The ship twirled slowly forward, like a slow motion football thrown through the dark. The Khralii, named for a crab-like creature, was a standard Union cruiser with twinkling lights over dark grey steel, guns lined up above and below each spar. In back, three massive engines glowed with the heat of the exhaust.

Captain Oris stood surrounded by a boarding party in the hallway outside the transporter room. A wall-mounted screen projected images from the frontal camera.

The smuggler’s ship was painted black and sprinkled with small white dots. When powered down it was nearly invisible. Unfortunately, the smugglers had underestimated the sophistication of the Erakos United Systems, and passed too close to an EUS outpost that was equipped with the newest scanning technology. The smuggler craft went “dead,” but the Khralii was already alerted to its location.

Realizing their mistake, the smugglers tried to star-jump to safety, but the Khralii fired on them destroying their FTL systems, crippling them. Captain Oris called for surrender and their captain quickly accepted. Oris knew he would. Smugglers had no courage.

The disabled ship floated. Oris knew the smuggler was heavily damaged. He hoped there were no fatalities. Regardless of the damage, the vessel itself would be towed back to the nearest outpost and repurposed, but Oris wanted to take the crew alive. They were smugglers and criminals, but in his mind none of that warranted death.

The Khralii drew up alongside the smuggler. Oris and his boarding party climbed into the transport. It took about three minutes for the airlocks to drain the hangar of air, and then the doors slid open slowly. The tiny craft floated out into the star-speckled void.

The boarding party was armed with only handguns, because a misguided shot might damage the ship or expose the inside to the exterior vacuum. Strapped to their hips were the standard Union sabers. If it came to fighting, Oris would go for that.

Luckily, the surrender was quick. The smugglers were clapped in irons and secured aboard the Khralii. Their ship was attached by a web of steel cables and towed behind. The smugglers looked scared, some staring in despair at their bonds. They were obviously from the Planetary League, where the punishment for crimes was much more severe than in the EUS.

Oris tried to dispel their worries. He assured them that they faced only some prison time and a few months at a reeducation center. Then they would be free to go.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It will be difficult, but you’re going to enjoy working with Erakos United Systems.”

The Khralii docked safely at the nearest outpost. The smuggler’s craft was taken away and its crew sent to judgment. Oris’s prediction proved correct. They received a three month’s prison sentence at the New Highport Correctional Facility and classes at the Ferris Memorial Reeducation Center. The smugglers looked relieved and patiently shuffled aboard the next shuttle.

The Khralii’s crew was dismissed. Oris and the rest boarded another shuttle, which brought them from the orbiting station to the planet below. They had four day’s furlough to do as they pleased. Most of them went out to the bar, or to the underground brawling club for a few extra credits.

The first thing Oris did was count his earnings and gather up two hundred credits. Then he brought the money to Samantha.

She looked tired, even more so than the last time he’d seen her. Initially, after Jack vanished, she had refused his help, but not now. Oris wondered if she was just too tired to say no.

Whenever he visited, he made sure to spend some time with Walis. Over the years he had watched his friend’s son grow from a small chubby boy to a hard-muscled young man. Walis was sixteen now and built like an ox. His thick neck and square jaw reminded Oris of Jack.

“You look more and more like your father every day,” Oris told him.

“Yeah,” Walis would say. Or maybe just “whatever.” Oris couldn’t say for sure if Jack had been like that at this age. They had met in the academy and served together in the Cesspool Uprisings.

As they sat down for dinner he recalled the last time anyone had seen Jack. It was a routine pirate chase, nothing special. The pirate ship was a reequipped industrial scrap hauler with only a rudimentary tunneling system. It should have been easy. Except that the pirates were fleeing along a remote border of EUS territory attempting to escape jurisdiction. Command seemed to think they were making for the unclaimed space between the EUS and the Sarnate Empire. Perhaps they were. But in the end, cornered by EUS men, the desperate pirates turned and dove through the Berkinson Nebula, that enormous enigma nicknamed the “Nebula Wall,” as there has never been an exploration beyond that point. Jack’s ship followed the pirates into that great interstellar cloud.

Neither of the ships ever returned. Not so much as a radio transmission. Fourteen years passed without a peep.

After that, Oris did his best to support Jack’s family. It was part of a pact they formed years ago, at the academy. Oris never did have a family, but Jack did, and so here was Oris, eating a meal that probably cost most of a week’s wages to put together. Oris suddenly stood up, pushing the chair back behind him.

“You eat,” he said. “I have to go.” He slipped out the door before Samantha could convince him to stay. It was wrong for him to eat their food. The EUS put plenty of food aboard the Khralii.

He found his feet taking him to Jala-Al-Puop’s bar, where most of the other men were already drinking the night away, Tom Berven approached him.

“So?” Tom asked. “What did they say?”

Oris cursed. He hadn’t forgotten the plan; he had just forgotten the deadline was today.

Tom groaned. “You didn’t ask them, did you?”

He had and he hadn’t. Oris had approached the Admiral with this subject before, and had been turned down.

“I knew him too, Captain,” the Admiral had said. “Fine man, good soldier, but he’s not coming back. Nobody who goes in there ever has, and I can’t lose any more good men.”

In that Oris had his answer. He might have approached the council, but their answer would be the same, he was sure of it.

“I did,” Oris said.

Tom gave him a glance. “They said no?”

“Was there ever a chance they might accept?” Oris asked.

“We have volunteers,” Tom protested. “People who knew Jack. Scientists who want to examine the cloud. People who just want to explore. We have men who own their own ships. All we needed is the council’s permission.”

Oris tilted his head back draining the last drops from his glass. “Do we?”

“Of course we do,” Tom snorted. “You know better than I, sir, we’d be charged with desertion.”

“Aye,” Oris said, turning back to face him. “And the penalty for desertion is…”

“Dishonorable discharge and a tattooing, sir,” said Tom. “After that you’ll never get another government job, not even as an order enforcer.”

“In the Planetary League the sentence for desertion is death,” Oris reminded him. “Consider yourself lucky to be serving the EUS.” He called to the bartender for another drink. “And in the Lar Republic deserters are sealed inside a rock a mile beneath the surface. If they can burrow back up they regain their honor, if not they die.”

Tom laughed. “Lots of Lar are punished like that. If the Lar are lucky, they can burrow sideways, and maybe find an old tunnel someone forgot to fill in. Maybe they return to the surface alive, and maybe they don’t.”

“So what if we dig sideways?” asked Oris, brightening. “What if we manage to find another tunnel.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed. “What you are suggesting is treason.”

“Oh come on,” Oris said. “You make it sound so bad, but if it really were, why would we be so insufficiently punished?”

Tom’s eyes widened. “Conviction would destroy your career! You’d be a man without honor, one who–”

“Honor?” Oris laughed. “Honor faded when you could kill your enemy from fifty mocs away, and died when we reached the stars, and found that the game had changed and all the rules with it.” Tom was still young.

Tom frowned and picked at a scab on his palm. “A few of our volunteers might be willing to go along with this, but not the military men.”

“We don’t need many,” said Oris. “We only need one ship and a crew for her. Once we pass the Nebula Wall they’ll end the pursuit.”

“Sorry, Oris,” said Tom. “You have to count me out. The rest of the boys, too.” Silently, Tom rose from the stool and left the bar.

Oris hoped the other soldiers might have their own opinions, but as Tom predicted they wanted to stay put. Most of the civilians however, stuck with him. Oris was pleased with the turnout. They had two ships, each privately owned and licensed. The ships had crews of fourteen with Oris making fifteen on the second ship.

Four days later, on the morning that Oris was due back on the Khralii, he boarded one of the two civilian ships instead and flew off.

Watching the planet fade into the blackness behind him, Oris wondered if they would be caught before they reached the Nebula Wall. Civilian ships possessed only the most basic tunneling systems, while the ships of EUS were equipped with the newest and best star-jump technology.

At Oris’s suggestion they flew away from major run lines and zig-zagged toward their target. The crew didn’t know that Oris was being hunted as a deserter, so he had to spin a few fables. As it happened, the trip was uneventful. On the third day Oris was on the bridge as they drew towards the Nebula Wall.

It was vast, an impossibly huge swirl of dust colored lilac, blue, and green, stretching out thousands of miles in all directions, twinkling with reflected starlight.

The crew took in the beauty of the massive cloud, as the ship slowly fell towards it.

When passing through a nebula, the dust particles get everywhere. They disrupt radio communication. Massive amounts of friction result in extremely high temperatures. Luckily these ships were built for orbit and atmosphere, giving them some amount of heat protection.

Oris wondered what desperation impelled the pirates to dive into this, and what madness had possessed Jack to follow them. They emerged hours later, into uncharted space.

“Well, Captain,” said the true captain of this vessel, a small man named Hugo Tandriff. “Do you have the coordinates?” Hugo rarely addressed Oris as captain, considering himself Oris’s equal because he owned this craft.

Oris nodded. These were the coordinates of Jack’s last transmission. Lining these up with the coordinates where he entered the nebula allowed them to predict with some accuracy where Jack had emerged. This far from Homeland Earth, the numbers of the coordinates got rather large. Even so, they were easy for any educated space-farer to comprehend.

Two hours before rest time was over, Oris was summoned to the bridge.

“Two ships,” Hugo said. “One is badly damaged, the other intact, but not emitting any energy signs.”

Oris’s heart sank. These were clearly the ships he was seeking. The broken one was a smaller, patchwork craft, while the unharmed one was clearly a Union ship. The fact that they floated this close together after all these years did not bode well.

“Scan for signs of life,” Oris commanded.

“Sorry, Captain. No life aboard either ship.”

Oris’s heart dropped. He had sacrificed his career for this? He couldn’t believe this was how it would end.

“Organics,” he croaked. “Do an organics scan.”

Hugo gave him an odd glance. “There will be food, and maybe a few corpses–”

“Just do it,” Oris said, but he knew Hugo was probably right. Hugo gave the order. The monitor’s eyes widened and he swiveled around to face the two captains.

“There’s no organics at all. No bodies. I did a sweep of both ships, and there’s nothing. They’re all gone!”

Oris felt his heart trying to crawl back into its rightful place. “No bodies, no food. They might have left, or been kidnapped! They might still be alive!”

The monitor spoke again. “Captain, I’m detecting another ship, closing fast!”

Oris’s heart shot past its rightful place up into his throat. “Identification?” Hugo asked.

When the ship appeared on screen, it was like nothing Oris had ever seen before. Too blocky to be Ngkanukgr, not smooth enough to be human.

“They’re initiating communication,” the transmissions officer said. “Shall I put them through?”

“Do it,” ordered Hugo.

In a flash he was on screen. Oxen shoulders and square jaw, just like his son.

“Jack,” croaked Oris. Jack looked right at him, but his face emotionless.

“You are trespassers here,” Jack said in a monotone voice. “You will be taken. Do not resist or you will be exterminated.”

“Jack!” Oris cried. “It’s Oris! Don’t you recognize me?”

“You are a trespasser,” Jack repeated in his dead voice.

“I don’t like this,” growled Hugo. “That’s a pretty big ship.”

“You’ll like this even less,” said the monitor. “I’m getting a molecular assembly signal. They’re teleporting people onto our ship!”

Oris whirled to face the screen. “What’re you doing, Jack?”

Jack was silent. Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall.

“Seal the doors,” said Hugo in a low voice.

“I can’t,” said the monitor in a panicked voice. “The computer isn’t responding!”

The doors slid open.

In stepped four people. One was a slug-like Lar. The rest were humans, though barely recognizable. All four beings had splotchy skin and pale white eyes. They all held guns which were pointed at the bridge crew.

Zombified as he was, Oris recognized their leader as Jack.

“That’s…that’s impossible,” Hugo gasped.

Oris looked back at the screen. The Jack onscreen looked completely normal, even more so now that he was smiling. Then, for a split second, the image on the screen changed. Oris caught a glimpse of a bloated, pink mass of fat with one blind red eye. Cords stretched from red slits across its body to numerous smaller beings, each fetal and worm-like in appearance. Then it was gone, and Jack was back. He was still smiling.

Jack’s voice said, “Don’t worry, it will be difficult, but you’re going to enjoy working for the High Community.”

One of the guards fired his stun gun at the Lar. The prong struck the Lar, sinking into greasy folds of flesh. Electricity sparked against the cold grey skin, but the Lar didn’t even flinch.

The four creatures turned as one, pointing their weapons at the guard. In that moment, the room burst into chaos. Hugo grabbed his pistol from his boot, the security guards reached for their weapons. The unarmed staff dove for cover, as did the young guard who had fired first. He wasn’t fast enough.

The four zombies fired at once, killing the guard.

Hugo dropped to one knee, firing at the invaders. “Lethal force!” Hugo roared at his men. “And for goodness sake, someone give the Captain a gun!”

Someone tossed a gun to Oris. The pop of the stun guns was replaced by the bangs of projectile weapons. They fired carefully and their aim was true. Four shots sank into the blubbery chest of the Lar, dropping her. Shots ricocheted into a computer screen, eliciting screams from a woman sheltering beneath. The zombies hit the floor. Jack was the last to fall, still shooting when Oris’s bullet took him down.

Oris slowly lowered the gun, shaking slightly. His best friend was lying dead because of him.

The crew had not died so easily. Four men lay wounded, and Hugo was slumped over the step, a red hole in his neck.

“Are they dead?” Someone asked, peeking over a table.

“They’re not bleeding,” a said a guard as he kicked at one of the bodies. He was lucky he had not kicked Jack’s, or Oris might have killed him. “Not that they should be., They’ve been dead a long time.”

The single surviving zombie was wiggling towards his weapon, but a security guard kicked it away from him and held him still with a boot on his back. “What about this one, Captain?” He looked up and saw Hugo dead on the stair. The guard turned to Oris. “What shall we do with this one, Captain?”

Oris swallowed. He wanted to decline command, but without a leader there would be pandemonium. He rose. Other men ran into the bridge, aghast at the carnage. “Captain Tandriff?” One of them asked.

“He’s dead,” said Oris. “I’m in command now.”

“And who are you? The next-in-line is Sam Whitley–”

“He’s in the other ship so I’m in command here.” Oris pointed to the wriggling zombie. “Restrain that…thing.”

When he saw that they followed his command, he turned away before others could protest. “Get us out of here,” Oris said. “Now. And open communications with Sam Whitley.”

“Something’s blocking our transmissions! We can’t get through!”

Sam’s ship floated in space, not moving.

“The others have been subdued,” said Jack onscreen. “But you have resisted. You will be destroyed.”

Instantly a shot from the enemy craft penetrated Oris’s ship. Alarms flashed and sirens wailed.

“We’ve lost power!” Someone yelled. “All systems down except life support.”

Beyond the alien ship, Oris noticed that some of the distant specks, which he had assumed were stars, were moving closer.

“There’s more ships coming,” a crewman moaned. “And we’ve got no power.”

Oris glared at the screen, at Jack’s false face. “Who are you really?”

“You will be destroyed,” repeated Jack. In disgust, Oris ordered the image be minimized.

Suddenly he had another split second image of those monsters. The worm…there was only one. And from him sprouted the all the rest.

Numerous smaller crafts appeared around the larger ship. An entire fleet had assembled. No more shots were fired.

“They think we’re dead,” someone said, only to be countered by; “no, they know we’re alive, and that we’re disabled.”

Oris didn’t know which was true, but he was barely paying attention. A single creature controlling all the rest. Lots of smaller fighter craft, all gathered around the flagship.

“It’s an attack force,” Oris guessed. Though there were other civilizations that they might attack, Oris could only imagine them gathering at this place to attack the EUS.

“Open transmissions again. Let me speak with your leader,” demanded Oris.

Jack’s face didn’t change. He said, “you are speaking with him.”

“We’re trespassers,” Oris said. “And now we’re to be destroyed, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Then answer us this question: Who are you?”

“We are the High Community. We are alive, we are alone. We must rebuild. We need new hosts. When these humans came to us, we were ten thousand strong and they were of little interest. But then the ten thousand fell sick. We require healthy bodies. Now your ships have come proving that there is life beyond the barrier. We must take your population to rebuild our kind.”

Oris’s mind was spinning. They were attacking the EUS. The last of their kind rushing to find healthy bodies to preserve their race. But more importantly, they only had one leader left. And it was aboard the flagship, he was sure of it.

“We request time to say our final prayers,” Oris asked.

Jack blinked. “Few among your kind still keep religion. But we understand. You have thirty seconds before destruction.” The image winked out.

“We have to move quickly,” barked Oris. “Can we redirect power flow?”

The crew exchanged glances. “Redirect? That power is flowing into life support, keeping us alive.”

“It’s not going to protect us when they open fire,” Oris said. “Can we channel that energy somewhere else?”

“I-I suppose, Captain. But where?”

Oris had already decided where. They must protect the Union.

“Engines. Give them all the juice you can.”

“We can’t escape, sir. Our FTL systems are flooded.”

“We can’t escape, but we can take them out with us.” He pointed to the flagship onscreen. “That’s where their leader is. If we ram that ship, we can kill it, like cutting the head off a snake.”

They paused, then started pushing buttons.

“We’ll be heroes,” beamed a young guard. “Like in the stories, giving our lives to save countless others!”

Oris didn’t have the heart to tell him that nobody would ever know. They would die anonymously beyond the Berkinson Nebula. But they would be heroes, and they would save countless lives.

He thought of Walis and Samantha. They would be okay, better off than if the High Community found them. Walis would not share his father’s fate.

The computer flashed a warning. “Life support offline.”

The ship slowly started moving forward and just like that the thirty seconds was over. The first laser shot pierced the ship. And then another. And another.

Oris saw glittering pieces of their vessel whirling away. But their ship still gained speed, moving quickly now towards the flagship. The numerous smaller ships put themselves in the way to defend it.

“The engines are overheating!” The monitor choked. Another flurry of lasers scoured the ship. “They’re gone! We’ve lost the…engines…”

Oris’s ship now moved purely from its own momentum. The air was very thin, and very cold. When the ship bashed against a smaller alien vessel, the entire bridge crew was thrown off their feet. The ship spun wildly, like a bowling ball smashing through pins.

Oris grabbed the handrail as the image of the alien flagship filled the screen. Oris shut his eyes. He heard an explosive impact and then opened his eyes. Why wasn’t he dead?

He watched the broken hulks of the two ships crumple into each other, the other ships floating dead around it. And that’s when he realized he wasn’t breathing. “I’m dead, aren’t I?” He said to no one. But a voice answered.

“Yes.”

Oris turned and he saw his old friend Jack standing there. He looked just as he had before, human and whole. Not the dead thing that had stood on the bridge of the ship.

“Jack? I-I’m sorry,” was all Oris could think to say.

“Sorry for what? Sorry you saved my family, and many others besides.”

“No. I killed you, remember?”

“I’ve been dead a long time. That was just my body, preserved and animated at the will of the High Community.” Oris had thought as much, but to hear Jack say it was a relief.

“I’m glad you acted,” Jack said. “Just a few seconds more and you would have been destroyed. Then they would have gone through and attacked our world.”

Oris stared at the fleet of small craft. “Are they all dead? Everyone in the fighters?”

Jack shrugged. “Most of them were like me. They went back to being corpses. The others were a lesser caste of the High Community. They had no minds of their own. They were nothing without their leader.”

Oris couldn’t take his eyes off the wreckage. “I just wiped out an entire race.”

“It wasn’t just you.”

“I commanded it.”

“They might have refused. They were good men, smart men. And women, too.”

Together they watched the broken spaceships float away from each other.

“So what happens next?”

“That’s rather up to you. Some people are afraid to move on, preferring to linger here. They become ghosts, without names or companionship.”

“Do you think I would choose that?”

Jack laughed. “No. Just giving you both options.”

“What’s the other one?” Oris asked.

“Come with me. The rest chose to. We can go into the next life together.”

Oris was confused. “Next life? The rest?”

Wordlessly, Jack stepped aside and Oris saw a small crowd assembled behind him. Hugo, Sam, and the rest of the crew. They stood beneath a great arch, and beyond was a white glow.

Jack smiled at him. “You asked what happens next.” He gestured beyond the arch. “The answer is everything.”

Greg Nam is a student at Freeport High School.

 

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