Telekinesis. A rare natural ability that has been observed in few species across the galaxy and even fewer are as intelligent or sentient as the Fei that holds me up with its power.
Struggling against the invisible force is useless, I simply flail about in the air like a fish out of water. How embarrassing, like getting kidnapped wasn’t enough.
The other heavily armoured Fei stood at ease now with me hanging out in the air, staring at me as I drew closer to their rather large comrade that pulls on me. Eventually, I give up struggling at let myself move freely across the air.
As if noticing my surrender, the psychic lets me drop to the floor like a bag of dirty clothes.
There’s clacking and clicking, tongue talk really, one I can’t be bothered understanding. The Fei language is one of the few that isn’t auto-translated by my wristband. One of the few languages left that require an organic to learn and translate.
An inconvenience but I suppose that just adds to their mystery and the natural threat they present. For centuries, they’ve denied and ignored all diplomatic attempts to reconcile from Sildor, and now, they declare war.
Sitting on my hurt butt I can’t do much but try and get my trembling hands and shoulders to a minimum as the psychic Fei begins to approach me again.
It squats down to my level, I look away. It seems to gurgle angrily and next thing I know, it is pulling my face to its own.
The Fei don’t have much in the way of a face. They have no facial features like eyes, noses or even ears unlike humans do.
What they do have is a slick black helmet looking skull that starts at the top of their sneering mouth that is filled with sharp, metallic looking teeth, and sometimes flows all the way back into their short heads, curling into itself.
Their biology is bizarre and unstudied. We’ve never gotten the chance to have a live Fei on our table in centuries, not without it killing several people and then killing itself when it finds no way off the planet.
A mystery to the galaxy truly.
The psychic Fei continues to click and clack at me, it has a rancid smell stuck to its breath and the skin of its three long fingers on my face irritates me to no end.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying!” I scream. Try as I may to free my face from its grip it holds onto me with a deathly vice that I can’t believe is a product of just it’s fingers.
This abuse goes on for a while, the psychic Fei raging in its tongue at my face, its fingers gripping on my chin even tighter whenever I speak back. It annoys me. Why try to communicate when we both can’t understand each other?
I try gesticulating but it slaps my hands away, pinning them down under its heavy, painful boot. I’m boiling with a fury unlike anything I’ve felt, comparable to the time Oscar failed to get me my drink despite several reminders!
Fortunately, this continued torture doesn’t last forever.
Alien as they are, I still manage to feel the atmosphere in the room change, the vibe of the Fei troopers around me and the one that stood over me, sloshing my face with its saliva and knead my hand under its boot.
The cause of this change is none other than the figure…or figures that troop in. These ones looking even more elite than the Fei around me. Fully garbed in their battle armour, towering over everyone in the room as they trekked forward beside the harmless looking Fei.
The one at the centre of this entrance is a small, stout looking Fei, possibly no taller than I which is odd for their kind…as far as we’ve seen anyway.
This Fei has on the traditional uniform for all scientists and engineer’s galaxy wide; a white lab coat fitted with self-sterilizing bacteria and a sleeve that produces endless gloves and little instruments for the right job.
A scientist’s best friend no doubt.
The troupe comes to a halt right in front of me. Or behind me as the Fei Scientists feet poke my back.
The Psychic Fei lets go of my face and moves back after a bit of click-clacking from the scientists. Free at last to turn my head as I see fit, I take a look at the scientist from below.
It seems to be grinning down at me. I appreciate the whiter, less sharp looking teeth baring down at me.
Unlike the psychic, this one has its skull a lighter colour of black, maybe grey or ash and it extends all the way down to its feet, becoming less cranium the farther away it is from the start and more of a head tail.
From this little feature only, I can quickly tell that this is a Fei female. I nearly lose myself in the solidarity I feel at finding a woman like myself so far in space, but I remember, she’s a Fei.
My heart which had long stopped drumming up a party in my chest decides it’s time to start another as I piece two and two together. This Fei woman ordered the Psychic off of me, she could very well be the commander of the Cruiser class ship.
She could be the one who ordered my kidnapping.
“Won’t you get off the floor, Xerai Black?”
Is that…Are those… WORDS I CAN UNDERSTAND?
I don’t bother hiding my surprise and the Scientist grins even wider. “You are shocked, because I can speak your language, isn’t it?”
Dumbly, I nod.
She seems to scoff, although it comes out like an amused hiss. “You humans are so exploratory, so curious. It’s a joke to lure you into a trap.”
Her voice is laced with the thick accent of her kind, every word and letter are excessively pronounced with an overuse and over reliance on her thin black tongue.
She sets out an arm for me and then I realize I’ve still been sitting on the floor. “It’s not proper to talk to an equal this way.” Is all she says as she lifts me to my feet.
“How do you know me. How do you know who I am?” I finally manage to choke out the words that clung in my throat since she spoke my name.
Her tongue slithers out, shaking out in the air like a snake hissing, “You are afraid.” She states matter-of-factly, “You believe a Fei knowing you is a danger, no?”
She shrugs, the muscle part of her cranium bouncing as she does, “Not always,” she answers shrilling, her grin turning even wider, “But in this case, yes. It is a danger, Xerai.”
Letting out a desperate breath, I gulp and shake my head, rubbing my sweaty hands off on my trousers, “What do you want with me? What did I do? I’ll fix it, I swear.”
“No, no, no.” She tuts wagging one of her three fingers at me, “You don’t need to be fixing anything...Not yet anyway. For now, this, well this is a personal vendetta for me, Xerai, the damage, it is done and now, I have won, I have you where I want you.”
What the fuck is she talking about!
She thrills with in Fei language to one of the others beside her snapping her fingers at them. They salute and quickly get moving.
She begins to walk, the Fei behind her follow like drones and I’m forced to walk beside her as she beckons to me.
“You see…many years ago, I was working on a theorem. It was meant to be a device, or a bacterium, or a way to use any of the known sources of energy to blow a hole in space…much like a black hole does, or a wormhole does.”
“But!” she snaps, scaring me. “Without all that volatile matter and terrible consequences attached to it. I wanted to bring about the power of to control these…still mind-boggling anomalies of space.”
“And then…and then you came along. Announcing, several star systems away that you have just discovered a way to separate matter nigh instantaneously. Your…Neutrino Drill.”
She stops walking and soon, the walls of the hangar part open, drawing away and revealing the dead, chill, space above Rim.
I find myself hungry for breath. Is she going to throw me out? Without a suit? Oh no, no, no, no!
Then slowly, the ship swerves and drifts. The facility is in view and…curiously, the drill is powering up.
“What does my Drill have to do with any of this?”
She scoffs, “Well. After that announcement, I realized that you’ve cracked the solution to my problem and hadn’t even realized it.”
“What problem?”
“You don’t know by now?” She turns to me, her grin ever permanent. “Poking a hole through the universe of course!”
Just then the Drill fires violently. It beams an angry red of Neutrinos down into the abyss, then suddenly explodes with another burst of power. The beam turns white and the abyss…
Spits out an entire naval fleet of Fei Battleships.
