The Terran Representative (4 page)

I sat on the edge of my bed. My crew quarters on the
Omanix
were sparse: a bed, a desk, a chair, a wash basin, a shower, a small tablet to watch pre-loaded shows from around the Confederacy. The main luxury was that I didn’t have to share it with anyone.

I’d tried to spark up a conversation in the common areas with the
Omanix’s
crew, but no one cared to speak with me. Before we’d gotten to SpaciEm Wards had told me that the crew wanted to keep their distance. They were a tight knit group who had served with each other throughout the war while I was an oddity, an outlier, a being to gawk at and tell stories about to their friends and family back home.

After the three of us discovered the atrocities committed deep below SpaciEm’s surface I noticed the crew had a different light in their eyes. They still avoided me but some now had wariness in their eyes and actions. It was like they expected me to break out in the violence and murder that had occurred below.

During the entire trip to Nasee Four I interacted with no one but Dell and Wards. Baron relayed their questions through someone else. Dell kept his distance. He was professional, as he’d always been, but there was coldness, a barrier, like a wall had been built between us. Only Wards continued to speak and act as before SpaciEm. If she saw the stares or noticed the room go silent when we’d sit together in the cafeteria or work out, she never let on that it bothered her; at least in front of me.

“Do you think it was Kaur and her people?” I said to no one in particular. I’d taken to speaking aloud in my quarters as there was no one to be embarrassed around.

After SpaciEm I’d asked Wards and Dell the same questions. Wards shrugged and said something non-committal. Dell flat out said, “Yes.”

“No,” I said. I sat for a few beats listening to the hum of the ship. “Maybe. Maybe something happened to them on their trip.”

“But what could have happened to make them do those things?”

“I don’t know,” I said. There must have been thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands in that chamber. Would we have found the same on the moon in its cave system if we’d searched? Would we find the same on Nasee Four?

I tried to shut it out of my mind. SpaciEm was an anomaly. It was the work of a fringe group of colonists gone mad.

“But what if it wasn’t a fringe group? What if it was Kaur?”

“No,” I whispered.

“What if that is what happens? You go mad when you go it alone.”

I scrunched up my eyes as tight as I could. My hands balled into fists, nails biting into my palms. I pounded my thigh with my fist, the pain felt deep in the muscle. “No.”

My breathing came in ragged gasps. Tears blurred my vision. I hung my head.

“You’re alone.”

“I know,” I said. If Kaur had committed the acts on SpaciEm, and there were no other Terrans besides myself, why should they be found? Why should they not be left to rot in whatever hellhole they found themselves? Why should I work to bring to light the worst of my people?

Maybe being alone in the deep void of space had made Kaur and the colonists go insane. I’d considered that they were completely cut off from Earth. Maybe they couldn’t communicate with anyone. Maybe they had become an entity unto themselves where mental illness blossomed and madness became the norm.

Perhaps the madness spread slowly, one by one but being self-contained within the colonial fleet it couldn’t be eradicated. It fed on itself getting worse as time went on. Colonists infected one another with their insanity until it controlled everything and everyone. Maybe the sane were what we found on SpaciEm.

And here I was: a lone Terran sitting in my quarters by myself. I let my imagination bounce back and forth without any filters. No one was there to tell me to stop traveling down a specific road of thought. There was no one to reel me back in, pull me out of the depths and plant my feet back on solid ground. No one was there to prevent me from following in the footsteps of Kaur.

“You can go back.”

“I know,” I said. Earth seemed enticing. Go back to my cryo-chamber. Shed the trappings of responsibility. I didn’t want the burden of answering for crimes I hadn’t committed or succumbing to an insanity I couldn’t explain. I wanted to go back to sleep and not have to face my current reality.

Let the Confederacy and the Vantagax have their war. Let Kaur have her cult and its abominable acts. I would be asleep without the reminders of the cruelty the galaxy possessed.

“Let Dell know you’re going back.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t tell Dell I didn’t want to be a part of this anymore. I had to handle it; I couldn’t slink back to my cryo-chamber. Maybe it was too much responsibility, but I had to try.

I started to cry. Tears rolled down my cheeks. They collected around my nostrils and pooled at the tip of my nose to drip off and splatter my shirt.

This was it. I didn’t know if I could handle Nasee Four, but we were almost there. Maybe there’d be a group of people who had outrun Kaur. They’d be there to welcome me with open arms as their rescuer. We’d head off, settle somewhere with me as their leader and forget about everywhere else.

I doubted it.

The
Omanix
’s shuttle touched down on the surface. The door slid open to reveal a barren pock-marked landscape. I’d been briefed that Nasee Four was the fourth of four Trojans following the planet Nasee. At one time a colony had been chartered to hollow out the Trojan. They’d gotten partway done before running out of money and abandoning the project.

“How far is the hatch?” I said.

We jumped out of the shuttle. Puffs of grayish dust plumed up from our footsteps as we crossed the barren landscape. The gravity was low enough that we bounded, almost bunny hopped across the surface. Our movements reminded me of the way the first men to walk on the Moon had moved.

“Not much farther,” said Wards. She leapt ahead of us, scanning left and right as she went.

Dell followed behind me. “Remember,” he said, “do not engage anyone that we come across.”

I felt his stare penetrating the back of my helmet. His only words to me before we left the
Omanix
were to not engage on my own; don’t speak, don’t call out, and don’t act until he told me to do so. He had been professional but curt, and I noticed a hard edge to his tone. I didn’t know if it was me or the situation that caused him to act in such a way.

Ahead of us Wards stopped and hunched over something. “Found the hatch,” she said. “Accessing the door panel.”

“The
Omanix
is still picking up all fifteen life signs in the habitable area,” said Dell. “Open the door when you can.”

“Manually overriding the door security,” said Wards.

We continued to bunny hop towards her spot. The stars behind her looked like a tapestry hanging as backdrop. The stars looked so close and the gravity so weak I felt like I could launch myself into space. There’d be no goodbyes or explanations, just me flying away into the emptiness.

The hatch burst open. Wards screamed and shot into space. Dell grabbed my shoulder. My feet flew out in front of me as their momentum kept them going. I let out a small cry and fell backwards onto my back into a cloud of grey dust.

“Wards,” I yelled. I reached out with my hand at the small speck that was Wards disappearing into space in the same way I had just thought about.

“I’m fine,” said Wards. “Suit’s fine.” Her voice was shaky, and we could hear her trying to control her breathing. “There was some kind of explosive on the door. Booby trapped.” She said something I didn’t understand but the intonation was one of frustration and anger. “Scan didn’t pick it up for some reason.”

“
Omanix
is sending the shuttle out,” said Dell. “They’re going to nab you before you get too far.” He looked at the blown hatch. “We’re still moving ahead.”

“Got it,” said Wards. “I’m going to take a little R and R. Let you do the heavy lifting.”

I laughed, half in relief and half at the joke, as Dell and I headed down the ladder into the Trojan. “See you before too long,” I said.

“Be safe,” she said. “I’m closing out this channel.”

Dell and I came to the bottom of the ladder and flicked on our headlamps. A hallway appeared before us out of the dark. It had metal grating for flooring, metal walls and massive ground to ceiling supports whose bulk dwarfed my own.

“Be careful of more traps,” said Dell.

It felt like he spoke to himself more than to us, but I still told my suit to scan for anything dangerous. “Do you know where we’re going?”

Dell gave me a small nudge and motioned with his head. “Ahead,” he said.

We plodded down the hallway in silence. The hallway was only wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side, but Dell kept as much distance between him and me as he could. If I moved a step closer to him he moved a step away from me. “You don’t trust me?” I said after we’d walked in an awkward silence for a good ten minutes.

“Precaution,” said Dell. “Terrans aren’t the first race to lose their minds when they get into space.”

We arrived at a closed door. Neither one of us made a move to open the door. Dell pointed at the hatch wheel. “Open it up,” he said. “I’ll keep watch.”

I sighed and gripped the wheel. No alerts came up. My suit groaned along with me as the wheel turned with hesitation, but I managed to open the door and push it inwards. My muscles ached and felt like they were on fire. I stepped across the threshold, caught my toe and stumbled.

A beam of light grazed over my shoulder and hit the doorframe. It sparked and blackened the metal. I tried to move backwards, back through the door, but Dell pushed me forward, and I sprawled face first onto the floor. Another beam of light flashed over my head. Even through my suit I felt the heat of the laser just missing me.

Dell fired three times from his suit’s arm cannon into a far corner. A smoldering piece of slag fell from the ceiling onto the ground. It glowed orange and lit up the walls around it.

I had to remind myself to breathe. My palms were sweaty and my heartbeat raced. I wanted to jump up and run.

“What the hell are you doing?” I screamed.

Dell looked down at me. He took a step over the threshold and into the room. “You’re fine.”

“Fine,” I muttered, pushing myself up and dusting myself off. “I’m fine. I bet if I checked a mirror there’d be a scorch mark on my helmet.”

“The calibration was off,” said Dell. “If it was going to hit you it’d have hit you on the first shot. Besides, you should have checked for it in the first place.

I muttered to myself as we continued our trek. Dell was the professional on this. He and Wards were supposed to take care of our security. I’d only been brought along to act as a liaison if we found anyone. I wasn’t trained for this type of situation.

We encountered three more mounted lasers and five trip wires attached to explosives. None of them seemed to be particularly well placed or well maintained. Lasers, like the first one, weren’t calibrated or weren’t aimed well. The trip wires were snaked across the floor. One would have had to be dragging their feet to get caught up in them. Everything seemed to be installed by someone distracted or without know-how.

Dell and I reached an airlock and stepped inside. A red light began to blink at us when the door closed. My suit alerted me that atmosphere began to fill the chamber. We stood in silence. I glanced over at Dell, but he concentrated on something else. Soon the red light blinked off and a green one turned on. A chime sounded, and the opposite door opened.

We stepped into the habitable area. The lighting was less harsh, and the walls were painted a light blue. Rows of empty planters lined the walls. My suit read the atmosphere as being the same as Earth’s. I thought it was a good sign. Dell gritted his teeth and gave a throaty hiss.

The hallway widened, and we walked without talking. In the atmosphere our boots clanked on the metal grating. It didn’t take long to forget about the lack of outside sounds when I was locked down in my suit in the vacuum. Everything came internally: radio chatter, the rasp of my breathing, the thump of my heartbeat. In atmosphere, sounds leaked through my helmet. Even filtered I could hear the going on around me: hiss of pipes, rattle of vents, pounding of boots.

When we came to junctions, I slowed down and Dell would nudge me or point in the direction we needed to go. He continued to keep his distance. The thought of a surprise attack crossed my mind briefly, but I tried to dismiss the idea. Dell would be on alert for one; I was not a fighter.

I ran through a few other scenarios but came to the conclusion I wouldn’t be very good in a fight. I decided that if worst comes to worst that I would take a ship from whoever was here. They had to have a ship because otherwise how would they have gotten here. Flying it would be up to the AI. I was pretty sure ships had some kind of autopilot.

I shook my head. My plan was terrible, but I couldn’t think of anything else.

I continued to trudge along. One part of my mind tried to tell me to be ready for the worst. The other part tried to tell me that everything would be okay. I wasn’t sure which one I wanted to believe.

As we moved down the hallways signs of life began to pop up; a blood smeared white tank top sat wadded on the ground, a rotten smell, and unintelligible voices echoing in the distance. With the first voices Dell grabbed my shoulder and pushed me down until we were both crouched. My heart pounded, and the saliva dried up in my mouth.

I wasn’t sure what the plan was supposed to be, as there had been an assumption in briefing that the people we’d meet would be aggressive. I supposed if they were friendly I’d be able to strike up a conversation with them. It made sense that we needed to be alert. Even the walk down into SpaciEm felt cautious, but this almost felt like we were part of a raiding party sneaking up on the villagers.

Something crashed in an offshoot hallway at the T-junction ahead of us. It sounded like an empty barrel had fallen over. Someone began cursing. My ears perked up. Then someone spoke in English with a Zimbabwean accent.

“I recognize the accent,” I whispered to Dell.

“Terran?” he said.

I nodded.

Dell got up and walked around the corner. “Don’t move,” he yelled. His tin can voice from his suit mike echoed in the hallways.

“Fuck,” yelled the someone. Three shots rang out. The noise reverberated around the small space, and I silently thanked my suit for filtering out the worst of it. .

Dell’s arm cannon blared. It made a whomph sound each time it fired its small energy blast. Something fell onto the grating with a thud and a separate clatter of plastic. Someone shouted. Footsteps pounded down the corridor away from my position.

Two more shots fired then another three from Dell. His heavy footsteps moved down the corridor. He traded fire with someone else who yelled obscenities.

My brain screamed at me to run. I opened my eyes. During the shooting I’d screwed them shut so tight tears rolled down my cheeks. With the sounds of fighting fading in the distance I looked around at the empty corridor and stood up.

I peeked around the corner to get a view of the aftermath. The corpse of a man draped across a pile of boxes. His rifle lay a few feet away from him. He wore the standard jumpsuit I remembered the colonists had on in promotional photos. Every inch of exposed skin had a myriad of tattoos and scarring in the shape of the symbols we’d seen on the walls of SpaciEm.

Another violent encounter filtered around a corner and down the corridor. Every fiber in my body told me to take off in the opposite direction of Dell and the colonists. Whatever fight he partook in wasn’t one I wanted take part in. At this time I didn’t want to be found by either him or the colonists. I wanted off Nasee Four.

Once again I found myself choosing random corridors. I’d slow down at hallway intersections and try to identify something that would help me find a path to the shuttle bay. In my head it should have been easy like finding a firehose in a skyscraper, but here I couldn’t find anything. The thought crossed my mind that since this was an unfinished colony they had never put any signage.

As I ran, voices echoed down the hallways. Footsteps hammered the metal grating somewhere else in the facility. The sounds of gunfire and return fire bounced around the hallway walls. About the only thing I could pinpoint was that the fighting wasn’t right next to me.

I ran around a corner and skidded to a halt. A woman raised her gun, aiming above my head, and fired one shot. I threw my hands up in the air and on instinct crouched down as the bullet ricocheted around the small space.

“Don’t shoot,” I said, surprising myself that my words didn’t come out in a stammer.

“Are you with it?” she said. Anger and hatred oozed from her words.

I looked up and with some hesitation stood before responding. She wore the same jumpsuit and had the same markings as the dead man. I didn’t know how to respond.

She gritted her teeth and gripped the gun tighter. An odor struck me in a wave of rotten flesh. The stench that had been haunting us throughout the facility was the colonists.

The woman edged closer to me. She cocked her head to the side and eyed me sideways. Her gaze focused on my face.

“You aren’t here to take us back?” she said.

“Back where?”

“To there,” she hissed. Spit flecked on her lips and her eyes got a wild look in them. “With Kaur.”

I shook my head. “We don’t know where she is,” I said. “We thought you could tell us.”

“No,” she said continuing to edge closer to me. “No. You aren’t here for us.”

A smile crept across her face. It dangled to one side like she’d had a stroke at some point. Her teeth were black and her gums bled. Her sclera was yellow with veins crisscrossing them. She eased herself up next to me and leaned in, smelling my neck. I closed my eyes and turned my head. Her breath made me want to retch and her body odor felt oppressive.

“No,” she said in a low tone. “You’re going to join us.” She snapped. Her teeth clacked as they hit each other, and she laughed.

The whomph of an arm cannon at the opposite end of the hall echoed down to us. A man screamed and the woman turned. She started firing down the hallway as Dell stalked around the corner.

Bullets sparked and ricocheted around him. He stumbled backwards as one caught him in the chest but righted himself and continued forward. Two shots from his arm cannon caught the woman in the abdomen in quick succession and sent her cartwheeling into the bulkhead behind me.