First Encounter

by Jasper T. Scott

  Clayton smiled tightly and nodded back, his gaze already straying back to Doctor Stevens.

  “It’s not for sure yet, because, well... you know, we don’t actually know the sex, but I was thinking about calling her Keera. In honor of Commander Taylor.”

  A knot rose into Clayton’s throat with the reminder of his late XO. She was lying dead and rotting in that underground lab back on Trappist-1E. He fought back tears, and spoke in a gravelly whisper, “She would be honored.”

  Dr. Reed smiled. “If it’s a boy, we’re thinking Keeran.”

  “He or she, that kid is going to have some big boots to fill.”

  “She’ll have time to grow into them,” Dr. Reed replied.

  Clayton was struggling to hold it together. If he had to deal with this for even a second longer, he was going to lose it. He cleared his throat and said, “Excuse me.”

  Walking on to the front of the nearest line of people waiting to enter cryo, he found Doctor Stevens and said, “How are we doing, Doc?”

  Corpsmen walked around the circumference of the chamber, checking readout screens and their control tablets before triggering pods shut. The pods sealed with a steaming hiss of flash-freezing cryo fluids and condensing moisture that curled out along the deck like smoke.

  Doctor Stevens turned away from supervising the process. “Everything is going very well. At this rate, we’ll have everyone in cryo within the hour.”

  The corpsmen shut the last of the pods on the deck, and then Doctor Stevens said, “Next section, please!”

  The cryo pods shifted from forty-five degrees to vertical with a collective groan of machinery, followed by a loud clunk of locking bolts. The pods sank down to the deck below and the ones from the level above came sliding down. The pods were built into rotating belts that circulated between the outer and inner hulls so that they could be filled or emptied one ring at a time. Glass covers popped open—all except for one, which remained shut and illuminated, indicating that it was already occupied.

  Clayton pointed to it. “Is that Dr. Grouse’s pod?”

  “Yes,” Doctor Stevens confirmed.

  They’d placed him in cryo yesterday, before any more of him could mutate and die.

  “Did you need something, Captain?” Doctor Stevens asked, his bushy gray eyebrows drifting up.

  Clayton watched corpsmen waving to the next people in line. They injected sedatives and guided colonists and crew stumbling into their pods, their eyes already heavy with sleep.

  Sleep sounded good right about now. Clayton hadn’t been getting much of it lately. There were too many ghosts inside his head, and his sleep paralysis was getting worse.

  “Yes...” Clayton trailed off, dragging his eyes away from the pods. “I’d like to jump the queue.”

  Stevens’ rugged features screwed up in confusion. “You want me to put you in next?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Clayton sucked in a shaky breath. He was the captain; he was supposed to set an example. How could he explain that all of this waiting around was just too much, that he couldn’t stand to be awake for another second because now he had two people haunting him: the wife he’d lost, and the work wife who’d stood by his side through Samara’s funeral, his subsequent depression, and everything in-between. Keera Taylor was dead, and he didn’t even have the delusional dream of someday bringing her back from a mind map. Clayton glanced at his smart watch and Samara’s smiling face—everything that she was and had been, condensed down to a single picture and a string of ones and zeros etched into a crystal matrix. The sheer absurdity of that fully struck him for the first time.

  “Sir?” Stevens prompted.

  He jerked his head up with a crumbling smile. “Yes, I’d like to go next.”

  “Of course...” Stevens snapped his fingers to a nearby corpsman. The other man paused just before he could inject someone else with a sedative. “Over here, Sellis; Captain Cross is next.”

  The corpsman nodded and walked over with a bemused frown. “This way, please, sir.”

  Clayton let Sellis lead him to an empty pod. “Ready?”

  “When you are, Corpsman. Need me to roll up my sleeve?”

  “No, sir. It self-sterilizes.” Sellis said, and then stabbed him with the needle.

  The pain was like a bee sting, but it lasted for only a second before a spreading warmth overtook it, cascading down to his knees and making them feel weak. A blissful sigh escaped Clayton’s lips as the corpsman led him into the nearest pod.

  “See you next rotation, sir,” Stevens said, crowding in and tossing a quick salute.

  Clayton tried to return it, but failed to raise his arm. His eyes sank shut and the sound of his pod groaning shut came distantly to his ears, followed by a loud hiss that snuffed out all the light and warmth left in his being.

  The Long Journey Home

  Chapter 17

  Ten Years Later...

  —2160 AD—

  35.42 Light Years from Earth

  “You’ve been having contractions?” Dr. Stevens scratched the grizzled shadow of stubble growing along his jaw. He squinted at Lori in the bright lights of sickbay. She’d woken him up in the middle of his sleep cycle, and it showed.

  “Yes—” Lori nodded quickly, and broke off in a wince and a gasp as another contraction hit. She braced herself on the edge of the examination table, gritting her teeth and gripping the table with whitening knuckles. The contraction ended just as quickly as it began, leaving her body so drained that she almost fell off the table. Richard steadied her.

  “That’s not all, Doc. I think my water broke. When I woke up, the bed was wet.”

  Stevens’ face paled, but he quickly covered his reaction. Lori knew what he was thinking. She was only twenty-four weeks. It was far too soon for her to have the baby. He gave a tight smile. “There are other possibilities, but let’s take a look, shall we?” he suggested. “Lie down, please.” Both he and Richard helped support her as she lay back against the table.

  “What if it is labor?” Lori asked as Stevens left her side. Richard stayed close, smiling and holding her hand. She clutched her massive belly with her other hand—felt a swift kick, and rubbed her hand back and forth reassuringly.

  At twenty-four weeks the fetus was already huge—approximately eight pounds according to the ultrasounds. So far there was no explanation for it, but fear was a constant companion in this pregnancy. If she actually carried to term, she’d probably explode. Stevens had already explained to her that they’d have to perform an emergency C-section if she got much bigger, so at this point, a premature birth wouldn’t be all bad—except that they didn’t know how far along the fetus really was. Were her lungs developed yet?

  Stevens returned a few seconds later, dragging over a mag-wheeled supply cart and a stool. “Let’s take a look and see, shall we?”

  Lori nodded, her eyes sliding shut as she took a deep breath to steady her nerves.

  “Would you mind if I removed your underwear, or would you prefer to do it?”

  Lori reached down and under her nightgown to begin sliding her underwear off. She only got it down a few inches before she had to stop as another contraction hit and stole her breath away.

  “Let me do that,” Richard said quickly, and hurriedly pulled off her panties.

  This time a guttural cry escaped Lori’s lips and prickles of sweat beaded her brow and back.

  Dr. Stevens removed a speculum from the cart and lubricated it. “Try to relax,” he said.

  “You relax,” Lori muttered. She winced as the instrument went in, and then Stevens flicked on his headlamp and leaned down for a look.

  He froze.

  “What is it?” Lori asked, her voice soft and ragged as she peered over her pregnant belly at him.

  Stevens looked up with a tight smile. “You’re already dilated nine centimeters. You’re about to give birth, Lori.”

  That news hit her like a bucket of cold water.
“What? But I’m only twenty-four weeks!”

  “Maybe so, but your baby is ready now. When did your water break?”

  “How do you know she’s ready?” Lori screamed as another contraction hit.

  “It’ll be okay, Miss Reed. I promise. We have all the facilities here to care for your child whether she’s fully developed or not, and all of our ultrasounds suggest that she’s been developing more rapidly than expected. Regardless, right now all you need to focus on is getting her out. Are you ready to push?”

  The contraction ended and Lori began sobbing. “I’m not ready. It’s too hard...” Her head lolled suddenly to one side, the pain making her feel faint.

  “Hey, don’t do that.” Richard squeezed her hand hard, and nodded to her. “You can do this. I’m right here. Okay?”

  Somehow Lori found the strength to nod back. She heard Dr. Stevens on his comms to one of his staff. She tried to listen to what he was saying, but another contraction came and stole all of her attention with sparking flashes of white-hot agony. An animal cry tore from her lips, and spittle flew from her lips as she propped herself up onto elbows and crushed Richard’s hand in hers. Her legs went reflexively up to her chest as the waves of pain washed over and through.

  “I can see the head!” Stevens said. “Keep pushing!”

  Lori let go with a gasp and slumped back against the table. “I can’t...”

  “Yes, you can!” Richard insisted. Their eyes locked and a smile twitched one corner of his mouth up. “Keera is counting on you.”

  The next contraction came and she pushed again with another scream. It felt like she was turning herself inside out. This time the pain went on and on. She couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t hear—

  And then it was over. “You did it!”

  Lori cracked a smile, her eyes sliding shut with exhaustion. All of her muscles turned to jelly on the table, and an intense feeling of relief and fulfillment spread through her.

  “What... what is that?” Richard asked, his voice pitching high with alarm.

  Lori’s eyes flew open and she propped herself up to see Stevens standing frozen with a ghostly white baby in his arms. Her scalp and body were whorled and striated with black veins, and her head was misshapen with four rounded lumps rising out of it.

  Stevens just stood there staring at her baby. It wasn’t moving. Lori’s thoughts spun away with horror, and her whole body tensed right up again. Yet somehow, her baby’s appearance wasn’t what had struck fear into her. It was the fact that she wasn’t moving.

  “Stevens!” she cried. “Do something!”

  Chapter 18

  Dr. Stevens clamped and cut the umbilical cord, and then ran over to an infant-sized gurney with a bright heating lamp shining down. The light of the lamp made Keera look even paler, and the black veins snapped into sharper focus, forming strange patterns beneath her skin.

  That appearance triggered a flash of deja vu for Lori. A thick knot of fear broke loose inside of her, making room for something else: revulsion.

  “What...” Richard trailed off, backing away quickly and shaking his head. His expression was twisted up with disgust. “What is she?”

  Doctor Stevens positioned Keera’s head to open her airways and began clearing her mouth and nose with a suction bulb while vigorously rubbing and drying her with a downy white blanket.

  “Is she breathing?” Lori asked.

  But Stevens gave no reply; he simply worked through the motions as if on autopilot.

  The door to the examination room swished open and a corpsman with spiky blonde hair and bright blue eyes rushed in wearing scrubs.

  Dr. Stevens looked up briefly. “Get over here, Sellis!”

  The corpsman hurried over, and then jumped back a step at the sight of Keera.

  “What the hell?” he cried. “What is that?”

  “I said give me a hand, damn it!” Stevens snapped.

  Sellis crept back in, and Lori watched as both of them hunched over her little girl, their hands and elbows flying as they worked with their backs turned to her, blocking sight of Keera.

  Enough! Lori decided. She wasn’t going to just lie here and wait. Gathering her strength, she pushed off the examination table, ignoring the sharp stabs of pain that the movements provoked from her loose belly and shredded pelvic muscles.

  Her gaze flicked to Richard. He was hugging his shoulders and slowly shaking his head as he cowered in the far corner of the room, right beside the exit.

  A flash of loathing shot through Lori. Coward! I’m coming Keera, she thought. Mommy’s coming...

  And then she heard it, the most beautiful sound in the world—

  Keera began to cry. It was a pitiful, whistling and whooping sound that made her fear Keera’s lungs weren’t properly developed despite her healthy birth weight. Lori pitched off the examination table and her bare feet hit the cold deck with an agonizing jolt. Her knees buckled instantly, but her hand shot out and grabbed Stevens’ cart of instruments for support.

  “Get the incubator!” Stevens said to his assistant as he wrapped Keera up in the blanket. Sellis darted for the exit while Stevens turned and carried Keera over.

  Lori scrambled back up onto the examination table to receive her child. Dr. Stevens’ expression was grave, his eyes hard as he stared into Keera’s face. Even now that she was breathing, she was just as pale as before. Fish scale patterns of black veins struck a fierce contrast to her glossy white skin. Between Keera’s jutting cheek bones and chin, her sharply sloping forehead and deeply sunken eyes, her face looked frighteningly aquiline. Her nose was just as bony and sharp as everything else, and her mouth protruded slightly with thin black lips that were parted slightly to reveal an equally black tongue.

  Suddenly Lori realized what she was looking at. She hadn’t seen them firsthand, but she’d heard Richard and Captain Cross describe them to her. Now she understood why Richard was cringing in the corner. He knew. He’d recognized Keera instantly.

  “Open your robe,” Stevens instructed. “You need to hold her to your chest. Skin to skin.”

  “H-how is this possible?” Lori stuttered as she fumbled with the buttons of her night gown. She hadn’t had any contact with the Avari. Not like Dr. Grouse, whom they’d infected with some kind of—

  Her thoughts broke off there. Dr. Grouse had stopped breathing in the airlock, and she’d administered CPR and mouth-to-mouth to bring him back.

  “I don’t know how,” Stevens replied.

  “But you cleared me!” she cried. “I wasn’t infected!”

  “I obviously missed something.” He nodded to her. “You should hold her.”

  Stevens held Keera out and Lori accepted her from the doctor, placing the infant’s bony face against her bare chest.

  She sucked in a sharp breath as Keera’s cheek touched her. “She’s hot!”

  A muscle in Stevens’ jaw twitched and he nodded. “That might be normal for her spec—”

  “You can say it. Her species,” Lori said.

  Keera was nosing around, searching for something. Her whistling cries quieting now, her eyelids fluttered a few times, and then her eyes cracked open to slits and locked on Lori’s—Keera’s eyes were a piercing red. A tiny hand popped out of the blanket and found her breast; then Keera’s mouth seized on her nipple and she began sucking hard.

  Lori gasped—then smiled as a feeling of warmth and contentment spread through her. Sheer bliss overcame any revulsion that she’d felt up till now. Whatever Keera was, she was her little girl, and that was all that mattered.

  The door swished open and Corpsman Sellis appeared, dragging an incubator behind him. Richard let out a muffled cry and then darted out the door, fleeing the examination room.

  “I don’t think we’ll be needing that,” Dr. Stevens said as he glanced back at Sellis. A tight smile touched his lips as he watched Keera feed. “It looks like twenty-four weeks is full term for an Avari baby.”

  Chapter 19

&n
bsp; Clayton stood in sickbay, watching real-time security footage from the corpsman’s station. He stared hard at the holoscreen, a chill coursing down his spine as he watched Dr. Reed breastfeeding her baby. Dr. Stevens and Ambassador Morgan were crowded around the screen with him, and Corpsman Sellis was in the room with her, standing by the door and watching with wary eyes.

  “Have you taken any DNA samples yet?” Clayton asked.

  “Yes...” Dr. Stevens said.

  “And?”

  “Her DNA is human, but it’s like nothing we’ve sequenced before.”

  “How so?”

  Doctor Stevens scratched his cheek and shook his head. “The child has forty-eight chromosomes. There’s an extra set.”

  Clayton arched an eyebrow at that. “Alien down syndrome?”

  “Perhaps,” Stevens replied.

  “Am I the father?” Ambassador Morgan asked. Clayton glanced at him. Morgan’s eyes were fixed on the screen, his voice soft and trembling.

  “Yes,” Doctor Stevens replied.

  The ambassador rounded on him. “Then how did this happen?!”

  Stevens just shook his head. “We don’t know. Dr. Reed believes she may have become contaminated when she resuscitated Dr. Grouse.”

  Clayton’s gaze skipped from Stevens to Morgan and back again. “So this is the final evolution of the virus that was killing Dr. Grouse?”

  Stevens nodded. “Maybe. Or maybe the virus doesn’t kill everyone that it infects. It might even paradoxically be less dangerous to a developing fetus than an adult.”

  “So what you’re saying is that this child is some kind of human-alien hybrid,” Clayton concluded.

  Ambassador Morgan looked like he was about to be sick. “But Lori isn’t infected,” he said.

  “No, she’s not...” Dr. Stevens replied. “At least not the way that Dr. Grouse was.”

  “Is the child contagious?” Clayton asked. “Should we be observing quarantine protocols again?”