Tales from Omega Station: Abduction
By J. Kirsch
Copyright 2013 J. Kirsch
Abduction
Kyrena stepped through the end of the vast tunnel which connected Jeylani Dome to Berengi Dome like an umbilical cord, discovering a different world.
Dad’s going to kill me. It wasn’t an exaggeration, and yet Kyrena found herself not caring. As the young woman shed the dumpy-looking maintenance disguise and walked toward the main thoroughfare, her body throbbed with excitement. She’d seen plenty of aliens in the documentary vids and the reality casts back on Triton IV, but she’d never viewed an alien in the flesh. Some passersby looked more reputable than others. The thrill of danger only added to the spiciness of Kyrena’s curiosity. One day of true freedom was worth whatever draconian punishments Dad would come up with.
It wasn’t that she was doing this to hurt him. She loved her father. But Estevar Saunders made it tough for her to show that love. By suffocating her in his corporate world of propriety, always keeping her at length from the only other children she could hope to consort with because of back-stabbing intrigue among the top-level managers and execs…it was all enough to give any person a headache.
"I have to live my life, damn it," she muttered to herself. Her blue eyes widened at a greenish-orangish back-lit street filled with the sounds of singing. Towering trees – definitely not indigenous to the airless, waterless asteroid which was Omega Station – lined the main avenue like attendants at a wedding ceremony. Two melipiods with long legs like celery stalks and detachable, eye-tipped tentacles sprang down the street, their boisterous song echoing and lingering long after they had turned sharply down a side avenue.
Kyrena gaped at the busy jumble of pedestrians before glancing at the canopy of stars above the dome. Berengi Dome is so beautiful…then again, I bet all the surface domes have a breath-taking view. The streets were paved with a glossy sheen which was somehow luminescent, giving the whole street constant illumination even at night. Though ‘night’ was an artificial concept here, the hodgepodge of dwellers who lived on Omega Station needed some kind of routine.
What shocked Kyrena the most was the sheer nonchalance of Berengi Dome’s inhabitants. Two vrelki walked in front of her. They were muscle-bound brutes who looked almost human except for their ridiculous biceps and the protruding bone ridges which ran down the center of their skulls and across their foreheads.
Are those two holding hands? Kyrena was almost certain that both were males. A blush crept across her face and she turned away, horrified and yet feeling very silly at the same time.
"Can I help you, pink-skin?" a resonant, thunder-rumble of a voice nearly sent Kyrena jumping out of her boots.
Kyrena turned, appraising it even as she wondered what the thing thought of her. It wasn’t nearly as strange as the melipiods. Like the blue-skinned vrelki, it was vanilla humanoid, with a surprisingly boring number of limbs (four). Its milky, pupil-less eyes seemed to lay bare her soul, however, and that was just plain creepy. It grabbed her arm and tried to encourage her to join it through the narrow entryway to the alley behind him. "Please, pretty pink-skin, come and see my wares. Many fine things await in Port-Belo Alley. You come and look!"
Kyrena may have been sheltered, but she didn’t live under a rock, and she’d come prepared. Her hand moved like a blaze of light, a shock-wand materializing in its grasp as she smelled the faint stench of burning flesh, her wand blistering the man-thing’s neck. She was pretty sure it was male.
The milky-eyed rogue thrashed and groaned. As he writhed helplessly on the ground Kyrena stepped over him with disdain and moved along until she was swallowed up in the general traffic.
I think I’ll be leaving that encounter out of my story when Mom and Dad interrogate me, Kyrena decided. She allowed herself to soak up the rich, chaotic world that was Berengi Dome’s main thoroughfare. Its main street, Venusia, ran in a perfectly straight line as part of a grid-like pattern. Great, now if I get lost I’ll feel extra stupid. Dad’s uncanny sense of direction hadn’t been passed down to Kyrena with all the other genes. Stubbornness, though, was another matter.
Kyrena slipped her map free of the travel pack around her waist, taking a look at the first landmark on her wish list. Her travel pack was one of the ProximitySafe models. The chip embedded within the bag’s fabric was attuned to the micro-chip which lay under the skin at the nape of Kyrena’s neck. If a pickpocket nabbed it, as soon as the bag reached a certain distance away from Kyrena, its alarm would trigger, liquefying the contents with an acidic mixture that would probably also turn the body parts of whichever thief had stolen it to mush. It was extreme, sure, but Dad was paranoid that some corporate espionage a-hole might try to take Kyrena’s personal effects as a way to gain access.
Of course that lovely chip in my neck has other uses. It was exactly what Gulnara would use to track Kyrena when she sent out her team of expensive babysitters to whisk Kyrena back to the boring-ass dungeon Dad and Mom called ‘home.’ But Kyrena smiled. There were ways to fool technology, even a fancy proprietary micro-chip developed by geeks in one of Jeylani’s windowless labs.
Kyrena stopped at the entrance to a mall which looked like it might stretch beyond infinity. Its huge letters read ‘Mall of the UniVerse,’ and two swooping dragons spat geysers of water through hungry-looking mouths along either side. A shallow moat ringed the entrance, and Kyrena had to step gingerly across its narrow wooden bridge. A line of pedestrians politely waited for her to cross before resuming their way from the other side.
She spied what looked like a gamer’s paradise and ducked inside. Aliens of various shades and sizes played in front of screens spanning entire walls. Their movements were easily mirrored in the games they played – some one-on-one fighting tournaments, some strategy battles, and more than a few racing courses and outdoor simulators.
Kyrena sauntered up to a young man her age. He had a shock of lime-green hair which ran as a Mohawk down the top of his skull and a nose ring, but compared to the aliens in the vicinity he looked positively normal.
"Hey," Kyrena said. The young man gave her a smile back and moved over to make a place for her on the snowscape surfer platform.
"Care to join me?" He gave her a genuine grin, but there was an edge to it, and Kyrena couldn’t figure out why.
"I’m Kyrena. From Jeylani Dome."
Mohawk Guy nodded. "Call me Spook. Everyone else does. First time in our neck of the Rock?"
Kyrena nodded, her skin warming instantly as his fingers slid against her wrist, slipping an extra pair of gaming gloves over each of her hands. She gasped as she felt the gloves automatically activate, attuning to the nerve endings along her fingers and synchronizing with her body’s senses. The world in front of her and on all sides turned white, snow sparkling on the slopes.
"You done this before?"
"Uh, not exactly," she answered, and judging from the way his grin went up a notch, she guessed that he knew that meant ‘No.’
Kyrena shivered as the gloves started to affect her body’s temperature to make the experience more real. The screen began a countdown and she saw her avatar appear at the top of a tree-lined slope. The drop-off seemed almost vertical, and her stomach churned butterflies. She had played sims like these at home, but never with this scale or depth. It was like watching a movie on a mammoth-sized screen instead of a hand-vid. There was no comparison.
"OK, don’t panic. It’s not as steep as it looks," Spook said gently. His hands appeared at her waist, steadying her and adjusting her hips to give her the perfect stance out of the starting gate. The countdown hit zero – and WHOOSH – she was flying. Even the wind against her hair f
elt real, her rich, dark tresses whipping backward like confetti in the artificial wind thrown at her from the fans just above. Her stomach bottomed out as the gamer platform shifted and lurched. For a mere simulation this felt frighteningly real, especially when she went flying over black diamond hills interspersed with trees, their branches thrown wide to grab her like leafy kidnappers. Kyrena squealed, running dead-center into a tree trunk. Her whole body lurched backward and she found herself about to fall onto her butt hard, until unexpected hands eased her fall, sitting her on the ground as she panted, her lungs burning the way any snowscape surfer’s would on a freezing winter day.
"Believe it or not, that wasn’t too bad," Spook laughed. "I’ve seen first-timers sprain an ankle trying to overcorrect, or get too caught up in the environment to pay any mind to their footing. You all right?"
Kyrena looked up into Spook’s eyes, blushing and feeling very much the fool. Yet her heartbeat picked up its pace when he reached his hand out, helping her up. His face was handsome, even though Kyrena thought the haircut needed definite work. You can’t have everything, she thought with an inward grin. And life would be boring if you could, anyway. He’s nice, and cute. I think I’ll keep him. She tried to imagine the look on Dad’s face if she brought him home with him and introduced him as her new boyfriend. Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves, Kyrena? God, she was so starved of human contact that she was ready to jump on the first normal guy she met. How pathetic was that?
The game was in pause mode, which was a good thing because sudden movement angle in from Kyrena’s peripheral vision. Globs of something were flying through the doorway to the gaming store, spinning in mid-air like slimy, oblong bubbles. Pinkish bubbles, to be exact. Kyrena went rigid as those bubbles began to swirl around her like a mini-hurricane with her as its chosen eye. The hair on her neck and arms stood up, and she shivered, her eyes widening.
"Not cool, my man! Cut it out, Zelky! She’s new, man, and you’re definitely scaring her!" Spook growled.
Kyrena blinked several times, shocked as the alien’s bubbles began to smash together like large, slimy atoms, until a blob which resembled a fat slug materialized right in front of her.
"Sorry, Kyrena. This is my boy, Zelky. He likes to make a grand entrance. Then again, most mandalors do." Mandalor…another type of alien? She’d never heard of them, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. The thing did have two eyes, but one was located below its paunch of a stomach and the other peered at her inquisitively from the top of its gel-like, pink head. Sounds of gurgling accompanied an arm and hand slowly reaching out to shake hers in greeting. Before even thinking, she shook the hand automatically, gasping as the slime of the alien’s hand coated her own.
With barely salvaged grace, she stifled the urge to grimace and mutter ‘Yuck’. She looked with dismay at her hand, though, and Spook shook his head with annoyance.
The hard look Spook now seemed to give his friend spoke volumes, though. He’s pissed that his friend is barging in and making me uncomfortable. He wants to impress me, and he doesn’t think his friend’s antics are helping. Realizing everything which Spook’s quick glance at his friend encompassed, her skin warmed. Did Spook think she was cute? And why was she hoping so fervently that he was single all of the sudden?
Keep it together, Kyrena…you’ve known this guy for what, all of ten minutes?