Across The Universe With A Giant Housecat (The Blue) (17 page)

In five weeks, we would be back at Iron Horn Base. I would see Katelyn again.
 

Chapter 26

For weeks, we traveled through hyperspace.
 

We were finally again in inhabited space. It felt so good to know that the planets we passed were inhabited, at least on a sparse level. We were not alone anymore.

Two days from reaching our destination of Iron Horn Base, the ship encountered trouble in the form of worrying imminent power failure messages that popped up on the display. I relayed this over to the captain, who decided that we should set the ship down on the nearest colony world—a short two hour trip from where we were—rather than risk continuing on towards Iron Horn Base.

We did this uneventfully. The colony world was a sparsely populated but notoriously rough place called Heartbreak.

In a strange twist of fate, its climate was as mild as its populace was rough. I set the alien ship down mere yards from the shores of a clear sea, but at a safe distance from any settlements.

The captain set his ship down nearby, then sent out a message to Iron Horn Base, informing them of our predicament.

Within the hour, he received a reply, which he sent to me. The captain—and the rest of us—were ordered by Standing Admiral Northe to remain with the
Freedom
until a carrier ship arrived to scoop the alien ship up and sail away with it back to Iron Horn Base. We were forbidden to abandon the ship, for fear it could fall into the wrong hands.

So I settled in to wait, with everyone else. Perhaps I could catch a few naps.

Our stay on the colony world ended up being longer than I had expected. We waited patiently for the carrier ship to arrive each day. But, as I discovered later, all the carrier barges were in use in other parts of the galaxy at the moment; the soonest one could come to our rescue would be a few weeks. So, until then, we had to sit quietly on our little colony world.

Everyone settled into a routine during this time of waiting.
Samantha, Leo, the aliens, and I rarely went aboard the
Freedom
after the first few days. The alien ship sat empty, guarded by the watchful sensors of the rescue ship.
 

Leo was the first one to take a dive in the water of the sea. Samantha took a sample of the water, placed it into some sort of analysis machine, and deemed it safe. After her announcement, the rest of us, including the rescue ship’s crew, were more than happy to spend afternoons swimming.

We saw few of the planet’s populace, for which I was grateful.

The aliens, for their part, stayed aboard the rescue ship. They were nervous about entering human society again, I could tell. They spent most of their time asking questions, researching their families or friends, and reading. They had a lot of history to catch up on, so I tried to help them wherever I could. Samantha and I owed them our lives.

After a few weeks, the captain was happy to announce that the carrier ship
Titan
was on its way to us and would be arriving tomorrow. Everyone cheered, including me. Though the colony planet was wonderful, I was tired of being there. I had had my fill of paradises for a little while.

After lunch that day, I realized I had left my knife aboard the
Freedom
, and headed over to the ship to retrieve it.

The ship was dark and empty, reminding me of the first time I had seen it. I found my knife and, before leaving, took a moment to gaze at the ship’s alien interior.

“If it had not been for you, we would still be stuck on that planet,” I whispered. “Thank you, ancient aliens.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I turned around.

Someone was standing there, behind me in the shadows. Instantly on guard, I moved backwards. The intruder moved forward into the light of one of the windows.

My eyes widened and my mouth dropped open.

It was Useia. The love of my life, whom I had given up on as lost to me. She was alive and standing before me.

“Hi, Alan,” she said softly. “I’m back.”

Chapter 27

“I’m back,” she repeated as I continued to stare.

“Useia!” Somehow, I had discovered my voice. “You’re here! It has been so long!”

She moved forward, nodding. “Too long. I’ve missed you. I—I still—I mean, I hope you still…”

“I still love you,” I said firmly. “As much as before, if not more.”

“That’s all I needed to hear,” she said. “I’m coming with you. I’m back for good, I promise.”

I gazed at her as she stood before me. Her short hair had grown longer, and had started to curl at the ends. She had pulled it back in a haphazard way that suggested that she either didn’t care or that she was still learning how to live with longer hair. Either way, I knew that if she was still sporting that style when we returned to Iron Horn Base, Katelyn would pull her aside at the earliest opportunity and give her beauty lessons whether she wanted them or not.

She had changed her top, too. She had swapped the utilitarian tank top she had worn as an assassin for something with a pattern on it—swirls of some kind. Perhaps her mother had given it to her, saying she had liked such things when she was younger. Useia still wore the same cargo pants and heavy boots she had worn before, and I could tell from a slight bulge in a few of the
 
pants pockets that she was probably carrying her usual complement of knives, her weapon of choice.

I reached out to touch her arm. “You’re really here. You’re real. You’re not dead.”

She came forward, sinking into my arms. I held her, drinking in the scent I had missed for the year we were apart. This, holding her, made all I had endured worth it.

“You were gone for so long,” I murmured into her hair. “I thought you were dead, or had changed your mind.”

She pulled back. “Never,” she said, her eyes lighting up with passion. “Never. I just had to tie up a few loose ends, that’s all.”

“I got cornered by one of the assassins who was loyal to Trilloque and thought maybe one had found you too.”

She shifted her gaze away. “Well the loose ends I tied up were related to that, partially. It seems there was something of an underground bounty on your head for the few assassins left free who had been Trilloque’s loyal peons.” Her gaze met mine again, as sharp as a dagger. “
They
won’t be a problem anymore. I took care of it.”

I thought it best not to ask.

“How did you find me here?” I asked instead.

“After I had handled my affairs, I went to come find you, only to find out that you had just left on some deep space mission. I went back to my family, thinking I’d just find you again when you returned from your mission. But when I heard you were on your way back, I jumped on the nearest transport to get to you. Then you were stuck here, so it was easy enough to find you.” She said it easily, as if tracking down one person in a whole galaxy was a simple thing she did every day. Though, for all I knew, she
had
done such things daily when she had been an assassin.

“Impressive,” I said. “The best Katelyn and I were able to do was a call to your family’s farm right before I left.”

“You have your specialties; I have mine,” she said.

“Will you come back to Iron Horn Base with me?” I asked. “I have to see this mission through to the end.”

She nodded. “I will come with you.”

#

The carrier arrived the next day. It was enormous, its bulk blocking out the sun as it got into position over us. It remained high in the atmosphere, like a bloated fly overhead, the noise from its engines deafening.

I couldn’t wait to see it up close.

The captain had decided that Samantha and I should go aboard the carrier for the remainder of the journey, just to be on hand if any issues should arise with the
Freedom
during the two-day journey to Iron Horn Base. We were the resident alien technology experts now, after all.

I had no objections to this plan.
 

From its position above us, the carrier fixed its powerful grav clamp onto the
Freedom
and began to draw the alien ship up from the planet’s surface and towards one of the carrier’s onboard bays. Fascinated, I watched.

After the
Freedom
was safely stowed aboard the carrier, the carrier’s crew sent a shuttle down to pick us up. Samantha, Leo, Useia, and I climbed aboard, ignoring the astonished looks of the shuttle’s crew, who had clearly been told to expect only two people, not three and a kyvat.

“They’re with me,” I offered as explanation.

After a nod from the pilot, the shuttle left the planet’s surface and flew up towards the carrier. I tried not to stare. The carrier was even more majestic up close. Everything about it made the other ships I was familiar with, even the
Indomitable
, seem comically tiny and dainty in comparison. It was at least twenty times the size of the
Indomitable
, its hull studded with openings—bays where average-sized ships had been docked. As we drew near, I spotted the
Freedom
parked safely in one of those bays.

After our shuttle docked, a young woman met us in the bay. “Alan Michael Wolf? Dr. Samantha Selburn? Welcome aboard the carrier ship
Titan
. I’m to show you to your quarters for the remainder of this voyage.” She handed me a data chip. “We received a communiqué that was meant for you, Mr. Wolf. It’s from your sister. You can look at it in your quarters.”

I took the chip from her, fingering it and smiling. I couldn’t wait to see Katelyn’s smiling face again. Part of me was still in shock that I would even
get
to see her again. But somehow, with alien help, Samantha and I had done it. The aliens had a whole new world to see, and perhaps some old and new faces to meet. We had made it home.

#

Samantha and I stood together in the viewing room aboard the carrier, Leo at our feet, looking bored. Useia was down the hall, taking a shower.

The viewing room was large, with a huge window that spanned the length of one of the walls. The window looked out into space, where the colony world we had just left grew smaller and smaller as we left it behind. The darkness of space, sparkling with stars, filled the rest of our view.

“Do you know which direction Coriolanus is?” I asked Samantha.

She nodded, the fingers of one hand drumming on her pregnant belly. “Of course.” She nodded to my right. “That way. Is it the same for you?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Still a Space Reader, just like you.”

“Maybe they’ll find some use for our kind eventually.”

My lip curved in a half smile. “They sent us out there to get field experience. I’d say they succeeded in that.” The colony world was nearly a speck now, hardly discernible from the rest of the heavenly bodies.

“So,” said Samantha sadly, “we still haven’t found any aliens.
 
We know about the wonderful creatures who made the oasis on that planet long ago, but now we will never get to meet them. We’ll never get to talk to them.” She looked out the window at the universe around us, her hand still on her rounded abdomen.

“Maybe they are still out there, Samantha. Somewhere among the stars. We just haven’t found them yet.”

She nodded. “Maybe someday we will.”

Moving so I stood next to her, I stared out at the stars with her. She was right and I knew it. The odds of us finding the beautiful aliens who created the healing planet were slim. The galaxy was a big place, and we were only at the edge of the small part of it that humans had explored and colonized. There would be more exploration, sure, but it was unlikely that we would discover aliens in our lifetimes.

Useia appeared in the doorway, her hair still wet from the shower. I went over to her, folding her in my arms. And she spoke the words I had so longed to hear.

“I love you, Alan Michael Wolf. I never want to leave you again.” She smelled wonderful, like freshness after the rains of my home world.

“Me neither. I want to stay with you forever. I want to explore the galaxy with you by my side.”

The monitor at the side of the room buzzed, its screen filling with static. The lights dimmed, an alarm sounding across the ship.

“What happened?” I asked, turning to Samantha.

Samantha was staring out the window, her face rapt with joy. Out the window, and nearly atop us, was the most enormous spaceship I had ever seen.

It was an alien ship.

The ship was a deep blue-black, the color of the alien obelisk. The same kind of alien writing covered her giant hull. Several blue lights danced across her.

She was the full-grown whale to our tiny fish.

And just as swiftly and silently as she had appeared, the alien ship vanished. The monitors and lights around us returned to normal, but none of the three of us noticed that.

We had seen an alien spaceship.

The ancient race of aliens that had saved us were still out there, alive.

“I saw them,” whispered Samantha. “They spoke to me. They told me I’m having twins. A girl and a boy.” Her eyes filled with tears of happiness. She cradled her abdomen, looking out at the stars. “I’m going to continue working with the Stellar Intrepid, Alan.”

“Really?”

“Yes. For better or for worse, these past few months have been the most exciting of my life. Over and over again, I was sure I was going to die, but I didn’t. That was nothing short of a miracle, and I’m not in the habit of squandering miracles.”

For my part, I turned my back on the stars and instead gazed into the face of Useia, the woman I loved. The aliens and their mysteries could wait. My own future was starting.

The End

A Little Favor

Hello there! This is Stephanie Void. I hope you enjoyed my book.
 

I’d really be extra grateful if you did a small favor for me. I’m an indie author, which means reviews really help me out. I’d love it if you would leave a review of my book on whatever site you got it from. It doesn’t have to be a long review at all—just a few sentences of what you thought about it.