Other-Terrestrial

Season 1, Episode 13

"Dark Star"

by Nolan Conrey

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The sun was dimmed as ten thousand vessels ascended into space.

They were staggered out, so from Ham Sulp's point of view they formed a sheet of moving dots, slowly shrinking in size.

Their engines were in full burn, ascending them at speeds that would, at most times, be considered unwise.  In just a few moments most of the ships had escaped the atmosphere and shrunk from sight.

"We're almost loaded!" he heard his first mate yell.

He turned and looked at the short woman as she raced towards him.  "One-thousand and twenty-seven, all we can manage!" she said.

"Not all," he replied.  "Get some sitting in the bathrooms, those seats can function for liftoff, and we can pack on ten more."

She frowned.  "I'm worried about the air.  It's gonna get real heavy quick with this many."

"Crank the air scrubbers to eleven," he told her.

His first mate nodded, even if she didn't like that, and yelled for ten more.

There were guards at the edge of the air fields, who pointed to ten people.  They let them through the cordon, as people stood in terror, yet with enough control not to be rushing the fields.

The guards knew they'd never get to leave.  Because they were never going to get everyone off Terris, and they wouldn't abandon their posts until there was no one else left.

One of the ground crew came up, a woman with the long hair of a terrestrial, which was flying in all directions in her haste.

"I've got the next group staged," she said.  "If you think you can come back for another run."

"We're starting pre-lift," Sulp told her.  His eyes happened to meet hers, and they locked a moment.  She was from Terris, had always known this world.  And he, he was from the spacer fleets.  They were so different, but their eyes were the same color.

He didn't know anything about her, but his system told him that she was Lieutenant Sarah Lachmann.

"I'll be back," he told her.  "I think we can get in one more run."

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The last ten packed themselves onto the ship, and he had to pick his way carefully through the rows of seats to get up to the cockpit of the small shuttle.

People pressed aside as best they could, but they were packed in like sardines.  The trip was only up into space, where they'd dock with a heavy transport.  The people would disembark, they'd refuel, and then they'd head back down for the next group.

This shuttle was good for ten more drops through atmo, he thought.  More than they'd get.

Sitting down in the pilot's chair, he flipped the air scrubbers to an overdrive feature to take carbon dioxide out of the air.  It'd burn them out fast, but they'd last for a few more trips, and that was all that mattered.

He almost laughed.  Never would such an act have been made in his home fleet.  Any Spacer worth his water weight would rather die than waste air filters.  It was too selfish, it would impact those who lived on beyond you.

But sometimes, in a larger context, you sacrificed in the short term.

"Everyone into liftoff chairs," he announced.  When the system confirmed there were no errant people, he began the warm-up sequence.

His first mate slipped into her seat.  She was a Spacer, too, but he had only met her a few weeks ago.  She was, like any Spacer, trustworthy with regards to the ship, and that was all that mattered right now.

"Bad idea to burn out those scrubbers," she muttered.

Not that long from the home fleet, he mused.

"Noted," he told her.

She did not say anything else; it was only a waste of oxygen.  The ship shuddered and began to rumble as the powerful boosters fired off.

Down below, somewhere, Lieutenant Lachmann, the guards, and the others awaiting evacuation were watching them, hoping that this shuttle, or another like it, would have time to come back.

G-forces began to crush him into his seat.  This wasn't that bad compared to what he had pulled in the past, and he didn't even lose vision.  Taking sharp breaths and clenching his body against the g-forces, his fingers still worked the control boards near his hands, getting the computer to plot their course to the carriers.

On the other side of Terris, millions of kilometers out, were the fleets.  They were facing down the . . . anomaly that was fast approaching.

The reality of it still had not settled in for him.  A lifeform of deep space the size of a planet . . . it didn't even make sense.  What the hell could fleet weapons do against something that big?

Maybe slow it down, he thought.  Every non-combat ship that had gone towards the thing had been disabled quickly.  It didn't seem to follow a logical orbital path, moving with will, though how it moved was unknown.

His eyes unfocused.  People had said sometimes that when they looked in the sky they could see the thing.  But that was impossible; it was approaching from the other side of the world.

But he, too, could see something in space.  It was not . . . an actual object.  The thing would be visible, and it would look almost like a planet.

What he saw now was more like a void.  A void of blackness so deep that it swallowed even the black of space.

"Comm from the carrier," his co-pilot said.

He started in his seat.  The g-forces had slackened minutes ago and he hadn't even noticed.

"Let's get docked and dump off this lot so we can-"

"No," his co-pilot said, her eyes going wide.  "It's a call for retreat."

Sulp tuned into the call.

". . . fleets are in full retreat.  The object code-named Leviathan has not slowed, and has accelerated its movement towards Terris.  Repeat, there are to be no new drops to the surface of Terris.  Time to impact is stated to be less than twenty minutes.  All shuttles are to meet up with their mother ships or else to begin a burn along heading . . ."

He ripped off his headset, staring at his co-pilot.  Her eyes were wide, but she said nothing.