1.6 Nightmare
Capt Nelson woke up the next day in a plush hotel room where Colonel Steyn had insisted he spend the night before taking the trip back home. After a few hours of broken sleep, he finally managed to get rest only to be disturbed by a dream that he hadn’t dreamt for a long time. It was one of the recurring nightmares from a time in his life he thought he had left behind.
Flight Lieutenant Nelson is sitting next to another uniformed man. He looks around and feels comforted in the familiarity of the space around him. He can see the insides of the grey-blue hull of the Condor, the largest combat aircraft ever designed. He knows that in the back, there are several servicemen and women ready to be deployed. The fact that they are even sending personnel on the ground means that they must be close to winning. They would never take this risk otherwise. It’s his first mission outside the base, and is almost considered a reward for all the work he’s done testing these jets.
There is a windscreen in front of him, but he isn’t really trained to use it. There are many screens right under it that he uses, as well as the in flight computer that tells him everything he needs to know. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices a speck on the computer screen. It’s coming closer and closer. He wants to ignore it, but knows he can’t. He looks at the person seated next to him and sees the terror on his face. The Captain looks at him, shell shocked, but then regains composure and speaks into the microphone as calmly as possible, “Condor to Control. Can you hear us? We have an unidentified object approaching us.”
No response.
Ominous sounding alarms start to go off. The Captain grabs the microphone, presses a button and yells into it this time, “We are under attack. I repeat: We are under attack. Brace for impact.”
Even before the Captain is able to finish that sentence, he hears the kind of loud clanging sound no one wants to hear. His suit starts to feel hot. In that instant, he knows they’ve been hit and they may not be able to salvage the aircraft.
“Evacuate. I repeat: Evacuate.” He remembers his training. He’s gone through this worst case scenario. He hopes that everyone in the back is able to get out in time. He wants to ensure that he can keep the aircraft steady for long enough.
The Condor keeps losing altitude quickly. They descend past a layer of clouds and he catches first glimpses of large dunes. The Captain looks at him. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
He thinks he can buy more time. He doesn’t let go of the controls. He hears the Captain bark into his year, “Get the hell out of here, Simmons. That’s an order.”
He nods and puts the flights on autopilot. They are now only four thousand feet above the ground. He presses a button and is immediately in freefall. He waits a few seconds and tugs on his strap to open his parachute. He tries to look down to get a sense of where he’s going, but there seems to be a massive dust storm all around him and all he can see is sand swirling and dancing on the ground like a giant snake, waiting to devour him whole. Within seconds, he’s enveloped in sand. It’s in his eyes through the edges of his goggles and he can feel tiny particles of sand pelt him in the face. Before he can brace himself for impact, the ground hits him as his knees buckle and he collapses in a heap, and the parachute entangles itself around him, making him struggle for air.
That was the last thing Captain Nelson remembered before he woke up with a jolt. He was covered in sweat. He found himself gripping on to the bedsheets tight. As he got his bearings, he got out of bed and when he realized it would be time to wake up anyway, he decided to make himself a cup of coffee.
As he stood in front of the bathroom mirror to freshen up, he considered the reflection staring back at him. He didn’t feel that old, but he certainly looked it. His usually clean shaven face had a hint of a stubble on it. He had short hair that was greying at the temples. He had a bald patch developing toward the back of his head and his hairline had started to recede a bit, small wrinkles were starting to form in the corners of his eyes. He had always had an avuncular face, more a professor, less military man. Over the past few hours, he felt he had aged a bit, as he finally started to consider the enormity of the information that he had just received the day before.
It was only after he walked out of that conference room at the IA HQ that he had had the chance to contemplate everything that had happened to him in the past day. Was it even a day, or was it a few hours? At first, there had been the message, the kind of which he’d never seen before. He was relaxing in his living room in the old city of Oxford in the sector of London, watching a rerun of a nature documentary, when it was interrupted by the kind of video message that he’d never seen before. Some sort of bug in the network programming, he thought to himself at first, but as he heard the first line of the message, all his military senses automatically engaged, and he was in rapt attention.
“Captain Nelson”, the message simply said. Through a broadcast. Directly into his living room.
Most people would have been alarmed at such an event, but he was not most people. He was well aware that the kind of technology the IA (especially the defense department) possessed was generally assumed to be science fiction by the general public.
While he could not place the voice at the first time of hearing, he could clearly place it when he heard it the second time, even as the picture on the telecast stayed frozen on the iguana that had been the subject of the scene he was watching. It was most certainly Colonel Steyn, the current Head of the International Alliance. He had cut out the middlemen and decided to deliver a message himself.
“We need you. I’m sending someone to get you to HQ. I trust you can have your things together by 1700 your time. See you soon.”
“We need you.” Those were the only three words he could remember. He processed the other information, but those were the only three that really mattered.
He half-remembered telling his wife, Sophie, who nodded in silent agreement and steeled herself in a way that only a military wife could. She insisted on packing for him, insisted on his shaving before he left. He knew he could count on her more than he could on himself. She quickly and efficiently packed together a suitcase that he knew would contain enough supplies to last him for a few days. He marvelled at how she could make this transition from a frail, vulnerable little woman into an absolute powerhouse at the drop of a hat. It was her superpower, in his mind. It’s what had gotten him - gotten them - through the hard times.
The IA soldiers were at his doorstep at 1700 sharp, as the Commander had promised. They gave him a sharp salute, took his bags off him and ushered him into a futuristic-looking vehicle. He gave Sophie a quick kiss as she stood in the driveway. She looked at him through determined eyes and gave him a weak smile. He could tell that she was straining under the effort, so he did his best to look calm.
“I’ll be here”, was all she said and that was all he needed to hear. He turned around and got into the vehicle.
He had flown earlier models of the flying vehicle he was currently in, but hadn’t actually been in that particular one. It lifted off near-noiselessly without needing a runway. It took him a short distance to the airport and from then on, things moved very quickly. He was ushered into a medium sized aircraft, offered a comfortable seat and asked to sit back and relax. Strangely enough, he was able to clear his mind and take a nap. He wasn’t sure how long it was. It could’ve been four hours or six (it had been just under two) to get him all the way across the ocean to the city of New York in the district of the Northeast Americas.
He was grateful that Sophie had packed his shaving kit, as he rummaged through his suitcase. He shaved and had his coffee in quiet contemplation as he sat on a chair adjacent to his bed and again looked at New York before him. Doubts had started to form in his mind. Was he too old to take on something like this? How would he even begin to explain this to Sophie and his daughter, Tara? Would he ask them to leave their lives and go with him? Would he be able to go if they said no? So many questions, so many thoughts. The only thing certain about it all was the sheer uncertainty of it.
But then there was also something compelling about it. Here was a chance to do something that millions of humans had only dreamt about. He would be written in the history books of the future as the person who captained the ship that took humanity into life beyond earth. Could he pass up that chance?
These thoughts were interrupted by a buzz on his phone. Sophie was trying to reach him. He pressed a button and her image appeared on the screen in front of the couch he was sitting on. His wife’s face filled the screen. She smiled slightly and asked him how things were.
“I’m fine, sweetheart. Just a little tired. I’ll be home in a few hours.”
Sophie nodded. “Is everything OK?” Then she paused for a second and then asked, “You’ve had that dream again, haven’t you?”
The Captain thought about denying it before realizing it wasn’t worth trying. His wife knew him too well. He nodded weakly. “Yes, but I think I know why I had the dream. They told me something that put my mind into overdrive. I’ll explain when I get home. Can you ask Tara to pop over as well?”
“Yes, dear”, she said. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll do the right thing.”
Capt Nelson felt a lot better having spoken to his wife. “Now I know we will”, he said as he smiled what was probably his first heartfelt smile in over twenty four hours.