The Sublime Seven

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  “That’s a superb question. I don’t know the answer. What else?”

  “The second question will help clarify the first. Why are we just now hearing them?”

  “I don’t know the answer to that either.”

  Shroom blew out an exasperated breath. “Think, JD. Think about all the work we’ve been doing lately and why we’re doing it.”

  “Because of the Arrival.”

  “Right. Do you think it’s a coincidence that we started hearing the whispers as the aliens are drawing near?”

  “You think they’re coming from the vessel?”

  “Yes.”

  Jaeda pondered the notion for several heartbeats. She had to admit it was intriguing. “If that’s true, why are their thought-whispers in Sanskrit?”

  Jaeda had never seen such a big smile on the face of the bad-ass corporal. Her small, white teeth looked like a string of cultured pearls.

  “Because I don’t think they’re aliens at all. I think they’re just like us.”

  ***

  “You expect me to believe the two of you can hear the thoughts of the beings currently hurtling toward our location at a speed our technology can barely calculate?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, sir,” Jaeda replied.

  She and Corporal Eckland stood at attention in the Colonel’s quarters. He had turned on the hack block, of course. The buzzing sound made her feel as if she should be swatting at insects. Even though everyone knew about the Arrival, they weren’t privy to the classified details. Jaeda herself didn’t know everything, though she knew more than most. Khandar had taken her into his confidence since the day she had defied him. She could only assume her insubordination had somehow won his respect. Perhaps he too had secretly chafed at the thought of throwing seven hundred people to the proverbial wolves.

  “It makes sense, sir,” Eckland added.

  “Really? It makes sense that these alien beings are human, just like us, because of a theory based on so-called telepathic whispers heard on the HIVE? That’s preposterous.”

  Shroom was not easily intimidated, not even by the Kraken.

  “Yep,” she said. “I mean, yes, sir. It’s only preposterous to think we could hear them audibly. It’s plausible to hear them telepathically. You’re aware of my Psi upgrade?”

  He gave her a withering look. “If they can communicate in an Earth language, why wouldn’t they have used it on the DSN instead of speaking in mathematics? The linguists at NASA would have been able to translate Sanskrit.”

  “For one very good reason. They don’t want us to know they’re human.”

  “Why not?”

  “It might give us leverage, some kind of advantage.”

  Khandar shifted his fierce gaze from Shroom to Jaeda. “And you’re buying into this?”

  Jaeda reminded herself of those Zulu ancestors. “I think the theory has merit. I can substantiate the thought-noise. I’ve heard it myself for a decade, and it’s actually gotten worse. Or maybe I’ve become more adept. I wanted to deny that this was some kind of Psi talent, but nothing else makes sense. Ask the techs. They’ll have records of all the times I complained about it. And I can substantiate the thought-whispers as well, but I didn’t give them the attention Corporal Eckland did. If she tells me she documented the sounds and it turned out to be Sanskrit, I believe her.”

  When Khandar looked away in disgust, Shroom gave her hand a quick squeeze. The two women waited in silence, watching him pace the short length of his quarters.

  Minutes passed. The thunderous eyebrows never relented, but finally his expression turned thoughtful.

  “How does this change anything? Assuming any of this is true, what would we do differently? Should we stay above ground and welcome them with a muffin basket? Do you remember their message? So what if their biology is human. They still want to kill us.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, sir,” Shroom replied. “I think NASA might have that wrong. May I see the communication itself? Both the original and the translated version, specifically the subjective part about their intentions.”

  “You know that’s not possible. Asking your commanding officer to give you unauthorized access to classified material well above your paygrade is an offense for which I could have you court-martialed. Allowing it is an offense for which I could be court-martialed.”

  “I know,” she said, then nothing further. There must be ice water running through those Nordic veins.

  The Colonel crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes. The next moment, he stalked toward his HIVE portal, swatted at the v-board several times, then waved the young woman over. “There,” he said, thrusting a finger at the information scrolling across the hologram display.

  Jaeda watched her gaze drift from left to right, up and down, then repeat the process several more times.

  “You’re neither a scientist, nor an engineer, nor even a tech specialist. I have no idea why I’m permitting this,” Khandar said. The statement would have been offensive if not for the soft, almost indulgent tone he had injected. He needn’t have bothered. Corporal Eckland seemed to be in some kind of trancelike state.

  “You’re permitting it because of her Psi, and also because you sense on some level that there may be something to this. What is it, Shroom?” Jaeda said. “What do you see?”

  The blue eyes blinked several times, slid away from the holo-screen and settled, unfocused, on Jaeda’s face.

  The short, muscular body shuddered from head to toe.

  “Corporal, snap out of it,” Khandar’s voice had the desired effect.

  The dreamy look faded, quickly replaced with an unsettling combination of indignation and savagery.

  “The NASA scientists were right,” she said, finally. “They want to study our technology, but eliminate everything remotely homo-sapient. Those human feckers want to kill us all.”

  ***

  Khandar never admitted to believing that the aliens were human, but it didn’t matter. He knew a threat existed and doubled down on the work schedules. It would be tight. Oxblood was almost ready, but the ductwork trench that would supply oxygen to the cavern was taking longer than expected. In addition, the colonists from Omega pod were relocated to Beta and Delta since their air tubing had been commandeered. The Meggies – all civilians down to the six-year-old who had charmed everyone with her willingness to work as hard as the grown-ups – surprised Jaeda in their stoic acceptance of the move. Normally they complained about everything. But not, it seemed, about being homeless when faced with the prospect of impending peril.

  Finally she had discovered a way to shut them the hell up.

  She was shuffling through the chow line in Theta pod after another long shift at the trench, when she felt a tugging on her sleeve. She turned, then looked down to the curly red hair of the six-year-old she had just been thinking about.

  “Hi, Tana,” she said, smiling and squatting down to the child’s level. Serious green eyes stared back at her. “Are you after my cookie?”

  Crimson curls swayed from left to right, then back again. Emerald eyes beseeched her, begging her to ask the correct question. As bright as the little girl was, Jaeda instinctively knew she didn’t possess the vocabulary to explain what troubled her.

  “You want to come sit with me for dinner?”

  Another vigorous shake of the curls, but this time up and down.

  “Okay, let me get my tray. Hey, Cluck, can I get extra for the little one?” She spoke to the exhausted man behind the silver thermal food bins. Cluck managed the meal commissary and everything that entailed. He had lost much of his staff to the work going on outside, so it fell to him to prepare and serve the chow.

  “Yeah, yeah.” A silicone-gloved hand placed three cookies in the dessert space of her segmented tray.

  It was a shocking display of rebellion. All the non-indigenous food on Mars, down to the last chocolate chip, was ordered, inventoried, and appropriated from Earth for their tiny population. Those cookies
had traveled 54.6 million kilometers so they could provide sustenance and minor comfort to the colonists. Jaeda didn’t know who would have to sacrifice their desserts for this gesture, and she didn’t care. They might be dead in another week anyway. When she made eye contact with Cluck, she could see he was thinking the same thing. She gave him a conspiratorial wink.

  “Let’s sit over here, Tana,” she said, guiding the child to a corner table.

  Everything in the dining space was made from aluminum. The combination of stark lighting and cold, uncomfortable furniture created a cheerless environment. The ambience was no accident. Folks ate their meals quickly and left, focused on heading to their jobs or the rec center or their beds rather than on the meager five to seven-hundred calories (depending on height, weight, and occupation) allotted at each meal.

  Nobody came to Mars for the food.

  “Here, sweetie.” She handed all three cookies to the little girl, whose eyes opened wide in surprise at the unexpected bounty.

  “Are you sure?” she whispered.

  “Of course. Now, tell me how you’re feeling. Are you worried about the ship that’s coming here?”

  “Yes.” Both of her front baby teeth were missing, so the child took bites from the side of her mouth. The sight made Jaeda smile. She would never have children of her own – that option was not part of her career plan – but she enjoyed spending time with those born to the civilians...even the teenagers. There was something about their candor she found delightful.

  “You know we’ll all be hiding underground, right? That’s why we’ve been working so hard to get everything ready.”

  “Yes, I know,” Tana said between bites.

  “Don’t you think we’ll be safe there?”

  “Maybe. But maybe the aliens will find out where we’re hiding and they’ll just come there.”

  “That’s true.” She wouldn’t insult the child’s intelligence. “But Colonel Khandar...”

  “The Kraken!” Tana injected with an impish grin.

  Jaeda laughed. “Yes. The Kraken thinks they won’t find us. He thinks they’ll see the empty biosphere and go away.”

  “Is that what you think?” The green eyes bored into her. There would be no dissembling with this child.

  “I don’t know. The thing is, we don’t have a lot of options, and this one seems like the best one. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes. Actually, I’m not so worried about us.”

  “Then what are you worried about?”

  A dimpled hand set the third cookie down on the table, uneaten.

  “Grandma and Grandpa on Earth.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “They might not have a place to hide in Texas.”

  Tana had been born on Mars and had never even met her grandparents in person. Like everyone else, her family would have been allocated bandwidth for vid exchanges on the Deep Space Network, but she had never had a live conversation with anyone on Earth. Yet she had developed affection, perhaps even love, for these relatives. Jaeda could see anxiety etched into every inch of the guileless face.

  “The aliens might not go to Texas,” she replied. “Earth is a big planet. And even if they do, I bet your grandparents are smart, just like your mommy and daddy, and they’ll know where to go so the aliens can’t find them.”

  “I think those aliens must be pretty smart too since they can travel through space so fast. Maybe they have special machines that can find people, no matter where they are.”

  “The people on Earth are also smart. They have a lot of weapons they can use if the aliens try to hurt them. They have thousands of soldiers on Earth. Hundreds of thousands. That’s a lot, right?”

  “Yes. But wouldn’t it be better if those aliens never even got to Earth?”

  “Of course, but I don’t think they’re going to change their minds about that. The message they sent was...clear.”

  “I know. That’s why I think we should try to stop them when they come here to Mars instead of just hiding in the caverns. If we stop them here first, then everyone on the Moon and Earth will be safe.”

  Jaeda was stunned. In all her discussions with not only her superior officers as well as the enlisted, nobody had suggested their contingent of soldiers try to fight. Their plan was simply to keep everyone alive and hope that Earth with all its resources could handle the invasion. The notion of the Martian colonists engaging in battle with the aliens was ludicrous. Merely existing on a planet inherently hostile to human life took everything they had. But the baffling part was why had no one even pondered it out loud? Five-hundred-seventy military personnel on Mars and no one had said, Maybe we should try to kill them before they kill us and everyone else?

  “Tana, how would we fight them? We have some weapons, of course, but we don’t know if those would be effective against the aliens. We don’t know how many will be coming, nor anything about their technology.”

  “Maybe we should try talking to them.”

  “But we already know they want to...” She had almost said kill us, but stopped short. That information had been kept from the children – there was nothing to be gained from terrifying the kids. “We know they aren’t nice. We figured the best thing to do was just let them think nobody is home.”

  Tana rolled her eyes. “They’re going to know we’re hiding somewhere. They’ll see the empty biosphere and come looking for us.”

  Jaeda stifled a snort. “We thought of that. That’s why we’re going to camouflage the entrances to both caverns. We hope it will appear as if we left months ago.”

  “That’ll mean more work, I bet. Wouldn’t it just be easier to talk to them? Get them to change their minds about killing us?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I hear everyone thinking it.”

  Just as with military files, she couldn’t access certain parts of civilian personnel files, nor that of their offspring. Tana may have inherited some Psi talent from a parent. It was still a relatively new area of the explosive biogenetics industry, and Jaeda had no idea how many people possessed it. The geneticists on Earth were rather proprietary about their work, but Khandar could tell her.

  “You can hear people’s thoughts?”

  A shrug of the small shoulders. “Sort of. Mostly if they’re really happy or really mad. Or scared.”

  “I see. Those are strong emotions, so they make loud thoughts.”

  “Right.” Tana reached for the third cookie.

  “Do your mommy and daddy know about this?”

  “Oh, sure. My mommy practices with me. Daddy can’t do it, so he’s the thinker when we do our exercises.”

  “The thinker?”

  “Yep. He thinks of stuff, and I try to hear what he’s thinking. Mommy is really good at it, but she says I’m going to be even better than her when I get bigger.”

  “I didn’t know people could practice it.”

  “Hearing thoughts can be fun, but it can be scary too. Like now, when I hear about the aliens coming to kill us.”

  Jaeda sighed. What could she say? What reassurances could she impart to this child? If she had to guess their chances of surviving the Arrival, she would give them about one in five. And that was being generous.

  “I’m sorry you have to hear all that.”

  “It’s okay. And I know you hear stuff, too. I think yours is different, though.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Did Shroom tell you? She’s the only person I know besides you and me and my mommy who can do it.”

  Jaeda nodded.

  “JD, what if the aliens can do it too? Shroom thinks they’re not really aliens at all, but people just like us. If they can hear thoughts, they’ll know we’re here.”

  Feck.

  “You just thought a bad word,” Tana said, popping the last bite of cookie into her mouth.

  ***

  “It makes sense, if these aliens are actually highly advanced human beings. Telepathy could have been part of their
evolution, just as it appears to be a new facet to ours.” Jaeda sat in Khandar’s quarters with the hack block turned on. She was getting tired of that invisible honeybee swarm. It was distracting and annoying, but he insisted on using it during their private conversations.

  “For any of this to be an issue, I would have to concede that I believe the human-alien theory.” He slurped some of his sissy coffee. “Turns out, I do.”

  “You do? That’s great. So all this work we’re doing could be for nothing.”

  “All this work was your idea.”

  “I know,” she said, irritated. The hack block was driving her crazy. It felt like those bees were trying to burrow into her brain. “You seem calm these days. Almost...fatalistic, if I may be so bold.”

  “That’s how I feel. We’re doing everything we can to survive. If it’s not enough, so be it.”

  Jaeda was surprised. This attitude was quite un-Kraken-like.

  “Again, if I may be so bold...”

  “You’re all about the boldness today.”

  “What has changed with you? Why the tranquility? It’s not normal.”

  “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  “Very funny...sir.”

  He fixed his gaze on her face. The old fierceness returned. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or alarmed.

  “I won’t be going below ground with everyone else.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “JD, ask yourself this question: Why would I allow a known threat to proceed to Earth if I can stop it here on Mars?”

  “I was just having a conversation on that subject with a six-year-old. It’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “How interesting. Tell me everything.”

  So she did.

  “What a remarkable child,” he said. “Of course I was aware of her mother’s Psi upgrade, as well as that of Captain Eckland. I had also been informed that the little girl...her name is Tana?”

  Jaeda nodded.

  “That Tana’s talent is being nurtured. It’s extraordinary the things scientists are accomplishing these days. But what does this have to do with our situation?”