Nathan Hystad - The Survivors - Books 1-3

Mary was already up, putting her jumpsuit back on, and I fell right in behind her. I felt rested, but wished I had time to brush my teeth or freshen up. I made a quick pit stop in the washroom and did just that after relieving myself. I wasn’t going to be of any use wetting myself on the bridge.

When I crossed to the bridge, Nick was behind me, and he called up. “Any idea what’s going on?”

I looked back. He was in a bathrobe, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. His eyes were sporting some serious red veins, and I expected his first attempt at sleep on a spaceship was a failure.

Slate was standing tall behind Mae’s console, with Mary and Clare flanking her. They were all looking at the viewscreen.

“The icon blinked out here,” she said, highlighting the spot on the map, “but the tracking still seems to be working, unless there’s a major glitch in it.” She looked over her shoulder to Clare.

Clare stood there, perplexed look across her face. After a moment, a light bulb went off, and I could see recognition wash over her. “Holy shit. The reason the map went all funky and tiny like that is because it was zooming out. Somehow they travelled from here” – she pointed to a spot on the tablet screen – “to here.” Another spot way to the right.

“Just how did they do that? We’re operating the same drive as them,” Mary said.

“I have no idea. To travel that far would take something entirely different. Something we don’t have. Maybe…” She stopped, tapping her finger on the back of Mae’s chair.

“What is it? What could do that?” I asked, losing my patience. If we lost them now, on day one, we were hooped.

“The only thing I can think of is a wormhole of some sort. We didn’t find the technology on their ships, though,” Clare said. “That’s the only reasonable explanation I have.”

A wormhole. This just kept getting more convoluted.

“So what do we do? Wait until we catch up to the spot they disappeared at and see if we can duplicate it?” Mary asked.

“What’s our ETA to that spot?” I asked, a nervous energy coursing through my veins.

“Just under two hours,” Mae confirmed after tapping a few glowing buttons.

Two hours to travel FTL toward a spot where our target ship blipped out and moved thousands of light years away. If we didn’t get the same hop, we would never be able to catch them. The whole escape would be successful, and we would be heading back to Earth with our tail between our legs, preparing for an all-out war.

“Then that’s what we do. Pray for the same wormhole to be there,” I said, and we all kept staring at the map, a light blip across the stretched-out expanse, glowing, letting us know our target was still out there.

“I hate waiting around,” Mary said as we sat in the eat-in kitchen.

The table was bolted to the ground and would sit all of us if we crammed in there. We sipped tepid coffee and batted ideas back and forth. Really it was all speculation, because we couldn’t know what we were going to arrive to.

“What are the options if the wormhole, or whatever the hell it is, isn’t there any longer?” I asked, sure I could guess what they were. I just wanted Mary to reconfirm to me what I already knew.

“I’d say the first option at that point is to turn around, hightail it back to Earth, tell the powers that be what we found out, and hunker down, preparing for a war that may or may not ever come to us. I hate the idea of living in constant fear of invasion. The world can’t deal with that after all we’ve been through.” She took a drink from the cup and set it down, wrapping her slender fingers around it.

“Option two?” I asked.

“Option two: we keep going, take months to get where they are, thousands of light years away, and hope this ship is really built for it. We may be too late then, but at least we’ll know one way or the other.”

“Option three?”

“We say screw it, head to Proxima b, where we meet up with our friends in a few months, and start over on a new world.” She smiled at this one, and I knew that option probably suited her as much as it did me, but we couldn’t do that. We had too many people back home relying on us.

“So now what? We play the wait and see game?” I knew it was only a matter of minutes before Mae called us to the bridge and we saw firsthand what was left of the “leap” spot, as we started calling it.

Slate came in the room, and I noticed he had to turn sideways to get through the doorway. His short blond hair was a little messy. Probably coming from a quick power nap. I used to tease Magnus about being too big, but this guy was next level.

“Slate, what’s your story? And where’d you get that name?” I asked, truly intrigued by the man.

He shrugged, grabbing a cup of coffee, and sat down at the end of the table so we could both turn and face him.

“Name’s really Zeke Campbell,” he said nonchalantly.

“You don’t look like a Zeke,” I said, trying to hold back a laugh.

“No kidding. My old sarge started calling me that when I was just a private. He found out I painted, and said I was like a rock but had many layers. Ergo, I was Slate from then on.”

I did laugh then, and soon Mary was laughing beside me, and even the ever-serious Slate was grinning.

“Where are you from?” Mary asked. He was Army and she was Air Force, so they had more camaraderie between them than with an accountant from upstate New York.

“Grew up in L.A. near the water. Loved to surf,” he said, staring into his cup. “My older brother shipped off to the Gulf War when I was just a kid and died two months later. It broke my mom. Anyway, at that moment, I started to plan my revenge. I was just eight years old, but in my heart, I told myself I was going to find who killed him and make them pay. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was too much for a little kid. I started to work out as soon as my mom would let me, and against every wish of hers, I joined the Army when I was eighteen. I saw a lot of tours in the Middle East, and killed a lot of men, but none of it ever brought me the redemption I dreamt of as that little boy. It just… I’m sorry. I don’t talk about it much, so when I get started on it, I guess I can’t stop.”

I thought about running through the massive Kraski vessel with the Shield, killing what was left of an entire race. “We do what we have to do, Slate, and we have to live with it after. I’m glad we have you along. I look forward to getting to know you better,” I said, and meant it.

“Same here.” He smiled again.

“We’re about to shut the drive down,” Clare said through the computer’s wall speaker.

“I guess we find out what’s next now. No more speculating.” Mary stood, and we followed her out to the bridge, where Clare sat to the left, Mae still in the pilot’s seat.

Mae got up, relinquishing the seat to Mary. Her face was impassive, impossible to read. She looked worried, and we all were at that moment, hoping there would be a swirling wormhole or something to carry us across the universe.

“Drive down, normal engines on,” Clare said, and the viewscreen showed distant stars slowing from lines to points in space once again.

“Where is it?” I asked, looking around for a sign of the anomaly. I walked over to Clare, who was quickly typing in something on her console’s tablet.

“I’m not picking anything up. Shit. It’s gone.”

We stood there, frustration enveloping us. The mission had failed.

“W here’s the exact point they took off from?” I asked, curious more than anything. Before we started to debate the options Mary had suggested in the kitchen, I had to see it. I had to be sure.