by K. D. Mattis
After a few minutes, the cylinder stopped moving and pulled in until it formed the same cylinder as before. Startled, Robert continued to sit back away from the object.
“What was that?” Robert asked.
The voice in his head diminished until he could barely hear it.
“It’s already started.”
15
Standing in place, Asher propped her foot on her desk to stretch. She almost knocked over her model of the Explorer in the process. Asher leaned over to look at the screen of the corded phone on her desk. She didn’t recognize the number, so she continued stretching. She figured that, if it were important, the person on the other end would leave a message.
Instead, the person on the other end hung up, only to call again. Asher picked up the receiver and didn’t try to hide the irritation in her voice.
“Yes?”
“Admiral, it’s Harris.”
Asher nearly dropped the receiver.
“Robert, where are you?”
“I can’t tell you that, sir.”
To her side, Asher saw the security button. She knew she had a responsibility to press it so that Central Command could trace the call and find Harris’s location, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so. Not immediately.
“Sir,” Harris said, “is the Explorer ready to go?”
A loud crack resonated down the halls of the underground facility. Asher jumped, but was too focused on the call to worry about it.
“You know I can’t answer that. You have a lot of people looking for you. You can make this a lot easier for everyone if you come back to the Space Center.”
“I can’t do that, sir.”
“Please,” Asher said, “whatever’s going on, you know the parasite in your brain…it’s dangerous. We can’t have that out in the world. Who knows what sort of viruses that thing could be carrying? You don’t want to expose people to that.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “They’re already out here.”
Jolting upright, Asher asked, “Where? How many?”
“You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen. There’s so much that we don’t know.”
That was it. Hitting the button, Asher tried to make Harris stay on the line. “Like what?”
“We’re not the first, and we won’t be the last.”
“Robert, please. That doesn’t help me much. Give me something specific.”
“You want specific?”
Nodding, Asher said yes as a security staffer ran in. Asher pointed to her phone and mouthed the words “Lieutenant Harris.” The security staffer understood and stepped into the hall to call for assistance over his radio. In moments, Asher saw people running into her office with equipment. She knew, somewhere, there was someone now listening in on the call.
Harris paused again. “Kayla, is the Explorer ready?”
She tried to ignore Harris using her first name. “You know I can’t answer that.”
Another rumble shook the facility. A pop of plastic caused Asher to turn around and look at her chair. It rolled away. Not far, but far enough to tell her that something was wrong.
Blue lights and a siren filled the facility. A mechanical voice said, “General evacuation. All non-essential personnel, please report to your station and exit the facility.” The voice repeated the same warning every thirty seconds.
“Admiral, listen to me.”
Harris sounded lucid, but there was a hint of something behind his words that Asher couldn’t ignore. He wasn’t drunk or anything like that, but he sounded numb. The constant pauses concerned her. She could only guess at the role of the parasite in the conversation.
Frowning, Asher asked, “Robert, are you there?”
“I’m here, Admiral. Please, get the Explorer in the air.”
“I need more than that.”
“I can’t give you anything else.”
Asher sighed. “Something. Anything. What’s it for? Should we look for something?”
One of the security members listened intently to a speaker in his ear. He then turned to Asher and signaled for her to keep the lieutenant talking.
“Robert, please. You can’t just tell me that and not give me a reason. You’re wanted because no one knows what the parasite can do. It controlled you before. Maybe it can do it again.”
“Yeah,” Robert said, suddenly weak. “I’ve thought about that a lot. I’m not even sure most of the time. Right now, I know who I am. I know what I need, and I know what you need.”
“What do I need?”
“Is the Earth Defense Initiative ready?”
Part of her said that she shouldn’t answer, but Asher couldn’t lie to her old friend. “No. The space elevator isn’t even complete yet. They can’t go into full production mode until that’s done.”
“How long?”
“A year? Maybe more.”
Harris cursed on the other end of the line. “We can’t wait that long. You can’t wait that long. You need to get everyone together. Everyone that’s ready to go needs to go.”
“Go where?”
“I don’t know.”
Her voice cracked as Asher shouted into the phone. “That’s not an answer. What are we looking for up there?”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t know.”
“We?”
“Do you trust me?” Harris’ voice shook.
“I want to.”
“Do you?”
Asher couldn’t bear to give her friend an honest answer, so she didn’t answer at all.
Harris started to talk on the other end of the line, but his words were cut off by screaming. “I have to tell her!” he shouted. The argument with himself continued for several seconds before he regained control and said calmly, “Sir, we’re already under attack. It’s going to get worse the longer it’s allowed to continue.”
With that, Harris’s end hung up and Asher was left listening to silence.
The men around the room looked at their superior officer. With no orders, they packed up their gear, and everyone but the commanding officer stood in the hall.
“We have a location, sir. How would you like us to proceed?”
Slowly lifting her head, Asher looked the man in the eyes, then looked at the door. “Do whatever you have to. I have some things to take care of.”
Ensign Gonzales woke in her bunk to the intense stare of the admiral.
“Get up,” Asher said.
“Sir?” Gonzales asked. She shot out bed and started throwing on her uniform.
“I—”
Looking at the admiral’s hands, Gonzales saw them shaking. She reached out and took hold of them for a moment.
Asher pulled away, nodded, and turned toward the door. “It’s Harris. I just heard from him.”
“I see.”
The women stared at the floor together, neither wanting to break the silence.
“He warned me something was about to happen,” Asher said at last. “The problem is that I don’t know if I can trust him.”
“What’s your gut telling you?”
Asher focused on the ensign’s pictures lining the wall around her bunk. Most were of her smiling and laughing with various family members. One, however, was of Gonzales and Harris at the helm of the Explorer. She focused on her lieutenant’s picture, and her expression softened.
“We’re jumping right back into the thick of it, aren’t we?” Gonzales asked.
“Prep a shuttle. Meet me in the hangar in twenty minutes.” Asher gave her a small tablet. “This is a list of essential personnel that I could reach. They’ll meet us there. Prepare to depart as soon as I get there.”
“Yes, sir,” Gonzales said. After a moment of thought, she added, “Is there a reason you came down here to say that?”
Asher smiled and walked toward the door. “I needed to see a familiar face.”
With most of the crew onboard, the Expedition was towed out into the middle of a concrete flat in a giant field. A
sher checked her harness at least a dozen times during the short journey. When she finally accepted that her harness was in good shape, she visually inspected the harnesses of the rest of her crew.
Logically, she knew that everyone there was more than qualified to inspect their own harnesses. They wouldn’t have made it very far in the Space Corps otherwise. Even so, she needed something to focus on, and she couldn’t have a tablet out.
“This is the USSC Expedition to control. We’ve reached the launch location and are requesting permission to depart.” Gonzales spoke into her receiver with the same articulation that Lieutenant Harris taught her.
“Expedition, this is control, permission to depart granted. Have a safe flight.”
The ensign typed in a long sequence of commands. With every entry, the ambient noise in the cabin of the shuttle changed just slightly, until it shook as it lifted off the ground. Asher hated the way it swayed as it moved up several meters into the air. While it had the ability, the shuttle wasn’t designed to stay in place for very long, and it only received stabilizers as an afterthought. As a result, the craft swayed much more than Asher would have liked.
A few more commands helped to smooth the ship’s movements. The back of the ship erupted in a deafening roar, and the shuttle shot into the sky. Air and water particles made sure the trip would be one to remember. They slammed into the front of the aerodynamic craft with speed, and each particle hitting the hull added to the noise.
Looking to the front of the cabin, Asher could see through a small window into the cockpit. Ensign Gonzales never looked away from her wide monitor and diagnostic equipment.
All at once, the patch of blue outside of the window transitioned to a black, starry mess. Just as before, Asher couldn’t help but smile. As the shuttle settled into a short orbit, it no longer suffered the effects of gravity, and Asher pushed against the harness so that her body stayed pressed into the seat.
The men and women around Asher played in their seats. It wasn’t anything obvious, but she saw them allow their bodies to float around before pushing themselves back down. One of the men managed to sneak a ping pong ball in his uniform pocket. When he thought he didn’t see anyone watching, he pulled it out and pushed it off to one of the others.
Asher should have reprimanded the man. Bringing excess gear violated several regulations. Given the circumstance though, she decided to let it slip. When the ball floated over to her, she flicked it away. In no time, the crew all passed time by bouncing the ball around.
Gonzales’s voice came over the intercom. “We’re nearing Ambassador Station. ETA four minutes, twenty seconds.”
The ensign looked back into the main cabin and motioned for the admiral to look out the front window. For a moment, Asher couldn’t see anything. Gonzales fixed that with the push of a button and angled the ship to get a better view.
Asher saw it.
There, not too far away, was the Explorer docked at Ambassador Station. Dozens of tiny ships moved around it like worker bees. Asher could only imagine what each did, but the radical change of the Explorer’s look stole her attention.
The old Explorer was perfect for what it was supposed to do. It was designed as a colony ship and had plenty of room and supplies. When the aliens threw themselves into the equation, they had been forced to adapt the Explorer. Now it shone with a brighter, thicker armor plating. Enhanced diagnostic equipment and sensors flashed bright colors in a steady pattern. She couldn’t see any of the weapons systems, but Asher knew they were there, and she knew they were vastly superior to the Explorer’s previous compliment.
After receiving approval from Ambassador Station, the Expedition slowed and approached a docking arm that extended into space. The arm caught onto a bar on the side of the craft and pulled it toward a port on the side of the station. Hissing and several loud thuds filled the cabin of the shuttle while the airlock secured and prepared to receive Asher’s crew.
Deciding to forgo standard procedure, Asher unfastened her harness and pushed into the air. Her crew watched, unsure if they should do the same. The admiral didn’t wait for others to follow. When the light for the airlock turned green, she pressed a series of buttons to open the door and pushed her way off the frame and down the hallway.
Under normal circumstances, the corpsmen that Asher passed would have stopped to salute her, or at least acknowledge her presence. Her haste stole that opportunity from them. The only thing that slowed her on her way to the Combat Information Center was the occasional viewport along the outer wall of the station. Each one she passed gave her the opportunity to glance at her revamped ship, and she took every opportunity.
Outside the door of the CIC, Asher paused and grabbed onto a bar on the outside of the door to position herself upright. She reached down to her boots and pressed a small button just above the ankle. When she touched the ground with her feet, they connected to the floor with a metallic click. After straightening her hair, she opened the door and walked in.
16
“Admiral, welcome back.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
Asher looked at Commander Hale with a silent hope that he knew something she didn’t. When he didn’t immediately come forward with information, she gave up on that hope.
“You’ve run the scans?” Asher asked.
“As requested, sir. No luck so far.”
“Whatever signal we’re looking for, it may not resemble anything we’ve seen before.”
The commander nodded and pointed toward his diagnostics team. “We’ve worked around the clock. If there’s anything out there, we should have seen it. I’m starting to think that there isn’t anything to see. If that changes, my team will let us know immediately. You have my word.”
“Good. Station status?”
The pair walked around the combat information center, taking time to pause at each station. When they passed by a group of people, the Corpsmen continued their work, but with renewed intensity.
“Everything’s up and running,” Hale said. “I wish we had more time to test. Most of the upgrades are integrated properly into the system, but without a proper test, I can’t guarantee anything.”
“Have your engineers seen any problems?”
“No, sir. It’s still a little odd thinking about the weapons systems on the station. Under Commander Reynolds, I helped to install them, but it was all very quiet.”
With a smirk, Asher walked over to the tactical station. At nearly four times the size of the tactical station of the Explorer, she wondered what it could do.
“Things have changed,” she said.
“That they have.” After a pause, the commander pulled up an image of the Explorer on one of the four large screens around the room. “About the Explorer—”
“Yes?” Asher asked.
“The engineers are polishing off some finishing touches. I moved all resources that I could spare over to your ship as soon as I received word of a potential threat. She’s in better shape than ever before, but it has the same problem as the Ambassador.”
“The new systems?”
The commander nodded.
“There’s nothing that can be done now,” Asher said. “We’ll put her through her paces if we can, but we don’t have time for a full shakedown run. It’s unfortunate, but there’s nothing we can do about it. My full crew couldn’t get up here in time.”
“You’ll have the people you need.”
“Will it compromise the Ambassador?” Asher asked.
“I’ll worry about staffing concerns, sir. We’ll both have what we need.
Walking to the exit, Asher said, “Good. Keep an eye out.”
Each step Asher took in the long tunnel sent a wave of noise forward that returned a moment later as a loud thud. Only after she reached the halfway point did she reach down and turn off her magnetic boots.
When she reached out to the wall, Asher pinched the flexible material between the tunnel’s ribs between her fingers. Though thick,
the wall moved easily in her hands. She held her breath when she realized that she put her life in the hands of something so seemingly infirm.
Spooked, the admiral pushed down the tunnel faster, hoping to find firm footing in the Explorer sooner rather than later. At the airlock, she pressed a button requesting that someone open the door. When they did, she didn’t hesitate to push into the airlock and close the door behind her.
The bones of the ship were the same as always, but it bore an alien quality. Down the normally clean walls ran large bundles of cables running to uncovered junctures. The cables were loosely held in place by straps. New pieces of equipment were haphazardly stored in the halls, pending installation. Asher still traveled the halls with ease, but when someone passed, she couldn’t help feeling cramped. Still, she was on her ship. She was home.
A new sign offered Asher a choice. While she planned to go to the bridge immediately, she couldn’t resist the temptation to head back to engineering. Pushing down the crowded hallways, she passed several corpsmen without pausing long enough for them to adhere to usual decorum. Instead, she whipped past them, barely acknowledging their presence. The first stunned look on an engineer’s face left her feeling guilty, but the hum of the engines grew louder the farther along she moved, and she soon forgot about any emotion other than excitement.
As she entered the main engineering room, Asher’s smile faded. While the engines hummed loudly, the noise didn’t match her memory. A glance at part of one of the engines reminded her why. She recognized the main components, but each part she saw was shaped or placed differently than before.
When Asher saw a part that she didn’t recognize, she pushed off the floor and floated over to it, grasping it in her hands. Furrowing her brow, Asher let out a sigh. Even upon close inspection, she couldn’t figure out what the part did, or why it was there. She let her shoulders drop and pushed back toward the floor and out of Engineering without a word to anyone.
Asher arrived on the bridge to see most of her crew in their respective places. Each person stood by, pushing up from their chairs and bracing themselves against their station. They then turned to their commanding officer and offered a salute. With a nod, Asher put them all at ease.