Socket 3 - The Legend of Socket Greeny (9 page)

“You’ll be travelling alone,” the Commander
said.

“Seems a bit much. Couldn’t you send
something a little…” Again, I wasn’t sure if smaller was what I was
thinking.
Maybe something a little less bad ass?

“It takes a lot to travel through space,” he
said.

“That thing will fit through the
wormhole?”

He smiled, but instead of answering he
adjusted the straps on my backpack. It weighed over seventy pounds,
but my body felt so dense that the backpack felt like a box of
tissues. The ship contained everything I needed. The pack was just
an insurance policy.

“In case you’re wondering, I don’t personally
see every Paladin off on their first trip.” The Commander smacked
my back like he was sending off a horse. “But your mother
insisted.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

He grabbed both shoulders. “This is a routine
trip, son. No need to be nervous. You’ve been through things plenty
worse than this.” He winked.

He sensed my nervousness. Is that what it
was, nervousness? I was feeling as rigid as a flagpole and heavy as
a tank. I trusted my gut feelings and this one was saying stay
right here, this was not the trip I wanted to take. But something
also told me this trip was inevitable. It was now or later. But why
did something so routine feel so imminent?

The ship’s humming intensified again. A
doorway was glowing on the black surface. The Commander patted me
again, one more wink. “Godspeed, son.”

“Thank you, sir.”

I started the slow march toward the doorway,
the wind whistling in my ears. Each step was heavy, vibrating every
time the bottom of my foot touched the ground like it was a
vibratory plate, compacting my insides. The air was becoming dense,
like the ship was pushing back the closer I got. Each step took
more and more effort.

I thought about turning around and asking the
Commander what he thought, but it wasn’t the ship pushing against
me. It was me; like rigor mortis setting in. Maybe it was those
vibrations just whacking me out, getting me ready for the
super-squeeze of the wormhole. Like Spindle said, we were going to
the other side of the galaxy, not Charleston. Was this prepping me
for the ride?

I could feel the cold wave emanating from the
ship’s surface like it was sucking the energy out of the
atmosphere. I had to push my last step through the doorway. First,
it was bright and so cold it squeezed out my last breath. But then
I was through and the ship was gone. Gone, as in gone-gone.

I was standing in the boulder-field. No ship
around me. Everything, completely silent.

There was a table in front of me, round and
black like the ship. The surface was smooth. The field silent. The
trees moved, but the wind didn’t gust in my ears. Birds flew over,
their beaks jerking open while their heads searched below. But no
caw. I scratched my face and heard my fingertips rub against my
skin.

The Commander was still where I left him,
hands clasped behind his back. I started to walk back but an
invisible force pushed back. I must be inside the ship, the walls
projecting the view from the outside so they appeared invisible to
me. The Commander would still be seeing the black ship.
Spindle
must’ve missed this detail. Or maybe I wasn’t listening.

I expanded my mind, felt the smooth surface
of the invisible walls and the circuitry within them. I merged with
the ship’s intelligence, sensing its directive to serve. It felt
cold and alien. And massive. I opened to the ship’s database,
allowed it to connect with me and read my intentions. The
experience of its artificial intelligence stung with a slight
metallic ring. Soon, we were intertwined with a single goal in
mind.
The Grimmet Outpost.

The trees shook violently, whipping leaves
into the sky, the grass jerking back and forth. The ground slowly
dropped away beneath my feet. I lifted magically into the air.
Vertigo swirled in my stomach.

Higher and faster I went. And closer to the
cliff. I soared over the top to see tree-covered mountains far in
the distance and drifted near a great chasm that was filled with
the Preserve. Nothing stirred as I cruised over it, the jungle
separated from me by its invisible forcefield. In the middle of the
trees was a dark green oval dotted with six children and a silver
humanoid, looking up. They were waving.

I drifted further until they blended with the
scenery. A lightning bolt, absent of thunder, licked the sky. I was
moving near the center of an electrical storm that swirled ahead.
It began to open, the center black, swallowing the bands of
lightning like it was hungry for our world, growing larger and
wider. I felt like plankton being inhaled by a whale. I gripped the
table, cold and smooth and solid. Maybe that’s why it was there, to
keep me from falling over.

The black opening suddenly ripped open,
exposing a blue throat. I was swallowed with no time to brace for
impact. No time to scream. It was like being sucked through a
straw. But just as sudden as my body felt steamrolled, there was no
sense of motion. There was no sight or smell. For a long moment, I
was bodiless. There was no pressure. No pain. There was
nothing.

Getting past the first part was nothing short
of being blown to bits. After that, it was the greatest peace I’d
ever known. No body, no thoughts. No sense of going anywhere. Maybe
this was what death felt like.

But I was moving. Towards destiny.

There was no stopping that. We all arrive
where we’re going. And as my body began to exit the other end of
the wormhole, preceded by the siren scream of my nervous system
reminding me that it was working again, I had the nagging thought
my destiny was near.

Showtime
.

* * * * *

Serving life is not always beautiful.

Pivot

A perfect trap is one the prey readily
accepts,

even when he already knows the outcome.

Pike

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free.

John 8:32

* * * * *

The exit was as quick as the entrance. For a
second, I sensed my body had already arrived at the destination
before I did. But I was catching up, arriving in time to feel the
wormhole shit me out the other end of that intergalactic straw.

My extremities were cold and my fingers
tingling. I blinked several times to focus the blurry details of
men, more than one, somewhere in front of me. There was a hollow
pain burning inside my chest. I wasn’t breathing.

I pulled in my first breath like I was
drowning, gasping for air. I bent over and, with my hands on my
knees, was ready to puke. It passed, but when I stood up my mouth
was filling with spit. I blinked away the tears. Now I could see
three men. Maybe they were smiling.

I walked toward them, each step tentative. I
couldn’t feel the ship’s walls anymore, but then again I couldn’t
feel much of anything. Five feet away from them, I passed through
the ship’s cold doorway and was bombarded with an earthy smell and
the sound of the ship’s hissing. And that’s when my stomach
revolted.

I blew chunks all over. It was mostly green
liquid, but I was hands on my knees again, wrenching until it was
all over my shoes, the floor and whatever else was below.

Someone slapped my shoulder. “That first
trip’s a bitch, ain’t it?” The others chimed in with laughter.

The man in the middle was the commanding
officer. His name was Samuel. He handed me a bottle of water to
rinse out my mouth.

“Spit it on the floor,” he said, when I
looked around with a mouthful. Evidently not their first time
greeting a first-timer
.

I was expecting the inside of the Outpost to
look industrial. Where the ship had landed, that was exactly what
it was: all gray walls and concrete floor. The translucent ceiling
of the dome was far above, letting pale light through.

The other two guys with the commanding
officer introduced themselves as Pepper and Fadden. They showed me
the rest of the Outpost. It was a small city, complete with streets
lined with elms and maples and houses and warehouses. Mosquitoes
buzzed and squirrels chirped. They farmed crops, raised animals
while they researched the planet outside the dome.

We walked for hours and never reached the
perimeter of the dome. We stopped at the central cafeteria, a
gathering place for the settlers. They ate. I didn’t.

We sat around for a good hour. People dropped
into the conversation until there was a couple dozen. They asked
the questions, mostly about life back home. Most of the residents
were on extended stay in the Outpost, some had been there half
their life. Some even born there. While most of them said they
didn’t miss it, they were still curious. No one forgets home.

My celebrity status among Paladins was
missing a planet millions of miles away. Some had heard of me – the
Paladin that defeated the duplicates,
The One Who Sees
Clearly
, as the grimmets once named me – but it hardly seemed
to matter. That was another planet. This was the Outpost.

The sun was a gray disk as seen through the
dome when I was escorted outside Samuel’s office, a set of steel
doors tightly closed. A few minutes later, they slid open. I
ascended a short flight of stairs to an enormous room at the edge
of the dome. A large desk was alone in the middle of the empty
floor, and beyond that was a panoramic view of the vast plain.

Samuel was at the desk, looking busy and more
officer-like than he did when he was laughing at my pukefest.
Military tension set my body rigid, waiting to approach. This was
the president of the Grimmet Outpost.

“Have a look,” he finally said. “I’ll be done
in a moment.”

I relaxed and let my gaze wander. My
footsteps echoed in the silence, but the outside world was a dry,
whirling windstorm. Dust-devils dropped to the ground, picking up
debris and sending it airborne before disappearing as quickly as
they formed. There were ancient, leafless trees sparely populating
the flat, baked ground, like the ones I saw in my office, and red
mountains in the distance. I went up to the dome, put my fingers on
the surface. It was warm.

There were no signs of life. A beaten planet.
Only a clear barrier that separated life on the inside from death
on the outside.

“Quite a view, isn’t it?” Samuel stepped next
to me.

I nodded, but not convincingly. Captivating,
yes. But I failed to see the beauty in a lifeless landscape.

“This is where the grimmets live?” I asked.
He nodded. “Up in the mountains?”

“Mostly, yes. They occasionally visit the
plains and flock to the Outpost out of curiosity, but we don’t see
them much. Mostly when we venture out.”

The planet didn’t look diverse, but it was
rich in elements valuable to Earth. Why else be here? The Outpost
was just one of many settlements on the planet. Mines were set up
all over. They weren’t here just to live on another planet. There
was profit involved.

“This planet wasn’t always dead,” Samuel
said, gazing out. “There is some water and the atmosphere can
support life, but when we discovered it there was none to be found.
There is evidence that beings once lived here, the remnants of
houses and roads, cities and farming. Signs of advanced
civilization. One can only imagine what it looked like when it was
still vital.”

He was looking at a plume of smoke in the
distant mountains.

“I’m sure you’re well aware of our mining
industry, but our primary objective for being here is research.
This is an expensive operation and the mining of energy-rich
minerals helps fund our exploration. Those trees you see are some
of our first successes. Instead of leaves, the bark is
photosynthetic, tolerating the harsh conditions. This is one of the
first links in planet-building. Our goal is that one day this
planet will be habitable, once again. That many generations from
now, the human population can call it a home.”

“I don’t understand. How could the entire
planet be void of life if the atmosphere is habitable? I mean,
asteroids or pestilence or war couldn’t wipe out
all
life.”

“We’re not sure.” He was still curiously
eyeing the mountains. The cloud was dispersing, growing larger and
nearer. It didn’t appear to be smoke. “All our research indicates
that life just vanished. As if a heart just stopped beating. What
could do something like that is, currently, beyond our
understanding. And that’s another reason we’re here.” He flicked a
glance toward me before resuming his watch on the cloud. “If it can
happen here, can it happen on Earth?”

I wondered if he was holding back
information. We knew so much, how could there be so much mystery
about a dead planet?

“What made the grimmets immune?” I asked.

“Tenacious beings. Unlike anything in the
universe. They’re similar to cold-blooded organisms, going extended
periods of time without food. They seem to have some ability to
photosynthesize as well as utilize minerals and nutrients from
soil, rocks and trees. Somehow, they resisted whatever wiped
everything else out. Of course, I don’t need to tell you about
their psychic ability.”

All right, so he was aware of my connection
with them. Of course he would know I shared a special bond with
grimmets back on Earth.

“But even as tough as they are, their
populations are dwindling. We tried to incorporate them into our
environment,” Samuel said, “inside the Outpost, but it just didn’t
work. They weren’t acclimated to the friendly climate and didn’t
care to be separated from the flock.”

He stared to the distant plume, let his
thoughts drift for a moment.