Shadows

by Brian Whiting

  “Like I said, I don’t know. They had modified our bodies before, but whatever they did to you was major.”

  “Why, how do you know?”

  “You sweated a lot the last couple days—and your sweat was blue.”

  Alex looked down at his arms, which appeared normal to him. Then he peered around the room, and saw that everything was intricately detailed and engraved. Then he observed the assortment of bolt holes.

  “Where are we?”

  “We are in a room below the room where you died. It’s a sacred part of the palace. They tell me.”

  Alex listened to him, but he also continued admiring the detailed work all along the room, as if the whole room was carved out of solid wood.

  Almost instantly all of the bolt holes were occupied by Gothans. Stepping out of the makeshift bed he stood up. He felt his heart pump harder, but not faster. It was an odd sensation. His muscles burned with anticipation. Something inside him felt at peace, and he began to relax. He turned to Jeremiah who remained seated, frowning at him.

  “Alex.” A Gothan spoke out loud in its native language.

  Jeremiah pulled out the datapad and fumbled to try and turn it on. He had turned it off to conserve battery power.

  Alex didn’t see who spoke, but somehow he instantly knew who it was.

  “Gs Ho Tae, I am in your debt for saving my life,” Alex replied, shocked to discover that he was speaking in perfect Gothan.

  All the Gothans in the room made awkward warbles.

  Alex looked to Jeremiah who sat frozen, the datapad just now turning on, lighting up his face.

  “It is us who are in your debt from saving us from a cursed fate.” Alex knew that whoever spoke this time was different. He looked around the room and studied the faces of all the Gothans, easily several dozen of them, who watched him and Jeremiah.

  “Who is it?” Jeremiah asked as he pulled out his sidearm.

  “There’s at least thirty of them,” Alex responded.

  “Where?” Jeremiah stood up pointing his weapon towards the pitch black shadowed sections of the room.

  “What are you doing?” Alex asked as he watched Jeremiah point the weapon at a solid bare and harmless-looking wall.

  Jeremiah didn’t respond, and Alex suddenly felt Jeremiah’s fear as if it were his own. He stepped over to him and placed his hands on Jeremiah’s shoulders. “It’s OK; they are unarmed, and Gs Ho Tae is here with them.”

  “How do you know? We can’t see anything.”

  “I can see them.” Somehow Alex could feel Jeremiah begin to relax a little. “Put your weapon down; I am sure you’re concerning at least some of them.”

  As soon as he did the datapad lit up again indicating it was ready for service and notified its user it was unable to locate a UEF network for connection.

  “My name is Ga Mu Deck. I am leader of Gothans, and this is my only remaining mate, Gs Pay Ba.” The leader motioned gat mate forward with a touch of gat hand. The datapad began translating, but Alex didn’t need it.

  “What did you do to me?”

  “Had we not previously altered your genome, you would not have recovered. Your body was near the beyond, and we had to act fast. When you woke after your shuttle crashed, you were given a mind sedative to allow time for your mind to become accustomed to the changes slowly. When you were injured in the capital, we had to flood your system with chemicals and make further gene modifications to save your life. You’re at peak physical health; you could not possibly be healthier. In fact, I have edited your regenerative properties to such an extent I doubt you’ll be ill or old anytime soon.”

  Alex picked at his nail with his thumb a few moments. “I thank you for your assistance.” He began to feel fear from several of the Gothans.

  “Leader Alex, I feel fear for what I am about to tell you; it is my hope that you do not react harshly.” Ga Mu Deck stepped forward close enough that now even Jeremiah could see gat in the dim light that was beside Alex’s makeshift bed with the faint light of the datapad.

  “I feel shame, my leadership suffered a coup at the hands of Ga Det Gru. Humanity put an abrupt end to it, however, and has seen fit to restore me as leader.”

  Alex was struck by that odd phrasing but didn’t want to interrupt the speaker. He could feel Jeremiah’s confusion as well.

  “Ga Det Gru, however, escaped with a small group in a shuttle and has fled our inner territory to the asteroid belt where ga is in hiding. Gat other followers were quickly put to death. But ga escaped punishment.”

  Alex could feel the fear growing from all the Gothans present. Ga Mu Deck dropped to gat knees and lowered gat head to the ground, arms directly out to either side.

  “Your ship has retreated from the inner territory and is on a course away from our system. We know it’s been damaged, but we do not know how extensively. The Gothan people have failed the predators of the deep, and I offer myself as a sacrificial penance, if you agree to spare the rest of my kind.”

  The fear wasn’t his own, but Alex could describe it in detail as if it were his own fear: they were afraid he would not accept the offering and kill every living Gothan and erase them from memory. He also knew what the Alex of yesterday might have even considered that. However, he would have known that he wouldn’t like it but would accept the apology. But this new Alex was already calculating possibilities of this particular moment for months and years into the future. Taking into considerations he would have not thought about before. Taking what he knew about the Gothans and extrapolating assumed information about the rest, he tried to envision their future with humanity and the larger threat he felt lingering in the back of his mind.

  The datapad was just finishing its translation for Jeremiah, who appeared stunned. “What are you going to do?”

  The datapad began to translate the phrase, and he tried to cover up the speaker, clearly embarrassed that he forgot that it would translate it.

  Alex stepped forward and sat Indian-style in front of the Gothan leader, whose face was still touching the ground. Driven by instinct, he reached out with his right hand and placed his hand on the back of the Gothan leader’s head. When he did that, he felt the other’s fear stabbing into his mind.

  “Ga Mu Deck, I will accept your offering, on one condition.”

  As he spoke, he felt spikes of terror—every Gothan in the room was trembling with intense suspense, and he felt all of it. It was distracting and took him a moment to move past the feeling in his mind before he continued.

  “You must agree that you and all Gothans become not just members of the UEF, but share a life bond with humanity for as long as your kind exists. We will explore the deep together, find and form new families and new bonds while we defend ourselves from other predators of the deep.”

  The Gothan hadn’t moved, but he felt its bounding thankfulness, as if it had received more than it had dared to dream.

  Driven by instinct, Alex stood towering over the Gothan and awaited a response. The room was deadly silent, and Alex remained confident.

  Ga Mu Deck slowly stood to gat fullest height and looked directly into Alex’s eyes far above gat.

  “On behalf of my kind, we are honored to become part of your family.” The Gothan clicked gat heels together in a sharp motion. The other Gothans in the room followed suit and warbled excitedly as they ran up to each other and rubbed faces together.

  Alex felt the room explode with joy, and it filled him with pure pleasure. He closed his eyes and basked in the feeling, allowing it to wash over him.

  Moments later, when the room quieted down, he still felt the constant pressure of the joyous mood of those around him, except Jeremiah, who seemed terrified at the odd sounds the Gothans had made. Alex felt that Jeremiah’s fear had risen tremendously. Jeremiah, who was busy scanning the room trying to see the other Gothans.

  “Please, if you have the ability,” Alex said, enjoying himself tremendously, “raise the lighting some more in here. We humans do not pref
er the dark. Then, I would like to contact my ship.”

  Ga Mu Deck walked over to the central pole in the room and grabbed a staff equal to the Gothan’s size. Ga Mu Deck slammed the end of the staff into the ground. The room reverberated with a boom. Gs Ho Tae left the room as quickly as a fleeing rabbit, as did the other Gothans.

  ***

  “Try it now!” The chief waited for a response, while he was on his back in a cramped space between decks, a flashlight in his mouth.

  “Nothing!” came the familiar reply.

  “How goes it, Chief?” Lanora asked, having just approached his location.

  The chief closed his eyes, frustrated at both his lack of progress and the constant updates Lanora kept requiring of him. “No change since you last asked, except to say I now know of another one hundred and thirty connections that don’t work.” He knew the next question, and instead of hearing it he tried to preempt it by saying, “I still don’t know. If the system was working, it would have been fixed by now, since we have everything digitalized including the repair schematics, and I don’t have access to the repair schematics. I am doing trial by error.”

  Lanora felt the venom in the response and understood the frustration of the chief, because she herself was frustrated, but refused to show it.

  “Where’s our famous missile now?” the chief asked, genuinely curious.

  “Still attached to the wall and drifting away, currently about two hundred yards away. It’s a shame we couldn’t have found a better way to push the wall away than with your girly push.”

  The chief bit his lower lip, obviously staving off a curt reply. “Well, at that distance, if it exploded it wouldn’t cause as much damage, if any.”

  An idea occurred to Lanora, and she regretted not having thought of it earlier. She walked the length of the ship to her cabin. She had become intimately familiar with each ding, dent, crack, and damaged portion of the ship as she walked the familiar halls, waiting for the systems to come back online. They had been without a majority of ship systems for over a week now.

  She entered her cabin, one of whose walls was dented just slightly. She didn’t know what caused it, but it filled her thoughts each night as she fell asleep imagining what had made it.

  Walking past the dented wall she opened up her suitcase, which contained her laptop as well as a USB cable. Laptop and cable in hand, she went to the adjacent room next to the ship’s computer room. The far wall had a table that ran the length of the room and a series of chairs on one side. One cable came from the wall on the right side of the Thean digiform tank and went into the tank directly, both the cable and the tank bolted in place to ensure that, with or without gravity, everything was secured. The lighting in the room decreased another twenty percent at that moment. She sighed as she knew that they were in the final phase of energy conservation. Now it would be harder for the repair teams to do their job, but it would provide another day of power to life support systems.

  Without thinking much about it, she turned the laptop on and connected one end of the USB cable to it, then opened the Thean tank and dropped the other end inside it.

  Instantly a Word document opened up, and a message appeared on the screen of her laptop.

  (At 1645 hours the Enterprise received a hostile subspace communication signal. The signal was encoded with a replicating virus that corrupted the system and spread quickly. I had no time to ask if it was OK, I had to protect the ship from the virus. I shut down the computer system to prevent the spread. You will need to remove system bus from the subspace receiver array. I recommend destroying it. You will also need to remove memory drives C4–C7 to prevent further spread and contamination.

  Lanora was shocked, thankful, and suspicious all at once. Thank you, Symboli, for acting so swiftly; our power situation is critical. Without the computer the reactors shut down, and we have been unable to start up any downed system independently.

  This was done as a safety precaution in case I was not immediately inquired about the shutdown so that critical information could be disseminated before systems were activated and the spread continued.

  You sabotaged the—)

  Before Lanora could finish typing, the digiform responded. (Yes, however, I shorted out only a few capacitors, which are cheap and plentiful. The repairs will be quite simple.)

  (I see. Well, the chief is cross-connecting the main distribution cable to kickstart the re—)

  Again the digiform responded before she was done.

  The chief will be unsuccessful due to my interference. It would be beneficial if you brought the chief here so that I can relay repair instructions.

  Lanora eyed the screen for a few moments and considered her options, then stood up when she realized she had none. She left the room and walked out into the hallway. A young UEF technician was walking by, perhaps heading to his cabin after a long day of work. “Tell the chief that Symboli caused the outage to protect the ship and is waiting to provide repair instructions.” The technician hesitated for a brief moment. “Go now!” Lanora said, and pointed. The tech turned on his heels and ran down the hallway.

  Ten minutes later the chief rounded the corner, “What the hell is going on? That damn computer in there nearly killed us. I’m going to take care of that problem right now.”

  Lanora sighed deeply, “No, Chief, you’re not. We received a subspace virus, and Symboli shut everything down to save the ship. It’s ready to give you quick instructions to bring the ship back online. Follow them exactly.” She stepped away.

  “Where are you going?”

  Lanora stopped in her tracks and turned her head slowly to the side.

  “Wherever the hell I please!” she said, then continued walking.

  The chief turned toward the room and eyed the bluish tank beside which was sitting a small laptop that he recognized as Lanora’s. He didn’t want to accept the help from Symboli and tried to imagine what kind of instructions it would be giving him. Finally, he relented and sat down at the laptop and typed, Tell me how to fix my ship.

  ***

  The corridor was brightly lit and contained a bit of a chill. Jorge rounded the corner at a quick pace as he approached yet another well-armed militia guard. This one was on his cell phone and, upon seeing Jorge, he fumbled and dropped it while snapping to attention and then opening the door for him.

  Jorge looked down at the cell phone, its surface glass freshly spiderwebbed with cracks. The guard stood frozen, looking worried. Jorge passed him without a word and entered his own plush, well-decorated, red-oak-appointed office, closing the door behind him.

  “I must be honest with you,” Jorge said to his appointment, who was waiting in his office. “When I got your message and you wanted to meet, I thought it was anything but legitimate. Then after I told you that, if you wanted to meet, you had to come to me, I didn’t think you personally would make the trip. How did you get here, anyway?”

  The man faced away from him and didn’t move a muscle.

  A moment of silence passed.

  “No matter,” Jorge continued. “I hope you see the irony in this situation. Allow me to soak it up and prepare myself to give you the same response you once gave me.”

  “I appreciate the irony,” the other man said, “and can only hope that you are above that sort of petty act of vengeance. I have come with a proposal that will propel you into a position of great importance.”

  Jorge slowly walked around his desk and sat down. He looked the other man in the face and studied his features up close.

  “I am listening.” Jorge sat back in his chair, well pleased with the situation.

  “I bring information to the table, information that you can use to grow your little empire out here.”

  “I really don’t need information. I think I’ve got everything covered.”

  “Really? Well, if that’s how you feel, I suppose you don’t need me then.” The man stood and turned away taking a step or two toward the door. “I guess you already
knew that American forces were about to execute a plan for stealing your little craft. Sure, you could move it now, but wouldn’t you like a heads-up before the raid occurs?”

  Jorge didn’t take long to respond. “What do you want?”

  “Before everything went to crap, this is where I would talk about company shares or very large deposits. But now we live in the new world, and my desires have changed. What I want is a seat at the decision table. I want my needs taken care of. What more can a man ask in this new world?”

  Jorge felt an enormous amount of pride and self-worth; he knew he was the one desperately needed in this transaction and he felt immense pleasure to finally be the one holding the power. “I don’t have a decision table. As for having your needs met, I think we can arrange something.”

  Drake leaned back in his chair and a smile crept along his face. “I think we are going to make a great team.”

  Chapter 12

  Round Agenda

  Timmy fell back onto the cold stone floor of the tunnel. The black seamless orb hovered, then moved closer. Terror ripped through Timmy as he realized that since it was impervious, there was nothing he could do to stop it, and he tried to scoot out of its path on his rear end. The orb slowed but kept following him. It began to push aside the desks as if they were merely paper in its way.

  Pete stood to the side frozen, but felt safe knowing it wasn’t coming for him.

  “Do something!” Timmy shouted to Pete.

  Pete picked up a chair and tried to push the orb with the chair legs. Despite putting all of his weight into it, the orb didn’t budge even a bit, as if some kind of invisible force was keeping it in place and on a track leading straight to Timmy.

  “What do you want?” Timmy screamed in desperation as his back came up against a large filing cabinet. The orb stopped just two feet away from him. Timmy held his breath; he knew something was about to happen. He just hoped it wasn’t going to be his death.

  The orb flashed the color purple twice. A thin red line appeared on the orb, circling the entire circumference of its equator.