Icharus_ARC Series

by Renee Sebastian

  “And instruction manuals,” she added.

  “I don’t think we have those anymore,” he replied.

  “Allow me access to your systems.”

  I decided to trust her and added, "We can leave sooner if she does."

  Malik hesitated, but then nodded his head. “Do it.”

  Cage handed her his oculus back to her. “Does this mean that an expatriate is joining our operations?”

  “My operation,” Malik corrected him. “And I don’t think Jett wants to join anything anymore.”

  “No, I don’t think I do, but we do need food and water.”

  “I’ll show him,” Cage offered.

  “Do it, but we all depart in two oras. I’ll stay with her.”

  Cage then led me to a metal door and down several mostly deserted hallways until we reached a small bunkroom. He closed the door behind us, and I asked, "I don't see food or water here."

  “No, we’ll go there next. There is something I need to tell you.”

  I looked at his wiry beard and greased face, waiting for accusations about Kore to slop out of his mouth. Instead, he said, “You aren’t going to like this.”

  “I already don’t.”

  “Malik is not your friend.”

  “What do you mean? Are you implying that you are?”

  “No,” he said, but before he could say anything else, we heard a clinking noise from down the hall. Then he continued, “I have to make this quick. I don’t approve of what Malik is doing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Rather than answer me, he put his ear to the wall and whispered, "They are here."

  “Who?”

  “The others.”

  I grabbed his shoulder and turned him towards me, “Who? The Council?”

  “No. The non-humans.”

  “The aliens?”

  “Yes, they call themselves the Ouder. They are not like we thought they would be. They are not humanoid, but they are… other," he said with apparent disdain.

  “If there are these others, what do they have to do with Malik?” I would never have pictured him as an alien sympathizer. Not unless he could profit by it.

  “He’s going to call them to collect the girl.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “The Overseers will destroy our world if they don’t get her.”

  “What evidence do you have that Malik is involved?”

  “He is in close contact with both the Ouder and the Overseers. That part I know to be true, but the rest is a guess.”

  “Go on, I’m listening.”

  "Maybe the Overseers are working with the Council, or maybe they are both fighting over the same thing. Don't matter in the end. It wouldn't matter to me either if they destroyed Icharus, if I found safe harbor with them, and Malik will think the same way.”

  I needed more details and proof if I was going to half-believe what he was telling me. “What are they like?”

  “They’re not human, that much is certain,” he spat out at me.

  “If they aren’t humanoid, then how would a human survive on their ship?”

  "I never said that they didn't breathe air like us, although I'm still not sure what they eat," he told me, but he seemed a little less confident of himself. I could tell he hadn't thought this all the way through.

  I stared at him and said, “I don’t believe you, but if I did, how do you know Malik is affiliated with them?”

  “He is a sympathizer. If she is shinka, they are going to want her. She was never supposed to leave Senja’s labs. Malik is going to contact them, and when they come, they will take her and kill us all."

  “If what you say is true, then how can we stop them from taking her? Do we need to leave right now?”

  "There are a few of us that disagree with Malik's relationship with them." He paused and then added quickly, "Sade is going to try to commandeer one of the two ships and break away from Malik. We have room for you if you want to join us."

  “You’re not telling me something.”

  He stared at me, weighing the trust between us before finally saying, "When the Overseers come for her, we are going to try and take their ship. Ours is a hunk of hock for long-term travel. It will help us survive."

  "If they are very advanced or if their ship is heavily populated you will die." I could not believe what I was about to say but felt it was our best option. "I will help you take them on outside of this facility, but I still get one of the two ships from here.” I did not trust Cage at all, but maybe he knew something that I did not. If Malik offered me something different, I might reconsider my deal with Cage.

  “Now show me the proof of what you say. How can you prove that Malik is going to turn her over to them?”

  “Stay close and follow me.” He then led me back out into the corridor.

  Chapter 17

  Cage brought me to another room which was larger than the bunkroom I used to stay in back when I lived here. There were four black obelisks in a square formation that were a regular distance from each other. He approached one of them and swiped his hand over it. A three-dimensional playback appeared above it. Cage selected specific sequences, and then he ran his hand along a side of the device.

  We were now watching a ghost version of Malik walk away from the dispatch room and navigate the narrow hallways until he finally reached the link room. He reached over to flip a few levers and manipulate his oculus. Then something appeared above his oculus. He put it into the amplification holder, and it grew to become life-sized in front of him. It was a black, digitally distorted image of a humanoid figure.

  “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

  “I didn’t know if it would be able to be accurately picked up by our recording devices.” I reminisced when our previous leader had first installed these recording devices annos ago, just when the parts were beginning to be more easily manufactured on our planet, in turn making them affordable. These, however, did not look like they had been updated very much since then. That was before the current model of the oculi was available though, making these obsolete.

  “Maybe this one has an error code written into it?” I suggested.

  “No, look, why would Malik and the rest of the room be clearly visible, while the visitor is distorted? Besides, what it looks like is inconsequential, listen.”

  He turned up the volume by blowing air on the image, and suddenly Malik's voice rang loudly through the room. Cage adjusted it, and I listened. "Yes, when?"

  It should not have surprised me, but I next heard a garbled language spew out of the shadowy figure's mouth. Cage said, "Oh, let me fix that." Then he turned it back down and proceeded to modify the audio by adjusting filter settings through a series of knobs on the side of the device. I walked around the device to see if the image was somehow artificially implanted. It was widely believed that the Council often modified audio or visual communications to thwart fringe people like Malik, who would have stolen it to further his own pirating operations.

  Suddenly the vocal clarity sharpened and it became evident that it was not of this world, judging by the high pitched whistles and cadence. There also surfaced a much lower tone that vibrated with the whistles, which to me served no purpose. "What is that lower hum?"

  “That is part of the frequency. The best I can manage is that there is a duality to its voice. Where the higher tone we naturally hear, this one seems embedded in it. Sometimes it changes and seems almost musical, except its tonal differences. It typically has no structure to its melody. Now that I have boosted our range, we can listen to what it has to say.” Whatever this second voice was, it certainly did not sound like the stories I had heard from about the Overseers. Maybe they had changed and evolved since we left them.

  "I've broken into Malik's encrypted files and found a program to decipher what the thing is saying. He maneuvered through a few screens, and then Malik asked, "What about Kull and his people?"

  “He is looking as well,” the bl
ur said.

  “Can you make the visual on it better?” I still couldn’t make out whether this was an Overseer or something else.

  “No, I’ve tried, but I have seen one once in person.”

  “What did it look like? Like that shadow thing?” I asked.

  "Odd thing is, I can't tell you, even though I want to very much. Every time I try to spit out the words, my mind goes blank." Could be some sort of mind control. I had heard stories about the Overseers ability to manipulate people, but still, something lurched in my stomach that told me this was something other.

  I returned my attention to their conversation. “Whoever brings her to us first, shall receive dominion over a small exoplanet.”

  “A habitable one?” Malik asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll find more agents to scour the planet.”

  “The planet has already been nudged. Its time is coming to an end.”

  “So the planet is already doomed?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what if we don’t find her in time?” he asked.

  "The planet you call Icharus will flood before the sun eats it, but if we do not find her, then she too will die. We must find her. We can assimilate her biology whether she is dead or alive. Do you now understand?"

  “Yes, I understand.”

  Then the figure disappeared. I was left dumbfounded. “When was this transmitted?”

  “Six oras ago.” That must have been what we felt when we were in the parking area under my building.

  “You don’t think this is the Overseers, do you?”

  Cage looked uncomfortable, “I think something is controlling the Overseers.” If that was true, then we were all in trouble. Kull had been picking up some sort of an encrypted signal, but where was it truly originating? Was he working with these other entities too? Either way, odds that Kore would get out of this unscathed were dwindling. And I, with no incredible abilities, well, my fate was already sealed. A man with nothing to lose is a man who has everything to gain.

  • ѻ ● Ѻ • ○ ☼

  Cage brought me to the dining area and ordered food for Kore and me. It was a simple molecular gruel, but since we had not eaten in nearly a dag, and this might be the last meal we would eat on Icharus, this would taste like the finest roasted unger meat to me. They were a bovine rarity that was farmed on Sepia. The lower gravity allows their muscles to be extremely tender.

  Two other men were sitting in the corner of the cavernous room, meant for hundreds, but now only served a mere twenty, give or take a few. They were huddled together, deep in conversation, but when we walked into the room, they stopped and stared more at Cage than myself, which rubbed me the wrong way. I wanted to sit closer to them, but Cage told me to sit on the other side of the room. Soon enough, they re-engaged their conversation, but the bigger of the two kept his eyes targeted on Cage.

  Cage borrowed an oculus from one of these other men and after swiping it a few times, told me, “I’m letting Malik know that Kore needs to come and eat.”

  While he worked, it gave me a moment to reevaluate what I thought about the Council and their involvement with Kore. The Council was comprised once of officials that rotated on a bi-ano election, but that effectively ended before I was born, and now it was an elitist organization with children selected by the age of five to assume the mantle. Sure there were still elections, but the outcomes were predetermined. I honestly did not know how a future leader could be determined at the age of five. Some people speculated that the latest round of Council members were picked even before birth, using cellular matches in the incubators, but that was all hearsay. All I knew was that most people could care less, so long as their d or s-packs kept on coming. Those who did not self-medicate usually defected like Old Nage or worked subversively like Malik. Nage would be a target, but so long as Malik did not do anything too outrageous, the Council would ignore his wrongdoings.

  The real question was if Malik was still working backroom deals. Was he actively cooperating with the Council, the Overseers, or the Ouder, but in reality scamming all three?

  Cage finally finished. He handed the oculus back to the man, thanked him, and then sat with me. “Done. Malik is on his way.”

  “He’ll come with her, won’t he?” I asked.

  “I would.” He sat down across from me and looked around the nearly empty room nervously.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You are making me not trust you.”

  He stared at me and then he said, “I need my personal oculus.”

  “Why?”

  "The coup has to be timed perfectly, and my oculus has encrypted protocols that I invented. And now with your girlfriend's arrival, the timeline has just been pushed up. I have to let everyone know." Now I was in the middle of an uprising. As usual, my timing was impeccable. I hated to tell him that my side had already been chosen for me.

  “How many of you are rebelling?”

  He looked a little sheepish before he said, “Three.”

  “Including yourself?”

  Before he could answer, in walked Malik with Kore, who was still glued to Cage's oculus. Malik guided her to our table, and she sat down next to me without really looking at me.

  “I see that Cage has taken care of you.”

  “Yes, thank you.” I leaned back in my chair, relaxed but observant. “When will we be leaving the planet?”

  Malik slid a look at Kore before returning my stare. "Five oras. We don't have much of a crew left since most have already gone to Sepia or deep space."

  “Are they hoping that the Overseers will pick them up?”

  “On the overcrowded ARC? I doubt it. We are all collateral damage to them.”

  “They will be ready in one point five oras,” Kore amended.

  “We leave in five,” Malik reiterated forcefully.

  It was time to see which side he stood for. “Are you in contact with the Overseers?”

  "No." He said that a little too quickly for my liking. It would not surprise me if the Overseers were masquerading as a superior alien race to achieve their ends, or at the very least made an alliance with one. It did not bear thinking that they had fallen under the control of these so-called aliens. What mattered now was getting off this planet.

  “Frack, what made you think that?” he asked, but it was Kore who next challenged him.

  “We are moving towards the star in this system.”

  Malik grimaced at her but confirmed what I already knew. "Yes, we are. How long have you known?"

  “Only this past ora. The planet’s momentum has sped up enough for it to become noticeable.”

  Malik ignored Kore and shifted his attention to Cage, who had become immersed in his oculus, probably setting up the rebellion that was doomed with only a handful of participants. Who did Cage think they were going up against? I knew enough to know that Malik was in all probability fully aware of what Cage was doing.

  Malik sent me a significant look. “Come with me to the kitchen.”

  I left Kore with Cage, knowing full well that she could take care of herself if the need arose. I followed Malik at a casual distance until we were alone with only the food machines for company, and he said, "She is too hot for you to handle right now."

  “I promised her that I would get her off this planet.”

  “Could she take us?” he asked.

  “What do you mean? Like battle you?”

  “That is precisely what I mean. Is there a chance that we could contain her?”

  I thought about what he said, could she be contained? I thought about those hooligans in the city and the outliers, both of which she had no trouble dealing with. She could most likely man one of Malik’s vessels singlehandedly. How had Kull kept her trapped for so many annos? Or had she simply allowed herself to remain under his care?

  “Are you planning on going back on your word to help us?”

  “I am helping you, you Kuthic. What
are you thinking? She doesn’t belong to you. She is more than you or I could ever be. She is shinka. She has another destiny, a greater one. She belongs with the people who understand her unique requirements, people who can care for her. She belongs with Kull and the Council.”

  “Kull isn’t working with the Council anymore,” I informed him.

  “He isn’t?” But something in his voice led me to believe he knew full well he was not.

  “No, but she wants to be free. I thought you would understand that.”

  “I can see that you are confused about where your loyalties should lie. Understandable. She is a lovely creature, but she is just that, a creature. One that has no business with the likes of me, you, or anyone else who is human.”

  “You mean she is alien?”

  He paused but then held up a single finger. I knew what that meant.

  I turned around, but it was too late, I was hit with a charge of electricity from one of the two men whom we had seen when we walked into the mess hall. I did not even have the time to think if Kore was going to be safe or not.

  Chapter 18

  Someone kept poking me, and then I heard, “Wake up.”

  “What the…”

  “She took Malik down,” I heard Cage say.

  "Who?" I asked as I sat up, rubbing a sore spot on my head. Fracking shame to my profession if I let some muscle outwit me. I did learn a few things at least through my conversation with Malik. It stung that he would betray us, not just me – but humanity in general. I think he thought he was protecting everyone from our impending demise but never realized that she was our only way off of this sinking ship.

  I found Kore, who was standing in the doorway of the hall along with another man I did not recognize with shoulder-length black hair. A woman sat down next to me with brown hair. She dabbed something onto my scalp, and I winced in pain.

  “Good morning to you too,” she muttered.

  “Sorry, feeling out of the loop here.”

  A zealous Cage came over and said, “You should have seen her. She was amazing! Better than I could have imagined. No wonder they want her. She could be the ultimate soldier.”