A Warrior's Journey

by Guy Stanton III

  The cool voice intoned once more, “Transferral successfully initialized. Expected arrival at destination, Earth in three days, four hours, fifty seven minutes, and sixteen seconds. It is now safe to remove safety harnesses.”

  The lights came back on as she finished talking. Everything was on automatic control now in terms of the vessel’s operation. I could relax now or at least try to.

  Something was being handed to me; it was Torren holding the same cloth I had used on him.

  “Thanks!” I said mopping away at my face.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  We both sat back in our seats entirely exhausted from the experience we had just gone through.

  Roric unknown to the men on the vessel had watched the entire training process take place with Krista by his side on a special display that Abby had set up for them.

  When the vessel had left the underground chamber he and Krista had come back up to their room on the cliff top and watched from their balcony out toward the distant ocean and waited.

  The transferral beam was clearly visible even at such a distance with several low mountains in their way of viewing the ocean. The beam of golden green light had seemed to reach forever up into the sky. When it began disappearing from the ground up they both knew that the ship was on its way into space and God willing, Earth.

  Krista watched as she stood within the shelter of her husband’s arms. Big tears fell down her cheeks; as she witnessed the column of light disappear from view upwards into the heavens. She’d just perhaps seen her two sons for the last time. When the light was gone she turned and sobbed against Roric’s chest, as his tears wetted her hair.

  Roric continued staring up into the sky hoping against hope for the safe return of his sons and the mission to be a success, but he couldn’t shake the despair he felt of that never happening.

  I came to the conclusion by about the second day of our voyage that life on a vessel traveling through space could be unbelievably boring. I was even starting to look forward to landing, because it meant that we would get off this miserable ship, with all its brightly lit technology that I had come to loath.

  I was walking back towards the main control room in search of somebody to talk to about something, anything in order to kill the time, when alarm bells went off all over the place, as the hallway filled with red flashing lights.

  I ran the rest of the way to the control room. What was going on? Several of the others were already there.

  Ileyano turned away from a screen to yell to the rest of us, “It says we have a coolant leak and that we need to redirect down another pathway! The redirect valves are under the floor over there!” He said pointing, as he began to run towards the spot.

  There was a sound of an explosion followed by the hissing of steam, as a pipe running over head burst and fell crashing down onto Ileyano’s head. He crumbled to the floor as steam vented into the room.

  Talaric and Larc pulled the unconscious Ileyano out of the worst of the steam pouring into the room, even as I ran for the floor panel that Ileyano had indicated. Thanic who was Ileyanos understudy beat me to it. Throwing the cover back we starred blank faced into the space that was revealed.

  There were four pipes with four differently colored shut off valve handles. Blue, green, yellow, and red.

  “Which one is it Thanic?”

  “I don’t know! Abby never showed me!”

  I grabbed the green handle and started to pull it, but Thanic stopped me.

  “I think its two levers at once! Turn the red one as I turn the blue one!”

  I released the green handle and did as Thanic said. We turned the valves in unison and the steam stopped pouring into the room. Moments later the sirens went off followed by the warning lights. Then the annoying monotone voice of the vessel broke into the stillness of the room that was punctuated by our heavy breathing.

  “Coolant successfully rerouted. Coolant levels back to normal.”

  I looked across at Thanic and he back at me.

  “How did you know it was two valves?” I asked.

  A slight grin popped out on his face, “Steams gotta go somewhere and if reds usually hot then blue is usually cold. A fair exchange right?”

  I dropped my head down laughing hysterically. I hoped space travel never got this exiting again! I would take the boringness of space travel over this kind of experience any day.

  The rest of the journey went by without any further incident. Ileyano had not woken up yet and we were monitoring him closely, but there was little we could do for him. He was already secured to the bed in his quarters, as we began preparation for landing.

  What awaited us no one knew, but it probably wasn’t going to be good. My thoughts were interrupted by the ship’s voice letting us know that arrival was imminent and that we should fasten our safety harnesses.

  Already ahead of you lady. The only part of landing I was responsible for was to deactivate the charged energy beam moments before we entered the water. If I waited too long the ship would crash into the ocean floor and the beacon array.

  The vessel had been slowing down in speed for the last several hours so it shouldn’t be too difficult should it?

  I was quaking inside at the prospect, as my hand hovered near the button that would shut the beam off. I glanced over at Torren and it made me feel better. He looked as uptight as I felt as he sat there gripping the wheel. And then things got worse.

  We had taken off vertically and apparently that was how we landed too, only now we faced down and hung against our safety harnesses. With the nose of the vessel straight down and the conscious speed of the vessel increasing I glanced over again at Torren and he at me, as we gave each other a look of shared misery.

  I looked back at my screen and the rapidly decreasing increments of time and got ready to hit the button. I couldn’t do it too soon or the vessel would smack into the hard surface of the water and shatter. I had no way of knowing when we were in the water other than relying on the instruments in front of me. The clock struck zero and I hit the button.

  I had probably broken it, because I had hit it so hard. The charged beam ahead of us started to break up and I could tell that we were in the water, as it started to pour in and around us shaking the vessel. The beam generators that had encircled the ship folded back inside the vessel, as the water became rough.

  Torren engaged the biplanes. As the two side fins pulled out from the sides of the vessel they gave more resistance to the downward momentum of the vessel headed for the seafloor. Our speed decreased rapidly, but it was a rough time, as the vessel shook violently. Torren was able to pull us up out of our decline onto an even plain.

  We had landed and looking around the control room I saw no water venting into the vessel so we were good.

  Larc got out of his restraints and came up behind Torren and I, “Great job you two! Alright Corrigan what do you have for me?”

  Corrigan turned from the display in front of him, “The scans are complete Sir. The ship’s analysis shows only minor changes from the last file reading of the ancestor’s departure from Earth. The condition of the landmasses appear to be remarkably similar with the earlier record. We are roughly two hundred miles offshore of the continent near the beacon array location.”

  “Okay then, Torren put us on a course for that land mass. We’ll get in and then get out fast and be home before any of us know it.” Larc said confidently.

  Chapter Nine

  We’re Not Alone

  Deep in an underground bunker situated in a Nevada desert the activity reminded one of an ant hill, after a malicious kid had finished kicking at it. Into the scene of organized mayhem, with hastily thrown on clothes, not diminishing his sense of command, General Tommy Vern Sunderson surveyed the scene.

  “Talk to me people, what do you have? It had better be good to pull me out of my bed at this hour of the morning!”

  A semblance of order was attained at the presence of the General in the room. An aid ste
pped forward and gestured towards a large screen that began displaying space imagery.

  “At 1:00 AM this morning our deep space probes picked up an anomaly on their scans. At first we thought it was a low orbiting asteroid, but it moved without any sign of orbital pull. By 2:00 AM what we thought at first was an asteroid was completely across the system and was starting to enter the atmosphere. We only picked it back up then because it had slowed down considerably and had the same signature as we had seen from earlier. It came down through our atmosphere on a straight down trajectory and landed approx. two hundred miles off the California coastline. One of our satellites got this footage.”

  The General looked back up at the screen and swore starring in disbelief at what was on the screen. As far up as one could see in the real time footage was a column of what appeared to be pure energy. As he looked at the imagery almost before one could blink a dark object came hurtling down it and the energy beam disappeared as it passed by.

  The General swore again, “Notify the navy! I want our people there an hour ago!”

  “Already working on it Sir! We have subs in the area and we dispatched a salvage ship and three destroyers to the area. Sir it also appears that the Asian Alliance witnessed the incident and has upped their military threat level. One intercept of their communication lines suggests that they are redirecting their own subs to the area as well.”

  ‘Just great!’ the General thought to himself. The situation was unsteady enough with the newly formed Asian Alliance before this had happened.

  “Notify the committee of this. They will want to know.” ‘And get in the way of progress,’ thought the General to himself.

  Within hours the entire coastline of the Western Confederation, formerly the west coast of the United States of America was on high alert.

  The morning of the fourth day on the planet our scans picked up the outline of the coastline and we began looking for a place to make our way ashore. We could see where the populations of people were most concentrated from our thermal scans and we avoided those sections of the coast.

  We found a secluded looking stretch of beach and that evening Torren raised the ship up to the surface. Larc and Talaric went up top to have a look. Orhanin had figured out how to turn the lights off that ran along the vessels exterior so at least we weren’t announcing our presence overtly to anyone who may be ashore. Larc and Talaric came back down into the control room.

  “It looks clear. Torren, you Corrigan and Sassten will stay aboard and man the vessel and take care of Ileyano. The rest of us are going ashore. Torren submerge the ship and go back out to deep water and keep a low profile. Come back here in four days to pick us up. If we aren’t here leave and come back in another four days and so on till we make it back. If we aren’t back in a month’s time head back to our world, if you can’t make it back destroy the ship. Understand?”

  All three of them nodded solemnly in acceptance of their orders.

  “The rest of us need to put on the clothes that Abby had made for us and get to shore and away from the beach, while we still have the cover of darkness on our side.”

  We all moved to our assigned tasks then. Later after we were in the strange air boats and headed for the shore I looked back at the shape of our ship that was already submerging and for a moment I wished to be back on it. I brushed that thought away. Our people were counting on us to make this a successful mission; their fate could depend on it.

  I’d see the vessel again, when I had a book of the words of the Creator in my hand and not before. As we reached the shallow surf of the beach we jumped out of the air boats and drug them up onto the shore and into the cover of some sand dunes. We wasted no time in burying them under whatever debris and vegetation that we could find. Straightening up I looked around. We were past the beach and in the cover of some low vegetated sand mounds. Lights could be seen sporadically here and there in the dark.

  Lights like the ones on the ship! The people of Earth must still be advanced then. We would have to be extra careful then. I paused before following the rest of the men through the dunes.

  We were the first men of our kindred to step onto the first world in over seven hundred years. It was a heady thought.

  We traveled on through the night. Daylight found us on the edge of a small sprawled out town. We studied it carefully and its occupants. Everything was once again foreign to us, as it had been on the ship.

  Larc whispered, “We’re going to have to cut our hair. I don’t see any of the men with long hair, only some of the women seem to have long hair.”

  “Look!” Talaric exclaimed pointing at a tall man who had just left a building surrounded by black hard looking road.

  The building had red and orange lights glowing in its windows. It was not a good look. Perhaps it was some kind of temple. The man had long flowing hair and wore black leather clothing. He seemed to be imposing to the other people on the street because they stepped out of his way, as he arrogantly swaggered his way through them. It wouldn’t take too much work to copy him down.

  We should have kept our old clothes on in place of the ones that Abby had made for us. While nice they didn’t compare favorably with the mood of what we saw on the street. We would stand out in them. We would stand out dressed like the man we had observed too, but in an intimidating kind of way that perhaps no one would think twice about questioning.

  Larc must have thought the same thing, “We’re going down there and getting some clothes like he had. The stuff we have on just won’t do.”

  We made our way, as best as we could, to the building without looking overly suspicious. Larc opened the door of the building and we stepped in. We were the only people in the strange place, which must be some form of a store.

  A little man I took to be the shop owner looked up at our entrance and did a double take. I wondered if we would need to kill him.

  “Can I help you gentlemen?” He asked somewhat uncertainly.

  Larc, ever the glib one, strolled over to the counter and smiled charmingly, “We’ve been traveling for quite a while and we find ourselves in this sunny country of yours completely out of attire for such a climate. Do you have any clothes that we might purchase?”

  The man blinked a couple of times, “Where did you say you’re from?” Asked the openly suspicious man.

  Yeah we’d have to kill him.

  Larc met his eyes and said pointedly, “I didn’t say!”

  The shop owner swallowed fearfully, “Can you pay?”

  Larc reached down to his belt and pulled out a small sack, which he dumped out in front of the shop owner on the counter. The beady eyes of the shop owner almost popped out of his head at the sight of the gold.

  “Take anything you want!” He said in a daze.

  He started to reach for a chunk of gold, but Larc caught his hand in a firm grasp, “We’ll do that, but in addition to that I want all the currency of this land that you possess.”

  The little man nodded vigorously, “Sure! Sure! Here take it all!”

  The man opened the box beside him and pulled out what looked like oblong pieces of greenish paper. The people of earth used paper for currency?

  What could be of worth about fancy looking paper?

  Larc gathered the money up and smiled at the shop owner again, “I wouldn’t tell anybody about us if you know what I mean. I’d hate to have to come back here and make you eat this gold, before I cut it back out of you with this.” Larc said testing the edge of a long knife that had materialized out of nowhere in his hands.

  The man was shaking like a bunny in fright at the prospect of being a wolf’s mid day snack. “I won’t tell anyone! Take what you need!”

  “Thank you for your generosity, but remember I don’t make idle threats.” Larc said, as he tapped the pile of gold with the tip of the knife.

  Larc turned away from the man, but then swung back around abruptly and the man stepped back slightly in fright.

  “Is that vessel outside you
rs?”

  The shop owner looked out the window puzzled at where Larc pointed at a funny looking box that sat on four wheels.

  The man hastily dug into his pocket and pulled out a little piece of shiny cut metal, “Here take it too! It’s got a full tank of gas!”

  Larc took the little piece of metal from the man and lifted it up in a slight salute, “You know you’re making me glad that I didn’t just outright kill you.”

  The man was literally quaking, as Lark turned away from him and came over to where we were changing into new wardrobes. The man stared at us as if we were nuts as we changed into the garb that the man, who had left the store earlier had been wearing.

  It must not be a custom to change clothes in a store upon purchasing them. Wasn’t really a custom at home either, but these were special circumstances.

  We were all ready to go when Larc went back over toward the shop owner, who seemed to shrink away from him, “One more thing I ask of you. Do you know where we might find the Holy Scriptures?”

  “Holy Scriptures?” Squealed the little man on a panicked high note.

  “Yes the words of the Creator written down on paper.” Larc restated patiently.

  “Oh you must mean the Bible. I haven’t seen one of those in a long time, especially since the edict of San Diego. It’s frowned on heavily by the government to have one of those books, actually it’s illegal.”

  Larc asked softly, “And why is that?”

  “They say it’s full of hate speech and that it’s judgmental. I wouldn’t know I’ve never read it.”

  Things were worse here than I had imagined they would be I thought to myself. The people had turned from the very words spoken by their Creator. It was an unthinkable action to do, but yet it had happened. Would my world become like this? The people not even wanting to read the words of the Creator and then darkly I had to admit to myself that many of the people of my world had already done just that.