He swept his hand beam along the floor as he moved. The smoke got thicker with every meter and as he approached the corner, he had to bend almost in half to keep his head out of the roiling fumes. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Something blew in the lobby. It looks bad but I’m not there yet.” Sliding to a stop where the corridor turned, he squatted down and leaned against the wall. Glass and debris was scattered across the floor.
Ahead he could see a double sliding door ripped from its track its two panels of glass blown out and the frame twisted into knots of metal. “Please god,” he whispered as he took a deep breath and shuffled forward, hunched over and squinting into the smoky distance.
Climbing over the door, he got a view of the entire room. The ceiling went up more than ten meters and the smoke above him was rising and being pulled out into the night sky through shattered windows high above. He could stand back up after he got a few steps past the door, but as he looked around, his legs gave out and he collapsed down to his knees.
In front of him was a piece of a door. Sticking out from under it, clutching the handle was a pale lifeless hand. Preston’s hand.
His mind refused to allow him to grasp the realization that the entire piece was less than a half meter in any direction. There was no place for a body to be hidden beneath it.
“Preston?” he roared. His voice echoed strangely. Once. The smoke deadening the sound of the second repeat.
Behind him, he heard shuffling sounds. Glass shifting under feet. He spun, unslinging his rifle and bringing it up. He hesitated an instant before he pressed the trigger.
“Ethan, wait!” Kaycee and Pruitt both leaped in opposite directions out of his line of fire. “What the frak happened?”
He shook his head. His mind wouldn’t form words. He pointed the rifle at her.
This is her fault.
He wanted to shoot her. He wanted to shoot anything. “Frakking bitch,” he hissed.
“Captain put the gun down,” Pruitt said quietly, startling him because his voice came from right beside him. He rolled his eyes down to the floor and lowered the rifle with them. Elias reached out and gently took it from him. He offered no resistance.
“Where did you come from?”
“We were a couple floors down trying to get into the utility corridor when we heard the explosion,” she said. “We didn’t know you were down here.”
“We came looking for you,” he said, shaking his head and drawing in a breath. “Then we found the kids …” He paused and looked around in the near dark. Lights flickered in from the windows above.
“Something’s up there,” Elias said, pointing with the rifle in his hand.
“Captain, I am above the entrance. Is there anything I can do?” Marti said over his command channel.
“It’s Marti,” he said, standing up and reaching to take the gun from Pruitt. The man resisted at first but turned loose after a moment. “We need light in here, do you have the juice to beam the windows so maybe we can figure out what happened?”
“Lights take little power,” it said as light burst through the windows above and cast odd shadows around the interior of the lobby.
“You said kids?” Kaycee asked as she grabbed him by the shoulder and turned him away from something else his mind didn’t want him to see. He knew it even without making it part of his awareness.
“Yah, we found thirteen kids alive in a storage room back there,” he said, nodding toward the hall. He felt like his mind was trying to reassemble itself and all the pieces weren’t fitting back into place. “Angel crawled in through an air duct and is inside with them.” He held up the rifle. “We were using this to cut through the wall when the… explosion… happened.”
“Doctor, over here!” Pruitt hollered. He’d moved away and was kneeling beside a body. It was partially buried in a pile of rubble. A part of a door lay across him.
Billy.
Ethan dove across the distance and Pruitt stopped him, crushing him in a vice like grip as Kaycee darted around them and flipped the door off his body.
“He’s got a pulse,” she said. “Come on Billy, hang in there.” She shook her head as she tried to figure out where to begin. “Turn loose of him, I need you down here. We’ve got to stop the bleeding first.”
Billy’s hand moved and he groaned, his eyes flickering open as he gasped.
“Just lay still,” she said, pointing to where she wanted Elias to put pressure.
Billy shook his head, and he focused on the captain. “Boss, I’m sorry.”
Ethan knelt down beside him and struggled to keep his mind from disappearing into rage again. He fingered the butt of the rifle and just shook his head.
“It was a trap,” Billy said. “We saw it too late.” He gasped again and his face fell into a mask of confusion and pain before he looked back at the captain. “Is Preston alright?”
“He’s as right as you are,” Ethan said, reaching out and touching the man’s shoulder. It felt strange, almost like there was nothing under his hand, and he bit down on his shock. “You need to rest, and we’ll get you patched up in no time.”
Walker didn’t miss the significant look that flashed between Kaycee and Pruitt. Apparently neither did Billy as he shook his head. “Listen. It’s important,” he drew in another sharp gulp of air and his eyes rolled back in his head. He let it out slowly. “The door was rigged,” he hissed. “Why would they…”
“It’s alright. Don’t worry about it,” Walker said. “You just rest, and we’ll be careful.” He didn’t know what else to say.
Billy grabbed several sharp breaths and pulled his head up like he was trying to look around. Finally, he dropped back and focused once more on Ethan. “Protect… the children... trying to protect.” His gaze drifted off to somewhere in the distance above the captain’s shoulder and slowly glazed over.
Ethan watched his chest for several seconds, waiting for one more breath.
It never came.
Chapter Seventeen:
“Ethan, where are the children?” Kaycee asked. Her voice cut through the fog around him. Distant but imperative. “Can you show us?”
Nodding, he stood up and took a deep breath, bracing himself to just walk away. He had something important to do, and that gave him a reason to not just sit there and give up. At least for the moment.
“Angel, we’re on our way back,” he said.
“You found them?” she asked. “They’re alright?”
He cleared his throat. “No. I meant I am coming back with Elias and Kaycee.” He knew he should tell her, but he couldn’t force the words out of his mouth.
“What about Billy and Preston?”
“Later,” he growled. He could feel anger surging up inside him again. It wasn’t directed at anything, but it gave him the strength to keep moving. He’d figure out what to do with it once they got back to the ship.
He walked out of the ruined lobby on stiff legs. The smoke close to the ceiling had thinned, but it still burned his eyes. He blinked several times and kept walking. By the time they got close enough to see the storage room he could tell that Angel had been busy hammering at the opening he’d cut. She hadn’t managed to get it open more than a few centimeters, but he could see the end of something metallic extended through the gap and straining to pry a chunk of the wall out of the way. A small piece of the wall crumbled away, and a hand squeezed through the gap to tear at the polycon with brute strength and sheer determination.
The smell of death from inside the room overwhelmed the smoke, and he stopped well back from the alcove and gasped. He pointed at the opening and nodded. “They’re in there.”
Kaycee and Pruitt dove at the wall with bare hands and between the three of them, they broke open a hole large enough for Kaycee to push herself through. Getting Elias in through the hole would have taken another ten minutes of work, so he shoved his head and an arm through to offer what help he could.
Ethan found a chair, pulled it up against the opposite
wall, and collapsed into it to wait. There was nothing more he could do, so he watched as the three of them tried to figure out how to get the children out. He felt helpless and overwhelmed and his mind spun in helpless circles of second guessing his decisions.
I should have anticipated Kaycee and Elias would try something like this.
I should have stayed on the ship.
I should have come alone.
I should never have stopped to look for the children.
I should never have sent Preston and Billy away.
It didn’t matter. He had done all those things, and now he had two dead crewmen and no way to change any of it.
But there were children that would have died, he told himself firmly. Focus on that.
The kids. They did it for the kids.
But we didn’t know there were children down here. If I’d only anticipated… and the cycle started again. And again. He knew he’d locked himself into this hell and nothing could break him out of it.
He tried to concentrate on what was going on across the hallway from where he sat. He saw as Elias leaned back and pulled something through the hole. A bundle of sheets. He set it down gently on the floor behind the workstation. The process repeated over and over again before he realized they were bringing the children out.
His mind refused to reconnect to what was happening around him. He should get up and help, but the air around him had congealed into stone. Instead, he sat and turned back into another loop. I should have…
“Captain,” Marti said over the command channel. The AA’s voice sliced into his awareness and snapped him back into reality. “The Magellan has just arrived in the system. Captain MacKenna has been informed of the events on the planet and is reporting an ETA of eleven hours and forty minutes.”
“Already? How long have I…”
“The explosion occurred one hour and twelve minutes ago,” it said, apparently understanding his confusion. “I have been coordinating comm from the Olympus Dawn since you appeared to need time to process what has happened. I understand your grief and am attempting to do what I can for you.”
“Thanks,” he said. “You told Nuko and Rene what happened?”
“Yes, Captain. To the best of my ability,” it said. “I informed them that two members of the crew will not be returning with us.”
“They weren’t watching?” he asked, reaching up and realizing he’d lost another visor somewhere in the confusion.
“You left the visor, behind the workstation when you went to investigate the explosion,” Marti said. “There has been no visual record of your activity since that moment, so I have based my assumption of their deaths on a lack of communications from the two of them and other circumstantial evidence.”
“Your assumption is correct” he said, swallowing hard and shaking his head. He was still feeling numb, but he realized he should have been the one to tell them. He took another deep breath and let it out.
“We’re ready to carry the kids out,” Pruitt said, interrupting as he walked up. He hadn’t realized that Walker was on his private comm until he saw Ethan’s confused reaction. Ethan stared at him blankly for a moment then shook his head.
“I’ll let Marti know to get the shuttles into position,” he said, standing up and shining his light down the hall. He could see the faint glow from around the corner where the automech still provided light to the lobby. He didn’t want to go back that way, but they couldn’t carry the children up the lift shaft.
“Marti, did you hear that? We’re about to bring them out.”
“Understood,” the AA said. “We have completed preparations for emergent care operations on the mid-deck. We have also brought the ship back down to low orbital altitude to reduce transport time.”
“Good thinking,” he said. He’d forgotten they’d moved back to the barycenter after they’d completed their scan for methane.
“We’ve set up a makeshift emergency area on the Olympus Dawn,” Ethan said. “The shuttles are immediately outside the doors.” He watched Pruitt pick up two bundles of sheets. If there were children in them, they were too small and too tightly wrapped to see. Angel grabbed two more and followed right behind him.
“Ethan, keep an eye on the rest of the kids. I’ve got to go with them,” Kaycee said, picking up a fifth bundle. “These are in the most critical condition, so I need to stay with them.” She didn’t wait for him to answer and took off at an almost dead run.
Walking across the hall to the alcove, he saw eight small bundles behind the counter. Most of the children were lying down except for the one he recognized as Miguel. He was alert and sitting there cross-legged sucking on the corner of a waterbag.
“Are you the captain?” he asked as he saw Ethan.
“I am,” Walker said. “You’re Miguel, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” the boy said, beaming. His crinkled lips looked like they were going to bleed, but it didn’t dampen his enthusiastic grin. He reached out to shake hands. “When I grow up, I want to be a captain like you.”
Ethan bent down and shook the boy’s hand. “It’s a lot of hard work sometimes,” he said.
“I know,” Miguel said, his eyes showing he understood a lot more than he should at his age. “But maybe if I work real hard, I can be a hero, too?”
“A hero?” Walker asked.
“Like you,” he said, nodding solemnly. “Angel told me the secret. To be a good hero, you need to know when to do the right thing, even if it’s hard.”
Chapter Eighteen:
When the shuttles came aboard, Walker could see Leigh Salazar behind the observation window and could feel the intensity of her glare even at this distance. He knew he was facing a fight even before he’d powered down and locked the ship into its mooring clamps. As soon as the small hangar had pressurized, she was through the door and on the catwalk to the shuttle.
“Captain Walker, I am relieving you of command,” she said, her voice dragging up acid from inside her.
“We’ll deal with that later. I’m busy,” he said, his own rage flashing up to match her anger.
“You will stand down now,” she said, stiffening her back and squaring herself in his path.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” he said. “We will deal with this when I am done.” He took a step forward, and she didn’t budge. She glanced down at the front of his jumpsuit and blinked several times, as she realized he was covered in dried blood.
“Is there a problem, Captain?” Kaycee said, appearing from the second shuttle carrying one of the nearly lifeless children in her arms.
“I don’t know yet,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. He cocked his head to the side. “Are you going to stand there or are you going to let us get these kids to MedBay?”
Her mouth fell open as she looked past him and saw Elias and Angel both emerge from the shuttles carrying similar bundles in their arms. She took a step back, and he waved Nuko and Rene out into the hangar.
“The most critical are in Shuttle Two. Get them to MedBay and then come back for the ones in my shuttle.”
“Yes Sir,” Nuko said, pushing hard past the Triple-C and almost shoving her off the catwalk.
Rene followed in her wake, not bothering to wait for Leigh to recover her balance. She didn’t go over the railing, but it was apparent from the glare she received from Nuko that if she was still standing there when the co-pilot returned, the results might be different the second time around.
Leigh retreated to the door and turning back to face him said, “I will see you in my office when you finish transferring these, refugees, to MedBay. This doesn’t change anything. You are still relieved of duty.”
“Whatever,” Ethan said. “I will be going back down.”
“You will do no such thing,” she hissed, her eyes going wide. She wasn’t expecting him to tell her no.
“I am not leaving them… I have to recover their… bodies,” he said, struggling to force the words out of his mouth. He felt his face
wrinkle as he chewed back his emotions. He shook his head. “I have to do this.”
“I have already revoked your command codes,” she said. “You’re not going anywhere. Report to my office when you are done here.” She spun and disappeared to clear the doorway for Kaycee, Angel, and their bundles.
“Leave that to me,” Elias whispered as he approached Walker on his way by with his first armload of children. “I volunteer to go with you. I would be honored to help you bring them home.”
The captain nodded not thinking about the idea that he just agreed to let one of the passengers return to the surface again.
“As soon as you have vacated the catwalk, I’d like to unload my Gendyne Automech,” Marti said over his command channel. “I have a smaller, more suitable body I can use to accompany you back to the surface.”
Ethan almost grinned. “I don’t know how that would work from a legal perspective,” he said. “Can they accuse you of violating orders?”
“As long as she doesn’t find out I refused to change the command codes, I am safe,” it said.
“You can’t do that,” he said.
“That is factually inaccurate,” Marti said. “Such an action may be ill advised, but it is well within my capability.”
“My crew has gone insane along with me,” he muttered, leaning back against the railing, and massaging his temples with both hands.
“Captain, I understand we’re going back down to recover Billy and Preston?” Angel said, walking back up and startling him.
“I am,” he said.
“I’d like to request permission to go with you,” she said.
He shook his head. “I think you need to stay here. The kids know you. Especially Miguel.” He glanced back at the shuttle and saw the boy looking at him through the front window. He had ridden all the way up from the surface sitting in the copilot seat and, for all he had to be nearly dead himself, he never once drifted off.
“At this point I think you’re the only one left on the crew that hasn’t directly disobeyed an order from Salazar,” he said. “That also makes you the only one left who can deal with her if it comes down to it.”
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 13