Talisman of Earth

by A. S. Deller

Gray’s eyes again, unwavering. He knew what was next.

  “It has to be me. I will be able to locate the Pernet scientist Sior. We need him, if we can get him. Empathically, Pernet are vastly different from Valgons, and I’ll know where he is almost immediately upon entering the lek’s atmosphere.

  Most importantly, Gulliver and my psionic network will allow him to gather data from my senses, as well as track my location. All passively, without my comm implant sending or receiving signals.”

  You have a choice, said Rhodes’ steely, deep brown eyes. You can’t volunteer for this.

  Dr. Weller’s eyes oscillated between Rhodes and Sorakith. She could see Gray’s idling anger as well as anyone.

  The Captain must have sensed a querulous undercurrent brewing, as well. She interceded, “While Sorakith is inside, the strike team goes EVA, infiltrates the lek, and rescues Sorakith and Sior, while the rest of us aboard ship maintain the illusion that we’ve been commandeered as long as possible. If we need to, we extend the amplified shields all the way through the air lock.”

  “Captain,” Rhodes inserted, “When we’re there, we should try to transfer some data from their AI. It’s worth a shot. If we catch them off guard there’s a chance we can get something useful before they lock it all down.”

  That I what he said, but he thought: There’s a chance I can find my wife and daughter.

  Lancer said, “Splitting the boarding party may not be the best tactic, but you’re right. I think it could be worth it, too.”

  Rhodes stroked his chin thoughtfully, relieved.

  The Captain concluded, “And when it’s time to go and the lek is activated, we hit them with antimatter missiles.”

  “Those are the only ordnance that can do enough damage to a lek to cripple it,” Chief Falken added.

  “We don’t have antimatter missiles. This is a Moderator, not a Capital class ship like the Hartford was,” Rhodes spoke stonily.

  Lancer agreed, “We do not.”

  Kyra Weller cinched it. “So we’re going to make some.”

  Captain Lancer stood over senior nuclear tech Jana Haley and her assistant, mustached Frenchman Petty Officer Laurent Chateau. Both were concentrating on their holos with such single mindedness that her presence didn’t faze them, if they even knew she was there.

  As Gulliver monitored and controlled the position of every antiproton and positron, Haley and Chateau kept their eyes on the bigger picture: Every movement that Chief Falken and Dr. Weller made in the null-G compartment that housed the antimatter containment had to be precise, to the millimeter if possible, in order to avoid any unexpected jostling, vibrations or momentum generation. It was dangerous and dicey work, manipulating antimatter for means never regimented by Star Navy standard operating procedures.

  While Cassidy Falken moved like a ballerina in the absence of gravity, Kyra Weller was significantly less skilled in such conditions. Everyone was, compared to Falken. Luckily for everyone, Kyra served as the brains of the operations, verbally guiding Falken’s deft hands as the nimble Geneng physically dislodged a thimble’s worth of antimatter—-a “pellet”--from within the containment rings. Cassidy wasn’t using her bare hands, of course. She remotely controlled a series of nano-scale robotic arms they had placed at junctions in the rings. The arms used “hands” made of electromagnetic fields, sculpted with intense calculations by Gulliver. But Gulliver had less real-world ability to handle objects in zero gravity than Falken did. Thus, the death-defying duty fell to her.

  “Okay, now bring the pellet through the juncture and into the vacuum cylinder,” Kyra said in hushed tones to Falken. Then, to Haley, “How is the pellet’s stability looking?”

  Jana Haley’s voice answered over her comm implant, “Still optimal.”

  Kyra said, “Just a little further, Chief, and the fields will hold it in pla—-“

  “Foist me!” Falken spurted out.

  Weller almost jumped out of her white rad suit. “What!”

  “Sorry, these little manipulators are bloody unforgiving,” the Chief said.

  “That isn’t calming me down, Cassidy.”

  “I have it, don’t worry. I think I’m entitled to a ‘foist’ here and there, don’t you?”

  In the engineering station, Lancer cracked a little smile. She noticed that Haley and Chateau were still as serious as the plague.

  After another ten minutes of high tension, Weller and Falken had the dribble of antiparticles safely stowed in its own miniature vacuum containment unit, kept one hundred percent partitioned from the container’s normal matter by EM fields. Suspended like a metallic sphere of rain frozen in time, it awaited an ultimate destiny that could mean victory or defeat for the crew of the Talisman.

  In the air lock, as they prepped to return to gravity, Weller nudged Falken. “Steadier hands I have yet to see. Nice work in there.”

  Removing a pale hand from a glove and bending her spidery fingers into a fist, Falken said, “I have to give it to the damned Alliance however I can, eh, Professor?”

  “Right. Let’s go make a couple of antimatter missiles, shall we?”

  Falken’s lips curled in luscious anticipation.

  With at least one and a half days remaining before the Talisman entered active scanning space of the lek, Sorakith visited with Doc Martell and Kyra in Sickbay.

  She hadn’t had time to spend with Rhodes for nearly a week. Not for meals, not for training, not for talking. He assumed it was the loss of the twins to the hibernation pods. The stress of apprehension for the upcoming mission. The part Sorakith had to play in it was easily the riskiest of all. Yes, everyone aboard the Talisman might die, but she might spend many unforgiving hours in a Valgon interrogation room before she died. There were, indeed, many things worse than death. A Valgon’s general lack of sympathy was just one of them.

  So when Sorakith went to see the doctors, Rhodes assumed it was in some way related to mission preparations.

  And when she pinged him, and his room’s hatch whooshed open, he expected a reunion of sorts. Maybe a final goodbye before they parted ways, all to ride into the valley of death. Maybe this would be the time they finally made love.

  “Hello, Gray,” she said softly, her coppery-brown hands held demurely behind her back.

  He read in her posture, her tone, and her unblinking gaze what he wanted to see.

  He read them all wrong.

  Rhodes approached Sorakith haltingly, at last putting his

  hands on her shoulders. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Sorakith’s hands felt for purchase and found it on Gray’s elbows. She pulled him closer and gazed into his deep, mahogany eyes as she said, “I know their methods. We know that they always keep Althorians alive so their Malign Interrogators can pick our minds clean. And we need the advantage of surprise.”

  “I still don’t understand why it has to be you,” Rhodes pleaded.

  “There is a reason why I never allowed the two of us to bond. It was my own fear. I should have told you before,” she said, her orange-yellow irises glistening.

  “Told me what?”

  “I am ila’thna,” she said.

  Rhodes didn’t comprehend the word immediately. He tilted his head a bit, a questioning look on his face. And understanding finally dawned, like so much unexpected cold rain pattering on his brow in the middle of the driest desert he might imagine.

  Sorakith felt his hands grasp her more strongly, his cybernetic fingers digging in just a little too much.

  Ila’thna was the “Third Gender” of the Althorians. Very similar to the kind of sequential hermaphroditism found in various species of frog, fish and flies on Earth, the Althorian variety evolved so that in times of low population density of either male or female sexes, an Ila’thna could alter itself biologically into one or the other, as needed. This occurred during the evolution of the Althorians’ earliest ancestors, and was a trait carried forward because of heavy predation due to an entire taxonomic order o
f carnivorous animals that preyed specifically on certain genders of other animals, depending upon the season. Since the advancement of Althorian civilization and their subsequent self-removal from their world’s natural food chain, the proportion of ila’thna individuals had fallen from roughly one third to one-in-ten. Even though they had the bioengineering wherewithal to remove the trait from their species, the Althorians chose to retain ila’thna in their society. They were a naturally cautious and practical people.

  Rhodes knew all of this. Biology of League species was one of the courses he was subjected to as a cadet decades before.

  But he certainly did not know that Sorakith was an ila’thna.

  She saw the realization in his eyes as he processed the fact. Before he could speak, she said, “Was I wrong? Was I wrong in my fear, or is it true that you would no... be... with an ila’thna if you knew what she was?”

  Rhodes casually moved his hands down her shoulders, to her forearms, to her hands, feeling the greater warmth of her 100.6 degree Fahrenheit body temperature, her different, alien biology. He knew the truth. He also knew that he couldn’t lie to her. Any words were merely the air coming out of his lungs, because she could feel the truth. But no matter how hard he tried, his eyes dropped. And, looking down to the deck, he heard himself say, “I love you.”

  He felt Sorakith’s hand reach up and tilt his chin so that he was looking into her eyes again. She smiled tenderly. “You do, but not in the way you did five minutes ago.”

  “It’s...it’s not...,” Rhodes struggled with the words.

  Sorakith raised a hand to his cheek and held it there. “You haven’t even felt the same way about me for a while now. I’ve felt it. Your divided thoughts. Is it Kyra?”

  “You’re not supposed to be reading our thoughts,” said Gray, eyes sapped.

  Sorakith grinned again. “It’s been almost two decades and we still haven’t convinced you that we aren’t telepathic.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “I do. I do care for you,” Rhodes tried again.

  “Yes, you do. And I, you. But there was always this, and I should have told you. I’m glad I didn’t, though.”

  “Why, Sorakith?”

  “Because what has happened between you and Dr. Weller was as natural as what happened between you and I. But it they are purer, your feelings for Kyra. There is no deception there, while I deceived you.”

  “No, don’t say that,” Rhodes implored.

  She shook her head slowly and said, “I did deceive you, but never intended harm. It was selfishness. I am sorry.”

  Without realizing it, Rhodes’ hands were holding onto each of her wrists. Suddenly, he pulled her into a strong embrace. Into her ear, he said, “It’s okay. I forgive you. Thank you.”

  They held each other for a moment, and finally backed away a short step. Gray Rhodes took a deep, affirming breath before he spoke again. “You told me this now because it’s part of your plan?”

  “It is. I become male, will be captured as male. I will be stronger and have some greater pain endurance. If I revert to female, I will have some other advantages,” Sorakith stated evenly.

  Rhodes looked her up and down, and said slyly, “Oh, you definitely do.”

  Sorakith snickered. “I’d better go. I have already initiated the Changing. It isn’t something that is suitable for others to witness.”

  “Alright. You do what you have to,” agreed Rhodes. “I’ll see you in--?”

  “About twenty-six hours.”

  “That’s fast.”

  “Fast, and painful,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  In a short time, Sorakith was back in her stateroom. Captain Lancer and Commander Rhodes had their own rooms by virtue of their rank. Rax, Chief Falken, and Sorakith had their own rooms by virtue of their extreme biological difference from the human crew. It wasn’t a form of segregation in the negative sense. Rather, it was a way to allot them some measure of privacy. Sorakith and Rax each had various rituals based around physical and religious requirements, and in Sorakith’s case, meditative states that all Althorians had to maintain for certain periods. If Sorakith did not have the opportunity to meditate at specified times throughout a day, while not in the presence of others, she ran the risk of inducing a type of madness called “elth’tosa”. An Althorian could be around other Althorians, and only Althorians, for a lifetime without concern for elth’tosa. The risk came into play when an Althorian, with a psionically-attuned mind, was surrounded by a population consisting mostly of unlike minds. This effectively created a cacophony of uncontrolled and unmodulated mental energies. Over a relatively short timeframe this could, and often did, cause some types of dementia and even psychoses.

  So quiet was nice for an Althorian. And right then, Sorakith needed not just solitude, but relative quarantine. Dr. Weller and some of her team had already convinced crew members (mostly junior officers) berthed in adjacent compartments to move into empty the Petty Officer bunks. The PO’s hated it, but it was understood as a necessity.

  Now, Sorakith was alone.

  Before she could enter her trancelike ila’thna state, she had to gorge herself on at least three days’ worth of nutrition. She placed an intravenous tube into a tiny port in each arm that Doc Martell had just installed.

  After beginning the steady and fast drips of high-caloric mineral, vitamin and protein solution, she sat down to numerous plates of her favorite foods. These were Sorakith’s guilty pleasure items: Piping hot, rich and creamy gi’rit with aldima prawns. Slices of warm Brayland pie with prairie jumping deer and potatoes, which Rhodes had gotten her addicted to. And a big bowl of chocolate praline ice cream, another thing to blame Rhodes for.

  Tempting aromas and a raging appetite caused her to eat it too quickly. She cured a slight upset stomach with a liter of chilled, emerald Calivara wine while she read the last chapter of a novel called “Phillips Turnaround” by Torvald Torvaldssen. It was about a goatherd on pre-FTL Earth who killed his abusive stepfather and fled to Mars with his mother.

  The story ended poorly, and Sorakith wished she hadn’t finished.

  After gingerly turning off her holo tablet and laying it aside, she removed the IVs, their bags sagging after being fully emptied into her veins, and stretched out on her bunk.

  “Sora,” floated in Gulliver’s voice on her comm link.

  “Yes, Gull?” She answered.

  “You are performing an act of bravery. However, you do realize that it may result in bodily harm? I can monitor your safety, but I will not be able to do anything to protect you.”

  “If I must sacrifice, I must sacrifice. I believe you might do the same in my position,” she said.

  “If the lives of the crew could be preserved only if I gave my own life, yes. I would,” said Gulliver.

  “Good.”

  “But even though your choice is logical, it is not the only logical choice. And none of our possible strategies had a one hundred percent success rate.”

  “My life is no more valuable than any other crew member’s, Gull.”

  No answer.

  Sorakith pried, “You don’t feel that my life is more valuable, do you?”

  “I...do, Sora. You disapprove. There is no directive that compels me to weigh all lives equally. The baseline is the same for every individual. Is it wrong for me to hold one life in higher regard than another, when my baseline is to protect and preserve all lives? My research indicates that such considerations are common to most sentient species,” Gulliver said, his benevolent voice faltering.

  “It is not wrong. But, as my friend, I ask that you respect my wish. Please do not place more value on my life over any other crew member’s. Please cherish us all equally. If I do not survive this, consider that my last appeal to you.”

  Again, no answer.

  “I am going to de-link my implant for now, while I sleep. I’ll speak with you later,
Gull,” Sorakith finished. With a slight static blip, Gulliver was gone.

  Closing her eyes, Sorakith imagined standing on the edge of one of the twenty-three vast plateaus that comprised most of the landmass of her homeworld Althori. The center of each plateau was dominated by a monumentally large city built of stone and intertwined with sprawling inland forests. The plateaus, collectively called zea’pith, ranged in size from only a few hundred miles across to several thousand miles wide.

  She was perched on the edge of one. She looked down over the side at a series of laser-hewn steps carved into the cliff face, a thousand feet down to a twinkling, fine-sanded beach. The waves moved steadily in and back, huge green swathes of kelp forests bobbing and rocking in the calm sea. Althori’s voluminous orange giant of a sun hovered low over the horizon, casting everything in a golden-scarlet tincture.

  A cool wind coursed over her body as she sat, legs dangling over the edge. She was a youth again. Sorakith closed her eyes in the dream, and dreamt of the same scene. And again, and again, the plateau, the cliff, the steps, the sand, the sea, the wind.

  On and on, a fractal reverie.

  In the real world, Sorakith’s relaxed form began to tense on her bunk. Her eyes fluttered beneath her lids. Her thin, matte bronze fingers curled around clumps of bed sheets with a feral strength.

  The biophysical processes of the Changing had begun, and in less than half a day she would be Kithsora.

  Chief Cassidy Falken and her crew had toiled for days in the depths of the engineering deck. With nuclear tech Jana Haley and electrical specialist Carlos Williams, and some serious brainstorming time on the part of Dr. Weller, Falken had figured out how to remove the Valgon scoutship’s shielding system and link it to the Talisman’s own. This would nearly double their EM shield capacity.

  With shields of that level, they were more than the equal of any battleship in the fleet, and could better withstand destructive forces that were thrown at them during their banishment through the Solar System lek essel.