MBryO: The Escape

Pax Vitar gazed broodingly into the star-studded heavens above the dwarf planet known as Nyla 6. The stars seemed so close tonight he could almost reach out and touch them.

Three glowing red moons occupied the western horizon, each one in a different phase of waxing and waning. At only one hundred thousand kilometers away, Wasit was nearest. Wasit’s light was so bright it lit Pax’s surroundings like one of the old fashioned streetlights he had seen in the library vids when he was a boy. Even during the nighttime hours, when his body was inclined toward sleep, the small planet was never completely shrouded in darkness.

Relaxing, Pax laid his mass-blaster across his leather jerkin-clad knees and settled against the rocky overhang at his back. This was his favorite spot on the whole mountain. From here he had a clear view of the verdant rainforest covering the valley floor below and the beauty of the heavens above.

His home was a cavernous bunker carved deep into the mountain at his back. Thick ropelike vines, as big and strong as a man’s arm, guarded the dugout’s three massive loading bays, the lowest of which opened into the forest floor below.

Nyla 6 had an oxygenated atmosphere and terrain similar to Terra’s. Fifty years previously, the Terran government had commissioned Pax’s ancestors to build a starbase here.

Terran leaders had sent the initial landing party of eight men and women to erect the bunker and establish a small colony. More inhabitants were scheduled to come as soon as the living accommodations were habitable.

At that time, the planet’s coordinates had aligned perfectly with existing trade routes and would have been a perfect stopping off point for intergalactic travelers. Everything was progressing according to plan until with a wicked twist of fate, the trade routes suddenly changed.

The next set of newly elected Terran officials promptly scraped the project, deeming the starbase on Nyla 6 economically unfeasible.

The starbase was forgotten and the eight member landing party was written off as collateral damage. Terra’s government had abandoned his ancestors without a second thought, leaving them here to rot on this revolving rock, cut off from all civilization.

Over the years, the first colonists had eventually died out. Pax’s parents were direct descendants from that landing party. And, from their union, came Pax himself.

Since their death, Pax was the only Terran left on the planet. He sometimes wondered if he would die before he ever encountered another humanoid being.

His was a sparse existence. As the only human on the planet, he was destined to live out his life here alone. To die here! Like everyone else he had ever known.

Pax longed for the ability to travel the galaxy like his ancestors before him. As usual, the futility of it all filled him with helpless despair.

He heard the snap of the spaceship entering Nyla 6’s atmosphere long before he saw it.

A stream of silver smoke trailed across the horizon covering Wasit. A loud explosion rocked the heavens as the craft’s starboard engine seemed to disintegrate.

Astonished at the sight, Pax watched as the nose of the space ship began its descent amid a shower of fiery sparks. They rained down upon the planet in a kaleidoscope of vivid hues.

Pax ignored the colorful display, pushed aside the insidious tendrils of hope filling his spirit and mentally calculated the trajectory of the falling craft. If it continued on its present course the spaceship would crash about three klicks to the east. Whoever or whatever was aboard that spacecraft, if they survived the impact, was going to need his help.

There was a crystal clear lake in the general vicinity where most of the forest denizens congregated at night. Most of them were either poisonous or vicious. He needed to get to the lake quickly.

He came to his feet, straining to follow the trail of white smoke across the horizon. He lost visual as the disabled ship disappeared inside the canopy of the dangerous rainforest down below.

A top notch pilot, Melara Sivanza refused to give up hope that she could land the light weight shuttlecraft, until the cabin started to fill with smoke. And just when she didn’t think things could get any worse, the starboard engine exploded! The smoking nose of the shuttlecraft gave a hard jolt and chose that moment to sink downwards.

Flashing red and blue lights lit up the inside of the ship’s cockpit. The computerized monitoring equipment blinked frantically from the controls mounted on the walls. The shrill screeches and alarms from the malfunctioning flight system had the hairs on the back of Melara’s neck standing straight up.

MBryO drone ships had blasted a hole in the ship’s undercarriage resulting in a complete meltdown of the ship’s circuitry. The five humanoid passengers aboard the planet-hopper were in serious trouble!

“Warning! Warning!”

The shuttlecraft’s onboard computer joined the symphony of other alarms ringing through the cabin.

“Please be advised…this is a code red warning! All humanoid life is in danger.”

With the autopilot on the fritz, Melara used every bit of her strength to manhandle the ship’s landing gear into position. A silvery stream jet wash marked their trajectory across the night sky as the ship plummeted toward the surface of the tree covered dwarf planet below.

. “Three minutes until impact,” the onboard computer announced in her cheerful sing-song voice. “Be advised…total loss of life is expected. Please secure all shoulder harnesses.”

Melara’s calm blue eyes shot to the mirror above the helm. “I’m not going to be able to keep her in the air much longer. Joshua, see if you can find a spot to put her down.”

Joshua was the oldest of the four psy-talented young people were locked into the seats behind Melara. The situation was extremely tense, but the blank faces looking back at her showed no emotion whatsoever.

Melara was positive the foursome was communicating through the private frequency, hard wired into their DNA at conception. Usually they took pity on her lack of psy-ability and included her in their empathic dialogues, but this time they were deliberately blocking her from their conversation to keep from distracting her.

A hopeful glance through the wide glass panel ahead revealed a harsh landscape down below. Covered in a morass of greenery, the spinning rock was barely big enough to be called a class six dwarf planet, but it would have to do!

There was no visible place to land the shaking shuttlecraft. She was hoping Joshua’s psy-talent could find an opening in the forest canopy. At seventeen he took his big brother, leader of the pack status, very seriously. She knew his psy-talent had been operating in over-drive since the drone attack. All of them had!

“One minute and twenty-seven seconds until impact,” the computer’s too polite flight attendant voice informed them.

“If you will release the helm Melara, we will attempt to set the spaceship down,” advised Sasha gently.

Sasha was the only one of the four who attempted verbal communication on a regular basis. For the most part, the others preferred to communicate telepathically.

Sasha’s raindrop colored eyes, milky white hair and sculpted features lived up to the beauty of her soft voice. Each feature had been carefully selected when MBryO had designed her genetic packaging.

The same was true of her three fair haired brothers. Cloned, the males were in various stages of development; therefore they were different ages.

“Thirty seconds until impact,” the computer intoned in her irritatingly cheerful voice. More alarms began to reverberate through the cockpit. Sparks were shooting alongside the ship as their descent met resistance upon entry of the thick oxygenated atmosphere.

Melara spared one more anxious look through the glass panel. The forest was so dense she couldn’t get a glimpse underneath the green canopy. Without a visual, there was no way she could set the ship down without it breaking up.

“It will be alright Melara,” William, always the sensible one, stated calmly and

reassuringly. “Just release the controls.”

At fourteen William was the scientist in the genetically designed family. Melara was sure he would discover a cure for a rare disease or create a life changing invention of some sort before he was through.

Sadly, he wouldn’t get the chance if they didn’t get out of this alive!

She mentally weighed the pros and cons of the situation before she came to the conclusion that their best chance of survival lay in the telepathic skills of the four incredible teenagers sitting behind her.

The tree tops scraped against the bottom of the fuselage as the ship’s avatar pinged for the last time.

“Final countdown sequence initialized! Impact expected in twenty seconds.”

Melara’s hands shot into the air as she surrendered control of the broken ship.

Ian grasped Sasha’s hand on the console between them and closed his blue-gray eyes tightly in concentration. He was eleven Terran years old and the liveliest of the four telepaths.

“Can we really do this?” he asked his brothers and sister silently.

“We have no choice,” seventeen year old Joshua returned with more confidence than he felt.

“This isn’t the first time we have levitated solid objects,” William inserted.

“Yes, but it is the largest thing we’ve ever attempted!” Ian pointed out.

“If you don’t mind,” Sasha interrupted firmly, “Can we discuss this later? We are about to crash onto this Zander-forsaken mountain. Joshua...?”

“Relax, Sasha,” her brother’s voice, coming from somewhere deep within him, was calm and focused. “Just concentrate on helping the others slow down the ship so we don’t disintegrate upon contact. Leave the rest to me!”

“Five, four, three…!” the avatar continued her countdown.

“We’re going down!” Melara screamed in horror as a towering treetop seemed to rise up from nowhere to intercept the falling spaceship.

His hopes of being discovered were dashed as Pax held his breath and listened for sounds of impact; watching for the fireball he knew would follow.

Astonishingly neither came. He remained motionless for several minutes while he considered his options.

Curiosity pulled at him. If the occupants in the spaceship were aggressive then he could be setting himself up for a mess of trouble. But if they were friendly this would be the first contact with another human he’d had since he was a boy.

Excitement held him spellbound for a second. Using the maze of pulleys and zip lines strung throughout the canopy, he estimated the trip to the spot where the ship went down would take about ten minutes.

He knew he had to go and investigate the crashed ship. The question was, did he go now under the cover of darkness, or remain safely hidden away here on the mountain until daybreak?

Caution told him that if the occupants of the space craft were unfriendly he might be risking discovery by a potentially dangerous attacker. Or even worse, traveling through the canopy at night meant he could run into a eughi.

Eughi’s were the carnivorous bear-like animals indigenous only to Nyla 6. Upwards of seven feet tall the huge hairy creatures walked man-like on two legs, and were vicious as well.

The eughi was one hundred percent deadly monster. He had once watched one rip a feral pig apart with one swipe of its deadly claws and sharp teeth. He shuddered to think what it could do to a humanoid.

Shrugging, he decided to take his chances. It was really no contest! As dangerous as it was, possible contact with the outside world was well worth the risks involved.

Rising smoothly to his booted feet, he slung the blaster to his shoulder. Nimbly, he negotiated the dark path to the wooden perch built into the side of the mountain. Grabbing the iron bar in his hands, he stepped into a metal fan-shaped basket and swung out into the open space above the canopy of trees down below.

His ancestors had painstakingly attached zip lines to the tallest trees throughout the forest. Junction boxes were fitted into notched branches which allowed him to step onto other perches to change directions.

Coming to one such junction, Pax exchanged one zip line basket for another. The planet’s three red moons were at his back now as he headed due east in the direction of the lake. The glittering stars were so bright he could see the entire valley stretching for miles and miles below.

He was aware of the pop and crackle of sound in the back of his mind. At first he thought the words and phrases were his own. But then he realized he was somehow receiving some sort of empathic message between several different entities.

Pax was filled with elation as he realized the language was humanoid in origin. Maybe some type of old English! It had been a while since he had heard…much less spoken…language of any sort. So it took a moment for him to sort through the undertones of the silent conversation playing through his mind.

“We must hurry,” Pax heard a disembodied female voice say. He knew it was female because it had the same sort of lilt he remembered from his mother’s voice. “We are at the mercy of any predator indigenous to this Zander-forsaken rock!”

“Melara needs attention. We must not move her just yet. She’s injured and unconscious,” returned a slightly older male firmly.