Homecoming (Terran Z Prelude) Read online

then turned to face the alien. He sighed lightly and scratched his head. "Ok, but if you insist on knowing... it's when a corpse is reanimated."

  "Like Frankenstein?"

  "Frankenstein could use his brain... zombies don't, they just eat brains."

  "And these... zombies. They exist?" Frank asked, turning one eye slowly to peer at the Captain.

  "No," Jason said with a chortle.

  "You're certain of that fact?" Frank turned his eye forward and continued to study the sprawling deck.

  "Never seen one, never heard of anyone seeing one," Jason said flatly. "Why do you care anyway?"

  "Your culture's nuances fascinate me, Captain."

  "Isis, could you watch our guest here while I go to my chamber and catch some shuteye..." Jason commanded, whirling in his chair and stepping past Frank.

  "As you wish, Captain," Isis chimed personably in response.

  "Captain, you have a deity handling the operation of your vehicle? My first impression of your kind has vastly changed..." Frank observed, turning to watch Jason walk by.

  "No, Frank. We humans like to name things after people. Cars, ships, spacecraft. No god, just a computer..." Brightside trailed off as he left the deck.

  Frank slowly turned and glided along the edge of the console, his eyes rapidly taking in every angle, his arms softly waving to and fro above the controls.

  30 minutes later…

  Jason bolted upright as the sound of the ship's claxon, accompanied by Isis’s voice, jarred him from a twilight sleep.

  “…the Excelsior is grossly off course. Captain Brightside, please report to the command deck immediately…” Isis said.

  Shaking off the bleariness from his eyes, the Captain leapt from his bed, grabbed his shirt from a nearby hook and scrambled into the hallway leading to the command center.

  The casual silence of the command deck met the Captain as he strode determinately into the room. Stopping to gauge the lack of interest by Isis, the ship’s omnipresent computer, he scratched the back of his head in subtle confusion.

  “Isis, status report…” he commanded.

  “All systems nominal, Captain,” she responded. “Did you enjoy your sleep, sir?”

  Jason ignored the question and focused on the status reply.

  “Is the Excelsior still off course?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid I don’t comprehend the question, Captain. The Excelsior is still on the same trajectory it was prior to your retirement to your quarters.”

  “You woke me with a NavAlert… that we were off course,” Jason added with a bit of confusion.

  “I’m sorry, sir. I have no record of raising such an alarm.” Isis went silent as Jason stood and stared around the room. “Perhaps your confusion is a result from REM sleep?”

  Brightside pressed on his eyelids with both index fingers.

  “This mission can’t end soon enough…” he mumbled.

  “Sir, as an aside, we will be reaching the Terra Fold Gate within thirty minutes. Do you wish to continue course?” Isis asked.

  “Yeah… yeah, that’ll be fine, Isis,” Jason replied, almost disinterestedly. “What about our guest… where’s he at now?”

  “The Doradoan is within the Specimen Hold,” she replied, then promptly called up a visual on the display to the Captain’s right.

  Frank, still moored in the Inhibitor Pod, hovered near one of the walls of the hold, his back to the video unit. Jason nodded and exited the command deck… it was time for another nap.

  As Jason plopped his weary frame onto his cot, he felt the subtle shift of the ship as its rotational thrusters maneuvered the craft into position to enter the nearby Fold Gate. He would be home soon.

  A few hours later…

  As if a magnet had slowly drew him upwards, Jason sat upright in his cot and blinked incoherently around his quarters. In the distance, there was a very faint metallic knocking. He shook his head and pushed himself to his feet, then disappeared into the corridor.

  The lights in the shaft, embedded at the tops of the walls near the crease of the ceiling, flickered off and on in silence every few meters. Jason stared up at them as he passed, nearly stumbling as he tried to pull himself from his weariness on his way to the command deck. The clunking became louder as he neared the cargo hold.

  There’s nothing in there, he thought.

  The noise ceased.

  Then, taking the place of the mysterious clunks and blaring over the loudspeaker, were a set of high-pitched squealing sounds in a wavy pattern. Not to be outdone in its obnoxiousness, a strange clicking filled the background of the squeals.

  He wagged his head again and forced a lock of hair back away from his forehead with one hand, then trudged on toward the command deck.

  Isis’s voice echoed with a tinny reverb down into the corridor. “Captain, do you wish to proceed with the self-destruct order?”

  “What self… NO! That’s preposterous! What the Hell…” Jason mumbled in annoyance and stormed forward to the command center.

  The door to the command deck slid open swiftly and Jason stepped forward. The squeals and clicking were of an exponentially louder factor within the echoey chamber.

  “Isis! Status report!”

  The room fell silent, except for the occasional beep of a nearby processor in sequence with its holo-display. The voice of Isis, interrupted by pools of static, suddenly flooded the room.

  "...crew stasis interrupted... hull breach... crew compartment."

  Dammit, Jason shouted in his head, reaching into the emergency compartment and quickly donning a low-pressure suit before trotting out into the corridor and down toward the hibernation chamber.

  "Isis, sensor calibration in crew hibernation quarters..." he commanded as he finished locking his pressurized facemask in place, turning the corner 30 meters from the crew's chamber.

  "Sensors online and calibrated, Captain. Crew stasis nominal," the smooth reply came immediately.

  Jason slowed his gait and thrust his hands onto his hips.

  "And the hull breach?" he asked with an exasperated breath.

  "Hull breach, Captain. I'm afraid I'm not aware of any such breach," Isis replied.

  "Surveillance on the Specimen Hold, Isis... now," Jason instructed, yanking the pressure suit helmet from his head and slamming it to a nearby tech bench.

  "At once, Captain."

  A holovid of the Specimen Hold surveillance camera instantaneously appeared above the bench. Frank, still hovering in the same location as the last viewing, remained with his torso faced away from the lens. Jason shook his head angrily and pounded his fist.

  "Isis, why do you keep reporting false data?" he barked.

  "Captain, can you clarify your statement?" Isis replied.

  "The stasis change, the hull breach... what gives?"

  "I am confused, Captain. I have not raised any alarms on this mission since the orbital thruster leak upon entering Dorado two months..." Isis explained.

  "Play back the sequence during my sleep over the past three hours..." Jason interrupted.

  "As you wish, sir," Isis complied, to which the video above the bench switched to a recording of Brightside's crew chamber, showing a slumbering Jason.

  A blip of momentary static filled the playback, and then the video resumed. The Captain put his hands on his hips, watching the image of himself in silent slumber, until suddenly it showed him sitting up on his cot in alarm. Jason listened intently - no alarm, no Isis - no nothing. The video Jason leapt from his bed with no provocation, grasped a nearby shirt and fled out of view into the corridor beyond the compartment.

  Jason frowned and shook his head.

  "It was there. I know it was!" the Captain declared to Isis, not taking his eyes off the holovid.

  "Captain, if I may make an observation. Perhaps you are... hallucinating from your lack of sleep..." Isis suggested.

  "I'm fine! I heard the alerts, Isis..." Jason argued, grabbed the helmet and began to stomp into the
corridor toward the crew compartment once again.

  As he reached the midway section of the corridor, a reinforced glass walkway separating the two pods of the craft, Isis's voice once again echoed throughout in-between bursts of static.

  "...crew hibernation pods ejected...hull breach crit...cal...cabin depre...zation in progress...structural failure imminent in 20 minutes if rep...r is not intiated imm...tely..."

  Brightside slammed the helmet back over his head, flicked at the visor, which clicked closed with a subtle whoosh, and proceeded to sprint the final ten meters to the crew hibernation quarters.

  Jason pulled up to the double entry doors, then peered into the slatted windows running vertically beside them. The hibernation pods, contrary to what Isis had reported just moments earlier, were still in their docking bays. To his dismay, however, they were empty.

  "Isis, crew status report..." he ordered, scanning the visible areas within the crew compartment.

  Static.

  Without hesitation, the Captain pounded his hand onto the entry control pad on the wall next to the doors. The door immediately flew open and up into the ceiling.

  Jason stepped into the compartment and stopped. The door dropped loudly behind him with a metallic 'cachoong!' and latched. Brightside stood and listened to the eerie silence within the crew chamber. He glanced at each of the stasis bays, in turn. Aside from being void of a crew member, they all had something in common - bloody streaks lined the inside of the bubbles that made up the faces of the pods, and the glass, thick enough to withstand external elements including catastrophic explosions, was broken.

  Movement from across the other side of the room, in-between two larger strands of hanging