Thetis--The Deep Sky Saga--Book Two

by Greg Boose

  “Jesus, dude. Are you really going to put your face down next to hers and give her one last chance to kill you?” Vespa asks. “Come on, Firstie. That’s like, rule number one.”

  Dr. Z’s head rolls toward Vespa’s voice, still repeating the same word or phrase, but now with a slight smile.

  “Speak the fuck up, lady,” Vespa says.

  Brooklyn joins the huddle, stepping on the doctor’s left wrist and holding it there. “What already?”

  Dr. Z’s head rolls back and forth until she stares straight up at the ceiling. Her neck suddenly strains as if an invisible hand chokes it, trying to get her to stop talking. But her voice finally becomes clear: “They’re not pyramids. They’re not pyramids. They’re not pyramids.”

  “What aren’t pyramids?” Vespa asks.

  Those things on Zion aren’t pyramids? Jonah thinks. Then what else could they be?

  “What is she talking about?” Vespa asks.

  “I’ve seen them. They’re on another planet in the galaxy,” Jonah says. “I think…the ghosts that I’ve been seeing, the ghosts that a lot of people have been seeing, they say I need to go to this other planet called Zion, and I’m supposed to go inside the pyramids there and do something. I saw it when I ate the verve and when one the Module Eight kids touched me. If I don’t go, then Earth is going to be destroyed. Everyone is going to die.”

  “They’re not pyramids,” Dr. Z says one more time. And then, as the middle of her neck magically twists and narrows until it’s the size of her wrist, she whispers, “I’m sorry, Jonah.”

  The woman’s eyes clear up, turning back to their shade of green. She takes one last short breath and then her body twitches and rises a few inches off the ground before she goes rigid and quiet and falls back to the floor. Dr. Z is dead. Whoever was inside of her, possessing her to attack and lie and dig up dead bodies and mutilate people’s skin, has left.

  “Good,” Brooklyn says.

  Jonah wipes a tear running down his cheek. “It’s not her fault.”

  Far off on their right, the woman soldier limps toward the exit with her head down. Behind her, the frosties teeter back and forth stacked on top of each other, slowly following a capstone that stops every few seconds to put a shard of shattered glass or a piece of broken wood on its head. And huddled in front of room four’s doorway are the last three Module Eight kids and Kip, all holding hands, all humming softly.

  Brooklyn gently takes the rifle out of Jonah’s hand and aims it at the kids, but Jonah pushes the barrel toward the ground and shakes his head.

  “Jonah, they’ll kill us the first chance they get,” Brooklyn whispers.

  “They’re just kids. Mirker’s dead. Dr. Z’s dead and lots of those Module Eight kids died. Griffin died out there. Can we just take a break shooting and killing each other and instead try to figure out what we do next?” Jonah asks.

  “What we do next is we all slowly die from the air here,” Vespa adds.

  Kip and the three Module Eight kids sit down simultaneously and let go of each other’s hands. This is the first time Jonah’s ever seen one of them sit.

  “No, we don’t. I think that’s about to change, too,” Jonah says.

  The door on their far left creaks opens slightly, bringing in a narrow slice of sunshine. Brooklyn whips her gun toward it, only to have Paul and Hopper peek their heads into view.

  “Vespa?” Paul shouts. “Firstie, you guys good?”

  Vespa hugs Jonah’s arm and shouts back, “Yeah, no thanks to you!”

  Her warmth brings a moment of peace to Jonah. And a moment of clarity. He said he wanted to take a break and figure out what they do next, but he knows what he’s doing next. He makes eye contact with Hopper and nods and the boy smiles. Nothing is going to change here—the ghosts will keep trying to communicate with him, people will continue to be possessed and be killed—unless he leaves to fix things. He’s not going to be someone’s God, but he will be someone’s hope.

  • • •

  Jonah sits between Vespa and Brooklyn, his spoon carving a trail through his mashed potatoes. Across from him, Paul stuffs a cold pile of corn nibs into his face while telling the table about new insects he saw that morning: “It was like a spider meets caterpillar meets mosquito, and they fly around in fours and each hold a corner of a web like a net, and they just buzzed around catching other insects in the net until they had enough for a feast.” He guides the last remaining noodles on his plate onto his fork. “Then they’d land and just go to town.”

  “How were they like caterpillars, though?” Vespa asks.

  “They had these fat, chubby long bodies,” Paul says. “Kind of what like Firstie here would look like if he ever ate his fucking food.”

  Jonah stops playing with his mashed potatoes and pushes his plate toward Paul who digs right in.

  “I’ll take the bar,” Brooklyn says, reaching over to stab a crumbly white square with her fork. A bag of medicine sits slumped on her shoulder, slowly dripping into the tube attached to her forearm.

  Paul grabs Brooklyn’s wrist. “Like hell you will.”

  “Paul,” Vespa says.

  “Fine.”

  Brooklyn drops the square onto her empty plate and cuts it into fours. Without saying anything, she sets a piece in front of each of them just as Aussie, the redheaded demic with a constellation of freckles on her face, enters the dining tent with a tray of food shaking in her hands. It’s the second time he’s seen the girl since the ship arrived over a week ago, and Jonah waves her over to join them.

  “Hey,” she whispers as she sits down.

  “How are you feeling?” Jonah asks.

  “I don’t know. Every day is a little better, I guess. Having a hard time breathing. Feeling nauseous a lot. Don’t really feel like eating.”

  Paul quickly reaches his fork toward the girl’s plate when Vespa shakes her head. “Come on, dude.”

  “Well, you sound like everyone else here, then,” Jonah says to Aussie. “But Hopper and the others are supposed to launch the terraformer today. Then, hopefully everyone will start feeling better. If it works.”

  Aussie nods and picks at her rice.

  “It’ll take months, maybe years for it to make a difference, though,” Brooklyn says. “You don’t just change a planet’s atmosphere overnight. So, get used to feeling like shit for awhile, is what I’m saying.”

  Everyone falls quiet. A few people come and go from the tent—original settlers of the colony—and Jonah can’t help but notice their heads are held a little higher than they used to be. He even sees a few smiles and hears someone laugh. A man and a woman in matching gray jumpsuits hold hands at a table in the corner. The woman leans over and gives the man a kiss on the cheek, and he leans into her with his eyes closed.

  Aussie clears her throat again. “Jonah, look, I’m really sorry we…I’m really sorry about what happened on Achilles and how we left you behind and for what happened in Tunick’s cave and everything. I don’t know, I just couldn’t control my—”

  “Your burning desire to see me again?” Paul interrupts. “I totally get that.”

  “Jesus,” Vespa says.

  Aussie opens her mouth to continue, but then she shuts down and slumps over her tray. Jonah can feel her guilt hovering over the whole table. It hangs just over his own cloud of guilt and shame and sadness. He never thought so many people would die around him. He never thought that so many people would die because of him.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “I know that wasn’t you. I’m just glad you’re okay. And that Portis and Christina made it, too. And that Michael is getting better.”

  Matteo enters the tent, quickly making eye contact with Jonah, hesitating in the doorway about where he should sit. Jonah immediately empathizes with the situation; he used to be the one wondering if it was okay to join a group of people before eventually finding an empty table to eat by himself. But now, he’s somehow surrounded by ki
ds who aren’t disgusted at the sight of him. He’s surrounded by friends. And Paul. Matteo walks in his direction, but instead of inviting him over and welcoming him into his crowd, something no one ever did for him, Jonah looks away. Ever since he moved out of Matteo’s yurt and got his own private place, the two boys have stopped speaking. Matteo sets his tray down at the end of a nearly empty table in the back corner and gets out his sheaf to read while he eats alone, but then a second later, he picks up his tray and leaves the tent with his shoulders low, his sheaf stuck under his arm.

  Jonah’s own sheaf is curled up in his pocket, fully charged, updated with the latest findings on Thetis and what’s happening back on Earth. The war rages on in England, spilling over into Ireland and France. Thousands continue to die every week. Canada tested another nuclear weapon, its third in the last month. More of Florida and Georgia are underwater, and California continues to burn. Mexico has reached its limit on accepting Americans fleeing both the draft and their destroyed states, and now there’s a lottery system in place.

  “You guys hear about that volcano erupting in Bali?” Vespa asks.

  “Fuck Earth,” Paul says, jabbing a fork full of mashed potatoes in her direction. “I don’t want to hear about it. We’re on this shitty planet now. And this shitty planet has spider caterpillar mosquitoes with cool flying nets. And I get to name the bastards.”

  The door opens again, and two women enter with their food, and before the door closes behind them, Jonah sees Matteo sitting outside on the ground, his tray resting in his lap.

  “I’m going to go check on Hopper, see if it’s ready to go,” Jonah says, standing. He pats his pocket to make sure his sheaf is still there, a new routine he follows every few minutes.

  “I still hate that kid,” Vespa says.

  “Ditto,” adds Brooklyn.

  In walk Krev and Hess, and then Portis with a severe limp. It’s the first time Jonah has seen any of them outside of the hospital tent. As Jonah crosses paths with them, Portis gives him a sarcastic salute, and Krev purposefully rams his shoulder into Jonah’s, knocking the cadet off balance and into a table. The whole dining room grows silent.

  “Touch him again and I’ll fuck you up,” Paul says matter-of-factly from his seat. “For real.”

  Jonah takes a deep breath and stands up straight, staring the huge boy right in his wolfish eyes. The old Jonah would sheepishly turn and walk out the door without speaking. The Jonah from Achilles would walk right up to the boy and smash his nose into Krev’s, daring the kid to take the first punch so he would feel good about unloading on him until his arms grew tired. But this Jonah, the one who knows he won’t be around much longer, says, “I’m sorry about Camilla.”

  Krev doesn’t know how to respond, and so he just grunts and turns around to find a table, immediately digging into his food. Portis joins him.

  “Lark isn’t taking it well,” Hess says.

  “I bet.”

  “Everyone says you saved the day here. Took down Mirker and everything.”

  “It was a joint effort,” Jonah says with a shrug, stealing a glance at Vespa and Brooklyn who shake their heads at something Paul has just said. “But I do think people might be a little happier around here now.”

  “I hope so.

  Jonah turns to leave, but Hess grabs his wrist. Her eyes suddenly brim with tears. “I saw it, too, you know. We all saw what they want you to do, Jonah. It’s messed up. Are you going to… What are you going to do?”

  He wants to tell her the truth, that he and Hopper have been meeting every night to go over their plan, that they’ve been putting together a list of people who they want to ask to join them. Hess isn’t on it, and neither is Krev or Portis or Matteo, although Matteo did corner him to say he knew what he was up to.

  “Did you know that Everett was here when we arrived? Mirker had him chained up in a sphere they built in the jungle. I guess it was for me. I was supposed to go through that portal we found and get here sooner. And then I was supposed to be sacrificed, whatever that means.”

  Hess lets go of his wrist. “Seems like everyone has a plan for you.”

  Jonah reaches for the door, but then stops himself and moves toward a small table sitting against the wall. He pours hot water from a pitcher into two cups and then drops in some loose orange tea leaves. He then backpedals out of the door and into the afternoon light. A drone zips by before sweeping over a line of yurts and circling the villagers trying to fix the telescope before it rises and disappears over the wall.

  Matteo sits there with his tray of food on his lap watching the drone, too, and Jonah surprises him by handing him a cup of tea.

  “Hey, thanks,” he says, taking a sip. “What kind is it?”

  “You’re sitting out here all alone and the village is in shambles and you’re being picky right now about what kind of tea it is? That’s the funniest shit I’ve ever heard.”

  “Touché.”

  “Come on,” Jonah says. “Let’s go see how they’re doing with the terraformer.”

  The two boys walk silently toward the ship that’s still on its belly in the northwest corner in the village. Hopper and a few others circle the satellite near the tail of the ship, performing their final inspections on the car-sized terraformer with sheafs in their hands. A crowd has started to form.

  Matteo takes a long sip from his cup. “So, what do you think?”

  “Well, I think it’s probably a huge mistake for me to leave Thetis now that things are going to be better,” Jonah says. “I think what I’m going to be doing and where I’m going in the next week is either going to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, or the best. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be stupidest, but honestly, man, I still hear them. They’re still in my head, telling me what to do. And if I don’t go, they’ll never stop. And I can’t live like that. They won’t let me.”

  “I was talking about the tea.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Brooklyn and Vespa suddenly appear by his side and Vespa gives him a playful shove in the back. Jonah spills the hot tea over his fingers. “Dude.”

  “Relax, Firstie,” Vespa says. “Drink your tea, and let’s go give Hopper some shit and tell him he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  Brooklyn laughs and readjusts the medicine bag on her shoulder. “Cool, I’ve been doing that all morning.”

  The four of them walk together for a few steps, but then Jonah slows down and lets them get ahead. He watches them move forward without him, thinking about what he’s about to do, where he’s about to go. He’s still torn about asking a few of them to come with him. He just doesn’t know how he could go without his friends by his side, watching his back. How is he going to show up on a new planet that’s still in the stone age, not speak their language, and then somehow change the course of their history so they don’t wipe out alien civilizations in the future, all by himself? But then again, how’s he even going to do it with anyone’s help?

  “Fucking wait up!” Paul shouts.

  Jonah turns to see the cadet speed walking out of the dining tent, shoveling food into his mouth. His freshly shaved head shines in the sunlight.

  “Hurry up, ya pig!” Vespa yells back.

  They join the crowd around the satellite, Jonah’s head sticking high over everyone else’s, a buoy bobbing in a sea of hope. He listens to their coughs and wheezes, knowing how much rests on Hopper’s shoulders. More and more villagers gather, including Krev and the other Splitters, plus Aussie who pushes Michael in a wheelchair. Kip and the few remaining Module Eight kids are nowhere to be found, most likely still in the hospital, strapped to their beds.

  One of the scientists asks everyone to back up, back up, back up, and when everyone is at a safe distance, Hopper follows the other engineers and scientists up the ramp of the ship. Moments later, his face appears in one of the windows, his sheaf blinking red under his chin. The boy circles his index finger over the device several tim
es with a goofy smile on his face, and then he presses it.

  Smoke appears in the satellite’s thrusters and the silver and blue cylinder starts to shake. A hand slips into Jonah’s, and he doesn’t need to look down to know it’s Vespa’s. When the satellite begins to lift off the ground, she squeezes his fingers and he squeezes back, and when the boosters ignite and blast the machine into the sky where it will orbit Thetis to release nitrogen and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Jonah pulls the girl into his side and kisses the top of her head. Vespa looks up in surprise, and then she pulls him down to press her lips into his.

  The satellite gets smaller and smaller, and soon the only evidence of its arrival is the column of smoke marking its departure. Hopper and the others descend the ship’s ramp to applause, and then the hacker finds Jonah’s head above the crowd and points to him.

  Jonah nods and his shoulders stiffen. He looks down at Vespa and searches her eyes for comfort. “Hey, this is hard for me to ask, but I wanted to know if you—”

  “Yeah, Firstie, I’ll come with you.”

  “Me, too,” Brooklyn adds, giving her medicine bag a slight squeeze. “I mean, who doesn’t want to travel back in time and take down an entire evil civilization?”

  Jonah shakes his head and watches a drone zip through the satellite’s column of smoke. He reaches into his pocket and makes sure his sheaf is still there, and then he heads for his yurt to finish making his plans for departure.

  END OF BOOK TWO

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Ah, the second book of a trilogy, the one where you try to answer just enough questions from the first book to keep readers from grumbling and then ask crazier questions and plant seeds for the third book to keep readers still interested. The middle child of trilogies. The one unfavorably compared to the oldest and then later overshadowed by the youngest. But even if Thetis is the Jan Brady of The Deep Sky Saga, I hope you enjoyed reading it just as much as I enjoyed writing it. (And remember that Jan ended up being the fan favorite.)