Steve Alten - The Mayan Resurrection

Embedded in every bulkhead, ceiling, and deck are artificial gravity node emitters, set to normal Earth gravity. Inertia dampeners protect flight crew operators from possible injuries caused by sudden acceleration, deceleration, or rapid changes in direction. Voice controls in each room can adjust ambient light, humidity, and temperature controls.

The upper deck is constructed to assure passenger comfort and survival. Hydroponic vats, biological waste treatment converters, and chemical storage containers needed to produce crops are located in an aft hangar, along with storage bays and a series of ‘autophysician’ pods that look like sarcophagi, something Dominique remains too claustrophobic to use. A main corridor leads forward into the centrally located ‘habitat,’ a 230-foot-long chamber that contains a kitchen, bathing pods, toilets, workstations, virtual reality facilities, exercise, and sleeping pods.

The onion-shaped control center is located upper deck forward. Escape chutes leading to smaller landing/escape pods are situated throughout the vessel.

Dominique Gabriel opens her eyes. The padded ‘curtains’ covering the portals in her sleep chamber have parted, allowing filtered sunlight to brighten the compartment. Reaching across her body, she unfastens the Velcro straps of her sleep suit, which cause her to adhere to the wall.

The dull headache returns the moment she floats free.

Dominique has been traveling in space for two days, twenty-two hours, and eighteen minutes. She has been suffering repeated bouts of spacesickness and an aching lower back, anxiety, sleep deprivation, an inability to focus, and an almost constant dull headache.

Her diet of freeze-dried rations has only added to her irritability.

‘Computer, activate gravity mats.’

A moment of nausea as her Earth weight returns, landing her awkwardly on both feet. She groans as the menstrual pain returns.

‘Computer, locate my son.’

JACOB GABRIEL IS ASLEEP IN HIS POD.

Dominique enters the habitat where her son is sleeping. During her first ‘night’ in space, she had tried to sleep in a similar pod, but the coffinlike bed was too confining.

Hearing a muffled scream, she rushes over to one of the sleeping pods, where her son is in the throes of a terrible nightmare.

‘Jake?’ She bangs on the tinted plastic lid, then struggles to open it.

Inside, her son thrashes violently, as if being attacked by a swarm of bees.

Dominique yanks open the cover, grabbing him by his wrists. ‘Jake-wake up! Jacob!’

The azure-blue eyes flash open-absolutely terrified. He grips his mother’s biceps, bruising them within his powerful fingers.

‘Jake, it’s okay… Jacob, you’re hurting me… Jacob!’

‘Huh?’ He gazes up at her and stops thrashing.

Dominique helps him out of the pod. ‘Are you all right?’

He nods weakly, then collapses into a deck-mounted ‘nourishment’ chair. ‘Computer, 20 cc’s supplement 4-F.’ Placing the feeding tube into his mouth, he closes his eyes, sucking the clear liquid through the two-foot-long pressurized straw.

‘Another nightmare?’

‘It was a vision. A final warning from my father.’

She kneels in front of him. ‘Tell me.’

He shakes his head.

‘Jacob… please-’

The white-haired twin looks up at his mother through gallows’ eyes. ‘I was deep inside the nexus, enshrouded in heavy white fog. My physical body seemed to have left me, there was only my mind’s eye. Two violet specks appeared… two eyes, glowing at me from within the thick haze. It was Lilith. She whispered into my mind, “Jacob, we’ve been waiting.” And then I saw her.

‘She was so intoxicating, Mother, like exquisite poison. “Come to me, Jacob,” she said. My mind screamed no, but then I felt her touch, and it was beyond any ecstasy I’ve ever known. I could feel her warm breath in my ear. My nerve impulses tingled as she caressed the pleasure centers of my mind, and her nectar spread over me like a soothing balm.

‘I could have stayed there forever. I could have let her drain me, dying a happy man. But then these blue specks appeared-a pair of Hunahpu eyes observing me from beyond the fog.

‘It was my father. “You have allowed the serpent into your garden,” he said, “and once more you’ve been deceived.” Then the fog lifted, and I saw the Abomination for what she really was.

‘She was part-human, part-demonic creature. Her skin had bleached ghostly white, her long hair was black and knotty. The corneas of her eyes were violet-red, her pupils like a viper. But it was her mouth that made my soul retch-a vertical slit, like a fleshy trap-like a vagina, Mother, only it was filled with hundreds of these sickening stubbly black teeth.

‘Blood was smeared across the monster’s unholy slit… my blood! She stood before me, an obscenity of humanity. Her hideous lips spread apart, inhaling my consciousness inside her orifice, and I knew I was in Hell.

‘And though I had no body, I could still feel her heat melting the flesh from my bones, and though I had no nose, I could still smell the putrid scent of demon’s vomit, and though I had no mouth, my tortured mind screamed over and over as the Abomination entwined her naked limbs deeper around my mind, and ground her rancid groin into my being.’

‘My God…’

Jacob wipes tears from his glazed-over eyes. ‘I was drowning in her sulfuric maelstrom, ranting and raging and screaming as if caught in a swirling pool of lava, then suddenly I was in an oasis of calm. Somehow Mick had reached in and saved me, pulling me to safety. I could still feel the Abomination clawing at my back, tempting me to look at her. And even though I had just escaped her Hell, it was all I could do to keep myself from turning again.

‘My father pulled me into his arms and held me, whispering that I am the true Hunahpu, the Nephilim messiah, and that he would be there for me when I needed him.’

Dominique wipes a tear. ‘How did he look?’

‘Weary. And then he faded back into the white light.’

Warning bells sound, snapping Jacob to attention. ‘Computer, report.’

WARPED SPACE DETECTED, COURSE TWO-ZERO-THREE MARK SIX. TIME TO INTERCEPT: FOUR MINUTES, TWENTY SECONDS.

‘Origin of warped space?’

GRAVITATIONAL RIPPLE.

‘The wormhole?’ Dominique asks.

Jacob nods. ‘Computer, plot and execute intercept course.’

She follows Jacob forward into the control room.

‘Computer, activate forward screen.’

A three-dimensional image of space appears on the wall before them. Located in the upper right hand corner of the screen, growing in size as it travels from east to west, is the frightening scarlet-ringed aperture of the wormhole.

Jacob stares at the object. ‘I think you’d better strap in.’

Dominique climbs into one of the pilot chairs, which instantly conforms to her physique. The mouth of the vortex appears before them, radiating like a swirling, orange-red alien moon.

ACTIVATING EXOTIC-MATTER BEACONS.

The image of the scarlet orifice blurs as the negative energy field of the starship’s exotic-matter force field carves an invisible path before them.

Jacob pulls himself into his command chair as the wormhole’s mouth grows to occupy the entire forward screen. ‘Hold on!’

The sleek starship crosses the wormhole’s threshold, the cosmic tunnel’s intense gravitational forces instantly sucking the vessel down its throat, propelling it through its conduit.

Dominique’s arms are suctioned to her chair, the intense gravitational turbulence shaking the vessel hard enough to loosen her back teeth. She bites down, her eyes barely able to focus on the forward screen.

They are rocketing through an iridescent sky-blue funnel, rimmed by a strange bloodred hue. At the very center of the image is a black dot… growing larger… larger And suddenly they are flung free, hurtling through space into an unrecognizable sector of the Galaxy.