Quarantined Planet (2 page)

Sephora
, another dragonfly-shaped craft similar to
Lilith
, is docked with the Eye. In space, the alien drop off station more closely resembles a massive car tire than an eye. Both float gracefully in orbit midway between the planet and its rock buster spheres.

The space station’s interior is drab and dimly lit with smooth, bare walls. Like a basketball arena, long corridors circle the outside on five levels with doors and hallways allowing access to deeper chambers. Humans are not allowed past the top floor, where food and supplies are unloaded for subsequent transport to the planet. It’s reminiscent of a warehouse retail store, with lengthy aisles of shelving that are all empty at the moment. Chloe works alone and neatly places one last crate on a stack of empty storage boxes. A gourd-like alien fruit falls from somewhere inside the pile, and she watches it roll to a stop.

Elliot Nixon, bounds into the room, startling her.

“Oh, Nix,” she exclaims, putting a hand over her heart. He’s a good-looking, twenty-three-year-old kid with blue eyes and thin but with impressive chest muscles. Nobody calls him Elliot, however. He has always hated the name. Both wear tattered, tight-fitting space suits without helmets.

“Gordon’s on the other side of the station,” he tells her before picking up the red fruit. “We won’t be seeing any more of these, will we?”

“They’ll come. The supply ship’s only a couple of weeks overdue,” she assures him.

“They better hurry, or we’ll have to split this about thirty-five-hundred ways.”

“It’s mine.”

“Oh yeah, they are more like apples or pears, you think?”

“I don’t remember what either tastes like. Give it.”

Teasing, Nix poises to take a bite, and she tackles him.

“Ouch. Damn,” he says, laughing.

Chloe latches onto the fruit while straddling his waist. He grabs on tight to her slender hips.

“Here we go,” he says.

“Stop.”

“Come on,” he murmurs, his hands moving up her back. “It’s been forever.”

“It was yesterday, and he could walk in any minute.”

The young man moves in for a kiss. “Then he can watch.”

“Nix.” She pushes him away.

“He’s on the other side of the station. Come on, say you love me.”

She’d always thought of him as attractive and appreciated his long, curly blond hair, but she wasn’t in love with him. “Nix, you nut.”

Gordon Rain, a fifty-three-year-old British man, enters as the hatch slams behind him. He is striking, with piercing green eyes and short, spiked hair. Deep wrinkles across his forehead make him appear as someone who’s spent too much time either very angry or in profound thought. “Need another minute or two, Nix?”

The young couple scrambles to their feet. Chloe holds on tightly to her alien fruit. “We were just—we weren’t…”

“A rock made it through the grid.” Gordon, not one to show much emotion except in extreme situations, definitely has a sense of urgency in his wrinkles. “We’re going after it.”

“What? Are you sure? Is it going to hit?”

“I just saw it, come on.” Gordon bolts for the opposite door before his puzzled mates follow.

***

Sephora
’s crew sprints down a curved hallway toward the airlock, their ship visible through windows as they pass.

“A rock buster’s failed then,” Chloe says, running behind the men.

“Great,” Nix sighs.

***

Sephora
is of the same design as
Lilith
but older, worn, and weathered with dents and deep scratches around her hull. Gordon had originally called her Exeter after his hometown in England, but after Chloe became co-pilot, he changed it.

“It’s too military sounding,” she’d told him. “Plus,
Sephora
is a girl’s name that means bird, and every ship is female, right? It’s perfect,” she’d argued. In the end, Gordon didn’t really care.

Inside, the ship is divided into three sections. Her flight deck is rounded with a large glass porthole in front and smaller rectangular windows wrapping around either side. There are four workstations, each with one chair and two extra seats in the rear.

Her midsection is a bit roomier, without any controls taking up space, while the rear compartment, as her dragonfly shape would suggest, is more narrow and devoted almost completely to an anti-matter engine.

As pilot and co-pilot, Gordon and Chloe face the forward porthole in chairs better suited for Alien Greys. Before each are similar groupings of lights, knobs, and buttons amid brightly colored alien symbols.

Chloe tosses the fruit to Nix, who’s sitting at a station behind her. He gladly accepts and takes a nervous bite. “You know there’ll be a riot if we come back empty.”

“Don’t wet your knickers, yeah?” Gordon tells him before turning to his co-pilot. “Release the docking clamps first.”

“I know that,” she says, annoyed.

“We should have guns,” Nix declares with his mouth full.

Gordon scowls, “Nix, you donut. Strap in.” Then to Chloe, he grumbles, “What is this, your first time? Let’s go.”

“A minute,” she says.

Nix pulls hard on his seatbelts to get them as tight as possible.

***

Sephora
breaks free with a lurch, traveling not altogether smoothly away from the orbiting satellite. Her main engines fire, and she rockets toward Gaea.

Chloe presses buttons in deep concentration. “How are we supposed to stop a rock exactly?”

“Bat your eyes and ask nicely,” Nix says, stuffing the half-eaten alien fruit into the crease of his seat.

“Quickly, love,” Gordon orders, “we have to get it before it hits atmosphere.”

The massive asteroid, which has a bit of a spin on it, soon fills the ship’s forward porthole.

“I don’t think it’s afraid of us,” Chloe says.

“Get our nose parallel and match its rotation. We just need to give her a nudge.”

“It’ll probably just burn up, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t.”

Chloe soon has the tiny ship out in front of and spinning in tandem with the rock. Both hurtle toward the planet.

Gordon’s busy on his side of the helm with a set of controls above the rest. “Nicely done, love, now don’t switch off.” As he punches buttons, two powerful metal arms, each ending in an Alien Grey-like hand with four fingers, extend out from the ship’s bow. “Gently—ease us in ‘til we make contact. Gently.”

Sephora
’s hands open up before she latches on to the tumbling asteroid. One finger bends slightly further out than it should. Chloe cringes at the grinding, creaking noise from the ship.

“Alright, give it a push,” Gordon tells Chloe. She takes a deep breath while Nix holds on tight to his seat straps.

With a flash,
Sephora
’s engines ignite to no effect. The stone is seven times her size and both continue plummeting in a straight line for Gaea.

“It doesn’t want to play,” Chloe announces, fearing that the big rock is in control.

Gordon doesn’t agree. “Let me have her.”

“We’re going to hit atmosphere.”

“I got it.”

Another blast from
Sephora
’s engines and, to Chloe’s surprise, the rock begins to change direction.

Blue, green, and yellow indicator lights turn bright red. The ship shudders violently, and an audio alarm sounds.

“We’re in atmosphere,” Chloe warns.

“That should be enough. I’ll get us clear.”

Still attached and tumbling together, ship and asteroid begin to glow, skimming across the rusty world’s upper atmosphere.

“She won’t let go,” Gordon says to more audio alarms and red lights from the ship’s helm.

Chloe’s scared now. “We’re going to burn up.”

Gordon’s efforts aren’t having much effect, and with her claws burrowed in, the rock now drags a helpless
Sephora
across Gaea’s atmosphere. Flames fill the forward porthole from corner to corner, and all are tossed about in their seats.

“It’s getting hot. Just pull the arms in,” Chloe says above the rumbling protest of her ship.

“Hold tight,” Gordon commands.

While retracting,
Sephora
’s hands pull her into the asteroid with a crunch sufficient enough to knock the tiny ship free, and she begins a rapid, flaming descent.

The asteroid skips over Gaea’s upper atmosphere before spinning off toward a deadly web of rock busters, where it’s vaporized.

Gordon is relieved even as flames fill the forward ports. “Well, that unlikely adventure is over,” he observes before turning to his co-pilot. “She’s all yours. I want a perfect landing, yeah? Remember to cut the artificial gravity.”

“I know that.” Chloe has a dangerous lack of confidence in her flying abilities and struggles with putting the ship on solid ground. Color leaves her face as she takes the helm.

Sephora
straightens out and enters Gaea’s lower atmosphere with a boom. The ship rocks and bounces, and Gordon mimics flying her just above his own set of controls. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“That was such an amazing thing you just did,” Chloe begins. “Why spoil it?”

“You won’t spoil it—now focus. This is the easy bit, yeah?”

The ship shudders.

Nix checks his seat straps, pulling them even tighter. “Ouch,” he exclaims with another hard jolt.

Chloe stiffens up. “Air’s unsettled. Currents are too strong. Take her, Gordon.”

“I already know how to do it,” her captain says.

“I see ground,” Nix starts, “it looks harder than usual.”

“Nix, shut it. Chloe, a good pilot works with the elements. Don’t fight ‘em. Use ‘em to your advantage. Don’t overthink it and loosen up, yeah.”

Sephora
bucks and Chloe’s hands slip across several controls, sending the sleek craft into a full spin. Her fingers come off the helm as if it’s suddenly white hot.

Gordon takes over, feverishly working the buttons, knobs, and levers in front of him while his crewmates grab on for dear life.
“Bollocks!”

Sephora
skims across a grove of dead trees just beyond Saucer City. Gnarled and wiry branches shatter all around before the ship disappears in a cloud of dust and smoke.

***

Sparks from the craft’s operation panels fill her bridge with a light haze. “Everyone still have all their bits?” Gordon coughs out as Nix removes his straps with a frown of pain.

“Yes. It’s still here,” Nix declares. “Chloe, you okay?”
The young woman doesn’t answer and wilts in her chair, turning away from Gordon. “Hey, no one’s in hospital, right? Better dead than end up there…”

“Nix. Get out.”

“Chloe? You alright?” the young man asks again.

Shaking and unsteady, she holds up a hand to cut him off.

“Nix! Move your trouser hams. She’s fine.” Gordon huffs about, straightening the bridge until Nix does as ordered. “Or is she? Look at me.”

She doesn’t, and he continues, “What the hell happened? You’re good in the air. What—you enjoy making me look like a cow’s backside?”

“No.”

“Isn’t this what you want—to be pilot?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you have to be able to land the damn thing! Where is your head?”

“She wasn’t responding to me…”

“Now you’re blaming the ship?”

“No. I just…”

“Look—stop. Pull it together and show me some bloody passion, damn it!”

Chloe buries her face in the ship’s helm, and Gordon storms out.

At the center of Saucer City is a massive former spaceship that serves as home to Gaea’s government, such as it is. More like a Wild West sheriff and his deputies than a regime.

Gordon and Nix are still in their space suits while Chloe wears the Grey’s version of a T-shirt and cargo pants.

They stand in a sparsely furnished, high-ceilinged room with a small group of people gathered behind them. Bright shafts of sunlight stream in from large open windows. Governor Ulysses Carver is in his late fifties. He’s a buff black man who seems better fed than anyone else. He is a man who used to command respect with his penetrating brown eyes, but too many failed coups by one fringe group or another have left his governorship weakened. His recent attempt to slow the production of alcohol brewed from fermented alien fruit nearly finished him altogether.
Much of the planet’s population would rather starve than go without booze.

There’s a desk between Carver and the others—more of a control panel, really, and likely re-purposed from somewhere else in the grounded ship.

All eyes are on a holographic image of the planet and its orbiting protective grid.

Carver points to one of the simulated rock busters flashing on and off in red. “We’ll move forward with your idea, Nix. Take a power cell from one of these less critical rock busters and place it in the sphere that failed. Are you up to it, Chloe?”

The question takes her by surprise. “Well, ah—I’ve never worked the arms…”

“I’ll complete the transfer,” Gordon jumps in.

“Very good,” Carver nods, “you’ll get underway as soon as possible?”

“Yes, of course, Governor.”

“Then our thoughts are for your safe return.”