Event Horizon Threshold

by Kaitlyn O’Connor

  Aurek shrugged. “I am saying what we have.”

  That didn’t entirely explain it as far as Roslyn could see. If each held a week’s rations, and they had one, then that meant three missing containers or somebody had lied to them.

  Oh! There was a surprise!

  “There doesn’t seem to be much point in belaboring it. It is what it is. We have to decide what to do about it. Do we go back? Or keep going? I mean, we could make another trip, couldn’t we?”

  Both of them stared at her like she’d lost her mind.

  Indignation rose within her as she glanced from one to the other. “What? I thought that was the whole damn idea! We built the gateway to … well, at least explore options.”

  “You don’t really believe the government, and big business, got into this for shits and giggles?” Paul said dryly. “They expected to benefit big time. If we go back and tell them all that’s here are ruins ….”

  “What? The city?” Roslyn gasped. “There’s nobody there?”

  Paul shrugged. “This place has a ‘nobody lives here’ feel to me. We’ve been here days and no flyovers by any kind of commercial vehicle. There’s a whole city over there that is a ghost town—and I mean a big ass city. Nobody. And this valley—it was clearly cultivated at one time and just as clearly it’s been growing on its own since who knows when.”

  She couldn’t really argue when she’d had that same feeling when they’d arrived.

  But that didn’t mean it was so. They couldn’t just explore a little patch and say, oh well, nobody home. There were places on Earth where someone could land and not see a living soul for days. It was just as clear that the planet supported abundant life and the city was an example of a very advanced civilization to say nothing about the gateway.

  “They expected there might be ruins,” she said pointedly. “I’m an archeologist and I’m guessing that’s why they sent me. So I don’t see them shutting the entire project down because we found a city that had been abandoned. We don’t know what happened. We haven’t even gotten there yet.”

  “Well I say we should take a vote if there’s any kind of doubt about this at all,” Paul said tightly.

  He stalked back to the others and spoke to them. In a few minutes everyone had gathered to discuss whether to keep going or turn back.

  Roslyn thought they should stay. After all they knew where there was plenty of food. They weren’t going to starve even if they ran out of the rations they’d brought.

  Marvin pointed out that it hadn’t been tested and they didn’t know if they could eat it, but he was of the opinion that they should make a push to accomplish something besides getting blisters before they returned—just in case the project was shut down—or they weren’t able to return for any other reason.

  Gretchen sided with Paul—stunning Roslyn, at least. She didn’t see much chance that she was going to be able to contribute anything useful since computers were her specialty and they weren’t likely to find any in the city that looked like it had been abandoned a long, long ass time ago.

  Aurek voted to stay and complete the mission and, no real surprise since they pretty much did whatever he said, Dylan and Tor agreed with him.

  Paul was pissed off and so was Gretchen, but they were outnumbered by a landslide and it had been Paul’s idea to take a vote to start with. And, he’d already known she didn’t agree with him so he should have expected a defeat.

  Everyone settled to eat and then crawled gratefully into the tents and their sleeping bags.

  Roslyn was wakeful.

  She’d slept a long, restful nap while Aurek carried her.

  She was still confused, embarrassed, and deeply unsettled about it.

  She had been awed at how muscular they were and fit, but that feat … well, it just went way beyond normal.

  Maybe they were … enhanced somehow?

  A strange mixture of relief and uneasiness filled her.

  It was the only answer that made any sense and that relieved her.

  She supposed the ‘contact’ with aliens had gone to her head, because she’d thought …. Well she wasn’t sure what she’d thought ... except everything strange and different and seemingly unexplainable had begun to seem like alien intervention?

  But if she accepted that they were enhanced the question became how and why.

  Some kind of drug?

  That was actually her first thought, but she’d dismissed it because she’d never heard of a drug that could make that sort of thing possible. Athletes had taken steroids to enhance their natural abilities, but it didn’t go that far.

  Weight lifters could dead-lift way more than her weight, but lifting people was different than lifting weights and carrying someone was different from merely picking them up and putting them down again—or carrying someone a short distance.

  They didn’t seem drugged.

  She hadn’t seen them take anything and nobody else had or they would’ve said something—especially Paul. He already didn’t like or trust them.

  Maybe she was just making a mountain out of a mole hill?

  They were big guys, strong, and really fit.

  Maybe she’d lost weight?

  Ok, well she wasn’t that big. She damned sure wasn’t skinny, but she was within range of the recommended weight for her height—more or less.

  She resolutely dismissed it.

  She liked them—especially Aurek—and she just had to get down with a microscope and see what was wrong with him, that being the case, because he at least seemed to notice her and that was always suspect in her mind.

  He’d just carried her because he didn’t want her slowing them down.

  She wasn’t sure of why he hadn’t just let Tor carry her, but none of the possibilities that came to mind seemed the least bit logical, so she put that from her mind, too.

  Restless, she decided to get up. Maybe if she was up for a little bit, she’d be able to sleep. Otherwise, the next day’s hike was going to be really rough.

  She took her camera. It was supposed to be low light enabled. She hadn’t seen that it worked all that well in low light, but she could try.

  It wasn’t likely Aurek was going to let them stop long enough to do anything, she thought irritably.

  They were lucky if he allowed stops for bathroom breaks!

  God! The man was a machine! It totally baffled her that the military could do that.

  She didn’t see anyone when she emerged from her tent even though she’d been under the impression that there was always someone on watch during the night. Inwardly, she shrugged it off. She wasn’t leaving the camp area.

  The sky was amazing. Night or day, daybreak or sunset, it was always stunning. And it seemed way more alien than anything else they’d encountered thus far—except the snake-like thing which, now she thought about it, wasn’t all that ‘alien’. The trees and plants certainly weren’t. They didn’t look like plants she was totally familiar with, but they looked like—well, Earth plants, like they could be from Earth.

  Weird that there was such similarity in evolution. This planet was at least halfway across the universe.

  She thought.

  The scientists seemed convinced it was and that it wasn’t in the Milky Way galaxy.

  It could’ve been in the next closest solar system and still been a tremendous distance from Earth.

  Maybe there was something to the panspermia theory? Maybe this supported it? All the seeds of life originating from the same source and being spread throughout the universe? Of course, then, conditions took over and affected the evolution, but the similarity externally and internally, remained. There would be DNA markers in common.

  She wondered if Marvin had been collecting samples to take back for study.

  Had he had the chance?

  It seemed to her that the soldiers had an entirely different agenda than they’d been told. From the outset, they’d seemed to have somewhere to go and little time to get there.

  It
was true, she supposed, that scientists tended to get distracted by their curiosity and their specific interests, but who benefited from being rushed along?

  Shaking the thoughts since they seemed calculated to keep her awake, she focused on the sky until she found an area that she wanted to photograph. She discovered it was hard to look up and maintain her balance—especially being surrounded by darkness.

  When she swayed, though, she came up against something solid.

  A jolt went through her since she hadn’t thought she was close enough to anything to bump it.

  And it was warm.

  And breathing.

  Her heart stopped in her chest a split second before he grabbed her.

  “You are too far from the fire.”

  “Oh my god! You scared the shit out of me! I didn’t know you were there!”

  He said nothing for a moment. “Then a beast would have eaten you before you knew it was there.”

  “Not funny!”

  “Not intended as such.”

  He didn’t step away when she turned to look up at him. “I should have heard you coming,” she said, somewhat accusingly.

  “Did you?”

  That was almost more insulting since it seemed to her to suggest that she was … Well, she wasn’t sure what. Laying a trap? Trying to lure him?

  Had she been?

  Was that why she’d really decided to walk around with a camera? Taking pictures of things she probably wasn’t going to be able to see?

  Maybe.

  “No,” she said finally. “Was that because I was distracted? Or because you were very quiet?”

  He studied her for a moment and changed the subject abruptly. “Why are you photographing the sky?”

  She blinked at him, trying to change gears. “It’s a scientific expedition. I thought it was worth recording. It isn’t the same sky we see from Earth. Or not the same view of it anyway.”

  He seemed surprised. “We have special equipment that was issued for that purpose.”

  Of course they did! She knew that.

  Her belly clenched as the realization sank in that she had hoped for an encounter … of some kind, away from the others.

  It embarrassed her and made her feel awkward. “Well, redundancy is never a bad thing in science,” she pointed out. “I guess I should try to get some sleep.”

  Since nothing was happening.

  She hesitated. “Why didn’t you just let Tor carry me?”

  He met her gaze for so long she thought he would close the distance and kiss her.

  Disappointment fluttered through her when he didn’t.

  Stupid!

  He didn’t answer either, but when the sentence had hung between them until she began to feel the crushing weight of embarrassment and awkwardness and she started to walk off, he grasped her arm to stop her. She looked down at his hand and then up at him in surprise and hopefulness and uneasiness. “Because … I wanted to.”

  A thrill went through her. She had a blond/teenager moment where she had to stifle the urge to prod him by saying ‘really?’ She swallowed with an effort. “Uh … well, thank you. I didn’t earlier, I know, and I should have. I was … I was … uh … just so tired ….”

  Shut up, Roslyn!

  He was thinking too much and she wasn’t thinking nearly enough.

  “Well, uh, goodnight.”

  He didn’t let go of her arm. He tightened his hold, drew her closer. She stared into his eyes with a mixture of anticipation and uneasiness.

  “Do not come out alone again.”

  Dismay flickered through her, chased closely by anger. “Yes, sir!” she snapped when he let her go, stalking off toward her tent. “Asshole,” she muttered.

  She was so busy beating herself up and then him that she tossed and turned most of the remainder of the night.

  Gretchen looked almost as bad as she felt when they got up the following morning, but she didn’t bother to leave Roslyn in any doubt about the reason for it.

  “Next time you have a fight with your boyfriend, how about sleeping in his tent and keeping him awake all night?” she growled when Roslyn was stupid enough to ask her if she was ok.

  And there is was! The reason she’d been stupid enough to think Aurek had an interest in her! “He isn’t my damned boyfriend!” she snarled.

  “No,” Gretchen smirked. “He isn’t.”

  Roslyn had always thought she was a non-violent person—not that she didn’t occasionally have violent thoughts! But she wasn’t confrontational. At that moment, though, it took all she could do to keep from knocking the fuck out of the bitch.

  It wasn’t bad enough she’d planted that … hallucination in her head?

  Now that Roslyn had been stupid enough to test it she had to smirk about it?

  She’d manipulated her. That was what it was!

  She’d seen Roslyn mooning over him and thought it would be funny!

  Roslyn was so angry she felt like crying.

  Hurt, although she refused to admit it even to herself.

  It was cathartic, though. She wasn’t certain, after the awful night she’d had, that she would have been able to gather the strength to get through the day if she hadn’t been so pissed off.

  She made it a point, though, to keep her distance from all of the guys—as much as she could, at any rate. They seemed determined that one or the other of them was going to be close enough to grab her at any time.

  It was weird, she thought, that she hadn’t noticed that before when she’d thought she was hyper-aware of all of them. It was like … static electricity dancing over her whenever any one of them got within her ‘space’.

  And that made her wonder why she hadn’t realized Aurek was behind her until he’d been so close she’d bumped into him.

  But maybe that meant he had just followed and she’d broken the distance, her personal space, rather than the other way around?

  It was still unnerving that he could move so quietly. She supposed it was his training.

  He had to be able to sneak up on the enemy.

  Chapter Five

  It was a damned good thing Roslyn had her anger to sustain her. She didn’t think she could have made it through the next day without dropping otherwise. She hadn’t really rested after the encounter with Aurek. She’d dozed off repeatedly, but she didn’t think she’d actually rested even then.

  She began to regret the vote she’d cast to stay—actually regretted it from the moment it occurred to her that she might be trapped, permanently, with the people she was with and she didn’t especially like any of them.

  Actually, she had a fondness for Marvin. He was cranky and way too blunt much of the time, but she didn’t dislike him for being honest. She couldn’t tell that he shared her fondness, but she did like him.

  She’d liked Gretchen just fine until she discovered the dirty trick the bitch had played on her.

  Paul … she didn’t dislike, but some of his mannerisms were damned annoying—mostly his jitteriness, almost like he was on crack.

  The soldiers—well, she didn’t dislike them, but she didn’t especially like them either—mostly, she thought, because she hadn’t made a dent in getting to know them. And the longer she was around them the less she felt like she could trust them.

  She wasn’t sure why.

  They seemed to take care of her.

  She supposed, maybe, it was the sense of being ‘babysat’ that bothered her. It was one thing to feel taken care of because of a special interest in her and entirely different when it seemed objective—she was a team member and it was their job.

  The stop for food at noon seemed to help her feelings somewhat and gave her a little time to rest and fuel to boost her energy level.

  She had a few bad moments after she’d grabbed her MRE.

  She didn’t want to sit beside Gretchen, and Paul seemed to have buddied up to her after ‘the vote’, so that left him out. She sure as hell wasn’t sitting with the soldiers, but she th
ought if she found a spot by herself somebody might take exception or decide she was doing it for attention.

  That left Marvin and she wasn’t certain of his reception.

  She settled just a little away from him as a compromise—not close enough to ‘buddy’ but not far enough away to be considered sitting alone.

  It was basically the same thing.

  Marvin was focused on his food and hardly seemed to notice she’d settled close by.

  She couldn’t help but notice he looked a little ill. His coloring seemed ‘off’, but if she asked him how he was most likely he’d bite her head off and what was the point? She couldn’t do anything if he was sick except offer sympathy.

  Tor was the medic, she recalled.

  She thought he must just be a field medic, though, maybe trained to attend trauma and wounds, but not necessarily illness.

  That gave her a bad turn—the thought that he could have picked something up to make him sick, but she’d seen he was on some kind of medication when they came. It seemed possible that he already had whatever it was that was bothering him.

  And he’d been pushed hard.

  She’d felt it herself and she was in decent shape. Not, obviously, in as good a shape as the others, but she kept active, worked out several times a week, watched her diet. She really didn’t push herself when she was in the field, but she’d never felt overly taxed.

  Maybe she should talk to Tor about it?

  Reluctance instantly rose in her and she spent most of the meal wrestling with whether she should or shouldn’t mention anything to Tor.

  Marvin would be pissed off if Tor approached him, she knew.

  And if he figured out it was her that had ‘narced’ on him, he’d be pissed off with her.

  She finally decided that she shouldn’t ignore what she felt like might be warning signs. They might need to turn back and get serious medical help for Marvin and the further they got from the gateway, the harder that was going to be.

  Having decided, she finished her stew and surreptitiously watched Tor until he got up to dispose of his trash, surging up and heading that way so that she could catch him alone.

  He looked surprised.

  “I need to go,” she said.