“Leonard, I’ll be right there. We have a way down,” I relayed through the suit’s comm, and when I looked down at him, he waved, giving me a gloved thumbs-up. The task at hand truly scared me. I only had the centuries-old details from the portal file to go by, but according to it, their closest capital city was southwest of the portal. I could only cross my fingers that it was still there, and that what I was looking for would be present.
“What’s it look like?” Leonard asked as I neared him.
“Let’s just say the comic won’t be lacking for inspiration.” I turned the hover scooter on and guided it with my hands to the peak, my tag-along’s footing stumbling as we went. “You seem to be taking this well.”
He grunted as he lifted a leg over a large stone. “All my life I’ve been afraid to do anything surprising. I was picked last for every sport in physical education, I was made fun of for having my nose stuck in the newest Star Battle books, and because of it, I stuck to myself.”
We made it up top, and Leonard gasped as the Bhlat world’s view came into sight. “It’s beautiful,” he whispered. The red color palette over everything had felt malevolent initially, but the longer I looked at it, the more I just accepted it was the nature of the planet. Was it so different than where we came from?
“You’re right. It is,” I agreed. “What changed?” I prompted him. The more I kept him talking, the less he’d realize how dangerous our surroundings really were.
“You.”
“Me?”
“You more than the others. Magnus and Natalia were commandos. Tough as nails and went through some serious crap during their time as mercenaries. They were prepared for the Event as much as anyone could have been. Mary was Air Force, trained as well, smart and…” He paused, looking at me. “Beautiful. Not that that has anything to do with it.”
I held back a laugh, and now understood how Leonard had made the Mary version in his comics all the more voluptuous than any real woman.
“But you, Dean. Dean Parker, chartered accountant from a sleepy town in upstate New York. A guy who worked hard and watched the love of his life pass away so young. A man who liked to drink a pint and throw a baseball around with friends. You’re the everyman who came from obscurity and saved the world. And that’s why I want to be a better man.”
I stopped walking and looked Leonard in the eyes. Through the helmet’s visor and his glasses, his brown eyes had a red glow to them on this world, and they looked hard at me. I hadn’t given much thought to my own story over the last couple years. It seemed so irrelevant with everything going on, and I was a little shocked to learn that anyone actually knew me. He’d painted a fairly accurate picture.
“Thanks, Leonard. I never thought of myself as anything special.”
“That’s what makes the best hero, don’t you see? I’m just happy to be here with you. Can you fill me in on the plan?”
“What do you know so far?” I asked as we started down the other side of the mountain.
He looked contemplative before speaking. “The Bhlat are really there, aren’t they?”
I nodded, the weight of my helmet exaggerating the gesture. “They are.”
“Son of a sailor. I didn’t believe Jeb when he told me the president went there and was missing.”
“My other friends are with her,” I said, trying to let him fill in the pieces.
“Slate, Nick, and Clare, right?” This kid knew his stuff.
“You seem to know a lot.”
“I have to pay attention to every little detail if I want my comics to be accurate.”
I thought back to a couple of crazy plots from the books and asked him about the one where Mary and I had to give our firstborn to an alien race’s king in exchange for our freedom.
“You were gone so long, I could only speculate on what was happening to you out there,” he said. “Pretty kickass, though, right?”
“I’ll be honest, I did enjoy reading them.”
“Seriously?” he asked, and I noted how much farther down the slope we were. Another half hour, and we’d be able to get on the scooter. My tired body was looking forward to the break.
“Only one thing,” I said.
“What?”
“You made my hair gray in the later issues. How old do you think I am?” I asked as a joke, but the truth was, I had been seeing some grays creeping into the sides of my hair, like unwanted visitors you knew would never leave once they showed up.
“You were gone for seven years. I expected you to have aged.” It was a valid point. “So the Bhlat are at Earth. How are we going to save the day?”
His optimism lifted me up. Such a simple question, but important to my current mindset. But his question was one-sided. It was as if he knew we were going to save the people of Earth; he just wanted to know how I was planning on doing it.
“We’re on their world. We need a bartering chip. There’s no way we can fight them without losing. We have to play our one hand, and that’s what we’re doing here. Playing our hand.” I didn’t go into further details, and Leonard seemed to accept that it was need-to-know, and he’d know when I needed him to.
“Then let’s do just that.”
My communicator vibrated, and I tapped it through to my suit’s earpiece. “Mary?”
“Dean, we’re almost to their ship. They seem to have bought our story. They asked about the one we call Dean, and we told them you were dead.”
Goosebumps lined my arms, like her saying that was a harbinger of things to come. “Be careful. Don’t let them take the communicator. We’re heading to the city now.”
“We?” she asked, worry and anger mixed together in her voice.
I forgot they wouldn’t have known I wasn’t alone. “The comic book kid, Leonard, conveniently learned we were on a mission and beat me to the secret portal. We need to lock that place down when we’re back.” When we’re back.
“Don’t let anything slow you down. Anything.” Mary had an edge to her voice, and I glanced at Leonard, who couldn’t hear our conversation.
“I won’t. Stay safe. It’ll be over soon, one way or another.”
“If this is it…”
“It won’t be,” I said, trying to keep the tremor from my voice.
“If it is, I want you to know how much you’ve meant to me. To be really loved and have a partner has meant the world to me.” She laugh-sobbed in my ear. “It’s meant many worlds to me. Just remember me, Dean Parker. Remember the spark we had so long ago on our trip to Peru and beyond.”
I held back tears, turning from Leonard so he couldn’t see my emotions threaten to overtake me.
“I won’t, babe. I never could. I’ll see you soon.”
“See you soon.” The connection went dead.
I shoved the pain in my gut down and kept moving.
Once the ground leveled out enough for me to trust using a hover scooter with the added weight of Leonard and our gear strapped to it, we hopped onto the vehicle. There was just enough room for us, me pushed too close to the front, and Leonard complaining half of him was hanging off the back of it.
Time wasn’t on my side as I hit the thruster, a little too heavily at first. Leonard’s arms wrapped tightly around me to keep him from flying off the end.
“Sorry,” I said into my mic, and eased up a bit. The lights of the city seemed distant as we moved from the hillside into the red-tinged forest. I had to slow to navigate the trees, and a couple times we could have walked faster as the copses got denser.
“It looks so much like home,” Leonard said. “Or Earth, at least,” he corrected himself. Earth was no longer this man’s home.