“It doesn’t matter. That was his papa bear mentality kicking in. He’s stuck on the other side, or in limbo in some unknown place, and doesn’t want us to join them,” I said.
“But we have to,” Slate said.
“We have to,” Rulo said too. It was her people’s ship, and there were far more Keppe on board than humans. She would have been told by Lord Crul to bring them back at any cost. Rulo wasn’t leaving until we did just that.
Karo broke his silence. He stood the farthest away, one foot on the bridge and one in the hall. “There are so many variables you haven’t contemplated, Dean. What if the Cloud destroys us? What if it sends us to a different place than it sent Fortune? What…”
“What if we play the what-if game all night and never end up anywhere? Karo, we owe him this. At least I do,” I said.
Slate’s chin lifted proudly. “So do I.”
“Me too. He’s our friend,” Suma said.
“Very well. I only want to be the voice of reason on an otherwise passion-fueled crew. I fully agree we should attempt this rescue.” Karo stepped onto the bridge and put his big arm around my shoulder.
“Someone should go power Dubs up, I guess,” Slate said with a laugh.
The entire mood had gone from devastation to hope, but Karo was right. Just because we got a communication from Magnus, it didn’t mean we were going to be able to pull this off. Still, we had to try.
I walked to the corner of the bridge and stared at the Cloud through the viewscreen. It appeared to be moving faster, almost as if it knew our plans. “Forgive me, Mary. You’d do the same thing, babe. I know you would. It’s Magnus and Nat. They need our help, like we needed theirs not so long ago. I guarantee they didn’t hesitate to rescue us off Sterona. Little Dean, who isn’t so little any longer. We need to see how he and Patty end up. We need to raise Jules beside our friends.” I was talking to my wife, who was so far away at that moment, but I was sure part of her was feeling my urgency.
Dubs walked onto the bridge and turned his head, looking around at all our faces. “What did I miss?”
Twenty
I woke up feeling well-rested for the first time in weeks. As much as I’d pushed for us to leave as soon as we were all assembled on the bridge, the crew wouldn’t let me make that decision. Instead, they forced me to take a sleeping pill and go to bed. It had been the right call, because I had more energy and a calmness over my mind that had been gone for some time.
“Today’s the day, buddy,” I told Magnus. “We’re coming to get you, Natalia.” I pictured the reunion and imagined the look of consternation on Magnus’ face when he found out I’d ignored his warnings.
I slipped into a clean jumpsuit, threw on my boots, and headed for the bridge, where everyone was already gathered.
“It’s time?” I asked.
“We were going to leave without you, but Suma thought you’d want to be here for this part.” Slate poked me in the arm with his finger, and I slapped it away.
“How long was I out?” I asked.
“Twelve hours,” Slate said.
“You could have woken me up!” Twelve hours. If I didn’t feel so well-rested, I would have complained more. “Any chance he used the communicator again?”
“Nothing. Squat. We’ve tried every ten minutes, but it hasn’t worked,” Slate answered.
The Cloud was massive in the viewscreen now. “We’re going to head along the same path that the tracking drone took. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to be in position.”
I was glad I’d slept until that moment. Otherwise, I’d have been a nervous wreck in anticipation of traversing into the Cloud. No one spoke as we watched the approach. Suma and W were in the front two seats, and the rest of us strapped ourselves tightly to the rear wall. The drone had spun into the Cloud, and if that happened to us, we’d be thrown around, even with the inertia dampeners.
Our ship coasted toward the target and soon, the Cloud took up the entire screen. I stood at the edge of the bridge with straps wrapped around my chest and stared into the maw of the beast. An electrical storm raged around us, a few energy beams striking the shields. We’d removed the cloaking device because we already knew the Cloud was aware of our position. It had been following us.
“Remember to cloak as soon as we’re through, unless we instantly see a need for our shields,” I shouted, my voice loud over the silent bridge.
W was quick to reply, “I am ready, Captain.”
As expected, the ship began to spin, caught in the power of the anomaly. It was like we were being flushed from one dimension to another. We spun slowly at first, then picked up speed. I had to close my eyes as the pressure built up, the straps digging into my body. Slate groaned beside me, and Rulo let out a war cry two spots over. Karo didn’t make a peep on my other side, and I wondered if he’d blacked out.
Then it was over, the spinning slowed as W controlled the thrusters again, and I opened my eyes to see white dots dancing around the edges of my vision.
“Did we make it?” Slate asked.
“We made it. No initial threats, Captain. Shields activated.” W’s voice was thin in my ringing ears.
I unstrapped myself and fell to the floor in a heap. Slate had the decency to laugh at me.
On uneasy legs, I got up and pulled his strap buckles free with a smile. He poured to the floor much like I had. “I deserved that, boss,” Slate said, taking my offered hand.
“What are we looking at?” I asked, walking in zigzags to the front of the bridge.
“It appears as though we are somewhere else, but at the same place. The location reads identically, but… as you can see.” W rotated the ship, revealing a planet. A star burned hotly in the distance.
“Amazing. Suma, is that star…” I started to ask.
“In the same position as the missing star in our dimension? Yes. Yes, it is.” Suma watched me with fear in her eyes.
I rested a hand on her shoulder. “We’re going to be okay, Suma. This world” – I pointed to the red-tinged planet – “is populated! I can see lights from here.”
“You are correct. This planet is occupied,” W said.
“Occupied.” Karo was beside me, watching with interest. “What’s that on the radar?”
“I apologize, Captain. The telemetry scans did not activate. They must have been fried in the transport. I do see vessels. At least three of them, congregating close by.” W was tapping on his console.
“Slate, where’s the communicator?” I asked, and he pulled it from his pocket, passing it to me.
“Here goes nothing.” I activated the line. “Magnus, come in. Dean here.”
“It’s a Keppe ship, Dean,” Suma said as the readouts arrived. “It’s them!”
“Dean Parker, I warned you not to come!” Magnus yelled through the communicator’s speaker.
“We had no choice,” I assured him.
“What the hell? How did you even find us? Never mind. We see you on the scanner. Come aboard. We have a lot to discuss,” Magnus said.
“We’re on our way.” My hand trembled slightly as I held the communicator. We’d done it, only now we were trapped on the other side, and Magnus had been here for over two months without finding a way to return.
“We’ll figure it out together,” Suma said, as if reading my mind.
“Dean?” Magnus started.
“Yes?”
“Thanks. Thanks for coming,” he said.
“That’s what we do for each other, brother,” I replied. “How long until we’re there?”
W answered. “Twelve minutes.”
“Good. Enough time to splash some cold water on my face and have something to eat.” My knees were weak, and I had to give my stomach something before we got to Magnus and Natalia. “W, find out what you can about the other ships near Fortune while we’re waiting.”
“I am on it, Captain.” W returned to work on his console, and I stared forward at the planet.
“
We did it.” Rulo clapped Slate on the back. “Somehow we found them! We should be celebrating!”
Slate hugged the big Keppe woman, and Suma was up now, joining in.
“You’re correct, Rulo. Right now, we rejoice at having found them, and we’ll deal with the consequences later. Great work, everyone. Magnus might be upset with us for his own reasons, but don’t take his rebuking to heart. He would have done the same thing to rescue us.” I beheld the crew, seeing the mix of characters at my side. This was how it was supposed to be done, not going rogue like I had when looking for Mary. Back then, I thought I needed to do it on my own, for selfish reasons.
But we were stronger as a group, and all of these people knew it. Rulo was crying, and I knew she had friends that she was going to reunite with aboard Fortune. It was odd to see tears streaming from her snake eyes, down the scar on her cheek.
We’d done it. But there was so much we didn’t know about what it entailed.
____________
We emerged off our ship and into the hangar on the Keppe vessel Fortune. It was a big ship, and our small Kraski vessel fit easily inside, nestled between two lifeboats. My boots met the grated metal floor of the hangar with a clank, and I was surprised to see Magnus and Natalia weren’t there.
A Keppe crew member was by the corridor entrance, and he lifted a hand in greeting. Seconds later, Magnus’ big frame pushed through the doorway, followed by Natalia. They ran to us, concern and relief radiating from their faces.
Slate and I met them in the middle of the hangar, and Magnus wrapped his thick arms around me, threatening to crush me in an embrace. Slate was spinning around with Natalia in his grasp, and everyone was laughing.
We switched, and Natalia pulled my face into her shoulder, and she finally spoke. “Dean Parker, I can’t believe you made it here. Thank you. Thank you for coming to find us.”
I held her at arm’s length and smiled at her. “No thank yous necessary.”
“Is Mary here?” she asked, and I shook my head.
“Mary’s on New Spero with Jules. We thought it was a better idea if we waited until Jules was at least five to bring her on rescue missions,” I joked.
“Where are we?” Suma was here, and the rest of the group greeted the married couple.
“We’ll get into all of that inside. Dean, didn’t you intercept my warning about not coming?” Magnus was frowning.
“Did you really think that would stop us from flying into the Cloud?” I asked.
“The Cloud?” Natalia asked.
“That’s what we called the dark green nebula,” Suma said.
“I guess I knew you were going to come anyways. I wasn’t actually sure you got my communication at all. How did it work through…” Magnus pointed toward the exterior wall. “All this?”
“Sometimes the universe gives us a win. Come on, Magnus, let’s find somewhere to talk. You can fill us in on what’s going on.” I was so glad to see them safe and healthy. Other than some sleep deprivation evident by the bags under his eyes, which I also had, Magnus appeared well.
The corridors of the Keppe ship were tall and wide, big enough to accommodate three of the large people consecutively, and I found the added space comforting. After being on the compact Kraski ship with so many crew members for the last few weeks, I could finally breathe.
Rulo stopped and chatted excitedly with a few Keppe along the way, and I knew she’d be getting the scoop from their point of view. I’d be sure to have her fill me in later.
We ended up in a room much like the one in which we’d first met Admiral Yope on Starbound, and I took a seat beside the head of the table, where Magnus plopped to a seat and swiveled from side to side in his chair while the rest of our crew got settled. Natalia was opposite me, and she kept staring at me like I was the last face she’d ever expected to see. The door opened again, and an old Keppe woman poked her head in. I heard the familiar jangle of dog collars, and I pushed off my chair, crouching low.
Carey ran at me, his ears flopping side to side, and he barreled into me, knocking me on my butt. “Carey!” The elderly cocker rubbed his head into my legs and climbed my lap to lick my face.
“We thought you might want to see your old friend,” Nat said.
Charlie, Maggie’s brother, bounced around, yipping and trying to make it past Carey to say hi to me. I stayed there petting the dogs for far too long, telling Carey how much I missed him, and how glad I was to see him so active and healthy-looking.
“He’s had a few Keppe Nanoshots. They use them for animals, keeping their pets healthy for longer than they’d otherwise have been. He was sick a year or so ago, and we had no choice. He’s like a puppy again,” Magnus said, and I could see it in the dog’s gait. He was in amazing shape for such an old canine.
“I can’t believe I’m here with you guys. Mary would love to see these pups.” Saying her name, and seeing Carey, was giving me all the more drive to find a way to go home.
Eventually, I had to pick myself up off the floor and settle into my chair. Carey found a spot to rest between Magnus and my feet. Charlie sat directly on Nat’s feet across from us.
“Did you bring the dogs to double-check if it was really me?” I laughed, and Natalia didn’t quite deny it with a smile.
“Da, I know, Dean. It’s… been a hard couple of months.”
“How are the kids?” I asked, anxious to hear about them.
“They’re fine. Everyone on board is fine, Dean. But we have no way of escape. We’re stuck. There’s no Cloud on this side to send us away,” Magnus answered.
“Who do the other ships belong to?” Slate asked.
“They’re explorers like us,” Magnus answered.
“How many?” I knew there were a few ships.
“Hundreds. Hundreds of vessels have arrived here over the centuries.” Magnus grabbed a device from the tabletop and brought up an image on a wall screen. Everyone turned to look at the feed of the nearby planet. “This is where they end up.”
“On the planet?” I clued in, finally. “Wait, are you saying that the Cloud sucked hundreds of ships through it, and now they’re populating the planet?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” Magnus tapped the controls, and the image slowly zoomed from a vantage well out of orbit, until it showed us a city from above. “The various races ended up accepting their fate and elected to populate the system. Recent records show over a billion various beings on the world today.”
Slate let out a low whistle. “And how many alien races?”
Natalia shrugged. “We don’t know. Over a hundred. There are Deltra, Padlog, Terellion, and even a race of telepathic bird-people, like Regnig. It’s quite amazing. Suma, there’s an entire Shimmali population down there.”
“There is? Wait until my father hears…” Suma stopped after realizing he might never find out. He might also never know what became of his daughter.
This was huge news, but I didn’t know what to do with it. My shoulders slumped as my thoughts drifted to the future. “All of these beings, all of these minds, and no one’s ever found a way to leave? How can that be?”
“There is no way to leave, Dean. That’s why I was warning you.” Magnus clicked the screen off and turned to me. “Our lifeboat, is that how you found us?”
“In a matter of speaking. Why did you send them off?” I asked before telling him their fate.
“We were on the other side, trying to understand where the damned star went, and the nebula, or the Cloud as you’re calling it, jumped right in front of us. It moved so quickly, we had no time to escape its clutches. We fired off a lifeboat, hoping it would be able to break free and search for help.”
Magnus’ explanation made sense. “That’s why it was damaged. We found it crash-landed. I’m sorry, they were dead.” I told him the news, and Magnus banged his hand against the table with a thud.
Suma spoke up, breaking the tension. “We used their trajectory to determine the starting point of thei
r trip, which brought us here.”
“Good work, but now I’m afraid you’re stuck on the other side with us.” Magnus rubbed his temples, and Natalia rubbed his forearm gently.
“This isn’t over. We’ll figure it out.” Everyone in the room wore somber faces, as if the idea of never going home had struck them at the same time. “What about flying away?”
“We haven’t tried, but that’s only because we’ve heard countless times that there’s nothing else out here. Only the darkness of space. It’s almost as if someone created this place: a star, a planet, and a ship-sucking nebula on the other side to send patrons their way,” Magnus said.
“Who is this someone?” Karo asked.
“No one has ever seen signs of one responsible for creating this dimensional shift. Maybe the Cloud is a naturally-occurring disturbance. Who knows? Or perhaps some being set it up a million years ago and died a long time ago,” Magnus said.
“We were considering heading planetside eventually. We’ve already been down there to one of the cities. It was… interesting but liveable,” Nat said. If she’d given up hope, then I could understand why the fire was blown out of Magnus.
“You said there are many races on the surface. Are there any… Theos?” Karo’s eyes were wide, and I could feel the hope emanating from his chest.
“I’m sorry. I actually checked. No one matched your description, and there’s nothing on record regarding your people,” Magnus told him.
“I understand. I was expecting that answer,” Karo said.
A light bulb went off in the dark corners of my mind. “Wait. Is it possible there’s a portal stone on the planet?”
Magnus straightened in his chair. “I knew you’d ask. It took me three weeks to think of that. I have some inquiries in with the locals, but nothing’s come up so far. If no one has ever seen it or used a portal stone, it’s not going to be on record. I was going to start searching, but where would we even begin?”
I couldn’t answer that. “We’d probably be grasping at straws anyway.”
“Well, we can’t do anything today. How about you all settle in crew quarters, and we’ll revaluate in a day or two?” Magnus asked, rising from his seat. He tapped a button on the table, and a small, robed Keppe walked in. “See they’re all assigned quarters, please,” Magnus said, his orders translating for the Keppe crew member.
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