Viole(n)t Skies (The Galactic Era Book 1)

by Derek Baker

  “I do…well I did, anyway. Not sure what’s gonna happen with that.”

  His smirk fell. “How come?”

  I shrugged solemnly. “I don’t really feel like talking about it.”

  Fortunately this answered sufficed for him. “Okay then.”

  His hand went into his back pocket, pulling out his wallet. I watched him closely as he extracted two 100 FEN’s and extended them towards me. I stepped forward, cautiously grabbing the money.

  His eyes studied mine from behind his glasses, penetrating mine like lasers. I was very uncomfortable to say the least.

  I tip-toed around and headed for the door without saying a word.

  “Delvon, wait,” he called after me.

  I turned back around, expecting him to change his mind. I half-expected to meet his fist. But he still stood there in the same spot, shoving his wallet back into his pocket.

  “Yeah?” I answered impatiently. I had a train to catch back to my side of town.

  “Remember, this IS the last time. Next month you’ll just have to get a job doing something other than astrophysics, boy. ‘Cause your old man lost his job today.”

  My face filled with horror. “What? Why? What happened?” Panic entered my voice.

  “Laid off. Not enough profits. You’d think they’d treat their veteran employees better than that.” He looked indifferent.

  I walked back over to him, gave him a rare hug. “Sorry Dad. What are you gonna do?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. I’ll figure it out though. You don’t have to worry about me. It’s you that I’m worried about. Get cracking on that job, son. Now go.” He waved me away.

  “Alright then…” I let go of him, walking out the door.

  “Last time!” he yelled out.

  “Got it!” I answered.

  And indeed it was the last time. After leaving my house that day, it would be almost a year before I saw my parents or Claire again.

  Chapter 6

  Alexander agreed to pick me up at my place so we could secure all of our equipment for the stargazing weekend ahead of us. I was amazed to find an exception to most of the vehicles I had seen throughout my life other than in museums: a truck with a space in the back I believed to be called a bed, storing anything that would fit. As Alexander told me, it had taken a special circumstance for him to acquire this antique.

  Because Alexander grew up hundreds of miles west in the agricultural region in America, he was the only person I knew who had even been on a farm. As a young boy, his first job was assisting an older man in operating his machinery in order to harvest the crops every fall. Since Alexander had never met his grandparents for reasons of which I am uncertain, this old farmer was the closest thing he had to a grandfather. When harvest season came around, they spent every day out in the fields, talking as the man shared his wisdom with the young Alexander. The old man had apparently come from a long line of farmers, tracing his roots back to the late 1800’s when his ancestors crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Europe. I think they were of German descent; not that it really mattered to anyone anymore as Europe had become a whole nation in itself. As the years went by, Alexander’s foster grandfather began to have heart problems and died because he couldn’t afford to have a heart transplant. Alexander was devastated since he had never really had a connection with anyone else, including his parents. Much to everyone’s surprise, the old farmer had written in his will that his old truck that been kept in his family for 150 years would go to Alexander when he was old enough, by then a young ten year old. Alexander was equally as surprised, seeing as the old man had adult sons. The reason that Alexander had been chosen over the sons was never clear to anyone. When the time came, though, the truck became Alexander’s only link to his loving foster grandfather, as well as to the long and nearly forgotten past: to the history of the greatness that this land used to possess.

  The affection that I shared with my family was perhaps bleak as well, though that was much the case for any families stuck in the factories. No time to see each other, no chance to build a real family, no real way to pass one’s values down the generations. Many who craved love never gave themselves a chance to share their own with others. Growing up, my parents could only be together eight hours a day, which never quite worked out seeing as one of them would have to sleep. Time with Dad was usually time without Mom, and vice versa. Alexander’s parents had been in separate lines of work, but so engrossed in their respective fields that they never seemed to have time for each other or for their only son. Being an only child, it made sense that no one but a poor old farmer seemed to share the bonds of a true parent and child relationship with Alexander. I was coincidentally an only child as well, but I had no farmer, much of my time was spent in school or by myself. The origin of people, as I have seen throughout life, can make the reason behind the choices they make as adults all too clear.

  It was late afternoon when Alexander picked me up and the conversation we had at the photography shop seemed to continue when we began down the road. The drive out to the wilderness took about two hours; it was only the third time I had ever even left the city. The first time had been for a school trip to learn about biology, and it was probably the first time for most of my fellow students as well seeing as travel was a bit complicated in a stagnant economy. When I was in my rebellious pre-teen years I embarked on my second trip out of the city without letting my parents know where I had ran off to. I got hungry and exhausted after a few days and the consequences weren’t too pretty when I came home. Though it was very expensive for both of us sharing the cost of this third trip of mine, Alexander and I both knew this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

  Why couldn’t Claire have understood that? I suppose I couldn’t blame her. She was ignorant of the vastness of the universe and the secrets of it that kept my mind full of questions without answers as long as I had been studying the subject. I had to try to shut her out, though. I told myself over and over again that this was the right choice, that I had been waiting all my life to see Halley’s Comet and if it had been any other weekend I would have gladly spent it with Claire and her parents. I wondered what they would be doing, imagining the puzzled looks on her parents’ faces when Claire told them about my hobby. It occurred to me that she might have actually been close with them, making the guilt I was trying to suppress ever more present in the pit of my stomach.

  It occurred to me that all Alexander and I had really talked about up to this point in our relationship was our mutual love for astronomy, and the origins of his amazing antique truck. Naturally, I wanted to know more, as it was a rare opportunity for me to have a nice conversation with anyone at all, to be honest.

  During a break in the space-related topic, I took the chance to change the subject: “So uh…anything else you like besides astronomy?”

  “Huh? What do you mean?” his casual intelligent manner prevented him from directly answering those open-ended questions.

  “Do you have any other hobbies? Do you have any family nearby? Girlfriend? Or what?” I kept my eyes on his hands upon the steering wheel. The constant subtle gestures back and forth, occasionally a full spin. I’d never learned to drive; I wondered how that sensation must have felt.

  “Well…my family’s still out west. No girlfriend. As for hobbies…you’re participating in it,” his eyes stared out on the dark road ahead of us.

  “Really?” I asked incredulously, “No other interests?”

  His hands shifted positions on the wheel.

  “Well…I was in college,” he finally admitted uneasily.

  My eyes sparked up. “Oh really? Where at?”

  “Poston University.”

  The rest of my face joined my eyes. “No shit? I went there too!”

  He shrugged uncomfortably. I could tell there something he didn’t want to reveal.

  Sensing this, I perhaps inappropriately ventured to ask: “You dropped out, didn’t you?”

  He sighed, then grud
gingly nodded his head.

  Apologetically, I offered my condolences, “It’s okay, man, a lot of people don’t finish these days.”

  “I guess you’re right,” he said monotonically.

  An awkward silence crept into the truck between us. All I could hear was the wind colliding with the vehicle and the soft purr of the engine. Occasionally the truck creaked and rocked, adding a feeling of antiquity to my surroundings.

  I worked up the courage to enquire further: “Would you feel comfortable telling me why you dropped out?”

  He tilted his head to one side. “Um…I guess not. It was because of the Havenist movement.”

  “Those people who like that guy Johnny Haven on the television?” I raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

  “Yeah, those guys,” he said.

  The Havenist movement going on was somewhat recent. I hadn’t really experienced much of it for myself when I was attending Poston University. I deduced that it must have grown much worse since I graduated.

  “So why was it such a problem?” I asked.

  He sighed, growing annoyed with my probing. “’Cause they’re all into drugs! Don’t you know?”

  I was taken aback by his sudden rise in volume. “Sorry,” I muttered, “I guess I didn’t.”

  He stole a couple glances at me to see that I was serious. His lips formed a thin slit.

  His voice lowered, he sounded apologetic now. “No, I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s fine,” I shrugged.

  “Have you seen those narcotics they use?” He asked me.

  I thought about it for a moment, then replied, “No, I haven’t.”

  At that moment, Alexander was probably thinking of the silver-like cylinders from which the Havenists smoked their psychedelic chemicals. He raised his hand to brush the topic away, as if saying, “Never mind.”

  I brought attention back to the fact that he had dropped out. “Promise me something, Alexander.”

  His eyes kept staring at the road. “What’s that?”

  “Promise me you’ll go back to school today and get that degree… what were you studying anyway?”

  “Political science,” he said.

  “Well then, promise you’ll finish and get that political science degree someday. You’ll be glad you did. I may not have a job with my astrophysics degree, but I still know I did the right thing.”

  He shrugged indifferently. “Okay. I promise.”

  Good enough for me, I thought.

  “I feel like some music,” Alexander said abruptly.

  He turned on the radio, switching bandwidths until he settled on one he liked. The music was relaxing: a slow, rhythmic drum and bass line. Here and there keyboard and guitar tones were heard. A woman’s voice complemented the backing musicians, a sweet yet penetrating set of words that pierced one’s mind.

  The music continued the rest of the trip.

  Darkness encompassed us, took us into its menacing arms. I could hardly recall such darkness, such a lack of light that left me uncomfortable. The city was a distant memory behind us, a different realm of our lives temporarily forgotten. It seemed hard to imagine that everything I knew or had known lay back there in Baltimore. Everything that I had learned or experienced. Something new loomed, beckoned us with its waving hand.

  I knew we were getting close to our destination. Soon the sign to the state park for which we had been searching sat alongside the road, weather and wind-torn; the road we had gotten on a while back was largely in the same state. How long it had been since anyone had been out that way we could not tell.

  Alexander rotated the wheel in the direction of the dirt road that the sign marked. The rough conditions underneath the truck’s tires shook me around in such a way that would never seem possible in the smooth intercity trains. A few moments of this, and then silence.

  Before us lay a small clearing in which we would set up camp. Our tent sat in the bed of the truck along with our carefully situated telescopes. Within an hour we had everything set up exactly the way we wanted it.

  I looked up into the night sky. So many stars! Besides the thin sliver of a moon in the southeast, there shone the most brilliant and dazzling object directly overhead. It was Halley’s Comet.

  The comet was clear and immense as it illuminated the night sky, much to my awe. As it had done for thousands, millions, maybe billions of years, Halley’s Comet made its cosmic voyage across the solar system and passed by Earth. It shined so bright, brighter than the moon, with its glowing ball at its front and shimmering tail trailing in the rear. Never would I forget such a sight. Sometimes when I close my eyes it still streaks behind my eyelids when I want to remember it.

  Adjusting our telescopes every so often to match the comet’s subtle movements, Alexander and I remained silent and glued to this astronomical wonder for the next few hours. The night was cool, the crickets chirping and frogs croaking around us, the slight breeze swaying the branches of the trees and the blades of grass. We stayed there in the darkness except for the light provided by the sky. It was such a normal evening for everyone else in the world, but not for us.

  And then it happened. Taking a quick glance away from my lens to adjust the telescope’s position, I caught out of the corner of my eye a glowing object in the sky that I had not noticed before. Perplexed, I stood there concentrating on this object, going over in my head what it might be but nothing came to mind. Then, to what I thought was my imagination, the object began to grow in size, almost as if it were coming closer to where we were.

  “Alexander,” I whispered, “Do you see that?”

  He looked up to where I was pointing. His reaction was much the same as mine, and turned his head back towards me. “What the hell is that?”

  “No idea.”

  In an instant we forgot about Halley’s Comet and turned our telescopes towards the object. Peering in, the perplexity that I experienced before more than doubled when I saw an irregularly shaped object almost hovering through the air. It wasn’t a plane, that I could be sure of; it didn’t look like anything I had ever seen before. And it kept coming closer, its intensely looming silhouette grew larger.

  Then Alexander and I looked at each other and I said what was on both our minds, “You think this is a-”

  At that instant the object that had been approaching suddenly and without warning whizzed over our heads from about a hundred yards above our heads. By now it was clear that this was an air craft of some sort, yet it hardly made any sound save for a continuous humming that variably changed pitches. It wasn’t like those flying saucers I had seen in old movies, but shaped more aerodynamically. It was about twenty-five feet long, and by my best estimate ten to twelve feet wide. My apologies for those unfamiliar with the American measuring system of the time, but that’s the best way I can think of it. It sparkled with multi colored lights that would perhaps fool people to believe it was a plane if were flying thousands of feet high. At its tip there was what appeared to be a cockpit, though I wasn’t sure, and the rest of it glimmered due to its strange textured surface that reflected its lights in an almost beautiful yet startling display. I wanted to believe it was some sort of government experimental plane, but there was too much about it that suggested it was wrought by something other than human hands.

  After passing the spot where we had set up camp this craft began to slow down considerably, and as Alexander and I watched in bewilderment, it had stopped moving in mid air about a half mile from our location. I half expected it to drop to the ground with a subsequent explosion, but then the lights suddenly changed colors and it made a slow and gentle descent to the ground. The humming, or whatever sound that the craft had been producing, was now gone.

  I became aware that I was breathing very heavily, almost panting. Perspiration was building up on the back of my neck, a cold sweat of which I was barely conscious. I drug down my eyes to meet Alexander’s, the curiosity mixed with shock was evident in our facial expressions.

  Something clic
ked for both us; it was like this was meant to be. I looked up once more at Halley’s Comet, undisturbed by the new events transpiring here on the ground. I got out my tablet in the stunned silence, pointed it up at the comet. With a tick, I took a picture, then another. Alexander watched me silently. Then I put the tablet back in my bag, ready to take another picture at a moment’s notice.

  I looked back at Alexander, his face now calm, determined. I mimicked his expression. We both knew what we had to do.

  Chapter 7

  It was all we could do to keep from making a noise; Alexander couldn’t help but step on a twig and I clumsily tripped over a large root that extended from the base of one of the trees we passed under, though it was impossible to tell which one in the darkness. We crept along as carefully and subtly as two college age guys who were unaccustomed to the outdoors could possibly muster.

  Certain we were heading in the right direction, we had left behind our telescopes and other equipment in a rush as the object we had seen land from the night sky had quickly, and quite obviously, become our newest priority. With so many things going through my mind, I hardly cared if I ever saw my telescope again depending on what I would discover when I came upon the landing site of this craft we had watched flying over us.

  “Holy shit,” I thought to myself, “This could be…no. Stop that. You’re getting ahead of yourself. It’s probably some government thing that we’re not supposed to be seeing.”

  As if Alexander was reading my mind at that precise moment, he lifted his headed from its hunched over position and whispered over to me, “Look man, we can’t get caught if this is some top secret stuff we’re stumbling upon here. If we see someone, it’s best off for both of us to just run.”

  “Every man for himself?” I hissed back.

  “If necessary.”

  “Agreed.”