It's like flying through the nervous system, lieutenant Jason Donnelley thought, astounded by what he observed. At the head of the group, Erik Ross passed through a jagged breach in the inner rock-like hull and made a sharp right turn down the corridor, then glanced at his radar to see if everyone had made it.
This is not what I expected, Erik realized at once. It's not like the other alien ship.
Their special, small fighters had been built to fly within the narrow corridors of the other alien ship, under the assumption that the same engineering design prevailed, taking the estimated size of the aliens into consideration. There's almost enough room here for the others to pass me, he thought, or for the aliens to surround us. With that thought, he shuddered.
But who knows—with this thing, Arnaud's outdone himself, he thought appreciatively.
Their new infiltration fighters were more maneuverable than even the newest of the Blue Stripes Sky Hawks' fighters, infinitely more than the planes used only a generation before them. The small fighters' thrusters were so powerful that the planes literally lifted into the air, atmosphere or no. Their agility in turning was unmatched, even at the low speeds necessary to navigate safely within a space vessel. In fact, the reduced speed meant the planes could stop on a dime, though Erik's stomach still hadn't gotten used to that.
A few minutes down the passage, an air lock appeared on their right, near-space side. Behind it an enormous cargo bay yawned before them, but it looked empty. As if of one mind, the team instinctively turned into the larger space and headed to the far left side, then traveled down a dim corridor leading into the interior of the ship.
As they curved around the passage, a dead end wall appeared up ahead. Erik felt his stomach lurch. He knew it was too late. Before he had time to react or slow his engines, the wall suddenly retracted from a perfect vertical fissure down the center, and the team was shunted into an alien world flooded with artificial starlight.
The environment the Earthlings beheld reconstructed the surface of an unknown planet, a surface with features unlike any found on a planet or moon in the So system. In the distance, a few low-lying, orange-red hills soared into the night, creating a circular enclave around the city below. Short, rectangular, purple-colored buildings spaced evenly apart filled the space directly beneath them; to their left, a near-barren rock plain supported a scattered collection of bizarre, scraggly trees with gnarled, thorny branches.
Above, an artificial sky glittered with thousands of twinkling lights of every color, the density of the stars greater than that of the view on Earth, whose star system lay on the fringes of the Milky Way.
The brightness of a sky like that could only be possible near the heart of a galaxy—or in a solar system inside a galaxy supercluster, lieutenant Kramer thought in calculation. It looks like our alien friends have come quite a long way.
Meanwhile, Erik's instruments scanned the area for energy output readings and for metallic infrastructure. He detected the greatest material density beneath them, now that they had risen above the city, about 500 meters near the roof of the cavernous area. Then he detected a similar corridor to the one they had entered at the far end of the area. Perpendicular to their position and lengthwise relative to the ship, he discovered several smaller corridors leading towards the more energetic regions near the engine room, but the greatest corridor was not wide enough even for their specialized close-range ships.
Seconds passed before Erik noticed an egress. Then, to the left and up into the holographic projection of artificial sky, he swore he saw a hidden atmosphere duct, wide enough for their ships that looked like it might lead to the central systems.
* * * * *
Erik headed down the duct instinctively, and the others followed without pausing to question him. A few seconds passed as they sped down the narrow passage. Erik hoped they wouldn't come across any sharp turns—there simply wasn't enough room to maneuver around them.
But the passageway opened into a large space, a kind of botanical hydrogarden. The teams' instruments told them that they had come out somewhere near the main engines, now a few floors beneath them. As they exited the gardens down another wide corridor leading away in the opposite direction, an alarm sounded. Erik figured that they must have been detected by the citizens of the city as the team flew overhead.
Moments later the team had come to an open, city-sized area full of buildings of assorted sizes. The Earth team didn’t recognize the blue sign of the medical center and research area of the Orian elite hierarchy. But the central area, decorated with fountains and pools of water, reminded Erik of an ancient Earth garden.
As the team sped among the maze of small buildings, a group of enemy fighters appeared perpendicular to their position and cut off the last two Earth fighters. One of the planes managed to break through their line, but the other plane, razed by the enemy enfilade, plummeted to the pathway below.
The team had been distracted by the unbelievable sight of bipedal figures beneath them; each one of them could have sworn that the beings they had caught a glimpse of were humanoid.
* * * * *
Erika Zirnenka had received word of Iriken's return soon after waking. Recently, she had been unable to keep early childhood memories from entering her conscious thoughts. It was uselessly sentimental, she knew, that she could not stop distracting herself with nostalgic thoughts and center her whole concentration, her unconscious mind as well, upon her work.
Some of her dreams, she knew, would never come true. A capacity for enjoying amorous love and the procreative instinct itself had supposedly been deleted from the chemical make-up of the elite children produced by ectogenesis; yet Erika knew, and had known since her chidhood, that by some miracle she did possess them. And from the moment she made her discovery that the rest of the world around her had been denied these human possessions, she had been compelled to begin living a lie.
She loved Iriken, loved him more deeply than he could possibly love her. Loved him more than anything or anyone. And he would never know, never feel it, could not appreciate her regard for him. Worst of all, she couldn’t even blame him.
And so, her life grew shorter day by day, without real joy and without real pain, knowing only a horrible kind of feeling that ricocheted between the two. She often felt she was going to die without having much to regret losing. Did even that matter anymore? She wondered. She had no control over her life at all. She did her duty and received food rations. She survived, and learned to enjoy the moments talking with Iriken. They did share a true filial affection that meant more to her than anything else in the world. Yes, she supposed, there was a reason to go on living.
Erika had gone to the labs to check her experiments and found five of her brothers and sisters who had also been selected for Bio-research already busy analyzing the new video reports from Kiel3. This was the group's first view since receiving their permanent positions, and they had been assigned analysis of a coastal plant's vascular tissues using only a few snatched samples with accompanying seconds of rolling images taken by one of the pilots to show its native environment.
The Great Leader Sargon, who had been ill for fifteen years and had gone missing, had not been able to order any kind of full attack on the planet Earth, and so the Orian people had been left to obey his last orders: organizing and instigating little assaults against the planet Earth to terrorize its inhabitants. Recovered once more, Sargon now had plans to assault the planet Earth and take it over for the Orian people.
Erika and some of the others had ideas of incorporating some of the vegetation of the third planet into the Orian diet and as possible source of unknown medicines, but only after the samples' nutritive qualities had been fully analyzed and assessed for possible toxins.
As the others began to analyze the chemicals in pigmentation and check the measurements of sun luminosity, Erika hesitated a moment, unable to keep herself
from appreciating the beauty of the stilled frame.
"Anything disturbing you, Erika?" Yurgen stopped to ask her, but unquestionably he had meant 'what have you found regarding the picture?'.
"No, Yurgen." She responded automatically, with little genuine feeling. "I was merely considering the saline content of the biome and its long-term effects upon the water-gathering systems." Erika had supplied the perfect, politically correct answer; she now turned away to examine her data.
A few hours had passed, in which the team finished its analysis and sent it away to the head Bio-analysis division in the Imperial block around the Great Leader's quarters. Because Great Leader Sargon had been afflicted for the last fifteen years with another rare mental and physical lapse, that he alone understood, the Garen had been in charge and had continued to attack the Earth.
For Erika, it had been time to report in at one of the main command rooms. Then she hurried to attend a discussion in the nearby medical wing lounge with six other representatives of the elite children groups who had been selected for specialization in medical treatment and system function.
When the infiltration alert had sounded, the representatives just stood their ground, disoriented. They had not been trained to react in emergencies and had all but conditioned away their instinctual response to flee. Yet where could they go?
Erika waited for the elder officials to speak, but they too had been affected. Like the others, they waited for Enlil’s inner security pilot teams to dispatch a unit in order to protect the command room and stymie the aliens' escape. With each primary corridor and command room cut off, the intruders would easily be captured.
But Erika felt a new feeling of fear intruding into her faith as the seconds passed. She had begun to wonder why none of them had even been aware that an attack was in progress outside Enlil.
Why do they trust so few of the elite with such news? she wondered. Shouldn’t they have instructed the people to shelter themselves?
Several minutes had passed since the alert had sounded when she noticed that one of the elder elite was moving to the fore of the representatives, as if about to return to the discussion.
Suddenly a number of fighters passed over the group of medical specialists, but Erika didn't recognize them. At once, the Enlil’s defense squadrons appeared in the intersection ahead, no doubt sent to cut off the Kiel3 fighters' escape. In the small skirmish, one of the Kiel3 fighters was hit and crashed to the ground while the others sped away.
* * * * *
There was nothing they could do for Jason. Erik had to force away images of him, as horrifying as it was to dismiss him. Dimly, he knew that such distractions could prove fatal. That did not make it any easier to forget.
At the same time, Erin was finding it difficult to concentrate upon the corridor ahead. Her thoughts drifted away from their group and back to the first city they had encountered. Something about the dusty red soil and gnarled trees or the intensity of the dense, speckled sky had struck a chord in her memory, from whose deepest regions Gnostic visions and perceptions haunted her.
A shadowy male figure Erin Mathieson-Blair had never known appeared in her thoughts, surprising her by the force of the feelings she unconsciously associated to him. How could she deny this creature, whom she had once clearly adored? Together as they stood in a cavernous, metallic grey room, he had projected false images around her, conjuring a similar city out of four bare walls. Instinctively, she felt that her own life and history had something to do with the desolate place he had recreated, even as her rational mind dismissed the possibility.
Erin tried to focus her attention on the fuel gage, but still heard him whisper the name of that world as the vision faded, a planet once called—Orian?
* * * * *
Erika watched the enemy ships escape down the medical center highway, pursued by three or four of their defense ships. Glancing over at the burned wreckage of the downed ship, she could not tear her eyes away from the broken wing that had struck the ground first.
All at once, she thought she heard a feeble, muffled voice calling out in an unknown language. A moment later something stirred amidst the wreckage, emerging through a crumpled pile of metal and glass shards that fell aside with an audible tinkling. Then, as if overwhelmed by the effort, the creature collapsed, still partially buried.
Erika motioned to her colleagues but only two responded. Pointing to the wreck, she muttered something about investigating and stepped tentatively towards the crash site. The others followed her, picking their way up the incline of sharp, hot metal shards to the injured pilot. At the front, Erika steadied herself, preventing her bare hands from reaching out and clasping the red-hot surface for balance.
But as she reached the pile of rubble, her team automatically moved ahead, forming a circle about the alien pilot, then they reached for the creature's arms that had broken free. A smooth green material that had been ripped in places sheathed his skin, and his head was protected by a metallic dome that had probably preserved his existence in the crash.
A moment later they had pulled the alien from the wreckage and were dragging him back down the remains of his ship. Erika wasn't sure what she had been expecting to see.
The sight of his humanoid form shocked her. She almost screamed.
At a safe distance from the plane, Helcosar instructed the others to drop him, and they began their examination. Under the rips in the uniform he wore, Erika's disbelieving eyes beheld a creature of strangely mottled pink skin tones though in body form nearly identical to their race.
She jerked back as the pilot's hands reached up to pull off the helmet over his head; then, her curiosity renewed, she knelt beside him and helped him with her strong arms. Unconcerned, she noticed the others retreat after a moment to collect some equipment.
He breathes like us, Erika thought in awe, dropping the dome that had covered his head.
The creature they observed might have been an Orian except for the bizarre coloring of his skin and the dark exotic reddish-brown coloring of his hair. His eyes fluttering open were blue—not unlike her own. Yet they were full of anguish and agony.
Glancing down at his chest, she realized in growing alarm that his skin had been punctured.
She drew a finger lightly over the wound, amazed and distressed by the dark red stream gushing from the lacerations in his skin. She looked to his eyes again to read the significance of her observations and was held by his gaze, the unsettling plea she found there.
While she hesitated, her comrades had retrieved a transport table, and returning to the alien, pushed her aside, running the smooth planar surface beneath him and lifting him up for transport to the Great Leader and his top examination team.
Numbly Erika followed them, still seeing the pilot in her mind's eye, entranced by the emotion that controlled his handsome face. Minutes passed as they reached the Great Leader's Command Room and waited for him to appear; then a short discussion ensued, but Erika heard none of it.
"May we observe?" Erika heard Helcosar enquire, and the team was permitted to observe from a distance.
They knew the Great Leader could interrogate the alien pilot without words, using only his great mental abilities, but it was still something of wonder to them.
Suddenly the alien began to scream.
Erika could not understand his cries, but some irrational part deep in her mind began to regret his torment. Sticking sharp probes into his body to retrieve samples of tissues and fluids, the scientists ignored his screams, giving him no palliatives. As if the subject were nothing to them and already a corpse for study and dissection, they made no attempt to halt the flow of the dark red streams pouring from his chest. A bioscan was called for and the officers moved back for a moment to let the machine run.
As the scanner departed, Erika got an unobstructed look at the alien's face. She would not have been unable to descr
ibe the emotion that appeared there but reacted to it nonetheless. She drew closer to the dying man. The examination was over.
When she had advanced within a few feet from him, the alien pilot recognized her and with his dwindling energy raised his arm and hand out to her, a look of desperation on his face. Taking her limp hand, his eyes softened. His breathing became erratic, first as he managed a short exhalation, then, as the minute slowly ticked away, he began to gasp spasmodically, still clutching her hand though his grip grew weaker.
A second later the man's body stilled. His arm fell down heavily to rest at his side. Erika turned away from his face and gazed down at his motionless fingers, the uneven cut of his nails, familiar half-moons, and the blue vessels just under the skin.
Stepping back, Erika allowed the officers to cover the body before taking it away for dissection. Silently she watched them go, and it was not until the medical team had disappeared down another corridor that she realized her own team had returned to their laboratory without her.
Standing alone, she lifted her fingers involuntarily to rub her eyes and was amazed to find them clouded with moisture, leaving glistening drops on her fingertips when she brought her hands down.
Fearfully Erika wiped her hand on the material of her legs and rushed down the Medical Highway to catch up to the others.
* * * * *
As the Earth infiltration unit sped down the wide corridor, Erin glanced at her rear monitor uneasily. She sensed a dominating presence far behind them, a being capable of discovering her, of forcing her to understand herself. Panic struck her like she had only known once before, when she had been inside the alien ship on Earth.
The short distance between them offered no protection from the force of the creature's mind, but thankfully the presence had thus far no knowledge of her proximity. All of its energies were focused upon someone else at that moment. Though she had gained some distance from the source, the feelings were so intense that she was able to concentrate and perceive the questioner's subject.