Maria stares at Eakran in the strange light that filters in from behind her inside their small ship. The escape vessel was able to seal to airtight because of the translucent shell that is embedded inside of the ship’s morphing metal exterior. The translucent shell is more durable than metal and it is used to form the shape of the ship; the standard issue IP exploratory vessels are formed in compartments that make sealing off separate sections of the ship much easier. As a result, each section can be sealed off and converted into an escape pod using the translucent inside to seal gaps that can’t be compensated with the malleable metal, which gives the escape pod windows.
Maria is not scared. She doesn’t panic. Alia, who sits next to her, breathes easily and they wait as the white light flickers behind them and creates a changing scene inside where they all blink in and out of darkness in a stark silence.
Maria isn’t scared, she’s confused. Nothing could have prepared her for everything that has happened, and Darker is gone. Now they are in the belly of a ship and she knows that this isn’t the IP headquarters.
“What is happening, Eakran?” Maria asks. Her voice is calm, but firm.
“I have no idea, Maria. I don’t know what this is.”
“Be calm,” Alia says. “We all have places to be.”
Maria looks to Alia who smiles at her confidently.
“Just go along and stay alive.”
Just as Alia finishes, the escape pod opens like it is melting; the mallable metal is sucked away and the translucent center shrinks to nothing around them. The four of them fall to the floor of the larger craft that had trapped them. The lights that they had witnessed inside the escape pod are the lights from the tools beings used to confiscate the components of their pod and as the remnants of it are trapped like a viscous liquid, the lights cease and the room that they stand in is dim.
“Representative Eakran,” a robotic voice speaks as beings of the planet Oin, known as Ointites, emerge. This group of six are not typical of the Ointite species and as members of a Cabal of Mind Snatchers, their physical features are almost grotesque to Maria and the others, including Eakran who has met Ointites before, but none like these. They are taller than a typical Ointite, over six feet, with stocky bodies and large heads lined with intense veins. Their eyes are intense, red around the white balls that have noticeable red veins around the dark pupils. Their bulbous heads have pits in either side that seem to pulsate, which gives the impression that their heads are on the verge of rupture or explosion.
“You are a black bounty. Your head will be harvested to retrieve said bounty. Your crew will be dispatched according to our leader, they will be held as prisoners until he meets with each of them individually. Humans, cooperate and you will live to see another star shine. Representative, come with us.”
Maria is ready for a fight. She has a weapon in her waistband that will unfold into something impressive, like an origami Swiss army knife in space. She’s practiced with it, and she’d accessed instructional IP videos on combat with their weapons. She isn’t an expert, there hadn’t been enough time for that, but she could maybe control some alien minds and make them easier to manage.
“Don’t,” Alia whispers as the Ointites hold their weapons and ready restraints. “Give it a second,” she says softly to Maria.
Maria is confused, but just as the Ointites approach, the ship takes fire and pushes up on one side. Everyone loses their balance and stumbles to their right. There is a loud metallic commotion, like metal being ripped and sawed, and then drilled and welded. It happens quickly and soon there is a group of what looks like soldiers approaching them with weapons drawn.
“Representative Eakran! We are here on behalf of the IP. Grab your crew and let’s go.”
The Ointites fire on the group of IP soldiers who fire back with much more success. The Ointites are down and Maria watches it all with wonder. The leader of the soldiers who speaks, drops her helmet and Maria notices the large, armored wings at her back. Her face is almost human but with avian features; a beak and feathers where hair would be.
“I am Whadgaf Jiris. Your ship was shot down over Ointite space by the sinister Cabal, outlaws who apparently need something and want to kill you for it. I was sent by Representative Kiarle Prab of Bromeran, he said that you would know him. We have to go. We tore our way in here and the hold won’t last much longer. You have to trust us.”
Maria agrees on behalf of her crew and they all rush through the tunnel that the IP soldiers used to board the ship.
When they are on board, they are forced to split into two rescue vessels. Maria follows Whadgaf as the rest of her crew boards a ship that takes off immediately.
“Why are we waiting?” Maria asks. She realizes that the equipment of her suit is translating for her, and she can hear the robotic translation of others in her ear. She isn’t sure what language is being spoken.
“We will blast off soon,” Whadgaf says from the navigation seat. “We just have to let the other ship clear so we don’t risk collision. We’re off.”
Whadgaf flips switches and Maria marvels at the ship. The interior is like a large airplane used for skydiving with high ceilings for the small size that is exaggerated by the scarce inside; there is a very sturdy captain’s chair positioned at controls in the front toward the large window and the chairs for the crew are seats that flip down and padding on the wall as cushion for the back. As she sits and straps herself in, she realizes that she doesn’t know what Whadgaf’s crew looks like. They don’t have wings like her, they are slightly taller than her, and they are all in full body suits. Maria overhears their conversations and they seem happy to have rescued Eakran and the Earthlings.
Before they can blast off, though, Maria feels the familiar; the ship rocked by the impact of hostile fire.
“We’re fighting back,” Whadgaf says. “It’s just the one ship.”
“No!” One of the crew members yells as the ship takes more fire. Maria can see the laser beams through the front window, most zip by, but every now and then they impact and the ship rocks.
“We are right over Oin,” the crew member says.
But Whadgaf advances on the ship that looks like a giant floating rock and she lays on heavy fire. The ship retreats and when it disappears, Whadgaf assumes that it has gone hyper-speed.
“See,” Whadgaf says playfully. “I didn’t even kill anyone. But we took a lot of damage. We have to land before we take the human to the IP. I hope you don’t mind, human. We’ll be on Oin for a while.”
Maria is along for the ride. It’s all so exciting, exactly what she hoped for when she left Earth, but nothing that she could have ever imagined.
Then there is a surprise that none on the ship could have anticipated. The rock-like ship of the Mind Snatchers makes a surprise reappearance and fires on Whadgaf’s ship from behind; it had not gone hyper-speed, just a fakeout to put her off guard.
In the chaos that Maria had survived so far, this is the most alarming. They take heavy fire and then Maria feels the ship free falling through space, like an elevator with its line cut. She feels her stomach floating uncomfortably high in her chest.
“Everybody brace yourselves!” Whadgaf yells, “We’re going down fast!”
– – –
Maria was born in the Bronx, New York and she called it home until she was nearly eleven. Then, her mother left the city after a decade in the chaos; the people and the smells that came off the pavement in the heat or the cold. She was happy to leave it and she was happy to follow the professor that she’d met while working a custodial job at the City University of New York. When they lived in the Bronx, they lived in a small room in an old building that was owned by her uncle who had left Cuba decades before. He was old by the time Isabel arrived, still pregnant with Maria, and he was happy to help her, though Isabel would not have known it by his attitude. He was a short, stocky man, with salt and pepper hair on his head and in his bushy eyebrows. His voice was deep and intimidating and a cigar usually dangled from his lip when he was grumbling about something angrily. Isabel was surprised that he was such a reliable babysitter and Maria spent most of her first days on Earth with the man.
But Isabel liked using her mind with the professor and he liked working with her late into the evening after she was done cleaning. He was a linguist and when they met, he was struggling to translate an old book by a writer from eighteenth century Cuba. It was old Spanish that Isabel recognized from her rigorous schooling that her mother had forced onto her to ensure that she would be smarter than the other children. She recognized the writer of the book and suggested some other works to give it context, and before long, Isabel was the professor’s paid assistant.
When he took a job at a university in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, Isabel was happy to follow him because she worried what the city would do to her little girl. The people who lived in New York weren’t especially mean, it was just easy to wander to an unfamiliar place and feel lost and alone, which was doubly frustrating because there are always people around in the city, but they easily become part of the scenery. She hoped that a slower life in the mountains would be a good change of pace, and she said goodbye to her relatives who lived in her uncle’s building. She loved them, but she hadn’t come to America to experience the familiar, and time in her uncle’s building felt like she had warped back to Cuba when she was inside with the food cooking and the music playing.
Maria grew older in the mountains and she developed a love for hiking the woods alone. She was an expert at spotting ticks and fleas and she was known to keep track of the insects she encountered on her walks because of a book on bugs the librarian had recommended for her. The library was about a thirty minute drive from the small cabin that Maria and Isabel called home, and Maria never got tired of the view out the window as they drove around their small town. She loved the feeling of moving over hills and the distant views that reminded her just how high up she was.
After her encounter with Daecoo and the trip to his planet, Maria was excited to tell her mother about the experience. But Isabel was instantly concerned and she shut down Maria’s story of a trip to space, in a mansion with black aliens.
“You can use your imagination to go anywhere and do anything,” Isabel told Maria that first time she brought it up. “But the real world is not your imagination.”
“I know the difference, mami,” Maria said defiantly. She was very mature for her age.
“Then listen to yourself. There are no aliens, no other planets with people.”
It became a familiar refrain in the small cabin. Maria wanted to drop it because it obviously upset her mother, but it felt wrong for her to deny it and she never could. Not even to the therapist that Isabel’s boss recommended. The therapist thought Maria was a healthy girl, and if she needed her story of aliens, it wouldn’t be any more harmful than a child with an imaginary friend.
But Isabel had grown concerned and she was determined to find someone who saw the same problem with Maria that she saw and could fix it.
“It’s how she talks about it,” Isabel told Maria’s pediatrician. “So sure. And she’s never been one for imaginary friends, she’s a very grounded girl. Or she was.”
“Maybe it is natural,” Isabel told a psychiatrist, “but she’s not as focused. She wanders off into the woods for hours, I don’t remember her doing that before.”
Maria became angry that her mother doubted her and worked so hard to discredit her. One day, she became angry in a talk session with her counselor.
“I’m going back there!” Maria yelled, and she knocked over her chair as she stood. “Everybody here thinks I’m weird, even my own mom. I’m gonna find them in the woods and I’m never coming back.”
Isabel cried and she agonized over what she could do for her daughter. The mountains had driven her mad, or maybe curses were catching up to her, Isabel couldn’t decide which.
When she gave custody of Maria to the state, she honestly thought it was best. The people she’d met in the system were nice and they seemed to care about the children in their charge. Isabel felt like a failure, like she couldn’t be trusted to make decisions that would benefit her daughter and she often cried alone in her empty cabin.
Maria spent five years as a ward of the state of North Carolina, and when she was eighteen, she went to live with her great uncle, who was still alive and very healthy, in the Bronx.
Maria never hated her mother. She thought of Isabel as an unstable woman who should not have tried to raise her on her own. She always wanted to feel close to someone, but it was hard for her to form lasting relationships as she plotted her return to Druont.
PRL Serials 