ONE of THIRTY-TWO
*NOTE- Hello, everybody! It's me, TheManFromMudos, and guess what? It is time, ladies and gentlemen. Matthew is back. Xena is back. Katie is back. Although, she was only in the last story for three chapters, so you're probably not that interested in her. For now. Yes, after a long month of careful planning, meticulous structuring and quite a lot of head-scratching, I have finally fixed in place the foundations of the final chapter in the 'Xena' trilogy. Now, some of you may be disappointed that this is the last story in the series. But don't worry. Methinks there might be a prequel on the horizon. And anyway, this one should keep you busy for a few months (or days, if you're reading this at some point in the future when the whole thing's done.) Anyway, I'm not going to spoil anything for you. I'll just leave you to sink your teeth into it. All I will tell you is that this is by far my most ambitious story yet. So, read on and enjoy. For the first time, it's 'Xavier'. THANK YOU!*
*DISCLAIMER – Way back when, in the autumn of 1979, that majestic creature known as the Xenomorph graced our screens for the very first time. Now, we've a lot of people to thank for that. Ridley Scott. H.R. Giger. And many more. But one person we don't have to thank for that, is me. Yes, believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, I did not play any part in the creation of the Alien franchise. So, I think it goes without saying that I do not own, nor have I owned, the rights to the franchise. Just so you know. Oh, there's some other franchises referenced in here as well. I don't own them, either. What I do own is all of the characters in this story, as well as most of the ships. I also own the hand-drawn cover art, which is currently mounted proudly on my bedroom wall. Again, just so you know. THANK YOU!*
PROLOGUE
Xenomorph (XX121) – A deadly, endoparasitoid lifeform with no higher goals other than the propagation of its species. That is the standard by which the Weyland-Yutani Corporation defines a Xenomorph. I should know. I've read several of their case files regarding the species. It all began in 2104, apparently, when a colonisation vessel called the Covenant first discovered the existence of the creature on an uncharted, life-supporting planet whilst en route to its destination on Origae-6. Along with another lifeform referred to in the case files as a 'Neomorph', the bloodthirsty predator all but wiped out the Covenant's skeleton crew. Of course, Weyland-Yutani soon got this crazy idea that these 'mindless' aliens could be easily transformed into biological weapons of mass destruction. Since then, ship after ship has been claimed by the Xenomorphs, as rogue bounty hunters and undercover synthetics bring the killer organism amongst the unwitting crew, hoping to bring it into the hands of the Company. The Copernicus, the Nostromo, the SS Lockley-Lockley, to name but a few, are all such ships, whose crews were completely eradicated by these ruthless carnivores. There's one thing about the Xenomorphs that you can always be certain of: that they will kill any and all other living things that they come into contact with.
XAVIER
Galactic Standard Date/Time Stamp: TWO-THOUSAND THREE-HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO / SEVEN / THIRTY-ONE
N.X. Tulmorian Public Transportation Vessel Andromeda – Registration Number: 446526331
- Mainframe AI: Neolith Xerxes Tulmorian Artificial Intelligence Systems Unit 35 – 'Andi'
- Crew: 1 – Navigational (1)
- Passengers: 4 – Adult (1), Infant (2), Animal (1 – UNRECOGNISED SPECIES)
Current Assignment: Travel to Manchester, Sedna for relocation of patients from MTAS Constantinople
Expected Time of Arrival: TWO-THOUSAND THREE-HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE / SIX / TWENTY-TWO
I hate hypersleep. Most people will tell you that you get used to it eventually. But I beg to differ. Throughout my life, I've collectively spent more than fifty years in hypersleep. Chronologically, therefore, I've lived for well over seventy years, despite the fact that I'm only physically in my late twenties. And yet, after all these years, I still can't safely say that I am 'used to' hypersleep. Thankfully, I don't get 'stasis sickness', which is more than can be said for a lot of people. But I always end up waking up so… tired. Technically, you are neither asleep nor awake whilst in hypersleep, which would explain why, after an eighteen-month period in stasis, for example, you wake up feeling like you haven't slept in… well, eighteen months. So, naturally, when I awoke from a near two-year stint in hypersleep aboard the NXTPTV Andromeda, I was feeling pretty knackered. The moment I opened my eyes, I immediately wanted to close them again. But, seeing as though I was the ship's only crew member (albeit not one of its own crew members), I knew that it was my duty to be up and ready before the passengers were awoken. Drearily lifting my heavy arms from by my sides, I reached out to the two handles on the inside of the hypersleep booth, and pulled back the thick glass casing over my head.
Sitting up groggily, I rubbed my weary eyes and looked around the dimly lit room I had just spent the last twenty-four months asleep in. It was a tiny little chamber, to be sure. Basic crew quarters, four to a room. I saw that the other three hypersleep booths around me were still occupied. The others had not yet been awoken. Katie. Xena. Xavier and Amanda. Together, we made up the rag-tag crew of the Andromeda. But not for much longer. Soon, we'd touch down in the sleepy village of Manchester, on the dwarf planet Sedna. Far, far away from the heart of human civilisation. There, Xena and I could start a new life together, away from the prying eye of the discriminative public. Before any of that, though, we'd have to make our landing.
"Andi?" I called out hoarsely into the silent room, stretching my arms out into the air as I did so.
"Konbanwa, Mashuu-san." A chirpy, disembodied voice replied loudly. It belonged to Andi, the Japanese-speaking AI mainframe of the Andromeda.
"Shit. Forgot about that." I muttered, trying to translate a coherent sentence in my head. "Um… Ima nanji dess ka, Andi?"
"Juu-hachii-ji san juu-pun dess." She replied cheerily. Eighteen-thirty. With luck, we could touch down on Sedna before the day was out.
"Hokanohito o mezame sasete kudasai, Andi." I continued, slowly climbing out of the hypersleep booth and flicking on a nearby light switch.
"Mondai arimasen." Andi agreed. "Chottomatte kudasai." Suddenly, the other hypersleep booths in the room began to whir gently, springing to life as their occupants were slowly reanimated. Air hissed through the vents on the foot end of each pod as they were repressurised, their contents being exposed to 'fresh' air for the first time in two years. Eventually, the hissing subsided, and the interior of each booth was bathed in pale blue light.
"Subete no joukyaku wa me o samashite imass." Andi assured me, as the small dials on the side of each booth clicked into the 'vacant' position in unison.
"Arigatou gozaimass." I replied, walking over to the nearest booth. I peered down through the thick glass casing and saw a young woman in her late twenties, perhaps a year or two younger than myself. This was Katie, single mother of one and the only adult human passenger aboard the ship.
"Katie? Can you hear me?" I asked quietly, rapping gently on the glass with the knuckle of my forefinger. She opened her eyes wearily, slowly craning her neck to see who had woken her up. When her gaze fell upon me, she smiled weakly, and attempted to speak, before coughing violently.
"Hold on." I said, lifting the lid of the booth open for her. As Katie sat up, still coughing, I began to swiftly strike her across the back with one hand.
"Thanks." She mumbled as her coughing subsided. She smiled weakly once again, her face incredibly pale.
"You alright?" I asked, rubbing her back gently as she continued to breathe heavily.
"Yeah." She replied, nodding hesitantly. Her face certainly said otherwise.
"Are you sure?" I insisted. I wasn't going to risk her throwing up all over the place. Blood and gore was one thing, but I couldn't stomach vomit.
"No." She muttered, her smile suddenly falling. I immediately reached down to a small shelf on the underside of the hypersleep booth, and pulled out a small plastic container, which I thrust into Katie's hands just in time. I turned away as she began to retch violently.
"I'm going to check on the others." I told her, quickly moving away as she continued to heave loudly. I walked over to the next booth along, and gazed upon its dormant inhabitant. She was tall. She was slender. She was black. And I don't mean dark-skinned, I mean she was quite literally black.
The inhabitant in question was, of course, Xena. My eight-foot tall, heavily-armoured killing machine of a girlfriend. She could snap a man in two like a dry reed. She could punch through a ribcage with nothing but her tongue. She could even survive in the vacuum of space. And yet, in many ways, she was as soft as a brush. Xena wouldn't hurt a fly, much less a human. For although she may have had the body of a killer, Xena was far from that. Quite the opposite, in fact. She'd saved my life on a couple of occasions, as well as the lives of our other passengers. Yes, believe it or not, Xena was much more accustomed to being on the receiving end of violence than she was to dealing it out. As I stared down into the pod, I thought about everything that Xena and I had been through together. Murder, blackmail, betrayal. And that was just on the Archimedes. Then, on the Constantinople, our own son had tried to kill us. With a bit of luck, though, things could soon change. We could live in peace here on Sedna. We could be happy.
"Xena..." I whispered, lifting the lid of the hypersleep booth and stroking the top of her head gently. "Are you awake, Zee?" She nodded her head slowly, although the size of the pod was so inadequate that she had barely a couple of inches to move around in.
"Do you feel alright?" I asked, carefully helping her sit up. After a long pause, she slowly shook her head from side to side.
"Makes sense." I muttered. "You've only been under once before, and you were dead at the time." I chuckled, as did she.
"Don't worry." I assured her. "You'll be right as rain in a couple of hours." She smiled slightly, and heaved a deep sigh. I reached out with both arms, and she leaned in to embrace me in a hug, I gently stroked her smooth carapace as she rested her head over my shoulder. She sighed again, but when she eventually pulled herself away from me, her expression was much less troubled. Despite everything we'd been through getting here, at least we were together. It might not have been all that mattered, but it was certainly a comforting thought. And one we had to hold onto in these stressful times.
"Matthew?" Katie suddenly called out from the far side of the room. I looked around to see her stood beside the final hypersleep booth. In her arms, she gently cradled her infant daughter, Amanda. She gestured towards the pod as I approached. I leaned over the side and saw another baby, also newborn, who was sound asleep, breathing lightly. The adopted child of Xena and I. Xavier. I lifted the child out of the hypersleep booth carefully, rocking him back and forth in my arms. Technically, hypersleep was unsafe for minors. But we hadn't exactly been given much choice in the matter.
"Is he alright?" Katie asked, still quietly tending to her own baby. I looked down at Xavier with a smile, and nodded as I stroked the top of his head.
"He's fine." I told her. "Thankfully." She nodded in agreement. I glanced over at Xena, who seemed reluctant to move from her hypersleep booth. Perhaps she simply needed a few minutes to relax her aching muscles. I didn't envy her, having to squeeze into a pod just over half her size. But, once again, we didn't really have the luxury of choice when we were fleeing a collapsing space station. We just had to make the best of a difficult situation.
"So how close are we, then?" Katie enquired. "A few hours? Couple of days?"
"I'll ask." I told her, trying to correctly phrase a question in Japanese off the top of my head. "Andi, Manchesstaa to no kyori wa?"
"Watashtachi wa Manchesstaa, Sedona kara juu-ni OA tan'i hanarete iru." Andi replied. "Yaku san-jikan de touchaku shimass."
"What did she say?" Katie demanded before Andi had even finished her sentence.
"We're about three hours away." I explained. "We'll be there before nightfall. Mind you, I don't know what the local time is."
"And what's today's date?" Katie asked, keen to get the answers she wanted right off the bat."
"An excellent question, Katie." I replied jokingly. "I shall find out at once. Andi, kyou no hidzuke wa nandess ka?"
"ni-sen san-hyaku yon-juu-ni nen nanagatsu san-juu-ichi nichi dess." The ever-cheerful Andi told me.
"What did she say?" Katie said again. She really did need to work on her patience.
"She said it's the thirty-first of July." I assured her calmly. "Twenty-three... Wait a minute. Andi, nan-nen dess ka?"
"Ni-sen san-hyaku yon-juu-ni nen dess." She repeated. My face fell as I translated each word individually in my head.
"What did she say?" Katie asked yet again. "Is there something wrong, Matthew? Is it not the thirty-first of July?"
"Oh no, it's the thirty-first of July." I assured her, staring blankly off into space as I did so. "Twenty-three forty two."
"I beg your pardon?" She snapped, both astonished and dismayed by the number that she had just heard.
"The year…" I repeated slowly, turning to face her and sighing deeply. "Is twenty-three forty-two."