At the same time in space…

Sometimes I think about what I’ve done over the years: helping the less fortunate, taking out evil groups in different systems, working with Brill and the Novas most of the time—the kind of stuff that I easily get my hands on and complete with high remarks. After every job, both civil and military, I either get money, valuable items of magical power or mundane use, or food, and maybe female companions if I’m lucky enough. But that day, when I was sitting in my chair, drinking the last bit of tea and watching a live Howler Cycle race from Derega, the alarms sounded off.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I grumbled. “This better be a computer glitch.” I slowly got up, turned off the race, and went to the bridge, still drinking my tea from a unique ceramic mug. “Computer, open.”

I didn’t want to sit, but when I saw the report on the viewport, I wished I had. My heart skipped a beat and my cup fell from my hand, shattering on the metal floor into pieces. There was a major change in the report, nothing about it spelled boring. I hopped into my chair and read the report with utmost scrutiny, almost puking all over the dashboard after checking my math.

“Oh, crap,” I yelled. “Wait thi… this is impossible. This should not be happening!”

I opened the blast shield to see for myself. The report said that the asteroid was “turning,” changing its trajectory and accelerating itself towards Terra Firma. The planet itself was dipping behind the spires and out of sight, leaving me with the view of Helen’s jagged rock and ice landscape. It scared me instantly and I had to do one thing, and I had to do it fast.

I typed commands on my dashboard to initiate the fusion reactor, along with the rear rocket thrusters and side thrusters at the front of the ship. The ship’s sensory alarms came on, the engine did not respond, and that pissed me off.

“Come on girl, wake up!” I yelled while slamming my fists on the dashboard. The ship cooperated and the fusion engine roared to life. At least it didn’t suffer much, deicing the engine once a month was one of my priorities. The rear thruster went idle while the side thrusters powered up. The propulsion jets turned on under the ship and I felt the hunk of metal lift off and hover to let me retract the landing pads. The grapples on two neighboring spires detached and retracted, the deflector shields bursting to life. My hands gripped the joystick in front of me, up until the time when a spire suddenly cracked from tremors, broke off at the base, and went flying towards my ship. The shockwave of it breaking vibrated under my feet.

“Come on, move,” I screamed, pulling on the stick, increasing power to the thrusters, and dodged the rock to the right by inches. My heart was racing, my breathing never slowed down, I was sweating out of every orifice of my dreads and skin—I didn’t want to die like this. I flew out, avoiding all the free flying rocks and spires in the asteroid’s wake. “Computer, call Captain Secambre,” I yelled.

Within seconds after the Slipspace drive activated, the monitor on the dashboard came on and Brill’s face showed up. It appeared that he was in his personal sleep pod in his quarters and was waking up with a groggy and sour expression. He wiped his grey face with his hand and looked at me. “Captain Brill Se… ah, great,” he said covering his black eyes. “Jaruka, it is the middle of the night. I know you’re alone up there, but this is taking it a little too far.” Seems he recently went to sleep, but not deep enough, thank goodness.

“Do I look like I have the time for chit chat?” I screamed while making more code commands. “Read the report I’m sending you. The asteroid is croging turning!”

He unshielded his face. “What are you talking about?” He came out of the sleep pod and started his computer on his desk to transfer my transmission, wearing his skin tight blue garment designed for his species to keep warm while sleeping so to not grow cold and die. “What do you mean it’s turning?”

“Read. The damn. Report, Brill!” My distressed tone woke him up. As he did, skimming, he then looked at me with a confused expression. “This is impossible,” he said. “Asteroids don’t change course on their own, they’re all dead rocks.”

“Oh, gee, you think? I’m getting the hell out of here.” I avoided several more rocks and I was finally clear.

“Did you send it to your client?” He asked.

“Screw that dwarf. If I wanted to earn my pay, I would do it somewhere else instead of desk jobs. This was a mistake from the very beginning.” The Slipspace Navigation program came on and found the saved coordinates for Creos.

“Whatever is happening, keep moving. If that asteroid enters the atmosphere and your still near the surface, you’ll die,” Brill said.

“Way ahead of you, Brill. Already setting for a jump to Creos. Next is to find the nearest bar and forget all of this even happened.”

He glanced back at the report, reading it again. “I don’t have the map of the planet. Where is it going to strike?”

“Northeast quadrant of the Pacific Ocean, over a hundred miles from Alaska.”

He paused. “Okay, I don’t know what that means, but I’ll wave that.” He then looked up from me and raised his small grey hand. “Private Irna, now is not the time to talk.”

A bright green light passed my viewport as a massive surge of force hit my ship, sailing me off my chair. My head hit the floor and I started to see double. The ship’s alarms came on, loud and annoying, and made my growing headache hurt more.

“Son of a bitch!” I exclaimed.

“Jaruka, what happened?” Brill said.

“I’m hit. Something hit me hard. It wasn’t no damn rock.”

I managed to get up and lug my green butt back into the chair. The ship was veering off course while spinning on its axis. Terra Firma came into view of the bridge, briefly, only to show a large green orb coming from the surface of the planet, accelerating towards me. Everything went into slow motion, my heartbeat pulsed through my eardrums, and it hit the Lunar Spear, slicing my starboard thruster off like a loose fruit falling off a tree. The shockwave knocked me, again, off my chair and I landed the same as before, y right arm took most of the blow. I got back in the chair, ignoring the throbbing pain. Stuff and trash from the chairs behind mine flew into the air and landed on me.

I looked at the computer’s alarm of the ship, showing massive damage on the starboard side of the ship and the deflector shields destroyed. I was loosing altitude fast, the planet’s gravity pulling me in.

“Ah, no, I’m crippled!”

“Jaruka!” Brill screamed and he grabbed his monitor, almost shaking it, “get out of there no-!” Communications went dead, and the sound of the alarms filled my ear holes.

“Too late,” I said, my voice shaking to a whisper. I froze in the chair, about to die.

“Computer, strap me in and prep life-foam.” Long leather straps came out of the chair, crossing over my chest while four more straps wrapped my arms and legs tightly. Small guns appeared from the dashboard and began to power up.

All I did was scream for dear life as I entered the atmosphere.

When I saw the straps and my monitor going black with “Communication Lost,” I had reason to believe that I had lost my best friend and partner of Nova Company. My hands were still on the sides of the screen, gripping it with all the strength my little body could muster. My breath sounded in junction with an antique clock in the room; inhaling and exhaling every second. My legs were shaking under me as I stayed standing. I was even more scared than the time I almost lost five teams of medics, all magical, from a hull breach over eight years ago.

“Captain?” Irna asked, almost whispering. “What’s going on? What did Corporal Teal do this time?”

My head was frozen in place, but I managed to look up from the red letters on the monitor. Irna, my personal secretary, a full-fledged blade master, and second in command, stood three feet from the door, holding her touchpad and memory drives close to her chest. The Modalen elf still had her uniform on from the last mission; it was wrinkled and had traces of blue blood stains. Her black hair was lopsided as one pointed ear was uncovered, the other completely hidden. I would’ve sighted her for not cleaning up afterwards, and that she just been discharged from the infirmary, but nothing mattered, not while I lost the one the crew liked, and disliked. She must’ve heard me while heading to her cabin.

Her tanned face was getting whiter, eyes scanning over me, looking for an answer. “Captain, what is happening?”

I released the tension in my hands. My knuckles were white and creaked when they moved. I dropped back in my chair. The room was dark, only the light from the two monitors on my desk and the opened door leading out to the deck lit the room. I tried to slow down my breathing and talk.

“Inform…” I started, my voice shaking. “Inform the crew… and the Assassin.” I paused. “That we have a Class… Class Three alert. Tell them, that Jaruka is in trouble… near Terra Firma.” I raised my hand to my head, my elbow resting on the desk. I was about to cry but had to keep that emotion restricted.

I issued Class Three’s a lot during my command. It is code for a warrior of Nova falling behind enemy lines. When you put Class Three, the Red Flagged planet under the Primitive Culture Protection Act, Corporal Jaruka Teal the sensitive gunslinging mercenary together, and seeing Irna’s face turn from curiosity to all out fear in a second, it leads to internal pandemonium.

Irna let go of her touchpad, letting it crash to the floor in pieces while the drives fell like rain. “Great Pillars of Paradise,” she said and rushed out of my quarters to do her job. In moments, the entire crew of the Endeavor knew of it as well the carrier-class ship Assassin docked beside us by Irna’s voice through the intercoms and monitors.

Sweat emerged from my large forehead and coated my palm. My sleep suit felt uncomfortably clammy and clung to my skin. But I had a job to do.

I slowly stood up and went to my closet, pressing the button to open and began dressing in my uniform.

Brill, I thought, keep it in control. Just get yourself cleaned up and to the bridge intact. You have a friend to find, dead or alive.

Grizzly Summit

December 21, 2012

12:13 PM

“I can’t believe it,” I muttered to myself after having watched the news, which was now repeating the breaking story. “I can’t believe that psycho Tom was right. Katie must be a wreck right now.”

It sucks that I had my whole life planned out, and the next minute it’s smashed by Helen. I wanted to get a higher education, and even gather the courage to propose my love to Katie on Christmas morning. As expected, everybody in the bar went crazy. Was I a brainless idiot to rely on science? In a sense, yes.

Pearl started to cry uncontrollably and I gave up on helping her. I avoided a flying chair that a snowboarder threw by ducking to the floor. People started screaming and running out of the bar to warn others outside. I tried to find where Mike was but he had already left.

Then my cell phone in my pocket vibrated. I pulled it out and answered; it was Katie. “Scott!” She yelled. “Did you hear what ha…”

“Yes, I know,” I interrupted. “Are you still at the apartment?”

“I am. Please, please get over here. I don’t want to die alone!” Yep, as traumatized as I had thought.

“I’m coming, baby. I’m coming!” I hung up and ran out before any other people exited. I went down the patio steps, out onto the quad below, and ran towards the parking lot toward my car, where it was parked on the other side of the street, next to an old bed and breakfast.

I found the my car while avoiding three others pulling out from their spots. My lungs burned and every breath I took stung. The work boots I wore caused havoc on my feet. I unlocked my car, got in, turned on the engine, and pulled out. I dialed Katie’s number, but turned out that the line was busy. She must be calling her parents, or they had called her.

I raced to the main boulevard. It was good and packed in the early afternoon, so I slammed my horn down and made a couple of SUVs stop in their tracks. I turned right and was now driving in the center divider; there were others that were turning left into driveways so I avoided them as I made the horn my friend. I arrived at Fox Farm, but was forced to stop at the left turn lane. Three minutes passed.

“Come on, Katie,” I mumbled to myself. “Don’t freak out without me.”

A loud bang came from outside of the car. It made the car shake and jerk violently for a few seconds, and then a blinding light came from the east. I ducked down over the passenger seat to see passed a real estate office, and that’s when I saw her.

Helen entered the atmosphere, exploding into a ball of white and yellow fire. The shockwave must’ve broken the sound barrier and it was already over Big Bear.

“Oh, fuck no!” I yelled and pulled out of the lane. “Don’t you dare beat me!” Stupid, but I was desperate. I had to avoid three cars as they crashed into each other in the intersection. I was screaming down the road, passing a motorcycle shop and a medical clinic. Both of them were littered with people staring at the asteroid, frozen in disbelief.

I pulled into my driveway and saw Katie on the street looking up in the sky, her cell phone in hand. Once Helen was past us, a second object fell. This one was smaller and fell in a different direction than the asteroid, toward Arrowhead. She turned when she heard my horn, her face drenched in tears. I skidded to a stop in front of our garage while flying out of my car to hug her.

“Oh, thank god you came,” Katie cried. “I was wrong, Scott, I was freakin’ wrong. I heard the news and then I called Mom and Dad, and they heard it too. They were furious with me. I told them to stop but we were cut off. The asteroid knocked out my reception and…” More tears came down in buckets as she became incoherent and gasping.

“Calm down, calm down. I’m here, Katie,” I soothed. “Let’s get inside.”

We entered and slammed the door behind us. The TV was on, still broadcasting the news from CNN. Both of us stood in the living room in front of the TV so I could hear what I had missed.

“Helen has now passed over California and is still heading northwest to the ocean,” the reporter said. “We will have a coastal feed of the crash, but we will keep broadcasting till the end.” He sobbed a little.

I grabbed Katie and pulled her to my side, her hands touching my back and chest. “This is really happening.”

Katie started to cry harder and buried her face in my chest, her voice muffled by my shirt. She began to sink down to the floor and I did too, stroking her head. My phone began to vibrate in my pocket so I pulled it out to see that Katie’s father was calling, but my phone dropped the call and showed a no service signal. Even though he wasn’t with us, I could feel his rage a hundred miles away.

“We now have a feed from a coastal camera in Oregon,” the sobbing reporter said. “Helen is now entering the horizon… It will be within seconds when it hits.”

I did not care about anything, not even the people outside smashing things, yelling at the top of their lungs in dismay and pleasure as cars smashed into one another. It was total anarchy.

I stared at Katie’s face, as did she with eyes so wide they were about to pop out of their sockets. “I love you, Katie, with all my heart,” I said, pushing her hair from her face. Screw the proposal, this is it.

“I love you too,” she said. “Kiss me.”

And we did, closing our eyes and tasting each other’s salty tears and saliva. I didn’t want to leave that position, ever. After everything I went through, in all of the years being with her, getting to the that point where I was happy—very happy—I was delighted I was with her. I would have traded anything to survive the apocalypse. Anything.

The reporter said it crashed thirty-seven minutes after noon and everything went quiet.

Just the two of us, locked in a pose that would be frozen in time by similar events of Pompeii. It was perfect. Too perfect. A tear trickled down my cheek.

That’s when everything got weird.

“What the fuck?” The newscaster said in confusion. “Okay, something’s wrong with the asteroid.”

My perfect moment of sensual bliss was halted by that random exclamation. Now, this was public television, and the laws of censoring bad words were strict. I was sure kids were watching it too, and hearing that man’s words, it felt... out of place.

My eyes and Scott’s opened simultaneously. We parted and looked at the TV, seeing a view of the Pacific Ocean, calm and unnerving.

“Huh?” Scott said.

In the middle of the screen, a single horizontal line of white light was shooting out of the horizon and straight into the sky. When you expect a wall of water or fire from an asteroid strike, you expect it. Only there was no wall, this was something new.

“Okay we are now switching to a live satellite feed of ground zero from orbit provided by NASA.” There was a short switch of picture, taking like a second to do. “Oh my God! This can’t be right!”

My head was cocked to the side, followed by my own “huh?” A spiral of grey light circled the spire and erupted into a purple ring, then a shockwave hit the sea to settle the potential tsunami. The ring grew in diameter, blowing outward like a ripple in the water. A maelstrom of thick, grey clouds engulfed ground zero, but from the ring like anomaly, I could pick out glittering objects falling from it and into the ocean.

It then cut back to the Oregon coast camera, and we saw the thing move through the sky with effortless ease. It was very high in the sky, too high for any human to be able to breathe at or commercial aircraft to fly. I saw the objects falling, getting closer and closer to the camera. They were coming too fast; I couldn’t make out what they were. They splashed into the ocean, then up to the rocky beach as some people ran for cover. When one object came screaming at the camera, everything went to static, and cut back to the stunned and pale-faced reporter at his desk, then the TV went out completely, cutting our connection to civilization.

Scott was blinking heavily; I blinked once. I felt confused and a little robbed.

We still held onto each other while getting up, then we held each other’s hands and walked out onto the balcony. The craziness had almost died down and some were listening to the radio or whatever still had connection. I saw a big crack in the windshield of the Element with remnants of rock still hanging on the wiper blades.

I looked to the east for a moment but Scott told me to look towards the north sky as the ring came into view. Inside, I felt a little jealous of the ones with a better view of just how mysterious and scary it was. Once it was over the lake, a huge shiny object fell from it along with smaller ones, crashing into the lake with a big splash that reached ten stories high. My stomach felt like lead.

“Katie, get inside and take cover!” Scott yelled to me.

I ran inside as Scott shut the balcony door. He grabbed my wrist and told me to get in the bathroom’s door jam. We braced ourselves in it as the objects began crashing on the apartment’s roof like huge hailstones. Eventually we heard one or two puncture through our ceiling. I did not dare to see where they landed; I just buried my face in Scott’s chest and squeezed my eyes shut. It was a horrible sound, a sound that was burned into my mind forever. Scott held me tightly as I momentarily cried as the building shook, maybe from larger objects. Then the sound subsided and I guessed that the ring in the sky had moved on.

We both let go, slowly breathing. We came out of the door jam and looked in the living room. I picked out a couple of holes in the ceiling and the floor. As we got closer to the balcony, I saw what fell.

They were crystals, dark purple and fading to black on the sharp edges. Once outside, I saw a towering purple crystal in the center of the lake, about twenty stories tall, erecting out of the water like a monolith. Everywhere else had more crystals: some small like basketballs along the streets and in the vacant lot across from the complex, some were larger and stuck out of the buildings like crude chimneys. I looked down at the my car and to my dismay, two huge holes were in the engine and the rear roof. Scott saw them too and cursed.

I kept staring out at the changed landscape, getting a new sense of our transformed world. Inside, deep down in my soul, this was telling me something else. From the times I fantasized of the mystical and the impossible, the crystals cracked opened a door in my mind I had closed long ago.

Scott tapped my shoulder to look up. “My, God,” he said as he stood there gaping at a crystal in his hands as big as a baseball. “Katie, look how smooth and flawless this thing is. Not a single crack.”

I glanced at it, but still looked outside. “That’s it?” I said. “I mean, all of that and we get showered by crystals? We should be dead by now.”

“Guys, are you all right?” A voice called out from down below. We looked down at Mr. Conner, our next-door neighbor, waving at us.

“Yes, Darren, we’re all right,” I answered. “You?”

“I’m okay, but Linda banged her hip on the table before a crystal smashed through our kitchen.” Scott talked to him as I tuned him out.

More people came out of hiding, examining at the damage the crystals had caused. Most were happy to be alive; others were shocked, felt ripped off, even robbed. I saw one old woman look at the monolith in the lake and fall to her knees, ecstatic to be alive. Something within me—I don’t know where it came from—that told me that it wasn’t done. And I was right.

I heard something in the distance and it grew in volume. I tugged on Scott’s shirt. “Do you hear that?” I asked. He stopped talking to Darren and listened.

It was a humming sound, a cross between a monk’s song in a chapel and a low-pitched tuning fork. It got louder and louder to an unbearable sound. The hairs on the back of my neck perked up as I looked at the crystal in Scott’s hand. It started to glow in junction with the humming.

The memory door busted wide open and I came up with a theory. Magic.

Scott dropped the crystal. “Katie, I think we need to get back inside.” I wanted to agree but the monolith caught my attention as it glowed brighter. Scott looked too because I couldn’t budge a muscle. The glow made me freeze and feel uncomfortable.

The humming became irritable. As I saw it glow, I figured they were some kind of extraterrestrial bombs and the humming was the charging signal. Then in a flash of light, the monolith exploded, but still retained its shape.

What came out were thousands of white orbs, made of electricity I figured, and went shooting through the air, hanging over the crystals. After a few seconds, the orbs moved like a pack of killer bees, and attacked every living human in sight. The orbs electrified people where they stood and they fell to the ground in a parade of seizures and tortured screams.

“Inside!” Scott yelled.

I ran screaming into the apartment, hoping I’d be safe from the orbs. Scott closed the door, locking it. I had a sudden idea we weren’t safe as I looked at the door and Scott. Darren’s apartment was hit by them as two orbs smashed through the wall.

I saw two coming after us, smashing through the inch thick glass. One slammed into Scott’s chest in a shower of lightning bolts. I turned as one hit me in the back, but the force of it was so strong that it picked me off my feet, slammed my whole body into the fridge, and I crashed to the floor.

My whole body was electrified from the inside out, seizures followed as I screamed bloody murder. I had no control of my limbs as they whipped in all directions. My skin was on fire, like all my cells were trying to burst all at once. I thought of Heaven, seeing myself in a cloud pillow sitting with Scott and my family, although it was hard to keep the thought with electricity frying my brain and nervous system.

My vision went black.