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  CHAPTER 2 (PETER)

  “La Reine est morte. Vive la Reine!”. The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen!

  I stopped at the entrance of our living barracks, not believing what I was seeing. Christine was leaning on the table, looking haggard and lost, her eyes red and her hair dishevelled. She was clutching a suspicious flask and seemed seriously drunk.

  This morning she had left for the nearest Haillar settlement allegedly to look for some items we missed. In reality, she was just bored and eager to see more of our hosts and test the translation crystals we all had received a couple of days ago.

  “Cristine, what are you doing? What happened to you?”

  “The little Haillar queen is what happened. Nolan was right. She was indeed holding back on us. She being all proper, having us drinking jugs of foul-tasting alien tea… pretending booze did not exist on Aldeea. Lies, all lies… they have their liqueur if you know where to find it, they always did... I bet she’s laughing at us from the netherworld … the self-righteous bitch.”

  Christine was not just drunk, but completely stoned. Her ravings against Ellandra were proof of how far she was gone if any proof was needed. She had liked and respected our alien friend even before the siege and the queen’s death defending Aldeea. The psychiatrist had even spoken for her three days ago when we had our wake for Endeavour’s dead. When we had the wake for Liz.

  Unless she hit an entire stash of moonshine, Christine’s condition could not be the effect of alcohol alone. I wasn’t a doctor, but we all knew that some Haillar food and drink could be poisonous, even lethal. Christine should remember this too, only she didn’t seem to care.

  In two long strides, I was next to her before she even registered and snatched the half-empty bottle. The smell of bad alcohol mixed with something sickening sweet almost floored me. I threw the flask in the rubbish bin and heard it breaking into pieces. Christine gave a cry and attempted to fight back. Apparently, the effort was too much for her, and she collapsed unconscious in my arms.

  “What the …”, shouted Mertens from the doorway.

  “Hank, get Charles! She’s sick, she poisoned herself with some local drink.”

  To his credit, Hank hurried out with no comment. Ensign Heimlich had left in the morning for some shuttle maintenance work, so the only one left able to help Christine was Charles Swanson. A very indignant Charles brought in a minute later by Hank Mertens.

  “Take your hands off me, Hank. I’m not the village witch doctor to be fetched-in whenever somebody gets a hangover.”

  I thought again about Liz and felt sadness and rage building up looking for an outlet, any outlet, to explode.

  “For now, Charles that’s exactly who you are. And this is no hangover, but Christine poisoned with some local substance.”

  “Then it serves her right for being an idiot,” mumbled the biologist but moved next to Christine and proceeded to check her vitals. “Bring her to my lab. I need to take a blood sample and see what’s causing this.”

  Charles's so-called lab was a converted storage unit with a table and a few surviving parts of the biology test kit. Whatever equipment happened to be still on the shuttle, not yet unloaded at the time the Scourge arrived.

  “You could have had the foresight to keep the bottle, Peter!” said the biologist. I admit he was right to scold me, as now we were only left with some contaminated samples scrapped from the bin.

  “I can’t believe Christine lost it. She was always so steady. She was the one supposed to keep us from cracking under stress”.

  “I’m never in danger of cracking under stress, Hank,” responded Charles indignantly. He was probably right, for the biologist was the last person I could suspect of angst and self-doubt. People so utterly convinced of their own importance had a way to endure should the world fall to pieces around them.

  “The only thing I can do is to place an intravenous drip to top up her water, blood sugar, and vitamin levels. She should be safe. Luckily it was a mild poison, and she didn’t have time to finish the bottle. Tomorrow, though, she’ll have the mother of all headaches.”

  We left Christine sleeping soundly in the improvised infirmary. I couldn’t help but think it was telling of our situation, stranded on Aldeea with minimum supplies. A common accident could kill any of us, like Christine nearly died from a sip of booze. And sooner or later we’ll run out of pre-packaged food. And at that time, it would be up to the Haillar to find a way to feed us. Ewan and Charles should start working on this with the old lady at the Academy, the biologist who came with the remedy against Scourge’s mind scans.

  ✽✽✽

  “I swear you won’t see this happening again, Peter!”

  The morning after, Christine was surprisingly steady considering her blinding hungover. Or maybe a combination of hungover and withdrawal syndrome, or whatever conditions people waking from alien drug-induced coma are expected to suffer from.

  “I lost contact with reality while inhaling poisoned vapours and couldn’t make myself leave the distillery, though I should have recognized the symptoms.”

  “What happened, Christine? Do you remember?”

  “I went to the village looking for something to do. Learning more about our hosts, maybe. There was an open tavern serving drinks, and this was the first time I saw alcohol on Aldeea. At the Citadel, I was under the impression they don’t drink anything stronger than tea and fruit juices. The tavern keeper saw my interest and offered to show me around, trying to be nice with the strange alien woman. I was curious, so I followed him to the distillery where he showed me the entire process, very similar to the way we make spirits on Earth, by the way. Even the smell was the same reminding me of pear brandy. I got a bit dizzy and had to take a seat, then I ended up holding a flask and tasting the product, not even aware what I was doing.”

  “And after that?”

  “I don’t recall much, but I guess I lost track of things. I remember cursing and bitching about Ellandra. Blaming her for hiding the booze while subconsciously I think I was blaming her for dying. I was blaming the rest of the Haillar for not caring. Gods, Peter, I liked the little queen, I really did. We started on the wrong foot, but I ended up being fond of her. I admired her self-control, her cunning mind. Do you remember me on the bridge, telling the Navy that she was not obfuscating us on purpose, that it was just the Haillar’s way?”

  I nodded. Every minute of that cursed day was etched in my memory for the rest of my life.

  “I lied, Peter, or at least I wasn’t telling the entire truth. I’m pretty sure she knew exactly what she wanted to share with us, and she was sharing just that, not a trifle more. I liked sparring with her even if most of the time she got the best of us. But I was true when I said she never lied to us, at least not as far as I could tell. In the end, after we all learned who she was, I had so much to talk about with her. I had to understand, to ask her about… Never mind, now she’s gone.”

  I always thought Christine was mentally the strongest one of our crew, yet the alien queen’s death has hit her hard. I’ve seen the two of them becoming close, but I didn’t realise Christine had started to see Ellandra as a kindred spirit in the Haillar world. When did this happen?

  Never mind. We had to do something to escape the shadows of our past. We are leaves in the wind, drifting without a purpose.

  ✽✽✽

  “The Haillar agreed to port us to the Citadel, sometime tomorrow morning. We should decide what’s next.”

  We were all together in the communal area, the first crew meeting after the wake for Endeavour’s dead.

  “What can it be?” answered Charles. “We continue the survey. I have tons of research to do on both the Aldeean and the Haillar biomes.”

  “To what end? We’ll never return to Earth, so you’ll never publish anything,” responded Ewan bitterly. The younger man was less upset about his defunct academic career but distraught by the prospect of being forever separated from Alice, his wife.

 
; “My research can still be valuable to the Haillar. I only need to agree with their Academics the topics that would make the best use of my time.”

  Charles hubris was indeed boundless. Yet, amongst us, he was the first one who seemed able to redefine his goals, to find a reason to be, no matter how preposterous. He was right stating he wouldn’t crack under stress, immune because of his uncanny ability to bounce back no matter what.

  I was probably the only one finding some sense in what the biologist was saying, while the others met his statement with puzzled expressions. Mertens decided to ignore Charles’ last comment altogether and stated bluntly what most of us were already thinking:

  “The mission is dead, and so is the survey. Any idea what’s coming next?”

  The answer came unexpectedly from the one person who had barely been able to join the crew assembly tonight, and eventually made it by sheer strength of will despite Heimlich’s advice and Charles’ protestations.

  “I want to go out there and see the Haillar worlds. If I can’t go back to Earth, I want to learn as much I can about our alien hosts. Not for the mission brief, not to strengthen Earth’s hand in any future negotiations. For myself.”

  Everybody turned their heads staring at Christine. Still wobbly she was standing next to the entrance, leaning against the doorframe.

  “Come on Christine, we have so much yet to see on Aldeea. Before this mission, before coming across a world teeming with life, unlimited time to study an alien planet would have been a dream come true,” responded Ewan.

  “That was before we came across the Haillar. We have so much more to see, an entire civilisation to discover, of which this colony is just a remote outpost. Tens of alien species, hundreds of inhabited planets! So much to see, and so little time…”

  I wondered if her earlier accident was to blame, but Christine seemed coherent even if a bit flustered. Most likely her nearly dying in such a stupid incident made her reassess her own mortality, made her want to make more of her life than just surviving on Aldeea.

  “Nonsense,” blurted Charles. “What do you want to do, roam around the Haillar empire? To what end? And who is going to ferry you? Their fleet?”

  “Travelling to their home-world as humanity ambassadors, that would be something,” mused Hank Mertens.

  “Their world is thousands of years further away from Earth” responded Milena in a quiet voice. “If we stay on Aldeea, we may stand a chance to return home someday. Going in the opposite direction means giving up all hope we’ll eventually go back home.” Milena was as keen to return as Ewan was, and for the same reasons, as Tim Stratton, her fiancée, was waiting for her on Earth. They were supposed to start a family soon after her happy return.

  “Our mission, Keppler 452 expedition’s goal, was to travel to this world and back”, said the Captain. “We don’t have the mandate to represent humanity in front of an alien empire or even to travel further inside the Haillar Dominion.”

  “We can’t exactly call Earth and ask for approval,” continued Christine. “The Haillar already know about us, and we have no secret astrogation data left they can force us to reveal. Our planet’s location is safe. Humanity is not in danger, at least not from the Haillar. Going to their Core worlds, learning more about the Dominion is the most useful thing we can do in the eventuality of a second contact. I don’t know how we can convince the Haillar to agree but if we can, we shouldn't waste this opportunity.”

  That was indeed a big if in Christine’s proposal. Why would the Haillar decide to let us go to their home-world, whether by ship or by portal? We had nothing to give them. If Ellandra were still alive, she might have helped, but the Warden had no cause to accommodate us.

  Actually, there was a good reason they might agree to do it!

  “Ellandra mentioned we arrived at the citadel as her personal guests, under the Sen’Dorien seal. I can ask Aleen if this implies that we are welcome to their homeworld too. The queen herself was a visitor here. She made it clear she was born on their main world, the place where the Heart of The Haillar lies.”

  “Correct,” chimed in Christine. “She stated that her invitation was more than a letter asking us to come to the Citadel, that she was welcoming us on behalf of her House. They might respect Ellandra’s intention beyond the limited content of the message. In fact, based on what we understand about their culture, they probably will.”

  I strongly suspected that we didn’t know as much as we thought we did about the Haillar society. I’d say we had a fifty-fifty chance, but Christine seemed keen to try, nevertheless.

  “I won’t stop you, people,” said the Captain, “but I won’t encourage you either. I’ll stay on Aldeea, and so will my command, for the eventuality that Mission Control will send a follow-up expedition after we fail to return when scheduled. We still have this duty, no matter how remote the possibility of a contact.”

  “We’ll remain on Aldeea too,” said Ewan, looking at Milena. The astronomer nodded.

  “I would go,” stated Hank Mertens from the other side of the table. “I want to see what’s out there and if we have a chance to go to the Dominion’s capital, I’ll take it.”

  “I want to come too,” said surprisingly Matteo Fiorelli. “I never believed I could visit more than one alien world in my lifetime. Why not go deeper in the Dominion, since we have nothing better to do? I want to travel and see as much of the universe as I possibly can.”

  “On second thought, the Haillar capital might be a better place to promote my research”, said Charles out of the blue. “Aldeea is a bit of a backwater colony.”

  I thought my hearing was playing tricks on me or maybe I had caught some virus from Christine and I was hallucinating. Charles Swanson never changed his mind. In three years since I had known him, he never conceded an argument, never admitted that he might be wrong, or the other person might have a point. To see him making a complete U-turn from a previously stated opinion was a monumental occurrence, on par with humanity’s first steps on Aldeea.

  But to be fair, the only person who could persuade the biologist to have second thoughts was Charles himself. He wasn’t going to Bellona moved by Christine’s arguments or in a pro bono attempt to gather information for the unlikely eventuality of a second contact. All his life Charles has gravitated towards people of power, and the most powerful people this side of the universe could be expected to be found on the Haillar homeworld. My remark about a possible letter of introduction to such people suddenly opened an entirely new world of opportunities for Dr Swanson. Such was the law of unintended consequences…

  What about me? Should I join this impromptu adventure or stay with the Captain and try to find a purpose on this planet?

  Aldeea was the place where Liz shared her feelings with me, but also the place she died. Yet, there was no cenotaph left behind, no grave, not even a body. No physical reminder of my friend, no burial ground to light a candle for her soul or leave a wreath of flowers in her memory.

  I promised myself that I’ll look forward, that I would live my life to the fullest, for both of us.

  “I’ll join you as well,” I confirmed. “Tomorrow, I’ll ask Aleen about the invitation letter and if it implies permission to visit their homeworld.”

  “You should reconsider. None of you is trained for this, you are not even able to protect yourselves”, said Koslowsky. “Besides, there is no such thing as private individuals, everything you do would reflect on Earth.”

  “Earth is safely hidden, Commander, and will hopefully stay so for the foreseeable future,” responded Captain Holt. “Having said this, if five of you intend to travel to the Haillar world, the least we can do is to provide assistance, splitting the protection detail.”

  Thomas Holt was indeed a canny old fox. He didn’t want to be seen continuing the mission into the Haillar Dominion beyond the letter of our mission brief, yet didn’t mind doing a little reconnaissance masked as Navy’s escort for a gaggle of civilian scientists. Christine’s p
oint about intelligence gathering for the eventuality of a second contact was not entirely lost on him. Commander Koslowsky immediately took the hint from the Captain’s tone:

  “As your place is with the crew stranded on Aldeea, I can take care of the second group, together with one of the sergeants.”

  “I volunteer to go,” Tim Morris said immediately.

  I was happy to see Tim joining us. I wasn’t so keen on Koslowsky since he was a solid but rather unimaginative man, but Sargent Morris was with Liz and me at the Citadel. Despite his quiet demeanour, he was a lot more open-minded than his superior officers and a valuable addition to our group.

  CHAPTER 3 (ELIZABETH)

  I step through the portal and find myself in a world of flickering fire.

  The Origin Hall is enormous, a tunnel of shifting shadows with no end in sight. On my left, the transparent panels display an ever-moving sea of fire. It’s the Ka Loren forge, the burning birthplace of our people. On the other side, the wall is adorned with row after row of names. The names of all Haillar known to have died in the destruction of our planet and the subsequent samun Annihilation Wars. Billions of names are etched in stone. Once I remember walking through the Origin Hall for hours. I didn’t find its end, though I’m well aware it’s only an infinitely small part of the enormous structure we built around our sun.

  There is nothing left around Ka Loren other than a giant sphere. The samun burned our home and sent us into exile. We returned, we defeated them and built the Origin. A globe completely encasing our sun, made from the remains of our world and every other scrap of matter in the system. Ka Loren’s presence is now hidden to all but us, its people. Our sun’s energy, its life force, feeds the eka conduits into the portals connecting the Origin with thousands of Haillar worlds. Ka Loren is our heart, its fire is our blood, giving life to the entire Dominion. Its eka feeds each Chapter House, from the sprawling Council World to the smallest Citadel.