329 Years Awake

by Ellie Maloney

  Meanwhile, the settings were ready. I unpacked and installed them.

  The floor was only inches away from completely receding on both sides.

  Ebony however was ready to face it. “See you on the other side, Mazula! It was an honor being captured with you!” She smiled and fell into the abyss. I waited until the last second to see how far she had to fall. The last thing I saw before Ebony disappeared was the yellowish-green flash, combustion of sorts. And then, poof, she disappeared. The void was dark again.

  That’s when the remaining floor receded and I snowballed down.

  ***

  “Mazula, get up.”

  I peeled open my eyes. Ebony was looking at me, her headgear still on. I felt the ground underneath me: hard, smooth, and plastic-like. It was a bit difficult to get up at once, so I rolled over to the side and managed to prop myself up on all fours.

  That’s when I saw tentacles next to us.

  Unkari, two of them to be exact, stood next to us and tilted their heads left and right, blinking like some freakish three-eyed lizards.

  And they had weapons trained at us.

  I finally brought myself in an upright position. I looked around. We were in the middle of some valley covered with what looked like methane ice and snow, with lingering fog. A typical Unkari habitat, however, it was definitely not Erinozhan. I could see far into the horizon, where the valley transitioned into dramatic spiky mountains.

  “How long have I been out?” I asked out loud, feeling that NVC would be too much energy right now.

  “You fell out of the vortex in the air a moment ago. By the way, we did not need the cast, because this surface turned elastic upon impact. It was a rather soft landing.”

  “I must have passed out.”

  “The likely answer is that your brain erased the memory of the fall as a protective mechanism. Human brains often erase memories of traumatic events. Because I am eidetic, I could not forget the fall, that’s why…”

  “River! You’re giving me a headache! And I already have one!”

  “Sorry, Mazula. You are right. These ugly bastards should be our priority at the moment,” she clenched her teeth, staring down the enemy, like a panther, ready to rip their throats out.

  “Calm down, River.”

  “Calm down my ass! I am tired of this!” And she made an abrupt forward motion, testing if the aliens would budge. They twitched and raised their weapons into a ready position.

  “Ok, ok, big guys, we are cooperating, see?” I slowly raised my hands for a few moments, until the guards visibly relaxed.

  Once the guards’ vigilance diminished, I needed to know where the hell we had ended up this time. I shifted the weight from one leg to another and yelped, pretending that my leg was injured. Leaning down to my “injured” ankle, I accessed the B5 and set it in the automated mode to feed the data directly on my retina. Because I had no time to apply filters, hundreds of windows instantly bombarded my field of vision, superimposing on each other and cluttering my view with billions of data pixels.

  Because my eye muscles reflectively tried to follow each of the windows popping up, my eyeballs felt as if pricked by a myriad tiny needles of electric current. This immediately exacerbated my migraine. Covering my eyes and moaning in pain, I had to pull through it anyway, and use my eye movements to close the fields that I did not need at the moment, leaving several scans running to the left and right corners of my sight.

  As it turned out, we were still in the Gliese 581 system, although it was a different planet, and, based on the gravity readings, I suspected it to be a moon or a planetoid. Despite intense migraine and piss-poor concentration, I NVC’d this data to River. This chip in her head was proving itself handy.

  “Umn mast moov!” asserted one of the Unkari, and stepped forward, encouraging us to step back. I slowly collected myself from the shiny ice-covered plastic, and we complied.

  We walked across the alien terrain. I took the environment composition scans to the best of my ability, navigating the searches with my eye movements, despite terrible pain each eyeball movement caused me, wiring my findings to River.

  We walked down the valley in silence for about an hour, with the mountains sprawling on both sides. The fog was composed of methane-nitrogen-hydrogen vapor and traces of cyanide gas. The fog-like methane vapor was a sign of condensation. I wondered what methane rain would look like. The surface was covered by sand dunes made of various glistening hydrocarbons. Underneath the dunes, there were glaciers of polypropylene and other unfamiliar classes of plastics. The whole valley was made out of plastic!

  “You know guys, for an advanced race, you sure don’t recycle enough.”

  “Umn mast tok not,” verbalized the alien behind me, poking my back with his gun.

  Traces of rock-hard water were present as well, clustered in layers of mountains around us, although this water was not suitable for human consumption, containing a variety of highly toxic trace elements.

  The surface temperature was -187ºC in the valley, dropping even lower in the mountains. The Unkari loved it cool.

  I took a brief reading of the cat suit stats. Thermoregulation worked within safe parameters, but the extreme environment required higher rates of water consumption for climate control maintenance. This was bad news.

  “Ebony, how long do you have before red-zoning on the water level?” I NVC’d to her.

  “Three hours, give or take. And you?”

  “Around two. I hate to state the obvious, but we must figure something out, and fast.”

  “There is frozen water on the surface. It’s mixed with the sand under our feet. It’s a mixture of freeze-dried snow, so solidified that it doesn’t stick at all, and it feels like soft sand. There are also frozen methane particles and rock sediments, all in a perfectly non-reactive state.”

  “Ok, ok, got it, damnit, River. So we have water. But we would have to do serious filtering before we can pump it in. Did you see the cyanide readings?”

  “Yeah, among other things. I may be able to rig up a filtering program, so we only need to collect and melt the ice. And the problem is that you cannot heat it up in this atmosphere. Methane is highly flammable. Basically I need to accelerate molecules in the ice without applying heat. I could apply pressure to it, a lot of pressure, several thousands of atmospheres to be exact. Or, some chemicals could work too.”

  “Or we could just repossess the weapons of these bastards. Other than merely shooting, their particle beams probably would do a great job melting the ice.”

  “That would do!” she said as if it did not occur to her before. “With one little exception. I doubt they would just give up their guns.”

  “That’s a problem. Hey, what did you just say about a highly flammable atmosphere?”

  “It is. A small electric short-circuiting would combust the hell out of this place.”

  “This is something we could work with. How do you think our suits would react to the explosion?”

  “Well, it depends on how big the explosion was. Chances are that we would survive, but again, our water level would dramatically drop. Any environmental stress causes accelerated rates of water processing. We could torch them, but at the same token, we would be on the verge of our climate-control collapse.”

  One step at a time, I thought. Meanwhile the Unkari brought us to their transporter. It was hovering at the edge of a bottomless crater that stretched miles into every direction. Leading to the transporter was a bridge, about 500 meters long, that stretched between the edge of the cliff and the transporter entrance.

  “It’s now or never!” I NVC’d to River. “We need to break away now.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “We need to highjack the transporter. With any luck, we can make it to the Earth Prime in time before our oxygen runs out.”

  “It
might be our only chance.”

  “We need to wait until we get to the middle of the bridge. Not a minute earlier.”

  “Why? You have something against solid ground under your feet, Mazula?”

  “We need an advantage. Throwing one of these squids over the rail, using the element of surprise, would give us such an advantage.”

  The Unkari behind nudged us towards the bridge, pointing their weapons in our backs.

  “Mazula, I have an idea. I think we can generate static on the surface of the cat suit. Use the setting for survival on the wild terrain. There should be an app for kindling the campfire.”

  “Oh yeah? How is that going to help us?”

  “I believe that generating sparkle on your palms, you could torch them like marshmallows. Since you have B5 running through your retina, you can access it. You’ll have to do it, and I will back you up.”

  “It might work, River. Good thinking! Remember, we need one of them alive to pilot the transporter.” Meanwhile, we made our first few steps on the bridge. Looking from above, it appeared nearly translucent. The bridge was wide enough for five persons walking side by side. At first, it appeared that there were no safety rails, but then I noticed that one of the guard’s tentacles lightly brushed against the edge, bumping into something solid. It was a force field.

  “What parameters should I look for to identify, how high is the rail?” I NVC’d River.

  “It’s 0.9 meters tall, close to your waistline. I suspect if you tossed anything in it, it would become more visible.”

  “Is that so? And you know this how exactly?”

  “I can see it. The field emits a slight heat wave, only 0.17C above the background temperature.”

  “Ok.” I slightly raised my eyebrows and chuckled. “I guess it’s a long story, isn’t it?”

  “Actually, not really. I am genetically enhanced, remember?” Ebony smiled back warmly. “How is the campfire going?”

  “All set. Let’s get a bit closer to the middle. I will try throwing a flame ball at the one behind me. Yours will get distracted, that’s when you go after his gun.”

  As we walked, the wind grew stronger with every moment. At first, I thought that it was some kind of convection effect that created wind currents in the canyon, but then I noticed the clouds. I turned back and could not believe my eyes: the horizon was sprinkled with emerging and dissipating tornado twisters. Although far away, they looked intimidating.

  The storm was approaching fast. The bridge swayed under our footsteps, and clouds of sand, mixed with snow, blew in our backs, almost throwing us off balance.

  In mere seconds, the sky turned violent, and the flickers of lightning illuminated rugged edges of clouds. There was no thunder yet, that was how I realized that the lightning was in the outer atmospheric layers, but probably would descend closer to the surface soon.

  And then we heard thunder breaking the sky, like a giant crystal bowl.

  We could not wait any longer.

  “Now!” I yelled to Ebony in my head, clasped my palms to generate static, and immediately tossed flame, like a baseball, at the guard behind me. The guard was caught in flames, and his methane-based biochemistry flared up. Through his screaming I heard Ebony yelling at me out loud:

  “No! It’s a mistake! It’s about to rain!” I watched her kicking the gun out of the guard’s grip and sliding it with her foot in my direction, trying to process what exactly she was telling me about the rain.

  The terror in her voice made no sense to me at first. Then, to my horror, I realized it.

  Methane rain.

  Liquid methane pouring from the sky all over us, right when we started a bonfire.

  The entire bridge was about to turn into a stove!

  I picked up the gun and pointed it at the other guard, who screamed in his alien form of panic, while Ebony yelled at that unresponsive creature, “We have to run!”

  And then the first heavy drop fell on the shield of my headgear, leaving a large wet splatter as it rolled down. A few more drops fell on the bridge, on my cat suit, on Ebony and the guards. The crisped up, but still kindling guard a few meters behind me all of a sudden flared up with new energy.

  The next second, raindrops started catching fire while still in the sky.

  A chain reaction flared up to the raindrops above the source of the fire and started spreading in all directions across the bridge’s surface.

  I believe, for a brief moment, all of us were perfectly still, taken away by the forbidding beauty of the green flames raining from the sky, falling on the translucent bridge surface and “infecting” the wet methane puddles, rapidly gathered on the surface.

  Through the humming of my blood in my head, I heard Ebony’s terrified scream at the guard, who seemed to be the most affected with the sight of his dead fellow soldier and the flames raining from the sky. Finally, she sucker-punched him in the head. That snapped him out of his stupor, and he started running towards the transporter.

  That’s when the individual drops were no more, and the sky rained a downpour of liquid methane, instantly creating a combustion right behind us, spreading faster than we could possibly run.

  I yelled for Ebony to run in front towards the transporter door and try to open it. That was the right decision, because she was the fastest among us.

  A cloud of black smoke enveloped the guard and me, making the outline of the transporter disappear. A red alert from my climate control beeped annoyingly before my eyes, but I had no time to disable it. Meanwhile, the Unkari soldier started lagging behind. The fire did not have him yet, but it was obvious that he was suffocating from smoke, because he was breathing on his own without a space suit. His tentacles slapped the pavement heavier and heavier, and far less regularly. Finally, merely ten meters from the transporter door, his body collapsed as he passed a loud groan. That was a disastrous scenario, because even inside the transporter, we were not exactly safe and we had to take off immediately. That Unkari was our ticket out.

  Ebony and the transporter were almost within my reach, but I had to go back and drag the comatose alien to the door. Ebony helped me to stuff his limp appendages into the tiny quarters of his vessel, designed for two Unkari, sealing the door behind. Through the semi-transparent skylights, we watched the flames catch up with us and envelop the ship.

  I rushed to the alien, he was sprawled on the floor coughing out smoke mixed with dark-green phlegm. “Now listen to me, you bastard. To your misfortune, I can kill you only once, but trust me, I will do a better job than you fuckheads did with us. There will be no coming back from death once I send you over to the other side. Do you understand me?” The bastard lifted his three eyes at me, and gave me a look which I chose to interpret as an agreement. “Here is the deal. We need to get off this planet, now. You either help us, or I throw you out there, into your own personal hell.”

  The alien gave a mortified squeal, which I chose to interpret as his refusal to be toasted.

  I was getting good at Unkari.

  “If that’s something you prefer to avoid; you have a choice. You are going to pilot the transporter directly to the Earth Prime, broadcasting on all frequencies that you surrender to the Earth Nations. Do you understand me?”

  The bastard silently blinked at me with his three eyes. Ebony did not like that.

  “Answer him!” she screamed and motioned her palms in his direction, threatening to torch him. That had a striking effect on his collaborative spirit.

  “Unkar akree.”

  Ebony was about to unravel. I considered holding her back, but decided against it. After all, who am I to tell a woman how to deal with her rage. She kicked the floor with her boot, nearly missing the Unkari’s torso (or whatever he had there for a torso), and commanded:

  “Now, get up and move to the console! And I am warning you, one suspicious move, and I will mak
e a BBQ of your ass!”

  Rage suited her well.

  14

  VACUUM

  Ebony watched our captive Unkari like a hawk as he entered the coordinates for the flight into the transporter console. Unlike humans, Unkari often traveled in two- or four-person transporters, valuing personal freedom of movement. Humans went for public transportation and cost-sharing commuting on large vessels, whether those were private, passenger, cargo, military, or government routes. Being a much older race, the Unkari had abandoned shared commuting long ago.

  “What is your function?” I asked the Unkari, who by that time had finished entering the coordinates, lifting the transporter off the surface.

  “Is Lenar Unkar Varrria.”

  “I know you are a warrior. A soldier, that is. But what is your function among the warriors?”

  “Is serv Lenar Unkar.”

  I couldn’t figure out if he was trying to be difficult or if we had a legitimate language barrier. Ebony punched him with a fist.

  “Miama haunnarr ammtakht!” She yelled at him. Those three words made the Unkari rapidly blink; he responded:

  “Is trevl umn and umn to Lenar Unkar Leeda.”

  “Now we are getting somewhere! Ebony, what did you tell him?”

  “I told him that I like my meat on skewers.”

  “I see. When did you learn Unkari?”

  “I started learning when we were captured. B5 has some ethnographic reports from the First Contact era. Humans and the Unkari had a brief diplomatic period, over 300 years ago. We had several cultural exchange missions set up on Earth. As a result, a few works on the syntax of the Unkari language were written, and a basic dictionary was created. I guess by now I’m fluent in conversational Unkari.”

  “No shit!”

  “It’s not that difficult for someone with eidetic memory. The enhanced capacity for forming connections between the neurons helps too. See, language is like a puzzle. My people are very good at puzzles. Our education is built around solving puzzles. Our school grade system is based not on how much we can memorize - because we are a race of eidetics, we all can memorize - but we are judged on how many creative, outside-the-box solutions to a problem we can find. So basically if I learn a few hundred words from a new language and cross-reference them to the rules of syntax and grammar…”