Ambition (The Long Haul Book 1)

by Geoff North

  The alien stood and went to the door. He motioned Hadar to follow with one long finger.

  Hadar remained in his chair. No more games. I won’t go. I’ll stay right here. Let them kill me.

  I can read your thoughts, Hadar Cen. We already know about your ship, your people, and your mission. Come with me and learn about us.

  “What’s there to learn?” He refused to communicate with the alien telepathically. Speaking out was one of the only actions left he could control. “Either let me go or kill me. I won’t co-operate any longer.”

  Please, Hadar. You’ll want to see this.

  Following the creature couldn’t be any worse than remaining where he was. Hadar stood up. He wouldn’t cooperate, he wouldn’t say another word. But he could observe. And if there was even the slimmest of chances of returning home, Hadar could report what he’d seen, maybe even help his people out of this hellish situation.

  The Pegan began leading him down a long corridor. Hadar paused and stared through a window on his left into another room. Six more grey beings were standing motionless in glass tubes. The tubes were filled with amber liquid. A cluster of heavy wires and cables led out from the top of each unit. They ran up into the ceiling and forked off into power conduits built into the walls.

  Hadar’s promise to not say another word was quickly broken. “What is this? What have you done to them?”

  They are not needed at this moment. They will remain suspended until required.

  Glistening black eyes stared out from the semi-transparent brown fluid at Hadar. One of the heads twitched, stirring up a swirl of bubbles.

  Come along, Hadar Cen. This will be worth everything you’ve gone through. They walked to the end of the corridor and stopped at a closed door. Be prepared, you may want to cover your eyes.

  Hadar ignored the alien’s warning and watched the door open. Light flooded through, blinding him momentarily. He blinked once, twice, and then gasped at the sight before him.

  “God of Sol… where am I?”

  Hadar stepped forward onto a lush carpet of green. Cool air pushed against his face and ran through his hair. It smelled wonderful, fresh. He looked up and saw billowing formations of white set against endless blue. “Clouds,” he whispered. “Those are clouds.”

  “Yes, Hadar Cen. Clouds, sky, and green grass.” The alien voice had changed. It was no longer muffled sounding. “Do you know where you are now?”

  Hadar didn’t reply right away. He was too involved with the enormity of his new surroundings. He stumbled forward a few more steps. There were hills in the distance covered with trees—hundreds and thousands of trees. Forests. Hadar looked down at his feet. He was standing in a patch of colorful vegetation. Plants blossoming in purple and yellow. Flowers.

  “Hadar Cen, do you know where you are?” The voice asked again.

  He finally realized the voice was female, and she wasn’t speaking inside his mind. He turned around slowly and saw a beautiful woman standing just outside the open door. The grey-skinned, black-eyed alien was gone. “Is this… am I on Earth?”

  The woman stepped towards him. Her hair was the color of gold, her eyes a match for the sky. She smiled and placed one warm palm on his cheek. “Not Earth. Welcome to the planet Pega.”

  Chapter 29

  Hail and Kella continued down into the seemingly endless gorge. “This is pointless,” Hail said. “We’re so far down into this rock I can’t even see the stars above anymore. Our oxygen supply will run out in less than four hours. We’re finished. Let’s go back up top. Maybe we’ll get to see Grannus rise one more time before we die.”

  “Such a pessimist.”

  He grabbed onto her arm and forced her to stop. “You can add claustrophobia to my long list of problems. Please, Kella, I don’t want it to end down here. I don’t want my body stuck down in a hole on some alien moon. Can’t we at least die somewhere with a view?”

  “Why are you so fixated on death?”

  “Aren’t you?” He could see the glean of sweat had returned on her forehead. Her color was beginning to fade again. “Maybe you should sit down for a few minutes.”

  “Bad idea, we have to keep moving.”

  “What for? There’s nothing down here. The moon’s lifeless.”

  Kella took his hand and started walking backwards, further down into the darkness. “Didn’t you find it at all odd that the Pegans found us here so quickly? Think about it… Ambition is searching for us—at least I hope they are—but it will take them days, maybe weeks to find us. But the Pegans locate us hidden beneath the viewable surface of a dead moon in what, less than an hour? Was it even that long?”

  “Maybe they followed us here after the initial attack.”

  “I doubt that. Why not finish us off out there? No, I think there were Pegans already here. Why did you land Bee into this narrow strip between mountains of rock?”

  “Because it was the flattest piece of surface I could see on the canopy chart. It was also the straightest—” Hail stopped talking. Kella watched his eyes grow wide. “I didn’t land us in a naturally formed gorge, did I?”

  She shook her head and smiled. “You’re starting to get it now.”

  “We’re on a trail of some kind… a road.”

  She was still walking backwards. Their helmet lights were trained on each other’s faces. “I think so, and the only way to find out where it goes is to keep heading down.” She started to turn, and her shoulder slammed into something hard. Her helmet bounced off it next, and Kella fell back into Hail’s arms.

  They trained their lights on a slab of metal built into rock. It was octagon-shaped, five meters high and wide. “It’s a door, Kella! We’ve found a door!”

  She was rubbing her shoulder. “Yeah, I noticed. Now how do we get inside… knock?”

  Hail shone his light along the door’s outer edge. He saw something on the right side ten feet off the ground that looked promising. He stepped up onto a pile of crushed rocks to get a closer view. “Looks like a receiving console. Vehicles broadcast a signal on the way down, and the door begins to open before they get here.”

  “I don’t suppose you have anything to signal it with?” Kella asked.

  She sounded tired, running out of breath again. Hail knew she didn’t have much time left. “No signaling device, but there’s something else here.” He brushed black dust away from a rod set horizontally into the door frame beneath the console. “I think it’s a manual handle of some kind.”

  “Don’t just stare at the thing… pull down on it.”

  Hail gripped it with all of his strength and prepared to do just that. He felt something click through the fabric of his glove, and the rod shifted down four inches all on its own. The big door started to swing inwards. Dust kicked up all around them as the vacuum of space met a pressurized atmosphere within. Hail jumped down from the rocks and helped Kella inside.

  “It’s some kind of pressurization bay,” Hail said. Rows of red lights were blinking all around them in the cylindrically shaped area. A second door was located at the far end twenty meters ahead. “We need to get through there somehow.”

  The first door had finished swinging all the way in. It connected with a console set in the wall, and the red lights turned bright white. The door started closing again five seconds later. “Looks like… it might happen… automatically.”

  The door thumped shut and dust started swirling around them again. The HUD activated inside Hail’s visor. “Oxygen, nitrogen. It’s pumping in breathable air.”

  The process completed. The blinking white lights turned steady green. The second door started to rumble open. Kella started staggering towards it. “Hurry… before it closes up.”

  The door began swinging shut when they were still ten meters away. Kella fell to her knees. Hail picked her back up and wrapped one of her arms around his shoulders. He jogged for the opening, dragging Kella along. He pushed her through first and squeezed his body sideways a second after. The big door
clunked shut with a deep thud.

  Kella removed her helmet before Hail could stop her. She breathed in deeply and sunk back down to her knees. “It’s okay… the air’s fine.”

  Hail waited a few moments longer before removing his own helmet. “You’ve got to start thinking before doing things. There might’ve been poisons in the air our HUDs couldn’t register.”

  “If I thought things through too much… like you… we’d be walking for the surface… preparing to die.”

  Hail pulled his side cannon out and looked around. They were in a small mechanical bay. Vehicles with heavy rubberized tires were lined against one wall in varying stages of assembly and repair. Fuel tanks and tools were strewn about the floor. There was a thin coating of dust on everything. “Doesn’t look like this place gets used much.”

  “Reminds me of the main fighter mechanical bay… back home.” She was lying on her side now, one elbow propping her up off the dusty floor. A small pool of blood had started to form around her. “Hail… I don’t feel so good.”

  “Hang tight, there’s got to be something here we can stop the bleeding with.” He rummaged through the vehicles. There was nothing. What did he expect to find? They were trapped on a moon, inside an alien installation. There would be no emergency medical kits jumping out at him, and even if there were, they probably wouldn’t be compatible with humans. He kicked one of the big vehicle tires in frustration.

  But they were breathing air, he realized. Whatever kind of beings worked and lived here couldn’t have been that dissimilar from them. There had to be something. He looked past Kella and saw what appeared to be an inner office built into the far wall. Hail ran to it and went inside. There was a desk and chair set in the middle of the room. Papers were littered across the desk’s surface, and stacks more were piled into trays and boxes to the side. There wasn’t as much dust in here, he noted. Someone had been working through these papers recently.

  The wall behind the desk was lined with small doors. Hail began rifling through them, tossing things over his shoulder and onto the floor that were of no use to him. Cups, writing utensils, boxes filled with nuts and bolts.

  There was nothing that could help save Kella’s life. He stepped back and sat dejectedly on the desk’s edge. One of the paper piles next to him toppled over and fell to the floor. Hail watched the last few sheets flutter down. He looked up and saw a five-foot-high metal door set into the side wall.

  Hail pulled on the handle and it opened with a creak. There was a power control box built inside with dozens of electrical switches arranged in rows before him. Below the power box was a red container sitting on its own shelf. A single black image was stamped on its surface recognizable to any species. It was a simplified picture of fire. Hail laughed out loud. He had found an emergency burn kit.

  “What took you… so long?” Kella asked as Hail squatted down next to her.

  He opened the container out onto the floor. Rolls of gauze wrapped in plastic spilled out. Squeeze tubes of what had to be sterilized medicine followed. “Quit talking and get out of that spacesuit.”

  Kella sat up and started to undress slowly. “What’s in there?” She pointed to a large white bottle still attached inside the container. “Is that water?”

  Hail snapped off the plastic strapping and unscrewed the cap. He smelled the liquid inside. “Maybe.” He removed his gloves and poured a bit of clear fluid onto his fingers. “Sure looks like it, but I wouldn’t recommend—”

  She snatched it away and started drinking. “Yeah, it’s water alright.” She sloshed some more onto her face.

  Hail took the bottle back. “Save some to clean your wound… dumb girl.”

  Kella giggled as Hail began working on her.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I’m being treated by Ambition’s biggest hypochondriac… a guy that probably can’t even stand the sight of blood.”

  “Keep reminding me and I’ll likely faint on top of you.”

  The giggles stopped once he’d finished cleaning the blood away and started in with the squeeze tubes. “That stings.”

  “Probably means it’s working.” He applied the largest bandage he could find and made her straighten up. “Lift your arms and sit still.”

  “Thank you, Hail,” she said as he started wrapping the gauze around her midsection. “You’ve put up with too much crap from me. I’ll quit being such a smart-ass, okay?”

  He taped the last of the gauze down against her stomach. “I don’t want you to stop being who you are because of me.” He leaned back and their eyes met. “Believe it or not, I kind of like you the way you are.”

  The color had already begun to return to her face. Was she blushing? He backed away further and handed her the water bottle. “Here, drink a bit more, but save some for later.”

  Kella grabbed onto the back of his neck and pulled him in. Their lips met, Hail’s heart started to pound up into his throat. A door opened somewhere behind them and the kiss was broken.

  A man dressed in dirty work clothes stood less than twenty feet away. His expression was total shock—one cheek was bulging out with half-chewed food. Part of it was hanging out over his lip. A cardboard box beneath his arm fell, and the rest of his pastry lunch rolled onto the floor. He blurted a single-word question and started to back away. He said it again louder.

  “What’s he saying?” Hail asked.

  Kella picked his side cannon up off the floor and pointed. “How should I know?” She fired a six-inch hole into the door behind him. The man jumped to one side, lost his balance, and smacked his head into the rear fender of a half-disassembled vehicle. He was out cold before he’d finished hitting the floor.

  Hail ran to the fallen body and placed a hand on his chest. “He’s still breathing. Were you trying to kill him?”

  “He was going to run… find more aliens.”

  Hail’s hand shook as he pulled it away. “They aren’t aliens, Kella. The Pegans are human, just like us.”

  Chapter 30

  Tor Emin had better ways to spend his time. He was the newly appointed General of Ambition’s military, and even though its numbers had been cut in half, the Captain expected him to be organizing their remaining troops into a ready fighting unit, not sneaking around in the dark bowels of the multi-leveled Sciences section. The Captain didn’t know where he was—Thank Sol—or what he was up to. If Sulafat, or just about anyone else onboard, even suspected his sinister ties with Chort Leo, Tor would be immediately knocked back down to the rank of milun. Hell, he would be kicked out of the military altogether and likely spending the rest of his days in the ship’s prison.

  Tor hated it down here. He rarely visited this area of the ship, and only the schematic loaded into his com-pad—directions provided by Chort—showed him where he needed to be. There were too many goddamn machines, he thought. Row after row of humming computers stretched off up into the ceiling ten feet above his head. It made him feel like a trapped rodent, scurrying down too-narrow aisles, sandwiched between the towering, black monoliths. The machines threw off a tremendous amount of heat as well. Tor was drenched in sweat, the com-pad slippery in his fingers. He continued on, desperate to have this clandestine meeting over with.

  He saw no one along the way. A majority of the rooms he passed through were running on minimal power and staff. Ambition was at war, and every available crew member was somewhere else trying to win it. The computers could run on automatic, and the research could wait. Even the lighting had been set to emergency minimal, casting everything in an eerie red glow.

  It wasn’t too late to back out. He could abandon this centuries-old obsession handed down throughout generations of his family. Tor came upon an unmarked door and punched a seven-digit code into the console. It slid open noiselessly and he stepped through into an even darker area.

  Chort was waiting for him in the shadows. “I was beginning to wonder if you got lost.”

  “This is wrong,” Tor whispered, even though the
re wasn’t anyone around to hear them talking. “I did what I said I’d do out in space… fulfilled my part in it. I even voted for the war when Sulafat put me in charge. I can’t afford to be seen with you.”

  The Science section head flipped a switch on the wall. Their surroundings brightened slightly in a sterile shade of blue. “You wanted this just as much as I did, Emin. We all did. We’re fulfilling a promise that can’t be broken.”

  “I’ve never been here before.” Tor began walking slowly through the hidden control room. The biggest computer he’d seen yet was sprawled out across an entire wall fifteen-meters across and five-meters high. It was a mass of monitoring screens and control panels. He could feel the power of it humming through the bottoms of his boots. “Part of me always thought the tomb didn’t actually exist.”

  “Less than a dozen people onboard are aware it’s still running. Everyone else believes it was shut down and abandoned more than six hundred years ago.”

  The tomb was a name given to the single cryonics facility located on level 65. Seven personnel born on Earth had been placed in deep freeze near the beginning of Ambition’s long mission. They were to be revived seven decades later when the ship arrived in the Pegan system to assume military command of operations. The Turnback Revolution had put an end to that. The cryonics facility had been sabotaged, the machinery heavily damaged, but not completely destroyed. The technology to revive the suspended had been lost. The lives stored within had remained frozen.

  Tor made his way to an observation window at the far end of the room. A row of seven cryogenic canisters set at forty-five degree angles rested on the floor surrounded by a network of heavy cables and cooling tanks. “It’s them… the original seven.”

  Chort pointed to the third canister from the right. “And that’s your grand-father, sixteen times removed, still resting peacefully after all this time.”