Wings of Earth- Season One

by Eric Michael Craig

  “Demons!” he roared, looking straight at her. “YOU! See them! DEMONS!”

  “Put him back under,” she ordered, turning away and putting both her hands flat on the countertop. Ammo slipped up beside her. “Are you alright?

  Kaycee shook her head. “No, but I think I got what I needed.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “We need to get back to the ship,” Angel said, nodding and making sure Ethan knew that she’d gotten the ping to let them know it was time to find their way home.

  “I’m sure they think we’ve gotten lost, or drunk. Or drunk and lost,” he said, grinning. Although he wasn’t feeling lost, he was on the verge of being painless. The rum was a lot sneakier than most of what he had drunk in recent memory, and according to Magabi, you had to develop a tolerance.

  “Let me settle the tab and we can go,” Ethan said, looking around and trying to decide which way to head. Maybe he was lost after all.

  “No mon is mine,” Magabi said, standing up. “Your money is nogo here, yah. Unless you be carrying a pouch of Dabbies?” He pulled out a handful of gold and silver disks and showed them off before he headed toward the bar.

  “Coins?” Nuko said, frowning. “I don’t think I’ve seen real money since papercred folded.”

  They all wandered toward the front. It was obvious that his sense of balance was somewhat compromised, but he wasn’t the only one questioning the balance of the universe. Nuko spent a lot of extra time looking at the oddities that lined the walls and shelves and he could read that she was treading deep waters.

  “You’re thinking, aren’t you?” he asked, as he stood beside her staring at things.

  “How can I not be?” she asked. “We’ve had our reality dumped on its ass how many times in the last year? The good guys aren’t, and despite what I always knew about the universe it looks like the bad guys might be good.”

  “I’m not ready to go there,” he said. He was, but he couldn’t allow himself. Not yet.

  “Yes, you are,” she snorted. “You were a long time ago, but nothing’s pushed you hard enough to… what did Tanis call it?”

  “Declare your heart,” Angel whispered.

  “Yah that’s it. Nothing’s made you declare that you know things are wrong. To stand up.”

  “To stand up for what? Thievery? Kidnapping? Killing?” he asked, turning, and walking farther down the shelves. “This place may be different… incredible even. But it’s built on stones of blood. The rest of the universe may be screwed sidewise, but that still doesn’t make this right.”

  “Are you really sure?”

  “Frak no. I’m not sure. I’m not sure of much right now. Are you?” he asked. “Or you?” He glared at both of them and neither could look back into his eyes. Walking another half-dozen steps away, he shook his head, and turned to stare into a shelf with a display of ancient navigational tools.

  He refused to accept that somehow this was right and everything he’d believed all his life was wrong. The things he’d seen around him here seemed to be a lens that crystallized all his doubts into a single sharp moment of clarity, but his heart screamed and retreated within the shelter of his moral complacency, and he knew it.

  Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he realized it was the rum thinking and, although he hadn’t had that much, it was enough to let his inhibitions tangle loosely around him. It hadn’t been wise to let himself get to this point. He had responsibilities.

  It didn’t help that he’d been feeling something was different in the universe for a while.

  Pushing the thoughts that tugged at his moral fabric to the back of his mind, he focused on the objects on the shelf in front of him. He recognized a lot of the items as tools used to navigate on the seas of earth. Most of them were museum quality, and he reminded himself that they’d likely taken them from transport ships. Like most everything else here.

  He picked up one of the pieces. It was a complex looking tool of brass and steel. A little placard on the shelf in front of it called it a ‘sextant.’ He remembered having seen one in an educational text once, but he had no clue how it worked. He squinted through the eyepiece trying to make sense out of out how it could have worked. He turned it over a couple times in his hands before he set it down.

  The next object that caught his eye was behind a sign that called it a spyglass. It looked like a large brass telescope to him. He studied it for several seconds. At least this he understood. It was missing an end optic so didn’t work when he looked through it.

  He sighed and reached for something else. The placard in front of it didn’t have an identifier. It leapt out at him because of its oddness. Where most of the things on the shelves carried a patina of age, this one looked out of place. It was a solid cylinder of metal, resting in a cradle supported by three spindly legs. It also looked like an optical telescope, but something about it was wrong.

  He picked it up and turned it over in his hand. He had no clue what purpose it served.

  “Maybe it’s something to line up on a star to get a bearing?” Nuko said. She’d walked up and was watching him examine the artifacts.

  “I don’t think so, there are no optics and no sighting reticule. It would be impossible to get an accurate alignment.” He held it out to her, and she shook her head.

  “I don’t know if we’re supposed to be touching this stuff,” she said.

  He glanced around and only the server was paying any attention to him. She didn’t seem to be too concerned, so he held on to it for several seconds.

  I wonder what it does? he thought as he reached out to set it back on the shelf.

  An instant later, his mind exploded.

  The reality around him vanished and images of stars and planets flashed through his mind. He hurtled through space at impossible speeds. He knew he could see anything, even as he didn’t know how he’d figured that out. He shot toward a planet, and then dove through it and out the other side, blasting onward toward a blinding yellow dwarf.

  He gasped, dropping the device back onto the shelf.

  Blinking several times, his eyes cleared, and he could see a faint glow coming from the ends of the tube. “What the frak?” he whispered.

  “We need to get him out of here,” Nuko hissed. She held him upright by the arm as Angel snagged his other side.

  He wobbled as they walked him out into the open air of Tortuga’s main dome. Fortunately, reality had reassembled around him and he was sitting on a bench before Magabi caught up with them.

  “It all swings, yah mon?” he said. “Ship’s rum is strong shit. Fuck you up good, yah?”

  Ethan nodded, but as he looked up at Tanis, there was something else in his face. Something much deeper, and far more ominous.

  It felt like blood.

  But that didn’t bother him as much as he expected.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “You’ll be pleased to know it doesn’t look like they’ve gotten anything out of the Tacra Un yet,” Ethan said as Kaycee dropped into the seat across the table from him. He was staring out the front windows on the middeck lounge not thinking about anything. The lights of the industrial fabrication complex spread out over the icy wasteland a kilometer below.

  “Most of the base is free of anything that’s Shan Takhu.” Nuko glared at Ethan as she sat down at the table with two cups of coffee. “That is as long as you don’t mess with something on a shelf.”

  He swung his chair around to face the table and shrugged.

  “What?” Kaycee turned a level glare in his direction.

  “Yah, he touched something, and it knocked the piss out of him,” she said.

  “That makes two of us,” Kaycee whispered.

  Ethan raised an eyebrow, but figured he’d wait to ask.

  “I thought you both said he was safe to handle that stuff?” Nuko challenged.

  “The truth is, we don’t know,” she said. “He’s probably got some sensitivity to it now but there is no way to test that witho
ut exposing him to things we don’t have access to.”

  “Since you two are the only ones with real memories of what happened and neither one of you has explained the details, I’m a lot concerned that what I don’t know might come back and kick the frak out of us,” she said glaring at the doctor. “Knowing that somehow Shan Takhu technology finds his brain tasty is a bit concerning to me.”

  “The trauma that caused my TSD happened when I touched a very strong telepath and it rewired my brain,” he said. “When I woke up, the damage was bad enough that I ended up halfway between plusser and… STI tool.”

  “I am not a tool,” Kaycee said, dropping an eyebrow and glaring. “But that’s close to true. He has a specific synaptic deformity, and it appears to be mimicking the kind of alterations that a STIF gets to allow them to use Shan Takhu tools and technology. But because in Ethan’s case it happened spontaneously, the changes are dynamic and haven’t yet stabilized.”

  “Does that mean he really might lose his mind?”

  “His mind is a bit small, but doesn’t wander far from home, so probably not,” she said, turning the glare to a wink as she settled the score, “but Ammo and I are helping him to adjust as his brain reprograms itself.”

  “Why Ammo?”

  Ethan looked around the lounge and sighed. “Because she’s a plusser.”

  “She is?” She looked down at her coffee cup and scrunched her eyebrows into deep furrows. “Why does that not surprise me?”

  “Maybe I should do another set of scans to be safe,” Kaycee suggested, changing the subject, and settling into a serious expression. “If whatever you touched did some damage—”

  “I don’t feel like it did anything to me, it was just startling, and it knocked me off balance.”

  “Off balance you say?” Nuko snorted. “He almost flew off the deck before Angel and I caught him.”

  “What was it?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “A map? Or a tool to make maps, maybe. When I touched it, I was suddenly floating in space and… it was just… disorienting.”

  “When you turned loose of it did it shut down?”

  “I think so, but I don’t know.”

  “Was it on when you touched it, or did you do something to turn it on?”

  “I picked it up and held it for several seconds and nothing happened. I was trying to figure out what it was and—”

  “You asked it what it did,” she finished. “But you don’t speak Shan Takhu. You shouldn’t be able to activate something that’s off.”

  “I don’t know. I just wondered what it was, and the next thing I know it was showing me the inside of a star. And a planet. That’s not a pleasant thing to experience with a brain full of Tortuga rum.”

  “I had to learn how to speak the language before they let me touch anything at the institute,” she said. “And then I had to concentrate for hours to get my mind to make it work.”

  “What about my Urah Un?”

  “Those are human built versions of a Shan Takhu tool. They operate a bit differently and they’re designed to come on automatically.”

  “You used that word before we left. What’s an Urah Un?” Nuko asked.

  Ethan flicked his wrist and peeled his off. He dropped it on the table, and it curled up like a dead five-legged spider. She leaned forward to look at it. “Don’t touch it,” he warned.

  She sat back one eyebrow raised skeptically.

  “It’s like a glove that enhances sensory capability,” he said. “It interfaces with my nervous system and lets me feel things that would ordinarily take special sensors. I’ve been learning to use it since we got back to Coalition Space.”

  “How did you get it?” she asked.

  “I got that one off one of the intruders that jumped aboard the Dawn. We shot him and the trauma caused it to drop off his hand. That was right after Qara screwed up my mind, so I ended up with it.”

  “It’s Shan Takhu?”

  “No, it’s human tech, but it’s based on things we’ve learned at the institute,” Kaycee explained.

  “I don’t wear it all the time because it still makes my head hurt sometimes,” he said, picking it up and dropping it back into the palm of his hand.

  Nuko watched in fascination as it uncoiled and fused back into his skin, dissolving into its usual almost invisible state. She shook her head in disbelief. “‘Enhances sensory capability.’ What does that mean?”

  “With it on, when I touch something, I can tell you what it’s made of, how rough or smooth it is, what temperature it is, and even if it’s electromagnetically active. If I touch a person with it, I can tell all that and some other things too.” He reached out and touched her arm. “I can feel your heart rate, your skin responses, even your blood chemistry. And a few other things, too I guess.” He shrugged.

  “It’s like an STI multitool,” Kaycee said. “It can do a lot of things, but like any other tool, it’s a matter of learning how to use it. The more you practice the better you get.”

  “Because he can use one of these gloves, he can now run Shan Takhu equipment?”

  “I didn’t expect him to do more than be able to feel that something was Shan Takhu. Almost all their tech takes an understanding of the language to access, and he doesn’t have that,” she said. “In reality, I figured you’d be better at spotting anything they might have than Ethan. At least you’ve been to the Institute and seen some examples firsthand.”

  “Well so much for that assumption,” Nuko said.

  Kaycee nodded. “Do you remember which hand you used to pick up the map tool?”

  “Not the one with the Urah Un, if that was what you’re thinking,” he said.

  She frowned. “We’ll have to study that if we can figure out how. Once we’re out of here.”

  “In that direction, did you find out anything useful from the survivor?”

  “Other than the fact that Cantos Vega is completely insane,” Ammo said, walking up and setting a small platter of yeastcake rings on the table. Quinn was in the kitchen and cooking again. She pulled a chair up from one of the other tables and sat down.

  “Is that the official medical opinion too?” Ethan asked picking up a ring. It smelled like fresh herbs and something else that Ethan couldn’t identify.

  Kaycee nodded taking one for herself. “Yah. And he has Trappist Syndrome too. We did a set of scans before we tried talking to him. He’s also showing lots of environmentally related atypical TSD.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  “Not much that made sense. Everything he said was pushed through the filter of his brain damage.”

  “You need to tell him what else happened,” Ammo said.

  She sighed and looked down at her palm. “I was linked to him, so I could monitor his response while we were bringing him up from the drugs, and there was an unusual spike in his nervous system. It kicked my butt a little bit.”

  “A ‘little bit’ translates to ‘flung her across the room and almost through the wall,’” Ammo said.

  Ethan chuckled. “Yah, I can relate.”

  “It was harsh and not typical of a unidirectional Urah Un link. I got images and a full barrage of emotion from him.” She shivered as the memories washed over her.

  “Images of what?”

  “Things he thinks he’s seen?” She shook her head. “It was utterly disconnected from any potential reality, so it has to be a result of his mental condition.”

  “He was screaming about demons and a lake of fire,” Ammo said. “And something about the sky.”

  “That’s what I saw before the connection severed. It felt like a nightmare.” Kaycee cleared her throat and shrugged. “He was running from something that came up from the ground. There was a strange green glow that looked like plasma fire all around and he was trying to get away from things he thought of as demons. They were tall thin creatures with four long spindly arms and glowing eyes. Nothing I saw was clear enough to tell what was going on, but there were p
eople all around him running too.”

  “That doesn’t sound even remotely like it fits what we saw on Starlight,” he said.

  “Not at all,” she agreed, “but we can’t know for sure what was reality and what is a product of his imagination.”

  “Where does that leave us?” Ethan asked.

  “Even if the TSD is permanent once he responds to treatment for the TSS he might be more communicative,” she said. “Unfortunately, it will take a month or more for him to even start to recover.”

  “You’re not talking about hanging around here that long?”

  “More like coming back,” she said. “Maybe we could do some fieldwork to see if we can confirm what melted his chips.”

  “Fieldwork?” Nuko asked.

  Kaycee nodded. “We need to see what really happened. If we can examine things firsthand, we might be able to unspin his framework and pull out more of the truth in what he’s saying.”

  “Right I understand that,” Ethan said. “You’re saying you want to go to Tamilis Two?”

  “I think we have to.”

  He shook his head. “If the two disappearances are connected, then there’s no way we’re getting in. The system will be crawling with FleetCom. If they’ve already finished, they’ll have it quarantined and locked down like they did with Starlight.”

  She opened her mouth to protest but realized he was right.

  “Maybe you can talk to one of the other survivors?” he suggested.

  “He was apparently the most coherent of them,” she said. “Dr. Pettyjohn said he’s the only one that can speak at all.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  She nodded, letting out a long sigh as she pushed herself back from the table and walked off.

  Ammo leaned forward and rested her chin on her elbows as she watched her disappear into the MedBay. “What if there was a way to recon Tamilis?”

  “How?” Ethan asked.