by Paul Tassi
Asha remained silent.
“After this, I’m going straight into cryo for the last week of the trip,” he said. “I’ll see you on Makari. Have fun with your new squad.”
By the time he finished, she was already storming out the door.
The anger didn’t leave Lucas as he fled the med bay and rushed upstairs to the vast cryo room that housed the sleeping pods for the entire crew. Most were already full. The Guardians who slept there had been on ice for months, the rest were vacant, meant for him, Asha, and their training squad. They slept there each night, but not under “deep ice” as the Sorans called it, which was for prolonged unconsciousness lasting weeks, months, or even years. But that’s the sort of asylum he was seeking now.
Alone in the room, it felt like a cemetery. The only light came from the closed pods where other Guardians rested. He didn’t care to say goodbye to Asha, to Silo, to any of them. He’d had it with this whole damnable ship and crew and wanted nothing more than to shut the entire events of the day out of his mind in deep sleep until they finally reached this wretched planet. He figured he would have probably been better off just spending the whole trip in cryo like so many of the others onboard.
He stripped down to nothing but a pressurized mesh bodysuit, the standard outfit for deep ice as the system needed direct access to all the vital organs to keep everything running smoothly in hibernation. In his “personal effects” compartment he crammed Omicron’s glass device, the only thing of value he had with him. Additionally, he’d quickly swung by the armory to grab his most trusted ally on the ship, Natalie. It was against regulation, but he pulled her into the pod anyway. There was no telling who might attempt to steal or dismantle her while he slept. He didn’t trust anyone here anymore. Rage was perhaps tipping him into paranoia, but he didn’t care. Lying down inside the chamber, he tapped the control sequence on the interior wall that would automatically wake him when they arrived. Natalie lay upright near his feet (deactivated of course), taking up precious space in the cramped area.
The machine started to spool up and a series of restraints threaded themselves across him, securing him in place. The device doubled as an emergency lifepod should the moment call for it. Next, cables snaked out of the walls, and Lucas winced when they dug into his skin at various points all over his body. None of this was necessary as a precursor to nightly sleep, but it was mandated for long-term rest. If it weren’t for the madness-inducing nightmares, he much preferred the comfortable setup of the Xalan pods with their gel backing and simple halo. This seemed downright medieval in comparison.
The last stage of the process was the lid, which slowly lowered down with a creak. The rest of the chamber became obscured behind the frosted glass.
Lucas felt liquid relaxation flood into his veins. His anger was washed away in minutes, and he watched a blue substance work its way into his arms and legs. Soon after, the liquid switched to green, and his head started to grow fuzzy. He embraced the darkness in which he’d rest for the next ten days until they landed. At last he’d have some peace.
Mercifully, the dream that followed was far more placid than the ones he usually endured.
He sat on a platform, a broken-off piece of pavement floating in space all by itself. Sparkling stars surrounded him, but the vision ahead was an even lovelier sight.
It was Earth. Old Earth. Facing forward, the planet took up almost his entire field of vision and was a spectacular painting of blue, green, and white, the colors it had once been known for. North America was in front of him, and he could see its southern counterpart curving under the globe down by his feet. The entire planet turned ever so slowly in front of him.
After what seemed like an eternity of staring at the sphere, the platform suddenly buckled and sent him tumbling toward the Earth. He’d had this dream before, and he’d ended up in the Portland crater. He had no desire to return there, but as he sped through the atmosphere, found he was heading a little farther south. California.
Opening his eyes, Lucas found a different vision in front of him. Bacon sizzling in a pan he was holding. He blinked and looked around the room. The kitchen was large and full of dark-wooded cabinets with glass fronts and granite countertops. Bright morning light streamed in through the windows. It was a place he’d never been before.
A little boy wandered sleepily into the room from the hallway and took a seat at the table across from the counter.
“Daddy, is breakfast ready yet?”
Lucas stared at him. It was Noah, probably about three years old, but still very much recognizable with bright blue eyes and distinctive blond locks. His arm had no burns that Lucas could see.
“Daddy!”
“Um, uh, almost,” Lucas stammered as he poked the bacon around. A stack of steaming pancakes sat on the counter a few feet away. Looking around, he could see that the house he was in was gorgeous, with lofted ceilings that gave way to skylights. Massive couches sprawled across the living room, gathered around a stone fireplace devoid of a fire.
Lucas saw the bacon starting to burn and quickly pried it off the pan and onto a nearby plate. He brought it and the pancakes over to the table where Noah eyed them hungrily.
“I swear you’re going to make us all fat.”
The voice was one he knew instinctively. He turned and saw Asha descending from a spiral staircase nearby. She wore a form-fitting navy dress and heels with an oversize necklace. She also had an enormous diamond ring on her finger. Lucas looked down at his own hand and saw that he too wore a band.
In Asha’s arms was an even younger child, little more than an infant. One with wispy dark hair, her eyes, and his nose. Their other son, one not yet given a name. She set him down in a high chair across from Noah and then grabbed a couple nearby oranges from a bowl and started peeling. Lucas just stood at the table in shock.
“What are you staring at?” she said. “Start eating! I’m on set today after dropping these two off, and you’ve got that huge meeting in what, like an hour?” She looked at her watch.
“Uh, yeah, right,” Lucas said, not sure what she was talking about. He looked down at his own outfit and saw he was wearing a slim gray suit with a sapphire tie. He slowly sat down and started eating breakfast. The pancakes tasted as good as they ever had when he used to make them years earlier. The baby in the high chair waved his arms around and babbled until Asha fed him a tiny piece of orange. He grinned happily.
Noah was drawing on a piece of paper with crayon in between bites of bacon.
“What are you working on there?” Lucas asked him.
Noah slid the paper over to him. On it was a simple drawing of a stick-figured family, their own, judging by the hair colors, and then a larger figure with slightly elongated arms and an oblong head.
“Who’s this?”
Noah looked exasperated.
“Uncle Alpha!”
Lucas’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, but he didn’t miss a beat.
“Ah yes, of course. It’s a really good picture of him. I must have had something in my eye. And what’s this?” Lucas asked, pointing to a black scribble with neon blue circles on its right edge.
“His spaceship, it was soooo fun riding in it last week!”
Lucas played along.
“Yes, it was, wasn’t it?”
Asha laughed.
“I’m surprised I even still have a job,” she said. “Why would anyone want to watch movies anymore with them here?”
For the first time, Lucas looked out the window in the living room. When he saw what was there, panic surged through him. A mothership hung in the distance over downtown Los Angeles.
But then he kept looking. Walking down the street were two Xalans. Not dressed in power armor, but in their natural greys. As they passed, another walked by, this time talking with a woman walking her dog. What the hell?
Lucas slowly shifted his view to the fireplace. A photo sat framed with a plaque next to it. It was of him and Alpha shaking hands. The engravin
g read:
“This commendation recognizes the outstanding work you have done on behalf of the Interspecies Initiative after first contact. The citizens of two worlds thank you for your invaluable assistance.”
“Everything okay?” called Asha from the table. The baby and Noah had turned to look at him as well.
“Yeah, fine,” he said, noticing an ID badge on the counter with his picture on it. Underneath his name it had his title, “Director of Interplanetary Relations, North America.” A US government seal followed.
“Alright, well, that’s enough pancakes for you,” Asha said.
“But I want another one!” Noah moaned.
“Nope, we’re going to be late. A little help here?”
“Sure.”
Lucas cleared the table and hoisted the baby out of his high chair. He passed him off to Asha, who scooped up a large purse and took Noah by her other hand. Lucas followed them out onto the driveway. After the boys were buckled into car seats in a silver SUV, Asha turned to Lucas and wrapped her arms around his neck. She kissed him, letting her lips linger far longer than any unhappy housewife would. He felt … passion.
“Alright, don’t be too late tonight,” she said as she released him. “And don’t let that Ambassador Omicron boss you around; he’s a prick.”
“He is …” Lucas said, his head still swimming.
“Bye, I love you.”
Lucas was stunned at his own words, ones that had never actually left his lips when speaking to Asha.
“I love you too.”
And ones that had never left hers either.
The car pulled away and Lucas was left in his driveway. He stared up at the sky where Xalan ships zoomed overhead like lightning bugs.
Clouds started to form above him. They darkened, then reddened.
No, Lucas thought. No, I want to stay.
But it was too late. The ships were gone. The house was gone. He was standing in a new crater. He forced his true set of eyes to open.
His head swam, his vision was still black, but he knew he was awake. A bizarre dream, but a welcome one. He’d often wondered in quiet moments what life might have been like had he been able to start over with Asha on a reborn Earth. Perhaps the drug cocktail gave the user a pleasant insight into their deepest desires as a programmed side effect to make the cryosleep go more smoothly. The scenario presented of the Xalans coming in peace was the furthest thing from what had happened, but it was an intriguing alternate reality.
Now awake, Lucas wanted to go back to that world. To their children. To her. A peaceful, loving Asha that didn’t seem to exist in the real world. Old pain resurfaced as he thought about her recent demonstration of mercilessness, and the fact that she seemed to be getting too close to Maston, in one way or another.
Lucas’s vision was slowly coming back. The cables had retracted from his body, leaving dabs of healing gel in their wake, and the restraints slid off of him and back into the base of the unit. He was surprised to see Natalie up near his shoulders now, rather than at the south end of the pod. He blinked and saw something he didn’t understand. The opaque glass had long cracks running through it from top to bottom, and light was flooding in.
Too much light.
Sunlight.
11
Lucas was having trouble moving inside the chamber. His arms and legs were stiff from lack of use, though muscle stimulants inside the unit were supposed to keep them refreshed while he slept. The wall controls were unresponsive when he waved his hand where a hologram should have appeared. Scouring the coffin-like environment around him, he searched for the manual release. When he found it, the lever was jammed and no amount of force seemed to budge it. The cracked lid shifted slightly, but some sort of mechanism was clearly broken within.
Panic was starting to set in now, both from claustrophobia and the clearly damaged nature of the pod. Why was it so light outside? The worst sorts of thoughts began to flood into Lucas’s mind as he banged on the glass in a frenzy. The cracks didn’t spread any further, and it was time for a last resort. He brought Natalie down from his shoulders and pointed the barrel at a twenty-degree angle toward the lid by his feet, which was as high as the gun could be raised before it met the glass. Switching to silenced mode so he wouldn’t deafen himself within the chamber, he fired one, two, three, four shots. On the final one, the weakened glass shattered altogether.
Oh god.
He wasn’t in the cryobay any more. He wasn’t even on the ship. Lying on his back, his field of vision was a thick canopy of enormous, leafy green trees. Sunlight streamed through the treetops and made its way into his quickly shrinking pupils.
Am I still dreaming?
He climbed out of the unit and staggered to his feet, his muscles burning as they were put back to work. All around him the jungle called out, chirps and screeches from unseen creatures lurking nearby, or far away.
His bodysuit was torn in a few places, and he felt bruised patches of skin all over himself as he surveyed the forest. There was only one explanation for all of this, and he had to somehow prove it. Scanning his surroundings for the tallest climbable tree, he found one a few yards away from the downed cryo unit. Slinging Natalie onto his back, he ascended through the branches painfully as his body struggled to reactivate its core functions. Star-shaped leaves whipped against his face, and the bark felt sticky, which thankfully helped him keep his grip. The ground became more and more distant below him while the white sun got brighter.
Finally he burst through the forest canopy, nearing the top of the tree. He found a branch wide enough to sit on and, shielding his eyes with his hand, he looked out onto the horizon. It was true, then.
Plumes of smoke were rising from areas all over the vast jungle, with one enormous column coming from an area a long distance away. He didn’t need to see the wreckage to understand what had happened. The Spear had been destroyed upon reaching Makari, and an unknown number of the crew with it. His heart raced and threatened to beat right out of his chest. It was getting harder to breathe.
Where were the others? Could they possibly be alive? He was. But he had the security of a cryopod. Who knew what state they were in when the ship broke apart. What the hell happened? Was there some mechanical error, or had they actually been shot down by the Xalans? The stealth drive was supposed to get them in and out of there safely. Lucas’s head was dizzy trying to imagine what might have occurred, and what the fate of everyone onboard could have been. A hundred feet in the air was not an appropriate place to pass out, and Lucas quickly scrambled down the tree, taking note of which direction the largest stream of smoke was.
He collapsed on the ground when he reached the base of the tree. Sap trickled down into his hair and onto his shoulders as he attempted to mentally pull himself together. It was still hard to believe this was actually happening.
Controlling his breathing, he slowly brought himself back from the brink of hyperventilation. It was time to take stock of the situation. First, the cryochamber.
He crawled a few feet over to it and searched inside. Immediately disappointing was the discovery that the comm transponder within was as nonfunctional as the rest of the electronic features of the unit. He retrieved Omicron’s glass square from the personal effects compartment and found a welcome bonus next to it. There was a panel labeled EMERGENCY KIT he hadn’t seen before, as it was practically behind his head. He wrestled it open and sifted through the contents of the pack.
Inside was a very small knife, but one that was exceptionally sharp. There were a few packs of powder labeled SURVIVAL SUPPLEMENTS and a rubberized canteen that would expand if filled with water. A few tiny vials of healing gel were there to seal wounds, and a small hollow metal circle produced a blue flame in the center when he rubbed his thumb around the outside. It wasn’t much, but it was something. And of course he still had Natalie.
Another thought occurred to him as he slung the pouch over his shoulder. If the ship had either crashed or been shot down,
the Xalans here would be out hunting for survivors. He’d seen how good they were at tracking living organisms through heat and heartbeat, and for all he knew they could be on top of him in the next few minutes. It was unclear how long he’d been unconscious after the cryochamber crash landed. Yes, this was a sparsely populated colony according to Alpha, but who knew how many troops were stationed nearby that could be sweeping the area? What was obvious was that he couldn’t stay in his present location.
He did one last search of the unit and set off toward the largest column of smoke he’d seen, where he figured he’d find the bulk of the wreckage, and with it possible survivors. It was also likely he’d find Xalans there by the time he reached it, but it was a risk he had to take. Where else could he even go? He didn’t have the coordinates of their contact Zeta’s location. His only hope was to try to regroup with whoever was left before the Xalans reached them, or him. If he was alive, others had to be, right? He refused to let himself believe anything else, and he knew Asha and Alpha were alive. He felt it, as strange as it sounded, and it drove him forward with purpose.
The jungle was unforgiving. Even if most of the planet had been rendered desolate by the Xalans stripping it for resources, they’d crashed square in the middle of one of its last thriving rainforests. Thick vines and branches barred his way, and his bare feet were being shredded by the forest floor. The air was so humid it felt like he was wrapped in a thermal blanket, and he had to tear his bodysuit to his knees and elbows to avoid passing out.
So far, he’d only seen glimpses of the local wildlife. A millipede-type creature the size of his forearm slithered up a tree trunk. He swatted away clusters of what looked like tiny red mosquitoes that were equally as annoying—and presumably as disease-bearing—as their distant cousins on Earth.
His first truly bizarre encounter was with an animal that could only be described as the nightmarish union of an octopus and a snake. It was about ten feet over his head in the trees and, fully extended, probably as long as he was tall. It had two yellow eyes with black slits and four green, scaled tentacles that it was using to swing from tree to tree. As it passed over him, he could see a mouth on its underside full of razor-sharp teeth. Not knowing its intentions, his rifle remained pointed at it until it swung out of sight.