3 ABOARD THE ORION SWIFT
“Dr. Fry, the boy’s up!” said an excited voice of a boy named Kru, around the same age as Troy’s.
“Well, that was quick!” remarked Dr. Fry, a tall, heavy set man with orange hair, rising from his chair in his office.
Troy looked up from his transparent coffin. He saw white everywhere, with tiny lights here and there.
The ceiling seemed to be so far off, with tiny circular portholes, placed very high above. He lifted his head, and looked at hundreds of beds with transparent domes, all around. Troy thought he must be in some kind of hospital or worse that he was being experimented upon, by the attackers. His adrenaline rushing, he snatched out the nasal mask that was placed on his face, in anxiety.
“Easy there, boy!” shouted Dr. Fry, rushing towards Troy’s Teradome, the official name for the medical coffin in which Troy was lying.
Troy punched on the glass of the Teradome, and cracked it, making Dr. Fry run even faster towards him and call loudly for help.
“We need help in here! Call the other Keplers!” cried Dr. Fry.
Anyway before the Keplers could come, Troy broke through the Teradome and stood in the path, still wearing his dark brown organic pants, blue tee and a white loose button less shirt. He looked confused and pretty aggressive.
“Easy boy, we aren’t here to harm you!” said Dr. Fry, motioning his hands to indicate no harm, stopping right in his tracks at a safe distance from Troy.
Troy looked at him and the others, they looked similar to him.
Where they Keplers? No, they weren’t, but they still spoke the Standard Order English. They had to be one of the other two known colonies. Anyway, a far more intelligent alien could be using the language in order to trick him or even worse, this whole thing might be just sort of a hallucination, that the aliens were putting him under.
Troy decided to be defensive.
“Who are you?” asked Troy.
“We mean no harm, young man,” replied Dr. Fry, who held his ground a few meters away from Troy.
“I asked who you are?” yelled Troy, angrily.
Dr. Fry removed his white coat, revealing the Albein emblem that was of a constellation of seven stars, surrounding the alphabet ‘A’ shining against a violet background on the left side of his chest on his maroon body suit.
Albeins…
Troy was still not convinced.
“Do you have my mother?” he called, realizing how stupid his question was, a moment later.
“Young man, we can help you out, if only you would let us,” appealed Dr. Fry, trying to look as innocent as he could.
“Don’t come near me!” warned Troy, stepping back as soon as he saw Fry approaching him.
At that moment,
“TROY!” shouted a familiar voice, from behind Dr. Fry.
“MUM?” cried Troy, his heart skipping a beat.
Amanda rushed forth, and hugged Troy, kissing repeatedly on his forehead.
“Mum, you are alright!” cried Troy, relieved.
“Yes son, I am, thank goodness that you are too,” said Amanda, looking at her son, her beautiful face worn out by years of worry and tears.
“What happened, Mum?” asked Troy, still holding his mother tight.
Before Amanda could explain, all of a sudden, red lights and a very loud alarm went off.
“Back to the Atrium now!” cried Dr. Fry, motioning towards the mother-son duo.
Everyone rushed through the small pathway that lead from the medical bay into a landing with fifteen elevators, while some of the medical team rushed to attend to some of the Teradomes.
Troy ran with his mother behind the Albeins and the other rescued Keplers. The elevators opened onto a very large area, where hundreds were already assembled. There were a lot of maroon body suits. A small group of around a hundred Keplers were standing were standing to their right, where Amanda joined along with Troy.
A man’s gruff voice suddenly boomed throughout the Atrium,
“It is requested of everyone on this ship that they go to their designated cabins and stay inside them.
You will be notified of them at the end of this announcement.”
Amanda turned to face her son,
“It’s going to be alright, Troy,” she said and smiled.
“Don’t worry about me, mom,” replied Troy, trying to smile back.
Soon, an Albein official came by and started allocating cabins to the Keplers, with four in each room.
“Cabin 317, if you would please!” said the tall female Albein official, scratching her long pointy nose and motioning towards a door labeled 317.
Two Kepler women went in and then Amanda held Troy’s hand and proceeded to go, when Troy abruptly stopped her.
“Mum!”
“What is it, Troy?”
“I think I’ll go with the men.”
“But baby-”
“I’ll be fine, don’t embarrass me here,” he croaked, looking at others who were staring at them.
Amanda looked disturbed for a moment and then she smiled.
“Well then, Troy, go on,” said Amanda.
“Thanks!” coughed Troy gratefully.
“Troy! I just want you to know, that the Falcon is here too,” said Amanda.
“Wow! Great!” grinned Troy happily, forgetting for a moment all that had happened in the past few hours.
The Albein official flashed a smile at the duo and looked at the rest of the Kepler contingent.
“If the rest would follow me now, please!” she said politely and moved on
As the women were being assigned cabins, Troy joined the Albein official at her side.
“Ma’am, can you tell me where Mr. Hugo Falcon is?”
“Mr. Hugo Falcon?” asked the official doubtfully, as she walked.
“Yes! Mr. Hugo Falcon! My Mum said he’s here in this ship, but he’s not here in this group.”
“Oh! It must be that ill-mannered scallywag!” she hissed.
“Excuse me?” said Troy, completely oblivious to what she said.
“He is with the Kepler Premier on the Command Bridge,” she said and forced a polite smile.
“Can I…can I join him?” Troy stuttered, knowing the answer even before he asked.
The official glared at him in return and she stopped to assign another cabin, before she turned to say, “Obviously not!”
Troy hung his head in dejection and trudged along.
It wasn’t long before he was given a cabin with three other Kepler men.
The cabin was huge and Troy was amused by the size of it. The cabin was big as his bedroom back on Kepler. There were four beds in the four corners of the room, with its own bedside table.
The cabin was snow white as was everything in it and the white light that bathed the room came from above the translucent ceiling.
“Welcome aboard the Orion Swift, an Albein Transporter Space Vessel,” announced the male voice of an AI. “Meal time will be announced shortly. In case of any clarifications or doubts, you can get my help from your DeskComs.
“It is referring to the bedside tables,” said a bearded man in a tattered yellow shirt, looking at Troy.
Troy nodded sheepishly.
Why does everyone treat me like a small kid?
Troy sank on his bed in the corner. The bed felt too good to be true. It felt as if the bed were massaging him.
These Albeins and their technology…
Troy lay down and allowed his senses to float, in the ecstasy offered by the bed.
“This is good, really good,” Troy said to himself.
“You are Dylan’s kid, right?” asked the bearded man.
Troy squeezed his eyes shut. He hated conversing with people as a general rule. He made friends and most of his conversations as a consequence and never by choice. So he wasn’t really looking forward to this conversation, either and that too, involving his dad.
“Yes, I am. Troy Zander, by the way,” replied Troy, sitting up, reaching out his hand to the bearded man.
“Jim Bobbers!” said the bearded man, shaking Troy’s hand.
Troy managed a polite smile.
“You are not really the talking type, are you?” asked Jim, grinning at him.
Troy just grinned in return.
“Not really!” said Troy.
“Your father was a great man. Such men are the ones needed in crisis times like this.”
Troy shook all over and hung his head, to not let his emotions show.
“I am sorry, boy! I am sorry, I didn’t mean to-” panicked Jim, placing his hands on Troy’s shoulders.
“Leave the kid alone, Bobbers, we got more important stuff to deal with,” called a mean middle-aged man, whose bed was near the door.
Jim looked guilty as he took one look at Troy and turned. Troy sunk back on his bed and turned to face the wall.
Why? Why these people had to always do that?
Troy squirmed.
All of these events were yet unexplained. What about Kepler? What about the other people? Jim was right, had dad been around, things would have been different, totally different.
Troy could hear the three Kepler men speaking in hushed voices, as if they didn’t want him to listen as to what they were speaking. Troy kept turning uncomfortably in his bed, till suddenly it was meal time.
“It’s supper time. Follow the luminescent green arrows along the surface, outside your cabin to the dining hall,” announced the AI.
The instructions proved needless as an Albein official, opened the door, waiting to escort them to the dining area.
Supper proved to be uneventful. Troy looked around for his mother in the dining hall, but she was nowhere to be found. He settled at one of the hundreds of long tables with tiny hemispherical projections that were present in front of every diner. It sprang to life every now and then and resulting in trays magically appearing and disappearing on the tables all over the place.
“Teleportation,” muttered Troy and chuckled to himself.
Well, it was expected of the Albeins to be this advanced. Troy didn’t feel anything odd about it, as did many of the other Keplers. Teleportation technology was common back on Kepler too, but it was rarely used in such dramatic ways like the Albeins. So, there were naturally a few, who were totally unsettled by it, like one Kepler woman screaming her head off on seeing her plate disappear, on the next row next to Troy’s.
The only thing that Troy noticed odd was that a tall lanky young Albein around his age, who was arguing with other older Albeins, constantly motioned towards him, with his hands, throughout the entire meal. Troy avoided looking at them and kept his head low, avoiding those Albeins’ gaze, whenever they turned around to look in his direction.
Feeling slightly depressed and uncomfortable in a new place, Troy ate very little of the crispy bread and dark green soup that had been served and returned to the cabin area.
He wanted to see his mother and thought he would go to her cabin but decided against it, on the way back and went to his room and fell on the bed again. He didn’t know what to do. Feeling bored, Troy activated his DeskCom. A holographic user interface popped before him, with the Orion Swift as its wallpaper.
“Hi!” said the AI. “How may I help you?”
“Is there a porthole in this cabin?”
“Yes but I am afraid that I can’t open them right now, sir!”
“Why not?” questioned Troy.
“I am sorry, sir, but I am not allowed to, right now.”
Damn it…wish I had the Whizzler now…Whizzler!...Max!... my Warswagger!
Troy felt his right ear where he had had the transmitter. It wasn’t there anymore.
Of course…
They had removed it from him. Feeling completely messed up, Troy found it too much to deal with his losses today and thought that it would be better to sleep. He shut his eyes and hoped sleep would take him over.
Thankfully for him, that one wish was granted quickly.
Later, suddenly in the dark, Troy felt being shaken by his shoulders by someone. As his typical reflex action, Troy grabbed his nighttime visitor by the wrists and locked them in a painful position.
“Oooowww!”
Troy could see him in the dark. It was the same guy that he had seen motioning towards him, at supper time.
“What do you want?” Troy hissed.
“I mean no harm. I am Kru, by the way,” giggled the boy, at how Troy was startled.
“What do you want, Kru?”
“I am here regarding something.”
“What?”
“Um…”
“Tell me!” commanded Troy.
“It’s about your vehicle.”
“The Warswagger! Do you have it?” asked Troy, excited, to finally hear news of his beloved machine.
“Yes, we do!”
“What about Max, is she still functional?”
“Yes, yes, yes, but now please let me go now or else my wrists are going to snap if you keep holding that way!” pleaded Kru.
“Alright! Alright!” whispered Troy loudly, letting go of him.
“Follow me!” said Kru as he felt his way out of the room followed by Troy.
Both of them emerged outside the room and Troy could look more closely at Kru. He was as tall as him, but looked lankier. He had a boyish face with loads of curly brown hair and a look like that of a toddler’s.
“Your vehicle has been kept in the Arkylum,” whispered Kru and by ‘Arkylum’ he referred to the Archives.
“How did you even-”
“Be quiet and follow me, we’ve only got a three minute window.”
Troy raised his eyebrows and stopped him.
“What do you think you are doing?” asked Kru, growing anxious by the minute
“I want some answers now!”
“You’ll get your answers down in the Arkylum, trust me,” reassured Kru. “As for now, follow me.”
Troy kept silent and ran behind him. There was no one in the path they were taking. They took the elevator to the deepest part of the ship. Lights turned on, as they exited the elevator.
A giant gray circular door was before them. A giant plate above the door read Arkylum.
“Just give me a moment!” said Kru and he muttered something onto his transmitter.
In less than a moment’s notice, the giant circular door huffed and puffed, and opened with a lot of white gas diffusing towards them.
“Avoid breathing that gas, it can make you dizzy for a while,” said Kru as he held his breath and went through the mist into the Arkylum.
Troy followed him into a very large bay, which reminded him of an ancient history museum back on Kepler. They seemed to be an unlimited number of rows and columns distributed over the length and breadth of the place. There were twenty floating platforms right above each other in each column, each hosting objects locked inside transparent boxes.
“Your vehicle is in B 99,” announced Kru. “It’s quite close by, we don’t need to use the flying scoos.”
gesticulating towards a line of what seemed to wheel less bikes, on their right.
Troy was tempted to ask what they kept here, but then realized that he had a horde of other important questions to ask first.
“Why are you helping me?” asked Troy.
“Because I think you are interesting!”
“WHAT?” said Troy, taken aback by the answer.
“I mean, I mean, tsokay, I’ll start over. Your biology isn’t like the other Keplers, the Teradome-”
“Tera what?”
“It’s the medical apparatus that you broke today!”
“Oh! Yes!”
“The Teradome picked some unusual signals from your brain and the presence of an uncharacterized drug in your system.”
“It’s not a drug, it’s a stimulant.”
“Stimulants are drugs.”
“I see.”
“You are different.”
“Tsokay! Fine!” Troy said, feeling weird about the way their conversation was going. “What really happened today?”
“The four colonies are being attacked by yet an unidentified alien force. We couldn’t save our planet but as figured as much we’ll save the others.”
“We have no idea about them?”
“No, not yet but I think we can get an idea from your vehicle.”
“Really?” asked Troy, in disbelief.
“I believe that the aliens attacking us are invisible to us because they have somehow found out as how to manipulate dark matter, which is also invisible to our eyes. Dark matter only interacts with gravitational forces and nothing else,” said Kru, looking very serious. “Just a few minutes before we rescued you, our ship picked up a distorted gravitational field from the place you were found. Since we couldn’t send a ground team to rescue you, we teleported you along with your vehicle and when I ran diagnostics on your vehicle, I found that your AI system had a video corresponding to the time, when we had initially picked up the peculiar readings.”
“So you think the video might give us an idea about the attackers?”
“Yes, I think the blast which disrupted the gravity force could also have messed up the dark matter technology, which I guess the aliens were using as some sort of an invisibility shield. I am not completely sure, it’s just all a big guess,” stated Kru.
“Right!” said Troy. “You didn’t tell any of the other Albeins about this?”
“No!” said Kru nervously. “I wanted to be sure of it myself, that’s why I called you. I can’t get your AI to show me the video. It asked for your authorization.”
“And I thought that you thinking that me being interesting, was the reason you brought me here,” joked Troy, before he realized how weird it sounded.
“Yes, you are, after all, you are the only thing explaining the disruption in the gravitational field with that drug in your system and your unusual brain activity.”
“Or the brain activity could be just a side effect of the drug and the disruption due to something else completely different,” said Troy coolly.
“Yes, that’s possible too,” said Kru, getting confused.
“Let’s just for now focus on the task at hand,” said Troy and smiled.
They reached B 99 soon. Troy looked up at the Warswagger, on the penultimate floater from the top.
Kru pressed an imaginary button in front of him.
“What are you doing?” asked Troy, amused.
“The computer is in my eye lens,” he explained grinning, pointing to his eye lenses. “It reads my hand movements.”
“Weird!” Troy cooed.
“It’s super cool! You must try it sometime!” Kru said enthusiastically as the floater holding the Warswagger moved forward from its position and descended softly, without even making a hissing noise.
“Max!” called Troy, as he jumped onto the floater before it had even descended completely.
“Hi Troy!” said Max, as the Warswagger was activated by Troy’s voice.
“There you are!” grinned Troy, feeling the battered Warswagger.
“Here we are.” replied Max happily.
“What about this attack, Max?” said Troy, turning serious.
“Yes, Troy, I have collected information as you requested.”
“Does the video show anything?” asked Troy with bated breath, as Kru joined him.
“Yes, Troy, there is something in the video you need to see,” replied Max.
“Show us!” said Troy, his curiosity spiking like a hot spring, gushing fresh from the ground.
Max projected the video as a holographic projection, from the Warswagger. The video started with two blasters emerging off the rear of the Warswagger and shooting bullets at the centre of the smoke filled epicenter. The video continued to show Troy jumping out of the Warswagger and running madly and then, there was it, the explosion but it was all over in just under a second.
“Max!” called Troy, afraid that the video almost virtually showed nothing important.
“On it!” replied Max, as she slowed down the video and replayed the explosion.
The video now showed, Troy floating above the ground, before a huge ring of white light exploded around his body. The explosion seemed to disrupt the air around, sending lightening blue electric sparks, everywhere and then they saw it. A grayish form, just in front of Troy, projecting out what seemed to be like a hand and as the video progressed, something turned towards the camera. It was a head, smiling maliciously, at the camera, as if the alien knew that he was being filmed.
“It’s human!” gasped Kru.
“Dad?” whispered Troy, frozen as he felt his world crash in grossly from within.