The Oppressed

by Matt Thomas

  When the Ahai Collective made first contact, no more than two generations prior, they had been the first sentient alien species humans had encountered. The Collective comprised of a confederation of caravans, joined more by history and culture than organization. In a gesture completely reflective of their docile, communal nature, they had rescued a stranded cargo ship on the edge of the Solar System. Their early discussions with human representatives shared rich details about the galaxy, and warned humanity of dangerous other species. In the reality of their self-serving, self-preserving nature, they had leveraged that good will to negotiate access to the system’s resources. The subsequent relationship barely maintained symbiosis. The Ahai helped evacuate Earth when the Hetarek showed up, and in exchange received complete access to every resource, human and otherwise, plucked from the planet. The entire offensive against the Hetarek for the last three years relied completely on Ahai wormhole ships, but in exchange for one crucial yet secret concession: the humans, after liberating Earth, would help them return to their own planet, which had been occupied by the Hetarek for an estimated fifteen hundred years.

  Those who didn't know the Ahai saw them as selfless benefactors. Those who truly understood their nature knew to be weary of their intent.

  Just as Xander was wary as he was escorted off of the transport. His felt some relief when he recognized Tanig S'Maned waiting for him just outside the hanger bay. He had not seen the Ahai in years. In fact, the last time they had met, his counterpart had been K'Maned. The promotion reflected a contribution the Ahai must have made to the Ahai Collective. Ahai social structure provided rank and accompanying privileges based entirely on how well a member contributed to well-being of the Collective.

  The Ahai fidgeted, as much as Ahai fidget. Their incredibly slight, almost withered bodies disappeared beneath their loose clothes. Their eyes had grown wide, sitting on the side of their heads under slitted nostrils and elongated scales that shimmered in the artificial light.

  Upon seeing Xander, D'Maned extended his spindly arms, splaying his six fingers with double thumbs in a form of greeting.

  Xander mimicked the movement as well as he could.

  "It is good to see you, old friend." The Ahai said in his musical cadence. "I am relieved that they sent you who understands us."

  "As much as a human can." Xander replied. "It is good to see you as well."

  The Ahai turned and walked. Xander followed and realized that the Ahai was alone. They generally avoided any type of isolation, always walking and working in pairs. That may explain the alien's nervousness, but did not explain the reason. Unless the topic was so sensitive that Xander was his pair for the meeting. The Ahai took Xander into a small, sparsely furnished room.

  "Congratulations on your promotion." Xander said. "I'm glad they recognized your contributions to the Collective."

  S’Maned nodded, showing he had not forgotten some of the human body language he had learned during their assignment together. "Thank you. It is my pleasure to aid all." He gave the routine Ahai response.

  "I understand you have concerns about the arrangement." Xander began, hoping to return to his own ship as quickly as possible.

  "It is the Doyen's concern." The Ahai referred to their leader, a single, somewhat reclusive individual amongst a culture built on working collectively. "The fight for these planets was more intense than anticipated."

  Xander cocked his head, confused. Before becoming an intelligence officer, he had been an infantryman. He had experienced combat, even more intimately the the vast majority of the Free Human military who had been engaged in only a defensive, then harassing war largely fought at extreme distances from ships. Even from orbit, he could instantly think of space battles far more violent and contentious than the liberation of The Twins. He had thought it went much more smoothly than anticipated.

  "It’s war." He said. "This operation was never going to happen without a fight. By every metric, we succeeded. We achieved our objective, our casualties were relatively low, our kill-to-kill ratio was the highest I’m aware of since this conflict started. I won't say it was perfect, but it went very well."

  The Ahai began fidgeting again. So it wasn't just loneliness. "Our sensors indicated that no less than eight times the Hetarek targeted Wanderer."

  "And she remained undamaged." His history with the Ahai began to fade as anger began to fill the void. Not anger, rage. Rage began to overflow into irrationally. These partners were upset because they may have been hurt, because doing their job took them outside of their comfort zone, floating in free space light years away from anything remotely hostile as they philosophized over ancient history and remote possibilities. Xander wanted to yell at the Ahai about the ever growing list of human dead. He wanted to shout about that feeling in combat, not that you might die, but questioning if it was even possible to live. He wanted to snap an call the Ahai the cowards he had always inwardly believed them to be, no matter how he enjoyed nearly every other minute amongst them. His hand started to clench. Then he reminded himself that his response was unreasonable. That the Ahai had fought their battles long ago and lost everything. And that he could not let his wildly swinging emotions impact the overall mission.

  So he took a deep breath.

  "We can never guarantee safety, but we can always protect you. Our ships kept the Wanderer safe because we’re all in it together. Besides, you have weapons. You can defend yourself but you choose not to."

  "We must save our defenses for the Enki." The Ahai's brow smoothed as waggled his head and let forth a soft burst of clicks from deep in his throat. It was a laugh Xander always appreciated about his old friend's honesty. In the tenseness of the room and sudden onset of Xander's anger, he nearly burst out laughing himself. The Ahai lived in space, far from civilization, traveling in vast caravans because the Enki were after them. The legendary, likely mythical, swarms of Enki wandering through space, stripping everything bare kept the Ahai clustered in groups even though none had been seen in recorded history. To most Ahai, the leadership included, fear of the Enki had become an almost religious undertaking. They believed they existed, conserved, and persevered to return safely to their home planet and to defend against the Enki, should they ever return. But to some, the ones Xander thought of as rational, they were an absurd myth.

  Xander pulled out a datapad and brought up a local map. "Let me show you what I just saw on my trip over here."

  The Twins appeared on the map, as did a flurry of icons. "This is how we are deployed right now in this system. This green dot in the middle? That's Wanderer. Our entire posture is to protect the Ahai. And that's what we promise we can do."

  S’Maned smiled, baring the dense, hair-like teeth that lined his mouth. "I can pass this on to the Doyen."

  Like that, the burst of rage that threatened the relationship disappeared. Internal Ahai politics plagued their relationship with the humans. They constantly questioned and reassessed what best benefited the Collective, or their individual caravan. A simple image could allay many fears. Just a simple image could send the entire Collective into endless deliberations and hand-wringing.

  Having provided S’Maned with the political ammunition he needed, Xander felt relief and moved on. "How have things gone with the Metic Ahai rescued from the Twins?"

  To his surprise, S’Maned shifted uncomfortably. "This also challenges us. They are part of the Collective, and we must embrace them. But they are also not part of the Collective, and have not been for many generations. They have put their feet on the ground. And that is a difficult thing to overcome."

  Mixed between the humans and the their overlords, the Metic Ahai descended from caravans of their species that long ago had fallen to the Hetarek. The Metic Ahai administered the Hetarek colonies as servants. While humans had liberated Metic Ahai in small numbers on previous operations, the Twins inundated the fleet, and Wanderer, with Metic Ahai hoping to be reintegrated with their ancestral culture. As the Ahai
pointed out, however, the Ahai struggled to recognize their brethren for one simple reason: they had set foot in a planet. Involuntarily, they broke a cardinal rule of their species having been born into servitude to a species that did not care that Ahai had sworn never to walk on a planet until they had reclaimed their own. But the Ahai saw such an act as heresy. The caravan dwellers had to learn to live with the Metic Ahai, and the Metic Ahai must learn to live within the confines of the caravan. Xander could understand the struggle.

  "As you know, it is critical to our operation that the Metic Ahai on Earth assist us. If you could share your lessons-learned with us as you integrate the Metic Ahai from the Twins, it would help us a great deal."

  "Of course." His host replied. He stood, and the two walked back towards the shuttle bay.

  "I don't have to tell you, friend, that the trust between our peoples is an uneasy one. Our leaders must remain vigilant, but it is up to you and I, who know each other and, I hope, trust each other, to discuss freely what truly matters."

  Xander stopped at the hanger entrance, and extended his hand in a human gesture he had long ago taught his counterpart. "Of course we can trust each other, old friend."

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The abandoned ski lodge had lost most of its charm. Wilted, rotting plants and food left an odor long after they had cleaned out the place. Much of the furniture broke when sat upon, and the lack of electricity kept it from being well illuminated or warm in the dreary nights. They didn’t light a fire for fear that it would announce to any Hetarek ships overhead that the building was occupied. Instead of having a warm, crackling fire in beneath the cracked mantel, they used chemical heaters for cooking. O’Hare had set up a shower system that would collect rain and snow in a couple of well-concealed cisterns. The showers were so cold they added salt to the water to keep it from freezing completely, but it passed as running water. Raghnal and Jedynak sterilized the kitchen as much as they could, and the team sergeant had taken over most of the cooking, hobbling around with his left knee bound tightly.

  Smythstyne worked on OTIS obsessively, as he was at the moment. He had cut a stencil using his considerable art skills and a scalpel borrowed from one of the medics, and filled it in with a paint marker. All watched intently as he gently pulled it back. Only context helped them identify the arch of a parachute canopy, the wings, the dagger, and the flames around them both. In the middle was a star he had painted rust orange.

  “Tell me you didn’t just give the machine Orbital Free Fall Wings with a combat star.” Raghnal said from where he lay back in one of the remaining functional benches, his leg elevated on its arm.

  “Why not, Master Sergeant?” Smythstyne replied. “He jumped with us.”

  “He was shoved out the back of a shuttle and you hit a button to deploy his canopy.”

  “I was shoved out of the back of a shuttle and I hit a button to deploy my canopy.” Smythstyne answered.

  “I think what Master Sergeant Raghnal is trying to say is that you’re anthropomorphizing a piece of equipment.” Bryan said from where he sat behind a makeshift desk, staring at data fed to him by the satellite overhead.

  “We treat Raghnal like he’s a person and he’s basically just a piece of equipment.” Jess Kysley said from her stack of intelligence collection reports.

  Smythstyne laughed, and the others stared at him. “Sergeant Smythstyne,” Raghnal replied deadpan. “You can laugh at Chief Kysley’s joke after we’ve spent ten years killing Hetarek together.”

  “Captain Howe laughed.” Smythstyne replied.

  “First, Captain Howe outranks me so he can laugh at me whenever he wants, and I’ll just get my revenge on him elsewhere and get paid more than him. Second, Captain Howe was here during the invasion, same time I was. Of course, he was like two and scared and I was one of the guys trying to keep people like him alive, but it’s not his first rodeo with the Hetarek either.”

  “I was thirteen.” Bryan commented.

  “Same difference. Sir.” Raghnal said with a smile.

  “How far from here did you all live?” Smythstyne asked.

  “I lived in a neighborhood down across from the base where everyone else seemed to live.” Raghnal answered.

  “What about you, sir?”

  “I lived fifty-five minutes from here. Well, fifty-five minutes with working roads, I guess. Actually I learned to ski here.”

  “In these mountains?”

  “In this resort.” Bryan said, leaning back and looking around at the surreal scene before him once again. “I was about six, and I fell down thirteen times on the first run down the beginner’s slope.”

  Jess laughed. “That’s only about two hundred meters.”

  “It’s longer than that if you’re zig-zagging your way down.”

  “Still.”

  “I sat over there where Kendrick is sleeping, drinking hot chocolate after my first disastrous attempt, my mom was telling me it was okay if it was hard, my dad was telling me the opposite, and then my big sister comes in after running down the one of the ridiculously hard routes, bragging about how she could do something that I couldn’t.”

  “Let me guess: that was it.” Jess said.

  “That was it.” Bryan confirmed. “I was out there until after dark, and I got a friend to take me back the next weekend. Then my sister and I got a coach and started training to compete.”

  “Did you win any competitions?” Smythstyne asked.

  “Well, our first big regional meet was scheduled one week after the Hetarek showed up. I was on the next mountain over when the word went out. Traffic was more insane than usual, it took us five hours to get back home. My parents had already packed and we started moving to an extraction point. That took another six hours; it was the next morning before we got there. Left the car by the side of the road; it might even still be there for all I know. Military shuttles were pulling people out, totally overloaded. It was maybe fifty hours we were there before it was our turn. Hetarek ships had started getting close. It was absolute chaos. I was still in my ski clothes when I got on the shuttle and we made it to the Novogorod.”

  Raghnal drank some tea. “It really was absolute chaos. I’d just gotten to my first team. First they told us to go protect some of the refugee centers, then they realized that really wasn’t a job for us, so they sent us to go protect some VIPs. Once they were off-planet they sent us back to refugee centers because the infantry guys were pulling out. The Hetarek landed and started to round people up. We stayed behind while the planet was getting overrun and kept pulling people out until our Quinalts were too shot up to land again. It was pretty brutal.”

  Everyone remained silent, particularly those old enough to really remember what had happened.

  “Ryan, how’s the knee?” Howe asked, wanting to move on from the memory.

  “It’s fine.”

  “No it’s not.” Jedynak, the senior medic, said. “Bridget was right. It’s not tendinitis. It’s completely torn.”

  “You going to ground me?” Raghnal stared straight at Bryan, almost pleading.

  Bryan nodded. “I feel like I’ve got to. I need someone to be in charge of this place while we’re out.”

  The team sergeant sighed. “I want to kill Hetarek.”

  “You will, once you can put some weight on that knee.”

  “Fine.” He replied out of resignation, not defiance, and rubbed his knee.

  “Sorry.” Bryan offered.

  “No, you’re right. I’ll be better before landing day.”

  “You’d better be.” He looked around the room at the handful of his team still awake. “Jess, O, Starek, and Bridget, we’re heading out tomorrow night to find our contact, Objective Helen. So get some sleep.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Xander did not lose the fact that he faced the answer to a centuries-old mystery as few had. The pair of Quinalts, the transports always flew in pairs like Ahai, settled down on a barre
n plateau a few hundred meters from the wreck of the Gemini. Half of the wreck, actually, the bow portion of the over-sized ark ship that had crashed down on Pollux more than a hundred years previously. Like a bit of set dressing in a play, background holding little meaning to him yet holding immense meeting to the handful of people on that particular stage, the remains of the legendary ship served as a backdrop to operations on the newly liberated planet. He had already seen the aft section, crashed on the sister planet Castor, around which the Hetarek had built the now-liberated work camp.

  Until the Hetarek invasion, humanity believed the Gemini and all her crew lost. The ship departed Earth’s system two hundred years before, full of families and livestock and seeds ready to settle on either of the Twins, whichever planet its crew found most hospitable. On the day of its arrival in the system, it transmitted the first message. One announcing it arrived and sending back initial sensor data on the two early featureless worlds below. The second, a screaming desperate mayday and call for help, with explosions and shrieking metal audible in the background. By the time Earth received the message, nothing could be done. The Ahai arrived shortly thereafter, and focus changed with the ability to wormhole to more welcoming planets.

  Xander could not take credit for finding the wreck, that went to the scouts who first reconnoitered the Twins System, hunting down Hetarek jump signals. But Xander had been the first one to digest the data and brief it, including his analysis about the humans the Hetarek used as slave labor. It occurred to him that, if humanity survived the war, some textbook somewhere may include a footnote about him when they describe the story of the Gemini, the lost first attempt at colonization. So, before he continued on his mission, he paused for the indulgence of a snapshot of him standing next to the wreck, the name of the ship barely visible on the dust-pelted hull.