Farlost: Arrival Read online

  The world flared green with every impact of rock on the force field that kept all souls aboard HHL-6 from certain death.

  In between impacts though, the stars still spun, reminding Lou that the scientific miracle surrounding their ship had bought them reprieve, not escape.

  Still... Holy Shit, her mind repeated like a mantra. The asshole genius had done it! Her tight-pressed lips split in a nervous half grin.

  "Thank you, Dr. Beacham," Lou said, letting out a deep breath she hadn't known she’d been holding. "This will do nicely."

  "You really should thank me, it's quite amazing what I've done," Beacham said, already post-gloat and tapping madly again. "But first let me see if I can't extend our lives past twenty minutes first. Hurry up and get in here, Stan!"

  "I'm trying!" Stan Renic yelled. "There's a security lockout." Lou kicked back to her monitor. Sure enough, there flashed another blue warning light. She quickly dismissed it, and watched as the icon for the console in front of Stan’s chair lit up on her screen, and mated itself with Beacham’s.

  VP Burkov was still only half in his seat, vibrating with fear - poorly disguised as rage. “No! Third Officer Villanueva, as ranking corporate officer I demand you issue an SOS to all Haskam assets! After you lock up this crazy bitch, before she kills us all!”

  Villanueva gave a Lou an indecipherable look, then turned to the VP. "Chain of Command is clear, Mr. Vice President, and a matter of maritime law, not subject to corporate oversight."

  Lou blinked. The words were pretty safe and all but she was pretty sure Arnel Villanueva had just told the VP of research for all of of Haskam Corporation 'no'.

  She flashed Villanueva a morbid grin. “Hey, you sure you don't want this job?”

  Arnel actually smiled. "You're doing fine, Chief. I'm the one who tells you when you start slipping, remember?"

  Lou matched the grin, surprised by and grateful for the man's support.

  The lights winked out across the C&C, save for a few red emergency spotlights.

  Seconds later, Nav Officer Okoro's voice called out "Emergency reserve power is now below fifty percent. Per protocol, all but essential services have been automatically taken off line."

  Lou cleared her throat, taking care to keep her voice calm and controlled. "I think it's time for that second miracle, Dr. Beacham."

  "Doing our best, lady," Beacham called out, his hands tapping roughly. "Wanna go see Pluto, Stan?"

  "No! Stop this, goddammit,” Burkov growled, slapping his fingers on his harness release. “Or I’ll see every one of you get sued out of existence!”

  "Sue us?" Taggart chuckled.“I think this, you know, rain of death by rock that we're in the middle of is gonna get us first.”

  Burkov pointed a finger at Taggart and snarled. "How dare you! You don't get to talk to me!" He turned to Lou. "Please," he almost sobbed. "I don't want to die."

  Lou felt her lip curl up in disgust at the smallness of the man. "Grow a pair, Mister Vice President."

  “Over a thousand contacts registered incoming by LIDAR, tracking sensors have lost count!” Rose shouted out from her nav console. “If Beacham’s green light fades now...”

  Villanueva licked his lips. His gaze flitted from Lou to Beacham. “Can you guarantee me this will work?”

  “Fuck no,” countered Beacham venomously. “But we’re dead for sure if we stay here!” He turned back to his workstation, slid his hand along a vertical control.

  The windows went black.

  "What was that!" wailed Burkov.

  Beacham turned to Lou to answer. "I'm blocking everything. Nothing external is getting through that field, not even light or any visible spectra, until it fails. But I have no way of knowing what damage the rock storm did, or how long the energy will last in either the force field emitters or in the FTL pods. We gotta go, lady. Now."

  Lou stared at Beacham. The little prick had more steel than she expected. He hadn’t exactly kept his cool, but he had stones she would never have given him credit for.

  “Third Officer?” Lou questioned, more coolly than she felt, her eyes boring into Villanueva. Villanueva remained silent for a moment, staring at Beacham’s monitor, reflecting power spikes - more rocks vaporizing against Beacham's blacked out force field.

  After a long pause, he nodded. "I concur, Security Chief Montagne."

  “All right. Fine. Great!" Beacham ground out before Villanueva had even finished speaking. "Now will someone unlock my FTL pods so I can get them online! Chop fucking chop, people!”

  "Beacham," Lou warned in a cold voice. "People making life and death decisions don't get to swear blue streaks. Knock off the potty mouth!"

  Beacham stared at her with wide eyes, incredulous. He laughed manically. "Yeah, fine, we live through this and I'll knock it off but for now will someone take the child locks off my fuckin' FTL!"

  “Eighty years of trying,” Burkov implored, staring at Lou and the third officer. “Eighty years of failing! Please, don’t let Beacham burn us all!”

  “We're not going to burn!" Beacham snapped back. He took a deep breath. “I don't know why there's been an explosion on every FTL attempt, but it's not ship-mass or reactor cores going up! Every explosion triggered by FTL has been way bigger than anything on board could account for. That means it’s an external force! My field will keep us safe from anything external!”

  Villanueva laughed, once and harsh. “You better be right, Beacham! Computer, voice ID: Villanueva, Arnel, Third Officer. Official log entry: Commander Dwyer is dead. Second Officer is missing in action. Acknowledge.”

  An artifical computer voice did so. “Confirmation by a second ranking officer is required to remove an officer from chain of command—“

  “Montagne, Lulu. Security Chief. Commander Dwyer is dead. Devine is missing. Acknowledge.”

  There was no pause. The synthesized voice continued on a ship-wide channel as a small news scroll appeared on every screen on the bridge, repeating the same message the voice conveyed. “Haskam Heliocentric Lab 6 is now under the command of Security Chief Lulu Montagne: field commissioned to Commander. All systems have been re-keyed to her biometrics and security settings."

  "No!" Burkov screamed again.

  "Chief!” Taggart boomed out.

  Burkov was in motion, and fast. Reaching out, face twisted in an animal snarl.

  Something glinting bright in his hands, he was coming for her.

  15

  Burkov was in motion, and fast. Reaching out, face twisted in an animal snarl.

  Something glinting bright in his hands, he was coming for her.

  Lou was already aware of the threat, already moving to counter it on instinct.

  Yanking on the side of the command chair, she pulled herself out of his path. She heard the clicking sound, saw the arcing blue light of his taser just inches away.

  He grunted as he flailed for her with the small plastic device. She pulled her body out of the path of his hand, bent in the middle and kicked the Haskam Senior Vice President for Research square in the face.

  His eyes shut tight in pain and a few droplets of blood escaped his nose. One joined the drying smear on her cheek, that was all that remained of Ed Dwyer.

  "Officer Taggart!" Lou yelled, already back at her monitor. "Lock him in the duty officer's cabin!" She slapped instructions into her screen to open up the last restricted controls Beacham hadn't yet been able to access.

  She heard Burkov bark in pain. Taggart had already been heading to intercept the VP before her command, and he had not likely been gentle about it.

  "No!" Burkov said, his voice wet with blood and nasal sound. She guessed she'd broken his nose for him. "Please, don't do this!"

  Then he made a wet, coughing sound. Lou spared him a glance and saw both his hands at his throat. Taggart's fingers had poked him into gagging silence before sending him careening toward the small room on the outer wall equipped as office, mini kitchen and lavatory for the officers who manned the C&C 24-
7.

  She wasn't bothered in the least by how hard Burkov bounced off the wall by the hatch, when he got there.

  She turned back to watch Beacham's fingers race, tapping and eking out information quickly. "Done!" He cried.

  The message 'engage FTL' appeared inside a red rectangle on her mirrored terminal. "Still locked out, here!" He said, his voice high and frantic.

  'Command override required to engage FTL,' read a dialog on her monitor.

  Lou reached out to tap the green square below the message, but she stopped her fingertips in the air just shy of the target. She hesitated, licking her lips.

  Almost a hundred lives depended on her. A hundred.

  She leaned towards Beacham's work station. “Don’t be wrong.”

  Beacham licked his lips too . “I’m not wrong. I'm not, okay? I. Am. Not. Wrong.”

  She saw it in his eyes. He was scared, but he believed... and they didn't have any other choice anyway. She tapped the green square.

  He bowed his head for a second, then straightened it. “And if I am wrong, we'd have been dead for sure, anyway.”

  “C’mon, don’t tell me tha--!” Lou roared, as he slapped his palm down on the blinking ‘engage’ in the center of his screen.

  Touch, sound, Vision all mixed together in a stomach churning jumble. Language and taste blended in with the rest, before the world completely stopped making sense. Lou, along with everyone else aboard, passed out.

  Unknown to any of the unconscious crew, bolts of white energy haloed the C&C, arcing faster between small pods that had been installed around the thinner 'neck' that connected the module to the airlock array and the tanks below. Two of the eight pods were gone, torn away by rocks, but there were enough left to complete the circle.

  The circle of white enveloped the ship. Slowly, the circle of light expanded further out from the craft, and finally obscured the blacked out force field that shrouded and protected the ship.

  The white glow became painfully bright. If anyone had been watching with naked eyes, the ship would have looked to be a new sun being born.

  And then that 'sun' exploded, the searing white light and titanic shockwave of energy rocketing outward, leaving nothing in its wake.

  HHL-6 was gone.

  THE IN BETWEEN

  16

  Albert Okoro held out his hand. Rose took it and stepped out of the limousine, smiling up at her father.

  “I am so proud, Rose,” Albert said, patting her shoulder and leading the way up to the massive airplane hanger.

  “The first pilot in our family!” Rose’s father said. “We came to America with nothing. Now we have means, but you don't just sit. No, not my Rose!”

  Rose’s cheeks hurt from her smile. Yes, she was excited to see what lay inside the airplane hanger, but even more, she was thrilled by her father’s pride, and her own accomplishment.

  “A Masters in communications information systems, and now a pilot!” Albert gushed, then reached out with the scarred knuckles he had fought his way out of Zimbabwe with and rapped on the heavy steel of the massive hanger door. Then he stared back down and repeated, "So, so proud!"

  Her father was not a terribly emotional man. He loved her, yes. He coddled her and challenged her - even hugged her, from time to time- but those rare she had him to herself, he made the whole world seem so much safer and brighter.

  The massive door began to shudder and slide to the left. A gleaming white wing appeared.

  Her wing, Rose knew, and her insides shook.

  “My little lion,” Albert murmured, his face bent down to watch hers as the present in the hanger slowly revealed itself. “A navigator for Haskam? Flying on the spaceships! Oh, my, my, my!”

  “Haskam?” She said, confused.

  Her eyebrows knit together. The perfect joy of seeing her graduation present, the Boeing Airbus 991 luxury jet sliding into sight, was cracked. Her mind tugged at something. Something about the moment that was not right.

  No, it wasn’t right. How could he know about that? It hadn't happened yet. Haskam wasn’t even flying labs in Heliocentric orbit around the solar system yet!

  The hanger door bucked in its track, the booming sound of the metal being pulled along dragging her back. She looked over at her father, so strong, so fit, towering over her, a wonderful, powerful, and gentle giant.

  No. That was wrong, too. She knew it, but this truth she pushed away, didn’t want to remember.

  Albert smiled back down. “Don’t let the lights die, Rose,” he whispered, his head craning down to kiss her forehead, and letting bright sunlight blind her. She shut her eyes.

  When she opened her eyes again, the plane was gone. The airport was gone. Her father, too, was almost gone, laying wasted on the hospital bed, gasping. His hand in hers was cold and bony.

  “The lights, little Lion!” Albert Okoro moaned, fighting to form every wet, garbled word with his ruined throat. It cost him, and he began to gag, his whole body jerking with spasms.

  “Bhabha!” she gasped. Her tears coated her face. She wrapped her hands around his. Her father's painful cries stabbed her heart.

  “If the light dies…” He choked out, “You… all… die!”

  Her niece and nephew laughed as they chased each other in the backyard. Dina ripped the head off another beer bottle and took a long pull, turning away from the sound.

  Her sister Maria’s face switched between sadness and false good humor as she lifted her own beer and clinked. “I’m sorry, little sister,” Maria said.

  Dina laughed, fighting the tears back. “What’s it matter? When you and Dave finally kill each other, I’ll get those two out back.”

  The last tests came back, and now Dina knew: she would never have children. She took another long pull of beer. “I signed the papers today.”

  Maria gasped. “With Haskam?”

  Dina nodded. “I want to fly. No babies coming my way, why not give them a few years?”

  “Penny and Rico will miss you. So will I."

  Dina smiled at her sister, fighting back the tears. “I’ll miss them too, but I need a little time, you know? Besides, it’s not like a job in space can screw up the kids I can’t have!”

  “Oh...don’t be so sure,” Maria said.

  Dina stared at her sister. Her eyes stung. She wanted to reach out and slap her . Hadn’t she been listening? There was zero chance of her conceiving, no matter how much money she threw at the problem.

  “So many things you never dreamt of are possible where you’re going. Just don’t let anyone turn out the lights, sis.”

  Dina stared, and then winced. Was the kitchen getting brighter?

  Behind her, the kettle started to wail on the stove. Dina jumped around and stared at it.

  When she looked back, the kitchen was empty.

  She heard Penny squeal, and Rico laugh in response. She looked to the window. Impossibly, day had turned into night beyond the glass. Her own face stared back at her, obscuring the shadow of something she couldn't quite make out: something giant, organic yet alien, and terrifying.

  Arnel lifted his wine glass and held it to Ina’s. Their glasses touched with a muted clink.

  “Happy Anniversary, Mrs. Villanueva,” he said with a smile.

  “Twenty two years, husband,” Ina said, her brown eyes soft, her face warm and loving. “I’ll miss this place,” Ina murmured, looking around.

  Manila had always been her home, while Arnel hopped from spaceport to spaceport, gone months at a time. Now she was moving with him to the Haskam corporation space center in Texas.

  “Are you sure, baby?” he asked for the third time that day. “Haskam’s not the only corporation, I can find something else. You don't have to move.”

  Ina clucked at him, her face flashing that ‘don’t be silly’ look she had perfected long ago.

  “Haskam’s the only corporation that promised you a job in Earth Orbit after just four more years flying around the solar system. I knew what I was gett
ing into Arnel, marrying you, but I’d murder you if you DIDN’T take this job!”

  Arnel raised his glass and an eyebrow. “I knew there was a reason I loved you.”

  As she delicately sipped, Ina’s lips hinted she had a fitting end to their anniversary celebrations in store.

  “It’s a hard place, but there’s joy here too,” she said, the words a bizarre counterpoint to her seductive smile.

  Arnel’s other eyebrow raised to join the first. “Where, the Philippines?”

  She snorted. “No, silly. But.. keep the light going, Third Officer,” Ina said as she sat her glass down.

  She faded as he watched. The music and tinkling of silverware continued, but all Arnel saw was her empty chair.

  All he felt was the sudden ache of her absence.

  Arnel sat back in his chair. He stared around at the bustle of their favourite restaurant, remembering that it had been burnt down years before. Arson.

  “Remember the light,” Ina’s voice whispered again in his ears.

  God, he missed her.

  Taggart’s older brother slapped him on the shoulder. “Sit your ass down, mini!”

  Taggart slapped his big brother back on the side of his head, then obliged him, falling onto the old leather couch beside him.

  “This is bull, Ron,” Taggart teased, pointing at the screen. “Army-Navy game? Ain’t real football!”

  Ronald glared at his little brother and pointed at the black ‘ARMY’ stenciled on his grey sweatshirt. “You wanna say that again, mini?”

  He grinned. Ron had always been a sucker for army jokes.

  He froze. Had. He ‘had’ always been. He stared back at Ronald Taggart. His brother looked like he was in his twenties, but that wasn’t right.

  “What are you doin' here, Ron?”

  “Same thing I was doin’ the first two times I came home between tours. Gettin’ drunk, playing basketball and fixin’ all the shit around this old house before I go back. What are you doin’?

  Taggart stared hard at his brother. Something was wrong.

  Ron sighed. “Look I know you’re freaking out about signing up. It sucks, mini. Fucking sucks. But you just got to do it. You stay here, all you got comin' is drive-by’s and assholes tryin’ to take what’s yours. Least this way you get a trade and a pay check for somebody shooting at you.”