Far From Home: The Complete Series (26 page)

King checked the time. “We’d better call it a day, ladies and gents. I know you all have things to do. Lieutenant Chang and Doctor Oriz, if you could both get some rest then continue to work on your findings from that device. The rest of you, I suspect, have things to get on with.”

Greene stood. “Aye Captain. Everybody dismissed.”

“I’ll listen to those recordings in my quarters,” she told him. “Then I’m going to get some rack time.”

Everyone filed out, but Jessica stopped Dana before she could leave.

“Captain?”

“Just a moment, Doctor, if you don’t mind.” When everyone was gone, they both sat back down. “What was it like?”

Dana licked her lips. “Like nothing I’ve ever experienced. It was strange. It knew I wanted that information. Somehow it got inside.”

Jessica chose her words carefully. She crossed her arms. “Doctor, do you think a machine like that -
as powerful as that
- might know of a way home for us?”

“I don’t know. But I can try and find out,” Dana said.

“Good. Do that. But don’t tell anyone else I asked you.”

“What about Lieutenant Chang?”

She shook her head. “No. Not even her. I don’t want anyone getting their hopes up …”

8.

Jessica showered first, then sat on the edge of her bunk listening to the
Sophie
’s logs. She towelled her hair as she played the first of them. Unlike what Chang and Boi had managed to piece together from the timeless swirls of space, these recordings were crystal clear. Duplicated and stored all that time ago, it was as though they’d been recorded that day.

Captain’s personal journal

Date: UNKNOWN -
ERROR 409

Time: UNKNOWN -
ERROR 409

It’s been eighteen hours since we arrived … wherever we are. Our computer systems are still playing catch-up. I don’t know what time it us. I’ve kept track of the lost time by using a countdown since I woke up on the deck.

Although I try to find some explanation for it, I can’t quite get my head around it. We are in low orbit around a planet. It is not Akron IV, that’s for certain. We’ve talked about this, and we think the
Sophie
was thrown across the galaxy when she went through the black hole. Burke is trying to determine our exact position, but with the computers playing up the way they are, it’s proving difficult.

There’s no sign of the Draxx warship. I have to assume they got thrown here with us. And there’s a problem - we can’t muster enough energy from the engines to maintain altitude. We’re falling toward the planet.

I hope our message to command got through. They need to stop any more of these things getting built. Lieutenant Burke tells me that there are no signs of a singularity nearby, so it must’ve fulfilled its shelf life.

As for now, I have to decide whether to wait and see if the Chief can get me some more power or risk an emergency landing down there, on that alien planet.

Captain’s personal journal

Date: UNKNOWN -
ERROR 409

Time: UNKNOWN -
ERROR 409

I still can’t believe it when I look at where the date should be, only to see an error message. It’s no longer a simple case of computer malfunction. We simply cannot pinpoint an exact date or time anymore. Everything is  …  screwy.

I keep thinking to myself: perhaps it’s Christmas Eve  …

How did we end up thousands of years in the past? Burke thinks it has something to do with time dilation. Perhaps because the black hole was artificial. Hell, maybe it wasn’t really a black hole after all but something else altogether. The sort of hole in the fabric of space-time I read in those silly sci-fi books when I was a kid  …

The simple fact is that we’re stuck here now  …  stuck wherever the hell this planet is. Stuck in our distant past. There won’t be a rescue.

I am not equipped to deal with this. The crew doesn’t realise the fear that flows in my veins. The lack of sleep. Our ship is dead and she is steadily sinking. The soft sand we landed on cannot support her weight. She’s gradually falling through it, as if this planet is absorbing her into itself. But for now she seems to have settled, doesn’t appear to be sinking any further.

We’re on a time limit to find shelter in the surrounding area. To strip her of everything we’ll need to survive. I feel like a castaway, stranded on a very strange island in the middle of a vast, dark sea.

Oh, and there’s something else. Burke thinks he detected life, further inland. Near the woodland. It appeared as a blip on his monitor, but before he could confirm it, it was gone  …

Captain’s personal journal

Date: UNKNOWN -
ERROR 409

Time: UNKNOWN -
ERROR 409

Tonight has been the longest of my entire life. First the Chief, then Commander Reese. Burke has been left a trembling mess. I had him sedated.

I’m now sure that those people are the natives of this planet. The way in which they seem to attack the ship, as if it’s some kind of beast or dragon, backs my theory up. A primitive race like that would not be at a space-faring stage yet, and thus able to visit this planet from afar.

At about 0300 hours, they returned and tried to cut the main power lines on the outside of the ship. I sent Miller and two of the other lads up top to stop them. I threw all of the main lights on, which blinded them momentarily. Watching on the monitors I saw Miller and the others get a few good shots in. The natives seemed to flee.

Only it was a ruse, meant to draw them away from the ship. As they descended down the ladder to check the damage, the natives turned back. I watched my men get impaled, helpless to stop the bloodshed. I called for more men, and they came, but they too were slaughtered the moment they got to the skin of the ship. I slammed the hatch shut. On the monitors, I saw that not all of them were dead. I’m sure I saw Miller’s body twitching  …

I am ashamed to say I turned away from the viewscreen as they were carried away. My heart hammered in my chest. I regret sending those men to their deaths, but what else could I do?

When I was a marine, we had a motto. Death and Glory. It was our battle cry before we went into action. I used to be young enough, and stupid enough, to believe in it. Now I realise how wrong I was. There’s no glory in death, not the death of others. And what glory can there be in mine when there are no others left to bear witness to it?

The door chimed. Jessica looked up. “Come.” Commander Greene walked in bearing two cups.

“Please, no booze,” she said. “I’m just about beat.”

“Oh not booze this time. Though I’ll remember for my next visit,” he said. “Here.”

He handed her a cup. She lifted the lid and smelled it.

“Hot chocolate?”

He shrugged. “Make the most of it. Once the supplies run out, we’ll be living off of reprocessed star dust, so  …”

“You have a point,” Jessica said and took a sip. “Sit down.”

Greene plonked himself down on the sofa, but before Jessica could resume the log entries, he spoke up again.

“Jessica, the real reason I came down here  …”

“Go on,” she said.

“The girls went straight to the science lab to work on that data. I guess they couldn’t sleep, and I’m not surprised. They, uh, managed to work out how long ago the recordings were made. How long since Lukas was alive.”

Jessica swallowed. “How long?”

“Thousands of years, Jessica. A long, long time.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. If they got here by the same process we did, then surely an equal period of time would have elapsed.”

“But you’re forgetting the time differential. Remember, Hawk got here fifty years before us, yet only days had passed for him. We already know that if we get back to our own galaxy, centuries will have passed. And there’s another thing,” Greene said.

“What’s that?”

“We don’t know how the
Sophie
got here. We don’t know it was a black hole.”

She shook her head. “For every answer we get another two questions pop up.”

“Like a hydra,” Greene said.

“Yes.”

She resumed the recordings and drank her hot chocolate.

Captain’s personal journal

Date: UNKNOWN -
ERROR 409

Time: UNKNOWN -
ERROR 409

… my last entry in this journal. I can only hope that if it is found then … Reese, Burke, Miller were killed … all of them … they’re hostiles … only myself and Lukas left. The other lads tried to help but they didn’t last long either … don’t know how long Lukas and I can hold out against them if they return. The ship is sinking. Must find some way of communicating our …
ERROR 411
… this is Captain William Nate, commanding officer of the Union vessel
Sophie
. We have crash landed on an alien planet. I don’t know where we are …
ERROR 411
… I am leaving Lukas on board. If I don’t return in six hours he is to take as much as he can carry and abandon the ship to the desert. I must try to find the others, see if any of them are still alive … I owe it to them … Captain Nate signing off.

Commander Greene and Jessica looked at each other in the vacuum of silence left by that last message. She thought the logs were over with, and was about to shut her console down when another one played.

Captain’s personal journal

SUPPLEMENTAL

Date: UNKNOWN -
ERROR 409

Time: UNKNOWN -
ERROR 409

This is crewman Lukas. I am a replicant and, I believe, the last surviving crew member of this vessel. If you are listening to this, then it is probably too late. I am abandoning ship to learn what has become of the Captain and the other missing crew. I doubt I will continue to exist following the encounter with this planet’s natives, but I must go. It is my duty.

With any luck, they are only captives to these people. Perhaps I can reason with them. After all, I am
not
human  …

9.

“You’re Dana, ain’t yuh?” Hawk said as he sat opposite her with a tray of food. When Dana eyed the stacks of barbequed meats, cornbread, rice, and chilli, she thought about the imminent food shortages that would soon occur if they didn’t find anywhere to re-supply. At the rate Hawk Nowlan was eating his share of the food, they’d run out sooner rather than later.

Taking from the L’ucrah was out of the question - even if they were prospering, albeit with the aid of the mountain.

“Yes. Pleased to meet you,” she said and shook his hand.

“Not eatin’?”

She had a few biscuits on a plate, and a barely-touched hot chocolate that wasn’t so hot anymore. “I’m  …  uh  …  not that hungry to be honest.”

“Know the feelin’,” Hawk said and scooped up a load of rice with chilli.

The mess was quite full, and noisy.

“You know, as a history buff, you’d make an interesting case study,” Dana said. It felt good to be around different company.

“That so?”

“Being a living legend and all. I bet you could tell some stories  …”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, the legend thing again. Bah!”

Dana chuckled. She broke off some biscuit. “Your Father was responsible for the Metal Marquis, wasn’t he?”

Hawk chewed. “Yuh. I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but from what I do know he was the one got them on their feet. An’ a good thing it was, too.”

“Well, I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t.”

“Parents repo’s, huh?”

“Yes they were replicants,” she said, bristling at the word repo’s.

“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, just somethin’ we used to call yuh kind in my day is all. I’m tryin’ to pack it in, believe me,” Hawk said.

“That’s okay. I’m not like this normally.”

“Yuh? What’s up?” Hawk said as he tore a strip from some chicken.

Dana drew a deep breath. “That world down there. It’s barren. Dry and inhospitable by all accounts. And yet, there’s life. An oasis with a thriving village inside.”

“I don’t see nothin’ strange in that,” Hawk said with a frown.

“That’s not it. There’s a kind of alien artefact on the surface influencing the weather so that it rains on a regular basis, and provides fresh water. Because of that, they’re surviving. But they’ve stalled. They’ve not developed in thousands of years.”

“Uh huh.”

“A society needs challenge. It needs to go through the fighting and the wars and the tragedy, then pick itself back up and get on with things. They’ve not had a chance to do that. Long ago a ship crashed there, and the survivor programmed that device to look after them. He thought he was saving them from themselves. He wasn’t. He was dooming them to die  …  of boredom.”

“Then switch it off,” Hawk said simply.

“Huh?”

“Pull the plug. Shake things up for ‘em.”

She chewed this over. “Yeah  …  yeah  …”

Her eyes lit up, their inner fire rekindled. She got up.

“Yuh goin’?” Hawk asked, confused.

“Yep. I’ve got to see the Captain.”

Dana grabbed a biscuit to eat on the go, then left.

“Thanks for the advice!” she called back on her way out the door. Hawk watched her go, then looked back down at his plate.

“Yuh  …”

* * *

“Doctor?” King asked. She rubbed her eye. “I was just nodding off  …”

“I’m sorry, Captain. But something’s been bugging me about what’s going on down there.”

“Come inside. What’s the matter?”

The doors whooshed shut behind her. Dana licked her lips. “The locals. They’re stunted. Kept safe. By the
Sophie
crashing down there, we’ve stopped their evolution dead. Lukas. He told the mountain to provide the rains, so that they never suffered another drought, another famine. And now they’re stuck in the mud. They can’t move on.”