by T. L Smith
“Let’s go! I’m not ready for this.”
“It is overwhelming.” Everett looked back to the panel he’d been studying. “I can’t imagine what this is like for you.” He tore himself away and came to where I pressed against the wall, wanting desperately to leave. “Let’s get you back to familiar surroundings.”
His hand gently gripped my shoulder, the best he could do through the suit. Sharmila yielded, willing to give me time to adjust. As we walked back through the ship, I repeated her descriptions of the ship’s levels and every room we passed, except one. Her omission and a surge of grief as we passed, made me stop.
Her silence made me backtrack to the door. The sensors worked. The door opened to my presence. Instantly I knew I should have let this room pass. Her memories twisted in my heart. These were her quarters.
Her initial avoidance turned to an overwhelming need to enter, so I stepped into the large room. The lights rose softly, revealing a room that, like the rest of the ship, still looked inhabited. Not just ship’s quarters, but a home with overstuffed furniture, piles of pillows, ornate decorations and a large bed, not just an oversized bunk. Nicer than any ambassador suite.
She said nothing as I stopped at a table, picking up objects, knowing they were hers. I touched a panel at the side of the table and jerked back as an image formed, images.
Everett slipped up beside me. “That’s them.”
His companion told him what I already knew. “Yes, before they evolved.” I could see love’s glow in the faces of a man and woman, holding each other close, with eyes only for each other. “Sharmila and her lifemate.”
My voice cracked as she opened up. “She lost him in the war.” And millennia later it still killed her soul, my soul. I knew her pain. I wanted to look away, but was unable to. I felt like an intruder. “He’s beautiful.”
He was beautiful. They both were radiant as evolution made their skin pearlescent. They were tall like our EH, but willowy thin. Her hair lay long and wispy, like the most delicate spun silver, draped over one shoulder. His hair had been pulled back so tight I couldn’t see it, making his facial features more pronounced. Strongly chiseled from his squared jaw to his high cheekbones, accented by large eyes as silver as her hair.
Their hands pressed palm to palm, their fingers delicate at first glance, but clearly strong. He had done so much to build this world, only to be torn away from it, from her.
I realized I spoke of someone dead. In sympathy I let go of my resistance and gave her a moment. Her hand caressed the back of the chair, remembering when he sat there, when he touched the surface of the table, held the objects they’d collected. They were bonded, one to the other, inseparable in life, just as Everett was bonded to me.
Clearly this was the origin of EH bonding, a genetic compulsion carried forward. She didn’t acknowledge the revelation, remaining in her memories.
Another picture. Of a woman. Younger than Sharmila, but she looked slightly different. Her attire was sharper… a uniform. Another wave of sadness as Everett took the picture. “Their daughter. She died in the war too.”
The room wavered and my thoughts faltered, suddenly dizzy. “Sharmila, whatever you’re doing…” An alarm sounded and I realized what it was, looking at the display on my arm.
Everett grabbed at my arm too. “Damn! That stunt with the gloves… you lost too much oxygen for the recirculators to keep up.” He jabbed at the controls, activating the emergency supply. “I need to get you back to the shuttle, our shuttle. No! Our shuttle! Oh…” His eyes glazed over for a second as he argued with his companion, then turned bright silver again as he focused back on me. “…that will work. We can fly their shuttle back to ours.”
The dizziness eased as the oxygen level on my display moved up slightly. I had another thirty minutes of reserve. In my head I gauged the distance back. It was a tight timetable with no leeway. I pulled my arm away as Everett tried to herd me out of the room. “No, wait! Oxygen production is underway. Sharmila, can enough be rerouted to this ship, to this cabin?”
“Yes, it can. It will take a few minutes to redirect systems. Ten of your minutes to oxygenate this cabin. An hour for this deck.” She reached out to the Elders accompanying our men, ordering the change.
In less than a second our coms crackled to life. “Sir, I have an order to redirect oxygen to your location?” The engineer’s voice in our headsets sounded confused.
Everett pushed me into the chair. “Yes, I confirm the order. Malant Ghiya experienced a loss of oxygen in her EV suit. It is more expedient to reroute oxygen, than to attempt a return to the shuttle. I’ll go back to retrieve a new tank. She’ll stay here.” Everett received confirmation, but looked hesitant. “I don’t want to leave you here alone.”
“I’m not exactly alone.” I couldn’t help sounding sarcastic as I leaned back in the chair, breathing in the emergency oxygen, waiting for the weakness to pass.
He scowled. “Not funny.”
It was funny, but maybe from slight hypoxia. “I’m sorry. I’ll be safe. I probably need to spend some time with Sharmila anyway, figure out how this integration is going to work.”
“You don’t sound like you trust her.” Everett clutched the arms of the chair tighter as he leaned over me. “That’s all the more reason I shouldn’t leave you alone.”
“She can’t hurt me without hurting herself.” I grasped his arm. “Go, I won’t do anything too stupid.”
“I’ll be back, fast, I promise.” He left, resisting his baser impulse to drag me with him.
Alone, I stayed in the chair, conserving energy and oxygen. “Okay, you have my full attention. Use it well and tell me everything they haven’t.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Sharmila poured out the terror of the Punitraq. Whole civilizations were lost before the Collective knew of their threat. The Elders threw themselves between enemy and friends, a soul-wrenching task for a species who long left violence behind.
They had to relearn war, learn to kill again. Many died as they hesitated in mercy, many died fighting with conviction. The death of her family drove Sharmila to win their terrible war.
I relived her grief, her opposition, and her soul-wrenching conviction to ultimately surrender her own life, to create me. I understood so much more than any of the Elders. She made her sacrifice after losing all that mattered to her.
For her I explained my path of reincarnation, how the Elders watched over me. They’d sent another soul who was always there whispering in my ear, sending me down the path. I told her of Carl’s lives, his duty to guide me as I struggled through a thousand difficult decisions. Decisions as difficult as the one she had made.
Abstractly the individual tasks seemed unrelated. One would think a fatal mistake would end the experiment, but they had thousands of years to reset the course of history. Thousands of ‘me’s to get us to this point in time, to this place in the universe.
Sometimes there were mistakes. Sometimes long periods of time where the only task was to pass on the soul and DNA inside me. Many of my lives disappeared, sometimes they resided under the shadows of others. Some tasks were too hideous to even think about, but the end justified the means.
My lives had served as royal priestess’ throughout the cradle of civilization, studying the moon and stars for pharaohs, emperors and kings. We taught alongside Socrates, healed the wounded and created tools, even through the restrictive dark ages, that buried women under the heavy heels of religion and politics. We survived.
When we couldn’t create the sciences that pushed humanity forward, we helped guide those who could. We fought in battles, leading them or using our femininity to slip past front lines. Into the heart of enemy territory, then out again with vital information.
We sacrificed ourselves and our companions, over and over again. Only a few shown through, to the woman who wrote about us. One gave our life for an experiment gone awry, leading to the Sequence and FTL travel. Another prevented the terrorist attack
meant to derail the EH project. And yet another of my lives stopped the total extermination of the EH. Bringing us here.
In every life there was a ‘Carl’ to guide us, and I’d loved them. I had loved him and lost him. Now I had this life to live, this war to win, and Everett.
She told me about their home before the Orb. Even with a dying sun, it was beautiful and familiar. I’d had this dream often, not knowing where it came from. Now I knew I’d carried it in my soul forever. What she showed me was as real to me as it had been for her. I walked through her world in a dream state.
When the monitor on my suit chirped, an acceptable oxygen level had been reached, then I did exactly the foolish thing I promised Everett I wouldn’t. I removed my helmet.
The room was pleasantly cool, the temperature rising with the oxygen level. I unfastened the collar of my suit and removed my gloves again. As I walked around the cabin, looking more closely at her memories, I felt connected. We were growing accustomed to each other.
In long-sealed cabinets I found her clothing, still soft and silky after all this time, very much like my saris. I couldn’t resist.
After nearly an hour the computer confirmed full oxygenation of our current level. I returned to the bridge of my own free will. Despite her assurances that there would be no further invasions of my body, every muscle tensed as I sat down in her chair. I was ready to leap from it at the slightest deception.
At first my feet dangled inches from the floor. As I squirmed, the chair adjusted, settling until my feet were on the floor. The cushions shifted, filling in the space around me. The chair accepted me as the new owner.
My fear faded away as I leaned back and closed my eyes. In my head Sharmila whispered, telling me the ship was mine, an extension of me, responding to my DNA. In the picture she painted in my head, the ship was alive. The light of a new dawn spread deck to deck. Her heartbeat hummed up through the soles of my boots, energy like blood started to pulse through the ship’s veins. She felt as happy as Sharmila to be alive again.
This is home. I was home. Finally!
“Kali!” Hands gripped me, shaking me loose from the embrace of the chair.
My first thought was panic to be separated from perfect unity, but the calm warmth remained. They were still connected to me… “Kali! Snap out of it.”
Everett shook me harder, but I could only smile up at him. “I’m fine. For once in my life, I’m fine. This is where I’ve been heading all my life and now I’m here. We’re here, back where we belong.”
“Yeah, we can all hear it!” Everett’s cheek twitched, his mind trying hard to block what his senses were picking up. He let go, but his eyes fixed hard on me. “Is this you or her?”
The question seemed odd, and then I realized I didn’t hear her. I looked inside myself, looking for Sharmila. She stirred, letting me know she was still with me, but no longer so separate.
It made sense, we were two halves of the same soul, but we both needed more time to stabilize. She was tired, while I felt euphorically stronger. “She’s not doing this.” The spell broken, I stopped projecting to every EH within range, Everett’s face reflected my release. “It is time we take our rightful place. Open the Orb.”
“We’re not ready. The engineers are still figuring everything out.” Everett shook his head. “Look what this is doing to you.”
I could see myself through his eyes, seeing how I might appear irrational or under her influence. I rose from the chair. Sharmila’s gown fell as soft as a cloud against my skin. I brushed my loosened hair back over my shoulder as I looked up at him, opening my mind to him. “Am I possessed or insane?”
“I can’t…” He jerked his head away as I reached for his helmet release. “This air isn’t tested. You can be reacting to something in the atmosphere.”
“It’s oxygen to human specifications.” I unsealed his helmet and stepped away. After all that had happened today, he didn’t thoroughly trust the Elders.
Everett’s hands reached for his helmet seal, ready to reset it, but after a few seconds, he removed the helmet, then his gloves. He took another leap of faith and inhaled the ship’s air. “This is totally against protocol.”
“We’re beyond protocol. We’re beyond the IGF, even the Collective. This world has been waiting for us. We need to take our places.” He’d taken this leap and now it was time to plunge all the way in. My eyes left his, turning to the workstations around us. I approached the first. The console came to life as I brushed my fingers across the smooth surface.
“We…” I looked back over my shoulder as I activated the next station with a touch. “…are the race that binds. We replace the Elders, but are children compared to them, so we need guidance.”
Everett watched me bring to life alien consoles he had touched earlier, with only the slightest brush of my fingers. The ship tuned to my energy. “I’m not so sure about the ‘We’ part of your theory.”
I kept my fingers off the next console. “Come here!” Everett obeyed and I took his hand, guiding it to the console, but not touching. “The ship only responds to the DNA of the Elders, passed on to the EH and maybe to a certain small percentage of humans. Touch it. Tell me what it tells you.”
He had touched these consoles earlier, but they hadn’t ‘told’ him anything. Everett let one finger barely touch the console and watched it flash to immediate readiness. He stared at the alien symbols and seemed to stop breathing. He heard the ship now.
One eyebrow jerked up. “Weapons. This is the weapons station. Ummm…” His companion explained the symbols, the ship’s capacity, the total firing power when fully armed. “This is amazing. I understand the concepts. It’s stuff we’ve been trying to work out for years. Most of our scientists gave up, but here it is. Here it is and I know it works. I once did this…” Everett shook his head. “Alright, he did it. This integration gets me turned around sometimes.”
“When this war is over they’ll go back to their plane of existence, but for now we need them here, teaching us. Fighting with us.”
“Or through us.” Everett looked at me. “The companions will leave us when this is done, but what about…” He frowned at the concept of Sharmila being inside me.
“She’s part of me, not a companion.” I activated more screens, radar and visual displays. “Even with their guidance, our teams need training before we’re thrown into battle. We need to start as soon as possible.”
“Agreed. As soon as we’re fully oxygenated, I’ll start bringing troops over.”
The floor started to rise upwards. “Everett…”
He spun away from the weapons console to grab my arm. “Kali, what’s wrong?” I pushed my hands into my hair, trying to hold my head still. His arm tightened around me, his alarm easing. “You’re done. We need to get you back to the ship so the doctors can—"
“No, I’m fine. The reactivation needs to continue, with me here. I’m… we’re still very interconnected to what’s going on.” I gripped his arm for support. “Take me to my quarters.”
“Her quarters.”
“My quarters.” I looked up at him. “Our quarters. Take me there.”
Everett gazed at me, looking deep into my soul. He could see that forcing me to return was out of the question. “Fine! I’ll take you to rest, but I won’t leave you alone again. Until this integration is done, I’m staying with you.”
I couldn’t argue. I leaned into his chest, his arms tightened enough around me I barely touched the floor. With each step I drifted in and out. Nothing was wrong, except simple exhaustion. One didn’t get an alien entity… no… your great-grandmother a million times removed, injected in their brainstem every day.
“More like fifteen hundred generations…”
“Whatever!” Even in a daze she was connected. “I need to rest. So go to sleep or something.” I didn’t even care if that came off insensitive, since that was what she’d basically been doing forever. “I need quiet in my head.”
My sarcastic
pleading worked. Released from her grip, I barely realized it as Everett laid me into deep cushions.
Caught in a haze I watched him go to the desk and sit down. Carefully moving the ancient knickknacks out of the way, he positioned his helmet to broadcast his next report. I didn’t listen to his words, but knew he translated my requests to Faraday and Gardner. In a deep recess of my mind I could see Faraday, his feet itching to get on the Orb. Maybe that was why there seemed to be no arguing.
After a while Everett returned to me, kneeling and checking my pulse. As he pulled away, I caught at his EV suit. “Stay with me.”
Everett untangled my fingers from the collar of his suit and stood up. He’d had protocol virtually beaten into him and I was breaking every rule, but after a minute he worked the heavy suit off. He stretched out beside me, pulling a thick blanket over us in the chilly atmosphere. “I told the team to not disturb us unless it’s an emergency, so rest.”
I pressed close, but felt Sharmila’s thoughts stir with curiosity. The sensation of a lover so close made her realize it wasn’t her lover. Her lover was lost. Who was this man? “He is my protector. Bonded to me. He is my lifemate. Mine!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Exploration of the Orb would take years, and even then we’d only scratch the surface of her secrets. Fortunately, we had her builders in our heads, leading us through our new world. An EH world. A place that was ours alone. Uncontestable. Home. But we came here for one purpose, to prepare for war. To reacquaint ourselves with the weapons left by our ancestors.
The immediate problem was having more ships than we had EH. The Elders reminded me how they had searched for viable species to carry their DNA. They searched among the Collective, so there might be enough DNA in other species to fill in gaps aboard our new ships. So we tested everyone. Humans and Collective.
There were some who showed remnants of Elders, enough that the Orb recognized them. We moved those people into training units so they could learn to operate the many stations of the Orb, or our new fleet of battleships.
