Stasis (Alpha Ship One Book 1)

by L. D. P. Samways

  “Some friends for you,” one of the guards said through his translator box. He then proceeded to shove the strange humans into the cell. Before the door was shut, the electrical lasso cuffs that were around each of their wrists fell to the floor. The Ursines grabbed the lassos and ripped the blindfolds off our new cellies. As the Ursines made their way out of the room, I spotted the genders of the three new people in front of us. Two men, one much older than the other, and a young woman, probably the same age as the younger man. Twenty-ish, maybe thirty at a push. But the other man looked old. Really old. He had crinkly skin and sandpaper hair. I didn’t have time to examine them anymore because the cell door came to a close, shutting out all of the light that had filled the dank room before.

  The three of us remained silent as we watched the three of them. They began to mumble in a language I didn’t understand. I decided to get up and make my way over to them. The problem was I couldn’t see them for the life of me. But I managed to bump into one of them by accident. I heard a male voice say something.

  “Mira por donde vas, bruta,” he said. I didn’t quite understand it, but I recognized the language he was speaking as Spanish.

  “No hablo mucho español,” I said, in my best accent. Which meant I don’t speak much Spanish.

  There was a moment of silence and he replied.

  “Bueno, no necesitamos hablar con un traidor como tú.”

  I stared in his general direction, not quite knowing exactly where he was and blinked. I wasn’t much of a linguist, but I was getting a hostile vibe off this one. So I thought that I’d leave the multi-national diplomacy for later.

  I sat back down where I was seated before and yet again continued to scrape the floor. I guess deep down I was wondering how long it would take for me to tunnel out of there with my bare hands. But I wasn’t stupid. Even I knew that it was impossible to accomplish such a thing. So I left the daydreaming about escaping for another time. I was shattered and decided that I needed to sleep. Even if we had company, it was obvious that they didn’t want much to do with us, so I stopped scratching the floor, patted for my pillow and sheet and wrapped myself up, laying on the floor, turning in for the remainder of the night (or day, wasn’t sure what time it was).

  I dreamed of a few things whilst I slept. None of those things were nice. All of them were dire. Dire, dreadful, and delusional. Dire being the situation we were in. Dreadful being the actions of Jess. And delusional being me thinking that I had this under control. Truth was I didn’t. And I suspected that after today, I’d never have control back. I’d always be their slave until they were done with me. There was no use fighting this anymore. I’d have to do whatever they asked of me, or suffer the same fate as Raj. Not that his fate was at all that bad. At least he was dead, and away from these things. And if I was being honest, I wouldn’t have minded swapping with him. But there would be no swapping. I was done for and so were my crew.

  Alpha Ship One would never fly for Earth’s Empire, or Pilgrim Tech again. We were now the property of the Ursines and Alpha Ship One was their secret weapon in a war that only they knew was coming. Earth had no idea what was about to hit them.

  And neither did we.

  Chapter Eleven

  The attempt to talk with the three new cellies we had, had fallen on deaf ears, and I’d only been asleep for a short while when our cell door was opened, a bright light filling the room once again as the Ursine guards came in. They didn’t waste any time with any pleasantries. They got straight to the point and told us to get off our butts and follow them.

  The three of us did what we were told. The other three didn’t understand at first what was being asked of them until one of the Ursines fiddled with its translator box and started speaking their language. Once the other three knew what was being said, they were very quick to stand to attention and follow the group out of the cell.

  We were frog-marched through the same corridor that we’d been through before. By now the prisons meandering corridors were becoming familiar and even in the dimly lit small spaces, I found myself turning at the right times, even without looking. After a few minutes of marching, I soon realized where we were off to. I was willing to bet that we were about to pay a visit to the Ursine king. I had a feeling in my gut and when we exited the prison and commenced a stiff walk down the alleyways of their city, I was certain of the fact that we’d be visiting the king. It all matched up you see. Just like last time, we were being escorted at night, and just like last time, we were weaving our way through the various small and dank alleyways that littered this industrial city.

  The cover of darkness seemed to be the key to everything these things did. They didn’t seem to do anything during the day. Maybe they were nocturnal. But their streets were empty and all the buildings we were passing were dark. As I explained before, they had a pre-space-flight Earth era thing going on here. The city looked a lot like New York City back in the day when humans had little technology and weren’t aware of the many civilizations that had been watching them evolve for centuries. Around the year 2055, Earth was contacted and the rest was history. A lot had changed since then. Earth had gotten more powerful, but they weren’t the top dogs. And judging by the might of the Ursines, I’d say they weren’t even in the same league. These guys were exactly like us, but they possessed something that I just couldn’t put my finger on. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but it was something that the humans didn’t have in them.

  “Instinct?” I muttered under my breath.

  “What?” I heard Jess say from behind me. I ignored her though. I wasn’t going to talk to her. Not for a long time. I was still very mad about Raj. But deep down I knew she had her best foot forward. She wasn’t an idiot and was very adept at survival. And that was all that was left. That’s all we had to do. Survive.

  I decided to watch where I was going after nearly bumping into some sort of trash receptacle. The march to the Ursine king didn’t last much longer. Sure enough, a couple of minutes later we had arrived. But this time my crew were with me. At least what was left of it. And not to mention, the older man, the younger man and the woman were also with us. Three people we didn’t know. Three people who looked like they shared some sort of commonality with us. I mean, why else would they have been put in our cell? And why were they with us at all? Come to think of it, where the hell did they come from? They weren’t on our ship, that was for sure. Besides, the Ursines had killed the many men and women that were on board our ship when we’d woken up. Unbeknownst to us, Admiral Thisk had decided to whack a load of so-called sympathizers on the ship and murder them.

  The whole thing was a little foggy. I still didn’t quite understand why we’d been banished from Earth, or if anybody else besides from Thisk knew of our plight. But I guess it didn’t really matter. I mean, who would miss us? We were only known to a very few people in the upper ranks of Pilgrim Tech. Our job was simple, disrupt the cash flow of other alien nations. That way, Earth would remain just as strong as it saw fit. But the problem with doing a job like that is when you are successful at it, it’s just a matter of time until some other worldly empire wants you gone. If we were ever found out and caught, Earth would have denied our existence. I wondered if that was why we’d been banished. Had we done anything to the Ursines before? I didn’t think we did. I’d have remembered meeting these things or running a merc mission on their planet. So the mystery remained.

  But this wasn’t the time or the place for wondering about anything. We were all in immediate danger, and that immediate danger was sitting on a throne in front of us. We’d all been escorted up the steep ramp toward the King. He was still situated in the same grand room he was in before, when I’d been summoned to him a few days earlier. The incense sticks were still burning and the heat coming from the burning baskets was still nearly unbearable. It didn’t take long for me to start sweating, and as we stood there in two rows of three, Alpha Ship One crew at the front, newbies at the back, I noticed that we all lo
oked a little sticky. Maybe the room was so hot to make us feel uncomfortable. Either way, there was no escaping the heat or the Ursine king in front of us.

  “I will be addressing you humans in the front. After I’m done, it will be your job to relay our instructions to your new crewmembers behind you,” the Ursine king said, staring blankly at us. His eyes had a hollow quality to them. He didn’t blink much and his bear-like facial features were relaxed, and looked a lot less menacing than the other Ursines. But then again, he was smaller, so maybe that was why he looked a lot less scary. I wasn’t stupid though, I knew that even an Ursine his size could probably rip us to shreds, so I wasn’t underestimating our pampered overlord.

  “Sorry to break it to you, pal, but those guys behind us don’t speak our language,” Dale said beside me. My eyes widened. Dale had answered the Ursine King Back. That couldn’t be good. I didn’t know how these lot would take such an action from a human, but I was hoping that they’d spare Dale his life. But funnily enough, after a few seconds of silence, the Ursine king raised his paw in the air.

  “Not my problem. You humans are at fault for having such a varying vernacular. You’re the only species known to talk different languages amongst yourselves. For that, we commend you. It must be difficult to understand other humans from further lands on Earth. And to some extent, we understand why you humans fight with each other. With different languages comes different cultures. And differences in any race, be it human or otherwise, usually results in civil strife. That being said, it is up to you to communicate efficiently with your new crew. You will need to have an understanding of them. Or you will all die. Do I make myself clear?”

  Neither of us said anything. I think Dale understood his place and decided to keep his mouth shut this time. Which was just as well, because I had a feeling that the Ursine king wouldn’t be letting much more back chatting slide. He had a different look in his eyes now. They were no longer hollow. They were filled with some sort of anguish. And I didn’t quite understand what it might be, but I figured that maybe, just maybe, the Ursine king was getting impatient with us.

  And that couldn’t be a good thing.

  “I have brought all six of you humans here to brief you on your mission,” the Ursine king said, shifting in his throne. His anguished look had disappeared, as if a switch had gone off in its head. The hollow gaze he had worn before returned as he began to tell us of our fate. I decided then and there that I was going to withhold my questioning until later, if of course, I had the chance to ask any questions.

  “The three of you from Alpha Ship One have lost one of your own members. My condolences. But the truth is, there was only enough room for six people on the ship. You three at the front had to lose one member of the team, as did the crew at the back. So take solace in knowing that it was necessary to take their lives, so yours could be saved.”

  I felt my bowels gurgling as I listened to the Ursine king pretend to give a shit about us. It filled me with anger listening to the excuses coming out of its mouth. I knew as well as any other man that the sole purpose of killing Raj was to get us under their control. It’s all to do with bondage, and not the fun type. But the type that bounds us to them. That binds us to their whims. It’s a form of breaking our spirit, and I wasn’t dumb enough to believe anything that came out of its mouth, or more precisely, the translator box.

  “Now, on to the mission at hand. We, the Ursine race, are entrusting you with our most violent and cataclysmic weapon. It is something that even man would struggle to comprehend. Its damage output far overshadows anything the human race can muster, and quite frankly, we are surprised of its capabilities. We call it the MEGATON bomb. It resembles an early hydrogen nuclear bomb, but it uses special fusion capabilities to multiply the reaction before the bomb goes off. The device weighs approximately ten tons. It will be couriered on your ship, the Alpha Ship One. You will use our technologically advanced ULTRABOOST hyper drive engine to fly back to Earth. The journey would usually take you six earth years, seeing how far away our planet is from yours. But it will only take you six earth months to get there. Once you reach Earth, you’ll be able to land the ship on your planet, escape the planet on some sort of pod, get back into space, set the bomb off and the mission will be over.”

  I looked at the Ursine king as he spoke. Its snout didn’t move much, but under the robotic translation I could hear his native tongue at work. Low murmurs and growls came out of him as he strung his words together. It looked as if he was getting a little worked up as he talked. I guess the idea of wiping out humanity would get most brutish races excited. This wasn’t the first time that an unknown alien race had tried to destroy Earth. But this was certainly the first time that an alien race was using humans to accomplish it.

  “Have you any questions?” The Ursine King asked, the translator box crackling a little as he reached for a chalice of wine and took a sip. He placed the heavy cup back down and waited for our response.

  “How fast will we be traveling?” I asked. It was a mundane question, but I was curious to see just how rapid this so-called ULTRABOOST drive was.

  “You will be traveling at just over three hundred and fifty thousand miles per second,” the Ursine king said.

  I heard a collective gasp from my crew, both Dale and Jess were stunned by the Kings revelation as to how fast we’d be traveling.

  And so was I.

  “Wait a damn minute,” I said, shaking my head, looking around at the spacious room we were in. It was decked out in many splendid things. Paintings. Water features. Pillars. All in all, the place looked like something you’d see back on Earth, in Rome. But I was finding it increasingly difficult to believe such a statement from the King regarding the speed we’d be traveling at. It was impossible. There was no way in hell that we could travel at that speed in the Alpha Ship One.

  “That’s some damn engine you got there, Mr. Bear King. But I don’t know if you’re aware, but three hundred thousand miles per second is double the speed of light,” I said, turning to see the prison guard next to me. It looked grouchy, and appeared to be weary of my tone.

  “Speed of light? What are you talking about?” the Ursine king asked.

  I looked at him in dismay.

  “Surely you know what the speed of light is?” I asked, gob smacked that a civilization that claimed to be able to travel at double the speed of light didn’t actually know how fast light traveled at. It was absurd to think that that was possible.

  “You mean the rays from the sun?” he asked.

  I nodded my head.

  “Yes, the rays from the sun. The substance that illuminates the worlds we live on. This planet has two suns, or at least that’s what I saw when I came off the ship. I can’t be too sure though, seeing that I haven’t seen this planets sunlight since arriving.”

  The Ursine king shifted in his seat yet again as he reached for more wine. The guy had a drinking problem, that’s for sure.

  “I don’t see your point. How does the sun, or the light that comes off it have any bearing on how fast you can get to Earth?”

  I stood there, eyes wide open, wracking my brain. I guess I was just as stumped as he was.

  “It doesn’t really, but we were told, or led to believe at least by the people on Earth, that traveling at the speed of light or faster, was or is, impossible,” I said.

  Suddenly I heard a chorus of chirping. All around us the Ursines were laughing. I couldn’t believe it. Not only were they making fun of us, but the guards that surrounded us understood what we were saying. Were they getting some sort of translation feed into their heads?

  “Oh, you humans never fail to amuse us. It is funny that you think that. Don’t you know that the possibilities in space are boundless?”

  I shook my head.

  “I guess not,” I said.

  The Ursine King drank from his chalice once again. He raised his paw up in the air and waved us away. Or at least that’s what I thought he did.

 
“Be gone. I have much to do. Much to prepare. You have two days to wrap your head around the new equipment on the ship before you take off. We’ve converted the ship a little to keep in contact with our ships. That way there won’t be any misinterpreted signals between your ship and ours.”

  “Your ship? What do you mean?” I asked.

  There was another chorus of chirping from the creatures around us. I could feel tension building in my stomach. My blood was boiling. I was close to exploding.

  “You didn’t actually think that you’d be flying alone did you? We will have an escort accompanying you to Earth. They’ll hang back around ten thousand miles behind you, but seeing that both you and them will be going three hundred and fifty thousand miles a second, all it will take is a little flick of a switch and they’ll be in firing distance. So keep on your best behavior. They’ll be cloaked, and off radar. You won’t. But then again your ship is a human ship. It will be recognized as friendly in most galaxies. So you won’t have any trouble making your way through star ports. We already checked the galactic bounty list, and the Alpha Ship One’s record is clean. Nobody is looking for it. So you should be able to get to Earth with no problems, provided you do as you’re told. We won’t hesitate to blow the ship up. Mission accomplished or not. There are many other ways we could destroy Earth.”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “If there are many other ways to destroy Earth, then why are you using us?”

  The Ursine king didn’t answer straight away. He gulped some more from his chalice and placed it back down on the side. The beast looked a little distracted as his eyes wondered around the room. But then he did something that surprised everybody there, including the other Ursines. He got off his throne and plodded toward me. His head reached my waist as he walked on his hind legs. He then poked me in the belly with his paw and looked straight up at me.