As they walked down the hall, peering at the rooms and stations, Zoor said, “Your people will rotate blocks of time in deep sleep during the journey to Tula. They will be monitored from these stations by a combination of Suhkai, Cytons and humans. When they are awake, they will live in one of three Tula habitat levels on this ship — habitats like the one where Sarah, John and Annie live now.
“Children who are not yet of breeding age will be educated and cared for by a select group of Suhkai, Cytons and humans. When their bodies are capable of procreation, they will join the community of breeders. As Nick indicated, all colonists will devote most of their waking energy toward procreation, but they will also devote time to learning and refining the skills necessary to build and maintain their colony on Tula. Suhkai, Cytons and humans will lead this instruction.
“From our experience colonizing new worlds, we know not all humans will survive the journey, nor will all breeders be successful. Still, we estimate that when we arrive at Tula eleven years from now, we will have over five hundred humans. If they adapt well to the planet, the population should triple within ten years, and humanity will have a chance to survive.”
Zoor made the plan sound reasonable and well-thought-out. Except for the body-snatching part. Morgan said as much to Zoor. “Why not recruit humans willing to make the journey?”
“If you see a boulder about to crush someone, do you push them out of the way as fast as possible, or do you stop to explain why you are about to push them?” Zoor asked. “Take too long to explain and they are crushed. Push them out of the way without warning and they may be angry at first, but when the boulder lands where they once stood, the anger will quickly fade and they will thank you.”
“I appreciate the analogy, but it oversimplifies the situation here,” Morgan said. “You’re not talking about just pushing someone away from a falling boulder. You’re pushing them into a hole from which they can never escape. Given a choice, they may prefer to die from the boulder than spend the rest of their lives in the hole. And if they aren’t given that choice, their anger will never fade, they’ll never thank you, and they won’t breed.”
“They will breed. We do not need their cooperation to ensure this.”
Morgan halted in the hallway and shook his head. How could beings who had exhibited such altruism toward Nick, Avery and Christine believe in such an approach?
Zoor turned to him. “Space is no different than your oceans, forests or deserts. Every being, everywhere, is in a constant struggle for survival. Eat or be eaten. Kill or be killed. Breed or die off.”
“I get that, but—”
“I have spent many Earth years learning about your planet from Nick, Avery and Christine. You routinely take plants and animals from their habitats and move them elsewhere, do you not?”
“Yes, but—”
“In your history, you have displaced groups of humans many times…often by force, often without explanation. Sometimes for good reasons — natural disasters, disease or conflicts that ravage lands of the innocent. Other times not — conquest, greed or hatred. How is this any different?”
Morgan clenched his jaw. “Like I said before, you can spin it any way you want, but it’s still wrong. It’s enslavement. We’ve had plenty of experience with the concept in our history. If you listened closely enough to Nick, Avery and Christine, you’d know that humans won’t tolerate it.”
Zoor’s crest tubes began to vibrate as if she was preparing a rebuttal, but Morgan held up his hand. “As I’ve already said, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. I know that. So I’m begging you, Zoor. I’m begging the Cyton queen inside your head right now. Don’t do this. Allow me to talk with my fellow humans on Earth and explain the situation. I’m confident volunteers will step forward…many more volunteers than are necessary to fill a thousand arks like this one. It won’t be the ideal mix you seek — no human parents will surrender their young children — but the people who go will be committed, not conscripted, breeders. I have to believe the odds of their survival will be stronger because of it.”
Lower-level hallway — Suhkai refinery
Saturn moon Dione
If Kiera had died in the plunge, she would have been at peace knowing she had saved herself from a lifetime of exploitation. But a swarm of Cytons had enveloped her before she collided with the stone floor below.
As the Cytons carried her shooting along a lower hallway, the ball’s magnetic energy prevented her from speaking or even moving. In her thoughts, she pleaded, “Leave me alone. Let me die!”
With her eyes closed, she was unaware of the sea of blue surrounding her as a return thought entered her mind. “We will help. We are friends.”
Human breeding ward – Suhkai spacecraft Ethel
In orbit around Saturn moon Dione
“Your solution will not work,” Zoor said. “Many humans will die because of it. Nick understands this. Why can’t you?”
“Because I refuse to believe it,” Morgan said.
“Think, Skywalker. Use your mind. If you tell your people there is a magwave coming that will end your world, it will cause panic. If you say only two hundred can leave for Tula, there will be fighting. Many will die. Your approach risks thousands, possibly millions.”
“Then I won’t tell them about the magwaves. I’ll present it as an exploration mission, a chance to settle on a new world.”
Zoor looked down at Morgan and blew an exasperated grunt through her crest tubes. It was powerful enough to knock Morgan against the glass wall directly behind him. “You humans are as stupid as you are stubborn. You do not listen to voices of experience. Such a mission as you describe will not produce enough humans to establish a new society on Tula. The people who go must not think of it as an adventure or relaxing voyage. They must think of it as humans’ last chance, possibly their only chance, of survival.”
“Why only two hundred?” Morgan countered. “Why not send the ark back after the first volunteers arrive and keep making round trips for as long as the ark can fly, or for as long as Earth still exists?”
The suggestion drew another angry snort from Zoor. “If the first colonists know and believe that others will follow, they will not feel the same pressure to breed. When the next ark arrives, twenty-two Earth years later, only a small fraction of the first colony will still be alive and the second colony will number far too little for humans to survive, for they will relax on the journey, too. Trust me, Skywalker. The Suhkai have seen enough colonies fail to know this will happen.”
“Then why not build more arks? Send a thousand people, or two thousand. If you won’t build them yourselves, then show us how to do it and we will build them.”
“In the time it would take us to show you how to build our vessels, how to travel vast distances, how to utilize our technologies, this ark will have already reached Tula. By the time you actually built the ships and began the journey to transport one thousand humans, the Tula population will have surpassed two thousand.
“In the meantime, your people would expend enormous resources. There would be great strife. People would say, ‘Why do we waste so much for so few to survive when so many more starve now.’ The tensions would worsen as time dragged on. You know this to be true.
“And there would be corruption. In the end, if the ships were successfully built, it would not be the young and fertile who traveled to Tula, but the well-connected. Or worse, wars would break out to possess our technology and ships. Many would die, and the ships and technology would be lost in the fight or diverted for other purposes.”
Morgan hated to admit it, but Zoor’s scenario was likely. Yet if the aliens had such a dim assessment of humans, why had they been so willing to help Nick, Avery and Christine? He thought, “If we suck so much, why do you want to save us?”
“Enough talk, Skywalker. It is time to make your decision. Either take Nick’s place and shepherd the colonists during the return trip to Tula, or we will rule over them ourselves and you and yo
ur crew will be sacrificed.”
Morgan stared Zoor in the eye and shook his head. “I can’t, I won’t, do it your way, Zoor.”
“Fool! Our way is the only way!” The alien pounded her fist through the nearest glass wall. As shards of glass landed around Morgan, a new thought entered his mind. It wasn’t his own, and it wasn’t from Zoor.
“You lie!”
The hallway began to gleam with a new light. A blue light. A blue light three times larger than any Cyton Morgan had seen. “You lie to all!”
Morgan watched the blue light flicker as it approached Zoor. The Suhkai began to tremble. Morgan felt the sensation of static electricity all over his body. In a blinding flash, the Callisto queen shot out from inside Zoor’s head. The Suhkai fell, knocking into Morgan on her way to the floor. As he tried to wedge his body from beneath the dazed Suhkai, he looked up to see the blue Cyton hovering over Zoor.
“Tell him!”
The Callisto queen flickered and Morgan’s thoughts filled with Zoor’s answer. “No! It is not necessary.”
“You lie! Tell him!” The blue Cyton zapped Zoor’s chest bulge and sent another bolt at the Callisto queen. The queen’s golden light faltered and she backed away.
As Morgan crawled out of the line of fire, he stared at the blue Cyton and thought back to an earlier comment made by Carillo when she realized she was communicating with the BLUMO pack alpha, not the BLUMO queen. The queen is the one who’s coming. Trust me, you’ll see what I mean when we meet up with her. And then it dawned on him they’d never encountered the BLUMO queen…until now. Morgan spoke to her. “Can you understand me? Are you receiving my thoughts?”
“Yes. We are friends.”
Zoor regained her feet and issued a screeching command to the Callisto queen. The golden ball of light blasted a bolt of electricity at the blue Cyton. The heat from the lightning was intense enough to burn Morgan’s exposed skin. He curled into a ball and covered his face with his hands.
Morgan didn’t see the BLUMO queen’s response, but he felt it: a VLF radio wave blast so intense that it not only disintegrated the Callisto queen and killed Zoor, it shook Ethel from bow to stern.
That was when Morgan passed out, his eardrums obliterated.
Later, he would learn from Anlon Cully how lucky he had been to survive. VLF radio waves produced during a sperm whale song, Anlon told him, are powerful enough to stop the heart of a human floating within touch of the great beast.
CHAPTER 22: A NEW DAY
Mission Control
A3rospace Industries Command and Control Center
Mayaguana Island, The Bahamas
September 12, 2019
Dante Fulton, asleep and drooling on his console, shook awake in response to the screams of Norris Preston. The backup mission director sounded like he was hyperventilating. “Downlink! Downlink! Downlink!”
Thirty-six heads, including Dante’s, Amato’s and Pritchard’s, snapped to attention.
Preston’s cracking voice echoed over Mission Control’s intercom. “We have pings from Cargo-4! Recon-3!”
Thirty-six bodies raced for stations around Mission Control. Four hundred million kilometers away, the party was just beginning.
Suhkai cruiser link-up with the Rorschach Explorer
Asteroid belt
September 13, 2019
Two hours. That’s how long it takes Cytons, unaided by the push from a magwave, to travel 1.2 billion kilometers …the same time and distance it took them to lead a Suhkai cruiser carrying Kiera and Ajay to link up with the Rorschach Explorer. When the alien cruiser pulled alongside Amato’s stricken vessel, no radio was necessary. For both vessels were surrounded by spheres of blue light.
In the Suhkai cockpit, Kiera closed her eyes and thought, “Need a lift?”
Through Rorschach’s BLUMOs, Dr. Robert Shilling answered. “Roger that. What took you so long?”
“Sorry. Elroy had to stop at the gift shop on the way out,” Kiera said. “You coming aboard or what?”
Shilling mentally grumbled something about the need to depressurize.
Ajay responded, “Depressurize, schmecompressize. Just put on your EMUs and let the BLUMOs do the walking. Oh, and can you pack up flight suits for us…and one for Skywalker, too. Suhkai clothes are a little drafty.”
Thirty minutes later, after Major Julia Carillo had shut down the last of Rorschach Explorer’s systems, she pushed herself out into space through the outer airlock door. The blue bubble surrounding her guided her into the airlock of the Suhkai cruiser, where Shilling was already awaiting her arrival.
As soon as the Suhkai pilots had closed the outer airlock door, Kiera summoned the BLUMOs surrounding both ships. “Find Skywalker.”
Human medical ward — Suhkai spacecraft Ethel
In orbit around Saturn moon Dione
September 12, 2019
When Morgan came to, he was lying on a table in what looked like a hospital room. His hands were bandaged and his ears were ringing. The memories from the Cyton-Suhkai confrontation in the breeding ward flowed into his mind, as did the stinging sensation of the burns on his face and hands.
“We have treated your burns. They will heal before you leave.”
Morgan recognized the voice invading his thoughts. It was Haula. He raised his head and looked around. To his right he spied the Suhkai male. The BLUMO queen hovered in midair next to him. Morgan’s head began to spin. He lowered it back to the table and asked, “What the hell happened?”
“We are friends.”
He craned his neck to look at the flickering ball of blue light. “So you keep saying.” He turned to Haula. “Where am I? Where’s Zoor?”
“Zoor is no more,” Haula answered.
“We are friends,” interjected the BLUMO queen. “We help humans.”
“You want to be friends? Then convince Nick and Haula here to let me and my people go.”
“Preparations are already underway,” came Haula’s response.
Morgan’s head snapped up. “You’re serious?”
The BLUMO queen began to pulse, and Morgan’s mind filled with visions of Kiera and Ajay in the cockpit of a spaceship piloted by two Suhkai. Another vision showed Carillo and Shilling inside the Rorschach Explorer. They all wore smiles.
“Is this some kind of trick?” Morgan asked Haula.
“No. Humans free,” the BLUMO queen assured him. “Suhkai obey me.”
“Just like that?” Morgan said. He pushed up into a sitting position and once again turned toward Haula. “I don’t understand. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about it, but I don’t understand what’s happened.”
Haula extended his hand. “There will be time for explanations later. Please rise. Nick awaits you. His time has come.”
The Reed-Baker-Lockett home
Tula habitat — Suhkai spacecraft Ethel
When Morgan, Haula and the BLUMO queen entered the bedroom, the three children were seated on the bed next to Nick, their hands touching him. Maggie hovered over Nick’s chest, throbbing light as if mimicking a heartbeat.
Haula projected a thought to Morgan. “His body is no more. Maggie has kept his mind alive long enough to say goodbye to you and the children. She will translate.”
As Morgan approached, the children let go of Nick and began to move off the bed. Morgan urged them to stay. “Don’t go. Be with him.”
They resumed their places and Annie said, “Skywalker’s here, Nicky. He’s come to say goodbye.”
Morgan sat down next to Annie and wrapped his arm around her. Maggie began to flicker, and Nick greeted Morgan. “Hey there, old man.”
“Hey, buddy.” Morgan choked up.
“Understand there’s a new sheriff in town.”
Morgan wiped tears from his eyes and turned to look at the BLUMO queen. “Looks that way.”
“She says you’re calling the shots now.”
With his eyes still locked on the blue Cyton, Morgan said, “That’s news to me.”<
br />
“Well, that’s the deal. You made quite an impression on her. She trusts you.”
Morgan returned his gaze to Nick’s lifeless body. “I’m not sure how or why.”
“Apparently you have a blue aura.”
Sarah intervened. “Cytons, like the Suhkai, can detect our magnetic energy. Yours is blue.”
“Blue means you are strong and love helping people,” Annie said. “Mine is yellow. I shine like a sun.”
“Yes you do, my sweet,” Nick said through Maggie.
“What exactly does calling the shots mean, Nick?” Morgan asked.
“Means you’re now responsible for dealing with the magnetar, and for making sure this boat gets to Tula with my family and enough humans to build a lasting presence. I still think the Suhkai approach is the only way to do it, but, at this point, neither I nor the Suhkai are in a position to dictate how you do it. The responsibility has been stripped from us and vested in you. And you better not screw up. I’m counting on you. So are Avery, Christine and the children. Not to mention the human race.”
Morgan turned to seek confirmation from Haula. The Suhkai responded. “We are duty-bound to honor the wishes of the spreaders-of-life. This queen now rules your solar system. She has spoken, and we will obey.”
While Morgan absorbed the import of Nick’s and Haula’s comments, Nick communicated again. “Three last requests, Paul.”
“Yes, Nick, I’m listening.”
“First, don’t be all mad at me or Christine or Avery for what we had in mind. I know you don’t approve of it, but we were trying to do the right thing. Honest. And don’t get all down on the Suhkai. They didn’t have to help us, but they did. They don’t have to help you, but they will. Lastly, please forgive me for what I put you and your crew through. I took no pleasure from it. I just felt I had no choice.”
Under the circumstances, it was hard to be mad at Nick, though it wasn’t easy to forgive him. “I understand, Nick. And don’t worry. I’ll do my best to make sure things work out right.”
Magwave (The Rorschach Explorer Missions Book 2) Page 30
