Episode 6
When you start to come out of deep thaw, the first thing you feel is the headache. Grainne Thragsus had been through this a half dozen times. You sleep in inky black oblivion for a few months, then, bang, headache. Then you wake up and you feel like shit.
He felt the light above him. It throbbed. It fueled his headache. Then, the ache moved, spread throughout the body. All of Grainne’s connective tissue felt tender. It was fine so long as he didn’t move. He tried not to move, but you can only get away with that for so long. Then his muscles began to ache.
Gradually, his head started to clear. Fuck. He remembered. The colony… the cargo… He should be dead. This ship wasn’t the Glorious Jeweled Lightning Bird. Where the hell was he waking up?
His eyes focused a little more, a little better. He felt gravity. Was he on a planet? Or maybe this was a Union starship. Those annoying bastards had gravity on their ships, and they would go out of their way to save a doomed vessel. But what the hell would they be doing so far from Union space?
He could see things a little better. He was in a metal room. The other two stasis pods were next to his. That gave him a little comfort. Something strange had happened, definitely, though. At least Maedoc and Tadgan were in the same boat as him. He wasn’t alone.
There were aliens walking around the room. They seemed upset. One of them furiously worked on a device next to his stasis chamber but they didn’t seem to be doing any good.
Finally, his eyes focused enough that he could see. He didn’t really understand what he was seeing.
They were definitely aliens. Their foreheads were curiously flat and their cheek bones and noses were too smooth. They could be from the Union, but it was weird that there were so many of them and none of them were Gilfanians.
The people all around him were in variations of the same uniform, a suit and jacket of gray with colored panels on the side. Most of them had orange metal panels on their uniforms, although the person fiddling with electronics had gold panels, not union naval uniforms.
One of the orange paneled aliens yelled at the yellow paneled alien. He seemed really upset. Grainne tried to discern meaning from it. They weren’t being intentionally thawed. Something had gone wrong. The yellow paneled alien yelled furiously at the orange panel alien. The other orange paneled aliens seemed surprised by this. Perhaps the colors indicate status? Or the aliens’ role?
The door slid open and another alien stepped into the chamber. His uniform had blood orange panels. He was very skinny with piercing eyes, and darker skin than the other aliens. The others showed immediate deference to him. He talked to the orange paneled aliens. They just seemed to go along with whatever he wanted.
The orange paneled aliens opened up the stasis pods, then stepped backward.
Tentatively, Grainne sat up. He felt a little dizzy. He had never come out of deep chill under gravity. This would take some getting used to.
The leader alien, Grainne surmised, anyway, stepped up close to him. He said some words in an alien language. He was gentle, didn’t touch Grainne or anything, but it was still terrifying. The leader alien talked to Maedoc and Tadgan, saying roughly the same words each time. Then, once that ritual was done, he grabbed the shoulder of the yellow panel alien and they left the room.
After that, the aliens in orange panel uniforms performed tests on them. Whatever the tests were they seemed medical. Blood samples, they did some kind of scanning of the abdomen. Then, after that was done, the aliens guided Grainne, Maedoc and Tadgan to a room with three padded platforms and a cabinet. In the back of the room was a little sectioned off cell thing. Next to the door there was a little sliding button. The aliens showed them how to turn the lights in the chamber up and down. Then they left.
“Where do you think we are?” said Grainne.
“A planet,” said Maedoc. “Don’t know where, though. I wonder how long we’ve been out.”
“No way to tell,” said Tadgan.
“These guys must have been the ones to nuke the colony,” said Maedoc.
Tadgan said, “They’re being awful nice, if that’s the case. I haven’t seen any aliens with obvious weapons, maybe the yellow uniform one.”
“That one was playing with electronics, think it’s an engineer,” said Grainne.
Grainne stood up and walked around the room. It was warm, calibrated to a comfortable temperature. He walked over to examine the little cell. Inside there was a very small chamber. There was a small basin that had a machine that dispensed water, as well as some kind of chair with a basin underneath it. It seemed to be to collect unnecessary biological material.
“The colony was nuked by the Santosians, bet on that. They’re fucking animals,” said Tadgan, “Don’t think these aliens did it.”
“The colony was ninety percent Santosian workers, you’re being stupid,” said Grainne. “Even the Santosians wouldn’t nuke themselves.”
“Don’t fight, you idiots. That’s probably what the aliens want us to do,” said Tadgan.
“What do you think they want?” said Grainne, “They took us off the Glorious Jeweled Lightning Bird. Are they going to experiment on us?”
“It might just be a misunderstanding, or an accident,” said Tadgan. “But there’s not really much we can do about it right now.”
About a half hour after they had been brought to the room, an alien in a silver paneled jumpsuit delivered them vessels containing water, as well as flat pieces of drawing medium, markers, and a tablet computer. The trio played vaguely with them for a little while, then took turns laying on the padded platforms. Eventually their stomachs began to grumble.
About four hours after they revived another alien in a silver touched uniform came in. This one pushed a cart in front of itself. On the cart there were three trays. Each of the tray had one item on them. The first was some kind of loaf. The second was some form of noodles in a thick sauce. The last item seemed to be some kind of flat cake with some kind of unknown fruit embedded in it. It didn’t smell great, but it seemed to be edible.
The alien nodded and left them be.
Tadgan was the first to taste any of it. He tore a piece off the loaf and smelled it. It was aromatic in a bad way. He put it in his mouth. It tasted incredibly bland. The noodles tasted too sour. The flat cake wasn’t too bad, at least it was sweet enough to disguise the strange flavor underlying all the food items.
“You’re insane, they’re going to poison us,” said Maedoc.
“If they wanted to poison us they could put it in the water,” said Grainne, “Or they could just pump it into the air. We’re at their mercy, and they seem to at least be a little bit merciful.”
Grainne followed Tadgan. By now his stomach had calmed down from thawing process, and damn was he hungry. The food wasn’t particularly good, but it was edible.
It had been almost a day since they woke up. The aliens hadn’t bothered them too many times. There was another shipment of small objects, little flat pieces of plastic with symbols printed on them, cubes with numerical dots embedded in them, and other small frivolities. The cubes seemed to be part of some probability activity. They examined the cards rather closely. Most of them just had symbols, but some of them had cartoon figures of the weird aliens.
It was clear that the aliens weren’t overtly hostile. They were being fed, they had a clean space to rest in, the cell in the back of the room seemed to be some kind of bathroom facility.
The second meal they brought was even kinda all right. Another loaf, but a more palatable one, along with some sort of fresh vegetables, and an assortment of tiny cakes.
About an hour after the second meal another alien walked into the room. He wore the two piece uniform with silver highlights. He was on the scrawny side, and looked very young with yellow hair. He took a few small plastic sheets from his bag. They contained pictures of objects. He showed them, and repeated sounds.
This situation just sucked. Neither Maedoc, Grainne nor Tadgan paid him any attention. They all sat on the floor on the other side of the room and faced the wall.
The alien offered some confections. They were two small cake discs with a filling in the middle. Grainne perked up and wanted to investigate more, but Maedoc and Tadgan shook their heads. Grainne too looked away.
The alien attempted some other exercises. Clearly, he was trying to teach them something of the alien language. To hell with all that.
After the alien left, Tadgan got as close to the door as he could. He heard the alien talking to what sounded like the doctors. He couldn’t discern much, maybe vague anger.
“So what are we gonna do?” said Grainne.
Maedoc said, “Are they just going to keep us here indefinitely?”
“Let’s say that there was a weird incident and we accidently captured an alien on the Glorious Jeweled Lightning Bird. What would we do?” said Grainne.
“Kill it,” said Maedoc, “Before it killed us.”
“Lock it in a closet and let the government deal with it when we get back to the planet, more likely,” said Tadgan.
“That’s what they’re doing with us, isn’t it?” said Maedoc.
“That alien was definitely trying to communicate. Maybe we should try to play along,” said Grainne.
“You’re not our fucking boss,” said Maedoc.
Tadgan said, “What we’re doing now isn’t helping anything. We have to do something.”
“Let’s try to break out of here. Maybe they have a dune buggy or a shuttle or something we could put some space between them and us in..”
Grainne said, “If we want to do that we need to learn about the ship. Maybe if we communicate with the aliens they will bring us back home.”
“This is stupid. We need to get the hell out of here,” said Maedoc.
He stepped up to the door and slid it open. It wasn’t locked. He poked his head out. The room was situated in a hallway with a few aliens in the red trim uniforms walking around. Another alien with silver highlights was sitting on some kind of stool with a back, just to the side of the door. He spoke words in an excited and confused manner.
Grainne and Tadgan followed Maedoc out into the hall.
The aliens in the orange trim uniforms did their best to avoid looking at the trio.
Maedoc walked down a random direction in the hall. The alien with the silver trim uniform made no effort to block him. Grainne and Tadgan followed a few steps behind.
The walls mostly had video consoles built into them at eye level. Most of them had generic textures or diagrams on them, although a few had what seemed to be internal views of the alien’s biology, skeletons and organs.
The alien in silver followed a few steps behind them.
They explored the medical chamber. That was clearly what this was. One door was locked, but otherwise the aliens didn’t block access to any of the other rooms. That was weird, these aliens were extending them a large amount of trust. Most of the rooms had more technical looking platforms with padding at the top, and various machines built into the walls.
Finally, after checking out about six of the rooms they found one with a curtain separating one side of the room and a line of stools against the opposite. A large machine behind the curtain hummed. Maedoc stepped up to the curtain and poked his head behind it. The alien followed them in.
“There’s an alien in there, in some kind of machine,” he said.
The alien shouted at them. The three of them stepped up to the curtain. Next, Tadgan poked his head through.
“It’s gesturing at us,” said Tadgan. “Let’s just go inside.”
“It’s a trap,” said Maedoc.
“It’s clearly not a trap. This is a medical facility. It’s having some kind of medical process done to it. If it doesn’t seem hostile I’d like to have a look myself.”
Grainne pulled back the curtain. There was a large machine built into the wall. It had different chambers and sections, and it was mounted on top of one of those padded platforms. The alien had chambers of the machine locked in around its torso with its legs, one arm and head free. The alien had pale skin mottled with brown dots and short bright red hair. It gestured with its arm.
“What the hell are they doing to you?” said Grainne. He approached and examined the machine. It hummed merrily.
The alien chattered at him, it didn’t seem too bothered to see them. If anything, it seemed amused. After a moment, it noticed the other alien that had been following the trio. The alien in the machine shouted at the alien who had followed them and it left.
“That looks so uncomfortable,” said Maedoc. “I would go crazy if I was being held in such a machine.”
The alien made a high pitched snorting noise.
It pointed with its one free arm at the arm under the other device. It twisted its hand into a knot and made a crunching noise with its mouth.
Grainne made a similar crunching noise with his mouth. He pointed at his same arm, then pantomimed as if it took some injury.
The alien gestured with its head.
Again the alien pointed at itself. It pointed at three points along its torso and then twisted up its hand and made the crunching noise.
Grainne pointed at places in his torso, then contorted into a pained position and made the crunching noise.
The alien made the same gesture with its head again.
“What the hell are you doing?” said Maedoc.
“The alien, I think I know what it’s saying,” said Grainne, “It hurt its spine in three places and its arm in one. This machine is somehow helping it, regenerating it, maybe?”
“Wow, great translation there Kilbermal. Next time I’ll get you to translate the Epic of Chelumuc for the alien’s entertainment.”
“You excretion hole, we communicated! Didn’t we communicate?” said Grainne.
The alien made some kind of noise at him.
“See? It agrees with me. We communicated,” said Grainne.
“We can’t be sure of that,” said Tadgan.
“They let us walk around their hospital,” said Grainne, “They gave us food and a place to sleep. Those objects they brought to the room are clearly recreational items of some sort. These aliens don’t mean us harm. I’m not sure why we’re here, but they’re not trying to hurt us.”
Maedoc groaned. “You’re probably right.”
Grainne returned to the alien’s side.
It traced a shape in the air with its finger: a long shaft with a bulbous shape on the top.
“The Glorious Jeweled Lightning Bird,” he said, “It’s trying to talk about our ship.”
He traced the shape with his fingers and with his other hand he pointed at the bottom of the shaft, where their stasis tubes were held, then he motioned toward Tadgan and Maedoc.
The alien made the same affirmative gesture as before.
Then it pointed at itself, then it pointed at its eyes. With its hand and head at the same time it twisted them jerkily together, in the same direction.
“The alien,” said Grainne, “I think it’s saying that it went over to our ship to look around.”
The alien pantomimed the shape of the ship again, then curled its hand into a dome and crashed it into the same space it had been pantomiming into. It curled its face into a sneer and curled its fingers into a claw. It made an animalistic noise. Then it curled its face into a different expression, eyes wide open and the sides of the lips curled downward, then it threw a punch into the air. Finally, it pointed at itself.
“Something else hit the ship, then, I think?” said Grainne, “And then it fought some other thing? Did the Glorious Jeweled Lightning Bird get damaged in all this? That’s too specific. No way to communicate that.”
The pack was heavy, filled with vegetables and raw dula, but it didn’t feel so bad. Mylen marched through the concrete halls. They were decorated with bright pink and yellow banners. This was her favorite time of year. In the hall she smelled everything that everybody else was cooking in all the little apartments.
She slid the key into the door and fumbled with it until it opened.
Doven sat nervously on the couch sliding his fingers over a tablet computer.
A sneer twisted across Mylen’s face.
“The Rishti,” said Mylen, “You haven’t even started. Mother and the aunts will be here in an hour and you haven’t even started.”
Doven was in his own world, likely colony four, but the appearance of his sister broke him out of his trance. “Mylen,” he said, “You’re here early.”
Mylen said, “No, I’m not. Why aren’t you in the kitchen? You’re going to make me do everything, aren’t you? There’s not enough time.”
Doven pulled himself to his feet, bolted over to Mylen and grabbed the pack from her. He immediately dragged it to the kitchen.
“I’m so sorry, I lost track of time,” he said .
“Come on,” said Mylen, and she sorted through the shelves until she found a bottle of yeast and a bowl. She poured snek flour into the bowl along with some yeast and water. “What were you reading about this time?”
“Don’t you think it’s unusual that we haven’t heard from dad in three months? He ordinarily sends a message every fortnight,” said Doven.
“You’re reading conspiracy stories again,” said Mylen, “There’s no truth to them.”
She mixed the paste with a spatula.
Doven said, “I wouldn’t be so sure. Nobody has gotten a message from colony four in that time.”
Doven set a jug of water to boil and poured the dula into a big jug.
“Last year,” said Mylen, “Father didn’t send us messages all through the spring. There was a communications lockdown on colony four.”
“Yes,” said Doven, and he washed some vegetables in the sink, “but there were still communications coming through for the Tuariskeagn. No Tuariskeagn has received a message from colony four in the same time.”
Mylen said, “You’re worrying about nothing.”
Doven said, “The processing facility on colony two is running under capacity because they haven’t received the latest shipment from colony four.”
“Okay,” said Mylen, and she cut some katalia root, “What do you think happened?”
“The Tuariskeagn government is trying to cover up some disaster at colony four,” said Doven.
Mylen heated up a pan over the stove.
She said, “This is what it always comes back to with you, isn’t it? The government is lying to us. The government is mistreating us.”
“They are and they are,” said Doven.
Mylen threw the katalia root into the pan with some fat and it sizzled.
“How well did this line of inquiry work out for uncle Sedren or Welven? You just want to join the SFL, don’t you? You want to forget all about your responsibilities, you want to forget your family and go be a dead hero.” she asked.
“Is that really worse than the way we’re forced to live?” said Doven.
The kettle boiled over and Doven poured it in with the dula.