Resolve (Lost Fagare Ship Book 1)

by Edward Antrobus

  “You do know that’s just an expression, right?”

  “They were about our size.” Jim pointed his light at a control box almost chest high on the wall near the hatch. “It probably just caught on something. Soil’s mostly clay, but there’s been a lot of rock on this excavation.”

  Bobby and Chris both nodded, remembering their own problems they’d had to overcome while digging out the foundation for the mansion that Mario Martinez had been hired to build. The remaining two flicked on their flashlights and the four beams started crisscrossing each other about the room. The beams illuminated shafts of dust hovering in the air. Grey metal walls formed a square some thirty feet across, empty save for some sort of...

  “It’s a shuttle,” Bobby said. “I can’t wait till I get the chance to fly that.”

  “Crash it, more likely,” Chris muttered.

  Bobby either didn’t hear or chose to ignore the taunt. He took a step towards it. Jim put his hand on the shorter man’s shoulder. “Hold up. You won’t get very far in that with the door stuck half open and the entire ship ten feet underground. Let’s keep exploring.” More loudly, he added. “Everyone, stick together. We don’t know what’s down here. Would be easy to get lost.”

  Their flashlights found an exit along the far wall. The door hung skewed from invisible hinges. Something had gouged the door on one side as if the ship’s previous occupants had left in a hurry. They exchanged glances. “Do we go in?” Melissa asked.

  Bobby and Jim just shrugged, but Chris spoke. “Hold up.” He hitched his pant leg up to reveal an ankle holster. He pulled out a Colt .45 and dropped the leg back down, smoothing it over the empty holster before standing back up. He pressed his light against the grip of his pistol aimed at the floor in front of him. “We should be good now.”

  Jim sighed. “When we’re done here, we need to have a talk about carrying a gun around at work.”

  “Pfft. You probably don’t want me to have my Bowie knife strapped to the other leg, either.”

  Jim sucked in his breath, puffing out his chest, before releasing it slowly. “No. There’s no reason to carry around stuff that isn’t for work.”

  “Fine, but don’t go complaining if we need it and you made me leave it with my bike.”

  “I’ll take that chance. After you.” Jim held his arm out.

  Chris slid up to the hanging door and pressed his back to it. He raised his pistol to the ceiling before turning towards the opening. He turned his head as he swung the light through the door. He rolled his entire body in one fluid motion until he was in a tactical stance. “Clear,” he shouted.

  Bobby snickered but followed him through the door with the others. The opening gave way to a hallway. Three doors lined the right side, while a single, off-center one stood lonely to the left. They tried each one, but they were either locked or required some sort of power from the ship to open.

  At the end, another broken door revealed what even Jim had to admit could only be described as the bridge to some sort of science fiction spaceship. Three workstations took up the bulk of the room. They seemed too low to stand at but no chairs were evident near them. The sole seat stood in the center of the room. It reminded Jim of a throne at which a king could command his men to battle. It carried none of the ornateness which he would have expected from the description that came to his mind, but every ounce of the chair, from its deep cushions to the polished armrests, screamed command to him.

  The chair felt like home. He scoffed at the word. A series of foster parents had raised him and throughout his adult life he’d moved around more than he’d stayed put. Even during the decade in which he had been married to Melissa’s mother, and then raising the girl as his own after cancer had taken the one woman he’d ever loved, they hadn’t lived anywhere longer than a few years. He supposed the RV, purchased after Melissa had decided she was too old to live with her father, held the record at six years, but he wasn’t sure it counted when it moved from job to job every few months.

  But this chair was home. Suddenly, he understood why he’d been so restless over the past forty-eight years. He’d been looking the entire time for the one place where he would truly be at home. And this chair was it.

  The others milled about the workstations, seemingly drawn to them as he was to the room’s centerpiece. He barely noticed them. Barely noticed his own feet moving towards the seat. He reached out to the armrest. He ran his hand down the material that was like leather but also not, exotic but completely natural at the same time. His fingers grazed the metal grips. A shock went through him.

  The lights turned on without warning, momentarily blinding him. Whirring and humming emanated the ship, causing the ground to thrum. The telltale buzz of ventilation kicked in and the staleness of the air began to recede.

  Chris whirled around and looked for something to shoot. He’d sat the pistol down while examining the console that had drawn him in, but his hand blurred as it grasped for it. He dropped the flashlight, no longer needing it, and brought both hands to the gun’s grip. As new systems came online and made sounds, he turned at each.

  “There’s nothing there, Chris,” Jim said. His hand gripped the armrest, as if the act of holding it kept it from fading out of existence. “Can’t you feel it? We are safe here. We’re meant to be here.”

  Another system came online and the workstations where his crew stood hummed to life. Chairs rose from the floor like molten plastic below the three in front of him. It reached Bobby first. As the liquid wrapped around his fingers, he yanked his arm away. It stretched like taffy but clung to his skin.

  “Hey,” he shouted. He pulled again, but the substance held and snapped back, bringing his arm back down with it. It ran up his arm and jumped across to his waist. The thick substance coated his legs as it ran down them and connected with the gooey puddle on the floor. More flowed around him, pushing his legs out in front of him and lowering him a good foot closer to the floor.

  Jim’s brain told him that he should be alarmed, that he should do something to help. But he felt an odd sense of peace, that whatever was happening was supposed to be happening. They would not be harmed. He saw Melissa and Chris hung in similar states.

  Melissa panicked. “Help, daddy. Help me.” Her breaths came quick and shallow. Jim knew better than anyone the depth of Melissa’s terror and the stress that could do to her system. But he didn’t help her. He sat completely unfettered, but it was almost as if he couldn’t move. The goo continued to coat her body, and she shut down. The liquid flowed over her as she hung limply in it. Unlike the other two, Chris seemed to be experiencing the same calm as Jim.

  Chris allowed the liquid to flow over his lower half and up his back. He relaxed his muscles and let the substance support him. Allowing it to do its work sped up the process. While Bobby was still coated in an amorphous blob of goo, it formed into the shape of a pedestal chair under Chris and, more slowly, Melissa.

  Chris’s seat finished and the goo receded from the upper portions of his arms and legs. It left no residue, but didn’t remove anything from his skin, either. The smudge of grease from the skidsteer still coated the back of his hand.

  Chris leaned into it and kicked his legs up, forcing his chair into the shape of a recliner. He brought his arms up behind his head. Unlike previous attempts by the others to free themselves of the material, they came away easily, leaving armrests that flowed back and forth like water. “Pretty comfy. I could get used to this.”

  Melissa’s chair finished next. The gel-like substance retreated from her as it had Chris, but she remained catatonic. Without standing, Jim snapped his fingers. “Mel, Mel. You’re okay.”

  She blinked twice and looked around as if lost. She yanked her arm away from where it sat. It came free as easily as Chris’s, but when she put it down again, the material molded to her skin as before. She pursed her lips. “I can’t stand being all enclosed like that. But, it is pretty comfortable. I never realized how uncomfortable every other chair h
as been until I found one that was tailored to my body.”

  To her left, Bobby was suspended sideways, continuing to fight against it. He yanked hard against the molten plastic and his arm broke free. Momentum threw his arm behind his back where it was quicky recaptured.

  “Doofus, it’s just a chair. It ain’t going to eat you. Let it happen,” Chris said.

  “I hate to admit it, but Chris is right,” Melissa added.

  Booby took a deep breath and relaxed his muscles. Having finally won the battle against its occupant, the chair formed around him and released its hold in seconds.

  Jim relaxed in his own mount. It didn’t conform to his body quite like the others had, but he sank into the deep cushions. He grunted. “If we get nothing else from this ship, I want this chair in the RV.”

  More of the ship’s systems flickered to life around them. The blank slates of the workstations glowed, and alien language filled their screens. Jim wasn’t quite ready to leave his spot, but leaned forward to try to watch over their shoulders.

  “I’ve got some sort of navigation over here, dad. Here are all the constellations you taught me as a kid,” Melissa said. She twisted towards him but was no more willing to stand than he.

  “These look like pilot controls,” Bobby added. His face stayed creased as he pouted at his treatment by the chair and being the last to figure it out, but his voice belied his excitement at the prospect of flying. His hands slid over the gauges and dials on the screen. “Setup looks a little like my flight simulator.” His voice fell a little. He’d trained over a thousand hours on a homemade cockpit to become a commercial pilot only to be rejected for astigmatism. Contacts made it so the casual observer would never know that his vision was less than perfect, but he’d still failed the rigorous physical.

  “Wonder what I got.” Chris poked at his screen. A rumble in front of them shook the ship slightly.

  The others looked at each other. “What are you doing over there?" Jim barked. A panel that dominated the front wall lit up showing a view of the rock outside with a rod protruding from the corner. Chris punched the button on his screen again and a flash of light left the rod. The rock in front of them glowed and blew apart, leaving a large crater in the earthen wall. “Cool.”

  “Chris, why is your first response to blow stuff up?" Bobby said.

  “I didn’t know what it would do. I was just pressing buttons.”

  “Yeah, you were just blindly doing whatever with no thoughts of consequences.” Bobby’s voice rose in pitch and volume as he spoke. “What if that was a self-destruct button?"

  Chris shrugged. “Wouldn’t it be labeled self-destruct or have a big sign that says, do not press?"

  “I can’t read what my screen says. Can you? It could have for all you knew.”

  “Guys,” Melissa interjected. “Did anyone else feel like the station they went to was where they belonged?"

  “Uh, huh.” “Yeah.” “You, too?" Came the responses around the room.

  Melissa took a breath and relaxed against her station. The plastic released from her body and drained back into the floor. She stood and took a step away from her spot. She held her hand over the place in the floor from where the seat had come and the plastic started to rise. She shivered and pulled her hand away letting the molten plastic sink again. “I think the ship knows us somehow and sent us to the spot where we are most suited. Navigation, controls, weapons. And, Dad, you are obviously the captain.”

  Jim pursed his lips. “Yeah, I guess.”

  Melissa continued, “If that’s the case, the ship isn’t going to let us do anything too stupid, I think.”

  He nodded. “Sounds reasonable.” Jim turned to his demolition expert. “You think you can figure out the controls enough to clear the rest of this rock around the ship?"

  “It will be my absolute pleasure trying.” Chris smirked. He fiddled with buttons on his screen which resulted in a series of small tremors. He tried again and his display popped from the screen to form a 360 hologram around him. “Whoa.”

  Virtual joysticks hovered in the air around him. He looked to the others.

  Jim shrugged. This was all well beyond his ability to comprehend. Bobby, for once, was more helpful. He nodded at the taller man and shooed him towards the controls.

  Chris grunted in response and put his hands up until they were just over the holographic controls. He breathed and put his hands on them.

  Jim expected the hands to go right through the images, like a ghost moving through the walls, but Chris’s hands held on to them as firmly as if they were really there. He moved them about in small motions and tracked the digital sight across his heads-up display. He aimed at one outcropping between the turret and the starboard nacelle and fired. The rock vaporized leaving a clear sight to the rear of the ship.

  “Our next dig will be a piece of cake with this baby.” Chris’s grip on the controls tightened and he went to work on the other impediments locking the ship to the ground. Within minutes, the ship was clear.

  Bobby’s screen had displayed red but now glowed green.

  “See if you have a button with a picture that looks kinda like a turtle and a giraffe had a baby,” Chris said.

  Melissa snorted, but Bobby found the icon and pressed it. A display popped up before him as well. It looked similar, but was obviously designed for controlling the ship as it flew through space. He tried his controls, but his workstation buzzed and the display flashed.

  “Mel, if you're navigation, maybe you need to chart a course before Bobby can fly,” Jim said.

  “Makes sense.” She approached her console, having gravitated towards the center of the room when she spoke. She stopped just before her station and looked at the floor. Now that Jim knew to look for something, he saw a faint circle around the stations. The dark navy of the carpet-like surface was just a hint lighter inside the circle. She turned to Jim and pouted. Her body seemed to shrink inside itself at the prospect of what she was about to do.

  He gave a small nod. She took a step forward into the circle. She closed her eyes and held out her hand. She scrunched her face as if in pain as the rising liquid met her. Perhaps it was because they knew what to expect, or perhaps Melissa’s theory about the ship having some knowledge of them, but the process went much faster and smoother. In less time than it would have taken to settle into a regular chair, her seat formed below her without sucking her in as before.

  “Okay, that wasn’t so bad. Maybe I can get used to it. So, where do you want to go, dad?”

  “We need to get this to the authorities. We try to take off, they’re just going to go after us anyhow,” Bobby said.

  “I can take them,” Chris said. He pushed his boot against the floor and the seat spun around in a languid circle before coming to a stop facing away from the alien computer. “I bet nobody on earth has artillery like me now.”

  “We’re not shooting anybody,” Jim said.

  “I’m just sayin’, if it comes down to it, we have the superior firepower.”

  “I said, we are not shooting anybody,” Jim shouted.

  Chris looked a little cowed at Jim’s reaction. “Okay, okay. Chill out.”

  Melissa rolled her eyes and returned her attention to her console. She found the button that the other two had pressed and activated her screen. A star map surrounded her head. She fiddled with her controls in much the same manner as Chris had until the star field zoomed in to the familiar shape of their solar system. The hologram continued to show more detail until a virtual moon orbited a virtual Earth.

  Satellites winked into existence on her map. “Looks like the ship is scanning the sky and finding out what is new since its last survey.”

  “I wonder how long it would take to reach the moon. It took Apollo astronauts three days, right?” Jim asked.

  “Yeah,” Melissa said. She poked around on her screen some more but gave up on finding what she was looking for. She slumped back in her seat. “I guess we’re not going anyw
here after all.” Her lower lip jutted out.

  The others looked at her. She scrunched her shoulders up and crossed her arms over her chest. “Come on. Chris and Bobby’s controls are pretty obvious. All I’ve got is a map. So unless you’ve got any ideas, don’t judge me.”

  “Maybe you’re overthinking it,” Jim said. “If their controls are obvious, so should yours.”

  Her eyes lit up. She spread the map out with her hands until the cratered lunar surface took up most of her virtual surface. Her finger traced a line from the Earth, just peeking above the lower limit of the hologram. A blue line painted the screen where her touch had been. Her arm arced in front of her until she reached the moon.

  Melissa hovered over it for a second before sending their course past it and curving back to the far side. The view shifted as she turned until the Earth rose over the horizon. She kept around until connecting back to the original line above the moon. A small white pulse circled the moon within the blue line. “Try it now, Bobby.”

  He shook his head. “We need to be reporting this. Not going out for a joyride.”

  “Come on, nerd. You can’t say that you are not dying to go into space and land on the moon. That’s got to be, like, geek heaven.” Chris aimed his virtual turret at him and made laser sounds with mouth while pretending to press the trigger.

  “Of course, I want to go. But we have to do the right thing.”

  Jim scratched the day’s growth on his chin. “How long would it take to get there? I’m not saying we’re going. I’m just curious.”

  Bobby sighed. “Hard to tell when you can’t read the words on the screen, but it looks like maybe a couple hours at the slowest speed.”

  Chris leaned forward. “How fast at the fastest?”

  “It won’t even let me do more than maybe a quarter speed. Faster than that, and it would probably activate the FTL drive and destroy the planet.”

  Chris frowned. “Yeah, let’s not do that.”

  “Let’s do it.” Jim sat up. “Not destroying the planet. Let’s go to the moon.”