The sense of smell returned to Phoenix with a vengeance, a sharp odor searing his sinuses like he had inhaled a ton of wasabi from a sushi joint. His nostrils and throat burned, which aroused more of his senses. His head felt detached from his body, floating in zero gravity. And his skull tingled, and a dull pain throbbed behind his eyes like a growing pressure that wanted to escape. Even more disturbing, he couldn't see because a black void surrounded him, an impenetrable darkness. He wasn't wearing a spacesuit, at least not that he could tell, and his face didn't feel like it was about to freeze and crack like a block of ice in the vacuum of space. There were no stars. No planets. Only his conscious mind, and that pain in his head that wanted to vent through his eyeballs.
As time crept by, the blood in the tiny vessels in his face rushed toward his scalp. Was he upside down? His shoulders and arms came into play, hanging and jostling in the air. His legs and feet dangled too. It was like someone had draped his body over a moving concrete wall or barricade, which made little sense. Somewhere below him, an object or objects clopped along, rising and falling, pounding into a loose and gritty material, reminding him of a mixture of gravel and sand.
Wait. Those sensations could only happen in gravity, not in a vacuum. Where in the universe am I?
Phoenix opened his eyes.
Dark, intersecting lines crossed his vision for a millisecond before he winced and closed them.
Disoriented, he didn't know which way was up or down, or sideways.
In that moment, the mounting pressure forced its way out through the slits in his eyelids, but that minor relief helped little at all, and it didn't give him a frame of reference to calculate his whereabouts. The throbbing intensified, building into a sharp stabbing pain that spider webbed out across his forehead. He tried to shake it away, but the vibrations rattled his brain. The entire head in an oblivion was irritating and disorienting.
His cheek bounced off something as hard as a rock. Phoenix opened his eyes again. His head had collided with the back of one of those dark-clad soldiers, his body carried over a shoulder like a sack of dog food. His gaze shuddered and shifted, revealing a foot trail of sand, small rocks, sparse grass and weeds. The man's shoulder blade pressed into Phoenix's chest like a piece of steel. Nothing about this guy was soft.
Phoenix's chin struck the man's hardened back muscle. "Could you ease up a bit, buddy?"
"Commander Drake is conscious," a voice said with deep resonation. "What should we do?"
The question came from one of the other soldiers, the one carrying Ariel's curved form slumped over a shoulder, a hand on her backside. Hiked up high on her thighs, her skirt revealed a pair of slender legs. Normally, the sight of a pleasant set of female legs would stir up a wave of inordinate desire inside Phoenix. But the sight provoked another reaction... a rumbling caldron of nausea in the pit of his stomach. As great as Ariel's legs were, the view only made him think of Nova's missing limb.
Phoenix turned away and cast his gaze to the ground.
"Our orders are to stow them on the plane and stand guard during the flight," the dark figure replied, the one carrying Phoenix. "It doesn't matter if the subjects are awake. That does not violate our orders."
With the pain in his head subsiding as they continued on, Phoenix focused on the uneasiness in his stomach. And staring down at the ground was not helping. He raised his chin up as much as he could from the guy's shoulder blade and craned his neck for a view of the retreating scenery behind him. In the dark, a bank of exterior lights illuminated an air traffic control tower and a pair of one-story structures with flat roofs. So, they were at a secluded airfield, headed who knows where. The destination didn't matter because Phoenix knew they were going wherever the soldiers went. Why they were abducting them was the most important question? He didn't bother asking because he knew they wouldn't answer him, but at least he could take solace that they were still alive.
On the other side of Phoenix, a soldier trudged along carrying Callisto.
The ensign's head turned. He was stirring, coming to. He moaned and made eye contact with Phoenix.
"Put me down," Ariel said, an edge to her voice. "I said, put me down, you big brute." She pounded her fist into the soldier's backside. "Ow. Is your butt armor plated or something?"
"You're wasting your breath, Doc," Phoenix said.
She glared over at him. "I'm not a doc. I told you to call me—"
"I know. It's Ariel or Dr. Fairhaven. Sorry, slip of the tongue."
"And what is this?" she asked.
"This... is us getting kidnapped, and there's nothing we can do about it."
"He's right," Callisto said. "You might as well go with the flow. I'm thinking these guys aren't your average soldiers. They're something else."
A light brightened around them as the soldier's boots clanked onto a metal grating, ascending a ramp. It appeared to be the rear of a cargo plane. As they entered the fuselage, a lone star twinkled on the edge of the horizon above a range of distant mountains, Venus hanging in the west. With that bit of knowledge, and his mind filling in the blanks, Phoenix deduced the soldiers had taken them from the mega-carrier by a small boat or an aircraft. Then transported them to land, then moved them by another vehicle, most likely a van or truck since he didn't see another plane anywhere around the airfield. There were no other vehicles in the vicinity either, so the van or truck was not within visible range, which meant the soldiers had carried them a great distance on foot.
Inside the cargo plane—which Phoenix identified from memory as an Air Force C170—the soldiers dropped him, Ariel, and Callisto to the floor. The men weren't breathing heavy and didn't appear tired or strained after the journey to the plane. They looked calm and in control of the situation, not an ounce of stress, physically or mentally. Phoenix pushed up to stand, but a firm hand on his shoulder halted his advance. Five men towered over them, speechless, emotionless, like mindless mechanical cyborgs.
A sixth soldier pulled a woman by the arm from the front of the plane and slung her to her knees next to Phoenix. She brushed aside a lock of auburn hair from her face and glanced over at him. He didn't have a clue as to her identity. She wore jeans, a dirt smudged tank top, and hiking boots. Her arms revealed bruises from the rough handling by her captors, and her bottom lip had swelled, showing dried blood on the center crack.
Phoenix clenched his jaw. He glared through slits at the soldier nearest him. He hated it when a man laid a hand on a woman. Of course, these weren't ordinary men. They completed their assignments and followed their orders by the book and to the letter. Heartless. Cold. Efficient. Despite that, there was no need for excessive force.
The sixth soldier, the one who dragged the woman and slung her next to Phoenix, pressed a red button on a control panel and the ramp rose from the ground with a hydraulic hum. The gap narrowed and sealed them inside the plane.
"Phase one complete," the sixth soldier said. "Begin phase two." He didn't talk into a mic but spoke like it was a definitive announcement to the other soldiers, or someone received his words at another location.
The engines of the cargo plane roared to life, vibrations shaking the fuselage. It was then Phoenix recalled a unique detail about the C170. It was a pilotless aircraft, an innovative technology that was tested and sure. Seconds later, the plane moved, creeping down the runway.
Callisto looked at Phoenix. Their current circumstance seemed to ease the fire of anger in his eyes, if only a fraction. Phoenix didn't have to hear the accusation to know that Callisto blamed him for Nova's death. Maybe it was his rush to shoot his spear at the fish, or maybe it was the fact he got the nano-case treatment and Nova didn't? Or maybe it was both?
Maybe if Callisto realized it was Phoenix's fiancée who died and not his own, maybe he wouldn't harbor so much anger? Phoenix had enough guilt to carry himself. He didn't need Callisto adding to the weight.
Phoenix leaned back into a cargo net that hung against the wall behind him. As he exhaled the lingering frustration and felt his stomach settling, he peered over at Ariel. She stared back with anger simmering within her, clear in her hardened cheeks and fierce blue eyes. In the short time he had known her, her facial expressions were normally soft and kind. But now, looking at the doctor's stern countenance, he had a feeling she could take care of herself, even if she had to get creative to do it.
The plane sped up, nearing takeoff speed. Phoenix turned his attention to the auburn-haired woman. She mirrored his determined gaze.
"Guess we're along for the ride," he said, sensing the plane lifting off from the runway. "Might as well settle in."