Aldebaran Divided

by Philippe Mercurio

  Her attempt had alerted the Saharj. From a distance, she saw an entity begin to move, seeming to detach from the dreamscape’s horizon. It was as massive as a real-world planet. In a single heartbeat, it appeared next to Mallory. Thoughts focused on her, striking with the force of lightning. Almost thrown back to the physical plane, she hung onto Squish’s calm, reassuring presence.

  A sepulchral voice rang out.

  “Who?”

  The force of the question crushed Mallory. The telepathic pressure rose another notch, becoming torture. The jufinol helped her withstand it and sent a thought to her that explained its titanic strength: the Saharj possessed a collective consciousness, a gestalt.

  With her usual stubbornness, the human refused to allow herself to be intimidated. She formed an image of herself in her mind and pushed it toward the entity. The immense mind broke off its attack for a moment and shivered in return.

  The reaction stopped the pilot in her tracks. Her thoughts, combined with Squish’s, were strong enough to affect the gestalt, albeit briefly.

  It assailed her once again, preventing her from following her idea to its conclusion.

  “Unknown! Why are you here?”

  Rather than explaining herself, she retorted, “Murderers!”

  And she projected images from her recent memories into this ethereal world. She particularly focused on the violence she had seen since her arrival in the Aldebaran system.

  In reply, she received a series of images: Solicor, a thousand years earlier. Gibrals. Very tall humanoids with dark skin covering an armor-like skeleton: the Saharj. Welcomed with apparent kindness. Their scientific discoveries stolen. Betrayed. Chased from Aldebaran. Condemned to wandering and extinction. A discovery that allowed a handful of them to survive. The slow reconstruction of a civilization. And, finally, a goal. “Revenge!” the immaterial multitude rumbled.

  Mallory understood, but she didn’t approve. What was the point of demanding reparations after such a long time? And blind resentment of all Gibrals, without even considering the Xilfs, how was that just? The real guilty parties had been dead for centuries, forgotten by everyone except for the Saharj, who had been poisoned by their rancor.

  Just before she gave the Saharjs’ collective consciousness a piece of her mind about their actions, she reconsidered. Across the city-planet, insane parasite/embryo hybrids were engaging in a massacre.

  She had managed to stand up to the gestalt, but she couldn’t stop there. If she was able to disrupt the link between the warrior aliens and the enslaved creatures, it might be broken.

  Squish immediately reacted negatively: he didn’t like that idea at all.

  “Sorry, I can’t think of anything else…” she said as an excuse.

  She lowered her defenses and welcomed the Saharjs’ hatred as if she accepted their reasoning. Believing she had acknowledged its rage, the gestalt also dropped its guard. The pilot received a burst of information and emotions, a surge of feelings and memories. In return, she felt a similar wave flow from her to the luminous network that stretched to infinity. She had very little time to react.

  With an effort of will, she managed to move in the material world. Her hand broke contact with the young Gibral, whom she no longer needed, and fumbled in her jacket for the long blade she had hidden there.

  In the room, Laorcq, Alrine, and Torg thought she was going to plunge it into the black mass dripping from the ceiling. Taking them by surprise, Mallory turned the steel point toward the floor and drove it forcefully into her own thigh. The pain tore a cry from her mouth.

  Amplified both by the link between the human and the jufinol and by the dark material, the wave of suffering drowned the Saharjs’ network of consciousness. It fell apart like a tapestry whose threads have been cut.

  Mallory was about to collapse but drew strength from her anger. “You’re no better than the Gibrals!” Disgusted by the Saharjs’ thirst for blood, she cried, “You fought back blindly, and you killed innocents and children! You’re disgraceful!”

  This short tirade wore her out. A black veil of unconsciousness threatened to overcome her. She resisted, hearing a faraway voice, a sound coming from the material world: Laorcq.

  “You’ve won. Let go now! Do you hear me? You’ve won!”

  Scattered throughout the city-planet’s twists and turns, strewn about the ring surrounding Solicor, the parasites’ hosts collapsed all at once. The Saharj embryos had been unable to withstand the transmission of the pilot’s psychic suffering. Those who didn’t die on the spot fell into deep comas.

  The Gibral police force, assisted by the Xilfs, removed the victims, and things returned to normal. Thanks to Mallory’s intervention, the number of casualties remained low.

  The exhausted pilot found herself under medical care, in a hospital that had facilities to treat humans. The self-inflicted injury had caused serious damage to her thigh, barely missing the femoral artery.

  In a nearby waiting room, Laorcq and Torg sat and tried to be patient.

  “Stabbing herself like that…” the scarred man murmured as he ran his fingers through his hair. “She didn’t even consider her own life. If we hadn’t been there to help her, she would have bled out…”

  Facing him, perched on a chair that looked ready to collapse under his weight, Torg agreed, grumbling, “It’s true. She wasn’t too coherent at that point. I wonder why…”

  The veteran knew that Mallory had an annoying tendency of taking things to heart: a very bad habit. In a combat situation, emotions interfered with judgment and could lead to catastrophe.

  He really liked the pilot, despite her “hard-bitten” persona. Evidently, she was quite proud that she had been chosen by the Vohrn. She just needed to understand that she didn’t have to constantly go above and beyond in order to prove her worth.

  Flesil’s arrival interrupted Laorcq’s thoughts. The alien informed him that most of the parasite’s surviving victims had been placed in stasis awaiting the operation to remove the Saharj embryos.

  A question had been nagging at Laorcq for some time concerning the Gibrals and their attackers. He had begun formulating a theory and decided to put it to the test.

  He locked his gray eyes onto Flesil and asked, “This isn’t the first time you’ve encountered the Saharj, is it?”

  The blue extraterrestrial simply blinked his enormous eyelid. Unable to interpret this reaction, the human opted for brutal honesty.

  “During her… ‘connection,’ Mallory said something about the guilty and their descendants. She was referring to you, apparently.”

  In actuality, he had only caught half-whispered, half-mumbled fragments, but his bluff worked anyway. The Gibral’s neck twisted from one side to the other, and he recoiled.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “They came to Solicor a long time ago. You must understand our silence: these facts are so ancient that they cannot be verified.”

  Cynically, the scarred man thought that seemed awfully convenient for them. Controlling his tone of voice, he tried to hide his reaction. “No matter. Tell me anyway…”

  Flesil told a rather sordid tale.

  Almost six hundred rotations earlier, equivalent to around a millennium on Earth, while the Gibrals were still at a pre-space level of technology, the Saharj had arrived on Solicor.

  The race of artificial warriors had served their creators for centuries. Once the conflict for which they had been designed was over, they had become useless. The few that remained were doomed to wander; since they were unable to reproduce, they began a quest to find a place where they could go extinct in peace.

  The Gibrals welcomed them but harbored a secret hope that they would be able to take advantage of the situation. At the first opportunity, they took over the Saharj ships. The cyclopes helped themselves to the advanced technology they contained as well as to the research on reproduction that the biogenic soldiers had conducted.

  Most of the warriors died. Despite their superior combat skills and sci
entific knowledge, they were simply overwhelmed by numbers. Only a few hundred Saharj managed to escape aboard one of their ships. The Gibrals paid little attention, believing them to have reconciled themselves to a quick extinction.

  Obviously, they had been wrong. The Saharj had not only survived, but had also overcome their sterility.

  “And now, they’re back to settle their score with you,” Laorcq concluded. “Frankly, I wonder if they should be allowed to do it!”

  He was vexed by what he had just heard. The cyclops’ ancestors hadn’t exactly behaved admirably.

  Flesil was about to respond when another Gibral entered the room. The human recognized the doctor who was taking care of Mallory.

  “The Earthling’s injury has been repaired. She is under light sedation.”

  Laorcq felt a weight lift from his shoulders. He was completely taken aback when the doctor continued:

  “Her prognosis is excellent. This is for the best, considering her condition. Carrying a hybrid fetus will be very challenging, physically and mentally…”

  Mallory regained consciousness. Wrapped in thick fabric, her body was sustained three feet off the ground by a force field. Above her floated the glowing sphere of a medical AI.

  Her first thought was of Squish. She looked for him and found him comfortably nestled in a sort of large, hollow cushion that looked like a bright yellow block of gelatin. The jufinol sent her an echo of his own joy at her awakening.

  Her mind cleared. She tried to move her arms and found that the field that supported her also restricted her movements. With a dry, hoarse voice, she spoke to the Artificial Intelligence. “Hey! I’m okay – let me out.”

  In impeccable Earth standard, the machine replied, “I cannot override the doctor’s orders. Do not worry, he will be here shortly. While you wait, I can permit a short visit.”

  The pilot heard a door slide open, followed by two footsteps, one of which was quite heavy.

  A smile appeared on her lips. Torg and Laorcq, she guessed. They came close enough for her to be able to see their faces. The man’s pronounced features, his permanent three-day beard, his gray eyes, and the scar that ran from his temple to his neck. The cybrid’s wide hemispherical head and the protrusions formed by his eye sockets, surrounded by black and red fur.

  As far as she could tell, both seemed simultaneously shocked and embarrassed.

  “So why are you both making the same face?”

  The scarred man explained uneasily. “I suspect you wanted to keep it to yourself for a bit longer, but the Gibral doctor did a full scan and he told us what he found…”

  Mallory was at a loss. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  The man and the cybrid looked at each other, and their discomfort rose another notch.

  “You’re pregnant. With a hybrid,” Torg blurted.

  Her first reaction was that the situation was comical. A small laugh bubbled up in her throat. And stuck there. She had slept with Cole Vassili. If… She groaned. “For fuck’s sake! He must have been carrying a parasite!” She didn’t hesitate. “Get this thing out of me! Right now!”

  On the backs of her hands and forearms, her tattoos displayed a web of thorny black brambles. Her anger was so intense that the design seemed to be embossed on her skin. From his nest, Squish let out a sound of distress. Mallory sensed his reaction and tried to reassure him through their link.

  Alerted by the AI, the Gibral doctor appeared in the doorframe. He was holding a plastic bag that ended in a small tube. He brought it to the Earthling’s lips. While she sucked the water out of the pouch, the doctor spoke to her.

  “You don’t want to keep the fetus? It’s developing perfectly. Where’s the father from? The DNA is similar to yours but diverges in a number of ways. I haven’t found anything like it in our database.”

  The humans contemplated the gulf that separated different species. Translator boxes were a great invention, but there were still areas of ignorance.

  Conscious of this cultural gap, the pilot restrained her anger. She spit out the plastic straw and repeated, “No, I don’t want it. I never wanted a child, especially not a half-alien one.” She realized there was one detail that didn’t fit. “Wait? Did you say you couldn’t identify the DNA?”

  The doctor agreed. “Correct. If you’re concerned that your partner was under the influence of a Saharj parasite, I can reassure you that was not the case.”

  And yet, Vassili was the only possible source. The Vorhns had put her through a whole battery of tests and evaluations before the mission. If she had been carrying an embryo before arriving on Solicor, they would have known. What did that bastard do to me while we were in bed together?

  Mallory’s reaction was so intense that she managed to break through the force field and grab the doctor by the front of his tunic. “I am telling you to get this thing out of me!” She then addressed Laorcq and Torg in a tone that brooked no objections. “Don’t just stand there – go find Vassili!”

  For once, Torg refused to follow his captain’s order. “I’d rather stay with you in case a surviving parasite tries to come after you or Squish. In any case, Laorcq and Alrine can arrest that guy without my help.”

  Shaken by this last statement, Mallory appreciated her bodyguard’s concern. Undergoing a surprise abortion in a hospital run by blue cyclopes was difficult enough. Having the jufinol and the cybrid by her side would help. She held her free hand out to Torg and said, “If you want. As soon as I get out of here, we’ll go take care of Vassili.”

  Her one-night stand was going to regret having amused himself at her expense.

  XV

  ARREST

  LAORCQ had just left the hospital. He was running through the streets of Solicor, noting the layout of the area automatically thanks to a habit acquired during his years of military training. After the recent events, the city-planet’s streets were almost deserted. In the absence of the usual crowd, the advertising holograms seemed to dominate the area. They splashed the walls and moving walkways with pale colors.

  Concerned, Laorcq quickened his pace. Like Torg, he feared that some of the infected had survived the confrontation between Mallory and the Saharj gestalt. He stuck as much as possible to empty streets, avoiding the small winding alleys, almost tunnels, which were so common on Solicor, even if it meant a longer trip. He frequently saw police patrols that included both Gibrals and Xilfs. Wearing antigrav harnesses, they traveled between the buildings, jumping from one level to another without paying any attention to him.

  As he walked, he thought. This series of events implied a set of much more serious facts. He was certain that the Saharj were not going to stop here. He had to talk to Hanosk: obviously the Vohrn could not maintain their apparent neutrality.

  On the way, he came across EMTs who were busy collecting bodies, the remaining traces of the violence that had struck the city so brutally. Thinking about what would have happened to Solicor if the experiment hatched by the Saharj had worked gave him stomach cramps. His participation in the conflict between humans and Orcants had demonstrated to him just how much stupidity and suffering was caused by war. Combat on an overcrowded planet would be a bloodbath.

  Mallory had acted impulsively and risked her life, but she had been right to do so. Obviously he wouldn’t tell her that: she might make a habit of it.

  Laorcq put these thoughts aside. He had just arrived at an antigrav well, only to find that it wasn’t running. He looked around and spotted a metal door with a universal symbol of staircase. Good. Only about twenty flights of stairs. This is what I get for not exercising enough lately…

  He pushed the door and began climbing. The rarely used stairwell was made of crude ceramic concrete. The uniform beige-grayness was interrupted only by large characters indicating the floor number and glyphs from non-human alphabets.

  He climbed fifteen floors and stopped. A sound reached him, a plaintive moan reminiscent of a wounded animal. A nauseating odor of decomposing
debris and bodily fluids caught in his throat. All senses alert, he climbed a few more steps and found himself on a landing.

  A Gibral was slumped there, back to the wall and legs splayed out on the floor, giving the impression that he had succumbed to intense exhaustion and had needed to rest. He sat in a brown puddle. Laorcq came over and examined him while trying to ignore the stench assaulting his sinuses. The big blue cyclops had a glassy eye, and his head swayed slightly at the end of his long neck. The unintelligible mumblings began again, louder this time. The alien seemed to be in the throes of a violent internal debate. The veteran decided to move on. He had neither the time nor the knowledge to care for a Gibral in distress. He thought it best to leave and call for help, especially if he was infected, which seemed likely.

  He passed in front of the alien, keeping his distance, and climbed to the next floor. An almost inaudible rustling of fabric alerted him. Too late.

  A steel fist grabbed his ankle and almost made him fall. His reflexes took over: he kicked his other leg backward, and his foot hit a soft mass. A cry rang out, and he was free again. He climbed the stairs quickly, without looking back.

  He finally saw the symbol corresponding to his destination. Relieved, he left the stairwell and returned to the city-planet’s strangely empty streets. He inhaled the fresh air deeply. Although he could no longer smell it, the stench seemed to cling to the inside of his nostrils like a traumatic memory.

  He activated his navcom watch and reported the addled Gibral to the police.

  He arrived at the hotel where he was staying with Alrine without further incident. The building, made of glass decorated with blue and violet swirls that looked like smoke in ice, rose all the way to the top level. The façade was otherwise blank, with the exception of a tall door. Laorcq entered and walked across the brown carpet in the white-walled entrance hall. When he got into the elevator, the AI receptionist recognized him and selected his floor.