“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
— Albert Einstein
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Chapter 1
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The dropship pulled into the loading dock, glistening with the phosphorescence of a blue sun. Not a remarkable ship by any means – at least a decade old, squat, and withered at the thruster. Similar to the others in the bay, but with one standout feature: a red exterior.
The only person for whom this bore any significance was Ava Longwood, whose father departed from the SS Constellation two years ago in a ship of the same colour, though with far fewer scratches and more than enough polish to please the eye. Ava was only eleven years old at the time, and seeing her father leave as part of a military expedition to find potentially habitable planets in the Western Arm of the Milky Way was a scary experience. What had worried her more than anything was the thought of never seeing him again; she believed he would somehow be swallowed by the maw of space and its never-ending mysteries. She used to ask her mother when he would return, and her mother would tell her ‘soon’.
How soon?
Soon, Ava.
Now, she stood up from her desk and approached the window. She had been studying for her upcoming astroengineering exam – astroengineering because she had dreams of one day venturing into space herself – so her brain was naturally fried. “Mom.” Ava’s voice was uncertain.
“Yeah?”
“Red ship.”
“What?”
“Outside.” Ava looked back at her mother.
Her name was Windal. She was scrubbing dishes in the podroom sink. The pink lightstrip bolted across the wall gave her greying hair a youthful tint, but it did little to stave off the wrinkles ebbing down her brow and cheeks. She was thirty-six, but after only a couple years of raising a kid all by herself, time and stress no doubt took a toll on her body. It was the reason Ava didn’t want to stay cooped up in this space station forever; she didn't want to grow old and wrinkly in the same place where she was once young and vigorous. She wanted to explore. She wanted to see her father again, and that wish, thank goodness, looked as if it was finally about to be granted.
“Dad’s ship.” Ava pointed. “Look.”
The word ‘Dad’ didn’t bring a smile to Windal’s face like Ava had expected it to. Instead, after joining her at the window, she shook her head and went back to wiping the coffee mugs in the frothing sinkwater. “He would have contacted me by now.”
“Mom,” repeated Ava in the same voice.
“Two years, Ava. He’s been gone for two years without a word. It’s not him, dear.”
Not him? Surely that couldn’t have been true. There was only ever one red dropship on the SS Constellation. Her father was part of the Crimson Collective, a team of planetary explorers. If her father wasn’t on that ship, then at the very least a member of his team would be, and they would be able to tell her exactly where he was.
Ava stared at the dropship. The gangway from the loading dock slid outward through the oxygen bridge until connecting with the ship’s exitpoint. Ava pressed up against the glass, her hands cupped around her eyes as she squinted intensely at the semi-transparent bridge, looking closely for her father’s face. Several officers walked out, each dressed in a bright red astrosuit and a dimly tinted space helmet. As expected, they were too far for her to get a good look.
Her father had been a tall man with a rabbity face like hers. Much of his hair had receded at both temples; what was left had grown in listless, piebald patches. Ava remembered the sadness in his eyes before he stepped foot off the SS Constellation into the red dropship. They had known months beforehand that the CC would travel across multiple planets, beginning with Zurn 852, but knowing didn’t help ease the situation.
Stay. Please.
Two years was a long time ago, however, so perhaps he looked different now. Ava backed away from the window. A tiny part of her agreed with her mother – that if he was finally returning, he would have contacted her through the Echo Cloud. The Echo Cloud was helpful in connecting all humans across the Milky Way. It was a telecommunication line spanning seventy thousand lightyears through a series of cosmic masts, each carried by a stationary drone. But maybe her father’s tech was damaged or faulty. Maybe he somehow ended up in a deadspot. Maybe he did try to contact them.
Whatever the case, she wanted to go down there. She wanted to see for herself. “It’s the Crimson Collective, Mom. That’s Dad’s team.” She wasn’t sure if they actually were the Crimson Collective, but her mother would surely see the benefit in questioning them if they were.
God, how difficult it had been to convince her mother to come along though. It was as if she didn’t want him to come back at all. Windal grabbed the key card from the kitchen cabinet and went to unlock the door.
It’s red. It has to be him.
Ten minutes later, they were standing at the loading bay along with hundreds of other passengers. Each of them was dressed in the same dark-blue tempsuit with black shoulder and rib padding. It was a special jumpsuit with the soul purpose of keeping the body at room temperature, because in space, it wasn't uncommon for the ship to sail or orbit through both cold and hot pockets of cosmic radiation.
Normally the dock would be bustling with engineers, technicians, and electricians, but today regular people rushed past in riptides, cheering and whistling as the red astronauts finished their decontamination in the semi-transparent bridge. Although their helmets had been removed, foam sprayed from the hoses and covered their bodies, making it impossible to make out the faces. Ava and her mother navigated around the sprawl of civilians, smothered with heat and foul odours: liquid-oxidised petrolate, burning rubber, and, of course, the foam, which smelled a little like baking soda and white vinegar.
Granted, most of the smells came not from the CC dropship but instead from the spacecraft in the loading bay: large cargo haulers with broad wings that fleshed out on either side, each equipped with a thruster engine. The cargo holds were open, showing containment units marked with different galactic stations: WS-C, WS-47D, WS-IB7, all numbers representing different sections of the Western Arm of the Milky Way. Transporting resources from different planets to different stations, no matter how dangerous the planetary conditions were, was a procedure humanity adopted on the basis of survival alone.
The reason teams like the Crimson Collective existed was not just to scope out planetary conditions, but to also bring back water, vegetables, precious nutrients, which in this society had been something of a currency between star systems.
The people clamoured incomprehensibly. Windal kept Ava close to her side. Ava patted one of the civilian’s shoulders and he turned to face her. A scraggly man with a gaunt face.
“The Crimson Collective?” she asked.
“The CC? Yeah, they’re back.”
By coincidence, one of the men from the crowd threw his Herculean arms in the air and bellowed, “The CC are back!”
Ava didn’t realise it until the foam depleted from the astronauts’ bodies and the decontamination unit steamed open like a hot sauna, but the white stencil of an alien spider was embedded on their chestplates, marked with the crusty characters C.C. Excitement was all Ava could feel for a moment, but after all the astronauts left the dropship and she realised that none of them looked like her father, that excitement, however short-lived, quickly turned to fear.
Mr. Maxim Heart, the captain of the SS Constellation for the last two decades, emerged from one of the nearby corridors, escorted by a pair of armed guards. It was hard to miss the white greatcoat with gold-coated epaulettes flapping at his brass-buttoned boots. He was an old man who often had a little too much to say about the state of humanity. He used to give tedious speeches about the development of the Western Arm, and how several ships across the galaxy were searching for the next habitable planet. Ava remembered what he used to say about Earth, the planet which fell into ruin once the population grew to a whopping fifteen billion. That was, what, two hundred years ago? And here they were now, still searching space for another Goldilocks zone. Maxim once said humanity was supposed to live in great, sprawling cultures across the universe, not in ships or pods. Ava agreed, but finding a new Earth wasn’t just like finding a needle in a haystack; it was far, far harder.
Pulling his goatskin gloves up to his cuffs, Maxim approached the decontamination unit. The crowd grew quieter and quieter until all that could be heard were breathless whispers and the captain’s footsteps.
The first red astronaut to step out wasted no time greeting Maxim with a salute.
“Paul Barkley, sir,” the astronaut said.
“Great Scott,” Maxim said. “Where have you been?”
“Zurn 852, sir.”
“But what happened? Why didn’t you call? You’re within cellular distance!”
That was an understatement; Zurn 852 was observable from certain areas of the ship. A giant ball of water, fire, and blue vegetation, followed by clouds with dark spots punching holes in the atmosphere. Those ‘dark spots’ came from the smoke of lava pits, ones so large they might as well have been seas. The habitable area, however, was supposedly located among the blue stretches of land, which made up more than thirty-five per cent of the planet’s surface, the rest primarily being a mix between saltwater, lava, and molten rock.
“Our transmitters went down shortly after entering the atmosphere. The ship lost all function, the electricity blacked out. We finally got it working again, but our Echos were fried beyond repair.” Then, as if suddenly remembering, Barkley added, “Sir.”
Maxim exchanged a long stare with each member of the Crimson Collective, stunned. Slowly, he asked, “How did you survive?”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
A good question, one that Ava had partially considered on the way here. If they were gone for two years, they must have fed on something, drank something, and slept somewhere safe. Vegetables, maybe, and perhaps filtered water, and beds made from grass, twigs, bushes, and clay. It was all in an old self-survival guide she once read on the web: Outliving the Sun.
Paul Barkley took a moment to look at his team before responding. His answer seemed to come out with uncertainty. “There’s life, sir. Creatures…. We ate them.”
The people’s whispers grew into a hubbub of disbelief and surprise. The guards signalled for everyone to quiet down, and Maxim massaged his chin with his thumb and forefinger, letting out an incredulous chuckle.
Ava couldn’t believe it either. Life on another planet. Out of all the star systems the SS Constellation had been to, ones hosting planets so alike Earth that Ava couldn’t believe they were all labelled ‘hazardous’, she didn’t expect a planet which was one-third lava to host life. But this was an exciting discovery – at least, it should have been – because it confirmed that alien species existed.
We’re not alone.
“Great Scott,” Maxim said.
Barkley nodded and took a deep breath. He looked up at the ceiling of flickering fluorescents, pulled his space helmet out from under his arm, and looked down at his reflection on the visor. For someone who discovered the existence of extraterrestrial life, he sure didn’t seem enthusiastic. “We lost a lot of men,” he said.
Ava’s heart jumped and her eyes widened. A lot of men?
“Sir…” Barkley finished.
“That’s horrible,” Maxim sincerely replied. “But we found life, which means we might be able to sustain ourselves there. What’s the verdict, gentlemen? Can we sustain it? What do the tests show?” He seemed a little too eager asking these questions for Ava’s tastes.
One of the other red astronauts cut in. “Maybe it’s best to leave this discussion for the boardroom, sir.” It was a woman, and she took a bit more time introducing herself. “Angel, sir. Angel Kenny.”
“Where’s my dad?” Ava didn’t leave her mother’s side, but she did let go of her arm.
She expected everyone to focus their attention on her – and they did, temporarily – but almost instantly another man cut in, asking where his wife was. His name was Mr. Armand Broker, one of the engineering professors at Ava’s school. His wife Linda had also been part of the mission to investigate extraterrestrial planets for habitable zones, and he sure as hell didn’t look too happy. Soon, the crowd clamoured for answers. The captain raised his hand as if to bring silence to an otherwise stressful situation, and he succeeded, but it wasn’t long before Mr. Broker pressed further.
“Where is she?” He stepped out and approached Maxim; the guards told him to back up.
“Armand,” Barkley cut in suddenly, and once again silence filled the bay.
Mr. Broker rushed forward and the guards shoved him away. “Where is she? Tell me. Now. Fucking now!”
“Back up,” one of the guards shouted, his voice muffled under the heavy-duty space helmet. Mr. Broker looked at the officer with his terrified, distraught eyes, his lips twisted in a cramp, and Ava got the feeling that something horrific was about to happen. That rifle could fire and blast Mr. Broker brainsfirst on the floor. She had only ever seen blood on TV, and it had always made her squeamish; thinking about what could happen sent her heart into a spiralling panic.
She took a step forward and her mother pulled her back by the arm.
“Stay,” Windal said. She looked at Ava sternly, not blinking even once. Those were the eyes that had at one point told her to stay calm, that Dad would be home in no time at all. Granted, there was no way she could have known that to begin with, and as years went by, the stress of raising Ava all by herself must have taken her mind off him. It certainly seemed that way, but how could she remain silent when there were so many questions waiting to be answered? How could she stand there and ignore the idea that her own husband could have been involved in the list of ‘lost men’?
Ava didn’t know, and frankly, it didn’t matter. This couldn’t go ignored.
“Just tell me where my wife is,” said Mr. Broker.
“And where’s my dad?” added Ava.
Windal’s grip tightened on her shoulder. “Ava,” she rasped.
Now Mr. Broker looked at her, his face still frozen in that rictus of frustration. His cheeks were starting to redden a little bit, and his eyes glimmered with fresh tears.
“Little girl....” Maxim was staring right at her.
“She’s not a little girl,” said Mr. Broker. “She has as much right to know what happened to her father as anyone else does. What? Are you gonna keep this info classified, too?”
“Quiet,” said Maxim, more vociferous than before. “Now I don’t know what happened. The CC and I are going to have a private discussion and when the time comes—”
“Where’s my wife, Barkley?” asked Mr. Broker.
Maxim looked as though he was about to lose his patience, and then he lost it. He turned to the Crimson Collective, beckoned them towards the tunnel from which he had arrived, and began walking. “To the cockpit, all of you. There’s too much noise here.”
The crowd clamoured again, this time sounding outraged. The guards waved the CC forward, holding their phaser rifles – weapons capable of firing concentrated beams of energy that could vaporise anything in their path. Ava saw those in a documentary about the development of technology from the twenty-first century to the twenty-third.
The guards were also equipped with a standard X-74 blowout pistol, a popular choice due to it largely relying on short blasts of concentrated lightning rather than bullets or pellets. The barrel was slightly shorter than traditional firearms, but it had a sleek metallic finish and a curved grip that, according to firearm experts, made it easier to control. Ava remembered those details vividly – she had something of a photographic memory – but right now that didn’t matter, because Mr. Broker had his eyes glued to them. He seemed as though he was about to lunge for one of the pistols, and after the final CC member followed Maxim through the tunnel and the guards escorted them from behind, he did. He was slow at first, tiptoeing up to the nearest officer like a cat stalking its prey, and then quickly he snatched the X-74 from its holster. Before the officer had a chance to fully turn, Mr. Broker aimed the blowout pistol at his helmet and pulled the trigger.
A flash of blue light, and then a beam of concentrated energy flew into the officer’s visor, shattering it and causing blood to shoot out from the opposite side of his head. The officer’s body didn’t even have a chance to hit the floor when Mr. Broker pulled the trigger a second time, this time killing the other officer. He kicked back and hit the floor, dropping his phaser rifle off to the side. Some of the people from the crowd screamed, others took off into the nearby tunnels, and others stayed, watching with sun-lamented eyes.
Ava winced, feeling suddenly breathless. Her heart pumped, her stomach turned, but she didn’t look away. Strangely, something compelled her to keep watching, no matter how sickening the brain splatter was.
Maxim and the Crimson Collective had long since stopped. Maxim looked on with horror, but the CC were calm, collected, and standing. Barkley, in particular, had seen this before. Not a single drop of fear on his face; he wasn’t concerned with whether or not he would die.
“Barkley.” Mr. Broker shook with a mix of anger and mental break. “Come back here, now. Tell me what happened to my wife.”
“Come on.” Windal pulled Ava away and began dragging her through the crowd, towards the exit stairs on the other side of the dock.
“Stop,” cried Ava, but her voice was nearly incomprehensible beneath the volley of shouts, roars, and whistles. What about Dad? What about Mr. Broker?
The fluorescents overhead began flashing red, and a strident alarm whirred across the loading dock. The emergency alarm was only ever sounded if there was great impact damage to the hull, especially from flying space debris. But there were certain cases where the danger was internal, and right now there was nothing more dangerous than a distraught man wielding a firearm, unafraid to use it. Mr. Broker was the last person Ava would have expected to go insane like that. Yes, it was terrible that Maxim wanted to keep the list of ‘lost men’ confidential – in fact, it was a crime against human decency – but killing guards like that, no less impulsive than a big spender, was darkly out of character. Mr. Broker was a kind man who missed his wife. He often spoke about his wife during his astroengineering lectures, how he would often reach out to administration to see if there were any updates to the status of the Crimson Collective. For so long, he was told that they were still busy carrying out tests on multiple planets, and once that became too repetitive to be true, they told him the CC’s signal had been poor. However, not too poor for administration to know the team was, in their own words, ‘still operational.’
Sure, that in itself would have concerned anybody. It would have made anyone sick even. When it came to thinking about her father and where he could have possibly been, Ava felt the same way, but never would she go so far so as to harm another human being. That crossed the line beyond all reasonable doubt.
Ava’s mother continued to drag her through the bowels of the ship, and others followed. The standard procedure was to retreat to your pod as soon as the alarm was pulled, as soon as there was danger, and as soon as SS Personnel had to get involved. And there were a lot of personnel. Once Ava and Windal reached the greenhouse, which acted as a bridge between the loading dock and the educational sector (otherwise known as SECTOR 46-G), the people made way for the oncoming soldiers armed with not only phaser rifles but tesla rods, photon displacers, and flash grenades. Of course, it wasn’t often that SS Security had to use weapons. Most of the issues caused by civilians could be resolved by forceful restraint. Then again, there weren’t many instances of poor passenger behaviour. Most understood the importance of acting in accordance with galactic law, and for those who didn’t…. Well, there were special prisons across the Western Arm: LockCrafts.
Ava had never seen one in person, but they were remarkably small; the idea of being trapped in something for decades gave her a sense of phantom claustrophobia. She couldn’t help but imagine Mr. Broker in the same situation, shackled, beaten to a bloody mess, thrown behind a laser cell, and what? What was someone supposed to do then? Count the days?
Now Ava imagined her father in a similar situation: trapped on Zurn 852. She was fully aware that her father had been part of the list of ‘lost men’, but whether that meant he had died on duty or become lost on the planet was a question waiting to be answered. She couldn’t stop thinking about it. She had to know.
But not now. She wasn’t stupid. Mr. Broker was an emotional hazard. More shots could be fired. More blood. More brains.
When they finally made it back to their podroom and Ava could see the flashing red lights from the window, Windal slid the key card through the activation slot and caused the bulbous light at the top of the door frame to turn orange. There was silence before she spoke. “Ava.”
“I didn’t think that would happen.” There was a touch of guilt in Ava’s voice.
Windal knitted her brows as she approached. “Think what?”
“That Mr. Broker would….” The image of the officers’ deaths was too sickening to describe. Ava locked her fingers together, looking at her mother with wide, regretful eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Windal’s brows were drawn down, her lips curled up. “Don’t you dare think that was your fault.”
“But I asked about Dad. He’s dead…. Isn’t he?” Surprisingly, Ava didn’t cry; the shock of the situation had sucked all moisture from her tear ducts.
“Your father isn’t dead,” said Windal sternly.
“Then where is he?”
“Somewhere.” Windal struggled to find words. “Don’t worry about that. I’m concerned about you, only you. When you see danger, you run. You told me to stop back there.”
“The astronaut didn’t say anything about Dad—”
“I told you,” said Windal, “your father’s fine. He’s on Zurn. He’s alive and well, and so is that man’s wife. Barkley said it himself that they were able to survive, and your father’s a very intelligent man, sweetheart.”
Ava’s worry deteriorated slightly. “I want to see him.”
“And we will, one day, sweetheart. We have to wait. Maxim will let us know.”
“Why would he?”
“Because he’s the captain.”
A captain who, no doubt, had a poor habit of keeping information from the shipmates. Particularly information involving large trades between other galactic stations where the SS Constellation would suddenly ‘run short on supplies’ due to ‘late shipments’. In other words, he would trade heaping piles of produce for cigarettes, plasma, weaponry, and stronger heat-protection shields so he could order more business stores to be built along the tail of the ship. Even though food and water were like currency, the intergalactic zed (Ƶ) was still sought after, especially to convince people to get up in the morning and work.
“Captains are supposed to give us updates. You heard what Paul Barkley said. There’s life on another planet, not just vegetables, animals. We might be able to live there soon. We’ll get to see Dad again.”
“Promise,” said Ava.
“I promise, sweetheart.” Windal hugged her tightly. “But promise me you’ll run when you see danger. If you hear the alarm, get back to your pod. There’s some dangerous people on this ship, in this world. We have security lockdowns for a reason, Ava.”
It took a moment for Ava to respond, but after Windal gave her a set of, for once, soft and caring eyes, she nodded. “I promise.”
And she kept that promise since that discussion. She took the time to process everything in a more optimistic light: the idea of living on a planet, an actual planet, and getting to meet whatever animals resided there. What would they be like? Would they be similar to the creatures held in Sector FG-21, where cows were milked, chickens robbed of their eggs, sheep shaved?
Five years later, she still didn’t know, but she was soon about to find out.