NaNo Excerpt – Week Four

Not too much to be set up in this scene. Basically, we have Commander Aleron, Chandra, and Skyler discussing the findings from the planet they found Alyx on. Skyler is about to be drafted for an assignment.


Chandra paced up and down the length of the conference room while Aleron and Skyler exchanged puzzled glances.

“Forgive me, but I don’t understand what’s got you so worried,” Aleron said. “You found the artifact you were looking for, didn’t you?”

She stopped pacing and sat down with a sigh. “Yes, that was the artifact we were looking for, but the circumstances under which it was found . . .”

“It’s the woman, Alyx, isn’t it?” Skyler said.

“Yes. There was a reason she was put in that place and I think it’s of vital importance that we understand why.”

“Is this just curiosity speaking, or is this one of your ‘feelings’?” Aleron asked.

“A little of both,” she admitted.

“Maybe someone on her planet—” Skyler began. He broke off at a look from Chandra.

“What?”

“That was her planet,” she said.

“But that’s impossible,” he said. “Isn’t it?” He looked from one to the other with a sinking feeling. “But there’s no other human life on that world, I don’t understand.”

“I’m sure it will come as no surprise that what I’m about to tell you is in the strictest confidence.”

She got up and began to pace again. “I had the remains in the temple analyzed and we discovered five humans, six of the Old Race, and one Illezie.”

“An Illezie! Wait a minute, that statue outside the temple. I was right, it was Illezie. I don’t understand.”

“Nor do I,” Aleron said.

“Many years before the Confrontation Wars, there was a group of Old Race and Illezie who experimented with temporal displacement.”

“Temporal displacement?”

“They were a very tight knit group and shared neither their reasons for the experiments nor their results. Little else is known other than the fact they seemed to just vanish one day, their experiments abandoned. Eventually they became just another notation in history.”

“You think we’ve stumbled on the remains of one of those experiments, don’t you?” Aleron asked.

“Yes.” Chandra sat down again.

“What about Alyx?” Skyler savoured the name. He liked it – it suited her.

“I don’t believe your friend from the temple is cognizant of what’s happened to her.”

“How’s that possible?” Aleron asked.

Chandra shrugged. “She was with a group who were searching for the temple for other reasons and were captured. She appears to remember very little after that until she woke up in the lab.”

“Appears.” Aleron jumped on the word. “You think she could be lying?”

“No,” Chandra shook her head as Skyler opened his mouth to speak. “I don’t think she’s lying, although I don’t think she’s telling the whole truth either.”

“We need someone to ferret out more information from her.”

They both turned to look at Skyler.

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