| Chapter 24 | Chapter 26 |
Part IV
25
Sleipnir
Debrisphere polar hotzone, September 6 2047
"Professor?"
As Robert looked around the strange room, trying to make sense of the situation, Professor Fjelstad removed the straps from Robert's hands, legs and chest that were holding him tied to a large yellow light emitting table.
What had happened. What was happening? After all the trouble Robert had gone through to stay off-grid, he still ended up getting caught. But he had no memory of any such an event.
The last thing he remembered was going to sleep in his little tent.
And now that he was caught, the professor was actually helping him?
The professor's mind seemed to be somewhere else completely. After Robert repeatedly failed to establish eye contact with the professor, Robert's eyes went around the rest of the room.
There was a second table next to his, white with a yellowish white light emitting from its top surface. The table was empty. Behind the table, there was a third table. On it, there was a woman strapped. Probably, he surmised, in the same way that he had been strapped.
A sporty looking lady in her mid-thirties was laying there, sleeping. Short in stature and lean. Not the feminine soft type of lean that Robert was privy to, but a robust gym-rat type of lean. Short, almost manly looking blond hair with a face that, while expressing strength in tune with her short muscular stature and tomboyish hairstyle, also had the kind of feminine elegance that reminded Robert of old pre-war fairytale movies about sleeping beauties being awoken from an eternal sleep by some fairytale prince.
There was definitely an aristocratic air to this unconscious woman. But then, there was also an aristocratic air about Professor Fjelstad.
Damn, both must be Mars-One! With the professor helping me, that means we must have all been captured by New Zion!
As Professor Fjelstad removed the strap from Robert's legs, Robert loosened the strap around his left arm and jumped off the table. Still captivated by the facial features of the tomboyish sleeping beauty, Robert walked towards the third table.
"Don't" Professor Fjelstad screamed out. "Lady is a bad person. A very bad person!"
What? Why was Professor Fjelstad talking like a total retard? Or more like a young child, actually!
As Robert looked intensely at the professor, the professor pointed to the other side of the room.
"The Martian lady attacked the groom with robot flies. The groom then killed all the trolls. The trolls are not bad, the trolls are nice. The Mars lady and the groom are very bad; dangerous, don't touch them!"
'What? Has the professor completely lost his marbles? Robot flies? Trolls?' Robert thought.
As Robert watched where the professor was pointing, a shock went through him. Agent Bridgewater! The suited-up man with long dreads sitting kneeling on the ground with his head down and his hands covering his forehead and eyes, this was Agent Bridgewater for sure. Robert stumbled and fell to the ground as he made a step backward and found something blocking his path.
What the? A sense of complete disorientation overcame Robert as he realized what had made him fall. Small grey skinned bodies, naked, with long thin arms and short legs. While they were naked, there were no signs of any genitalia. Their faces as pale gray as their bodies with giant dead black eyes in heads that were rather big for the size of their bodies. Then Robert remembered the professor's words: Trolls! No, these weren't trolls, these were aliens!
"Calm down young pilot!"
A soft female voice manifested itself in Robert's mind.
Great! I've lost my marbles too! Aliens. Voices in my head. Either I am going mad or the rumors about Mars-One using mind control are true.
"I am sorry about intruding in your mind like this, young pilot, but we are in deep trouble. I desperately need your help if we are going to survive this."
'Intrude in my mind? Great, I am not going mad, Mars-One after all!'
"Not Mars-One young pilot, I would formally introduce myself if we had the time, but I am afraid we are in a bit of a hurry.
My name is Azraella, young pilot, Junior conduit of the Amazon Homo Hylobo colony.
We are dead in the water, smack in the middle of the northern cascading-red-zone of the debrisphere. I needed to erase our pilot due to an unfortunate chain of events. I must introduce you to the ship now, no time to explain. Please be polite to the ship and whatever you do, don’t address the ship before I have introduced you to it."
As Robert tried to make some sense out of words spoken by the voice in his head, different questions filled his mind. What is a Hylobo conduit? Why did she call him young pilot? And what was this thing about being polite to a ship!? And what was that about erasing the pilot?
Then a stream of short, condensed but very clear thoughts washed through Robert’s mind. Strange words. A set of rules; grammar? Coordinate systems using an unfamiliar set of calculus rules that truly made more sense than any of the geometry mathematics Robert had ever learned. Magnetic fields, biology. What the ?…. It was as if years worth of new data, no, old knowledge, were being poured into his head without any context. Robert had no time to really process it.
Then a new voice entered Robert's head. A strong and menacing voice that spoke like thunder. Not a human voice.
Ibeáné, homo ujoëfe
While the words were in a strange language, Robert understood everything that they conveyed as if he had known the language since he was a kid. Somehow he knew that the language was Hyvala, a battle language that allowed crucial information to be conveyed in very few words.
But how did he know all this? How did he know this language? Where did this language originate? He knew things. Many things that, .., that he shouldn't know. Couldn't know! He knew now where the voice was originating. It was the ship itself! The spaceship was asking about the human. No, it wasn't a spaceship, at least not in the normal sense of a ship. It was an alien lifeform in its own right, not a spaceship that could easily travel space, as humans looked at space travel. It was much more like a giant bird that was not confined to the atmosphere. Its natural habitat was the magnetosphere. Traveling outside it was akin to a human swimming underwater holding its breath. Unlike humans though, this ship could hold its breath for weeks.
This knowledge, this new knowledge! Robert realized now what the erratic data stream was which had poured into his head earlier. Azraella had shared an important nugget of information with him, plugged it straight into his memory completely bypassing his conscious learning.
The 'not truly a' ship was asking about the human male. It was very much concerned about a particular man, very concerned about his fate. It asked if the human had fallen and while only three words were spoken, and while the voice itself was thundering and menacing in its own right, the words, through a simple set of grammar rules conveyed both the fear for the life of the human and the high level of anticipation the ship had to learn about the fate of what Robert concluded was the old pilot, who was a good friend of the ship.
Then the now familiar female voice of Azraella spoke in the strange tongue:
Ujwoópé ubwàra homo Robert odweëdo
While he understood the words, they still confused him. "The human has forgotten." A fact that she humbly apologized for. She had chosen a new human pilot; "him" Robert, that she now wanted the ship to meet.
Robert was thrilled by the fact that he could understand this strange alien language. A language that he had never learned. A first sentence formed in his head. In a strong thought of amazement the words came strongly to his mind:
Ibeèwü hyvala, iboüwu hyvala
Words that, in his mind's voice shouted out in amazement, then shouted out in joy: "I can understand Hyvala!" Then, just after Robert realized he had not kept his thought private, the ship spoke again in its thundering voice:
Obóvòmi homo ijeèfi
The ship was not amused with Robert's outburst. Not amused at all. Now Robert understood Azraella's warning about being polite to the ship. The ship was furious about Robert's unintended thought broadcast. This was all too much for Robert.
There was a telepathic link, created by this strange female being, to allow him to communicate with the living spaceship! A ship that now was in a total rage about something Robert thought was his private thought. The wording the ship used left nothing to the imagination. The ship proclaimed it wanted to hurt the insolent human. Robert had shown contempt for protocol and apparently that was something that to the Vanir ship was an unforgivable act.
Robert did not know what the ship could do to hurt him, but Robert knew deep inside himself, the ship wasn't making idle threats.
Then in the most groveling grammar packaged in a strangely comforting voice, Azraella spoke:
Homo oweijoöfa ojoêpï ojoêwu ojoêné
The human has just begun. He shall know; he shall understand; he shall fly! Robert immediately understood the dissonance. The groveling was aimed at the vessel while the tone of voice, which would have absolutely no meaning to the ship, was directed at Robert and as such meant to comfort him. She was telling Robert that everything would be alright using tone of voice while communicating, in a totally different 'tone' of sorts, with the ship through the subtleties of the Hyvala battle language grammar.
Ibeôba
The ship spoke. The ship had reluctantly accepted Azraella's explanation of his bad manners. Robert had not gotten off to a good start with the ship, but they had to work together. Robert was to be the new pilot. With the ship in the middle of the polar hot zone of the debrisphere, there was no time left to waste.
| Chapter 24 | Chapter 26 |