Fate

by Tia Wylder

  “Everyone,” said Merrill, “this young man is the subject of this briefing. Last night, during my daughter’s birthday party, Liana and I were called away when this young man appeared—simply appeared, without a spaceship—in the Transit Bay. And that’s when our troubles started.”

  Referring to the face on the monitor, Liana said, “His name is Lieutenant Jay Goodwill. His background checks out; he’s a member of Stellarforce, though some of his records are redacted, and others are classified. He was in some sort of traumatic panic when he arrived, similar to a violent psychotic break brought on by a triggered memory. It’s subsided now. He’s lucid, and he’s cooperating.”

  The Physician General, a man of partially Indian descent with gray hair, added, “We compare his condition on arrival to the kind of post-traumatic stress that soldiers used to experience in the pre-Spacer wars on Earth.”

  Merrill addressed Dr. Patel: “And he still has no memory of what brought him here? Or how his unusual suit, which had a Stellarforce insignia on it, came to be covered with that…slimy substance?”

  “No,” replied the Doctor. “He’s suffering from retrograde amnesia about everything preceding his appearance in the Transit Bay.”

  “Liana, play that back, would you?” asked Merrill.

  “To recap,” said Liana, “he appeared in the Transit Bay with no advance hailing. He accessed the system with official Stellarforce codes that the system couldn't override or block.” She pressed a surface on the conference table, and the image on the monitor changed to a recorded view of the orbital Transit Bay. The Bay consisted of a low orbital platform attached to a series of metallic and luminous rings, a conduit for incoming and outgoing spacecraft, probes, and drones. There were several of them arrayed about the planet and coordinated with each other and from the ground. As the group in the briefing room watched the playback, there was a flash of light within the rings, and when it subsided, a small object floated there. The view zoomed in to reveal that it was a male human figure—the same one who had crashed Tia’s party.

  Liana went on, “The Transit Bay drones took the body to Quarantine when they found that it was covered with an unknown substance. This was also when we found the Stellarforce insignia on the suit—under the material covering it.” She touched the surface on the table again, and the screen showed the figure lying on a table in a glassed-in enclosure where three members of Colonial Security in full-body hazard suits examined it with instruments. The garb of the mysterious figure was the most sleekly sophisticated spacesuit—or was it a suit of armor?—they had ever seen, and moreover a suit of a completely unfamiliar design. The suit was ribbed and piped in a way that looked organic and electronic at the same time. It reminded them at once of an array of circuits and a nervous system. But even that was not the most curious thing about it. The suit seemed to be covered with something, an unfamiliar substance that Merrill and Liana could tell even from here was not at all pleasant. It was viscous and slimy, all green and gray and brown, and seemed almost like unprocessed waste matter.

  “Doctor,” asked Merrill, “what did you make of that…substance covering the spacesuit?”

  Dr. Patel answered, “The gelatinous material was organic but inert. We suspect it wasn’t always inert. Before Lt. Goodwill somehow appeared without a spacecraft in the Transit Bay, we think the substance was alive and active. Perhaps it couldn’t withstand the hyperjump the way the suit seems to have allowed the Lieutenant to do. Whatever the case, the material contained DNA. We ran the sequence and found no match to any known life form, sentient or otherwise. It’s definitely alien, definitely unknown. And judging by the context of this event, there’s every reason to think that the source of this material was not friendly.”

  With a hard frown and a shake of his head, Merrill said grimly, “Hostile aliens we’ve never met before. Out here on the Frontier. We knew there was a chance of this, but space has been quiet, and colonization has been uneventful for so long… Damn.”

  Liana chimed in, “You’re now about to see why Dr. Patel diagnosed his condition the way he did, the post-traumatic stress. Watch.”

  On the screen, the figure on the table suddenly lurched and bolted upright. Those gathered in the briefing room watched him leap from the table, hold up his hands, and issue a bolt of light that knocked one Security team member against a wall and left him crumpled on the floor. When the remaining officers fired on him, their beams splashed off the stranger’s suit like water—or, more accurately, sparkled against the suit and then disappeared into it as if absorbed by a sponge. Moving as fast as a striking snake, the mystery man took down the other two Security personnel the same as the first one, then wheeled about and faced the hatch to the quarantine room—and pointed both of his arms directly at it. From the body-suited man’s arms erupted a blinding, screaming discharge of energy that bombarded the hatch and blew it wide open. A second later, he leaped through the sparks and smokes that remained in place of the hatch and was gone.

  “From there,” continued Liana, “Lt. Goodwill made his way to the Transit Bay Shuttle Deck.” Another touch of the surface on the table changed the tableau on the monitor again. “Here, he engaged more Security personnel—and took them all down.” On the screen, the man in the suit ran, leaped, ducked, and rolled down the main passage of the deck, dodging the beams of Security personnel who had poured into the place. The Security officers were perched atop and between ships and on and around fixtures in the deck, firing away at a target that proved either impossible to hit or impossible to stop when it was hit. Wherever a beam struck him, the strange suit covering the mystery man simply drank the energy as it did in the quarantine chamber. More often the fire of the Colonial personnel missed him completely and flared and sparked off pavements, walls, and the sides of parked crafts. Finally, the intruder stopped at one ship and paused in front of its hatch.

  At once the Colonial forces came rushing in at him, weapons aimed. The mystery figure stood his ground and put his hand on the hatch of the ship where he had stopped. Incredibly, at his touch, the exterior and interior lights of the ship came on, signaling that the ship was powering up. The Security people rained fire at man and ship alike. Every beam fired from a Security member’s weapon struck only the space surrounding their target and his intended escape vessel and disappeared into a rippling of light as if the air were a pond and the beams were pebbles dropped into it. Not one beam connected.

  The Security forces aimed and prepared to fire again, but their quarry did nothing but hold up the hand that was not touching the ship. The hand issued another, greater, rippling of light that spread out across the Shuttle Deck. Wherever the shimmering ripples swept a Security member, that person was sent flying, weapon and all, from wherever he or she was standing or perched, until everyone lay sprawled on the pavement or crumpled or draped over a fixture or a ship, and a dreadful stillness settled over the Deck.

  The mystery man lowered his one hand and turned back to the hatch of the ship, and the hatch came open. The figure climbed into the ship, and the ship at once took off towards the port of the Shuttle Deck letting out into open space.

  As the monitor showed the shuttle moving out from the Transit Bay and towards the arc of the planet, Liana said, “There was a Security aircycle aboard the shuttle. Once Lt. Goodwill reached the planet, he landed the shuttle and headed out on the cycle—directly towards the pavilion in Swansdown Park where Administrator Swift’s daughter’s birthday party was taking place. The rest of the story, you know.”

  As the recording ended, Merrill once again addressed the physician. “Doctor, to repeat your analysis of the contamination hazard, you’re certain that there’s no danger from Lt. Goodwill bringing the unknown substance onto the surface of the planet?”

  Patel responded, “We’ve done a thorough decontamination on the shuttle. We’ve sealed off the area of the pavilion in Swansdown Park, and we’re doing a decontamination on that as well. Since the material was inert, we believe the ri
sk is minimal. The alien DNA wasn’t viral in nature and wasn’t replicating. No one is being allowed into the park for the time being, but we think there’ll be no danger.”

  “Well, that’s something,” Merrill sighed. “That only leaves our ‘guest.’ He’s not presenting any further hostile behavior, but…”

  “But he’s in a very restless state,” said the doctor. “Per your instructions we’ve given him gymnasium privileges. And he’s being watched carefully by Security and Medical personnel.”

  Merrill said, “Liana, display the spacesuit he was wearing, if that’s what it was. Let’s have a look at it.”

  Liana brought up Security footage of the Lieutenant’s empty garb, spread out on a laboratory table with the “slime” cleaned from it. She said, “The suit is made of a membrane composed of unfamiliar carbon compounds that are able to assimilate, store, and process energy, and contains a neural-net technology that creates a seamless interface between the suit and the brain and nervous system of the wearer.”

  Patel added, “My examination of Lt. Goodwill himself turned up some other interesting things. His cognitive processes, senses, and reflexes have all been enhanced, possibly to make him compatible with the suit. It’s likely we hadn’t seen everything he’s capable of doing, in or out of what he was wearing when he arrived.”

  “All of which seems to make him some sort of enhanced soldier,” said Merrill. “A soldier enhanced by Stellarforce technology more advanced than anything that anyone has ever heard of—in other words, secret technology. The question is, was that technology created to combat this alien force which no one has ever heard of either? I’ve put out an inquiry to Interstellar Command and the Terran Union and put a Top Priority on it. I hope the general directive to support and protect all Colonies gets us some answers. Or let me rephrase, it had better get us some answers, or I’ll take this to every channel I have access to as the head of this colony. Any outside force striking at the Union will come through us, so Earth knows what’s at stake here. And I’ll make sure they’re reminded, regardless. That will be all for now, everyone. I’ll keep you apprised.”

  The other Administrators and the doctor filed out, leaving Merrill and Liana alone. Liana came from her end of the table to where Merrill now stood, watching the others leave. Once they were gone, Merrill faced Liana. “My daughter’s birthday party,” he said gravely. “This Lieutenant Goodwill came careening right into my daughter’s birthday party with his contaminated suit and his unknown weapons and…” He trailed off, then continued. “What if something had happened to Tia? Losing her mother was bad enough. What if my daughter had been…?”

  “She wasn’t,” Liana said reassuringly. “She’s fine.”

  Merrill shook his head, seeming weary. “This wasn’t the eighteenth birthday I wanted to give her. Now I have to keep her safe, and I don’t even know what I’m trying to keep her safe from.”

  Liana put an arm on his shoulder. “We’ll get some answers. Then you’ll know better how to protect her.”

  “I’d better,” said Merrill, his mind now turning to the last time he saw his little girl, happily watching the concert with her friends. She was eighteen years old now, facing a galaxy full of wonderful things—and things unknown for which no one including her father could prepare for.

  Chapter Four

  The gym facility was a short walk from where Tia and her father lived. She was there, clad in a leotard and using a pair of gravity weights while checking her form in the mirror that took one wall when two Security men brought him in. Tia was so focused on the way the small weights, which were themselves very light but used the same tech as the artificial gravity in a spaceship, gave her resistance as she raised and lowered them, that she almost did not notice him coming in. He was no longer wearing the strange suit in which he had so dramatically arrived last night; he had been issued a sleeveless leotard of his own. But then, she could not have missed that face. It was too unforgettably handsome. And his tight, hard body, packed into that tight, sleek garment, was too striking. With a hard exhale, Tia lowered the weights to her sides and thumbed the control to turn them off. She turned around to get a better look at him striding into the gym while the two Security men stationed themselves at the entrance. The view was better every second.

  How was it even possible for a man to be so good-looking? And to be sure, he had just recently grown into his full manhood; Tia could tell it had not been long since he was a boy her own age. He was probably twenty, perhaps twenty-one. He probably had just two or three years on her. But what years they were. From the perfect thicket of dark hair on his head to the hypnotic man-boy handsomeness of his face to the way those muscles sang with his every movement under the dark, clinging fabric of the leotard, he looked like an impossible thing made real. And then there was what bulged in the crotch of his suit bottom; the roundness and fullness that made Tia recall every night she had lain alone in bed thinking about touching what a boy had down there, or every night she had sat up with a girlfriend talking about it. And every time she had imagined or whispered about doing more than touch it: licking it, putting it in her mouth and feeling it throb against her tongue and slide between her lips, letting him climb on top of her and put it…

  Suddenly, rudely, in the middle of imagining how it must be to receive the greatest gift a boy could give her, Tia’s mind whipped around to the subject of gifts in general—and the memory of the gifts she had gotten last night. And the gift that was so shockingly, violently interrupted when this vision of man-boy perfection came hurtling into what had been the happiest night of her life, bringing terror and violence and upheaval with him. And suddenly, Tia’s pumping heart turned to fire, and her rushing blood turned to steam, and her teeth clenched in her mouth, and she dropped the weights, her hands turning to fists, and made an angry beeline right for him.

  “You!” Tia cried, seizing his attention and stopping him in his tracks. “You…you! What are you doing loose? Why didn’t they lock you up?”

  He made a stunned and frowning look at her. “What…?”

  Stopping just a couple of steps in front of him, Tia shook her finger at him, wanting to do a lot more, but wary of the Security personnel. “For your information, that was my birthday party you broke up last night! That pavilion they had to blow up to stop you, that was where I was having my birthday party! You scared the living stars out of everybody! Why aren’t you locked up?”

  The lad glanced over his shoulder at the uniform men. “I’m under surveillance all the time. I’m as good as locked up.”

  “Is that so?” Tia glowered at him. “And just who is it they’ve got under surveillance? What’s your name anyway.”

  “Jay Goodwill,” he said.

  “Well, Jay Goodwill,” Tia snapped, “my father happens to be the Chief Administrator of this colony. I have a good mind to ask him why they’re just letting you run around loose!”

  “They’ve got people watching me,” Jay quietly said. “I’m not going to do anything now. I was…not well when I got here. I was sick. Crazy. When I came to after…your party…my head cleared up. I’m better. I don't mean to hurt anyone. I’m sorry I scared you. And I’m sorry about your party.”

  Tia’s mood softened and cooled only slightly. She was not prepared for the madman who had crashed her party in every sense of the word to be so calm now, so quiet, even polite. He was practically a gentleman. She had expected him to be a beast. A hot, gorgeous, steamy, sensual, dangerous beast. She’d been ready for that. She was not ready for this. But she was still angry. “So how did you get that way, anyway?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know,” said Jay. “Listen, I’m not some kind of wild man. I’m not. I’m a member of Stellarforce. As a matter of fact, that and my name…that’s about all I know about myself right now. Everything else is a blank. If I’d been myself last night, I wouldn’t have done anything like that.”

  “You’re sure about that?” Tia frowned.

  “I’m su
re,” said Jay. “I’ve…lost my memory, except for my name. But I know I’m not a wild man. I’m a space soldier, and I’ve got my duty. I just…don’t know what my duty is right now. Or anything else.”

  She calmed down a bit more now, even more unprepared for his manner and what she was hearing from him. “Nothing?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. And there was a pain in his attitude, a genuine pain. He was not pretending; he was for real. She could see that the void in his mind, in which his only vague memory was of what he did last night, was hurting him. And for the first time since she spotted him, Tia felt a glimmer of something like compassion. “The people interrogating me—I didn’t even know I was a Lieutenant until they told me. And my records are locked up; the man leading the interrogation—I guess that must have been your father—had to put out a request to have them opened up.”

  Somehow Tia found herself sitting with him on a bench near where she’d been working out. He sat beside her, half hunched over, staring either at nothing or at something he wasn’t able to discern. And with a pang of sympathy she had not had a moment ago, Tia asked, “There really isn’t anything you remember at all? What about where you were before you showed up here? Do you know where that was?”

  “It’s not clear,” Jay said, trying to concentrate. “I’ve got this strange feeling of being someplace dark and closed in, and…covered in something. Or maybe, I don’t know, submerged in something, like you’d be submerged under water like I was drowning. Only it wasn’t water. It was thick and dark, and…I don’t know what it was. But I wanted to get out; I remember that much. And then I was out, and then…” He put his hands over his face, making an ever greater effort to call back his memories, struggling inside himself. “And then…all I could see were these…I don’t know what you’d call them. Shapes. All I could see were these shapes.”