Catalina stretched her aching arms, and her comm band trilled with an incoming call, giving her a welcome excuse not to go back to sweeping just yet. The caller ID said the call was from Lieutenant Muros from NAS Lemcroft. Caty’s jaw went slack and her eyes drifted out of focus. The last time she’d heard from Muros was when she’d found out that Alexander’s ship had gone down with all hands on board.
“Hello?” Caty said. Her hands felt cold, her entire body stiff.
“Caty, are you sitting down?”
“No.”
“I’ll give you a moment.”
Caty eyed the antique chair in the corner of the room. What if it broke? She imagined sweeping floors for the next twenty years, and decided not to risk it. “I’m sitting,” she lied. “What is it?” Her heart played a staccato in her chest.
“I made a mistake, Caty. There were two ships called the Lincoln—a destroyer class, and a battleship class. The battleship was the one that we lost, but the destroyer is still listed as active. I looked a little deeper, and your husband’s name shows up on the roster of the destroyer, but not the battleship. He could still be alive.”
Catalina shook her head, hot tears sizzling down her cheeks.
“Caty?”
“How could you make a mistake like that!” she burst out.
“I…”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“I’m very sorry. I really—”
She ended the comm call there and stood glaring at her comm band. Stupid woman. Some distant recess of her mind whispered to her that maybe the lieutenant wasn’t the only one she was mad at, but she wasn’t ready to listen yet.
Six hours later she was walking back from the bus with David, listening to the sound their feet made in the hard-packed mud. After the night they’d spent together a week ago, Caty had explained that she still needed time to get over Alexander. David had accepted that, but not happily. Now that she knew Alexander might still be alive, she would need more time than ever. Closure had come and gone, leaving a trail of guilt and a gaping hole in her chest.
Caty’s comm band rang. It was probably Mrs. Walton. The band went on ringing, and David glanced at her, his bushy eyebrows lifting. Feeling suddenly annoyed at him, she answered the comm just to avoid a conversation about why she wasn’t answering it. This time she didn’t even bother to read the caller ID before answering. “Hello?”
“Caty, don’t hang up.”
Muros. The name burned like acid in her brain. “Why not?”
“You don’t have to forgive me.”
“I know.”
“Well, there’s a message here on file from Alex, addressed to you. The date stamp is from over a year ago. Do you want me to send it to you?”
Caty gaped at her comm, unable to believe what she was hearing. A message.
“Caty?”
“Was that message before or after the fighting concluded in orbit?”
“Ummm… after.”
“So he is alive.” Caty ignored the cold look of betrayal on David’s face, pretending not to notice.
“That’s looking more likely, yes.”
“Send it. Thank you, Muros. This doesn’t make up for anything…”
“No, I know.”
“But thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
The comm call ended from the other end and Caty was left sharing an awkward silence with David as they walked the last block to their home.
“He is alive.”
No Spanish this time. Caty couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. “Yes.”
“When did you find out?” he asked, turning to look at her. His eyes were like stones.
“Today.”
He nodded, looking away again. “Then you were not lying about needing time.”
“No. I wasn’t. I felt like I cheated on him with you. Now that he might be alive, I feel more like that than ever. Being with you was a mistake, David. I’m sorry.”
David stopped suddenly and grabbed her roughly by the arm. His eyes were wide and flashing, his breathing fast and shallow. She could smell the alcohol on his breath, and for the first time it really hit her that he always smelled like alcohol. “Te equivocaste?” He all but spat the words at her.
“David. I’m a married woman.”
“You’re with me now! He left you here! Yo te cuido, yo te acompaño!”
She shook her head. “I’ve never led you on, David.”
“No, solo te acostaste conmigo como una cualquiera!”
Caty blinked. Was he really calling her a whore? How dare he! She jerked her arm out of his grasp. “You knew my situation from the start. I never led you on. You took advantage of my grief when I thought Alexander was dead. If anything this is your fault.”
David’s jaw clenched, and all of the light left his eyes.
Slap!
Her cheek exploded with fire, and David shook a finger in her face. “El culpable eres tu!”
He stalked away, leaving her stunned and trembling with a mixture of fear and rage. She stood there frozen, watching until David walked around the block and out of sight. He’d hit her… she couldn’t believe it—the man who’d been her guardian for more than a year had just assaulted her.
It was just a slap. He’s been drinking. His feelings are hurt.
No. She shook her head. She wasn’t going to make excuses for him. Wrong was wrong. The adrenaline left and the pain in her cheek intensified. She felt light-headed and nauseous. She sat in the grass beside the footpath with her head between her knees.
After a while, she recovered enough to wonder about the message that had caused the fight. She checked her inbox on her comm band and found a message from Muros with Alex’s message attached in a video format. She opened the file for playback and immediately saw Alexander’s face projected in the air above her wrist. Her heart leapt into her throat, creating a painful lump to compete with the fire burning in her cheek.
He smiled briefly. She smiled back, imagining he was really there to see it. She reached out with one hand to touch him, but it passed straight through the hologram and out the other side, causing a fuzz of static to wash through his features.
“Catalina, by now you know more about what’s happened than I do. I hope to God you’re somewhere safe. As for me, I’m okay. The Lincoln is well on her way to her destination, but there’s a lot they didn’t tell us about this mission. I don’t think I can say much without this message getting edited all to hell before it reaches you, but due to reasons I can’t discuss, I’m not going to be able to keep contact with you. I’ll still record messages every day that I can, but you probably won’t get them for a long time. It’s going to be years before we see each other, Caty—at best. I’ll wait for you, just as I promised, but if you can’t…”
She saw him swallow visibly, and her entire body went cold once more.
“Above all, I want you to be happy. Whatever that means, I won’t hold it against you, okay? Keep yourself safe. I love you, Caty. Te amo.”
Somehow, he’d known. He’d known she would cheat, and that made her infidelity twice as bad. Was it some intrinsic part of her? A flaw too deeply-woven for her to deny?
Alex’s message ended there, and he faded out of sight, leaving her feeling more miserable and alone than she ever had in her life. He’d just given her permission to be with David, but she didn’t want to be with him.
I just want you, Alex! Caty fell forward with her face in her hands and sobbed. I just want you.
*
June 3rd, 2790
(Wonderland’s Frame of Reference)
Alexander stood at the bottom of Shuttle One’s ramp, surveying the damage to the hab complex by the light of day. There was nothing left but a mountain of char-blackened canvas clinging to equally blackened framing poles. It was like the carcass of some giant alien monster. The real alien monster lay somewhere in the center of those ruins.
A stiff breeze blew, stirring big
papery flakes of canvas to life and driving them like snow. Overhead, through the swirling ashes, the sky was a pale ice blue. It was a chilly morning for Wonderland, at just under twenty degrees—not that Alexander could feel the weather through his suit.
“There’s nothing left…” Korbin said beside him, sounding forlorn.
Alexander turned to her with a sigh. “How’s your ankle?” he asked, nodding to the bulge in her pressure suit where the cast was hiding. Doctor Crespin had managed to fashion crutches for her out of spare framing poles.
“Better.”
“You’re lucky Max pulled you out. Whatever he was hiding, I guess we can rule out collusion with the enemy. If he was with the reds, why would he save you?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“So Williams must have been the one who sabotaged our engines. What I don’t get though is why he didn’t just confess to it. He already confessed to planting a bomb.”
Korbin shrugged. “Why would he admit to it? It’s one thing admitting to sabotage that could cause serious damage to a fleet ship, another thing entirely admitting to sabotage that could damage the ship and harm its crew. He’s already in enough trouble without adding to the charges against him.”
“True.” Alexander nodded and looked away, back to the ruined hab complex. “Well, there haven’t been any other acts of sabotage since we caught Williams, so I guess that must be it. Fleet investigators will have to handle the case when we get back. Speaking of which, we need to pack it in. I’m going to go contact Davorian and have him set up a flight plan for us to rendezvous with the Lincoln. Meanwhile, I need you to supervise the crew while they collect their samples. Just make sure they don’t wander too far. At this point safety is our main concern. Even without further research we’re all witness to the fact that Wonderland is habitable.”
“I’ll keep an eye on them, sir.”
“Good. And Korbin?”
She turned to him, her eyebrows raised in question behind her helmet’s faceplate.
“Cheer up. We’re going home. You’re going to see your kids again very soon.”
Korbin flashed half a smile. “And you your wife, sir.”
He half-smiled back and nodded.
Neither one of them voiced their fears about what they would find on Earth when they returned, but Alexander still clung to stubborn hope. Caty was alive. She had to be.
Chapter 31
Three Days Later - June 6th, 2790
(The Lincoln’s Frame of Reference)
Alexander watched their final approach to the Looking Glass on the main holo display. It still looked like a clear glass marble to him. It was hard to imagine that bubble of distorted spacetime was a tunnel from one galaxy to another.
Davorian had spent his time in orbit well, studying the stars and trying to identify familiar galaxies and their distances from Wonderland in order to triangulate Wonderland’s position in the known universe in relation to Earth’s. Apparently all of his stargazing had paid off, because he was now 99% sure that Wonderland was situated inside the local group at just over three million light years from Earth. More specifically, Davorian had determined that Wonderland was located inside the distal arm of the spiral galaxy M33, otherwise known as the Triangulum Galaxy.
“ETA five minutes until we enter the wormhole,” Davorian announced from the helm.
Alexander nodded. “Keep me posted.” Turning to his XO, he said, “Looks like our mission was a success, Commander.”
She nodded without looking away from the forward display.
It didn’t feel like the forward display. With the engines lying directly behind them, generating one G of thrust in order to simulate gravity, it felt like they were lying on their backs, staring up at the ceiling.
“How’s Max doing?”
“He’s still in med bay under quarantine, but Doctor Crespin and McAdams can’t find anything wrong with him. We should probably release him. If you’re worried, we can keep him in a pressure suit until he gets to his G-tank. The tank will act as an effective quarantine unit.”
Alexander nodded. “I think that would be the safest course of action. If viruses on Earth sometimes take weeks to incubate, then the same could be true for Wonderland, and we may not know we’re dealing with a harmful pathogen until it’s too late.”
Korbin nodded once more. “That’s what McAdams said.”
“Well, she’s a smart girl.”
Korbin turned to look at him, arching one eyebrow.
“What?” he said.
“Just rumors, Captain.”
Alexander frowned. “What rumors?”
Korbin switched to a private comms channel so that the rest of the crew wouldn’t overhear. “Before we entered the G-tanks, McAdams left the memorial service saying she was going to go find a bunkmate for the night. At that point you were the only one who’d left the officer’s mess without a partner. We all just assumed…”
“That the captain was sleeping with his junior officer, and breaking his marriage vows while he’s at it.”
Korbin shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first to give into temptation in absentia. What happens in space stays in space, Captain.”
“Well, I didn’t. McAdams came to my quarters, drunk. She tried something, but I turned her down—and that’s more than I should be telling you. Next time you hear the crew gossiping about their captain I hope you’ll have the sense to put those rumors to rest before they travel.”
“Yes, sir,” Korbin replied.
Alexander blew out a breath and shook his head. He hadn’t meant to be so defensive, but it wasn’t just about the inappropriateness of the crew talking about him behind his back. It was about the sanctity of his marriage, and the fact that everyone just assumed allowances could be made for infidelity due to the nature of their circumstances.
What happens in space, stays in space.
Those words echoed through Alexander’s mind with mocking clarity.
What if Catalina felt the same way about their situation? Was giving into temptation in absentia, as Korbin put it, somehow any different? More acceptable?
Now that he knew they were going home, and much sooner than anticipated, he wished he hadn’t given his wife permission to move on. He’d been a fool. What if she took his advice? He could only hope she hadn’t gotten his message.
Thinking about messages reminded him what they had to do next. “Hayes—”
“Sir?”
“Get ready to send a message through the wormhole with what we’ve managed to reconstruct from our mission data along with my report and the crew’s messages for their loved ones.”
“Is that wise, sir? We don’t know who’s waiting to receive our message on the other end.”
“We have to risk it. There’s a chance that something happens to the Lincoln while we’re all asleep, and we don’t make it back. Then all of this will have been for nothing. Use the best encryption algorithms you can and punch it.”
“Yes, sir.”
*
May 22nd, 2791
(Earth’s Frame of Reference)
Caty didn’t even turn to look when she heard the front door open. She sat at the kitchen table, warming her hands around a cup of hot tea and chewing her lower lip as she thought about the impossible predicament she was in. Peripherally, she saw David walk in. His stride faltered when he saw her sitting there.
“Hola bella,” he said.
She didn’t reply. She didn’t feel beautiful, and besides, she wasn’t talking to him. He pulled out the chair in front of her and reached for one of the hands wrapped around her tea cup.
“Mi amor, perdóname.”
Forgive me. She wasn’t even thinking about him slapping her, but this was probably the thousandth time he’d apologized for it over the past four days. There hadn’t been any further incidents, but her trust in him was still thin and brittle as ice. She risked glaring at him, and saw his brown eyes big and sad and full of hope—hope that this time she really wo
uld forgive him.
Forgiving and forgetting are two different things, she thought.
On the other hand, could she really afford to be so strict with him now? They both had bigger issues to deal with. Part of her was bursting with joy, but the other part…
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