by Greg Curtis
David knew nothing of either race, save for the fact that they were extremely old, having been space faring for tens of thousands of years, and that they were also peaceful. It was they that had first set up the Interstellar Community Council, established the ground rules for the exploration and exploitation of space, and then enforced it. So why would either be attacking an unarmed Leinian transport? It made no sense. Unless there was another race out there.
A hand suddenly found his and he turned to see that Cyrea was still beside him, in the same boat as him, literally. She too had no answers in her eyes, and he knew she had to be frightened. Instead of asking the questions he knew she couldn’t answer, he simply held her tight. Not so easy when her belly was already starting to swell, but a comfort none the less.
“It'll be all right,” he told her. But they both knew he had no idea. None of them did.
Chapter Twenty Eight
The ship was being boarded.
That was something that David still found incredible. Impossible actually. And worst of all, he like the other passengers had been ordered to stay in the common area. He hated that. He should be out there with the crew, repelling boarders. He was their best fighter in unarmed combat, and they had no weapons. But the captain had been very clear on that, and Cyrea more so. So he had to stand with her and the others and wait for their pirates to show up. It wasn't easy.
They all stood around in the common room, staring at one another helplessly. Waiting nervously. None of them had any idea of what to do. Neither did he, and that was wrong. He always had a plan. His training always gave him an option. But not this time.
The options were always only three; run, hide or fight. But it was a small ship, there was nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide. He would be caught either way, and he had Cyrea to protect. Which left only fighting. But against who? And how many? And how well armed were they? Despite all his training, all his years in the field, David was as helpless as the rest and he hated it. Which left him with only the fourth option, the one that no one ever spoke about. To surrender.
“We’ve been boarded.” The captain’s warning blared out through the room but there was no need. They’d all heard the clangs and scrapes as the hull was slowly being forced open. And they’d all heard the huge cacophony as something large and metallic fell on to the metal floor. The noise echoed through the ship. They all understood what it meant. What they didn’t know was what came next.
They heard it though. The tap, tap, tap of metal feet on the steel deck. The whoosh of weapons fire, and the shouts of the crew as they had to fall back. What else could they do? They were unarmed. This was a transport vessel, not a warship. If the Leinians even had warships. He’d never thought to ask.
Explosions rocked the ship and people started screaming all around, some of them men. He couldn’t blame them for that. They were civilians. David was panicking as well, his mouth dry and his heart racing. But then he was unarmed save for a pocket knife. And worse than that he was in an unfamiliar environment and he had absolutely no idea what he was facing. He would have screamed with them if not for his training.
Then there was smoke. The thick grey smoke was billowing everywhere. It came out of the vents in the walls and rolled down the walls filling the corridor just outside. Smoke on a spaceship didn’t strike him as good, and immediately he saw it he had thoughts of suffocation. After all it wasn’t as if they could run outside into the fresh air.
“Oxygen masks!” He made the call because it was the only thing he could think of even though he had no idea if there were any. Did the spaceship need such things? Would masks drop from the ceiling as they would in a plane?
“It’s all right.” Cyrea squeezed his hands and he was about to ask why. Did she know something? But even as he opened his mouth he learned the answer. He felt the jets of air suddenly blasting down on him from above, and he saw the smoke being pushed out of the room. Apparently the ship did have some safety measures after all. Against smoke anyway. But then there was the sound of more shots being fired, footsteps running and men yelling, and the tapping of little metal feet, and he knew the ship had no defence against that.
“We should take cover.” He wasn’t sure if it would help them when they were unarmed and things with steel feet were coming for them, but it was all he had. There wasn’t even much to hide behind. The tables were anchored to the floor and they wouldn’t provide much protection anyway. The chairs were some sort of light weight composite. They wouldn’t even make good clubs. In fact the only shield he could see was the dart board and the only weapons the darts. Somehow he doubted they’d be a lot of use. They didn’t even have a door to close. The doorways didn’t come with them. The others stared at him, perhaps hearing something hopeful, and then they looked around the room hunting for shelter. Then they looked back at him, hope gone as quickly as it had come.
There was nothing he could tell them. Nothing they could do except wait for whatever came through the doorway.
So they waited, listening to the sounds of the battle as they came closer, and tried to stay calm. For his part David said nothing. There was nothing to say. He just held Cyrea and prayed. Prayed that there might come an opportunity to take down their attackers. All he needed was a chance.
The chance didn’t come. Instead there were more explosions and more smoke. More screams and more metal feet tapping out their terrifying rhythm on the metal floor. Soon even the fresh air being pumped into the room couldn’t stop the smoke. It was billowing down the hallways, thick and nasty, and despite everything, it was slowly forcing its way into the common room instead of out. Instinctively they all backed away from it, heading for the far walls.
Then the first of the steel creatures entered the room, and David nearly had a heart attack. Instinctively he pushed Cyrea behind him, protecting her with the only thing he had; his body. But all the time he had eyes only for their attacker. It was a spider. A mechanical spider. And every instinct he had, every thought in his head was telling him to run screaming. He hated spiders. It might have had six steel legs instead of eight, no head, and be the size of a dog, but it still looked like a spider to him. But what it looked like was less important than what it was carrying. Some sort of weapon on an articulated arm standing up from the middle of its back. That was the true danger.
Of course it wasn’t alone, and as they stood there more and more of them entered the room, emerging through the smoke and taking up positions on either side of the doorway. Soon there were a dozen of them at least, all with their weapons pointed at them, and David knew the battle was over. But at least they weren't shooting. He just hoped that too many of the crew hadn’t been hurt, or worse.
Some had been though. He watched as he saw the captain, blood on his forehead, get literally thrown into the room along with a few other of his crew, only to come crashing down on the floor in front of them. The robots weren’t gentle about things. But at least the crew were alive. They were even able to get to their feet and stand with them as they waited. Some of them anyway.
Then through the clouds of smoke a faint shape appeared, and David realised their pirate had finally arrived. He almost wished he hadn’t. He, it(?), was alien as he’d expected. But that word explained almost nothing about it. It was different in ways he could never have imagined. It had too many legs, none of them moving in the same direction. It looked most like a huge round coffee table with curved sides and dozens of legs. It was also big and grey, and as far as he could tell, had no head let alone eyes or a face.
Things got worse as the creature came closer through the clearing smoke and he thought he was seeing things. He wanted to be seeing things as David realized at one point that it didn’t actually have any legs after all. Instead it had tentacles, thick grey tentacles with no joints that writhed and wriggled in a distressing harmony. They began at the creature’s flat body, where they were as thick as a man’s thigh but quickly tapered to a point which curled up on the floor like the toes of pixie s
hoes. Every one of them moved independently, constantly sending David's fears into overdrive. And it did have eyes, maybe. At least he thought it did. They were on the underside of its body, peering out from between the cage comprised of its legs. Little black marbles that surrounded its torso.
But the worst of it was that he knew that the creature was intelligent. It was in the holsters strapped to each of its tentacles, each of which carried a number of devices. Some of them he knew were weapons. Probably the ones it held in its front tentacles.
“A Mentan!” Whatever else it was, Cyrea clearly knew the species, and from her tone she was truly shocked. And even if he didn’t recognise the creature, he knew the name. Mentans. One of the two races that had formed the Interstellar Community. That meant he realised that it was one of the two oldest and most advanced species of the sector. It was a powerful enemy, though it shouldn’t have been one at all. Mentans were supposedly peaceful. In fact they were one of the two races that had created the Interstellar Community Council from what he had been told. But before he could think of anything to say, the captain did.
“Why have you attacked our ship, Mentan? Dragged us off course and sabotaged our communications? We are not enemies, and this is not a war ship. This is a transport and we’re carrying these two to a hospital for care. If we don’t get there it could be serious.” Quietly David thought Gal was over-stating the case a little bit, or at least he hoped he was. Many women had had babies before, even if they weren’t aliens and all the doctors had continually said everything looked fine.
“Believe me friend Leinian. I wish I had a choice, but I don’t.” The voice was flat and toneless and came from somewhere above the creature’s missing head. Some sort of translator and communication device he guessed. Certainly there was no mouth with moving lips to make the sound. Not that he could see.
“I cannot allow you to complete your trip. It would be the ultimate humiliation for my people, though they don’t even know it yet. But neither will I let you be harmed. My people are not savages.” Which funnily enough was exactly what David thought he was. Or actually a pirate. He wanted to say something, he ached to point out exactly what he had done and what he was, but instead he kept his mouth shut. Antagonism wouldn’t help, and he had Cyrea to think of. The last thing he could afford was a gun battle.
“You have been brought to a new world, where I’ve set up food and supplies below for all of you. Enough to last you for your entire lives. But never will you be allowed to leave that world, nor to communicate off it. For now it must be as though you never really existed.” The worst of it all was that David and the others all knew they had no real option. They never had. The creature had total control of the ship, and by the looks of things was only too well armed. So much for peaceful transports. Next time David decided he was taking a battleship.
“But why? We’ve done you no harm, and these ones do need medical attention in the next few months. They’re expecting a child.” Gal refused to let it lie, and for that David was grateful. He was a brave man and that had to be respected. And someone had to stand up to the alien and he didn’t know where to begin. Neither did the others by the looks of things.
“Children have been born by your people for thousands of years without problems. But I have left you extensive medical supplies as well.”
“But I’m not their people! Surely even you can see that!” It just ripped out of David despite his best intentions. But he knew he had to make the creature understand. Whatever else happened, he knew Cyrea had to get to the hospital so she could be properly cared for.
“And surely even you can see that you are the same people, human. How else could you be having a child? How else could the others? And why the **** else would I be here, if you weren’t?” The translator may have had trouble with the creature’s words, but David understood them only too clearly. In fact things were suddenly falling into place all around him.
“Oh dear God!” Cold certainty clutched at David, as he put the creature’s words together with everything else he’d been through lately and saw the complete picture.
“What does he -?”
“He means love, that Earthlings and Leinians are two different races of the same species, just as Africans and Europeans are. That’s why our DNA matches. That’s why we can have children. We’re the same species, and somehow I don’t think it has anything to do with parallel evolution.” She looked at him, and then at their captor. So did everybody else. David could hear the objections starting in people’s throats, and dying as they tried to think of anything to actually say. Which was fine by him. He had a few questions of his own, and once he’d opened his mouth and broken the silence he felt the need to continue.
“Your people are responsible for this, aren’t they?” It wasn’t really a question. He knew that somehow, somewhen this alien or his ancestors had created either the humans or the Leinians or both from the same stock, and planted them on different worlds. It was the only explanation for why he had attacked them. And logically there had only ever been two races that were old enough to have done it, the Floyd and the Mentans. Now, the culprits were busy trying to cover up the evidence.
After a few moments thought he even knew the when. Thirty or forty thousand years before, Cro Magnon had appeared out of nowhere and beaten the crap out of the Neanderthals. Scientists had speculated for years that they had been different variants of the same basic genre, and that there had been interbreeding and competition until one had wandered its way into extinction. Though scientists had always wondered why Cro Magnon had won out when Neanderthals were in fact stronger and smarter. But suddenly David knew that the two hominids had had nothing in common at all. Not even the same planet. It was a shockingly long time ago, but the only possibility.
“Correct human. Our ancestors made some horrible mistakes.” Mistake wasn’t the word David wanted to hear right then, and the hairs on the back of his neck started bristling even more. Deep down he was angry. Not just that this creature should attack them, threaten them, and plan to exile them, but that he should refer to all of humanity as a mistake made by his people. That was just too much. Or was he also referring to the Leinians?
“There are others?” Cyrea suddenly asked the creature the other question David should have thought of and he forgot his anger for a moment. She was right. The Mentan had mentioned others.
“Two more couples, on a transport that left just under a month after you. They too will be joining you below in time.” Two more couples, the knowledge just shook David, and he suspected Cyrea. After all the panic, once again they weren’t alone.
“So am I a Leinian or is Cyrea a human?” In hind sight David wasn’t even sure why he asked the question. It was so completely irrelevant to their situation. He should be arguing for their release. Negotiating with their captor. But a large part of him was suddenly curious. Morbidly so. And he could just imagine the reaction when the news made it all the way back to Earth, if it ever did. There would be riots in the streets.
“Neither.”
That was the last question they were allowed to ask. One of the Mentan’s tentacles idly brushed against a device in one of its tool pouches, and all hell broke loose. A bunch of sonic booms caused them to fall to the ground stunned, the creature’s equivalent of concussion grenades he guessed. But for once the creature had not prepared fully. The Leinians fell like bricks, clearly paralysed by the noise, but to him it was just a shockingly loud fire cracker. He fell, shocked, hands over his ears, but after the first few seconds his prone posture became a ruse. Instincts born of training told him to play dead. He knew from years of being caught in tight situations that this was his chance. His only chance to act.
He heard the creature approaching, the rustle of its many feet a sure give away. And then he saw it through the corner of his eye, prodding the others one by one, making sure they were out of it. It prodded Cyrea and he had to restrain himself, hoping that she was all right as the creature had promised. Then
it prodded him. The feeling was like being poked with a solidified jelly, but he held his piece and the creature moved on.
He heard its feet rustle as it reached the next one and prodded, and then rustle again as it moved on. In that instant David knew his moment had come.