All
That
Remains
Frank Kennedy
Dedicated to everyone who thinks they have it all figured out.
c. 2020 by Frank Kennedy
All rights reserved
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Part One
All That Could Have Been
Earth calendar – August 15, 2129
Centauri III (Erachnus-Ceti) calendar - 57’d Hogmou-d’hon
A
t first, they touched her not as words but as a tremor, and the dull ache passed around and through her mind and seemed to trickle from her ears like water after a long swim in a frigid pool. Lara Singer opened her eyes, shook away the sensation of being violated, then frowned at her alien host.
“This will not work. We have to expand our translation base. We need to explore the problem with the subjunctive. Will you study with me?”
As the English fell nervously from her lips, a series of clicks and whispers passed from a large silver bracelet on her right wrist, and she waited for the Fyal to process the translation, hoping it would reply in kind rather than stubbornly attempting another round of cross-species telepathy. She spent her first 10 days on this planet developing a broad enough phonetic base to allow easy – although somewhat stilted – communication with these aliens. And when they finally had enough to say that the human visitors understood, the Fyal insisted on experimenting with their primary mode of communication – telepathy.
It was a painful failure, resulting only in the scrambled grammar of the Fyal being poured into the visitors’ minds as if in ice water. And Lara had just allowed this Fyal (for the final time, she hoped) to crawl about in her mind, trying to pick out any bits of English to which it could respond. She broadcast a simple message.
Give up!
She knew the alien would never penetrate her thoughts.
The hosts showed disdain for verbal communication, and neither party was encouraged by the awkward phraseology resulting from the Fyal having no natural equivalent to the English use of the subjunctive (among many other grammatical obstacles). Any accidental slips into the vernacular or – worst of all – metaphor, resulted in long periods of silence from the Fyal. It was, she realized, not an entirely bad thing – especially given the choice rantings that some of her colleagues had fallen into during last night’s unwelcome twist.
She thought today was a mistake. Are you still angry with us for saying no?
There had been considerable debate among the crew about allowing a day or more for a cooling-off period, perhaps even to reevaluate the validity of sending down another ground team.
“But we can recover from this,” the captain told the crew of Andorran. “We can show them our ability to forgive, if not to forget. And we can show compassion for their situation and try to work with them to develop a new strategy. This can work. This will work.”
She heard a familiar squish, and then the clicks and whispers to which she became accustomed. The bracelet responded in English.
“No. Study tires me.”
The eyes – large, drooping, and fiery red, resting just beneath the crown of the creature’s mushroom-like head – captivated and frightened Lara as she struggled to make sense of this Fyal’s attitude. The alien’s head tilted, and a pair of slender, jet-black tentacles slowly emerged from the sides of its thorax, and they wrapped around its plump, flagellating food sac below. A gill within the stout lump that connected thorax to head opened and closed in a smooth rhythm. And then there were more words for Lara.
“We understand enough.”
Even in the mechanical tone of the translator, there was a distinct chill in the message, and Lara took a step back, the deep moss floor briefly giving way beneath her surface boots then just as quickly bouncing back.
Thick brown wrinkles that provided highlights against the alien’s faded green flesh seemed to tighten. The Fyal looked up at Lara one final time before retracting its head. For a moment, the lateral protrusion seemed to flip in on itself, becoming almost cylindrical. The eyes disappeared in a squish as the head plunged into the lump from which the gill had emerged, and sepals of flesh rose to form a protective cone where the head had been.
The crew learned early on that the Fyal retreated inside their cones for three reasons – anger, fear or sleep. As Lara stood in confounded silence, she looked away from the cone of flesh, out across the promenade. She tried to remind herself that this living city of M’moc-yon, with its rambling and oblong organic structures of forest green, olive, sage and chartreuse, built on a carpet of emerald moss, was a work of incredible achievement. These were advanced beings who would certainly understand that what they requested was genocide, was simply inconceivable.
They resent us now, she convinced herself. But they’ll get past it. Surely.
The Fyal drifted away as if pushed by the wind, its single leg poised less than an inch off the surface, a huge downdraft of methane from the food sac providing the fragile body with the necessary lift.
“We can still learn …” Lara started feebly, knowing the silliness of the effort. When she heard a crewmate’s voice in her ear, the tension pulsing through her blood was relaxed – for a second.
“OK, everyone, I want no response to this. Especially if you’re with a Fyal. Express no emotion. No recognition of my voice.”
Lara instinctively pressed her hand against her right cheek, rubbing the soft, translucent surface of the Remote Interactive Faceset that molded itself to her from ear to mouth to nose. It kept her close to her crewmates while filtering the Centauri III air of impurities – especially the ever-present methane that cast a stale musk through the city.
The crewmate continued. “We have a situation developing and I’ll need all hands. Casually excuse yourself from your hosts and make your way here. I’m at the northernmost thicket, hard right past the prayer summit. For the moment, I’m alone. And keep a smile, everyone! Walk as if you have nowhere special to be.”
Lara looked up and down the promenade, and it was silent save the organic trellises that squirmed in rapid expansion to form shade as the sun neared its zenith. She was caught off-guard by a sudden departure of the gentle breeze that had been a constant for almost a week. The static air was heavy with mist.
“The captain and Michaud entered the medical sanctum with several of the Drah’hom almost three hours ago. They were supposed to relay a status report to me at two hours,” said Daniel Loche, the chief science officer of Andorran, over the RIF. “I allowed that intense negotiations might have been continuing, and I did not attempt to contact them until two and thirty. I received nothing – not even an indication of their RIFs being on link. When I went to the sanctum, I was greeted by a phalanx of Fyal. They refused my entry and …”
“Goddammit, I knew this was a bad idea!” Another voice interrupted. “Told Navarro this was trouble.”
“Control yourself, Peter. Don’t let the Fyal see your anger. Composure, please. This is what I propose. First, we prepare ourselves for worst-case. Peter, I need for you to get to Napier and start lift sequence. You’re with Susan, are you not?”
“Yeah but …”
“Then give her the lazgun you smuggled down here against orders, which means you’ll have two, Susan. Yes, I know you’ve had one in your side-pouch for a week.”
A sharp Caribbean voice shot back. “You’re too good for me, love.”
“Slip the weapon to me when you reach the thicket. Lara, Olivia, I need for you to start toward the sanctum now. I’ll meet you. Susan will stay at the thicket, provide mid-cover if we need it. Peter, I’ll signal you if we’ll need a quick exit.”
“Not to put a diaper in your strategy, love,” Susan replied, “but if the situation gets a tad nasty, I’d think you’d be better off with me at the sanctum.”
“No. I want to keep this group small – if this isn’t trouble, I don’t want the Fyal to think we’re strong-arming. They trust Lara – she’s been the language bridge between us from the beginning. And despite Liv’s outburst last night, she’s been very accommodating to their medical requests and they shouldn’t feel threatened. No offense, Susan, but I think there’s a reason all those cones close up when you’re around.”
You’re wrong, Daniel. Lara felt a chill. I don’t think they trust me anymore.
But her mouth did not open, and she cautiously directed herself to the sanctum, easily the largest domed structure in M’moc-yon. It was the dome where the Fyal congregated in their greatest numbers, and where natural luminescences pulsed just beneath a jade skin that shed and grew back each day. This was where the Fyal determined that their own evolution could be re-engineered thanks to humans.
The handful of worker caste Fyal she passed were ignorant of her, their tentacles maneuvering harmoniously through the operating arteries of M’moc-yon.
She met Daniel and Olivia just a few meters shy of the sanctum’s primary portal, and a half-dozen Fyal – heads exposed and tilted in curiosity – provided a barrier.
Daniel provided a comforting, brotherly nod before he spoke. “We need entry,” he told the Fyal, careful to keep it simple. “Allow us to pass.”
When they did not respond, Lara found the courage to add: “Please. We are grateful to you to let us pass.”
Finally, a click and a whisper.
“No.”
Daniel kept his cool. “We need to speak with our people inside. Tell them to come to us.”
“No. Not now.”
Two Fyal quickly dropped their heads inside their cones and drifted back. The others would not look at the crew. Daniel reached into his side-pouch and removed two lazguns, handed one to the doctor, Olivia, and stared into the eyes of both women – large, oval ginger eyes that told them to remain calm.
“Yes, I packed one of these as well,” he confessed. “But use it only if necessary, Liv. You understand? Only if necessary.”
He didn’t wait for Olivia’s response, and he aimed the weapon at the exposed head of the closest Fyal. “Allow us to pass.” His voice deepened. “Move away.”
The remaining Fyal drifted back, a simultaneous squish of disappearing heads. And as Daniel stepped forward and placed a hand upon the portal, the organic shield seemed to eat itself away in seconds, and they entered three abreast.
The doctor screamed.
As her crewmates plunged ahead, Lara felt nothing, and her body seemed to lock in place. The one strength that carried her through these 35 days on Centauri III – her understanding of language – was worthless at this moment.
Beyond a barrier of six Drah’hom, or ruling caste Fyal, was a billowing examination bed which pulsated at its base just like the outer skin of the sanctum and rippled along the surface like a waterbed. Between these organic undulations Lara saw first a human leg, then an arm, briefly a head. The man was naked, but his soft silver hair and goatee gave away the identity of Andorran’s captain, Miguel Navarro.
Lara was sure she heard guttural moans from the captain. But her terror was directed toward their cause. Undulating in almost perfect synchronicity with the bed, three Fyal hung less than a foot above the captain, their food sacs flagellating at chattering speed and heavy brows falling over their eyes, leaving only slits of the red fire.
And then she looked up.
The Fyal hung from the sides and the ceiling of the sanctum, at least hundreds of them clinging to each other in dangling columns, their black tentacles wrapped around each other’s food sacs. At the top of each column, a thick green mesh seemed to grow from the sanctum’s skin, a conduit through which the Fyal emerged and were supported. The food sacs gurgled so fast, were so in sync, that the sanctum was overwhelmed by a nauseating slurp.
And just as Daniel and Olivia prepared to fire their weapons amid a string of human curses and retreating heads by the Drah’hom, Lara realized what this was. The Fyal had done a small-scale demonstration for Olivia only days earlier.
This was how the Fyal mated.
“Bastards.” Olivia screamed. “You’re not going to do this to us. Lara, I…” The doctor turned, snapped Lara out of it. “Quickly, help us with the captain.”
When Lara arrived bedside, Daniel and Olivia were trying to force the Fyal off their captain, and the Drah’hom drifted away in a hurry. Lara felt her stomach roll when she saw three wet brown nodes extending from narrow gills just above the food sacs into a small, bloodied hole in the captain’s belly. The Fyal whose genitals were plunged into the captain were resistant as the humans tried to remove Navarro from the bed. But when Daniel placed his lazgun within centimeters of the nodes, the organs retracted and the columns of Fyal retreated inside their cones.
The captain was conscious, but his pupils were dilated, and his head was rolling from side to side. They gingerly brought Navarro down from the bed then saw their second-in-command. The naked body of Michaud Pousson was crumpled against the inner skin of the sanctum several feet from the entry portal, the splattered mass of red across his midsection unable to hide the fact that his legs were almost severed at the waist. Deep blue eyes cast a death pose, beneath them dried streams of tears.
Lara felt her knees weaken, and then she looked to Daniel Loche, who shook his head violently. “No, no, no,” she heard him whisper, followed by a shout: “And you wanted our permission to do this?”
He turned back, fired, and blew a hole through the food sac of the closest Fyal. The laser bullet carried upward through more than a dozen Fyal, and as their innards exploded, the remainder of the columns retreated.
“Peter, get that shuttle in the air right now.” Daniel shouted through his RIF. “Susan, watch for us. I think we’re going to need you.”
And in the instant after Daniel turned to his colleagues and said, “Let’s get the captain out of here,” a barricade of Fyal entered the sanctum, blocking the portal. Their tentacles extended and their heads revealed, these Fyal advanced quickly, despite lazguns aimed at them.
“We can shoot them all, but there are bound to be hundreds more behind them,” Olivia said. “I don’t understand why they’re not afraid.”
Daniel mumbled. “Worker caste. The inside sheath of the cone flesh is speckled red. They’re being told to do this; they won’t retreat.”
He delayed.
“Yes?” Olivia asked. “And? I’ve got to get the captain to the shuttle.”
Daniel pulled back his weapon. Lara stared in bewilderment as he placed the muzzle of the lazgun against his right temple.
He smiled.
“Do it, Liv! Do the same thing. They’ll back off. They’ve got to have us alive. Remember?”
Indeed, as soon as the doctor followed suit, the worker Fyal backed off. When they didn’t completely clear a path to the portal, Daniel shot one of them and quickly repositioned the lazgun against his head.
Lara acted on rote survival for the next few minutes, barely aware of the blood that rubbed off on her bodysuit or the continuing moans of the captain that intensified after he was laid down in the cabin of the orbital shuttle Napier. And in the final second before the shuttle door closed, she glanced back toward M’moc-yon, her eyes freezing the image of thousands of Fyal cones drifting in unison up the summit of moss. And then there was the sensation of ice sheathing through her mind, and a collective voice at once both fearful and murderous.
We need you. Please. We NEED you.
They were sitting among rubble.
Much of the interior of Napier had been stripped. Panel covers for side instruments and a survey monitor had been ripped away without discretion, and the remains lay in the aisles between swivels. Wiring and computer boards were exposed along the bulwarks. And in the first minutes after takeoff, lighting panels blew, shrouding the cabin in red.
Lara heard the cries of her crewmates, understood the words, but could not acknowledge the meaning. Peter, the pilot, explained between assorted vulgarities that he took two Fyal by surprise, and they were already in the process of ripping out the guts of Napier. Systems were failing – he thought they could reach orbit, but if the SOA stabilizers failed, they’d never reach escape velocity.
Susan, the Dominican, exploded at Daniel, grabbed hold of him as he tried to maneuver from the co-pilot’s chair. “If there was an ounce of courage in your soul, you would not have left that poor man's body on the planet! Only a man concerned for the safety of his own ass,” she railed, and Daniel swung around.
“Ten of us are alive,” he said. “Considering the odds, I'd say we came out quite well.” He lowered his tone. “Please, Susan, strap in. We're still 15 minutes from Andorran, and our SOA stabilizers are failing. This isn't the time for debate. We couldn’t save Michaud.”
Navarro was laid out across two swivels, the middle arm of each swivel pushed back and straps wrapped awkwardly around the man's chest and legs.
“How is he?” Daniel shouted.
“There's not much I can do until we're on Andorran,” the doctor said. “The bleeding is not as strong as it was, but there are so many small wounds. I don't have the equipment to seal them.”
“Just hold on a little longer,” Daniel raised his voice.
“Goddammit, we told him.” Peter yelled, fidgeting wildly as he tried to maneuver the shuttle for approach to Andorran. “Don’t go back down there, we told him. Goddamn Navarro – always the fucking politician. Those green bastards come to us last night and tell us, ‘Hey, you folks could do us a big favor. We need what you got, so how about you fork over a couple billion people, we’ll take what we need from them, and we’ll feel all better!’ Then we say, ‘Hell’s behind door number one, just walk right on through.’ And goddamn Navarro thinks those bastards will get over it.”
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