COMPETE: The Atlantis Grail (Book Two) - Preview

CHAPTER THIRTY (draft)

​CHAPTER THIRTY

Panic hits me with a surge of adrenaline. It blasts through my moment of stark, cold, debilitating, idiot paralysis.

"The Emergency Protocol . . ." I whimper, while I stare at the glorious colored stars and giant nebula . . .and at Hugo, turned to stone next to me.

"Oh my God . . ." he whimpers also. He is still in paralysis mode.

It seems, both of us have lost our voices from the terror.

I regain mine quickly. "Hugo! Wake up! Get a goddamn grip!"

I breathe heavily, wildly, panting with frantic panic. My pulse hammers in my temples, as I turn to the QSBEP-1 Emergency Instructions list that's lit up in red text on the wall panel before me.

There's not a second to lose, I recall. We have to hurry, because the Quantum Stream field trace dissipates almost instantly.

"Okay, what! What do we do?" Hugo mutters, looking like he's about to weep.

We both stare at the Emergency Protocol.

"Okay," I speak in a crazed hurry. "We listen to the space around us in all directions for any QS signal trace. Which means—turn the resonance scanners on!"

"Okay, yes," Hugo responds. "Right! We use Global Scan Mode!"

We activate the resonance scanners and listen.

The ship's acoustic grid crackles to life all around us, as we start hearing the eerie silence of space from the hull itself, with occasional pulsar bursts of unknown radio frequency, interpreted by the ship as dull bursts of faint static.

"How long do we listen?" Hugo exclaims after a while.

"I don't know!" I am starting to hyperventilate at this point, and a lump is rising in the back of my throat.

"So, we keep listening!" Hugo looks at me, then looks out at the glorious space vista outside, fidgets in his seat.

"Yeah . . ." I say. "We kind of have to. This is the first step in the Emergency Protocol and we can't proceed past it."

"Oh, God . . . oh, God. . . ."

​* * *​

About five minutes later, as the shuttle resonance scanners cycle on all frequencies, we're still picking up only faint crackle echoes of distant radio waves from the stars. None of them are even close to being the Quantum Stream field traces.

Our only chances and our luck have come and gone, many, many long minutes ago.

It's time to face it, but neither one of us—Hugo or myself—can.

We're cut off.

We're going to die here.

I listen with intense focused attention to the resonance scan going on around us. Empty eerie crackle, punctuated by silence.

My eyes are brimming with moisture now, and the lump in the back of my throat is choking me.

Gracie. . . . I'm never going to see my sister again.

Nor my little brother Gordie. Or George. My entire family back on Earth—I won't be able to help them, or even stupidly die in the Games of the Atlantis Grail while trying to help them.

And I will never see him again.

Aeson Kassiopei.

"Hey! What was that?" Hugo reacts desperately at a small blip noise, followed by a hollow reverb echo.