Sagitta

by C M Benamati

  “I’ll show them,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m not just some civilian. I’m Morgan Greenfield, fighter pilot.” Scared little boy, more like. Look at you, you’re trembling.

  He was on his way back to the crate where he’d woken up when a commotion broke out near the entrance. The two guards had grabbed a young woman and were dragging her through the doors into the corridor. The woman, an enlisted crewmember by her gray uniform, had gone boneless. One of the guards scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder. Her mouth was open in a silent scream.

  Morgan ran towards the archway. What are you doing? Do you want to get yourself killed?

  He thought of Liz, and told the voice in his head just where it could go.

  A group of prisoners had already flooded the spot, cursing the hellcats. Morgan pushed through and came face to face with the energized barrel of an energy rifle. Four more hellcats had come through the door, forming a perimeter around the two that were dragging the woman away.

  His blood burned as he watched the woman disappear behind the archway. His voice joined the others. “I’m gonna kill you. You’re all dead!” Did I say that? His voice hardly sounded like his own.

  The hellcat snarled, its fangs glistening. The human crowd drew back for a moment, then surged forward. I might be able to get that gun. To his right, servos whined as a crewman with augmented muscles drew his arm back to swing. The man named Alberto pulled what looked like a makeshift knife out of his pocket. Morgan took a half step forward.

  Someone grabbed his arm and yanked, pulling him back into the group of people. Victor!

  “Stand down, all of you,” said Del Toro. He slid into the gap between the aliens and humans, his back to the hellcats. His eyes were twin pools of fury. “I said stand down!”

  Muttering, the crowd backed off. Behind Del Toro, the hellcats withdrew from the bay. The doors slammed shut and locked.

  “You’re such an idiot,” whispered Victor in Morgan’s ear. “If you’d so much as twitched, that thing would have shot you dead.”

  Morgan turned around. “Why do you care?”

  Victor didn’t answer.

  “Cool it everyone,” said Jack, pushing through the crowd. “Enough people have died already. They have guns, we don’t.”

  A man behind Victor raised his voice. “So we’re just going to sit here while they take us one by one?”

  “Stoddard’s right,” said a woman. “We need to get Uliana back.”

  Everyone started yelling.

  “I’m sick of sitting here doing nothing.”

  “That’s right!”

  “Next time they come in, we ambush them!”

  Morgan added is voice to the crowd. Let’s do it. He’d already fought the hellcats once. He was still alive, despite everything that had happened. If we can just get a few of those pulse rifles…

  “Quiet!”

  For such a little man, Lieutenant Commander Del Toro’s booming voice came as a surprise. “I’m in charge here, and we’re not going to do anything. No resistance, until we can learn more about this prison of ours.”

  “What’s there to learn?” said Morgan. “It’s a ship, isn’t it?” They had all agreed on that, even though no one had seen what it looked like. Everyone had woken up in the cargo bay without any memory of how they got there. “We’re light-years away from Earth, prisoners of some monster aliens, and no one back home can get to us. Or are there other warp ships just waiting in the wings to swoop in and save us?”

  Everyone was staring at him. No one said a word, but a few crewmen shook their heads. Can’t stop now.

  “I thought not. We have to save ourselves. We’re screwed if we just sit here. I say we take this ship! Next time they come in, we jump them and take their guns.”

  “Yeah, let’s do it!” someone shouted.

  “The kid’s not afraid, so why are we?” said another.

  Jack raised a hand for silence. “Morgan, I like you, but shut up. They’ll kill us if we try anything. They’ve got guns, and they likely outnumber us a hundred to one. Don’t be a fool.”

  Del Toro pointed at Morgan. “You, boy.” His pale lips curved into a sneer. “Wally told me you figured out how to fight in a Firefly, and that you actually took down some of those darts.”

  When Morgan nodded, excited whispers spread throughout the crowd.

  Del Toro laughed. “That explains the hero complex then. Well, hero, do you think you’ll get lucky again? Look around. Do you see any Fireflies in here? Do you see any crawl spaces, access hatches, or anything other than those doors that we could use to escape?”

  “Well, no.” They’d already scoured the bay. The ventilation ducts were the only thing that came close, and they were far out of reach overhead.

  “Good, you have eyes,” said Del Toro. “I was starting to wonder. The only way we are going to get through those armed monsters at the door is with diplomacy. Don’t let your five minutes of accidental success go to your head.”

  Morgan’s face flushed. “It wasn’t an accident.”

  Del Toro raised his eyebrows. “Oh really? Let me guess. Your computer got a target lock on one of the hundreds of attacking ships, ships that were already weakened by the fighting that had been going on since before we arrived. I bet that ship wandered right across your bow. It did, didn’t it? Or did you masterfully chase it down?”

  Morgan was silent.

  Del Toro smirked. “You probably wet yourself as you pushed every button on that flight stick, praying that something would happen, and when you hit the missiles something did. But what skill was in that? It was luck! They dragged your unconscious butt out of that ship after you got it handed to you.”

  Morgan seethed but said nothing. He’s right.

  Victor leaned in and whispered in Morgan’s ear. “Did you really kill one of the aliens?”

  “I got two. With Liz’s help.”

  “Ah,” said Victor. He was silent for a moment. When he spoke, his voice trembled with emotion. “It might have been luck, but I think if Liz were here, she would have called you her hero. At least you were there for her, unlike…”

  Morgan was stunned. He waited for Victor to finish, but when no more words came he turned around. Victor was gone.

  ∆∆∆

  “Did you really kill an enemy fighter?”

  Morgan looked up at the young man. He’d been so lost in his own thoughts that he hadn’t heard him approach. The man was familiar. He recognized him from Del Toro’s group earlier—an officer, probably in his mid-twenties.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Cool,” said the man. He held out a hand. “I’m Jason Carver. I’d be interested in hearing how you managed to do that. Actually, I’d like to hear how you ended up on the Sagitta in the first place, assuming you don’t mind telling. Mind if I sit down?”

  Morgan shrugged and scooted over, making a space between himself and the crates.

  Jason sat. Morgan looked around. People were settling in for the night, dragging crates and barrels around, making rudimentary shelters. For what? Privacy? It was funny that people could care about such things in a situation like this.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “No, it’s ok,” said Morgan. He thought back to that day at the track. It seems so long ago. How to begin? He cleared his throat. “Back in the desert, in Arizona, this girl pulled up in a blue POD 1000. She was a racer, like me, and she just was looking to have some fun.” And so he told his story. It was her story too, and someone had to tell it.

  When he got to the part where he and Liz destroyed the alien fighters, he was grinning.

  “Sounds like you two made a good team,” said Jason.

  “I guess we did, for a short while.” It was hard to believe he’d only known her for a week. It felt like forever ago when they’d first met. Morgan sighed and leaned back against the crate. He had known this part would come.

  “She died, didn’t she?” said J
ason.

  “What?”

  “That’s why she’s not here with you. I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell how it happened.”

  Morgan wanted to thank him, wanted to take the easy way out. But he couldn’t. “No, I’ll tell you. Just this once.” And he did so to the last detail. When he was finished, he was crying.

  Jason was crying too. “I lost someone as well. I mean, we were a tight crew and we all are hurting, but this is way, way worse.”

  “A friend?”

  Jason nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “My wife, who was my best friend.”

  “Oh.” Morgan sniffed and looked away.

  Jason shuddered. “She worked on the bridge,” he said. “See, everyone in here’s lost someone. Now it’s up to us to live, so there’ll be someone left to remember them.”

  “And to get home,” added Morgan. “To tell our stories, so people know what happened.” The idea of his parents never learning the truth was insufferable. I will get back to Blairsford if it’s the last thing I do.

  “Blairsford,” he mumbled. The word sounded weird, almost comical.

  Jason blinked. “What?”

  “Blairsford, Arizona,” said Morgan. He chuckled. “It’s where I’m from. It feels strange to say it in this place. But it also feels good. Try it. Say where you’re from.”

  Jason looked around, grimaced, then spoke. “Groton, Connecticut.”

  Morgan watched as Jason’s face contorted. “See what I mean?”

  “It’s like those words were never meant to be spoken in this room.”

  “That’s it exactly,” said Morgan. “But let’s not forget to say them every day.”

  ∆∆∆

  Mog pressed the pads of his hands into his ears in an attempt to drown out the noise, but it was no use. Although the terrified alien occupied just half of the examination bed, her shrieks (the doctor had already discovered she was a she) were more painful than any vocalization he had ever heard from a living creature. It didn’t help that they were so high pitched. Maurian ears were most sensitive to high frequencies.

  The alien’s voice wasn’t the only distinctive thing about her. As it turned out, the furless ones weren’t really furless. Their skin was covered in a hair so fine that it appeared invisible unless you were looking for it.

  The top of her head was most puzzling. This confirmed what he had suspected after viewing the video feed from the cargo bay. Each alien had a patch of hair that covered its scalp. On some the hair was short. On others, especially on the females like the one in front of him, it hung down past their shoulders. Saran said the men could grow more hair out of their faces, but for some reason they had shaved it off. The color of the hair varied. Sometimes it was black or brown. On this one, it was the color of dune grass.

  The alien stopped shrieking just long enough for Mog to wonder if she had gotten tired. No, apparently not. She had paused just long enough to inhale half the air volume of the room for her next scream.

  For her sake Mog didn’t want to shout, but there was no other way to be heard. “Saran! How long is this going to take?” We shouldn’t have to do this at all. If only Saran had taken detailed head scans of the others when they came in for treatment…

  The old doctor waved a hand scanner over the alien’s head. “It would go quicker if she would lie still. I believe I will have to sedate her.”

  Mog took a step forward to better observe the doctor’s work. The alien’s eyes widened as he peered down at her. He did his best to put on a soothing expression, but all it seemed to do was make her scream louder and thrash against the straps. There must be something about Maurians that terrified the furless ones, because no member of his crew had been able to calm one of the aliens with body language. Then again, forcing the aliens onto an exam table probably wasn’t the ideal way to convey a message of friendship. It was too bad there wasn’t enough time for a proper first contact.

  When Saran leaned in with a bioinjector, the alien’s shrieks vibrated the walls. The muscles in her skinny legs convulsed, but the straps didn’t budge. Considering how fragile her body seemed to be, Saran, frail as he was, could have pinned her to the table with one arm.

  The alien fell quiet as Saran placed the injector against her neck, but her rolling eyes betrayed her terror. The injector hissed. She lurched and started shrieking again. Would the drug even work? The aliens were so different—of all the races he had seen, these seemed closest to the Mekmek, but even that was a stretch. Saran had assured him that the creatures were warm-blooded mammals and that his sedatives would be effective, but in this situation Mog wasn’t counting on anything.

  “No memory modifier this time, right?” said Mog. He’d decided to dispense with that particular precaution. He doubted the female would glean anything from the sickbay that she could use against them. And so what if she remembers this? She will soon know that it was all for the best.

  “She’ll remember everything,” said the doctor.

  The alien started to relax, and her screams became less intense. Her eyes closed and her cries subsided into dull moans.

  “That’s better,” said Mog.

  The guards withdrew to the anteroom. Saran began passing his scanner over the alien’s head, focusing on her ears. The information scrolling across the scanner’s display was gibberish to Mog. He watched as the alien’s chest rose and fell. If Saran’s drug was too powerful and she expired, there would be nothing Mog could say to her comrades that would calm them down. Any chance of an alliance would die right here with her.

  “Are you sure she’ll be alright?” he said.

  Saran grunted and continued scanning.

  Suddenly, the alien’s eyes opened and locked with Mog’s.

  “I wish you could understand what I’m saying,” he said. “We are not going to hurt you, but we need to learn more about you so that we can talk.”

  The alien moaned. She had a thin gold string around her neck. Part of it was out of sight beneath the collar of her tunic. Mog hesitated, then slowly reached out, being careful to extend a claw only just as much as needed to hook under the chain.

  The alien watched him as he pulled the gold cross up from her chest. “This is pretty,” he said, trying to look as non-threatening as possible. He let the little ornament fall back against her breastbone. “Did you make it?”

  Of course she couldn’t respond. Her eyelids drooped.

  “What do you suppose it means?” he said to the doctor. “Some indication of rank? Of seniority?”

  “It’s just a chunk of impure gold,” said Saran. “And I have no idea.” He gave the scanner one last wave over the creature’s head and then flicked it off.

  Mog tapped his claws together. “You’re missing the point. I meant, what is its function? Perhaps it’s a charm, or a family crest.”

  “It is not relevant to my examination,” said Saran.

  Mog growled his displeasure, but the old doctor ignored him. The man had always possessed the social skills of a textbook.

  “There,” said Saran. “I have uploaded my scans into the database. We should now be able to create a pair of aural inserts that will fit her anatomy.”

  “Good,” said Mog.

  “Their anatomy is not impressive,” said Saran. “They possess only one heart. They have a thin hide, no claws, a weak jaw with weaker teeth, and probably no sense of smell. The spine is interesting though, very flexible, and the brain seems capable enough. Be sure to tell Kremp to include a good amplifier in his design. Their ears are weak compared to ours, though not as bad as their eyes.”

  “I thought you said they had some sort of implants that helped them?”

  “A few of them do,” said Saran. “One had a synthetic hand, another artificial lungs. Most have communicators in their ear canals. These were all fairly basic, uninteresting devices. I disabled the communicators to keep them from talking to each other covertly—standard procedure.”

  “Yes I know. What else?”

  �
��Of slightly more interest were the few that have biomimetic circuitry.”

  “Biomimetic?”

  “Yes, bonded directly with and sustained by the cells of the body.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “Compensating for the inherent weakness of their bodies. Better vision, data storage, enhanced tactile communication.”

  Mog indicated the alien before them. “But this one doesn’t have anything?”

  “No. This one doesn’t. She did at one point, but the biomimetic cells were rendered inert. I’ve found evidence of similar work in almost all of them—implants that have been removed, cells that have been neutralized.”

  “Why would they do that? Why would they augment their bodies with technology and then disable it?”

  Saran flattened his ears. “How would I know?”

  The com system beeped, and Ryal’s voice came through. “Mog, Drakmara’s done reviewing the audio logs from the cargo bay and Kremp just sent us a load of information from the alien’s computer. They had a complete library in there, including actual sound clips from their language. Drakmara says it’s going to speed things up quite a bit. You should probably come back up.”

  Mog’s ears began to twitch again. He had already had enough of Drakmara, even though he had only been in the room with the man for a half hour. He’d known him once, long ago, and he hadn’t been any better then. Drakmara was an educated lord from an old family, and his ego had filled the briefing room to bursting. It also hadn’t helped that the professor had taken Ruba’s coded message at face value. Mog glowered, remembering Drakmara’s surprise and honest interest. Azhra is still alive? By Ramas’ claws, that explains this whole thing now doesn’t it?

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” he grumbled. “Mog out.”

  He turned and beckoned the security guards out from the anteroom. “Take her back to her people, and be careful. They’re not going to like the sight of her being drugged. Soon, we’ll be able to explain everything to them, but until then, don’t drop your guard for an instant.”