Symbiosis: Chapter 42

In the dark, Jackson looked down from his precarious roost of branches and leaves eight meters off the forest floor. He caught Dr. Gregory’s eyes from an adjacent tree, looking more or less upward.

“If they saw us they would have shot us,” Tom said. “They are two dimensional thinkers,” he said quietly. “At least their uneducated members, anyway.”

“How long are we gonna stay up here?”

“I’m staying up here until I can see the forest floor again. And so are you, Scott. Don’t go shimmying down and get lost, or eaten, or fall in a mine shaft. I don’t need any more problems on my hands.”

“How can we call Mr. Lee? They took my com button.”

“Mine too,” Tom said. “Smoke signals, I don’t know. Right now I’m hungry and cold and need a few minutes to think.” An icy draft dislodged a few clumps of snow from the branches above, splatting on Tom’s head as they fell to the ground.

“Could be worse,” Scott said. Tom wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Scott was referring to so he pretended he didn’t hear the comment. It could always be worse. Somehow, they’d have to get out of the forest without being spotted, find Mr. Lee or a way to get to one of the other medical stations, and get back to Maria Mitchell. He of course didn’t want to abandon the mission, but he needed to regroup at the very least.

“You think you can get a few zees? I’ll take the first watch,” Tom said.

“I’m more likely to fall out and break my neck. You sleep, Tom. I don’t think I can. Too much adrenaline.”

“You don’t play captain enough or you’d be used to that by now: no sleep, too much adrenaline.”

“I don’t wanna be captain. I’m perfectly happy to follow your crazy butt and map stars and planets and nebulas.”

“And comets.”

“And comets. I’m still looking for Zalara’s Comet.” Tom smiled although in the dark canopy of the forest it was his secret.

“Okay, I’m lodged in here pretty good. Wake me if I’m actually still sleeping here in an hour.”   Tom took a few deep breaths and closed his eyes, but his thoughts circled back to Rianya over and over. A knot in his gut said something was wrong, but he couldn’t name or put finger to it. He shifted a little as another blob of snow dropped on his shoulder. He shifted his jacket as best as he could but it would not become a pillow unless he took it off, which wasn’t about to happen.

Damn Pegasi. They were only interested in keeping their sheep sick with Yersinia so they’d keep purchasing antibiotics for decades to come. He was convinced the plague was intentional and its cure intentionally thwarted. He understood the Pegasi slice of the puzzle but what about the Kiians? Kiians had a reputation for looking out for their own interests but not necessarily at the expense of another species. They weren’t pirates like Pegasi, but entrepreneurs, certainly.

 Tom opened his eyes, startled to wake up in a tree and sprinkled with snow. Eta Cassiopeia would be making its daily appearance in less than an hour if his judgement of the eastern sky was accurate. He glanced down at Scott’s tree and saw only branches. 

“Damn it all,” he muttered. Tom shook off a little wet snow from his hair, looked down, and immediately regretted it. He had to get out of the tree and find his astronomer. One slippery wet branch at a time he climbed down, feeling for each branch with a foot and bouncing a little to test it first. He hoped he was about at the bottom because his grip was giving out on the wet surface.

“Tom!”

His hand slid off the branch, gravity seized him and dropped him hard to the ground from a meter up the trunk.

“Geezes, damn!” Tom shouted, landing on his back with one foot under his butt. “Scott I’m…”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to startle you,” the older man said then held out his hand to help the captain up, grasping him at the elbow. Tom hoisted himself up but his ankle was angry and tender.

“I hope I can walk on this,” he grumbled. Scott shoved his shoulder under Tom’s arm and propped him up on the lame side so they could get moving. “What are you doing up so early? Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I called your name and you kept snoring. I wasn’t about to climb your tree and tug on your sleeve. I did think about throwing a rock. Where are we going?”

“Back to the city. We’ll be safer in a crowd, and there’s a hell of a crowd back at the stadium.”

Tom hobbled and Scott ambled across the snowy ground toward the city. Dawn mercifully dawdled on the horizon providing enough light to travel by but plenty of shadows to hide in as well. The stadium loomed but was still a considerable distance ahead. Bright lighting and an angry noise noir reverberated from its core.

“What’s that?” Tom said, stopping to look at something shiny in the distance.

“Where?”

“Over there, in the west, see that?” Scott squinted where Tom pointed. “Is that the Osprey?”

“I think it is!”

They pivoted ninety degrees and headed for the bulky silver cube in the distance. As the dawn gave way to the sunrise, Cinconians began to appear on the streets all meandering in the opposite direction as the humans, to the stadium. Many of them gave the odd pair a long look but the stadium pulled harder.

Tom shook his helper away gently to reduce the number of stares. He limped on the ankle but it drew less attention and that was worth the pain. Who knew if Cinconians were spying or watching for humans that escaped. They knew the Pegasi well from decades of occupation, not so much the suspicious humans that tried to stop their deplorable election process in order to save their lives.

“Captain, Doctor,” came a familiar voice from behind. Both men stopped and turned. Yee Akadar. “What are you doing here in New Hope?”

“I would think we could ask you the same thing,” Tom said. “Aren’t you supposed to be at the UMA medical station?”

“Our games eh done, now our champions come here a New Hope to play against New Hope champions.”

“Who is at the UMA then, the disease? The plague project?”

“No humans stayed. All went with games open day. You travel wrong, come sit at me chairs,” the yee said, tugging on Dr. Gregory’s sleeve.

“Wait,” Tom said. “No humans?”

“No humans with medic stations. All wait for games a finish.” The yee tugged again. “Not come late, go.” Tom understood him enough despite his syntax, or lack of, rather.

“Where did they go?”

“You know not they go?” Tom’s adrenaline began to surge.

“Did they go with anyone? Dr. Adams?”

“They went with ship driver man. Human. I not be late for beginnings. You go not to stadium?”

“Thank you, Akadar, thank you, but we have to get together with our people.”

“Good bye,” Akadar said and hurried on his way to the stadium with the rest of the herd.

“They must be waiting for us,” Scott said, tossing his head at the silver block of metal. Tom nodded and they increased their speed a bit. Tom did his best to hurry and found that he could use his leg like a pendulum to help propel him without putting too much weight on the foot. It was an awkward ambulation but effective. “Are you sure I can’t help?” Tom waved his buddy off, not needing help for a simple twisted ankle. Now had he broken his leg, well, maybe.

It was another kilometer ahead. Tom actually took off his coat, sweating from the effort to walk quickly on one foot. Scott carried both jackets and was careful to point out slick spots of melted snow for Tom to avoid. The grasslands opened onto a clearing covered with fine stone dust, and the silver cube occupied the center. It was not the Osprey. It was Dukvita’s shuttle, twenty meters long, ten wide and fifteen high.

“That’s not good,” Scott said. 

“That’s the one York and I ferried to Dukvita’s ship. Where you see a problem, I see an opportunity. We can get on that ship and sabotage it.”

“Isn’t that kind of, uh, dangerous, if we’re on it?”

“I didn’t say take a ride in it.”

“You want to strand them here?”

“No, I want to strand them in orbit. Come on.” Tom hobbled the last few meters with Scott’s help and they ducked behind a large stone outcropping. The sunlight from Eta Cassiopeia had broken out of the clouds casting long morning shadows as it began to warm the ground. Snow melted and turned surfaces wet. He leaned on the rocks for balance and took some weight off his ankle.

“It’s pretty quiet,” Scott whispered.

“Any Pegasi hanging around?”

“I don’t see anyone, Pegasi or Cinconian. Or human.” Tom’s brain suddenly went into overdrive and was too busy to acknowledge a throbbing ankle. The docking port and hatch were on the port side, and the helm was to the left of the hatch. In the center was the passenger seating, and aft, behind a door, was the cargo and propulsion, something like a bulky personal jet without wings.

“If I can get into the cargo area, I can rig the bay doors to open when gravity comes on. Better yet, trigger a malfunction in propulsion.”

“They have gravity in that little shuttle?”

“Not real gravity, just moon gravity. They have EM gyro spheres under the deck.”

“Why don’t we have those?”

“You can suggest it when we get home. Stay here,” Tom said.

“I’m coming with you.”

“No, you stay here, that’s an order. And not like an order to think about staying in the tree, you stay here. It’s easier for one to sneak around than two. When I’m done we’ll go find the others.”

“Aye, Capt’n. How long do I wait?” Tom leaned on his good leg and looked back at the man, smiled and frowned at the same time, catching the jacket Scott lobbed at him.

“Until I get back.” He trotted toward the Pegasi shuttle craft darting from boulders to trees along the way. He was on the aft starboard side. Standing tall he scanned the area as far as he could see for any large green people milling with the smaller brown, red, and white ones. For perhaps half a kilometer he saw no one but Cinconians, all heading toward the Stadium of Doom. He stole around to the port side, inched past the hatch to the edge of the bow, glanced in quickly and pulled back out of sight. He looked again for a couple of seconds and decided it was empty.

Tiptoeing back to the hatch he felt the sides where a latch or handle should be. Reaching higher he found a ten centimeter depression and jammed his hand inside. The door obediently slid toward the aft and locked open. A little shot of endorphins volleyed around his body and he slipped inside the dark cabin. A faint odor of chlorine gas made him comically wonder, briefly, if perhaps a swimming pool was on board.

He was in the seating area and to the right was a bulkhead panel. He glanced at the door separating the cabin from the cockpit and listened intently for a few seconds. With no sounds, he pressed against the aft wall and felt for the switch or handle or button that would give him access to the stern. He found a depression at eye level and gave it a tap. Indeed, the door lifted out of its hollow track toward the captain and slid to the right.

Darkness ahead didn’t faze Tom in the least. He jumped inside and the door automatically closed behind him. He hadn’t been prepared for that. A second later the room illuminated automatically and he saw three more doors, one to each side and one at the far end. That would be propulsion, and one of the side doors would be cargo. But what was the third door?

He dashed to the propulsion section and slipped inside. The room was lit, glowing with assorted engineering readouts and gauges, dials, switches, lamps and indicators, much like a mini version of Maria Mitchell’s engine room. He wanted to make sure they could get off the planet, but not easily hook up with the Pegasi interstellar ship, causing them delays so he could complete his mission. If their transportation was damaged, they couldn’t bring their contraband to the planet.

Now he wished he’d learned to read Pegasi. Hatch, hatch, he needed the hatch controls. A diagram led him to a panel on the port side; he jerked the cover off and dropped it, examining the circuits and components inside. Intuition said the return circuit might control the airlock latches since those logically went on first and off last with every docking. He grabbed the board and wiggled it until it came off in his hands. He put the prize in his pocket.

On to the cargo room. He chose the door on the starboard for no particular reason but it was locked tight. Tom jiggled the handle several times, threw his shoulder on the door, then kicked it without victory. He turned to the other door on the port side.

“Przygotować się pierwszy pojemnik,” Tom heard on the other side of the bulkhead and felt his heart nearly stop beating before it started to gallop. He pushed on the port door and it opened easily. He slipped inside and shut the door behind him as fast as he possibly could do so without making any telltale sounds. Lights came on automatically but without motion detected, apparently, they shut off promptly. He heard the bulkhead door clunk and slide open. In the dark he flattened himself against the wall as if he could melt into it. And then the latch on the compartment door rattled.

Symbiosis: Chapter 41

Wilson Mills sat by Rianya’s bedside with a cold data pad in one hand and his other hand on the side of her warm neck. For three full days she blistered at 40.5 degrees, unresponsive to medications, leaving only cool towels frequently exchanged, hour after hour, to protect her from permanent brain impairment.

 He’d been wrong in assessing her condition. Never having complete responsibility for the life of an alien, his stress had actually diminished when she descended into a coma, knowing she was unconscious and no longer experiencing the crushing agony of pneumonia. Her pain was his own. Her life was in his hands.

Once more he checked her vital stats and recorded no change in the last hour. Her temperature was 38.4, just a little over normal for her species. Apparently her immune system was in overdrive, keeping her asleep so it could work at top efficiency. In the way that a human body had no control over its sympathetic nervous system and the accompanying beta brainwave pattern, her species’ immune system also shut down her nervous system, putting her brain into a steady theta alpha pattern.

“Mr. Mills,” Quixote said as he entered the sick bay.

“In here, sir.”

“Has there been any improvement in Ms. Rianya’s health condition?” Mills looked at Quixote and sighed.

“Her meninges are still inflamed, but her fever seems to have broken for the most part. I have her on 25% oxygen; her lungs are still compromised. She’s in a kind of hibernation healing state, so perhaps you could say she’s improved, but not out of the woods.”

“Bridge to Quixote.”

“Quixote here.”

“Lieutenant Lee is signaling the us. Should I respond?” Mr. Watson asked him.

“Where is Dukvita?”

“He’s on the off side of Cinco.”

“Respond to Lieutenant Lee, Factor Eleven in force, understood?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Tell him to collect the team and come aboard.” He tapped the intercom off. “Mr. Mills, you’re fading; what is it?”

He tried to speak but words wouldn’t come out of his dry mouth, He massaged his throat with one hand.

“I’m…scared, Quixote. I’m scared.” The lieutenant commander, a reptilian of exceptional intelligence and compassion, stepped close to him, and put his claw gently on Mills’ shoulder.

“Focus on your task, Mr. Mills. I have confidence that you are wholly competent to ensure her recovery.”

“I’m glad one of us does.”

~~~

“The shuttle is aboard, commander,” Mr. Watson reported.

“Very good.” Quixote tapped the intercom. “Lieutenant Lee, please report to the doyen’s office immediately.” He turned to the two men on the bridge. “You know where to find me.”

“Commander?” Lee called with a knock on the door.

“Lieutenant, thank you for being expedient. Come in. We have a lot to discuss.”

“I know. I don’t think I was detected leaving orbit, but I can’t be certain.”

“I’m sure you would have been fired upon had you been, so I agree. Precise, skillful flying. Your transmission reports you picked up doctors Ferris and Adams, security officers York, Bowen, and Wagner, and Engineer Painter and Crewman Campbell.” The fellow nodded and reached for a glass and the pitcher of water on the conference table.

“Quixote…Captain Jackson and Doctor Gregory are nowhere to be found. They were last seen in New Hope at the stadium. I’m not sure the witnesses I spoke to knew if the men were Jackson and Gregory, but they knew humans when they saw them. No doubt in their minds.”

Did you speak with any transportation officers or just bystanders?”

“I didn’t want to draw attention so I just talked to whoever was standing around. I was afraid if I poked around too much there might not be anyone to fly the crew back to Maria Mitchell.”

“Yes, a wise decision on your part, Mr. Lee.”

“I didn’t want to abandon them, but if I didn’t leave when I did we’d have been in the Pegasi orbital path.”

“I understand, Mr. Lee. The question is now, how do we find them and get the hell away from this damn forsaken planet?” He drummed two claws on the table not looking at the helmsman’s face, but a slight increase in the radiant temperature from his direction caused him to turn. The lieutenant’s eyes were wide, the rest of his face static, and he sat straight up in the chair. “I apologize, Mr. Lee.”

“No, don’t, sir. I’ve just never heard you, uh, speak with such flair in the past.”

“If there was ever a time to verbally express frustration this would be it.” Xe looked down to avoid additional eye contact with the subordinate officer. “Have you slept recently?”

“I’ve been busy for the last few hours, otherwise yes.”

“Very good. I’d appreciate your taking leave of Ensign Rougeau at your soonest convenience. Change your uniform, have a brief meal and plan being on duty until at least zero hundred hours. That's all.”

Quixote decided against calling other members to the office and instead chose to visit the respective stations of the returned crew starting with sick bay. That would undoubtedly be priority one.

The doors to sick bay parted as xe approached but before stepping both feet inside Dr. Jane Ferris stood before xim with tears in her eyes. Quixote never knew which of her eyes to focus on when interacting with her, the blue one or brown one. The blue one displayed greater contrast, so blue it was.

“Does the captain know? About Rianya?” she whispered.

“We haven’t heard from the captain for quite some time.”

“Oh, Quixote,” she chirruped, clamping her hand over her mouth and walking out of sick bay.

“Dr. Adams!” Quixote called loudly, hurrying across the slick floor minding not to skid toward Rianya’s chamber. The doctor popped into the hallway and stopped Quixote with his hand held out.

“How long?” Dr. Adams asked. Quixote actually felt his blood pressure drop, a dizzy wave passed above his head, and his mind hazed over. He shook his head.

“Mr. Mills?” Adams asked.

“I spoke with him this morning. I haven’t since. What's wrong?”

“It’s a goddamn good thing I’m here! Get out of my way!” the doctor yelled, waving his arms to clear a path to his equipment station. “Find Mills and haul his ass up here right now! The captain’s wife is grave. Where the hell did Ferris go?” The man rushed from his station with an armload of assorted supplies and gadgets back to his patient’s room. Quixote took a deep breath for Rianya’s mortality.

“I’ll go find them,” xe said to the doctor.

“Just stay here!” the white haired, diminutive human barked. He threw a blanket at Quixote and pointed at Rianya while he injected something through her skin at the base of her neck. Quixote promptly unfolded the cover and gently laid it on the woman he’d come to call a rare and true friend. Xe tucked the sides in around her and looked at Adams expectant of more instructions. Only the monitors made any sound as Adams hovered over Rianya, his focus laser sharp on her face. He lifted her lip and pushed on her gums; the white spot slowly flushed.

He touched her face, her neck, her hands, her feet, then her neck again, then the mouth again. The spot flushed much quicker this time. Adams took a slow, deep breath and let it out quickly. Stepping to the intercom he thumped the button hard.

“Sick bay to Ferris and Mills, report to stations STAT! Ferris and Mills, report STAT!” he fairly shouted into the mic. He slammed it again, rifled through a drawer until he found a com device, and marched back to face Quixote. “She needs 24 hour watch! She’s in hypovolemic shock.”

“Which means…?”

“She’s bleeding in her chest cavity from a pneumonia abscess on her left superior lung.”

“Doctor Adams, Mr. Mills has been diligent throughout your absence. He’s not been carefree about his responsibility, I assure you. I’m certain his interlude is warranted.”

“Twenty four hour watch is not twenty three hours and forty five minutes!”

“Doctor Adams,” Mills said as he rushed in.

“Where the hell have you been? Rianya would have been dead in another minute if I hadn’t come in here when I did!” Quixote thought the doctor might slap Mr. Mills but instead his fists clenched and pounded against his own thighs.

“I knew you and Jane were on board. I had to use the lavatory, and check on Zalara.”

“Four minutes to brain death! Next time use a bedpan or call someone before you leave a patient’s side! How many other people on this ship can watch Zalara? You’re not the only one.” Quixote cringed on Mills’ behalf. The doctor’s body was bright red not only in skin tone but his temperature as well. Mills’ skin tone was white.

“What happened?” Mills asked.

“I got here as quick as I could,” Ferris said, bursting in. Her face was red but cool, damp. Quixote wondered if they could sense each other’s feelings by reading faces the way xe, and frankly, Rianya also, could do. It wasn’t hard to miss.

“Hypovolemic shock. Look at this!” Adams stomped over to the monitor just outside the patient bay and flung a pointed finger at the image. “One of the internal pulmonary furuncles must have burst and she was bleeding out into her pleural cavity. Her BP was plunging like a stone! I have to operate and you two better get sterile fast. And I mean sterile, not sanitized, sterile! Quixote!” The dinosaur jumped a little when he heard his name. “Turn the OR table to 37 degrees and get an instrument pack from the closet. Don’t bring it under the field, just into the room.” Adams joined the other two in the sterilization room and placed his hands under the ultra violet lights. 

After carrying out his tasks, Quixote watched as the three medics rolled her bed from the room to the OR, moved her to the heated table, then pulled the blanket off. Mills aimed a portable UV light at Rianya’s left ribcage. Momentarily Adams inserted a tube attached to a bag that somehow vacuumed out the blood from her body and kept it in the bag.

Mammalian blood was red, as was his, but warm and highly oxygenated. It seemed likely the doctor was going to recycle her blood back into her body as he hooked the bag to a small mechanical device that operated on a hydraulic piston. Now seemed like a good time to leave since he couldn’t do any more for Rianya. He’d save his questions for the doctors, and promptly went in search of the security crew.

Symbiosis: Chapter 40

Quixote stood in the launch bay staring at the space capsule the Kiians had traded for a substantial quantity of medical supplies. The machine was simultaneously antique and futuristic, damaged and sound, realistic and sophisticated. Xe walked to the other end trying to discern which was aft and which was fore.

“Do you think this might be the bow?” xe asked Kym Byrd. She covered her mouth casually with one hand, pulling on her chin a little. The engineer ambled around the vehicle, bending, stretching, looking under and over and in the hulk of what appeared to be metal but not any metal they could fully identify. She stopped after making a complete trip around the shuttle sized space craft next to Quixote.

“I think you’re right, this must be the bow. It’s hard to tell being so smashed up.”

“We have to get the hatch opened so we can make the determination of its origin. Maybe the answer to our quantum daters’ malfunctions will be inside.”

“I could get a torch,” she said.

“Ms. Byrd, do you think perhaps we can consider a less destructive option in order to preserve the integrity of this artifact?”

“Artifact? Quixote, it’s a space ship, not a butterfly.” Kym smiled and turned to get something that would no doubt break open the door.

“I’m concerned about what we may find inside, not about damaging the hull,” xe told her.

“Whatever’s in there ain’t alive, sir, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Kym came around a bulkhead with a laser torch in one hand, fiddling with its settings, focused intensely on the tiny readout. “Okay, let’s get this party started.”

Ms. Byrd’s colloquialisms puzzled Quixote but they provided some levity in dire and serious circumstances that the other humans seemed to appreciate. He waved her to the hatch inviting her to commence the procedure.

His electrical engineer aimed the small device at a round protrusion one meter by one meter in the center of the port side. Of course, the damage prevented the door from simply opening when they manipulated the latches. Black, carbonaceous scorch marks covered most of the exterior and the entire bow section. The aft seemed relatively symmetrical and undamaged but the bow had crumpled upon itself in an apparent impact.

The green pinpoint of light from Kym’s laser torch didn’t easily penetrate the hull. She tapped a few controls to shorten the wavelength and intensify the beam. The beam shifted slightly from greenish to greenish blue. A faint trickle of smoke began to rise from the contact point.

A shocking pop followed by a protracted hiss came from the craft when the seal broke. Kym stopped her surgery and stepped up to the door but it held fast, the hinges frozen into position, guarding the secrets inside.

“Cut the supports,” xe told her. She aimed her torch and fired another long beam precisely down the joint of the door to the hull, and then the second one. As the weight of the hatch began its toll the metal groaned and the panel dropped to the deck with a resounding CLANG that caused both engineers to jump.

An odd odor wafted out of the black hole, an odor of decayed mammal, of ancient sweat and earth. They both hesitated as lifeless dust floated out and down to the floor.

“Sir?” Kym said, stepping back from the possibilities. Quixote’s curiosity trumped his anxiety; he stepped up to the dark hole and flipped on the headlamp atop his hat, lighting the interior like a sunbeam. His broad spectrum vision failed to reveal any warm bodied creatures or overheated circuits. He aimed his beam fore and made out the backs of two chairs made for bipeds, humanoid bipeds. To the aft some laboratory equipment of sorts filled the space. Looking again at the bow, the conning station seemed extraordinarily confusing and complicated, almost byzantine.

“Kym, you need to come and gander at this con.” She stepped up and peered in over his scaly shoulder. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”

“It’s like a command center,” she mused. Quixote crawled through the aperture and pulled himself between the two chairs to get a good look at the myriad of buttons and switches and readouts.

“Oh, my, Kym, look at this!” He turned his head to beckon her inside. He wanted her to see for herself his discovery written on the helm.

“What is it?” She couldn’t get past his hulk but tried to see what he was tapping with his claw. Her eyes turned to black pools and Quixote thought the bright red spots in her pupils might actually be her retinas. “Oh my God. It’s English.”

“Bridge to Quixote.” The commander climbed backwards out of the space capsule leaving his engineer to ponder the implications of their discovery. He tapped an intercom button.

“What are you reporting?”

“We’re half way to Cuatro, sir.”

“Very well. Change course one eighty degrees and return to Cinco. Take up a geosynch orbit on the dark side of the large moon and maintain com silence. If you hear from the surface, contact me immediately.”

“Aye, sir.”

Quixote stretched a little and looked over at the wall chronometer. He didn’t need sleep as much as his human companions nor the woman in the sick bay, but he did need to stop every twenty hours or so and reduce his metabolic functions for a couple of hours. He stepped back to the capsule hatch.

“Kym, would you like to take the lead on this? I need time to reset my metabolism.” She turned at his voice, her complexion rather more pale than normal, her surface temperature cooler than normal. “Are you feeling well?”

“Quixote, this is…” she turned back to the helm and then to face him again. “It’s…yes, but I’m going to need help.”

“I’ll have Ms. Stone come down here, unless you prefer Mr. Harchett.”

“The steward?” Kym snickered at Quixote’s suggestion.

“We don’t have a lot of available personnel. I could send Ms. Wallace.”

“That tootsie only has one thing on her mind, and it ain’t science,” the woman muttered. Quixote cocked his head. “Never mind, no, she’s more trouble than she’s help. Zoe will be great.” The reptile twisted on his feet to leave. “Quixote?”

“Yes?”

“I’m not a history buff, not even of Earth. But I can tell that this craft isn’t of Earth. This technology is beyond anything I’ve ever seen, but, well, the writing is English, more or less, not quite, but Latin based, most of the alphabet. And I’ve never seen technology like this. It’s beyond quantum computing and I’m not sure exactly what it is.”

“This could be evidence of human time travel, Byrd. We know of it in other civilizations. We’ve suspected this outcome since before we left Earth last year. I think perhaps you should keep an open mind and do your best work to put forth an explanation of our quantum readings.”

“Both positive and negative.”

“Tear this vehicle from stem to stern and have a report for me before we get back to Cinco’s moon.”

~~~

“Shuttle bay to Quixote.”

The reptile opened one eye and glanced at the readout on his timepiece. Five hours had passed. The humans would be in orbit of Cinco’s moon and planning dinner by now.

“Quixote here.”

“We are ready with a report, sir.”

“Meet me in the doyen’s office in thirty minutes.” He rose and donned a soft cape that fastened from his keel to his knees. Upon awakening a little extra protection from the human temperatures in the mid-twenties got his bones moving quicker. While waiting in the doyen’s office, he brought up a schematic of their position around the moon. Maria Mitchell was veiled by the giant moon which protected them but also kept them from contacting the crew on the planet. It would have to do while the Pegasi were hovering around Cinco.

“Sir?” came a feminine voice with a knock at the door.

“Come in.” Both Zoe Stone and Kym Byrd entered with small plastic components in their hands; Kym also carried a large data pad that she promptly handed to Quixote. He examined the data and looked up at the two women. They nodded.

“Commission date 2575. It quantum dates four hundred eleven years in the negative, and also eight hundred twenty six in the positive,” Kym explained.

“We found these data modules in the helm, at least we think they’re data modules. We weren’t able to ascertain what’s on them, but the digital encoding is clearly a recording,” Zoe said.

“You’re saying the ship is 800 years old today but it’s commission date is more than 400 years in the future?” Both women nodded, glanced at each other, then turned back to Quixote. “And the text is in a human alphabet?” They nodded again. “I’d venture to say this confirms our suspicions. It also ties the mummy to this capsule since it has similar temporal properties.” He paused and looked at both Kym and Zoe, then out the window at the heart of the Milky Way.

“While we wait to hear from Captain Jackson and the rest of the team, I need you both to work on those data modules. Go get Watson to help; he’s excellent at figuring out this sort of thing. See what you can extract. This might be the greatest discovery in your human history, even bigger than germ theory, exobiology, FTL drive, or quantum technologies.” Quixote shuddered, tasked with the knowledge of the human time travel discovery. “It could be colossal, dogma shattering, and treacherous. We have to be careful here. Exceptionally, unusually, careful.”

Symbiosis: Chapter 39

Jackson woke with a jolt at the sound of metal on metal, clanking and grinding at the door. Instantly conscious he jumped to his feet and stood against the wall where the door hinged, coiled against whatever was about to enter.

The heavy door swung open, he heard a step, then one more, and he vaulted against the door with his shoulder, knocking the intruder back into the hallway. He grabbed at the handle and jerked the door inward. Flat on his back a green Pegasi pirate held a hand against his head and moaned quietly. Without hesitation Jackson jumped over the prostrate body with the grace of a gazelle and bolted down the hallway.

He didn’t recognize the building. This wasn’t the New Hope medical facility, but neither did he spot any clues to tell him where he actually was. Sterile, artless, seafoam colored walls with a dozen doors on each side of him funneled him to the unknown; the sound of his footfalls ricocheted behind him. He reached a dead end, no door, not even a window.

“Shit!” One of these doors had to go somewhere! Jackson returned up the hallway trying each door. On the fifth door his hands slipped on the slick handles, his heart raced and his adrenaline was pulsing. Door six, or maybe it was seven, didn’t open. He threw himself on door eight, grasping the handle and found himself hurled into the room, the door slamming shut behind him as he crashed headlong onto the cement floor.

The air was frigid and the room void of light. In blackness he barely knew which way was up and crawled on hands and knees toward the direction he thought he’d come from. Reaching the wall he stood and felt around for a lighting control and found nothing. He slid his feet to the right, keeping his hands on the wall to orient himself and try to figure out just what fresh hell he landed in. This wasn’t any better than before, except perhaps that the door wasn’t locked.

His foot stopped at a solid object; he reached toward the blockage and found a table of sorts, heavy, hard, warm like wood. He slid around it and back to the wall when he fell over something, probably a chair. Something metallic crashed, clattered, then fell on top of him, hitting him in the chest.

“What the hell is this?” he shouted, flinging the bucket off and against the wall where it kablanged with a nerve jangling but satisfying smash.

“Tom?”

Jackson’s heart stopped for a moment but only a moment.

“Scott?”

“Buddy! I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, not that I can see you now.” The captain stumbled through the blackness toward the voice.

“What are you doing here?” Tom asked.

“I was kidnapped by a Pegasi outside the stadium. You?”

“Yeah, so was I, on the way to New Hope. The unholy spectacle was making me sick, so I left, and then when I tried to reach Maria Mi- oh! Sorry,” Tom said. He’d bashed into the chair Scott occupied and fell halfway across his friend’s lap.

“You’re okay; there’s another chair here.”

“It’s as black as a coal mine in here. Is there a light?”

“I haven’t found one.”

“Why are you sitting here? The door was open, let’s go!”

“It must lock behind you. I tried for hours but I gave up. I didn’t know it was you, Tom or I would have said something when you came in. I thought you were a Pegasi.”

Tom felt around and planted himself in the other chair adjacent to Scott, relieved to be off the floor and off his feet.

“Have you eaten anything?”

“No, I’ve been here in the dark for hours. You?”

“My room was lit and there was food and water, but no furniture,” Tom said.

“How’d you get out?”

“A Pegasi came in and I knocked him over with the door, took off. I thought maybe this was the way out.”

“I’m glad you’re okay, Captain. Nice to have some company, although I wish we were both on the other side of that door.”

“Do you know where we are? They knocked me out, I woke up in the room on the floor.”

“We’re not in New Hope anymore. They took me several kilometers outside the city. When I tried to run, though, they kicked me down and I couldn’t walk. They dragged me in here and that’s all I know.”

“Have you seen Wagner? I thought the two of you were at the game.”

“No. I never even got inside the stadium.”

“Be glad you didn’t. It’s like those old historical movies about the Romans and lions and gladiators. It’s carnage. I just lost all respect for these people. They’re savages.”

“The Cinconians? They’re pacifists,” Scott said.

“I thought so, but not from what I saw. If this is how they elect their government, we ought to just let them live with the plague. It took down the Roman Empire, and that’s exactly what they deserve.” Tom fumbled with the zipper on his jacket.

“You don’t really mean that,” Scott said. Tom thought briefly and guilt inched up on him, forcing him to agree.

“I just wish their leaders would get it and the people could go about their business. And keeping an entire race of their own species at the bottom of society, well, that’s just wrong.”

“It’s their culture, Tom, it works for them, we can’t be their judges or juries.”

“You’re right, and I won’t, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be disturbed by what I see around me here. Not that I can see anything at the moment.” Tom shifted in the large chair hoping for a more comfortable position. “These chairs aren’t half bad for Cinconian furniture.”

“I took a long nap in this one,” Scott said.

“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Tom asked. He found a pillow on the chair could be moved to his lumbar and support his back in the soft hollow. “I think,” Tom continued, “that Dukvita must be around somewhere, wanting us out of the way so he can keep his antibiotic trade going.”

“That’s logical,” Scott said. “Think they have anyone else?”

“I’m betting they have everyone else. I’m wondering what’s happening on Maria Mitchell.”

They sat in silence for a minute. Tom rarely felt helpless but he was at a loss for a plan. Everything was locked up like Alcatraz. He heard the handle on the door click and snapped to attention, tapping Scott, or perhaps the arm of the chair.

“I hear it,” the man hissed. Tom crept silently across the floor toward the microscopic crack of light on the wall. Scott followed close behind him. The door inched open and the crack of light grew wider. Tom could see finally, that the room was small and another chair across from their pair was empty. The door inched again and squealed on its hinges. He looked at Scott, holding up his hands so Scott would stay behind him and at bay. They flattened themselves against the wall.

“Human?” a low voice asked, and a green head appeared in the crack. “Human?”

Tom held his breath. The Pegasi had to get inside the door before he dared. The door opened wide and the two men stood behind it in utter silence. The Pegasi that Tom had slammed in the hallway stepped in and looked around. Tom jabbed Scott in the ribs and leapt forward. With a primal scream he jumped on the brute’s head and Scott shouted and dove for the giant’s legs, the two of them sending the big man to the ground in an instant.

Tom sat on the big green chest and with every fiber in his body he slugged the ugly face against the temple, knowing the toxin would get him but also knowing his most vulnerable spot given Tom’s limited strength against anyone that size. Scott stood and jumped on the Pegasi’s knees. He moaned.

“Come on!” Tom shouted. They climbed off the brute and sprinted out the door into the corridor where bright, almost blinding light stopped long enough to grab the door and slam it behind them, trapping the green devil. “This way,” Tom suggested, heading away from the dead end. While they ran he burnished his knuckles against his jacket and, gratefully, the tarry toxin began to rub off.

At the end of the hallway past Tom’s confinement room another door looked promising. They skidded the last two meters and tried the door gently. It obeyed and opened into the dusky light of early evening. As the two of them shot through the door, the alarm sounded on a dozen electronic sirens mounted inside and outside the building. Like escaping from Scotland Yard, a nee-naa nee-naa sound blared across the open fields.

“Run!” Tom yelled over his shoulder; he and Scott sprinted across the yard toward a grove of trees. The sound dwindled as they increased their distance by a kilometer. Eta Cassiopeia slipped behind a mountain; the landscape darkened and dramatically cooled in a matter of minutes.

 “Tom!” The captain turned and saw what Scott saw: their footsteps in the grassy mud leading from the building directly to their position. “Nothing we can do now,” he said, and they dashed into the woodland. The mud soon turned to brown and yellow leaf litter that masked their trail. “Come on, we have to get deeper.”

Both men hunkered into their jackets and slowed their pace as the visible light faded and snowflakes drifted down; they plunged deeper into the darkness until they couldn’t run another step.

Symbiosis: Chapter 38

 

Captain Jackson opened his eyes slowly, blinking hard against the searing white light from above his head. He found himself leaning against a wall; his back ached and the floor beneath him chilled his bones. His wrists were crossed and tied behind his back with a heavy flax rope. Clambering to his feet he only saw four gray walls and a closed door. No windows, not even a skylight, provided any clue to the time.

The side of his head throbbed. He remembered someone had grabbed him and muzzled him, a huge person, a person with hairless green arms: a Pegasi minion with the familiar reek of acidic, tarry toxin on his hand. A heavy metal thwack of a laser pistol was the last thing he could recall. The pain below his ribs reached deep toward a kidney. He didn’t know what happened there. Perhaps it’d had been the hard toe of a giant boot.

A square metal footstool hosted a plate of green and white blobs, some kind of starch in a little leaf wrappers appearing suspiciously like Cinconian cuisine. A pitcher of water and a bowl accompanied the assumed food balls. He needed the hydration badly but looked around for something sharp instead. The room was intentionally devoid of any implements of destruction. Jackson looked at the empty ceramic bowl and full pitcher. He reached his foot to the little pedestal and kicked the bowl hard off onto the floor. It crashed into several glorious shards with a satisfying clatter.

He squirmed to select the largest shard with one hand and manipulated it against the ropes like a knife until he felt their strength waning. He flipped the chunk to his other hand and finished the job with one more contorted slice and his hands flew apart. The dangling fragments of rope fell off his wrists when he rubbed the raw skin gently to get some blood flowing again. He picked up that pitcher and drank water straight from the lip until he could drink no more, then he had one more swallow.

Pegasi! Those bastards just couldn’t keep their debauched green fingers off this planet. If they were dispersing antibiotics again, the whole mission would come to naught. Jackson shoved both hands in his jacket pockets but came up empty. He had to get out of the room and find out where they’d hidden his com button. At least he still had his jacket.

He hadn’t felt his head ache so much since before Zalara removed the glioma in his brain, but without the accompanying nausea. When he touched his temple he felt a hot, angry hump which begged for an ice pack. The tips of his fingers on his left hand tingled with slight numbness, possibly from the same situation that caused the wallop now pulsing on the right side of his head.

The small room was sealed like a submarine. He tried the door but it was shut as tight as a gnat’s ass. Jackson smashed his face in his hands, pushing them up through his hair, but not even an inkling of a means to escape arose. He returned to the footstool and selected a ball, sniffed it, then tasted it. Sushi. It was fishy and grassy and tasted like sushi. For Cinconian cuisine, this was tolerable. He ate all of them.

Since he wasn’t dead, he decided that the Pegasi wanted him alive for some reason, so he’d simply have to wait. With no place elevated to sit, he backed up against one wall and slid down until his butt hit the floor. Still cold, after some serious thought, he decided to keep his jacket on rather than sit on it. He started to drift, wishing he could call Rianya, make sure she was okay, and tell her that he missed her.

~~~

“Why are you here?”

“I could ask you the same thing, Commander,” Quixote answered. He recognized the depth of Dukvita’s voice easily and its distinctive cadence.

“I’m sure I was clear with Captain Jackson. We are engaged in commerce with the populations of this planet.”

“And, Commander, we are here on a mission of mercy at the request of the medical community.”

“Yes, and your missions interfere with our commerce. I must ask you to leave promptly so I not forced to take action.”

“Dukvita, I believe Captain Jackson was clear stating his mission with you several days ago. We have an assignment with dire health consequences at risk. Is it not in your best interest that the population of this planet actually exist for your commerce activities?”

“What do you mean?”

“I have it on good authority that you are aware of the pandemic medical situation, are you not?”

“Quixote, do you always talk backward? Human is not my first language. Speak again.”

“Human is not my first language, either, Dukvita.” Silence.

“We knows of the pandemic. We supply critical medical supplies; of course we knows.”

“Then your request for us to break orbit is unwarranted.”

“Unwarranted or not I make my intentions clear to Jackson.”

“And I am certain that we are here at the request of the Cinconians and your authority is not binding on us.”

If the bridge had been dismal a few hours earlier it was as tense as steel now. Quixote never considered himself terribly emotional but he sat on a pedestal, his back straight, his dorsal scales quivering. That overweight, chartreuse pirate wasn’t about to chase the Maria Mitchell out of orbit, especially with men on the surface.

Quixote shifted on the stool, tapping one claw on the console in front of him. Jean was a statue at his helm. Zoe fidgeted in her chair. The silence was thick and heavy.

“I have three hostages on the planet. If you don’t leave orbit before you complete another revolution I’ll kill one of them.” Quixote gestured a slash across his neck to Zoe and the com was closed.

“Men, we’re not finished here. The only location with three of us is New Hope. He must have Jackson, Gregory, and Wagner. Rougeau, plot a course to Cuatro at ISS speed. Stone, call Watson or May up here to relive you; have whoever prepare a copy of the logs and transcripts and stand by.” He nodded to open the com.

“Very well, Dukvita. But you certainly don’t expect us abandon our crew on the surface.”

“You may collect them when we have finished our business, if you leave orbit as required.”

“How long do you need?” Quixote said through his conical, clenched teeth. He resented having to cooperate with the likes of that Pegasi, but for the sake of the team, not the Cinconians, he would at least give an appearance of acquiescence.

“Oh, six or seven days”

“Six or seven days?! You have thirty hours to get your business completed, Dukvita, and I highly suggest you don’t press your luck.”

“If you don’t leave orbit of Cinco I’ll be forced to open fire,” Dukvita said. “When you have three Pegasi hostages you may speak all the demands you like. Until then, good bye, Maria Mitchell.” The com terminated with an acute snap.

Lieutenant Quixote drummed his claws on the console and closed his eyes to shut out the planet in the windows. He took a deep breath and simmered for a few seconds.

“When we’re beyond the planet’s gravity send our status transmission to Earth and simultaneously initiate a waste dump. Rougeau, as soon as that task is completed engage ISS drive at half speed on a course toward Cuatro.” The old reptile marched to the elevator and banged the call button. “I’ll be in sick bay.”

Mr. Mills sat in front of a monitor with colorful images floating before him when Quixote came in. The man’s eyes looked up but his head didn’t move, then he looked back at his images.

“How is she?”

“No change. Fever, fluid in pericardium, thoracic cavity, hyper-swollen lymph nodes. I wouldn’t call it grave, but she’s critically ill.”

“That’s not what I wanted to hear.”

Symbiosis: Chapter 37

“Little Miss, you don’t need to stay here,” Quixote said to Zalara. Xe looked at Rianya and knew enough that a little girl shouldn’t be exposed to a deathly sick person.

“I want to stay here with Mama.” Xe didn’t usually pay much attention to the long, red light wave lengths that were part of his normal spectral vision, but the child’s body glowed yellow and green while her face appeared orange and red.

“She’s just going to keep sleeping; she doesn’t know you’re here, Zalara.”

“I know I’m here.”

Quixote had never seen Rianya as flushed and hot in the five years he’d known her. Mills had her on a warming table but only covered with a sheet to keep her fever from escalating to a dangerous level. Nothing in the humans’ sick bay worked on her non-human body to reduce the fever, and Mills decided he had to let her own immune system work with the antibiotics to kill the Yersinia pestis.

“She wouldn’t want you to worry and sit here all the time. She’d want you to go play with Honey. I’ll stay here in case she wakes up, if you like.”

“No.” The little half human folded her arms and didn’t look at Quixote.

“You’re not to touch her, Zalara. Your father would not approve.”

“I know.” She didn’t look at Quixote but instead at her mother. “Mr. Mills say I need to let his medicine make her get better.”

“He’s right.”

“The bad is all right here,” she said, putting a hand on her own chest. “I can feel inside,” she said. She finally looked at Quixote with her curious eyes, the jade crystals of her father and frilly-edged pupils of her mother. “I can do it. I don’t care what Mr. Mills say, I not let her die.”

“Yes, I know. But let the medicine try first.”

“I not letted Papa die. Papa had lectricee in his head. Mama haves ocean in her chest.” Quixote assumed that meant the hyper-hydro pneumonia.

“Your mama said you are not to fix her.”

“I don’t care.”

“Oh, look here, thank you Bailey,” xe said when the chef arrived carrying a tray.

“I’m going to put this on the table,” Bailey told them, drawing the two of them out of the single bay into the treatment room. “It would be better to eat here,” she said with a nod to Quixote. Xe took Zalara’s tiny hand in his heavy claw and led her out despite her reluctance.

Mr. Mills and Bailey joined them at the table. Quixote detected a chill in the room that he could literally see. Xe cared for Zalara and Rianya as much as anyone else, but in a slightly different way that he could never quite define. Of course he and Rianya were the only aliens on the human ship, and Zalara, well, xe’d known her since the day she’d been born. More than the captain’s family, xe’d known Thomas Jackson for almost 20 years and admired the human for at least a dozen reasons. His choice to bond with an alien, Rianya, and his forthright affection for Zalara only confirmed the captain was a human worthy of respect.

If Rianya perished, Zalara would go on, but he wasn’t certain if the captain would. Jackson seemed born to push boundaries, to explore, to take risks, but a facet of him put the safety of these two females as his priority, tempering yet enhancing his skills as their ship’s leader. Jackson had explained to xe years ago that being a captain in the air service meant you could fly an air vehicle. Being a captain in the naval service meant you commanded a ship and crew.

“Zalara,” Mr. Mills began gently, “You need to go down to the gym and meet up with Honey. She’s been missing you.”

“I have to stay with Mama.”

“We’re here to take care of her, Sweetie. I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”

“Zalara, I could really use your help in the galley; Honey too. We’re a little shorthanded lately.” The girl looked from one adult to another then at Quixote. Her hand grasped a glass filled with fruit juice, her mouth a straight line, her eyes focused on the drink.

“Okay,” she said. Tension dropped palpably by several magnitudes. The vigil was broken, but most likely not over. She drank the glass of juice and took a handful of puff cookies as Bailey took her by the other hand and led her out of sick bay.

“I need to give her another treatment,” Mills said, vaulting from the table, his chair rolling away on the slick floor. Quixote took his celery beverage and drank it in one long slug, clanked the glass down on the tray and followed Mr. Mills into Rianya’s isolated chamber.

Mills promptly turned on several monitors and placed some sensors on his patient’s head. Her mane was bound and contained in a puffy blue cap that barely held all her thick tresses. Her eyes had sunken in her skull, her long lashes motionless on her cheekbones. Patchy grey areas of her pink skin revealed that the depth of the infection was no longer solely in her lungs.

Numbers blinked on the monitors over her head, a few in green, most of them in orange, one in red. Xe knew enough that red numbers in any department, engineering or the sick bay, were bad numbers.

Mills placed a mask over her nose and mouth which was attached to a strange hose, one with a second, smaller hose inside. The red number 89 turned an orange 92.

“Her lungs can’t oxygenate her blood,” Mills muttered. “I wish she’d just come out of it already, but overall her stats are stable,” Mills said. “Adams warned me this could happen so it’s not like I’ve been blindsided, but I would sure love to have his or Dr. Ferris’ help. Henderson’s the only one who can help.”

“I volunteer as help, if there’s anything I can do.”

“Keep Zalara out of here. I can’t watch her and Rianya at the same time.” Mills placed a ampule of medicine in a micro injector and pressed it against her neck. They watched the numbers begin to change, a few flipping from orange to yellow, a few from orange to green. Mills’ attention focused on the numbers while they changed. “I take it you haven’t talked to the captain yet.”

“I’m afraid not. Mr. Lee has orders to find him, but no one has seen him for several hours.”

“Hours?”

“Seems apparently the entire Cinconian population stops whatever they’re doing and travel to enormous stadiums to watch the politicians physically battle for office. The captain was invited to attend. We suspect he’s indisposed or unable to respond.”

Rianya still lay unconscious but her skin had cooled a degree already.

“Why is her condition so grave when the rest of the crew is not sick at all?”

“She’s not human, Quixote. Remember, her DNA spins in the opposite direction of earthlings. I think we forget that since she’s so much like us. I look at you and I know you aren’t human.”

“If that was supposed to insult me it did not,” Quixote quipped. “She is human enough to the captain.”

“Because the captain sees similarities in people, not their differences.”

“He is unlike any other human I’ve known over the years.”

“He’d give the bacteria hell if he could. The strain that survived in that mummy must have been titans to survive as they did and infect her to this degree.”

“Titans in a Trojan Horse,” Quixote said with hindsight. Mr. Mills stared at him askew. “Have you not read Homer, Mr. Mills?”

“Quixote, I’m a man of medicine, not literature. Her immune system is what’s suffering now. The systemic Yersinia is responding to the ciprofloxacin but it’s damaging her internal fauna. Her poor body doesn’t know what to do with the dead Yersinia. This is why we don’t want to treat with broad spectrum medications, they don’t target specifically enough.

“You need to have someone find the captain and get him up here in preparation for the worst-case scenario,” Mills continued. “I can’t guarantee Rianya will pull through this. She could fall into a coma. We all need the captain and doctor to come back to Maria Mitchell.”

“I agree, Mr. Mills. I’ll see if there’s anything else I can do from the bridge.”

The planet Cinco occupied the bow windows, and but for a few chirps, beeps and whistles, the bridge was eerily silent, quiet, and still. Ensign Rougeau turned briefly and nodded. Zoe Stone, the quartermaster, stood near the navigator’s station and also tipped her head at Quixote.

“Mr. Rougeau, have you knowledge of Mr. Watson’s whereabouts?”

“He is on the overnight watch; I would guess he’s in his quarters.”

“I haven’t seen him,” Zoe added. “I’m manning his station for now, sir.”

“We must contact Captain Jackson even if it means breaking radio silence. Code a priority one signal and ping his personal com until he answers it. No words, just the signal. Let me know as soon as you hear from him.”

Symbiosis: Chapter 36

After four hours on his feet, Jackson didn’t think he could open one more vaccine package. He’d lost count hours ago on how many people had been given a dose on their way inside the stadium. The medical team Odalis had called to serve seemed indefatigable. The throng of white hued Cinconians crowded at the entrance to the ‘showgrounds’ as Odalis called it. Jackson called it a Super Stadium of Doom but didn’t tell the yee what he was thinking about the entire spectacle. He’d decided to keep his mouth shut.

Funneling tens of thousands of people through only two entrances made for some aggravation among the spectators, to say the least. The frustration was worth it to vaccinate thousands all at once. The frightened looks some of them threw at his face reminded him that most of them had never seen an off-worlder.

“We could now watch the ceremonies start,” Odalis said to him. He jumped slightly at Odalis’ voice, realizing he’d tuned out for a moment.

“Yes, I’ll just wash this--”

“Otars wash, Captain, you not. You come sees. Sitting with me. I am good place to watch.” Odalis put his arm against Jackson’s back and herded him alongside and down a short hall.

“Odalis, I need to find Dr. Gregory and Mr. Wagner.”

“Games start, we not miss ceremony. Your friend find us.”

Odalis indeed possessed visible capital in the crowd as most people gave him extra space for traversing the aisles. He didn’t know if it was Yee Odalis personally or any yee would have the same respect. They arrived quickly at center position seating near the field. Jackson might have called it the fifty yard line if the dusty ground had been covered in turf and painted with white lines.

He looked around for his friend and security officer but didn’t see them. They both would be easy to find in a crowd of white haired people if, perhaps, they weren’t such tall white haired people. Odalis almost glowed with excitement and Jackson decided he’d try to get into the spirit since he had no other choice. Perhaps he could sneak off after things were underway by feigning an illness or an interplanetary com.

The bright stadium lights cut out in an instant and the spectators roared in the dark. Jackson wished he’d had a program but for all the good it would do him written in their language. The crowd began to act as one, like a school of fish, all swaying and stomping in unison while something happened on the field. Jackson covered his ears to block the intense clamor resounding and echoing in the enclosed oval dome.

Tom tried to fathom these laid back people putting together something as incredible as the amphitheater surrounding him. Their population didn’t seem to support a stadium such as this. Even on Earth no building was so immense as this, at least not horizontally, for the sole purpose of entertainment.

“It happen soon Captain!” Odalis shouted at him. “Opens first, then lower people, then higher, then top person,” he explained. “Local, provincial, nation, planet,” he added, or perhaps clarified. This was an election by contest but not a contest of brains or policies, but of brawn and combat.

BOOM! In the center of the field a fireball erupted like a miniature, red and black nuclear bomb. The lights came up again, and Jackson distinguished the other half of the stadium was dressed mostly in a vivid green, and those around him in a vivid orange. The battle of the green and orange; had it not been so deafening he might have chuckled at the centuries old Irish battle of the green Catholics and the orange Protestants, on Earth.

A white Cinconian dressed in long robes of black stood on stage in the center where the bomb had gone off. Using a microphone, his voice bellowed in the stadium. Jackson only heard a few words he recognized here and there above the racket of the crowd. Shortly, dozens of Cinconians ran out onto the field wearing gaudy bright ponchos in neon orange and green.

A musical anthem began to play that reminded Jackson of the Indian nation, with deformed sitars, cymbals, and disharmonized notes that seemed to wiggle up and down the scale at a furious tempo. Cinconians around him stood up as if hypnotized by the crazy sounds, swaying and shouting. Even Yee Odalis stood and began to lose himself in the herd.

The music broke and a few dozen Cinconians raced out of the tunnels on each side of the field. In one hand each carried something like a machete, and in the other a round metal shield that was barely large enough to protect the user’s face. They lined up, the green against the orange, facing each other, and the sound blared again starting the stampede of weapons. Blades swung wildly, swiftly, cracking against shields and glinting in the bright lights.

Screams and cheers erupted around him, and Jackson wanted to close his eyes against the brutality but he was compelled to keep watching. In a few moments, the first blood spilled in the dirt. A unified roar intensified on both sides of the arena. He cringed at the anarchy rampant around him.

Jackson had been in a war zone. He hadn’t enjoyed it then, and didn’t now. The few times he’d had to take aim at his enemy were sterile, precision strikes aimed to destroy property, not lives. Once or twice he had been responsible when humans in the vicinity of his targets were killed. The memory briefly drowned out the sounds of war in the dirt arena below.

“Odalis!” he shouted, thumping on the yee’s shoulder. Shrieks abruptly amplified and Jackson shook over the slam to his ear drums, snapping his attention to the field. Another Cinconian lay prostrate on the ground, apparently gored before his opponent brought the machete to his neck with the strength of a grizzly bear. Now two wearing green lay dead on the field in their own blood. No others came to rescue them; no time out was called to remove the bodies from the fray. The remaining combatants simply jumped, or marched, over them.

“Odalis!” he yelled again, grabbing his arm and shaking him. The yee finally turned, his dark eyes wide and abnormally quivering. “I can’t stay, I need to go!”

“You go?! We win, not go!” the yee shouted back, turning his attention back to the carnage giving a high pitched scream for his team, or candidate, or something.

“I go!” Jackson was sweating, fuming at the reprehensible demonstration of battles. Ten minutes was more than enough. He shouted and shoved a few Cinconians out of his way, pushing past them toward the exit. They ignored him as if he didn’t exist, opening and closing like a wall of gel that he had to escape before he was swallowed, consumed, and devoured by the psychosis.

Something flew above his head, and a shower of pebbles came at him from behind. Jackson was drowning, suffocating as he parted the mob without regard and landed face down on a hard concrete walkway. Only marginally less obstructed than the seats, he clamored to his feet and plowed his way forward.

The exit to the outside was in sight! He sped his pace to reach the door and flew through it. More Cinconians crowded the plaza area but their focus was on the box office. He jogged at least twenty meters away before he stopped to breathe. He’d torn one sleeve of his heavy jacket, somehow.

“Geezezesmutherofholyfuck!” Jackson shouted to no one. He’d seen a lot of war and fighting in his years, all of it filled with death, screaming, weapons, destruction, and his least favorite of all wartime inevitabilities, blood, but this took conflict to the level of sport and carnage, for the spectacle. It just wasn’t possible that a society with indoor plumbing could revert to such savagery, yet here it was in front of him. It was akin to bull fighting, throwing Christians to lions, savage chariot races, or the Cossack uprising of 2020.

His med team was being subjected to the same madness in different Super Stadiums of Doom all over the planet. He took a few more breaths and cleared his head. He dug a small com unit from his pocket.

“Jackson to landing party, calling anyone, this is Captain Jackson. Please respond.” Despite knowing the components in the device were in no way mechanical, he banged the thing in the palm of one hand when he’d decided it’d been quiet long enough. “This is Jackson, anyone receiving? Please signal.”

He needed a drink of water or scotch, either one would do at the moment. He had another two, long kilometers to reach the New Hope building, taking his time, looking down at the silent com button. He dodged a few young Cinconians not in school, not at the festival. He stopped at an intersection and wondered where all the people had disappeared to.

“Jackson to Maria Mitchell,” he called again. A huge hand clamped over his mouth from behind and he dropped his com button in the dust. Before he could turn around an arm grabbed him around the waist and dragged him backwards out of the street. Jackson flailed and tried to squirm away from his captor but whoever it was had an iron grip, and it was green.