Outward Borne (8 page)

The Cathians had been on the
Outward for some two hundred and twenty days. They wandered through
their plain, boxy, featureless enclosure without purpose. They were
fed a bland gray mush that was barely edible to the refined
Cathians who required a rich and varied diet to maintain their
wellbeing. The survivors had all lost weight, strength, and
will.

Without thinking, or perhaps
caring, the ObLaDas used a twelve-hour light/dark cycle and dim
lighting within the Cathian habitat. It was the same as the ObLaDas
known on their home planet, but in the habitable regions of Cathia
the day had thirty-two hours of intense light and four hours of
partially lit night. The darkest dark of a Cathian night was
brighter than the meager lighting within their habitat. They could
not adjust.

Note: Units of Time

The ObLaDa day was divided into
twelve hours of light and twelve hours of dark. This record will
use the same ObLaDa ’hour’ (~75 minutes Earth time) and ‘day’ (~30
hours) that were used on the Outward Voyager. For convenience, we
will refer to a twenty-four day period as a ‘month’ (~30 Earth
days) and a 288 day unit as a ‘year’ (~ 360 Earth days). These are
close enough to familiar durations to be useful without being
overly complicated. Relativistic factors would make gibberish of
any attempt at exact comparisons to Earth time.

- MDK

The Cathian language relied
heavily on gestures, body language, and facial expressions, which
provided the context and subjective weight to the few simple words
that they expressed vocally. Unfortunately, the Cathians small
protuberant eyes could not adjust to the low light levels, dark
corners, and long nights of the habitat in which they were made to
live and their ability to communicate was severely limited. This
added to the generally depressed state of the captives and
contributed to their poor performance in the intelligence tests
that the ObLaDas employed. In the beginning, the ObLaDas doubted
that the new aliens had any useful language at all. Their
disordered behavior and acquiescent demeanor conspired to diminish
the few favorable impressions that the ObLaDas had formed.
Ironically, the Cathians were the most intelligent society that had
yet been discovered, but the ObLaDas were convinced that they were
baseline dullards and resented the cost, time, and effort that they
had expended on bringing them aboard.

Note:

The ObLaDas did not decipher the
Cathian language until well after the catastrophe occurred. They
analyzed what and why it had happened from the available
surveillance records and movements of individuals within the
ship

- MDK

Zep, like all Cathians, had a low,
wide, and very strong body. She had six stubby thick legs that
extended directly beneath her lumpy body and massive feet that
folded into fists when walking. This level of support was needed in
the high gravity of Cathia, but their habitat on the Outward had a
much lower force in which their stiff stout legs bounced them about
and made their movements appear awkward in the extreme. Their heads
were tapered snouts hanging forward from their broader mottled
yellow-tan to red-brown bodies. Small eyes protruding from the
sides of the head could look forwards and backwards, complementing
their long supple necks. Like some other alien species, their
cup-shaped feet were very flexible and could serve as hands to
manage small delicate objects even without having defined
fingers.

Cathia was a beautiful but
difficult land, and those that lived there and survived were tough,
hard beings. The climate was variable leading to periodic droughts
and starvation, and storms came often during the cold season
bringing the damp and diseases of the ocean’s coast. Survival at
times required that they burrow into the ground and persist until
the harsh times were over. The older Cathians developed dusty gray
patches on the top of their heads and what might pass for shoulders
or knees. Pok was particularly well padded, flexible, strong, and
mean.

Zep, Pok and their friend Sut, had
been members of a construction gang. They dug wells and built
bridges and houses using stone and the available reeds and grasses,
and generally tackled whatever projects they were told to do.
Several others from their rugged gang ended up in the Outward, but
their bosses had not. The captive Cathians were without direction,
living in a foreign and unexplainable cage, discouraged and
weakened. Yet, no one had stepped forward to organize or control
her fellow captives.

Zep and her crewmates were
workers, not rulers, but they were adept at problem solving and had
been trained to take on the challenges of some substantial
projects. They began to shake off the lethargy of their captivity
by doing what they knew how to do. Pok had slunk around the place
and it was clear that the Cathian habitat was larger than needed.
It had many identical little rooms, far more than the small group
needed, but lacked the open space they were used to. Zep, Pok and
Sut began to pull down walls and ceiling panels to create a larger
open area and collected lighting modules to brighten the room. It
became the only space within the habitat where the Cathians could
see one another clearly and communicate freely. Unfortunately, the
construction had not destroyed the embedded ObLaDa surveillance
cameras or microphones, but it was a start.

The small group’s despair changed
to anger when bodies began to disappear. At first, no one
understood what was happening. Two Cathians, Kit and Loft, were
taken. They were apparently removed from their sleeping quarters
during the night, but no one saw or heard a thing. They were just
not there anymore. Pok was especially angered by the kidnappings;
Loft was her friend. She wanted to learn how the abductions were
being conducted and began to creep around the exterior walls of the
habitat during the night, watching and waiting, but saw nothing.
There were no further seizures during the nights that followed and
the Cathians began to believe that they had regained some control
over their lives. Then one morning, in full light, an access door
slid open and two flat-topped service robots rolled into the
habitat. They went directly to the room where young Bek was lying
unconscious. She had probably been gassed in her sleep. One bot
picked up her body and they both rolled back through the entryway.
The operation occurred with hardly a sound and was complete in less
than five minutes. Then, two days later, shortly before lights up,
the entryway doors again slid open and Kit’s body was laid
carefully on the floor just inside the habitat. She was barely
conscious. No one knew at the time, but Kit was
pregnant.

Anger and hostility boiled over.
The Cathians started to retaliate, but it was little more than
mindless destruction. Pacing back and forth, rubbing against the
wall of Zep’s room, Pok held an angry and guilty posture, unnerved
by what had happened. Zep sat slumped in the corner watching. Some
young fools, too angry, too frustrated, had destroyed a maintenance
robot and brought on more troubles.

Tot and Cit had cornered a
harmless service bot and used clubs to bash its long arms when it
tried to protect itself. Another bot came around to help, but it
was equally defenseless and was smashed as well. The idiots ran
around posturing as though it were some great victory. They had no
idea that the flybots had come in. The things shot darts into their
backs, and into others who were watching them. They were all lying
about when the largest bot they had yet seen picked up Tot, Cit,
and two others. Many remained on the floor, not taken.

Sut had just come from the bright room where
many of the Cathians had gathered. Zim was telling her story. The
fight took place near her room. She saw it all. Her sister Nib was
leading the call for revenge.

Zep was convinced that would be
the wrong way to proceed. She jumped up stomping her legs. They
were living in a trap. The Hags have complete control. They could
gas everyone in here or stop providing our food. They do not care
about us and if we become a problem, they could just get rid of the
problem. They must find some way to confront the monsters
themselves, not just their robot machines. Somehow, they needed to
get to the Hags. The Cathians had not yet seen one of the ObLaDas,
who they called Hags, but they knew that those being controlled
their lives in the same way the controlled to bots. It was as bad a
name as the Cathians could bestow.

Patrols continued with dubious
success to ambush bots that entered their space. They even seized
the robots that came to fix things or deliver supplies. But Zep and
her friends had begun to think of ways to escape from the habitat
and retaliate against the Hags. It would be no easy task. There
were no openings in the habitat. They had been looking ever since
they first arrived.

Zep decided to approach Kit. She
was the only one that had been outside of the habitat. She must
know something. Zep was hopeful. Pok was not. She was even more
dejected than before and doubted that Kit had any ideas. Kit had
hardly talked to anyone since her abduction. Kit had said little
about her ordeal, and once she was found to be pregnant, she
refused to discuss what they had done to her. She was not pregnant
from any normal course of events. The Hags had done something to
her.

Note:

The ObLaDas’ findings from their
Cathian experiments were not in the available records. Whatever the
ObLaDas knew about the Cathian’s unusual biology was apparently
lost during the ensuing events.

- MDK

Zep brought Kit into the bright
room. She was determined to break through her reserve. Zep spoke of
the continuing abductions and of the declining morale among their
kin. She told of her intent to fight back, and how it was suicidal
to carry on a fight from within the habitat, how vulnerable they
were. She told of the need to confront the Hags themselves and
force them to return to Cathia. She did not know how this could be
accomplished, but that was why she was here. Zep told Kit that she
would not ask about what had been done to her, but must know as
much as possible about her capture and what she saw outside the
habitat.

Kit only agreed to talk only
because it might stop it from happening to someone else. Her first
memory was of lying in a small, barred cage inside a much larger
dark grey room that was filled with equipment. Other cages sat in a
far corner behind some tables. Cabinets lined the walls, tools were
scattered around or hung from the ceiling. Much of the place was
arranged around two tables that stood in the center of the room.
Just about everything was metal or some black material that she did
not recognize.

Her cell had a bench type mat,
some dried food and water, and two empty shelves. She was left
alone for many hours and for a long time nothing happened. She was
not bothered and received no instructions. Then a large door slid
open with a hiss, on the far side it was. A service bot came in,
one that looked like a rolling box with several arms. It was
holding Bek’s body. She had not known that Bek had been captured.
The bot slid Bek onto one of the tables and strapped her down. The
table was too narrow, Bek’s hind legs hung over the side. It moved
the equipment around the table and adjusted some lamps. The room
was dim, but Kit could see her better in the extra light. The bot
turned and left through the same door. Bek was too far away to see,
but she must have been alive since she had been strapped down. She
lay there for a long time and never moved.

Without any warning, a
large-bodied thing came in and a great sharp irritating stink
rolled across the room. It was completely covered in a shiny gold
fabric. It had four legs and two arms, with a loose reflective
helmet covering its head. It must have been a Hag. Kit confessed
that she was afraid that it was coming for her and could not help
wishing it onto Bek. It stopped and seemed to look into her cage,
but Kit could not see its face. She kept wishing it would to go to
Bek and it did. The thing turned and bent over Bek’s body. She
could not tell what it was doing, but it worked intently, with
quick movements, leaning ever closer, reaching for one instrument
after another, and never turning to look away. Some of the
instruments moved by themselves, while the thing bent closely in,
then it suddenly stood upright, looking down, seemingly upset at
Bek. Without doing much more, it moved away, back through the same
sliding door. It had done something to Bek’s head. The lights were
focused on her, there were tubes attached to her and raw flesh was
showing. It was quiet then. Kit called to Bek to say how sorry she
was for wishing the Hag would take her, but Bek did not
answer.

A short time later the same service bot came
in to take Bek away. It had a long scratch on its side. It put away
some of the instruments, turned off lights and grabbed Bek by the
arm to pull her onto its top. It was very rough, as if it did not
care. Kit knew then that Bek was dead.

There was another Cathian in that
room, but Kit could hardly see her from her cage. Loft stood still
with a slack expression in the middle of a small cell, staring hour
after hour, hardly moving. Her head was tilted and twisted to her
right as if she was partially collapsed. Something was wrong with
her. She moved, but slowly, fumbled her way around. Her body had no
expression. Her self had been taken away.