by Jason Letts
“OK,” Loris said, willing to go along with her that it wasn’t possible. “Let’s shelve that in case our capabilities change. For now, I agree that staying here for very long isn’t in our best interests, but before we move on, whether it’s through one of these windows or not, let’s have a good reason for doing so. That means we’re looking for a new home within striking distance. Keep digging for information.”
He ended the meeting, wondering for the first time if they were so far away from everything that they knew that the sheer distance would provide them enough safety to live comfortably. That window at the bottom of the chasm on Detonus was so narrow that anything much bigger than a fighter would never be able to get through. Arriving at a new place to live might come sooner than he thought possible.
After a week of research they’d begun to identify a few possible candidates among the thousands of stars and countless planets out there, but a problem more pressing than where they would go arrived in front of Loris’s desk. It came in the form of Panic, who had heard through her staff about unrest among the refugees on the Incubator.
“It’s getting pretty bad over there. Fights are breaking out. They’re disgusted with eating the Detonans’ powdered food, which we’re mixing with water. They call it baby formula. The smell of rotten eggs is making them sick. My team over there is having trouble keeping order, and Quade isn’t doing much to help. They’ve barely seen him since I sent them over there after we came through the window. There’s also an issue with waste management. Evidently, the Detonans don’t defecate as often as we do and it’s putting a lot of stress on the system,” she explained.
“Just have them expel it out into space,” Loris said, feeling like this was the last thing he needed on his plate.
“That takes someone going around to collect it, transporting it, and then ejecting it out of the ship. No one wants to do that,” Panic said.
“Well, someone’s going to have to,” Loris said, shrugging. Panic leaned toward the desk.
“They’re having trouble adjusting and they want to know what’s going on,” she said.
Loris pursed his lips, accepting that the obvious things everyone had to deal with in space may be hard for them to take after spending years on a planet where they had all the space and freedom they could want.
A hasty visit was arranged, and Loris soon found himself heading to the docking bay to take a shuttle over to the alien ship. He climbed in, detached, and activated the thrusters. Somewhere along the way, Loris reduced speed and then let go of the console. While the shuttle began to drift, he leaned forward to look out from the windshield as a strange feeling came over him.
It was a feeling of being watched. Outside, there was nothing but black space and the glimmer of distant stars to see, but the sense he got was no different than when someone stared at the back of his head.
Shaking off the strange sensation, he reached for the controls and began accelerating toward the Incubator. When he arrived, no one but a couple of the defense officers were there to greet him. The plan was for Loris to spend some time checking out the living conditions before speaking in front of as many would come to the large echo chamber.
He retraced most of the route he’d taken during his previous tour, which quickly set him down residential hallways that must’ve been the heart of the problem. In addition to the dead Detonans and the programming team’s garbage, there were now Novan refugees lying about in the hallway. A few kids ran around and jumped over the various impediments. The smell had gotten worse and suggested that people were relieving themselves in some of the rooms.
Feeling out of place as he pressed on, he couldn’t believe that they’d let their living conditions deteriorate like this. They needed some order and they needed it fast.
Smiling at a studious looking young man seated alone in one of the rooms, he reminded himself that he had wanted a chance to hear from them about their concerns.
“Hello there,” Loris said, causing the young man to look up. “How are you doing?”
The young man had on a Novan robe, though it fit very tightly over his arm and shoulder muscles. His mouth opened slightly but didn’t produce a single sound. It was off putting to Loris.
“Do you need help with anything? Are you getting enough to eat? I know it might not taste very good.”
Other than the continued attention of two unflinching eyes, Loris received no response to those questions, either. He had no choice but to move on, but he did get a strong reaction from the next man he tried to step over.
“Hey, you’re from the space station, aren’t you? When are we getting out of here?” he asked. He was an older man whose woven garment was frayed from age.
“We’re trying to figure that out. I’ll address it more when I speak to everyone,” Loris said, but his answer produced a sour grimace on the man’s face.
“Have you been doing anything?” he shouted, his arrogance boiling over. The man also got uncomfortably close, nearly jostling into Loris’s face.
“If I recall correctly, you spent ten years on a cramped ship to get to Nova. You should understand that these things take time,” Loris said.
“I didn’t want to go in the first place!” the man shouted.
His face grew red and Loris thought it better to turn away, but as he did so, the man grabbed his shoulder to turn him back. Already there were others who’d heard the exchange and quickly gathered around. Loris spotted another one of the defense officers down the hall and wondered if he was going to be in need of help. The faces around him were either angry or desperate. More hands latched on to his uniform.
“Please,” he said. Then someone yanked his hair, forcing his head back. He looked around to see that the old man had done it, but Loris’s attention shifted when he saw the large young man standing farther back in the hallway, still mute but stern and intimidating nonetheless.
“If you’d just listen for a moment,” Loris said, twisting to buy some room. “When I said this was going to be unpleasant, I wasn’t just talking about the transport off of the planet. This is your home now and you need to take care of it. And it wouldn’t hurt if you were a little bit thankful as well. If you were back on Nova with Kid, you’d be dead. If you were still on Earth, you’d be dead. We’re going to find a new home, but we have to find the right home.”
Much of the anger remained on their faces, but there were no more moves toward him. The officer finally made it over and escorted Loris out of the area. Deciding he’d have enough of an opportunity to see what things were like, he went straight to the echo chamber and delivered similar remarks once everyone was gathered. He spoke for fifteen minutes, wondering if it would have any real effect on their behavior, and was glad when it was over.
Before he could return to the Magellan, he had one more bit of business to take care of. Entering the control room, he demanded that one of the programming crew bring Trynton Quade to him.
“He’s busy,” the programmer said. “There was almost no notice of your arrival.”
“Yes, he’s busy talking to me. Now go get him. That’s an order,” Loris said.
The officer was nearly Loris’s age and didn’t try to hide his rolling eyes as he left the room. He did return with Quade, who managed to show some more respect. The Chief of Technological Research looked like he hadn’t cleaned himself in days. His skin and hair was almost as oily as a Detonan’s.
“I’m sorry about not being there as soon as you boarded. We’ve had some issues with air circulation that we’ve been working on. Trying to take care of that smell,” he said.
“I understand there’s a lot going on here, and clearly you need some help managing this many passengers while keeping the ship running. We’ve got to clean up the dead bodies and the trash. Let’s get these people into a daily routine that makes sense. I’m going to get some people over here to help.”
“That’s not really necessary, is it?” Quade quibbled. “You just gave that great speech. I was l
istening to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if that takes care of the problem.”
“A few more people would make things easier for you,” Loris said. Still resistant, Quade offered a curt nod.
Loris couldn’t wait to head back to the Magellan, but on the way he had that same uncomfortable sensation of being watched. This time it was an image of the young man in his mind that distracted him. His face had all the youthfulness of a seventeen-year-old, but from the way his body had been built he must’ve been born with dumbbells in his hands. That he wouldn’t say a word irked Loris endlessly.
The experience on the Incubator continued to haunt Loris during his off-duty hours. He had a dream about the people he was trying to help turning on him that was both suffocating and demoralizing. When he woke up, he found that he’d only gotten a few hours’ sleep, and he was agitated to the point where getting more wasn’t going to happen.
In times like this, Loris often went to the simulator to run tests and prepare for the next fight. Although there were no enemies in sight, as a Unified officer he knew that the next battle could land on his lap at a moment’s notice. On the way to the simulator, he suddenly got a taste for the real thing and headed to the docking bay instead.
Most of the lights were off there when he arrived except for a few wall lights that only cast a slight glow across the large hangar. He appreciated the solemnity of the darkness and went straight for an airlock and the Cortes beyond. Leaning back in the cockpit and putting a foot up against the monitor, he spent at least an hour thinking about what they should do next.
Without much in the way of weapons to fight with, could they really turn their back on the war against the Detonans? If they landed on some peaceful, beautifully green planet, would it gnaw at him forever that he hadn’t finished the job? After seeing and hearing the Detonans so many times, he knew they’d never relent as long as even one of them remained. The question Loris couldn’t answer was if he had the smarts to figure out a way to win.
Leaving the Cortes and returning to the vacant and dim docking bay, he planned to return to his quarters for another shot at sleep when an odd sound forced him to turn around. It was the sound of an airlock sliding open, and sure enough the silver gray door had been replaced with a glimpse of black space speckled with a few twinkling stars.
If an airlock suddenly malfunctioned and exposed the room to empty space, he would’ve expected a few things to happen. The loss of pressure would’ve sent him and everything else flying. He would’ve had a minute to restore pressure before ebullism, hypoxia, and a host of other ailments sealed his fate. But none of those things happened.
The airlock looked out into clear, unobstructed space.
Loris wondered if he was still dreaming. He approached the airlock while rubbing his eyes. Someone must’ve been aware that the airlock had opened in one of the nearby monitoring stations, but perhaps they weren’t paying that close attention and figured it was Loris continuing to come and go from the Cortes.
His curiosity got the better of him and he ventured closer to the airlock, a dark tunnel he’d crossed many times that now required much closer attention. The air felt ever so slightly colder, but it was nothing compared to the iciness of space.
Sure he was still in a dream, he crept to the end of the airlock and gazed out at space in every direction possible. He didn’t dare cross the plane at the end of the tunnel, but his fear of doing so was gradually outweighed by his disbelief. If he stepped out, would he then be able to fly around through space using the power of his mind? Anything seemed possible. It was also possible that breaking the plane and extending into space would shatter whatever was keeping the pressure in. He had no grasp of what was going on.
Without letting any more deliberation paralyze him, he extended a foot forward beyond the edge of the tunnel and, when nothing happened, he brought it down to find a hard surface he could not see beyond. Pressing his foot hard, it didn’t give way even though he looked straight down at empty space behind it. There was only one thing left to do.
Continuing forward, he stepped out onto the invisible surface far enough to be able to look back at the exterior of the space station’s docking bay. Impossible, surreal, inexplicable. These were some of the words racing through his mind. He reached up with his hand and stubbed his fingers against another hard surface. It might’ve been a ship he was in.
His doubts caught up to him and he quickly stepped back into the tunnel, afraid that it would all fall apart and he’d be caught outside. It was time to get someone, anyone to verify this. The best candidate would’ve been Riki Lala, who he’d lift out of bed and carry her down if he had to.
He marched toward the exit but didn’t get very far. To his left at one of the console tables, he spied another unusual sight in the darkness. A touch-activated tablet had turned on and was floating in the air a couple of meters above the ground. It jostled and twitched, swinging slightly here and there, seemingly of its own accord.
Taking short, cautious steps, Loris approached the table and the floating tablet. When he was a few meters away, it came to a halt at an angle as if someone was holding it against his or her side. He knew something was there in the darkness holding it up, perhaps the same thing that had been watching him while he was in the shuttle. It was the dark matter. Something was alive.
Loris reached out toward the empty space around the tablet. His fingers pressed against a surface that felt like warm stone. To his surprise, something of that same texture tapped him on the side of the neck three times. It was unbelievable, and Loris felt surprisingly elated.
“Who are you?” he said.
Instead of an answer, he watched the tablet begin to move again. His fingers no longer felt anything but air. The tablet, and whatever was holding it, moved steadily toward the airlock. Of all possible responses, it dawned on Loris that he was being robbed. The humor in it brought a smile to his lips. The last hint of light from the screen slipped out of the airlock and away from the open space outside. The airlock closed.
Loris was alone, but in another very real sense clearly he was not.
CHAPTER 8
Rather than barging into her room and dragging her out of bed, Loris summoned enough patience to hit the doorbell and wait for Riki Lala to answer. When she opened the door, she was in a nightgown and her hair was a contorted mess, but he took her by the hand anyway and brought her to a monitoring station where they could try to get a recording of what happened from mounted cameras.
“There, you see that!” Loris said triumphantly.
She nearly had her face pressed into the screen. The viewpoint was a long distance away, and the light from the tablet was like a star in the sky. Noticing she was still skeptical, he went on to bring up logs of the airlock. Incontrovertible proof.
“Sure, something came in, took the tablet, and left,” she said, sounding like she was trying to appease him.
“You still don’t believe me?” he said, turning back to the screen to replay the film, but she tugged his attention back to her with a pinch on the sleeve.
“No, I believed you from the beginning. We’re so far beyond uncharted territory that not believing anything is a dangerous risk.”
“Then what is it?” Loris asked. Much of the astonishment he’d felt was still running through his veins. Virtually, every interaction he’d had with any alien life form in his life was hostile, or at least uncomfortably invasive in the case of the boy, but this felt different. It had been dizzyingly strange, but somehow he’d felt a connection in that unexpected moment.
Riki Lala blinked hard, still waking up.
“My only guess is it’s a wimp.”
“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”
“A W.I.M.P. It’s an acronym that stands for weakly interacting massive particles. It’s pretty much the only theory we have going when it comes to the physicality of dark matter. The weak force is best understood as an agent facilitating radioactive decay, and one could extrapolate th
at in the context of a life form to suggest that the very thing that gives them substance is also what causes them to age and eventually die, as humans do.”
As much as Loris was interested in her theorizing about the nature of what he’d seen, he had more practical interests that needed attention.
“Is there any way for us to gather any more information on what they are, what kind of ship docked against the airlock? If there’s something out there, I’d like to know what it wants and what its capabilities are,” he said, his mind falling back into a commander’s preoccupation with security.
“We can try to locate the tablet and keep an eye on where it goes,” she suggested. “Part of the challenge with the weak force is that it doesn’t register over long distances like gravity. Unless that being wants to submit to testing or give us something we can work with, our opportunities to observe and study it are nil.”
While Loris hadn’t held out much hope that she’d be able to unravel all of their mysteries from the get-go, he had anticipated that she of all people would be most likely to share his enthusiasm over the discovery. But in that respect she was truly disappointing.
“You’re just not fazed by anything, are you?” he asked, wondering if he should be trying to get some sleep.
Riki Lala sighed and grabbed her right elbow.
“Do you know why I take such a dispassionate approach? It’s not because I study science and believe there’s no room for emotion. Plenty of people would act giddy whenever they completed a calculation. That’s fine and I even used to be like that when I was young, but then my parents died. It wasn’t a Silica attack or anything extraordinary, just a regular old car crash in which I broke my arm. Studying was the only thing I had left, and the world lost all of its color for me.”
“I had no idea. I’m sorry to hear about that,” Loris said.
Her lips widened into a smile.
