Embarkment 2577 Read online

  I’d seen him eat and drink. What did he do with the stuff? Asking about his inner workings seemed intrusive. He was so sweet and I didn’t want to offend him. My curiosity would have to wait.

  Evening turned into night, and we strolled through the dimly lit arboretum. Adam sounded apologetic, “I guess the plants are sleeping. We’ll have to come back in daytime.”

  “I’m impressed with how big it is. I wonder how many different kinds grow here.”

  “There should be thirty four thousand eight hundred and thirty seven. There used to be more, but we dropped some of them off not long ago.”

  I tucked my hands around his arm again. “Thirty four thousand? That’s crazy.”

  “Not really. There are about three hundred thousand kinds of plants on Earth, and that’s one planet. These come from many places.”

  Considering the size of the ship, the area could be huge, stretch over several floors, even. It was more than large enough for me to get lost.

  Adam paused in front of a little bush. “This one, right here, is a part of a bush from California. It’s more than thirteen thousand years old.”

  We moved on in silence, and my mind played with the same questions as always. Now might be a good time to talk about it. “So… When are you going to tell me?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Tell you about what?”

  Men. Impossible. “About us. You don’t seem to mind spending all your time taking care of a lost girl. What am I to you? How long were you in my time? What happened?”

  “I’m not going to tell you. Maybe your memories aren’t the same as mine, and if you’re biased by my point of view you might never remember.”

  From my point of view, there were flaws in his logic. “But…”

  He interrupted me, with the same infuriating calm as always. “I could only tell you my side of the story, and you have the right to make up your own mind.”

  About what? Him? Surely some eloquently presented facts wouldn’t hurt me. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He paused to pick a flower growing next to the path. I expected a horde of angry gardeners yelling plants shouldn’t be touched, but we were still alone. He put it in my hair, and I grumbled, “You’re just trying to distract me.”

  “Yes. Is it working?”

  When we reached my door, he gazed into my eyes with an indecipherable look on his face. “Good night, Alex. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He bent down a little to kiss me on the cheek, and the touch sent a burst of electricity through my skin. I didn’t want him to go, but I wasn’t able to ask him to stay.

  Chapter Eight

  It had been an eventful day, and I was exhausted. My mind wanted to keep poking at the android mystery, but my body said no. Sleep took me so quickly I can’t even remember going to bed.

  Blaring alarms made their way into my dreams. Who was dumb enough to set an alarm clock? I sure hadn’t. Pulling a pillow over my head didn’t silence the noise, and I finally sat up. “What’s going on?”

  The always friendly and almost human computer voice announced, “We have been boarded, Alex.”

  Boarded? What was the silly machine talking about? “But we’re okay, right?”

  “I cannot answer that question. The bridge crew and most of the officers have already been taken prisoners.”

  “Prisoners?” As peculiar as my new friends could seem at times, they always appeared to have everything perfectly under control. An enemy able to come aboard and snatch them all up must be formidable.

  The phrase “bridge crew” churned in my mind. Wasn’t the bridge were my android friend went every night? To command the ship? His kiss still burned on my cheek. I wanted more of them. That meant we both had to live.

  The normally neutral computer voice changed into Anya’s. It was easy to forget she was a program and not a flesh and blood person. She must be stored in the mainframe for the night.

  “Alex, I’m trapped in here, and they’re restricting my access to the systems. I can’t get to my mobile unit. Someone’s coming your way, you have to hide.”

  Great idea, but where? I ran into the living room, but it was too late. The door slid open and I dove down behind the sofa. More clothes would have been good. Lying nearly naked on the floor with my breasts pressing against the cold tiles was uncomfortable, not to mention undignified and ridiculous.

  I heard footsteps and held my breath. Could they hear the pounding of my heart? It echoed like a drum in my ears, drowning out the noise of someone rummaging around in the room. I crawled forward ever so little to take a peek.

  A pair of big and hairy feet clad in leather sandals came into view. The creature had long and tobacco coloured toenails. Might be normal for the species, but still… disgusting.

  Glancing further up revealed more fur. The intruder walked upright like a human, but had a strong tail. When standing still, it leaned its weight on it. A stout body ended with four arms evenly spaced around it. Was that clothes, or did it wear its ribs on the outside of its chest?

  The head was also furry, and boasted a snout, multi-faceted eyes, big horns, and a number of fangs sticking out through the mouth. It might very well have been pretty to other members of the same species, but I found it horrendous.

  The big feet moved closer to my hiding place. Had it seen me? No, it turned away and stood with its back to me. If it moved just a little I’d be completely visible, and there weren’t any better places to hide.

  Fear spurred me into action. I jumped up, grabbed a heavy lamp from the table next to the sofa, and hit the creature over the head with all my strength.

  I was lucky. It might not have been sensitive at all in that region, but it worked. The intruder sank to the floor.

  Left to my own devices I might have stood staring the rest of the day. Anya’s encouraging voice broke my paralysis. “Well done, Alex. They’ve overridden all the locks, so I can’t help you secure the door.”

  More aliens could come running in at any moment. I needed to secure the one I had. “Anya, could you replicate some rope or something to tie it up?”

  The replicator hummed to life and a number of cuffs and chains appeared. What was I supposed to do with all this? I had to touch the creature to figure it out, and its coat was oily and unpleasant. “Eeeew.”

  As much as I fumbled, only minutes passed before all its hands, feet, and tail were restrained. I dragged it over the floor, towards the closet, groaning. “Dumb thing. How can someone so small be so heavy?”

  “Well done, Alex. Thus far you’ve gotten a hundred percent more of the intruders than our highly trained personnel.”

  Yay for me. “So… What happened?”

  “The Bell answered a distress call. We lowered our shields to send over an away team, and several thousand Logg teleported on board. Our crew was greatly outnumbered. There was no choice besides surrender, or everyone would have died.”

  Logg. That must be their name. Very fitting for something that heavy and furry. Had Adam been on the bridge, forced to raise his hands in the air and capitulate when faced with an overwhelming number of weapons? Maybe they shot someone in his crew to make him.

  I wanted to ask if he was okay, but it seemed petty to worry about one person when the entire ship was in danger. “Where is everyone now?”

  “High ranking officers are kept in the brig. The rest of the crew is being teleported over to the intruders’ ship.”

  “Why?” It was a superfluous question. I could think of enough reasons on my own. My imagination was coloured by Hollywood of my own time, and most of my mental images were probably bloodier and more violent than the truth.

  If all these highly trained and armed people were overrun just like that, what could I possibly do? They had Adam, Jia’Lyn, Ima, and Blake. I was just a lost girl who couldn’t even remember her own past.

  I could probably hide, at least for a while. Maybe call for help, but to whom, and how? “What do we know about them?”

>   “They’re not known as great inventors or thinkers. They steal technology and ships. They’re strong and have excellent hearing, but poor eyesight.” Good thing Anya was there and not the ordinary computer; it would have given me an hour long lecture.

  A little fraidy-cat like me should be good at hiding, especially if they didn’t see all that well. I had a weapon from the captured Logg. I could at least look threatening.

  I hugged myself. “Where’s the best place to hide? In plain sight. Where’s the closest help? In the brig. Where is the brig, anyway?”

  Anya sounded weary and I couldn’t blame her. Me being the last person free on the ship was not a good thing. “Take the lift to level thirty-three, go down the corridor to the right, and through the seventh door on the left.”

  I counted the numbers on my fingers. “Thirty-three, right, and seven.” It seemed simple enough at the moment, but given the stress of a ship filled with hostile aliens, maybe not so much.

  “Anya, I need to hide. Maybe a disguise or something. What do you think?”

  Going into the ship seemed like madness, but I would certainly be captured if I stayed where I was and did nothing. Being caught when at least trying to act would be better. Worst-case scenario, I’d be shipped off with everyone else, or killed with everyone else.

  A couple of minutes later, I was dressed in a newly replicated Logg suit. I, of course, had only two arms and no tail, so I pulled a bandage around one of the arms, pretending it was hurt from a fight with someone in the crew.

  I put a bandage on the tail too. It wasn’t a good disguise, and it wouldn’t explain why my limbs flopped around, but it was the best I could think of. “I look like a stuffed toy.”

  “Sorry. It’s the best I can do. Act with confidence and they might not look too closely.”

  Good advice.

  Anya admonished, “Don’t talk to anyone. The chip will help you understand them, but your voice will give you away.”

  “What chip?”

  I could visualize her rolling her eyes when she answered. “The language chip you got implanted in your brain when you first came here. How do you think you can communicate with everyone on the ship?”

  “Oh…” I just assumed everyone spoke English. I attempted to cover my stupidity with muttering, “My voice is wrong. Can I alter my voice? No. I’ll have to find a reason not to talk to people.”

  A new object appeared in the replicator. It was a small skin-coloured patch. “Take that, Alex. Put it on your throat.”

  The next few words came out slower and slower, and I panicked when I realized the computer lost power. “I’m being… shut… down…”

  With those last words, the room fell silent and all lights went off. I stood in complete darkness for a long moment before the emergency lighting came on. I could see enough not to walk into anything, but the world was much too dusky for my taste. “Anya!”

  She didn’t answer, of course. I was on my own.

  With no more reasons to linger, I grabbed the little patch and applied it to my throat. “What does this thing do?”

  My own voice made me jump. I sounded like me in my head, but the voice my ears heard had an eerie insectoid quality. “Anya, you’re the best.”

  She couldn’t hear me. She might be gone forever, and that thought brought tears to my eyes. “If you’ve destroyed her program I’ll kill each and every one of you.”

  I had no idea how to accomplish such a feat, but I sure intended to try. My ideas of how people should behave to be “good” came from countless books, movies, and TV-shows where everyone either managed or died trying. I pulled the headpiece of my new costume into place, picked the rifle up and headed into the unknown.

  My heart beat like a sledgehammer, my stomach churned, and I could barely refrain from shaking. I still muttered, “Alex, you’re doing fine.”

  During these first shaky steps, the tail was the worst thing. I almost got it stuck in the door and had to take a few running steps to clear it. “Bloody thing. I wonder how many minutes I can last before being caught?”

  Probably zero if I didn’t stop talking to myself. Time to shut up.

  Chapter Nine

  There was a guard outside the lift. The guest quarters were far up in the ship, just a deck below the high officers, and it was a reasonable place to post someone. I still didn’t expect it.

  The guard greeted me with a nod. “Troublesome humanoids, but they’ll make good slaves in the mines.”

  Slaves, huh? Free labour and a grand starship, these guys were having a good day. “Troublesome indeed. Feisty. One tried to chop my tail off.”

  He made a sympathetic clicking noise. “I bet that hurt. I can make it feel better though. Come up here when your shift is over, if you want to.”

  Seriously? I was dressed in a stupid Logg costume and this creature didn’t just buy it; he was hitting on me? Poor eyesight, indeed. Good thing the mask hid my facial expression. “I’ll think about it.”

  Luckily, the lift came and I hurried inside, making sure to go far enough to bring the entire tail with me. I turned my back to a corner so newcomers wouldn’t notice my extra arms and tail sagging.

  No one else entered the lift, and I had a few long minutes on the way down to work myself into hysteria. I wasn’t up to heroics like this. What would happen if they caught me? Chances of being sent to my friends in the brig were slim to none, I’d be lucky to be teleported off the ship with everyone else. Maybe they’d just shoot me.

  I led an extremely protected life on the Bell with Adam buffering me against everything and everyone, friend or foe. Did my friends face dangers like this all the time?

  When the lift finally slowed and stopped on level thirty three, I forced my feet to move forward, into an alien crowd. Moving like a Logg wasn’t hard; in my current mood both slumping and dragging my feet came quite naturally.

  I met many guards holding more or less human prisoners. A few of the captives still showed some fighting spirit, but most were bruised and compliant. Some were unconscious, being pulled on the floor or carelessly thrown over a furry shoulder.

  No one paid attention to me. Good thing, because I couldn’t see very well through the mask. The spacing of the eyes didn’t fit mine at all, and I had to look through one eye at the time. Losing depth perception made it difficult to walk.

  The rooms on this level were huge, and the corridor went on forever. Was I even going in the right direction? I was pretty sure Anya said “right,” but nervous as I was, it might have been left. I almost lost count of the doors several times, even though I only needed to find the seventh.

  My hands cramped around the weapon and I forced myself to relax. All these aliens might not be watching me right now, but that would change the moment I accidentally shot someone…

  The seventh door looked exactly like all the others, and I had no way to double-check if it was the right one. I hoped for the best and approached. Nothing happened. Could it be locked? Maybe none of the entrances worked without the computer, but the elevator had opened willingly enough.

  There must be a manual override, other than shooting the dumb thing. I just had to find it. When I stepped up to the console next to the door my eyes caught movement above me. A camera. Maybe someone on the inside was watching? I performed my best Logg imitation and gestured to open the door. To my relief, it opened.

  The brig turned out to be a vast room with cells all around it. I saw my friends over to the side, held in by a force field. In the middle of the room was a console for the guard, and a single Logg sat there with his hairy feet up. Should I shoot him?

  “Finally. I’m so tired of these humans and things, they stink. I thought they’d never send someone to relieve me.”

  I nodded and gesticulated, doing my best to look Loggy. “I’ve been hurt. My tail is hurt and the cursed human got two of my arms, so I was sent to guard duty. They’re feisty.”

  The alien got to his feet and headed for the door. He didn’t care.
“Have fun with them, they’re all yours.”

  With the guard gone, all that remained was figuring out how to close the door. I punched some buttons on random, and was eventually rewarded with a whooshing sound as it shut.

  The rifle was so heavy, and the ridiculous suit warm and uncomfortable. I made it to the brig, against all odds. Didn’t I deserve to sit down and relax now? I drew a deep breath and pep-talked myself; it wasn’t time to quit until I let the others out.

  I shuffled over to the closest cell and squinted at the console next to it, pressing some keys with the suit’s claws, hoping I would turn the force field off and not accidentally sound an alarm or kill everyone. Nothing happened. “Bloody hell, why do you people have to make everything so fucking complicated? What’s wrong with having one button labelled ‘open’ and one labelled ‘close’?”

  There were about ten people in the cells: Adam, the Captain with his hair all tousled and wearing a pyjamas, Ima and Jia’Lyn wearing robes, a lieutenant whose name I couldn’t remember, and a few I didn’t recognize at all. My outburst made everyone stare.

  Ima flapped her tail. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it is a furry version of Alex.”

  “Yes, furry. I’m a goddamn teddy bear, and the fur is warm, so tell me how to open this stupid thing!”

  Adam looked at me, blinking, as if trying to get the pieces together just to find it didn’t quite compute. No help to get there. The Captain regained his composure the quickest. “You need a code. Try the security override. Press the green button, then 1, 5, 5, 2, 7, and the green button again.”

  The force fields turned off, and I mumbled, “Thank God.” I couldn’t wait to hand the rescue operation over to someone else’s hopefully able hands.

  The first person passing by got the rifle, and I sighed with relief as I pulled the headpiece off. Even breathing was difficult in the suit, and the patch had to go. The alien version of my voice freaked me out.