First Encounter

by Jasper T. Scott

  “I’m here,” Clayton said in a rasping voice. He watched the Avari ships all fade invisibly into the black of space and simultaneously drop off the grid. Only green, friendly blips remained.

  A relieved sigh sent a burst of static across the channel. “What the hell, Captain! We’ve been hailing you for the past ten minutes!”

  That broke through Clayton’s shock. He hadn’t received any messages over the comms. Until now, he hadn’t thought to wonder about it.

  Another voice chimed in: “Hey, where did they all go?” The comms panel identified the speaker as Falcon Two, Lt. Ike

  Clayton just shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine, Lieutenant.”

  “Form up with us, Captain. Let’s get you back in one piece.”

  “Copy that,” Clayton replied, rolling and hauling back on the stick to bring the Forerunner into line with his nose.

  That flat, inflectionless version of his voice echoed back through his thoughts as he formed up with Falcon Squadron.

  I only spared you because she begged me to.

  She who? he wondered again. Keera? And if so, what was she to them?

  Then his thoughts took a darker turn, and the dazzling emerald fire that had consumed Delta’s fighter blazed bright in his mind’s eye. He saw the former Marine’s tumbling body... Devon’s dead, staring eyes, Commander Taylor’s matching gaze... Lieutenants Ferris’s and Asher’s bloody remains.

  Clayton’s eyes burned and blurred with tears. What did the Avari want?

  Keera? Lori? Access to Clayton’s thoughts and memories?

  Maybe all of the above. Whatever it was that they’d been after, they had it now.

  Chapter 42

  Clayton lined up his fighter with the flaring, cone-shaped opening of Launch Tube 01. All twelve launch tubes sat nestled between the massive, fiery blue thrusters at the back of the Forerunner.

  Range to the ship reached fifteen klicks, and he activated the auto-landing sequence. The autopilot did the rest from there, making micro-corrections, firing brief blasts from the maneuvering thrusters as he flew in.

  Magnetic fields in the opening of the launch tube would help to line him up, guiding his fighter to the rails.

  At just one klick out, a warning popped up on his nav panel. His damaged starboard wing hadn’t retracted fully. The Forerunner had detected a small anomaly in the shape of his fighter.

  Range was scrolling down fast. Just six hundred meters now.

  Rather than abort the landing, Clayton summoned a holographic screen to check the shape of the launch tube against the shape of his fighter. The two outlines lined up perfectly but for an offending bit of metal that was flashing red. Half a foot wide by one foot long, a bent and curling piece of the wing. The system was designed to accept small variations in shape due to combat damage, so he overrode the warning. The offending scrap would get sheared off by the launch rails.

  The launch tube grew steadily larger. The other Scimitars in Falcon Squadron flew all around him in a vague star formation, the same as the pattern of the twelve launch tubes in the back of the Forerunner.

  Then the tube swallowed his fighter. It hit the rails a split-second later, and a metallic shriek reached Clayton’s ears—the offending scrap of wing getting clipped off. The fighter shuddered briefly, then steadied and glided down the rails to a sudden, jerking stop at the end of the launch tube. Artificial gravity took hold, pinning him to the back of his seat.

  Doors behind his fighter shut with a thud and air hissed in around it as the receiving end of the tube pressurized. Finally, the part of the tube under his fighter folded down, taking the Scimitar with it. He landed on the maintenance conveyor with a subtle thunk, and sat there, numb and staring sightlessly out of the cockpit canopy as the rest of Falcon Squadron folded out of their launch tubes. Pilots began climbing from their fighters, pulling helmets off to reveal short, sweat-matted hair.

  Clayton’s breath rasped steadily through his helmet, loud and shallow in his ears.

  He half expected to see Delta climb out of one of those fighters and flash a craggy grin.

  Denial. That was one of the stages of grief. He knew it well. He absently brought his wrist up to his faceplate, thinking to see the comforting image of his wife’s smiling face on his smartwatch, but both his wrist and the watch were hidden by the sleeve of his flight suit.

  Clayton shook his head to clear the ghosts. He still had more than a thousand crew and colonists on board, all of them alive and well, and he needed to keep it together if they were going to stay that way.

  He disconnected his oxygen hoses, opened his cockpit, and climbed out. Standing beside his fighter, he removed his helmet and tucked it under one arm. The Commander of Falcon Squadron caught his eye and nodded to him before walking over.

  Cmdr Craig Pullman—the holographic name tape glowed bright on Clayton’s ARCs.

  “Captain,” Pullman said, stopping in front of him and coming to attention.

  Clayton acknowledged him with a nod, and Pullman stood at ease. He had a quarter-inch of red-blond hair, bright green eyes, and a baby-face that made him look a decade younger than his forty years.

  “Delta was a good man,” Pullman said, one corner of his mouth jerking downward.

  “Yes, he was,” Clayton replied, his voice a ragged whisper. He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Commander. I’m needed on the bridge.” He turned and strode for the exit of the hangar with a lump in his throat and eyes burning once more. Pullman’s reply came dimly to his ears, drowned out by the thunder of blood roaring in Clayton’s ears.

  Then came a buzz and crackle of static, followed by his comm officer’s voice. “Captain, there’s been a development. The Avari have de-cloaked again. We’re reading one capital-class vessel.”

  Clayton blinked and sucked in a deep breath. Grief retreated to the background as a fresh spurt of adrenaline went sparking through his veins. He broke into a sprint, running the rest of the way to the elevators. “Ready weapons, Lieutenant,” he said.

  “Aye, sir.”

  Flicking a glance back the way he’d come, Clayton bellowed, “Get back to your cockpits!”

  Commander Pullman hesitated for just a second before turning and repeating the order to his pilots. “You heard the captain! Scramble!”

  Chapter 43

  “Captain on deck!”

  Everyone came to attention, rotating their chairs to face him.

  Dr. Stevens rose from the captain’s chair and met Clayton halfway. His silver hair glowed blue in the dim lighting of the bridge. With so many other officers dead, Stevens was the most senior officer on board other than Clayton himself. “Sir, they’re not responding to our hails.”

  That comment sounded out of place when talking about an alien starship, but the Avari had clearly proven that they’d learned enough about human comms and languages to communicate whenever they felt like it.

  Clayton’s gaze strayed past Stevens to the viewscreens that ran the circumference of the bridge. The enemy ship lay dead ahead, magnified to fill nearly half of the screens. Their hull was dark and non-reflecting, a dark stain on the stars with no signs of life, not even a single viewport with lights radiating out.

  “Any signs of activity? Fighters launching?” Clayton asked.

  “None that we can see,” Stevens replied.

  Clayton walked past him to the captain’s chair, sat down, and buckled his restraints. “Are they giving chase?”

  “Negative. They’re not even facing us, sir,” Stevens replied as he took his seat in the XO’s station beside him.

  “Try hailing them again. Open a line for me to speak.”

  “Aye, sir.” Stevens spent a moment interacting with screens on his ARCs, his green eyes glowing blue as he interfaced with the comms.

  Stevens nodded to him. “Ready to transmit, Captain.”

  Clayton sucked in a deep breath, but before he could say anything, the tear-drop shaped black starship on the viewscreens vanished wit
h a bright flash of light.

  “What was that!” Clayton demanded.

  “I don’t...” Stevens trailed off, screens flashing rapidly over his eyes.

  The sensors operator replied before he could, “A sharp spike in radiation coincided with their disappearance.”

  “Did they cloak again?” someone else asked.

  Clayton slowly shook his head. “We didn’t see any radiation spikes or flashes of light to accompany them cloaking before. This was something else.”

  “Aye,” Stevens said, turning to look at Clayton. His ARCs cleared, revealing green eyes once more. “Sensors detected gravitational waves to accompany that spike. They’re still washing over us.”

  “Ripples in space-time,” Clayton mused.

  “Aye, sir.”

  Natural gravity waves are created by massive bodies moving very quickly. They could also theoretically be created by the sudden emergence of a wormhole, or the use of some theoretical faster-than-light drive tech, such as Alcubierre warp drives. Either way, the conclusion was the same.

  “I think what we just witnessed was the Avari going to FTL,” Clayton said.

  Silence answered him. If he was right, the implications were terrifying. The Avari were far more advanced than any of them had realized. And if they had any interest in Earth, they could be there in a fraction of the time it would take for Forerunner One to get home.

  “What now, sir?” Stevens asked quietly.

  The doors to the bridge rumbled open before Clayton could say anything, and a new voice interrupted them:

  “Why was I not told that it was safe to leave my quarters?”

  Clayton rotated his chair to see Ambassador Morgan striding in.

  “It wasn’t an intentional oversight.”

  Morgan stopped a few paces away with arms crossed over his chest to glare down on Clayton.

  “Do you need something Ambassador?”

  “Yes, an update! Where is Dr. Reed? She’s not in her quarters.”

  Clayton hesitated. The Ambassador really did have a lot of catching up to do. He dragged in a weary breath and then explained everything that had happened in as few words as he could manage.

  Morgan’s face had turned ashen by the time he was done. Maybe he had a heart after all.

  “They took them both?”

  Clayton nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Keera was obviously some kind of genetic experiment. I’m guessing it was a success, because they went to great lengths to recover her. For all we know, they were on board before we even arrived at Trappist-1. They might have even been the ones to impregnate Lori.”

  “But Stevens said I was the father!” Morgan roared.

  “Maybe not the only father. There was obviously an alien gene donor as well.”

  “How did they get on board without us noticing?” Morgan asked. His tone was accusatory, as if they should have been able to see a cloaked shuttle docking with the Forerunner.

  “Somehow, we didn’t,” Clayton said flatly. “Right now, figuring out how all of this happened is much less important than why. Why create an Avari-human hybrid, why extract Earth’s location from Dr. Grouse’s mind, why infect him with a virus, and why learn our language and comms protocols?”

  Morgan’s jaw dropped as those pieces clicked into place, but Stevens was the first to state the obvious: “They’re going to invade Earth.”

  Clayton looked to him and gave a stiff nod. “Yes.”

  Chapter 44

  Morgan visibly worked some moisture into his mouth, the wheels obviously turning in his head. “We’re a colony ship. It’s our responsibility to re-populate the species. We should find another planet to colonize.”

  Clayton gave him a hard look. “Has running with your tail between your legs always been your go-to response?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We’re going to Earth, Ambassador. To warn them if we’re not to late, and to reinforce their position if we are.”

  “You’re insane. I’m in command of this mission, Captain, and I’m ordering you to—”

  “Corporal!” Clayton called to the Marine Corporal standing guard beside the doors. “Escort Mr. Morgan from the bridge.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Morgan’s face turned bright red, and he glowered darkly at Clayton as the corporal approached. “Ambassador,” the Marine said. “This way please.”

  “I’ll show myself out,” Morgan snapped, and then turned and strode away.

  Clayton noticed that the rest of the bridge crew had rotated their chairs to face them. “Eyes on your stations,” he said, and they spun their chairs back around.

  Stevens caught his eye and whispered, “With everything we know and suspect, going to Earth will be dangerous, sir.”

  “We’ll head for Proxima Centauri and send a message from there, just as we were planning. Once we arrive, we’ll decide whether or not to push on for Earth. If we do go, the mission will be volunteer only. Anyone who wants to stay at Proxima b and keep heads down is welcome to do so. Fair enough?”

  “Aye, sir,” Stevens said. “When do we go back into cryo?” he asked. He didn’t look or sound eager.

  “In a few days,” Clayton replied. “After the memorial for our dead, and after we’ve swept the ship for more Avari.”

  “What if they’re here, but we don’t find them?”

  “We’ll be thorough,” Clayton replied.

  “They’re invisible,” Stevens countered with one eyebrow arching up.

  “If they’d wanted to kill us all, they could have easily done so by now.”

  “That’s true... why didn’t they?”

  “I don’t know,” Clayton admitted. “But I’m hoping it’s a sign that they’re not entirely hostile.”

  “Aye.” Stevens blew out a breath. He obviously hadn’t thought of that.

  “Maybe studying the one we killed will give us more insight about them. I assume you handled the body correctly?”

  “Yes. I had one of my corpsmen put it in a cryo pod in sickbay. We haven’t had time for a proper analysis yet, but it’ll keep.”

  Clayton turned his chair back to the fore and stared into the glittering wash of stars on the viewscreens. Silence fell on the bridge, and Clayton’s thoughts grew loud. One of them jumped to the fore, a question: If the Avari don’t want to kill us, then what do they want? Slaves? More subjects for their experiments?

  No answers came to him. He slowly shook his head. There was only one way to find out. They’d have to go back to Earth and see for themselves.

  Chapter 45

  Seventy-eight Years Later...

  —2237 AD—

  “Hailing Olympia Station,” Lieutenant Stevens announced.

  Clayton nodded, steepling his hands beneath his chin as he leaned forward in the captain’s chair.

  Ambassador Morgan stood hovering beside him, quietly watching and listening.

  They’d all awoken from cryo for the last time barely half an hour ago—right after crossing the heliopause to officially enter the Proxima Centauri System.

  Proxima b was magnified on the forward screens, a dark circle with a crescent of light dawning at the far right edge. Proxima b was otherwise known as Olympia, a reference to Zeus and Greek mythology that the planet had earned thanks to its violent thunderstorms. Tidally locked to its sun, Proxima b’s weather was so disastrous that landings and launches could only be safely conducted from one point on the surface: dead center of the perpetual night. There weren’t even any lights visible from the colony on the surface, but that wasn’t necessarily strange. Even after almost a hundred and eighty years of technological advances, it likely still made more sense to build underground. Hurricane-force winds were constantly blasting in from the scalding dessert on Olympia’s day side.

  A solitary silver speck gleamed brightly above the day-night terminator, catching crimson rays from Proxima Centauri. Olympia Station was still there. That had to be a good sign.

 
; “Message sent,” Stevens announced.

  “I assume you included the mission report that I prepared,” Clayton said.

  “Of course, sir.”

  “How long before we can expect a reply?” Ambassador Morgan asked.

  “At fifty-six point two AU...” Screens flickered brightly over Stevens’ eyes as he calculated on his ARCs. “Almost eight hours for our signal to arrive, so the soonest their reply could reach us is fifteen and a half hours.”

  Morgan grunted unhappily at that.

  “If we’re right about Earth, they might already know about the Avari,” Stevens pointed out.

  “Time will tell, Lieutenant,” Clayton said. He unbuckled his safety harness and stood on creaking knees, stretching out his back and neck.

  And then a series of bright flashes strobed through the viewscreens, flash-blinding him.

  Morgan cursed viciously behind him.

  “Report!” Clayton cried.

  “Multiple contacts!” the sensor operator said.

  “Incoming comms!” Stevens added. “Both audio and visual feeds!”

  Clayton stood swaying beside his chair and blinking the spots from his eyes to see a massive dark gray starship directly in front of them. It was long and boxy, ridged and bristling with glittering lights and weapons platforms.

  “Put them on,” Clayton ordered.

  The bald head and shoulders of a man in a fish scale patterned uniform appeared front and center of the main viewscreen.

  Chalk-white features, black veins whorled underneath, bright red eyes, sharp facial bones, and four stalky appendages rising from the back of the creature’s skull identified it clearly enough. But its arms didn’t extend from its chest, and they weren’t thin and bony like an Avari’s. There was no sign of translucent wings either.

  “Hello, Captain,” the creature said, its voice deep and husky, but somehow familiar. “I’ve been waiting a long time for your arrival.”

  He placed the voice a second later and his jaw dropped. “Keera?”