The Awakening (The Hyperscape Project Book 1) (29 page)

Arya looked like
she had just as many questions. She shook her head in confusion, and a little
fear.  “But the patch. The burnt patch. Two thousand years in the past?
Nick, what does it all mean?”

The adrenaline
racing through Nick’s veins snapped him out of his deliberation. He could tell
by the desperation in Arya’s voice that she was concerned for his safety.
“Don’t worry, we just need to get to that probe and find out what happened. Um,
what
will
happen. Maybe we can change the future.”

Nick struggled
not to let his own fear show. A burnt I.S.A. patch found two thousand years in
the past was not a good sign. The damn prophecy was real, and it seemed to
indicate an unpleasant demise for him. But he couldn’t get all mamby-pamby
right now.  He had to stay level-headed. It would take effort,
concentration, and every wrinkle in his scientific mind to crack this puzzle
and prevent his own death. 

Arya
straightened visibly in an attempt to pull herself together. “Right. We’ll just
have to change the future. Karg, get these coordinates to Sirok. But make it
clear that I don’t want anyone else to know where we are headed, or why.” Arya
handed Karg a crystal containing the data for their destination.

“Yes, Sir!” For
the first time since Arya had become Captain of the Ashok, Karg addressed her
with the courtesy and respect due her.  His entire demeanor changed as he
slipped from being her friend into being the person she could rely on to help
her save Nick’s hide.  She was never more appreciative of her big lug of a
friend, and never more proud.

Karg’s eyes
gleamed as he stood to leave the room.  He gave her a formal salute and
then hurried off down the corridor, leaving Arya staring after him, wondering
what their fate would be now.  And what new horrors her people might face
out there.  And Nick.  What of Nick?

She turned her
head to look into his blue eyes.  He was deep in thought, his mind clearly
churning over a plan.  She couldn’t help but smile.  Odd as it
seemed, she wondered where she would be without Nick, if he hadn’t been flung
into her galaxy and pulled onto her ship.

She reached out
and placed her hand over his.  He caught her forefinger beneath his thumb
and squeezed gently.  She stared at their two hands, so different and
yet…so very similar.

“I’ll come up
with something,” he murmured.  “I’m not ready to die yet.”

Arya stifled a
sob.  “It’s just that….  I only just now got you back after thinking
you were dead, only to discover that you are the prophecy and I might lose you,
after all.”

He turned his
palm over and gently clasped her hand.  “It’s not gonna happen,” he
said.  “I promise you that.”  He gave her hand a tug so she would
look up at him.  “You gotta trust me on this one.”

She reluctantly
nodded.

“I need you to
stay focused.  You gotta be strong.”

She caught her
lip between her teeth and nodded again.  The movement sent glimmers of
reflected light through her long, green hair.  Nick smiled.  She bit
back another sob and then finally returned the smile.

“See.  It’s
gonna be okay,” he promised.

“I believe you,”
she whispered.

“Good.”  He
pulled away and stood up.  “Because we have work to do.”

Nick sat on his
favorite crate in Bay One.  He’d taken a break from working on the module
to eat a sandwich and was gulping down the last bite when Karg strolled through
the door.

“Hey,” Nick
called out. “I haven’t seen you all day. What have you been up to?” He moved
his drink to make room on the crate for Karg.

“Eating,
cleaning my rifle, eating, a little combat training, and um…eating.” Karg
sighed as he sat on the crate next to Nick. The crate creaked and groaned under
his enormous weight.

Nick glanced
down. The metal container was bound to give way one of these days. “You keep
eating like that, and we’ll have to reinforce the chairs in your quarters
again.”

“Can’t help it,
have to keep up my strength. Rakozians are known for eating vast amounts when
preparing for battle.”

“Battle? We’re
just going to find a hidden library of old relics. More like an archeological
dig.”

Karg raised a
boney brow. “When have we gone anywhere without ending up in a fight?”

“Never,” Nick
sighed. “Damn, just once I would like to relax. Go fishing maybe.” Nick leaned
forward with his elbows on his knees and stared at the module.

 Karg
glanced over and noticed the necklace hanging from Nick’s neck. “So, that’s
what a Sacred Amulet looks like. I’ve never actually seen one before, just
heard about them from stories.”

“Yeah.” Nick
held the amulet away from his chest as he looked down at it. “Here, take a
look.” Nick pulled the necklace over his head and tried to hand it to Karg.

Karg leaned away
from Nick. “No. I…I don’t want to.” His eyes wide with fear, he motioned for
Nick to take it away from him. Karg scooted his rear end over to the edge of
the crate and tucked his four arms close to his body to avoid getting too close
to the amulet.

“Karg, you look
like my sister Susie when I tried to hand her my pet Boa. What the hell is
wrong with you? It’s just a necklace. Come on, take a look at it. The
workmanship is extraordinary.” Nick turned the amulet in his fingers so Karg
could see the intricate detail of the metalwork.

“I said no!”
Karg jumped up and took a step back. “Keep it away from me.” His voice crackled
with fear.

Nick laughed.
“The great and mighty Karg, scared of a little necklace.”

Karg shuddered.
“They’re said to possess powerful magical qualities. Just touching one can kill
you.”

Nick paused with
his mouth open for a second, amazed and a little tickled at the vision of Karg
cowering from a necklace. “Who says?” Nick asked.

“What?” Karg was
too busy avoiding the amulet to even hear what Nick had asked him.

Nick held the
necklace out in front of him. “Who told you that these have magical powers?”

Karg took
another step back. “It is a story told to the young. It is a tale about a man
who snuck into the Royal Palace and tried to steal the Queen’s Sacred Amulet.
When he touched the amulet, he turned into a stone statue. The Palace guards
found the thief’s stone body the next morning, still holding the amulet that he
tried to steal. It is said his statue still decorates the Palace Hall to this
day, as a warning to others.”

Nick
grinned.  “Children’s fairytales? You’re scared of fairytales?”

“The tail of
some creature has nothing to do with it! I don’t even know what a fairy is. How
could I be afraid of its tail?” Karg defended.

Nick
frowned.  “What the hell are you…? Oh…no. It’s not….” Nick shook his head
and started over. “There is no fairy and no tail.  It’s all one
word.  Fairytales are stories told to children. Sometimes they are meant
to frighten them into being good. Your amulet story just sounds like a
fairytale to me.”

Karg
straightened to his full height.  “I’m not scared. I…I just don’t want to
take any chances, that’s all. I’d rather someone made a statue in honor of me,
not
out of
me,” Karg said, trying his best not to look scared.

Nick stared up
at this friend. “Right. I see.” He had to fight hard to hold a straight face. A
tear formed in one eye as he clamped his lips shut and tried not to laugh. The
uncomfortable look on Karg’s face was just too funny. Nick didn’t think he
would be able to contain his laughter much longer if Karg continued to stand
there looking like a spooked kid.

Nick placed the
amulet back around his neck and patted the crate next to him.  “Buddy,
come on, relax.  I promise not to touch you with my amulet.”

Karg took a
hesitant step toward the crate.

“I promise,”
Nick said.  “Come on, sit down, we’ll chat.”

Karg hesitated.

“Not about the
amulet.  About something else,” Nick assured him.

Karg cautiously
came closer.  Nick grinned and shook his head.  A second later, Karg
eased his bulk back onto the crate.  Nick stared at his massive
arms.  He still had trouble getting used to something so scary being so
easily spooked. 

“How did you get
those scars?” Nick motioned with his chin to indicate the scars on Karg’s
abdomen.  “Must have been one hell of a fight.”

Karg looked down
at the scars across his abdomen then ran a finger along one of the long, raised
patches of skin. “When I was a young boy, I went hunting with my father and was
attacked by a Tarnac. It was a baby one. Only about eight or nine hundred
pounds. It gored me with its tusks.”

“That must have
frightened your father.  Did he kill it?”

“Kill it?” 
Karg looked puzzled. “Why would he do that? He took me out there hunting so I
could catch one. We didn’t kill it.” Karg looked completely dumbfounded by the
human’s ignorance. “I jumped on top of it and wrestled it to the ground. Then I
held it down while my father put a collar on it. We loaded it in our transport
and took it home with us.”

Nick squinted
and cocked his head in utter confusion. “Wait. Let me get this straight. You
didn’t kill it? You brought it home with you? Alive? Did you say nine
hundred
pounds? Tell me that was just a translator glitch.”

“Yeah, perfect
size to bring home. You wouldn’t want to take the poor thing away from its
mother any younger than that. He was the best pet ever, too. Sure do miss Spot.
I used to ride him around all day, holding on to the thick fur around his neck.
Spent many a night sleeping out under the stars, leaned back with my head
resting on Spot. Great times those were.”

“Spot?” Nick
shook his head quickly and his eyes fluttered as his brain attempted to process
what he was hearing. “It was your
pet?
Your father let you keep it?”

“Of course.
Every boy gets to hunt his own Tarnac when he is of age. ‘Course not everyone
is able to bag a Tarnac the first time out. My father was so proud that I did.”

“You called him
Spot?”  Nick paused, a grin breaking over his face. “Oh, I get it now.
This is another one of your jokes, isn’t it? Yeah, play a joke on Nick because
he’s the new alien on the block. Do I look stupid or something?”  He threw
up his hands and shook his head. “Don’t answer that.”

“Not
stupid.  Ignorant maybe.” Karg grinned. “And, no, it’s not a joke.  I
called him Spot. It’s a good Tarnac name. He had the cutest white spot on his
left side, right in the middle.” Karg looked at Nick real serious like. “And
you
never
joke about a boy and his Tarnac. It’s a sacred thing, it is.”

Nick’s eyebrows
went up as he shrugged. “Okay, cool. You had a nine hundred pound teddy bear.”

“What’s a
teddy
bear?
” Karg asked. “Is that what humans have for pets?”

As Nick was
explaining the concept of teddy bear to Karg, a familiar whir came from the
direction of the doorway. Sirok buzzed into the hangar bay in his
transportation gizmo to check the transport’s readiness. He was just in time to
hear Karg roar.

“Teddy bear!
I’ll show you a teddy bear!”

Nick jumped up
and hauled ass away from Karg as the big guy lunged off the crate and reached
for him.  Nick was running away from Karg when he almost ran head-on into
Sirok whizzing across the bay.  He managed to weave around Sirok and his
gizmo and scrambled out of the hangar as fast as he could.

Sirok spun
around and watched Karg slide out of the doorway in pursuit. He could hear the
sound of Nick’s voice fading as he ran away down the corridor.

“Karg! I’m
sorry! It was just a joke!”

Karg’s deep
voice echoed through the bay. “I told you, never joke about a Rakozian Tarnac!”

With the Ashok
in orbit around a small rocky planet, the team prepared to head to the surface
of what they had dubbed Beta-Nine, the larger, nearby twin of an unusual binary
planetoid system. They were trying to divert attention away from their real
target by keeping the ship at a distance.

“I wish we could
just beam down,” Nick mused.

“Beam down? What
the hetek are you talking about?” Arya queried curiously.

“I wish you guys
had matter energy devices.”

Arya was
instantly intrigued. Always eager to learn more about advanced technology, she
looked at him with gleaming eyes. “You’ve seen such a thing somewhere before?
One of these matter energy devices?  And what exactly does this device
do?”

“Well, no. Not
exactly. It takes the atoms of your body and converts them into energy. Then it
beams that energy to the planet’s surface, where the same energy is then
transformed back into your body.”

Karg scrunched
his nose. “Do you have any idea what it would take to manipulate a beam of
energy to reconstruct the atoms of your body at that distance, to that degree
of precision? That’s utterly ridiculous. I think, as you have said before,
someone was pulling your egg.”

Nick looked at
Karg like he was a dunce. “It’s leg. Not egg.  Pulling your
leg
.
And no one was pulling my leg. It was just a video show. Fiction about what the
future would be like.”

“Fiction? See,
someone
was
pulling your leg.” Karg shook his head. “Where do you see
these things?” 

 “It’s
Star….”  Nick broke off and rubbed his closed eyes in frustration. 
It was too complicated to explain to someone who’d never seen a vid show.
“Never mind, I was just making conversation.”

“You waste any
more time and I’m going to personally turn your atoms into energy,” Arya
huffed. “Come on, get in the dran transport.” Arya was anxious to get to the
planet and find the hidden Royal Vault. She prodded Karg’s backside with the
butt of her plasma rifle in an attempt to hurry them along. 

All three
stepped inside, and the door clanked shut behind them. Arya wasted no
time.  She hopped into the pilot’s seat and started take-off
procedures.  In no time, the transport sprang to life. The engines whirred
softly in the background as the instrument panel lights popped on. A three
dimensional holographic image of the bay appeared from a center console. The
display made the transport easy to navigate in almost any environment. Arya
brought the ship up off of the deck a few feet and turned it around
one-hundred-and-eighty degrees.

Nick fell on his
ass as the craft bolted out of the hangar. “Damn, someone’s in a hurry!”

He didn’t know
the thing could accelerate like that. He had never seen Arya in this much of a
hurry before, either. Not that he minded. He was anxious to get to the vault,
as well. The data from the probe could shed some light on the mystery he’d been
mulling over.
How did that probe end up two thousand years in the past? And
the patch? What did a burnt patch mean?
His heart beat faster just thinking
about it.

“Karg, I’ve been
thinking.”

“Uh-oh, Nick’s
been thinking again,” Karg joked.

“No really.
Don’t you wonder about the possible paradoxes? I mean, what if I destroy my
patch right now? That would mean that it couldn’t make it into the past. And if
it wasn’t in the past, there wouldn’t be any record of it in the archives. And
what if I just took a torch and made a hole in it? Would the picture suddenly
show a patch with a hole in it? What if I replace the patch with one that said
Nick? Would it then be the Prophecy of Nick? How would we even know if things
were originally different and we’ve already changed it, changing the past to
the way it is now?”

Arya looked over
her shoulder at Karg. “Have you been letting him have too much gorban juice
again?”

“Hey, this kind
of thing bothers me. Doesn’t it bother you?” Nick questioned.

“Don’t make me
come back there!” Arya announced sternly, without so much as a glance. 
She sounded like a mother scolding her unruly children.

“Are we there
yet?” Nick asked grinning. The whole conversation, and Arya’s demeanor, was
reminiscent of a particular summer vacation he’d had with his parents and
sister. He hated long, boring drives. Just the thought of that day on the road
made his rear sore. He could almost feel the sting from the whipping he had
received when his father had had enough of their sibling bickering and pulled
the car over at the rest stop. He swore he could feel welts starting to form on
his butt.

“Not a good
thought right now,” he mused to himself.

“What was that?”
Arya said from the pilot’s seat.

“Nothing,” Nick
answered.

Nick wished they
could have set out from orbit.  It would have made their trip
shorter.  But it made more sense to keep the Ashok some distance away to
avoid alerting anyone to their presence. The last thing they needed was
unwelcome company following them down to the planet.

He looked out of
the cockpit window at the clouds rushing by, trying to get his mind off his
painful youth. This planet had one heck of a thick cloud layer. He wondered if
they would ever break through it. Time passed as he stared at the water vapor
sporadically blowing by as they sped downward.

A collision
warning chattered from the console, rousing the crew from their lethargic
state. Arya watched as the ground appeared on the holo-display, though they
still couldn’t see anything through the cockpit window in the planet’s soupy
atmosphere. Darker colors eventually began to emerge through pockets in the
clouds, revealing small glimpses of a lush landscape on the world below. As the
transport cleared the thick cloud layer, Arya pulled the craft out of its dive
and flew toward the location of the secret vault. Hopefully, the Admiral’s data
was correct and no one had beaten them to it.

An ever
shortening cycle of beeps emanated from the holo-display, indicating that they
were closing in on their target. Arya scanned the area. It would be good to
know what sort of local inhabitants were around. “I’m not picking up any signs
of technology. Just a wide array of lower life-forms. Although, the minerals
present in the rock formations seem to be blocking the scans. Hard to say what
could be under ground.”

From the view
outside Nick’s window, the planet looked like a dense jungle. Surprisingly
similar to the small pockets of protected rainforest still left in the Amazon
on Earth. Mountain ranges whizzed by, their peaks shrouded in clouds. Even the
lower elevations appeared to be enveloped in thick fog. Pretty, from what he
could see of it, but no doubt treacherous and difficult to traverse.

A marker showing
their destination popped up on the holo-display, visually identifying their
landing zone ahead. Arya guided the ship along its course until they were
almost directly over the top of the landing area. The quick deceleration was
felt in every inch of Nick’s body as the transport came to a screeching halt.
Then the ship descended into the thick fog, Arya deftly avoiding the sloping
terrain and tall tree line. Nick pressed his face up against the window to peer
down at the landing zone, ever watchful for anything of concern.

The splat of an object
against the window made Nick jolt backwards so hard he almost fell into Karg’s
lap. A six legged, frog-like creature clung to the outside of the window, right
where Nick’s face had been. It was an odd sort of creature with reddish colored
splotches and a prehensile tail.

“Shit. That
scared the hell out of me.” Nick wiped at his face as if he could feel the
creature’s paws on his cheeks. Back in the Rain Forest of Earth, bright colors
usually meant a frog was poisonous. He wondered if this planet would yield
similar dangers.

Nick swallowed
hard. He was suddenly overwhelmed by the thought of giant, alien snakes. He
hadn’t even thought of that possibility until now. Snakes were okay; he even
kind of liked them, as long as they weren’t giant, poisonous monsters waiting
to squeeze the life out of him.

“Lord knows what
deadly creatures could be lurking in that alien jungle,” he muttered.

Arya set the
ship down on a small, fairly flat, rocky patch on the forest floor. She powered
down and then sat for a moment staring out of the forward cockpit window at the
thick, misty jungle ahead. She didn’t appear to be in a hurry to go anywhere
now. The foreboding task of getting through the thick underbrush was no doubt
the reason.

“Okay.” She
sighed. “I calculate our destination is a short distance in that direction, but
we better be prepared in case we run into more than we bargained for. I want
you two fully outfitted.”

Nick grinned as
he watched her.  Battle weary as she was, she would carry out this task
with dignity and bravery.  She was starting to sound more like Argos every
day. Maybe it came with the job. Maybe it was the need to always be prepared to
protect your crew.  In any case, she was a natural born leader.  Just
like Argos had said.

Karg stuck a
heavy backpack in Nick’s face. Nick peeked over the bag at Karg as he grabbed
the straps. “Thanks, man.”

Karg let go of
the pack. The weight of it caught Nick off guard and pulled him off balance. He
regained his footing with difficulty and eventually managed to get the bag
flung over his shoulders. As he fastened the clip, he couldn’t help feeling
like he was chaining himself to a lead weight.  

“Shouldn’t you
guys have super futuristic lightweight gear? What the hell is in this
thing?  The backpacking gear on my planet is a third the weight of this.”

Karg stood
loading the biggest rifle Nick had ever seen. “Forty clips of ammo, three days
of rations, a sleeping bag, water purifier, extra clothing, medical kit, um…a
spare pulse pistol, rescue beacon, five plasma grenades. I never go anywhere
without plasma grenades. Let’s see…what am I missing?”  Karg shrugged. “A
variety of other survival gear.”

“Ropes, pulleys
and other climbing gear, too,” Arya added.

“Don’t you think
we’ve over packed?” Nick asked, looking at Arya.  “Maybe we should include
the kitchen sink.”

She just gave
him that
momma-knows-best
look.

Nick followed
her to the door. “Yeah, right. Better to be prepared, I always say.” The words
grunted out under the weight of the pack.

The transport’s
door swung down into the mist, landing with a loud clank against the rocky
outcropping on which the ship was perched. Nearby in the misty brush, more than
one creature stirred from the sound of the door hitting rock. Arya paused and
glanced into the woods toward the rustling bushes. When nothing came rushing
out at them, she pulled out her PDU and fearlessly walked down the ramp,
swinging the device left and right to pinpoint the location of the vault.

“This way.”

Nick strained to
hear over the background roar of the abundant forest creatures. Birds? Frogs?
Whatever they were, it wasn’t unlike the constant noise of the Amazon. Nick
looked up as they passed an immense tree. More of a tree fern than a tree,
really. The thing towered over them, its trunk disappearing into the misty fog
above. He glanced back down just in time to see Karg vanish in a waft of fog.
Crap.
He trotted forward through the soup and almost ran his nose into Karg’s
backpack. A horrid smell quickly permeated his nostrils. It smelled like….

“What the hell
is
that? Karg, you’re not having stomach issues again, are you?” A look at the
ground revealed the source. Karg’s foot was square in the middle of a large
pile of dark, messy dung.  “Oh, crap. Literally.  Karg, you’re
standing in sh—”

Karg swung one
arm back and poked Nick in the chest with his massive finger, almost knocking
the wind out of him. Nick opened his mouth again to say something when he
realized the two were listening to something.

Ahead, Arya
panned the scanner. “This dense vegetation is making it difficult to scan very
far. For a moment I thought I saw—”

She abruptly
spun around and brought her pistol to bear at Karg’s head. “Down!” she
screamed, firing a burst of plasma rounds as Karg ducked. A large shadowy shape
flew over Nick and through the mist toward Arya, meeting the stream of plasma
from her pistol. An ear-piercing scream erupted from the beast, forcing Nick to
cover his ears as he fell to the ground. Peering around Karg, he watched as
Arya dove to the side to avoid the huge creature’s trajectory. It crashed to
the ground and floundered in the wet leaves of the forest floor. Karg was on it
in a second, firing several bursts into its head until he was certain the large
beast was dead.

Karg let out a
low, rumbling laugh. “That was fun.”