Nathan Hystad - New Threat

I pressed the touchscreen, and yellow light glowed in a ring around it. Everything looked fine.

“Be careful,” Mary said.

I leaned over, giving her a deep kiss, long enough to make a sailor blush.

“I love you,” I said, hoping it wasn’t for the last time. She mouthed it back to me, a tear falling down her cheek.

Leaving that bridge was the most difficult thing I’d ever had to do, and considering what I’d been through, that meant a lot.

“Nick, what are you waiting for? Suit up,” Slate said, causing the doctor’s mouth to fall open.

“What? Me? Out there?” Nick stammered.

“Why do you think I’ve been training you? So you can go home and win the Hill Valley state karate competition?” Slate asked.

“Oh crap, you’re serious,” Nick said.

“It’s time for the big leagues, my friend. Don’t worry; we just need you for backup. We still don’t know what we’re getting into,” Slate said, and I saw Nick’s tense look loosen up a little.

The corridor to the weapons room felt longer this trip.

“What do you think we’re going to find?” I asked Slate while Nick was busy getting his assigned suit on.

“She might be bringing us right into the hive of the enemy. Good thing you have that weapon,” he said, nodding his chin to the device in my hand.

As much as I wanted to protect Earth, I wasn’t sure genocide of a race was the answer this time.

“Of course, we’ll still need to eliminate Mae when it’s said and done,” Slate whispered in my ear.

I solemnly nodded, still not believing we had to kill my close friend. I felt so used by her.

“Don’t worry, boss. I’ll make the shot if that helps.”

It didn’t. “I’ll do what’s necessary.” The words came out, but I didn’t recall saying them.

We got suited up, leaving our helmets off, and lined them beside our weapons in the storage room next to the ropes and tethers. I pushed the pin on Nick’s collar just long enough to see him glow green as Slate held him.

“I’m not looking forward to this,” he said.

“Just press this, push yourself through on this bar” – I lowered the bar from the center of the room – “and don’t forget to strap in. You don’t want to end up floating around in space. We haven’t had a chance to train you on the suit’s propulsion system yet.”

This just made him pale more, if that was possible. A year ago, I would have looked just like him, but I’d been thrown into a desperate position with no other options.

“You guys have to see this.” Clare said through the speakers.

We crossed the ship and entered the bridge, amazed at what we were seeing.

“Our cloaking tech is functional, right?” I asked.

“They can’t see us,” Clare said.

The viewscreen showed us a planet in the distance, and one of the two stars in the system, on opposite corners of the planets, which made for a complicated orbit pattern and had to be hell on days and nights. Maybe whatever life was on them had adapted to that, if there was any life.

Before us was a satellite, a small moon for the closest planet, which reminded me of a sand-colored Mars. The viewscreen zoomed, and there was Mae’s ship, hovering near the moon.

“Look.” Mary zoomed closer and we saw a structure on the surface. It stretched out in an intricate system of halls leading to an assortment of outbuildings. There was obviously no atmosphere, and probably very little gravity, so they had a sealed colony.

Beside the structure, three ships were settled on the rocky surface.

“This looks like an outpost. We must be closer to their home galaxy,” Slate said, clenching his fists. “We can’t let Mae get to them.”

Mae’s ship was just hovering there. She was either contemplating her next move, or she was waiting for clearance. Clare tried to scan all communication frequencies, but nothing came across.

The good news was, they still didn’t know we were there.

“What do we do?” I asked, looking to Slate for guidance.

“We go down there, activate that death tool you have, and blow up Mae’s ship.” He said it so straight-faced, it startled me.

“What if there are more than Bhlat down there?” I asked, playing devil’s advocate.

“That’s why we have guns,” he replied, a smile crossing his face. It was more than a little unsettling.

“Does it end here? We stop Mae, we stop the outpost from ever passing on the knowledge we were here, and we go home. Right?” I laid it out and everyone nodded.

The device was light in my pocket, but the weight of what it could do almost caused me to sit down. The good news was, I would just need to use it one last time. To kill the potential enemy before they knew what hit them, in order to keep humanity a secret longer.

“How close do you think we need to be to use it?” Mary asked, not having to say what “it” was.

I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I doubt it will work instantly from a thousand kilometers. I’d say we fly over them and hope they can’t see us, turn it on, get Mae, and go home.” It sounded so easy. Part of me was excited that we might be on the way home in a very short amount of time; the other was tired of having to kill.

“Bringing us in,” Mary said.

Mae was still in space, and we went the long way to avoid crossing her path. The moon was rocky, small hills and mountains jutting out from it. The station was on the flattest part of the moon, which was even smaller in diameter than I had originally thought.

I tried to gauge the size of the room and hall structure as we approached, and put it at about six city blocks long with about twenty separate buildings, each connected with dark corridors, no glass anywhere.

When we hovered above the center of the area, I stood, sliding the device from my breast pocket. Tapping it turned the yellow ring on, and I scrolled to the icons, even though my helmet wasn’t on to translate the text. I remembered which to press.

“God forgive me,” I whispered as I tapped the confirm icon.

“Is it done?” Clare asked.

Nothing on the base looked any different. Were they dead?

The device ring shone red and started to flash. Text appeared over the screen. “I can’t read it, but I think something’s wrong.” Grabbing my helmet from beside my chair, I popped it on, locking it in, and let my HUD fire up. I scanned the device text again. DNA sample insufficient.

“Shit. The DNA sample has failed. Must have messed up when it flew onto the ground when we were tossed around in the wormhole,” I said, my hands nearly trembling. I tapped it a few more times, trying to get it to work, and the same result occurred. I even popped the sample tray open on the back, careful not to add my own sample to it. This thing was dangerous.

“You know what this means?” Slate asked, before answering his own question. “This means we go down there, kill one of them, and get a fresh sample. Then we beam the hell out and destroy them.”

It was as sound a plan as we had. “Couldn’t we just blow them to hell?” This from Nick.

“As much as I agree with the good doctor here, I think we need to get the sample. What if they do find their way to Earth? Having protection against them would be the difference between survival and extinction,” Mary said. I found it hard to argue with her logic.

“Then it’s set. Let’s go, Slate. We’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t leave without us.” I led the way off the bridge, catching a worried glance from Mary. I knew she wanted to be down there with me, but her injuries weren’t healed enough, and it was a lot safer on the bridge than in the spider’s web we were about to jump into.

Nick was there beside us, passing us our rifles. He slid his helmet on. “Call me and I’ll be right there.”