Darius grimaced. “That’s like what sea-faring pirates on Earth used to do—flying a friendly flag until they got close enough to attack.”
“Yes,” Gatticus replied. “Exactly like that.”
They flew on in silence as everyone considered the implications of what Gatticus had said. The bottom of the Deliverance loomed in front of them, and Darius noted that they were headed for a large, gaping bulge in the underside of the ship. It was open to space on both ends. A landing bay? Darius wondered.
It swelled to fill Darius’s entire field of view, and then they cruised inside. The hangar was at least a kilometer long, if it’s size relative to the full length of the ship was anything to go by. The ceiling was marked with a dozen parallel landing strips, and flashing arrows led in from both sides to glowing rectangular landing pads in the center of the hangar. Some of the pads were marked with red X’s, others with green rectangles. Gatticus rolled the transport until the ceiling of the hangar lined up with its bottom; then he swooped down along one of the landing strips.
Black rectangular docking clamps raced up under them, zipping along sliding rails in the landing strip to match speed with the transport.
As they drifted down, the docking clamps extended to reach the underside of the transport. They made contact with a loud clunk, and Darius felt his body being pressed hard against his seat restraints. His head snapped forward, then back, but the suit helped to stabilize his neck. Again he couldn’t breathe.
A few seconds later they jerked to a stop on one of the landing pads in the center of the hangar. Those magnetic clamps had managed to both capture and stop their ship.
“Snaz!” Cassandra said.
The nose of the transport kicked up suddenly, and Darius frowned in confusion, wondering what was happening. The landing pad flipped under them, and they emerged inside a chamber like the one they’d launched from a few minutes ago.
“Uhhh... this isn’t where we left those creatures, is it?” Blake asked.
Darius scanned the space nervously, but he didn’t see anything.
“It is not,” Gatticus replied belatedly. “The launch tubes run the length of the ship and they are connected to all of the hangars, but each hangar has its own set of vehicular airlocks.”
Deck sections slid open above them, and they rose into a hangar like the one where they’d found the Ospreys, except this one was much larger, and it had a variety of different ships parked inside: small one-man fighters, more bomber-transports like theirs, and a few bulky-looking shuttles.
Darius inferred that was the reason for the red X’s marking some of the landing pads in the external hangar. The X’s marked occupied spots.
“Stay here,” Gatticus said. “I’ll go find Lisa.”
“Fine by me,” Blake replied.
Darius tried to get up, but his restraints held him down.
“How do I get out of this damn harness?” Blake demanded, apparently encountering the same problem.
“Pull the lever on the left side of your chair,” Gatticus said.
Darius found and lifted the lever. Pushing the two halves of his rigid harness aside, he stood up and ascended the ramp to the upper part of the cockpit. He was just in time to see Gatticus walk out through the open cockpit door. Blake and Cassandra were watching him go, both still seated, but with their harnesses folded away to the sides of their chairs.
Darius sighed. “We’re alive.”
“For now,” Blake said. “We still have to steal enough fuel to get out of here.”
“And then pick a star to fly to,” Cassandra said.
“Yeah, and hope that one of the planets around that star is inhabited by friendly aliens, or at least habitable, and not another hunting ground for Phantoms. What are the odds we check all of those boxes?”
Darius scowled and glanced at his daughter, worried that Blake might be scaring her again. But she didn’t look scared. She looked... excited.
“Cass? Are you okay?”
She blinked a few times, as if coming out of a daze. “Yeah, why?”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Well, kind of, but...”
“But?”
“It’s just that... it seems like a few hours ago I was on Earth, going into cryo with two months to live and wondering if I’d ever wake up again. Now I’m awake, I’m cured, and it’s over a thousand years later. I got to meet aliens, and an android, and walk around on a spaceship. And now we’re talking about going down to an alien planet so we can steal fuel for the warp drive of that spaceship and fly to some other planet.” She shook her head. “I always dreamed of what it would be like to travel the stars, to see aliens and explore other planets, but I never thought I’d actually get to do it.”
“Yeah that’s pretty snaz, kid,” Blake said, “But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Well, if we do die, at least we’ll have really lived, you know?”
Darius’s scowl deepened. “No one’s dying.”
“That’s a bold promise, Spaceman,” Blake replied.
“Let’s try to stay positive, all right?” Darius said.
“Sure, you do that.”
They lapsed into silence and Darius went back to his chair to wait for Gatticus to return.
About five minutes later a pair of footsteps came clanging down the corridor to the cockpit. Darius got back up just in time to see Gatticus and Lisa appear. “Are you okay?” he asked as soon as he saw her.
Lisa nodded. “Yeah, just... a little shaken.”
“Where was she?” Blake asked.
“Right where you left me,” Lisa snapped.
“Hey, we all left you, Blondie, so don’t blame me. You’re the one who forgot to turn on her boots.”
“We need to transfer to a new Osprey,” Gatticus said. “The Banshees destroyed the airlock on this one.”
Darius nodded and everyone followed him back through the ship. When they reached the airlock, they saw what Gatticus was talking about. The inner doors were twisted and bent, and slashed with long, ragged claw marks.
“Damn...” Blake said.
“How can they rip through metal like that?” Darius asked.
“Their claws and teeth are coated with advanced materials that enable them to cut through almost anything,” Gatticus said.
“Don’t they break?” Darius asked.
“Sometimes, but they just fix them when they do,” Gatticus replied.
“What about their hide?” Blake asked as they followed him through the airlock and across the hangar to another Osprey. “I shot one of them a few times, but it still didn’t die.”
“Nanites,” Gatticus explained. “The same thing I injected you with.”
“You mean them,” Blake replied. “You didn’t inject me.”
Gatticus nodded. “Nanites aren’t just used to cure and prevent disease. They heal and repair damaged tissues too.”
“So nanites are Phantom tech?” Darius asked.
“Yes,” Gatticus replied. “They brought us death, but they also brought us life. Ironic, is it not?”
Blake made a lurid comment about irony, and Darius cringed. “Would you mind not swearing so much around my daughter?”
“Sorry. Irony is like a woman who sleeps with men for money. Is that better?”
Darius shook his head. “Never mind.”
They reached the rear airlock of the next Osprey. Gatticus waved his hand in front of it, and a landing ramp extended. They walked up the ramp together and Gatticus opened the outer doors.
As soon as they were all inside, Gatticus closed the outer doors and opened the inner ones. They followed him through the passenger bay to the cockpit.
“I should go shut down the reactors on the Deliverance,” Gatticus said.
Darius blinked at him. “Are the ship’s power cells recharged already?”
“Charged enough, yes.”
“Even if we power down the reactor, what are the odds the Phantoms will miss this ship
sitting up here in orbit?” Blake asked. “I mean, it’s not exactly small. Even with the power offline, it should be pretty easy to spot.”
“That depends if they are using active or passive sensors,” Gatticus replied. “But you are right, the odds of discovery are still quite high.”
“So we just have to hope that no one finds the ship while we’re off stealing fuel for it?” Darius asked.
“I believe I may have a solution.”
“Spill it, Slick,” Blake said.
“We could land the Deliverance on Hades’ moon and then shut down the reactor. It will be nearly impossible to detect against the backdrop of the moon, assuming the thermal signature has faded, of course.”
“How long will it take to reach the moon?” Lisa asked.
“A few hours.”
Darius nodded. “Let’s do it.”
“What if there are more of those creatures on board?” Cassandra asked. “They could find us while you’re landing the ship.”
“You can all stay here,” Gatticus suggested. “It is unlikely they will find you aboard the Osprey, and even if they find me, they won’t hunt me.”
“And what are we supposed to do while we wait?” Blake demanded.
“Is there any food?” Cassandra asked. “I’m starving.”
“There should be plenty of ration packs on board, but there is something else you could do to pass the time. It would be helpful for you all to receive combat training, and maybe learn some more useful languages—at least Cygnian and Primary.”
Blake shook his head. “Wait, I thought you said landing the Deliverance on Hades’ moon would only take a few hours? How are we supposed to learn all of that while we wait?”
“You won’t technically need to learn anything. You just need to download the knowledge to your brains.”
“We can do that?” Lisa asked.
“How?” Blake added.
“You need an injection of nanites first,” Gatticus explained. “The neural mapper just tells the nanites what to do. They are what writes the information to your brain.”
Blake’s eyes narrowed to paper-thin slits and he held Gatticus’s gaze for a long moment. “Fine,” he said. “I guess they haven’t killed anyone yet. Hook me up.”
Gatticus nodded and went to open one of the lockers in the passenger bay. Inside was a metal cabinet with drawers. Opening one of the drawers, Gatticus withdrew a metal cylinder like the ones he’d used to inject everyone else. This time Darius noticed a red stripe on the side of it.
Blake thrust out his arm and watched with a scowl as Gatticus administered the injection.
“So how do we start downloading?” Darius asked.
“I will need to bring the necessary equipment from the ship’s data center. Wait here.”
“What about those rations you mentioned?” Cassandra asked as Gatticus turned to leave.
He pointed to another locker. “Over there.”
Darius went to open the locker and found another cabinet filled with meal packs and black canteens. As he passed them around, he caught a glimpse of Gatticus back inside the airlock, the inner doors closing behind him.
While they waited for him to return, they began eating their meal packs. Those meals consisted of different-sized bars and squares, all varying shades of brown. They looked like dog biscuits and tasted like sawdust glued together with chewing gum. Even so, Darius couldn’t get enough. He ate until his jaw ached. With everything going on, he hadn’t realized just how hungry he was. It probably didn’t help that technically the last time he’d eaten anything had been over a thousand years ago.
While they ate, Cassandra and Blake explained to Lisa what she’d missed, mostly filling in details about the political situation with the USO and the Coalition. Lisa listened quietly while she chewed her ration bars. When they were done, she asked, “So, whose side are we on?”
“Technically, I guess we don’t have a side,” Blake said with a shrug. “But it seems like the crew was with the Coalition.”
“So how did we get here?”
“Maybe they found us on Earth and rescued us,” Darius suggested.
“And then brought us to an active hunting ground?” Lisa countered.
Darius frowned. “Well, they ran out of fuel somehow. Maybe this was the closest planet where they could get more?”
“Maybe,” Lisa said. “Or maybe we were being delivered here. More prey to populate Hades for the Phantoms.”
Darius shook his head. “If this is a delivery ship and we were the cargo, then why would Phantoms kill the crew, but leave everyone in the pods alone?”
“And why would they just wait around on board after they killed the crew?” Blake asked. “What were they waiting for?”
“We’re obviously missing something,” Lisa said.
They mulled over those questions in silence while they finished eating their rations and washing them down with stale water from the canteens.
Gatticus returned about twenty minutes later, carrying a scuffed metal crate. He set it down on the floor, and then Blake asked him about the Banshees who’d been hiding on board.
“They must have been hiding there in the dark and waiting for weeks,” Darius added, “since you said you spent two weeks on board without any power.”
“Yeah, speaking of which, what were you waiting for?” Blake asked.
“For my memory to be repaired,” Gatticus replied. “When I woke up, I couldn’t even remember my own name, let alone where I was.”
“Okay, what about the Banshees?” Lisa asked.
“They hibernate in extreme cold. They must have been forced to do so before they could find a way to turn the power on and escape; then when I turned the power on, and the temperature increased, they woke up.”
“Hmmm. I guess that makes sense...” Blake said.
“So if this is a Coalition ship, then it’s probably safe to assume that the crew found us on Earth and rescued us,” Darius said.
“Possibly,” Gatticus replied.
“So why didn’t our pods run out of power and wake us up on Earth long before they found us?” Lisa asked.
“The cryo facilities were likely built with disasters in mind,” Gatticus said. “Their power sources would be independent and extremely robust. As for why no one found you sooner, that is likely because Earth was a designated hunting ground until just last year. You were in cryo all that time because no one knew you were there.”
“Or the people that knew had their own problems with being hunted by killer aliens,” Blake said.
Lisa slowly shook her head, and tiny motors in the neck of her exosuit whirred as her helmet tracked that movement. She’d raised her visor to eat, but had left her helmet on.
Darius jerked his chin to the crate Gatticus had brought. “What’s in the box?”
The android bent down and opened the top of it to reveal a handful of metal bands and fat silver disks floating loosely inside.
“Neural-mappers and data modules,” he explained. He straightened, holding one of the metal bands. “You’ll need to put these on. Darius, Lisa—that means you need to remove your exosuits.”
“Can we at least find some clothes first?” Lisa asked.
Gatticus nodded and went to open another one of the lockers. This one contained jumpsuits, under garments, and mag boots. Gatticus helped them out of their exosuits, and then passed the articles of clothing to them. Darius did his best not to look at Lisa this time, but that wasn’t easy while he was drifting and spinning around in zero-G, struggling to put on the underwear and jumpsuit.
For his part, Blake made no effort to respect their privacy and watched them both with obvious amusement.
“If you don’t want your eyes to turn black, you’ll look somewhere else,” Lisa said.
But Blake just smiled and went on staring.
Darius scowled. It was hard to imagine him being the father of two girls.
After they were dressed and had their mag boots pla
nted firmly on the deck once more, Gatticus gave each of them a silver band and showed them how to wear it—by placing it around their foreheads. After that, he removed one of the silver discs from the crate and turned it on. A holographic menu sprang to life above the device, written in the same language as the heads-up-displays in the helmets of their exosuits. Gatticus touched the top menu option, and made a series of selections from subsequent menus.
“What are we going to learn first?” Lisa asked.
“Language, but before we begin, you need to go back to the cockpit and strap in,” Gatticus said.
“Why can’t we stay here?” Cassandra asked.
Gatticus turned to regard her with a small smile. “Because if you do, you could knock yourself out while I am maneuvering the Deliverance. The magnetic clamps in the troop bay only work if you’re all wearing exosuits,” Gatticus added with a nod to the walls of the compartment.
They all followed Gatticus to the cockpit, and retook their seats—except for Lisa, who didn’t have one.
“Where do I sit?” she asked.
Gatticus slid open a compartment in the back wall of the cockpit, right beside the door. He folded out a chair and pulled out a padded harness like the ones the other chairs had. Gatticus showed her how the harness worked and waited for her to secure it.
“Good,” he said as she finished.
Darius glanced at Cassandra to make sure she had her harness secured, and then he hurried down the ramp to the gunner’s position.
“You’ll begin to feel sleepy soon,” Gatticus explained as he made a few final selections from the silver disc he was holding.
“Say what?” Blake asked.
“The nanites have to put you to sleep while they write the data to your brains.”
“Forget it. Count me out,” Blake said. “I’m not getting eaten by an alien in my sleep!”
“Get back in your seat, Mr. Nelson,” Gatticus replied. “It’s too late for second thoughts.”
Darius found himself agreeing with Blake. Gatticus should have mentioned this sooner. Adrenaline surged through Darius’s veins as he fought an onrushing wave of sleep. His hand drifted down to the release lever for his harness, but his entire body felt numb, like he was adrift in a sea of cotton.
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