“You come in here, attack me without provocation, and then you expect me to just let it go? Give me a damn good reason that I shouldn’t throw you off my ship,” I said while holding my stomach. The pain lessened into a dull throb.
Cessa didn’t respond, which either meant she was ignoring me or called my bluff. Galaxy One Alpha was the closest station. If I wanted to be rid of her I’d have to return, which wasn’t an option. She kept her back to me, cooking the food. When she finished she brought two plates and forks to the table and sat across from me, immediately digging into her food. I studied mine and wondered if she poisoned it in some way.
“You deflect,” she said to me without looking up. Her voice wasn’t angry or frustrated, but soft and concerned. “You deflect everything. You fail to act, to stand up for yourself.” Her eyes met mine. “Eat.”
“Ummm . . . was that escapade supposed to help me with that?” I asked.
“You allowed yourself to be manipulated by Raymond Erebos. You refused to fight or let me kill the ESA agent that hunted you. Instead you ran like a coward. I threw punches and kicks to see if you’re at least willing to fight for yourself and your ship, but instead you stood there only making attempts to block me. You deflect, hide, and cower. It’s disgusting. Eat.”
“Sometimes you need to run away in order to live on,” I said to her, trying to defend my actions.
“That’s not living. Eat!”
What did I get myself into? Cessa was crazy, a woman with obvious personality shifts. One moment she was yelling at me, another trying to fight me, and now she sat across from me like some kind of concerned parent.
I humored her. The eggs were more overdone than I would’ve cooked them, but they were hot and delicious nonetheless. As I finished my plate, her words played on a loop in my mind. I’m a coward. I deflect, not living. Was I really that fearful? I always thought I was just doing my best to stay alive, but a part of what she said really got to me. This really wasn’t a good way to live, and I think somewhere deep down I knew it.
“Have you ever killed anyone?” She asked me. The question came out of nowhere, startling me a bit. I opened my mouth, but closed it. She nodded at me, knowing the answer before I said it. “Those two ESA agents wanted you for something. I don’t care what, but you refused to let them be executed when in fact you should have been the one executing them.”
She spoke so matter-of-factly it scared me. I could only imagine the upbringing she had that she could be so heartless and manipulating. She looked at battle as if it was a sport and killing her adversary was the ultimate goal. Just thinking about it sent a cold feeling throughout my body and unpleasant images to my mind. I tried to shake it off.
“I don’t want death surrounding me,” I told her. “If I had killed those guards I would be a murderer. If I had fought back just now I might have hurt you.”
That last sentence caused her to laugh, her head tilted back.
“So what now, you’re protecting yourself from me because I’m a woman? You are disgusting and you’re lucky my job is to keep you alive!”
My face felt increasingly hot, and I gritted my teeth together in frustration. Of the two people on this ship I really didn’t think I was the crazy one, but she was damn sure going to make it seem that way.
“Listen to you,” I spoke out, suddenly speaking everything I was thinking. “Do you even realize how insane you are? What the hell did Erebos do to you to screw you up so much?”
As soon as the words left my mouth I regretted it. Cessa stared back at me expressionless, but I could see her eyes glisten. She stood up and turned from me before I could see one of the tears fall.
“Cessa, wait,” I said to her. She stopped at the open doorway and turned her head slightly.
“Don’t ruin this moment. You actually showed some strength. Even though it wasn’t physical, it will do for now.” She walked out and left me with another confused look.
I had moments when I wished my ship had a brig so I could lock her up. Her personality was so damned peculiar. At the same time something about her seemed so . . . I don’t know . . . vulnerable almost, as if this tough-girl persona acted as a shell of armor. I saw the look on her face, the words that she used when we came out of the asteroid belt unscathed. I impressed her, but the look on her face was fear. She thought we were going to die and that terrified her.
I knew people like her years ago. I mean not exactly like her, but similar principals. They were so dedicated to the job and to their superiors that it made it seem like a master and pet relationship where they blindly followed any order given to them. In a way they almost lived on autopilot and let other people control them.
Cessa told me that running and avoiding was cowardice. Maybe in some ways she was right, but those actions were caused by pure emotion, the will to survive, and the need to stay alive. I had a feeling that she didn’t feel the same way. She had a job to do and that’s all that mattered to her. Now that I thought about it like that, her actions on this trip almost seemed reasonable. She’s been living without emotion or self-control for so long that in order to feel any emotion she had to take extreme actions, whether with arguing, fighting, or even killing. I wondered if this was the key to break through her emotional armor.
The next few days passed without incident and Cessa continued to avoid me. She spent most of her time in the crew quarters training with her sword. I left her alone. We were here to do a job, not be friends. She moved throughout the ship parallel to what I did. If I was in my room, she was in the mess hall or on the bridge looking at the monitors. I wasn’t worried when she was there alone. Al had all my previous databases and logs locked out.
I was in the mess hall having breakfast on the fourth morning when a large buzzing sound echoed throughout the entire room.
BBBBBZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTTTTTT!
I took one last bite of my eggs and made my way to the bridge. I knew this was Al’s way of getting my attention. There wasn’t a warning alarm on the ship that sounded like that.
“Al, what’s up?” I asked after I firmly locked the bridge.
“Sir, if I may say so, your relationship with that woman is . . . intriguing.”
“To you and me both my friend, but is that the real reason you wanted me?”
“Negative Captain, I wanted to inform you that just moments ago this ship was scanned.”
In seconds I was sitting in my chair checking over the sensor readings for the last hour. Go figure something would happen while I was away from my station. Everything looked normal. There was a gaseous anomaly, a small moon, an asteroid, but as I ran my finger down the time chart, at time index 07:57 there was feedback along the sensor signal. The asteroid we passed over must have been some kind of satellite or probe. This entire time our sensors had been moving in a circular motion and after the second pass the probe activated its own beam to send back towards us. From what I could tell, it wasn’t harmful in any way, but that meant someone knew we were out here.
“What do you make of it?” I asked my computer.
“The sphere shaped probe is metallic in composition. There are traces of iron, but the other elements are not in my database.”
“And the signal? Where’s that transmitting to?”
“Judging the trajectory of the beam that’s scanning us to the beam that is relaying back its data I am certain that it is coming from the fifth planet in the solar system ahead of us. Coincidentally, that is the same planet we are on route to.”
I stared at the monitor into the open space in front of us. Currently there was nothing to see but stars, but somewhere out there some type of advanced civilization kept watch out here, and now they knew visitor’s would soon be arriving. I often wondered what Cessa and I would find when we landed on the planet containing the empyreus. Now I had my answer.
Life.
To be honest I wasn’t sure what to think. I suppose it would have been stupid to assume the planet that held empyreus would be uninhabited
. I’d been spending most of my time on the ship trying to figure out our passenger. At the same time, inhabited or not, we were going there, but I had thought and hoped we would be arriving without any prior knowledge of our arrival. What kind of welcoming party would these aliens throw us? Would there be starships coming to intercept us? I asked Al to do a specific sweep ahead of us, looking for signs of any ships.
“I detect no other vessels in range, however I cannot scan far enough to reach the planet itself. It is possible there could be ships in orbit around it. Captain, shall I initiate first contact protocol?”
I couldn’t remember the last time I was in a first contact situation, though with Al being a computer he didn’t have the ability to forget or really understand the passage of time. The first contact protocol dictates that once an alien species is discovered, we halt our course and send out a broad general transmission. Vocally we use every language known to man including any alien languages we’ve learned. We also send out a written message with language, mathematical equations, sometimes even music, basically anything that will show the aliens we mean no harm and are interested in making contact with them.
The Kestrel Belle wasn’t exactly an appropriate ship to make contact with. She was inadequate in every way, except for Al who wasn’t an original part of this ship. Meeting new races meant having the equipment for diplomacy if a truce was reached, or defense if they turned out to be hostile. Not to mention the only two humans onboard were not exactly made of diplomatic material.
Like Derrick said, humanity ventured into the stars not for exploration but for conquest, expansion, and escape from the planet that we had suffocated. Racism and prejudice were still in effect on Earth and now it had even spread into space, and that was just with our own race. Some gangs and radical people out there attacked aliens just for being alien. For every human who accepted life beyond our planet, another human would murder and abuse to keep their homes and streets ‘human only.’ I didn’t agree with that way of thinking, but I couldn’t be sure where Cessa stood on the subject. Time would tell.
“Do not initiate first contact Al. Continue on course and keep us at alert level two. If you come into range of any starships activate the shield coils and notify me immediately.” I paused for a moment, scratching the heavy stubble on my chin. From here on out I would be a nervous wreck with no idea what we were getting ourselves into.
“Also,” I continued. “Make sure the weapons are charged and ready, including my rifle. I don’t care for that damned thing, but better to be safe than sorry. How long until we reach the fifth planet?”
“The ship will pass into the solar system in 7 hours. Total time to the planet is 16 hours, 4 minutes and 21 seconds.”
I left Al on the bridge after I told him my plans for the next few hours. I walked throughout the ship to find Cessa. She was downstairs in the cargo bay again, sitting on the floor cross-legged, staring at the containers Erebos brought onboard. To me it seemed like she was in some type of meditative state. I stood at the top of the stairs looking down on her.
“What do you want?” She asked me. Nothing but her lips moved.
“I thought I would let you know that we are less than a day from our destination. We . . . I mean, I also detected an alien signature scanning our ship.”
She stood up immediately and walked towards me. That certainly got her attention. For a moment I was worried that I messed up when I said ‘we’, but she seemed to write it off.
“I know you consider yourself a badass and you’re eager for something to happen,” I continued. “But I strongly suggest you get some sleep. In sixteen hours we will be sailing into the unknown.”
Nothing happened for a moment as she processed the information, but then she looked in my eyes and nodded in agreement. I turned around to take my own advice, but at the same time I felt a sense of pride wash over me. I felt like the true Captain of my ship, giving a speech to my crew. If anything, now is the time that Cessa and I would have to put our awkward relationship aside because we were the only two people between whatever waited for us out there and the empyreus we were charged to collect.
EIGHT
“What should we name it?” I asked.
The two of us stood on the bridge staring out the window. The planet came into view about thirty minutes ago and I don’t think either of us moved an inch since. Even Cessa with her unique personality and attitude couldn’t deny the sheer magnificence of a brand new planet. Like Earth and many other planets we inhabited, the overall color was blue, though it had a green tint to it, almost a turquoise color. Though I was somewhat tense waiting for some kind of welcoming party to intercept us, the sensor readings were completely clear. There were no ships or even any satellites in their atmosphere. The scene in front of us was peaceful and beautiful.
“What do I care what we call it? All I require is the empyreus,” Cessa said.
I rolled my eyes at her and told her to buckle up. Our descent to the planet was going to be bumpy from here on out and I had to find a suitable spot to land. The scans from the planet were highly unstable due to the extreme energy output the planet was giving off. There was no easy way for me to tell if there were villages, settlements, or even cities.
Assuming the lowest energy readings were the least active areas, I chose a spot that held a wide radius for the Belle and initiated landing procedures. At the same time I made sure Al kept his figurative eyes looking out for any signs of trouble. My heart was pounding and I found myself smiling from ear to ear. This was why I came out into space, to explore the unknown.
The ship slowed down to standard orbital velocity as we entered the upper atmosphere. There was a slight hesitancy on my part as I was of half a mind to stay in orbit for another half a day or so and collect data. It’s always best to be prepared for any given situation, but the ship was beginning to feel smaller than usual. Tensions were at an all-time high and I was having trouble controlling my nightmares with the medication I had. I wasn’t sure my sanity would make it another day, so I made a judgment call. The time had come to be the first humans to land on this world.
The thrusters ignited and the ship was veering down into the atmosphere. I felt the floorboards vibrate as the temperature of the outer hull began to rise exponentially. In minutes we flew through the troposphere, surrounded by oxygen. I leveled the ship out as we passed through the familiar white clouds that were identical to Earth’s. In the display screen land was finally visible and I was surprised to see that the turquoise color that covered the majority of the planet from space was endless fields of grass. Earth was 70% water, but that didn’t seem to be the case here.
The main screen on my console relayed that all systems were operating efficiently and the landing gear had dropped. I held onto the navsphere so long my knuckles were white. The last part was tricky. As the ship dropped within five hundred feet of the ground, I fired the bow thrusters and then the stern thrusters until we hovered, then I synced all four so the ship could lower and finally land.
My chair jerked as we touched down and I quickly deactivated all thrusters and engines. The core powered down and within a minute the ship was quiet. I clapped my hands together and shouted out cheerfully. You never fully appreciate a docking station and the signal that allows your ship to automate landing procedures until you’ve had to manually land your ship on solid ground.
“We’re here! Safe and sound,” I said to Cessa as she unfastened her harness. Her eyes were wide open and she was breathing heavily. I’m guessing she didn’t expect me to actually land without any incident. Of course it amused me more to think she was scared. I wouldn’t mention that to her though.
“Yes,” she said softly while walking towards the display screen to look outside. “But where is here?”
“Ha! You’re the one who didn’t want to name the planet!” I thought about the amazing view from space, then the sky looking down on this new land. Every step we took and everything we saw would be for the first time
in human history. Naming the planet was easy.
“Dawn. I’m going to enter in the ship’s log that this planet is now called Dawn.”
Cessa looked at me as if asking, ‘seriously, that’s your name’?
“Take an hour to prepare. We’ll exit the ship after I’ve confirmed levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide. We’ll meet in the bay.”
“Whatever you say,” she said solemnly, walking towards the door. I was so happy from the landing and the thought of being on this new planet that I couldn’t stop myself from responding to her.
“Whatever you say . . . Captain!” I suggested.
She scoffed at the comment and slammed the door. She still couldn’t ruin my mood. I knew I was just on a high and it would end eventually, but I let myself enjoy it while it lasted.
I spent the next half hour sending out a low level bio-scan and got a lot of results, such as forests, plant life, and some minimal life signatures most likely from animals, but I didn’t see anything that resembled a humanoid life form. It’s possible I landed in an uninhabited area. If so, it made me feel a little bit safer. I wasn’t quite ready to meet any new species yet. One thing at a time.
“I am most impressed with this planet, sir.” Since we landed the only other thing Al said to me was, ‘congratulations on an average landing’, but he was as dumbfounded with the readings as I was. In his dictionary, ‘impressed’ was the same thing as ‘dumbfounded’.
“The scanners are not detecting any alien life signatures, except for local animal life.”
There was a possibility that they were masking their signature from us. They knew we were coming and the ability to have a deep space relay satellite meant their technology was at least as advanced as ours. Whether or not there were any humanoids around us we had a job to do.
I didn’t know how long it would take us to survey the area. Depending on what we encountered and whether or not we could find the empyreus easily, we could be away from the ship for a couple of hours or even an entire day. I checked the security camera to see if Cessa was in the cargo bay and sure enough she was. She was well armed, but I couldn’t zoom in to get an accurate description. What really interested me was the box she was carrying towards the doors.
Energize (From the Logs of Daniel Quinn Book 1) Page 7