by A. K. DuBoff
“Tell us what to do,” I said.
“Stars! This can’t be happening,” Maris moaned.
“Seals on your suits are good?” Kaiden asked. He began to gently turn the shuttle toward the Evangiel.
“Yeah,” I confirmed, followed by acknowledgments from Maris and Toran.
“Okay, unstrap and brace yourselves in the common room,” Kaiden instructed. He hit the comm controls while I released my harness. “Commander, we have a situation.”
I worked my way down the short corridor while Kaiden briefed Central Command on what we were planning. I listened in on the conversation, though I glazed over when they got into the technical jargon. To my surprise, the commander supported the proposed approach, agreeing that it was too risky for the shuttle to make contact with the larger ship given its level of contamination. It would be left to burn up on reentry into the atmosphere where the Darkness would claim it.
They rapidly completed the planning, and Kaiden made the necessary entries to the nav system to enable Central Command to remotely control the shuttle. He joined us in the common room, his face drawn with worry. “I know this sounds nuts, but it’s going to be fine.”
“I’ve never been in a spacesuit. This—”
Kaiden gripped my shoulders. “You’ve got this, Elle.”
I looked out the side viewport at the Evangiel rapidly approaching. “It’s so far away.”
“It won’t be by the time we make our move. Just consider it hands-on training for that Tactical School you were so eager to attend,” he shot back with a forced smile.
“Well, I didn’t want to be a Ranger,” Maris said, it almost turning into a wail.
“Put that worry to good use and conjure us up a protective shield,” Toran suggested.
“Hey, I’ll take anything.” I hugged myself. But, another thought broke me from the worries about my mortality. “Stars! Our gear.”
When we’d donned the EVA suits, I’d set down my Valor artifact sword and my other armor, thinking that it would be safe in the common room until we landed. However, if we were to abandon the shuttle, the items would be lost with it. A quick glance at Toran confirmed that he’d, likewise, set down his gauntlets. Only Kaiden had been able to wear his artifact—the delicate, silver circlet, inside his EVA suit’s helmet.
“Forget about the clothes, just get the artifacts,” Toran said, racing toward his gauntlets.
I ran for my sword. Just as I took my first steps, the shuttle lurched. I stumbled sideways, and Kaiden caught my arm. “What was that?”
“Shit! The thruster didn’t fire how it was supposed to,” he replied, looking at our approach out the viewport.
“Shuttle 1,” a female voice said over our ear comms, “we’ll compensate for your flight path. We’ll get you. Don’t worry.”
“Right, ‘don’t worry’!” I finished my dive for the sword and wrapped the scabbard’s waist strap around my hand. “Really helpful.”
Toran grabbed his gauntlets and shoved them inside his backpack. He looped the pack’s straps around his arm. “Better than ‘you’re probably going to die, but good luck anyway’.”
Maris gaped at us. “You’re all terrible!”
“Look at us, still bantering even in the face of death.” I couldn’t help cracking a smile.
“Yep, we’ve officially lost our minds.” Kaiden shook his head.
The shuttle lurched again, and I stumbled back toward where I’d been bracing against the port bulkhead. “When is this thing happening?”
“Any second,” Kaiden murmured, keeping his attention out the viewport. “The Evangiel is turning now.”
“But, what’s the plan?” Maris asked. “We’re just leaping from here to the ship, or…?”
Kaiden shook his head. “Not exactly. We’ll blow the side hatch, and the sudden pressure change will suck us out. If we’ve timed everything right, that will put us on a trajectory to pass through the electrostatic shield into the hangar, and then the Evangiel can pull away from the contaminated shuttle.”
“Then we get scrubbed down along with all of our stuff?” I completed.
“That’s the idea.”
I eyed him. “You’re making it sound too easy.”
“Am I? Sounds pretty tricky to me,” he replied.
“But totally doable, right?” Maris pressed.
Kaiden shifted on his feet. “Yes, absolutely.”
I wanted to call him out for lying to our faces, but I figured that wouldn’t do anyone any good. The commander had signed off on the plan, so that meant it was the best course of action under the circumstances. “Just tell me when to let go and I’ll follow.” I said.
Kaiden took my hand in his. “Get ready.”
8
Kaiden and I gripped handholds along the bulkhead in our free hands and prepared to make our move. Toran and Maris also took each other’s hands for extra stability, and Maris cast a purple shell around us to hopefully offer added protection against debris or radiation the EVA suits might not shield against.
After a tense forty seconds, we finally got the signal from Central Command over our comms. “Remotely releasing the hatch in three… two… one… breach!”
My perception tinted orange around me, and I realized a haste spell had been cast the moment the countdown ended. The hatch across the shuttle from me released in slow motion, sending a cloud of oxygen into the void as the common room rapidly depressurized. Kaiden let go of his handhold and allowed the pressure change to suck him toward the opening. Reluctantly, I released my own handhold and we careened toward the opening. Toran and Maris were only a meter behind, and the four of us flew into the open void.
With my altered perception, I was able to take in the unobstructed view of space for the brief moment I passed between the shuttle and the Evangiel. The stars were even brighter than they seemed from inside a craft, and for that instant I felt the true vastness of space. I was a speck in the universe. Yet, my purpose made me an important speck, and I needed to do everything I could to survive.
Our course was true as we hurtled across the void toward the large ship. The shimmering gold of the electrostatic field raced toward me. Kaiden’s firm grasp offered my only sense of grounding as I cartwheeled on an uncontrolled vector through the barrier. The energy passed over me in a wave and bright light assaulted my eyes.
Artificial gravity kicked in the moment I passed all the way through, pulling me toward the hangar floor—which happened to be above me based on my awkward entry angle. I thudded to the deck face-first. Kaiden released my hand the moment before impact, allowing me to catch myself a little and absorb the worst of the fall.
Cries of surprise and relieved chuckles sounded over the comms as my teammates settled on the deck. We carefully rose and checked ourselves over.
“Everyone all right?” Toran asked.
Remarkably, the event had left me no worse for wear. “I’m alive. That’s good enough for me,” I said.
Maris brushed herself off. “I am never doing that again.”
“I don’t know, it wasn’t that bad.” Kaiden cracked a smile.
I raised an eyebrow. “You really do have a hero complex, don’t you?”
He shrugged. “I mean, I suppose it was me who got us back here safely.”
“Right, yeah, the Central Command crew had nothing to do with that.”
“Elle,” he leveled his gaze on me, “I’m just messing with you. This was a team effort.”
I popped off my helmet and brushed my hair back from my face. “Right, sorry. Guess I’m still on edge.”
Toran smiled. “We accomplished our mission. We got the data we set out to retrieve.”
“We should go—” I cut myself off as I looked down at my EVA suit. We still needed to go through decontamination. The tents where we’d need to scrub down were waiting for us on the other side of the hangar.
“Are you okay?” Tami shouted from my left.<
br />
I turned to face her. “Think so.”
The engineer stopped seven meters from us. “Were you… exposed?”
“Unavoidable,” Toran replied.
She nodded. “All right, you know the drill.”
I began stripping down to my white base layer shipsuit. “Yep.”
Kaiden pressed behind his ear while he started to undress. “Commander,” said to the comm, “we’re back on board. We’ll come see you as soon as we’ve finished the decontamination procedure.”
“Glad all of you made it back,” Colren replied in our ears. “I want a full med eval, as well. We’re working through the data you gathered and should have a summary of the preliminary findings to share once you’ve finished.”
“Okay, see you soon,” I acknowledged.
We filed into the decontamination booths and completed the scrub-down. It was just as unpleasant as I remembered, but I gladly took it over the chance of having some of the corrosive Darkness remaining on me. Unlike the previous time in the booth, however, duplicates of our custom-sized shipsuits were waiting for us. After dressing, we were directed from the decontamination booths into a temporary medical examination area next to it. A nurse looked me over inside the tent, pausing on some bruises forming on my limbs and torso from the fights, but everything checked out to her satisfaction.
When I emerged from my medical screening, Kaiden was waiting for me. “You have a radiant glow about you again,” he teased.
“You too. I think this time the chemical scrub took off an extra layer.”
“We were right up in it on the planet. I won’t complain about anything that keeps the Darkness far away from us.”
I nodded. “Think we’ll finally be able to get answers about what it is and where it’s from?”
“Stars, I hope so! The longer this drags on, the more antsy I get.” He crossed his arms.
Toran emerged from the tent next. “I would like to second Maris’ vote to avoid corrupted worlds in the future.”
“If that information is as good as you made it sound, we won’t have to,” Kaiden replied.
“Here’s hoping,” Maris said as she stepped out from the tent, her hair still perfectly styled through some mysterious magic she’d no doubt deny using.
“Let’s get up to Central Command and find out,” I suggested.
Kaiden held out his arm for me to lead the way.
The bridge crew snapped to attention as soon as we arrived. They’d always examined us with curiosity, but this was one of the rare moments that their professional regard bordered on awe. We’d just successfully come back from a planet that would have destroyed anyone else. While part of me appreciated the attention, it was awkward to be idolized for something I didn’t have any control over. We had been called to fulfill our role—that didn’t make us special, we were just performing our duty.
Colren beamed at us from next to his seat at the center of the bridge. “Welcome back. I’m almost willing to forgive you for disobeying our agreement considering what you managed to retrieve.”
My cheeks flushed slightly. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s done now. Let’s talk in the conference room.” The commander led us into our standard meeting space, then took a seat on the far side of the table.
The four of us sat down facing him with Kaiden and me in the center.
I folded my forearms on the tabletop and leaned forward. “Did you get anything good from the data Toran extracted?”
Colren nodded. “We’re still working through exactly what it means, but the preliminary findings are promising.”
“What have you learned?” Toran asked.
“Well, the signal embedded in the data is quite curious.” Colren tapped on the touch-surface tabletop and an ethereal melody began to play. Underneath the enticing tones was a dissonant hum that caused everyone at the table to scowl. The commander silenced the recording and continued. “At first we thought it was a specific set of instructions, like a looping set of orders. But when the techs looked deeper, they realized that there were actually multiple layers to the signal.”
Kaiden tilted his head. “In what way?”
“Well, there does appear to be a high-level message on one layer, but there’s also a complex code we were able to pick up from other parts of the world that were well outside the vicinity of the crystal you accessed. In some manner, it appears to be a control system for the Darkness.”
Toran nodded. “I suspected that might be the case.”
“How did you arrive at that?” the commander asked.
“Based on how everything behaves on infected worlds, I thought maybe the Darkness was tapping into the crystal’s unique properties—to use them as a means to re-form a world.” Toran spread his hands on the table. “Now, I can’t be certain that’s how the crystals work, but that’s been the prevailing hypothesis.”
I hadn’t fully processed what Toran had said down on the planet’s surface, but now that I didn’t have the black tendrils snaking up my leg, I allowed the words to properly sink in. “What are you saying… that a reset is actually rearranging matter?”
“As far as anyone can tell, yes,” Toran replied.
“How?” Kaiden asked.
Toran bowed his head. “Scientists have debated that for decades—arguing everything from nanotech to a controlled release of hyperdimensional energy. The important part has always been the outcome, not the mode. However, if the Darkness is interrupting the process and inserting its own variations for how to restructure the environment, then we might need to dive deeper.”
Matter rearrangement. I’d always taken the crystalline network for granted, never thinking about what actually happened during a reset. Having it spelled out, though, it all made so much more sense—why materials needed to remain within the crystal’s zone in order to come through after a reset. It wasn’t so much that the raw material needed to be the same, as I was certain state changes happened, but there needed to be enough material and energy present for the crystals to recreate the physical state from when the reset point was set.
What still didn’t make any sense to me, though, was why an alien race would want to tap into that process to alter a world, let alone how they could accomplish such a feat. It was clear they had access to ancient technology that was well beyond our comprehension, so that would suggest they would have the firepower to wipe our worlds if they saw fit. Why go to the trouble to taking worlds one by one through the Darkness?
Commander Colren seemed to have similar thoughts as he leaned back in his chair with steepled fingers. “What might the aliens want with these worlds?”
“Clearly, they want us gone,” Maris said.
“Yeah, that much is obvious,” I agreed. “Everything on those worlds is designed to kill us.”
“But maybe not intentionally,” Kaiden chimed in.
Colren tilted his head. “Go on.”
“Well,” Kaiden continued, “I tend to look at everything the way I would with an agricultural problem. There’s the natural state of the world, and then there’s what happens when some outside force starts directing the natural progression—like when there’s an infection. For example, a virus that attacks blood cells isn’t trying to kill the host, per se; rather, it is trying to redirect the hosts’ resources to fulfill a different role. Though that can result in death, that wasn’t the virus’ specific aim. I think the Darkness may operate in a similar fashion.”
“Like the animals,” I realized. “Not all of them died. Some were transformed into those other creatures that attacked us.”
He nodded. “Exactly. And the plant life and other things turned to soot, but then new forms took their place. It might not be intended as an attack, but rather some sort of bio-optimization.”
“Perhaps transforming the worlds to match the aliens’ preferred habitat?” Colren posited.
“That’s my best guess,” Kaiden replied. “Especi
ally since the gravity of the planets has been altered somehow. I can’t think of another explanation that covers all the things we’ve observed.”
“The ships,” Toran murmured.
The commander’s brow furrowed. “Pardon?”
“In Kaiden’s vision, there were ships,” he explained. “If they’ve been preparing these worlds for habitation, then…”
“Eventually the beings themselves will come,” I completed for him. A chill gripped me as I thought through the implications. We weren’t just up against the faceless Darkness—an entire invasion force of unknown beings might be coming for us.
Colren snapped to attention. “We have little chance of standing up to an adversary we know nothing about—especially one with the kind of skills these aliens seem to possess.”
“We must be able to learn more from the code,” Toran said. “Trace it to an origin.”
The commander made several entries on the touch-surface tabletop, and a holographic star map appeared above it. “The techs have been unable to trace its origin, but they did observe something interesting. The full code has never been recorded before, but when it was broken down into its components, they realized that part of the signal had appeared on the other worlds.”
“All parts, or only some of them?” Toran asked.
“There wasn’t an apparent pattern,” the commander replied.
Toran held out his hand toward the holographic model. “May I?”
Colren inclined his head with assent.
“Where do you have the data stored?” Toran asked.
The commander navigated to a directory, and then Toran began sifting through the information displayed on the tabletop in front of him.
I leaned over Kaiden to watch him work, but it was all foreign codes and graphs that made no sense to me. To my left, Maris took one glance and then leaned back in her chair with a mystified sigh.