Chapter 16 Elana
I don’t know what I expected, but this isn’t it.
After navigating through the asteroid belt painfully slowly for several hours, Rotten gives the order to blast our way through the rest. It seems needlessly bombastic, dangerous, and slightly ridiculous at the same time. In other words, totally Rotten.
It says something about Falen, Wyn and the crew that they take the order in stride, like this is something they’ve done before. Wait. Have they done this before? Oh, my stars, Rotten is something else.
“Fire!” Rotten commands in an excited voice.
Wyn responds by pushing a red button that sends an honest-to-goodness missile at the asteroid in front of us. Falen keeps us moving steadily forward, not even waiting to see if the asteroid explodes as planned.
It does! I feel like clapping. The view screen lights up with the bright white blast as the asteroid bursts and pelts The Defiant with clods of dirt.
Not that all that dirt is good for a spaceship.
I know Rotten is keeping an eye on the shield health gauge on his readout panel.
I stand on my tiptoes to see. The shields are at 75 percent.
BAM!
Another asteroid explodes in front of us. This is madness. I look over at Rotten, who smiles his best pirate smile. And it gives me butterflies and maybe something more like heart palpitations.
“Do you want to press the button for the next missile?” he asks me.
“Yes, I do.” I giggle, because how could I not giggle?
“3, 2, 1, press now!”
I press the button and the missile releases. I watch transfixed as it slams into the huge asteroid in our path.
BOOM!
Instead of obliterating the asteroid, the blast breaks it in half. Dust rains down at us again. I check the shield gauge. We’re at 65% now. Yikes!
“Rotten, if we keep losing ten percent of our shields, we’ll be down to nothing in six more blasts,” I say.
“Don’t worry Elana. I have this under control.”
“Time to fire again,” Falen says urgently.
Rotten presses the button and says, “Firing now!”
Another missile tears out into space, ripping an asteroid into pieces. This time a giant chunk of dirt makes a direct hit on the view port with a sickening thunk.
The shields are now at 50%.
“Rotten you’ve got to stop blasting. I know we can’t move too slow, but maybe there’s a way to save the shields a little.” My panic is real now.
Rotten looks like he wants to argue.
“She’s right, you know. We could do a little less blasting and a little more evading,” Wyn says.
“Alright. Falen, let’s see if we can keep going at a reasonable pace with 50% less blasting.”
“I can do that. But everyone’s going to need to buckle in. There’s going to be a lot of sharp movements and near misses.”
“Sounds exciting!” Rotten says.
I feel a trickle of sweat drop down my back. I know this is probably better than blasting everything, but it still fills me with dread.
Rotten presses the ship comm.
“Buckle in everyone, we’ll be running evasive maneuvers the rest of the way through this asteroid belt. It’s going to get bumpy.”
He gives me a happy thumbs up, which I weakly return.
“You ready, Elana? You can sit down right over there.” He points to the co-pilot seat where Wyn usually sits.
“Are you sure Wyn won’t mind?” I glance back at Wyn who’s been standing by his side.
“I’ll be fine. How about you, Elana, you look a little green.” Wyn’s eye’s narrow in concern. Then Rotten takes a closer look at me. Before he can say anything the ship lurches hard to the left. I stumble, just barely managing to stay upright by grabbing the chair.
“Whoa. You better sit down now. It’s only going to get worse.” Rotten grips the console to keep upright.
I slide bonelessly into the seat and buckle in. The ship lurches again. I check and see that the shields have stayed steady. Well, that’s something. Then we suddenly lose altitude, and the ship shakes as the tip of an asteroid scrapes the top of the hull.
“Is that okay,” I whisper, terrified.
“Yeah, it’s actually much better for the shields than getting hit head-on by all that dirt,” Wyn explains.
“Oh good,” I mutter, not comforted at all.
I don’t say anything more for the next few minutes. We swoop and dip, zigzag and spin. I frankly feel like I might die even though everyone else looks like this is a normal day at the office. My heart is pounding and I’m sweating profusely. I think it might be time to start praying.
“Are you okay Elana? You’re breathing hard and your cheeks look flushed.” It’s Rotten’s voice but somehow, I can’t manage to focus my eyes on him.
“I’m fine. I think I just need a little–” before I can finish, the world goes dark around me.
***
“Elana, are you okay?” I blink my eyes and see Rotten crouched by my side. He looks worried, and a little guilty if I’m not mistaken. “You blacked out there for a while.”
“It was all the zigzagging. And the fear,” I manage to say and try to straighten up in my seat. A cool compress which had been on my forehead falls into my lap.
I’m relieved to see him and doubly relieved that we seem to be lurching around a lot less. I grab the compress and twist it in my hands. I’m embarrassed that I passed out. It makes me feel more out of place than ever on this ship and in Rotten’s life. He rubs a gentle thumb over my cheek.
“Don’t worry. We’re going a little steadier now and only blasting when needed. We should only be a little late to pick up your friends.”
“That’s good.”
He looks at me intensely for a moment.
“You scared me back there. It’s like the lights just went out and you were gone.”
I nod, wishing I could pretend it didn’t happen.
“Yeah, I get motion sick easily and that was more than I can handle.”
“You should have told me. I would have gone easier.”
My chest tightens and I shake my head.
“I don’t want you ever to go easy on me. I want to be able to keep up with you.”
“Darling, I’ll always wait for you no matter where we are.”
The words pierce me to the core. He’s such a sweetheart.
“I’ll hold you back,” I whisper.
“No, you’ll keep me tethered. You may have noticed I tend to act first and deal with consequences later.”
“I have noticed that.” I smile a little.
“And maybe you tend to hold back.”
He lifts my chin and smiles affectionately at me.
“That’s true,” I say.
“So, I can pull you out of your shell and you can hold me back from the brink. It sounds like a good balance to me.”
“Maybe it is.”
Before we can say anything more, Wyn approaches Rotten.
“Hey Captain, we’re within range of the escape pod. We should try to connect now.”
Rotten looks to me before he answers. I nod and he stands to join Wyn.
“Alright let’s make this rescue happen!”
***
It doesn’t take long to hash out details.
The Defiant will link up with the escape pod and Brigitta and Loren will come onboard.
Then we can tow them all to Xanx where we can meet up with Mia.
There’s so much to tell Brigitta about, so much to discuss.
And what about Orocopa 1? With all the excitement, I nearly forgot it was here.
Before he disconnected, Loren warned Rotten to keep away from the planet, that some invisible force was shooting at anyone who approached. He didn’t go into details, but he said they were protecting an illusion. What does that mean?
I step over to the viewport. In front of me is a huge, glowing, gold planet: Orocopa 1. What about it is just an illusion? It’s very clear that something is out there.
Except, there’s something off about it. It seems picture perfect, not like a regular planet.
And then it appears to shake. I think about the dust patterns.
Over the past days I’ve been running simulations on the dust pattern data, and it always comes up funny, as if Orocopa has no gravitational pull.
Like none, which is impossible for a planet that size.
And then, right as I’m watching, Orocopa 1 shakes again. What the ever-loving stars is happening? Planets don’t shake or shiver. It’s like…no…it can’t be.
“Orocopa 1 isn’t a planet. It’s just an image.” I say it loud enough that the crew members swing around and look at me.
I tease the idea out in my head. That has to be what Loren meant.
Brigitta must have discovered something, too.
How does this fit with what happened to Mia?
Does one ship go through the galaxy swallowing planets while another one goes through erecting fake ones?
Why would anybody do that? And who would want to?
It sounds inhuman to me, something out of a bad science fiction book, an artificial intelligence run amuck. Like someone programmed it to get all the information about the planets in the galaxy and it took the assignment too literally.
I want to laugh, because honestly, I can’t think of a better explanation. Would someone from Earth or Xanx program such an AI? It wouldn’t make sense, unless it really did get away from them. The idea of a third unknown species makes even more sense to me, even though it’s practically unbelievable.
Rotten steps onto the bridge and winks at me. The butterflies in my belly flutter like crazy. I think I fainted earlier today because I was motion sick, but also, I was overwhelmed by the fear, the excitement, by everything.
I’m not built for non-stop thrills though I do enjoy it in little bursts. I wonder how Rotten would feel about taking some downtime with me while I work with the ladies to sort this all out. I’m afraid we’re entering the quiet phase of our investigation, and he doesn’t seem like the quiet type.
***
“Orocopa 1 is a projection. There’s no planet there at all,” Brigitta explains once she’s had a minute to freshen up.
Brigitta, Loren, Rotten, and I are sitting around the table in the kitchen deck. Our new passengers were famished when they came aboard.
“We did a 360-degree image capture. It was from a distance, but Brigitta says it will help us identify the technology powering the illusion,” Loren says and pops some nuts in his mouth.
Loren is a giant of a Xanxian, bigger than Rotten or even Wyn, but he has a gentleness about him that makes him easy to talk to. Then I remember he was in charge of interviewing the cast members when we were working on the show. It seems like a million years ago now.
“Can we look at the images? Do you have a theory on what’s behind it?” I ask the newcomers.
“I think that’s my cue to attend to ship business.” Rotten pushes up from the table and heads for the door. I give him a smile, hoping that he doesn’t think I’m hopelessly boring. “Tell me when it’s time to blow something up,” he calls from the corridor.
I laugh. He doesn’t seem to mind that we have different interests. Maybe there is hope for the two of us. Brigitta clears her throat, and I snap back to the conversation at hand.
“I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I’ve never seen technology like this before,” she says. And that means…
“It’s aliens,” I whisper.
“We don’t know that for sure. It could be some top-secret military tech we’re not aware of. I have a number of hypotheses,” she continues.
“But aliens are at the top of the list.” I take a sip of coffee. I’m going to need all the brain power I can get in the coming hours.
Brigitta doesn’t respond but inclines her head.
“You mentioned that Mia and Kellan are safe after some kind of adventure,” Loren says, changing the topic.
“Yes! You’re never going to believe this, they somehow ended up on a small planet, Xanxes 8 in the Calyx sector. Right after they left, a mystery ship came and gobbled the planet up.”
“It did what?” Brigitta looks genuinely shocked.
“Swallowed the whole thing. Poof, the planet is gone,” I explain.
Brigitta stays quiet, obviously thinking through this new information.
“Do we know why they were there?” Loren asks.
“No. When we return to Xanx we can ask them. Maybe they were investigating a lead in the attack. Mia seems like someone who would chase answers.”
“I think we all are.” Loren smiles.
“I guess so.” I smile back.
“You’ve really come out of your shell, Elana. I’m glad you’re safe and doing well.”
“Thank you. I think Rotten’s been a good influence on me.”
“Really?” Brigitta asks.
“Amazingly, yes. When I’m around him I find it’s easier to be myself. I guess courage is contagious,” I explain.
“There’s nothing like love, to open new horizons,” Loren says, then gazes adoringly at Brigitta.
She blushes.
“Yes, there are certainly upsides to love,” she says, still sounding surprisingly serious.
I’m not sure what to say. Things are too uncertain for me to say that love conquers all. But I’m beginning to think it has a fighting chance. We’ll see what happens when we get back to Xanx. Can our relationship survive when we’re not in crisis mode?