“Do you know what you’re doing, Striker? Or are you going to get us all blown up?” Drifter leaned on the wall like it was his ship and Reckon held up his laser in warning. He licked his cracked lips. Striker figured his former first mate was too proud to ask for some water.
Striker waved the old man back. “I’ve got it, Reckon. Thanks.”
He turned to Drifter. “This is your only chance of getting off this desert hell. I’d think you’d be thankful and have a little faith. But no one is forcing you to come along. You could make a nice life here, build a sand castle, find some lizard pets.”
Drifter grinned in a menacing stretch of his lips. “Let’s leave the desert nomad reputation to you.”
The engines rumbled like primordial thunder, revving up. Striker pulled back on the main controls. The ship tilted, everyone swaying backward as the engines blew out the sand around the ship. “Don’t push it too far,” Reckon advised. “We can go back out and keep digging.”
Tiff jutted her chin out. “Speak for yourself, old man. I’m not going back out there.”
“There’s no need to.” Striker trusted the analytics. The ship told him he had enough clearance, so he fired the engines harder. “We can break free. I know it.”
As the hull emerged from the ground, the ship jerked forward with the force behind the thrusters. Striker fell back into the captain’s chair, and the rest of them fell on their butts on the floor. Regaining his balance, Striker pulled the main lever forward, leveling out the ship as it hovered in midair.
“Last chance if anyone’s changed their mind.” Striker looked around the control deck, but no one so much as twitched a finger.
“I didn’t think so.”
He drew his finger along the screen, plotting a direct course toward the New Dawn. The ship responded to his request by computing a clear path into orbit. Once the coordinates were set, Striker pressed a fingernail into the panel to engage, and the ship shook, rattling his bones. Striker looked back to a series of frightened faces, some hiding it better than others. They’d each found a seat along the back of the control deck in a massive indent in the coral. He settled into the white half-bubble of the captain’s chair. “Hold on.”
The main screen retracted on both sides, giving way to a glass-like sight panel. Striker stood up as the desert scene spread out before him, the red sun burning his eyes.
“Way cool!” Loot’s voice was wispy with awe. Striker couldn’t help but agree with him as he squinted against the glare.
A light flashed on the controls and Striker had to focus to decode the symbol below it. He scratched a circle with the wire tip, and the ship arched up to meet the new trajectory. Orange sand turned into endless blue sky. Striker engaged the thrusters and the ship took off, cutting through the atmosphere. The force pushed him back into the chair, and he wondered how much pressure the hull could stand after all those years of disuse.
The blue sky gave way to a star-studded backdrop of space. After the ship broke free of the planet’s gravity, the shaking subsided and it cruised smoothly. Triumphant cries erupted behind him as Tiff and the boy jumped out of their seats. Striker focused on Reckon. The old man winked, giving him a thumbs-up.
“Where are we going, anyway?” Drifter slid out of his seat, dusting off his pants. Although he didn’t seem impressed, Striker bet his life the ascent into space on the alien craft made his old nemesis wish he knew the correct hieroglyphs to take it for a spin himself.
“We’re going directly to the colony ship.”
A chorus of protest erupted behind him. Tiff batted her fist in the air. “You’re going to get us all killed.”
At the same time, Drifter threw back his head in frustration. “Without a plan?”
Loot stood up. “How are five of us going to beat a whole shipload of them?”
Striker looked out of the sight panel, his eyes scanning over a purple-pinkish galaxy cluster as the ship took them farther from Sahara 354 and closer to the New Dawn. He’d come up with a plan. He always did.
“We’ve got two days to figure it out.”
…
Aries woke with a raw hunger gnawing at her stomach walls. She’d seized her only opportunity to escape, which had forced her to flee without planning her next meal, or anything else for that matter. Now she squirmed on the floor of an air duct, holding her growling midsection in her arms.
She needed to find the air duct leading to the food supplies. Retracing her steps, she thought back to which direction she’d turned and where she’d climbed. It had seemed so clear when she started, but now the air ducts were a maze in her mind, and her head ached, thinking about directions. The medication had made her delusional. Now, as it wore off, she was left with the reality of the situation. She was lost.
Fighting off dizziness, Aries looked around. She could climb down the ladder to the workroom below, but she’d chance being seen. Aries weighed her options. She could be lost in the air ducts for days. She shivered with the thought of that. She might even die of starvation in the inner workings of the New Dawn. No one would find her until she’d decomposed. At least it was better than being shot out into space in an airtight coffin.
Aries listened for sounds of footsteps or voices but couldn’t hear anything. Only the dim emergency lights cast the shaft in a red glow. Her stomach gurgled, the sound echoing in the small chamber, and she took it as a cue. Climbing down the ladder, she found herself in a workroom with pipes running across the ceiling and a table of containers storing various plumbing tools. A map of the air duct system was pinned on the wall.
She figured out her position on the map, calculating the distance to the nearest food source. Her best bet were a pair of storage units located on the deck above her, twenty meters away. If those were empty, she’d have to sneak into the bio-dome and raid the crops. That was the riskiest option, because workers would be watering and pruning.
Aries tore the map off the pin and folded it up, stuffing it under her arm. She found an unused light stick on the counter and cracked it in half, illuminating the room in a green glow. At least she wouldn’t be crawling around in the dark anymore. She climbed back into the air duct and elbowed her way forward to the storage chambers.
She reached the junction above the storerooms, feeling lightheaded from lack of water. Aries backed up and kicked the metal under her feet until the grating fell, stirring up dust from the room below. A mildew scent wafted up. She covered her mouth. Not a promising sign for food.
She lowered herself, landing on her feet. Holding up the green light stick, she examined the contents of the room. A long hallway led into darkness, lined with boxes and shelves on each side. The dust lay as thick as carpeting and it tickled Aries’ nose, making her stifle a sneeze. She held one arm across her nose and mouth and stepped toward the first plastic container lying underneath a swash of stars and stripes.
Although the New Dawn had its own emblem of a sailing ship, Aries recognized the pattern from her textbooks as an old American flag. Why would they have such a thing onboard? Maybe they kept artifacts from old Earth here. Aries had never heard of physical items in the archives. She’d assumed when they’d left the planet, they’d also left everything behind.
She removed the cotton fabric and snapped open the container. Crumbling frames stood up on end and she pushed the first one back, staring at a pastoral landscape with, what was their name? Yes, she remembered: horses pulling a carriage. The next picture was a man in a white wig holding an unfurling document that read: The Declaration of Independence. A third picture showed a young woman with a white turban wrapped around her head, a pearl earring peeking out from her ear.
“Paintings.” Her breath blew dust into the air. “From old Earth.”
She closed the container. There would be nothing to eat in that storage chamber and she had to press on if she were to find sustenance to keep going, but curiosity tugged at her. Her stomach could wait a few more moments.
Aries walked through t
he maze of shelves, holding up her light to illuminate the shady objects. An old violin with droopy strings lay in a box next to pages of crumbling sheet music, preserved in plastic. She looked further down the shelf and jumped back as a porcelain doll with a cracked face stared back at her with glassy eyes through the clear lid of a container. Miniature carved men-at-arms lay scattered over an ivory chessboard.
Then came the jars. Rows and rows of clear liquid, secured in the walls by rubber clasps, held what could only be specimens from long-dead species on old Earth. Aries said their names as she passed, running her fingers along the glass.
“Ceratophryinae, known as a horned frog.”
Beady eyes popped out from a bulging throat and bumpy skin. The green and brown markings were strikingly beautiful and she picked up the jar to see the patterns more clearly in the green glow of the light stick. She turned the jar around in her hand, the frog rolling around inside before placing it back on the shelf.
“Thamnophis elegans terrestris, known as a coast garter snake.”
The slender body spiraled up in the clear liquid as if it would strike if she opened the jar. Next she picked up a hairy-legged tarantula, suspended in an eternal striking pose, and a furry Eastern gray squirrel, its tail curling behind it. They were bigger in life than she’d assumed by the pictures, but more beautiful and tame than anything she’d encountered on Sahara 354. Old Earth must have been quite a place.
A wave of melancholy washed over her as she stared at the last remnants of a slew of extinct species, victims of the blight of humankind. She wondered what their lives would have been like, and hers, too, if she’d lived with them in their original habitat. She glimpsed something red behind a jar of beetles. Aries reached back and brought out a container holding a real rose from the gardens of old Earth, preserved in formaldehyde. She squeezed her palm over the lid and heaved until her knuckles turned white, opening the jar. A sickly sweet scent permeated the room. Reaching down in the liquid, she picked it up, the soft petals melting in her fingertips. She’d never thought she’d get to see, let alone feel, a real one.
She heard a too-familiar beep behind her. Someone stood on the other side of the door, punching in an entry sequence. Quickly closing up the jar, she rushed to the air duct, dragging a plastic container underneath in order to climb back up. She hid the broken ceiling panel behind some old boxes and pulled herself up as the door opened and the fluorescent lights blinked on.
Aries peered down from the shadows, hiding her glow stick underneath her shirt. An old man in a janitor’s uniform carried a vacuum on his back. Aries rolled her eyes. It would be her luck, the one time they cleaned the storage chamber, she was hiding in it. He switched the vacuum on, the machine buzzing as a cloud of dust scattered. At least the sound would cover her escape.
Aries didn’t stay to see if he noticed her footprints, the missing ceiling panel, or the misplaced jar with the rose. Instead, she squirmed as fast as she could toward the air ducts leading to the bio-dome. Anxiety outweighed her hunger, but she knew it would come back in full force once her adrenaline settled. Her light stick dimmed and her fingers shook, her mind flooding with dizziness.
Damn those medicines. Food. She needed food, and she needed it fast.
Chapter Twenty-four
Good Old Times
Tiff dug through her backpack like a beggar salvaging newly dumped trash for scraps. Most of her items were covered in sand and scratched up from the journey. Her favorite water bottle was cracked and her last case of makeup had broken in half, the black eyeliner leaking all over her change of clothes. She had a moment of panic before she found her sonic microplayer nestled beneath her hooded sweatshirt. Thank goodness she’d stuffed it in before they left their ruined ship.
“We’re on an alien ship going into battle with fundamentalist psychos and you bring out your sonic microplayer?” Drifter’s tone stank of bitterness. His hands were tied behind his back, so all he could do was taunt her with words. It made fury boil inside her.
“I need it to relax.” Tiff pressed tried to turn it on, but the energy cell must have died. Nothing happened. “Damn.” Why wasn’t anything going her way?
“Guess you’ll have to suffer like the rest of us.” Drifter’s dry, cracked lips twisted in a sardonic smirk. He looked so dastardly, Tiff wanted to poke his eyes out so he could never make fun of her again. What had she seen in him? She was revolted at the memory of her lips touching his.
The feeling she’d never see Outpost Omega again rushed back to her and she had to steady herself against the sleek white wall. If she was never going to see it again, it could only mean one of two things: she would succeed in finding Refuge, or she would die. A shiver crossed her shoulders. Somehow she didn’t think she’d ever see Refuge. Tiff gritted her teeth and dug deep inside herself to find courage. No, she was going to make things happen her way and steal the reins of fate. She had no other choice but to fight for a better life.
Tiff ignored Drifter’s leers and walked over to Reckon, who sat in front of multiple screens typing in code on two different panels. “You have to help me connect this to the ship’s power source.”
“Can’t.” Reckon didn’t even glance at her. His eyes were stuck to the trail of numbers like a hunter stalking a deer. “I have to help Striker find a way onto the colony ship. We’re all supposed to be thinking of a plan, remember?”
She used the sweetest voice she could muster and placed a delicate hand on his shoulder, her fingertips brushing his stubbly cheek. “Please, Reckon. This is important to me.”
It worked. His face softened and his fingers stopped twitching. He glanced at her hand on his shoulder and then looked into her eyes. “All right.” The old man turned around, peering into the corridor.
“Striker’s not here. He said he needed to check on something in the belly of the ship.”
Reckon seemed satisfied with her explanation. “Fine. Let me see it.” Tiff gave Reckon the iPod. He turned it over, running his finger along the input device.
“If you could connect it to the ship’s power source…”
Reckon quirked an eyebrow. “I’ll try my best.”
“Hey, Reckon, what does this ship run on, anyway?” Loot had woken up in the middle of their conversation. He’d been asleep for most of the journey. Tiff was relieved he had finally gotten some rest.
“Solar power coupled with a form of nuclear I’ve never seen.”
“Wow. No wonder the ship goes so fast.” Loot sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. “The hull’s been soaking up desert heat for centuries.”
Meanwhile, Reckon walked over and touched a panel in the wall. A drawer of cables opened up out of nowhere. Tiff gave him a questioning look, feeling her eyes widen.
“Striker’s been nice enough to show me around.” The old man grinned. “Now let’s see. This should do.” He found a cable with frayed wires on one end and twisted the wires just right before sticking it into the sonic microplayer.
A techno beat blared through the ship’s intercom system, bouncing deep in the bottom of her gut. Everyone covered their ears.
Tiff smiled, turning the music down a few notches and thanked Reckon with a kiss on his cheek. She head banged to the beat, mouthing the refrain.
“What are you trying to do, make us all deaf?” Drifter yelled from across the room.
“No.” Tiff gave him one of her practiced scornful looks, reserved for scoundrels and ex-boyfriends. He was both. “I’m getting us outta here.”
The familiar music calmed her down, but she’d lied about her motives. She had a secret plan.
Striker appeared in the doorway, shaking his head. “What’s all that racket?”
“Tiff’s living it up.” Drifter jerked his chin in her direction like an ultimate tattletale.
Tiff resisted the urge to smile. She’d finally grabbed Striker’s attention. She plunked herself down in front of him and gazed into his smoldering gray-green eyes. “I need to talk to you.”<
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“Well, turn that music down and come on.” Striker gestured for her to accompany him down the corridor.
Tiff complied, softening the music before following him into the corridor.
She saw him clench his lower jaw as he turned to face her, arms crossed. “What do you want?”
Tiff tilted her head. “Don’t you recognize it?”
“What?” She saw his mouth sour as recognition hit. It was their song. The song that had been playing when she’d first jumped onto his ship deck and asked to join the crew. As he registered it, the lead singer’s voice oozed out the refrain in soft, velvety tones: “I’ll see your sparkling green eyes in paradise.”
Emotions passed through his features: confusion, pain. “Why are you playing it?”
She moved toward him. He towered over her and she had to crane her head to look into his eyes. “Because it brings back good memories, happier times.”
Striker stepped back and crossed his arms, preventing her from slipping into his embrace. “What if I don’t want to remember? What if I’ve moved on?”
Tiff ignored his question, even though it sliced her heart with a knife of regret. “We were so good together once. You and I.” She ran her finger down the length of his arm. “I’m glad to see you.”
He shifted uncomfortably. He’d backed into the wall, and he couldn’t back up any farther.
She moved to caress his shoulder. “You know, I’m the one that insisted we go back for you. I’m the one who wanted to set things right.”
“There is no ‘setting things right,’ Tiff.” Striker grabbed her hand. “When you left me here, our relationship ended. You killed it. There’s no way to resuscitate something’s that been dead for five years, even if I wanted to.”
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