“Hello!” she shouted in her language, the word translating for me. We piled into the crashed vessel, one after the other. Suma was last, and I helped her up and in before tugging the door closed. I could hear the incessant shrieking wind, but at least inside, I was protected from it.
“Hello!” I said in English, shaking sand off my suit. Rulo was already checking the front of the ship, and Karo and I went to the rear, while Suma went to the side of the door, where a computer sat lit up.
The lifeboat was only big enough for ten passengers and had basic functionality. It was meant for its namesake function. If things were dire, the Keppe could send some of the crew out to be saved in the vessel.
Karo was ahead of me, and he stopped suddenly as he neared the rear section of the ship. I’d been looking at the ground, and I bumped into him.
“Oh my,” Karo said, and I peered around him to see at least five dead. The ship was torn apart here, and sand was piling into the breach. The Keppe weren’t wearing armor suits, or even masks. They hadn’t survived the crash to the surface.
Rulo appeared and stepped around us, kneeling at the side of a fallen Keppe man. “This lifeboat is from Fortune. Why are they here, and crashed?” Her usually controlled voice wavered as she held the man’s hand in her gloved fingers.
“No one up front?” I asked.
“No one alive. Three more bodies, though,” she whispered.
“Perhaps we’ll find answers in their computer system,” Karo suggested.
“It won’t do any good standing here.” I glanced at the fallen Keppe and wished better for them. Rulo stayed behind, staring at her people’s lifeless bodies.
“Suma, anything usable?” I asked.
She stared with wide black eyes, nodding. “Dead?”
“Yes,” Karo answered, and she hung her head before tapping away at the console.
“The backup system is still working. I’ll download it all, and I think we can find some answers. At least partial ones.” Suma kept typing.
“Do you think we can determine where they came from?” I asked, and she nodded.
“It appears so,” she said.
The lifeboat might have crashed, and lives had been lost, but at least their efforts allowed us a clue into where Fortune was. I had to count it as a win. A sad moment, but a win nonetheless.
“Karo, let’s help Rulo bury her people and return to the ship,” I said.
By the time we entered onto the Kraski vessel, we were exhausted, weak, hungry, and melancholic, but we held some important information on a datastick in Suma’s possession. And none of us were willing to eat or shower until we knew where the lifeboat came from.
“Two hours, huh?” Slate gave me a playful jab with his elbow, and I rolled my eyes.
“I don’t have the patience for this at the moment. Can you grab us some coffee and see if W is done charging?” I asked, and watched Slate’s smile dissipate into a frown.
“You got it. For once, I’m glad I stayed behind,” he said.
Once we removed our dirty suits, we wound our way to the bridge, where Suma was already loading the stick into a port.
Data streamed onto the viewscreen with the tap of a button, and the group of us watched with keen interest as Suma made sense of it. Rulo sat beside her, identifying what files were important and what they didn’t need to access.
“Captain, it is good to see you all aboard,” Dubs said as he entered, followed by Slate with a carafe of coffee.
“Don’t forget to tip your waiter,” Slate said as he passed the cups around, each of us eagerly accepting the beverage with thanks. He set a plate of protein bars in front of us, and we chewed away at them as Suma found the map we’d been waiting for.
“There it is: the path this lifeboat has taken since being activated,” Suma said.
A map appeared on the viewscreen. The trajectory of the boat showed as a dotted line, ending on the desert world we currently sat in orbit around.
“All we have to do is follow the line, and we’ll find them,” Karo said.
“Or at least see where they were when they felt the need to send a boat off. If they used this boat, things were dire,” Rulo said.
“How many lifeboats does each Keppe exploration vessel hold?” I asked.
“Ten,” she answered.
“That’s not even enough for a quarter of the crew,” I said.
Her answer was honest: “In our experience, there’s rarely an occurrence where everyone has time to vacate a ship in danger. So we play the percentages.”
“What can we tell about the starting point?” Slate asked, pointing at the system where the dotted line originated.
Suma zoomed in, and we got a slightly better idea of the surroundings. “From this, we can see a few planets nearby, but the lifeboat’s sensors were limited. There’s no visible star near them.”
“This is the system without a star that Crul was telling us about. Beyond the edge of the universe, where at least four other vessels have gone and never returned.” I expected that number was a conservative one.
“I doubt it’s really the edge. Most Shimmal astrophysicists don’t believe there is an end…” Suma started, but I cut her off.
“I don’t want to fall into a philosophical discussion about the expanding universe. My brain can hardly keep up as it is. Let’s call it the unexplored side of the universe, then, for this purpose,” I said, feeling every step in the sand at that moment.
“The image doesn’t necessarily mean there’s no star in the system either. It might be out of range of the inadequate sensors,” Slate said.
“He’s not wrong,” Rulo said, not quite giving Slate’s estimation full confidence.
“At least we have a starting point. W, how long until arrival?” I asked, and Dubs leaned over Suma, keying the location into the console.
“We can be there in eleven days, fourteen hours, and …”
“Thanks, Dubs. I think that’s accurate enough.” I turned and slogged away, in search of a bed.
____________
It had been under two months since we’d first left New Spero for Haven, but it felt like so much longer since I’d held Jules in my arms and kissed my wife. I sat in the kitchen with a tablet, scrolling through images of my family while eating dinner, when Slate came and sat down. His nose was almost healed, and he pulled a chair to the table across from me.
“What are we eating? Green or red tonight?” he asked, peering at my plate.
“Green. I can’t stomach red anymore. I love the Keppe, but they have a limited palate, don’t they?” I pushed the plate away, leaving a third of the slop. I wasn’t sure even Maggie would enjoy this.
“I’ll have a red, then. Reminds me of spaghetti.” Slate got up and used the Kraski cooker to heat the food. “You miss them a lot.” He didn’t have to say who he meant.
“Yeah. It’s so weird, Slate. Remember when we were running around the galaxy, getting into trouble at every intersection? I wasn’t married, Magnus and Nat had just tied the knot, none of us had kids. Everything is so different now.”
“Not for me. I got to basically grow up and watch everyone around me dive headfirst into adult relationships. I still haven’t managed to do that.” His food was ready, and he plopped the plate onto the table, his red sauce steaming.
“You were so young. I pulled up to the cloaked base in New Mexico with Leslie and Terrance cuffed in the back. You took the keys and drove into the base. You remember that?” I asked.
“Of course I do. I was working for General Heart. He was a good man.” Slate looked older at that moment, with a bushy blond beard and a slight crinkling at his eyes as he smiled, thinking about the old general.
“He was a great man.”
“You were a legend, Dean. You, Mary, Natalia and Magnus. When I found out you were coming to our base, I was nervous to meet you.” Slate was eating slowly, his eyes distant and reminiscent.
“Nervous to meet me. If only you knew bac
k then.”
“What? That we’d become best friends? That I’d have to save your life more times than I can count on my two hands?” He laughed, and I joined him.
“Yeah. All of that. It’s been quite a ride, hasn’t it, buddy?” I stuck a fist across the table, and he clenched his big hand, bumping it.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” Slate said.
“Me neither. You ever think about trying to settle down again?” I asked. I’d tiptoed around the subject for the last few years, ever since I’d had to kill Denise. It wasn’t an easy topic to bring up with him.
“I do. Maybe I should put myself out there again. Damn Denise. I can’t even blame her, really. It was Lom. Him and his brainwashed hybrids. How did you get over it?” Slate asked, and I realized we hadn’t talked about my previous relationship in a long time. It was easier that way, but I owed him this.
“I didn’t get over it. I moved on. Janine will always be a part of me, but honestly, my heart doesn’t miss any of it. It hasn’t for a long time.”
“It’s easier when you have Mary,” he said.
“You can find your Mary, then.” I gave him a grin, and he kept eating.
“Maybe. I have had my eye on this woman on Earth. She’s out of the New York complex. Maybe I’ll go visit when we’re back.” Slate was finally opening up.
“We need to talk about things like this more, Slate. We’re brothers. It doesn’t always have to be about how many slugs we each killed or didn’t kill. Sometimes it can be about these kinds of subjects,” I said.
“I hear you… brother.” He winked at me, and I threw a crumpled napkin at him. “You ready for tomorrow?”
Tomorrow was the day we arrived in the system of no return. “I hope so. With any luck, we’ll find them sitting there waiting for us,” I said, knowing that was a lot to ask.
“If only. Thanks for the chat. Any chance you want to lose another game of cribbage?” he asked with a smirk.
“I’d be happy to show you how it’s done…again. You’d think you’d have learned by now.” I picked up the tablet, took one last look at an image of my wife and Jules, and switched the screen to the crib board.
Slate was already shuffling, and we settled in for an evening of cards.
Eighteen
“We are officially on the outer edges of the system we are calling UES, or unexplored side, as per our captain’s orders,” W said, making me sound like a dictator.
“I didn’t… never mind. What are we looking at?” I asked, waiting for the system’s radar scanners to advise us of any vessels nearby.
“Boss, may I suggest something?” Slate asked as he stared at the dark space beyond on the viewscreen.
“Slate, since when do you ask first? Go for it,” I urged.
“We don’t know what’s here. Obviously there’s something dangerous, and that could be an anomaly or an enemy. I suggest we go in cloaked, so we can investigate without being targeted.” Slate rested his hands on his hips.
“Good call. W, cloak us. That will pull the power from our shields, but if no one sees us coming, they can’t fire on us.” The cloak also wiped our ID and electronics from sensors, so we were essentially going in dark.
“Cloaking drive activated. Shields at minimal protection, but it will be enough for small debris, should we encounter any,” W said.
“We’re picking up two of the system’s planets from here, Dean,” Suma said. “I’ve been tracking the closest one for as long as I could, and now have an estimation of its trajectory.”
“What good does that do?” Rulo asked.
“It’s going to tell me if the planet is indeed orbiting anything, or if they’re now freely floating through space,” Suma answered.
“Explain, Suma,” I suggested.
“If the star actually disappeared, the planets would cease to orbit anything. They need the gravitational pull from the mass of the star for the orbit to function. If it’s gone, they should be free in space. What I did find was interesting.” Suma tapped on the console, bringing up an image across the right side of the viewscreen. “This planet still appears to be orbiting something.”
“And that’s bizarre?” I asked.
“If there’s no star, then yes,” she replied.
“Then we’d better check out the center of this solar system,” Slate said.
“I concur. Let’s find out what’s waiting for us. If Magnus arrived here, that’s where he would have gone,” I said.
“That’s where they would all have gone, and now Fortune is missing, along with at least four other ships, according to Kimtra.” Rulo’s arms were crossed, and she was frowning as she stared at the image of the planet moving along a plotted line.
“We will arrive in over three days,” W informed us. The entire trip would have taken us a year if we’d flown from Keppe, but we’d had the luxury of cutting the trip’s time by using the portals to navigate to the Traders’ world.
The stones were failing, and we had no idea how long it would be before they failed completely. We either had to find a way to power them while deprived of the Theos inside or we’d end up living without them. There were still some ways of ascending from point A to point B, and I had the portals from Fontem to work with. Clare was trying to duplicate the system, but so far had come up blank. The technology was hard to deconstruct and reverse-engineer.
If the stones ceased working entirely, we wouldn’t be able to move from Haven to New Spero to Earth with the quick jumps, and that was going to cause issues for our race. But maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. Mary and I could live out the rest of our days on New Spero, or even at the farmhouse on Earth. Maybe I was looking at it the wrong way. Perhaps the stones fading was a good thing for me.
I pushed the thought from my mind. It wasn’t. We’d built too much, entrusted vast energy into our new relationships to let it slip away now. It was months to travel between Earth and New Spero, and we’d flown to Haven once, but only through a wormhole that stole years from us.
And what of the Gatekeepers? Their main function was traveling to portal words, exploring, cataloging, making contact with new races. Without the stones, they basically became inessential. I already wondered how many of our Gatekeepers had used the portals, only to end up on the wrong world. The “crossed wires” were likely wreaking havoc on the entire team.
We needed a solution, and fast.
“Dean, are you okay?” Karo asked.
I was standing in the middle of the bridge, rubbing my temples and muttering. “I’m fine. I was thinking about the stones again.”
“We have time. Let’s discuss this in the other room,” Karo said.
“Call me if anything pops up,” I told the rest of the team and followed Karo to the kitchen.
We sat opposite one another, and I cut to the chase. “Karo, tell me the truth. The Theos are disappearing from the portal stones. What do you know about it?” I’d seen the way he stared at the glowing crystals, the profound sadness in his eyes. I used to think it was his loneliness, but there was more to it.
“The Theos are already dead, Dean. They don’t sing inside the stones any longer. I cannot access them as we once did. With the Iskios gone, they’re disappearing too.”
“How much longer before they aren’t operational?” I asked.
He shrugged and swept his long white hair over his shoulder. “There’s no way for me to know that. I’m surprised they work at all.”
“We have the device from J-NAK. That seems to work.” I leaned my elbows onto the tabletop and rested my head in my hands.
“And it may continue to solve the issue. I’m not sure, though. I suspect they’ll stop working eventually,” Karo said. “Even with the Modifier.”
“I think there are going to be some Gatekeepers out there unable to get home,” I said, wishing there was more I could do.
“One thing at a time, Dean. We’re here right now, and Magnus and Natalia need us. We can deal with the next thing once
we return home with our friends.” Karo’s stare was hard and confident.
“What are you feeling about this? Planets orbiting nothing? It isn’t scientifically possible. They need something with mass, don’t they?” I asked him.
“As far as I’m aware, you are correct, but we’ve seen enough that goes beyond the scope of science for me to really judge what is and isn’t possible. We have three days to travel and find out if Fortune is still there or not,” he said.
“And what do you think?”
Karo gave as good an answer as I could expect at that moment: “I think there are too many unknowns to guess.”
“Want to go work out?” I asked. My body was filled with nervous energy, and so was Karo’s, judging by his fidgeting hands.
Karo gave me a good-natured mocking smile. “Sure. I’d be happy to give you another try at the mats.”
____________
“You’re saying the star would be visible and taking up half of our viewscreen at this point?” I was encouraging W to reiterate what he’d said.
“That is correct. I don’t know what classification, but we have used the size of the planets and their trajectories to determine what size and type of star would affect them in their current pattern. It is probably an orange dwarf.”
“Does that help us in any way?” I asked, irritated that we were only a few hours from the position where the lifeboat had detached from Fortune.
“My father says it’s always good to have all the facts,” Suma said, hurt evident in her voice.
“Suma, it’s fine, I was only wondering. Is there nothing showing up on the radars?” I asked, and W advised me that there had been no change.
“What happened to them?” I asked no one.
“Results are coming,” Suma said, typing away at the console.
“What results?” I asked.
“We sent a series of transmissions out toward the location where the star would have been,” she said.
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