by Chance Maree
Celine strolled up the aisle until she found the choicest seat.
“Only the new arrivals are supposed to be on the shuttles,” Byrd reminded her. “Perhaps we should hide until takeoff.”
“The best place to hide is in plain sight.” Celine sat in a seat one row back from the stairwell. Byrd sat beside her. Once settled, he unzipped a corner of his bag and slipped a water nut dosed with a sedative into Rafiki's outstretched hand. The sight of Rafiki made Celine smile.
Several moments later, Pilot Pots peeked over the rail. Byrd sunk down in his seat, but she spotted him and plopped down on the seat beside him. “I hope you don't mind.” Tyr and the native girl sat on the other side of Celine.
Ata will recognize me, most certainly. She'll ask about Rafiki and then everyone will know. They might even throw him off the shuttle. Byrd pulled the bag tight against his chest and sunk lower in the seat, but his beak stuck out, so he tried alternatively turning and lowering his head. Stupid! I'm waving this thing around like a flag!
Fearing to look but unable to stop himself, Byrd peeked. Ata was huddled in the corner of her seat, hiding her face in Tyr's cloak. The girl must be traumatized. The commotion would have frightened anyone, with people swarming, fearing for their lives. Byrd himself fought an urge to cover his head as more evacuees stomped up the stairs and began occupying seats. The air was oppressive—stuffy and hot. Rafiki squirmed against Byrd's chest. Pots didn't appear to notice; she'd been talking the whole time.
“…I was supposed to be heading to Alpha Horizon,” Pots said. “Now I'm on a shuttle, going who knows where.”
“You must be pretty disappointed,” Byrd said mechanically, hoping the sound of his voice would calm Rafiki.
“You bet I am.” Pots heaved a deep sigh. “I’m finally a pilot again, and I can't get a ride to the ship.”
Byrd tilted his head, as he often did when addressing someone in need of his counsel. “We've been through natural disasters before. Once the danger passes, the shuttles will return to the ship, and in no time at all, you'll be hurtling through space ensconced on the brain of a worm toward the greater catastrophe called Earth.”
The pilot grinned. “Thanks for cheering me up, Doc.”
Tyr rose abruptly from his seat. “I hear Gunner.” The young man's voice betrayed his fear.
Pots left her seat for a better view down the stairwell, which gave Ata an unobstructed view of Byrd. Without Tyr's cloak to hide behind, her tear-smudged face turned towards Byrd, in full sight, like a pale moon. She lifted her hand wearily and covered her eyes.
Pots voice startled him. “No problem. The commander isn't boarding.” However true that was, something Pots saw had clearly surprised her. She stepped back as two women climbed the stairs, one carrying a crying infant swaddled in a blue blanket.
The lizard woman Byrd recognized as Agent Barbara Percy, a spy for either the government or a big corporation, he couldn't recall which. The spy was one of the few calm souls in the room. With a baby in her arms, she still managed to extract the spiked heel of her shoe from the top wire mesh step. Barbara and Pots spoke briefly. When Pots returned, she dropped like a stone into her seat, jarring Byrd and disturbing Rafiki.
“The earthquake is nothing compared to what I just heard.”
Byrd was about to inquire as to her meaning when the shuttle pilot demanded everyone prepare for takeoff. The strappings were secure around Byrd and Rafiki, who had dropped back into a drugged sleep, despite the rumble and thrust of engines.
Byrd, with one eye twitching and both ears popping, leaned toward Pots and sputtered in her ear, “Please, distract me with a bit of juicy rumor from our notorious spy lady.”
“It’s no rumor,” Pots said, gripping the armrests. “Gunner is the father of Barbara's baby.”
The shuttled lurched. Byrd clenched his beak and closed his eyes. Several minutes passed without anyone speaking or even appearing to breathe. At long last, the shuttle pilot's voice blared over everyone's com with an emergency broadcast.
“Don’t panic!” Good gravy, Byrd thought. Don't they teach any psychology in pilot school? The evacuees gasped and began to struggle against their strappings.
“Are we going to crash?” someone cried.
The shuttle pilot continued, “We've received an emergency transmission from military headquarters. Volcanic activity has been detected near several of the other cities, which leaves us with fewer landing options. However, we still have enough power to break through the atmosphere and rendezvous with Alpha Horizon. Given the circumstances, my colleagues and I have decided we'll be safer up on the ship.”
Passengers groaned collectively. All except Pots, Byrd noticed. The evacuation—one could say, the day in general—wasn’t turning out at all as anyone expected. He couldn't help wondering when life on Ostara would start to feel normal.
CHAPTER 29
Doctor Jacob Reynolds
A small army of volunteers transported injured and convalescing citizens from the clinic on Well Street to an awaiting riverboat. Mindful that his research lab lie in the pathway of possible destruction, Jacob grabbed an air board reserved for medical personnel and headed down the pedestrian-congested street. For dodging the crush of foot-traffic, the air board proved impractical, so the doctor dismounted and carried it under his arm until he reached the tomb-like silence of the lab. Ducking in with a glance over each shoulder, the doctor met the door like a murderer returning to the scene of his crime. This place he so loved was now the cache of incriminating evidence and exquisite knowledge—and more importantly, it was a vault containing irreplaceable tissue treasures from his genocidal project.
The doctor closed the door and leaned against it before sinking down to a seated position on the floor. Four days now he'd gone without sleep. Now, all the stressors—Pots’s departure, his incomplete project due to the frustratingly fertile native girl, Tyr’s unspoken accusations, and now the widespread panic, citywide evacuation, and finally the turbo thrust of a Dynastimix or two or three—had consumed every ounce of him. His eyes refused to focus anymore, their lids obeyed gravity that could no longer be withstood, and finally, the drugs succeeded in a final corruption of rational self-preservation. I'll close my eyes for a minute or two, he thought.
⁂
Disorientation, horror-film flashes of light, somewhere inside his head a rational thought stirred. With effort, Jacob swam like a drunk through darkest molasses to remove floorboards beneath his desk and shove a case of vials, not yet analyzed, but which he felt—remembered—were vital. Adjusting the shoulder strap, Jacob worked to prevent down-trending, gelatinous legs, and nausea, wondering why the lab was so dark, and exactly where was the door…. Fresh air—all he needed was fresh air. To the river, a voice reminded him.
Jacob woke from one dream and stumbled into the next, dreams within a dream, and then came a sensation of opening the door and exiting the lab. The streets were deserted. Jacob lifted the air board, but it dropped to the ground with a thud. Flipping the power switch off and back on, the device remained unresponsive, without charge, Jacob noted with frustration. It'd had been fully charged when he had taken it from the hospital. Throwing the board aside, he considered the shortest route to the river.
The sky was dark with smoke, or night, or both. His eyes were stinging, and heat scorched every inhaled breath. Jacob crouched low and hurried past smothering buildings and trash dirty and gray. The street glow sticks were dark. The eerie reddish glow was but a reflection of fire off the smoky canopy. Where is everyone? How long did I sleep?
Shock met with further shock—he tripped face first over a hunk of metal. Jacob toppled elbow and shoulder onto the ground. After losing, finding, and grasping that precious bag—research, nay, evidence—the doctor turned to examine the debris. A drone. A drone had fallen from the sky. The inert device appeared undamaged, just a sleeping beetle in the dust, yet its presence reminded Jacob to, to choose his human mind over the animal. He tried opening his
com, but to no avail. Inserting his finger inside his mouth, he pressed the ‘on’ switch harder, but the device remained as silent as the useless drone.
Jacob gathered his bag and stumbled towards the river. After several steps mostly stumbled, he turned, disoriented, and then aimed for the next building, steadying a hand along its wall, until he reached an unfamiliar alleyway. Where am I? Why am I so confused? The sudden bolting of a large animal flattened Jacob against a window frame. He stared, disbelieving, at the hindquarters of a zebra, its hooves clopping and raising dust before disappearing in a smoky haze. A moment later, trailing the zebra, a lioness roared with frustration, glancing only momentarily at Jacob before disappearing into the dark.
What the bloody hell?
The sound of boots crunching on glass caught Jacob's attention. He turned. Approaching through the smoke, someone covered by a white helmet and matching armor approached. Jacob straightened his back and faced the figure, who, though moving at a calm and measured pace, appeared menacing.
“I'm Dr. Reynolds,” Jacob stammered. “Who are you?”
The figure raised a gloved hand and pointed a finger at the doctor's feet. Jacob looked downward instinctively, fearful, and guessing that something was amiss. He saw his feet shimmer from long toes bound by sandals to blackish scales from which jutted four claws.
Jacob raised his eyes to see the armored figure had begun to move his hand and Jacob following the pointing finger to watch in horror as his own entire body shimmered from its human form to that of a monstrous beast. Jacob fell to the ground, an adult-sized alligator. He tried to move, but his short legs pumped uselessly in the air. He used his hands to push his body upright, but where his hand had been before were wide-spread webs and five thick claws at the end of short, stubby limbs. He wiggled his body, using a long, thick tail with a ridge along the upper edge to help turn him upright. When Jacob directed his eyes far upward, from the vantage point of the ground, the white armored figure had gone.
CHAPTER 30
Pilot Pots Kahn-Anderson
Pots stepped into the pilot's front control chamber on Alpha Horizon, triggering dim lighting along the floor. Her clothes felt stiff, crusted with sweat, and her braided hair lay heavy and oily down her back. But none of that mattered, because in the center of the chamber was the pilot's chair—pale grayish pink, Alpha Horizon’s brain in stasis. The protocol was to maintain the worm-mole in a dormant state while she orbited Ostara. Pots shuffled her clunky gravity boots to the chair. She fought the urge to stroke its soft, billowing cushion, but what she truly desired was to curl up in its center and forget it all—overwhelming fear, anger, disappointment, and grief.
Emotions were suppressed, as usual, but they peered like rats from every dark corner on the ship. Pots's shuttle and one other had landed safely on Alpha Horizon. The ship's skeletal crew reported they were no longer able to reach anyone on Ostara. No one knew what to make of it, but everyone was plagued by dark imagination.
Engineer Casey Wu, who had remained aboard to repair sensors on Alphie's power grid, told Pots privately her suspicions that electronics on Ostara had been fried by the huge power surges sourced throughout the planet. If so, all the other shuttles must have crashed. Other members of the crew may have thought the same, but no one else speculated out loud.
The crew sent distress transmissions to Atlas and Gaia. While awaiting a reply, they joined the passengers in wandering aimlessly about the ship, looking strangely out-of-place, like visitors to a museum.
Questions mumbled by slack mouths of the survivors, those walking, traumatized victims, echoed throughout the corridors. “Did we come all this way to die?” On Earth, ground quakes had been relentless, as were tornadoes and hurricanes. Everyone lost family and friends. Now, grief flooded their hearts again, bringing feelings thought to have been left behind, immune, or dead. These were again sorrowful times, a fresh taste of the staleness of death. Unknowingly, they had relaxed, let their guard down, opened themselves to desire for rage, but they lacked energy and a target for rebellion. The few that remained knew they were supposed to be the lucky ones. The ship felt like a tomb.
Pots ignored them all. She kept to herself, but her thoughts were haunted by Jacob. The others seemed willing to wait for help from Atlas or Gaia, except for one engineer who was constructing a satellite from scraps. Thus far, he’d not inspired confidence that the project would be successful.
Grief and edginess prevented Pots from sleeping. As her mood darkened and logical thought began to fray, Pot considered how she could return to Ostara on her own. She expected objections, especially from Victor and Josh, who would object to her decision, or bully their way into joining her—which of course strengthened her determination to look for Jacob alone.
The idea was indefensible, that much Pots knew. She had no scouting or rescue experience. Realistically, her effort would be unsuccessful and perhaps even deadly. Also, selfish. Pots was the only worm-mole pilot on board, at least until help arrived from Atlas or Gaia. Until then, no one would be in favor of Pots's return to Ostara.
And so, she schemed. In the privacy of the control room, Pots walked past the pilot's chair and touch-activated the overhead monitor through which she accessed the ship's inventory of transportation equipment. The shuttle she had arrived on was huge and required specialized training. She knew another type of craft existed. Scrolling through the ship’s files, Pots found what she’d been looking for: Alpha Horizon carried a vehicle called a space raft, designed for short distance space flight and emergency landing. She opened the schematics and a description of the instrumentation panel.
A tap on her shoulder startled the pilot. Tyr stood beside her. “You're a worm-mole pilot. If you try to fly a raft, you'll get yourself killed, and ruin a perfectly fine piece of equipment.”
“I suppose you could do better,” Pots snipped. Despite Tyr's technologically advanced genetic code—and his rate of maturation was nothing less than astonishing—he was still a big kid.
“I know space rafts, inside and out.”
“Bully for you.” Pots closed the screen. Something was wrong. She felt a buzz inside her skull.
Tyr was talking. “…You can’t find Jacob by yourself.”
“What did you just do?” Pots positioned herself between the masked boy and the door. “I don't care who you are, or what super abilities you have, you are not allowed to go around reading people's private thoughts.”
“Then stop lying to me,” Tyr shouted. “And I'm not a mind reader, okay? I'm not a freak, either! News flash, lady: you’re not that hard to figure out.”
Pots suggested a truce. She locked the door. “What I’m about to tell you is between you and me.” She paced, weighing the pros and cons of having Tyr as a confidant. The lunacy of her plan to borrow a space raft and take off for Galileo to find Jacob had its flaws. Perhaps Tyr could be helpful. “First off, aren't you supposed to be taking care of that native girl?”
“Celine is watching Ata.”
“You couldn't find an adult to babysit her?”
“You underestimate Celine.”
Pots frowned and rubbed her temples. “Promise not to tell anyone about this.”
Tyr's masked bobbed up and down.
Pots eyed the youth critically. She couldn’t tell whether she’d be crazy to go alone but crazier to take Tyr along, or vice versa. “Fine. You can come with me.”
“I'll go if you insist, but on one condition.”
The boy is cheeky. Pots glared, regretting her decision already. “What?”
“I do the flying.”
Pots sensed, behind the mask, Tyr was smiling.
“Pots! Pots!” Wu's voice blasted over her com. “Are you looking at Ostara? Get to a monitor. In-fucking-credible!”
“Wait a minute.” Pots flipped the monitor to the ship’s forward viewer.
Pots and Tyr stared, open mouthed, at the screen. Another worm-mole, like a monstrous white whale, was orbiting Ostara. It s
wung its snout in their direction, and then waved its flat, chubby paddle-like paws to orient itself closer to Alphie.
“Is that one of ours?”
“None of our worm-moles are white.” Wu's voice trembled. “Look at the structure around its neck.”
The worm-mole wore a wide, dark collar, and as the creature turned, Pots saw that the collar had an outer band connected to an inner band by a network of beams that allowed the outer piece to rotate around the static inner band.
Pots moved closer to the screen. “With that structure, the outer compartments would have some amount of gravity.”
“My guess is that worm-mole belongs to The People in the Canyon.” For once, Pots had to agree with Tyr.
The white worm-mole slowed to a stop and whipped its tail. Pots held her breath—Alpha Horizon was in stasis, defenseless. Suddenly, the ghostly space creature veered left and vanished. Out of Ostara's atmosphere burst another worm-mole. It sped upward, alongside Alphie with a force that sent them rolling and spinning. Tyr and Pots were tossed about in a bruising tumble. Alphie slept through the whole ordeal and for hours thereafter while the engineers used manual thrusters to return her to orbit.
⁂
Within the hour, five worm-moles blast forth from Ostara. Each creature ignored Alpha Horizon, pausing for only a moment, if at all, before launching into deep space.
Pots and Tyr both expressed eagerness to return to Ostara. Pots’s curiosity mixed with fear, but pride prevented her from suggesting their mission should be delayed. They walked the dark halls of the eerily quiet ship until they found the storage canister containing the space raft.
“The rafts were intended for emergencies.” Tyr pointed to a warning panel above the door. “An alarm will go off in the command center when the door is opened. The crew is disorganized right now, so if we're lucky, no one will notice. If we’re unlucky, one of them might override the escape hatch.”