CHAPTER 10
2237
Rogue Planet Exoginos
Riley looked around, his vision still clouded by the stasis pod gel. He tried to stand but his limbs were recovering slowly from his time in stasis. A pair of hands grabbed him and pulled him up. It was Ethan. Riley was enraged. He shoved Ethan and tried to pursue him, to hurt him. His eyes were wide, rabid, but his body betrayed him. Riley crashed to his knees. His stomach gurgled and he lurched forward as he vomited more gel. Ethan took a step back. When Riley finally stopped retching, he looked up at the people again, his vision slowly clearing. They seemed familiar but the memory was distant, faded. He could remember very little at all. He closed his eyes and tried to remember who he was, where he was, and why. All he felt was a dull ache in the back of his head. He looked up at the Vindex armor. Even as he struggled to remember anything else, he knew it belonged to him.
Riley finally struggled to his feet. He staggered toward Vindex, then placed a palm on one of its feet. Everything else seemed unfamiliar, but touching the armor soothed him somehow.
Bethany cautiously stepped toward Riley reaching out with her hands. “Riley, it’s me,” she said.
The name sounded familiar. He felt as though he should have known her but he couldn’t place her in his memories.
Bethany continued moving closer until she stood at the foot of the mech. She slowly placed her hand on Riley’s. “You really don’t remember, do you?” she asked.
Riley shook his head.
“I’m Bethany, your friend. Those are Isaac and Ethan. Can you remember them?”
Riley shook his head again.
“It’s okay,” Bethany said as she wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly. “It’s been twenty-seven years, and now we’re here. We were looking for you, and we finally found you.”
Riley didn’t return her embrace but he didn’t fight it. Something about her touch was familiar. The smell of her hair, the softness of her skin. It didn’t feel strange to him but he still didn’t know who she was. Riley knew they were telling the truth but he shared none of their memories. Why couldn’t he remember?
Isaac approached Riley. “It’s so good to see you again. We thought you were dead.”
Bethany frowned at Isaac, who immediately understood why. Isaac nodded, patted Riley awkwardly on the shoulder, and moved away to study Vindex. Riley stepped toward the other members of the group. Ethan gave a slight smile and a not of acknowledgment. Ethan wasn’t comfortable hugging Riley while his memory was so clouded. They had fought together in the final battles against the vilis before Earth fell, and Ethan would never forget Riley’s bravery through it all. He had met no one like Riley in the decades since. Somehow, Ethan’s friendly smile had the opposite of its intended effect on Riley; he wanted to smack Ethan’s smug face.
Riley felt cold and weak. He found a rock away from the others and sat down. He was visibly shaking.
Away from everybody else, he whispered weak enough for nobody to hear him "Sa- yeed-..."
Anderson approached Bethany. “How’s he doing?” he asked, quietly.
Bethany crossed her arms. “I don’t know. He doesn’t remember anything but that might be a side effect of being in stasis for so long. We need to give him time.”
“He hasn’t aged a day,” Isaac added.
“We don’t have time,” Anderson responded to Bethany. “We need to learn what he knows about this planet if we’re going to survive.” He looked up at the two suns. “It’s getting colder. We can’t be out here after sunset. We need to find shelter.”
Bethany walked over to Riley. She sat on a stone near the one he was sitting on and faced him. “Riley, what can you remember about this planet?”
“Ri-... ley…”
She nodded. “That’s your name.”
Riley shook his head and shifted his eyes towards the stasis pod. “How long was I inside that thing?”
“A very long time. Do you remember why you entered stasis?”
Riley looked at the pod, then up at the mech, as though either of them could provide him with answers. He shook his head again. “When you arrived, was there someone else here?”
“No. We came here to find you, and you’re the only person we found.” Bethany took out Riley’s journal and flipped through its pages. “Do you remember this?”
Riley’s eyes widened when he saw the journal, the first hint of some kind of recognition.
“How did you get here, Riley? You couldn’t have flown a ship this far; that was impossible when you left. Did you travel through a breach?”
Riley looked at the Vindex and stared at it. “That’s mine.”
“Yes, it’s yours,” Bethany agreed. “I need you to give me access to its systems. We need information and it might remember what you can’t.”
Riley scowled, sprung up from the rock, ran to the mech, and stood in front of it. “No one touches my armor,” he growled.
Isaac jumped away from the mech. “We’re trying to help, buddy.”
Bethany followed Riley. She approached him and took his hands. “Riley, we need your help, or we’re all going to die here. Thousands of us traveled here and now we’re all that’s left. If you don’t help us, we won’t survive another night on this planet.” She placed a hand on his chest. “I know you can’t remember who you are but that doesn’t change the truth. You’re a good man, Riley, and I know you won’t let us die.”
Riley grabbed Bethany’s wrist and gently moved her hand away from his chest. “What do you need me to do?”
“Tell your armor that you grant me full control of its systems.”
“How?”
“Just tell it. Its name is Vindex in Machina. I’m Bethany. Bethany Clarke.”
Riley looked up at the armor and spoke. “Vindex in Machina.” The moment he said its name, the armor vibrated loudly, followed by a low hum, then by several whirring and clanking sounds. “I grant Bethany Clarke full access to all systems.”
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For the first time in almost thirty years, the Vindex in Machina armor came online. The hatch popped open. Bethany gave Riley a nod, then she signaled for Isaac to follow her. They both climbed the mech and disappeared into its hull, shutting the glass hatch behind them.
Isaac sat in the pilot’s chair and browsed its systems. Bethany searched the wall, opening different compartments until she found a thick tablet. She took it out and pressed the power button. The tablet opened a small hatch on the floor and she descended through it on a ladder. She continued down until she reached a room with two small windows. She looked through the window to the right. Her eyes sparkled, reflecting the light of a live quantum reactor, swirling with pulsing energy of blue and white. She looked through the other window and saw a different chamber, isolated from the quantum drive. Its contents were completely alien to Bethany: floating metal balls, each one the size of a golf ball.
The floating metal balls were arranged in a manner reminiscent of a human DNA strand. The strand was connected to a component hanging from the ceiling of the chamber, and a similar component on the floor. Each ball turned independently of the others, but the entire strand also rotated together. Bethany looked closer. There was an almost invisible energy field surrounding the device. Bethany knew she had seen it before. She opened Riley’s journal and quickly flipped through the pages until she found a drawing of the device she was looking at. The words ‘The Time Drive’ were written beneath the drawing. Bethany looked back and forth between the drawing and the real thing, trying to confirm what she already knew. They were unquestionably the same device. Questions she had been asking for decades were now replaced by even greater confusion.
Bethany closed the journal and shoved it back into her pocket. She looked behind her and saw numerous different ports on the wall. There was a short cable attached to the tablet and she connected the other end to one of the ports. The tablet immediately began downloading a wealth of data. Moments later, the download was complete. Bethany disconnected the tablet and climbed back to the cockpit. As soon as she emerged from the hole, Isaac called her.
Bethany climbed out, put the tablet away, and went to Isaac. She placed a hand on his shoulder and opened her mouth to speak, but she stopped, took her hand away, and looked up at the screen.
“Beth, are you okay?” Isaac asked.
“I’m fine,” she answered.
Isaac looked at her face and didn’t believe her. “Is this about Riley? I didn’t know you two were that close.”
“It isn’t like that. What did you want to show me?”
“It’s the weather. Look at these readings. I think Anderson was right all along; the planet has been attacking us.”
Bethany frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Isaac pointed at the screen. “This was the weather planet-wide before the jump ship approached. Look at how calm the readings are. Now, this is the weather after we lost contact with the jump ship. Look at the spike. Now look at it after we arrived, look at it as we walked up the mountain.”
Bethany saw it as clear as day. “Something’s…”
“Not just something. The planet. I don’t think it wants us here.”
“But the weather improved,” she said.
“It did. Then we found the structure, the beads, and the vilis.”
Bethany was disturbed. “Then why isn’t it attacking us now? Why hasn’t it attacked Riley?”
“Maybe because he was asleep, or maybe it has no issue with him. It could just be us.”
They stared at the screen in silence for a moment.
Bethany took the tablet and looked through the data. “Riley came here through a breach. There are still traces of negative photons all over the mech. Maybe the planet doesn’t see him as a threat because he didn’t fly into its atmosphere.”
Isaac nodded. “Maybe we’re safe as long as we stay close to him.”
Bethany rubbed her forehead. “This is crazy. It doesn’t feel like science; it feels like magic.”
“Anderson might be right about something else,” said Isaac. “The founder. This could have been his home planet.”
Bethany plugged the tablet into the wall and continued staring at it, wide-eyed. “What do we do, Isaac?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Wait,” Bethany looked closer. “Oh my God.”
Isaac got out of his seat and joined her.
“It was Riley,” she explained. “He opened the breach on the station. He must have been trying to get back.”
“But that’s impossible,” Isaac replied. “He was in stasis for as long as we were on the station, remember?”
They stared at each other, deep in thought. “Someone else sent the beacon,” they said simultaneously.
“Wait,” said Isaac. “It could also result from time dilation. For us, the breach opened months ago. For him, it might have opened before he entered stasis.”
“Does time dilation explain a stasis pod that functions without an energy supply and prevents Riley from aging a day in three decades?”
Isaac looked down and sighed. “You know what that means." Isaac looked up at Bethany. "We have to tell the others.”
They opened the hatch and climbed down. The others were all sitting on stones, except for Anderson, who was pacing impatiently. When he saw Bethany and Isaac, he stopped pacing and glared at them.
“What took so long?” Anderson barked.
“We weren’t playing games in there, you know,” Isaac replied, too exhausted to be intimidated.
“Did you find anything in there?”
“We think you were right,” said Bethany. “The planet appears to be attacking us, at least that’s what the readings suggest. The storm, all of it. It started when we arrived and it’s following us. I think it wants us to leave.”
“Come again?” Ethan blurted. “What do you mean the planet is attacking us?”
“It’s the only thing that makes any sense, Ethan,” she replied. “It probably didn’t attack Riley because he came here through a breach.”
Anderson frowned. “What are you saying? That we’re going to die here, and there’s nothing we can do about it?”
“There’s something we can do,” Isaac replied. “The ship has data on the coordinates of our original destination. If we can salvage that data, we might be able to use the Vindex to open a breach to the planet’s surface and walk straight in.”
Anderson looked at Isaac and Bethany for a moment, then he burst into laughter. It was rare from him. “You must be kidding.”
“The breach that brought the vilis to the station was opened by Vindex. If we can figure out how Riley did it, we might be able to open breaches that lead anywhere we want.”
Bethany nodded in agreement. “Analyzing the data could take days, even weeks, but it’s our only option. We also can’t know how long it will take to figure out how to make breaches with the suit.”
Ethan stood up, tired of listening. “None of that matters,” he said, “the alternative is waiting here to die.” He turned to Anderson. “What’s the plan, sir?”
Anderson took a moment to contemplate. “Under normal circumstances, I’d say we split up. One group stays here, the other group returns to the ship. All things considered, I say we toe and knuckle it down there together. We can fit four or five people in the mech and the rest can sit on the hull. Move fast and we can be back here before nightfall.”
Riley had been listening in silence, listening as they talked about his mechanized armor like it belonged to them. He hadn’t spoken since he gave Bethany full access to the mech. The longer they spoke, the angrier he became. He couldn’t remember why the mech was so important to him, why he felt so furious whenever somebody else touched it. The affinity he felt for the armor wasn’t one he could describe with words. The suit was part of him, an extension of his being. When it was touched, he felt invaded, threatened. Riley held back his anger because the woman was sweet to him, and something about her was familiar, but he had allowed enough.
Anderson turned to Riley. “Riley, are you good to pilot that thing?”
Riley didn’t answer. He stared at the ground.
“Soldier, can you pilot that thing?” Anderson asked again, louder.
Riley looked up at Anderson and gave a coarse whisper “No!”.
Anderson felt a chill in his spine. He knew Riley well. He knew him personally, he knew his combat record, he had read hundreds of his mission logs. He knew what Riley had endured, things no one else knew. Anderson knew him at the beginning, and he knew what Riley had become. The Captain understood what it meant for Riley to have that look in his eyes.
“Right,” said Anderson. “You’ve done good work here, soldier. Now, I need you to transfer pilot access to Ethan.”
Riley's eyebrows lowered “No!”
“Are you disobeying a direct order?”
Riley unfolded into straight posture with his arms to the sides, and his chest puffing out.
“No one touches my armor.”
“Soldier, do you remember who you’re talking to?” Anderson snarled. “Given the circumstances of your hibernation, I’m going to let that slide. Now get your ass up and do as you’re told.”
Riley’s face twisted into a manic expression. His chest heaved with every breath. He glared at Anderson for a moment, as Anderson watched him, waiting for Riley to follow instructions. Riley sprung off the stone and lunged at Anderson. He clenched his fist and it audibly parted the air as he threw it at the Captain. Riley’s fist struck Anderson’s throat, crushing his trachea and shattering his hyoid bone. Anderson recoiled and clutched his neck, staring at Riley with bulging eyes as he gasped for air. Ethan ran toward Anderson but there was nothing he could do. The Captain fell to his knees, then collapsed forward, dead.
Standing over Anderson’s body, Riley turned to the others, glaring at them with bloodshot eyes. He clenched his fists again and roared, veins bulging, and charged at them.