Surviving The Theseus (22 page)

Before Regina realized it, Rachel was
strapping her in. She had zoned out, fascinated by these things,
whatever they were.

"There'll be a bit of a jolt," Rachel
said.

"What? Why aren't the engines going?"

"No time for start up procedures or warm up."
Rachel punched a couple of buttons and a panel slid open beside
her, with a lever inside. "If it will start at all," she added, and
then yanked the lever up, the buttons she pressed previously lit
up, which Regina took as a good sign that there was some power to
the ship. Rachel pressed them.

The floor plummeted downward, taking the
shuttle with it due to its attachment via the shuttle's magnetized
landing spikes.

Both Regina and Rachel's shoulders wrenched
against their harnesses.

Thoughts raced through Regina's mind, like
her life may be over at any moment. Mostly the flashes were of her
mother, memories she had forgotten, because she was so young when
her mother was taken from her, stolen from her.

She flashed on an image of her mother sitting
beside her, so beautiful, glowing, red hair, kind eyes, reassuring
words. It was the first space flight she was ever on, at five years
of age, terrified, a year before her mother was murdered. Her
mother told her stories of magical worlds for two hours, making up
anything fantastical that she could, until Regina finally fell
asleep.

And then the flash of her mother's murder, or
how Regina perceived it: a man throwing her mother to the floor,
hitting her, berating her, tearing her clothes, and then blood -- a
fountain of blood -- and her screams for someone, anyone, to help
her. But nobody did, even though she died in a well to do,
well-populated area. Nobody did.

There were flashes of her father, the
training -- the constant training -- and the kills, so many, too
many, and the anger, always the anger, always there when she needed
it. So lonely. Alone.

These thoughts pervaded her mind in the
seconds it took to drop out of Pyramid and into space.

As soon as the shuttle cleared Pyramid,
thrusters kicked in to stop it from flying off into space.

"What's it doing?" Regina asked.

"It's going to stabilize and then trail
Pyramid at 100 kilometers. Well, that is, it will if we don't get
it going."

The shuttle stabilized below Pyramid and
slowed its pace, Pyramid passing over Regina and Rachel, a goliath
of a ship Regina did not have the luxury to see previously as most
did before boarding. Regina was too busy watching others to look
out the tunnel window of the space station they boarded her
from.

The hull smooth, rounded, not blocky like a
real pyramid would be, and tiered, albeit upside down, like a
pyramid, or at least half of one.

As Pyramid flew them by, Rachel busied
herself, Regina assumed, prepping the ship for startup. Why there
was not an emergency start up was beyond Regina, but who was she to
tell a pilot what to do.

As they passed behind the giant, the
blue-green glow of the engines drew Rachel's attention, and then
Regina watched her eyes dart elsewhere.

All Regina saw was a strange little dark gray
bump on the underside of the otherwise smooth ship.

"Jesus!" Rachel said. "Right under the
shuttle bay. I swear it wasn't there a second ago."

"What? What is it?"

"It's another ship."

What seemed insignificant became much more as
the bump on the underside of Pyramid detached itself and came at
them.

"Seriously!" Rachel said. "What the fuck do
they want? I fucking did all this for nothing. Fucking nothing!"
Rachel winced, gritting her teeth. Searing pain. Of that, Regina
had no doubt. She could see it in Rachel's eyes and the contortion
of her face.

"Calm down," Regina said, trying to console
Rachel, but it came off more like a command. "Just . . . get us out
of here."

Rachel turned away from the window and
grabbed the cylinder out of her pocket. The cylinder they needed or
they wouldn't get anywhere. Rachel clicked a button on the small
cylinder, and there was a red flashing light; then she clicked a
different button and the light almost immediately turned solid
green; and then another button. Too many damn buttons.

"Bringing systems up now," Rachel said, which
Regina found unusual for her to be voicing out loud, but so be it.
Voice away. "Engines. Hard start." Rachel pressed a series of
buttons that meant nothing to Regina.

The engines burst to life. Regina didn’t
understand how the creatures could know to leave the shuttles
alone. How could the creatures have knowledge of their technology?
Specifically, knowledge of the matchstick markers and the safety
features built into almost every ship to keep it within range of a
marker?

The gray ship was close. Too close. Regina
watched its approach. It was bigger than the shuttle, at least
double the size, but flatter and oblong, a dull gray.

Rachel grabbed the yoke in her left hand and
the throttle with her right, and then accelerated right at it.

"Rachel!" Regina blurted, but Rachel said
nothing. Both of them slammed back into their seats, the harnesses
cinching up. Rachel rocketed toward the alien ship, playing chicken
with it, and, at the last possible moment, way past the point any
sane person would react, she yanked the yoke.

The shuttle flipped upside down and flew
underneath the alien craft, almost skimming the bottom of it.

The ship was devoid of any features, much
like the creatures themselves. Not a window in sight.

Once they cleared the underside of it, Regina
digging her fingers into her seat, Rachel hit the thrusters and
they blasted back toward Pyramid.

Regina said nothing. Where else could they
go? There was nothing around them, no planets, just a big empty
three hundred and sixty degree wasteland of space. Nowhere to hide,
but the doomed ship they just escaped from. Regina had no idea
what, if anything, Rachel had planned.

Since the shuttle's gravitational actuation
system was always active, any way Rachel turned the ship felt
upright to Regina. It was the advantage to flying in space, and the
advantage to having an artificial system of gravity. Even though it
didn't matter, Rachel righted the ship parallel to the current
position of Pyramid. She reached for the throttle, pushing it as
far as it would go.

The alien ship was not visible through the
window.

"Computer," Rachel said. "Navigation.
Holographic."

The paper-thin, glass monitor in front of
Regina tilted, becoming horizontal, its back side parallel to the
dashboard. Three-dimensional animated figures of the shuttle,
Pyramid, and the alien ship popped up, flying above the screen, but
did not go outside its borders.

The alien ship had turned around and was in
pursuit. A digital number told them that it was three hundred
kilometers and gaining quickly. Rachel got a nice jump on it from
her little maneuver, but it wasn't good enough. The only place to
hide was Pyramid, and now Regina knew where Rachel was going, but
not how she was going to go about it.

Rachel hit the thrusters, boosting their
speed as much as she could. Pyramid got bigger and bigger in the
window.

Rachel screamed, a sustained, horrible
scream. Regina jerked from the suddenness of it. Rachel grabbed her
head with both hands and then collapsed forward in her seat, the
harness stopping her from falling right out.

The shuttle bore down, center mass, toward
Pyramid.

"Rachel!" Regina tried to move, forgetting
her harness. She slammed the release button and it detached. She
turned her seat toward Rachel and put her right hand on Rachel's
head. Regina softly pushed Rachel's head up.

Rachel's eyes were open, rolled up, the
whites not what Regina expected. She recoiled, not knowing what to
do.

An alarm rang out: Bwah-Bwah! Bwah-Bwah!
Bwah-Bwah!

A computerized, tinny female voice came from
the shuttle's speakers. "Proximity alert. Proximity alert.
Collision imminent. Ten seconds." The alarm continued, constant,
disconcerting.

Regina looked out the window, and Pyramid
consumed every part of what she could see through the glass.

"Eight seconds."

The alien ship almost upon them.

Bwah-Bwah! Bwah-Bwah! Bwah-Bwah!

"Seven seconds."

Rachel. Poor Rachel. Was she dead? Her head
had dropped down again, the whites of her eyes a searing thought in
Regina's mind.

"Six seconds."

Regina reached over for the yoke.

Bwah-Bwah! Bwah-Bwah! Bwah-Bwah!

Rachel convulsed, violently, foam oozing from
her mouth. Regina pulled back.

"Five seconds."

The alien ship was less than one hundred
kilometers away.

Rachel shook in her chair, her body twitching
and twisting, pressing against the harness. Not a peep came from
her mouth.

"Four seconds."

Regina's eyes watered. She couldn't take her
eyes off of Rachel. What was happening to her?

No time. Look away.
"Look away!" Regina leapt at the yoke, yanking it back with
her left hand, pulling back on the throttle with her right
hand.

Bwah-Bwah! Bwah-Bwah! Bwah-Bwah!

"Three seconds."

Pyramid became a wall through the shuttle
window, an impossibly high wall that Regina didn't know if they
could climb. Windows buzzed by. There was too much momentum. They
were no longer thrusting, but they were not slowing down.

Regina’s eyes darted all over the
console, and then she saw it. She yanked back on a lever
labeled
Reverse Thrusters
,
right down to
Full
Stop
.

Bwah-Bwah! Bwah-Bwah! Bwah-Bwah!

"Two seconds."

Reverse thrusters were firing, but there must
have been too much momentum, the reverse thrusters not powerful
enough to bring the shuttle to an immediate stop.

If they had more room, the ship could have
done a loop up and away, but the upturn was not enough. And left or
right was out of the question. They were going to crash.

Bwah-Bwah! Bwah-Bwah! Bwah-Bwah!

"One second."

Regina sat down and slammed the harness back
on.

The shuttle crashed into the domed top level
of Pyramid.

Glass cracked, the ship seeming to skip on
what must have been re-enforced glass, like a stone skipping on
water, and then the glass gave, shattering.

The ship had slowed too much. It plummeted
through the dome, now in a gravity environment, it dropped like a
stone, falling backward.

Regina kept her eyes open, as much as she
wanted to close them. For the briefest of time, staring up at the
gaping hole the shuttle just created, she watched air and debris
get whisked through the opening and then it sealed, probably some
sort of backup protection, like in the control room.

Nothing for a couple of seconds, and then the
shuttle smashed into the tops of pine trees Regina had been walking
through not so long ago. Cracks and snaps whisked by her ears, she
took a deep breath, her head resting against the headrest, and then
she slammed into her seat even further as the shuttle thudded into
the ground, the shuttle slowed somewhat by the fall through the
trees but the impact didn't seem any lessened as her teeth
rattled.

Regina looked over at Rachel who was not
moving. Her body lay limp, her head lolling. She looked dead.

Tears streamed from Regina's eyes. She
couldn't look away, not even after an orange flash filled the
cockpit. She noticed the burning smell, but didn't pay attention to
it. "Please, no. Please don't hurt her."

Even as a gray, rubbery substance oozed from
every visible orifice of Rachel's body, Regina continued to mutter,
and tears continued to stream down her face. She did not move to
thwart off any threat. "Please please please leave her be. Please
don't take her."

Rachel's body disintegrated into nothing but
a pile of clothing, her shirt and jacket on the chair, her pants
hanging halfway off the chair.

Regina let it out, let it all out. She
sobbed, crying out loud, her body convulsing with every sob.

A brown blob shot out of nowhere, from behind
her. She saw it out of the corner of her right eye, a blurred thing
coming at her. She didn't move.

Regina’s hands brushed lush, tall, green
grass. Her vision was blurred somewhat, but as far as she could
tell she was in a field, near a forest, on the top of a small
hill.

A figure approached her, again blurry, but it
looked human.

As Regina's vision cleared, she saw she was
indeed on the top of a hill in the middle of an open field, looking
down at a large deciduous forest, the sky blue, wind lightly
blowing through her short hair, relaxing, soothing. Somehow, she
couldn’t explain it, she felt good.

Even though Regina's vision no longer
blurred, the figure walking up the hill towards her was not
complete. The figure looked ghostly, like it wasn't quite there.
And then, slowly, the figure became whole, and Regina recognized
her immediately.

"Rachel? How? I saw you die."

Rachel walked up and sat down in front of
Regina.

"Am I dead?" Regina asked.

"You are not," Rachel spoke softly, like she
didn't have a care in the world. "But I am."

"I'm so sorry." Regina teared up again. "I’m
so sorry I couldn’t help you. I'm so so sorry."

"Don't," Rachel said, reaching out to grab
Regina's hands with hers. "You did everything you could have, and
none of it mattered, Regina. The end result would have been the
same."

Regina couldn't help herself. "I'm
sorry."