I started this a long time ago. Have added tiny bits to it at a time over the last few years...
The Visitor (Metroid fanfic)
- Thread starter Leila Hann
- Start date
-
- Tags
- metroid
- Created
- Status
- Ongoing
- Watchers
- 40
- Recent readers
- 0
- Threadmarks
- 2
-
Statistics (2 threadmarks, 4.2k words)
User Total Leila Hann 2 Threadmarks Reader mode
- Location
- Patriarchova
1.
The senior staff were gathered in the tiny cave that passed as a command center. The florescent lighting was dim; power was a scarce commodity, and using too much of it in one place was dangerous. Foreman Saul Mathys was staring at the dusty monitor screen, his heart beating faster than he could ever remember.
"You're positive it's a ship?"
Valeria nodded, her face grim. "I resolved the thermal scans before I called you. It's a small ship, about seven meters. Engines hot."
"How close?"
"Its touching down just outside our line of sight."
Saul's heart pounded against his ribs like a caged animal. The dry, dusty air of the complex suddenly seemed to be choking him. They had been found. Four years of hiding. Four years of doing nothing, hunkering in the caves for fear of detection. Four years in a rocky prison, and the pirates had found them.
"Wait a minute," said Jerome, stepping forward into what passed for the light, "Seven meters? That's barely the size of an attack skiff. Why would they send a raiding party in something too small to carry the loot?"
Saul looked at Valeria. Her expression was unchanged.
"What about an unmanned probe?"
"Seven meters? Too big for that."
"Maybe they're trying a new tactic," Saul said slowly, "hell, could be an old one. We've been out of the loop long enough."
Jerome shook his head. "Why use tricks on us? If they've detected us, they know we're barely armed."
Saul was about to answer when Dara came in from the comm station in the next cave.
"We've received a transmission," she said, "narrow band."
Every eyebrow in the room was raised.
"Have you isolated the source?"
Dara exhaled nervously. "There's a lot of interference. But…dad, I think it's the ship."
"What?" Valeria leaned over the sensor reading, "are you sure?"
Dara nodded emphatically. "They're looping the signal. Just sending it over and over."
Saul looked at his seventeen year old daughter. Since Kai had died of the rock mites, Dara was the closest thing they had to a communications specialist. She had spent every day for the last ten months poring over the receivers, trying to find some puny, flickering sign that someone was trying to contact them. Her eyes had sunken in her head, and she was drastically thinner than the smiling, twelve year old girl in their photos. Just like everyone else.
"Play it."
Valeria hit a few buttons on the touchscreen. There was a hiss of static, and...
"SEENAZ! OVKGUA!"
The mechanical, high pitched shriek stabbed into his ears like a pair of knives. It was a scream, a series of painful yelps, like fingers being dragged across a chalkboard and somehow formed into different sounds. Valeria winced and gritted her teeth. On the other side of the cave, Jerome put his hands to his ears. Dara just stared, open mouthed, as the sonic assault continued.
"MATHTA EENUMAN FAGHA! SANA EE SAMUS ARAN JEES! UYO NETHLA! UYO NATHLA CH'KIWA NAAZ!"
Slowly, Jerome lowered his hands. Saul felt tears building behind his eyes. For a very long, very cold moment, they all looked at the projector, and at each other.
"What the fuck was that?"
Jerome's eyes were locked onto the sensor screen, his face an ashen gray.
"It doesn't sound like space pirates," Valeria said quietly.
"It doesn't sound like ANYTHING!"
Saul disagreed with that assessment. It sounded like something. It sounded like a computer trying to play a song as its wires caught on fire. It sounded like a power drill boring into a frozen skull. But most of all, it sounded like a language.
"Any of that in the databanks?" Saul asked.
Dara shook her head. "The computer would have told us if it was."
"It…could be the interference," Valeria suggested hopefully, "maybe that could have distorted the sound?"
Jerome shook his head. "I've heard interference."
Saul exhaled very slowly. Not Galactic Federation; a G-Fed ship would have sent ID codes. Not space pirate; they wouldn't bother sending messages at all. There was no way the company had sent someone to rescue them; any civilian ship that came into this cluster wouldn't get closer than the first pirate patrol.
He looked at the screen. The small ship was on the ground, engines cooling. He looked back over his shoulder into the chamber Dara had entered from; the flashing LED's told him that the signal was still looping.
"Let's check it out."
Jerome gave him a sideways look.
"You sure we want to do that, foreman?"
Saul shook his head. "They want to talk. If we transmit back, we put even more noise out there for the pirates to pick up. At the very least, we need to get them to quiet down."
He looked back at Dara. Her face was as scared as the rest of theirs now.
"Jerome, get Rena and Joss and meet me in the airlock. Dara, find your mom and brother and tell them to get everyone else down below."
…
Sunset on the planet GB-91 was purple. Not the deep, reddish purple that sometimes happened on Earth. More radioactive, almost pink and blue. It fell over the endless piles of gray rock and sprawled across the flat, hard stone underfoot. Barren. That was the word for this planet. Gray rock and smoky gray sky, broken only by the searing sunlight. The carbon monoxide was supposed to have been filtered out of the atmosphere years ago. But, despite having all the equipment stored away in the caves, they hadn't done any terraforming in four years. You could inoculate yourself against carbon monoxide for a few hours, but since their supply of the drug was low, gas masks were a better choice. Saul breathed in through his filter; the mechanical wheezing sound was comforting, somehow. The other three were wearing similar masks, and padded jumpsuits that offered some protection from avalanches and rock mites at the expense of catching the setting sun's heat and making them sweat like pigs. Beside the rest of the group, Joss was sitting in the driver seat of the landrover.
"Ship is over the hills. We'll go through Kai's Pass and come from the north."
"You sure its safe to take the rover this far?"
"Safer than leaving that ship where they can see it from orbit."
"Right."
The vehicle made its way, as silently as their jerry-rigged muffler allowed, around the grayish crags and through the field of violet sun. Black shadows were growing from behind the rocks, painting a forest of black stripes across the ground. Some tough, grayish-green lichen grew on the undersides of a few of the larger boulders; as far as the colonists had seen, this was the foundation of GB-91's only native ecosystem. The rest of the food web consisted of microbes, some tiny fungus-like growths, a few underground chitinous bulbs that might as well have been rocks for all the activity they conducted, and a half dozen species of arthropod. None of these organisms were bigger than a fingernail, aside from the bulbs, and you could only find them under one out of every three hundred rocks. There was plenty of water frozen under the surface, enough to turn these mountains into a green paradise. Melting it would be suicide, though; the instant anything out of the ordinary happened on GB-91, the pirates would come to investigate.
The rover came over the last ridge, and there, clinging to a small, rocky shelf, was the ship.
"The hell kind of ship is that?"
Silhouetted against the dying, purple sun, the vessel clung to the ground like a sea creature sticking to a rock. It was a dark, red orange in color, its shape like an elongated disk. At what Saul assumed was the front, the orangish hull was broken by a cockpit canopy. It was thin, V-shaped, and a glass bottle shade of green.
Without being told, Joss backed the rover up, putting it behind the ridge and out of the ship's line of sight.
"Wait in the rover," said Saul, "gun it if we're not back in ten."
Joss bobbed his helmet. The other three picked up their GAUSS rifles and climbed out.
Climbing over the rocks, Saul looked again at the ship. The setting sun cast a thick shadow over the half facing them, tinting the canopy and even darker green. No lights. No movement. No sign of activity. Saul cast his mind around, thinking of every style and type of ship he had seen pictures of. Nothing. From what he could see, the design wasn't even practical. Engine pods? Sensor towers? Where was everything? It almost looked more like an unmanned probe than a ship, but that was definitely a cockpit canopy.
Using his rifle as a cane, he climbed, slowly, down the other side of the ridge, flanked by the other two. The ship showed no sign of responding. Panting in his thick jumpsuit and mask, Saul turned to Jerome, and saw someone else standing behind him.
"BEHIND YOU!"
Jerome and Rena snapped around, weapons clutched and raised.
When they saw what Saul had warned them of, however, they felt their grip on their weapons weaken.
Easily two meters tall, a humanoid colossus of dark orange metal plates and bands stood out against the sun, the purple sunset dying the thing a whole spectrum of bloody reds and pinks. A domelike helmet, bearing a V-shaped visor the same color as the ship's canopy, was flanked by a pair of enormous, spherical shoulder pads, much larger than what an engineer would think necessary. The thing's metal torso was somehow undulating, pulsating as if the metal was inexplicably alive and breathing, the sun gleaming off of its plates as they contracted and relaxed. Most striking of all was the visitor's right forearm, or rather, its lack thereof. Instead of a hand, its right arm ended in a gray metal tube; it had to be a gun.
A power suit, Saul thought, some kind of powered armor. But why the shoulderpads? And why is it pulsating like that?
The armored figure did not move. However, Saul noticed a dull, green glow beginning to shine from its visor, like an optic scanner being brought online. Its armcannon was pointed at the ground.
Jerome was the first to pluck up his courage.
"This is Brenstrom Colony, terraforming division. Could you identify?"
His voice fell against the surrounding crags without leaving an echo. The armored figure just stood there, its visor glowing an eerie green.
"We're sorry about the guns," Saul spoke next, lowering his weapon slightly, "but this whole region is overrun by space pirates. Do you need assistance?"
The figure took a step closer, armgun still pointed carefully at the ground. Was it just him, or did the air get colder when it approached?
"What language do you speak?" Saul tried again. There was no guarantee that this creature spoke any human languages, but Saul had nowhere else to start.
The figure was silent and still. The glow from the visor subsided, leaving it a dull, glassy green again.
And then, like melting phosphorous, the armor began to disappear. A soft, white glow emerged from the figure, casting a clear radiance over the rocks and chasing their shadows back against the sun. At first, Saul thought the suit was sublimating, but after a second he could see that that wasn't it. It was more like it was…recoiling…folding back up into itself and compressing its matter into thin air, leaving nothing but light in its wake. He felt his grip tighten around his rifle as the light grew brighter.
And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the light was gone. Where the armored giant had once stood, there was now a teenaged girl in a skintight blue jumpsuit. The air felt warmer again.
There was a long, heavy, and very silent pause. Then, the girl opened her mouth and spoke in a high pitched, screeching whisper.
"Chana ee samus aran jees. Oinzmua ri."
Her mouth moved in a strange way when she spoke. Her lips and jaw seemed to move very little, while behind them her tongue twisted like a live snake…it almost looked impossible for her to be pronouncing the syllables that she was. The sound was unpleasant, but nowhere near the high, robotic scream that they had heard over the comm.
Saul looked at Jerome and Rena. After a wordless conference, they all lowered their guns.
"Oinzmua ri," the girl repeated as she took a few steps closer, "speetna."
Her eyes were a bright, sapphire blue, like well polished marbles. The rest of her face was unreadable, but the emotion in those eyes was unmistakable.
Desperate, almost begging, hope.
Saul stepped up to her, careful not to make any motions that could be seen as threatening. Her eyes attached themselves to his, pleading with him for something. For a moment, she looked defensive, as if about to run away or fly at him, but she kept her composure. The girl didn't seem to be having any trouble with the air; Saul decided she must have innoculated herself before leaving her ship.
"I'm Saul Mathys," he pointed to himself before gesturing to the others, "This is Jerome Harker, and Rena Meng."
The girl raised one hand and pointed all five fingers toward her own chest. "Iwak t'nasi jees."
"Iwak…tenasi jiss?" asked Rena, pointing at the girl "your name is Iwak Tenasi Jiss?"
The girl looked confused.
"Here…Iwak…" said Saul, speaking very slowly, "we need to go back to our home. Do you want to come?"
He pointed over the ridge in the direction they had come from.
The girl studied him for a moment, and then made a strange gesture that involved crossing her arms.
"Suneesa."
She turned around and glanced back at her ship. Immediately, it disappeared from sight, its shadow vanishing from the rocky earth.
"That's one hell of a cloak," murmured Rena.
Jerome looked at the other two. "Think maybe that disappearing suit was also an illusion?"
Saul nodded. "I can't think of anything else to explain it. Anyway, I guess we don't need to worry about the pirates seeing her ship."
Just then, Saul's world started spinning. He staggered. Dropping his gun, he put both hands to his mask, trying to grab onto his head and stop the sky from shaking, but the spinning went on. A feeling of nausea rose in his gut as he started gasping for breath.
"Saul!" Jerome ran forward to help hold him up, but before he could grab him the dizziness and nausea were gone. Straightening himself up, Saul blinked in confusion.
"I'm okay. Must be the heat, or something."
The girl was staring at him intently.
The senior staff were gathered in the tiny cave that passed as a command center. The florescent lighting was dim; power was a scarce commodity, and using too much of it in one place was dangerous. Foreman Saul Mathys was staring at the dusty monitor screen, his heart beating faster than he could ever remember.
"You're positive it's a ship?"
Valeria nodded, her face grim. "I resolved the thermal scans before I called you. It's a small ship, about seven meters. Engines hot."
"How close?"
"Its touching down just outside our line of sight."
Saul's heart pounded against his ribs like a caged animal. The dry, dusty air of the complex suddenly seemed to be choking him. They had been found. Four years of hiding. Four years of doing nothing, hunkering in the caves for fear of detection. Four years in a rocky prison, and the pirates had found them.
"Wait a minute," said Jerome, stepping forward into what passed for the light, "Seven meters? That's barely the size of an attack skiff. Why would they send a raiding party in something too small to carry the loot?"
Saul looked at Valeria. Her expression was unchanged.
"What about an unmanned probe?"
"Seven meters? Too big for that."
"Maybe they're trying a new tactic," Saul said slowly, "hell, could be an old one. We've been out of the loop long enough."
Jerome shook his head. "Why use tricks on us? If they've detected us, they know we're barely armed."
Saul was about to answer when Dara came in from the comm station in the next cave.
"We've received a transmission," she said, "narrow band."
Every eyebrow in the room was raised.
"Have you isolated the source?"
Dara exhaled nervously. "There's a lot of interference. But…dad, I think it's the ship."
"What?" Valeria leaned over the sensor reading, "are you sure?"
Dara nodded emphatically. "They're looping the signal. Just sending it over and over."
Saul looked at his seventeen year old daughter. Since Kai had died of the rock mites, Dara was the closest thing they had to a communications specialist. She had spent every day for the last ten months poring over the receivers, trying to find some puny, flickering sign that someone was trying to contact them. Her eyes had sunken in her head, and she was drastically thinner than the smiling, twelve year old girl in their photos. Just like everyone else.
"Play it."
Valeria hit a few buttons on the touchscreen. There was a hiss of static, and...
"SEENAZ! OVKGUA!"
The mechanical, high pitched shriek stabbed into his ears like a pair of knives. It was a scream, a series of painful yelps, like fingers being dragged across a chalkboard and somehow formed into different sounds. Valeria winced and gritted her teeth. On the other side of the cave, Jerome put his hands to his ears. Dara just stared, open mouthed, as the sonic assault continued.
"MATHTA EENUMAN FAGHA! SANA EE SAMUS ARAN JEES! UYO NETHLA! UYO NATHLA CH'KIWA NAAZ!"
Slowly, Jerome lowered his hands. Saul felt tears building behind his eyes. For a very long, very cold moment, they all looked at the projector, and at each other.
"What the fuck was that?"
Jerome's eyes were locked onto the sensor screen, his face an ashen gray.
"It doesn't sound like space pirates," Valeria said quietly.
"It doesn't sound like ANYTHING!"
Saul disagreed with that assessment. It sounded like something. It sounded like a computer trying to play a song as its wires caught on fire. It sounded like a power drill boring into a frozen skull. But most of all, it sounded like a language.
"Any of that in the databanks?" Saul asked.
Dara shook her head. "The computer would have told us if it was."
"It…could be the interference," Valeria suggested hopefully, "maybe that could have distorted the sound?"
Jerome shook his head. "I've heard interference."
Saul exhaled very slowly. Not Galactic Federation; a G-Fed ship would have sent ID codes. Not space pirate; they wouldn't bother sending messages at all. There was no way the company had sent someone to rescue them; any civilian ship that came into this cluster wouldn't get closer than the first pirate patrol.
He looked at the screen. The small ship was on the ground, engines cooling. He looked back over his shoulder into the chamber Dara had entered from; the flashing LED's told him that the signal was still looping.
"Let's check it out."
Jerome gave him a sideways look.
"You sure we want to do that, foreman?"
Saul shook his head. "They want to talk. If we transmit back, we put even more noise out there for the pirates to pick up. At the very least, we need to get them to quiet down."
He looked back at Dara. Her face was as scared as the rest of theirs now.
"Jerome, get Rena and Joss and meet me in the airlock. Dara, find your mom and brother and tell them to get everyone else down below."
…
Sunset on the planet GB-91 was purple. Not the deep, reddish purple that sometimes happened on Earth. More radioactive, almost pink and blue. It fell over the endless piles of gray rock and sprawled across the flat, hard stone underfoot. Barren. That was the word for this planet. Gray rock and smoky gray sky, broken only by the searing sunlight. The carbon monoxide was supposed to have been filtered out of the atmosphere years ago. But, despite having all the equipment stored away in the caves, they hadn't done any terraforming in four years. You could inoculate yourself against carbon monoxide for a few hours, but since their supply of the drug was low, gas masks were a better choice. Saul breathed in through his filter; the mechanical wheezing sound was comforting, somehow. The other three were wearing similar masks, and padded jumpsuits that offered some protection from avalanches and rock mites at the expense of catching the setting sun's heat and making them sweat like pigs. Beside the rest of the group, Joss was sitting in the driver seat of the landrover.
"Ship is over the hills. We'll go through Kai's Pass and come from the north."
"You sure its safe to take the rover this far?"
"Safer than leaving that ship where they can see it from orbit."
"Right."
The vehicle made its way, as silently as their jerry-rigged muffler allowed, around the grayish crags and through the field of violet sun. Black shadows were growing from behind the rocks, painting a forest of black stripes across the ground. Some tough, grayish-green lichen grew on the undersides of a few of the larger boulders; as far as the colonists had seen, this was the foundation of GB-91's only native ecosystem. The rest of the food web consisted of microbes, some tiny fungus-like growths, a few underground chitinous bulbs that might as well have been rocks for all the activity they conducted, and a half dozen species of arthropod. None of these organisms were bigger than a fingernail, aside from the bulbs, and you could only find them under one out of every three hundred rocks. There was plenty of water frozen under the surface, enough to turn these mountains into a green paradise. Melting it would be suicide, though; the instant anything out of the ordinary happened on GB-91, the pirates would come to investigate.
The rover came over the last ridge, and there, clinging to a small, rocky shelf, was the ship.
"The hell kind of ship is that?"
Silhouetted against the dying, purple sun, the vessel clung to the ground like a sea creature sticking to a rock. It was a dark, red orange in color, its shape like an elongated disk. At what Saul assumed was the front, the orangish hull was broken by a cockpit canopy. It was thin, V-shaped, and a glass bottle shade of green.
Without being told, Joss backed the rover up, putting it behind the ridge and out of the ship's line of sight.
"Wait in the rover," said Saul, "gun it if we're not back in ten."
Joss bobbed his helmet. The other three picked up their GAUSS rifles and climbed out.
Climbing over the rocks, Saul looked again at the ship. The setting sun cast a thick shadow over the half facing them, tinting the canopy and even darker green. No lights. No movement. No sign of activity. Saul cast his mind around, thinking of every style and type of ship he had seen pictures of. Nothing. From what he could see, the design wasn't even practical. Engine pods? Sensor towers? Where was everything? It almost looked more like an unmanned probe than a ship, but that was definitely a cockpit canopy.
Using his rifle as a cane, he climbed, slowly, down the other side of the ridge, flanked by the other two. The ship showed no sign of responding. Panting in his thick jumpsuit and mask, Saul turned to Jerome, and saw someone else standing behind him.
"BEHIND YOU!"
Jerome and Rena snapped around, weapons clutched and raised.
When they saw what Saul had warned them of, however, they felt their grip on their weapons weaken.
Easily two meters tall, a humanoid colossus of dark orange metal plates and bands stood out against the sun, the purple sunset dying the thing a whole spectrum of bloody reds and pinks. A domelike helmet, bearing a V-shaped visor the same color as the ship's canopy, was flanked by a pair of enormous, spherical shoulder pads, much larger than what an engineer would think necessary. The thing's metal torso was somehow undulating, pulsating as if the metal was inexplicably alive and breathing, the sun gleaming off of its plates as they contracted and relaxed. Most striking of all was the visitor's right forearm, or rather, its lack thereof. Instead of a hand, its right arm ended in a gray metal tube; it had to be a gun.
A power suit, Saul thought, some kind of powered armor. But why the shoulderpads? And why is it pulsating like that?
The armored figure did not move. However, Saul noticed a dull, green glow beginning to shine from its visor, like an optic scanner being brought online. Its armcannon was pointed at the ground.
Jerome was the first to pluck up his courage.
"This is Brenstrom Colony, terraforming division. Could you identify?"
His voice fell against the surrounding crags without leaving an echo. The armored figure just stood there, its visor glowing an eerie green.
"We're sorry about the guns," Saul spoke next, lowering his weapon slightly, "but this whole region is overrun by space pirates. Do you need assistance?"
The figure took a step closer, armgun still pointed carefully at the ground. Was it just him, or did the air get colder when it approached?
"What language do you speak?" Saul tried again. There was no guarantee that this creature spoke any human languages, but Saul had nowhere else to start.
The figure was silent and still. The glow from the visor subsided, leaving it a dull, glassy green again.
And then, like melting phosphorous, the armor began to disappear. A soft, white glow emerged from the figure, casting a clear radiance over the rocks and chasing their shadows back against the sun. At first, Saul thought the suit was sublimating, but after a second he could see that that wasn't it. It was more like it was…recoiling…folding back up into itself and compressing its matter into thin air, leaving nothing but light in its wake. He felt his grip tighten around his rifle as the light grew brighter.
And then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the light was gone. Where the armored giant had once stood, there was now a teenaged girl in a skintight blue jumpsuit. The air felt warmer again.
There was a long, heavy, and very silent pause. Then, the girl opened her mouth and spoke in a high pitched, screeching whisper.
"Chana ee samus aran jees. Oinzmua ri."
Her mouth moved in a strange way when she spoke. Her lips and jaw seemed to move very little, while behind them her tongue twisted like a live snake…it almost looked impossible for her to be pronouncing the syllables that she was. The sound was unpleasant, but nowhere near the high, robotic scream that they had heard over the comm.
Saul looked at Jerome and Rena. After a wordless conference, they all lowered their guns.
"Oinzmua ri," the girl repeated as she took a few steps closer, "speetna."
Her eyes were a bright, sapphire blue, like well polished marbles. The rest of her face was unreadable, but the emotion in those eyes was unmistakable.
Desperate, almost begging, hope.
Saul stepped up to her, careful not to make any motions that could be seen as threatening. Her eyes attached themselves to his, pleading with him for something. For a moment, she looked defensive, as if about to run away or fly at him, but she kept her composure. The girl didn't seem to be having any trouble with the air; Saul decided she must have innoculated herself before leaving her ship.
"I'm Saul Mathys," he pointed to himself before gesturing to the others, "This is Jerome Harker, and Rena Meng."
The girl raised one hand and pointed all five fingers toward her own chest. "Iwak t'nasi jees."
"Iwak…tenasi jiss?" asked Rena, pointing at the girl "your name is Iwak Tenasi Jiss?"
The girl looked confused.
"Here…Iwak…" said Saul, speaking very slowly, "we need to go back to our home. Do you want to come?"
He pointed over the ridge in the direction they had come from.
The girl studied him for a moment, and then made a strange gesture that involved crossing her arms.
"Suneesa."
She turned around and glanced back at her ship. Immediately, it disappeared from sight, its shadow vanishing from the rocky earth.
"That's one hell of a cloak," murmured Rena.
Jerome looked at the other two. "Think maybe that disappearing suit was also an illusion?"
Saul nodded. "I can't think of anything else to explain it. Anyway, I guess we don't need to worry about the pirates seeing her ship."
Just then, Saul's world started spinning. He staggered. Dropping his gun, he put both hands to his mask, trying to grab onto his head and stop the sky from shaking, but the spinning went on. A feeling of nausea rose in his gut as he started gasping for breath.
"Saul!" Jerome ran forward to help hold him up, but before he could grab him the dizziness and nausea were gone. Straightening himself up, Saul blinked in confusion.
"I'm okay. Must be the heat, or something."
The girl was staring at him intently.
- Location
- Patriarchova
2.
The hospital unit was one of the few things left intact from the colony ship. To keep it safe, they had transplanted the entire room into one of the caves, including the white plastic wall and ceiling panels and the air-sterilization screens that hopefully still worked. Saul laid on the all-purpose surgical bed, tapping his fingers impatiently as he stared up at the fluorescent. "I told you, Layla," he said, "I'm fine."
She clucked her tongue at him. "You always say that."
"Have I been wrong?"
"Not that your selective memory would recall. Your blood chemistry is fine. No dehydration symptoms. Neural scans...hold on a second."
Layla put her fingertips on the hologram, adjusting it in the air above the projector. Her skin was darker and thicker than that of the woman Saul had committed his life to twenty years ago. Her face was sun-dried to leather, and wrinkles had descended a decade early on her cheeks and neck. Saul had noticed the change in himself in the bathroom mirror about two years ago, and seen it on Layla a month later. What have we done to ourselves by coming here?
"This..." she pressed a button and pulled up a text display to go with the part of the hologram she had highlighted, "...this is strange. There's signs of recent overstimulation in your prefrontal lobe. Enough that it gave your entire central nervous system a shock. Its actually most consistent with use of nootropics."
Saul raised his eyebrows. "Smart drugs? Where the hell would I have taken those?"
She shook her head, running one spectrum sweep after another over the hologram. "You haven't. At least, not as far as the blood test can say. I could perform a spinal tap, but I-"
"No spinal taps," commanded Saul.
Layla rolled her eyes at him. "Doctor's orders don't fall in the command structure, foreman. I was going to say I strongly suspect the tap wouldn't find anything, but now that you've pissed me off..."
She pressed a few more buttons, and the holoprojector turned off. A second later, the robot arms withdrew their sensors from Saul's body and folded back under the bed. Saul got to his feet and took Layla in his arms. She hugged him back.
"You really scared me, Saul. I'm going to have to run repeat tests for a week or so to make sure. Don't leave the base again until I'm sure."
"Of course." Hollow words from both of them. Brenstrom was understaffed and falling apart. If the hyperspace sensors or moisture collection system broke down, there were only so many able bodied people who could climb out of the caves and fix them. If it had to be Saul, then it would have to be Saul.
She withdrew from his embrace. "The visitor should be through decon by now."
"She already cleared," Saul explained, "I have Rena and Jerome standing guard."
Layla looked at him quizzically. "You think she's dangerous?"
Saul looked from his wife to the empty white walls that kept up the illusion that this room was a safe place. He thought back to the conversation on the surface, just before he had the episode. Had something changed in the way the girl was looking at him? Had he just imagined that...surge...in her eyes the moment before he lost his footing?
"I don't know what to think. Maybe your examination will help. Just do me a favor, and don't be alone with her."
...
When Dara came to the antechamber, Jerome and Lena were leaning against the prefabbed metal wall, GAUSS rifles clutched loosely in their hands. She was about to ask them why their guns were still out when she saw the visitor standing, perfectly straight, in the middle of the room. Dara's eyes widened. Her father's transmission said that there was one human passenger, but Dara had been expecting a traumatized fighter pilot or a half-starved freighter crewman. The teenaged girl - no more than a year or two older than Dara - looked not only healthy, but strong.
"Hello?" She said.
The visitor - Iwak, her name apparently was - looked at her. There was something strange about the older girl's eyes. They were sharp and clear, but that wasn't it. Dara couldn't quite put her finger on it. The visitor didn't speak. Dara looked from Iwak to the guards. Lena shook her head.
"We don't know what language she speaks," Jerome offered.
Dara looked back at the girl. She was still standing straight, watching the conversation with an unreadable expression.
"You couldn't even offer her a chair?" Dara asked, gesturing at the tattered lounge chair bolted into the wall beside the hospital door.
"We did." Said Jerome.
"She just looked at us weird and said a bunch of...whatever she speaks." Rena explained.
Dara stepped further into the room and tried again. "Hi. My name is Dara." She pointed to herself.
Iwak took a few steps closer, stopping just a meter from Dara. The visitor was a tall girl, probably a full head above Dara. As Dara shrank back, the stranger began moving in a circle around her, as if trying to get a look from all directions.
"Hey! Um...are you checking me out?"
"She did that to us in decon," Jerome said as the visitor kept circling Dara, "really weird shit. Where she was brought up I don't even."
Iwak stopped in front of Dara again and looked her in the eyes. The stranger's face was curious, inquiring, and some other emotion that Dara couldn't quite place. Not lust though. Dara breathed a sigh of relief. Thank god for that.
"Ee nathla mara jees," the visitor said. Dara tensed a little at the sound of her voice. It was nowhere near as horrible as the synthesized scream on the radio, but still unpleasantly shrill. It didn't sound right coming from the mouth of a human.
Dara glanced quickly back at the guards. Rena shrugged. Jerome shook his head. She looked back at the visitor, whose expression hadn't changed.
"I'm sorry, I can't understand you." The visitor seemed to be listening carefully, lips slightly parsed. Trying to memorize the words I use? Probably. Dara still had her attention. She decided to repeat it more slowly. "I am sorry. I do not understand." She shrugged and made an exaggerated, confused expression.
The visitor pursed her lips further and looked down at the steel floor, golden bangs falling over her face. This must be as frustrating for her as it is for me, Dara thought, probably worse. What if she's been trying to ask us for help? What if she's trying to say she's hungry, or thirsty, or tired?
"Are you hungry?" Dara asked. She rubbed her stomach, and pantomimed eating something. The visitor's eyes followed her hands as she acted it out, like a cat watching a piece of string. Then, suddenly, her eyes lit up. Iwak clicked her jaws together, and then copied Dara's gesture very enthusiastically.
"Ia! Iwak tenasi jees! Duom farheel maan."
Dara smiled. For some reason, the world suddenly seemed lighter.
"She's hungry," Dara repeated to the watching guards, "Iwak Tenasi Jees is her full name, right? I'll bet her language doesn't have personal pronouns." She turned back to Iwak. "Here, I'll grab you something."
She reached out to pat Iwak on the arm. Before she could touch her, Iwak jumped back into a combat stance, pulling her arm far out of Dara's reach. Her eyes flashed with shock for a moment, and then turned to cold mistrust as they bored into Dara's. Dara took two big steps back. Rena started to raise her GAUSS rifle.
"Oh! I...I'm sorry. I won't do that again." She raised her hands submissively in front of her. Dara felt her face burning. I'm so stupid. Touching is taboo in tons of cultures. How could I be such an idiot?
Iwak looked from Dara's eyes to her hands, and then back. She blinked. Twice. Then she relaxed her posture and lowered her head. The visitor's hands curled into fists, but she didn't look angry anymore. More frustrated, or ashamed. Across the room, Rena had lowered her weapon again, but she and Jerome were both watching very closely, ready to aim again.
"Why don't you leave her alone for now," Rena said curtly. Dara knew that tone of voice, and could practically hear the unspoken word at the end. Child.
She turned to leave for the cafeteria, feeling very small and very pathetic. Some communications officer I turned out to be. Before she could leave, she felt a gentle slap on her arm.
She turned around. Iwak was standing closer again, looking at her almost desperately.
Dara smiled, and patted Iwak's arm again. This time she allowed it, reacting with only the slightest flinch. Why did everything feel so good again? Dara remembered learning somewhere that the act of smiling actually made you happy, something about reciprocal neurons or endorphin triggers. Has it really been so long since I've smiled?
"Its okay, Iwak," she said, "don't worry about it."
The visitor raised her eyebrows. "Iwak?" The question mark was audible.
Dara reached out (slowly) and pointed at the visitor's chest. "Iwak. Iwak Tenasi Jis. Right?"
The blonde girl looked confused. Then realization struck her, and just for a moment, the corners of her mouth curved upward. The ghost of a smile. She raised her right hand and pointed all the fingers toward her own head.
"Samus Aran."
Dara thought for a moment. Then she copied the gesture, forming her fingers into a spearpoint and raising it to her own temple. "Dara Mathys."
The visitor clicked her jaws. Then she pointed at Dara. "Dara."
Dara copied her, minus the jaw thing. "Samus."
Samus patted Dara's arm.
"Well how about that," Jerome said knudging Rena in the side. Rena looked away.
"Let me get those rations," Dara said. She was grinning now.
The hospital unit was one of the few things left intact from the colony ship. To keep it safe, they had transplanted the entire room into one of the caves, including the white plastic wall and ceiling panels and the air-sterilization screens that hopefully still worked. Saul laid on the all-purpose surgical bed, tapping his fingers impatiently as he stared up at the fluorescent. "I told you, Layla," he said, "I'm fine."
She clucked her tongue at him. "You always say that."
"Have I been wrong?"
"Not that your selective memory would recall. Your blood chemistry is fine. No dehydration symptoms. Neural scans...hold on a second."
Layla put her fingertips on the hologram, adjusting it in the air above the projector. Her skin was darker and thicker than that of the woman Saul had committed his life to twenty years ago. Her face was sun-dried to leather, and wrinkles had descended a decade early on her cheeks and neck. Saul had noticed the change in himself in the bathroom mirror about two years ago, and seen it on Layla a month later. What have we done to ourselves by coming here?
"This..." she pressed a button and pulled up a text display to go with the part of the hologram she had highlighted, "...this is strange. There's signs of recent overstimulation in your prefrontal lobe. Enough that it gave your entire central nervous system a shock. Its actually most consistent with use of nootropics."
Saul raised his eyebrows. "Smart drugs? Where the hell would I have taken those?"
She shook her head, running one spectrum sweep after another over the hologram. "You haven't. At least, not as far as the blood test can say. I could perform a spinal tap, but I-"
"No spinal taps," commanded Saul.
Layla rolled her eyes at him. "Doctor's orders don't fall in the command structure, foreman. I was going to say I strongly suspect the tap wouldn't find anything, but now that you've pissed me off..."
She pressed a few more buttons, and the holoprojector turned off. A second later, the robot arms withdrew their sensors from Saul's body and folded back under the bed. Saul got to his feet and took Layla in his arms. She hugged him back.
"You really scared me, Saul. I'm going to have to run repeat tests for a week or so to make sure. Don't leave the base again until I'm sure."
"Of course." Hollow words from both of them. Brenstrom was understaffed and falling apart. If the hyperspace sensors or moisture collection system broke down, there were only so many able bodied people who could climb out of the caves and fix them. If it had to be Saul, then it would have to be Saul.
She withdrew from his embrace. "The visitor should be through decon by now."
"She already cleared," Saul explained, "I have Rena and Jerome standing guard."
Layla looked at him quizzically. "You think she's dangerous?"
Saul looked from his wife to the empty white walls that kept up the illusion that this room was a safe place. He thought back to the conversation on the surface, just before he had the episode. Had something changed in the way the girl was looking at him? Had he just imagined that...surge...in her eyes the moment before he lost his footing?
"I don't know what to think. Maybe your examination will help. Just do me a favor, and don't be alone with her."
...
When Dara came to the antechamber, Jerome and Lena were leaning against the prefabbed metal wall, GAUSS rifles clutched loosely in their hands. She was about to ask them why their guns were still out when she saw the visitor standing, perfectly straight, in the middle of the room. Dara's eyes widened. Her father's transmission said that there was one human passenger, but Dara had been expecting a traumatized fighter pilot or a half-starved freighter crewman. The teenaged girl - no more than a year or two older than Dara - looked not only healthy, but strong.
"Hello?" She said.
The visitor - Iwak, her name apparently was - looked at her. There was something strange about the older girl's eyes. They were sharp and clear, but that wasn't it. Dara couldn't quite put her finger on it. The visitor didn't speak. Dara looked from Iwak to the guards. Lena shook her head.
"We don't know what language she speaks," Jerome offered.
Dara looked back at the girl. She was still standing straight, watching the conversation with an unreadable expression.
"You couldn't even offer her a chair?" Dara asked, gesturing at the tattered lounge chair bolted into the wall beside the hospital door.
"We did." Said Jerome.
"She just looked at us weird and said a bunch of...whatever she speaks." Rena explained.
Dara stepped further into the room and tried again. "Hi. My name is Dara." She pointed to herself.
Iwak took a few steps closer, stopping just a meter from Dara. The visitor was a tall girl, probably a full head above Dara. As Dara shrank back, the stranger began moving in a circle around her, as if trying to get a look from all directions.
"Hey! Um...are you checking me out?"
"She did that to us in decon," Jerome said as the visitor kept circling Dara, "really weird shit. Where she was brought up I don't even."
Iwak stopped in front of Dara again and looked her in the eyes. The stranger's face was curious, inquiring, and some other emotion that Dara couldn't quite place. Not lust though. Dara breathed a sigh of relief. Thank god for that.
"Ee nathla mara jees," the visitor said. Dara tensed a little at the sound of her voice. It was nowhere near as horrible as the synthesized scream on the radio, but still unpleasantly shrill. It didn't sound right coming from the mouth of a human.
Dara glanced quickly back at the guards. Rena shrugged. Jerome shook his head. She looked back at the visitor, whose expression hadn't changed.
"I'm sorry, I can't understand you." The visitor seemed to be listening carefully, lips slightly parsed. Trying to memorize the words I use? Probably. Dara still had her attention. She decided to repeat it more slowly. "I am sorry. I do not understand." She shrugged and made an exaggerated, confused expression.
The visitor pursed her lips further and looked down at the steel floor, golden bangs falling over her face. This must be as frustrating for her as it is for me, Dara thought, probably worse. What if she's been trying to ask us for help? What if she's trying to say she's hungry, or thirsty, or tired?
"Are you hungry?" Dara asked. She rubbed her stomach, and pantomimed eating something. The visitor's eyes followed her hands as she acted it out, like a cat watching a piece of string. Then, suddenly, her eyes lit up. Iwak clicked her jaws together, and then copied Dara's gesture very enthusiastically.
"Ia! Iwak tenasi jees! Duom farheel maan."
Dara smiled. For some reason, the world suddenly seemed lighter.
"She's hungry," Dara repeated to the watching guards, "Iwak Tenasi Jees is her full name, right? I'll bet her language doesn't have personal pronouns." She turned back to Iwak. "Here, I'll grab you something."
She reached out to pat Iwak on the arm. Before she could touch her, Iwak jumped back into a combat stance, pulling her arm far out of Dara's reach. Her eyes flashed with shock for a moment, and then turned to cold mistrust as they bored into Dara's. Dara took two big steps back. Rena started to raise her GAUSS rifle.
"Oh! I...I'm sorry. I won't do that again." She raised her hands submissively in front of her. Dara felt her face burning. I'm so stupid. Touching is taboo in tons of cultures. How could I be such an idiot?
Iwak looked from Dara's eyes to her hands, and then back. She blinked. Twice. Then she relaxed her posture and lowered her head. The visitor's hands curled into fists, but she didn't look angry anymore. More frustrated, or ashamed. Across the room, Rena had lowered her weapon again, but she and Jerome were both watching very closely, ready to aim again.
"Why don't you leave her alone for now," Rena said curtly. Dara knew that tone of voice, and could practically hear the unspoken word at the end. Child.
She turned to leave for the cafeteria, feeling very small and very pathetic. Some communications officer I turned out to be. Before she could leave, she felt a gentle slap on her arm.
She turned around. Iwak was standing closer again, looking at her almost desperately.
Dara smiled, and patted Iwak's arm again. This time she allowed it, reacting with only the slightest flinch. Why did everything feel so good again? Dara remembered learning somewhere that the act of smiling actually made you happy, something about reciprocal neurons or endorphin triggers. Has it really been so long since I've smiled?
"Its okay, Iwak," she said, "don't worry about it."
The visitor raised her eyebrows. "Iwak?" The question mark was audible.
Dara reached out (slowly) and pointed at the visitor's chest. "Iwak. Iwak Tenasi Jis. Right?"
The blonde girl looked confused. Then realization struck her, and just for a moment, the corners of her mouth curved upward. The ghost of a smile. She raised her right hand and pointed all the fingers toward her own head.
"Samus Aran."
Dara thought for a moment. Then she copied the gesture, forming her fingers into a spearpoint and raising it to her own temple. "Dara Mathys."
The visitor clicked her jaws. Then she pointed at Dara. "Dara."
Dara copied her, minus the jaw thing. "Samus."
Samus patted Dara's arm.
"Well how about that," Jerome said knudging Rena in the side. Rena looked away.
"Let me get those rations," Dara said. She was grinning now.
Last edited: