The void was open. Open wide as it had been for centuries, allowing spacecraft large and small to cut through it with ease. Gone were the days of galactic travel being reserved for only matters of the highest importance, as anyone with means could now cruise the stars with as little care as the celebrities of ages past in their chartered jets. That image of a time gone by held some water in the careless, dejected mood of the privileged youth who now soared alone towards a bizarre destination. Their number was three, but they had every intention of whittling it down to two.
The time had come to get rid of Sohrab. No one had known where he came from, but now they did, and the day had come to put him back. He was the strange, silent one that drifted into Kory’s family around the time they had left their home world for Celhesru. Always a constant presence, the eerie pale shadow drifted on the periphery, barely out of view. Now in their early adulthood, Kory, her best friend Nash, and the unofficial brother faced the imminent threat of purpose and self-sufficiency. The latter was making the envied choice to check out of the whole thing altogether, leaving civilized space for an uncharted hollow on the galaxy’s edge. Somehow, he knew he was supposed to be there. He didn’t tell Kory and Nash how, or why, just when. When, was four weeks ago, or at least they thought it was. The voyage outward hadn’t felt real. Time passed differently out here.
The little ball of ice on which they’d left him could hardly be called habitable. It was the solitary planet of a white dwarf star, tidally locked, and miserably lonely. Because the planet never rotated, only a thin band of twilight on the border of the light and dark sides could support life. Infrared scans performed by unmanned probes from the visiting craft quickly revealed which area contained the largest cluster of people. It was here they decided to leave him, whether or not it was the right spot. They landed with the greatest stealth and dropped their companion off just a short walk from this ‘settlement’ – barely worthy of the name. Nash handed him a transmitting ring and promised a beacon would be left in orbit to answer his call should he ever need rescuing. He took it in his gloved hand but did not put it on. Kory remained on the ship’s off-ramp, refusing to meet his gaze, and wholly impatient with the ordeal.
Silent as he arrived, Sohrab left their lives, off to find whomever he needed to meet here. He didn’t even bother to look back until the roar of the engines was long behind him and the ship itself was no more than a receding point of light. Even now as Nash and Kory returned to the stars, preparing for another long flight, they were left with the image of their friend walking dutifully through the snow towards the gnarled, black trees and the pale, purple evening beyond. It would be his view forever. The sun would never rise or set.
The thought of it made Nash uncomfortable. As a native Iolite, the passage of time and the rhythm of the heavens were perhaps more important to her people than anything else. Celhesru owed its prominence not only to its commercial success, but its well-ordered beauty as well. For one thing, it rotated on its axis, as a proper planet should. Celhesru was the solid companion to a larger gas giant called Geponnta, which orbited neatly around their tame, but potent, yellow star… The nonsense and tired old descriptions of a place long established faded in and out of her waking mind. Was it really all so important? Briefly another stream of thought washed over her. The feeling lived outside of time, and for as long as necessary it floated like scum on the pond of her mind. Why did it feel like something Sohrab had told her? Was it a message meant for her or someone dearer?
“Don’t you cry because I’m leaving… I’ve led the life that’s not for grieving.”
“How badly he must have wanted out,” Nash thought, pityingly. “What else is left for him?”
#
The moment the pair emerged from the lukewarm gel of hydro-stasis, the chime of an incoming signal echoed throughout the cabin of their modest craft. Without a doubt the call was urgent. Believing it to be the isolated cry of the one they’d just left, Nash rushed forth from the tank to the front of the ship to answer it. She nearly slipped on the hard metal floor, having foregone rinsing or drying off first. When she reached the communications console, she checked their position and found it to be as far from their first destination as she imagined they would be. Three and a half weeks had passed for her and Kory inside the viscous fluid that now dripped from her fingertips onto the controls. She was usually so meticulous about messes, especially in this vessel that had weathered many a strange voyage throughout the years. Only recently did she inherit it from her uncle, and she was determined to care for it with the same unflinching pride he had. But true emergencies necessitated a different sort of care. She answered the summons, hearing perhaps the last thing she expected, a voice so common on the grand scale, but so bizarre given the circumstance. The one who entreated them was an Earthling.
“Whoever’s out there listening. This whole place is unstable. The planet might explode or collapse or-or something…. I don’t know…” the fearful voice crackled over the voice channel before getting to the main point. “If you can manage it, I’ll give you eighteen million to land at the coordinates I’m transmitting to you now.”
That was the crux of the matter wasn’t it? Nash thought it amusing, if not a little worrying that someone would offer up the cost of a good vacation for something as simple as a little pickup. She didn’t need the money, as time seemed to be her currency. Still, they had a little extra to spare. So why not see what all the fuss was about and at least hear the odd man’s story?
“We’re two hours out, can you wait that long?” Nash answered, hoping to set a course before the slick gel hardened on her skin and in her hair. Nothing a hot shower couldn’t dissolve, but seconds turned to minutes, and these minutes mattered more than most.
“Yes,” the voice on the other end replied. He started to launch into another set of less important questions before Nash cut him off.
“We’ll see you then,” she said brusquely before ending the transmission. No point in making double or triple sure, as was the common Earthling way. One statement of agreement should be enough as far as she knew. The Human they were about to intercept would flip her concept of minimal conversation on its head, but that was yet to be seen, or rather, heard.
After availing herself of the first of the ship’s hot water, Nash dressed in her simple, lavender flight suit and went to resurrect her friend. A nicer craft would have hydro tanks that cleaned the sleeper before they awoke, or at least a hot water system that worked more than half the time, but it didn’t make good economic sense to give a nicer craft to someone who hadn’t yet gotten results. “Get up and go get cleaned off. We’re landing in just over an hour” she said to Kory, who rose from the tank with little more energy than a corpse.
Kory barely wiped the goo from her face before yawning indignantly. “Why’d you let me cook so long? You said I could have a day to sleep out in the dry before we landed on Twelve.”
“We’re taking a little detour first, but trust me, it’ll be fine… or at least interesting,” Nash chuckled.
“Did you want me to get in the shower now or…?” Kory mumbled.
“It’s all yours,” Nash said, moving backwards. Now that she was clean she had to desire to get covered in gel again by her friend’s careless movements. “No scalding yourself like a lobster today either. You’ll get five minutes before it turns cold on you.”
#
As they drew nearer to the odd, gray planet, clumps of debris floated into view, as if the little ball of rock had its own asteroid belt. But that couldn’t be right, could it? Nash gingerly maneuvered around the orbiting chunks and prepared to approach the agreed upon site. The coordinates their desperate client sent over had them landing about mile south of a cluster of buildings. Oddly enough, a few of the structures sent forth faint electromagnetic signals, indicating they were at least powered, if not occupied. Nash hesitated to deploy the infrared scanners which would offer real proof of life, lest whoever lived there judged them hostile.
“Something’s off about this,” Nash said mostly to herself, but loud enough for Kory to hear. “If it’s inhabited, why haven’t we been asked for credentials to land? She stared intently at the flat place of ground as it loomed closer just beyond the windshield.
Kory sat beside in her in the copilot’s seat and offered little reply save for a yawn. She didn’t feel up to the task of talking yet. Her hair was still wet and occasionally an irritating drop would roll down the back of her collar. Then there were the dreams from her recent stint in hydro. They occupied much of her waking mind, and they hadn’t been the best. Though, it wasn’t something she wanted to bring up now. The one time she’d mentioned the nighttime apparitions in their youth Nash teased her about spending too much time with Sohrab, which stung for its own litany of reasons. Maybe this little stopover between his planet and hers would be enough to help her forget them both, at least for the time being.
A puff of dust flew up from the parched ground to greet the ship as it landed. There was little time to prepare or even react as the target of their mission came into view just over the horizon. Some distance beyond the windshield, a tall man with an awkward gait came loping over the empty plain.
“Well would you look at that,” Nash puzzled as she rose from her seat and leaned forward for a better view.
“He runs like the ground under his feet can’t be trusted,” Kory added, noting the stranger’s fearful, jumpy stride.
“Now hang on, is there somebody else following behind him?” Nash asked, practically pressed up against the glass now. “Two wasn’t part of the deal.”
“No, you’re right, I can see another one too,” Kory said. Their observations proved true as a different, shorter man indeed followed the first. Something about the tone of the pursuit gave the implication that the second fellow didn’t want the first to leave. Sure enough, when the pair were no farther than fifty yards out, the taller turned to confront the shorter. Noticing as much, Kory nudged Nash on the shoulder and told her to “cut on the outside mikes, in case we hear something.”
To their surprise, very little wind grazed the surface of their landing site, rendering most of the transmitted speech perfectly audible. Though the devices covering each man’s mouth and nose did a little obscuring of their own.
“Dammit LB, you’re my friend… but I can’t stay! This place is doomed, maybe everything is! Just wake up why don’t you!” The first man shouted to the second.
The second man approached the first with his hands out, pleading. “I’m not saying your theories are wrong… just that you have to scale them up – way up – to have the effect you want them to!”
“You and I both know this isn’t about that theory…not anymore.”
“So, you’d just run off with some strangers!? You don’t even know these people!”
“Whoever they are, they’re leaving, and you and the others best do the same if you plan on living to see your work through.” This would have been the tall man’s final word, but seeing his friend’s face drop changed his disposition to a kinder one. He placed a hand on the shorter man’s shoulder and managed a more conciliatory goodbye than his first. “Now I don’t want you to think this isn’t important. I believe in what the team is doing. Just hold off for now and try to find another place to do it. There’s plenty of spots the industry won’t notice, not at least until the choice is made for them.”
“But what about all that stuff you said about… a ‘reckoning’ coming?”
“I still believe it, and so should you. But it could take years… and for those years you’ll need to survive, we all will. Now go and try to talk some sense into the rest of them before this whole planet crumples like tissue paper.” At this, the taller man’s most final word, he turned from his friend at last and walked the rest of the way to the visiting ship. The shorter man waited, not yet ready to make the lonesome trek back to the buildings. Running all that way had worn him out, and he wasn’t eager to let the others see that he’d failed, not yet at least.
“What do you suppose all that was about?” Nash asked in an emotionless tone.
“…a reckoning?” Kory practically sang the word as she scrunched up her face in confusion. It wasn’t a term she heard often.
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“Never mind that now,” Nash brushed her off as she moved to a small oval shaped door on the right side of the ship just behind the miniscule cockpit. “You know I prefer the big ramp down below… makes for a statelier entrance I think, but the system’s telling me the atmosphere is scant here, so he’ll have to come in this way through the airlock.”
“That’s why they had those things on their faces,” Kory said. “I’ve never seen a partial respirator in real life before.”
“They’re not common for a reason…” Nash replied as she opened the exterior airlock door with commands from a small control panel to the right of the still-closed interior door. “…anywhere worth landing these days has an atmosphere thick enough to not need them.” They each heard a thud as the new passenger availed himself of the space between. Once she was sure he was inside, Nash closed the outer door once more and started the oxygenation sequence. “I just hope whoever settled for real estate this poor at least got a good deal.” With that, the inner door swung open, delivering the Earthling to the company of his rescuers.
When the man stumbled into this, his new role in a script written by hands unseen, he wasn’t sure if it was wiser to stay or go. He looked around rapidly between the two women, uttering an incomprehensible string of gratitudes, platitudes, and other nervous nonsense. From where he stood, it was plain to see the one in charge, the one who’d answered his call and agreed to take him, was an Iolite. There was no mistaking her violet skin and eggplant hair and eyes. The other, less commanding, presence was almost eerier on second glance. He'd been in mixed company a time or two before, and was not unfamiliar with Iolites like Nash, but the second young lady, whom he later came to know as Kory, seemed almost fully Human, except where it mattered most, her eyes. He tried not to stare too hard as he fumbled through the greetings and introductions, though he couldn’t help but notice that even as Nash’s purple irises shone just like his blue ones, Kory’s were fully black and reflected no light at all. Even the whites of her eyes seemed duller than a regular person’s should be. Eyes were supposed to look like glass or porcelain, not unfired clay.
It didn’t take long for Nash to tire of this awkward song and dance portending stranger times to come. She sensed the Human was on edge, and worse, a talker, so she ordered him as gently as possible to secure his ungainly duffel bag as well as he could, before strapping into one of the two jump seats in the back. Assurances were made that all discussions of itineraries, payment, and life thereafter could continue once the ascent and jump to hyperspace were complete. He agreed readily, and after muttering a few more earnest thanks and apologies, sat down and shut up, if only for a little while.
#
Not long after their course was set and the autopilot engaged, Nash and Kory lounged in the meager living quarters of their ship and listened to the rattled Human yap unceasingly. “Once you can make it two minutes in the cold water, you can do anything. Really your whole day, or night or whatever, is locked in after that. And the great thing is, you don’t need some fancy ice-maker or anything like that, just the cold water from the tap! Make sure it’s a bath though, not a shower. All the water molecules need to be touching all of you at once, and you wouldn’t get that full coverage in a little shower that’s barely sprinkling…” The Earthling rambled on and on. He was animated if anything else, and so grateful to be ‘rescued.’
In between his meandering detours about whatever guru he was following this week or his longings for ‘real coffee and cherry ice cream, you know, the good, civilized stuff,’ the newcomer managed to explain just how his predicament, and the planet’s itself, had come to pass. His name was Greg Williams, and he was a rich kid from somewhere he called Atlanta. To clarify, by ‘kid,’ one must envision an over-educated, twenty-five-year-old man with more opportunities than sense and with whom his affluent father’s patience had long run thin. He was tall, with auburn hair and a short beard. He would describe himself as ‘white,’ which perplexed his new companions as this Human man was registering as more of a beige in their minds. But Earthling culture was known to be many-faceted and bizarre, so they chalked it up to the language of another place and time. On and on he waxed poetic, fever in his eyes, illustrating the things and places he loved, different golf courses mostly. After a time they learned the hard-won truth of his recent ordeal over a few glasses of the fake pinot noir from the Isles of Cuanerel.
The place from which they’d abducted him was a completely normal energy facility until about a year ago. Many like it could be found throughout the galaxy, mining or refining that which made the space between the stars crossable in days as opposed to hundreds of years. “So, we were late to game, as a species I mean…” Greg explained, choosing to reveal only enough substantial information to ‘sell the bit’. A little old-fashioned industry talk couldn’t hurt, even if his most recent project had been aimed at subverting it. “There’s none of this stuff on Earth so when we can get our hands on a property out here that has even a little of it we’re not going to miss out on the opportunity, as I’m sure you understand.”
Kory didn’t understand much beyond the bottom of her wine glass at this point, but Nash listened with intent. Her uncle was in this business too, and she was intrigued to hear how civilizations with less seniority handled the economic side of flight.
“And so, my dad was, is, one of the stockholders for the company that used to run this place, so of course they weren’t happy when it got wrecked last year. You may not have heard about it, but it was all anybody cared about back home for a few days or weeks at least. Believe it or not, the planet we just left used to have a moon, and then out of nowhere one day it just blows up!”
Nash spoke for what felt like the first time in ages. “I think I heard something about this. Do they know why it ‘blew up?’”
“Moons don’t usually do that.” Kory added.
“You’re exactly right! They don’t.” Greg continued, excitedly. “And once it did, it some of the bigger chunks of debris plummeted toward the surface of the planet and wiped out most of our buildings. Thankfully almost nobody lived there before, but the atmosphere was totally engineered. We still didn’t have the resources to regenerate it yet, which is why when you picked me up I had that thing on my face… Matter of fact, you probably don’t see a lot of breathing apparatuses out there anymore.”
“Wait, so what were you doing there if work couldn’t continue as it did? If I’m assuming correctly,” Nash interjected, desperate for him to get to the point.
“Right, so I was there with a research team, on like, a post-grad, internship sort of deal and we discovered by looking at surviving station logs that just before the moon exploded, there was an energy anomaly right next to it seconds before,” Greg said carefully. If any secret had to be revealed it might as well be the one with much vaguer economic implications. “And as far as I knew, no one had ever seen anything like it. Essentially a big ball, almost half the size of the moon itself, of concentrated electric energy appeared in the middle of space and disappeared maybe two or three seconds later.”
“Do you think it was intentional?” Nash asked.
“See, that was my first hunch too, that somebody did this for some reason, but the more we learned about it we concluded that it couldn’t be anything other than random phenomena with no explanation at all! Which, if you ask me, is way more terrifying than any act of terrorism.”
Nash and Kory, unsure of his assessment, remained silent, anticipating he’d continue unprompted. Kory stood up to go find more wine. “You could almost pass for Human,” Greg said to her, having drunk away just enough of his earlier timidity.
“Typical Earthling” Nash thought. “They can never stay focused or even just get to point.”
“Yeah, you know, with some sunglasses or something I’d think you were from Arizona, maybe Baja even,” he continued. Uncouth as it was, his evaluation was spot on. As Kory shot a brief glare in his direction, he became more aware of the one detail separating him from her by a measure of several hundred light-years. Her skin was reddish-brown, and her hair was black. She had an athletic build and was above average height, but not tall enough to turn many heads. The one domino toppling the whole pile of her potential Humanity was her lightless gaze.
Nash’s eyes, as shiny as anyone’s from Earth, fixed vexatedly on the boorish traveler. She wondered why she’d agreed to pick him up in the first place, knowing good and well the money wasn’t it. “So why did you send that distress signal? What happened to the ship you flew in on?” She pressed, ignoring his unimportant geographic references to her friend’s appearance.
“Right, sorry! I just get so excited, you know, to be out of there. I mean, it really was hell, it really was.” He mused. “After we locked in on that first energy phenomenon that blew up the moon, destroyed a lot of the station, and most of the atmosphere, I started to scour some other data from around the galaxy. I would look at stuff from anywhere: remote listening stations, satellites, unmanned scanners, anything I could find. And you know what I found?”
“How about you find the reason you’re here breathing up my air?” Nash thought. Her gentle face betrayed not even a hint of exasperation, not that he would have clocked it anyways.
“This has happened before. And in fact, it’s happening all the time!”
#
The ship cruised on through the stars, one Earthling heavier now. The original pair managed to learn that not only had Greg abandoned the station because the others would not listen to his findings regarding energy anomalies around the galaxy, but also that his less-than-professional relationship with a fellow intern named Penny had gone south and he couldn’t take looking at her ‘stupid, blue-dyed head’ any longer. To Kory and Nash’s surprise, Greg didn’t beg to go back to Earth right away. In fact, he welcomed a few diversions while he figured out what else he needed to do besides play golf.
“This next stop will be anything but a vacation.” Nash warned Greg as she took her seat and prepared to safely pilot the craft into a foreign atmosphere.
“Why are we landing on a planet this remote and…” he searched for the right term “…disconnected from it all? As he fumbled with his seat’s harness he couldn’t help but notice the large, well-preserved ruins orbiting the little, rocky world. Bathed in the red glow of the massive sun, the structures appeared to comprise a network of inter-connected space stations, long since out of commission. Greg nearly opened his mouth to question what he was seeing, but something led him to believe it was better if he didn’t.
“This is where Kory is from, originally.” Nash answered.
“Yeah I didn’t think you were from Celhesru, I guess I just assumed you—” Greg started.
“I grew up there” Kory said. She reached high up on the wall to fasten down a final piece of gear before taking her seat. “But I was born on this one. I don’t remember much.”
“And you’re coming back? Like, to live?” He asked.
“No. There’s something I have to find here. And then we’re leaving as soon as possible.” Kory responded, her eyes firmly fixed out of her window in the opposite direction of the Human guest. Realizing he wasn’t getting anywhere with Kory, Greg decided to ply Nash with more questions.
“So, you’re landing this ship old school huh?” He gestured to the instrument panel in front of her. “Don’t you just want to let it land itself?”
“No,” Nash responded, a bit distracted by the process. “There’s no infrastructure down there to communicate with the ship, so I have to do the thinking for it. Starting an auto-land sequence here will put us wherever the software thinks the flattest ground is, and that’s not necessarily where we need to be.”
“And like, the atmosphere down there is pretty good or—” Greg said.
“I need concentration for this next part.” Nash responded.
“Right,” said Greg, politely staring out his own window now, one foot tapping and one hand rapping on his knee. “You got it boss, say no more.”
“How about you say no more… boss.” Nash mused as she lowered the interactive display over her eyes and initiated the descent.
#
When they landed, Greg’s question about the atmosphere was answered. Sensors outside the craft confirmed it was breathable, if just a tad high in heavy metals, no worse on average than an industrial city anywhere else. Strange though, considering there was no trace of industry, or anything like it on this world. Though the sky was dusty under a layer of white clouds, the whole terrain was vaguely tinged with a rusty hue. Was it the light from a sun in the twilight of its career? Or were the soil and rocks just a little red on their own?
As the three emerged from the ship, they heard a faint howl on the air. Kory seemed undisturbed by it, knowing in her bones it was the savage wind that blew over the world without ceasing. Nash was unmoved, at least outwardly. But Greg’s heart began to race. To him, the persistent wail sang in the same key as a crying baby.
Before he could put one foot off of the exit ramp and onto the parched ground, Nash told Greg to “wait here and guard the ship.”
“Guard it from what?” He asked. “What’s out there? Is there a weapon I’m supposed to use?”
“Don’t worry about it. If anything shows up just close the bay door and stay inside. The walls of that thing are sturdy enough to protect you.” Nash turned from him and looked to the horizon. Greg wondered why Kory wouldn’t answer his questions, seeing as this was her home planet after all. In spite of every obvious sign of danger, she was perfectly silent and still.
The air whipped her hair around her face higher and higher until it nearly stood on end. Slowly her fingers began to unclench and flow back and forth. Small tendrils of static electricity appeared, emanating first from her hands and head until they enveloped her entire body. For Kory, the energy strands were as tender as algae in the sea, but for the unsuspecting Human who had never witnessed such an event, it felt like standing next to a power plant. The deafening hum of her electric current brought with it the promise of instant death. And then, to top it all off, she started levitating. Now fully engulfed in lethal light and ten feet off the ground, she turned headfirst towards the west and flew away.
Greg had no words to process what he’d just witnessed, but Nash had a few. “You’re going to see a lot of things you don’t understand, so keep your eighteen million. I just bought your silence. Don’t get scared or do anything stupid while we’re gone,” she warned. Then she began to glow a shade of violet even more potent than her own coloration. This light was calm, and not at all threatening like Kory’s display of voltage had been. As her friend before, she rose into the air and soared off into the distance, following the trail of electricity that now appeared as a distant star over the land.
As he stood there motionless, mouth agape, a fearsome howl on the wind roused him from his stupor. Whatever beast made that noise was certainly larger than the baby he imagined. No need to wait and see what it was. He stumbled up the ramp into the craft, closed the bay doors to the terrors outside, and sat down on the floor until he was good and ready to move or even think again.
