by S. W. Ahmed
“That is indeed fishy, my Lord,” the other Aftaran said, puffing as he tried to keep up with his master. Since he was only 7.4 feet tall, his strides were much shorter than Wazilban’s.
“Get in touch with our associates at the Volonan border. Tell them to get as close to Volo-Gaviera as they can. I want to find out everything there is to know about this consar attack. Since we know the attack failed, the Mendoken ships were either destroyed or captured. We need to find out if there were any survivors.”
“As you wish, my Lord.”
“And have them send a report as soon as they discover anything of significance.”
“Certainly, my Lord.”
“The Imgoerin may believe he has succeeded in concealing this whole project from his enemies and allies alike, but once again he underestimates the extent of our reach and influence. Which, as usual, plays right into our hands, my friend.”
As the two of them walked away from the chamber, Wazilban’s laughter echoed boomingly from the walls of the long, dark hallway.
It was a strange feeling for Sharjam to be back inside an Aftaran ship. Two years had passed since he and the others had crash-landed on Tibara and concealed their ship, two years of hiding in the deep caves of that wretched mountain, of no space travel or contact with other Aftarans. Finally, he felt like he was a part of the Dominion again.
They had cleared Droila’s atmosphere within a few minutes after takeoff, and were now heading out into deep space. Their destination was the Mendoken border, about 130 light years away. At a maximum speed of 25,000 times the speed of light, the Boura-class ship would take about 2 days to get there. That wasn’t anywhere close to the speed that Mendoken or Volonan ships could travel at, but not bad considering how far behind Aftaran technology was.
Sharjam was starting to feel hopeful and optimistic, something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Of course, once the other two Aftarans back on Droila found their ship missing and sounded the alarm, Dominion ships would be on the lookout everywhere. But if he and Dumyan played it smart and didn’t make any major mistakes, they had a good chance of making it into Mendoken territory. To be safe, they would have to avoid all major travel routes of the Yuwa and risk flying across open space instead.
Sharjam, totally exhausted from the events of the past few days, felt himself falling into a peaceful slumber. His mind began to wander, his thoughts trailing off in random directions, his eyelids slowly dropping over his tired eyes.
But the peace was not to last.
“Make no abrupt movements, either of you,” a deep, gruff voice behind them suddenly said. “Or your heads will be blown to bits.”
Sharjam froze in his seat. He felt the sharpness of metal against his neck, almost certainly the edge of a boryal.
“Who are you?” Sharjam demanded, paying heed to the warning and not turning his head. He felt a hand slipping into his cloak, grabbing his own boryal and taking it away.
The voice laughed with a croaking sound, a sound only an Aftaran could make. “Did you really think you could escape so easily? The Doolins might be devoid of intelligence, but we didn’t teach them to be traitors!”
“I should have guessed you were behind this, Ozwin,” Dumyan said, without turning around. “Only someone with your devious nature could mislead an entire species like that.”
“We meet again, my dear Dumyan! And this would have to be your younger brother Sharjam? Quite the righteous Aftaran he is, from what I hear, a far cry from your naughty self. Although much good that will do him now!” Again, that croaking laugh.
Sharjam wondered who Ozwin was, and how his brother could possibly know him. He wondered why he and Dumyan hadn’t noticed Ozwin during their earlier search of the entire ship. There had to be a hidden compartment somewhere that they had overlooked.
“What do you want from us?” Dumyan growled.
“A silly question, my friend,” Ozwin said. “You will be taken straight to Meenjaza, where Lord Wazilban will deal with you as he pleases. I can assure you that it won’t be a pleasant experience for either of you. He has lately become quite annoyed with your constant evasion of his surveyors, and is anxious to get his hands on any one of you. He will surely also want to learn how your wise old father is.”
“Some things never change,” Dumyan said, shaking his head. “Tell me, Ozwin, have you been promoted yet?”
“Promoted?” Ozwin asked, sounding surprised. “To what?”
“To have the privilege of sniffing and cleaning Wazilban’s excrement every morning? Wasn’t that your dream occupation, the last time we spoke?”
Dumyan received a sharp blow on his head with the back of his own boryal. He was instantly knocked unconscious. Having lost the mind connection to its pilot, the ship started losing speed almost immediately.
“Enough chitter-chatter,” Ozwin said. “The same will happen to you, Sharjam, if you don’t keep your mouth shut. Get up slowly and turn around, with your hands above your head. No sudden movements!”
Convinced that he was dealing with a ruthless individual, Sharjam did as he was told. He could see Ozwin now – a tall, burly Aftaran dressed in a brown robe. His face was uncovered, revealing a stout face with wide eyes and a beak that was always slightly open. He had a mean look about him, with a scowling expression that seemed to be permanent. Sharjam guessed that even if Ozwin ever tried to change his expression, the muscles and feathers on his face just wouldn’t allow it.
Behind Ozwin was another Aftaran in a brown robe, also with her face uncovered. She was shorter and thinner, and far prettier. Her round eyes and long eyelashes gave her an air of sweetness that Sharjam hadn’t seen since… well, since his days as a student at the clerical academy, maybe the one time he had done something wild, something outside the realm of the strict religious protocol he had observed throughout his life. Raiha… that name still sent tingles through his body. She had just been so attractive and so charming, so incredibly understanding and supportive, that he had been unable to resist falling head over heels in love with her. Much as he still missed her, it all seemed so long ago now, and so much had happened since then.
This attractive Aftaran, however, clearly meant business, for her boryal was pointed straight at him.
“Take them away!” Ozwin ordered her, as he shoved Dumyan out of the pilot’s seat and took his place. Dumyan, still unconscious, fell to the floor with a thud. Sharjam immediately knelt down to attend to his brother.
The female Aftaran spoke for the first time. “Didn’t you hear Ozwin?” she barked. “No sudden movements!”
“Hit him,” Ozwin said, without bothering to turn around to look at them.
She raised her boryal, and with its backside hit Sharjam’s head hard.
Sharjam fell on top of Dumyan, dazed and weakened. He murmured a confused prayer to the Creator, asking for protection and guidance. Then he felt another blow, and was knocked unconscious.
Chapter 20
“Aliens!” Marc said to himself. “I’m on an alien world!”
The memories came back, one by one. The night in his lab at Cornell, the fight with Cheryl, the failed time travel experiment and its completely unexpected outcome. The arrival of the Mendoken, and his journey aboard a spaceship past the silupsal filter to the Mendoken heartland. Then another journey with the Mendoken to the seat of enemy territory, using the very mechanism he had discovered with his failed experiment. And finally, the failure to escape, after which the enemy had totally destroyed them. The last thing he could remember was that massive explosion all around him on board the Mendoken battlecruiser. He should have been dead.
Yet here he was, alive. Somehow he had survived the explosion and had become a prisoner of the enemy. All this time, he realized, he must have been living in a Volonan virtual world, a perfect world created by the desires of his own imagination.
The Volona had kept him alive, and had almost certainly been observing him in his virtual world. For what purpose, he didn’t know. Perhap
s they were just curious about his species, but that was unlikely. Sibular had told him the Volona never took prisoners, so for some reason the Volona thought he was of some value to them. This was probably their way of interrogation – holding him indefinitely in his own virtual world and watching him closely. Completely ignorant of the fact that he was a prisoner, he was to live his life, over time unknowingly revealing whatever information his captors were seeking.
What the Volona didn’t know, however, was that humans couldn’t survive in such worlds of perfection. That wasn’t surprising, since they had probably never met a human before. They didn’t know that the human mind would continuously rebel, even against itself, until it was allowed to return to its natural state of imperfection. For humans, perfection was a goal to keep striving towards, never to continuously live in. Life had no meaning for humans if they could get everything they wanted without any effort.
Marc’s mind had rebelled against itself, appearing as a ghost in his own perfect, virtual world to pull him back into reality. The ghost had taken some precautions to remain undetected, such as never mentioning the Mendoken or Volona by name. Such mention may have triggered a warning to his observers that he knew he was their prisoner and why they were holding him.
But now that he was back in reality, what was he to do? Surely the Volona would have noticed that he had escaped from his virtual prison. How long did he have, he wondered, before they came looking for him here in the real world? And so many other questions still remained unanswered. How had he survived the attack on the Mendoken ships? Was Sibular still alive? Had any of the other Mendoken survived? If so, how could he find them? And, of more immediate consequence, what kind of strange environment was he currently surrounded by?
Behind him, the mirror he had just stepped through had vanished. He found himself in the middle of a street, or at least what remained of what had once been a street. Most of it consisted of deep potholes, while the rest was covered by loose boulders. Every direction he looked, he could see the same thing. Never in his life had he seen such disarray. There was rubble and garbage everywhere, in some places stacked up in tall mounds. Ruins of what had once been massive buildings were scattered on both sides of the street. Smoke and dust blew all around him. The sky was a dismal gray, with lightning periodically flashing in the distance between the dark clouds. A horrid stench hung in the hot, humid air, a smell as bad as that of a trash can of perishables that hadn’t been emptied in several weeks. It all reminded him of a movie he had once seen a long time ago, showing the remains of an entire city that had been destroyed by nuclear bombardment.
Except that this wasn’t a destroyed city. It was a living, functional metropolis. There were alien creatures about everywhere – Volonans, no doubt. Most of them were just standing, sitting or even lying down on the ground. Some walked about slowly. But they all had that same carefree, sleepy look about them, as if they were in a trance. He surmised that this was because their minds were in their own virtual realms, where they were enjoying their lives to the fullest.
The Volonan stood upright, but with a curved upper back, as if it suffered from severe bent spine syndrome. Its body was chubby and droopy, with two long front limbs that hung so low that it dragged its hands along the ground when it walked. The two legs seemed more stable. Shorter and wider, they kept the body firmly planted on the ground. The head was round and big, especially compared to the rest of the body. The face looked quite innocent, with large, round eyes that were black in color, elephant-like ears that flapped in the wind, and a short trunk for a nose.
“A large penguin with a bent back and an elephant’s head,” Marc thought. That pretty much summarized what these Volonans reminded him of.
They were not very tall creatures, as 5 feet seemed to be the maximum height he could see around him. Although if someone forced them to stand upright, they could probably reach heights of 6 feet or more. Their skin looked rough and had a reddish tint. The clothes these creatures wore were shabby and torn all over, a clear reflection of their environment. Some of the outfits did have bright colors and interesting patterns, though, and they generally covered the Volonans’ bodies from their necks down to the upper parts of their legs. Their thick-soled feet had no toes and were protected by sandals.
The Mendoken had not shown Marc any pictures of Volonans, as they had no records of what Volonans actually looked like. So he was surprised at how familiar these Volonans seemed to him. He couldn’t explain it at first, but soon realized why. He had seen them in his visions back on the Mendoken moon Ailen, and subsequently in dreams that had served as a constant reminder of those horrible visions. They were the creatures he hadn’t been able to identify, the ones beside the Mendoken, Aftar and Phyrax. How he could possibly have known back then what Volonans looked like was a big mystery. He wondered if he was going crazy, or if the whole virtual world experience had somehow altered his memories.
He also wondered what to do now, or where to go. He began walking up the street he was on, to see what was beyond his current line of sight. But it was all the same – miles and miles of the same ruins, garbage heaps and daydreaming Volonans, no matter which way he looked. A hill could be seen in the distance, atop which stood several massive towers shaped like lighthouses. They looked like foreboding shadows, not to be approached by any mortal who valued his or her life.
After an hour of fruitless walking, Marc began to feel very tired. The gravitational pull on this world was much stronger than that back on Earth, requiring him to consume much more energy for every step. Not sure what else to do, he decided to try to talk to one of the Volonans. He approached one of them, sitting on a boulder and gazing dreamily at the sky.
“Hello!” he said, trying to sound cheerful.
The Volonan didn’t look at him.
“I am Marc,” he continued, pointing at himself. “You are?”
No response.
“Can you hear me? Hello?” He gathered enough courage to poke the alien on one of its long arms.
The Volonan didn’t budge. Marc tried the same thing with a couple of other Volonans, but it was the same result every time. This was a useless exercise, he soon realized. Back to the aimless wandering it was.
He didn’t get very far, however, before he began hearing a deep whirr. It was far away behind him, but getting louder by the second. He turned around nervously. At first, he saw nothing, but then it became visible, flying through the air at a low altitude and at high speed. Another one appeared to the left, then another to the right.
They looked like bats, he thought, except that their wings weren’t flapping. Evidently, these were no living creatures, but flying machines of some sort. And they were heading straight toward him.
Suddenly one of the machines fired a laser-like streak of light. Before he had any time to react, the streak landed several feet away from him. A powerful explosion followed, shaking the ground and causing him to lose his balance and fall. Then came another explosion in front of him, and another behind. Luckily for him, their aim wasn’t the best.
He got up and ran as fast as he could. It wasn’t easy, though, given the strong pull of gravity and the rockiness of the terrain. Several times he stumbled and fell, hurting one of his knees, legs or ankles. But thanks to the adrenalin rushing through his body, he got up every time and kept on running.
As they quickly caught up with him, the machines kept firing more frequently, and they eventually chased him onto a bridge over a deep gorge. Before he was able to reach the other side, one of the machines flew ahead and turned around to face him. With his escape path cut off on both sides, all he could do was stop and stare at the machines. They looked menacing, with their dark bodies and wide, curved wings. The tips of the wings carried the guns that were firing those deadly shots.
Marc stood still and awaited his fate. But as he heard the machines fire, a figure suddenly jumped onto the bridge from the depths of the gorge below, grabbed him, and jumped off the other side with him.
It all happened in the flash of a second. As both of them fell into the gorge, the shots hit the exact point he had been standing on, causing the center of the bridge to blow up in a big explosion.
It was a free fall. “Haaaaaaaaahhhhhh!” Marc yelled. Out of fear, he didn’t dare look into the depths of the gorge below. Instead, he kept his gaze focused on the mystery figure that was holding him tightly with one of its long arms. It was a Volonan.
With its free arm, the Volonan suddenly grabbed onto a ledge on one side of the gorge. With a violent jerk, they immediately stopped falling. Then, with just that one arm, the Volonan pulled both itself and Marc up onto the ledge.
The ledge led to the opening of a cave. Still holding Marc, the Volonan rushed into the opening. And none too soon, for the debris from the destroyed bridge above came thundering down the gorge. Some large chunks of rock crashed onto the ledge they had just landed on, sending off plumes of dust that chased after them into the cave.
Marc coughed in the darkness, trying to brush the dust from his eyes.
The Volonan let go of him and propped him up against the wall of the cave. It laid its four-clawed paw on his mouth, motioning to him to stay absolutely still. Then it took up position next to him, flattening itself as much as it could against the wall.
Through the settling dust, Marc could see the flying machines outside, hovering around in the gorge. One of them came right near the entrance to the cave, shining a light inside. The light moved around, and at one point shone directly on his face.
“This is it,” he thought, “the end!”
Surprisingly, the light kept on moving around. Eventually, the machine flew up and away. The other two machines also took off.
The Volonan stranger relaxed and turned to face him. Opening its mouth, it began making some high-pitched whines that sounded somewhat like the siren of a police car.
