by Trevor Scott
“If we don’t land, we’ll be dead in space without direction. Plot a course for just west of that body of water there,” Liam said, pointing at the map on the screen.
“We’ll be about ten kilometers from that large mass of life forms. Shouldn’t we land a little farther away?”
Liam could tell Saturn was frustrated. She was talking with her hands and was out of breath. Her dark hair, still tied back, floated up in a messy ponytail behind her. He knew Saturn didn’t like taking orders from anyone, even him, whom she’d known for years. Still, someone had to hold their little group together. They were stranded ten thousand light years from home and while there were three entire species of aliens out there somewhere, there were only three humans anywhere nearby.
“We might need them,” Liam explained. “We only have enough supplies for days, a week at most.”
Saturn softened her stare and said, “I still don’t like it.”
“We need to make repairs to the ship and get our bearings and it will be a lot easier when we’re on the ground.”
“Fine.”
9
Four Hours Later
“We’re inside two hundred thousand kilometers,” Saturn declared, waking Liam up from a cozy nap.
Liam opened his eyes and removed his feet from the cockpit’s center console. He unbuckled his straps and floated up and out of his chair, redirecting himself so he could see better out of the window. The yellow and brown planet took up most of their view now, the large lakes just coming into their line of sight. Its solitary moon, a small black and gray sphere, was on his monitor. They’d passed inside its orbit more than an hour ago. Liam matched their course to the spin of the planet so they would have a favorable angle of descent. With any luck, their makeshift repairs would hold together. Liam briefly fired the reverse thrusters until they were traveling at a safe speed for entry.
Saturn retrieved a packaged protein bar from a small cabinet to the left of her console. The door clicked shut and she ripped open the package. The solid brown substance floated up out of her hand where she caught it and took a large bite. The mining craft’s supplies were limited to nonperishables in which anyone familiar with spaceflight had grown accustomed. That didn’t make the supplements any more palatable, but there was some comfort in knowing that not even the president of Vesta Corporation had it any better than they did. Rations were rations.
“One hour out,” Liam mused. “Then we see just what secrets this mystery planet holds.”
Saturn yawned, revealing chunks of her protein bar lodged in her teeth. She swallowed too much at once and hit her chest with a closed fist, coughing and sending a small chunk floating up and out of her mouth, which she quickly grabbed and shoved back between her teeth.
Liam watched as she regained her composure. She tightened her straps so the chair was hugging her body. Liam knew it was hard to get comfortable in a weightless environment. It wasn’t just finding a comfortable position, but finding a way to support the back without waking up in pain. Liam asked, “Did you sleep at all?”
“No,” Saturn replied. “I’ve been trying to go over the readings to see if I can find out anything else about the aliens on the planet.”
“And?”
“I have a few assumptions about them, but nothing terribly useful I’m afraid.”
Liam turned his back to the cockpit’s window, floating at an odd angle above the console. “What kind of assumptions?”
“Well, for starters, whatever species are on the planet have been attracted to the water source, which means their biology must be like life on Earth, probably carbon-based.”
“We think they’re bipedal, then?”
“Maybe, but it’s more than that. On Earth, there’s human life even in some of the most desolate deserts and tundra. On this planet, apart from the life near the water, there’s nothing.”
Liam scratched his scarred right cheek, noticing he needed a good shave soon. He thought about the implications of what Saturn had just told him. Liam thought aloud, “Does that means this is some kind of colonial outpost?”
“Exactly. We’ve already seen a ship far more advanced than our own pass through a wormhole to our solar system. I think it’s possible all of these species are more advanced than us, with colonies spreading much farther than our own.”
“How far?”
“I’ve done a cursory scan of this system. There are eleven planets and hundreds of moons. Unless we got closer, there’s no way to know if they’re inhabited. But I’m betting this is one of many.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because there are two million inhabitants. It took Earth fifty years to reach one hundred thousand on Mars. Even if they worked at a faster rate, they could have been colonizing this place for centuries.”
Another multi-planetary species. It was impossible to tell with their scanners just how far the aliens’ civilization could have spread. In a hundred more years, humans will have colonized Titan and Europa, in domed cities if nothing else. There were far more planets and moons in this system. That meant the possibilities were far greater for expansion. If most of the planets were rocky like Earth it could mean a lot of colonies.
“Have you been able to scan this planet’s moon at all?”
“There are ruins on the surface. Some nice mineral deposits. The moon has only a few hundred inhabitants all located near a large structure that’s built into the rocks. I think our chances are better on the planet’s surface.”
Liam pushed off from the window and floated to the display behind the pilot’s chairs. He gripped a handle on the wall to steady himself and began looking at readings of the surface of the planet. Their gravity was more than ninety percent of Earth’s, which meant the difference between the two would feel negligible. The gravity on the mine itself worked out to be similar to Earth’s, between the asteroid and the artificial gravity of the ship. The weightless environment of the past day wasn’t enough to lose muscle. Liam was thankful that they at least had that going for them.
“Saturn, can you adjust our descent based on the gravitational parameters of the planet?”
“I programmed it while you were sleeping,” Saturn said with a smirk, putting her hands behind her head. “Maybe I should be the one in charge, like old times.”
Liam had been on missions where Saturn was the Captain. She was a skilled leader, but was always headstrong. She couldn’t separate a grudge with the task at hand and it had almost gotten them killed on multiple occasions. Right now, their small crew needed Liam to keep things level-headed. Though, he knew there could be a time and a place for Saturn’s unique skill set.
Liam replied, “Let’s just focus, fifty-five minutes until—”
There was a crash and a flash of blue glanced off their bow. The auto-pilot adjusted the ship so it would stay on course, though the ship still tilted slightly off kilter. Liam was shaken up and banged his head on the console, cursing loudly. “What the hell was that?”
Saturn’s fingers were busy at the console, pulling up images of another ship on their view screen. It was a small ship, sleek in design and moving far faster than their scout ship. Its design was different than the first alien ship. It came about and matched their course and speed. A red light blinked on the control panel.
“It’s an external audio message,” Saturn said.
“Put it through.”
The voice that filled the cockpit was deep and silky, drawing syllables together like a master poet, far from what Liam had expected. Though, he didn’t know what he had expected, if he was being honest. Alien languages were, well, alien to him.
“Is there any chance our translation software will work on this?” Liam asked.
Saturn shook her head, still rapidly pushing buttons on the console. “It is a learning software, so the more it hears, the more plausible it will be that it will decipher the language. Right now, not a chance.”
“Open a channel.”
Saturn
turned her head and gazed at him questioningly. “They won’t understand us.”
“Just do it.”
Saturn pressed a button on the left-hand side of the console and with her right hand raised the volume. She motioned for Liam that she was ready. Liam pushed off with his hand and floated over to her seat, resting his hands on the backrests of the two pilot’s chairs.
“My name is Liam Kidd of the Planet Earth. We mean you no harm. Our ship is damaged and we need to land on the surface to make repairs.”
Liam waited for a response that didn’t come.
Saturn shook her head. “I told you, they’re not going to understand.”
The cockpit door opened and Ju-Long Ma floated through, rubbing his eyes as he glided up to them. “This had better be good. I was in the middle of a great dream,” he said, then pointed at Saturn with a smile across his face, “You were in it, Saturn.”
The silky voice returned, this time speaking something different than before.
“Earth Kidd,” it said. “Ship land on surface.”
The aliens cut the audio channel, leaving the cockpit in silence. The crew exchanged looks, unsure of whether to be frightened, thankful, or simply bewildered.
“Who the hell was that?” Ju-Long asked, breaking the silence.
Saturn brought up the image of the alien spacecraft on the screen. It was silver and sleek, bearing the likeness of something made from liquid rather than solid metal. It was shaped like a long bullet with a single engine jutting out the back with a blue ion trail. Liam was sure its speed would dwarf their own. Their weapons were very similar to the aliens at the Asteroid Belt. That couldn’t have been a coincidence.
“We’re going to the surface with these guys?” Saturn asked.
Liam watched as they slowly approached the planet. They would be entering the outer atmosphere in well under an hour. Liam looked between Saturn and Ju-Long and said, “It doesn’t look like we have much of a choice.”
10
There had been radio silence for thirty minutes as the mining craft began its approach. The sleek alien vessel trailed closely, monitoring them the whole way. Liam wondered how powerful their scanners were and what they’d found out about them. Even most Earth ships had better scanners than their small scout craft. In that moment, the alien technology’s only bounds were the limits of Liam’s imagination.
A holographic map rose out of Liam’s control panel showing a gridded chart of the planet’s surface. A location blinked in a small yellow dot, growing in size as they approached. Liam turned to Saturn who gazed back, confused.
“Don’t look at me,” she said.
“These things can control our ship?” Ju-Long asked.
The aliens hadn’t adjusted their course for them, leading Liam to believe they couldn’t control all of the ship’s systems. It was still frightening that they could manipulate them as much as they had. Liam took the joystick and moved the ship to the new suggested heading.
“Saturn, where is that on the surface?”
Saturn put her hand inside the hologram and spun it toward her, zooming in and examining it closely. “It looks like a spaceport near the water. There are strips of sand on the surface lined with hundreds of vessels.”
“Why would they take us to the heart of their colony?” Liam asked.
“They must have scanned us,” Ju-Long replied sarcastically. “Three humans with an inferior ship won’t stand much chance against whatever they’ve got on the surface.”
He was right. Their weapon systems consisted of low-powered mining lasers which were incapable of penetrating the first vessel’s armor. Their own ship was susceptible to its own mining lasers, meaning whatever the aliens had would no doubt be far more effective against them. In the conventional sense of the word, they were hosed.
The mining ship descended into the upper layer of the atmosphere, the air pressure beginning to push against their vessel, heating up the visible exterior portions of the ship until they glowed a bright orange. Gravity began to return to the cockpit faster now, forcing Liam’s feet to hit the floor. He quickly found his seat and strapped in.
“Ju-Long, take the jump seat by the console,” Liam yelled over the increasing noise in the cabin.
Ju-Long flipped down a small seat and pulled straps over his shoulders, attaching them to a belt which he secured around his waist. The gravity was increasing and Liam began to feel the G forces working against him. In a minute, they passed into a lower level of the atmosphere, where Liam leveled out the scout ship, using the increased surface area and backward thrusters to slow their descent. At thirty-thousand meters he noticed a problem.
A red light flashed on the console along with a blaring warning tone. A holographic image of their ship appeared where the map once was, showing the starboard wing, flashing a red color. The graphic representation of the wing was detailed enough to show individual panels. The panel they’d fixed on the bottom buckled, slowly tearing until it flew off. The heat from their descent was having an effect on the internal wiring in the wing.
A burst of heat blew the top panel off, revealing a hole in it a half-meter wide. The wiring inside the wing was fried and the hole began to widen as they went down. At ten thousand meters the wing was holding on by a single support strut. At five thousand, it snapped, sending them veering off course. Liam turned the joystick hard trying with all his might to steady the scout ship. He fired thrusters in the port wing, leveling them out to some extent.
The ground was fast approaching and the landscape began to come into view. What looked like a vast desert from far away was, in reality, bustling with life. Around the water Liam saw a glut of purple foliage, climbing high into the air. The sky was filled with strange winged creatures neither avian nor reptilian, but something in between.
A hundred monolithic spires shot out of the ground around the water, metallic and sleek like the alien craft. Apart from a few hills in the distance, the ground was very flat and dry, even cracked in some places. The majority of the population seemed to live in much smaller buildings around the spires, creating in effect a hundred small cities in concentric circles, connected at the edges by an imaginary line only visible from the air.
Two thousand meters. They could clearly see the spaceport now, several kilometers of hardened sand approaching fast. Liam fired the remaining thrusters to slow their fall, but without the starboard wing they were ineffective in slowing the ship to a safe landing speed. One segment of the landing gear was stored in their right wing. Without it, their landing was going to be bumpy. Without slowing to a safe approach speed, Liam wouldn’t be able to land the craft vertically. Instead, he’d have to try to skid to a stop.
Five hundred meters. Two hundred fifty. One hundred.
“Hang on!” Liam shouted over the countless alarms booming throughout the cockpit.
Liam pulled up hard, firing the thrusters at full blast, trying to give them a better angle on the drop, but the landing gear was still crushed under the ship as they crashed down. The nose hit the sand first and skidded along, throwing up dust and dirt over the cockpit windows and obstructing Liam’s view. He couldn’t see where they were as he tried to keep the vessel straight, though he knew it was far out of his control. They skidded almost a kilometer before they finally came to a halt. Once stopped, the loose sand trickled off the cockpit’s window and Liam saw they were among a particularly dense conglomeration of starships, each one more different than the last in shapes that would baffle most humans. He wondered how some of them even flew.
The alarms continued to sound as the dust cloud began to dissipate around them, the cabin still a mess of flashing red light. The power to the console dwindled, the holographic images and control lights fading to black. The hum of the ion engine slowed to a halt and the cockpit was left in silence, deafening to Liam’s ears after so much commotion. Liam looked around the cabin and asked, “Is everyone still in one piece?”
Ju-Long’s legs were shaking and he held ont
o his restraining straps with white knuckles. “Tā mā de,” he yelled, repeating the Chinese curse softer under his breath as he checked over his body meticulously for injuries.
Saturn breathed heavily, bracing herself on the console. Her forehead was lined with sweat, beads trailing down her face and soaking into the collar of her gray jumpsuit. She shot Liam an angry look and said, “That’s the last time you drive.”
11
When the dust had fully cleared, Liam could see that the mining ship was surrounded by humanoids clad in tight, sand-colored suits. Plated armor covered their shoulders and parts of their legs and abdomens. Their alien faces were obstructed by oblong tan helmets with black visors which jutted down over their visages. Their ensembles camouflaged them well against the dunes and rocky outcrops in the distance. There were dozens of them, each bearing some manner of laser-weapon pointed at the ship. They approached with caution.
Liam unbuckled his straps and stood up on the grated metal floor of the cockpit, clanking his feet as he grew accustomed to gravity again. He stretched his legs and raised his arms up to stretch his spine. Even a day in zero gravity took its toll upon return to near normal gravity.
Saturn released the control panel and unstrapped her buckles. Her eyes were focused intently out the window. “Do you think they’re hostile?” she asked.
“The way they’re approaching it looks like they’re just being cautious. I think we’ll be okay.”
“You think?”
“Feel free to stay here if you like.”
Liam helped Ju-Long out of his jump seat. His muscular frame appeared weak for once, his face losing its color and his knees shaking under his newfound weight. When he realized Saturn was watching he quickly stood up straight and brushed Liam’s hands away, determined to look after himself. Liam opened the cockpit door and led Ju-Long out into the cargo bay until they were standing near the airlock. Under the lights in the cargo bay Liam could see Ju-Long’s lip sporting a healthy bruise and the cut along his forehead beginning to scab up.