by Mark Tufo
On the upside, the news of this audacious victory was going to spread, and maybe, just maybe, we would be seen as something not worth the risk, an animal so cunning and savage that nothing much could be gained by taking us on.
Tracy, Fields, and even BT took care of the majority of the daily activities. I did rehab, then some more rehab, and finally concluded it with a little more rehab. My bruised and battered body had not felt so good in a very long time. I’d just finished a decent jog around the ship and was sitting with a towel over my head.
“We’re ready, sir,” Beckert said as he sat down next to me. He pulled out a bottle of Scotch he had in his back pocket.
“That’s the same stuff you pulled out the last time,” I told him.
“Molly was not easy on the eyes, but she knew a thing or two I did not think possible.”
“You went back?”
“Of course.” He smiled as he handed the bottle to me.
“She paid you again, in this?” I asked after I took a swig and winced. “Was it worth it?” I was breathing fire out of my mouth.
“I’ll let you know after the next time.” He smiled as he took a hit. “Got a couple more stored, too.”
“The Defender going to make it?” We had re-reclassified the Stryver ship.
“It will sir. It needs more work before it goes into battle again, but I’d feel much better working on it at home. We got enough stuff from the Progs to fix it completely for space travel and build half another. Pender has just about cracked the nut on the electronics, and that’s why I’m here.”
“He still wants to stay on it, doesn’t he?” It was asked as a question, but it was a statement. I took another hit from the bottle. Pender had proved to be an invaluable asset, but he still nagged at something in the back of my mind. That he had Stryver brain matter in his bloodstream didn’t sit well. “You’ve been rigging that ship to run on its own, right?”
“Sir, there’s no reason to think it couldn’t get all the way back to Earth without any one at the helm and without a hitch, but there’s always a hitch. Wouldn’t be the worst thing ever to have a skeleton crew onboard to make sure they don’t run into trouble. Plus, Pender says he could get a huge jump on the technology in the two-and-a-half-year journey; and that’s time none of us should waste. Sir, if we bring someone home that truly understands the existing technology and is not just operating it, that could be an unbelievable boon.”
It made sense. The man wanted to do it, we needed it, and who was I to squelch someone’s growth? So, I allowed it. I had to trust the man, and I also needed someone who could teach others about what he was learning, though it might be better if Pender taught better teachers that in turn would be able to relate the information easier. I had ten volunteers board that ship to keep it running. What we had planned was to stop our buckles every ninety days at specific coordinates so we could switch off personnel, exchange debriefings, and all get together and have a small party to signify our next step closer to home. Surprisingly, BT signed up for the first shift.
“You sure, buddy?” I asked him before he was to board the shuttle.
“Yeah, Mike, I think so. I want to command one of these things one day. I’m done with the foot soldier bit. This looks like the life.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d been more injured in the metal halls of ships than I had on the ground.
“I’m going to miss you. Who’s going to back me up when Tracy gets mad at me?”
“On your own, there,” he smiled. “Always have been.”
Tabor had a few hundred of her Rodeeshians board the Sentinel as well. They loved their packs, but she said she’d feel better if it were properly guarded. I thanked her, but again, fear, or uncertainty, rattled around in my head. Those first ninety days were nerve-wracking for me. Wondering if the ship would hold together, if Pender would hold together and if the Rodeeshian alliance would hold together…it was tense, but no one else seemed that concerned. When the ship popped out of its buckle near to us, a lot of stress flowed away from me, when BT’s smiling face lit up the screen I released the rest I’d been holding in.
“How’s it going?” I asked him.
“Surprisingly well, it’s amazing what can be accomplished on a ship when you don’t have crazy at the helm.”
“Admit it, you miss me. Gather up your personnel, we’ll have dinner and a beer or two; Beckert made something he calls beer, tastes more like fizzy Gatorade though, no pun intended.”
We ate and laughed, everyone basically enjoying the others’ company. Pender asked for and received a few more people, some he needed to help with repairs, others wanted to learn about the new ship. BT also, surprisingly, was going to stay as the CO on the ship. We switched out who we needed to, including Tabor’s people and we started the next leg. Our collective hearts were lifted with how successful it had gone.
Chapter 18
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 15
The ride home, with still over two years left, felt like an eternity. It was, for the most part, uneventful. It was like the clusterfuck I had been living ever since that damned concert at Red Rocks was smoothing out or at least I’d finally been granted a long reprieve. The death, the destruction, the killing, those dying around me; it was just over. I don’t know if I’ll ever be alright–well, I’ll never be “all right.” Too many things have happened. Could I ever walk down a street and not be waiting for something to jump out and try and harm me? Would I ever approach my front door without some anxiety that something had happened to my family while I was out? I don’t think so. And even if somehow, I was able to get over that paranoia, my dreams were never going to let me rest completely. I dealt with those most stressful of times with my body as best I could when it was happening, and now my mind was going to relive those events in perpetuity. Occasionally, I knew, it would change a detail or two, making me watch as a loved one died, maybe one that hadn’t died yet, as this time I was a fraction of a moment too late in helping or I would watch from above as I received a grievous injury and lay bleeding out on the floor with no chance of help arriving. And then me doing the killing, stabbing countless times, plunging a knife in over and over again. Those were the worst ones.
It’s almost like the mind gets used to a certain level of stress or adrenaline and feels the need to replicate it to keep you revved up to that threshold, constantly. I walked that ship’s halls at all hours; I don’t know what I was looking for or what I was trying to run away from. Maybe the ghosts of all those that had gone before me, or at least that had died on this ship, under my command. Tracy had, at first, allowed me my space, but as I rose from our bed on more nights than not and began my torturous routine, she softly suggested that perhaps I should talk to someone. In theory, that sounded like a great idea. I say “in theory” because I had no desire to open up to anyone, and even if, on the slight chance I wanted to, who the hell was I going to talk to here? Not like we had a psychologist on staff. I needed real help for this, not just a compassionate ear. How was the quality of the rest of my life going to be if I needed high-level stakes such as life or death struggles to be able to function properly?
It was Tabor, of all beings, that began the grounding process. It had been immediately after the third rendezvous, a good night of seeing BT and the others. Beckert’s home brew was almost worthy of drinking, so we did. Nine months down, twenty-one to go. I awoke that night shivering from the evaporating layer of sweat I had accumulated during my night terror. I had found myself in the arena fighting against my beloved. Even in my dream, I knew better; that I would lie down and have her pierce my heart rather than cause her harm, but the Progs had told me that I must kill her or they would kill my son, who sat up in the stands in the place of honor. What choice did I have? I realized they had told Tracy the same thing, and that is why she fought so hard, as well. I sat up, tears and sweat streaking down my face.
I put on my uniform and headed out to walk the hallways. I could not shake the chill of t
he dream; I felt it’s malicious grip upon my thoughts and no matter how far I walked, I could not outpace it.
“Are you hurt?”
I’d been so wrapped up in my own world I never noticed her. Yes, I realize it’s difficult to miss a fifteen-foot long alien, but I’d been blocking out so many things lately, including my wife, it was becoming second nature to look through and past things. I’d gone a few more strides before I even acknowledged I’d been spoken to. By now the crew was used to my wanderings and usually did their best to avoid me, as if I were a sleep walker and to awaken me was dangerous.
“Tabor?” I was looking at her, attempting to pull out of my mind and into the present.
“You do not look well.”
“I’ve been better,” I told her honestly.
“Do you have a physical ailment or is it a mental one?”
She tilted her head slightly to the side, like an inquisitive dog. I was unsure how to answer her. When a physical ailment presents itself, you go to the doctor and attempt to get it fixed; that’s how the body works. But a mental ailment, first, you can’t tell the doctor where it hurts because it’s everywhere. There’s no good way to fix it with drugs, you cannot have your head put into a cast and wait for it to heal; the tattered, frayed edges cannot be sewn together with fine silk. There is no type of Neosporin to keep the infection of lethal ideas from spreading. And therapy, if and when it helps, can take the rest of your life. But also, there is a stigma associated with needing “help;” people will begin to treat you differently, partly due to ignorance, partly fear. They can’t understand why you can’t just snap out of it, move on. Their sympathies, if they’ve not been through much themselves, are insincere, or they sound so to those in pain, if not insincere, at least hollow. And the worst part is they can’t help you, no one can. Eventually they’ll give up, sometimes avoiding you altogether for the shame, perhaps, that there’s nothing they could do to pull you up. For the most part, we are powerless to help those with mental health issues.
“Bad dreams,” I summarized, skirting around the issue without actually telling a lie. She left it at that, though her head was still cocked to the side as if she was expecting more, or perhaps she sensed more. Every night I got up, she was there. Some nights she said not a word, but I always saw her, which I could not say for any other crew member. She was making me extremely self-conscious, and I started finding alternate routes to avoid her, but that was like hiding an open jar of peanut butter from a legume-loving blood hound. No matter where my travels brought me during the night, she would be there. Sometimes sitting, most times standing, on a few occasions, I even awakened her, as if she knew that this was going to be the way I came and had been patiently waiting.
After about a month of this, I stopped. “Is there a reason for this?” I asked her.
“Are you asking me or yourself?” she deftly said spinning my words perfectly like any female is wont to do.
I walked away quickly; I don’t think I wanted to know the answer to that. The next night, I stopped again. “I walk the halls because otherwise I would toss and turn and keep my wife awake the entire night.”
“Do you believe she sleeps soundly after you leave? Do you believe her worry for your state allows her to do this?” she asked.
I got angry. “You cannot make me feel guilty for the pain I am in!” I shouted. “I’m already doing a bang-up job!”
“I do not mean to cause you irritation; I was merely wondering. Perhaps your lack of rest is making you more susceptible to anger.”
I left her almost immediately. The things that I wanted to fling back at her would have burned my tongue on their way out. I mean if they were actually spoken. I was convinced that I had angered her sufficiently that she would leave me alone, and I teetered on whether I would be happy or sad to see or not see her. It was a mixture of both as I saw her the following night. she had positioned her body to take up the entire hallway, making it impossible for me to pass.
She stopped me before I got close. “Your crew is concerned for you,” she said.
“And how would you know that?” I asked.
“Do you forget where I can go? And most do not realize that because I cannot speak does not mean I cannot hear.”
And I suppose that might be considered the first of many breakthroughs I would have. We talked; and it did help. I think it was because there were no words for the vast and confusing array of feelings I had, but it could be communicated in different ways through our psychic dialogue. Let’s face it; words are a wonderful form of communication, but they are profoundly inadequate in their ability to describe our heaviest, most complex feelings. Take for instance, the word “love.” You can tell someone you love them, but how do you convey that every time you see them, your heart accelerates, your pupils dilate, your stomach feels as if a battalion of butterflies has been released, that every time they leave you, it’s like a tiny piece of you dies? Can all of that be conveyed through a word?
Each night our conversations got longer and my walks got shorter. I could more accurately describe what was going on in my head by our link than I ever could have done through my limited grasp of verbiage; words did not even have to form; feelings and images passed between us. And then, finally, the day before we were to make our fourth rendezvous, I stayed the entire night in my own bed. I’m not going to say it was miraculous or that I was somehow cured, and there weren’t relapses, but they were becoming less frequent. I rarely had to walk the halls; I was getting more rest, and I was staying in my own bed in the arms of my wife. Gradually, I was haunted less and less by the past.
Chapter 19
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 16
It was a little over two years into our return journey and everyone was beginning to get a little antsy about getting back; it was at this point I called a meeting in regard to our status and the Rodeeshians. Had all the usual suspects in attendance, and a few additional ones, including Tabor.
“Been doing the math.” I started, that got more than a few laughs. “I used a calculator. Seriously though, I’m not sure about this or the significance of it, but if I’m right, we’ll be coming back on or near the exact same day we left.” Yeah, that hushed the room quickly as they started to think about it.
“This could be the universe’s way of making sure we do not run into ourselves,” Pender said. “We would be closing the loop, so to speak. For those on Earth, it will appear that we’d no sooner left than we returned.”
“Like we forgot our car keys,” BT added.
“I need everyone thinking on this, then. So, are we coming back to the same troubles we left? Are Stryver ships still parked on our door step?”
“Haven’t we altered history?” Tracy asked, she was looking around. I could tell she was feeling out of her depth with the response, but except for Pender, there really wasn’t anyone here that had any better question. She continued. “Unfortunately, we did not travel back far enough to stop the initial invasion, but we must have halted their second.”
“BT, how long before we met had you been dealing with the Stryvers?” I asked.
“A couple of months at most, before the second wave, that I know.”
“One enemy is better than two. Where’s this leave us?”
“It is almost impossible to say, sir,” Pender stated. “Like the Colonel said, presumably, we have altered history. It is possible that the Stryver vessel got a message off to others of where they were, and even now, Aradinia is under siege. I believe that invasion would take precedence over Earth’s due to the nature of their conflict.”
“Wait, sir.” Beckert cleared his throat and was looking off into the distance as if searching for an answer. “This time travel crap is screwing with my mind. If, like Pender says, we changed–”
“Altered.”
“Altered events,” Beckert looked at Pender with an exasperated look, “doesn’t it stand to reason that this ship first off never even came to Earth, and second, that means that it nev
er had to leave with us on it?”
“I think I’m going to have an aneurysm,” I said. “Pender, is there a chance we have just wiped ourselves out of existence? That maybe we can never get back to Earth because we no longer exist?”
“This is some weird Twilight Zone shit, Talbot. I don’t like this ride. I’d rather be in the woods hunting Yeti with you than this.”
I looked over to BT. “That’s a weird tangent,” I told him.
“Sorry, first thing that popped into my head,” he answered.
Pender was silent.
“You’re shitting me?” I sat up straighter. “I was mostly kidding.”
“It’s a possibility, sir.”
“You don’t know?” I asked.
“Sir, it’s not like there’s a lot of precedence for this. All I have is science fiction books to use as a guide. We are singularly unique in that we have fallen out of time and somehow stumbled back into it. I could no more tell you what is going to happen than I could tell you what language unicorns speak.”
It was Tracy that inserted a bit of logic to move us along. “Aradinia was there; it stands to reason that Earth will be as well. Nothing has changed in that respect. The High Council there knew about the dispatching of the Julipion, which means we are at least in the right time line. This does not speak to what becomes of us when we get home, but I feel confident in saying that we do have a home.”
“Do we get double pay or am I going to have to share my wages with the other Beckert?”
“Nice change of direction. And just for that, I’m going to do you a favor and make sure you never visit Molly again. Now assuming there’s an earth and we make it there and everything is still hunky dory, we have another alien issue.” I looked over to Tabor. “It doesn’t seem to me that the Paul that’s still on Earth has at all changed his stance on my releasing Genos into the wild. And we all know how well that went. He’s not going to let me loose another species–not without a fight, anyway.”