by Mark Tufo
“Yes. It is not wired into the mainframe.”
“Winter, Cedar,” was written in large letters. I touched the screen and the message revealed itself. “We need to talk, one ship.” And then there were a bunch of numbers.
“Coordinates.” Graylon was next to me.
“What are we going to do?” I asked him.
“It is most likely a trap; they are pirates, after all.”
“I think it’s worth it.”
“How worth it will you believe it to be when they capture all of us and you are enslaved by the Others?”
“Not so much, but I still think it’s a chance we need to take.”
“Why?”
“You said it yourself, Graylon, not in so many words, but we need help. Maybe they’re offering it. If they wanted to push the issue, they could have stepped in and helped Breeson or waited until he was gone. We weren’t in much shape to take him on. No, he had a chance to take us and he didn’t.”
“There is logic in what you say, but that does not make me like the words any better.”
“When do we leave?”
Graylon eyed me while he thought. “We will buckle to a safe zone nearby to this rendezvous point and then we will bring the Arundel to him.”
We left just as the warnings came that enemy ships were less than ten minutes from breaking space with us. For five hours, I was on the bridge repeatedly; I would check the infuriatingly small message for any signs of deceit. It wasn’t just me that was walking into a trap. I was bringing half the rebellion. It would be a loss we could not recover from. What kind of bounty would the Others pay for something of that magnitude?
“I would like to give the crew a few hours to rest and the medical teams to catch up on the injured. We will buckle shortly. Do you harbor doubts?”
“Would you believe me if I told you I didn’t?”
“No,” he responded.
I went and checked on Cedar; she was having bouts of fitful sleep. Her legs kicked out and she would scream occasionally. I sat down next to her head and talked soothingly to her while I wiped her sweating brow.
Her eyes opened quickly. “Serrot?”
“It’s me, sis.” I gently hugged her.
“I thought for a moment that he had come back to me. I was dreaming that.” She started crying again. “I never thought I could feel pain like this,” she said.
“I’m so sorry,” I told her. I could not fathom the depths of despair she was going through, though when I thought Tallow had died, I thought it would be the end of me. She cried until she had nothing left to give. Her body gave out and she was once again asleep; I truly hoped her dreams offered some comfort. I kissed her forehead and headed over to Tallow’s room. He still slept and soundly; I would not bother him as I went to the Medical Bay.
I had my first bit of good news as I heard something metallic clanging in the next room over and then a groggy-but-alive Lendor shouting to let him out of the damn tube he was in. When I went in, there were two Genogerians going about their business, clearly ignoring him. He looked like he’d got into a fight with a Stryver and lost, but still, I smiled as I walked over. There was a large port through which I could see him, and he could see me.
“Winter!” he shouted, then coughed. “Broken ribs, sorry.” Didn’t stop him from trying to sit up where he proceeded to bonk his head on the top of the vessel he found himself in.
“You should tell him to be calm. The hyperbolic chamber will speed the healing process.” The Geno to my left said. “We have tried but he will not listen.”
“How long has he been like this?”
“Long enough. I am trying to get the doctor to authorize the use of sedatives.”
“Lendor, did you hear them?”
“I heard, Winter, but I’m in a tube. I don’t like enclosed spaces.”
“The less you rustle about, the sooner you get out.”
“How is everyone?” he asked but I was fairly certain he had an idea.
“Serrot didn’t make it.”
He looked straight ahead toward the ceiling. “He died for me.”
“It would appear so.”
“There is a debt there that I must repay.”
“He’s gone, Lendor, what could you possibly owe him?”
“What he left behind in life; it is now my duty to care for. It is the way of the Brutons. It is called Gunnowism.”
“All he left behind was Cedar.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew what he now meant. “She’s not a possession, Lendor, you can’t just take her, and don’t even think about telling her you’re going to ‘take care of her.’”
“It is not meant that way, only that I must do all that I can to ensure she is cared for,” he said without offering any clarification.
“Tread lightly, Lendor. She’s going to need a lot of time to heal.”
“I will only be there when she needs me; of this, you have my promise.”
“I am glad to see you mostly well.”
“Mostly?”
“You look terrible.”
“I feel decent, Winter. I was assuredly going to die. I had said my final traveling prayers and was ready. The meddies somehow brought me back; it was a strange sensation to have traveled so far into the realm of spirits, to wake finding myself in a tube. You can see how I could be upset.”
“I do. Rest; I will visit later.”
There was a small hiss, a bluish release of gas entered into the chamber and in a moment Lendor was asleep.
“Got the sedative,” the Geno meddie said. “Now perhaps I can get some work done in peace.”
I wanted to go back to the bridge, but I was running out of energy. My legs were getting stiff and my head heavy. I detoured to my room, letting Graylon know to get me up before the buckle. I thought I might need some of that blue gas Lendor had received when my head hit the pillow, as my brain, unlike my body, was spinning on its axis. I was going to get up, when inexplicably, my thoughts began to calm, and I found myself sleeping. I was whisked away to a field; Tallow, Cedar, Serrot and myself were gathering blueberries and eating them by the score. I knew I was dreaming because I was enjoying the fruit. Didn’t matter; it was good to see Serrot. He smiled and waved goodbye to me as a voice came into my room telling me I was needed on the bridge. I don’t know much about the other side, but I know that was Serrot and he was letting me know that he was all right. I thanked him for the message as I arose.
When I walked onto the bridge, Graylon was there. I didn’t feel overly rested after my small nap but worlds better than he looked. He had not left his station, and he looked exhausted.
“Has sleep clarified your thoughts or are you still of a mind to go through with this?” he asked.
“I am. Are you?”
“I do not like it, but I fear you may be correct. We are not in a position to turn away help, wherever it may come from. That, above all, has me concerned. It is not too difficult to believe that Brigend knows this as well.”
He was right, but still, Brigend had passed up an opportunity to finish us—or hurt us more, anyway. Graylon gave the order to buckle.
“We will be there in an hour.”
In terms of a buckle, that was fast, but the number of miles traveled was still staggering. We’d no sooner stopped when my heart lurched, not due to the strange mode of travel but rather at what awaited us. Brigend had a ring of ships around us. We were one to their twelve. I had wrongly assumed when he told us to come alone that he would do the same. It was an oversight I would learn from, if given the chance. Graylon was a heartbeat from giving the order to buckle again.
“I did not think you would come.” Brigend’s face was displayed on the comm screen. “Although, it is good you did.”
“Is this a trap?” I asked point blank.
“It would be the ideal set-up, but no, Winter, this is not a trap. I have someone here that may be able to put you at ease.”
“Johnjon?” I was thankful Graylon was so cl
ose; there was a chance I would fall over and I could use him to prop me up. “Are you prisoners?”
“Hey, Winter! It sure is good to see you. We’re all here; your Bruton squad, the Dystancians, Comanchokees…all who would come.”
“What do you mean ‘all that would come?’” I didn’t know what was going on.
Brigend spoke up. “We’ve been watching Earth for a while now. Use it as a place to get away when we need to. Caught wind the Others, as you call them, were now very interested in the place and it goes without saying they did not have good intentions. We have been off-loading people from the planet’s surface for a couple of months now. We have everyone who wanted to go. Some stayed; can’t blame them. Earth is all they’ve ever known. In fact, they never even knew other worlds existed. Difficult to convince people to get on a ship that flies the stars when most have never even been on a horse.”
He was talking but I couldn’t process the information quick enough. “Why? Why did you do that?”
“We’re human, Winter. It’s what we do.”
“I thought you were a pirate, only out for yourself?”
“Have you not listened to anything I’ve said?”
“No. The first impression you made has stuck with me.”
He laughed. “Graylon, get your other ship here. We will be traveling far to our home. We can get the repairs you need, and we will talk further about what needs to be done to win our world back.”
“That’s it? We’re going to leave those that are left to their own devices?”
“There is nothing more we can do; time has run out. They have chosen their fate, though I argued loudly for them to change their minds. Some would not.”
“We have to go back.”
“Breeson has an armada parked around the planet now. Going would do nothing except spell our doom.”
“Graylon?”
He was still looking at the screen; I had no idea what was going through his head.
“We are no match for Breeson’s fleet; not like this.” He finally turned away and to me.
“I tried, Winter. As an officer and a gentleman in the United Earth Marine Corps, I tried. We saved who we could, and when we can, we will save the rest.”
“Johnjon?”
“We were among the first picked up, Winter; he tells the truth. I went down on more than one excursion trying to convince people. Many times we were even attacked, and still, he pressed.”
“Sometimes, the imprisoned know no other way. We have seen it before; a regimented life is a difficult thing to break free from. There are those that are content being told what to do, their lives defined by the structure, even if it is of a harsh nature. Fear of the unknown can be a hindrance many cannot overcome.”
I was stuck, but he was right. How could we help those that didn’t want to be helped? We couldn’t force them, and even if we tried, all we would be doing was exposing ourselves to even greater danger. We’d already suffered so much. I instinctively knew if I pressured Graylon, he would begrudgingly go back. But what would that prove? And the blood of those lost would be my fault. I could not, I would not do that.
“I’m ready when the rest of you are.” I resigned myself to what was happening.
The Genogerian sister-ship showed up in a few hours; we explained what was going on. When Brigend sent the coordinates over to Graylon, I noticed surprise in the Commander’s features.
“Truly?” he asked, looking up to the screen.
“How do you think we’ve survived for so long?” Brigend wore a wry smile. “We should probably get going; even with the buckle, the journey is not a short one.”
“What’s it mean?” I asked, looking at the chart.
“It’s a black hole.”
“A hole in space? Aren’t all holes black?” I had no reference to what he’d said.
“It is created when a star dies and collapses in on itself; the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape, not even light.”
“So that’s where the name comes in,” I deduced. “Doesn’t seem like a place conducive to life.”
“It isn’t.” Graylon was again looking at Brigend.
“We live on the edge of the pull, just out of its reach.”
“There is no world there.”
“You’d be surprised what you can find out in space.”
The journey took nearly a month. I thought I would go crazy with worry of all those still behind; it was Cedar, of all people, that prevented that. She had her own demons that she needed to escape from, and with a single-minded determination, she threw herself into training. She was a woman possessed, and I was along for the ride. She did not talk of Serrot at all; I felt like she thought if she never brought it up, then it never really happened. I wasn’t sure if she was in denial, until one day, after a grueling fifteen hours of training I had walked with her back to her room. She’d no sooner closed her door when I heard her sobs. She was still very much suffering; she just chose to do it alone. My heart grieved with her and for her.
13
Three Years Later
The Horizon wasn’t a planet—not a naturally occurring one, anyway. Of that, Graylon was right. What we stopped at, some three years previously, was, in a word, astounding. It was a human-built structure; I was told it was nearly the size of the moon. It shared some similarity in shape in that it was partly round, though the middle stretched out to make it look more like the rings of Saturn. It was the color of an angry storm cloud and was woven together by nanotechnology, machines that were apparently too small to see with the human eye. The beauty was that they could also detect damage and repair it before it ever became a problem for the inhabitants. I tried not to think of them much; I couldn’t get the image of electronic spiders out of my mind when I did.
For three years, we trained, we gathered resources, sought out allies, and I watched as Cedar slowly healed. She had more of an edge to her than before; she wasn’t quite as happy all the time as she had been, and that change was difficult to witness. Sometimes, when she didn’t think anyone was looking, I could see the smile she had, be quickly replaced by a sadness that ran deep within her. When we would mock-fight during our training exercises, she would go all out with a deep determination to destroy the enemy. Losing was not an option, and on those rare occasions when she would, she was nearly insufferable. Sort of like today.
“Watch it!” she told Tallow as she sat down and hit his side and arm, causing him to drop a forkful of food.
“You realize I was here first, right?” he asked as he moved slightly over.
“Yeah, well now I’m here.” She dug into her meal like it had somehow offended her. She did not eat with any signs of enjoyment, but rather something that needed to be done to keep her running at optimum performance. It was not overly difficult to foreshadow what was going to happen next as we had often heard this diatribe.
“When are we actually going to do something? These exercises against each other aren’t doing anything to defeat the real enemy. All we’re doing here is wasting time.”
The first few hundred times, we had attempted to explain what was going on or how beneficial all the training was, only tended to add fuel to the fire. And once Cedar got going, well it wasn’t too good of an idea to stick around. We’d since learned to say nothing or change the topic of conversation until she moved on. It sounds worse as I write this down. Cedar hadn’t changed fundamentally, but she’d been affected, as had we all. Dinner was done and I knew where she was headed as she got up.
“She heading to the simulator again?” Tallow asked, shaking his head.
“You know that’s what she does when someone bests her.”
“It was seven-on-one, and she took out five of them, something no one else on this weird planet could do. I don’t think she should beat herself up about it.”
I knew what was consuming my sister, powering the relentless drive. She would tell others differently, but she wanted revenge, and if possible, to single
-handedly end the regime that had taken Serrot from her. It wasn’t so far-fetched to believe she could deliver on that vow.
Tallow and I had gone to the observatory; I found myself here whenever time permitted. The spin of the station kept us in constant view of the black hole. There was a destructive beauty there that I could not help but gaze upon.
Tallow couldn’t understand my fascination, for the life of him.
“You know it’s just a giant hole, right? Hey, you think maybe there’s a library in there?” he asked, joking.
“You see that bright light there?” I was pointing. “Brigend told me that’s a planet, been circling this black hole for over a hundred years. He said the scientists here believe that it most likely had life on it. Can you imagine?”
“Can I imagine that what you consider a normal life is completely and abruptly different from things that happen in space? Yeah, surprisingly, I can wrap my head around that, Win.”
I nudged him in the shoulder. “It’s just hard to fathom the power of that. To be so powerful as to rip matter apart into individual atoms and maybe those don’t even survive. What do you think happens to everything that goes down there?”
“If those brainiacs walking around in the lab coats don’t know, how could I?” he shrugged.
“I think whole new universes are created. All that matter is torn apart and rebuilt; it’s a fresh start.”
“Most people’s idea of a fresh start is to move to another city,” Cedar said as she walked through the door. “Not violently rip themselves apart into sub-atomic molecules.”
“Cedar! Did you stop obsessing?” Tallow asked.
I smacked him in the arm.
“What? It’s not like she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“Is it difficult being a dolt?” I asked him.
“Not so much.” He was smiling.
“Can I talk to my sister?” Cedar asked Tallow.
“Of course you can,” he said, not moving.
“She means alone,” I told him.
“I knew that,” he said sheepishly and headed for the door.