by Ken O'Steen
Chapter 7: Truth
Angela saw my eyes; saw that only the lack of gravity had prevented me from falling. As Cutter and her aide Petrie entered the room Angela pulled me away. Moving quickly she shut off our mics and held me against the wall, the glass of our helmets touching.
Inside my mind had gone blank, my skin was drenched in sweat and my stomach was churning. My wrist monitor was beeping indicating a raised heart and breathing rate. Anger began to fill me, my hands clenched into fists.
“Professor. I need you to stay calm and tell me exactly what you are feeling right now.”
“I know him Angela. An alien from a hundred years ago. How do I know him?!” There was anger in my voice, a quivering of rage and confusion.
“You remember your pills, the ones they make you take every day? Some of them are memory suppressants,” She spoke frantically, glancing back to make sure we were alone in the corridor, “I replaced them with placebos when we began our search for this ship.”
“But why?” Angela was frantic, a crazed look in her eyes, desperate to make me understand something. But what?
“Remember the day you met Captain Anderson. He told you you were the clone of some of the most brilliant minds to exist on Earth. It was only partly true. About ten years ago humans developed the theory of conscious cloning, to clone consciousness into any form. Using alien DNA they created humans capable of higher comprehension.”
“But why? How did they have alien DNA if the mountain was abandoned?” My eyes widened, “Because it wasn’t abandoned was it? The room at the base, the only one still drawing full power.”
“It’s filled with pods similar to our stasis ones. My grandfather was a part of the original research team when they discovered the chamber. He fought to wake them, to help them but in the end only a single alien was removed from stasis. The alien was unable to communicate with them and became frantic when it saw its kind left to die in the stasis pods. They could not get it to help them or to calm so they killed it. Humans have been trying to understand your technology ever since but it is still beyond us. So they made you, hybrids capable of bridging the gap.
You must not speak of this yet, you must remain neutral for now. This information could get both of us killed. The reason I am here, the reason for aides is to keep a close eye on our subjects. To prevent them from finding the truth.”
“And A90? Will you tell me about him now?” Despite it all, no matter what this strange world threw at me I remained plagued by A90.
“I loved him. I loved him and they terminated him for it. I will not let them take you from me too.”
I saw Cutter emerging from the room and quickly turned Angela’s mic on, “We have to tell the others, stop them from taking their pills.” I turned my own on, “Let’s find the engine room. Just follow my lead, we’ll do what needs to be done and get back safe.”
Angela nodded, her face full of fear but also relief. Relief that I was remaining calm, that I knew what to do and that I knew she was on my side. My old dreams of Angela in danger, of her in pain were at the forefront of my mind.
Inside the engine room Angela distracted Petrie while I pulled Cutter to the side.
“What is it?”
“Stop taking your blue pills. Just trust me and talk to me when you remember.” I let her arm go and walked off to begin examining the engines.
A child, pale and blue with black eyes the size of saucers and absolutely beautiful was held in her arms, swaddled in blankets as she chirped lovingly to him. He chirped back, sleep slowly taking hold. Across their small apartment her husband was preparing dinner. Pre-packaged, synthetic food that required only a couple minutes of heating.
Everything had changed, the world around them a darker place. Radiation coating the planet, plants unable to take root in the poisonous soil, even the air held dangerous amounts of oxygen now. Direct exposure would kill you in a matter of minutes. Confined to the mountain stronghold they waited as the days wore on with no evidence of day or night, just the phospholuminescence brightening and fading. Fear seemed a part of the every day. Fights had already broken out three times in the halls.
“Must you patrol tomorrow?” The warbles, clicks and chirps of varying frequencies conveyed the question to her husband. He looked at her then down at their son, his black eyes saddened, a sweet smell emanating from his glands.
“You know I must. We must keep the peace and wait for word.”
She rose, lifting their son up she set him down in his bed and returned to their living space as her husband set down their dinner.
“It has been two months and no word. Where are they? Surely someone would have responded by now, given us any bit of hope.”
“There is still hope. Thirty ships, thirty planets. One of them will be hospitable and when the colony is established they will return for us.”
A sweet smell crept its way around the room, the smell of her sadness. Her husband crossed the room on his long, skinny legs still dressed in his Captain’s uniform, and hugged his wife with long slender arms
Cutter awoke with a gasp, human tears soaking her face as she sobbed into her blankets. Three days without the pills and she almost wanted to take them again, if only to erase the memories of a husband and child long past from another life.
The hot water scalded her skin but distracted her from her nightmare. As the cool air of the biodome hit her warm skin her sadness hardened into anger.
I awoke to the doorbell. Slowly pulling myself from my dreams I glanced at the holographic alarm clock, one in the morning.
I threw a robe on and tied it up, waving my arm in front of the motion detector to open the door. Cutter stood there, hair drenched and dripping, face red and also wrapped up in a robe.
“I remember.”
I sat in the Captain’s chair aboard The Wilhelm, like a toddler at the dinner table. Everything far too big for my human form. We had breathable air to most sections of the ship, had sealed off the destroyed ones and had the systems repaired enough to get it back to Kepler. I looked around at all of them, saw the effort behind the mask of calmness as one by one they had ceased to take their suppressants and memories of an entire life of family and loved ones had surfaced.
The deep hum of the engines reverberated throughout the ship as we fired them up for the first time. The frowns all lightened slightly while the aides standing off to the side smiled openly, unknowingly. All except Angela.
“How’s the startup Professor? You ready to get this thing back to Kepler for further repairs?”
“I believe so Captain.”
“Good. We’ll follow you.”
I nodded to Cal who rose from his seat. Together we headed to the main door where Johnson and Evans stood, armed.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
My response was a needle to his neck as Cal took out Evans.
“Now Strata!” I scooped up Johnson’s gun and Cal and I herded the aides, including Angela, into a side room. Strata fired two shots at The Onyx, one crippling their engines and the second destroying their communications. They were dead in the water. One last shot and their hull was punctured, their oxygen cascading out into space. It was all over for them in less than ten seconds.
With the aides locked away I slipped my hands into the controls and we blasted away without a second thought. Abandoning their crew to die as they had abandoned our people on Kepler.