Voices of the Lost Page 3

  “Voids…” Jann fixed his eyes on Dren. “That’s amazing! How did you know to do that?”

  “Kingston,” Kara said, “You’re the language expert. What do you make of this?”

  “Uh…” He cleared his throat then furrowed his brow. “Not a damn clue, Commander.”

  Kara groaned. “It’s always a pleasure working with Fleet’s finest minds.” She shook her head.

  “It’s an alien language, Commander,” Dren said while shifting his pinky finger. The rings continued to change size and elevation.

  “Is it possible for written language to be three-dimensional?” Jann asked.

  Kingston leaned into the holographic pictographs. “I don’t see why not. Language, at its core, is a system of communication. Understand the system, and you understand the language.”

  Dren focused on the combination of circles, trying to discern a pattern, hoping to figure out the fundamentals of the language. “If this is some alien language, what could the addition of a third dimension mean?” He asked as dizziness began settling in his head. He had to put his gloves on soon and re-pressurize his suit.

  “Voids if I know,” Kingston said with a sigh. “They may have given me a language profile when they created me, but it doesn’t mean I can solve alien riddles.”

  “We’re spending too much time on something that could be a dead end.” Kara sneered. “Arvol, if you…”

  “Guys,” Veillon interrupted. Loud clicking sounds played over his suit comm. “We may have a problem.”

  “The Mimics know where we are,” Wyrick said dryly.

  “My mini-map is picking up a lot of movement,” Veillon added. “Less than 1000 meters away.”

  “We need more time here,” Kara said.

  “You have ‘til we run out of ammo,” Veillon said.

  “Kingston, Arvol — study time’s over,” Kara said, placing her hands on their shoulders. “We need you to pass the final exam. Figure out this 3-D crap, or we all die.” She removed the safety on her rifle. “Jann, you’re with me. It’s our job to give these geniuses more time.”

  Jann nodded and followed her toward Veillon and Wyrick.

  Dren’s exposed hand felt numb. His fingernails were blue, like the color of deep ocean ice. White spots clouded his vision.

  “You OK there, Arvol?” Kingston peered into Dren’s eyes and frowned. “Want me to be the hand model now?”

  “No time to switch,” he said. “Besides, I think this thing likes me.”

  In the corner of his HUD, Dren saw the avatars of Veillon and Wyrick flashing. They were either firing their weapons or taking damage. He hoped it was the former.

  “OK, what do we know?” Kingston asked.

  “My finger makes these circles move.” Dren shrugged. “Other than that, I don’t think we’ve figured anything out.”

  “You’ve been wiggling your fingers a lot,” Kingston said. “What gave you the idea to stick your hand into this, anyway?”

  Dren coughed and avoided eye contact with his Sergeant. “I don’t have a good answer for you, Pops.”

  “I’m not looking for answers. I’m looking for a solution.”

  “I’m trying!” Dren said in a raised voice without intending to yell. “We don’t even know if the aliens who invented this tech had fingers. What if they were giant squids with tentacles?”

  “Then unless you’re hiding tentacles I don’t know about, we’re dead.” Kingston lowered his gaze.

  “Hey, award-winning scientists,” Kara yelled over suit comm between weapons’ fire. “We’re seriously running out of time here!”

  “We’re polishing our final report, Commander. Need a bit more time. Kingston out.” He placed both hands on Dren’s shoulder. “I need you to wiggle those fingers faster. So let’s recap what we know…”

  Sleep was tugging at Dren. Warnings popped up on his HUD as his O2 saturation rapidly fell. There’s no pattern. It’s all random…

  “Hey, Dren!” Kingston rapped on Dren’s helmet with his knuckles. “You heard what I said?”

  “No… Was it something important?” Dren replied and injected himself with a combat stim. When the mysterious black-suited man placed his hand onto the sphere, he seemed to know what he was doing. I should’ve paid more attention… He closed his eyes and concentrated. Come back… Come back… A chill traveled up Dren’s spine. He looked up to see the man in black reappear. Who are you? He wanted to ask.

  An alarm sounded inside Dren’s helmet.

  Wyrick’s avatar flashed red before turning gray.

  “FALL BACK!” Kara shouted. “FALL BACK!”

  Veillon’s avatar followed Wyrick’s fate, flashing red then gray.

  4

  Commander Kara shouted words that never entered Dren’s ears. His focus stayed on the man in black who was slowly removing his suit helmet. Kingston’s baritone voice added to the swirl of sound, but it too, did not penetrate Dren’s consciousness. The man in black was speaking; at least, his lips were moving. No matter how hard Dren tried, he could not discern the instructions. Apart from his lips, the rest of the man’s face was blurred.

  Dren had never encountered this phenomenon. His previous ghosts were all too eager to show their mocking, cruel faces, laughing at some joke with Dren as the punch line. This apparition felt different. Like recognizing someone whom he knew he never met. Dren redoubled his efforts to unblur the mysterious man’s face. He stared until his eyes watered, trying not to blink, forcing his brain to make sense of the senseless.

  It didn’t work. The man in black retreated into the darkened recesses of Dren’s mind. Before he did, Dren witnessed a cascade of crimson gushing from his mouth, painting his black exo suit in blood. Now I know I’m crazy…

  As soon as the mystery man disappeared, the roar of battle finally broke through Dren’s thoughts.

  “Dren! Dren!” Kingston vigorously shook his squadmate. “What did you do?”

  “What?” Dren’s throat was parched. He had difficulty swallowing. “I… Must be O2 deprivation…” He fumbled his words. Without realizing it, Dren was mimicking the stranger. His lips moved as he did. His hands copied the same gestures. For the last minute, Dren was not in control of his own body and had no memory of who was. His breath became raspy, and his palms grew sweaty, even in the frigid environmental conditions of the ship.

  “Look!” Kingston pointed at the sphere with his rifle. “Something’s happening…”

  Dren blinked his eyes rapidly while shaking his head. What did I do?

  Molten yellow lighting replaced the scarlet lines on the sphere. The concentric rings spun. Some clockwise, others in a counter-clockwise direction. The object itself changed shape, from a sphere to a multi-sided, three-dimensional structure — a polyhedron. Every second that passed, the object flickered, steadily transitioning into another type of polyhedron.

  “Look at it with your ocular scanners,” Kingston ordered. “Count the number of sides…”

  It took a few seconds for Dren’s ocular scanner to catch up with the speed of change. “There’s one less side each second.”

  “Is it…” Kingston’s mouth fell open. “It’s counting down to something.”

  Rhombicosidodecahedron, a 30-sided, three-dimensional polyhedron.

  “Did we…” Dren tilted his head at Kingston. “Did we just activate a bomb?”

  “A BOMB?” Jann yelled. “Voids! You’re kidding me… What else can go wrong?” He and Kara retreated to Dren’s position and kneeled into a defensive stance.

  “WHAT BOMB?” Kara screamed. “I ordered you to find a way out, not blow us up!”

  “We have to get out of here,” Jann said in a panicked voice.

  “There’s nowhere to go!” Kingston snapped back at the kid. “This is not the time to lose it, marine!” He aimed his rifle into the dark hallway before him.

  “I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention,” Jann said, “But we lost Wyrick and Veillon!”

  Icosah
edron.

  “20 seconds left,” Dren said.

  “20 seconds ‘til what?” Kara growled. “Voids! Someone explain what’s going on!”

  “Incoming!” Jann emptied his weapon into the cramped tunnel.

  Dren picked up his glove from the ground and screwed it back to his suit. The familiar hiss of re-pressurization sounded in his ear. A sense of calmness fell over his mind as he vaguely recalled living this moment before — that everything about to happen would happen as intended. “Let them come, Commander.”

  “What did you say, soldier?” She narrowed her eyes at him.

  “Arvol’s been acting real strange since we got here, Commander,” Kingston said. “I don’t know if it’s O2 deprivation or if something else got to him.”

  “Deltohedron,” Dren said dryly, growing more detached from the situation. “10 seconds left. If it is a bomb, let’s take out as many Reapers as we can.”

  Kara gritted her teeth. “Jann, fall back.”

  Jann positioned himself in front of the commander.

  “Cube,” Dren said. Six seconds left.

  “Why am I in the middle of a geometry lesson?” Kara asked with a pinched expression.

  Kingston removed two frag grenades from his thigh compartment. “If we’re going out with a bang, let’s make it as big as possible…”

  With three seconds left, the object reverted to a sphere. Arcs of electric white lights emanated from it. The dark black surface glowed with a cold but brilliant blue light. The sphere quickly doubled in size, expanding to cover the team and the room, enveloping every remaining squad member.

  “What do we do, Commander?” Jann asked, his eyes roaming between Kara and Kingston. “What’s happening to us?”

  “Stay inside,” Kara said. “If we’re meeting our end, it’s better to die in the light than in the darkness with those monsters.”

  Tranquility fell over Dren as the gloomy corridor melted away in the light’s warmth. This was another moment of déjà vu. Dren gave up on trying to understand or explain the impossible experience. There was no way for him to have been here before with his genesis one-sol year ago. He had never been in this sector, having spent most of his existence fighting the Defiled on frontier planets.

  Screams interrupted Dren thoughts. A Reaper, twice Jann’s size, bulled him to the ground.

  “MIMICS!” Kara shouted over squad comm. She unloaded her weapon at the monsters entering the bubble of light with them.

  Kingston rushed to Jann and with the butt of his rifle and knocked the Mimic off his younger squadmate.

  Dren helped the fallen marine to his feet. “You’re OK now.” He picked up Jann’s rifle and returned it.

  “Yeah, thanks.” Jann patted his body as if looking for holes in his suit. “I thought I was dead…”

  Kara continued firing at another wave of onrushing Mimics. The tidal wave of sound from their constant clicking reached a deafening level.

  “Is this light supposed to do something, Dren?” Kingston asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” he answered. Dren wasn’t entirely truthful. The tension had left his muscles; his breath flowed easily through his chest. He expected something good to happen, but if pressed, he wouldn’t have an adequate explanation. They wouldn’t believe him without one.

  Suddenly, bits of Dren’s hands floated away from him. It was like his body had turned to liquid in a world without gravity; one with no cohesive force. He opened his mouth to scream but his lips separated from his face, forming spherical droplets of various sizes. The same oddity happened to the other members inside the light, including the dozens of Mimic intruders.

  Garbled noises spewed over suit comm.

  Dren tried turning his head toward the sound. The attempted action caused his head to explode into hundreds of marble-sized, multi-colored spheres. His point of view changed; he saw pieces of himself floating by as if his entire existence was a pair of disembodied eyes.

  At first, there was no sensation of pain nor any feelings of discomfort. Then something changed. Like someone had dropped a cyclone into the middle of a body of water. Dren, his squadmates, and the Mimics swirled toward an invisible center. Dren felt a powerful, inescapable gravity pulling at him, spiraling his consciousness into uncertainty.

  The liquid spheres of himself merged with that of the others. During this moment of connectedness, Dren felt the fear in his squadmates and the insatiable, uncontrollable hunger of the Mimics. The panic and terror overpowered the sense of tranquility he felt recently. He grew desperate as his essence continued to spiral chaotically toward an invisible point.

  Bit by bit, Dren’s watery body disappeared as it crossed an event horizon. He wondered if this was what it was like to die. In his linked state with his squadmates, he knew they were thinking the same.

  On the other side of the singularity was darkness, a place devoid of anything and everything, the opposite of existence where even time itself served no purpose. In this universe of nothingness, Dren lost all sense of his team. He knew he was alone even if he couldn’t feel the loneliness. Not even his ghosts cared to haunt Dren here. He continued drifting in the shadows, wondering if his consciousness would eventually switch off.

  After what felt like an eternity, Dren heard a voice calling out to him. The sound was whisper soft at first, indiscernible, barely above the decibel of a light breeze. He found himself attracted to it, drifting toward it. He felt the forces of motion and acceleration. Heat and warmth followed. The whirring sound of his Tempest suit’s rebreather floated into his ear.

  “Get up, Arvol!” Kara’s voice stabbed into his brain.

  A force hit his head from the left. Dren realized his eyes were closed; he peeled them open. The sight of stars against a curtain of night filtered into his retinas. Somehow, they were outside again. Nothing made sense as his mind tried to wake itself from its stupor.

  “Uh, are we dead?” Jann asked, wrapping his hands around his helmet.

  Mimics! Dren immediately sat up and searched for his rifle. They came with us through the… whatever brought us here.

  “Arggg…” Kingston’s groan traveled over voice comm. “Remind me never to sign up for first contact missions again.”

  “I don’t think we’re dead, no,” Kara said. “But I think these Reapers are.” She kicked one of the dozens of Mimics that came with them.

  Its body collapsed into a fine black powder.

  Jann did the same to another Reaper. He jumped backward as its frame collapsed into dust.

  “What happened to us, Dren?” Kingston asked. “And where are we?”

  “Voids if I know.” Dren scanned his new surroundings. “But I have a feeling we’re not on the alien ship anymore…”

  5

  Dren peered up into the night sky and scanned the stars with his ocular implant, trying to match them to known navigational charts. Hundreds of astrological maps looped in his peripheral vision. No results came up in his search.

  The squad’s Tempest suit lights were the only illumination. Are we outdoors? The dull sheen of the metal flooring suggested otherwise. It was more likely they were in a massive, ceiling-less room.

  Engrained in the flooring were the same concentric circle patterns he witnessed on the strange orb that brought Phoenix Company to their current location. The patterns continued, seemingly without repetition on every centimeter of surface.

  Dren reviewed the atmospheric readings.

  21% Oxygen.

  78% Nitrogen.

  0.9% Argon.

  Numbers nearly identical to Earth’s.

  Gravity registered at 12.71 m /s². Whatever planet or structure this was, it had more mass than Earth.

  Next, he checked his battery levels. 83%. This gave him at least 20 sol-hours assuming moderate activity levels and no solar activity.

  “Did Wyrick and Veillon make it?” Kingston asked.

  “No,” Jann shook his head while looking down. “I don’t see their bodies
anywhere.”

  “Someone please tell me where in the Voids are we?” Kara demanded.

  “The stars are different here,” Dren said softly.

  “What does that mean, soldier?” Kara raised an eyebrow.

  “We’re not in the same sector as the alien ship, Commander,” Kingston said.

  “Did we get teleported somewhere?” Jann asked.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Dren said. “I think so.”

  “Priority is to figure out where we are,” Kara said. “The original mission hasn’t changed. We are to learn as much as we can about the aliens, their technology, aggression level, favorite foods — anything and everything — and transmit the findings to Fleet Intel. Making it back home is a secondary objective.” She paused before continuing. “We’re clones. We’re expendable.”

  Dren’s thoughts drifted while the others talked. Once again he felt the distinct feeling he had been there before, even as he acknowledged the impossibility of the scenario. Every minute of his life had been accounted for. None of which had ever been spent looking at this particular set of stars. He returned his gaze to the arrangement of circles in the flooring. There’s a pattern here. I know there is…

  “Arvol?” Kara dragged him from his mental isolation. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Trying to find answers, Commander,” he answered without looking at her. Dren noticed the arrangement of circles seemed to point to a larger pattern. He kneeled to touch the lines with his gloved hand. Nothing happened. Knowing the atmosphere was breathable, Dren took off his right glove. With a bare finger, he traced one of the large concentric circle patterns.

  Almost immediately, the rings lit up in a cascade of cerulean light. Like a series of falling dominos, every centimeter of surface, from one end of the expansive room to another, glowed.