I'm going to wake up. I have to.
From the pilot's chair, Maureen stared in horror as black, dart-shaped ships popped up all around them. The light from the binary suns reflected on their terrifying hulls. Covered in scales and thorns, the alien fleet seemed to have flown straight from Dante's hell.
"We're dead," Don whispered when all the lights and instruments turned off, plunging the cockpit into oppressive darkness.
As the Jupiter slid to a halt in the middle of the pack of killer machines, Will grabbed the navigation console. Maureen looked at his pale, thin fingers as her son slowly lowered himself to the floor at her feet, his raspy breath audible in the cold silence. Then she looked up, expecting to hear a loud, metallic sound: the impact of a robot on the hull a second before it would blast its way inside and kill them all.
"We should all go to the hub," she said as she struggled to unbuckle her harness.
"No, we're good. They haven't seen us," Will replied.
"We're right in front of them. How can they not see us?" Don asked.
"They see energy: light, heat, sound, anything electrical. The smallest battery electrical field is like bright neons reflecting on a wet pavement at night. I killed everything as fast as I could," the boy explained. "Believe me. If they had seen us, we would have been boarded already."
Seconds passed by, ticking loudly in the silence while their eyes adjusted to the weak, cosmic light dispelling the surrounding shadows.
"What are they doing here so soon, anyway?" Maureen whispered, desperate to see the deadly alien fleet instead of the Resolute. She didn't even dare to stand up or make any move that could betray their presence, but was all too painfully aware that, in the infirmary, John couldn't afford to wait.
"Maybe they've always been there," Will replied. "We were not here the last time to witness their presence because last time, we were on the planet, and the alien engine had no power to give away our position. That's why it shut down, I think. To keep us safe. Robot didn't understand at that time what we needed to survive, that our habitat is much more specialized than his."
Will grunted. His face shone with sweat.
"What's wrong?"
"I'm sorry, mom. I don't know if I can save Dad. I don't know if I can save any of us. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I… I…" Will's eyes rolled back as he swayed to the side.
Maureen gasped as she tried simultaneously to hold up her son and launch out of the pilot's seat. "Don?"
But as she looked at the mechanic for help, her own head began swimming. Her voice sounded strangely distorted as blood rushed in her veins, making her temples beat painfully. What was happening, she wondered as the robots' fleet undulated in front of the Jupiter, like a mirage. A mirage in space? That couldn't be, she remembered thinking as purple streaks of light burst all around them, drawing fractals in the darkness. A distant, low-pitched siren rang out as the alien ships flipped in and out of existence around them.
"Mooooommmmm!"
Maureen forced herself to turn her head toward the back of the cockpit. Penny was there, standing in the door frame, her mouth open in a scream that she couldn't hear anymore. A thicker shadow swallowed them. For a few seconds, Maureen smelled the damp earth. Her nostrils flared at the contact with the cold mist. At once, a violent shiver shook her whole body. Cold. She was so cold! It was the fog. That cold and dense penetrating mist from the forest, it was back, and it was numbing everything, pressing a dead weight on her chest. She couldn't breathe. Why couldn't she breathe? Panic was overtaking her when, as suddenly as it had appeared, the cold, the fog, and the weight vanished. Maureen drew a deep, sharp breath. Space was back. And it was full of asteroids.
"Oh crap," Will muttered as he hauled himself up, reached over the navigation console and re-engaged the autopilot. The lights turned on, blinding.
"What are you doing?" Don yelled. "They're going to see us!"
"It won't matter if we crash into one of these!" Maureen shot back as the computer began weaving a path through the rubble. The rubble of what, she wondered as one quick turn after another threw them crashing to the deck between the chairs and instruments.
"Can someone tell me what just happened?" Don asked as Maureen scrambled to her feet and, holding tight on the console, hauled herself back into the pilot's seat.
"Where did these asteroids come from?" Don asked.
"They're not asteroids," Maureen replied, staring at the data from the ship's sensors.
"The ring overloaded," Will said as the Jupiter cleared the debris field and came to a halt.
Far from feeling relieved yet, Maureen looked at her son in shock. "What? The planet exploded?"
"That's exactly what Robot and I were afraid would start to happen."
Feeling dizzy, Maureen pressed her hands to her face, trying to control the stress that was churning her guts.
This was chaos.
Each new decision set in motion a different future, causing new events with intrinsic unpredictability that were governed by physical laws beyond their understanding. They were like drunk drivers speeding along a highway in the wrong direction, oblivious to the real situation. They were no more in control of the car than a curious baby strapped in their seat, toying with the buckle of the harness because it was shiny and made funny clicking noises.
"Where are the robots?" Don asked.
Exhaling deeply to calm her nerves, Maureen took another look at the screen. "I don't know. There's too much interference."
"They're not here anymore," Will said.
"Oh, you're a sensor now? A robot detector?"
Not happy with the mechanic's tone, Maureen stared down at him, then realized that Will's connection with the robot had always worried her a great deal. "How do you know this, Will?"
"I know. That's all I can say."
Maureen frowned as she looked into her son's eyes. "That's all you can say or want to say?"
As Will's lips sealed shut at her question, Maureen silently cursed. What was her son not telling her?
"Okay, so if that point isn't the robots, what is it?" Don asked, pointing at a spot on the screen.
For the first time in days, tears of relief rose into Maureen's eyes. "The Resolute!"
