The Euclidian: When Worlds Collide (uncut) Page 8

  They could have just sent the vehicle into space, but preferred not to lose a valuable piece of equipment. The security team surrounded the vehicle as it arrived. They opened the cargo doors and found the vehicle to be empty.

  “What’s the scanner say?” asked a guard.

  “A life form is present,” responded an operator.

  “Team, stay alert. I’ll run a manual scan to see what we can find.” The guard scanned the vehicle. “I’m picking up something behind this maintenance panel. I’m going to open it. Prepare for anything that might try to escape.” The guard flung the door open and found Pico shivering in a corner. “Kill it!”

  “Don’t shoot,” said Pico to them telepathically.

  “What the… How are you able to communicate with us?”

  “I’m able to scan minds and learn languages that way,” Pico responded.

  The guard contacted the bridge. “Captain, I have a situation here. We found a stowaway on one of the mining vehicles.”

  “So why didn’t you just throw it into space? Why bother me with this?” said the captain angrily.

  “It’s able to pick up languages by scanning minds. We could use that talent during interrogations.”

  “Smart thinking. Throw him in a holding bay for now and tell the interrogators about his capabilities.”

  “Aye, Captain,” said the security officer, feeling proud of herself. She addressed her detail. “Grab the creature and rerun the scan on the vehicle.”

  “It’s clear, sir,” responded the operator.

  “Okay, return the vehicle and place the creature in holding bay 147. Send an image with the stats to the interrogation team. Let’s make sure the rest of the vehicles are clean.”

  That began Pico’s captivity on the ship. He was thrown into a holding bay and heard the large metal door slam shut behind him.

  He scanned the room and saw lots of different creatures. They were all humanoids of some sort. Each had a cot just wide enough for one individual. The room had eating, cleansing, sanitary, and exercise areas.

  Pico took one of the small empty cots by a wall away from the others. He lay there and dreamt of his home that he would probably never see again.

  ***

  “So what do you think of your beautiful planet now that we have removed your rich atmosphere, the minerals from the ground, and your exotic wildlife?” said the captain to one of the Cerebran elders the Euclidians had captured.

  “What you’ve done is abominable,” he replied. “You’ve destroyed our planet and most of its inhabitants. There was no need for this genocide!”

  “You’re right about that. Even though you are tiny I might have found someone willing to pay a good price for you, maybe to clean sewer lines or chimneys or as a pet for an eccentric on some gaseous planet. But you pissed me off with that surprise attack. Trust me, someone here paid for that and now you will. I have a nice trick I want to show you. Navigator, have you calculated the planet’s final trajectory?”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Give me a view of the planet on the view screen,” Shisal ordered. “What do you think, gentlemen?”

  “That’s not right,” exclaimed an elder. “Why are the moons clumped behind our planet?”

  “Due to the fact that we removed the atmosphere from your planet and mined so much of it away, its orbit is decaying at an increasing rate toward your sun. Your moons are following behind, into oblivion. It will take about a week before your planet and its moons are consumed by the sun. Don’t worry, you will be alive until the end. I wouldn’t want you to miss the extinction of your planet and its civilization. I had a large cave set up for the five of you, full of your atmosphere and with refrigerant to keep you alive as long as possible so you can experience the destruction of your planet first-hand. I’d like to stay and watch, but you’re already boring me. This is payback for trying to push us into the sun.” Shisal gave orders. “Send them off and let’s get home so we can dump our cargo and get ready for our next mission.”

  The captain let out a sardonic laugh as he pulled out a live Plexus creature, his favorite snack. He smashed it with his fist and placed the dazed squeaking creature into his mouth, ending the culinary moment with a belch.

  ***

  Pico was restless. He was out of his environment and in a room full of strangers, to say the least about them. There were about two hundred cots of different sizes in the room, and about forty different species represented. Many were like Pico, the only one of their species in the room, and maybe the only one left anywhere. Pico had heard that there were cells housing thousands of the same species. He could only imagine that they were being sold as slaves. From the guards that threw him in there he could tell that most of the captives in his cell were going to zoos and museums.

  Pico discretely used his shaman stone to assimilate the languages of his fellow captives. One by one he learned their gruesome tales, though they were all very similar. The Euclidians had spied on their planets to learn about their resources and weaknesses. A ship then moved in to take down their defenses, many of their people were taken captive, the planet’s resources were harvested, and sometimes the Euclidians had destroyed the planet to prevent others from taking advantage of it. The Euclidians were often fulfilling requests for specimens by researchers, zoos, and rich collectors, or for military interrogation and exploitation for any special powers they seemed to exhibit. Now that Pico’s life had been spared he could assist with the types of interrogation that had led to his cellmates’ captivity.

  Pico tried to sleep and forget about his predicament, but he found himself suffocating. This was a new feeling for him. He wasn’t getting the nutrients he needed from the environment in the cell. He stood up and grabbed his chest. The pain was creeping over him. He could feel himself passing out.

  Pico’s normally light blue skin was turning green. He leaned against the wall to keep from falling over and felt a bit of relief. He released the wall and started to feel dizzy again. He put his hand back against the wall and again his dizziness eased. He used his hands to try to pull nutrients from the wall and it seemed to work. He placed his other hand on the wall and concentrated on pulling nutrients into his body. He began to feel normal again.

  His skin was now dark blue so he knew he was still missing something. He went to the nutrition troughs and placed a hand in each one until he felt himself being revived. His skin color eventually turned back to its normal light blue. This was going to take some getting used to. Unfortunately he couldn’t use his feet to soak up nutrients as he walked around. That inborn protection mechanism, which was great for walking around on his planet, would not be helpful in his current captive state.

  Pico went back to the wall and noticed that his handprints had been etched into the metal. He figured his captures wouldn’t be happy if he destroyed their wall – he had to be more inconspicuous about his feeding practices. He took a container of liquid from one of the troughs and lay under his cot, up against the wall.

  Healthy again for the time being, Pico used his shaman stone to mentally travel through the walls and investigate the ship. He could see, hear, and smell things as if he were physically there. Outside the nearest wall was a long hallway stretching in both directions. The hall was dimly lit by light-tubes, and dotted with what looked like communications devices, sensors, and several types of nozzles.

  Pico heard a quiet buzzing sound and turned his attention to see a small vehicle coming towards him. It had a couple of spinning antennae and tiny arms extending from its body. The arms were reaching out as if trying to find something.

  He floated down the hall to an intersection with an even longer hall that extended as far as he could see. In this hall the white tube lights were interspersed by an occasional blue light. Pico went to the nearest blue light and saw a door underneath it. He looked into the door and saw a containment cell much like his. He checked several other doors and found the same thing.

  Pico floated upward to see
if he could find a control center of some sorts and find a way off of the ship. He floated through several levels but found only more containment cells and storage areas.

  After rising twenty levels, Pico came to a corridor with light-tubes of colors he had not seen on other floors. He traveled down the corridor and stopped at a door under a green light. Peering through the door he saw what appeared to be crew quarters inhabited by a group of Euclidians. The area just beyond the door seemed to be a lounge. The room was brightly lit and scattered with assorted chairs.

  A crewmember was chatting over a video communications device with what appeared to be a loved one. On a nearby couch was a couple apparently being romantic: one sat on the other’s lap. The one on top shuddered for a while then collapsed onto the other. The genders of the Euclidians were more distinct from each other than those of the Cerebrans. There was really no visible way to distinguish a male Cerebran from a female, but carrying a newborn was strong evidence that a person was female.

  In an adjoining, darker room, Pico found four crewmembers playing some sort of three-dimensional battle game that moved animated soldiers across a make-believe landscape. They appeared to be able to feel what was happening to the animated soldiers. When one of them got shot a player would jerk back in his chair.

  Pico discovered what appeared to be sleeping areas, a dining room, and a bathing facility. The crewmembers obviously lived a lot better than Pico and the others confined in his cell.

  Pico wasn’t getting any information that would help him depart the ship so he drifted back to the corridor to see what else he could find. There were various colored lights along the corridor. Most were some shade of blue. Upon entering the rooms that were identified by the blue-colored lights, all he noticed were more crew quarters or facilities that supported the crew. One housed an enormous kitchen where all sorts of food was being prepared, none of it like what was served in his cell.

  Through another door was a large gymnasium where crewmembers exercised on different types of equipment, or sparred with each other, or merely stretched. An adjoining room was used for target practice with an astounding range of weapons. Pico became afraid just watching them being fired.

  Other rooms contained medical facilities, a library, and a relaxation center that looked quite enticing. He could sense that the people there were experiencing some sort of fake reality. It was obvious that this level was just for managing the needs of the crew so he drifted up again and found himself in the middle of a conversation that he found quite interesting.

  “We still have 52 hours before we make it back home. I’ve already scheduled the special replenishments that we’ll need to mine the next planets we will be visiting,” said an officer to a holographic image of the captain.

  “Retrieve our operative from the planet that we’ve been monitoring, and review our attack strategy one more time. I don’t want any more unexpected trips into a sun,” sneered the captain.

  “Aye, Captain. I’ll have the transport team contact her right away.”

  This is my opportunity, thought Pico. He had to find the transport room to see if he could use it somehow to get off the ship.

  “Transport room, this is Logistics.”

  Pico focused on the impending response, hoping to detect where in the ship it was coming from.

  “Transport here,” came a voice from a speaker in the control panel.

  Pico winced. Not enough time. He would need a longer response to detect the person at the other end of the conversation.

  “I need you to get a fix on our operative in system XAB1123.”

  “Roger that.”

  Still not enough time!

  “We need you to bring her in, as well as the others she’s working with.”

  “Will do.”

  Pico was exasperated by the short replies.

  “We’ll bring them up separately over the next couple of hours as we locate them.”

  Bingo! Pico let his mind target the sound patterns from the conversation and flowed to their origin. Before long, his projected self was next to the transport officer.

  “Ping the operative and let her know that she is needed,” said the transport officer to one of the operators. “Then locate the others that are working with her.”

  Pico looked around and saw several people in the room looking into monitors. They appeared to be windows into faraway places, as the images were obviously not of places on the ship. Some images were inside buildings, and others out of doors. Some were during the day and others at night. The operators seemed to be monitoring different species, but after the officer gave the order to locate the individuals they recalibrated their devices and the subsequent images appeared to be different locations on the same planet.

  “I’ve contacted our operative and she indicated that she is available for transport right away,” replied the transport operator.

  “Bring her up,” replied the officer. “Place her in the reception area we’ve designed for her planet’s environment. Tell Cobalt he’s needed to debrief her.”

  “Engaging now, sir. Cobalt, you are needed in reception XAB1123. Your operative will be there for final briefing.”

  “Cobalt here. I’m on my way.”

  His voice didn’t sound like the others. The tone was different, and there was something else that Pico couldn’t quite make out.

  “She’s coming in now,” said a different operator.

  Pico looked at the operator’s screen and could see the image of a room. It was completely different from the other rooms he’d seen on the ship. The furniture was smaller and of a completely different design. He could see a window that seemed to have a view of a mountain and a sun in the sky. That seemed odd since he was sure that it was a room near where they were. There were no tube lights in that room or anything obviously made of metal. The lights were round and glowed brightly. The walls were a pastel color and the floor was covered with some sort of cloth. On the wall was a picture of a being in a uniform; it was a species that he had not seen on the ship.

  Pico saw a spark appear in the center of the room and it quickly took the form of a creature from the inside out, as if it were an anatomy lesson. The materialization process completed and in the middle of the room stood a slender humanoid with long thin strands of material emanating from her head. She had light delicate skin much like Pico’s but beige in color. Her eyes were brown with black centers and white around the outside.

  Pico found her quite pleasant to look at. She stood there for a moment as if composing herself, then looked around, spotted a desk, and walked over and sat behind it. Soon afterward a door opened and a person walked in who was covered from head to toe. The person was the same height as the woman and also slender, but Pico could not tell anything more about the newcomer.

  “Ni hao, Li Xiao,” greeted the person.

  “Ni hao, Commander,” replied the woman. “Good to see you again.”

  This woman was from the planet Earth, located in the solar system that was the ship’s next destination once it was replenished at home. She had been recruited to provide intelligence on the planet. The Euclidians used several techniques to recruit spies from places they were planning to attack. They weren’t opposed to helping a collaborator as long as it got them the intelligence they needed. Gathering intelligence without collaborators took too much effort. To recruit Li Xiao they had used greed and revenge as motivation.

  The Euclidian intelligence team would scan a planet looking for its power center. They would then look for someone who was susceptible to manipulation, using an empath as part of the process. While empaths couldn’t directly communicate with beings at a distance, they could sense a person’s intentions, emotional state, and general character.

  After a quick scan of the Earth, the United Nations building seemed like the best place to find an operative. They slowly scanned each person and ran across Li Xiao as she was begrudgingly translating emails with assistance of the Bing Translator. It was laborious, m
enial work for someone who used to be a diplomatic translator for the Secretary General, as well as his lover.

  Li Xiao normally had contact with diplomats from several countries. Her mastery of several languages and Top Secret clearance gave her unfettered access to files and documents. She attended many state dinners where she had social access to diplomats, which made her even more valuable to the Euclidians. A few drinks and a warm smile was all it took to get even the most disciplined diplomat to let his guard down.

  One day the Secretary General had decided to upgrade to a younger model, a woman named Consuela, who treated Li Xiao with disdain. The new woman took Li Xiao’s job and became her new boss. Consuela had fun sending her to pick up coffee, sandwiches, and even her dry cleaning. She took every opportunity to let Li Xiao know that she was no longer top dog in the office.

  Li Xiao complained to the Secretary General and he had her moved to email translation. He threatened to fire her if she said another word about the matter. It was bad enough that her decrease in pay forced her to give up her Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park. If she lost her job she would have to go back to China in disgrace.

  The Euclidian intelligence team decided that she would be a perfect recruit. One night while she slept she was transported into a room on a spaceship that was designed to look like a hotel room. The transportation startled her awake, and she looked around see what looked to be a normal hotel room. A picture of Mao Zedong hung on a wall. Next to the picture was a large window with a view of Mount Huashan in the distance. The room was beautifully decorated with Chinese art from the Ming dynasty. A menu for the Huashan hotel was sitting on a desk near the window.

  As she was examining the room, the door opened and a man entered, covered from head to toe, including gloves on his hands and a thick stocking over his face. He spoke to her in Mandarin, her native tongue.

  “Xiao Xiang Hao, Li Xiao.”

  “Who are you, where am I, and what do you want?”

  “Forgive me if I frightened you Ms. Li. I assure you that you are in no danger. I am Zhao Zhang from the People’s Republic of China. I would like to offer you an opportunity to get your job back, have revenge on your ex-lover and his tart, and even make enough money on the side to keep you quite comfortable. If you are not interested I will have you sent back unharmed and you will never hear from us again.”