“Yo, what the actual fuck are you talking about?” Kat shouted, standing. Colonel Jackson eyed her, then shifted his gaze somewhere behind her, nodding once. Chapman stepped forward and clocked Kat on the back of the head with the butt of what looked to be a pistol.
“Oh my God,” I stammered, barely catching her as she fell with a yelp. She crumpled back into her seat beside me, rubbing her shaved head, which I could see was already swelling where she’d been hit. “Are you OK?”
“What do you think?” She replied, staring viciously at Chapman, then back at the Colonel. But he ignored her, as if she were a fly that had been squashed and was no longer buzzing annoyingly nearby.
“As I was saying, this mission is of the utmost secrecy. You have all been selected for your areas of expertise – chemistry, biology, anthropology, botany, linguistics.” My throat tightened at the mention of my PhD program. So it wasn’t some insane mistake that I’d been brought here.
“I don’t have any expertise! I’m just a student. Please, I want to go home.” The voice was a quiet and trembling one, coming from a girl I couldn’t see well on the other side of the room.
“I’m happy to say that if our mission is successful, you will all be allowed to go home,” Colonel Jackson replied, his voice devoid of emotion.
“Allowed?!” An angry voice piped up. “What do you mean, allowed? I’m an American citizen, I have rights.” Several heads nodded, and murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. It emboldened me, and I raised my voice.
“And what about me? I’m not even American! You kidnapped a Canadian citizen!”
Someone else shouted, “Moi aussi, I’m from France!”
The Colonel took a breath and closed his eyes for a moment, as if dealing with a bunch of irritating children. His expression filled me with rage. For him, apparently, this was just another annoying day on the job. But to us, it was our whole life, hanging in whatever fucked-up balance he had orchestrated.
After a moment, when most of the talking and questions had died down again, he spoke.
“While this particular mission is largely US military-run, rest assured the program at large is a global effort. The governments from every country represented in this room have sanctioned the mission and our actions.”
The breath rushed out of me, leaving me deflated and shaken. My own government was OK with this? They offered me up like some kind of lamb to slaughter?
But was it slaughter? Maybe the fact that this appeared to be some kind of legitimate, massively funded military operation meant that we weren’t about to disappear off the face of the earth, murdered and thrown in a ditch somewhere...
Another voice piped up, and I realized with a jerk that it was Melanie. Quiet Melanie from our table. Her eyes were hard, her voice steady.
“You said we get to go home if this mission is successful. What is it exactly that you want us to do?”
There was a cold determination in her eyes that I admired. I gulped, trying to fortify myself with some of whatever she had. Theresa sat up straighter at the question, and Kat stopped rubbing the back of her head, leaning forward. I licked my lips, mouth suddenly incredibly dry.
“Unbeknownst to the public, Earth has a large space program, much more advanced than what you see on TV with rockets and moon-landings. We have been searching for energy and materials to sustain life on Earth, and have been also searching for planets to eventually host human colonies.”
A collective gasp ran through the crowd, and Colonel Jackson raised his hand for silence, continuing.
“We have discovered numerous new energy sources and resources we need to study further. One of these is a compound we have called IX189, on a planet we have called P14256ABX.”
“That isn’t, like, Mars or something, right?” I said, stomach sinking. Were we going to be flung out of our entire galaxy? I’ve never even been outside of North America.
“This planet exists in a small galaxy we have named the Ophis Cluster.”
“Ophis... That sounds like the Greek word for serpent,” I whispered. My thoughts were confirmed when suddenly the blank silver wall behind the colonel lit up, an image being projected on its smooth surface. A hushed silence fell over the room as we stared at a star system none of us had ever seen before, the planets and glittering spray of stars swirling, snakelike, across the screen. The image suddenly shifted, showing a large brownish-looking planet with a ring of what looked to be asteroid chunks, or some other kind of space rocks, surrounding it like the rings of Saturn.
“This is P14256ABX. Our radar technology has picked up a massive energy source on this planet, the compound we have labelled IX189. The problem is that we can’t just go down and get it. This planet is inhabited by a primitive, warlike species that we have yet to establish contact with. We have not yet been down to the surface of the planet, but have orbited it for some time, collecting data. Now that we’ve collected enough data, our orbiting vessel has left to move on to other projects, and our mission can begin.”
Another image flashed on the screen, this one blurry and difficult to make out. I realized with a small cry it was a photo of one of the planet’s inhabitants, an honest-to-goodness real life alien. Another round of gasps ran through the room, and someone burst into tears.
Holy fucking fuck. I’d always assumed that with a universe as wide an unknown as ours that there would be life out there somewhere. I just never thought that I’d get a chance to come face to face with it, even as a grainy photo like this.
“For fuck’s sake,” Kat said, squinting and leaning forward as far as she could across the table. “Is this some conspiracy UFO type shit? They couldn’t get a better photo?”
She wasn’t wrong. The photo looked like one of the Loch Ness Monster, or Big Foot. I couldn’t make out any distinct features on the creature at all, only that it seemed to be bipedal, standing tall on two legs. Or was it three? Before I could look closer, the image vanished, replaced with an image of desert.
“From what we’ve gathered the atmosphere on the planet is similar to our own, with slightly less oxygen. Similar to high altitude climates on Earth. It shouldn’t cause too much of a problem for any of you unless you’re vigorously exercising. We’ve examined your medical records and you all should be fit for such an environment.”
Hold the phone. Why did it matter to us what the atmosphere was like? Why did we need to know about the aliens down there? Unless they were planning to...
“Oh my God,” Theresa said, her face going pale under her tan. “They’re gonna drop us down there. They’re literally gonna drop us on the surface of an alien planet.”
“No, no way,” I shot back quickly, goosebumps breaking out over my skin. That made no sense. At all. “I’m a PhD candidate in the linguistics department. Don’t you need tons of training to become an astronaut?”
Theresa’s voice fell to a broken whisper.
“Honey, I’m a vet tech. I sure as hell shouldn’t be here.”
Kat shook her head, and then Melanie turned her dark eyes on us, her face looking resigned.
“Linguistics PhD sounds an awful lot like someone to be an alien translator. And vet tech – well, someone to make conclusions about the local wildlife, I guess? Didn’t he say there’s a botanist around here somewhere?”
“Um, no,” I interjected. “My area of research is translation in pop culture, specifically the creation of subtitles for popular films and TV shows. I literally watch anime for research. That’s going to do fuck-all on an alien planet. I assure you.”