Nathan Hystad - New Threat

“Not that any of that matters anymore after we got taken. The world was always an upside-down place. Now we just have to turn around with it, so we can see straight.”

The perspective on things was a good one. “When was that?” I asked.

“Two years before they came. I was a wreck. When I got back from the tour, I could hardly function. I started drinking too much and almost lost my job.” He stopped, just staying quiet for a few moments. “Then they came and changed it all. I was up there with people dying around me, everyone fighting each other like wild animals trapped in a corner. I helped save a few lives up there, and I got it back. That urge to survive, and to help others survive. It was like I needed that shock to bring me back to being myself. Anyway, here we are. I guess someone heard about my efforts on vessel twenty-six, and I was recruited to the cause.”

It was a great story, and I found myself liking the already affable man a lot more for hearing it.

“Want to get back to it?” he asked. “I’m ready to learn to fight. Thanks for making me talk it out.”

We got up, me doing a little stretch on my tightening back, and we got back into position.

“Go!” Slate called.

“Everyone to the bridge.” Slate’s voice carried over the comm-system.

“Mary, time to get up,” I said, pushing the blankets off my body. The floor was cool under my bare feet, and in moments, I had the uniform on, socks included.

“Just five more minutes, Mom,” she said, her eyes still closed.

“I’ll see you up there,” I said, leaving her in bed but turning the lights on. Oldest trick in the book.

Nick came out of the kitchen, shrugging at me as we made our way down the corridor onto the bridge.

“What’s up?” I asked. Clare was at the helm, with Slate on the console next to her. Their faces were grim.

“Asteroid field. That bitch led us into it,” Clare said. Hearing someone call Mae something derogatory stung for a moment, until I remembered she’d betrayed us. I still clung to a glimmer of hope she hadn’t, that she had a good reason for what she’d done. My gut told me otherwise.

We were out of the FTL, stars slowed on the viewscreen, and the computer zoomed to pick out a few large chunks of rock, highlighting them in blue on our screens.

“They look easy enough to avoid. Let’s go around,” I said, sitting down.

Clare took us around them, the computer calculating a trajectory for each of the asteroid chunks, a stream of blue lines covering our viewscreen.

“She’s heading right for them,” Slate said, standing as he watched. “She must have a death wish.”

We were only a day away from the location of the space station Kareem had told us about. What games was Mae playing?

We kept going, Mae’s icon blinking along a thousand kilometers behind us now. She was getting awfully close to one of the asteroids. We saw her darting in and out of clusters, before the ship went straight toward a large chunk a few hundred meters across. Her ship’s icon blinked rapidly and disappeared from the screen.

“What the hell was that? Did she make impact?” I asked. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked back to see Mary standing there, dressed, her hair in a tight ponytail. Concern etched across her face, and I knew she’d been clinging to the idea Mae might still be on our side too.

“Looks that way. The tracking is far more advanced on this vessel. You remember those ships. They have a proximity sensor more than exact calculations. She must not have seen it coming, or thought she could sneak by it,” Clare said.

“Keep going,” I said, my hand mopping my face. The urge to yell at someone surged through me, but there was nothing anyone did wrong. Mae had been the culprit, and now she was dead, and I’d never be able to ask her what her truth was. I knew we wanted to stop Mae from making contact, but I still thought I was going to be sick. My eyes shut, only to see the icon lights of her ship still blinking on the back of my eyelids. It all felt so anti-climactic. That was life sometimes.

“We’re clear of the debris field. Activating the drive now,” Clare said. Otherwise, the room was silent.

“Let’s bring it in slowly,” I said, standing behind Mary’s chair. Our cloaking shield was running, making us look like the stars around us from a distance. Up close we would appear like an anomaly, and anyone seeing us would most likely investigate the disturbance.

Kareem claimed he’d abandoned the station over fifty Earth years ago. The translation wasn’t clear, but it made sense with how long he’d been on that planet. They’d been fleeing a Bhlat sentry ship, which apparently caught on that the Deltra were in possession of some new weapon. He didn’t know if the station still existed, but they wouldn’t have the code to start the engines.

He’d had every intention of getting back to it, but by the time he’d made planetside, he wanted to put it all behind him. To live a quiet life away from the war. His wife and child were with him, and that was enough for him to stay hidden.

“Is this worth it? I mean, now that Mae is gone, and the hybrids don’t want to sell us out?” Nick asked us for the tenth time since yesterday.

“If this thing will do what Kareem says it does, then yeah. It could secure our safety from invasion,” Mary said, creeping our ship toward the system. A ringed planet hung in the distance, a gorgeous juxtaposition to the ugliness I was feeling. A large moon was nearby, and just where we were told the station would be, it stayed, orbiting the planet beside the moon, its massive wheel-shaped rim spinning still.

“It might still have gravity,” Clare said, staring at the viewscreen, taking in the amazing piece of technology.

It had to be a hundred times the size of our ship, with no lights of any sort on the outside of it. It looked like what it was: abandoned. I couldn’t take my eyes off the circular space station, rotating so slowly, but that was probably because of the size of it. It was flat dark gray in color, patches of different material on the outside layers. It looked like there was an unfinished section in the center of it, a section probably closed off from the interior.

It gave off a coldness, looking at it. For some reason, the station made me think of visiting my father’s grave after he’d passed away, and I didn’t like the comparison in my mind. Nothing about it should have made me feel that way; nonetheless, it did.

“I have a bad feeling,” Slate said, mirroring my thoughts.

“Me too,” Mary whispered.

We slowed the ship, all silently watching the massive stationary vessel’s turbine slowly rotate.

“No signs of anything nearby?” I asked, knowing there wasn’t, because the map showed no vessels flying out there.

“Nothing within range,” Clare said.

“Okay, let’s do this. We stick to the plan. Clare, you stay here with Nick. Mary, Slate, let’s suit up.” I walked past them, to the hall.

“Dean,” Nick said, “take care, and good luck out there.”

I turned and forced a smile. “Thank you. Should be back in a jiffy. I wouldn’t mind a beer after all of this is over. Can you put some on ice?” I joked.

“We mean it. Be careful,” Clare said.

“We will. We have each other’s back. Right, Slate?” Mary asked, nudging him with her elbow.

“Right,” he said, his face set in grim determination.

With that, we exited the bridge in a line, and made our way past the storage area to the prep room, where our three suits hung on the wall, already prepared over the week. The lapels had the buttons attached to them. I hadn’t green-beamed through any walls for a while, and frankly, I wasn’t looking forward to it. The last time had been stressful enough. At least this time we were going into an empty ship, and the imminent death of millions of people wasn’t looming over our heads.