“So, by all rights, this man could be anybody,” Ivy said. “He might not have anything to do with the University at all, and could have been in the transportation bay without authorization.”
Maxim hadn’t considered that and now that Ivy said it, he felt a sense of dread settling into his chest. The thought was unsettling but made sense in a disturbing, uncomfortable way. The group of soldiers and refugees had been led under Pyra’s guidance into the transportation bay though they didn’t have the authorization to be there, and yet they hadn’t stopped to question if this man who they were entrusting to bring them on the crossing to Penthos had any legitimate reason for being there.
“He mentioned to Jacob and the women that he had a military background,” Maxim said. “His explanation for becoming the leader of the ship in Pyra’s absence was that he had served in the military and then leveraged that experience and those skills to gain the place as pilot in the University program. They said that he carried himself like someone in the military.”
“That might be true,” Ivy said, “but that doesn’t mean that he really was in the University program, or that he had any real reason for being in the transportation bay. If he had military experience, that would explain him being familiar with the technology of the ships. Even ships that are designed within the University itself have to be reviewed and approved by the military and government joint factions before they are allowed to be used for any purpose other than ground-based testing. It’s possible that he could have been serving when the ship that was brought here was under review by the military, making him familiar with its features and operation.”
“Which would be why he selected that specific ship out of all the rest of the ones that were in the transportation bay,” Maxim said.
Ivy nodded slowly.
“The question, though, is whether that means that he was there with negative ulterior motives, or if he was actually telling the truth and it was someone else onboard that was putting the entire group at risk.”
“But why would he be at the University?” Aegeus asked. “For either purpose? What was he looking for?”
“What…or who?” Maxim asked.
“We should get moving,” Severine said. “We need to get everyone safely in the ship. The longer we stay here, the more likely it is that the hybrids will be doing their rounds and find us.”
“Before we go,” started Rilex and Maxim saw him give a meaningful look to Severine.
She nodded and looked at Maxim.
“Rilex and I have something that we need to get before we can leave the tunnels,” she said. “Will you help?”
Maxim nodded. Though he didn’t know what it was that she wanted to get, she could see in the woman’s eyes that she was very concerned and dearly needed them to cooperate with her.
A few minutes later they were making their way across the quarry and toward another entrance to the tunnels. Maxim cradled Ivy in his arms, not wanting her to exert herself too much this early in the trip back to the ship. His father continued to hold Dove in his arms, seemingly unwilling to let the tiny baby out of his sight. They followed Severine and Rilex as they led them across the rocks and then down into another section of the tunnels. He didn’t know where they were going and he continued to tell himself that he needed to trust them. Neither had done anything to show that they were anything but loyal to their crew and had put themselves in tremendous danger to help their cause. Maxim had to believe that they had no ill intentions for any of them, or for what they were all fighting to achieve.
Maxim didn’t know how long they had traveled when Rilex and Severine slowed and stopped, turning to face the rest of the group gathered behind them.
“When we first traveled through this section of the tunnels toward the compound, before we found the Meldor, we found something else. Because we were focused on getting the Meldor safely to the compound, we left this behind, but we decided that we needed to come back for it. That’s why we were in the quarry tonight. We had come back here and heard Ivy screaming.”
They stepped back and Maxim lowered Ivy gently to her feet before following them into the room where they had paused. The body lying on the ground was a momentary shock and he stopped abruptly.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“We don’t know,” Rilex said. “He doesn’t have any form of identification. His clothing is tattered so even if he used to have a name tag, it’s not readable anymore.”
“You found him exactly like this?” Aegeus asked from behind him.
“He was lying on his stomach and had a book with him,” Severine said.
“Where is the book now?”
“We brought it back to the compound,” Rilex answered. “We haven’t had a chance to read it yet. We intended on bringing the body back to examine it and to read the book to see if we could find out anything about it.”
Maxim crouched down beside the body and touched one skeletal arm. The sight of the skull turned toward him, empty eyes seeming to implore him, was chilling. He glanced back over his shoulder to ensure that Aegeus was truly still standing there. Though he knew that he was and that the years of believing his father to be dead were over, seeing the unidentified skeleton brought back all the horrific feelings of not knowing what had happened to him or where he was. Whoever this man was, he had been lying in the tunnels for quite some time, and somewhere there might be a family who was still wondering.
“What is the best way to get him back to the ship?” he asked.
Aegeus removed the cloak that he wore around his shoulders and spread it over the dirt. Looking at it resting there was a sharp, cold reminder of the clothing of the Valdicians, though Aegeus always wore his hood down, eliminating the sense that he was hiding from something. Moving as carefully and reverently as they could, they transferred the body onto the cloak. Maxim and Rilex each tied one end of the fabric to create handles and lifted it up, positioning the knots on their shoulders to allow them to carry the body back through the tunnels. They walked in silence, a sense of solemnity overtaking them as they transported the body out of its resting place and toward the ship.
The walk back to the ship seemed to take longer than it had to get to the quarry even after they had stepped out of the rocks and back onto the desert sand. They were a strange juxtaposition of a funeral march and a coronation processional, at once presenting the planet to Dove and bringing the body further toward its final resting place. It wasn’t until the ship was looming ahead of them that Maxim remembered that Avery was still within the ship. With both he and Aegeus gone, it left the pilot alone. If there was anything on that ship that was dangerous, he would have to face it by himself.
Dove had started to cry by the time that they made it inside the ship and Ivy reached up to take her from Aegeus.
“I’ll bring you to the passenger pod that I was using,” Maxim told her. “You can feed her and rest while we start examining the body.”
Maxim carefully handed his handle of the cloak over to Aegeus and rested his hand on Ivy’s back to guide her in the direction of the room where he had been trying to sleep before he left to explore the desert. He knew that Aegeus could lead Rilex to the ship’s infirmary where they could lay the body on one of the beds for the examination. He brought Ivy into the room and took Dove from her arms long enough for her to undress and climb into the bed, then settled the baby down beside her. He watched Dove eat for a few peaceful moments, then noticed Ivy’s eyes had closed. He kissed her gently on the forehead and walked out of the room, hurrying toward the infirmary. As he approached, Avery came toward him from the opposite end of the hallway. His eyes were wide and he looked at Maxim questioningly.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “I heard other people on the ship.”
Maxim nodded, holding up a hand to calm the human pilot.
“It’s alright, Avery. They aren’t a threat. My partner, my mother, an ally of theirs named Mhavrych, Rilex, and Severine are here.”
“H
ow did they get here?” Avery asked.
“Rilex and Severine came from the compound. I’m not sure about the others. My partner, Ivy, just gave birth to our daughter.”
Avery’s face softened and he took a partial step back.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s wonderful. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“But I don’t understand, how did they get to the ship? How did they know that you were here?”
Maxim recounted the events of the evening, gesturing toward the infirmary when he told him about the body that now lay there. Avery looked toward the door, a slightly unnerved expression on his face.
“What are we going to do?” he asked. “How are we going to find out anything about it or who it used to be?”
“George.”
Maxim turned toward the sound of Ivy’s voice behind him and saw her walking toward him. He rushed toward her.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “You should be resting.”
“Dove fell asleep, but I couldn’t. Not with everything that’s going on. I knew that you were coming to the infirmary, so I found my way here. I think that we should get George.”
“Why George?” Maxim asked.
Just saying the man’s name reminded him of the tension that Ivy had told him had occurred when she first arrived on Uoria. When she was on Earth, Ivy was George’s research assistant. She was devoted to her work and followed the much older human scientist closely through all the work that he did. When he planned to go to Uoria on a research trip as a part of the exchange program with the Denynso, Ivy first said that she wasn’t able to go, but quickly changed her mind when she realized the opportunity that she might be missing. Maxim knew that she had gone to the planet with such hope, but that was quickly dashed when she arrived only to find both the Denynso and George infuriated at her arrival. It only got worse when she encountered Zsilvia, the Denynso woman who was to become George’s mate. She was immediately suspicious of small, beautiful Ivy, and thought that there was more to her relationship with George than just professional admiration and dedication to their work. The situation was painful and stressful for all of them, and it was only the necessity for them to combine efforts to help the warriors rescue the humans in the Nyx 23 settlement that released the tension and began to repair their relationships, though it was still some time before Ivy was confident in her desire to remain on Uoria with Maxim.
“George is the most knowledgeable scientist that I have ever known. He is far smarter and even more of a visionary than Ryan. He just stays quiet and doesn’t show off the way that Ryan does. If there is anyone around here that will be able to help you understand this body better, it’s George.”
Maxim nodded. He knew that Ivy was right. If they could get George to the ship, he could help them examine the skeleton and might be able to give them more insight into it. He stepped into the infirmary and found Mhavrych standing at the side of the room, watching Rilex, Severine, Aegeus, and Ellora gathered around the skeleton on the table. As he approached, he noticed that the man’s eyes seemed to be focused on Rilex rather than on the rest of the group. He continued to stare even when Maxim got to his side, noticing his presence only a few seconds later.
“You got Ivy and my mother here to Penthos,” he said.
He intended it as a question, but it came out more as a statement. Mhavrych gave a single nod.
“I did,” he said.
“How?”
“I did because I had to,” he responded.
“I need you to go to the compound,” he said. “There is a man there named George. He will be able to help us examine the body.”
Maxim expected Mhavrych to argue with him, or at least to ask him why. Instead, he turned his attention back to Rilex for another few seconds and then stalked out of the room.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“This is incredible,” Cassandra said as she ran her fingers over the controls that spread across a large portion of the wall. “I wish that I could turn it on. Just for a few seconds. I want to see what all of these things do.”
Elon gave a soft laugh and nodded.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I rode on this ship and I’m still amazed by it. This is some of the most advanced technology that exists today. It’s far beyond anything that existed even a few years ago.”
As soon as he said the words, he felt heat spread across his cheeks and embarrassment tighten in his chest. He stumbled over his words for a few moments before he was finally able to speak.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean…”
Cassandra turned away from the controls and smiled at him.
“It’s alright,” she said. “It’s a lot to process.”
Elon nodded. That was a tremendous understatement. He was looking at this woman standing in the same room with him, her face smooth and soft, appearing perhaps five years older than his thirty years, yet he was expected to believe that she had been alive for impossibly longer than that. He wanted to seem as though it wasn’t affecting him, to go along with it as he had seen those around him do, but it was something that he was struggling to wrap his head around.
“Can I ask you a personal question that is probably wildly inappropriate for me to ask?”
She looked at him curiously and then took a few steps across the room to another of the control banks and settled into the large curved chair in front of it.
“Alright,” she answered. “What do you want to know?”
“How old are you?”
He felt ridiculous asking her the question. He had known her for such a short time, not enough to build any type of personal relationship with her, and yet he felt like he needed to know more about her. He told himself that it was nothing but curiosity. She was, in brutal truth, an oddity, something that didn’t make any sense and was well beyond anything that he would have ever imagined he would have encountered when he was preparing to leave on the mission aboard this ship. Cassandra glanced over her shoulder at him. Her expression was still relaxed, seemingly unfazed by the question.
“35,” she told him. She looked back at the controls and then back at him. “I think.”
“You think?” Elon asked with a laugh, taking a few steps toward her so that he could stand beside her chair and look at the same controls that she was. “How do you not know?”
Cassandra shrugged.
“I was twenty when Nyx 23 left Earth,” she said.
“That seems so young,” Elon said.
“It is,” she said, “but not unusual for that group. We all excelled in our areas of study, research, and work. That’s why we were chosen for the program. Several of the members of the team were twenty, and there were a few more that were even younger. I graduated from the University when I was eighteen and joined the department that produced Nyx 23 immediately. Rain is a year younger than me, but she didn’t start in the department until a little more than a year later.”
Elon was impressed by the information. He knew that the members of the Nyx 23 crew had to be extraordinary. They had been selected for a program that was not only clandestine but experimental and extremely dangerous. He knew that there were many members of the crew who were older than Cassandra and Rain, learning that they had been so incredibly young when they left Earth, not realizing that it was the last time that they would ever see the people, places, and things that they knew and loved, created another level of impact on the story of Nyx 23.
“You were twenty when you left Earth,” he said, wanting to bring the conversation back to his original question. “Then what happened?”
“We ended up on Uoria,” she said. “We were in the settlement for about 15 years before the Covra came and locked us into place so that we could incubate their young. That lasted for more than 100 years before the Denynso and the people from the University were able to free us.”
“So, you think that you’re 35,” Elon said, understanding what she meant now.
“Mmmm-hmmmm
,” Cassandra said. “I don’t really know if I’m supposed to count all those years that we were locked because I wasn’t really living. I didn’t age or change. So, my body has technically been around for far longer, but I’ve lived about 35 years.”
“Do you ever wish that you had a more accurate count of how long you were there?” he asked.
“Not really,” Cassandra said. “If I really wanted to know, I’m sure that I could figure it out. The crew kept fairly meticulous count of the days after we had been on Uoria for a while. I know the exact day that we left for Nyx 23, so I’m sure that I could calculate it, but it’s really not that important to me. There’s nothing that I can do to change what happened or to give me back the years that I didn’t get to spend on Earth. I went through them when I did and I don’t want to go through them again.”
Elon was stunned into silence by her words. He had been so startled when he found out that the crew of Nyx 23 hadn’t died the way that he had always learned that they had, and that, in fact, they were still alive. It hadn’t occurred to him to think about what they had gone through when they had come out of the lock by the Covra and realized that as much time had passed as it had.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No,” Cassandra said, shaking her head. “It’s fine. If things were reversed and I was standing in the same room with someone who I was positive had died and drifted off into far space more than a century ago, I’m sure that I would be curious, too.”
“I can’t imagine what you went through,” he said. “I don’t know if I would have survived the shock.”
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