I closed my eyes in the hall, trying to determine my own injuries. I could feel some pain in my knee, but I hoped it was just a bruise from landing on it. My left shoulder was a little tight, but again, that could be from falling on it. Nothing seemed too serious or broken.
A quick stop in the kitchen, and I was heading to the bridge with an armful of water bottles for everyone.
Slate stood, looking no worse for the wear, and Clare was absent, talking to Mary through her console speaker. “How about now?” her voice asked, and the viewscreen flickered, cut out, then stayed on, showing up the view before our ship.
Black sky, stars in the distance. Yep, pretty much what we had been looking at before, only I knew it was far different. No one from Earth had ever been this far out, and when we brought the map up, it zoomed in from tiny specks to large blinking icons. We were right on their tail.
The icon had moved trajectory since we’d last seen it, and to my non-spatial, linear mind, they were heading deep south in the 3D map. At their speed, it was evident the FTL drive was back up and running. As if she read my mind, Mary said, “Our drive will be good to go in twenty minutes. We were still holding a charge.”
I slumped down onto the console chair to the left of Mary, staring into the blank space outside, the blip of our target getting ever so farther away with each beat of my heart.
I wondered how long this journey was going to take.
__________
Two weeks later, we were settling into a routine. I’d become more of a scheduler than anything, shifts on manning the bridge swapping between all six of us. We took turns making meals and sleeping.
Slate had a great idea for training sessions, which not only allowed us to get in shape, but let us learn the ins and outs of every weapon on board.
I headed into the storage area, which had become a makeshift gym, mats layering the floor in a square. Mary and Clare were inside, doing push-ups with Slate counting them off.
“Time for hand to hand,” he said, grinning at me. If there was one thing Slate loved, it was hand to hand combat. He lit up every time, and I was sure he wished there was some competition aboard for a man his size. There wasn’t anyone close. I’d been at the bruising end of his moves a few times, but he had taught me a lot, and for that I was thankful. Now the smaller Clare was up, getting ready for some basic combat techniques against the better-trained Mary.
Watching Mary sweating like that, getting ready to kick someone’s ass, was a turn-on. I wondered where that primal emotion came from.
Clare was thin, and her glasses were off to the side of the room. As an engineer, she said she hadn’t spent much time worrying about athletics, but Slate said she was a natural. Mary wasn’t the biggest fan of the upbeat nerd, as she called her, but was willing to admit she was a useful addition to the crew, especially since she’d helped convert some of the alien technology on board to better suit our human needs.
The two women strapped on gloves, and Slate made sure their headgear was on firmly. Mary tugged her ponytail and planted her feet. Clare moved hesitantly, a feint, before attacking from the left. Her kick hit Mary in the side, who grunted and jabbed with her right, catching Clare in the head.
The smaller woman went down, and Mary was on her, two quick shots, before Slate stepped in and pulled her off.
“She’s down,” he said angrily. Clare was down on the ground, turtling her head, and Mary moved back, hands in the air.
“I’m sorry, got a little too into it.” She reached her hand out, and a heavily-breathing Clare grabbed it, letting Mary help her to her feet.
“No sweat. I’ll get you next time,” Clare said before guzzling some water.
Slate looked at me and raised an eyebrow, as if to say he was impressed with their cordial behavior. Frankly, I was too.
Mary grabbed a towel and started for the washroom, where I knew she’d take a quick shower. I still couldn’t believe we had a Kraski ship with a human shower and toilet on it.
“Everything okay?” I asked, when we were out of earshot of the others.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“You just about took our engineer’s head off back there.”
“I just got a little too into it. And honestly, since you’re asking, I’m getting a little frustrated. I’m a pilot, but I usually get to leave my jet, not follow a bogey across an unknown universe. To top it off, I’m tired of Clare giggling at every little joke you say and batting her eyelashes under those Buddy Holly glasses she wears.”
The truth came out. “I get it about the ship. We’re all getting restless.”
She sighed, closing the door behind us, and started to take her workout clothes off. I didn’t want to be presumptuous, so I hung back, thinking I might be reading the room wrong.
She stepped into the now-steaming shower and stuck her arm out, wiggling her finger for me to join her.
“You don’t have to ask me twice,” I said, shucking my uniform in record time.
There were still some things we could do to ease the tension, and it wasn’t easy on a small ship with very little privacy. We chose our times carefully. This time, she just didn’t seem to care. She was taking what was hers.
Fifteen minutes later, we heard the speakers throughout the ship. It was Mae. “They’re out of the FTL drive. You guys are going to want to see this.”
SIXTEEN
Mary’s hair was dripping into a puddle on the bridge deck, and she was wearing a bathrobe, while I’d rushed and slipped my uniform back on. Doctor Nick winked at me as he entered the room, but I didn’t care about any of that. We were about to find out where Leslie and Terrance were headed. Were there Bhlat down there? Was this one of their conquered worlds?
“Our cloaking tech is working, right?” I asked, wishing I’d asked when we came out of the wormhole.
Clare was on her tablet but nodded. “One hundred percent active. They can’t pick up our signal, or see us, unless they fly into the side of the ship.”
We had slowed to our normal drive, getting closer to the world below. The hybrids ahead of us were nearing orbit, and they hung there for a time, allowing us to get caught up.
The planet looked amazing. It had been one thing to see your own planet from outer space, seeing familiar clumps of land look so alien from that height. Seeing this new planet was life-changing. My whole perspective on life somehow jarred at the sight. There were other planets out there with life. Scientists and theologians had debated the point for centuries, and we were seeing one firsthand.
I looked over, and everyone’s faces mirrored what mine must have looked like. Excitement for finding the hybrids but mixed with curiosity.
“Enough drooling, everyone,” Mae said. “This could be a Bhlat world. We have to be cautious.”
She was right. We waited, Mary having time to get dressed before taking over the helm from Mae.
“Can we send the probes down yet?” I asked.
Clare shook her head. “Great idea, but their signals aren’t hidden. They only make a small signal, but we should still wait.”
We didn’t say what we were waiting for, but I kept assuming they were going to lower planet-side. As if they read my mind, the ship started moving, descending through the planet’s atmosphere.
There were clouds on the large planet. It was hard to tell from our vantage point, but Clare said the world was a third larger than Earth. The system’s star was slightly closer, percentage-wise, to the world, which would make it warmer than we were used to.
We kept tracking the target ship as it crossed across the planet, and once they were far enough away, we flew in closer.
“Launching probe now,” Clare said. I stood beside her, watching the readout numbers scan across her screen. It only took a few minutes before we had the answers we needed. “Surface air temperature appears to be around 35 Celsius, and the air is within ninety-five percent of Earth’s, surprisingly. No toxins read that can be harmful, but we’ll get a better read
when we land.”
“We’re going down there?” Nick asked, looking doubtful of the move.
“What choice do we have? Wait until they leave and blast them?” Slate asked, then answered his own question. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea.”
Mae shook her head. “We need to see what brought them here. If there’s a base, or a danger to Earth, it’s up to us to bring the fight to them,” she said, standing straight in her Earth Defense uniform.
“How about life-forms?” I asked.
“We aren’t there yet. We don’t have those kind of readings, but we’re picking up some images.” Clare pushed the pictures from her tablet to the main viewscreen with the press of a button.
The shots weren’t high-definition from this distance, but we could make out some buildings, and what looked like crops near a river. The green lush landscape overtook almost everything, and I was reminded of the thick deadly landscape in South America.
Clare switched to the map, and we saw the hybrid ship’s icon land near the marker she’d placed on those structures.
“Bingo,” I said. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go in.”
Clare looked ready to say something, but Mary cut in first. “Let’s wait a few hours, until the sun is set on that part of the continent. The cloaking works much better in darkness, under the cover of the night sky. They’ll never see us coming.”
We spent the next couple hours planning our move, and when it was all settled, we lowered toward the planet, nervous energy palpable on the bridge of the ship. We couldn’t make out a lot in the night sky, but the world was beautiful, unspoiled by pollution, and most importantly, humans. It made we wonder for a moment what would happen to Earth if the people were all gone from it. Would it reclaim the cities like in those post-apocalyptic movies? Would New York be covered in trees, and would deer walk down Fifth Avenue, making a home in Central Park?
We decided to scout a spot close enough to get to the village by foot, but far enough not to be spotted. The landing area was an empty copse of trees, which each stood over a hundred feet tall, surrounding the location. The ground was soft, and Mary decided to hover there rather than keep the weight on the grass. It was similar to a rainforest, and the chances of sinking into the bog-like terrain were high.
“Clare, you’re sure you know how to fly this thing, right?” Mary asked for the fifth time.
“Yes. I did help create it, after all,” Clare answered, impatience thick in her voice.
Nick stayed back, looking relieved that we didn’t ask him on the away mission.
“We’ll keep in radio contact. Any sign they’re leaving in the Kraski ship, you tell us and come pick us up,” I said, slinging a pulse rifle over my shoulder. I was thankful for the time Slate had spent with me, familiarizing me and the others with the vast array of weapons we had. My confidence holding the gun was much higher than it had been a year ago, when it was new and alien to me.
Mae had her EVA suit on, the door closing between her and us as the ramp lowered. A hand-held tablet in her hand, she walked down the ramp.
“Readings shows the air is breathable,” Mae said, and I felt my shoulders loosen. Skulking around without the suit on was going to be much easier.
The door opened, and I felt warm air rushing up the ramp and into my face. A strange smell emanated from outside, a mixture of barn and swamp.
Stepping on the ground, I felt it give ever so slightly. The grass was more like moss, the water table evidently very high. The high humidity was almost a shock after spending a couple of weeks on a closed-system ship, where climate was controlled to a tenth of a degree. My uniform started to stick to my sweating body nearly instantly, and I looked at the others, seeing much of the same. Slate was the only one who kept stone-faced. He was a soldier on a mission, and his mind was extremely focused on the task at hand. Being on a strange planet with terrorist aliens on it, I was more than happy to have the gigantic soldier alongside us.
“Clare, come in,” I said, testing the comm-system.
“Go ahead,” the reply came.
“We’ll keep our trackers on. Just don’t leave us hanging if things get hairy,” I said.
Slate took the lead with ease, and we followed him. I finally got a look around, which was hard in the dark. We were hesitant to use flashlights in case we were spotted, but Slate had night-vision goggles on. I felt mine strapped to my thigh and considered wearing them. Instead I followed the others, trying to not be distracted by the brand-new surroundings.
We were on another world, walking on the mossy ground. It was an amazing feeling to see the strange massive trees looming around us, a moist musky smell lingering in the air. The river was close, but I suspected smaller ponds or swamps nearby, judging by the dampness.
As we got near the tree line, I stopped to touch one. The bark was smooth, slightly sticky. The branches were thin near the lower end of it, with slim leaves unlike any I’d ever seen.
“Dean, let’s go. We can look at the flora once we nab Terrance and Leslie,” Mae said.
I just shrugged and kept moving. The village was a couple of miles away; we’d expected to take fifteen minutes to get there at a good pace. Reality was different.
Three minutes in, the ground was too soft to walk on. Slate’s substantial bulk sank in as he stepped down, and we had to help him pull his right leg out of the mossy hole. A smelly mud stuck to his boot when he pulled free, and Mary wrinkled her nose at the stench.
“That’s not something you want to walk in. Let’s see if there’s a way across this way.” She pointed north, and we found much the same issue. Doubling back took valuable time, but the ground was eventually firmer, and soon we were making our way to the village in the right direction.
In a few minutes, we could see lights from the town: a soft glow in the darkness of an ominous world. It called to me like a beacon, and suddenly I remembered the time my car broke down on the highway in the winter when I was first off at college, right before the days when cell phones were in everyone’s hand constantly. It was the middle of a snowstorm, and after seeing no one else was crazy enough to be on the main roads, I spent an hour walking down a gravel road seeking a house. Just when I thought my toes were going to fall off, I saw a light in the distance. I ran, more stumbled, toward it, and the family let me call a tow truck and stay there until the driver picked me up.
When I saw the village light, the same feeling hit me, and I ran ahead. A few steps into my sprint, I felt the ground make way for water and I fell forward, going under.
It happened so fast, my brain couldn’t comprehend it. One second I was moving in the warm air, the next my head was under water, a thick sludgy liquid. I flailed my hands, trying to find something to push against, but they just sank into the muck on the bottom of the ground.
I finally swiveled my legs out under me and pushed up, my head breaching the muck.
Laughter shot at me from behind, and I turned to see Mary’s outline snickering at my epic fail.
“Laugh it up, chuckles,” I said, angry I was so stupid to get into this situation. That anger was heavily mixed with embarrassment. “Can you guys just help me out?”
It looked like I was in a small pond, only thirty feet across. All we would have had to do was walk a few steps to the left and avoid it. If I hadn’t rushed forward, I would be up there with the rest of them, dry and clean.
Slate stepped forward and reached a hand out, when something brushed against my leg.
SEVENTEEN
“What the hell was that?” I asked, shaking my leg.
As I stretched my hand out to grab his, I felt it again, this time harder.
“Guys, something’s in here with me.” Panic was creeping into my voice, the embarrassment all but forgotten. Slate grasped my wrist and that was when the creature underwater made its move. It wrapped around my ankle, pulling at me. I still couldn’t see it, but it was constricting tighter by the second. Another tentacle twisted around my waist and befor
e I knew it, I was gasping in murky water, flailing for air.
I hadn’t even noticed, but Slate was still holding my arm, tugging at me, a tug-of-war where I was the rope. I could hear shouting as my head ducked in and out of the water, me just trying to get air when I was able to. There were multiple tentacles now, and I had no idea if it was one multi-limbed attacker or a group of snake-like animals.
This was it. I was going to die my first hour on a new world. Water gushed into my nose, and I tasted the stale muddy water as I was tugged under it once again. The strong hard grip of Slate’s hand was gone suddenly, and I was pulled down and away from my friends. Clenching my eyes shut, I tried to stave off the panic, and fought to pull one tentacle from its crushing force on my abdomen. Nothing worked.
The water muffled sound, and I thought I could make out Mary’s voice from the ground a distance away. The swamp area was far larger than I’d initially thought, and I kept being pulled farther in. My lungs burned for air, and I knew it wasn’t going to be long. Light flashed in my closed eyes, and my body went from tense and flailing to calm and serene. The light was there for me.
Something splashed nearby, and I felt a surge of hope. The pressure on my waist ceased, and before I knew it, I wasn’t being pulled any longer. Next the grip on my ankle was gone, and an arm was under my chest, lifting me to the surface. My feet found muddy purchase on the swamp floor, and my weak knees helped keep me in an upright position. It was dark, and I retched out water, bile mixing with the thick stinky liquid.
“Are you okay, Dean?” Mae’s voice asked in my ear. She was panting, and my eyes made out her form beside me in the dimly-lit night sky.
“Mae,” was all I could muster through my clenched teeth.
“Oh, thank God,” she said quietly.
She was holding a knife in her hand, and that’s when I saw the floating tentacles to the right of us. She’d dived in and killed the thing with a blade. The others were calling to us from forty yards away. Mae helped me to them, dragging the creature behind us like a prize kill.
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