A Warrior's Journey (16 page)

“I think its two levers at once! Turn the
red one as I turn the blue one!”

I released the green handle and did as
Thanic said. We turned the valves in unison and the steam stopped
pouring into the room. Moments later the sirens went off followed
by the warning lights. Then the annoying monotone voice of the
vessel broke into the stillness of the room that was punctuated by
our heavy breathing.

“Coolant successfully rerouted. Coolant
levels back to normal.”

I looked across at Thanic and he back at
me.

“How did you know it was two valves?” I
asked.

A slight grin popped out on his face,
“Steams gotta go somewhere and if reds usually hot then blue is
usually cold. A fair exchange right?”

I dropped my head down laughing
hysterically. I hoped space travel never got this exiting again! I
would take the boringness of space travel over this kind of
experience any day.

The rest of the journey went by without any
further incident. Ileyano had not woken up yet and we were
monitoring him closely, but there was little we could do for him.
He was already secured to the bed in his quarters, as we began
preparation for landing.

What awaited us no one knew, but it probably
wasn’t going to be good. My thoughts were interrupted by the ship’s
voice letting us know that arrival was imminent and that we should
fasten our safety harnesses.

Already ahead of you lady. The only part of
landing I was responsible for was to deactivate the charged energy
beam moments before we entered the water. If I waited too long the
ship would crash into the ocean floor and the beacon array.

The vessel had been slowing down in speed
for the last several hours so it shouldn’t be too difficult should
it?

I was quaking inside at the prospect, as my
hand hovered near the button that would shut the beam off. I
glanced over at Torren and it made me feel better. He looked as
uptight as I felt as he sat there gripping the wheel. And then
things got worse.

We had taken off vertically and apparently
that was how we landed too, only now we faced down and hung against
our safety harnesses. With the nose of the vessel straight down and
the conscious speed of the vessel increasing I glanced over again
at Torren and he at me, as we gave each other a look of shared
misery.

I looked back at my screen and the rapidly
decreasing increments of time and got ready to hit the button. I
couldn’t do it too soon or the vessel would smack into the hard
surface of the water and shatter. I had no way of knowing when we
were in the water other than relying on the instruments in front of
me. The clock struck zero and I hit the button.

I had probably broken it, because I had hit
it so hard. The charged beam ahead of us started to break up and I
could tell that we were in the water, as it started to pour in and
around us shaking the vessel. The beam generators that had
encircled the ship folded back inside the vessel, as the water
became rough.

Torren engaged the biplanes. As the two side
fins pulled out from the sides of the vessel they gave more
resistance to the downward momentum of the vessel headed for the
seafloor. Our speed decreased rapidly, but it was a rough time, as
the vessel shook violently. Torren was able to pull us up out of
our decline onto an even plain.

We had landed and looking around the control
room I saw no water venting into the vessel so we were good.

Larc got out of his restraints and came up
behind Torren and I, “Great job you two! Alright Corrigan what do
you have for me?”

Corrigan turned from the display in front of
him, “The scans are complete Sir. The ship’s analysis shows only
minor changes from the last file reading of the ancestor’s
departure from Earth. The condition of the landmasses appear to be
remarkably similar with the earlier record. We are roughly two
hundred miles offshore of the continent near the beacon array
location.”

“Okay then, Torren put us on a course for
that land mass. We’ll get in and then get out fast and be home
before any of us know it.” Larc said confidently.

Deep in an underground bunker situated in a
Nevada desert the activity reminded one of an ant hill, after a
malicious kid had finished kicking at it. Into the scene of
organized mayhem, with hastily thrown on clothes, not diminishing
his sense of command, General Tommy Vern Sunderson surveyed the
scene.

“Talk to me people, what do you have? It had
better be good to pull me out of my bed at this hour of the
morning!”

A semblance of order was attained at the
presence of the General in the room. An aid stepped forward and
gestured towards a large screen that began displaying space
imagery.

“At 1:00 AM this morning our deep space
probes picked up an anomaly on their scans. At first we thought it
was a low orbiting asteroid, but it moved without any sign of
orbital pull. By 2:00 AM what we thought at first was an asteroid
was completely across the system and was starting to enter the
atmosphere. We only picked it back up then because it had slowed
down considerably and had the same signature as we had seen from
earlier. It came down through our atmosphere on a straight down
trajectory and landed approx. two hundred miles off the California
coastline. One of our satellites got this footage.”

The General looked back up at the screen and
swore starring in disbelief at what was on the screen. As far up as
one could see in the real time footage was a column of what
appeared to be pure energy. As he looked at the imagery almost
before one could blink a dark object came hurtling down it and the
energy beam disappeared as it passed by.

The General swore again, “Notify the navy! I
want our people there an hour ago!”

“Already working on it Sir! We have subs in
the area and we dispatched a salvage ship and three destroyers to
the area. Sir it also appears that the Asian Alliance witnessed the
incident and has upped their military threat level. One intercept
of their communication lines suggests that they are redirecting
their own subs to the area as well.”

‘Just great!’ the General thought to
himself. The situation was unsteady enough with the newly formed
Asian Alliance before this had happened.

“Notify the committee of this. They will
want to know.” ‘And get in the way of progress,’ thought the
General to himself.

Within hours the entire coastline of the
Western Confederation, formerly the west coast of the United States
of America was on high alert.

The morning of the fourth day on the planet
our scans picked up the outline of the coastline and we began
looking for a place to make our way ashore. We could see where the
populations of people were most concentrated from our thermal scans
and we avoided those sections of the coast.

We found a secluded looking stretch of beach
and that evening Torren raised the ship up to the surface. Larc and
Talaric went up top to have a look. Orhanin had figured out how to
turn the lights off that ran along the vessels exterior so at least
we weren’t announcing our presence overtly to anyone who may be
ashore. Larc and Talaric came back down into the control room.

“It looks clear. Torren, you Corrigan and
Sassten will stay aboard and man the vessel and take care of
Ileyano. The rest of us are going ashore. Torren submerge the ship
and go back out to deep water and keep a low profile. Come back
here in four days to pick us up. If we aren’t here leave and come
back in another four days and so on till we make it back. If we
aren’t back in a month’s time head back to our world, if you can’t
make it back destroy the ship. Understand?”

All three of them nodded solemnly in
acceptance of their orders.

“The rest of us need to put on the clothes
that Abby had made for us and get to shore and away from the beach,
while we still have the cover of darkness on our side.”

We all moved to our assigned tasks then.
Later after we were in the strange air boats and headed for the
shore I looked back at the shape of our ship that was already
submerging and for a moment I wished to be back on it. I brushed
that thought away. Our people were counting on us to make this a
successful mission; their fate could depend on it.

I’d see the vessel again, when I had a book
of the words of the Creator in my hand and not before. As we
reached the shallow surf of the beach we jumped out of the air
boats and drug them up onto the shore and into the cover of some
sand dunes. We wasted no time in burying them under whatever debris
and vegetation that we could find. Straightening up I looked
around. We were past the beach and in the cover of some low
vegetated sand mounds. Lights could be seen sporadically here and
there in the dark.

Lights like the ones on the ship! The people
of Earth must still be advanced then. We would have to be extra
careful then. I paused before following the rest of the men through
the dunes.

We were the first men of our kindred to step
onto the first world in over seven hundred years. It was a heady
thought.

We traveled on through the night. Daylight
found us on the edge of a small sprawled out town. We studied it
carefully and its occupants. Everything was once again foreign to
us, as it had been on the ship.

Larc whispered, “We’re going to have to cut
our hair. I don’t see any of the men with long hair, only some of
the women seem to have long hair.”

“Look!” Talaric exclaimed pointing at a tall
man who had just left a building surrounded by black hard looking
road.

The building had red and orange lights
glowing in its windows. It was not a good look. Perhaps it was some
kind of temple. The man had long flowing hair and wore black
leather clothing. He seemed to be imposing to the other people on
the street because they stepped out of his way, as he arrogantly
swaggered his way through them. It wouldn’t take too much work to
copy him down.

We should have kept our old clothes on in
place of the ones that Abby had made for us. While nice they didn’t
compare favorably with the mood of what we saw on the street. We
would stand out in them. We would stand out dressed like the man we
had observed too, but in an intimidating kind of way that perhaps
no one would think twice about questioning.

Larc must have thought the same thing,
“We’re going down there and getting some clothes like he had. The
stuff we have on just won’t do.”

We made our way, as best as we could, to the
building without looking overly suspicious. Larc opened the door of
the building and we stepped in. We were the only people in the
strange place, which must be some form of a store.

A little man I took to be the shop owner
looked up at our entrance and did a double take. I wondered if we
would need to kill him.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” He asked
somewhat uncertainly.

Larc, ever the glib one, strolled over to
the counter and smiled charmingly, “We’ve been traveling for quite
a while and we find ourselves in this sunny country of yours
completely out of attire for such a climate. Do you have any
clothes that we might purchase?”

The man blinked a couple of times, “Where
did you say you’re from?” Asked the openly suspicious man.

Yeah we’d have to kill him.

Larc met his eyes and said pointedly, “I
didn’t say!”

The shop owner swallowed fearfully, “Can you
pay?”

Larc reached down to his belt and pulled out
a small sack, which he dumped out in front of the shop owner on the
counter. The beady eyes of the shop owner almost popped out of his
head at the sight of the gold.

“Take anything you want!” He said in a
daze.

He started to reach for a chunk of gold, but
Larc caught his hand in a firm grasp, “We’ll do that, but in
addition to that I want all the currency of this land that you
possess.”

The little man nodded vigorously, “Sure!
Sure! Here take it all!”

The man opened the box beside him and pulled
out what looked like oblong pieces of greenish paper. The people of
earth used paper for currency?

What could be of worth about fancy looking
paper?

Larc gathered the money up and smiled at the
shop owner again, “I wouldn’t tell anybody about us if you know
what I mean. I’d hate to have to come back here and make you eat
this gold, before I cut it back out of you with this.” Larc said
testing the edge of a long knife that had materialized out of
nowhere in his hands.

The man was shaking like a bunny in fright
at the prospect of being a wolf’s mid day snack. “I won’t tell
anyone! Take what you need!”

“Thank you for your generosity, but remember
I don’t make idle threats.” Larc said, as he tapped the pile of
gold with the tip of the knife.

Larc turned away from the man, but then
swung back around abruptly and the man stepped back slightly in
fright.

“Is that vessel outside yours?”

The shop owner looked out the window puzzled
at where Larc pointed at a funny looking box that sat on four
wheels.

The man hastily dug into his pocket and
pulled out a little piece of shiny cut metal, “Here take it too!
It’s got a full tank of gas!”

Larc took the little piece of metal from the
man and lifted it up in a slight salute, “You know you’re making me
glad that I didn’t just outright kill you.”

The man was literally quaking, as Lark
turned away from him and came over to where we were changing into
new wardrobes. The man stared at us as if we were nuts as we
changed into the garb that the man, who had left the store earlier
had been wearing.

It must not be a custom to change clothes in
a store upon purchasing them. Wasn’t really a custom at home
either, but these were special circumstances.