Allison’s bus ride was uneventful she was surprised to see her house was empty when she got home. She heard her mother’s voice from the house’s audio system.
“Sorry Allison, your father and I were called in for an emergency briefing, do your homework and make yourself something to eat. We’ll talk when I get home.”
Allison felt a cold chill go down her spine. Somehow the tone on the last sentence in her mother’s message sounded more like a threat than a statement. She pulled out a frozen pizza and slid it into the reheater. She could have used the oven for a more authentic cook but the reheater always got everything cooked perfectly. The oven was less surgical, but faster. She slid onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar that bordered the kitchen and started working her way through her literature assignment. She’d finished her evening meal and was about to start on the fun stuff since her homework was done when the house’s VI spoke.
“There are two military police at the door, Allison. They are requesting your presence.”
Allison sighed.
“What now?”
The house’s VI did not answer. Allison stood up and opened the door. She recognized them from base, though couldn’t place their names. They were both men in their twenties. They were non-commissioned members which meant even at her measly ensign rank, Allison outranked them.
“Hello, what can I do for you guys?”
The master corporal spoke.
“Ma’am, SAI is requesting your presence on base. We’re here to give you a ride.”
Allison sighed and motioned for them to come in, she pointed to the still warm pizza she’d only eaten half of.
“I’ll go get changed. Feel free to grab a drink and some pizza. It’s not like I’m going to get a chance to finish it tonight apparently.”
The two MP’s sat down at the bar and accepted her offer. Allison went into her room and started pulling on her black System’s Alliance Uniform. She pondered why SAI, or System’s Alliance Intelligence for the uninformed, would want her on base when she was technically on leave due to her injury. She looked at the synthskin patch as she was pulling on her white blouse. She decided whatever this was she’d stop by Medical to have the wound looked it. She did heal faster than a typical person, she’d always been that way, but this thing wasn’t really healing as fast as even a normal person would given the advances in medical technology humans had made since they encountered the Sauroids, Silwrath and Synthlin.
The two MP’s had obviously missed supper because when she left her room the pizza was completely gone. She didn’t mind, saved her composting it later. They escorted her out to a waiting armored military transport. None of them said anything which led to an uncomfortable silence. She assumed they weren’t sure how to respond to a sixteen-year-old girl who outranked them both. She finally broke the silence.
“So… any idea why I’m being summoned? I’m on medical leave.”
The master corporal who was riding shotgun glanced back at her.
“Sorry ma’am, no idea. You know SAI. World could be on fire at night, and they’d still say no it isn’t, that’s classified, it’s just sunlight hitting some clouds the wrong way.”
That evoked a smile from Allison and the corporal. The corporal seemed to relax somewhat at that point.
“Ma’am, you look kind of young to be an officer, if you don’t mind me saying.”
Allison nodded.
“I am, I am sixteen. I just finished flight school.”
The master corporal glanced back at her.
“Then I really have no idea what SAI would want with you.”
Allison shrugged.
“Probably the patrol I flew last night. A lot of classified stuff happened, they’re probably just pulling me in to remind me what that means. Because the president sent me to school instead of to them this morning. They probably think, I think I’m special or something, when actually I think the president is just scared of my mom.”
Both MP’s laughed at that. Then the corporal piped up.
“If we ever go to war with anyone I think they should just send all the mom’s and aunties from Eden Prime, the other side will run away screaming.”
All three laughed. Allison added.
“I know I would. Mom is a force of nature. SAI is saving me a conversation because by the time I get home I’ll be able to say, it’s a school night, time for bed.”
They all chuckled. The transport pulled into the base and up to SAI’s building. Allison got out. The two MP’s also got out and saluted her. She saluted them back and went inside. Someone must have been monitoring her progress with her holo-phone’s tracker or her ident chit. Because a Major was waiting for her when she arrived. She saluted and the Major motioned for her to follow. They reached a security check point and Allison swiped her hand with the chit over the scanner but nothing happened.
“Uh, is this thing working?”
She swiped again. Nothing happened. The male Major sighed and motioned her forward and held up his hand when the duty security team stepped forward.
“Its her, something just happened with her ident chit when she was on patrol yesterday. Most of the tech she had with her was disrupted.”
Allison followed the Major down a hallway and into a briefing room. He motioned to a seat. Allison sat down after pulling her hat off. She placed her hat on her lap. The room was filled with officers Major and above, one of them her father. On the holo-display sat the president, and her joint chiefs of staff. On another was her mother. Allison felt a bit out of place suddenly. She was somewhat comforted to see her mother was looking somewhat less angry than she expected and more sympathetic. The president spoke in her calm, soft tones. Allison had never been able to place the pale woman’s accent.
“Thank you for joining us, Ensign Wanjala. Proceed General Keen.”
The holo-display shifted to her contacts view of the battle with the black alien bug thing. Those attending virtually were displayed in a row beneath the three dimensional fully realized hologram. The general went over Allison’s fight with the bug in great detail. Pointing out where his analysts found weak spots. Allison winced when she saw the bug pierce her abdomen. She was surprised by the overall assessment of the tactics she used in the encounter, the analysts thought she did the best she could with the limited information she had available to her. She had just been making it up as she went along.
The briefing continued with a display of locations pulled from the Qual’sa ship. They were known to be hotspots for this invasive species. An entire quadrant of the Andromeda galaxy. Including Eden Prime and planets in its near orbit.
“The Qual’sa designated these creatures ‘Sal’nash’ or the Plague. They are known to swarm, a few systems would get attacked. The Galactic community would respond. Something happened approximately six thousand years ago that caused them to be much more dangerous. They spread faster and with more virulence then seen in thirty thousand years of the Qual’sa galactic history. Entire sentient races were wiped out, including the Qual’sa. We lack context and thus far the subject at Pluto Station has been unhelpful. He was injured and put in stasis decades before the end of their species. The Queen has more pertinent information she did not go into stasis until the end was inevitable. She refuses to communicate with us beyond requesting the one who came before. She calls us too primitive.”
Allison was very confused as to why she was even here. This was all pretty high-level classified stuff the public would definitely not be let in on. Maria must have noticed Allison’s look of confusion.
“Ensign, you are the one who came before. I wanted you to be involved in this briefing so you knew what information we are looking for to start. Culture, history, technology can come later. Right now we need to know how much of a threat these Sal’nash are to our interests. How they spread, how they hide themselves. We could have already spread them to all of our colonies, Sauroid Prime and the Sol system.”
Allison felt put on the spot but when she signed up for the military she realized her life would not be entirely her own until she left. She could be literally asked to lay down her life at any moment.
“I will do whatever is necessary to get the information. I understand how important this is, ma’am.”
Maria smiled.
“I never had any doubt. If I did you would not be sitting in that chair. We will reconvene after Ensign Wanjala speaks to Queen Quasitori. Everyone is dismissed.”
Allison stood up.
“Everyone except the Ensign.”
Allison really felt like she was put on the spot now. One by one the joint chief’s of staff vanished from the holo and everyone filed out. Allison’s mother hesitated but finally she vanished as well. This left Maria alone in the SCIF room of Eden Prime HQ. Maria leaned close to her holorecorder.
“Ensign, when you finish with the Qual’sa Queen please message me via this SCIF we have other things to discuss. For now the Sal’nash and debriefing the queen are your priorities.”
Allison saluted.
“Aye ma’am.”
Maria nodded.
“Thank you.”
Maria ended the connection. Allison couldn’t help but feel like the President wanted to say more to her. She pulled her cap on. She wasn’t sure why it was referred to a combination cover, but it was. She assumed it was like a lot of things, tradition from the twentieth century. She much preferred her black beret, but she was dressed for a meeting with the brass. Not in a flight suit or combat field dress.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The same major that met her previously was waiting for her. He motioned down the hallway.
“The asset is this way, Ensign. I know you do not have interrogation experience or training. Start small, build up to questions about the Sal’nash. Xeno-Psych and Xeno-Med both agree she has been traumatized. Kid gloves but please remember how important this is. You aren’t going to be two teenage girls chatting. This could mean the difference between the life and death of every single person in the Alliance.”
Allison thought, “No pressure or anything huh?”
“I understand, sir. I will get what we need. You need to understand though, we might not even say anything. They seem to communicate almost exclusively telepathically.”
The Major looked confused.
“That wasn’t in any of the intel reports.”
Allison shrugged.
“I don’t know sir, no one actually debriefed me fully. When I was brought into Pluto Station, they put me under immediately. The president sent me straight to school.”
They stopped in front of an armored door.
“This is where she is, good luck Ensign.”
Allison stood at attention and saluted.
“Thank you, sir.”
He returned the salute and pressed his hand against the panel. The door slid open. It was six inches of pure armor. The same material warships were made out of. She went inside. The door slid shut behind her. The room was well appointed and very white. It had a comfortable bed, a couch, a holoprojector and a desk with a tablet on it. The Qual’sa queen was sitting on the couch watching a primer on the System’s Alliance. The Queen was much cleaner than she had been the day before. She looked to be in good health. Her silver hair which hung down past her waist was pulled into a tight braid. She had magenta eyes. She hadn’t looked towards Allison. Allison spoke.
“Ma’am, we met yesterday when I rescued you from your ship?”
The Queen’s head turned towards Allison at the sound of her voice. She stood up and rushed to Allison grabbing her hand. The flood of memories and thoughts threatened to overwhelm Allison’s mind. She used the same technique as she had the previous day. Guarding her thoughts and pushing away the flood of memories. The pair met in the middle. It was the same feeling Allison had when she used the neural link with Bit. It was like she was sharing two bodies at once. Words formed in their shared mind.
“I am Tearyna Qualistori”
Allison visualized an introduction.
“I am Allison Wanjala. I’m so glad to see you’re doing better.”
The room fell away and they stood in one of the Queen’s memories. They were standing beside a vast garden of alien flowers the garden was a terrace and beneath lay a city of intricately grown buildings. Marble and stone interwoven with nature. Music flowed around the pair. Allison had never felt so in touch with nature as she did in the moment. She realized the song she could hear was the trees singing. She could feel the pulse of the planet beneath, almost as if the core was a beating heart. She could feel the strength of the ageless rock that formed the planet’s crust and its mountains. Tears dropped from her eyes in the memory and in the waking world. She realized Tearyna was sharing a memory with all the sensations she felt in the moment.
“This… is your homeworld. Do you feel this all the time.”
Tearyna smiled and nodded.
“Even here? On Eden Prime?”
Tearyna nodded once again. Then she spoke, her voice was beautiful.
“Everything in this universe is connected by the energy of creation. My people can manipulate it and feel it. You are connected. It flows from your mother to you and it will flow through your descendants.”
Allison was confused. Flashes of rows of fetus’s growing in genesis pods slipped through their bond.
“I was artificially conceived. I don’t have a mother. I am sorry but we don’t have time for this. I need to know about the Sal’nash.”
At the mention of the name Tearyna’s traumatic memories flashed through. The memory shifted to the garden scorched and barren. The beautiful city was gone, replaced by a radioactive wasteland. Tearyna released Allison’s hand and collapsed. Allison was suddenly back in the protective custody room. Tearyna was in a fetal position holding the sides of her head. Allison wasn’t sure what to do. She was pretty sure hugging your interrogation subject was not in the manual but she did it anyway. She was much larger than Tearyna and scooped her up wrapping her arms around the young Queen. She held her tight.
Allison was drawn into a whirlwind of memories. Terror. Fear. Pain. Loss. Tearyna had felt the deaths of every single one of her people. One by one they were snuffed out. Entire worlds obliterated and she had felt it all. Allison felt herself on the edge of a cliff and she felt like she was going to be pulled into the ocean of pain and suffering rushing through Tearyna’s mind. She grasped onto her own she wasn’t sure where the memory came from, it wasn’t hers, she assumed it came from Tearyna. The pair were under a tree on a grassy rise overlooking a road and an ancient city Allison had no name for. On a blanket. Allison wasn’t sure what to do, so she kept her arms around Tearyna and rocked her gently.
“Shh, shh. We are safe.”
Tearyna slowly came back from the brink. Once she was out of her spiral she looked around.
“Where is this memory from?”
Allison looked around.
“I thought it was yours…”
Tearyna stood up and looked around. The grassy rise offered a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the grasslands that vanished into the surrounding sea and into the city.
“It is beautiful. Like Celestia’s rise on a clear day.”
Allison stood up and saw ships in the distance. They were water vessels. They looked ancient but she could not place their source. Orrs propelled them towards the city’s docks.
“This is Earth as it was before… the Gray. The human home world.”
“You said you had no mother… or you imparted it.. birth mother but you have a memory.”
Tearyna grasped Allison’s forearm. Allison was suddenly an infant or had the perspective of one. She looked up and saw golden eyes that matched her own. She gasped, the woman she saw at Pluto Station. She whispered to her in a language Allison could not understand. Tearyna looked at Allison.
“What did she say?”
Allison shook her head.
“I have no idea, I don’t even know what language it was its impossible, I was born in a genesis pod. I was created from randomized DNA. We had so few humans left after the Gray the System’s Alliance took preserved DNA from the ice randomized it and created new children in the Genesis Pods. I’ve known that since I can remember.”
Tearyna shook her head.
“My new friend, your memories cannot lie to you in the link. You have a mother out there and she is not a… Genesis pod.”
She grasped Tearyna’s hand again and their shared experience shifted to the hanger when Allison first met Bit.
“I am sorry, I do not want to make you relive the memories but… is there a way you can tell me about… you know what without falling back into those memories?”
“My memories of them… are not my memories they are my mother’s she gave them to me before she was released from her physical form and joined the ancients. She was… dying. Usually, it’s a slow process and the Queen’s daughter can process and assimilate them, but they are jumbled I received them in an instant all at once. I went into stasis almost immediately afterwards because of my own injuries. They are mixed with her ascension it was painful and… I need time. My mother took our entire people’s collective memories into herself. She passed them to me. It is too much.”
Allison sighed.
“We might not have time. My leaders are concerned we spread the Sal’nash already. That we’ve endangered our people.”
“My mother held secrets… from the others in the League I have everything that was her in my head but I can’t pull them apart.”
Allison rubbed Tearyna’s upper arms gently as she felt the young Queen starting to spiral as her mother’s memories threatened to overwhelm her. As it was some slipped between the link and they found themselves on the surface of another burning world. Tearyna buried her face in Allison’s shoulder. Allison was eager to get something, anything for the President. She spent as much time as she dared gathering what information she could from the memory. Sal’nash bodies were scattered about. Most were dead but a few were starting to move and get up. Mixed amongst the dead were the remnants of an army of various alien species. The League as Tearyna had called the previous Galactic civilization had bombed this world, scorching the ground and burning the sky and killed their own forces in an effort to destroy the Sal’nash and it had all been for not. The Sal’nash survived.
Allison pulled them out of the memory. They were standing in Sister Silra’s classroom. A safe space for Allison. The surroundings seemed to calm Tearyna. Allison realized now that this teenage girl had just watched her mother die. She held the last remaining memories of her entire species, which meant that she had the last moments of billions of Qual’sa, including their deaths. Allison suddenly felt very sorry for this poor girl. Tearyna looked around.
“You don’t like this building, but you feel safe here. Where are we?”
Allison motioned to the desks.
“Teenagers, and children in our culture attend school. This is my favorite teacher’s classroom. She makes me feel safe and welcome.”
“You’re not finished your lessons and you are sent to fight in wars?”
Allison nodded.
“Some of us choose to volunteer for what we call the reserves.”
Tearyna’s eyes lit up with recognition.
“Ah, so you are in the militia, the home guard. I see. It is common for the Royalty of my people to serve in the military as well. To teach us responsibility, but only once we reach adulthood. I am still two decades of your years off.”
Allison blinked a few times.
“How old are you exactly?”
“By your years? Two hundred and twenty-six… not including time in stasis. We mature between two hundred and forty and two hundred and fifty years.”
“So, you should still be in school.”
Allison started to formulate a plan. It wasn’t a great plan but maybe something akin to normalcy might help Tearyna sort out her overloaded brain problem.
“Do you know our language? We are speaking…”
Tearyna nodded.
“I have taken your lessons from the link. I will master it once I can focus on them. Thank you for sharing them.”
Allison smiled.
“Then you should come to school with me. Maybe not linking with people… and talking your way through things might give you the time and distance you need to sort out what your mom gave you. I just have to convince the brass that is what needs to be done.”
Tearyna looked around the classroom then back at Allison when she seemed to realize something.
“Thank you, thank you for rescuing me. I know it was dangerous for you. If we were at my home you would be called: Ro’Mer Saras, Crown Guardian. There would be a parade in your honor and a statue would be added to the Saras Halls. A blade would be crafted in your name and gifted to you by the crown. Your house would be added to the noble caste and your family would forever be Nal’sa, considered ‘The True People’. I can do none of this for you and thank you does not feel like it is enough. If rescuing me were not enough, you bested a Sal’nash in honorable one on one combat and are still standing strong. The Grignash would be in awe of your prowess. The Primarch’s Council would sing your praises in the assembly of sentients. The Silwrath would call you Slaashan, the highest honor they can bestow on a warrior. You do not understand the gravity of what you’ve done, my new friend. Not even a Silwrath Champion could claim defeat of a Sal’nash in one-on-one combat with a knife!”
Allison’s confusion could be felt through the link.
“They showed me of my rescue on your holo-displays. Primitive but effective. And too pilot one of our ships. It is as much mental discipline as it is physical action. If even a small percentage of you humans are as resourceful, strong and as brave as you, you have nothing to fear from the Sal’nash.”
Allison kept rolling back to the Silwrath. The humans knew of them. The Dark Mother had captured a battleship, they had obliterated the Synthlin… and many other races. They were extremely xenophobic.
“I… you were allied with the Silwrath? I thought they were xenophobic… like really xenophobic and basically committed genocide on everyone else in this galaxy.”
Tearyn looked very confused.
“I do not understand. They are the ones who formed the League. The Sal’nash never reached them, but they bled and died by our sides until the last of us. A Silwrath Battle master put me in my stasis chamber and helped us escape. They are… warlike but they are honorable and noble.”
“But they killed all the Synthlin, my fighter has records… They went back in time and destroyed them, the only reason any of the Synthlin survived was the temporal shields they developed. My fighter showed me all of it. They did it to any sentient species they came across. They are… monsters. Trillions upon trillions of lives lost… They would do it to Earth if our President hadn’t developed the same shields.”
Tearyn was just as confused.
“They would never harm a species that was defenseless. If one of them did, if their High King did, there would be civil war…”
“Maybe things have changed in the last six thousand years. Maybe watching all their allies get devoured one by one… I don’t know. They are why we are here in Andromeda. They are why the Dark Mother attacked their fleet. We have their flagship in the home system of the Humans, the Dark Mother captured it twenty years ago. There is a Silwrath Countess who is helping us prepare for the inevitable attack. Rubina.”
The connection between them shattered. The disconnect between what Allison knew to be true and what Tearyna knew to be true were so incongruitous neither of their minds could make them work.