Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) (13 page)
Read Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) Online
Authors: Stephen Landry
That was it then. I was now a fullfledged prisoner. My life, my daily routine
would be planned out for me. I was to be a prisoner to the nexus, to the
Erebus. I was nothing more than a tool. A slave just like the Trepp.
10 YEARS LATER.
“Hayden you stupid bastard, what do you think you are doing!”
“GET YOUR HELMET ON NOW!” We were inside a small two-man
dropship. A piece of space debris had ripped a hole in our hull. Our space
suits were meant to take a punch but this was unlike anything either of the
two of us had ever experienced outside a simulation. The under armor was
cushioning but the outside armor of our suit was meant for battle so we could
take a couple of hits as our backs flew against the wall. Why had I
volunteered for a stupid mission? The Aelita had detected a strange alloy
floating just ahead of the Erebus outside the immer. We were going to
investigate. The Erebus would come to a near stop inside the immer while we
went ahead. We would catch up in less than a day. The elders had insisted
and since Balkava had become an elder now it meant that I had gone from
being a pawn to a knight. I was Sev, the orphan from Errikus, Balkava’s best.
“You stupid Drok, you’re going to get me killed,” I yelled. “You’re
fine Sev, I
knew you would be quick about it,” Hayden always had an answer for
everything. "Maybe it should have been me piloting,"I said. "Not on your life,
I'm the best pilot the Erebus has and you know it," Hayden responded. He
wasn't but that didn't stop him from running his mouth and I had to agree, he
was a better pilot then me. Anytime I wasn’t using the nexus I was with him
training or in the simulation room playing in some virtual reality world. Other
times I would just sit alone in my room writing music. One of the few escapes
I had since becoming a part of the crew. Aira was always on my mind. I
didn’t even know if she was still alive. I had grown up since Errikus. I was no
longer a scrawny scared little child. I was a hundred and eighty pounds of
muscle. I started growing my hair and shaved it on the sides. It was a look I
had seen in the nexus and enjoyed. I wonder if she would even recognize me
now. I was no longer afraid of fighting or killing. I was a human soldier
fighting a war. I still resented Balkava for the mental conditioning but I
understood. Throwing me inside the nexus like they did was a necessary evil.
Day in and day out there was little to do so when we volunteered for this
mission we looked at it as an escape from our daily routine. Hayden was a
genius now. The time I spent in the nexus he spent studying astronomy,
physics, fringe science, even genetics. He was a part of the research team
working on trying to figure out the location of Eden and what we were
actually getting ourselves into. We were close now. The Erebus autopilot was
beginning it’s decent. We were closer then we had ever been and yet we still
had no idea where we were going. The descent would take years as our
computer scanned for habitable worlds but it still meant we were closer and
closer to our endgame. I knew a lot more now then I had when I was
younger. I had seen through the eyes of over a thousand different people. I
had seen people make mistakes, make love, make war. I had a much better
understanding of where I, we had come from. I could make sense of why
certain things were the way they were.
Hayden had made me a guitar from some spare parts we had. It was a perfect
Earth replica. I would play every night, sometimes it would bring me peace,
other times it would make me hurt. It would remind me of everything I lost
getting here; my mother, Aira, Dom, all the people on Errikus. That entire
world was dead now. We picked up a signal not long after our departure. It
was a cry for help from the ones we left behind. The colony was being
ravaged by hellbeasts both mature and adolescent. In a few years the
environment there would be completely inhospitable.
“I don’t now why you worry so much Sev,” Hayden said, “We have this. you
and me, we’re a team.” And just like that we were patching up the hole. “It
looks like that alloy is sharper then whatever this ship is made out of. What
do you think it could be?” I asked. “Doesn’t really matter, we have to turn
back now if we are going to hook back up with the Erebus, we’re going to
have to drop a drone and turn around.”
“This is Balkava, blackbird do you hear me?” Balkava’s voice came on the
comm. Sending signals through the immer in realtime was something we
managed to perfect fifty-sixty years ago.
“You can refer to me by name, no need to be formal,” I answered.
“This is Blackbird, what can we do for you?” Hayden snapped back.
“Forget it, just hurry and drop some drones in the area and get back to the
ship, Balkava out,” and like that she was gone. It was silent aside from my
breathing inside the helmet.
I could never get over the fact that the Erebus gave the drop ships names. It
was rumored that the drop ships and transports possessed A.I. cores. It was a
failsafe put into their design, should anything happen to the crew the ship
would act as a drone with the mind of a child carrying out whatever it’s last
task might have been. Beyond that the A.I. cores would have been useless
unless they were used to spy on us. There wouldn’t be much of a point to that
though, everything we said and did was recorded and reviewed later by the
elders. The elders seemed to have all of the control on the ship. We were a
social society taught that we were all equal but in reality the elders held all
the power. The elders were survivors though - have to give them some credit.
Most were veterans from various skirmishes and each and every one of them
had been awake their whole lives. Together they made up the consul that
governed us all.
The drones were rectangular with several rails running down and off their
sides. Drones could be used to study anything from derelict crafts, the surface
of a planet, even within the convection zone of a yellow star. They could
transmit data all the way up till the corona. It was quite a feat.
“Ready to get out of here? How far away are we from the Erebus anyway?”
Hayden asked. “We are a few hours away,” I answered. Drop ship,
transports, even drones were created with small immersion cores and ion
drives. Drives that would surround an object with a field and tap into the
energy of the immer. They wouldn’t tear into it like the core of the Erebus but
they could bend space around them and you still get that sweet faster then
light travel.
“I was in the nexus once reading about the
first core test,” I started. “Yeah
how was that?” Hayden asked.“It was a failure, a scientist was messing
around bending the laws of physics in his lab and then without any shielding
or anything forced the atoms in his experimental drive to jump. It created a
massive crater in the university his lab was in. It would take years before they
figured out what had actually happened and by then we had already begun
reverse engineering from the Skrav."
“Hit the switch already, I’m planning to attend a test for new prototype
carbine tonight,” Hayden said. It amazed me that we were always building
new weapons. Human’s specialized in finding ways to hunt. I guess that is
why other species always liked to call us the Ter.
I
flip the diagnostics switch and begin booting up the ignition. Nothing.
“Damn thing won’t kick,” I say before I start beating the console with my fist.
“Calm down just means we need to go boot it manually,” Hayden said, “You
know we fixed the hull this place should pressurize soon we won’t be stuck in
these helmets forever.” Hayden only reminded me how much I hated being in
tight spots. You would think living on a starship half my life I would get over
that. I could never stop thinking about the open air on Errikus. I could never
stop thinking how amazing it was to look out over the horizon. I took it for
granted and now it was gone. Chances were slim to none that I would ever
see over a horizon again for the rest of my life. The closest we had was a
simulation. A massive room created in a virtual reality where we could feel
free; it wasn’t much but it was something to look forward to. We also had 'rift'
technology. Visors much like the one I wore when working with the nexus
that showed us a virtual world. The downside the 'rift' tech was we could
only move with console controls. The whole system seemed dated and analog
compared to the rest of the ship.
Gravity inside the drop ship was slim to none. We were held down only by
the inertia. Drop ships had no real reason for artificial gravity. Everything
could be placed in molds or fastened down. I made my way to the back of the
ship and slowly opened a panel in the wall. Inside there was small console
that would allow someone to jump the ship without running a computer
diagnostic. Usually this was ill advised.
wall jettisoning myself forward to the front of the ship.
10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1
I remember they use to count down like that during the
first spaceflights. I
had seen one before, it was through someone else’s eyes of course but it was
amazing. Nothing but forward momentum pushed by an explosion. We
strapped bombs to ships and flew to the stars.
“There’s the kick!” I shouted as we began to move. Time seemed to stand still
for those moments. We were bending the universe to our will and in a way it
felt as if it was screaming at us. It was something else... The universe itself set
a speed limit... no ship except for maybe a few exots, the Skrav, us and maybe
ancient ships built by the Lethe could travel as fast as we were now. The
universe around us looked like a haze of glowing light. Gotta love loopholes
in the laws of nature.
The Erebus and her child the Aelita before us. How I wanted to turn us
towards the Aelita. All these years. All my training. There was still nothing I
wanted more.
“You can’t do it Sev,” Hayden said. I could only wonder if I had always been
so easy to read or if Hayden and Balkava just knew me so well they were the
only ones.
“I know, I just wonder how she is, I still dream about her you know, I still
dream about all of us... even Dom,” my voice began to crack. It had been
years since I had said his name aloud.
It took me my entire
first year to figure out what was really a dream and what
was something I had seen in the nexus. 'What is a dream, what makes
something in the nexus real? We know that the few times we see the future
they are only small pieces, snippets usually there is nothing but darkness,
sometimes it’s only a day or more. We know every time we see the future and
become aware of it we change it. If I see you drop a glass and I tell you about
it then you have a choice. Do you let the glass fall? Do you let it break
knowing you could save it?' My mind wandered all the time wondering what
the hell it was I was doing. Among other things I would wonder if anybody
had seen Dom die. I wonder if there was some message out there somewhere
in the universe warning us not to go down to the river. I wonder if a user
would even care. We were required to report everything we saw anyway. If
we saw something no matter how insignificant it was recorded. In the end all
we had was a blurry photograph of our future.
Back in the hangar we began to walk out the portside of the drop ship. The
small bulkhead that separated us from the vacuum of space hissing and
depressurizing from inside. We still had our entire suits including helmets on.
"We did a shoddy job patching the ship. They are going to have to melt down
an Anton to replace it." "Hopefully no one decides to take this ship for a
joyride." Balkava and Bloch were first to greet us and congratulate us on a
mission well done. They were collecting data now and would know more
about the object and it’s origin in a few hours. They were already preparing
another drop ship and crew to go out and study it. The small pieces of debris
we collected were made out of the same red material found in ruins on
Errikus. Red flowers. That was what they called them. All over the planet
there were sites and excavations scattered. The Lethe had left behind small
buildings here and there - nothing special but who knows. There could have
been entire outposts buried beneath the ground. All of it was nothing more
than a distant memory now.
“If we could build a ship out of that stuff we would be unstoppable,” Hayden
said collecting the sample in a tube. His hands were shaking. He must have
been anxious or nervous about it. We barely had enough collected to fashion
a knife; chances of a starship were slim to none. “Let’s hope the Skrav never
figure that out,” I told him. This only seemed to make his hand shake worst.
He collected all of it and within ten maybe fifteen minutes there was a repair
crew out of stasis working on the shuttle. Our mission was over.
I stood naked next to Balkava standing inside the simulation room. I had
decided tonight I didn’t feel like holding onto her. I was keeping my distance
but this was routine. She would have known something was way off had I not
come. She may have been a few years older then me but she still looked
younger. Time had been gracious to her and in the past ten years she had
barely aged a day. I wondered if she was like this with anyone else. I knew
every inch of her body and she knew every inch of mine. We had started
seeing each other a few years ago. I graduated from being a student, trainee,
cadet, or whatever you want to call it and became a fullfledged partner. For a
while we were equals in every way. Then she became the youngest elder in
history. Now the only time we are equal is like this. There were other women
onboard but none held my interest like her. In a way maybe I did love her.
A few times she had joked about having kids. At least I thought she was
joking then she started talking about saving the human race. Who would
want to bring anyone into a world like this? The idea disgusted me enough I
almost stopped seeing her completely, but she agreed to back down. Duty
came first. Her body was beautiful but she was still scared. Her face, her
arms, her legs, even below her stomach she had gashes that would never
completely go away. Her body was a testament to the war and each line a
story. Her scars reminded me of something else. There was something in the
past buried deep. I was constantly seeing bits and pieces every time I used the
nexus. It made me want to use it more and more. I was going from two hours
a day to twelve. I thought about it constantly. As far as I knew I was the only
one that had recurring visions.