Arrival Read online

  “Do you think we’ll spot the Red Angel, Daddy?” Miela asked. “She works at the hospital in our cube. I’ve only seen her on the screen.”

  Pamas had seen the woman who went by the moniker Red Angel, an empath changer who could not only sense emotions from others, but also read thoughts. Rumor had it that she and her sister, who possessed the ability to see the future, had stowed away aboard Pathfinder despite every precaution the engineers and authorities responsible for the Exodus mission had taken. Strangely enough, President Tylio trusted both changers and credited them for saving the ship and a multitude of lives on several occasions.

  Toggion answered his daughter. “I don’t know, sweetie.

  She might be working, or assisting the president. You know she does that.”

  “I just want to see her. Just once.” The little girl looked around them, obviously hoping against odds to see the famous and revered changer.

  A loud humming noise permeated the large hall inside the hatches. An automated, metallic-sounding voice came over the speakers. “People of cube eleven. Form lines and keep together with family members. Move in an orderly fashion. Anyone cutting in line will be pulled aside and made to wait until last. You will be greeted and scanned as you reach the gates. Keep moving, and do not stall the lines by asking redundant questions. Everything each of you needs to know will be given to you when required. Welcome to Gemocon, your new home. Go in heavenly splendor.”

  Pamas swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat. She wanted to push herself to the front of the line, get off this ship, and make her way out into the fresh air.

  Suddenly the vast cube felt constricting and as if it were about to pull her back in. A lot of people would keep residing in here to keep the hospitals going. If she had been one of them, she would have escaped and gone into the wilderness despite potential dangers.

  The line moved fast enough to keep people who felt like Pamas in check, but not so fast the greeters at the gate didn’t have time to do their job. Men and women from the advance team stood there smiling broadly as they scanned them and gave initial information. Pamas ended up in the far-right line and found herself looking down at a stunningly beautiful woman. Large, black curls framed a triangular face, and her blue-violet irises told of her Gemosian descent. Her lips were full and curvy, her nose narrow and slightly upturned, giving her an impish expression. A nametag on her uniform gave her name: Darmiya Do Voy.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Darmiya Do Voy stood at gate eleven, ready to greet the passengers as they disembarked cube eleven. It had been a majestic view when the enormous cube broke through the light clouds, still emanating heat and scorching the ground as it touched down. As soon as it was cool enough for the crews to approach, a steady stream of men and women rushed forward to attach hoses and vents required to sustain life support within the cube now that it was no longer traveling through space at an unimaginable speed.

  Now, twenty hours later, it was time to greet the ones leaving the cube and guide them toward their habitats or tents. Habitats were mainly for families with young children, the elderly, or others with special circumstances. The rest would stay in tents until they had chosen whether to reside in any of the denser populated areas or the countryside.

  Darmiya hadn’t slept many hours during the last three nights, going over checklists and trying to anticipate any potential mishaps. Now she was standing here at the opening to the long corridor that would take the new inhabitants farther into the part of Gemocon’s future capital that held provisional housing. Darmiya had meant to greet the newcomers with her usual exuberant self, but now all she wanted was to return to her own habitat and go to bed.

  She didn’t used to succumb to exhaustion like this, but the last year had been insanely busy. A lot of the medical issues and planning had weighed heavily on her. Her best friend Spinner, the commander of the air group for the advance team, claimed Darmiya would be back to her old self as soon as Pathfinder had arrived and the responsibility didn’t solely lie on the advance team. Not only that, Darmiya and Calagan would have some 100,000 of their fellow Gemosians and not feel like they were so outnumbered.

  Darmiya didn’t feel outnumbered. That wasn’t it. And besides, these two people had agreed to merge and refer to themselves as Gemoconians. She didn’t want to seem overly dramatic, but she doubted the arrival of Pathfinder would solve everything for her in an instant. Yet she also didn’t think it was right to bother Spinner and her wife with her fears. They had so much on their plate, currently standing in for President Tylio until she arrived. Darmiya wasn’t sure it was the hard work, not entirely anyway, which was good, since she did realize if they had worked hard before the Exodus ship arrived, their duties would only increase once the cubes landed. Her mood swings and bouts of depression were something…something else. She couldn’t pinpoint the problem herself.

  The hissing sound of the metal walkway extending from the open hatch to cube eleven drew her attention from her inner musings. People began milling out in single file through the walkway. Some of the engineers had suggested they should construct totally closed arms from the cubes to the gates, but Darmiya had fought, and won, for building them without a roof. “Don’t you think they’ve longed to see the sky? They’ve just spent more than two years in space without the types of shore leaves we had. Even if our pit stops were dangerous, some of us stepped on solid ground and breathed air. We will have much less stress and discontent if the walkways don’t have roofs.” She had glared around the conference table, seeing Spinner and her wife, Admiral Dael Caydoc, nodding to themselves. Some idiot had objected by saying, “But what if it rains?” Only Dael’s intervention had stopped Darmiya from igniting on all fuses.

  Dael put a hand on Darmiya’s shoulder and turned to the engineer in question. “If it rains, Lieutenant, they’ll get wet.”

  Now, Darmiya readied herself, holding the tablet steadily.

  She didn’t have to fake any smiles yet today, which was a blessing.

  Nodding encouragingly toward a family of five as they walked down the corridor from the gate toward the small hover vehicles that would take them to their provisional habitat, Darmiya then turned her attention to the next on the list.

  “Pamas Dagellion?” Darmiya glanced up at the slender, tall woman before her. It was hard to miss the stark appearance of an eyepatch, but she disregarded it and merely repeated the name and smiled questioningly.

  Pamas Dagellion didn’t reciprocate but nodded briskly, and Darmiya could have sworn that the woman went from a military “attention” to an “at ease” stance, hands behind her back.

  “Yes.” The woman extended her right hand for Darmiya to initiate the identification procedure. Pamas Dagellion kept her one good eye on her, which made Darmiya’s cheeks grow warmer. When she had performed the retinal scan of Pamas Dagellion’s right eye, she read the results and nodded affirmatively. “Excellent. Now, according to my list here, you are to take the left corridor and exit toward the settlement area down by the lake. You will find it consists of tents and habitats. Yours is tent 14-DG. The orientation board at the entrance is quite self-explanatory. You will find guards and personnel to assist you if you require help. Do you have any questions?” Still following the script, Darmiya didn’t really expect the woman before her to have any special queries.

  “Yes. Where can I find the military headquarters?” Pamas asked. “It’s important.”

  “I see.” Darmiya really didn’t see, but the advance team’s counselor had trained her how to address eager new arrivals. “You will find everything you need to know on the orientation boards by the entrance to your quarters.

  Everything is easily downloadable into your tablet for convenience—”

  “No, Ms. Do Voy. You don’t understand. This is quite urgent.” Pamas glared at Darmiya and clearly tried to keep a civil tone. This was something she was supposed to note on her passenger roster, but Darmiya decided to give the woman some slack. The eyepatch
combined with the paled scars on her face awoke sympathy in her. The juxtaposition between that and Pamas’s pale-blue eye was mesmerizing.

  “It’s Doctor Do Voy.” Darmiya sensed that she would lose the other woman’s interest if she didn’t remain firm. Pamas Dagellion didn’t appear to suffer fools or weak personalities easily. “No new arrivals are allowed to wander outside the provisional camps until everyone is ashore and accounted for. Once everyone is assigned accommodations, passes will be handed out—your new identity documents.”

  “That is just it,” Pamas said, and now Darmiya could tell others were starting to object about having to wait behind the stubborn woman. “I need to go to the military headquarters for that reason. It is very important. Very.”

  Darmiya was uncertain what to do. She could insist on Pamas following the rules, but she had a hunch this woman would do as she pleased and find her way to headquarters no matter what—and surely that would make everything Darmiya’s fault for not being clear enough.

  “Hey. How long is this going to take? I have three kids back here getting restless,” a woman called out from the line behind Pamas, who merely looked at Darmiya below raised eyebrows. She was obviously not going to back down.

  “All right. Let’s do it this way, even if it’s not by the book.

  You go ahead and settle into your new lodgings. Then, once my shift is over, I’ll come and get you and walk you over to the military headquarters. It’s a bit of a hike, but we have very few hovercars operational at this point, and we can’t spare any.”

  “Thank you. I have no problems going on foot. I’ll get out of your way unless I need to know something else.”

  “No. That’s it. Once again, welcome to Gemocon. I hope your tent will be to your satisfaction for now, Ms. Dagellion.”

  Pamas nodded and began walking down the corridor behind Darmiya, who shook her head. What was it about this woman that got under her skin? She had hoped something or someone would come along that could pierce the armor of indifference and dullness that engulfed her every day, but she hadn’t counted on it being a prickly, persistent woman who looked like she’d endured torture at one point.

  Going through the motions with the remaining people, one after another, Darmiya smiled and gave the correct information while on autopilot. She really was happy that the Exodus ship, with all its twenty individual cubes, had made it to Gemocon. This was the entire reason for the dangerous journey they had all undertaken, first the advance team and then the 2,100, 000 people aboard Pathfinder.

  Darmiya’s communicator buzzed, and then she recognized retired Fleet Admiral Helden Caydoc’s voice.

  “Admiral Helden Caydoc to Darmiya Do Voy.”

  Darmiya tapped her lapel to answer. She had never used to wear an Oconodian uniform, consisting of a gray coverall with a thin flak vest over it, but now it had become a necessity when working toward receiving their people.

  When someone wore a uniform, it was easy to identify the other person’s branch and profession. Darmiya was on the medical and scientific side together with her brother Calagan. The woman paging her was Dael’s esteemed grandmother, and even if she was officially retired, she was the highest-ranking active military officer among the advance team. “Darmiya here, Admiral. What can I do for you?”

  “We have a bit of a situation, and you are among the ones that needs to be briefed. Dael has put me in charge of getting the right group together, Advance team and

  Pathfinder crew alike. Report to headquarters at 20:00

  hours.”

  Checking her timepiece, Darmiya calculated quickly that she might just about make it after walking Pamas Dagellion to headquarters. She would have to order some military police to escort the other woman back, but it wasn’t undoable.

  “Count me in, Admiral. Will Calagan be there too?”

  “Of course. Caydoc out.”

  Darmiya frowned as she scanned the next person in line.

  Helden was rarely anything but direct, but even so, she was never this abrupt. What could be so amiss that it required her to slip back into her role as fleet admiral?

  * * *

  Pamas followed the winding corridor, now under a roof again for a few hundred meters. Guided by the signs, she made two turns and then stepped outside. She moved out of the way of the people walking behind her and took in the view. In the far distance, tall mountains rose through the layer of clouds hovering above them. It looked like there might be snow or ice toward the top, and the scene was achingly familiar compared to Oconodos’s northern hemisphere. Closer, a vast forest stretched along the horizon, and in front of it lay something resembling the grassy prairie she had hiked across as a young cadet. The area just before her looked like the perfect area to receive the Gemoconian population. Flat, but with beautiful hills to the…gazing up to the two suns above them, Pamas estimated she was looking due north. Slowly she inhaled the crisp air, feeling quite dizzy from its sweet scent. Were flowers nearby emanating this scent, or was it like this everywhere on the planet?

  She headed toward the area of habitats and tents where she would reside until the next step of colonization. The area was indeed located by an idyllic lake and was the one

  closest to cube eleven. Looking back over her shoulder, she was stunned at how enormous the cube was, seen from her current perspective. In the vastness of intergalactic space, each cube hadn’t seemed as big, but now it towered 580

  meters over what would become the capital, together with cubes one and three. Cube one held the Caydoc Park and all the governmental buildings, universities, and, so far, the residential area for their political leaders. Cube three mainly consisted of the engineering area. It would be entirely dismantled and converted into providing the capital and surrounding towns with much-needed power and computer systems.

  On her walk along the gravel path toward the village of tents and habitats, which seemed to wrap around the entire lake, Pamas let her thoughts stray to how the military would receive her once she had revealed her identity. Would they welcome her back into the fold? Would she truly want to go back on active duty? A lot had to have changed while she was held in a bunker in one jungle more mosquito-infested than the other. Her knowledge was outdated, to say the least. Apart from the two changers that had snuck aboard Pathfinder, the sisters, nobody could use her extensive knowledge about malevolent changers. They were all back on Oconodos.

  The orientation board consisted of a six-meter-wide rectangular panel with people standing in line for any of the eight palm sensors available for registration. Pamas hoped they weren’t expected to use one each time they came and went. That was a bit more surveillance than she was prepared to allow. After all, getting away from the changers that had held her captive and finding her kids were the only reasons Pamas was here. If Pherry and Aniwyn rejected her, she would purchase what she required and go off into the wilderness. Having made do on practically nothing in the jungle had prepared her in ways she never would have guessed before she was taken.

  Pamas placed her hand into the indentation when it was her turn at the orientation board. She also placed one of her large tablets into a connection slot. A purple light ran along her palm, and she hoped it would be forgiving enough and recalculate her palm and fingerprints despite the scars interrupting the sweeping lines. The scanner gave a muted beep, and a dotted line appeared on the map of the paths among the tents and habitats. Her tent was at the far end of a small peninsula that extended to the center of the lake.

  Not bad for tent real estate. Back on Oconodos, such a lot, no matter how small, would be worth a fortune. She had lived in a regular neighborhood as a child and only moved into a posh district when she married the man she thought she would love forever. When the much-older Gexter Seclan made general, she concluded that the price of trying to stay in the marriage was hurting her, but worse than that, it was damaging her children. She had come so close to leaving him together with Aniwyn and Pherry. Just one more day and

  —
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  “Finding it hard to read the map, dear?” a kind voice said behind her, making Pamas wince and step aside.

  “No, thank you. I’m fine. Excuse me.” Grabbing her tablet, she nodded at the elderly man, hoisted her backpack, and hurried along the well-marked paths among the dwellings to her tent. The tents came in two different sizes, as did the habitats made from nylon-infused aluminum. Pamas wondered if the advance team had stored all of them or had brought some manufacturing equipment with them.

  Reaching her tent, she once again pressed her palm against a sensor near the fastening of the tent flap. It buzzed and released its locking mechanism. Pushing the flap aside, Pamas stepped inside.

  The tent boasted a real floor, which was a relief. She had had her fill of sleeping on the ground in the jungle or on raw concrete in the bunkers. Seeing the single bed, the blankets,

  pillow, and sheets folded at the foot of it made her smile.

  She spotted a simple faucet by a shelf holding a small sink, but nothing resembling a bathroom. A quick glance at the information on her tablet showed that those in single and double tents were supposed to use the common areas that provided bathrooms, aqua showers, cooking possibilities, and recreational areas. Pamas doubted she would spend much time in the latter. The closest facility was only two paths away, which was a relief.

  As for her tent, a small seating area with a table and two stools sat next to a rack holding enough space for clothes and personal items. Those who had accumulated a multitude of things aboard the cubes would have to store their belongings outdoors. Pamas traveled very lightly, for obvious reasons, having constantly been on the move after her escape. The habit was hard to shake. She glanced around her new, albeit temporary, home. The whole briefness of this arrangement was perfect at this point. The wilderness was still on the table, should her attempts at redemption where her children were concerned fail miserably. She tried to shake the gloom from her mind, but it was difficult. She had remained aloof and endured the loneliness that had been her existence all through her captivity and afterward. Would life on Gemocon be different?