Tag Scifi

Episode 9 – Mayday, part 5

Captain Mayor Brooks 6 Comments

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Her ears were ringing after the explosion.

She felt more than heard the sound of herself gasping, her chest heaving hard to pull air into lungs that had been deprived for . . .

She didn’t know how long.

But she was alive.

The bulkhead above her was curved, a dark utilitarian gray metal.  She looked to either side, seeing that she was in one of the escape pods.

How had she gotten here?  The last thing she remembered was the massive sound, being thrown-

She reached up an arm, pain shooting through her, but she found she could move her left.  Her right arm was stiff, immoble against her front, and she looked down to see that it was bound in a quick-cast.  It must have been broken and someone had put her into it.

Looking down took a lot out of her, her head swimming.  She probably had a concussion, which meant she had to stay awake . . .

But even as she thought that she felt herself drifting out of consciousness.

A beeping sound awoke her.  It was a shrill, demanding noise, and she groaned, reaching for the console.  Pain shot through her right arm as she tried to move it, and she suddenly remembered.

Sitting up suddenly, her head spun, but it settled after a few moments.

She looked down and saw two small plastic discs stuck to her midriff.  One was an antibiotic and painkiller, the other was one of the precious medical nanos – machines as small as a cell that could be pumped into a person.  They could repair damage, spur healing, even specialize into specific roles to keep vital organs functioning.

Someone had really worked hard to save her.

The painkiller might be why she didn’t remember much.  That, or she’d suffered brain damage.  In which case she could only hope that the medical nanos were up to the task.

Her limbs still felt like they weighed ten times more than usual as she got up, crawling towards the console that was still beeping at her.  They must still be moving at more than one G, she thought.

“On,” she said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

“Maria’s Cog Pod #57, this is the Craton!  Are you there?  Give us a signal.  Repeat, Maria’s Cog Pod #57 . . .”

It was an automated call, and she swallowed nervously as she activated the transmit button.  A list of errors appeared in her HUD, only a few of which she understood.  The transmitter had suffered some kind of damage, but as she swiped them away, she found that she still had a signal.  It wasn’t that strong, but it was enough.

“Craton, this is Lily Brogan . . .  Drone Repair Tech second class . . .  I’m here!  I’m alive.”

She didn’t know what else to say.  She gotten emergency training, done a hundred drills, there were things she had to do.

She wracked her brain.  She was in the pod and they’d launched . . .

Wait, they had, hadn’t they?  She looked at the console, sweeping aside warnings and looking for course.

There!  Bringing up the screen, she saw that they had launched away from the Maria’s Cog, a dashed line showing their course.

It was a dotted, flashing line through a three-dimensional space.

This was her forte; she worked with drones in space all the time, and her long experience made the image make sense.  They were still accelerating, the pod’s fuel still burning.  So it hadn’t been that long since they’d launched, the pod didn’t have fuel or reaction mass for more than ten hours of burn.

She began to search for more data to overlay, the work helping her understand what happened but also giving her something to do while she waited for an answer.

The pod had only rudimentary sensors, and most weren’t working, but she was able to overlay the position of the Craton; they were broadcasting their locational data and she could triangulate it with the Maria’s Cog itself, which was still broadcasting – even if just gibberish.  If they had continued on their course it meant she’d be getting a reply soon.

Placing the Maria’s Cog, she zoomed out.  There had to be other pods near them, but something was off.  She had been nearest to the port pod bay, but her location did not match that launch.  It didn’t match any launch location for pods on the Maria’s Cog at all.

The locations of other pods was not a priority for any individual pod to track, though they did note other fast-moving objects for purposes of avoiding collisions.  So if she filtered based on their likely velocities . . .

A series of dots began to glow.  Some were debris whose velocity just fell into the right ranges, but others had to be the pods.

A pattern was clear.  The pods had launched in droves from port and starboard.

But she was off-course.  Nowhere near the others, which were on curved courses, designed to meet up a distance from their mothership, so that they could be picked up by rescuers easier.

Her course was curving the other way.

She scanned the data again, double checking, then triple-checking it.

But it seemed consistent.

She sat back, taking a breath.  Fear was powerful, but this wasn’t a death sentence.  The Craton had its own zerodrive, that was the only way it could even have been here to help them so quickly.  Even if it took time to charge again, and her pod continued to fly off-course, they could collect her.  It just meant she’d be out here for awhile . . .

But escape pods had survival rations and the basic facilities of life.  A small medical drone, rations for ten for two weeks, air recyclers . . .  She could survive.

Sniffing and wiping her face, she sat back.  She just had to wait.

Her head was swimming again, and she felt like – no, she knew – she was forgetting something.

But she could not remember what.

< Ep 9 Part 4 | Ep 9 Part 6 >

Episode 9 – Mayday, part 4

Captain Mayor Brooks 2 Comments

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

“We have surfaced in normal space,” Ji-min Bin called.

Brooks rose from his chair, taking in the view of space around them as reality coalesced on the screens.

“Scanning for krahteon emissions . . .” Cenz said.  “No krahteons detected.”

There was a slight exhalation of breath from many, Brooks included.  “Keep up low-intensity scans – carefully.  Just in case we have another sleeping giant.”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Recording twelve minor impacts upon the frontal cone,” Bin called.  “Very small pieces, likely debris.”

“Just a few new dents for the frontal armor,” Urle commented.  “Nothing serious.”

“Automatic interception lasers are firing,” Jaya commented.

On the screen, brief, bright red lines appeared, the navigational lasers on the ship’s towers incinerating small objects flying at them.

“Filter infrared and find me our ship,” Brooks ordered.

A small speck highlighted on the screen, then magnified.  It was the Maria’s Cog.

Glints of light from a million pieces of debris danced, glittering like fireflies on a summer’s night.

But the ship herself was a wreck.

She had broken up into at least three major pieces.  Areas of the hull showed jagged damage, but other cuts appeared relatively straight, sliced cleanly.

“She definitely got hit by something with a lotta joules,” Ham Sulp messaged.  He was not on the bridge, but he was observing all they saw.  “Something deep into her.”

“It appears the impact came in through her nose shield and pierced at least seven kilometers through her superstructure,” Jaya said.

“If it pierced the nose cone then it was highly energetic, as Commander Sulp suggests,” Cenz said thoughtfully.  “This would be consistent with a projectile launched from a heavy coilgun.”

“High-temperature plasma burns,” Urle noted, highlighting marks on the hull.  “The reactor breaches released plasma rings and those are what ripped the ship apart.  If not for that, she would have survived the impact, I bet.”

“But who attacked them?” Jaya said.  “At the moment that is the most important thing to know.  Every weapon leaves traces, and we must find them here.  Other than directly IDing an enemy ship, that is our best bet to finding out who did this.”

“Do not jump to conclusions before further assessment of data,” Cutter said.  “Deeper scans will reveal true cause of damage.”

Brooks found his eyes following the lines of the ship, feeling a hurt to see her so broken.  Brooks knew her type well – the Maria’s Cog had never been a beautiful vessel in the traditional sense.  But ships like her were the lifeblood of distant worlds and stations, the unrecognized heroes of a star-faring civilization.

Now cut apart like a carcass on a chopping block.

The glints of light from the debris hinted at the dangers lurking around her.  They could be a piece of hull, radioactive waste, food, someone’s tablet.  Or even a body itself, frozen solid in space.  At high enough speed any one of those could cause catastrophic damage if it hit the right place.

They had to proceed with caution.

“What are our sensor sweeps finding?” Brooks asked.

“We are detecting no other large vessels,” Cenz said.

“Find all likely locations they could be hiding from our sensors,” Jaya said.  “Behind astronomical objects, even in a star’s light.”

“This area contains seven long-term monitoring probes,” Cenz said.  “I am querying them all, but the nearest two report that they have had no view of any vessel besides the Maria’s Cog in the last 248 days.  Their view, while not complete, covers many nearby plausible objects that could be screening an enemy vessel.  And to be quite honest; we are in interstellar space.  There is not much around that could serve as cover.”

Jaya looked even more displeased by that; she did not speak, thinking.

Brooks understood why she’d be so disquieted.  She had to view situations through the lens of how they might threaten the ship and her crew, and it did seem obvious that this was an intentional attack.

But the lack of enemy was strong evidence against.  To hide from the sensors of the monitoring probes was not something that could be done easily; with the multiple reactors any zerospace-capable vessel must possess, the amount of IR they put out was like a beacon.

“Captain,” Cenz said.  “There are nearly one hundred lifepods with active signals.”

“We need to begin recovery operations,” Kai said, turning her chair to face Brooks.  “I have all Response Teams on standby.  We await your orders, Captain.”

“Stars and rads, it’s going to be hard to extract them from that mess,” Sulp messaged.

“Begin deploying rescue drones first,” Brooks ordered.

Jaya frowned, but did not object.  Prioritizing the rescue drones meant the Craton had much less protection or ability to detect incoming threats for a time.  If an enemy had caused the destruction of the Maria’s Cog, they would be vulnerable.

But the evidence was still unclear, no enemy was near.  If somehow they had learned to hide themselves so completely that they were not detectable by the probes or the Craton, then it hardly mattered what precautions they took.  They would be outclassed to such a degree that resistance would be impossible.

Brooks continued.  “Get signals on all lifepods and search for any that may have gone dark, just in case.  Have secondary comm centers one and two begin actively pinging those that are signaling, I want to know their status so we can start rescue triage.  And find out everything you can from them about what happened to the ship.”

He frowned, studying the separating parts of the Maria’s Cog again, still slowly drifting away from each other.

“I want Science using secondary sensors to find those pods – without an obvious current danger we want to close our window of vulnerability and get them out of there as soon as possible.  Engineering, you have primary sensor arrays.  Start your own investigation, see if you can ascertain what destroyed the vessel.  Even more than rescue, we need to know if this was an attack or an accident – if there’s a threat, it goes beyond the fates of the Maria’s Cog‘s crew and even our ship.  The Union needs to know if we’ve got an enemy in our midst.  I want your preliminary answer in twenty minutes.”

He sighed.  “And until we can rule out an attack, get the combat drones launching as soon as the rescue ones are out.  At the very least we’ll need them to intercept that debris.  Just . . .”

He hesitated, staring again.

“Try not to shoot the bodies unless you have to.  I want to recover everyone we can.  The living and the dead.”

< Ep 9 Part 3 | Ep 9 Part 5 >

Episode 9 – Mayday, part 3

Captain Mayor Brooks 3 Comments

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Captain Ian Brooks accepted the cup of tea from the drone with a nod.

It floated off silently, and he took a sip.  The tea was still too hot for his liking, and he blew on it.

“Really, Captain?” Jaya said quietly.  “That’s barely tepid.”

“Yes, I know you drink boiling water each day to toughen up,” he replied, amused.  “But I’ll take my tea at the temperature I prefer.”

“I imagine you’d be able to even drink it cold,” she commented.

“Why yes, I can,” he retorted.  “That’s how everything is in Antarctica.  What most people call room temperature we call too hot.”

“Captain,” Shomari Eboh called out.  “We are receiving a priority distress signal!”

Brooks sat up, the humor dropping from him.  “Who sent it?”

“The long-range cargo carrier Maria’s Cog.  Timestamp indicates that it was sent only thirty-two minutes ago, bounced off a repeater, and came to us.”

“Are we the closest vessel with a zerodrive?” Jaya asked.

“Aye,” Eboh confirmed.  “Two other vessels have been alerted, the long-range scout Huntington and a deep-space science vessel the Inquisitive Eye.”

“We’re the only real help for them, then,” Brooks said.  “Begin charging the zerodrive.  Prepare for a dive.”

“Do we know the nature of their emergency?” Jaya asked.

“Not yet,” Eboh replied.  “We are still unpacking the detailed data.  Give me a moment.”

Jaya and Brooks exchanged glances.

The feed connected to their systems, sending the decrypted data.  It was brief.

SHIP TIME HOUR 04 MINUTE 27 SECOND 12 – UNKNOWN IMPACT EVENT

SHIP TIME HOUR 04 MINUTE 27 SECOND 12 – REACTOR 8 CRITICAL FAILURE

SHIP TIME HOUR 04 MINUTE 27 SECOND 12 – REACTOR 3 CRITICAL FAILURE

SHIP TIME HOUR 04 MINUTE 27 SECOND 14 – REACTOR 8 BREACH

SHIP TIME HOUR 04 MINUTE 27 SECOND 14 – REACTOR 3 BREACH

Brooks checked if there was any more on the first point, elaboration upon this impactor.

But there was nothing.

“They were attacked,” Jaya said.

Brooks was quiet a moment longer, going over the data again, as sparse as it was.

The ship took a hit that pierced two fusion reactors.  It was unknown, which means it was moving so fast that they didn’t see it coming.

The hit was precise.  Surgical.

The Maria’s Cog was not a military vessel.  Without good reason they would not be blaring out active sensors and utilizing dense screens of high-quality drones.

Jaya had to be right.  As much as he did not want to think that someone had just launched an unprovoked attack against a ship deep in Union space, it was the most likely explanation.

“It may be,” he said.  “We’ll be prepared for all eventualities.”  He raised his voice.  “Awaken all command staff, prepare Response Teams and rescue drones.  How soon until we can jump?”

“Capacitors were already near full,” Cutter said.  “Enough power for jump in ten minutes.”

“I recommend we also prepare all combat drones, load the missile racks, and charge the coilguns, Captain,” Jaya said.

“Do it,” he ordered.  “It’ll take us three hours to reach them.  We have until then to prepare.”

Hopefully there would still be someone left alive to save by then.

Captain’s Log:

The Craton is an hour away from the last location of the Maria’s Cog.  We do not know what to expect when we surface.  Who would want to attack a cargo carrier?

Our records indicate a long service record for the vessel, extending back before zerodrives.  Almost thirty kilometers long, she once carried millions of people at sublight speed – dropping off sufficient people and supplies in a system before moving on and letting natural growth replenish her numbers.

Now she operates with a skeleton crew of less than a thousand, serving to bring massive quantities of supplies to distant colonies and outposts.

What could threaten a vessel so large?  Even a heavy battleship would have difficulty knocking out such a ship quickly.

The fear of a Leviathan is in many people’s minds, but I remain skeptical, until we arrive and see for ourselves.

< Ep 9 Part 2 | Ep 9 Part 4 >

Episode 9 – Mayday, part 2

Captain Mayor Brooks 1 Comment

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

A screaming sound was the first thing she heard.

Pain was the next sensation, her entire body feeling like a mass of pain, and the screaming continued.

Only it wasn’t screaming, because it was still going on, a constant droning that no living being could have kept up without pausing for breath.

Everything was a blur; dark red lighting dominated, and as she sat upright she joined the strange endless scream as she felt the pain in her side.

It only got worse as something grabbed her, yanking her to her feet.

Davyyd’s face was there, in front of hers.  She could barely see him through the darkness and her own tears, but she recognized something about him.

“Can you move?” he was shouting.

She nodded or must have said something to that effect, because suddenly they were moving.  She had no idea if she could really move, the pain in her side was almost blinding.

Adrenaline was helping, as she stumbled along with him.  The lights were out; even most of the emergency lights were out, and the reddish glow she was seeing were from fires.

Black smoke poured from an open door as they stumbled past, and she wondered why the bulkhead had not automatically shut if there was a fire.  As she glanced in, saw the raging inferno, with a handful of drones and Response Officers battling it, she realized that the bulkhead door had been completely torn off.

“What happened?” she yelled.

“Don’t know!” Davyyd yelled back.  “We’re hit, that’s all I know.”

“How bad?” she asked.  It seemed a dumb question, really, given what she was seeing.  But the Maria’s Cog was a big ship.

“Bad,” he said.

“What’s that noise?” she yelled.

“Fusion reactor warning,” he yelled back.

That wasn’t a fusion reactor warning sound, she thought.  Fusion reactor warnings weren’t continuous-

The sound was growing.

“Faster!” Davyyd cried.  They were running now, she was panting for breath and crying out with each step, pain shooting through her that even the adrenaline couldn’t fully cover.

The screaming sound reached a crescendo – and kept rising.  She could practically feel it now, and she saw that a bulkhead door ahead was closing.

The air was growing hot.

“Through!” Davyyd yelled, throwing her – and himself – through.

She looked back, down the long hall, and saw a light glowing.  It was not directly in sight, but down along the hall as it curved, so bright that all simply seemed to be turning white.

She saw other people down the hall, she couldn’t tell who.  They were running towards the door, but then they were simply gone.

“Don’t look!” Davyyd yelled, pulling her away.

The security hatch closed, sealing.

And she realized that it was the light of a fusion reactor breach.

The transparent titanium window was nearby, and she staggered over, looking out into space.

A loop of pure white light ripped out of the ship, and the block dimmed.  For a moment she thought it was the interior dimming to protect her eyes.

But no; it was the outside darkening as it began to burn.

“What are you thinking?” Davyyd cried.  “Get away from there, we have to keep going!”

She looked back at him, and saw that the heavy door was already warping, the air near it distorting from the heat contained behind it.

They ran.

It was only snippets, moments after that.

She staggered, falling, but Davyyd dragged her back to her feet.

Another door shutting behind them, held until the last moment by another Response Officer who was burned over half his body, but still doing his job.

Davyyd tried to help him, but he waved them on, yelling something.  Lily did not catch what, but she understood the gist.

With his rad exposure, he was dead already.

The escape pod area was rumbling by the time they got there, and Davyyd kept shoving her onward, though she was gasping.  The air was too hot; something else terrible was happening, but she did not even know what.

“Get in!” he yelled, opening the pod bay door and shoving her inside.

“You too!” she cried.

He shook his head.  “I have to help others!”

She grabbed his arm, but he pulled it away.  “There’s another reactor, it’s going critical!  They need-“

Something behind him exploded, staggering him forward into the pod.

She grabbed his arm, pulling him out of the way of the sealing door.

The pod was screeching an alert about a high-g maneuver, and she wasn’t even sure if she was fully strapped in before it crescendoed.

Everything jerked, and she lost consciousness once again.

< Ep 9 Part 1 | Ep 9 Part 3 >

Episode 9 – Mayday, part 1

Captain Mayor Brooks 5 Comments

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here!

“Good morning, Davyyd,” Lily said pleasantly, stirring her coffee.

The tiredness came through her voice and she sipped at her drink.  Most people prefered a wake-up shot in the morning, but her family was old-fashioned and liked a good hot cup.

The Response Officer at the security desk smiled, giving her a mock salute.  “Oh, hey Lily.  I didn’t expect to see you around this early.  Couldn’t sleep?”

“Something like that,” she muttered, looking down into her coffee.

He raised an eyebrow.

She caught the look as her eyes lifted up from her drink.  “Oh, fine,” she admitted, both annoyed to be sharing and relieved that she could.  “I just think I finally realized what was wrong with that drone’s engine.  Fuel feed line thirteen is clogged – it has to be!  I’ve checked everything else, and I wrote that off because of the initial scans said it was clear, but sometimes those can be wrong, you know?  And since I’ve eliminated every other possibility, that has to be it.”

Davyyd held up his hands.  “You’ve convinced me, Lily.  It’s the thirteenth feed tube.”  He laughed.  “I won’t argue drones with you.”

“Sorry,” she replied, laughing at herself now.  “It was just bothering me so much that I couldn’t figure out the problem.  Then it just came to me while I was showering.”

“So you got up early to come fix it,” Davyyd said.

“Yes,” she agreed, then yawned.  “Though damn me, it is too early to be awake . . .”

Davyyd pointed his thumb over his shoulder through the wide doorway.  “Well, I took the liberty of logging you in.  Have a good one, Lily.”

She walked on, grateful that the drone bays were in a spin-gravity area.  She had hated working in the zero-g parts of past ships, the charm of floating wore off very quickly.

Continuing on towards the drone bay, Lily walked by one of the huge transparent titanium windows along the Maria’s Cog‘s flank.

Out there she could see stars, stars, and more stars.  The arm of the Milky Way was out of view from this side, the ship was angled so that this window was looking ‘up’ relative to the galactic disk.  When she stepped close enough to get a bit of an angle down, she could get a glimpse of the glowing, dusty arms.

The view never failed to please her, even if she’d served in space for most of her life.

Her eyes went back up to the stars, wondering just how many were actually colonized, and what they would look like when, one day, they all were.  Because she knew that it would happen, Humans and Dessei and Sepht and all the other known species would just keep spreading until they had planted the seed of life around every star that shone.

Right now, every star near them was just a distant point; the ship had come out of zerospace six hours ago, and glancing down at the main hull she could see the large ring of their zerodrive.  It had been retrofitted to the Maria’s Cog ten years ago, and she had proudly served as a workhorse of the Union, transporting supplies to far-flung colonies.

Not every ship got their own zerodrive!  Most had to just tag along with a Ringship, or be launched by a gate and caught by another at their destination.  She was grateful that the Maria’s Cog didn’t have to rely on anyone else; her worst nightmare was getting trapped in zerospace.

Because any ship that stayed in there longer than a week never came out.  It was something of an urban myth, she knew, but no one ever denied it, either.  There were stories of people staying in much longer, some lone researcher had claimed to have been under for a month, once.  But none of them had any evidence, and even the best theories of neo-physicists entirely broke down after five days.

She sipped her coffee.  Maybe you carcinized into a crab, she thought, trying to turn her dark thoughts into something amusing.  Who could bring a ship out with claws, after all?

“Lily, I didn’t know you were on this shift,” she heard.

Turning, she smiled.  “Oh, hi Reggie, I didn’t even notice you!”

“You seemed like you were lost in space,” he said, amused.

“A little.  But yeah – I’m clocking in.  I’m not scheduled, but I think I know what’s keeping drone 237’s engine from functioning.  I just had to come down and see if I was right.”

“Oh, right on,” he said, starting on deeper into the drone maintenance bay.  She followed him.

Entering the bay, she waved to some others, who smiled and waved back.  They’d all been working together for some time, and she felt grateful to have such a good batch of co-workers.  All competent and they just hit it off well.

“. . . we’ll be drawing in the net in ten hours, anyway,” she heard Lt. Kajetán say.  “And we’re out in the middle of void.  The watcher-net is a formality, don’t fret it too much.”

She could see the frustration on Amédée’s face.  “But the procedure is a full net whenever we’re in realspace, sir.  What if-“

“I know.  And we are following it.  I’m just saying that we don’t need to go crazy with it,” the lieutenant reassured her.

Lily leaned onto the console, sipping her coffee.  “Is something wrong?”

The Lieutenant looked up at her, but did not rebuke her for butting in.  “Amédée’s just trying to tweak the watcher net again,” he said.

“I think I’ve got an improved pattern for them, given we’re short on drones,” Amédée said emphatically.  “I was working it out last night, and I’m just worried that something could slip through given our current pattern.”

“Technically,” Lt. Kajetán noted, “something could slip through while we reorder the net.  Just saying.”

Amédée let out an annoyed sound.  “I’ll try to create a reorg pattern real quick that will account for that . . .”

“Tell you what,” Lily said.  “I think I know what has 237 not working.  Half an hour, I can have it out there, then I can take a crack at the other non-functionals.  Hopefully we can have a full proper net in an hour, sound good?”

“Yes!” Amédée said.

The Lieutenant smiled.  “Sounds good.  But I didn’t even think you were scheduled today, were you?”

“It’s some extra work,” Lily said.  “But I’m happy to see if my thought was right!”

She stepped away from the two, heading towards the drone racks.

Even a supply ship like the Maria’s Cog had dozens of kinds of drones just for space work; repair drones for the ship, repair drones for other drones, scanner drones, net drones to watch for debris, defender drones for destroying said debris, probe drones and so many other specialized kinds . . .

They varied from the size of a suitcase for the smallest to five meters long.  The net drones were among the largest, packed with all sorts of sensors that favored reliability and low power consumption over small size.

Going to 237, met by a number of small ship-board drones to help, she accessed its system and began to open up the engine compartment to check the fuel injectors.

She could still hear Amédée and Kajetán talking.

“. . . okay, so re-deployment should only give us a tiny window of vulnerability.  The odds are insignificant that there will be trouble,” she heard Amédée say.

“It does look like a good net,” Kajetán agreed.  “Redeployment in progress . . .”  A few moments later; “Done.  I hope you won’t be insulted if I run a check to make sure there’s no gaps.”

“Of course not, we have-”  Amédée cut off.

“What is it?” Lily called out.

Amédée yelled back.  “Drone 399 just winked out.”

“It’s probably just a stray cosmic ray causing a shutdown,” Kajetán said.  “Lily, could you go to its rack and hit the reset?  It’s quicker than doing it from here.”

“Sure,” she said.  399 was stored in the secondary storage room, but she was near there anyway.

Approaching the rack it normally rested in, she hit the reset switch.

“How’s that?” she called out.

“Great!” Kajetán called back.

Amédée spoke again, her voice so quiet with distance that Lily could barely hear it.  “Kaj, do you see-“

Then there was a noise and everything went dark.

< Ep 8 Epilogue | Ep 9 Part 2 >

Episode 8 – Showing the Flag, Epilogue

Captain Mayor Brooks 1 Comment

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

“DAD!”

“DAAAD!”

The two girls crashed into Urle, and he laughed, stumbling back slightly to cushion their impacts.  He didn’t need to, but it was better for them not to ram into unmoving metal and carbon plates.

“Girls, I missed you so much!” he said, sweeping his arms to encompass both of them.

“Daad, you’re squishing me!” Persis squeaked.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, letting his grip relax a little.  It was actually rather hard to make himself do it.

He didn’t want to let go.

The girls began to regale him excitedly about all the things they had done while separated from him; studies and drawings and anecdotes, interesting and mundane, and he listened intently, taking in every aspect of his children.

They had grown, he could tell.  It had only been a few weeks, but they were both a millimeter or two taller.

He hated that he’d missed any of that time.

But they were back now, at least.

“. . . so that’s why I drew a big slug instead of a puffer slug, but Professor Browning said that maybe I should do my report on something with a spine so I asked him if it could be something with a nodochord, and he said yes so that’s why I chose a salp.  I think he wanted me to pick something more like a mammal and not something squishy but- Elliot!”

Hannah dashed over to her friend, who was hanging back near the large doorway to the docking hangar.

Urle was glad to see her excited to see her friend, and Persis wiggled free from his grip, too, to go join them.

He decided to hang back, though, watching his girls chatter to the boy who seemed to be just as pleased to see them, though trying to hide it to some degree.

As he saw the children talking, he felt much of the tension that had been torturing him for the last few days start to evaporate.  The nightmares might not come tonight, he hoped.  He’d born them as well as one could bear the memory of dying, but a respite was certainly welcome.

They were all home, he told himself.  They were all safe.

Pirra rubbed her forehead and then signalled for Kessissiin to enter.

The Dessei walked in like he was on the parade ground, turning sharply once in front of her desk and snapping smartly to attention.

“At ease, officer,” she told him.

Kessissiin relaxed marginally.  “What may I do for you, Commander?” he asked.

He was so damn eager, she thought, irritated by it even though it wasn’t really a bad thing.

“I have taken time to thoroughly look into your past accomplishments,” she told him, holding her tablet in front of her, as if looking at his file.

She had at least attempted what she had said.  Her contacts back in the Dessei Republic had looked into Kessissiin . . . but it was difficult.  She was known there for being the daughter of the great Solon Maara, but she did not want to make her investigations too obvious to her mother.

They would trickle back to her mother no matter what, but Pirra didn’t want it to be easy.  But such caution meant that she had learned little.

Except that Kessissiin was just as he seemed; a very fine soldier.

His record was, honestly, almost too good.  A greater soldier could hardly be conjured in the imagination of a propagandist, and he had the perfect features to make him worthy of a recruitment ad.

It all seemed too good, but she couldn’t separate out her suspicion from her real instinct here, and there was no reason not to accept him.

“I hope my previous accomplishments meet your standards, Commander,” Kessissiin said.  She could tell his pride in them by his stance, his crest.

“They speak volumes,” she said neutrally.  “But I have a question.”

Surprise made his crest bob, but he regained his composure quickly.  “What is that, Commander?”

“You are a temporary transfer officer, Kessissiin.  In five months you will be rotated back to the Dessei Republic Fleet.”

He was silent a moment.

“Yes, that is right, Commander, my transfer is temporary,” he said.

“So how do you view your assignment here?  A path in your career?  An interesting experience?”

“Neither of those, Commander,” Kessissiin said sharply.  “May I speak frankly, Commander?”

She dipped her crest, giving him permission.

“If I may be so presumptuous, Commander, I believe I understand your reluctance in appointing me to your team.”

“You do?” she asked coolly.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said immediately.

There was an earnestness in his voice and his crest that gave her pause.  “Go on,” she said.

“I admit that I was . . . unaware of the actions behind the scene that prompted my appointment.  When I was first introduced to Councilor Tallei, I only viewed it as a great honor.  Yet upon seeing you meet him, it was clear that you have a distrust of your brother’s motives – and therefore mine.”

He snapped to attention.  “But I promise you, Commander, I have no goal in mind but to do my duty.  To my ship, to its crew . . . and to my team.  I am a Response Officer, and we do not play politics.  We save lives.”

Pirra felt her heart race at his words, stirred by the strength behind him.

Skies above, she believed he meant them.

She took a deep breath, rising to her feet.

“I am pleased to hear that, Lieutenant,” she told him, extending a hand.  “Welcome to Response Team One.”

Apollonia collapsed onto her bed, letting out a breath.

She was so tensed up that relaxing was painful; muscles in her shoulders, back, and legs flared sharply as she let herself sink into the mattress.

It was pleasantly cool; it always seemed to be the right temperature, even when she was under the blankets.  Probably some kind of smart cloth or some shit like that.

She wanted to just fall asleep, the last few hours having drained her of all strength.

She was too tired to even reflect upon all that had just happened.  It kept playing, but she wanted to ignore it.

She’d seen a criminal nearly kill two Response Officers, killed a man herself with her goddamn mind.

She had read people’s minds.

She’d always wondered why the Union called her kind ‘Cerebral Readers’, but there were so few of them that it was a poorly-understood phenomenon, and she hadn’t really wanted to read the reports that did exist.  The idea seemed rather creepy.

Before all of that had even happened she had exercised her damn guts out, to boot.

Oh, and she’d read minds.

The sheer idea of it was staggering, and she had never had an experience like it before.  She’d been trying to think if there had been a time she had felt something similar, but was coming up with a blank.

Maybe she was just too tired.

She didn’t feel sick or anything anymore, not unnaturally drained of life.  Just tired.

Tomorrow she would just stay in and do nothing.  Surely Kiseleva would understand that . . .

Her eyes closed and she began to drift towards sleep – but jolted awake.

Oh, yeah, she still had other things to do.

Responsible things like changing out of her sweaty clothes, putting her laundry in the cleaner . . . eating . . .  taking a shower.

All of that seemed like too much.

“Computer, do I have any messages?” she asked.

Zeela Cann had told her she should check them, and it seemed the easiest sort of thing she could reasonably do.

Slowly pulling herself upright, she started to undress, kicking off her pants and debating if she wanted to just take the nearest outfit or go get the most comfortable.

“You have twenty-seven unread messages,” the computer said.

“Wait, how many?”

She hadn’t had any when she’d left this morning, and at most she was expecting one or two, from the ship’s newsletter or something.

“Who are my messages from?” she asked, dragging on the nearest suit.

“One from the ship newsletter.  Two are maintenance updates.  One is your daily caloric count – Dr. Y recommends you increase your healthy calorie intake, rather than your chocolate intake-“

“What about the rest?” she asked, interrupting.

“The remaining letters are from individual senders, via care of the Abmon Diplomatic Bureau.”

Her heart beat faster.

They were replies?  To her letter?

She got up, sealing her suit and double-checking it as all good spacers should, and went to the computer terminal.

Yes, twenty-three responses there, from Golgutt.  All Abmon . . .

The first was from He That Crushes The Pebbles, the next from The One Who Walks Swiftly, another from She Who Eats The Clouds.

She glanced at one, then the next.

They were all family or friends to He That Squats on Yellow Sand.  Ones who knew him and ones who didn’t, all of them with the same theme.

Thanking her for her letter, for one last chance to know one last memory of Squats on Sand.

Apollonia put her hand over her mouth, for the first time today feeling the tears begin to come.

FINIS

< Ep 8 Part 51 | Ep 9 Part 1 >

Episode 8 – Showing the Flag, part 51

Captain Mayor Brooks 1 Comment

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Apollonia felt numb as she looked down at the body of Romon Xatier.

His body seemed wrong.  Horizontal as it was, he seemed smaller, the outward calm and total self-confidence gone, leaving a neutral form that seemed . . .

Lifeless, she thought.

A bit on the nose, but it was just the right word.

Y stepped over.  “Do not move any closer.  The body must remain inviolate,” he told her.

From this point on, she thought.

“Of course,” she said, shuffling back a little.  But still looking down at him.

Y had brought her back to the medical wing along with Jan Holdur and Xatier’s body.  Drones had brought the latter and guards the former.

But Y had carried her back.

After he’d checked her over thoroughly, he’d allowed her to shuffle about the room a little.

Some kind of device still gently hummed on her temple, doing a constant check, but she didn’t know what for.

She felt fine now.

A scream of anger came through the open door and they both looked up.  Jan Holdur, from another room, venting his spleen as Dr. Zyzus operated on him.

“So the crazy guy gets to be okay?” she asked.

“I only paralyzed Jan Holdur,” Y said.  “He is being surgically stabilized right now – given that I am the one that paralyzed him, it is best if I am not involved in the actual surgery.  Some believe it could be a conflict of interest.”

“Wouldn’t it?” Apollonia asked with a smirk.

“No.  If I had wanted the man dead, I would have struck slightly higher,” Y replied.

It was his normal matter-of-fact voice, but it was also chilling, she realized.

His gaze had gone back down to Xatier and she followed suit.

“Weird how calm he looks when he’s dead,” she said, finally putting words to her thoughts of earlier.  “Like a normal person.”

“He was a killer,” Y said.

“I know,” Apollonia replied.

She looked up at Y.  “But you ever think, if some shithead like this was just . . . not raised in such a horrible place, they might not have turned out this way?  I mean, was he born like that, or was he made?”

“That is a question that is still argued by many,” Y said.  “In my opinion?  He was made a monster.  Statistically, if a society is healthy, oriented with humanity as its goal rather than merely a resource, then they do not have people like him.”

He leaned in, pulling a cloth over the coffin.

“But I cannot say with certainty.”

He turned away, moving towards a console.

Apollonia watched him, wondering just how far ahead of them all he really was.

Far more than she even thought, she figured.

So he had to know.

“He had to die,” Apollonia said to Y.

He stopped working, but did not turn to look at her.  “Yes, I know.”

“I don’t have any regrets,” Apollonia said.

He turned now.  “My only regret is that I did not tell you my own plan.”

Apollonia blinked.  “What?”

Y gestured, checking a hundred times that the room was bug-free, that no sensors were recording them.

“Since I met Romon Xatier, I was aware that he would not face justice.  He was wealthy, he had the support of his fellow elite.  The only thing that would make them turn would be if he threatened them.  I could not change that.

“But I knew that I could stop him.  I have been . . .” he hesitated, then plunged in.  “I have been manipulating the man since we first spoke.  I knew it would have consequences.”

“You were driving him to kill again?”

Y hesitated.  “I was.  I calculated that if I made him angry enough, he would become impatient.  The murders fed a cruel, damaged part of his psyche.  Whether he performed them himself or if he merely directed them.”

“Why?” Apollonia asked softly.

“I had to make him act with his own hands.  You see, only by making him angry could I make him sloppy enough to put his own life in danger.  And then I would make sure he was caught.”

“How?” Apollonia insisted, stepping closer.

“The Union has numerous messenger and courier drones in Gohhi.  I knew that his targets would be poor prostitutes, and I knew his methods.  Most importantly, I knew the man himself.  I had a very good idea of his potential spots to strike, and I would be there, to sound the alarm just as he went to strike, but before he did – just as we caught Jan Holdur.  It would only take an anonymous tip, and he would be caught red-handed.”

Apollonia looked down at the dead man’s coffin.  “They would have let him go.”

“Only,” Y said, “If he survived the arrest.  The right tip, a simple lie, and the security sent to arrest him would have fired first and checked identity later.  After all, who would have expected one of Gohhi’s wealthiest men to be out in the poorest areas?

“His move of releasing Holdur surprised me, I admit.  I calculated a chance he would try something during this transfer – but I put the chance as low.  It was a more foolish move than I expected.  He must have believed that Jan Holdur would not hurt him, yet – I believe if the two had been left alone for two minutes, Holdur would have taken his life.”

His words had a logic to them, but Apollonia was not convinced.  For the first time, she felt conflicted towards Y.

“You were putting lives at risk . . .  Innocent lives,” she said.

“Which was very bad,” Y admitted.  “But the man would have killed again.  In an environment entirely uncontrolled.  I only manipulated the timing.  I did not single out an individual to be a victim, consign them to death.  I made certain in my planning that they would not be harmed.  Even if it might result in his escape, I would not play a life so callously.  Still . . .”

He turned back to his console.  “No plan survives reality.  I controlled all that I could, but it might not have worked.  I can admit that.”  He raised his head, his hands no longer operating the console.

“I violated the most important oath I took, to do no harm.  Yet I always knew that it was a lie, Nor.  I feel that a doctor’s true goal is to mitigate harm.  And in this case, this was the only way I felt I could do that.”

Apollonia did not know if Y was speaking from hubris or the truth.  Maybe there had been another way.  Maybe . . .

But it didn’t matter now, she thought, looking back at the casket that held Romon Xatier.  Since she had killed him.

Y tilted his head.  “You know far more than you should be able to, Nor.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“You did make contact with his mind, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And through that contact was how you caused the dissolution of his neurons to such a startling degree.”

“He’s dead,” she said flatly.  “That’s all that matters.”

“I notice,” Y said carefully, “That his cause of death was the same as that of the former Chief of Police of New Vitriol.”

Apollonia did not respond.  Y wondered what she must be feeling.  It was probably not happy.

“I will not tell anyone,” he promised.

Even without turning, he could see her, see the dark shadows on her face.

He wondered if Nor might turn against him if she was pushed hard enough.

He did not want that.

“I know you won’t,” Apollonia said.  Her words were soft.  With trust in them.

He was quiet for a long moment, his many calculations and simulations that he ran – that all sapient beings ran in some way in their minds – a jumble of conflict and confusing outcomes.

“Will you go rest now, Nor?” he asked.

She nodded.  “Yeah.  Doc, um . . . thanks.”

“It is I who should be thanking you, Apollonia Nor.”

< Ep 8 Part 50 | Ep 8 Epilogue >

Episode 8 – Showing the Flag, part 50

Captain Mayor Brooks 1 Comment

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

A groan came from Romon Xatier, his legs giving way beneath him.  He fell to the floor heavily.

Y kept his grip on Jan Holdur, but snapped his head to the man, summoning another wave of medical drones as he scanned him for the issue.

The man had just had a massive stroke.

More Response officers were aiming their sidearms at Jan Holdur now, and he let the man fall.

Holdur had not touched Romon.  He was certain of that.  He scanned deeper, unsure what the cause of the man’s stroke was.

He moved to his side, scanning deeper, seeking life signs.  The drones arrived, one swooping in to give the man a shot of a gel that would stabilize the damage in his brain, capturing the errant blood.

But Y could tell it was already too late.

Romon Xatier was dead.

“Jan Holdur is no longer a danger, Captain.  He is alive, but I have paralyzed him from the neck down.”

Y’s words were delivered in his normal, cheerful voice through the video comm, but Brooks felt his head spin.

Less than a minute ago he had been awoken with news of what had just occurred.  He’d only been asleep half an hour.

Jan Holdur broken free, now paralyzed.  Two Response officers injured – and Romon Xatier dead.

“How are the Response Officers?  How is Apollonia?” Brooks asked.

“Regori Gill is undergoing a minor operation right now that will repair the damage to his arm – he will need one month of convalescence before he can return to duty.  Lalan Fah will require only one week – while he had multiple micro-fractures, they will heal quickly.”

Y tilted his head.  “As for Apollonia Nor, she is calm.  She suffered no injuries.”

“Just trauma,” Brooks said, eyes closing.

“I believe she is handling it well,” Y replied.

Brooks took a deep breath, collecting himself as much as he could.  This situation could balloon out of control – it might be even as they spoke.

“And Xatier could not be saved?” he finally asked.

“I am afraid not, sir.  The damage to his brain was too severe.”

“And you said it was a stroke?” Brooks asked, struggling to sort this out.

“I know that is extremely rare, Captain, but it can be explained by a previously undetected blocked blood vessel bursting in his brain.  I’m afraid that once the injury is that severe, there is no way to save the person’s life without instant reaction on a surgical table.”

It made no sense.  The man’s wealth surely meant he would have had the best in preventive medicine, Brooks thought.  And a blocked vessel like this would be easily seen by simple scans.

“There is a very important detail I must add, Captain,” Y said.  “Jan Holdur’s restraint suit did not fail – it was interfered with.  In Romon Xatier’s pocket I found a device that sent a signal to disrupt the suit and disable it.  It is not ours – this technology bears the hallmarks of Gohhi, and used a brute-force method that our technology would not have needed to use.”

“. . . you’re saying that Romon unleashed Jan Holdur?” Brooks asked.  “Why the hell would he do that?”

“I do not know sir.  I was hoping you might have an idea,” Y admitted.

Brooks’ mind started to see the twisted logic behind it.  The Lord Executives must have decided Jan was too much of a liability.  It would be convenient if he died in Union hands – a propaganda victory of incredible value.

“Can we prove that this was his doing?”  Brooks asked.

“The evidence is all there, but there can always be the claim that we faked it.  We can provide endless evidence of this, and it will not matter.”

“Send me your preliminary report,” Brooks said.  “I have to contact the Gohhians.”

“Captain,” Y said.  “I believe I can help.”

Ten minutes later, Brooks sent off the message.

Y had, indeed, proven invaluable, his report to Brooks essentially half of the response in itself.

To [insert the name of your contact here, Captain],

At 23:39 hours aboard the SUS Craton, Romon Xatier released the dangerous prisoner Jan Holdur.  Two of our officers have been injured.  Holdur has been disabled but remains alive.

Possibly as a result of the brutality of the attack, Xatier suffered a fatal stroke.  Due to the severe nature of this incident, a full medical exam of his brain will be required to confirm cause of death.  As the damage largely left his memory intact, we will also perform a deep scan to find the cause of his actions.

You will want to examine his brain as well, to confirm our findings, which you will find to be accurate.

Brooks attached all of the data they had of the incident, showing the events, and the scans of the device Holdur had used.

Then he added his own embellishments, turning Y’s simple description of what he had to do into a sword waiting to plunge.

The words above are what my Chief Medical Officer has written.

This is what you will do; the guilt will be found to be on Xatier, as is the truth.  Neither you nor any news source you control will claim this was an attack by our side.  Accept this or we will perform the deep brain scan of Xatier and learn everything he knew – and if you thought Holdur talking was bad, then let us see how much worse it will be to learn every secret Xatier held.

Brooks considered if this was what he should say.  It was a terrible risk.  He ran the numbers on known Gohhian behavior and predicted outcomes.

He was giving them a bargain, letting this go to waste.  They could check Xatier’s memories, learn every dirty secret he knew.  In death, being the clear cause of this violence, they had every legal right.

Would it outweigh the political fallout of the Gohhians claiming it was an assassination?

He did not know.  But that would be an economic war that would almost certainly bloom into the real thing.

It would ultimately result in the liberation of the people of Gohhi, he thought.

It would ultimately result in millions if not billions dying or being displaced, and economic damage that reached across known civilization, probably alienating many neutral powers.

They would surely believe the Union had caused this.  The caustic lies of the Gohhian media apparatus was masterful at spin.

He sent the message.

Then he waited.

He checked if he could reach Trevod Waites-Kosson, but all possible methods of contact were shut to him.

Forty minutes later, he had a response.  It was signed by Trevod and by the current Lord Executive of Holdur Conglomerate.

All conditions agreed.

Brooks felt his head swim in elation.

Will return Holdur and Xatier’s body shortly, Brooks replied.

He sent it, then staggered back to his bed and lay down, looking at the ceiling.

< Ep 8 Part 49 | Ep 8 Part 51 >

Episode 8 – Showing the Flag, part 49

Captain Mayor Brooks 3 Comments

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

Apollonia did not feel like she was in a bad shape anymore.  Yet she felt dizzy all the same, and was nearly leaning on Kiseleva as they went.

She noticed a handful of Response officers, but Kiseleva said something that let them move past.

Then, they saw the group travelling down the hall.

She recognized the rich prick at the rear walking with Y.  She thought she’d seen something about the man in the restraint suit being guarded, but she couldn’t recall what.

Y’s attention snapped to her.

“Please stand aside,” he said.

“Doctor,” Kiseleva said.  “Apollonia is having some kind of episode.”

Y hesitated.  “I can summon Dr. Zyzus to assist you,” he said.  “I am very sorry, Nor, but I am distracted with another important task.”

The rich man smiled.  “I do not mind you tending to a special patient, doctor, if you wish to pause.  I give you permission.”

“I didn’t know it was a bad time,” Apollonia said, glancing at the rich prick, wondering what his game was right now.  “Go on, I’ll talk to the Zyzus guy.”

Y hesitated – she’d never seen that in him – then stepped over.  “He is summoned, but I will take a moment to be sure you are healthy enough to wait.”

He bent over, matching her height perfectly, peering into her eyes.

“She entered a fugue state and then became very weak,” Kiseleva said quickly.  “She was exercising hard, but the medical readouts were highly abnormal.  I’ve never seen brain patterns like what they read.  I quadruple-checked them with my Response scanners and local scanners to rule out mechanical malfunction – but all seems to be correct.”

“. . . I am seeing very unusual activity,” Y admitted.  “Apollonia, how do you feel?”

“Just a little dizzy,” she said.  “And noodly.  You know, weak.”

“A perfectly appropriate analogy,” Y replied.  “Did anything else occur?”

Apollonia hesitated in saying.

How did you tell someone that you think you read another person’s mind?

Even as she thought about it, she felt her consciousness slipping.  A vague memory of falling asleep with her parents awake, watching the television and talking softly came to her.  The memory startled her more than her own drifting consciousness.

She heard the rich man talk, this time to Kiseleva.

“You’re the one who executed the pimp, aren’t you?” she heard him say.

Kiseleva said nothing, ignoring him.

“Your shot was impeccable.  Your bullet pierced both his heart and spine.  Death was inevitable after that.  But I’m sure you knew that, didn’t you?” he asked.

“Be quiet,” she heard Kiseleva say.

“Oh, my apologies, did I strike a nerve?”

“Be quiet,” she repeated.  “It is not a request, it is an order.”

“Nor?  Nor, are you all right?” she heard Y ask.

She could not muster the energy to reply.

Then all hell broke out.

A yell of alarm, then a sound like a mallet striking a side of beef.

Apollonia felt snapped out of her trance-like state at the noise, opening her eyes in time to see one of the Response officers being sent flying into a wall like he weighed nothing.

Jan Holdur had broken free.

The other officer raised his sidearm, but was unable to even get a shot off as Holdur grabbed his arm, snapping the bones like they were nothing.

The officer screamed, but brought his other hand up in a blow that staggered Holdur.  Holdur shoved him back, tumbling into the wall, where he fell onto his broken arm.  Agony, like electricity, shot through him, and Apollonia felt it.

Everything seemed to slow down then, as she felt Y push her away.

It was for her own protection, she realized.  Because Jan Holdur was turning already to look at her, and she felt his desire to kill her.

Kiseleva was reaching for her own sidearm, turning to face the man, but she was moving too slowly.  Holdur already had the initiative.

Then she saw Y moving, faster than any being she’d ever seen, faster even than Holdur.  He was a blur in her vision, darting forward.

Holdur’s eyes began to move towards the new threat, but they were not fast enough.  Y’s mechanical hand thrust inwards unerringly, taking the man by the shoulder.

He was sent into a spin, twirling towards the wall.  Even in the strange slow motion she was feeling, she saw how the man’s whole body was pulled along, ripples through his skin, as Y brutally slammed him into the bulkhead wall.

Then Y’s other hand slammed into his back, on his spine.

The man’s eyes bulged momentarily, his vision going glassy.

But despite the shock and drama of it all, her eyes were pulled away from him, like light pulled into the event horizon of a black hole.

They fell on Romon Xatier.

She barely knew the man.  He was obviously some rich asshole, but she didn’t know who the big players were on Gohhi.

But her earlier reading of him had not been nearly deep enough.

He was not a thing of the Dark.  But he was as close as a man could get.

She felt she was falling, but in slow motion, her body still barely moved back, but she couldn’t even feel the sense of terror one felt when they felt themselves going down.

She could only stare into the man, a swirl of feelings and fleeting images.

Into his mind.

It was not like she would have guessed.  She had scarcely believed that she had just read a mind earlier, and it was not an open book that she could peruse for specifics.  Instead it was a jumble of id and ego and superego – or however one wanted to describe the mind – all at once, playing on different layers, blurring into one another.

Images, half-formed and grotesque popped up; Y, somehow flesh and blood, bleeding.  A broken old man gasping for air as blood bubbled from a gaping hole in his chest.  A woman – no, several women, different yet all blurring into one image – dying or dead.  Among them she saw her own face.  Kiseleva’s.

He felt such joy in each image of suffering, but they were not quite enough – never quite enough, not the Platonic perfection he was so desperate for.

All of it unclear, like an unfinished clay sculpture, the details not set, even still slightly fluid.

Dreams, hopes, memories.  She could not tell one from the other, but she knew this:

Romon Xatier was a killer.

He had done this.  She felt the satisfaction, the feeling like he had just struck some just blow against Y and the Sapient Union.  Felt, through his own hand, the device he had just activated.  It had cost so much, been given to him by . . . someone, but she didn’t know who the man was, and like all the other images he was blurry and unclear.

He had deactivated the suit that kept Jan Holdur under control, done it in the hopes of . . . what?

She felt her body hitting the floor, felt pain shock through her, but her mind’s eye fixation on Xatier did not falter in the slightest.

She sifted, felt – saw herself.  Or at least, saw herself as Romon saw her.  A pointless puppet, only acting at being human.  A random woman, but a soft spot for Y.  Dull, ordinary, just a target.  A tool for striking at an opponent that he secretly feared.

Yes, the fear was there.  Eating away at a part of him like a cancer.  It was new, unfamiliar, and he hated it.  He’d never felt afraid before.

. . . kill her, you fool . . .

. . . smug machine, your turn to be humbled . . .

. . . show me red, please I want to see the blood so much . . .

His thoughts.  She heard them like whispered words, talking over each other.

This man is a monster, she thought.

And she felt the shock course through him as she thought it.

Until now she’d been only feeling, with little internal monologue.  But she realized now that whatever was happening, she was not just viewing.  She was projecting as well.

Her own feelings began to surface, no longer fully lost in Xatier.  She felt dirty, disgusted to have even touched someone like him. 

His emotions began to turn more fearful, shocked, her emotions bleeding into him, an unknown force he could not control or explain.

It’s me, she thought.  Apollonia Nor.

The person you thought was just some meaningless hollow puppet.

She felt him react to that, shocked, his head turning towards her, still in this strange slow movement of time that she existed in.

Y’s blow against Holdur had sent a splatter of his blood flying and a drop grazed Romon’s cheek as he made eye contact with her.

She felt a surge inside.  Rage, hate.  A desire to lash out at this man who had actually thought he could kill her just to hurt her friend.

You’re a monster, she thought again.

But you’re far from the biggest one here.

Her emotions burst to a climax, and her own vision seemed to fly into him, a sound that was part roar and part primal scream ripping through his mind.  She felt the physical meat that was him ripping, shredding apart on the smallest scale.  Blood vessels bursting, neurons firing and then melting.

His fear had reached a level like that of an animal in the jaws of a predator, and she knew now, for the first time with certainty, that she was that predator.

On some level she’d always known she could lash out and hurt people.  She had done it, without even meaning to.  Or meaning to, but not admitting it, like on New Vitriol.

During the battle against the Hev, after Squats on Sand had died.

This thing had come out of her, and it had killed.

Now, she finally used it consciously as a weapon.

Romon knew it was her.  Knew that this was the result of his own plans and desires.

She made sure he knew that.

And made sure he knew that he was about to die.

< Ep 8 Part 48 | Ep 8 Part 50 >

Episode 8 – Showing the Flag, part 48

Captain Mayor Brooks 4 Comments

New to Other-Terrestrial? Check here! Or if you need to, jump to the beginning of the episode here!

“The restraint suit is operating normally,” Y said.

The two Response officers from Team Two nodded, their sidearms drawn all the same.  When the door opened, if Jan Holdur had been freed, he could probably kill them both before they could get them out of their holsters.

Y still marvelled at the level of augments the man had taken on.  They were hand-crafted, assembled with atomic perfection.  None of it was revolutionary tech, not beyond the Sapient Union’s ability – in some ways less elegant and functional, such as having the platinum woven in.  But the singular cost focused into one individual was equivalent to the productive wealth of entire worlds.

It was not about practicality.  It was about sending a message.  For one man to have so much effort put into him made him a monument to self-gratification.

Holdur was watching carefully, his eyes moving between them, gauging his ability to strike if given the chance.  There was no sense that he viewed them as anything more than targets, which Y found an incredible feat of mental conditioning.

Y kept his attention focused on the suit.  The man had been systematically testing it during his stay here.  Y knew he could keep him under control, but there were weaknesses in any restraint suit, and it was possible that he could exploit those and break free if Y did not pay attention.

Behind him, Romon Xatier stood quietly, the man chosen by his class to observe Holdur’s transfer.  The irony was not lost on either of them, and Romon was smiling smugly, not watching the officers and prisoner, but Y.

Y had scarcely acknowledged him.

“Opening door,” Y said.

There was no loud hiss or drama as the door opened.  The two Response officers moved to flank it.

“Get up,” one said to Holdur.

The man smiled darkly.  He rose.  His motions were stiff, half-controlled by the suit.

As he came out of the cell, two drones came in, attaching to his arms, helping to move them behind his back and link them together.

The officers stepped in, checking the man, preparing him for moving.

“I insist that we remove the restraints,” Romon said.  “He is not a common criminal, but a man of great wealth.”

“His wealth has no bearing here,” Y said.

Romon stepped closer, his voice a soft hiss.  “Could it be you are afraid of what will happen, machine?”

Y knew he did not mean what would happen with Holdur.

He did not reply, focusing on his work.

“It still boggles the mind to think that your captain viewed those three women as equal in value to Jan Holdur.”

“Three to one seems a favorable exchange, if one were to erroneously believe it was a trade,” Y replied absently.

“There is no need to hide the truth.  I cannot speak of this to others, or else it would break the privacy of our conversations – and you could speak freely.  It serves us both no good to lie.”

Y was silent again, and Romon continued.

“There are billions of women like those three.  But the Holdur Conglomerate has only two heirs.  Such a silly waste, really.  He’s a fool, but one day he’ll grow up and learn.  I will help him on that path, you need not worry.”

Y turned.  “Excuse me, Mr. Xatier, but you will have to step back.  We are preparing to move the prisoner.”

“And what a dangerous one he is, if you are to be believed.  If only I could have brought my guards in,” he said.  “Ah, but I suppose they would be of no defense against one so terrifying as Jan Holdur.”

He said the last words almost affectionately, and loudly enough to be heard by the room.  Y saw how Holdur perked up, almost puffing with pride.

The man had not been an intended puppet, Y knew.  But he practically worshipped Romon Xatier, and now, with even a little praise and a smile, he was gleefully a pawn again.

But more than that, Y knew that everything Romon was saying was a pre-admission of guilt.

He would kill again.  He would kill with his own hands.

“Women like those three die every day in Gohhi,” Romon said, his voice quieter again.  “Sad, but true, wouldn’t you agree?  They have chosen lives that are difficult, but it has to be someone’s lot, society argues.”

Y knew he was being goaded, and he decided he would rise to this bait.  “To say they chose is erroneous, when the other choice is death.  And only some societies normalize such things.”

Romon spoke again, the cold rage behind his eyes coming out for the first time.  “There’s nothing more you can do, you know,” he whispered fiercely.  “Whatever will happen will happen.  Even if there is bloodshed.  But do not be sorry, you have simply reached the edge of your abilities, Doctor.”

The two Response officers began to move Holdur.  Y transferred his work to a tablet and prepared to follow them.

As the official liaison of the transfer, Romon followed.  They trailed the man by three meters, reasoned a safe distance.

“I predict at least one whore will be murdered tonight.  Perhaps many more – the anger against their kind has risen to a fever pitch after what those three did.  It’s so sad, yet it is the natural result of their actions.”

His voice dropped lower still.  “If only you, Doctor, were powerful enough to stop it.”

Powerful enough, Y knew he meant, to stop him.

< Ep 8 Part 47 | Ep 8 Part 49 >