He rubbed the table with a hand and raised his eyes to her. “I could have pursued you harder, but Luttrell indicated that you two had a commitment.”
She shot him an indignant look. “You should ask me how I feel about any relationship, not Luttrell.”
“You’re right.” He paused, a smile wreathing his face. Elise, you know I love you. I’ve always loved you from the moment we first met. Maybe I should have mentioned it earlier, but you were the daunting captain and I was no one. But now, I’ve proven myself, and I’m well thought of. I still love you and whatever arrangement you’re comfortable with suits me fine.”
“Oh.” She sat back in surprise. “You never asked that question …”
“I was a complete fool.” He reached out to stroke her fingers, then her shoulders. He stood and pulled her up to him, planting a hot eager kiss on her lips. She fell toward the inviting couch as her hands felt his warm skin and smooth cheeks. A thrill danced along her lips and spread across her whole body, causing her toes to curl in delight. A soft moan escaped her mouth. They fell together in a passionate embrace.
Dinner went cold.
***
Good to his word, Carter created and launched several probes to a number of promising systems. The probe, surveying their closest target, sent back transmissions with breathtaking images.
“This system is what we call circumbinary,” said Jensen as he displayed two suns with ten planets.
“One sun is larger than our sun back home while the second sun is dimmer and smaller. Still, the effect on the planets is substantial as light shines a majority of the time during certain seasons. Nights are short.” He showed an image that included the other planets.
Eventually, the probe targeted the most habitable planet. Elise strained forward in the captain’s chair, squinting at the monitor where hazy images of a hot landscape flickered in and out of focus. Habitable? She had some doubts there.
When word of close-up pictures of planets from the new star system seeped through the ship, curiosity seekers asked to come on the bridge to view them.
Trajan showed up to protect the bridge. “No admittance except official crew.” Trajan’s baritone ordered inquisitive visitors away. Mika also joined him and pitched in to help guard the entrance.
Finally, Elise excluded all but her bridge crew. “We need to evaluate the images, and then we’ll send them over the network, so everyone can view them.”
At first, the transmissions revealed barren worlds of ice. Then came the gas giants, totally uninhabitable, but two terrestrial planets initially raised their hopes.
Dane sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “I’d so hoped this second planet from the two suns would be habitable, but without a magnetic field to protect it, the atmosphere has blown out and consequently all water has dried up.”
“No water, no life.” Jensen flipped forward images of a barren wasteland.
“However, I’m getting signals of an odd nature from the other planet,” Jazz informed the bridge.
Heads swiveled toward her, reflecting faces with questions.
Jazz put up a hand palm out. “Just reporting my observations. I’ll research further.”
The next planet, nearer to the two suns, proved extremely hot with a high gravity. A closer inspection revealed active volcanoes. A weak magnetic field offered some protection, but radiation levels tested dangerously high.
“The place looks like the images of hell that old Earth used to portray in religious books,” Jensen mused.
Pointing to a spectrograph, Tate added, “Those signals are made by intelligent entities. There’s a definite pattern to them, like a language.”
Jensen shifted his shoulders and cracked his neck. “How can anything survive in that heat?”
John Luttrell showed up and edged past a frowning Merek to enter the bridge just in time to hear Jensen’s words, “Not only heat but radiation.” He joined her at her station and raised an eyebrow. “May I watch?”
“We’re taking tickets,” Tango drawled.
“Left mine in my jacket back at the lab,” John retorted. He leaned closer, practically edging out Elise. He slanted his head at her. “Hello.”
She elbowed him. “Hello, yourself. I had to offer titillating pictures to get you to visit my bridge, huh?”
“They sounded interesting. I wanted a peek.” He leaned in, rubbing against her shoulder.
She chose to ignore the invasion. “They don’t show much life.”
He straightened a little. “Life might have adapted by going underground. That would be my guess.” He stepped back, a puzzled expression on his face.
She stretched and gazed up at him. “You think something’s down there? There’s no evidence of housing, transportation, or crops on the surface.”
“Like I said–underground.” He tapped the monitor as the probe panned past a series of strange cylindrical formations.
“What are those?” Tate asked. “There’s smoke coming out from underneath them.”
“I have no idea.” John squinted at the odd structures. “And another curious thing. Those wide squiggles could be curving roads or merely patterns made by wind blowing over dry sand. Hard to tell.”
“Commander on the line,” Jazz announced.
Before linking in, she shooed John off the bridge. “Yes, sir. Are you seeing what we are?”
Commander Reardon’s gruff voice answered, “I’m not sure what I’m seeing.” He paused. “What do you make of the images?”
“Nothing definitive. We got more questions than answers. Some say conditions are too hostile to support life, but Luttrell thinks life could have gone underground.” She sighed. “I’m inclined to think he may be right.”
***
Elise needed a quiet place where she could think about the images she’d seen. She’d invited Lisi to join her. She wanted her clone’s opinion on the situation.
Elise remembered that the lush green plants of the garden module always revitalized her. After the dry, hot, barren images from the probe, she wanted to surround herself with green life and think if she wanted to live on a world where such beauty might not exist. So, she headed to the ship’s garden.
Walking past all the vegetation, she searched for her favorite spot and found it. After twenty-five years of careful cultivation, those plants burned by radiation were now healthy. Seeds from revitalized plants that had been defrosted from cryo had been returned back to storage so they would grow and thrive on a new world…hopefully.
Lisi, Elise’s now thirty-year-old clone, joined her. The youthful face also appreciated the lushness of the garden.
“Ah, here we are!” Elise exclaimed as she faced Lisi. It was more and more like gazing into a mirror. The wide lavender eyes fringed with dark thick lashes were one of the many features attracting the notice of too many young men on board the ship.
“A picnic. We’ll have a picnic.” Elise unfolded a thick cloth and spread it on the ground.
“I love a picnic.” Lisi settled her slim body onto the blanket and helped Elise unpack. Bright red apples, sandwiches, and cookies nestled in a woven basket soon materialized onto the cloth.
Elise handed Lisi a thermos of tea. “Back on Earth, John and I would often have picnics. We’d find a spot outside, usually under a tree near fragrant flowers. We would spread a blanket and share a meal. He had a romantic side back then.”
Looking around, Elise said, “Trees on Earth would grow twenty or thirty feet. Some in northwest America grew taller. Ten people could stretch out their arms and encircle those trunks and even that would not be enough to reach entirely around some trees.”
Lisi’s eyes widened. “They told us that in our studies, but I still find it hard to believe.” She gazed around at the spindly trees in their current garden.
With a sigh, Elise sipped her tea. “We don’t have the room here. Also, the flowers in that world …” She shook her head. “There were thousands. So many with vivid colors and fasc
inating forms that it took my breath away. And the smell. They gave off incredible fragrances, sweet, spicy, woodsy…”
“Our educator said Earth contained an extraordinary variety of animal life too.”
Carefully, Elise unwrapped a thin tomato and cheese sandwich. “Oh, yes. From the deepest abyss of salt oceans, where translucent jellyfish dangled long tentacles, to the highest snow-capped mountains where nimble goats frolicked, Earth teemed with an infinite variety of life. We carry in the fleet’s cryo unit and cultivate on the farms only a small portion of what lived there.”
Chewing slowly, her daughter nodded. “It’s hard to imagine.”
“The land was so vast and beautiful in places.” Elise swept out an arm, tears in her eyes. “That’s why we search so hard to find a habitable place … in the hope we can create another Earth.”
“So why did you leave?”
Elise’s hand flailed the air. “A lot of people on Earth felt the need to expand into the universe in order to protect the species from an extinction event. A near miss by an asteroid gave us a wake-up call. With all of humanity isolated on one planet, we were vulnerable to asteroids, sunspots, earthquakes, volcanoes, hundreds of possible events that could wipe out our species.” She nibbled on an edge of sandwich. “At least that was one argument for this expedition.”
“Jay says people messed up Earth.”
“Yes, a bit. But that wasn’t the only reason for leaving.” Elise sighed. “At the time, it seemed important to expand out to other worlds to protect the species, but considering all that has happened, I wonder if we made the right choice.”
“Maybe it’s part of our nature. Jay’s studying how genetics controls behavior so he can design certain traits into humans. He says that people have an innate sense of curiosity and the drive to explore.”
“Now, Lisi.” Elise shifted to a more comfortable position as she organized her thoughts. “I know you love Jay, and I understand. I just hope …”
Lisi leaned forward, putting a hand on her mother’s arm. “Don’t worry. I do love him, but men like the Luttrells never marry well. They neglect their women terribly. You forget that I’ve seen how John Luttrell has treated you over the years. The man and his clone are both charming but very self-centered. When I’m ready to commit, I’ll find someone who gives me more attention than he gives his Petrie dish.”
“I consider John’s work critical.”
“No one here is saying that it isn’t. However, when I marry, I want to find a man who puts me at the center of his world and not one who treats me as a small addition to his life.” Her daughter bit down on the sandwich and chewed vigorously. She stared meaningfully at her mother.
“Oh, he’s not like that!” Elise bristled at the comment. It hit too close to the mark, making her feel diminished.
“Isn’t he? Just last shift he canceled your lunch to run and check on something at the lab.”
“It was important. I understood.”
“For more than thirty years, he’s been more committed to his lab than your relationship, except when threatened by Carter or some important event.”
Her mother shifted uneasily. “We both have responsibilities that take precedence. Maybe I’m as much to blame as John. The expectations of a wife’s role in marriage never appealed to me. I prefer flying a spaceship to the duties of a wife. I’d be a high maintenance woman who he wouldn’t have time for, and John would be a lab-absorbed husband, which I would resent. I’m happy with the current arrangement …and so is he.”
“Jay is just like him. I like that he wants to make a difference, but I would never marry him because I want someone who would be willing to let me make a difference too.”
Surprised, Elise regarded her daughter with appreciative eyes. In her own life, figuring that out had taken far too long.
She heard a rustle as someone hurried into the garden. Jacob burst between trees and channels of vegetables. “Captain, you’re needed immediately on the bridge. Something’s happened.”
Lisi smiled a wry smile. “John’s not the only one who rushes off because of job responsibilities.”
Elise struggled to stand, her aging muscles complained. “You know my job’s important. I’m sorry to leave you, though. I was enjoying our talk.”
“Me too.”
Jacob reached out to pull her up. “The commander wants to speak to you as soon as possible.”
She brushed off her slacks and went from the peaceful garden to whatever fresh crisis waited.
***
As soon as she arrived, she detected heavy tension throughout the bridge. An agitated Tango sat in her captain’s chair, worriedly tapping his fingers on her armrest. Next to him stood Tag, whose hands waved in the air over some critical issue. At the communication console, Jazz and Tate were in a serious, hushed conversation.
The clones often confused her, and she would use the wrong name, or call them by the name of their original. Good-naturedly, they gave her a hard time about it and often commented that her forgetfulness was age related. She resented the implication that she was turning senile but could do little about it.
In spite of Luttrell’s nanites, the whole fleet kept getting older, although at a slower pace with little illness among them. Thank the stars. All over the ship, clones took on more tasks. Even on her bridge, the clones were assuming greater responsibilities as they replaced or augmented her original crew.
She strode up to her chair, waving Tango off as she began plugging in. He, in turn, bumped Jensen from the helm. Sliding Dane out, Jensen moved to navigation and began transferring maps of a particular region to everyone’s display.
“What’s up?”
Tango swiveled around. “Dane has sighted bogeys coming up from that hot planet.”
“Bogeys?”
Tate chimed in, “Unidentified spaceships.”
She found the comment difficult to believe. “Couldn’t it be just a cluster of funny-shaped asteroids? Nothing looked like it could live there.”
“They show no off-gassing, and the spectrometer displays a mixture of silver, carbon, silicate, and other materials that indicate they’re artificial, not natural. Also, we believe they launched from the planet.”
Elise’s head snapped up. “Huh?”
Leaning toward her, Tango added, “We also identified heat source emissions coming from inside.”
“Seriously?” She squinted at the monitor. “Enlarge the images. How many?”
“Five that we’ve located.” Jazz’s voice lit up with excitement. “More may come.”
Tango stared at Elise. “Could they be hostile?”
“Commander on your private line, Captain.” Jazz gestured at her console.
She nodded and tapped in. “Captain Fujeint here. Commander, are you monitoring those images?”
“Remember that top secret program you put in place twenty years back? We may need to activate it.”
“We’ll need time to get it working.”
“Charles Dance has a system similar to yours that Jacob and his wife … what’s her name … built.”
“Abbie, sir.”
“Right. I just talked to Charles Dance, and he’s scrambling to get his working. Your clone, Elija, helped put one on The Valiant too. He’s taken over as Captain there, by the way. I have my Tate setting up an alien contact protocol just in case. We could be wrong, but the more details we get, the more it looks like we are about to encounter intelligent aliens.”
She trembled at the idea and tried to clear a clogged throat. “Do… do… you think they’re hostile or friendly?” Her voice stumbled on the words.
He grunted. “Let’s assume friendly, but the configurations we observed indicate warships: forward weapon mounts, power emissions, streamline shape for ease of maneuver … the signs are not good.”
“Sir, with all due respect, let’s not start a fight we may not be able to win. We only carry four ships with weapons.”
“I know. Ready your ship for
Jump. If we’re attacked, the fleet jumps out. Meanwhile, get prepared. Tell Carter we’ll need as many of his drones that he can assemble. Dance, you, me, and Elija lead out front to test the waters and meet and greet.”
“How far out are we from these bogeys now?”
“Computer estimates say five shifts unless they change their trajectory or vary velocity. They took out our forward probe, and they’ve launched, heading straight for us. At best, we have approximately forty hours to prepare. Make that time count.”
Five shifts. Forty hours to activate a defense system never used, or for that matter, ever tested.
Great.
Chapter 37
Engagement
Elise felt someone shaking her. Lisi’s face blurred into view overhead, along with her sleeping quarters in the background. She had just put her head down to rest, or so she thought. The image cleared. A worried frown knitted her clone’s dark eyebrows.
Hurting muscles, a headache, and exhaustion bombarded Elise’s body. She didn’t want to get up. Getting old sucked. Dimly, recent events trickled into memory, jerking her upright. Possible alien contact! She struggled to sit up as adrenaline rushed through her body.
Lisi said, “You asked to be woken up at least one shift before we contacted the aliens. Get up, Mom. In eight hours, they’ll be here.”
Elise rubbed her face and offered a wan smile. “What’s the status of the ship?”
Smoothing out the covers, Lisi eased onto the bed. “Jacob and Abbie have forty drones, armed and ready. Jimbo’s team has front ports stuffed with projectiles and extras stacked nearby. Power systems have prepared jump engines and spun up the antimatter containment magnets. The ship is buzzing and tensions are tighter than a plucked string. You need to make an announcement before rumors cause riots.”
As ship captain, she would have to inform her ship that they faced armed and possibly hostile aliens without causing a ship wide panic. After all this time and struggle, the fleet couldn’t fail now.
With a nod, Elise edged off the bed. Lisi handed her a black shirt, edged with a gold collar and cuffs. She slipped it on and pulled on black slacks, her eyes tracing the gold line down either leg. Serious captain clothes.
A World Too Far (Terran Trilogy Book 1) Page 22