by T. L Smith
The small sickbay stood only a couple doors from mine and inside another creature prowled through cabinets. It turned to watch us enter. I pointed to the exam table and their leader laid Carl out. I fought to position myself for a closer look. A lack of gravity and the clumsiness of the suit’s gloves was going to make treating him impossible.
I peeled my arms out of the confining atmosphere suit. Half-freed, I magnetized my boots and pulled on surgical gloves. While I had greater flexibility, I still felt unstable. “Computer, can you give me back some gravity, at least a quarter-G.”
“Ma’am, all systems power is being supplemented by the other craft. I have no access to their systems and communications continue to fail.”
“Gravity, I need gravity.” I picked up a pair of forceps from the med kit and let them float in mid-air. I looked at their leader and pointed to the airborne forceps. “Gravity.” I pulled the clamp downward. I repeated the word and action again. “I need gravity.”
He spoke. Maybe to someone else. Maybe to me. The helmet never turned away from me, but my body settled down to the decking. I nodded energetically. “Thank you!”
More stable, I removed the shirt. With some gravity back, blood streamed down Carl’s face. I sprayed the wound with a disinfectant. It foamed up pink and hissed. I waited as the bubbles broke down and then swabbed the wound. The disinfectant had a secondary chemical to stay the flow of blood for a few minutes. I pulled a scanner over Carl’s face. “Computer, assess injuries.”
It only took a second to look past flesh and bone. “Severe concussion, fracture of left frontal bone over left orbit. Stretches to left medical plate. Interior bone splinter causing bleed...” It rattled off more details.
“Damn!” I grit my teeth as the system listed the treatment required. I knew a lot of Carl’s history. He’d led a rough life before showing up here. His body contained a lot of artificial bone, including part of his skull. He’d hit in just the right angle to rattle one of those bone plates, resulting in the splinter between his skull and brain. I had to get it out before it migrated deeper. I had to relieve the growing pressure inside his skull.
Working through clenched teeth, the computer and I played doctor. Totally focused on Carl, I almost forgot about our unwanted visitors. Except whenever the leader leaned closer to see what I was doing.
It wasn’t pretty work, but the computer did the worst of the work. It guided my hand to the damaged plate. With the plate removed, pooling blood escaped. The pressure on his brain dropped to safer levels. Having open access, the computer found the splinter and bleed. Removing both. Then ran another diagnostic scan, checking for neurological damage, other internal bleeds.
All we could do was let the pressure subside. Let the computer repair the damaged plate, then be ready to reinsert it. As I stepped away from the table, the tension caught up with me. My arms shook. I sat down before it got the better of me.
I barely got a breath before the leader of this alien group stepped in front of me.
CHAPTER THREE
Unlike the first time we stood face to face, I wasn’t nearly as afraid. Maybe because he wouldn’t have helped if he intended to kill us. My counterpart in the story hadn’t been killed either, at least as far as I knew.
He rumbled something and pointed to Carl.
I thought I felt genuine concern, but only gave him back a shrug of my shoulders. Not that the gesture meant anything to him. “We need to figure out how to talk. Computer, set your translator. Pull up a picture dictionary and holographics.” I tapped my chest as I stared up at the creature. “Kalpana Ghiya.”
He thumped his broad chest. “Huracid.”
Ground broken.
I invited Huracid to sit down as I pointed to the images the computer produced, naming them. Objects we had in common. Our ships, uniforms, weapons, basic similarities in anatomy and differences in human genders. Word for word exchanges. He called his species Regurak.
As exciting as this ‘first contact’ should have been, I felt drained as it only seemed to go on and on with no real information. I let out a deep sigh, throwing up a hand. “So, what do you intend to do with us. You’ve shot up my ship, clobbered my shipmate, and up till now been pretty much on script.” I laughed at the sheer absurdity of the situation. “So what now?”
The creature rumbled at me and after a short pause an almost human voice growled from his chest armor. His huge hand shifted to Carl’s still form. “Shipmate Carl.” He pointed to one of his men. “Men Strong. Stop. Not injure.”
I stammered at having nearly a whole sentence of real communications. “He…he thought you’d hurt me.” I leaned on the table and waited as our computers translated. “Why did you attack my ship? I’m just a simple freighter, unarmed.”
“Planet attacked. Track ship.”
“You have a planet in this territory?” I whistled to myself. “That’s going to put a serious crimp in the IGF’s colonization plans.”
Huracid’s head shifted slightly, giving me the impression of Carl when I said something he didn’t understand. “No planet this space.” He rumbled words that meant nothing, but my computer brought up a map of space. I recognized our galaxy and Huracid pointed to the approximate location of where we were, and then dragged his finger outward, past the expanse of empty space, to the next galaxy.
Instantly my brain started calculating the numbers required to traverse that gap. “Nooo… no way it was us. How long have you been on this hunt?” Again he grumbled an answer followed by a moment of silence as computers compared notes. Three weeks, according to his translation. I could only sit there, stunned. “I’d blame our pirate problem, but even their best ships would take a lifetime, or three, to get that far.”
“Pi…rates?”
The name conjured up old images of water-bound ships, sword fights and misplaced romantic fantasies, but real life was ugly. “Pirates. Thieves and murderers, banded together for survival.” I left out the idea that we freighters sometimes worked pretty close to the legal edge. Sometimes slipping over that thin line. I knew from experience.
“Pirates.” Huracid picked up on my words. “Yes. Pirates attack…” He tried several words until satisfied. “…remote settlement. Kill men, women, small ones. Take many. We follow…” I didn’t recognize the word he used. He tried to correct. “…energy trail.”
He continued in broken words, the computer getting better by the minute at interpreting, until our conversation finally flowed smoothly and clear. The oddity of his voice even changed, from a computer simulation to his own tones, but without the strange growl and rumble, just a deep vibration.
As his voice smoothed out, so did my senses, becoming completely at ease with Huracid. For such a menacing creature, he espoused peaceful coexistence. He served a coalition of species, a Collective, of which we were clearly not members. I did my best to convince him that, as a whole, the Human Race was also peaceful.
Maybe I got too comfortable, taken off-guard as his hand reached across the table to touch my chest. “What are you?”
I shook my head at his odd question. At the odd feeling I was getting from him.
He pointed at Carl, then at me. “He is man, you are woman. He is human. You are… different. Not… human.” His finger pointed at my forehead. “More aware here.” He tapped his helmet. “Feel you looking.”
“What? No, no, I’m not... We…” How did he know? I struggled for an explanation. “Humans have many races. Some are like me.”
I felt his emotions take a leap higher. “Many? Like you? Many who see true?” He reached out and clutched my face again, leaning so close our faces nearly touched. I couldn’t see past the bug eyes, but felt them scanning me closer. Then the implanted lens in my eyes switched themselves off. His reaction was both surprised and alarmed. “You hide eyes. Clear eyes. Eyes see true!”
“Yes, my race sees things other humans don’t. What others think or feel. Some better than others.” I tried to close my eyes. “I’m n
ot as good.”
“No. You see true. You see all.” His voice sounded rougher and he let go of my face. “It is told by… old ones…” He stopped. Pushing away from me. “It is told by Elders of a Darkness that destroys. Evil they drove away. Evil they watch for, age on age. They task all to find woman with eyes clear and true. She would rise again from afar and bring her blood, with eyes clear to her duty as Darkness returns. Ancient evil Darkness.”
What the hell was I feeling from him now? Satisfaction, honor… fear? Did I feel fear?
He spoke quickly, but the computer didn’t translate it for me. It didn’t need to. The air nearly crackled as the same fear spread to the creatures guarding the door. They quickly left the medical bay. Leaving me alone now with Huracid and an unconscious Carl.
How had this conversation turned so bizarre? How did he know I wasn’t the same type of human as Carl? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I stumbled away from the table. “What do you mean, duty and darkness? Is something going to happen? We didn’t hurt your people. You know that. We didn’t even know you existed. We certainly don’t have the technology to be a threat to your people. We can’t be this ‘Darkness’ you’re worried about.”
Huracid didn’t move, keeping his place. But there was a definite difference in the way he was looking at me from behind those bug eyes. “Our task is fulfilled. Our search done. As whispered, she is found. One who will see and speak true. Now the Elders return. For her. For you. For the Ancient Darkness.”
His fear was still there, along with a swirl of terrifying emotions. Anticipation? I’d felt something like this in my military days. When we prepared to make an assault. As the soldiers prepared for a battle.
“Are you trying to say I’m… that someone… the ‘Elders’ are coming for me? I didn’t do anything. I don’t know what this Darkness is. Or these Elders.” It was a terrifying thought, but deep down in my gut, I felt a certainty that I’d blindly stepped through a dangerous door. “You’re wrong. I’m not this person you’re looking for.”
“You are.” Huracid approached me, steadily as I backed away. Each step my terror rising. He leaned down into my face again. “You will see clear when the Elders arrive. You will see your duty and the Darkness.” His huge hand took hold of my shoulder. “When it is time, your eyes will see clear. Eyes clear to her duty as Darkness returns.”
He repeated it, over and over, even as I collapsed.
CHAPTER FOUR
I felt a dark danger, darker than Huracid and the Regurak. It was out beyond our two ships. Out beyond my galaxy or his. There was a growing deadly cloud of darkness spreading through space, snuffing out everything it crossed. Flicker by flicker stars disappeared, silencing the screams of millions upon millions of souls. From that darkness came a wave of pure evil, reaching out to me. Reaching out for me.
Waking with a start, I found Carl’s arms around me. Tight enough to keep me from bolting out of bed. “What...? How…?” I twisted free and sat up confused. “That was a bad…” I turned to look at Carl as he groaned. “Shit!”
He opened his eyes, or mostly one eye. The other pretty much swollen shut. “What’s wrong? Owwww! What the hell?” He touched his face, struggling to sit up too. “Wait, we were attacked by… by aliens?” He managed to get his one eye open a bit more. “You hurt?”
I climbed out of the bunk and made it to the mirror by my door. Damn! I reactivated my eye lenses before returning to his side. “I’m fine. But you took a hard blow to the head.”
“Yeah, kind of remembering that part now, but… nothing else.”
“It wasn’t good. Had to do a bit of surgery.” I leaned over him, lifting his hand away from his face. His eyes looked evenly dilated. Good sign. “You’re still alive.” I bit back saying that I didn’t remember doing the final treatment. Meaning they had.
“My head feels like they tried probing me.”
“No, that was me.” I pushed off the bunk again standing there. On my own two feet. No magniboots. No suit. Shit. “Computer, status report!”
“All systems functioning normal, speed constant, ETA on track.”
“Speed constant? Computer, damage report.”
“Ma’am, no damage to report. Date 146.2532. All systems functioning normal, speed…”
I grabbed clothes as I headed towards the door. It opened freely. “Where are the intruders… the Regurak?”
“Ma’am, there are no intruders.”
“Damn. They’re gone.”
“How do you know?” Carl followed as I reached the dayroom.
“The Regurak don’t handle more than a quarter G, a different atmosphere and physiology.” I headed for the cockpit. Distorted space proved FTL was fully engaged. “Computer. Where are the Regurak?”
“Ma’am. Only two life forms register. Is there a problem?”
“Yes, where’d they go? When did they leave?”
“Ma’am, I do not understand your question.” The computer’s AI paused for a second. “Ma’am, are you injured or ill? Should I run a medical scan?”
“NO! No scan!” I threw myself down in the pilot’s chair and called up the ship’s log. Nothing. “No record of an alien ship attacking us.” My nerves tightened to nearly breaking point. “I didn’t dream this.” Carl staggered into the cockpit too. “I talked to their leader for hours. The computer translated the whole damn conversation.”
Carl held up his hands. “They must have erased the computer and put us back on course.”
“They blew out my engines!” I twisted around to look out the portal, down the side of my hull. No blast scars, no burns, just as grimy white as always. “This can’t be the way it ends.”
“Well, how did it end?”
I leaned away from the portal. “It didn’t end.”
“Of course it did. All books end. Whether you like it or not.”
“This one didn’t. The woman died before it was done and they left the story there, a mystery.” I backed out of the cockpit, confused. “I… we… they were still hostage, but Hura… the aliens wanted me… her for some reason.” I rubbed at my forehead.
“But they let us go.”
“I know, but...” I remembered the whole conversation, and the strange turn it took. “This isn’t how it ends either. Huracid said something about the time not being right. That I’d see the truth, but first…” I bit down on the part of the conversation that delved into my not being the same as Carl. About Elders. Or Darkness. Or my weird part in his weirder story.
“It’s not over.”
“Well, they let us go. Not just let us go, but got our ship fixed up and back on course. So I don’t know what to say or do. With no logs, we can’t even report this to the IGF. I think… I think we just have to swallow this one and move on.” He took my arm, pulling me closer.
I ran my hand over his face, swollen and bruised. They’d finished the job as well as I’d have done. “You need to rest a few days. I’m going to run some diagnostics… and stuff.” Like the medical logs. There had to be a report of his treatments. “Maybe then I’ll join you.”
Carl agreed, his head hurting, even though he refused to say so. He went to his own cabin, leaving me alone to scour the ship. I searched the med bay, the medical computer, then the entire ship, looking for the slightest proof of the encounter, but nothing remained.
Nothing but the eerie feeling that Huracid was out there, somewhere nearby, watching me. Watching for whatever evil I was the harbinger of. No matter where I went aboard the ship, I could feel him. My ship was no longer my safe haven. I felt violated. And his disappearing with the threat of the ‘Elders’ coming for me, only made it worse. If he could so easily capture us, there was no way I could escape them. Or whatever they wanted to do with me.
The thoughts left me in terror. Every instinct told me to run as fast as I could, from the only thing I’d ever loved. I’d been born to be out here in the depths of space. If grounded too long, I ached to be thrust into the stars a
gain. The further the better, but now I wanted to find a whole to crawl into. At least until I figured out what I was supposed to do.
In the privacy of my quarters I struggled to understand everything Huracid had said to me. What did they want? I kept coming back to the book. The details of the last story so spot-on. Why me? Why her? Were these all really my prior lives?
Maybe the answers weren’t in the last story. Maybe all together, they’d make sense. I started to read them again. No longer amused, I searched each prior life for the missing clues to my fate. With more attention and trepidation, I sent my imagination back to the author’s many incarnations.
Scanning the current page, I realized I was reading the same line over and over. As hard as I tried to stay awake, I drifted into the words.
Trees fly by as I gazed out the window. Strange trees with the branches hanging down under the weight of vines that coiled around them, choking them of their original foliage. Bare, dead branches protruded from beneath parasitic vines.
Where were we? I was about to ask when another voice pushed up and out of my body. A sleepy voice. “Zach. You should have…”
Zach? Who the hell was Zach? My body moved, my head turning away from the window. To the person sitting in the other seat, hands wrapped around a wheel. Who the hell was this person? I felt my heart catch, then sadness flowed out.
“I’m sorry, I was daydreaming.”
Again that voice. Not my voice.
“I gathered as much. How do you feel?” The man glanced from me to the clock on the control panel. “You actually got a few hours sleep.”
I looked too.
“Guess I did. Where we at? Louisiana?”
Ohhhh. I was dreaming. I was dreaming about one of my lives from the book. Quite vividly, from the feel of it. I felt the vibration and bumps as this ground vehicle rolled down a long wide road that cut through the strange trees. I stopped trying to resist and settled back to see where this took me.
