Chapter 9
“Is there a way that we can hail them so we can tell them that we’re not a threat?” I asked.
Before Francine could answer, a red beam shot out of one of the ships’ weapons and narrowly missed my ship.
“Actually, I don’t think they’re in the mood to listen,” I said as I powered up the engines to full capacity, spun around, and sped away from the ships.
I flew toward B-4’s southern pole, but the three fighter spaceships were hot on my heels, and they were substantially faster than my ship, or any of the other ships I had come up against, if I was honest. Without the uranium, there was no way I was going to be able to outrun these guys, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.
I dodged and swerved around the debris that still littered my path, though there was no time to study it this time. I briefly wondered what kind of weapon had been used to create that much destruction, and I silently hoped that it had been destroyed once the people of this system saw what kind of total annihilation it could cause. No one should hold the power to destroy an entire planet, I decided, although it wasn’t insane to think that the weapon was still out there somewhere. Still, I shuddered at the thought.
There was an occasional humming noise from the shield generators as smaller pieces of rock and debris clattered into my new shields and were expelled back out into the darkness. Thanks to Jeelie, I didn’t have to worry about a hit from every little pebble, but I still had to avoid the larger rocks. It made for some teeth-gritting flying as I tilted and twirled while I pushed the engines to their top speed, but at least it slowed down the ships behind me as well.
It felt like forever, but I finally powered past the glowing center of B-4 and raced over its south pole. We were clear of most of the debris as well, so a moment later, the fighter ships started to fire at me again.
I pulled out every trick that Francine had downloaded into my brain with the flying lesson, but some of the red beams were still too close for comfort. The other pilots were good, and I gritted my teeth every time a beam skimmed by or a piece of rock blew up. Even the larger chunks were vaporized by a direct hit, and suddenly, the idea of a weapon that could destroy half of an entire planet didn’t seem all that unrealistic.
I was running out of maneuvers when I spotted a larger piece of land with the remains of some old building floating lazily near the pole. I decided to deploy the same tactic that I had used against one of the pirate ships in the asteroid belt back in the Xerillian System. I was already at top speed, so I just held my course as steady as I could while I tried to avoid the crimson shots.
The planetary remnant was growing larger and larger, but the ships were still on my tail. A red beam nearly clipped my ship as I curled into a dive, and I held my breath as the rock was suddenly close enough that I could actually pick out some sort of writing on a sign.
“Will…” Francine said.
“Yeah, I know,” I chuckled as I suddenly yanked the joysticks up as hard as I could.
I pulled up just in time, though I could have sworn I heard something scrape the bottom of the hull. I swerved around the rock and then tumbled toward the pole once again.
My hope was that the three fighters would be too large and too heavy to pull up in time. But of course, I’d already seen how good the pilots were, so I felt a flash of disappointment when a check of my scanners revealed the three ships were still behind me.
“Damn it,” I grumbled.
The lead ship looked like it had damage to the underside of its structure, but unfortunately for me, it was still able to fly. The other two appeared to be unscathed, and I growled in frustration.
But I’d cleared the planet, and I had no desire to get sucked into the battle that was still raging on the other side. So I veered off and pointed my little ship back into the darkness. I hoped the three fighters would give up and return to their own war, but the HUD showed them still on my tail.
“This would all be much easier if we could just tell them that we come in peace or whatever,” I remarked.
“I do not believe anyone has ever said that,” Francine chuckled. “That seems to only happen in your human movies.”
“Clearly,” I said. “I’m not sure these guys understand the meaning of the word ‘peace’, anyway.”
“I will try to contact their command ship and inform them that we are visitors in this system,” the AI said. “Perhaps if we promise to leave as quickly as possible, the fighters will be recalled.”
“Great,” I said. “And in the meantime, I’ll just try not to die.”
“That would be ideal,” Francine said.
“Shouldn’t be that hard, right?” I said. “I only have three fighters on me. Piece of cake.”
Suddenly, there was a loud fizzing sound, and the whole ship was knocked forward from behind by some strong force. A warning alarm started to go off again, and the screen informed me that the very back corner of the ship had been hit. Luckily, no serious damage had been done to the ship since the shields had taken the brunt of the shot from one of the ships, but if my ship was hit there again, I wasn’t sure how well the shields would continue to hold.
I needed a plan, and I needed one now.
I looked down at the center console again to check how close the other ships were, and I frowned when I saw that there were no ships in the vicinity. The screen was blank, other than the debris from the planet, but that couldn’t be right.
“What the hell?” I said.
I slowed down and widened the radius of the scan. I didn’t like the idea of being chased by ghost ships, but it was like they had just disappeared in a puff of metaphorical smoke, or like a true ghost ship, had never even existed. It made no sense.
I gripped the joysticks nervously and frowned as I tried to work out what in God’s name was going on. The air was so quiet now that I could hear myself breathing and the steady thump of my pulse in my ears. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms stand up. They sensed something, and so did I. It was a sort of creeping feeling that I just couldn’t shake, like there was a spider on my neck or someone coming up behind me. The feeling was so strong that I even turned around to look behind me in the cockpit, even though the logical part of my brain told me it was pointless. Bob beeped when I looked at him, but other than my small robot companion, there was nothing there.
“Something’s not right here,” I said.
Boy, was I correct.
Suddenly, every alarm and warning sound began to blare throughout the cockpit. A red light pulsed, and I turned my attention back to the control panel.
The three ships appeared on the screen directly above me. I quickly yanked one of the joysticks so that the ship would point upward, and I could see what all the lights and sirens were about.
The three ships were hurtling down toward me so quickly that it was hard to even track them with the naked eye. They had stacked themselves one on top of the other with some sort of short rods that had come out of the base of each of them and latched onto the roof of the next ship. It was now one large ship with the combined firepower and speed of the three smaller ships.
As they drew nearer, I saw the weapons on the sides of each of them begin to charge up. The cannons were connected as well, and I had a bad feeling that Jeelie’s improvements wouldn’t be able to withstand the combined blast.
“Weapons to one hundred percent,” I said.
“Ready to fire,” Francine confirmed.
I grabbed a third, smaller joystick that Jeelie had put in for me, selected the laser mode as the three ships were advancing at such a speed toward me, and aimed my weapons at the rapidly approaching vessel. I was running out of time, but I studied the ship until I found the one with the damage. It was at the bottom of the stack, so I aimed my own weapons at the long scar and pulled the trigger.
Bright blue beams of deadly light arced across the space between us, and though most of the power was absorbed by their own shields, I could see that my guns were carving deeper wounds into the bottom ship.
I kept firing at that single target until the shield collapsed completely. The other two ships detached and flew away just as the bottom ship exploded. Shimmering dust glittered in front of me for a moment and then drifted away to join the rest of the debris.
“Holy shit,” I laughed as I marveled at the power of my weapons. “These really are the best of the best.”
“The other two ships are returning,” Francine warned.
The remaining fighters, still joined, had turned back and were diving toward me. Plasma bolts shot straight toward me, and a sudden jerk of the joystick was the only thing that kept us alive.
I tried to head back into open space, but the fighters seemed determined to keep me within their reach. Well, that was fine. I could use the debris field to finish off the last two ships and then make my way to the outer planets.
My ship dodged and swerved among the rocks, and I let the fighters inch closer. When they were almost within firing range again, I did a loop around what looked like the hull of an old spaceship. For a brief moment, I was behind the two fighters, and I fired several quick laser blasts before they could turn around.
“I love this thing!” I said as I fired neon blue shots at the ships. “Have you made contact with them yet?”
“I am working on it,” Francine said.
“Shit,” I muttered as I jerked out of the way of another return blast. “We can’t outrun these guys, and there’s still two of them. We need them to stand down.”
“The shields will hold,” Francine said.
“Let’s hope so,” I said as I ducked behind an old satellite.
Even though I was in space, I felt like I was in a shootout in an old Western. I found myself humming the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly until I reminded myself that I’d be dead if I lost this battle.
We began to fire at will. Both sides let loose at one another, and soon, there was a rainbow bridge between us as red and blue light filled the darkness.
The fizzing and crackling sound was even louder this time, and every time a shot of theirs landed on the shields, the ship jostled about, and I had to use all my strength to keep it steady while I returned fire. That was a lot more difficult to do against the combined power of their weapons.
“Any luck?” I asked.
“No, but there is something strange,” the AI replied.
“What?” I asked as I ducked behind a large rock for cover.
“We are on B-4’s side of the battle,” Francine said.
“Yeah, so?” I replied.
“These ships are from B-3,” Francine replied. “It appears they snuck around the back of the planet to try and ambush B-4’s army from behind.”
“People like stabbing others in the back in this galaxy, it seems,” I sighed.
“Yes,” Francine said.
“But that gives me an idea,” I said.
“I thought it might,” the AI replied. “Care to enlighten me?”
“Well, I can’t imagine the B-4 navy would be very happy if they found out these two ships were here, would they?” I said with a wry smile on my face.
“No, they would not,” Francine replied.
“In fact, I’d be curious to see just how unhappy they might be, wouldn’t you?” I chuckled.
“Definitely,” Francine replied.
I punched both joysticks forward and steered the ship even closer to the rear side of B-4. The two ships followed me like obedient ducklings behind their mother, unaware of the destination that I was headed toward.
Once I reached the jagged, crater-covered surface of B-4, I began to fly around its circumference in an ever widening circle. The ships followed on my heels, though I wasn’t sure if they’d figured out what I was doing. They kept firing, and I kept returning fire, until my path finally brought me to the other side of the planet. I could see the massive flag ship as well as the smaller ships that had been deployed to protect it.
“Well, let’s invite these guys to join the party,” I said as I aimed at one of the smaller B-4 ships.
I hung around long enough to confirm that I’d hit the B-4 ship, and then I turned my own ship for the outer planets. The HUD showed the moment the fighters suddenly found themselves face to face with the B-4 armada, and then a moment later, they vanished from my screen.
It was about a three-hour journey all the way to B-14 since the Bellatorus System was much larger than Earth’s or Xerillian’s was. But there were no more grand space battles going on in the system, at least as far as I was aware, so I put the ship on autopilot, went into my living area, and laid down on the bed. Bob pottered in after me and laid down at the foot of the bed, which I was pretty sure he had decided was his unofficial ‘spot’.
I had only planned to rest my eyes for a moment, but then the darkness seemed so inviting and warm.
After what felt like a couple of minutes, I found myself waking up to Francine’s voice, which sounded distant to me, almost as though I was hearing it through water.
“Will?” the AI said. “Will?”
“Huh? What?” I replied as I peeled my eyes open.
“Good, you are awake,” it said.
“Just about,” I said as I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes to try to get rid of the feeling of disorientation in my head. “What’s up?”
“We have just arrived at B-14,” the AI informed me.
“Wait, what?” I said. “How long was I out?”
“Three hours,” it replied. “You were asleep almost instantly. I believe you had what is referred to as a power nap.”
“I didn’t realize it was so long,” I said. “But I guess I have been awake for a long time. All this is kind of a lot to try and process.”
“I thought it best to let you sleep,” Francine said. “You definitely needed it.”
“I feel a hell of a lot better,” I replied as I stood up and stretched.
Coffee seemed appropriate, since it felt like morning, so I got the machine going and then did a quick scrub in the sink. The smell of the beans was glorious and reminded me of home, and I wondered what was going on back on Earth.
Agent Adeogun had probably alerted every authority under the sun about what I had done, about the random civilian who had a meteor land in his backyard and then a couple of months later shot off into space in a self-made rocket. I wondered how that had gone down with the various officials he told and what theories they had cooked up about me and what I was up to. There had probably been a frenzy as they tried to work out how I, Will Ryder, a fifty-five-year-old, ex-truck driver, had managed to travel out of the solar system. I was sure they had tracked my movements for as long as they could, and so they’d know that I had gone where no man had gone before.
I also wondered what kind of reception to expect when I eventually, hopefully, returned to Earth to help defend it. I wanted to believe that they’d welcome me back, if only to get some answers to their questions, but I also knew there was a very good chance that someone would decide to shoot first and let God sort it out.
When the coffee was done, I picked up my mug and headed back to the cockpit. It was time for my first view of B-14, and while I wasn’t sure what to expect, I still almost dropped my mug in surprise anyway.
The planet was almost entirely a gray, cracked, burning wasteland. There was a sort of yellow-green hue around its atmosphere that I assumed was thanks to the nuclear fallout. Most of the oceans had dried up, leaving behind deep craters across the planet, and the land wasn’t in much better condition. Fires large enough to leave a smoke trail that could be seen from orbit raged across a couple of the continents, while others looked barren and devoid of any life whatsoever. There were several small continents that were scattered among the seas that hadn’t dried up, but most of the planet looked uninhabitable.
“Planet B-14, locally known as Wildern,” Francine said.
“Jesus,” I sighed as I looked at the damage the planet had been subjected to. “Is there even any life on this rock?”
“Yes, over here,” Francine said as it took the ship around to another equally gray, yet slightly less destroyed continent. “It appears the planet’s inhabitants are few and far between, but they have found the areas of the planet that are able to sustain life.”
“What about the radiation?” I asked.
“I suppose they must have adapted to it,” Francine said. “Your suit will protect you from it when we touch down, but there is significantly less on this continent, so you may be able to have your head exposed for short periods of time, so long as you continue to use the breathing tube.”
“Good to know,” I replied.
“The natives here are actually the most similar lifeforms to humans that I have come across,” Francine said. “Of course, they have evolved slightly since the nuclear war here, but their basic biology has remained the same. Before the war that turned this planet into what it is now, the planet used to be much like Earth. The main difference was that the continents on this planet were smaller, which left room for more of them.”
“And now look at it,” I sighed as I gulped down most of my cooled coffee in one go. “It can’t be easy living there.”
“Food is scarce,” Francine said. “But the natives make do. It helps that the rest of the planets in the system tend to leave them alone, since they no longer view it as a threat.”
“But that means no one is bringing them any supplies,” I pointed out.
“It is all any of them know,” Francine said. “The war that caused this was hundreds of your Earth years ago.”
“So, is the uranium that we need on that continent?” I asked.
“I am detecting high levels of uranium on this continent,” Francine replied. “There is an old nuclear power plant that seems to still be intact. I believe we may be able to find what we need there.”
“Perfect,” I said as I knocked back the final dregs of coffee in my cup. “Take us down.”
I fastened my seatbelt and grabbed the joysticks, even though Francine was flying the ship for the most part. We had to enter through the planet’s atmosphere, so I knew it would be a bumpy ride, and it was comforting to hold the joysticks just in case anything went wrong.
Francine gently began to descend toward Wildern’s atmosphere, and we began to pick up speed as we got closer. As soon as we touched the top of the atmosphere, the whole ship began to shudder as it tried to get through. The shields sizzled as flames licked up the sides of the ship, and I kept a tight grip on the joysticks as the ship jolted around like it was inside a paint shaker.
“Jesus!” I shouted as I was thrown backward in my seat.
“Almost there,” Francine said. “Brace.”
I tensed all of my muscles right before we broke through and entered into B-14’s dark yellow sky. We shot out of the upper atmosphere like a blow dart out of a straw, and I pulled us up with the joysticks before we plummeted too far toward the land.
“Damn,” I said. “That was rough.”
Now that we were through the flames and shaking, I was able to see the continent below me properly. It was predominantly rocky, with sharp hills and barren plains devoid of life, but there were greener patches here and there, and a couple of natural springs that provided water. As we got closer, I could see ramshackle villages near the water supply, and I realized that the buildings had been made with whatever materials had been left over after the long-forgotten war. There was even some livestock as well, although from this distance they just looked like small, moving dots, so I wasn’t able to identify them.
“There aren’t any other spaceships around,” I said as I checked my route on the HUD.
“This planet is extremely poor,” Francine replied. “They scavenge for everything they have. They do not have the resources nor the ability to build spacecrafts here. It is a wonder they are even alive, but in my experience organic lifeforms are very resilient… on a species level.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, then I might attract a bit of attention once I land.”
When we reached the nuclear power plant, I found a flat section of rocky land that I could set down on safely. I slowly brought the ship in for a landing, and the power from the engines kicked up a gray dust that swirled around the windows. Despite that, I brought my ship down perfectly and landed gently on the ground without any bumps or scrapes. As soon as I turned off the thrusters, the dust began to settle, and then I switched off the rest of the ship, except for the shields, which I left on just in case.
Then, I released myself from the seatbelts and went into the living area. I grabbed a rucksack out of one of the cupboards, as well as a water bottle and a flashlight. I made sure I had my gun in its holster, and then I pressed the section beside my neck, and the headpiece climbed up along my face and over the top of my head until I was encased entirely in the dark gray, protective suit.
Once I was ready, I took a couple of deep breaths to steady myself, and then I went over to the door in the cockpit that led to the new, unfamiliar outside world.
When the door slid open, I was totally exposed to the radioactive world outside for the first time. I stood in the doorway for a moment as I took in the grim scene, and then I stepped down onto the hard, stone ground.
It was like all the movies I had seen about the apocalypse. The sky was dark yellow, and black clouds swirled across its canvas like ominous shadows. I wasn’t able to see far across the barren wasteland thanks to a dense, light yellow fog that seemed to cover every inch of the continent. I looked down at the ground and saw that every plant that poked up through the cracks was fried, blackened, and crumbled to dust the moment I touched them.
But the eeriest part was the absolute silence. There were no inhabitants here, but it was the absence of the normal sounds of nature that made it so surreal. There was no rustling of leaves on tree branches, no squawking birds soaring overhead, and no gusts of wind that brought any kind of sound with it. It was as though I had been trapped inside a soundproof container, and I found myself very aware of every sound I made, from the rise and fall of my chest as I breathed, the thump of my heart, and even the rustle of my hair underneath the suit as I moved.
I closed the hatch of the ship and turned to look at the nuclear power plant up ahead. It was a large building, but one that had been neglected for many, many years. It had once had four towers attached to it in the shape of conical flasks, but one of them had collapsed since then and now lay in a pile of dusty, grimy rubble at the back of the building. The rest of it, however derelict, was still mostly intact.
It had once been a white building, and a few splotches of the white paint still clung to the brickwork. There had been a high fence around the perimeter, but that had since been flattened, and the barbed wire was impacted into the ground, so it posed no threat whatsoever.
The building in the middle of all of the towers was eerily similar to buildings back home on Earth. It was roughly the size of a large, multi-story shopping mall in a good-sized city, and just like a mall, there were very few windows. The glass had been blown out long ago, but I could see shards on the ground that still sparkled in the weird, sulfurous light.
There were some old vehicles that looked a lot like the cars on Earth parked in a nearby lot as well, and a quick peek inside one revealed a dashboard that could have come from a Ford. The planet had been technologically advanced for its day, but all of that had been wiped out once it was totally decimated.
“What a waste,” I sighed as I began to walk toward the entrance of the plant.
I tightened the straps on my rucksack as I got closer to the building. There were cracks along the front of the plant that reminded me of some pottery I’d seen once. The woman who’d made the pots tried to explain to me that it was a Japanese art form, where the pot was broken and then glued back together. It had looked cool on the pots, but on the side of a building I was about to venture inside, it only made me nervous.
I found a pair of doors that had probably been designed to survive almost anything back in the day. One of the heavy metal slabs was still on its hinges, but the other one had been knocked from the jamb. Someone had propped the fallen door against the wall, but there were no drag marks in the dirt and the dust layer was thick, so I didn’t think that had happened recently.
Beyond the doors, however, I could see nothing. It was as though there was some sort of line right at the threshold of the power plant that didn’t allow any light to exist anymore. It was entirely black, and even the dim light of the sun was totally consumed by the darkness. I put my hand through the doorway and watched as it practically disappeared right in front of me. I could just about see the outline of my gloved fingers, but it was hazy even at such a short distance.
“Well, it’s lucky I brought a flashlight,” I said as I took it out of my rucksack. “Are you sure the uranium is definitely in here?”
“Yes,” Francine replied.
“Great,” I sighed. “Well, it’s nice that this place is so inviting.”
“Sarcasm?” Francine asked.
“Yup,” I replied. “God, it’s so dark in there.”
“You are scared,” Francine said.
“What?” I huffed. “No, I’m not scared.”
“You seem scared,” the AI pressed.
“I’m not scared, I’m just… cautious,” I replied. “You don’t know what’s hiding in there.”
“And if you never go inside, you will never find out,” the AI said.
“Yeah, yeah, alright,” I sighed. “I’m going.”
Before I could stop myself, I walked forward, through the doorway, and was consumed by the darkness.