The Terran Representative by Angus Monarch Read Free Book Online

of us discovered the atrocities committed deep below SpaciEm’s surface I noticed the crew had a different light in their eyes. They still avoided me but some now had wariness in their eyes and actions. It was like they expected me to break out in the violence and murder that had occurred below.
    During the entire trip to Nasee Four I interacted with no one but Dell and Wards. Baron relayed their questions through someone else. Dell kept his distance. He was professional, as he’d always been, but there was coldness, a barrier, like a wall had been built between us. Only Wards continued to speak and act as before SpaciEm. If she saw the stares or noticed the room go silent when we’d sit together in the cafeteria or work out, she never let on that it bothered her; at least in front of me.
    “Do you think it was Kaur and her people?” I said to no one in particular. I’d taken to speaking aloud in my quarters as there was no one to be embarrassed around.
    After SpaciEm I’d asked Wards and Dell the same questions. Wards shrugged and said something non-committal. Dell flat out said, “Yes.”
    “No,” I said. I sat for a few beats listening to the hum of the ship. “Maybe. Maybe something happened to them on their trip.”
    “But what could have happened to make them do those things?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. There must have been thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands in that chamber. Would we have found the same on the moon in its cave system if we’d searched? Would we find the same on Nasee Four?
    I tried to shut it out of my mind. SpaciEm was an anomaly. It was the work of a fringe group of colonists gone mad.
    “But what if it wasn’t a fringe group? What if it was Kaur?”
    “No,” I whispered.
    “What if that is what happens? You go mad when you go it alone.”
    I scrunched up my eyes as tight as I could. My hands balled into fists, nails biting into my palms. I pounded my thigh with my fist, the pain felt deep in the muscle. “No.”
    My breathing came in ragged gasps. Tears blurred my vision. I hung my head.
    “You’re alone.”
    “I know,” I said. If Kaur had committed the acts on SpaciEm, and there were no other Terrans besides myself, why should they be found? Why should they not be left to rot in whatever hellhole they found themselves? Why should I work to bring to light the worst of my people?
    Maybe being alone in the deep void of space had made Kaur and the colonists go insane. I’d considered that they were completely cut off from Earth. Maybe they couldn’t communicate with anyone. Maybe they had become an entity unto themselves where mental illness blossomed and madness became the norm.
    Perhaps the madness spread slowly, one by one but being self-contained within the colonial fleet it couldn’t be eradicated. It fed on itself getting worse as time went on. Colonists infected one another with their insanity until it controlled everything and everyone. Maybe the sane were what we found on SpaciEm.
    And here I was: a lone Terran sitting in my quarters by myself. I let my imagination bounce back and forth without any filters. No one was there to tell me to stop traveling down a specific road of thought. There was no one to reel me back in, pull me out of the depths and plant my feet back on solid ground. No one was there to prevent me from following in the footsteps of Kaur.
    “You can go back.”
    “I know,” I said. Earth seemed enticing. Go back to my cryo-chamber. Shed the trappings of responsibility. I didn’t want the burden of answering for crimes I hadn’t committed or succumbing to an insanity I couldn’t explain. I wanted to go back to sleep and not have to face my current reality.
    Let the Confederacy and the Vantagax have their war. Let Kaur have her cult and its abominable acts. I would be asleep without the reminders of the cruelty the galaxy possessed.
    “Let Dell know you’re going back.”
    I shook my head. I couldn’t tell Dell I didn’t