PART
11
HOME
SWEET HOME
The light streams in through the gaps
between the top-level platforms, down into the walkway. I stand last in line,
following Shawn, Aubree, Marthus, Maura, Jack, and Kassandra in a single-file
fashion. The walkway is shaded with blue light, and doors in the walls are
sealed tight.
I have to get used to the structure of the
outpost. There are gaps in all the walkways that I have to jump over, and the
lighting changes dramatically on each level.
No one makes a sound. We just follow the Commander
towards our laboratory. I’ve noticed that the walkway is circular; it surrounds
the center chamber, which looks suspended in midair in the middle of the
outpost. I’m guessing it’s Lynch’s quarters or something. I can see into the
walkway below us as well; it is in the same shape.
I am too busy taking in the outpost’s
details to notice that we’ve come to a complete stop. I almost run right into
Shawn, but I catch myself just in time.
“Here we are, ladies and fatties,” informs
Commander Lynch, from the front of the line. We have stopped next to a single
door with a keypad next to it. “This is the laboratory. Now, I’ll let you know
right now, the head scientist is a bit…quirky, so don’t mess with his
inventions, or he might shove you in a beaker or something.”
We all nod.
“Define…quirky,” says Shawn, curious.
“Dr. Hughes is a bit…well…you’ll see.” She
turns and rapidly punches the code into the keypad. The door shoots open,
revealing the laboratory.
The room is tall; metal catwalks surround
the upper walls. We enter on one of them, looking down into the laboratory. On
the floor there are bunches of small bed-like chambers and machines set up next
to them, and I instantly recognize them as cryogenic freeze chambers.
The other scientists and I walk out onto
the catwalk and take in the room below. Lynch follows us and gazes up at the
ceiling.
“OH, DR. HUGHES! YOU HAVE YOUR RECRUITS!”
she hollers, glancing around the room.
“Oh, swell, my test subjects are here at
last!” exclaims a voice, from somewhere on the floor behind a cryo-freeze
chamber. We all follow the sound with our eyes.
A man, in his early forties, pops up from a
place across the room. His hair is slightly frizzled, like he just stuck it
into an outlet. He wears goggles made of a sleek white metal, their lenses a
glowing green color. A short stubble of beard is growing on his face, and I
notice that one of his arms is robotic, made with strange golden clockwork.
“Hello! I am Dr. Hughes!” He says
ecstatically, jumping up and rushing over to a thin staircase that leads up to
our place on the catwalk. “I am the head scientist here at Olympus. May I get
you all something to drink?”
We all just stare at him. He looks like he
just jumped out of a jet engine.
“Ok, Hughes, first of all, they don’t need
drinks,” interjects Lynch, “They need to know what to work on.”
His smile fades just a bit.
“Right…yes…sorry. Here, let me show you
around the room.”
He clambers back down the steps. We all
glance at each other.
“Why…Olympus?” inquires Aubree under her
breath.
“He loves Ancient Greek mythology. He’s
gotten to calling the outpost that,” informs Lynch, rolling her eyes. “Now what
did I tell you? Go down there and get working.”
We all follow down the steps, ending up on
the shiny titanium floors of the laboratory. Blue cryogenic light glistens on
the walls and on our armor.
“So, you all, this is the cryo-freeze
area,” says Hughes, gesturing gaily towards the glowing chambers. We all nod in
unison.
“Next is the area of
Be-Careful-Where-You-Step-Because-It-Might-Break,” he discloses, pointing to an
empty place on the floor.
“What might break?” asks Maura, confused.
“The floor. Or your bones. Or both,” he responds,
giggling like a maniac. “Here, why don’t one of you come and try it?”
None of us says anything. Aubree shoves
Marthus forwards to save time.
“FABULOUS! WE HAVE A VOLUNTEER!” hollers
Hughes, and some of us cover our ears, “Come on over and stand on this patch of
floor right here.”
Marthus looks like he just wet himself. He
slowly steps towards the spot, and Hughes beckons melodramatically.
“C’mon, c’mon, it won’t explode or
anything,” he says, grabbing Marthus’ arm when he gets close enough. “Alright,
now stay there.”
Hughes rushes over to the wall, near a
large button, making sure that Marthus is stationary. Then he slams his finger
into the button and Marthus suddenly falls through the floor, a trapdoor
opening outwards. Screaming, he plummets down towards the sea. Maura gasps,
Aubree’s eyes widen, and Jack, Shawn, and I rush over and peer down through the
hatch, horrified. Marthus slowly turns into a silhouette as he falls, falls,
falls, down into the crashing waves of the extra-terrestrial ocean. He makes a
huge splash that only looks like a tiny ripple from our height, hundreds of
feet above the surface of the water.
Hughes giggles maniacally. “Heeeeee-heeee,
I LOVE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS!”
I look up, disgusted, at him, as he cackles
like he’s had too many energy drinks. Shawn gets up and runs over to him,
grabbing the wicked scientist and throwing him onto the ground.
“DR. HUGHES! SNAP OUT OF IT! YOU JUST
KILLED A MAN!” he shouts, filled with rage and annoyance. Jack jumps up and
puts his hand on Shawn’s shoulder to calm him. Hughes continues to giggle.
“He’s not DEAD, he just fell into the
ocean! How can you not be cracking up right now?” responds the drunken Hughes.
“By now he’ll have been sucked up into a
wave and probably smashed against the rocks,” I inform, trying to remain calm,
“If not that, his armor will have weighed him down and he will have drowned.”
Hughes just rolls around and snickers.
Shawn drops to his knees angrily and puts
his head in his hands. “I can’t believe I agreed to come to this place.”
Jack stands behind Shawn with his arms
crossed. Maura still has her hand cupped over her mouth. I glance back down
into the sea, seeing nothing but churning orange water. But then I am shoved
back, out of the way, by Aubree, who now has stripped down to just a white tank
top and shorts. She cracks her knuckles and throws her dog tags at my feet.
“What…Aubree…what are you doing?” I ask
frantically, not moving. She sits down and lets her legs dangle out through the
hole in the floor.
“I’m going to save Marthus,” she says, and
with that, she drops through the hole and plummets in a pencil dive, down
towards the ocean.
“NO!” I shout, too late. The water could be
toxic, or there could be some sort of alien wildlife that we don’t know about,
or even the impact could kill her. We don’t even know if Marthus survived his
fall. I stare down into the hole and watch her break the surface, disappearing
beneath the waves.
My heart racing and my senses tingling like
I just drank five shots of alcohol, I jump up and run up the steps, back
towards the door.
“What are you DOING?” calls Maura, finally
out of her shock.
I stop to look at her, and then roll my
eyes. “I’m going to save Aubree AND Marthus.”
With that, I wave my hand in front of the
sensor and the door slides rapidly open.
Outside, I run along the walkway, shoving by
passers out of the way. It only takes me a moment to reach the ramp that leads
up to the top deck.
When I find myself up on top of the
outpost, the peaks of the rock spires looming down over me, I glance quickly
around the deck. There are the most people up here; squads of six, marching
around, others standing in single file lines and staring into space. Protruding
from the outpost, across the deck from me, is a landing platform. The HeliCraft
is on it, being tended to by three engineers, who clean it and check to make
sure that all the mechanisms are working properly. An idea rushing to my head,
I run straight towards it, a few people moving quickly out of my way. I leap
over the gap between the center part of the deck and then over to the outside
section, going at full speed. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Commander
Lynch, who turns from addressing the troops and sees me. I don’t know what she
does, though, because I reach the craft and jump into the open cockpit,
flipping the switches and hoping that I know how to fly it.
As the rotors rapidly fire up and the
engineers frightfully clear off the platform, Lynch runs up the walkway towards
me, as I sit in the cockpit. Her face looks determined and angry, so I
subconsciously hit the button that shuts the glass shield. As she continues to
run and get closer, the HeliCraft lifts off and hovers, shakily, above the
outpost. I grab the joysticks and spin it around, losing sight of Lynch and the
top deck and facing the open sea. But instead of flying out, I send the craft
into a dive, flying at dangerous speeds towards the water below.
The gauge on the touch screen control panel
measures the distance from the surface of the water.
150 ft.
125 ft.
100 ft.
Lynch’s voice comes over the communications
radio.
“Romulo, I don’t know what the—”
Static interrupts her voice.
“—you’re
thinking, but you get your sorry little white tush back up here or you will be
shot down with anti-aircraft guns.”
70 ft.
50 ft.
25 ft.
She speaks again.
“And no, we will NOT look for your body.
Romulo? Romulo! You respond RIGHT NOW or I will shoot! ROMULO!”
15 ft.
10 ft.
5 ft.
I yank the joystick up with full force just
in time to stop the HeliCraft from colliding with the surface of the water. The
vehicle spins around for a moment, rattling me in my seat.
I scan the surface of the sea with my gaze,
seeing nothing but orange water. The waves are much higher than I would have
expected, and I have to raise the craft a few times to avoid them.
“Oh no, Aubree, Marthus, where are you?” I
whisper, to myself, desperate and getting worried. They could’ve been killed
from the sheer impact.
My thoughts are stopped immediately by
something that sends the HeliCraft forwards. Some cracks in the wall leak water
as I am driven into the sea by a massive wave from behind. I am too shocked to
even make a sound, and that shock is only magnified when the vehicle submerges.
Underwater is actually beautiful; the water
is almost clear and it glistens under the sunlight. I can’t see the bottom,
it’s so deep.
The HeliCraft flips over, and my heart
races. I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m
gonna die, I think, fumbling throughout the cockpit for a breathing mask.
But the rotors are still going, and when
the wave passes over, the vehicle finds its way back above the water, hovering
and swaying in the wind. My gaze is directed straight towards the spire that
juts out of the sea, and the giant wave that slams into it, shattering the
water mass into hundreds of tiny droplets.
“I’m giving you ONE LAST CHANCE, Romulo,”
snaps Lynch through the communications system, “Either you wreck my ship again
or you come up here. Either way, you will PAY FOR IT.”
I press the button and respond to her:
“Commander Lynch, I’m sorry; Aubree and Marthus are gone.”
There’s silence for a moment. I lift the
craft away from the surface, upset and feeling tears well up in my eyes. Then
the radio crackles again.
“I’m sorry…what?” she says, confused,
“How?”
“Commander, it’s Hughes. He dropped them
both down.”
She remains quiet, and I’ve reached about
halfway up the spire when I can see the outpost again.
“Well, you still disobeyed orders, so get
up here,” she commands finally, and I don’t hesitate to comply.
The HeliCraft slows to a halt, resting
peacefully back on the landing platform where it was before I took it. I
unbuckle my seatbelt, shaken and unnerved by Hughes and the unsuspected power
of the Prominence ocean.
Lynch is standing with her arms crossed at
the end of the walkway. Behind her a line of roughly twenty guards stands,
their long Hypershock Rifles trained on my vehicle. I press the button on the
control panel and the glass shield opens upward, allowing me room to climb out.
“You just made a HUGE mistake, Romulo,”
says the condescending Lynch, scowling, “Do you know how dangerous that was?”
“Yeah, I do,” I respond, tentatively moving
up the thin walkway, “I had to save two of my colleagues.”
“I can’t believe you thought that would
happen. No one can survive a fall that high!”
“Oh yes they can!” interjects a voice from
behind me, and Lynch and I turn our gazes to the HeliCraft.
It’s Aubree. She walks slowly, dragging
Marthus with her. He is unconscious, and it’s a miracle she can carry his
weight. She is drenched with sea water, her tank top sticking to her skin. Her
shorts drip on the walkway.
My eyes widen, and so do Lynch’s.
“Oh my…how did you make it up here?” I ask,
in shock. I run forward to provide assistance with Marthus. When I am by her
side, she can speak loud enough for me to hear.
“Well, when the HeliCraft went under for a
few minutes, I had just made it close enough to the surface with Marthus to get
inside the passenger area.”
“How did you find him when you had gone
under?”
“I hit the water just after he had, so he
was just a few meters down, and still sinking,” her voice is weak and once or
twice a few drops of water come out of her mouth.
“Alright, cut the chatter,” interrupts
Lynch, motioning for a few of her soldiers to come help us, “This man needs
medical attention, and Aubree, you need to change clothes.”
When the troopers have relieved Aubree of
Marthus, she almost collapses, but I catch her, helping her up. She’s light and
easy to carry, so it isn’t hard to assist her.
“Thanks,” she says, weakly, “I’m gonna need
the extra hand.”
“No problem,” I respond, watching as Lynch,
the soldiers, and the unconscious Marthus clear off the platform. We’re the
last ones to reach the stairs that lead down into the walkway beneath.
As we pass through the blue light, I can
tell that she is limping more. When she eventually grunts with pain, I decide
to speak up.
“Whoa, you ok?” I inquire, as she slips a
little, “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing, it’s just…” she clutches her leg,
and my gaze follows her hand to a deep, bleeding wound on her thigh. It seems
to be the first time that she notices this, too.
“Oh, my,” I say, helping her sit down
against the thick railings that face the center of the outpost. Her breathing
gets slower and heavier. “Oh gosh, what happened? Did something cut you?”
“No, I think…” she gasps for air, cringing,
“I think something bit me.”
I look up at her face. She couldn’t have
been bitten.
“Aubree, there is no wildlife on this
planet; the atmosphere is made of mercury gas.”
“John, listen, I felt a sharp pain in my
leg while I was down there. I’m just giving theories.”
“Ok, well, just sit still for a minute, and
let me examine that wound.”
I peer closer at the gash. It is deep and I
notice that the wound is actually several wounds, like claws or teeth marks.
She tries not to cry; I can tell.
“Well, what do you think happened?” she
asks, nervous and getting a little exasperated.
“I don’t know…maybe you were right…these
don’t look like anything a human or a wave could make.”
We sit in silence for a moment. She
breathes with difficulty.
“I’ll tell you what; I’ll take you to the
quarters, you can change and wash up there, then we’ll go down to the medical
room and you’ll get that gash fixed up while I take care of Hughes.”
She nods, grimacing. I see signs of tears
glinting in her eyes. She puts her arm around my neck for support and I help
her to stand.
We move along the walkway, and I read the
glowing blue signs next to the doors to find the scientist quarters.
She needs to move slowly in order to
experience less pain, so I try to make conversation.
“So, what’s your field of science?” I
inquire.
“Oh, uh, I majored in nuclear physics,” she
says, shrugging, “Nothing much. What about you?”
“Nothing much? You know how to destroy
entire planets!”
“Yeah, well, you know, in my book, that’s
nothing much.”
She attempts a smile.
“What was your major?” she asks me.
“Forensics.”
“Oh, solved any big cases?”
“Well, partly. I was on Colossus-487 during
the bio-engineering war.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, it was intense. But there was one
man who was attacked in the dark while traversing the dark jungles and I had to
figure out what happened.”
“Well, what happened?”
“He had been killed by a Genothorian,” I
say, hoisting her up with my back to keep her supported, “It had been let loose
by one of the superpowers due to lack of control.”
“You sound like an expert at this stuff.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say an EXPERT.”
She doesn’t speak. I can tell the
conversation rid her of some of the pain.
Then I see it: the sign for the scientist’s
quarters.
“Oh, here we are,” I say, punching in the
code on the keypad. The door slides open faster than I can blink, and I lug
Aubree into the room before it slides shut.
The quarters are surprisingly spacious. The
walls, a cold gray metal, are pieced together by a glowing blue light that
illuminates the place. The room is rectangular. The right wall is lined with
simple, knee-high beds, their sheets a pallid blue-gray. There are small
lockers in the far wall, for clothes and weapons and other supplies. The left
wall has a small area cut out, roughly four feet deep, with a curtain hiding
it: the shower area.
I help Aubree to the nearest bed, sitting
her down and relieving myself of the burden.
“I’ll let you rest and wash up,” I inform
her, rubbing my hands together to get the dust off, “I’m gonna go take care of
Dr. Hughes”
She nods, taking in some deep breaths to
steady herself. I spin on my heel and quickly exit the room to give her some
privacy.
The door to the laboratory opens with the
sliding of metal on metal. I walk out onto the familiar metal catwalk, rushing
over to the steps and quickly running down them.
Maura and Jack stand next to Hughes, who is
tied to a chair with his goggles lying on the floor. His eyes are eerie and
dark, and his lips are curled into a sneer. But at least he is silent.
I stride over to Maura, who looks a bit
shaken, but otherwise fine.
“How is he?” I inquire, talking softly so
that only she can hear.
“I don’t know, John,” she says, “But I
think he lost it. He started saying some weird things like ‘Run’ and ‘They’re
coming’ and ‘Can you hear the howling of the wolves?’” She looks concerned.
Jack walks over to join the conversation,
and Hughes looks up at us.
“How’s Aubree?” he asks, hushed.
“She’s fine,” I respond, “But she’s weak.
She just needs rest. I think the lack of oxygen got to her.”
“And Marthus?”
“His condition is more serious. They’ve
taken him to the medical bay.”
We stand in silence for a moment.
“Commander Lynch came in a few minutes
ago,” says Jack finally, “She told us that we need to get to work soon; after
all, we are scientists.”
I nod. Lynch is right; we still have jobs
to do.
A wave of drowsiness falls over me. My
eyelids get heavier, and my brain slows down.
“I need to sleep,” I tell them, yawning.
“It’s been a long day.”
Maura nods, and Jack just stands there.
I turn and walk back towards the stairs. My
body is losing energy, and fast, so I need to reach my bed before I faint. I
climb the steps and when I reach the top, Hughes speaks.
“You think you are safe,” he whispers,
eerily and inhumanly, “You think this planet is empty and that it is yours to
claim.”
I gaze at him, and my eyes slowly widen.
“They are coming for you,” he continues,
“You have no refuge here. And when they come, they will tear your home apart
piece by piece and they will show no mercy. You will be left to die in the sea
and the humans outside will keep on coming. They will keep coming to this place
to make a home for themselves but every time they come, they will be taken by
surprise and killed.”
He pauses and I can feel the air go cold.
“Can you hear the howling of the wolves?”
-------
Continued...
c. Taylor Ward 2013. All rights reserved.
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