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Molokai Middle School, Molokai Hawaii, Earth
May 31st, 2037
The entire class looked up in alarm as a rattle rolled through Molokai Middle School. Several students yipped in surprise, and one boy gave a little scream. In the following silence, his friends gave the kid a good ribbing.
Terry listened and waited with the practice of a long-time resident of the Hawaiian Islands. Earthquakes were sometimes a daily occurrence. A single shudder shock, though? Unusual. It reminded him a little of the brief activity period from Wailau—or the East Molokai Volcano, as the tourists called it—five years ago. Only in that case, it was a series of intense shocks, not just one.
“Everything looks fine,” the teacher said, holding up her hands, “probably just an earthquake.” The kids who were native or long term residents all looked at each other skeptically, probably thinking the same thing as Terry.
An hour later at lunch, Terry realized a few kids were missing from his class. His school wasn’t large—less than 50 seniors in all—but he wouldn’t have noticed a few missing if someone else hadn’t mentioned it as he was passing.
“Did you see Katrina Long was pulled out?” someone said.
“Yeah, Colin, too,” another said.
“Earthquake fever,” Yui said with a smirk as they found their customary table. The friends had only just started to eat when they felt the next tremor. This time Terry noted a long, low reverberation following the shock. Unlike an earthquake, this one he heard instead of felt through his feet. What the hell? he wondered. It was almost like an explosion, only it went on for several seconds before trailing off.
The second one was followed by several more over the course of his lunch hour. They seemed almost regular. He’d been trying to have a conversation with Yui about a dive they’d been talking about. Since it was the last day of school, Doc had offered to take them on a celebratory dive the next day. But every time they got into the conversation again, there was another shock and rumble. He looked up and saw several of the teachers by the exit, talking. Now he knew something was up.
“Yo, Terry!” Ben Stevenson called from the next table over.
“What’s up?” Terry asked. Ben held up his tablet and waved for Terry to come over. Terry glanced in the direction of the teachers. Using computers during school was against the rules, even during lunch. The adults were in a huddle of conversation, and they had a tablet, as well. He glanced at Yui, who nodded, and the two slipped over next to their friend.
“Check this out,” Ben said and clicked on the screen, bringing up the web page for a local television station.
“This video was shot live by an observer and sent to us at WFFV,” a man’s voice said. There was a moment of poor camera control, typical of someone shooting with their phone. The view jerked around before suddenly focusing on an unmistakable shot of the PCRI. Terry recognized it instantly; the view was shot from the road above and behind the institute.
For a few seconds he thought there’d been another protest by the Faith of the Abyss, which happened almost every day. Immediately, his fear evolved to thinking it was a bomb attack or something like that. When the camera swung around to show the main road up to the institute, it was blocked by a sea of flashing emergency lights. Oh, no, he thought.
“What’s going on?” Yui asked.
“Wait for it,” Ben said. A second later, a ship plummeted out of the sky, its engines flashing like stars as they fired. It slowed steadily as it descended. As it slowed to a stop, a thunderous Booom rolled across the person filming the events, and the recording jerked all over the place again.
“We’re hearing sonic booms!” said another kid, who was watching the video over their shoulders.
“How do you know?” another kid asked. They’d apparently drawn a crowd.
“My brother’s a merc,” the kid said. “His outfit’s in Houston, and he says ships make those sounds when they come down from orbit.”
Terry watched the scene intently, trying to will the person filming to refocus on the action. He was about to yell at the tablet when it finally refocused, and he watched a huge ship settle down into the upper parking lot, the one used by staff. Even before the ship began to lower toward the ground, he could see the concrete was blasted black. It hadn’t been the first ship to land.
“Terry Clark!”
He looked up at the authoritative voice. Doc, Mr. Abercrombie at school, was standing with the teachers, waving him over. He immediately walked over to him. Everyone around was watching him. “Yes, Mr. Abercrombie?” He was terrified.
“Your mother said to take you to the institute immediately,” he said.
“What’s going on?”
Terry hadn’t noticed Yui had followed him over. “I don’t know,” he said and looked at Doc.
“She’ll tell you when we get there. Come on.” He gently took Terry by the shoulder and led him toward the lunchroom exit.
“What about Yui?”
Doc looked back at her, still standing by the other teachers, looking confused and afraid. He glanced down at Terry, then back at her. “Say goodbye,” he said. “Quickly.”
Terry went over to Yui, not knowing what to say. He finally settled on, “See you soon.”
“What’s going on?” she asked again. Her eyes were shinning with unshed tears. “Why won’t anyone tell us?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll call you as soon as I know.” He held up his phone.
She took hers out and nodded. “As soon as you do?”
“Yes,” he said. “Promise.” Before he knew what to say, she grabbed him and hugged him. Doc’s strong hands gently took him and pulled him back. Yui’s lips brushed his cheek so gently he wasn’t sure it had really happened. Doc led him to the door, and he looked back. The image of her standing there, tears now streaming down her cheeks, was etched in his mind’s eye like a laser cut image.
Outside, Doc took him to the teacher’s parking lot, and they got into his old 2016 Ford pickup. He’d bragged about it the one other time Terry’d ridden in it. “No damned auto-drive, just like I prefer.”
After making sure Terry was buckled in, Doc fired up the engine and pulled out of the parking lot, heading down the coastal road faster than Terry thought was safe. As they approached the institute, he cut off the main road and up away from the beach.
“Where are we going?” Terry asked.
“Up to the employee parking lot.”
“That’s the next road down.”
“Only if you use the road.”
Terry was about to ask him what he meant when Doc slowed down. He turned off the road and right through somebody’s immaculately-tended front yard. Terry let out an uncomplimentary squeak and grabbed the bar mounted to the dashboard. Doc called it the “Jesus Bar,” and for the first time, Terry knew why.
The truck bounced over a hedge and onto a small dirt road. Doc drove the truck with casual confidence, managing to impress Terry, despite the terror from the ride. He no longer had any idea where he was, until the dirt road turned, and he was looking down on the institute. He’d looked up behind the buildings many times and had never realized there was a road on the rocky hill. The same ship he’d seen landing just minutes ago was squatting on the charred concrete like a big beetle.
“Hang on,” Doc said and turned off the dirt road.
“Oh, shit,” Terry said, afraid Doc was going to jump down to the parking lot 30 meters below. Instead, there was another dirt road. Or maybe more like a goat path? Either way, the already nerve-wracking ride become terrifying. Terry held the Jesus Bar like his life depended on it, which he was afraid it did.
Then they were skidding to a stop next to the institute’s perimeter fence, and Doc bailed out. “Come on, young man,” he said.
Terry unpeeled his fingers from the bar, his hands hurting from the force he’d been exerting. He unbuckled and got out of the truck. By the time he’d come around to the front, Doc already had a big section of fence pulled back to reveal an opening large enough for both of them. “What about your truck?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Doc said and gently urged Terry through the hole.
Somewhere during the drive, Doc had put on a headset, which he was talking into. “I have him, we’re north of the lot, don’t lift off. I repeat, don’t lift off.” He turned to Terry. “Come on, we need to hurry.” He took Terry’s hand and ran. Terry wanted to know why they needed to run, but just concentrated on keeping up with the man’s much longer strides.
In a short time, they were on the concrete, and the ship loomed above them like a building with rocket engines and landing legs. Terry wanted to gawk and ask a million questions. In every place the previous ships had landed, the concrete was charred into a series of small craters. He tried to imagine how hot those rockets must be to melt concrete. Where the ship sat at the moment were six smoldering burn spots. Holy cow, he thought.
They ran past the ship toward the institute. As they passed to the other side, Terry saw a big tracked machine moving from the bay door at the back of the main aquarium building. It wasn’t going more than a slow, walking pace and was being followed by a dozen of the institute’s staff. None so much as looked up as Doc and he ran by; they were far too intent on the vehicle. It reminded Terry of a gas tanker.
At the back door, his mother was standing with one of the alien slates and all the senior science staff. Here, more staff were moving dollies packed high with all manner of crates. They went by just like the earlier staff, not noticing Terry or Doc, and intent on their tasks.
“Mom!” Terry said when he saw her.
“Oh, Terry,” she said and disengaged from the staff. They looked annoyed as she limped toward him. Terry noticed she was using her cane, a sure sign she’d been on her feet all day and was tired. She pulled him into an embrace. “Doc, thanks so much.”
“My pleasure, Madison,” he said.
“Mom, what the heck is going on?”
“The High Court’s going to rule in a few hours,” she explained, putting a hand on both shoulders. “They want to euthanize the cetaceans.”
Terry’s eyes widened in shock and horror. “Kill them?” His mom nodded her head. “But why?”
“Dr. Trudeau managed to successfully argue that the modified cetacean’s quality of life was sufficiently damaged, and they were a danger.”
“A danger?” Terry demanded. “How? They’re just dolphins!”
“I know it, and you know it, but a lot of people fear the cult, the Abyss followers. They’ve attacked advocates of our cause.”
“How does that mean the cetaceans are hurting anyone?”
“To us, it doesn’t,” she said, “but to the lawyers, it was a weapon to use against us in arguments.”
“It just isn’t fair.” Terry insisted, “We need to do something.”
“We are,” his mother agreed. “Come inside and I’ll show you.”
They went into the main building, and Terry looked at the nearest orca tank. It was empty, with no sign of the huge whales anywhere.
“You’re hiding them!” he said with an ear-to-ear grin. His mother looked at Doc, then back at him. “Aren’t you?”
“Yeah, kid,” Doc said. “Somewhere they’ll never find them.”
“Where?”
“We’ll explain when we get there,” his mother said.
“I get to go?”
“Absolutely!” She looked at the boxes going by. “Can you go inside and get your stuff together? I left a crate in your bedroom. Only what fits. Understand?”
“Why can’t I take everything?”
She and Doc exchanged the same look. Doc shrugged. “We don’t have time. The court will realize any moment now what we’re doing, and they might send the police.”
“We’re breaking the law?” Terry asked in a hushed tone.
“Yeah,” his mother said and nodded. “But it’s an immoral law that would mandate the cetaceans’ death because of what your father did.” Terry’s face darkened, and she shook her head. “Doc, can you take him up to the apartment?”
“Sure,” he said. “Come on, kiddo, I’ll lend a hand.”
They went to the elevator. The doors opened just as they arrived, and four people came out with carts piled high. Terry saw everything from file boxes to specimen vials. They were emptying the labs upstairs. Doc walked in front of him up to the residence wing, reaching the apartment first, and keyed open the door.
Terry went straight to his room and, just like his mother had said, there was a plastic case sitting on the floor. It was about a meter long, half a meter wide, and more than half a meter tall. It wasn’t big enough to hold all his clothes, not to mention everything else. “I’ll never get everything in there,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Doc said. “Just get the important stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Underwear and video games?”
Terry laughed, and Doc went over to open the case. Terry saw his name with some more information printed on a removable label. He wanted to know what was on it.
“No time, just pack. I’ll help. I have lots of experience.”
“How?” Terry asked, pulling open a drawer on his clothes chest.
“When you’re a Navy SEAL, you move all the time, usually with no notice. We always kept the vital stuff in a duffel we called our ‘Go Bag.’ A lot of the guys on the teams never unpacked.”
“They lived out of their go bags all the time?” Doc nodded. “That had to suck.”
“All a matter of perspective, I guess.” Doc helped him sort by making piles of what he thought was important to the Terry. He was right much more often than he was wrong. “You and Yui are really good friends,” he said, not so much a question as a statement of fact.
“Yeah, she’s my best friend.” Terry tossed aside a pair of slacks and took jeans instead. “We were friends almost from the time we met in grade school.” He stopped and thought. “She’s just cool, and we get along great.” Doc nodded but didn’t comment. He handed Terry a pile of thin sweats. “It’s hardly ever cold enough for those,” Terry complained. “It’s almost summer, too.”
“You’ll want them where we’re going,” Doc said.
Terry smiled and thought, So we’re going somewhere cold. He was excited about seeing someplace new and being with the cetaceans. There’d be some great stories to tell Yui when he got back.
Doc put his hand to his ear over the headset. “Ship’s taking off.”
“Can I watch?”
Doc looked at his watch, then nodded. “For a minute.”
Terry dropped the sweats in the case and ran out to the living room. The big window overlooked the ocean, but two smaller ones to the rear overlooked the tanks, and the parking lot, somewhat. He was disappointed he couldn’t see the ship, but then the ground shook, and the building rumbled as he covered his ears against the intense roar. Outside, the beetle-like ship climbed into view, riding on six brilliant columns of pure blue fire. It was incredible.
“I’m going to get to ride on one of those?”
“You betcha,” Doc said behind him. Outside the ship climbed into the sky, and the roar slowly dissipated. Terry lost view of the ship in the small window. “Come on, let’s get back to it.”
He somehow managed to get the case filled. In the end, Doc and he both had to sit on it and latch the locks with their feet. Terry laughed uncontrollably as the drama played out. He only managed because Doc said he could take his school backpack, too, which he stuffed with books, games, and his tablet computer. At the last minute, Doc took his dive computer, which Terry had left on the room’s desk, and put it in the backpack.
“I won’t have a chance to use it, will I?”
“You never know,” Doc said.
They traveled down the elevator just in time for Terry to watch the big tank vehicle loading the bottlenoses, one after another, into its interior using an amazing flexible plastic tube with metal articulations. For their part, the dolphins appeared to be having the time of their lives.
His mother was still in the same place, by the doors outside the employee parking lot. Only now there were more people. A lot more people. There were men and women he’d never seen before, along with children, too. Many wore grim expressions, and the children looked confused or scared. A little of it began to rub off on Terry.
“Everything will be fine,” Doc said, noticing his expression. “Your mom planned ahead.”
“She knew this would happen?”
“More like a contingency plan. You know what that means?”
He nodded. “Who are all these other people?”
“Family and friends of the staff,” Doc said. “Also some supporters who helped financially.” He looked up and shielded his eyes. “Here comes the last one.”
A brilliant flash of light was falling toward them from the sky, its engines blinking as it maneuvered. Terry watched it come, marveling at how such a huge thing could fall all the way from space with seeming ease.
Doc put his hand to his ear again. “Madison!” he yelled. She spun around, attentive. “A flyer is coming from Honolulu, where a suborbital just landed.”
“They figured it out,” Terry’s mom said. “Everyone, ready to go! Doc, can your friends buy us some time?”
Doc’s mouth was a thin line, but he nodded his head. He spoke into the tiny microphone by his mouth, too quietly for Terry to hear, then aloud to Terry’s mom, “They want to come along afterward.”
“Are they sure?”
“Yes.”
“What about their families?”
“None of them have wives or kids; that’s why they came.”
“Okay, but they better hurry.” The rest of the conversation was drowned out as the ship’s engines roared to full power, burning off velocity.
Terry saw it was coming in to the side, over the water, and only began to slip sideways toward the institute after it had nearly slowed to a stop. He wondered if that was on purpose. Before he could ask anyone, it flew over the parking lot and landed on four columns of fire. This ship was different; it was more boxy looking.
The engine roar rose to an intolerable volume, and Terry again covered his ears. The blast from the rockets blew debris everywhere, and the wind was strong enough to push him back, even a hundred yards away. As it’s big, thick landing legs pistoned to bear its weight on the ruined concrete, Terry saw writing on the side near a big glass cockpit. “USS Teddy Roosevelt.”
As soon as the gear touched down, the engines cut out with a quickly reducing whine, and people raced into motion. Terry was swept along with the first group as Doc easily carried the case they’d packed together. He could hear voices yelling, children crying, the motors of the dolphin transport whining, and the distant sounds of gunfire. His eyes were as wide as dinner plates as he half walked and was half carried by Doc across the now crunchy concrete.
The closer he got to the ship, the bigger it seemed. It looked like a flying aircraft carrier to his untrained eyes. He wondered why it looked so much different than the beetle-shaped one earlier. His young mind wanted to ask a thousand questions, but there was no time.
Two ramps had lowered from the Teddy Roosevelt, one from under the front, and another much larger one under its rear. The dolphin transport was rumbling toward the rear one. Terry was at the front of a steady stream flowing up the front ramp.
“Take care of him, Doc?” his mother asked.
“You bet,” Doc said and guided Terry to a ladder and up several decks.
The inside of the ship looked nothing like the sci-fi shows Terry had seen. It was rough, dirty, and there was rust in places. Nothing was white or padded. What a dump, he thought. A pair of crewmembers passed them, going down, while Terry and Doc went up. They looked just as dirty and rough as their ship. Neither seemed to be wearing uniforms, just oily coveralls and ballcaps which said USS Teddy Roosevelt. The logo on the hat was a fat guy with a big mustache riding a moose.
“Here we are, Terry,” Doc said as they arrived at a room with lots of seats. It didn’t look like it usually had a lot of seats; in fact, there was a man in the back busily clicking more to the floor. It appeared the floor was covered with places for them to be snapped into place.
“I want to stay with you,” he said to Doc.
“No can do; I have to help outside.”
“I can help,” Terry insisted.
“Yes you can, by staying right here and helping the younger kids coming up.” As if Doc had conjured them, a bunch of kids were shepherded into the chamber. “Please?”
“Okay,” Terry said. Doc nodded, set the crate by another door, and was gone in an instant. Terry grumbled, then saw a pair of young boys—twins maybe—who looked scared to death. “Hey, you guys want to play a game?” he asked and fished out his game box. They looked skeptical but came closer. Terry smiled at them, and they smiled back. In minutes, there was a crowd around him, and Terry at least felt like he was helping.
He didn’t know how much later it was when a crewman dropped in from the deck above and looked at the dozens of kids standing around in abject shock. “What the hell is going on here?” he gasped.
“Keeping them entertained,” Terry said.
“We lift in one minute!” He raised his voice to a low yell. “Get in a chair, now!” The kids, being used to grownups getting excited, moved in response to the specific order. Well, most of them did.
Terry looked at the seat design and instantly joined in, helping the kids closest to him. Other older boys and girls saw what he was doing, and they began helping others. The crewman quickly showed him how to flip the buckles so they couldn’t be unhooked by the occupant, then went around corralling a few children barely old enough to be in school, bodily stuck them in chairs, and strapped them in. Just as Terry helped the last boy buckle in, an alarm began to blare.
“Thanks,” the crewman said, then pointed to one of the last empty seats. “Buckle in, space cadet!”
Terry threw the man a salute and got a smile in reply. He dropped into a seat and pulled the straps into place. “Lift ship!” someone yelled over the intercom. Just as he clicked the straps home, the world seemed to explode.
Pure transcendent rage assaulted his senses. It was like being in a hurricane and an earthquake at the same time. He’d been in some fast boats and flown a number of times, so he’d felt acceleration. None of it was like what he felt at that moment. Something was sitting on his chest, crushing the air from his lungs. He thought he was screaming, then realized it was all the kids around him. Some in shock, some in stark, raving terror.
His vision swam red, and he could see kids tearing at their restraints. The still-functioning part of his brain now understood why the buckles on the restraints were reversible so the person wearing them couldn’t release them. He could barely breathe and could only try to imagine what would happen if the children unlocked their straps and crashed to the floor. Is it ever going to end?
Suddenly the pressure began to fall away. His vision cleared, and he looked around. Some of the kids appeared to have passed out. The sound of the engines’ roar was greatly diminished. The crewman buckled in nearby was using a computer tablet and glanced at his young charges.
“When do we land?” Terry yelled at him.
“Land?” the man asked, looking confused.
“Yeah, when we set down to hide the cetaceans.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said. “We’re set to rendezvous with a hyperspace carrier in eighteen hours.”
The horror on Terry’s face must have registered with the man, because he looked surprised. “Nobody told you we were leaving Sol?”
“We can’t...” Terry said, his voice trailing off. The man looked sad, and Terry got mad. Then he remembered his last words to Yui. “I’ll see you soon.”
In a panic, he grabbed his phone from his pocket and clicked on Yui’s grinning face. Of course it was a satellite phone, but would it work in space? It took the phone forever, but it did eventually connect, and he heard a ring.
“Terry?” Yui’s voice spoke. It sounded distorted.
“Yui, it’s me. I’m sorry!”
“Terry, where are...” the call broke into static. “Saw ships taking....police are everywhere!”
“We’re going to another star! They didn’t tell me!”
“...star?...Terry, I...you!” The phone disconnected.
“Yui! Yui!”
“Take it easy, kid,” the crewman said. Terry stared at his phone in anguish, slowly letting it fall from his hand. It bounced off the floor and flew across the room, spinning lazily as it went. His tears didn’t fall down his cheeks, instead forming puddles over his eyes. He was in space.
* * * * *
