Through the Never

by J. A. Culican

  He smiled, flashing his dimples. “Follow me, Captain, Miss Rivers. The rest of the crew is already at the mess hall.”

  Becca blew out a breath. Okay, this was going to be fine. Sure, it had been sixty years, but it felt like only yesterday that they’d boarded the ship—the crew and their teenage offspring—Becca, Sarah and Travis. It was Travis, Father Darwin’s son, that Sarah had set her sights on once BEK had been disabled. The woman was obsessed with sex. But Travis had made his disinterest clear, and in the end they’d all settled into an easy friendship, united in their station as the kids of the brightest and the best in their respective fields. Their parents were the chosen ones to guard the cargo and take it across the universe to their new hope. Earth was probably a million light years away—abandoned to nature and left behind to heal.

  BEK lead them down colour-coded corridors. Yes, she recognised where she was now. If they headed straight they’d get to the bridge. She’d made this journey two or three times a day, while her mother, the captain, had held court on the Bridge—a place off limits to everyone but essential crew.

  BEK took the next curve, and a door slid open, admitting them into the mess hall. The hum of conversation came to a halt, and seven faces turned to look at them.

  “Captain.” Father Darwin made to stand.

  She waved him back into his seat. “Please. Don’t mind me. Eat. You must all be starving.”

  “You have no idea,” Jenkins, the crew doctor, said. “Who knew not eating solid food for sixty years would have such an effect. Although we need to take it easy. No gorging.” She gave the rest of the crew a pointed look.

  Reynolds snorted. “Not going to be hard with cardboard on the menu.” He held up an energy bar. “You’d think being one of the most important missions in the history of humanity they’d actually stock the ship with some decent food.”

  Yeah, she remembered now, Reynolds was the arsehole of the group. The glass half empty, negative vibe dickhead who’d been short changed when it came to charisma and tact. He was also their tech expert next to BEK, because of course you couldn’t leave a machine in charge of everything, right?

  “You can have mine if you want.” Lloyd said. “It’s blueberry. Doesn’t taste too bad.” Lloyd was the science guy and Sarah’s dad. He was the go to guy when it came to the cargo. He and his team were essential. Sarah said that her dad was a prodigy in the field of genetics, having published several award-winning papers and winning the Nobel Prize for advances in fertility.

  Reynolds snatched the bar from Lloyd’s hand and chowed down. No thank you. Not even a grunt or nod of appreciation.

  Yeah. Dickhead.

  Grabbing a couple of protein bars, Becca’s mother took a seat beside Darwin and jerked her head toward the empty seat. Sitting with the crew was awesome, but what she really needed was to see her friends. She opened her mouth to ask where they were, but BEK was already speaking.

  “Doctor Jenkins, I have arranged appointments for the crew and your offspring to have standard post-cryo checks. The details have been emailed to you.”

  Jenkins swallowed the last of her protein bar. “Thank you.” She smiled.

  BEK returned the smile, but it seemed false. If he hadn’t been a machine, Becca would’ve said he was hiding something.

  “Captain, when you’ve finished your meal, I will be happy to debrief you on our journey so far,” BEK said.

  Sixty years he’d been monitoring this ship while they slept, which was another reason making him too human was a bad idea. A human would probably have gone insane alone on a spaceship for sixty years.

  “Sure. I’ll meet you on the bridge,” her mother said.

  He inclined his head, turned on his heel and strode of out the room

  “He gives me the creeps,” Reynolds said.

  Lloyd chuckled. “Don’t worry, Reynolds, this isn’t some sci-fi movie where the android goes nuts and kills the crew.”

  “Or where he has a secret agenda encoded into his mainframe by the powers that be,” Darwin added with a grin.

  “Are you going to sit?” Her mother arched a brow at her.

  “Actually, I might go find Travis and Sarah.” She looked from Father Darwin to Dr Lloyd.

  Lloyd smiled. “They grabbed some food and headed to the lounge, I think.”

  “Thanks.” Selecting a protein bar and a juice box, she headed off to find her friends.

  * * *

  The lounge was on the lower level of the ship with the sleep cabins. It was weird, because on the one hand it felt like she hadn’t seen her friends for ages, but her memory told her they’d chatted only yesterday. She found them deep in a game of ping pong, and from the look on Sarah’s face, Travis was winning. But not for long it seemed. His gaze flicked up at the moment she stepped through the doorway, and he missed the ball.

  “Yes!” Sarah pumped her fist in the air.

  But Travis was too busy scanning Becca with his eyes. “You’re awake.”

  Sarah turned to see her and let out a squeal. “The three amigos together again.” She rushed forward and wrapped Becca in a hug.

  Travis hung back until Sarah was done and then moved in for a hug of his own. He was older than them by just over a year, no longer a teenager, and his body, all hard planes and muscle against hers, brought back a memory that had her cheeks flushing.

  Oh, god. How could she have forgotten?

  Travis released her and stepped back, his eyes hooded.

  Oh, yeah. There was no way she should have forgotten that.

  Sarah was looking from Travis to Becca, her expression odd. The pact. They’d made a pact and Becca had broken it. She met her friend’s gaze and saw the suspicion in the azure depths, but then Sarah was blowing out a breath and shaking her head.

  “Come on,” she said. “How about two against one?” She turned to Travis. “There is no way you can take us both.”

  He grinned. “Yeah? We’ll see about that.”

  And just like that, the tension was diffused, but there would be a reckoning later. She knew Sarah well enough to know there was no doubt about that.

  “So you two...how far did it go?” Sarah asked, all nonchalant.

  Becca sighed. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to happen. It was the night before we went into cryo. We kissed, that’s all.”

  Her neck heated with the lie, because what they’d done had been more than just a kiss. Just shy of what they wanted to do. It made her ache just thinking about it.

  Sarah shrugged. “Look, it’s cool. The pact was dumb anyway. We’re all adults here, and if you two like each other then that’s fine by me.” She smiled, but her gaze was haunted. “Just don’t get all couply and smoochy on me, okay? Just not until we land and I have more people our age to hang with.”

  Becca chuckled. “We land in three days, Sarah.”

  She stuck out her tongue. “Yeah, so it shouldn’t be too hard, right?”

  “Right.”

  Wrong.

  He found her later in her cabin. She probably shouldn’t have let him in, but his body filled the doorway, his gaze hungry as it swept over her, bringing forth the ache at the apex of her thighs. She let him in, and he reminded her what she’d almost forgotten—the brush of his fingers across her sensitised flesh, the heat of his mouth on her neck, her collar bone, her breasts. He kissed her as if he was drowning and she was his only oxygen, but he didn’t cross the line, even though his hardness told her he was more than ready. It would be the first time for them both.

  Afterward, heart pounding, and blood thrumming, they lay in each other’s arms, still aching for a release they’d agreed to deny each other.

  Travis nuzzled the sensitive spot behind her ear.

  “We could alter the pact you know,” she said. This was a new pact—one just between the two of them.

  His hand ran over her hip and came to rest at the top of her thighs.

  “Yes...god. Yes...” She turned to face him, pressing herself against his ha
nd.

  His eyes darkened, drinking her in. “Becca...” His voice was tortured. “You have no idea how much I want to tear off your panties and slide inside you.”

  Her pulse skipped and jumped. “Do it.” She ground against his hand, those clever fingers caressing her through the thin fabric of her pants—just a slip of fabric between them—hardly any barrier at all.

  “Only three days,” he said. “Then we land and we can be together.”

  He wanted to claim her properly in a sanctioned union. Her heart felt as if it would explode with joy. They could be together and start a family on Earth 2. Their child could be one of the first natural born infants on their new planet. It was their duty to reproduce. It was why they’d been chosen for this voyage and why their siblings had been left behind.

  Three ships had left Earth—a terraforming ship and two cargo ships. The terraforming ship had gone years before to prepare the planet for the cargo ships. A city would be waiting for them, ready to be inhabited by the cargo. The first ship carried the fertile population of Earth—barely twenty percent of the world’s population. Men, women and children, over the age of thirteen. There had been no babies born for almost a decade. And that was where their cargo came in—hundreds of fertilised embryos in stasis created from eggs and sperm from the last fertile humans on the planet, from the humans on board the other cargo ship. The embryos were the last batch of humans guaranteed to be fertile thanks to Sarah’s father’s breakthrough research. The serum he’d perfected undid the effects that the chemicals pumped into earth had done to human genes, the effects that had rendered over eighty percent of humanity infertile. Humans were dying out as a race, and the planet was beyond saving. Staying would mean risking humanity’s demise. Dr Lloyd had synthesised the serum, and using harvested eggs and sperm, created embryos on which to test his theory. But not all embryos had been reactive, and it had come to light that a new gene, more persistent than the first, had developed. It had been the last straw for humanity as they’d realised that the loner they remained on Earth, 1 the more damage would be done. Earth 2, which had been a back-up plan, became the only plan. The reactive embryos were put into stasis, and years later here they were. The cargo they carried was humanity’s last hope. A hope they’d waited a long time for. So what was the harm in waiting a little longer?

  Becca snuggled into Travis. “Yes, we should wait.”

  The intercom above her bed buzzed to life. “Travis Darwin, Becca Rivers and Sarah Lloyd, please report to Meeting Room A.”

  Travis sat up, his handsome face darkening into a frown. “Something’s wrong.”

  “What? You don’t know that?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve just had this bad feeling ever since I woke up.”

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out.”

  Becca knew that look on her mother’s face. She’d seen it when her father had been diagnosed with cancer and when her nan had taken a tumble down a flight of steps and broken her neck. It was the ‘things are really fucked up and I wish I didn’t have to tell you’ look.

  “Please sit,” her mother said.

  Darwin and Jenkins were present, but BEK, Lloyd and Reynolds weren’t.

  “Mum, what’s going on?” Becca asked as they took their seats.

  Her mother drew a deep breath. “There were several unexpected occurrences during the course of our journey—an asteroid storm which BEK was successful in navigating resulting in minimal damage to the ship, and space debris which the scanners didn’t pick up in time to avoid. We were hit, several times. The impact took out aspects of our communications systems. They also caused disruption in the embryo cryo unit. But BEK rerouted power from the damaged communication cells to keep the cryo unit running.”

  “Did we lose any embryos?” Sarah asked.

  She nodded. “About ten percent.”

  “Oh shit.” Travis ran a hand over his face.

  So this was the bad news? No. The look on her mum’s face told her there was more, and her mother’s next words confirmed it.

  “Our navigational systems have been damaged which means that I’ll have to manually land the ship. I’m confident that I can do this, but diagnostics show that we may also have lost thirty percent of our shield capacity.”

  The shield that would protect them when entering the planet’s atmosphere? The shield that stopped the ship burning up?

  Her mother inclined her head as if in answer to Becca’s unspoken question, but then her mum had always been a master at reading Becca’s facial expressions.

  “What are the odds of us making a safe landing?” Travis asked.

  “Fifty percent.”

  Oh god. “We have two days though, right? Can’t we do something to fix the problem?”

  She smiled, but her eyes didn’t light up. “Reynolds and BEK are working on it. Lloyd is doing what he can to safeguard the cargo in the event...” She cleared her throat and stood taller. “In the event that some of us don’t make it.”

  “What do you mean some of us?”

  She kept her gaze on a spot above Becca’s head. “In the event we should crash, the front of the ship would take the brunt of the impact and any crew on board the bridge would be killed on collision. There may be other casualties, but BEK is unable to calculate for sure where the second danger zone will be on the ship and advises remaining in the lounge or cabin areas as they are the most cushioned.”

  Wait, was she saying? “No!” Becca was on her feet. “You can’t do this. There has to be another way.”

  Her jaw tightened, and her eyes flashed, reminding Becca who she was. That she was Captain Rivers’ daughter—the daughter of the most decorated space pilot in the world.

  “The cargo is the priority,” her mother said. “The cargo must be delivered and protected at all costs. Do you understand me?”

  Throat dry and thick with emotion, Becca nodded. “I understand.” Her eyes burned with the need to cry. No. Not here. Not now.

  Jenkins stood slowly. “Come with me. You’re all due for your post-cryo medical.”

  “What’s the point if we’re going to crash anyway?” Sarah asked.

  Becca turned on her, eyes blazing. “We are not going to crash. Because we have the best fucking pilot at the helm.”

  Darwin cleared his throat. “I’ll be in the chapel...if anyone needs to talk.” He left the room.

  Two days left. Two days until they knew whether they were going to live or die.

  Chapter 2

  “What does this mean?” Sarah asked her father.

  She was agitated, really agitated. Becca could see it in the tightness around her friend’s eyes, and the whiteness of her clenched knuckles.

  “We’ll be fine,” Lloyd said. His eyes remained fixed on the monitors that provided data on the embryos. “Captain Rivers is an excellent pilot. If anyone can land this baby, then it’s her.” His tone was flat though, almost a rehearsed speech.

  They were standing above the embryo cryogenic chamber—a whole floor containing embryos in various stages of development. Becca pressed her hands to the thick glass separating them from the room below.

  “The next generation,” Travis said.

  “Yeah.” But not if they crashed and burned.

  Dr Lloyd made a note in his ring binder and then tucked it back under his desk. “Go grab a bite to eat. Watch a movie. Just do something to take your mind off things. Leave this to us. Everything will be fine.”

  But once again his expression belied his words. Why had she bothered following Sarah down here? The only person that could put her mind at rest was the woman who’d be navigating this thing in less than forty-eight hours.

  Becca headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Travis asked.

  “I need to see my mother.”

  “She’ll be with BEK. Not to be disturbed,” Lloyd said.

  Why did he look so shifty?

  “Why? What are they doing?”

  Lloyd sig
hed. “You’ll need to ask your mother about that.”

  “Dad?” Sarah’s brows came down in a frown. “We’re not kids. You need to tell us how serious this really is. What the heck is going on?”

  Lloyd dropped into his swivel seat. “My vote was to tell you everything. But the others were worried you’d panic and lose it.”

  Becca’s stomach dropped. “Tell us.”

  “The damage is worse than the captain let on. There’s a hull breach that’s been patched, but will most likely reopen upon entry into the planet’s atmosphere. Some of the navigational equipment for manual override has also been affected, which will make it harder for the captain to keep the ship on course. A crash is inevitable. The only thing we don’t know is how bad it will be.”

  “Oh god.” Sarah clutched her stomach and Lloyd pulled her into his arms. “You stay in the lounge when we land. It’s the safest place to be. Jenkins and Reynolds will be with you.”

  “What about you?” Sarah asked.

  “I need to be here with the cargo.”

  Her bottom lip jutted out in defiant mode that Becca had come to recognise. “Well in that case, I’m staying with you.”

  “Sarah, please...”

  She crossed her arms under her breasts. “I’m staying with you.” Her voice quivered.

  Travis cleared his throat. “I need to speak to my dad.”