Lokians 1: Beyond the End of the World (26 page)

She sat next to him. With a feigned smile, he
turned to her, and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. Her brow
twitched.

“
Marty, and Zak, some Thewls that rode
with us. I don’t even know their names. He didn’t care. He just
said we had to press on,” O’Hara explained.

Day clasped her hands over her mouth as tears
welled up in her eyes. “Oh, no. Oh…Marty and Zak,” she said between
choking tears.

“
Korit just left his crew mates behind.
I...” He stopped in mid-sentence and held back tears of his
own.

Quickly, he masked his sorrow with anger and
stood. He turned facing the wall then smashed his fist into the
steel. Day recoiled from his outburst. She had never seen him so
overwhelmed by emotion. She tried to hug him from behind, but he
threw a second fist into the wall and shouted.

“
What am I supposed to do? I mean, I
get it. You know? We need to be here, we need to keep fighting, or
these monsters will kill everything. God damnit! They’re my
friends. Why do I keep leaving them behind?!”

“
Our friends, Riley, they’re our
friends, and we,” she stopped speaking and rested her forehead on
his back.

He felt her tears and calmed down. Ashamed by
his display, he turned around and kissed her. For a second, she
kissed back, but then she pulled away.

“
I-I’m sorry…that was,” he
muttered.

“
It’s okay…we both, you
know….”

“
Yeah…protocol and whatever. As Imes
would say, I need to pull myself together. We still have friends,
new friends, too. Fitzpatrick, DeReaux, Nandy, Swain, even Adams
and Franklin…Korit, and the others. You, always you,” he said as he
nodded to himself.

“
You’re not mad at Korit?”

“
No…I’m mad at the Lokians. They killed
our friends, and Korit just did what he had to do; they were dead.
It was me, I wanted to sulk, but this is bigger than me, isn’t
it?”

“
Bigger than all of us….”

“
Let’s walk…I need to walk,” he
said.

They stepped out of the room to meander down
through corridors. After a moment of treading silently, she turned
into her room. There, they sat together. Flem emerged from the
shower, wearing something like black lycra-spandex.

“
Oh, hello,” she said.

“
Hey,” both the Humans
answered.

“
Do you need privacy?”

“
No, join us,” O’Hara
invited.

After a polite silence, Day said, “So, tell
me how you found the traveler.”

“
Okay,” O’Hara smiled. “We were getting
our asses handed to us by Lokians. I don’t even know where they
came from. I guess there was a drop ship or something,” he
explained as he shook his head in recollection. Day held his hand
firmly as he spoke. Flem observed their behavior. “Korit and the
others were the only ones able to really do anything,” he
continued. “We just got ambushed, and our weapons were practically
useless. Eventually…well I guess I don’t really know what
happened.

“
You’d have to have Fitzpatrick or
DeReaux tell the rest of the story. All I know is I was passed out,
when out of the blue, the traveler ripped the aliens to shreds. He
healed us, and we got out….”

She leaned her head against his shoulder.
“We’re all trying so hard and dealing with so much. I feel
insignificant.”

“
I know what you mean. No matter how
hard we try, we fall short. Every task set out for us seems
impossible, and it progressively gets worse. Even with the Thewls’
power, we were dead without the traveler’s intervention. I’m glad
he’s here to help, but how can expect me to invade their world?” he
thought out loud.

“
What?!”

“
Uh, the traveler’s plan,” he
replied.

“
That’s what he said?”

“
Not so much said, but yes. According
to him it’s the only way,” O’Hara responded.

“
I should like to meet him,” Flem
said.

“
Yeah,” O’Hara trailed off.

“
Wait a minute, I thought...I don’t
know, I thought that when we got the travelers, they were going to
help us fight the Lokians,” Day snapped.

“
Look, I’m not sure how to explain
this. Somehow…they, he I mean, won’t help outright. I guess, he can
only show us the way,” O’Hara answered.

“
I am surprised,” Flem interjected.
“Our history indicates that they fought the Lokians for
us.”

“
It’s different now…that’s all I know,”
O’Hara replied.

“
This is awful. How can we win?” Day
complained.

“
He never implied we would, truthfully.
What he’s giving us is a chance, but I’m at a loss for
now.”

“
Travelers are our benefactors,” Flem
stated. “Surely, they must be willing to do more.”

For a time, they stayed there, wondering
about the next step, how dangerous it was, and what chance at
success they had. Flem remained faithful to the travelers. O’Hara
was questioning his ability. Day commiserated, and as the hours
eased on by, and fatigue settled in, they agreed to get some sleep,
and regroup at 05:00.

Chapter Seventeen

Swain was brooding over the outcome of their
previous battle. Busy hands allowed him an escape, so he joined
Thewlian repair technicians and helped to fix everything from comm.
lines on ships to personnel armor. One of the engineers was chewing
on ice chips, making obscenely loud crunching sounds, which brought
to the Human an epiphany; he decided to fill the Swainium bullet
tips with a Bose-Einstein condensate.

After finishing a repair shift, he bolted to
the weapons lab on the Carrier. There, he conversed with Thewls
about his idea. They first stated he needed to contain the BECs
with a miniscule force field—one so tiny it fit within the
bullet—then, they claimed it wasn’t going to kill Lokians anyway;
they were resistant to cold, but Swain believed the crystallization
of their exoskeleton or armor made them weaker, slower.

“
I don’t know why you’d want to
continue firing physical ammunition. Energy based weaponry is more
efficient,” an engineer advised.

“
I agree, but,” he paused in
mid-sentence as he moved to a computer. At the screen, he showed
schematics for a new weapon, a lightweight, Swainium, mini gun. It
was something he had tinkered with during his downtime. The
engineer looked over Swain’s head at the screen. “Until we get the
time and materials to build new weapons for Humans, I gotta’ go
with what works, or, you know, what might work….”

Rubbing his chin, the Thewl was in agreement.
“I’ll have words with my superiors. It’s high time we provide you
our kinds of weapons.”

“
Well, hold on, now,” Swain smiled. “I
was thinking about the AMRMC. A rifle that can fire a miniaturized
version of that beam will really get us going.”

“
We’ve tried, but there is no way to
build a small enough version of such a lens.”

“
I’ll get to work on something…I think
we can do it.”

It took some doing, but he figured there was
a way to design a miniaturized lens using fullerenes. He then
disassembled a photon, field generator in an effort to devise a
method for pumping highly charged photons through the new lens. It
took a great deal of work and ingenuity, but when he presented his
idea, they gave it a shot.

****

The days were filled with excitement for
everyone, especially Nandesrikahl, who was determined to learn the
Thewlian language. Basic orders were no problem, but they didn’t
just have words, they had turns of phrase, expressions, metaphors,
which had bypassed him on numerous occasions. On top of that, they
had told him it was impossible to understand every nuance without
being familiar with complexion changes and the distinct scents of
certain pheromones.

In agreement, he did his best to learn to
read and write. He liked that they had only the one language,
unlike Earth, where every ethnicity practically spoke their own
tongue. He asked his alien friends about the oddity, but they had
no answer, so he pestered the ambassador.

The two conversed about the changes, which
largely affected Thewls after their home world was destroyed. Weh
stated that at one time, there had been multiple languages, but
that like Humans, facial cues and body language were universal.
What remained upon their reintegration was a generic form of their
language, which evolved into what they spoke currently; a
militarized speech conforming to a survivalist mentality.

Nandy pointed out that they all spoke
remarkably well, professorial even; they were hardly survivalists.
Weh told him to consider the fact that they had already abandoned
their religion after the arrival of the travelers. Though they were
very spiritual, they no longer worshipped deities. On top of that,
they no longer spoke of art, music, dancing, colors, entertainment.
He agreed that they were still a scholarly people, and intelligent,
but there was no way to compare the past to the present.

“
Are there no physical records? No old
books, movies, nothing?” Nandy was shocked.

“
Yes, yes of course, but there are very
few of us with the time to study something so menial. First, we
must defeat the Lokians. Then, we must build lasting colonies.
Perhaps, after that, we will revive our ancient
culture.”

Nandy had rifled through screens of
historical events, and glossed over scant details of cultural
traits relevant to present day Thewls, but he knew very little of
their past. Since they had some time before reaching Soft Light, he
asked Weh to educate him. Together, they both perused historical
data, ancient mythologies, and past philosophies, which they
promised to reintroduce when the time was right.

****

Sirt was eating in the mess hall when the two
agents walked in. She saw them and motioned for them to join. They
received plates from the cook then sat next to each other across
from her.

“
You two are very different from the
other Humans,” Sirt said. “Are there different kinds of
Humans?”

“
No,” Franklin smiled.

“
Your equipment is also different…does
this mean that you are not part of the Navy?”

“
We work for a secret agency back on
Earth,” Adams said, nonchalantly.

“We have some experience in alien relations.
The Bureau monitors alien activity in our solar system, but this is
the first time we’ve ever made this level of contact,” Franklin
added.

“Normally, we just exchange messages, or
maybe a few schematics and cultural or historical information,”
Adams explained.

“Sometimes, we exchange certain practices or
pieces of functional technology. That’s where our training and gear
came from,” Franklin continued.

The alien looked them over. “What other races
are there?”

Adams and Franklin exchanged a glance. “Our
area of expertise is Pseudo Exodermea, what we call Grays,” Adams
said, reluctantly.

Franklin gave Adams a dry look, but said,
“They came to Earth on and off after their initial crash. It took
decades, but we reached amicable terms.”

“Not too long ago, we volunteered in an
exchange program where five Grays came to The Bureau. The two of us
and three other agents went to their ship,” Adams revealed.

“Should we be discussing that?” Franklin
asked.

Adams ignored him and went on to say, “We
never made it to their place of origin. What they asked of us was
too demanding. We underwent some cybernetic surgery and gene
therapy. What they wanted were splinter cells. Franklin and I were
the only two who refused, so they dumped us in space where we had
to be retrieved,” Adams explained stoically. “That was the end of
that for us.”

Franklin gave Adams a sideways glance. He
chuckled and shook his head. Then, he looked to Sirt and
shrugged.

“
There are some other races of which we
know, but you have to understand, knowing they exist, and knowing
of them are two, totally different things. I mean, consider what
you knew of Humans before you met us, and compare it to what you
know now.”

“
We’re not so different,” Sirt
said.

The agents shrugged. Sirt asked if any of the
races were hostile, if any were willing to lend a hand against the
Lokians, and she was especially interested in new technology.

“
We don’t think any are a threat,”
Adams said.

“
The Lokians are the scariest race
we’ve every seen, and with the weirdest tech,” Franklin trailed
off.

“
I hope the traveler’s technology is
better,” Sirt replied.

DeReaux wandered into the mess hall. He
stopped by to smack the agents on their shoulders. They exchanged
pleasantries before he sauntered off, claiming he needed to talk
sex-ed with Thewls. Sirt looked from him to the agents.

“
Everyone has an obsession,” Adams
said.

While they returned to conversations about
aliens, DeReaux invited himself to the table of a lone, Thewlian
woman. After introductions, he mentioned he had not seen any
children aboard the vessels, and asked to know all about their
reproductive practices, stating it was imperative they shared such
information as their superiors both needed to know such things.
Freely, she revealed they were an egg laying race, and that mating
had become something cold and sterile. He had intended to play it
cool, maybe even invite her back to his room, but what he learned
made him feel dirty.