ALL NOVEL Helium Glider
Chapter 9: Helium Glider
The moment I saw the thing I leapt back, letting out a high-pitched screech that was supposed to be a scream. The alien moved just as quickly, dropping through the branches with effortless speed and agility. The movement reminded me of a monkey or an ape, and indeed the more I was able to get a look at it the more appropriate that comparison became.
It was humanoid, or at least more humanoid than me, with two long arms, two long legs with prehensile feet, and an elongated, skinny torso. No tail, though, so I guess it was more of an ape. If apes had scales instead of skin.
The same instant as the scream, everyone turned to me. Quinn freaked out and screamed as well, while Miri started hurling rocks ineffectually in the alien’s direction. My parents, meanwhile, responded with militaristic efficiency that I’d started to expect. They sprinted back across the clearing, Stephanie arriving by me first, with the blaster rifle at her shoulder.
She did a brief double-take when she saw the alien. Then she said something in a language I didn’t understand, a language that sounded like the halfway point between unusually complicated monkey chattering and sped-up Spanish.
The alien dropped nearly ten feet from the lowest branch, landing effortlessly. It turned and raised the blaster pistol, aiming directly for my mother. I straightened my back and opened my elytra just slightly, ready to move or just to give it a scare. As it moved closer, still keeping the gun trained on Stephanie, I got a much better look at the alien’s face. Or rather, the mask covering its face.
Based on the shape, I guessed that it would have had a muzzle, similar to a jackal. But it was covered up by some sort of smooth, rounded mask, somewhere between olive green and forest green, and made out of either hard plastic or shell. It extended all the way up the face to the eyes, where it had a pair of glassy lenses covering up beady purple eyes. Extending from the sides were two thin tubes, which connected to a pair of small canisters clipped to the alien’s belt.
The alien snarled out a short sentence in the same language, which Stephanie responded to yet again. I got the feeling that Amanda didn’t speak whatever language Stephanie and the alien were talking in.
Sticking out my chest a little and folding all four of my arms, I tried to make use of intimidation. The fact that I had to psych myself up to do that meant nothing. “I’m not afraid of you,” I said. “I have poison and stuff.”
The alien immediately looked at me, though the blaster was pointing at Stephanie’s head. It reached behind its jaw and pressed a few buttons. “Oh dear, poison,” it said, in a rough and screechy voice that was almost as ill-suited to English as mine was. “I’m already shaking.”
“You speak English?!” Stephanie said, eyes wide.
“Of course I speak English,” said the alien. “I learned it at University. Where’d you learn Architectine? Your grammar is atrocious.”
Stephanie relaxed. “I picked it up. It’s a useful language to know when you’re getting repairs done.”
“Um. Are you with the Order?” I asked.
The alien didn’t look at me. “Of course not. And I’m especially disinclined to work with them after they murdered my crew, kidnapped me, and stole my ship.”
“This is your ship?” asked Amanda.
“It is.”
“Then I don’t think we have any reason to fight,” said Stephanie, lowering her gun.
The alien did the same. “I think you should introduce yourselves, then.”
Amanda took the opportunity, extending her hand. “Admiral Arana Karus, Collective Naval Forces.”
“Stellina Karus, married to the Admiral,” said my other parent. “Former free trader.”
I looked rapidly between the two of them, antennae straight up and eyes wide. “Wait, what?”
Amanda gave me a quick apologetic look. “Not now, son.” She turned back to the alien. “This is Alexander Sierra, our son.”
Getting brushed off like that… it stung. Finding out that my parents’ names weren’t even their real names stung more. I pressed my mandibles shut and didn’t talk.
The alien looked over at me when I was mentioned. “Your son, the… Emissary?” He paused, face dropping slightly. “Oh. I understand now. Who are the other two Liberates?”
“They’re friends of Alex’s,” said Stephanie. She gestured to Miri and Quinn.
Miri waved. “Miriam Hewitt. Alex and I were… involved.”
“Quinn Brandeis. I’m his best friend.”
“I am going to assume, given your age, that ‘involved’ is used in this context to mean ‘sexually’, and move on. My name is Dr. Xaranañilok Erobosh, former researcher for the Division of Nuclear Technologies. And that,” he pointed to the spaceship behind us, “is my personal skiff, Helium Glider.”
Stephanie looked over her shoulder, seemingly paying attention to Helium Glider for the first time. “It’s a damn good ship. Shame it got used by the Order.”
Dr. Erobosh made a dismissive gurgling sound in the back of his throat. “Used. The damned fools could hardly control her, let alone use her. It’s why they kept me around. Speaking of the Order, where are they?”
“How many were on board?” Amanda asked.
Dr. Erobosh paused, tilting his head. “Five spectrademons and a cambion.”
“In that case, we killed them all.”
“Wonderful,” said Dr. Erobosh, without a hint of enthusiasm. “Now I don’t have to deal with them again. Now then, what are all of you doing here?”
Amanda immediately launched into a quick summary of everything that had happened with us up until that point, including the incident with Officer Cover, my metamorphosis, the works. When she was done, Dr. Erobosh nodded sagely.
“Normally I’d be loathe to let anyone use my ship without permission… but I cannot control her on my own. What’s in it for me if I help you get off this planet?”
“We have money,” said Amanda. “If you can get us to Collective space, of course. I’m sure we could afford to pay you… twenty percent above the standard transport rates?”
“Thirty percent,” said Dr. Erobosh, seemingly on reflex.
“Deal.”
And before I knew it, we had made a business deal with an alien, who was bringing all five of us on board his cool spaceship. Easy as pie. The big arc, with the box with windows on the bottom, was exactly what it looked like: an elevator. All six of us packed on board and Dr. Erobosh pressed a button. With a soft whirring sound and a few concerning rattles, the elevator lifted off and carried us into the top of the Helium Glider.
As soon as the elevator had docked with the main body, a voice started playing from inside the ship. The voice was speaking the same language as Stephanie and Dr. Erobosh, except this one sounded like it was the voice of a little girl, maybe middle-school aged at the oldest.
“Switch to English, Helium, we have guests,” said Dr. Erobosh.
“Oh, of course, Doctor Erobosh! Welcome aboard, guests. My name is Helium Glider, and I’m Dr. Erobosh’s personal skiff!”
Dr. Erobosh waved Helium away. “I already told them. Everyone, this is the ship’s computer, say hello to Helium.”
We all did. That done, Dr. Erobosh input a short code on a keypad, unlocking the door in the side of the ship, and finally letting us get off of the slightly-rickety elevator. On the other side of the door was… a much smaller room than I’d hoped. It was shaped like a half-circle, with the door at the farthest curve of the outer wall, and the other side, with three more doors set into it, no more than four paces away.
About a third of the room was taken up by a red plastic machine that was shaped like a disorganized pile of barrels of various sizes, with a touchscreen glued to the front. The opposite corner had another weird device fused to the wall, a machine that looked sort of like if an electrician’s cabinet grew arms. Compared to those two things, the rest looked downright normal; I got the impression of an underfunded high school’s teacher’s lounge. There was a table, a few chairs, a TV screen with a cracked monitor, a few scattered devices, and a coffee maker. Or at least, what I thought might have been a coffee maker.
“Huh. Well, this is certainly… underwhelming,” said Quinn. “I was expecting more cool glowing panels or fun hanging wires for monsters to hide in.”
“Why would you want monsters to be able to hide in me?” Helium asked. “Bring ‘em out in the open so that Dr. Erobosh can blast ‘em full of holes, is what I say.”
“Why’s it so small?” I asked.
“It’s a spaceship, not a hotel,” said Dr. Erobosh, letting his derision slip into his voice. “But, speaking of rooms, there’s only three cabins. We will have to decide who is sharing with whom.”
“I imagine Alex’s mother and I will be sharing a room,” said Amanda. “Miri, Alex, maybe you two would want to share as well?”
Miri glanced down at her feet, seeming to almost shrink.
“I think I’d rather room with Quinn, if that’s okay?” I asked.
Miri nodded. “Alex and I are… well, things are complicated. We’ve never really stayed in a room together and… the opportunity to get to talk with an actual extraterrestrial is… very intriguing.”
The adults all looked at her curiously. At least, I assumed Dr. Erobosh was giving the same expression. “I suppose curiosity is a natural response,” said Dr. Erobosh. “Very well, you may room with me. Now that that is decided, follow me; I must show you the rest of the ship.”
We all followed Dr. Erobosh around the side of the big machine, awkwardly skirting around the other furniture. I got the feeling that time on the Helium Glider would involve a lot of figuring out how to pass each other in hallways.
“What’s the big machine?” I asked.
Dr. Erobosh stopped, looking back over his shoulder at me. “Oh, this device? It’s known commonly as a polyfac; it allows for rapid construction of simple devices from raw components on a freeform basis. Very useful when you need a spare component or have an unexpected need for a specific device. You do not have these on this planet?”
“Well, we have 3D printers. Sounds like a similar idea.”
Stephanie leaned around Amanda’s shoulder to butt in. “No no no no no no no. Calling this thing a 3D printer is like calling the ship’s AI an abacus. It’s an entirely different machine.” She stroked her hand down the side of the polyfac like you would a prize stallion. “I have so missed having one of these around.”
“Yes, as I said, very useful,” said Dr. Erobosh, continuing into the corner of the ship. “Perhaps we can make the Emissary some clothes before we take off.”
I folded my arms. And to think, I had nearly forgotten about the fact that no human clothes could possibly fit me.
There was a ramp going up and following the curve of the hull, hidden behind the polyfac. Dr. Erobosh gestured for us to head up, which we did. The next room up, and as far as I could tell the top level of the ship, managed to be even more cramped than the living quarters. Or maybe it was just the low, blue lighting that gave the impression. It fairly closely resembled pictures I’d seen of the newest generation of space capsule cockpits, except arranged in a circle pattern.
The exact center of the room was taken up by a huge console, mostly covered in pale blue touchscreens and clusters of buttons. Around them were six chairs, similar to what you’d see at a dentist’s office, with three of them having more buttons mounted on the arms and screens positioned on steel arms over the head. Over the middle of the console was a huge hologram, nearly eight feet tall, showing the entirety of the Helium Glider in extreme detail. Without thinking, I got as close to the hologram as I could, leaning over the console to see it up close. There were dozens of moving parts; not just the six of us, but a handful of other little things whose shapes I couldn’t quite catch, most of them moving around the engines or the center of the hull.
“What are you doing?” asked Dr. Erobosh.
“I just want to see it up close, is all.”
“You know you can’t touch it, right?” said Amanda. “Holograms don’t work like that.”
I quickly pulled my hand back from the hologram. “Of course I knew that. So… there’s six couches, one for each of us. Does that mean we all have to pilot the ship together?”
Dr. Erobosh shook his head. “Three of the seats are for the pilots… presumably myself, Arana, and Stellina, as the ones with previous experience on board a spacecraft. The other three are merely acceleration couches for our passengers. I do hope you will not find this a disappointment.”
I briefly questioned why an alien from a different planet still considered “shaking your head” to be a gesture of denial, then decided not to think about it. “So, are we taking off now?”
“It will likely be a few weeks before—” Dr. Erobosh paused, still as a statue. “No, I apologize. A few hours. It will likely be a few hours before the repair drones have the engines back to maximum capacity.”
“I’ll make sure the polyfac is working, then,” said Stephanie. “I remember there were a few standard designs for Emissaries on there, assuming they haven’t been removed from the catalogue over the last couple of decades.”
I felt suddenly very self-conscious again, crossing my arms over my chest. Acting like a girl who got caught stepping out of the shower wasn’t going to help anything.
Quinn poked his thumb into his chest. “I’ll, um. Get settled in. Make sure that there aren’t any stowaways or libertarians or anything.”
“I’ll be taking a nap,” Miri said softly, slipping back down the ramp.
We all dispersed. Dr. Erobosh led Amanda back down into the living chambers, then through a hatch in the floor to the engineering room. I was briefly split in two, part of me wanting to see the cool machinery down there, while the other half wanted to stay up and see how the polyfac worked. The second half won out. If I go into the engineering room, I’ll probably break something anyway.
So I stood behind my mother, watching her use the touchscreen to scan through dozens of categories, hundreds of different clothing designs, looking for the one designed for people with four arms.
After about three minutes, she noticed my presence. “It’s a good thing that you’re paying attention, kiddo. You’re going to be using these things a lot in Collective space.”
“It looks fairly simple,” I said, craning my neck over her shoulder to see the screen.
“It is, you just have to know the right categories and sort out all the crap schemes from the good ones. Custom schemes are the hard part, really.” She turned around, looking down at me. “How tall are you?” she asked.
“Five-foot-ten. Don’t you already know?”
Stephanie chuckled. “Kiddo, you do realize that you have to look up at me now, right? You were five-foot-ten, last week.”
I hadn’t even thought about it, but… she was right. I was so busy paying attention to all the other changes that I hadn’t even noticed the change in my height. But indeed, when I thought about it, I had had to look up at an even steeper angle to look at Quinn’s face, and I was barely any taller than Miri. Just another sign of how much I’d changed that I hadn’t even noticed it.
“Uhh, kiddo, are you okay?” asked Stephanie.
“Yeah. Just thinking.”
“So any idea how tall you are now?”
“Well, I’m about an inch taller than Miri,” I said. “So… five-five? Maybe five-six if you’re feeling charitable.”
She nodded, going back to the polyfac. With the requisite information, Stephanie cued up all the materials, and a minute later the huge machine was rumbling away, shedding waste heat. It worked quickly, as well; I had hardly had the time to get bored before the first item fell out of a drop slot in the bottom of the polyfac. It was a solid olive color, similar to Dr. Erobosh’s mask, and that was about all that I was able to discern, because it looked like it had been left out in the sun too long.
Stephanie indicated that this was the outfit. I took it, slightly embarrassed, and slipped into the middle of the three cabins.
The cabin was small, but not inordinately cramped for only two people. The bunk bed took up a lot of the space along the outer wall, with much of the rest taken up by a small stall for what I could only assume was a tiny bathroom, complete with the words “only for use under gravity” on the door. Nearer to the door was a tall metal cabinet on the left, and a small desk on the right. The only detail that would have felt out of place in a cheap dorm room or a tiny hotel was the transparent plastic bubble covering the lower bunk. I assumed it was some kind of special tech thing for space stuff, and didn’t pay it any more mind.
More pressing was figuring out how in the hell to wear the clothes that the polyfac had made for me. There were weird slits in the cloth and too many sleeves and how was I supposed to fit my head in with these antennae getting in the way? Eventually, I had to sneak back out into the common room and grab the instruction manual from my backpack. I started searching through the book for the first time, and to my relief there was indeed a section on Emissary clothing. Of course, it took another five minutes just to figure out what kind of clothing this was.
Apparently it was called a luhuella, not to be confused with a luhuel, and it was basically a bodysuit designed to cover me from neck to ankle, with half-length sleeves for all four arms, and a pouch to cover the abdomen. Unlike most Earth bodysuits, it was designed to actually be practical clothing, with a few pockets on the abdomen and zippers in a few key locations. And, best of all, it had slits on the back so that the wearer could still use their wings while fully dressed. Still took me another five minutes to figure out how to put it on. It didn’t help that, on top of everything else, the outfit kept moving.
Suddenly, while I was reconciling the fact that my clothes kept moving, the door of the cabin opened. I saw Miri’s face looking shocked for just a moment before the door slammed shut again.
“You know that this is mine and Dr. Erobosh’s room, right?” she said after a moment.
“It is?”
“Yeah, the bubble is for Dr. Erobosh, so he can take off the mask while he sleeps,” she said.
I glanced back at the bubble. “Oh. That makes—“
“Don’t open it,” Miri interrupted. “It might be full of chlorine gas. He was a little vague on that.”
“I wasn’t planning on opening it,” I said. For a minute, I went back to getting dressed. A thought occurred to me. “Miri, are you still there?”
“Yeah. I need to grab something in there when you’re done.”
“You can just come in, you know.” I said.
“Alex, you’re half-naked,” Miri said, exasperated. “I’m not just going to barge in on you.”
Just then, Stephanie, who was still in the main room, spoke up. “Okay, all of the devices we need are cued up. I’m going to go to the control room, where I can’t hear what you’re talking about. Bye!”
We both waited until her footsteps vanished up the ramp. I stepped closer to the door so Miri could hear me. “First of all, I’ve been naked for the last two days, so technically I am less naked than I was before… Second of all, when has my not wearing clothes stopped you before?”
“Heh, true enough,” she said. I could almost imagine the smile on her face. It made me feel warm. “I dunno, it’s sort of like how it’s weird that Donald Duck isn’t wearing pants, but Felix the Cat is naked and it’s fine? The fact that you want to wear clothes, but you aren’t, that makes it weird, I guess.”
“I resent the fact that you compared me to a cartoon bird when I am very clearly an insect… but I get it.” I stopped bothering with the outfit and took another step forward until I was slumped against the door. Miri was just a couple of inches away, even if we were separated by all that metal. “I guess we were going to have this conversation at some point anyway.”
“Mhmm. We had a lot of good times together.” Miri sighed. “There are some things that I will… never forget.”
For a second I was hopeful. My antennae perked up, tips brushing against the metal of the door. Then I got myself under control, and I finally said what had been on my mind. “But we can’t be together?”
“But we can’t be together.”
I chittered nervously, my antennae going limp. “It’s okay. I know that you couldn’t be with a bug like me.”
“It’s not just that,” she said. “Though that is part of it. You’re leaving, probably forever. And my parents would never let it happen. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. I knew it was going to be like this,” I said, half-lying. “We had some good times together and I hope that we can have a good time for these last couple of weeks.”
“Yeah. Same.”
I could hear Miri walking away. For maybe half a minute, I stayed, resting against the door in the hope that she might come back. Without a word, I went back to dressing myself. The one nice thing about being an insect is that insects don’t have tear ducts.
It only took another minute or so, and when I was done I left the door open for her. Miri was in the common room, her knees hugged to her chest. I realized that if I wanted to avoid more situations like that, I should probably figure out which cabin was mine.
“Is this cabin mine?” I said to the door on the left.
The door creaked open, revealing Quinn, who looked slightly disheveled. “Yeah, this one’s ours…” He paused, glancing over my shoulder. “Sorry about what happened.”
“Fuck you.”
Quinn took a step backwards. “Hey, it’s a small ship. I couldn’t help it.”
“I know what I said.” I clicked my mandibles in annoyance. “Why is it so goddamn tight anyway? This ship is the size of a skyscraper.”
“Would you calm down?” Miri snapped.
I wheeled around, ready to give her a piece of my mind. There was a part of me that really did want to yell, to scream, to curse and rage… but I couldn’t. The tension dropped from my antennae, my shoulders slumped, my wings relaxed. I didn’t say anything as I slipped past Quinn into the cabin. My sketchbooks got shoved into one of the drawers, and with a quick hop I was in the upper bunk, where I could spend the next three quarters of an hour facing the wall and experiencing no emotions whatsoever.
“Come on, Alex, we’re taking off soon!” came Amanda’s voice from the common room.
I rolled right out of bed, flapping my wings in order to land softly. Ladders are for people who don’t have wings. Clearing the dark red sand from my eyes, I shuffled past the polyfac, which now had a small pile of clothes and other items that I didn’t care enough to make a shot at identifying. Everyone else was already in the command room when I got there; Amanda, Stephanie, and Dr. Erobosh were in the seats with the extra screens and buttons, while Miri and Quinn had strapped themselves into the other seats. I followed their example, finding the last seat and doing all of the proper buckles and such.
The pilots did all of their final checks, making sure that the ignition lasers were lasing, the fuel ejector was ejecting, the gas vents were venting, and all of that. To me, who didn’t know the difference between a blaster and a particle coil, it was all very boring. I mostly stared up at the blue-lit ceiling of the command room, occasionally craning my neck to look at the holographic ship model, all while trying to forget the events of the past hour or so.
“Everyone strapped in?” asked Amanda. “If anyone breaks a limb, we’re going to be forced to throw you out the airlock.”
I didn’t dignify the joke with a response.
“All of the buckles have been buckled, though hell if I know if they’re in the right order,” said Quinn.
“Alex and I are all in,” said Miri. “What are these chairs made out of? They’re really comfortable.”
Dr. Erobosh was happy to answer. “It’s a gel-based semi-fluid matrix involving—”
“Do you want to leave Earth,” said Stephanie, “or do you want to sit here and talk about your fun science things?”
“Right, many apologies,” said Dr. Erobosh. “Priming the reactor.”
A deep rumble emerged from the very core of the ship, far below me, and I could almost swear that the air heated up by a degree or two.
“Opening gas vents,” said Amanda. A slight hiss merged with the rumble, creating a full orchestra of mechanical sounds.
The procedures of the launch started to blend together, the soft tap of buttons being pressed and the light click of switches being flicked blended together with the ongoing stream of responses and statements.
“Coolant stream at max throughput.”
“Ignition lasers primed.”
“Preliminary gas stream cycling.”
“Fuel cannons loaded and ready.”
“Gyros aligned.”
It was a while before the chaos calmed down, when all the buttons had been pressed and all the switches flicked. I shut my main eyes but not my secondary ones, turning the world into a monochromatic blur, and gripped the straps around my stomach with my lower arms. I had never been on a spacecraft launch. Hell, I’d only ever been on a plane a couple of times for vacations. To calm myself down, I decided I was going to count how long it took to go from the ground to space.
“Ready to launch,” said Dr. Erobosh. “Launch engine ignition in Three, Two, One, Ignition.”
The sounds of the reactor and the hiss of the gas vents was drowned out by a new sound. One, two, three, four. It sounded exactly like the jet engine of a passenger jet, though even I’m smart enough to know that you can’t use a jet engine in space. Five, six, seven, eight, nine. The acceleration pressed me down into the couch, a heavy weight covering every inch of my body. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. We were in the air, we must have been so far up in the air by now, the unsteady ground replaced with smooth, soft air. Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. We had to be close to space now, soaring impossibly high, the rumble of the engines carrying us. Nineteen, twenty, Click.
The engines cut out, replaced by the low hum of the reactor, which felt like silence. The weight went off of me, all weight; I pressed against the straps as we entered free-fall. One thought entered my head: the engines have failed and I am going to die.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM the engines burst to live with a scream, a roar, a sound loud enough that it felt like my ears were going to burst. The weight redoubled, hundreds of pounds slamming into me, crushing me into the chair. The metal of the hull groaned and twisted, the entire ship rumbled and shook like the strongest earthquake you’ve ever felt, a scream of superheated air ramming into the nose of the ship above me. I curled up as tightly as I could, which wasn’t at all, my entire world reduced to sound and unstoppable pressure while I hoped that I wouldn’t die. Time stopped having any meaning, sight was forgotten, that there were even any other people around me was an unimportant detail. The Helium Glider was going to explode, I knew, the heat and the force was going to tear it apart and leave me in the open air.
The impossible noise faded away into nothing as there was no more atmosphere to carry it. My antennae, pressed against my head with so much force it felt like they were going to snap, slowly relaxed. The ship slowed down, the weight decreasing with each passing second. I could breathe again, and the noxious dizziness that met me when I did gave me the idea that I probably hadn’t been breathing very much. Everything returned to normal as the Helium Glider entered orbit.
“Ow.”
