by Ashley Amos
Chapter One
Her fingertips grazed the frame of the window overlooking the vast swath of darkened space outside. Looking down at her delicate, pale rose-colored hand, Zana sighed. It had been so many days at warp-speed and they still hadn’t been briefed on the mission. All she knew from her mountains of paperwork that there was a chance, a small sliver of a chance that they would be heading for the ‘Sol’ system. She scoffed at the thought.
Having been a xeno-linguist for most of her adolescent life, Zana was fascinated with the outpouring of data from this backwater system in some of the farthest reaches of the galaxy. There was no way that her superiors would hide a mission to the Sol system from her. It was unthinkable. She was one of the few people in the entire fleet well versed in uncontacted peoples’ communications and for them to hide a mission to Sol… she shook her head, the thought scattering to the void of space. She couldn’t start questioning things like this while they were on the job. Turning away from the window, she paced towards her work station, sitting down and crossing her legs under the desk, her fins folding against her uniform, burgundy and crimson striped against the skintight fabric smooth as water. Pulling up her notes that needed filing for the day, she worked, eyes like citrine locked onto the holographic displays before her.
“I see you have gotten back to work,” came a voice, light and cold, from behind her. “Splendid. This mission requires the utmost dedication to be executed without problem or conflict. I am glad you have disregarded your ‘sightseeing’ Darex Zana.”
Zana scowled, the burgundy markings around her eyes growing deeper in color as she tried her hardest to hide her disdain. “Onex Cal, I am surprised that you have the time to conduct inspection of lowly persons on this mission such as myself. Regardless, thank you for your vote of confidence in my dedication to this mission.”
“Oh?” Cal said, smirking with his thin, alien lips. “I must express my gratitude that some people on this expedition are well versed in basic etiquette when dealing with their superiors.”
“Mhmm,” Zana said, eyes on her work, thoughts roiling in her head. “I didn’t realize you were on inspection duty this cycle, Cal.”
“That is Onex Cal to you, Darex Zana,” Cal said, his drooping jowls flopping about in agitation. “But in response to your inquiry, no, I am not on inspection duty currently. It is my cycle off and—”
Cal watched Zana spin in her chair, staring at him with the fury of her home-planet’s blue sun. She rose, the three fingers and thumb on each of her delicate hands curling into a bony fist. She cleared her throat.
“If you have no business today, you are in no position to chastise or scold any member on duty, you do understand this, yes Onex Cal?” Zana asked, her voice cutting through the tension between them like a knife.
Cal froze, looking up at Zana, a flicker of multiple translucent eyelids signaling his surprise. He remained silent.
“I know well my workplace rights, Onex Cal, and if the disciplinary committee catches wind of you distracting and meddling with affairs outside of your department when I am working overtime and on my meal break, you will be more than regretful of your behavior here. Do I make myself clear?” Zana asked, tapping her foot with a quick rapping sound on the glossy white floors. “Well?”
Onex Cal scowled, his eyes cast downward, the vestigial antennae on his head drooping some as he shuffled off without another word. Even he knew that there were plenty of loopholes a subordinate could use to ruin his career. Even he knew the façade of superior and inferior meant nothing on scientific expeditions like this. He knew that Zana knew that better than anyone else.
She smirked, watching the amphibious blob of blueish skin and sagging folds slink away. There was nothing more exhilarating to her than to stand her ground, here and now, and it only made her smile all the more, her opalescent fangs gleaming. Turning back to her workstation, she sat and resumed her typing. When she looked up next, she found herself face to face with a familiar face. He was the same species as Zana, a rose-colored aquatic creature with citrine eyes, markings on his body like rust and scarlet. A grin, revealing opal fangs, spread over his smooth face.
“Way to stick it to Cal,” he said, voice a bit low, deep and resonating.
“Don’t you mean Onex Cal?” Zana asked, correcting her coworker with a snort. “I mean really, who does that guy think he is, waltzing down here from experimental engineering every cycle, harassing the lot of us like he’s some bigshot?”
Her coworker laughed. “Right? He’s not even one of us. I don’t know why the hell he gets the title Onex when he’s very clearly not a Darini. I know every Darini on this expedition personally. He’s nothing like any of us.”
“Parad, you and I are the only Darini on this ship,” Zana said with an eye roll.
“That’s the joke, dear,” Parad said with a laugh. “Now come on. You stuck it to the big blue faker with the superiority complex. Smile. Lighten up. Stop working so hard. We don’t even know what our mission is yet. There’s no need for you to be so hard on yourself.”
Zana paused. For a moment she stared at the holographic screen in front of her, the long stream of data that weighed on her shoulders scrolling by. Parad wasn’t wrong. She knew that much. Inhaling gently, the fins by her ears drooped a bit. Part of her was excited, thrilled even, by the mystery surrounding her latest expedition into relatively unarchived space, the gaping void of the unknown swirling around her with possibilities she could never have dreamed of. The work deciphering alien communications was her pride and joy, something that gave her insight into the varied lives out there in the void. With that on her mind, she turned back to her work, ordering and calculating her notes as required as Parad groaned.
“Come on Zana. We could get a call any moment that we’re nearing destination. Don’t you want to be ready for that instead of glued to your little vortex of filing the upper management’s to-do lists?” Parad asked, the markings on his face flickering between varying shades of red and rust, his emotions a cloud of confusion on display. “Just give yourself a break.”
“No,” Zana said. Her voice fell like a rock on a high-gravity gas giant. “I’ve got work. There is no way I am going to jeopardize my standing a single iota when there’s the possibility to be contacting the residents of the Sol system.”
“Are you still really on about all of that?” Parad asked, rolling his eyes, his markings flashing pale pink as he scoffed.
“Yes, I am,” Zana said. Her reply was half sincere, half ice cold as she glared at Parad. “This could be it. I could be one of the few people in all of galactic history to be a species’ first outside contact. Do you really think I’m going to be silly enough to jeopardize my chances here? I could be the lead xeno-linguist in the galaxy and higher ups would do anything in their power to discredit me.”
“Because you’re a Darini?” Parad asked, one of his brow markings rising up in curiosity.
“No, you ninny.” She laughed, trying to focus on her work, eyes lost in the numbers for a bit. “Because what else are they supposed to do with a chancellor’s daughter and former lounge singer? Let her become an interstellar science star? They don’t want me at the top. They don’t want me in the headlines. So I need to work three times as hard as people six times lazier and uneducated as me.”
For another few moments the two of them sat there in silence, Parad slinking back into his seat. Zana was too focused on work, on crunching the numbers before her and the possible discoveries awaiting her out in the void beyond the ship’s hull.
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“I just want to do right by the mission,” Zana said. Her voice was low and it only registered after a moment.
Parad popped his head up over the divider between their cubicles, staring through her holographic work screen. “And you think I don’t? Zana you’ve got to—”
He was cut off. A flashing series of blue lights alerted the entire work block to a change in ship status. Zana looked up, her eyes flashing from gold to green with each ring and flash of the alarm.
A voice boomed out, clinical and programmed as the ship let out its warning announcement. “Expedition Cruiser Azin will be exiting faster than light speed travel within half an hour. The crew is to remain at their stations. Communications Officer Darex Zana, report to the bridge immediately.”
Within a few seconds, the sound of the siren cut out, the blue lights fading to a repetitive blinking, dull and dim, on all the electronics’ screens across the ship. Zana was frozen, some potent anxiety rising up in her thin, pink body. Her markings, from her fins to the smoky diffused marks around her eyes, all of them washed out to a pale, light shade of pink, her fingers scrambling over the work before her. It took a moment, but she powered off her workstation and stood, staring at Parad across from her, the wide expanse of the communications deck suddenly feeling like an empty museum, sprawling and white and imposing like nothing else. She inhaled, fins fluttering gently. There was nothing left to do. She had to report to the bridge. Her eyes locked with Parad and he smiled faintly, his markings a pale, nearly white set of splotches across his face and his bare arms.
“Well, I guess we’re done talking about the mission, huh? Time for you to go find out what’s up,” Parad said. He looked down, suddenly fixated on his work before him.
Zana gulped. “What if Onex—?”
“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Parad said, waving his spindly hand through the air, dismissing the thought. “Just go before they note your lateness.”
“Right,” Zana said, nodding her head and adjusting her posture. Standing tall wasn’t her usual thing, not since she began her work in communications. Often times she was hunched over her work, staring at her various foreign data transmissions, trying to decode them all.
The Sol system transmissions had been her life for months now, both on and off the expedition cruisers. It had become a pet project; an obsession. She filed off of the communications deck and to the high speed elevator, rocketing up to the bridge with a million thoughts on her mind. Did Onex Cal really turn her in for holding her ground and using workplace decorum to her favor? Was that really it? Or, despite her fear, she wondered if Parad was right? Was this her final big break? Was this the Sol system’s siren call finally reaching her? She thought back to the garble of static and nonsense she had devoted herself to, all of those varied transmissions, her work slowly deciphering dozens of languages over time. She was proud of herself to say the least. It blossomed in her like a warm flame, her markings shifting to a robust ruby color, the feeling pushing her to lift her head and her fins, the elevator coming to a stop at long last.
The doors of the elevator slid open, revealing to her the glimmering and pristine chamber that was the ship’s bridge. Zana kept her head high and marched in ward, saluting with her three fingertips to her throat, before bowing her head and reporting in as required of her.
“Sit,” the booming voice of the captain rang out. “Debriefing will begin once we reach the Sol system.”
From there it was all a dream, or at the very least what felt like a dream to Zana. She found her seat in the loop of chairs near the edge of the room, the communications hub bustling with a few select officers. Her superiors, from Onex Cal to his entourage, sat in wait, all eyes on the captain. He remained front and center, his catlike eyes trained on the observation pane circling the far wall of the deck. His silhouette, with angled feline ears and stiff sideburns standing out in the white of the room, it made Zana ponder how such an archetypical villain looking man could have gotten so high in the ranks of the Union’s scientific fleet. There was no denying his charms and his potent aura, all of it making for a positive effect on the crew. Zana kept her mind closed off to the fantasies everyone, from her roommates to Parad, had about the man with the violet pelt and the broad shoulders. She watched him now, however, and her citrine eyes fixated on the surrealistic warping space around the ship, passing by the windows with a watery distortion. She inhaled, marks washing a half a shade paler on her face. There was an uncertainty in her, wondering what she should be more anxious about: The Sol system or the Captain.
Having spent her adolescence in her family’s shadow and lost in her world of singing and books, Zana hadn’t really ever come to understand the logistics behind faster than light speed travel even though it was rather common knowledge among her peers. She didn’t mind. Having devoted herself to languages, she found her calling there. No one could fault the Union’s most gifted young xeno-linguist if she couldn’t understand complex physics. Zana took solace in that at moments like this. She watched the distortions outside the viewing windows with a lump in her thin, long throat while her fingers wrapped around the padded arms of her seat.
“Captain Benkof,” Zana whispered to herself as the ship began beeping, alarms sounding out as the vessel left its faster-than-light mode. There was a slight lurch, environmental systems trying to keep up with the lurch. “Holy hell it’s got to be amazing being Captain,” Zana whispered to herself. Her hands tightened again around the arms of her chair, iridescent, scale-like nails digging into the dense padding. She watched the captain rise, his broad shoulders rolling, his head turning to inspect the space he had brought his crew into.
“Listen up, everyone,” Captain Benkof said, his voice booming again, the sound filtered through his respirator. “The purpose of this mission has remained classified to all those not vital to its success for a variety of reasons, the most important being the failures of the Exploratory Regiment’s failures within the Sol System over the past one hundred or so cycles.”
A collective murmur sounded out, filling the bridge with enough sound to drown out the hiss and click of the Captain’s respirator as it re-filtered the air for him to properly breathe. Zana stared at him, his bright green eyes seeming to pierce through the gathered crowds, locked onto her. Fins fluttering, she took a good deal of willpower to pry her eyes from the purple of his silky fur. There was work at hand and Benkof cleared his throat, the indicator lights of his respirator flashing.
“Enough chatter,” he said. “Exploratory Cruiser Tennann and its crew went far beyond Union protocols for first contact with underdeveloped species and have found themselves in a massive problem that we, and our esteemed Sol System Communications prodigy, are now required to tidy up as much as possible. Though full scale contact has not been made, there are… issues that require a more precise, scientific touch. I expect nothing short of the utmost care on this mission. Debriefings will begin once our station above the Sol system’s orbital plane is established and communication channels are open with the Tennann. At the ready, everyone,” Benkof said, his respirator beginning its re-filtering at once.
Zana froze, astounded, a million different emotions duking it out in her mind. Blinking, she fixated on the Captain’s respirator. She knew he came of a race in need of purely filtered nitrogen to breathe, knew that those respirators were highly common sights in the Union’s more metropolitan planets and stations. And yet, she had only ever seen Benkof’s up close.
“Darex Zana,” called out a voice.
She spun, turning to face none other than Onex Cal and his bulbous face. It took much of her focus to prevent a scowl and a flush of deep rust across her features. Fins pinned back, she cleared her throat and as much of her mind as she could. She nodded. “Yes? What is it, Onex Cal?”
The man, still clearly not a Darini man, swallowed and held his fat head high. “The captain wishes to relay his request for you to join him for the personal debriefing in his quarters at once.”
The bridge was new to her, sure, but she knew enough about basic design and the flow of the crowds milling about to locate the Captain’s quarters. She pulled to the left, off towards the front of the bridge near the viewing windows. There was an elevator waiting for her, an attendant and another officer with her.
Zipping off to another location on the ship hadn’t been in her plans, but the world, the universe really, was already spinning around her so fast that she had no time to think. There was no time at all to do anything but feel the pull of the elevator and the flash of light, her chest rising and falling with a quiet, strong breathing. It wasn’t right. Something was off. Zana had no time to focus on it, the elevator coming to a stop somewhere below the bridge but above the bulk of the ship, a large, richly colored room coming into view. She allowed her fellow officer on the debriefing to enter first, followed by her as the attendant sent the elevator back up to the bridge without a word. She gulped. The need for water or something calming and cool was not unnoted.
“Sit. Please.”
Zana snapped to her senses, realizing very quickly that Captain Benkof was there, before her, gesturing to a set of chairs in front of his shining desk under the plethora of lamps hanging from above. The amount of sparse, minimalist luxury of this quarter put Zana on edge, wondering if her end would come at—