Celestial Incursion

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “We need a way out, and I’m willing to wager they know where it is,” Peiun said. “Follow them but keep your distance.” That’s when Peiun remembered that they were twenty-eight light minutes away from the invader fleet. The footage from the viewer and scanners was nearly an hour old. A lot could have happened in that time. “Alesyna, can you sense them?”

  She entered a brief ESP trance and revealed. “Not clearly, but I do have a general idea where they are now, updating tactical map.”

  A blinking navigation point appeared on the view screen, transmitted by Alesyna’s HNI and based off her ESP sweep of the region.

  Louik’s hands remained idle at his post at the helm. “Should we not try to return to the point we entered?” he asked.

  “That entry point has long ago closed,” Alesyna said.

  “According to your psionic mind,” Louik spat. “Not our direct observation, we should continue the search and—”

  “Do you not trust the abilities of our psionic?” Peiun’s stern voice silenced him.

  “I just think it’s risky to follow a fleet of ships that made playthings out of the deadliest Imperial ships.”

  “We’ve been here for days and observing that fleet for hours, and they have not detected us,” Peiun said. “Their scanning equipment must be affected by the maelstrom, or perhaps they were indeed asleep and did so the moment they arrived. Either way, we have the advantage; they don’t know we’re here.”

  The Rezeki’s Rage changed course plunging through a thick patch of magenta and red clouds and entered sub light speeds. They followed the pulsing holographic navigation point that floated directly in the middle of the view screen, while viewing the now out-of-date footage of the fleet taken by external cameras that were set to observe them, still partially obscured by the substance outside.

  The silence on the bridge and long trek to their destination gave him ample time to wonder if the former captain and first officer had loyalty problems with the bridge crew. As it stood, Alesyna was the only person Peiun could trust. They had each other’s backs, the rest of the crew didn’t. It was a perfect plan for failure.

  “Captain,” Alesyna called out, bringing his mind back to the bridge almost two hours later.

  “What is it?”

  “I’ve noticed something interesting about the invader fleet.” Alesyna pushed a three-dimensional projection of the invader ships, created by her thoughts via the ESP scan. “You see that ship in the middle?”

  He pulled the projection closer to his face, staring curiously at the cluster of living ships. There were far too many bunched up for him to see the central ship. He glided his finger across the projection, highlighting all ships except the central one, and then selected an option on his HNI to temporarily hide them from view. The highlighted ships vanished, leaving behind one ship, the central ship, a familiar ship.

  It was of the same type they destroyed at Paryo, the one that spilled its contents across their hull. Tiny waves of the substance pulsed from the glowing sacks on the ship, splashing across every other invader ship that circled around it. He allowed the projection to return to its original state with the entire invader fleet present. A closer look revealed that each ship had traces of the substance clinging onto its fleshy exterior.

  “It’s protecting them from the environment,” Peiun said.

  “Exactly, when we destroyed it that strange substance inadvertently served as protection for us,” Alesyna said. “Had we entered without it, we’d be watching the last of the Rezeki’s Rage fade away into nothing.”

  Repair crews still were in the process of getting the shields back online. But given the fact that Alesyna had been maintaining overshields since she awoke from a quick nap and demonstrated that the force fields and her abilities were unable to stop the maelstrom from eating away at the cargo hold, he had doubts that shields would help.

  One thing was for certain, the Rezeki’s Rage could not remain inside of the maelstrom for a long period of time, unless they found more of the substance to coat the hull breach near the cargo hold. The only source of that substance existed within the ship in the center of the invader’s fleet, the ship that opened the vortex into the maelstrom.

  It was the charybdis he needed to seek out.

  And it was moving away from them fast.

  17 Williams

  Liana Foster’s House

  Halley, Terra Nova (formerly known as SA-139), Sirius A system

  August 8, 2118, 07:26 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Dominic Williams felt his body plunge into a pit of despair. The horrific images of Chicago burning replayed in his head, back when the human race discovered the hard way that aliens existed. He was a kid back then, watching Imperial ships eclipse the sun while transports carrying Hashmedai death squads lowered into the city streets, painting it red with human blood and partially vaporized limbs. His mother and father were amongst those slain as they tried to flee the doomed city to the safe haven of California.

  The images were too real.

  The pain and anger were unbearable.

  He yelled for help. But no help came.

  Williams awoke from his sleep. His body was drenched in sweat while his eyes and mind readjusted from the very real dream of being back in 2018, in the body of a ten-year-old kid. He kept his body still and tried to relax and slow his accelerated breathing, calming his racing heart to the sound of birds chirping, whatever passed for birds on this planet.

  It took him two minutes to remember why he was in the unfamiliar bedroom and soft comfortable bed. It came back to him. This was his home now on Terra Nova, the first human colony established in the Sirius system, a colony he officially gave the order to be built sixty-eight years ago.

  He slipped out of bed wearing only his boxes to peer out the second-floor window. Bright white and blue light from Sirius A shined down as it hovered high above in the skies, a star that was twice as massive as the sun Earth orbited. An immaculate suburban neighborhood appeared out the window. The snow that covered the ground was in the final stages of melting away as the grass below it was seen for the first time in years. A year on Terra Nova lasted eight Earth years, winter’s two-year reign had come to an end, ushering in two years of spring.

  Flying cars lifted away from their driveway parking lots of their respective homes. The cars entered the skies and soared into the downtown district of Halley, the largest city on the planet, and the first one built by the hands of the colonists the Carl Sagan deposited onto the planet. Williams turned away from the normalcy outside, and the one thing that helped calm his newly formed PTSD mind. He went to shower and get dressed, leaving behind on his bed a holo pad that displayed documents in regard to his forced medical leave from IESA.

  He slogged into the main floor kitchen where he gave Rebecca’s mother, Liana Foster, a subtle good morning. Rebecca had contacted Liana, informing her of his arrival at Terra Nova and she’d offered him a place to stay. Liana sat at the table finishing her breakfast and watching the holo TV play. Gene therapy did wonders for her age, she looked younger than him and Rebecca, sporting an eighteen-year-old body and hair styled in the same manner Foster had when she was of the same age. Between Liana and the dreams, it was hard for Williams to remember what the date and year was.

  “Feelin’ any better?” Liana said with her charming southern accent.

  Williams sat at the table, helping himself to bacon and eggs which had a noticeably different taste and texture to them. Guess that’s what happens when you have livestock born and raised on a different planet. “Same dreams,” he said. “I don’t understand why this is happening to me now.”

  “You were always the silent one when Rebecca and I took you in,” she said. “Maybe you were tryin’ so hard to repress all them awful things the Hashmedai did.”

  “That’s what everyone else says.”

  “Them invaders screwing with ya head, wiping yer minds clean didn’t help, I bet.” Liana gently tapped Williams arm. “Do
n’t worry, we’s gonna get you back to normal.”

  Liana touching him was a strange feeling. She looked like Rebecca when they first met, yet inside that body of hers was an old woman, one that took on the role of being his mother and guided him and Rebecca to stick with each other, watch each other’s backs while the UNE rose from the ashes of human society.

  “Have you spoken to Becca recently?” he asked after finishing his meal.

  “Just brief QEC emails,” Liana said. “Ya’ll not having HNI is making it hard to stay in contact, gotta wait till Rebecca has access to a terminal. Ya’ll should look into getting fixed up with ‘em when you get the chance. Oh, speaking of messages . . .”

  Liana used her HNI to create a holo window and pushed to Williams, a message that had been waiting for him. It was Dennis Chang, who Williams was supposed to be staying with originally. The message reminded Williams that he had agreed to assist Chang in settling in to his new place with his family, who ironically were part of the first generation of colonists to the planet. Williams, Chang, and Nereid had all shared the same transport that made the lengthy flight from Earth to Terra Nova via the wormhole network, though she was to be deported to the Undine world of Meroien, which orbited Sirius C.

  Wonder how’s she’s handling the change, hell, wonder how everyone is holding up, he thought as he went to reply to the message.

  Williams sat in the backseat of the car piloted by one of Chang’s relatives after they arrived to pick him up from Liana’s house, an hour later. He watched the house and community shrink in size as the car of the twenty-second century took to the skies and take flight rapidly into the downtown district of the city.

  “Thanks for coming out to help, Commander,” Chang said.

  “Just stick to Dominic; I’m a nobody right now.”

  “Dude, you helped make this city, hell, this whole colony a reality,” Chang said, pointing at the astonishing towers, high-rise office buildings, and condominiums in the horizon. “This whole planet is like Earth now; we made that shit happen, we are fucking celebrities.”

  Yeah, celebrities the government doesn’t trust, Williams thought, and shifted his attention to the driver. “So, is he your relative that was a colonist aboard the Carl Sagan?”

  Chang nodded. “The reason I transferred to the Carl Sagan in the first place? Yep, that’s him.”

  “Well, sir,” Williams said to the man in the driver’s seat. “I guess we owe you a lot of thanks.”

  “Oh?”

  “If Dennis here had remained on the Nikola Tesla as planned, I don’t think we would have survived the Sirius fiasco.”

  “I guess what he’s trying to say is that you’re the real hero because it allowed me to be on the team,” Chang said. “Hold up, Commander—”

  “Dominic.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Are you trying to say that I’m the real star of this story then?”

  Williams slumped back in his chair. “No, I’m just extending my thanks—”

  “Oh, no, no, no, you were totally hinting I was the real slayer out here,” Chang spat. “My flying, my skills, my epic rescue of Chevallier . . .. Well, I’ll be damned, it’s like I’m the main hero of some kind of space opera story and I didn’t know it.”

  “Is he always like this at home?” Williams asked his relative.

  “They’ll never know for certain, I’ll be spending most of my time at the UNE base, mentally preparing for my HNI surgery,” Chang said.

  Williams’ gut turned at the mention of him getting the implant. “You gonna go through with it?”

  “I don’t want to . . . but it’s the only way to get my ass in the seat of a fighter,” Chang said. “Or back in space for that matter. What really sucks is the amount of retraining I’ll have to do. Since people live longer lives, experience carries a lot more weight. It takes years just to get from the simulator then into a real cockpit.”

  Williams gazed out the window peering into the blue skies of the Earth-like world while faint white light from Sirius B shimmered in the distance, the second sun in the sky of a world that was once alien to them.

  “Wonder how many more years it will be before I get back into space . . .” Williams grumbled to himself.

  “With everything on your plate?” Chang said. “It’s going to be a long time, and then to get promoted to captain? Yeah, I hope you enjoy watching paint dry. You know who Martin Xavier is right?”

  “I read about him in the news before we left Earth.”

  “He was a commander back in 2033 when we went to sleep for seventeen years on our cruise to Sirius. Fast forward to today and he’s a captain, multiple decades of service weren’t enough time for him to make it to admiral with the new standard of life.”

  “People have developed unlimited patience,” said the driver and Chang’s relative. “It’s not uncommon to see people go to college or university at age forty because they spent the last twenty years or so partying. We control our age and, with that, control our destiny.”

  “So, what happens to sleep-ins, like us?” Williams asked.

  “Adapt, or sit on the sidelines,” Chang revealed.

  Williams grunted. “I’d pay good money for a time machine right now . . .” Travel back to 2018 and prevent the Radiance and Hashmedai arrival so that we could continue to live alone on Earth not knowing what’s out there.

  The skies of Terra Nova became obstructed with the buildings of the city, as their car flew into a heavily populated and high traffic area. They rapidly sped past a restaurant, one with a familiar logo and name.

  Hot Sun Restaurant and Bar.

  “Bro, did you see that?” Williams shouted to Chang, while his excited and racing mind flared up.

  “The girl in the red jacket with the tits? Yes, sir, I did.”

  “No, that restaurant’s name we just passed.”

  “Oh no, didn’t catch it, was kinda distracted by the girl.”

  “It was called Hot Sun.”

  “And . . .?”

  “Chef Bailey, he had a restaurant on Earth called that before we recruited him.”

  “Oh . . . I see where you’re going with this,” Chang said. “Chef wasn’t on board when we vanished.”

  “No, we dropped him off on the Poniga homeworld with a team of explorers before we went to investigate that ship.”

  “You think he’s still kicking around?”

  “A lot of the original colonists are thanks to gene therapy, who’s to say he isn’t?”

  The driver chimed in. “Want me to turn around?”

  “Let’s get Dennis settled in first, it is what we came out for,” Williams said.

  Chang concurred. “I suppose, it’s not like it’s going anywhere anytime soon.”

  Hot Sun Restaurant and Bar

  Halley, Terra Nova, Sirius A system

  August 9, 2118, 10:01 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Williams and Chang returned to the restaurant the next day, during the middle of a roaring lunch service. The two both eyed the contact information of the restaurant on a flickering holographic projection next to the front door. The name of the chef was a person neither of the two knew.

  “Well, that’s encouraging,” Williams said sarcastically.

  The interior and layout of the restaurant was similar to the Hot Sun establishment Williams and Foster had dined at near the Radiance Embassy on Earth. The food the service staff brought out to eager guests sitting at their tables had a similar smell and appearance; Earth and Radiance fusion cuisine.

  As welcoming as the atmosphere inside was, the sign outside the door said it all. Chef Bailey was not the one in charge. Perhaps he was at one point; he did have all those years to make it happen during the development of the colony.

  “Hold on,” Chang said, waving for Williams to follow him inside. “I’m fucking starving, let’s at least grab something to eat.”

  The two were seated at a table next to a window giving them a view of the spring-touched streets outside, as
cars flew back and forth. The menu had Bailey’s touch all over it. Salads, appetizers, the mains, it was all food that was once served on Earth, food that was once served to the crew of the Carl Sagan. There was even a soufflé as part of the dessert menu which Williams ordered to finish their dining experience.

  The perfectly prepared dish sat before him, triggering deep thoughts in his head. “I could really go for his wise words right now,” Williams said.

  “He was full of some deep stuff at times,” Chang said.

  The server that took their orders arrived with the bill when the time came, as Williams reached for his credit chit, he asked. “Hey, by chance, did a man named Demarion Bailey work here in the past?”

  “I think so,” said the server. “The first chef and owner of this place created the menu but went away on a spiritual retreat about ten years ago.”

  “Just upped and left like that?”

  “Vacation I think, he asked his assistant to take over until he returned,” said the server. “If he does . . . nobody can get ahold of him at the moment since he refused to receive HNI.”

  Both Williams and Chang slowly tilted their heads to face each other. “That’s got to be him . . .” Chang said.

  “Ten-year vacation though?” Williams said.

  “Remember, people live forever now, a ten-year vacation probably is the norm nowadays,” said Chang.

  The facts fit the profile. Chef Bailey was planning to retire from cooking before Williams had recruited him for the Sirius expedition. And his reason for accepting? Because Bailey wanted to go on a spiritual journey and figured Sirius would provide the perfect setting to do that.

  Looks like Bailey finally got around to doing it, several decades later than planned, but he did it. I suppose that’s why his name wasn’t on the door.

  “One last question,” Williams said as he paid his split of the bill. “Do you happen to know where the first chef went?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t know, but he used to quote a lot of deep stuff from the Poniga culture,” said the server. “It really helped me out when I was feeling down on busy shifts. If he went anywhere in this system, maybe there?”