Authors: Steven Lyle Jordan
With that, she turned on a heel and headed for the pile of suitcases. Lambert just turned slowly in her direction, and as he followed behind her, he muttered, “
Merde.
”
~
When the
Makalu
appeared, both Wasps in tow, they seemed to be alone. There was no Verdant in sight.
On board the freighter, however, no one had noticed. The ship’s medic had finally joined the melee outside of the bridge cockpit, and managed to sedate Kline while he was being held at bay. It had taken altogether four of the crew, including Anise wrapped around Kline like an angry python, to finally subdue the impostor, at which point he was taken to the med bay and strapped down on a bed.
When Anise and Roy finally returned to the bridge, they heard the calls from Goldie, in the Wasp outside.
“Goldie to Grand! Are you all okay? What’s going on in there?”
Roy opened the connection, and said, “Yeah, we’re all fine now. We’ve subdued the impostor. He came to the bridge, and was threatening to blow up the ship, but Anise—”
“No wonder the missile went off,”
Goldie cut in.
“That was a crazy thing to do!”
“Missile?
Went off
?” Roy and Anise stared, open-mouthed, at each other. “When? He didn’t have a chance to—” And he remembered Verdant. “Oh, shit, did it hit Verdant?”
“No, it didn’t hit anything,”
Goldie replied.
“Verdant jumped away, then so did we. We left the missile behind, lucky for us. I’ve located Verdant. It’s about twenty klicks from here, bearing one-forty-five by sixty-nine.”
Anise returned to the pilot’s station and began resetting her navigational controls. “Where did you say they are?” She looked at her navigational readings, which had all gone blank. “God, where are
we
?”
“Oh, shit, the
terrorist
…” Roy immediately started fumbling with his com. “Verdant, this is
Makalu
! Verdant,
Makalu
! Are you receiving me? This is Captain Grand! What is your status? Are you okay? Is anyone receiving me? Are—”
“
Makalu
, Verdant,”
came a voice over their com. As soon as the voice spoke, Anise’s eyes widened, and she pivoted about in her seat. “Daddy!”
“Yes, it’s me,”
Julian Lenz replied.
“I’m fine. We’re all fine.”
Before Roy or Anise could reply, they heard another voice over the com, somewhere in the background:
“Who’s ‘all fine?’ I got shot!”
“Was that Reya?” Anise asked. “Is she okay?”
Julian could be heard laughing.
“You can still hear her complaining, can’t you?”
~
The moment the airlock doors opened on the
Makalu
, and the way was open to the bays, Anise Lenz bolted out of the freighter. Julian Lenz was waiting for her, along with Dr. Silver, Calvin, Aaron, and Kris. Anise made a beeline to her father and almost knocked him over when she dove into his arms.
“Oof!” Julian laughed when Anise fell into him and hugged him powerfully. “I’m glad to see you too, Ani!”
“So, you are okay,” Roy was calling out as he stepped off of the
Makalu
, following his pilot. “That’s great!” He turned back to the hatch and gave a thumbs-up to those inside, and within seconds, the first of the passengers started to disembark.
“Oh, Daddy!” Anise said when she pulled back to look at her father. “When they said you were dead… I was so… oh, Daddy!” She buried her head on Julian’s shoulder and squeezed him hard enough for air to escape his lungs.
“I’m so sorry about that,” Kris was saying to her, tentatively reaching out to comfort her, but self-consciously withdrawing her hand before she touched Julian’s daughter. “We realized that the attack gave us an excellent tool for a diversion, and that was all I could think to do on short notice. We thought it might have been coordinated with whatever was going on on the ship…”
“Which we’ll have to talk about,” Julian said. Despite the relative safety they had obtained by escaping the missile, it had been mutually decided to refrain from discussing the matter over the com, and had waited for the freighter to dock. “Why don’t we all go back aboard?”
They opened up the cargo bay entrance, giving those aboard more leeway to enter and exit, and they made their way back inside the ship. Roy took them to the med bay, where the impostor lay sleeping, strapped to the bed.
Julian examined him. “So this is Kline,” he said. “Are you sure he’s disarmed?”
“
Hell
, no,” Roy replied. “I’d suggest giving him a full cavity search before even waking him up! We didn’t even know he triggered that missile.”
“We were so busy fighting him,” Anise said, “we didn’t even know
about
the missile!”
“It’s just a good thing we were listening in from the bay, so we had time to jump away ourselves when it swung back on us,” Valeria commented from the periphery of the group. “And I’m glad you got our message, Jacqueline. When the probe came back without a return message, we really weren’t sure.”
“We just didn’t get a chance to respond,” Julian explained. “Right after we received your message, we were under attack. By the time we got everything sorted out, we realized the probe had already gone.”
“Who was it?” Anise asked. “Who attacked you?”
“Reya identified the woman as Col. Emily Stearns,” Julian replied. “She was the pilot of Aerospace Force One, back there.” He hooked a thumb down the bay. “She must have hidden herself away when everyone was leaving. A lot of people were trading idents to make, or avoid, that flight. She probably convinced someone to take her place, so someone as prominent as herself would not be missed and searched for.”
Behind them, Calvin’s head lowered slightly, and his eyes fell to the floor. Everyone was focused on Julian’s story, however, so no one took notice of his reaction.
“She managed to get a staff jacket from somewhere,” Julian continued, “and snuck up to CnC. She might have had a better shot at us, but Dr. Silver and Dr. Rios literally ran into her in the hallway, and she had to go through the guards to get to CnC. We heard the guard’s warning, the shots fired, then the GLIS’ warning, so when she came around the corner and squeezed through the doors, we were already taking cover.”
“With two notable exceptions,” Aaron pointed out, placing a hand on Julian’s shoulder. “Your old man stood there while everyone else scrambled, to draw fire.”
“Daddy!” Anise cried in horror, but Aaron threw his hands out to calm her.
“He knew what he was doing! He was standing on the other side of the display column… Sterns had to shoot through it to hit him. The thing is, the column distorts your vision through it at that angle, so much so that she was aiming at a blank wall!”
“And by the time she figured out she wasn’t hitting me,” Julian finished, “Reya snuck up around her and tackled her.”
“Did she really get shot?”
“In the hand,” Julian nodded. “Took the last bullet just as she hit Stearns. It managed to miss the bones, amazingly enough, though. She’ll be fine.”
“But she’ll have something new to complain about,” Aaron commented good-naturedly.
“Anyway, CnC got pretty shot up, and the column at the main station is smashed,” Julian explained. “When you com’d, and then Kline came on, we assumed the two events were timed somehow. Kris came up with the idea of pretending the attack had succeeded, hoping it would buy us all time to deal with your impostor. And by that time, Doctors Silver and Rios had input your translation equation, and were waiting for the signal to go.”
“And when we heard the Wasp pilot shout ‘incoming’,” Dr. Silver shrugged, “we figured that was as good a time as any.”
“My ears are burning.”
Everyone turned around to see Hunter and Goldie entering the freighter through the cargo entrance, Hunter in the lead. Julian immediately turned about and extended a hand to them. “Good job, pilots! Your quick thinking saved all of our asses!”
Hunter started to reply, but Goldie cut him off. “Glad to be of service, sir! But if I may: Where are we now?”
“Yes,” Anise said, turning back to Julian. “My nav board couldn’t make heads or tails of our position. If we really jumped, or whatever… where’d we go?”
Everyone turned to Dr. Silver, who in turn glanced at Valeria. Valeria’s eyes widened for a moment when she realized everyone was waiting for an answer from her, and she visibly gulped.
“Well,” she started nervously, “the equations came from my datapad. You see, when we were working on the original translation equations, we’d chosen different locations to translate to. In one of the tests, we had been looking at old space exploration data, and we came across references to some star systems that had been scanned in the twenty-first century, and estimations made of which ones may have held Earth-like planets, or similar elements to our solar system…”
As she had been explaining it, Anise’s eyes widened in amazement. She finally turned to Roy and said, “You were
serious
?”
“As a heart attack,” Roy said.
Anise turned back to Valeria. “Are you saying we’re in another
solar system
?”
Valeria grinned sheepishly. “Mmm… yeah.”
“Specifically,” Dr. Silver stated, “Fomalhaut. In the constellation of Piscis Austrinus. About twenty-five light years from Earth.” The group’s reaction to this news was mostly wide-eyed goggling at each other, and heads shaking in confusion or amazement.
“But why here?” Anise finally asked.
“In the early two-thousands,” Calvin immediately spoke up, though noticeably without the trademark inflection and animation that he was otherwise known for, “scientists identified gas giants and a thick shroud of dust around Fomalhaut. The predominant theory of the time was that a solar system needed a gas giant planet at a far orbit, in order to create solid planets closer in… just like our solar system was created.” He paused to clear his throat. His voice was still raspy and strained, and as he spoke, Valeria moved closer to him in concern and laid a sympathetic hand on his arm. He noted her concern with a look of appreciation, before he continued. “The theory was revised later, to suggest that while inner solid planets might not actually form, there would be a strong possibility of compound-rich asteroid belts at least, especially early in the system’s development… and Fomalhaut is a relatively young system. Either way, it would be a likely source of the same elements and raw materials common to the solar system.”
“Which turned out to be a perfect choice,” Dr. Silver explained, “because if we don’t go back to Earth soon, the one thing we’re going to need is raw materials.”
“What?” Anise stared. “Not go back? How can we not go back?”
“I’m not sure we can risk going back,” Julian told her. “We were attacked… twice… in order to take us over, stuff us with refugees, and destroy the sustainability of Verdant. It would have been a slow death sentence for everyone here. At least, for right now,” Julian went on, looking to everyone for understanding, “we can’t go back.”
“So,” Anise asked slowly, “what are we going to do?”
A strange light came into Calvin’s eye. “We’re going to live.”
~
They walked carefully through CnC, mindful of the shattered bits of the display column and other workstation surfaces crunching beneath their feet. The first thing Julian said upon returning to CnC was: “Reya, why aren’t you in the hospital?”
Reya Luis sat at a chair facing one of the working workstations in the room. Beside her was a doctor that was busily examining her hand again. He had taken the first bandages off, which were now piled on the floor, and he held up the puffy, bruised appendage to get a good look in the light.
When Reya heard Julian’s question, she nodded at the doctor. “Look: They make house calls.”
“Reya,” Julian warned.
“Well, you weren’t here,” Reya quickly defended herself, as Anise rushed over to comfort her friend. “And I don’t care how shot up this place is, one of us needed to be here! Just in case… I don’t know… an alien mothership came out of hyperspace, or whatever, and wanted to drop antimatter bombs on us. Oh… and something else.”
“Yes?” Julian prompted.
“Remember when Stearns showed up and the GLIS closed the doors to CnC?” Reya asked, and Julian nodded. They stared at each other for a moment, and Reya paused to see if he would comment further. When he didn’t, she said, “You know it’s not programmed to do that on its own.”
“It occurred to me,” Julian admitted. Everyone nearby was silent for a moment, and a few eyes drifted to the ceilings, where the cameras of the GLIS stared back down at them.
“But that’s a mystery for later,” Julian finally said, “and I’m here now. So I’m ordering you to go to the hospital.
Now
.”
“Yes, Dad,” Reya said, and slowly moved to her feet. The moment she was standing, she swayed dangerously, and the doctor on one side and Anise on the other grabbed her quickly before she fainted. When Reya recovered, she looked at Julian and Dr. Silver and said, “I’m pretty sure that was just me… right?”
“It was just you,” Julian said tenderly. “Ani, please help the doctor take her to the hospital.”
“Sure, Daddy,” Anise replied, and the two of them led her away through CnC.
“Reya?”
Julian’s voice stopped the procession, and Reya turned back to Julian. Julian smiled, and said, “Good work, Eo.”
Upon that proclamation, those in CnC that did not have their hands full began clapping, followed by those who could free up their hands to join in. Reya, taken by surprise by the response, smiled awkwardly back to those in CnC.
Then she spun about and said to Anise and the doctor, “Okay, get me out of here before I tear up.” And she was quietly led out of the wreckage of the room.
And the room was a wreck. Miraculously, other than Reya, no one had been hit by a single bullet, and flying shrapnel had only caused a few minor cuts. But CnC had indeed suffered from the attack, Col. Stearns having shot up the central workstation, and several other workstations, beyond repair. The GLIS was still functioning, albeit at a confused level due to its inability to get a reading on their position, but it had lost its vocal mode, and technicians were still working to restore it.