The Rift Rider

by Mark Oliver

  Six injections later the interrogator's enthusiasm had ebbed somewhat. She no longer screamed in Charlie's face, and when she injected the red stuff, she seemed to no longer take any enjoyment from his suffering.

  Her eyes looked dull, like someone had switched a light off behind them. Charlie recognised the look. He had seen it everyday for the last twelve months in the eyes of the Hawk Insurance admin staff.

  Charlie, on the other hand, felt his spirits rise. His body had gradually started getting used to the injections. They still hurt like hell, but each subsequent rush of red hurt a little less. For the first time since he had awoken, he believed he might make it out of the room alive.

  The alien woman's bracelet emitted a series of sharp beeps. She raised it to her ear and listened. When the message ended, she said something into the communication device, lowered her hand and walked over to Charlie.

  "We captured three escape pods," she said, robot like, her mind on automatic pilot now, "two empty and one with you inside. The drones have returned from examining your ship. We know four pods jettisoned. So, tell me Mr Scott. Who was in the fourth pod?"

  Charlie arched his back in an attempted shrug. "I told you a hundred times, the last thing I remember before waking up here was surfing. I don't know anything about a spaceship."

  The alien woman clenched her fists. When she spoke, she spat the words out with venom. "You think I don't have anything better to do than talk to a shit like you, an idiot regular unfit to scrub Corporation toilets. I've had my fill of arseholes like you. I deserve better than this." She slapped him hard against his cheek.

  Charlie jerked his head away, more in shock than in actual pain. Aside from the injections, the alien had not so much as laid a hand on him before.

  She got in close again and screamed. "Who are you and what were you doing in the Wrake Pass?"

  Charlie closed his mouth, and twisted his nose. The woman had breath like stale kippers.

  By now, he figured, if she had wanted to kill him, she would have. So he thought, fuck it, and said, "To be honest, love, I think you could do with some breath mints."

  Her eyes seemed to catch aflame, as if someone had doused them with petrol and lit a match. In the cold, motionless flesh of her face, they seemed to belong to another being, some fire demon that had possessed her mannequin body.

  Her jaw dropped open and juddered wildly.

  The punch came quick and hard. It smashed into the centre of Charlie's nose and sent him spiralling into unconsciousness.

  Executive Ko stormed out of the interrogation room and into the dimly lit, observation cell.

  "What are you doing here?" The silver said, clearly caught off guard at finding someone else here.

  "Watching your interrogation, Executive," the scientist said, smiling, enjoying the woman's discomfort.

  She eyed him with caution. "Why?"

  "Chief Lade sent me down to observe?"

  "Why should the Corporation's Chief Technology Officer have an interest in a simple terrorist?"

  "A simple terrorist who claims to be from another planet."

  She scoffed, and shook her head. "You can't possibly believe that. It's a simple cover story, and nothing else."

  "Is it? Have you ever asked yourself why I've been doing on the ship all this time, why a simple regular such as I has been afforded access hitherto restrained to the highest ranking silvers?"

  "My role is to hunt terrorists, Doctor Sree. I have no interest in the Technology department's experiments."

  "Well, without boring you with the details, I have been experimenting with a new form of engine, one that promises to revolutionize space travel. That's why we're so close to the Wrake Pass.

  "In these experiments we have broken a great number of the Universe's basic laws. The consequences of this even I cannot predict. So when I heard we had caught a person near the Pass claiming to be from another world, well, you can see why my curiosity was aroused."

  Ko glanced at the prisoner in the interrogation room. "You believe the suspect has something to do with your experiments?"

  "I'm a scientist, Executive. I don't believe in coincidences. "

  The woman turned, and looked through the observation mirror. The suspect hung, limply, from the interrogation frame. His long, wet hair obscured much of his face. "But he looks turen."

  "A unique one, but yes, a turen nonetheless."

  "Then, how could he be an alien?"

  The scientist shrugged, and said, "I need to run some tests before I can answer that. A partial dissection should be enough. Therefore, I will require you to hand over the prisoner to me."

  "Is this you asking, or Chief Lade?"

  "Would you do what I asked without the backing of our superior?"

  The woman said nothing, but her eyes flashed in annoyance. Silvers viewed regulars, even Corporation ones, as intellectually and physically inferior. They were not used to taking orders from them.

  "The prisoner is yours. But before you start chopping him up, I'd like to observe him in the holding cell. If it turns out he's just a turen, he'll likely make contact with the other terrorists we have caged up down there. I want to see who he talks to."

  "So be it," he said, smiling. If his hypothesis were true, he would be first scientist to ever examine an alien. Together with his successes in rift travel, his name would live forever. He had finally stepped out of the shadow of his mentor, the traitor Doctor Krest.

  He gave the prisoner one last look, said, "I'll begin preparing the lab for dissection," and then walked out of the observation cell.

  Chapter 4

  The beagle trotted up to Charlie, a stick dangling between its teeth. When it reached him, it dropped the stick and sat down. It looked up, its eyes, big, brown, and expectant.

  Charlie crouched, and smiling, rubbed the dog's head. He squeezed the soft fur at the top of its skull, and scratched behind its ears. The dog barked, and nipped Charlie's hand, reminding him about the stick at his feet.

  Charlie picked it up and threw it as far as he could. The stick flew, cutting a perfect arc in the clear blue summer sky. Charlie stretched his arms and smiled. The sun shone full and the smell of freshly cut grass brought back memories of his best childhood days.

  He took a long breath, filling himself from toes to fingertips with the clean air. Everything's going to turn out okay, he thought. The Universe is with me.

  The dog returned, and took a seat at the edge of the cliff. Charlie sat down next to it, and stroking the dog, watched the waves rolling onto the beach below.

  "Charlie."

  He looked around. When he saw nobody, he frowned. He swore he had heard someone call his name.

  "Down here, Charlie," the beagle said.

  Charlie started, and rose to his feet. Only the frantic swaying of arms stopped him from tumbling over the edge. When he regained balanced, he looked down at the dog.

  "Yes, it's me talking, Charlie."

  "How?"

  "How can a dog speak, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, strictly speaking, I'm not a dog. You see me as this friendly fellow, as that is how your mind has chosen to interpret me." The dog stood on its hind legs, and raised its front paws. "Now, please be a good chap and pick me up."

  Charlie placed his hands under the dog's front legs and lifted. The dog hung before him, its short legs dangling in the air and its coffee black eyes staring, sadly, back at him.

  "If you're not a dog, then what are you?"

  "A message."

  Charlie looked at the dog blankly. "That doesn't make any sense."

  The dog sniffed the air, a look of dissatisfaction passed across its doggy features. "We don't have much time. At any moment, you're going to wake up back on board the Corporation destroyer."

  "What?" Charlie said. "But that was just a dream."

  "Charlie, I'm afraid you have things rather back to front. This is the dream."

  "No, no, no, no." Charlie shook his head
frantically, and the little dog's hind legs jiggled like a baby's. "I can't go back there. I can't."

  "Get a grip," the beagle barked. "And stop your damn shaking."

  The dog's eyes flashed so angrily Charlie feared it would snap his fingers off. He took a deep breath and steadied himself.

  "Nobody aboard the ship knows the truth about you. You must keep it that way. If the Corporation knew where you had come from and how, you'd live out the rest of your short, pain-filled life in their laboratories while they expanded their vile empire across the Universe."

  The mention of laboratories made Charlie shiver. He pictured his interrogator's rigid, passive face, as she went about dissecting him alive. "But I don't know anything about this place. How can I pretend to be from here?"

  "The next time you slip into unconsciousness, the rest of this message will play and then you'll know. In the meantime, you're a turen resistance fighter. Your memory has been wiped to protect your mission, wiped of everything except the knowledge that you must go to Jajag City and meet a man by the name of Brother Yojim."

  Thunder roared around them. The air filled with electricity. The noise was incredible. Charlie let go off the dog and it fell heavily to the floor.

  It landed and barked a message drowned out by the storm. Charlie dropped to his knees, and pulled the animal close. Its ears drooped over his hands. He lifted one of them and spoke into the cavernous hole inside. "Who's Brother Yojim?"

  The dog twisted in his grip. "He will send you home."

  "How?"

  The animal locked its dark eyes upon him. They grew deeper, sucking at Charlie's mind, pulling him into them like black holes.

  And then from somewhere in the darkness, a red silhouette emerged. Charlie strained to focus, and as he did, was pulled off the storm-ravaged cliff and drawn into the dark calm. He found himself face-to-face with a giant of a man, towered almost a foot above him. The man wore a thick, black sarong, golden bracelets and an expression of patient wisdom. But it was not his attire, or even his height, that Charlie stared at. It was his skin.

  The man looked as if he had been carved out of burning embers. Onto this glowing skin, someone had tattooed an intricate black web of curves and lines that ran across his body from his bare toes to the tip of his high forehead.

  A smile broke on the red man's face, adding more curves to the complex mesh of tattoos. "I'm Brother Yojim."

  And then Charlie was tumbling, head over heels, into the darkness.

  Pain shot up his side. He twisted onto his back and opened his eyes. His surroundings, fluorescently lit like a hospital, spun around him as if he were on some out of control carousal. He recognised the sensation. It usually accompanied a mistaken hit of spliff after a heavy night's drinking.

  He groaned. A heavy, growing burden pressed, and swilled inside him, straining to be released. He rolled onto his front, and climbed onto his knees. The sick came rushing out of him in a torrent of greys and greens. The taste of stale aubergine filled his mouth.

  "You animal."

  Charlie twisted to see who had spoken. A kick in his ribs sent him back on the deck. He groaned and another wave of vomiting squeezed his stomach tight.

  "Son of a whore," said the angry voice.

  This time Charlie pushed sideways, and the swinging boot brushed passed him without connecting.

  "Sorry," Charlie said, and knelt back, resting on his calves. His hands lay in his lap, metal restraints cuffing his wrists together.

  Beside him, a male soldier, green skinned, and wearing a ridiculous basin head hair cut, leaned down and rubbed the sick of his shoes with a handkerchief.

  "Disgusting," he said, pocketing the soiled cloth. "You do that again, and I'll shoot a couple of fingers off." Then he reached down and with the help of a second soldier, female and blue skinned, yet similarly coiffed, picked Charlie up by his armpits and placed him on his feet.

  "I'm serious," the soldier said. "The bosses allow us certain liberties when dealing with terrorist scum like you."

  Charlie said nothing. His thoughts were now primarily fixed on the pain throbbing in his nose and the swirling rumble in his belly. He reached up and ran his fingers over his broken nose. He immediately regretted it. The touch drove a needle into his cranium.

  He yelped, and withdrew his hands. They were covered in a thin sheen of blood and mucus. Charlie wiped them on his wetsuit bottoms.

  "Come on, Pukey," the female guard said, pushing him forward. "We don't have all day."

  "Okay," Charlie said. "Keep your knickers on."

  He was not sure if it was the comment or the smirk that got him a dig in the ribs with her rifle butt.

  The guards led him down a never-ending series of turquoise corridors. He had the impression he of walking inside some giant aquarium that had been emptied of its ocean life.

  As he walked, he snuck glances at the soldiers escorting him. Except for their soft drink coloured skin they looked human. Their hair was thick and blonde and looked as if they it had been cut with only a pair of garden shears, a mirror and a salad bowl for assistance.

  Charlie had seen worse haircuts, but only in the monkey section of Bristol Zoo.

  As they walked through the labyrinth of the ship's belly, the Charlie passed more and more of these fringed blondes. In fact, every soldier he passed had the same haircut.

  And he thought Hawk Insurance was a shitty place to work. At least he had the freedom to choose his own hairstyle.

  And it was not just their haircuts that looked fruity. They wore the same figure hugging uniform his interrogator had worn. Except theirs was the kind of blinding green usually reserved for obnoxious Lamborghini owners. He wondered what kind of army chief decided that this was how a soldier should look.

  Unlike the stacked soldiers Charlie had grown up watching in the movies, these soldiers looked more like long distance runners. They were trim and taut.

  The armed forces here also seemed to have a stringent equal opportunities and diversity policy. Female troops matched their male counterparts in number. At least he thought so. The identical haircuts and similar builds at times made it difficult to distinguish their gender. It seemed this alien power like its fighting force glam and androgynous. Its whole army was composed of David Bowie wannabes.

  He also saw aliens without any uniform. Civilians he guessed. They wore smart business like clothes; long slim fit trousers or pencil skirts (men and women alike), and double-breasted shirts with flared sleeves. Unlike the military personnel, their clothes were mostly dark greys, browns and blacks. Build wise, they occupied a much wider range. Some were as thick set as body builders and others as slim as storks. Most were under Charlie's height, but occasionally, he passed someone he had to raise his eyes to.

  But out of all the strange alien features, the aspect Charlie found most impressive had to be their skin. There were pinks, ambers, whites, blues, browns, greens, and even a few oranges. It seemed like they had every colour of the rainbow covered.

  Some of them were covered head to toe in thick fur and these usually went around dressed only in shorts or sarongs. Yet amongst all that he had seen, he saw none with the brown hair, green eyes and silver skin of his interrogator.

  If to a certain extent the alien soldiers had proved to be somewhat of a disappointment, the spaceship had not. It was enormous. Charlie figured he had been walking for over twenty minutes, and from the expressions of annoyance on his chaperones' faces, carried unconscious for much longer. And yet their destination remained unreached.

  As a child, Charlie had once taken a ferry ride with his then foster parents. The ship had sailed from Portsmouth to Bilbao and at the time Charlie had thought it incredible that something so large could be a form of transport. Compared to this spaceship, the P&O ferry seemed as quaint as a pedalo.

  He wondered what the ship looked like from outside and whether he would live long enough to see it.

  A series of high-pitched beeps cut through Charlie's musings.
The two soldiers stopped in their tracks. The female one grabbed Charlie and pushed him against the wall. "Stay there."

  The corridor lights faded and with it the steady beeping, until they stood in silent darkness.

  It lasted a second and then a bluish whiteness enveloped them.

  The soldiers stiffened. With ramrod straight backs, they stared ahead, bringing their hands up to their stomachs where they rested them palm in palm.

  Out of the light, a giant face materialised, filling the corridor. It was another silver skinned female. But this one seemed to belong to a whole different species to his interrogator. The holographic face possessed the graceful pleasantness of a primary school teacher. It was a face you could trust. When she smiled, Charlie felt she was smiling just for him.

  Her voice came drifting through speakers, well hidden in the corridor walls. It was like the sound of a thousand children singing in harmony. She could have read him his death sentence, and he would have stood their smiling.

  "Colleagues," she began. "It is time for the daily update. As Chief Executive Officer of our blessed corporation, it is my privilege to inform you of our victories in the field of commerce, civility and defence."

  Finally, Charlie learned the name of this alien race of people. They were turen and they lived on the planet Seenthee and its two orbiting moons. To Charlie's surprise, their civilization contained no nation states and there were no governments, elected or not, ruling them. Instead, one giant, globe encompassing business organisation called the Corporation ran the show.

  Soon the update deteriorated into an endless torrent of business talk. Charlie's admiration for the woman faded as she switched topic to increasing crop estimates and predicted economic growth. It reminded him of his Monday morning meetings with Old Coldbones. He yawned and got a crack in the ribs from one his guards.

  Eventually the CEO turned towards more interesting matters. Defence it seemed ranked highest amongst the Corporation's priorities. He listened carefully, hoping to glean some information that might help him survive his stay on board the ship.