Williams sat with Rivera with his meal tray full of food. A medium-rare steak from the Rabuabin home world, seasoned with Montreal steak spices, and sautéed vegetables. Rivera had just finished her meal and made no attempt to acknowledge Williams as she fiddled with her holo pad.
“Thought I was going to be eating alone,” Williams said to her. “Hey, sorry about what I said earlier on the surface about your Zen thing, it was out of line.”
“You did what you felt was necessary.”
“Stress I guess, being pinned down like.”
“We got out of it alive and rescued those Poniga in the process.”
“But not the captain.” He paused and looked at his meal. “Damn it, I got to stop screwing things up.”
Rivera grimaced, shut off her holo pad, then stood up. “I gotta go.”
“Chief,” he called out to her before she vanished through the sliding doors. “We good?”
“Yeah, don’t sweat it, sir.”
Williams sat back in his chair after finishing his meal. He felt his body slowly return to something like normal as he looked out the observation window on the far side of the mess. Bailey joined him sometime later and placed a perfectly baked soufflé and fork on the table.
“Hey, Chef, how you doing?” Williams said to him.
Bailey’s aged face smiled at him as he removed his chef hat. “Fine, mon. But are you doing good?”
“I hope so.”
“Forgive me, but it don’t sound like it.”
“Like I was explaining to Rivera, I’m just a bit stressed out. I wasn’t expecting to be in command so long during this expedition. Honestly? Between you and me, I’m not sure I should be doing this.”
Bailey began to spin the dish the Soufflé rested on around and around, staring at it intently. “Let me tell you a story. When I was a young apprentice, the head Chef nearly cut off his thumb in the middle of a banquet service, he had to leave, and I was left in charge of the kitchen.”
“Why you?”
“All the cooks were young. I was the only one with experience, mon! I had to make it happen, but at the time I ain’t never made a soufflé which was the last course to be finished. I knew if I panicked, the cooks would lose it. I had to take control and lead them, I had to not let my worry that it wasn’t gonna rise properly create self-doubt.”
“I see where this is going.”
Bailey pushed the soufflé across the table to Williams. “The soufflé was served. You need to stop this self-doubt nonsense, its messing with your head, creating negativity, negativity that’s spreading to th’ crew. Want to know how I know this?”
“Enlighten me.”
“She wanted this soufflé, I was going to present it to her personally if she was willing to wait for it. Now she’s gone.”
Williams cringed. The more he thought about it, the more it was clear, Rivera upped and left because of him, not because she had something else to do. “I made her leave . . .”
“You got to take command of this ship, steer it in the right direction, and instill your team to follow and support you. You might get the captain back and protect the colony, or you might mash up the ship tryin’, but you have to try. Just like the soufflé, it might rise or fall, but I had to get it in the oven and accept what came next.”
Williams stayed silent as Bailey got up and went back into the galley to clean up, leaving the soufflé on the table before him. Bailey found a way to make it happen back then, take leadership control of an unexpected crisis.
Rise or fall, I can’t run away, I have to do this. “Thanks, Chef.”
“Cool runnings.”
Williams gnawed away at a piece of the soufflé.
The soufflé was the best Williams ever had. Had Bailey backed down that night, he wouldn’t be eating it right now.
BAILEY RAN a damp cloth across the surface of his cutting board, removing blotches of spilt sauces and tiny fragments of vegetable trim after a day’s worth of cooking for the ship’s crew. He watched as Williams strode out of the mess hall with pep in his footsteps and a brimming smirk on his face.
Hugo, his sous-chef, approached him from behind having overheard the story exchanged minutes earlier. “So, how did that soufflé you made back then turn out?”
Bailey snickered, and knocked his fist on the cutting board he wiped clean. “Came out flatter than this board!”
Uncontrollable laughter from the two shrieked from their mouths, nearly causing them to fall over.
20 FOSTER
The Architect’s ship
En route to Sirius C system, Interstellar space
May 22, 2050, 00:48 SST (Sol Standard Time)
Foster had awoken to the sound of her prison cell door opening. Her surprised and disoriented body crawled away from the cold hard bed and watched two overlords toss a robed Poniga into the cell, slamming the doors shut as his face hit the floor. She limped next to him, fatigue still in her eyes and legs. She reached down and wrapped her hands around the Poniga as she lifted his head to face her, it was Mavron.
Blood trickled down his face from the large gash across his forehead as she helped him move over to the bed to lie down, and recover from whatever beatings Architect forces put him through. No doubt punishment for their failed escape attempt through the wormhole. Foster cringed at what they might do to her since she was the one that pushed for it to happen when it opened unexpectedly.
And what an escape attempt that was. A random wormhole opening from behind with none other than Williams and Rivera at the other end, too bad she and Mavron didn’t make it through. What Williams and Rivera were doing in that strange chamber, and how they figured out how to open a wormhole was another story. One she hoped to hear after finding another way off this ship. Sirius was indeed full of mysteries and it would seem her crew had begun to unlock some of them.
Mavron grumbled a long-winded sentence in his native tongue, one she couldn’t understand. He gently pushed her away and folded his hands together, his eyes shut while faint light began to emanate from his folded hands. Slight blue and purple waves of light rippled around his body, it was psionic energy, Foster had seen it enough times to know what it looked like.
The semi-dazzling light show stopped, his hands lifted and unveiled a shimmering white, glowing orb, she suspected this was the same object he tried to show her earlier. It psionically left his hands and floated in front of Foster’s face as he leaned his body back up to face her.
Foster merely looked at the stunning, but strange-looking orb floating in front of her. It moved with her as she tried to tilt her head away from it. “I’ll pass,” she said, and pushed it back toward him, only for it to get shoved back toward her with his mind.
Mavron said something to her; probably ‘I insist’ or something similar. At least that’s what his facial expression suggested. Foster swallowed and braced herself as the orb hovered toward her forehead. It pushed into it like a single raindrop falling into the middle of a pond.
Everything around her went dark. She wasn’t herself, she felt different. She looked at her body to find she was a man, a young man at that. The darkness faded away, suddenly, she saw that she was a Poniga by the looks of the maroon robe and the strange off-world landscape in the distance, similar to that of the Poniga home world.
She became fluent in the Poniga language as if she had been speaking it her whole life, she was experiencing someone else’s memories, experiences, and knowledge. She obtained data about the Lyonria wormhole network. Smaller gates connected planets together within a system, the Sirius system was full of them, left behind by the Lyonria when they used it as a base and also to mine minerals. Midsized gates were strong enough to connect to wormholes located in different star systems, larger gates were typically found in the depths of space, these were capable of sending ships to either different parts of the galaxy, or to distant galaxies in the universe.
Then there were the grand gates.
These were special ones, only found inside a room in
the top spire of their central travel hubs. These gates were not only powerful enough to link to any type of wormhole across the cosmos, but were powerful enough to open a gateway to an alternate plane that existed outside of normal space and time.
Ten years before, there was an incident within the wormhole network after a planet that orbited Barnard’s Star went offline suddenly. As a result, it forced all nearby gates to lockdown. Only the smaller, inner system gates were able to operate normally, as they were separate from the primary wormhole network. The lockdown drove the Architect insane.
He was close to figuring out how to use the gates to leave the system, and escape from a trap a goddess had set, her name was Tiamat. A trap he couldn’t disable, since it, like Lyonria technology, was based on complex programming that took him centuries to master. Rather, centuries for the Poniga and Undine to figure out. It was the job of the Poniga to uncover and excavate Lyonria ruins and artifacts. The Architect then forced the Undine to use their psionic powers to unlock its secrets, and present their findings to him. New discoveries about Lyonria technology were used to further his knowledge of the Lyonria wormhole network, and how to unlock Tiamat’s trap. These memories and thoughts, they all had belonged to Mavron. He was once a laborer tasked with unearthing buried Lyonria artifacts and bringing it to the Undine ocean world known as Meroien. Foster was witnessing and experiencing the enslavement of Mavron and his people.
Foster saw a glimpse of the other plane of existence from the memory engram. It was the source of the Architect’s power, where he supposedly became a godlike entity thanks to mysterious beings that lived deep inside of it. Anyone that ventured inside for a prolonged period of time died, at least their physical body did, only to be reborn into something much greater. The Architect, from time to time, had used the gate in the Lyonria hub to send Poniga and Undine he favored on a journey to transform and ascend them into a higher state of evolution.
The trance ended, hurling Foster to the floor.
Her body jerked repeatedly as if an electrical shock had hit her.
21 NEREID
Xal’oxnia
Meroien, Sirius C system
Clock Error: Error source: unknown interference
Xal’oxnia was the capital city of the Undine, located deep below the darkened oceans of their world Meroien. Meroien orbited the brown dwarf star of Sirius C, which in turn orbited around both Sirius A and B. Heat from the three stars contributed to the warm weather of the ocean planet as well as the warm temperatures deep in the oceans despite the lack of light the planet received from its parent star.
Lustrous towers arched up from the bottom of the ocean and formed the tallest structures in the undersea city. Fish swam past, attracted by the many lights that covered the sides of them. Below the towers were smaller structures, mostly food stores for the Undine people, and homes that formed a web of lights when seen from above. The center of the city was an enormous structure originally built by the goddess herself. It provided the city with a limitless supply of power. Computers within each home displayed relevant information about the status of the planet to the Undine that wished to swim to the less populated regions, to explore and embrace life as an aquatic species, and tell stories of how the goddess brought them across the stars to this world. It was the only pastime the Architect allowed them to indulge in.
From time to time, rare births would occur amongst the Undine where a female would give birth to one child, instead of the female and male that they would normally have. This single child was always female, but appeared to be more human than Undine, often having a pair of legs. They possessed the memories of their father, and according to many unconfirmed reports, were able to activate the biometric technology that the goddess had used to prevent unauthorized users from using their dormant ships. These birth defected children were called the Nereid by the ancient humans that had discovered them on Earth in the past.
The Architect, enemy of the goddess and Undine, learned of the first Nereids that were born on Earth and their interactions with the humans. The Architect feared that if Nereids were to interbreed with the humans, their offspring might lead to the rise of a powerful psionic hybrid species. It was a well-known fact to the Architect that humans had been experimented on by the Lyonria before they vanished. The Architect’s ship, in response, arrived at Earth to remove all Undine and Nereids, preventing any further Nereids from being born without the Architect’s knowledge, and forcing the Nereids to activate technology left behind by the goddess.
They did as asked, but not before activating a trap left behind by the goddess, a damping field that encompassed the entire system preventing psionic thoughts from leaving it, and the activation of drones programmed to fire on, and destroy, any ship that wished to leave. The Architect was unable to return to Earth and punished the Undine by exiling them on their ocean world within the system, and forced them to research a means to deactivate the trap. No one knows what became of the defiant Nereids, most likely executed, or forced to breed with the land dwelling species that eventually evolved into the Poniga, under the Architect’s supervision of course.
Undine mating with Poniga wasn’t anything new in fact. The Architect encouraged it as it gave an opportunity for him to have a Nereid born loyal to his needs. Qirak’s were paid to lure men toward Undine women. Undine women that pleaded their loyalty to the Architect were allowed to rise to the surface and enchant the men to swim into her arms. No Nereid, however had been born, only Undine-Poniga crossbreeds. Humans were the key.
A Nereid being born within their society therefore meant one thing, the three men that Norauk had sold to Lysi and her sister Cinil were human. Humans managed to cross the stars and arrive at Sirius. The Nereid that Lysi gave birth to was proof of that. The leadership of the Undine, a puppet government controlled by the Architect, ordered the last remaining human male to be brought down below the ocean into their vast undersea city for questioning.
The Nereid that was born, spent her childhood days living an isolated life, her birth was considered to be too important for her to mix freely. The elders that controlled the Undine government feared the Architect’s forces would punish them heavily should something happen to her. Furthermore, Nereids were always born with their father’s memories locked away in their minds, therefore she had access to human information, though it would take years for her to recall everything.
She had a humanlike appearance, and like the Nereids born before her, borrowed a few features from her Undine background. Gills on her neck allowed her to breathe water, while her body was able to adjust to the temperature changes of water instantly, allowing her to swim through warm or freezing cold waters with little issues. She possessed strong psionic abilities, enhanced by the Lyonria genetic manipulations all humans possessed, but didn’t know.
Given the short lifespan of her people, she was an adolescent by age one. Her raven-blue hair grew quickly, reaching down to her knees. She required very few lessons from her first year in existence due to her having some of her father’s memories. She only needed to be taught about her people and their language, since she only knew of human customs and the English language. Lessons were all taught via the exchange of engram orbs from other members of her society.
At age two, she had the body of a fully developed adult, and was able to recall more of her father’s memories. He was an EISS agent named Sylvester McDowell, codename Test, masquerading as a navy commander. He was assigned to a human exploration ship, known as the Carl Sagan, in secret by the EISS to search for any threats to Earth, and to keep tabs on two members of the ship’s crew that might have been affiliated with a terrorist group. She couldn’t recall who, or the name of the group, but as the months went on, more of McDowell’s memories and personality came to her mind.
During her two years of life she heard stories of a third human that traveled with McDowell and Kingston to Meroien, he had been captured and kept within the central palace built by the goddess. Inside the palace we
re special chambers devoid of water and had fresh oxygen pumped inside. In the past it was used for a place where the Poniga people stayed when they were visiting the city, though nowadays such visits rarely happened, due to the bad blood between the Poniga and Undine.
With adulthood came the next phase of her life. Forging her loyalty to the Architect. Nereid were still too valuable, so even as an adult she wasn’t allowed to leave the city. She was in turn given the task of speaking to the captured human within the palace in hopes of getting it to reveal how humans had advanced so quickly, and trigger more of her human memories inherited from her father. And most importantly, discover if the human race worshipped the Architect.
She swam to the palace and caused a group of fish to scatter as she arrived at its entrance. The tubular halls inside led her to the chamber where she saw the human via a force field sitting on the floor in a miserable state. She remembered him from her father’s memories, Dr. Travis Pierce, or egghead as he called him from time to time, whatever that meant.
Pierce had a long, ungroomed beard; understandable since he had been held inside the chamber for two years. The Undine lacked hair on all parts of their body except their heads, so tools to shave were nonexistent. She was about to enter to speak with him directly when she stopped herself. She wore no clothes, her people had no need for such a hindrance. For humans like the Poniga and Qirak, however, it was taboo for one to appear without apparel on as she recalled. And with Nereid possessing a full humanlike body, she of all people would need to obscure her bare natural figure. She left briefly, and obtained robes left behind by a Poniga who was charmed into mating with an Undine several years ago.
Wearing clothing was a strange feeling to her and a confusing task. It took her twenty minutes to figure out how to put her arms through the sleeves of the robe. And when she figured out how, she discovered it was on backward. It took another fifteen minutes to get it on correctly, she didn’t bother trying to figure out how to tie up the front as she feared it would have been another hour before she got to her duties for the day.
The Siege of Sirius: A Splintered Galaxy Space Fantasy Novel Page 19
