The meeting finished and Arthur went back to the bridge to find Sky and the cat, but they had already left, leaving a message with Captain Schmidt to say they’d gone back to the quarters they’d been assigned. Arthur thanked the Captain, but instead of going to join them, he went up to the viewing deck situated above the bridge. Occupying a much smaller area than the bridge, it had been built to allow a 360-degree view of the space around the starship, offering a quiet place to sit and think. This was the first time that he’d been there and he was surprised to find himself alone. Selecting a comfortable seat, he gazed out at the distant red cloud harbouring the wormhole. The planets Skellar and Tresk were fast approaching.
So strange, he thought, to be sitting here on a massive cosmic warship heading to Earth, trying to save it from doom. Like a movie, maybe, but there was no pause button to stop it. He suddenly wondered if things could ever become normal again. Even if they somehow dealt with the Solarians, he doubted he was going to be able to just go back to school and carry on like before. Would his beloved summer cottage still be the same? Fishing in the lake? Arthur shook his head and suddenly cursed himself. He hadn’t thought about his mother and sister and his stepfather for a while, and reproached himself for it. What had happened to them? What would happen to them now?
‘No,’ he said out loud. Nothing was going to be the same any more. He leaned back into his seat and shut his eyes. He was exhausted. The desire to get some sleep had been gnawing at him and now he was ready to give in. He fell into a fitful slumber.
Of all the strange dreams he had that night, there was one that stayed in his memory. In the dream, he was standing in front of the huge gate in the Valley of the Serena again. He took a step through it and, where he had previously seen the Horizon with the Solarians’ warships and the dark planets, this time there were no black planets. This time, he saw the Horizon being taken through the wormhole, surrounded by other ships. His dream then switched, as if he were standing on the bridge of the Horizon itself. He saw a few of the crew that he recognised: Mr Simms, the Deputy Engineer who had voted against trying to rescue the captured crew, was sitting in the Captain’s chair, looking unusually pleased with himself. Standing by the door and at intervals about the room were Solarian troops, guarding them.
When Arthur woke up, the vision of the tunnel and Mr Simms’ smug face were still burning into his thoughts. He got up and paced around the viewing gallery. Still the vision of the Deputy Engineer in the command chair wouldn’t leave him. What was it that he had just seen? He was used to having weird dreams, so there was nothing new there – but why Mr Simms? It wasn’t hard to explain away why he’d dreamed about the wormhole, or maybe even seeing the Horizon’s bridge, but why would he have put him in the Captain’s command chair? That felt too weird, even for him.
Arthur decided not to tell anyone about his dream. The more he thought about it, the more he decided that maybe it was just a dream after all.
27
A Cruel Twist
Wormholes have only one speed. It doesn’t matter how fast you might want to travel through them; the tortoise and the hare always end up at the same place at the same time, assuming, of course, that they started together. At least, this was how Captain Schmidt chose to explain it to them. Arthur had, until that moment, had the idea that travelling in the Gorkan, which was capable of incredible speeds, might give them a chance of getting to Earth first. Captain Schmidt had also had that impression, until the ship’s commander told him otherwise.
The Gorkan had been joined by the Interceptor class ship Nema just before entering the tunnel. There had been no stopping or ship-to-ship transfers; the Nema had been waiting for the Gorkan to enter and followed her in. For the next ten days, the two ships were a mass of activity, repeatedly practising attack and defence drills in anticipation of what they might find when they arrived.
Arthur and his group were also assigned roles. The Major and Captain Schmidt were assigned to the Intelligence section, as advisors, to help everyone try and understand how the Earth might react to their arrival and how best to go about organising and implementing the planet’s defences. Margot was given the task of helping the ship’s laboratories with her invaluable knowledge of the Earth’s elemental make-up and its chemical and biological diversity – none of which had made much sense to Arthur when she’d once tried to explain some of it to him.
Perhaps the biggest surprise of all, especially to Arthur and Sky themselves, was that Insuro had personally seen to it that they start Strike fighter training. There were over a hundred Strike fighters on the Gorkan, but since the end of the war, the Treskans had still not been able to train enough pilots to replace those lost in combat. The cat, of course, was mortified and couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just have been given a nice boring office job, or something relaxing and safe!
‘Why is it that everything we have to do always means my tail is on the line – literally!’ He meowed, feeling very aggrieved about the whole situation.
‘Well, I can’t believe they trust us enough to fly one of these things,’ said Arthur, gazing in awe at the Strike fighter landing bay. There were four landing bays on the Gorkan, two at the front and two at the back. They had been assigned to the forward flight bay and to one of the Strike ships, which he and Sky had already nicknamed ‘Merlin’ in the hope that it might bring them a bit of magic.
The cat looked wide-eyed and miserable. ‘It’s nothing more than a tuna tin!’ He groaned.
‘Not only that, Cat,’ mused Sky, ‘but they’ve made a special seat for you, once they removed some unnecessary bits.’
‘Marvellous. Let’s hope it was the engine. That would suit me just fine.’
Their training had begun on the third day after entering the tunnel and, although they had a go at sitting in their Strike fighter a couple of times, the only thing they were really allowed to fly was the training simulator. Arthur was very glad that Sky was with him to remember what each of the switches and buttons was supposed to do.
‘I just don’t get why Insuro thought I might be good at this!’ He exclaimed, infuriated at having crashed for the millionth time into the side of some snowy mountain or other. He much preferred practising in space. It was a lot harder to hit things where there wasn’t anything to hit!
‘Just be patient,’ laughed Sky, ’you only started today. These pilots have probably been training for years, and you’re upset that you can’t do it after a few hours? Phh!’
Arthur rolled his eyes.
‘Yes, yes! But anyway, it’s really annoying. How many times is it possible to crash in the same place?’ Arthur reset the simulator. ‘And anyway, the faster we can learn to pilot this thing, the sooner we might be able to do something useful when we arrive. I don’t want to be sent home.’
‘You’re worried about being sent home?’ asked Sky, looking very surprised. ‘I don’t think you’ll be going home for a while, not now you’ve got these powers of talking with creatures and that sword of yours that lets you see things. Really, don’t stress – you’re getting the hang of it quickly… and you know it. And stop fishing for compliments!’ She added with a smirk. Arthur made out as though he didn’t know what she was on about.
By the tenth day, Arthur, who had spent every available moment in the simulator, was getting to grips with flying the Strike ship and had already received some approving comments from his instructors. Sky, too, was becoming comfortable with the ship’s navigation and weapons systems, while the cat was doing what he did best and taking every opportunity to relax and sleep that he could.
After his eighth practice simulation of the afternoon, Arthur went to check on his father, who, along with the other rescued crew, was still being kept in his regeneration machine. When Arthur had been shot in the shoulder, he had spent two weeks in one of them. He’d hoped his father would have been allowed out by now. Sezan, however, had discovered that each of
the survivors had been infected with a type of life form that he hadn’t come across before.
‘It is possible, and in my opinion most likely, that it is a trap,’ said Sezan, when Arthur quizzed him about what he had found. ‘I cannot at this moment be sure that this life form – a type of parasite, as you would call it – will not awaken once I release your father and others from regeneration. At this moment they are asleep, along with their hosts, but for how long? We cannot risk the possibility of infection or what could happen if the parasites wake and take control of the hosts. For now, Keeper, until we understand more about what they are and how to remove them safely, your father and the others are all going to have to remain in quarantine in the isolation of these machines.’
Arthur sat on the floor next to his father and watched him, asleep inside the machine, through the small slit in the side. He thought he was looking better and talked a little to him about his training as a pilot. He kept forgetting to ask Sezan if there was any way his father would be able to hear him whilst he was asleep. In the end, though, it didn’t matter; he just did it anyway.
‘Keeper,’ came Vello’s voice, interrupting his thoughts and causing him to forget what he was about to say. ‘Come with all haste to the bridge.’
‘What is it?’ asked Arthur, getting up and hurrying towards the turbo lifts.
‘We are coming out of the wormhole.’
‘What, now? It’s three days too early.’
‘That is correct, Keeper. Something is amiss.’
Arthur ran from the lifts onto the bridge. Insuro and the Major were already there, staring out of the window, whilst the Commander was calling out orders to get a fix on their position.
‘Keeper,’ said Insuro, ‘Vello has informed you?’
‘Yes,’ replied Arthur, wondering if this was somehow his fault. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘This is not your doing, Keeper. The Arnac clearly showed the way to Earth and those instructions were precisely followed.’
‘What’s going on, then?’
‘It is far from clear. Never have I heard tell of this class of wormhole behaving erratically.’ He turned to Commander Yann. ‘Commander, what news of our position?’
The commander was looking decidedly uncomfortable.
‘Mr President,’ he said, very respectfully, ‘we are unable to get a fix.’
‘Unable?’ repeated Insuro.
‘Yes, sir, it would appear as though we are no longer in “known” space.’
Insuro studied the commander thoughtfully.
‘What can it mean?’ He said quietly to himself.
The lift doors opened and Sky appeared on the bridge. ‘What’s happening?’ she asked hesitantly.
‘We’re coming out of the wormhole early and we seem to be lost,’ said Arthur.
‘Lost?’
He nodded, watching the rings of the tunnel growing further apart as he remembered them doing when they had first neared the Tharan system.
‘The commander believes that we’re coming out into unknown space.’
‘Oh…’ said Sky, also gazing out of the window along with everyone else. ‘That doesn’t sound good.’
‘See? What did I tell you,’ said the cat, stepping out from behind Sky’s legs. ‘If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times: if we were supposed to go into space, then we would have been born in it!’
Arthur looked away from the window for a moment and threw the cat a strange look.
‘Well, technically, the Earth is in space,’ said Sky.
‘Phh!’ meowed the cat. ‘You know what I mean.’
As the rings of the wormhole continued to disperse, they still could not get a fix on where they were. A feeling of unease grew on the bridge.
‘Battle stations, Commander,’ instructed Insuro. ‘We don’t know what we are arriving into.’
The commander nodded sharply and gave the order for general quarters to be sounded.
‘Ready cloaking shields,’ said Insuro. ‘The moment we break free of the tunnel, be prepared to use them.’
‘And just when I was beginning to dream of a good old English breakfast,’ muttered the Major to Arthur, with a wink.
Arthur smiled politely but he wasn’t sure what to think. He had really been looking forward to getting home, hopefully to finding out that his mum and sister had been rescued. He’d also found himself dreaming of pizza and hamburgers and sushi, and gallons of juice and cola. But now it looked as if the Solarians were going to get there first, and they would be unchallenged. If Tresk was anything to go by, Earth would never be the same again. Even worse was that there was no way to warn them about what was coming. Arthur glanced at Sky, who also looked upset.
‘It’s not good, is it?’ She said.
Arthur just shook his head.
‘Commander, wormhole release, cloaking shields engaged,’ came the call from across the bridge. Again all eyes were on the window. There was nothing to see, just a vast emptiness with only a few very distant twinkling stars.
‘Engage long-range scanners,’ ordered the commander.
It seemed like they waited an age before any reports were called out.
‘We are picking up a planet-sized object at the very edge of the scanner range, but there is too much interference to classify it,’ came the report.
‘That is all?’ asked the commander.
‘Yes, sir, we are in uncharted deep space. This is the nearest object that we can detect.’
‘Very well, make towards it and launch long-range probes. Stand down battle stations. Keep us cloaked.’
Insuro turned abruptly to leave the bridge, then stopped suddenly and glanced at the Major and then at Arthur. His brow creased.
‘What has just come to pass cannot have happened,’ he said cryptically, and looked Arthur straight in the eyes. ‘The causes of what has passed may become clear with time. For now…’
‘Can’t we just go back into the wormhole and try again?’ interrupted Arthur.
‘That would not be a wise course to take. Perhaps next time we would be thrown out straight into a sun, or worse. No, Keeper, that way is no longer open to us. We must now find our way back to known space. From there we may find our way to Earth.’ With that, Insuro took his leave of the bridge.
Arthur stood staring out of the window at the emptiness. He felt Sky slide her fingers between his as she leaned her head against his shoulder.
‘You never know, we might get lucky,’ she said.
‘Maybe.’
But as he gazed out into the almost starless darkness, Insuro’s words kept repeating through his thoughts. What has just come to pass cannot have happened… What has just come to pass cannot have happened…
Arthur and the Andarran Rescue Page 23