by J. Benjamin
“And I can see you!” Thomas replied, waving back.
“How?” Ty asked.
“There’s some weird hologram thing in the host,” Val said. “How are you able to see me?”
“Would you believe me if I told you?” Thomas asked. “A display just appeared on the giant branch which holds the reactor core. You look like a soft-screen or hologram.”
“How is that even possible?” Ty asked.
“How is it possible that these things hacked Kiara’s brain?” Val asked. “How is it possible they took down civilizations and terraformed untold number of planets? How is it possible they brought down the Zelthrati? If we could figure out inter-cranial communications between a local host and the physical world, I’m sure they could beat that by ten-fold.”
“That’s not all,” Thomas said. “Ever since entering the vessel, I could sense the presence of the Aquarian consciousness. Almost as if there is a sixth sense triggered by them.”
“I know what you’re talking about,” Val said. “Same has happened here.”
“Val, I just felt a second-presence. I think it’s from this two-way visual.”
“Yes, I sense it too. Both of us are connected to the anima.”
“Visual and auditory connections. Duly noted,” Ty said. “This is incredible. Keep trying to talk to them.”
“We’re trying,” Val said. Once again she focused her attention on Minerva. “My name is Dr. Valerie Alessi. I know you see me. I know you see Thomas. Please, talk to us.” Val said, begging now.
“This is Thomas,” he said. “Minerva, do you know the names Kiara Lacroix and Matt Ashford? They were the first humans you made contact with. They came to you seven Solar months ago. You took them to a place called the Universal Crescent, and then you brought them back here. I am the one who sent them to you. Please respond.”
Once again, no response came. Thomas continued to look at the core and the hologram through which he saw Val. She looked back at him and back to the projection of the Aquarian consciousness.
“I don’t get it,” Val said. “We can see them. We can clearly see each other. They know we’re here. But they’re not speaking to us.”
“Maybe it’s the local host,” Thomas said. “Perhaps if we—”
A deafening whisper disrupted both humans.
“Death incoming,” the high-pitched whisper shouted.
“What was that?” Val asked, with a renewed sense of panic. She didn’t really have to ask because she knew the answer. “Thomas did you hear that?”
“Loud and clear!”
“Did it just say what I think it said?”
“Death incoming,” Thomas replied.
“Death incoming? Of what?” She turned her words toward Minerva. “Death of what?”
“Death incoming,” Minerva said, in their imposing, alien voice.
“Of us?” Val asked. “Death of me? Death of Thomas? Death of the people on this moon? Of Earth?”
“Deeper!” This time it sounded more like a command than an answer. “Deeper. Death incoming.”
“Deeper?” Val asked, even more confused by Minerva’s response. “Deeper into where?”
The sixth-sense she and Thomas just spoke of went off for Val like a warning siren.
“Thomas!” Val shouted. “Get out of there, now!”
“What’s going on?” Ty demanded.
It was too late. Thomas’ head fell forward and he collapsed to the ground.
“No!” Val screamed. Time stood still.
“Val, Thomas’ vital signs are non-responsive,” Ty said urgently. “Get out of there, now! Abort sequence! Abort!”
Chapter 28
Edie and Alex were back on a levitating train, accompanied by Pravixyt, Ruutana, and Sattui. The factory was now far behind.
“Where are you taking us?” Edie asked the aliens.
“External path active . . . we are taking you to your quarters,” Ruutana said. By now even their programmatic words started to make some sense. Still, the communications left a lot to be desired. Getting information from the A’biran hosts felt like a fishing expedition.
Edie still had no Earthly idea what they just saw inside the factory. The machine which will save your species. That was all Pravixyt said. There was no elaboration. The half-carved space-rock certainly left no visible clues. Granted, neither human would likely understand what it was or how it worked, even if it were complete.
Edie felt a growl in her stomach, reminding her that there were other pressing concerns besides which alien bed they’d be sleeping in later.
“Six fifty-nine, we have sustenance prepared for you,” Pravixyt said. “The Yonapi informed us of your nutritional requirements.”
Can these damn things read our minds? Edie thought to herself.
“Sustenance?” Edie asked. “You mean food?”
“Correct,” Sattui added.
“Oh great,” Edie said hesitantly. Hungry as she felt, she knew that having alien chefs who’d never cooked for humans before could go one of two ways. Either she’d be full soon, or she’d never want to eat again. Alex, standing next to her as they looked out the cabin, turned to give her a frown suggesting a similar enthusiasm.
“What do you think that contraption was?” Alex quietly asked Edie.
“The one in the factory? Hell if I know.”
“Think the Aquarians, errr . . . Yonapi will tell us?”
“They’re gonna have to,” Edie said. “They know my thoughts on the rest of humanity and if they have any wise ideas about us helping save it, they’ll have to level with us at some point.”
“Touché.”
In order to understand their current position on the planetoid, Edie constantly looked to Agamemnon. It was still there, stationed at the same docking bay. Except now it was the size of a marble, and Edie had to look up to see it.
“We have to be at least thirty or forty miles from Agamemnon,” Edie said.
“I was thinking thirty-seven point five, to be exact,” Alex elaborated.
“Look at you, going all mathematician on me,” Edie quipped.
“What can I say? It’s why you brought me along for the ride.”
“Indeed Harper. Indeed.”
On the horizon, a new skyline approached. There were skyscrapers galore. Unlike a city on Earth, these buildings had no obvious windows. The structures were sand-colored and roundish. The first comparison that came to Edie’s mind were the adobe buildings she used to see in Mexico, although these buildings soared and melded together toward their bottom halves. No roads separated them.
Their floating cube entered another tunnel. This one was well-lit. It felt like a cavern, aglow with green light as far as the eye could see.
The walls were covered top to bottom in more of the hieroglyphics they’d been seeing throughout the Krayasee since their arrival. Scores of A’biran hopped throughout the tunnels. Edie stared in amazement as a pack of three simultaneously hopped from the ground and landed on the tunnel ceiling. Their limbs were flexible enough to swing upward and grip a surface as though gravity were irrelevant.
It became clear why the tunnels glowed green. The walls of the tunnels were translucent and glowed with the pools of the compounds which fed the A’biran in their bodiless state. Edie was fascinated by this species’ ability to not only create bodies for themselves but also to incorporate those necessary liquid vats into everything they built.
The train stopped and clouds of nitrogen hit the walls of the cube from the sides. Edie nearly lost her balance as the train shot upward.
“Didn’t expect these things to move three-dimensionally,” Edie said.
“It’s gravitational-locking,” Alex explained. “So long as there’s nitrogen, they can take us wherever they want.”
“I wonder where that is.” The exhaust stopped and the train-turned-elevator ground to a halt.
“Terminate protocol, we have arrived at our destination,” Pravixyt said to the humans. The
side of the cube opened. The three aliens unlatched their claws from the bar holding them and hopped out of the cube.
“Follow us,” Ruutana said.
They followed the A’biran into a narrow hall. Alex ran his hands along the walls. They were onyx-black, and rocky to the touch. She looked carefully and saw more of the hieroglyphics running along it.
“I swear, if we don’t learn what these symbols are before we leave, I’m going to be pissed,” Edie said.
They continued walking until the A’biran stopped. Now a new light filled the corridor. Pravixyt arched its spine to aim their metal bowl to face the humans.
“End path, this your quarters,” they said.
Edie and Alex stepped ahead into a room which clearly stood at the edge of one of the tall skyscrapers. Edie quickly ran to the translucent walls and stared in awe at the city-world below.
“Wow! Alex, come check this out.”
“Bird’s eye view. We must be at least fifty-five stories up.”
Edie turned to appraise their new living space. It was small, about the size of a hotel room. What looked like a double-bunk bed with two blankets was built into a metal frame.
The entire setup didn’t look comfortable, but she’d slept on worse. Edie considered it impressive how the A’biran managed to closely duplicate living conditions for humans.
“Your sustenance,” Sattui said. Edie and Alex turned to see the alien standing by an orange light which emanated from the ceiling to the floor.
“Food?” Edie asked.
“Yeah,” Alex said. “It’s levitating!”
Edie looked closer at the orange light and saw that the sustenance in question levitated at the center of the light.
“Go ahead,” Raatuna said.
Edible was not the first word that came to Edie’s mind. It looked more like orange foam.
Clearly the A’biran were not following the Aquarians lead in reconstructing human food. Edie recalled the time when she fled the Herschel along with Simon and Alex. Their skipper came packed with a month’s supply of dried food. Once they arrived at the Universal Crescent, they taught the Aquarians the types of food grown on Earth. For the Aquarians, reconstructing Earth-based genomes came with surprising ease. Little did Edie know, the Aquarians already retrieved the genetic mappings for all Earth-based plant life from the Golden Wave database, from the Pelicans that had arrived at Wolf 482 years before.
What if it contained elements hostile to human biology? What if it messed with her DNA? What if she never wanted to eat again?
“Not bad,” Alex said, holding one of the cubes, already partially consumed.
Edie grabbed the other cube and shoved it into her mouth taking a bite. The texture was dry and crunchy, like a meringue cookie. Except there was nothing sweet about it. The cube had a slight salty taste, and somewhat smoky. If Edie were blindfolded, she would have thought someone fed her a chunk of veggie chips with artificially grown meat.
After consuming their cubes, Edie felt as though she just ate a perfectly-portioned meal. She didn’t feel a need for more but she also didn’t feel stuffed.
“Thank you,” Edie said. The A’biran did not respond. Edie figured it would be a stretch to expect them to understand human pleasantries.
“Now that your sustenance is consumed, we will leave you for a short rest,” Pravixyt said. “When we return, we will take you to the brains.”
“I’m sorry,” Edie said. “Can you repeat that?”
“Yes,” Pravixyt said. “They are greatly looking forward to your presence.”
Chapter 29
New Tokyo
Val fell to the floor with a thud. She felt pain, but not from the fall. It was the nanites quickly evacuating her brain in response to the emergency cancellation. Her body ached. She fought mightily to push herself up from the floor but struggled.
She heard voices. People rushed in to the gammanaut staging area. She couldn’t make much sense of what was happening but momentarily saw she was no longer on the ground.
“Hang on doctor,” a man said.
“You know the drill, get a bucket,” a woman said.
Val closed her eyes. The pain was unbearable. She felt her insides creep up. Then, in an intense rush, Val let it all go.
The pain vanished, and Val felt her body again. She opened her eyes to see a pool of fresh, gray bile greeting her from a metal bucket.
“Ugh!” Val groaned.
“It’s okay babe,” said the one voice in the world that always brought her comfort. Val jumped up, having regained motor functions.
“Ty!” She hugged her wife, although Ty seemed to be pulling back a bit. “What? Oh, sorry.” Val realized she had pieces of vomit on her chin. One of the medics handed her a towel to wipe it off.
“Are you okay?” Ty asked.
“I’m fine,” Val responded. “What the Hell happened in there? Where’s Thomas?”
“We’ve lost all contact with Thomas,” Ty said. “His vital signs flatlined.”
“Oh no,” Val said.
“We have an extraction team going to get him. Go shower. Clean up. Come meet us in the command center as soon as you’re done,” Ty said. “We have something you need to see.”
Chapter 30
New Tokyo - Research Bay
The research bay turned command center was a madhouse. Engineers yelled at each other. Holograms of Minerva, Thomas, and his flatlined heart monitor filled the back of the room. Val caught Ty chatting with Minister Endo, who turned her gaze to Val as she made her way to the floor.
Everyone fell silent. The engineers stopped arguing. All faces and attention turned to Val.
“What’s going on?” Val asked. “What happened to Thomas?”
“No word on his current state,” an engineer said.
“Was it the Aquarians who did this?” Val asked. Nobody answered her. “Did Minerva do this?”
Minister Endo left her workstation and moved to where Val stood. She pointed at the Aquarian vessel on the other side of the glass. Val didn’t understand.
Minister Endo wasn’t pointing to Minerva. Rather, she was pointing above the kaiju. A metal tube connected from one of the upper decks in the Research Bay into the upper part of Minerva’s mantle. One look at the truss, and Val realized it wasn’t the Aquarians.
“Thomas wasn’t alone in there,” Val said. “Somebody was in there with him.”
“Correction,” Minister Endo said. “Somebody is still in there with him.”
“Who?” Val begged. Before the Minister could reply, Ty interjected.
“Minister Endo, we’re receiving a message from inside the host.”
“Put it on speaker,” she demanded.
“Patching them in now.”
Val wasn’t sure if it was an after-effect of the nanites leaving her body or if it was the sheer anticipation of the moment that made her heart feel weak. Who could have broken into Minerva and attacked Thomas? Val took notice of all who were present. Ty, Minister Endo, and Seiji, stood at arm’s length. Every console had one or more engineers present. The chaos paused.
“I didn’t want it to come to this,” Kosuke said, his frantic breath filling the speakers of the Research Bay. “But you left me no choice.”
“Kosuke!” Minister Endo replied.
“He can’t hear you,” Ty said. “We’re on mute.”
“Well then unmute!” Minister Endo demanded.
“He sounds desperate,” Seiji interrupted.
“Your point?” Minister Endo beckoned.
“He’s the one who wanted to destroy the host. Now he’s standing in it with Thomas Adler. We don’t even know if Thomas is alive. I’d be careful not to push Kosuke over the limit.”
“Valid,” Minister Endo acknowledged. “Unmute.”
“Unmuted,” Ty said.
“Kosuke, this is Yuna Endo. Is Thomas Adler alive?”
Several seconds seemed to stretch into eternity. A deafening silence filled the deck as the
team nervously waited. In the silence, an alarm sounded from one of the neighboring consoles and the air-conditioning hummed.
“Yes,” Kosuke replied in one word. Minister Endo breathed a sigh of relief.
“May we please speak to him?”
“Not yet,” Kosuke answered. “First, I want to make one thing clear. I know as we speak, you probably have a strike team assembled to storm the host and take me out. If I see a barrel of any gun emerge through the host, Thomas dies. Do you understand?”
“Alright. You have my word. We will not send in a strike team,” Minister Endo said. “However, we also need you to meet us halfway. I won’t send in a strike team, but I need you to return Thomas safely.”
“And give up all my leverage?” Kosuke asked, astonished. “Come on, Yuna! You know if I send Thomas outside, I’m a dead man.”
Minister Endo took a deep breath. “Kosuke. Thomas’ heart monitor shows a flatline. Assuming he is even alive and this isn’t a bluff, whatever you did to knock him out also knocked out his vital sensors. We need visual confirmation he is still alive.”
Kosuke did not respond.
“Hello?” Minister Endo called.
“You can send in one person,” Kosuke said. “Unarmed.”
“How do I know you won’t endanger their life too?” Minister Endo asked.
“You don’t,” Kosuke said. “But you don’t really have any other choice.”
The Minister took a moment to consider Kosuke’s demands. Here he was, holding up an alien vessel with intentions that confounded everyone.
“Please hold,” Minister Endo said.
“Of course. Take your time,” Kosuke said.
“Muted again,” Ty said.
“Seiji,” Minister Endo said.
“Yes Minister?”
“Get a strike team ready. We’re taking the sonofabitch down.”
“What?” Val responded, surprised. “You can’t be serious! You’ll kill Thomas.”