Quarantined Planet Read online

  ***

  Gordon’s lift careens with neck-breaking speed further and further into the planet’s interior, but it’s still not fast enough for him.

  “Oh, bloody come on.”

  ***

  High above the world and its ring of orbiting debris, what remains of old space-race junk, Lilith drifts along; she’s been there for some time.

  In the ship’s flight deck, Earl stares vacantly out the forward ports into space. His trigger hand twitches nervously and taps around the same switch he’d held while alone in Cocoon Cavern. Some doubts about what he planned to do are eroding his resolve.

  An alarm sounds from a station behind him. He first checks a display on the helm and then stretches for a look outside his ship just in time to see Sephora make a sharp turn and accelerate in his direction.

  It’s just seconds before he hears the piercing sound of crunching metal. He’s thrown across the flight deck.

  Chloe lifts her head from the control panel, blood running into an eye from a cut on her brow. Sephora’s power flickers, the helm turns red, and several alarms sound. It was another hard jolt for a ship that’s had one too many and wasn’t constructed for such poundings in the first place. The vessels break apart, and bits of each sail off in all directions.

  Earl drags himself up off the floor and ambles to Lilith’s communication terminal. “Well, that was unexpected,” he broadcasts to the other ship.

  Chloe’s Sephora manual is on the helm beside her. She had a plan but wasn’t fast enough to make it work. Looking out the forward port, she is certain that Lilith has drifted too far.

  Earl pipes up over the static on her craft’s hollow-sounding radio. “That can only be you, Chloe.”

  With a few finger strokes, Sephora’s engines ignite, and the battered vessel barrels toward Lilith. Chloe straps herself into the pilot’s chair and braces for another impact. Her eyes close tight, and she turns away just as the ships smash together.

  Sephora pile-drives Lilith in the moon’s direction, but Earl pushes back with all his ship has. Breaking loose from Sephora isn’t easy, but after a long moment of grinding metal, the craft is free and blasts away. The force catapults Sephora into a lateral spin that Chloe quickly corrects. However, she loses track of the other ship and leaves her seat, darting from port to port, until she spots Lilith at a distance.

  Earl’s on the radio again. “Violence is catching, isn’t it, Chloe? There was a time you couldn’t hurt a fly. Now, look at you, trying to smash me to bits, proving my point about us.”

  While she watches, the other craft comes about and rockets in her direction. Chloe scrambles back to the ship’s controls. With all the weary craft can muster, Sephora hobbles toward a sea of ragged moon bits. Lilith is gaining.

  Chloe looks over her shoulder to no avail. The rear ports are too small to see much of anything, and in that moment of distraction, she fails to realize how quickly her ship has arrived at the rocky debris field.

  Sephora steers away from a hefty moon chunk while Lilith catches up and rams her from behind.

  Chloe is bounced out of her seat to the deck, and Sephora’s power flickers and then flames out along with her artificial gravity. All is silent except for static from the radio. Chloe floats off the floor. Her head aches, her broken fingers are throbbing, and her ribs hurt. Fatigue from so much adrenalin pumping through her for so long is beginning to take its own toll. She’s exhausted.

  Lilith, like a shark swimming in for the kill, begins to circle Sephora. A couple of moon chunks zing by while Chloe pulls herself from the floor and back to the helm.

  “Come on, come on.” she says, tapping on one button after another as she desperately attempts to revive her ship. There are a few sparks, a whiff of electricity, and everything comes back to life. A second or so later, gravity returns. Chloe smacks her head on the control panel before hitting Sephora’s floor again.

  “Oh.” She curls up in a fetal position and stays there for some time.

  ***

  “You still alive over there?” Earl asks with a hint of concern.

  Chloe wakes and climbs back into the captain’s chair. Everything is blurry, but her adrenalin kicks in again, and she puts Sephora in motion.

  “Don’t overthink it,” she says to herself.

  The crippled, dragonfly-shaped starship bolts for a spindrift of moon rocks.

  ***

  Gordon rolls the anti-matter cell along a dimly lit walkway. The device is much heavier than it looks, and he struggles to get it onto a nearby railing. He lets go of the cylinder, but it doesn’t fall far, clanking and rolling to a stop on some surface just a few meters below.

  “Oh, bugger me.”

  Gordon jumps into the darkness and lands on a metal outcropping. He feels along for Earl’s bomb and, upon finding it, pokes around for an edge. With great effort, the Brit pushes the cell over and holds perfectly still, waiting to hear it hit anything.

  “Please be bottomless,” he says. There is only silence.

  Back in the elevator, Gordon whacks a button, and it takes off.

  ***

  Sephora weaves in and around swirling chunks of moon.

  Chloe maneuvers her ship between quick dashes from porthole to porthole for a glimpse of the other.

  “Come out, come out,” Earl sings over the crackly radio.

  Lilith enters the rocky field a few hundred meters below Sephora and trails about as far behind.

  The wake from Chloe’s ship disturbs a couple of good-sized boulders, and they soon splinter out Lilith’s forward ports. Earl cringes when fragments begin pelting his craft, sounding like water droplets on a tin roof. It jogs his memory.

  “…and when the rain beats against my window pane,” he sings quietly, “I’ll think of summer days again and dream of you.”

  Chloe spots Lilith under a floating mountain and pulls the seatbelts around her, only to find they’ve snapped.

  “You singing over there?” she asks, hoping to keep him distracted.

  “It’s a song I’ve been trying to remember the words to,” Earl replies, “‘A Summer Song.’”

  “A song about summer?”

  “‘A Summer Song.’ That’s the title. Reminds me of long Sunday drives with Mom and Dad. They had a Buick with an 8-track tape player. Sing me a song, Chloe. Something from the radio you recall.”

  “Please tell me you haven’t set off your bomb,” she says, checking her ship handbook against a grouping of controls above and off center from the rest.

  “I haven’t.” She can hear a smile in his voice. “I’ll give them a few more minutes.”

  After an angry and yet relieved sigh, Chloe says, “I don’t remember any.”

  “Come on. There must be one?”

  Chloe puts Sephora in motion and takes a nosedive right into the river of stone. Earl has no time to react as Sephora appears from behind a massive rock and barrels toward him. Chloe tangles herself up in the broken seat straps as the two space vessels crunch together.

  Sephora’s power fails again, and everything goes deathly quiet except for the disconcerting sound of slowly fracturing alien glass. Chloe can do nothing but watch as her ship’s forward port begins to crack in the pattern of a spider web.

  Aboard Lilith, things aren’t much better. Indicator lights are red across the helm as Earl gingerly slides off it. Having been thrown forward by the impact, he’d inadvertently flipped the switch that ignites his anti-matter bomb.

  ***

  At that same moment, a sudden thunderclap is followed by a horrible, low-pitched rumbling beneath Gordon’s elevator. The tough Brit crouches down and holds on tight.

  An eruption of light, fire, and fine, rocky debris fills up the abyss. Gordon’s lift is soon engulfed by the storm.

  ***

  Jane and Tivis stagger past the severed alien heads on their way out of the bunker. Just a few meters from exiting, Nix props up Frey, whose injuries are getting the best of him.

&nbs
p; “This is it, yes? We’re out? I’m going back,” Nix informs the other man even as the ground quakes, and there’s a thunderous roar underfoot. “Jane!” he calls out. “Help me!”

  A couple of moments pass, and Nix yells again, “Jane!”

  The Chinese woman appears.

  “I’m going back for Gordon.” He doesn’t wait for a response, and Jane knows he wouldn’t listen to one anyway. She helps Frey out of the bunker, and Nix disappears back inside it.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Sephora and Lilith drift apart with an occasional spark of electricity from one or the other. Their ships are nose-to-nose and so close that Chloe, doubled over in pain, and Earl, bruised and bloodied, can see each other quite well. Sephora’s power and gravity click back on, and luckily, Chloe drops right into the pilot’s chair.

  Her vessel’s radio crackles back to life.

  “It’s done, Chloe,” Earl says. “Well, not quite, now to finish it—to New Earth.”

  She looks up and directly into his eyes with such deep rage her vision blurs with every heartbeat.

  “But first—you,” he continues. “Can’t leave anyone behind.”

  Chloe trembles, fearing she might pass out or pass away any second. She presses in sequence the off-center buttons that control her ship’s arms and hands.

  “Let’s back way off,” Earl says, “get a good, long run at each other this time.”

  She hammers one last switch.

  Sephora’s powerful metal arms, as if spring-loaded, jet from her bow. One bounces off Lilith’s hull, putting a little spin on Earl’s ship that helps the other hand punch right through her forward port.

  Earl is jolted from the pilot’s seat as Sephora’s fingers come within inches of his nose. Air streams out to space from a gap between the metallic alien hand and Lilith’s pierced window, making an eerie whistling sound.

  Earl backs up and away from the hand, laughing like someone possessed for a moment. Then he stops and picks up his gun, aiming it at Chloe. It wouldn’t take much to shatter both windows now. As weak as she is, the young woman stands straight, looking him directly in the eyes.

  Lilith’s flight deck is quickly turning cold, and Earl shivers, causing Chloe to flinch, thinking he’d fired.

  “They say that all good things must end someday,” he says, “autumn leaves must fall…”

  He turns the gun around in his hands and smashes it against Sephora’s fingers.

  “But don’t you know,” he says with another hit, “That it hurts me so.” Another hit as he continues, “To say goodbye—to you.”

  Suddenly the metal hand opens with a clang and then retracts out of Lilith, shredding her forward porthole. Earl is violently sucked into the pilot’s chair. He wraps his arms around it as the ship’s flight deck ices over. Anything not fastened down is siphoned into space.

  Earl gives Chloe a resigned smile, but she can’t watch. She turns away just before Lilith’s flight deck implodes, and Earl disappears in a bloody mingling of metal and glass.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Sephora descends through the planet’s electrically charged clouds and the jelly creature-filled sky. Tivis, Jane, Nix, and Frey, all blackened, bloodied, and bruised, seem surprised to see the ship again.

  The battered craft touches down beautifully where Lilith had been. The others rush to her and gather at the crumpled main hatch, Nix out in front. There’s a long, anxious pause until Chloe stumbles out and right into Nix’s arms. They embrace, both holding each other up.

  “Amon’s dead,” she says. “I killed him.”

  “I didn’t think we’d see you again,” Nix answers, squeezing her a little too hard.

  “Oh, ouch—Nix, easy.”

  “Sorry.”

  She checks the faces, and one is missing, “Gordon? Where’s Gordon?”

  “Well, he had to be a hero–”

  “Nix, where is he?” Chloe is all at once frantic.

  “I’m right here, love,” Gordon says, having propped himself up against a tree. Chloe limps over and hugs him so tightly they both wince in pain. “Okay, okay, love. I’ll be fine.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “A story for the road home, but all those people are safe.”

  “I was so afraid I wouldn’t see any of you again…”

  “That was a hell of a landing,” Gordon says to a brief smile from the girl. “Had me gob smacked.”

  She wraps her arms around him as tight as possible. The others, except for Tivis, gather around, and they all huddle together for a long time.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  A shaft of sunlight breaks through the dark, angry clouds. Chloe and Tivis limp around Sephora, giving her a final inspection.

  “If she’ll fly, the ship is yours,” he tells her.

  “I know,” she says, tightening a bandage around her hand. “If she’ll fly, can you fly that supply ship?”

  He nods yes.

  “Then let’s go. The guns stay here.”

  ***

  Chloe is in the pilot’s seat with Tivis as her co-pilot. Everyone else is strapped in. The broken moon with all its bits and pieces glides serenely by Sephora’s forward ports.

  “Hold together now,” she tells her ship before sending it into overdrive.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chloe stands on the hill overlooking a meteorite-ravaged Saucer City. Plumes of smoke rise in the distance. She puts a hand up to block the sun’s glare and to see the eye-shaped orbiting alien satellite. Not far from it, the large supply ship approaches and slows. Cheers go up as Governor Carver, McKenna, Gordon, Nix, Jane, Dennis, Ailee, and the rest of Gaea circle her and Sephora.

  “We’re going back there,” she says, eye-to-eye with Carver, “to bring those people home.”

  “We can talk about it,” he replies, a little put off by her uncharacteristic confidence.

  “No. We’ll find a way, and we’ll do it. And everyone here will know the truth—where we are and why.”

  “Chloe, I don’t believe it would be wise to reveal that now.”

  “So, Amon was right, you do know.”

  “Chloe, we should discuss this at a later time.”

  She puts a hand up to stop him. “Look, they did save us, maybe not in the way we were led to believe.”

  “Again, I’d like to talk about all this later.”

  “That they went to such efforts must mean there’s hope,” she continues with a wink at Dennis. “Now, we have to stop behaving like an injured squirrel, biting the hand trying to help it.”

  Carver doesn’t understand the reference, but concedes. “Okay, Chloe, okay.”

  “We’re going. We’ll bring back whatever food and supplies are on that ship and get those rock busters working. Nix?”

  The young man is standing right behind her. “I’m good,” he says.

  “Let’s go.”

  They turn for their ship.

  “Wow,” Nix says as he leans in, “you should run for governor.”

  “Oh, please.” She rolls her eyes.

  “Could you use some help?” Jane asks.

  “Yes, thank you, Jane.” Next to her, Gordon is leaning on Dennis for support. “Think we can handle this?” Chloe asks him.

  “Clearly.” He winks.

  ***

  People pat them on the back, offer up well wishes and words of love, as all three hobble toward their tattered spaceship. Before they enter Sephora’s main hatch, a grand cheer goes up. Nix can’t help but bask a little in the attention and gives the crowd a wave to an even bigger cheer.

  On the disheveled flight deck, Chloe hesitates before taking her place in the pilot’s chair. Humanity’s fate—at least for the short term—is in her hands. Jane straps herself in.

  “How is this thing still flying?” Nix says, genuinely curious and amused.

  “It—she doesn’t have the good sense to give up. Like the rest of us,” Chloe observes. She takes a deep breath. “Nix. Str
ap in, ya donkey. Shotgun.”

  He smiles and hops into the co-pilot’s chair.

  “Watch what I do.” Chloe, looking out the spider-cracked forward porthole, confidently runs her good fingers over the ship’s helm.

  Sephora’s engines roar to life as all of Gaea watches. The battle-worn ship gleams under a shaft of sunlight. She lights up, lifts off, and rockets straight up toward the Eye and the docked Alien Grey supply ship.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chloe crisscrosses the neatly manicured cemetery alone, passing cross after cross, including new ones for those they’d recently lost—Wray, Marshall, Naledri, and Frey. She kneels at the cross for Amon Earl.

  “You’re wrong, you know,” she says out loud. “You made a murderer of me, but you’re wrong.” Her eyes well up. “My God, I hope you’re wrong.”

  She slowly sits back on her legs in the rusty sand. “You know we are what we are. Sometimes our own worst enemy, but there’s no reason we can’t be better at love than we are at war. And that rock wall will come down.”

  She stands and looks to the horizon, wiping the tears away. “And it’s a beautiful day.”