Stowaway Read online

  Once in the bloodstream the nanites would utilize components of the host’s intake to make required changes. Small changes were almost unnoticeable, whereas larger changes would elicit a strong hunger forcing the host to increase intake and thus provide the nanites with the material required to make the manipulations to the hosts’ physiology. In the event that a required material was not in the host’s diet, it could be administered via injection by any medical personnel. The treatment being proposed to Zade would complete two tasks. First, the nanites would alter Zade’s antibodies and immune system, immunizing him for all know diseases. Second, the nanites would remove and replace the speech section of Zade’s brain with an ultra-dense piece of brain matter. After the new speech center was in place the nanites would transfer all known language data to it, allowing Zade to communicate with anyone from the Unity without the aid of the translation device he now wore. Jorloss assured Zade that the procedure wass completely safe, noting that both he and Samix had had it done when they were children, which is why they didn’t require a translator to talk to Zade. Furthermore, Jorloss guaranteed that within six to eight earth months all of the nanites would be passed and no longer be in Zade’s body. The nanites would leave behind the new speech center, which would allow Zade to speak any earth language fluently, as all had been added to the Unity’s lexicon based on information collected while orbiting Earth.

  After some internal deliberation, Zade couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see an actual spaceship. Plus, if he played his cards right, Samix might let him off the ship while they were at their repair stop. The idea of being the first human to set foot on a distant world was just too enticing.

  “Let’s do it, I want to see space up close.”

  While preparing for the procedure Jorloss explained that Zade was to be given a sedative for his recovery. The reason being that an individual’s first nanite infusion was a strange experience with the patient often complaining of a slight tingle, similar to having ants crawling all over them. Secondly, as the nanites replace the speech center of Zade’s brain he would be unable to communicate, so the time would be better spent asleep. Since Zade was going to be sedated during his recovery, Jorloss instructed him to eat enough to supply the nanites for the duration of the modification. As he finished the instructions he opened compartments in Zade’s cell that contain what appears to be enough food to last Zade a week, but Jorloss assured Zade that it was the exact amount based on metabolism to complete the modification.

  ​As Zade finished the last of the food, Jorloss spoke, “There’s one more thing. I have to enter your room to administer the nanites while Samix watches from the outside. The door will be locked behind me and in the event that you try anything harmful, Samix will raise the temperature in the room to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. My species can handle temperatures like these yours cannot. Do you understand?”

  With a nod of recognition Zade sat down in the chair and waited for Jorloss to enter the isolation cell. With the hiss of air pressure regulating Jorloss entered the small room with two syringes, one full of clear liquid and one full of a metallic grey liquid. Jorloss administered the clear liquid first, Zade assumed that it must have been the sedative. After a brief moment of silence, Zade’s head began to spin, Jorloss administered the metallic grey liquid. Fully sedated and as threatening as a newborn puppy, Zade was helped out of the isolation chamber and into the most comfortable bed he has ever felt in his life. Just a Zade closed his eyes for some much-deserved rest, he saw Samix and Jorloss kill the lights and walk out of his room. Zade had the most vivid, pleasant dreams he’s had since he joined the army and for the first time in his life, none of them were in English.

  Chapter 3

  Zade woke to a dark room resonating with the sound of machinery. As he stood up the lights in his cabin raised, highlighting the Spartan yet comfortable living quarters that Jorloss and Samix put him in after the sedative and nanites kicked in. Although the room was comfortably cool, Zade’s clothes were stiff with sweat. Looking around the room for any other amenities, Zade began to notice a horrible smell that seems to be emanating from somewhere near him. Searching for the source of the foul odor Zade checked the bed, dresser, and small adjoining bathroom. Nothing, after moving back to the center of the room defeated, Zade stretched and wondered what could be making the smell, and if it was normal. With hands clasped above his head, the source of the odor was revealed, Zade was making the smell. His last shower was the night before the mission in Afghanistan, judging by Samix’s description of events, that must have been over a week ago.

  Pulling off his uniform and boots, Zade headed to the bathroom to try and figure out how the space shower worked. Like the main area of his quarters, the lights in the small bathroom were motion activated and as soon as he entered, they matched the lights in his living area. Noticing a small keypad and screen just inside the shower door, Zade read the keypad and turned the shower on. Zade enjoyed his first shower, not in a shower trailer, in over a year. Turning the shower off triggered a set of warm air blowers that dried Zade off as he exited the bathroom. While heading toward the dresser to look for an undershirt to put on under the utilities provided to him in the isolation chamber, Zade noticed that the old uniform which he had kicked into the corner was nowhere to be found. The dresser contained standard compression undergarments and socks. After dawning the items, Zade searched through the other drawers only to find they were empty. Doing a lap around the small room wondering where his uniform had gotten to, Zade watched as a small door opens just ahead of him on the wall, inside there were four freshly pressed uniforms and four sets of boots. Grabbing one outfit and laying it on the bed, Zade began to dress noticing that these particular uniforms seem to fit his frame perfectly. Zade wasn’t a huge guy, but he wasn’t a twiggy runner either and one of the biggest problems he had with his army uniforms was finding a set that could fit across his broad shoulders, while remaining trim enough to not tent over the rest of his torso. These uniforms had to be custom tailored, they fit exactly like Zade preferred.

  After doing one final check to ensure that he was dressed properly, a habit bred and fostered at the military academy, Zade stepped out of his room. Zade’s room opened directly into a common area with club seats and end tables. To the left of the common area was, what appeared to be, the galley. It had one long table in the middle and what appeared to be some kind of food machines on the back wall. Jorloss was sitting at the table staring blankly into the middle ground while sipping on some hot beverage. Hoping for a hot cup of joe, Zade began walking toward the alien doctor. Just as he grabbed a seat across from Jorloss at the table he noticed movement behind him. Standing and spinning around, Zade saw a humanoid robotic skeleton standing directly at his six.

  “Don’t worry it’s just the SSILF tasked with escorting you around the ship. Captains orders.” Jorloss said from behind Zade.

  ​Realizing that he had just understood Jorloss without the translator caused Zade to reach up and touch both of his ears to be certain. This translation was so much clearer than before. In the med bay, with the earpiece, Zade could still hear Jorloss’ native tongue in one of his ears, and there was a slight delay between when Jorloss’ mouth started moving, and when the translator started speaking. It was like the shitty Afghan bootleg movies Zade had amassed a collection of across three deployments.

  They were being honest about the nanites. I can understand everyone.

  “Any chance that y’all have coffee on this ship? I could really use my morning cup.” Zade asked as he sat down.

  “You could try the food machine, but I would suggest grabbing a cup of the stuff on the hotplate. For unique things like your species’ coffee, it can never get the recipe right. The pot on the hotplate has a drink from my planet called sloop, it is like your coffee, with all of the same stimulant effects, and I’m pretty sure it’s safe for you to drink.”

  The food machine affectionately known by Zade from this point on as the Gut Truck, c
ontained a variety of food components; protein paste, carbohydrate paste, an amino acid based fat paste, liquid vitamins and minerals, and water. Profiles were created for every person on the ship based on their species and planet of origin. An individual would select a meal item out of their profile and based on the selection the machine would combine the substances together to match the nutritional breakdown of whatever food that was selected. Sometime while Zade was sleeping, a profile was created for him. Thanking Jorloss for his advice, Zade heads for the food processor. Looking at the screen only one name was comprehensible to Zade and that was his. The others must have been written in their native languages. After selecting his name all of the information on the screen turned to English. At the top right corner, the time and date were displayed for Earth, and down the left side meal categories were listed. Noticing that it was 6:00 am on earth Zade selected breakfast and then chose coffee, four eggs scrambled, bacon, and oatmeal. From the condiment’s menu Zade chose brown sugar and hot sauce. If Zade knew anything from his time in the army, scrambled eggs and oatmeal were the two hardest foods to fuck up, he was hoping this held true for alien food processing units. If it wasn’t, he had the hot sauce; enough hot sauce can make anything edible.

  Everything smells great. Hope this thing gets bacon right, at the very least. I can survive here indefinitely with bacon, but I’m getting off at the next stop if it fucks up bacon.

  Zade grabbed the tray that the gut truck spat out and headed for his spot at the table across from Jorloss. Zade with some hesitation tried his breakfast, and to his surprise the eggs and bacon were spot on and only the oatmeal missed the mark. Grabbing the coffee to wash down the meal, Zade began asking Jorloss about the ship. Upon first taste the coffee didn’t seem too different from coffee back on earth, but the aftertaste was horrific, and only got worse as time passed. One sip was all it took for Zade to pitch the coffee in lieu of some sloop. To Zade the prospect of being forced to go without caffeine was far worse than the prospect of getting sick from some alien drink. The sloop was actually pretty good, it reminded Zade of black tea from home just stronger. After talking with Jorloss a bit more and finishing his drink, Jorloss informed Zade that the captain wanted to see him. As Jorloss got up to leave he tossed his tray in what appeared to be a bottomless trashcan and Zade followed suit.

  Shadowed by his robot chaperone Zade left the galley following Jorloss’ directions towards the command deck. After hanging a left and heading towards the command deck at the front of the ship Zade noticed the environment change. The galley, common area, and quarters all seemed to have some attempt at creature comfort included in their design. Once Zade left the berthing area the ship took on a very utilitarian functional aura. The corridor he was traveling in had just enough light to safely navigate it. The walls were barren metal with the occasional door, and the floor was just a grate with miles of cable running under it. If he didn’t know any better Zade could have mistook this place for a submarine or the deep interior of a ship. The hall ended at a short staircase. Zade climbed the six stairs and entered the command deck. Upon entering he was awestruck, the view was amazing.

  The leading edge of the V shaped command deck from floor up was a panoramic view of the space surrounding the ship. Millions of stars from white to deep red were scattered against a perfectly black backdrop. To the left side of the command deck a gigantic, twisting, green and orange gas cloud sprawled past the bounds of the windows. To the right, hopefully at a safe distance, a quasar extended cutting space itself in half with perfect purple line as long as the eye could see.

  “Amazing isn’t it?” Samix asked from somewhere to the left of Zade.

  Unable to respond for a bit, Zade finally managed a, “Yes.”

  Prying his eyes from the space outside the ship, Zade scanned the command deck. Zade had entered at the back right corner of command deck, which was roughly shaped like a triangle, point forward. The back wall was covered in monitors and different system readouts. In the center of the back wall sat Samix in what Zade suspected was the captain’s chair, as it was the only chair on the elevated platform that covered the back quarter of the command space. Just behind the left shoulder of the captain’s chair there was a man size indentation in the wall, which housed what Zade expected was another one of the SSILF similar to the one currently shadowing him. Forward of the captain’s chair, on the lower level of the command deck were four work stations set two by two and slightly canted towards the center of the room. Zade looked from Samix to the windows and back, again and again.

  “You can sit at one of the workstations if you’d like. We have time before we start landing procedures.” Samix offered.

  “O-Ok.” Was all Zade could manage.

  Without removing his eyes from the view, Zade moved toward the closest workstation to sit. Just as he got to it, Samix locked out the screens and controls. Zade sat engrossed by the view for what, to him, could have been seconds or days. The magnitude of his situation finely firmly settling on his conscious. Every scifi book he had read, like the Ian Cormak series, every game like Freelancer he played, every movie he watched, Zade was living all of them right now.

  “Captain Zade…Captain Zade…Captain Zade!” Samix’s said finally breaking Zade’s reverie. “You need to get up, I am leaving the command deck for some sloop.”

  “Come on, you guys have the dog and pony bullshit in space too? Where everyone needs to stop what they’re doing to stand and salute when the captain leaves the room.”

  “No. What? No, you just have to stand up and leave. I’m going to get a cup of sloop and I don’t want you up here when I am not around.”

  As Zade stood to leave he could almost make out the system they were going to. One star was moving independently across the starscape, a behavior known as parallax displacement, which meant that it was significantly closer to the ship than the other stars. As Zade followed Samix out of the command deck, towards the galley, he tried to figure out how he was going to word his question to her. He needed her to say yes. Samix turned right, into the galley heading straight for the sloop. After grabbing a clean mug and the pot, she headed to one of the chairs in the common area. Both the galley and common area were deserted, Jorloss must be in the medical bay working. Zade grabbed a cup and took the seat next to her. After filling both mugs Samix sat back and began gingerly sipping on the drink. Zade on the other hand, forgetting how hot the drink was, pulled down a big gulp, immediately regretting his choice.

  “I’m guessing Jorloss talked you into drinking sloop instead of your local drink of choice?” Samix asked.

  “Yea, said that the machine couldn’t make my drink, coffee, correctly so I might as well start on sloop.”

  “Sounds like him. Sloop is one of the only goods that we actually carry on this ship. We have enough in the cargo hold to last us forever.”

  “Look Samix, I have to ask you something. I know I’m essentially just a stowaway on this ship, destined to be tossed back on my planet as soon as you get the chance, so is there any way that I can go planet side when we land for repairs? I would be the first of my species to set foot on a planet other than Earth.”

  After a minute of contemplation Samix said, “I don’t see why not, as long as you stay out of our way. It’s good you asked now, you need to go to the medical bay to get another nanite treatment before you head down the ramp, and we are almost too close for the nanites to complete before we land. It will protect you from some of the poisonous plants’ native to the planet. After we land all you have to do is meet us in the cargo bay. From there we will suit up and head out.”

  “Awesome, I can head to the med bay right now, how do I get there?”

  “Didn’t Jorloss tell you how to get around the ship? Every screen on this ship, unless being used for something else, will bring up a map with a marker for your location if you touch it.”

  Slamming the rest of his sloop Zade thanked Samix and headed towards his quarters, wanting to bring up the map by
his room so he could see how to get to the med bay and how he could get to the cargo bay, expecting that he would be in his quarters sleeping off the nanite treatment when the ship started it’s decent.

  A cursory glance showed that the ship’s main fuselage was disk shaped with a triangular protrusion at the front, and a rectangular rear section. The ship was divided into three different levels. The sublevel had all of the machinery and engines in it. This is where the material reclamation systems were located. The first level consisted of four lab spaces all roughly the same size. From a top down view of the ship; the front left was labeled anthropology lab, front right was the biology lab, rear left was the resources and terraforming lab, and rear right was the robotics and fabrication lab. The rear labs had rolling doors that connected them to the cargo bay which occupied the rectangular rear section of the ship. The doors made sense since, in every space book Zade had ever read, both terraforming and robotics could require or produce equipment that was too large to fit through a standard man door. Anthropology and biology on the other hand could survive without access to the cargo bay.

  The second floor of the ship appeared to be split right down the middle from front to back. The protrusion on the front of the ship was the command deck which Zade had already become acquainted with. The left side of the ship appeared to be billeting. Immediately to the rear of the command deck on the left side was the captain’s quarters. Lazily following the outer arc of the ship there were five smaller crew quarters. The space between the interior of the crew quarters and the centerline of the ship was occupied by the galley and common area. On the right side of the second deck directly opposite the captain’s quarters was the forward staircase and the medical bay, where Zade had first been introduced to the ship. Just behind the medical bay there were four offices, corresponding to the four labs and the four scientists onboard. Separated from the offices by a short hallway running left to right there was a meeting room and the storage room for the communications, navigation, and probe systems. The cargo bay was two stories to accommodate large equipment, so like the first deck the rear rectangular section of the second deck was occupied by the cargo bay. The cargo bay also housed the rear staircase which ran down the inside of the interior wall.