by J. N. Chaney
“Yeah, we’ll go with you,” Stacy said, looking to Ricky and me for confirmation.
“Of course,” Ricky said.
I nodded too. I didn’t know Ira well, but I knew enough.
Together, we exited the cafeteria tent, ready to bury yet another colonist this planet stole from us.
10
The patch of ground chosen to act as the new cemetery was half a kilometer from where the Orion rested. A single tree rose from the brightly colored grass and dark soil on a sloping hill.
A hole had already been dug for Ira. His body was wrapped in a white cloth and lay beside the grave. The group gathered there was smaller than I expected, but I guess we were all still just getting to know one another.
I was surprised to see Elon there, still with a heavy limp but no pain on his face. He looked a hundred times better than the would-be drunk slinging bottles against the wall.
Lou, the older, bald, religious man, led the ceremony. He was dressed in a dark grey, high-collared shirt, a pair of matching pants, and dress shoes that looked as out of place in the alien grass as anything I’d ever seen. I guess we were all out of place at the moment.
A handful of other colonists I didn’t know came as well, and finally, right before the ceremony began, Arun and Captain Harold.
The two didn’t speak to one another, nor did they even look in each other’s direction.
“I want to thank all of you for coming,” Lou began. “I know many of us didn’t get to know Ira well. It’s a testament to his character that you showed up at all. I only spoke with Ira once in passing. We were on the Orion in those first few days. I was lost trying to get to one of the viewing levels. I didn’t even have to ask for directions. Ira was the kind of soul who saw others in need and came to help. He noticed the confused expression on an old man’s brow and offered assistance. That’s what kind of person Ira was.”
Lou paused for a moment to let the words sink in.
I placed my hands in front of me uncomfortably. It had been a long time since I had been to a funeral or any kind of religious gathering, for that matter. It took a lot to make me uncomfortable, but here I was.
Instead of making eye contact with Lou, I looked past him, surveying the landscape. To our right, the hull of the Orion rose on the horizon. In front of us and a good kilometer away, a line of trees dotted the landscape.
I caught movement. The trees were so far away, it was hard to tell if I had seen a person or maybe some kind of animal. It could have even been a breeze pushing against one of the many bushes. The only thing I knew was something moved out there.
I fought down panic or the need to tell anyone yet. I wasn’t sure what I had seen. I wasn’t going to interrupt a funeral to tell everyone I might or might not have seen a person hiding in the trees.
Lou went on about the life after and forgiveness. I ignored him for the time being, squinting and craning my neck forward to see if I could spot anything.
Once again, a figure that looked like a man dressed in black shifted deeper into the bushes.
A feeling of dread descended on me like a bucket of cold water. Someone was out there. The hairs on the back of my neck rose in unison. I went through the checklist of the reasons anyone would be hiding in the bushes while we held a funeral ceremony.
Most colonists were eager to find one another and traveled outside the Orion and the erected tents in pairs or even groups for safety. I was positive I had seen a figure and nearly sure it was a man.
I wasn’t about to interrupt Ira’s funeral to go off running to the trees now. It would have to wait. My eyes never left the area where I had seen the person moving, but no other signs appeared.
The call for anyone to share a story about Ira came. Two people I didn’t know had nice things to say about him. How Ira was always looking to help and that we had lost a great man.
Boss Creed came last.
He looked down on Ira’s still form under the white sheets. His eyes never left him. “I wish I could have known you longer, Ira. You were a good kid with a smile on your face, always willing to do what needed to be done. This planet has taken a lot from all of us, and for some of us, it’s taken everything. All I can promise you is that we’re going to get off this godforsaken rock. We’re going to get off, and people will remember you and what you did here. Rest easy, Ira. We’ll take it from here.”
Boss Creed never looked up at those gathered while he spoke. It was as if his entire speech was just a private conversation between himself and Ira. You’d think Ira was alive and well. I half expected him to respond.
As Boss Creed moved aside to allow Lou to begin the closing remarks, I felt a tickle on the tips of the fingers on my right hand. I looked down to see Mutt grinning up at me. His ears made the brush against my hand.
“Where were you an hour ago?” I whispered to him. “I could have used you back in the cafeteria tent.”
Of course, Mutt didn’t respond. Instead, he went down to all fours, placing his head in his paws. His eyes rested on Ira’s still form, and he gave a tiny whine.
The ceremony soon ended with people awkwardly heading back to the Orion and the steel wall being constructed. I didn’t blame them for not knowing what to say. I didn’t know how to transition from a moment of somber reflection on death to what was for lunch either.
Boss Creed and Ricky stayed behind with Lou to lower Ira’s body into the grave and cover his corpse. I would have offered a hand, but my interest had never swayed from the copse of trees beyond the cemetery grounds.
I still didn’t want to mention it to anyone. It could have been a kid playing or maybe someone who had gotten lost and retreated back into the brush when they saw they were about to interrupt a funeral.
Mutt jogged alongside me, sniffing the air with his long snout.
“Where you going?” Stacy asked, catching up to me. “The Orion’s back that way.”
“Not headed to the Orion,” I answered. “I think I saw something in the brush over there during the ceremony. I’m going to go check it out.”
“What did you see?” Stacy asked. She kept pace with me and scanned the trees in front of us.”
“Don’t know exactly. Someone was in there,” I said, searching for the right words to express the feeling I didn’t want to push out into the world.
It couldn’t be him, I said to myself. He died in the crash. The holding cell with the two prisoners in the Orion broke off upon descent to the planet. Odds were whoever was on that section struck the ground like a meteor and died before they knew what was happening.
Stacy placed a hand on the blaster on the right side of her hip. We crossed the rest of the grassy field in front of us without an issue. There was a grouping of trees in front of us with bushes on either side. This was where I had seen someone. The thin foliage pushed further back, interspersed with wide open plains.
Whoever had been snooping around in here was a professional at sticking to shadows. After the two times I had seen him, he disappeared using the sparse terrain as cover to retreat.
Stacy and I entered the brush searching for any sign of who I might have seen poking around. Mutt lowered his head to the ground, sniffing hard both in and out on the dirt soil.
“I’m just going to be honest with you here,” I said, examining the ground for footprints, broken leaves from the plants, or anything else that might signal someone passing in the brush. “I don’t really know what I’m looking for. I’m not a tracker.”
Stacy smirked. She was bent over low to the ground, her right hand still on the handle of her blaster. “You know, the normal stuff: tracks, threads of clothing that may have been tugged off, bent or pushed down grass as the person passed.”
We both spent another ten minutes scouring the area. There was nothing there except the eerie feeling we were being watched. It was the same feeling I used to get in the arena when my opponent thought they had the upper hand on me.
It was Mutt who finally stumbled on something
.
A low growl came from the beast’s throat. Both Stacy and I exchanged glances and headed over to where the dog stood snarling at a piece of cloth caught deep in a prickly bush that looked more like cactus than anything else.
My heart seized in my chest as I realized what the piece of cloth was. It was a red handkerchief, the same kind someone could wear over the lower half of their face to conceal their identity. Memories of both Disciples on the Orion flashed in front of my eyes. It was the same one they wore. The same crimson red Disciples used to conceal their identities.
I had come up against the cult twice so far, the first time with Maksim Petrov and the second time with Marcy Knot. Marcy was dead from the explosion she set off that took the Orion out of slip space. Maksim had been in the cell block of the ship when it broke apart on reentry. We assumed his section of the ship exploded on impact. Maybe we assumed too much.
“What are the odds this has nothing to do with Maksim?” Stacy asked with a heavy sigh as she took in the same article of clothing I did. “What are the odds this is some random handkerchief blown in by the wind? I mean, there’s debris everywhere.”
“I wish,” I said, looking at her with a raised eyebrow. “I want to believe all that, but I saw someone. I know I saw someone.”
I turned, suddenly scanning the woods behind us. I half expected to see the crazed Disciple running at us from some hidden location, a rock in his hand to use as a weapon. There was no such attack at the moment. But I still felt like we were being watched.
“You feel it too, huh?” Stacy asked as she reached down to retrieve the handkerchief. It was burned on one side, dark smoke stains on the other. “Like we’re the fox and the hound is about to pounce?”
“I feel it all right,” I said. “There are no tracks, but he would be well-trained at hiding those anyway. He’s too good to have dropped his handkerchief. He’s playing with us.”
“I’ll get a couple of suits in here,” Stacy said, eyeing the terrain behind us. “If he is here, we’ll find him. I think we should get you a blaster to permanently carry—”
Stacy stopped talking as the earpiece squawked to life. I couldn’t make out what she was listening to, but I got the general sense of doom by the look of dread on her face.
“Yes, I understand, Iris, but isn’t that a good thing?” Stacy pressed her right hand to her ear. She looked at me with large eyes as she listened to what the Cognitive had to say. “Okay, I’m with Dean now. We’ll head back.”
“I don’t even want to know,” I said shaking my head. “Something tells me you’re going to tell me anyway.”
“Danger, Will Robinson,” Stacy said, jerking her head back to the Orion. “Doctor Wong got Iris’ long-range scanner up and working again. They’ve found something.”
11
I made my way back to the Orion with Stacy and Mutt. We traveled through the sideways elevator again to the bridge of the ship.
Arun, Elon, Iris, and Captain Harold were already present. Everyone in the room was waiting for Stacy and me to begin. Their eyes were grim. If Captain Harold and Arun held any animosity toward one another for the events that morning, neither of them showed it.
“There they are.” Iris nodded toward us with her ethereal blue glow. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt your date. The data we received once the long-range scanners were active required a meeting as soon as possible.”
“Uh, we weren’t on a date,” Stacy said, scrunching her nose as if she just smelled something bad.
“Definitely not a date,” I said as I tossed the crimson red handkerchief on top of the holo table.
Everyone stared at the item. I watched as realization touched their eyes.
“Where did you find this?” Elon asked, reaching for the cloth. He lifted it and frowned.
“It was in a copse of trees just outside the funeral ceremony,” I answered. “I think he was watching us.”
“No, he’s dead,” Arun said, searching everyone’s expression in the room for a consensus. “His portion of the Orion broke off upon descent. It had to have struck the ground like a meteor. He’s dead.”
“Just to be clear, who are we talking about? A Disciple?” Doctor Wong asked nervously, adjusting his glasses.
“We caught and imprisoned a Disciple on the Orion who was trying to sabotage the ship,” Elon explained. “He was in the cell block of the Orion that broke off when we crashed.”
“What are the odds that the wind blew the handkerchief in?” Stacy asked.
“The odds that an article of clothing from a portion of the ship twenty kilometers away could travel this close to our location in a matter of days are exactly zero point zero, zero, two, nine, nine percent,” Iris answered. “Otherwise, very unlikely.”
“Well, that’s a very exact number, Iris,” I said, understanding she would have to know where the cell block of the ship impacted on the planet to figure out that very complicated portion of math. “We know where the cell block of the ship landed?”
“Indeed, it’s about time we had some good news.” Iris smiled. She waved a hand over the holo table. A green planet appeared in front of us. “With my long-range sensors now active, I’m able to see half of the planet, where different escape ships and pods landed as well as where various sections of the ship ended up.”
We all watched as Iris zoomed in on the view of the planet in front of us. A miniature Orion showed up on the planet’s surface. All around and in sporadic intervals across the terrain, dots appeared labeled as “ship” or “pod”. My mind tried to calculate how many there were. There had to be hundreds of escape crafts dotting the landscape like some kind of disease.
Along with the markers on the map showing the location of escaped pods, there were other much larger chunks of debris of the actual Orion itself. Massive sections of the ship that had broken off during descent now showed on the holographic display.
“How many escape crafts are there?” Captain Harold asked.
“There are five more escape ships unaccounted for as well as over two hundred of the single and double escape pods,” Iris said, pointing to the larger portions of the Orion. “As far as I can tell from our long-range scanners, there are also two smaller portions of the Orion still somewhat intact.”
Iris moved her hands over the hologram, enhancing the view. She focused on the east side of the map to where the red mountains rose with their jagged edges. “The section of the ship holding the communication equipment landed here, while the section of the ship housing the prisoner cell block landed closer to the water to the west. There are other sections of the Orion scattered around, but these are the two that I can say landed intact, to some extent.”
“And were your long-range scanners able to detect any… alien activity?” Arun asked, pausing on the word as if she were having a difficult time speaking it into existence.
“No intelligent life that I can discern.” Iris shook her head. “No buildings either, except for those closed doors set into the mountain wall. I do have more information on the planet itself, however.”
Iris zoomed out of the close-up hologram of our section of the planet. A green ball, more of an oval instead of a perfectly round planet, met our eyes.
“Although I can only see half of the planet due to my scanners, I can mock up what the other half looks like based on the size and shape of our side. Lucky for us, this planet is rather small, almost the size of a moon.”
“Can you tell us where in the galaxy we are?” Stacy asked another of the many questions we all had.
“Unfortunately, no.” Iris gave a very human frown. “It’s something that has been bothering me for quite some time. I’ve run all the calculations, over and over again. I’ve noted the stars that appear in the night sky as well as the suns and where we might have fallen out of slip space. All I know for sure is that we are in an uncharted portion of the galaxy. If we are able to gather some of the communication equipment, I might be able to get a signal out for anyone
searching for us to hear.”
“Iris, can we get that enhanced view of our location again, please?” Elon asked.
“Certainly,” Iris said. Her hands moved in a flurry as she enhanced the view of our side of the green holographic planet in front of us.
“I think it’s clear what we have to do,” Arun said, nodding toward all the ships and escape pod dots on the map. “There are people out there right now, lost, maybe hurt who need our help.”
“We could help more people if we were able to get to the communication section of the Orion and bring back the gear we need,” Captain Harold said, eyeing Arun. “That would not only allow us to send out a broadcast to anyone listening for us but also allow us to communicate with all the survivors on the planet. If they are alive and out there looking for the Orion, we could give them directions on where to find us.”
I didn’t really want a part of what was about to happen. I could see Arun’s eyes narrow as she considered Captain Harold’s words. She took a moment to think about what she was going to say before she continued.
“I see the wisdom in that plan, Captain Harold.” Arun surprised us all as she validated the captain’s plan. “Perhaps like before, we can focus on two goals at once.”
While Arun and the rest of those gathered worked out the details, I took a closer look at the map of the planet in front of us. The section of the Orion that Iris pointed out holding the prisoner cell block had crashed down on a beach area of the planet, northwest of our location. Just to the north of this was also where one of the five remaining escape ships had touched down.
I had to know for my own sanity if Maksim was still out there or if he had, in fact, died in the crash. I could hear his voice in my head calling me brother and grinning with that maniac-like look on his face.
“We’ll need to send two larger teams.” Captain Harold was already putting together the logistics of the trips. “One will go to the east, where the communication equipment landed in the mountains. The other will start with the crafts and secure any survivors who may be injured or lost.”
