Learning to Blush (5 page)

She was a genius! An Earth-born genius!

A genius that was parachuting straight towards the trees below her. Those pine trees were beginning to appear very sharp and very unforgiving.

“Damn it!” she growled, but it was too late to do anything. In less than three minutes her parachute was stuck in a pine tree and her seat swinging back and forth, twenty inconvenient feet above the ground. “For fuck’s sake… Do I always have to screw up my end-game?”

Like hell she was spending all day in a tree! She unstrapped herself from her chair and tried to swing herself towards the nearest branch.

She ended up falling all twenty feet onto the ground with her hand full of splinters and her wrist communicator in about fifty pieces. At first, she was certain that she broke a bone or two—she laid out, feeling paralyzed, upon forest ground for a long moment, waiting for the biting pain to wear down.

Eventually paralyzed feeling in her body did wear down enough that she was able to sit up with a groan. She carefully pulled the communicator strap, sans communicator, off her pain-numbed wrist. “Damn it…” she groaned. How was she going to communicate with Graham with no ship and no communicator?

She wasn’t, simply put. She had to wait for Graham to figure out what happened and to come and get her.

Her stomach clenched and she looked up at the sky, wondering with horror:
Would he come?

* * *

“What the hell…” Graham asked, watching as a red light beeped when somebody initiated the emergency sequence to one of the ghost-class ships. He didn’t authorize any to be piloted out of the hanger.

The flight coordinator, Jio, was at the board being confused by it, as well. “That’s weird. The device is transmitting from a location about twenty-thousand light years away… I’m trying to locate what
galaxy
it’s in…”

“Maybe engineering’s working on it?” Graham guessed. It seemed like whenever engineering “fixed” anything, the computer system would freak out and do unexplainable things.

“I’ll contact engineering,” the staff coordinator volunteered.

“I lost contact with the device,” Jio said, shaking his head. “But I can still track its signal from its last known position… Hold on.”

“Engineering said that nobody’s working on it that they know of, but Lieutenant Masterson never reported in for duty, so it’s possible
she’s
working on it without authorization,” the staff coordinator informed.

Graham put his hand over his eyes. “Call her communicator,” he ordered with a groan.

A long minute passed where Ellie did not answer her wrist communicator.

Graham suddenly had a horrible, horrible feeling.

“Huh. Last known position was in the atmosphere of planet 52566,” Jio said thoughtfully. “That’s the
human
planet… But it’s only been out of the dock for eleven hours!”

After ten seconds of utter confusion, Graham felt his heart climb up into his throat. “Give me her communicator's stats!” he ordered, jumping up from his chair and standing behind the staff coordinator’s chair. “Right now!”

The staff coordinator’s six digits revved against his keyboard. “Communicator’s offline…” he said with a small voice. “Her life monitor’s not responding, either, Sir.”

“Her last known location?” Graham rumbled, feeling suddenly extremely nauseous and wondering if he would be able to hear the answer.

“Planet 52566… coordinates 42, -123.” The coordinator shook his head. “Impossible! I saw her at breakfast in the
cafeteria
. She can’t be all the way out there…” he assured, but his tone was very quiet. “I suggest making a full-scale search of the ship for her before we dock at the Mothership,” he said.

“Order it,” Graham nodded, and then went back to his control chair and called Thorton’s communicator.

Thorton's face lit up in front of him when he answered the call. “I’m having trouble calling Ellie’s comm,” was the first thing Thorton said, trying to predict the reason for Graham’s call.

“Do you have the plans she showed you for her engine modification?” he asked.

“Yeeeah… I think so,” he drawled, seeming confused by the question. “She sent me an electronic copy last week. Why?”

“Could that modification be used on a smaller ship?” Graham asked blankly, trying to keep himself calm.
More than likely
, he tried to tell himself,
Ellie took off her wrist communicator and is moping about somewhere on the ship
. She’d been doing some major sulking since her last spanking two days ago…

Thorton scrunched his brow with thought and scratched his head. “Hell, I don’t know, Boss. It would take some serious tampering to the original modification plans she designed. I mean, it couldn’t be done with just any ship. Possibly an X-class or a Ghost class; something that travels at hyper speeds…” He shook his head. “It’s practically philosophical. We don’t have the material to make those sorts of adjustments. Now, maybe Ellie could rig something together that would work out in a small ship like that. You know how she is…” He found himself grinning at the idea of Ellie rigging up anything.

But then he focused on how all color immediately came off of Graham’s expression. He looked like he'd seen a ghost!

“You okay, Boss?” he asked, suddenly feeling nervous. “Boss?”

Graham just turned off his monitor and put his head in his hands. He was in his own personal hell.

* * *

Graham and Thorton both leaned over the small wristband on the ground with alien script on it. Around it were the smallest microchip scraps they’d ever seen. “Well,” Thorton said, breaking the silence as he watched Graham churn the tiny wristband around in his fingers. “No animal teeth marks, no body. No body
parts
… No body in the shipwreck. No body in the injector seat.” He pointed overhead to the seat just barely attached to a parachute strapping. He put his hands on his hips. “Too much time has passed for us to track down where she went to, but she didn’t die out
here
. That’s encouraging!” he said, smiling.

Graham was still extremely pale, not daring to be relieved just yet. He was in shock when he first saw the two-month-old ship wreckage and never quite got over it. “She might have tried to head towards civilization. We can check into hospitals or… morgues. Somebody might have seen her,” he said shallowly, trying very hard not to think too deeply on what he was saying.

“It’s about fifteen miles to the closest town, as the bird flies,” Thorton informed, looking up from a satellite image of their location and pointing a certain direction. “That-a-way.”

Graham didn’t say anything, just marched in that direction, shoving his hands into his pockets.

Thorton swallowed, unable to decide whether or not to really encourage Graham further. Graham’s father, who just happened to be the admiral of the Swarii fleet, told Thorton to go with him to make sure Graham didn’t commit suicide when he had positive confirmation of Ellie’s death. There was a point in time Thorton was sure Jack was going to come along just to share Graham’s grief, but the political climate was too treacherous for the high admiral to go anywhere, as the round-trip to the human planet was over three-to-four months long.

“You know,” he commented, looking around, looking down, then looking up at the treetops. He was looking for something positive to say, but he was actually rather unimpressed. The planet was nicer than a space-station, but that wasn’t saying much. There was something particularly creepy and horrible about pinewood forests. And it was dusty. “It’s a nice planet,” he lied just to break the silence between them. “The trees look interesting… And
sharp
…”

Graham grunted, making the silence feel more uncomfortable than before. But finally, as if a bubble burst, he turned his head towards Thorton and asked, “Do you think I was a bad husband? Was I too hard on her?”

Thorton was taken aback. When he volunteered to accompany Graham to Earth, he expected some regret-filled questions to be asked… He just expected them two months ago when they first headed out. He was just beginning to think Graham wasn’t going to ask those sorts of questions until he saw a body. “No, no way,” Thorton promised, shaking his head. “You spoiled her, as a matter of fact, and she knew it. So did everyone else.”

Graham snorted, obviously doubting Thorton’s answer. “I didn’t ever take her back home,” he reminded, gesturing to the world around him. “Why wouldn’t I do that? I knew she was homesick, and if anyone can dodge the Frians, it’s me. What sort of husband am I?”

“Graham, don’t kick yourself in the nuts just yet, Buddy,” Thorton groaned, patting him on the shoulder. “It took two long pain-in-the-ass months to get all the way out here, and a small fortune in fuel. She was not born on a convenient planet, by any means.” He looked around and kicked the mounds of dirt and dust in front of his boots. “Besides, she might not even be dead. Did you consider that? We both expected to find a body back there, let’s face it, but—”

They both stopped walking at the same time and their heads slowly turned in the northbound direction. In the distance, they could hear a gravely, roaring noise and human music blaring. Thorton could swear he remembered the song, in fact, if just because Ellie had constantly sung out her strange human tunes at the top of her lungs… Other workers had even filed complaints about it.

Still, the music slowly sunk away into the distance… But then it returned. “Highway to hell! I’m on a highway to hell!” the music blared loudly, returning with a gravely sort of roar surrounding it.

Thorton and Graham looked at each other and shrugged simultaneously before walking on. They weren’t on a road—nor were they even by one. There was nothing but dirt and trees around them. A lot of the ground was thick and dusty—it wasn’t paved, and it wasn’t corded off from the scenery. Nobody would be moving a vehicle through there. Maybe civilization was closer than they thought?

As they stood and pondered, they were both clipped by a very big truck that certainly seemed to turn up from out of nowhere. The truck only winged them both, knocking their sides in a way that caused them both to spin violently towards the ground. Both Graham and Thorton landed on their backs after they jumped back not a moment too soon, keeping themselves from being crushed by VERY large back wheels covered with mud. There were three people crammed into the front seat, and they were all screaming “Oh, Shit!” as the brakes squealed sharply.

The humans piled out of the vehicle in a hurry.

“Oh, shit! Are you dead? Don’t be dead! Don’t be dead!” A girl’s voice squeaked from through the blinding dust billowing around them. “Are you okay?”

“Shit, Penny! Didn’t you see them?” one of the young men said as they climbed out of the truck behind her, his voice accusing. There were suddenly two men that looked nearly exactly the same, except the colors on their criss-crossed styled shirts, kneeling down beside Graham and Thorton. “You guys okay?”

Graham sputtered. “
Do you see two of them
?” he asked Thorton in Swarii, moving his extremities around to make sure his spine was still intact.

“
Yep
,” Thorton assured, as if he was glad that Graham was also aware of the anomaly.

Graham pushed himself slowly up on his elbows. “We’re fine,” he said tersely, speaking English for the first time in a long while. He looked around him. “Is this a road?” he asked, incredulous.

“N-n-nooo,” the girl sputtered apologetically. “It’s not. You were perfectly okay—it’s just this… trail we go down… for kicks…” Now that the dust was clearing, Thorton could see a red-headed girl who was probably a half-foot taller than Ellie, jumping up and down nervously in tall boots and a scandalously short, white skirt, showing off her long and very-freckled legs. “I’m so
sorry!
”

Thorton cleared his throat and was suddenly feeling extremely self-conscious. He stared at her and even blinked to make sure he was seeing her right. She seemed nearly like a doll—her skin so smooth, it looked to him as if she was made out of porcelain. Still, this “doll” crouched down next to him, causing Thorton to lean away in habit, as it was so taboo to touch an unknown girl on Swaraan. He rubbed dirt out of his eyes and looked over at the men—they were nearly Peyton’s size… And Peyton was the largest human he had ever seen.

One of the men, who offered his arm to help Thorton off the ground, said “Please, don’t sue. We’ll take you guys to the hospital—right out of our pockets if we have to. Just don’t sue.” When Graham and Thorton settled themselves on their feet and started to wipe the caked-on dirt from themselves, he added, “Although, I think you might have dinged up Penny’s truck more than she dinged up you! Holy anchovies, you boys are big!”

The other man looked around, as if he was searching for bags. “You guys from around here, or are you… hiking?” He went to run his thumb across the new dent in the side of her truck.

“We’re looking for the town, actually,” Thorton admitted in his gravely tone, opening his jacket and pulling out his electronic tablet to check to make sure it still worked. When he realized that it did, he put it back into the pocket inside his jacket.

“You guys lost?” one of the men asked.

“No, we know where we are,” Graham replied, more brusquely than he meant to, since the three humans simultaneously straightened themselves nervously. “We’re en route to the hospital, now that you mention it. If the offer’s still open, we’d appreciate a ride.”

The men looked very visibly confused. One of them put a hand on Penny’s shoulder, a gesture which seemed to calm her instantly, although she was still chewing on her bottom lip. “Sorry about everything—it’s Penny’s birthday so we got her a new off-road truck, and this is a fun trail to race down… It’s our fault completely. We’ll give you a ride to wherever you want!” he assured. “Um… I’m Tom, this is my brother, Tim. Our sister, Penny…” He gestured towards the redhead.

Tom offered his hand for Graham or Thorton to shake, but they just looked at his hand as if they expected it to be brandishing a weapon. Then they looked up, looking very confused with Tom’s gesture. Tom, looking from side to side, slowly lowered his hand, and then brushed his palm on the side of his jeans as if the awkwardness of the moment could be rubbed off.