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Andrea Speed
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Story Prompts! First Story is in! "IT" by Andrea Speed
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“What was what?” Raj replied. “Please restate the question.”
“The noise. What frequency did that come in on? What does Alwyn mean?”Daryl put a hand on Dan's neck and felt a pulse, which was strong but irratic, and then he saw …
What did he see? It was like his brain was trying to reject it even as it unfolded in front of his eyes. It was like Dan's skin … rippled, like a wave on the ocean, revealing greenish-brown overlapping scales that disappeared under a smothering wave of human skin. Maybe Daryl would have disbelieved it, except he was touching him, and he could feel his skin move beneath his hand, become something finer textured and strange before the human flesh reasserted itself.
Daryl drew his hand away and jumped back, surprised and not completely sure what he should feel. Shocked? Scared? Angry? His confusion deepened as he realized Raj had said, “There was no noise. And I am unclear what you mean by all win. Do you mean as in we all win? Otherwise, as a singular word, it isn't in my database.”
Dan sat up slowly and looked around, as if trying to remember where he was, and then stood up and turned. Face to face with him, Daryl was aware something had changed, but he wasn't sure what at first. Dan's face looked the same, but the sparkle in his eyes had taken on a sharper quality, like he had suddenly gained some dark knowledge. “Computers don't receive telepathic messages, Daryl.”
Daryl had backed up to the rear console, and could go no further. He nodded, even though supposedly there was no such thing as telepathy. “What are you?”
“Apparently I'm a Sylur sleeper agent, who's just been recalled to the homeworld. It's as much of a surprise to me as it is to you.”
“A sleeper agent?” This was crazy. Maybe he was suffering some kind of space madness, catching up to him all at once.
“Yes. We're embedded into alien societies to find out all we can about them from the inside.”
“But you didn't know that?”
“No. It's easier if we think we're one of them.” He cocked his head as if hearing something Daryl couldn't. “I don't think I figured out why the humans have sided with the Chorvas, though.”
“We haven't. Well, not really. We just don't know your people at all.”
Dan smiled in a sly way that made a chill run down Daryl’s spine. “And the way you’re going, you never will. But please let TASA know that we’re not hideous warmongers There’s just some things your people are not ready for.” Dan went to the door, but he paused there to look back at Daryl, and for a brief second, his flesh seemed to ripple, showing skin made of fine, overlapping green scales, a face with no nose and large, black liquid eyes. He stayed that way for a couple of seconds, where Daryl was frozen to the spot in hideous fascination. How could he change forms like that? Was he a shapeshifter? Supposedly those didn’t exist either, but if telepathy did, the old rules were off the table.
Dan suddenly became the human looking person he had known, and said, “There. Now you’re the only human to ever see a Sylur in their natural state. Don’t say I never gave you anything.” He then turned and left the deck, as Daryl slowly sank down the wall, sighing like he was deflating. Did that actually happen? Was that real?
For an untold time, he sat there, listening to his frantic heart, before Raj announced, “An escape pod off dock three has deployed. Dan is inside it. Was this authorized?”
“Don't worry about it,” he said. So that's how Dan was going to meet up with the mothership out there.
Would TASA believe him when he made his report? And what did it mean about the Sylur?
Daryl wished he knew. But maybe the most unbelievable thing was, he felt like he had lost a real friend.
Now that was good. Really, really good! Edge of the seat action and "But maybe the most unbelievable thing was, he felt like he had lost a real friend."? Yeah, exactly!
I want to say that this is a truncated version of the story, and I'm not sure I edited it quite right, but thank you. (See, I went all world build-y on it, and it's supposed to be a short story ... argh, long winded ...)
Nope. Perfect punch to it! And trust, way better editing than some published stuff I've read.
Didn't seem to have much of a gay theme. But, I enjoyed it anyway. The "difference factor" pretty much aligns it with this SF group.
Mod
Editing was well done then - just enough world buildy stuff so we weren't lost :) More of a snippet than a short story, though? It feels like there would be more...
Now that needs expanding - loved the story and hope you write more of the same.
I'm with Ilona. I loved the story, and would love to see an expanded version of it, and perhaps more set in this universe and with these characters. *hopeful*
Sometimes less is more. This story sparked my imagination and left me feeling satisfied. ;P
Love it. It reads like the beginning of a larger story. Moooaaar. ;)
I agree. It feels like there should be more. I like the world. Daryl should be able to see Dan again and find out more about the Sylar. It would be a fun world to explore.
please more..get them to meet
please...
Wow! well done! Definitely had a gay theme in my mind. OK, I started reading with that in my mind...but still...good on you. As a short story, it ended right where it should.
I would like human/xenomorph (any xenomorph, not necessarily Alien-like, just not anthropomorphic) interaction. Not too heavy on romance. Maybe the xenomorph should take human shape to get access to some strategic information? A spy story would be nice.
Without further ado, the story!
IT
“It’s not another drill, is it?” Daryl asked, as the screeching noise of the warning klaxon broke him out of sleep.
He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of his bunk. His bladder felt like it was balloon about to burst, so he padded to what passed for a bathroom and emptied it before Dan's voice came over the comm. “I don't think so. I think this is the real deal.”
Daryl pulled on a new coverall, one he hadn't slept in, and shook his head, even though they'd cut the internal cameras long ago. “No way. Someone's screwing with us out of boredom.”
The last time anything had happened, it was just that. The bored people of an interstellar ore freighter just trying to liven things up by playing with sensor shadows. What else was there to do out here, in the ass end of nowhere – or, as the charts would note, Sector 359-Omega. They were the final outpost of the Terran Alliance, the last stop on your voyage to nowhere, and it was insane to think that the Sylur or the Chorvas would ever venture this far into the nothing. For what purpose? But it wasn't supposed to make sense. The Terran Alliance Space Association had a budget, and by god, they were going to use it.
Daryl Holmstrom, third level technition, had been the longest assigned person to Outpost 359-Omega (referred to as “Checkpoint Omega” in what passed for TASA shorthand) at six and a half months. As a checkpoint it was low on amenities, and since it was in a stationary orbit of a Class III gas giant that had a standard numerical designation, but was called, for reasons lost to both time and Daryl, Manhattan. It was a featureless orb of deep blue, uninhabitable, a lone planet with a single brown giant to keep it company. There was no strategic value to this location, no valuable minerals or elements to mine, and it wasn't a shortcut to anywhere. It was a pointless boundary in borderless space.
Dan was the new kid, as far as Daryl was concerned, although at one months and three days, he'd lasted the longest of all the engineers sent to this checkpoint as his company. Most washed out after a week or two. Oh sure, they thought they could handle the solitude and the quiet – why else did personal VR rigs exist? - but they soon started going slowly but surely out of their minds. They always caught the next supply ship out. Daryl was glad the kid had lasted, because he liked him. He was low key, yet did his job without having to be ridden hard about it.
Daryl was one of the few unfortunates born on an overcrowded Terra, always full of noise and people. You had to fight for space and quiet, which was the main reason Daryl signed up for the TASA in the first place. Space was vast, and empty, and quiet. Not all of it, but for massive stretches that normally couldn't be crossed in a human lifetime, and Daryl wanted to finally dwell within that peace. He was so happy when his psychological profile said he would be ideal for long term, isolated missions.
He really didn't get all these kids who washed out. They had VR units, right? They could simulate being on crowded, filthy Terra. So why get cabin fever so quickly? All right, their jobs weren't the most stimulating, which probably added to the problem, but that couldn't be all of it. TASA was full of boring jobs, whether they were planet bound, ship bound, or floating in these little canned space stations.
Daryl walked the narrow, metal lined corridor until he came to the command center, the biggest room on the station. Dan was seated behind his physical (as opposed to virtual) console, and had activated the virtual screen, so the entire bulkhead was showing space around them. At first that was always disorienting, your brain screaming that you were in the open void and you were about to die, and the newbies always hated it, but Daryl liked it a lot. All that space. “What we got?” Dan hadn't enhanced the view, so he couldn't make out anything except blackness, and a bit of a side glow from Manhattan.
“It's an unidentified craft,” Dan said. “I've been hailing them, but I've gotten no response. I've been having the computer shift through all the frequencies, in case they're using an unusual one.”
Dan had the nut brown skin and slender build of a Terran, but he was actually from the Mars colony. He had a knife blade face and expressive eyes, which was an odd but appealing combination. The fact that Dan was eight years younger than him occasionally made Daryl a little depressed. He liked to think he was young, until presented with evidence to the contrary.
Daryl took the seat of his console, and said, “Raj, anything?
Raj, the station's computer, said, “Ship is unknown, made of an alloy that seemes to deflect most sensor signals.”
“Can you make any guesses?”
“Processing,” Raj replied. That meant it was running the subroutines that allowed it to make educated guesses. Speculation wasn't natural to this kind of low level AI.
“Can we magnify?” Daryl asked. “I can't see anything.”
“Working on it,” Dan replied.
Suddenly the scene on the wall pixeliated, space becoming an abstract blur before reforming itself into a clear picture of blackness, with some blue light at the edges suggesting light correction, so they could actually see something. It still took Daryl a minute to process just what it was.
It was a silver teardrop shaped … ship? Perhaps, because what else could it be? It was definitely not a natural object, not as he knew them. It looked like a drop of liquid mercury, hammered flat and hardened, then sent out into deep space. “Can you give me an approximation of scale, Raj?” Daryl asked. Mainly because, with the amplication and lack of background objects, he had no idea the scale of this thing.
“It appears to be the equivalent length of an A class starship,” Raj reported.
“Goddamn,” Daryl muttered. That was big. Not as big as an ore frieghter, but much bigger than he expected. “Any gusses on what it is, Raj?”
“It might be a Sylur spacecraft,” the computer replied in its even toned, gender neutral voice.
“Since when do they look like that?” Daryl asked.
“Our knowledge of Sylur craft is incomplete at best. Our knowledge of the Sylur is incomplete at best,” Raj said.
That was true. The Sylur were a super-secretive, some would say paranoid race, that pretty much no one ever saw. They had been engaged in a border dispute for years with the Chorvas, who were the ones that supplied TASA with what little knowledge they had about the Sylur. Supposedly they were hideous and war-like, but since that was coming from an enemy, you had to assume a certain amount of bias there. So what was true about them? If only they'd speak for themselves.
“What would the Sylur be doing out here?” Dan wondered.
“Good question. I've no idea. They're not powering weapons, are they Raj?”
“As far as I can tell, no.”
“What can you tell about them?” Daryl asked.
“Nothing,” Raj replied.
That was not comforting. Daryl rubbed his eyes, and tried to think. What could they do? There was no fighting back, as there were no real weapons on this station, just lasers to blast apart oversized debris. Then again, what reason could there be to attack them? They had no strategic value, no goods, no nothing. It would probably be a long time before anyone knew they were gone.
“Still trying to hail them?” Daryl asked.
“Yep, all frequencies, including ones the computer is just making up. No response yet.”
“Damn it.” He scratched his head. “Could there be another way they communicate?”
Dan turned to look at him, his dark eyes glittering with that strange light he'd seen a couple of times before. Daryl wondered if it was a personal thing, or maybe a Mars thing. He'd never been to Mars, so he didn't know. “Like, what do you mean?”
“I dunno, like maybe they communicate with light or something? If they communicate via smells, we're screwed, but what're they doin' out here if they communicate with scents? In space, no one can hear you sniff.”
Dan snickered. “Where do you get this stuff?”
“Lemme see if flashing the docking lights has any effect,” Daryl said, pushing a few buttons and taking manual control of the lights. He'd just started flashing them in a random pattern when suddenly, a booming voice filled the control room.
At first, Daryl didn't realize they were words; it just seemed like a frontal assault of noise that made his back teeth vibrate. But it was only after Dan had pitched forward and collapsed on top of his console that Daryl realized there had been words in that bludgeoning wave of noise. It sounded something like, “Alwyn activate, it's time to go home.” What type of word was alwyn? All win? No, that made even less sense in context.