The Progenitor (5) Cetuc turned to regard the Commander but said nothing. Yernej and Vezisk remained silent, intently studying their monitors. The silence stretched on for several moments before Rekex decided to break it. HE punched in a sequence on his console and when the image of a junior-grade shuttle pilot appeared, he began issuing orders. “Shuttle pilot, prepare to launch a shuttle to the planet’s surface.” “Yes, Sir,” the pilot stiffened to attention. “Have the necessary checks completed in the next five intervals. Your passengers will meet you there. Launch as soon as possible.” Rekex disengaged the communicator before the pilot could respond. “Rekex to Security,” the Commander barked after entering another sequence into his key pad. “Security here, Sir,” a female Security officer appeared on the screen. “Assemble a team for retrieval. Meet shuttle pilot Menes in the shuttle hangar in five intervals.” “Yes, Sir,” the flush of excitement was evident in her ridges as she signed off. “Now, we wait and see what they find before we decide how to proceed.” Rekex sat back in his chair, attempting to affect an attitude of confidence despite the fact that he feared the worst had happened to his officers. He hoped sending another shuttle would not prove as disastrous as the first was becoming. He gazed at the imager and was about to order Cetuc to lower the sensors’ intensity when he saw a great cloud of dust rise up around the shuttle as it engaged its thrusters. Rekex hastily keyed the sequence to the shuttle hangar and informed the pilot to postpone his preparations. He repeated the process with the Security personnel. As the female Security officer’s disappointed features disappeared, he addressed Cetuc. “Hail the shuttle!” He made no effort to conceal the relief and surprise he was experiencing. For his part, Cetuc attempted to hail the shuttle as ordered, his visage calm as if this was nothing more than ordinary. Rekex felt a momentary pang of resentment as he watched the helmsman placidly do his duty. He pushed it aside just as quickly as it had appeared however. He should appreciate having such disciplined officers. “No response, Sir.” “What?” Rekex thought he had heard incorrectly. “No response, Sir,” Cetuc repeated. Rekex stood and walked over to stand behind Cetuc. “How can that be? There has to be someone aboard the shuttle in order for it to launch!” “Perhaps the communicator is malfunctioning, Sir. My sensors indicate the signal is being received.” Yernej informed him. “Continue to make contact, Cetuc.” True concern evident in his voice, Rekex fell silent, glaring at the image of the shuttle rising from the planet’s surface toward the thin atmosphere. What is happening to my officers? he wondered. Why are they not responding? And where have they been? “In contact with the Progenitor, I assume.” Cetuc answered. “Excuse me?” Rekex demanded. “I assume they have been in contact with the Progenitor. That would explain why they had not responded to our hails.” “How did you . . .?” “Know you were thinking that? Simply put, I heard your thoughts. We all did.” Cetuc gestured to the other members of the command crew. They all indicated their agreement by placing a clawed forefinger to the side of their craniums. Rekex stood gaping at them, uncertain how to respond. With anger? Disbelief? Confusion? All of them? He was must certainly experiencing each of these emotions at present. “Do not be angry, Commander. It is nothing you have done incorrectly. You have performed your duty admirably given the circumstances.” Cetuc, Yernej and Vezisk were speaking in unison, their voices an eerie chorus. “You simply do not understand what you have found.” His instinct was to scold them for their lack of respect for his rank. He decided that was foolish, however, given the extraordinary circumstances. Instead, he faced Cetuc, who seemed to be the spokesperson for the trio. “What have I found, Cetuc? Can you explain it to me?” “No. Thenesh will when he returns.” He began to return to his duties but stopped in mid-turn. Over his shoulder he said, in three voices: “We mean no disrespect, Commander. It is no longer important to recognize a chain of command, though. All are equal.” “Now wait a minute!” Rekex roared. “I am still the Commander of this ship! And as long as I am in command, you will respect the chain of command!” Before he could say any more, the portal on the starboard side of the Command Deck irised open and Technician Hekten stepped through. She walked up to Rekex. “Do not concern yourself, Commander. All will be well. You will see. The Progenitor will be aboard soon and you will understand everything.” Before he knew what she was doing, Rekex felt an injector pressed against his neck ridge, felt the numbing cold of a compound enter his blood stream. He staggered away from her, suddenly feeling disoriented. He made it three steps before his vision faded, replaced by darkness. He never felt his body hit the deck plating. After Hekten sedated Rekex, the command crew turned to the watch the events on the imager. The shuttle was rising into the sky, it thrusters laboring to remove the Progenitor from its resting place. As they watched, the grappling tethers pulled taut, the peak in the center of the crater’s bowl began to lift and crack, separating to allow the Progenitor’s removal. It emerged into the light of day, the millennia of sediment sloughing off in cascading waves, to reveal a dark cylinder approximately one and a half times the size of the shuttle. A series of fluorescent green bands of light scored its surface at evenly spaced intervals. Once it freed the Progenitor, the shuttle quickly rose into the planet’s atmosphere, seeming not to be burdened at all by its ancient cargo. The capsule dangled at the end of the tethers, swaying back in forth in a lazy arc as the shuttle gained altitude. Resistance increased as the shuttle entered the atmosphere and began its climb first through the various layers of the atmosphere. Prior to breaking through the thermosphere, the turbulence pulled at the capsule, threatening to rip it from its tethers. They held, however, and the shuttle, its cargo intact, emerged soon afterward. Ó Menes piloted the shuttle Kermza that met the Zatezra as it made its final approach to the Cadtuz. It maneuvered itself in a long, looping arc that brought it parallel to the Zatezra. Menes, having programmed the shuttle prior to launch, watched as the Kermza’s tethers snaked out from its underside and latched onto the capsule, sharing the load with the Zatezra. Together, the shuttles guided the Progenitor to the aft cargo bay doors and lowered it gingerly into the cradle that had been prepared for its arrival. Rekex had regained consciousness shortly after both shuttles docked in the hangar. The first thought that raced through his mind was: Mutiny! His crew had mutinied and his ship was now in the hands of mutineers. As the fog of the sedative slowly receded from his mind, his vision began to return. Hazy shapes and muted colors filled his sight. He could feel that his hands were bound to the arms of a chair – his chair – and his feet were lashed together. His appendages ached as if he had been in that position for too long. Hoping to take his mind off the pain, he glanced around him, hoping his muddy vision would light on something familiar, anything to provide a clue as to where he was. The shapes around him remained fuzzy, however. He blinked several times in hopes of speeding its return. He opened his eyes after the last furious blink and could vaguely make out three indistinct forms, the right height and mass to be crewmembers, arrayed before him. “What do you plan to do with me, now?” he asked the blurred figures. “We do not intend to harm you, Commander. Nor do we wish to possess your ship. We wish only to help you.” They spoke in that odd chorus that had so disturbed him when he first heard it. He recognized Cetuc’s voice in the mix, and what may have been Hekten. He could not be certain, though. “Then free me,” he demanded. “We cannot do that, Commander.” “Why not?” Rekex was growing agitated with the situation. These were supposed to be his subordinates, his crew. Why were they opposed to him now? Had his command been so unbearable as to warrant mutiny? Despite what they said, their actions marked them as mutineers. “Thenesh will explain, we are not your enemies, nor are we your subordinates,” the chorus intoned. “We are more.” Ó By the time Zechor and Thenesh emerged through the starboard portal, Rekex was in a state of near apoplexy. The three crewmembers with whom he had spoken steadfastly refused to untie him, refused to answer his inquiries about their reasoning. They insisted he wait for Thenesh to arrive and all would be revealed. His vision had returned. At least the shapes were now distinct and the colors appeared as they should, but he doubted his eyesight was completely restored. The command crew appeared warped somehow, their features distorted. He had been attempting to discern if it was a trick of the sedative, a lingering effect that would wear off eventually, when the sound of portal’s iris twisting open drew his attention away from them. Thenesh and Zechor emerged onto the command deck and he knew his eyes had not been deceiving him. His officers were changed. Their head ridges were more pronounced, sharper and thicker, their neck ridges had thickened also. The plates adorning their heads, chests and shoulders were sleeker, nearly seamless, as if they had been pressed deep into the hide below, and their muzzles were shorter, blunter. As they strode across the deck toward him he noticed their legs were longer, less bowed so that they walked with a more upright posture. Dangling at their sides, their arms were longer as well, and thinner, the four fingers on their hands slender and clawless. The changes that surprised Rekex the most, however, were the placement of their eyes. No longer set on either side of their craniums slightly forward of their plates, their eyes were facing forward, surrounded by a curved ridge of plating. The effect was quite disconcerting to Rekex, though he instinctively knew this new configuration would provide for better depth perception. As for the other changes, they were designed to increase speed by reducing wind-resistance. Thenesh came to stand before him, Zechor at his side, allowing Rekex to study the changes in more detail. Despite the shock of seeing them, he had to admit the alterations were improvements. He saw that what he had taken previously as an increase in the head ridge’s size was in fact an increase in the overall cranial capacity, the ridges having been pushed further up the brow slope. The plates had stretched, becoming thinner is response to the added cranial size. What could possibly have altered them so much in such a short time? And what did it mean for the rest of the crew of the Cadtuz? “What it means is an advance in our ability to improve ourselves,” Thenesh spoke, his voice a multilayered orchestra of sounds. “What has allowed this to be is the Progenitor.” “The Progenitor? The object on the Human planet?” “Yes. The Progenitor has improved us. It will improve all Serenthi as it has improved us. All Serenthi will know what we know, will see what we see.” “And what do you see, Thenesh?” Rekex asked. “Do you see a crew that has mutinied against their Commander? Do you see the chain of command being usurped? Do you agree with these measures?” He made no effort to control the rage that building within him. His voice took on a hard edge he hoped would convey the seriousness of the situation to those around him. Thenesh simply looked at him. Rekex could see they had been altered as well – the pupils bifurcated, the irises a shimmering green-gold. The expression in his Science Officer’s eyes was compassionate loathing. When he spoke, however, the cacophony of voices belied none of his emotions. “I see a being too afraid of change to see the wonderful opportunity before him. “The Serenthi are chosen,” he continued. “The Progenitor has chosen us to bestow its gift upon. The Humans were unworthy, unable to accept the gift. When the Progenitor awoke, it searched for a mind into which it could place its knowledge. They were unable to comprehend. Their technology had advanced at an incredible pace, their scientific expertise enhancing their lives and enriching their enthusiasm. It did nothing for their spirits, though. They remained immature. While their society progressed, their egos remained unbidden. “The Progenitor searched for a kernel of enlightenment, and when it found none, it knew it had no choice but to begin again. It had waited for so long. Waited to find a planet where it could begin its experiment. I found this one. Its entrance into this world eradicated the laconic, brutish beasts inhabiting the surface, making way for the vibrant life that waited for a chance to thrive. Once it set them on the right path, it slept, waiting for the time when they were ready to take the next step, to become something more, something greater. This stage took many thousands of millennia to complete. When it awoke, it took the primitive beings that had evolved from that earlier life and provided them with the next component they would need to continue their ascent. “They accepted this gift eagerly, embraced it and appreciated it. Satisfied that its work was proceeding as designed, it slept. And waited for the time when it would be needed again. That time was thirty-five solar years ago. But this time, as it came to realize that the minds that would accept its gift were unable to comprehend it, when it realized what those earlier beings had become, it was disappointed to learn it had spurned its gift, refusing to accept it and allow it to nurture them. They fought amongst themselves, claiming petty prizes and fuming over ridiculous slights. It had learned nothing since the last time it awoke.” Thenesh stopped, watching Rekex as he struggled to understand what he was being told. The Humans were an experiment gone awry. This Progenitor was the catalyst that allowed them to evolve. It had destroyed the reptilian life that had once dominated the world and allowed the mammalian life forms to prosper. That had been the flaw in its plan. Now, it had the opportunity to correct that flaw. As that realization dawned on him, Rekex looked into Thenesh’s eyes, the light of truth shining like a star from within them. Thenesh’s mouth curled upward at the corners in an odd gesture Rekex did not immediately understand. “You see the truth, do you not?” It was a statement more than a question. “I do.” “The Progenitor has chosen us. We are to receive its gift.” The conviction with which Thenesh spoke made Rekex realize that his words were true. He could feel the effects of this gift beginning to work on him as well. He understood that he was becoming like the others. Their undisciplined behavior no longer troubled him, no longer caused him to fear for his position. He could see the shape of the Progenitor’s design and knew the concepts of rank and position were artificial constructs and wholly unnecessary. He accepted the knowledge being imparted to him. In his mind’s eye, he could see how much he had been altered in appearance. “All Serenthi will welcome its gift,” Thenesh declared, his many voices ringing out as he bent to undo the tubing securing Rekex to his chair. “Will you accept its gift, Rekex?” The use of his name rather than his title did not even register as he regarded his former subordinate. “Yes, I will accept its gift,” he said. Then, his voice infused with the voices of those around him, he stated: “All of Serenthii will come to accept it.” He smiled as his bonds were removed at last.
Copyright © 2006 W N Dayley |