“Disappointed?” the Governor challenged, ignoring Benjamin’s seemingly superhuman feat of speed reading through the ten-page Constitution.
“No,” Benjamin replied. “I wasn’t planning to run for... Supreme Overlord,” he said.
“You’re too young to run for office—but apparently not too young to be a bishop,” the Governor replied, smiling.
Benjamin nodded along with that, as if he hadn’t noticed the Governor’s sarcasm. “Back to our discussion—we need you to announce the Grays’ offer.”
“Why me? You’ve got a pulpit, don’t you?”
“And I’ll be sure to tell people from there, but they trust you, and not everyone trusts me, so it will sound better if you are the one who makes the announcement.”
“And if I refuse?”
Benjamin shrugged. “We’ll find another way to get the word out.”
Governor Chong’s eyes narrowed to suspicious slits.
Admiral Urikov put in, “I’m going.”
“Really?” the Governor looked up, her eyes suddenly wide with disbelief. “Just like that you’re going to trust the people who made you a mortal in the first place to help you undo their handiwork? What if they’re lying? What if they’re separating out the malcontents just so they can go dump you all in the nearest star? Maybe their god decided you’re all beyond redemption.”
Admiral Urikov looked suddenly uncertain. “If they could go rummaging through our memories to selectively edit out an entire field of human knowledge, then they could certainly have predicted that I wouldn’t be happy with the new status quo. If that’s the case, and they’re planning to kill me because of it, then they could have saved themselves the trouble of bringing me and other so-called malcontents back to life in the first place. I’m going to see where the Avilon went, because I believe Benevolence is our best chance to rediscover our immortality.”
“Maybe he is, but he might not want to help you.”
“That’s a risk we’ll have to take.”
“If you don’t find what you’re looking for, will they bring you back?”
Admiral Urikov shook his head. “No. That’s part of the deal. It’s a one way trip. They don’t want us to come back here just so we can stir up more trouble in the colonies.”
“Well, that’s very convenient. What about lines of communication between here and... wherever you’re going?”
“Can’t communicate over such vast distances, and even if we could, the comms would reveal our location to the Entity.”
“This just gets better and better!” the Governor said. “For all we know, or ever will know, they really might go drop you in the nearest sun—or black hole.”
“There are easier ways to kill us than that.”
“But not without causing the unrest they’re apparently so afraid of.”
“Will you make the announcement or not?” the admiral asked.
The Governor sighed. “I’ll do it after my speech. We’ll see how many people are brave enough—or stupid enough—to join you.”
“Desperate, is the word I would use, Governor,” the admiral replied, and with that, he turned to leave.
Markov watched as the others left. Benjamin nodded to them on his way out. The Grays standing with him were expressionless as usual, but Markov could have sworn their giant black bug eyes had been glaring hatefully the entire time.
Desperate, Markov thought. That’s a good word for all of us right now. The question is, am I desperate enough to risk what’s left of my life on a fool’s errand?
Chapter 40
“Here we go again,” Alexander said as he shuffled down the line of people waiting to step through the portal to board the harvester.
Catalina jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. “You don’t even remember what happened aboard the Liberty.”
“Well, you told me so much about the trip, it feels almost like I was there.”
“Ha ha.”
The line was at least a kilometer long, winding around and between the inflated white domes of the Seventh Colony. There had to be thousands of people who’d opted to leave Dark Space, and this line wasn’t the only one. Each of the seven colonies on Forliss had its own line to board the harvester. All aboard! Next stop, the Avilon. Surprise, Benevolence! Did you miss us?
Alexander smiled wryly, imagining the look on the android’s face. Assuming we get there, he thought in an effort to limit his expectations. It was hard to imagine that after everything they’d been through that he could be separated from Catalina by something as mundane as death.
Araaa, araaa! Raaawwk!
Alexander looked up to see a giant bird with four wings soar by low overhead. The wind of its passing tousled his hair and made him blink. People glanced up nervously and pointed. Some drew their sidearms in readiness. Those birds were like dinosaurs, and deadly as all hell: sharp claws, dagger-long teeth, and hungry. They typically only hunted at night, but that was a mixed blessing.
They’d already lost ten people across the Seven Colonies, all snatched from their habs in their sleep, leaving a bloodied, tattered pile of canvas for their neighbors to find in the morning.
Here’s hoping that whatever planet Benevolence chose to colonize, the predators there aren’t as deadly.
They reached the portal and stepped through it under the watchful gaze of two bug-eyed Grays.
They emerged in a broad corridor with yawning ceilings and wall-to-wall stacks of illuminated, liquid-filled tanks. Alexander recognized where they were immediately. A booming voice droned on in the background, giving instructions.
“This is where they brought us back... the Grays’ spawning room,” he said, and then began listening to the message echoing through the cavernous chamber. He recognized the voice, but from where? A moment later he had it: “That’s Benevolence!” He turned to Catalina in shock. All around him other colonists were making similar exclamations as they made their way toward the tanks.
Catalina grinned back at him. “I guess that answers the question of whether or not he’ll be willing to help us.”
The message began to repeat: “Welcome aboard! Please proceed to the nearest empty tank and wait to be attended by the Grays. Do not be alarmed. Apart from the reproductive function of the tanks, their secondary purpose is to induce a state of suspended animation. Gray harvesters are not designed to supply human needs, so you will need to spend the entire trip in these tanks. Once you arrive, you will be awakened and shuttled down to your new home.
“Welcome aboard! This is Benevolence speaking...”
Alexander followed Catalina through the bustling crowd in the spawning chamber to the nearest pair of empty tanks. He blinked, and a smile crept across his face. Excitement stirred, and a kaleidoscope of butterflies took flight in his stomach.
“I’m sorry I gave you so much trouble, Caty. You were right to push me, to push the Grays. If you hadn’t advocated for us...” he shook his head.
Catalina nodded. “You’d grow old without me. And die.”
Alexander nodded soberly.
A pair of Grays came up to them, one standing wordlessly to either side. They began flipping through holographic control panels filled with alien symbols. The tanks drained, and then they hissed open, letting out a gust of frigid air.
Alexander was about to step inside, but the Gray standing beside him thrust an arm across his chest to stop him. “Pl-ease un-dr-ess.”
Alexander frowned and glanced at Catalina, wondering what she thought of that, but she was already reaching down to remove her mag boots. He wasn’t particularly enthused by the idea of thousands of colonists getting to see his wife naked, but he assumed there must be a good reason they weren’t allowed to wear clothes inside the tanks. He stripped out of his boots and jumpsuit without comment, and then stood naked and shivering in front of the open tank. The Gray nodded to him, and he stepped inside. Beside him Catalina did the same. He reached for her hand through the open tanks and squeezed. “I love you,�
�� he said.
“I love you more,” she replied.
The Grays flipped through more holographic screens, configuring the tanks. Another one came and separated their hands.
“K-eep l-ims in-side t-ank,” it said.
The glass covers of the tanks swung shut, and a freezing blast of air took Alexander’s breath away. Terror clawed inside his chest, and his hands flew up to the glass in a reflexive attempt to break free.
Then a wave of numbness swept through his body. He exhaled a frozen cloud of air that frosted the glass with ice crystals, blurring his view of the spawning chamber. That was the last thing he saw before awareness abruptly left him.
Chapter 41
Alexander woke up to a blast of heat. Numbness left him with the stabbing, tingling pain of all his nerves coming back to life at once.
The tank opened with a hiss of escaping air. His jumpsuit and mag boots sat on the deck in front of him. He stepped out of the tank. Catalina stepped out beside him.
“We’re here!” she said, oblivious to her nakedness.
All around them the other colonists emerged from their tanks and hurried to get dressed.
He and Catalina grabbed their jumpsuits and pulled them on. Grays flooded the spawning chamber, appearing from multiple portals. They remained by the portals and began ushering people through.
Alexander and Catalina stepped through the portal nearest to them and emerged in the passenger compartment of a Gray shuttle. A few minutes later the outer circumference of the shuttle became transparent, revealing that they were already underway, heading down to a mottled brown, red, gray, and blue planet. It didn’t look as habitable as Forliss had, but Alexander knew that plants didn’t have to be green to be alive. The clouds were still white, however.
The transparent panorama running around the edges of the saucer became rimmed with fire as the shuttle plunged into the planet’s atmosphere; then it began to shake, but they didn’t feel any of that turbulence.
“How far do you think we’ve traveled from Dark Space?” Catalina asked amidst the excited chattering of the other passengers.
Alexander considered that. “How long did it take to reach Proxima Centauri?”
“Two days.”
“That’s about two light years per day. Assuming that holds true... six months at two light years per day... we traveled roughly three hundred and sixty light years.”
“Sounds far.”
“Actually, that’s pretty close in Galactic terms. If that’s the fastest that Gray ships can go, I doubt they’ve seen much of the galaxy. At a rate of two light years per day, it would take them more than a century to fly from one side of the galaxy to the other.”
“That’s not so long. They’re immortal,” Catalina reminded him.
“True.”
“Don’t worry. Soon you will be again, too,” she added.
Alexander nodded, his attention back on the view. The fire of atmospheric entry faded, and clouds swept by the saucer in feathery wisps. Beads of water formed and streaked across their view in snaking rivulets. The clouds parted, revealing that the mottled brown and red colors they’d seen from orbit were in fact alien vegetation—red-leafed trees soared high, and patches of grassy brown plains stretched between them. Craggy gray peaks capped with white snow ran in ragged lines around the forests. Blue rivers meandered down from the mountains like arteries and veins, and sparkling lakes dotted the surface.
“Looks habitable,” Catalina said.
Silvery specks streaked down around them. More shuttles. All of them were heading for the same point: a flat grassy island in the middle of a lake with a giant starship sitting on it. The Avilon? Alexander wondered. It looked like they’d used the island as a landing strip, but that didn’t make any sense. The ship was too big to have safely made atmospheric entry and landed in one piece, and it didn’t have wings to serve that purpose.
“How did the ship get down to the surface?” Alexander wondered aloud.
“The Grays must have helped Benevolence land it,” Catalina said. “Why take shuttles down when you can take your entire ship?”
Alexander shook his head. “No, they don’t even take their harvesters down into planetary atmospheres. That tells me they either don’t have the technology to do so, or it’s not worth the trouble.”
“What’s it matter?” Catalina asked.
“It matters because whoever helped the Avilon to land on this planet, they did it for a reason. Now that it’s on the ground, there’s no way it will be able to take off again. Benevolence is stranded here, and that means we’re stranded with him.”
Catalina looked away from the view, her eyes wide and blinking. “They don’t want him to leave the planet? Why not?”
Alexander grimaced. “I’m not sure, but I have a bad feeling we’re about to find out.”
Chapter 42
Remo walked off the shuttle into a field of tall brown grass. A desolate wind rustled through the field. The air was cold, but tolerable. Above zero at least. He looked up to the pale gray sky, squinting at the hazy white glow of the system’s sun.
Beside him Deedee hugged her shoulders and shivered. “It’s freezing!” she whispered, her teeth chattering.
As they disembarked, other passengers exclaimed to each other about the cold, and the mysterious circumstances in which they found themselves. The Avilon sat in front of them, the ship’s name stenciled in bold white letters across the side of it.
“Now what?” Deedee asked. “Where are all the androids?”
Remo started toward the Avilon. “They must be using the ship as a shelter for now.”
A sudden gust of wind slammed into them from behind, making Remo stumble. He turned to see the shuttle that had brought them down to the surface hover up and leave without so much as a word of explanation from the Grays.
“I don’t like this,” he said as the saucer dwindled to a mere glinting speck in the sky. Around the field other saucers hovered up and jetted away with soft whirring sounds.
“Come on,” Deedee said as she walked by him. “It has to be warmer inside the ship.”
Remo frowned and followed her up to the side of the Avilon. It was like standing beside a skyscraper. The ship soared at least thirty stories high, and more than a kilometer long. An ocean of shadows pooled around it, making the cold even colder. Frost twinkled on the grass in the shade. Remo’s entire body trembled.
“We have to find a way in!” he yelled over the rising tumult of desperate colonists. They were a disorganized mess. No one seemed to know what to do. Remo couldn’t feel his fingertips, and his ears were burning. Turning to Deedee, he said, “I’m going to run around the ship, see if I can find a way in.”
“I’m coming with you. Might warm me up!”
Remo nodded, and they ran around the perimeter of the ship, periodically glancing up at the sides of the vessel to look for openings. Soon they were coughing, their airways irritated by the cold.
“There!” Deedee pointed. At the bow of the ship, a hatch lay open. A warm square of light spilled from the opening—an oasis in the frozen desert.
“Over here!” Remo called, waving to the nearest group of colonists. Cries of relief echoed back to his ears as he raced up to the open hatch. It wasn’t close enough to the ground for them to easily reach, but Remo managed to pull himself up; then he turned to help Deedee.
“You’d think by now they would have made a ramp or something,” Remo grunted as he hauled her up into the ship. The planet’s gravity was obviously close to Earth standard. He and Deedee stayed at the opening to help pull up the other colonists, but they soon ran out of room and had to cycle the airlock to let the first batch into the ship. A welcome burst of warm air flowed out as the inner doors opened.
“Heat’s on. That’s a good sign,” Remo said.
“What about the others?” Deedee asked as he began to cycle the airlock once more. “The airlock isn’t fast enough to get them all inside before they freeze t
o death.”
Remo stopped what he was doing, his mind racing for a solution. “You’re right.” He checked the manual overrides. Finding the lever he was looking for, he pulled it down into the open position, and the inner doors ground open once more. He went and repeated the process for the outer doors, eliciting a warning blaat from an alarm.
Cold air whistled by the opening, and warm air rushed out from inside the ship, drawing relieved exclamations from the huddled masses outside.
Now they were able to pull people up continuously without running out of space. But after the first dozen or so, they were gasping for air, and Remo’s arms were shaking so badly that he couldn’t have lifted a grain of sand. Deedee called for two strong men or women to come and take their place. Two tall men pushed to the front of the crowd and pulled themselves up without assistance. Remo thanked them, and walked through the airlock into the ship.
“We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz,” he muttered.
“What was that?” Deedee asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing, just an old children’s tale.” And to himself, he thought, I hope our wizard isn’t also a fraud.
Chapter 43
“There’s no one here,” Alexander said.
Catalina refused to believe it. They have to be here! she thought. She picked up the pace, striding down the corridor. “We haven’t even searched a fraction of the ship yet!” she said.
“We should have run into someone by now,” Alexander replied. He stopped walking. “They’re not here.”
Catalina turned to him. “Then where are they?”
Alexander shook his head wordlessly, and she let out an irritated sigh. “Come on! We don’t stop looking until we’ve checked every last room of every single deck.”
Alexander let out a sigh of his own and joined her once more. A group of other colonists went running down the corridor ahead of them, screaming, “Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?!”
Exodus: Book 3 of the New Frontiers Series (A Dark Space Tie-In) Page 27