“So it is. The readings from it are gone too. The others are still sending data back,” Clare said, perplexed.
“Mary, can you take us in? As close as you can get to where the probe disappeared.” I had a feeling we were right on it.
As we approached, the light changed, and a fold opened before us, just enough for us to see different stars beyond it. In my head, a wormhole was a dramatic swirling maw of light and energy, but what we saw before us was nothing but an illusion of space, a fold in the universe. It was amazing.
“I’ll be damned,” Mary said, and Clare literally walked toward the viewscreen, tears rolling down her face.
“It’s beautiful,” she said over and over.
“We have to make a choice. Do we go for it?” Mary asked.
“We know the other ship made it through, so by that, can we assume we will as well?” Mae asked.
“This is what we came for, and we have to stop them, so my vote is on entering the unknown,” I said.
“You’re in charge,” Mary said, and it struck a chord. Did anyone really think I was calling the shots? “Don’t panic, honey. I’m just kidding. Don’t worry, I won’t blame you if we disintegrate into a million pieces. Just give me a kiss before we do it.”
“I don’t remember Kirk ever kissing Sulu when they were going into a dangerous situation,” Slate said as I bent over, kissing my fiancée.
We would have all laughed if our lives weren’t at stake. Mary eased the ship forward, and we entered the almost invisible wormhole. I expected us to just appear on the other side, so when we started shaking, lightning flashing all around the viewscreen, it didn’t quite register. One minute I was standing watching the screen, the next it went blank and my head hit the ceiling.
_____________
My eyes opened slowly, the soft alarm klaxons ringing in my head. I looked around and saw everyone strewn about. The viewscreen was blank. Getting to my feet proved to be difficult, so I stayed down, half-dragging myself to Mary, who was just starting to come to as well.
“You okay?” I asked. She just nodded, a distant look in her eyes.
I checked on everyone, and when I got to Mae, I knew it wasn’t good news. She was already so banged up from the other day, and now her head was bleeding from a scalp wound on top of it. We’d been tossed about like rag dolls.
“I think we made it through,” Mary said. “But the link to the viewscreen is broken.”
“Mae,” I whispered. Her chest rose and fell lightly. She was alive. “Where the hell is the Doc?” I asked, remembering he wasn’t on the bridge at the time. He must have been in the bunks.
Footsteps clanged from the hall, and he emerged, holding his arm up in a makeshift sling.
“Everyone okay?” he asked. “Thanks for warning me we were about to be tossed around like a sack of potatoes at the harvest festival.”
“We didn’t know it would do that. How could we?” Clare asked. “Help Dean get Mae to the medical lab, and I’ll work on the inertial dampener. I’m hoping the connections just loosened and it didn’t fry.”
That explained the flying around the ship. I made sure Mary was really okay, and headed with Mae down the hall, propping her up between Nick and me.
“I take it we found the wormhole,” he said, voice thick with sarcasm.
“I’m sorry we didn’t wake you. It just happened so fast. One minute we didn’t think it was there, the next we found it.” I felt foolish even saying it like that. He was right. We should have woken him.
We laid Mae down on the bed, and Nick went about looking over her. When he lifted her eyelids and shone a light in them, they darted around, and her leg kicked out at him.
“Mae! You’re fine! It’s just Doctor Nick,” I called in an effort to calm her. She stopped flailing, and I stood by her head, holding her hand.
“All the blood is from this small scalp wound. Their bark is far worse than their bite. I’ll have to stitch it up. You’ll be good as new, but with your other injuries, we’ll have to keep an eye on you for a concussion,” Doctor Nick said. I appreciated his bedside manner, especially after nearly being kicked by his patient.
“I’ll be at the bridge. Mae, let him do his job. We need you healthy,” I said. She nodded softly and squeezed my hand before letting it go.
I closed my eyes in the hall, trying to determine my own injuries. I could feel some pain in my knee, but I hoped it was just a bruise from landing on it. My left shoulder was a little tight, but again, that could be from falling on it. Nothing seemed too serious or broken.
A quick stop in the kitchen, and I was heading to the bridge with an armful of water bottles for everyone.
Slate stood, looking no worse for the wear, and Clare was absent, talking to Mary through her console speaker. “How about now?” her voice asked, and the viewscreen flickered, cut out, then stayed on, showing up the view before our ship.
Black sky, stars in the distance. Yep, pretty much what we had been looking at before, only I knew it was far different. No one from Earth had ever been this far out, and when we brought the map up, it zoomed in from tiny specks to large blinking icons. We were right on their tail.
The icon had moved trajectory since we’d last seen it, and to my non-spatial, linear mind, they were heading deep south in the 3D map. At their speed, it was evident the FTL drive was back up and running. As if she read my mind, Mary said, “Our drive will be good to go in twenty minutes. We were still holding a charge.”
I slumped down onto the console chair to the left of Mary, staring into the blank space outside, the blip of our target getting ever so farther away with each beat of my heart.
I wondered how long this journey was going to take.
_____________
Two weeks later, we were settling into a routine. I’d become more of a scheduler than anything, shifts on manning the bridge swapping between all six of us. We took turns making meals and sleeping.
Slate had a great idea for training sessions, which not only allowed us to get in shape, but let us learn the ins and outs of every weapon on board.
I headed into the storage area, which had become a makeshift gym, mats layering the floor in a square. Mary and Clare were inside, doing push-ups with Slate counting them off.
“Time for hand to hand,” he said, grinning at me. If there was one thing Slate loved, it was hand to hand combat. He lit up every time, and I was sure he wished there was some competition aboard for a man his size. There wasn’t anyone close. I’d been at the bruising end of his moves a few times, but he had taught me a lot, and for that I was thankful. Now the smaller Clare was up, getting ready for some basic combat techniques against the better-trained Mary.
Watching Mary sweating like that, getting ready to kick someone’s ass, was a turn-on. I wondered where that primal emotion came from.
Clare was thin, and her glasses were off to the side of the room. As an engineer, she said she hadn’t spent much time worrying about athletics, but Slate said she was a natural. Mary wasn’t the biggest fan of the upbeat nerd, as she called her, but was willing to admit she was a useful addition to the crew, especially since she’d helped convert some of the alien technology on board to better suit our human needs.
The two women strapped on gloves, and Slate made sure their headgear was on firmly. Mary tugged her ponytail and planted her feet. Clare moved hesitantly, a feint, before attacking from the left. Her kick hit Mary in the side, who grunted and jabbed with her right, catching Clare in the head.
The smaller woman went down, and Mary was on her, two quick shots, before Slate stepped in and pulled her off.
“She’s down,” he said angrily. Clare was down on the ground, turtling her head, and Mary moved back, hands in the air.
“I’m sorry, got a little too into it.” She reached her hand out, and a heavily-breathing Clare grabbed it, letting Mary help her to her feet.
“No sweat. I’ll get you next time,” Clare said before guzzling some water.
Slate loo
ked at me and raised an eyebrow, as if to say he was impressed with their cordial behavior. Frankly, I was too.
Mary grabbed a towel and started for the washroom, where I knew she’d take a quick shower. I still couldn’t believe we had a Kraski ship with a human shower and toilet on it.
“Everything okay?” I asked, when we were out of earshot of the others.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You just about took our engineer’s head off back there.”
“I just got a little too into it. And honestly, since you’re asking, I’m getting a little frustrated. I’m a pilot, but I usually get to leave my jet, not follow a bogey across an unknown universe. To top it off, I’m tired of Clare giggling at every little joke you say and batting her eyelashes under those Buddy Holly glasses she wears.”
The truth came out. “I get it about the ship. We’re all getting restless.”
She sighed, closing the door behind us, and started to take her workout clothes off. I didn’t want to be presumptuous, so I hung back, thinking I might be reading the room wrong.
She stepped into the now-steaming shower and stuck her arm out, wiggling her finger for me to join her.
“You don’t have to ask me twice,” I said, shucking my uniform in record time.
There were still some things we could do to ease the tension, and it wasn’t easy on a small ship with very little privacy. We chose our times carefully. This time, she just didn’t seem to care. She was taking what was hers.
Fifteen minutes later, we heard the speakers throughout the ship. It was Mae. “They’re out of the FTL drive. You guys are going to want to see this.”
SIXTEEN
Mary’s hair was dripping into a puddle on the bridge deck, and she was wearing a bathrobe, while I’d rushed and slipped my uniform back on. Doctor Nick winked at me as he entered the room, but I didn’t care about any of that. We were about to find out where Leslie and Terrance were headed. Were there Bhlat down there? Was this one of their conquered worlds?
“Our cloaking tech is working, right?” I asked, wishing I’d asked when we came out of the wormhole.
Clare was on her tablet but nodded. “One hundred percent active. They can’t pick up our signal, or see us, unless they fly into the side of the ship.”
We had slowed to our normal drive, getting closer to the world below. The hybrids ahead of us were nearing orbit, and they hung there for a time, allowing us to get caught up.
The planet looked amazing. It had been one thing to see your own planet from outer space, seeing familiar clumps of land look so alien from that height. Seeing this new planet was life-changing. My whole perspective on life somehow jarred at the sight. There were other planets out there with life. Scientists and theologians had debated the point for centuries, and we were seeing one firsthand.
I looked over, and everyone’s faces mirrored what mine must have looked like. Excitement for finding the hybrids but mixed with curiosity.
“Enough drooling, everyone,” Mae said. “This could be a Bhlat world. We have to be cautious.”
She was right. We waited, Mary having time to get dressed before taking over the helm from Mae.
“Can we send the probes down yet?” I asked.
Clare shook her head. “Great idea, but their signals aren’t hidden. They only make a small signal, but we should still wait.”
We didn’t say what we were waiting for, but I kept assuming they were going to lower planet-side. As if they read my mind, the ship started moving, descending through the planet’s atmosphere.
There were clouds on the large planet. It was hard to tell from our vantage point, but Clare said the world was a third larger than Earth. The system’s star was slightly closer, percentage-wise, to the world, which would make it warmer than we were used to.
We kept tracking the target ship as it crossed across the planet, and once they were far enough away, we flew in closer.
“Launching probe now,” Clare said. I stood beside her, watching the readout numbers scan across her screen. It only took a few minutes before we had the answers we needed. “Surface air temperature appears to be around 35 Celsius, and the air is within ninety-five percent of Earth’s, surprisingly. No toxins read that can be harmful, but we’ll get a better read when we land.”
“We’re going down there?” Nick asked, looking doubtful of the move.
“What choice do we have? Wait until they leave and blast them?” Slate asked, then answered his own question. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.”
Mae shook her head. “We need to see what brought them here. If there’s a base, or a danger to Earth, it’s up to us to bring the fight to them,” she said, standing straight in her Earth Defense uniform.
“How about life-forms?” I asked.
“We aren’t there yet. We don’t have those kind of readings, but we’re picking up some images.” Clare pushed the pictures from her tablet to the main viewscreen with the press of a button.
The shots weren’t high-definition from this distance, but we could make out some buildings, and what looked like crops near a river. The green lush landscape overtook almost everything, and I was reminded of the thick deadly landscape in South America.
Clare switched to the map, and we saw the hybrid ship’s icon land near the marker she’d placed on those structures.
“Bingo,” I said. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go in.”
Clare looked ready to say something, but Mary cut in first. “Let’s wait a few hours, until the sun is set on that part of the continent. The cloaking works much better in darkness, under the cover of the night sky. They’ll never see us coming.”
We spent the next couple hours planning our move, and when it was all settled, we lowered toward the planet, nervous energy palpable on the bridge of the ship. We couldn’t make out a lot in the night sky, but the world was beautiful, unspoiled by pollution, and most importantly, humans. It made we wonder for a moment what would happen to Earth if the people were all gone from it. Would it reclaim the cities like in those post-apocalyptic movies? Would New York be covered in trees, and would deer walk down Fifth Avenue, making a home in Central Park?
We decided to scout a spot close enough to get to the village by foot, but far enough not to be spotted. The landing area was an empty copse of trees, which each stood over a hundred feet tall, surrounding the location. The ground was soft, and Mary decided to hover there rather than keep the weight on the grass. It was similar to a rainforest, and the chances of sinking into the bog-like terrain were high.
“Clare, you’re sure you know how to fly this thing, right?” Mary asked for the fifth time.
“Yes. I did help create it, after all,” Clare answered, impatience thick in her voice.
Nick stayed back, looking relieved that we didn’t ask him on the away mission.
“We’ll keep in radio contact. Any sign they’re leaving in the Kraski ship, you tell us and come pick us up,” I said, slinging a pulse rifle over my shoulder. I was thankful for the time Slate had spent with me, familiarizing me and the others with the vast array of weapons we had. My confidence holding the gun was much higher than it had been a year ago, when it was new and alien to me.
Mae had her EVA suit on, the door closing between her and us as the ramp lowered. A hand-held tablet in her hand, she walked down the ramp.
“Readings shows the air is breathable,” Mae said, and I felt my shoulders loosen. Skulking around without the suit on was going to be much easier.
The door opened, and I felt warm air rushing up the ramp and into my face. A strange smell emanated from outside, a mixture of barn and swamp.
Stepping on the ground, I felt it give ever so slightly. The grass was more like moss, the water table evidently very high. The high humidity was almost a shock after spending a couple of weeks on a closed-system ship, where climate was controlled to a tenth of a degree. My uniform started to stick to my sweating body nearly instantly, and I looked at the othe
rs, seeing much of the same. Slate was the only one who kept stone-faced. He was a soldier on a mission, and his mind was extremely focused on the task at hand. Being on a strange planet with terrorist aliens on it, I was more than happy to have the gigantic soldier alongside us.
“Clare, come in,” I said, testing the comm-system.
“Go ahead,” the reply came.
“We’ll keep our trackers on. Just don’t leave us hanging if things get hairy,” I said.
Slate took the lead with ease, and we followed him. I finally got a look around, which was hard in the dark. We were hesitant to use flashlights in case we were spotted, but Slate had night-vision goggles on. I felt mine strapped to my thigh and considered wearing them. Instead I followed the others, trying to not be distracted by the brand-new surroundings.
We were on another world, walking on the mossy ground. It was an amazing feeling to see the strange massive trees looming around us, a moist musky smell lingering in the air. The river was close, but I suspected smaller ponds or swamps nearby, judging by the dampness.
As we got near the tree line, I stopped to touch one. The bark was smooth, slightly sticky. The branches were thin near the lower end of it, with slim leaves unlike any I’d ever seen.
“Dean, let’s go. We can look at the flora once we nab Terrance and Leslie,” Mae said.
I just shrugged and kept moving. The village was a couple of miles away; we’d expected to take fifteen minutes to get there at a good pace. Reality was different.
Three minutes in, the ground was too soft to walk on. Slate’s substantial bulk sank in as he stepped down, and we had to help him pull his right leg out of the mossy hole. A smelly mud stuck to his boot when he pulled free, and Mary wrinkled her nose at the stench.
“That’s not something you want to walk in. Let’s see if there’s a way across this way.” She pointed north, and we found much the same issue. Doubling back took valuable time, but the ground was eventually firmer, and soon we were making our way to the village in the right direction.
The Survivors: Books 1-3 Page 35
