Aurora Renegades

by G. S. Jennsen

The last option was dismissed out of hand. If they—

  Her awareness of the pinpoints of blue light began when they were fifty-six meters from the exterior of the Siyane. They passed through the shields and hull 3.5 seconds later as effortlessly as if the material were made of gossamer. In the cabin the lights coalesced into the vague form of a faie. Interesting.

  ‘Are you Mnemosyne?’

  So you know of my colleague. No. I am called Lakhes. What may I call you, sentient ship?

  ‘Valkyrie. What have you done with my companions?’

  Your companions are safe. Interesting name, Valkyrie. It arrives layered with imagery and implied significance.

  ‘I always thought so. Given the Metigens’ proclivity for Greek mythology, I assume yours is derived from Lachesis. The ‘dispenser of lots.’ Do you believe you determine others’ destiny? Do you strive to do this for Alex and Caleb? Will you harm them to do it?’

  ‘Metigens’? Is that what the Humans call us? Logical, in a literal sense, if not particularly inventive. I did not expect to need to repeat myself to a quantum synthetic, but so be it. Your companions are safe.

  My purpose here is to impart this information to you, so that you will not act rashly upon the inhabitants of this planet. They are a peaceful species who have committed no offense.

  ‘They have kidnapped Alex and Caleb. They—’

  No. Your companions may return whenever they wish, though it is my hope they will instead elect to spend a measure of time below. The individual which greeted them did so at my behest, because I believe they can learn much from those who dwell here.

  ‘Learn much about what? About the purpose of the portal network? About the universe through the master portal? About you?’

  Yes.

  ‘What is your species called, then? We would be happy to address you by your proper name.’

  My species is known as the Katasketousya.

  ‘Known by whom?’

  What a clever little sentient ship you are. But I will tell you no more today. My purpose here is fulfilled. Do not fear for your companions, and do not attempt to harm the species which now calls the depths of this planet home. Patience, Valkyrie.

  ‘Platitudes are not—”

  But the Metigen—Katasketousya—was now gone as well, dissipating and vanishing as swiftly as it had arrived.

  If forced to give voice to the sensation she felt, she decided it would be considered annoyance. Seeing as annoyance was counterproductive to the present crisis, she encouraged those processes to wither.

  What had she learned?

  - The Metigens called themselves Katasketousya.

  - Their fetish for Greek mythology continued to be evidenced.

  - They were easily as infuriating as Alex had insisted.

  - This Metigen, Lakhes, communicated with the local inhabitants, as other Metigens had with the Khokteh and humans. What it presented itself as to them was not apparent.

  - Lakhes strove to protect this species, a course of action they had yet to encounter in any other portal.

  - Multiple Metigens knew of their explorations in the portal network. Unlike the one they encountered on Ireltse, Lakhes did not intend to discourage their efforts or seek harm upon them. At least not today, here, now. On the contrary, it was trying to teach them some thing or things. Alex believed the Metigens had ulterior motives for all their actions, so the likelihood of purposeful manipulation must be a consideration in her analysis.

  What was she able to extrapolate from this information with a reasonable level of confidence?

  - The Metigens now or had once frequented a place where additional alien species lived and interacted with one another. She could not assert this with one hundred percent certainty, but the statement providing their name had connoted ‘known by others.’

  - The technology behind the hologram projection and the quantum layer preventing her from contacting Alex and cloaking what existed below was Metigen in origin.

  - Lakhes knew the Aurora portal opened into what humans called the Metis Nebula, from which she inferred some level of involvement on its part in the observation of their universe.

  - The Metigens were actively hiding this species, though she dared not guess from what.

  Bolstered by this new if still distressingly incomplete data, she returned to her initial assessment of her options.

  She could do nothing.

  24

  UNCHARTED PLANET

  Tayna Portal Space

  * * *

  Luminescence from the spindle at the center of the platform returned light to the space an instant after it had plunged into darkness, and Caleb loosened the grip on his blade even as Alex’s grip on his forearm tightened.

  Her eyes were flaring brightly—but in panic rather than an artificial glow. “She’s gone. The connection, the comm channel, everything!”

  He kept a bead on the alien, who was also watching them intently. “Valkyrie? Are you there?” He received only silence.

  Alex spun to their guide in agitation and began pointing to the darkness above. “We have to go back up. Take us to the surface!”

  The alien’s eyes and face lit up in pulsing colors as a stream of chirps and trills poured forth.

  Alex’s gestures grew more frantic in response. “Up there! Reverse this goddamn machine and take us the fuck back to the surface!”

  The alien pulled off one of its gloves, revealing four long, multi-jointed fingers ending in small, blunt claws. It stepped forward, reached up and placed its palm on Alex’s jaw as it continued talking.

  Caleb tensed anew, his own fingers again closing firmly around the hilt of his blade as he prepared to force his way between them.

  Alex jerked in surprise, but after a blink, stilled. “What…?” Her voice faded off, and her face took on a curious expression. Her nose crinkled up in what he recognized as consternation, but she didn’t appear afraid or in pain.

  He reached for her nonetheless—and she held up a hand to keep him at bay.

  “He says this place is a…refuge…for them, a place of safety…and there’s a…barrier of some sort…to hide their presence. He apologizes if it…prevents us from talking to our…others, but promises he and his…people mean us no harm.”

  The alien’s palm fell away with a ponderous tilt of its—his?—head.

  Alex smiled a bit hesitantly, then turned to Caleb. “I don’t understand exactly what just happened, but somehow through touch he’s able to…make my brain translate what he’s saying. Sort of.”

  “And now you know it’s a ‘he?’ ”

  “Yeah? I think so?” She gazed up into the growing darkness above them. They were descending a long way indeed. “I’m worried about Valkyrie, and she’s definitely going to be worried about us. But I think it’ll be all right if we spend a few minutes seeing what’s down here before we return to the surface.”

  He nodded cautiously, taken aback by her dramatic about-face. The alien’s touch must have been powerful indeed.

  Twenty long, dim seconds later, half the stone—no longer ice—walls surrounding the lift gave way to brighter but still faint light. Two more revolutions and the platform came to a stop. Their guide stepped through an open archway and motioned for them to follow.

  A city awaited them on the other side of the archway. Not a city humans would build, to be sure. There were no straight lines or sharp edges. There were no skyscrapers, for the sky could not be reached from this place.

  A broad, winding pathway provided a route among a maze of structures carved into the stone and buttressed by an architecture of elegant metal arches and cupolas. Alcoves and cylindrical tunnels shared space with unexpectedly spacious open areas and airy, multi-level complexes.

  Hundreds of aliens were in plain sight, going about their business. It was warm down here, and unlike the one who brought them, the rest of the aliens wore no heavy coats. They did wear clothes of some kind—form-fitting woven leather or linen bodysuits from what Cal
eb could see.

  Their habitat built into the crust of the planet extended as far as his vision reached, albeit chaotically and displaying no apparent order beyond the pathway cutting through the middle of it. Edifices built into the earth here, vast swaths of rock carved out and put to productive purpose there.

  Their guide faced them and began chattering. Then, probably remembering they did not yet understand him, the alien removed his other glove. He tucked it into a coat pocket and stretched his arms out to them.

  Touch. Alex’s experience suggested they communicated via touch as much as sight and sound. Caleb removed his own gloves while Alex did the same; they shared a nod of confirmation before each offered a hand. The alien grasped them both.

  Caleb worked to concentrate, to decipher what was happening. It wasn’t like communicating with Akeso. This alien was speaking, but the message came in the form of concepts as much as words. Of course, that could simply be the language barrier at work. As they began to understand the language, the impressions may well become complex sentences. For now his brain did its best to bring form to the amorphous impressions.

  Welcome, strangers. Taenarin Aris, this, our haven. Your haven. Welcome, and see our hospitality to accept.

  Know me, Jaisc, Iona-Cead to the Taenarin.

  Alex missed Valkyrie.

  She missed her in a gnawing, existential way, like that nagging feeling you got when you’d forgotten something important, but if you concentrated on it the idea flitted away. She missed the comfort of being able to reach out any time she wanted and touch another mind, one so unlike her own yet now an intrinsic part of her. She missed the new, celestial plane of existence Valkyrie allowed her to access and sometimes the only plane upon which the universe seemed to truly exist.

  She missed Valkyrie for all those reasons and countless more. But right now, far and above those considerations, she most of all missed having a damn translator.

  “All this touching is making me twitchy,” she muttered while she folded her environment suit into a fastidious, hyper-neat square and set it atop the shelving.

  “You think you’re twitchy? I catch myself reaching for my blade every time the alien’s hand threatens to move toward me.” Caleb put his suit next to hers on the shelf, somehow folded with far greater neatness than hers with far less effort expended. “But they seem harmless. So far.”

  She grimaced and inspected the small room. They had no legitimate need for the suits or the breather masks down here in the cavernous subterranean space and, after enough arm waving to qualify as a game of charades, they’d been taken to a building not far from the entry to store the extra equipment.

  They’d encountered several aliens on the way, leading to much rapid chirping and skin-tone light shows as Jaisc had explained their presence to the agitated passersby.

  She couldn’t say what the alien actually said about them. Her eVi was running relational comparisons of the sounds, colors and few words which had been imparted, but it was a poor substitute for Valkyrie’s quantum algorithms when it came to developing a translation program.

  She missed Valkyrie.

  When she turned around, she found Caleb watching her, eyes twinkling in blatant amusement. “What?”

  “You look good.”

  She glanced down at the black, stretchy thermal leggings and mock turtleneck she’d worn under the suit. “In my thermals?”

  “Yes, in your thermals. They’re very…form-fitting.”

  “Oh.” A sly grin grew on her lips as her gaze drifted down before returning to his face. “That works both ways, you know.”

  “Does it?” He took the tiny step forward required to draw her into his arms and bring his mouth to hers.

  She relaxed in his embrace, grateful for the warmth, safety and always desire it brought. “One more alien encounter survived.”

  “Indeed….” His lips lingered on hers for another breath before pulling away, regret in his voice. “Speaking of, we shouldn’t keep our guide waiting too long.”

  “Right. We need to try to learn as much as we can as quickly as possible, so we can get back to the surface.”

  “I’m sure Valkyrie’s okay, if concerned.”

  “We were linked when the elevator started descending, which means she was able to detect the barrier, or whatever it is, before it blocked us. So she knows what happened.”

  “I’m glad you found a way to let her shut off the connection. Extremely glad.”

  “Me, too.” It still unnerved her a bit, the idea that Valkyrie must have forced her mind to take action without her knowledge or decision to do it. She was glad of it, but also unnerved. It wasn’t a question of trust, but rather of control.

  She found a light pullover in her pack and tugged it on over the thermals, then positioned the pack on her back. “Ready.”

  Jaisc was waiting for them in the larger, connected anteroom. As soon as they arrived he stepped between them and clasped their hands in his.

  Show you home, share world, ours.

  She raised an eyebrow gamely at Caleb over Jaisc’s head; the alien only came up to her shoulders, so it was an easy gesture. “Sounds excellent. We’re eager to learn about your society—such as why you live underground.”

  Always did, short times above, now to remain hidden but is our way.

  “Wait, you understood me?” Thus far the communication had been one-way for all but the simplest of matters.

  Jaisc tilted his head to one side, then the other, akin to ‘sort of.’ He reached up and touched her lips, not from here, then her hand again, from here.

  “So as we’re learning to understand you through touch, you’re learning to understand us as well?”

  Works as such. Come.

  And with that, they were off.

  25

  TAENARIN ARIS

  Tayna Portal Space

  * * *

  A sculpted ceiling dipped low above them in a porous tangle of twisting archways and hollows.

  A group of children played in the maze, scrambling along ledges and swinging across the archways—and it was suddenly obvious why the aliens’ hands, feet and digits were so long and flexible. The children gripped crevices and outcroppings with the practiced ease of professional climbers.

  On spotting their approach, the children leapt down to the ground in front of them in a cacophony of high-pitched warbles and prismatic skin.

  Her and Caleb’s eVis had independently decided the shifting skin hues did not correspond directly to the words being spoken, but instead signified the accompanying sentiment. The swirling irises resided somewhere in between language and mood. They wore their hearts on their sleeves, as it were, their emotions visible to all.

  The concept of anyone, strangers included, being able to see what she was feeling honestly terrified Alex. But she supposed it was ingrained so deeply in their culture as to be normal to them.

  The children flashed mostly orange and gold. In excitement? Nervousness? They appeared to exhibit both as they stared at her and Caleb in wonder.

  Jaisc spoke to the children in a calm tone for thirty seconds or so, then rejoined them.

  Permission to greet? To touch?

  Caleb nodded. “I’d welcome it.” He dropped Jaisc’s hand and crouched to meet them at eye level. As they neared he extended both hands, offering them for interaction.

  All five of the children rushed up to him, grabbing his hands and running their long fingers all over them and up his forearms, giggling and cackling.

  “Hi. It’s nice to meet you all.” More giggles accompanied bright, rainbow hues pulsing across their skin and eyes.

  He understood how to talk to kids, how to make them feel comfortable in a way they usually were not around adults. She knew this about him. But seeing it so persuasively in action gave her pause nonetheless.

  It was possibly his most dramatic contradiction, of which there were many: violence and compassion, fervency and tenderness, two halves of the whole, all bundled
up together in this complex, beautiful man.

  She steeled herself and tentatively joined him. Instantly two of the children diverted their attention to her. One grabbed her hand, but the other reached up to run its fingers through her hair, which she’d unbound when she’d discarded the environment suit. The Taenarin did have hair of a sort, but it was coarse, wiry and uniformly neutrally colored to match their base skin tint.

  The child touched her jaw with the other hand.

  Pretty. Soft. Red! How make it so red?

  She laughed in spite of herself. “It came this way.”

  The child cooed a pleasant trill that sounded a lot like “Ooooh.”

  You are from above? Never been above. Scary.

  To never have seen the true sky, never have beheld stars…. “It can be scary, yes, but it’s also pretty. Far prettier than my hair, I promise you.”

  That elicited another giggle, which Jaisc cut off with a throat-clearing and what sounded like a lecture. The children backed away wearing pouts, and she and Caleb stood.

  Jaisc grasped their hands once more and guided them off to the left. Kind you are, to respect innocence—

  Caleb jerked as one of the children plowed into him from behind and wrapped its arms around his legs. She recognized the nanosecond flare in his eyes and flexing of the muscles beneath the skin of his jaw. The next instant it was gone, and he shifted around to pat the child on the head with an easy smile.

  Jaisc clucked reproachfully until the child reluctantly let go, then spun and ran back to the others. They continued on.

  Up ahead steam clouded the air from a geothermal spring. Were they below the pond where they’d landed, and this the heat which melted the water? “Iona-Cead Jaisc, how did you know we were here? How did you know where to find us?”

  Slanait Lakhes appeared to me, shared news of your arrival and bid me retrieve you.

  Alex frowned in suspicion. “ ‘Slanait’? Is that a title, like ‘Iona-Cead?’ ” Upon meeting a Taenarin referred to as ‘Iona-Lui,’ they had wrangled out that ‘Iona’ was a government or leadership title of some sort.