A Lonely World Where the People Are Blue Read online

  An arc of electricity came forth from his suit, and encompassed our troublesome foe. As always, they froze for a moment, their muscles contracting with the voltage shooting through them, and then fell, with a thud to the floor.

  ‘You’re getting good at that,’ I told Te’rnu.

  He didn’t reply, merely stood and stared at the body on the ground in front of him.

  ‘You OK, bud?’ I followed up.

  ‘Are they dead?’ Mel asked. ‘’Cos I would be totally cool with that if he was. I won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘No. Just unconscious. Right, Te’rnu?’

  There was no immediate answer from him.

  ‘They’re just unconscious,’ I assured Mel.

  I grabbed Ve’nua by the arms, and Te’rnu, without needing instruction, grabbed the legs. We heaved them towards the open cell door.

  ‘Do you always go around knocking people out?’ Mel asked.

  ‘Honestly?’ I replied. ‘More than we should.’

  ‘Cool! Cool energy. Like it! Really like it.’

  I raised an eyebrow. Was this woman OK?

  ‘Thanks.’

  I slammed the ‘close door’ button on the console and sealed the unconscious Iyr inside.

  ‘OK,’ I announced. ‘This time, for real: let’s get out of here.’

  We wasted no more time. I, for one, had no idea how long these Iyr would remain unconscious. Glancing at the time on my console, I could see it had been a good few hours since Te’rnu had defused the situation in the barracks. For all I knew, the real Head of Guard was waking up at this very moment, rushing to the barracks terminal, letting the whole stronghold know what we had done.

  We strode with purpose towards the shuttle bay; Mel and I leading the way, Te’rnu at our rear - still acting as though he was transporting us. We walked down countless long corridors, bare in decoration but for the screens every few metres and the small crevices that marked the doorways. As we marched, I noticed more and more Iyr glancing our way - but without being able to see their faces, it was impossible to know for sure what they were thinking.

  ‘Am I being paranoid, or are we getting more looks?’ I whispered over my shoulder to Te’rnu, while there was no hostile company in our immediate vicinity.

  ‘I have noticed this too,’ he replied, his voice strained, as though speaking through a clenched jaw. ‘Do they know?’

  I shook my head; the smallest of movements, so nobody else would see that we were communicating. ‘If they knew, they would stop us; that suit wouldn’t mean shit.’

  Mel, in spite of the situation, smiled a little at my response.

  ‘Still laughing at the Terran who swears?’ I asked, allowing myself to grin too. If we were about to get caught, there was no point Mel dying miserable.

  ‘A little,’ she replied.

  As we approached the bay, the screens buzzed into life. I allowed myself a quick glance at them as we strode, and when I saw what they were displaying, I halted instantly. Te’rnu crashed into me from behind, and Mel stopped too, to see what all the commotion was about.

  ‘Oh, my…,’ Te’rnu mumbled.

  ‘Understatement of the cycle,’ I replied, equally hushed in volume.

  On the screen, the Head of Guard - now risen from his enforced power-nap - shouted angrily and impassionately.

  We didn’t waste any time listening to what he had to say. The jig was up.

  ‘Come on,’ I told Te’rnu. ‘We’re sitting ducks out here.’

  ‘Sitting-’ Te’rnu began to ask.

  ‘Come on!’ I repeated, moving now towards the shuttle bay with a sprint.

  Mel and Te’rnu also picked up the pace, and we charged down the final corridor and into the shuttle bay. We were fortunate that this building was as large as it was - the few Iyr inside could not hope to cover every room.

  When Te’rnu, the last to enter, was safely inside the shuttle bay, I closed the door behind him and locked it from the inside - just as a precaution.

  I rushed to a nearby docking terminal.

  ‘OK, Mel,’ I instructed, trying to make my voice sound as assertive as possible. ‘I’m pulling an empty shuttle in for you now. Get on it. It’ll take you to the nearest GMU station, and-’

  ‘You aren’t coming?’ Mel asked, her mouth open with disbelief.

  ‘We’re not done here.’

  ‘You’ve learned the truth! Your job is done! Your debt is paid! They could kill you if you stay here!’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No.’

  ‘We need to tell my people,’ Te’rnu interrupted, talkative again for the first time since he returned to us. ‘We can’t let them live on like this.’

  ‘You can message them from the station!’ Mel pleaded.

  ‘No. The settlement screens are wired into Central Command only. We can’t do it off-planet.’

  ‘Te’rnu,’ Mel continued to beg, ‘Tell her, please. This is your fight, not her’s!’

  ‘There’s more,’ I continued, ‘There’s more I need to do here.’

  The shuttle docked and the doors opened behind her.

  ‘What do you need to do? What’s so important that’s worth risking your life for?’

  I shook my head. ‘There’s no time to explain. Get on the shuttle. With any luck… I’ll catch up with you.’

  Mel went silent, shot me another perplexed face. As she entered the shuttle, I closed the door, but she shot her hand out to stop it.

  ‘Come with,’ she said, one last time.

  I shook my head, and Mel removed her hand, allowing the door to close. The shuttle undocked and I wondered, for the briefest of moments, whether I would live to see her again.

  ‘Are they outside?’ I asked Te’rnu. He looked at me blankly in response.

  I rushed over to the security terminal and tapped to bring up the closed-circuit monitoring system.

  ‘They’re not. Not yet.’

  ‘OK,’ Te’rnu replied. ‘Let us take a moment, gather our-’

  ‘No,’ I interrupted.

  ‘No?’

  ‘At the moment, they only know that we’re in the building. Soon as they see a shuttle leaving the atmosphere, they’ll know what room we’re in. We need to be as far away from here as possible.’

  Te’rnu nodded. ‘I understand.’

  I tapped at the terminal once more, bringing up live feeds to the screens. Tens of Iyr guards filled the images.

  Hm. Just how much did I really want this journal decoded?

  ‘It looks as though our path to the mainframe room is clear for now - most the Iyr are at the cells still, retracing our steps.’

  ‘I shall keep my hand on the Incapacitate function.’

  We nodded to one another. This was it, then: our big shot.

  Te’rnu and I rushed for the doors, sprinting down the corridors that were, according to the screens a few moments earlier, devoid of any enemy presence.

  On we ran, fighting our breath as we ploughed down corridors, and praying with every corner that we turned that we weren’t about to run into an Iyr - and our almost-certain deaths.

  17

  Closing In

  As we entered the mainframe room, I stopped and turned for one last look. To my disbelief, there was still nobody on our tails. I did some mental maths - we had left the shuttle bay about five minutes ago, and it had taken us the same length of time to get there from the cells. If the Iyr were following in our footsteps, then they were arriving at the shuttle bay at that moment. We didn’t have long.

  I rushed to the nearest security terminal and tapped to bring up the live feeds once again. I was right - the Iyr were in the shuttle bay already. The Head of Guard pointed at their own security terminal, images of Te’rnu and me on their screens. We couldn’t count on having more than a couple of minutes to finish up in here.

  ‘They’re coming.’

  Te’rnu whipped his head around to look at me, face going white. ‘How long?’

  ‘Maybe
a hundred seconds.’

  Te’rnu nodded. ‘I will speak as quickly as I can.’

  I rushed to the main terminal, bluffing my way through the user interface until I found the network communications package. As I worked, Te’rnu sat on his shaking hands.

  ‘Do we have time? To decode Leya’s journal?’

  I glanced at the security terminal. The Iyr were close already, wasting no time in getting here.

  I shook my head. ‘No. I don’t think we do.’

  Te’rnu sat aside. ‘Go ahead.’

  I turned to face him, brow furrowed. ‘But if we get caught, your people… they might never learn the truth.’

  Te’rnu took my hand and looked into my eyes.

  ‘Syl, if it were not for you, I would never have gotten this far. I would never have learned the truth. You deserve this.’

  ‘No, I-’

  ‘Decode the journal. Then we run. And-’

  I interrupted my friend’s honourable rambling, exasperated in tone. ‘No, stop! Listen! We both saw that statue of Leya. We both heard about what she did for Nu’r’ka. She recognised the brilliance, the greatness of your people, Te’rnu. And so do I. Get ready to speak.’

  I set the screen ready to record Te’rnu.

  ‘On my mark.’

  ‘On your what?’

  ‘When I say “go”, you speak. Tell your whole world the truth. Got it?’

  Te’rnu nodded.

  I got ready to press the broadcast button, but Te’rnu’s hand shot out to stop me.

  ‘Are you sure about this? What if you never find your sister because of this?’

  I forced a smile, and it came out sadder than I had intended. ‘If I’m gonna find her, I’m gonna find her. We have a saying on Terra: whatever will be, will be.’

  Te’rnu returned my smile. His was more sincere than mine was. ‘We have that expression here too.’

  ‘Ready?’

  He pulled the head off his mechsuit, turned to me, and nodded. ‘Thanks, Syl.’

  ‘Go.’

  I hurried to the door as Te’rnu began to speak.

  ‘Arellians. Please, listen to me, I don’t have much time.’

  I poked my head outside and was answered by a wave of phaser fire. I pulled myself quickly back inside, shutting the door firmly behind me.

  They were at the end of the corridor already. It was a long way off, but still they would arrive before Te’rnu had a chance to explain himself.

  ‘My name is Te’rnu. I lived in Te’r’ok, just outside the Iyr capital, and I have dedicated my whole life to learning the truth that the Iyr have kept from us for millennia.’

  A glowing light appeared in my peripheral vision. I turned to the right to see that the ends of my hair, down by my shoulders, was burning - caught by the phasers. I patted it out as quickly as I could - before any serious harm could come to myself. Unfortunately, serious harm had already come to my haircut.

  This one’s gonna be hard to explain at the hairdresser’s.

  ‘I was exiled from my own village for seeking the truth, but now, finally-’

  ‘Hey, Te’rnu?’ I called out. ‘Might wanna get to the point, buddy!’

  My friend turned in his chair to face me. ‘Oh! Right! Yes!’

  He whizzed back around.

  I looked around the room, trying to find some way of getting an advantage over the approaching Iyr. In the corner, I noticed a gun rack - holding only one rifle for the two of us.

  ‘The truth is: the Iyr are not some other species! They are us!’

  I picked the phaser up, held it in my hands… and accidentally fired a beam into the wall.

  God, I hate phasers.

  Te’rnu instinctively ducked in his chair and turned again to shoot me a confused expression.

  I pulled a face in response - and he moved back to the console.

  ‘The Mutation is not the end! It is only the beginning! Have you not wondered why the Iyr have always been so keen to help us with it? It is because it marks the beginning of us turning into them!’

  I hurried for the door, and, having learned my lesson, did not peek out for a look. Instead, I held only the phaser outside, shooting beams around the corner - and almost certainly into the wall. I prayed that I didn’t hit anyone - killing someone would not go over well with my radical Terran conscience.

  ‘They are using us for their own personal gain! Our tributes to them are the basis for their entire economy! I implore you, all of you, please: stop giving the Iyr anything. They are doing us no favours. Arellians: stand up to them!’

  Te’rnu slammed the broadcast button to end the recording and rushed over to help me.

  ‘Quick!’ he shouted to me, at a volume I could just about hear over the sound of phaser fire. ‘Decode the journal! I will do my best to hold them off.’

  Not needing to be convinced, I shoved the phaser into Te’rnu’s hands and rushed over to the console, plugging my diary in.

  Behind me, the sound of phaser fire quickly faded.

  ‘Err… Syl?’ Te’rnu asked. ‘I think I have done something wrong.’

  I turned to look at my friend to see him pulling the trigger with no effect.

  ‘You’ve put the safety on! Turn it-’

  But it was too late. Te’rnu backed up slowly as a crowd of Iyr entered the room, the Head of Guard at the helm.

  Te’rnu and I stepped backwards, away from the Iyr, slowly and cautiously. When my Arellian friend saw that I had raised my hands into the air, he followed suit.

  The group stopped a few metres in front of the door, and a silence swept over the room for a few seconds. Tens of red eyes glowed in the dim light, like something out of an old Terran horror movie.

  It was the Head of Guard who spoke first, voice swimming with rage, and punctuating each word with a pause.

  ‘You… are… wearing… my… suit!’ they roared.

  Te’rnu gulped.

  ‘Only one of them,’ I mumbled, under my breath. Any louder and someone might have heard me.

  ‘What was that?’ the Head of Guard snarled at me.

  Oops. They still heard me.

  ‘Nothing,’ I answered.

  The Head of Guard nodded. ‘I thought as much.’

  At a menacingly slow pace, they approached Te’rnu and me.

  ‘Do you know what you have done?’

  I shook my head. Te’rnu nodded.

  The intimidating Iyr stopped in front of Te’rnu and held their helmeted face in front of Te’rnu’s.

  ‘You have doomed your own planet. Do you realise this?’

  ‘I…,’ Te’rnu began to murmur, ‘I haven’t doomed us. I have told the truth, that is all. We deserve to know.’

  ‘Why? Why on Z’h’ar do you believe that to be the case?’ the Head of Guard snapped back at him. ‘I was pre-Mutation, once, too, remember. I did my time. Every Iyr in this room did their time. And now that we are old enough to reap the spoils, you do this? You cannot possibly imagine the implications this will have.’

  The Head of Guard stopped staring Te’rnu down - and moved on to me.

  ‘And you,’ they growled at me. ‘I knew from the moment I saw you in that bar that you were nothing but trouble. This is typical of a Terran. You have been brainwashed by your own people. You subscribe to your own sense of ethics, with no room for any other ideas to be considered.’

  They chuckled a resigned laugh. I chose an ashamed grin as an appropriate response.

  ‘No!’ the Head of Guard continued, ‘Do not smile! Do not think you have done good here. I will not have you thinking this!’

  They turned to the group of armed Iyr behind them.

  ‘Guards, ready your weapons.’

  I put my arms out in front of me, pleading for them to back off.

  ‘Wait! No! You’re really going to kill a tourist?’

  I didn’t wait for a response; the number of guns pointed towards my face suggested that it wasn’t going to be a good one. Instead, I grabbed
at my right wrist and activated that ever-trustworthy EMP.

  Who needs phasers, anyway?

  The whoomph echoed around the room as the lights, computer systems, and mechsuits all simultaneously went offline. We were enveloped in almost total darkness - the only source of light being the small window at the end of the corridor.

  Without wasting a second, I sprinted towards the door, through the group of frozen Iyr.

  ‘Syl!’ a voice called out behind me.

  Oops - Te’rnu.

  I looked back, over my shoulder, but couldn’t make him out in the darkness.

  With a sigh, I turned on my heel and rushed back towards him.

  ‘Ah,’ I said when I saw him. ‘Sorry. Forgot you’d be stuck.’

  Te’rnu, like the rest of the Iyr in the room, was wrestling with the hydraulics in his suit - but getting nowhere.

  I pulled at the clips around his limbs, one by one, releasing them.

  Some of the Iyr guards had managed to move their arms to aim at us, but the click-click-click of the triggers suggested that the rifles hadn’t rebooted just yet. I knew, at least, that we didn’t have long; the phaser in the outpost hadn’t taken too long to re-start, and waiting around here for a more precise estimate was perhaps not a great idea.

  My friend wriggled free of the last limb - a leg frozen in place on the ground.

  ‘The suits are beginning to reboot already,’ Te’rnu told me, voice anxious, ‘We don’t have long.’

  ‘We don’t need long,’ I assured him.

  Te’rnu now free of his suit, we bolted for the door, weaving through the Iyr who were slowly moving to block our exit. We sprinted down the corridor, echoes at our rear of mechsuit feet occasionally hitting the floor as the Iyr trudged on.

  We turned the corner at the end of the corridor, heading back the way we’d come - from the shuttle bay. I crashed into an Iyr, who was frozen in place by the rebooting mechsuit.

  ‘There!’ they called at another Iyr, standing nearby, equally stuck in their place.

  They growled as I picked myself back up to my feet, and joined Te’rnu in continuing our escape.

  A phaser beam shot over our heads. The phasers were on back online, then - but at least the Iyr were still struggling to move to aim.