“Don’t be stupid!” one sleek haired guy with glasses was shouting, as Sophie and I came into hearing distance of the table. “The Weraynians gave us clear proof that these Paladanian people are bad news; it’s why we came here in the first place! You can’t just say that the enemy might not be so bad after all! They stole one of our ships! How can you even be on their side, Neve?”
“All I was saying was that it doesn’t make sense!” a girl, evidently Neve, replied. “If the Weraynians are being kept inside that force field, then how could they possibly know that this planet had captured a space craft? It seriously doesn’t add up.”
“Like Rot said before, they explained everything when we talked to them!” another man joined in angrily. “Look, they told us all we needed to know, so it should be clear what we have to do. Get out of this blooming force field, and attack those Paladanians with all we’ve got!
“No, that’s precisely what we shouldn’t do!” A soldier with a beard and a gravelly voice argued back.
“What do you suggest then?” A woman snapped at him. “We lay down our weapons and chat with them over a cup of coffee?”
This started everyone off yelling at each other, shouting their arguments mixed with profanities aimed at either each other or my people.
I watched, mouth open in shock, as a couple of them started brawling, tackling each other to the ground and continuing to yell as they fought.
“Seen enough?” I turned to Sophie to see a small grin on her face.
I nodded, and she wheeled me over to an opening in the wall, through which more people could be seen, holding trays of food to serve dinner with.
Sophie began to move along the line of people getting their portion for the night. I followed along behind Sophie, hands clenched tightly together.
As I reached the first serving lady, she handed me a tray with brown, red and green mush in different compartments. I tried not to screw up my face in disgust, and continued on, only stopping so that a plastic cup of crisp liquid could be added on my tray as well.
I knew Sophie was laughing as we walked towards the table where Jon was sitting, watching the debate, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of looking at her. She was far too entertained by my shock at this so called food that we’d been served, and I was finding this whole situation weirder by the minute. I scowled as I placed my tray down beside Jon, and Sophie sat across from me. She was still laughing.
Now that I was sat down, I realised that I was actually going to have to eat this poor excuse for sustenance and that made me scrunch up my nose. How did these humans stomach it? I could tell that the ‘food’ was packed full of aritficial protein and nutrients but it certainly didn’t seem healthy. I looked over to see Sophie holding a spoon, about to dig into her portion.
“Well, aren’t you going to eat it?” she asked me with an amused smile on her face.
I narrowed my eyes at her, and she laughed before plopping some of the goop from her tray into her mouth. She chewed it enthusiastically, making an act of swallowing the food before smiling contentedly.
I glared. “Are you sure it’s food?” I decided to make sure. For all I knew, she could be trying to poison me. Okay, that is a blatant lie, I did know that it was not poisoned but I was trying to find a way out of eating it.
Sophie laughed again and nodded. “Yes, of course I am. But it’s hard to come by fresh food in space, you know, so sometimes they have to live on this.”
I glanced down at my plate, and then turned to Jon. “Do you want to eat mine?” I offered him my tray.
“Huh?” he suddenly noticed I was there. Up until then he’d been staring at the crowded table where they were still arguing. I guess the fighting was a good thing, if it stopped them attacking my people.
I pointed at my tray. “This food. Do you want it?”
“Uh, alright.” He took it from me. “We really stirred up a fuss didn’t we?” he added, before stuffing his face with food.
I nodded, turning my gaze back on the rallying people. Unfortunately, there still seemed to be a fair amount who wanted the attack to continue.
I looked around at the other tables in the large room, and was surprised to find how empty they were. Apart from the large crowd at the main table, there were only a few tables occupied by people. The others must have still been on guard duty outside.
While looking at these small groups of people clustered around the outside table, I noticed something important. There were children on this ship. Most of the people not involved in the debate, the ones who were merely eating their food quietly, were families with young children. I hadn’t seen any children before now, and my stomach constricted as I realised that that was because of the battle that was coming.
I focused on one family in particular. It was one with a mother and father and two kids, the children being a girl about eight years of age and a boy who looked no younger than I was. They must have felt as out of place in this incident as I did. The parents were quietly urging their children to eat, occasionally sneaking worried glances over at the crowded table where the debate was going on, and clearly not wanting to get involved in the fight. I watched the boy pick at his food, his face pale, obviously he was just as worried as his mother and father were about the situation.
These parents didn’t want their kids involved in that, nobody would. I’d been judging the humans as being blood-thirsty and trigger happy and yet looking at the children, and the way their parents were scared for them, made me realise that they were just as unhappy about this conflict as my people were. They hadn’t wanted this to happen, the Weraynians had just decided to use them for their own means. All the problems caused by the coming of the humans to my planet was because of that evil race on the edge of the Staarus System, not the human race.
Suddenly a distraction came into the room in the form of a loud group of sweaty workers, who pushed into the dinner line and immediately got served their food by the people behind the counter. I immediately tore my eyes away from the family and focused on them instead.
Though I’d never seen them before, I knew immediately that they were the people who’d been stationed at the force field, at a point nearest my town. They were the one’s who’d been spending the day trying to break through using some of those horrid weapons. Once they’d all obtained their food, the workers took their places at a large table next to the arguing crowd, who were staring at them expectantly.
One of the workers, a big guy with a tough scowl on his face, was the main person they were all waiting for, as he took his time chewing his large mouthful of food. He was evidently the leader of the group, and I wondered what the other humans were expecting him to say. It was most likely an update on the force field they were all waiting on, and I noticed a few of the humans with gleaming eyes, plainly wanting him to tell them they could attack soon. I didn’t understand how anyone could enjoy fighting, and killing, but it was a cruel fact of life that some people did. I sighed, causing Sophie to shoot me a weird look. I rolled my eyes at her and nodded back to the workers, and she turned her attention in their direction.
Finally, the guy who’d been chewing finished, and everyone shifted in anticipation as he opened his mouth again, this time to speak.
“We’ve set the bombs up at the edge of the force field.” His voice was deep and his eyes dark, putting me on edge. “Tomorrow morning, once they’ve reached full capacity, we’ll detonate them, and they’ll create a nuclear electromagnetic pulse strong enough to reduce the force field to atoms.”
I felt Sophie tense up violently beside me, and I was just as shocked as she was. Electromagnetic bombs? Nuclear weapons? If they were strong enough to destroy the force field, then the surrounding forest (not to mention the nearest edge of town) would never be able to withstand a blast of that strength.
I assumed the humans had methods to rid the area of the radiation caused by the explosion, because otherwise it would be far too much of a risk. The danger my people were in now was worse than any other threat before, except for the Weraynians, and seeing as they were behind this battle, I shouldn’t have been surprised. The people of my town might be able to beat the humans after a while, but by then it would be too late. The only thing I could think of to stop the oncoming war was negotiation. We may still be able to convince them of the Weraynian’s deceit if we acted before those bombs went off. Cogs began to spin inside my head; a plan was forming. The only problem would be convincing Sophie to help me go through with it.
I snuck a glance at her. She was watching the other table intently again, absorbed in the conversation that I’d tuned out of long before. I nudged her in the arm, and she shook her head in surprise before turning to me.
“Yeah?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Are you finished eating yet?” I inquired.
Sophie glanced down at the small amount of mushed up food still left on her plate and shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Good.” I said, standing immediately and pulling her up with me. “We’ve got work to do. Come on, Jon.” I added, addressing our mechanic friend who stood up as well.
“Better clear our trays.” He murmured, pointing down to the table where they lay.
I nodded, and we grabbed the trays up and deposited them in the slot set into the wall for them.
We moved off quickly, leaving behind the crowd who had somehow got back into their argument from before, and headed back to Jon’s room.
“So what do you think we should do about this?” He asked me as Sophie fired up his computer.
“I’m not entirely sure yet.” I replied, still trying to work out the details of my plan. “What time would the bombs being activated?”
“Just before dawn.” Jon said instantly. “They said so before.”
I paled, realising exactly how soon that was. I flicked my eyes to the clock on Jon’s wall. It read four fifty-six, Earth time. I then rolled my eyes. That didn’t help at all. Judging by my Paladanian instincts, I felt sure that it was around seven o’clock outside, and dark as dusk.
That gave us, what, a mere nine hours, or even less? For my plan to work, I realised I was going to have to act now.
Jon was now helping Sophie log into the mainframe of the ship, officially this time. I waited patiently as they bickered over base codes and passwords, and watched as Sophie found a log recording the numerous people present on this ship, and the information about them. She pulled up a new record and started typing furiously. Within a minute Sophie had a full record of information on herself, some of it fake, placed in the log.
“Do you want me to integrate it?” Jon offered. “Just in case someone notices your name in there.”
Sophie nodded, and moved back so he could take over. He began typing even faster than she had.
I turned to Sophie where she stood beside me. “So you’re planning on staying here overnight then?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“Well, yeah.” She answered. “There’s a few empty rooms in the north wing, so I thought we could bunk there for a few hours while we work out what to do. It’ll be easier to stall them from inside than out.”
“I don’t see how much help we’ll be typing away in Jon’s room.” I muttered sarcastically.
Sophie frowned, her face flushed. “That’s not what I meant; obviously we have to do more than that.”
I nodded. “That’s why I think you should take me home.” I voiced what I’d been thinking since I first found out about the bombs.
“What? Why?” Sophie looked shocked. She clearly didn’t want me to leave.
“Because I have a plan.” I explained simply. “And it will be much easier if I warn my people of what’s coming.”
Sophie nodded reluctantly, understanding but not wanting to agree.
“You and Jon were good at stirring up a debate before,” I added quickly, hoping to convince her. “So you guys should obviously stay here and do what you can, but it’s obvious a war’s coming. It’s best if we both work with our own people.”
Sophie had a pained look on her face. I looked at Jon, who was staring at me, his fingers lying limply over his keyboard.
I swallowed before speaking once more. “Sophie, you have to take me back.” I almost pleaded with her; despite my more noble reasons, I was also quite homesick and would have felt totally out of place staying on the spaceship.
Sophie finally gave in, biting her lip and nodding. “Okay.”
“Thank you.” I smiled weakly at her.
“It won’t be easy though.” She was immediately back to her old, talkative self. “The calculations for the coordinates, the probability of this working, getting it done in time; these are all things that are going to be problematic.”
I smiled for real this time. Sophie’s exuberance was highly infectious.
“I’m sure we can work it out.”
Sophie grinned at me, before grabbing my hand and moving towards the door.
“I’ll be back in a bit, Jon.” She called over her shoulder as the door opened.
“Where are you going?” he asked incredulously, still seated in front of his computer.
“To find the point with the lowest transmitter resistance.” Sophie replied.
“Uhhhhhh…” Jon said intelligently.
“Bye Jon.” I waved slightly. Sophie pulled me out into the hallway.
I only just heard his sad “Goodbye Abigail” as the door slid shut behind us.
Sophie and I walked silently along the corridors for a few minutes, with Sophie staring at numbers and words on the screen of her teleport watch. She pressed a button on the side, and it showed a radar symbol.
“I think we should go…..” Sophie waited as more numbers appeared on the screen.
“This way?” I said, eyebrow raised, as I pointed down a hallway that led to the eastern side of the ship.
“Wait a minute Abi.” Sophie held up a finger, clearly not listening, and then smiled as the numbers stopped changing. She pointed down the same hallway that I had, looking proud of herself. “This way!”
I rolled my eyes and followed her down said hallway.
We made our way silently through the ship, occasionally stopping so that Sophie could check her teleport watch for the transmission signal. We soon found ourselves facing a blank wall in a strangely empty part of the ship. Sophie stopped still, focusing on her watch as she tapped the screen, calibrating the coordinates for the trip we were about to make.
After patiently waiting for a minute and a half, I saw Sophie nod slightly in approval at the teleport watch, and then she reached her hand out to grab mine. Turning her eyes upon me, she gave a small smile.
“Ready to go?” she asked, with an eyebrow raised.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes.” I said shortly, and she grinned wider before gripping my hand tighter and reaching with her free hand towards the teleport watch. I mentally prepared myself for transportation as her finger pressed down on a button and the ship faded around us; then it was gone.
We were travelling through empty space again, nothing but blackness. Due to the extended distance and the resistance of the force field against our teleportation, the trip through nothingness was extremely painful. The previous time I’d teleported with Sophie my lungs had just felt compressed; now they felt like they were on fire! I fought the urge to scream as the absolute pressure threatened to crush me. Though I couldn’t see Sophie, I knew she was feeling the same pain by the way her hand was gripping mine, cutting off the circulation. Suddenly I felt the energy of the force field bombarding us with all the strength the Paladanian and Halapatovian leaders had woven into it and it made me wonder how we’d gotten through before without feeling this intense attack. I knew we were going to make it, but I wasn’t sure what shape we’d be in when we did.
Though it felt like hours had passed, the gruelling teleport trip from the ship through the force field took only a few moments. I landed, gasping desperately, on the floor in the dim light of the forest near my home and Sophie finally let go of my hand. I was in so much pain that for a moment I couldn’t even move, and just lay there groaning. Sophie was dealing with it far better than me, she had managed to stand, but she was accustomed to travelling that way and I hadn’t expected anything less. I however was completely out of action for almost two minutes, before I lifted my head off of the floor, took Sophie’s outstretched hand and let her pull me to my feet.
“You alright?” she asked, looking me over for any obvious injuries. “That was pretty rough.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s why I needed you to find the right breaching point last time,” Sophie explained, as I dusted myself off. “Otherwise it would have been a near miss and just as painful.”
“So it’s not usually like that?” I asked curiously. Teleportation was an interesting subject after all.
“Uh, it varies I guess.” Sophie said, absently scratching the back of her neck. “Depends on distance, and resistance and sciency stuff like that.”
“Okay.” I glanced at the foliage above my head. The very last rays of the set sun were filtering through the leaves and I knew that if I was planning on visiting the leaders before it grew too dark, Sophie and I would have to part ways right now.
“I should probably get going now.” Sophie was evidently thinking the same thing. “Are you going to be alright from here on out?”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “I’ll be fine; I know my town better than you.” I reminded her.
“Oh yes.” Sophie blushed lightly, and awkwardly flipped open the compartment of her teleport watch. “I guess I’ll get back to the ship.”
“Yeah…” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“Yup, see ya later.” Sophie saluted me with two fingers on her brow and then she pressed the familiar button on her watch. Next moment she was surrounded by an electrical humming and then she was gone.
I stared dismally for a minute at the spot where she’d just been, wondering if I ever would see her again. If a battle was started tomorrow….. well the outcome would most likely not be good, and with Sophie’s tendency to get into trouble it was probable that she wouldn’t make it out alive. I felt unbelievably sad at the thought. I’d only met her the previous day, but already Sophie had become an important part of my life. The time I’d spent with her had been exciting, intriguing and unbelievably fun, even if we were on the brink of disaster. It was almost as if she was my best friend, compensating for Leila moving away. That was a stupid idea though; you don’t just replace your friends like that.
I shook my head to clear it, and was about to start the trek through the forest towards town when I felt a sudden vibration on my left leg. I reached into my left pants pocket and pulled out the device Sophie had given me earlier; a communicator. It was violently buzzing, so I pressed a small button on the side and held the communicator up to my ear, with the microphone near my mouth.
“Come in, Abigail, come in. Over.” Sophie’s voice emanated from the device and I immediately knew that, wherever she was, she had a huge grin on her face.
“You and I both know that’s not how these work.” I told her, a small smile creeping onto my face as I rolled my eyes.
I heard her jokingly scoff on the other end of the line. “Whatever. Anyway, I’m just calling to tell you that I made it back to the ship, no one saw me arrive, and I’m about to go meet Jon.”
“Okay, good.” I replied. “Was the trip painful?”
“Very.” Sophie immediately answered. “Thank goodness the force field will be gone tomorrow, one way or another.”
“Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me.” I face palmed as I remembered what I was originally meant to be doing. “I’ve got to go to town.”
“I know. Wait, aren’t you on your way there already?”
“I am now.” I told her as I made my way through the trees, heading in the general direction of the town. Through the communicator I could hear Sophie’s own footsteps as she moved through the ship towards Jon’s room.
“Good,” Sophie said. “Are you planning on telling the leaders everything?”
“Yup.” I responded.
“You think they’ll freak out about the whole bomb thing?”
“Yup.” I repeated, not bothered to think up an original answer.
“Well, at least they’ll know what’s going on.” Sophie said, and I heard the sound of a button being pressed and a door sliding open.
“Yup.” I replied absently.
“Hi Jon.” I heard Sophie say. She was clearly back in Jon’s room now.
“Hello Sophie.” I then heard Jon reply, slightly muffled. “Talking to Abigail?”
“Yeah.” She answered. “Wanna say hi?”
“Sure.” Jon said.
I heard the sound of the communicator being handed over, and then Jon’s voice in my ear.
“Hey Abigail.”
“Hello.” I replied.
“What’s it like being on the other side of the force field?” He asked curiously.
“I don’t know. What is it like being on the other side of the force field?” I said back mockingly.
“That bad, huh?” he said and I laughed.
“At least the food’s better here.” I could hear Sophie laughing hysterically at that.
She then grabbed the phone. “Well, I’m sorry to break up this pointless conversation, but Jon’s message coder is beeping and we all have important battle preventing work to do. Talk to you later Abi!” she ended cheerfully.
I barely heard the tone as she switched the phone off; a sudden image had flooded my mind the moment Sophie had mentioned the message coder. It was something I’d seen earlier in the day, when I’d been looking at the messages on the device just as Jon had entered the room. The words on the screen hadn’t registered then, but now they were branded into my brain as if by a hot iron.
‘SOS: to all human fleets. Urgent situation. Immediate request for backup.’ The humans had sent a distress signal out, asking for help with attacking my planet!
Then there’d been a reply: ‘Message received. We are on our way to assist.’
That wasn’t even the worst part. Oh no, the worst part was that that reply had been echoed by over fifty other human spacecraft, each one registering at least four hundred passengers.
We were in trouble, deep trouble.