by Frank Carey
“I checked everything I’ve consumed since landing here. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. I’m amazed at how similar Venlanta is to Earth. Anyway, Relapse, Syndrome, and Turning only appeared within the last fifty years.””
“What did I miss?” Doc Vloss said as she slid into the room sporting a huge three-lens set of sunglasses.
“Where were you?” Surrey asked. “And what's with the shades?”
“I was on a gathering trip with some students of the guardian healer. You would not believe what you can find along the shore. As for the glasses, your ex-home world packs a wallop of UV. I swear it’s not nearly this powerful on Earth.”
“What is this UV you talk about?” one of the healers asked.
“Part of your sunlight you can't see. It causes your skin to turn red and burn if you stay outside in the sunlight for too long,” Vloss said. “My world's sun is weaker than yours, so I have to protect my eyes from the light here.”
“UV… Sunlight… It can't be that simple, can it?” Surrey said as she brought up graphs comparing the solar outputs of the Venlanten sun and Sol. They were almost identical. Before Surrey could swear, Gabe said, “Compare the flux measured on the surfaces of Venlanta and Earth.”
Surrey typed commands into the terminal. “Yes!” she said as graphs showed the amount of UV reaching Earth's surface to be less than that reaching the surface of Venlanta.
“Mykla, do you have historical solar flux data for the Venlanta surface over the last four thousand years? We're interested in the UVB wavelength range,” Gabe asked. When they moved to the complex, they were happy to find Mykla waiting for them, her hologram now a guardian.
“Yes,” she said and brought the data up on the big terminal.
“Now, access the League database and overlay Earth's surface flux.”
A second curve appeared. This one, though, had a sharp rise starting in the mid twentieth century followed by a decline starting in nineteen-ninety.
“I read about this,” Vloss said. “Earth's efforts to replenish the ozone layer were too successful. About fifty years ago, your planet experienced a deficit of UVB hitting the surface. There was worry of Rickets returning, but the decline was reversed, though the levels are still much lower than normal.”
“Fifty years ago. That's when the first cases of Relapse were reported,” Surrey said.
“With the Syndrome appearing shortly after. Could this be the answer?” Vloss said as she took off her glasses.
“Only one way to find out,” Surrey said as she started typing furiously. Shortly, an emergency message was traveling to Earth through other-space.
###
Nadia Ramses slept at her daughter’s side. She had nowhere else to go. Penny was her life, and that life was dying.
“Nadia, wake up,” a voice said.
“Penny?” she said groggily.
“Penny is asleep and still stable,” Gail said as she took Nadia's hand. “Nadia, we got word from Venlanta. They think they've found a treatment, but they can't test it, only we can.”
Nadia looked and saw a nurse standing next to her daughter's bed with a hypospray. “What is this treatment?”
“A shot of Vitamin D.”
“That's it?”
“Yep. The docs have run tests, and she has the beginnings of a Vitamin D deficiency, but not enough to raise an alarm if she was human.”
“When will we know it works?”
“Almost immediately.”
Nadia looked at Penny before nodding to the nurse. A moment later, they heard the hiss of the hypospray.
The nurse stepped back as Penny's doctor stepped over and listened to the child's heart, then ran a scanner over her before smiling.
“What’s happening?” Nadia asked.
“Mom? Where am I? What's happened?” Penny said while looking at the tubes and wires attached to her body.
“Here, darling. I'm right here,” Nadia said. She leaned over the bed and hugged her daughter with tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Mom, why are you crying?” Penny asked, as she sat up for the first time in a week.
“I'm just happy you're okay,” Nadia replied.
“Doctor, you have this under control. I have to go and make a call,” Gail said as she walked out into the hallway while trying to hide the tears flowing down her own cheeks.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We hit the bottom of the stairway and found ourselves staring at a large, glowing pylon sitting under the bottom of a sphere. The pylon was encased in a glass enclosure with a single doorway leading inside. “Mykla, what am I looking at?” I asked as I checked my scanner. The sphere was slightly radioactive.
“The sphere is the bottom of the fusion reaction chamber while the pylon is a fifty-kiloton shaped nuclear charge. On the side of the pylon is a control panel with an access pad. You must place your hand on the pad to cancel the sequence.”
“Time to detonation?”
“Fourteen minutes and counting.”
“Mykla, why have a nuke installed under a reactor?” I asked as we ran up to the door. I looked around, but found no sign of an access pad, only a small hole in the middle of the door.
“The self-destruct was installed by order of Gen. Toask at the beginning of the war with the guardians. The general was paranoid about the guardians taking over the planet.
Unable to open the door, I looked at Hiram. “I’m on it,” he said, as he pulled out his scanner and all his lock picks including a pouch of manual ones.
“We’ve got company,” Taliss said as she pointed into the gloom.
I squinted and saw something moving toward us. It was big. “Mykla, what is that thing?”
“Security bot from the looks of it. I am not able to access its controls.”
“Why?”
“Something is blocking me.”
“Hiram?” I asked.
“I need more time.”
I had an idea. A crazy Hiram-esque idea. “Robot!” I yelled. “This is Capt. Fiona Syron. You are ordered to stand down.”
The robot stepped into the light and stopped. It was a centaur with four powerful legs on a cylinder-shaped body. A humanoid torso, sporting two limbs, each terminating in a weapon, sprouted from the center of the cylinder. The head was featureless save for two glowing eyes.
“Hello, Fiona. Long time no see. I see your time on Earth agreed with you,” it said as it stood there, swaying from left to right as if it had lost a gyro.
“Mykla?”
It‘s an AI, Doctor and I think it has Gen. Toask's engrams imprinted on its positronic brain. I'd hazard to guess the general's fascination with the afterlife has paid-0ff.”
I played along with this armored megalomaniac. “Toask, why the self-destruct? The guardians have done nothing. It’s me you want,” I said. I glanced up and saw that Taliss had moved to a position behind the thing that gave her a clear field of fire.
After some whirring and humming, the centaur replied. “Betrayal. The guardians and lower-castes have betrayed the true Venlanten race, the race you betrayed by killing me. All of you must die so that the rulers of Venlanta can return to their rightful place.”
“The royals left Venlanta centuries ago. The planet belongs to the guardians now. You are an anachronism, Toask. Recalibrate! Your clocks are off. I order you to cancel self-destruct and shut down.” I turned my head slightly toward Hiram and hissed, “We need in there, now!”
“Just a few more seconds,” he replied.
The damn thing started to sway back and forth at a faster rate as it tried to come to grips with the conflicting information it was receiving. “Impossible. Time-synch indicates thirty centuries have passed, yet you live. Non-sequitur. Non-sequitur.”
“Hiram!”
“Almost there. I looked at my watch and saw we had less than a minute to detonation.”
“Fault, fault, fault,” the bot screamed as its weapons spun up. I heard the door open and felt someone grab me and
throw me inside the room as the bot started firing. I slid into the wall under the panel as the time went to five seconds. I reached up for the access pad and saw the bot fire as Hiram stepped between it and me, protecting me. Taliss fired, but it was too late. I watched, horrified, as rounds from the bot's guns tore into Hiram, sending him to the floor in a crumpled heap. I screamed as my hand hit the panel, canceling the self-destruct.
“Self-destruct canceled at T minus one second,” Mykla said, but I didn’t hear her. I was too busy trying to keep Hiram from bleeding to death.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Put pressure here,” Taliss said pointing to the holes with the most blood flowing from them while handing me compresses from her medical kit. I almost passed out when I saw Hiram's blood flowing across his chest and down his side to the ground, where it formed a huge puddle. I grabbed the large cotton squares and pressed them hard against his wounds while some part of me noted my complete lack of desire to feed. I pushed those thoughts aside as I tried to keep Hiram conscious while Taliss slapped injectors into his thighs.
“This is Taliss. I have a medical emergency and need all medical teams down here stat. We have a gunshot victim. Now move people!” she yelled. Dropping the communicator, she reached into her pack and activated the EPIRB inside before grabbing more compresses and pressing them against other wounds to staunch the flow.
“Hiram, stay with me,” I said as tears welled up in my eyes, making it almost impossible for me to see him.
“Hey, no feeding frenzy,” he whispered. “That is so cool…” He began to nod off.
“Hiram, don't leave me, damn you!” I screamed
“Doctor, we've got this,” someone said from next to me. I turned and saw a guardian kneeling beside me. Her hair was in a bun and she was wearing a uniform. Around her neck was a stethoscope, and in her hand, an instrument, maybe a medical scanner. I looked closer and saw an insignia on her shoulder. “Who are you?” I asked as I pulled my hand away. Immediately, another guardian in a similar uniform pressed a fresh compress in place. I looked around and saw more uniformed guardians working on Hiram as his breathing normalized.
“My name is Dr. Alterra Fold, and I'm with the Venlanta Space Medical Corps. We're here to save your friend. Please, I need you to step back and give us room to work,” she said before nodding to one of the others on her team. I felt hands gently help me up and guide me over to where Taliss was standing.
“Taliss, what's happening?” I asked while trying to fight the urge to run over and help Hiram.
“I don't know,” she replied as she looked around the room. “They appeared from out of nowhere along with their friends over there by the bot.”
I looked over and saw thee more guardians, all wearing heavy battle armor, examining the bot while several other similarly dressed guardians watched the perimeter with large weapons. “What in the Sam Hill is going on?” I asked.
Max and Joshua took that moment to run up before Taliss could answer. “By all that's holy,” Max said. “Dr. Fold, how is Mr. Jones?”
“I'm doing fine,” Hiram said as he brushed off the ministrations of the guardian medics and attempted to stand up with little success. Taliss and I ran over with eyes wide as we helped him to his feet.
“My son, how is it you remain in the land of the living?” Taliss asked as she checked his vital signs.
“That would be us,” Dr. Fold said as she handed us moist towels to clean our blood-covered hands. “We pumped him full of metabolic enhancers and short-life medical nanobots that healed his wounds while accelerating his blood production. Your son's strong will to live did the rest.”
“That’s impossible,” I said as I opened his shirt to examine his wounds. So complete was their healing that I found it difficult to find them. “This is way beyond League technology.”
Max gave an embarrassed smile. “I owe you and your crew an apology. From the moment your probes entered our space, you have been unwitting parts of a ruse designed to determine if you are a threat to Venlanta and its people, the ones you know as the Guardians.”
A ruse. I'm sure Max would be dead now if I hadn't left my weapon on the ground next to where Hiram had lain.
“Explain to me why I don't kill you where you stand,” Taliss said as her ears went flat and her eyes went to slits. Instead of trying to talk the angry Storen down, I stepped back a few steps to give her room to work. That's how angry I was.
“Hey, both of you need to calm down,” Hiram said. “Really, I'm fine, though really thirsty.” Hearing this, Dr. Fold handed him a canteen, which he drained. “Thanks, Doc. Nice work, by the way.”
She nodded and picked her stuff up. “Good luck with all of this,” she said as she led her team toward the stairway.
Several armed guardians appeared, but Max waved them off. I noticed that Joshua said nothing, opting instead to step between Max and the rest of us.
“Please, hear me out before you end my life,” she pleaded. I looked at Taliss and nodded. She backed down.
“Where to begin? When Joshua's probes overflew the planet, we knew it wouldn't be long before a ship arrived. Normally we would take measures to prevent anyone from discovering us.”
“And how would you do that?” Hiram asked. From his demeanor, you wouldn't even know he was almost dead a few minutes ago.
“Spoof the probes' sensors into thinking the planet was a dead rock.”
“And if that didn't work?” Taliss asked with more than a little stink-eye aimed at Max.
“If a ship is determined to land here, and we determined it to be hostile, we would fire on it. This has happened eight times in the past. Your probes, though, came from Earth, a planet that holds a great deal of significance for us, so we decided to try a test.”
“And how did you know that?” Joshua asked. “My probes detected nothing following them back to the planet.”
“We didn't follow you. Our probes are small, perhaps the size of a tea saucer. They attached themselves to your probes and hitched a ride back to Earth. We've been monitoring Earth since then. One of them has even stowed away on the Tailtiu. It’s under the captain's tea cup as we speak.”
Wonderful. I can imagine the fit Gail will have when she hears about this.
“So, why go through this much trouble? If you were monitoring us, then you had to know our intentions were aboveboard,” I asked as I held onto Hiram with a death grip. I've had it with losing him, dammit.
“Unfortunately, our probes couldn't answer the fundamental question of whether or not the Venlanten royals had revenge in their hearts, so we decided to test you. Unfortunately, there were some unforeseen difficulties,” she said as she looked at Joshua. I know that look all too well.
“OMG! You fell in love with Joshua!” I blurted out.
Max nodded. “I was horrified when we changed him. Somehow, the fact he's not a royal got past our equipment. Truth be told, I thought he was hot before he became one of us. Now? Well let's just say I'm glad he's decided to stay.”
“What about the bot? I can't believe you missed that as well,” I asked.
“The bot is one of a contingent of guard units that roam the complex. We thought we had deactivated all of them, but that one deliberately hid from us the moment Dr. Syron opened the gate. Somehow, Gen. Toask's ID had infiltrated several of the station's systems without our detecting it. What remained of Gen. Toask was hell bent on revenge against Capt. Fiona Syron and once it thought she had returned, it set out to destroy not only Capt. Syron, but every lower-caste Venlanten left on the planet. We had no idea it existed until the bot activated and shot Hiram.”
I continued to hug Hiram while asking questions. I could see Taliss somehow found this amusing. “Did we pass the audition?” I asked, in all honesty.
“With flying colors. Again, I apologize for all of this. No one was supposed to be hurt during the test,” she said as she took Joshua's arm in hers.
He looked at her and frowned. “We still haven't foun
d what we came looking for, a cure to Syndrome.”
“Oh my, in all the commotion I forgot to tell you. Dr. Surrey and the other scientists have found the cure. I will let her give you the details, but it seems Syndrome, Relapse, and Turning are the royal's ways of expressing a Vitamin D deficiency.
Shut the front door. How did we miss that?
“Penny! What about Penny?” Joshua asked immediately.
“Forgive me for not telling you this sooner,” Max said as she gripped his arm. “Dr. Surrey called Earth the moment the discovery was made. Penny is fine. Ms. Semtar said something about many tears of joy and a great deal of eating.”
Joshua grabbed Max, picked her off the ground, and hugged her as tears streamed down his cheeks. “Thank you, thank you all for what you have done,” he said. “I have to call Earth,” he said as he put the leader down.
“Of course, this way,” Max said as she led him up the stairs to ground level.
I looked at Taliss and saw tears in her eyes. “It’s days like today that make all the bad ones worth it,” she said as she walked over and hugged Hiram. I realized that of the three of us, she was the one who truly knew what Joshua was going through at this moment. I decided it was time to leave this place—and get more sun while I was at it—so I grabbed my two companions and headed upstairs.
When we got outside, we saw several ships floating above the ground around the Tailtiu. One of them—painted bright orange with the same insignia we saw on the medical corpsmen—was lifting off. Just as it cleared the field, it shimmered before disappearing completely.
“Did you see that?” Nancy said as she ran up. “They have transdimensional drives that make FTL look like a bottle rocket.” I swear the woman was visibly vibrating.
“Nancy, have you seen Dr. Surrey?” Taliss asked.
“Jacks? Yeah, she's in the Tailtiu's forward lounge,” she replied. Before we could thank her, she ran over to another Venlanten ship where one of the other expedition engineers was waving to her. I swear I heard her yell, “Yippee” on her way there.
