QUIETUS [S!5] [Round 3: Deluge]

When the Kelriz was discovered it was agreed that it was too potentially important to be claimed by any one person, no matter how much the location of a gargantuan untouched spacecraft from an unknown civilization might have fetched on the black market (this was not an agreement that was made easily). This information was instead taken to the Galactic Alliance. After much debate (wherein almost every member planet’s government attempted to concoct some reason as to why the Kelriz was best served by giving it to them) and some initial investigations it was decided the only fair thing to do was to split the ship between the governments of the member planets.

While most governments saw the Kelriz as an opportunity of one kind or another and seized upon it almost as soon as the ruling had been passed, the government of Deste, home planet of the tsote, had no such designs. Tsote are humanoid beings, almost elfin in appearance, with skin falling somewhere along a spectrum from lavender to Byzantium and eyes the colour of precious metals. They are most known for having the ability to sense fate as a tangible thing. This innate ability perhaps makes them a less ambitious race than any other. They know their limitations and they stick within them. Few venture too far from Deste, and those are generally those who think that if they can run far enough away from their homeworld they can avoid the ill-fate they have been stricken with.

Regardless a portion of the Kelriz was theirs, whether they wanted it or not. When it became apparent that they did not they were beset by private organizations requesting to rent or outright purchase their portion of the Kelriz.
Eventually they made a deal with Raxucorp, a small but rapidly growing organization based mostly on Earth. The nature of the deal granted Raxucorp free reign to do what they wished with the Deste portion of the Kelriz, provided that such actions were not considered unethical, and though the Raxucorp representatives were reluctant they eventually accepted that a representative of the Deste government should be present to ensure that these conditions were met.

Vincent Adyka was her name; Vinnie to her friends (as a non-binary species sometimes Tsote had difficulties differentiating between ‘boys names’ and ‘girls names’. They often had trouble with the gender binary in general. In regards to names Tsote parents who choose alien names often just pick whatever they like the sound of).

Vinnie’s fate was mostly pretty standard; the basic love/marriage/kids/eventual death (the details of which even those who liked to know their fate ahead of time generally shied away from learning) destiny. There were subtle hints of a journey to a far off place but it was faint enough that it could safely be assumed that whatever it referred to was largely uneventful. It was partly this safe fate that made her the ideal choice to oversee the Raxucorp Excavation.

It had been about a month since Vinnie and the Raxucorp Excavation team had arrived on the Kelriz. Things had been as peaceful as her fate had promised, but there was a certain tension between her and the Raxucorp management. It was obvious that they were not best pleased about her presence. Vinnie suspected that they were hiding something from her, what that might be she was not certain, and there was never enough proof to push the issue.

Today (or rather this 24 hour period as the Kelriz lacked a day and night cycle most inhabitants used whatever time measurement they were familiar with) was a rest day for the Raxucorp crew. Most of them had chosen to spend the day hiking down to the docks, which were designated as a communal area. Since the ruling the docks had been filled with independent merchants looking to capitalize on, well, not a captive audience exactly, but a market that does not have a wide variety in its retail choices. Vinnie might have opted to join them, but management was also making the journey and she really needed a break from those two.

Instead Vinnie had found an out of the way corner and was quietly reading a well-worn copy of The Night’s Thorn (wishing she had thought to bring more than one book) when she heard a distant frail sounding voice singing uncertainly. It took Vinnie a moment to convince herself that she was not just imagining the distant song, it wasn’t that she was prone to flights of fancy, it was just that sorrowful song seemed so out of place in these cold industrial corridors. She’d heard some of the Raxucorp crew sing upon occasion but they were generally bawdy songs making reference to anatomic processes she didn’t really understand sung when stumbling home drunk from a rest day spent down at the docks, and this was very clearly not that.

Unable to conceive of a satisfactory explanation for what she was hearing, Vinnie took her torch and following the echoing sound of that haunting melody. As she strolled through the wide empty corridors she neared the ribbon of light that denoted the Raxucorp Central Excavation. Did someone come back early? It was probably none of her business, but her curiosity drove her on. She peered through the door to see a girl in a raggedy dress collapse to the ground.

Quickly abandoning all pretence of secrecy Vinnie rushed towards the girl. She was now convulsing wildly on the hard metal floor, each limb seeming to flail independent of the others. She was also making uncomfortable sounding noises from deep in her throat, punctuated by occasional coughing. Vinnie pulled off her Raxucorp logo emblazoned jacket, rolled it up into something vaguely resembling a cushion and carefully placed it under the girl’s head.

“It’s okay mystery girl.” Vinnie whispered soothingly. “My name’s Vinnie. I’m gonna stay right here with you; keep you safe.” She watched as the girl’s eyes blinked independently of one another, alternating between quickly and slowly and long periods of staring, whilst her eyes swivelled this way and that way in their sockets. Vinnie continued to speak calmly and reassuringly though the longer she watched the girl the more unnerved she became. It was as though every part of the girl’s body was operating entirely separately. Vinnie was not a medical expert by any stretch of the imagination but even so she had never seen anything like this.

“Ms. Adyka?” Vinnie glanced behind her to see Raxucorp management showing more emotion than she had ever seen in either of them. On site management consisted of regional manager Adam Smith and assistant manager Jane Jones, but one was so rarely seen without the other that Vinnie had privately began to think of them as a single entity. It didn’t help that they kind of resembled one another; they both had blonde hair, though Ms Jones wore it long and Mr Smith kept it professionally short, they both had pale blue eyes, the same chiselled jawline and winning smiles which they would flash with regularity. Their fates reeked of success.

“Please explain what is happening here.” Mr Smith instructed.

“I don’t know.” Vinnie admitted. “I got here and there was this girl. I think she’s having a seizure but I’m no doctor. I don’t know what this is.”

“Hmm.” Mr Smith looked contemplative. “Thoughts?”

“She seems human. If she was here with the Earth Allocation then we’d know about her already.” Ms Jones replied. “What’s she saying? Is that a language?” The girl continued to make guttural sounds from her throat as her tongue lolled and thrashed.

“No.” Mr Smith said with certainty. “Or I suppose it might be a language but she’s not using it as such; there’s no pattern to the noises. I suspect it’s a symptom of her seizure but we’ll see for sure if it passes.”

“I suspect she’s freelance.” Ms Jones said. “Did she see anything confidential before she started seizing?”

Vinnie didn’t respond for a moment, wondering how they could be so calm and detached right now. “Um, not that I saw.” She said. “I, um, I thought I heard her singing before I got here.”

“Singing?” Mr Smith cocked an eyebrow.

“You left Central Excavation unguarded?” Ms Jones asked pointedly.

“Never mind that, this girl needs a doctor.” Vinnie said, anger rising in her voice.

“She is calming.” Mr Smith observed. “Medical assistance might not be necessary.” Vinnie looked back around to see that Smith was right; the girl had stilled. Vinnie gently manoeuvred her onto her side and stood up.

“Now, about the singing…” Mr Smith said. “Please tell us everything you can remember about it. The more information we have about our potential saboteur the better.”

“Sa-” Vinnie cut herself short when she finally noticed something about the girl. It hadn’t occurred to her until now because she was so fixated on helping her through whatever it was that she had just gone through, but now that she was still and silent she couldn’t help but notice it. This girl had no fate. Not even the slightest trace of fate hung around her. “She needs to die.” She said, almost under her breath.

“Excuse me Ms. Adyka, what did you just say?” Ms Jones asked.

Vinnie spun around to look at management. There was a look of terror in her eyes. “This girl needs to die. She has no fate she should not be alive.”

“I understand that to tsotes fate and destiny and so forth is very important but even so I’m not sure I understand your position.” Mr Smith said slowly.

Vinnie knew that humans had a tendency to dismiss fate as some kind of superstition. She didn’t have time to make them understand. She walked over to the ‘dorm’ (nothing more than a few sleeping bags in a rough circle) and started to search through her bag.

“Ms. Adyka please explain yourself right now.” Mr Smith insisted.

“There’s no time.” She said simply. “If I act now I can minimize the damage she’s done but it might already be too late.” After a minute she found what she was looking for, a pistol she had packed confident in the knowledge that she would not need it on what fate had assured her to be an uneventful journey.

“Ms. Jones.” Mr Smith said her name as if it were an instruction. She strode forwards her heels clacking on the metal floor and in one easy motion she grabbed Vinnie’s wrists and pulled them behind her back. Vinnie strained and struggled in Ms. Jones’ unnaturally strong grip, her pistol clattered uselessly to the ground. “Ms. Adyka this is uncharacteristic of you, explain yourself right now.”

Vinnie sighed. “Fate is real. You just need to believe me on this point.” She said. “This woman has no fate and I’m not saying she has no free will. This isn’t about free will vs. fate. This is about this woman shouldn’t be alive at all. Every interaction that anyone has with her sends them further and further away from the path of their fate.” She took a glance at the girl lying helpless on the floor. “And it doesn’t end there because nobody lives in a vacuum. You change the fate of one person you change the fate of every person they come into contact with, maybe only very slightly but in increments you change the fate of every living being in the universe. This is an unprecedented disaster. She needs to die before she can do any more damage, so just let me do what needs to be done.”

Management looked thoughtful for a moment. “We need to think on this.” Smith said.

“At the risk of being redundant, there is no time for methodical contemplation.” Vinnie spat.

“This seems like a largely ideological issue.” Ms Jones ventured. “Even assuming tsotes have an accurate perception of fate, I don’t see how an altered fate is so catastrophic.”

“Further investigation into the validity of the tsote fate sense and how it could be best utilized would be ideal but I understand that time is pressing.” Mr Smith said.

“Perhaps we should question her to learn how this lack of fate came about so that it can be replicated in the future if necessary.” Ms Jones suggested. “She appears to be coming around.” Vinnie looked over to the girl who it seemed was trying to climb to her feet without using her arms.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me?” Vinnie said exasperated.

Smith walked over and offered her a hand. “Good afternoon miss.” He said. “My name is Adam Smith, regional manager for Raxucorp. I would be very interested to learn your purpose here in the Deste Allocation.” The girl looked up at him, made some uncomfortable guttural noises, but otherwise ignored his offer of assistance. Her arms hung limply by her side and she was having far more trouble getting to her feet than seemed reasonable.

“I think a doctor might be advisable after all.” Ms Jones suggested. Mr Smith gripped the girl by the arms and gently but forcibly lifted her to her feet. He held onto her for a moment while she found her balance and then let her go. She stumbled past him and onto the podium she had collapsed next to.

“I don’t think we’re going to get an answer.” Mr Smith said with a frown. “Perhaps it is safer to simply eliminate her.”

“Finally.” Vinnie said with a roll of her eyes. The girl had dropped to her knees again and was touching the pedestal, making large imprecise gestures with her arms like she didn’t quite know how to use them. Suddenly there was a rumbling, like the sound of an engine starting up. The room began to light up, not just with the lighting rigs that Raxucorp had set up, but the main lights of the Kelriz were flickering on.

“Did she just do that?” Mr Smith asked incredulously.

“The timing is too close to be discarded as coincidence.” Ms Jones offered.

“How did she just do that?” Ms Jones could not offer anything more than a shrug. “We’ve been here a month and we couldn’t even turn the lights on, she does it in minutes, after undergoing some kind of trauma.”

Vinnie could see her shot at ridding the universe of this abomination fading away with every second. They were going to use her. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t understand her or how she had done what she had done. Even if it was only a fluke they were never going to kill her now. It was now or never. Distracted by the power coming on Ms Jones had relaxed her grip; Vinnie jerked her arms forward with everything she had. It was just enough. She dropped to the ground and grabbed her pistol, turned and opened fire once, twice, three times before Ms Jones was upon her again. The girl collapsed, two of the bullets had gone wide, but the third hit her in the side of the head. There was no doubt she was dead.

“God damn it Ms Adyka!” Mr Smith rounded on her furiously. “Do you even realize the opportunity you have just cost us?”

“I’ve done you a favour.” Vinnie snapped. “Nothing good could have come from that fateless.” She spat the last word like it was the worst insult she could imagine.

Smith picked up the pistol from where it had dropped. “Ms Jones do we have a spare?” Jones shook her head. “What a shame.” He said sadly. “I know there will be trouble back with the Deste government for this but I don’t see any other option at this point.” He levelled the pistol at Vinnie and for once managed to look genuinely regretful.

“You can’t do this.” She whispered disbelievingly. “There’s no way you’ll be able to explain this to Deste.”

“I’ll tell them Fateless over there shot you when you tried to end her.” Smith said. “It’s a gamble but I’m guessing they’ll go for it.”

Vinnie was at a loss for words. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Smith pulled the trigger and the last thing she saw before dying was the fateless girl sitting up as though nothing was wrong.