Professor Relin is dead?
Elander Hays asked herself the question for what seemed like the millionth time. She'd been woken from her bunk by the alarm of her portable console, indicating an urgent message from the Omicron. It was still dark, a couple of hours before dawn and she had been catching up on sleep before she'd have to prepare another interrogation session with Yana. Interrogation? That seemed too strong a word. She didn't like it. It implied things that she didn't believe were true. Well, things that she didn't WANT to believe. But now, after reading the communication that woke her, she didn't know what to believe about many things.
The message came in the form of a terse, encrypted memo digitally signed and endorsed by the Captain. The memo was emotionless in its language and tone. It merely stated facts. The decomposing remains of Professor Almore Relin had been discovered in the grounds of the University back on Terric Prime. The body had been hidden and half-buried behind the Grand Library and was found by the construction workers undertaking the recent renovations of the classical buildings and surrounding gardens.
Professor Relin is dead. Was dead.
At first Elander thought she had read it wrong. She had just been woken after all. Maybe she was still half-dreaming. She actually laughed after first scanning the text. Relin? Was dead? What a silly thing to say out loud! It was absurd. She'd just had lunch with the man a few days ago before that shuttle trip down here to see the cave paintings. In fact he'd even encouraged her to come down to the planet. Maybe he was becoming soft in his old age, she had thought at the time. And here was this memo talking not of old age but of death!
She read it again to make sure she wasn't dreaming and read it again to realise she was indeed awake. One more time it was read to confirm it was official. Now she couldn't stop reading it, but it still made no sense to her.
Professor Relin is dead?
Who the hell had she been meeting with? Talking with? Dining with? She felt confused, sick, disturbed. Something inside her felt like it was shrivelling inwards at the thought of... Well, what was it? An impostor? A fraud? A ghost?
The memo had an addendum. A security issue. If you see the man resembling "Professor Relin", it warned, do not approach and inform the nearest security personel.
"Professor Hays!"
She visibly flinched at the voice and turned with widening eyes.
"Oh, you ARE awake. That's good. That's good." It was John Lawrence looking almost as alarmed as she felt. He must've got the memo too. She was about to ask his opinion on it but he quickly continued, "You've got to come see this. There's a... Well, you've got to come see." He waved a beckoning hand and then disappeared, his absence demanding that she should follow. So she did.
"Shh," she was told from a distance as she left the tent. "This way. Quietly." She stepped tentatively towards the origin of the voice and eventually found Lawrence crouched by a tree. He beckoned her closer and pointed back over his shoulder to the small clearing where the containment transport was situated.
Elander crouched too and gazed beyond through the pre-dawn mist.
The transport craft was surrounded by small primate creatures. Over the past week sightings of the furry, ape-like animals had increased in frequency. Initially they had been timid, barely glimpsed before they disappeared back into the trees and foliage, but more and more they were being sighted out in the open. And now.., Right here before her, Elander saw fifty, sixty- Maybe a hundred of them, all stood around the containment ship. Unafraid of being seen.
"What are they doing?" she asked.
"I don't know," Lawrence replied. "They haven't moved for the past 20 minutes."
"Have they got inside the ship?"
"I don't think so. I doubt they'd get past the door locks. But nobody's gonna be going in or out with them there. There's too many of them. A group that big would probably get aggressive."
"Who's inside?" she asked, not bothering to add, 'apart from Yana.'
"I think the Doctor may be there, Helena was doing some more tests last night. A couple of guards. Oh, and Professor Relin went in to see Yana."
John Lawrence definitely hadn't seen the memo!
"Relin? Why?"
"Well, I don't know," he answered rather defensively.
"We need to get in there." Elander didn't care about the memo any more or its security warning. She cared about Yana. Quarantined or not, she was in danger. "We can't leave her in there with him."
"Should I get Sergeant Holst?" John Lawrence clearly didn't want to be the hero around here. "Maybe he'll be able to clear the-"
"No," the woman cut him off. "He's leading the recon team. They should be in the dropship on their way to the mountain about now. We're on our own with this one."
"That's just great!" Lawrence looked at Elander and noticed her thinking, remembering, wondering. "What is it? You have an idea?"
"Maybe. We need to get back to the tent." She led the way and turned back to him to say, "Come on. And take off your shirt."
"What?!"
"Stay calm, boys," Holst told his troops. "Stay focused and alert." Alert. He remembered saying that at the big meeting before they'd even entered orbit. Did anyone even listen to him then? Did anyone listen to him NOW? Maybe if he'd been better with words things would have been different. But back then he'd been talking to the whole crew. The scientists and the academics. They never liked people like him. They had no respect for orders and the chain of command. But here in this transport vessel he was with his own kind, his own people. They were soldiers. They were brothers. And he was their leader. He looked in their eyes. He saw their trepidation. He saw their uncertainty and, in some cases, their fear. But he also saw that they were calm, they were focused and they were alert. He felt pride at what he saw. And then he saw nothing. The lights went out and the ship seemed to drop as if being buffeted by turbulence. Voices and shouts called out around him, panicking, questioning. Holst raised his own voice in the darkness, "Stay calm, boys!"
The interior of the craft then lit up with a warm red glow. Holst saw that boy Jinnik holding the flare. "Good," the Sergeant told him, "good." Perhaps there was hope for him yet.
"It's the electrics." Another voice called out and then the ship bounced and rocked again.
Holst released his seatbelt and clambered along the central aisle of the dropship towards the cockpit. He steadied himself by reaching out to the walls above the heads of his troops, offering each a glance or a word as he passed. He ducked down through the low doorway and addressed the pilot who had ignited his own flare.
"Electrics," came back the reply. "Must be another dead spot."
"So what's gone and what do you have?"
"Nav-comp's gone. Radar's out. No comms obviously."
"And I'm still listening for what you have left." That was really what Holst was asking the first time.
"I can still manoeuvre. Wing-flaps are pretty analogue with the mechanics but thrusters are fly-by-wire so they're a no-go."
"So you're telling me we're gliding."
"Hey, falling's just another type of flying." The pilot grinned.
Holst shook his head. Pilots were a strange species. "So, can you land it?"
"We're flying blind in this light but..." he tapped a retro, old-fashioned altimeter dial that looked like it'd been stuck on cockpit wall with tape. "...that's why I always install one of these. As long as I know where the ground is before we hit it."
"So, CAN you land it?" Holst repeated with urgency.
"Buckle up back there and tell me later."
"Are you sure about this?" asked Lawrence as Elander nudged the reluctant botanist out of the tent.
"I'm not sure about anything any more," she admitted and gave him another encouraging shove, tentatively following behind the shirtless man. "Just make sure you hold that out in front of you"
Lawrence did as he was told, holding aloft the stick that they'd wrapped with leaves, and together the two of them shuffled forward on towards the treeline and beyond.
The horde of creatures heard the approaching pair and turned en masse, reacting like a single entity.
"Slowly now," said Elander, peering over the man's shoulder. "No sudden movements."
"I'd prefer no movements at all!" He grumbled back at her.
"Shush!" she insisted.
They edged forward and in response the nearest of the creatures stood tall and erect. The rest followed creating a standing wave of attention swelling around the containment ship.
"Keep going." Elander urged but he kept pushing back against her. They were too close, he thought, it isn't going to work.
"Do it now," he said.
"Not yet. Not yet."
Now the creatures were hooting and howling, screaming their primitive defiance against the two intruders.
"If you're gonna do it, do it now!"
She agreed and ignited a flare to light and burn the leaves wrapped around the end of the stick. "Now hold it out!"
He did so and in the dim, blue glow of the makeshift torch his bare chest bloomed in golden light to display the painted image of a spiral jewel, like the one in the cave paintings of the mountain.
The creatures were now silent and calm. They stared in awe and the golden light smeared over the man's body reflected back in their eyes.
"Keep going," Elander whispered.
As they slowly edged forward the furry apes seemed to bow, still gazing up at man as if in deference to a deity.
"Try and send them away."
"What?" Lawrence asked. "And how the hell am I supposed to do that? Shoo?"
"I don't know. Some kind of gesture."
He tried to oblige. Extending both his arms forward then spreading them wide.
A couple of the nearest creatures raised their heads as if in inquisitive acknowledgement.
"Yes," said Elander. "Again."
He repeated the gesture, this time with more confidence and drama, and in response the creatures stood tall again and as one they scattered from landing area back into the trees.
"Well, I didn't think that would work!" John Lawrence laughed more with relief than humour, but the woman had already dashed past him to get to the containment ship.
Elander entered through the main hatchway and immediately found the two guards lying on the floor. She bent down to check them and realised that they were unconscious although one of them stirred as if about to come around and wake. She left them and went on down the narrow corridor to the ready-room where she found Helena. The doctor was slumped over the desk but, like the guard, seemed to be stirring. She then raised her head.
"Elander?" she mumbled, her face confused, her eyes heavy and squinting through a glare that wasn't really there.
"Doctor Grey? Are you all right?"
"Mmm," she nodded slowly, struggling with her own inertia. "So very tired."
"What happened here? Where's Professor..." she couldn't bring herself to use the name Relin.
"Something happened?" Helena had no answer. "The Professor? You mean Relin? I... I don't remember. I don't remember anything happening."
The doctor yawned but Elander had turned away and was now looking to the array of monitors that showed the quarantine cell. She went on through the door to confirm it in person.
The Shimmer Glass matter barrier was down. Yana was gone. And "Professor Relin", whatever he really was, had left nothing but a trail of consequence.
