“Happy new year!” Shouted everyone as the clock hit midnight. Pops of fireworks could be heard across the town, filling the sky with a brilliant show of lights and explosions.
Alice was sat on the armrest of my chair with her arm across my back. She leaned in and planted a kiss on my cheek, her mousey brown hair giving me goosebumps when it brushed against my face as she straightened back up. “Happy new year Alex, I love you.” She whispered in my ear as she stood up and made her way into the house to find a new bottle of champagne.
After the fireworks had settled, everyone began chatting again, sitting off in groups around our porch with Eli plonking himself on the outdoor sofa next to my chair and cornering me into a conversation.
Eli was our intelligent but quirky friend and a bit of a lone wolf. He was a great friend but could get carried away with conspiracy rants, especially after a few drinks if you weren’t careful.
“You and Alice are planning to try and conceive aren’t you?” He asked with an unusually straight face. Most of the time he would start a conversation with a ‘knowing something you didn’t’ kind of smirk.
“Uh yeah it’s something we’ve discussed I guess. Why’s that?”
“It might be something you’d want to reconsider unless you have a plan”
“Reconsider? plan? What are you taking about? I fired off with a scoff at how ludicrous the conversation had turned and so quickly at that. He had me there for a second thinking we were about to have a normal conversation about life for once.
Eli scuffed forward in his chair and lowered his tone, occasionally glancing over at the doorway to see if Alice was about to return.
“Well you know my work, right? Over at the research observatory? He paused. “Well we discovered an odd trend. Repeatable through different models. It’s not good Alex.”
If there was anything to take seriously it would be Eli’s work. He never joked when it came to his work and he was over-the-top passionate about it ever since university. He worked at a space climate research lab, using satellites and all that jazz to study climate change. It was a field he was held with high regard in, despite our young age, and had already a handful of accomplishments under his belt.
“What do you mean ‘not good’?”
Eli sat there paused, likely thinking of the best way to say whatever bomb he was about to drop on me. “Ten years” is all he could think of.
“Ten years for what?”
“Until Earth starts truly becoming inhabitable. It starts as a slow decline and then as we approach the ten year mark it starts to go off a cliff”
We sat in silence for a brief moment as I tried to process what he just said. I had no words, I kept opening my mouth to speak but no words, no sounds, nothing.
“There’s already talk from the higher ups that there’ll be some sort of evacuation attempt but it’s all under wraps right now. When they announce it, which will be soon, we’ll all need a plan.”
I Still had nothing. I wasn’t sure what emotion to feel in that moment either. I felt an urge to cry but then again I was angry like I could punch a wall. The future, our future. The child we hadn’t even conceived yet, I felt grief for it all, like it had already happened. In that moment I could barely keep it together and it’s a feeling that has never escaped me. A feeling that keeps me alive but wanting to die and give up at the same time.
While dealing with the inner turmoil, I could see Alice through the window making her way back out to us, and all I could picture was her beautiful smile turning sour as soon as she found out. Before she reached the door, Eli had grabbed my attention again.
“Whatever happens don’t bring new life into a world scheduled to die. Not unless you know for certain you can get off this planet.” Said Eli, knowing our conversation was about to be cut short by Alice any second.
With a pop of a champagne cork, my attention was slowly was sucked back to my unfortunate reality.
“A glass Carter?” Asked Sergeant Ro, holding out the bottle ready to pour me a glass. Salvation was celebrating our official departure out of the solar system and into deep space. There were parties all throughout Salvation and ours was on the viewing platform on Deck 3, my home deck.
“Sure, why not.”
“Not still thinking about the Dominus and the phantom ship of yours are you?
I had been ever since it disappeared. By the time I had gotten to a Miltech station and notified Jeremy to look, whatever was there had gone. I started to doubt my own recollection of events, heck I even started to think I might be going space crazy - I wouldn’t of been the first one. The Dominus had all but vanished, not even showing on the craft tracker. I became obsessed with searching for it in my spare time, hoping to catch its blip on the screen in an ‘aha gotcha’ moment but it never happened.
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“Kind of… just thinking. Anyway, I don’t know why everyone else seems so keen to forget about it!” I said to Ro as I took a big gulp of the champagne.
“It was nothing more than a flex and trick by Fletcher to get under Hendersons skin. We’ve got bigger and better things to look forward to now.”
Ro had a point, after all the dust settled it was made known that Captain Fletcher previously had a number of companies that worked on Government programs, spearheaded by non-other than Henderson herself. According to Jeremy, a lot of the tech within the Dominus fleet was taken from these programs which makes sense why Henderson was so eager to take him down.
As the celebrations continued I turned my attention to gaze out into the endless black, pondering my existence, as you do, and wondering if any of this was even real. Maybe we all died and this is some kind of cosmic journey of our souls, damn I really am starting to go space crazy.
“Captivating isn’t it” said a deep, calm voice that was unfamiliar. There would be the regulars I’d occasionally chat with, a mix of passengers and crew but this one was different.
He sat there staring out into the black as well. He was wearing an outfit I had not seen yet since being aboard Salvation, it was a charcoal suit-like outfit but its colours weren’t those of Miltech, although he did appear military in the way he spoke and carried himself. He had dark greying hair that was styled as well as sporting a lighter grey beard that was neatly trimmed. On his lapel was a name badge that had a deep red captain insignia with the name ‘Captain G. Lee’ next to it.
“Are you the one they’re all joking about over there.. the phantom ship one?”
“Yeah that’s me” I sarcastically replied pointing to myself. I decided to own it after my reluctant nickname was handed out by Kai like it was going out of fashion.
“I’ve seen them too”
“Them? Like multiple? Are you screwing with me right now?” I queried slightly taken aback by the calm admission of seeing ships that I had been copping so much flack about.
“Not at all, ever since we’ve left I have overseen every decision aboard this ship and since we that anomaly that made us jump I’ve been in the bridge almost 24/7”
Captain Lee continued to tell me about the wild things they had seen, heard and encountered while piloting the transporter. Everything from picking up static to picking up comms from transporters that were now millions of kilometres behind us, and also about the unknown crafts that had been buzzing around us since the anomaly jump - some of which were cloaked, ‘phantom ships’.
“So these things are all connected? What do we know about the anomalies?”
“Not a whole lot yet, we have a bunch of our specialist crew researching around the clock, as does Miltech. They have been trying to convince me to put Salvation directly into the next one that shows”
I could tell that it was something that he was considering, he held a look of intrigue as we discussed the pros and cons of purposefully putting salvation through one of these anomalies. Captain Lee was almost of the opinion that these unknown crafts actually wanted us to do it and he made a strong case when he spoke of the movements and timing of when they would appear. It started to feel as if everyone with authority aboard Salvation had no issue gambling away their life and the lives of the thousands of other people. Just happy to roll the dice and see where they land.
The preceding days after the celebrations and introductory chat with Captain Lee had proved interesting. It seemed as if each day we were having more and more anomaly alerts which meant we were continually having to clear people from the decks back to their rooms per emergency protocol. It had become obvious that the Captain decided to play along with the idea of putting Salvation clear into the path of an anomaly but so far nothing extraordinary like the last had happened yet.
Each time an emergency was enacted, the passengers and crew were more defiant, refusing to go back to their rooms. It escalated our clashes to a more violent nature and it was wearing the Miltech crews thin. Already short of personnel, coupled with more frequent injuries, we needed to find and remove the figures pulling the strings. Luckily for us, I already knew who one of those figures were, Bill the boarding douchebag.
I pulled Ro aside after one of the recent clashes and told her about my run in with Bill at the dive bar late one night after my meeting with Jeremy. She had no hesitation in saying yes to tracking down Bill and making him divulge any information.
He usually hung out on the main deck and was becoming more inclined to blow off his crewman duties for helping to establish a new black market and criminal underground in Salvation. So for now he had been one of the main players or at least had a hand in establishing them.
It never got old stepping from that elevator back onto main deck. Each time gave me the same feeling as the first, like I was back on Earth for a night on the town. The deck would of been give or take about the size of a city block or so, but it was divided up by narrow alleyway style streets and had buildings that were a couple of stories high. It held a lot of businesses and also accomodation style places to - I’m guessing for cross-transporter stays or something like that.
Like any city though, with the main bustling streets also came the seedy dark alleys. Where Bill was most likely lurking. There was no shortage of shady characters that scurried away on sight of two Miltech crew too.
“What are you guys selling here, all legit right?” Ro said to a back alley vendor who had a bright medical cross hanging above his shop.
“Of course it’s all legit baby” replied the man.
Ro grabbed his head by the hair and slammed it onto the small counter of his shop, then pulled him up and slammed it one more time before pulling him over it, scattering his stock all over the ground and wasting no time at all getting to the point.
“I’ll put you out an airlock if I ever hear you call me baby again you fuck. Now tell me, where’s Bill? Don’t even try to tell me you don’t know who I’m talking about”
“He…he’s down the far end usually, them guys just opened up a new bar”
“Alright Carter, Let’s go. Kick him in the ribs as a thank you”
At first I thought she was joking until she shot a stare at me as I was about to step over him. With a half hearted apology telling him he asked for it, I gave him a kick to the ribs just hard enough to get praise from Ro before we made our way to the far end of the deck.
“There he is, grab him!” Ro shouted as she spotted him, quickly running across one of the alleyways and slipping his arm behind his back. There was a group of guys with him, who didn’t look too happy about us being there.
“Ya know, Miltech shouldn’t be this far down ‘ere… we don’t really like you lot down here do we boys” Bill said with a psychotic false sense of security, however, it was enough for the others to move forward.
I raised my rifle and pointed it toward the group, which included Ro as she remained trying to restrain Bills arm behind his back.
“Well you lot know better than to fuck around with Miltech don’t you… or is this when you find out?” I shouted toward them.
Instantly they tried to call my bluff, stepping forward at the same time Ro activated her voice link for backup. One of the group placed a quick kick to the back of Ros knee, buckling her and loosening her grip on Bill. I pointed my rifle at his body, inhaling and tapping the trigger two times to take him down. I drop to a knee as I see another one pull out his own rifle and point it at me. As I’m swinging around to engage, I place a single round into Bills leg before dropping to a stationary position and putting one through the head of the armed one of the group.
They all dropped in rapid succession with Ro still kneeling and covering her head while Bill groaned in pain on the ground. People were still screaming and running away without realising it was over as quickly as it began.
“Holy fuck Carter, what was that? I didn’t think you had it in you” Ro said as she stood up and looked over the aftermath.
I couldn’t talk, I just laid there for a second as the adrenaline dumped from my system. All I wanted to do was sleep now. It was hard to think of how easy it was to snap back into combat, the kill or be killed mentality I had back on Earth in the end.
Ro pat me on the back and helped me back to my feet as backup arrived. “Alright guys take them all to medical, take the one who’s still alive to the brig after they patch him up. We’ll catch him there later.”
“How the hell did that guy have a rifle” I asked with a strained voice.
“No idea but we’ll find out soon enough, after we get some rest. Good job Carter” added Ro with a smile.