Surviving The Theseus (8 page)

“Well, you let me know what you think after I
tell you what happened,” Travis said, probably winking at Paula, as
he was apt to do regardless of the gender he spoke to.

“Hey, no hitting on my partner,” John said.
Brett smiled, knowing he hit the nail on the head. John almost
never got pissed off so the response was genial; likely a smile
came with it.

Brett dared a look just as Travis kissed the
air towards John, who, even though higher in rank than Travis, just
shook his head and smiled. Travis said, “I was eating this chick
out one time, and she was really into it, because -- well -- I
really know how to pleasure a woman.”

Brett whipped his head back, not missing the
irritated glare from Mary, probably partly irritated at him and at
Travis’s stories.

“All right, Casanova, on with it already,”
Paula said.

“Just thought you should know. She was
totally moaning and grinding her crotch into my face, and then it
happened . . . she farted.”

Paula and John laughed.

Brett dared another look, a quick glance, and
caught George shaking his head. “My partner,” George said. “God
help me.”

“I lifted my head for a second,” Travis
continued, “but she didn’t say anything and I thought it slipped
out by accident because she was so relaxed. You know? Because I’m
so good.” He laughed, joking, but maybe not. Brett wasn’t sure.
Travis didn’t come across as smug, so it must have just been
playful banter to make the story more interesting. Brett wanted to
smile but held back because Mary would know he was listening if he
did. “So I went back down, breathing through my mouth so I didn’t
have to smell it, because, you know, it’s an erection killer.”

Brett saw Mary turn and look back in disgust
and then she turned back around without saying anything. It almost
seemed like George let Travis’s antics go unchecked just to piss
Mary off. Or, at least, that’s what Brett liked to think.

Travis either didn’t notice Mary or didn’t
care, because he kept going. “So, I’m going at it again, and a few
seconds later she rips off another one. And what does she do? She
giggles. So, I’m like ‘What the fuck?’ and she’s like ‘What? What’s
the big deal?’ and she lets off another one. Well, that did it. I
was pissed off, and my boner was gone, so I stood up on the bed and
pissed on her.”

Mary whipped around. “That’s enough, Travis.
Jesus Christ!”

George didn’t say anything. It was weird.
Maybe George was trying to teach her patience, because she was
obscenely low on it.

Travis kept talking. “Yep, I pissed all over
her. It was her bed so I didn’t really care. And you know what she
did?”

“I can guess,” John said.

“I don’t think you can,” Travis said.

“She liked it, didn’t she?” John said.

“Well, well, Johnny boy, it sounds like you
might have some stories of your own. Yeah, she started moaning and
wanted more.”

“Disgusting!” Paula said. “What did you
do?”

“Sorry, Paula, but this is the censored
version. The rest is best left for porno forums, but you can use
your imagination.”

“Rip off,” Paula said.

“All right, you guys,” George said. “Study
your control devices. We’re running low on time before we get to
the last known location of Pyramid One, and I want everyone to be
ready for anything.”

*****

Michael stared at his control device, but his
mind was elsewhere. He had already memorized the levels of Pyramid
One and the different floor plans. He tried to remember the last
time he did anything other than work, which he loved to do, and he
came up empty. He knew he should take a break, but he just
couldn’t. It wasn’t because he would be bored or because he needed
a constant adrenaline rush. His father. Everything was for him,
because of him. Everything he had was because of that man, and he
wouldn’t ever tarnish that gift, even if his father was no longer
alive to see what Michael had achieved.

“You have to work hard” is what his dad
always told him. “Work hard and everything you’ll ever need will be
yours.” Growing up on a mining farm had forced him to be a hard
worker, but his dad never forgot to make him laugh.

One warm, summer day, he and his father were
surveying with a hover vehicle sixteen feet long and twelve feet
wide, with a large clear deck allowing them to see the ground
below. It had short walls and two seats with a control panel at the
back and in the front.

His dad drove from the front while he sat in
the back, following a grid that they had laid out earlier with
flashing beacons on foot high poles. The beacons were placed fifty
feet apart, running for what looked like miles of flashing lights
along the flat, rocky terrain. You could see rows and rows of them,
with each row one hundred feet across from the other.

They stopped a few feet over some rocks, and
then his dad hit a switch and a purple light emanated from beneath
the glass, covering the ground with a bright, fluorescent color. As
soon as his dad hit the light, Michael could see they had found
large batches of the moss they were looking for. The moss glowed
bright white in the wash of purple light. His dad flicked the light
off, and the moss was no longer visible.

“Where is she?” his father said. “First day
and she’s already late by nearly an hour. Your hiring days may be
short lived, buddy-boy.” His father smiled. He pushed his
round-rimmed glasses up on his nose, and then looked up. Another
hover vehicle approached. The approaching vehicle looked much
smaller than theirs, no bigger than a few feet long and no doors
because it had low walls like the mining vehicle.

The passenger hover vehicle pulled up beside
them and stopped.

Michael’s mom drove, and a petite
eighteen-year-old girl, Angel, was the passenger. Michael’s father
let him hire Angel, even though he was fifteen at the time. His
father’s mouth popped open as his father got his first look at the
new hire. She was small, had low-cut shorts on, a white halter-top
showing her midriff, and tanned all over. Her black hair was pulled
back into a ponytail.

When they were all on the ground, his mother
gone, abstracting the moss from the rocks with a vacuum-like device
while the purple light washed over them from the hover vehicle
above, Michael’s father whispered to him. “God bless you, boy. I
was worried you wouldn’t get me a good, experienced moss
abstracter, but now I don’t care.” Michael laughed and so did his
father. Angel looked up at them and smiled, and both Michael and
his dad stopped laughing and couldn’t help but smile back. “God
bless you, boy,” his father said once again.

Michael looked up from his control device,
smiling. Cindy looked over at him. “What are you smiling at?” Cindy
said.

A steady beeping noise sounded off, and a red
light flashed on the monitor in front of Michael. “Proximity
alert,” Michael said. “We’re within a kilometer of the last known
location. Do you see it anywhere?”

“No.”

“I can’t find it anywhere on the system
scan.” Stars flashed by his eyes on the three-dimensional monitor
in front of him as it scanned for any foreign object, finding none.
And Pyramid would be a hard target to miss.

“Why would they veer off course? It’s like
they vanished,” Cindy said.

“That’s not the weird thing though,” Michael
said. “The markers we’ve been following are the only ones between
the gate we came through, and the gate at the other end. Pyramid
came through the gate at the opposite end and never went through
the other one.”

“Could they have gone back through the other
gate?”

“They could have, but gate patrol did not
report them going back through, and, as you well know, they
wouldn’t be able to go through without authorization from gate
patrol. Plus, I’m not reading anything along the markers before the
next gate. If they were there, somewhere down the line, I’d pick
them up.”

Michael didn’t understand all the physics of
space travel, but he knew a big ship like Pyramid would require a
lot of energy to move it, and he was sure it had very large engines
to do so. On the flip side, the markers would also need significant
energy to stop such a massive object. He knew there were
advancements in energy development, and he also knew that the
markers would garner energy from as many other markers as they
could, in order to bring a vessel to a stop and tow it back. If
Pyramid went 500 meters past the markers, the ship’s engines would
disable, and immediately the markers would calculate the necessary
energy to stop the ship and then tow it back within range. But the
facts in front of him said otherwise. “Cindy, they’ve gone off the
markers.”

Cindy sighed. “Why? Why the hell would anyone
do that? And how? Wouldn’t the markers stop them?”

“I’m no expert, but if a big ship like
Pyramid blasted its engines, getting up to a high speed quickly, I
doubt the markers would be able to stop it. Its engines would die,
the markers would likely slow it down somewhat, but then it would
be off, with nothing to stop it, unless it either hits something or
some gravitational force acts upon it.”

It occurred to Michael that someone may have
found a way to tamper with the device in the ship that links with
the markers. He had never heard of it working though. Since he
could remember, there were always people who tried, but always
failed. Always. The device, upon any attempt at a tamper, would
explode and the ship’s engines would die. The markers would stop
them and there would be no engine restart, only the long wait until
authorities arrive. All cases led to serious jail time.

Cindy nodded in agreement. “So, now
what?”

That was the question. Now what, indeed.
Pyramid out of contact for over ten hours. Depending how fast it
got away from the pull of the markers, it could be a great distance
away, and they had no long range-tracking device. No military
division did. With the markers and the gates, it was never
necessary, until now. Michael looked over at Cindy, who waited
patiently for some sort of response from him. “I honestly don’t
know, Cindy.”

Regina let Blair and Rachel lead her by
twenty feet. They all walked down the stairs as quickly as they
dared, which was slower than they would have down a less
treacherous descent.

Not even the next level down and Blair
started whispering to Rachel, which Regina picked up with the
multidirectional microphone on her glasses.

“I think we should tell her,” Blair said.

Rachel scrunched her face up with what looked
like contempt. It was hard to tell for sure since all Rachel
offered to Regina was a side view. “And what would that gain
anybody?” Rachel said. “And this is no place to talk about it,
especially with her right behind us.”

Regina could hear everything they were
saying, even though they were whispering as quietly as they
could.

Blair stopped. “It’s driving me crazy.
Someone else needs to know . . . in case we don’t make it.”

“Your guilty conscience is not bringing me
down. No more about it.”

“It’s just --“

“Stop it. Just let it go. We didn’t do
anything wrong.”

Blair didn’t pursue the matter, but it didn’t
matter. Regina knew they knew something. Hell, she knew it before
she heard them whispering, and this just proved it. She would
confront them, but not until they got where they needed to go. She
knew a gun in Blair’s face would get her the needed information,
but Rachel was an unknown. Regina couldn’t read her, who she might
be, or what she might do.

The descent went on, with no more whispering.
They passed three levels, and kept on going.

As Blair and Rachel passed the fourth level
down, Regina, still wearing her glasses, heard a woman scream.
“Stop,” Regina said, as loudly as she dared, and then held her
index finger up to her mouth, hoping they wouldn’t respond.

Regina climbed down the stairs a little
more quickly, got to the platform, and looked over at the door,
which read:
Casino, Restaurants, and
Shops
.

She had to trust them, even though she had no
reason to, because she couldn’t let them go through the door first
in case there was something right there. Regina waved them to come
back up to her.

As soon as Blair and Rachel came up beside
her, Regina whispered, “I think I heard a scream. We’re going to
check it out.”

“What?” Blair whispered. “I didn’t hear a
scream. What’s to check out?” His last few words came out louder,
not normal speaking volume, but no whisper either.

Regina held both her hands up at him in a
tone-it-down-now gesture.

Rachel didn’t say a word, just nodded.

“It’s not open for debate,” Regina whispered.
“I’ll lead, and I want you two right behind me.” She whispered the
word “right” with gritted teeth and pointed down hard behind her to
emphasize her point. Regina looked both of them in the eyes. “Try
anything and I will not hesitate to kill you both. Just one of you
tries something, and you both die. Get it?”

Rachel nodded.

“Yeah, yeah, we got it,” Blair said, not
without some disdain.

Regina readied her weapon at her side and
pushed the door. The door opened to the usual scene, which was an
empty, wide hallway with no people anywhere. Across from the door,
a large casino was filled with flashing lights and the noise of all
the games in demo mode.

Regina walked into the middle of the hallway,
Rachel followed, and Blair crept out slowly, all of them looking
around.

“There,” Rachel whispered as she pointed
toward the casino.

Two people, a woman in her forties and a
ten-year-old boy, were huddled down, hiding behind a large
holographic game of jousting men in armor on flying ships that
looked like fancy motorcycles. They were in line of sight of
Regina, Rachel, and Blair, but the woman and child did not see
them.