Nathan Hystad - New Threat

“You don’t remember? You talked to me, letting me know which room to find you in.”

“No. The Bhlat cornered me, and I tried to shoot my way free, then… nothing.”

“The device worked, and they turned to mush in their suits. It was terrible and lifesaving at the same time. We found you unconscious, and I was barely hanging on. Slate ended up hauling us the pair of us, passed out and bleeding,” I said, getting a slight snicker from her.

“We make quite the team.” She rubbed the back of my hand with her palm.

“We sure do.” I kissed her forehead, getting a shot of pain from my stomach wound, though it felt way better than it had. The hybrid blood was helping me heal from it at a welcome expedited rate.

We talked, and I filled her in on Mae’s ship reappearing. I hated to tell her, but she swore she wanted to know everything. With any luck, we would have time to heal a bit before we were back in battle mode.

“I wish Magnus and Nat were here,” Mary said, mirroring my own thoughts.

“Me too. I still can’t believe they’re married.”

“I wish we were,” Mary said. “I was running around that damned place trying to distract the monster Bhlats and all I could think about was walking on a beach with you, a little boy holding our hands between us. We walked, swinging the boy, sand warm and messy under our bare feet. It was wonderful and scary at the same time. I thought that was it. Like I was having an afterlife vision of what wouldn’t be, if that makes any sense.”

“It makes a lot of sense. I love you, Mary. Let’s go stop Mae from doing whatever it is she’s up to, and go home,” I said, wishing it were that easy.

“Deal. Now where can I find one of those crazy pills you were talking about?”

“Has she changed course at all?” I asked. We were all on the bridge, six days after the adventure that had resulted in two of us being badly wounded. Slate still had a few bruises, mostly healed by that point.

“Nothing substantial. She only moves when there’s something standing between her and her target. Wherever that is.” Clare had gone from bubbly engineer to focused pilot. Mary took some light duties now, but she needed to walk around with crutches, which they surprisingly had stored on the ship.

I passed around the freshly heated freezer-pack dinners, though we really didn’t know what time our internal clocks were working on since we all had such different schedules. With just the five of us, we had to split the small number of chores.

I bent down, passing Clare a dinner plate, and noticed my side didn’t hurt at all any more from the movement. It was almost entirely healed. I only wished Mary had the same success. She was still in a lot of pain, popping more pills than she thought was healthy.

“Where the hell is she bringing us?” I asked for the hundredth time.

“I guess we won’t know until we get there,” Mary said between bites of her heated-up quinoa mixture.

The map on the side of the viewscreen flashed, expanding at Clare’s direction. Mae’s ship icon blinked and was gone, the map zooming out once again.

“Son of a bitch. Another wormhole?” Nick asked.

Setting my plate down, I almost looked for Carey, who would inevitably come sniffing around looking for a way to steal the chicken off my plate. But Carey was on another ship heading to a new world. As the map expanded, and I saw the universe enlarge around us, I suddenly wanted to be sitting back on Earth with Mary and Carey, in front of a fireplace at a resort in Vermont.

“That slows us down a bit, since we were aiming to cut her off on her trajectory. Looks like we can get to that spot in an hour.”

“At least we have time to eat,” Nick said, nearly getting a smile from Clare.

The wormhole was hard to spot again, but there it was, a window into another galaxy.

“Sending in probes,” Clare said.

“I’m no scientist, but even a theoretical wormhole is near impossible to work, let alone stay open,” I said, baffled by the phenomena.

Clare turned while the probes shot back data. “You’re right. They need an outside force.”

I pondered that before standing up fast, nearly knocking my empty plate over. “Outside force like technology?”

She nodded, pursing her lips slightly. “Sure. If there was a way for them to keep the gateway open, that might make sense. Bear in mind, I have no real understanding of this other than the Hawking books I read in college.”

“Send more probes out. Look for any electrical or nuclear radiance that isn’t coming from us.”

We waited for the results to come back.

“Probe 9351 found something. Wait.” Clare was almost giddy with excitement. “9714 found the same results.”

“Take us to one, please,” I said, standing behind the helm’s console.

Slate zoomed on the coordinates, and we saw a hovering satellite. No doubt this was one of the things keeping the gateway open.

“Look, I find this fascinating too, but every second we stay here looking at this piece of alien metal, Mae is getting closer to her target,” Slate said, clearly agitated.

“Just record their emittance frequency, and let’s get out of here.” I had a plan for when we passed back through the fold in space. If we came back.

Soon we were hovering in front of the wormhole. I was holding the device with Bhlat DNA affixed to its sensors. Just holding it was making me feel better about going into the mouth of the beast.

“Everyone strapped in this time?” Mary asked from her seat.

“Affirmative,” Slate said after a quick scan of the bridge.

“Three… two… one.” Clare eased the ship into the opening, and it felt like we entered the gates of hell. The ship lurched back and forth, like a boat in a tumultuous storm on the sea. The inertial dampeners, already patched up after our last venture, kicked in and out, and it felt like my head was going to rip clean off my shoulders. As badly as I felt, I worried for Mary as we tossed about, but just as quickly as it started, it ended as we exited the other end.

“Are you all okay?” I asked, getting out of my seat to cross over to Mary.

Her eyes were closed, and blood ran from her lips. My hand ran to her face, and her eyes darted open. “It’s all right. It’s just me,” I said calmly.

Her fingers traced her mouth, coming away with her blood on the tips. “I’m fine. I bit my tongue.”

“Well, that was better than the first time,” Slate said, getting up too. The map had zoomed once again, and Clare left the bridge to check on the engineer room. “She’s not using her FTL yet. That could mean a couple of things. Either she’s having trouble with her ship or the target’s near.”

Slate looked every bit as imposing as I’d seen him before. If I didn’t know better, he was itching for a battle; a final showdown.

Clare’s voice came through the console speakers. “Everything checks out here. We should be good to go.”

Mary moved to the helm position, though I could see her wince in pain at doing so.

“She’s slowing down,” Mary said, pointing to the map. “We’ll be at her location in thirty minutes.”

“It’d be a lot faster if we just toss this baby into FTL for a minute,” I suggested, getting a smile in return from Slate.

“I like the cut of your jib, boss. I’ll suit up. Care to join me?” he asked, and I didn’t answer because he wouldn’t like to hear what I really thought. I just nodded sullenly, anxious for a resolution to this chase, but worried about what that outcome would look like.

I felt my pocket for the Deltra device and couldn’t find it. Panic coursed through my body until I found it on the ground across the bridge. It must have gone flying when we were jostled around in the wormhole.