The Betwixt Book One

  Chapter 13

  Silence returned to the dig site. It was that kind of silence where you knew it was directed at you. People specifically weren’t talking to me. Of all those people, I noticed one more than anyone else – the good Commander.

  Everything had obviously caught up to him – the monster, me, this general creepy dig site. He may routinely see a hell of a lot of bizarre in the big wide galaxy – but would this rock the boat?

  “Are there any more of those things?” His helmet was still on, so I couldn’t see who he was asking. He turned to Doctor Cole, who was standing with her hands on her hips, staring off down the tunnel that led to the caved-in chamber.

  “No.” She dusted a patch of dirt off the shoulder of her vest.

  “Then let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Seriously? That was it? They weren’t going to poke around this dig and discover the secrets of this ancient site? Presumably, none of the GAMs, not even the Commander, had ever seen anything like that creature before – so why throw away the opportunity to learn more?

  “Get these people out of here,” Commander Cole spoke to the room at large. “The ship radioed in. Structural integrity of this chamber is fluctuating. Move.”

  We did. It was an ordered affair – the GAMs escorting us up the ladder in single file, pulling us up at the top, and directing us toward the shuttle parked outside the circle of lights on the surface.

  I looked up as I crested the ladder. There was the massive GAM cruiser above us – the air from its engine vents flattening my hair to my face, though the thing was several hundred meters up. The noise was amazing – pounding at the earth like 1000 drills all at once.

  A GAM at the top of the ladder hooked an arm under mine and pulled me to my feet, motioning me toward the shuttle with a silent bowl of his arm.

  Between the noise from the cruiser and the powerful light from the shuttle trained directly on the mine entrance – I felt less like I was on some alien moon and more like I was in one of the great shipyards of Central.

  There were signs of battle. The deep black scorch marks that darkened every rock and patch of earth. Several of the standing lights that had once stood in a perfect circle around the mouth of the dig site lay on their side, either mangled into lumps of nearly unrecognizable metal or erupting into sparks – their light tubes leaking onto the scorched dirt.

  It must have been one hell of a fight.

  How had the GAM won? How had they even done it? How had they managed to get here in time? Had they been in the system? Or did they use the emergency hyperspace routes – the ones Central controlled that allowed for super-fast, emergency space travel?

  It was becoming apparent to me as I looked around that I didn’t know much about space. I mean, underground digs on Crag moons with monsters made of light? Tarian Mercenaries attacking, GAMs streaking across space to save us? I didn’t have any experience with this, nothing to draw on whatsoever.

  I had bigger questions to keep me breathing. And breathing was an issue – I’d left my helmet back in the chamber, and the air on this moon was thin. Not enough to kill me and pop me like a bubble in space, but enough to make me labor for each breath, my lungs hissing and puffing as they pumped and pumped.

  They took me straight to the Med Bay. In fact, they took as all to the Med Bay, which was a huge facility far better stocked than the one on the station. This was a GAM Cruiser, and they obviously weren’t strangers to danger. The GAM didn’t just operate as a galactic security force – patrolling the borders, dealing with pirates, and keeping the peace on warring planets. They were also intended to be the first call in disaster response. They were equipped and trained to deal with situations like this. Well, maybe not like this.

  All the dig team – even Crag’tal and Od – they were all being administered to, each with their own bed and medical scanner. There was this huge team of doctors and nurses walking amongst them, clicking their tongues and asking questions like “What the hell were you doing down there?”

  Then there was me. I was off in a room at the back of the Med Bay with my own team of doctors. The CMO – Chief Medical Officer – was there. He was a big, burly man with a bustling mustache that looked more like a cat’s tail that had been strapped under his nose.

  He was leaning over me, snapping orders to his staff as he peered ever so carefully at my eyes.

  He didn’t say much, which wasn’t comforting. He wasn’t even rubbing his chin and proclaiming “Wow, what amazing eyes you have! I’ve never seen anything like them.” He was peering, unassisted by technology, right at my face then down at the data pad in his hands.

  “Doesn’t make sense,” he grumbled.

  “What doesn’t make sense?” I asked quietly, not wanting to draw his wrath when he was barely an inch from my nose.

  He leaned back and cupped his chin in his hands. “So you can see?”

  Well, that was a strange question. “Ah yeah, I can see.”

  The Doctor walked away, typed something on some panel, and said something to one of his nurses. He stood at the other end of the room and held up three fingers. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  Was he doing really this? “Ah, three.” This was the future. We had more accurate medical tests than the old “how many fingers” to rely on.

  The Doctor looked vaguely annoyed at this, like he would have preferred me to answer “18.”

  “Is there… is there some kind of problem?” I was starting to sweat, breath coming harder. Had that light – that strange light from the Twixt – had it done something to my eyes? Was there a problem? Was I going to go blind or something?

  The Doctor looked at his pad, sniffed, and shrugged his shoulders. “Yes and no.”

  “Well, which is it? Is there a problem or isn’t there?”

  “Pick one.”

  “Ah—”

  “You’ve got two sets of eyes there, as far as I can tell, and only one of them has the problem.”

  What? What in the galaxy was this guy talking about? “That doesn’t make any sense – I don’t understand.”

  “Hey, neither do I,” the CMO quipped back.

  “Two sets of eyes?” someone said from behind us.

  I turned to see the Commander leaning against the door, arms crossed. “She’s right, that doesn’t make any sense.”

  The Commander was out of his heavy, black armor and in his standard black fatigues. I was starting to realize he didn’t have a large repertoire of colors in his wardrobe. I’d never even seen him in gray, let alone anything pastel.

  The Doctor shrugged again, his huge shoulders stretching against his light brown uniform top. “You don’t see this kind of thing every other day, Commander. In fact, I’ve never seen it before. I mean, hell, I’ve never even seen anything remotely—”

  “I’m starting to realize why you don’t like doctors, Mini; they get all vague around you. What are you talking about, Adams?”

  “Her DNA is rewriting itself. It’s like some kind of retrovirus, except it isn’t a virus. As far as I can tell, sections of her own DNA are recombining on their own, essentially overwriting and changing extant code.” The Doctor had his hand up around his mouth as he stared off between us, deep in thought. “I’ve ticked off the possibilities here, Commander, and we aren’t dealing with a bioweapon, genetic engineering, even those fancy remote quantum-flux devices I hear Central are working on.”

  “Prognosis?” The Commander didn’t uncross his arms or once look my way.

  “I haven’t even gotten that far yet. I’m making this up as I go along—”

  “Just what I want to hear from the CMO.” The Commander didn’t smile.

  “You aren’t going to get anything clearer. Whatever that light was, it wasn’t light in the conventional sense. We aren’t even talking a spectrum shift. I’m not saying it was out of phase—”

  “What are you saying?” the Commander cut in.

  For once, I was finding his direct nature r
efreshing. I needed him around when I wanted answers from Od – Cole was like a conversation katana that would cut through the babble like a blade through cottage cheese.

  “Beats me. The short of it is this – Mini over here was already a half-breed, and I don’t need to tell you alien DNA doesn’t combine well with humans. Unstable is the word I’d use to describe it; others may say it’s an accident waiting to happen. Background cosmic radiation, short time exposure to alpha or beta rays – hell, even too much sun can cause irreversible degradation in a half breed’s genetic structure. It’s not robust enough – doesn’t have the same—”

  “Doctor,” the Commander uncrossed his arms and tapped a fist against the door frame behind him, “I don’t have time for science today. I’ve got Central breathing down my neck on this one. I’m going to need the short version around about now.”

  “Got it, Commander. I don’t know what other species you are, kid.” The Doctor shrugged my way. “But your DNA isn’t the same as ours. In fact, it ain’t like any other alien race I’ve ever seen.”

  I felt supremely uncomfortable as if I were standing naked in front of a panel of well-dressed judges ready to pick apart my history with a precision scanner and tell me what had always been wrong with me. “I’ve undergone genetic scans before. No one’s ever told me—”

  “Wouldn’t have used tech like ours, wouldn’t have had the money. We have to give the Commander the short version here – and your DNA isn’t what’s interesting. Whatever light source you were exposed to on that planet – it’s a form of radiation I’ve never come across before. Now, for some reason, it only affected you – the soldiers in that room, as far as I can tell, were immune. I don’t know if it was their armor, but I can’t see that offering too much protection—”

  “Are we going to have to be inoculated against radiation poisoning?” Cole interrupted, voice so quick it might as well have been a vocal whip.

  “No, and here’s where it gets interesting. Ordinarily, radiation can cause damage to DNA, especially when the source is strong enough to penetrate the cell membrane. Whatever kind of radiation you encountered down there – that bright light you said came from inside that creature – Mini here copped an eyeful of it, literally. It has caused a massive genetic change in her eyes. That’s as far as it goes, for now.”

  “Not following you, Adams.” Cole crossed his arms again, still not moving from the doorway.

  The Commander was mirroring my own sentiment, because I wasn’t following a word, either. Radiation, cellular damage, DNA rewriting itself? I was a waitress, not a scientist. I needed the extremely simple version, preferably with a colorful diagram and the important words underlined.

  Was there something seriously wrong with me?

  “The damage to her genetic structure isn’t, well, damaging, as far as I can tell. These aren’t ordinary mutations. They’re adaptive, neat, fit in with the rest of her morphology without rocking the boat, as it were. It’s like,” Adams took a deep breath and stared at the data pad in his hands again, “Those comic books from old Earth. You know the ones where kids would fall into a vat of toxic waste or cop a face-full of gamma radiation but somehow develop powerful mutations, rather than dying like the rest of us would.”

  He had completely lost me. Comic books? Vats of toxic waste? Was he a real doctor?

  I looked over to the Commander, sure he would have an incredulous look on his face, his lips opening to form the words “Get on with it.” His eyebrows were knotted in concentration – as if he actually understood what was going on.

  “The radiation should have killed her, or at least done some kind of irreparable damage – but it has facilitated adaptive mutations, instead. It’s like she has looked at the light of creation and walked away with a brand new set of eyes.”

  I put a hand up to my face, fingers trembling slightly as I touched my eyes. Looked into the light of creation – what?

  “I’m no physicist, Cole; I’m a doctor. I can only comment on what I’m seeing occur at a biological level. And right now every cell in Mini’s eyes might as well be dancing the cha cha – causing morphological changes faster than anything in any lab I’ve ever seen.”

  “Is it dangerous?” Cole asked.

  “No.”

  “Can we stop it?” The Commander’s expression was completely neutral.

  “No – not unless we remove her ey—”

  “What?” I piped up, shuffling back on my bed.

  “No one is going to remove your eyes, Mini. So that’s it, Adams? We’re dealing with a previously undiscovered form of radiation, one that causes specific but beneficial mutations?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. It’s causing beneficial mutations in her,” he gestured at me with his data pad, “Because she’s got some strange alien DNA kicking around. I doubt it would have the same effect on you or me.”

  “No one else in this crew is in any danger—” Cole began.

  “Look, there’s no residual radiation, and I haven’t picked up any genetic abnormalities in anyone else from that site. We’re dealing with the strange, Commander, but not the deadly.”

  Cole nodded once, and it was sharp and definite. “That’s all I need to know. Is she free to leave the Med Bay?”

  Adams brushed down the sides of his mustache with one big hand. “Sure, but tell me if she drops dead.”

  I squeaked.

  “He’s joking.” Cole shook his head. “More used to dealing with rookies and marines. You’ve got the bedside manner of a Tarian Merc, Adams.”

  “Except I don’t get paid half as much,” Adams managed through a laugh as he turned away.

  I sat on the corner of the bed, not sure what to do next. I hadn’t understood enough of what the Doctor had been saying to know whether I was safe or not. To top it all off, I didn’t see what the problem was – I could see fine. Things looked the same as they had before. If my eyes were dancing the cha cha, wouldn’t I notice?

  I sighed quietly. I wanted to go back to being a waitress at Marty’s Space Diner. My life was less of a life right now and more of a space opera.

  “Come on,” the Commander motioned to me from the doorway, crossing his arms again, “We have to talk.”

  My stomach sank quicker than a teacup tied to a 1000 ton rock pushed into the ocean. Oh dear.

  I stood up and followed the Commander out of the Med Bay. He walked me through a wide corridor lined with other GAMs as they jogged about doing whatever it is they did when they weren’t fighting wars or drinking crappy space cocktails.

  Eventually, we reached a room with a huge holounit in the middle. There were comfortable but still military-looking chairs set up all the way around the projector. It was obviously some kind of briefing room.

  Od was sitting there, and Crag’tal and Doctor Cole too.

  “This is where you all tell me what’s going on,” the Commander began.

  I carefully took a seat closest to the door. I liked to think I had the option to run, though I wouldn’t be able to make it far.

  “This is ridiculous, Jason,” Doctor Cole began, arms crossed just like her son’s had been moments before, “You can’t treat us like we’re—”

  “I’ll tell you how I can treat you, Doctor Cole. I can treat you like a group of suspects wanted in connection with illegal genetic experiments and violation of the Central maxim not to create banned forms of life.” Jason didn’t bother to sit down; he stood directly next to the holounit, staring at us all in turn.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Doctor Cole blustered. “You know full well I didn’t create that thing. I found it—”

  “Right.” Jason crossed his own arms. “If things like that were sitting around archaeological sites, waiting to be found – don’t you think we would have heard about it before?”

  This time Doctor Cole snorted, and it was about as derisive as you could get. “Don’t you bring this up now, Jason. You know I’ve been finding things out about the Twixts my whole life—??
?

  “The Twixts.” Jason took a deep breath and shook his head.

  “Oh, you can’t be serious – you still don’t believe me?” Doctor Cole was sitting on the edge of her chair, body so tense it looked ready to snap up and bounce around the room like a spring under strain.

  “I don’t know what to believe, because I still don’t know what happened down there.”

  “Many things happened down there,” Od spread his arms wide. “Many.”

  I winced and sucked in my lips. Now wasn’t the time for babbling Od to meet single-word-sentences Commander Cole. This would get ugly.

  “Some things I would not have expected, some I didn’t even imagine possible,” Od continued.

  Jason didn’t look amused. His lips weren’t frowning, but they were dead straight – as if he’d adjusted them with a level.

  “I think that you are using the premise that you hold us here under suspicion of violating the Central law against banned genetic experiments as a ploy to pressure your mother into giving a more detailed version of events.” Od cupped his hands in his lap. “You do not believe that the creature you encountered on the Crag moon was the result of a sophisticated genetic experiment – you believe that your mother did find it. Though perhaps you do not go so far as to believe it is a Twixt, maybe a previously unidentified form of life. Perhaps from beyond the reaches of this galaxy—”

  “Perhaps you should stop telling me what I believe, Kroplin.” Jason’s voice was careful but clearly dangerous.

  “He’s right, Jason. I know you’re playing a game here. It doesn’t matter anymore – I’ll tell you everything. If you’ll listen. You just need to ask the right questions.”

  “I have a waitress who can move faster than a battle mech, a Crag, a Kroplin, an unidentified creature that gives off unrecognized radiation, and my own mother right in the middle of it. What questions should I be asking? Does anybody want a cup of tea?”

  I was about to answer that I would love a cup of tea, anything to hide behind, when I realized it was a joke question. I pressed my lips together and tried to become invisible.

  “You’re like your father sometimes.” Doctor Cole shook her head.

  Jason looked a strange mix of hurt and plain angered by that comment. “Start at the beginning and start now. I’m putting my ass on the line talking to you like this. My superiors want answers, and they wanted them yesterday. I thought if I talked to you all first it would be softer on you. If you don’t start cooperating, I will hand you over to someone else. No, they won’t be conducting this meeting in the briefing room.”

  His non-specific threat hung in the air like the sword of Damocles – ready to strike us down should any of us grow any more comfortable or cocky.

  “Several months ago, I received a message from the Rain Man,” Doctor Cole began with a sigh. “And before you ask, it’s a codename for—”

  “I know who the Rain Man is, now keep going,” Cole said, voice less dangerous than before but still not something you would use to herd bunny rabbits.

  “He said he had the location and funding for a site that was connected to The People—”

  Jason took a massive breath and sighed, his chest looking like it would rip through his uniform. “The People – they’re a myth—”

  “Jason, you’re asking me to tell you the truth, and this is what I’m doing. The Rain Man had the finances, the location, he even provided half of my team. He assured me it would be the find of a lifetime – and it was.”

  “The find of a terminally short lifetime, maybe,” Jason added quietly. “Did he know what was down there? Did he give any indication—”

  “No. He said his intel suggested it was an ancient site of The People – ruins or something. When we began our excavations, we realized something was up. We were receiving strange readings, way off the scale. By the time the main chamber was fully excavated…” Doctor Cole trailed off. “None of us could believe what we were looking at. I had at least five people leave the dig site that day – they couldn’t handle to look at that thing any longer.”

  “Five people left? Can you confirm their identities? They may have been responsible for the Tarian Mercs—”

  “I don’t know if they would have told on us, Jason, but I’ll give you their names. They weren’t my people – my people had the stomach to move on with the excavation. It wasn’t long after we had our discovery that those three turned up, uninvited.” She nodded in the direction of Crag’tal and Od.

  Uninvited, that was one way to put it.

  “What happened?” Commander Cole looked at me briefly, eyes meeting mine for the slightest moment before he dragged them away again to glare at his mother.

  “Oh, it reacted to her.” Doctor Cole sat back, expression growing bitter. “Of all the beings in all the galaxy, she was the last thing I needed to come down that ladder.”

  Jason’s eyes had practically disappeared under his crinkled eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

  “Jason, you aren’t going to believe a word of it – but here it is, anyway. That thing was a Twixt, but not an ordinary one. My team and I are fairly confident in our hypothesis that that thing is what results from a Twixt that has been left in our dimension for too long. It becomes visible, distended—” Doctor Cole broke off before taking a large breath. “Now, I know you never believed the stories I told you as a child, but I also know you remember them. The only race capable of seeing and fighting the Twixts were The People. Your Mini over there is half-human, half-People.”

  Jason looked at me, right at me. I couldn’t read his expression, couldn’t even hold his gaze. I felt like a bug under a microscope, waiting to find out whether the scientist would let me go or pin me to a board.

  “The Twixt could smell it in her – knew the moment she walked in that chamber that she was a descendant of The People. It woke the damn thing up. Whatever containment had held it in check – I knew it wouldn’t last long with her around.”

  “Pretend I believe you, Doctor Cole, and keep on going.” The Commander’s tone was completely unreadable.

  I felt more nervous than I had in my whole life. What was going to happen after this conversation – what was Jason going to do?

  “That’s when you rang, that’s when the Tarians came breathing down our necks. Don’t ask me what they were after – the Twixt or Mini – because I don’t know. It could have been either, or both.”

  Me? The Tarian Mercs could have been after me? I hadn’t even considered that option before. Why would… how would they even know about me? What would they want?

  “Now, as for their story,” Doctor Cole pointed my way. “You are going to have to ask them. I’ve told you everything, Jason. Who they are, where they came from, what they were after, why they showed up when they did, you’re going to need to ask her that.”

  Commander Jason Cole turned to me. I could tell the questions were on his lips. Would I be able to answer them? Or would I crash and burn?