Fluency

23

This part of the ship was distinctly different from the rest. For one thing, the climate control was set far lower—it was downright chilly. When Jane shivered, the suit’s internal systems engaged and she felt waves of dry warmth radiating from the dense walls of the suit.

Little puffs of warmed air blew around her face, tickling tendrils of loose hair around her ears. She’d left the helmet open because it didn’t seem necessary to close it and she felt more…human this way. Still, her nose was cold and occasionally she could see her breath frosting up in front of her.

She was heading toward the heart of the ship.

The lighting was also different here—more blue-green and not nearly as bright. In fact, as she strode deeper and deeper, the light dropped off substantially until she was walking in twilight, just on the cusp of absolute darkness.

Ei’Brai’s presence in her mind was calm, expectant. He knew by now what she was about. He wouldn’t try to stop her. It was time.

She could no longer see the walls as she walked. They’d long since receded into darkness. There was a light integrated into her suit that she could turn on with nothing but a thought, but she held that in reserve, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom.

The blueprint inside her head told her she’d reached the point where all the ship’s corridors converged like spokes to a central point. She slowed down, every sense on alert.

A wall of cool air slapped her in the face. She’d just walked into a vast, open space.

Her eyes drifted to a small pool of reflected light. It rippled.

She froze. She’d been here before. Except she’d been on the other side of the glass, looking out, from inside Ei’Brai’s mind.

She squared her feet with her shoulders and stepped out onto the railed gantry that led to Ei’Brai’s domain. She leaned out and darted looks up and down over the side of the railing. Every deck had its own service-gantry leading to hundreds of gangways circumnavigating the core habitat, identical to the one she occupied. They seemed to go on for miles in each direction.

She strode up to the glass, reached out a hand to touch it, and lifted her chin. She cleared her throat, though she wasn’t speaking aloud. “Show yourself to me.”

He didn’t answer. But she felt him inhaling, burgeoning to the fullest point, limbs languidly drawing together to a tight star as he exhaled in an enormous whoosh, sending himself shooting like a torpedo down many deck levels toward where she stood, peering through the glass.

He stopped his rapid descent by throwing his arms out, the membranous webs between them billowing, creating friction. He constricted the flow of the squeeze to a trickle and came to a full stop opposite her, while at the same moment a pair of soft lights came on, illuminating his environs so that she could see him, fully.

She flinched and berated herself for it. She knew he’d make a dramatic appearance.

She’d had some inkling, of course, that he was an aquatic creature before now, but nothing could have prepared her for the fact that each of his eyes was larger than her head, or that his longest limbs appeared to be five times the length of her body or more.

His many arms twined around him as they regarded each other, just a few inches of air, glass, water between them. Each of his eight arms was studded along its length with pale, semi-transparent suction cups, a large portion of which brandished a prominent, barbed hook curling over the top, clearly meant to shred prey as it was dragged relentlessly toward his mouth, currently hidden from her.

In the murky light he was creamy white, shimmering with a metallic sheen, alternately silvery and golden. Every languorous, sinuous movement drew her eye to the light reflecting off his gilded, iridescent skin. He was mesmerizing.

Tears pricked the backs of her eyes. She hadn’t expected him to be beautiful.

Though she tried to remain guarded, he picked up on her mental state. Proximity seemed to be a factor. She felt an even greater sense of the multiple layers of his racing thoughts. She could almost see, as well as sense, the multiple brains beneath his translucent skin.

His mantle swelled in an almost child-like expression of pride. He bobbed in place. “My appearance pleases you?”

One of two tentacles extended toward her, far longer and thinner than his arms and terminating in a leaf-shaped club. Suction cups, with serrations, like teeth, flattened against the glass where her own hand rested. His words reverberated in a hushed timbre, full of surprise. “Unexpected. Your kind is indeed dissimilar from the Sectilius.”

As he spoke, his skin flashed crimson and glowed with an inner luminescence. Simultaneously, he fed her the meaning behind the primitive communication. It was a cordial greeting, meant for an age-mate. It implied that he felt connected to her, that he was grateful for her presence. He called her friend.

She nodded slowly, unable to take her eyes off him, but ready to broach the subject she was there to tackle.

But he distracted her again. This time forcing a flash of insight into how he perceived her, both visually and mentally. Through his eyes, she could see herself in almost microscopic detail. Small, by comparison to him, he divulged that her body was also small by Sectilius standards. More fleshy, soft, rounded, than a typical Sectilius female, though, he’d decided that he preferred her appearance to their more angular, muscular structure, for no other reason than it was more like his own, if only in an abstract way.

He saw her as upright, tightly controlled. Her jaw was set with determination and her eyes were expressive, burning with an inner fire—a fire he knew to be rare and valuable—juxtaposed against the hair, flowing wild around her head, similar to the way he perceived her internal landscape—disorganized, fluid, organic.

He saw her decisiveness, her duty, her compassion, her sense of responsibility as most desirable traits. He presumed her to be the very pinnacle of humanity, the ideal specimen. Perfect.

She leveled her gaze on the eye closest to her. He was unblinking. That was a little unnerving. She pushed that feeling down as irrelevant and put steel in her internal voice. “Perfect for what purpose, Ei’Brai?”

He pivoted slightly, his arms curling around himself. He was calculating the reorganization of the micro-robotic squillae to prevent a minor hull breach. But she knew those were calculations he could literally do in his sleep. He was not truly preoccupied by them. That was a misdirection.

“Quit pretending to be distracted. Quit putting me off. What do you want from me?”

“You know. You’ve always known.”

She wanted to scream with frustration. She wracked her brain for any kind of hint of what he might be referring to, but came up blank.

He waited for her to reply, his limbs drifting around him on a silent current. His only intentional movement was the slow undulation of the fins on either side of the conical mantle above his eyes.

Her muscles tensed to such a degree that the suit’s internal sensors brought up a prompt, asking her if she was experiencing a muscle spasm. “I know that you’re doomed, that you’ve decided to try to bring all of us down with you. You’ve managed to keep Alan, Tom, and myself here while the others escaped. But for what? To keep you company, until the moment the asteroid hits? You would sacrifice us, too—so that you won’t be lonely in your final hours?”

“None of us are doomed.”

It was a flat statement of fact—she could see he was completely convinced of its truth.

“What?” Was he mad? There’d been moments she’d suspected….

“Dr. Jane Holloway, you are the key that will unlock all of our futures. Terra’s future as well. We can still fulfill the primary mission.”

He didn’t sound crazy. He sounded calm, certain. That was so damn infuriating.

“We? You—”

It struck her, suddenly, what he must mean. He’d been obliquely feeding her clues all along. One of the first things he said to her was that he wanted something from her—not them—her. He’d told her, “You are home,” which she’d dismissed as a cultural reference, a welcoming gesture, a throw-away. But there was the moment he described the command hierarchy of the ship…the journey to Castor and Pollux…the download…his satisfaction when she’d gotten herself out of the gel…the computer’s greeting in the infirmary only an hour before….

It snapped into place.

“You can’t seriously want me to—?”

“I have already appointed you—you have already utilized your proto-command when you extricated yourself from the Sanalabreum. Under martial law, an expeditious vote of the Quorum is all that is necessary. I am the only surviving Quorum member. It is merely a formality now. You have only to accept.”

She staggered back from the glass, blood pounding audibly in her ears.

“What then?” she mumbled aloud.

“I am your servant.” Another fact. Another truth, from his point of view.

“Oh, give me a break!” She raised a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, but caught sight of the gauntlet just in time and threw her arm away. They really should retract like the helmet, for goodness’ sake. “So, we just…we move the ship.”

“Obviously. We complete the mission and return.”

She stared at him, aghast, her lips formed in a moue of disbelief. “To Sectilius? You’re joking!”

“I do not dissemble. It is your duty to complete the mission begun by your predecessor. It is not in your nature to shirk duty, especially to those to whom you believe yourself responsible. I am now your ward. That responsibility extends to me.”

“That—I—that’s ridiculous! I don’t know anything about—”

She paused. But she did know, dammit. She knew everything about it, if she just searched in the right corner of her mind. The sneaky bastard had put everything into place at the very beginning with that insane download.

She half-expected to see some kind of maniacal grin on his face, which wasn’t there, of course—only an innocent, wide-eyed look, that bespoke nothing of the devious nature of the mind beneath the white flesh, still rhythmically flashing a crimson “friend” signal at her.

She turned and walked a few feet away, grateful for the support of the suit. Her legs felt wobbly and weak within its generous support and her injured leg ached. “This is nonsense. We’ll go to Earth and let the bureaucrats there work it all out. They’ll appoint someone suitable for this task. It’s not me you want.”

“It is you, Dr. Jane Holloway. There can be no other.”

She stopped, began to form a retort.

He interrupted her thought. “This is what you will give me over to them for?”

He pushed a memory at her. She meant to resist, but when she saw familiar faces, curiosity got the better of her. It was a small conference room, somewhere on Earth.

In the memory, she stood stiffly, with folded arms, and made eye contact with the Deputy Administrator of Johnson Space Center.

What was his name again? Dr. Marshall?

Marshall nodded brusquely, indicating that she should dim the lights. As she turned, she glanced into the faces of three others that occupied the room—Ajaya Varma, Tom Compton and Ronald Gibbs stood at ease nearby, dressed in fatigues. She was feeling grim. She moved forward, picked up a remote, and looked up. She could see her reflection in the television screen before it came to life. She was Walsh. This was his memory.

As she watched, ancient black and white film footage played on the screen, hastily shot, documenting some long ago event that the military had been brought in to deal with. Walsh had seen this before, but he still squinted to see the grainy images, interspersed with snow and flashing jumps. It was dark. There was smoke, lots of smoke. There were floodlights in a perimeter, flooding a large object with harsh light, making the camera white out from time to time.

Then she recognized the ship that the soldiers were swarming over—a Speroancora shuttle—and she realized this had to be the 1947 New Mexican crash site. There were Sectilius inside that small ship. The cameraman drew closer and asked questions of men working on and around the ship in a disgustingly jaunty manner, belying the seriousness of the moment.

Ei’Brai watched and listened, silently absorbed in her reaction. She perceived him and the video on different levels as information streamed between them. He did not understand the language spoken, only the emotions conveyed. She was surprised at how accurate his interpretations actually were.

Several soldiers put their backs into some large tools to pry open a hatch, which suddenly gave way with a hiss. Someone barked an order at the cameraman and he moved in closer. The camera shook, making the footage difficult to watch. He didn’t sound so jolly anymore. Soldiers moved in with weapons drawn. The camera followed.

There were four Sectilius inside—three men and one woman. One of the men was obviously dead, impaled by a twisted component of the control console. The other two were stunned and moving lethargically—they would have been affected by the same mysterious illness as Compton at some point during their journey to Earth.

The female Sectilius was in the process of donning an armored suit, exactly like the one Jane was wearing. The woman was exceedingly thin, tall, lithe, sharply featured—to Walsh’s eyes, alien and suspicious.

She was ordered to stop what she was doing. She answered calmly, matter of fact, in Mensententia that she meant no harm, that she intended to protect herself from the violence of this bizarre, chaotic world. These men couldn’t comprehend her, nor Walsh, but Jane could and the following sequence made her blood run cold.

Two soldiers advanced on her while other soldiers crowded the unresisting, catatonic Sectilius men, slumped at the controls of the vehicle. The soldiers ordered the woman to stop again as she slipped one arm down into the suit. She narrowed her eyes and slowly continued, no expression of any kind on her face. They tried to stop her physically. She pushed them away with a force that clearly surprised them.

There were angry words, cursing. A shot rang out. The Sectilius woman looked down at her torso, registered that she’d been wounded, and shouldered the suit, which instantly enveloped her. She returned fire, obliterating the man who’d just shot her with a single concussive blast from her wrist. The camera rocked violently and it was hard to tell what was happening for a few moments. When it righted itself, bullets were pinging off the Sectilius woman as she staggered forward, arm raised, sending out a few more pressure waves before she collapsed.

The screen went blank for a moment then lit up again in a new location. This scene was very different—the contrast was stark. Bright light flooded the room from above. It was a surgical suite filled with gowned, masked men crowded around the center of the room. It was very quiet. The men spoke in low murmurs as they worked over someone.

Then she heard an agonized moan.

Jane involuntarily put the back of her hand to her mouth and tasted blood as the mechanical hand smashed her tender lips.

One man smoked a cigarette nearby, watching the proceedings with intense absorption.

The camera moved in. Men with oiled hair and horn-rimmed glasses glanced up and stepped aside. One of the Sectilius was naked on an operating table. It was the short, stocky male—his body corded with dense musculature.

The camera moved in closer, revealing that his body was flayed and cut wide open from neck to groin. They were dissecting him. He was alive and awake and in agony.

Jane could sense Walsh’s unarticulated emotions. It was very clear. He approved of this.

Jane fell to her knees against the glass and wretched. Ei’Brai stopped the flood of the memory and she thanked him for that kindness while she recovered her composure.

If Ei’Brai saw this in Walsh’s mind—from the beginning? That explained a few things.

When she was able to stand again, she choked out, “I will not let them do that to you!”

“How will you prevent it? They will be curious about the similarities and dissimilarities between my kind and homologous creatures on your world. I have seen in your mind, my form is not unfamiliar to you, yet my intellect, my abilities, are singular—you have encountered nothing that compares in your cumulative experience as a species. The precedent has been set. Surely you must see that this is the natural conclusion to any alien introduction to your culture. They will not be able to help themselves.” All his concentration was fixed on her every move, every thought. “You, however, are different. You know me as they cannot.”

She shook her head slowly, perplexed. “Ei’Brai, I won’t let that happen.”

“I’m gratified that your intent is unadulterated, but I’m less certain that this pledge is truly within your dominion. A brief appearance in your skies, messages to your many governments with all the necessary information is in order—in your own words, with your reassurances—that will more than fulfill that portion of the mission.

“Eventually another diplomatic ambassador will be dispatched from the Unified Sentient Races to your world, assuming the coalition still exists—that will permit a more equal footing, less risk to any single individual, such as myself. Certainly you can see that logic dictates we must proceed immediately to Sectilius for a full investigation into the genocide of the Speroancora Community, to discover the extent to which the fleet has been affected, Sectilius itself, or if this was an isolated event. Now that the ship’s binary systems recognize the presence of a Quasador Dux, there is nothing to keep us here. The time has come. We are much delayed.”

“Nothing to keep us here?” she asked, incredulous. “What about the illness that killed your crew? Are Walsh and the others going to infect Earth with it? What about Compton? Is he contagious? I’m not just going to sit back and ignore all of that and let you zoom off into space!”

“It is improbable they are infected. Far less likely that it will be capable of replication in any meaningful way. Contagion is highly unlikely.”

“Improbable? Meaningful? Highly unlikely? You mean you don’t know? I can’t gamble with their lives that way. I will not gamble with Earth that way!”

“Commander Mark Walsh chose not to step onto the diagnostic platform. That was his election and does not affect you. You have not been infected. Nor has Dr. Alan Bergen.”

Again, certainty.

Jane stood resolute before him. “I’ve trusted you. Now you must trust me. We should go back to Earth, bring our best scientists onboard. I’ll teach them Mensententia and we’ll deal with this thing, whatever it is. Then, we’ll talk about Sectilius. Decades have passed since the attack—a few more months will hardly matter in the greater scheme of things. I’m certain there will be volunteers for that kind of mission—people far better suited to the role of Quasador Dux than myself! I’ll be careful. I’ll be adamant with my government. I’ll be strong. I won’t let them bring anyone on board that I don’t trust.”

“This is not a negotiation.” His voice had suddenly taken a different tone, resonated on a different frequency.

She felt small stirrings of unease in her belly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I possess the power of eternal night—the balance between dusk and dawn for your Dr. Alan Bergen.”

Her heart fluttered in her chest. She felt weak.

His finger was on the trigger. If she didn’t agree to his terms, he would end Alan’s life.

Jane backed up a step and shook her head. Panic rioted through her. “You can’t be serious! Why would you resort to that? You’re insane!”

He was extremely agitated. The sensation of barely leashed power that she’d felt from him early on pervaded her perception of him again now. His arms were whipping and swirling around him. He inhaled through his mantle, exhaled through his funnel more rapidly than seemed to be necessary, and this required tense countermeasures to maintain his place in the water opposite her. His mental touch was shielded, though. She had a hunch he might be bluffing, but she couldn’t be sure.

He sounded contemptuous, his voice vibrating louder inside her head than it ever had before. “I am rational. You are allowing yourself to be motivated by fleeting emotional states, instead of by reason. Elimination of this individual would free you. I am needed elsewhere, immediately. You and I are bound to this mission. This supersedes your paltry desires for intimacy.”

She stared at him, open-mouthed, outraged that he was so dismissive of Alan’s life. Her voice cut like a knife through the air, so angry that she had to speak out loud. “He is more to me than that and you know it.”

Ei’Brai growled, “I have not waited this many solar cycles to find my end, desiccating and bleeding in your primitive surgeon’s theatre. I am far too valuable an individual to meet dusk in such a manner.”

Her voice also dropped to a lower register. “Alan is equally valuable to me, to the people of my world. Be careful where you tread, Ei’Brai, or I may just let the asteroid give you this dusk you speak of.”

But he was going on as if he hadn’t heard her, “In fact, one session with a Sectilius mind-master would relieve you of these insecurities, allow you to embrace your inner desires, fully transmute you into the commanding individual you are meant to be.”

She was afraid to force his hand. “I’m fine how I am. Stop this charade. You’re bluffing.”

“Am I?” Ei’Brai sputtered. Then a wall came down and a crashing torrent of experience broke through—she was gasping and choking inside the gel—except it wasn’t her. It was Alan.

She fled to the controls that had freed her just hours before, looking for the command that would give Alan the air he needed, but Ei’Brai was concealing them from her, masking everything so it seemed like gibberish.

She refused to give in to panic.

Withdrawing from him in a rush, she came back fully back into herself and severed the link between them. She turned on a dime and strode back down the gantry, ordering the helmet closed as she went. Eleven swift paces to the left, she stopped at a precise point and raised her arm. The blast cannon would discharge with a mere flicker of thought.

Her teeth ground together in defiance. She turned the helmet to face him with a servo-motor whir.

“Your life support lies behind this wall, Ei’Brai. If you dare to hurt Alan, I will destroy that equipment and you will suffocate—not as quickly as Alan, but you will suffocate, nonetheless—while I watch.”

“You may injure yourself in the process. You will be stranded here,” he said warily.

“I don’t care,” she uttered with deadly certainty. She wasn’t bluffing. She’d do it. She’d kill him if he murdered Alan.

She sensed an easing of Alan’s distress and allowed herself to take a long, relieved breath.

She felt the need to press her advantage, to challenge him. He wanted her to lead, but then gave her ultimatums to force the issue? It sounded like an antagonistic maelstrom in the making, not a peaceful working relationship at all.

Was she actually considering taking him up on his offer? Did she really have a choice?

“Ask yourself, Ei’Brai—am I your enemy or your ally? Do you trust me as your Quasador Dux—or is this mutiny? Confirmed mutineers on this ship receive the death penalty, under Sectilius law.”

She wasn’t precisely sure how she knew that, but she did know it and it was damn useful information.

Ei’Brai’s gaze was unwavering. His limbs slowed. His voice was solemn. “Does this mean you accept the appointment to the rank of Quasador Dux, Dr. Jane Holloway?”

There was gravitas in this moment. She knew it.

Instinct told her that her life had been spent barreling toward this moment. Every decision she’d ever regretted, she’d agonized over. There was no time for that now. She had to take the upper hand somehow. She had to trust her gut. She barely hesitated. “I do.”

As soon as those two words transmitted to him via thought, she realized what he’d been doing. In that moment a new channel opened between them and she experienced Ei’Brai on an entirely new level. The ship hummed through him—now through her as well. She could be aware of any part of it that she pleased at any given moment, through this connection with him. There were no walls between them anymore. She could see any part of his inner dialogue or memory that she might want. She could monitor any system or any individual.

In that moment, all Ei’Brai felt was raw relief. His bravado was instantly supplanted by a release of anxiety and a flood of reassurance and calm. So much so that it affected even her. That was a small comfort as she quickly uncovered the series of machinations he’d used to bring her to this point. His deceptions, which he deemed a series of necessary tests, were laid at her feet. He begged her forgiveness for them.

She looked over at him. His limbs were drawn together to a point and he had maneuvered his body so that he faced slightly away from her, more laterally than vertically at the moment. It was a form of submission.

She lowered her hand and intuitively used her new access to check on Alan. He slept peacefully. He hadn’t just gone through any kind of trauma. That had been a ruse.

She shook her head, utterly baffled. “You tricked me!”

“A regrettable and heinous act of subterfuge. It will not happen again—is not even possible now, as I’m certain you have ascertained. I am completely open to you, at your service.”

She staggered back a step as he revealed that the xenon gas…the transformation of the nepatrox…these were all carefully concocted tests to see how she would handle herself under pressure, to see where her loyalties would lie, to evaluate her sense of fairness, her self-control—all to see if she would measure up to his exacting standards. He wouldn’t serve just anyone, it seemed.

“Calculated risks,” he hummed deferentially.

That included the interlude with Alan—testing her ability to accept cultural differences and not put her own ego first when feeling affronted.

“I need to sit down.” She backed into the wall and slid down to the floor with a heavy clunk. Drawing her knees to her chest, she opened the helmet to rest her forehead on crossed arms.

“You put people’s lives at risk.” It was an accusation. That was the part that rankled the most.

He did not sound the least bit defensive. Instead, he resumed his patient, instructive air. “Normally, every potential leader among the Sectilius, myself included, is assessed in an academic setting under naturalistic, simulated conditions by accomplished proctors. This was not possible in your case. Therefore, I created a real-world scenario and endeavored to minimize risk, while keeping the overall goal of assessment within similar parameters, always with the goal to preserve life when possible. There is much at stake.”

After a moment, she raised her head. He was still respectfully floating horizontally, eyes averted from her.

“Stop that,” she said crossly.

“As you wish.” He came to vertical and relaxed his limbs. He exuded tranquility. It was infuriating.

“But why put anyone in danger at all? You’re certainly capable of creating any scenario you like, making it feel as real as…reality. Why do all of this?”

“I regret I do not posses the imaginative traits needed to endeavor to plot such a scenario. I am but a practical individual. I utilized what I had to hand, so to speak. It was imperative that your experience be heuristic in nature. I believe I accomplished that admirably, did I not?”

She drew her brows together. “But Compton really is infected then….”

“With the latent squillae that infected the Speroancora Community, yes. I had presumed them all uncovered and eliminated by now, but—”

“Clearly a few hid from your efforts,” she said dryly.

She could see in his mind that over the decades he had ordered his own cadres of squillae to comb the ship, seeking and destroying the rogue squillae that had lain dormant, unnoticed under their noses, biding their time until something triggered them, infecting everyone on board simultaneously. Only Ei’Brai was spared, because his environment was encapsulated, kept separate from the rest of the ship, impervious to infiltration.

“Agreed. They were programmed by a sophisticated and resourceful individual.”

“Who?”

“I regret I cannot say, but I am eager to take revenge in whatever manner you see fit, should we discover the perpetrator’s identity and whereabouts.”

She exhaled slowly, determined to come to terms with her new role as the Quasador Dux of the Speroancora. “Is there any hope for Compton?”

“Unknown. The Sanalabreum has declared him clear several times, but then another is found replicating elsewhere within his anatomy.”

“I see. They’re tenacious and not easy to detect. So, there is risk to Alan and myself and to Earth—if Walsh, Ajaya or Gibbs are infected with even one of them.”

“Regrettably, yes.”

“How do we get rid of them, once and for all?”

“That, Qua’dux Jane Holloway, I do not know.”