“You’re welcome. As you know, we’re here to serve the people of the Concord, and this way, we’re able to fulfill our duties to you as well as to the local issue with the Seeli,” Tom said, attempting to be as diplomatic as he was able.
“Well said, Captain. There’s a reason I trusted you in the first place, and it was more than just my young acolyte’s respect and deference for you.” She leaned in, speaking softly so no others could hear what passed between them. “I look forward to our years of interaction as we both move to our new homes.”
Tom smiled, but bridled inside. So the word was out about his promotion offer. He didn’t love the fact that Jalin Benitor appeared to be so close with Fayle. It didn’t seem like they’d ever interacted before their meeting a few months ago. He wanted to ask her about it, but his gut told him to keep quiet.
“How long until we reach Driun F49, Ven Ittix?” Fayle asked.
“Four days, Elder Fayle.”
“Very well. If you’ll excuse me,” she said, rising to leave the bridge.
Tom watched her until the bridge doors were closed behind her, and glanced at the empty seat adjacent to him. He hoped Treena had some luck left over.
____________
They received clearance after the second trip around Vaxiar. Yunrio gave them directions to the safe zone in the center of their most hostile land, which few to none inhabited due to the extreme temperatures and inclement weather systems.
Cleo made the trip with ease, but Nee curiously continued leaning over Treena, trying to gain a better vantage point of the world. “I wish I had my old lab’s equipment here. We could conduct more accurate testing.”
“I imagine they’ve done everything possible, Nee,” Reeve told the doctor.
“I know, but it might help identify the issues.”
Treena lowered them through the atmosphere, eventually coming below the cloud cover. As soon as they broke past the white vapor, the wind buffeted against their hull, sending the ship rocking side to side under the immense turbulence.
“He wasn’t kidding when he warned us it was inhospitable,” Reeve muttered, pointing to the sandstorm.
“Switching to manual landing,” Treena said, flicking the lever. The sensors were usually precise, but she never trusted the software when the conditions were so difficult. It was easy for the craft to mistake a thick gust of sand for ground, and she didn’t want the thrusters to be cut off prematurely. She’d seen it happen once in training, and the man was lucky to have lived.
She used the pinged location from Yunrio and landed there, unable to see much of anything through the viewscreen. “Guess we suit up,” she told the others. Reeve already had hers on, and Nee mumbled about the difficulty of dressing inside the cockpit.
“Then go to the hold,” Treena told him, and she watched as he stalked off. “Doctors…” She’d never met one that wasn’t slightly eccentric; add in the fact that he was a rarely-seen Kwant, with skin poisonous to the touch, and he became an enigma.
Reeve strapped her helmet on, and Treena climbed over the seats, helping the chief engineer with the gear. “Must be nice to not need the suits any longer,” Reeve said.
“Real nice. I think I’d trade being a normal woman again for having to wear an EVA on occasion,” Treena said, maybe a little too harshly. She’d been in a foul mood since they’d been told they were to separate from Constantine, and she saw the hurt in her friend’s face the instant the words escaped her lips.
“I didn’t mean to say…”
“Reeve, stop.” She set a hand on the Tekol woman’s forearm. “I’m sorry. This whole thing just has me flustered.”
“The mission, or the decision you have to make?” Reeve asked, grinning at her.
Treena laughed. “You do have a way of making people smile, don’t you? Did you really mean what you said earlier?”
“About Nee being a looker? I did, but I’m not sure it’d be worth having to hear him drone on about biology, or the fact that one caress could potentially kill me,” Reeve said, using her hands like the scales of justice.
“Not that part.” Treena dropped her smile. “When you said you’d follow me to another posting.”
“Of course I did. I love Baldwin, but I think you’d need me,” Reeve told her.
Treena beamed at the praise, even with the jab thrown in there. “Well, I haven’t chosen my final team, but I’ll be sure to keep you posted.”
“See, you can be funny too. I knew you had it in you, Starling,” Reeve said.
Treena elected to use an EVA too so she didn’t have to explain her story to everyone inside. It was easier that way.
“What’d I miss?” Nee asked, holding his helmet under his arm.
“Would you put it on so we can go already?” Reeve grabbed it, jamming it over the doctor’s head. She clasped it together, and the suit’s lights flickered to green.
“I was just about to do that,” Nee said. “Now, if you’ll help me gather some supplies.” They walked through to the cargo hold, and Treena shook her head at the sheer number of crates he’d insisted on bringing.
“Tell you what. We go in first and send the Seeli over to retrieve what we need,” Treena suggested. She pressed the door open, sending the barrier over the exit. The green energy field flashed constantly as it was assaulted with fine pieces of sand.
The building wasn’t far, but the trek through the sand was perilous nonetheless. Treena was glad for the EVA, even if she didn’t need it to breathe. Otherwise, she’d have a face and hair full of sand for weeks.
They found the structure, and the doors sprang open, revealing a Seeli man. Treena recognized him from the communications.
“Yunrio, I presume?” Treena asked as the doors closed behind them. The sound of the whistling sandstorm muffled now.
“Commander Starling.” His words flowed from his thin mouth, his teeth sharp. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed Constantine had to depart so quickly. I was looking forward to meeting with Captain Baldwin. He’s made quite the name for himself. Not that you haven’t as well, Commander Starling.” He squinted his slips of eyes, the green scales on his face changing tones slightly.
“Thank you, Yunrio. This is Doctor Nee, and our chief engineer, Reeve Daak.” Treena stepped out of the way as her crewmates said hello.
“You can remove the suits. There is nothing to fear here for your health, I assure you,” Yunrio said.
“I’d prefer to run some tests myself first, if you don’t mind,” Nee said, and to Treena’s surprise, the man didn’t stumble on the request.
“Not a problem. It will be cumbersome in those suits, though. Perhaps you’d like to utilize our decontamination zone, and use a more flexible hazard suit?” Yunrio motioned for them to enter, and they obliged.
The building was far greater inside than Treena had been expecting. They were immediately greeted by stairs, the entire place white and pristine, like a sterile hospital. A few of the local Seeli wandered around, focused on clear handheld devices with glowing symbols on the screens.
“What is this place?” Doctor Nee asked.
The stairs were twenty deep and led to a giant underground foyer. From there, Treena spotted at least five different corridor entrances, each with ten-foot-high ceilings. The lights were bright, making it feel like anything but a below-surface bunker.
“This is our primary research center. The Seeli have had a tricky run over the course of our inhabitancy here on Vaxiar,” Yunrio told them.
“How so?” Reeve asked.
“We’ve encountered a few threatening issues since arriving four hundred years ago. This world wasn’t meant for us; that much is clear.” The man laughed, a gargling sound.
“Why did you stay?” Treena was curious.
“Because we had nowhere else to go,” the man said, leading them to the end of the foyer. The wall was made of glass, and beyond it, Treena saw at least ten separate stations, two of the Seeli in each room, working over a test patient.
“You mentioned there were two races in the quadrant, stemming from the same DNA. You obviously meant the Minon, right? Can you elaborate?” Nee asked. Treena was aware that the doctor had already done as much research as he’d found in the Concord database, but the details were spotty at best.
They remained where they stood, watching the two physicians working over the Seeli. “The Minon are the closest genetically, though we look different. They appear closer to you humans, and Tekol.” Yunrio glanced at the doctor before continuing. “We all originate from an old, faraway world called Celevon; the people, the Pilia. The star was ancient and threatened their existence, so they spread out, sending five ships to colonize.”
“How long ago was this?” Treena asked.
“We aren’t sure. A million years, at least.” Yunrio stared through the glass.
“I thought you only had interstellar travel four hundred years ago,” Nee reminded him.
“That’s correct. The first colony ship was a generation ship that took years to arrive on Vaxiar. It landed in the ocean after a rocky entrance, and we forgot about our ancestry over centuries of adversities. Only when our technology grew advanced enough to search our small oceans did we learn of our history. This led us to new theories and technological dreams we’d never experienced before. We also heard of the other colony vessels. Only two settlements are members of the Concord.”
“And the other three?” Reeve asked.
Yunrio shrugged. “We don’t know. We’ve never encountered them, so I assume they either traveled much farther than us or died off long ago.”
Treena listened with interest, but the sudden beeping from inside the room across from them garnered everyone’s attention. “What’s happening?” she asked Yunrio. His eyes went wide as the patient thrashed in the bed. The two physicians tried to hold her down, but she frothed at the mouth, sitting up rigid. She shook before collapsing, the machines around her chiming smoothly, indicating a flatlining of her vitals.
“She’s dead. You see, our tests have grown a little extreme in this time of desperation. We haven’t initiated a successful pregnancy in three months,” Yunrio told them, his gaze drifting to the dead patient.
“This is atrocious. How can you do such testing?” Nee asked loudly. A Seeli woman watched them from across the foyer.
“We have no choice. The rest of the Concord has all but abandoned our plight. We need to fix this!” Yunrio shouted in response.
“Let’s examine more details. Perhaps a fresh set of eyes would help,” Doctor Nee said softly.
“I hope so, Doctor.” Yunrio waved them along, indicating they should follow him through the corridor on their right. He stopped fifty feet down and pressed his stubby thumb to a screen. The office door opened, revealing a busy but organized room.
The lights were dim, and he moved to a wide desk, tapping a screen embedded in its surface. “Will you be able to go to Minon?” he asked as an image of the Border station they’d looked up on Constantine appeared.
“Depends on why we’re going,” Treena told him.
“Everything. The Minon have found something. Someone…”
“Someone?” Nee quipped.
Yunrio took a seat behind the desk, motioning to the seats along the far wall. Reeve and Treena grabbed three, and they settled to them, still wearing the EVAs. Treena suddenly felt too claustrophobic and wanted nothing more than to remove the suit.
Their host changed the image on the screen, showing footage from a lab. It was nothing like the bright space they found here on Vaxiar. The place appeared clandestine: dim and covered in shadows.
“You have to understand, cloning is frowned upon here,” Yunrio told them.
“As it is across the Concord.” There were laws in place to prevent cloning on the whole, and they’d grown stricter after a few races had nearly obliterated themselves with a flaw in their coding.
“But we might not have a choice,” he said quietly.
Treena didn’t like the sound of this. They each stared at the screen, and a tall man in a dark lab coat stepped to the side, revealing a body inside a glass-encased tube. It was a young woman.
“What have they done?” Nee asked.
“Found our savior. But now I fear she’s gone.”
____________
Brax stretched his neck, moving it from side to side. It cracked lightly, and he returned to his motionless position. The newsfeeds from Nolix were concerning. He wasn’t one for reading them often, but with the impending colony planet and the Ugna’s alliance into the Concord, things had escalated lately.
He was shocked at how much pushback the Concord was receiving as a result. Dozens of families had come forward to claim the Ugna had stolen their children when they were little. Others admitted to being bribed to sell their kids to what was being called a multi-race cult, run by robed albinos with magical powers.
Brax scrolled through a few more articles and closed the screen. It didn’t look good for the Ugna, and the Concord’s efforts to appease their new partner were only giving their tarnished reputation another black eye. Even after the Ugna had helped them fight the Statu and return home heroes, people were scared of the unknown.
After being on a ship with Elder Fayle and her peers, Brax didn’t blame them. The Ugna were, by all intents and purposes, very strange. Even Ven had been acting differently in their presence, and Brax didn’t like that. He and the other man were beginning to forge a friendship, but over the last day or two, his demeanor had changed.
It was late, and Brax wasn’t on duty for another nine hours, so he decided to head to the lounge. He washed his face quickly, drying it off, and opted for changing out of his uniform. On occasion, it was nice to wear something that didn’t define you as Concord property, even if they did supply the other clothing as well.
His long-sleeved shirt was dark blue, his pants a crisp gray. If there was one thing the Concord lacked, it was color. He shook his head, departing from his quarters. Treena’s room was close, and he thought about how odd it was that she was with his sister on an alien world, while her body was residing only yards away from him.
Brax kept moving, and a short time later, he found himself in the courtyard lounge. It was fairly quiet, and he spotted a few familiar faces inside. He started to walk to the bar but was called over by a woman from his security crew.
“Lieutenant Commander, have a seat with us,” Baylish said.
He smiled, pointing at his collar. “I’m Brax tonight.” He took the offered chair and was introduced to the other two people at the table. Mapoli was a short Tekol, and he worked in the boiler room with Brax’s sister. A lean Zilph’i woman named Peeli rounded out their group, and she gave Brax moon eyes as he said hello. It was clear they’d been in their cups for a few hours.
“What are we drinking?” he asked.
Baylish answered, her words slurring slightly. “Eganian whiskey.”
He waved for a ServoBot. “In that case, I’ll take a Raca. What are we talking about?”
The Tekol leaned in, his voice a hushed whisper. “Don’t they give you the creeps?” His gaze drifted behind Brax.
Brax followed it, seeing a pair of robed Ugna enter the lounge. “They’re fine. I mean, we’re in a universe with hundreds, maybe thousands of different races. What makes you freaked out about them?”
“They’re not a race, and that’s the problem. Do you think you and I, being Tekol, could team up with some humans”—Mapoli pointed at Baylish—“or Zilph’i, like the lovely Peeli here, and declare ourselves worthy of being a Concord partner? It makes no sense.”
Peeli took the bait. “I hear they brainwash everyone and make them take drugs to control them. It’s sickening.”
Brax’s hot beverage arrived, and he sat patiently, not wanting to interrupt them.
“And those eyes. Red. The Vastness does not welcome all, I can assure you,” Baylish said.
Brax cringed, hating to hear one of his staff acting this w
ay. “This is the problem.”
“What is?” Mapoli asked.
“This. The way you don’t even give them a chance. If Captain Baldwin and the admirals, as well as the Prime, have the common sense to see a powerful ally and take advantage of the potential relationship, then so should we.” Brax sipped his Raca, savoring the first taste.
“We didn’t think…”
“That’s right. You didn’t. Our executive lieutenant is one of the finest men I’ve ever met. He sacrificed his own life to save mine. Did you know that?” Brax asked.
“But he’s alive,” Baylish replied.
Brax nodded slowly. “He is.” He didn’t want to explore the unknown fact that the Ugna could apparently rise from the dead. That was the last thing that needed spreading around. “My point is, give them a chance. I think you’ll be surprised.”
“If you say so,” Mapoli muttered, drinking another shot of the green-brown liquor in front of him.
Brax made an excuse and left their company. If their own crew were already this much against the Ugna, what hope did they have? He’d need to broach the subject with Captain Baldwin right away.
He left the lounge, wondering where Ven had disappeared to.
Four
The Ugna ship was unlike anything Ven had ever seen. The energy was invigorating. Everywhere he went, people like him were working, using their minds to perform the ship’s functions. Their vessels were far smaller than Constantine, and they only had two decks, each with twenty-foot ceilings. The corridors spread wide, making everything feel quite impressive. The design was utilitarian, as he’d expected, but sleek and smooth: an intricate blend of old world and lustrous space travel.
“What do you think, Ven Ittix?” Elder Fayle asked as she toured him around Vastness, their flagship. He’d learned this was her own personal ship when she traveled anywhere, and it showed in the casual deference the crew offered her.
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