While Making Other Plans:
Chapter 27

  The door to the room where Maggie was being kept melted away, and Margaret stood in the doorway.  She was quiet for a time as she watched Kathryn and Jaren gently stroke her hair and hold her hand as she lay unconscious.  They were too absorbed in their concern to notice her entrance.

  “How is she?” Margaret asked as she entered the room and the door rematerialized behind her.  “Any change?”

  “She’s almost woken up a few times,” Jaren softly answered, obvious that he’d been crying.  “She mutters sleepily but we can’t make out what she’s saying.  She seems to be coming out of it, it’s just taking a long time.”

  “And how are you two holding up?” she asked as she put her remaining hand on Margaret’s shoulder.  

  Kathryn reached up and wrapped her arm around Margaret’s waist without looking up.  “I’m fine Molly, I just… I just want her to wake up,” she said as she wiped a tear away from her eye with her other hand.

  The girl’s eyes opened slightly, then widened a bit more when she understood she was seeing her parents.  She blinked several times, her eyes remaining narrow as she adjusted to the light.  “Mom?  Dad?”

  “It’s us sweetie, we’re here, you’re safe.  It’s over.”  She turned to Margaret.  “How could they do this to a child?”

  “Fourteen… not a child…” she reflexively insisted as she tried to sit up but fell back down when she discovered she didn’t yet have the strength.  Kathryn leaned over to hug her where she lay.  “Take your time, you’re still woozy.”

  

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  Not long after, when Maggie had fully recovered and when their ship was halfway back from the star portal to the Bobbin’s home world, she sat in a chair drawn out of the floor material with a blanket wrapped around her.  Food and drink the Bobbins could provide were hit and miss to the human palette, but from the available options Jaren had managed to find a hot drink which was sweet and of a flavour which was unidentifiable but not on the whole unpleasant.

  Kathryn, Jaren, Patricia, and Margaret all sat in front of the girl as she took her first few sips and composed herself to recount what had happened to her.  Kathryn couldn’t help but notice the change in her demeanour, the way she pulled her knees up to her chest and trembled off an on.  The boisterously curious and confident daughter she’d known, apparently gone at least for now.  Bill entered the room and Maggie jumped in startle and spilled her drink a little on the blanket she’d wrapped around herself.  She’d never been prone to jumpiness before.  Kathryn realized as she looked at him that the only Bobbins her daughter had seen so far had been her captors.

  “Bill is a friend, sweetie.  I promise.  The ones who took you are his sworn enemy.  He’s the only reason we were able to rescue you.”  She nodded her understanding but kept a close eye on him.  Her eyes quickly darting back to him at the slightest movement from him, keeping his mirror ball a gold mixture of yellow projected friendliness and brown sympathy.

  “I…” she started, then sat up straighter trying to compose herself before continuing.  “I was in my suite on New Horizon when they attacked our ship.  I heard the general alarm sound, but… I didn’t pay much attention to it,” she shrugged.  “It wasn’t the first time, and there was nothing I was supposed to do but stay where I was.  A few minutes later a circle on the wall started glowing bright orange and yellow, then it melted away and slagged on the ground.  Three aliens like… like that one,” she sheepishly pointed at Bill without meeting any of his eyes, “they captured me.  They threw a ball of that…” she looked down at the chair she was sitting on and tapped at it, “this dark material, they shot some at me with some kind of gun, and when it hit me it spread out and covered my whole body.  When it hit my face, I was sure I would suffocate under it, but somehow I was able to breathe normally.  I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t feel being moved or anything…” a distant look came over her eyes.  “I have no idea how long I was just stuck like that, it… it was horrible.  I’ve never felt so…

  The girl awkwardly shifted in her seat again, but this time avoided spilling any of her drink, and taking a couple more sips before continuing.  “Helpless,” she finally admitted.  “I was scared.  Being… entombed like that, I’ve never been so scared in my whole life, so… utterly helpless.”  The distant look came over her again, and it filled Kathryn with an anger she did her best to suppress for the moment.

  “Anyways… when they finally pulled the material pulled away from me again, it all flowed back to my chest and left again as a ball.  It floated back to the wall and was absorbed into it, it was so strange…”  She seemed to reflect for a moment on how strange it had been to see such alien technology at work.  “I realized that the entire room was made of the same dark material as the ball which had covered me.”  She looked around her.  “Like this room.”  Kathryn squeezed her hand and nodded.  “Anyways, right after that I felt a warmth all over my body.  My vision went bright white and then everything went dark as I was knocked out again.”

  “Wand stun?” Kathryn turned to ask Bill.

  His mirror ball turned a more solid brown as he nodded.  “Not necessarily an actual wand, but yes.”

  “Who is he again?” Maggie asked uncomfortably.

  “A friend,” Kathryn insisted.  “It’s a long story but their species is in a civil war and their side are the good guys.  I’ll tell you all about them and what we’ve been up to after we hear your own story, okay?”

  “Whatever,” the girl shrugged, now seeming uncomfortable for some reason and more reluctant to continue but shook her head to herself and she pushed through.

  “Anyways, when I woke up again…” her eyes darted across every face in the room as though she were trying to reassure herself that it really was okay to speak openly about what she had to recount next.  “When I woke up I was tied to a table.  Naked.  Like… spread eagle.  My hands and feet were restrained, and I couldn’t move.  There was a bright light above me, it was… it was so bright it was hard to open my eyes but it was cold and I could feel that I wasn’t wearing anything.  I was so…” she pulled her knees in tighter and looked down at the ground in shame.  “Exposed.”  She looked down at the ground.  “Vulnerable.”  Kathryn felt the urge to reach out to her, but it was so obviously a bad time to try to touch her that she resisted.  “I don’t know how long I was left like that.  It felt like hours.”

  Kathryn was losing containment on her mask hiding the horrified anger on her face and in her eyes, and we she saw Maggie recognize it she redoubled her efforts to clamp down on it for now but there was still significant leakage.  She was enraged at what they had done to her daughter, but needed to remain calm so she could continue recounting what had happened to her.

  “Eventually some of the aliens came in.  They started taking… samples.” she awkwardly explained.  “Blood, urine, hair, swabs from all over… the next time they came back they took a skin sample from here.”  She pulled the blanket away from her side and pulled the side of her pants down a little, just enough to show the small wound on her side below her hip where they had excised a piece of skin.  It was ultimately minor, only a centimeter or two squared, but seeing it filled Kathryn with anger more matched to them amputating one of a limb.

  “Scans suggest they also took a bone marrow sample from that site,” Bill reported with a dull brownish green.

  The girl wrapped herself back up and took another drink of the now cooling beverage.  “It felt like this went on for several days but there was no way to tell how long it was, nothing to mark time.  When they were taking samples, they used three of those… floating things that one is talking through,” she said, pointing at Bill’s mirror ball.  “But after the samples they left them floating around my head for a really long time.  I figured they were scanning my brain activity or something, and then after that they started asking questions.”

  “What about food and drink?” her father asked.

  “Well, soon after I woke up strapped down one of them came in to offer me water through a straw.  Once they figured out for sure it was what I needed they mounted a straw beside my head from out of the wall and I could drink from it whenever I wanted.  Food was… harder for them to figure out.  From time to time they’d bring in stuff I couldn’t recognize and hold it in front of my mouth.  I was too scared to try it at first, but eventually I got so hungry.  I took a small bit to see what it was like but I spat it out, it was disgusting.  Over time they’d try different things and at first I thought it was just another kind of torture to tempt me with inedible food as I was starving, but eventually they brought something I could stomach and they’d bring it regularly enough.  I figured their scanning and tests helped them figure out what my body needed or at least…” she shrugged, “what it would accept.”

  “You said they were asking questions?” Kathryn asked.

  “Yes… but it was all things I didn’t know.  They seemed to know so much already, and I didn’t know the answers to what they wanted to know.”

  “They took the New Horizon II’s computer core at the same time they took you,” Margaret informed her.  “That’s how they knew what they did.”

  “Ah,” she nodded.  “I figured it was something like that.”

  “They asked me a lot about anti-matter.  They seemed frustrated that I didn’t know anything, that they thought I was lying, that they were frustrated they didn’t take someone who knew more or was more cooperative.  They asked me about Earth… about all our worlds, about our defences, about our anti-matter reserves, about where our planets are… all things I didn’t know or didn’t know how to communicate.  Like…” she took on a studious curiosity for a moment that blessedly reminded Kathryn that the daughter she knew was still in there.  “Like, how do I convey something like the location of a star system without a common point of reference?”

  “There must have been a lot of data in the core they couldn’t access,” Jaren offered softly.  “I don’t care how advanced they are, some quantum encryption is just flatly impenetrable.”

  “Then at some point they released me from the restraints,” the girls said as matter-of-factly as she could but was retreating again into her vulnerability.  “The examination table melted into the floor, and the room reconfigured into what it was like when you found me.  I found my clothes and put them back on, so… at least there was that.  For several days I was just happy to be free of the restraints and to be clothed again…” her eyes took on the same distant look as she recounted this new phase of her imprisonment, “but eventually I started making noise.  

  “I didn’t know what else to do, I mean on top of everything else there was just this horrible boredom.  I know it sounds dumb given everything else, but it was almost the worst part.  Noone to talk to, nothing to watch or listen to, just a matte black empty room with no time…”  she shook her head trying not to return there.”  I started yelling and banging.  I started figuring out the motion controls for the wall and floor material by dumb luck at first, but then I started experimenting and learning.  At one point I was able to pull apart the wall enough to climb through.  I don’t think they were expecting that,” she smirked.  It was a look Jaren and Kathryn knew all too well, she was proud to have exceeded their expectation, to be smarter than they’d expected of her— to be more trouble and harder to contain than expected.  Kathryn caught Jaren looking over at her from Maggie for a moment and realized she probably had the same look in her own eyes, proud of her daughter for being more trouble for her captors than they’d expected.

  “Anyway, after that incident they knocked me out again like they did on New Horizon II, and I don’t remember much between then and waking up here after you rescued me.  There were a few times where I think I remember starting to wake up before the same stun thing knocked me back out.  I think I noticed something going into my arm at some point, maybe it was something to keep me hydrated or whatever.  Anyways, and then I woke up here with you. ever since until you rescued me.  When I did wake up I found water and what was passing for food at that point… but when I was done eating and drinking I was hit with the knock out ray or whatever again.  I guess that’s how you found me.”

  Kathryn nodded to confirm that’s how they’d found her.

  “So…” she awkwardly drew out trying to change the topic.  “What’s with your alien?” she asked as she waggled a thumb at Bill.  “How’d you get mixed up with them?  Where’s New Horizon and everyone else?”  Kathryn watched on her daughter’s face the dawning of the prospect that their ship had been destroyed and everyone else was dead or something.

  “Oh everyone’s fine Maggie, everything’s okay, don’t worry,” she assured her as she reached over and put her hand on Maggie’s.  “Well the truth is we did lose a few people in the attack where you were captured, but it wasn’t anyone you knew.  I ordered everyone else to take the ship back to Earth and get everyone home safe and report in to Command when we had the opportunity.  We stayed behind to help our new friends and they helped us rescue you.”

  “And they’re different from the ones who took me?”

  “No.  Well,” she looked back at Bill for a moment.  “Well, it’s complicated.  They’re the same species but like I said they’re in the middle of a big civil war.  Bill’s enemy have a sort of hive mind but his people continue to exist as individuals.

  “Bill?” Maggie balked.  You named it Bill?”

  “I,” she sighed as she lowered and shook her head.  “Felix,” she shrugged and Maggie nodded.  It was all the explanation the girl needed.  “Yeah he’s Bill, they’re planet is ‘Bob’, and they’re the ‘Bobbins’.  It stuck before I could do anything about it,” she added ruefully.  “Anyways, the Bobbins from this faction have been very good to us, very friendly and helpful.  We never could have rescued you without their help.”

  The girl seemed unsure.  All her experience with this species so far was of hostility and abuse.  If she’d ever be able to really accept the idea of there being any ‘good ones’ it would take time to really believe it.  For the moment though, she seemed willing to provisionally trust her mother’s judgement as far as the one in the room.  “I know it’s weird with how long I was sedated, but I’m still so tired.  Right now I just want to sleep.”

  “Of course sweetie,” Kathryn cooed.  “Being unconscious isn’t the same as sleeping.  We’ll leave you alone for a while-”

  “No,” the girl cried out, reflexively grasping her mother’s hand.  She became embarrassed and withdrew her hand as she tried to compose herself.

  “I mean… I don’t want to be left alone again in one of these rooms.”

  Kathryn’s rage at her daughter’s obvious post-traumatic stress response piqued momentarily before she was able to stuff it back down and offer again a warm smile.  “Of course Maggie.  Don’t worry, we won’t leave you alone again, I promise.”

  “I can stay for a while,” Patricia offered, and Kathryn reached for her hand and joined it with Maggie’s.

  “Thank you Patrica.  We’ll all take shifts to stay with you while you recuperate, okay Maggie?  You can’t have had any decent sleep in a couple weeks now.”

  The girl seemed embarrassed but nodded sheepishly her acknowledgement and relief.

  “We’ll arrive back at the Bobbin home world shortly, but there’s no reason for you do anything other than just stay here and get some rest.  It won’t be long before we’re headed back home and you’ll be sleeping in your own bed again before you know it, okay?” she assured her daughter as she took her hand again and gave it another squeeze with one hand and pushed some of her hair away from her eyes with the other.

  Jaren rose from Maggie’s bedside and began gently but firmly ushering Margaret and Bill out of the room.  He then returned and gave Maggie a firm, lingering hug before taking Kathryn’s hand and leading her away as well.  “You get some rest Maggie,” he said.  “Don’t worry, it’s all over and we’ll be here when you wake up.”

  

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  The four stood outside the wall which reappeared after they’d left Maggie’s room.  Jaren let out a long heavy sigh as he allowed himself to fall back against the wall.  “Well…” he said, “all things considered it could have been worse.  At least we got her back.”

  Kathryn instinctively breathed fire at him with her eyes over his perpetually optimistic attitude shone on what they’d done to their daughter, but she quickly caught herself and tried to believe the other voice in her head which understood that he was right.  She was livid at what they had subjected her daughter to, but in the end they at least did have her back.  Traumatized as she may be, she was physically unharmed and back with them and that was all that really mattered.  It could have been so much worse after all, but she couldn’t help wondering how long she’d be having nightmares about what she’d just experienced, how deep the psychic wounds would be.

  “At least we hurt them,” Margaret said with a cold tone and a sneer at the corner of her mouth.  “I hope all the data we took will be a serious enough blow to their war effort.  Did it get  you good intel?” she asked Bill.

  The alien hadn’t said a word so far.  His mirror ball had been black a lot, indicating a lot of communication across the link.  He shuddered a bit as he disconnected to speak to them again.

  “Yes, the information has been… very illuminating.”

  “But not good.” Margaret clarified, reading between the lines.

  “No,” he conceded.

  “Well out with it then,” the simulant demanded in frustration.  She seemed to also be  quite shaken by what had happened to Maggie.  She’d suffered far worse back on Earth in her time, but that was her and not a young girl whom she was particularly fond of.

  “Our enemy is far stronger than we originally thought,” he answered.  We mistook the limited nature of their direct aggression as a capacity gap.  In reality they have been gathering resources and building up their forces in secret.  At this point they have more ships than we do.  Not by a lot, but more, and they continue to be able to construct them faster than our side can.  But what’s worse…” he trailed off.

  “What is it?” Jaren asked, understandably seeming a little irritated at the need to.

  “They realized about the anti-matter right away.  Within hours of beginning analysis of your computer core they reviewed the data about your encounter with our portal ship and saw for themselves the effectiveness of your anti-matter warheads against our vessels.  They immediately began constructing research and production facilities and they are already weeks ahead of us.  They have already built up a supply which threatens our existence.”

  “What will you do?” Kathryn asked.

  “There is little we can do,” Bill admitted.  “At this point their strategic advantage is too great.  We cannot win.”  His bluntness was disarming.  “There is currently a bitterly contentious debate in the chamber, but we seem to be left with only one bitter option given our apparently assured defeat.  We escape.”

  “Escape?” Margaret puzzled incredulously.  “Where could you go that they couldn’t follow you?  You know they’ll never stop pursuing you, that they consider your existence a threat to theirs.  Wherever you go they’ll follow and hunt you down.”

  “That is not entirely accurate,” Bill cryptically responded.  “We can escape to the Andromeda galaxy and start over.”

  Jaren’s jaw dropped in disbelief.  “What?  How?  That’s like, over two million light years away!  Even at the speed of light… there’s certainly no way to portal there, I mean the amount of energy you would need would be… and you’d need a portal to already be there…”  His engineering brain was cycling through all the possible methods and excluding them one by one so fast he couldn’t finish any sentences.

  “In short, astronomical.” Bill said.  “The amount of energy required would be astronomical.  Yes, we know.  But we have found a way.”

  “How?” Jaren demanded, half indignant, half in disbelief.

  “Hypernova,” Bill explained in one word.  “Within our territory there is a large star which is on the verge of going hypernova.  We expend a great deal of energy maintaining it in that state and preventing it’s collapse and completing its phase change.  We’ve constructed massive energy collectors around the star.  If the extremely powerful polar jets when it collapses can be harnessed at least ninety-six percent which we believe we can, it will be enough energy to force a portal open somewhere in the Andromeda system without a receiving gate.  The receiving gate is after all more to anchor an arrival location than anything else.  Portal travel is possible without a receiving gate but not to a precise location.  The energy required to spontaneously force open a distant ungated portal are tenfold, more than any single star can typically output for us to accomplish it , hence the drone gate ships.  The energy required to travel that far is of course an additionally extreme hurdle to the energy required, but the polar energy jets of a hypernova collapse are one of the most concentrated sources of energy that are known to exist anywhere in the universe.  Before the war started we were preparing the system for an exploratory expedition to set up a gate on that side which we could link to, but…”

  “But now it’ll be a one way trip,” Jaren said, reflexively finishing his thought now that he understood.  

  “Yes.  We had volunteers, brave Bobbins who wanted to push the boundaries of our understanding, not sure if they’d ever be able to return home, but… now the war.  Now everything is the war.”  The aquamarine of his mirror ball betrayed his great sorrow at all that had been lost because of it.

  “It’s those kinds of people who originally left to settle our own home planets,” Kathryn reflected, distantly regarding the floor.  “It was a one-way trip for them as well.”

  “It is the true unknown,” Bill offered.  “We know we may encounter aliens even more advanced than ourselves, that we may be unwelcome there, or there could be no one there at all and the entire galaxy theirs for the taking.  It was a massive undertaking, hundreds of portal drone ships would have gone with them to begin the slow process of seeding the galaxy with a greater portal network upon their arrival.  They’d would’ve had had everything they’d needed to establish a thriving network like the one here, but…” he sighed.  “The war.”

  They were all silent in reflection at the romanticism of the idea for a few moments before Margaret angrily cut in.  “So what, that’s it?” she demanded.  “You’re gonna just give up and leave?  Piss off and abandon this galaxy to the monsters you created and left here!?”

  “Margaret.” Kathryn said, trying to cut her short with a tone of authority.

  “It’s alright,” Bill offered with a wave of his three taloned.  “We see no other options at present, but we are certainly open to suggestions.  With the information garnered from our raid, all our simulations now show that there is simply no way for us to win this war.  We will be destroyed, and all survivors will be enslaved by their Link.  At present we simply can’t see any alternatives to escaping while we still can.  Hypernovae are so rare they will not be able to follow.”

  “And what would that mean for us?” Margaret demanded.  Bill just shrugged with green defeat.  “So you abandon the galaxy, and just leave us behind.  They know we’re out there now, and with the only effective weapons against them, and knowing that we’ve helped you.  It’s only a matter of time before they come for us and you know it!”

  “This is all true,” he acknowledged.  “I’m certain if you chose to gather as many as you could and come with us you would be welcome, we could even send some ships to allow you to evacuate more people, but there is simply nothing else we can do for you now that wouldn’t just further risking our own extinction.”

  They all glumly stared at the floor as they considered the bleakness of their prospects before Kathryn looked up and turned to Jaren.

  “How much anti-matter could Kobol provide in an emergency?  Total, like across the whole system if they really had to, if they stripped every ship and energy plant, every production facility, every last single weapon, how much.”

  “I really don’t think-”  He immediately understood what she was driving at and clearly wanted no part in it whatsoever, but Kathryn wasn’t going to let that stop her.

  “How much?” she demanded again in a more impatient tone.

  He glared at her contemptuously for a good long while.  “Five hundred kilos or so.  Maybe six.” he finally answered, starting to shake with anger.  

  Bill’s eyes darted up from the ground at hearing the number and Kathryn turned to him.  “Tell me Bill, what could your people do with five hundred kilos of anti-matter?”

  One of the alien’s eyes considered Jaren as another considered Kathryn for a moment.  “Win the war,” he plainly answered through his mirror ball, “if we act quickly.”