MissionSRX: Deep Unknown

by Matthew D. White

  The sudden noise pierced the commander’s mind and Grant was instantly overcome by the visceral battlefield urge to aid his fellow crewman. He leapt from his bed to the floor but found himself falling flat as well. Pain the likes of which he’d never known shot through every bone, joint, muscle and cell in his body. He cried out like Othello, jarring the others from their deep layers of restful sleep. Commander Fox, Scott Ryan, Major Kael and Sergeant Mason likewise leapt up but dropped instantly, shouting and thrashing in agony as their bodies failed to function.

  Across the room, Scott’s mind still spun in the torrent of visions as he jolted from his bed and tumbled to the floor, a stabbing pain firing in every synapse. Commander Fox followed right on top of him and from his exclamations was experiencing the same sensation.

  Grant tried to pull himself upright, but through the pain felt something else amiss. He froze and then grabbed at his wrist and stopped. “I don’t have a heartbeat.”

  Fox turned about on the floor, still writhing in agony but put the blade of his hand across Grant’s neck. His face grimaced and he tried the soldier’s wrist as well before growing a more vexed expression and comparing it against his own. “I… I’ve never felt something like that. There’s no beating, but I feel something more like murmuring. Or churning.”

  The engineer heard a sound that stood out from the shouting, cursing mess of soldiers. On the wall across from the farthest bunk a strip of blue light appeared as if outlining a door. Rather than swing or slide away, the pure white material within the frame simply evaporated with a hiss of smoke into nothing.

  From a similarly lit passage beyond, strode in an alien that towered over even Othello by at least half a meter. The being was attired in flowing white fabric identical to the humans but additionally wore a hood that fell to its chest and obscured its face.

  The form instantly stole the attention of the room while the trained soldiers reacted, scrambling about and ignoring the pain to put on a thinly-veiled show of defense. Their shouts dwindled down to nothing, quickly leaving the room silent. Scott looked amongst them, watching their faces strain from the simultaneous clash of emotions they were attempting to hide.

  Grant watched as the being lifted a humanoid arm and hand from within the folds of its drapery. It held it up as if to say stop, but he heard nothing. Rather, almost instantly, he felt a welling surge from within his body, as if his team had just been ordered to stand down by the general himself; as if the battle was won and the long-sought morning had finally arrived. He fought the conflicting emotions, trying to keep on his guard, but the peaceful warmth continued to pour into his soul.

  Subconsciously, Grant felt his face and fists relax. The others around him appeared to do the same. Whatever he felt inside, they must have sensed as well. Together they were frozen in place, transfixed by their visitor’s arrival.

  “What’s it doing?” Scott whispered.

  “Shh!” Grant snapped and saw the creature drop its hand. Again from within his mind, he heard, or more accurately, felt, words dictated slowly and methodically.

  Peace be with you. Trouble not, you are safe with us.

  The statement was more sung than spoken within Grant’s head. It had a melodic feel like a wide chord being mixed with the hum of a vibraphone. He touched the side of his cranium without thinking, half expecting it to be physically carved away.

  He looked back and forth among the other men. “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes.” Fox’s eyes were wide as he stared straight past the soldier.

  “What are you?” Grant continued

  We are The Chosen, it replied again without any externally audible sound.

  Grant’s mind was a maelstrom of conflicting ideas, but tried to keep his composure before the others, still in stunned silence. “What did you do to us?”

  We have made you ideal.

  The commander’s joints and muscles stung as if on fire. “This is ideal?”

  Today, no. Now is for healing. Soon you shall be strong.

  The statement was simple but unleashed another surge of questions. “How are you communicating with us?” he asked, staring at the spot of cloth he assumed obscured a face.

  We communicate through raw emotion. Feelings are universal unlike words. We give your minds a direct stream of our consciousness which will be interpreted as a statement. It was one of many enhancements.

  “What do you mean enhancements?” Fox questioned, methodically getting to his feet while trying to keep the searing pain under control.

  There is time for that later.

  Grant stood in turn, “So what do we call you? Why are you here with us?”

  I am the Emissary. The words floated through Grant’s mind with increasing flourish. I am here to escort you to The Bloodline.

  “The Bloodline?” Scott inquired.

  Our king, prophet, emperor, pharaoh: The Bloodline. You know these words, yes?

  “Oh, of course,” Scott replied, nodding his head. Something behind the sheet nodded similarly.

  “Why are you wearing that?” Mason took his turn, pointing at the Emissary’s flowing robe.

  It is written that The Bloodline would be the first to reveal our race to you.

  “Sounds like you’ve been expecting us.”

  Absolutely. You must to follow me to him. He shall explain all. Assistance has been recovered for your handicap. The Emissary gestured beside the nearest bed, where a row of aluminum crutches pulled straight from the Flagstaff were stacked in a line.

  The wording was strange, Grant thought, but there was no other way he could see himself being able stand. His shoulders burned as he retrieved a pair and rested his weight upon the thin pads. Only lightly grasping the handles caused the joints of his fingers to sting.

  “Where is my crew? Did you save them as well?” Fox asked without budging.

  Undoubtedly. They are safe as you are, but are not here. They are resting and will be reunited once they are healed. The Emissary took a step into the doorway. It is time to follow me.

  “I wouldn’t be trifling with him,” Othello’s voice trailed as he pulled himself up, still intently staring down at his lower extremities, flexing his bare feet in amazement. “Incredible…”

  “Concur.” Grant exchanged a glance with Fox and followed the Emissary through the door. “Best not keep our host waiting.”

  The team’s quiet sense of intrigue dulled their pain as they stumbled forward and out of their holding room. On the other side, Grant looked to each side of an expansive, snow white concourse which seemed to stretch forever into the distance.

  A few meters out was a thick railing which obscured a view that he could only compare to an indoor Grand Canyon. They were multiple stories high and he identified dozens of similar floors on the opposing side, hundreds of meters away. Every wall glowed with the same pale ambient light beneath an expansive skylight far above. The sides of the facility curved out like the inside of an egg, giving each walkway a sense of being alone in the vast space.

  Scott scanned around beyond the high glass dome above their heads and saw the endless expanse of stars drift by above. Nothing was recognizable and they moved in real time; he surmised the platform was rotating far faster than Earth or Mars did at the present. Given what they had already seen, he would have made a bet that there wasn’t a physical barrier between them and the vacuum. It wouldn’t be a stretch to see their hosts using some kind of a force field.

  “What are you thinking?” Fox asked Grant with the tone of a genuine question devoid of sarcasm.

  The soldier moved along slowly with half his weight upon the aluminum supports. “To be honest, I don’t quite know yet,” he replied while swiveling his head about the room. “They’ve gone through a lot of work for this so I don’t think they mean to kill us. If I had to guess anything, I’d say this is their version of a hospital.”

  Grant turned his attention to their guide, “Emissary, what is this place?”

  You ar
e nearly correct in your ascertainment. It stated without looking back. This is where your kind are brought to be fixed and healed.

  The word choices were strange again but Grant didn’t vocalize an objection. He didn’t know how much of his mind was open to these things, and although they didn’t seem malicious, he wanted to play it safe. Plus, how likely was it that an alien would understand human emotions, not to mention English definitions.

  Fixed and healed sounded like two different operations, as if they were brought here to be processed instead of for recuperation. If that were true, then the rest of the crew of the Flagstaff could be nearby. Commander Fox and Major Kael undoubtedly had the same concern on their minds.

  This way. We are nearly to our transportation. The alien turned to the left as a massive section of the wall dematerialized like their holding room before. Scott watched as it passed through the field before the fog had cleared and was struck again as to its method of operation. It was an utterly vexing device.

  “We’re the only ones here,” Mason noted.

  Othello responded first, having thought the same thing as they entered the next empty hallway. “I think it was planned like this for our arrival.”

  “Quite the operation,” the sergeant said but was left speechless at the next turn.

  While the hallway had been a semicircular arc, twenty meters high or so, once they cleared the structure, the white walls gave way to a dome conceived of the same crystal clear force field as they had seen before. A billion stars shined bright in the black, atmosphere-free sky from horizon to horizon, undisturbed by the light from the facility.

  To their right, the team could see in the distance a row of towering ovoid facilities like they had just departed. The ground was a pale gray, dusty and barren, however there was nothing to suggest that even a micron of the grit made it inside.

  On the left sprawled what could have only been called a spaceport, but such a term didn’t do it justice as far as Earth’s installations were concerned. A few branches of the facility extended down across a shallow valley, flanked on the sides by shimmering crafts numbering well into the hundreds. A few danced above, gracefully descending to their destinations or floating up and away.

  Commander Fox was speechless at the sight. They didn’t look like anything he’d seen on Earth or fielded by the Aquillians. They had solid forms but had no rigid angles, hard metal panels or protrusions. As the nearest approached its destination, the vessel’s wings adjusted downward, changing its entire outline. They looked more like bioluminescent sea creatures than spacecraft. “These are your ships?”

  Yes.

  “The wings are really moving?”

  Yes. In the void there are greater requirements for it, but for landing here it helps with balance.

  “Amazing,” Scott mumbled, “they look like they’re alive.”

  The gently textured stone underfoot took a shallow grade as the group continued to the dock of the nearest ship. Although dwarfed by most of the others, the deck of the shimmering craft towered high above their heads. Grant noted it was of similar size to the Space Corps’ gunboats, albeit far more elegant and with much more useable space.

  Their guide paused before a blank wall in front of the ship and turned back to his followers. Welcome to our transportation, he added as the wall evaporated like the others before.

  Again the inside of the ship matched the rest of the facility. It was more compact but every surface flowed into each other as if a wax model of the human equivalent were left to melt in the sun. For once, the view of the sky was partially obscured by the skin despite long flowing windows on each side.

  Eight rows of seats were molded into the walls and across the center of the bay, illuminated by the strip of glowing ceiling above. If this was a ship, it was unlike any other Fox had ever experienced. Like the rest of the station, every surface was white, save for a few gray outlines of panels and indentions. The alien turned back as the wall behind them reformed again out of thin air.

  Scott felt bewildered, terrified and beyond excited all at once. It was something so mundane and yet so far beyond his own understanding. He could only imagine what lay ahead. He had a million questions and suppressed the desire to ask them.

  Please be seated. The Emissary addressed the team. We’ll be lifting off in a moment.

  The followers did as they were told and picked two facing rows in the center of the bay. Grant dropped his crutches on the floor behind his feet and let himself fall. He expected the surface to feel like a hardened steel platform or maybe a nylon jump seat, but the substance instantly deformed to his weight. Initially feeling like he was losing his balance, he nearly fell until the seat equalized the force across his body and firmed back up. He could see the others going through similar adventures with the unknown technology.

  The alien took a seat against the wall, facing the two rows and remained motionless. Fox waited for any sign of movement but received none. He expected a growl or shudder as whatever type of rocket they were riding in came to life, but there was nothing. From the rear of the ship came a hiss as if an industrial air circulator had just spun up. Without more than a whisper, the shuttle detached from the ground and gracefully slid into the sky.

  Expecting to catch a glimpse of the facility from the air, Scott scanned out the massive windows. He felt no acceleration and barely any movement, but it only took a second for them to go soaring into the darkness.

  “How far are we going?” Kael asked their host.

  Not far. Just across the system, the alien replied and continued, sensing the follow-up. It will not take long at all.

  As they left the strange planet’s thin atmosphere, Grant watched as more stars began to form in the distance. Flickers of light appeared in the foreground and he assumed they were passing by a major alien thoroughfare. He would not have looked any closer if it wasn’t for their engineer.

  “No way!” Scott exclaimed and hopped from his seat. “Did you see that?” He ran to the port bank of windows while the others leaned to catch a glimpse of what he had spotted.

  Grant turned to investigate when a band of light caught his eye from the darkness. The ship arced to the side and he could make out a massive network of concentric rings encircling the small planet below. Although miniscule in comparison to the other ships, the sheer length easily gave the structure the edge in total mass.

  “Did they build artificial planetary rings?” Scott asked the group.

  Your hypothesis is correct. The Emissary’s voice danced through his head. The platform is used for ship construction as well as docking for existing fleet vessels. In dire circumstances, it can also be modified to provide effective defense.

  Grant and Fox exchanged glances with each other and turned back to their shrouded guide. “Defense from what?” Grant asked but got no response. He watched as they slid alongside the eight silver tubes slowly orbiting outside before turning again into darkness.

  3

  “Did any of you read the account of First Contact?” Scott asked the room after a few minutes of silence.

  “I did years ago, back at the academy,” Commander Fox replied. “It was required by every cadet.”

  “Not the original transcription, but I skimmed a collection from the crew of the Celestial while I was laid up,” Othello added.

  “You expecting something similar?” Grant returned.

  “Yes. No-maybe; I don’t know,” Scott said shaking his head. “But there are probably some lessons from it that we could use.”

  “Good thinking, wish we had a copy with us,” Fox commented. “Seems to me races would all develop differently, but still be constrained by the same natural laws.”

  “Exactly!” Scott became animated and spoke faster. “Biologically, instinctively and socially we are probably completely different. Conversely, we all most likely encountered similar notions of gravity, electricity, the spectrum, nuclear energy, things like that.”

  “I’m not sure how differen
t we are when it comes to our interactions,” Othello said. “To a certain degree, of course, but if our guide’s to be believed, he’s able to express concepts that are not dissimilar to our own. It’s a stretch, but maybe we’re not that different.”

  “There’s another pretty major difference between this and First Contact,” Grant added. “Back then, we met the Aquillians neutrally on a remote asteroid. The same can’t be said here. I don’t think we’re in mortal danger, but our host knows far more about us than we know about him.” He turned to the Emissary, “What happened to our ship?” he asked, seeking to prove his point.

  The vessel upon which you were discovered was sanitized, cleared of your personnel and taken to be protected by the fleet. Your assertions are correct, that it was used to study you, but it is for the best, you will see. It yet survives, should you require it. The alien paused. I’m sorry, there isn’t much more I may divulge before you speak with the Bloodline.

  Kael leaned in. “That’s the least of my worries. If that gave them the insight to keep us from killing each other, I’d call it worth the risk.”

  They exchanged glances and Scott continued, “Another thing, he said these things communicate telepathically using strings of emotions. That means whatever any of them say to us as a collection could be interpreted differently based on whatever our innate processing of language to be.”

  “So, we could each hear something different despite him only saying one thing?” Mason asked.

  “That’s right. We might need to compare notes on it; that might give us a better understanding to their meaning.”

  “I’d also bet more differences would emerge if they started talking in more technical terms,” Othello added.

  Stillness reigned for a moment before Scott continued his speculation. “I wonder if they know what compromised our engines.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you should ask them,” Grant replied, crossing his arms and leaning back in the seat. His body still burned from whatever they had done to it. If this was, quote, ideal, he didn’t want to think about their idea of a punishment. Thin lines of tension slid across his face.