The Scythian Crisis, page 10
part #3 of Space Colony One Series
“I wonder why we couldn’t talk to Giesen and the others over the comm,” said Cherry. “I’d love to know what they’ve been doing since the attack.”
“Yeah,” said Ethan. “I guess that part of the ship where they can access the external comm must be far from the agri district.”
On the other flitter Brent and Garwin were readying the equipment the Guardians had brought along. The Mistral’s printer had constructed the items and they had arrived via shuttle in the middle of the night. The line was very thin but the androids had assured them it was extremely strong. Brent was checking the harness.
Sykes poked his head out of the hole in the ship’s side. “I’ve widened the gap. I’m confident they can fit through it now.”
“Right,” Garwin said. “So we’re going to use the winch to extract them?”
“Yes,” Brent said. “That’s the best option. We’ve connected it to the flitter’s power supply. Later, if we can connect it to the ship we’ll fix to the side somewhere around here for bringing out the equipment.”
“Are you sure?” Ethan asked. He’d wanted to manually pull up the trapped colonists. “What if we hit a snag? The floor of the agri district is covered with fixed growing beds. We don’t want to accidentally crush them against something. I’m sure we could manage to pull them up ourselves.”
“Sykes will observe the extraction while I’m operating the winch,” Brent said. “We can see much better than humans in low light. We’ll go slowly. He’ll tell me immediately if there’s a problem and I can stop the winch. If we try to pull them up by hand, we might accidentally lose our hold on the line. It’s too risky.”
Brent passed the harness across to Sykes, who fed it into the hole. She attached the other end to the winch and allowed the rest of the line to hang in a loop in the gap between the flitter and the ship, brushing the thread-filled waves below. Sykes disappeared into the hole again and apparently sent Brent a silent message because she began to operate the winch.
The slack in the line straightened out until it was finally taut. The winch continued to hum, dragging up a heavy weight at the other end. Ethan watched the cleft in the hull, wondering who would come out first.
The winch stopped. Someone had reached the access hole. Ethan peered into the dark space but could see nothing except the soles of Sykes’ boots.
“Is he helping someone out?” Cherry asked Brent, who nodded, her hand on the winch.
It was the female reproduction tech who emerged. Ethan saw the top of her head, her long hair parted in the middle. Then she turned her face toward them, grinning in the morning sunlight.
“Cassie,” Cherry exclaimed. “It’s so great to see you. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Cassie replied. “We’re all fine, though it’s been quite an adventure.”
“Can you make it over into the flitter?” asked Cherry.
“Yeah, no problem.”
Cherry and Ethan held out their hands to help her. Ethan noticed Cassie’s rounded belly as she climbed across.
“What happened to you?” Cherry asked, looking down at Cassie’s feet and legs, which were covered in dirt.
“All the soil from the agri district has fallen against the wall. We had to dig through a mountain of the stuff. Or rather, Florian and Giesen did. Florian wouldn’t let me help on account of my bump.”
“What are conditions like in there?” asked Cherry. “How high is the water?”
“The funny thing is,” Cassie replied, “the water level has been dropping for days, ever since we crashed. We think the threads might be doing it.”
“The threads?” Ethan echoed.
“Yes,” Cassie replied. “We’ve been terrified of them. We could see them infesting every place the sea had penetrated. But then a few hours ago we think they spoke to us over the general comm. Just before Giesen comm’d the settlement.”
“What?” said Cherry. “You think the threads spoke to you? What did they say?”
“They told us they wanted to help us,” Cassie replied. “They said they’d fixed our comm and we could talk to our friends outside the ship.”
“They said of all that?” Ethan was astounded. In his experience, not so long ago the threads had only been able to say three words in human language.
“It was really hard to understand them,” said Cassie. “And they didn’t say anything else. Giesen said she thought they’d accessed the ship’s computer and files and begun to decipher our language. I guess she must be right. How else would they know how to speak to us?”
Ethan looked over the side of the flitter to the threads in the water below, trying to understand what the creatures had done. They had kept him, Rudra, and little Ganika captive for weeks, yet they tried to help the people trapped on the Nova Fortuna escape.
Chapter Fifteen
“You must have rearranged that cupboard fifteen times, Cariad,” Dr. Kurtz said. “Maybe you should go for a walk.”
Cariad slid a box onto a shelf and closed the cupboard door. The doctor sounded irritated and she didn’t blame him. She was on tenterhooks of anticipation and she couldn’t keep still. Maybe she should go out for a while, but then she might not be there when—
Cassie appeared at the clinic entrance. Before she could take another step, Cariad rushed over to hug her. Taking care to avoid pressing into the woman’s pregnancy, she held her tightly.
“Thank the stars you’re okay,” Cariad said through tears. “I was so sure you must have died in the crash. I wouldn’t let myself hope you hadn’t.” She released her hold on the tech. “But where are Florian and Giesen? Are they here too?”
“Giesen’s gone to the shuttle field to take the next flight up to the Mistral. She wants to talk to Addleson. Florian didn’t come with us, though. He went back into the Nova. He has to stay to monitor the gestation systems, but he made me come here to be checked over.”
“So the babies really are okay?” Cariad asked. “All of them?” Cassie had already told Cariad the good news via Cherry’s comm on her way to the settlement. Cariad had been beside herself with joy, yet she still needed to hear Cassie say it again.
“Yes, they’re all fine.”
“This is almost too good to be true,” said Cariad. “But come over here so you can be checked over.” She led Cassie to the examination table.
Alasdair said, “My turn for a hug. No more heroics from now on, okay? You’re staying here with us now, right?”
“I’d love to,” said Cassie, “but I can’t leave Florian in that ship all by himself. He’ll be lonely.”
Kurtz ran the scanner over her lower belly. He smiled. “Would you like to see?” he asked.
“I’d love to,” Cassie said.
They all gathered around for a peek at Cassie and Florian’s baby, displayed on the scanner screen.
“I can see the resemblance to Florian,” Alasdair said.
“I’ll tell him you said that,” Cassie said. “I’m not sure if he’ll be pleased or not.”
“Everything’s looking good,” said Kurtz. “I don’t have any concerns, but I’d still prefer you to remain here at the settlement, Cassie. If you had an emergency aboard the Nova Fortuna you would be a couple of hours away by flitter. A round trip to pick you up would take four hours. That’s a long time if you need urgent medical care.”
Cassie sat up, looking sad. “I thought you might say that. But I really can’t leave Florian alone. It’ll be horrible for him.”
“Florian is a grown man,” Kurtz countered, “and I’m sure he would rather suffer a few months’ loneliness than jeopardize the health of his unborn child and its mother.”
Cassie bit her lip. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I do,” said Cariad. “Florian can live at the settlement with you. I’ll go aboard the ship to look after the babies.”
“No, I couldn’t ask you to do that,” said Cassie.
“You’re not asking me,” Cariad replied. “I’m still your boss, remember? Dr. Kurtz and Alasdair can manage fine without me so I’ll take over from Florian. I’ve decided.”
“But I don’t think Florian will agree,” Cassie protested.
“I listened to Florian once when he wanted to stay on the ship during the alien attack,” Cariad said, “and look what happened. I’m not listening to him again. I’m laying down the law here. If he refuses to come off that ship I’ll ask the Guardians to extract him.”
“Okay, okay,” Cassie said. “I don’t think it’ll come to that. But, you know, Cariad, if we hadn’t stayed on the ship all those babies might have died.”
“Really?” said Alasdair. “What happened?”
“If you bring me a drink I’ll tell you,” replied Cassie. “I’m really thirsty.”
“Sure,” Alasdair said. He walked to the faucet and filled a beaker. Handing it to Cassie, he said, “Enjoy Concordia’s finest. Fresh, filtered, and disinfected.”
Cassie took a swallow. “Mmmm. That is nice. I was getting wary of the water supply on the Nova. All our systems went down when we crashed and I was worried the water was becoming contaminated. Though I think the threads have fixed the water system now. I had a drink not long before we went to the agri district and it tasted better.”
“The threads fixed the water system?” Cariad asked.
“They’ve been fixing everything,” said Cassie. “But I’ll start at the beginning and tell you it all. Can I sit on one of those beds?”
“Sure,” Alasdair said. He smoothed the bedding on one of the mattresses while Cassie walked over.
“It feels so good to be walking on level surfaces again,” she said. “Everything’s topsy turvy inside the ship.”
She sat down cross-legged. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she began, “So, I’ll start with the attack on the settlement. We saw it all. Giesen was pulling the satellite feed. It was terrible. We were so frightened for you. We could see pulses of fire coming from out of space and exploding on the surface. But we also saw that the Mistral’s weapons were fighting off some of the attack, deflecting the fire away from Concordia.
“Then the aliens started firing on the Nova. None of the hits were near the reproduction facilities but we could feel the impacts. I don’t know about Florian but I was pretty scared. But the babies were okay, so I tried to stay calm. We were in our crash seats by then. We felt a big hit, the biggest up until then, and Giesen told us over the comm that we’d lost an engine. She reassured us it was fine because the ship could stay in orbit with only three engines working. I tried to comm you, Cariad, to let you know we were okay so you wouldn’t worry, but the external comm was down.
“We could see that the Mistral was trying to defend us but fire was still getting through. We felt three or four more impacts—I don’t remember exactly how many—and then another big one. After that Giesen told us we’d lost another engine. After a few moments’ silence, she told us that we were going to fall into Concordia.”
At the memory of the moment, Cassie’s eyes shone and she swallowed. “It meant that to save ourselves we had to leave the babies. It was hard but, I mean, they didn’t stand a chance no matter what we did, right? Giesen said we had to meet her at the shuttle bay. It took us ages to get there because the transit line power was out. We had to run the whole way, but we’d lost some gravity by then so that made it easier. We arrived, out of breath from running, and Giesen told us it was no good—the external doors had been hit. They were warped out of shape so badly they weren’t airtight and the shuttle bay had no atmosphere. Even if we’d worn space suits to reach a shuttle, the bay doors wouldn’t have opened to fly it out.”
“So you were stuck,” Alasdair said. “We thought it had to be something like that when we didn’t see you abandon ship.”
“We would have if we could,” said Cassie. “Believe me, none of us fancied being aboard when the Nova hit the planet. But there wasn’t anything we could do. Giesen said we should go back to our crash seats. She said she’d slowed the ship’s fall as much as she could and that there was a small chance we might survive the impact. Though the look on her face made me not believe her. I think she was only trying to give us some hope so our last few hours weren’t so dreadful. We returned to the reproduction facility. What else could we do? Giesen went back to the pilot’s cabin. The internal comm was still working, so we all talked a bit as the ship went down.”
Cassie paused. “It was a sad, horrible time. Giesen had told us when she expected the ship to hit, so we were kind of counting down in our heads, though no one mentioned the hours passing. When we lost the ship’s gravity and Concordia’s gravity took over, we were half hanging out of our seats. Everything was at a new angle and we were kind of leaning forward, if you see what I mean. I thought that was lucky because it meant we were on the side of the ship and not the bottom, which would take the full force of the impact. I was right, it turned out. The bottom half is gone as far as we can tell. If we’d been down there we would never have survived. Giesen was okay too because she was at a similar angle on the other side of the ship.
“I’m sure you can imagine how tense the last few moments were. We wished each other good luck and said what we needed to say in case we never saw each other again. Then, it was weird, but I felt really calm. Like everything was out of my hands and I couldn’t change whatever was about to happen so I shouldn’t worry about it. Florian and I were holding hands, and I just concentrated on his face, thinking … ” She wiped a tear from her cheek and chuckled, embarrassed. “Well, you don’t need to hear all about that.
“We hit. It was quite a jolt but nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be. I held Florian’s hand so tightly I’m surprised I didn’t squeeze it off. The funny thing was, we didn’t stop moving immediately on impact. I could feel we were still going downward, though we were slowing rapidly. I don’t know how long it was before we finally stopped, but it felt like a long time. Florian and I were staring at each other. We couldn’t believe it. We’d survived.
“But we knew the ship must have sustained a lot of damage. The main power had gone out and the emergency lighting had come on. We’d also lost the internal comm, so we didn’t know if Giesen had survived or not. The first thing we did was check on the babies. They were all fine, Cariad. Every single one. Even the ones in the new gestation room. We didn’t know how long the backup power would last but for the time being things were looking good. What we had to do next was find Giesen and leave the ship.”
“But you’d come down in the ocean,” Cariad said. “How could you leave? Or didn’t you know that?”
“Oh, we knew we were going to come down in the ocean,” Cassie replied. “Giesen had figured out the impact site. But we wanted to get outside and see what the situation was, even if we probably couldn’t get to shore. I didn’t know how far from land we were until I left the ship today.”
“You said something about the threads fixing the water system?” Kurtz queried. Cariad was dying to know more about that too.
“Okay,” said Cassie. “So, bear in mind we still only think it’s the threads, but we don’t have a better explanation yet. While we were trying to make our way to the pilot’s cabin to find Giesen—you would not believe how hard it is to walk around a ship where hardly anything is the right way up—we tried to go downward first. It was stupid of us. We’d known we were crashing into water. We should have guessed it was pouring into the ship through cracks in the hull from the impact. We had a nasty moment when we were nearing the Main Park. We were sliding down a corridor and suddenly we saw that the part we were heading toward was filled with water, and it was rising fast. We had to stop ourselves before we slipped right into it. Luckily the ceiling tiles on that part of the corridor floor are old and rough, so we had a bit of traction.”
She smiled ruefully. “That was when we realized we’d been going in the wrong direction and that to find Giesen we would have to go up and over the top of the ship.”
“So that was when you saw the threads?” asked Kurtz.
“No, that was later. But that must have been how they got into the ship. They came through the cracks the same as the water did. We eventually found Giesen, and we told her about the water filling the lower levels. This all took a long time, you have to realize. I’m condensing and leaving out the boring bits. When we’d had a chance to talk things through with Giesen, we decided we would try to escape through an airlock. She knew where they all were. We had to head downward again. But we soon encountered more water and it was still rising. We were all pretty exhausted by then, so we slept for a few hours. Then we had to set out for the other side of the ship again, going right over the top. By the time we finally reached the other airlock, that was underwater too. Short of cutting our way out of the ship, we were stuck.
“We knew we couldn’t leave the babies for long, so Florian and I said we would stay on the ship for a while. You see, we had food and for the time being we seemed to be safe, so there wasn’t an urgent need for us to leave. If things got desperate, like if we lost power entirely, then we would try to cut through the hull. Giesen said she would work on fixing the external comm system. We didn’t know what had happened to you all, you see. We didn’t know if anyone on the surface had survived. But we hoped that you had. We hoped that, when we finally escaped, it wouldn’t be to find Concordia overtaken with aliens.”
Kurtz cleared his throat. “The threads?”
“Oh yes,” Cassie exclaimed. “The threads. So, Florian saw them first. He’d gone to check on the lower levels. We were worried the water might rise even farther. He came running back to tell me that he’d seen creatures in the water. The place was full of tentacles, he said. At first I thought it might be another one of his jokes—you know what he’s like, Cariad—so I insisted that he take me to see them for myself. Well, there they were. I’d never seen anything like it, even in vids. I had no idea what they were, and neither did Florian or Giesen. We assumed they were sea creatures that had come in with the water.”
