by Ken O'Steen
Chapter 9: A New Home
My biosuit was warm, I was sweating and my nerves were frayed. We had sealed off a section of the ship and made the atmosphere breathable for our Originals. The pods had been moved and we were only three days into our journey yet we had already lost one. I didn’t know whether to be thankful that it wasn’t my Original or not.
“We’re ready.” Cutter, Meta and Strata were with me. I nodded to Cutter and she began the process to bring the aliens out of stasis.
Liquids drained into the I.Vs, atmosphere rushed into the stasis pods as their lids opened. One by one they regained consciousness. Their long, limber limbs removed the needles from their arms and they lifted themselves from the pods. Their blue bodies towered several feet above us and I gazed in awe as their black eyes all turned in our direction. They wore suits of black and dull yellow.
Their voices consisted of several different frequencies at once, a low rumbling and high warbling as they spoke to us. It felt so long since hearing those familiar sounds though I knew I had never heard them before. I smiled at them and handed the closest a datapad. Her large hand swallowed it up. She gazed at it for a few minutes, reading the report we had written up and holding the small screen close to her eyes. She turned to face her fellows and spoke the words aloud. Whatever thoughts were crossing their minds were hidden behind their skeletal faces.
“Please, leave us.” She spoke in her language, our language, as she turned back to me. I nodded at the request and we left their part of the ship as they went through the datapad.
Angela ran her fingers through my hair as she lay beside me. The room was lit dully and her hair shone golden at the edges. A look of concern crossed her face.
"What is it?"
"Your hair is greying."
"Isn't that what happens when humans age?"
"Yes." But the look of concern did not leave her face so I kissed it away.
I thought I had rid Angela of her worry but first thing in the morning she ran some tests and blood work on all of us. I watched her work, going through the files, comparing, making notes. She buried herself in her work, ignoring my attempts at conversation. I left her alone and began my own work. There was everything on this ship required to start a colony, a permanent colony but it was old and hadn’t been turned on in decades. I started working my way through all the machinery, double checking that everything functioned. A few hours in Angela found me, her face ashen.
"What's wrong?" I came to her side, held her close but she pushed me away and took a breath.
"You're dying."
"What do you mean?"
“You were created to serve a purpose. I found a code in your DNA and it was activated shortly after we attacked The Onyx. It's a termination code. Your aging process has sped up and I can't find a way to deactivate it."
"How much time do we have?"
"It's impossible to know exactly. You'll all be slightly different. But no more than five months."
I nodded in response, too in shock to really process the information, "Do the others know?"
"Not yet. Should I tell them?"
"I don't know. For now, let's not."
"They'll be curious about why I ran tests on them."
"It was just a general health checkup. It's been a while since we had one."
“Ok." There were tears in her eyes. I couldn't bear the thought of her hurting and I pressed her against my chest and held her as she sobbed, "It's all going to be fine. We're fewer than five weeks from a suitable planet. Once the Originals are dropped off we can get you home, to earth. But I am going to teach you how to pilot the ship. We have to face reality that you will be on your own the entire journey home."
She sobbed harder and I held her painfully close. Her body went limp and I scooped her up into my arms and took her to our room.
Later that night, unable to sleep I watched her frail form breathing rhythmically in the dark. The thought of losing her, even though she was the one losing me, was painful to acknowledge. Dying didn't scare me, it was an inevitable fact of all life, it was the thought of never seeing Angela again that was causing my grief.
The following weeks felt cursed. I spent every waking moment preparing the ship, working with our Originals and teaching Angela everything about the ship she would need to know. We were forced to tell the others but they handled it better than I, after all, they weren't leaving anyone behind.
Our Originals, still weak from prolonged stasis were slowly regaining their health, day by day. Their skeletal forms filled out as they received proper nutrition, their pale skin darkened but I was concerned with their mental health more than anything. Cutter ran tests on them to figure out the exact side effects of the stasis. One of which was short-term memory loss. They seemed to have an easy time remembering things they had learned before they entered stasis, but to learn anything new was a challenge. They would often ask the same questions again and again so I had Corvus begin building a library of all the things they would need to know, of every question they asked and every answer we gave them so when we were gone they would have it easily accessible. With everything completed we entered orbit and prepared to eject the portion of the ship that would become their new home. It was the original destination of the ship before it had malfunctioned. There were no others of our kind on the planet, if any had survived they would be off elsewhere in the galaxy, but it was a hospitable planet for them and capable of sustainable resources.
I watched as most of the ship detached, metal squelching and shuddering as the ejection procedures engaged. I sat at the bridge with Angela and watched as this whole new ship descended to the planet’s surface. The atmosphere was suitable for them and we had already found the most abundant location in which to land. The others were aboard the descending ship, choosing to live out what time they had left helping to establish the colony. We all knew that their breathable air would run out long before their expiry dates were reached but they would have a week, maybe a day more before that happened.
Only Angela and I remained, watching silently, her small, soft hand held in mine, "Would you like to do the honors?" I asked her when the landing craft became no more than a speck against the blue haze of the planet. She slipped her hand from mine and sat down in the pilot's chair. Her hands slipping into the glowing controls, into the gel like material that picked up electrical impulses from her brain. Engaging the engines she turned the ship around and put in the co-ordinates for Kepler 84C, a pit stop on our way to earth.
Chapter 10: Protecting Secrets
The biodome sat peacefully against the barren landscape, all optional systems shut down to preserve power and air. The remaining soldiers and scientists were down there. No doubt they had already sent word of what happened to earth. Ships would have been launched, with full crews to bring us rebels back under power. Still, it would be four long years before a ship arrived. I was thankful that I had kept Angela's part in this hidden.
My hair was completely grey now, wrinkles covered my face and my muscles were breaking down, making walking and other tasks almost impossible. I had spent the last week in bed but Angela helped me to the bridge so that I might witness our final act of vengeance. She lowered me into the chair and kissed my forehead gently.
The weapons came online; Angela charged them to full power as the ship descended through the clouds. Breaking through she hovered a couple hundred miles above Kepler.
She targeted the mountain and released. Four balls of spinning red left our ship and shot towards Kepler. I watched the screens to see it smash into the side of the mountain and we watched as the honeycombed mountain slowly collapsed inwards on itself. Angela targeted the biodome. I could feel my breathing slowing, my heartbeat too. My eyelids were becoming heavy. Angela was too distracted by the explosion of oxygen that marked the destruction of the biodome to notice but it didn't matter. We knew this was coming, and she knew how I felt. I was only thankful that I saw the last of it through. I ma
de it to the end and my people were safe.
Angela sat a moment, watching the flames die down, the column of black smoke billowing upwards. She knew that the Professor was gone but could not bring herself to look at him. It was done, everything. It was all over and things had been made right. The last ten years of her life had been dedicated to this moment. To finishing what her grandfather had started decades earlier. What she had never expected was to fall in love, and to lose him so quickly.
There was only one thing left now, one thing that the Professor had subconsciously overlooked in his love of her. If she took The Wilhelm back to earth she would be delivering the most advanced piece of technology the aliens had to offer to Earth. The information available on this ship was far too dangerous, her grandfather had taught her that. If this ship was allowed to fall into human hands it would compromise the location of the new alien colony and all their hard work would be undone. It would give humans advanced knowledge of propulsion and weaponry, something that could be truly catastrophic to other alien species throughout the universe. She had spared the Professor most of the true history of what had really happened on Kepler 84C, told him only what he needed to know to free his people and be free himself.
Angela brought the ship closer to Kepler, letting gravity lead her downwards. The ship began to plummet. She watched as the blue polluted smog whisked across the screen. By the time she was through the worst of it she had only a few seconds to take in the brown wasteland rising up to meet her.