Flower-of-Sands_The Extraordinary Adventures of a Female Astronaut

by Grahame R. Smith

  Prince did not respond. Instead, he steered his sister’s helpless frame to the front of the ship’s equivalent of a bridge and began securing her to the energetic columns of light that were the ship’s infrastructure.

  ‘There are discarded ships in orbit, between the light-transmitters,’ Arabella insisted. ‘I saw them as I suffered through the planet’s rotations. Seize one and flee. Seek out the Inquisition and report this criminal, inhumane regime, which has become weak through indulgence and excess. No one will notice you escaping. The orgy across the habitats will distract the population long enough for you to make good your escape. By the time they realize it, you will be long gone.’

  ‘Shut up, Arabella. You are lucky that your punishment has not been more severe.’

  ‘Severe! You have no idea about the pain planet.’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Then show some courage. Stand up for what is right. Seek out the Inquisition. Plead with them to help us. It is their duty – and yours.’

  Prince hesitated. ‘Look where your rebellion has gotten you. Now we are both paying for your self-serving rebellion.’

  ‘Don’t be a coward, Prince. Obey your instincts and release me from all my bonds. I can hardly move. You can do that, at least. I know you can.’

  Prince remained still for a long time, considering Arabella’s accusations. She was right. He was a coward. And he too hated the regime, especially now that it had become so corrupt and decadent – sacrificing everything for indulgence – eating the sufferings of an entire planet, feasting on the vibrations of the special guests from the beyond. It was obscene. Yet he was scared. The Sisters were remorseless in their punishment. If Mother found out that he was assisting his sister in insurgent activities, he would suffer terribly. Perhaps Mother already knew. Perhaps she had sent him here to facilitate Arabella’s departure to the pain planet as a trap.

  Then it struck him. Why was no one else assisting him with his sister’s departure? Why had the Sisters-of-the-Third departed so quickly, leaving him alone?

  He sensed it, all around him. The Sisters were watching, and they were closing in.

  ‘It’s a trap!’ he yelled, realization smashing into his mind.

  He plunged into the columns beside Arabella as a squad of Thirds emerged from nowhere, blazing weapons at the interstellar ship. Stealth canopies folded like giant wings around the ship as he took the controls. Blue splendour radiated from every part of the ship’s underbelly as it rotated and rose out of the clouds of the upper atmosphere, moving away from the Sisters, rotating faster and faster, its outer coatings badly shaken by the Sisters’ weapons, but still functioning and activated in take-off mode.

  ‘The Sisters are in pursuit,’ Arabella transmitted as the ship shot away. ‘We must inform the Inquisition. Can you reprogram the controls?’

  I can try.’ Prince released her from her restraints and began to work on the controls. The ship would make several orbits before finally configuring a flight trajectory. That might give him time. He placed the ship on temporary manual and frantically cancelled the Sisters’ commands. It was not easy. The Sisters were clever, their programming sophisticated and effective.

  Arabella rolled towards him as she freed herself from the last of the light-bonds. ‘I want to go to the pain planet, don’t try to stop me, but you must contact the Inquisition. Can you make the transition to one of the discarded ships?’

  Prince entered the ship’s propulsion and navigation matrix. There was little time to get it right and it was risky – the Sisters were undoubtedly following. He must not let fear and thoughts of failure intrude. He only had one chance. He linked to the ship’s matrix and began configuring. It took a while.

  ‘Done!’ he exclaimed to Arabella as he broke contact with the ship’s inner core and placed it on automatic. ‘We will cross the flight path of the remotest discarded ship shortly. I will jump out and intercept the discarded ship. I am cutting it fine.’

  ‘I trust you brother. There is none second to you in astral engineering. Believe in yourself and do not hide.’

  ‘I have reprogrammed this vehicle to land safely on the hell-planet. Good luck sister.’

  ‘Good luck to you, brother. May the true light go with you? I am proud that you are at last showing courage.’

  Prince prepared to move to the back of the ship where he would make his exit.

  ‘Why are you going to the hell-planet, Arabella? Why not come with me?’

  ‘Because I must save them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The beings on the hell-planet. I tell you, as I always have, of course. They are sentient, they suffer.’

  Had prince eyes, he would have rolled them. ‘Typical,’ he thought.

  Then he jumped into space and into low orbit where he would swing alongside an old orbiting star ship and leap onto it - a precarious venture, but no less dangerous than remaining on a planet where Mother’s rule was absolute and merciless. Soon, with any luck, he would be moving up to and beyond the speed of luminosity towards the light nebula and the mighty citadels and bastions of the Inquisition.

  ***

  ‘They experiment. My guess is that originally our captors put something in the food, or water, or air, and have now removed it,’ Astral-La informed her fellow captives. She sensed it, keenly. ‘Whatever it was had made us compliant and manageable. We were self-pitying, afraid, bewildered – but our instinct for survival damped down.’

  ‘Not now, it seems,’ Venetia said.

  ‘Right! Not anymore. Obviously,’ Astral-La explained after one of their joint trance-explorations. ‘Keeper’s customers were striving for increasing potency in their psychic feasting. We are like a drug to them and they are continuously attempting to make their experience stronger. They have control over energies and chemistry unique to this area of the cosmos and unknown to the people of the home galaxies.’

  Jalaal and Venetia were silent, absorbing the import of Astral-La’s words.

  ‘Basically,’ she continued, ‘We have been trafficked.’

  ‘I sense that too,’ Jalaal said. ‘These so-called Unseen are light beings and may be deviants from their race as a whole – possibly banished from the main part of their civilization.’

  ‘They use the Field, I realize that now,’ Venetia said. ‘They occupy areas of the Field that our Earth scientists have only touched upon. Astral-La, your people gave the Field to the people of Earth. Can you not sense it? Can you elucidate?’

  ‘I am not a scientist,’ Astral-La said. ‘But I feel these beings who hold us captive use the Field differently than do my people, for a different purpose. I agree they could be beings of light, photon beings, electromagnetic – something like that – probably invisible to our eyes, feeding on our energy, feeding off our talents and higher functions. We guessed all this before, of course, but now it feels more real.’

  ‘They make changes in our nutrition to get different effects, like putting condiments in food,’ Venetia said.

  ‘They do not believe we are conscious, self-aware, that is the problem – for them … potentially,’ Jalaal said. ‘At best, they see us as animals, but most likely they see us like we see plants. So yes, they try different things for different effects.’

  ‘They are unaware that we are aware,’ Venetia said. ‘That we have become more aggressive, more willing to consider fighting, is an unintended consequence of their actions. It’s a mistake on their part due to their inability to recognize what we truly are.’

  ‘Or they choose to ignore who we are,’ Astral-La said.

  ‘Explain,’ Venetia requested.

  ‘Okay, hypothesis. We are dealing with a criminal, dysfunctional part of an otherwise peaceful and advanced race. They may not care that we are sentient’

  ‘It would explain a lot,’ Jalaal said

  ‘So, what now?’ Venetia asked.

  Jalaal grabbed a hand from each of them.

  ‘We need to escape!’

  ‘To
where for Mother’s sake?’ Astral asked.

  ‘We got here, so there must be a way back, as Venetia has always pointed out. But we must see outside this encampment. We need to see where we are.’

  ‘Gravity is like Earth’s, and it doesn’t noticeably deviate,’ Venetia said. ‘My guess is that we are on a planet. If it were on an artefact, however sophisticated, there would be anomalies, however minute. My guess is we are on a world similar in size to Earth or Astral’s world.’

  ‘We need to get a picture of what lies outside this encampment,’ Jalaal said. ‘So far, we have created profiles of our captives, based on our experiences when they feed on us. Now we must try for a picture of where we are in time and space.’

  ‘Unless it’s a virtual world of some sort.’ Astral-La spoke ominously.

  ‘I think not,’ Venetia came in quickly. ‘I think it’s a real world, with real gravity. I sense the beings that have imprisoned us want something solid, corporeal. They feed off thoughts and feelings encased in a solid form.’

  ‘I sense that too,’ Astral-La said.

  Jalaal spoke clearly, as if attempting to eliminate doubt from his thoughts. ‘Let’s do it, my friends. Let’s make a start. Now.’

  Chapter 30

  She sat on the sandy bank looking out across mountains and a long winding river. Beside her, a new friend, Alois, a tall man with rich sandy hair and a perpetual frown. In different circumstances, the landscape might have been beautiful. Perhaps it still was, on occasions. Thick polluted air filtered sunlight, causing a dull-red, yellowish glow. A translucent cloud hung over the cliff edges and precipices, obscuring them in places, and sometimes lifting to reveal a scorched terrain, ravaged by continuous exposure to military exercises.

  This planet is dedicated to war, she thought, everywhere, all the time. Well, almost. It was not war in this camp; here, killing and violence were entertainment. Why? Surely, there was enough of that all day, every day, everywhere.

  But she knew it was about currency, about wealth of many descriptions, about gambling on a massive scale. She suspected she was the general’s greatest asset and that she was becoming increasingly famous for her fighting skills and striking appearance, with the absurd black leather outfit with silver-violet shoulder pads the general forced her to wear. It would not be long before he had her in the killing pit. And she had no idea how she would deal with that. Killing was outside her remit.

  She turned her thoughts to that strange observation made by her escape pod’s AI that something was watching the planet – observing the activities of war, the violence, the suffering, the deprivation, and the absence of sentient rights. Was the planet a vast experiment? As she lay awake at night, she often pondered on this.

  She had been in the general’s camp for five cycles of the planet’s moon, which was strangely like Earth’s moon, as she remembered it. The training had been rigorous, the food good, and, unexpectedly, so had the company of her fellow gladiators, all of whom were prisoners like her, all of whom Diaz was coercing in some manner, usually with a threat to a loved one, a family member, a child, wife, parent, or close friend. Diaz had all of them in his power; and there were tragic stories that confirmed that his threats were not idle.

  Her associates were trained fighters, in some cases the equivalent of Rann or Earth Special Forces. They regarded her with respect, even admiration. None of them had been able to beat her in combat – although Alois had come close to it – and for that they revered rather than hated her, as she was not faking, but using a mysterious technique unknown to them. Often, she had the feeling that, given the circumstances, they would follow her in a breakout or rebellion.

  ‘Where are we?’ she muttered, half to herself. ‘I wonder that all the time. No one knows, or they will not tell me.’

  ‘We are somewhere in the northern hemisphere, near the Black Mountains, an extensive mountain range, a bleak and hostile place,’ Alois said as he followed her eyes across the mountain ranges. ‘If you want to escape we will follow you. But we would be unlikely to survive. First, we would have to kill the general and his cronies because he has our loved ones. He has my wife and daughter, and will kill them if I step out of line, I know that from the experience of others. Then we would have to cross those mountains – an impossible undertaking, even for highly trained men.’ Alois gazed at her thoughtfully. ‘And you, Flower, what has he on you?’

  She was resistant. So far, she had told no one of the hold the general had over her, but Alois was a new and trusted friend.

  ‘He has my boy. Well, he is not really my boy, but I rescued him and l have grown to love him as my own. That is why I am here, for his sake, to keep him alive. I would not agree to this shit otherwise.’

  There were several training and combat divisions in the camp. The one she occupied was friendly; they fought against each other, were hurt, and fought again, and they made it look good. But games fought by men from other divisions were different. The barracks of these divisions were like prisons, the inmates regarding each other with hostility. No one was safe, inside the barracks or in the fighting arena. They fought to the death. Often, the inmates of Flower-of-Sands’ camp could hear the uproar from the fighting arena as soldiers from other barracks killed each other with knives, axes and spears. What would she do when her time came?

  She looked across the stony plateau that stretched out from the main area of the camp. The high walls surrounding the remainder of the camp cast shadows in the opaque, hot sunlight. Coming out of the shadows was a welcome figure. Helena (her actual name was unpronounceable, but that was how Flower-of-Sands translated it) was the pale, waifish woman who had served her with food and water back in the general’s headquarters. He usually brought her with him when he visited the gladiatorial stronghold. Although a welcome sight, her presence indicated the arrival of the general and an influx of off duty military personnel in search of pleasure. The general swindled them ruthlessly, but they didn’t care as the general gave them what they came for, to witness high octane combat and blood.

  Helena reached them, her large blue eyes searching Flower-of-Sands’ features, her hair falling over her face in the wind, her mouth quivering slightly, as if she wanted to say something but dare not. Why the general often sent her to collect Flower-of-Sands was a mystery. Perhaps he was using her to spy, to see if Flower-of-Sands had plans to subvert his domain here in the shadow of the Black Mountains.

  ‘General Diaz requests your presence,’ Helena said, her voice surprisingly rich and low for one of such child-like appearance.

  Flower-of-Sands responded to the so-called request, which was really a demand, by supportively squeezing Alois’s shoulder and sliding off her perch to join Helena. They began walking towards the compound, which housed barracks, dormitories, gyms, a mess hall, and other makeshift meeting rooms where the general would be waiting for them. Behind the compound loomed the shadowy structure of the Coliseum, the main place of gladiatorial combat to the death. Already, even at this early hour, she could hear fighting.

  Helena walked silently, not daring to look up, and responding to Flower-of-Sands’ attempts to communicate with a slight shaking of her head, an almost impenetrable inner nudge, as if to say, ‘Do not speak, we are being monitored. You will get both of us killed.’

  A commotion at the main entrance to the compound brought them to a standstill. Doors burst open and a huddle of fierce animals, like large Earth dogs, burst onto the dry gravel and began running towards them. A group of five soldiers with leads and animal restraint devices followed. They shouted to Flower-of-Sands and Helena to stay still. Helena burst into tears and clutched hold of Flower-of-Sands. The animals had now reached them and formed a circle around them, baying and growling fiercely. Flower-of-Sands realized that Alois was standing beside her, placing his back against hers.

  ‘Stay still,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t move. Help is on the way.’

  ‘I don’t see it,’ Flower-of-Sands responded.

  She could
see the general striding towards the incident, but he wasn’t helping. Moreover, he did not seem disturbed, as if he was enjoying the whole thing.

  ‘It’s a set-up,’ Flower-of-Sands whispered. ‘We should oblige.’

  She screamed at the animals. One leapt into the air and dived towards her. Applying techniques that she had learned with Invisible Fist, she pushed Helena aside and allowed the animal to roll over her.

  The dog-creature hit the ground, squealed loudly, and leapt onto her again. She allowed the force of the animal movement to propel it towards the other dog-creatures. Meanwhile Alois was wrestling with two other animals. He was bleeding from both arms and feet, his head badly damaged. Flower-of-Sands kicked the animals off him just as another landed on her back. She felt herself sinking and losing strength. It is the end, she thought, as she collapsed onto Helena.

  Suddenly the dogs backed off and ran reluctantly back to the officers in charge. She realized that the general had set up the whole thing; two of his men had been recording the incident and would no doubt use it as publicity. The self-satisfied smirk on the general’s face expressed the success of the operation.

  She rushed over to Alois, but Helena was already there, seeing to his wounds and attempting to stop the bleeding. The depth of Helena’s concern suggested that she shared history with him; perhaps they were friends, and perhaps she was another hold the general had over Alois. There was much shouting from the officers and the dogs were still excited, although brought under control. As Flower-of-Sands bent down to assist Helena with Alois, Helena bent forward so that Flower-of-Sand’s body screened her from the general’s view. ‘I know where your boy is,’ she whispered softly. ‘He is two hundred miles south, in a training compound.’

  Flower-of-Sands felt her body go ice-cold. She wanted more information, but getting that was not possible, the circumstances were against it. As the officers and paramedics arrived, she slowly got to her feet. Helena, who was quietly sobbing, was already standing, and began leading them towards the general. Both women were terrified that the general had overheard Helena’s comments about Daff.