large doses. That’s why passengers had to go through weeks of cleansing before being fully awakened. At least that’s what he remembered from history class.
“Deb. How long were you in here?”
“We discovered a couple of dozen other rooms like this one.”
A couple of dozen? He covered his mouth with his sleeve and did a quick inventory. There had to be at least five hundred chambers in this room. They hadn’t found the full half million people of legend, but ten thousand sounded about right for one ship. Maybe it crash landed on the moon instead of Dia Nova proper, and the rest of the fleet thought it was lost.
He took a look inside the smashed chamber and saw an earth woman dressed like the earth man they’d discovered earlier. “Are they alive?”
Debi shook her head. “Not that one.” Then she pointed at another chamber that sat open and empty. “He was.”
“Was that the man in the clearing?”
She nodded. “He started to go berserk in the ship and the crew tossed him.”
“The crew?”
She took a deliberate breath. “I ordered them to stand down but they wouldn’t listen. They were convinced he’d kill us all. They thought he was some kind of monster. So they popped the hatch and threw him out.”
“And then you lost control of the ship?”
She nodded. “Morgan was killed on impact.”
He checked his watch and saw that his own crew would be leaving in eight minutes. Damn. “We have to go. Let’s deal with this later.”
“Later? Command won’t let you.”
“Why not?”
“You think they want to share Dia Nova with earthlings? They’ll bomb this place from space.”
She was almost right. They wouldn’t put up with a bunch of earthlings making a claim on the colony. But there was something Debi didn’t know. She didn’t have the clearance to know. Command would not only let him return, they would send him back on a secret mission. He’d study the Originals. Hell, he’d do more than that. He’d genetically mine them.
Most of the colony didn’t know it, but they needed a continual source of new unmodified DNA to mix with future generations to avoid genetic breakdown. For all their supposed genetic superiority, they lacked diversity. A single virus could mutate and take them all out in a generation. Even without a virus, they’d die out on their own eventually. Modified DNA simply wasn’t stable over several generations.
They were already starting to see an alarming number of birth defects. Command managed to blame the mutations on earth. They’d claimed their food supply had been sabotaged. But that was just a story meant to placate the masses.
If earth cut off ties after the war, which they surely would, then the colony be in desperate need of diverse unmodified human DNA. And unmolested human DNA wasn’t even walking around earth anymore. It only existed in earth labs. Labs that were nearly a light year away.
Theo knew his duty. He had to seal off the ship, report the presence to Command, and make sure no one else found out about it. But what was he going to do with Debi?
He faced her. “You said Morgan died in the crash. What happened to the rest of your crew?”
“I took them out,” she said. “They tried to blow up the ship.”
Took them out? The fumes were getting to him. He had to get out of there before he completely lost his ability to reason. But first he had to deal with Debi. “So, what do you want to do now?”
She smiled. “Set them free.”
“How?”
“Broadcast our find to the entire colony. Notify Earth. Notify the other colonies. Make it politically inconvenient to commit genocide.”
She would do it too. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop her. And there’s no way she’d go along with DNA mining. He nodded and returned her grin. “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“Really?” She sighed with apparent relief.
When she reached out to hug him, he slipped his hand into the med kit, retrieved the hypodermic, and stabbed her.
#
Theo climbed aboard Eagle Two moments before takeoff.
“Where’s the Eagle One crew?”
“They didn’t make it.”
Ellen closed her eyes and took a quick breath. “What happened?”
“Those that survived the crash died of ionic poisoning. I couldn’t save them.”
He looked at the body bag beside them, and thought of the Original DNA inside. By itself, it was a treasure trove and worth the losses on this mission. Then he thought of the transport ship not one hundred yards away. Two dozen rooms, each containing around five hundred chambers. And all but two of those chambers presumably contained live Original DNA.
“I should’ve went with you,” Ellen said. “Maybe I could’ve helped.”
Of the two chambers that didn’t contain live Original DNA, one contained dead Original DNA. The other held an idealistic and resourceful young officer who, Theo knew, wouldn’t be very happy with him when he returned and woke her.
“There wasn’t room,” he said.
“What?”
He smiled and braced for launch.
###
About the Author
Brent Meranda lives in Cincinnati with his wife and two children. He writes software by day and fiction by night. His non-fiction articles have appeared in The Plain Truth, Christian Odyssey, and Control Engineering. He’s also a certified teacher of relationship skills with Equipping Ministries International, and is a member of the pastoral leadership team at Christ Community Church.
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