Endeavor
Page 9
When our lips separated, I discovered Crickett standing next to us placing two sweaty glasses on the coffee table. Now I had to wonder just then if Crickett would be the one to kill me instead of her mother. After all, she walked in on us while I seemingly allowed her mother to kiss me.
“With this kiss, I hereby make you a part of the family. This is a bond that cannot be broken, even upon death. Just the same as a kiss cannot be undone, neither can this bond,” Astrid spoke as though she were reading a script, “You are now my son and all I have is yours. Crickett is yours and I expect you to love her forever and to always make amends should you ever let her down. Vastian, I really hope you understand these expectations.”
“I do,” I nodded.
She then patted my leg and turned toward Crickett who stood nearby, “By the power vested in me as the family matriarch, you two are now one person and I expect you to also love him forever, without end.”
“I will, Mom,” she said with tears welling in those giant eyes of hers, “Thank you for your blessing.”
Astrid also had tears in her eyes as she looked from her daughter to me. In spite of the tears, she couldn’t hide her smile.
“Just so you realize – as of this moment, you’re living in a whole new world.”
KAPTEYN C
And it was indeed a whole new world starting the moment her mother had kissed me. Although the processes and the paperwork were different from my own world, Crickett and I were for all intents and purposes married on the same day that I had learned of my banishment.
And on that day, I became a contributing member to the very same orchard that had always been the supplier of apples, juices, and sauces to my own parents. And all the while in my new role, I began sneaking handwritten and signed notes to my parents in those crates, letting them know that I was alive and doing well. There was no way for me to get replies to those letters, so I had to just cross my fingers and hope that these letters found them well.
My first letter informed them that I’d found love and actually got married to a beautiful brunette with a heart of gold. Then as time passed, I told them little tidbits about my mother-in-law or the random and unwelcome visits from Idris. I gave them enough hints about my world that I was fairly confident they understood the ship to be significantly larger than we’d always believed.
Then, about one year after my first hidden letter, I informed my parents about their new grandson. We’d named the beautiful boy Vale as an intentional homophone for the word Veil. We named him this because he was the firstborn of a generation who would be raised with a knowledge of the world hidden behind the veil. He would be born into a world without lies or charades. He would know where we came from and where we were going to. I also managed to send over several photographs of the family with that hidden letter.
Throughout the years leading up to our arrival, we all shared the same farmhouse. It had been nice living together as an extended family who insisted on sharing at least one meal a day no matter how busy things got to be. And it had been during these meals that I started slowly offering tidbits about the world I had come from. I shared important details, eventually explaining that we were all living on an interstellar ship that I originally assisted in piloting. Needless to say, there was some sufficient amount of skepticism from both Astrid and Harrion. That would all come to an end on a sunny morning two years, three weeks, and four days after I’d first set foot into this world. That was the day that the waterfall shut down, the doors had opened up, and the giant curved stairs rose up from the pond.
I had been living those last couple years in a media-dominant, news-hungry world that existed above my previous home, so I had an important role in assisting the two worlds into a peaceful and safe meeting. What really helped my cause was the assistance offered by the Endeavor’s AI. He took the sky away and allowed the people of the upper world to see the star system that existed beyond their falsified view. The AI changed the aerial views above us to coincide with the information that I began sharing. All the while, dozens of people began showing up from a world beneath their feet.
When my parents arrived through the forward void door, having obviously followed my secret instructions hidden in an apple crate from three days prior, they would find Crickett, Vale, Astrid, Harrion, and me standing near the pond awaiting their arrival. It was my mother who ran the fastest and crashed into me, literally causing me to fall to the thick grass with her still in my arms. My father had been a little more casual, laughing as he watched us lying in the grass.
The introductions, hugs, and updates took nearly an hour as my family met the ones who had accepted me as their own. There were tears all around as my wife finally got to meet my parents and as my parents got to meet their first grandson. After all of that, I welcomed my parents to join us at the farmhouse while the world was slowly acclimated to all the wild implications of the true universe around them. That process of educating the world about these past eighty-some years as well as what would be expected in the future was mostly handled by the AI.
My parents stayed with my extended family at the farmhouse for the next two days as the ship fell into a safe orbit and then began its extended safe-landing procedures. We’d all enjoyed each other’s company during that time which also happened to be around the same time that Crickett and I announced the fact that we were expecting a second child. This had turned into an enormous celebration that had brought nearly a hundred people to the farm on the night that the ship settled onto the alien ocean.
It was on that same night that the ship eased its way about a hundred yards out from the shore of a very fertile land. At that point, three outer hatches opened for the first time in over eighty years and then the ship’s automated systems began unfolding the extended metal bridge in front of the hatch nearest the shore.
The party lasted throughout the night, and then when our new and very real sun in the Pictor Constellation rose the next morning – a true M1 red subdwarf that appeared to be a little larger than the sun and significantly more orange or reddish in color – the entire world paused and took notice. The AI allowed our digital sky to reflect the real world and the real sky above us. From that day forward, there would be no falsified skies above us like those recorded images from Earth that had served as our umbrella all these years. We were now on Kapteyn C and even as we continued to use this ship for shelter, that would be our new home star Kapteyn in the sky above us.
The ship’s AI informed the people of our world that the air outside the ship was breathable and the temperature was seventy-six degrees Fahrenheit, so if anyone chose to investigate the claims that many still thought were hoaxes, they could do so via any of the three main exits.
From that day forward, the planet Earth had become one of those unimaginable ancient portions of history where the stories would become more and more diluted over the years. Perhaps in a thousand years, many would even forget about where mankind originated from. For now, however, we were starting anew on a planet with orange skies and deep red sunsets. We had a lot to do and plenty of space to do it with. I was just happy to know that I got to do it all while surrounded with several people that I truly loved. I could ask for nothing more.
The End
Check out these other affordable books available
for your Kindle by Scott McElhaney:
Ptolemy’s Child (The Ani Maxima Files #1)
SuperVirus (The Ani Maxima Files #2)
Veiled Sky (The Ani Maxima Files #3)
Enigma (The Ani Maxima Files #4)
Flying in the Rain (The Ani Maxima Files #5)
Silent Lucidity (The Ani Maxima Files #6)
The Ani Maxima Files Collection
Selenocentric
Maelstrom
Final Season
Indentured (Mystic 1)
Legacy (Mystic 2)
Violation (Mystic 3)
Judgment (Mystic 4)
Convergence (Mystic 5)
The Mystic Saga Omni
bus (all 5 books)
Dominion
Vestige
Erinyes
Ghosts of Ophidian
Alastair (Ghosts of Ophidian)
Daylight in Blossom
Hope Rising
Beyond the Event Horizon
Kepler Moon Alpha (Colonization 1)
Black Hole (Colonization 2)
The Gateway (Colonization 3)
Valhalla (Colonization 4)
Fossil (Colonization 5)
Warrior of the Myst
Mommy’s Choice
Elusive December
One Crazy Summer
Talking to the Moon
Saving Brooksie
The Wisconsin Samurai
Excerpt from PTOLEMY’S CHILD
(Book One of the Ani Maxima Files)
CHAPTER ONE
“Gunnar”
Something awoke me just then. Was it an alarm? A voice? I inhaled and was overwhelmed with the strong scent of rubbing alcohol… alcohol and something else… ammonia...
“Gunnar, can you hear me?”
There it was… a voice… female. And no, it wasn’t the scent of alcohol that had been flooding my olfactory senses like a nasty and unwelcome tsunami. But I was right about that strong antiseptic smell of ammonia.
“Gunnar, I need you to open your eyes. Can you hear me?”
The smell was fading now, but not before it triggered a memory. This was the familiar scent of a hospital. That’s when I noticed the temperature… It was cold… I was now inhaling some cold air. Just then, I attempted to open my eyes, but something was preventing me. Actually my eyelids sort of hurt. I attempted to open my mouth to ask what was going on when I discovered that my lips were somehow glued shut.
“Mmmm… MMMM!” I was able to make some sounds, just as I also managed to tear my left eye open.
“Thank god,” she said, wiping my face with a warm damp cloth, “Try opening your mouth again while I wipe your lips.”
I obeyed her direction, this time feeling my lips begin to separate. Now both of my eyes were open, though my vision was still blurred.
“W-where… what…” I tried to say, but my throat was too dry to speak.
“That’s enough, Gunnar,” she said, “I just needed evidence that you could breathe, move, and speak. Here, take this.”
Suddenly a cool marble-size lozenge was shoved into my mouth. Before I could even attempt to suck on it or crunch it, the pellet dissolved completely, creating a flood of saliva in my mouth. A moment later, it was like my brain opened up and offered me access to all my memories.
“Say something, sweetie,” she said… Sky said.
This was Sky Vaughn speaking to me, one of the eight of us who were now what… nearly twenty light years from Earth? Last time I saw her, we were on a heavily guarded prison transport about eight-hundred miles above the Earth’s surface. Sky Vaughn - that exceptionally thin chief medic with short and spiky platinum blonde hair who sat next to me on the prison transport.
“Is it time already? Are we here?” I asked.
She wiped my eyes and lips again as I reached out and took hold of her hand. I felt her pause as I watched a blurred image of her lean in close to me.
“Gunnar?” she whispered.
“Sky?” I replied, “Something is seriously wrong. I can’t really see.”
She kissed me gently on my chapped lips. I knew they were chapped now because that was a common side-effect from cryo-sleep. It was the same reason my eyes were crusted over. If all had gone according to plan, I would have just slept a total of fifty-nine years in suspended animation. And if there were no flaws in my revival, I’d still be existing in my original body. If something had gone wrong however, they had access to a clone embryo and would imprint my adult mind onto the virgin partially-formed brain. This however was feeling like I was still residing in my original body.
“Sky?” I asked, “That wasn’t the first time, was it?”
I was referring to the kiss. I had suddenly remembered that just before we left the transport, she leaned in and kissed me. And that one was a deep and almost passionate kiss that I fully appreciated and accepted. We had just spent over three hours talking, laughing, and getting to know each other while we were handcuffed to the metal armrest between us. As our lips had parted, two enormous guards jabbed needles into the back of our necks. Then Sky said something, her lips next to mine. But what did she say?
“It’s me, Gunnar, and no, it wasn’t the first time. At the time, I didn’t think we’d ever wake up. Never been a fan of the dreaded ‘deep-freeze’,” she offered.
That’s what it was. Just before it all went black from the unknown drug, she had said, “This is just in case that in heaven, we can only remember the last few seconds of our lives.”
“Wow, that was quite a gift,” I muttered now, “Thank you.”
She chuckled, “We’re one or two days out from the USS Ptolemy.”
A day or two? Our cryo-chambers were supposed to wake us when we were a week or two out. I reached up and rubbed my eyes with my cold hands.
“Here, hold on a moment,” she said, taking hold of both my hands, “Open both eyes and look up toward the ceiling.”
I could already see the shadow of something approaching. Two warms drops entered my right eye, causing a burning sensation that was nearly intolerable. I squeezed both eyes closed as I clenched my teeth and cried out.
“I know, I know… open your left eye,” she whispered.
I struggled against my natural urges and finally opened both eyes. She quickly squeezed two drops into my other eye, causing me to react in the same way as before. It took me about a minute of suffering before I could open my eyes again.
I could see clearly now as I looked up at the raised hood of my cryo-chamber. I’d only seen similar ones in the prison where we had learned how to operate these. It felt like I’d just gone to sleep merely a few hours ago on that prison transport, yet all evidence suggested so far that I’d just slept the half-century that I’d agreed to.
She leaned in and started unhooking all the ports and monitors that were still attached to me. I watched her, surprised to see that she looked exactly the same as I last remembered. She didn’t have the appearance of someone who just woke up from over fifty years of sleep like I had.
“When did you wake up?” I asked.
“Our AI woke the medical crew first. I don’t know if you remember Darnell Rogers and Caleb Sturm. The three of us woke yesterday without the pleasant touch of a real human to help us,” she said, placing her hand on my cheek.
“Why didn’t the AI wake you much earlier? We were supposed to wake up a week or two out from the Ptolemy,” I groaned, struggling to sit up now before turning toward her.
“The USS Ptolemy was powered down and cloaked,” a male voice, perhaps our AI, called out from one of the many speakers in the ceiling, “It suddenly appeared six days ago at which point I began the braking procedures. All systems on the craft began powering up at the same moment it had appeared.”
“Cloaked?” I sputtered as Sky assisted me out of the clunky and cold mechanical coffin, “The Ptolemy was equipped with a way to camouflage itself?”
“All I can confirm is that the ship we were coming out here to investigate was supposed to be located nineteen light-hours further along our course. Instead, it suddenly appeared where it is located today. It wasn’t there before, and then suddenly it was,” AI offered.
I realized just then that I was completely naked. I knew beforehand that this was the way of cryo-sleep, but now I was being led through a cold medical bay by the woman who had surprised me with a tender and very memorable kiss not too long ago… or was it fifty-nine years ago.
“So did the Ptolemy fly out to meet us?” I asked, “Are there somehow people alive on that thing after more than three hundred years?”
“As I said, the ship was powered down. ‘Fly’ isn’t an appropriate term for space travel inside a vacuum. W
hen the Ptolemy appeared, it showed that the power systems were currently on at minimal levels. The craft, when it appeared, was stationary albeit with a slow forward tumble along its axis,” AI replied.
“Perhaps you should get with Naia after your shower,” Sky said, referring to the lady who would be acting as the captain of our ship.
“Wait,” I said, recalling Naia Petaline just then, “I’m the second in command of this…”
“The USS Cepheus,” Sky offered, opening up a sliding glass door into what turned out to be a small utilitarian shower stall, “This ship is commanded by Naia Petaline and Gunnar Bale. You’re a team, although it was she who won the bid to ultimately be captain.”
She reached in and turned on the shower for me. After it achieved an acceptable temperature, she ducked out and gestured for me to step in. All the while, I started recalling all those months I’d spent in training with Naia on shipboard operations. The memories flooded back into my mind, but only one had caused me a moment of pause. It was the memory that Naia was a murderer.
CHAPTER TWO
I was happy to discover a pile of clothing outside my shower door as well as a fluffy towel. Sadly, I also discovered that the clothing was quite similar to my orange prison jumpsuit that I’d worn for the past four years. Only instead of orange, this particular one-piece uniform was navy blue.
I held it up and examined it, liking what I saw just then. It had all the real markings of the United States Space Navy. My name was stenciled above the left breast pocket and above the right pocket was stitched a golden patch that identified any Navy officer who had passed all the command courses, which indeed I had done. It didn’t matter that I had accomplished such a feat while I was confined inside the razor-wire fences of the federal penitentiary in Houston for smuggling illegal drugs into the United States.
Also I noticed that someone on Earth had decided that we would wear military ranks on our lapels. It made sense being that we were forced to study Navy ranks and take curious quizzes in regards to advancing in rank. Mine was a silver oak leaf which I recalled stood for Commander. No one aboard this ship was true military. We were all lifers – a title given to those of us who had been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, unlike the majority of the prison population, we were considered to have been rehabilitated. And we had been! Although I had gone to prison on three separate occasions for drug trafficking charges, and although it appeared that I would never change, I ultimately had. The truth of the matter was, if released from jail, I would have never been so stupid again. That didn’t matter though because my sentence demanded that I would never join society again thanks to a recent change in drug-trafficking laws. Rehabs – that’s what we called those of us who had truly changed but would never get the chance to prove it. Curiously, about ten percent of all those in prison could qualify as such.