Sand and Shadow

by Laurisa White Reyes

  She’d met Scott Dryker on day one. He was tall, confident, handsome. He selected her from all the others to be his. Dema didn’t know how else to describe it, and she was never really sure why she agreed to his come ons. He was arrogant, like an overgrown high school football star, but he was also a good leader. And he was gentle with her when they were alone together, tender and sensual. Dema had felt wanted.

  She knew full well there was nothing more than sex between them, and she was fine with that. Even now, holding the plastic wand in her hand, she had no aspirations that Scott would want a family with her.

  But she needed to tell him. She at least owed him that.

  But Scott did not react—at all. The news didn’t even make him blink. There was no surprised pause, no frown, no smile. His expression remained as disinterested as when she’d interrupted his E-Tab game.

  “We’re three weeks from launch,” he said indifferently. “You should have been more careful.”

  Dema was taken aback. “I should have been more careful?”

  Scott leaned back in his desk chair and turned his attention back to his game. “You can’t go into cryo pregnant. What are you gonna do?”

  So, she’d been right to believe she was in this alone. All the better. She wouldn’t even add his name to the birth certificate. In fact, she didn’t owe him anything after all.

  Dema left his room without answering his question.

  She spent two days thinking about what she was going to do. She had finally gathered the courage to resign from the project she when got a summons to Colonel Foster’s office. After donning her uniform and going over in her head what she would say, Dema made her way nervously out of the barracks to the administration building.

  “Colonel Foster asked to see me,” she told the secretary, who told her she was expected and to go on in.

  Dema pushed open the office door and stepped inside. The room was furnished with a heavy-looking mahogany desk and two matching bookcases. Photos of the Colonel with various presidents and senators decorated the walls, along with several certificates and diplomas.

  Colonel Foster stood beside the desk, dressed in a neatly pressed, navy-blue uniform skirt and jacket. In her early fifties, Foster’s dark hair, fashioned into a sensible bun, had hints of gray at the temples. Her face was stark and thin, with fathomless dark eyes.

  “Take a seat, Corporal Sarkissian.”

  Dema turned to look for a chair and was shocked to find Scott already sitting in one in the corner of the room.

  “Commander Dryker?” Dema said, trying to mask her surprise. A brief, sharp nod was his only greeting.

  Dema took the other chair, closer to the Colonel’s desk.

  “Is there something you need to tell me?” asked Colonel Foster.

  Dema’s body went rigid. She already knows, she realized. Scott’s already told her.

  When she didn’t reply, Colonel Foster answered for her.

  “Commander Dryker here has informed me of your—situation. Now before you get angry, let me assure you that as your commanding officer, it was his duty to inform us of any issues that might interfere with the mission. Honestly, Corporal, such behavior during training is not only inappropriate but would normally be cause for dismissal.”

  Dismissal? Hadn’t Scott told her he was the father?

  Dema didn’t dare look at him. Clearly, he had left that important piece of information out of his report.

  “That’s actually why I’ve come, Colonel Foster,” said Dema, fear already weakening her resolve. “I wish to turn in my resignation.”

  The Colonel sat down in her chair behind her desk and clasped her hands together. “That’s not an option at this point, Sarkissian.”

  Dema gripped the armrests. She could feel her heart rate increasing.

  “In just seventeen days, the Carpathia and her crew will launch for Europa. This mission is imperative. We cannot delay departure, and there isn’t time to prepare your alternate.”

  “What do you mean there isn’t time?” asked Dema. “We just got an alternate last week, replacing a sick crew member.”

  The Colonel’s expression turned icy. “There is a world of difference between a team member coming down with a life-threatening, contagious disease and a girl getting herself knocked up.”

  Dema squirmed in her seat. Surely Scott would say something in her defense? The baby was as much his fault as hers, but no. The only noise she heard from the corner was the rustle of fabric as he shifted position.

  She could speak up, of course, tell the Colonel that Scott Dryker was to blame, but Dema imagined he would deny it, laugh off the accusation. And who would the Colonel believe?

  “We find ourselves in a quandary,” said Colonel Foster. “But unlike a contagion, this is easily resolved.”

  Dema looked up. A resolution. Yes, that’s what she wanted. To leave the program and raise this baby on her own. She didn’t need Scott Dryker. She didn’t need anyone.

  The Colonel slid a form across the desk and then held a pen out to Dema. “Just sign this consent, and we’ll move forward.”

  Dema hesitated only for a moment before taking the pen. She leaned closer to the desk to read the form, eager to sign it and get on with her life.

  But what she read sent ice through her veins.

  “What is this?” she asked, though she knew full well what it was. It was clearly printed across the top:

  Consent for Abortive Procedure

  “I’m not signing this,” Dema said, pushing the form back across the desk. “I want to resign. I want this baby.”

  The Colonel leaned back in her cushy leather armchair and sighed. “You misunderstand. This isn’t optional. You signed a contract when you first joined us committing yourself to this mission. I have a copy of it right here, if you’d like to see it.”

  Dema wilted. “No, that isn’t necessary. I know what I signed.”

  “Good. So, we’re on the same page.”

  Suddenly, the air in the room felt stifling. Dema instinctively reached up to unbutton her collar but stopped herself. “You can’t force me to do this,” she said, getting to her feet.

  “Actually, I can, though I’d rather not.”

  Dema stumbled away from the chair and took a few steps toward the door, keeping her eye on Colonel Foster. “It’s unconstitutional. I have rights.”

  Dema turned for the door, but before she could reach it, Scott was there blocking her way like a mountain. “Sit down, Sarkissian,” he said in such a calm voice that it startled her. “Just listen, all right?”

  It was the Scott she had grown to care about, the tenderness he’d exhibited in their private moments. And it caught her off guard. He took hold of her arm and gently guided her back to her seat. Dema was too much in shock to resist. And what if she did resist? What would happen then? She suspected the answer was something she’d rather not find out.

  The Colonel stood up and came round the front of her desk. She squatted down in front of Dema, a very unauthoritative position for a military leader. Her face softened, and Dema thought she looked almost motherly.

  “Corporal. Dema,” said the Colonel, her voice uncharacteristically soft, “I know this is a very difficult decision to make. And unfortunately, I am not at liberty to explain to you why we need you to make it. All I can tell you is that this mission is far more important than any of you know. We are counting on you to do the right thing. In truth, you already made your decision when you signed that contract with us, and the reality is I can and will end this pregnancy for you if I must. For the good of the mission.” Colonel Foster closed her eyes for just a moment, and when she opened them, her look was intense, almost pleading.

  “For the good of the human race,” she continued. “But it would be easier for all of us if you give your consent willingly.”

  Dema stared into the Colonel’s eyes trying to read what was behind them, but she couldn’t. Where she expected to see compassion to match the tone of her vo
ice, she saw only a passionate determination.

  She’d been given a choice, but what sort of choice was it really?

  She felt the presence of Scott standing behind her, his hands on the back of her chair. She knew the strength of those hands. If she didn’t sign, Colonel Foster would force her somehow. She could only guess how that would play out.

  Dema gripped the pen in her fingers and with a trembling hand reached for the consent form.

  “For the mission,” she whispered, tears burning the backs of her eyes.

  “For the mission,” repeated Colonel Foster.

  “How’s he doing?” Adán sat on the end of a bench and rested his elbows on his knees. “Is he going to be all right?”

  Dema nodded sharply. “He has a slight concussion, and he’ll have a whopper of a goose egg and a lovely scar, but otherwise he’s just fine.”

  Her sarcasm was not directed at him but at Jonah who stood with arms crossed in the corner, a look of contempt on his face. “You should have killed him,” he said.

  “Why?” shot Dema. “Because there hasn’t been enough death all ready?”

  “Because there will be more deaths—ours,” Jonah snapped back. “And I, for one, don’t particularly want to end up as Zarminan fertilizer, do you?”

  Jonah slunk into his corner and went silent. They all went silent. Dema sat cross-legged on the floor beside Adán and leaned her head against the wall. She was covered in dust and looked completely worn out, but Adán thought she looked as beautiful as ever.

  “I wanted to keep it, you know.” Dema’s voice was quiet and low.

  “Hmmm?” Adán closed his eyes. He was beginning to feel sleepy.

  “The baby,” Dema continued. “I was planning to resign my position on the crew, let the alternate take my place. But Colonel Foster said it was too close to launch, that I was bound by contract. I should have fought harder.”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Dema,” said Adán. “You did what you had to do.”

  “No. I did what was easy. Ironic, isn’t it? My duty is to save humanity, but first I had to destroy my own.”

  Adán said nothing. Instead, he brushed his hand down Dema’s hair then rested it on her shoulder. She laid her cheek against it, and Adán felt the warmth of her tear-stained skin. He couldn’t judge her. She had judged herself hard enough.

  Dema went on. “Scott knew, but he didn’t care. He was all about the mission.”

  “I told you, you should have killed him,” Jonah interrupted. “You said it yourself, Adán. He’s the mole.”

  “He denied it,” said Dema.

  “He’s lying,” Jonah answered.

  Adán’s patience with his crewmate grew thin. “Listen, Jonah. You have a right to protect yourself, to survive. We all feel the same way. We want to make it to New Earth—alive and in one piece. But isn’t it possible we—I—was wrong?”

  “We’re not wrong.” Jonah stiffened defensively.

  “Okay, we’re not wrong, but what if we’re only partly right?”

  “What are you saying, Adán?” Dema leaned forward and pulled the blanket over Scott’s chest, tucking the edges under his arms. Adán was amazed at her capacity for kindness even toward someone she hated.

  “I’ve been scanning the shuttle’s archives again,” said Adán, “and I’ve found things—things that just aren’t right. I showed you some of it, but there’s more.” He told Dema and Jonah about the holos and how each crew member had its own library of them. “But there was another thing I spotted a few days ago that only now struck me as odd. So, I went back and found it again.”

  He reached for an E-Tab and pulled up the document.

  “After the Beacon was sabotaged, there was this massive investigation involving NASA and a whole bunch of higher ups. We had already launched, so this information must have been transmitted after the fact but before Earth—ended.”

  Jonah shifted impatiently on his bench. “What are you getting at, Adán?”

  “They assumed every shuttle was in danger.”

  “And they were right,” said Jonah. “Only the Ensign and Carpathia made it.”

  Adán agreed. “I uncovered an entire file of documents, all hyperlinked. At first, they seemed to have nothing to do with each other, just a bunch of random articles, but someone created that file and intentionally linked those documents together, maybe hoping someone someday would find them.”

  Adán swiped a finger across the screen and pulled up another page. “Look here. It’s an article about an experiment in Norway, something called the Cognitive Outreach Project. And here’s an article about the same experiment from a scientific journal from Prague.”

  “It’s in a foreign language,” said Dema.

  “It’s in Czech, but part of it’s been translated into English—here.”

  Another swipe. Jonah came near to read over Adán’s shoulder. Just two paragraphs had been translated, but it was enough.

  “The article is dated a dozen years before we launched,” Dema noted.

  Adán nodded. “But look at the names of the research team. They aren’t mentioned in the American article, but they are in the Czech one. Look at that name there.”

  “Dr. Megan A. Whitlock,” Jonah read out loud.

  “Vice President of NASA’s Planetary Colonization Division,” added Adán. “Though not at the time this was written.”

  Dema shook her head. “I don’t understand. This article is about projecting thoughts outside our bodies. So, you think the saboteurs somehow controlled the shuttles with their minds?”

  “Maybe,” said Adán. “I do think Whitlock somehow used that COP technology on us.”

  Dema took the tablet from Adán and reread the paragraphs in English and scrolled through some of the other articles Adán had pointed out. “Okay. So, sabotage would explain the shuttle cryo system going haywire, but I can’t, for one second, believe Scott or anyone else from our crew was or is capable of conjuring a monster out of sand. It’s too crazy!”

  “No, you’re right, Dema,” said Adán. “One person couldn’t do that, but what about all of us?”

  “All of us?” Dema cast a skeptical glance between Adán and Jonah.

  “Not us, the four of us. I mean all of us, the entire crew. All twenty-four of us.”

  “Well,” snickered Jonah, “that would be interesting if the other twenty weren’t already dead.”

  “Are they really dead? Weren’t we all in a sense dead while we were in cryo? Our bodies were preserved, our brains put on ice—literally. Our minds were recorded, stored in the computer’s hard drive system, waiting to be re-uploaded once our bodies were rehydrated. I’ve seen it. We’re all in there, literally one with the system.”

  The truth was Adán had not thought this all through. He was figuring it out as he went along, but it made sense—didn’t it?

  “The sandstorms are a natural part of this planet’s climate, but in some way I don’t understand yet, the shuttle can project some part of us out there—sort of like how it projects the holos.”

  Dema’s eyes widened as she took in Adán’s explanation. “Neural function is nothing but electrical impulses firing like engine pistons between synaptic nerve endings. Our unique electrical signatures were stored digitally. It is possible that those signatures, our minds so to speak, are in some sense present in the ship.”

  “Not just the electrical impulses of our brains,” said Adán, getting excited now, “but our memories, our thoughts, our emotions.”

  Dema went on. “Most of the basic functions of the ship are designed to think for themselves. The shuttle is capable of maintaining life support systems, collecting and interpreting data, creating water from oxygen and hydrogen. Hell, it can even fly on its own once it’s in the air. What if its capability goes beyond those basic functions?”

  “What if,” Jonah continued Dema’s thought, “the shuttle itself is the weapon? If it can project one conscience, like Adán said, what’s to stop it from p
rojecting all of them in real time?”

  “Not as individuals. . .” said Dema.

  “But as one single entity.” Adán flattened his palm against his tablet’s screen, compressing every point of his skin to the cool smooth surface. “All that energy, all those thoughts and feelings fused together into—into what?”

  “A monster,” said Jonah.

  Personal Text Conversation - Recovered from personal data stores during the Congressional Tribunal Investigation

  R. Herrera: We’ve lost contact with three shuttles already. It seems our worst suspicions about sabotage were true. We must assume they’re gone.

  M. Whitlock: What more could we have done?

  R. Herrera: Postponed the launches. Investigated the crews.

  M. Whitlock: There was no time for that. We had to take our chances.

  R. Herrera: Take our chances? With the fate of humanity at stake? By moving forward, you’ve jeopardized the entire mission.

  M. Whitlock: If we’d waited, the mission would have been dead in the water anyway. As it is, we’ll all be dead soon enough.

  R. Herrera: What if moles are on every ship?

  M. Whitlock: That’s the assumption. All we can do, and it’s already been done, is reprogram the remaining shuttles and hope it’s not too late to save some of them.

  R. Herrera: What do you mean reprogram?

  M. Whitlock: We’ve initiated COP.

  R. Herrera: Are you crazy? There’s a reason the FEDs scuttled it. That catastrophe a few years ago…

  M. Whitlock: Has been scrubbed from the archives. We’ve made huge strides since then. I’ve already entered commands for the shuttle drives to scour the data for any connection, however remote, to the Terrestrial Brotherhood.

  R. Herrera: How, exactly, will that help?

  M. Whitlock: The shuttles record and file the crews’ brain activity, biochemical fluctuations, psychological data. In essence, the entire person sans the body itself. The shuttles will comb through each record to locate memories or emotions that might reveal the saboteurs’ identities: such as guilt, resentment, anger, fear.