Zillah made her way to the communications panel and shut it down. Androgyne couldn’t help but stare at her, utterly confused.
“Androgyne,” Katz whispered, “This is Zillah, the captain of Opera Alpha. Judging by the way she’s talking, she thinks you’re Alpha’s Androgyne unit. Just play along with it.”
“Honestly,” Zillah flicked the levers off one-by-one on the communications unit, “What are you doing here? Why are you fiddling around with things that don’t involve you?”
“She thinks I’m a droid?” Androgyne whispered a bit too loud.
“No, don’t say—” Katz’s voice cut off.
“Huh?” Zillah shot Androgyne a look of suspicion. “Who are you talking to?”
“Umm, no-one. Captain.”
“Who woke you?” Zillah planted her hands on Androgyne’s shoulders and inspected her face. “You can’t wake yourself up, so someone must have done it. Who was it?”
“I, uh, do not know how to respond.”
“Oh…” Zillah finally put two and two together. “You’re not my Androgyne, are you?”
“Yes, I am,” she said, afraid to reveal the truth.”
“What lessence,” Zillah pushed her away. “Manuel?”
The Alpha’s Manuel appeared beside Zillah and hovered around her. “Yes, Captain?”
“Who is this impostor?”
The holographic book fluttered over to Androgyne and inspected her. “She’s not one of ours, ma’am. She’s from the ship that has just connected to us.”
Zillah couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What ship?”
“I’m getting a reading that another ship has docked with us.”
Androgyne held her breath, waiting for Zillah’s response. Hopefully it would be one in which she didn’t end up killing her.
“We’ve been rescued?” A smile crept along Zillah’s face. “They responded. They got our message?”
“It seems so,” Manuel said, floating back to his master.
“Oh, goodie!” Zillah danced a happy dance and clapped her hands together. “My God, I thought we were doomed.”
“I, uh,” Androgyne stepped out of the chair and ran an array of excuses through her mind. Something wasn’t right. “I’m not sure—”
“—USARIC got our message and have come to save us!” Overjoyed, Zillah became very emotional. She held out her hand for Androgyne to shake. “Thank you so much for coming. Can I speak to your Captain, please?”
“Umm, yes. Okay,” she said, “Captain Katz?”
“Yes?”
“Captain Chin-Dunne would like to speak to you.”
A few moments later, Zillah patched her headset into Androgyne’s frequency and led her guest into the hyper-sleep chamber.
“How has the crew been able to sustain themselves for the past four years?” Katz asked Zillah.
“When Opera Alpha arrived at Enceladus, she blacked-out entirely. All comms went down for approximately twenty minutes. When the backup drive started, I had to act accordingly and sent out a distress call.”
Zillah pointed at the six hyper-sleep pods.
“Botanix took a hit. Fifty-eight percent damage,” she said. “A lot of the plant life didn’t survive and the main coolant stopped producing water. My only option was to conserve oxygen and food, and put the crew and myself in hyper-sleep.”
Katz, much like Androgyne, felt that something was truly off.
“Are they being fed intravenously?” Katz asked.
“Yes, we have enough protein and supplements to last ten years,” Zillah explained. “We genuinely didn’t think we would see rescue.”
“Are you thrusters damaged?” Katz asked.
“Yes. We were a sitting duck out there praying for rescue. It doesn’t matter now, if we can board Beta and go home with you.”
“We don’t have enough hyper-sleep chambers to house everyone,” Katz said. “I’d like to send my team in to investigate. It’s possible we could return to Earth together, and have each crew member spend half the journey in sleep.”
“Everyone would spend six months awake?”
“Yes, something like that,” Katz said and turned to Tor. “I don’t like this one bit. I want to know what happened to Alpha, and why it blacked out.”
“Understood, Captain.”
“Assemble our crew. We’re boarding Alpha,” Katz returned to the screen. “Zillah, can you confirm Alpha is ready to accommodate my team?”
“Yes, Captain,” Zillah said, “I can show you what you need to see when you board.”
“Thanks, I’ll leave our Androgyne with you. My team and I will board Alpha in thirty minutes. There will be five of us boarding, including our feline.”
Zillah entered Alpha’s control deck and looked at Androgyne, suspiciously. “USARIC sent a feline up with you?”
“Yes,” Katz said, “We’ve made a discovery which we can share with you. It could help to make some sense out of what’s been happening.”
“Oh—”
“—See you in thirty minutes. Katz, over and out.”
Androgyne sniffed around the air, feeling her sensors go off the charts. “I’m sensing an unusual odor in the air. What is it?”
Zillah crouched to her knees and held her head in her hands. “Ugghhh…”
“What are you doing?”
Zillah moved her hands away, to reveal a trickle of pink-colored blood coming from her right eye. “Androgyne, I have something to tell you. You’re not going to like it.”
“What are you going to tell me?”
“You’re not human,” Zillah wiped the blood away from her eye and licked it from her knuckle. “You’re an android. Do you know how I know this?”
“Why are you bleeding?” Androgyne went to touch Zillah’s face, only to have her hand patted away in defiance by the ship’s captain.
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“What?”
“You are not human. Do you know how I know?”
Androgyne’s face fell as she took in the revelation. “No, I do not. How do you know?”
Zillah grabbed the back of the communications chair and spun it around.
Alpha’s Androgyne, identical in every way to Beta’s, lay lifeless in the chair. The front of its face had been removed. The once-pulsating brain had dried up and developed a thin layer of skin over it.
“I don’t know what happened during the black out. It fried our communications and terminated our droid. I found her like this.”
Androgyne looked her peer in the face and paused. She traced her finger over the droid’s skull. It was as if she was looking in a mirror. “Is it me?”
“No, it’s not you,” Zillah said, backing up against the door. “Well, that’s not strictly true. It’s not you, but it is one of you.”
Androgyne looked up from the chair, confused. “One of me?”
“I’m sorry, Androgyne,” Zillah thumped the panel on the wall, opening the door to the control deck. She stepped through it, trying not to show any emotion. “Please forgive me.”
The door slid shut, sealing Androgyne in with the dead droid. “No, you can’t do this. Don’t leave me in here!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Captain Katz, Tripp, Bonnie, Jaycee, and Haloo strapped themselves into their outer-skins, ready to disembark Space Opera Beta.
Bonnie held Jelly in her arms made a fuss of her. “Hey, gorgeous. Are you ready for an adventure of a lifetime?”
“Bonnie, stop talking weird to the cat, please,” Katz said, yanking the zip up to his helmet. “Let’s try to keep first physical contact with Alpha as professional as possible.”
Bonnie smirked and bounced Jelly around in her arms. She affected a cutesy voice, indirectly talking to Katz through the animal. “What’s that, Jelly? Yes, he is being a miserable old so-and-so, isn’t he?”