The door slid open, and she ducked behind me as dozens of people flowed into the room, looking weak and hungry, but angry too.
I stood before them and noted that they saw the bodies on the far side of the room. “Mae here is going to help us. No one lays a hand on her.” I motioned for the woman we’d seen one floor down. “Miss. What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Alley,” she said, her gaze like steel. She would be able to help lead the survivors; I could see it in her eyes.
“Well, Alley, there’s a bit of food here, and water. Mae here will show you the storage facility. I want you to distribute it through each floor. Send some of these people to go room to room looking for doctors, nurses – hell, veterinarians… anyone who can help the sick or dying. Get a triage set up near here.” My gut sank as I thought about the lifeless bodies I’d seen in just a few rooms. “You’ll also need to set up a room for the dead. Start to separate them from the rest. Can you do that? Water first, then the rest. We’re going for everyone else. We’ll be back. Do you hear me? We will be back for you.”
She looked up at me, her brown eyes glistening. She took a gulp and nodded.
“Mae, I take it you guys had some medical supplies too?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ll show Alley the way.” Mae motioned for the other woman to follow her, and two men followed along, ready to help.
I smiled to see people still alive and ready to help each other. Magnus walked over and leaned in to my ear. “You know what people will do when they hear there’s food? I’m worried there’ll be a riot.”
He was probably right, but I had to have faith in them. I motioned for a couple of big men looming by the door. They looked like bouncers at a nightclub scanning for trouble. Perfect. I crossed the room to them. “Gentlemen. Alley will be getting some leaders together to hand out food and water and to set up a functional hospital. I need you two to get a few more men you trust, take weapons from the fallen over there” – I nodded at the bodies on the ground – “and just make sure no one does anything out of hand. People are desperate, and they’ll do anything when they’re desperate. You get what I’m saying?”
“You got it, boss,” one of them said. The other gave me a salute and it made me smile. An accountant being saluted in a metal cube in space was quite the sight. “What about that one? Isn’t she with them? Should we… dispose of her?” He said it with a twitch of his eye, like he was trying to act the role but was terrified if I’d say yes.
“She’s with us. Caught on the wrong side of the battle.” They visibly relaxed and moved on.
Alley addressed the people and was giving directions. They all eagerly listened, ready to help, with hope on their side now. People could do miraculous things with just a little hope. Mae came over carrying some food and water and tossed them in a bag, slinging it over her shoulder. She also had an EVA suit over her other shoulder; her gun still hung there too. “I’m coming with you. I’ve changed the thrusters on this thing to slow it and to make a wide turn, sending it back toward Earth. We’ll have plenty of time to get to the sun, do the same for the others, and get back to this one, at the slow speed it’s heading.”
I smiled at Alley and the group of survivors. That’s what they were now, survivors. We had no time, and I knew Mary and Natalia would be worried about us.
“Come on, let’s go,” I said. We ran through the halls, making our way back to the floor we’d arrived on. People milled around the halls now, word of help passing through the container. We urged them to help where they could and that directions were coming. Soon we were in the room we’d started in. Half the people were gone from it now, the other half dead or too weak to move. I had a new resolve to help the rest of the containers. The image we’d seen on the Kraski mother ship looked like there were about thirty of these containers out there.
We zipped our suits up, put on the masks, and clipped ourselves back on to the tethers. Hopefully, Mary was still there.
“Mae, we’re heading to a Kraski ship here. Do you have a pin?”
She looked confused until she appeared to realize I meant the button on our suits. She nodded, and we all pressed them. Glowing green, we pulled ourselves up and briefly into space as we passed through the walls and into the ship where Mary was waiting.
She was in the cargo bay waiting for us. Relief crossed her face when I looked up at her, but it quickly turned to aggression when she saw Mae with us.
“It’s okay, Mary. She’s with us now,” I said.
She came to me as I took off my helmet. Unexpectedly, she grabbed my head in her hands and leaned her forehead against mine. While our few kisses had been wonderful, this was more intimate and special. I could feel my face reddening as we shared this moment with two others standing a couple feet away from us. She pulled back and I stood there breathless for a moment.
She gave me a light kiss before letting go and blushed a little when she looked over at Magnus and Mae. “I was so worried about you. What happened down there?”
We moved to the front of the ship so Natalia could hear it too. We told them our story, and about Mae being a Kraski-human hybrid. Mary had met Janine, so I knew she was aware this woman was a spitting image of my wife, but she didn’t say a word about it. We ate a little dehydrated something from Mae’s bag and drank water. Our aching bellies needed the sustenance, and I knew it would give us enough energy to get the job done.
“I think we should get going, da?” Natalia asked from the smaller ship, through the speaker.
Magnus shifted from side to side and shrugged at me as if he’d decided something. “Nat. Bring your ship over here. I’ll do the same tether business and make my way into your ship. I think you could use the company, and if I’m being honest, I miss you. I’ll bring some food and water for you.”
She agreed, and I helped Magnus get hooked up in the cargo room. In a matter of minutes, Magnus was across and with Nat on the other ship. I was on the bridge with Mary and a clone of my dead wife, and we were accelerating for the sun. We devised a plan on the way. I sure hoped it would work.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The sun was blazing at us from the viewscreen from quite some distance. We were moving at full speed; stars in the distance didn’t quite streak as move slowly along our view. We were close to where the ships would be, according to Mae’s last intel. The last leg of the trip was upon us, and all I could do was hope that we weren’t too late. Would our plan work? It seemed the only logical move, and we’d find out very soon.
“Are you sure this ship is linked in to their communication systems?” Mary asked Mae, her eyes narrowing slightly as she looked at the other woman.
“Yes, the Kraski ships are all linked to the transport vessels. We’ll be upon them in moments.” Mae stepped toward the screen and pointed when multiple lights blinked up onto it.
The stars slowed in the viewscreen and I was once again amazed that we could go from super-fast to a stop and not feel the inertia at all inside. These guys had some serious engineering capabilities. All the science fiction I’d read or seen on TV had engines that required massive power sources and crash couches for the bone-breaking sudden lurches of space travel. This was nothing like that, and I was glad for it.
“Mae, we’re trusting you here,” I said as I put a tentative hand on her shoulder. My voice wavered slightly when I spoke, and I felt bad for not trusting her all the way. I wasn’t sure I would ever trust anyone fully after Janine.
“I know what you’re thinking, but you don’t have to worry about me. I want to save your people and live among them, free, instead of a slave to the Kraski.” She sat down and keyed in something to the control panel.