Andromeda Rises Ch. 2
Andromeda Rising II
It had been more than a week since Elizabeth had been brought back to life. She was coping rather well, but her memories refused to get any clearer than they were the day she woke up. She was introduced to Byirnah, a hefty brown bear female that filled the narrow ship's corridors too much to allow easy passage. Byirnah wasn't fat, exactly. It was more an issue of her being built like a Mack truck. She seemed rude and uninterested, as was typical, according to Tak. Lizzy also met their navigator, a diminutive male who looked to be some family of rodent, though Lizzy could hardly tell. His name was Y'thrix, and a hefty pair of glasses rested heavily on his muzzle. It was all so overwhelming, encountering these half-blooded creatures that spoke and walked like humans. The entire time, she saw almost nothing of their captain.
Lizzy was sitting at the mess table, which was in one of the only two rooms in the entire ship that had a skylight window. She kept arching her head back to look up. Every time, she saw the passing multitude of colors as various streams of radioactivity, dust, and even solid matter slipped around the tachyon field being generated by the ship. Tak had explained that the tachyons, by their very property of being able to slip through any kind of material, enabled them to pass through stars, planets, and nebulae. The only things they had to avoid were the various sources of super-massive naturally occurring gravity wells in the galaxy. Quasars, black holes, and even neutron stars still collapsing in on themselves were too powerful for them to safely pass through. The influencing gravity would dramatically change their trajectory. Lizzy wondered what each passing band of color meant as they slipped through the fabric of space-time. Was that purple band a planet? The orange a small nebula? There were so many things she had yet to learn about this seemingly endless cavalcade of information.
Still, Lizzy could only look up so often. She was ravenously hungry--again. She had eaten a huge, filling breakfast, a brunch, and a lunch consisting of three pounds of steak of unknown origin. And here she was, it being still a couple hours before dinner would officially be served, downing two gallons of ice cream. She was already sick of the butterfat creaminess of it after the first half gallon, but she was too hungry to stop.
Matthew suddenly stepped into the mess from the corridor that was aft of the dining area. Seeing Lizzy, he tried to turn around and head the other way, pretending he remembered something he had forgotten.
"You're avoiding me," Lizzy said flatly. Matthew stopped in his tracks.
"Yeah."
"It wasn't a question. I just want to know why. What did I mean to you in this past life I apparently had more than a thousand years ago?"
"I would think you would have seen the pattern by now, considering what you are."
"I know what the patterns say. Why be so cryptic, though? Just tell me from your own mouth what this was between us."
"It doesn't matter," he said flatly. "Your memories are gone. You will never be Lizzy again."
"I'd at least like to get to know who she is."
Matthew sighed, looking at her with sad eyes. His face still had that drawn, defeated look it did the day she was revived. "You really want to know?"
Lizzy nodded.
"Fine. File number P-seven-seven-four-one. Access code is thorny rose."
Elizabeth tried to find something to write with, but even as she did, she realized her memory wasn't letting go of the information. In fact, it had been surprisingly easy to learn all that Tak had to teach her. She was even building her knowledge of the three primary languages outside of English--which was referred to as the Eternal language, thanks to the fact only the Eternals possessed the language for so many eons. Lizzy assumed this had something to do with her "little helpers," as she had come to call them.
"Alright, I'll look into it. P-seven-seven-four-one, access code thorny rose." Even as Lizzy said it, she felt she should know some sort of significance with the access code, but it evaded her. "Is this really necessary? I want to talk to you personally about this."
"It's necessary. Because I don't," he replied, walking across the small mess hall towards a small set of stairs that led to the only second floor of the fuselage of the ship. His quarters were up there, and had steps fore and aft to gain access to the bridge and mess, respectively.
"Can I at least ask you one thing?" Lizzy asked. Matthew paused.
"You can ask, but I can't promise an answer."
"Am I always going to be this hungry?" she asked in a slightly whining tone.
"It gets a little better once the nanites have replicated their numbers sufficiently enough, but yeah. You'll get used to it over time. Eventually you find you can deal with hunger pains much more easily."
"How long until eventually happens?"
"I'd guess it took me about three hundred years or so," Tak said. Lizzy looked dismayed. "Hey, at least you won't look like Tak, no matter how much you consume," he chuckled. For a moment, Lizzy had a glimpse of the man that used to be there, inside that empty, ghostly shell of what looked like a youngish guy with the world on his shoulders. With that, he took his leave, and headed up to his room.
Soon after, Lizzy found herself in quarters she had been assigned to for the duration of their journey home to Earth. She was pulling up the file specified and began reading.
March 12, 2195
_I have finally woken up after what my doctor tells me was a week-long fight with this Red Plague. The whole hospital is buzzing with excitement about me, apparently. I am one of the first to survive this horrible disease. Doctors are still running through their backlogs on my treatments to figure out what they did that might have triggered my recovery. Already I am feeling much stronger, better even than how I felt before the disease hit me. And the oddest thing yet: the tumor in my lung I was scheduled to get operated on has disappeared. The doctors don't know how or why, but they suspect an intrinsic change in this nanovirus.
I think I can even see my hair growing back. I haven't had a full head of hair for over a hundred and fifty years._
Lizzy blinked, sitting back in her chair. She began digging through files and found what she was looking for: a birth record for Matthew. She had her hand over her mouth in shock as she read what it said, listing his birth at January 28th of 2014. That would make him over 181 years of age, she realized. She would have to do some more research on medical advancements of the 21st and 22nd centuries, she realized.
Just as Lizzy was about to start digging further into how Matthew had achieved such an astonishing age, Tak came on the intercom. "All hands to the bridge. There is a high priority message from Earth."
Soon, every hand aboard the cargo cruiser was on the bridge. Matthew was standing with his arms crossed just behind the captain's chair, which he'd invited Lizzy to sit in out of courtesy she thought rather thoughtful of him. Byirnah was leaning against the rear hatch, wearing what looked like a rag that clung limply over her shoulders. It looked like a Mexican poncho, she realized without having any reason to think that. She couldn't even think of what a real Mexican poncho looked like. It was covered in grease stains and whatever else Byirnah had been working on. A pair of baggy pants hung off of the brown bear's hips, equally stained and ragged-looking.
Y'thirx was in an odd kind of blue leotard, and his hands were sweeping over the navigation terminal as he made a course correction for Persephone.
"Alright, Tak," Matthew said, nodding towards the two large plastic composite panels that made up the conical front of the bridge. The pair of windows seemed to melt away, concealing the flowing waves of tachyon bombardment and replacing it with a wider screen with some odd central symbol that looked like the letter V with the right arm having two lines to make it like an arrow. It was bold and red, seemingly to indicate a danger.
Suddenly the image disappeared, and a harsh-looking woman who was also an Eternal came onto the screen. Her features were angular and sharp, and she looked young enough to be a teenage girl. Her red hair was cropped short and slicked back behind her ears. "This is a top priority message to all Eternal-run ships and colonies throughout the galaxy," she began.
"Several days ago, a mining colony outside the Horse Head Nebula ceased communications with us. Ships arrived at the location yesterday to investigate, and report that the entire planet is gone along with any evidence of it or its satellites."
Lizzy looked up at Matthew. More worrying than the woman's news was the look on Matthew's face. He had the kind of troubled look that told Lizzy that he'd never before heard of such a thing.
"Only hours after the discovery, another much larger system--New Zhong guo--reported a distress call. Several military ships were dispatched at maximum warp, arriving only minutes later. New Zhong guo was gone. What was more disturbing, however, was this image one of the ships managed to take just as it came out of warp speed."
An image came on the screen, replacing the woman's face. Four very large cross-shaped vessels were in the image. "These ships are being seen at a distance of four hundred thousand kilometers of distance, to give some perspective. They are believed to be the very same ships encountered in the several attempted missions to make the crossing to Leo I, which remains the only galaxy in the orbital space of the Milky Way that we have yet to at least partially explore, as each attempt has been brought to an abrupt end by these aliens.
"Until now, there has been no open hostility shown by this alien race. We are unsure of their capabilities, but their technology obviously outmatches our own. Once these images were taken, the four ships immediately disappeared in what our sensors tell us were singularities of some kind. We don't know how they destroyed these planets or what they are using to travel across the universe, but we do know that if you should encounter these vessels, you are ordered to avoid at all costs. No military vessels are authorized to assist any planet or ship facing these aliens at this time. That is all."
The image and the voice cut out abruptly, and all they were left with was the swirling colors of the tachyon field. The bridge remained silent for a long time. Elizabeth was the first to break it. "What are we going to do?"
"Nothing," Matthew replied flatly. "We have to get you back to Earth first, then we'll figure out where we go next.
"What if Earth is next?" Elizabeth asked.
"Well we'll just have to pray that's not the case," Matthew said flatly. "We'll be there in nine more weeks." He turned around and started for the door. "If they keep the pace they've shown thus far, chances are Earth will be around for a while. There are thousands of inhabited planets in the galaxy."
Matthew turned up the narrow staircase that led to the second level and the door to his room, moving quickly and fluidly, slamming the door shut before anyone could ask any further questions.
Sitting at his desk in his quarters, Matthew pulled up a monitor that was recessed into the desk and hit a button. The screen came to life, and the same harsh woman's face was on it. Matthew had seen the little flashing light on his control panel on the bridge. A comm. channel was open and hailing them on his private frequency.
"I thought you were on Earth," he said simply, looking at Teresa's familiar face.
"I am."
"Does the Council know how much energy you're burning just to have a direct chat with me?"
"They know it, approved it, hell they even came up with it. I would have sent you an encrypted video. Much less personal that way. No loss in idle chat."
"I'm not complaining," Matthew said with a sad little smile.
"I saw your report on finding Lizzy. I'm sorry."
"Are you?"
"What do you mean?"
"She doesn't have any memories of me, or of the Council, or even you. You've always insisted I accept that she is gone, to find closure. Now, perhaps, that part of me is no longer in your way. Isn't that what you wanted?"
"No, of course not."
"At least not like this, hm?"
"You are being cruel, Matthew. I may not be able to help how I feel about you, but my heart does go out to you for your loss. I know how much she meant to you."
Matthew simply rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair. "So why the massive waste of energy just to talk to me?"
"I need to figure out a rendezvous point with you as quickly as is possible."
"For what?" Matthew said, suddenly getting very snappy. The thought of having to meet with Teresa so soon after finding Lizzy, particularly in the state she was in, made him very uncomfortable.
"I need to begin working with her as soon as possible. I need to awaken her abilities again."
Matthew gritted his teeth, and extended a hand to pull up another screen. The faint whirring of the electric motor that brought up the new screen could be heard by Teresa. "Still using that older-than-dirt equipment, Matthew?"
"The simpler it is, the easier I can fix it. Such are the necessities when you're trying to explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy. I don't exactly have a servicing station anywhere nearby." He turned to look at the new screen, which showed a three-dimensional image of their trajectory. "Can you get to Turanis Station in five and a half weeks?"
"Are you really asking such a thing? I can get there in a week with the resources they have available to me."
"The Council is deadly serious about getting Lizzy's abilities back, eh?"
"Very much so. We're not going back to Earth after we meet. We're going to an asteroid field where there is a hidden base we can work with. Earth has already begun evacuations. Only a skeleton government is going to remain planet-side. The rest of them are all taking refuge in the most obscure places they can find."
"These aliens have got you running scared?"
"You don't remember Elizabeth's prediction?"
"Of course I do. I just don't invest the religious zeal you people tended to see in it. She has been wrong, you know."
"She's been right far more often."
"So where is this base?"
"I can't tell you."
"Classified?"
"Unknown. Only one eternal knew of its location. He programmed a navigational computer with the location, buried under a mountain of encryptions that can only be accessed when every council member assents to accessing it. And even then, its location remains anonymous. The computer simply guides the ship to the spot under a complete blackout of sensor arrays."
"Oh come on, is that really necessary?" Matthew said, sitting up and staring down at Teresa. "You can't be serious."
"I didn't think things were that bad, either, but they think so, and those are my orders. I'll meet you at Turanis Station."
Before Matthew could protest, the communication stream cut out. He wondered silently just how much antimatter was required to power the tachyon accelerator for such a long data stream connection. And to think it was only a few hundred years back that they couldn't even manage getting a message through the galaxy in a week.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, made her way to her small nook of a room. She sat down at the computer console. The passage she had been reading was still up. She skipped forward, trying to go to later entries. They stopped only a few months after they began. Many more entries were listed subsequently, but they were all encrypted by a code other than what Matthew had given her. She decided, instead, to read the last passage of what she could see.
December 25th, 2196
It's Christmas. Not that that means anything to people anymore. I guess I couldn't really call us people, either. That would be inaccurate. My fangs are sharp as ever, and I look like the young man I once was so many centuries ago.
The night seems so dark and empty now. The world has maybe ten thousand people left. Communications are still in the process of being reestablished by that small group in Texas I mentioned before. We don't even know if anyone out there is listening. For all intensive purposes, our planet may be the only one with people still alive.
There is hope, however. Elizabeth saw a string of lights setting down far off in the distance, much closer to New York City than we are. I suppose it's a search party from one of the other planets.
Speaking of Elizabeth, I cannot help but continue feeling this growing infatuation with her. I swear I keep catching her making eyes at me when we're tending to the day's chores, but I cannot be sure. I wouldn't really blame her. Where once I was a tottering old man barely holding himself up against so much as a fart in the breeze, I am now the strapping and strong young man I was once upon a time. My frame is still thin, but I continue to grow stronger. I feel like a teenager again, my emotions thunderous and intense. I guess there really is no replacement for real hormones.
I considered giving Elizabeth this little necklace I found in the market down the road. It was under a pile of rubble I was clearing to get to some batteries. I decided against it, however. Somehow, everything in this world just feels tainted now. With so many dead littering the corners of the earth, I'm not sure how humans are going to continue surviving as they have.
December 26th, 2196
We have reestablished communications! The lights were from a search party that originated in the Yardley System. What is so strange, though, is their method of surviving the Red Plague. Apparently, as the last living people of Earth expired, a discovery had been made in an obscure laboratory where they had been doing work with retroviruses. These viruses could rewrite very significant segments of DNA. The people we met were hardly people at all. They were all hybrids; humans mixed with felines that were common on their planet. Apparently planets all throughout the system are doing this. A few planets are like Earth, though, their communications network breaking down long before word could get to them.
I decided I would make this entry as a simple testament to a new turning point. While humanity has ceased to exist as we know it, there is hope for our survival. I see a great new age on the horizon, and it feels good to hope.
Lizzy smiled in spite of herself. She liked this Matthew. Facing a world where the odds are stacked against him, where death has filled every single home on the face of the earth, he continued to strive and work, even managing to write out his thoughts and entertain such romantic concepts as hope.
"What happened to you?" she whispered to the screen, biting her lip.
"I died when Elizabeth did," came his voice. Lizzy practically jumped out of her skin with a bit of a scream, whirling around. She hadn't even heard him pulling the latch to her quarters and opening it. But there he was, leaning against the heavy steel frame.
"How long have you been there?"
"Not long. You know, you really should read the entire thing, if you're going to know the story. Our first winter wasn't so easy."
"How long were we working together?"
"Since the beginning. We happened to be the only two survivors at our hospital. Three, if you count Henry."
"Who's Henry?"
"A janitor that was helping us get our wits about us after the plague. He died when he tried to move a supply truck out of the cargo bay. Chain broke and snapped him across the head."
Elizabeth winced. "You don't have to be so graphic."
"Hm? Oh, sorry," Matthew said indifferently. "I guess when you've lived through the apocalypse, you become a little desensitized."
"So why'd you come down here to talk to me, anyway?" Lizzy asked, suddenly not feeling so hungry for information about her past.
"We're changing course to meet with an old friend. She's going to be working with you to regain your abilities."
"Abilities?"
Matthew nodded slightly, considering how he was going to explain. "You were a bit of a gem amongst the Eternals. Your nanites not only repaired and enhanced your body, they enhanced your mind to a point unmatched by others."
"What kind of enhanced?"
"That, I think, might be best left unsaid until you start feeling out this ability on your own. If Teresa wants you to know, she can tell you herself. For the time being, know that it's very important you get it back."
"Is that why you were searching for me so passionately?"
"No. I was searching for you because... well, because of what we had once. Funding, however, isn't so easy to come by."
"Which is where my ability comes in. You search for me at the price of the Council having my abilities back into their fold."
"Pretty much."
"You were going to rescue your lover and just hand me over?"
"You underestimate me, Lizzy. I had every intention of coming back, returning their ship, and then disappearing with you to some dark corner of the galaxy."
"Wouldn't that make us fugitives from the main power point of the galaxy?"
Matthew shrugged. "They serve their purposes, but you're not a machine to be enslaved and used. Their intentions are good, but their means are not."
"The ends justify the means."
"That would be their policy, yes," Matthew said, sighing.
"So then why meet with one of their agents now?"
"Because we owe her. Plus, the alien presence is a game changer. There's no point to being fugitives when we don't have a council of overfunded, overly egotistical assholes looking for us under every rock and around every corner."
With that, Matthew turned to go. As he went down the hall, Lizzy stepped out behind him. He was strolling along like a man deep in thought. "Hey." Matthew turned, eyebrows raised, arms crossed over his chest. "I'm starved. You want to get some grub?"
Lizzy and Matthew went to the mess hall, where Lizzy had two steaks, three potatoes, and loads of veggies. Matthew simply watched on, the slightest tinge of a smile touching at the corners of his lips. Still, his eyes seemed to sad and tormented, and Lizzy had a hard time looking at him.