by Damon Alan
“You’re so over-dramatic,” Emille giggled.
“Again? Do you have no respect for privacy?”
“When you think about me, you think at me,” Emille said. “Or didn’t you know this?”
He smiled weakly. He’d said that exact same thing to Sarah.
Alarms went off somewhere across the bridge.
“Mister Harmeen?” Sarah asked.
“The passive sensors on this beast are incredible,” Navin Harmeen replied. “I’m picking up a gravitational lens from in system.”
“Of course you are. Hive filth,” Sarah spat out. “FTL bubble, I assume. What’s the chances it’s not heading for us?”
“Zero. I’m getting no degree of variance on the bearing, which means it’s approaching this location,” Harmeen confirmed.
“Great. Mister Algiss, set a course directly away from the approaching bubble,” she ordered. “Maximum speed. Mister Harmeen, do you have an ETA?”
“No idea, Admiral. If I knew more about this sensor package—” Navin Harmeen answered.
“—Two hours,” Thea broke in. “We need to take ninety of those minutes to let Emille’s body heal.”
Sarah looked at her, puzzled. “How do you know that?”
“Emille told me,” Thea said, gesturing over toward the adept’s gravcouch. “However good the sensor package is on this prize of yours, she’s better.”
The admiral shrugged. “Good enough for me. You have ninety minutes to heal your patient, doctor. Mister Algiss, set the clock,” she ordered, then gestured at Emille. “Alarin, make sure she’s ready.”
“I’ll do my best,” Alarin agreed.
“That better be good enough,” Sarah growled. “If your best isn’t her ready to jump us home when that timer goes off, then thirty minutes after that we’re all dead.”
That irritated him. He knew the stakes. “I said I’ll do my best.”
His friend sighed deeply. “I’m sorry,” she replied. “Nerves. Trust me, if the Hive nuked us, that would be merciful. You do not want to be infected.”
She looked at Navin Harmeen again. “Does this ship have a self destruct?”
“It does,” he replied. “A simple system, the computer simply turns off the magnetic containment in the fusion reactors.”
“We Korvandi like things simple,” she said, shrugging. “Be prepared to use that feature if we get into the need for it. It will be the best choice we have.”
Show me what has you so scared, Alarin thought to Sarah.
He hated to make her prove herself, but he had to have all the facts if he was going to push Emille to try and take them home so soon.
Her response wasn’t verbal. She must be getting used to him approaching her this way. She looked him in the eye and a flood of emotions washed over him.
What he sensed shocked him. Fear. Dread. Disgust. And an outright determination to obliterate this ship in fire before letting the Hive have them. He caught images of an infected man feeding on the corpse of another human, and of her family being consumed on a spacecraft that might still be orbiting a planet not far from their location.
There’d been the thought that she might be overreacting to the situation. She was not. If anything, she was controlling her reaction to the threat they faced with stoic bravery.
He didn’t say or think another word toward Sarah.
“Emille,” he said gently to his mate. “I don’t want to pressure you, but I know how strong you are and that you will do what has to be done. If we don’t leave here before,” he pointed to the chronograph and interpreted the time for her mentally, “that runs down to zero, we’re all dead.”
She’d been resting, edging on the border zone between sleep and waking. Her eyes settled on the chronograph, then back on Alarin.
“The only thing I don’t understand, my love, is how you can even doubt me?”
He squeezed her hand and transferred heat from the towel to the floor once again as she closed her eyes slipping gently back into rest.
Chapter 49 - Departure
12 Febbed 15330
Sarah watched as the chronograph hit zero, then looked over at Emille, who was still resting.
Alarin looked at Sarah, his eyes betrayed his concern. “Emille, we have to go now.”
“Tired…” she replied.
Sarah’s stomach rose into her throat. The Entalia had been accelerating away from the expanding cloud of debris that had been Chungathi station for a good while, but the old ship was damaged. It was no match for the acceleration rate the Hive ships would be able to muster for the chase.
If they didn’t leave, they were dead. Or worse.
“Alarin, we have no time,” she said softly.
“I know. She will do what she needs to do.”
“We need to leave before the Hive get into the area. Right now they’re in an inclusion sphere, they cannot see us. They can’t know about our new mode of travel.”
“I know, Sarah!” Alarin barked, then immediately seemed to regret it.
His response shocked her a bit, and didn’t exactly increase her confidence.
“I know,” he repeated.
She said nothing.
“Emille,” he said again. “There is no more time.”
“I’m trying,” she said weakly. “I can’t…”
That was it. Sarah unstrapped from her gravcouch and pushed past the two Gs the Entalia was sustaining to walk over to the stricken woman’s gravcouch.
Alarin looked at her angrily.
“Emille. This is Sarah. You will take us home now.”
Nothing.
“Emille! Now!”
Her eyes opened and stared at Sarah. She looked drained.
“Alarin… you do it,” Emille whispered.
“It’s beyond me,” he replied, his voice stressed. “We need you.”
“Reach in, take what you need to know,” Emille replied. “You can do this.”
Alarin sighed and looked at Sarah. “She can’t do this. I will try, but it will be hard. She thinks of what she needs to do, and it’s done. I will have to be in her mind, which takes effort, and also do the task, one I am not familiar with.”
“Soon would be good,” Sarah suggested. “If you mess it up, it will still be better than getting infected by the Hive.”
“Two minutes,” Alarin answered. He stood up and returned to his gravcouch, Sarah did the same.
“Two minutes,” she agreed.
The Entalia’s sensors could no longer look behind the ship because of the fusion trail lancing out behind them. The super-energetic particles of their trail obliterated any signal with raw power. The only indication they’d have regarding the arrival of the enemy fleet behind them would come from the gravity wave detector.
“Any sign, Mister Harmeen?” she asked.
“They’re still inbound, Admiral. No wave yet.”
She nodded. Closed her eyes. Her mind went back to a similar situation on the Stennis, when they’d waited for the fleet’s ships to rejoin them and jump away from Hamor. She’d had Franklin to talk to then. Now she waited in silence, and nobody spoke.
“I have it,” Alarin said. “She’s helping me find the skills I need.”
“How long?” Sarah pressed.
“Now,” Alarin said.
Sarah glanced at the main viewscreen, at the familiar stars of the Korvandi sky. A moment later they were gone, replaced with blackness. In the center of the screen Andromeda danced the circular dance of galaxies.
She breathed a sigh of exhaustion and relief. Wherever they were, it wasn’t under the heel of an approaching Hive fleet. “Location, Mister Algiss?”
“Oasis, Admiral. I’m plotting our burn now to match the system velocity. Destination?”
“Put us in Refuge orbit, Ensign.”
“Aye, sir.”
She looked over at Alarin, who showed none of the distress from the jump Emille had. He was already detaching himself from the gravcouch to get to his mate
.
Thea was doing the same. Sarah didn’t, the last thing Emille needed was a bunch of people hanging over her.
“Mister Harmeen, I’d like a full sensor sweep. Mister Seto, let the Seventh Fleet know we’re home and that our test was conditionally successful. Let them know about the Entalia so we don’t scare them any more than necessary.”
Both officers jumped to their tasks.
She waited as the doctor did her job. Resisting the urge to ask for details was much harder than she thought it would be. She’d grown to like the young woman, something she’d not expected. Emille might be almost as abrasive as Merik had been, but when it came time to step up, she hadn’t failed to do so yet.
Until now.
Sarah caught Thea’s eye. The look on her face must have asked the question she was reluctant to say out loud.
Thea gently shook her head side to side for Sarah to see.
What the galaxies does that mean?
Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
“We need to get her to sickbay, Alarin,” Thea said. “Can you help me with that?”
Alarin said nothing. He started unstrapping his woman from her secured position. Sarah watched helplessly as they moved her toward the hatch. Harmeen joined them, helping out.
The Master Adept she’d grown to think of as almost a brother stopped in front of her, letting Thea and Harmeen move ahead.
He moved in close to speak. “I sided with you over Merik because she was wrong. You were the only one who could stand up to her, so you gained my loyalty and friendship.”
As he took in a deep breath broken with an emotional shudder, she gave him time to continue.
“But this,” he gestured toward the hatch, “she put everything on the line for a threat I only barely understand. If anything happens to her, forgiving you will not be an easy task.”
Sarah said nothing as he pushed away and followed the others.
Was this her fault? Emille had jumped at the chance to learn about modern society, and to master her powers alongside Peter Corriea.
But it didn’t matter what Sarah thought about it, to be honest. Alarin thought it was her fault, and that was enough.
All she’d worked for would crumble without him as her ally.
She stared at the now closed bulkhead door.
Everything depended on that young girl getting better.
Everything.
Chapter 50 - A Long Sleep
Eislen sat in the copilot seat. It reminded him of the early days after meeting Sarah Dayson’s people, when he’d been friends with Peter Corriea.
He looked over at that man now, as they rose above the air of Nula Armana into the inky blackness that many of Sarah Dayson’s people seemed to prefer to walking on the ground.
Maybe that was part of their problem, why they struggled to find purpose. They didn’t have their own home to fight for. Or maybe not, now that he thought about it. Maybe the problem was that without a home, they didn’t all have the same reason to fight.
Some of the newcomers fought for one thing, many for another, and it seemed they had as many causes as they had people.
This was the last of the shuttles from the surface, and Peter Corriea had asked if he could fly Eislen. Nearly seven thousand of his people were now frozen on the ship that Eislen was told brought his ancestors to this world.
When they got to a new world, one that would be their own, they’d be awakened again. Until then they’d rest in sleep, in frozen exile from the corrupt and brutal society the adepts had built.
Peter Corriea told him the newcomers were building new equipment and supplies for the Gaia, as their temporary home was called. They were building things so their permanent home would be paradise. While Eislen’s people would close their eyes and then open them in a new place, time would pass for everyone else.
I suppose we have the easy job.
What the things the newcomers needed to make were, Eislen didn’t know. While he no longer felt friendship with anyone of this world, he did trust Peter Corriea. Their agendas differed too greatly for closeness, but not so much to prohibit cooperation in this cause.
The newcomers. Such a mystery to him. They seemed good, but so much bad happened around them.
Eislen wasn’t sure why they’d work so hard for his followers, but in the end it didn’t matter.
He’d be far away, and the adepts or the newcomers would no longer be of any concern.
That idea was appealing. Eislen wished he could free more people from the tyranny that so few but he could see. But it wasn’t to be. The limit given to him was ten thousand souls, and he’d not even been able to produce that many.
He’d not had enough time to spread his word to the small villages. If he had, there would have been no empty places on Gaia.
He sighed. It was no matter to him now. What was done was done.
The important thing was that he and Salla’s baby would grow up without any chance of being snagged away by a cold and heartless society of soulless power mongers.
They’d return to the old ways, and while Jalai and Faroo weren’t going with them, there’d be new gods in a new place.
They’d find them, and speak to the universe.
“That speck, that’s Halvi,” Peter Corriea said. “You should get some rest. When we get to the ship you’re going to have to absorb a lot of information as the leader of this expedition.”
That surprised Eislen. Not that he was unwilling. But he was under the impression that everything would be done and his people would simply move onto the new world when it was ready.
“What sort of information?” he asked.
“Starting a new colony isn’t easy, Eislen. You’ll be asleep for a good long time. Gaia assures me that she can run things while you sleep, but your people will be alone out there. None of my fleet will be there to monitor the process, except for maybe a few technicians.
“How do you know my people will be safe?”
“Gaia will make every effort to keep you safe,” Peter Corriea answered. “But there are no guarantees. We are arming her, because Eris trusts that colony ship more than Admiral Dayson’s distrust.”
“How long will we sleep?”
“Centuries,” was the reply.
Centuries. Eislen knew the term. One hundred of the newcomer years, which were only slightly longer than the years he knew. So a very long time.
The people alive on Nula Armana, the newcomers, they’d all be dead by the time Eislen and his people awakened.
That was sobering.
He unstrapped from his seat and pushed toward the door to the back of the shuttle. “I’ll join those few of my people not yet frozen and get some rest then, Peter Corriea. Thank you for delivering us safely to our new home if I don’t get a chance to tell you that later.”
“You’re welcome, Eislen. I know you don’t think we’re friends anymore, but you’re wrong. When this idea came to light, that you’d be new colonists, I knew I’d miss you when you were gone.”
Eislen didn’t doubt the sincerity of that statement at all, which surprised him.
“I suppose you have been more friend than I acknowledge,” Eislen replied. He turned and put a hand on the newcomer’s shoulder and squeezed. “You may well be the only one I miss here.”
Peter nodded and adjusted some controls on his machine without looking back.
Eislen opened the door and floated through, turning around on the other side and looking back.
“Goodbye, Peter,” he said as the hatch shut.
Chapter 51 - Sendoff
12 Febbed 15330
The docking at Gaia was uneventful. The ship was a masterpiece of technology, far beyond what Peter had thought anyone was capable of producing ten thousand years ago. Some of the technology was advanced even by today’s standards, such as the ability of the hull to go opaque to radiation.
He looked at the external atmosphere readout.
The bay was pressurized and oxygenated
.
He opened the back hatch, and watched on camera as the last of Eislen’s people put on magnetic boots and filed out onto the cold deck plates of the hangar. Their breaths, white puffs of cloud in the air, said how excited and nervous they were. The puffs came quick and short.
He unstrapped from his seat, and as he did he noticed motion from the bay airlock.
The temporary crew of the Fyurigan were entering the bay to collect, process, and freeze the new colonists. Under Gaia’s unfaltering supervision.
He opened the hatch, walked through the passenger compartment, then down the unloading ramp to the hangar deck.
“Mister Corriea?” someone said behind him.
Peter spun around to see a sergeant he’d not seen in a long time.
The man extended his hand. “Good to see you again.”
Peter grabbed the hand and pulled the man into an embrace. “Malco Vander. How have you been?”
“Good,” Malco answered. “I hear you’ve moved up in status a bit.”
Peter shook his head. “Rumors. The real bosses in my life are Admiral Dayson, Thea Jannis, and my wife, Eris. So no, only the title has changed. Nothing else.”
Malco laughed and waved his hands at the walls around them. “I got two more stripes and this cush position since my stint on Halvi with you and the angry adepts.”
“What do they have you doing?” Peter asked.
“I thought you’d know. I’m in charge of this expedition until planetfall. Admiral Dayson remembered my efforts helping you with the Alarin incident, and this is my reward.”
“You’re happy about that?”
“Happy? Are you kidding? I’m ecstatic,” Malco answered. “The big wigs wanted someone who could translate languages on the off chance we do meet others at Andromeda.”
Peter laughed. “Aliens?”
“Never say never, Mister Science.”
That was a good point. No matter how unlikely the supposition.
“I suppose you’re right. Do you need me to stay while you process these guys?” Peter asked.
“No. We’ve got the art of it down after the thousands we’ve pushed through. They have the easy part. I’ll be awake during the planet search.”
“That sounds exciting. At least the getting to Andromeda won’t take long.”