Errant Contact

by T. Michael Ford

  She swung around in front of me and I had to pull up suddenly to avoid walking through her. She put her hands on my chest and brought her blue eyes up to mine. They shone with an intensity that I hadn’t seen before. “I do care,” she whispered pleadingly. “I care more than you could possibly imagine. Please don’t be angry with me.” Kalaya tried to rest her head on my shoulder, but there was no compatibility between our forms and she gave up in bitter frustration.

  “I’m not mad at you, Kalaya,” I returned slowly, realizing that, in all honesty, I really wasn’t. “I have known you long enough to know that you do everything for a reason. The logic behind that reason escapes me now, but I know it’s there. You do probably owe Laree an apology, however, for using her in your nefarious scheme.”

  She sighed, “You’re right, but I thought there was a chance, a very slim chance, that the touch of a flesh and blood woman might change your mind. Laree is a sweet girl. You could make a life with her if you tried. It’s a better alternative than dying a pointless death on this failed experiment of a planet.”

  “You heard my story – the full, unadulterated version. Do you really think she has any concept of what she would be getting into? I am not just some ‘bad boy’ who can be rehabilitated by the love of a good woman. I am a cobbled-together monster and a murderer. No self-respecting Quetanae woman would want someone like me if she knew the truth, much less a human girl dating outside her own species. I have absolutely nothing to offer her except pain and sorrow.”

  “I think you underestimate the power of love, Kodo.”

  I stepped around her and continued to walk down the hall. “Perhaps, but who am I kidding; I only had a few years with my mom to experience it firsthand. You, at least, were born into a loving home with real parents. It’s funny, the Terrans think of you as a machine when the reality is, of the two of us, you are the far more human.” I noticed that she was no longer following me and I glanced over my shoulder to see her standing in the passageway, eyes cast down.

  “Indeed,” Kalaya breathed out almost soundlessly and faded from sight.

  I didn’t see Kalaya again until I stepped out of the shower. She seemed to be somewhat back to her old self as she leered appropriately. However, I also noticed a clean crewman’s jumpsuit and a cold drink were waiting for me by the bed. She waited for me to dress and then looked up from where she sat on the edge of the mattress pretending to examine her nails.

  “Have you made up your mind?”

  “Yes, is it ready?”

  Kalaya hesitated for a second, but I didn’t get the impression it was data lag. “Yes, the Herald Mark Sixteen is complete, tested and being loaded into the forward launch tube as we speak. Launching in three minutes, twenty-seven seconds. Kodo, are you sure this is a good idea? What if the Jeff doesn’t believe them?”

  “We’ll have to make sure our message is credible, then. That probably means we should broadcast from the bridge.”

  “I feared you would say that.”

  “You disagree?”

  “No, I don’t. You are correct; that doesn’t mean I like it, however. Showing them the bridge, allowing Laree, Max, and Drik to report what they have seen. It’s a threshold we can never re-cross,” she said sadly.

  I knew where she was coming from on this, just as I knew what both of us were putting on the line. Nevertheless, it needed to be done. I spent a couple of minutes putting away my tools and collecting my thoughts while Kalaya just watched me in stony silence.

  Finally, I could dither around no longer. “Where are they?”

  “They’re all in the mess hall, doing whatever humans do with their free time. Honestly, I have been watching them for an hour now, and the only one who seems to be accomplishing anything is Laree. She is reading one of her romance books, and judging by the increased breath, heart rate, and blood pressure, she must be in the middle of an especially steamy part. I’m sure she’ll be over it soon, that book had a lousy ending.”

  A few minutes later, the two of us walked through the door to where the Terrans were sitting. Laree was at the main table, seemingly engrossed in a book on a tablet. Drik sat next to her tinkering with some sort of brightly decorated cube and Max was perched on one of the higher stools in the corner playing with an electronic device of some kind that he manipulated with his thumbs.

  “Oh, hello, Kodo, did you need help with something?” Drik asked, looking up from his task.

  “No, but I need you three to accompany us all the same,” I said looking over at Kalaya. “We’ve made a decision that affects you three, and you should be privy to it.”

  “You sound serious, and for the first time since I’ve met her, Kalaya isn’t smiling. If we’ve done something stupid again, please allow me to apologize. This doesn’t have anything to do with Laree’s recent bout of unusual silence does it?”

  “Not directly, no,” Kalaya supplied, still quiet herself. The two women exchanged silent glances. “And this has nothing to do with us being mad at you.”

  “Ok, then what are we doing?”

  “It will be easier to explain once we take you there.” Drik just shrugged, rising to his feet. Laree snapped the case shut on her tablet and rose as well. Obviously, she had been listening intently to our conversation.

  “Max,” the older scientist groused, “stop playing those ridiculous video games and get over here.

  The kid looked up, disgruntled; but, he set the game down on the stool and wandered over. Drik set his cube thing down on the table and pushed in his chair.

  “What is that?” I asked him.

  “You mean this?” he asked, indicating the cube. “I don’t really know, but Kalaya said it was a puzzle game from long ago. Apparently, it’s something she found when she was rifling through our databases. She said the goal is to get each side to the same color, but I’ve been at it for an hour and I’ve only gotten three sides.”

  “Drik, I showed you how to do it,” Kalaya said impatiently, but finally managed a sly grin.

  He sighed and picked the cube up from the table. “Yes, I know, but…”

  “Fine, one more time, then,” she said, a holographic twin to Drik’s cube appearing in her hand. “Now watch closely.” Kalaya’s hands flew over the cube, and within two seconds, she was done and displaying the piece proudly. “See, easy!”

  Drik snorted, “And now you see my problem; in fact, I’m pretty sure she’s cheating.”

  I took the small, real version of the cube from his hand and looked it over. It seemed simple enough, turn this bit, flip this part, turn this row, and done. I gave the completed cube back to him and he looked at it with a dumbfounded look on his face.

  “Wow, you suck at gameplay, old man,” Max chortled from behind. Casting his younger subordinate a look of disgust, Drik just tossed the cube into a nearby waste receptacle.

  “What was it you need us for?” Laree interjected to change the subject.

  “Follow us; we’re going to show you a part of the Aurora that you haven’t seen before.” I led the way down the passageway to the tram system. I could hear the girls whispering to each other as we walked along, but the heavy footfalls of the two other scientists prevented me from hearing much. I could imagine Laree was trying to find out what the mystery was all about from her non-corporeal friend.

  We entered the tramcar and set our destination, trapping us in a clear box with a group of confused humans…great.

  “Are one of you going to tell us what’s going on or not? You’re both acting weird,” Laree said, her hands balled up on her hips. I’m pretty sure that signifies that she was getting angry and impatient.

  Kalaya sighed and looked back at me. She didn’t have to say a thing for me to understand. I nodded and mentally stepped out of the conversation, letting her do her thing. She turned back to the group of humans and took a deep simulated breath before speaking.

  “We’re sending you home,” she said sadly.

  Their reactions were about what I expec
ted. Max did some sort of fist pump into the air and flashed a huge, stupid grin. Drik let a small smile of relief escape his otherwise guarded features. I could see that his mind instantly turned to the question of how exactly we were going to accomplish that. Laree just looked upset. That part bothered me, why in the world would she be upset? I would have guessed she would want nothing more than to seek safety back aboard the Jeff.

  “You’re getting rid of us?” she asked shakily. “Why?”

  “It’s not like that, Laree,” Kalaya said, teary-eyed and running her hand along the human girl’s cheek. “We like you, all of you…ok, most of you. You will always be our friends and always welcome. But Kodo doesn’t feel it is safe for you to stay, and I concur. We won’t put your lives at risk again; we just won’t.”

  “We’re not talking about safety from the wolves, are we?” she fired back. “You’re afraid of what’s going to happen when our military finds out about the Aurora.”

  “Yes, but we are much more afraid of what might happen to you three if they find you down here with us. I doubt it will end well for either side, and it would be best if you were safely away on the Jeff when that happens.”

  Laree nodded sadly, and I hoped she understood we were doing this for their own good.

  “How do you plan on returning us to the Jeff? Are you going to give us a shuttle or something? Drik asked.

  “No, I’m pretty sure our shuttle technology is well beyond your piloting skills,” Kalaya laughed. “Besides, none of you know how to drive stick, and we don’t have time to train up the hamster! We’re going to put you in contact with the Jeff and have them come back and pick you up.”

  A screen came to life on the glass walls of the tram. It showed the communications satellite that Kalaya had launched earlier. It had entered high orbit around the planet and a small strip of indicator functions across the bottom edge of the picture told me that it was in place and ready to work.

  “Finally, we get to leave this hellhole and go home!” Max exulted. “Why didn’t you do this earlier, we could have been home days ago?”

  “Earlier!” Kalaya steamed, obviously insulted. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to build a functioning communications satellite? Your people take more than two years on average to build one! It’s not easy. If you don’t believe me, then you make one in less than two days. Go ahead, I’ll wait!” She actually stood there looking very cross with her arms folded across her chest, tapping her foot. Max briefly looked like he was going to rise to the challenge and argue with her. Then the realization hit him that he had no idea how to start such an ambitious project. Finally, he just slumped and waved her off in defeat. “Thought so!” she smirked.

  Thankfully, the tram slid to a silent halt and the doors hissed open. Kalaya and I led them through another passageway to an escalator that carried the whole group up past the exterior of the infrastructure to what I knew was a large bubble on the top of the Aurora’s nose. The platform doors at the top opened, revealing a small but impressive bridge.

  I noticed the Terrans were almost frozen in amazement, which puzzled me. Yeah, there were a lot of bells and whistles to see. Screens lined the duty stations, all showing the ship in relation to its place in the universe. Engineering functions, life support, communications...but most of this should have been similar to what they would have seen on the Jeff. If anything, they should have been astounded by the fact that this was all run by three bridge personnel including the captain. Kalaya had informed me that the Jeff had a standard bridge crew of eight, and it’s only a small research vessel.

  Laree, always the scientist, ran up to the huge glass viewing apertures and gazed out over the surprisingly beautiful landscape in front. The view showed a vista of rolling hills, trees, and grasslands. Of course, the area immediately near the ship was torn up quite a bit by the wyverns when they excavated around the Aurora. If you looked carefully, some of the vast herds of alien sheep that gave Fleece its name could be seen on the distant hilltops.

  Drik and Max were captivated by something very different. They gazed out the back viewport at the full length of the newly revealed Aurora. “Oh, my!” Drik uttered under his breath while Max just gawked. “I know you told us how big she was, but this is beyond imagination!” The scene before them showed an immense cylindrical central core dotted with massive hangar doors along the sides. Sensor arrays and maneuvering engines were scattered here and there. A small army of drones and robots scurried across the hull like ants in a nest. Here and there, one would stop and open an access port and remove some parts, followed by another with the replacement piece. A few teams of units were hard at work repairing some spots just below and to the aft side of where we all stood.

  “That was where the explosion that took out the bridge crew’s stasis pods and most of the navigation hardware was centered,” Kalaya confirmed gravely. “As you can see, the bridge itself was undamaged.”

  Pulling myself from the outside view, I examined the condition of the bridge itself; overall, everything looked to be in good shape. Of course, the last time I had stood in this spot was almost a thousand years ago, just before she took off for the initial shakedown flight. Most of the access panels had been propped open and wires still ran across the floor in a haphazard fashion.

  The control station was designed in the clean lines of a standard ‘V’ formation with the captain’s chair in the forefront and the crew stations in wings to either side. A number of guest chairs sat against the back wall.

  “Where did the rest of the bridge crew sit?” Drik asked, tearing himself away from the viewing glass. “Is there a secondary bridge elsewhere?”

  I chuckled, “This is the full bridge. There are some emergency control stations scattered about the old girl, but they are only manned in the event of attack or threat of imminent collision. What you have to remember is that our ships have fully integrated AIs to do most of the flying, none of them as advanced as Kalaya’s people, but certainly capable of running a starship. The Quetanae bridge crew and captain were here to be, I guess you would call them managers, not button pushers. As good as the ship’s AIs were, they could never equate sentient intuition. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have needed a bridge crew at all, except for tradition, of course.”

  “So why didn’t you just build more of Kalaya’s people and have them run all your ships?” Max cut in, still looking over every aspect of the bridge.

  I winced and didn’t even have to look at Kalaya to imagine the appalled look on her face. “First off, Maxwell, we do not ‘build’ synthetic organisms, any more than we build Quetanae. They are their own free-willed race. Having Kalaya confined to piloting a single starship would be like selecting a highly intelligent human, putting him through years of advanced education and college where he graduated at the top of his class, and then sentencing him to wash windows the rest of his life. Not only would it be a tremendous waste of talent, but it would eventually drive the individual insane.”

  “Well, that explains a lot,” Max muttered, still looking around, and I saw Kalaya flush with anger.

  The humans continued to circulate around the bridge while I walked over to one of the stations and checked on the status of our communications satellite. I had watched some vid playback of human ship bridges while I was showering and what I saw was quite alarming. Humans must use the most unsafe ship designs imaginable with crew members standing at their duty stations with no visible restraints of any kind. And what is with their consoles always seeming to explode whenever the ship takes the slightest damage? Do they really run full power for the weapons systems through such flimsy devices? It just seemed like a recipe for getting everyone killed, I mused silently as I worked, trying not to think about other stupid design features I saw on their ships.

  I looked up to see Kalaya jumping into the captain’s chair. She was now wearing a full formal Quetanae Fleet Captain of the Defense Forces uniform and beaming happily. When I looked at her somewhat askance, she chuckled, “I thin
k we both know that I am better suited to play the captain.”

  “Well, you can play all the bridge crew and staff a four-piece brass band, too, if you desire. I’m probably going to be needed in the engine room anyway.”

  “Oh, don’t be that way,” she pouted. “I’ll tell you what; I found an entire catalog of naughty uniform wear in the Jeff’s hologram library. I can show them all to you later if you like.”

  That sounded really good actually, but judging by the smirk on her face, I think she is just pulling my leg on that offer. Regretfully setting those thoughts aside, I asked, “Well, should we get this show on the road?”

  “Just so you know,” Laree interjected, “I think it’s really creepy when you use Terran colloquialisms on us.”

  Kalaya snickered but ignored her comment. “Might as well, I suppose.” The room darkened as thick armor plating slid into place covering most of the windows. Soft cabin lights came up as Kalaya swiveled her command chair around and addressed the humans. “Gather around now, children, it’s time for you to phone home.” A huge vidscreen suddenly materialized on the front bridge wall directly ahead of the captain’s chair.

  “Are you sure this is going to work?” Drik questioned, moving to the forefront.

  “That’s entirely up to your people and if they decide to pick up,” Kalaya answered. “Everything from my end is, of course, working splendidly. The range of that makeshift satellite might not be that long using your primitive frequencies, but the Jeff can’t be that far away either.”

  The screen turned gray as a symbol containing a large “P” started spinning in the center of the screen. “Damn loading screens,” Max grumbled from the far side of the room.