MILO

“If those goddamn orbs give you a hard time you will discharge lightning bolts at them,” Sam said. “Make sure they learn not to mess with you.”

Claire patted Milo on the shoulder. “It will not come to that. I am sure of it”

“There was this one time when I air dropped troopers during the Mars wars. We had to go too low and took a few glancing hits, making the ship shake wildly. You know I am pretty good at maneuvering the ship, but there was this iron ball from one of the railguns that no one saw. Neither the sensors nor my copilot. It came at the perfect angle and impacted a weakened hull plate, so it went straight through the three layered hull and tore two soldiers in combat suits in half,” Leopold said. “So obviously we had to make an emergency landing in the middle of enemy territory in the middle of the biggest shooting war even witnessed in the history of mankind. We were stuck in those deserts for two weeks before being airlifted out. Kid, you will shoot anything that moves in those tense circumstances. Fingers are tight at the triggers. You see a threat, you destroy it, or you die. That is how it goes. Or else your friends will pay the price. We all lost people during those weeks.”

Sam nodded. “That goddamn planet and that goddamn war. Many great men and women gave their lives, so that greedy corporate and political leaders could fatten their wallets and strong arm more votes.”

Milo knew not how to react. They talked as if he were going into war. But that was not the case. It would be a meeting between other clan leaders and companions. Peaceful talks, not conflicts. But Chieftain Argus had wanted Tern and Beth for protection. So in truth maybe there was a need for concern. Or was it all a test? 

“I will be fine,” Milo said. “I am not backing down. It had not gone many months since we saved Beth. I am not letting my sister leave on her own yet. No. Just no.”

“Blue,” Sam said, shoving his shoulder. “It is fine. We didn’t mean it like that. I… we want you to be safe. That’s all. Don’t be afraid to pull the trigger if the situation demands it. I saw the hesitation in your eyes when Carl dropped inside the bridge. People die because of hesitation. You will not.”

Milo nodded. “Of course.”

“Do you think we could strap a pair of fuel cells to his back?” Sam said. “Just in case he gets thirsty.”

Claire stepped forward. “I don’t know, Cap’n. The aliens might not like it.”

Diego entered. “He doesn’t need that. He needs water. Hours will pass and the aliens might not have suitable drinking water for humans. We cannot have you run around getting dehydrated again. Not that healthy.”

Milo grabbed the shoulder bag from the Doc, it weighed more than he had anticipated. “This cannot just be water.”

“It is a need-to-have bag,” Doc said. “If the content of this bag doesn’t suffice all the needs you will face during this mission, please come with suggestions. Even though you throw lightning bolts and Beth is super strong, there are things you will need if you get hurt or trapped. Or anything. In case you need anything, it will be in the bag. Also, the bag is certified for usage in space.”

“That is actually a great idea!” Milo said. “You are a clever man, Diego.”

Diego smiled. “That’s what they tell me.”

“Mr. humble in the flesh,” Claire teased him.

Someone knocked. Milo turned. Beth stood in the doorway, dressed in the usual metal threaded crew uniform. Tern floated behind her, all omniscient like.

“You ready?” Beth asked.

He nodded in reply.

Birgitta peaked in, from behind Beth. “You sure, you ready, lightning-in-a-bottle?”

“Yes,” Milo said.

“Good luck with the suit!” Birgitta said.

“Stay safe, kid,” Leopold said.

“Use the bag,” Diego said with an arm around Claire’s shoulders.

Sam leaned in closer to him. “And remember what we have talked about. Don’t get yourself killed. If the choice is forced upon you, get yourself home.”

“Of course,” Milo said.

Sam was a bit too overprotective, but he was the one who would have been in war before and had been forced to make such decisions. Second guessing his experience and capability to make difficult decisions was not on the table.

“Lets go,” Milo said, walking up to Beth’s side. “Do we even know where we are going?”

Tern bumped into him.

“A planet. Far, far away,” Beth said. “We will be going in Tern’s ship. So we will see the inside of an alien starship. Doesn’t that get your gut to shiver?”

If she meant that he should be feeling sick and ready to puke, then yeah, he felt a tingle in his gut. But in reality she probably meant that he should be excited.

“Tern and his kind really like real, natural gravity wells. So having these meetings on planets make sense. Also, a planet can be neutral ground when a starship or a giant solar system wide space station could not. Those have to be owned by clans, but the planets do not. There are designated planets for these kinds of things and which lays outside ownership,” Beth explained.

Milo opened the locker, his vacuum suit stood still but there was something odd with it. Birgitta. The vac suit’s back segmented and the flakes folded away. He stepped into it and it re-sealed. The gauntlets were designed differently and he didn’t recognize the metal on them.

“The communication between me and Tern has impr…,” Beth started.

“She did it,” Milo said.

“What?” Beth said.

Milo showed her the suit’s gauntlets. “Look. Dr. Birgitta has designed  these gauntlets to be able to transfer my electricity through without damaging the suit.”

“She is amazing,” Beth said.

Milo looked up. “Sorry, that I interrupted you. You said something about your communication with Tern?”

“Yes,” Beth said. “His vocabulary has improved greatly. The more Tern has learned the faster he learns new words and grammatical structure. Four worded sentences have been unlocked and his context and choice of words have grown accurate. I am looking forward to the day when we Tern has mastered the English language.”

But there was something Milo had not dared to ask before, but now it felt easier since she looked better in tune with the telepathic bond and the woman who had locked herself into her own room was far gone. “But does it not feel weird? After all Saif did to us. After all the things he did inside our minds, having another mind playing being inside your head again. I would not have been able to be as relaxed about it as you. You just seem to have accepted the whole situation as if it is nothing.”

Beth wrinkled her nose, something she only did when the situation was uncomfortable.”Yes. It has been difficult and it still is. I still feel the tingle in my temples and from time to time my head hurts as if HE is still poking around in there. But during those moments I try to remind myself that Saif is far away and will not hurt me again. I won’t lie, sometimes it is difficult and I will probably feel weird for a long time.”

This was the first time she opened up to him. The bond with Tern had changed her for the better. It was weird how a relationship with an alien being could put her in such a better mood, when his efforts across several weeks had done so little to improve her state. 

His vac suit showed nominal readings, it was always a good idea to check those before leaving the ship.

Beth was already inside her suit and held the weapon Birgitta had made for her. They stepped inside the airlock, Tern following them behind. The inner door slid closed and the cycle ran its course. The pressure dropped. The outer door unlocked and slid open. Few words could describe what hung in front of them. Well, he knew it was an alien ship, but that fact alone could not mitigate the sensation of weirdness. It looked far apart from anything humans had ever built, it was constructed from large spheres which seemed able to stay attached to each other. But that was not all, the sphere rolled over and beside each other as if the laws of physics were optional and the seals between them were never permanent. How would the corridors line up? If every side was able to couple against every side of every sphere, there had to be a rigours protocol when building the things. And how would electrical energy be transferred between the spheres? They would need a ton of redundant systems, just to make it work and somewhat reliably. The design felt stupid. Tern, the alien being floated besides him and Beth, seemingly unaffected by the marvel in front of them. Well, it was the orb’s ship, Milo could not expect him to be awestruck when he saw his own ship.

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“Let’s go,” Beth said through their shared comm link.

She stepped forward with Tern on her side. Were they supposed to jump the distance?

Milo followed them up to the edge. “I am not that keen on jumping. I don’t have metal skin to absorb the impact. Should I cross the gap as a lightning bolt? I don’t know how their ship will behave when I crash into it.”

“Ha. No, that is not necessary,” Beth said. “I told you about the modules, right? Tern will show one off.”

There might have been a sound if they had not been in space and its vacuum, but a vibration shot through his body. A milky white bubble expanded around the three of them. The vibration persisted even with the bubble’s surface fully encompassing them. The bubble rose, his feet came away from the ship’s floor and the gravity core’s influence lessened.

“This is amazing,” Beth said. “Tern says you just need to stay calm. This next part will be a little strange. But don’t panic, we don’t want to have lightning bolts thrown inside the bubble.”

Milo was not as convinced. “Do you know what? The way you say that, it is as you speak to a child.”

Beth laughed. She enjoyed the moment, the aliens, the science behind it and the weirdness that came attached to it. She had accepted it fully and so quickly. It was strange, how two siblings could react so differently to the same thing.

Tern seemed to stay in the absolute center of the bubble, maybe not so weird since the orb was the focal point of the bubble. The moment the bubble left the gravity core’s influence, he was pushed back at the surface. They were flying through space in a magic bubble.

“You are breathing too fast. Deep and slow,” Beth said.

“Excited electrons move fast, they never stay still,” Milo mumbled.

With the lighting of the milky white bubble behind her, an alien starship as their destination, an alien being on her side and the primitive weapon in her hands, and the backdrop of a solar system wide alien space station, it created a strange image. A lot of ‘alien’ in those thoughts. This was as far as one could get from sipping coffee while commuting to work. The old grind was gone and with it the surroundings that supported it.

They closed in on the alien starship. Its surface looked darker than space itself, much like the orbs’ shells.

“They are not called ships, they are ‘homes’ or ‘households’ or even simpler, ‘families’. To describe it in human terms are difficult, the precise word doesn’t exist,” Beth explained.

Milo stared at the black mass, a sphere rolled over another and positioned itself right in their trajectory. “Right. Of course. I think Sam will like that. He might stop calling our ship a ship and instead say home.”

“We will arrive at one of the household’s approximations to an airlock and a shuttle bay. They themselves don’t really have a use for a shuttle bay, since they don’t need shuttles. Their bodies do all that for them. But since they need to accommodate an amount of other varied beings, which might not have similar properties to their bodies, they need some shuttles. Like for us. We cannot go flying too far in this bubble and certainly not without our suits, since it doesn’t create an atmosphere for us. Tern’s people will be building a shuttle for us,” Beth said.

Milo muttered. “You have the metal skin, just as they do.”

“Their bodies are far beyond that. They are metal and mechanisms all throughout,” Beth said.

“Machines? They are all machines?” Milo asked. “Sentient machines?”

The surface of the alien ship, or household, segmented and opened. The opening looked familiar to that of his vacuum suit and the combat suits.

“They used to be organic beings. But they ascended from those mortal forms,” Beth said. “These bodies cannot perish from old age as long as their inner cores can be ignited. Tern’s core shut down when I hurt him back on the Au-delà, but his core recovered from eating his friend and ignited once in contact with the radiation of space.”

“Wow. That sounds very alien. You didn’t tell me that before,” Milo said.

“Quiet, I don’t want to miss this,” Beth said.

The bubble passed through the boundary and the vibrations vanished. What had he imagined the inside of the alien starship to look like? Not like this at least. There had to be a forcefield or something at the boundary, because this entire sphere was opened to them. No ceiling, no overhead barriers. Strange, but it offered a view across this entire sphere. There were corridors and rooms, all following the structure of the sphere’s round shape. They liked round things. There was technical equipment which he could not name or define their functions. Orbs and their companions moved around, performing tasks. But all those things were not the strangest thing. The strangest thing by far was that the gravity was all wrong. Everything was tilted by ninety degrees. The crew walked on what he constituted as walls. They walked on the walls! An orb rose from a corridor and flew ‘over’ the network of walls and landed in another section of the sphere. If he was skilled enough he might be able to jump up from one corridor and land in the other end of the sphere. Or if he could fly. It actually could be an effective method of traversing longer distances in the ship.

They landed on a bulkhead wall and the bubble disintegrated, his boots touching down. An orb and its insect swarm of a companion walked around them. The swarm buzzed as it passed by his side. One of those tree-like twig-weapons floated inside the swarm.

“Where are we going?” Milo asked.

Beth turned the weapon in her hands. “Tern’s role is combat. We are going to his preparation chamber. We will stay there until we arrive. They don’t want aliens running around their ship and making a mess.”

Milo chuckled. “That is so true. That from their perspective we are the aliens, I never thought about it like that. It is all about perspective.”

“Many things are,” Beth said.

Tern took the lead, they followed. 

“All this is a bit overwhelming,” Milo said as he walked on a bulkhead wall. The ninety degree shift felt weird.

Milo kept the sweetness at bay and not yet trickling into his mouth, but it could be opened at a moment’s notice. It was better to be ready, these aliens were strange.

“I know, right. But this will be one for the history books,” Beth said. “People will hail us as legends. First peaceful interaction with an alien species, or more accurate, with multiple alien species. And when the peace is sealed, we can go back to the rest of humanity and celebrate. Saif can do nothing to interfere. If this meeting goes like we want it to, we have won before the war starts.”

Milo took another set of steps. “A little naive maybe, but if Saif is sincere with achieving his goal, then he actually might settle with peace.”

“I am unsure about the truth about anything he says or does,” Beth said.

Tern’s preparation chamber was larger than he had expected. Centered in the room was a smaller room that would fit a single orb at a time. It looked darkened. Some equipment along the walls, with cables and tubes running across the walls.

Tern bumped into Beth and she nodded in reply.

“What? You will need to tell me. Since, I still don’t hear what goes on between you,” Milo said. Had he sounded irritated?

Beth sighed. “I forget. It is easy to do when the communication between me and Tern is so fluid and quick. He is starting to pick up the complexities of English and he is even developing his own voice. It’s endearing. Also, this room holds a human atmosphere.”

Beth disengaged her vac suit and stepped out from it, stretching when coming outside and tasting the air. 

“You remember that this room has no ceiling?” Milo asked.

Beth chukled. “When Tern says it is safe, it is safe. The air, the pressure and temperature, all of them are fine. You can always check your vac suit’s sensors if you don’t trust me.”

“Of course. You have yet died and the readings look as you say.” Milo followed her example.

Milo sat down and leaned on what should have been the ceiling, but in reality acted as a wall. ”So we will stay here until we arrive?”

Beth sat down besides him. “Yeah.”

Milo sipped on the water Diego had handed him. Refreshing. He put the bag in his lap and rummaged through it. Most of the contents were for medical emergencies, which was no surprise. But there was one thing he had forgotten to pack and Sam had not reminded him. Could Diego have been that predictive. His hands went around, shuffling the stuff to the sides. Maybe. The symptoms of withdrawal were a medical emergency.

His fingertips stroked at a familiar metal. Cold and of cylindrical shape. It was not a fuel cell, but something that could take the edge off.

“Diego is the best,” Milo said and pulled out the coffee thermos for Beth to see.

 It was not for the withdrawal symptoms, but a bit of caffeine went a long way to combat anxiety.

“Do you mind if we share a single cup?” Milo said. “There is no alternative and it looks like you need some too.”

Beth smiled. “It smells great. Pour it, I want to taste. I always said that a hot cup of coffee was like a warm, reassuring hug.”

“That is so true,” Milo said.

He sipped the warm content and passed the cup to Beth, who took a deep inhale of the aromatic steam. Her face relaxed as she sipped.

“We are sharing coffee on an alien starship, or household. We are flying towards a meeting which will involve even more aliens and we are going to run protection duty for this clan’s Chieftain. Clan. Household. Chieftain. It is all so strange,” Milo said.

Beth passed back the cup. “Everything is strange until it is not.”

“Well, yes,” Milo mumbled.

It was amazing how well Beth still handled the situation. She seemed more ready for hanging out with aliens than with humans. It must be making her inner child do jumping jacks. She was at the forefront of discovering an alien species, no, the truth was that it involved many alien species that all lived in symbiotic relationships. Would dad ever have thought that his son would be involved in something like this? Even though he looked from the outside and from Beth’s unique perspective, it all felt unreal.

“The other orb companions have these twigs. I want one,” Beth said. “According to Tern, I will need to earn mine.”

She was hungry to learn more and Milo understood why. There would always be more things to explore and she wanted to get to the next step right away. The inner child had no patience.

Milo passed the coffee back. “I am excited for you. You seem happy.”

Beth smiled back. “Yeah. I am enjoying this very much. Tern is disconnected from my mind for the moment, so I cannot ask him anything. Waiting feels like an eternity.”

“Life is not always easy.” Milo laughed.

“True,” Beth said.

Milo rubbed his temples, his head hurt again and there were no fuel cells in the medical bag for him to drain. Even his hands had started to tremble. With just a little suck of electrical energy and some blood deposit, and he would be back to fighting form. Milo put his hands under his legs, so that Beth would not spot the shakes. He swallowed and focused on the room’s surroundings, until his eyelids grew heavy.