Esther

The room was setup with tables, chairs, sofas and a long bar at one end. The lights were dim. I had made it home when I first boarded. No one else was there so why not. They hadn't even finished stocking it. There were some glasses behind the bar, but not enough for a lounge and nothing else. I guessed they had started to stock it, but then stopped when it was decided decks 7 - 9 wouldn't have residents in order to conserve the ship's energy.

The Aether Field Prototype was cold in my hands. I knew it was a weapon. I just didn't know how to work it. The only thing I could get it to do was to make a small aether shield. I put the Aether Field Prototype down and carefully picked up the piece of wall.

It was so old I was afraid it would crumble beneath my fingers, but it didn't. I couldn't decipher the writing, but I knew it wasn't K'thaktran. The Awakened One had taught me enough before he died that I knew it was theirs. He had thought The Corruption had destroyed everything that was theirs. But they had missed this. It might not have said anything important. It might have said 'This way to the bathroom'. But what if it did say something important? I had found enough patterns that I thought I could decipher some of the letters. Ugh. I just hadn't had enough time with the Awakened One. Or my people. Or my family.

The horrors of that day washed over me. The Corruption (that's what the Awakened One called them) had come in waves of pink smoke. Little individual sparkly pink aliens that worked as a collective to tear us to shreds. We didn't know how they found us, how they knew about the Awakened One, how they knew we had the light, but they knew. Maybe they targeted all the smaller outer colonies like ours. Maybe we had given something away in a rare moment of communication with the outside.

The Awakened One had opened the light to us and we used it, but they were too many. We killed a lot of them, but still they swarmed over us.

The Awakened One hid me. Sent me away from the Lion of Judah Research Station. One with the light had to survive.

He hadn't chosen me for any special reason. I was just closest to him and the shuttles.

I was already in space when I felt the connection with my family ripped away. First my father. He killed five of them before hundreds tore at his flesh, crawled inside. Destroyed him.

Then my mother, my uncle and aunt. My little brother was next. He tried to protect the younger cousins. At 14 he was taller than me, but like my parents, like all of us, we were all new to the light. There was so much we didn't know yet. The Corruption knew that. They had killed almost all of the Awakened Ones long ago and the Awakened Ones had known all about the light.

Tears fell from my eyes on that shuttle. I left them all to die. A tear spilled onto my cheek now. I roughly wiped it away with the back of my hand. The Awakened One had fought them long after the rest of us had died. Long after they tore at him - hurt him. He fought long enough for me to be out of their grasp.

I hadn't liked the Awakened One. In fact, I had hated him. He had eaten one of us in front of me. But he had tried to give us the means to defeat The Corruption.

The second Awakened One reached out to me just after the first died. He gave me his location more through a feeling than coordinates. The Gathering calculations were not the same as the Awakened Ones, but it had been enough. I needed to find him.

My alarm went off on my okulus. I opened the surveillance feeds I had tapped into on level 8. Six security guards stepped out onto level 8 when the elevator doors opened.

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I released my handheld sweeper into the air. It flew over the computer terminal and food terminal I had used and wiped away any fingerprints, burned any fallen hair and skin. I grabbed the Aether Field Prototype, the wall, the algae bar I had taken a bite out of and my pack. I went to the wall and opened a panel. I pushed in my items and then crawled inside the small maintenance tunnel. I stuffed the Aether Field Prototype, the wall and the food bar into my pack and sealed it tight. I put the pack on my back.

I tuned the audio feed of the surveillance into my okulus and wrapped my okulus around my ears.

"Remember she can hide herself from the surveillance cameras. Use infrared."

Damn.

The sweeper came back to me, but I sent it out again to cool down any areas I might have touched. I left the audio on, but stretched out the okulus to fit all around me and my items. I changed the settings so it would emulate the temperature of the tunnel around me. I only left a small opening that my hand could fit through. The sweeper came back to me. I shut the wall panel, the sweeper cleaned it. I put away the sweeper and closed the opening in the okulus so I was now completely encased in it.

I waited. I watched through the feed as the security officers split into three groups of 2 and went through each room. Two of them - a human female and a Starwatcher male - entered the lounge I had claimed as my own. I focused my feed on them.

"Anything?" the human asked as she walked around the room with her okulus held out in front of her.

"No," the Starwatcher said. "You?"

"No."

"I don't know why command believes those kids anyway. There isn't any evidence of anyone being on the restricted levels."

"It's not just at the word of those kids," the human said. "Lieutenant Commander Ma'amaloa found evidence of a girl by looking at the records of his mechatronic. She shows up on the mechatronic's sensors and she shows up on infrared. They are going to change the surveillance to include infrared."

Double damn. I'd have to modify my distorter.

"I interviewed Lieutenant Commander Ma'amaloa's son," the Starwatcher said. "I'm not sure his testimony is worth anything."

"They didn't release that Owen kid because of what Vai Ma'amaloa said," the human said.

"I know. I don't see any prints, no hair, nothing on infrared." His okulus was before him like the human's was.

"Me neither."

The Starwatcher passed the computer terminal I frequently used. Pink was in his eyes. He looked at the terminal, blinked and the pink was gone.

The Corruption.

My hands shook. Tears burned my eyes. It was difficult to breathe. The Corruption was onboard.

When the Awakened One found out about the K'thaktran war - about the pink smoke that had surrounded the K'thaktra that the rest of the Gathering thought was a drug called zek - he had suggested the Corruption couldn't pass through Aether shields and that was why the Gathering had won. Once I got onboard the Shadow and bypassed classified securities, I saw that the Aether Field could also be used as a weapon. That was why the Shadow had been so successful against the K'thaktra.

So. If The Corruption couldn't get passed the Aether shields, how were they onboard the G.E.V. Shadow? And since when did they start inhabiting Starwatchers and not just K'thaktra? Were Bundu-jo and Humans affected too?

The Starwatcher opened the computer terminal. "This terminal has been used in the last 12 hours."

"Really?"

The human accessed the food terminal. "This one has been used in the last 2 hours."

Triple damn. I'd have to find a new place. Maybe on level 9.

"Nothing else here," the Starwatcher said. "Let's go report."

I watched them on the monitors until they all got on the elevators and left. Instead of crawling out of the maintenance tunnels, I used them to make my way to level 9.

The Corruption were onboard. There was a possibility I would need help. That teenager I had touched, I had made forget, I knew he hadn't been touched by The Corruption. Maybe he could help. Help with what? He didn't have the light. Could I awaken it in him as the Awakened One had with us on the Lion of Judah? I had planned on getting to the second Awakened One before anything else, but now...

I had checked the Shadow's flight path when I first boarded - checked all the scheduled stops. There was to be a science expedition on a planet that hadn't really ever been explored yet. That was where I thought the second Awakened One was. I couldn't lead The Corruption to him. I'd have to find them. I'd have to kill them. Starting with the Starwatcher security officer.