Outcasts
An original science fiction story
Investigating the derelict space station only raised additional questions instead of supplying answers. Violet stared down a darkened empty corridor. Her helmet light illuminated her ebony face as her brown eyes settled on a sea of shadows. Infrared scans uncovered no trace of life on this level. Questions swarmed her mind as Violet exited the docking bay.
Who built the station?
What purpose did it serve?
Why did the builders abandon their creation?
“A passing star must have jettisoned this planet from an alien solar system.”
Violet snapped her head back at Nate. He shone a flashlight on a drab gray corridor wall behind her.
“That's the only logical explanation,” he continued. “How would anyone know where to find this planet? And why build a space station above a cold dead world wandering through deep space?”
Violet shrugged.
“Maybe alien explorers came here long ago to study this planet. We found it easily enough.”
Nate cracked a knowing smile. His sky-blue eyes sparkled under his helmet light.
“Your definition of easy doesn’t match mine. Finding a planet and a space station out here is a one-in-a-trillion cosmic fluke.”
“Fluke?”
“Our ship blundered right into its path.”
Violet turned away and pursed her lips. Nate made a valid point. Stumbling upon a rogue planet wandering beyond the outer reaches of their solar system amounted to a giant stroke of luck. The same held true with their nava sensors even detecting an anomaly moving parallel to their hyperlight path. Violet still hadn’t made up her mind if their discovery fell on the good end or the bad end of that luck spectrum.
Earth established thriving colonies on 13 exoplanets since first settling on Colonia nearly six decades earlier. Even with so much exploration preceding these colonizing expeditions, their little corner of the Milky Way Galaxy still harbored countless mysteries. To her knowledge, no other Earthian encountered a planet not bound to a specific star before she and Nate uncovered this one.
Cubic lights sprang to life along both walls as they moved deeper into the corridor. Each shoulder-high light appeared no larger than a navel orange and bathed the corridor in a dim pale-yellow hue. Violet turned and shot a worried glance at Nate.
“Did we trigger a hidden motion sensor?” She worked to conceal the tremor seeping into her voice. “This is kind of creepy.”
Nate’s eyes darted from wall to wall, and he answered her with a reluctant nod.
“You’re telling me. How does this station still generate enough power to operate lights?”
Violet refocused her gaze on the section of corridor ahead of her and squinted at the dull lights.
“Some form of nuclear energy is my first guess.” She cast her eyes at the ceiling and studied twin columns of giant hexagonal paneling crossing over her head. “You’d need a power source with a half-life that’s off the charts for this station to still function while wandering in interstellar space for God knows how long.”
Ventilation shafts carved out of random gray hexagon panels circulated breathable atmosphere throughout the corridor. At least that’s what environmental readings on Violet’s helmet visor indicated. It had to be a mistake. Neither she nor Nate picked up life signs when they boarded the station. Any oxygenated air inside this station should have been depleted soon after it entered deep space traveling at subluminal speeds.
They reached a sealed box-shaped door at the end of the corridor. Nate unholstered his handheld scanner and started running fresh infrared scans. Violet shone a flashlight on the door, trailing the beam around the perimeter while she searched for a control switch or access panel.
An electronic voice called out to them with startling abruptness. She recoiled and backpedaled a few steps. None of the words emanating from some sort of unseen computer sounded familiar. An alien language in every sense.
Of course, the words aren’t familiar. Who knows where this station even came from?
Violet silently chided herself for her foolishness. Odds of a familiar Earthian, Colonian, or Lathoan dialect being spoken on a random space station stuck in deep space were ridiculously close to zero.
The electronic voice spoke more unfamiliar words. A small port opened above the sealed door and a blue beam of light fell upon both explorers.
“Are we being scanned?” A palpable nervous energy crept into Nate’s voice. “This shouldn’t be happening.”
“Who’s scanning us?” Violet cast her flashlight beam at the port. “I thought there were no life signs on this level.”
“Infrared scans don’t lie.”
She wanted Nate to be right. Common sense told Violet that no alien species possessed an ability to survive indefinitely while trapped in deep space — no matter how much advanced technology they had at their disposal. Still, something felt off about this situation.
Had they stumbled upon a form of artificial intelligence inside the station?
“Biothermal scan complete.”
Violet snapped her head back to Nate. His widening eyes and troubled frown mirrored her own rising anxiety. The electronic voice now spoke perfect English – both explorers’ native language.
“Alien language analysis complete,” the voice continued. “Transmitting data to central processor for station-wide dissemination.”
“Who are they calling alien?”
Violet’s uncomfortable joke failed to elicit even a polite laugh from Nate.
A narrow vertical crack formed in the sealed door. It widened and soon formed two equal sized sections that retreated from one another. Fresh clusters of pale light bombarded her eyes. Violet instinctively squinted and then gasped. She pressed her gloved hand to her visor.
“Damn,” Nate mumbled.
Violet simply nodded, unable to find better words to express her own surprise at their discovery. A vast chamber greeted her eyes. Cylindrical pods poked out from the chamber walls, forming orderly rows on three sides. Dozens of pods formed a single row. Each individual pod appeared capable of holding a nine-foot-tall human with wiggle room to spare. The chamber floor covered as much surface area as her hometown pro football stadium.
“I can’t imagine what’s inside those pods.” Violet paused and drew a sharp breath. “I’m not sure I want to imagine it either.”
Nate cast a disapproving glance at her.
“Come on. You don’t really think something bad is inside, do you?”
“I just … I have a weird feeling about this place.”
“No reason to assume the worst here. The peaceful alien races Earth has encountered outnumber the violent ones two-to-one.”
Violet furrowed her brow. His off-the-cuff math didn’t add up based on what she knew of Earth’s history. A century checkered with surprise attacks and failed invasions by alien fleets offered contradictory evidence. Then again, Earthians gained a reputation for being a violent and reactionary species among several extraterrestrial races over the past 100 years.
Three pods — one on each wall — opened in the same manner as the chamber door did earlier. Violet fixed her gaze on the pod straight ahead. Her heart raced faster when a lanky alien stepped out into the chamber. Thick tufts of hair covered patches of their elongated head and portions of their gangly limbs. A pair of deep-set wild blue eyes fell on her. The alien crossed the chamber in long-legged strides toward the two explorers, soon joined by its companions. All three wore a seamless white uniform decorated with unusual pictographic symbols.
“Our scans showed no life on this station.” Shock threaded through Nate’s voice. “I don’t believe —”
“What you are seeing is a synthetic body housing an organic consciousness.” An alien in the middle of the three who exited the pods stepped forward as they spoke. “We built these synthetic frames using a template matching our original organic bodies.”
Violet let her eyes trail from the alien’s head to their feet. They were more animal-like in appearance than any other race she had ever encountered.
“How do you know our language?” Nate gave the alien who spoke a puzzled look. “I mean, this is the first time —”
“Our central processor absorbed your language and distilled the data into our neurons,” the alien said, interrupting him. “We understand how to translate our speech to match your understanding.”
Violet licked her lips. What the alien said was cool, but it also heightened her nervousness. Their technology operated on a level far beyond what Earth had achieved since first venturing out into the wider galaxy.
“Where did you come from?” she asked, hoping that learning more about the synthetic aliens would calm her nerves. “How did you end up on a space station orbiting a planet without a star?”
“We once basked in the light of a star for tens of thousands of generations before my creation,” the middle alien said. Their companions remained curiously silent. “An unforeseen cataclysm hurled our home planet into the cold depths of space. We feared many eons would pass before our planet journeyed close to another planetary system.”
“So that explains the synthetic bodies,” Violet said. “It must have been your only means of survival.”
“Correct,” the alien replied. “We hoped to preserve our civilization long enough to begin anew.”
“We’d be happy to help you find a new home,” Nate said. “I’m sure there’s a suitable uninhabited planet in this sector of the galaxy where you can start a new colony.”
Matching smiles crossed the lips of all three aliens. They shot one another satisfied glances.
“Maybe you could tell us more about your people, so we can be of better help,” Violet suggested. “We certainly don’t want to leave you stranded out here in deep space.”
The middle alien beckoned her forward.
“Come with me.”
Violet stole a brief glance at Nate. Curiosity had overridden his earlier anxious demeanor. He now wore a broad grin.
“This will be fun,” he said. “It’s like we’re assembling a living 3D jigsaw puzzle, and we found an elusive piece that connects the whole sky.”
Nate never told her he liked 3D jigsaw puzzles. Violet kept a whole stack stored on a lower shelf inside her closet. So many missed opportunities to unwind and assemble puzzles together during long interstellar voyages.
The middle alien directed both explorers to stand behind two parallel circles at the center of the chamber. Consoles rose from each circle and stopped when blanked colored screens reached eye level. Blue light shot out from each screen. Beams enveloped Violet’s eyes and seemed to tunnel a path straight into her brain. She let out a pained whimper and tried to step away from the console. A shockwave rippled through her body keeping her frozen in the same spot.
Seconds felt like minutes while the light probed Violet’s eyes. Then the blue beams terminated with sudden force. She gasped. Only blank screens stood before her and Nate again.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” the middle alien said. “We’ve found a suitable planet for a new homeworld.”
“Where are you … Why did …” Nate sounded as disoriented as Violet felt. “You probed —”
“You probed our minds,” she said, completing the sentence before he had a chance. “Why?”
“We needed to learn who you really were.” The middle alien answered with a patronizing tone. “Everything about you and your civilization is now stored in our central processor. Our survival hinges on learning — and eliminating threats to our existence.”
“We’re not trying to threaten you,” Violet replied.
“I agree. You are no threat to us.”
The middle alien turned to its companions and pointed a long spindly finger at each one.
“Drain the antimatter cylinders in their space vessel and send them away from the station. I will wake the others and ready our fleet.”
“It will be done,” the other aliens said in unison.
“We outlasted the enemy who ejected our former planet from its home,” the lead alien said. “Now we will begin our empire anew with none left to resist.”
Violet and Nate were forcibly dragged through the corridor back to their ship. Despair weighed on her with the pressure of a thousand suns.
These synthetic aliens were taking the first steps toward invading a planet and claiming a new homeworld. Violet still knew hardly anything about their species and had no clue where they were going. Worse yet, she and Nate possessed no realistic way of traveling through deep space fast enough to warn Earth and its allies about the danger ahead without antimatter to power a hyperlight engine.
If through some miracle their ship made it to the nearest inhabited planet within their lifetime, what assurance did Violet have the world they reached wouldn’t already be conquered?
Did you enjoy this sci-fi tale? Read my other short stories in the Strange New Worlds archive and check out my Alien People Chronicles series.
See, this is why I hope we never have to meet aliens, ever. Eggs, pods, orbs. Just don't touch anything and humanity will survive... Right? This filled me with dread like poor Violet. How do you outmanouvre something that's 3 steps ahead? I enjoyed your Sci Friday story!
A good read. It kept you guessing what was going to be found. I would like to know what happens next.