They were as tall as standing polar bears. Yet instead of a fur-covered body, the Suhkai were covered by a gray-green scaly skin akin to that of an alligator. The connection with reptiles or dinosaurs was further reinforced by their elongated heads, snout-like noses and dark eyes. Yet while their overall appearance was lizard-like, their facial expressions had distinctly human qualities. Morgan could detect smiles from their mouths that caused their brows to furrow and dimples to form on their cheeks.
On their thick but muscular bodies, these two wore sleeveless tunics that extended down to mid-thigh, with a rounded cut-out at the center of their chests to expose a bulged feature of their bodies. These ribbed bulges looked to Morgan like convex stereo-speaker woofers. There were other pad-like bulges on their forearms and thighs, though these were smooth instead of scaly. It might have been a trick of the light, but it seemed to Morgan that the pads were rising and falling in rhythm with one another. He thought of the injuries Carillo had suffered to her arms and legs and wondered if these pads served a special purpose.
Morgan tapped Nick on the shoulder. “Is there some sort of customary greeting? We tried to introduce ourselves in the decontamination chamber but they didn’t seem to understand what we were doing.”
Nick laughed. “Under normal circumstances, there would be a long ceremony, but they understand our time is limited. Just follow my lead.”
“Okay.”
Maggie hovered in front of the chest bulge of the Suhkai on the left. She glowed, and the bulge vibrated in response, as did the sloped holes on both sides of the alien’s crested head. Maggie then drifted over to the other, and the exchange was repeated.
Nick stepped forward and raised his hand. He cupped the chest bulge of the Suhkai on the left and lowered his head. The alien’s bulge vibrated powerfully enough to make Nick’s arm tremble.
Nick pulled his hand away when the trembling ceased. “Your turn. Just place your hand on Haula’s sonar. Don’t squeeze it — it’s not a tit. And don’t rub it, it’s not Buddha’s belly. Just place your hand on it like you would on someone’s forehead to feel their temperature. He’ll pulse magnetic energy. They do it to feel your magnetic field. It’s sort of like reading your aura. When he pulses, say hello in your mind. Maggie will translate.”
“They don’t speak?”
“They do, but not in any tongue you’d understand, and believe me, you don’t want them to try speaking in their language. Their screeches are so intense they’ll burst your eardrums. Found that out the hard way.”
Morgan did as he was told. The alien’s bulge felt different than he’d expected. He’d thought it might be supple, but it had a shell-like hardness. He lowered his head and waited, and after a moment the bulge vibrated, sending a sensation down his arm like a stream of water. It spread across his shoulder blade and ascended his spine.
He projected a thought. “Hello, Haula. I am Paul.”
Maggie’s translated response flowed back immediately. “Untu, Skywalker.”
Morgan pulled his hand back and looked up at Haula. The alien smiled, showing his jagged teeth, and his crest tubes vibrated as if he was laughing.
Morgan turned to Nick. “He called me Skywalker.”
“Yeah, you’ll find they know a lot about you and your crew. We had plenty of time to catch up on y’all during the last leg of our trip. Now, careful when you touch Zoor. Those bumps across her abdomen are tits. Suhkai aren’t real keen on humans touching them there. Again, found that out the hard way.”
Her sonar felt no different than Haula’s, nor did her vibrations. But her greeting was more expansive. “Untu. We have looked forward to this union on behalf of our dear friend, Nick. He needs your help. We hope you will give it.”
CHAPTER 19: SCATTERED
Major Julia Carillo’s cabin — the Rorschach Explorer
Drifting at all-stop in the asteroid belt
September 10, 2019
Shouting hadn’t worked. Neither had the slaps across her face. But finally, Shilling’s shaking paid off. Carillo began to rouse from unconsciousness.
“Come on, come on! Wake up, Major, wake up!”
Carillo’s eyes cracked open, and she moaned.
“That’s it, that’s it! Listen to my voice, Major. Focus on my voice.” Looking toward the ceiling, he said, “Thank God.” Then he laid a bag of ice on her forehead and continued to coax her awake.
Carillo moaned again and reached up to her head. In slurred speech, she said, “I feel awful.”
“You’ve got a fever. Here, have some water.”
Shilling guided the straw from a water pouch to her cracked lips. She closed her eyes and pushed it away. He brought it to her lips again.
“Just sip a little,” he said.
Carillo closed her lips on the straw and took in some water. As she pulled away, a few drops dribbled out and floated away. He positioned the straw at her lips again and encouraged her to drink more.
“It burns,” she said.
“I can’t help that, but we need to get fluids in you fast. We’ve got problems. I need your help.”
Carillo’s head lolled toward Shilling, sending the ice pack off onto the bunk. “What problems?”
“We’re dead in space. The engines aren’t working. Neither is RCS. All the comms equipment’s been smashed. Most of the lab has been destroyed. ”
She frowned at him. “Bob, you’re bald.”
“Yes, I know. So are you.”
“What?” Carillo reached up and touched her bare scalp. Then she pulled her hand back down, stared at it and looked at Shilling’s face. “Bob…we’re both blue.”
“Yeah, I noticed. I thought there might be a problem with life support, not enough oxygen, but life support is working fine. Truth is, it’s about the only thing working.”
Carillo rolled on her side and tried to look around. “Are we still docked?”
“Docked? What are you talking about?”
“The Suhkai ship…Nick.”
“You’re hallucinating. Have more water.”
Carillo shoved his hand away and tried to sit up, but almost immediately collapsed back on the bed.
Shilling took hold of her arm and pulled her into a sitting position next to him. He handed her the water pouch. “Major, I hate to rush your recovery, but I need you back on your feet. Colonel Morgan, Ajay and Kiera are gone, and all the computers are dead.”
“The Suhkai…” Carillo mumbled. She put a hand on her neck. “Is there a mark on my neck?”
Shilling examined the area. “No. Why?”
“Have you been to the med bay?” Carillo tried to stand, but teetered and fell back onto the bunk.
Shilling helped her to her feet. “I have. And you don’t want to go there. Take my word for it.”
“Let me guess,” Carillo said. “Lots of blood. On the walls, on the floor.”
“Floating in the air…on the gurney…nasty slick on the corridor floor, too. Leads all the way to the airlock.”
“It’s from me,” Carillo said. “One of the Suhkai shot me in the neck with a dart of some kind.”
Shilling frowned. “I think you need to lie back down. Your head’s not right.”
“My head is fine,” she slurred. “What… what do you remember?”
“If you mean getting poked by Ajay’s syringe, I remember that clearly.”
“Let me see your hand.” She grabbed his right hand.
“Why?”
“There’s no burn.”
“What?”
“Take off your shirt,” Carillo said.
“Excuse me?”
She felt his chest with both hands.
“What are you doing?” Shilling said, pushing her hands away.
“You don’t feel bruised?”
“No. Ajay didn’t hit me, he just sedated me.”
Carillo looked down at her flight suit. She unzipped it down to her crotch and wiggled her arms from the sleeves. Underneath she wore a T-shirt and un
derpants.
“Look.” She held her arms up for Shilling to see. “My burns. They’re completely gone.”
Shilling made an effort to examine them, but she pulled her arms away, tugged off her T-shirt, and pushed down the legs of the flight suit. As the shirt floated away, she splayed her arms. “See? They’re all gone. The Suhkai healed them.”
Shilling politely looked away from Carillo’s naked torso. “Could you please cover up?”
“Oh, don’t be such a priss.” Carillo reached down to grab the fallen flight suit. “You don’t remember the UMOs shocking you?”
“The UMOs…shocked me?”
Carillo slipped back into the suit and zipped it up. “Your heart stopped. Paul and Ajay started it up again but you didn’t regain consciousness.”
Shilling laughed. “I don’t believe you.”
“Nick said the Suhkai could heal you. And he said they could heal my burns. But we stayed on Rorschach. We didn’t go with Paul and the others.”
“What are you talking about? Who’s Nick?”
“Nick…as in Nick Reed…flight engineer of Cetus Prime. You know, be good to one another and all that.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Am I? Then you explain how we ended up here alone. You tell me where the others went. Why we’re bald and blue. Explain why the ship is all busted up and my burns are all healed.”
Shilling took two steps back and collapsed on Carillo’s bunk. With his head clasped between his hands, he whispered, “I can’t. None of this makes sense.” He looked up at Carillo. “Can we take five? Please? I feel like I’ve gone down the rabbit hole and woken up in another world.”
Watching Shilling’s angst was heart-wrenching. Carillo recalled how lost she had felt as Morgan described all that had happened since the attack during her spacewalk. Yet here she was, treating Shilling like a puppy dog. Don’t worry about the details. Do this and get fed. It was unfair and selfish. It was the opposite of being good to one another.
Carillo sat down next to Shilling and wrapped her arm around his shoulder. She apologized and recounted the crew’s travails as best she knew them…from the moment Shilling was sedated by Ajay until now.
Shilling was stunned to learn how much had happened. He asked many questions — about the UMOs, the gambit to trap and kill the second alien life-form, the Callisto queen, the images implanted in the crew’s minds, the Suhkai, the dialogue with Nick Reed, the Cytons, Morgan’s decision to go aboard the alien ship and, lastly, the Suhkai attack on her in the med bay.
“After that, I don’t know what the fuck happened,” Carillo said. “One minute, I’m standing next to you in the med bay. You’re lying there unconscious with a carpet of Cytons on top of you. A bunch of them fly up at me like bees after honey and then a lizard head comes into view at the door. It shoots something at me and I reach for my neck. It feels like half of it is gone and then…whammo…you wake me up. I’m all better. All my wounds are gone and we’re on a dead ship in the middle of nowhere.”
Shilling rose from the bunk, and Carillo watched him pace the cabin. “What do you think has happened to Paul, Kiera and Ajay?”
“I don’t know, but based on what the Suhkai did to Rorschach — to us — I can’t imagine they’re sipping mai tais right now.”
“No, I imagine not,” Shilling said. “So what are we going to do?”
Carillo stood. “First order of business…find out how bad we’re wounded.”
Carillo stared at the empty slots in the racks of the battery closet in the engine control room. “Damn it! They took most of the batteries! Nick must have helped. He would know where to look, what to pull.”
“Do we have backup batteries?” Shilling asked.
“Not enough, and it probably doesn’t matter. I’m sure they took our reserves, too. Jesus, what assholes. They left us in a no-win situation.”
“What do you mean?”
She pointed to the leftmost rack. “The missing batteries here? They’re dedicated to feed the VLF-engine electron guns. And the ones that are supposed to be in that rack” — she pointed to the back wall — “power Rorschach’s thrusters, comms and computer systems. Without both sets, we’re dead in the water.”
“What about those batteries?” Shilling asked. He gestured to the third rack, which still had its batteries.
“Those power life support, environmental controls and GEFF.”
“Can we shift some of those to the other slots?”
“Only if we want to sacrifice life support. Besides, it won’t do us any good if we can’t repair this.” She stepped aside and pointed to the smashed console that managed the engines.
“We wouldn’t have to shut off life support for long though, would we? All we need is one good push to generate momentum. We shut off life support long enough to get Rorschach moving again, then we switch the batteries back over.”
Carillo nodded. “It’s feasible. If we can fix the engine computer.” She waved him across the hall. “Come on, let’s see what they left us in the storage room.”
The storage room proved to be in even worse shape than the battery closet. Every last container had been emptied, their contents pulverized or melted. Most floated in the weightless cabin, while some metallic debris stuck to the GEFF flooring and walls. And just as Carillo expected, their reserve batteries had been taken.
Carillo knelt down and picked through a pile of broken circuit boards. “Well, that does it. We’re screwed.”
In the dim glow provided by the emergency lighting in the corridor, Shilling stared blankly at the wreckage. “Why would they do this?”
“I don’t know,” Carillo said. As she stood up to close the door to the storage room, she wobbled and leaned against the corridor wall. “Wow, I feel super weak all of a sudden.”
Shilling came alongside and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Come on, you need some more water. And something to eat.”
As they started up the corridor toward the galley, Carillo stared at the trail of blood leading from the med bay and puzzled over the tragic turn of events. What had happened to Morgan, Kiera and Ajay? Why did Nick and the Suhkai strand her and Shilling? Was it some kind of sick revenge? Payback for Cetus Prime’s marooning? No, that didn’t make sense. If Nick wanted revenge, it would be Morgan he would maroon, not Carillo and Shilling. Neither of them had been party to the Cetus Prime saga. Unless…
She halted outside the galley. “Hold on a sec. Maybe that’s it.”
Shilling let go of her shoulder and said, “Excuse me?”
“Maybe Nick stranded us to get back at Morgan.”
The damage inflicted on Rorschach was similar to the damage wreaked upon Cetus Prime — according to Mayaguana’s description, anyway. In both cases, the attackers had focused their assaults on technology — instruments, engines and communications. And in both cases, there were clear signs of malice. The Cetus Prime attackers hadn’t just disabled the ship, NASA suspected they demolished it. And whoever had damaged Rorschach had apparently been supremely pissed.
After retrieving and unwrapping an energy bar, Carillo took a bite and sat down at the galley table. Shilling took a seat across from her and stared off into the distance, apparently deep in his own thoughts.
The obvious suspect was Nick, Carillo decided. Despite his “gone and forgotten” comment and his friendliness over the radio, maybe he wasn’t quite ready to forgive. Twenty-five years in space…wandering who knows where with only two other humans for company…yes, Carillo could see how that could twist a person. The Rorschach crew had been in space for less than three months and had already battled fatigue, loneliness, stress and each other.
“Imagine twenty-five years of that shit,” she mumbled. “No thank you.”
“Twenty-five years of what?” Shilling asked.
She raised her arms and waved her hands around. “Space.”
“Ah. I agree. No thank you.”
She explained her theory to Shilli
ng. When she finished, she frowned. As appealing as the Nick-revenge theory had seemed at first, there were aspects that didn’t jibe. This wasn’t just a Nick thing. The Suhkai were in on it, and so were the Callisto UMO queen and her followers. What would they have to gain by helping Nick?
She posed these questions to Shilling.
“Maybe Nick convinced them we were threats,” he said. “Or…maybe it was the other way around.”
“Other way around? How so?”
Shilling laid out an alternative theory. “You said the BLUMOs connected with your mind, with the others’ minds. Maybe they discerned the aim of our mission. They alerted the UMOs on Callisto and, in turn, they alerted the Suhkai. The Suhkai returned to protect the facility…to prevent us from exploring it.”
Shilling’s theory had some compelling elements, Carillo thought, but there were problems with it. “If the Suhkai don’t want us to explore the spaceport, why didn’t they just say so, through Nick or the UMOs? Hell, if they’re that concerned about us, why didn’t they order the BLUMOs to destroy Rorschach? Why go about it this way? I mean, seriously, why bring you and me aboard their ship, put us through decontamination and inoculation, heal us, and then put us back on a crippled Rorschach?”
“True. They do seem like bizarre contradictions,” Shilling agreed.
“Plus, it doesn’t explain their purpose in returning us to Rorschach while hanging on to Paul, Kiera and Ajay.”
“Maybe they aren’t holding them,” Shilling said quietly. “I know it’s not pleasant to think about, but our crewmates might be dead.”
Carillo hadn’t allowed herself to consider the possibility but, now that Shilling had voiced it, she acknowledged it was a plausible explanation for their separation from the others. “That still doesn’t explain why they left us alive,” she said. “Why they put us back on Rorschach.”
“Well, it doesn’t really matter now.” Shilling stood and walked to the refrigerator. “They’re gone. We’re stranded.”
Magwave (The Rorschach Explorer Missions Book 2) Page 26