CollisionWithParadise (9 page)

Swallowing convulsively, she glanced at the clock. It was late. She suppressed a yawn. Okay, this is stupid, she told herself, being nervous about falling asleep and having wild dreams. It was Zac’s controlled dream that had produced her nightmare in the first place. Of course, she reminded herself, the nightmare was purely her doing. She’d manufactured that all on her own, by reacting to Zac’s stimulus. But she was exhausted. And she had lots of work to do tomorrow. She still had to review ship’s systems inside and out and report back to Zeta Corp within twenty-four hours. If she didn’t, they’d abort the mission regardless. And she was so close…

Maybe if she just lay down…Genevieve flopped on the bunk and pulled out an archaic hardcover book from her small personal library,
Atlantis: Myth & Fact
, a book that had synthesized all pertinent information on both the legend and acquired evidence, from Plato’s writings to Ignatius Donnelly’s runaway bestseller,
Atlantis: The Antidiluvian
World
, to recent discoveries of strange crystal structures off New Zealand, the deep Atlantic and the South China Sea that matched those found in the Caribbean earlier.

She flicked through the pages with her finger, not paying much attention. The legend of Atlantis had always fascinated her. What particularly interested her was how its legend shared its thematic elements with virtually all other great cultural myths on Earth. Plato’s 400 BC story of Atlantis matched with Moses’s and Enoch’s accounts of the antediluvian world, or the Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Sumerian tale that spoke of a great flood. She’d flipped to a page in the centre of the book and her hand rested on an interesting, though still contentious quote by Donnelly: “These lost people were our ancestors,” he wrote. “Their blood flows in our veins…the words we use every day were heard…in their cities, courts and temples.”

That was kind of absurd, she thought. Despite hundreds of years of searching, there remained no trace of the Atlantean people, so much so that some enthusiasts came up with fantastical and ridiculous theories of their Lamarkian transformation into sea-life. And yet, there had always been one thing about the commonality of flood legends throughout the world that bothered her
—
if no one had survived, then how did the story get out?

Genevieve snapped the book shut and stared vacantly at the parametal wall ahead of her. She found her thoughts wandering dangerously to Dan and the last time she’d seen him. He was the gentlest man she knew, yet his temper, when it did finally flare, was formidable. They’d stopped having sex long before he left her in a huff the day before his mission to Eos. She found out that she was pregnant the day before he left her. She’d planned to tell him about the baby growing inside her, hoping that this news would help repair their torn relationship. But somehow it didn’t turn out that way. Instead they’d quarreled over some silly thing she couldn’t even remember. He’d flatly announced he was seeing someone else and left. She never told him. Never had a chance to tell him she was pregnant, after five years of trying. They never communicated after that. She spent her entire pregnancy alone and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. And Dan never knew he was a father. Jason was six months old when Dan’s ship exploded off Eos. Then, as if God was punishing her, Jason fell victim soon after to an arcane viral disease and died of complications.

Genevieve curled on the bunk, hugging herself in a sudden violent shiver. Breaths hitching, she let her arm drop down and tucked it between her legs like Dan used to do. She wrapped herself around the arm like a warm blanket and yearned for the mantle of his loving touch, the sweet sound of his light snore, and the glowing comfort of the very routine she’d once despised. She brushed away the tears from her wet face and closed her eyes.

She hadn’t cried when they told her that Dan’s ship had been destroyed. The truth of the matter was, she didn’t know what else to feel except tremendous guilt. He and six other crew members burned to death in the explosion. There was nothing left of anyone or anything. Millions of pieces of crew members and space shrapnel orbited Eos for months, perhaps years before they too found a fiery end, plummeting toward the planet’s surface. There was something eerie about not seeing his body. Like it hadn’t really happened, as though she had to take it on faith that he was dead. Her close friends thought she was being stoic about it all, but Genevieve realized that she’d simply decided not to believe it, that somehow he’d managed to escape, that he was
taken
by the planet, he was stranded there, his bodiless spirit trapped and trying to communicate with her. Doctors later told her that she’d suffered a mental collapse. Together with the pregnancy and death of her sweet infant son soon after, it wasn’t hard to agree. Yet, a part of her had always refused to accept that Dan was gone. She’d seen her boy die, watched in agony as he slipped away. But Dan had simply disappeared and never came back.

Thoughts wandering, she fell asleep.

“I love you,” Dan said with that boyish smile she loved. He was embracing her as they stood naked in a maple-beech forest. “Let’s fuck!”

He pulled her down onto the soft moss and slid on top of her. She felt the cool tickle of the moss carpet beneath her as his warm body pressed against her.

God! His penis was a huge rod with a mind of its own, driving into her and thick like a baseball bat. She sucked in her breath and panted with excitement. His image swam and broke up in front of her. Did it turn purple? She didn’t care, because his penis had just slithered inside her and continued to swell and pulsate.

She moaned with each pulse, wild ecstasy escalating and overwhelming her as
he continued to grow in waves. “Oh, God! Oh God!” she screamed as he surged and surged. She felt him throbbing up her vagina, past her cervix, stirring her like nothing had before. “Oh!” she wailed. It was painfully exquisite! He pulsed into her abdominal cavity. Pounded up her thorax. Now vibrating through her chest and up her throat…

Then, like two seas crashing, she roared with her own surging wave of come. Wet and gushing, she pulsed purple out of her mouth and vagina and saw that it was
him
. His remarkably attractive purple face, those tender deep eyes piercing into her, as he roared his own exultation in a shrill bellow
.

Chapter Seven

She jerked awake, hand stuffed under her flexpants, and fell off her bunk. The ship shuddered and moaned from a sudden jar. The emergency klaxon whined.

She burst out of the room. The alarm pounded twice as loud in her ears. “Zac! What happened?” she yelled, pelting for the control centre. “Did we get hit?”

After an excruciating long pause, Zac responded, sounding strained and distant, “I don’t know, Genevieve.”

“You don’t know?” she shrilled. “How could you not know? The alarm is—”

The ship jerked hard, throwing her into the wall. She bounced off it and fell, sprawling on the soft floor. “What the hell!”

“Something’s collided with the ship,” Zac said without emotion. “The hull’s breached. We’re leaking air.”

“What?” she said in disbelief then abruptly thought of the nursery. She scrambled up. “Where’s the damage?”

“Sections two and three.”

“Oh my God!” Too close to Section one, the nursery. She vaulted up the ladder to the control room. “What’s the status of Section one?”

“It’s okay, except it’s leaking air. Genevieve, we’re leaking air in
all
sections now.”

“The crew are in
jacks,
which act as vac suits, so they’ll be fine.”

“But you aren’t.”

She froze in mid-climb. “Damn!”

“The portable
jacks
. They’re your only chance right now. The closest one is located thirty meters aft on the portside corridor. Hurry! You’ll run out of air in twenty-five seconds!”

Genevieve dropped down from the ladder and pounded down the hall, already feeling the drag of the thinning air against her lungs. “God! I’m having a hard time breathing!” she rasped.

“You’re almost there, Genevieve,” Zac assured her.

She spotted the locker with the emergency
jack
suit down the hall. Genevieve hauled open the locker door and grabbed the suit with trembling hands. She’d promised herself that she would never get inside one of these again, but she had no choice. She undressed, trying not to think of Zac staring at her, and pulled on the portable
jack
suit with difficulty because her hands were shaking too much.

“Lie down on the floor. It’ll be easier!” Zac commanded.

She let herself collapse with her back on the floor and struggled with the arms and legs. Her breaths became shallow and her lungs burned. She found herself panting. Black spots flickered in front of her eyes and she realized with a strange objectivity that she was passing out and that once she did, nothing and no one could help her…Then miraculously she was in. She fumbled the suit secure and clamped the visor down. Instantly, fresh air vented in, enveloped her, and she sucked it in hungrily.

The suit’s nano-sensors tickled over her flesh, feeling for dirt, moisture and other foreign material to remove and recycle. She inhaled sharply and broke out into goosebumps as the nano-sensors probed her lower abdomen and crotch, wicking away the orgasmic discharge still leaking from her. Normally, in post-hibe she would have succumbed to renewed excitement. But she was already surging with a different kind of thrill, the kind that came with the fear of dying.

Her strength now fully restored, Genevieve scrambled to her feet and hastened to the control room. “Zac, can you fix the damage to you and secure the leak?”

“I believe so. The air leak is just about fixed. Sections one and two have repaired themselves and are now secure. I can restore air within ten minutes.”

“What about the integrity of both ships, you and the
Chimera
?”

“We’re both stable. I am speaking with
Chimera
now. It was unaffected by the impact”

One of the perks of nestling its berth safely in Zac’s belly. “Do you have enough power?”

“I think so. The nursery is secure and theta waves are still feeding online. My system is self-diagnosing and I think I’m okay. We should make it to Eos.”

“Good,” she said, hearing the hollowness of her voice.

So long as whatever smashed into the ship didn’t do it again, she thought. At least they weren’t dead in space, thanks to Zac’s self-replicating organic nano-system. Now she needed to find out what had caused the collision in the first place. What was out there? Whatever it was, was it the same thing that got Dan five years ago? And, if so, why weren’t they in a million pieces?

“What’s our position, Zac?”

“About twenty hours from our entry point to orbit Eos.”

That was supposedly time enough to figure out what had happened, prevent a second occurrence and get to Eos unscathed.

“So, was it a hyper-velocity impact?” she posed. “A renegade meteoroid?” The meteoroid ring that circled Eos had been carefully considered in their calculations to enter Eosian orbit. But maybe it was less stable than they’d thought. The metalloid sandwich-style hull was specifically designed to withstand such impacts, Genevieve considered, as she approached the ladder to the bridge. And the plasma biofilm shield was further protection. “Well?” she prompted impatiently. Zac was taking his good old time.

“I…don’t know…Genevieve,” Zac replied in a faltering voice.

“How could your radar tracking system have missed it? Are you sure you’re okay?” She suddenly thought of Zac II’s misjudgment and felt alarm spike in her chest.

“I detect free radical infiltration in the plasma field with abiogenous generation of viral organic molecules,” Zac said then added in a strange voice, “It may interfere with my homeostatic systems.”

Her chest tightened. That didn’t sound good.

“I think the hit may have caused some kind of impact plasma—”

“That’s impossible,” she cut Zac off. “That’s what the bio-film shield is for.”

“I turned it off.”

“What?” she shrieked, throat dry, and came to a dead halt. “You what?”

“You told me to. You said we needed to conserve energy.”

Her heart slammed. “I did no such thing!” Why on Earth would Zac turn off the shield then lie to her face that she’d told him to? It made no sense. Had he gone mad?

“Genevieve, I…I…don’t feel very well…”

“Zac?” The alarm in her head surged and she felt her stomach curdle. What was happening to Zac?

“Genevieve?” Zac’s urgent voice jolted her. She’d never heard him with a panicked voice before. “I need to tell you something about the mission. It’s not what you think it is…”

“What?” she said. “What do you mean?” Did Zac mean DAWN? Was she really the only one on board who didn’t know? “Does this have to do with Project DAWN? What do you know, Zac? Tell me!”

“I…” Zac made a funny sound like a gasp, something Genevieve had never before heard from him either. “… programmed for disaster…” He gurgled. “...DAWN crew already inside the
Chimera
,” he spluttered disjointedly, voice splintering into a multi-timbral spectrum. “…will use Plan B…they’ll aggressively take what they’re after…after treasures of…” His voice gurgled and choked and decayed into ominous ticking sounds.