New World Read online

  The plan formed faster than I’d thought possible. We felt like a real crew at that moment.

  TWO

  “Come on, I have to use the bathroom!” Nick called to the guards on the other side of the door. It had only been an hour, but we weren’t going to sit around waiting for them to convince themselves to dispose of us.

  Clare must have sensed that Nick wasn’t getting anywhere, so she went to join him. Maybe a woman in need would pull on their macho soldier hearts.

  “Me too. I can’t go in here. Don’t you guys have any compassion?” she asked, layering in a thick sad tone to her voice.

  After a minute or two, the door slid open, and a guard motioned for them to step through. It was tough to see, but even from across the room, I spotted the glint of the screw as Nick placed it at the base of the door, feigning tying up his shoe in front of the guards.

  We hadn’t been counting on two of ours getting separated, but it was in motion now, and we couldn’t turn back. Slate was already moving for the door, which had slid shut but not all the way, as the six-inch-long screw stopped it from sealing so that it wasn’t locked. Clare had seen the blueprints on the original station plans, back on Earth at the base she’d spent a year working at. These doors had almost a faux lock; a precautionary thing for safety, not really meant to keep anyone in. Only prison cells would have the real locks that would alert someone if the door wasn’t sealed properly.

  “Two guards, minimum, had to go with them. It looked like we only had three or four watching us, so I say we all go, swing the ship back, and grab the other two,” I said to Mary and Slate, the only others left in the room with me.

  Slate nodded, gun already in his hand. I wished I’d seen this coming, because the knife in my grip didn’t give me the confidence a pulse pistol would have.

  Slate stood at the door, three fingers raised. He lowered them one by one, and when his count was at zero, he gripped the handle and pulled it inward with a grunt. It slid open, and two guards were there, talking between themselves.

  Before they could react, Mary was on one of them, disarming him and pointing her gun to his head. “Drop it,” she told the other one, and I bent down, picking up the pulse rifle from the ground.

  “Do it!” I called to the last guard still holding his weapon. He lowered it, letting go, the metal clanging on the floor. “Mics,” I said, holding my left hand out. They looked at one another, and the smaller of the two took an earpiece out and set it in my hand. The other guy followed suit. “Thank you. So you know, we are the Heroes of Earth, and when this all shakes out, come down to the surface and I’ll buy you a beer.”

  They looked at us, wide-eyed. “I told you it was them,” the smaller one said, grinning as we led them into the room we’d recently vacated.

  Slate pulled the screw from the door jamb, and we left, locking them in.

  “Let’s go before the other guards come back,” I said, wishing we had Clare and Nick with us. Even though we had a plan, leaving anyone behind was a chance I didn’t want to take.

  We knew the way back, since we’d walked these very halls over an hour ago. Foot traffic was nonexistent; I wondered how many people lived on the station, and what exactly it was they did up here. I hoped I’d eventually learn the answer.

  “This way,” Slate said as we heard footsteps coming from down the hall. We ducked into a side room, the door sliding shut as the steps reached us. We waited in the dark as the sound echoed away from us. My heart was hammering in my chest, and Mary had gripped my hand, a gesture of worry and comfort.

  “Let’s go,” I said, heading back into the hall. The one good thing about function over fashion was that we could hear anyone coming from a hundred feet away on the metal floors. Twice more, we ducked into empty rooms before continuing on our way, soon making it back to the hangar. As we paused in the hall leading to the docking station, alarms blared loudly, getting the attention of the guards lingering inside the large room.

  One of the guards held his hand to his earpiece, trying to hear commands over the noise, and he pointed to the door we were standing near. The three of us ran the other way, turning in time to see the guards from the hangar heading down the hall, toward the room we’d escaped from.

  “Time to shine,” Mary said, rushing back to the hangar. There were only a couple guards left in the room, the rest likely sent to assist in searching for us. Mary ignored them and ran straight for our ship, which still had the ramp lowered. I followed her while Slate threw some covering fire at the guards’ feet and made for one of the other ships docked inside the hangar.

  The guards didn’t even have time to fire back, which was a good thing. We had no intention of killing anyone today. They were doing what they were told, like any good soldiers.

  Our feet clanged on the ramp, and I hit the button as I entered the storage area on our ship. Slate was still firing, and I caught a glimpse of green light emanating around him as he lifted into one of their ships. I still hadn’t seen a guard fire at us.

  “Time to go!” I yelled as Mary ran to the bridge, firing up the engines.

  Our viewscreen showed Slate’s ship leaving, erratically flying like a madman. We followed him out, and when he went left, we went right, back toward the middle of the station. It was only moments later that two ships came after us, but Slate was on them, firing at their shields, making more of a show of it than actually trying to harm them. It was enough of a distraction that the two ships focused on him rather than us.

  “Come in, Clare,” I said after slipping my comm-device in my ear. The sound crackled, and as I thought they might not have been able to conceal the earpieces, her small voice came through.

  “Dean, we’re down the hall in an office, about a hundred yards down from the room we were in. I can’t talk, they…” Her voice cut out.

  “We’re coming now. Be ready.”

  There was no reply as I told Mary the directions. When we thought we were above the section of the station they were in, I told Clare to activate the pins. The energy changed slightly in the room, and I ran to the storage room where the beam drive sat. Clare entered, and she was crying.

  “They spotted it right before you came. Nick’s still down there,” she exclaimed.

  “This complicates things,” I said, wondering if we should head to the surface now and hope we could deal with getting Nick back after. It might be the smartest move, but I hated the thought of leaving one of us behind. There were too many unknowns.

  “That’s not going to matter, because you’re all going back,” a voice said, coming from the far side of the ship where the rooms sat. The black-haired man in the suit emerged from the dim hall, gun pointed at us, a sideways grin covering half his face.

  The training Slate had engrained in us over the last few months took over, and I assessed the situation. For now, I would keep him talking.

  “Find anything you like, or were you having a nap?” I asked, my voice level.

  A flicker of annoyance passed his eyes before he smiled again. “Those quick to joke are covering their own insecurities.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was quoting someone or just making up something stupid and irrelevant, but I played along.

  “I heard that men who wear suits all the time are covering their own soft desk-job bodies.” I shrugged, and he raised his gun, this time pointing it at me.

  “Dean, are we good?” Mary called through the ship’s intercom system.

  “Tell her to join us back here,” the man ordered me.

  I shook my head. “Why would I do that?”

  He moved the gun to the side, firing at Clare, who saw it coming and rolled out of the way. “Because if you don’t, I’ll kill this one.” He fired again, but Clare was already pulling her own gun from the strap on her leg. She shot the man as his beam struck her in the arm.

  It hit him in the leg, and he stumbled, dropping his gun. I lunged at him, tackling the shorter man to get him away from the weapon. Clare groaned but walk
ed over to us, holding her pistol in her left hand.

  “What’s going on back here?” Mary’s voice carried across the room.

  “I’m dealing with a stowaway,” I said while getting off the man, leaving my knee on his chest.

  Mary came to my side as the man cursed me, tears falling from his eyes. I wasn’t sure if it was from the pain or the humiliation.

  “What are we going to do with him?” Clare asked, her voice grim.

  “Collateral.” Mary and I got him to his feet, half-carrying him toward the bridge.

  “You won’t get away with this!” he yelled, but I was beyond caring what this man said. I only wanted to get to the planet.

  “Where’s the colony located?” I asked him as we entered the bridge. We half shoved him into the communications seat, and he almost slid out, his leg wound obviously painful. I took his tie from around his neck and used it as a tourniquet on his leg, cutting off the flow of blood. He screamed as I twisted it a little more than I needed to. “Where is it?”

  “On the eastern coast of the largest ocean,” he said, head slinking down. He called out some coordinates, and Mary quickly moved us toward the planet.

  “Clare, are you okay?” I asked, and she nodded, holding her arm.

  “It’s just a flesh wound. I wish Nick were here to fix it,” she said, and I agreed.

  “We’ll have him back sooner rather than later. I swear.” I hoped I could follow through with the promise.

  The planet approached quickly through the viewscreen. It was a beautiful sight. Having followed the hybrids to another planet, and having seen Earth a few times from space, I knew I’d never grow tired of seeing a world from this vantage point. It was awe-inspiring.

  Still, no ships followed us, and that meant Slate was up there causing all sorts of issues for them. I took a seat at the helm and checked the radar. Four ships followed a single one that was unpredictably flying away from the planet. I silently wished him luck as we entered New Spero’s atmosphere. The ship shook slightly, and then we were heading down toward the location our now-passed-out friend had given us.

  The comm-device beeped, receiving a message. “This is NS-001. Your ship is untagged. Identify yourselves.”

  Mary looked at me for guidance. “No point in hiding it. Take us in slowly.” I reached over to the console and tapped the reply icon. “NS-001, this is Dean Parker, Mary Lafontaine, and Clare LeBlanc coming at you from the past, requesting clearance to land this bird.”

  There was a pause from the other end before a crisp message came back. “Dean Parker, we’re sending you the landing details. Over.”

  Mary keyed them in, taking us over a desert landscape at five thousand feet, slowly descending as we neared the landing pad. The terrain changed as small mountains jutted out from the ground, the land growing greener as we went. Eventually, we were able to spot structures, and I let out a whistle. When I’d first thought of a colony, I pictured straw huts and campfires. I wasn’t prepared for the small city we saw.

  There were no high-rises in sight, but a few multistory buildings popped up all over the area. A city full of residential areas, commerce, and agriculture was evident as we flew over it all. My heart pounded in my chest. We were here. New Spero.

  The landing pad was a few thousand feet long. Dozens of different types of vessels sat idly, and we chose a slot as close to the outbuildings as we could. If we needed a fast escape, we wouldn’t have to traverse the long runway.

  “How’s the readout?” I asked, knowing Clare was working on gathering data from the probes we’d shot as we entered the atmosphere.

  “Perfect. It’s warm, like a spring day in California. Within two percent of Earth’s atmospheric blend. This is amazing.” She stared at the screen, her pain all but forgotten as the scientist in her took over.

  The ship settled down. “We better bring him,” I said, indicating the groggy suited man in the chair. I tapped his cheek with my palm a few times. “Time to wake up,” I said, unsure of how our first steps on the colony planet would go. We might need him as a bartering chip.

  Mary and I lifted him by the shoulders, mostly dragging him back to the bay, where Clare hit the ramp icon to lower it. “Remember, we’re survivors. Whatever we find down here, we’ll make it. Together.”

  Mary smiled at me, blowing a kiss in front of the dead weight we were carrying around.

  We stepped down the metal ramp, warm air blowing against us. I held a pistol in my right hand, Mary had one in her left, and Clare was in front of us, a pulse rifle raised and ready. I suddenly wished Slate was there with us.

  We reached the ground, which was some sort of slate or sandstone-like rock, a good place for a landing pad when you didn’t want to waste a large amount of concrete. No one was there to greet us.

  “That was a little anti-climatic,” Clare said, lowering her rifle slightly and scanning the horizon.

  We set the wounded man down, which gained a few groans from him. He needed medical attention; he had lost a lot of blood before I’d used the tie on his leg.

  A slight hum came from the direction of a nearby warehouse. I spotted a cart, like the ones from the base on Earth, coming toward us.

  “Get ready,” I said, holding my pistol up, ready to look for cover if I had to.

  It closed in on us, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was Magnus. The cart stopped twenty yards away, and a woman in uniform stayed in the driver’s seat as my old friend came rushing toward us. Clare still held her gun up, and I called at her to stand down. She’d briefly known the man, but he did look different. She listened and stepped out of the way as Magnus came crashing into me, his wide arms crushing me in a bear hug.

  “Dean, you son of a bitch! Oh my God, it is you!” He held me back, gripping my shoulders tight. I saw his face then, the youth from his thirties gone, wrinkles creased around his eyes as he smiled at me, gray lining his hair and stubble. Tears were streaming down his face, and I found myself crying too. “Mary! I can’t believe you guys are alive.” It was Mary’s turn to be picked up and swung around by Magnus, and she squealed, matching tear for tear with the big man.

  “You have no idea how good it is to see you, Magnus,” Mary said, wiping her face with her free hand.

  “Magnus, before we do anything, I need you to call up to the base and tell them to stop chasing our friend, and to take it easy on Nick.” I didn’t want to break up the reunion, but I couldn’t let anything happen to my new friends.

  He looked at me, confused, before cluing in. “No problem. Laura, comm the station.” The woman had been within earshot, and soon we heard her convey our message.

  “They said Andrews is missing,” she called back to him. Magnus’ gaze found purchase on the body slumped on the ground. “The ships are calling off their chase.”

  “I think I found him,” he said, grinning at me like old times. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

  THREE

  “Is he going to be okay?” Mary asked.

  Magnus nodded. “He’s fine. Already up and walking. Modern medicine has changed a lot since we last saw each other.” He waved his arm in front of him. “Even in this backwater planet we call home.”

  “I’d hardly call what you have here a backwater anything. It looks like paradise to me,” I said, following the man down the street. People walked by on the sidewalks, heading into different stores. They were labeled with basic names – clothing, grocery, seeds – and I couldn’t shake the feeling we were in some sort of science-fiction socialist regime. I wasn’t going to judge it, because under the right circumstances, it had every chance to thrive. The problem was, humans rarely allowed for the right circumstances.

  “I know we’re going to wait to get to my house to really talk, but, guys, how is it you don’t look any older? What the hell happened out there?” Magnus asked, leading us past the stores.

  “It’s a long story. One Nat’s going to want to hear too. How many people live here?” I asked. I had a gen
eral idea, because a lot of them had left Earth.

  “This city? About half a million, but we’re spread out over two hundred square miles. We have places set up all across the world. Different things grow in different biomes, and we have each city manufacturing different supplies. That way, we can trade and keep everyone gainfully employed and productive. It’s quite the setup.” Magnus looked happy about it, but I could tell he was dying to know our story.

  “What’s your main export?” Mary asked.

  “Agriculture. We have the planet’s best soil, and grow everything from food, to hemp for clothing, to bamboo for various things. I bet you didn’t ever think I’d be a farmer.”

  I laughed. There was no way he was being serious. “Are we almost there?” I asked, curious to hear if Nick and Slate had made it planetside yet.

  “Not quite. That’s why we’re taking this.” He led us to a camo-covered Jeep-like vehicle, and we hopped in. Mary took the front seat, I grabbed the back. I sat in the center of the rear bench, watching wide-eyed as Magnus fired up the engine and drove down the dirt road. We left behind what constituted cityscape on New Spero, and in a couple minutes, we were away from any signs of humanity. The only evidence anyone had been here before were the tire tracks in the grass we were driving in. “See all this? It’s mine.”

  I looked around us, seeing acres upon acres of farmland, crops growing in the summer-like afternoon. At least it felt like afternoon. I really didn’t know what time it was and realized I knew next to nothing about the planet we were on. It was remarkable. If I took a deep breath, there was nothing there to tell me I wasn’t on Earth, in middle America, somewhere much like the state I’d grown up in. I suddenly felt homesick, but for what or where, I wasn’t sure. It was just a feeling gnawing at my stomach.

  We kept going for a few minutes. Soon Magnus turned right and drove down a dirt road leading up to a cabin. It wasn’t big, and smoke poured out of a chimney on the left side of the structure.