by Trent Falls
In reality, Alex had slowly erased several of the shallow level of memories in John’s brain. He had buried nearly all of the conversation they had inside John’s memories of York, Pennsylvania. He had buried the knowledge of the Norn as best he could, though John’s PTSD proved to form a difficult patch to ‘overlay’ with false information.
What Alex didn’t bury was the importance of stopping Euler and his men. This was also a difficult message to instill. John’s first and only concern seemed to be getting Julie back from wherever she was being held and back home. Alex understood the level of personal sacrifice John was committed to by his actions. All the same, he tried to keep the message in John’s head of stopping the Norn from being discovered. Alex was tempted to go as far as noting the danger to the human race if Euler was successful. Knowledge could not be unlearned. Humans had nearly annihilated themselves with knowledge of nuclear power. The Norn would not let humans have access to any more of their knowledge or technology.
The Norn would wipe out the human race to prevent the misuse of that knowledge.
John looked over at his friend as they walked on through the jungle. John seemed very calm despite the situation they were in. Certainly, he kept sharp and alert to his surroundings. He knew the Xen were out there. Memories of enemies he had faced nearly twenty years earlier flashed through his head. Did they still look the same? Would he recognize them? What were their typical weapons?
“Where are we headed?” John dared to ask quietly.
“Back to the ship.” Alex replied. “It should be ready to go by now.”
John remained silent for a moment. “Then what?” John asked plainly.
Alex turned his head to glance back at John. “I don’t know. You have something in mind?”
John again remained silent for a moment before responding. He took a quick look to the rainforest around them, again making sure there was no one around.
“I want you to take your ship and head back home.” John said bluntly. “Euler wanted to meet me here. After you leave I’ll surrender to the Xen. They’ll take me to him.”
“Are you sure he’s working with them?” Alex asked.
“I’m positive. There’s no way he can’t be.” John replied.
“It’s a bad idea, John.” Alex argued as best he could at low volume. “They could very well kill you on sight. You’d be no help to Julie if you’re killed.”
“That’s pretty obvious.” John smirked, reverting back to a serious tone just as quickly. “I just don’t see any other way.”
“There’s always another way, John.” Alex stated. “Let’s get back to the ship and get off this planet first. Maybe we can double back and ghost their ships with the Tequesta’s gamma ray cloak.”
“The scatter jammers?” John breathed, nearly as a laugh. “Those things might be good to get past tired frontier listening post operators, but a seasoned Xen scope jockey will see right through them.”
“I don’t know about that, John.” Alex grinned. “I have a few upgrades on my ship that are top of the line.” Alex glanced back at John with the same grin. “The construction business has been pretty good to me.”
The interior of the Tequesta was all but quiet. The vast cargo area’s metal deck was level and ninety degrees to Altair Nine’s gravity vector; meaning it was flat and no longer pitched to one side from the way the ship had settled during the crash. The damage to the interior had been repaired. The fuel lines in the conduits below had been repaired. A minor crack in the small basketball-sized warp chamber had been sealed. Even the last of the blood where White had been killed in the cockpit had been cleaned up.
A silver ovoid robot with four spider-like legs walked across the deck. It was hunched over an open panel in the side of the bay, welding the ends of a refurbished rectifier in an access panel. Another identical brushed silver spider crawled up an access latter at the side of the bay. The dorsal airlock chamber doors had been left open, allowing the small robot access to the outside of the vessel. Its metal legs tapped lightly on the powder blue topside hull of the Tequesta. The sun was now bright outside. The spider drone walked up to a section of damaged hull where yet another spider was working. It was using a heavier welding extension and closing up a seam in the outer hull. The second spider drone produced a similar welding device from its bulbous body. It used one of its legs as a grounding clamp then positioned its welding arm over the seam. The other two arms, strong beyond their deceptively thin appearance, pried together the split seams of the hull.
The ship itself had been set next to a shallow creek surrounded by a narrow green river valley. Much of the vessel had been covered in large tree branches to hide it from the Xen. The branches and covering foliage had also been cut down by Alex’s repair drones. The Tequesta rested neatly on its five landing gear. The rear ramp at the back of the transport shuttle was closed.
It was very nearly ready to fly again.
Alex and John weren’t far from the ship when John grabbed Alex by the shoulder. He hauled him down behind the cover of a nearby brush, forcing the confused pilot down with all the strength he could use in one arm. Alex was about to protest when John slapped his right palm over his mouth, forcing him to be silent. In a second or two Alex knew what was happening. John removed his hand from the now dead-quiet Alex. His right hand turned slowly, pointing to a distant point ahead in the rainforest.
John had heard them a half second or so before seeing them. The Xen Advanced Recon unit. He saw one Xen at first, venturing slowly in a rolling heel to toe walk over the moist ground of the forest. John returned his right hand to his weapon but he held off from pulling the trigger. He and Alex had managed to get into a nearby thicket. With, hopefully, adequate cover John waited as still as he could. Shooting the Xen soldier would be a waste and, likely, suicide. The Xen recon soldier surely wasn’t alone; a theory John soon found validated. Another Xen recon soldier appeared, walking almost perpendicularly to his position. If John had a few other soldiers with him it might have been a perfect spot to ambush the Xen. He couldn’t take them alone. God knows how many more there were.
Another walked across his field of vision.
It was gripping to see the Xen after all those years. The last time he had seen one of them was fifteen years earlier. That Xen soldier had been at the end of his rifle sights. He had killed him – one of the many faces that still haunted John in his nightmares. While they looked very much like Earth humans, many of the Xen recon soldiers had the same hint of Asian features and a similar hue to their skin. Their grey and olive drab light BDU’s were distinctly Xen cut. They looked, in uniform, much like John remembered even though so many years had passed. A bit of the gear was updated. The goggles were a new feature but not uncommon during the war.
John kept a firm grip on his weapon. He was ready to fire at a moment’s notice. He remembered that he only had a limited amount of ammunition. The Xen were, likely, in overwhelming numbers on the planet. He strained to keep his breathing slow. His heart hammered within his chest. One shot would kill the Xen at the end of his gun sights. Others would surely pounce on top of him, probably ending his life and Alex’s in a hail of high velocity full metal jackets.
A Xen recon soldier appeared from John’s left. He was so close it was shocking. John was nearly paralyzed with fear. The Xen was so close he could make out the grime of his camouflage face paint. John nearly turned to fire as the Xen was likely close enough to spot him. Indeed, the Xen did turn towards John. He spotted him! The Xen was about to call out an alarm as he raised his assault rifle to his sight.
Alex’s eyes glowed brightly again. John froze. The Xen froze. A white light pulsed out through the rainforest from Alex’s body. The balance of the Xen froze in their tracks.
Alex, with his eyes still glowing, turned to look at John. John was frozen, as though with fear. Even though he willed himself to move he couldn’t. His brown eyes turned towards Alex, accented with some level of fear he still had for his friend
.
“Don’t worry. I’m getting us out of here.” Alex reassured him in a calm voice.
Alex did the unthinkable. He stood up, emerging fully from the thicket of ferns where they had been hiding.
“Come on.” Alex ordered John in a tone that echoed in John’s head.
John complied. He didn’t understand why but he felt no fear as he stood up. He was clearly visible to the Xen recon team around him. Standing up, John had a better view of them. There were about seven in total, probably with a few more elsewhere in the rainforest. None of the Xen seemed to turn towards him or notice him standing. They merely remained still like statues; like life-size action figures with real firearms. Unlike John, though, the Xen seemed to have blank expressions. They didn’t seem to take any notice of the world around them.
“This is getting tiring.” Alex exhaled as he led John away from that area of the rainforest. “Why your species feels the need to shoot each other is disgusting! If you had any idea what you look like to the rest of the civilizations in the universe!”
They were clear of the Xen after about ten minutes of walking. As he followed Alex, John could feel his senses return to normal. His memory of the Xen faded. It was as though he had awoken from a nightmare and was quickly forgetting the details with every moment that passed. Soon enough, he would only recall the event as a near miss with the Xen.
“What was that about?” John asked Alex, who was still walking ahead of him.
Alex turned to look back at John. His brown eyes had reverted back to normal. “What are you talking about?”
“That patrol.” John asked, straining to remember.
Alex slowed his pace so that he was walking beside John. “What patrol?”
John strained to remember. “I don’t know.”
The duo walked on for another twenty minutes – silently.
After moving out of a small valley, John picked up his eyes and looked ahead with Alex. They broke through another row of trees to see the familiar aft section of the Tequesta. It was sitting next to the creek as though someone on vacation had parked it there.
“How the hell did this get here?” John asked aloud.
“John!” Alex turned to quiet John with a harsh hushed tone. “Easy! The Xen might hear!”
John took a breath and remembered the situation. “How did this get here?” John asked in a similar hushed tone.
“It’s… part of the automated repair system I told you about.” Alex explained. He pulled out his pocket computer and slid the scroll handles apart. He depressed a button on the roll-out holographic screen.
The hydraulics arms hummed at the rear of the ship as the main loading ramp lowered. John waited patiently, yet remained alert for any Xen that may happen by. It was such a strange scenario. Echoes of the real incident with the Xen patrol bounced within his head but he couldn’t accept them in the realm of reality. They were still a faint dream. The very real threat of the Xen recon team on the planet made him focus his attention on the surrounding jungle. He kept his weapon aimed out to the trees.
The ramp couldn’t come down fast enough. The noise the hydraulic system was producing couldn’t end soon enough! The ramp finally lowered with a thump.
Alex led the way up into the Tequesta with John walking backwards up the ramp behind him. Once inside, John lowered his M-10 carbine. Alex continued on towards the cockpit while John hit the control switch to raise the ramp. The much-too-loud noise of the hydraulic system activated again.
John kept an eye on the closing ramp just to be sure the ship was secure until it was, in fact, sealed and ready to fly. He could hear the main thrusters and the repulse emitters powering up. John looked around the massive cargo area quickly. It was much cleaner than he remembered. Empty. There were no signs of whom or what had made the repairs to the ship, let alone moved the damned starship from the crater where it had crashed!
All the same, John was glad to be alive and in a ship capable of lifting off and leaving Altair Nine. He thought again of staying behind but Alex was right. What if the Xen did kill him on sight? He hoped he had made the right choice. He found himself hoping he had made the right decisions since deciding to embark on the whole of that crazy journey. All he wanted to do was get his niece back. That’s it! He had no desire to get caught up in an interstellar incident.
“We’re about ready to go.” Alex’s voice came over the intercom. “You better get up here and strap in.”
John complied. He walked in near running strides towards the front of the ship. He stopped along the way to stow his M-10 in a nearby locker before continuing forward.
Alex was in the pilot seat bringing up the navigation systems. John jumped into the copilot chair, taking a glance at the short range sensor screen. There were no nearby aircraft of any kind. Lucky! John strapped into the seats five-way harness and settled in.
“We’re clear. Hang on to your ass! This is going to be exciting.” Alex noted. He pulled back on the Z-Axis lever of his repulse system on the center console of the flight deck.
John was pushed upward in his seat. Outside, the surroundings of the rainforest fell away. If the possibility of being shot down didn’t exist the vertical lift off would have been exciting. They were leaving Altair Nine. The view from John’s seat in the copilot station offered a majestic view of the surrounding forest. The lush green trees that surrounded them reached out for miles. The hills they had taken nearly a day to cover rolled far out into the distance, meeting the rocky mountain chain that extended for miles further away. Altair’s bluish white sun broke through the clouds as they lifted off and pushed forward into horizontal flight.
Their speed increased very quickly. The nose of the Tequesta turned upward. They were soon breaking through the higher cloud systems, achieving escape velocity.
The lead Xen pilot on patrol sat in his narrow cockpit. He was confined both by the enclosure of his cockpit instrumentation and the boredom of his job. His patrol had been assigned a wide orbit. Basically his flight path and that of his wingman’s was preprogrammed based on the known details of Altair Nine. Circumference at the equator, gravitational constant, the influence of its satellites; all things calculated into the flight computer. All the Xen pilot had to do was mind his instruments. Even then, the ship’s computer would alert him of anything out of the ordinary.
He and his wingman orbited at the equator, flying at about a 45 degree angle relative to the planet surface. This allowed the pilots of the delta wing fighters to have a good view of the planet as it rotated by above and to the right of their canopies. The bright reflected light from the planet obscured some of the dimmer stars in space out on the left. The edge of the horizon looked like a faint blue and white haze ahead. The only notable event was when they would cross over into the terminator of night on the dark side of the planet. Altair Nine, being uninhabited, appeared very dark and foreboding on its night side. The continents rolled by as large vast shapeless masses of land, dark veiled mists and clouds, and deep black seas. For a good while there was little sound aside from the rushing whine of his cockpit’s air conditioner.
The starfighters crossed back into the dawn. Suddenly a warning indicator on their tracking sensors began to beep.
“Class Three transport shuttle detected.” The Xen pilot spoke in an awake tone. “Scan profile matches the transport shuttle that crashed on the surface.” The pilot toggled several switches on his instrument panels. “Target marked. Zombie Two. Assume high cover formation and switch to weapons hot. Follow me in. Fire only on my order.”
“Copy that Zombie One.” The flight lead’s wingman reported in.
Zombie One grabbed his throttle control with his left hand and shoved the sliding handle forward. A jolt of acceleration threw him hard back into his seat, quickly building to four g’s on his body. His flight suit responded by tightening around him.
The two Xen interceptors rocketed forward at about 300 MSK. They reoriented themselves so that the bottom of their figh
ter craft faced the planet.
Ahead a lone tendril of faint white smoke climbed up from the vast curve of the planet ahead. It was faint at first, barely discernable from the stratus clouds of Altair Nine. As the column of white smoke reached the upper atmosphere it became more prevalent against the black of space. With the lack of moisture, though, the contrail soon thinned, evaporating to nothing behind the Tequesta’s main engine thrust.
John sat as still as he could in his chair as the Tequesta shook madly around him. The shaking was typical of most shuttles as they escaped a planet’s gravity, particularly if they were doing so in a hurry. The experience made John remember back to his early days of EEF training. The Marines had taught him to fly spacecraft with a simulator, from shuttles and fighters to basic maneuvering with capital ships. The simulator had rocked like mad as well as the shuttle took trainees through the lift off and atmospheric reentry parts of the program.
John looked over at the screen for the short range scanner a second after Alex did. There were two Xen fighters closing in on them from behind very quickly.
Alex pulled up hard on the flight yoke and rolled the shuttle, turning as best he could away from the fighters.
“Damn it!” John yelled.
“I got it!” Alex yelled in response.
“They’re damn near on top of us!!!” John shouted.
Alex slammed forward his throttle controls. John was pushed back hard into his seat again. The Tequesta’s two main engines burned hard, its exhaust glowing bright white. Its speed jumped. 30,000 kph. 37,000 kph. 44,000 kph! Now free of the atmosphere it was impossible to overspeed the Tequesta. It could accelerate as fast as the engines and the inertial tolerance of the occupants inside would allow.