by Wilson Harp
The camera that gave a glimpse at the area around their prison was damaged. They could no longer control where it pointed, and there was a layer of static over the view.
It had been three weeks since the attack. At least they thought it had been three weeks. Without Adams and his amazing internal clock, they had to guess at time’s passage.
Alex had another reason for exercising, but he hadn’t let anyone know. Even after his years in Leavenworth and his weeks of captivity in this prison, he had never really felt confined.
But the last several weeks in this small room was starting to make him feel very closed in. There were times he had imagined just opening the door and letting all their air out. At least he would see something beyond those walls before he died.
He quickly pushed thoughts like those aside, but it was easier when he was doing something. Anything. So pestering Hopkins to work out with him was his new sanity therapy.
A beep from the console brought every eye in the room to bear on the monitor. An exhausted Hopkins made it to Alex’s side before Manny and Levin could hop off the table and join them.
“Do you see anything?” Manny asked.
“No, nothing yet—there!” said Alex.
“That was just static,” Davison said.
“No, that was something,” Alex responded.
As if confirming his statement, there was another beep from the system.
“I just saw it too,” Hopkins said. “Maybe it’s a rescue.”
“Or maybe the Otina are here to kill us or blow up the station,” Levin said.
“They will have to lower the mosar field to get in,” Alex said. “If they come in, we can get everyone out.”
“If they come in, they will be looking to kill us all,” Manny said. “I don’t know if all of us will be able to survive and take over their ship.”
“We are going to try, anyway,” Alex said.
Alex moved to the cabinets and tossed the breathers to the Pelod.
“You can use those to make it to the barracks,” Alex said. “Manny was the last to feel the effects of the oxygen loss and me and Hopkins will just have to work fast. Hopefully they will be wearing breathers as well, and we will have some when we have killed their soldiers.”
“Alex, we don’t even know if that really was a ship,” Manny said. “It could have been a faulty sensor reading and I certainly saw nothing in the static that would make me think a ship was incoming.”
Levin shook his head. “Me neither, and I was looking right where you pointed.”
A jolt shook the med lab. Manny groaned in defeat.
“They have landed. Assuming they can get the mosar field down, they will be here in just a few minutes,” Alex said.
“I can use a weapon, Ramirez,” Levin said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, my father was a security officer. He felt it was important for me to learn to use weapons in case I wanted to choose that career path.”
“You just liked rocks better?”
“Rocks don’t shoot back at me. I feel safer with rocks.”
“Fair enough. We have an extra zap you can use,” Alex said. “You know how to use it?”
“It’s a Nanimor 950 series with a reconditioned coil. It’s not a top end item, but it will work for close quarters.”
“So you know which end zaps. Good.”
Alex handed the Pelod the weapon and went to the left side of the door. Hopkins crouched opposite him.
“How do you expect them to breach, Gunny?” Hopkins asked.
“We don’t have any way to lock the door, so they just have to hit the button on the other side of the panel. They might just try that.”
“Yeah, or they might just put a brick of explosives on the door and blow it up.”
“I don’t think so. If they wanted to just kill us, they could set a decent sized bomb wherever the life support system is and kill us that way.”
“True. Good to know you’ve figured out all the ways they can kill us,” Hopkins said.
Alex motioned him to keep quiet. There were sounds of movement and speaking not far away. Alex focused on staying loose. There were footsteps in the control room and someone spoke just beyond to door.
Alex moved forward as soon as the slight whir of the door’s motor began. He launched himself like a missile at the first Otina he saw when the door slid open.
Only it wasn’t an Otina. He found himself sprawled across a rather tall and very startled Pelod.
“Ramirez!,” someone yelled behind him. “Thank God you’re alive.”
Alex rolled off of the alien and looked for the source of the voice. The disorientation of a strong suction of air being pulled out of the facility was compounded when he saw Carl Williams smiling at him.
“How did you…” Alex gasped. The air was quickly running out.
A Pelod appeared with a mask and a breather. He attached it to Alex’s face and pressed a metal rod against Alex’s neck.
“All vitals look good,” the Pelod said.
“You sent the message. You had to guess that I would figure it out, didn’t you?” Williams asked.
Alex nodded. “I hoped, but I wasn’t sure. And I certainly did not expect you to be part of the rescue team. And why are you with Pelod?”
Five or six of the aliens were moving about the area of the command room. Hopkins’s smile beamed from behind his mask, and Levin and Davison spoke in an animated and friendly way with their fellow Pelod.
“I pulled some strings with the Ambassador to borrow this ride,” Williams said.
“Why not an Earth vessel? We’re in the system.”
“I’ll explain it once we are on board.”
Alex smiled. They had finally been rescued. “I take it you got that mosar field down if the Pelod got in here.”
“Had to cut the doorframe completely out,” Williams said. “We need to get moving, the temp is dropping fast.”
Ramirez realized he was right. With an open breach into space, the heat and atmosphere that the life support system was supplying was fading fast.
The former prisoners were hurried to the waiting ship. Alex shuddered as the hatch behind them closed and the warmth of the ships interior started to seep into his bones.
“Hi, I’m Carl Williams. And who are you?”
“Sergeant Gerald Hopkins.”
Williams picked up a tablet and checked on a screen. “Good. Do you know when you were captured?”
“July 22nd.”
“Did you lose any prisoners while you were there?”
“Yeah, when we first escaped. It was about two weeks ago. There were eight others that made it onto the ship.”
“Ship?” Williams asked.
“An Otina supply ship. We fought them and took control of the base and ship.”
“We saw the Otina bodies when we came in. When did they leave in the ship?”
Hopkins dropped his head. “The Otina automatic defenses destroyed the ship soon after it left the bay.”
“How did you and the others get left behind?”
“We couldn’t get the mosar field down between the hangar and the base. So we couldn’t get the aliens on board. Gunny wouldn’t leave them and I thought he might need help. So I stayed behind as well.”
“Doctor Williams, I’d like to scan him now,” a Pelod said.
“Yeah. Hopkins, this is Medical Officer Mueller. He’ll check you out now,” Williams told the soldier.
When they left the area, Williams stepped over to where Alex was sitting.
“Why did you send the message that way?” he asked Alex.
“I knew if anyone could figure something like that out, it would be you. The Otina might have come back for us otherwise.”
“The automatic defenses were ripped to shreds and the facility had been bombarded. I think they did come back for you.”
Alex nodded. “Yeah, luckily the life support system was still functioning and the med bay was in the far
back.”
“Good idea sealing yourselves in there,” Williams said.
“Not my idea. Levin did that. I didn’t even realize we were in trouble at that point.”
“We have figured something out since you have been gone.”
“Yeah, the Otina weren’t targeting me. They were after Manny,” Alex said.
“Wow, that’s some good work. Especially since you didn’t have access to our sources.”
“Yeah. I figured it has something to do with his time on Earth. Levin and Davison were on Earth for long stretches of time as well.”
Williams smiled and nodded. “You have always been so clever. And so good at playing the mindless grunt.”
Alex laughed. “I guess I would rather do something than think about something.”
“So did you figure out the deal with mosar or was it plain, dumb luck that kept you from going into the hangar?”
“What? I went into the hangar.”
Williams head rocked back and his eyes went wide. “You went through the mosar field,” he asked.
“No… I guess I didn’t, now that I think about it.”
“Good thing, because I am one hundred percent sure that it would have killed you.”
“What?”
“Yeah, seems that our little adventure at Helku imbedded mosar in our bodies. Happened to the crew of the Hemingway as well.”
“When did you discover this?”
“About the time you went missing. A Captain Swanson was killed walking through a mosar field. We started looking for it in other people and we found it,” Williams said. “Don’t tell the Pelod, it’s not something we want any of the other races to know yet.”
“I won’t,” Alex said. “What does it mean? The fact that we didn’t have it was what separated us from the others.”
“I don’t know yet, but we will keep looking until we figure it out.”
“So it spreads?” Alex asked.
“Yeah, it spreads.”
“I could have killed everybody by spreading it.”
“Not quite, but the general idea is that we need to stop it from spreading.”
“When some of the men went through the field, they said that they felt burning in their lungs, or weird pains in the rest of their bodies.”
“That was likely mosar burning off inside their systems.”
“Hopkins had the lung thing. Will he be alright?”
“Probably. He doesn’t seem to be having any problems right now.”
Alex shook his head.
“So you really stayed for the aliens?” Williams asked.
“Yeah, they were fellow prisoners. I couldn’t leave them behind.”
“If you had decided to leave, you would have gone through that field. Your loyalty to your fellow prisoners saved your life.”
“I suppose it did. Jeffries wasn’t happy about it though. He was going to include it in his report once they got away.”
Williams laughed. “Since when have you cared about what was in your file?”
“I don’t, man. Never have,” Alex chuckled. “So what do we do now? I mean about the mosar problem.”
“Well, the first stop is my lab in D.C.,” Williams said. “Once we get you tested and verify the results, then the mosar problem will be out of your hands. After that, I would suspect that you will be debriefed fully. Then I would say go get some rest up at that cabin again. Don’t have a lot of company, though, Kitch is thinking of a quarantine for those of us with high levels.”
Alex nodded.
“Doctor Williams, you have a message coming through on the bridge,” a Pelod said.
“I’ll be back, Ramirez. Get some rest.”
Alex leaned back and took a deep breath. He realized that he would be getting hungry and thirsty now that he was out of the nutrient infused air of his prison. He wondered how much food and water his body could accept before he made himself ill.
He closed his eyes and felt safe for the first time in a couple of months.
“Ramirez,” Williams said. “Sorry for waking you.”
Alex hadn’t intended to fall asleep.
“No problem. What is it?”
“Looks like we got some good news and will be taking a bit of a detour on the way home.”
“What news?”
“We have captured Warlord Jii,” Williams said.
“That’s great news,” Alex said. “How?”
“We had some teams out looking for you and they stumbled upon some information. In fact, the tech who pulled Jii’s location was the same one who deciphered your message.”
“I think I owe him a steak dinner or two when I get back.”
“That sounds like a good plan. You will also want to add K-man to that dinner arrangement.”
“Let me guess, he’s the one who led the search,” Alex said.
“He sure is. He is also the one who captured Warlord Jii. I think he may make full Colonel over this catch.”
Alex laughed. “K-man a full bird, you in civvies and Kitch wearing four stars. Nothing else would surprise me.”
“Wait until you see the ambassador.”
“What? What’s happened to Kyle?”
Williams puffed out his cheeks.
“Fat? Kyle went and got fat?”
“Not too much, but he is a little soft now,” Williams said. “You’ll get to see for yourself in a couple of hours. He is coming to Ellison to interrogate Warlord Jii personally.”
Chapter 21
Warlord Jii sat across the table from Kyle. His purple skin seemed to drape around his bony structure. He moved smoothly, if slowly, despite the years that he claimed.
“Your age,” Kyle said. “It seems a little hard to believe.”
“A fruit fly would say the same to you, Ambassador. It would scoff that you could have seen tens of thousands of sunrises. Does it make you a liar or them ignorant?”
Kyle nodded. “So you are thirty two thousand years old.”
“Thirty-two thousand, four hundred and eleven Earth years. But that makes me feel so old. I am only twenty-nine thousand and six of my home planet’s rotation around my home sun.”
“Where is your home sun?” Kyle asked. He was off his game and he knew it. When he first saw images of Jii, he knew he would have a hard time with this interrogation.
Jii chuckled. “My home sun. Yes, its name has passed even from legend and myth. Not surprising. Any of the races that would know it well enough to record it have either all died out or sit on the Higher Council.”
Kyle hesitated. “The Higher Council knows what your home sun is?”
“I would assume so. Tell me, Ambassador Martin, when you saw me, did you feel betrayed?”
Kyle had. He was livid and scared at the same time. He knew as soon as he saw Jii that he had been lied to the entire time.
“Yes.”
“Truth. It is what will free us, isn’t it,” Jii said. “And yet truth can be dangerous, can’t it? Especially when we only see it obliquely and at a distance.”
“Why have the Otina been doing medical experiments on humans?” Kyle asked.
“For the same reason we have been doing them on every race we come across. To stop the spread of mosar.”
Kyle frowned at Jii. “The spread of mosar? Every race you have come across has had to deal with the spread of mosar?”
“Yes, although you humans are the first ones to detect the infection before it had overwhelmed you. But that has to do with Earth. Without your planet’s unique situation, you would have been infected already. As soon as we came into your solar system close to three hundred years ago, mosar would have started to infest you.”
“How do you know this?”
“We spread it. We’re the carriers. In fact, I am one of the ones who created mosar.”
“And A’nacal? What part does he play in this.”
“I was wondering if you would say his name. He was one of those warning us against playing with things we didn’t
understand. When we created mosar, we didn’t understand what it would do. We didn’t understand that we would lose control. A’nacal tried to warn us. When we realized that we were infecting the galaxy, he encouraged us to isolate ourselves. He was hopeful that if we died off then mosar would die with us.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Jii snorted. “Because we were better than that. Why should we hide when other races roamed the galaxy at will? Plus, if he were wrong, then mosar would have infected everybody anyway and we would be dead.”
“The aliens that we have always called ‘Otina’, they aren’t the same race as you,” Kyle said.
“Changing subjects. Yes, how boring interrogations are. Very well. They are Otina. In a way. We created them to be servants. Some serve as guards, others as technicians, others as medical staff, and so on. They are clones, but they are individuals as well. They refer to themselves as Otina, but to my race as ‘the Otina’. A subtle difference, but it works for them.”
“And how many of ‘the Otina’ are left?”
“Less than a hundred. We are dying off. Every century there are a few less.”
Kyle took a sip of water. The bright lights and stark room did not seem to affect Jii at all, but Kyle was feeling tense. Each revelation moved control out of his hands and into Jii’s.
“How many of the Higher Council know that A’nacal is an Otina?” Kyle asked.
“All of them,” Jii said. “When they are elevated, they are given the details of what is happening to them. Of why they must close themselves off and what their fate is.”
“What is their fate?”
“Death of their race.”
“From what we have been able to see, there is nothing in mosar that is deadly.”
Jii smiled. “That’s because you have only seen it in its earliest form.”
“Are you saying that mosar… evolves?”
Jii wobbled his head back and forth. “You are familiar with metamorphosis?”
“You mean like a caterpillar to a butterfly?”
“Precisely. Mosar goes through stages. The first stage, the pupa if you will, is what infests you now. This stage lasts for about two thousand years,” Jii said.
“Two thousand years? Except for your claims, I don’t know of another species that lives for two thousand years, how can the mosar transform?”
