Of Bravery and Bluster

by Scott Kelemen

  Tricia objected, “But they do communicate. We are sure of it.”

  Johanna agreed, “Remember our introduction two months ago? The bias was two-fold. When humans emote, we change color as our blood flow is interrupted or enhanced. We blush or go pale. Our speech patterns are rife with descriptive terms like ‘green with envy’, and other medical symptoms like deficient livers or hypothermia can change us yellow or blue. All of those are non-rational clues and body-language. So, we assumed that the color changes of the Adonlaeydians were the same, functioning to accent the vocalizations we couldn’t understand.”

  Sheffeld was following her. “When in truth, it was the other way around.”

  Johanna nodded, “I suspect in time, we will find the two are more of a blend. Our teeth chatter when we are cold, as well as turning our skin blue. When we flush with anger, we might also scream in rage. But it will be important not to assume there will be a blend. That sort of bias was standing in our way in the first place.”

  She called up the next screen, “With that reversal in mind, I began to look for complexity and patterns in their coloring. Instead of assuming their choices in hue are like an emotive personality, I assumed they were a deliberate choice of what they are choosing to say. This one here, she always has a green pattern of waves that she keeps directed generally toward the others. This might be a continual reminder for calm, coming from the leader of their social group. Like how a leader amongst us might give small encouragements and try to bolster our spirits.”

  Tricia had ceased scoffing at the presumption of this cadet and was instead following closely. “Have you made any progress on finding real patterns?”

  “My example of anger wasn’t a guess, Ma’am. Given their dislike of us, it is one of the more common patterns I had to study, and as such one of the first I managed to decipher. Of course, my understanding remains incredibly crude. The subtle shapes and choices of hue allow for almost infinite complexity. It will be the work of years to achieve any sort of full fluency.”

  She pulled out a vest and slipped it over her body. On the front, a liquid display shimmered with readiness. She slid a pair of computer-augmented glasses over her eyes as well. “But I have developed this prototype. The shield will display colors based on my inputs, and the visor will interpret the color-words as much as I have been able to discern. Microphones will absorb their vocalizations and present an emotional context. Combined, we should be able to have rudimentary conversations with them.”

  Now Tricia was completely captivated. Eager, even a little demanding, she leaned in close, “Have you trialed it yet?”

  Johanna quirked her head to one side, in disbelief the scientist would ask that. “We aren’t allowed into the enclosure. Nor can we reverse the viewing screens to let the Adonlaeydians see us in return.”

  Seeing Tricia totally engrossed with inspecting the electronic details of the prototype, Sheffeld asked the next logical question, “Have you run any tests at all?”

  Johanna answered, “There is a projection display inside the enclosure, and I have attempted to display colors and broadcast sounds that should have been requests for communication. I haven’t received any response, except once when I believe the youngest of the Adonlaeydians flashed a color sign along with a rude noise that required very little interpretation. I believe their anger might be preventing their cooperation.”

  The air handling units inside the lab crashed to a stop.

  Pre-occupied, Tricia didn’t react to that important failure. Generally, air supply on space stations was something that needed to be constant. In the lab, that constant flow was even more important for any ongoing experiments. “We gave you permission to inject stimulus into the enclosure?”

  Johanna nodded. “It wasn’t frozen out.”

  Tricia wasn’t exactly suspicious. She had intended to ensure the students had no privileges like that, but Johanna didn’t seem the sort to hack her way into gaining computer access she wasn’t meant to have. “Well, no harm done -”

  The lights pulsed to full brilliance, and then flickered out. Ruddy red emergency lights throbbed reluctantly into life, awoken from sleep as if they had never been tested before.

  Sheffeld glared at the light sources as if they would obey a mental demand. “What are we looking at here, Tricia? The air’s down and now the lights.”

  The scientist was a little shaken. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen this sort of failure before.” She shot back at Johanna, “You did nothing? You didn’t push past any of the security barriers?”

  Johanna was about to reply in the negative when Marrah gasped from the corner. “She did!” Her eyes were fixated on her console.

  Johanna had learned a lot in the last few years. Dianne had made a point of educating her friend on some of the stranger social conventions that existed. Outright lying never failed to stun Johanna into silence, anathema to her very nature.

  Her pause gave time for Marrah to blurt out, “I checked it, Ma’am! We didn’t have access to the enclosures at all until a week ago when someone forcefully changed the rights.”

  Tricia whirled to stab an accusing finger at Johanna, “You broke through security!” She demanded of Sheffeld, “Does she have the skills to do that?”

  Johanna knew what the answer would be, if her superior was at all honest. For the rest of her career, anyone who had authority over her would have access to the general details of what had happened during her kidnapping back in her first year at the Academy. The full details behind Glen Sanders’ actions would be buried in the protected files, but the fact that she had waged a small war against Sanders inside a space shuttle’s computers and won would be well known.

  She never learned whether Sheffeld would give up the truth.

  A helpful computer voice passed a quiet warning, “Containment between main enclosure and observation laboratory ceased.”

  Marrah was working feverishly in the corner, growing more frantic by the moment. “Ahh, this says a cascade failure is underway. I can’t stop it! This wasn’t meant to -”

  The display covering the left wall of the enclosure split apart and retracted several meters, revealing a cargo door behind. The blue warning outline flickered and died as the magnetic seal failed.

  Inside the Adonlaeydian enclosure, the same crimson emergency lights were the only illumination, dark even by their Tauron home world standards. Violent patterns of rainbow light flooded both rooms as five massive spider-limbed forms sent forth a storm of speech blended with banshee keens of raw, alien emotion. The five shapes converged on the opposite side of the wall.

  Sheffeld snapped at Tricia, “Can those creatures see that door from the other side?”

  Tricia was scurrying for a computer, “Yes! Whatever your cadet did, she activated the entrance routine! But we haven’t anesthetized them! I can do that from here. Just give me –”

  Metal screeched as chitinous spears that were their legs wedged in between the durasteel doors. Nothing made of simple flesh could hope to do more than dent that metal which was only a grade lower than full battlesteel. But the aliens clawed at the cracks no longer protected by seamless magnetic locks with literally inhuman strength. They dragged the doors apart centimeter by centimeter.

  Tricia froze. “The sedative is a vapor! I can’t release it with the doors open!”

  Sheffeld bellowed at them all, “Get out of the lab! Get out now!” Her hands went to the magnetic acceleration pistol at her hip, drawing the MAAC weapon in one smooth motion.

  Marrah merely trembled in place. Johanna darted to her side and dragged her from her seat and along the far wall of the lab.

  Through the crack in the enclosure door, a single long limb jabbed in and grasped for a hold. The powerful leg smashed through one of the observation columns, the force of it scattering Ferris, Paula, and Nadia to the ground. Part of the console smacked into Paula’s forehead. Her petite body flopped like a wet blanket onto the deck.

  Nadia scrambled to her
side, “Ferris! Get over here! Help me get her out!”

  The other cadet barked a laugh at the ridiculous idea of staying near the angry machines of death ripping their way into the lab. He scrambled on all fours toward the outer doors.

  Tricia yelled at him, “Seal the doors! They can’t be allowed out!”

  The enclosure doors groaned in torment as they were dragged open another centimeter. The bulk of a glowing Adonlaeydian swelled into view, its limbs already reaching to grip the decks and ceiling to drag its body into the main lab.

  Sheffeld sighted down the MAAC and fired a round at an armor-piercing setting. She knew it risked breaching the moon-based station’s hull and letting in the lethal vacuum, but anything less wouldn’t stand a chance of penetrating.

  The round punched into the Adonlaeydian, shaking its entire body as cracks webbed outward along its exoskeleton. Pure rage that transcended the communication barrier snarled out from the alien. With a flex of its forward limbs, it launched itself toward the navy officer.

  Sheffeld stood her ground, disciplined as she waited for the MAAC’s ready light to cycle into the green. The pistol chimed, and she ripped off another bullet at near point-blank range. It blasted into the alien’s head, killing it instantly. But nothing could stop the mass coming at her. A half-ton of enraged spider swept her into one of the still-standing columns and crushed her into a broken heap.

  Behind the first, four more aliens streamed into the lab, their multiple limbs working in a ghastly sort of poetry of motion. Two framed in around Tricia, another skittered for the door, while the last edged toward Johanna and Marrah huddled along the far wall.

  Tricia fell backward to her backside, pushing away until her back pressed against one of the computer stations. She slapped at the comm link panel until it chimed. “Command, we have an enclosure breach! Send...” She trailed off as two growling Adonlaeydians closed in from either side. She was at a loss for how to finish that sentence. What could they send? Her skin lit up with competing patterns of color as the aliens shone dazzling streams of incomprehensible speech in her face.

  Ferris reached the door first and hammered on release, ignoring what Tricia had said about sealing them in. He slammed his fist against the lab doors as the computer processed the command to scroll open. He cried in panic and pressed against the center gap, willing the doors to part for him.

  The Adonlaeydian charging after him misgauged its ability to bite into the lab’s floor and ceiling. Trying to stop, it skidded into the durasteel. Cadet Ferris Fulum’s panicked scream was cut off sharply as the bulk slammed into him a heartbeat before the doors creaked open. The door finally parted, sending the two spilling into the outer corridor with the weight of the alien crushing even more fully down on the now silent human body beneath it.

  Marrah crouched in behind Johanna as another creature loomed over them, surging a radiant message over its skin. The single alien out-massed the two cadets by tenfold, and turned their whole world into a chromatic storm.

  Johanna’s refined senses were dazzled by the combined brilliant display and shrill audible emotives. She blinked in surprise when her prototype display began to feed text in front of her eyes. It was broken, totally overwhelmed by the complexity of what the Adonlaeydian was sending at her. But it was real. “Want! Where? Tell! Explain! Lost! Demand!”

  This was not a string of death threats. Johanna felt as much as saw the pattern to it. The logical core of her, the undefinable fragment of her that retained calm in the face of the monster threatening her, made her fingers twitch, typing out a curt message of her own. “What do you want? What are you looking for?”

  Her prototype chest-plate began to flash the patterns for her, but before the message could broadcast a sound of inhuman frustration carried over the lab. The two Adonlaeydians crowding Tricia had reached the end of their patience. After years of humiliating experimentation, that patience had only been paper thin. Unable to make her understand, one of them snarled into her face and smashed a hard-shelled leg into her head. Any stronger and her skull would have caved in. As it was, she crumpled to the side, the consciousness blasted right from her.

  A sound of summons and a new, orange-tinged message glowed forth from the alien at the door. In the distance, the sound of boots on steel could be heard. In a jumbled rush of limbs, the quartet burst through the door and disappeared in a knot of colored flesh as they talked in feverish haste about what could come next.

  The lab was plunged into a strange silence. That silence was momentarily broken as a squad of security forces sprinted by dressed in battle armor, but soon faded as they carried on in pursuit.

  Nadia was huddled over Paula, trying to revive her.

  The smaller woman roused with a groan, waving Nadia away. “I’m fine. Damn, my head hurts.”

  Hearing her talk put Nadia’s mind at ease. Nadia lunged at the nearest comm panel and called out, “Medical help to the lab! There’s, umm, at least three hurt! Maybe four!” She glanced at the heap of the alien, and Sheffeld buried beneath. She didn’t dare risk looking at the crumpled mass of Ferris, all that was left after the Adonlaeydian who crushed him had lifted off and departed with its sister-creatures. Nadia hung her head, coughing. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  From the comm-link, the response was crisp, orderly, too orderly to be real after the sudden chaos. “Help is on the way. Stay where you are while we deal with the containment breach.”

  Johanna found the description strangely distorted from reality. Containment breach? This was more like a prison break, and they were on the side of the guards. But something about the messages that were still printed on her visor made her wonder if that imprisonment was righteous.

  She had decided to speak before she was even fully conscious of why. Instinct was guiding her, the instincts her tutors back home had taught her to follow when it came to understanding what could not be put into words. Call it empathy. Call it intuition. Call it deduction. More likely, a blend of them all twisted together inside her mind. “We need to find them. Help them find what they’re looking for.”

  Marrah gawked back at her. “Help them? Are you serious? They just killed Ferris!”

  Paula lent her support, “Not to mention the Lieutenant Commander who was trying to protect us!”

  Johanna didn’t snap back at them. Her rational mind was merging with her instincts, and her normal calm was returning quickly. Her response was measured, if spoken quickly given the limited time. “See it from their side! Sheffeld was trying to kill it, and I swear Ferris looked like an accident, not an attack! They didn’t kill Doctor Gavalt. Who would they have more cause to hate? These are not Adonlaeydian soldiers. They are civilians, captured and held against their will for years. If they were humans, they’d be desperate to escape, or maybe get a little revenge. But that isn’t what they are after! They are looking for something! That is what is making them dangerous, right now. They’re frantic to find it. The want it more than to escape with their own lives. What could that be?”

  If anyone could find empathy for an alien race, it would be Nadia’s charitable heart. Her voice softened as she realized the truth. “Family. Maybe a child.”

  Paula caught on. “You think there are more of them here? We haven’t heard anything about another enclosure, not in two months on-station.”

  Johanna admitted that truth, but added, “That doesn’t mean there isn’t another complex. An annex off-limits to us. We’ve never been outside on this moon. There could be an entire city on the surface out there and we’d never know if they decided to hide it from us.”

  Marrah blurted out, “What are we talking about here? Let the soldiers handle this! I am not going after those things!”

  Paula’s natural shyness faded away in a sudden surge of anger. She stabbed an accusing finger Marrah’s way. “Damn right, you’re not! I wouldn’t trust you near us, not after you let the damn aliens out of their cell!”

  “What?” Her face was painted more guilt
y than shocked.

  Paula laughed at the pitiful attempt to cover. “Don’t even try to deny it. What under the stars made you try and blame Summer for screwing up computer code? I don’t care how you played with the system. No-one’s going to believe Johanna was to blame, and they’ll find what you did. Just sit here and wait for the investigators to burn you down for trying!” She looked at Johanna, “But there’s a big difference between not letting them out and actively helping these creatures out. Why, Johanna? Why would we do that?”

  Nadia added, “How do we even know what they want? If we find them, why wouldn’t they just kill us too for getting in their way?”

  Johanna gestured to her creation. “It was primitive, but I understood them. I just didn’t have time to get a message back.”

  “So?”

  Johanna knew she was leaping to conclusions far too quickly. She couldn’t explain this and expect to be believed to the standards of academic rigor. But she knew. She just knew. “The Adonlaeydians are linked to each other. They’ll be trying to rely on that, but our technology will defeat them. They will need us. If we want to find out what’s going on, we’ll need them.”

  “So, we wait -”

  Johanna had no time to be patient, so rushed on. “If there is a hidden enclosure, then the scientists are hiding it for a reason. They’ll bury knowledge of it. Maybe even hold up what Marrah was doing to discredit us. If the truth needs to get out, the whole trust needs to get out. We have to act now.”

  Nadia pointed to the corridor. “There is a whole squad of soldiers between us and those creatures.”

  Johanna winced at the choice of words. Creatures. Monsters. Words that presumed they were nothing but killing machines lurking in the darkness of space. Even in those she might call friends, the xenophobia of humanity was so close to the skin. “All they can do is follow, and they’ll think this is an escape. We know better. If you were trying to conceal a hidden annex to this station, where would you put it?”