SODIUM:4 Gravity (16 page)

I asked how long it would take to deplete the Sodium of the Earth’s oceans to which she replied, 400 of our Earth years, most of the lifetime of Rial Dorius. Had we not resisted, the Rial family would likely have been given another mining fleet, hence elevating their family position and elevating Mabia's position. With the costs of lost equipment due to our resistance the Rial family would be lucky to hold onto its current status.

I then asked Rial Mabia why they had not responded to our attempts at a truce. She replied that it was not the way of the Frekkin Empire. If a superior force was to arrive at your world you were expected to subjugate yourselves immediately or face annihilation.

Our response some 70 odd years before, during the Sodium Apocalypse, had sealed the terms of the war. The order to annihilate had come down from Royals much above the Rials and very likely above the Horbis'. With a failure, all the families in the hierarchy above the Rials would suffer.

Mabia then posed that if my government were to submit, it would bring an end to the destruction of our civilization. We would be allowed to take our place amongst the Frekkin Empire as subjects of the Kurtz. They were a fair and just people and in their employ we would do well.

I lifted the pulse gun to her forehead. It took all my strength to not pull the trigger and splatter her brains across the room. I then turned the table on her supposition. I asked that she submit immediately to me and take her place amongst the superior race of Humans.

For a moment she looked perplexed. She then countered that our cultures and way of life were already doomed as the Moon grew ever closer to our planet. We could destroy the mega-ship, but we had no way of stopping what had already been put in motion. Our weak gravity beam would not stop the progress of the moon in time to prevent the major catastrophes that were only months away.

In less than a year the Earth would be uninhabitable to us. Rivers and streams would be disrupted, farming non-existent and the chain of life that brought food from the oceans would cease to exist. We had only two choices. Submit or die.

I then received a text from Shepard. Mabia was right. The earthquakes we had recently seen were only the beginning. The damage caused by the pull of the Moon would worsen exponentially. I then asked Mabia what she knew about the gravity beam to which she responded with the same line that Gurkus had given. They did not know how any of it worked, only that it did. She then repeated her request that humanity submit.

I pushed the nose of the pulse gun firmly into her forehead and let out a growl. I then withdrew the weapon when a drop of green blood began to roll down across her nostrils from an indentation I had made.

Shepard then texted that I try giving the same offer as I had given Gurkus, she reasoned that Mabia might need a tangible offer on the table before giving the suggestion any consideration. Shepard suggested that I offer her an ambassadorship of her own. I sat next to the alien who now had a disgusted look on her face. The negotiating soon began.

Command gave the go-ahead to offer whatever I could dream up in an attempt to turn our enemy. As I began to piece together my offer, the door into the room opened and two Kurtz military officers entered with their weapons aimed directly at me.

Before I could fully blink out a green bolt struck me in the abdomen sending me to the floor unconscious. Shepard returned fire with two pulses knocking the military men backwards into the far wall. They slumped over dead. Mabia looked around the room wondering where the blasts had come from. Shepard remained hidden.

The room was soon flooded with soldiers. My power belt was inspected and my power cell removed. I was now defenseless. The soldiers were given orders to move my unconscious body to the brig. Rial Mabia did not want to look any further upon the hideous two-eyed alien creature.

Six Kurtz soldiers soon lifted my body. It was a strain to them as my bones were thick and tissue dense as compared to their own. The gravity on their homeworld of Toleda was only three quarters that of Earth.

Shepard was unsure of what to do next and Command gave the direction of wait and see. She drifted alongside the soldiers in warped space as I was transferred to the brig on the lower decks. My power belt was given over to Kurtz scientists for study. Aside from my capture I now had only 48 hours to live before the toxins in my system overwhelmed my body’s ability to process them. Being wrapped in a BGS had its drawbacks.

When I regained consciousness I was lying on a long bed in a small room. The walls were the same dull gray as the remainder of the ship except for the one separating the room from the hallway, it was transparent.

I was soon joined by a Kurtz scientist escorted by two soldiers. The scientist looked me in the eye and let out a series of grunts and wheezes. Without my helmet translator I had no idea what he was saying. He then placed a small box on the bed beside me.

When he next spoke the box repeated his words in perfect English. He wanted to know about the suit. There was no way I was giving him any information, so I decided to use the same excuse that Gurkus and Mabia used, I didn't know anything about how it worked, only that it did. I could only guess that the expression on the alien's face was their equivalent of a scowl.

He then identified himself as Rial Boota, the nephew of Rial Mabia. He had been given full authority to gather whatever information he could, using any method he chose. The phrasing of his words gave me an uneasy feeling.

My powerless pulse gun was removed and placed in a container followed shortly after by my gloves. A device was brought in that soon neutralized my audio implant and the QE comm it contained. The alien scientist then began to feel around on my suit until he located the means to remove it. I was soon stripped naked and left standing in a pool of disgusting bio-gel.

The stench was horrifying as usual, but the aliens had no reaction. Rial Boota then commented, he felt the gel in the suit was unusual, it was fragrant unlike our world. I thought for a moment and then realized that the alien atmosphere was heavy in sulfur. The disgusting stench of my bio-waste was probably like perfume to the slit nostrils of Boota.

My helmet, weapon and suit were then carried out of the room. Boota and the two guards exited leaving me covered in my own filth. Shepard dare not blink in for fear that the room was being monitored. As other guards walked by the transparent wall of my room I had an uneasy feeling of being nothing more than a caged animal that was on display.

For hours I sat in the cold smelly room waiting for Shepard to free me or for Boota to return. As I sat with my hands on my face looking down at the floor I noticed that some of the bio-gel was beginning to move.

The movement continued over several minutes before a message became legible. "Command working rescue" was spelled out on the floor. Shepard had placed her pulse gun on its lowest setting allowing her to push the bio-gel around without having to blink in.

The gel quickly became muddled as a guard approached and walked past my cell. After several minutes Shepard began another message "carriers lifting o". The message writing stopped mid-sentence. I waited for her to continue and wondered if a guard was approaching. I wondered why she had stopped and what the full message was.

Many hours passed and the message remained as it had been. Guards had walked by without any attempt by Shepard to hide our only form of communication. Boota then returned to the room with the two guards.

His team had been analyzing the suit and they were beginning to make progress on determining how it functioned. He found our primitive yet highly effective technology fascinating. I did not give him the satisfaction of a reply.

Boota sat on the bed next to me and again pressed for information. I remained silent. He then gestured to one of the guards who grunted a command into a communication device on his sleeve. Several minutes later another Kurtz entered the room with a piece of gear to be placed over my head. I wondered if the torture that was an almost certainty was about to begin.

Boota reached around to the back of the headpiece and flipped a switch. A clear visor flipped down in front of my face and a soft bar soon looped around my neck, seconds later the soft bar inflated sealing off my breathing from the rest of the room.

Another thirty seconds passed before I began feeling anxious. Was I to be deprived of air? Would the psychological trauma of my body convulsing while it tried to breathe push me over the edge? I wondered how long it would be before I cracked.

As I struggled for air a fine mist was sprayed into the headpiece. I soon had a feeling of euphoria. After several minutes with my head in the clouds a second mist was sprayed. Within seconds my dreamy thoughts turned to paranoia and I was filled with fear. I trembled at the mere suggestion by Boota that I was about to experience pain like I had never felt before.

The misting process was repeated for nearly half an hour with my psyche being pulled from one extreme to another. When the headpiece was removed I was in a complete state of confusion.

Boota then suggested he was my friend and that he was here to help me. In my mind I somehow believed it to be true. He then began to question me about the suit and how it functioned. A small part of my brain screamed to be silent, but that part was no longer in control. I began telling Boota everything I knew.

The questioning continued until I passed out from exhaustion. When I awoke I had been washed and fed through an IV. The stench of the bio-gel was gone. The device was again placed over my head followed by more misting and interrogation.

Over the course of what must have been several weeks I told Boota everything about my past. I told of my family, of my friends, of how to reprogram an automated milker, of how long it took for corn to grow in the field, Boota was fascinated.

Within just over a month the knowledge of our technologies, our strategies and our weapons was now fully known to our enemy. My life had become sad and lonely except for when Boota entered the room. He meant everything to me and nothing else mattered except for his company.

I had no thoughts of Zack or Shepard, or of a rescue mission. I was not worried about my family or about what was happening to the other citizens of Earth. The joy of seeing Boota each and every day was my life in its entirety.

I was unaware and uncaring of what was going on around me. The alien mega-ship and the carriers had left the vicinity of the Moon and were now in transit back to Alvin. It was a trip that would take 13 years to travel with the alien's propulsion system.

When the ship suddenly departed Shepard and the Marines had been left outside. They floated 800 meters above the Moon until such time as our ships picked them up.

Rial Mabia had determined that the discoveries made by Boota about the BGS suit and its capabilities far outweighed any Sodium that could be mined from Earth. Our suit with its ability to travel through walls and to disappear would be a discovery that would elevate the family back home, possibly as high as the rarely heard of two-position upward move.

Mabia thought of the power and status she might wield as the discoverer of this new technology. In the hands of the aliens it would mean certain doom for Earth. The mining and subjugation of the Human planet would no longer be of concern to the Rials. It would be something for lesser Royals to quibble over.

Back on Earth there was no rescue mission planned for returning one individual. I was considered a prisoner of war. Earth had a much bigger problem to deal with. The Moon was still closing in and the destructive force of its gravitational pull was wreaking havoc around the globe.

I sat in my cell daily, waiting for my best friend Boota, until one day he no longer came. The alien scientist had gathered all the useful knowledge I possessed. He and his team were now busy trying to unlock the technical secrets of the BGS and its Sodium skin, secrets of which I had no knowledge.

With no daily Boota and no headpiece, my confused state slowly returned to normal. I was now depressed over my capture and with how easily I had given up our secrets. My days were long with the only stimulus being the occasional passing guard. Even the other Kurtz aboard the ship no longer came by for a gawk at the hideous two-eyed Human.

With nothing else to do I turned my focus towards my physical condition. I had grown weak after months of inactivity in the lower gravity aboard the alien vessel. The Kurtz diet was rich in seafood and I soon found myself eating as often as they would feed me. With the high protein food and the intense isometric workouts I forced upon myself, I was soon able to regain my muscle mass and flexibility.

I offered no resistance to the guards who brought my twice daily meal or to the squid that cleaned my chamber pot. My cell was only a holding cell and I would learn later that prisoners were not usually taken and would not be allowed on the air-decks if they were. I was an exception and the chamber pot accommodation was made only because I was a most valuable prisoner.

After months of incarceration I was glad that a long term effect of wearing a BGS had been the loss of body hair. It had been the only thing that had prevented a hideous jungle from sprouting under my arms, on my legs and on my privates. Once a week I would receive a visit from a squid with a bucket of a watery solution and a set of nail clippers. A sponge bath was looked upon as a necessary accommodation even though the Kurtz preferred my week-old odor to none at all. My hygiene was not a priority for my captors.

As I sat alone in my cell my only thoughts were to prepare for the moment when my freedom was at hand. I practiced the timing of hand to hand combat moves with the hopes that an opportunity to escape would one day arise.

During the hours of rest for the Kurtz the lights in the hall would dim. It allowed me to gaze upon my reflection in the transparent wall. I was buff, I was hard and I was powerful. I remained naked, but with no humans around to see me it no longer mattered.

I waited and plotted and planned for my moment and often wondered what the trigger for my escape would be. The weeks turned to months and the months to years. I wondered what had become of my grandfather and of my parents and Zack. Were they safe? Had we made progress with our gravity wave and stopped the impending disaster of a too close Moon?

These were the things I pondered between workouts. These were the things that kept me sane. As long as I lived I still had hope, hope for a life where I was once again on Earth, hope for a life where I was once again free.