Rift

by Nathan Hystad

  When he opened them, the Eureka’s location flashed on his HUD, and Ace let out a sigh of relief at the sight of the massive vessel. He pressed the throttle and made for the hangar.

  27

  Jish

  Ten minutes. It had only taken ten minutes for Jish Karn to be sure they were doomed. To be honest, it had only taken seconds, but for the next few minutes, she clutched to the hope that something would turn the tide. It didn’t.

  Thousands of enemy ships swarmed the space around them, destroying the Earth Fleet fighters like they were mosquitoes around a campfire. Jish cringed as the Fleet’s most powerful corvette exploded, an anticlimactic end to a thousand lives. She slumped down in her seat, the crew of the Stellae looking to her for answers.

  “Leave. Jump back. I just need three minutes.” She got up, and when a series of questions flew at her, she yelled over them. “Retreat and give me three damn minutes. We’re going to lose today, but not without some pain on their end.”

  Jish ran from the bridge, tears streaming down her face. She almost laughed at how tired she was after keeping this pace for half a minute, still feeling the effects of the Scotch from earlier. Her private hangar door opened as she approached, and she ran for the solitary ship. It was small, but she knew it would pack a punch.

  The original Watcher fighter hummed to life, and she wasted no time in strapping herself in and lifting it out of the Stellae. She saw her fleet retreating, the Shift drives activating, leaving the invaders to fire at empty space instead of the Earth Fleet. She spoke into her earpiece as she flew away from her ship.

  “Captain, get out of here. Now!” she yelled and watched her console as the Stellae disappeared. The enemy ships looked confused. They hadn’t expected the humans to have their own technology. She had one last surprise for them.

  Jish Karn wasn’t a young woman any longer. She’d lived a good life, a long life. Her years as the Grand Admiral of the Fleet had been her finest, even though they were marred by the prediction of this invasion. The pressure of knowing she held the only live alien in a cell below the decks of her ship had been enough to drive her a little crazy at times. But as she entered the enemy lines, she did so unimpeded, as if she’d piqued the Invaders’ curiosity.

  Jish found herself the last Fleet ship in the whole region, a needle amongst the haystack of devastation coming to Earth and the colonies. The Invaders let her pass their ranks, and she made for the largest cluster of warships.

  She half expected them to attempt communication, but she knew it was pointless. Jish wished she could wipe the tears from her mask-covered cheeks, but it didn’t matter anymore. She might not have always done the right thing at each moment of her life, but she knew she was going to die proud of what she’d accomplished. She was going to sleep eternally sound.

  The antimatter bomb had cost the Fleet more credits than she cared to think about, but at this moment, she knew it had been worth the price.

  The countdown started on her console. Ten. Nine. Eight.

  She took a deep breath before closing her eyes, saying the numbers out loud as they ticked away.

  When the countdown reached one, she smiled momentarily before being torn apart. She may not have stopped them, but she’d damn well die happy, taking as many of the bastards with her as she could.

  Wren

  The noise was terrifying at first. Wren had been working, which meant organizing all her files from the lab back in New Dallas from a few years ago. She was impressed with most of the results, though they hadn’t quite nailed it down. One moment, the room was silent; the next, the Watcher was screeching. It caught her off-guard, and she dropped her coffee cup to the ground, the metal container splashing the brown liquid on the floor before rolling away.

  The screech turned into a howl, and Wren knew they’d made the jump. They were on the other side of the Rift, and the alien had somehow sensed it. That was very curious. She made sure the event was being recorded and walked over to the cell.

  “Stop yelling. You’re fine,” she said, and it ceased howling momentarily. But just as quickly as it stopped, it began again, and she had to put her palms to her ears to muffle the noise.

  This continued for a while longer, and then it switched from howling to speaking. It spoke in a series of clicks and groans, a sound quite unlike anything she’d ever heard. It was animalistic, but wasn’t every language essentially an animal talking?

  “What is it? I can’t understand,” Wren said, watching it stand in the cell, its dark eyes pleading with her.

  She couldn’t stand to see it and decided to leave the room. “It’s making a racket in there. Just be aware,” she told the guards in the hall and made for the bridge.

  No alarms rang out, and she took that as a good sign. Clearly, they hadn’t emerged in the heart of a Watcher fleet. Her steps quickened as she got closer to the bridge, and Wren tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for the lift to bring her up. When she arrived, there was no sound other than the soft chiming of different computer systems running their functions.

  Jarden Fairbanks was standing at the front of the bridge, his gaze plastered to the gigantic viewscreen. The star patterns were unfamiliar; a purple nebula danced slowly in the distance, catching Wren’s eye in the top right corner of the screen. Otherwise, there were no ships, no planets or moons in sight.

  She crossed the space and stood beside Captain Barkley, who noticed her and looked up to smile. “We made it,” Heather said.

  Flint

  Flint’s racing heartbeat finally began to slow down. Seeing the Watchers emerge through the Rift was disturbing, like a scene from a holohorror. From the moment he and Kat had seen the footage of the Rift from ninety years ago, he’d been hoping it was a fake. He’d thought Jarden might have actually been a delusional eccentric with too many credits and power. But it was all true: the Watchers, the colony ship, the Shift drive capability.

  He tried to determine where they might possibly be by having the system scan for any familiar star patterns. The diagnosis quickly came back with no results. They were far from home.

  Home. It was a strange word to Flint, and to many on board, he suspected. The Earth Fleet troops rarely had families, since they didn’t have time to settle down and grow roots.

  “Setting destination,” Captain Barkley said from her seat. Jarden finally broke his locked gaze from the viewscreen, a look of elation in his eyes. His excitement was palpable.

  Flint almost inquired how far it was but found their trajectory mapped out. Thirty-three hours. He wanted to ask why they wouldn’t use the Shift drive to get there, but he knew the answer. The drive showed four percent charged. The extreme distance they’d traveled had drained whatever source powered the ship’s new drive.

  Excited chatter passed between Tsang and Barkley, Kat joining in. Flint stayed quiet. Whatever they were about to stumble into worried him. It felt too empty here, as if the expanse of space had changed. He couldn’t put it into words; everything felt upside down. The metaphor didn’t work, but it was something along those lines.

  He spent the rest of his shift in silence, cautiously scanning the viewscreen for incoming enemies.

  Six hours later, he found himself in the same lounge where he’d spent a few hours with Wren the other night, and to his surprise, the doctor was sitting there, her hands wrapped around a beer. She didn’t notice him, so he stood there watching her. She looked tired; of course, the entire ship’s population was tired at this point. Still, he was drawn to her sad, withdrawn eyes.

  “Flint, how very nice to see you here,” a voice said from the hallway. Wren looked up from her glass and caught him watching her. He turned away to see the android Charles standing there with a young man beside him.

  “Hey, Charles. What’s shaking?” Flint asked.

  “Nothing is shaking, Flint. The ship is constantly vibrating, if that’s what you mean,” Charles said. He was the smartest, most unique android Flint had ever seen, but he was still easy to
pull a fast one on.

  “Never mind. Who’s this?” Flint asked, taking the boy in. He was just a kid, all arms and legs, like a puppy growing into his body. He had a long face and close-cropped hair that looked like a butcher job from the Fleet. Flint knew the hairstyle only too well. It was one of the reasons he’d let his hair go so shaggy to this day.

  “Ace. Nice to meet you.” The kid stuck his hand out, and Flint shook it – three solid pumps – and let go.

  “Ace. Nice call sign. I haven’t seen you around.” Truthfully, there were a thousand people on Eureka, and Flint hadn’t met many of them.

  “I just got here.” Ace grinned, and Flint felt like he was missing some pertinent information.

  “Ace helped me bring the Watcher from the Earth Fleet’s Stellae,” Charles said matter-of-factly.

  Wren’s ears must have perked up, because she called to Charles and waved them over. “What’s this all about? You were the one who brought my subject in? How’s that possible?”

  Wren was introduced to Ace, and the four of them took seats around the square table.

  “I need one of those,” Flint said. “Anyone else?” When no one replied, he nudged the kid. “How about you, Ace? You look like a guy who has a story to tell, with something to wet your whistle.” Flint knew he was still a kid, but when you witnessed an alien invasion and were millions of light years from home, what did it matter?

  “Sure. Thanks,” Ace said.

  Flint already found himself liking the guy. He reminded Flint of himself as a teenager. He wanted to tell the kid that it was going to be all right, and that he’d grow into those shoulders eventually.

  “How about you, Chuck? Pint of fission core?” Flint said it straight-faced, and a second later, Wren let out a laugh.

  “I don’t see why that’s funny,” Charles replied.

  Flint left, bringing back two beers before plopping down in a seat beside Wren. Kat entered the cafeteria lounge and meandered over to their table, stealing a sip of Flint’s beer with a smile.

  “What are we talking about?” she asked with a chipper tone. Flint was glad to see her in good spirits. Despite all the crazy events leading them to this table together, their mismatched group felt right.

  “We’re telling our stories. If we’re going to be living together for the foreseeable future, we may as well get to know each other.” This from Wren, who was still nursing the beer she’d been staring into when Flint arrived.

  “I’m game,” Kat said, and Flint was glad to see her opening up to the others.

  “I, for one, need to know what’s going on with our good friend Charles the android,” Flint suggested.

  “I’m not sure there’s much to tell, if I can be honest.” Charles sat at the end of the table, his arms hung down at his sides.

  Wren took this one. “He’s a complicated android, but I owe him my life. Without Charles, I’d still be rotting away at the Uranus Mining Prison for Women. I never quite noticed how much of a mouthful that is to say.”

  Flint didn’t know she’d come from a prison. “Now this is going to be interesting.”

  He sat back, took a pull from his beer, and they talked well into the night, regaling one another with stories of their pasts: first Charles, then Wren, followed by the heart-wrenching tale of Ace. Flint wanted to hug the thin boy, to tell him life was going to get better, but that wasn’t a promise Flint could give him, not after everything he’d witnessed in the last few days. When it came time for Kat, she talked about the attack that had killed her parents as well as Flint’s.

  Flint stopped drinking after two beers, knowing his shift would start in six hours.

  Everyone stopped talking for a moment when Ace spoke. Flint noticed the room was empty except for their small group, and he was grateful for it.

  “Are they going to destroy Earth?” Ace asked. It was a simple question at its core. Were the Watchers going to turn into Invaders, as the Fleet called them? Flint guessed they never really were Watchers. They were Wait-until-the-right-timers, and when it was time, they’d sent a fleet large enough to take over.

  “What do you think? You were with the Fleet. Can they fend off the attack?” Wren asked.

  Ace’s sad eyes turned down as he answered. “No. They can’t win.”

  Flint hated to say it, but he agreed. “The Earth Fleet has never dealt with anything close to this magnitude. There’s a big difference between space pirates and idealist groups attacking small outposts versus this invasion. Come to think of it, we recently learned that most of the terrorist attacks were commissioned by the Fleet in order to prove their own value and necessity.”

  Ace paled further, and Flint felt bad for the kid. He’d grown up wanting to be a pilot with them, and by sheer luck, he’d ended up doing just that, only to find out they were corrupt and about to be destroyed.

  “We need to find a way to stop them,” Kat said, and all eyes turned to her.

  “To stop who?” Wren asked.

  “The Watchers. We can’t let them have Earth.” Kat sat up straighter, the tiredness gone from her face.

  Wren slammed a hand down on the table. “I agree. We’re going to kill the bastards.”

  Was Flint the only rational one in the group? “How do we do that? We’re on the other side of the Rift, far from home. A Rift, need I remind you, that only opens up once every thirty years.”

  “We’ll find a way.” This from Ace. Flint really did find himself liking the kid.

  Wren raised a mostly empty glass in the air. “To resisting!” She gave them a wry smile, and Flint couldn’t help but finding himself grinning with her.

  “To the resistance!” they all echoed.

  28

  Jarden

  Jarden paced the back of the bridge, trying to make it look more casual than anxious. The crew needed him to be strong. He was the unflappable Councilman Jarden Fairbanks, the reason they were on the other side of the Rift, approaching a new world where life was abundant, water fresh, and air breathable.

  Jarden saw the system’s star in the distance, a glowing hot yellow ball of gas. This planet had the right parameters for an Earthlike world, but this was old news. Their probe had told them this ninety years ago when Jarden had been just a little boy, staring into the night sky outside his family’s farm in desolate middle America.

  While he was dreaming of traveling into space to escape the harsh life of a poor farmhand, he never could have guessed that one day he’d be among those distant stars, exploring a new world. As he paced the bridge, he tried to remember that little boy, to see the viewscreen with his optimism and delight, but it had been too long ago. Too much had happened to Jarden since then.

  “Any luck on the sensors?” he asked for the tenth time since he’d woken up.

  “No, sir.” Tsang answered this one. “Maybe something in the atmosphere’s messing with the pulse, or maybe the colony lost power to the beacon.”

  All good reasons, but Jarden feared worse. Leona Fairbanks, are you still alive? Nik and Oliv, are my children okay? As much as he’d tried to push their names and faces from his memory for the last sixty years, he couldn’t. They were there every night when he closed his eyes, and he could almost smell Leona beside him on the bed when he woke in the morning.

  The planet appeared on the viewscreen. It was zoomed in as much as they could while keeping the image crystal-clear. As the hours passed, the shape grew, until they could see wispy white clouds, deep blue seas, and high mountain ranges. Jarden became calmer as the planet grew nearer.

  Flint took them closer as the last hour dragged on, seconds ticking by in Jarden’s internal clock.

  “Bring us into orbit,” Captain Barkley said.

  The viewscreen showed the rounding of the world above, and Jarden hadn’t ever felt this nervous in his life. It hit him like a brick wall, and he found his knees giving way, himself falling to the floor. At first no one noticed, but seconds later, Heather Barkley was at his side. “Sir, are you all r
ight?”

  He was, he tried to tell her, but no words came out.

  “Captain, I’m picking up a signal. It’s weak, but it’s there,” Tsang said.

  Jarden found his breath and sat up as Heather left him there, too drawn by the news. “Is it…?” he finally croaked out.

  “It’s the beacon, sir. It’s faint.” Tsang couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice. “It’s the pattern you were waiting for.”

  Jarden pulled himself up on the arm of the captain’s chair and pulled himself into it. Don’t fail me now, body. Not while I’m so close. “Attempt communication,” he said, his nerves shot while he waited.

  “Nothing, sir,” Tsang said.

  “Keep trying.” Jarden knew there could be many reasons for them not answering. The equipment could be damaged or they might have turned it all off. Hell, sixty years was an awfully long time to be waiting for a rescue, and they might be afraid of who else was listening.

  A few minutes later, there was still no answer to their communication, and Jarden made a decision.

  “Kat, take Flint’s seat. We’re going to the surface.” Jarden watched the scans of the planet, showing minimal electrical readouts. Whatever was down there, it wasn’t alien cities and technology.

  Flint Lancaster got up and followed him off the bridge. “I’m coming, Leona,” Jarden whispered.

  Benson

  Benson caught his reflection in the mirror, and fixed his collar. He’d always hated wearing a uniform and was glad Jarden allowed him to dress as he pleased. Benson had done a lot of favors for the man over the years and knew that if he could make himself invaluable, he would have free rein over Fairbanks. It had worked even better than he’d imagined.

  He read a message from the bridge saying they were in orbit of the colony world. Years ago, Fairbanks had dubbed the world Domum, Latin for home. Benson had never liked the name, but that didn’t matter.

  He walked by a few crew members on the way to his destination, and he paused to chat with a delightful young woman before carrying on. He stopped in the cafeteria, grabbing a much-needed coffee, and kept moving.