The Alien's Tensions

by Ruth Anne Scott

  Severine had been so lost in her thoughts that she nearly walked past the house. The sound of the baby crying inside brought her back into reality and she rushed in to find out what was wrong. By the time that she got to the back room of the small building, however, he had stopped and Rilex was cradling him against his chest, murmuring soothing sounds into his tiny ear. Severine paused at the doorway to watch the wonderful sight inside the room. She felt such incredible love for Rilex and for the little child that he held. It was something that she would never have expected and that she felt honored and privileged to not only feel but to have returned to her.

  “Is everything alright?” she asked softly after a few moments of watching them.

  Rilex looked up sharply as if he hadn’t realized that anyone was standing there but then smiled. He nodded as he bounced the baby slightly.

  “He’s fine,” he said. “Just a little fussy. I just fed him. I think that he’s going to sleep now.”

  Severine crossed the room and reached out for the baby. He felt warm and soft in her arms and she cradled him in the crook of her neck so that she could breathe in the scent of him and touch a kiss to his cheek. When she felt relaxed again, she turned to Rilex and told him what she had been thinking about during the walk back from the ship. She spoke quickly, unsure of how he was going to respond to what she had been thinking and she wanted to make sure that she could get all of it out before he said anything. When she was finished, she didn’t look at him but walked across the room and settled the baby onto his bed. Rilex looked like he was deep in thought when she turned back to him. She didn’t say anything to him but waited for him to speak.

  “I think that we should go back for him,” he finally said.

  Severine felt her heart lift and she took a step toward him.

  “You do?” she asked.

  Rilex nodded.

  “You’re right. We need to figure out who he is and why he was down there. It could have something to do with all of this, but even if it doesn’t, he deserves to be acknowledged and honored, no matter who he was.”

  Severine nodded, the words meaning more to her than she thought that Rilex could ever understand. It wasn’t just about the man who was lying in the tunnels. What Rilex had said about him encompassed her and all the Others as well. From the moment of their births, they weren’t considered as anything more than tools, weapons to be trained or machines to do whatever function that was wanted of them. There were times when she had heard Ryan discuss when there were new babies in the facility. Whether they came from one of the human breeders or one of the hybrid women, he didn’t refer to them as being “born”. Instead, they were manufactured. It was just another indication of what he thought of them, and, in turn, what the Valdicians thought of them, and what they thought of themselves as well. Rilex didn’t feel that way. He believed that they were all valuable, that it didn’t matter who they were, what went into making them, or how they came to be. He looked at each of them by merit of who they were as individuals. He evaluated them according to what they thought, what they believed, and what they did above anything else.

  Across the room, she heard the baby let out a comfortable, happy coo. Rilex looked at him and then back at her with a soft hint of a smile on his lips.

  “You know,” he said, “we still haven’t given him a name.”

  Severine looked at the baby and let out a sigh. It was difficult to believe that they had had him for as long as they had, and yet it seemed that he had always been there, that he was an integral and now-inextricable part of her. Despite being a few weeks old, the baby still didn’t have a name. She hadn’t had one until she had come together with Rilex, so the thought of giving a name to a newborn baby was foreign to her. Though she understood the concept and knew that Ryan, the human women, and the Valdicians, as well as other people who voluntarily came into the program from other species, all had names that they were given at birth, she still hadn’t been able to find a name that she felt was right for the baby.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s so hard to think of giving him a name that he will carry with him throughout the rest of his life. It is so much of a responsibility.”

  “So is raising him,” Rilex said. “We are his parents, Severine. We are the ones who are going to guide him through life and encourage him to be whatever he is going to be. Giving him his name is the first decision that we make to help him create who he is going to be. He deserves more than this. He deserves an identity, too.”

  Chapter Ten

  Rain stepped into the house where several of the people from the settlement were staying during their time in the kingdom and looked around. Three women were in the kitchen rolling out what looked like pie crusts and the men were gathered in the living room sharpening knives. She recognized the weapons as blades that they had fashioned out of metal from the StarCity after the crash. There was something poignant and deeply moving about seeing them with those blades in their hands. When they had first crafted them, it was out of fear and a desperate desire for survival. It had been difficult in those early days to truly accept the destruction of their ship and with it the hope of being able to return to Earth. When they began to take pieces from it and fashion them into elements of the new life that they were being forced to live, it was incredibly painful for many of the members of the crew. They didn’t want the ship disturbed. They wanted all the pieces to be left where they fell, influenced by their delusional beliefs that somehow, they would be able to restore the ship and leave the planet on which they had crashed. It was the terror of the realization that they were on a completely unknown planet exposed to species that they didn’t know and threats that they couldn’t begin to fathom that had finally broken through those barriers and started the systematic dismantling of what was left of the ship.

  That, of course, was not truly the first time that some of them had gone through the wreckage, tossing pieces aside and digging through without regard to the structure and the potential for reviving the ship. Rain could still remember the way the metal felt on her hands as she tore through the still-burning crash to look for the bodies of the crew members who had not climbed out when the ship smashed to the ground. During those horrific moments, she already knew that there were casualties. She had seen Etan’s body lying on the floor of the cockpit and knew that he was already dead long before the crash. There were other faces that she hadn’t seen outside of the twisted metal, though, and she worked tirelessly with several of the other crew members to try to find them.

  The weapons that the men now sharpened had become a symbol of their lives on Uoria and a reminder to each of them that they were going to have to change the way that they thought of themselves and their futures just to survive. Seeing them now gave them even more meaning. These weapons were not a means of protection and survival now. They were fighting for all that had happened to them and what had been stolen from them, carrying their blades with them into battle as a way to carry those who had lost their lives within the burning crash and then in the years that followed. Their chance to seek justice had finally come.

  Rain stepped into the living room and faced the men.

  “I need help,” she said.

  “What is it?” Gideon asked, starting to stand from the couch. “Is something wrong?”

  Rain chose to push past the question, to focus on the purpose of her trip there rather than elaborating in that moment.

  “Creia has asked me to oversee checking the shuttle to ensure that it’s ready for the trip to Penthos. I can’t do it all by myself. Are any of you willing to come with me?”

  Gideon nodded.

  “Of course,” he said. “I’ll come with you.”

  Michael stood as well.

  “So will I.”

  “Cassandra?” Rain asked. “Will you come?”

  The woman brushed the flour off her hands slowly, the expression on her face telling Rain that she was thinking back through the years that they had spent on Uoria, t
rying to remember who she had been before they had built the settlement and started new lives. Cassandra had been one of the most brilliant technicians Rain had ever known, rivaled only by Jonah, and had been the first to recognize that the Valdicians had sabotaged the ship’s navigation systems after they left the surface of Penthos. Having her for the review would make understanding this ship much easier. Though Rain had been able to pick up how to operate the ship and realized that it was largely automated, far more advanced than the operating system of the StarCity, she knew that there were intricacies of the ship that she didn’t understand and that could play an important role in their trip. Cassandra would be able to examine the ship with the humans who they had found on it, learning the technology and helping to determine if it was safe and ready for travel.

  Finally, the woman nodded.

  “I will,” she said.

  “Good,” Rain said. “Thank you. I’ll meet you at the shuttle in half an hour. Please bring whatever tools and supplies you can with you. We’ll be leaving soon and need to pack the shuttle as efficiently as possible.”

  She turned and walked out of the house, wanting to give them as much time as possible to prepare for the task ahead. Though examining the ship might not be extensively challenging, she knew that it was just the beginning. This check was the first step that would usher in the moment when they would finally leave Uoria again. She and only a few of the other crew members had had the chance to experience that feeling already and she knew the impact that it made. It was different than she had expected and she knew that some of them would not be able to handle it in the way that they thought they would.

  Rain made her way toward the clinic and knocked lightly before stepping inside. Kyven had long-since been moved out of the treatment room and returned to his own house with Emerie, with Nylek leaving to go to the house where Mina was staying a few days later. This left the only inhabited beds in the clinic belonging to Elon and Michael. The two human men that they had found hiding in the panic room of the shuttle had chosen to remain in the clinic rather than taking Rey up on his offer for them to stay in one of the houses. They had been uncomfortable with the thought of sharing living space with any of the Mikana or Denynso and even shunned one of the few homes that were still left empty, preferring instead to stay in the clinic that seemed almost familiar to them after their time on the shuttle.

  “Hello,” Elon said when Rain stepped into the treatment room.

  He was organizing a cabinet of medical supplies, the Mikana doctor standing by with a bemused look on his face. Rain could only imagine that Elon had gone through this process several times already in the time that he had been on Uoria. Though he was not as resistant to them as he had been at the beginning, he had still struggled to assimilate to being on the planet. There were times when she half expected him to try to take over the ship himself and bring it back to Earth, but he hadn’t tried. She felt as though he were trying to fit in and accept what was happening around him, but that something within him was blocking him out.

  “Hello, Elon. Is Michael here?”

  It wasn’t until that moment that she realized that this man and the man from the Nyx 23 crew had the same name. It felt like a bridge between the two groups, linking the old and the new in a way that was so simple and yet so clear. There was time separating them, and perspectives that could never fully align, but at their core, they were the same.

  The man stepped into the room from a storage closet and she glanced at his uniform, which he had insisted on wearing as much as possible in all the time that he was there. She caught his last name from his name badge and looked at him.

  “May I call you Heggs?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Sure.”

  Rain presented the same request that she had to the crew members and both men gave their agreement. She felt a sense of relief that they were going to go along with the process with her. They knew this ship. They had traveled on it for many months and were likely as comfortable on it as they were in their own homes. Rain knew that feeling. When a person’s career was like theirs, revolving around traveling through the Universe on a variety of missions, the ships on which they traveled became sometimes more like their home than the houses that they left behind. They had to settle into these environments, to find comfort in them, or they would live their lives feeling out of place. Elon and Heggs would know the ship far better than any of them could. The only person who may know more about it was Avery, but he was on Penthos. They could help her and the crew members understand the ship so that she could fulfill the task for Creia and push forward toward returning to Penthos.

  Michael, Gideon, and Cassandra were already waiting in front of the shuttle when Rain, Heggs, and Elon walked up to it. Rain’s breath caught slightly in her throat when she saw the ship, remembering the tense moments of having to take the ship into her control and pilot it off Penthos. It felt daunting to approach it as if it was a new challenge this time, something that she was going to have to overcome. She released the staircase and they walked up to the door. Rain input the code that Elise had taught her to unlock the door. They stepped into the ship to an eerie, unnerving feeling. She felt like she could still see the Valdicians standing there and hear Ryan’s voice cutting through the air, though it was now silent.

  The fact that the ship had been infiltrated meant that it was likely it was compromised, and though she had been able to bring it to Uoria without incident, they couldn’t simply assume that that meant the ship was secure. The StarCity had seemed perfect when they left Penthos the first time, only for them to discover that the weapons they had rolled toward the ship had sabotaged it and made it so that they weren’t able to control where the ship went or to land it safely when it got near Uoria.

  “We need to check the mechanical elements of the ship to ensure that they haven’t been compromised and that the ship is in a safe condition. We also need to scan every aspect of the ship to detect any infiltration. Look for trackers, recording buds, cameras, lifeforce monitors, and anything else that might not be original to the ship and could be from the Valdicians or Ryan. Once that’s finished, we are to take count of the layout of the ship so that we can determine how it will house everyone from Uoria as well as the supplies during the crossing to Penthos.”

  “There aren’t enough passenger pods,” Elon said. “This ship wasn’t designed to accommodate that many passengers.”

  “Then we’ll find a way,” Rain said. “The pods will be for those who need their protection the most. The rest will travel in other ways. That’s the purpose of us being here. It is our responsibility to make sure that this shuttle is ready to bring all of us to Penthos, and we have very little time to accomplish it.” She looked at Cassandra. “Have Elon show you to the control room so that you can start getting familiar with the ship’s systems. When you’re ready, he can show you to the engine room.”

  As the two walked out of the main room she remembered the discovery of the tiny replica ship within the center of the shuttle and knew that that would be extremely helpful for Cassandra as she worked to overcome the gap in technological advancements and learn the vessel in what little time they had. Once they were gone, Rain turned to the men who were left behind.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  They nodded and they separated, splitting up across the room where they were so that they could start the thorough, exhaustive examination that would be the only thing that would ensure they were safe. They had been searching it for several minutes when she heard Heggs calling her name. She turned toward his voice and found him standing near the large window through which Maxim had seen the hybrid army for the first time. His fingers were tucked against the bottom of the window, tucked beneath the tiny edge that she hadn’t even noticed before.

  “There’s something under here,” he said as she approached him.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I was running my fingers along this edge and there�
�s a section of it that feels different.”

  He stepped out of the way to allow Rain to take his place so that she could feel what he had. The edge was not even large enough for her entire fingertips to fit beneath it and she felt along it carefully. She felt the change in the feeling of the surface that she assumed Heggs had felt. It was a slight elevation as if something was stuck beneath the edge. She pressed it and a light burst on from beneath the window.

  “It was a light switch,” she said.

  “Turn it off,” Heggs said almost frantically.

  Rain pressed the button again and the light hesitated for a fraction of a second before turning off.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “It was just a light switch.”

  Heggs shook his head as he walked across the room toward a barely-perceptible door. He opened the small door and revealed a control panel inset into the wall. He touched one of the controls inside and the light under the window turned on again, then back off.

  “That’s the light switch,” he said. He crossed back to the window and gestured toward the edge again. “This is an emergency light. It’s made so that if the ship is in distress or has been delayed and is running out of power, the crew can turn off the systems that use the most energy and use these lights. They utilize a different form of energy so they don’t put a strain on the entirety of the ship, but they aren’t for ongoing use, that’s why the switch is in the panel in the wall. It’s to discourage using it all the time.”