Second Contact [Alien Nation #2] (#Wattys2019)

22

Cass thought she knew what despair felt like, how humans waited for that one spark of hope to ignite in the darkness only for it to never come.

Now she knew that the emotions she had tried to imagine from what she had seen in human media, from what she had pieced together from Jules' and Avery's late-night conversations with her, were only a shadow of how it really felt to watch that last spark of hope gutter out.

They were leaving Earth. The swell of power as Erri brought the engines to life normally made her feel so ecstatic, but now it was like a door slamming closed.

There had been no sign of Jules since they first lost contact with her. Not a ping from her tracker, an SOS message, nothing. Miranda and even Cedric had both called the head of the diplomatic program, to no avail. They were needed at the Hub, and they were needed immediately. A further delay could see Erri grounded, and Miranda wouldn't hear of it.

So Erri took them up into the skies of Earth, the rugged mountains that had been her home these past weeks fading into the night before they disappeared entirely under wispy white clouds.

It seemed a lifetime ago that Jules had told her she had a soul somewhere in amongst all her programming. If that were true, Cass thought she must be leaving part of it behind in the Sol system.

She didn't talk to Erri as he took them away from Earth, expertly dodging the hostiles' sensor sweeps she'd calculated for him, letting her automated responses do the talking. All she could focus on was that blue-white swirl in the darkness as it rapidly shrank into nothingness.

But right before it disappeared, there was a blip on her sensors.

It was small but moving quickly. A less powerful AI might have missed the tiny vessel as it headed towards Earth. But not her.

And on board...

"Erri!" she cried, not caring if he was alone in the cockpit, beyond caring who heard her now. "You have to turn the Phoenix around."

"What?" he spluttered. "I can't just -"

"Jules' tracker just showed up on my sensors. It's on a small vessel heading for Earth."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course."

The Phoenix slowed, but didn't stop or turn around. "Cass, it could be a trap."

"It could," she admitted, "but it could also be her."

"I know. Cass, I want it to be her, but... ah, fuck it." She watched him through the camera as he tapped out a message – to Miranda, she assumed. Seconds later, the reply came. "We can investigate, at a distance, until we're sure it's her."

"Yes!" Finally the Phoenix banked and turned, nose pointing at Earth again. As Earth grew larger in their viewscreen, Cass wondered what she would have done if Miranda had said no. Would she be able to get back to Earth before Erri regained control of the Phoenix? Would he even try?

"We'll have a visual in five minutes if they continue their current trajectory," he muttered, almost as much to himself as to her.

"Got it," she said a few moments later, pulling the visual feed up in the corner of the main viewscreen. "It's like the shuttle we saw on the beach." Anger flared inside her and she directed the extra power to the engines. If Jules was their prisoner... Cass wasn't equipped with guns, but it didn't matter. If they'd hurt Jules, she'd ram them out of the sky.

When she switched her focus back to the cockpit, Miranda and Cedric had joined Erri there, Miranda hovering just behind his chair, arms folded tightly over her chest as if to hold herself together.