First Encounter

by Jasper T. Scott

  Gradually Keera’s breathing slowed with sleep, and Lori let herself drift off as well. She dreamed that Richard was sneaking up behind them with a gun to kill them in their sleep. She woke up with a muffled cry just as he shot their daughter in the head. Terrified, she checked Keera to make sure that she was okay. But she was fine: no bullet holes or scorch marks anywhere, and her breathing was steady, her body still hot.

  It was just a dream, Lori thought, subsiding with a sigh.

  Chapter 22

  Lori woke up in a fog, her body heavy and sore from carrying Keera around the night before. In addition to that, her head still felt thick and fuzzy with sleep. She’d had a rocky night even after Keera had finally calmed down and drifted off. Richard had haunted her dreams, always coming after them, trying to get at her and Keera.

  Lori sat up with a grimace and kneaded her eyes with her fists in an attempt to push back the dull ache building behind them.

  She couldn’t leave things between her and Richard like this. Especially not now. They needed to present a united front to Captain Cross and Lieutenant Devon when they woke up. They both needed to be singing the same tune. Keera wasn’t dangerous. She wasn’t a threat, and she didn’t need to go into cryo early.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Lori noted that Keera was still fast asleep.

  Good. She would rather talk to Richard when Keera wasn’t around. She didn’t want Keera to overhear anything that would do additional damage to her relationship with her father.

  Sliding quietly off the bed, Lori padded over to the door and waved it open. The metal deck was cold as ice, so she stopped to put on a pair of UNSF slippers along the way. The laurel wreath was green around a golden star, just like it was on the Space Force’s flag—she wished they would have made it that way on the uniforms, too. It would have looked better than the monochromatic silver version that she and everyone else had to wear clipped to their uniforms.

  Cinching her nightgown tight around her waist, Lori walked out and shut the door behind her with her ARCs.

  The gleaming metal deck curved gently up. Glowing lines of recessed lighting curved along the tops and bottoms of the bulkheads. Every couple of feet or so a safety handrail jutted from the bulkheads and ceiling. Just like any other part of the ship, The Wheel was designed to be navigated just as easily in zero-G as while under simulated gravity. Staggered doors with glowing numbers and letters on them lined the length of the corridor on both sides. Each door led to a different set of quarters. They’d chosen the largest room for themselves, designated W1.

  Soon Keera would need to pick a room for herself. She was already at a point where that would make sense, but these fits Keera had been having were going to make the transition harder than it needed to be. Still, they’d had a breakthrough last night. Keera had finally described what was bothering her. It was just her fears about herself and her own nature, partly instilled by Richard’s attitude toward her.

  Which was the other reason Lori needed to speak with Richard. He needed to know how badly he was hurting Keera. And he needed to stop. Or else leave them and go into cryo by himself.

  Lori spent a moment scanning the doors, trying to decide which one of them Richard might have picked last night. She tried the first door on the right on the same side as the quarters they shared as a family, thinking that Richard would probably want a forward-facing window.

  It was strange to think of it that way, but since the deck settings of The Wheel were rotated with respect to the rest of the ship, down was actually the outer circumference of The Wheel, up was the inner circumference, and the windows faced either the stern or the nose of the ship.

  As the door of W3 slid open, Lori saw a perfectly made bed and no sign of Richard. Frowning, she shut the door with a thought, and moved on to the door on the other side of the corridor—W2. It slid open, and this time she saw the bedsheets rumpled, but still no sign of Richard himself. She walked in, “Rick?” She was tempted to use the other short form of his name, but she didn’t want to antagonize him right now. “Are you here?”

  No reply. She padded over to the bathroom and waved the door open. His uniform and underwear lay in a heap on top of his slippers.

  Lori frowned. He’d obviously taken a shower and gotten dressed. But with what clothes? Maybe he’d found a spare uniform in one of the storage lockers. That, or he was walking around naked right now.

  She caught a glimpse of an amused smirk on her face in the mirror as she left the bathroom. Heading out, she shut the door behind her and walked briskly down the corridor past the remaining rooms. Richard was probably in the mess hall eating breakfast and having a cup of coffee. Her mouth watered at the thought. Especially with the thought of coffee. She could really use a cup right now.

  Coming to the end of the crew section, a sealed bulkhead appeared with the words Mess Hall stamped on it in thick white letters. She glanced up at the elevator doors recessed into the ceiling. That elevator led up one of four spokes to the central column of the ship.

  A twinge of doubt trickled in. What if Richard had gone to speak with the crew? There were two officers down there, and at least one of them would be awake and on duty at any given hour, day or night.

  If Richard had gone to share his concerns about Keera, he might have convinced them to wake the captain and the rest of the crew early. Or maybe he’d had them put him into cryo without so much as a word of goodbye to either Lori or Keera.

  Those thoughts lit a fuse inside Lori’s brain, and she glowered darkly at the door. She wasn’t sure what would make her angrier. He’d better be in the mess hall, she thought as she dragged her eyes away from the elevator and waved the doors to the mess hall open.

  The doors rumbled open and she passed through, her eyes scanning empty tables and chairs. The ration storage bins were all sealed shut, and the food prep areas in the kitchen were clean and sparkling, just the same as they’d left them after dinner last night.

  Walking in behind the serving counter, Lori ran her hands along the sparkling surfaces and checked for signs of crumbs and milk spills.

  There was nothing. No coffee in the dispenser, either. Everything was clean and dry and unused. If Richard had already been and gone and cleaned up behind himself, the kitchen wouldn’t have been this neat.

  Regardless, there were only a few other places on The Wheel that he could be—the control center was restricted access, so he wouldn’t be there, and he wasn’t a fan of exercise, so the gym was out, too. He could be in the rec room, but she knew him: he would have come here first, made coffee, and fixed himself something to eat. The fact that he hadn’t done any of that could only mean one thing—

  Lori turned back to face the open doors to the mess hall, her eyes drifting up and narrowing on the elevator doors in the ceiling.

  He’d gone to speak with the crew hours ago already. Maybe even in the middle of the night while she was still consoling Keera.

  You coward! she thought as she stormed out of the mess hall.

  Chapter 23

  Lori ran back down the corridor to the nearest of the crew quarters. She waved the door to W15 open, and then hurried over to the lockers along the wall opposite the bed. There she found a spare UNSF uniform and mag boots. The uniforms were one-size fits all, and the mag boots were adjustable and padded sufficiently inside that she didn’t need additional footwear. As soon as she was dressed, Lori hurried out and back down to the elevator. Activating it with her ARCs, she stopped and waited as the doors opened up and the elevator platform dropped down from the ceiling on four pneumatic arms. Before it had even touched the deck, she jumped onto the platform and used her ARCs to select deck CS17 (Central Storage, Deck 17) from the available options.

  She grabbed the nearest handrail for support as the elevator platform steadily rose up the spoke to the central column of the ship. Stars flashed past the windows in the sides of the elevator car and reciprocal windows in the sides of the spoke. Those windows gave a view to the rotating Wheel
, but since the spoke was turning, too, it all looked stationary, and it seemed like the stars were moving instead.

  Lori shook her head and looked away, glaring up at the doors on the far end of the elevator car. The sensation of gravity pulling her down toward The Wheel grew more and more faint as she approached the center of rotation. Then the car jolted and thunked to a stop. She reached for the first in a line of folding handrails embedded in one of the two windowless sides of the elevator. The other side also had rails, but they were permanently extended, not folding, and the folding ones were marked with black and yellow stripes and arrows with instructions that read: CLIMB TO CARGO TRANSFER.

  As she climbed, Lori used her Neuralink to activate the cargo transfer airlock, and a loud whirring sound started up somewhere above her head. She reached the top of the ladder and waited for a few seconds, then the doors in the ceiling of the elevator rumbled open, revealing a boxy cargo transfer junction with more folding handrails on one side.

  There were four identical junctions, one for each spoke, with adjoining corridors running between. Together they formed an independently rotating ring known as the cargo transfer airlock. Cycling that airlock meant spinning the ring up to the same exact RPM as The Wheel itself so that leaving one of the elevators and entering the rest of the ship could be done without first stopping The Wheel’s rotation.

  As soon as both sets of doors were open, Lori climbed the rest of the way into the spacious cargo transfer junction, folding out the handrails as she went.

  The sensation of gravity was lighter than ever now, maybe just a tenth of standard. As soon as she was inside the junction, she used her ARCs to cycle the airlock shut once more. The elevator and airlock doors sealed behind her with a boom, and then the whirring rotation of the airlock gradually slowed to a stop.

  Weightlessness settled in, and Lori’s stomach fluttered queasily. With nothing to give her a sense of what was up or down, her perspective changed, and she saw the deck setting the way it was primarily intended to be seen and used: she was lying on the deck. Pushing gently away from it, she tucked her legs and mentally activated her mag boots.

  The soles clamped to the deck with a ringing report, and then she set out, thunking along toward the set of inner doors that led to the rest of the ship. Worry crowded in as she went: what if Keera woke up to find them both missing? How would she react? Would she go looking for them, or wait patiently for their return? Keera was a later sleeper, though, and it was still early. Lori nodded to herself, pushing her concerns aside. Right now the most important thing was to find Richard and stop him from waking the Captain. Keera would stay asleep until she returned.

  * * *

  The entire ship was deserted, the lights turned down to a low, power-saving golden glow. Shadows curled in every doorway and every corner. Lori’s first thought was to check the bridge, but if Richard had come down here to speak to the crew in the middle of the night, he’d have been tired after that and looking for a place to lay his head. Like his old quarters.

  Lori reached the nearest bank of elevators and took it up to OQ26 (Officer’s Quarters, Deck 26). Richard wasn’t technically an officer, but his status as ambassador gave him some of the same privileges.

  The elevator accelerated quickly, easing the nauseating sensation of freefall from zero-G, but her relief was short-lived, and was accompanied by a gut-sucking inverse effect as the elevator decelerated. The contents of her stomach lurched into the back of her throat with a foul-tasting tang of acid.

  Lori exited the elevator with a grimace and hurried down the corridor to Richard’s quarters, marked by the glowing number 18. She tried to wave the door open, but it resisted with an error beep, and the control panel beside the door glowed red, along with the number on the door. The word locked flashed on the control panel, and Lori’s eyes narrowed angrily. He was definitely here, then. No one on board bothered to lock their doors unless they were inside and needed privacy.

  Using her ARCs to interact with the panel, Lori rang the buzzer and waited.

  A few seconds later the door swished open to reveal a dark room, and she heard Richard call out in a sleepy voice: “Come in.”

  The lights rose to a dim setting as she walked in, and she saw Richard just now unzipping from the bed covers. They doubled as a sleeping bag for sleep in zero-G. As soon as the bag was open, Richard drifted free.

  “You found me,” he said through a sigh as he used the handrails on the bed frame to maneuver his feet down into a pair of waiting mag boots. He adjusted the straps, and then stood to face her.

  Lori crossed her arms over her chest, ready for battle. “What are you doing down here?”

  He shook his head, looking tired and unhappy. “I tried to sleep in the room next door, but I couldn’t. I kept having these nightmares of Keera coming to get me in my sleep.”

  “Coming to get you?” Lori echoed incredulously. “She’s just a child! And she’s your daughter!”

  “You and I both know she’s much more than that.”

  “You mean less than that,” Lori quipped.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It’s how you act. Please tell me you haven’t said anything to the crew.”

  “Not yet. I was going to, but I decided to wait to speak with the captain when he wakes up. Just a few more hours before then, anyway.”

  “Did you know that your daughter is scared of you?”

  Richard’s brow furrowed. “She said that?”

  “Yes. She thinks you’re going to kill her.”

  “So it’s mutual then.”

  “Neither of you should be feeling that way!”

  “And that’s my fault?” Richard challenged. “I think I’ve done pretty damn well under the circumstances.”

  “Not well enough,” Lori replied, shaking her head. “Keera told me what she was crying about.”

  Richard’s eyebrows lifted in question, but he said nothing.

  “She was crying because she thinks she’s a killer, because you’ve made her feel that way!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the way you treat her, always scared, always wary and paranoid. Running away to sleep down here is just another example of that.”

  “Maybe she thinks she’s a killer because whatever instincts she has are getting stronger. Those claws and teeth she has didn’t evolve from a peaceful species. They evolved because her DNA was spliced together with some kind of alien apex predator. She could have all kinds of bloodthirsty urges that we know nothing about and won’t discover until she kills someone. She is a killer, Lori, whether you want to see that or not. And soon she’s going to start practicing, just like any other killer does.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “No!” Richard thundered and his arm snapped out to stab a finger at her. “This has gone on long enough.” He rolled up his sleeves, one at a time, revealing the uneven ridges of crisscrossing scars. “Look at me, Lori! We’re living proof of what she is.”

  Lori shook her head. “Humans are apex predators, too.”

  “No, we were foragers. And we’re omnivores, not carnivores. You do realize that Keera only eats meat, right? You know what that makes her.”

  “She drinks milk, too.”

  “Breast milk. And your breasts have a few little chunks missing from them, don’t they? One of these days she’s going to take a real bite.”

  Lori spun away from him, her eyes blurring with tears of frustration—both from this conversation and from the memories of incidents that Richard was referring to. Raising Keera hadn’t been easy.

  She heard thunking footsteps as Richard approached, then felt his hands on her shoulders. “We need to put her in cryo,” Richard whispered gruffly. “The Union will know what to do with her when we get back.”

  “We’ll never see her again,” Lori replied, and twisted out from under his hands. “I won’t let that happen.”

  “You don’t know that they’ll take h
er away. They might just help us to raise her in a safer, more controlled environment.”

  “All the while experimenting on her! Poking and prodding her like an animal!”

  “There’s no way to prevent it,” Richard replied. “Waiting until she’s older before she goes into cryo won’t help. All that will do is give her more time and opportunity to give into one of her baser instincts and hurt one of us.”

  A memory flashed through Lori’s head, something that Keera had said during their heart-to-heart last night: Sometimes I want to hurt Daddy.

  She pushed the thought away, refusing to accept that as true. Keera was angry with her father because of his attitude toward her. She didn’t know how to process his rejection, that’s all.

  “If we wait, and she gets older, at least she’ll be more mature—maybe even an adult. She’ll be more ready to deal with the way she’s going to be treated on Earth.”

  “I’m not going to spend any more time with her and you shouldn’t either. It’s too dangerous. Speaking of which, where the hell is she?”

  “I left her up on The Wheel. She was still sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake her. Besides, I think it’s better we have this conversation without her, don’t you?”

  “That’s not the point—you didn’t tell her where you were going?”

  “No, why?”

  “What if she came looking for you?”

  Lori frowned. She didn’t have her own ARCs or a Neuralink yet, but they’d taught her how to use the physical control panels to work doors and even the elevators in the spokes, in case of an emergency. Still, it was unlikely she’d go to all the trouble of leaving The Wheel and following them to the central column of the ship. And if she did, so what?

  “What does it matter if she follows us?”

  “She could bump into one of the crew and surprise them. They haven’t seen how big she is yet. They won’t recognize her. The could shoot her!”