Quarantined Planet Read online

  Carver puts his hand up again, “If a big enough rock makes it through the grid, it wouldn’t even take a direct hit to wipe us all out. Find that ship.”

  “And if we don’t?” Nix says getting an evil eye from his captain.

  “Get underway as quickly as possible.”

  Gordon adjusts the collar of his suit. “Yes, of course, Governor.”

  There’s an uncomfortable hesitation before he and his mates begin shuffling out. The room erupts with heated discussion.

  “Gordon, a moment alone, please?” McKenna asks.

  Governor Carver pushes his way past chattering bystanders and corners Chloe. “Another rough landing?”

  “Yes, Governor.” She blushes.

  “I’ve come to trust Gordon’s decisions, but you in the pilot seat…I just don’t think you’re right for it.”

  “Yes, Governor,” she says, unable to look him in the eyes.

  ***

  Minutes later, Nix and Chloe dash through the collection of beached spaceships that make up Saucer City.

  “Hey, ya think,” Nix stops her, “maybe I should stay behind on this one?”

  “I know I’m not going.”

  “Really?”

  “I quit. I’m done.”

  “Well, good then. Me, too. It’s crazy.”

  Gordon sprints up. “Nix, Chloe, get back to the ship.”

  “On our way,” Nix replies enthusiastically as Chloe darts off in the opposite direction, kicking up a little swirl of dust.

  Nix watches her walk away, then turns to Gordon looking like a deer in headlights. Although the young man is an annoying smart aleck, Gordon loves him like a son. He’s a hard worker who doesn’t complain too much.

  “What? Close your mouth and get going,” Gordon orders.

  “It’s nuts,” Nix says, struggling with whether to obey or follow Chloe’s example.

  “Hey, we enjoy the bloody perks…now we have to earn ‘em.”

  “No amount of extra food, cider…hero worship is—I mean—I don’t think we’re coming back from this one…”

  “Nix, we’ll be fine. Now go.”

  Gordon charges off, leaving his young crewman standing open-mouthed.

  Gordon served as a chef in the British navy before he was abducted on May 7, 1975. He never had the chance to marry or have a family. While he thinks of Nix as a son, he’s never thought of Chloe as a daughter and certainly doesn’t think about her the way other men do. He respects the young woman as an equal even while, at times, doubting his choice to make her co-pilot.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he yells, still at some distance.

  “I’ve no talent for it, Gordon,” she yells back as he catches up.

  “Hey, talent is crap. What you lack is courage.”

  “If I ever—ever hurt either of you, I could never live with it. Okay? So stop.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.” He grabs her by the arm, and she stops walking.

  "I know people don’t think I belong in that chair…that I slept with him, and that’s the only reason–”

  “Chloe, I don’t care. You wouldn’t be in that chair if I didn’t think you belonged there.”

  There’s yelling in the background as two men they don’t recognize and Marta, the town nuisance, argue over a basket of alien fruit. It provides a momentary distraction.

  “Look. Just do everyone a favor. Train Nix.”

  “Oh, come on, Nix operates like a tortoise giving birth.”

  Angered, Chloe sprints toward the scuffling combatants and is soon between them.

  “Marta, stop. It’s okay.” She puts a comforting arm around the dungy woman. “I’ve extra—you can have it.”

  Marta hadn’t always been the town nutcase. She’d been slipping into senility for a couple of years, and Chloe had developed a soft spot for her.

  “Marta, let go. I have plenty for you.”

  The men gently take their basket, thank Chloe, and leave.

  “Come on, Marta. Let’s get you home.”

  Chloe leads the woman away, looking over her shoulder at Gordon, who shakes his head and huffs off.

  Chapter Eight

  Chloe meanders alone past metal structures made from bits and pieces of alien spaceships. Sandwiched between two is an outdoor church. Reverend Evan Desage is a tall, bald man wearing a long brown robe and cross around his neck. He stands in front of a life-size crucifix carved from small tree trunks and set on a small stage several meters above ground. She overhears his sermon while trotting a little faster.

  “Earth isn’t gone,” he proclaims. “It just needs to heal—we’ll return there. Oh, Chloe. Chloe, join us.”

  A believer joins in with an eager, “Yes, Chloe, please join us.”

  Her attempts to sneak past the faithful never work, and always she thinks, Take another route next time. While she might not know all of Gaea’s thirty-five hundred residents, they all know who she is. As pilot, one takes on a sort of celebrity status. Having the whitest, straightest teeth of any woman on the planet doesn’t hurt either.

  “Death isn’t the end, Chloe,” the pastor continues. “It’s the beginning. All of us will return home. Like angels. Who needs a ship? The eternal core within us—the soul, our essence, whatever you want to call it—it knows the way back. The way back to Earth…” More than the religion, Chloe is irked by the belief that Earth is still out there somewhere. She waves a pleasant no and scampers up the stairs of another grounded ship.

  The former star cruiser looks like a library inside—not just for books, of which there are only a few, but for any and all objects collected from Earth. Several aisles of photos fill the room, each placed with reverence on shelves built out of tree branches. There’s an overly cheerful family portrait, some college-aged kids on a beach somewhere, and row houses in sepia tones.

  The randomness of it all troubles her greatly. Why was she saved while the people in these happy photos suffered such a horrible end? Why was she so lucky? Some divine hand at work, as Reverend Desage would have her believe? No, she’d always agreed with Earl on that point—God was a creation of man.

  Dennis 72 startles her with a tap on the shoulder.

  “Oh, Dennis 72.” She swallows a breath.

  “You know a librarian should have more books to librarian over.”

  “You say that every time.”

  “Do I?” Dennis tilts his head and smiles gently. He regards Chloe with the weight of sixty-seven years of wisdom in his eyes. If anyone knew his real last name, it had been long forgotten. Some years prior, he began a trend among hippie-types of changing one’s last name to the year he or she was abducted. So Chloe would be Chloe 97. Nobody does it anymore, but Dennis still demands his fellow abductees address him that way.

  Chloe returns his smile as she steps in front of a 1970s era Pet Rock.

  Dennis chuckles. “Funny the things people have on ‘em when taken.”

  “He looks hungry,” she says, thinking about her growling stomach.

  “You know, I’m glad you stopped by. I’ve something for you.”

  Dennis disappears for a moment while Chloe picks up the rock and turns it over, contemplating how simple and miserable life is now. All the technologies and comforts of Earth are distant memories. Why aren’t the aliens taking better care of us, she wonders.

  Dennis returns, cradling a stack of loosely bound papers under one arm. He thrusts them at her, and she takes a hop backwards.

  “What? What is all this?”

  “Something new to read. Everything I know about Sephora. How to fly her. How to fix her.”

  “Where’d you get all this paper?”

  “Never mind that. She was mine first, don’t forget.”

  “Well, I know that.” Chloe shuffles to another aisle as Dennis follows. They stop at a portrait of someone’s mother and father. “I don’t remember what they look like. Mom and Dad.”

  “You know it helps to think of them doing something.�
�

  “Hum. Dad getting ready for a concert.” She smiles. “Bach and Beethoven. Mom would turn the pages, and I—I wouldn’t behave.” Somberness comes over her. “I so want to hear him play again.”

  “Sure.”

  Chloe takes a deep breath. “Water from the moon.”

  “Water from the moon?”

  “He’d always say that, Dad. It means something that can never be.” She zones out.

  “You’re troubled - more than usual.”

  “Guess I don’t think we’re doing well by those who didn’t make it, you know? We still cheat and lie and hurt each other—and the city’s divided up by races and churches. People who believe Earth is still out there somewhere…”

  “Yup, I hear ya…”

  “And, you know, Nix thinks they’ve given up on us. I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if we were…” She picks up the portrait. “If we were even worth saving at all?”

  “Wow—heavy stuff. Look, Chloe.” Dennis takes the photo and places it back on its shelf before resting a hand on her shoulder. “That they went to such efforts to preserve us must mean there’s hope, right?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just so disappointed in the human race.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you.”

  “And I’m done with flying. I know that.”

  “Oh, so that’s it.” He places the book in her hands, and she takes hold, fumbling to keep all the loosely bound, hand-written pages from slipping out. “Nonsense, you’re not the giving-up kind.” He winks, adding one final paper to the collection. “That wouldn’t be doing right by those who didn’t make it.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You know—that brings me to another thing.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I was thinking, it wouldn’t surprise me if your former captain is behind this somehow. That supply ship being late.”

  The young woman perks up. “Amon? You’re the second person to say that today. How, why?”

  “Because I don’t think they’ve given up on us—and they’ve never been late before.”

  Chapter Nine

  Saucer City appears tiny from the hillside of wilted forest the Back-to-Earthers call home. Forty or so outcasts have cobbled together a few metal structures from pieces of terraforming machines the Greys left behind and clustered them among the dead trees.

  Gordon helps Tivis Lowe, a fit, short black man in his forties, secure a door to one of the shelters. Like everyone on Gaea, Tivis is quite thin. He speaks with a deep, raspy voice. “If I graciously decline, will you hold it against me?”

  “Look, T, I really need a proper co-pilot.” Gordon smiles, something he doesn’t do often. “Going to be tricky navigating that asteroid field.”

  “And Carver’s allowing me back into the fold?”

  “Well, now…no. Not exactly. It’s help us, or it’s the hole.”

  “He’d put me away again? That son of a bitch.”

  “Come on, Tivis. Listen, yeah? We’re an endangered species. We don’t have the luxury of staying divided.” They stop working on the troublesome shelter door.

  “Well, the hole it is then. You expect Carver will do it himself or send that Irish prick out here?”

  Prison, jail, the hole. He had spent a good share of time in all of them. Before his abduction, he’d clocked five years in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center for insider trading. None of that bothered him.

  “Look, you stubborn git, just come back with me and help us.”

  Tivis drops a hand-made hammer and canters off into the forest. “Help you bail out a bunch of slates? You know how I feel about that.”

  Gordon follows close behind. “No, no. It’s about us, T. We need what’s on that ship.”

  “Good. Then retrieve it and let them rot, since they won’t take us home.”

  “I’m still not convinced they have a choice in that matter.”

  “Don’t tell me you believe that ‘Earth is gone’ nonsense. They saved us? Really?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Gordon sighs. “How’s Jane?”

  “Well, she’s…emaciated. Suicidal, you know? Like the rest of us.”

  “Wasn’t she a nurse? She has medical experience, yeah?”

  “No, Gordon. Don’t even start.”

  “Look, I need your help. Both of you.”

  “You need your head examined.”

  “Tivis. It’d be the hole for her, too.”

  Tivis stops cold.

  Chapter Ten

  There’s a path of downed trees up to where Sephora rests from Chloe’s sixth failed attempt at landing. Gordon is giving his ship a walk around inspection as the young woman runs up, holding her hand-bound ship’s manual. She and Gordon must yell to be heard above the low pulsing hum from Sephora’s anti-matter engine.

  “What changed your mind?” he asks her.

  “Guess I’m not the quitting kind.”

  “Suit up quick and take the radio seat.”

  The spark goes out of her eyes. “Radio?”

  In Sephora’s flight deck, Nix is strapped down tight at a station behind Gordon’s chair, and Tivis occupies the co-pilot’s seat.

  Jane Li, a pretty Chinese woman who celebrated her thirty-third birthday one day prior to her abduction, is busy securing small storage boxes at the rear of the cabin as Chloe enters.

  “Hello, Chloe,” she says in her delicate and quiet way.

  “Hi, Jane, nice to see you again,” Chloe responds before removing her T-shirt and pants. Nix is captivated as she, in skimpy underwear, retrieves her space suit from beneath a chair and puts it on. Tivis can’t help but look either until Jane glares at him.

  The girl finally takes her place to the left and behind Tivis. Nix, directly opposite, continues to eyeball her for some time, but she avoids his gaze.

  Gordon enters and doesn’t take long to settle into the pilot’s chair. “Chloe, Jane, strap in.”

  “Maybe you should leave your clothes off,” Tivis whispers over his shoulder to Chloe, “being a tease, you’re good at.”

  “I get it—you don’t like me,” she says.

  “If you could fly, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Knock it off,” Gordon tells them. “Let’s go.”

  The craft lights up and lifts off, shooting straight up into the Gaean sky.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sephora slows and hovers near one of the troublesome gaps in the rock buster grid. Just beyond is the swirling, violent asteroid field surrounding Gaea. Normally, the Greys would have fixed any such issue with the protective field. Their absence has left everyone not only very hungry, but quite anxious as well.

  There’s a moment of shock and awe across the faces of Sephora’s crew. “Wow, wow, wow,” is all Gordon can think to say.

  “How are we ever gonna find this ship?” Nix questions. “I mean, its space. It’s…big.”

  “Earl somehow calculated the course they take to get here,” Tivis explains. “I happen to know what it is.”

  “So that’s why you’re here,” Chloe says.

  “Not entirely,” he answers followed by a scowl in Gordon’s direction.

  “I don’t understand,” Jane talks over him. “How do the big supply ships get through this?”

  “They have big guns,” Nix says.

  Gordon’s wrinkles deepen. “Everyone, shut it. Ready, T?”

  “No,” Tivis responds without hesitation.

  Sephora’s engines ignite, and she nose dives straight into the asteroid field. The sleek ship zips in and around a cascade of space rocks, weaving from side to side through smaller stones, clipping a colossal ice ball. The jolt sends a box of tools crashing across Sephora’s flight deck.

  Nix leaves his seat to look out a side porthole. “Holy Mamma.”

  “Nix, sit down,” Jane implores.

  “Damn it, Nix, strap in,” Gordon commands.

  The young man ignores him while Tivis blurts out, “Go left.”

  S
ephora, nearly blind-sided by a jagged boulder, swerves around others before reaching a bit of a clearing that allows Gordon a few seconds to catch his breath.

  “This is insane,” Tivis wipes his brow.

  “Guys,” Nix says with urgency. “Gordon! Move!”

  Gordon and Tivis see the massive boulder coming their way.

  Sephora zings out of the rock’s path with a second or two to spare but is soon caught in another barrage of stone and ice. A couple of smaller fragments bounce off her hull.

  Chloe gasps and Nix is tossed across the deck as Sephora makes a sharp turn. She zigzags over, under, and around more rocks, barely passing between two as they scrape together, pelting her hull with bits that sound like hail on a metal awning.

  “We have to come back this way, you know,” Tivis says in his low, raspy way.

  “I think they’re thinning out,” Gordon observes.

  And just like that, the space ahead is mostly clear with only an occasional and easily-avoidable rock visible out Sephora’s forward windows.

  “Bloody hell,” Gordon sighs.

  There’s a few seconds of silence while everyone gathers their wits, and then Nix pipes up with, “That didn’t seem so bad, actually.”

  The man’s hit with a volley of violent ‘sit downs’ and ‘shut ups’ from all but Gordon who says, “Nix, you mop head, strap in!”

  “Okay.” Putting his hands up as if to surrender, the young man sits down.

  Gordon didn’t feel like sharing with the others, but he thought it was a bit too easy as well. Along with most, he’d been led to believe that, in this solar system, Gaea had once been the only rock big enough and with sufficient gravity to become a planet, floating along in a river of materials that never would—an endless asteroid field. From out here, however, the rocks and ice seemed limited to an orbit just a few kilometers above. He checks his crew and winks at Chloe.

  “Let’s go find that supply ship.”

  Sephora is not capable of generating a space-hopping wormhole and, like all Alien Grey vessels, isn’t able to travel faster than light but she’s fast. After a flash from her engines, the tiny ship disappears in a field of stars.