“All right. We’ll have to go dark,” said Claire. They didn’t know what sensors the Takiree used, so in the past turned off all tech and kept out of sight during the periodic visits. The shuttle itself was well camouflaged, just one more ship in the graveyard; and it was hoped that if the Takiree used heat sensors that their individual body heat revealed them to be just two more animals amongst the abundant wildlife.
“There’s not much left for us to turn off,” said Amelia. “We’re already about as dark as we can get.”
They did have the proximity sensors, but usually kept them active. Most everything else was shut down. Amelia wouldn’t be connecting with the space station now for another week.
Claire frowned. “Yeah, we are rather off the grid, aren’t we?”
§
The first signs of dawn were creeping into the main cabin from the open airlock in the next compartment; a soft gray slowly pushed its way in, moved across the floor and well into the room. A cool breeze drifted in, and there was a hint of morning dew in the air.
Amelia and Claire were asleep in their bunks, formally their cryo tubes. Claire slept in the upper bunk, her sister in the lower.
An amber light began to pulse: slowly, steadily. It sent a golden glow throughout the cabin. After half a dozen seconds, the pulsating light was accompanied by a rhythmic attention signal, the alarm just loud enough to bring the sisters out of their slumber.
Both managed to maintain a sense of calm as they climbed out of bed. Both dressed quickly, Amelia as she moved to the monitors. She shut off the alarms.
Claire was standing just inside the open hatch. She looked back at her sister. “Waddya see, Amelia?”
“Still a couple of miles north, coming this way, slow.” She shut down the sensors. “I think it’s a pair of drones.”
“All right,” said Claire. “You ready?”
Amelia was already turning and standing. They stepped out of the shuttle together and hurried across the clearing to the supply shed. Claire brought out a pair of light daypacks, already prepped with emergency provisions. They left the clearing and quickly worked their way to a preplanned location in the brush a few hundred yards north.
As they didn’t know what sensors the drones might have, they long ago decided it best not to draw attention to their home base. They also felt that if the drones were in fact equipped with heat sensors, best they be seen as a pair of animals in the brush rather than a couple of bodies in one of the supposedly abandoned craft in the spaceship graveyard.
They settled in beside the trunk of a great tree with a wide canopy spread above, creating a small clearing beneath it surrounded by brush; they waited, watching the dawn sky peeking through branches and leaves.
A minute later came the muted hum of Takiree craft. Claire cocked her head sideways, took in the sound. She looked then to Amelia, held up two fingers and nodded.
Amelia had been right: Drones; two of them.
The craft were upon them a few moments later. One passed several hundred feet to their left, the other some distance to their right. They caught only a quick glimpse of the nearer. Three meters long, cylindrical, a pair of wings near the bow and smaller stabilizer wings aft.
And then they were past. It took another half minute for the sound to fade and the early morning quiet to return.
Claire shifted about on her heels, leaned against the tree trunk and slid down to a sitting position.
“So,” she said, just managing to mask her sense of relief. “What’s for breakfast?”
§
A long-dead city lay an easy one day’s march north of the spaceship graveyard. Claire and Amelia came to the abandoned town every three or four weeks. They often took the time on these outings to explore the ruins, looking for stuff they might be able to use, and they often spent a night or two camped in the protection of broken concrete walls, but their stated reason for being there was the good hunting that lay just beyond the city.
They walked side-by-side down the wide, rubble-strewn boulevard that would take the sisters through the heart of the downtown. None of the buildings had survived the centuries of neglect. Iron framework skeletons of buildings with hanging broken chunks of wall lined the streets; great shards of concrete rose dozens of feet from the remains building foundations.
Claire slowed, listening, turning her head to one side and then the other. She appeared to be stretching her senses far beyond this street. She stopped then, holding her staff to one side.
Amelia took another few steps before stopping and looking back to her sister.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I hear something,” said Claire.
Amelia listened, tried to hear what her sister was hearing. There was only the sound of the gentle breeze whispering through the broken walls of the nearest buildings.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Listen,” Claire said, almost a hush. “Listen.”
She listened. And then… very faint. Very distant.
There, thought Amelia. Yes…
“An engine?” she asked.
Claire turned her gaze to Amelia.
“I think it’s—” She looked up, outward... south. She couldn’t see anything. “It’s coming this way.”
Amelia indicated the concrete remnants of one corner of the nearest building. They moved quickly over, clambered into the rubble and squatted down in the shadows. They sat in silence, struggled to hear the incoming threat. It took another few seconds before the sound was clear, distinct.
Something was definitely out there, and it was coming nearer.
“It’s not a drone,” said Amelia.
It didn’t have the soft hum of a Takiree drone.
“No,” said Claire. “Not a drone.”
Moments later the sound was directly above them and rushing past. The Takiree ship was visible for only a couple of seconds. It was maybe a hundred feet above them and appeared to be descending.
“Come on,” said Claire. She was up and scrambling out of the shadows.
“Claire!” Amelia whispered harshly, as if the Takiree might hear her.
Claire wasn’t hanging around to argue the matter. She was hurrying up the street, heading in the direction of the descending alien craft.
Eight blocks up, the boulevard circled a city park, mostly overgrown now. In the center of the park was an open plaza. The Takiree shuttlecraft had landed on the plaza. The alien craft was smaller than Claire and Amelia’s shuttle, closer in size to the small jumpers that Claire had first trained in so long ago.
By the time the sisters reached the park, hiding behind the thick bramble of blackberry that had overtaken the south side of the park, they only just caught a glimpse of two figures stepping back into the ship.
Claire and Amelia had never seen a Takiree before. All they saw now were two shadowy silhouettes disappearing into the shadows in their tiny craft. They appeared slightly shorter than an average human, thin bodies and long arms.
“Feldafarb,” grumbled Claire.
“Really?” asked Amelia. “They could have seen us, Claire. They still might.”
“I was hoping to see what they looked like.”
“One head, two arms, two legs. Can we go now?”
Claire wasn’t ready to leave. She studied the park surrounding the plaza and the alien craft. “What are they doing here?”
“I don’t know.” Amelia had wondered that herself, but she wasn’t so curious as to want to hang around. “Maybe they’re checking on something one of their drones saw.”
Claire frowned at that idea. There wasn’t much around that should draw the interest of the Takiree. What might a drone have seen that would bring them all the way out here?
And that begged the question… where was this Takiree craft based?
Amelia shifted position, caught her sleeve on the bush they were using as cover.
“Maybe they like blackberries.”
One of the Takiree appeared again in the op
en hatch of their small shuttle. It stepped down and away from the ship. They were too far away to see its face or features, but they could see that it was dressed in loose-fitting pants and jacket, perhaps military; a uniform of some kind, at the very least.
It turned and looked back to the ship. The hatch closed, and a moment later the shuttle lifted off. It rose about fifty feet before smoothly gliding away, continuing to rise at it did.
The individual that had been left behind started across the park, away from Claire and Amelia.
“Is it going on an explore?” Claire wondered aloud, though in a low whisper.
“Hey, you’re not thinking of—”
“No, no, no,” Claire said quickly. She rose up from her crouch and started to back away. “Let’s get the heck out of here.”
§
Claire settled onto her familiar spot on the corner of the table, propped her feet up on the chair as she watched Amelia take a seat at the computer station.
They had been laying low for three days. There had been no sign of the Takiree anywhere in the area since the landing in the dead city. Whatever the bad guys had been up to, it hadn’t brought them to the graveyard.
Amelia activated the proximity sensors that had been shut down these past days. They waited expectantly.
No pulsing alert light, no alarm.
“Well, that’s a good sign,” sighed Claire.
Amelia studied the monitors. “There’s nothing in the air.”
“Right. And so?” she urged, waving a hand at the computer.
“Yeah, okay…” Amelia said cautiously. She brought up the main computer, activated the comm with Delta Station. It took her another half minute to interface with the space station’s systems.
Incoming data showed the station sensors had last tracked an alien cruiser in the inner solar system two days previous. It also noted the earth orbit presence of two alien shuttlecraft several times during the week prior to that.
All appeared clear at the moment, though they couldn’t know for certain that there wasn’t a presence planet-side, but beyond the range of the proximity sensors, nor whether any bad guys had been left on the ground anywhere on the planet. After all, there was that one alien they had seen walking away from the alien shuttle.
But it hadn’t been looking for them. If it had, it wouldn’t have been alone.
And one wandering alien certainly wasn’t an invasion.
“Hey, Sis…” Amelia said slowly, staring at the monitor.
“What is it?” Claire was suddenly anxious.
“A message.”
Claire slid off the table and stood behind Amelia.
Amelia had her eyes focused on the monitor. “No indication as to how it got there, but there’s a message saved in the comm logs; several days old.” She went silent as she continued to study the data splashed on the screen. Claire waited.
“Coded,” said Amelia. She worked at the keys for a few seconds. “It’s from Danny.”
“After all these years…”
“Text only.” Amelia read then: “Approaching Labyrinth. Seeking family.”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
Claire thought about that. She looked away, looked aft to the next compartment, to the daylight streaming in through the open hatch.
Amelia looked up at Claire.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” said Claire. “I think I’ll go for a walk.”
Amelia watched her sister leave the main cabin, then turned back to the computer. She disengaged from Delta Station and shut down the system, leaving the proximity sensors active.
Stepping down out of the shuttle, she found Claire over in the vegetable garden. The mid-morning sun wasn’t yet above the perimeter trees, so that entire section of the clearing was still in the shade.
She walked up the edge of the garden. Claire was on her knees midway along one row. It looked like she was pulling weeds.
“I thought you were going for a walk.”
“Started to,” she said absently. “Saw some weeds, then saw some more.”
Amelia glanced around the clearing, looked back again to her sister.
“Claire. Really, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She continued weeding. She hesitated then, stared at a clump of weed in her hand. The root was broken. The weed would be growing back.
She sat back on her heels, finally looked up at Amelia.
“Amelia… do you ever think about Mom and Dad?”
“Sure. They creep into my thoughts almost every day.”
“Me too.” Claire sighed, tossed the weeds out beyond the garden bed. “Mom, Dad, Uncle Marcus. All these years, we’ve only had Danny. And he came to us second hand; just an image on a monitor or a cryptic text message stored in a log.”
“And now…”
“Yes. And now.”
What news might Danny bring?
“Claire, are you worried?”
Claire looked away from her sister. “We never knew. You know, what happened. Not for sure. Danny never said anything. He and Uncle Marcus transferred our canisters into that shuttle. That’s all we know. That’s all we ever really knew for sure.”
Neither said anything for several moments. Claire rose up then, brushed dirt from her hands.
“Do you ever think about that?”
“I do. All the time.”
Claire looked about the clearing, not really seeing anything. “Yeah. Not like we could ask, right?”
“We’ll know soon enough, Claire,” said Amelia. “Sis… whatever happened, it happened two hundred years ago.”
Claire looked directly at Amelia, started to respond to that, to tell Amelia that it hadn’t been two hundred years for them. For them it was closer to seven years. But Amelia knew that. And she knew that Amelia was feeling exactly what she was feeling.
She stepped out of the garden bed and started away. “I’m going to take that walk now.”
§
Marcus Bradford worked his way from the command deck down to the airlock, eager to greet the newest arrival. He had been on Delta Station for only four days, knew that his nephew’s shuttle hadn’t been far behind, negotiating its way through the Labyrinth.
Marcus had made three trips to the far side of the galaxy over the years, most of that time spent in cryo; this while Danny had lived half his life. They had worked together for almost a year following that day when they had placed Claire and Amelia into the shuttle and sent it on its way, but since that time had crossed paths only twice in the two centuries that had passed since.
So the uncle was now a bit younger than the nephew, though he too was starting to gray around the temples.
Danny and two of his team were already through the airlock and into the station by the time Marcus reached them. He stopped in the passageway, welcomed the new arrivals and allowed Danny’s companions to pass, directing them to the station mess.
He stepped up to Danny, then. “So it’s Colonel, now,” he said. He reached out to Danny and gave him a hug.
Danny mumbled something about retiring soon if they let him, and then they followed after the others down the passage. They exchanged a few minor pleasantries en route to the mess, and then Danny asked about conditions on the station.
It was empty but for Marcus and his small team. They would have their pick of quarters, and the galley was still well supplied.
“And what about the Takiree?” asked Danny. There had been no sign of them outside the Labyrinth perimeter, nor as they had traversed the Labyrinth to the station.
According to station’s logs, all had been quiet for several weeks. Prior to that, the Takiree had been buzzing about Old Earth like flies for almost a month; cruisers, a number of drones. But they were long gone by the time Marcus arrived.
They both knew the Takiree had been significantly weakened over the past years, and hoped the Jaung could finally defeat them. They had to wonder why the Takiree
bothered with Old Earth at all. Perhaps they weren’t looking for humans in hiding. Maybe they were looking for a hideaway of their own.
Danny sat at one of the tables in the mess, cup of coffee in hand. His companions were at a table nearby. Marcus settled into the chair opposite. He waited, and when Danny didn’t say anything, decided to bring up the subject himself.
“They were here,” he stated.
Danny rubbed at his face, the tension in his body appearing to dissolve.
“Oh, boy…” he managed.
“We found a message saved in the comm log; not much, listed their arrival date, departure date. They were here for twenty six years; a lot of that time in cryo.”
“How long ago did they leave?”
“About three years ago.”
Danny stared down at his coffee again. He took a drink, swallowed. “All these years, I never knew if they ever saw even one of my messages. Or if they were even alive.”
“Well… they were alive up to three years ago. They were here, and it was you that brought ‘em.”
The cryptic messages, the supply pod, the even more cryptic directions and half-completed code sequences. And through all of it, Danny had to have considered and planned for circumstances that were decades out, never knowing the way of things in the future.
“Do you suppose they’re on Old Earth?” Danny asked. He hadn’t actually directed them there, but he had guided not so subtly, and hoped. But so much had depended on the circumstances that existed when and if they arrived at Delta Station.
Wherever they went, they hadn’t gone straight away. Marcus had said they had remained at the station, going into cryo, so they hadn’t been ready then. It was more than a quarter of a century before they decided to move on.
But to where? Had they gone to Old Earth?
“We’re headin’ that way in any case,” said Marcus. “What say we find out?” He gave a wink, took another sip of his coffee.
Sisters in Space: The Complete Series Page 12