by Aaron Frale
Kal used some of the wisdom of her tribe in her management of the crew. The elders never made decisions without consulting the village. The entire tribe would meet in the center of the village to discuss important issues that affected everyone. Kal hated the discussions growing up. She would rather explore the woods or play rock ball than listen to people debate about boring topics. Now that she was a leader herself, she understood the value of listening to what the people wanted.
“It could be booby trapped,” Seayolar said as he eyed the crate cautiously.
“I find that scenario highly unlikely,” Maker said. “The crate is designed for delivery from one Teristaque vessel to another. I find it challenging to conceive of a situation where they would wish to cause harm to their ship.”
“Unless it was an assassination attempt.”
“There are far more effective-“
“We should just smash it open and be done with this pointless discussion,” Grannork snarled. Orcandus were twice the size of humans and had a jagged horn on their forehead that seemed to look sharper with their mood, which bordered on fearsome even when they were happy. Kal was taller than humans, and she was the runt of her species. However, even the tallest of her earth brothers and sisters looked like dwarfs compared to Orcandus.
“I don’t know,” Hayden said. “What do you think Captain?”
Kal hated when he called her Captain, and he knew it. She ignored the comment and said, “The crate is just a worthless shipping container until we open it. What’s inside may have value to someone.”
“What if there is a biological agent inside. What happens if we breathe it when we open that thing?” Seayolar gulped.
“Then I will heal you,” Haath-Nlo finally spoke up. He had been Kal’s cellmate. A giant bug-like creature minus some appendages took some getting used to in prison. Haath-Nlo was even more fearsome to behold than Grannork. However, unlike Grannork, he was probably the one who had values most like the peaceful ways of her village. She trusted his judgment and often went to him for advice. In addition to secreting some natural healing goo, he was also very good at alien biology, so he fell into the role of the ship’s doctor.
“There is only one thing that matters,” Haath-Nlo continued. “Once we open the crate, we may be walking a path where we can never go back. Right now, the Teristaques are not actively looking for us. They think we died in the prison riots.”
Some of the areas of the asteroid mining prison station depressurized during their escape. Prisoners and guards alike were sucked into space when an errant explosive damaged the haul. Because they had the wisdom to toss Dr. Feslerk’s body into space, there was no reason for the Teristaques to believe that any of them were alive since no other ships escaped.
“Once we open that crate,” Haath-Nlo addressed the crew, “our anonymity may end.”
“Well hell,” Hayden said. “If it’s important to the UPE then it’s got to be worth something. Let’s quit wasting time and open it. Our anonymity will end at some point when we score big enough. Today might as well be that day.”
The crew murmured their approval.
“So we are all in agreement?” Kal said.
“You know what I think,” Seayolar said. “But if the rest of the crew wants to open it, it was good to know you all.”
That was about as close to approval from Seayolar as they would get. The crew all stood, staring at her. Most of them were not used to the communal leadership style that she used. Most of the crew had been either giving orders or following orders their whole lives. While Kal had the final say in most matters, she encouraged discussions that most of them weren’t used to having. However, with a little work, she finally got them talking and even got them to voice opinions when they disagreed with her own. The silence of the crew told her that they at least agreed on one thing. They all wanted to open the crate.
“All right then,” Kal said. “Grannork.”
He pulled an Orcandu sized crowbar from the tool bay. The crate was solid metal with an electronic lock. Most species would need robotic assistance to pry it opened. Maker also could have hacked the computer component given enough time. However, Grannork’s brute force method had its advantages, especially when they all wanted to see what was inside. With a roar, the Orcandu pried the top off, and the lid clattered to the ground. They all leaned over the top to see what was inside.
There were many cubes with eight bars extending from each corner suspending a tiny piece of technology. In the center of each cube was a chip with tiny metallic tendrils coming from the middle. On top of all the chips was a data drive. It was an odd choice to include a physical data drive with the tech because most people transferred data through the galactic network. With advancements made possible by quantum entanglement, data was easy to encrypt and instantaneous to transfer regardless of the distance across the galaxy.
Data drives were archaic. Physical transfer of drives only happened in the criminal world with those who were paranoid about data theft. The Teristaques had the best quantum security in the galaxy. A hacker good enough to enter UPE servers would cost more than the data was worth. The only conclusion was that the data on the drive was worth the slow transfer of information via space travel. Not that space travel was very slow; it just wasn’t instantaneous as with the galactic network.
Most ships could travel by creating a field that bent space in the direction the ship wanted to go. Hayden lovingly referred to faster-than-light traveling as warp drive. Kal would have to watch Star Trek one of these days, as she would never hear the end of it from him if she avoided it for too much longer. Hayden had explained that they measured warp in his favorite show as a factor of one through ten. The reality was that faster-than-light travel was measured in parsecs per year. Even though humans had come a long way since the days it took months to travel from Earth to Mars, the Scitronites only sputtered at a measly top speed of 30 parsecs per year and was only safe at 20 p-years. By contrast, most of the Teristaque fleet could travel at 70 p-years.
There was an old pirate legend that one of the most notorious ships could outrun the Teristaque fleet. The captain’s name was Jax, and he was on the top of the UPE’s most wanted list. However, no one could find him. He simply disappeared. Most claimed that his ship could travel at 100 p-years, and he simply moved on to another region of space far beyond Teristaque control. 100 p-years could traverse the galaxy in 306 years. Kal had a hard time believing the rumors because no ship could travel past 72 without disintegrating under the haul stress. Kal believed that if Jax was smart enough to evade the Teristaques, he was also smart enough to retire in style.
The crew was locked in a debate about what to do with the strange objects in the crate. Grannork and Seayolar wanted to eject the contents into space. Seayolar was worried about it hurting the crew whereas Grannork thought that it was worthless. Hayden was trying to make guesses at the street value of UPE tech, and Haath-Nlo remained silent. Other crewmembers murmured to themselves. Kal turned to Maker and said, “I need you to tell me what is on that data drive. We are not making any decisions until Maker can figure out what we are dealing with.”
The crew conversation came to a halt as they all reflected on the words that she had said. Not wanting to participate in any more idle speculation, Kal nodded to Maker. He scooped up the contents of the crate. There were so many tiny containers for the chips. A normal person would have to use a cart. Maker’s current set of arms split into many tendrils, and he hauled the contents back to the science lab. The other crew dispersed.
Haath-Nlo turned to Kal after the last crew member had left the room. “I do recognize the markings on the side of the crate, and I’m sure you do, too. I trust that you can discern the difference between what is a benefit to you and what is a benefit to your crew. It’s part of the responsibility of being a leader.”
Haath-Nlo turned and shuffled toward the door. Due to his missing legs, his body dragged on the ground as he walked. The sound of his shiftin
g gait filled the silence that followed. Kal wasn’t sure she could discern the difference, though she liked to believe that she would put her crew above herself when the time came.
_______
Later that week, Kal walked into the bridge one night when she couldn’t sleep. She had a nightmare again. It was the same one over and over. She would be walking through her village. People would wave to her while they would bustle about on their tasks. Her light green skin was washed out in the sunlight, unlike her fellow villagers who had a more vibrant green skin tone. A boy with long orange hair to his neck and a girl with blue hair to her waist kicked a rock ball toward Kal, and she tossed it back into the game. A silver-haired elder smiled and nodded. On the path ahead, she would see her mother, but she wouldn’t be smiling and calm like the rest of the village. Makiuarnek, in full power armor, held her mom by the throat with one hand and pressed a gun to her mother’s head with the other.
Her mother screamed, and Kal ran to save her. No matter how fast she ran, she could never cross the distance between her and her mother. Kal screamed at the villagers for their help. They would all smile and nod like nothing was wrong. She would scream about their impending deaths. They would all go about their business.
Right as Kal struggled closer, Makiuarnek fired his weapon. Half of her mother’s head exploded outward and covered both Makiuarnek and Kal with blood. Kal screamed and sprinted the rest of the distance in what seemed like an instant. She knelt beside her mother’s lifeless form and looked up to Makiuarnek. She rushed towards him and knocked him to the ground. She yanked the two tubes protruding from his chest attached to his helmet. She’d shattered the two black round eyepieces. She pummeled the Teristaque captain with all of her strength.
Once Makiuarnek’s form went limp, she opened the armor. Her bloodied face was staring back at her.
She woke up after every nightmare in the darkness of her room, and even though the crew insisted that she had the most spacious one, her quarters seemed small. Since there was no immersive arcade gaming platform on the ship to occupy her mind, her best option was to sit on the bridge and watch the stars whiz by while they were at warp speeds. It was comforting to know there were planets out there that were safe from the influence of humans.
The Scitronite was such a small ship that it didn’t have a bridge like most ships of a larger size. It had only four seats. One for a pilot and one for weapons and sensors were a half a chair length below in the front. Raised in the back, there was a chair for science operations, and another for ship operations. Since the ship operations seat was as close to a captain’s chair as Kal would get, they had her sit there. Hayden sat in the pilot seat. The sensor and weapon seat were removed because Grannork preferred to stand, not that he would have fit in a seat made for a human anyway. Finally, Maker sat at the science station when he wasn’t in one of the ship’s many labs.
Kal was at her ops station calculating fuel to speed ratios when she heard the hiss of the door to the bridge. Hayden appeared in his pajamas. Kal thought they looked silly and didn’t understand why humans wore them. Her people slept in the same clothing they wore during the day. Nigramotoians weren’t known for their style. Their clothes were some of the most utilitarian in the galaxy. Clothing designers made a killing on working class clothes “inspired” by Nigramotoian design. Because Kal kept it simple, she usually wore a black body suit and had a utility belt. The only time she would take the suit off was to refresh the suit in the replicator and to shower in the evening. The belt was draped on a chair in her quarters at night. Hayden, on the other hand, would waste his replicator supply by picking out a new look every week.
“Can’t sleep again?” Hayden said as he wandered into the pilot’s nest.
“I’m fine. I’m just trying to ensure we have enough decrand to get to the next port.”
“You know there’s a cure for sleeplessness.” Hayden gave her a wry smile.
“You’d think human males needed sex to survive, the way you want it all the time,” Kal said as she turned to her work.
“We don’t need it to survive?” Hayden said and punched up his console. It was his same charm that made its way into her bed. While the physical pleasure of sex did give her a release from time to time, she didn’t want Hayden to think that it was anything more than a purely physical relationship. There was too much going on in her life to worry about another person. So they would meet in the halls at night and off duty from time to time. However, he would never be allowed to stay the night. She would always show him the door before then.
The first night they had sex was very similar to this one. Kal couldn’t sleep, so she was performing ship maintenance tasks on the bridge, and Hayden wandered to his station. They began talking, and the next thing Kal knew, she had her first romantic experience. Unlike human females who usually experienced pain their first time, she experienced pleasure. Kal was quite knowledgeable about the act. Because her people were so utilitarian, she learned about procreation with all of her peers during learning hours. It was a normal part of life. She didn’t know that it was loaded with so much other meaning until her encounter with a human.
Humans seemed to have all sorts of hang-ups, imply all sorts of meaning and have all these strange mating rituals. It wasn’t just a physical act for them, but some sort of complicated process where emotions got involved. Of course, there were emotions involved for Kal, too. She did feel something for Hayden, but she wasn’t sure what it was and was in no rush to define it, whereas Hayden seemed to want nothing more than to define it. He would ask all these questions like “What are we to each other?” or “What are we doing?” Kal would always answer with a realistic answer. “We are lying next to each other in bed at the moment.”
As much as Hayden seemed to need a definition of their relationship, Kal simply couldn’t provide him one. So they settled for late night encounters and hallway meetings. Tonight, however, Kal could not give him what he wanted. Hayden seemed to be able to read her better than she could read herself sometimes, and he knew when to back off. He was soon lost in his tasks at his station.
The crate weighed heavily on Kal’s mind, more so than the nightmare. She had grown accustomed to shielding herself from the nightmares and steeling her nerves. However, the crate was a new development. It was obviously intended for Makiuarnek and his crew. There were enough chips to outfit a crew and a few to spare. However, she wasn’t sure what they were used for yet. There were speculations like super soldier upgrades, interfaces for their armor, and even more outlandish ones like chips for their guns that turned them into thinking machines. The crew even inserted ideas they had seen in movies. It was not worth speculating until Maker gave them a clear answer as to the nature of the devices.
The “movie theories,” as Maker would call them when he rejected a hypothesis from the crew, came from Hayden’s movie night. He made sure the crew always had leisure time, and he always had ideas to fill up the night. At first, Kal agreed with Grannork that movies were a waste of time and so was leisure. Slowly, she began to see the appeal. The crew seemed to work more efficiently when they had time to unwind. It was nice to get caught up in someone else’s story and forget your own, even if it was only for a brief moment. Human storytelling was pretty short and concise for the most part. Unlike some species, humans kept most of their stories in the two-hour range. The Larthneelarloloianshettiks would perform plays that would last for thirty-six hours before their first break. They had to invent entirely new playhouses for offworlders.
When she finished calculating the fuel ratios, she punched in oxygen numbers. She reconfigured to conserve oxygen even though they didn’t need to. They had more oxygen than fuel thanks to her replicator heist. Maker and Grannork took the oxygen reserves from the dwelling on the dwarf planet in addition to other various items as well as a few coinchips. While physical money was a relic of the past, coinchips were a digital currency much like an ancient Earth currency called bitcoin. The coinchips were li
ttle cards with microchips that stored a value of cash on them. They could be refilled, but most people would just throw them out and purchase a new one from the vast coinchip ATM network across the worlds. The coinchip vendor skimmed a little off the top when refilling or creating new coinchip cards. It was a scoundrel and thief favorite because the vendors converted currency from almost all known worlds, and each card was completely anonymous. It was one of the few currencies that could be traded both in Teristaque controlled stations and Shusharshian Collective stations.
After she was done with oxygen ratios, she pulled up the navigation charts. They were taking a desolate route to an out of the way station. The route on her nav screen was a nonsensical route through vast empty regions of space, zigzagging and crisscrossing on itself. The Teristaque would no doubt be watching for vessels leaving the Tricore vicinity. Even a neutral ship like hers would be searched on the major shipping routes. Their one saving grace was that the Tricore sensors had not registered their ship. Each day they traveled through the void without an encounter with another vessel put them more and more at ease.
Kal knew they couldn’t fully relax until they got to the space station to refuel. Her destination was a Veban fuel depot that was neutral with the UPE. However, neutral meant that the Teristaques had no reason to take over their homeworld. Vebans were a trader race with limited technology. They bought and sold human decrand on their many stations peppered throughout the galaxy, so it was an amicable relationship. However, should the Vebans ever have a dispute with the United Planets of Earth, they would be annihilated within a day or forced to join the UPE. Even though humans dominated the UPE by a vast majority, there were other races in the UPE, too.