Chapter 8
Rayne and I got out of bed quickly. I used the facilities, though I didn’t recognize half of what was in the Lilacron bathroom, so I just had to hope that I peed in the right part. I splashed some water on my face and ran my fingers through my hair to make it look more presentable, and then I walked back into the bedroom.
I found Rayne sitting on the bed doing the same with her hair, and she smiled when she saw me. I was reminded of our kiss last night. Every time we kissed was a surprise, but it was also incredible. I wish we could do it more often, but it was almost a running joke that every time it felt like something more was about to happen, we were interrupted.
To prove my point, there was a sudden thump on the door.
“Occana, I said we’d be there in a minute,” I said as I trudged over to the door and pulled it open.
However, I didn’t find myself looking at the General. Instead, I looked down to see Bob waiting politely outside the door, and on his back was my suit, which he had apparently gone to collect from the ship while we were asleep.
“Thanks, buddy,” I said as I grabbed the suit.
Bob beeped as I gave him a grateful pat on his back, and then he trotted into the room. He bounded over to Rayne and leaped up onto the bed, and she rubbed his belly warmly.
I stripped off everything except my boxers and pulled the suit on quickly since I didn’t want to keep the analysts waiting, nor did I want them to start without me. I slipped my feet in, pulled it up over my legs, put my arms in, and the suit did the rest. It sealed itself seamlessly behind my back, and after a quick squat to make sure it was in a comfortable position, I was ready to go. I popped my trucker hat back on as a final touch, and Rayne chuckled at me as we exited the bedroom.
As we left, Occana reappeared at the end of the hallway and beckoned for us to follow him. Rayne, Bob, and I hurried to catch up with him, but the tall Lilacron had lanky legs, so his strides were almost double ours. We jogged after him and eventually, we fell into step beside him.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked.
“I slept like a log,” I replied.
“Does wood sleep where you are from?” he asked.
“It’s a phrase… never mind,” I chuckled.
“I slept so deeply,” Rayne said. “I didn’t have a single dream, and considering what we went through yesterday, I think I got lucky.”
I thought about my near-death experience fighting the Karaak and shuddered. Rayne was right. My dreams could have been horrifying if I hadn’t been so exhausted. Images of more of the murderous monsters attacking Earth penetrated my mind’s eye, and I shook my head to try and banish them from my imagination.
“What about you, General?” Rayne said. “How did you sleep?”
“I had a couple of hours,” he replied. “That was enough.”
“I’m guessing you’ve been busy overseeing whatever it is you’re about to show us,” I said.
“That, and disciplining the soldiers that shot at you,” he replied.
“I hope that you weren’t too hard on them,” I said. “They were acting on Doron’s orders.”
“Doron had no real authority to order them to attack your ship as they did,” he replied. “That is my job as General, and that order also has to be approved by the rest of the leaders. They are all fully aware of that, so I reminded them of that.”
“Well, try not to wring too many of their necks,” I said. “You’re not exactly in a position to lose any more soldiers at the moment.”
Rayne jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow, and she clearly thought it was too soon to be making a joke like that, but fortunately, General Occana laughed.
I gave Rayne a smug smile, and she rolled her eyes and marched ahead of me.
Occana guided us through the maze of interconnected tunnels that made up the Frumentum Colony. We passed a couple of large rooms where I could see a seemingly endless sea of corn being nurtured and cultivated by Lilacron farmers. Warm lights created mini-suns, and a moist haze inside the room kept the plants watered, even while small groups of Lilacrons moved among the stalks to harvest the golden ears. It was fortunate that their bolthole had been one of their farming colonies, because otherwise, I wasn’t sure how they would have kept their people fed for an extended period of time.
We passed a few windows that looked out over the horizon of the small community, but it was fairly dark outside, so I couldn’t see much other than the faint outline of the rocky skyline. It was a little disappointing, since we were on an alien world, but there was enough inside the colony to look at to keep my imagination fired.
The other thing that I noticed were the looks we drew from the other Lilacrons while we were on our way to the science block. Some of them stopped and stared at us, while others tried to steal glances more discreetly. I got the feeling that news about us defeating the Karaak and bringing the ship back to the colony had traveled while we had been asleep, and it appeared that we had become minor celebrities among the Lilacrons. A couple of them even reached out and patted us on the back as we walked.
I smiled awkwardly whenever someone caught my eye, but I had never been good at the whole accepting gratitude thing, and so I started to walk more quickly so I could pretend I didn’t see any of the looks. While I was glad that our actions had saved them from the Karaak attacking again, or at least postponed the attack, I was starting to wish that the mission had been kept under wraps, just so I wouldn’t have to smile and wave at complete strangers like they were suddenly my best friend.
When we finally got to the science block, I was relieved to find that most of the focus wasn’t on us as we entered, but rather on the enormous Karaak ship that was displayed in the center of the room. There was no way they could have taken it through the colony buildings to this room, but when I saw the two large doors on one of the walls that I guessed led to the outside, I figured that they had lugged the thing across the rocky terrain.
The other three walls had doors as well, but there were windows next to each set of doors, and I could see additional labs just on the other side of two of the doors and a long hallway through the other window. There were plenty of computer screens as well, all filled with various images and bits of data that I didn’t recognize.
Francine had told me that the Lilacrons were very technologically advanced, but since almost everything on Lilacron had been destroyed, I hadn’t been able to see what she meant. Now, however, I could see it at full force.
There were several scientists gathered near the ship that seemed to be taking some sort of readings. There was also a pile of pieces that I realized had come from the computer room inside the Karaak ship that Rayne and I had found. We watched as a few younger Lilacrons, who I assumed were interns of some kind, carefully picked up each piece and took it through one of the doors at the side of the room. I had hoped that the Karaak computers would contain useful information, and now was the moment of truth.
“That was fast,” Rayne whispered as she spotted the equipment.
“Sure was,” I agreed. “Wonder if they learned anything interesting about the ship itself.”
I nodded to the twenty or so Lilacron scientists who were poking and prodding the ship. I noticed they all wore thick gloves on their hands and goggles on their eyes to protect themselves from the acidic substance the creature seemed to still be excreting even posthumously. I saw several of the scientists take swabs of the substance while others inserted various devices into the ship, all of which was carefully recorded on various pads by yet more scientists.
“How can it still be producing acid?” Rayne asked.
“One of many mysteries we hope to solve,” Occana replied.
The room was pleasantly quiet, with only some scrapes and scribbles audible as the scientists worked on the ship. I could see the surprise on some of their faces when they got their results, and I couldn’t blame them. The Karaak ship and technology was like nothing I had ever seen before, either, and while we were lucky to be able to study it despite the Karaak’s efforts to kill Rayne, Occana, and me, it was still nerve-wracking to have the creature inside the base. I was sure that Doron wasn’t the only one who was upset about the ship’s presence in the colony, but hopefully, these tests would give us enough answers to convince the naysayers that we did the right thing by bringing it here.
After we had been standing there for a minute or so, one of the other doors opened and a very flustered Hemphy emerged from the hallway beyond. He had about a million tablets in his hands that he seemed to be looking at simultaneously, and when he saw us, his face went through a series of emotions from relieved to overwhelmed. As he hurried over to us, he handed the tablets to various scientists and analysts, until he eventually arrived in front of us with only one in his hands. He panted slightly while he caught his breath, and then he smiled.
“Nice to see you’ve got everything under control here, Hemphy,” I said. “It’s good to see that you stepped up to the challenge.”
“I have people working on our ships, too,” he said eagerly. “Like you told me to do. They should all be battle ready in no time.”
“We can confirm that some of them already are,” Rayne said, and that made me chuckle.
“Yes, I heard about that,” he said sheepishly. “If I had known that was the first thing they’d use them on…”
“Don’t worry about it,” I replied. “It had nothing to do with you. You’ve done amazing work in such a short amount of time. I’m sure General Occana will let the leaders know how committed you are to helping your people.”
Occana gave him a genuine nod, and Hemphy smiled like he’d just won the lottery.
“So, we hear you’ve found something pretty exciting,” Rayne said. “I have to admit, I’m insanely curious to know what you’ve already learned about the ship.”
“Well, we’ve worked out quite a lot, actually,” he said. “I was told you were both sleeping, and I didn’t want to disturb you, but then I just couldn’t wait any longer.”
“I’m glad you woke us up,” I said. “This is worth an hour less of sleep. Besides, we had just woken up anyway.”
“Good,” he replied. “So…”
“Go on,” I said when the Lilacron paused.
Hemphy tapped away at his tablet for a few more seconds, and then he took a deep breath as he prepared to tell us their discoveries. Rayne, Occana, and I waited impatiently for the man to speak, and even Bob beeped to urge the Lilacron to speak.
“So, we were able to recover most of the information from the ship,” Hemphy began. “I can tell that it crashed with quite a bit of force, but it hit the object at an angle, so it didn’t burst or break on impact.”
“I threw it into a dwarf planet with the tractor beam on my ship, if that helps,” I said.
“I see,” he replied. “That does line up with our conclusion.”
I nodded.
“The fact that it wasn’t too damaged was extremely lucky,” he continued. “It means that ninety percent of the ship is still intact, and we have almost finished looking at every inch of it. We began with a scan of the entire spaceship, and that showed us that this used to be a creature. We’ve nicknamed it the Skelg, which means Eel in our tongue, although we’ve never encountered this type of creature before. Our best guess is that it comes from a part of the Galaxy we have never been to, or possibly even further.”
Rayne and I glanced at one another.
“Even further?” I asked.
“Yes, but we’ll come back to that,” Hemphy said. “That’s not the most interesting part.”
“What is?” Occana asked.
“The scan showed that the ship is only about thirty-five percent organic,” the scientist replied. “The rest of it was gutted and replaced by the Karaak’s technology and the interior of the ship.”
“That’s awful,” Rayne said. “Did they do it while the creature was still alive?”
“Alive is a generous term,” he replied. “I would think of it more like the creature was comatose the whole time. It would have felt the initial pain when the Karaak took out its insides, but once the wires and controls were inserted into its brain, it probably would not have been very aware of anything after that. The body lived on, but the mind not so much.”
“Still, it’s barbaric,” she said.
“Agreed,” Hemphy said. “On further inspection, we did discover the glands that are used to secrete the acidic substance you told us about, Will Ryder.”
“Nasty stuff,” I said.
“We have never seen a substance so acidic,” Hemphy said. “We learned that the hard way.”
He pointed to a hole in the floor of the warehouse a few meters away, the edges of which were still sizzling slightly.
“Ah,” I said. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“I have decided not to think about it,” the flustered analyst replied. “Moving on. It appears that the creature itself is a silicon-based lifeform.”
“Silicon-based?” I gawked. “Where the hell do you even find silicon-based lifeforms?”
“We do not know,” he replied. “As I said, I wish I knew where these things came from. I can only assume they are from some far-off planet that has since been overrun by the Karaak, but instead of mass genocide, they decided that these creatures could be of use to them.”
“So, do you think they enslaved the whole population of this creature’s planet?” I asked. “I’m trying to get an idea of how big the Karaak’s fleet is.”
“I could not tell you,” Hemphy said. “But we have both seen firsthand how ruthless the Karaak are. I imagine any of the Skelg they did not choose to use are not around anymore.”
I nodded. Everything Hemphy had said so far made logical sense.
“We have assessed the size of the creature as well as its molecular structure, and we have concluded that this was a very young creature,” he continued.
“A baby one, like we said,” Rayne said. “Which explains why it was a scout ship. The adults would be bigger and more fearsome in battle.”
“Definitely,” Hemphy said.
“We only just managed to take this one down,” Occana sighed.
“Enough bad news,” Hemphy said brightly. “Let me tell you the good stuff.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” I replied eagerly.
“I have someone going through and decrypting this right now,” he said. “But we have the first half here for you.”
“The first half of what?” Occana asked.
“Take a look at this,” he said and passed me his tablet.
I took it, and Rayne and Occana leaned over my shoulder to see what was on it.
“I translated it into your language,” Hemphy added.
“I appreciate that, thank you,” I replied before turning back to the screen.
On it was a list of names that I had never seen, except for the one about a quarter of the way down.
Earth.
“What is it?” Rayne asked.
“It’s a list of the planets they’re going to hit next,” I said, and I felt the knot in my stomach start to twist again.
“We do not think it’s in order,” Hemphy said. “But these are the names we have so far. I have sent out a couple of scout ships to the first few on the list to warn them. This is probably one of the most valuable pieces of information we have gleaned from them so far. Thank you for bringing it to us. Now, those planets will have time to at least evacuate, if not prepare for war. You have destroyed the Karaak’s element of surprise.”
“That’s good,” I said more to convince myself rather than anyone else, though I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the word Earth.
Rayne put her hand supportively on my shoulder.
“We also have collected most of the tech they had on the ship, as you probably saw,” he said. “We will be going through that over the next few days. We’ll get a better idea of how their tech works, and hopefully, we’ll find something that we can use to disable or counter their weapons.”
“That’s good,” I said. “That’s the sort of stuff we need to be focused on.”
“Then, there’s the Karaak themselves,” he said. “I am sure you are aware that there were two bodies left on the ship when you brought it to us?”
“Very aware,” Rayne said.
“Follow me,” he said.
We walked past the Skelg and followed Hemphy through one of the doors. It led into a clinically bright hallway, and I squinted as we sped down the hall toward another door at the end of it. As we approached the other end of the hall, I noticed that the air around us seemed to get colder. It prickled my exposed cheeks, and I felt a shiver dribble down my spine. I saw Rayne and Occana have the same reaction, and that reassured me that it wasn’t just my own reaction to the news about Earth, but rather the new environment that we found ourselves in.
Hemphy opened the door at the end of the hall, and a wave of even colder air washed over us like a frozen deluge. But the reason for the freezing temperature became glaringly obvious when we found ourselves looking down at the two bodies on metal slabs on one side of the room.
We were in the morgue.
It wasn’t a big room. I could imagine that they didn’t expect to have many deceased visitors on a farming colony. There were three tables in total, but I ignored the empty one and followed Hemphy over to the two stainless steel tables that held the Karaak’s bodies. At the side of the room, there was a counter where the Lilacrons had neatly placed all of the Karaak’s black armor, meaning that we were able to take in the Karaak bodies in all their mismatched, patchwork glory.
If Frankenstein’s monster had an uglier, more terrifying cousin, then the Karaak would be it. The one’s I’d encountered were terrifying to look at, and now that their armor was gone, it was even worse. I could see every sinew, every gaping hole in their skin, every piece of machinery jutting out of it, and every scarred piece of tissue that crisscrossed along their leathery, coarse skin.
I could also see that the Lilacrons who had been studying the bodies had cut into certain parts and then sewn the Karaak back up again, like the relatives might be along at any moment to claim the dead. The careful precision of the fresh cuts stuck out against the battle scars that covered both bodies, and I wondered how many battles these aliens had fought in to earn so many scars. Even if they were particularly unfortunate and had been injured in every battle, it would have to be hundreds of attacks.
But after what I’d seen of the Karaak, that didn’t seem all that surprising.
Rayne and Occana had the same expression of both intrigue and disgust on their faces as I’m sure I had. As we all gathered around the table, the cold air gripped the back of our necks like death’s hand while we stared down at the first of the two bodies.
The flaps that covered the Karaak’s skin had been peeled back to reveal its teeth, and I could just about make out its dark tongue coiled up beyond the row of razors, too. I had a flashback to Seloni B when I had watched that mouth open firsthand, and it was like I could feel the tongue around my chest and hear its deafening, debilitating scream all over again. I took a deep steadying breath, and then I forced my objective brain to take over. If I was going to deal with this, then I had to remain logical and unaffected by what was in front of me.
“These two Karaak soldiers died when the ship crashed into the dwarf planet,” Hemphy said after giving us time to take in the sight of the bodies. “Fortunately, the sleeping quarters where we found them took the brunt of the impact. There was almost no chance for anyone in that section of the ship to have survived.”
“That wasn’t so fortunate for them,” Rayne said.
“No,” Hemphy chuckled. “We’ve checked the bodies and the ship for tracking devices, by the way. The bodies do not have them.”
“And the ship?” I asked.
“The ship did, but it had not been enabled,” the analyst replied. “I believe they use it as more of a distress signal, but they did not have time to activate it before you crashed their ship.”
“That’s lucky,” I said.
“No, it’s thanks to your quick actions and expert flying,” Occana said.
“Thank you, General, I appreciate you saying that,” I replied.
“What can the bodies tell us about the Karaak?” Rayne asked.
“Other than the fact they’re nasty sons of bitches,” I added.
“Well, you will be pleased to know that my team and I have made quite an interesting discovery,” Hemphy said excitedly. “Do you see this?”
He pointed to the fingers on one of the Karaak’s claw-like hands. As we looked closer, I was able to see that the bones of its fingers had been replaced by hydraulic mechanisms, though I wasn’t sure what the purpose would be.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Its fingers have been altered to move more quickly, most likely to enhance its dexterity beyond that of most other creatures,” he explained. “And look at this one.”
He moved over to the other Karaak. This one didn’t have the same hydraulics in its hands, but it did have an artificial left eye that I hadn’t noticed before. They hadn’t even bothered to try and make it look like the other bright orange eye, and instead, I found myself looking at what appeared to be a very advanced camera of some sort.
“This one’s eye has been altered to be able to judge extreme distances, so it can aim weapons with excellent accuracy even while in motion, and we suspect it could even identify ships at an extreme distance,” Hemphy explained. “It’s sort of like the HUD screens we build into our ships.”
“I see,” I replied. “What are you getting at?”
“Well, it is my theory that each of the Karaak is altered for a specific purpose,” he said with a prideful look in his eyes about the fact he’d come up with this idea. “They are born and grow up, and once they reach full size, they are altered mechanically and technologically.”
“And, what, each of them are changed differently depending on what their job will be?” Occana asked.
“Precisely, sir,” Hemphy replied. “So, this one with the altered hands is most likely a ground soldier or a gunner in the ship, whereas the one with the artificial eye is probably the main pilot.”
“That’s fascinating,” I said. “So much for free will.”
“Yes, it seems that having a choice is not really the Karaak’s style,” Hemphy agreed.
“Congratulations, Hemphy,” I said. “This is truly an incredible discovery. You and your team should be proud of everything you’ve done so far.”
“Well, none of this would be possible without everything you’ve done for us,” the humble Lilacron said to Rayne and me. “And there’s still much to do.”
“Well, we should let you get on, then,” I said. “I’m sure we can find a way to occupy ourselves.”
“In the meantime, why don’t I show you around the colony?” General Occana suggested. “We could use some advice on how to get us ready to defend ourselves.”
“Lead the way,” Rayne said eagerly, and we followed Occana out the door.