Mary explained how Teelon had implanted knowledge of the ship into their brains with a small cable. There was a small dab of blood on the side of her forehead. I couldn’t believe they could just download data into a human like that, but Teelon assured us the process had been tested, since the hybrids had need of the technology as well. Apparently, the data transfer wasn’t perfected, because Mary said there was a lot of it she didn’t quite understand, like the translation was cut short. Natalia nodded as she explained it.
“But you’re confident enough to fly it, right?” I asked, hoping we didn’t need to rely on the dying alien beside us. I wished there was something one of us could do, but we weren’t doctors, and internal bleeding wasn’t something we could help with.
“Yeah, I can do this for sure,” she said confidently.
“You got it, Teelon,” I said. “We’re ready.”
We lifted the heavy Shield to underneath the ship, and on Teelon’s word, we pressed the little metal buttons pinned to our shirts. The green light shone down again, and I was glad I had moved the pendant from under my shirt. It was glowing red hot. I could see Mary’s ring around her neck, plunging down her dirty tank top. It burned a hot green too. We floated upwards and it was the strangest feeling.
So this was what everyone had felt when they were taken less than a week ago, only for them, it was massively terrifying. For me, it was only mildly terrifying. I’d never been a huge fan of heights, but I could deal with them. I didn’t mind being on the Empire State Building or at the top of a ski hill, but the feeling of floating up, with no control and nothing under my feet, was a whole new level of odd.
Magnus seemed to be doing okay, and he was carrying the Shield device by himself, his huge arms bulging at the weight. I felt embarrassed to just be carrying the pack with water and food, and Carey nestled into my neck. He panted scared breaths on me as we rose. Mary was smiling wide, like it was the best ride ever. The view from here was undeniably gorgeous, but it was hard to focus on it at the time. Moments passed, the ground got farther away, and then we approached the ship. My instincts were to stretch my hands out over my head to keep from hitting myself on the ship’s underside. Instead, my hands just went through the wall, and soon my head did too.
TWENTY-TWO
It was the strangest feeling to move through matter like that. It was a technology Earth had never seen before, and I wondered when this was all over if we would have a new ally with Teelon’s people, the Deltra. There was so much we could learn from them.
My body emerged into the ship, and before that moment, I hadn’t really thought what the inside of one of them would look like. It was dimly lit, and the only detectable scent was the musk of us humans. The room we came into was quite spacious and had storage compartments lining the metal walls. The floor was also metal, polished smooth and shiny.
“Teelon adjusted the air levels to be breathable to us. They and the Kraski have similar breathing element percentages as we do, which biologically is extremely interesting. My father would love to learn more about that.” Mary paused at that, as if she just remembered her father was somewhere up in space at that moment. “I hope he’s okay. This way, guys.”
“Dean, wanna give me a hand with this thing?” Magnus asked.
I grabbed an end and we lowered it to the ground, away from the tractor beam, or whatever it was called. Anywhere on this ship would be safe. All we had to do was make sure it stayed turned on, as long as we got it onto their mother ship.
We followed Mary down a hall. The whole place had an ominous, sterile feeling to me, and I had a flashback to Janine’s time in the hospital. I shook it off as we approached what could only be described as the cockpit. There were two seats facing a large dashboard of glowing controls. Otherwise, there was room to stand, and not a lot else.
“How do we see out?” I asked, and Mary hit a button, causing the wall in front of us to go transparent. The viewing port was at least ten feet across and four feet high. We could see for miles down the mountain, and the Peru day was shaping up to be a beautiful one with clear skies, but we wouldn’t be here to enjoy it.
“Wow. Are you sure you can fly this thing?” Magnus asked.
“I’m Air Force. Of course I can,” she said with a smirk. She was sexy when she went all cocky like that. She tapped a button and told us it was for communication. Magnus settled into the seat and held it down.
“Nat, Teelon, we’re ready to fly the coop. Are you guys good? Over.”
There was no crackle, just a clear, crisp voice. “We’re good. Follow us up. We’ll lead the way.”
The smaller ship hovered above us and soon we were jutting after it. The ride was a little bumpy.
“Well, I said I can fly it. Just takes a while to get used to the thrusters. They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. No visible exhaust points…it’s almost like there are little thrusters all around the ship, so you can hover and move any direction, with more accuracy than a helicopter. It’s amazing,” Mary said, excited.
We rose up and the land below us got smaller and smaller.
“I always wanted to become an astronaut someday. I know it sounds silly, but a lot of them come from an Air Force background. I didn’t have the required degree to make the switch, but it had always been an idea I’d had. That maybe one day I would go back to school. The government would pay for it. Then I’d apply with NASA.”
“Well, now you get to do something even better. Fly in space and save the world. That’s all in a day’s work for Mary Lafontaine.” I could tell she smiled when I said this just by the movement of the back of her head.
We rose higher and higher, picking up speed as we went.
“Why are they going to just let us board again?” Magnus asked.
“Teelon used their communicators from the ship and told them there was an issue with the device being shut down. That the three Kraski were coming back because they were exposed to it and needed medical attention. He’s sure they’ll send another ship or two down to investigate things, but by that time, we’ll have dealt with them.”
“They must really think Teelon’s people are docile if they let them roam around in their own ships,” I suggested.
“From the sounds of it, they’ve been playing at being weak for centuries, waiting for the right moment to strike. You show your belly to a predator for enough years, they forget that you also have teeth. I’m just glad they decided to show them when humanity needed it,” Mary said.
“I wonder how many of his people are aboard that ship. And will they all help when the Kraski are down?” Magnus asked no one in particular.
“Let’s just hope they do. First things first, we have to stop them, then save our people. Then we can worry about what happens after that.” I believed the words as I said them. It was all too overwhelming if we thought too far into the future. We’d been led to believe all we had to do was shut this thing off and we would be done. After the journey halfway across the world, we had done what we’d thought was necessary. It wasn’t done. I thought about Ray, and how it was done for him. I would find his family and tell them he was a good man. That he had cared for them very deeply. I couldn’t blame him for trying what he did.
We raced through the atmosphere, and the ship jostled around a little bit. Mary kept focus, and she let out a whoop as we broke out and into the blackness of space. My jaw fell open as I saw Earth from above for the first time. It was a moment I knew I’d never forget, but I’d been having a lot of those lately. Magnus looked back at me and smiled. “Now that’s something you don’t see every day!”
We followed the smaller ship away from Earth. I had no idea what direction we were heading because to me, that all went out the window in three-dimensional mapping. They sat, and I stood in silence as Mary navigated us a safe distance behind them. I didn’t know how far out the so-called “mother ship” would be, but for some reason, I had expected it to be closer than the moon. I also had no idea how fast we were going. The
re was nothing for me to gauge this against, and it wasn’t like I could read the speedometer.
I took the time to look around the ship a bit as we rode through space. Carey followed behind, nose sniffing rapidly at everything. They must have had something to create artificial gravity, because I stepped along the floor with my feet firmly planted on it. It felt a little lighter than Earth, and I tested it with a small hop. I was sure I had a little longer hang time than I would on the surface at home. The ship was plain, with metal walls and floors. Nothing decorated it; everything appeared to be about function, not fashion. To the left of the cockpit there was a small room with two bunks in it. They had shiny silver bedding. I felt it between my hands and the material was softer than anything I’d touched before. They were so similar to us, yet so different.
I pictured one of the pale humanoid aliens sleeping here only a day before, and it struck me that we were about to kill a lot of them. I knew we were just defending ourselves, but the idea of genocide of that level...of any level… was going to be tough to do lightly. They were Janine’s people. Well, partly her people. She was a hybrid, after all. It was hard to feel for them, since they’d taken our entire population and we still didn’t know where they were.
Next to that room was another identical one, then what must have been a washroom, though I hadn’t the vaguest idea how anything inside it would work. Maybe it was engineering, not a bathroom.
I made my way to the front of the ship as the moon sailed by us through the viewscreen.
“That was amazing,” Mary said quietly, hands still firmly on the controls.
“How much further do you think we have to go?” I asked, hoping she had an idea.
“Let me ask,” Magnus said. “Teelon, do you know what our estimated time of arrival is? Over.”
“We should be able to view the mother ship soon. Don’t be alarmed when you see it. We mustn’t seem out of place. When they try to communicate, signal me and I’ll reply through our connected systems. Over.”
It was only a few minutes before it came into our sight. It was tiny at first, but I had no idea how far away it was. The closer we got, the larger it started to get. Soon we spotted two ships coming toward us. My heart hammered as they approached. Mary said they couldn’t see through our viewscreen, and I hoped she was right. Wouldn’t that be a sight to see? Three humans coming at them, jaws hanging to the ground.
The communicator buzzed, and we heard a strange language come through the smooth speakers. Magnus buzzed Teelon, who proceeded to reply in their language. He must have been disguising his voice as one of the sick Kraskis, because it didn’t sound much like his usual monotone self. They spun around us and flanked us on either side.
“I guess we get an escort in,” Mary said.
“Teelon was hoping most of the fleet was in the hangars on their main ship. Less to deal with afterwards,” I said, scanning the space for signs of more ships.
The massive Kraski ship grew immensely as we closed in, though I still had no idea how big it must have been. I tried to do the math, thinking about the thousands of ships that had hovered over Earth, then the huge black cubes that had lowered, taking all the humans with them. That was a lot of ships and a lot of space to hold all of those people. Where were the cubes now? A ship to house the Kraski along with their fleet would be astronomical in size. I figured we would be making it to a docking station in a few minutes, but it turned out to be closer to forty minutes. Forty minutes of us nervously talking as the unbelievably huge ship took over our viewscreen.
“We’ll be arriving shortly. I told them we came along as an escort for the Kraski on board your ship. The device’s potency almost killed you all. I think they bought it, but they’ll be arriving on Earth soon with their backup ships. It’s only a matter of minutes before they find out the truth. If the ships beside you do anything odd, you have to make for the blinking green lights at two o’clock from here. Mary, do you understand?”
She pressed the comm-button and said she did. I really hoped it didn’t come to that. The last couple minutes went by as we sat there sweating bullets.
“Are we sure we thought this through? I mean...what if it doesn’t work?” I asked.
Magnus looked back at me, his eyes hard as steel. “It has to, my friend. It’s the only shot we have.”
Word must not have gotten back to them from back on Earth, because everything was still smooth sailing. The Kraski home ship was smooth on the outside and shaped much like a rounded rectangle. A panel slid open into a hangar; it wouldn’t even have been noticeable from a few miles away, the ship was so large compared to us. As we neared the slit to enter, the ships beside us turned and tried to get in between Teelon’s ship and the hangar. Before we knew what was going on, Teelon veered left and up, red beams firing from his ship at the guides. The first shot glanced off some sort of force field on the ship, and so did the second, but the third in quick succession made it through and the enemy exploded into a million pieces in front of us. The second ship chased after Teelon, its own red beams firing quickly.
Magnus tensed, but spoke calmly to Mary. “Honey, get inside this ship and beam me down. As fast as you can!”
The ship jerked around as she tried to slow it down and avoid any debris still floating nearby from the explosion. Red lights flashed all around us now, and a blaring alarm rang as we came up to the hangar. The door that had opened to let us in as friends only a few minutes before was now trying to close on us, to keep us out. Mary clipped the bottom of the ship on it, but we made it through, crashing into at least five of the hovering ships inside.
“Teelon said we need to get this thing out of the ship! Something about the ships having a little immunity to pulse or some crap. Inside here there’s no protection from it. These purebred will wither away! Mary, stay here and wait for us. I have a feeling we’re going to need a quick exit!” Magnus was yelling as he ran down the hall to the transport room.
I followed him, and when we had the device in our arms, we hit the buttons on our collars. The green light surrounded us and we lowered through the ship and down toward the smooth floor of the hangar. The Shield we held hummed as we neared the ground, and we set it down, standing behind it. A door hissed open across the room from us and someone tumbled down the stairs. It was a Kraski; green vomit came from its mouth and it stopped moving. More poured into the room, all reacting the same way.
“Do we just stay here? This ship is huge. Didn’t Teelon say something about a hall?” I asked, knowing Magnus wouldn’t have the answer.
“Let’s stay put for now,” he said, pulling his gun out. We moved behind some crates, and found a wall lined with armor and weapons. “Can’t hurt,” he said, and threw a vest over his chest. He also grabbed one of the guns he’d tested on Earth, slung it over his shoulder, and passed me one.
Another door opened and more Kraski came in. They all died in seconds. Word would get out what was here, and they’d retaliate. We had to think of something.
“We need to get out of here before they open that door, and remove the barrier field to space. For all we know, we go flying along with that shield into oblivion.” His logic was sound. I threw one of the vests on, and a helmet for good measure. It almost fit. It was creepy how similar our two races were.
It was hard to see in the room, with the red lights flashing and the alarms blaring in our ears. I let Magnus take the lead, and he crossed from storage unit to storage unit so smoothly that it would have been hard to spot him if you were watching from either of the entrances. I tried to do my best impression of him and almost tripped a couple times.
“We need to get to the center of this ship. Teelon said there would be levels within levels on here, like ventilation ducting, only larger. I guess every few floors has space for Teelon’s people to get around, out of sight of the Kraski,” Magnus said, back pressed against the far metal wall. I had to ram my ear right up to his mouth to even hear him over the noise.
“We just hav
e to find one of them!” I called back as a few more pale aliens entered the room and fell to their deaths, spewing the green mucus as their bodies gave out. I felt the urge to spew myself, but fought it and spotted something twenty feet across, on the opposite wall. We would have to pass by the doorway, but from the looks of things, the Kraski weren’t going to have much time to fire on us before they would expire in proximity to this thing. Even now, the furthest of them on the ship would be weakening. Janine had lasted years on Earth, but she was mostly human, and thousands of miles from the thing. Up here, they had no chance. But the longer we waited, the bigger the chance of something messing up.
“Over here! The rest of the wall is smooth, but that part isn’t. Looks like a vent...and large enough to get through,” I yelled to his ear. Magnus nodded, took a moment to think, and ran out, firing the gun he’d pilfered. The red beam blew a hole in the wall three feet across and we could see a dimly-lit passageway beyond.
“Let’s grab the Shield and head down the tube,” he said. “And hope it leads us near the center somewhere.”
We rushed back near the ship, grunted as we lifted the heavy device, and made for the hall as fast as we could. One of the Kraski fired at us from the entrance, creating a crater in the floor in front of us. He died right after, and we narrowly missed hitting the hole. Once back on balance, we entered the opening Magnus had blasted and kept moving.
“Maybe such an obvious escape wasn’t necessary,” he said.
“I think we’re committed now. They know we’re here. I just hope if this all goes well, that we can find our way back to Mary. You don’t have any bread crumbs, do you?” I asked.
Magnus slowed and shifted the Shield so he was only holding on with his right hand. With his left, he drew his knife. “No, I don’t have any bread, but I do have pants.” He lifted his leg and cut his right pant leg below the knee. I took the full weight of the device for a minute and was amazed that Magnus was able to walk with it alone. My knees almost buckled at the weight of the thing. He hurried, and soon he was dropping a small piece of cloth in the hall. “Just like Hansel and Gretel, hey, Dean? Let’s just hope there’s no witch at the end of this tunnel.” I almost laughed but couldn’t. Not yet.
The Survivors: Books 1-3 Page 16
