Irina’s Quest

Irina's mission is to find a planet for her people, but Ken is smitten and determined to lure Irina away from danger.

Will Irina's people survive? Can Ken convince Irina to leave her people behind?
Read an excerpt.

EXCERPT

The peeling bark of the birch trees looked like curling paper tendrils against the electric blue of the sky. Birds chirped repeatedly as if trying to compose a melody, the same melody, the exact same melody. The ship only had so many audio files for sparrows and bluejays and after four years, I’d heard every one of them at least a million times.

Twigs snapped on the forest floor as I headed into the cafeteria where my shoes packed white sand with every step. Past the beach and palm trees, I watched wave number two reach its peak. I’d seen all four of the waves so many times, I knew exactly where each would break into its frothy white crest.

What it would have been like to be in the presence of a real ocean? My mother told me about going to the beach. But even in her day, no one could swim in the contaminated water.

By pushing a button, I said goodbye to the Caribbean and its hollow metallic music soundtrack. The wall turned black with lighted pinpoints denoting known stars, planets, moons, and comets in this galaxy. Faint red lines indicated their orbital paths. A big part of my job was to plot celestial bodies we came across and determine the likelihood of them having suitable atmospheres. Almost every month we located a new planet or moon to investigate, but in almost one hundred years we hadn’t found one that could come close to support human life. This time, however, I might have found one.

“Irina,” my mathematician, Sandy, called as she trudged through the sand. She stood beside me as I stared at the three-dimensional map. “Don’t even tell me we done come across another candidate.” Her brown eyes didn’t blink or show any excitement, but my pulse raced at the mere mention.

“This looks like a good one right here.” I pointed to a planet as far away from its sun as Earth. I spotted it a few weeks ago and we’d been racing toward it ever since.

Sandy’s shoulder-length dark blonde hair wisped out at the sides exaggerating her large brown eyes. Her waist was tiny and her bust and hips plump – the exact opposite of me - my eyes were too tiny for my narrow face and I didn’t have a curve from my limp brown hair to my feet.

Sandy pointed. “Got any preliminary readings on that thing?” She said in her West Virginia drawl that didn’t belie her intelligence. When Earth’s surface became uninhabitable, her family had survived by hiding in her family’s coal mine.

“Not yet. Just like Earth, an asteroid belt is blocking it.” A tingle ran up my spine.

“It’ll be like all the others.” Her breath streamed out in a huff.

“As soon as you have data to review, you’ll see. This planet just might be the one.” This planet had more potential than any of the others we’d found on my shift. Each commander was on duty for five years and I’d prayed I’d be the one to find the planet before my shift was up. I had only one more year to find our next home. “We all have to hope.” Even after all these years it was hard to believe Earth was completely barren of life – not even a jellyfish survived.

“After all these years in space ‘n you still got hope?” Her eyes rolled back.

“I will find a planet.” If we didn’t that would be the end of mankind.

“I done worked it out mathematically. The odds of finding a planet whose sun isn’t too close or too far, whose core isn’t too hot or too cold, that has sufficient water,” she held her finger up, “that isn’t all frozen, and has sufficient oxygen.” Her head swung back and forth so hard her whole body went with it. “And then on top of that to be seismically stable. No way.” Her eyes tried to bore a hole through me. “Never happen. You just gotta accept it.”

I turned away from her and the map and stared at the other wall that still showed Caribbean jungles. No way was I going to get pessimistic. I’d find a planet.

“Just don’t get all worked up. Irina, I done seen you mope around here every time your dreams get clobbered.”

A deep thundering sound shook the walls. The floor vibrated then the ship wobbled. The sand shifted. I knocked into Sandy and we fell against a wooden picnic table supposed to make us feel as if we were on a Caribbean beach.

The map and palm trees disappeared. The walls turned black. Emergency lights blinked on.

“Shit,” Sandy screamed.

We both dashed toward the doors, already parted, anticipating we’d be heading for the bridge.

“Fucking Justifiers,” I cursed entering the control room with wall-to-wall computer screens and monitoring devices.

Sandy scooted across the fluffy red carpet, but I overtook her and slammed my fist down on the button. The shields engaged and I prayed they’d protect us yet again. They’d been constructed for navigating through asteroid belts. The designers never dreamed we'd have anyone firing at us.

“There they are.” Sandy punched in commands. The large wall across from the command center turned into a screen of black space. The tiny space vessel – steel gray and arrow-shaped, just like the end of the Devil’s tail, realizing we were no longer vulnerable, turned and headed in another direction. They’d be back though - no doubting that.

The bridge was the darkest place on the ship, lit from beneath, and one wall covered with Computer’s tiny multi-colored bulbs.

“There’s some damage.” She pulled up a diagram of the ship on a perpendicular wall. Red lines ran along the rounded hull indicating where we’d taken damage. “They are the areas where the ship’s already goin’ and repairin’ itself.”

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Our training hadn’t prepared us in defense tactics. When Earth was no longer habitable even deep down in the caves, the young people trained to colonize planets were sent out in space. I never allowed myself to think of the ones we left behind.

The day we left our solar system, we’d believed we were the only humans to have survived. We’d never even heard of the Justifiers, but they’d built a vessel and were right behind us hell bent on annihilating all of humankind.

Sandy, a genius at mathematics, assisted me as our security specialist. If it weren’t for the Justifiers, Sandy’s skills wouldn’t be needed and she’d be hibernating below with all of the other passengers. One good thing about having an enemy, Sandy got to stay above deck with me, meaning I wasn’t all alone.

“Damned Justifiers. How can they believe God wants them to kill us? Whoo, up in the mountains we had snakehandlers, lots of fire ‘n brimstone preachers, but I never heard them talking about killing folk.” Sandy ran both sets of fingers through her hair.

“Yeap. So God or Allah or Yahweh’ll take everyone to heaven.”

She plunked some more buttons and perused more diagnostics of the ship. “Way things’re going, maybe they’ll get their way.”

“How can you say that?” She infuriated me. Sometimes I believed she was actually willing to accept the end of the human race.

“Just wishful thinking.” Her voice was slow and melancholy. “We’re just torturing ourselves riding around with our pods and grand stores of DNA, but we’ll never find that perfect place.” She stretched her arms over her head. “Why couldn’t I have been born in 1954 instead of 2354?”

“We’ll find a planet.”

She put her feet up on the chrome console. “I’d’ve driven around in one of them old Chevrolets with the big fenders.”

“Have you forgotten that all that gas guzzling is one of the reasons our planet became uninhabitable?”

Her feet plopped down on the floor. “Irina, with you, it’s always business.”

Her negativity was how she protected herself. She couldn’t deal with let downs.

“But just think how great life will be when we finally find that perfect planet, that new Earth.” I imagined waterfalls next to verdant fields and big canopy-like trees I could have picnics under.

Sandy didn’t bother to respond. Security codes and diagnostic formulas streamed down her screen.

“Each of us will have our own little cottage.” I closed my eyes and imagined. “I want one with a thatched roof and lots of windows to let that natural sunlight in.” What would it feel like to get sunburned? Or get a mosquito bite?

“It’s better not to get your hopes up.” She plunked more keys and the formulas whipped by even faster.

I ignored her. Hope was what kept me going. “The first thing I’m going to do is plant a garden with lots of flowers and vegetables.” I wonder what it would feel like to dig around in real dirt.

She continued to manipulate data on her machine effectively ignoring me.

“Wish I could give you a little bit of my optimism.”

Sandy didn’t even look at me.

"Hungry?" I asked.

"Nope, having too much fun right here," she replied sarcastically.

I headed back to the cafeteria imagining eating something delicious like lasagna with garlic bread or Szechuan chicken and an egg roll.

I glowered at the boring square machine in front of me. It was hardly appetizing. “Replicator, what has the chef prepared for today?”

“Irina must tell Replicator what Irina wants,” said the tinny voice.

Which was worse? Talking to Sandy or this thing?

“I’d like the house special.” I’d read about those in our history files. Restaurants used to offer them. Not that I’d ever been in a restaurant. “Everything Replicator fixes is special, but Irina must specify.”

“I want something fresh.” My grandmother talked about something called ‘fresh food’, whatever that meant.

“Replicator has searched all files and ‘fresh’ isn’t found. Please be more specific.”

“Replicator, when we find our planet, I am going to retire you.” I really meant I was going to smash it to smithereens.

“Replicator always tries to please Irina.”

Instead of arguing more, I shut off the voice control and grabbed the keyboard and plugged in what I wanted.

The cafeteria became the Sahara. The wall screens turned to a deep blue sky with mountains of white sand to each side. The sun shone blindingly. A caravan of camels trudged down an incline, their feet leaving deep gouges in the dune. I closed my eyes momentarily. When I opened them, a tent had materialized. A blue oriental rug seemed to beckon me inside. I sprawled on it and enjoyed the luxurious pile. When I sat back up, Shish kebab, rice, and lentils had appeared on a white tablecloth.

“Salaam aleichem,” a deep voice interrupted my meal.

I almost choked. A man stood outside the tent blocking the sun.

I hadn’t programmed in company. Could he be one of the crew members who should be hibernating in one of the pods below?

He entered the tent and sat across from me.

There were over five hundred people below. I didn’t know all of them, but this particular man would have been hard to forget. His skin was deliciously smooth and his hair dark. Thick eyebrows framed almond-shaped eyes.

“What are you doing awake?” I asked him.

“Awake?” His brows arched and he looked at me as if he hadn’t understood.

Odd way for him to react. “Did the attack awaken you?” Maybe the temporary power interruption caused his pod to malfunction. If that happened, he was lucky to be alive.

“Do you mean that terrible racket?” He smiled, not the kind of response I’d expect from someone jolted out of hibernation.

I should order him back to his pod, but male company did feel really good. The inside of the tent was too dark to see him well. “Computer. Carribean. Evening.”

The tent and dunes disappeared. We both sat on a picnic table beside a thatch-roofed cabana. Waves lazily lapped against the tropical beach and the sun was now a pinkish ball disappearing below the horizon.

“Much better,” he said.

Now I could see him. His eyes were a deep brown, his hair parted on the side and combed over to a crisp line above his prominent forehead. He wore the same uniform our crew wore, but it fit much better. In fact, it hugged every inch of his physique.

It had been way too long since I’d been with a man.

“You really need to get back in your pod,” I said, but he knew that. Why did I have to tell him? He knew what was at stake. It could take millennium to find our perfect planet and every year of life was valuable to us.

“Can I get in this pod with you?” His eyebrows rose reminding me of pictures I’d seen of medieval court jesters.

“I’m on duty,” I replied as I imagined snuggling up to him. No, I reminded myself. Only one thing was important now - finding a home for humankind. “You really need to get below deck and back into your pod.”

Thanks for reading an excerpt of Irina. It is my first foray into science fiction and it is as challenging as it is fun to write.

Hopefully it will be published soon!