He didn't sleep much anymore. None of them did.

They didn't need to.

Even when they did lie down to rest, most of that idle time was spent working furiously behind the scenes. Behind their eyes, beyond their bodies.

Enhanced senses picked up activity all over the building that was his prison. He idly listened in on several conversations, mostly about them.

"You'd think they would've broken by now."

"I reiterate my protest, General. The Alliance made promises to these people. They practically came back from the dead to fulfill their mission, and then you locked them up. How do you expect to fill the Academy with recruits when this is how you reward such outstanding behavior?"

"You won't be spreading tales, would you, Doctor? That NDA you signed is ironclad."

"General, you're not listening. These people -the entire crew- are far superior to every other human being on this planet. Whatever happened to them out there, we need to be careful."

"I thought you said they were harmless. No danger to the public?"

"I said they choose to not harm us. I can promise you, with the physical and mental prowess and the emotional poise of the Asimov crew, they remain in Alliance custody because they choose to."

A rude snort made his lips twitch.

"They ain't fuckin' Superman, Doctor. Get a goddamn grip. We got so many security measures in place a germ can't get in or out of here without having his shit clocked."

"General, you're blind. If Captain Sloane and his people decide they want to be free, I hope they show their jailors more mercy than they've received."

A slamming door ended the conversation, and he eased back to contemplate it

      Doctor Jim is on our side

Yes, he always has been

    He'll suffer in our absence...They'll accuse him of collusion

       He must not suffer

I'll see to it...He's been so kind...He doesn't want to experiment on us, but he has no hope...They've worn him down

   We will take care of him...Bring him in

Yes

      Bring him

            Into us...

Into the Collective

He inhaled and opened his eyes. The dull gray ceiling greeted him, as it had for so long. The single window to the outside that they allowed in the bedroom was tempered, double-paned with a steel mesh screen between the layers of glass that were strong enough to be used in space flight.

The bedroom was one of three rooms that made up his prison. He had a bathroom on the other side of the bedroom. The last room was an open living/dining/kitchen area. The living room held decent size television that only played the content they uploaded. No actual live broadcasts.

He supposed he should be thankful they allowed him to watch football and the Olympics.

There was a kitchen, but he was never allowed knives or forks. All his spoons were degradable and disintegrated into recyclable mush within an hour of contacting his saliva.

One of the living room walls was glass, with an observation room on the other side. He was monitored around the clock, by at least three people at a time.

Four guards were instructed to subdue and retrieve him if he ever escaped.

He was too precious to kill. At least, until he revealed the secrets of the Asimov, their voyage, and what they learned in the wilds of deep, uncharted space.

He wanted to. He told them how, but the ones who believed them and wanted to learn, and grow and become more, were silenced. Removed. Discredited.

He tossed the covers back and swung his bare legs over the side of the bed. His lips twitched in wry humor while he rose, naked, and strolled into the bathroom.

Cameras captured his every move. Mics picked up even the most mundane sound. After the first week, they stopped letting women work in the observation room. They even fired several men.

He glanced in the mirror while he brushed his teeth. Wide amber eyes looked back at him. High, angular cheeks and a sharp nose, broken twice when he was a kid, sloped down to a slender upper and pouty lower lip. His jawline was square and bold, coming together in a strong, defined chin with an off-center scar the less-observant assumed to be a cleft.

His dark brown hair used to have golden highlights from his time in the sun. Asimov was equipped with a solarium that helped them maintain their vitamin D levels and kept the ship supplied with fresh oxygen and vegetables.

He rinsed his mouth and washed his face.

They should be along any minute now.

He sauntered back into the bedroom and rummaged in the soft trunk against the wall under the dimly lit window for clothes. By the time the opaque barrier faded from the glass wall he was dressed in slip-on jeans with a tank top.

He wasn't allowed shoes or contact with any metal.

Honestly, they were so human. He shuddered to think he grew up with such hubris.

And he didn't even know it until he had no choice but to look so deeply within himself that he was turned inside out twice.

It was worth it.

The recessed door slid open on schedule to allow General Victor Ulster to step into the living room.

He emerged from the bedroom at the same time, ignoring the man with his tight uniform and stacks of ribbons. His shiny stars didn't impress him at all. The man didn't deserve the rank any more than he deserved to be a prisoner.

"Captain Sloane."

Sloane walked right by him into the kitchen. His meals were pre-made and packed into self-heating containers. He had a stove, but he wasn't allowed to cook.

He wasn't even allowed a microwave.

At least he had a coffee machine. Even if his cups did the same disappearing act as his spoons.

Opening the fridge, he blindly selected a meal and cracked the package to activate the warm-up process. He left it on the small island -no dining room table or chairs allowed- while he stepped over to program his coffee.

Extra sweet, light cream, cinnamon.

"Captain."

"General."

Sloane's lips twitched when the man jumped.

He usually didn't speak before coffee. The machine beeped and he retrieved his cup. Taking a sip, he detached his spoon from the meal and popped it open. Steam wafted up, bringing him the scent of sausage biscuits and gravy.

Impish and ghostly laughter whispered across his mind.

Minx

Sloane dug in, and the heated food barely registered. He had no time to waste. There was a very small window before the food cooled into a congealed mass of manufactured starch and pseudo-meat. 

"Sloane."

"Captain Sloane," he corrected, gulping coffee. "I've yet to be decommissioned."

Ulster drew a deep breath. "Captain Sloane," he growled. "Your people still refuse to comply."

Sloane chewed and swallowed before speaking. Mama would be proud. "We've been through this. We need to be together to fully access and share the information."

"What about the weaponry?" Ulster snapped. "The boost to the core? You pared down that ship, dropped half its weight, tripled the food capacity, and broke speeds no one on this planet has even dreamed of reaching. None of that is collective knowledge."

"But it is," Sloane shrugged, scraping up the last of the gravy with his softening spoon. "Everything we learned, everything we know, is shared between us. We can't access the complete body of knowledge unless we are together.

"Besides," Sloane said, tossing the empty container and the spoon into the recycler. "You didn't find any weapons, or core upgrades when you stole our ship."

"Asimov is Alliance property," Ulster snarled.

"Bought and paid for with half the crew's wages over the course of ten years. That was in our contracts," Sloane finally met the other man's bloodshot eyes.

Ulster flinched away, pacing across the bare floor. "You were declared dead when you failed to report for five consecutive years," Ulster stated tersely. "Upon the demise of the entire crew, ownership of Asimov reverts to the Alliance. That's also in the contract."

"The verbiage is 'presumed dead'," Sloane corrected the man and sipped his coffee. "This is why our families received the balance of our wages held in trust and those hefty life insurance claims. Since we are, in fact, alive, ownership of the Starship Isaac Asimov reverts to us, in every court of law in the world, General. That ship is ours, every bolt and bulkhead of it."

Ulster cracked his thick neck. Honestly, the man was built like a bull, solid and imposing.

At least, he would be to someone else.

Someone fully human.

"This is the same shit you say every day."

"Pot," Sloane raised his coffee cup in mock salute, "meet kettle. You want weapons. You want a military advantage. You want intel on extra-terrestrial species."

"We want to enrich and uplift our species. We are compelled to share what we learned,  but it cannot be done while we are separated. That's not how this works. That will not change. It's the way the information was acquired, and how it was distributed amongst us. It's too much for any one or two people to carry. So," Sloane shrugged, "here we are."

Ulster's nostrils flared. He stalked toward Sloane until they faced each other across the small island. "Doctor Moore seems to think you and your people are humoring us. That you could escape any time you want."

Sloane allowed a smirk to curl one side of his mouth. "What do you think, General?" he asked softly.

The other man still wouldn't -couldn't- hold his gaze. He tried, but he continued to fail.

"I think you've worked some kind of mindfuck on the good doctor, and he's just saying what you put in his head."

I wouldn't do that to him

Ulster stumbled back, going pale. His red-rimmed eyes bulged, and Sloane calmly wiped a drop of blood from his nose with a knuckle. He finished his coffee and tossed the cup.

"The chip we allowed you to put in us makes doing even something that small painful. The Doctor is not wrong, General. We are very patient. We had to learn that out there. Especially once we realized just how long it might take us to get back home. It was never a question of if, always when.

"And when the time comes, you will either personally open the door and let us out, or we will take steps to free ourselves, and reclaim our ship."

"Try it," Ulster was hoarse, fueled by anger and more than a little fear. "That chip doesn't just zap you mutants for the mind tricks. It'll release a shock powerful enough to stop your heart if you get more than ten feet from this room."

Sloane smiled, and his amber eyes glowed golden in the artificial light around them. "Oh, General. I didn't know you cared."

Ulster's lip lifted in a snarl of rage, and he stomped to the door. It opened and closed silently behind him.

Sloane studied the door for the few short seconds it was open. His sensitive ears listened to the clicks of the keyboard code entered to release in the observation room and the smooth glide of the mechanism that worked the door.

He timed it down to the millisecond and filed the data away.

After a moment, he turned back to the coffee machine for another cup.

***

He spent the day as he spent so many before. They installed a monitor where he could read. It was embedded in a pedestal that he could move around and only responded to voice commands.

Thankfully, he could find just about any book he wanted to read. Sadly, it didn't allow him to access any current newspapers or magazines. Or the internet.

But he could read.

Small blessings, as O would say.

  They're all small these days...

True, but pile up grains of sand, and you get a beach

That light laughter was a balm to his yearning heart.

He missed her so much.

His darling. His queen.

  I miss you too, Brig

He swallowed, tears blurring his eyes. The words on the screen ran together and he sniffed, crying silently, feeling her grief and loneliness echo back.

His ears perked and he wiped his cheeks with the sleeve of his shirt and composed himself. The obs window was opaque again, darkened soon after Ulster stormed off. Sloane stopped paying direct attention to the people stationed there after the first few days. He took note of repeat appearances and marked changes to the group, but like the timing with the door, filed it away.

He took a deep breath and focused on the book he was trying to read.

Sloane had a deeper appreciation for the fictional creations of humanity now. The Odyssey hit differently after spending nearly twenty years in space trying to get home to Earth.

At least he hadn't lost his crew as Odysseus had.

Not such a small blessing. That one was huge. Fucking humongous.

It wasn't just O's laughter echoing in his head now; he smiled, calmed by the contact. Inadequate as it was, at least it was...

...a small blessing

The chorus of tempered merriment felt good. The Collective didn't get many moments like this. Each one was precious.

He was smiling when the obs window cleared and the door slid open. Ulster was back, but he wasn't alone.

A lean man in a lab coat followed him in and stood off to one side. The T-shirt he wore had a typical grey alien head and the words "Aliens Do It in Saucers" emblazoned around it. He paired it with worn jeans and violently neon green Converse high-tops.

There was a woman in heels that didn't look at all comfortable and clashed with her sober navy-blue skirt and subdued white long-sleeved blouse. 

Sloane didn't acknowledge them. He was reclining on the pile of cushions he kindly called a sofa. A fresh cup of coffee sat on top of his book pedestal.

"Captain Sloane."

"You brought company. You should have said. I'm sure I have a cake or two in that fridge somewhere."

He was intrigued, and the knot of merged thought in his head was still and focused, waiting to learn what was going on.

"Captain Sloane," the lab-coated man stepped into his line of sight with an excited smile. He held a clipboard to his chest, both arms wrapped nervously around it. "I'm Bryan Zachery, you can call me Zak. It's an honor to meet you, Sir."

Sloane blinked at him, the Collective watching and measuring Zak through his eyes. He must have seen something because his lips parted on a quiet gasp and his pale cheeks reddened.

"Wow," he whispered.

"Doctor Zachery," Ulster snapped. "Stop fanboying and get away from there."

Zak blinked light blue eyes slowly and took a step back from him. Sloane blinked, and Zak shuddered.

"Zak, nice to meet you. Doctor of what?"

The blush deepened. "Um...I'm a linguist, Captain."

Sloane nodded slightly and went back to his book.

"Captain," the woman moved to the end of the "sofa" and gave him a stiff, plastic smile. Her light brown eyes didn't settle on him for more than a few seconds at a time. "My name is Sandra Harper. I'm a communications expert."

"Ms. Harper," he nodded, not looking her way.

They assumed if he didn't look them in the eye, he couldn't read them.

Well, the less they knew, the more he could use.

"Sloane, our station on the moon intercepted a signal from the region of space the Asimov went missing in," Ulster announced.

The Collective's focus sharpened, and Sloane held himself still, breathing slowly. He didn't respond and waited for Ulster to continue.

"Dr. Harper believes the signal was meant to terminate at Asimov's location. It seems the data stream split once it entered Earth's atmo, but we can't tell where the other leg went."

"We have a recording," Harper took up the lecture. "Zak thinks it's linguistic, but there are anomalies that cannot be accounted for. We'd like you to hear it and give us your take on it."

Sloane sat back into the pillows, lifting his gaze beyond his visitors to the techs in the obs room.

"So, play it."

Ulster nodded to the techs and moments later, hidden speakers came to life. Sloane closed his eyes and listened to the clicks and buzzing; the hums and chittering

It was less than a minute long and when it ended, Sloane sat quiet, withdrawn into the Collective.

When he blinked back into himself, Zak was shaking his shoulder. The young man's light blue eyes were concerned, and Sloane smiled at him.

Zak was a good guy.

The doctor jumped back when Sloane smiled.

"Sorry, didn't mean to encroach. You just went somewhere else."

"Thank you, Zak," Sloane said softly.

"Any ideas?" Ulster snapped impatiently.

"Play it again, please."

"Once is enough," Ulster muttered.

"How many times did you listen to it, Zak?"

"At least twenty times back-to-back," the young doctor responded without a filter. "It's fucking rad. The linguistic markers are so subtle, it's..."

"We have no proof the transmission is a language." Harper cut Zak off, sniffing in disdain. "There are data points incorporated as well."

"I would like to hear it again," Sloane requested.

The tension in Sloane's shoulders eased when Ulster nodded, and the tech played the recording again.

The Collective was buzzing in his head, amping up.

"So?" Ulster prompted.

"Zak is right."

The doctor crowed.

"So is Harper."

Zak blinked at him, puzzled.

"It's a message." Sloane caught Zak's gaze and nodded.

"What does it say?" Zak asked, breathless and excited, eyes bright with discovery. "Who is it from and for? Where does it come from?"

Sloane turned away from Zak and stood. He picked up his softened coffee cup and carried it into the kitchen. "We heard something similar in our com files when we were trying to figure out what happened to us. We thought they were messages from Earth. We figured out the messages were directions."

"To where?" Ulster demanded.

Sloane turned to them. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back on the counter. "They were trying to help us get home."

"They who?" Ulster hissed.

"We told you who they were, or at least," Sloane sighed, "what we call them. They gave us a name, but we can't verbalize it. We called them the Hive, because of their hive mind."

Ulster turned away in disgust. "So, this so-called Hive sent a message to Earth."

"I said it's similar," Sloane qualified.

Ulster gave him a side-eye. "Could there be another hive-like society out there capable of broadcasting such a message?"

"We encountered quite a few unknowns out there. Love to tell you all about it." Sloane gave a dazzling smile and noticed Harper's blush.

She wasn't as remote as she wanted to appear. That went into his mental files, alongside Zak's barely leashed hero worship.

Ulster growled at his humor. "Nothing is stopping you."

Sloane bent a pitying look on Ulster, not bothering to rehash their daily debate.

"Can you translate the message?" Zak asked. He was nearly vibrating with excitement.

"There's no real translation. It's hard to put into a form a human mind will understand. In its simplest form, it's a notification and a date."

Ulster's bloodshot eyes narrowed. "Notification of what?"

Sloane's smile turned feral without his permission. He didn't care. He was done playing this game, done waiting. Their patience was about to be rewarded.

"We're coming."

If he was a vindictive man, Sloane would have enjoyed Ulster's sudden pallor a lot more.

"When?" The ragged demand made him grin. 

"Two years from the date of the message."

"You said it couldn't be relayed in a human language?" Zak was scribbling on his clipboard with a frown.

"The Hive's primary mode of communication is not verbal," Sloane explained. "They've evolved beyond physical form, beyond the need for vocal cords. They attempted spoken communication for us because humans cannot handle direct contact with them. A single human mind can't bear the weight of the Hive mind. We couldn't even fully perceive them until they...changed us. Made us as much like them as human anatomy would allow.

"As a result, when they do attempt to verbalize, we get the nuance beneath the chatter, the ideas behind the words. It's a lot. We couldn't communicate with them directly at first. Eventually, they would relay information through one, to avoid overwhelming us with the entire Hive."

"Your admiration for them is disgusting," Ulster snarled.

Sloane gave him that sunny smile again and felt the strength of the Collective pin the man with his eyes. He took a slow breath to calm them and himself.

Not yet... he soothed

  When?

Days...

"We were chosen for the Asimov Deep Space Exploration mission because we're the best at our jobs and the best humanity had to offer. A little gratitude is due, considering we may have been trapped out there if they hadn't helped us."

Ulster scoffed and Sloane caught a flash of distaste in Harper's eyes and outright disdain in Zak's.

Good...

  We can use them

Only if we must

   Bring him into us

Sloane's smile softened. Zak would be beside himself. His hunger to know more was barely restrained.

"You're barely human anymore," Ulster barked.

"We are what humans could be, given time, and guidance," Sloane replied calmly. "If we can stop the petty squabbles amongst ourselves and stand as a united species."

"That sounds fucking awesome," Zak murmured. "Is the Hive like that? No war? No poverty?'

"They would never go to war for resources or wealth, or religion, at least not anymore," Sloane frowned.

"Have they been here before?" Zak licked his lips, stepping closer to Sloane.

He let his amber gaze fill with the power of the Collective again, holding Zak's eyes. "Yes, they have. That's how they knew where we were from."

"When were they here?" Ulster yelled, yanking Zak away from Sloane roughly.

Sloane slid his glowing eyes to Ulster, laughing softly when the General flinched his gaze away. "They don't judge time the way we do. There's no start and end to days, weeks, or months. 

"Like the Mayans, they have multiple ways of judging the passage of time. One 'clock' is task tracking. Concept, planning, prep, execution, completion, implementation. 

"The overall, over-arcing tracking is measured by stars. The formation, birth, life, death, post-death collapse, and reformation." Sloane shook his head, images of multiple star life cycles flashed through the Collective mind, remnants from the Hive. 

"Not so hard to share information, now," Ulster pointed out smugly, "is it?"

"Look at us, Ulster," Sloane's voice went silky and sibilant. It throbbed with the hundreds of voices of the Collective. "See us. Listen. Hear us. These are mundane subjects. Not the great Knowing that has been unlocked within us. Not the destructive power you so foolishly seek."

"Dude!" Zak whispered in awe, eyes, and mouth wide.

"It's true," Harper cried. "He's connected to them!"

Sloane closed his eyes and breathed. Slowly, the Collective subsided. When he opened his eyes, they were as normal as his alterations would allow. The Collective could still see through his eyes, but they weren't spilling out anymore.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "We yearn for Union, every moment of every day. Sometimes a few of us try for it, but it never holds with distance."

"What's Union?" Harper asked breathlessly.

Sloane couldn't stop the pain, the emptiness his enforced solitude created shining in his eyes. "It's the joining, the merging we achieved on Asimov.  Against our will, Union was lost when we came home."

"Is that what the Hive has?" Zak asked.

Sloane shook his head. "We can only presume.  We believe they have a greater connection than our Union, a bonding and merging so complete they are with each other in every way that humans cannot achieve with our separate forms and closed minds. 

"The Hive helped us overcome that, and reach Union. It's how we were able to be so efficient and get back home as quickly as we did."

"Enough."

Zak snapped his mouth shut, and Harper lowered her head. Neither of them was pleased to do so.

"Out."