Alien Exodus Read online

Alien Exodus

  Book Three of the Alien Something Trilogy

  by

  Mary Margaret Branning

  Copyright 2017 Mary Margaret Branning

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

  Big Fat Thank You page:

  My Sincerest Gratitude belongs to:

  Nina Davies and her Autocrit software, without which this book would have been even messier than it currently is.

  Jesse Gordon of A Darned Good Book.com for expert formatting and advice.

  Graphic Artist Toshi Simon of Allegra Print, Sign, and Design in the White Mountains of Arizona, for his excellent work on the book cover.

  Magann (Markus Gann) for the green iris, via Shutterstock.com.

  Andrea Danti for Space ships travelling to a futuristic city. Mixed media illustration via Shutterstock.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One: Bustered

  Chapter Two: Klon, Civilized

  Chapter Three: Bumpin’ Alien Uglies

  Chapter Four: Hit… Thing

  Chapter Five: Vacation with a Side of Business

  Chapter Six: Domestic Interlude

  Chapter Seven: The Trakennad Dor

  Chapter Eight: Dual Duplicity

  Chapter Nine: Buster Makes Bank

  Chapter Ten: The Anything Goes

  Chapter Eleven: The Rapha Disappears

  Chapter Twelve: Infinite Recycling

  Chapter Thirteen: The God Remnant

  Chapter Fourteen: Alien Fight Club

  Chapter Fifteen: Really Big Show

  Chapter Sixteen: A Fine Finale

  Chapter Seventeen: Return to Earth

  Chapter Eighteen: Deena’s Final Betrayal

  Chapter Nineteen: The Realm of Conscience

  End Notes

  Chapter One

  Bustered

  Buster ordered the ship to adjust course to swallow up some loose metal scree floating off to port, and then she left the bridge.

  She didn’t walk; the low interior gravity prevented walking. Buster didn’t keep the gee low because she needed to conserve energy; the scow’s capabilities included conversion into energy of many of the materials found floating around in the Infinite.

  Mainly the engines relied on hydrogen, always abundant in space. Sometimes the ship scooped up spacebergs, distilled out the water, and split off the hydrogen from the oxygen. The useful solar collecting outer hull panels worked efficiently when they came close enough to light sources, and even reflected or refracted light. Once in a while they ran across shipwrecks or jettisoned fuel tanks containing unused fuel. She rarely traded for fuel. The scow was adaptable.

  No, Buster didn’t walk simply because she liked using the handholds to pull and push herself along - to float. She spent most of the time with the gravity dialed down.

  Her drift wasn’t aimless; her goal was the gym. Because she spent so much time in thirty-five percent gravity, Buster used the gym frequently.

  There wasn’t really much else to do.

  As she entered the gym and sealed the hatches, the loud clanging of the reclaimed metal scrap on the interior hull reverberated throughout. The company spent untold wealth on the ship’s brain, the recyclers, hull reinforcement - because of the massive storage areas, and the engines, but little on crew comfort. The noise of scrap hitting the walls after being scooped out of space was barely dampened.

  No matter.

  After she righted herself, Buster ordered the gym to increase its gravity to one-point-five Universal. Slowly, she fell. The insulated soles of her booties pressed into the hard flooring. This footwear protected her from sudden impact and most of the cold of the floor. She let one rip and moved away while the ventilation removed her effluent.

  The vessel collected and made plenty of energy to heat the shipwalls and the decks, too, but to warm up all those surfaces just for her seemed like a waste. So, Buster kept them almost livable, relying on her thermal boots, gloves, and hooded skinsuit to protect her. The shipwalls weren’t freezing, but the occasions she did touch them with unprotected skin reminded her that, yes, she was still alive, and not simply a ghost haunting an empty ship searching endless space for garbage to recycle.

  Walking the few steps to the machine was exercise itself in the one-point-five gravity units, accustomed as she was to thirty-five percent. But she was also used to the exercise, and she wiggled into the machine and waited as its padded clamps closed on her various parts. She tightened her abs, pulled in her arms and legs, and began.

  After the sweat began to bead on her skin she ordered a grav increase of fifty points. Two gravity units forced her to strain more at the padded clamps. Her muscles bulged and her veins swelled. Ligaments, tendons, and membranes complained.

  No matter.

  She imagined her heart growing larger and stronger with each pull and push, willing it so, controlling the straining muscle’s beating with her breathing. Slowing her pulse, she worked harder.

  Sweat beads broke free and fell splashing onto the deck. The floor absorbed them for recycling. She gripped more tightly. The clamps on her legs and arms held tight, wicking moisture. She decreased the gravity seventy five points to rest, still moving the resisting machine with her own kinetic energy. She breathed deeply but regularly, further lowering her heart rate.

  Through the ship’s vibrations she felt the bay clamps reaching out to grasp and manipulate the garbage. The analysis of the scrap for content produced a grinding shudder.

  “Log results,” Buster gasped, so the ship would not announce the results. She was uninterested now and would access the information later.

  Whatever the scrap amounted to didn’t really matter, the ship would neutralize anything harmful, disassemble manufactured refuse down to its basic elements or useful composites, segregate and containerize or palletize each type, label, and make a record of every little thing.

  “Increase gravity fifty points,” Buster ordered. The increase wasn’t sudden, but gradual. The ship knew better than to make instantaneous changes, because she’d taught it. She’d taught the machine the temperature she liked in the air, her quarters, the bathwater, and her food and drinks.

  The company provided only basic foods, and no coffee, tea, or sweets, and Operators were expected to buy and trade for the items they preferred on the planets they serviced, and to make do. Buster had stopped paying for her own supplies after the first thirty years of service, and included supplies in the contracts she made with clients. This way the Company ended up paying for them, and she didn’t touch her accumulating compensation. The Company never complained, she was their oldest employee, literally, chronologically, and in seniority. She’d been working their scows for one hundred and seventy-three years, ever since the Company had bought her from the humans. Put to work after six months of training, she’d had outlived two ships. This was her third. Buster had no idea what her ultimate lifespan would end up being.

  Lactic acid ravaged her muscles.

  “Decrease gravity twenty five points,” she grunted.

  The banging and ripples of motion and noise from the bay ceased.

  “Ocean view,” Buster gasped. The bulkhead in front of her shimmered before displaying a gorgeous view of a red, orange, and white sky above an undulating orange surf with yellow foam. The arrhythmic motion of the waves calmed as much as the color aroused. Buster braced herself.

  “Increase gee seventy-five points.”

  Buster strained and pumped the torturous device for one minute more in the final abysmal sprint in two-and-a-quarter gravs, then relaxed utterly. The machine slowed and stopped in response to the lack of kinetics.


  “End,” she ordered, and the contraption released her. Standing, she wriggled free of her skinsuit, and held it in her right hand. She walked over to the bulkhead, gripped a handle, pulled open a little hatch, which was hinged on the bottom, and dropped the used article inside. It would be recycled. The door banged closed and she stood naked, soaked, with sweat running in rivulets down her body, which immediately disappeared as it dripped onto the deck. This absorption limited condensation, conserved water, and prevented slip-and-falls. The Company, requiring her to keep herself uninjured, had engineered and programmed the ship to be helpful in this regard.

  “One gu,” she ordered, and felt her body stretch with the gradual release of a full gravity-and-a-quarter of pressure. Her joints creaked and popped.

  “Raining forest,” she said to the bulkhead and the scene changed. The sound of water sprinkling soil and slapping leaves filled her ears.

  “Scent,” she said. The complicated scent she associated with this particular scene entered her nostrils. She breathed deeply and stood still. Sweat still ran down her body. The skin’ she wore wicked like mad, almost chilling her. She bent over to stretch her calves, hams, butt and back. After a minute she stood, bending her knees on the way up to protect her tight low back. She leaned forward and pressed her palms against the sealed hatch, stretching her calves and Achilles tendons further. She held this posture for two minutes.

  Even though the Company had taught her their own system of time, the planet of the Company’s origin, Ordoron, used another. Once she’d had the ship to herself, she’d programmed the shipbrain to talk to her in Earth time, Christian calendar, followed by the Company’s manner of telling time, and then Ordoron’s. These adjustments remained, even though so many decades of listening to the different systems side-by-side had made both Company time and her native Earth time equally accessible in her mind. Ordoron’s complicated time system became understandable with a little calculation, which she found, after several decades, she’d learned to make automatically.

  Buster stood up. “Preferred,” she told the ship, and the gravity lessened to thirty-five percent. She would finish stretching after her bath. As the gravity adjusted she ordered the rain forest to quit and the hatch to open and pulled herself from the gym. She floated freely, grabbing handholds to propel herself through the tubular corridor to her quarters. Once there she sealed the hatch.

  “One grav. Bath,” she said. Water ran in the next room when the gravity field finished adjusting. She stepped through the hatchway and stood watching the tub fill. “Close.” The bathroom hatch closed behind her and the ambient temperature rose. So did the humidity, but the air moved gently to counter the cloying moisture.

  She examined herself in the reflective walls of the small bathroom. Same old scars - battle scars. Same old tattoo, B-4ST327R. Same bored expression on a perfectly seamless face. There were no reasons for expressions, therefore, no wrinkles. No one existed to perform expressions for anymore. Same shaved head.

  She stepped into the water closet and made a satisfying deposit, cleaned herself, and stepped out. This hatch closed automatically behind. Buster stepped into the water and lowered herself in, feeling the tightened muscles stretch with her movements.

  There used to be someone to emote for, but he was long gone. At first he’d made her smile, but the frustration came soon enough. Then came the scowls, and later, anger. The relationship became a typical Odd Couple situation, with Buster playing Felix.

  What was “Oscar’s” name? Cob? Nob? Rob? Oh yeah. Bob

  Bobrin the Braxletl. Bob the lover. Bob the corpse.

  No matter.

  Bob wouldn’t have lasted long anyway; Braxletls have an inadequate life span. They burned brightly though, for a short while, especially, in her experience, sexually.

  When she’d notified the Company of his demise they agreed she should continue on alone. It would have taken her years to get back anyway, even as the crow flies, as they used to say on Earth, since she was in the middle of yet another twenty-one year (Earth time) loop. They sent her the shipbrain’s advanced programming instructions, which Bob, as an employee and not a slave, had been the master of, the coordinates of the rest of the clients on this circuit, and wrote, “Contact us if you need something.”

  She’d finished the circuit herself, went back to Odoron, and was sent out again. That next time, they’d sent Buster out alone.

  Bob had died. Seventeen years had passed.

  As her body relaxed in the hot water and the humid, warm air entered and moistened her dry lungs, Buster’s memories drifted back to when she hadn’t been alone.

  Bob had been an employee, and she, a slave, but he didn’t seem to hold her reduced status against her, or her gender, either. No, his particular complaint was that she hadn’t always appreciated him the way he decided he should have been appreciated, in an unconditional way.

  But Buster wasn’t that kind of creature. Behavior mattered to Buster. She hadn’t much cared how Bob thought, only how he acted. So when he forgot to secure tools which could, in an emergency, or even under normal operation, propel around and injure or even kill her, she mentioned this failure. And when the endangering behavior happened again, she mentioned it again. And again. Likewise, when he left his personal junk lying around the communal spaces, such as the mess, the lounge, or the gym, she mentioned that too. Since Buster made the effort and took the time to secure tools and return her things to her quarters, she expected the same consideration. Bob continued to fail to be considerate. She found herself repeating her request for him to clean up after himself. She began to hate herself for turning into such a bitch, and him for being so unresponsive.

  Oh, he was always polite, agreeable even. “Sure, Buster, I’ll clean up,” he’d say, but rarely made much of an effort. When Buster left him on the bridge and went into the lounge to read or watch some entertainment, his mess lay all around her. Sour smelling clothes, food desiccating in containers, drinks moldering in mugs, reading material and games strewn on every surface, his personal grooming appliances and various surfaces covered in hairs and whiskers - he was quite hirsute - you name the mess, he left everything behind on his way to making another.

  She’d asked him, “Why do you do this though I’ve repeatedly asked you not to?”

  He’d replied, “My last shipmate didn’t mind. She was the same way as me.”

  “Well, I’m not her, and I don’t want to live in your filth.”

  By this time they’d embarked on a sexual relationship, since they’d agreed this was only reasonable; their stay on the ship together would be long and their genitals fit each other’s well enough, even though they didn’t belong to the same species. They learned to physically please one another in other ways, as well.

  After she’d yelled at him, finally scaring him, having become tired of requesting, asking, demanding, and pleading, he’d made an effort. She showed her appreciating by backing down in her demands. His quarters became the mess, since he stuffed all his possessions into his personal space, in no particular order, but about this she didn’t care because never went in there. Buster even avoided looking when she passed that way and he’d left hatch open.

  The other conversation about his behavior occurred regarding all the tools he left lying unsecured all around, which ended up floating about and hitting things when the ship lurched as it sometimes did while changing course, or when some garbage hit the hull inside or out. The old ship was designed and built to handle a rough job, with minimal thought for those who might be living inside, and thus the precautions were logical. They were even required by the Company.

  Buster continued to bring up this dangerous sloppiness in many conversations, but Bob didn’t think much of it until that time the ship orbited the planet - which one was it? The outer orbit was full of the trash the inhabitants had ejected into it, and this waste buffeted the ship constantly as it scooped up the mess. An excellent haul, and the advanced civilization paid well to have its
local space cleaned and the recycled materials returned to them for further use in manufacture. But the ship had been a dangerous mess inside as everything Bob neglected to secure for years ended up everywhere other than where it should have been. Buster was hit in the head by a large whirling wrench, and in the deltoid by a cutter which left a deep and painful gash.

  Done, then, with patient suggestions, explanations, and waiting for his compliance, Buster threatened him with bodily harm. He’d actually wondered aloud why she cared, since she healed so fast, and whined insensitively, “You don’t even feel pain, do you?”

  “Yes, I do, you stupid douche!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry. Well, that’s all right then. CLEAN UP THE SHIP!!! Secure everything where it belongs.”

  “What? That’ll take years!”

  Patiently, Buster quieted her tone. “Which is why I’ve been telling you for years to secure the tools after you use them, so this won’t happen. It’s easy enough to predict. I wasn’t just being a bitch. How old are you, anyway? Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”

  “She tried.”

  “Well, that makes perfect sense,” Buster sighed.

  Bob cleaned up the ship, but he wasn’t happy, and Buster noticed during this time the disappearance of her Iolian kelfinsfer.

  A while passed before this came to her attention. The kelfinsfer had been sitting on a shelf in her quarters, anchored by ship-grade decorator putty, ever since the vacation they’d taken in Iolia, after cleaning the planet’s orbit. When she realized the statuette was missing, she remembered the heated discussions they’d had soon after returning from Iolia. She soon realized other things were not where she’d put them, and recalled other highly animated conversations as well.

  Buster ran a scan in the waste hold to find her kelfinsfer, but everything inside was already being reduced to elements, segregated, and containerized. Later, while Bob manned the bridge and she was supposed to be sleeping, she went through his filthy quarters, but found none of her possessions.

  No one else lived on the ship, and Buster wasn’t prone to stealing and recycling her own goods in her sleep. She even took time to view recordings of herself sleeping on the big couch in the lounge where they engaged in their entertainments, and she viewed hours of sped-up vids of the hall outside her personal quarters while she’d been inside, sleeping. No bizarre sleep walking recycling adventures revealed themselves, though she could have been dropping her possessions into the recycle hatch inside, off camera. She did find recordings of Bob entering and exiting her quarters during her shifts on the bridge, several times, presumably stealing her things and dropping them in the recycling hatch. He didn’t seem to be carrying anything out. She also located and reviewed recordings of each of the arguments which, coincidentally, occurred just before his incursions into her private rooms. Hmmm.

  Strangely, everything he’d trashed had been something she’d told him a little story about: the small clay whales made by an ancestor of a friend, which the friend had gifted to her many years ago, the wooden hand-painted carving of a Terran cat she’d purchased while on leave in Bali, Earth, during her soldering days, the light jacket another friend bought her just because she’d mentioned the night air was chilly on Chobok. All these things and more disappeared, simply because Bob wouldn’t pick up after himself and couldn’t handle her criticisms.

  The symbols of some of her best memories were lost forever.

  During one shift, because she was suspicious by then, Buster hacked into his communications locker. She found a draft of a complaint he’d composed to be sent to the Company. The idiot had used his own name to secure the files. For a thief he sure was trusting. Perhaps he’d counted on her not behaving as he did, or figuring out what he’d been doing. She found his lies about her in the documents: that she was angry and unpredictable, had accused him of infractions she herself committed, and he’d become afraid of her (well that could be true) and would like to file a claim of intimidation and receive compensation from her account, per the board’s decision. Would they consider a complaint and send him the proper forms?

  Oh, no you don’t, you slimeball, Buster had thought. Insulted and incensed, Buster covered-up her break-in by deleting the record, and erasing the records of erasure, and compressing the whole lot. She ‘lost’ his entire communication locker in the shipbrain’s comprehensive databay, which included all the daily minutiae the vessel recorded.

  At the time she’d been three years into a twenty year trip. Detecting the proof of her perfidy would take a data retrieval expert a long while, since the expert wouldn’t even be able to get into the vessel’s cerebellum until she docked at the Company’s planet of operations in seventeen years. By the time the forsaken garbage scow docked, records of her deeds would be compressed incomprehensibly by immense volumes of data.

  She spent the rest of the shift making plans, both short and long term, and waited for opportunities.

  Bob, not a strong creature, had originated on a lighter-gravity planet than her origin of Earth. Bob’s people, an advanced, long-civilized race, pampered themselves unreasonably. They ate well, they lived well, and they didn’t have to fight for anything any more, well, except with each other. In Bob, the animal had been suppressed, and the privileged whiner emerged. But Buster was a complex creation, a killer who hadn’t killed in far too long.

  How ironic; she behaved in the civilized manner aboard ship while the civilized man behaved like an ill-trained child.

  No matter. She solved the problem.

  He’d been barely able to struggle against her when she’d hauled him to the airlock and pushed him in. She closed the door and, just for satisfaction’s sake, watched him scream, beg, and cry for a moment. Then she flushed him out and walked down the corridor, ordering the ship to provide a view of space through its hull as he floated by. Vacuum distorted his body and his deceitful face.

  No one would be able to prove anything. She recorded his death officially as an accident, and caused the ship system to malfunction and record over the recording of the real event. One great thing about living so long is you pick up these little tricks, and some fine day, you get to use them. She reported his head bashed in by one of the tools he was forever leaving unsecured. Buried in space. Such a shame. What a waste.

  Yes, she could carry on unassisted. No, the Company replied, no need for us to send a replacement. Anyway, by her estimation it would take three quahot for the replacement to arrive in a speedy one-man craft.

  A quahot denoted a third of an Ordoron year, and one-and-three-quarter years in Earth time, give or take. Three quahot equated to five-and-one-quarter Earth years. Four quahot was one Company year and about seven Earth years. Three Company years equaled approximately twenty-one Earth years. The length of the assignments she went on were typically ten to twenty Earth years or so, which came to one-and-a-half to three years Company, and included the year spent unloading whatever bucket she’d been in, plus the time it took to rehab it for another go.

  Time-telling on Ordoron was a complicated and ritualistic matter, best left to serious mathematicians, the Ordorons thought. However, the Company itself used something akin to military time used on Earth, though the periods differed greatly in length and divisions.

  Buster liked to play a game with her owners by converting Company time to the planetary time scales at whichever planet she was orbiting, and displaying for them her versatility and comprehension. It was a fun time-waster for her. What could they do about it? Bitch? The Company did not bitch. They employed and owned the best mathematicians who made the conversions back to Company time.

  Anyway, after Bob’s unfortunate demise, the Company sent generic condolences. Carry on. Here are the master instructions for the shipbrain. Buster became the one-and-only slave to ever receive them. Unprecedented!

  The scow’s productivity did not falter. In fact, without the distraction of Bobrin the Braxtletl, the ship recorded productivity
up an average of 2.54% per quahot. The Company seemed pleased.

  Apparently, Bob had mostly been extra weight.