by J. N. Chaney
“Thanks,” I said.
We made it back to the crawler, where Stacy went to work on sewing up the back of my head. Ricky, Tong, and Arun were close enough to help if needed. They stood beside the bed of the crawler, planning their next move.
“You know what you’re doing back there?” I asked, only half teasing. “I don’t want the back of my perfectly shaped head looking like a quilt from a first-time sewer.”
“Perfectly shaped head, huh?” Stacy asked as she rummaged through one of the black crates in the back of the crawler. “How many concussions did you have when you were a gladiator?”
“Too many,” I answered honestly.
“I’m going to have to clean the wound first,” Stacy said, finding a bottle of disinfectant, a needle, and thread from the medical kit she rummaged through. “It’s not going to tickle. Do you want something for the pain?”
“No time, and if we get ambushed again, I don’t want to be slow from the meds,” I said, gritting my teeth. I searched the ground looking for something to bite down on. I wasn’t sure if it really worked, but over the years when I was treated for my wounds using a Heal Aid, biting down on something helped. Like I could channel my pain into that single act. It was probably in my head, but either way, it worked.
I leaned down and grabbed a short stick that had fallen from one of the trees. It was as thick as two of my fingers and not much longer. I placed it in between my teeth and bit down.
“Go ahead,” I mumbled outside the bit in my mouth.
“Here we go,” Stacy said.
The cold liquid cleaning the wound felt good for about point zero five seconds. Then it turned to fire. It felt like someone poured molten lava on the back of my skull.
I grimaced, letting out a big breath of air in a near growl, then bit down on the piece of wood between my teeth, grimacing.
“You’ve got this,” Stacy coached me. “Just wiping clean the wound now and then we’ll start to sew. It’s not often I have a captive audience like this that can’t talk back. It’ll be like a free trip to the shrink for me. Hmmm, what do I need to get off my chest?”
I knew what Stacy was doing. She was talking to me to try and get my mind off the searing hot pain coming from the back of my skull. It didn’t work, but I appreciated the sentiment.
“Well, we’ll need to get you another earpiece, since yours was knocked off in the battle royale with Legion,” Stacy said, going down a mental checklist. “You should get something in your stomach and definitely water after this. You can sleep in the back of the crawler until we get to the communication section of the Orion.”
Each time Stacy put the needle in my skin, I could feel a tiny icepick digging away at the meat at the back of my skull. Pain was something I was familiar with. You didn’t get as far as I had in the gladiator world without your fair share of injuries and scars.
Stacy went on doing her best to distract me from the pain. I took my mind away from the agony in the back of my skull by focusing on her voice more than the words. When the pain became too much, I bit down on that unlucky piece of wood like Mutt would on a Christmas ham.
“There we go,” Stacy said, removing her hands from my head to examine her handiwork. Looks like some kind of screwed-up lightning bolt design, but you’re good to go.”
I ignored the lightning bolt reference. Somehow, I knew Lou would have jumped at the analogy, bringing together a parallel of what they meant.
“Thanks,” I said, spitting out the piece of wood that now had bite marks in it. I went over to the back of the crawler and found a towel and a canteen, letting the water run over the cloth. The cuts on my face stung when I touched the wet rag to it, but it was a familiar pain.
“There’s food in that large case in the back right corner of the crawler bed,” Stacy pointed out. “You sure you’re good to go with us for the rest of this mission? No one is going to fault you for wanting to head back to the Orion.”
She tried to hide it, but I could sense there was a deep concern in her voice. She was worried for me. If it was up to her, she probably would see me sent back to the Orion for proper treatment and a day or two of downtime.
“Not a chance,” I said, grabbing a protein bar from the case of food supplies and sitting down in the back of the crawler. “Just get the crawler moving. I’ll be good to go after a nap.”
Ricky, Arun, and Tong filled the cab of the crawler. I could hear the Remboshi going on and on about facts of his planet. I might have been more interested in listening in if I wasn’t so tired from the day’s events already.
People forgot how taxing fighting could actually be. That was why there were rounds in most organized fighting. After a handful of minutes going all out in a fight, the human body was fatigued to the point of quitting altogether.
I worked on chewing the protein bar quickly, just wanting to get the food in my stomach before I closed my eyes.
Mutt and Stacy jumped into the back of the crawler with me. Mutt’s nose sniffed the air hard. He looked at the rest of the protein bar in my hand. I tossed it his way. It didn’t even hit the ground.
Stacy closed the back gate of the crawler. Ricky gunned the engine and pulled forward with a slight jerk.
“I’m on lookout,” Stacy said, finding a standing position next to the rear of the cabin. She patted the blaster at her hip. “We’ll be okay. You get some rest.”
I found a spare jacket in one of the crates in the crawler. The rocking of the crawler bed lulled me to sleep with a dream I wouldn’t remember when I woke.
12
I stood in a massive dining room, a large table with elegant chairs in front of me, and fancy paintings on the wall. A gaudy fireplace sat to my left.
Who the heck lives here? I wondered. Why would someone own all of this stuff?
The double doors opened and little girl with brown hair pulled back into pigtails walked in. She wore a white dress and couldn’t have been more than three or four, but I was bad at guessing things like this. She looked at me shyly then giggled.
I didn’t know how I knew her, only that I did. She was familiar somehow, like I had known her all along.
I took a knee with a smile. I didn’t interact with kids, so the best I could do was give her a goofy grin and wave.
That was when I noticed I was dressed in slacks, a button-up shirt, and black dress shoes. The fabric felt soft and expensive. I hadn’t worn anything like this in a long time.
Something itched in the back of my mind. Something that told me I was in dream. It felt so real though, too real to be a figment of my imagination.
“You look nice dressed up,” the little girl told me with a sly grin of her own. “You’re beautiful. You have a beautiful face.”
The innocence with which she said the words made me smile then stop and think. I chuckled. “Thank you. You’re beautiful too.”
“Thank you, you’re so nice.” The little girl twirled around in her dress. She spun with all the grace of a child and none of the self-consciousness. She was determined in what she wanted to do and didn’t care what I might think.
“Mommy is going to come,” the little girl said, pointing at the doors. “She just wanted me to come in first and say hi. You’re exactly like she told me you would be.”
I opened my mouth then closed it again. Realization hit me like a gladiator never could. Tears sprang to my eyes, but I didn’t let them fall.
The double doors opened again. This time, a radiant white light showed a silhouette. The outline was of a woman. I knew who this was before I saw her. Natalie came into the room. She wore a plain dress like the little girl. A necklace with a medallion hung on her slender neck.
I rushed to her, unable to keep the tears at bay any longer, then scooped her up in my arms, understanding now this could only be part of a dream. A dream I wished I would never wake up from.
Natalie laughed and hugged me back. She buried her head into the side of my neck. I hugged her so tight, I thought I might hurt
her.
“I’m dreaming,” I said, more tears streaking down my cheeks. “I’m dreaming.”
Natalie wiped my tears with her thumbs. “Sometimes dreams can save us. We don’t have long, but I wanted to tell you that we’re safe and we understand why this all had to happen.”
“We,” I repeated, understanding exactly who she meant.
Natalie broke away from my arms for a moment, motioning to the girl to come forward.
“Dean, I’d like to introduce you to your daughter, Jemma,” Natalie said. She went down to her own knee, beckoning the child forward. “Come on, Jemma, this is your father. The man I’ve told you stories about.”
I fell more than went to my knees. More tears came with the absence of actual sobs or crying. I just couldn’t stop them.
Jemma came forward with a smile and whispered in Natalie’s ear. Her whisper was loud enough I could hear. “Can I hug him?”
“I think he’d like that very much,” Natalie said, looking over to me.
All I could do was nod, too choked with emotion to speak.
Jemma came to me with a silly grin on her lips. Like her mother, she wiped the tears from my cheeks. Next, she swung her little arms around my neck.
I couldn’t describe what I felt. It was more than happiness; it was pure innocent joy, the likes of which I could never remember experiencing before. Love on the most primal, open level.
I wrapped my arms around my daughter. She felt so tiny, so very small in my embrace.
Get it together, I told myself. Get it together.
I’m not sure how long I held her. The only thing I was sure of was, when she let go of my neck, the moment came too soon. I gave her one little tiny squeeze, remembering how she felt in my arms, the clean sweet smell of her hair, then let her go.
“Jemma, can you go into the rest of the house and give us a moment?” Natalie asked our daughter. “I’ll be right in. We just need to talk.”
“Okay, Mommy,” Jemma said, giving me one final glance. “I’ll see you again one day soon, Daddy. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I managed to say.
She was gone, her bare little fleet slapping across the wood floor. I’d remember that sweet noise forever.
“I need for you to understand two things,” Natalie said, bringing me back to the present moment. “First, everything that’s happened has done so for a reason. These people you’re with need you. You’re going to save thousands of lives.”
“What?” I searched Natalie’s eyes for understanding. “What are you talking about? I’ve never been a leader.”
“Maybe they don’t need a leader.” Natalie stared back into my eyes. “Maybe they need a protector. Second, you have to let us go.”
I shook my head, not believing what I was hearing.
“You’ve mourned us long enough,” Natalie said, choking on her own words for a moment. Tears shone in her eyes. “You have to let us go and enjoy the life you have around you. Make the best of the time you have left knowing Jemma and I are cared for and we’ll see you again.”
“No, no, how can you ask me to forget you?” I asked, shaking my head in dismay.
“I never said forget,” Natalie said with an arched brow. Her eyes sparkled as the light caught the tears that lived there. “We will never forget. But you still have a life to live. You still have a purpose to fulfill. Yes, be sad, but there is a time for sadness as is there a time for happiness. I want you to be happy. I want you to be happy, my love. Don’t dwell on us but remember us always with a smile as you live your life.”
I shook my head again, trying to understand what she was saying. I already did, but it seemed strange. Letting her go, letting them go was such a foreign idea.
“You go be the man you were always meant to be.” Natalie placed a hand on my chest. “I won’t be coming back. This is it.”
Natalie moved in closer, placing her lips on mine.
I woke in the back of the crawler, trying to remember my dream even as the details of the event faded. A sense of peace rested in my chest where Natalie had touched me. Tears fell down my face. I rubbed them away then sat up too quickly. A dull pain in my head reminded me of the events that had occurred that morning.
The crawler rocked back and forth underneath me. The sky overhead told me I’d slept far longer than I intended. Bright pinks and purples streaked the sky as the twin suns descended past the horizon.
Mutt looked up at me from his spot beside me on the crawler. His tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth in a dopey grin.
Stacy looked back at me from her spot behind the cab of the crawler. Her legs were bent in an easy stance to absorb the sway of the vehicle.
“I was going to wake you soon,” Stacy said with a smile. “How’s the head, Sleeping Beauty?”
“It feels alright,” I lied, still trying to remember every detail of the dream that had left me with such a deep sense of peace. I couldn’t. “I think I’m going to be okay.”
“Good. Here, I forgot to give this to you.” Stacy tossed me the medallion that Maksim had torn off my neck. “I saw it on the ground.”
“Thanks,” I said, catching it from the air.
“We’re out of range from communication with Iris now, so we’re on our own,” Stacy informed me.
I stood up on shaky legs, going over to where she leaned on the back of the cab for support. I had a chance to study the terrain. In front of us and to the left, dark mountain ranges reached up to touch the sky. To the south, the first lines of the forest scattered out and were lost in the growing darkness.
“We shouldn’t travel in the dark,” Arun said via the comm unit in my ear. “According to the map Iris gave us, we should be reaching the Orion communication level soon. We’ll stop there and rest for the night.”
“No sign of Captain Harold or his team?” I asked.
“None,” Ricky answered. “No tracks or markings they might have left either, nothing. It’s like they disappeared.”
An uncomfortable silence fell on our little group at those words. The crawler continued forward, racing the setting suns. Ricky switched on the vehicle’s high beam lights to compensate.
We reached the foot of the mountains less than an hour later. There was no sign of life save for a few birds in the distance and the scampering alien lizards on the ground around us.
Ricky pulled to a stop at the base of a steep sloping mountain whose peak was lost to the darkness.
“I can try to scout a way around or through,” Ricky suggested.
“No need,” Tong said through the comms. “I can see what you’re looking for there, just to the left of the foot of the mountain.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Follow the slope on the left side of this mountain,” Tong instructed. “You’ll see the silhouette of the section of the ship.”
“I don’t see anything,” Ricky said. “I just see another mountain.”
“I don’t think that’s a mountain, Rick,” I said as I picked up Tong’s line of sight. “That’s a piece of the Orion.”
13
Unlike the prison section of the ship we discovered the week before, this section was much larger. It was deceivingly massive. On the map Iris showed us, it looked small—sure, larger than the prison section by a bit, but not this big.
No wonder we missed it in the growing dark. It rose from the left side of the mountain in front of us like some massive hill. The stars twinkling overhead were obscured by thick clouds, as was the giant moon that usually beamed down.
Now that I saw it up close, there was no thinking it was anything else. It was obvious. I couldn’t unsee it if I wanted to.
“So, what’s our play here, Arun?” Stacy asked through the comm. “Are we going in or waiting it out until daylight?”
“We take the crawler up there and park until morning,” Arun decided. “There’s not enough room for us all in the cab of the crawler, but there is in there. We see what we can for now, find a secur
e spot, then go exploring with the daylight.”
“Will the vehicle be able to make it up the steep incline?” Tong asked.
“What do you think, Dean?” Ricky asked me. “You think we can make it up there?”
“We’ll make it,” I said. “Just drop it in gear and take it slow.”
“You got it, brother,” he replied, adjusting the gears and sending a hard shiver through the base of the crawler.
“Hold on,” I told Stacy.
Stacy nodded, gripping the handles on the outside of the cab. Even Mutt pressed his belly to the bed of the crawler and spread out on all fours.
Ricky used the high beams and the added floodlights. Two large lights in the grill of the vehicle shot out along with two smaller lights on each front fender. On the top of the cab near where we held on, four more lights opened from the roof and shot brilliant white lights into the darkness.
The mountains were bare of any undergrowth. Reddish-cream rocks and sands made up the impressively large terrain.
True to his word, Ricky took it slow, creeping forward meter by meter. Maybe it was because I had just been ambushed earlier that day, but I felt a sense of unease, as though we were being watched. The hot day air was just giving way to the night’s cooler touch, causing goosebumps to flow down my neck.
I kept my head on a swivel, seeing the mountain ahead of us and the looming section of the Orion, but nothing else. Even the wildlife had gone to bed for the time being.
Slowly, the broken hull took on more shape. It was easily four times as large as the prison section we found and hadn’t fared as well in the crash as the other. More than half of it had been annihilated on impact. Debris and broken twisted steel were everywhere. Ricky rolled over what could have been a sink, then a section of a door, and so on and so on.
Memories of how great the Orion had been when we took off flooded my mind. How had something so massive come to be nothing more than garbage? It arched on the side of the mountain as if it were trying to camouflage itself on the alien terrain.