Memory Transcription Subject: Taylor Trench, Human Colonist
Date [standardized human time]: July 28, 2160
If Gress could track my implant in an uncharted desert, using his police contacts, why hadn’t Mafani’s translator been traceable for so long? Either Underscales knew how to evade security, or the sadistic Resket was somewhere he had a buffer between himself and the eyes in the sky. The cavern, where Tellus’ settlers had lived exclusively for years, wasn’t hidden, according to my Krev friend’s reluctant offerings. I knew he could get in trouble for providing too many details, but the thought unsettled me. I’d been spending more time trying to analyze the world around me, rather than let my emotions and impulses get the best of me—and I’d stumbled on a worrying conclusion. The Consortium must’ve been able to track our movements for years through those devices.
It was a likely assumption that the Jaslip enclaves had been under surveillance as well; they’d outright said they had memory checkpoints. I supposed it wasn’t that damning if it was used solely for security purposes, but that didn’t stop my skin from crawling at the idea. The intended use was failing us now, given how long it’d taken to find Mafani, locked on a single world. The pink avian couldn’t have gotten off-planet without a spaceship launch being detected, so that meant he had to be far enough underground that it blocked signals. That must’ve been why the Trombil were combing the globe with ground-penetrating radar, looking for hidden refuges. But how could someone have entrenched a hideout that deep into Tellus without being noticed?
Unless it was before we left the cavern for the surface. Were they planning to tunnel up into our underground homes? Is that a crazy idea? Shit, it’s easier to let other people come up with the theories.
My thoughts continued to spin as we loaded onto a shuttle, with Radai herding us in with a special team; his honor-bound culture made it a necessity to give me the chance to seek vengeance on the bastard who wronged me. I didn’t want to get sucked back to just thinking about hurting those who inflicted pain upon me. Gress told me there were other ways of coping with the intrusive thoughts that haunted me, and left me bitter over what had been taken from me. Changing my entire persona wasn’t easy, especially when I felt like I had nothing but hatred. Nothing except the Krev, who warmed my heart, to keep me from falling back to old habits—and failing to be a better person again. My exchange partner was also causing me to reconsider things about myself that I had denied for a long time.
Quana settled next to me on the shuttle, binocular eyes seeming kinder. “How do you feel, now that we have a lead on Mafani?”
“I can’t let my feelings control me. I think I want to protect Tellus; he’s a threat to our safety. He could come after me, you, or any of us if he’s out there. He has the skills to kill people,” I grunted.
The Jaslip playfully swatted me with her tail. “So do you, Taylor Trench. You’re not helpless, and unlike Mafani, you have people on your side. Whatever differences we have, I came here just to help humans.”
“I know. I really am grateful to finally have…anyone care about me. I’ve forgotten who my self is to even try to be true to it. I…never could be me in the caverns.”
“It’s not easy to find out who you are, and make it who you want to be. I know what it’s like to feel hatred for your oppressors.” Quana’s pupils darted between Gress and Radai, before returning to me. “I saw how you lived in that burrow. The air was…musty. It seemed to suck my soul a little with each breath that passed through my nostrils. You were cramped down there for twenty-four years.”
“It wasn’t just me. I’m the one that lost their head about it, and couldn’t…accept it.”
“Wasn’t there literally a strike? You weren’t the lone colonist that couldn’t accept their lot. Spirits, Cherise mentioned that she cried beneath her mask when she first took a security role and went up—felt and saw the sun. It was the unreachable goal, made tangible.”
“Cherise always kept her cool…and kept me from going off the deep end. I don’t know how she did it.”
Quana’s whiskers twitched. “Neither do I. Smell is a lot more important of a sense to Jaslips, granted, but I couldn’t live in a cave—like you and your earliest ancestors did. I’d feel the same way, about a fresh breeze and scents on the wind, that you do about sunlight and running around.”
“I’m glad for your acute nose, Quana. Only a Jaslip could’ve found me that fast in that God-forsaken desert. You can pick up my scent from miles away!”
“Unfortunately for me.”
“How dare you?” I scoffed.
“You reek! Not to mention, I can smell your pheromones whenever you’re around Gress.”
“What?!” the eavesdropping Krev and I blurted at the same time.
The Jaslip cackled. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”
Gress turned away from where he’d been catching up with Cherise; I could feel my cheeks turning red, which I imagined would only add to the “adorable primate” effect. The helmet had never been thrown on faster, in the futile hopes of disguising my embarrassment. To my relief, the aircraft landed on a specific patch of sandy rock, on the opposite side of Tellus’ circumference. I all but sprinted out of the shuttle as it touched down, relieved to be away from the awkward moment the Jaslip put me in. There wasn’t much that we knew about what Radai had learned, but I’d rather be hunting my abductor than confronting that comment’s implications. Quana slid into her back-mounted gun’s harness, over her bulletproof vest.
My eyes studied the objective on the HUD, spotting it listed hundreds of meters underground. My theory wasn’t wrong. Perhaps this is some kind of black ops Krev infrastructure? That explains how an Underscale would know about its presence.
General Radai stalked out into the sandy environment, never letting me out of his sight. “Listen up! The Consortium sent mapping drones deep underground to scour for any potential activity. We’ve encountered an unknown facility located far below the ground which appears to be…old and decaying. This is the best option Mafani has to hide away. We must anticipate armed resistance; we can’t determine if he’s alone.””
“Sir,” I ventured. “Who would’ve built an underground complex on Tellus? It sounds like it’s older than the ark colonists’ presence here, so…I don’t see a reason.”
“You have the same information I have, Trench. Any reason you think I’d have those answers?”
“No, sir.”
“Then why don’t you head down that nice hole our lasers carved to it, and find out?”
“With respect…I can’t fly.”
“Neither can I, but I know how to put on a fucking harness and jump!”
“That’s…” I don’t think I’m ready to jump that far down and fall like that. I’ve never seen anything from this high up outside a ship; it’s no wonder I feel weak at the knees. They did teach us to rappel down, but not from this high up. “Exactly what I’ll be doing, sir.”
“Good. The ropes are sitting out there. Get your ass in gear, or I’ll give you a tail in the form of my foot being planted there! That applies to all of you: move! Check each other’s knots before you jump—I don’t want to clean your guts off the ground.”
Gress, Cherise, and Quana tailed behind me as I began tying the loops that’d make the difference between life and death. The Krev looked a bit uneasy, despite being an arboreal creature. Cherise and Quana, meanwhile, were making light of the long descent; the female human gave the Jaslip a light push toward the hole, though far enough back that there was no real danger of her falling. The arctic carnivore yipped with indignation, circled around the smirking primate, and began tugging at Cherise’s pant leg. The white-furred quadruped looked almost like a dog playing tug of war. The humor eased my nerves a bit, though I was still apprehensive: just as I’d been on the orbital train that went straight down. This was much worse.
Gress turned to check the ropes that I’d tied, though he looked quite distracted. “Taylor…”
“Yeah?” I managed, clearing my throat.
“Do you remember what it’s like to be loved, and given affection? To have someone that holds you close and tells you it’s all going to be okay?”
“No. The last hug or kind word I got before you was my parents, before they put me on that damned ship.”
The Krev threw his scaly arms around my torso, much tighter than when I’d comforted him after he told me the true story of the Jaslip incident. The alien, who I’d once despised and wanted to bash his brains in, felt like a warm blanket of security. Gress was why I wanted to keep going—I could see it as plain as day. After learning that all of our toiling for decades was for nothing, he kept me from despairing. Right now, I felt a bit less fearful, knowing he’d save me if anything went wrong hopping down. I wished I could stay here and soak in the validating embrace, and tell him that he was the only person that made life worth living. My exchange partner retracted his limbs, and I realized I’d stood there: dumbly, motionlessly, and lifelessly.
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“Sorry. I know you don’t like being touched…I should’ve asked,” the Krev coughed. “I just…didn’t want you to be afraid. Let’s go get Mafani.”
I nodded like an idiot. “Mafani. Yeah. He can’t get away with what he’s done.”
That’s such a stupid fucking thing to say. Snap out of it; can I pretend it was someone else under the helmet?
With sudden eagerness to plunge to my potential death, I began rappelling down in increments; my boots pressed against the dirt wall, as I tried not to look down at what was below. My mouth felt dry, so I pressed the chin button for water. My gloved hands clung to the rope like my life depended on it, since the last thing I wanted was to free fall such an abyssal distance. Quana looked clumsy imitating a biped’s actions, as she descended next to me. Cherise was taking the fall the fastest of us all, and sent a message into our helmets, shouting, “See ya!” in an exhilarated voice. That answered beyond a shadow of a doubt who the thrill seeker was among us. Gress crept down tentatively, and I found myself waiting for him. We had to do this together.
It took some time to reach the bottom of the hole, which was ample opportunity for Mafani to see us coming. Thermal cameras hadn’t picked up on the Resket, though the metal walls of the structure seemed to be blocking out that portion of the light spectrum. I breathed a silent relief as my boots touched solid ground, and caught Gress to ensure he didn’t take a hard landing. The Krev muttered a thanks, before trotting ahead to rejoin our squadmates. Special forces were manning the point, as they prepared to bust into the mysterious bunker. Rust was visible on the walls, with bits of metal having peeled away. Who would’ve built a shelter this far down, and this long ago? The Consortium itself was only a century old.
Maybe it could’ve rusted in that amount of time. I’m hardly an expert in oxidation.
Radai came careening down, grasping the rope with his wings just in time to avoid a nasty collision. For a ratite bird, incapable of flight, he was as fearless of heights as the ones that took to the skies. I readied my weapon, and waited for our unit to find out what was inside of this structure. It didn’t make any sense with the details I had, so I hoped hard evidence we found could shed some light on its origins. The general seemed uncertain over the structure, which affirmed that if it was from the Consortium, it wasn’t in his knowledge. It was odd to see him joining the field mission, but per Resket culture, disobedience of an order he gave and injury to soldiers under his command mandated a personal response. Their honor system put high-ranking officials in unnecessary danger.
Our allies finished cutting a hole in a sheet of metal, tiptoeing inside with guns raised; many of them were Reskets and Krev, since those species were the most well-suited to military service. I wondered if humans would wind up in special forces down the line. The avians had to duck through the opening, as they didn’t want to compromise the structural integrity. There was no gunfire or indicators of enemy contact on my HUD, once they entered the strange construction. I crept forward with my friends, hoping that this was Mafani’s hideout. More than revenge, putting the sadistic ratite down would help me not look over my shoulder constantly—I wanted to move on from my brush with death. My fingers curled tighter around the gun, remembering how it felt to be paralyzed.
Quana’s nostrils twitched, while her tail fronds swayed in confusion. “Whose writing is this? A dead language?”
I knelt beside the Jaslip, noticing words written above a crumbling door; my visual translator understood them, when I switched it on. It was a simple exit sign, like we would’ve seen in any building on Earth. Most peculiarly, the language the writing was identified as…was Sivkit. My head snapped back like I was slapped, while I tried to digest that factoid. What could it even mean, if those fringe grazers had…some long-lost dwellings on this world: our world?! What was their connection to Tellus, far outside their borders? That Sivkit fleet might’ve come to this system because of whatever this was. The ark ship and the entire Consortium weren’t outside the Federation’s sphere of influence after all.
“Why the fuck are we in a Sivkit bunker on our planet?!” I screeched.
Gress and Quana looked equally at a loss, and they didn’t respond to my panicked question. The Krev’s amber eyes were a bit watery, perhaps due to his own swirling thoughts. General Radai’s primary emotion was alarm, though he ensured that what we were seeing was livestreamed back to the Consortium brass. Tellus wouldn’t be safe if this was a place of importance to the Grand Herd. We had to find out what they wanted with our home, now and hundreds of years in the past. I tried to rein in my spiral, and consider what my allies might be thinking at the moment. Enemy infrastructure within our own space was a liability in the war; we weren’t working with all the facts on how much they knew about our space.
Forget going for the Federation’s heart—the Sivkits are the ones most likely to come after us. Maybe we should try to capture some of them, and find out just what they want. It might be worth the risk of them learning more about us, with this in mind.
Gress’ claws twitched, before he turned sad eyes toward me. “All of our efforts to hide from the Federation, and not draw their attention—they were here before. I wish we’d known this world was important to them. We could’ve moved. We could’ve let the Sivkits land, and hoped they’d leave us alone like we did with you…”
“Except humans were here,” I finished. “I’m sorry. You could’ve avoided war, if you didn’t have to stop them from finding out we survived.”
Cherise picked up a ribbon off the ground, before also finding what seemed like a bipedal Sivkit figurine. “We could’ve been found by their expedition at any time…and the Krev wouldn’t have protected us until recently. We inadvertently landed on one of the most dangerous planets for our kind.”
“It’s more than that. More than about humans,” Quana growled. “Esquo was destroyed to avoid the Federation stumbling across us, but that’s more likely to happen here—whether it’s further away or not! Don’t you see? Hundreds of millions died for nothing!”
“Hold on. Why is that Sivkit statue walking on two legs?” I demanded. “It looks like it’s fucking dancing.”
“That’s your focus?! Not what I said about the Jaslips?”
“What do you want me to say, Quana? I’m trying to make sense of this. There was no way of knowing the Feddies were so far out of their own turf.”
General Radai stepped between the two of us. “There can be multiple concerns at once. Obviously, this clashes with the information we had when making all of our governance decisions, for every species. It is cause for concern. Panicking and in-fighting will not help us deal with this or find out why the only remnant is such a decrepit bunker this far underground. There were no signs of past colonizations.”
“Then how did Mafani know about it?” Quana hissed distrustfully.
“That’s a valid question. And so is the shit about the bipedal bunnies,” I offered.
The Resket general’s eyes simmered. “Quadrupeds can act bipedal for short times, and sometimes do; Quana can attest to this. There’s not much to make of it. As for Mafani, he’s been planning this for months. My best guess is that he stumbled across it, looking for places to tunnel…or perhaps found a connection into it that we’re not aware of. The only way to find out is to catch him. We must gather as much intel as possible.”
“Getting a Sivkit’s memory transcript would be invaluable. They might have told us outright,” Gress mused. “I wonder what they would’ve said if we accepted their hail?”
“We’ll never know. This is why I would have preferred to attempt communication, but my crew were not reasonable. Our policy was to avoid war with the humans when we believed them Feds. This wasn’t a conflict I wanted, with incomplete information and the blood we must now spill to win.”
“If I knew the Sivkits had been here before, it wouldn’t have been a total surprise when they showed up.” I ran a hand through my scalp in frustration. “But what do they even want here? Why is a desert world important to a species that likes grazing in verdant worlds…devouring them?”
“Trench, did it occur to you they may have devoured this one? Tellus isn’t teeming with local flora.”
“Of course, sir, you’re right. But why would they come back if it’s…depleted?”
“I don’t know, because you upstart primates forced my wing, thinking you had the big picture. You should do less thinking, and more falling the fuck in line.”
“Understood, General Radai. Forgive my inquiries and past overreach. I’ll be following your orders all the way to Mafani, sir.”
The Resket leered at me for a few moments longer, before stomping off. I pretended not to notice the confusion he failed to disguise; the general was trying to quiet the unrest among his own ranks, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of our discovery either. Considering the disquiet it had created among us, I could imagine what this news could stir up in the wider Consortium. The words that’d really sunk their claws into me belonged to Gress, asking what the Sivkits might’ve said on the hail. What if that conversation could’ve saved lives, whether by preparing us for the war or from avoiding conflict altogether? I’d hated the xenos so much that I never gave a second thought to their deaths, until I stumbled across a child’s statuette.
There might’ve been Sivkit kids, Lecca’s age, on those vessels—something that would break Gress to consider. Is that more blood on my conscience, beyond just the drill explosion?
All I had ever wanted was to help humanity, but my passion only seemed to aggravate situations. Keeping the cesspool of hatred and hurt under wraps might not last long either; I wasn’t convinced I could change, or that there was another Taylor Trench deep inside at all. It was a matter of time before I hurt my friends, and proved to everyone that I was a terrible, selfish person. How could I ever be good for Gress, even if he was the only positive part of my life? I’d never deserve his affection, or a second chance at everything I’d done and failed to learn from. Perhaps General Radai was right that I should do less thinking and more falling in line.
Cherise snickered. “Those were actually legitimate questions. When did you grow a lone brain cell, Taylor? Gress, did you donate some?”
The Krev moved a claw along his temple, counting on his other paw. “Taking inventory. No, seems like all—”
“We came here to do a mission,” I snapped. “Let’s just do it. Mafani is still out there.”
“What’s…oh, I see. Taylor, it wasn’t your fault about the Sivkits. You weren’t the only human desperate to hide yourself, and you hardly started that policy.” The Krev wrapped an arm around my shoulders, voice and touch gentle. “We’ve all made mistakes; look at Esquo, having the wrong facts about where Jaslips would be safe. Look at me, majorly fucking up the deal with the k-kids. We just have to move on. I’m really proud of you for how you’ve grown and thought this through.”
“You…you are?”
“Of course I am. Even Cherise was giving you a backhanded compliment; you have more soul and intellect than you give yourself credit for. Use that. Keep asking questions and trying to protect the people you love. You’ll get a bit better at it, one day at a time.”
I wasn’t sure I believed what the Krev was saying, but hearing the conviction in his voice, a part of me wanted to. Having Gress around was why I’d decided to seek other emotional outlets in the first place; I didn’t want to hurt him because I was bleeding deep down. A taut smile forced its way on my face, and I nodded to signal agreement. We were in this together, to protect all of Tellus from Mafani. Whoever this hideout had belonged to long ago, that reality hadn’t changed. Perhaps following orders and asking questions weren’t as mutually exclusive as Radai’s verbal beatdown suggested. My hands tightened around my rifle, and our unit pressed deeper into the complex in search of a sadistic Resket.