Excelsior (17 page)

The shockwave hit a second later, an intense blast of hot air that knocked her flat. She hit her chin on the ground, scraping it raw. Catalina’s ears rang. She blinked and saw that the darkness had been replaced by a flickering orange light.

She rolled onto her back just as it began stinging with a thousand pinprick stabs of pain. Shrapnel.

The gas station was on fire. There was a human torch dancing around screaming and… laughing. Catalina looked on in horror, unable to tear her eyes away until the figure collapsed and lay still.

This was what humanity had come to. The only human being she’d met in months and he’d tried to kill her.

Caty watched the gas station burn. No need to light a fire tonight. She could lay out her sleeping bag right here and no animals would dare come close, except maybe the more dangerous human kind.

Catalina thought about hiding out in the Seven Eleven, but the thought of being in there with that dead rescue worker was too horrible to bear.

She ended up laying her sleeping bag under an elm tree to one side of the blazing gas fire. The spot she picked was far enough away that she wouldn’t catch fire if there were any secondary explosions or gas leaks, but close enough that the light and heat would still be useful.

Catalina lay awake, wide-eyed and blinking, watching as tongues of flame danced and noxious smoke clogged the air. She had her Beretta balanced on her belly, firmly clutched in both hands, just in case. Her pack rested beside under her head, the comforting lump she called a pillow. Sleep came for her, weighing down her eyelids, making them flutter. Her thoughts became scattered and disjointed. She wondered why the fuel station and the convenience store hadn’t burned up in the forest fires that had obviously swept through in the wake of the attacks. She also wondered if there were more survivors. The presence of that rescue worker in a hazmat suit told her that someone was still out there, trying to make order out of the chaos.

That was when she noticed the hover parked in the fuel station. It was nothing but a flaming wreck now. They’d been passing through, trying to fuel up while they continued their aerial search for survivors. Rescue workers had come here, assuming it was a likely place for survivors to hide out. Catalina wondered if there were more bodies lurking between the aisles of the Seven Eleven…

Her eyes grew wide, and she shivered. She was never going to fall asleep.

*

“Wake up!” Alexander shook her shoulders.

Catalina sobbed. “You left me! You left me here to die!”

“I had to go.”

“You didn’t!” she insisted.

“I go where they send me, remember?”

“I didn’t ask you to join the navy!”

Alexander shook his head, his eyes full of sorrow. “You’re going to be okay, Caty… wake up…”

“Wake up, ma’am! Wake up!”

“Ma’am?”

Catalina blinked. Men in bulky yellow suits loomed over her. One of them was shaking her by the shoulder, a loud voice saying, “Ma’am, wake up please!”

Caty sat up quickly, her heart already pounding in her chest. “Who are you?”

It was a stupid question.

“We’re here to help. Are you hurt?”

Catalina nodded. “Not bad. What happened? How many cities got hit?”

“Please try to remain calm. We’ll explain everything as soon as we can. Do you feel sick? Nauseous?”

Caty shook her head. “Please. I’ve been alone for a long time. I need to know. How bad is it?”

“We lost eleven cities. The rest of the missiles were intercepted. Reds lost fifteen or more, but it’s hard to be sure.”

“New York?”

“And Washington, Chicago, Houston, Miami, LA… Most of the Alliance is still fine, though, especially the South.”

Catalina breathed a sigh of relief. “And the fleet?”

“We lost a lot of ships, and the space elevator, but so did they. There’s a cease fire on right now.”

“How many ships did we lose?”

“Ma’am, I’ve answered your questions. Now I need you to cooperate. We need to keep moving. Is there anyone hiding in the store?”

Catalina shook her head. “There was. He…” She swallowed thickly.

“We know. One of ours called it in before he died. Come on. We need to get you to a shelter.”

A shelter. Survivors. Despite the news that eleven major cities had been turned to radioactive dust, Catalina felt so happy that she could dance. She smiled and climbed to her feet, tears streaming down her cheeks. This wasn’t the end of the world.

Not yet.

Part 2 - Wonderland

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

―Anaïs Nin

 

Chapter 14

70 Days Later, May 18th, 2790

(The Lincoln’s Frame of Reference, Now Separated from Earth by 420 Days)

Alexander’s eyelids fluttered open. His head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton. As he gradually became aware of his surroundings, his heart raced, and his palms began to sweat. He felt something choking him. Then he noticed the tube protruding from his mouth and he hurried to pull it out. He gagged as the tube came out, but his stomach was empty so no danger there. Once he was free of the invading apparatus, he closed his aching jaw and swallowed. There was a bad taste in his mouth, and his tongue felt swollen, but otherwise he was okay. Alexander began disconnecting the remainder of his life support, starting with his nutrient line.

He had to force himself to be gentle with the equipment and suppress his urgent need to get out of the G-tank. He could feel the walls closing in, suffocatingly close. To keep the panic at bay he focused on what lay ahead.

The very fact that he was alive and awake right now meant that they were about to arrive in Wonderland. He’d been half expecting to die in transit and never to wake up again, but instead here he was, about to make history.

When he was done disconnecting his life support, Alexander unstrapped himself from the tank harness and took a few shaky steps toward the door. His knees buckled and he fell. A lifetime of doing push-ups saved his nose, but a sharp stabbing pain in his wrists and knees reminded him that gravity was back. At this point it was being generated by deceleration as they flew engines first into Wonderland.

Alexander pushed off the ground with a grunt and stumbled toward the hatch. He waved the door open and stepped out of the tank. The air was freezing! Doors slid open to all sides as the rest of the crew came floundering out of their tanks. Alexander opened his locker and removed his bundle of clothes. He worked quickly to separate his uniform from his combat suit, and in the process his comm band and pocket watch clattered to the deck. The watch landed on its end and sprang open.

Cursing, Alexander bent to pick up the delicate gift. As he did so, he checked the date and time. The hands pointed to three and nine—3:45—and the date read May|18|90. Alexander tried to remember the date they were supposed to have arrived. Then he recalled marking it on his comm band’s calendar before entering his G-tank. Alexander picked up the comm band and strapped it around his wrist. He powered it on and checked the calendar. The dates recorded there confirmed it: they’d entered the tanks exactly 70 days ago, meaning they were on schedule. That was reassuring.

Alexander hurried to get dressed. Once his combat suit was on, he withdrew his helmet from the locker and tucked it under his arm.

“Captain.”

Alexander turned to see Commander Korbin ambling up to him. She was obviously taking it easy, giving her legs time to adjust to walking again.

“Commander. It’s good to see you again. Part of me was afraid we weren’t going to wake up.”

“I’m glad we did. Now all we need to do is find a way home before our supplies run out.”

Alexander smiled. “We haven’t even technically arrived yet. We still have a planet to explore. Speaking of which, we need to get to the bridge. Who knows what we’re going to find on the other side of the wormhole?”

“Well, the Alliance sent probes ahead of us, so we already have some idea.”

“Probes that captured only a few minutes’ worth of data. Anything we discover after those first few minutes is all uncharted territory, assuming of course that we don’t suffer the same fate the probes did.”

Alexander turned to address the rest of the crew. Doctor Crespin and his nurses were still busy checking the crew’s vital signs, so Alexander waited. As soon as the doctor was done, he clapped his hands and called out, “Wonderland awaits! Everyone to your stations!”

The crew filed into the elevators in the central column of the room. Alexander rode up one floor to the bridge with the rest of the bridge crew. They strode out and up to their control stations on the far wall. Alexander stopped in front of his station and regarded his helmet with a sigh. After a momentary hesitation, he slipped it on, and it sealed with an automatic hiss. Reaching for the rails on the armrests of his acceleration couch, he lowered himself down. Korbin eased down beside him while the rest of the crew hurried up the access ladders mounted on the walls.

“Systems check!” Alexander said while he strapped in.

“All systems green, sir,” McAdams reported from engineering.

“Davorian, how long until we emerge from the wormhole?”

“Approximately… five minutes, sir.”

“Good. Keep us posted. Hayes, get ready to send a transmission back through the wormhole. Attach our log data and a status update.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Willi—” Alexander broke off, remembering Williams’ treachery. He struggled to remember the new sensor operator’s name…

“It’s Lieutenant Vasquez, sir,” Korbin whispered from beside him. Like McAdams, she was new to the ship. Otherwise he would have known her name instantly.

“Right. Vasquez!”

“Sir?” she replied.

“Get a scan of Wonderland ready to send along with Hayes’ transmission.”

“As long as we’re still inside the wormhole, we’ve got tunnel vision, sir.”

“That’s better than nothing. We don’t know how long the wormhole is going to stay open on the other end, so we might not get another chance.”

“Yes, sir.”

Alexander watched as the main holoscreen came online, showing a warped view of stars and space from the ship’s cameras. Gone was the depthless black void of the Sol System. Instead, he saw faint red wisps of ionized gas running between the stars like gossamer threads.

“Davorian, what was time dilation going through the wormhole?”

“One minute, Captain.”

“A minute?”

“I’m still working on it, sir.”

“Doesn’t the ship track time dilation automatically?”

“The nav system isn’t designed to measure time dilation due to changes in the geometry of space time, sir. Wormhole travel is relatively new to us, but I’m using measurements that were taken along the way to generate a function that expresses how time dilation changed at different points in our trip. Using the integral of that function I can find the average value, which is the average time dilation factor for our entire trip. Then I just have to add average time dilation due to the speed we were traveling.”

Alexander frowned. “More calculating, less talking, Davorian.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You asked…” Korbin chided.

“There’s a reason I’m not the Lincoln’s astrophysicist.”

“Bad study habits?”

“Allergies.”

“Allergies?”

“As soon as Davorian mentioned integrals, my brain started to itch.”

Korbin snorted. “Ha ha. We can schedule a session to help you deal with your phobias later, Captain.”

“Got it!” Davorian said. “Time dilation from the wormhole was an average of five point triple eight times Earth. Dilation due to our velocity was one point zero double eight. The combined time dilation factor was five point nine six.”

“Good work. Now tell me what that equates to in terms of elapsed travel time for us and for Earth.”