Second Earth: The Complete First Novel (Second Earth Chronicles Book 1)

by L. D. P. Samways

  Hutchison’s heart sank in his chest. He couldn’t believe it. They had found out about his plan, how else would they know that he was flying to the gate? But the best thing that he thought he could do was act dumb.

  “What is the meaning of this? I am a member of the Earth Government. You cannot block me from travel!” Hutchison said.

  The lady on the screen wrinkled her face. He tried to perceive her emotions, but before he could, he heard the sound of his men standing up. He turned to see them pointing their weapons at him. Hutchison’s eyes bulged as one of the men slowly walked toward him, his boots clunking heavily on the ground, his weapon aimed straight at the Captain’s head, the barrel getting ominously close as Hutchison got lost in the spiral of black being pointed directly at him.

  “You thought you could get away with this? The Company has eyes in all places, low and high. So do as the nice lady says; or we’ll make you!” the man holding the gun said, reaching Hutchison and pressing the barrel into his chest.

  “How? How can you do this? You work for me, damn it!” he said.

  The man holding the gun smiled, and then laughed. His teeth were stained yellow, and one of the front ones had a chip in it. He leaned in closer to Hutchison, the barrel now pointing at the floor and whispered. “We don’t work for you; we work for Earth. And Earth has a bone to pick with you,” he said, before lowering the gun completely, swinging it back up and hitting Hutchison in the face with the butt, knocking him out cold.

  Chapter Three

  Randy and Timson ran down the crooked cave system as fast as their feet would carry them. Dust particles hung in the air as the dirt and muck being kicked up by their feet found its way into their lungs. Randy tried to stifle a cough as he smashed his feet into the ground, running as fast as he could. Timson was fairing a little better, and handling the muggy atmosphere with ease. It was obvious to Gustoff that Timson was quite fit and was used to over-exerting himself. But Randy’s lifetime of idleness had caught up to him, and his breathlessness was a direct result of such a lifestyle.

  “There they are!” Timson grunted as he spotted the colony members standing where the two of them had left them earlier. But something was amiss. They seemed to be a little light on personal. And Timson had a nagging feeling that he knew who was missing.

  “Where’s the elderman?” he said, reaching the others at the crossroads in the cave system. They looked a little suspicious themselves, two or three of the colony members giving Randy and Timson a look that could kill. Suddenly, the lady doctor stepped forward, a frown on her face.

  “We could ask you the same thing? Didn’t you come across the two that followed you down the path?” she asked. Randy nodded. “We did. They tried to attack us!” he said, alarming some of the members looking at him. Their faces were a picture, and the picture they painted was fear.

  “What do you mean they tried to attack you?” April asked, stepping toward Timson and Gustoff, standing next to the lady doctor from Earth.

  “We’ll explain when we get there,” Timson said.

  The lady doctor frowned.

  “Get where?” She said.

  “That’s not important right now, what is important though is that you tell us where those damn men in robes went!” Gustoff said, his patience wearing awfully thin. A quiet hush fell over the others as the lady doctor shrugged her shoulders.

  “They disappeared once you guys left. The two of them followed you, whilst the others vanished into thin air. One minute they’d been standing here, arguing amongst themselves, and then the next they’d vanished. I swear all I’d done was blink and then they were nowhere to be seen. I thought that maybe they had run down the path to try and catch up with the two of you,” the lady doctor said.

  Timson grimaced.

  “Well they didn’t. And to be quite frank, I couldn’t give a crap where they went. If they want to play games, I can play games,” he said.

  April looked a little worried as she got closer to Gustoff and grabbed his hand gently with her own.

  “What’s going on Randy, this is starting to frighten me,” she said, squeezing his hand.

  Randy looked at her, and then at Timson. He then turned around to glance in the direction that he and Timson had just come from.

  “Maybe it’s best we show you,” he said, squeezing her hand in return.

  Timson nodded.

  “Everyone follow us. There’s something that you all need to see,” he said, ushering everybody forward. He then broke out into a light jog, forcing the others to do the same. Before they knew it, they were all running toward the unknown.

  Only Gustoff and Timson knew what lay in wait for them, but even then, there was no guaranteeing that there wouldn’t be a surprise or two waiting for them once they reached the mysterious spaceship, hidden away in the crevice.

  ***

  Commander Williams watched over the Captain of the Orion Traveler as he lay on his back and tinkered with some wires that fed into the comms on Williams’ ship. By now, the two of them had been traveling for an hour or so. They’d already made good ground and were far away from the Orion Traveler and the blackness that had roamed its corridors. Williams was still trying to get over the complete and utter loss of his men onboard that ship, and wasn’t really paying much attention to the Captain as he slid out from under the comms unit and gave the Commander a thumbs up.

  “All fixed,” he said, a weird smile on his face. Williams snapped out of his daydream and stared at the Captain as he looked up at him and smiled.

  “That was quick. You’re pretty handy with a wrench,” Williams said.

  The Captain grinned, getting up to his feet and letting out a sigh, it was the sort of sigh a man with bad knees makes when getting out of bed in the morning.

  “You have to be handy with tools when you work on a rust bucket,” the Captain said, almost immediately realizing that the so-called rust bucket he’d worked on was no longer his.

  It now belonged to space and what she did with it was completely up to her. But he had a feeling that whatever the Orion Traveler’s fate would be, it had been wise of him to get off the ship. Nothing good could have come of that vessel anymore. It was destined for the depths of hell, a hell that he’d lived for more than enough time to know that once a man sets foot on the ashy coals of the Nether, his feet will be tarred black until he is no more.

  The sort of fear that he and his crew had lived with had changed them. It had molded them into shells of their former selves. He didn’t know how to proceed now that he was off the hellish ship and on his way back to Earth. How does a man get over the memory of losing all his crew? How does he go on with his life? Is there life after such travesty? Or is he going to wind up reliving the hell that he’d endured until it takes both his mind and his body?

  “It wasn’t your fault; you know that right?” Williams said, noticing the sorrow in his new companion’s eyes. He felt that same sorrow, but he wasn’t naive enough to think that he could have prevented what had happened to him and his men.

  Some people think that they can fix the world, while others know there isn’t any amount of fixing that can reconstruct the shattered remnants of humanity. Some things are far too cracked to glue back together again.

  “It was my fault. I lied to you,” the Captain said, his eyes filling up with moisture, but he refrained himself from breaking down into floods of tears. He’d already lost so much and wasn’t about to lose his dignity as well.

  “What do you mean?” Williams said.

  “I mean that I lied! That’s what I mean! And I’m not proud of it, in fact, I’m mortified that I’d do such a thing. I’m a Navy Salvage Captain for Pete’s sake! I have six Golden Wings on my patch, not to mention eighteen commendations. I’ve been fortunate enough to become a decorated service pilot. A well paid one at that. Men like me, pilots with Golden Wings, do not lie. They are not afraid of the truth. They seek it. They don’t bury it. Just goes to show what can become of most people
. And I’m not different. I’m a liar, just like the rest of them,” the Captain said, wiping a streak of sweat off his brow.

  Williams stared at him, a perplexed look on his face. He didn’t understand what the Captain was trying to say, and the man could tell that Williams wanted him to go ahead and just spill the beans already.

  “You asked me if I’d sent the pod ship onto the planet below the Orion Traveler, the one you refer to as Second Earth…”

  Williams nodded.

  “Yeah, I remember,” he said, his heart quickening a little.

  The pod ship and Second Earth were the only reason he and his men had been sent to the Andromeda Galaxy in the first place. If it wasn’t for that planet, he’d be at home now, kissing his wife on the cheek and embracing his kids as they played down the local park. But he wasn’t at home. He was stuck in this tin can in space, listening to the incoherent jabbering of an overly emotional lying sack of shit. So, his heart had plenty of reason to quicken in his chest.

  “Well, I lied. I sent them out there to do bio scans of the planet. I’d received a transmission from Earth telling me that the planet we were crossing over had some sort of significance to them and that they needed to get an atmospheric scan of the planet. It was imperative that I kept it quiet and didn’t make a big deal about the side mission. I was told that the other crew were to be none the wiser, and even the crewman I sent on the extracurricular mission need not know the full extent of the orders,” the Captain said.

  Williams frowned.

  “But what was so damn important about the planet? Why would they send a ship out to the surface of the atmosphere just to snap some shots? Didn’t the Orion Traveler have satellite technology? Couldn’t you just use the lenses onboard to get what they needed?” he asked.

  The Captain seemed to agree with his statement. His head nodded as Williams spoke, and then he gestured at him with his hands up in the air, as if to dismiss his supposed guilt.

  “That’s what I asked them, but they insisted that it was none of my business. And that if I didn’t do as I was told, I’d be stripped of my rank and put in the brig.”

  Williams raised an eyebrow.

  “Bit of an overreaction,” he said.

  “Yeah, you’re telling me. I’ve worked for the Navy for many years. Far too many to count in fact. But I’ve never had to deal with such pressure from them before. Ever since I took this assignment on the Orion Traveler, everything changed. The friendly calls from Command asking how we were doing soon turned into mandatory status reports. New rules were enforced on us and the ship. We were no longer allowed to use the social networks to communicate with loved ones onboard. We were cut off from the Universe and effectively were running black ops missions. We were never allowed to know what we were carrying either. The only reason that we found out about the blackness was because it started to infest the ship. It broke out of the cargo hold and basically introduced itself to us. That’s why we know what we know now,” he said, looking down at the floor, as if he was embarrassed about his actions.

  But Williams knew exactly how he felt. Command back on Earth had kept his mission directive quiet as well, and were not forthcoming about the planet or the ship hovering above it, so he knew what it was like to be invested in the lies, even if he wasn’t fully aware of what the lie was in the first place.

  “Don’t worry about it. You did as you were told. You followed orders. I did the same thing. I went on this mission thinking that we were rescuing some ship that crash-landed on an alien planet. I didn’t know that we were basically sent off to die, because that’s what I think is happening here. Whatever is going on, Command back home are panicking, and whoever comes to know of their secret, ends up taking a trip to the Andromeda Galaxy,” Williams said.

  The Captain’s eyes were wide with fear. He knew that when they got back home, they’d probably disappear, be taken away to a secluded place and executed. Something bad was happening, and now they knew about the blackness and the mysterious planet called Second Earth. The thing is, they didn’t know much else.

  “You told me that this blackness shit was being used as a resource. How did you come to know about that?” Williams asked.

  The Captain smiled.

  “You won’t believe it, but basically, once we took shipment of the crates that this thing was packed in, on the itinerary sheet given to us, they’d listed the contents as both TOP SECRET and resource. So their secret basically became known to me once I read the official document, which isn’t too smart if you think about it,” the Captain said.

  Williams nodded.

  “I guess everybody screws up eventually,” Williams replied.

  Suddenly, an onboard alarm went off and the lights in the ship went dark, then turned to red. Both Williams and the Captain turned toward the big screen and saw that they were approaching the Jump Gate.

  “Holy cow, we’re here already,” the Captain said.

  Williams walked toward the controls and saw that the hail button was flashing. The Jump Gate was trying to communicate with them. Williams turned to the Captain and grimaced.

  “Looks like they’ve been expecting us,” he said, pressing the button and waiting for the screen to flash on.

  “Commander, please turn your ship’s engines off. Unfortunately, there’s been an incident on the other side of the Jump Gate. We’re working on trying to contain it. Once we get the green light from Command, we’ll let you pass,” A woman said, her live picture coming through the screen. All Williams did was nod and then do as she said, turning the engines off. As soon as he did so, the screen went blank and the ship moaned as the engines cooled down.

  “What do you think is going on? You reckon Earth have a no-fly warrant on your ship?” the Captain asked.

  Williams stood there, staring at the screen. There wasn’t much else he could do other than comply. But he was with the Captain on this. Something was not right and he had a really bad feeling brewing in the pit of his stomach.

  “We could end up dying,” Williams said, turning from the screen and facing the Captain. “But if we do die, just know that I won’t go out without a fight,” he said, walking toward his chair, reaching underneath it and pulling out a gun.

  “How did you get one of those on here? Don’t you know they’re illegal?” the Captain asked.

  “There’s a reason they’re illegal,” Williams said.

  “And why’s that then?” The Captain said, playing along.

  “They protect a victim. They give a person the chance to repel oppression. They fight fire with fire. And I’m afraid things are about to get very hot.”

  ***

  Hutchison’s eyes opened wide as something constricted itself around his neck. At first, he couldn’t breathe all that well, but then the constricting vice loosened a little and his eyes refocused, revealing a muscular arm extended out toward him, along with a large hand wrapped around his neck. Hutchison jolted in sheer panic, realizing that somebody was attempting to choke him, but he couldn’t move much. He then noticed that his arms were strapped down with tape and he was sitting in a chair, rope and other binding material wrapped around his torso.

  “Please, don’t kill me!” he said, pleading with the man that had a stranglehold on him.

  He had yet to catch a glimpse of the perpetrators face, the only thing visible to him was his large bulky arm, covered in tattoos and veins. Everything around Hutchison and the man was dark, like they were in some sort of torture room. Hutchison had no idea where he was, but he did know that he was in deep trouble, the deepest kind possible.

  “I’m not going to kill you… yet,” the man said, taking his hand off Hutchison’s neck and stepping back into the shadows.

  As he did so, Hutchison caught a brief glimpse of the man’s torso. It was covered in scars and welts, plus many strange tattoos. He was heavily ripped, dents and contours present on every inch of his chiseled physique. Hutchison was panicking. This man could most likely rip him into two wi
thout much effort, so he knew that he’d have to watch what he said to him. He didn’t want to end up dead, and he had a nagging feeling that death was going to be the outcome of this. Why else would he be here, in a darkened room, being strangled by a shirtless psychopath?

  “Why am I here? I don’t understand! Do you not know who I am?” Hutchison said, trying to lean forward to stop the throbbing in his head from making his eyes bulge out of his skull.

  There was a tremendous cackle from within the shadows as Hutchison squirmed in his chair. The cackle emanated from his new shirtless friend, and right away he knew what this was about. The Company had caught on to his plan and now he was going to die. His mind flashed back to the last memory he had onboard his ship, the Phantom, being stopped at the Jump Gate. His men turning their weapons on him, and then one of them striking him. But everything had happened so fast that he’d held a sliver of hope that maybe he’d be able to worm his way out of whatever trouble he was in. But now that seemed unlikely. Once the Company gets ahold of you, there ain’t much you can do but resist, and even then, it will only prolong the inevitable… your death.

  “I do know who you are,” the man in the shadows said, still shielded by the darkness, his voice loud as it bounced off Hutchison’s eardrums. “But the question is; do you know who I am?” he said, the sound of something clanging could be heard. Hutchison didn’t know what it was, but his mind flashed various scenarios at him, none of them good.

  “Forgive my ignorance, but I am not aware of you who you are,” Hutchison said, stringing out the sentence as if it would result in more time for him, but he knew that any sort of time he had was firmly dependent on the man in the shadows, not Hutchison himself. He wasn’t in control. His captor was. In fact, the man in the shadows was Hutchison’s timekeeper, and as far as he knew, his time was most likely coming to an abrupt end at some point soon.

  “Well, Captain Hutchison, you will know who I am by the time I’m finished with you. You’ll know a lot about me. Like how I love to inflict as much pain as possible. And how the fact that everyone I know or have ever spoke to, is no longer with us. Do you know why they aren’t with us anymore?”