by Mark Tufo
There had to have been half the ship crammed in that viewing room all trying to get a look. Funny how, now that the thing was captive, everyone wanted to see it. When the nasty fucks were crawling around the ship, nobody wanted anything to do with them. Corridors had looked like the center street of a ghost town. I may have even seen a tumbleweed or two whistle on by.
Adair was in the room as well, with a vast array of equipment that looked like you’d need a serious batch of advanced degrees to operate.
I was happy to be elevated above the room and separated by a thick glass wall.
“Colonel Talbot, is our patient speaking now?” Doc Baker asked over the intercom system.
“Uh, no, Doc, nothing that I can hear anyway. He is pretty pissed off, though. Might want to record those levels.”
“Could you please say something?” Doc asked Uut.
“You heard the man,” I shouted into the intercom, knowing how much they disliked our voices.
“We will destroy all of you!” he shrieked. Most everyone slammed their hands to their ears to keep out the screeching sound.
“Catch that, Doc?” I asked sarcastically.
The Doc nodded, but it was Adair who seemed the most interested. He was talking animatedly to someone next to him.
“Major Adair, is there something of note you could share with us?” Paul asked.
“Sir, the SIO machine picked up his words perfectly.”
“What the hell is an SIO?” I asked to those behind me.
“SIO stands for Scientific Imaging Oscillator. It’s a machine the Progerians left behind that gives off all frequencies in the body, from bacteria to parasites and even individual organs. It has the ability to then map them out and show exactly where a problem is or may develop. It would have taken years for us just to figure out the basics had we not had Progerian help,” Adair said excitedly. “Colonel Talbot, could you please get him to talk out of our normal range?”
“Uut, don’t make me be an intermediary, you’ll soon learn I’m an asshole.”
“If that means ‘person that needs to be killed above all others’ than you are indeed correct. Driftar was right in wanting you dead.”
Apparently Ham did have a demon-given name. “Did you get that?” I asked Adair.
If he wasn’t in a room with thirty other people I think he would have broken out into dance. His face was beaming like it was Christmas morning and he’d just got his first chemistry set.
He gave me the thumbs-up. “Sir, I’m going to need you to give me his entire text without any of, umm, your colorful sayings.”
“Are you saying I embellish?” I asked him.
“No, sir, um, just if we’re going to successfully translate, I need to associate the correct readings with the exact words.”
This went on for about two more hours. By that time, most of the people watching had left. The only people who grew more excited were Doc and Adair. Towards the end, the script had changed a bit, Adair would tell me what Uut had said and I would either confirm or clarify.
“Colonel Talbot, the general has sent me to tell you that we will be arriving at your departure point in less than thirty minutes.”
“Thank you,” I told the messenger. “Adair, I have to go. Are we about done here?” He’d been staring at a print out for nearly ten minutes.
When he looked up I had a moment where I thought he could be having an “O” moment. Yeah, think on that for a minute. “I can tell with about ninety-two percent accuracy what he is saying, and with some more work, there is no reason to believe I can’t get to ninety-eight percent.”
“Okay, that’s awesome news.” And I meant it. “But can you do that without me? I have to get going.”
“Going? Right. Um…it would be easier with you here, but there is no reason to think we couldn’t get there. Good luck, Colonel.”
“Congratulations on your breakthrough, Major.” And with that, I was gone. I think he’d already forgotten I’d been there by the time the door closed.
“How’s it going?” BT asked when I came back.
“Shit, they’re going to have a Stryvers-to-English dictionary made by the time we come back.”
“We’re coming back?”
“Figure of speech. When I was a kid, I loved all sorts of science fiction stories, couldn’t read enough of them. Dreamed of traveling the stars and going to different worlds. What a fucking idiot I was.”
BT snorted.
“I’m done with space, I just hope space is done with me. Do you know where my wife is?”
“She went to the bridge to run simulations.”
I’m a little embarrassed to say it took me longer than it should have to figure out what she was running simulations on. At least I didn’t ask BT. He’d seen the furrow on my forehead as I’d thought it through, I’m sure.
Tracy came in not two minutes later. I was sitting in a chair looking over my new toy, a modified Stryver rifle. She barely acknowledged our presence as she started stuffing things in her backpack.
“Hi, honey, welcome home,” I said after about fifteen seconds of silence. No response. “You maybe want to tell us what’s going on?”
“No, I really don’t.” She said it with such authority and conviction that a smart man would have not asked again and most likely walked away. I am not that man.
“This have something to do with Beth?” I might as well have touched a raw spot with a lit match. The look she sent me almost had physicality to it. This was no exaggeration, as even BT, who was off to my side, caught enough of it that he began to hem and haw about needing to check his room for things he may have forgotten.
“Fucking chicken, gonna bale on me like that in my time of need.”
“Just because you dug the hole doesn’t mean I have to jump in there with you.” He was sidling up against the wall, making for the door.
“One in three,” Tracy finally said, just as BT’s hand closed on the handle.
“Huh?” we both asked.
“One in three, those are our best odds of launching a shuttle and escaping to the surface before we’re detected and either captured or destroyed.”
“Captured?” I asked. I’d take instant destruction over being captured again.
“If you take our actually making it out of the equation…” she started.
“I’d rather not,” I told her honestly.
Again the glare came, but I wisely ceded this time. “Of that sixty-seven percent chance of failure, it breaks down with being blown out of the sky at around sixty-eight percent, and being captured is right around twenty-nine percent.”
I did some quick math in my head. “Umm, what’s the other three percent?” That she had not explained this led me to rightly believe how unsavory it might be.
“We are sucked into the buckle as the Guardian departs.”
“How bad is that?” BT asked.
“We would be on a ship that was not capable of buckle drive, we would be destroyed.”
“Then shouldn’t that just be part of the sixty-eight percent?” I asked. I mean, what difference did it make how you died? Yeah that was about as smart as asking a burn victim if they would rather have broken their leg or received third degree burns. Both were injuries, but they did not carry equal weights.
“We would tumble through the void, spinning wildly out of control while the very atoms of our beings would slowly be pulled apart. It could take days for us to die and the pain would be so intense we would be able to do little else except scream.”
“Oh,” was all I could manage.
“Are we still going through with this?” BT asked, his eyes wide.
“It’s not incredibly better odds if we stay aboard. The success of the Guardian sits atop a tall, skinny fence.”
“Fifty-fifty? Really? Even with a surprise attack?”
She nodded, sitting down on the bed.
“BT, you can obviously do what you want, even if I thought I could force you, I wouldn’t. But if
I’m going to die, it is going to be in an attempt to see my son again, not in a tin can doing hidden hit and runs,” I said. Tracy nodded in agreement.
“Let’s see, I can die with crackers I know or die with crackers I don’t.”
“Welcome aboard,” I told him.
Ten minutes later we were on the shuttle doing our pre-flight check-in. Well, I wasn’t per se, it was Tracy. I was under the false impression this thing had some sort of autopilot that would safely avoid obstructions and land us blissfully in a meadow of sunflowers. This all goes back to my not properly thinking things out.
Tracy had done a few flight simulations; it had been her goal to eventually fly a fighter. I was against anything that kept her more than ten feet from my side, but these weren’t times you could idly sit by on the sidelines and hope that everything passed you by.
“How many sims did you do?” BT asked bravely.
“Twelve and a half.”
“Oh, you had a half as well?”
“Why are you poking her?” I asked him.
“I’m just wondering if that half flight training session ended early because of a crash.”
“All of my flights ended up in crashes,” she revealed. I wish she’d kept that to herself. “Relax,” she added when she realized we were both staring at her and, at least I was, with a gaping mouth. “They were mostly designed to end in an accident.”
“Mostly?” BT had the gumption to ask.
“It’s harder than it looks.”
“Um, honey, doesn’t this thing just pretty much fly itself?”
“No,” came her absolute and final answer.
“So then maybe the fighter stuff didn’t go well, but you aced the shuttle classes then.”
“Didn’t take any.” She was still going over the equipment.
“What makes you qualified to fly this thing, woman?” BT asked with a modicum of heat.
“I am a mother!” She turned on him, the finger of death coming up as well. “I will not crash this ship because I have to get back to my son. The Stryvers, the Progerians, intergalactic war, my lack of experience…nothing is going to keep me from that final destination. So if you could please sit down and shut up while I go over this stuff, it would be greatly appreciated.”
She said please, but nowhere in her words was this a request. BT got the point and backed slowly away from her.
“Ever win a fight?” he asked me as he sat down.
“Not even close.” I was busy strapping my harness.
“You maybe haven’t thought to leave her?”
“She won’t let me.”
“Shut up, you two!”
“Yes, ma’am.” BT was now pulling his straps tight.
I could tell Tracy was pretty stressed out; she was attempting something in which she was completely out of her element. This had been the only alternative when Paul said he could not spare a pilot for what he had called a “one way” mission. I think he meant to substitute “suicide” in there and pulled back at the final moment. I want to believe he wouldn’t give us a pilot because he thought we’d back out, but the fucker hadn’t yielded when Tracy told him she’d do it. I knew she was inexperienced, I just didn’t know to what degree. I wondered if it was too late for me to pull out. I grinned.
“What the fuck you grinning at?” BT asked. He looked like he was about to be sick.
“I think we’re about to die.”
“I fucking hate crazy people.” He quickly undid his straps and moved to a seat further away.
Tracy had a manual on her lap and another propped up on the seat next to her. She was flipping through pages and looking back and forth from the books to the equipment.
“Ten minutes until drop out, all personnel to their assigned battle stations,” came over the ship speakers.
BT was rocking back and forth, at least as much as the drawn-tight restraints would allow. “Shit, shit, shit…” he kept repeating his curse mantra.
“That won’t help,” I whispered.
He flipped me the finger.
The next series of events happened almost faster than I could keep up with. The ship dropped out of the buckle and there was a lurch like you sometimes get when you stumble off one of those moving walkways they have at airports. The hangar doors opened and we fired out along with every manner of ordinance this ship possessed. We were at a slight angle, but we saw every red, blue, and silver streaks head to what had to be the most imposing spacecraft I’d ever seen. It literally looked like gun emplacements were stacked upon gun emplacements and that was how the ship had been created. Tracy had altered our course so we were taking as severe an angle away from the battle as we could. It could not have been more than eight seconds since we had left the Guardian and yet the Progerian war vessel had already returned fire. The Stryvers’ equipment had been as good as guaranteed, at least. The Progerians had not been shooting before we arrived. The attack had been a surprise; sure, maybe it had only lasted for eight seconds, but maybe that was all we needed.
I was forced into my seat from the g-forces Tracy was putting the small ship through. I had no choice but to look out the windows across from me.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“What?” BT was across the aisle and to the left of me. He was trying to turn his head to look.
Massive impacts struck all along the right side of the Progerian battleship. A finale at a fireworks show couldn’t compete with the display I was bearing witness to.
“The fucker did it. He’s hitting that ship with everything.”
“They still there?” BT was straining.
“I can’t tell. The Guardian is beginning to blur.” That was a telltale sign that she was about to buckle.
“We’re not far enough away.” I got the distinct impression Tracy was talking just loud enough for her own ears, but that came through loud and clear as if she had whispered it in my ear. “Hold on,” were her next words, but the vibrations of the sound waves hadn’t stopped moving when I felt forces threatening to compress me to half my former self.
I wanted to say, “What the fuck” but the words got shoved back down my throat. Our ship was vibrating like we had flown into the world’s largest paint shaker. Pieces of debris that had been loose or were shaken loose were flying about the cabin. I’d never experienced firsthand an earthquake; right now I felt I was getting a reasonable facsimile. Then things really started to get weird. I could feel two opposing forces, one trying to shove me into and maybe through my seat and the other trying to pull me apart. It was not something I ever desire to experience again. We were getting less and less rattled and I thought that, if I desired, (which I most certainly did not) I could stand.
“Mike, we’re in trouble.” She’d said it evenly, maybe even serenely, like she was accepting of our destined fate. That was until she looked back, and I realized her usual hale of health color was somewhere around the color of a spun spider web.
“Can I help?” That was like me asking Einstein if he needed any help with his theories. Pretty much out of my league.
There was a brilliant flash, my initial hope had been that it was the Progerian vessel being obliterated. It wasn’t. The Guardian had departed. Abandoned is what I was feeling right now. Space seemed much more vast and expansive when you had no friends in the vicinity.
“Incoming!” BT shouted. He was looking over my shoulder and out the window.
An alarm blared. Yeah, because we needed just one more piece of evidence to let us know just how fucked we were. This is where a multitude of things that a physicist could spend decades working on and never be able to decode happened, all at relatively the same time. I mean, I may be talking milliseconds of differential, and the only reason I could even pick up on it was because my brain had slowed life down to micro-slivers of time as death bore down on us. The Progerian vessel had indeed fired on us, and was about to make us cream-of-spaceship soup, when whatever kinetic energy that was sucking us into the buckle-void took hold and w
e were jerked out of the way, like a protective mother might her infant child when an errantly thrown football is heading his way.
For once, I was on the side of getting shot. The blast would have been instantaneous, we probably wouldn’t have had the time to register that we’d died; whereas, now we were about to prolong our deaths into an agony of moments, each punctuated with unimaginable pain. Sounded like a blast.
“This sucks,” came from BT. I could not have spoken truer words of wisdom had I tried.
I saw Tracy pushing, pulling, turning, twisting, and smacking on all sorts of controls. If she was having any luck I could not tell. I was undoing my buckles, figuring I could smack shit just as easily as she could, when I was violently thrown back into my seat, busting my head open on the bulkhead behind me. I was fairly certain I’d been shot, the pouring of blood from my wound was that pronounced. Another alarm added to the din. I always thought dying would be quieter. The ship started to turn violently; I was being tossed around like sneakers in a dryer. BT reached out and grabbed me, pulling me tight like a child might his favorite teddy bear when the lights go out.
It was on the tip of my tongue—the whole “I didn’t know you cared” type of comment. But my head felt like my brains were spilling out, and I had a case of nausea that threatened to become visual if I opened my mouth.
“Stop bleeding on me, man,” BT said as he squeezed tighter. If he kept doing that, I was likely to burst, and that was going to make a hell-fuck of a mess. We were still spinning; from my angle I could just make out Tracy as she fought the reins trying to regain control.
I don’t know how many revolutions we’d done before she finally righted the ship. I’d lost count somewhere around a hundred and twelve. I think I’d lost consciousness for a few seconds, more from the spinning than the head wound, although that could have played a factor as well.
“What happened?” BT asked. Long ropes of drool were hanging from his mouth and were just about to make contact with my cheek. I tried to push away, but I would have had an easier time ripping through my original seat restraints, and I think they had Kevlar in them.
“An explosion on the Prog ship shook us free from the grip of the Guardian’s buckle,” Tracy turned to explain. “Oh, my God, Mike, are you alright?”