Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent (40 page)

“And to hide the key,” Moodri said. “I shall get Gelana.”

Since the shift change, the number of those entering and leaving the infirmary had noticeably lessened. There had been no further corpse disposals or executions, and the injured Overseers, once stable, had been carried out, presumably to better-equipped medical facilities in the Overseers’ section of the ship.

Two black-uniformed medics worked on one Overseer in a treatment harness. Another Overseer sprawled, dead, in a second harness. Other than that, Cathy and two other Cargo Specialists were the only people in the infirmary. They were cleaning up the discarded bandage wrappers and spilled blood.

Moodri went to Cathy. “It is time,” he said.

Cathy’s face was set in anger. “Not while Overseers remain here.”

“We have no choice.”

“They will close this infirmary.”

“The infirmary will no longer be needed.” Moodri leaned closer to her ear valley. “When you have completed the extraction, find some excuse to leave here. Gather as many children together as you can and prepare to go to the lower cargo bays when we have landed.”

Cathy stared at Moodri in a mixture of alarm and anguish. “Landed?” she said. “But . . . I thought . . .”

“That we would return to Tencton?” Moodri said kindly. He bowed his head. “Our home is lost to us for now. Perhaps someday we will return, but not until we can face an entire fleet of ships. It is time for us to make a new home.”

“But where?”

“Its name I cannot tell you, but it waits for us, Gelana. As it has always waited for us since the day of the coming of the ships. And now, with your aid, this voyage will end and our new home will welcome us.” He held out his hand to her. “Come, it is time.”

Moodri returned to Buck’s sleeping platform. He had no doubt that Cathy would follow. And she did.

She carried a surgical kit in her hands and told Melgil to go over by the work station farthest from the Overseer medics and their patients. Melgil frowned. It was the work station closest to the recycling tank. But he went to it.

Buck tried to get up from his platform, but Moodri told him to stay in place. There could be no break in the routine as long as Overseers were present, and no action could be taken that would attract their attention. “Gelana is skilled. It will not take long. Tell me again what you are to do with the key once you reach the bridge.”

In a low voice Buck formally recited his assignment as both he and Moodri watched Cathy at work. “The Overseers in charge of the bridge functions will be working at the green consoles,” Buck said. “The stardrive consoles are behind them, painted blood-pink in warning.” Cathy prepared a three-needle injector and carefully slipped it into Melgil’s shoulder. “The Watcher Brigade will be led across the bridge to an observation area. We will pass between the green consoles and the pink consoles.” Cathy peeled the glittering wrap from a scalpel so thin that its blade seemed to disappear when she turned it sideways. “The control surfaces on the pink consoles will be locked to prevent the activation of any controls while we are in normal space.” She painted Melgil’s right forearm with a sparkling antiseptic liquid. “One control surface will remain accessible and will be marked with a flashing green light. It is the one that must be used to unlock the other controls. That is the port into which I will insert the circuitry key as I pass.” She held the scalpel over Melgil’s scarred skin.

“Then what will you do?” Moodri asked. It would only be a matter of moments before the key would be removed from its living hiding place. The goddess smiled.

“Alarms will immediately sound, and in the confusion I will run to the bridge-access tunnels and return to the cargo disk.”

Cathy made the first cut.

“How long will you have before the tunnels are sealed?”

“No more than fifty double beats.”

The infirmary door smashed open. A male Overseer staggered in, carrying the body of a female wearing a black uniform. Her head was almost severed from her body. Her spots were as pale as her skin.

“Help me!” the Overseer shouted.

The Overseer medics turned to him but would not leave their own patients. There was no help that could be given.

“You!” the Overseer yelled at Cathy. “Here! Now!”

Cathy hesitated. Melgil’s flesh was exposed beneath her scalpel, his arm cradled in a soft nest of bandages. Blood oozed from the careful incision she had made. And because of that situation she did not instantly respond to the Overseer’s order.

The Overseer reacted as if pure
jabroka
pulsed through his hearts.
“Did you hear what I said?”
he shrieked.
“Now!”

Cathy laid down her scalpel and hurried to him and the body he carried. She looked at the ruin of the female’s neck. No blood pulsed from the torn arteries. Moodri could hear the fear in Cathy’s voice as she spoke. “I’m . . . I’m sorry, master, but . . . she has died.”

Moodri saw the Overseer’s arms sag. He felt the loss the Overseer felt as Cathy confirmed the truth the Overseer was afraid to admit to himself. The Overseer stumbled over to an empty treatment harness and laid the body of the female within it. Cathy stood in the middle of the infirmary, unsure of what she should do next. Melgil stared at the ceiling lights, eyes closed, his good hand clutched to the shoulder of his opened arm.

Moodri stood. It was risky, but Cathy needed instruction. She had to be told to return to Melgil and retrieve the key.

The Overseer cried out in anguish. He bowed his head against the female, and when he stood again his face was smeared with her blood. He turned to Cathy. His eyes glowed like mining beams. “Your fault,” he spat. “It is
your fault!”

He lunged at Cathy. She had no place to run. His fist smashed against her face and knocked her to the deck. The other Overseers ignored the assault. It was nothing they hadn’t seen before, and they had all seen worse.

“I gave you an order, cargo!” The Overseer punctuated each word with a savage kick to Cathy’s ribs. “And you did not respond!”

Cathy’s breath exploded from her with each kick, Moodri turned away. There was nothing he could do. Not with so many of them in the infirmary. He saw Melgil pick up Cathy’s scalpel with trembling fingers. He knew how important it was to retrieve the key. He cut into his own flesh.

The Overseer turned to Melgil. “What are you doing here?” he screamed. “You filthy
sta!
You have no right to treatment when your betters are dying.” He threw himself at Melgil, leaving Cathy doubled over on the floor in a pod position, blood running from her mouth.

Melgil stepped back before the Overseer’s rage. His right arm was awash in blood. His left hand held the scalpel. The Overseer reacted as if Melgil intended to attack him with it.

“You dare?” the black-clad monster erupted in fury. “You dare attack me?” With a
chekkah
kick he knocked the scalpel from Melgil’s hand, and it clattered against the work station before falling to the deck. “Filth!” the Overseer cried, fueled by grief, by hatred, by the oppressiveness of the ship and the system that had stolen his hearts. “You have no right to be here! You have no right to live!”

He grabbed Melgil before the Elder could move another inch. He butted his head against Melgil’s, and the Elder’s legs instantly lost their strength.

“You have no right,” the Overseer snarled, and he lifted Melgil over his head as if the Elder were no more massive than the robes he wore.

Moodri touched his hearts.

Melgil whispered the name of the goddess.

And then the Overseer threw him into the recycling tank, and Melgil sank beneath the bubbling salt water.

“G
ROON
-
CHA
! G
ROON
-
CHA
!” The pulse of the power plants faded beneath the chanting of the crowd—a primal call for blood. Blood that brought back memories for George in the players’ cage. Memories of Ruhtra. Of running. Of escape . . .

George remembered running through the corridors, his younger brother, Ruhtra, at his side, small feet striking at the metal deck with the rhythm of the power plants, the pulse of the ship. He didn’t know how old he was in this memory, but since he and Ruhtra were together as children he knew it must be before his tenth birthday, before the Overseers came for him. Before he had seen his family for the last time, his mother’s hand reaching out to him, his father’s eyes so despairing, Ruhtra cradled between his parents, sobbing.

But now, in this memory, Ruhtra was panting, trying to keep up with his older brother’s rapid strides, yet never complaining. Their parents had seen to that. How could any child complain about inconsequential matters when so many of their kind lived in such hardship?

“There it is,” George rasped. He paused at the corner of the corridor. Ruhtra finally caught up to him. It was mid-shift. The ship was in deep space. The holy gas was at its lowest concentration. Yet the ship had translated. Something was going to happen.

“Did you
look?”
Ruhtra asked, gasping for breath.

“Of course I did,” George said with all the arrogance of an older brother to a younger. In fact he hadn’t, but he wasn’t about to admit it. The ship was more frightening than usual this close to the hull and the locked-off sectors.

“I bet you didn’t,” Ruhtra said, knowing his brother.

“Did too.”

“Prove it.”

The argument stopped there. How could George prove he had seen what he hadn’t seen? “We’ll look together,” he said.

Each by himself would have lacked the courage to have come even halfway to the hull when they were supposed to be in the light bay soaking up UV. But together, each afraid of being laughed at by the other, the two brothers encouraged each other in the most foolhardy of pursuits.

Eyes wide, scarcely able to breathe, George and Ruhtra slowly crept forward to the corner’s edge and peered around it.

And were transfixed.

Fifty feet directly ahead of them was an enormous viewport—teardrop-shaped like all the others but easily four times the size of any they had seen before and filled with uncountable stars. Without a doubt that proved the bulkhead before them was part of the hull. And most incredible of all, just as the older children had told them, beside that viewport was a
door.

George and Ruhtra held each other close as they stared at that door and thought about what it meant. A door that opened to the
outside.
An incredible concept.

In the day crèche the Elders had taught them that in space there was no air outside the ship. If the hull was breached, all the air inside would rush out. So why would there be a door in the hull, the children wondered, especially so far away from the cargo holds?

Without explanation the Elders had said that lesson would wait for another day.

And so a trip to the door to the outside had become a secret rite of passage for the children of the ship. Whispered about. Feared. And utterly fascinating. To make the furtive journey to the hull and gaze upon it was almost as important an event in a child’s growth to adulthood as the first opening of the
lingpod
flap in boys. But today George and Ruhtra were going to do more than just
look
at the door to the outside—they were going to join that small, select group of children whose spots were dark enough and hearts strong enough to cross the fifty feet of open hull corridor and actually
touch
it.

For George and Ruhtra, separately, such an action would be unthinkable. But together their courage knew no bounds, and no sense.

“You go first,” George said. “I’ll watch out for Overseers.”

“You
go first,” Ruhtra said.
“I’ll
watch for Overseers.”

“Are you afraid?”

“No! Are you?”

“No.”

“Then you go first.”

The exchange might have gone on for hours except for a subtle change in the sound qualities of the corridor. The terrified children, ever alert to the first faint approach of the Overseers’ boots, instantly fell silent.

But what they heard made no sense to either of them. It was something they hadn’t experienced before.

“Is it a pump?” Ruhtra said nervously.

“Maybe,” George said. But the odd pulsing sound wasn’t coming from the air vents. It was coming from—

“The door!” Ruhtra whispered in a strangled voice. “Stangya, look!”

George felt his spots twist on his scalp. The door to the outside was
opening.

He dug the fingers of one hand into the back of Ruhtra’s tunic. With the other he clutched at a pipe running up the wall beside him. He waited for the first awful blast of wind that would blow them out of the ship and into space.

But nothing happened.

There was only a gentle puff of white vapor from the bottom of the door seal as the wide metal plate slid upward.

There were no stars beyond the open door. Only darkness.

George still recalled the overwhelming confusion he had felt at that instant—as if everything he had been told about the ship and his place on it had been a lie.
Could
it be possible just to go to the door and
step outside?
Was that all it would take to leave the ship and return to the home his parents told him about? Could it be possible that they had never even left that home? That they had been trapped in the ship all this time for
nothing?

George felt Ruhtra struggling in his grip. “Let go, Stangya. I want to go outside.” The drive to be free was so strong that it overpowered even Ruhtra’s fear.

But George could not relinquish his hold on his brother. He couldn’t imagine the Elders had lied to him. But then why had they never said anything about—

Something moved in the shadows of the doorway.

Ruhtra shrank back against George. “What is it?” he whispered.

And as the huge white creature stepped out from the doorway George doubted if even the Elders would know.

Years later George would come to understand that the mysterious door to the outside was really an airlock, one of hundreds located along the hull. Sometimes they were used so hull crawlers could move into and out of the ship. Sometimes they connected one ship to another through a long, flexible tunnel. But whatever stepped through the door this time was neither machine nor any living thing George had seen before.