Sojourn Sol (Eternal Sol) (6 page)

The Kendall Center was started by Richard Kendall, an exobiologist from Earth before the Yttrium plague. He was an early explorer whose philosophy was simple. He believed that since man is an animal, he will behave like animals. The smartest animals kill creatures when they meet them in the wild rather than take a chance as to whether or not they'll be killed. In order to preserve alien species, he started an exploration center, which served as a front for protecting all races.

During the great holocaust, when men worked to destroy all other species, they played a huge hand in making sure that the process ended as quickly as possible, and their efforts were recognized, earning them a place in history. Their stance was not well known, though many people understood what they had done in the holocaust.

Only their higher ranking members are given the task of protecting alien species, because not all of their members had managed to purge their racist sentiments, just like Cress who laying on the floor of the ship, bloody and dying while Ren lay near him with a gash on his right side.

Cress struggled desperately to get over to the communication console when they were sleeping to contact the senate, and when Antioch heard him, he raised a gun and ordered him to stop, but he completed his communication. Ren heard the ruckus in time to jump on top of Antioch to stop him, but the blast grazed him and tore through Cress' chest.

Ren turned to Antioch. “Are you fucking satisfied,” he hissed.

“No. He was successful. Now we're all fucked. You've been given the same charge as I have. Why did you try to stop me?” Antioch raised his pistol.

“I was going to stop him, but you rushed up and shot him,” Ren's pleas were exploding through clenched teeth. “Get me a fucking med-kit - they're in the back.”

Antioch hesitated for a second, but he did eventually put his gun down. He ran to the back closet, which was in between their bunks, and pulled out a red box.

“There's a healing accelerator in a tiny black bag, and you can find some cleansing spray there too.” Antioch ran over and sprayed down the wound in order to clean it while it healed, then he gave Ren the pill, which he swallowed dry. “Fuck you,” he said, staring at the shooter . “This is FUCKED!”

“They're all going to get killed, Ren. What are we supposed to do now?”

“Leave,” he scoffed.

A sound like a supernova blasted through the sky, and the ground began to shake with the force of the blast. The two men couched down on the floor and made their way to the viewing hatch near the front door. What they saw astounded them. A fleet of center ships, many of them with weapons had landed on the outskirts of town and the spiders were swarming to see what was going on. They rode white hover transports, and carried tiny banners made of sheets of aluminum with letter inscribed on them. Even in his wounded state, Ren found the entire scene to be quite absurd. He would've laughed if he could muster the energy.

* * *

Henny was shaking and cold. She'd given up on leaving the ship and was trying to dispel thoughts of what would happen to her. She decided that she would live, and that if she kept an optimistic attitude it would happen, but she wasn't sure if she would be able to do that. She kept thinking about disgusting creatures and hateful wars. She imagined that when the hatch opened, she would see bodies and organs lying on the ground in front of her.

She'd never heard of the Kendall Center, so she wasn't sure what was going on, but she was certain that it must have something to do with a war, or the man would've known whether or not he was coming back. Dark thoughts crowded her mind like unwanted sea buzzards at a beach picnic.  She pushed them out of her mind and tried to think happy, optimistic thoughts.  The pushed the angry birds away but not for long – they kept returning to feast upon all her mind. Focusing on action seemed to help her ward off their paralyzing grip and help her formulate a plan of sorts.

She found that getting into her space suit would help with the cold. It was designed to maintain body temperature, which meant that it would be the perfect antidote to the bitter cod.. She might even be able to get some sleep if she could only slow her mind down, but it was proving to be impossible. What she did do was enter the digital world, where she could sit in the sanctuary once more.

She decided, when she started walking around her little cube that she would recreated the dining hall, where he had finally confessed her love to him. She materialized a piece of paper and an ancient quill, which matched the scene perfectly and strode over to where they'd sat.

She began speaking immediately. “Tamil. I love you and always will, but I think my time is almost over, and I don't know if I will ever see you again. I am in the cargo hatch of a carnival ship I stowed away on. I thought they would go to Fyrion or someplace nice, but I ended up on an ice world where the ship was commandeered by the Kendall Center who plans on using it on some dangerous mission, which they believe may be fatal. I can't leave the ship, and I can't dDao anything but tell you I love you and that if I don't see or hear from you again, I want you to know that I will always be there with you.” As soon as she finished her message, she left the room. She missed him so much that she couldn't bear to stay there any longer.

The shipped landed with a soft boom, and it seemed to sink just a bit in the process. They had landed on sand, which meant that she was right to put on her space suit. They could be on an inhospitable planet.

The hatch opened almost right away, and when she found his eyes staring at her, she felt a wave of electricity pulsing through her. She didn't even think about trying to hide herself. She had been too scared to even think about whether or not they saw her.

“What are you doing here?” It was an elderly man with a rough voice.

“I-I...”

“It doesn't matter. You're here now and I don't have time to take you back to your parent's house. You're gonna die if you don't stick with me, so let's go.” He grabbed onto her hands and pulled her out with surprising force considering his tiny frame.

The first thing Henny noticed was that the entire landscape was made up of blue sand that sparkled just a bit in the light of the tiny white sun which was shadowed by pure black clouds. Clearly this environment was far too cold for humans; it must've been lifeless. “What is this place,” she asked.

“It's an unknown world. The Center discovered a strange lifeform here.”

“Are they hostile?”

“That's what we're here to find out. Can you wait in the ship?”

“No,” she laughed. “This would be my first encounter with aliens. I'm not missing something this rare. If these guys are different, then I'm coming with you.”

“It's too dangerous,” the man tried to take her hand, but she shook it off and stared him down.

“What does it matter to you if I come or not?”

“You're probably going to die anyways.” he started walking away and she followed.

“How are you going to know whether or not they are hostile?”

He struggled to make his way through the thin sand. “I have a device that will analyze them and their language in order to discover what they are saying.”

“That's impossible. How will it know if they talk?” She went ahead of him to see where they were.

“It will watch them interacting physically, and measure when they make a reaction in order to tell whether or not they are communicating.”

He told her to stay behind while he made his way to a complex made of tiny silver strings. She watched as he pulled out the device from a pill and set it up on a tripod, not far from the entrance to the complex. Several strange, spider-like creatures came out to inspect it, but they didn't interfere. Soon enough, a crowd was surrounding him, and Henny decided that she'd better make her way over and see what was going on.

When she started, little tiny spiders popped up from the ground and started following her, making gurgling noises with their tiny proboscis. She realized that these were children and bent down to see them. They gathered around her, keeping a respectful distance and looked up. They were only a 2 or 3 inches tall, but they had clearly developed intelligence judging by the way they moved.

“Hello,” she said to nobody in particular. One of the bigger spiders pushed his way up to the front of the group and seemed to look up at her. He took one antenna and pointed up. He did it several times until she realized that the child wanted to be held so she carefully picked him up and got a closer look at him.

He was made of tiny, metallic-looking scales that covered his entire body like an exoskeleton. He scampered around, eyeing the curve in her suit then walked over to her fingers. With a hint of affection, he began rubbing them gently and looking back at her. She felt a sense of companionship with him. He was tender and kind. It was strange to see such a thing moving the way it did. When one sentient creature sees another, they recognize the intelligence in each others eyes and when he looked at her, that's what happened.

A dozen other little guys climbed on top of her, as she made her way over to the man to tell him what was going on. Then, all of a sudden, he blew up, along with the rest of his complex and she was thrown back onto the sand. Many of the children ran, but quite a few of them hid on her as best as they could. Their parents could already be dead, and she would have to find a way to make sure that they were safe. They were looking to her for guidance, but she was in such a strange place that she wasn't sure she could give it to them.

Tamil couldn't possibly have imagined the mistake he made when he joined the military, and there was never any way that he could take it back. It was sad, but once again, he was a slave with a crown on his head, walking the halls of the Main Aster Station to load his ship up with a weapon that could wipe out a specie's entire existence.

They said it was uninhabited when they came and gave him the mission, but he knew better, now he was being forced into killing off an entire species, and there was no way for it to be stopped. He had been thinking for quite some time as to how he would handle a situation such as this. If it came down to it, he knew that he would have to pull the trigger, but he was a determined man, far more determined than anyone he'd ever met before.

He was walking mechanically down a black metal walkway, towards the entrance to the holding pen for the most extreme weapons known to mankind, solar charges. These weapons were meant to drive a star into overdrive, causing it to burn its energy in a matter of minutes and causing a supernova, a shock wave that would destroy everything in the system.

He entered the room where the weapons were held and held onto the hover while he was transported into his ship, one of the finest weapons ships in the galaxy, which they had named the Ragnarok. He would be given enough will to power the ship then he would be forced to pull the trigger. They weren't taking any chances, and as he sat down at the front console, he realized that he couldn't allow this to happen.

He thought back to his training, which was gave him the ability to control his motor cortex, which was being effected by the slave crown. He didn't have a way to focus his body, but he could focus his mind. He didn't have a way to relax muscles, though, and that was the most integral part of the process. All he could do was try and trick his mind into thinking he had entered the trance and hope that it would work.

The ship had already jumped and he was sitting light-years away from the star, but he was still close enough to see it clearly through the dimmed screen. There were planets—inhabited ones—in front of him, and he wasn't going to be able to stop himself from destroying them.

A red signal came on  his ocular console. Henny was there with him, but he couldn't answer. All he could do was watch while his finger moved towards the trigger. His hand was shaking. He closed his mind and told himself that he could stop it, that he had control, and for a second, his finger started quivering, but it wasn't enough. He was forced to give into the urge and keep moving. He pressed the tiny button on his console and watched while the black square filled with explosives came out of the front airlock and made its way towards the sun. It would only take a few minutes for the charge to go off and when it did, everything in the system would be dead.

He felt a tiny tear falling down his cheeks, and when his will finally returned, he fell on the floor screaming. “Why!?”

He wasn't evil. He wasn't cruel. He'd protected the only people he'd ever loved, and he would never allow them to come to harm, not like this. This couldn't happen. He had to stop it, but he couldn't. If he used one of the ship's weapons, the charge would go off and kill him too. He had to leave. He couldn't see this any longer. He interfaced with the ship's systems and entered blank, intergalactic space.

The black void swallowed him as he drifted into a sweet oblivion. When he awoke his eyes were red and his entire body was sore from falling asleep on the floor. He wiped the drool off his face and sat up. Henny was trying to contact him when it happened.

He entered the sanctuary and began to wail when he saw what she'd created. It was a complete model of the solar system, which zoomed into the little planet, hovering over the blue sand, which he knew was not far from where the blast went off. She had been there.