by Donald Swan
With the circuits bypassed and a final throw of a large switch, Arya was finished. Lights throughout the hub popped on and the silence in the compartment was replaced by the low hum of active power conduits. “Power restored, Captain.” Arya grinned at Nick. “Now let’s go get Karg down.”
On their way back to the bay, Arya stopped and pulled a couple of space suits out of a locker. “Here, see if this will fit you.” She tossed one of the suits to Nick.
Nick slid the suit on, watching how Arya locked her gloves and helmet in place. The suit was obviously made for someone taller, so the blasted thing ended up all bunched up around his arms and legs. Not exactly a great fit, but he wasn’t about to complain.
“Ready?” Arya asked through the integrated helmet communicator.
“Ready,” Nick replied, still uncertain of what she was up to.
The two entered the bay, and Arya climbed up onto a stack of crates near to where Karg hung from the ceiling. She threw a breather unit up to him and then hopped back down to the deck.
“Are you going to do what I think you’re going to do?” Nick stared at Arya apprehensively, and then glanced back up at Karg. “Can he survive without a suit?”
“Rakozians are pretty tough. With the breather, he can withstand being in a vacuum for a few chronits.”
From a nearby control console, Arya sealed the access doors to the hangar. “You better hang on to something.”
Nick watched Arya grab onto a girder and hold on tight. “Oh, crap.” He quickly clutched the girder, wrapping his arms through the metal bars. She’s even crazier than I am! He thought.
Arya reached over and pressed a button on the console. The huge hangar door slid open, revealing a beautiful scene of stars lying beyond the force field that protected the bay.
Nick recognized the field as the same one he’d traveled through when he’d been pulled into the ship. With all the bizarre events that had happened to him since he’d come aboard, that seemed like ages ago. In reality, it had only been a day. One hell of a day!
Arya tightened her grip on the girder. “Hold on.”
With a beep from the panel, a warning siren squealed throughout the bay. Red lights mounted along the top of the metal walls flashed rapidly, turning the hangar into a bizarre dance-floor-like scene. Nick mashed his body against the metal column in preparation.
Suddenly, the force field holding the atmosphere in place dissolved, and an explosion of air blasted out into space. It was as though they were inside a champagne bottle and someone pulled the cork. The air left so fast that it was over in a couple of seconds, hurling an array of small objects out of the huge doorway. The debris spun away from the ship, weightless in the void of space. Some of the dead Mok’tu slid a few feet across the floor while Karg tumbled down the bay, coming to a stop some distance away. He stood up and gave a wave to let them know he was alright.
Nick looked down at the lifeless Mok’tu lying around on the deck. “Well, at least you have some of these bastards to study now.” As he spoke, a light on the chest of one Mok’tu caught his attention. The little red light was flashing faster with each passing second. “Look!”
Arya turned to see what Nick was pointing at. “Sket! This way. Hurry!” Motioning for Karg to follow, she led them to a transport ship docked in the bay. Arya punched some buttons on an external keypad mounted to the outside of the ship. With a hiss of air, the transport door opened, hinging down to create an entrance ramp. The team hurried inside, and Arya quickly closed the door behind them.
Nick followed Arya as she made her way to the cockpit of the ship. Numerous explosions suddenly erupted outside in the bay, rocking the transport as they stepped into the cockpit. Nick instinctively ducked as a metal hand was thrown straight at him by an explosion and slammed into the cockpit window directly in front of his face. Small metal parts landed all around the hangar bay, bouncing on the floor in the eerie silence of the vacuum before finally coming to rest. The Tac Squad had self-destructed. It was the Mok’tu’s final desperate attempt at killing them.
Arya peered out of the window at the mess. “Now we know why no one has ever brought back a Tac soldier for study.” She dropped her head back in the seat and sighed. “I was really hoping to find out more about their shields.”
“Now what?” Nick asked as he stared out the cockpit window.
“We’ll fly over to Bay One until we can repair this mess. Unless you would rather climb around outside looking for the air lock,” she said, removing her helmet.
“No, thanks. Bay One will do fine.” With the atmospheric pressure returning in the transport ship, Nick unlatched his helmet and pulled it off with a twist.
Arya looked over her shoulder at Nick. “We make a pretty good team.”
“Yeah, a good…team,” Nick replied, surprised she included him in their group. With everything going on he hadn’t even been able to think about getting home, just surviving. “Is it always like this?”
“No…. This was one of our better days.” Arya stared out the cockpit window as she maneuvered the craft out of the bay, never looking back at Nick. The tone in her voice was dead serious.
Nick was dead serious about his question. So far, it had been the roughest day of his life. If this was a good day, he wasn’t sure he would make it through a bad one.
Arya turned toward Nick. Her serious look gave way to a grin.
One corner of Nick’s mouth turned up as he fought to contain what was building in his gut. A laugh forced its way out from between his lips as he tried to hold it inside. He fell to the floor in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. Relieved for it to be over, relieved to be alive, and relieved Arya was joking, after all. His relief washed away the tension of the day and the only thing he could do was laugh.
Arya was also glad to have the episode with the Mok’tu behind them, for now at least. She couldn’t help but let out a giggle at the sight of the strange alien life form rolling around on the floor of the transport, all red-faced and laughing hysterically.
Even Karg began to laugh as they cruised along, his deep rumble of mirth echoing through the empty transport ship as they made their way around to the other hangar bay.
Arya walked down the corridor leading to the mess hall. As she rounded the bend, she heard Karg and Nick talking to one another over their morning meal.
“Your calendar is made up of twelve munse, your clock is divided by twelve, but your math and currency is based on ten? That’s the most backward thing I have ever heard,” Karg announced in his deep voice.
Nick scratched an itch on the back of his neck. “To start with, it’s months, not munse. And what else would math be based on? Math is math.”
“Yes, one plus one equals two, but basing it on ten is inefficient. We base it on twelve.”
Nick was still perplexed.
Karg looked at him across the table. “Look, ten can only be divided by one, two, five and itself. Twelve is divisible by one, two, three, four, six and itself.”
“Yeah, but—”
Karg cut him off. “What’s three quarters of ten? Seven and a half. A fraction. What’s three quarters of twelve? Nine.”
“Yes, but—”
“How much is that currency you carry?”
“It’s a quarter.” Nick pulled the coin out of his pocket and flipped it over in his hand. “This is an old one, from back when they still had some silver in them. It equals twenty-five cents,” Nick replied.
“Is that a lot?” Karg queried.
Nick laughed. “No, it’s not much. A penny is the smallest currency on my planet. This only equals twenty-five pennies. Why?”
“What is half of that? Twelve and a half. A fraction! See, your system is very inefficient,” Karg boasted.
Nick glanced up to see Arya standing there grinning. She had been watching their discussion from the side of the room. Arya raised her eyebrows and cocked her head as if to say well, he’s right you know. Nick just shook his head, trying to grasp the s
trange alien concepts.
“So, instead of a dollar being one hundred pennies, it should be ninety-six? And a quarter would be twenty-four?” Nick said, narrowing his eyes in thought.
Karg laughed and banged the table hard with his hand, causing Nick to jerk so abruptly that he almost fell out of his chair. “Now you’re getting it,” Karg said. “There’s hope for you, after all.” Karg gulped down the purple gorban juice from his cup and stood up to go get some more, letting out a deep burp as he went.
“Well, Karg seems to be warming up to you,” Arya remarked, as she approached the table. “I came to tell you that Captain Argos wants you to answer some questions later.”
Nick nodded as he stared off into space. He’d known it would only be a matter of time before Argos would want answers.
Arya glanced down at Nick’s plate of uneaten food. “You okay there? Don’t like the karesh meat?”
Nick’s gaze panned over to Arya. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine, just didn’t sleep much.” He looked down at the not quite identifiable food in front of him. “The food is pretty good actually. What is Karesh anyway? No, wait…maybe it’s better you don’t tell me.”
Arya sipped some juice from her cup. “Have you tried the gorban juice? That will make you feel better. You should get some before it’s gone. It’s not often that we have it.”
“Thanks, I will.” Nick poked around on his plate with the two-prong fork that came with his tray of food. “Can you tell me where I am?”
“You’re in a star system called Garanta Orionis. Some still call it by its ancient Arisian name, Back Of The Giant,” Arya answered. “Which, by the looks of it, is very far from your home.”
Nick stared at her for a long moment. “That doesn’t really help me a bit.” He sighed and scrubbed a hand across the back of his aching neck. “It sucks being lost and not knowing where the hell I am. I mean, I didn’t plan on being here. I’m really not supposed to be here at all. Wherever here is. Don’t get me wrong. If your ship hadn’t picked me up, I’d be dead. So, I am very grateful you brought me aboard. And you have been very kind to me, but my coming here was just an accident. I don’t even know how I got here.”
Arya set her cup down on the table. “I can see you are missing your home…. I too miss mine. It has been such a long time since I have been to my home-world.” Arya looked almost wistful as she thought about her planet. “I really miss the Sarlansis trees. There are huge forests of them. At least there used to be, before the war.” Arya lifted her gaze back to Nick. “Your home must be awfully far away for us not to have some record of your species in our databanks. You really don’t have any idea how to get home?”
Nick shook his head no as he toyed with his food.
“Well, Captain Argos will have the final say, but maybe we can help you find your home planet.”
Nick stared down at his plate.
Arya leaned down to get his attention. “You should eat. You’ll need your strength. I’ll get you some juice. It’ll help your energy.” Arya left the table to round up a cup of juice, leaving Nick still staring at his plate, lost in his thoughts.
Moments later, she returned and plopped a cup down on the table. “Here you go. Taste it.”
Nick agreeably lifted the cup to take a sip. “Wow. That is really good. Kind of like fruit punch, only better. Thanks.”
Arya sat down and shoved some karesh into her mouth.
Nick glanced around at the almost empty room. In one corner, a couple of aliens were gathering some food containers. The two creatures were completely covered with what appeared to be spacesuits. He only caught a hint of their creepy faces through their masks as they turned to leave. They appeared to be four-legged with two arms and a bizarrely shaped head. The aliens were definitely odd, and it was even odder that they were wearing spacesuits inside the ship. It made him realize that overall he hadn’t actually seen many crewmembers. Only a handful since being brought on board.
“I’ve noticed that there seems to be a very small crew for a ship this size,” he said, still watching the two spacesuit-clad aliens exiting the room.
“Meths.”
“What?” Nick turned to Arya with a befuddled look.
“We call them Meths. The two Coranii you were looking at over there. They’re methane breathers. Whatever you do, steer clear of areas marked with red and yellow ‘METH’ signs.”
“Oh, um, right. I’ll do that.” Nick’s brain was still stuck on the whole methane breather thing as Arya continued.
“The Resistance is spread pretty thin. We only have enough crew to run the ship. That way we reduce our losses if one ship falls to the enemy,” Arya explained through her mouthful of food.
“Resistance?”
“The Resistance is formed out of all the indigenous races in this sector. We have banded together against our common enemies. We are the ones that were lucky enough to escape the war between the Mok’tu and the Dragoran Empire. We were just in the right place at the right time to be spared. But we are few. The Resistance tries to rescue any survivors that it can. We stay in the shadows, attempting to fight the enemy any way possible. I feared our fight was a hopeless cause. But then you showed up with that ship of yours. You destroyed a Planet-Killer and a Dreadnought in one swoop. I knew then that the Divine One had answered our pleas. You are our salvation.”
“Your salvation? I can’t even get home. How could I be your salvation?” Nick asked, bewildered.
Arya’s eyes glazed over as she spoke. “Our prophecies tell of a Great War spreading over this sector, and a brutal fight against soulless beings of metal and scales. It was written that when all appears to be lost, a noble warrior from a distant world would split the sky and swallow our violent oppressors, freeing our people. I never believed much in prophecy, and I never understood what it meant by split the sky, but now here you are. It’s all so clear to me now.”
Nick looked at Arya’s hopeful eyes. He hated to crush her faith. “Look, I…I’m not who you think. I am just a man from Earth. A very lost man from Earth.”
Arya grinned. “The prophecy said you would be humble.”
Nick dropped his head and sighed. “I liked it better when I was being shot at. At least I know how to handle that,” he grumbled under his breath.
A beep from Arya’s com-badge announced an incoming call. “Arya, bring…Nick to my ready-room.”
“Right away, Sir.” Arya stood up. “Come on Noble Warrior, you don’t want to keep the Captain waiting.”
Nick rolled his eyes. This whole savior thing made him really uncomfortable. Was this day going to turn out even worse than yesterday? What’s going to happen when they found out he’s really not their prophesied hero?
Once in the transport tube, Nick readied himself for the pressure of the lift’s acceleration. As the tube shot upwards, Nick stood with his knees locked against the force with a smile on his face, happy that his legs didn’t buckle this time. His pride would have been bruised if he let it beat him again. The tube came to a blistering halt. Nick’s inertia carried him upwards an inch off the floor before he dropped back down. His feet hit the floor hard. The force transferred up through his rigid knees, jarring his teeth and forcing him off balance. Hoping Arya didn’t notice, he wrestled to gain his composure. The damn thing still got the best of him.
The tube doors opened into a relatively small room with a curved, black table in the middle. The smooth, polished table sported a row of chairs around the outside of the curve. Facing them from the only chair on the opposite side was Captain Argos. From what Nick understood, the table was different than the ones on other ships. This one was the Captain’s own design. He liked to have people close enough to see their eyes when he talked to them.
Nick and Arya stepped out of the tube and into the ready room.
“Thank you, Arya. You’re dismissed,” Argos said without hesitation.
Arya nodded and stepped back into the tube. The tube doors shut and she was gone, leaving Nick and
the Captain alone.
Nick stood facing Argos with an uneasy feeling in his stomach. Under other circumstances he would have suspected that the karesh wasn’t sitting well with him, but he knew it wasn’t the food. This was going to be an inquisition, and he was damn uncomfortable about it. The next few minutes would determine his fate. What could be going through the Captain’s mind? After all, Nick was an outsider here. Hopefully he could reason with Argos, and with any luck, he could convince the Captain to at least spare his life.
“Please sit.” Argos motioned to the row of comfortable looking chairs in front of the table. Nick spun the nearest chair a quarter turn, sat down and turned back to the Captain, who stared at him intently.
“Some of the crew believe you are fulfilling an ancient prophecy. They think you are here to save the galaxy.” Captain Argos leaned across the table and gave him a stern look.
Nick looked away, trying not to meet the Captain’s steely gaze. The large cat-like eyes of Captain Argos were unsettling. Like having a predator’s gaze locked on you just before the kill. The sharp teeth didn’t help much either.
Argos leaned in closer. “I don’t believe in prophecy. I believe in actions. I believe in honor.”
A scary silence permeated the room as Nick waited for Argos to make his point.
“Your actions so far have been honorable. You fought bravely to save this ship, and for that I am in your debt. Of course you were fighting to save your own neck, so I’m not entirely sure where that puts you.” Argos paused and stared at the tips of his green fingers, which he rested on the table in front of them. “No, I don’t believe you’re the savior that was prophesied about two thousand years ago, but I sure hope to God you prove me wrong…because, short of a miracle, my people, our culture, will be lost forever if we don’t win this war.” The Captain sat back in his chair, and a translucent image appeared over the table.
Hovering above the center of the table was a perfect three dimensional holographic model of Nick’s hyperspace module. Below the model were several schematics of the circuitry found within the module. Nick recognized the schematics. He had almost singlehandedly designed those circuits himself. As he watched, the skin of the model floated away revealing the internal structure of the craft. It was an almost complete blueprint of Nick’s module.