by J. N. Chaney
“We can help,” Stacy said, breaking us all away from our thoughts. “We’ll divide into search parties.”
Stacy turned to all those gathered, using her hands to amplify her voice. She placed her palms in a circular shape around her lips. She began to shout. “Everyone, if I could have…”
It was obvious as she began that her voice would not carry to all the survivors gathered.
I put my right thumb and pointer finger into my mouth and released a shrill whistle.
“Hey, everyone listen up if you want to live!” I shouted.
That did it. Everyone turned and gave us their full attention.
My words might have been a bit dramatic, but it sure had done the job.
“Thanks,” Stacy said with a grin. She turned back to addressing everyone in front of us. “We need to search The Orion for survivors and any supplies. We’ll take the ship level by level.”
Stacy went on with directions and things to be careful of, as they made their way around metal corners and exposed wires. While she doled out instructions, I took the time to study what had been the greatest achievement of mankind to date.
It had taken thousands of workers years to build the craft. In minutes, it had been reduced to a pile of scrap steel.
“Ira and Mr. Creed will let you know what portions of the ship to search,” Stacy finished her instructions. “Be careful while you’re in there, we don’t know how stable or unstable The Orion is. Each team should carry a holo pad. The communication distance on each pad isn’t far, but we should be able to hear one another now since we’re so close.”
Murmurs of agreement followed her warning as Boss Creed and Ira divided up search parties.
“We’re going to start at the bridge,” Stacy said as she joined me, looking up at the titanic structure. “Elon was piloting the ship when it went down. Arun would have gone to him. We need to make sure they’re still alive and get Iris up and running while we’re at it.”
“Agreed,” I said as Ricky joined us.
“Let’s get going,” Ricky said, stretching his arms and legs. “I don’t want to spend another night out in the open. It gives me weird dreams.”
“Yeah, I bet,” I said as we made our way toward the ship.
Mutt whined next to me as we walked forward.
“You got to stay here, buddy,” I told him letting my fingers play along his ears. “It’s dangerous and unstable in there. Stay, do you understand, stay?”
Mutt gave me a look like I was kidding. He rolled his eyes at me, sat down and whined.
“Okay, stay there. I’ll be back,” I said. “I can’t believe this. I’m reassuring a dog.”
“You’ve changed for the better since I’ve known you,” Stacy said with raised eyebrows. “I mean that.”
“Just don’t let the word get around,” I grinned back.
Ricky was ahead of us, already examining the best way to enter the craft and how to get to the bridge.
“The stairwell will be the easiest way to the top, or maybe the elevator depending on how damaged it is,” Ricky said, coming up to the smoking ruin that had once been our home. “Either way, we’ll have to walk. It won’t be an easy trip to the top. I’m guessing there’ll be something like a hundred and fifty levels we’ll have to climb.”
“What in this trip has been easy at all?” Stacy asked with a huff. “Come on, let’s get to it.”
The three of us pulled our way to the stairwell on the edge of The Orion. The going was tricky. There was debris and loose items everywhere. I was almost fried at one point, reaching for the next handhold when a live wire singed my hand.
We climbed the perimeter of The Orion, more than four stories up before we found the stairwell. Like Ricky guessed, it was clogged with debris ranging from food, clothing, and of course, bodies.
The smell was already setting in, making me look away and spit. Death was never an easy thing to stomach, and I had already seen my fill of it.
“We should take the elevator shaft,” Stacy said, working her way further into the ship. “Depending on where the elevator stopped, we may have to travel through it, but hatches are on both the bottom and the top, so we should be all right.”
We clicked on our flashlights. The emergency lighting in The Orion, flickered off and on in a bizarre pattern. It was like it was trying to give us a coded message of some kind.
We continued forward mostly in quiet, as we made the long trip to the bridge at the top of the ship.
Lucky for us, the elevator was in the lower half when it had been torn apart. This meant we wouldn’t have to navigate around the cylinder-shaped container.
Sweat poured off my face as the steel tunnel warmed in the light of the day’s suns.
It wasn’t too much of a surprise that Ricky was the one to break the comfortable silence, halfway through our journey.
“Do you think the escape crafts have enough in them to get back into space and go back to Earth for help?” Ricky asked. “That must be the plan, right? We have to go back. Or do you think they’ll send help?”
“I think they’ll try,” Stacy said as if she were talking to herself. “Sooner or later, they’ll realize something went wrong. The only problem is where do they search? We don’t even know where we are. How are they going to know? We have to get Iris up and running again. Once we figure out where in the universe we are, we’ll be able to make a plan.”
“Right, right,” Ricky agreed, chewing on his lower lip. “We’ll figure it out.”
His words were courageous, but I knew the guy well enough to know he was scared.
We made the rest of the way to the bridge as the tunnel sloped ever so slightly upward. Stacy pulled out her red holo card and tapped a few buttons bringing a diagram of The Orion up for all of us to see.
“I think we need to go three more levels up, and we should be there,” she said, wiping sweat from her eyes.
So far, we had traveled the elevator shaft with the doors to every level opening on our left. We followed Stacy’s instructions, heading up three more floors before coming to a set of closed doors that lead to the bridge.
“Here,” Stacy said, reaching into her pack and pulling out a short steel crowbar. She jammed one end of the rod into the door.
Ricky and I pressed our fingertips into the wedge in the elevator door, ready to pull the two pieces of metal apart.
“On three,” I said. “One, two, three!”
Stacy muscled the crowbar as Ricky and I tore at the steel elevator doors. Slowly they opened, allowing us to get a better grip on the doors in front of us.
I anchored my feet into the ground and braced my back. My arms quivered as I threw everything I had into pulling at the door.
Stacy abandoned the crowbar now that the doors were opening. She wedged herself in between the doors, putting her back on one side and pushed with her hands on the other. The door gave more until it was finally opened all the way and locked into place.
We looked into the bridge, completely unprepared for what we saw next.
Chapter 28
“Stacy, Dean!” Arun said limping to the doorway. “You’re alive.”
“And Ricky, too,” Ricky said, probably feeling left out.
I was going to respond, but between the state of the bridge and Arun herself, I held my tongue.
The bridge was a disaster. Emergency lights flickered on and off, exposed wires hung from panels and the ceiling, and pieces of furniture had been thrown to the front of the level where a glass wall lay cracked.
Arun herself was a bloody mess. Crimson stains fell down her uniform and face. Her hair was in disarray, and her left arm was in a makeshift sling.
Arun came up to us and hugged Stacy.
“I’m so glad to see you,” Stacy told her friend. “Where’s Elon?”
“He’s over here. I should warn you, he suffered serious injuries in the crash, but he’s going to be fine. He’ll heal,” Arun said, looking over to Ricky and me with a smile
. “So good to see you as well, Dean. And you too, Ricky.”
Ricky didn’t waste his opportunity. He opened his arms, hugging Arun.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe now, you’re safe now,” Ricky said, holding her tight.
“Yes. We’re going to be okay,” Arun said, confused at first, then giving in and hugging Ricky back.
“Shhh…” Ricky told her. “Don’t strain yourself. You need to rest that beautiful head.”
I rolled my eyes, working my way deeper into the room. From where we stood, the floor sloped down. The light blue lights of the emergency lighting allowed me to see well enough, but I still had a hard time of it.
I made my way through the loose furniture and gathered debris resting on the bottom of the level to a steel panel that had come loose from the ceiling. It had been laid flat, and a figure was lying on it.
I moved deeper, realizing it was Elon. He was on his back with a piece of clothing folded to support his head and a blanket over his body. He looked up at me with an uncomfortable smile.
“Dean Slade,” he said. “I knew you’d be among the survivors. It’s so good to see you, my friend.”
His bright, blue eyes showed the pain his voice would not. Much like his sister, his hair was a mess, and he had spattered blood across his grey uniform. He pushed himself up on his elbows, not moving his legs.
I’d seen enough injuries in my time to tell when there was something seriously wrong. Elon wasn’t moving the lower half of his body. The smile he put on was laced with pain.
“You stayed on to land the ship, you crazy son of a gun,” I told him, shaking my head. “I never thought I’d see the day where an Eternal risked his own life to land a colony ship of Transients. You’re crazy. You know that, right?”
“Ah, but am I crazy if I realize I’m crazy?” Elon started to laugh. “I’ve heard the truly insane don’t recognize their own madness.”
I cracked a grin, and he laughed harder. A moment later, he stopped, wincing from the act.
“What’s wrong with your legs?” I asked, pulling off the blanket that covered them.
“No, you don’t want to—” Arun said as she came up behind me with Ricky and Stacy.
Elon’s right leg was completely gone from the knee down. His left leg was a mangled mess of blood and flesh.
I swallowed back the bile that rose to my mouth.
“It will heal and grow back in time,” Elon said, trying to reassure all of us, even though he was the one with the missing appendage. “My DNA will make the necessary repairs, and it will regrow.”
“All of it?” Ricky asked in awe. “I mean, I knew Eternals healed quickly and could grow back limbs but—the entire leg will come back?”
“Yes, there are some that this may bother amongst our Transient counterparts,” Arun said, clearing her throat. “What I’m trying to say—”
“You don’t want us to tell anyone. because growing back limbs is bananas, and you think people will say you’re inhuman,” I said. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you,” Elon said, lowering himself back down on the steel sheet. It’s one thing to know that Eternals are capable of regrowing limbs, but it’s another thing to actually witness it.”
“We can keep it covered until you’re healed,” Stacy added in. “We’ll get a wheelchair in here and cover your legs with a blanket until then. Not to move on from this topic, but is Iris still up and running?”
“She is,” Arun said, reaching for a holo card inside her breast pocket. “I powered her down to conserve energy, but she’s functional.”
Arun produced the red holo card in her palm, tapping a few buttons, and Iris appeared in front of us. The ethereal blue light that surrounded her was a welcome sight.
She looked at all of us in turn. “I’m so glad you’re all alive. I was concerned.”
“It’s good to see you too,” Arun told the Cognitive. “Iris, can you do a full diagnostic of the ship and tell us everything we need to know?”
“It seems that the ship broke apart on the descent. Only levels one hundred and fifty and above are remaining. All other levels are scattered across the planet,” Iris said as if she were reading a report. “I’m detecting multiple life forms in The Orion.”
“Can you detect how many?” Stacy asked.
“Affirmative,” Iris said. “There are currently two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-three survivors onboard The Orion.”
My body felt numb as I heard the number. We had left Earth transporting one hundred thousand new colonists, promising them a better world. Now, not even three thousand were on board.
“How—how can that be?” Arun sank to her knees as the weight of the number hit her. “How did we let this happen?”
“You didn’t,” Stacy said, leaning beside Arun. “The Disciples did this.”
Arun hung her head low. Her white hair hid her face like a curtain, but by the way her body trembled, I knew she was crying.
“That can’t be all of them,” Elon said from his prone position. “That’s only how many are currently on The Orion, not the total number of survivors across the planet. There must be thousands, maybe more that made it onto the escape pods. There’s more out there. We just have to find them.”
The room quieted again. Ricky went over to Stacy and Arun and gave them both a hug.
I looked over to Elon. He wasn’t sobbing, but he stared straight up into the ceiling as tears slid from his eyes. It was a quiet sadness, almost stoic in the way he grieved.
I really wasn’t the comforting type, but I understood in that moment exactly how much Elon and Arun cared for the Transients. They honestly believed they had failed them. I placed a firm hand on Elon’s right shoulder, looking down at him.
“You take this time to be sad or disappointed. You take whatever time you need, but you can’t change the past,” I told him. “That’s something I learned a long time ago. The only option now is to move forward or quit, and you’re not allowed to quit.”
“Dean’s right,” Arun said, standing up and composing herself. “We still have people here depending on us as well as those who were scattered across this planet waiting to be saved. We can help them.”
“Iris, is there a way to calculate how many escape pods and crafts disengaged from The Orion before it crashed? And then calculate how many survivors could have been in them?” Stacy asked, looking over to the Cognitive.
“There was a total of seven escape crafts that successfully detached from The Orion, as well as two hundred and thirty-nine escape pods,” Iris said in her matter of fact tone. “There is no way to know for certain how full each craft was, but if it were filled to capacity, there would be roughly another seventy-five hundred survivors that landed around the planet.”
“If they’re out there, we’ll find them,” Elon said through gritted teeth. “I swear, we’ll find them.”
“I’ve run through the rest of the ship diagnostics,” Iris said, hesitantly. “Would you prefer the good or bad news first.”
“Bad news first,” I said. “Always the bad news first.”
“There is no way The Orion will ascend into space again. The complete lower section of the ship is gone, including the thrusters. The most notable sections lost are the four cargo holds with our supplies.”
“The cargo hold can’t be far off,” I said. “It had to land somewhere within a day or two of here.”
“How do you know that? Arun asked.
“One of the dogs that was in the cargo hold found us,” I told her. “He had to land somewhere close to be able to find us that same day.”
“But what about the brig? Who knows where that section of the ship landed with that Disciple and Warlord thug?” Ricky asked.
“There’s no way they survived the landing.” Stacy shook her head. “No way.”
“Elon did a great job of leveling out the craft,” I said. “If there are survivors here, then maybe there are more on the other sections of the ship. W
e need to be careful.”
“All right, Iris,” Elon said. “I think we can use some good news. What do you have?”
“The food stocks on the upper levels of the ship need repairs but will be usable. The main navigation is still down so I am unable to tell exactly where in the galaxy we are, but I have managed to get our short-range scanners up and running. I—”
Iris cut herself off from her next words. She held a blank stare with her mouth slightly open, and her eyes glazed over. This was not something the Cognitive had ever done before, as far as I was aware.
“Apologies,” the Cognitive said, finally moving again. “My processing power is limited at the moment. I’m detecting structures on the planet. Yes, the scans are showing buildings of some kind, and they are unrelated to The Orion.”
Epilogue
“Buildings?” Ricky was the first to find his voice. “Like, buildings, buildings?”
“Iris, please elaborate,” Arun said, knitting her brow in a thick line of concentration.
“My short-range scanners are working up to three kilometers in every direction of The Orion,” Iris explained. “Exactly two point four kilometers east of our current location.”
The bridge was so quiet, I could almost hear my own heartbeat.
“There can’t be buildings here,” Elon said from his prone position. “That would have to mean—”
“It would mean that we are not alone on this planet,” Stacy finished the thought.
“Aliens,” Ricky breathed, his legs shaking as he tried to steady himself. “I knew it. Oh God, I need to sit down.”
While Ricky took a seat, Arun picked up the line of questioning. “Iris, can you detect any alien lifeforms in or around the structure?”
“Negative,” Iris said. “Keep in mind, my scanners are only able to look three kilometers out. There may be additional lifeforms further removed.”
“Can you bring up a holo of what you’re seeing on the scanners?” Stacy asked.
“I can, but it will be difficult to make out,” Iris warned as she opened her right hand. “There is limited power at the moment.”
