Year 20XX
Mankind had finally acquired the technology to make its way to the stars. No longer would it be bound to just their home system.
There had been many obstacles in the way, but through shear determination and a never ending resolve, breakthrough after breakthrough was made, allowing the creation of colony ships to travel the void.
Or so it was claimed.
Few people knew that the ‘genius’ that released research that allowed interstellar travel was not creating it by himself.
Mankind had independently developed sufficient technology to reach Mars, and there they found the ruins of an ancient civilization. There wasn’t much, just a single settlement, but what was found changed the course of human history.
The discovery was not announced, except to those required for the development of the new technologies based on what was discovered.
The settlement was alien in origin, settlers from a distant world. They’d come to this system in search of a new home. They were a group that had fled their home when an outbreak of disease had threatened their world. Unfortunately for them, they only fled to their own doom.
How life develops differs greatly between worlds. What was safe for some, is disaster for others. Mars and the aliens killed each other. Bacteria harmless to the inhabitants of Mars was not so kind to the visitors. Had it been noticed in time, tragedy might have been averted, but it wasn’t. It did no harm to the life of the aliens who had arrived. Their descendants however, were all killed. The bacteria destroyed the reproductive abilities of the refugees, sealing their doom.
However, it wasn’t just the newcomers that were susceptible to the whims of fate. While it took far longer, what the refugees brought with them was just as fatal to what they’d hoped was their new homeworld.
Thus it was that the world and the aliens killed each other. By another twist of fate, the remains of the settlement were protected. While there was some decay, the buildings and ships that had brought the aliens to this new star system were still mostly intact, allowing them to be reverse engineered and reproduced.
Taking a lesson from the deceased, funding for development was drastically increased to not only those working with technology, but those in the field of biology as well. Even if mankind could get to the stars, it would be futile if doing so led to our destruction or the destruction of the new world.
---
After several decades, the time had come. A ship with everything it needed to reach another world, and the ability to ensure the destruction that occurred on Mars was not repeated, was completed and ready for launch.
It could carry two thousand passengers. However, there was a catch. While engines capable of interstellar transit had been created, it would still take time for them to reach those new stars. Decades. There was no way that enough supplies could be carried to care for that many people for so long, nor could it be grown on the ship.
The solution was another of the technologies from the Martians. Cryogenics.
The technology had been hypothesized even before humans set foot on Mars and found a viable version of it already existed. The problem was that the cryotech for some reason wiped the mind of those it was used on. Again, a solution existed. The mind could be stores on TAPES.
TAPES was not the old tech where audio-visual recordings were recorded magnetically. It was an acronym. Total Actualized Personality Extraction System. Basically, it copied the mind of those placed into cryosleep before they were frozen, then rewrote their mind onto their brains when being awoken. Nothing could go wrong since it was a proven technology, right?
I was one of those selected to set sail for the stars. Most of the passengers were scientists, engineers, soldiers, and administrators. People who had the training to put together a new settlement on the world we were headed for. I was not one of those.
As a publicity stunt, as well as to raise funding for the next ship to be constructed, a lottery was held to choose ten people outside of the hand-selected crew. It cost a hundred dollars per entry. Trillions of dollars were raised. Enough to completely fund the next ship, and then some.
I only threw my hat in the ring once. My luck was good, or so I thought at the time. Now I’m certain that it was someone else’s good luck foisting their problem onto me.
See, right now I’m on a different ship, that’s being attacked by an alien military. They are trying to capture or destroy this ship. For good reason too. But I should probably tell you how I reached that point.---
I had marched onto the ship and been put into cryosleep. The cryotubes were set up like those drawers you see in a morgue. I had climbed onto mine, put on the helmet connected to TAPES, and gone to sleep. There was no problem up to that point. What I awoke to was a whole different story.
I rubbed my eyes, brushing off the thin layer of ice that was covering them, and then opened them. I was not in the ship. Instead I was in a lab. That much I could tell, but everything about the place screamed alien. Even my own body. My hands were visible after opening my eyes, and they were not my own hands.
Yes, that sounds strange, but it’s the truth. They were smaller than they should be, with thinner fingers, and none of the scars my hands had. They were not the hands I went to sleep with. They were a child’s hands.
I was in a glass tube, so I tried to speak, to call for help and to ask what was going on, but while air flowed out of me, there was no sound. My throat felt strange. I touched it, and was terrified to feel a line running down my throat. It was as if surgery had been done on this body, and the only thing I could think of was that the vocal cords had been removed.
What the hell is going on here!?
I checked the rest of my body. The tube I was in was small, so I could move a little, but not too much. I looked down my body. It definitely wasn’t the one I’d been born with. Since I couldn’t check visually, I checked my body with my hands. Besides the thin scar on my throat, more could be felt all over my body. I was also bald, though at least I felt the stubble telling me it wasn’t permanent.
The most startling discovery was when my hands reached my waist. Between my legs specifically. There was nothing there.
WHAT!? From what I’d been told, there should have been no way for anyone to be revived in any body other than their own. Each tube had it’s own TAPES, not connected to any other, so how did this happen?
While I was freaking out, a person came into the lab. It wasn’t human, but the body shape was nearly identical. There were small horns on the head, the skin was purple, and not a speck of hair could be seen.
It took a look at me, checked some displays, then input something into one of them. I lost consciousness.
---
When next I woke, it was with tremors running through the ground. There was also a sound like blaster fire. What now? I checked my body, and I was still a little girl, unable to talk. I lay there, unable to move.
A group of figures came into the room. Humans, soldiers. And not with the kind of equipment I was familiar with. They looked vaguely like what I knew, but were at the same time very different. There was four of them. Two watched the door, while the another went around the lab, scooping up things, plugging into the computers and downloading data. These might have been alien systems, but it looked like status bars are a common denominator.
The last man terrified me. He was going around the room, placing small blinking packages. I didn’t have to be a genius to guess what they were. Explosives. This team was here to steal the data being collected, then destroy the place. And so far none had even seemed to notice me.
I started pounding on the glass, but it was thick, and my body was a child’s so it made very little sound, especially considering the booming shudders running through the place. If I had to guess, this group was infiltrating the lab while others drew away the enemy forces.
I was finally noticed by the guy placing the explosives. He couldn’t hear me, but as he went around the room, he saw me beating my hands on the glass. He said something to the others, but I couldn’t understand a word of it. It did make the others look my way. I kept hammering my fist ineffectually on the glass, while throwing pleading looks their way and crying.
When one of the men shook his head, I was afraid that I’d just been consigned to death. The next moment, the computer guy looked my way, then tapped a command into the console. With a click I felt more than heard, the glass popped open and I was free. I was also freezing. The tube wasn’t warm, but it was warmer than it was in the lab.
I quickly got off of the table. Since I was unable to speak, I bowed my thanks. Looking around the room, I searched for something to cover myself with. As expected of a lab rat, I was naked. There was nothing. I did see something useful in the hallway. A corpse. It had some kind of clothing on, but it was tight on the body, so I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do anything with it, even if I could remove it.
It was also exposed, so there was no way I was going to risk my life to try and get it. I started searching the room physically. There might be a cabinet with a lab coat or sheet, or something that I could use as clothing. I found cabinets, but I was unable to open a single one. It wasn’t that I tried to do so, I was pulled away when reaching for one.
I was told something, but since I didn’t understand the language, I didn’t know exactly what. The message got through though. Don’t touch anything. And so I waited. It took about five minutes from the time the men entered to when it was time to leave. It took that long for the download to happen. I was still naked when we left the room.
The two who were guarding the door took the lead, and explosives guarded the rear. Data guy and I were in the middle. I was being carried. I was too weak to be very fast, so I’d been picked up by data guy.
We rushed away from the lab. We didn’t run into anyone as we made our escape, not anyone living anyway. There were corpses here and there, likely killed by these men when they were making the way to the lab. All of them were similar to the person I saw in the lab. Horns, bald, purple skin. There was some variation in color and shape, but not much, at least to my eyes.
I discovered that we weren’t on a planet as we traveled. There was the rare window, and they showed one thing, space. We were in space. I could see rocks floating out there, so I guessed we were on a space station built into an asteroid. Cool! Or it would have been if we weren’t in what also looked like a war zone.
Finally, we came to a hatch, through which we ran into a ship. How could I tell? It had that kind of feel. Also there was a cockpit and seats with webbing for passengers. Yeah, this was an assault ship. One designed for a squad to get in and out quickly. I was thrown in a seat, and grabbed at the restraints, trying to figure out how to attach then as quickly as possible. I needed help.
After we were all strapped in, we took off. I was pressed back in my seat by the pressure. The edges of my vision turned grey, but I was able to hold onto my consciousness. The pressure slowly grew less, though I don’t think we slowed down at all.
We flew away. As we did so, explosives guy pulled a stick out of his pocket and thumbed open a safety cover. A red button was revealed. He grinned at me and said something, then pressed it. I heard and felt nothing. Tilting my head, I feigned ignorance. We were in space, there’s not enough matter to let us feel something unless we were right next to it, in which case, we’d have been involved in the explosion.
He pointed at something I couldn’t see. I tried looking, but there was a seat between me and whatever he was pointing at. I would guess it was a monitor, but I was too small, and there was no way I’d be undoing the webbing and risking injury just to look. I assumed that it was an epic explosion and just smiled at him.
We had successfully escaped, and they had pulled off their mission. A couple of hours after launch, one of the guys said something, and straps were undone. I’d seen how they were done up, so I was able to undo the ones I was under myself.
As I stood up, my stomach gave a little rumble. Yep, I’m hungry. I had been from the start, but it wasn’t like I could say anything. It was also too dangerous to risk pulling their attention away from things that might keep us alive.
I was handed a tube. I watched how it was opened, then did the same thing, or tried anyway. I wasn’t strong enough to do it. I pulled and I tugged, even using my teeth, but to no avail. Tugging on a shirt, I held up the tube and gave puppy dog eyes. Laughing, something incomprehensible was said, and it was opened for me. It was tasteless, but it filled the empty void in my belly. It wasn’t just food paste like I thought it would be. There was water in it too. I guess it was easier this way then having them both separate.
After eating, they tried to ask me some questions. I didn’t understand anything except by inference. Names for example. Explosives guy was Rob, data guy was Simon, the guy with red hair was Frank, and the baldy was Vince.
I wanted to give my name as Telarynn. It wasn’t my birth name, but it was my preferred name. Given the situation I found myself in, I doubted there’d be a problem with it. There was though. I had no way to communicate it to them. The vocal cords in this body had been removed, so talking was out. Simon gave me a tablet.
I wanted to write on it, but the alphabet it used was not the one I knew. By playing charades, I was able to inform them that I couldn’t read that language. Simon took the tablet back, and changed the language several times. Still no luck. I mimicked drawing, and he changed apps to one that was free form. I wrote my name. I also wrote down the alphabet.
Taking the tablet back, he did something, and shortly thereafter a keyboard in English appeared. Finally, we’d be able to communicate. I typed, and the tablet spoke. They spoke and the tablet translated the words into English. The syntax was a little weird, but we were able to understand each other now.
I started typing. I started with asking the year. It was the year 3415 of the Republic Calendar. I asked if that was from when humans first left Earth. It wasn’t. There was another four thousand years between the two. It had been seven and a half thousand years since I’d left Earth.
I was stunned. What the hell had happened? The trip should have taken around fifty years to get to Alpha Centauri, the closest planet believed to be habitable. I asked, and Alpha Centauri had been settled.
So what happened to the ship? A wormhole? Navigation malfunction? It had to be in the records somewhere.
Unfortunately for me, I would never learn what happened.
An alarm sounded. Everyone rushed to strap in. I could have done it myself, but it would have taken too long. I held onto the tablet. It was picking up the voices and translating them for me. It seems we had a ship on our tail, and not one of the Republic’s.
It was catching up to us.
We were pushed back in our seats as our already immense speed was further increased, at the expense of our fuel reserves. This ship was not one that could fly solo between the stars. It was one that was based on another ship. And our ride was not due for another few days.
Shit.
I wake up, thousands of years after I should have, in a new body as someone’s science experiment, escape death, only to end up in space combat. I really don’t want to die. I just got another lease on life!
Missiles were launched at us. They exploded close enough to rock our little ship, but so far we were not in danger of destruction. We had to hope we could hold out long enough for our ride to appear, or one of the ships that had attacked the lab came after this enemy.
Our high speed chase lasted three days before things changed. It was nerve-racking. We knew that there was a hostile ship on our tail, but the only thing we could do was run, run, and run some more. Transmissions had been sent calling for assistance, but it was no use.
Finally one of the missiles exploded close enough to damage our hull. It wasn’t a big hit, but it was enough that it was difficult to repair. They climbed into space suits, but I didn’t have that option. I could get in one, but with my small size, I was unable to move or access the food and water reserves while it was sealed. Given no other choice, I was placed in one of the escape capsules.
Each was big enough for a single people, and the ship had eight of them, so since only four of the soldiers had survived the attack, there was enough for me to be placed in one. They gave me enough rations to last a week, along with something to open them, since I was too weak to do it with muscle alone. The tablet had things to keep me entertained.
If we were not rescued before my food ran out, it was safe to assume we’d be captured or killed. If there was no backup of the data these guys stole, then they’d definitely try for capture first.
I spent two days cooped up in the capsule, being rocked by the occasional explosion before it came to an end. Unfortunately it didn’t end well.
There’d been contact with our ride, and they wouldn’t make it in time. One of the missiles had damaged our engines, and while we had momentum, there was enough out here that our speed was slowly being dropped, while the pursuer was unhindered.
They reached us the next day. With a lurch, our ship was captured. There was a plan for this. Sadly, it involved death, not just for the enemy, but for everyone nearby. There weren’t enough weapons to fight off the entire contingent of a cruiser, with over a hundred personnel.
The data was copied and installed in a fast message rocket, to be launched at the last moment. Then the countdown started. When it was time the rocket was launched, but not only that, the escape pods were as well, though chances of being picked up were essentially nil. The escape pods separated from the ship and headed in every direction. I don’t know if the others were in any of them, but I hoped they were.
The ship exploded.
I saw the ships go, first the one I’d been on, then the enemy ship exploded. What the hell was in the ship!? A nuke? That explosion was fucking huge. Unfortunately, I wasn’t far enough away. Debris peppered my escape pod. Most of it pinged off, but unfortunately for me some of it opened holes. My air was quickly disappearing.
Please no. I don’t want to die!
Please, let me get to safety.
Plea...
