Yearning, page 21
seemed quite cryptic. “Struts. Perimeter. Safety distance.
Winch…wait. Winch? Can that be something?”
“Try it.” Philber nodded, then he seemed to remember
they were a team. “Or?”
The others merely nodded.
“Everyone, take a step back.” Samantha motioned with
her hand, and everyone but Darian did as she asked. “You
too.”
“Just press the damn thing.” Darian clearly wasn’t
moving.
Holding her breath, Samantha placed her palm against
the circular symbol that said winch. The floor immediately
jerked under their feet.
“Shit.” Carl gripped Philber’s arm and helped the older
man remain on his feet.
Samantha and Darian stepped away from the wall and
joined the others.
“We’re moving.” Brandon felt the wall. “Slowly, but we’re
moving.”
“I can see it,” Samantha said, gazing at the console she’d
just used as it seemed to lower against the floor and then
disappear. “We’re picking up speed.” She looked behind
them. “Doesn’t it seem like the entire tunnel’s moving? That
can’t be right.” Trying to see how far back the floor of the
“elevator” went, she simply couldn’t determine the
distance. Her chest ached because of her rapid pulse. This
situation was potentially dangerous, and she felt responsible
for everyone. Inching closer to Darian, she gazed toward the
ceiling. It hadn’t gotten lower. What a relief. At least they
might not be crushed.
“I agree about the floor,” Brandon said. “A very large part
of the tunnel seems to move upward.”
“What if we end up in the lake?” Carl murmured.
“I doubt it. No water. Not even dampness in the tunnel,
remember?” Darian said. “No, we’re going somewhere
else.” Her tone was stark, and Samantha hoped so too. She
raised her gaze and grabbed Darian’s arm. “Is an opening
forming?” A dark line grew at the top of the wall that was
approaching faster.
“I don’t know.” Darian flipped her jacket back behind her
holster, which was still unclasped. “Just stay away from the
wall until we know.”
The dark rectangle grew larger as they seemed to reach
what Samantha surmised could be the floor level of another
part of the tunnel. She was prepared with her flashlight, as
no light glowed from this part. As their floor leveled out with
the new one, Darian raised her fist, something Samantha
felt rather silly that she recognized from crime shows to
mean “stop and be quiet.” At the same time, the elevator
stopped, aligned perfectly with the other floor.
“All right,” Darian said. “Flashlights on.”
Samantha switched hers on and let the beam sweep
back and forth and pierce the darkness before them. She
was trying to find anything resembling a console like the
one below. How else would they get back? Something
caught her eye, and she grew rigid and stepped sideways
fast enough to bump into Darian. “What’s that?”
Samantha’s trembling hand kept the flashlight beam on a
spot where the outline of a pole, or something similar,
created shadows around it.
Two more beams converged with Samantha’s. It was hard
to judge distances in the dark, but it wasn’t very far away
since it was well lit by the flashlights. “I’m going in,” Darian
said, removing her gun from its holster and holding it on top
of her other hand, which directed the flashlight.
“As are we all.” Any other day, Samantha would have
thought that sort of protection to be overkill, but as she
walked behind Darian into what looked like a new tunnel,
she had to confess Darian made her feel safer.
On either side of Samantha, Carl and Raoul kept their
flashlights trained on the structure ahead, and behind them,
Philber and Brandon took up the rear.
“We’re closing in,” Darian said. “It seems…I mean, to me
it looks like some kind of metal. Ridges, something looking
like rivets. I don’t know.”
Samantha didn’t take her eyes off the metal object,
which became more detailed as they neared it. When they
were only three yards away, Darian repeated her fist
maneuver. Everyone stopped, truly acting like a team now.
“Let’s check out this tunnel before we examine that, um,
whatever you want to call it. It looks like an aluminum
construction beam, but very large,” Darian said.
Samantha directed her light up the structure, and it took
her only a fraction of a moment to find it was attached to
something. The tunnel ceiling? “Look up,” she managed to
say, her voice husky. “We…we’re standing underneath
something.”
Five more beams joined hers and lit up a detailed ceiling
that resembled the structure it rested on. Sharp
indentations and rounded convex patterns were outlined by
smaller bullet-like objects, indeed looking almost like pop
rivets, as Carl had said earlier.
“Hey, guys,” Carl said, and Samantha was startled to see
he had walked closer to the tall structure. “Look here.” He
had turned his light to the floor.
Darian hurried over to him. “Hey, yourself. Not cool. You
have to stay behind me.” She stopped abruptly. “Whoa.”
Samantha had been half a step behind Darian, and now
she blinked hard a few times as she looked at the object
that had caught Carl’s attention. The long aluminum-looking
beam in turn rested not directly on the floor, but seemed
inserted into a large, oval disk. As she stepped closer, a
momentary bout of vertigo nearly made her trip and fall, but
she righted herself and closed her eyes briefly. When she
opened them, she wasn’t confused about the structure
anymore. “This is the left rear strut,” Samantha said. “It
seems in pristine condition.”
Darian swiveled and looked startled. “Samantha?”
“I just know. I think my NIEC kicked into another gear, so
to speak.”
“This vessel has four struts,” Raoul said. “It’s parked with
its starboard side facing us.”
“What the…what are you talking about, starboard?”
Philber began walking toward them, and then it was as if his
knees buckled. Brandon was impressively fast and caught
Philber before he slammed said knees into the rock floor.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” Philber said, but his voice was weak.
“Just need to sit for a moment. My backpack has a folding
stool.”
Brandon unfolded the stool and helped Philber take a
seat. Wiping at his face with his sleeve, Brandon then looked
at the strut and back up at what Samantha now knew—as
clearly as she hadn’t known before—was the underbelly of a
vessel.
“Okay, NIEC-wearing people, fill me and Brandon in,
please.” Carl impatiently waved his hands. “What vessel?”
“This one.” Darian stepped up onto the foot of the strut
and placed her hand on the tall pillar. Samantha gasped and
moved to pull Darian down, but as she gripped her hand, a
flood of light blinded her. Unable to stifle a cry, she tugged
at Darian, but instead of bringing her down onto the floor,
Darian yanked her closer and wrapped a strong arm around
her waist. “It’s all right,” Darian called out. “I think that was
my doing.”
“What the hell happened?” Philber roared and stood up
so fast, his stool turned over behind him.
“Oh, fuck,” Carl said, his voice sounding like a prayer.
Samantha blinked against the lights, and when her eyes
got used to them, she saw. Not only four struts but, farther
into the tunnel, eight. “Two,” she said weakly and was glad
Darian held onto her. Left to her own devices, her
overwhelming emotions would have sent her to her knees.
“Two vessels. Two ships.”
“Not only that,” Darian said, smiling broadly. “Two
spaceships.”
The silence between them created weird sensations in
Samantha’s ears, like faint, forgotten echoes, and then an
incredulous, “Well, that just happened,” from Carl broke it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Of course,” Darian whispered. She was still holding onto the
strut and looking up at the hull of the spaceship. She knew
what every part was called, what its function was, and even
the vessel’s name. “Speeder One, Torrent-class shuttle.”
“Able to transport forty crewmembers from Velocity, to
go planetside and back again. Also able to be used as an
escape vehicle for injured or ill crewmembers.” Samantha
turned to Darian, her eyes dark green and looking almost
too big for her face. She was pale, but two distinct red spots
marked the highest point of her cheekbones.
“Velocity?” Carl asked, as he came closer. “That the other
one?” He pointed at the second ship.
“No,” Darian said, but was interrupted by Raoul, who had
rounded all four struts of Speeder One.
“That one is Speeder Two,” Raoul said.
Darian nodded. “Same configuration. It’s a ship that
attaches to Velocity when in space or orbit. Weapons’ array
is the same. Canons. Nukes. Fire-pellets.”
“Nukes?” Brandon flinched where he stood next to them.
“You’re joking, right?”
“Not at all,” Darian said. “Everything is right here. Of
course, the shuttles, the speeders, have a limited capacity,
but Velocity is fully equipped and ready to face any enemy.”
“You guys are creeping me out,” Carl said. “I know you
suddenly have knowledge through the NIECs, but surely
your personalities haven’t changed. You have to see the
problem with having nuclear weapons sitting under
Dennamore!” Carl’s voice nearly cracked.
Darian reeled herself in. It was as if the information that
flooded her brain had been just that, like a shopping list
she’d ticked off at the grocery store. Now she inhaled deeply
and let the breath escape slowly between tense lips. “You’re
right. Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound so freaky. That was quite
the burst of information. As soon as I touched the ship, it
was just there, from one second to the next.”
“Same here,” Samantha said and placed a hand on Carl’s
shoulder. “I promise, we’re not going crazy and about to
launch any weapons.”
“Can you open the ships?” Carl asked, apparently
reassured enough for his curiosity to win.
“Sure.” Raoul glanced at Samantha. “That okay, Boss?”
“I don’t see why not. Just don’t touch anything that looks
like it can go boom.” Samantha pulled out a camera, and
Darian recognized it as one of Walker’s, the one he’d
brought to the lake. “I need to film this.” She raised the
camera just as Raoul put both palms on the strut Darian had
held on to. He made a twisting motion counterclockwise
against two of the larger rivets, and she heard a popping
sound above them. Then a hatch opened downward and
extended until it reached the floor. On the side facing them,
Darian counted fifteen steps.
“I’ll go first. Again.” Darian had tucked her sidearm away
into the holster, but it was still unclasped, and she moved
cautiously up the stairs. She could barely breathe. This was
unfathomable. Was she in shock, since she could climb the
steps toward the opening so calmly? It must be because she
could understand what this was, and what everything was
for. How odd for this vessel to seem so alien—and so
familiar. When she had five steps left to go, she was able to
peer inside. Like with the tunnel, it was lit up, and she could
see five seats with what had to be computer consoles.
Instead of windows, one long, curved screen showed all the
information the helmsman would need to pilot Speeder One.
The other stations included weapons, operations,
engineering, and the one in the center, the commanding
officer’s chair. After the five last steps, Darian stood in the
opening, looking toward the back, where thirty-five chairs
sat in rows of five. After a few seconds, her NIEC made her
see that half of them could be turned into LSC-beds, which
stood for Life, Support, and Care.
Soon, all six of them stood in the center of the command
part of Speeder One. Samantha was taking shots of every
part of the stations and then the crew area.
“Do we dare sit in one of the chairs?” Philber asked, and
it dawned on Darian that he had been unusually quiet since
the shuttles came to life. Studying him, she could tell he
was flustered, but a quick glance at Raoul showed that he
was keeping an eye on their oldest member.
“As long as we don’t give any commands, or attempt to
use the consoles, we should be fine.” Samantha pointed at
the ops station and then tucked the camera away into her
backpack. “Take a seat, Philber.”
Philber sat down, and immediately, the part of the screen
that ran by his station filled with a pattern that told Darian it
was running a diagnostic.
“A diagnostic procedure,” Samantha said. “I’m torn
between feeling deeply worried about this sudden, obvious
knowledge and completely fascinated.”
Placing her hand at the small of Samantha’s back, Darian
pointed at the commanding officer’s station. “Your seat,
ma’am.” She smiled as Samantha reluctantly sat down.
Raoul remained standing, but Darian slowly sat at the
security officer’s station. Her desk began its diagnostic.
Familiar swirls, jagged chevrons, and numbers flickered over
the screen, none of it in English. Of course. Here, the
symbols that had been a complete mystery only days ago
streamed from the lower right corner of the screen, floated
upward, and then moved to the left when the row was full. It
was an aqua-tinted screen, and the letters, familiar despite
their odd shapes, ran up along the right edge in a never-
ending stream.
“All systems at operations are functional,” Philber said in
a laconic voice.
“Same here,” Darian said after reading the diagnostic
results on her screen.
“This is surreal. And not.” Samantha had curled her
fingers around the edge of the armrests. “I wish we could
make copies of the logs, but we have no compatible
equipment.”
“We’ll be back, now that we know they’re here.” Darian
couldn’t wait to go over everything. Even if her NIEC made it
possible to understand what she was looking at, she didn’t
have the personal memories of the aliens who…She paused
her thought. Surely the ones who had arrived in these ships,
who brought the scroll boxes and NIECs and hid every sign
of what once had happened, had to be extraterrestrial
beings? Before regular human beings came to settle in
Dennamore, these aliens…No, she couldn’t keep thinking of
them as aliens. Visitors. That was a better word. The visitors
that came, and stayed? Or did they leave with the
mothership, Velocity? “I know we’ll have to head back soon,
or Walker and Camilla will send the cavalry, but we’ll be
back tomorrow, right? We have to go find Velocity.” Darian
hoped she wasn’t the only one feeling this way.
“Agreed.” Samantha stood. “Before we leave, we should
go through the storage facilities on board this ship. If we
find more documentation that we can study, or items to
take back, we should do it.”
“Let’s divide the task between us. Look only in cabinets
and storage in the crew area. We can’t afford to accidentally
touch something that takes us into orbit.” Darian was only
half joking. She turned to Samantha, who staggered as she
turned to move toward the back. “Hey,” Darian whispered
and discreetly took her elbow in a gentle grip.
“Dextrose.” Samantha felt in the front pocket of her
backpack. “I tend to get sugar lows.” She started to tremble
as she tucked a piece of it into her mouth.
“Why don’t you just sit until that takes effect?” Darian
knew it would take a couple of minutes for the sugar to do
the trick.
“All right.” Samantha lowered herself onto one of the
seats. “Just for a moment.”
After making sure Samantha would be all right, Darian
