“Who are you?” I asked, apparently breaching some protocol, judging by his surprise at my question.
He looked serious, then started to laugh. “I’m General Chen. William Chen. I suppose you’re curious just why we have a station here, and how so much has changed since you left.”
“What we don’t understand is how you did all of this in such a short period of time,” Clare said.
He laughed again. “Yes, I suppose seven years is a quick turnaround to build this, but with the new technology, and the world working together for it, we had it operational in five.”
My stomach flipped. The room was suddenly far too warm as my pulse raced. Deep breath, deep breath. Clare flopped onto a chair, her face drooping, tears falling down her face. Slate stood as stone-faced as his namesake, and Mary looked far too calm as well. Nick just seemed confused by it.
“Are you telling us we’ve been gone for seven years?” Nick asked, sliding into the seat beside Clare and putting an arm around her shoulders.
“That’s right. We have a lot to discuss. What of the hybrids?” he asked, and finally looked around as if realizing someone was missing. “Mae?”
I shook my head, to which he nodded, understanding what I meant by that.
“Before we get into this, what’s happening down there? Are we under any new threats?” Mary took over.
“None we haven’t faced before. Watch.” He hit a button on the table and a projector lowered, flashing a video on the white wall at the left end of the room. He motioned for us to have a seat; someone came in, bringing waters and coffee. It was like being at a meeting with one of my larger clients. If a bar graph showing projected sales had been brought out on a slideshow, I wouldn’t have been surprised.
I took a sip of black coffee while the video started. It was news coverage, dated at the bottom. Within six months of us leaving, and the colony ship with Magnus, Nat, and Carey also gone, the world was in turmoil. China teamed up with the US and other world powers, and they forced a treaty on the rest of the world. Most joined without complaint. Others fought it. Images of the dead in the Middle East flashed on the screen, and I watched, not letting myself look away. In the meantime, a second wave of colonists was sent, about a million in total.
Two years later, the world was in a much better place, though still assaulted by the odd threat or bombing. Eventually, they became less and less, the penalties harsh to anyone not playing their part in world peace. We saw a speech by Dalhousie five years after we left, saying anyone could go to Proxima with the third wave, which would be a whole fleet of vessels if needed. She looked older than she had, tired. Her voice had lost the lift and hope, but her eyes still shone with pride.
The newscast showed us two dozen vessels leaving; over half of Earth’s remaining population was heading for Proxima, which they were touting as Eden. Images of Eden overtook the screen and I was leaning so far forward, I nearly slipped off my chair. It was gorgeous. Lush grass covered rolling hills alongside crystal-clear lakes.
Mary reached over and grabbed my hand, squeezing it.
We saw the creation of the station, where exploratory ships docked and new technology was tested in space. It was a massive undertaking, and more than impressive in its vast scope.
A priest was interviewed in one segment, spouting out some new religion. It was a little off-putting, but he appeared to have a lot of support. A camera flew over fields all over the world, showing healthy crops. Stats of world hunger being under one percent crossed the screen. Poverty didn’t exist, everyone had access to clean water, and illness was way down.
“This is amazing,” Nick said, eyes gleaming as they showed some state-of-the-art hospitals around the world.
“No sign of the Bhlat?” I asked, looking for a reaction from Chen. He sloughed off the question with a wave of his hand, and I didn’t like that one bit.
“I still can’t believe you’re all here.”
A mural panned onto the screen, a reporter interviewing people on the anniversary of the Event. People were crying, remembering their losses. The mural was of Magnus, Natalia, Mary, and me. Of course, they’d left out the hybrid that helped us.
Then they talked about losing us on our wild goose chase of Leslie and Terrance. It was surreal to see people speculate on what had happened to us, and then debate on the value of us even going on that journey.
It was a barrage of information for missing seven years, but for the most part, I was impressed with the state of our new world. I was also happy to know the colony was doing well. Seven years. My pup Carey might not even be with us any longer, and if he was, he was an old man. I’d only had him for a year but felt like part of me was intertwined with him. That I lost that time to spend with him was heartbreaking.
“Do we have contact with the colony?” I asked.
“It takes about a month to relay the messages.”
I nodded, accepting this as reality.
“What do you think?” Chen asked, a glimmer in his eyes.
“I can’t wait to see one of those hospitals! You really found a way to reverse cancer cells?” Nick was almost dancing in excitement beside the table.
“They did. Once we dug deeper, we found so many things the Kraski didn’t even seem to think important any longer,” Chen said.
“Is Dalhousie still here?” I asked.
He shook his head slowly, before taking a sip of his coffee. “She left to New Spero, in Proxima, with the last wave of colonists. We have an elected world government. Valerie Naidoo from South Africa is in charge. World President Naidoo, if you will. Speaking of which, she’d like to have a meeting with all of you.”
Mary smiled at this, and I appreciated the forward evolution we’d taken. Leading this healing planet would be a lot of work, but they finally had the mindset and resources to do it.
“Now what can you tell me about your adventures?” Chen asked.
I started in on our planned story. Meanwhile, our ship was translating the data we’d found on the Bhlat outpost.
TWENTY-SIX
The wheat fields stretched for miles in the remote South African meeting place. As we’d lowered to the Earth, I couldn’t help but feel how different it was on our planet. The air felt cleaner, and even though our technology had vastly improved, there was something that made me feel like we’d stepped back into a simpler time. Food, shelter, happiness for everyone. It was a mantra I could get behind. I looked and made sure Nick had the ring I’d brought along on his finger, turned inward so the green gem wasn’t visible. Slate had an earring on him, though I couldn’t see it. Clare was staying in the ship.
“Quite the place,” Mary said as she landed the ship on a dirt pad. A building stood a short way away, and three Jeeps sat parked beside it. “You sure all this is necessary?”
“Looks like this is a low-key meeting. We’re survivors, and we didn’t make it this far by being naïve.”
Mary rolled her eyes at that. “Well, maybe at first we were a little naïve.” My pointer and thumb separated about an inch, and she laughed at this.
“Watch your backs,” Slate said, giving us a hard look.
“Don’t be so paranoid, we’ll be fine,” Nick said, clapping him on the shoulder.
The air was warm… dry.
“Greetings, heroes.” A woman waved to us from the building’s front door. I recognized her from the pictures Chen had shown us: hair cut short, smooth skin showing a youthful strong woman leading the world.
Mary waved back, and we crossed the space. Guards became visible.
“Beautiful earrings,” I said to Mary. “They look as fetching as ever.” She laughed it off, never quite agreeing with my over-concern, but still playing along. My own green pendant sat against my chest, cool in the heat.
Before we were in earshot, I tapped my earpiece. “Clare, be ready on my mark. If this goes south, and my instincts are leaning that way, execute the plan.”
“Done. I just hope you’re wrong,” she replie
d.
I patted my breast pocket, feeling a small circular lump sitting over my heart.
The guards weren’t wearing the EDU uniforms we’d seen in the station above Earth. Instead, they were more classic military. They had strange-looking semi-automatics, which I imagined had both bullets and pulse power behind them. I smiled at them and got no expression in return.
“We’re so glad to have you here,” the World President said, sticking her hand out to shake ours. Mary shook it first and said some pleasantry or another. I didn’t quite hear it as I scoped out the area. A tower a few hundred yards away looked to be housing another guard.
When it was my turn to shake, I was surprised by the sweaty palm I found. I just smiled. “It’s a real pleasure to meet the woman who controls it all.”
“Oh, I don’t control much, but I facilitate our leaders, and it’s been working well so far. Please, come in.” She had a slight accent; probably grew up in a South African private school.
The building was squat and square, most likely built just for this type of off-the-radar clandestine meeting. The inside was plain, a large room with what appeared to be a couple of offices and bunk rooms at the far end, washrooms to the right.
“Can we get you anything?” she asked, glancing at Mary’s ears.
I pointed up. “Chen took good care of us up there.”
“Of course. General Chen is nothing but the best we have. He takes great pride in that station, and I don’t blame him.” She stood straight, poised.
“You wanted to see us?” Mary asked.
“Yes. You’re heroes, and Heart sent you away on some mission seven years ago. Everyone on this planet wanted to know what happened to you, and here you are. It’s a miracle.”
“Look, if you need us to do a press conference or something, I think we’re done with that sort of thing,” I said.
She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture. “Don’t be silly. We just want to know what happened to you.”
“Apparently, flying through wormholes that take you thousands of light years away causes some time loss. Who’d have known?” I tried to laugh it off, but her face took a serious tone. “All this time, and no word from these Bhlat, huh? Thank God, because they look like some bad dudes.”
This got her attention. “Look?”
“Yeah, they’re huge. Big square ships, thick body armor.” I puffed up my chest in a display of size, and Slate grinned at me.
Her eyes moved to my chest. “No, we haven’t had word from them.”
“Really? That’s not what Chen tells me.”
She gave it away right then. My instincts paid off. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. If they’ve contacted us, I know nothing of it.”
But guards were already coming into the room, pulse rifles held up to their chests.
“Don’t make a deal with them. They’re not friendly. We have a drive with information from an outpost database. They’ve mined over one hundred planets, on sixty-three of which they either enslaved or killed entire races. The Kraski were one of the smarter ones, and they got away before the big fight.” We’d learned a lot, since we’d told Chen a mostly made-up story of our trip.
“Never mind. Give me the drive, and give me that,” she said, pointing to my pocket. If she knew what it was, she had been speaking to them for sure, but how had that information made its way to her already? Unless they had some schematics of a similar weapon on one of the few Deltra ships, or from a turned hybrid. In my mind’s eye, I saw someone with Bob’s face hanging from chains on a wall as the details were ripped from him at the same time as his skin.
The guards were getting closer, and we backed away. “We aren’t here to cause any trouble. Just hear us out. You can’t negotiate with them. The facts are there.”
“Do you think I got to be the president of Earth by being stupid? I’ll make the decision that is best for myself, and for humanity, and if that means cutting a deal with an alien race, then so be it.”
“Fine, here it is.” I tossed the device at her, and she let it slip from her fingers, the metal circle clanging to the floor.
I tapped my earpiece as the guards raised their rifles. “Clare, now!” I called, and the building shook as our ship hovered over it. Green beams entered the building, lifting the five guards and Naidoo. As Clare flew the ship away, they lifted in the beam, and I saw the guard in the tower looking on in confusion as we ran outside. He didn’t know what to do and knew his firing at the ship would be fruitless.
“Dropping them,” Clare said in my earpiece. Half a mile away, we saw the beam turn off, and the ship rushed back to us. The ramp was lowering even before the ship stopped, and we jumped the three feet up onto the metal grate, letting it shut once all four of us were inside.
“What a rush!” Nick said.
“I would have preferred to overthrow that woman,” Slate said matter-of-factly.
“This isn’t our world any longer,” I said, feeling it through and through.
“Were they going to kill us?” Nick asked.
I didn’t know, but the chances were high. Naidoo might have even used us as bargaining chips in her negotiation.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry, guys, but we can’t stay here.” Mary walked the closed ramp, and into the storage area.
We made our way to the bridge, where Clare greeted us with a big smile. “Oh my God, that was exciting!”
“More like terrifying. We could have died. It was awesome.” Nick was turning into a regular adrenaline junkie.
I flipped the viewscreen to show behind us as we raced away through the atmosphere and kept going. No ships followed us that we could see, and I flipped on the cloaking from the console. “Slate, thank God you knew about that jamming signal unit in our supplies.” I checked and found the real Deltra device where I’d left it on the bridge. The one I’d left down there was comprised of spare parts from the engineering room,
“Yeah, should be a while before they realize why their radio communication isn’t working,” he laughed.
We bristled with hope and energy, but quickly grew sober at the ramifications. Earth housed just under two billion people, and they were all under a direct threat now.
“What are we going to do?” Clare asked, the jovial moment over.
“We go home,” Mary said, holding my hand, “to our new world.”
“Set course for New Spero,” I said. We’d survived another day.
The End of New Threat
The Survivors Book Two
BY
NATHAN HYSTAD
Copyright © 2018 Nathan Hystad
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover art: Tom Edwards Design
Edited by: Scarlett R Algee
Proofed and Formatted by: BZ Hercules
ONE
The familiar hum of the FTL drive stopped as Mary pulled us out of hyperdrive. I was mentally prepared, but after traveling across our system toward Proxima for the last two months, the smallest noise difference caught me off-guard.
“Scan the area,” I said, and Slate went to work on his console, looking for anything that would show up on our sensors. We’d elected to pull up short of the colony planet, in case there were any surprises waiting for us. If the Bhlat were there, or some other complication cropped up, we wanted to be aware of it before we were detected. “Stay cloaked.”
We were at least six hours away, at our in-system speed: a stroll into our new home to get o
ur bearings of the area.
“Slate, you’re telling us that all the press about Proxima b being inhabitable was a lie?” Clare asked once again.
The big man nodded. “General Heart said it was a backup plan. We had probes sent to all the corners of space we could.”
“Where’d they get that technology?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Beats me. I don’t think the general NASA employees knew about them.”
A shiver ran down my spine. Government conspiracies about space were nothing new, but FTL satellite probes being sent to the far reaches of the universe? That sounded suspiciously like alien technology to me.
“The stories about the atmosphere being too weak to sustain human life?” Clare prompted.
“I don’t know much; I’m just a soldier. Heart said it was a bunch of bull set up between the leaders of the science community and the governments. They had top-secret meetings about all sorts of things: Mars colonies, liveable stations, Proxima, and countless others,” Slate said, still scanning the area, this time casting his net wider as he zoomed out on his console’s map.
“They’ve made elaborate space stations, but not without help from our Kraski databases. I wonder how they expected to do them prior to the Event?” Clare asked, ever curious about anything to do with engineering.
I sank back into my chair, seeing the back of Mary’s head at the helm as she guided us through the system. The viewscreen showed us nothing but space. Proxima’s star hung in the distance, a red-hot omen. A star can mean life or death. It depends how you use it. The old words from my father came to mind. Where he’d gotten that saying was beyond me, but he’d used the reference to tell me that not everything was black and white.
“The video we saw of New Spero looked like paradise,” Nick said, walking onto the bridge, holding a cup of coffee. We were running low on a few supplies, but coffee was still prevalent. One of life’s small miracles.
“For all we know, that’s also a lie Earth’s telling. Maybe they didn’t even make it there.” I said the words but didn’t believe them. If Magnus, Natalia, and Carey hadn’t made it there, I had no idea what we would do. They were the goal at the end of the journey, and I hoped they were still there with open arms. It had only been a few months for us, but I missed them fiercely, especially my little furry buddy. Seven years for them. A lot could change in seven years.
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