Nathan Hystad - The Survivors - Books 1-3

“How do we know where she’s going?” Nick asked, still wearing his scrubs.

“We don’t, but we can predict where her current trajectory will take her. We’ll aim for that path, and maybe we can even cross paths. We have the advantage because we can see where she is, but she can’t do the same with us.” Clare was taking charge, and I obliged her. With Mary incapacitated, we needed someone who could fly the ship and think outside the box.

“What do you think she’s doing?” Nick asked.

“She has to be going to the Bhlat. The Kraski are gone, for all we know… but maybe that was a lie from Mae. She had no affiliation with the Deltra, at least none that we knew of.” I thought back to my memories of the Deltra visiting Janine and convincing her to work with them. They, of course, tricked her, just as they had tricked us last year. I looked down at the new Deltra tool I held in my hand and wondered how I had trusted Kareem so quickly. Suddenly, the killing device I was holding made me want to throw up. How had it even gotten into my hands? For all I knew, they were tracking us with it. The urge to release it out the airlock passed over me, but we might still need the damned thing. After that, I was sure I needed to dispose of it, once and for all.

“Make that happen, Clare. Slate, can you give me a hand back to the room? I think I need to rest.” My body was in serious pain, and the events were leaving me lightheaded.

“For sure, boss.” He took most of my weight and soon I was back in the room, lying on the bed looking at the ceiling. I took another pill, and before I knew it, my vision was fading, my brain getting foggy.

“Dean, I’m just going to go for a run. I’ll be back soon, and I’ll make breakfast.” Janine walked over to me at the kitchen island as I was pecking away at my laptop. She leaned over, resting her chin on my shoulder. I turned my head and she kissed my cheek, leaving her freshly applied lip balm. She always wore vanilla. I loved the scent.

“Have a good run. Can we have bacon with breakfast?” I asked. She rolled her eyes.

“Dean, do I go for a run just to counter a couple slices of bacon? Maybe you should join me.” She prodded me in the side with her finger.

“I promise I’ll go next time. I have some work to get done for this afternoon.” It was mostly the truth.

“Okay, babycakes. I’ll be back.” She hopped from one foot to the other, warming up her blood flow. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she didn’t have any makeup on. She was the most beautiful woman I’d even seen.

The door closed, and I went back to working on the Peterson file.

I awoke from the strange dream wondering why I’d remembered that brief moment of my past. It was from eight years ago, probably not even a year after Janine and I had met. The pain pills left my mouth dry, another side effect of the medicine. Finding the bottle of open water on my table, I guzzled half the bottle before setting it down.

The dream had left me shaken, seeing Janine again. Mae looked just like her. I always felt like there was a difference I could notice between them, but since I hadn’t ever seen them together, it was hard to tell. Either that, or my brain filled in the Janine role in my dream with Mae’s face, her nuances.

“Dean,” a coarse voice whispered from across the room.

“Mary!” I exclaimed, so happy she was awake. “I’m here.”

Getting off my bed proved easier this time than the last, and I saw from the tablet on the wall that I’d been out for four hours. The pills really packed a punch.

I pulled the chair Slate had been sitting in and brought it to her bedside.

Mary’s eyes were closed, but she opened them when I touched her hand. It was warm, but not hot to the touch, and I took that as a good sign.

“How are you feeling?” I asked her, squeezing her fingers ever-so-lightly.

She groaned but smiled at me through the pain. “I feel like I fell from a cliff and landed on the ground in a poof just like a cartoon coyote. What happened?”

“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?”

“H as 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.