Subterranean (6 page)

With a grunt, he obeyed, returning to the salvage of the survey site. Flynn watched the exchange and naturally suspected a hidden purpose behind it, concocting all manner of various schemes and plots their vagueness concealed.

“What was that about?” He asked Rolan, who turned to Overseer Vale before answering.

“Nothing, Flynn. It was a trivial matter.”

“…that could inextricably complicate things?” He said with an unconvinced expression.

“Flynn, please,” Rolan sighed, “assist me with the salvage.”

Flynn retreated to his mind; something suspicious was going on, but given his lack of information, it could be anything. The simple knowledge of dark secrets would have to do for now. After a long, drudging search, the last of the equipment and survivors were finally loaded onto the trucks and secured in place. They were ready to leave the survey site, but it wasn’t over, yet.

“Now we need only scavenge the crashed ship.” Vale hopped up into one of the vehicles and primed the engine.

“What?” Flynn protested fiercely at Vale’s decision, something he’d done without forethought. “No, we need to go back to the city; we cannot stay out here another day.”

“Silence, human,” she boomed out from atop her vehicle, “we cannot return without the parts from your ship.”

Flynn rebuked her, his hands subconsciously searching for his weapon to bolster his courage. “What parts?!”

“The parts from your ship.” She replied carelessly, motioning Rolan to start up the other vehicle.

“Why can’t we just get them tomorrow?” He pointed at the horizon. “I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure the sun comes up soon… I thought you said my body couldn’t tolerate the heat on the surface!”

She sighed impatiently. “A few hours of exposure will not harm you.”

Flynn marched up and aimed a finger at her. “You just want to make sure I’m there to see it when you tear my ship apart!”

“Ha!” She scoffed at him. “Do not be childish. I care only for the well-being of this mission and of my people. You and your feelings are neither of those.” She then slammed the door and drove off, leaving Flynn coughing in a cloud of sand and dust.

“Do not mind her, Flynn,” Rolan patted him on the back, “she will adjust to you.” His hand was shrugged loose. “Attempt optimism,” he called out as Flynn walked away, “it is useful during times such as these.”

Fuming with anger, Flynn trudged over to the buggy and clambered inside, punching the ignition with clenched jaws; he was furious with Overseer Vale, if the Subterraneans were truthful about not possessing any space-capable technology, then his ship was the only hope he had of returning to Earth. And now it was going to be stripped of materials that she deemed ‘non-essential.’ He had to do something. But short of killing the Subterraneans, there wasn’t much he could do.

And why were they so intent on dismantling the ship now, when they could come back at any time to retrieve the scavenged goods? He milked his paranoia in the gloomy darkness and, feeling tired, sore, and hypothermic, followed the survey vehicle with strained eyes, deciding to ponder on the positives of the situation. There wasn’t much, but the one thing that came to him made the corner of his mouth flicker with a smile.

A Tomb for Lost Souls

After driving for almost an hour, the scouting party had made it to the site of the crashed ship. An eerie atmosphere descended upon Flynn as he stared at the pitiful remains of a once proud vessel capable of soaring to places unimaginable. There was a sizable amount of it left, considering the damage the Ravager ship had done to it whilst he was in space and the subsequent impact into the planet’s surface. The hard shell of metal was now freezing cold to the touch instead of the burning heap of smoldering rubble he’d remembered days ago.

Everything seemed pretty much the same from when he’d spied the Subterraneans inspecting it before, which meant they didn’t do anything to it last time. Why this time, then? Why was it a matter more important than rescuing wandering scientists in danger? Why was it considered so essential? He couldn’t shake the paranoia hanging over him with Radovan’s words of warning a mantra repeating over and over in his head.

“It looks as amazing as it was when we first saw it. You said you could pilot this thing?” Rolan stood awestruck before it; all worries that’d troubled him earlier about the scientists vanished from his mind.

Flynn regaled them once more with the story of how he arrived on the planet, although in a condensed version, telling tales of how far his people had come in terms of technological advancement and how humans had reached stars far enough to visit worlds inhabited by other alien species. “I’m surprised there’s still this much of it left.” He looked at Vale. “What precisely do you want with this? It’s in no condition to fly.”

She told him that the materials would be useful to learn more about his people… and as scrap metal; she spoke with a flat voice and a straight face, in contrast to the condescending voice he’d expected from her, especially at this point. “Alright, let us begin taking it apart and loading it up onto the truck.”

All of the survey team members, now dressed heavily for the coldest weather, swiftly began the process of tearing down the unofficial memorial of a dozen lost souls into manageable pieces that could fit in the cargo bed of the vehicles. Suddenly, Flynn froze in place at the click of a revelation in his mind.
Where are all the bodies?
The charred, mangled corpses weren’t pretty to look at, but they were here the last time he saw the downed ship, he was sure of it. Now there was nothing, just blood on the sand.

“Where are the bodies of my crew?”

Rolan and Vale looked at each other and then back at him. “Maybe one of the beasts got them. They hunt around here; it would not surprise me if they saw an opportunity for an easy meal and dragged them away.”

Flynn wasn’t convinced; Vale’s quick explanation was too convenient. Did the Subterraneans take them? It would make the most sense. They probably took the corpses when they captured him. There were at least half a dozen bodies littering this location, and reckoning the incompatible DNA of humans to life on the Subterranean planet, there must be at least half a dozen dead hukkas in the area, if her explanation were accurate. Yet, the hukka they had captured was the only known one for miles and it was very much alive. No, something else was going on here, and Flynn suspected is had to do with whatever Tural was hiding from him.

Chapter 5

A Little Hum of Hope

Inside the dead ship, he scanned every square inch of the interior for anything still working or that could be fixed. It was entirely possible that the Subterraneans would prohibit him access to any gathered materials pending an investigation of their purpose and use; another obvious shade of mistrust that Tural would soften by saying “natural suspicion”.

He was looking for something that he could bring back to Lisa so they had something, however meager, to remind them of better times. Much to his surprise, when he entered the control room, he heard a faint crackling of static emanating from one of the consoles; it was periodic, each burst lasting a few seconds. A dim light flickered on and off communicating the pain the dashboard had endured; it’d clearly taken a direct hit from something because it was badly damaged, with wires spilling out like an animal’s innards between the twisted metal.

Still, some part of it was functional, he was sure of it, and he wanted it before the Subterraneans had a chance to get their hands on it. Checking over his shoulder before proceeding, he quickly went to work on the device, examining the panels for a way to remove it without drawing attention from Rolan or Vale.

“Come on…” He muttered prayers and encouragement to himself as he disassembled the mechanisms holding it in place, with every agonizing second that passed slowly ramping up in intensity his fear of being discovered.

His hands trembling, he tinkered with the panel long enough for a lock to click loose, and he was able to retrieve the core of the device from the console, cradling it in his hands as he deduced exactly what it was. Without warning, a footstep landed in the room, startling him, and nearly causing him to drop the fragile object.

“Find anything useful?” Rolan stood in the doorway with an eyebrow arched.

“No, everything in here is shot. It was even before I crashed.” Flynn walked past him and towards the truck with a hand muffled over the speaker of the device, pretending to dump another piece of scrap metal in the cargo bed, but swiped it out of sight and dipped it into one of his pockets instead.

Echoes of the Wicked

It was still night and everyone from the survey team had been through a rough adventure. People were starting to complain of hunger, exhaustion, and the seemingly ever increasing cold, while others swore they heard voices or movement coming from all directions. Rolan kept looking up at the sky every chance he got, whispering something under his breath the whole time, while Vale took several breaks, seated atop the transport carrier with her face buried in her hands.

Flynn had been awake for over twenty hours so far, and a result was becoming increasingly tense and paranoid. Every time he turned his back to the Subterraneans, he felt like he was being watched and spoken about in hushed tones. Despite being on relatively good terms with these Subterraneans, there were still so many unknown variables about them; for instance, he hadn’t studied their history or culture extensively so he was clueless as to what would be considered ‘normal’ behavior under stressful circumstances.

If they were anything like humans, each individual would react differently, but there would certainly be a lot of anxiety in the air… and Flynn knew anxiety breeds mistrust; salt in the wound, given the current situation.

“Did you hear that?” One of the members of the survey team said, looking around like a madman trying to grasp something in the air intangible to others.

Flynn didn’t hear anything that time, but he did admit to perceiving some strange noises that sounded otherworldly. Sometimes they would sound just out of earshot, other times they would feel like someone was whispering just over his shoulder; it was unnerving.

“We should go back to the city.” Rolan pleaded with Overseer Vale, to no avail.

“No, Rolan. We are finishing the salvage first.”

“But we have what we came for.” He turned to the pile of supplies in the cargo bed. “This should be sufficient.”

Overseer Vale barely clung to the circular argument, her devotion fading with each excuse. “There might be more.”

“That is doubtful. We searched the entire ship.”

“So we will search it again.”

“Vale, we must go before insanity takes the rest of the survey team.”

“We are not leaving,
Lieutenant
.” She emphasized his rank in a clear attempt to assert her authority.

“Vale…”

Overseer Vale’s ears turned deaf, and she resigned to simply ignoring her lieutenant while she gathered the strength to search the ship again. Rolan’s repeated attempts thereafter failed as well, despite wielding every sort of appeasement he could think of. It was a fruitless effort that was bound to go on for hours until the Overseer found whatever it was she was looking for, something Flynn believed held far more significance than simple scrap metal, but what it could possibly be, he himself wasn’t sure.

Suddenly, their voices melted away from Flynn’s ears, even though they stood in the same spot gesturing with their hands and moving their lips. It was replaced with a surge of omnipresent voices speaking some strange alien language, but this one was different, like it didn’t have the same method of speech as him or the Subterraneans. He struggled to understand the peculiar words, eventually surrendering to the incomprehensible.

When the voices slowly slipped away, he could hear the bickering of Rolan and Vale fade in once more, but far quieter than a few moments ago, and they possessed a pressing aura of self-efface, especially when Flynn’s eyes fell upon them.

A Sanctuary for All

“Alright! We will go back!” Vale finally gave into Rolan’s beseeching just as the clock struck two hours past the usual time of dawn.

Flynn was relieved to hear the words and consequently plopped his aching body into the buggy to rest for a spell. The sound of the other engines igniting reinvigorated him to wriggle his body into the driver’s seat, where he awaited the movement of Rolan and Vale so he could follow their lead. He was extremely thirsty and frostbitten from the combination of the cold and physical exertion that’d tormented him all night, freezing his cracked lips hard as ice and numbing all but his head and torso.

The drive back to the city was long, and the whole time Flynn planned exactly what he was going to do with the radio he’d just received. He didn’t want to offer up an advantage if the Subterraneans were playing a game of secrets, at least not until he found more substantial evidence of what precisely it was they were hiding from him, so he had to make it perfectly clear to Lisa that the radio would be their own little secret.

At the entrance of the cave, the doors hissed open languidly, exposing an empty hangar filled with soothing warm air ready for their return. After everything was all settled down and the equipment unloaded, along with the captured hukka, Tural crossed into the hangar and motioned the trio to follow him, to which they all rapidly obeyed, trailing behind him silently until they reached his chambers. The hot air swirled around Flynn as they walked, melting away the bitter cold that’d soaked into his body all night and tempted him to lie down and sleep right in the middle of the hallway.

When everyone was inside and the door behind them shut closed, Tural crossed his arms, his face tensed with frustration. “What happened out there? Where is the rest of the science team?”

The Little Lie

Overseer Vale did most of the talking to Tural, detailing the specifics of the mission that’d taken some heavy unanticipated losses. She was admonished quite severely, despite the gushing optimism she tried to bring to the table, a tactic she supposedly commonly employed to water down a difficult situation. Rolan tried half-heartedly to defend her from their infuriated leader, but he was just too tired to argue with the well-rested Tural for long.

Flynn sighed; he was too tired to argue with Tural, as well. So, he just accepted whatever the leader had to say… whatever would get him back to Lisa faster. Flynn simply stood in the background, silent, nodding off occasionally until he was disturbed by an abrupt shout in between the long monotone speeches by both sides. At one point, Tural asked them a curious question.

“Are you certain everyone you left on the surface is dead?” He rubbed his chin anxiously.

“Yes. We are certain of it.” Overseer Vale nodded, sending a wave of relief into Tural’s idiosyncrasy.

Maybe it was because Flynn knew that this was not true, as there were some who fled the scene during the capture of the hukka, never to be found, but he couldn’t believe Tural actually fell for her utter lie. Flynn’s first instinct was to rectify this false information with the truth, however, he figured holding back would give him some leverage over Overseer Vale should the opportunity arise… besides, the fact that such knowledge was considered so important was far more interesting, anyway.

Regardless, once the tirade of lectures was through, everyone was dismissed and headed for their homes. Rolan was excited to see his wife again after almost an entire night without her and Flynn dragged his sore feet all the way to the hospital where Lisa was still under observation.

As for Vale, she disappeared into the city streets without a trace.

The Pretty Little Lie

Lisa was already asleep by the time Flynn got to her room at the hospital. He sat next to her and held his forehead lightly against hers, whispering assurance that he would soon unravel the mysteries behind this strange planet and its taciturn people. He declared to her that he would get them the help they needed to save Earth and all would be back to normal in no time. It would only be a matter of driving back the Ravagers that swarmed them off their home in a glorious battle of triumphant victory; years later the whole event would be just another piece of human history beautifully coloring their determination and improvisation as a species.

Of course Flynn would lead the charge against the enemy, whilst he gripped a brilliant light of hope, shining the way for all to reach the dream of survival. Yes, he could see it now in his mind: Ravager corpses strewn about on countless smoking battlefields, scattering a reclaimed planet; the aliens wouldn’t know what hit them. And now that Flynn had discovered another race, the mostly friendly Subterraneans, his efforts in establishing relations between the two peoples would be the beginning of a long, fruitful friendship. In its time of greatest need, he would be the savior of his planet and his people; of this he was absolutely certain.

And then he withdrew his forehead from hers and took back everything he said, all of his lies; he let go of his own beacon of fabricated hope and sunk back into the blackened pit of realism he knew so well. He was aware of the odds and they were not in his favor, not in the least; he was stranded on a desert wasteland planet filled with aliens that live underground who possess no means of space travel while his own ship and almost all of his crew lay a set of decaying bones out in the sandy wastes during which every day that passed was another unknown step towards his planet’s fate that he’d never hear about until it was too late, if ever.

The realism was so bitter that when it muddled with pessimism in an indistinguishable medley of logic and emotion striving towards a goal that was constantly changing in his mind, it became an unstoppable force of despair. Maybe he would just stop all worry over the whole situation; just stop all thought, and relax… forget it all and take things one day at a time, let someone else take care of the problem, someone more skilled than he. Such a sweet notion it was, so worth it, however impossible to his natural way of thinking it might be.

Philosophies aside, at least the radio he brought back from the crashed ship would finally get the attention it needed.

But first, to take off the HTS-500's.

Establishing a Connection

“Let’s see here…” From his pocket, he pulled the tool the requisitions officer gave him to remove the HTS-500’s.

He was overly cautious so as not to hurt himself in the process, prodding lightly the area where his skin met polymer. Eventually, after a couple minutes of no success, he began to force it out of frustration. Resorting to prying the lenses off his face, a sharp pain jolted into his eyes and traveled back through his head like a bad migraine.