by S V Hurn
Dorathy insisted, “I can hold my own.”
“I gotta say no, not this time . . . maybe next time. You stay on the ship with Brenda, help her track their approach. Two sets of eyes are better than one.”
Dorathy said reluctantly, “All right . . . whatever you say. You’re the boss.” Henry could tell Dorathy had an adventurous spirit; considering the circumstances surrounding her involvement with the Illuminati and eventual death and reclamation, she had maintained her composure, not giving in to fear and anger over the situation that had been forced upon her.
Henry, in an attempt to stimulate interest, said, “When we’re done gathering up a fresh supply of poppies, we’re headed to a deserted planet in search of a good lead on an ancient map that has some real promise. Our buddy, Jobar, is going to meet us there.”
Dorathy smiled wide with excitement. “Oh excellent! You know I can’t even wrap my head around this sometimes . . . I am on a mission in deep space with extraterrestrials and other planets capable of supporting life . . . a lot of life, on a dozen planets. How is it that for countless decades we searched and were able to reach deeper and deeper into space without a hint of advanced intelligent life on other planets, and here it seems endless?”
Henry shook his head. “The only thing I can come up with is that though our planet was seeded intentionally, these beings came from another part of space, a higher dimension or reality. We are now in their part of space. The specimen Dimitri found gave all indications it had traveled through a wormhole. We can’t be sure though. We only know that we, humans, are part of something much bigger than ourselves and that we share a common ancestry with most of the beings we have thus far encountered. Whoever is responsible for planting the seeds of life, I guarantee they are still out there somewhere and so often we have been close to finding the answer. All I can say is that the clues have kept us going over the years and I think this ship of ours has some real significance to finding the other side and the Otherlings, as they are called by the peoples of this reality. I just wish we could make the connection.”
Dorathy pondered for a moment. “Let me ask you this, have you found anything out there that resembles the material this ship is made out of?”
“No, nothing. We have been told countless times to watch ourselves with our ship, as there is a wicked faction that would stop at nothing to take control over it. As you can imagine, the power it possesses may hold the key to finding the road to the other side.”
Dorathy spoke with some hesitation. “This ship is more than bio-material you found. It’s alive and I feel it has an intelligence and that it is certainly aware of us.”
Henry agreed. “Yes. My hope is that when we are close to our goal it finds a way of communicating with us.”
Brenda broke into their musings. “Good morning, my brave young souls. Are you ready to do battle with our flying, furry friends?” Brenda always seemed to be in a good mood, as if everything was right in her world.
Henry threw his sweaty towel at her and whispered some obscenity under his breath, as Dimitri rounded the corner and said, “Easy for you to say wench, you stay on the ship and the men have to do all the dangerous work.”
“Hey, I would watch who you call wench,” she said with one brow raised, “because I might not be able to see a couple of these bastards coming after you, or my com may not have a good connection. There are a lot of things that could go wrong out there.”
Magnus had been reading incoming messages from fellow space trotters while sipping his morning tea. Peering over his cup, he shared one of the messages with them. “Jobar has indicated the need for two cases of the poppies and wants to pay us with multi-system credits.”
“Excellent!” Henry seemed less grim for the first time in a long while. “Finally, we can purchase what we need without all the drama.”
Dimitri laughed. “What’s wrong, Henry? You don’t like being an interstellar drug dealer? My uncle pushed drugs for years, he was a very wealthy man in Russia. But one day he sold to the wrong person . . .”
“Yes,” Magnus said. “I do recall your Uncle Vladimir’s unfortunate accident . . . he found himself very dead after selling a bad batch that resulted in the drug overdose of a particular young woman.”
“Eh, she was a prostitute.”
Magnus continued, “She may have been one indeed, but she was also the daughter of a government official. I seem to recall she was the same woman with whom you had a . . . relationship, that consequently landed you here with us.”
Brenda laughed. “I see. Bad luck with women seems to follow your family around.”
Dimitri muttered something in Russian under his breath as he kicked his feet up on the table.
Henry had had just about enough, “I’m going to lay out a plan here and I want it to go smoothly and by the numbers. We all know we’ve got to land on the night side and come in slow and quiet.” He punched a key on the console and a holographic image of the planet’s surface appeared. “We land here in this clearing. A good supply is growing in this wooded area here,” he said as he pointed to an area where the holographic image widened and became clearer. “The only problem is it’s right next to these trees here and that is where our little friends live. We need to be very careful and very quiet!”
Dorathy’s excitement was barely contained and she laughed with joy. “This ship is going to land? You can breathe the air? The poppies are . . . narcotics? Oh my!”
Her crewmates looked at Dorathy with a bit of envy. They had all once had the same enthusiasm years ago, but it had soon turned to simple survival mode. Henry clapped his hands with authority and said, “Okay, crew, let’s get our gear prepped and ready to go in one hour. I want to get this shit over with and without incident.”
The crew moved with purpose.
“Hey Dora,” Brenda called. “Come sit by me and I’ll show you how we track these bastards.”
Dorathy moved into the cockpit and sat in the seat beside Brenda. She was still amazed by the technology her donation had helped develop.
“I had been working on this space bending technology . . . ,” Dorathy’s voice trailed off. “What now seems a lifetime ago.”
Brenda reached for Dorathy’s hand. “Look honey, what’s done is done. And as far as your family is concerned and everyone we left on Earth; it WAS a lifetime ago; they’re all gone now.”
Dorathy was stricken with a sense of sadness and loss. “Thanks, sometimes I just feel so . . . lost and helpless.”
Brenda nodded. “Considering what we have all been through, I think we do okay for ourselves.” The two women had begun to develop a bond that would last through to the other side.
CHAPTER 31
Their ship landed with quiet stealth; no rockets blasted, no landing gear locked into place, nothing but a shift in the air and a whiff of electrified ozone. Over the years the crew had become better acquainted with their miraculous ship and its amazing abilities, stripped of all the cumbersome apparatus that had been in place so many years before.
Dorathy contained her excitement so that she was able to concentrate on the task at hand. Brenda had set up the commlink for her and then the motion detector monitor. She knew what she had to do and, not unlike some of her other projects she had worked on in the past, lives depended on her accuracy. But this time it wasn’t a design of hers that had to be space worthy as so to offer safety to the occupants, this was the life or death of a friend by her direct involvement.
Dorathy bit her lip in concentration as the outer door opened and the men departed, wearing night vision gear and suits that controlled their heat output and weight in a low gravity environment. The air was only tolerable, but they had the means to adapt to most of the planets they visited.
Brenda spoke into her commlink, “Okay guys, so far so good. I see the heat signatures of only eleven of those bastards in the trees to the west. There may be more out of sensor range but right now there is no movement, so the little monsters must be asleep
.”
Brenda looked over at Dorathy and nodded her head at the screen. “See how they are in small groups, one group per tree? Families usually consist of two adults: a male and a female, and two to three youngsters, with an additional two or more young adults that haven’t left the nest yet. During our last visit here, I noticed only the males come in for the attack, but Christ it happened so quick I had a hard time keeping track of what was going on.”
Henry, Magnus, and Dimitri kept low to the ground and were moving in slow motion, careful not to draw any attention. The grass was tall in the clearing and offered a bit of camouflage as they made their approach to the trees. Henry looked up and pointed so the others could see. Hand gestures were their only form of communication out here as the creatures’ hearing seemed to pick up the slightest variation in night sounds.
Up in the canopy to the west they could see five family members sprawled out in the high limbs of the trees, in nests they had built from dried twigs, branches, and grass, and another six in the trees just beyond. As the men walked deeper into the forest, more groups appeared in the trees to the west and directly above their path. The poppies grew on the north side, around the trunks at the base of the trees. The flowers only bloomed at night, with an eerie, purple phosphorescence that was an indication of when they were at their peak chemical concentration.
Henry motioned forward at a purple glow of ground fog directly in front of them about ten meters in. He hated the idea of being surrounded by these creatures, but the glow was becoming brighter which meant there must be an abundance of crop ready to be picked.
Dimitri shook his head and pointed to the east. Magnus and Henry looked in that direction and counted at least twenty more creatures. Henry knew the odds were stacking up against them, indicating they needed to act quickly and do what they came here to do. Henry motioned to press on. Reluctantly they went but moved with purpose.
They made it to a small clearing and to their delight found a wealth of poppies ripe for picking. They promptly started to fill their bags with their gloved hands, as handling the poppies with bare hands would allow the toxins to penetrate through their skin. Masks covered their noses and mouths, so not to breathe in any of the spores.
Brenda’s voice came in on Henry’s earpiece, “Ah yeah . . . looks like a night watchman is circling in towards your direction, get what you can and exit out to the north.”
Henry mouthed ‘damn!’ He motioned to the men to tie up the bags and pointed in the direction to depart.
Dorathy said to Brenda, “I don’t like this, there are two more circling in, one from the north and one from the east.”
“Oh, shit!” Brenda used an open channel. “Okay guys, you need to get out now. Stay low and come straight out the path you went in on. You have three watchman circling in from above.”
Dorathy was frantic. “Brenda, what the hell are they going to do? They’re surrounded!” Dorathy was watching the monitor closely when she noticed movement in the trees where groups of the creatures had been sleeping. “Brenda! They’ve been alerted somehow, there’s movement!”
Brenda said to the men, “Get the hell out of there, pronto!”
Dorathy couldn’t bear the thought of them being out there armed only with small side arms and dart guns. Even though the darts were soaked in a sedative, it had in the past been slow to take effect.
She stood and moved from her seat. “I’ve got a plan!”
Brenda yelled after her, “Whatever you’re going to do, you better do it now!”
Dorathy snatched a side arm and slung the holster around her waist then grabbed night vision goggles, her earpiece and a cartridge of flare rods. As she passed a nearby table, she scooped up the nunchucks she had used to fine-tune her skills only the day before. With a final mental run-through, she was out the hatch and running across the field of tall grass. She cut to the north to draw the attention of the night watchman there, hoping that the others would follow to investigate.
Dorathy was lightheaded from the lack of suitable air but knew her body would adjust with the synthetic DNA pumping through her veins. By the time she was far to the north, Brenda caught on to her plan. “Okay girlfriend, I gotcha. Take that flare rod and throw it directly up the tree line when I give you the word. Looks like two of them are flying your way. They’re coming now. After you toss it, double back. The guys are going to need help! Shit, throw it now—long and high due north!”
Dorathy did exactly that. She could see more of the creatures flying in to investigate. Then she was off and running south, straight along the edge of the forest. The men were about to break free from the cover of the trees thirty meters in front of her, when she looked up to see movement everywhere in the limbs high above. She hesitated for a moment to ascertain their direction and ran into the forest diagonally, so she would come in behind the men.
There was a screech from behind and she dived down to the ground just in time as one of the creatures flew over her head and landed directly in her path. Dorathy jumped to her feet and came face to face with an alien creature that resembled nothing she had ever seen on Earth. Large, canine teeth filled its maw and horns extended from its head, along its back and down its tail. Its long arms were tipped with three talons and its short muscular legs ended in feet that were comprised of three long, curved talons and an opposable thumb with an additional claw. It extended its leathery wings, making it look far larger as it advanced on her, spitting and hissing, twitching its wings and standing tall at close to eye level.
Dorathy knew what she needed to do and shot her sidearm, leaving the creature lying on the ground shuddering in pain. She was off running again and she could see the men ducking and sprinting through the trees in front of her. Dimitri was bringing up the rear, shooting up at the creatures as he ran, to no avail.
The sound of the shooting woke the rest of the tribe and they were descending from the trees in droves. Dorathy ran up to them one by one as they swooped in for the attack and used her nunchucks, sometimes knocking one right out of the air. She rendered the creatures unconscious with skilled, precise blows to the head. She saw Henry was down and had a creature ripping at him. Running to his side she struck a solid blow to the back of the creature’s head. Henry, although injured and bloodied, was able to break free and rolled from under the creature.
Dimitri shot past them while Magnus went back to pick up the bag he had dropped making his escape. Dorathy yelled, “Duck, Magnus!” And he hit the dirt. Dorathy ran towards Magnus to help, but he had already flattened out his opponent.
They had run past the tree line and were now out in the open. Dorathy was helping Henry across the grass and in front of them they saw Dimitri go down with a creature on his back. Dorathy aimed and fired her gun at the creature’s vulnerable underbelly. It went down with a whimper.
With the trees no longer there to protect them from an onslaught the creatures were now flying after them in a swarm. Dorathy yelled, “Magnus take Henry and the bags to the ship, I’ll draw them away from you,” Magnus didn’t argue, he could see she was armed and capable. Dorathy ran away from the ship, waving a lighted flare and screaming, “Over here!”
Her plan worked and she could see her friends boarding the ship. Waving a flare, Magnus had returned after depositing Henry in the ship. Dorathy sprinted over to pick up a bag of poppies that had been dropped along the way. She could hear one of the winged apes coming in for her and turned just at the right moment to slam it out of the air. One after another they came.
Just as she made it to the ship, she found herself surrounded. Magnus came to help, but there were too many. Several attacked him and he could not beat them all off. He ducked for cover, throwing himself through the hatch of the ship.
Dorathy was on her own, as they closed in on her slowly. Unexpectedly, the ship shot out an electrified rod of plasma that laid her assailants out on the ground in a heap. Shocked but alert, she leapt over their unconscious bodies and dove through the hatch. Magnus gra
sped her arms to pull her all the way in. The hatch slid closed and the ship rose, swiftly climbing to altitude.
Magus held Dorathy as she tried to maintain her composure. “Holly shit! What just happened?”
“Good question Dora, because we have never seen that feature of this ship. We had no idea it had such capabilities!”
Dorathy leaned against its inner hull and hugged it. “Thank you!”
Brenda yelled back over her shoulder, “Magnus, you need to take over in the cockpit. Henry is not doing well; I have to tend to his wounds.”
“Right-o, on my way.”
Dimitri stumbled up to Dorathy as she was taking her seat at the table to check herself for any wounds. “You need a shot of vodka to calm your nerves.”
Dorathy accepted readily and took a good long gulp. “Not bad.” She watched Dimitri to size him up. She was not impressed by him. Brilliant scientist, yes, but his misguided attempts at rock stardom led her to believe he was all talk no action, and he had proved that with his cowardly behavior.
“So, tell me Dimitri, were you ever a track and field guy in your youth? Perhaps a sprinter?”
“Me? Never. I was too busy at university for athleticism, but I was known to chase the women.” He burst into laughter at the thought. “But maybe I think they were chasing me.”
Dorathy smiled. “I guess that’s why you were the first one to the ship . . . being chased, that is.”
Dimitri caught her sarcasm. “Hey, those creatures down there can kill. Damn right, I ran to the ship!”
“Oh, absolutely,” she said with anger, “you outran us all.”
