Authors: Hao Yang
Time flies when you
are occupied. Now it is dinner time and I join others in the kitchen. It has
been six hours since I found out Lily was dead.
The food still tastes
like shit. If I didn’t forget lunch, I would throw up right away. I am
wondering whether the alien is messing with my food.
“Commander?”
“Commander!”
“Yes.” I look around
and it is Akio calling me.
“How is your head
pain, Commander?” Dr. Akio asks caringly while playing his fork.
“I am fine. Thanks.”
I try to smile at him, but only manage to pull me lips apart.
“What is with the
hat, Commander?” Bertha asks pointing at my hat.
“Nothing.” I focus on
my dish.
Silence.
Lisa keeps eyes on
her dish.
Roy carries a serious
face, lost in his thoughts.
Bud enjoys his steak
very much, making loud chewing noises from time to time.
Jim glances at me
several times as if he is making sure I am eating my dinner.
Charle and Bertha
have some small talks that I can’t really hear.
Lock doesn’t eat much
but drink a lot of water.
I finish my plate,
leave the kitchen and lock myself in my cabin. I have to wait until late night
to carry out my plan.
I wait and wait.
Finally it is 1 AM. I
open my cabin door, peek into the corridor and listen carefully.
Nobody.
Akio is supposed to
be sitting in the bridge right now. Others asleep.
I quickly make my way
to the escape pod and check it one last time.
“Let’s do this!”
I take a deep breath
and select bridge on the intercom.
“Dr. Akio. Dr. Akio.
Are you there?”
“Yes, Commander. You
know I am doing the nightwatch.”
“I need help. My head
is hurting so much. I feel it is going to explode.”
“It shouldn’t be.”
“What do you mean it
shouldn’t be?”
“I mean, I mean, you
said you were fine.”
“Yea. Now I am not.
Can you help me? I couldn’t even walk.” My voice is weak and low.
“Sure. Where are
you?”
“Near the escape
pod.”
“On my way. Out.”
My heart racing and
my hands shaking, I know I am taking a risk here. Akio might ask others to come
with him. That will complicate the situation. Leaning against the wall, I am
listening carefully.
Fast steps.
Yes. He is alone.
I open the escape pod
door, lower my head to my chest, hold on to the wall and put on a sick look.
He stops next to me
and says, “Commander, don’t worry. I—”
Now!
I grab him, push him
into the pod and lock the door.
Done.
He is hitting the door
and shouting at me. I can’t hear anything, but we can see each other through
the window on the door. After a minute, He calms down and we look at each other
in the eyes. He is composed like an old fellow who knows his time is coming. I
can tell he knows what is going on.
I turn on the channel
so that we can hear each other. For several seconds, neither of us says
anything.
“You are not Akio. I
know that.”
“How did you find it
out?”
“The DNA analyzer.
You did something to it so that it gives the false result.”
“It takes you this
long. Your girlfriend would be very disappointed at you.”
“How many of you are
onboard Achilles?”
He flashes me a
defiant smile and stiffens.
“What do you want
from us?” I ask impatiently.
“You are not that
smart either.”
“OK. Let me make it
clear for you. You either answer my questions or you die.” I shout at the top
of my lung.
“We both know I will
die.” His voice is slow and calm, sounding like some very old man’s last words
before dying on the bed.
Eyes on him, I activate
the pressure valve.
Hiss. Air is being
sucked out.
He is grinding his
small teeth and glowering at me. Now I truly feel he would eat me alive if I
let him survive this. After several seconds, he starts to struggle breathing,
face red like Mars and eyes sinking in the sockets.
When I see him fall
on his feet, I close the valve.
“Are you ready to
answer my questions?”
He is struggling, but
doesn’t say anything.
“I take it as NO.” I
open the valve.
The hiss sound is
getting quieter and quieter.
He curls up,
trembling from head to toes.
I close the valve.
No response from
him.
“You want to die? OK.
I will let you die!” I yell.
I open it again. I am
hoping he transforms to a squid or something weird, but nothing changes except
his skin. Now it is blueish.
Three minutes later,
I close the valve and pressurize the pod. After inside and outside pressure
equalizes, I open the door. I need to be sure he is dead.
I kick his head and
it rolls away from his neck. Red blood oozes out slowly.
OK. You are dead. I
believe you.
I eject the pod into
the space.
Watching it fly away,
I don’t feel any better.
Damn it! I get
nothing. I sigh and head for my cabin. It has been a long day.
My head hurts so much
that I couldn’t really sleep.
A least two aliens
came aboard. One was Akio and the other is Lily. I guess it copies Lily’s appearance
so that no one could find out Lily was dead. If one crew is missing, everyone
would become suspicious, which will happen soon. But why just lie there in the
medical bay?
In the message, Lily
said they needed and stopped. What do they need? If they need Achilles, they
don’t have to keep me and others alive. They can’t simply just kill us all,
because there is something my crew and me know. That is also why they messed up
DNA analyzers, so that they could keep us in the fog and we don’t know they are
here.
What they want? I
have no clue.
How do I tell the
crew that I killed an alien? Some of them won’t believe me and will think I am
a murderer instead. I should have kept some part of Akio and use it as evidence
to prove Akio is an alien. Too late for that. But Lily’s body is still there. I
can make some use of it.
I must act under the
assumption that there are other aliens.
Time ticks away as
questions and answers wrestling in my head. Now it’s already morning. I lie on
my bed with my clothes and hat on, waiting someone call me through intercom
about the Akio’s disappearance.
“Commander?” It is
Lock’s voice from the intercom.
“Yes.”
“We need you at the
bridge.”
“On my way.”
I get up from the
bed.
Why Lock keeps
calling me Commander? He never did that before. Never mind.
In the bridge,
everyone is sitting in their own seats and of course Lily and Akio are missing.
“Commander, we can’t
find Dr. Akio.” Roy says with a grave face.
“You guys checked
everywhere on the ship?”
Roy nods and so do
others.
“When did you do
that?”
“About one hour ago.”
Bertha says.
“And you guys had to
wait for one hour to tell me this?” I put on an angry look.
“We don’t want to
bother you until we know for sure,” Roy says.
“Now we know for
sure? He can’t just vanish.” I ask.
“The escape pod is
missing,” Bud sighed.
“You are saying he
left us,” I say.
“That is possible,
but it is also possible that someone killed him, dumped him in the escape pod
and ejected it into space,” Roy says, his eyes focused on the floor.
“Any blood or any
sign of murder?” I ask.
“No.” Lisa shakes her
head.
“I can’t believe this.”
Jim murmurs.
“Can we locate the
escape pod?” Charle asks with a sad tone.
“We don’t even know
when the escape pod was ejected. Someone disabled the signal,” Bertha says as
she pointed at one control panel.
“This was very well
planned.” Roy says looking at everyone.
“Commander, given the
current situation, I think everyone of us needs to know the access code to the
mainframe,” Lock says seriously.
“Why is that?” I ask.
“Just to be safe.”
“I suggest from now
on we all work in group, no one alone. This way I could give someone the code
just before I die.”
Everyone senses the
irony in my tone and they all avoid looking at me.
“Roy, can you make a
new daily schedule? We need to take turns to do Akio’s duty.” I say.
“No problem.”
“How is the antenna?
Can we talk to Earth?” I am asking Jim.
“It’s getting there,”
Jim says blandly.
“You and me will work
on it together and get it fixed. Is that clear?” I say coldly.
“I will go with you.”
Roy says with a concerned tone.
“We will let you know
if we need you! The rest of you keep looking for clues. We need to know what
happened to Akio?”
They nod and leave
the bridge one after another. Jim stays with me unwillingly. I can tell that.
“Let’s see what is
going on with the antenna.”
Achilles has two
antennae, one near the bridge and the other near the tail. Both of them can be
retracted into the hull. We always use the one near the bridge and save the
other one as backup. Now we have completely lost contact with Earth, so it is
very possible that alien sabotaged our communication system. I must establish
communication with flight control as soon as possible.
Jim and I go to the
antenna compartment. Since the antenna is outside the hull, so the space is
occupied by three steel beams supporting the antenna. The main one is twisted
like a wrung towel and the two are almost detached from the base. I am
wondering what happened. If an asteroid hit the antenna, it would probably
knock it off the ship or punch through it.
“Did you go EVA to
check the antenna?” I ask.
“Yes, I did. Several
times. The asteroid got it bad. I can’t fix it.” Jim doesn’t look at me but the
twisted beams.
“Did you try to
retract it back?”
“I tried, but with
the beams like this, it doesn’t work,” Jim says easily.
“Yea.” I nod, but
still not convinced that asteroids did all this.
“How about the backup
antenna? Was it hit?”
“No, it was inside
the hull when the asteroid shower happened, but I can’t get it out.”
“Let’s go to see the
backup antenna,” I sigh.
The antenna near the
tail has the size of a tennis field when it is fully deployed. Now it is folded
and resting in compartment 10 along with two EVA pods.
We walk around the
antenna and everything looks fine to me.
“Show me the
problem,” I say.
“Somehow the control
is not working,” Jim says pointing at the control panel on the wall.
I pull over a
circuit-checker. It looks like a tablet, but is a portable x-ray scanner. Its
sharp edge scratches my left thumb and it bleeds a little on the screen. I leave
it be and put the tablet right over the control panel.
“Scan the control
circuit for antenna NO.2,” I say.
“Initiating…”
It shows the circuit
just like the bones in x-ray photos.
“Short circuit
detected. Please check circuit A128023-3.”
“Go fix it,” I say
and hand over the circuit-checker to Jim.
“I will do it right
away.”
“Why didn’t you use
the circuit-checker before?” I am disappointed.
“I must forget about
it. I will fix it.” Jim leaves me.
I want to ask him
more questions, but the head pain stops me. It is getting worse day by day. I
was hoping I didn’t need to resort to painkillers or sedatives, but now the
pain has reached the point where I want to ram my head into wall, so I head to
the medical bay.
Lily told me not to
trust anyone, but with my headache going worse, I will need help. I need to
find someone I can trust. The alien can take over the body, but it may not be
able to inherit the memory. Yes. I know what to do.
When I get into the
medical bay, I see Roy standing next to Lily’s bed, his eyes fixed on Lily’s
face, his face cold and his figure stiff.