Thetis--The Deep Sky Saga--Book Two

by Greg Boose

  Vespa shakes her head. “I hear you, I know. Let’s talk after dinner or something.” She turns and starts to walk away. Over her shoulder, she calls, “Oh, and you think I can’t handle some assholes and their animosity, Firstie? Because I thrive on it.”

  “You should rest, too!” Jonah yells after her.

  Vespa raises her fist in the air and gives him a mocking thumbs-up before disappearing around the corner.

  Matteo’s face reappears in the doorway. “Dude, get in here before people rip you to shreds.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The yurt is warm and smells like lemons mixed with body odor. On Jonah’s right hang two green hammocks, frayed and a bit dusty, and Jonah immediately wonders who used to sleep in the second one. Tunick? Krev? Armitage? To his left, a small tabletop stove with a percolating tea pot sputters out a low whistle. Matteo sits down on a wooden footlocker under one of the hammocks and takes a loud sip of his tea. He closes his eyes, and a small smile crosses his lips. A moment later, he looks up at Jonah with a straight face.

  “So, you meet Tunick, or what?”

  “Um.” Jonah still doesn’t know what he should reveal about Achilles. After all the lies and backstabbing, he knows it’s possible that Tunick and the Splitters have spies here. He doesn’t know who here is friends with whom, or who has enemies and why. “A lot happened on Achilles with a lot of people. I’m still pretty much processing it.”

  “Yeah, you met him. Yeah, you did. I can see it on your face.”

  Jonah remains silent. Maybe there’s a free yurt on the other side of the village, one where he can be by himself. He needs time to think and decompress and look over his wounds and take a nap and, and, and. What he doesn’t need to do is talk about Tunick.

  Matteo takes another loud sip before standing to open a cabinet under the stove. “Okay, fine. You’ll talk about it when you’re ready to talk about it. When the nightmares end and all that good stuff. I get it. So, what do you want to know about this place? Because I’ll fill you in. Be your guide or whatever. Your seeing eye dog, not that you need one of those anymore, am I right?”

  Jonah quickly walks back toward the front door and opens it an inch. The crowd is gone, as are Freeman and Louis and Vespa. He quietly closes the door and tries to lock it, but there’s no lock.

  “Yeah, uh, we don’t exactly have locks, per say,” Matteo says as he fills up a second mug with hot water. “With so few people here, we’re supposed to be able to trust each other and whatnot.”

  “And do you?” Jonah asks, thinking about Captain Tejas putting explosives all over the village.

  Matteo stuffs some tiny orange leaves into a metal tea ball and drops it into the second mug. He holds it up to Jonah with a wink. “Here ya go, big guy. Matteo’s famous tea, made from the finest alien leaves on Thetis that I’ve been able to find so far.”

  Jonah hesitates to take the mug. “You made tea from leaves growing here? On Thetis?”

  “Don’t worry, dude, it’s been approved by the good old FDA. You know, the Fucking Doctors in Athens. Look.” He takes the tea ball out of Jonah’s mug and drops it into his own, taking a sip to make a point. “It’s freaking tasty, man. And safe. And it’s caffeine free, which is pretty boss.”

  Jonah takes the mug and sniffs the pungent tea; it’s sweet and citrusy. “You didn’t answer my question. Do you trust the people here?”

  “No, not really. I mean, after Tunick and Lark and Camilla and everyone else went a little crazy last year, it’s been a bit difficult on the old trust meter. But since then, it’s been relatively quiet.”

  “What about Captain Tejas, though? With her trying to blow things up?”

  “I don’t know nothing about that,” Matteo says. “Didn’t see it myself and doubt it even happened. More likely she just got sick of this place, went out for a walk, and fell down a hole, and then Mirker took over.”

  Jonah sits on the other footlocker and takes his first sip. It’s weak but not bad, and the hot liquid sliding down his throat feels good, restorative even. “Did you know that on Earth, we were told that a bunch of the kids here died on a field trip? Because that’s what we heard happened to Tunick and Krev and Lark and everyone. We even had a moment of silence for them, all around the world. We actually mourned them.”

  “How sweet are you guys?” Matteo laughs. “But, yes, we all agreed to say they died on a field trip when that shit went down. Needed to keep the community looking good and safe and all that. No need for Earth to know we had some drug addicts up here causing all these problems and stealing spaceships. We needed to be sure we still got our funding and reinforcements and supplies. Had to make sure you guys still made the trip.”

  “And look how well that turned out.” Jonah stands and circles the room before carefully sitting on the hammock furthest from the door. He gently lies back with his mug held over his head. “Did you know Tunick?”

  “Of course. Everyone knew everyone.”

  “And?”

  “And the guy was a big-time goofball, but overall, pretty harmless. Made everyone laugh, helped out a lot around the colony. Dude was strong. He and Armitage, and I guess Krev, they were big time important in getting this place put together. Even if they were only seventeen or whatever.”

  Jonah tries to picture Tunick without his beard and long hair, digging trenches and erecting tents, helping others. It’s difficult to imagine. His eyes drag along the sparse interior of the yurt, its canvas walls and ceiling, the one rocking chair on the opposite side of the room made of the same fuzzy black wood as the walls in the hospital and farm building. Then he looks back at the door and the white outline of the sunlight framing it. Jonah swings his feet onto the floor, sets his steaming mug on the ground, hooks his hands into his footlocker’s handles, and drags it toward the entrance.

  “Uh, see you later?” Matteo says.

  Jonah puts the footlocker right in front of the door and then walks back over to his hammock and climbs back on. He reaches his long arm toward the ground and retrieves his tea.

  Matteo pours more hot water into his mug. “And you just did that because…”

  “For one, that Louis guy who just pulled a gun on us. Secondly, have you seen some of the kids we brought back from Achilles? The kids with the blank stares who don’t talk?”

  The boy slowly blows steam away from his mug. “Um, yeah. And I’m staying clear of that little rat pack. Hopefully, the doctors will zap them back to normal here soon.”

  Jonah wants to know what that means, but he’s suddenly exhausted. He sets the tea on the ground again. The hammock is more comfortable than he thought it would be, and his eyelids become too heavy to stay open. A year ago, or even a week ago, there’s no way Jonah could have fallen asleep with another person in the room, especially a stranger, but now… He hears Matteo walk across the room and shove the footlocker to the side, and Jonah can’t even open his mouth to protest.

  “Told you that shit was caffeine free. Alright then, roomie. You take a nap or whatever. Bathroom is in the next tent over, if you need to use it. I have like a hundred tasks to do and whatever. See you at dinner time. Hope you like rice and potatoes.”

  As soon as the door shuts, Jonah is fast asleep.

  • • •

  Jonah stands in front of the small stove in his yurt and drags his fingers across his tired face, picking the crust out from the corners of his eyes. He has no idea what time it is or how long he’s slept. All he knows is that sunlight no longer frames the unlocked door and that Matteo has left him a note.

  “Jonah, don’t drink all of my tea. Other than that, go buck wild. But don’t really; I like to keep this place neat. Also, that was my hammock you slept on. Get it together. ;)”

  He looks at the note and then at the tea kettle and realizes he doesn’t even know where to get water. Or food, for that matter. The only directions he has are to the bathroom, and that seems like a good place to start before looking
for dinner.

  There’s a knock on the door. He groans; he’s not ready for visitors and small talk. He doesn’t want to talk about Achilles or Tunick or whatever supplies didn’t make it to Thetis. He wants to pee, find something to eat, and crawl into his own hammock until morning.

  “Jonah? You awake?”

  As soon as he hears Vespa’s voice, he rushes to the door and swings it open. She stands in a clean tan jumpsuit, backpack over her one shoulder, her black hair pulled up high above her head in a fountain, her green eyes darting left and right. She looks beautiful, like a flower growing in the cracks of an abandoned parking lot. Before he can say anything, she’s inside and pacing between the hammocks.

  “I need you to come with me. Right now,” she says.

  “Okay, sure. Where?”

  “Outside the gates.”

  Jonah pauses. “Why out there?”

  “Because Paul is missing. He’s out there. And he’s not supposed to be out there. And I need your help getting him back.”

  Jonah sighs and sits on a footlocker. “Paul doesn’t need me out there looking for him. That guy hates me. He hunted me, Vespa. He hunted me down with Armitage and Ruth and wanted to kill me.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t care about any of that right now,” Vespa says. “He’s out there with Dr. Z, Jonah. Someone at the gate said they saw them leave the village about a half hour ago. They said she was dragging Paul away like he was dead or asleep or hurt. She took him, Firstie. And we have to help him.”

  Jonah stands up, but then sinks down into his hammock, the ropes creaking under his weight. Paul is huge, much stronger than he is. And Dr. Z was able to drag him around?

  “Why didn’t they stop her at the gate?”

  “Someone tried,” Vespa responds. “And now that guy is lying in the same hospital bed you were just in.”

  “But how is that even possible? Didn’t Mirker lock her up after she attacked me? Shouldn’t she be in some sort of jail or at the bottom of some deep pit or something?”

  “That’s exactly what I thought. They’re going to send out a search party in about an hour, but that’s too long to wait. I need to go now. And I need you to come with me.”

  “Me? Why not take someone like Griffin? He actually likes Paul.”

  “Because,” she says. “Dr. Z seems to have a thing for you. You could be…like…”

  “Bait?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Gee. Thanks.”

  Vespa walks up to Jonah’s hammock and grabs ahold of one of the rope knots. She gives it a little shake. “Sun comes up in ten. You and I are going to be outside the gates by then. You hear me?”

  He can see the desperation on her face, or maybe it’s heartbreak. Is she in love with Paul, or just worried about him?

  “I’m hungry,” he says. “It’s morning time? Shit. I missed dinner last night. And lunch yesterday.”

  “I’ve got you covered,” Vespa says, patting her backpack.

  They speed through the alleys of the dark village as quietly as they can, setting off tiny motion-sensor lights as they dart from yurt to yurt. As they pass by the Woesner Telescope, Jonah stares at the huge tube shining in the Achilles moonlight. He wants to get inside that building and look into that telescope and see what it sees. He wants to know what it knows.

  After thirty seconds, they reach the forty-foot tall gate that’s flanked by the fifty-foot fence. At its base, on the right side of the gate, sits a wide building with five small windows dotting its side. It’s the only structure in the village other than the observatory building made of stone and concrete. A single red bulb sits above the door.

  “So, how do we…” Jonah mumbles as he looks for a button or switch to open the gate. Then he sees it: high up on the wall, maybe twenty feet up, is an emergency button. How are they supposed to reach that in an emergency?

  The door to the building suddenly swings open, and out comes a thin man wearing a red ball cap. He reeks of sweat and something that might be alcohol, but Jonah knows that can’t be right; alcohol is forbidden in Athens.

  “Who is it?” the man asks with a yawn.

  Vespa steps forward, entering the red glow from the bulb. “I’m Vespa Bolivar, one of the survivors from Achilles. And this is Jonah Lincoln.”

  She pulls Jonah into the light just as the sky overhead changes from black to dark green. The man’s features come into view: long nose, furry cheeks, spidery blue veins spreading from the corners of his sleep-deprived eyes to the corners of his temples, disappearing into his cap. An LZR-rifle hangs from the strap crossing his back.

  “Gate doesn’t open for another hour,” the man says. “Come back then. And you’re going to need an escort on your first time out. Does Mirker know about this?”

  Vespa quickly steps past him and peers her head into the door of the building. “A woman and a cadet got through this gate just a while ago. How’d that happen?”

  The man rubs his jaw and Jonah sees it’s slightly swollen. Also, his lip is cracked and lined with blood.

  “That happened because the good doctor got the jump on us. Broke Blix’s arm and maybe even his leg. And she tossed me around like I was nothing. I didn’t have much of an option but to open the gate unless I wanted my brains splattered all over the ground. She had that kid with her who seemed out of it, too. But look, Mirker knows all about it. Said to just let them go and suffer out there for a bit, and that we’d go out looking for them when the sun is up.”

  “But,” Vespa says, and before she can continue, there’s a low rumbling and the ground begins to shake. Metal pulls on metal, chains roll over gears, and a second later, the gate begins to separate.

  “Back up,” the man says.

  A pair of square headlights attached to a rover appear on the other side of the gate. Slowly, the vehicle rolls into the village, its electric engine humming. As soon as it’s through, the gate begins to shut, and that’s when Vespa grabs Jonah’s hand. They make a break for it, but the man in the red cap raises his rifle and steps in their path.

  “I don’t think so,” he says. “Not without an escort. You kids have trouble hearing?”

  “Who here needs an escort?” asks another man’s voice. It comes from an open window of the rover. “We’ll take ’em out. Show them the neighborhood. Introduce them to the locals and all that. Breakfast has been delivered, my good man. Be sure to tell Mirker.”

  The passenger door opens, and a stocky man slides out of the rover and onto the ground, his boots crunching the dirt. A curtain of brown hair falls over his eyes, and he pulls his hand through it, brushing it over his round scalp and putting it into a ponytail. His head nods up and down, up and down, never stopping. A walkie-talkie crackles on his shoulder, and he reaches over to silence it.

  With a whir, one of the back windows lowers, revealing a short Indian woman with a pencil between her teeth. She looks Vespa and Jonah over with a set of fierce brown eyes, then her cheeks harden, and she chomps through the pencil, breaking it in half. The window goes back up without her saying a word.

  “Okaaaay,” Vespa mumbles.

  A second later, a bald man pulls himself out of the driver’s side window with a hacking cough. He winks at Jonah. “You kids want to see the sights or what?” The sky lightens some more, showing a maroon scar on the man’s face, crossing through his left eyebrow down to his chin.

  “We’re looking for someone,” Jonah says. “A couple people left the village a little while ago, and she wants to find them.”

  “Ah, yes. The doctor and the cadet.” The man with the ponytail plants his hands on his lower back and stretches, his head still nodding. “We can probably help you. As long as it’s okay with the big guy.”

  “You can?” Vespa asks.

  The back window lowers again, and the woman reaches her hand out the window. She holds Dr. Z’s yellow jacket. It’s covered in dirt and ripped almost beyond recognition.

  “W
here did you find that?” Jonah asks.

  The woman throws it at Vespa who catches it in a cloud of thick dust. “About half a mile up the path. See all that orange stuff on it?”

  The cadets take a closer look at the jacket; wet orange smudges lie under the layer of black dirt. It smells like death and sweat.

  The bald man lowers himself back inside the rover and says, “That tells us they went through what we call the ‘marble zone.’ It’s pretty close. Shouldn’t be too hard to track.”

  “Not for us,” the other man says, his hands now on his hips. He leans left and then right, groaning. “Plus, we have drones.”

  The sky overhead is now more light than dark, and Jonah can see the white modules far in the distance. He can also see that the man nodding and stretching in front of him has dark circles under his eyes, like he hasn’t slept in days. Jonah knows that look.

  “So, can we go right now?” Vespa asks.

  “I just need to clear it with Mirker first,” the man with the red cap says.

  The man with the ponytail whips a small sheaf out of his chest pocket and unfurls it. His eyes scroll over the device, typing a message. A few seconds later, he shrugs and says, “Says just don’t let the kids out of our sight. And to bring the doctor back alive.”

  “What about the cadet?” Vespa asks.

  “Doesn’t say anything about what shape we need him in. So, I guess we’ll see what happens.”

  A back door pops open, and the woman scoots over without a word. The cadets don’t hesitate; after Vespa, Jonah pulls himself into the rover and reaches for the shoulder belt, but halfway through bringing it across his body, he releases it with a zip. He wants to be ready to get out—or even escape—at a moment’s notice. The man with the ponytail jumps in the passenger seat and sets a hand on the bald man’s shoulder as he looks over the vehicle gauges. In the middle seat, Vespa leans forward and says, “Ready when you are.”