by Geoff North
Chort Leo was sitting to the Captain’s immediate right. Of course he’s sitting there, Tor thought as Nash prodded him closer towards the table. Leave it to that scheming little rat to stay as close as he can to Sulafat to deflect any suspicion.
And then he saw Vin Vir for the first time, sitting on a small bench along the wall behind Ly and Ries. What was Rastaban’s friend doing here, he wondered? Why the hell are either of us here?
The Captain regarded him with a quick glance. “Have a seat, Tor.”
There didn’t appear to be any available. “Sir?”
Sulafat pointed to the end of the table. “Down there.”
Tor hesitated. “That… doesn’t seem appropriate. Isn’t that chair reserved for General Agle?”
The Captain gave Nash an almost imperceptible nod, and the robot began pulling Tor to the empty chair. “I’ve relieved Shain Agle of his command.” There was a collective gasp from the section heads. They started whispering and mumbling to one another. Tor remained quiet as he sank into the chair.
Sulafat tapped on the table with the tips of his fingers for silence. “General Agle convinced me six months ago that a manned scouting mission to the inner planets would be able to gather more intelligence on Pega’s defensive capabilities than a squadron of video drones. He assured me our fighters would evade detection, and that our people would return home safe. The fighters came under attack, and only one ship made it back.”
“You can’t blame Agle for Pegan treachery,” Chort Leo interrupted. “The decision to send our people in was ultimately yours, Captain.”
Sulafat nodded. “It was. Finding and bringing the others home is my responsibility as well. But the General also assured me those three fighters were ready to face any challenge met out there. After reading Tor Emin’s report, I’ve discovered our entire fleet of fighters sorely lacking in many respects—faulty canopies are number one on the list. Having those ships ready and functioning at one hundred per cent efficiency was Agle’s responsibility. We’re in Pegan space now. We must be fully prepared for the challenges ahead of us.”
“War,” Chort said. “Quit trying to avoid the obvious, Captain, it’s what we’re here to do.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
“Not an opinion. It’s a fact.”
Sulafat looked down at the end of the table. “Give me your opinion, Emin. If the three fighters had been properly maintained before mission departure, do you believe the outcome would’ve been any better?”
Tor shook his head without hesitation. “Three times the fighters wouldn’t have made a difference out there. It wasn’t ship functionality—it’s what we were up against. The Pegan forces knew we were coming, they were prepared.”
The Captain was still tapping his fingers lightly on the table’s surface. “We’ve had centuries to prepare as well, and here we are now with sub-standard fighting equipment and a crew torn down the middle on whether we should go to war or not.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than to Tor or those around him.
“It isn’t up to the crew,” Chort said. “Our orders remain clear—wipe out the Pegan threat before they make it to Earth.”
Hal Gulum was shaking his head. “It’s been more than seven hundred years since that threat was issued. Earth is still there as far I know.”
“But you don’t know,” security head Homa Sis interrupted. “None of us know what’s happened back home. We haven’t received a single message from Earth in centuries.”
“Because of the communications blackout,” Chort countered. “They couldn’t risk Pega becoming aware of Ambition’s mission.”
“Even after this long?” Someone else asked.
More arguments broke out over the unknown fate of their home world. Tor finally had to stand to get the captain’s attention. “Excuse me, sir,” he called out. “If you haven’t brought me to your quarters for a reprimand, what am I doing here?”
“I would think that’s fairly obvious. You’re in charge of Military Operations now, General Emin.”
Tor sat back down into the padded chair but found no comfort in it.
The Captain spread his hands out and looked at all of his section heads. “Settle down, everyone. I didn’t bring you here to fight. But before we leave, a decision will be reached, and the fate of two civilizations will be sealed, once and for all.”
Chapter 7
Hadar Cen awoke to complete blackness. I’m dead. The ship was destroyed and I was sucked out into space. It was a peaceful enough revelation until he realized there were no stars. There was no sense of weightlessness in his body. Panic set in. He wasn’t floating in the endless cosmos. Hadar was lying face down on a cold surface.
Pain caught up to his brain a second later. His right arm and leg were burning. It intensified with every thud of his still beating heart. I’m alive. I’ve gone blind.
It made sense. He had seen the remains of Kraz’s body fry as the alien beam had taken hold of their ship. The light had crept outwards, blinded him. But then what?
I was rescued, obviously. Nail had taken too much damage. Bee must have come back and destroyed the Pegan craft. Or Ambition had gotten word of their situation, and rescued what was left of the scouting mission. I must be back home, blind as a bat, but safe.
It still didn’t answer why he was lying on the floor. Had he fallen out of bed somewhere in the Medical Center? He felt with his fingers. Cold. Gritty. It wasn’t deck plating or cabin carpet.
“Hello?” He called out. “Is anybody here?”
There were no sounds around him, no machines running, no people talking off in the distance. Had his ears been damaged as well? He yelled out. “Where is everyone?” His ears worked fine. No one was answering.
Hadar pushed himself up into a sitting position. He wasn’t in Medical Center or any other level onboard Ambition. The pain in his right side had settled to a dull throb. Nothing was broken—minor burns at worst. He felt along his body. The environment suit was still there. He wiggled all ten toes. He was still wearing his boots.
Where the hell am I?
Hadar stood up, tested his knees and ankles. He took a step forward into the darkness. He called out again before taking another. There was an unfamiliar smell in the air, almost acidic. Unfamiliar and definitely unpleasant. Hadar was walking slowly now, his hands and arms extended outwards to feel for a wall. There wasn’t one. He moved faster, listening to the echoless clunk of his boots on whatever floor or ground was beneath him.
Something clicked off to his left. Hadar stopped walking and turned that way. Nothing but blackness. The clicking continued. It was coming from all around, like fingernails tapping on glass. He spun in a circle and saw a rectangular-shaped blob of grey light. It disappeared a second later, but not before Hadar became aware of two things; he wasn’t blind, and he wasn’t alone.
The light had come from a door opening and closing. Hadar had seen Kraz Corvus incinerated before his eyes. The others on Bee and Nail had likely suffered a similar fate. Hadar was beginning to wish he’d died with them.
A hand wrapped around his wrist. Another light suddenly popped on right in front of him. The fingers were grey and glistening. They were too long. Hadar could feel a burning cold working through the environmental suit, onto his skin and deep into bone. A face loomed before him in the weak light. It was enormous and grey, like the fingers, with bulbous, menacing eyes blacker than space.
Hadar tried to scream but another set of wet fingers covered his mouth. More giant heads surrounded him, more fingers dug into his hair, around his throat, and into the singed folds of his suit. They overwhelmed Hadar, pushed him down to the gritty, cold floor. The acidic smell became overpowering, he tried to retch. A finger slithered up one nostril. The clicking sounds intensified; a thousand fingernails tapping incessantly upon glass, scratching, digging, probing into his brain.
Hadar lost consciousness a second time.
Chapter 8
“Duck down.”<
br />
“I won’t allow you to do this,” Hail said. “There has to be another way.”
“I can’t think of any,” Kella answered.
Hail tried to control his breathing. The faster he inhaled and exhaled, the faster his environmental suit released oxygen. He would use up what precious air remained in a considerably quicker amount of time. “We’ve been here for less than an hour… we can come up with something better… anything better.”
“Are you ducking down? I can’t see you through all that smoke.”
“Please, Kella. You’ll kill me.”
“We’ll both die if I don’t.”
She had over-ridden the laser cannon’s targeting system to allow it full-field firing access. In other words, Kella could now point the big gun directly at the pilot canopy of their own ship. Fail-safes wouldn’t allow a gunner to accidently fire upon their own pilot. Kella had reprogrammed the safety protocols of that feature as well. She was preparing to give it a try.
“Well if you don’t give a damn about killing me, then maybe you should care about willfully damaging Ambition military equipment.”
She almost laughed. “You were the one that screwed up on the landing. Bee’s already damaged. Besides, we have to get below and see if the homing beacon is still working. Ambition will never find us without that signal.”
“Not necessarily. Some ship systems are still working. They’ll be able to pick up Bee’s power signature.”
Hail’s desperation was causing him to grasp at the weakest of possibilities. Kella didn’t want to fire upon Hail any more than he wanted to be fired at. But there was no other option. She spoke softly, but with final authority. “Only if they’re sitting practically over top of us. Ambition doesn’t know where to look. There are seven planets in this system and over a hundred moons. They won’t find us unless we give them a strong enough signal. Duck down, Hail. I’m pulling the trigger in five seconds.”
She counted down slowly and fired.
The light of the cannon’s single blast blinded her momentarily. “Hail? Are you still there?” Darkness returned. “Hail, answer me!” She saw a dull flash of yellow. Interior helmet lights.
Hail had turned around in the pilot’s seat and was staring up at her. The smoke had cleared and the canopy cover was gone. “I can’t believe you did that. The General’s going to have a fit when he reads our report.”
“General Agle will understand. Besides, he’s the one to blame for sending out fighters with crappy canopy covers. They either jam up too easily, or they get blown to bits in one shot.”
“They probably didn’t take friendly fire into consideration. That was friendly fire, right?”
“The friendliest. Now shut up and come let me out.”
It took him a few minutes to find a suitable piece of blasted canopy frame metal, and another fifteen minutes to wedge it up under Kella’s gunner turret cover. The two pried and pushed until the entire lid popped off unceremoniously and rolled off down into the rocks beneath Bee.
“Shit.” Kella climbed out on the wing and joined Hail. “We’re going to have to drag that thing back up here eventually. Once the air runs out in our suits, we’ll have to take refuge back inside.”
Hail sat on the wing’s edge and began lowering himself down further. “Maybe we won’t have to. Once the beacon’s going, Ambition will come for us.” He let go of the wing and dropped to Oread’s surface. “Oh. That wasn’t so bad,” he said after the softer than expected landing.
“They’re still days away.” She jumped down to the ground after Hail. It was a six-foot drop, but the moon’s gravity was half that of Ambition’s. The impact was easy to absorb. “Bee can supply the weapons cabin with maybe a hundred more hours of heat and air. We’ll be cutting it close.”
They activated the external lights on their helmets. Twin beams cut through the dark, revealing a jagged wall of rock less than two-meters from the tip of Bee’s left wing. It rose up before them for half a kilometer opening up to a narrow strip of stars. “You have to admit,” Hail announced proudly, “that was a damn fine landing.”
“It was automated,” she reminded him. Kella pushed Hail aside and studied the ground. They were standing in an inch of light silt. She found the spot where Hail had dropped down to and bent over for a closer look.
“What are you doing?”
“Camera view.” A heads-up image appeared on the inside of her helmet visor. “I’m taking a picture for the historians. We’re the first people to set foot onto the surface of an alien world outside the Sol System. Maybe you’d like to reconsider your first words… ‘Oh, that wasn’t so bad,’ doesn’t sound all that inspiring.”
She was teasing him again. Hail ignored it and went to the back of the ship. He removed a piece of outer deck plating and started digging into Bee’s insides. He located a small object connected to a heavily insulated wire and snapped it free. “The homing beacon unit appears undamaged. Looks like the signal cord tied into the ship’s main computer has been burned through. I should be able to get it going manually in a few seconds.” Hail turned the device over and began poking at a series of tiny reset switches.
Kella did a slow survey around the rest of the ship. “I hope so. The damage outside is considerable. This thing definitely won’t be launching off again on its own without help from home.”
Hail couldn’t get the beacon to power up. He smacked it against the ship’s hull and a blinking red light appeared at the center of the unit, indicating there were no ships within range. “There, I got it going,” he called out, shoving the device into a pocket of his flight suit. “Let’s get that canopy cover back on.”
“There’s no immediate hurry,” Kella was twenty feet behind the grounded fighter, walking up the steep chasm floor. “Let’s take a look around.”
Hail screwed the small section of deck plating back into place. “We’re not here to look at the sights. Get back here.”
“Come on, we’re going to be stuck in that turret together for a long time. Don’t you want to see what it looks like up top first? Imagine the stories we’ll be able to tell everyone back home.”
Hail wasn’t the exploratory type, but he didn’t want to be left alone either. He started after her. “Hang on, I’m coming.”
They moved up the incline side by side. It was easy walking in the weaker gravity, but Hail was still breathing heavily. Kella rested a hand on his shoulder. “You’re okay, kid. Relax.”
“Quit calling me that.” He could see her dark eyes shining behind the streaks of dry blood inside her visor. He wished he could see more of that face. Hail wanted to touch her smiling lips. Kid was the last thing he wanted her to think of him as. Why couldn’t she take him seriously?
The kilometer-long walk up through the rocky gouge took twelve minutes. The view waiting for them topside would be remembered the rest of their lives. The planet of Pega sat in space like a green and blue marble nestled in an endless blanket of black silk. Hail could hear Kella breathing heavily now through the speakers.
“My God,” the woman gasped. “I didn’t think it could appear any more breath-taking than it did from the ship, but I was wrong.”
“It’s because we’re standing on an actual planetary body. You were right… no one on Ambition has done that in over seven centuries.” The normally introverted Hail put his arm around her shoulders. “I remember the first pictures of Earth taken from its moon. This is what it must have been like for them. We’re the thirty-first century equivalents of Armstrong and Aldrin.”
They stood there for a few more minutes in silence, staring at the alien world half a million kilometers away. Swirls of white and grey were dappled against the colorful orb like drops of paint partially stirred and left to spread on their own. Planetary atmosphere, Hail thought. Clouds. Those are what clouds look like.
An eruption of light suddenly appeared on Oread’s horizon directly in front of them. Grannus had come into view. It was the closest planet to 51 Peg, an
d by far the largest. The gas giant continued to rise, its red brilliance bathing Pega over in pink. “I’m glad we didn’t land there,” Kella said.
“We wouldn’t be talking about it if we had,” Hail held out one thumb and blotted the bright light away. “It’s a thousand degrees hotter and the gravity’s a hundred times greater. We’d be little flat puddles by now.”
“Come on, let’s get back to Bee.” Kella started back down into the shadow-filled gouge.
Hail looked out upon Pega and Grannus one final time. He’d been scared to leave the ship, but now that he had, he wasn’t in any hurry to get back. Kella called out over the speakers again. “Now, Hail.”
She hadn’t called him kid, a good sign he figured. Hail caught up to her. They descended further back down the dark trail. The glow from Grannus and Pega became a sliver of dull light behind them. Oread was swallowing them down for a second time. “You said we’ll have a week of air and heat inside the turret?”
“A hundred hours. A little more than four days.”
“The oxygen in our suits will bump it up a few more hours. Surely Ambition will have found us by then.” He was beginning to breathe hard again.
“Only if you keep those nerves under control.”
Hail nodded slowly, causing the exterior beam of his helmet to bob up and down erratically against the rock and dirt a hundred meters in front of them. Bee was seven or eight hundred meters deeper still. He needed to see Pega’s atmospheric swirls again. Hail resisted the urge to stop and take one more look up the gorge.