The sound of scraping chairs rattled through the room as the group stood, echoing the captain’s words with glasses raised high above their heads, before downing the remainder of their contents.
“To fallen comrades,” Emily whispered, and tried to keep the ghosts of her life from her mind.
CHAPTER 14
The next morning, the fire-ravaged ground beyond the compound was still too hot to get too close to. While the majority of the smoke had been carried away by the Pacific breeze, the ground was still giving off thin plumes of gray smoke that stank to high heavens and stung the eyes of any at the camp unwary enough to venture outside the security fence.
Captain Constantine and MacAlister stalked the perimeter just clear of the choking smoke. The scowl on Constantine’s face conveyed his annoyance. He’d planned for a small expeditionary group to reconnoiter the damage to the jungle and their surrounding area, but that was now going to have to wait until the ground cooled to a safe enough level. So the day was spent chopping and digging and sawing the remainder of the alien vegetation still growing between the buildings of the compound.
The stumps of the creeping vine that Emily had found so impossible to budge from the soil around Building One proved the hardest of all to clear. Less than twenty-four hours after Emily had chopped the clinging vine down, there were already signs of regrowth on the root bulb. Tiny feelers, three inches in length, were sprouting from it, inching their way up the wall of Building One.
When the first stump finally came free after several hours of hacking away at it with a pickax and shovels by three of the burlier sailors, it became clear as to why it had proved so difficult. The root system was almost as extensive as the sucking vines that had crawled up the exterior walls of the building. The thick, dark roots were lined with rows of barbs that clung to the soil like hooks, forcing each root to be dug out one by one to be sure it was completely gone.
Everything in this new world seemed tough, with an almost preternatural desire to live, expand, grow; desires that were matched by an innate ability to achieve those goals.
By the end of the day as the sun began to set, the compound and the space between the buildings was clear of all but a few of the more stubborn plants. Even with the leather gloves she had filched from one of the sailors, Emily’s hands were blistered. But she did not mind; these past few days of physical exercise had reawakened something within her, and she found herself reveling in the purity of the simple task of manual labor. A definite sense of camaraderie had grown between the survivors, and Emily was happy to be a part of it.
Rhiannon, on the other hand, was not as enthusiastic about the brutal working conditions the California climate and salty air created. She had promoted herself to supplying the crews with water and food throughout the day, although she did stop by occasionally to check on Emily and carry a few of the branches and leaves she had cut down to one of the several growing piles of decaying vegetation that sat waiting for disposal near the exit of the camp.
“Emily!” a voice called to her, and she dropped her pickax to the ground, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and looked toward the source of whoever was calling her. It was Mac, standing in the open doorway of the main building and waving to her. “Come on in,” he yelled again, “we have someone who wants to talk to you.”
MacAlister escorted Emily inside the building and down the corridor to the makeshift radio room that had been set up on the ground floor of the building. The two of them squeezed in beside Jacob, Captain Constantine, and Parsons, making the room stuffy with their body heat.
Jacob sat at the desk, a pair of headphones over his ears, fine-tuning the portable radio. “Stand by, please, Commander,” he spoke into the microphone, then switched the radio over to its loudspeaker mode. “Okay, you’re good to go,” he continued, placing the headphones on the desk next to the radio and grinning at Emily as he pushed his chair back from the desk.
Onboard the ISS, Commander Fiona Mulligan pulled the microphone from the wall of the observation module and switched on the speaker. Through the observation port she could see the coast of Chile creeping closer as the station followed its orbit northeast.
“Hello? Can you hear me?” she asked.
Miles below, in the confines of the small room, Mulligan’s voice sounded extra loud and clear.
“We’re receiving you perfectly, Commander,” said Emily, finding it hard to keep the emotion she felt for her stranded friend out of her voice. “It’s so very good to hear your voice again. We were a little concerned about you there for a while.” She found herself returning Jacob’s grin, in spite of herself.
The commander smiled although she knew no one could see her. For a while, after their radio communications had gone down, both she and her crew had begun to wonder if maybe they might have lost contact permanently with the group of survivors from the Stockton Islands, or worse, maybe something had happened to them as they travelled to their new location. So it came as a relief when Jacob had finally managed to contact the station half an hour earlier. But it was especially good to hear Emily’s voice again.
“Thank you for your concern, Emily, and sorry for the scare, but the inevitable breakdown we were worried about now seems to be taking place. We lost several of the relay satellites we use to communicate when we’re out of normal radio range while you were travelling to your new home, and the red storm seems to have created some kind of residual electrical interference too. So, I’m afraid our contact with you is going to be a little unpredictable from this point onward. The sat-phone networks all seem to be down now, so we’ll be using our amateur radio rig from here on out and that will mean we will only be in range a few hours each day from this point onward, I’m afraid.”
“May I?” the captain asked Emily, nodding to the microphone.
“Sure,” she said, “go ahead.”
“Commander, this is Captain Constantine. It’s a pleasure to speak with you again. I want to thank you personally for everything you have done for me and my crew.”
“Likewise, and you are more than welcome, Captain,” came the static-riddled reply from the station.
“I know Jacob has filled you in on some of the events that have transpired since we arrived here at Point Loma, but I believe we have everything under control now. So I think it’s time we turn the focus on you and your crew: Can you give us any information relevant to your reentry and how best we should go about the recovery efforts once you join us back here on Earth?”
The commander and the captain exchanged information about location, trajectories, and possible emergency scenarios over the next thirty minutes.
Parsons stood elbow to elbow with Emily, taking copious notes on a steno pad. Emily found herself tuning out their voices as the conversation turned technical, but her attention snapped back to the cramped room when a sudden rattling burst of static drowned out the commander’s voice.
“…tain. Is there’s anything… eed to… bout. Hello? Can you… me?”
“I’m sorry, Commander. Please repeat all again. Can you hear me?”
“…eed to talk wi… Do you…”
As Commander Mulligan’s garbled words faded away they were replaced with a low, constant hiss of static from the speaker. Jacob reached across and flicked the radio’s off switch, silencing the machine.
“Damn! When do you think they’ll be in range again?” the captain asked Jacob.
“Their amateur radio rig is going to give them significantly less range and power,” Jacob explained, closing his eyes as he did some quick math in his head. “I’d estimate sometime between twelve and eighteen hours until we can establish a clear contact again, but I really don’t know for certain.”