The Terran Representative (5 page)

Dell kept his cannon pointed down the hallway in my general direction. Not knowing what else to do I kept my hands in the air. I gulped and licked my dry lips. Neither one of us moved.

A woman pounded rounded the corner behind Dell. She let loose a hail of bullets. I fell to the ground and covered my head. One whomph followed and then two thuds.

I peeked out from between my fingers. The woman lay moaning on the ground. She feebly tried to reach for her gun that was a few feet from her but couldn’t close the gap. Blood seeped through the fabric of her jumpsuit, soaking it. She stopped reaching for her gun as the capillary effect drew blood into the fabric.

A few feet from her lay Dell, face down and unmoving.

I lay on the ground and listened. The woman’s moaning stopped. No one ran to help. No one shouted for reinforcements. No one fired their weapons. The only sounds I heard were my breathing and fans in the air filtering system.

Dell didn’t move when I jumped to my feet. I sprinted over to his body and rolled him over. Blood oozed from a chest wound. It dripped through the grating and pooled underneath the walkway.

I wrenched Dell’s helmet off him. His frill popped open and his eyes stared at me without life behind them. I’d mourn for him later. At this time I needed to get off Nasee Four.

I hooked into Dell’s suit and was bombarded with information. The
Omanix
had hailed him multiple times without receiving a reply. There were markers on his helmet’s HUD for seven remaining lifeforms which I presumed were more Terrans. A small map representation floated in the periphery. Why I hadn’t been contacted I didn’t know.

I maximized the map. Corridors were still snaking out and being formed. Dell must have released mapping drones when we entered the living area.

My next step was to find a ship and get off this rock. I scrolled around the map trying to find something that might be a shuttle bay. I figured it would be larger and on the periphery. My intuition was right, and I confirmed it by bringing up footage the drones had recorded.

There were two ships in the video. I overlaid the lifeform markers with the map. They were grouping together and heading towards the bay.

“
Omanix
,” I said. I dashed down the hallway and towards the shuttle bay.

“Where’s Dell?” said the
Omanix
. “We’re not picking up his signal. Why did you go radio silent?”

My momentum coming around a corner sent me into a wall. I grunted and bounced off it. “Dead. We found Terrans,” I said. My muscles already burned from the exertion. It seemed they hadn’t done anything for my endurance while I was in the healing chamber. “They’re making a run for the shuttles.”

“Are they hostile?”

“Very,” I said. I wanted to laugh, but it didn’t seem right since Dell’s body was still warm. “I’m heading for the shuttle bay.” Four of the lifeform blips were already there.

Baron popped up in a communication box. Its head filled the entire screen. “Do not engage. We’re sending help,” the Captain said.

This time I did laugh. Baron scrunched up their eyebrows, and I detected just a hint of a snarl. “I’m going to try and beat them to the shuttles,” I said.

I rounded the final corner and charged down the final hallway. I could see my destination ahead of me. Klaxons began to blare. A door started to shut behind me. Warning lights turned on and began to flash creating a strobe like effect. The atmosphere whooshed past me. I let out a startled cry. My body felt lighter as I got sucked along and tumbled end over end into the shuttle bay.

The bay doors were open. The stars shone in the blackness beyond. Debris sucked out of the bay floated into the emptiness and disappeared. My suit pinpointed and magnified an object: the
Omanix
. It sat, waiting, outside the shuttle bay.

I came to a stop on top of a woman. She kicked and punched at me. I tried to disengage and get myself untangled from her without using the full power of my suit. It was unclear what kind of protection hers offered. Her attacks kept us locked together. I yelled at her to stop but forgot she couldn’t hear me in the vacuum.

We rolled around until I slammed my fist into her chest. She skidded across the floor and came to a stop against the far wall. I got to my knees in time to see the first shuttle take off and head out.

It didn’t fly straight. The pilot took it in a drunken, zig zag pattern that made it look like a top towards the end of its spin: wobbly and unstable. The
Omanix
moved to intercept. The shuttle fired its weapons. The small laser missed the Confederate ship and vanished into the blackness. The
Omanix
returned fire, striking the smaller ship.

The shuttle contracted then expanded into a cloud of debris. There was no explosion or fire or sound. It was like I watched a balloon pop on mute.

I pitched forward from an impact to my back and slammed into the ground. My face crashed into my visor. Pain blossomed in my nose and blood ran down my face before my suit began to administer first aid. Something pounded on my back. My suit screamed warnings that an attempt was being made to take off my helmet.

With a painful grunt I rolled onto my back then sneezed clotted blood onto my visor. The woman who I’d tangled with before let go of me. She unsheathed a knife. Through the blood spray I saw her charge me and rolled onto my side.

She jumped onto me and wrapped her legs around my waist. I grabbed her wrist and felt it crush under my suit-assisted grip as she brought the knife down. She didn’t seem to notice and continued to maul at my helmet with her other hand.

The fight slowed down for me. Through her visor I saw markings cut into her face. Some were fresh and still bleeding. Her head was shaved exposing weeping sores on her scalp. Spit flecked her visor as blood from her cuts dripped and mixed in with her saliva to create a frothy, pinkish mixture. I was tempted to put my helmet to hers to see if I could understand what she said.

My suit pinged me and the world sped back up to normal. The second shuttle began to lift off. It tilted to one side and bumped into the far wall then listed back towards my attacker and me. I let out a cry that was a mixture of terror at being crushed and frustration at my situation. The woman still didn’t let go.

A ball of golden yellow light appeared next to me. Wards materialized and grabbed my arm. I felt her slap a Travel beacon on my chest, and the world disappeared in a flash of golden yellow light.

Wards came out of the interrogation room and patted my shoulder. It looked like she wanted to say something but couldn’t think of the words.

“How’d it go?” I said.

“Well,” said Wards, “she wants to speak with you.”

I snorted. After Wards had grabbed me on Nasee Four we traveled back to the
Omanix
. By chance of her attacking me and being in contact, the colonist came with us. On the
Omanix
she continued to fight until being sedated.

“She doesn’t seem to care much for discussion,” I said.

Wards shrugged. “She won’t talk to anyone else on the ship, and we’ve got orders from up high not to push her right now.”

I sighed, unsure of what I could do, and headed through the interrogation room door. She sat, wrists chained to the table, ankles cuffed to the chair. Her back faced me. The door shut behind me.

“Hello,” I said, moving to take my seat in the sterile white room. It reminded me of the types of rooms I’d seen in movies: single table, two chairs facing each other and a large mirror on one wall.

She squinted at me as I sat down. The symbols on her face were lighter, contrasting against her darker skin tone, due to new skin growth from healing boxes. Her wrist was free of a cast. She didn’t stink so at some point someone must have hosed her down.

“I was told you wanted to speak with me,” I said.

We sat in silence. She stared straight at me. I felt her gaze rip right into me. It was like a void had focused its attention on me: unsettling, unfamiliar, empty.

Her chains clinked as she leaned forward. The ball of tension in my chest dissipated in relief that something broke the silence.

“You haven’t been touched,” she said.

“By what?”

She grinned. Her teeth were a daffodil yellow, but her gums didn’t bleed. “You’ll know.”

I grumbled and put my head in my hands. The Hive had spoken in what I thought were riddles. I didn’t need more.

She looked toward the mirror, smacked her lips and smiled. “When they come you will all know,” she said.

“Who? Who’s coming?” I said.

“Kaur is the vanguard. She is the spearhead of their arrival,” said the woman. Her voice crackled with the intensity of a zealot.

I leaned back in my seat, startled. Kaur couldn’t be alive. She’d left Earth before I’d been cryo-frozen, but I’d play along. “Where is she?” I said. “Where are the other colonists?”

The woman lowered her head. She tapped her foot on the ground. Her fingers fidgeted with the chains that connected her wrists. When she spoke her voice was low and had a tone of embarrassment to it. “We were left behind.”

“On Nasee Four?” It felt like I was getting somewhere, that she was opening up to me. I wished I had a psychologist in my ear telling me what to do because I didn’t want to prod too much.

“No,” she said. She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Kaur left us on Masirah, to wait, to spread their word, but then they came. They joined us and from them we went to Nasee Four. It was empty.” She raised her head. Her penetrating stare was back. The embarrassment was gone. The zealot returned. “Retribution in the old ways.”

“What old ways?” I said. “Whose word?” The woman spoke like she was in some kind of cult. It sounded like Kaur had started some kind of religion.

“They will return from beyond the veil,” screamed the woman. “They have awoken, and Kaur will ride at their head.” She strained against her restraints. They cut into her flesh, and she began to bleed. Veins in her neck bulged as she yelled. The woman threw her head back and began screaming at the ceiling in a language that I didn’t understand. Its words sounded guttural and phlegmy.

I pitched back from the table, catching myself as my chair began to fall. Two Planarium ran in and grabbed the woman. She bucked them off, continuing to scream before being injected with something and overpowered. I edged my way around the three and back out into the hallway.

Out of the room I let out a sigh of relief. I lightly slapped my cheeks and ran my hands through my hair. The woman scared the hell out of me. She sent shivers up my spine. Whatever had happened to her had sent her off the deep end. I hoped that searching didn’t lead me down the same path.

“Quite a piece of work,” said Wards as she came out of the neighboring room and into the hallway.

“I have no idea what she meant,” I shrugged. “I’m sorry.”

Wards nodded and handed me a tablet. It had pictures queued up. The subject matter looked like the altar on SpaciEm.

“What’s this?” I said. I handed the tablet back without scrolling through. I had no interest in reliving what we had found.

“It’s on Nasee Four,” said Wards. “They sacrificed the missing members of The Hive.”

I wanted to shake out the revulsion, but it wasn’t there. After seeing SpaciEm I expected that they would have done something cruel and inhumane. It seemed to be their signature.

“Do you know what she was yelling about with the veil and the old ways?” I said.

Wards furrowed her brow. “There are tales of travelers who go mad. During their voyage they leave this plane and enter another where space and time don’t exist, where beings that have always been and always will be live. The travelers are stuck there for all eternity as they perceive it, and when they return their minds are lost.”

“They travel between dimensions?” I said.

“Sure,” said Wards. “It’s known you can do it, but we don’t.” She looked at the tablet and caressed the edge of it. “I’m not an expert, but from what I remember, scientists were able to send inanimate objects to another dimension. They were never able to get the object to come back to the right place or time even with the correct coordinates and date. No amount of correcting or accounting could make it work.” She shrugged. “So they gave up.”

“So you think our friend traveled between dimensions?” I said. It didn’t sound plausible. The easiest solution to me was that she was mad. While her, and the others’, actions were abhorrent they were the work of minds lost in the vastness of space. “That seems pretty unlikely.”

“Do you know how your people achieved FTL travel?” said Wards. Her voice had an edge of defense to it.

I admitted I didn’t.

“One theory is to rip holes between dimensions. Travel into one with no time,” said Wards. “You calibrate how far you need to go in your new dimension to match up with our dimension and at the end of that rip a hole back into our dimension. If all goes right you’ll pop out at your destination, and it will seem like no time passed at all.”

“Okay,” I said. “So how would you know if the colonists did this?”

Wards’ tongue lolled out to the side: a Planarium smile. “There are extra heavy particles that are attributed with interdimensional travel. Scientists found them when they were experimenting. Our friend is filthy with them.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. It’d been a long day, and I was getting tired. I just wanted to get to the point. “So she travelled between dimensions?”

“Correct,” said Wards. “In addition, the particles not only stay with a traveler but are ejected before an object returns to our dimension.” She jabbed me in the chest with her finger. “And your system is filled with them in varying degrees of decay.”

“So,” I said, the realization beginning to dawn on me, “the colonists have been coming back to the Sol System periodically.”

Wards nodded. “And if we can figure out a decay rate pattern we might be able to predict when they come back.”

“Does that mean we’re heading back to Earth?”

Wards nodded. Her tongue lolled out even more. She looked like a ball of energy bouncing from foot to foot. I didn’t share her enthusiasm in heading back to an empty Earth.