'Allo! Spending family time with the whole, vibrant bunch, and sneaking chances to write, here and there. =) Thank you, Helensg, Creative Girl, Merv, Bow Echo and Whirl Girl, for reading and reviewing. You make my day.
41
Seven hundred years hence, in the place that was once Tracy Island-
Sharl's reaction to his offer was very strange. The weirding recoiled slightly, looking at once startled, hopeful and shocked.
"How…" she began, then paused; collecting herself by braiding her long, yellow hair. "How is this being possible, Honored Sheefold? The Words are saying nothing more of the Speaker's presence here."
Sheffield grunted, put his hands on his knees and levered himself back to a standing position. Across the way, Major Pope did the same.
"Want this thing repaired?" the lieutenant commander demanded, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the transport disk. Sharl nodded, seeming confused by the change in topic.
"Yes, Sheefold. Is being our hope of your coming, all these cycles gone by. But what…?"
"Because the only guy with a prayer of fixing that mess is the Tracys' engineer, Harry Hockenbeak."
Sharl flinched, as though he'd just said something very dirty, or very profound. Maybe both. Her people murmured and shifted around her. Didn't seem hostile, though. Weren't even capable of violence, possibly. Like… like children, almost; left alone in the house for a very long time, and feeling abandoned. After a moment, she said,
"It is that you should be seeing something more, Honored Sheefold. The Words have been with us since time is beginning, but they are written down in one place, just. For certain of not ever failing to watch and wait, as we are been told, long ago. You will coming with me, Honored Sheefold, and others?"
Sheffield rubbed at his tired dark eyes. He could have used some rest, actually… it'd been a h*ll of a day… but didn't feel comfortable or safe enough for a nap. So,
"Sure. Why not?" he acceded. No use getting angry at lost, lonely children. They couldn't help being weird.
Sharl smiled at him, and extended a spidery hand. After a moment, Sheff took it, allowing the woman to lead him out of the stepping-across room. Her skin had changed. Now it felt rough, like she'd lost some control of its texture, or something.
They traveled through a couple more of those cracked cement corridors, passing rooms filled with silent machines. Evidently, this region was not much traveled. Something troubled the lieutenant commander about that, at first. Something like a nagging sense of familiarity.
Then he worked out that these crisscrossing passageways were just like the tunnels he'd wandered through, to get to the Tracys. Took a few turns he hadn't, though, eventually reaching a door that was marked all around with strange symbols, and decked with small, precious objects. Looked like that secret little family shrine his girlfriend kept way back in her bedroom closet, he thought.
Sharl gave him an anxious look out of too-large, liquid green eyes, saying,
"This is being a very old place, Honored Sheefold. Here are the Words. Here, they sleep. Although you are the wilcom travailers, still must be to not touching anything, and staying close on the path. I will going, and you. My next one, Kym, shall standing with your next one, Pop, in the doorway. This is being agreed, between our heads?" Took him a moment to work out that by "Pop", she meant Major Pope: J.R.
Sheff took a second to look over his unit, making silent eye contact with everyone from Pope and Murray to Conyers and Kent. They understood. They had his back. They'd wait.
"Okay," he said to Sharl. "Let's see what's behind door number two. Hit me, Maestro."
She nodded, and then surprised him by making a sign with the tip of one finger against his forehead. Next, she touched what looked like a palmprint scanner. The door squealed open. Slowly, like it wasn't much used. Squaring her brittle-thin shoulders, Sharl took his hand, and led him within.
The room beyond was dimly lit, and lined with very old, faintly buzzing equipment. It was also quite dusty, and surprisingly warm. There was a footpath through the drifted grime on that dark concrete floor, leading to some kind of big metal plaque on the far wall. Looked like brass.
Sharl squeezed his hand, once, then drew him along the cleanish footpath. She was making for the plaque, but Sheffield hung back a little, looking around. This place wasn't modern. The scraps of label and print that he could see were written in Basic, not chicken-scratch.
At one point, they passed four extremely dusty, coffin-like tubes. Each had a dim, powered-down LED panel at one end. Cryo-sleep gear? Sheff started to ask, but Sharl squeezed his hand again, and gave him a quick, wide-eyed head shake.
Drew him over to the largish brass plaque that someone had screwed to the wall, down here, and someone else had kept polished.
"The Words," Sharl whispered, looking… reverent, or something like that.
Huh. There were letters inscribed around the plaque's edges. The Basic alphabet. Within that frame of letters was a long, detailed message.
Greetings to you! I am Doctor Hackenbacker, a scientist of the late 21st century. Seven hundred years from my time, in your present, there will appear a squadron of lost travelers who have been hurled into the future by the action of a time crystal. Please welcome them.
The crystal will appear among you at the following spacetime coordinates: EPSG 4630, transformation 1914, 2667, day 34. In precisely seven days from that point, the stone will return to the past, bringing with it all those standing upon the "traveling floor".
The lost squadron are good people, very curious and direct in their speech and actions. They are:
Lt. Cmdr. Reese Sheffield
Maj. John-Ross Pope
Cpt. Jessalyn Murray
MSgt. Thomas Chen
Sgt. Lillian Danvers
Cpl. Devon McTiernan
Cpl. Angel Jiménez
P1C. Hengist Scott
Amn. Calvin Kent
Pvt. Floyd Conyers
Pvt. Grace Woo
It is extremely important that they be with the crystal, when it jumps away from your time, if they are to return to their own. PS- Take pictures, please!
Sharl's head was bowed. The dim, grimy overhead lights flickered and spat. Behind them, four cryo-sleep tubes sputtered along on the last of their power, filling that big, eerie room with an almost subliminal hum.
"Guess he wanted to make sure we'd be okay, out here… Welcoming committee, hotburger buffet, and all," Sheffield remarked, folding both arms across his wide chest. Wanted to add, 'He's just a man, you know.' But didn't.
Sheff wasn't at all superstitious, himself; not like his girlfriend, or Sharl. But that didn't mean that he wasn't respectful. Even if the weirdings' religion was based on an accidental time trip, and Hockenbeak's rambling message. Sharl was staring at him, now, her expression too mixed-up to decipher.
"You can truly showing us the Speaker of Words, Sheefold?" she whispered.
"Well, yeah…" he replied. "If that time-rock functions as advertised. Otherwise, I guess we'll need to visit the local immigration office. But let's stick with plan A. I'll get back to my "now", grab that geek by the ne… Um, I can conduct him back here, that is, to solve all your problems."
"Let it being so," Sharl replied, big green eyes all at once swimming in tears. "Sheefold has speaking, and we are recording his Words. A new Speaker has appearing among us!"
"Uh…" Sheff hedged, as the weirdings outside twittered and thrilled, while his own people tried not to laugh. (Even Conyers, d*mn his clumsy ass!) It was one recalcitrant, unwilling new prophet who was dragged past those dying cryotubes and back outside.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
Mars, below ground-
Comm had flickered back on for just a few seconds, giving the men a quick glimpse of the other colonists, and a brief pulse of life support; a thump of lights and ventilation with sudden, shrill radiation alarms. Then, darkness, again.
They left Fuse behind in the tunnel, with as much sand and rocks in the joints of his armour as three men could pack. He could wake up, and he might even manage to move, but it would take him awhile, and a decent head start was all that they needed.
All of this was accomplished in silence, because there might be more than one saboteur in the area. No sense tipping the bastards off to their continued survival. Not yet.
Jeff would just have kept low and crept past. Rigby would have gone hunting. Pete preferred subterfuge, staging a very final-sounding fake death for them all. With hand signals, he ordered Rigby and Jeff to collect more rocks, and then throw them around, making plenty of noise in the process. Then, on his mark, they all three cried out.
McCord went for the short, strangled shriek of a classic "opened the wrong door" horror movie demise. Jeff went longer, throwing in a very artistic gasp, before falling silent. Captain Rigby just grunted a few times, looking stiff and embarrassed. Evidently, it was against Marine Corps policy to make that much of a fuss over a landslide.
After that, they kept off the comm, managing with signals, or by pressing their face plates together, so that speech vibrations could pass between. In on the ruse, Jennings, La Benita and Rollins waited for them on the other side, with a half-conscious Walker. Then came the hard part. Climbing the wall.
Pete bit completely through his fluid delivery tube, but he kept himself quiet. So did Jeff, who had to scoot on his back, guided by the young Marine, in order to keep that toxic metal shard from cutting him any deeper. Hurt like h*ll at the time, but would make a good story, afterward.
Scrabbling, pushing, grunting and heaving, they somehow crested the wall, and then managed to squirm their way between its rubbly top, and the partly collapsed tunnel ceiling.
Willing hands reached up to take hold, lowering first Pete McCord, then Jeff Tracy, onto the ground at the other side. Rigby half slid, half stumbled his way down; caught and braced at the bottom by Sergeant Rollins. Someone had even made a new crutch for the base commander, since he'd had to leave the other behind.
Then… piece of cake… only three flights of spiraling stairs to the surface, and safety. One and done, after a short nutrient/ fluid break, suit-waste evac (interesting process, in itself) and twenty-minute rest. Just pure, dumb bad luck, what happened next.
XXXXXXXXXX
Mars, up on the surface-
Havok panted as she ran along the Freedom Colony's curving main road, Interstate 1. The sun was higher, now, and the pink sky brighter. Somewhere below, her brother, Fuse, lay immobile. Unconscious, possibly, or… or a lot of dead f*cking colonists.
She'd fallen into a rhythm. Eyes on that distant, tall dome; breath hissing in through her nose, huffing out through her mouth, the lot punctuated by the crunch and thud of her boots on dusty grey pavement. The eastern hills were slowly changing from silhouettes to complex, wrinkled landscape, shot through with valleys and caves. Havok barely noticed, and wouldn't have cared, if she had.
What she did see was the red gleam of a targeting laser, brushing the dirt-smeared guardrail beside her. Havok hit the ground, rolled, and then sprang up again, a few yards further along. They were close, but they didn't shoot; not wanting to waste ammo on a mere puff of dust from their invisible target. Then the wind rose, stirring up clouds of dirt, and giving her cover. Got an idea, as she neared the big, misty dome. A wonderful, nasty, fatal idea. Picked up her pace, because she was going to need time.
The top of that circular greenhouse rose about twenty feet in the air. To her practiced eye, it appeared to have a hundred-foot diameter, and was constructed of scuffed and abraded spars, and curving glass panels. On one side, those panels were dusty; on the other, streaked with condensation and bubbling goo. Something inside must have sensed her movement, because it struck like a snake, firing a sticky blob at the glass. Even from here, she could see the stuff trickling down the panel, etching a trench as it went. Nice.
The dome stood off to the west, about five yards from the road. A few yards further north was a colony access hatch. Just about the perfect set-up. If she hurried…
Very quickly and carefully, Havok darted away from the road, leaving clear footprints up to the airlock of Biodome 3. Figuring that her cautious pursuers were five, maybe six minutes behind her, the girl then pulled another explosive out of her belt and armed it, setting the timer for 385 seconds. Had to give her shy, blushing suitors a chance to get close, after all.
Looking around to be sure that no one was watching, Havok examined the hatch. Not that it would have mattered if the GDF guard dogs were staring right at her, she reminded herself. She was still cloaked. Even right there at her side, they'd have seen nothing more than a slight distortion, as light rays were warped all around her. They couldn't hear her, either. Her comm didn't link to theirs unless she wanted it to, and the atmosphere was too thin to pass sound very well. Too effing bad for them, she smirked.
Attaching her explosive device on the inside edge of a hatch-side spar, Havok then gathered herself, and leapt backward. Low gravity meant that her jump carried her higher into the air than normal. Much farther, too. Her cable-shot did the rest.
Two swift button-presses and a midair backflip sent a pair of long, aluminum-alloy cables hissing from her wrists to the guardrail, where they locked on, and reeled the girl in. She bounced once, and hopped upward, again; managing to strike pavement a fair way from that carefully laid false trail. Then, Havok resumed pelting for the nearest colony access hatch. Fuse was down there, and d*mned if she'd let the GDF have him, even if he was a reckless, bloody great pain in the arse.
XXXXXXXXXX
Thunderbird 7, down in the hold's unpadded crew seating area-
Kayo wasn't a snob, but she didn't like being stuck in the back with a couple of newbies. Jan and Cody seemed nice enough, but very involved with each other, and rather shy of her. Instead of listening in on their conversation, Kay stared at the high, arching grey overhead, and started to plan.
Reaching Mars was only stage one of their problem, the girl realized. The rest was finding Dad, and retrieving those stranded colonists. Dealing with hostiles, too, maybe. She'd have to be ready for anything; armed with all of her fighting skills, except for those traitorous mind powers. Never again. She'd promised, and Kayo meant what she'd said. Whatever happened, the girl would respond without the insidious strength of a Kyrano. She couldn't help the family she'd been born into, but she could very much choose which one to stay with. There and then, with fiercely narrowed green eyes and flaring, delicate nostrils, Kayo chose to be Tracy; just like her father, her brothers, and Grandma.
Had she been able to reach into her own skull and root out that shadowy strength like a toxic weed, she'd have done so. Instead, deliberately, Kayo walled off that part of her mind. Never again.
The trip was difficult, especially without any windows or viewscreen. She sensed the Bird's terrific acceleration, but had nothing to gauge it by; no frame of reference except her own twisting guts. For something to do besides be sick all over the booming, shuddering hold, Kayo looked around.
Jan and Cody were holding hands, she noticed; fingers interlaced, thumbs stroking whatever they could reach of the other. With iron discipline, the girl did not stare. What must it be like to feel that way, she wondered? To belong with a man, as much as he belonged with you? To have a best friend/ partner/ lover. A mate.
Just like Gordon, she yearned for something she hadn't yet found, and didn't know where to look for. Just like her only remaining brother, she felt incomplete. Jan touched her arm, suddenly, startling Kayo right out of her thoughts.
"What?! Oh."
"Sorry, Miss Tracy," the other girl apologized. "I just wanted to ask for advice on getting into an IR environment suit. I mean… Cody's had some space training, because he was supposed to be our satellite guy…"
"Like John. I know," Kayo nodded, glad to be talking.
"Right," Cody cut in, squeezing Janice's hand. "Except, I never got much beyond theory. Mr. Fischler finally produced some actual suits, but, um…"
"Let me guess," said Kayo, smiling a little. "They weren't any good?"
"Leaked like a sieve in the training pool," Jan admitted, adding, "That was my first real rescue. Hauling Iceman, here, out of the weightless environment tank, before he drowned."
"So," the young man announced, eager to change the subject. "We could use a few real-world suit pointers, Miss Tracy. Anything you can tell us would be a big help. This is our first time in space."
"It's Kayo," she told him, beginning to unstrap from her seat. "C'mon… the spacesuit rack is back here. We'll have a quick tutorial session, and I'll show you two how it's done."
Cody Beech looked at her with odd intensity, as though expecting something more from her. Well, a lot of people were surprised to find out that the Colonel's daughter could be sort of normal.
Just to show off that other side, Kayo drifted up out of her seat with a gentle push, and then tucked herself into a floating, forward roll. Just like John had taught her how to do, all those years back. Then, with Janice and Cody flailing along behind her like a couple of amateurs, the girl took off. She swooped through the cavernous hold like a swallow, headed for a certain long rack of IR environment suits.
"This way," she told them; feeling tension drain like a bathtub, because helping others was the fastest cure for a lonely heart and gut-clenching worry. "Come on. They're not hard to put on, when you know what you're doing."
Cody and Janice were experts, by the time they reached Mars, and that made all the difference in the world.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Mars, above ground-
Captain Hesse and Sergeant De Claire followed those wide-spaced boot prints clear off the road and over to Biodome 3. Didn't want to. The mutated vines and spitting flowers within had already sent one poor researcher home on permanent medical leave, to regrow his skin. Still, if Havok was in there…
Captain Hesse readied her weapon. With power out and life support failing all over the colony, temperatures had plunged. Those plants were probably dormant. In cold shock, or something. Taking a deep breath, she started to punch in her access code, when De Claire put a hand out.
"Ma'am, stop," he said to her, urgently.
Hesse shot him a cold, quelling look.
"What is it, Sergeant?" she demanded impatiently, speaking over that thin, keening wind. De Claire indicated the hatch-side locking mechanism, saying,
"Check the access record, Ma'am. Please."
Keeping her face still, and one eye on her slightly insubordinate crewman, Hesse keyed up a hatch access history. The mechanism emitted a brief, tinny chime, then displayed its records and… oh.
"Last entry was three days ago, Ma'am," De Claire told her. "I know, because I was there, protecting the bio-tech crew at feeding time. It's a trap, Captain. She wants us to think…"
That's when the bomb went off, shattering two dome panels. Long, jagged slivers of perma-glass shot outward like hurtling spears. The dome's atmosphere vented, like a shrill, foggy hurricane; bringing with it long, snapping, saw-toothed vines and huge, toxic flowers, already freezing as they lashed at De Claire and the captain. Hesse got a single shot off before she was hurled backward away from the broken dome. Couldn't see De Claire. Then, something struck her helmet with crushing force, and the captain couldn't see, period.