Mike Adamson

Mano á Xeno

by Mike Adamson

Engineer First Grade Cameron White was lucky to have been in EVA armor when the ship was hit – or cursed.

The Altair was running in partnership with the Alnilam, two identical fleet scanning and support vessels, each 300 meters of spaceframe, antennae and engines, charting the orbital interplay of the ice asteroids trailing the small gas giant Acrasius C-5, building a dynamic model of the system. The likelihood of the Sendaaki – the enemy – using the jumble of ice moons as a duck-blind from which to strike at Colonial convoys supporting the Marines on the ground in the Acrasius sector warranted full survey, despite Fleet Intelligence being unaware of any previous alien traffic in proximity.

This far behind the zone of main contact, it was deemed a non-combat op, and the survey ships were running at green, without escort. The fact the enemy was already there meant more layers of double-think were in effect than Intel had allowed for.

White was in aft airlock trunk 3, preparing to go outside to perform minor repairs on one of the dozens of scanning masts and meteoroid shield grid generators. He had just closed is visor when the warning klaxon brayed suddenly in his helmet speakers along with a jumble of cries from the bridge, before the ship lurched sickeningly, hurling him into a wall. He rebounded, thankful for the tough exoskeleton of the suit, and his heart rate soared as acceleration pinned him to a bulkhead, the artificial gravity out.

Was the ship making an escape burn? Logic was cruel – he was pinned to a lateral wall; therefore, the ship was spinning. Com was filled with static and cries, and none had answered his own desperate call before the loop crackled harshly and faded to background EM pulses.

Acceleration lasted seconds before planing off, then he could move. Servos whining in his ears, he fought to the inner bulkhead and hammered the hatch release with the palm of his gauntlet, but annunciators flickered on the instrument panel, and went out. Systems failure – chamber pressurization was down, power was wavering.

Suddenly the transparency in the inner hatch was filled with flame, a short-lived burst that used up the oxygen and left all beyond a roil of smoke, before the lights died. His heart fluttered like a bird, and he forced calm. No way could the ship have been taken completely unawares. A call would have gone out, help would be coming. As of yesterday a fleet cruiser had been bombarding Acrasius B-6; they could be here in hours....

The corridor inboard was hot and toxic, and without chamber pressurization, what remained of computer oversight would not allow the door to retract. White turned and launched himself to the outer door, where stars whirled beyond the transparency, and operated the release. Power was on, but the spaceframe seemed twisted, and he resorted to the manual emergency crank, forcing the door back.

Now he had silence, and rose head and shoulders from the lock, the sight revealed striking him cold – the little that remained of the ship he had called home for so long. The Altair was severed amidships, the rear section spinning with the force of the explosion, and he saw the bow now several kilometers away, trailing gas and plasma, a haze of debris between them. The other ship had fared no better. As the ruined hulk rotated he saw the twisted, burned wreck, tumbling end over end about five kilometers off to sunward, as she impacted an ice mass. Silently, she came apart, tanks rupturing to spew volatile gasses in short-lived bursts of flame, then she was gone, an expanding cloud of debris that filled space with hurtling fragments.

Acrasius C-5 was a pale, cloud-banded sphere a million kilometers away, half-seen through this Trojan asteroid group, and White felt more terribly alone than at any moment in his life. He bit down on panic, let training take over – was he safer where he was or should he leave the feeble protection of the wreck?

The sight of the Alnilam meeting her fate convinced him he could not survive should the whirling pieces of the Altair also encounter asteroids. He clung to the hatch surround, closed his eyes, fought for calm. He was on the brink of a precipice and his only logical choice was to step off.

You accepted the chance when you enlisted, he thought blankly and took quick stock of his resources. The suit was undamaged, had 48 hours life support, and transmitter range to call to any ship that came looking.... Time to go.

He released his grip and centrifugal force took him gently away from the rotating wreck. A hundred meters out, he used a small part of his maneuvering pack fuel reserve to stabilize his flight path. Now infinity yawned under his boots, and he raised a hand to make a sad, symbolic wave to the retreating ruins of his craft, bearing the mortal remains of friends and shipmates he would ever see again.

Alone. Silence. Stars.

He aligned himself so the great, pallid face of the gas giant was centered in his field of vision, used it to anchor his orientation, then hit his scanners and searched the asteroids around him. The nearest was a few kilometers away, a slow-moving giant of frozen methane and ammonia, and the crevices of its pitted surface offered at least the illusion of safety. Perhaps he would be safer clinging like a flea to a dog than as a dust mote in infinity. He plied his pack’s input control grips, turned and began a long, slow glide toward the monster, trying with all his might to be inconspicuous, even his running lights doused.

The enemy was probably still around.

Whatever weapon had hit the two ships, given the force of the strike, the ship that fired it might not be far away. It was likely in the lee of one of these asteroids, maybe even the one toward which he was coasting. Now he prayed, something he had not done in many years, for he felt each meter he covered toward the million-tonne ice mass brought him that much nearer annihilation. The enemy would hardly leave a witness alive, one able to call a warning to any ship whose transponder showed up on his instruments. If a search ship came in at red, shields hot, they would stand at least a chance, and as a space farer loyal to the cause, his only duty was to warn them of a concealed adversary.

The dull, blue-white mass of ice grew slowly before him. He advanced at five meters per second, slow enough to not draw attention, quick enough to cover the distance in ten minutes. He had done asteroidal EVA in training, was no stranger to tethering onto a microgravity worldlet, but the crushing loneliness weighed upon his faculties, his breathing his only companion. As he drifted closer, he set his frequency search routine to monitor the radio sky, waiting for an incoming transmission or a burst of X-rays to indicate a ship leaving hyper. The moment he had either, the clock was ticking – get a warning to them, if he was able, or potentially watch another vessel succumb.

Where the hell were the enemy?

They must have lain dark among these asteroids for weeks, even months, the fiendish patience of alien minds. Even now, no one knew what they looked like, though rumors had done the rounds that a black op had somehow snared a prisoner – or a piece of one. The not-knowing was a dark place in every space farer’s soul, a fear that gnawed unseen at the mind. Who and what was humankind fighting? Soldiers in the field had reported what they assumed to be fallen Sendaaki personnel disintegrating in bursts of blue energy before they could be investigated, their drones and mechanisms likewise. It seemed the enemy had more regard for their anonymity than for their existence, making them a very difficult enemy to fight.

Like ghosts, White thought distractedly, the words replaying in his mind as he watched the mesmerically growing cliff of ice before him. Like ghosts....

He knew there had been diplomatic contact at one time, but the aliens had never revealed themselves in the process. Curt, rude by most standards, they had entered into a terse and sporadic dialog with the expanding human colonies, much of it via third parties who were either also oblivious of the form and nature of the Sendaaki, or preserved their diplomatic status with the enemy by sharing nothing with humankind. Whatever the politics of the matter, the colonies were fighting blind, and it was nothing short of remarkable they were holding their own.

A ranging laser gave him distance to planetfall, and as the field of dirty, gray-blue ice filled his vision he trimmed approach speed to walking pace, looked around for some cleft or crater, and selected a depression into which he might tuck himself. A sense of giddy elation went through him, tinged with horror, as he acknowledged he was the first human to touch this precise piece of the universe, and may perhaps be the only human ever to do so. That was the nature of deep space – unpredictable, and mistakes were very, very final.

Playing the force grips with skill, White edged into the shadows, found a crevice lit only with the reflected blues of the other asteroids and the great, bland face of C-5, brought himself up motionless and stretched out a hand. The ice was solid matter, pitted with grit and spacedust, but at least he had touched it. He could carve his name, add a date, and it may still be legible in a million years.

Rotating with minute blips of the thrusters, he turned to look back out at the universe, and sighed. Time. He had just substituted movement for action, and used up ten minutes. He had two days to go before the option of the termination drug became crucial. It was stored in the helmet, an automatic jab into his carotid artery would bring oblivion in a second or so, death soon after, should he enter the appropriate commands – the ultimate escape from anoxia, delirium, madness, going out the slow, painful, fighting way. To have it was both comfort and terror.

But destiny had other plans for Engineer First Grade Cameron White.

###

Fatigue can do strange things to the mind, but the simplest is to send it to sleep from sheer boredom. Too late to chide himself, White thought in a desperate, disjointed way, as he was jerked from his fitful rest into a terror that sent his pulse racing wildly, words he would never recall pouring insanely from lips slack with terror as shapes moved against the pale face of C-5, shapes he could not quite understand, for they were both familiar and anything but. His hands were pinned from the force grips of his pack by members which flashed about him, strong as steel cable, and he was lifted from the crevice bodily, as if the merest plaything, snatched up by forces powerful beyond measure. His helmet speakers were filled with an ululating whistle that built from whisper to shriek, filled his mind, overcame resistance, even thought itself, and plunged him, against all will, into the welcome relief of unconsciousness.

Where am I? was his only thought as he came groggily back to awareness. He was comfortable, warm enough, and after a few moments dared open his eyes – hesitantly, for nothing felt as it had.

Soft, bluish light met his pupils and a faint, deep thrumming sound resonated in his body, and he registered two things. First, he was still in zero-G; the other was that he was quite naked. Bereft of armor and inner suit, he floated in a stable, oxygen-rich atmosphere within what seemed a faintly pulsing sphere composed of threads of light, beyond which he glimpsed faintly the impression of some chamber whose walls were of planar geometry and gleamed faintly.

Panic rose in him and he felt his chest squeeze. He was helpless, held in freefall, he could move his limbs but they felt sluggish, as if he were trapped in a viscous liquid, his energy levels low.... How long had he been unconscious?

The enemy – memories cascaded back of nightmare impressions, barely-understandable shapes in the gloom of the world-light, taking hold, overwhelming him. His heart raced with the reality that he was utterly beyond the human sphere, for if any had fallen captive to the Sendaaki before, none had ever returned.

Gods of my forefathers, what will they do to me...? he thought helplessly, the instinctive terror of every captive throughout all history. The fact they had removed his garments as well as his space suit suggested strange and unwholesome things, and he fought for composure. If meeting his end with some shadow of dignity or control was all that remained, his task was to let the enemy know what a human could constitute. While the chamber was dim and silent, such bravado came to mind, but he knew it for the desperate thoughts which ran like sea froth ahead of such realities as may face any prisoner of war.

They came silently, figures emerging from a sudden, dim corona as if a portal had opened wide. Three beings – and White blinked, stared, forced himself to record what he saw, burning it into his memory. His first reaction was one of vague disappointment, for these creatures were more or less humanoid. That was the only similarity, however. They must have been double his height, and the limbs seemed double-jointed, legs like an antelope, clearly designed to cover ground fast, ended in dual toes with blunt hooves, while the hands came with four digits, each of four elements. They too were naked (a monogendered species, White wondered obliquely?), the whole a dusty beige, though the color wandered as the beings moved through the dim light, and it seemed their hides were subtly scaled. The face was a mask from hell; binocular vision, solid black orbs over a flat countenance, the mouth a wide and expressionless meeting of thin lips. Flaps moved in the sides of the neck with a regular pulse of breathing, and the crania were of odd proportion.

All this White took in as the beings stood silently, observing him inscrutably, and at last one of them adjusted a control at a wrist band it wore. Its lipless mouth moved in a sound like the rustle of wind in dead grass, but White heard English words in the air about him, and started in surprise.

“Human,” it said, blunt and assertive, the voice boomy and massive, flat and unaccented. “Know you are held by the Sendaaki military forces. It is not our policy to take prisoners. We swiftly learned all we needed of the human organism. But you have a task you must fulfill.”

White found his voice with difficulty. “My name is Cameron White, Engin – ”

“Irrelevant.” The word cut him off. “Your compatriots approach. Time is limited.”

White struggled for a moment against the helplessness of freefall. “What do you want of me...?” His words seemed pathetic in his own ears.

“We know how the war began.”

The statement was blunt and at first made no sense to White, until realization dawned. They were claiming they did not start it. Speechless, he waited for the being to continue.

“We are aware of dissent among humans, reservation among large sections of the military itself, and it is to this division you will carry our message. Your intelligence service will take charge of you and verify all we are about to give you.”

The central being extended a spindly arm through the sphere of blue filaments, one digit outstretched, a wrist device glowing softly, and White flinched in momentary horror as the alien’s fingertip came to a cool, firm contact with his forehead. He barely felt the rush of information uploading into his memory, but abruptly faces, scenes, and events poured before his closed eyes: people and places, chains of causality ... and the sudden, sick realization that the aliens perceived themselves to be the wronged party – that humans had attacked them.

The long arm withdrew and the aliens stepped back. “Your military will know what to do with this information. They will know we can repeat this seeding as often as necessary should they fail to act. The facts will be known.” The strange hand lifted, and the rustling voice came one last time. “Remember this moment, human, for this is the beginning of the end.”

###

White came to adrift in deep space, tumbling gently between the icy Trojans of the pale gas giant. He shuddered with momentary shock, knew he was back in his suit, but the memories the aliens had gifted him burst forth with startling clarity each time he remembered the moment the finger made contact. Perhaps it was a trigger to liberate the others. He walked through them at will, saw politicians and industrialists from Old Earth in deep discussions, the issuing of fleet construction contracts several years in advance, then the penetration of Sendaaki space by a survey ship – the incident everyone understood had sparked the conflict.

What the Sendaaki were claiming was that it was sent in deliberately to provoke that response, to the financial benefit of those appropriately invested.

He breathed shakily, knowing Fleet Intelligence electronic recall processes would lift these memories from his mind, dissect and verify them – the only thing riding upon fate was whether they were taken for verifiable fact or alien propaganda.

We’ll soon know, White thought, exhausted and needing rest, but knowing he would not get it any time soon, as a fleet scout appeared over the rim of the nearest asteroid, and his suit computer negotiated at lightning speed with the ship’s systems. The vessel came about and a search light blazed, swept across spatial debris, and bathed him in harsh white.

For better or worse, the ball the enemy had served was now in play, and the lost engineer could only surrender to forces beyond his control as the vessel grew to fill his sky and an airlock opened like a warm, golden eye. 

THE END

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