Nathan Hystad - The Survivors - Books 1-3

“Very good!” Slate yelled, clapping his hands together.

“Yeah, very good,” the doctor said, his words short and terse.

I got up and gave him my hand, which he hesitated to grab.

“Do I really need to learn this? I mean, I’m a healer, not a hunter.” Nick rubbed his chest with his palm.

“We don’t know what we’re up against. Nick, you’ve never told us your story. Why are you here?” Slate asked, surprising the doctor.

“I told you why. They needed a volunteer and I stuck my hand up.”

“We get that, but what drove you to stick your hand up?” I asked, genuinely curious.

We sat on the crates, drinking water, and Slate tossed us a couple of towels. I was covered in sweat and laid the towel over my head while he talked.

“I suppose a lot of my life decisions led me to that point. Where do you want me to start?” he asked.

“We have another four days before we get there. Go as far back as you want,” Slate said, leaning against the wall. “Tell us about your life. You know… before.”

It was hard for some people to go back to that life. To dwell on what was, because so much had changed with the Event. Nick’s eyes had that look to them, and that was probably why he was so tight-lipped about himself.

“I always wanted to help people. Even as a little kid. Where others would shy away from blood, it fascinated me. It was inside us, and if enough leaked out, we died. A weird thing for an eight-year-old to think, and my questions sometimes had my parents worried. They were simple folks from the Midwest. She worked part-time at a bank, and my pa had a small construction company. I remember the day he asked me if I wanted to take over his business. I told him I couldn’t because I was going to be a doctor. He looked crestfallen, but he never told me he was disappointed. They both supported me, and while I worked summers and part-time anything jobs while I went to school, they paid the lion’s share of my tuition.” His gaze had taken on a longing look to the far side of the room as he spoke, and I didn’t have to ask if his parents had survived the Event. They hadn’t.

“That’s great. That isn’t far off my own story,” I said. “Where did you go to school?”

“Medical degree at Stanford. I moved to California after pre-med for a life-changing experience. It sure was. I loved the beaches and people, but eventually got home-sick and went back to Indiana for my residency.” He took a drink of water before continuing. “I ended up joining the military ten years ago.”

“What made you do that?” Slate asked.

“A girl… rather, a woman, but aren’t we all just boys and girls at the end of the day?” he asked, a grim smile on his face.

“I suppose we are. Especially when it comes to following the heart,” I said.

“We went to Iraq. Different stations, and she was killed by a goddamn suicide bomber before I ever told her I loved her.” He stared at the wall, as if looking either of us in the eyes would open the bottled-up floodgates that were inevitably there.

Slate came over and rested his hand on Nick’s shoulder. He didn’t say a word, just let it sit there a moment before heading back to the spot he’d been leaning on.

“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.

“E veryone 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.

“L et’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.