Three students at the Santa Fe Space Academy prove they have the right stuff to handle the terrors of space.
My life flashed before my eyes. I had no regrets as I exploded through the second story window, revolved in flight, and fell to the street in a glittering hail of broken glass. I hit feet first and allowed my legs to buckle, rolling to spread the impact, standard skydivers’ technique. My martial arts training kicked in after that; the last of my momentum lifted me to my feet—in time to see the campus shuttle bearing down on me.
Always something.
I wilted to the pavement and lay on my back.
The vehicle shot over me, tingling my skin with cyan blue radiance. My weight lessened with a descending-elevator feeling, and I drifted up a few inches off the pavement. The crystal song of the bus’ hover field thrummed through me, leaving a shiver in my bones as it passed. Weight returned and I dropped to the pavement.
I tucked my legs and rocked back onto my shoulders. My palms went to either side of my head, pushing against the street as I kicked my feet forward. This flipped me into the air, onto my feet. The move was flashy, but what the hell, I’d already become a spectacle.
Cadets outside the Student Lounge stared as I brushed off my clothes. A few even clapped.
Gina Powers stood among them in the student’s formal gold-and-black one-piece uniform, a smile on her face, her pink-dyed hair ruffled by a friendly wind. In place of the usual regulation boots, she wore a bright red pair made of raptor hide. The off-world imports looked hideous and were hideously expensive. Having her father in charge of the school let her get away with snubbing the dress code—that, and the note from her podiatrist claiming she needed the boots for therapeutic purposes. She grinned as I came up to her. The drama over, the other students flowed around us toward various destinations.
“Ryuu, you sure know how to make an exit.”
“Wasn’t my idea. I was thrown out that window.”
I looked up and saw Frigg peering down with cool blue, her blonde head poking past some jagged glass still in the frame. She cupped her mouth and yelled. “Sorry about that. I don’t know who put that window right where I was throwing you. Landed on your feet; good thing you’re part cat.”
Gina laughed in my ear. “Do we want to know which part?”
I yelled up the wall, “Next time you want to practice throws, we do it at the gym.”
Frigg frowned. “You’re no fun.”
“Tell me about it,” Gina shouted up the wall at her. “This guy’s idea of a hot date is free- climbing a cliff face and glide-chuting down for a ten-mile, cross-country run.”
I widened my eyes to dramatize my sense of injury. “I thought we had fun. Besides, that part of the Sangre de Cristo’s is where the wilderness trials are usually held. We’ve seen it first hand. We’re bound to do better than the rest of the class.”
“Only reason I didn’t kill you.” Gina paused to whip pink hair out of her face as the wind changed. “I thought we were tackling snow. In actual skiing, I wouldn’t have come in second place.”
I held up a hand for silence, cocking my head to listen.
“What is it?” Gina asked.
I looked into the clear blue depths of the New Mexican sky and pointed. “Incoming.”
Gina looked where I pointed. A blue-white star had appeared; the hover field of a lunar transport. There was an attenuated rumble. Moments later, I made out the silver needle that rode that blue star toward the nearby spaceport.
“First time seeing a landing?” Gina asked. “That can’t be right. You’ve been here four years and the starport’s only a few miles away.”
“That’s not it.” I winced. “Something’s wrong with its drive. Listen to the hum.”
“What hum? No one but you have ever claimed to hear field inharmonics.” She put a fist on her right hip. “I think you’re just making it up.
The star went nova—a blinding wash of light—followed by the thunderclap of an explosion. Fragments of metal hailed, trailing black wiggles of smoke. It was fortunate the port lay outside the Santa Fe city limits; falling debris could otherwise have proven lethal.
Gina gasped in shock, eyes wide as the anime character she impersonated. “Oh…my...
God.”
A hush settled over the campus. Muscles knotted at the corners of my jaw. My eyes narrowed to a glower I’d inherited from generations of samurai warriors. I don’t like it when Death wins. And this had been the second transport crash in a year. There would have been at least a dozen people per transport, people with families. I empathized with their pain, having lost my mother at an early age. Some wounds never heal, we just learn how to lock grief in a dark closet and keep going.
My wrist-comm chimed. Lifted toward my face, it displayed a prismatic dome on a blue-steel band. The dome fanned intersecting planes of light that fused into a holo-field. A translucent icon faded in, a greenish, corpse-like face with a scar on the forehead and a flat head. The figure had bolts in the side of his neck like battery terminals. The monstrous face opened its mouth to speak, showing yellowed teeth and black gums.
“Fifteen-minute warning. Xeno-Archeology is next.”
I nodded to my personal AI. “Thanks Frank.”
The holograph growled and faded.
Gina’s wrist-comm had activated as well. Her hologram—a guy duded up in tux and tails—was…me! He said, “Oh, precious flower of my heart, Xeno-Biology awaits your graceful indulgence.”
I felt an aneurism coming on. “You made a smarmy icon out of me?”
“Sure, this way, I can always have you at my beck and call. C’mon, I’ll walk you to class. It’s on my way.” Moving on, she smiled sweetly.
I high-voiced a fake, Gone-With-the-Wind southern accent, “Thank you, Ma’am. I’d be ever so grateful.”
“You’ve been watching classic movies on late-night vid again,” she said.
I thought of all the hours I’d spent cramming this last two weeks for finals. “Not lately.”
We hadn’t gotten far when Frigg caught up from behind, her arms going around our necks as she sandwiched between us. Locked in step, we continued past the huge bronze statue of Bryce McKnight, founder of the school. His eternal glare did little to quell us. Even the lunar transport had had only a transitory effect, though the underclassmen still pooled at various spots to discuss the matter in subdued tones. They’d harden up after receiving rigorous training or get washed out of the school’s Off-World Careers Program.
Space is not for wimps.
We seniors were conditioned not to get distracted and unfocused by disaster. The work ahead had endless dangers to be taken in stride. Psychological tests had already weeded out students that were less than resilient, unable to compartmentalize their fear responses and act clear-headed in panic situations.
“You were leaving me behind!” Frigg wailed.
“So, what’s your point?” I asked.
“Hi Frigg, what’s new?” Gina asked.
“We got a guest speaker for class today, a scout captain, I hear. Oh, and I’ve been planning my graduation party. You guys are coming, right?”
“Don’t you actually have to graduate first?” I climbed a short flight of stairs, taking them only one at a time since the girls were with me.
“What are you trying to say?” Frigg asked.
I shrugged. “I’d spend more time studying and less time planning celebrations if I were you. Didn’t you just barely survive mid-terms?”
“Oh, groan of darkest despair, don’t remind me.”
The walkway took us between glass and steel buildings. We passed a circular basin and fountain, moving toward a butterscotch-adobe, three-story that had teal blue trim on the windows and royal blue clay tiles on the roof. The sign on the building said Richardson Hall. I angled for the main doors which had a Santé-Fe chic, long-horn skull hanging over the entrance.
Gina peeled off, continuing on with a goodbye wave.
Frigg stayed, having the same class I did. I opened the door for her, something she wouldn’t have let any other guy do. I could get away with a lot since I’d grown up with her. We were more brother and sister than childhood friends—even though I’d stolen my first kiss from her when we were eleven. She’d often kicked my butt because I couldn’t stand to hurt her. Growing up, it gave her an advantage she’d exploited without shame. Her Norwegian family had lived next to mine. She’d been named after the queen of Asgard. I had no trouble picturing her waving a Viking sword around, giving off a blood-curdling scream.
Inside the building, air conditioning made my damp shirt cling to my back like an icy bandage. The floors were tiled in turquoise. The ochre walls were enlivened with color photos from several of the local Indian reservations. At the appropriate room number, we went in, taking adjoining seats near the windows. For a change, our teacher wasn’t already in the room, waiting in his usual white suit, pastel handkerchief, and round glasses, capturing the light and letting it go in hypnotic rhythms.
The lady faculty members tended to sigh over him, and occasionally drool. Even a few female cadets flirted with him. I was less impressed. Sure, the guy was big, but my muscles didn’t come from a machine in a gym. I earned them risking life and limb against vertical rock, surviving on the strength of my judgment, pushing my endurance in cross-country running. Kendo practice further honed me to a razor edge. The only reason my father let me come to an American school was my promise to train hard every day. I had kept up with my training—even in the hustle of approaching graduation. Dad claimed failure to follow through would shame my ancestors.
Me, I figured once you’re dead, you have better things to do than mope around your descendants, living vicariously through them. Course, I might be wrong.
A murmur washed across the room as the door opened and Dr. Reginald Bolivar breezed in, striding to the lectern with a stranger following him. The visitor wore an X-Corps uniform, a polished copper body suit with tarnish green jacket and boots. The winged-star insignia on his shoulder patches sent a thrill through me that surpassed getting tossed through the window. The spacer was thin and well over six feet, with a leathery, bronzed skin that had felt the warmth of a hundred suns. He moved with a rolling gait that seemed slow but covered ground quickly.
Bolivar took up his usual position in front of the class, draping himself over the lectern. “No class today,” he drawled. “Senior class is being conscripted into service. This is Captain Tarique. You’ll take instruction from him. Go back to your dorm and get your field gear, then report to the main gates for transportation and deployment.
Frigg thrust a hand into the air. “Excuse me, but what will we be doing?”
The Captain answered without prompting from Bolivar. Along with other volunteers, you will be combing the area outside of town where the ARIEL exploded. All debris will be gathered to a central location for inspection. And should you find human remains, drop a radio-marker and notify me at once by comm link. Make sure you bring trail rations and plenty of water.”
A startled silence gripped the room.
“What are you waiting for?” Bolivar made shooing motions with both hands. “Go!”
We were on our feet at once, surging toward the door in waves. I was halfway across the room when Bolivar called to me. “Ryuu…”
I stopped, meeting his gaze. “Yeah?”
He grinned. “Not going to use the window?”
Word gets around fast.
Captain Tarique stared, his face slightly thawed by the ghost of a smile that faded as fast as it came.
I turned away and continued on, Frigg snickering beside me.
* * *
We’d been at it for hours, breathing through surgical masks, wearing latex gloves as we searched for improvable survivors, sifted wreckage for the black box flight recorder, and used tiny flags and transmitters to mark human remains. The burned, chopped up body parts challenged our emotional reserve. Frigg and Gina were with me. We’d all been deployed in teams of three with a backpack of supplies that included an ear-bud comm unit. I had the one for our team and responded as Captain Tarique remotely directed the operation from a nearby command site.
As more and more professional assistance arrived, they followed in the wake of our teams. It seemed odd not to pull us and let the pros take over. Odder still was the fact that all of us had been issued beamers, not the more common neural stunners. My beamer rode my outer right thigh, strapped down in a holster. I’d found a steel piece of strut that I used as a walking stick; it had the general shape and feel of a kendo sword, just a little heavier.
No edge, but a ragged point. A wanna-be katana. Still, it felt more natural in my hand the beamer ever had.
Captain Tarique’s voice sounded in my ear. “We weren’t sure, there was just a very small chance, so most military units have been tied up at the ports, nailing them down. I can tell you now that recently discovered vid footage confirms an ET presence infiltrating our worlds. On the ARIEL that may have caused the crash. If you find a body that is not quite human. Report at once and do not disturb it. Alien pathogens may be in play. Mark the site and retreat. A HAZMAT team will take over.”
I relayed the message to the girls.
“An alien?” Gena said. “No wonder things have been off. It’s why those of us with XT training are clearing the way for official personal. Someone thinks the alien might not be completely dead, or safe.”
Frigg smiled. “Lucky us. This could be a historical scavenger hunt. Imagine, prelude to an invasion!”
“Hey,” I said. “Here’s an intact pair of seats. Bodies, too.” I rounded the side to see the corpses better. A woman on the left had been burned bad. Her mouth was still open in a silent scream. Most of her hair had burned away. Frigg took one look and closed her eyes, swallowing heavily. Her smile stripped away, she took a reflexive step backwards.
Gina did the job; activating a radio marker, dropping it on the ground. The body in the right seat had an emergency blanket over it. I pulled it aside with the tip of my walking stick. The blanket had kept her from burning and breathing fire. It hadn’t protected her from bruised organs a broken neck from the fall. Before dying, she’d coughed blood.
I froze a second. There was a hole in her stomach, a big one. A host creature had tried digging its way out of her but hadn’t quite managed it. Tendrils connected the creature to the woman’s spine. It had been wearing her like an overcoat, making a puppet of her. I bet there were also tendrils to her brain, letting the alien creature tap into her senses. I saw big, black eyes, but no other features.
This gave an all new meaning to being invaded.
Retreating several steps, I gave the necessary orders. “Back away everyone. It’s our alien. Beamers out. It’s not human; it might still be alive.”
Frigg not only retreated but took up a protective position in front of me, drawing her beamer, aiming at the protruding alien. This was procedure; it freed me to focus on comms. I tapped the earbud for transmission. “Cadet Ryuu here. We have a positive alien presence. Be warned, it’s a parasite and can hide inside human bodies. We have one. There could be more.”
Captain Tarique’s voice unfurled in my ear. “A containment team is coming with a cryo-box for transportation of the alien. Take no chances but keep observing. If it’s not dead, we don’t want it crawling off and hiding.”
What he means is, don’t let it take a new host.
“Copy.”
“Command out.”
I tapped the earbud to close the transmission, stepped diagonally forward, and stopped beside the girls. Gina used her beamer muzzle to point at the exposed parasite. “There, poking out from under it, that’s a piece of technology I don’t recognize.”
Frigg spoke without taking her eyes off the potential threat. “I don’t think it’s human tech, a medical implant, or something. The alien looks wired to it. Food supply, transmitter maybe?”
“Transmitter maybe or life support. Not food. It seems to have eaten most of the woman’s internal organs.”
“Eeeeww!” Frigg blanched, but wasn’t sick. I was proud of her.
“Is it still working?” Gina asked.
I shrugged, not seeing any blinking LEDs. “How would I know.”
“You’re the one with the weird quantum-field hearing,” Gina said.
I held up a hand for silence. I did hear something, low, faint, a crystal song in the air. I focused on where it came from. Darting sideways, I moved past Frigg. I still held the strut in my left hand. I slashed it into position in front of me as the quantum inharmonic spiked, a discordant song.
Here was the cause of the crash. Whatever else the aliens intended the device to do, it had also collapsed the quantum drive on the lunar transport.
The transports with their weaker engines were less heavily shielded, more vulnerable than the star cruisers. This oversight by the aliens had spoiled the landing on Earth, and probably other worlds since the big ships were always launched off-world, planets being serviced by transports. Our just-discovered enemies had sabotaged themselves from the beginning.
We got so damn lucky.
The alien dissonance faded. I saw movement and responded by reflex. My make-shift sword stabbed into the burned body on the left, the source of the sound I’d heard. A second alien appeared, stabbed through its small body. It writhed, tendrils flailing, trying to climb the strut to get to me.
Gina fired her beamer. She hit the alien—and the device wired to it. The device popped open, spilling blackened, wire-filled goo. The alien on the strut had stiffened, then relaxed. Maybe dead, maybe not.
“Gina, shoot again if it moves.” I looked right. “Frigg, don’t shoot again.” She’d yelped, startled, and had shot the wrong alien. “We should try not to ruin the specimens more than we have to.” I handed the hilt of the strut to Gina. “Here. You watch this one. Frigg will cover the other one, in case it needs to die again.”
Gina took the strut from me. I backed away between them, tapping my earbud. This disrupted the general chatter, giving me an open line to Captain Tarique. I reported. “Cadet Ryuu. Second alien located. All teams are to be cautioned; they can survive the crash. One attacked and had to be put down. Keep on your toes.”
“Captain Tarique, here. Message received. I’m on my way with the HAZMAT team. Make sure the area is secure. We don’t want more surprises.”
“Copy,” I said.
“Command out.”
I tapped my link, shutting down the transmission feature until needed. I was sure we’d be judged on this exercise, including comm discipline, and team work. Unfortunately, Frigg’s beaming of a dead target might cost us a point or two. Our personal AIs would have the full experience recorded for download by our teachers.
“You two stay on guard. I’ve been ordered to secure the perimeter for the incoming team.”
“Acknowledged,” Gina said.
“Ditto,” Frigg said.
I moved off, circling, then spiraling farther out. I looked at everything. Using a bit of branch to turn over loose objects not embe dded in the ground. I radio-flagged remains as I found them and kept on. This part of the area had little debris. I finished my sweeps and returned to the girls as a float truck arrived with Captain Tarique and the containment team. The vehicle’s quantum field hummed off-key as it rode a blue glow toward us, stopping a few feet away. The warbling field weakened and the truck settled to the ground.
Frigg stayed on position, weapon on the exposed alien protruding from the corpse. Gina carried the strut with the impaled alien, walking beside me as we went to meet the team. The truck doors opened and a back hatch lifted. That’s when I heard the discordant crystal song. It came from one of the members of the containment crew. His face looked slack and emotionless, far less animated than the other men. He contained an alien. I fired into his abdomen. We had orders: take no chances.
The man crumpled. The dissonant song ended.
Captain Tarique rushed me and seized my gun hand by the wrist, also gripping my elbow. I stood relaxed, convinced that if I resisted him, he’d break my arm. I allowed him to take my beamer. He stared hard into my face. “What the hell are you doing?” He didn’t seem to notice that Gina had her beamer pointed straight at him; a commanding officer is a commander officer, but your team is your life-support.
That will cost us a few more points.
“Captain Tarique, sir. The corpse I shot was a host of these aliens. Cut open the stomach and you find one inside, controlling him like a meat puppet.”
The Captain stared a moment, then called to the recovery team. “One of you, check it out.”
A few minutes later, after exploratory surgery, we heard disconcerted gasps. One of the men spoke in a shaky voice. “He’s right. An alien presence.”
Captain Tarique released me and barked orders. “Get the aliens packed away. The human corpses go too. I want all cadets to remain for debriefing.” The team did their job. The Captain interrupted them just once to study the box from the alien Frigg guarded. He said, “Make sure the alien tech gets to military R&D.” The girls joined me when they no longer custody of their aliens. They stood beside me, relaxed, not quite parade rest. We weren’t yet enlisted; we didn’t need to honor military protocol, just be respectful.
As the truck readied for departure, Captain Tarique came back. “Cadet Ryuu, your weapon.” He handed me back my beamer. “How did you know we had a ringer in our midst?”
“Unique personal ability, Sir. Those boxes of theirs put out an inharmonic tone that interferes with quantum fields. I…heard it.”
“I didn’t.” Captain Tarique shifted his stare to Frigg and Gina. “You two hear anything?”
They answered in unison. “No, Sir!”
The Captain’s gaze came back to me. This time, he had more than the ghost of a smile on his face. “Son, you have just been conscripted into the X-Corps Intelligence. Congratulations. You’re our new secret weapon.”
An engaging story with all the right science until the "aliens," appear. It seems like this is a chapter from a novel because the hero (the author's alter ego) ends up with some special ability that allows him to suddenly promoted into an elite intelligence group.
My apologies to those reading this. After many tries, I had to post this way. The page where I upload stories keeps stripping away the italics, the tabs, and paragraph spacing. I copy and pasted from both a word doc and from a text file. No difference. I edited using the tools supplied by authorden but the edits were also stripped in the upload process. If someone knows what the problem is, please advise.
Michael, just Michael, simply wanted to live life his own way. He had no intention of becoming a revolutionary. Yet destiny calls even the uncertain and the arrogant to duties beyond themselves. Hidden agendas, false friends, and his own confusion le
