoning for the delay, he thoroughly believed that Dr. Kimura would have been able to perform his duty despite the heavy news. At the very worst, he might need a day to compose himself and continue on. He could not bear to wait for the pods’ radio threshold to be reached, weeks down the line.

  The man deserves to know, no matter what. What right do we have to hold news of his daughter from him? It’s insubordination, but it’s also what’s right.

  Darius exited the gallery and halted his motion just inside the open airlock to pod four. He sighed and mentally ran through the speech he had prepared. He had no idea why he had bothered to prepare one, other than for a sense of readiness. When the time came to deliver the news of Raphael’s destruction, he knew that the speech would fall to pieces. Darius shook his head and pushed off of the wall, snaking his way through the corridors to the ESAARC cockpit. He slid the door open and received a warm smile from Dr. Kimura.

  “Ah, Darius. I was just finishing lunch,” he said as he stowed a thick brown plastic wrapper in one of the storage bins. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  Darius maneuvered his frame into the seat next to the doctor and loosely pulled the restraints over his shoulders. I’m about to devastate him, he thought with a heavy sigh.

  The smile faded quickly from the scientist’s face, and his brows arched in concern. “Darius, what is wrong?”

  “We received a transmission – a distress call – from Raphael. They had a reactor malfunction.” Goosebumps rose on his skin and he got a sudden chill as Dr. Kimura looked like a deer frozen in the headlights. “We have been unable to make any further contact. I’m sorry, but it looks like there are no survivors.”

  The doctor’s mouth opened as he tried to speak. Nothing came out, nor did Darius expect his friend to be able to respond. Tears welled in Dr. Kimura’s eyes, pooling up until they floated away. His lips trembled and the corners of his mouth twisted in despair.

  “H-Haruka?”

  “We haven’t heard from her. We’re still out of range of the ESAARC pods’ emergency radio.”

  Darius could not bear to look him in the eye any longer. The weight pressed on his chest and felt as if it would squeeze the breath out of him.

  “I’m so terribly sorry, Doctor.”

  I can’t possibly imagine what you are feeling. When Mama passed my world turned upside down, but I knew the Lord was going to take her. To suddenly have the prospect of losing your daughter, in an accident…

  Dr. Tadashi Kimura broke down into a sobbing mess. Darius blindly reached over and clasped him on the shoulder. He felt his own emotions surge within him. Though he meant to comfort his friend, he could do little more than keep his own calm while holding the man’s shoulder. Minutes passed as the elder man wept. Darius sat by, waiting for something to break the tension.

  “I am losing everything,” the doctor coughed between sobs.

  “Again, I’m very sorry. I can’t imagine what you must be going through, but you’ve got to keep your head up, for your family.”

  “My family,” he parroted. “They are falling apart. Haruka is dead. Saika is pregnant and I have no idea what the stasis is doing to her. Her husband and I are accused of capital crimes. And neither Sarah nor Saika have the slightest clue as to what is about to hit them.”

  “We don’t know that she’s dead, Doc.”

  “The reactor failed.”

  “That it did.”

  “And you have heard nothing from the crew.”

  “That’s right. But like I said, the pods are…”

  “I appreciate your consideration, Darius,” the doctor snapped, “but we both know that the chances of surviving a reactor breach are almost nonexistent.”

  Darius gulped and sealed his lips tightly. Yeah, I know.

  “It might have been more merciful to have left her on Earth to die in the War,” Kimura continued as he buried his hands in his gray hair. “She wanted to serve so badly. I was selfish. Selfish to take her from what she wanted to do. To try to keep her close to me, to manipulate the system for my own childish desires.”

  Darius placed a thick hand on his friend’s shoulder. “It’s not childish or selfish to want to protect your family, or to want to be with them.”

  “I did not protect them. I dragged them with me to face death and punishment. I should have come alone into this darkness.”

  “And they wouldn’t have faced death if you left them in the middle of the War? If nothing else, you’ve given your wife and Saika a fighting chance. They’re going to need someone to lean on.”

  “I am a weak old man. I cannot be leaned upon without falling.”

  “Then lean on me as you catch your family.”

  To his surprise, Dr. Kimura pulled together and straightened up. He wiped his eyes and nose and took a deep breath.

  “You sound very much like David would have. You’re right, just as he always was. Please do me a favor, Darius.”

  “Anything.”

  “When we land, I’d like to break all of the news at once to them, but I don’t want to make a spectacle. Can you please ask Colonel Eriksen if we may have a private place to do so, after we land?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Thank you, my friend. I hate to be such a burden to you.”

  Darius shrugged and smiled. “I couldn’t let you bear that much by yourself.”

  An awkward silence descended upon the cockpit. Doctor Kimura was lost deep in thought, his gaze fixed on a cluster of stars pulsing overhead.

  “I know you need some time,” Darius added
softly. “I’ll forge an entry of your rounds tonight, and you can take tomorrow off as well if you need to.

  “That’s very kind of you, but I can still perform my duties.”

  “I thought you’d say that. Just remember, I can disable your terminal access if I have to.”

  Dr. Kimura forced a weak smile. “Very well then, I surrender in the face of overwhelming forces.”

  “Good. Don’t seal yourself up in here either; I don’t think that’s healthy.”

  “And what are you suggesting I do, Darius?”

  “I don’t know, maybe come to chow tonight.”

  “Forgive me, but I don’t want to be around large groups right now.”

  “It doesn’t have to be a large group. How about just me and Lieutenant Miller?”

  Dr. Kimura pursed his lips and considered for a moment. “Very well. Eighteen hundred hours?”

  “Nineteen thirty. I’m pulling a long shift tonight stocking pods one and two with emergency supplies, and Captain Quinn enlisted Miller for an extra cooling routine check.”

  “I understand. I will be waiting outside the pod.”

  Darius nodded in acknowledgement and left the cockpit. His fingers were numb, and a wave of despair washed over him.

  I hope he’s wrong about it all falling apart. Raphael was a huge loss. I pray that it wasn’t a design flaw that brought her down.

  2nd Lt Darren Cormack

  Planetfall +6 days, early morning

  Eight miles northeast of sleeper pod seven site

  Darren stretched. He winced as a knot in his back tightened and complained from the movement. Sleeping for the night on the hard ground had taken its toll on Darren. Though they were poorly padded and barely had what one could consider a pillow, the sleeper berths in the now abandoned pod were far more comfortable for slumber. What little luxury they afforded was now just a memory; the party of survivors that he led could only bring with them food, water, clothing, and some weapons and tools. He sighed and reached into his own pack and fished out a sealed ration. A large mosquito-like insect landed on his arm and he swatted it away before opening the meal.