They Ain't Never Tasted Terran Before

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The central control dash traced the north end of the navigation chamber. A membranous window, LT Reesa called the observation shield, stretched above the lighted panels. A single chair positioned before the dash granted a pilot total control of the manta. The lieutenant-technician assumed the navigator's seat while captain Vortrand corralled Lily to an alcove carved from the chamber's East end.


A table surrounded by four chairs occupied most of the nook. What looked like a library circulation cabinet blocked out the alcove's rear. Vortrand plunked Lily into one of the chairs. She crossed her legs on the cushioned seat and the captain situated himself on the table's edge. The storage globe clipped to his hip. He twirled his busted talk-round on a finger.


"Skims are clear." LT Reesa rose from the navigator's seat. "Phozone levels are almost sprint capable. At prolonged sprint we're three turns out from Kaptune."


"What about this?" Captain Vortrand held up his talk-round. The Verakian woman plucked the device from his fingers and popped open a small panel on the band's interior. She peered at the chunky bracelet's guts.


"I don't know that there's any fixing this." She poked at a frayed wire that looped from the opening.


"You have before."


"You fell on it. These knock off 'rounds were crap to start with. There's not even a brand mark on this. A Titian could stomp on a Nevia and the OS wouldn't even hiccup."


The captain snorted and snatched the talk-round from his sister. "I don't have the Pashmi's bank account. It's stall brand tech for us until Luthe decides we could do with better. Now then," he redirected his attention at Lily. "Begin with the fledgling's crash. Tell me everything you recall until you woke up on the manta. Be detailed. Especially about this." He slipped the storage globe from his belt loop and placed it in front of her. Metal clinked on the glossy tabletop.


Lily inhaled, closed her eyes and organized her thoughts. When she opened her eyes, she opened her mouth and narrated her tale. She was as honest and detailed as she could be. Over and over, the captain pressed her about the globe and what it revealed. He made her hold the segmented sphere and stare into it again which triggered no lights or visions. Shrugging, she described again faces and places and feelings that didn't belong to her. Half remembered images floated up from the depths of her consciousness. Vaguely, she interpreted what she remembered.


The fifth time through Lily's schpeal, captain Vortrand said, "Stop."


Lily slumped against her chair back.


"Close your eyes," the captain said and Lily did. "Empty your mind. Shouldn't be difficult for you."


Eyes still shut, Lily extended her hand and extended one finger. LT Reesa's chuckling cut over her brother's annoyed snort. The finger was universal.


"Empty your mind," the captain repeated, so Lily rolled and relaxed her shoulders and tried her best.


Thoughts were roaches. They swarmed in the dark behind her shuttered lids. With one word, she shushed her inner voices. Empty. She repeated it. Empty, empty, empty. The chant rolled into a meaningless drone. Ego dissolved. In the void, thoughts and other things, burbled up from the dark.


A woman ran in front of Lily. She wore red. A military uniform. A sword flashed in her hand as her arms pumped at her sides. When Lily fell behind the woman turned. Fury darkened her eyes and colored her cheeks. She shouted, pulled Lily along an endless hallway. They ran towards darkness, but something pulsed in the shadows. Something roiled. Its presence vibrated Lily's soft organs. Teeth and gums itched. Hairs covering her body stood erect. Bugs crawled under her skin. The darkness was a gaping maw. It yawned. Hungry.


"No!" Eyes popped open. The sides of Lily's chair squeaked in her grip. Chest pumped. Sweat slicked the backs of her legs, her thighs, and underarms. She licked salt off her upper lip.


Captain Vortrand grasped her shoulder. "What did you see?"


Head slashed left and right. "A woman in a red uniform. A hall. A...monster? I don't know! None of it made sense."


"Then we do it again."


"No."


The captain must have read something in Lily's expression and tone other than defiance. A dark brow curved up. "Tell me what's frightening you."


Swallowing, she said, "When I remember this stuff it's like I'm not me and like I might not be able to come back if I go too deep."


"Neural bleed." LT Reesa occupied the chair opposite Lily after she checked her brother's talk-round.


The captain nodded.


"Brain bleed? What does that mean?" Lily asked.


LT Reesa started explaining, but the captain spoke over her.


"That the storage globe's data transfer was successful."


"Intel was wrong. The lock wasn't DNA encrypted," the lieutenant-technician said.


"Intel wasn't wrong. Miss Abadie's species match percentages were quite interesting." Shifting into a seat, captain Vortrand flipped up a tile from the table. The side of the panel facing him housed a screen. With it, he controlled the alcove's embedded display.


Mechanisms at the center of the polished surface whirred. A circular aperture irised open. Blue light projected from the shadowed hollow. A voxic display flickered above the table. Four tiles formed a cube. Each side showed data Lily couldn't read since it was all in Verakian.


"What?" Lily asked when LT Reesa's jaw dropped.


"You're Bralian," the lieutenant-technician said. "That can't be right."


"No, I'm human. I've never even heard of Bralians or Utori or Verakian or anything else until now."


The captain rested his elbows on the table and steepled his fingers. "Being ignorant of the truth doesn't make it any less true." He gestured at the hovering tiles. "Those are your match percentages from the species matrix. They place you at a sixty-five percent match with the stats we have on record for Bralian."


"What about the other thirty-five percent?" Lily asked.


"Unidentifiable."


Lily stared into her lap. The hem of the captain's too big undershirt twisted in her hands. "You said they died out." She raised her head. "You said the Verakian were the last of their line."


"That we knew of," captain Vortrand said. "Now we've found you. The storage globe's reaction to your DNA confirms these results."


"Then we didn't lose the data," LT Reesa said.


Hands ran over the shaved sides of the captain's head. "No. We simply have a new Bralian storage device to crack."


"Hey," Lily waved at them. "I'm a person not a thing and none of what I remember about that globe makes sense enough for me to explain it."


"Because your limited conscious mind detects only fragments of the whole implanted there," the captain said.


Lily cringed and looked to LT Reesa. "There's something implanted in my brain?"


"Mem—"


Captain Vortrand cut off his sister.


"DNA encrypted visuals. Think of it like a film only a Bralian can interpret. Alien strains in your blood our species matrix couldn't assign dilute your lineage. That's manifesting as a degradation of your neural faculties. It's unsurprising your inferior mental resources aren't capable of interpreting the information it houses."


"My neural faculties are peachy, thanks. Before your pilot crashed in my backyard and your ship kidnapped me I was on my way to a pretty good college. On scholarship."


"Is higher education such a significant achievement on your baseworld?"


"Obviously, being a decent person isn't on yours."


"Does decency accomplish duty? Does it deliver results?"


"Not everything is about getting what you want."


"On this ship it is." Captain Vortrand rose. "This ship is my world. If you want to survive my world you will give me what I want, starting with determining the source of your Bralian heritage."


"Like I would know that."


"Tell us about your baseworld," LT Reesa said. "We know the Bralians had sub-world colonies within their own system and they intended to expand to other systems. Our records of their expansion, exploration and technological advancement is vastly incomplete. The Utori monopolize most of the information on our parent species. They'd have intelligence on Bralian expeditions into zerospace and their seed colonies if there's any intelligence on the subject to be had."


"Then why don't you ask the Utori?"


The captain barked out a laugh. "What makes you think they'd tell the people who beat them back into hostilespace a damn thing?"


"You have Vlex locked in the belly. Ask him."


Placing his hands on the table, captain Vortrand leaned in Lily's direction. Dark brows climbed upward, almost touching his hairline. "Vlex?" His upper lip curled.


"That's his name."


"I gather." The captain withdrew. "I didn't realize you were on a first name basis."


"I need information as much as you do. Why turn down a source?"


Squinting at her, the captain smiled then faced the observation shield. "The Utori aren't forthcoming with their intelligence. Especially that one."


"You can't use, like, enhanced interrogation?" Better him than her.


"I wouldn't open that cell to shoot him," the captain said. "He's too dangerous for interrogation and I doubt torture would be effective. The Utori may be a pack of animals, but they are well trained."


"But if he had a Bralian storage globe he might know about, um, zerospace seed colonies. He might know about Earth, my baseworld. Where it is."


Captain Vortrand folded his arms. "You better hope not. If the Utori ever found out about an entire planet full of half-Bralians like you..." He shook his head. "Humans will end up the same as their progenitor species: conquered, raped, enslaved, destroyed."


Lily shuddered. It wasn't hard imagining a race of creatures like Vlex being monsters.


Stretching her arm across the table, LT Reesa laid a hand atop Lily's tangled fingers. "If the Utori knew the location of a Bralian seed colony they would have conquered it long ago. Your baseworld is safe."


"For now," the captain said, a hungry glint in his eye. "It could easily become hostilespace without sufficient protection."


"Hostile?" They tossed around so many terms. All this placing the proper vocabulary with the proper image had her temples pounding.


Captain Vortrand tugged open one of the little cubbies in the cabinet and removed a spool of sparkling thread. Resuming his seat at the projection table, he fitted the spool into the depression his screen panel uncovered. The cube display evaporated. A miniature galaxy replaced the report. Controls the captain adjusted zoomed out, out, out on the voxic map. Over a dozen systems rotated before them. LT Reesa pointed at the cluster closest to her.


"You don't have the space type filter—"


"Getting there," the captain said through his teeth.


A white band passed over the map. Different colors highlighted crops of space. Red, purple, and yellow shapes quilted the projection. Magnifying a cluster revealed additional layers of demarcation.


"This," captain Vortrand circled a long, white finger around a red limned area, "is hostilespace. Any red on the map is Utori claimedspace. If we were to travel through it without the correct beacon signature we'd be attacked on sight. Utori are openly aggressive to unapproved Verakian ships within their claimedspace.


"The yellow is Verakian claimedspace. The purple is independent. Consider it Pashmi claimedspace. Now," a flick of the controls faded the colored map. A new projection took its place. This map was all blue. "This is a rough layout of traversed zerospace."


"No one owns these planets?" Lily asked.


"Not yet."


"Are they all inhabited?"


He shrugged. "Some, possibly. Zerospace scouts aren't planetary evaluators. They coast zerospace and record what's there, gather minimal terrain and atmosphere readings."


"One of those scouts might have recorded Earth and not known it," Lily said.


"A possibility."


Lily reached for the controls. "May I—"


The captain ripped the data spool from the hollow and slammed down the panel. The map shorted out. The projection aperture closed. He pointed at her, thrusting his finger at her chest to emphasize every syllable he uttered.


"Nothing on my ship comes free. You've already taken something of value from me."


"Not my fault."


"Not an excuse."


Lily crossed her arms. "What do you want?"


"The implanted data, of course."


"I thought you said my inferior, half-Bralian brain can't comprehend all that superior information."


"That doesn't mean you can't give me what's there. Or that I can't take it."


Lily flattened against her chair.


"Relax," the captain said. "With the Pashmi's aid, you'll come out of this with your mind and body intact. Allow me access to your mind. In return I'll get you home. While you're on board you'll have your own quarters, rations, and access to my maps." He waved at the cabinet near the projection table then rolled the data spool between his palms. "Search for your baseworld to your heart's content."


"And if I don't want you poking around in my head?"


The captain's laser gaze pinned Lily in place. "Then I hope you've found the belly to your liking. You can bunk with the Utori until I find a way to take what I want and when I'm done I'll blast you out of o-layer."


Elbows on the table, Lily plopped her chin into her hands. To her reflection, she said, "Which way to my quarters?"

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