The Gatekeepers by Nathan Hystad

Author:Nathan Hystad [Hystad, Nathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Woodbridge Press
Published: 2019-07-09T16:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

We settled to the surface roughly a hundred miles away. The cockpit of the ship was the size of a small bedroom, screens and computers lined the walls, and a single seat close to the floor sat along the main controls. It was meant for the aliens, whose average height was three feet. Magnus hunched on the seat; his knees in proximity to his ears would have been a comical sight at any other time.

“Loweck.” Slate said her name again, but she was out. I lifted the injured arm, reaching for Magnus’ pack. There was a first-aid kit inside, and I grabbed it, searching for something to help.

Her arm wasn’t bleeding any longer. I threw on gloves and touched the blood pooling on the floor between the metal grates, and felt it between my fingers. It was viscous, smooth like oil.

“I don’t think this is blood,” I told Slate.

“What do you mean? She was shot,” he replied.

I showed him, and his brow furrowed.

“Where are we, Magnus? Will they come for us?” I asked.

He was standing now, ducking from hitting his head on an overhanging console. “No. I removed the tracking system and found a place at the edge of the rocks. They don’t seem to venture this far.”

“They might after what happened,” Slate said.

Magnus shrugged. “Maybe. Honestly, they’re not very tough. I kicked this one’s butt.”

“Where is he?” I asked. “The one who flew the ship?”

“Don’t ask,” Magnus said, answering my question indirectly. “Who is this?”

“Loweck. She’s with us,” Slate said defensively.

“Settle down, slugger, I was only asking. Why was a robot in prison?” Magnus asked, crouching beside us.

“Robot?” Slate’s eyes went wide, and it all became clear.

The fact that she was from Udoon, yet looked nothing like the Udoon race. Her ship had failed, and life support ran out. Her crew had died, but she hadn’t. She asked if they would let “someone like her” live on Haven. I felt foolish for not cluing in before.

Slate mopped his face with a hand. “Oh man. Story of my life.”

“Don’t tell me…” Magnus started, and I shot him a look, shutting him up mid-sentence. He cleared his throat. “Let’s get out of here. Come on.”

It was dark out by the time we settled into the camp Magnus had been living at for the last while.

“How did you visit us without being detected?” I asked, glancing over at Loweck. She was lying on the ground, and the liquid had stopped flowing from her injury. She made a few whirring noises, but her eyes remained gray.

Slate was eating something and pouting. There was grass here, but not much else. The ship was concealed under a sheet of the same material we used to cloak our ships. Magnus was pulling out all the stops here. That explained how he’d come and gone with ease.

“Like I said, these guys are pretty dumb, and the cloaking stuff helped. But they do seem to have some serious commerce going on here. There were some large transport vessels lowering through the atmosphere, so I had to check it out.

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