by Paul Tassi
“What do you speak of?” he said flatly.
“Other children, besides Noah.”
“Oh, you have given it a name. How pleasant.”
“That woman, you knew what she was saying, and I didn’t realize what she meant until now. There wasn’t just one child she was trying to save; there were many.”
Alpha’s mech hand stopped its work on the core.
“I concede. I kept this information from you purposefully.”
Lucas was livid, but before he could speak, Alpha continued.
“But an attempted rescue of children would have doomed our entire mission. Our capture almost caused us not to reach the core before irreparable decay. Further delay and the window of opportunity would have been closed completely, and we would be stuck in your lifeless solar system until we died as well.”
It made sense, though the fury was still boiling inside Lucas. Alpha pressed on.
“It was pleasing that an infant did manage to survive, and I welcomed him onboard. But you were struggling with the concept of caring for one child. What would you have done with five? Ten?”
Lucas was now speechless, and couldn’t formulate an answer, internally or externally. Instead he stormed off, and Alpha returned to work on the core. He spoke loudly as Lucas walked through the doors.
“Watch the skies. We will be leaving soon.”
On the bridge, the sky showed nothing, and Lucas didn’t expect Omicron to break through the cloud cover any time soon. It took a while to get here, didn’t it?
He was still simmering about Alpha and the children, though logically, he had to concede the point. They had reached the core with minutes to spare after all, and he couldn’t even imagine ten children running around the Ark’s corridors. He’d thought himself hard after all these years in the wild, but the tiny blackened skeletons were stuck in his mind, as were the pleas of the woman. There was still hope however, and he would be remiss to let Noah suffer just because his brethren had perished. Lucas had brought him a stuffed T. Rex from the cart outside. Placing it in his hands, he waited for some flicker of emotion to register across his face, but none did. He eventually pawed at it with his burned arm, but when it toppled over, he lost interest. Lucas began to wonder if the child’s emotional state might be beyond repair. His thoughts were interrupted when Asha broke through on the comm.
“Are you going to help me with this shit or not?”
He headed back to ground level and helped Asha move the items out of the cart and into the storage bay. They debated where they should set up quarters. Alpha couldn’t be bothered with such trivialities, so they decided to explore the ship to choose locations.
The armory was now full of weaponry, but there was enough room to set up a mattress and a few choice pieces of furniture. Asha immediately claimed the area for herself, and added that she’d be able to sort through all the weapons in her free time, cleaning them of blood and dirt and matching up the scattered ammo. Lucas found the idea agreeable and helped her move in. A queen-size mattress, some thousand-thread-count sheets, a table, and two chairs made the space cozy enough. It was definitely preferable to a claustrophobic, nightmare inducing sleeping pod.
Lucas wandered around the rest of the ship by himself, going up and down levels in the lift. He returned to the pod area and found that though the room was quite large in total, the more than one hundred pods crammed in there made for limited floor space. Also on this level was the water storage area, and the blue tanks glowed to show they were as full as ever. Their water consumption had barely made a dent.
Lucas then took the lift to the LABORATORY level, where he hadn’t been before. The hallway dead ended quickly and the door on the right said “Research.” Lucas tried the controls but they were locked. Alpha’s quarters, he imagined. The lab from the video earlier. Turning to the other door across the hall, the label was an array of alien symbols that for some reason hadn’t been translated. Also locked. Lucas tried to pry the cracks of the door open, but quickly gave up as it became obvious it wouldn’t budge. Returning to the lift, he rode further down to the brig and engine level.
Before the large and secure doors of the engine bay were the four jail cells where at one point Alpha and Asha had both been kept. Three of them were caked with a decent amount of dried black blood and two had consoles that were sparking loudly and brightly. One room, however, had no blood at all and its console was burnt out, but quiet. It was too small for him, but perhaps Noah? He doubted he would mind the confined space. A short trip down the hall to the storage bay and he had the crib along with the selection of toys and books placed methodically in the room. He slapped the cushions in the crib against the wall and rid them of clouds of dust. It occurred to him to do the same with the animals, and he coughed as he accidentally inhaled a few particles. Surveying his work, he was satisfied. It wasn’t much, but it would have to do.
Finally Lucas decided on the water room for his own quarters. The ambient glow of the tanks was somehow comforting, and he set up his mattress at the far end of the corridor between the last two units. He put a desk and chair a few feet in front of it and stacked his books in piles on either side of the table. Shelving hadn’t exactly been a top priority when selecting furniture in the mansion, nor had storage, and he piled his recently acquired clothes a few feet away on the ground. Finally, he unslung Natalie from his back and mounted her above his mattress on a part of the wall that jutted out. She deserved something resembling a place of honor, and he wasn’t about to toss her out with the other scrap metal.
His muscles ached from hauling the cart through shifting sands and rough cobblestone all day. His leg and ribs were feeling markedly better however, and he couldn’t deny the effectiveness of Alpha’s healing apparatuses. Lucas kicked off his boots, lay his shotgun and buck knife down on the metal floor, and was fast asleep before he could strip any further.
11
It was time to leave. Not Norway, but Earth.
The prospect had been looming since he’d met Alpha and his working ship, but it appeared the moment was finally at hand. Lucas had been awakened by Alpha’s booming voice in the water chamber, and he and Asha had hastily assembled themselves and reached the engine bay where they’d been summoned.
Alpha had worked through the night, and Lucas didn’t know if he’d taken a single break the last two days. After learning of the slaughter of his entire family, was this how he dealt with grief? Or were they really just in that much of a hurry? He looked fatigued but resolute as he pointed out his finished work on the white core. It stood in place of the old blue one, but Alpha had built up a large amount of machinery around it, and every console in the cavernous room seemed to shine more brightly than ever. Whatever he’d set out to do, it seemed he had done it, and he informed them they were ready to leave immediately.
“The new core should allow us to travel at range, and once we are far out enough in space, we can use it to reach our final destination.”
“Which is where again?” Asha asked.
“A place that requires an explanation longer than we have time for. Once we are en route, you will have the answers you seek.”
He played around with a few holocontrols and the room made some odd noises.
“You’re sure this is going to work?” Lucas asked, motioning to the core. “You said this ship wasn’t supposed to be able to use this thing to travel.”
“The fact that the core has been installed without detonation is a positive sign. The calculations indicate the ship will hold while traveling in [garbled]. We have no other option but to attempt escape.”
“Wait,” Asha interjected. “You’re saying that when you were hooking this thing up, the entire ship could have exploded at any time?”
“That is . . . correct.”
“And you didn’t think you should tell us this?”
“I did not.”
Asha fell silent. Lucas supposed it was hard to fault him. It certainly would have robbed them of a
few nights’ rest.
“Before we begin the longest stage of our journey, we must survive the shortest. The Sentinels wait outside your planet’s atmosphere and have almost assuredly been issued capture or kill orders by High Commander Omicron. They will be waiting for us.”
“What exactly are these things?” Lucas asked.
Alpha brought up a display of an object on his wrist. It was a long column with spindles poking out around the center. It almost looked like a satellite or space station.
“Sentinels are unmanned robotic drones that monitor a planet’s life and resources. But in our case, they will transform into their secondary function: defense.”
He tapped the display and smaller machines began to shoot out of the central station. Pulling his claws apart, he zoomed in on one of them. It had three fin-like protrusions with a central chamber in the middle. Guns were mounted on all three wing tips.
“These drones are the Sentinel’s defense system, and they will be pursuing us. They’re smaller than traditional fighters, and don’t have the instincts of a living pilot, but they can be quite deadly in swarms. Their [garbled] cannons can damage us beyond repair if we take enough fire. We may be destroyed, or merely disabled, depending on Omicron’s orders.”
The holograms began firing tiny projectiles that disappeared into the air in front of them. They spun around and flew in tiny loops, demonstrating combat maneuvers.
“How am I supposed to avoid these things?” Lucas asked.
“And how am I supposed to kill them?” added Asha.
Alpha closed the hologram.
“It will not be easy. We are a transport ship and not nearly as maneuverable as a fighter, nor with as much firepower. Our sole advantage is that the new core allows us to move more quickly than the craft could previously.”
“So just dodge and weave,” Lucas said.
“I am not a combat pilot, but yes, that would likely be advisable.”
“And I’m still using the same gun as I did there?” Asha said, motioning toward town.
“Only at extremely close range. Though the main gun is offline; it would not have mattered as the drones are too small and fast. But your arsenal has expanded, as you now have access to [garbled]. To a stockpile of missiles.”
Asha was taken aback.
“We had missiles this entire time, and you weren’t letting me use them?”
“There was no reason to unleash them on the village, when the light gun served its purpose. Furthermore they are designed for extra-orbital combat, and I knew we would need to employ them in our escape attempt.”
Alpha was once again logical, but it didn’t make Asha any less annoyed.
“Additionally, I will join you in the secondary turret. The engine is now more stable than it has ever been, and we will need all the firepower we can gather to avoid destruction by the Sentries.”
“I thought you weren’t a soldier,” Lucas asked.
“I knew this day would come, and I have trained myself accordingly. Do not concern yourself with my abilities. Additionally, there is no longer a chance of our weapons overheating.”
“Thank god for that,” Asha said.
“So what’s the plan? Kill all these robots and turn on hyperdrive?” asked Lucas.
“What is this ‘hyperdrive’?” Alpha said, confused.
“The new core, it makes us go faster than light, right?”
Alpha looked amused.
“Your notions of science are derived from your fiction, not fact. The core does not make us ‘go faster’ to travel at range. You have heard of what you call ‘wormholes’ in space and time?”
“Yes.”
“The core generates a pathway that we will travel through that will cut through the galaxy to our destination. ‘Going faster’ would have all of us dead of old age before we even reached [garbled], much less [garbled]. This way will still take some time, but substantially less than a million years.”
Was that sarcasm? Couldn’t be.
“So how does that work?” asked Asha.
Alpha was the one starting to look annoyed.
“From interacting with the pair of you, it is obvious neither of you are well versed in the sciences. But even if you were, attempting to convey the elaborate and exact concepts behind intergalactic travel to even a genius of your civilization would be as if you were to try to explain how one of your ‘airplanes’ functioned to an ancient ancestor more intimately familiar with the workings of sticks and stones.”
Lucas didn’t appreciate the condescension, but he knew he probably couldn’t understand the depth of Alpha’s knowledge even if he was Einstein or Hawking.
“Alright, no need to be a dick about it,” Asha said. “When are we getting off this rock?”
“Presently,” said Alpha. “Report to stations.”
When Lucas fired the ship up this time, things were different. Taking off in open air rather than underground was certainly a relief, but it was more than that. The controls were responding much more quickly, and green 100 percent indicators lit up across the board, which revealed that every primary system on the ship was now surging at full power. The thrust of the engines was more powerful than ever, and as he left the ground with ease, he found that the ship felt a great deal lighter than it had previously. The weight had obviously not changed, but the integration of the new core had given the Ark a complete overhaul, and it felt like an entirely new ship.
Lucas watched the ravaged town at Kvaløya disappear below him. The place had almost been his tomb on more than one occasion over the past few days, and he was glad to be rid of it. But it occurred to him that the horrible little village was the last place on Earth where he would ever set foot, and he regretted not savoring the moment a little more, even if the place was a hellhole.
Turning his attention to the cloud cover, Lucas found it to be quite a bit higher in the atmosphere than he had anticipated. They were rising rapidly, and had been for some time, but had not yet broken through it. Alpha and Asha were visible in two floating monitors to his right and left. His hands swirled around through ship status reports and diagnostics so quickly he was barely conscious of what he was doing. It was the virtual training at work again, and his brain was firing even faster than his hands. Hopefully the ship would allow him to process information that rapidly when avoiding Sentinels in a short while.
Finally, the Ark broke through the clouds. Lucas was speechless.
The sun shone as brightly as it ever had, and the bluish black sky was a stark contrast to the red swirling clouds below it. To the east, Lucas could even see half of the moon in the distance. Earth’s old friends were still there as they’d always been, watching as the planet slowly decayed. It was miraculous to see them once again; he never thought he would.
They kept rising and the blue turned darker and darker and stars began to appear in the distance. The ship rumbled and Lucas could see the hull turn a fiery red as they broke through what was left of the corroding atmosphere.
Amidst all the carnage and heartbreak and despair he’d experienced in the last few years, this moment was simply glorious. He remembered watching the space shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral with his father as a boy. Soon after, he went through a prolonged phase of wanting to do nothing but be an astronaut. To go and see the stars and come back and tell everyone about them. Now he was actually going there, at the helm of an alien starship. His childhood self could not have imagined anything more spectacular.
His perfect moment was cut short by Alpha on the monitor.
“Do you see them?”
Lucas checked his readouts and saw that two of the rotating satellite stations Alpha had showed them earlier had been detected nearby. Zooming in on the viewscreen, he scanned the star-filled horizon until the computer located and outlined both of them.
“Increase speed,” Alpha said.
Lucas dialed up the engines and was temporarily pinned back in his seat. He glanced over at Noah, who was still in his
cylinder on the floor a short distance away, with no time to move him to his new quarters in the brig. Alpha assured them that the ship’s artificial gravity system would keep in them in place and minimize G-force, no matter how elaborate their maneuvers in space.
The curved edge of Earth was now visible in the viewscreen and, as Lucas suspected, the cloud cover stretched far and wide over the horizon. Earth probably looked more vibrant from this angle back when it was a mass of green and blue, but it was still an undeniably impressive sight.
Lucas couldn’t savor it for long. As the Ark moved further out into space, he could see the two stations drifting to either side of the viewscreen. He was going to pass right through them. Was it possible Alpha was wrong? Maybe they had been left offline with the planet in ruin, as there was nothing of substance to report. No one breathed as they moved silently through the pair of Sentinels. The speed readout said the Ark was travelling at close to 200,000 miles an hour, but it felt like he was riding a raft down a lazy river. Noah had apparently even fallen back asleep.
Alarms. Everywhere. The game was up.
Half-translated danger readouts flashed in front of Lucas’s eyes. He scrambled to see what exactly was going on, but could only make out the words ENEMY and APPROACH. The Sentinels were behind him now, but one of his monitors with a rear view of the ship showed what was happening. He flung it up on the main viewscreen.
Robotic drone fighters streamed out of the stations like hornets from a disturbed nest. It was impossible to tell just how many of them were pouring forth from each station, but what was clear was that they were approaching fast, even as Lucas increased their speed to 500,000.
“Here we go!” he yelled into the monitor, and he tried to silence some of the proximity alarms that were blaring in his ears. He was flying away from Earth, but the viewscreen continued to show the view to the rear. The planet was almost entirely encircled by cloud cover, with a few rare areas showing brown or dark red blotches. More pressing, however, were the objects in the foreground, as the drone fighters were gaining on them.