End Horizon

6. Mark

Organic beings through all of history required an element in their environment to spark evolution. It took hundreds upon thousands of years for a genetic left-turn to become a prominent element of a species. Nothing was an overnight process, except for perhaps this one time in the universe. Upon the early shift’s reemergence into the bridge, they noticed that an entirely new section of the ship had been discovered, or rather developed , overnight. Calvin was the first to call Mark up with him, gesturing to the grid of the ship that had now constructed itself two extensions below the belly of the ship.

“ Cannons ?” He was stunned, stopping dead the second he realized what shape their ship was beginning to take over their years of manipulating its inner workings.

“Nothing led any of us to believe this was a combat vessel,” Calvin said under his breath. “You look at the old designs of fighter jets and they look like toys compared to what we have now.”

“Yeah, but-- fucking cannons ?” Mark turned fully to Calvin, unable to simply turn his head and accept what he was seeing before him as the truth. The man was right; nothing on this ship presented itself as a fighter craft, but more of a mobile lab drifting through space. Having no idea how to even process this, Mark put a hand to his forehead and felt himself utter nonsense.

“Not even the [Tankers] have projectiles,” Calvin continued, crossing his arms tightly. “The longer we stay on this ship the more and more it seems to adjust to us on it. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe we can really turn shit around and--”

“This is an entire weapons system we don’t even know how to run .” As Mark stepped up to the grid, the consoles rose and he placed his hand to the left, not even wincing as he was locked in. The ship had presented itself with the development as soon as its crew was awake. Perhaps it was proud of its new feature, the twin cannons folded out like a t-rex’s two arms with a wheel of light spinning within. As Mark tightened his grip on the console, the twin arms lowered and slowly laced together. There was a low rumble through the ship, a silence befalling everyone as they felt the floor beneath them tremble; the ship breathing a new chance of life.

“Jesus Christ , we’ve got a real ship.”

Over the next few weeks the ship began to rebuild itself once more to suit its hosts needs. It was a sudden shift of their two years of work with hallways overlapping and changing and sometimes leading the crew in a circle before they were completely developed. There was only one recorded injury as hollow belly of the ship drew itself a wider rotunda, the installed metal railing snapping and flying suddenly in all directions.

With no way to view the cannon from the outside without descending into the atmosphere, Mark and Trent took the ship down to sit just outside the limits of Staten Island. It was a vacation for some, breathing in the air that tasted sweeter now that wildlife had seeped into the veins of the concrete jungle. To Mark Corley and Calvin Matthews, this was an opportunity to discuss their real plans for what was “next”.

“We have an advantage here, we can take it.”

“And go where?” Mark was unimpressed for some reason and he couldn’t shake it. He’d love to be enthused about the sudden development but his mind kept wandering back to the night he caught Rose at the consoles. There were good reasons to keep her away from receptive parts of the ship, one of them being they didn’t know how the hell it would respond to hybrid DNA. She wasn’t some relocated brain in the body of a worker drone, she was… something .

“We’ve got all the confirmation we need that there’s intelligence out there.”

“Something tells me they don’t have a welcome party planned for us.”

“We have their ship ,” Calvin growled, stepping in line between Mark and the ship. “It’s been two years without any contact and that’s probably because we haven’t done a damn thing except sit and watch the big blue marble spin. Lord knows we’ve exhausted our efforts.”

Mark’s narrowed eyes moved to meet Calvin. The one guy who didn’t put up with Mark’s unresponsive and vague antics. The one guy not in my fucking way, at least . He brought a hand to the light scars on his neck, not taking kindly to remembering what he had seen become of the people down here.

“Don’t you think it’s a little late?” He couldn’t find the power in his voice now, realizing he barely whispered his concern. “Imagine we go out there and there’s actually something or someone waiting there for us. No one came for this ship, there was no retaliation to a goddamn uprising so maybe they were alone too.”

“ Who? ”

Mark remembered that alien well, its proud and thin frame much taller and developed than the drones it created. The one creature that had a plan with the human race and had either come back to harvest, or conduct its own messed-up experiments. One being more likely than the other, everything considered.

“The alien that came here. I saw them… it… I don’t know. There were other ships, but this one, this was the one that had them. The flagship , right?”

Calvin nodded, waiting for Mark to continue.

“Goin’ on three years now I’ve tried to figure out why this happened and no one has come up with a better theory than it was another lifeform’s curiosity. They wanted something from us and they took it. Doesn’t matter if it worked out or not, the result is--”

“People like your daughter.”

“Yeah,” Mark said flatly, not expecting that to get the best of him. “Rose.”

“She’s a fluke of what they intended. And she nearly didn’t survive.”

“Kinda regret letting you in all that, Matthews.”

There was a ghost of a smile, but Calvin just sighed. They had little time to be anything more than working together some greater good of humanity, their survival and arranging a small military formation. Mark sighed as well.

“Really kind of turning this on me, you know? Not wanting to expect the worst of a whole… species, or whatever, just because of one bad thing. You know they killed millions of people, right? Might have been one guy, but--”

Calvin stared right through him.

He knew he was right, that they would have to make the final push and leave. Get out this system and figure it out for themselves. Maybe it would be like the fantasy of it all, where it would work out eventually for the human race, welcomed into the arms of the endless possibilities of the universe. It was mankind betting on stardust; a leap of faith into an abyss.