Intrinsic: Book One of the Terran Cycle

by Philip C. Quaintrell

  Over the years of experiencing his Rem-plant, Roland had become accustomed to the grogginess and confusion that usually followed. In the beginning, those ten seconds felt like an eternity, especially if he woke up in a different place. But now? Now he knew what to expect.

  His mind switched on long before he opened his eyes. He was aware of two pairs of hands dragging him by his limp arms down a corridor. He continued to let his feet drag on the floor. He didn’t know who these aliens were but they were as predictable as humans.

  He opened his eyes briefly to glimpse his surroundings. There were only two of them; the other guards must have remained behind to oversee the mechs. He no longer had to recall his training days at the academy, his muscles simply responded to his needs. He calculated five more seconds before he was free.

  First he had to get into position; it was all about counter balance. His initial attack had to be a surprise. Using one leg he planted it into the floor taking his weight so they wouldn’t realise he was about to lunge. Everything else was reactionary.

  Pushing up he shoved the captors’ hands away while pushing them both in opposite directions. With the armour plating they wore he had to use the walls as weapons or risk breaking his knuckles. Momentum was always a useful tool in combat; it could be used for or against. In this case Roland kicked the guard to his left until he felt him make contact with the wall. Pushing off the guard’s abdomen he threw his weight into the guard on his right. Careful not break any bones, he used the flat of his hand to force the helmet into the opposing wall. With a guard in front and behind him it became a simple matter of hit and run, the best tactic with multiple opponents.

  So far everything had taken two seconds.

  Hearing the guard behind him, he thrust his leg out again hitting him square in the chest plate. It was made easier by using the shoulders of the alien in front for balance. Before seeing the effects of his kick he brought his leg back and pushed his boot into the alien in front of him. Striking the knee joint, the alien dropped to the floor with a wonky leg.

  Four seconds.

  Knowing the enemy in front was now disabled, though not unconscious, he threw himself back landing elbow first into the neck of the other guard. Without breaking motion Roland slipped his fingers under the chin, bringing the helmet off with him. He turned on the spot and back handed the disabled guard gripping his broken leg. He heard the two helmets crack and the guard went limp. The gargling behind him abruptly stopped with a thud as the alien hit the floor. Roland already knew he had crushed the wind pipe.

  Five seconds.

  Looking down at the helmet in his hands he realised the guard behind him was no longer hidden. He couldn’t quite believe his eyes at the sight of the alien in front of him, and it was an alien. He saw now why the helmets had been sleek and slanted to the back. The whole head arced backwards stretching from the brow. Where he would have expected to see hair there was bony ridges that he guessed were part of the skull. The skin itself, if it was skin, was ice blue made up of glittering scales. The face was all angles as the bony ridges formed into the skull and high cheek bones. The nose was a small bump in the middle with a narrow slit down the centre. He assumed it was the nose purely by biographical location. The lips were the most astonishing, if only because of their resemblance to his own. They were a darker blue than the rest and didn’t glisten the same as the scaly skin.

  The eye sockets were of similar shape and size to a human’s but no eyebrows to speak of. He let his curiosity get the better of him as he parted an eyelid to inspect the eye within. Alien it was. With no iris to speak of, it only had a single black slit for a pupil against a white background. It appeared slightly damaged and blood shot after the recent suffocation. He turned the head to the side looking for ears but found only a pitted hole against the surface. There was a curious small black device stuck behind the hole. He looked at his finger tips after touching the face, the alien skin was not what he expected. Instead of scales like he saw, he felt soft smooth skin, much like that of a human. He took a closer look at the face and saw a thin layer of transparent epidermis covering the diamond like scales. If this creature was anything like humans he guessed it to be male as the features didn’t come across as particularly feminine.

  Was he the first person ever to see an alien? He spent a couple of seconds feeling good about that before realising he needed to move on. He heard a lot of movement from the direction he had been dragged from. Chances are they heard the commotion caused by his escape. He wasted no time relieving the dead guard of his rifle while making his way up the corridor, putting distance between him and the cargo bay.

  He inspected his new weapon, looking for familiar points of origin. The trigger was the most obvious though it was more of a two-fingered button than a lever. The handle was part of the stock at the back with a hole to fit his thumb through. Despite its size it felt light in his hands as he cupped the long barrel. Both sides of the main body were covered in a holographic panel with gibberish written across it. He decided not to touch any of it.

  After taking a couple of winding corners an alarm blared out above his head. The sudden noise dropped him to one knee as he prepared for a fight that never came. He looked around for potential threats and instead found a strange ball protruding from the ceiling above. The ball rotated in its socket as a green line moved across the corridor and over his body.

  That’s probably not a good thing.

  He already knew what had most likely happened. They had found the bodies and initiated a ship-wide search. It couldn’t be that hard to find the only stray human onboard. He had to move quickly now, they would know where he was. The door immediately ahead wouldn’t budge. He had to turn back and take another route. It wasn’t long before he was confronted by a group so big he couldn’t catch their exact number. He didn’t hear their responses at seeing him but he knew from the subsequent shots that flew by it wasn’t a ‘hi, how you doing?’

  He felt a cold burn as a blue flash caught the side of his right leg, singeing the material and melting the edge of his armoured plate. All he could do was run the other way whilst firing blindly over his shoulder. He ran without care for his direction, constantly aware of the pursuing boots behind. Every now and then a lucky shot would get closer, blinding his retinas with the blue after-image. He passed several other aliens on his excursion, none of which were dressed like soldiers. He could see their alien faces as he ran by and assumed them to be regular crew rather than soldiers.

  Every room and corridor was the same polish of silver with no attempts to make it aesthetically pleasing. He wanted to stop and take in some of the strange new technology he was passing, but he thought better of it after a holographic display erupted in sparks and flames after being shot. He heard the nearby crew shout in a language as confusing as the writing on the side of his gun. Despite everything, he couldn’t help but ponder his confusion. It was the first time he had ever heard a language he didn’t understand; humans hadn’t had such communication problems for centuries.

  Eventually he came to a lone room devoid of life with only one other door leading off it. He carried on through, looking for a control panel on the other side to seal him in. The symbols made no sense but he was sure it was for the door. Seeing this as a chance to lose his pursuers he decided to just shoot the holographic panel in hopes of locking the door. It didn’t work. After sputtering a small electrical fire, the hologram shut down and the doors remained stubbornly open.

  “Perfect...” He squared his back against the frame, peering round to see his captors. They spread out in the room taking up positions behind various stations and work benches. He wiped the sweat from his brow stinging his eye as he did. Rydeck had a thick head. He was running out of options, there was only one more room to go through and who knew where that led. If he stayed and fought they would over power him with superior weaponry.

  Unexpectedly, an alien walked out of the room on his right. On seeing him, the alien dropped his to
ols and ran the other way. All Roland saw was a potential hostage. Keeping the soldiers occupied he fired a couple of loose shots in their direction. Before they retaliated he ran after the fleeing alien. Much to his glee and dismay, the room was a dead end. His hostage wasn’t going anywhere, but neither was he. At least that’s what he thought.

  The lone alien had already activated one of the large red circular panels that ran along the wall. To his surprise the alien began to climb through the new portal, trying to clamber out of sight. Roland grabbed his ankle and pulled him back out to the floor. He didn’t seem much of a threat wearing a fitted suit covered in pockets and strange tools. He assumed him to be some kind of technician.

  Never the less he kept his boot on his chest as he inspected the contents of the circular hole.

  “Are these..?” He leaned back, taking in the other circular ports along the wall. Despite the alien tech it looked a lot like an escape pod. The port opened up into a passageway just big enough to stand in and a couple of chairs in front of a brightly lit console. He couldn’t miss the view port at the end with a clear image of space beyond. It looked like freedom.

  There was too much to calculate with the time he had. If he escaped now, he might never be able to get back to the others, or even Earth. He thought about the children he had seen dotted around the cargo bay.

  Screw it!

  He told himself he could do both. He would escape now and find a way to help them later. As long as he didn’t get his hands on any alcohol.

  He reached down and roughly picked up the quivering technician. Good, he thought, they feel fear. Without explanation he shoved the alien through the port and into the pod. He followed him in and dragged him to the nearest chair.

  “You. Fly. Away!” He shouted his words because that would make him easier to understand. He pointed at the console and then at the view port in hopes of giving direction. He heard boots moving around outside, they had decided to come looking for him. When the technician made no move he decided a more universal form of communication was required. He stood back to leverage the long weapon and pointed it in the alien’s face. The alien’s hands responded by moving across the console, closing the pod door behind them. It was extraordinary to see the alien hands at work. The back was covered in the same diamond scales, but he noticed the palms were a darker blue like the lips.

  The door sealed just in time as Roland had looked back to see a black-clad soldier levelling his weapon. Metallic thumps resounded from the other side.

  Roland fell back into the wall as the escape pod left its housing in the main ship. The compensators were never state-of-the-art in an escape pod; apparently that fact was universal as well. The alien was blurting out unintelligible words while frantically running his fingers across the console. He was impressed with the level of technology in such a dispensable ship. The holograms were all interactive, not requiring the alien pilot to always use the console. Human technology had never achieved such a feat; holograms were simple projections and did not respond to touch. He noticed too that the view port doubled as a screen, showing different readouts against the starry back drop. The pod suddenly changed course, giving them both a very different view. Roland lowered his weapon in awe of the sight. He wiped the sweat from around his eyes thinking his vision must be blurred.

  They were now heading towards a planet, or at least it had been at some point. He couldn’t explain what he was looking at. The planet was completely cracked in half horizontally. The exterior surface was charred black as if it had been burnt and the land had never recovered. The edges were covered in cracks and giant craters. There were three canyons on this side alone that could be seen traversing the surface. A section of the bottom hemisphere looked as though some cosmic giant had taken a bite out of it. The most extraordinary thing of all was the contents of the two halves. Each half of the planet was connected by a single tower in the shape of an egg timer, with the middle section being narrower. He estimated it to be similar in size to Earth’s moon. Stretching out from that were hundreds of cylindrical towers that were erected at every angle. They formed an artificial cobweb that connected the two halves together with faint bridges between them all.

  What was he looking at? Was this some kind of alien city in space? Every structure was lit up from inside with an unfathomable population. The buzz around the planet was impressive as well. Ships of every size and shape flew to and from the planet passing by the escape pod.

  Where the hell am I?

  Kalian couldn’t stop looking at the image of the Conclave. Over the last few days he and Li’ara had been studying the different text and images given to them by Ilyseal. However Li’ara had to translate most, as Kalian could only see a few words now. He had begun to make the distinction between what Telarrek called the Conclave, with the Highclave residing within, and the Conclave the society. He now reasoned that everyone lived within the Conclave, but the capital planet was simply referred to as the Conclave.

  The hologram showed a perfectly detailed planet that had apparently broken in half across the middle. He manipulated the image with his fingers so he could see inside at the planet’s alien contents. He was enjoying the data module and its interactive holograms; it made his Data-pad look obsolete. There were hundreds of towers that surrounded an even larger one in the middle, with a city-like structure both above and below that wove between the cylindrical towers.

  Their information told them that this was the capital of the Conclave with a varying population in the high billions. It was six times the size of Earth and three times the size of Century. He wondered if it had been Ilyseal’s idea to put human comparatives in the module for them. The history behind the capital’s broken appearance was of great interest to Kalian. Like the founding of so many great things, the Conclave’s beginnings were violent and bloody. The Novaarians were allied with the Shay and the Ch’kara while being opposed by the Laronians and the Raalak. The species came to war over territory disputes and resources therein. The history files were similar to Earth’s in their comparison to an older generation being prone to violence and what would now be considered primitive reactions.

  Being over a hundred thousand years ago there was no shying away from the horrific actions taken by each side; in fact Kalian reasoned the story was now used as a lesson to the entire Conclave. At the time the Ch’kara and the Shay were working on a new mode of transport that could open up a portal in space/time and teleport their soldiers into enemy territory without risking a space battle. The Laronians meanwhile, had set up a staging post on a backwater planet, with a young species of intelligent life inhabiting it.

  The Novaarians and their allies used this new technology to transport troops onto the surface of this primitive world, and surprise their enemy. The file simply read as a calculation error regarding what happened next. The portal didn’t open on the surface, but instead ripped a hole in reality within the planet’s core. This destabilised the core and started a chain reaction that caused the planet to crack in half, after killing everything on the surface with volcanic eruptions and eventual loss of atmosphere. The scientists and troops on the Novaarian side were exposed to the raw conditions of the planetary core, wiping out half a continent on their own staging planet.

  When the dust settled, both sides realised that they had committed genocide of an innocent species and spilled an ocean of blood on both sides. In the ruin of this broken planet all the races came together under a banner of trust and hope for the future. It was agreed that the technology would receive no further research in favour of pooling their resources to better the Solar Drive. The capital’s appearance was a constant reminder of the devastation that could be caused if the Conclave wasn’t united.

  They had spent the last three days reviewing as much information as they could in between their sparring. He was impressed with himself at the progress he had made in a week. Only once had he managed to best Li’ara, but he suspected she let him to lighten his mood at losing so much. He h
ad become increasingly frustrated with his progress in using his strange abilities, though. He felt like he was constantly on the edge of understanding it before another flying object hit him in the head. Thankfully most of his bruises were on his body and went unnoticed by the Novaarians. It hadn’t escaped either of them how quickly such wounds healed...

  On the sixth night, after sparring with Li’ara, she asked him about his body, more to the point his physique. He always felt a little confused on the matter as well.

  “Did you go to a gym, back on Earth I mean?” She had pointed to his well formed muscles around his abdomen. “I know they’re not augmented otherwise I would have broken my hands by now.” He suddenly felt very conscious about his lack of a top.

  “Honestly I couldn’t tell you how I got like this.” Li’ara’s confusion had been obvious.

  “You’re telling me your body just formed naturally this way, biceps and all?” Kalian had let out an anxious laugh at the ridiculousness of the statement.

  “I guess so...”

  “So this is just one of your things then?” She waved her hands around mimicking his telekinesis. He just shrugged, not really sure what to say. He had been through puberty like everyone else. It was only when he was sixteen that he realised not everybody changed like him.

  “You lucky bastard.” Li’ara couldn’t help but laugh, and Kalian couldn’t help but get drawn in. It had been a good evening after that. Li’ara let her guard down and actually talked about her life. Fearing this might never happen again Kalian didn’t dare breathe.

  “My father was in Calais... when they attacked.” They had already finished dinner and reviewed information on a species known as the Ch’kara, another species that had a seat on the Highclave. While seated on the comfy sofas she had finally opened up about her own losses on Earth.

  Like him she had no siblings and her mother had died when she was a child due to a rare bacteria found only on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons. Her mother had been a research scientist for a branch of Central Parliament. All scientists worked for some branch of Parliament, following the dissolving of all the corporations in the last war. Her father had worked in the Central Museum in Rome where much of the ancient world had been catalogued after the wars. Kalian himself had visited the museum in his early twenties and loved the exhibitions on life in the twenty second century. He had always admired the people of that age for surviving such horrific environmental conditions. He shuddered to think what might have happened had they never invented the Weather Net to control the atmosphere. He wondered if he had seen Li’ara’s father and never known it.