Proximity

by M. A. George

CHAPTER 30

  I didn’t need clarification to know who “they” were…

  All this time spent wondering where the rebel ship had disappeared to, and this was the answer I had not seen coming. I froze for a long moment, unable to find any words as I absorbed the devastating blow.

  Aeron was becoming concerned at my traumatized expression, but I couldn’t even explain it to him in my shock. I started to come around as I processed Sabela’s exact words…“They took him.” It suggested that—at least for the moment—he was still alive.

  Finally, I found my voice again. “Are you saying they kidnapped him?” I asked guardedly. “Where did they take him?”

  “I don’t know,” came her bewildered reply.

  My heart sank as I grasped the significance of her answer. Though it would be the expected response from any normal person in this situation, Sabela wasn’t “normal”. With someone as dear to her as Father, she should be able to track him down anywhere on the planet…Which meant he wasn’t on the planet.

  “Are you saying they left?” I knew it was precisely what she was saying, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it.

  “I can’t sense him anywhere,” she replied dismally. “And I have to hope it’s because he’s left Earth, not because he’s really gone…”

  “Can you sense if their ship is still here?” I prompted.

  “No…” she verified. “That’s at least promising. Maybe we can go after them,” she proposed with a vague hint of hope.

  My stomach churned as I realized I hadn’t had a chance to fill her in on my side of the story. “No…We can’t,” I replied bleakly. “We don’t have a ship.”

  “What?…” came her expectedly puzzled reaction.

  I elaborated on my response to bring her up to speed. There was a prolonged silence, then at length she spoke again. “We still have another option…”

  I knew where she was going with that, but I didn’t see how it was a valid alternative. “Father’s ship?” The skepticism was heavy in my voice. “It hasn’t been touched in over a century.”

  “I suspect it has,” she contested.

  “What makes you say that?” I was at least intrigued.

  “When Father was helping me find the enemy ship,” she explained. “He had to tell me the location of his own ship to keep me from confusing it with my target. He kept it in Utah…He didn’t sell all of his property there.”

  “Even so,” I came back, still unconvinced. “What makes you think he kept it in working order?”

  “I was curious how he knew it was still where he’d left it—that it was still untouched,” she continued. “Apparently every time you and I go out of town for a few days, he goes up there to check on it…I gave him a hard time about gallivanting off without telling us, but he dismissed it and changed the subject on me. At the time, I wasn’t thinking we would have any use for it.”

  “Where exactly in Utah is it?” My doubts gave way to desperate hope. “Can you give me detailed directions? And how soon can you and Dominick get on the road?”

  “It’s not too far from where we lived,” she described. “I’ll type something up quickly and e-mail it to you. It will take you twice as long to get there, so Dom and I have plenty of time. We’ll start packing up and meet you there.” Her voice had become much more self-assured at the transition to planning mode, as opposed to idle panic. I identified with the feeling.

  “Keep me posted on your progress,” I wrapped up. “I’ll see you in Utah…”

  I hung up the phone to meet Aeron and Ewenami’s anxious expressions. I tried to keep calm as I reported the crushing news about my father. I moved on promptly to the plan of action, checking my phone for Sabela’s e-mailed directions.

  Aeron was clearly worried for me, having seen the devastation on my face during my phone conversation. I reassured him that I would be fine, as long as I felt like we had a fighting chance. If we could get the ship to work and return to Onontí, Sabela would be able to track Father down…as long as they didn’t decide to kill him first. I pushed that thought to the back of my mind, clinging to the hope that they had kept him alive for a reason.

  Once the directions arrived, Aeron picked up the speed a little as we raced down the interstate. It would take us the rest of the day—and most of the night—to get there. As we drove, I asked him what the odds were that Father’s ship would actually be flightworthy.

  “If he protected it from the elements and kept up with routine maintenance,” he postulated, “it could actually be in pretty good shape. We may need to restock the food stores, but the ship itself was built to last.”

  “What about fuel?” I wondered.

  “It had enough to make the return trip and then some,” he explained. “It shouldn’t have degraded appreciably over the years.” He reached over to take hold of my hand, reassuring me. “This could work, Palta. And if it doesn’t, we’ll find another way…”

  After another hour of driving, it occurred to me that we hadn’t had a meal—or taken a bathroom break—in way too long. I sheepishly asked Aeron if we could stop to fill up the gas tank and run into a convenience store. Ewenami seconded my request. Aeron took the next exit, and we made a mad dash inside.

  On our way back to the car, I insisted on taking a turn to drive. The enemy ship no longer seemed to be a threat, and Aeron would need his energy to pilot Father’s ship. After a persuasive argument on my part, Aeron ultimately relented, climbing into the passenger seat. He stubbornly refused to recline the seat; but eventually his eyelids grew too heavy, and he leaned his head back against the headrest to drift off to sleep. I tried to keep my eyes on the road, but I couldn’t help but steal an occasional glance at his angelic face. Ewenami tried to stay awake to keep me company; but as she yawned involuntarily, I encouraged her to catch a nap as well.

  As the day turned to night, I looked for another gas station to refuel. Aeron startled awake as the car came to a stop. I reassured him it was just another pit stop. He woke Ewenami and sent the two of us inside, while he filled up the tank.

  When we regrouped at the car, Ewenami pled her case to be the next driver. I encouraged Aeron to sit with her in the front, while I caught some more rest in the backseat. I handed him my phone with the driving directions and made myself comfortable.

  It was well into the night when we arrived at the anticipated location. I came awake as we pulled to a stop in front of a gated fence, our headlights the only source of light in a surrounding sea of darkness. Aeron stepped out of the car to open the gate. My heart raced with sudden concern as I spotted a gun in his hand…Had something happened while I was sleeping? My fears were allayed when he aimed at the gate’s lock and fired, then pushed the gate open to allow Ewenami to drive through. He climbed back into the car, joining me in the backseat, as Ewenami began to follow the unpaved road ahead.

  I had another surge of alarm as I realized the gate had still been locked…

  “Why aren’t Sabela and Dominick here yet?” I burst out anxiously. “They had a much shorter drive…They should have been here long before now.”

  “It took them a while to pack things up, and they had to stock up on food supplies,” Aeron wrapped his arm around me comfortingly. “They’re almost here.” His voice was calmly reassuring as he reached up to tenderly brush my bangs out of my eyes.

  We drove through the darkness as we followed the meandering path of overgrown tire tracks for what felt like several miles. Eventually the beams from our headlights landed upon a massive steel building—an aircraft hangar. I wondered if the workers who had assembled it could ever have imagined what would be housed inside.

  Aeron exited the car—gun in hand again—to shoot the lock off the side entrance, disappearing through the door. Moments later he reappeared, slowly pushing open the wide wall of hangar doors. Ewenami pulled the car inside the unlit hangar. As the headlights reflected off the surrounding walls, a st
range glow filled the space.

  Standing in the center of the building—looking rather cramped despite the hangar’s enormous size—was the majestic ship that belonged to my father. Its paint finish was not quite as radiantly white, but otherwise it seemed an identical match to Aeron’s ship.

  My eyes welled up with tears as I studied my only remaining memento of my father’s love. Whether he had intended it or not, this was his offering of salvation to his daughters. It was also our only hope of saving him.

  Ewenami cut the engine, leaving the headlights on to light the space. We stepped out of the car as Aeron began inspecting the exterior of the ship. “It looks good so far,” he reported. “Your father kept it in immaculate condition.”

  Unfortunately, we had no way of breaking into the ship without causing significant damage. We would have to wait for Sabela—the only one of us who had been programmed into the ship’s roster before.

  We distracted ourselves with an introductory Onontian vocabulary lesson. I hoped it was my sleep-deprived and emotionally frazzled state that made it seem overly complicated…Aeron tried to hide his amusement as I butchered the pronunciation of just about everything.

  At length, we heard the sound of a vehicle approaching. I recognized my father’s truck, with an old ranch trailer in tow—it appeared to be packed to the brim. We stepped back to allow room for Dominick to pull into the hangar. As he came to a stop, Sabela jumped out and ran to give me a hug.

  “What is all this stuff?” I asked, referring to the jam-packed trailer and truck bed. “Is that really all food?”

  “Half of it is,” she nodded. “The rest is a combination of things from home and assorted new purchases.”

  I was too busy wondering if she would be able to gain access to the ship to question her any further about it. Aeron directed Sabela over to a panel near the cargo door. As she pressed her hand against it, the door made a loud clicking sound, then began slowly opening toward the ground. Dominick followed Aeron’s directions to pull the truck—trailer and all—into the cargo hold. As Dominick stepped out of the driver’s seat, I walked over to give him a welcoming hug.

  “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save your father,” he said, his expression racked with guilt. “I was no help whatsoever…I’m afraid he would have been better off without me there.”

  “That’s absurd, Dom,” I shook my head disapprovingly. “Who knows what would have happened if you hadn’t been there?…At the very least, we would have no idea what actually happened. I’m just so relieved you’re safe.”

  Sabela came over to join the conversation, attempting to explain Dominick’s self-deprecating perspective. “He thinks that Father put all his efforts into protecting him, rather than saving himself.” She shook her head in disagreement. “But I think he acted to protect us all…If he had persuaded the rebels to leave him alone, they would have just turned their attention back to the rest of us.”

  “You know she’s right, Dom,” I eyed him sternly. “So no more of this blaming yourself business,” I added with another hug. “We are going to find him.” He nodded in acceptance as we made our way to the ship’s interior.

  We proceeded to the control bridge, the familiar corridors and off-white interior easing my sense of loss over Aeron’s ship a bit. Even so, I was reminded of all of my most treasured possessions that had been lost in an instant. Our lives were certainly far more valuable; but I couldn’t help but wonder how we were going to make it through a lengthy flight with no spare clothing. Ewenami and I could probably fit into some of Sabela’s things, but I couldn’t see Aeron and Dominick being a good size match.

  With Sabela’s help, Aeron fired up the ship’s controls, then went about the procedure of entering each of us into the computer’s memory. The process complete, he explained he would need a little time to run some diagnostic testing and make sure the ship was prepared for flight. The rest of us returned to the cargo area to begin unloading the trailer.

  Once we had stowed away all the food in the pantry, we began dividing up the boxes that Sabela had marked with our names. I was puzzled to see that each of us had several large moving boxes to our name…In my case, there were a whopping five.

  “What’s in here?” I asked as Sabela helped me carry a load to my suite. “I didn’t expect you to bring anything beyond the essentials…I didn’t leave this much stuff behind that would have been worth taking the time to pack.”

  “It was Aeron’s idea,” she explained with an approving smile. “He knew that everything you cared about was destroyed in the explosion, and he wanted so badly for you to feel at home…So he asked me to pack everything of interest you had left behind. And then we went on a whirlwind shopping spree,” she smiled with a wink. “None of it is anything spectacular, just things I could grab quickly at the strip mall while Dom picked up the food: clothes, shoes, books, movies, CDs, a DVD player, makeup, hair care products,…” And the list went on.

  “I guess you might as well blow the bank,” I shrugged with a smile as I gave her an appreciative hug. “It’s not like it will do us any good to pinch pennies now…”

  I paused for a moment to consider the number of boxes in front of me. “You did get plenty of things for yourselves, and Aeron and Ewenami…Didn’t you?” I definitely didn’t want to be the only one on board who was basking in luxury. She assured me that everyone was covered.

  As we started unpacking boxes, the floor began its familiar vibration, accompanied by the subtle rumbling sound that I recognized to be the ship’s engines coming to life. We looked to one another with excitement, abandoning our unpacking to head for the control bridge.

  We met Ewenami and Dominick in the corridor, stepping into the elevator to ascend to the upper dome. Aeron slowly spun around in his seat as we approached. “Brace yourselves,” he declared with a smile. “We’re ready for takeoff.”

  I took my place behind his seat, bending forward to kiss him on the cheek as he returned to working the controls. As I looked out the windshield, I suddenly wondered, “How are we getting out of this hangar?”

  “Very carefully,” he enunciated, as the ship began to hover precariously between the floor and ceiling of the cramped building. Slowly, steadily, he eased us forward through the open doors. Once clear of the hangar, we started to climb into the night sky.

  Once again, it was hard to perceive the ship’s motion without any visual cues in the darkness. There was a momentary flash of light as we left the atmosphere, and suddenly a vivid image appeared outside the windshield…The moon’s outline was rapidly growing in size as we drew nearer. Then, abruptly, we seemed to come to a halt. The moon drifted to the side, then fell out of view as another vista filled the window.

  It was a scene of vibrant blues and greens, more breathtaking than any photo could ever do justice. My mouth dropped in awe as I squeezed Aeron’s shoulder. He looked up at me, patiently waiting for my signal that I was ready to say goodbye.

  I finally appreciated in that moment what an amazing home Earth had been to me…the only home I’d ever known. I took a deep breath, then nodded slowly. “Okay,” I shifted my gaze to meet his eyes. “It’s time.”

  He squeezed my hand upon his shoulder, then returned to the controls, as the view through the window slowly rotated to a star-studded blanket of night. With a momentary bobble of the floor, the ship burst forward into the infinite expanse.

  I stood in awe for a minute, trying to fathom how rapidly we must be traveling. In time, Aeron turned away from the controls. Apparently the ship would function on autopilot for a while. We all proceeded to the elevator, agreeing it was finally time to go get some decent sleep. As the rest of the group headed for their respective wings, Aeron took my hand to escort me to my suite. Once inside, I turned to wrap my arms around his waist.

  “I would like to thank you,” I began, “for being so thoughtful as to ask Sabela to replace my lost things…I wasn’t expecting it.”


  “Trust me, it’s the least I could do,” he replied with a humble smile. “She and Dominick did all the work.”

  “I know, but it’s the thought that counts,” I contested. “I hope you asked her to get whatever you need…You lost all your belongings too.”

  He shook his head. “There’s no comparison between our situations, Palta…I lost a few things I’d packed for the journey here. You have lost your whole world.” His eyes were filled with compassion. “I realize that a few material things won’t replace the solace of home—or ease your fear for your father’s safety—but perhaps they will offer some small comfort,” he continued, as he stroked his hands soothingly along my upper arms. “I promise you, we will find and rescue your father.” His gaze was intense as he pledged his unfailing support. “And with time, I hope you will come to think of Onontí as your home. I know it seems like a war-torn battleground right now, but it really is an exceptionally beautiful place…We will restore it to its former serenity.” He reached up to caress my cheek with a soft smile. “And when we do, there are so many places I want to show you…” A hint of anticipation flickered across his face.

  As he looked into my eyes, I found myself believing that he really would set everything right. “I know we have our challenges ahead,” I acknowledged with a contemplative look. “But in spite of them, I’m really looking forward to starting a new life with you…If you’ll have me,” I added with a playful smile.

  His affectionate gaze assured me of his willing devotion, as he leaned in to kiss me gently. He nuzzled my cheek lightly with the tip of his nose as he whispered, “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me…” He kissed me tenderly once more, then started to step back. “I’ll let you have some peace and quiet now…I’m sure you need some rest.”

  “Actually,” I caught hold of his hands, preventing him from backing away any further. “I’m not tired at all…” I bit my bottom lip mischievously.

  “I was hoping you’d say that…” He stepped swiftly forward, encircling my waist with his eager arms. My heart all but pounded out of my chest as he kissed me with renewed enthusiasm. I decided for the time being to set aside my worries, trusting in his ability to make anything possible.

  As I cleared my head and surrendered to the blissful moment, it was hard to imagine that life could get any better than this…

  ***

  Thank you so much for reading Proximity!

  If you enjoyed the story, please consider spreading the word to other readers by leaving a quick review where you purchased the book. Your time in doing so is greatly appreciated.

  Other Books by M.A. George

  Relativity (Proximity series #2)

  Vitality (Proximity series #3)

  Aqua

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  Palta and Aeron’s story continues with Relativity.

  Here’s a look at the first few chapters: