Ancient Astronauts

Nightmares

Hans woke Alyonna with his tossing and turning. She struggled to sit up under the weight of the baby in her belly and ran a hand over his brow. It was soaked in feverish sweat. This was the third time in the last week. He began to calm down under her touch but still twitched under the nightmare's influence.

The hand moved down to his arm and he relaxed some more. Alyonna looked out the window. Proxima B's two moons hung in the sky. They were incredibly close. It looked like you could reach a hand out the window and touch one of them even though Aly knew they were really hundreds of miles away in orbit.

Alyonna shuffled the new calendar around in her mind. When she'd arrived she was eight earth months away from term. That was twenty years on Proxima-B. They'd been on the surface now for a hundred and fifteen days. She now figured she was about ten weeks from term, only a week closer than what she'd told Ty when they were bantering the previous weekend. She felt a rush of pride at her indomitable math skills.

Moving around had become a bit more difficult halfway to term, though not as much as she imagined. She chocked that up to Proxima-B's slightly weaker gravitational pull.

The year round good weather in this part of the planet had proven to be invaluable to crops and they were already only two weeks from a fully sustainable, self generated food supply. The colony was built, and Hans had even lifted the ban on procreation early. At about the same time, the dirty looks Alyonna was getting over her swollen belly magically disappeared. Crazy what people will forgive when they are no longer denied the same privilege.

He began to toss and turn again, "C'mon man," Alyonna thought tiredly, "I'm the pregnant lady. Shouldn't I be the one getting cooed back to sleep?"

She still hadn't told Hans about the syringe, and planned to do that when she knew whether it was time for alarm bells to go off or not.

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"Snap out of it, Private!" Hans was standing on the bridge wrestling with the screaming officer. The man clutched his head and howled like the beasts of hell were upon him.

"Private!" Hans bellowed at him, "It's not real! It's only your mind."

Suddenly the guard stopped howling and shaking, and looked up at Hans with calm yellow eyes that weren't his own.

Hans took a step back, "What is this?"

"I'm sorry," the guard said in a voice that was not his own, "It was–garble garble-only way–garble–reach you. Impact...swoke...woke us."

"Who are you?" Hans demanded.

"Who are we?" The guard who was not the guard responded, "You know.. we are. Why do–garble–you hold us?"

"I am not holding you," Hans said, "You're free to go whenever you please."

"We are not," the guard shook his head clumsily like he wasn't sure how the gesture worked.

"Yes, you are," Hans said. I am the captain of this vessel, "Get off my ship. For that matter, how'd you get on my ship? Were you on the asteroid?"

The yellow reptilian eyes pierced Hans like a sharp knife, sliding into his conscious. Images that didn't make any sense flashed through his mind. "We cannot leave," the guard who was not the guard said, stumbling over the words, like whatever this thing was was reading the guard's mind trying to piece the sentence structures and words together.

"Free us," the guard said, then paused as though thinking about it, "Us free."

"Okay, okay, just tell me how to help you," Hans' mind was racing. He wanted nothing more than to kill these monsters that had mind enslaved one of his men and killed another, but he'd settle for figuring out where on his ship they were first.

The guard's eyeballs shot around his head a few times like Nascars on a racetrack back home, then he slumped forward. Hans checked his pulse. He was still alive.

Commander Mahelona screamed behind him. He turned to find it wasn't a death scream. It was a scream of fright. There was something in the shadows beyond the doorway. Hans thought it looked like the silhouette of some bipedal creature. Someone had turned out the lights where the bridge connected to B-Deck.

Clack Clack Tick...Clack Clack Tick....Clack Clack...Flames shot from the doorway onto the bridge.

Now Nalani emitted a death scream, and the rest of the second shift staff including Lt. Commander Hapkin joined her as their flesh was melted off by superheated flame. The horizontal column of fire originating in the doorway began to sweep back and forth. One of the officers near Hans shoved him into the lavatory. The flames burst through the closing door for a half second before it shut.

Hans heard his savior's dying scream mingled with his own before he faded into oblivion.