Darren Wearmouth - Critical Path

His guts flip-flopped, reminding him of days at the carnival as a teenager, experiencing rides that would have never passed health and safety checks. But that was part of the thrill. They knew they were dangerous, but the thrill was too much to ignore.

Despite his feelings about the aliens and this mission as a whole, a smile spread across his face. First because of a job done well, and second because this was just so damned awesome. He was flying in a bona fide alien ship.

The ship leveled off to a horizontal position. An altimeter on the screen indicated they were three hundred meters off the ground, clear of trees or obstacles.

Hagellan made a sharp thrusting maneuver with his hands.

And the craft shot forward like a bullet from a gun.

Mike’s body compressed with the sudden change in g-force. He gritted his jaw and clutched the arms of his chair until his knuckles were white. It felt like someone was trying to push his organs out through his back.

And it kept speeding up until Mike grunted with pain.

Hagellan looked over, his massively muscled neck coping with the force as though it wasn’t there. The look in its eye sent a chill up Mike’s spine and reminded him once more that these creatures were just so utterly alien. It looked at Mike as though he was an experimental mouse.

Mike’s eyes grew wide, and blood dripped from his nose. He gurgled, trying to form words to tell the bastard creature to slow down. A sharp pain in his brain started out as a small ball behind his forehead, and soon black and red shapes appeared in his vision.

When he thought he was about to pass out, Hagellan turned away and eased back on the throttle to a slow coast. Mike slumped forward in his chair and instantly vomited and coughed up blood.

“Your species is weak,” Hagellan said, but with no tone of accusation, rather an objective observation.

Mike wiped his mouth and nose and waited a moment to compose himself. He breathed hard for a minute until his heart stopped trying to claw its way out of his chest. When the adrenaline wore off, he looked up wearily to Hagellan.

“You bastard. You brought me here to test me like some goddamned lab rat.”

“We needed to know for sure. You survived. This bodes well.”

“And if I didn’t?”

Hagellan didn’t respond and turned away.

Mike looked up at the screens. Outside he saw vast tracks of ocean.

“Where are we? How fast did we just travel?”

“We travelled five hundred and fifty-three of your human miles in five of your seconds. Now we return.”

“Wait,” Mike said, shocked at the numbers and wanting to prepare himself, but it was too late. Hagellan flipped the craft nose over tail and barrel rolled on its axis until they were pointing the other way, almost as if defying the laws of momentum.

Mike couldn’t handle it a second time. Before they were fully leveled out, he passed out in his chair, the blur of the world on the displays the last thing he saw.

When he came around, the craft was cruising low over a dense patch of forest.

“You’re still alive?” Hagellan said.

“I guess so,” Mike said, squinting against the light and the throbbing in his head. For a brief moment he had forgotten where he was, but the display screens brought it all back.

Hagellan grunted and returned his attentions to the control, sending the craft down through a wide clearing in the trees until they were flying over Unity. Once they reached the edge of the dried-out lake basin, he spun the craft and lowered it.

But the landing didn’t go quite to plan. The craft seemed to lose its balance and rocked to and fro and finally hit the ground hard, sending up a shudder that jolted Mike’s spine and clattered his teeth together.

“Soft landing much?” he said, rubbing his jaw. “What the hell was that?”

A stream of data flowed down the central screen.

The two aliens approached Hagellan, and they all huddled around the tablet and scanned the screen.

“What’s wrong? Did the new parts fail?”

“Small calibration issue,” Hagellan said. “It will delay us, unfortunately.”

“We’ve still got time for that, though, right?”

Now Mike could definitely tell the alien was worried. There was no hiding that even on an unfamiliar face. Seeing concern in something so ancient and powerful brought a new kind of unease to Mike. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“The jump gate,” Hagellan said. “We received a response.”

“And? Are your friends there? Are we too late?”

“Worse,” Hagellan said. “The gate is compromised. I only received emergency codes, which are sent automatically from the system.”

“Compromised? How exactly? What does this mean for the mission?”

“It means we have no time to waste. We have to go now. Get your friends; we leave within the hour.”

High on the east side of town, a cool wind nipped at the edges of Denver’s ears. He pulled up the collar of his coat and trudged through the field until he finally saw his father. Charlie was standing with his back to Denver. Maria and Layla flanked him, their heads bent low.

A small mound of dirt lay at their feet. Charlie leaned against a shovel, sweat creating a sheen on his stubbled face. He wore a tired expression like one of the many old buildings that had crumbled and become a gray artifact in the undergrowth.

“What happened?” Denver asked after a while, keeping his voice low so as not to break the somber mood.

Charlie grunt-sighed. “It’s Gregor.”

“Oh,” Denver said. A mix of emotions battled for supremacy. Relief, joy, justice, a hint of remorse. But mostly an acceptance that the world was lighter of one less psychopathic nut-job. “How’d it happen.”

Maria looked up at him with neutral eyes. “Charlie, in the arena,” she said, conveying little emotion. Layla had barely looked up at Denver. He wanted to go to her, but she seemed focused on Gregor’s shallow grave, her body tense and bent over.

Denver wondered if she did have more feelings for Gregor than she had previously let on. They certainly had history together on the farm, and before. Despite her misgivings of him, Denver could understand that she might, underneath it all, have some feelings of grief.

“You killed him?” Denver asked his father.

“Yeah. I had little choice. He wanted it.”

“And you didn’t? After everything he’s done. After what he did to—”

“He didn’t,” Charlie said, turning to his son. “I saw it in his eyes at the end. It wasn’t him. He used it to make me end him. His time was coming, whether it was from my hand or one of Aimee’s pets. He goaded me, but in that final moment, I saw the truth in him. He didn’t kill Pippa.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certain.”

Denver looked down at the shallow grave with a new vision. All this time, Gregor had been like the bogeyman. All those years when Denver and Charlie were raiding against the farm and the croatoans, all that time surviving out in the wilderness, Denver had pictured Gregor as this great evil. Charlie’s nemesis.

Denver’s nemesis.

And yet, now, he was just another body in the ground. Another victim of the new world, the new struggle.

“We were more alike than I realized,” Charlie said.

“No,” Layla interjected, her first words since Denver had arrived. “You two were nothing alike. So what, he wasn’t your great enemy that you thought, but he had few redeeming qualities, and he won’t be missed.”

“He did help us take down the mother ship,” Charlie reminded her.

“And he also perpetuated enslaving humans on the farm for cattle,” Maria shot back.

“As did I,” Layla said. “What this shows us is that none of us are perfect. We’re a terribly flawed species, our own worst enemy. If there’s one thing the croatoans have shown us, it’s that we’re not terribly different to them. We’re all just animals doing our best to survive.”