A Cold Black Wave

by Scott, Timothy H.

  Harman turned to Marshall. “Mutiny? Now?”

  Marshall tapped the telecom in his ear. “Lieutenant Meyer, what is the status of the alarm, over?”

  Background noise distorted Lt. Meyer’s voice as he reported back, gunfire, shouting, “Issa and his men have taken over the depot and are heading for the shuttles, we only got a couple of the students. We might not make it Marshall, you need to get there before they do!”

  Harman readied his rifle and said with burrowing eyes, “I’ve been waiting to get my shot at those fuckin’ traitors. Can we still get to Tanya in time?”

  “We have to. The shuttle doesn’t leave without her. We can head through med bay and cut them off,” Marshall said. He looked at Josh, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  They ran down the empty corridors. Even those people who were still relatively healthy remained behind closed doors, unwilling to expose themselves to the desolation of life on the ship. There was no happiness on the UNC Westbound any longer, no joy to life as the inhabitants of the ship became infirm with the disease. The great hope of taking the last refugees of Earth somewhere to settle a new home had been extinguished by the vagaries of the strange and incurable virus.

  They crossed through sick bay, a veritable graveyard of the dead and dying. The few nurses tending to them were sick themselves, but they kept at it the best they could. As they ran, Marshall tried to contact Lieutenant Meyer again.

  “Lieutenant, where are they now?”

  The distinct sound of exploding ion gas could be heard over the telecom as rifles discharged between the security forces and Issa’s rebels. “We’re falling back to the plaza! I’ve lost half my goddamn detachment and the students ... they killed them Marshall!”

  “Say again? Your students were killed?”

  “They’re overtaking our positions Marshall, you need to move your ass or they’ll get there before you do!”

  “Lead the way Harman!” Marshall ordered as they pushed forward through the flashing red hallways.

  “Wait!” Josh stopped. His mother. She was close and it would only take a minute.

  The Academy actively suppressed many natural emotions. There was one Josh always tried to hold onto, “I-” Josh turned and ran the other way, running against the lifetime of training they tried to instill in him.

  “Shit!” Marshall said, sprinting back after him.

  “Marshall!” Harman yelled.

  “Help me get him, come on!”

  “What about the girl? We need the girl! Fuck!” Harman followed after them. Josh was quick. He knew the ship and was faster on his feet than his security detachment. He made calculated turns at intersecting corridors until he ran inside of a lift, hit a button and was rapidly taken four decks above. Marshall dutifully and exhaustingly kept pace with the kid so as to not lose him but couldn’t catch up.

  By the time Marshall and Harman got to the lift, Josh had already made it to a door on the housing deck, punched in a code and slipped inside before it shut locked behind him. Josh was in his house. Or at least, the house he would have lived in had he not been in the Academy. His mother lay in her bedroom being tended by her long time friend and neighbor, Maria Santiago. The two women sat in the shadows, a faint light from the kitchen illuminating their bodies like statues in a museum as Josh’s mother lay dying in her bed.

  Maria coughed, covering her mouth. She looked at Josh as if she had seen a ghost. “Josh? Is that you?”

  Josh hadn’t seen his mother in years and wasn’t told how sick she had become. The Academy did not tell them much of anything outside of what they wanted the students to learn at the Academy. For the students, the virus had only been a faint rumor. Now he approached the two of them apprehensively and revealed to Josh for the first time the disturbing effects the virus had on its host in their final hours.

  “You shouldn’t get too close,” Maria said weakly. Josh came closer anyway, unafraid of the virus. Maria shifted over on the bed so he could see his mother Janice with ashen, sunken skin stretched across the bones of her body. Her breathing was short and rapid and her eyes reflected a dull, lifeless quality.

  “Mom!” Josh cried in shock by the gruesome sight. A brief smile came over his mother’s face and her eyes flashed a moment of joy. A boney hand reached out for him as he grabbed it tight.

  “I didn’t know you were like this! They didn’t tell me anything about you, mom, what did they do? How the hell did this happen?”

  “I know. Sweety, I know. It’s okay. How did ... ?”

  “I’m immune somehow, I don’t know why. Now they’re trying to take a bunch of us to the shuttles. I don’t want to do this. I never did! When they took me away from you I cried, I cried for months and they tried to kill that in me but I never forgot, I never forgot you or how I felt about you. I always wanted to come back to you. You’re all I have mom and they took you away from me.” He desperately looked into her eyes as his emotions spilled forth, and he held onto her frail hands and never wanted to leave her again.

  She swallowed dryly, “I never lived a day without thinking about you. I worried for you every minute of my life. Josh, I love you, but your place is no longer here now. I wished and prayed every night that things could have been different because this life, it’s all we have and I had to live it without you.”

  He squeezed her hand. “If I have to go I will only do it for you.”

  She smiled weakly and held his head up by the chin, “There is nothing left here and you’ve been chosen to survive, for all of us. I love you. I’m sorry Josh. I’m sorry you had to grow up the way you did and that I couldn’t be there for you. I couldn’t ... hold you in your darkest hours. I know you had many there Josh. Look at you, my handsome son ...” Her hand slowly caressed his face as she felt the skin of her only child for the last time. He buried his face in the palm of her hand. All he wanted to do was go back to a time before the Academy, when he was with his mother and life held a semblance of joy and hope.

  The door behind him had its code overridden and Marshall barged in and grabbed Josh.

  “Mom!” He called as Marshall and Harman seized him, his hands reaching out as they pulled him away, but there was nothing they could do. All Josh could see in the light was his mother’s face turned towards his, the darkness of the shadows replacing her eyes. A macabre final image of his mother that would haunt his nights thereafter.

  Josh had given up his resistance. He was walking but not willingly, his mind blank as Marshall and Harman led him towards the shuttles like a lobotomized patient. The Academy had already taken everything that he was and now the last connection he had with the world was gone. There was no thing or person worth thinking of or caring for, and death called out to him for true escape.

  As Harman led the way, gunfire erupted ahead of them and Harman threw Josh to the ground as they all took cover.

  “I thought Meyer was holding them off?” Harman yelled between shots.

  “I guess not!”

  More ion rifles discharged from across the hallway and burned into the metal walls around them. Iron and steel sloughed off the walls and choking smoke filled the corridor. Issa’s men had already made it to the shuttles. Marshall fired at them but a stream of ion bullets came flying back. Holes were now appearing in their cover as it melted to the floor in pools of smoldering metal.

  Then a round hit Harman in the lower arm as he tried to adjust his position, exposing himself only for a second and long enough for the ion round to burn straight through, leaving a gaping hole and strings of flesh and muscle. He immediately collapsed and screamed in agonizing pain. Marshall dropped beside him and produced a stim needle from his belt and jammed it into his leg. Harman’s eyes flashed open as he came to, his heart pounding with adrenaline as pain-killing endorphins rapidly diffused throughout his body.

  Harman went back to the firing position, raised his rifle with his good arm, and let out a rapid stream of gunfire, killing two attackers. Marshall leapt up, aimed and kill
ed the last rebel as Harman tried reloading, but his left arm wouldn’t respond. Marshall helped him and they all took off down the corridor again. Just then, the floor and walls shook as a nearby explosion rocked the ship.

  Marshall shoved Harman from behind to move faster, “Go, go!”

  “We need the girl too Marshall, we need the goddamn girl!”

  “We don’t have time, just go!”

  Once they reached the shuttle bay, the main doors at the entrance had already been blown wide open and bodies were strewn everywhere. Two guards lay mortally wounded and crawled along the ground screaming in pain as blood pumped onto the white floors. A wounded rebel lay ten feet away, and Marshall nonchalantly fired a single round into his chest as they passed.

  Blood from Harman’s wound spattered to the floor as he pushed forward through the hole of smoke and twisted metal beams to enter the shuttle bay with Josh in tow.

  As they cleared the smoke the vast hangar revealed itself. It was situated at the top of the massive UNC Westbound, with a high domed ceiling and which held the six specialized shuttles that were ringed in a half circle around the outer edges of the circular hangar bay. Shuttle #2 disengaged from its compression locks and the engine roared, carrying the occupants into the coldness of space.

  In fact, all of the shuttles were gone already except for one. Issa’s rebels had succeeded in reaching the shuttles and selfishly left for their own survival. If they weren’t immune they would all die anyway, and they had risked the fate of the human race in doing so. In a way it didn’t much matter now as the only Academy student capable of getting onto a shuttle and immune, was Josh.

  “Keep going, we’re almost there!” Marshall yelled as they ran towards an empty shuttle. A long ramp stretched towards the docking bay for each shuttle, and Marshall passed the slowing Harman as they ran. At the foot of the shuttle door, two bodies lay next to each other, their death so recent the skin was warm to the touch.

  One of the dead men wore the white and brown clothing of the rebels. Next to him was a dead civilian, a middle aged man with dark hair and glasses. They didn’t have time to figure out what had happened here, nor did it much matter now, but Marshall assumed someone had made it into the shuttle and he had to stop them from leaving. Immediately.

  “Wait with him Harman,” Marshall said as he entered the shuttle. Harman slumped to the ground and pulled Josh down with him so they could take cover. The wound in his arm was pouring blood and he had lost so much that he could barely stand any longer.

  “Just stay low,” Harman said with drifting eyes. Josh watched the creep of death drawing over his face.

  At the blown entrance of the hangar bay, a handful of men and women in rebel clothing frantically ran inside with weapons drawn, desperate to get a ride off the ship as there was only one shuttle remaining. By now all of the ship’s security details were either dead or tied up fighting elsewhere and there would be no help coming.

  “Marshall!” Harman called desperately.

  Inside, Marshall crept with his weapon ready as sweat dripped down his face. The shuttle wasn’t large. It was dark, and there were corners. He didn’t want to take any chances but he had to be quick. Something moved. He swung his rifle around and just when he would have pulled the trigger, a girl’s voice squeaked out from a dark corner.

  “Who’s there?” He asked.

  “Please ...” Her voice quavered. Marshall lowered his rifle and peaked around to see a lanky young girl about Josh’s age huddled with her legs to her chest and auburn hair that shimmered tinges of scarlet cascading around her face.

  Marshall lived and breathed with every student in the Academy and didn’t recognize her, at all. He asked incredulously, “Who are you? You can’t be in here!”

  The girl shrunk back in fear and said nothing.

  With little time to do anything else, Marshall dismissed her and ran back to help Harman who was lying on his side, aiming and firing effectively at his attackers. Josh was squeezing himself behind what cover he could find, unarmed and unable to do anything. Marshall aimed and fired on the rebels with calm precision, and as he did, an incoming ion round burned through Harman’s chest and killed him instantly. In one swift, desperate move, Marshall exited the shuttle and grabbed Josh with both hands and tossed him with ease through the door head first.

  An ion round blew through Marshall’s shoulder and sprayed Josh in the face with blood as he was standing up. The rebels scrambled down the ramp to try and get to the door before it closed, a panicked, hysterical group that was now tearing at each other to get ahead.

  Josh looked on in horror as Marshall ignored his severed arm and used his other arm to close the shuttle door before pulling the compression lever to discharge it from the bay.

  Marshall didn’t say anything as the door closed on the shuttle, but his eyes did as they bore into him in that final second, condemning Josh if he failed in his task.

  Then the shuttle shook violently and threw Josh to the ground.

  Blood, skin, and bone were plastered across Josh’s face and hair as he tried to wipe it off. The shuttle shook another time and knocked him over as he tried to stand. Josh staggered to his feet and took a few steps before falling onto the launch seats, pulling the bar down over himself to lock his body in place.

  The girl. He saw her across from him in the corner, staring up over her knees and crying. Josh tried freeing himself from the bar but it was locked and he couldn’t figure out how to undo it.

  “You need to get up here, like this!” The shuttle jerked and knocked the girl flat to her face. “Sit over there and pull this bar down, hurry!”

  The girl was clearly stunned but realized enough that she had to listen to him if she didn’t want to be knocked senseless. She crawled her way over to the seat as the shuttle seemed to be on the verge of exploding making it difficult for her to move, let alone stand. She made it into the seat but kept slipping from side to side from the constant motion. She frantically tried to grip the launch bar and pull it down over her, but the sudden jolts made her body slip further down the seat and out of reach of the launch bar.

  The onboard computer announced that the shuttle would engage its engine in five seconds.

  Josh reached out his hand as if he could help and pleaded with her, “Pull it! Pull it now!!”

  With both hands and sheer focus, she lifted herself up, gripped the bar, and locked it over her body. In those final seconds the shuttle turned dead silent, the wisps of their anxious breathing all that sounded in the air as their eyes met in mutual fear. Then, the shuttle engaged its engine, sending them light speed into the universe like a streaking meteorite.

  Chapter 2

  The shuttle was safely away from the UNC Westbound, and the ominous colony ship slowly disappeared behind them. The launch bars released them both from their seats and Josh jumped to action. He opened the door to a supply room and pulled off his clothes, wiping Wangai’s blood and pieces of bone from his body and slipped into a grey jumpsuit with only the small emblem of the Academy stitched to the left breast. He took another one and came back to give it to the girl. “Here. Put this on.”

  She stared at him, her eyes distant and unresponsive.

  “Are you stupid? Get dressed.” He tossed the jumpsuit at her and walked away.

  The shuttle was small, but it contained three rooms connected by a single hallway. The main room was the bridge, where they had been locked into the launch seats. At the end of the bridge were the flight controls, entirely automated by four processors which ran synchronized, but each could be isolated from the others if any individual one malfunctioned. In theory, the shuttle only needed one functioning processor to operate. Above the controls were three reinforced glass windows that offered them a view of the black ocean, within it the reflecting lights of trillions of ancient mysteries.

  The supply room was the largest, containing boxes of food, clothing, and emergency supplies. Josh stood in the final room, staring inside from the
threshold of the doorway. It was small but held two body-length capsules that were linked to a computer embedded in the wall.

  Josh knew what these chambers were from his studies, but now they were in front of him and the repercussions of getting inside one were real. It was one thing to use them in a simulation and entirely another to use one onboard an isolated shuttle with only a computer to keep him alive. If there was a malfunction of any kind there would be no instructor to abort the simulation and save them, and there was no telling how long they would be adrift in space.

  The girl appeared next to him, having finished putting the jumpsuit on over her clothes. Josh turned to her and saw a fear and sadness to her that would not have been written on the face of a student from the Academy.

  He couldn’t help but stare for a moment. Her complexion was fair with scattered light freckles over her face and a small nose that seemed to be perfectly rounded at the tip. Her mouth was slightly open and the corners of her mouth naturally edged downward as if they were staking her lips to the earth.