by Amy Spahn
Her thoughts ran with ideas of escape, but given how little she knew about these people, she wasn’t sure how they would react to such an attempt. Would they stun her or jump straight to lethal force? Was this a hostile capture or just a precautionary measure? Maybe they were just curious about the humans and wanted to learn more about them. Maybe they would introduce her to whoever gave them their advanced technology, and the Endurance’s mission here would wrap up nicely and diplomatically.
Sure. And that room they were approaching at the end of the hall probably contained punch and cookies and balloons.
They entered the room, which Areva calculated to be under the eastern wall, and she heard a familiar voice.
“Oh, thank God!”
Chris and Joyce stood before her in a stone cell behind a wall of thick glass. To one side of the glass Areva could see a small hole in one of the stones with a wooden lever beneath it.
Chris ran up to the glass and pounded on it as the spider alien brought Areva over. “Hey!” he said to the alien. “I’m guessing she’s explained everything to you, so let us out now!”
The alien ignored Chris. He (or she—to be honest, Areva couldn’t tell) inserted a key into the hole and turned the wooden lever. The glass slid down into the floor, apparently connected to some sort of pulley. He pointed his stun gun menacingly at Chris and Joyce as he did this, and the two of them backed away from the front of the cell.
Areva had found her missing team members, and the alien wasn’t looking at her. Time to get out of here.
She threw a hard elbow strike into the aliens’ stomach, expecting him to drop his weapon and double over, after which she could hit him in the back of the head and knock him out.
Instead, her elbow struck something hard and chitinous beneath the alien’s green uniform. Her strike landed, produced an audible thud, and more or less bounced off. She yelped and started rubbing her stinging elbow.
The alien, for his part, simply blinked at her, then shoved her into the cell and used the lever to raise the glass barricade back up. He then retrieved the key and headed back down the hallway, leaving them alone.
“Oh, good job,” said Chris, rolling his eyes. “They’re obviously insects; you should know not to use brute force to attack the exoskeleton.”
“I didn’t see you do any better,” Joyce said.
“I’m not the security person here.”
“Okay, I’ll grant you that.” Joyce looked over at Areva. “So I’m guessing you didn’t succeed at explaining who we are, either.”
Areva sighed and shook her head. She glanced around the furniture-devoid cell. No place to hide. She didn’t like feeling this exposed. “Did they bring you both straight here?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you able to communicate with them at all?”
“No. And we certainly won’t now,” said Chris. “They have the talky box. And our guns. And our way of contacting the ship. And everything else. And, oh, by the way, one of them licked his teeth as he looked at me.” He shook his head in defeat and wrinkled his pointy nose. “We’re dead. We’re skinned, roasted, and devoured already. This is NOT the legacy I planned to leave behind.”
Joyce huffed and crossed her arms. “Chris, stop it. He wasn’t licking his teeth. I don’t even think they have teeth. We’re not in danger of being eaten.” To Areva, she said, “I told the captain that we should’ve just come right out and met these people instead of sneaking around.”
“This way was safer,” said Areva. Sneaking around tended to be her go-to option, and she didn’t like hearing it so casually insulted. She kept that opinion to herself, though, and tried to focus on the positive. “At least we’re not in danger.”
Joyce laughed humorlessly. “I didn’t say that. I said we’re not in danger of being eaten. I’m fully convinced that we’re never getting out of here alive.”
“At least we agree on something,” said Chris.
Areva pointed toward the hallway that led back to the prison courtyard. “Ramirez is still out there. He’ll tell everyone on the ship what happened. Then they can come and rescue us.”
Chris snorted. “So much optimism.” He and Joyce shared a look as if Areva was hopelessly naïve.
She took issue with that. “Look, both of you, I’m the senior officer here. I know neither of you like to think positively, but I’m ordering you to do that. No more talk about dying. We’re going to be fine!”
One of the aliens chose that moment to re-enter the room. Carrying a gigantic fork.
Chris screamed. Joyce froze. Areva had already worked her way into the far corner of the cell during the conversation, but she shrank back a bit more into the shadows.
The alien with the fork took no notice of them. He crossed out of their field of vision, to one side of the cell. Areva heard him drag something across the stone floor. She thought about moving closer to the glass wall to try to see what it was, but she decided it was safer to stay in the shadows and observe.
She turned out to be right. After a few seconds, the alien came into view through the glass, hauling a large wooden desk behind him.
Areva’s breath caught in her throat when she saw the object on the desk.
“They have a computer!” Chris said, pointing at the glowing screen with its various icons and attached keypad.
“Where’d they get it?” asked Joyce.
“Who cares? We can use that to get the talky box working!”
“We don’t have the talky box.”
“Then we have to get them to hook it up themselves!” He pounded on the glass again, his fear of being eaten apparently forgotten in his excitement. “Hey! We want to talk to you!”
The spider alien continued ignoring them. He positioned the desk and computer near the wall opposite the cell, looking upward as if trying to align it in a specific place. Areva craned her neck, but couldn’t see anything on the ceiling to designate one area as better or worse for … whatever the alien wanted to do. Maybe he didn’t quite get how the technology worked.
He finished arranging the furniture and then grabbed the huge fork again. Chris immediately backed away from the glass, but before anyone could panic, the alien stuck the fork into a slot in the top of the computer. Areva couldn’t see the screen, but she heard the device beep in acknowledgment of its new attachment.
All three captives breathed a sigh of relief.
“See?” Joyce said. “It’s a wireless receiver or something. They’re not cannibals.”
“I’m still not ruling it out,” Chris replied. “And are they technically cannibals if they’re eating us? We’re not the same species as them.”
“Oh, shut up, you know what I meant.”
While the married couple bickered, Areva stayed crouched in the shadows, observing and collecting information. She worked best this way: analyze the enemy first, and only then engage. And only then if she could control the whole situation. She knew from her previous job to never enter a situation unprepared. That was how people got killed.
She watched the alien in silence as he began entering some sort of information into the computer keypad. He worked slowly, checking his progress every few keystrokes. Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t a familiar task. She watched his insectoid face and thought she detected some measure of anxiety in his expression, but maybe she was just reading too much into it. After all, she’d only observed these people for a day.
Just as the alien finished his work on the computer, he happened to look in her direction. Their eyes locked.
Areva diverted her gaze immediately and cursed herself for being dumb enough to leave her attention where that could happen. She never wanted to make eye contact with an enemy. The eyes revealed too much. When you looked in someone’s eyes, you saw them, and they saw you. If you weren’t in complete control of your thoughts, you could give away everything in the space of that one second.
If they weren’t in control, you could see their thoughts, too. If they were dying, you
could watch their life flash before their eyes. You could see them realize what was coming. You could see them realize you were the last thing they would ever see. Areva stopped that train of thought before it could derail her. She hadn’t shot anybody who was looking at her in years. She wasn’t the harbinger of death anymore. She wouldn’t be that ever again.
She refocused on the present. Fortunately, the moment of eye contact had been short enough that Areva didn’t glean any information from the alien, and she didn’t think he learned anything from her either. That was good. In such an unknown situation, she didn’t want to show vulnerability.
The moment passed. The alien looked away, too. He checked the computer screen again, and what he saw apparently satisfied him. He glanced at the prisoners once more and then left the room.
Areva let out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. When she glanced at the Fishes, she found both of them staring at her.
“The hell was that?” asked Chris.
“What?” she asked. She looked around the cell for a distraction, not liking how she was suddenly the center of attention.
“You freaked out. You were watching the guy, and suddenly you got really nervous, and then he left, and now you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Chris’s face lit up. “Can you see ghosts? Was he haunted?”
“Or were you communicating with him telepathically?” asked Joyce.
“Good question!” said Chris. “Or was he …”
“No.” Areva cut off the rampant speculation. “Nothing like that. Just thinking.”
“About what?”
“How to get out of here.”
“Lies,” said both Fishes simultaneously.
“You showed a tell. Your eyes went up and to the left,” said Joyce.
“And you swallowed after speaking,” said Chris. “You’re a defensives officer. You should know not to give yourself away like that.”
Areva sighed. For all their paranoia and brazenness, the two scientists were astute observers. She knew if she didn’t give them an answer, whatever they came up with would be much weirder, and rumors would circulate around the entire ship within hours after they were rescued. She didn’t want the rest of the crew thinking she had psychic powers or some sort of dark secret, so she answered, “I accidentally made eye contact with the spider-alien. It reminded me of something from my past. That’s all.”
“What, life before you were transferred to the Endurance?” Chris shook his head. “It is not a good idea to think about that. It’ll depress you.”
“Chris, you’ve never worked on a ship other than Endurance,” said Joyce.
“Yeah, because nobody appreciates my expertise. Soon as I passed the police academy, they sent me straight to the armpit of the solar system. It’s because the establishment is afraid of me. They’re afraid of what I might find out. Science sees all, my dear.”
“Can it see a way out of this cell?” Areva asked.
“Nope.” Chris shook his head. “Walls are solid rock, and this glass is bulletproof.”
“We think it’s bulletproof, at least,” said Joyce. “Obviously we haven’t actually shot it. You should try to kick through it or something.”
Areva frowned. “Why me?”
The other woman laughed. “Do you really think either of us has the fortitude to kick through a wall? You’re the security person here.”
She had a point. Areva got to her feet and walked over to inspect the glass wall. “If this does break, we’re going to need to run for it.”
“We’re ready,” said Joyce.
Areva gauged the distance and prepared to throw a side kick at the wall. In the middle of that process, Chris asked, “So, what about your past life were you remembering?”
She closed her eyes in a moment of frustration. She’d thought they finished with that topic. “Something I learned at work.”
“Mind-reading through observing others’ behavior?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Can we guess?”
Areva decided to give them the short summary to appease them. “I was on a mission seven years ago, undercover, and I accidentally got caught. Someone I had become close to outed me, and they did it by reading my eye movements. So eye contact makes me nervous. That’s it.”
“Seven years?” asked Chris. “That’s right before you came to the ship. Did you get in trouble? Were they mad that you were found out, so they sent you to a dead-end job? Is that why you won’t shoot anybody who …”
Areva interrupted the unwanted questions by throwing her hardest kick into the glass wall. The questions had stirred up quite a bit of emotion, so she released it through the assault, throwing her entire body weight behind the attack. It produced a loud thud, and shivers of vibration swam up her leg and set her nerves to stinging, but the glass itself didn’t shatter. It didn’t even dent.
She hopped on one leg, rolling her ankle to try and get the blood flowing back through her now-painful limb. She inspected the point of impact and shook her head. “I can’t break it.”
“Not for lack of trying!” said Joyce. “Damn, woman, you are scary!”
Areva blushed and headed back to the corner, where she could observe while trying not to be observed. She really disliked the cell’s openness and visibility. “We’re going to have to do something else.”
* * *
“I say we blow them up.”
“Stop saying that, Ivanokoff! We’re not blowing them up!” Captain Thomas Withers paced in front of the conference table set up in the Endurance’s rec room. “We want to rescue our people, not kill them.”
“My plan would only kill the aliens.”
“We don’t want to kill them either. We’re here to make friends with these guys, not start another war!” Thomas rubbed a hand across his forehead. Meetings with his crew always made him sweat with frustration, but this time was worse because the rec room’s climate controls had been out of whack all week. “Does anybody have an idea that doesn’t involve murder?”
Matthias Habassa, the ship’s chief engineer, raised his hand. “We break in, get the talky box …”
Thomas rolled his eyes. “I told you all that we aren’t calling it that.”
“… and tell the aliens that this was a big misunderstanding. And maybe we should bring them cookies. Everybody likes cookies.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” said Thomas. “Just coming clean with who we are and what we’re doing here. We were going to do that in another day or so anyway.”
Matthias’s copper-skinned face brightened. “And the cookies?”
“No cookies.”
“Aww.”
Viktor Ivanokoff, the ship’s enormous first officer, crossed his arms so that his biceps bulged out and made him look even more intimidating than usual. “But how are we to get inside the prison to retrieve the box? Ramirez said they closed the door. It is completely sealed off.”
Thomas chewed his lip. “There has to be another way in.”
All three of them—captain, first officer, and chief engineer—turned to look at the fourth attendee at the meeting, Sergeant Irvine Ramirez, who looked like he’d much rather be anywhere else at the moment. Ramirez gulped audibly as all of the senior officers stared at him. “I didn’t see anything else,” he said. “L-like I said, I saw them, er, the aliens, I mean, take Lieutenant Praphasat, and I, um, stayed around just long enough to see. Where they went.”
“And did not help her,” said Ivanokoff.
“Leave him alone, Ivanokoff,” said Thomas. “He would’ve been caught, too. And then we’d have no idea what’s going on.” He nodded to the nervous young officer. “You did the right thing.”
“T-thanks.”
For some reason Ramirez always seemed skittish around him, and Thomas couldn’t figure out why. He’d worked on being patient with his crew, and while many of them had started to come around to him, Ramirez
seemed constantly on edge. The other senior officers said that it was just the way the sergeant was. Maybe he had a fear of authority.
In any case, Thomas needed him to help plan a way to rescue his three missing people. “Sergeant, I need you to tell me everything you can remember about that prison. Take your time.”
Ramirez gulped again and closed his eyes. His forehead wrinkled in thought. “Okay. It’s big. It’s stone. It has a thick metal door. Um …”
“Any other entrances? Any possible ways of breaking in?”
Ramirez shook his head, eyes still closed. “No. It’s just a solid wall, all the way around the courtyard.”
Thomas picked up on what sounded like a promising piece of intel. “What courtyard?”
“The courtyard in the middle of the prison.”
Thomas smiled. “Perfect.”
“Indeed,” said Ivanokoff. “If we drop an explosive into the courtyard just inside of the gate …”
“Dammit, Ivanokoff, we’re not blowing anything up! Stop suggesting that!”
Ramirez opened his eyes again and stared at the two of them in consternation. “W-why is it perfect?”
“Because it means the prison is open from above.” Thomas’s smile broadened. “And we have a spaceship.”
* * *
If it was a prison, Areva decided it was the least efficient prison in history. They’d sat in the cell for almost two hours without a single visit from one of the spider-aliens, excepting the guy who brought out the computer. She was thirsty, she was tired—after all, she’d finished a ten-hour shift right before all of this happened—and she had to use the bathroom. She’d thought that by now, somebody would have come to ask them who they were—and more importantly, what they were.
Also, Chris and Joyce were loud cellmates.
“That theory is bogus, and you know it!”
“If it’s bogus, then why is Officer Varma’s research getting more funding from the CPLA than your project on endothermic degradation?”