Bleak Read online

  Nilly nodded and Tucker held her closer. He didn’t say any more, he just held her. They’d watch for a little bit more before Tucker began his work day. He would pause during his day to watch the takeoff of the Omni, pause and pray. He knew the crew of needed all the prayers in the world. The fate of mankind depended on it. If they failed, if the planet wasn’t habitable, more than likely there wouldn’t be such a great second chance to find a new home.

  Without a place to go mankind, and a lot of other species, would reach their end at some point in his granddaughter’s lifetime.

  ELEVEN

  In order for the Omni to maneuver into the Androski Wormhole, they had to approach it just right, at the perfect time of day. Too much sunlight caused the wormhole to be invisible, and the last thing Finch needed was to guide the ship through too close to the edge.

  There were theories tossed about that no matter how big the wormhole was, it would crush whatever passed through.

  NOAA-13 passed through twice without incident, though it was twenty percent the size of the Omni.

  The timing was right, they were ready for takeoff.

  The forward fuselage and flight deck were equipped with early warning systems and an ejection pod, so the backup safety of the old-style helmets and suits wasn’t necessary.

  They were still welcome to wear their suits, though. In fact, Rey decided to do so, but she was the only one. She spent every day practicing how to get in and out of a suit. In the old days it took twenty minutes, now it took ten. It was heavy and bulky, but she wasn’t going without one until they left Earth’s atmosphere.

  She supposed she looked silly and amateurish, much like the time she went on her first cruise with her husband and wouldn’t take off her life jacket … at all.

  “Ma’am,” one of the crew told her, “I assure you there is no need for a life jacket at dinner. We are completely safe.”

  “Yep, and I am sure the folks that ran the Titanic said the same thing. No thank you. I’m good.”

  She didn’t care then and she didn’t care now.

  She was seated second in the Omni and expected to be leaning back. Instead she was strapped in and felt as if she were taking a plane ride.

  Rey was nervous, the whole thing was surreal. Her training was two weeks long as opposed to years with the other crew. Although, she wasn’t the only person on the crew that hadn’t taken a flight to space. She prayed the ship wouldn’t blow up on takeoff or anything else.

  There was excitement about seeing the Noah planet, and fear about stepping onto it. Her heart pounded in her chest reverberating up to her ears. Rey shook so badly, and her heart rate was so out of control, that she was given a very mild sedative. To her it felt like she took a couple shots of some very strong alcohol.

  She watched and forced a smile when everyone was strapped in. It was nice of NASA to make sure they were secured properly, but what would happen when they took off from the planet to return home. Who would secure them then? The scariest part to Rey was if something would happen to them, no one would know. The only indication that something went wrong was the fact that after two weeks, they never returned.

  The door was sealed and her heart dropped to her stomach.

  “Can you hear me?” Finch’s voice came through her helmet.

  “Yes,” Rey replied.

  “Good. That suit will get warm. Once we make it out of the exosphere, Ben will help you out of it and you’ll be much more comfortable for the remainder of the flight.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’ll be alright.”

  Rey took a deep breath. She hated the feeling of hearing her own breathing in her head.

  Then before she knew it, it was time.

  “Paradise to Omni, you are clear.”

  “Roger that,” Finch replied. “Initiating sequence.”

  “Ms. Harper,” Tom Waite’s voice was in her helmet. “Try to relax.”

  Everyone looked at her.

  Did they expect she’d be calm or an expert?

  “Godspeed, Omni,” Waite said. “You are good to go.”

  From her seat she couldn’t really see much of what Finch or Clutch were doing. Their arms moved about and they went back and forth with words she didn’t understand.

  “All you,” Finch told Clutch.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen this is your co-pilot,” Curt said as the Omni began to move, mimicking an airplane pilot. “Weather on Noah is unknown at this time. We hope for clear skies. Time of flight to the wormhole, three hours and fifty minutes. Sit back and enjoy the flight.”

  As the ship moved at incredible speed, Rey felt herself pressed back against the seat as music played in her helmet.

  What was that song?

  An old one, a very old one. ‘Fox on the Run.’

  Everyone groaned. Not Rey. She just had to focus on staying calm and listened to the music, which seemed so fitting for the speed of the occasion.

  “You alright?” Ben asked as he removed her helmet.

  Rey gasped. “Yes, thank you.”

  “Let’s get you out of this suit. So you can look around and take in the awesomeness.”

  Rey nodded quickly. She wasn’t ready for when he undid her strap. Of course, she knew she’d experience weightlessness. Her stomach already felt it. But the moment she was free from her seat restraints, she floated upward. Which seemed to amuse everyone, because she wasn’t ready.

  Rey had done really well in simulation, she had to get it together, she had to.

  When she first started teaching, she was young, wet behind the ears and the whole feeling was overwhelming that first day … being on the ship felt the same way.

  Until she looked out the window.

  She expected to be awed, her breath taken away from the beauty, but instead there was something scary about it. Earth was in the distance and behind them a blackened speckled sky that reeked of infinity. Rey found herself just staring, not moving, not talking.

  Sandra made her way to Rey. “You feeling okay? Do you need anything?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Amazing, yet scary, huh?” Nate said to her.

  “Yeah, yeah it is.”

  “Let’s go explore,” he suggested.

  He offered his hand as assistance for her, maybe even a guide, but she declined. She needed to do it herself.

  The feeling of floating was better than she expected, except no one told her how bubbly her stomach would feel. She had been on the Omni before flight, but it was a completely different experience now.

  Everyone had their light duties, things to check, making sure everything was secure. Everyone except Rey.

  She felt useless and wondered when she would be of any use on the mission. Although it was clear she was the face of the people, Rey wanted to contribute.

  Nate put her to work. He had to check his items in cargo, then the testing utensils he would use once they entered Noah’s atmosphere.

  “What are you hoping for?” Rey asked.,

  “Something close to Earth. I think we’ll get that. The water is blue, and the water and green of vegetation tells me there has to be a breathable atmosphere. If there’s not, we’re gonna be on this ship until we power up enough to return home. And gravity, we need gravity. It’s hard to tell from the pictures, but I envision a place very Earth-like.”

  “And if there is breathable air and gravity?” she asked. “Then what? What do we do for two weeks?”

  “Explore. Test the soil, the vegetation, look for the signs of a previous civilization, try to figure out what went wrong. Why they aren’t there. The two weeks will fly by.”

  “What if there’s life still there? What happens then?”

  “Hopefully they aren’t hostile. Hopefully they don’t treat us like an Area 51 experiment.”

  “That’s not funny,” she said.

  “I’m not joking.”

  Nate was amazing with her. When they finished checking all his equipment and cargo,
both of them familiarized themselves with what the others were doing, then went off to the kitchen.

  There were two types of food. One designed to eat in flight, the other once they were situated on The Noah.

  Between eating, working, and checking out everything on the ship, the four hours to the Androski flew by and Finch was soon calling them back to their seats.

  “Should I suit up?” Rey asked.

  “If you want,” Finch replied. “At this point. I don’t know that it’s going to matter.”

  Rey strapped in as did everyone else.

  “There she is,” Finch said.

  Rey couldn’t see it, it looked like nothing. She didn’t even know what she was searching for.

  “Paradise, this is Omni,” Finch said. “We are ready to go through.”

  “Omni, this is Paradise, you are clear. Last transmission until you return.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Godspeed.”

  “And Roger that, as well.”

  He was scared, or at least nervous, Rey sensed that. Going through the wormhole caused a quiet in the ship.

  “Here we go,” Finch announced.

  The ship tilted to the right, but didn’t pick up speed, he kept it steady.

  What would happen? No one had ever gone through a wormhole.

  Rey kept repeating in her mind, The satellite was fine. The satellite was fine. We’ll be fine.

  “We’re in,” Finch stated.

  Rey exhaled in relief, but that relief was short-lived.

  There were no expectations, but a part of her seemed to think it would be like going through a doorway.

  It wasn’t. The second they entered the wormhole, flashes of light surrounded them and as she looked out the window, it looked as if space bent. The stars were no longer dots of light, but streaks.

  The flashes picked up in intensity, and the entire ship filled with a blinding light before Rey began to feel the pressure on her body.

  It felt as if someone was sitting on her chest. The pressure increased and the ability to breathe lessened.

  No, no, no, what’s happening?

  Her head spun and when she turned to look at Nate, it was if she were in a thick pool of mud. Unable to move, think, see.

  She blinked hard, trying to focus. Nate was gripping the arm rest of his seat and then his head fell forward.

  Rey tried to call out. But her words, “What’s happening?” were slurred and deep. Was that even her voice?

  She watched as Ben and Sandra passed out. Curt was next. Finch tried to reach for him, then his arm fell.

  That was the last thing Rey saw.

  The last of her air left, she could no longer inhale or exhale.

  At that moment, as they traveled through the wormhole, Rey tried with everything she had to gasp for that one final breath, she couldn’t, all she could think was, This is it. I’m gonna die.

  Her head fell forward, and like everyone else aboard the Omni, she passed out.

  TWELVE

  With a heaving breath that sounded more like a gasp, Finch snapped his head upward as he found himself suddenly awake and clinging to the air that entered his lungs.

  Not only did he find himself conscious, he found the ship guiding on a direct course toward a light blue colored planet that blocked everything in his vision. The planet was huge and covered in a thick, blur cloud formation. It was as if it were blocking the other side of the wormhole, but why didn’t the NOAA document it? It was a frightening sight, especially when Finch noticed the speed of their approach.

  Finch not only had to clear his head, he had to think quickly.

  Within seconds, alarms started blaring.

  Curt jumped in his seat as he, too, woke up.

  “What the hell?” Curt asked. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Finch answered. “We’re being pulled by this planet’s gravity and we need to pull out. We don’t know what’s behind that cloud formation.”

  “That’s not it, is it? That’s not The Noah,” Curt said.

  “No. It’s not. I can’t see Noah.”

  Curt helped work the control to take the reins of the Omni about the point everyone else was waking up.

  “System is straining,” Curt said. “She wants to land.”

  “We can’t,” Finch replied. “Nate, you with us? What do we know about this place?’

  “Scanning the surface now,” Nate said. “Nothing friendly, it would tear us up. The terrain is rough. And cloud coverage would inhibit a clear solar charge.”

  Ben added, “It would take approximately three weeks to get enough power to lift off. That would be too long.”

  “There is something we can do,” Curt suggested. “We dump everything we have from auxiliary and basically lift off from this planet’s pull.”

  “If we do that,” Finch said, “we’re pretty much gonna coast our way into the atmosphere of Noah.”

  “Yeah, but that will leave us enough power to navigate a landing,” Curt said.

  “Ben?” Finch called him. “What will that do?”

  “Suck up all our power. Curt’s right. We can land on Noah. We’ll just have to charge fully, which will take a week. However, there may be another way. Propel enough to catch the orbit,” Ben suggested. “That will stop us from depleting completely.”

  “Slingshot?” Finch asked.

  “Slingshot,” Ben replied.

  “Then we have no choice, that’s what we do,” Finch said and looked at Curt. “On my call hit the propulsion.”

  “Roger that.”

  “On three … two … one ... now!”

  The pressure of the thrust pushed Rey against the back of her seat; there wasn’t an inch of her body she could move. Glued there, fingers stuck from seconds earlier when she gripped for dear life.

  She gained consciousness at the sound of the alarms and couldn’t imagine how Colonel Finch or Captain Henning were thinking so quickly, when she herself was dazed, confused, and scared out of her wits.

  She kept her eyes tightly closed, not by choice, but more by a frightened instinct. The voices of the crew, working as a team, flowed from one person to the next, like a well-rehearsed script. In her disordered state of mind, she couldn’t decipher who was saying what. They spoke quickly and emotionless, and all sounded the same, even Sandra, as the ship seemed to shake out of control.

  “Vitals are good, try to focus on calm. We don’t need heart rates right now out of control.”

  “Engines holding steady. Auxiliary power at seventy percent depletion.”

  “It’s a little hard to focus, right now, I’m trying to get us out of this.”

  “Ben, where do we need to be when we land on Noah?”

  “Jesus, what is this planet?”

  “We need to be at fifteen, optimal twenty if we need to search a landing site.”

  “We can do this.”

  “Auxiliary power at fifty-five percent.”

  “Oxygen levels holding steady.”

  “Forty percent.”

  “We need more.”

  “It can’t handle more.”

  “It has to. I need more.”

  “Thirty-five percent.”

  “This is its moon.”

  “What?”

  “Why the pull is so great …”

  “Thirty percent.”

  “We’re detaching.”

  Oh my God, Rey screamed in her mind. The Omni is breaking apart.

  She was prepared for some sort of explosion. Finch called out, “Clear,” and she felt the pressure of the propulsion release and had she not been strapped in, she would have floated forward.

  Before she could register what had just happened, slowly and with a sound of shock, Curt said, “Holy shit.”

  Everyone grew silent, and she felt a tap to her arm. Rey opened her eyes. Nate was trying to get her attention. When he had it, he pointed forward.

  Rey leaned to her right and saw instantly why the crew was sp
eechless.

  In the distance, clear and beautiful, was Noah.

  THIRTEEN

  “Damage?” Finch asked.

  “We’re good,” Ben replied. “Other than a few things knocked around.”

  “Do we know what happened?” Finch questioned.

  “Going through the Androski. I don’t know …” Ben shrugged. “We lost all power for about twenty seconds. Oxygen stopped flowing. We passed out. Fortunately, everything came back on.”

  Rey heard that, but had a hard time processing the scientific information. How could they? Maybe it was their experience in space that caused them to ignore what was out the window. Rey was in awe. Completely awestruck. Her eyes fixated not only to the deep blackness of space, but the huge blue body of mass that they nearly crashed into. As they inched forward her heart beat out of her chest, when the new earth planet, The Noah, came into view. It was breathtaking both figuratively speaking and physically. Rey could not catch her breath.

  A cluster of emotions hit her, most of which, she wanted to cry. It was overwhelming and there would never be another moment like it in her entire life.

  Words could not describe it.

  “Right, Rey?” Finch tapped her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry what? I can’t stop looking out this window.”

  Finch smiled gently. “That’s fine. It’s an amazing view. I was just talking about how we lost oxygen, and you wanted to wear the suit. We urged you not to.”

  Rey mumbled, her eyes never straying from the view. “I should have worn my suit.”

  “Then what?” Nate asked her. “The rest of us weren’t. We would have passed out and you would have been awake. What if it never came back on? You would have been aware and alive when this thing crashed into that planet. Me, personally, I wouldn’t want to see it coming.”

  Curt turned his seat to face Nate. “Is it a planet or a moon of Noah?”

  “It’s too big to be a moon,” Nate answered. “But it does orbit Noah, from what we can see.”

  “Looks like there’s another moon as well.” Curt pointed. “Two moons. That one’s further.”

  Finch swiped his forefinger over his top lip as he stared outward toward Noah. “Estimated time until arrival?”