Alexander regarded her with eyebrows raised.
“Call it a hunch, call it faith, but they’re still alive.”
“I hope you’re right, Commander.” His thoughts went back to Caty, and he tried to imagine her smiling face to make Korbin’s optimism seem more real. “I hope you’re right,” he said again.
Somehow they’d reversed roles, with Korbin the one clinging to hope while he gave into despair. Korbin had two sons back on Earth, wards of the state being raised by a first-class institution in New York City. New York was a high priority target for enemy missiles—maybe the highest—followed by LA, where Caty was. They’d picked LA because it had a vibrant immigrant community. Plenty of people still spoke Español there. It had seemed like a great way to transition to life in the northern states at the time, but now Alexander wished they’d chosen some sleepy town in the middle of nowhere instead.
He forced his thoughts back into the moment. They had a planet to explore. He looked away from the fading light and up at the dark, brooding jungle beyond the clearing where they’d landed their shuttles. “We’d better get back and help the crew set up the hab modules.”
Korbin nodded.
Alexander slung his arm through hers to help her up the beach. Not that she needed his help. If anything, he needed hers. They both stumbled equally as they went. Near the top of the beach, where lavender sand met ivory-colored shrubbery, they found Junior Lieutenant McAdams watching the sunset, her cheeks wet with tears behind her helmet.
“Hello, McAdams,” Alexander said.
“Sir,” she replied.
McAdams’ parents had spent their life savings on her so that she could be born a gener. As an adult she’d returned the favor, signing up for the navy against their wishes in order to save them. That was before the nukes had begun flying up North. Alexander remembered McAdams confessing her fears to him at the memorial service—‘I killed them,’ she’d said, and the sad part was, she probably had. But by that reasoning, Alexander had gotten Caty killed, too. He shuddered and pushed those thoughts away, forcing a smile for McAdams’ benefit.
“They could still be alive, Lieutenant. Regardless, we’re going to have plenty of time to grieve for the planet we lost. Right now we need to focus on the one that’s under our feet.”
Something ugly flickered through McAdams’ eyes, but then she sniffed and nodded. “Yes, sir.” With that, she about-faced and trudged back up to the landing site.
Alexander frowned, watching her go. He had a feeling he’d just put his foot in it, but maybe her anger wasn’t directed at him.
“Onwards and upwards, Captain,” Commander Korbin said, nodding as they continued up the hilly shore.
“Excelsior,” Alexander replied.
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s what it means—onwards and upwards.”
“Onwards to a brighter future, and upwards to the stars…” Korbin replied.
Alexander smiled. There was just enough optimism in that sentiment to dull the hollow ache in his chest.
“Excelsior…” he whispered.
CHAPTER 19
By the time Alexander and Korbin reached the landing site, the stars were already pricking out overhead. Both of Wonderland’s moons were out—one of them a large, angry red eye, the other a silver crescent that was more reminiscent of Earth’s moon.
Alexander activated his comms and said, “Gather round, everyone!” He waited while people stopped what they were doing and turned to face him, their head lamps sweeping his way. A group of headlamps came bobbing in from the direction of the jungle—Cardinal, et al.
Speaking to Korbin, Alexander said, “Get me a head count.” He studied the landing site while he waited. The shuttles’ landing lights were on, casting a muted golden glow across the sandy shrub-infested ground. The jungle appeared as a black, featureless wall towering over everything. Night was falling fast. The stars grew sharper and more numerous in the sky with every passing second.
It reminded Alexander of going camping back on Earth when he was a kid. He remembered his family telling scary stories around the camp fire while he watched wide-eyed as the firelight made shadows dance in the trees. Back then the night had been alive with unseen terrors. The mind of a child could be a scary place. When he’d grown up, he’d realized that the only really scary predator on Earth was man, but being here on Wonderland brought all his childish fears rushing back. There could be anything out there.
Even T-rex’s hairy cousin.
Alexander pictured a giant teddy bear, and a silly grin sprang to his lips.
“Sixteen. All present and accounted for, sir,” Korbin announced.
“Good,” he replied, nodding. He dialed up the volume on his helmet’s external speakers rather than use the comms. If he was being honest, that was just because he wanted to make some noise. Maybe he would scare off whatever was lurking in the jungle. “It’s time for us to set up camp, but first we’re going to go back to our shuttles for dinner. Leave whatever samples you’ve collected outside. That goes double for you, Cardinal.”
People began muttering their objections, and Cardinal started to say, “But—”
“This entire mission needs to be conducted with strict quarantine protocols. The airlocks in the shuttles and our habs have been equipped to flash cook anything that hitches a ride on our suits, but that doesn’t mean we should push our luck. There could be any number of deadly pathogens in the air, let alone any samples we collect. This planet does appear to be habitable, but that doesn’t make it safe. Go eat something, and I suggest you all take a caffeine tablet. It’s going to be a long night, and I don’t want anyone fainting from exhaustion.”
Helmets bobbed and aye-aye, sirs, echoed around the circle as people headed back to their shuttles. Alexander used his finely-honed sense of intuition to locate his, finding the one with Shuttle One written on the side in bold white letters.
Korbin followed him, even though it wasn’t her shuttle, and McAdams joined them while they were waiting at the airlock. “Mind if I eat with you, Captain?” she asked.
Alexander smiled and nodded. “Sure.” Maybe he hadn’t offended her as badly as he thought.
Cardinal and Stone joined them a moment later, followed by Vasquez. “You won’t believe what we found!” Cardinal said, his face full of wonder behind his helmet.
“What did you find?” Alexander asked.
“The plants move. They all move!”
McAdams arched an eyebrow. “Move how? Reflex or voluntary movement? Are you sure you were looking at plants?”
Cardinal gave her a look of strained patience. “Yes, to the plant question, and if you’re asking whether the movement was self-directed by the plant, I guess that would depend on whether or not it has a brain. My bet is that it does, but probably a very rudimentary one. I tried tests involving movement, light, and water. The plants I tested reacted to shadows caused by movement, turned toward the light, and gave no reaction to the water.”
Alexander frowned. “So plants on Wonderland don’t need water?”
“More likely the ones I tested weren’t thirsty. They must have an abundance of rain on a planet like this.”
“So you’re saying the jungle could sneak up on us while we’re eating.”
“No, of course not—well… I don’t think so. Just the branches and fronds move. And they’re not dangerous, just curious.”
Alexander looked to Lieutenant Stone. “What do you think?” He was in charge of mission security, and his expression was guarded, not awed.
“I think I’m glad we brought the Cheetahs. It might not be safe to explore the jungle on foot—especially not if we have to hack our way through. Who knows how those curious plants will respond if we start chopping off their limbs.”
“Is violence your first response to everything?” Korbin demanded. “We’re not going to hack our way through a living jungle.”
“Why not, ma’am? They’re just plants.”
; “Plants that move,” McAdams said. “That makes them more like animals than plants.”
Stone shrugged. “Plants, animals… We eat ‘em both, so what’s the big deal?”
“All right, enough bickering,” Alexander said. “We’re not going to be eating any alien life forms, and we should probably wait until we’ve studied this new environment before we start hacking it to pieces.”
“Yes, sir,” Stone replied while climbing up into the shuttle airlock.
Once they were all standing in the airlock, they activated the radiation shields on their helmets, and their visors polarized, effectively blinding them. Lieutenant Stone gave the airlock a verbal command to pressurize, and a warning siren sounded briefly; then a deep, resonating hum filled the air as the flash-cooker sterilized their suits. Another tone sounded, this one pleasant and musical to let them know it was safe to deactivate their radiation shields. They did so, and the airlock’s inner doors swished open.
In the shuttle’s cargo hold, Lieutenant Stone found a food crate and began passing out ration packs and bottles of water. They all removed their helmets and sat on the floor to eat.
Alexander picked up a meat-colored protein stick and sniffed it suspiciously. It smelled like old socks. He was beginning to agree with Lieutenant Stone about checking to see if the native fauna tasted like chicken.
McAdams sat down beside him and handed him a caffeine pill. He nodded his thanks and set his ration pack aside to swallow the pill with a swig of water.
“What do you think we’re going to find down here? Anyone have any predictions?” Korbin asked.
“Well I predicted we’d find plants, and we did,” Cardinal said. “You owe me a month’s wages,” he added, looking at Lieutenant Stone.
The geologist grunted, but gave no reply.
“I think we’re going to find plenty of animals, too,” McAdams said. “We already found avian life on our way down. Those jungles are probably teeming with all kinds of amazing creatures.”
Vasquez spoke up, “In terms of climate, I suspect the tides will be either more frequent or more pronounced thanks to Wonderland’s two moons. The climate is pretty mild, but there are signs of water damage on the trunks of some of the older trees, so we might find hurricanes or tsunamis here.”
“Tsunamis are usually caused by earthquakes,” Stone said. “I guess we might have to call them something else here… Wonderquakes?”
“Sounds like a breakfast cereal,” Alexander replied.
“Let’s just call them tremors. Anyway, if there’s seismic activity, that means plate tectonics, which in turn means volcanic activity, island formation, mountains, sea floor trenches, and so on. We might find a lot of the same geological features as Earth.”
“Sounds like you have some theories to work on already,” Alexander said as he took a cautious bite of a protein stick. Thankfully it tasted better than it smelled.
“If there’s water damage on the trees, I think it’s safe to say we need to find a new camp site,” Korbin said. “We don’t want a tsunami or a flood to come crashing over us while we’re sleeping.”
“Good point,” Alexander said. “We’ll tell the other shuttle captains as soon as we’re done eating.” He took another bite of his rations. A veggie stick this time. It tasted like spinach-flavored cardboard.
His comm crackled, and Alexander heard Seth Ryder’s voice. He was the pilot of Shuttle Two. “Captain… there’s something happening out here.”
“Out where? You’re supposed to be in your shuttle eating.”
“We finished already, sir.”
“Where are you?”
“On the beach. Listen, sir…”
All he heard was static. “I don’t hear anything, Ryder.”
“Exactly, no waves, because the water isn’t here anymore.”
“The tide’s probably going out. Vasquez was just talking about how two moons could mean stronger tides.”
“Maybe,” Ryder said. “But this ain’t like any tide I’ve ever seen. The water’s runnin’ away from us faster than we can chase it.”
Alexander saw Vasquez suddenly sit up straight. “How long has it been doing that?” she asked over the same comm channel.
“About ten, twenty seconds,” Ryder replied.
“You need to get out of there now!”
“What?”
“Run! Get back to your shuttle and take off ASAP.”
“Yes, ma’am… Ryder out.”
“What’s going on Vasquez?”
She bounced to her feet and ran toward the cockpit. “Tell the other shuttles to take off!”
Stone hurried after her, already on the comms telling the other shuttles to lift off. They all crowded into the cockpit and took their seats. Alexander’s mind raced, trying to come up with an explanation for the way Vasquez and Stone were behaving.
“What’s going on?” McAdams asked.
Lieutenant Stone was too busy cold-starting the shuttle’s engines to reply.
“There’s a tsunami coming,” Vasquez replied, her brown eyes wide.
CHAPTER 20
“A tsunami?” Alexander asked, frowning. “How do you know?”
“Sometimes the water runs out before a tsunami hits. That’s what Ryder was seeing.”
“You sure it’s not just the tide?” Alexander asked.
“No tide is that fast, not even with two moons. We’ve got a minute or two before that wave hits. Stone, you need to hurry.”
“I’m going as fast as I can!” he snapped.
Alexander looked out the side window and saw Seth Ryder and Max Carter come racing up the beach. They piled into Shuttle Two’s airlock, and the doors slid shut behind them.
“They’re not going to make it…” Vasquez warned, her voice a whisper.
“Oh, shit…” Stone said.
Alexander saw what had made him swear. A black wall of water was racing toward them, shimmering in the moonlight, and already curling at the top.
“Come on, Stone! Take off!” Vasquez screamed.
“I’m working on it!”
“We’re not going to make it either,” Korbin said.
Alexander blinked, and in that time the water had swept up and blotted out the sky. Tsunami’s were fast.
Suddenly the shuttle lurched and hovered straight up. Spray sprinkled the canopy and windows. Two of the other three shuttles rose beside them.
“Hang on!” Stone said. He pulled up and ignited the thrusters at full burn. The acceleration pinned them to their chairs. Then the wave crashed and went surging up the beach. Water splashed over them, washing the windows clean. Alexander imagined the water weighing them down and sucking them under, but a split second later they were through and racing toward the stars. Stone leveled out and looped back around to look for Shuttle Two, but it was nowhere in sight.
Stone keyed the comms. “Report in,” he said.
Shuttles Three and Four checked in, but Two was dead silent. No one said anything. Stone and the other shuttles swept their landing lights over the surging black water, but nothing came bobbing up to the surface. Shuttle Two was gone. By now the water was rolling them along the ground, slamming them into tree trunks and cracking them open on rocks.
Alexander watched the trees bending. The smaller ones got sucked under, while the tallest ones weathered the assault just as they probably had a thousand times before. More water damage to add to their trunks.
“Fuck!” Stone said. “Why didn’t they stay in the shuttle?”
“What are the odds…” Korbin whispered. “We were just talking about earthquakes and tsunamis, and then one hits us.”
“If they had time to strap in, they might still survive, even if they’re trapped under the water,” Alexander said. “Shuttles are armored and air-tight.”
“I don’t know,” Stone replied. “They’re going to take one hell of a beating.”
“We can’t leave until we know for sure,” Alexander said.
“How long
can we hover before we run out of fuel?” Vasquez asked.
“A while, but we should save our fuel.”
“We’re not going to be able to effect a rescue until the water subsides anyway,” Vasquez added.
Alexander rounded on her. “You want to leave them here?”
“For now. Tsunamis aren’t just one wave. They’re a series of waves, and it could be hours, even days, before the water subsides. We can’t do anything for them right now.”
“She’s right,” Stone said. “We need to find higher ground and start setting up camp. We’ll come back and look for them as soon as we can.”
Alexander ground his teeth. “All right. Let’s go.”
* * *
“Over there,” Stone pointed to the elevation map on the shuttle’s main holo display. The map was compiled from orbital imagery taken by the Lincoln. It showed a line of cliffs running along the coast.
“Elevation?” Alexander asked.
“Around a hundred meters.”
“How big was that tsunami?”
“About twenty meters. It would take one hell of a wave to reach us up there,” Stone replied.
“All right. Set us down.”
The landing was smooth. Nothing much to see out the viewports until the shuttle hovered down close enough to the ground that its landing lights peeled away the shadows. Alexander saw they were setting down in a field of red grass. A field of blood. It was a painful reminder of the crewmates they’d left behind. For all anyone knew Max and Ryder were already dead, but they could also be using debris as a life raft while the receding floodwaters took them out to sea.
Alexander listened as Stone checked in with the other two shuttle pilots. A minute later the other shuttles landed around theirs. As the noisy roar of engines faded to silence, everyone unbuckled and made their way to the cargo hold. No one said a word.
Stone sealed the door to the cockpit and opened the inner doors of the rear airlock so they could begin loading it with cargo crates. It was hard, sweaty work. Once the airlock was full they all piled in with the cargo and shut the inner doors. Then Stone cycled the outer doors open. After a few moments, a green light went on above the outer doors and they swished open. Then Cardinal and Stone climbed down while Alexander, McAdams, and Korbin passed crates to them.
New Frontiers- The Complete Series Page 16
