Abductees Read online

  Recorded activities taken to maximize positive mission objectives. Thus far, the mission parameters are considered to have minimal to no impact due to time equivalence changes reading less than 0.0015 discrepancy.

  It should be noted that any effect on the actualized time stream would have changed mission parameters.

  Side notes completed. Resuming monitoring of primary mission.

  All five subjects have been treated to level Alpha One health and primary inserts status. All monitoring functions at peak efficiency.

  Although the time stream anomaly diverted the primary mission parameters by 85 percent, these subjects are within the minimum-allowed parameters for mission success. Delayed transition to the first critical time node had a positive influence on shipboard systems.

  Within delayed mission parameters, all five subjects are in the primary time stream and conscious. Now monitoring on station with subjects, ready to implement containment protocols.

  Awakening has shown positive results.

  All subjects exhibit evolved functions within class seven series modified plans. Data on experimental Awakening has been recorded for study groups in file 120-E12.

  Conversant with mission parameters, the subjects are being allowed their social interactions and duration allotted to come to terms with the change in circumstances. Now following observation protocols.

  Interjection will occur based on first incident parameters for this node of the time stream.

  Observation and recording continues.

  * *

  “Uh. So, um, aside from our stylish wear, are we going to try and figure out what’s going on?”

  Marc was the only one still sitting down; the rest of them were all standing up and looking at each other’s singlesuits, trying to find any additional features or identifying marks.

  So far, only the one brand had been found, and already, they were wondering if it really did mean what they thought.

  Marc’s interruption got the attention of Connor, Lekiso, and Meriam, while Ormond took a moment to look over Meriam’s form-fitting suit a little closer.

  “Yeah, he’s right. Do you think we’re locked in there?” Connor looked over at Lekiso.

  “I wonder. You take a look at that door.” Lekiso pointed to the far side of the room and made her way over to the door closest to where they had woken up. Meriam noticed Ormond and took a step back from him while he put on an innocent expression and stepped back to lean against a slightly curved wall.

  Marc got slowly to his feet when Lekiso called out, “The door is the same metal as the rest of the room. It has a panel on the right. Well, that’s what I think it is, some kind of polished black like the glass on an iPad. I’ve got a window or viewport of some kind. The other side of this door has a metal floor, kind of bluish, doesn’t look like the same as the door, and the wall on the other side is made of rock.”

  The other three turned to Connor when he spoke from his side of the room. “Same thing with the door this side, only I don’t have a panel on either side of it. Nothing on it, no markings, buttons or words. But I also got a window or whatever it is. I can see some kind of corridor, all metal and round with a flat floor. The metal looks the same as this room.”

  “Seems like we’ve got ourselves a nifty cell here, then, hey?” Ormond called out.

  “Do we?” Lekiso had half turned away from the rest of them.

  She stood at an angle to look through the window on one side before she moved around to hunt down the other, craning her neck to see as far as she could in the limited space.

  “I think that we are in some kind of separating room, like a quarantine space or an airlock.”

  “Uh. Why do you say that?” Marc walked with his back to the wall, a bit closer to Lekiso’s door.

  “If both doors are locked, it could be a cell.”

  “Except I think this door can open. Look here.”

  Lekiso touched the black glass rectangle set at mid-chest height on the right of the door.

  Immediately, it lit up from within, deep-purple and royal-blue lines intersected in two squares on the panel. At the top, there appeared a green circle, and in the bottom squares were what looked like graphs and some lines of text.

  “Uh. Now that is interesting.” Marc came a little closer, peering at the panel.

  “This is some kind of atmosphere reading. It’s calling out the levels of oxygen, carbon dioxide, atmospheric pressure, and a few other readings. The text there, under the display, it says that the results are within Terran tolerances.”

  “Excuse me, but what is Terra?” Meriam had moved a little closer, but she still leaned forward a little to ask the question from where she kept to the wall.

  “Even I know that one, luv. It means us, humans, Terra being that Latin word for Earth and all.”

  Ormond crossed his arms and took up a cocky pose.

  “And what makes you two think that this is good for us, then? Maybe this door does open and all. Does that mean we should go through it?”

  “Well, we won’t know if it opens until we try, and as to whether we go through it, well, you can stay here if you like. But with only one option, I want to see what is out there and see if something is expected of us.”

  Connor walked back through the center of the room to join Lekiso and Marc by the door.

  “I’m with you.” Meriam came over to them, and with an easy shrug, Ormond uncrossed his arms and came over as well.

  “Here we go.” Lekiso pushed the green circle with one brown finger.

  There wasn’t a rush of air or a hiss; instead, entirely silently, the door slid to the left in a quick and smooth motion. What the five of them did notice, though, was the range of new smells that came wafting in through the open doorway.

  A mix of scents that they couldn’t even begin to identify all mixed and mashed into the air like an ozone sandwich for the senses.

  “Oh, wow.” Connor blinked a few times as the other four made their own unique exclamations. Once the smell had settled down from overpowering to only new and ripe, he decided he could speak again without gagging.

  “Is it just me, or is that a whole lot of smell right there?”

  “Nah, mate, you got it dead to rights. This is the smell of a whole lotta people doing a whole lotta things in one space. Trust me, I’ve been around enough of these things to know. Wheeeuew!” Ormond seemed to be trying to breathe in through his nose to identify the smells.

  “It, it seems to be fading.” Marc was holding a hand over his nose, and his voice came out muffled.

  “No, you’re just getting used to it. The room was sterile, clean, and all of a sudden, we just gave our noses a wakeup call.” Lekiso already had her head out and was looking up and down the passage, which was walled with rock or, as she now saw, seemed to be stylized metal panels placed in hexagons.

  She had no idea why.

  The passage had small lights on each panel, and the seams were a lighter color. They connected together to form walls and a ceiling. It gave the impression of a confined space even though the passage would have fit all five of them side by side.

  Connor stuck his head out beside hers. “Which way do you think we should go?

  The passage went left and curved out of sight; to the right, it ended a few feet from their doorway.

  “Hmmm, before we go anywhere, I think we need to sort out some roles.” Lekiso pulled back into the room and turned to face the other four. “We need to establish some guidelines here so that we all listen when we should listen, and we can all stick together.”

  “Hoohoo, so you want to be in charge, hey? I figured you for the type,” Ormond cheered merrily. Dancing back a few steps, he held his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

  “I’m not going to argue, darling. I’m happy to take a back seat and take suggestions.”

  Lekiso almost smiled. “Suggestions?”

  “Well, luv, I’m not going to be a pet dog. But you seem to be handling this well eno
ugh for my sense of confidence.”

  Connor gave his own vote of confidence. “I’m with Ormond. I’m happy to back you up in anything, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to handle everything yourself, but I’ll take your lead.”

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  “See, now, that is why you get my vote.” Meriam smiled, all charm. “I like your take-charge attitude, girl. And you’re polite about it.”

  They all looked at Marc, who held up his hands in surrender. “Uh, I wasn’t going to argue, guys.”

  * *

  Twenty minutes of discussion later found the five of them walking along the gentle curve of the corridor, just coming up on the turn. Connor was in the lead, with Lekiso to his right, Ormond a little back of him on the left, and the other two bringing up the rear.

  The passageway and its rock walls came to a steep corner, the metal floor making a sharp bend away from the airlock they’d come out of.

  They had passed three other doors, or airlocks, of the same design on this side of whatever the passage was. Each one of them had a window, and they saw different kinds of metal doors on the opposite sides.

  None of the glossy black panels responded to their touch, though.

  Nearing a sharp turn, the five moved cautiously up to the nearest wall, Connor, and Lekiso at the fore. Just where the rock made the sudden turn, the two of them stopped to peek around. The other three flattened their backs against the wall.

  Ormond was happily looking at how the form-hugging material covered Meriam from behind. What a great arse she has, he thought just as the group came to a halt and Lekiso looked around the corner.

  Lekiso could see all the way down the passage after the turn. The ceiling lights in their recesses provided an intense, consistent white light over the entire space. The passage after the corner went on for another twenty to thirty feet and then stopped at another door.

  This door was a different design than the ones from before, a large grid of metal that seemed to be separated into two halves vertically, like the doors to a cargo lift or a loft.

  Connor looked down at her and shrugged.

  “Let’s go,” she replied.

  Ormond rolled his eyes but followed along with the rest. Moving slowly, they emerged around the corner and made their way towards the doors. A small panel to the right had a few lights blinking starkly against the sheet metal surface.

  “Any idea what those are telling us?” Connor kept a lookout on both the doors and the panel with short switches of his eyes.

  “Only one way to find out.” Lekiso angled out a bit from Connor and waved at the others to hang back. Meriam and Marc slowed, but Ormond just kept sauntering on behind Connor, who was approaching the doors.

  Ormond angled his steps to the side to get a look at the door and the approach up to it, every sense he had assessing the empty corridor.

  He noticed the change in the panel’s lights before the others.

  “Hey, you lot.” He pointed at it.

  A prominent green symbol had come on at the top, and before they could look at the other symbols, a dull clunk echoed from doors of the elevator, parting to reveal a creature out of a nightmare.

  Everyone froze, although not out of fear exactly.

  They froze because the creature that looked like a cross between a praying mantis and a sea crab was something they remembered?

  “What the hell?” Ormond’s mind filled with information, things he could not know and yet he did know.

  He and every one of the other four humans could remember the Dadarian, an insectoid creature that hailed from its homeworld of Dadaria in the fifteenth sector, whatever that meant on a map. There were other terms as well that weren’t quite clear yet, some things about how to read coordinates.

  With two bulbous compound eyes on either side of a short insect beak, its head of green-black chitin was suspended on a short neck attached to rounded shoulders from which four articulated limbs extended.

  From the back of the head, there was a thick stalk of chitin armored on what was the large round top of the crablike shell. Out of it extended eight segmented crab legs, on which it stood on the base of the elevator.

  Overall, the entire creature would have been the size of a truck, filling the six-by-six-by-five interior of the large lift with a bit of a stoop to get its head in. The craggy and lethal appearance was offset somewhat by a blue cap that it wore on its head, held with two straps along the middle between the insect eyes, like a porter’s cap.

  From the Dadarian’s perspective, the five people all looked to have developed a slight squint, rolling their eyes in some way or another as if trying to see something just out of sight or on the tip of their noses.

  This was because they all had glowing purple text appear in their vision just off to the side of the Dadarian when they looked at it.

  Ormond’s vision kept being filled with the results of some kind of scan function.

  He had no idea where it came from, but the notes it popped up was relevant for him. The creature was armed with a general firearm—a plasma pellet projectile emitter, he also remembered somehow.

  That was relatively minor and wouldn’t be able to harm any of them.

  And how do I even know that? Ormond wondered.

  His scan had also determined no other major technology, field emitters, or scan function on the Dadarian itself either. The only thing it had was a small computer interface communicating wirelessly through the corridor nodes to the central core.

  “Um, chaps, is everyone else getting this weird information display and some seriously weirded-out memories?” Ormond tilted his head to see what the others were doing but kept himself facing the Dadarian, which had paused halfway out of the lift.

  “Um, ah, yeah, I am,” Marc whispered.

  “Not. Now.” Lekiso waved both her hands at the group, down at her hips in a surreptitious gesture to stay back.

  Ormond was about to comment when the strange alien spoke. Well, rather, it clicked its mandibles, and an English voice was heard by each of the humans.

  “Greetings, mammalians. This one is here to register your arrival.” The Dadarian held up the small screen that it held, which was a bit bigger than a tablet back on Earth, Ormond thought.

  At the same time, his scanning function popped up various options for him, all with thin violet lines barely visible leading to where the tablet was outlined in the same glowing color. As the Dadarian waved it around, the links moved with it.

  Instinctively, Ormond knew that the options represented by the icons were to deep scan the device, infiltrate its software, and a variety of other acceptable or hostile activities.

  Wow, that’s just like the kinds of things we’d use back when… Ormond’s thought was interrupted by Connor replying to the Dadarian. It had gone silent and tilted its head to the side in what Ormond’s memories said was impatience.

  “So, hi?”

  There was a subliminal sound of clicking that came from the collar of Connor’s singlesuit. The Dadarian straightened its head and continued to address them. “I am port master Izziktazixtizix, but most species prefer the shortened name ‘Izzix,’ which I will have the pleasure of responding to.”

  “Um, I hear it in English. Connor speaks, and it hears us in its own language,” Marc whispered.

  Lekiso waved at Marc to stay quiet.

  Ormond could barely hear himself think as threat assessments, anatomy, and culture rampaged through his conscious mind.

  Bloody hell, where did all this rot come from, anyway?

  He settled information into his memory like neat bundles as he mentally chewed his way through it all, the entire process happening in less than a second and giving him a piercing headache while it lasted.

  Ormond’s threat assessment included details of how dangerous a Dadarian could be, but only if commanded to fight. Most of the time, Dadarians were simple workers. The Dadarian calling itself Izzix was an excellent example of where peerless, r
epetitive, detail-oriented work fit perfectly into the insect’s mindset.

  It was particularly suited for anything that was boring and needed to be done a lot of times.

  The drones were very capable of administrative jobs and used in both manufacturing and paper pushing. Some, like Izzix, even had enough diplomatic skill to be allowed to talk to other species.

  “Yes, sir,” Connor replied to Izzix very politely. “How may we help you?”

  “My good mammalian, there is no need for such politeness. I am here at your service.” Izzix tilted its head up at the mouth and slightly sideways, which Ormond’s thoughts told him meant it was heartfelt.

  In Human terms.

  “I have completed the registration of your vessel into the station logs and prepared the contract for your electronic signature as directed by your machine intelligence.” Izzix offered the tablet, held in one claw, to Connor.

  “Oh, uh, I see.” Connor reached out to take the tablet carefully, keeping his eyes on Izzix for any sudden moves.

  It’s ok, mate. I can see its body language isn’t threatening. Ormond kept the thought from spilling out of his mouth, but he saw a new option pop up in his visual display, marked as send and with an icon for Connor.

  Hey, now, what’s this, then?

  Ormond selected the message to send, with absolutely no idea of how he did it since he didn’t have any kind of physical interface. His thinking it, though, seemed to make it happen, since a small click seemed to echo inside his head and Connor’s reply seemed to sound inside his ear without the man talking.

  “Ormond? How the hell are you talking inside my head?”

  “Whoooeee, now this is some impressive stuff, innit?” Ormond could feel his thoughts emitting the message into the channel he had open with Connor.

  “Just take the tablet, mate. We’ll figure it out as we go along. Let me see if I can get the rest of our merry crew on this wavelength, hey?”

  “Ok, yeah, alright.” Connor took the tablet.