Destiny
By Michael Shimek
The top one-fourth of the large planet dominated Jeffery’s viewing screen, filling his emotions with wonder and awe. The planet shouldn’t be here; in fact, the whole planetary system shouldn’t be here. But here it was, adding a mysterious wonder to his feelings.
They were orbiting at roughly four hundred kilometers above the planet, showing the celestial body’s brilliance. Snow capped the uppermost part of the world, leading down to brown and green landmasses. White and grey clouds lit up with electrical discharge over one of the many bright blue bodies of water off to the left. The atmosphere was alive and dancing with beautiful colors. Light from the nearby yellow dwarf star reflected off the sky, while glorious green and red auroras waved across the top of the globe.
The whole scene reminded Jeffery of the images and videos he had seen representing the home world of humans, a place that highly intrigued him but never had the chance to visit.
“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” The slightly high-pitched feminine voice came from behind. Swiveling the captain’s chair around, he was greeted with Lyack’s warm, inviting smile.
He smiled back at her. “So gorgeous,” he said, referring to the new view in front of him. His new friend was extremely attractive.
Lyack was perfect. A tight, lovely green dress was wrapped around her tall, slender body. Shiny, metallic silver hair hung down to her voluptuous breasts. Every feature and characteristic of the woman was flawless; like most humans and other alien races, she probably had some bioengineering done to keep her looking fit.
She was the reason for being here, and he couldn’t be happier for it. If they had never met, he wouldn’t be staring at the planet that had a strange hold on him. He could feel something down there, something dark, sinister, and powerful. Whatever it was, it was beyond amazing, and he had to find it. Thank the Universe she had found him.
#
“Hey there, stranger. You’re cute. Can I buy you a drink?”
Jeffery, drunk off whatever cocktail he was currently consuming, took his blurry vision from his drink and stared into the face of a beautiful woman. Her emerald eyes were alluring, asking for him to socialize with her.
“Hello,” he said, slightly slurring his speech. “I could definitely use another drink, thank you.”
When the bartender came by, the mysterious beauty ordered two alcoholic drinks and one Clear Minded, a not-so-popular beverage that reduces the affects of liquor and sobers up the recipient so they have a clear mind and are no longer inebriated. He downed the Clear Minded, immediately feeling its affects and becoming sober. He then grabbed the second drink and downed that one, hoping to quickly regain his drunken stupor.
“You don’t like being sober, do you?”
“There really isn’t much point anymore,” he replied, already ordering another drink.
“So,” she said, cutting the small talk short and getting right to the point. “I hear you have the fastest ship on the planet.”
“Yeah? And who’d you hear that from?”
“Oh, just from a friend.” She smiled innocently at him. “I also hear you’re in the business of taking people where they want to go.”
“Well,” Jeffery said, staring quizzically at her, “If you are so informed, then you should also know I’m not in that business any longer.”
“Not even for a very generous reward? The name’s Lyack.” The woman held out her hand in an old, outdated greeting form.
He gripped her hand and responded with his own name. “I’m Jeffery.”
“I heard you had an odd sounding name.”
“Yeah, it’s an old one. My parents were traditionalists, always implementing the importance of human society on me.” He finished his drink and turned his complete attention to her. “You said something about a reward?”
#
That was roughly thirty hours ago on the trader planet, Laarr, where Jeffery had taken up residence for the past seven years. There was no way he’d ever be able to go back now. As a wanted fugitive, the Lynarians would not take kindly to his return. The alien race was not a forgiving one.
“Don’t worry, those scaly thugs will never find us here. Besides, they wouldn’t harm us with our precious, new cargo”. She sounded very sure of this. The attractive woman then surveyed the screen, looking quite confused by what she saw. “Where is here, by the way?”
“I’m not exactly sure.” It was the truth; he honestly had no idea where in the galaxy they were located.
“What do you mean you don’t know? You got us here.”
“Yeah, but we were in a hurry, remember? I didn’t have time to pick a safe spot to jump to, so I picked some coordinates that were close by. Except, this is not that location. This system is alien to me.”
Only a few hours ago Jeffery was desperately maneuvering his ship between angry attacks by the Lynarian military fleet. When agreeing to his new friend’s proposal, Lyack forgot to mention she was wanted by the governing race for stealing one of the planet’s most treasurable artifacts. If he knew at the time that she had, in her possession, a rare crystal that could buy an entire planet, he probably wouldn’t have accepted the offer. Probably. But he did, and because of that, he had to make a run for it. In a last bold move to escape their pursuers, he activated the ships illegal jumping engine and booked it out of there.
And now, here he was, orbiting a planet that was strangely pulling him towards it. He could feel something tugging and creeping into his mind and senses, begging him to find the source and marvel in its strong power. It started as soon as their ship entered the system, and the closer they got to the second planet of five orbiting the local star, the stronger it got.
“Doesn’t your ship have a scanner?” His companion’s voice broke the hypnotic state the planet had put him in. “It should easily be able to recognize surrounding stars and systems.”
“It does,” he told her. “But that’s the thing. I’ve run the scanner several times now, and it doesn’t recognize a single star.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Lyack did not look amused. “That’s impossible, Jeffery. Every ship is rigged with a current map of the galaxy. So, either your ship is malfunctioning or…”
He knew what she was getting at. “Or we are in another galaxy.”
“That just cannot be, Jeffery. Traveling outside of the Milky Way is unattainable. No species has ever been able to travel between different galaxies, even with the jumping engine. Your ship is broken.”
“My ship is not broken. I’ve run every diagnostic test and the ship is running perfectly fine. I’ve never had a problem jumping before.”
Jumping was commonly referred to the action of traveling through the galaxy in real space-time. The device, created by a species that ceased existing millennia ago, applies technology banned by most planetary systems for personal use. It uses the surrounding stars to recognize its location in the galaxy, and then zaps you to coordinates you type in. No species alive can figure out how it works, making the remaining working devices precious and valuable. If caught with one, the sentence was usually a lifetime of hard labor, or even death. Jeffery was always taking a chance having the drive built into his ship, but it definitely came in handy to have.
“So, where the hell are we?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” he answered her. He was beginning to get annoyed with Lyack and turned his attention back to the plant. Back to the force that clouded his mind.
He couldn’t find the exact location of whatever was pulling him like a magnet because the ship couldn’t detect anything unnatural or odd on the surface. There was no output of energy the technology could detect, which meant Jeffery would have to use the power of the attraction to find it using his own senses.
“What are you going to do about it?” Lyack asked him.
“What do you mean?”
“If you don’t know where we are, how are you going to get me to the Schynyt System? You promised me you’d get me there.” Her face showed him how serious she was. “You don’t get paid until we get there.”
“I’ll get you there, I promise. It might take a little longer than expected, though. In the mean time, I want to observe and explore this planet.”
She looked angry. “I’m not paying you to explore anything. I’m paying you to get me where I need to go. If you’re not going to do that—“
He quickly cut her off before her temper was raised any higher. “Look, you will get to the Schynyt System, okay? We can’t go anywhere, though, until the ship can lock onto coordinates it recognizes. So far, it’s come up empty. I’m guessing this is going to take awhile, and I’d rather not be bored out of my mind while we wait.” He paused for a moment to make sure she understood what he was saying. It looked like she did, but her anger at the situation drowned it out. “Besides, there’s something down there. I can feel it.”
“There’s nothing you can do to speed this up?”
“Nope, sorry. I’ll even make a compromise with you.”
“Yeah, and what’s that?”
“You don’t have to pay me anything. I will still get you where you need to go, and you won’t have to give me a single penny.” The phrase made no sense these days, with pennies not existing for over hundreds of years, but Jeffery liked to use outdated expressions from human history. “It’s my way of saying sorry for not getting you to your destination on time. Which, by the way, is not my fault. The only thing I ask of you is to let me explore this planet while the ship figures out where we are. Once it does, we can leave. Deal?”
He could see her thinking it over in her head. She still looked upset over the unfortunate situation, but she appeared to be giving in to his suggestion.
“Fine.” Her voice was stern. “But the moment this ship figures out our location, we are out of here. No matter what. Got it?”
“Understood.”
Jeffery watched the beautiful woman storm out of the captain’s bridge to wallow about the rest of the small craft. There were only six other rooms on the entire ship, and she only had access to three of them, so he didn’t have to worry about her trying anything suspicious behind his back.
It was time to continue his search for whatever force was attracting him down towards the surface of the planet.
Hours went by as Jeffery orbited his ship around the planet, trying to figure out where the power source felt the strongest. It would have been so much easier if his ship were able to detect anything, but since it couldn’t, he was having a hard time pinpointing the exact position. Eventually, he found a large continent in the southern hemisphere that radiated something mysterious. He could feel it.
Dropping the ship into a closer orbit, he could make out a large mountain range that ran along the left side of the continent’s coast. White splotches painted the elevated grey rocks, with deep crevasses cutting down to bright green vegetation. It was in these mountains he felt the attraction at its strongest. A small swatch of flat planes between the mountains and oceans was the perfect place to land, but a frightening scene caused him to pause his landing once he saw what these planes held.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of different types of spacecrafts littered the land, dotting hundreds of kilometers of the green land in tiny speckles. Flying closer, Jeffery was amazed at the sight. It was a graveyard.
“What the hell is going on?” The voice startled him from his findings.
“Uh…”
“Why aren’t we out of this system yet? What is taking so long?”
“This ship still can’t locate us. I also shot a couple of satellites around the system, and another one orbiting this planet. Once those recognize where we are, I will be alerted. Then we can get you to the Schynyt System.”
She had a look of doubt on her face, but he was speaking the truth. They were stuck in this system until his ship could find a star pattern it found familiar.
“Okay,” she finally said. “But what are you doing? Are you planning on landing on this planet?”
“Yes, but come look at what I found.”
Jeffery turned back to the viewing screen, enhancing the image so Lyack could get a better look. Her luscious lips cracked open into a shocked expression.
“Those are ships,” she said.
“I know.”
“There must be thousands of them.” He could see her eyes darting all across the screen, amazed at each individual ship. “And they are all different kinds.”
“Do you recognize any of them?” he asked her.
“No…”
“Me either, and I can recognize most ships that travel in the galaxy.” With roughly fifty different intelligent alien species flying through the Milky Way, the number of types of spaceships was limited.
“Look how old some of them are,” Lyack said, her eyes glued to the screen. “Some of them are now just piles of dust.”
“And some of them are beyond anything any species in this galaxy is capable of creating. Look at that one.” He pointed to one of the largest ships. “Have you seen anything so big before?”
“No.” She turned to look at him. “Where did all of these come from? And they’re all here, abandoned? This isn’t right.”
“I agree,” he said. “This is very strange.”
Jeffery continued to fly his ship over the never-ending junkyard. When he saw a space large enough for him to land his ship, and close enough for walking distance to the mountain range, he set the spacecraft down.
“You’re landing?” She looked completely surprised by his actions.
“Of course. I told you I wanted to explore the planet.”
“You never said anything about landing and walking around.”
“There is something here.” His voice began to raise, getting fed up with the woman’s negative attitude. “I am going to find whatever it is. Its pull is so strong from here; we are so close. Can’t you feel it?”
“I do,” said the concerned face. “But, Jeffery, I get a dark and bad feeling the closer we get to it. I don’t think it’s a good idea landing on this planet. I mean, look around. What happened to the occupants of these ships?”
“It’s a mystery I’m going to find out.” He was determined now, and there was nothing that was going to stop him. “Will you come with me, and help me?”
“Fine, but only because if anything happens to you, I won’t be able to fly this ship out of here on my own.”
Smiling at her agreement, he set the ship down smoothly on the surface of the strange world.
#
The hiking was rough, having to weave their way through the tall, alien grass and between the variety of obstructing, dead spacecrafts. The thin oxygen content in the air didn’t help either. After a few hours, though, they were already making some great progress. Now at the foot of the mountains, Jeffery could sense they were nearing the source of whatever was beckoning him. Soon. Soon he would reach his goal and marvel in its mysterious wonders.
“I’m getting a bit tired. Can we rest for a few minutes?” Lyack asked, looking exhausted.
“Sure,” answered Jeffery, who was also beginning to feel a bit worn out. Fueled by his excitement and persistence, he had ignored the signs of fatigue until his companion mentioned something. “We can rest over there,” he said, pointing to some large rocks they could sit on. “It’ll give us some time to eat and restore our energy before continuing.”
“It’s most likely going to be dark soon. You sure you want to keep this treasure hunt up?”
She was right. The planet took only twenty hours to fully rotate on its axis, which meant there were probably only a couple of more hours of sunlight. He wasn’t giving up, though; nothing would stop him.
“Lyack, we are so close, so of course I’m not giving up.”
“What if we encounter a dangerous creature?”
“We haven’t yet. Besides, I have this disintegrator to keep us safe,” he said, raising another illegal device he owned. Only officials in the Lynarian military were allowed to carry them because of their devastating effects, breaking apart the target until only dust remained. He only had the one, and wouldn’t dare let it fall into the hands of Lyack; he didn’t fully trust her.
“What if the ship finds out where we are and alerts you? You promised me if that happened we would continue with my mission, immediately.”
“That I did, but I’m guessing we find this thing before that happens. It’s so close. I can feel it in my skin and bones.” He probably sounded crazy, with his recent obsession taking control of him, but he didn’t care. And, although she complained about the whole thing, he could also tell Lyack was just as interested. “Come on, let’s keep going. I bet we can find the source before nightfall.”
“Yeah, I bet we can, too,” she said, looking more worried than excited.
Grabbing their equipment together, they resumed their journey. The plant life was tough to travel through and the ground was becoming steeper with every step, but it wasn’t long before they found a large, overgrown path leading up the mountain Jeffery was drawn to.
“Well, that’s kind of convenient,” he said.
“It’s creepy is what it is,” replied a nervous Lyack.
“Shall we?” Without waiting for a response, Jeffery made his way towards the trail that wound its way up. He knew she would follow; even if she was scared, he could tell the pull was strong on her as well.
“Why did you stop transporting people?” The question broke the silence, hitting him like a shot to the heart. He figured she wanted to distract her mind from the fear she felt, which was fine with him, but the question was a very personal one and brought up memories he had tried to hide deep under better memories.
“Obviously I haven’t stopped. You hired me.” He was hoping she would drop it, getting the hint he didn’t want to talk about it, but she either didn’t care or was oblivious to his attitude.
“I mean before. You used to be the best transporter on the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy. Then word got out that you had suddenly stopped and became a Slouf.” A Slouf was a type of animal species known to hide from any other living thing; they would always end up dying alone, and he couldn’t help but think that maybe he had become one of those solitary creatures. “What happened to you?”
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Jeffery said, caving in to her request. “But you have to promise never to repeat it to a living soul.”
“I promise.” She was walking right beside him now, rather than the two steps behind she had been traveling the whole way. Her eyes were staring directly into his.
“I was responsible for the deaths of thirty humans, several of them children. Eight years ago I was asked to transport a cargo of people who were trapped near the Saticka System. Their ship had malfunctioned while on the edge of the system. With life support dwindling and their ship aiming to crash into a nearby small, planet-sized pile of rock, I happened to be the nearest ship that could help. Now, I’m not usually the type of guy who would transport people for free. If you know my old reputation, then you know I was very pricey back in the day. But my conscience got the best of me; there were kids, who could say no to saving kids? There were eighty of them in all, on vacation, wanting to the see the supernova that had occurred in the system a few years before. I came by and realized their ship was too large, mine wouldn’t be able to tow it to safety, and not all of them would have been able to fit in my ship.”
He stopped his talking and walking to take a breath and wipe the sweat from his forehead. The cooling air of the higher elevation felt good against his tiring body. Not much further. He could feel it in his skin.
“So? Then what happened?” She looked enthralled by his past.
“My ship could only safely fit ten extra people besides myself. My ship could also only tow one of their lifeboats away in time. The rest would have to stay and perish as their breathing air failed on them. They decided who would stay and who would go. The children, seven of them, would be strapped into the chairs you probably saw in the back of my ship. Three of the parents also joined them. The rest of the parents, and whoever else they picked, totaled the twenty people a lifeboat could hold. With thirty people now under my care, it was my responsibility to get them safely away from danger.”
The past was distracting Jeffery from his walking, causing him to trip over a long and large object protruding into the narrowing, rocky path they were traveling. Thinking it was a log from a nearby tree, he wiped himself off and started walking again before Lyack stopped him.
“Oh, wow! Look at that!”
Jeffery looked and gasped. He hadn’t tripped over a piece of wood; he had tripped over a bone belonging to skeletal remains.
“Those remains do not look like any alien species I know of,” Jeffery said. “Do you recognize them?”
“No,” Lyack replied. “Let me do a scan.”
During the entire hike, Lyack had been using her little pen-like scanning device to scan the alien wildlife they were passing. Much of the vegetation could not be identified by the scanner, which held knowledge on every known living and dead organic species in the Milky Way. These bones ended up the same, unidentifiable.
“This place just keeps getting weirder and weirder.” He studied the old bones, estimating the species was a large one. Well over ten feet in length, the two-legged, four-armed monster ended with a large oversized skull for a head. Rows of tiny, razor-sharp teeth grinned death at him. “Too bad he, or she, didn’t make it. They were so close.”
“I bet we find more,” Lyack said grimly.
She was right. They did find more. A lot more. None of which could be identified by Lyack’s scanner.
As their ascent became steeper and harder to journey on, death scattered their path. Different alien species passed them by as they walked. Some were very large, and some looked no bigger than a baby human. They caused obstacles for them to walk and climb around in the middle of the trail, while others had hunkered down on the sides or were sprawled within leaves and branches of surrounding exotic plant-life. Bones and mummified remains were all that was left of the many species that had perished so close to their destination.
This would not be Jeffery’s fate, though, succumbing to the unfair reality of death before reaching his goal. He was destined to find the source of whatever was pulling him. Drawing him in. Beckoning him to find the mystery held within this planet.
He was close. Oh, so close now.
“I want to hear the rest of your story.”
“What?” he said, looking at her. The once lovely and gorgeous Lyack was now looking tired and worn down. Her beautiful features were flawed. Jeffery didn’t care; she was still very nice to look at.
“Your story. You never finished it.”
A long pause separated the two.
“We crashed,” he finally said. “I crashed. It was my fault. I was being careless and stupid, and because of that, innocent children died. My ship was destroyed, and I was the only survivor. I know I was never Mr. Nice Guy before, but I couldn’t be responsible for the deaths of several kids. It killed me inside. It was a chance for me to finally do something good in life. Instead, I blew it. I gave up my dirty profession and became a recluse, keeping sane by slowly building this new ship. Life was going great until you came along.”
“You were drinking yourself to death, Jeffery. That’s no way to live a life. Besides, at least you tried. You could have just ignored their plea; there are plenty of people who would have done just that. There’s always something for trying.”
“I guess.” He didn’t really believe it. “There is one thing positive about getting back into the game.”
“What’s that?”
“Finding this.”
Not much farther. He could feel it in his mind and flesh.
“Since we’re sharing stories, how about you tell me yours?” He had to take his mind off the journey, otherwise he would go mad feeling how close he was.
“What would you like to hear?”
“Well, we can start with why you asked me to help you steal the Lynarian government’s prized crystal?”
“Are you serious? You’ve seen it. I can do whatever the hell I want with that kind of wealth.” She said it, but there was doubt in her words.
“That can’t be all,” Jeffery said. “You did it just for the money?”
“I can buy a whole planet system with it.”
“Give it up, Lyack. There’s something more. I can hear it in your voice.”
They had stopped again, both of them taking sips of water from their packs. With the low amount of oxygen in the air, the breathing was becoming a little harsher as they climbed higher and higher.
“All right, fine,” she said. “I wasn’t ever going to sell the damned thing. Truth is, I never wanted it in the first place.” She paused to see if her confession had any impact on Jeffery. When she saw his facial features the same, she continued. “I did it to prove something to Mynerion.”
The name definitely rang a bell in Jeffery’s brain. “You mean the leader of the Lynerian race? That Mynerion?”
“Yes,” she replied, hanging her head down feeling ashamed. “I was in love with him. He stole and broke my heart, so I stole his precious crystal. I had always planned on returning the thing; I have nothing against the Lynarian species. In fact, I enjoyed living on their home world. I just wanted to hurt him, like he hurt me.”
Her tale was very intriguing, and he had multiple questions about it that he wanted answered. The first question he asked surprised him because it was not one of the ones running through his head. “Do you still love him?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” She sighed at hearing the truth escape her lips. She looked like she was going to keep on talking, but Jeffery saw her startled expression. He turned to see what she was looking at and gaped at the enormous wonder before them.
A brilliant, bright, purple light shone through the gigantic opening of a mouth carved into the mountain. Their path led right up to the cave’s entrance, with large teeth protruding from all sides that had been chiseled into the stone that sparkled in the light. The pull was so strong now that Jeffery felt like he could have gone limp and would be pulled into the cave.
Fear and excitement raced through his body. He was finally here. He had reached the destination that had been plaguing his mind for the past several hours. He had no idea why he was feeling this way; he didn’t know what was waiting for him inside the mountain, but he knew it was something special. Turning to Lyack, he could see the same astounding happiness register within her as well.
“Come on,” Jeffery said, grabbing her hand in a friendly, reassuring gesture. “Let’s go find our destiny.”
Together, the two slowly walked into the cave. The light swallowed them, leaving only Jeffery’s spaceship behind as part of the planet’s collection.
#
Jeffery had a weird feeling of déjà vu wash over him. This all was strangely familiar somehow. He was fairly drunk, though, and was having a little trouble thinking properly.
“Will you assist? Please, help! I repeat…”
He flipped the sound off, mulling over what to do. He was only supposed to be passing by the Saticka System, there was to be no stopping. Now he’s the only one close enough to help save a group of stranded sightseers. This was not turning out the way he wanted.
Of course, he wouldn’t turn them down. There were kids on board. He couldn’t let kids die.
After sending a reply, Jeffery sluggishly maneuvered his ship towards the distressed vessel. He put the ship into autopilot for now, feeling a bit too inebriated to continue. Out of nowhere, he had this nagging feeling that he should be very careful with this detour. This was going to be important. Giving in to the whisper in his brain, he got a bottle of Clear Minded from the nearby cooler and made sure it was finished before he reached the other ship.
