Foreword: This work is originally by Matt Colville. It's the lore to the 2015 video game Evolve. The lore originally was posted on the game's forums, which have since been taken down and are no longer accessible. Fearing that this could someday happen, I archived a copy of the lore. I formatted it to look pretty in a gist, and corrected the few mis-spelled words I came across. Otherwise, it is all Matt's work, the order of the stories, emphasis with bold, italics, images, and all. I'll try to keep this alive indefinitely, via Gist, as well as a copy on my personal server. Enjoy.
"So we're going down there?" Val asked.
"That's where the monster is," Griffin said, grinning. He looked hungry, feral.
"You got another option, darlin', we're all ears," Hank said.
"I was thinking about a map maybe? A plan?"
"What use, a map?" Markov challenged. "A map is not the cave. And a plan? The plan is fire. Lightning. Steel."
"Yeah. Ok. That's what I figured," Val shrugged. She looked at Griffin. "Lead on, great hunter."
Four jetpacks burned into life, carrying the hunters out, and down. Into the depths of the alien cave where the monster waited for them.
Headquarters Counter-Intelligence Group 9 Office of the Director, Colonel Alan Banfield Ganymede
The director nodded to the secure messenger on his desktop. Val frowned when she saw it, grabbed it, and sat down across from her boss.
She flipped through the files. They were personnel files. After a minute reading, she realized what they had in common.
"What the hell's a 'planet tamer?'" she asked.
"Big game hunters, bounty hunters," the director explained. "Other unsavory individuals. Hired by colonists in the Far Arm to protect them from local wildlife. They sign on, deplete the local wildlife population, declare the colony 'tamed,' and move on."
Val continued to sift through the files. These were some colorful characters.
"I thought EbonStar handled security for the Corps."
"EbonStar and her competitors protect colonial assets," the director explained.
"Colonists aren't an asset?"
The director shrugged. "Easily replaced," he said. "Self-repairing," he added with a smile. And then, chuckling with his own cleverness, said "Self-replicating if you have the right mix of...uh," he made a suggestive motion with his hands.
"I get it. Ok, planet tamers," she let the messenger rest on the arm of her chair. "So what?"
"So you're going to become one," the director said, leaning back in his chair, peering at Val from under bushy eyebrows, his chin tucked down in his chest, waiting for her response.
Val blinked. "Umm," she said.
"You heard about what happened on Factor," the director said.
Val nodded. "Everyone's saying it was aliens," she said with some amusement. "I read the report, I assume that's nonsense."
"It was aliens," the director said.
Val stared at him. "What?" she said lamely, not knowing what else to say.
"We don't have very good intel; remote cameras, security footage, but there's something happening out in the Arm. Factor wasn't the first colony they lost, and there's every reason to expect it will happen again. The Far Arm is under attack from some kind of alien or aliens. We don't know how smart they are, or how they get around. They may be some kind of space-born natural phenomenon. Like a swarm of bees scouring the galaxy," the director intoned, not appearing to take the whole thing seriously.
Val looked around the small, windowless office. "What the hell's going on out there?"
"We're not sure. That's why we're sending you."
"Wrong department," she said with a shrug, her brow furrowed in confusion and worry. "Why did this even come to Operations, this is Intelligence."
"In this case, gathering intelligence is the operation. We had a station on Factor. We don't anymore, and whatever they knew, they took with them. We don't have a station on Shear, so you're going to be our eyes and ears."
"Shear," Val said.
The director pressed a button on his desk and the wall behind him lit up, the lights in the room dimmed.
The map behind him showed a close-up of one of the galaxy's spiral arms. Val recognized it as the Orion arm, the arm that Earth and all of Hub was in the middle of. A handful of blue dots glowed brightly in a line radiating out from Earth.
"It's the next colony in the line of attack," the director said, pointing to a series of circles. "If there is a line of attack. No one knows."
"So evacuate," Val suggested.
The director exhaled dramatically. "Expensive. Shear is the most Earth-like world the Corps have found. Full of transuranics. They're in early development, only fifty years, but NORDITA's hoping Shear is the world that lets the Corps break free of Hub once and for all."
"I've never heard of it."
"It's all in your brief. They've kept a pretty tight lid on Shear. Mostly they're afraid we'll swoop in and take it away. There's already a lot of static on the secure line about these aliens being our fault."
"Are they our fault?"
The director shrugged, tacitly admitting the possibility. "No one's said anything to me. And the ministry tasked us with finding out what's going on, so for the moment I'm going to assume we're as in the dark as everyone else."
Val nodded at the map. "If we know Shear is next, the Corps know. NORDITA knows."
"They do know," the director said. "Look at the first name on the list."
Val turned her messenger back on and read for a moment. "William Cabot."
"Famous planet tamer," the director said.
"I'll take your word for it," Val said, reading.
"NORDITA just offered him a new contract. We don't know the terms of the offer, but it was enough to bring him out of retirement. He's putting together a new team. And with his reputation, he can get the best hunters in the arm."
"And we're assuming it's for Shear."
"It's a good plan," Colonel Banfield said, nodding with respect. "To anyone else, it looks like they're just recruiting a team of hunters, like any other colony world. In reality, they're preparing for a possible invasion."
"And this team, this...Cabot. NORDITA keeps them in the dark?"
"They think it's just another job. It's the prudent thing to do," the director said. "It's possible nothing happens on Shear. In which case why panic everyone?"
"Alright," Val said, closing the messenger again. "So we don't really care about Cabot or his crew, we're after the aliens."
"If they are aliens. You did two years biology on Mare Ibrium as part of your field training. That gives you an advantage. And you were a medic, Cabot's team is going to need medics, and medics who can fight."
"Two years of biology," Val said skeptically. "Because I failed the first year. I get PTSD if someone asks me to spell 'photosynthesis.'"
"You'll do fine," the director said, smiling. "Your cover is just a former army field medic. Cabot will recruit his own science specialist, but you're smart enough to understand whatever he says and send it back to us."
"Or she," Val said. "Your brief says his probable for the science slot is a Celestial Catalog agent. Caira Diaz."
"You don't miss much," Director Banfield said, smiling.
Val sighed and started going through the messenger again. "Planet tamer," she said.
"You should understand," the director said, "these people are highly individualistic. They risk their lives against exotic wildlife the likes of which we can only imagine, and they do it for a paycheck."
"Not just a paycheck," Val said, remembering the brief on William Cabot. "I mean these people could sell their skills anywhere. They choose to help people. Colonists. That says a lot."
"Just making sure you understand the risk. You'll be under deep cover, no backup. More like...a long-term sleeper agent. Your cover is your life. The corporations put a high bounty on Hub Agents in the Arm and they don't usually specify 'alive' or 'dead.'"
Val looked at the CIG9 symbol on a plaque on the wall behind the director.
"Well," she said, "I'll just have to find a way to get them to trust me."
"I'm a spy," Val said.
Cabot stared at her across the coffee table with the chessboard etched onto it. The rest of the team thus far assembled could hear her, but most studiously paid no attention. Seven people hired so far. Val would be number eight. Nine, counting Cabot.
"A spy," Cabot said.
"Technically I'm a deep cover mole," Val continued. "That brief you read on me? It's all made up. My real name's Valerie Wolski, I'm a lieutenant commander in CIG9."
"The army," Cabot said, still trying to process all this.
"Well, part of it," Val said with a shrug. "The secret part. A secret part."
"What...," Cabot said, shaking his head as though trying to shoo away a buzzing insect, "I think I missed something."
Val leaned forward. "I'm an intelligence officer. They gave me a false identity," she said, nodding to Cabot's messenger, "so I'd blend in. So you'd trust me. See me as one of you, and hire me."
Cabot looked at Parnell. Everyone else was prepping for the dive, but Parnell was now listening intently, from across medbay.
"If this is true," Cabot said, unsure of what to think, "why tell me? I mean what's...what are you doing?"
"I'm deliberately breaking my own cover because I," she said picking up Cabot's messenger, "think this," she slammed it on the table, "is all bullshit and I figure if I can see that, you will too eventually. And I'd rather it all come out now, than when we're fighting some alien wildlife."
"Well," Cabot said, rubbing his eyes, trying to stop the headache building. "I guess that makes sense."
He stared at the woman across from him. On paper, she was excellent. An absolute 'yes.' Now everything was complicated.
"I don't know what to do with this. Why plant someone on my team?" Cabot asked, weary.
"My masters want to know why Shear is so valuable. You're the best tamer the Arm's ever seen, this," she said, indicating the med bay in the Laurie-Anne where the team prepped for hypersleep, "is the best team the Arm has ever seen. That means Shear is important. Why? Random planet out in the middle of nowhere. Why spend all this money? What is there to protect?"
Cabot deflated a little. This was not something he wanted to worry about. But he had a team to build.
"I liked you better when you were ex-Sol Guard," he said.
"I am ex-Sol Guard," Val pointed out. "I'm just not that person," she nodded at the made-up brief. "Hell that's nothing, you should see my real dossier."
Cabot sighed. "Do you mind if I...," he nodded to Parnell, "talk to my people for a second?"
Val shrugged. "Take your time."
"What do you know about CIG9?" Cabot asked Parnell in the weapons locker, away from the group.
Parnell scratched his head. "Counter Intelligence Group 9? When Nordita and Celestial execs talk about Hub and spit, they really mean CIG9."
Cabot didn't react. "Tell me why."
"Eh. You get a Hub-sponsored world at the edge of the Arm, they start getting rich, making people back at Hub rich, they start thinking 'gee it'd be nice if we could keep more of the money we're making.' That's when the Corporations come in, whisper in their ear. Pretty soon Hub's down a world, and the Arm gains one. CIG9 are the guys Hub sends in to stop that happening."
"Assassination?" Cabot asked, screwing his face up in disbelief.
"Rumored," Parnell shrugged. "I mean if you're asking me, would they go that far? Yeah, they would. CIG9 are serious black ops shit. Wetworks, insurrection, regime overthrow, you name it."
"Ok," Cabot said. "You talked to...ah, Val," he said, trying to remember whatever she said he real name was. "What did you think?"
Parnell crossed his arms. "I liked her. But she didn't spill her guts to me and break her own cover, so now I don't know what the hell to think."
"Me neither," Cabot said.
"The hardware she's familiar with? Her training? We'll never find anyone like her."
"I thought about that."
"And she's cool. I mean straight up. She's not going to break under fire, something comes charging at us out of the bush in the middle of the night."
Cabot nodded. "You buy her story about what makes Shear valuable?"
"Nope. Well, maybe. Might be true. But I'll tell you this...," he looked meaningfully at Cabot. "CIG9 never tell the truth, they don't have to. She's talking to you, she's lying to you. You'll just never know about what."
Cabot scratched his head. "Why can't anything be simple?"
"You should know something," Parnell said.
Cabot nodded.
"Out here," Parnell said, "months out from Hub, breaking her own cover in front of everyone. In front of people like Hyde and Abe. Even me. We could sell her out to Nordita, easy. Retire on the bounty. She's risking her life telling us this."
"If it's true," Cabot said.
"Oh it's true," Parnell said. "That part at least. She's CIG9."
"How do you know?" Cabot asked.
Parnell smiled. "No one who was not that, would claim to be that," he said.
"Parnell says you're lying," Cabot said.
It was Val's turn to sit back and blink. "About what?"
Cabot shrugged. "He doesn't know. He says you're CIG9 and we shouldn't take anything you say at face value."
Val smirked. "Well, he knows the 9."
"Yeah. But, we figure you're being honest about your cover. That seems to me like something you did, not something you were told to do. And your training and experience, that's what important. I guess it doesn't matter if you're a spy. Probably not spying on us anyway," he said.
Val nodded. "That's true."
"Ok, well, once we're on the ground, once the wildlife come for us, that's when we're a team. You're part of the team, same as everyone else, or we all die. No other way to do it. And you don't impress me as a suicide agent."
Val smiled. "We know each other already."
"Ok." Cabot said without much enthusiasm. "Let's see what happens." He extended his hand, she took it.
He stopped shaking but held her hand. "If it comes down to it," Cabot said, looking at her with a mix of threat and regret, "and you have to pick us or your Hub masters...I recommend us."
Val extricated her hand from Cabot's grip.
"Because you'll sell my identity to NORDITA. Celestial."
Cabot shook his head. "I won't. Parnell won't. I don't think anyone on the team would sell you out."
"Not even Mr. Presley?" Val asked, smiling.
"Nope," Cabot said, getting up from the table. "But he's the fastest shot I've ever seen. You screw us, Abe'll kill you." He walked out the door, his voice echoing back into the room.
"Faster than you can blink."
"Well why don't you come back to Hub with me?" Abdul Hamad smiled. There was just enough low ultraviolet in the club's lights to make his teeth glow.
The three girls giggled. "All of us?" the brunette asked.
"Sure," Hamad said, leaning back in his chair, spreading his hands apart as though spreading good fortune. "Why not?"
"Do you have your own ship?" the blonde asked, her eyes wide.
"I bet it's huge," the third girl said, her hair a riot of color.
"In fact," Abdul Hamad said "I just bought a highliner on Io, brand new. I'm going to pick it up. You can help me celebrate. Break her in."
"Oooh," the girl with the loud hair coo'ed convincingly.
"When do we leave?" the blonde asked.
Hamad shrugged. "Right now. Plenty of room in first class."
The third girl, a brunette, frowned and looked at the other two. Hamad didn't notice it.
"We know a few other girls," the blonde invented, and they were all smiles again. "Can they come?"
Hamad's smile grew larger. "You girls are something else, let me tell you. Of course they can come!" He pulled out his messenger and began searching for another flight. "I'll get a cabin on the next cruiser. Be just like our own. . .," he stopped tapping on his glass messenger. ". . .private. . ..."
His eyes went wide. Something was pressing into the back of his skull. Hamad raised his hands above his head slowly.
"You ladies can stop stalling," a voice said behind him. "I made it."
"Hi Abe!" the three women said in unison.
Hamad turned his head a little only to discover it was not a gun, but a finger pressed into his head.
"Shit," he said. "I surrendered to a fucking finger."
"Yeah you pull a gun in a club," Abe said, "people sorta notice." He was tall and lanky and moved with easy grace. He was the only person in the club wearing a hat, frontier fashion, not trying to pass as a rich Hub citizen.
"Come on," Abe said to Abdul Hamad. "You pissed off some executive somewhere, time to pay the piper." He grabbed the smaller man by the neck of his jacket and yanked him up out of his seat.
Hamad allowed himself to be yanked out of his chair. Spinning to face Abe, he pulled. He was fast, faster than Abe expected. His eyes went wide with surprise. When Hamad didn't fire, Abe frowned.
In a flash Abe brought his hands together, his left striking Hamad's arm away, his right grabbed the gun out of his hand. Before Hamad knew what happened, Abe had dismantled the pulse lancer in one smooth action and scattered the parts across the floor.
"Whoah, hey, what happened to your piece of shit gun?" Abe asked. "Jesus, thing just falls apart soon as you pull it out. That's gotta be like a metaphor or some shit."
Hamad was shaking now and he turned to look at the girls, for what reason Abe would never know. When he turned back, he discovered Abe had pulled his modified shotgun out and was pointing it at Hamad's head. The club was now silent.
With his other hand, he unclipped a leather pouch from his belt, and tossed it on the table in front of the three women.
"Ladies," Abe smiled, nodding at them. The brunette opened the pouch and emptied it on the table. A hundred round chips poured out. The blonde began scanning them with her messenger, reading the secure data inside the chips. "Pleasure doing business with you."
"You too Abe," the brunette said, wryly.
"Now you," Abe said, turning back to Hamad. "You're a fast streak of shit, I'll give you that. So in the unlikely scenario where you're ever in a position to have a gun on your person AND you get the drop on someone AND that someone is me? My advice is: pull the goddamned trigger. The fuck you thought you were gonna do? Arrest me?"
Abe reached around with his left hand to pull his handcuffs of his belt and in doing so twisted his torso, pushing his gun forward. The gaping barrels of the shotgun loomed large in Hamad's vision.
When Abe produced his 'cuffs, he saw Hamad was shaking so bad it looked like he was going to....
"Wait wait wait," Abe barked, "don't you fucking piss your pants, DON'T PISS YOUR...oh goddammit! You gotta ride back with me! Motherfucker. I'm gonna have piss all over my...you can ride in the goddamn trunk." Abe holstered his gun and spun Hamad around, clapping the handcuffs one his wrists one at a time. "Shit I got my clothes in there," Abe muttered to himself. He grabbed the neck of Hamad's jacket, shouting in his ear. "I am going to STUFF you in a SPACESUIT and fucking TIE you to the outside of the SHIP."
"That's what you get," a deep voice said from across the club, "for letting him get the drop on you." The crowd parted to reveal two men standing just inside the door. One, shorter than the other, older. Of some dim Asian ancestry. Abe didn't recognize him. The other—black and almost eight feet tall, the result of a life spent living and training in high gravity environments—he did know.
"Parnell," Abe said, more a recognition than a greeting.
"How you doing, Abe?" Parnell said. He and the other man approached the bar. Abe grabbed his prisoner and instinctively maneuvered him around so Hamad was standing between him and Parnell's unknown friend.
Abe looked around the club, then back at Parnell. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
"Back to chasing bounties, huh?" Parnell said.
The crowd inside the club was slowly going back to business as usual. The show appeared to be over. Only the three women Abe paid off were still watching.
"What else am I gonna do?" Abe said without rancor. "You and Johnnie Walker were having some kind of existential crisis on Matchstick Station. I can't go back to Hub, so it's this," he said, jerking Hamad around by way of illustration.
"Why can't you go back to Hub, Mr. Presley?" the older man with Parnell asked.
Eyes still on Parnell, Abe jerked his head in the direction of the stranger. "The fuck is this?"
"Abe, William Cabot," Parnell said. "Cabot, this is my best friend Abraham Presley."
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Presley. Why can't you go back to Hub?"
Abe looked at the man, his face blank, and said nothing. Then turned back to Parnell.
"You come find me and bring a cop with you?" Abe asked, confused.
"He didn't find you," Cabot said. "I did. He had no idea where you were. My ship and I have certain resources."
"Cop resources," Abe said, throwing the man a glance.
Parnell smiled wide. "My man Abe." He turned to Cabot. "Takes one look at you and knows you're a cop."
"I was never a cop, Mr. Presley," Cabot explained. "I was a Hub Marshall, but that was twenty years ago and you'll be happy to know they fired me."
"Abe," Abe said. "Just Abe." He looked Cabot up and down. "They fired you, huh? How come?"
"I was insufficiently ingratiating," Cabot said.
"Fuck does that mean?"
"Means he was a pain in everyone's ass," Parnell said.
"Why can't you go back to Hub, Abe?" Cabot asked again.
Abe ignored him. "Jim why am I talking to this guy?"
"Hey listen can I change my pants, I gotta...," Hamad asked, struggling against Abe's grip.
"Shut up," Abe said absently, pulling his shotgun out of his holster and to rapping Hamad sharply on the back of the head with the butt of the gun.
"Ow!"
"Ah Hub don't matter," Parnell said, and took another step forward. "Cabot here's putting together a team of planet tamers for a job."
"Planet tamers?" Abe said with some disbelief. "What planet?"
"Shear."
"That's way the hell out by the rim. That's like a six month dive. How long's the job?"
Parnell looked to Cabot.
"Couple of months," Cabot said with a shrug. "Nordita already paid us half in advance. It's a lot of money."
Abe looked back at Parnell, looking for more explanation.
"Cabot read about The Sword," Parnell said. "So he comes and finds me and says maybe it's time to get back on the horse."
"The Sword wasn't your fault," Abe said, not for the first time.
"Yeah," Parnell said, his voice darker, "I dunno."
"This isn't about what happened around Sirius A, Abe," Cabot said. "This is about the...,"
"Wait wait," Abe interrupted him. "Are you in?" he asked, pointing to Parnell.
"Yeah," Parnell said.
"Jesus why didn't you say so?" Abe asked. He pulled the keys out of his pocket and unlocked Hamad's cuffs.
"What?" Hamad asked.
Abe kicked his legs out from under him pushing him forward at the same time. The thin man sprawled across the floor.
Abe threw the cuffs and the keys on the floor next to him. The three women who'd been watching this whole time looked, as one, from Hamad, to Abe, and back to Hamad moaning on the floor.
The three girls piled on Hamad, one of them grabbing his head by the hair while the other two wrestled the handcuffs back on.
"Enterprising young ladies," Abe said. "Good career ahead of them. Amala!" he called out.
The brunette dropped her grip on Hamad's hair, allowing their captive's head to hit the ground, and stood up.
"Yeah Abe?" she asked, straightening out her hair.
He tossed her his keys. She caught them deftly. Looked at them. "Are you serious?" she asked.
Abe shrugged. "It's a piece of shit," he said. "I'll win another one if I have to."
Amala took hold of the keys as her friends pulled their bounty up onto his feet.
"Were those the keys to your ship?" Cabot asked, frowning.
"Well you got a ship, right?" Abe said, pointing to Cabot.
"Ah, yeah but...."
"You got room for more than two?"
"Yeah," Cabot said, looking a bit lost. "A lot more. What about...."
"Well then what the fuck are we standing around here for," Abe said with real disgust. "Come on."
Abe walked out of the bar.
Parnell looked down at Cabot. "Told you," he said.
The two men followed the bounty hunter.
The whale, or whatever it was, hung in a kind of reverse suspension. It took a while for the Crew to understand what they were looking at.
Two dozen great strips of canvas, each anchored to the ground, looped up, over, and around the massive beast. It swayed slightly in the breeze.
It was floating four stories off the ground.
The Crew watched as a half dozen young scientists walked around under the thing, monitoring it. Its eyes were half-closed and lifeless, but the brilliant yellow and blue stripes all along its body slowly pulsed as it breathed.
"What the fuck is that?" Abe asked.
The scientists studying the whale heard this and saw the five hunters standing at the edge of the forest clearing. After some back and forth between them, one of them nodded and jogged over. He was tall and thin and, like the rest of the team, young.
"Hi!" he said once he'd reached the Crew. "Was that your ship we saw a few minutes ago?" He was smiling broadly.
"Yep," Cabot said. "Hope we didn't disturb the, uh. . ..."
The scientist turned and looked at the whale. "Oh, no. No, he's sedated. He'll be like that for another couple of hours." He turned back and looked at Cabot and the Crew, smiling sheepishly. "No, it was mostly, ah, us you freaked out."
Parnell smiled. "Sorry, man." In spite of being heavily armored and eight feet tall, Parnell's smile was disarming.
The young scientist nodded, relieved. "Yeah well, your ship didn't look like a pirate ship and you ah," he pointed to Parnell, "you do not look like Corp Pirates."
"We are not," Cabot said.
"You look like Griffin Hallsey," the young man said, pointing to Griffin.
"Pure coincidence," Griffin said.
"Oh, really?" the young man said, confused. "Huh." He pointed at Bucket. "We don't need any repairs, so uh...."
"We're looking for Caira Diaz," Abe said.
"Oh, uh," the scientist looked at the whale behind him before turning back. "Is she, uh, in trouble or...?" he left the sentence hanging.
"We need a science specialist for a job," Cabot said. "We'd like to make her an offer. Strictly above board."
"We pay taxes," Parnell said, crossing his arms, his grin growing larger as though enjoying a private joke.
"Um, ok." The young scientist look flustered but lacking any other apparent option, he pulled his messenger out of his pocket and tapped on it.
"Caira, are you live?"
"Yes Francis, you know I am!" a voice crackled, echoing as though coming from a great distance.
"There are some people here want to talk to you," Francis said.
"What?" the voice said flatly.
"I don't know. . .," the young man said, looking at the Crew, "I don't know how else to say what is happening right now. There are people, here, who want to talk to you."
"To me?!" the voice crackled from the messenger. "Tell them I paid off my student loans!"
The young man smiled weakly at Cabot and turned half around, bringing the messenger close to his face. "Will you just get out here!" he hissed.
"Fine."
"Give her a second," the young man said to Cabot. "This can be tricky."
He turned to look at the floating whale and watched in anticipation. The Crew stepped forward, also watching, wondering what they would see.
After a few moments stillness, the whale inhaled deeply and then spasmed, like a cough. There was a wet sound and from somewhere on top of the whale, a small figure shot into the air. A tethered line looped behind her, connecting her to the whale. Her arms flailed and body spun for a second before landing on top of the beast.
The figure, tiny at this distance but obviously a woman, stood and began using the tether to rappel down the side of the whale, eventually using the tether like a zip-line to descend the fifteen meters down to the ground.
She strode toward them. Her white exo-suit was covered in blue goop and they couldn't see her face.
"Caira Diaz," Francis said. More an explanation than an introduction.
When she was closer, she pulled her helmet off. She tried to wipe sweat from her forehead, but managed only to smear the blue goop into her black hair.
"Wow!" she said, tucking her helmet under her arm. "Someone get a picture of this: 'How I spent my summer vacation.'"
Francis hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the Crew. "That's them," he said.
"Hi!" Caira addressed the five hunters. "Who the hell are you?"
"If you can catch 'em like that," Abe ignored her question, pointed to the whale-thing, "why not just bring it down to the ground? Make it easier to poke."
"Well, I mean, we could," Caira said. "But how would they get back up? They spend most of their time in the water, they only use their hydrogen ballasts to surface and fly when they mate. Grounding them freaks them out and they vent all their hydrogen. They get stranded and. . .die. So we either study them in the water, which is fine until you want to understand this whole mechanism," she half-turned and waved at the floating whale, "or you wait until mating season and...."
"They vent hydrogen?" Parnell asked, looking with awe at the giant beast.
"Yeah!" Caira said. "It's spectacular, you should see it. HUGE gouts of flame. We used to think it was a weapon for fighting other bulls, but I think we've basically proved it's just a mating display," she looked at Francis, now standing well behind her, who nodded in agreement.
"That's why they call 'em fire whales," Griffin said.
"Yes it is!" Caira said. "Well, the scientific name is balaenavia ignis. First thing Catalog does, name every. . .thing." She was looking at Griffin. "You look just like Griffin Hallsey."
"I am Griffin Hallsey."
"You are Griffin Hallsey," Caira said, eyes wide. "Wow. Well, then you know what you are talking about because if I recall correctly you hunted a bull whale back before we really knew anything about them."
"I did, I did. Wasn't much of a hunt, turns out. Mostly a photo op, but the press we got earned us a ton of funding."
"Yeah," Caira said smiling. "Funding, tell me about it."
She looked genially at the five hunters, nodding as though they were already friends. As though everyone was her friend.
"So what are you uh...," she stopped and pointed at Parnell. "That looks like a Berserker Suit," she said.
"Yep," Abe said. Parnell nodded.
"You're a Rage Trooper?" Caira asked. "I thought they scrapped that program."
"They did," Parnell said. "Suit didn't work."
"I sorta fucked with it a little," Abe said, and slapped the metal of Parnell's suit. "It won't kill the man inside no more, just hurts like hell."
Caira nodded. "So you're a strange group of people, that's what I'm learning."
"My name's William Cabot," Cabot said. "This is Abe, Griffin you know, Parnell..."
"Parnell," Caira said, frowning. "Parnell the Rage Trooper. James Parnell," she said, finally.
Parnell stopped smiling. His face lost all expression.
"Didn't I read about you on the line?" she asked. "James Parnell, captain of The Sword. I remember everyone talking like you were the bad guy." She was frowning, trying to remember.
"The Sword wasn't his fault," Abe said automatically.
"Don't believe everything you read on the line, Ms. Diaz," Cabot said with a smirk. "That was a while ago, anyway. These men work for me now."
"Well, you found a Catalog team. If you wanted to impress me," Caira said, "it's working. How did you, ah. . .how did you do it?"
"We have a lot of resources," Cabot said.
"Hi," the robot standing next to him held up a metal claw and rotated it in imitation of a friendly wave.
"Your repair drone just said 'hi' to me," Caira frowned, pointing at Bucket.
"It's called 'being friendly,'" Bucket explained.
Caira stared at Bucket, her mouth open.
Bucket's single blue eye turned to Abe. "I read about it in a book," he said.
"Bucket," Cabot introduced. "He's my partner."
"Your partner is a Vok-class repair drone?" Caira asked. "Why would someone need a repair drone that talks?"
"He's an AI," Abe said.
Caira pointed at the drone again. "No way. No way can you stick a reason core in that chassis."
"I'm a Yudkowsky Thought Box," Bucket explained. "My reason core is in the Laurie-Anne. But this repair drone is sturdy, mobile, and easily modified."
"Wow," Caira said. "You stuck a Rank-Rajat Mind in a ship. Cool."
"It ain't that cool," Abe said.
Caira nodded. They all stood around for a few moments, Francis watching from a discreet distance.
"So," Caira said eventually, "what do you want?"
"I need a science specialist for a job out on the rim," Cabot said.
"Job, what kind of job?" Caira asked, looking at the Crew, trying to imagine what kind of job they might be suited for.
"Planet taming."
"Ok," Caira nodded, "and what is that?"
Cabot explained. His explanation only made Caira more confused.
"I think you got the wrong Caira Diaz."
"I want the best," Cabot said. "That's you."
"That's me?" Caira asked, surprised.
"You're the youngest Team Leader in Catalog's history," Cabot said.
"I am?" Caira turned to Francis, who pursed his lips and nodded at her.
"Huh," she said, turning back to the Crew. "Not sure I knew that."
"It's not about youth, Ms. Diaz," the robot, Bucket, said. "You were made Team Leader because you were the best and the brightest."
"That's what we're looking for," Cabot said.
Caira scratched her hair which, thanks to the blue goop in it now, tried to stick to her hand and stood out at a strange angle when she was done.
"Listen, ah, I'm flattered. I really am. But I've got a job. My parents basically disowned me when I left Earth. I spent three years working a microscope waiting for this," she pointed at the ground. "Catalog is not easy to get into, and we just got started. So, I mean maybe we can talk after, but 'after' is like ten years from now."
"I understand," Cabot said, though he made no motion to leave.
"I'm sorry you came way out here," Caira said. "Tracking us down had to be a huge pain in the ass."
"It wasn't hard. Your Celestial supervisor gave us your location after we explained what we wanted you for."
"He did? X'iang said that? That doesn't sound like him. Was he shouting? How did you find him? I can't even talk to him half the time."
"Bucket tracked him down on the line. He said you were free to come with us, as long as you filed your reports under the Celestial Catalog imprint. He also said you wouldn't be able to accept the Nordita retainer, but I didn't think that would matter to you."
"That doesn't matter to me," Caira agreed.
"No, I didn't think it would," Cabot smiled. "I thought mostly you'd like to be the first person to give an official, scientific name to everything on Shear."
"Shear," Caira said. It wasn't a question.
"Yep," Cabot said. "The 'jewel of the arm.'"
Caira turned and looked at Francis. His eyes had lit up. He mouthed the word "Wow!"
Caira strode away from the crew.
The five hunters stood there, watching Caira Diaz walk back to the Catalog team's camp.
"Is that a 'no?'" Abe asked.
"She seems like she'd be exhausting to work with," Griffin observed. Francis nodded emphatically.
Eventually, she walked back to the Crew. She had a full pack strapped to her back, several articles of clothing slung over her shoulder, an open duffel bag in one hand, and a book in the other.
"If you want to think about it, we still have. . .," Cabot began.
"I don't need to think about it," Caira said, and handed the book to Cabot.
He took it and looked at it. The title was printed across the top, the author's name across the bottom.
Field Guide to the Far Arm By Franz Sigmund Luekhart, Ph.D
Cabot looked at Parnell and shrugged, handed the book to the taller man.
"Read the last page!" Caira said as she set the bag on the ground and started stuffing her clothes into it.
Parnell opened the book to the last page and read. After a few moments he said, "Ah."
He cleared his throat. "But the jewel," he intoned, "which as yet I have not attained, is Shear. That most earthlike of worlds in the Arm. This volume must be considered incomplete while she eludes my grasp."
Caira slung her pack over her shoulder. "He died," she said, "before he got out there. That book," she nodded at the book in Parnell's hand, "was what made me want to be a biologist. While the other kids were reading about wizards and space knights, I was rereading the Field Guide again." She used her thumb to point at the whale over her shoulder. "You know who gave that thing its binomial name? Page 446."
Parnell frowned, and flipped to the page, read it. "Wow," he said, looking at Cabot.
"I actually got to meet him," she said, taking the book back, "at a conference on Earth. He was amazing. He never said. . .we didn't talk about Shear but I sort of. . .I always felt like he was telling me. . .," she stopped. Unzipped her bag and tucked the book into it before zipping it up again.
She looked at the Crew. "Anyway," she said, and turned to Francis. "You're in charge, Francis!"
The tall, thin young man nodded with a rueful grin on his face. "Ok," he said. "I understand."
She walked past Cabot and his hunters. "Let's go!" She strode off into the forest behind them.
"Where's your ship?" her voice came out of the woods.
"That was easy," Abe said to Parnell as the Crew followed her into the trees to the Laurie-Anne.
"Cabot knows what to say to people, man." Parnell was impressed.
"You got a scientist," Griffin said, walking next to Cabot. "You need a field medic."
"I know," Cabot said, smiling. "One thing at a time."
"You out of your fucking mind, man?" Abe hissed. Challenging Parnell to defend himself.
Looking at the floor of the docking bay, Parnell shook his head. "She's the best person for the job."
"And ah, what do you think that job is? Huh? Flying tourists around Raven Cluster? We need a fucking combat pilot and you know that so what the hell are we doing here?"
"She can fly the ship," Parnell persisted. "She can handle herself...,"
"She's sixteen!" Abe shouted, stabbing a finger at the girl who no longer pretended she couldn't hear the two men arguing across the cavernous bay.
Parnell looked at Abe. "She deserves a chance."
"Deserves?! She deserves a mom and dad who give a shit. She deserves college or whatever. Money. Guy who'll buy her a nice...you know. Deserve is bullshit man, where did that come from?"
"She came out here on her own, Abe," Parnell defended himself. "It's not like we won her in a lottery man, she looked us up. You telling me she's not the best pilot you ever saw?"
"I haven't seen a goddamned thing," Abe said, "that was a fucking simulation."
"Well let's try her out on the real thing, you got the keys."
"This," Abe said, pointing a finger very close to Parnell's forehead, "is your goddammed hero fixation. You wish someone said 'yes' to you when you were a kid. Let you go off on a 'big adventure.' You read that King Arthur shit, cowboy movies. Fucks with your head."
"I...,"
"And that's fine! Whatever. It's good for you. Works for you. But it'll get that girl killed."
"We all share the risk," Parnell said.
"Killed," Abe said, folding his arms against his chest.
Parnell took a long breath. "How about...," he wanted to appease Abe. "How about we put it to a vote?"
"We don't need no goddamn vote! We need you to exercise some restraint. Show some...perspective or whatever."
Parnell was confused. "I thought...,"
"Whatever man...a vote? Come on. These assholes will do whatever you want, and they already know you think she's got the job. I give up."
"Give her a chance," Parnell said. "You'll see."
Abe was already walking away. When he passed Sunny, he tossed her the small round chip that allowed whoever held it to pilot The Sword. "Congratulations kid, you got the job. Don't fuck it up."
Two years later...
The hull of the pirate space-station shook, vibrated like a bell. The deck plates shuddered under their feet. The demolition charges kept firing like distant artillery, the sound reverberating through the hull The station would soon buckle and break apart in the gas giant's gravity.
"We got about three minutes, man!" Abe shouted over the din. They stood before an airlock, the massive window next to them showed nothing but space and stars.
"Where the hell's Sunny?" Dietrich barked. She tried to crane her head to see past the curve of the station's hull through the window.
"She'll be here," Parnell said.
"Don't matter," Abe said, unslinging the rifle from his shoulder. He prepped it in anticipation of the Corp Pirates coming for them. "Takes ten minutes to spin the drive back up anyway. Even if she showed up now..."
Parnell looked down the hallway they just came from, to the empty window. "Really thought she'd make it."
"The Resolute is no joke," Abe said, aiming down the hall. "Can't fight corp pirates and Hub at the same time.'
The pirates blew the bulkhead at the end of the hallway. Abe started firing into the smoke. Parnell launched a grenade. It wasn't clear if the pirates were trying to kill them, or get off the dying station. No one was in a hurry to find out.
"Hey!" Dietrich said. "Hey look!"
They turned to the window.
The Sword appeared as though dropped into a pool by an unseen hand. Space itself splashed around the ship, revealing it, eddies and currents flooding around it. The fabric of reality revealed.
The reason for The Sword's late arrival was apparent.
"Holy shit," Abe said.
The Sword did not emerge from its dive alone. It was docked with the defeated Resolute. The docking clamp gripping the dead ship like a vise. The engine lights on the Resolute sputtered in a semblance of life.
"What the hell..." Parnell gaped.
"Who's idea was that!?" Dietrich couldn't believe it.
"I think I got an idea," Abe said. "Come on, we gotta find an escape pod."
"Escape pod? We're supposed to be picked up!"
"She can't slow down!" Abe shouted. "The docking clamp will snap!" Using The Sword's sublight engines to brake would cause the Resolute to rip off and shoot forward under its own momentum.
"Why is she docked with it in the first place!?" Parnell howled as the three men ran, following the outer hull of the station in a long, gentle curve. The floor decks under their feet shook and buckled as they searched for the escape pods.
The Sword and Resolute sped toward them, growing larger in the window, barreling toward the station like a comet.
"What the hell is she doing with my ship?" Parnell glowered, trying to run and look out the windows at the same time.
"She's playing it really fucking tight is what she's doing, but I'll be damned if I can think of another way."
Parnell saw the engine lights of the Resolute and understood. The Sword's engines were spent, but while Resolute was defeated, her engines were live.
"You're kidding," he said.
"We gotta meet her halfway or everything goes to shit!" Abe shouted, running down the hallway. Sunny's plan depended on someone on the demo team realizing what she was doing, and deriving the other half of her mad scheme.
They found an escape pod and barreled in, Parnell covering them, his grenades keeping the corps pirates at bay. Abe closed the hatch behind them.
The escape pod shot out from the dying station, Parnell wedged into the only seat, madly flipping switches, trying to coax the largely ballistic vessel closer to a rendezvous point with The Sword.
"Where's the ship?" Dietrich asked, holding on to the bulkhead. "Parnell, where the hell are we..."
"Let the man fly!" Abe shouted.
Gimbals and gyroscopes in the ship's hull spun. Attitude adjusters were pressed into service as main thrusters. Parnell's gaze snapped back and forth in tenths of a second. The Sword. The pod controls. The Sword. Seconds stretched to eons.
The docking bay of The Sword was not where it needed to be. And there was no way for Parnell to maneuver the bullet that was the escape pod into position.
"We're not gonna make it," he pronounced coolly.
Dietrich looked at Abe, her face betrayed her fear. Abe shot her a look back. A warning.
Then, another miracle. Dragging, wrenching the burned-out husk of the Resolute around, The Sword rolled. Slowly. Agonizingly. Exposing its belly to the escape pod. The docking bay crept into view.
Sunny had seen the dilemma, and desperately worked to create an intercept trajectory.
"Hang on," Parnell said.
"Jesus Christ," Abe said. They were going to make it. The Sword spun around its axis. The docking bay opened.
"We're coming in too fast!" Dietrich said.
The escape pod and The Sword sped, in two different directions, at two different angles, toward an intercept window barely larger than the pod itself.
"We're out of thrust," Parnell said, grabbing the restraining harness and locking himself in. "Grab something."
The escape pod shot into the docking bay.
Resolute's engines flared into life.
The Sword and her unwilling partner Resolute vanished. Diving into Cherenkov space, sinking below the real.
The pirate space-station exploded in a silent fireball of metal.
The inertia-dampening memory foam that briefly filled the inside of the pod returned to its original liquid state, drained out, leaving Parnell, Dietrich, and Abe choking, but alive. Then the air filled with smoke.
Abe went to the escape hatch, but it would not open. It was now impossible to breathe. Parnell finally got the restraining harness off and fell backward, grabbing at this throat, desperate to get any air in his lungs. There was a fire somewhere outside the pod. It was eating all the oxygen.
Suddenly light and a deafening noise and the acrid smell of acetylene.
Someone had burned the end of the escape pod off, sliced it off with SALGE torches. The noise was the slam of a ton of metal hitting the deck of The Sword. The pod was open. They could breathe again.
Smoke billowed out and around filling the hold of the ship. Out of the smoke, walked a girl.
"Hey everybody ok in here?!" Sunny said, her smile beaming out through the smoke.
The demo team fell out of the escape pod.
Parnell stood up, almost twice Sunny's height. His eyes still watering from the smoke. She looked up at him.
"I'm sorry sir, you don't have a ticket for this flight," Sunny said, unable to suppress her smile. "You'll have to get off at the next stop."
Parnell, the tallest on the team, towered over Sunny, the shortest.
He held out his hand. She took it.
"Hell of a pilot," he said.
"And I keep the engines running," she said, cocking her head to one side.
"What the hell?" Dietrich got to her feet, gasping, shaking. "What the hell just happened? What the hell did she do?"
"Spun up both drives," Abe explained between coughs. "Used The Sword's engine to get to the station, then fired the Resolute's dive engine once we were on board."
"Twin drives," Dietrich said, unbelieving. "Dangerous."
"Not as dangerous as letting everyone die," Parnell said.
Sunny had done the impossible. Revitalized the burned out engine of the Resolute, linked the two ships together, creating a makeshift twin-drive ship.
"Not bad, huh?" Sunny asked, smiling hugely, looking at the demo team, all alive.
Abe, still in shock, just stared at her as though she wasn't there. "Not bad, kid," he said. And blinked, seeing the ship around him again. "Fuckin' A. Not bad." He laughed, realizing what he'd seen, what she'd done. "Goddamn, kid."
"How did you...," Dietrich coughed, "how did you take *Resolute?*"
"Well, we couldn't fire the main cannon," Sunny said, "so Mason's team just...went for it," Sunny said. "He said 'get us close,' so I did. They boarded her!"
"Through the vacuum!?" Dietrich squeaked.
"Mason," Parnell said shaking his head. "That's crazy."
Abe said nothing, just listened to Sunny.
"Well, they had rebreathers on," Sunny explained, "standard anti-anti-boarding, but yeah. Just," she made a gesture, one hand slapping off the other and then flying away, "phew! Out the airlock, across the gap, and onto the hull of Resolute. Like Basilisk soldiers! Crazy! Would have liked to see Resolute's crew when they showed up."
Thirty minutes later Abe walked into the engine room, where Sunny and Mason's team were congratulating each other.
"Abe, man!" Mason shouted when he saw Abe. "We took Resolute, you blew Fortune Station, and Sunny got us all the fuck out. Are we a fucking team, or what?"
Abe walked up and extended his hand. Mason took it. "Heard about your dumbass stunt, out the airlock," Abe said, smiling. "You're fucking crazy, man."
"You said 'fuck Hub!' So we did!"
"Yes you did," Abe said, slapping Malik on the shoulder, shaking hands with the rest of Mason's team. "Fuck Hub."
"Hey," Malik said, "how about we stop at Roman Station before we hit Sirius Hub?"
"Man we can't party before we collect the bounty," Abe said, but without malice. "We're all broke!"
"That's what credit's for!" Malik said. The team laughed.
Mason started to leave. His team followed him. "Best pilot in the Arm!" he said, pointing to Sunny. As he walked past Abe he slapped the man on the shoulder. "Best fucking weapons man in the Arm."
Abe slapped Mason on the back. "Craziest fucking boarding team anywhere," he said, smiling.
Once the boarding team was gone and the door was closed, the smile dropped and he turned to Sunny.
She was also not smiling. She was waiting for Abe's reaction.
"'Couldn't fire the main cannon?'" he asked.
"It happens," she said.
"Why couldn't you fire the main cannon, Sunny?" Abe asked, already knowing the answer.
She shrugged. "I dunno," she lied. "Wasn't fully charged."
"Wasn't fully charged, or wasn't charged at all?" Abe challenged.
"Come on," Sunny said. "Who cares? We got it done. Besides, if we'd fired the gun we'd have fried Resolute's engines. This way was better."
"The fuck you think happens we surface and find a fleet of corp pirates, Parnell goes to pull the trigger and nothing happens?"
"It was one time!" Sunny said. "He made a mistake, happens to everyone."
"Not like that it doesn't," Abe said. "Where was Mason last night?"
Sunny turned around, started checking the engines. "You know where he was."
"I want to hear it from you," Abe said.
Sunny stopped, her shoulder slumped. She turned back around to face Abe.
"Mason and his crew were out all night at Basis Station."
Abe turned and walked out of the room.
The confrontation happened in the weapons locker.
Mason turned around, and Abe was there.
"You knew we had a fucking op," Abe said.
Mason blinked. "What?"
"You knew we were live-fire, and you got shit-faced last night." Abe took another step toward the man.
"Come on, everyone does it, what?" Mason said, holding up his hands, unable to back away.
"Bullshit, 'everyone does it!' And if I check the log, what am I gonna find out?"
"Man what are you..."
"I'm gonna find out they were all back at, like, 2, and you just rolled in before we left. Aren't I?"
"Hey, what I do on my time is..."
"Did you black out again?" Abe asked.
"What?!" Mason objected.
"Don't lie to me, man, I know what happens. Answer the fucking question. Do you remember anything that happened before the op this morning?"
Mason was sweating, but tried to bully his way through.
"What we do before the op is between me and my team."
"They're not your fucking team, Mason. They're Parnell's team. And they weren't the ones on deck for weapons prep, you were. And you fucked it up. And it wasn't the first time. What happens when Parnell..."
"Abe," Mason tried to interrupt. "Come on, Parnell don't give a shit..."
That was it. Abe grabbed the larger man and slammed him against a locker.
"It's our lives, you asshole!" Abe said. "We could'a all died if we needed the gun! Because of you! Because you can't keep your shit together!"
"Jesus, Abe that ain't how it is, we were..."
Abe pulled Mason away from the bulkhead and slammed him back into it.
"You don't get to say how it is, you fuck. I ever find out we're dry on a cannon again, I don't give a shit who did it, it's your ass!"
Mason stared down at Abe, terrified, stunned. Mason was a big man, but Abe was a ruthless killer.
Abe slammed him into the bulkhead again.
"Are we fucking clear?"
The door opened behind him. He saw the look on Mason's face and knew who it was.
"Yeah man," Mason said. "Yeah whatever you say man. I'm...I'm sorry. It won't...won't happen again."
Abe let Mason go. Mason walked through the door, past Sunny, avoiding her gaze. This did not go unnoticed by Sunny.
"Abe what the hell are you doing?" Sunny demanded.
"Drop it, kid." Abe tried to turn to leave but Sunny blocked his way.
"I'm not going to drop it! Mason saved our asses and you're acting like he's a criminal."
"I'm not the one got a problem with how he acts. Someone's gotta keep an eye on these assholes."
"So he made a mistake, so what?" Sunny asked. "So have I! You going to beat me up? Parnell will forgive him, probably already has."
Abe pressed his palms to his forehead. "I swear to god I'm the only person on this team with the sense God gave a goose." He put his hands down and looked at Sunny.
"Parnell don't give a shit if someone screws up. Hell, I fucked up so many times I oughtta get an award. But he finds out Mason fucked up because he was out all night? That's...it's..." Abe couldn't figure out how to say it. "You don't get it."
"So explain it to me," Sunny said.
Abe took a deep breath. "It'd be disloyal, you understand? To Parnell it's like...like Mason was telling the whole crew to fuck off. The team needed him, and he fucked up. And Parnell can't stand that shit. Can't stand the idea of someone letting the team down."
"Mason's not disloyal," Sunny said. "And you know that."
Abe just stared at her.
"If someone dies," Abe said, his voice suddenly low, "and Parnell finds out it was because Mason's a black-out drunk, do you know what he'll do? He'll fucking space Mason. He won't even think about it. He'll grab the guy and throw him out the airlock."
"Why would he...what? That's not who he is. I know him, he's not like that."
"You don't know him. He can't stand to see...he doesn't think like other people. He expects everyone to live up to his bullshit standard. Eventually someone'll let him down and he'll see red, and when it's all done he will fucking hate himself, do you get it? He'll hate himself because he killed a guy and he will blame himself for Mason's screw-up. He'll blame himself for letting us down. He'll say "If I'd been a better leader...!"
Sunny tried to take this all in. It was overwhelming.
"He's never regretted anything, do you get it? He's never had to deal with failure, I mean real failure the kind where someone dies because of it. He's fucking sailed through the last three years like he's Robin Hood and we're his merry men or whatever. But it won't last. One of these days, someone will fuck up, someone will die, and then Parnell will do something he regrets and when that happens for the first time, it will fucking kill him."
"I didn't...," Sunny said. "That's not how..."
"I'm not gonna let Mason or anyone else be the one that lets Parnell down. You don't have to worry, you don't got it in you to let anyone down. But someone's gotta keep those assholes in line."
He walked past Sunny, leaving her alone to think in the empty room.
Abe dropped himself into the copilot's seat next to Parnell. He knew the older man would be at the helm. Want to fly his ship for a while after the Resolute and the station.
"I dunno," Abe said. "Bunch of ignorant savages."
"Abe, you might want to give the rest of the guys a break, man."
Had Parnell heard about what happened between him and Mason? No. No this wouldn't be his reaction if he had.
"Someone's gotta keep these assholes in line," Abe said.
"See, like that. Why's everyone on the team an asshole all the time?"
"I dunno, why'd you recruit a bunch of assholes?"
"They're a good crew. Best in the Arm. Last two years? We done a lotta good man. Put down a lot of shit, needed to be stopped. These are the good guys Abe. Why you gotta act like they're the bad guys?"
"Someone's gotta keep 'em in line," Abe muttered.
"Well that's my job, man. It's my team."
Abe turned to his best friend. "No, see, that's it. You're the leader. You ain't the guy keeping anyone in line, you're the one inspiring everybody. Mostly inspiring everyone to run balls out all the time like nothing bad could ever happen. Competing for your...approval or whatever. It's how we got this far and that I ain't gonna argue with.
"But you don't got it in you to, like, police these guys. Keep 'em in line. Which means I gotta do it."
"They don't need 'policing,'" Parnell said. "They take care of themselves. That's why we hired "em."
Abe looked at Parnell for a few moments. The stars speeding past the window beyond.
"You don't know how people work, Jim," Abe said, getting up out of the copilot seat. He put his hand on Parnell's shoulder as he left the cockpit.
"Don't reckon anyone who did could lead this team."
Sunny pulled the door to the armoury open. Abe was stacking the gear. She watched him. He knew she was there, but said nothing. When it was obvious that he wasn't going to say anything, she broke the silence.
"I want to know what happened back at Hub."
He glanced at her, went back to work.
"Lots of shit, what are we talking about?"
Sunny's mouth became a thin line. So that's how it's going to be.
"Everyone else on this ship is falling all over themselves to tell me their life story. Except you and Parnell. Him I think I got figured," she said.
"Hah!" Abe barked, his back to her.
Sunny stopped and stared at Abe.
"Everyone says you killed someone back at Hub," she continued eventually. "So what? People die all the time, what's so...I don't get it."
"Nothing to get," Abe said, slamming another depleted weapon into its charging slot.
"Parnell said you killed a guy in cold blood, I don't...what's he talking about? He said it like...," she didn't know how to describe it.
This stopped Abe. He forgot sometimes she was still just a kid in a lot of ways. Hell she'd spent her whole adult life on The Sword.
"He said it like what?" Abe said. He knew the answer. Wanted her to finish what she started.
She took a deep breath. "Like he was disappointed in you. Like you let him down."
"I let people down all the time, kid," Abe said.
"No," she said, pointing at him. "Not Parnell. Anyone else? Me? Yeah, sure. I'm not stupid. But not Parnell. You'd die before you let him down. So what happened back at Hub?"
"Nothing special about Hub," Abe muttered. "Mostly assholes anyway."
"Parnell's upset at you because you killed some random asshole? No."
"Believe what you want," Abe shrugged.
He could feel her eyes on him. She wasn't letting him off the hook, and the non-answer didn't sit well with him. She deserved an answer. All the times she'd saved his life? She deserved an answer.
He turned finally to look at her. She stared at him like she could drill the truth out of him, but it didn't matter. He didn't feel like evading.
"Yeah," he admitted, and nodded a little. "I smoked a guy on Triton while we were doing a job. Point blank. Guy was on his knees, hands behind his head. This was, ah...before I met Parnell."
She could see there was more, wanted to draw it out of him, wasn't sure how. "So who was he?" she asked. "Why'd you have to kill him?"
Abe held her gaze. Shook his head slowly. "I didn't have to kill him. He wasn't anyone. He was just some asshole in the wrong place at the wrong time. And I blew him away."
"There must have been a reason."
"I don't know," Abe couldn't look her in the eye now. "Why does anyone do anything? I was young and stupid and full of...I don't know."
Sunny didn't say anything. He hadn't answered her, so she waited. The cargo bay filled with silence until Abe couldn't take it anymore.
"We were stealing something. Something we shouldn't...something unusual. Even for us. This was...like I said, this was before I met Parnell. It was a ship. Luxury ship. We had a contact at the company who made it and we thought...thought it'd be...cool," he said lamely. "Our own ship. So we decided to take it.
"You know, you boost stuff, you smuggle, the people guarding it...they know the drill. There's insurance, they got families. The good ones...they'll look for an opening. Look for us to make a mistake, and sometimes we do. Then it gets interesting. But mostly they stand down.
"This guy was different. He didn't stand down. He didn't stand down, because he wasn't a guard. He was the guy who built the fucking thing. Designed it. Beautiful ship. Poured his...his life into it.
"So he put up a fight. Idiot. We took care of him. But there was something in his eyes. The way he...the way he looked at me, you know? There was fucking hate in his eyes and I knew that...he'd come after us or... Whatever. I told myself he was going to make a move on us right then. But I knew he wasn't. I just wanted to..."
Abe closed his eyes and saw the man die again. Saw the look on his own face, imagined how he looked, how he was sneering when he pulled the trigger, and he deflated. Something in him, something keeping his back straight, fled, and he sagged.
"Turns out this guy was important and so I had Sol Hub after me. I didn't think nothing of it, I was a real outlaw now. Seemed cool. Seemed natural.
"Then I met Parnell and...he was out from Sol Guard and putting a team together for the Arm and I couldn't go back to Hub, so I signed up.
"And after a while...," Abe said, and stood up a little straighter, "I sorta started...seeing things from his point of view. The stuff I'd done. There was something about him. The way he treated me...made me want to be...better." He shot a sideways glance at Sunny. "You been here long enough, you know what I mean.
"I started regretting what I'd done. Never done that before. Never thought about anything other than what's next. So I...I told him. Didn't feel right, him not knowing what I was running from and who was coming after me.
"And he...ah...he forgave me, I guess. He said I wasn't that guy anymore and all of a sudden...," Abe shrugged. "I wasn't that guy anymore."
Abe stood in the weapons locker, looking at nothing. Sunny looked around, her face expressionless
"I get it," she said.
He looked at Sunny. She was the only woman he'd known for any length of time who hadn't thought he was a complete shit after two days.
"Maybe I overreacted with Mason," he said, holstering his gun.
She nodded. "Yep."
"Doesn't mean I won't do it again," he said, with a shrug and something like a smile on his face.
Sunny shrugged. "I don't want to be there," she said, "when Parnell does something he regrets." There was silence between them for a moment. Then Sunny smiled. A little. "Someone's gotta keep these assholes in line."
Abe smiled. "You get it."
Sunny's smile went away. "Everyone loves Parnell," she said, looking around the weapons locker. "Sooner or later, someone's gonna let him down."
"You want us to take on a Hub cruiser?"
The director of Sapphire Station looked from Abe to Parnell. One entire wall of the long room was a picture window looking out on Sirius A. The dwarf star was millions of miles away, but still bright enough to bathe the entire room in a deep blue-white light.
"Isn't that what The Sword is? A cruiser?" Director Jahlani asked.
"We sorta fucked around with her a bit," Abe said. "She's more like a fast-attack frigate these days."
"We need her," Jahlani said. "We need your crew."
"What the hell did you folks do?" Abe asked. He looked around the director's office. "This place a bank vault or something? What?"
"We disabled our secure line to Hub," the director said.
Abe and Parnell stared at the director for a moment, silent.
"We'll do it," Parnell said.
"Now hang on a second," Abe said.
The director smiled hugely and surged out of his chair. Raced to Parnell, shook his hand.
"Thank you," he said, "thank you."
"We'll coordinate with your people and organize a defense for when Hub shows up," Parnell said.
"Jim, can I talk to you?" Abe pressed.
"So you've done this before?" Director Jahlani asked, hopefully.
Parnell smiled. "Sorta. We fought Hub before. Never as...ah...revolutionaries? I don't know what you'd call this."
"Insurrection," Abe said grabbing Parnell's arm. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Excuse us, Director."
They walked across the long room.
"Jim what the fuck are we doing?" Abe hissed. "Since when are we in the revolution business?"
"We fought Hub lots of times," Parnell frowned. "Why's this any different?"
"Because Hub's got its fingers in all sorts of nasty shit," Abe said, sotto voice. "All that stuff, Resolute, Endeavour? They had to cover that up. We side against Hub on this, it'll be all over the line! We'll be the bad guys!"
"These folks are going to declare independence from Hub. You remember Hub, Abe? The guys trying to hunt you down and string you up?"
"Yeah, listen, I got more reason to hate Hub than you know but this ain't our brief..."
"Bullshit it ain't our brief," Parnell said. "Why do you think we spend all that time chasing down corp-pirates, slave-traders?"
"Because it pays well," Abe hissed.
"Bad guys'd pay us a lot more. How you think I got folks like Mason and Dietrich?" Abe was about to answer when Parnell dropped it on him.
"How'd I get you?"
Abe stopped.
"You're not here because we're friends, man. You're here because you used to be a piece of shit. Just like Mason. Just like Dietrich. Because the Abe your father hates," he said, and Abe couldn't look him in the eye, "the guy your dad still thinks is a murderer, wouldn't go after the pirates and the slavers. He'd go for the payout."
Abe looked at the floor.
"Tell me I'm wrong," Parnell shrugged.
Abe glanced at Parnell, looked at him from the corner of his eye. "Mother fucker," he said, mostly to himself. Then he walked across the long room to Director Jahlani.
"Is there a problem?" the director asked, clearly worried. "If money's a problem we can..."
"It ain't a problem, we're in," Abe said.
"Excellent!" Jahlani said. It was Abe's turn for the handshake treatment. "Excellent!"
"I'm going to head back to The Sword" Parnell said. "Abe'll brief you on what to do when Hub shows up."
"Ahhh," Director Jahlani said with some trepidation. "You're not...," he looked from Parnell to Abe and back. "I was expecting you to supervise the ah...," Jahlani gave up trying to be diplomatic. "Why him?" he asked nodding his head at Abe.
"Because if we're gonna fight Hub," Parnell said, "I want to win."
Parnell turned and walked out of the room, leaving Abe and Director Jahlani alone. Abe was smiling hugely.
"Hey," he said, as though they just met. "So what kind of ordnance you guys got?"
"We've got a security detail, about a hundred men."
"That's good," Abe said, "what else?"
"I'm afraid that's it," Jahlani said. "It's why we hired you."
"Wait, hang on, hold up," Abe said, "this is a Hercules-class station right?"
"Ah...ah, yes?" Jahlani said.
"So you got a compliment of nuclear ordnance, right?"
"We can't use those!"
Abe shrugged. "You want to plug your line back in? Go back to giving Hub 15%?" The director didn't answer. He slumped down into his chair.
"Those warheads are for self-defense," he said, but the fight was already going out of him.
"Well what do you think this is?" Abe asked. "You think these guys are coming to collect on a bet? They're coming to shut this whole place down and they won't arrest you, Director, you'll be killed during the boarding action. Along with your executive staff."
It took a moment for Director Jahlani to absorb this. Slowly, his head started to nod. "Yes," he said. "Yes we have a compliment of missiles with nuclear warheads."
"Gooood," Abe exaggerated. "So here's what you're gonna do..."
The dive sensors blared. There was a ship in nearby Cherenkov space.
"Anyone got a visual?" Parnell asked. They were all looking to port.
"Why's there no report from the dive anchor?" Dietrich asked, looking at the Cherenkov screen.
"Something's malfunctioning," Mason said. "We would know by now if..."
"Team!" Sunny shouted. "Eyes a-starboard!"
Everyone dashed to the opposite window, momentarily lurching as Sunny spun the ship around.
Something was emerging from Cherenkov space. Between The Sword and Sapphire Station.
"That's impossible," Dietrich said. "There's no anchor there!"
"Jesus, look how close they're coming in," Mason said. "Are they gonna ram the station?"
The ship that splashed into realspace was small for a Hub ship. Only about twice the size of The Sword. It was a sleek, flat, black ship. Long, elegant, swooping fins projected off her, designed to absorb any Minkowski waves created by traveling through Cherenkov space. Absorb and deflect. Making her impossible to detect while simultaneously granting her access to the spacetime regions known as Dive Anchors too small for any other ships to use.
"Mother fucker," Mason said. "Solaris."
"No!" Parnell said, reaching above him to flip the inertial dampeners to OFF. "Solaris is a myth! They never built her!"
"That myth is powering up weapons, point blank," Sunny shouted.
"What is it?" Dietrich asked.
Abe just stared. "Stealth ship," he said. "Experimental. Small crew. No bigger than..." His eyes unfocused as he recalled something someone just said. "'Point blank.'" He snapped back to reality, pressed his hands flat against the window. "No! Goddammit!"
He spun around. "Someone get on the radio!"
"Solaris weapons live!" Sunny shouted. "She's gonna fire!"
Parnell turned to Abe. "What? What are you talking about?"
Abe surged forward, grabbed the radio. "I told them to..."
Then the light came. Brilliant white light, filling the cabin, filling every inch of it, banishing every shadow. The soundless, deadly light. Blinding everyone on The Sword.
"Jesus," someone said. It might have been Mason. "What happened?"
The crew of The Sword slowly regained their sight. Many of them stood, hunched over, pressing their palms to their eyes.
"Abe," Parnell said. "What order? What did you tell them?"
Abe was blinking madly, trying to force his eyes to work again. It wasn't permanent, but it was impossible to operate the ship at the moment at least.
"I told them; don't give Hub a chance. Because they won't give you a chance."
"What was the order, Abe!?" Mason shouted. He was staring in the direction he assumed Abe was in.
"I told them...as soon as you see a ship...fire your nukes."
"At that range?!" Dietrich shouted.
"I didn't know they'd come in that close! You ever seen a ship do that before? Anyone?"
"You killed everyone on that station!" Mason howled.
"I didn't know!" Abe shouted. "Anyone think Hub would come in that close? Anybody?!"
"Everyone shut up!" Parnell barked. "Sunny, where's Solaris?"
"Sapphire Station reporting heavy casualties," she said. "Deaths, radiation burns. But no sign of Solaris. Director Jahlani relaying message; 'Worth the cost. Give my regards to The Sword's weapon master.'"
Everyone looked at Abe.
"But where'd the fucking ship go?" he asked, dumbfounded.
"She must have...," Sunny was thinking. "She must have spun up her Patterson drive. Dove."
"How?!" Parnell asked. "There was no time."
"Who knows what that ship can do, man?" Abe asked. "It's a secret goddamned ship."
"No," Parnell said. "It still needs a realspace translation and that takes time."
"He's right," Sunny said. "Without a plot, they dive blind. They could come out...," she stopped. Noticed the line terminal for the first time since the nukes went off. The volume was off, but the readout was flashing like a strobe light.
Everyone stopped talking, and looking at the silently screaming subspace comms unit.
Parnell walked over, stood next to the panel. Flipped on the RECEIVE button.
"Mayday, mayday. This is the...as82r3%p...frigate Solaris outbound from Earth...hf*6%sf...in close to Sirius A. Unable to maintain...a0(^j#gfs...deteriorating. Repeat, we are falling into Sirius A, engines failing...(6%sjkf$1...
Mayday.
...k*!2sdh^...
Calling anyone.
...5#0-jdp##1...
Please help." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...Solaris. This is The Sword. We read you.
...Help is on the way.
"Those people are the enemy!" Mason railed at the captain of The Sword. "What the hell are you doing?"
"They were the enemy," Parnell said as he punched in the course and got out of his seat. "They lost. Now they need our help."
"That's the stupidest fucking thing I ever heard," Mason said, trying to block Parnell's way. The bigger man just pushed past him. "They wouldn't do this for you!"
"That's why we're the good guys," Parnell said.
"This isn't a tug! Goddamit Parnell you're going to get us all killed!" Mason shouted.
"The Sword will hold," Parnell threw back. "We don't need Solaris. We get her crew off, then Solaris can fall into the sun."
"There's thirty people on Solaris and they're falling into a white dwarf! No one's ever done this before! We won't survive ten minutes in that furnace! The hull will melt!"
"Just so you know," Sunny said, plotting the course and bringing The Sword around, "the surface of Sirius A is basically a fermionic sea. Temperature won't be a problem, we'll all be boiled into quarks first."
Parnell confronted Mason. "Ten minutes might be enough."
"'Might?!' And you're willing to risk our lives on that?"
Parnell snatched open the locker and pulled out the radiation suits. Tossed them to Abe, Abe distributed them to the rest of the team.
"So what?" Parnell asked, not looking at Mason. "Leave them to die?"
"Yes! They knew the odds when they signed up. We were hired to stop them not save them!" Parnell ignored him. "Jesus this is exactly why you were drummed out of Sol Guard! For trying shit like this!"
Parnell straightened and looked at Mason. Everyone else kept up the furious preparation for emergency evac in the corona of a star, but they were all quiet. Listening. Wondering what their boss would do.
His eyes locked on the younger man, Parnell asked his team "Anyone else?"
No response. Abe made sure everyone else was suited up before getting his suit on.
Parnell looked around the main deck, surveyed his team, made a mental calculation. Turned back to Mason.
"You're fired," he said.
"What?!"
"You heard me. Dismissed." He snatched Mason's rad suit away from him. Threw it back in the locker. "I'll buy you out of your contract."
Mason looked around the deck, searching his fellow specialists for any sign of sympathy or support. He found none.
"You're mad," he said. It was unclear whether he was talking to Parnell, or all of them.
"We'll see," Parnell said. Sunny pulled herself up, out of the pilot's seat and swung over to the copilot's station. Parnell took the command chair. If his ship was going to be eaten by a star, he wanted a front row seat.
"Time?!" Parnell shouted as he struggled to maintain control of The Sword in the gravity well of a star. Being attached to the wounded Solaris via the docking clamp meant Parnell had few options when it came to controlling the ship.
"Seven minutes!" Sunny shouted over the roar of the star's fermionic condensate boiling away against their shields. Even with the ultrareflectors up, the cockpit was still bathed in deep blue light.
"Abe!?"
"We got wounded here man!" Abe's voice came over the radio. "We need more time, goddammit!"
"Sunny what happens in seven minutes?!" Parnell asked
"Shields fail and the ship boils away!" Sunny shot back.
"Abe how many wounded?"
"How the hell do I know?" Abe's voice crackled over solar static. "Half these people are unconscious and there's fucking smoke everywhere!"
Parnell made a calculation. "There's not enough time."
Mason was pulling wounded Solaris crewmembers out of the airlock. He shot Parnell a look, but said nothing.
"There's not enough time," Sunny repeated, working the problem. "The shields will burn away and we'll be exposed to the star." She stared out the window, past the ultrareflectors, into the blue-white light of Sirius A.
Suddenly she was pulling herself up and out of the copilot's chair.
"I'll do it," she said.
"What!?" Parnell asked, unable to safely look away from the controls long enough to confront his pilot and chief engineer.
Sunny pulled a radsuit out of a locker, began suiting up.
"Solaris' engines burned out, but I can get them back online. I'll put her between us and Sirius A. Solaris' hull will act as a shield for us. Buy us the time we need."
"No," Parnell said. An order. "There's no time to get the engines back online and pilot the ship around and get back here!"
"There is if I go with her," Mason said.
Parnell twisted around in his seat to look at Mason. Sunny was suiting up, leaving Parnell to sort it out.
Mason didn't wait for Parnell to ask the question. "I can pilot Solaris if Sunny can get the engines up. I'm rated for it."
Sunny continued to suit up, gave no indication she'd heard Mason.
"Sunny you ok with this?" Parnell asked. Mason's face fell a little.
Sunny zipped her suit up. "He's the best pilot on the team," she said, and then looked at Parnell smiling. "After me and you, I mean."
"But I can't get the engines up," Mason said. "She can."
Parnell thought for a second. "Go," he said. "Buy us the time we need."
Sunny dashed into the airlock, Mason started after her.
"Mason!" Parnell shouted.
Already half in the airlock, Mason pulled himself out to look at Parnell.
"Good luck man," Parnell said.
Mason stared at him, saying nothing. Then followed Sunny into the airlock.
"Parnell!" Abe's voice spat over the intercom. "What the hell's going on? The ship feels like she's moving!"
"Just get those people over here!" Parnell said.
"There's no time!" Abe said. "I'm calling it!"
"You've got the time!" Parnell barked into the radio. "Finish the op!"
He heard Abe's voice, away from the mic, say "Goddammit," but no further complaints came through.
Minutes later, and Abe crawled out of the airlock, behind the last coughing, disoriented Solaris crewmember.
"That's all of them!" Abe said. "What the hell's going on?" Dietrich guided the rescued crewmember below decks.
"Crew all aboard!" Parnell shouted into the mic. "Sunny, get out of there!"
"Oh you are fucking kidding me," Abe said, rushing to the cockpit to look out the window at Solaris and Sirius A. "Sunny's over there? I thought the engines were dead."
"We've got this!" Sunny's voice came back over the radio. "Mason has positive thrust, over the gravity differential, we can get out of here! Go!"
"She doesn't see it," Abe said.
From the cockpit of The Sword Abe and Parnell watched as Solaris limped away from the surface of the dwarf star. The reason for her struggle clear.
The entire starboard half of the ship had been eaten by the star. Entire decks were exposed.
"Sunny, you're not seeing what I'm seeing," Parnell said. "You're missing half your hull, it's just gone, the star ate it!"
The comm crackled. Then Mason's voice. "All bulkheads sealed!" he said, from Solaris' command center. "Life support disabled everywhere except engines and control! Get The Sword out! We can claim salvage on Solaris!"
"Jesus Christ," Abe said.
Solaris continued her slow climb out of Sirius A's gravity well.
"They're gonna make it," Parnell said. "I don't believe it, they're gonna make it." He throttled up The Sword's sublight engines.
"Hey," Dietrich asked. "Hey did we just capture a Hub stealth ship?"
The crew started laughing, the nervous laughter of people who'd just been through hell.
"Holy shit!" Malik said.
"Stealth ship," Parnell said, riding The Sword's controls out of the intense gravity around the star. "What's that worth? Anyone got any records they need cleared?"
The team started cheering as The Sword climbed away from Sirius A.
"Look," Abe said. No one was paying attention. "Hey look at Solaris' engines," Abe said. "Why are they glowing like that, is that normal? Any know if...it looks like they're going to..."
Eight days later...
"Sir, he doesn't know you're here," the nurse said.
Abe looked up from his comic book. He brought it for Parnell, but there was nothing else to read just sitting there for hours. "Huh?" he asked.
"He's in a coma," the nurse said, her smile sympathetic. "We're monitoring brain activity. We'll tell you as soon as there's anything. You can go home. Right now he has no idea you're here."
Abe stared at the nurse like he hadn't heard what she said. "Yeah," he said eventually. "But I know." He went back to reading.
"Besides," he said, turning the page, "I got nowhere else to go."
For those joining us late, this is part of an official series on the Hunter's backgrounds. The index of stories is here.
His eyes had been open for a while, Abe had noticed. Abe didn't think that meant much, and so just sat there reading, waiting.
Eventually, Parnell's eyes started moving around the room. Came to rest on Abe.
Abe scooted his chair around so he could look Parnell in the eye.
"Hey man, how you doing?"
Parnell opened his hand, Abe took it.
"You're gonna make it," Abe said. Parnell squeezed his hand. "You been out for about three weeks."
Parnell's eyes took in the chair and the stack of comics. Abe smiled.
"Nah man," he said. "They took the tubes out two days ago. I only been here since then."
Parnell tried to talk. Abe let him. He knew what Parnell was going to say.
"The Sword."
"We lost them," Abe said, his eyes getting red. "Nobody...nobody made it."
"Solaris?" Parnell asked.
Abe shook his head, looked at the floor. "The engines went critical. Took out both ships. The cockpit saved you and me but. . ..."
"We lost them," Parnell said, his voice dead. Unbelieving.
"Press is kinda going crazy over it. Looking for someone to...you know, looking for an explanation. No one seems to give a shit about what actually fucking happened."
Parnell's eyes welled up, but there was no other sign of emotion or reaction. His mouth was half open. Lips cracked from disuse, blood caked around his nose from endless tubes inserted and removed. But no expression on his face. Whatever was happening, it was deep behind his eyes.
"But that order," Abe said. "That rescue. Getting everyone off that ship. That was the bravest goddamned thing I've ever seen." His voice broke as he said it.
Parnell gave no indication he heard.
"You're the best man I ever met," Abe said, his eyes darting back and forth. Unable to look at his friend like this. "Only reason those people had a chance was "cause of you. No one else coulda pulled it off. Not many would have tried."
Parnell's face betrayed no reaction.
"What...where..."
Abe pulled the chair closer.
"Solaris' engines went into overload. Some regulator probably got eaten by Sirius A. Explosion took out The Sword. Most of Solaris was unrecoverable. They couldn't find all the bodies. Mason, Sunny. Probably never find "em.
Parnell started at nothing.
"I gotta find something to do," Abe said. "Gotta go check the line, look for bounties," he said. "I can relax now that you're awake."
"Ok," Parnell said.
Abe stood up. "I'll be back tomorrow," he said. He picked up one of the comics, showed it to Parnell. When Parnell didn't look at it, didn't give any indication he was even aware Abe was in the room, Abe tossed the comic back down. "Try to find you some more comics," he said. "You'll grind through these in an hour, I know you."
"Ok," Parnell said.
Abe looked at Parnell. Looked at the comics, the room. He found it difficult to be in the room with his friend like this. Parnell needed room to take it in. Grieve.
Abe headed to the door. "I'll be back tomorrow," he said.
"Ok," Parnell said.
"Maybe I'll come back tonight," he said, and watched for a reaction from Parnell.
"Ok," Parnell said.
Abe sighed and screwed himself up. Grabbed the door handle, gave it a moment, and left.
"Ok," Parnell said.
Parnell looked at his Antietam Red. He had hoped it would be enough. It wasn't. Smoke from the fogh-pipes was making him antsy. He needed something to calm him down.
He signaled the server. "Double malt," he said. She nodded and moved through the crowd.
Parnell realized someone was standing near his table, watching him. An Asian guy. Older, but fit.
"Mind if I sit down?" the man asked, signaling to the server to make it two.
"Probably I do," Parnell said. "Don't reckon any man looking for me is coming with good news."
The man nodded, and sat down. "Well that's a reasonable assumption," he said. He was wearing a Sol Guard Air Agency bomber jacket. It wasn't a replica.
"Nice jacket," Parnell said
"Thanks," the older man said.
"You were with the Hellfighters?"
The man smiled. "Nope," he said. "I'm old, but I'm not that old. Jacket belonged to my father. I was, uh..." he turned and presented his shoulder to Parnell, so Parnell could see the patch.
"FTF," Parnell said. "Hub Marshall." The man nodded. "You a ways out from your jurisdiction."
"Oh I don't...," the man shrugged. "I'm not in that business anymore. I'm...," he twisted in his seat to present the patch on his other shoulder. Pointed to it.
"Planet tamer," Parnell said, and their drinks came. Parnell didn't touch his, didn't even look at it. His guest noticed that. "Like Leading Edge, yeah? Same thing?"
The man raised his eyebrows. "Ah, yes," he said. "You remember the Edge?"
Parnell scratched behind his ear, remembering. "There was a comic we were all reading back in the Guard. Called...," he remembered. "Wounded Wolves, that was it. All about Leading Edge. Pretty bad-ass. Supposed to be real. We all figured it was made up."
The man nodded. "Probably," he said.
Parnell peered at him. "Leader was this guy born on Ganymede. Real hard ass with a robot partner. Something bad happened to his wife, he sorta took it out on the wildlife. I don't remember his backstory though. What he did before that."
The man picked up his drink. "He was a Hub Marshall," he downed the shot, "named William Cabot."
"William Cabot," Parnell said. "Holy crap."
"Pleased to meet you," Cabot said.
"Man I read your comic book," Parnell said, suddenly animated, smiling.
Cabot smiled back. "It was mostly made up. Never got the name, either. Wounded Wolves. What is that?"
Parnell said back in his seat, grinning hugely. "It's a quote, man. From MacArthur. About his men, how hard they fought, how much he loved them."
"Well that I like," Cabot said, nodding. "Huh. Never knew that."
"I'm James Parnell," Parnell introduced, they shook hands. "Figure you know that though."
"Figure I do," Cabot said. "You're a hard man to find."
"Well," Parnell said, and the smile faded somewhat, "Not hard to lose yourself in the Arm." He looked at the older man. "You looking for me in particular?"
Cabot nodded. "Man who led The Sword."
Parnell stopped smiling. "Why'd you have to bring that up?"
Cabot shrugged. "You have to move on sooner or later. Can't hide from it forever."
"Yeah? Try me," Parnell said.
Cabot nodded. He seemed to understand. "I read about what happened," he said.
"You got no idea what happened," Parnell said. "Whatever you read was crap."
"I can sorta read between the lines," Cabot said. "Why was your crew on Solaris and Solaris' crew on your ship?"
"It don't matter man," Parnell said, grabbing his drink. "It's all crap."
"Solaris comes out of C-space, and fires its nukes point-blank at Sapphire Station?" Cabot asked. "That sounds like crap. Since when did Hub carry nuclear ordnance?"
Parnell said nothing.
"Word on the line is, you were commandeering their ship, holding their crew for ransom back to Hub."
"Whatever, man. What's this about?"
"But I noticed something looking at your record," Cabot said, ignoring him. "You and your crew went on over thirty ops, mostly bounties. In every instance you're fighting corp-pirates and slavers. Huge bounties out on station directors, regulatory agents. You never took one of them."
"Lotta bounties out there man, that don't mean anything. Why come to talk to me?"
"Ah hell," Cabot said. "Means everything. Means you're not the kind of man the line thinks you are."
Parnell said nothing.
"I'm guessing," Cabot said, pressing his finger down onto the table, "that the nukes were Sapphire's defenses. I don't know why they'd fire them point blank, fry half their staff, but then Solaris retreats. Fouls up. Jumps into the surface of a star. And you went in to rescue them."
"Why would I do that?" Parnell asked, his eyes unfocused, staring at nothing.
Cabot leaned forward. "Because it was the right thing to do," he said. "Because it was a ship full of kids in Sol Guard, innocent kids like you were once. Just following orders."
Parnell looked down at his drink, said nothing.
"You make life or death decisions every day," Cabot said, "sooner or later your number comes up. Doesn't mean you're no good. You have to be lucky every time you go out, the bad guys only have to be lucky once. Hell, your record? I've never seen anything like it. You know how many hunters we lost in the Edge? How many times the whole team almost got wiped?"
Parnell stayed hunkered down over his whiskey.
"You asked why I came here, this is the brief," Cabot said. "Colony way out on the rim. Shear. About thirty thousand people spread over a dozen settlements. These are working class folks, taking a chance for a better life. Better life for their kids. Risking everything. And the wildlife is serious. Makes Axil look like a petting zoo."
"Why me?" Parnell looked up from his drink. "I don't know planet taming, there have to be better guys."
Cabot nodded. "Well, experienced tamers are not in short supply, I grant you. But I sort of. . .," he tilted his head back and forth, weighing an idea.
He looked at Parnell and flashed a brief smile. "I don't trust NORDITA."
"You don't," Parnell said.
Cabot shrugged. "Not really. They wanted me, specifically. I've been out of wildlife services for years. So why me?"
"Cuz you're famous."
Cabot pointed at Parnell. "Exactly. It's the kind of thing the corps do to make something look good on paper."
"Cover their ass."
"You get it," Cabot said. Happy he and Parnell spoke the same language. "There's some big problem coming, they're worried, they don't know anything about wildlife, but they have money. So they spend five minutes on the line. . ..."
"Your name pops up," Parnell said. "'Best hunter the Arm ever saw.'"
"Someone, some executive somewhere, says 'Why don't we just hire that guy?' That way, when everything goes south, they can say 'wasn't our fault! We hired the best!'"
Parnell looked at his drink. "Sounds about right. I buy that." He looked up at Cabot. "So what's this big problem? Corp pirates?"
"Maybe," Cabot said. "But Shear has an EbonStar detachment. No, I was sorta thinking something military."
"Sol Guard?" Parnell repeated, unbelieving. "Twelve guys against Sol Guard?"
Cabot thought for a minute. "Yeah, I dunno. Maybe some kind of expeditionary force. Small. Maybe it is corp pirates. Hell, maybe it's just an important planet with nasty wildlife and they want to make sure it doesn't get out of hand. But if it's anything but wildlife, I need someone who knows tactics and strategy and that is not me."
"I get it," Parnell said.
"You took on Hub, pirates. You're the guy."
Parnell grimaced, skeptical. "I'm the guy."
Cabot leaned in again, like they were conspiring. "You and me build the team. We vet everyone. We go out there, we spend six months teaching the wildlife to stay away from humans. Get paid, go home."
He sat back and watched Parnell. "Simple job. I've done it a hundred times. And you feel good doing it. Just a bunch of wild animals one on side, good honest people on the other, and nothing but us between them. All your training? Your gear? You'd be a hero to these people."
Parnell looked around the bar. But he was breathing easier. Seemed less down.
"And there's something else," Cabot said.
"What?" Parnell asked.
Cabot leaned back and spread his arms across the back of the booth. "You get to work with the guy from the comics," he said, smiling.
Parnell laughed. It seemed like he'd come around. "And you're running the show?"
Cabot shrugged. "I like being in charge," he said.
Parnell nodded. "That suits me. Suits me fine."
"You ask me," Cabot said, "you're a born leader. You had one crap mission, it happens. Don't let it...you know, don't let one incident ruin a good man. Let's go to Shear. Help some people. Nothing to worry about except teeth and claws. No nukes, no Hub. No press."
Parnell smiled a little. "You're a persuasive man," he said.
Cabot shrugged. "When I want to be."
A server walked by. Parnell put his drink on her tray. Looked at Cabot.
"Ready?" Cabot asked, already standing.
Parnell looked around the bar. Smoke from the fogh-pipes clung to the ground. Dim, warm light from the ceiling failed to illuminate much. How much time had he spent here over the last six months? Too much.
"Yeah," Parnell said. "Yeah I'm ready to get out of this place." He reached into the inside vest pocket on his jacket. Cabot beat him to the punch, scanned his messenger across the table's receiver. Paid the bill.
"It's on me," he said.
Parnell nodded his thanks. "I'll get the next one," he said.
Cabot shook his head. "We're a crew now. Means we can write this off." One corner of his mouth curled in what might have been a smile. "Business expense."
"You pay taxes, man?" Parnell asked, getting up from the table. He was a head taller than the older man. He'd never thought of William Cabot, captain of Leading Edge as worrying about anything as mundane as taxes.
Cabot mock-frowned at the younger man. He knew the drill. Specialist crews didn't keep books. How was anyone from Hub going to find them out here in the Arm?
"Always," he said, pocketing his messenger. "Everything above board, get receipts. Pay what you owe. We're working for NORDITA. You deal with those guys, you need everything above-board."
Parnell pursed his lips in thought. "Taxes," he said, somewhat disbelieving. Then he shrugged. "That's how it's done, that's how we do it," he accepted. "Long as I'm not the one doing all the math."
Cabot smiled. He clapped the younger man on the shoulder as they walked out. "We hire accountants. Lotta money in planet taming if you're not pissing it away on repairs and booze."
"Accountants? Man we all thought Leading Edge was like a bunch of superheroes. Meanwhile you guys running around with accountants. They don't put that in the comics."
"Not romantic," Cabot agreed.
As they left the bar, Parnell asked "So what is this, like Leading Edge II or something?"
Cabot shrugged and then stopped. Parnell and Cabot stood there in the corridor leading to the rest of the station with people walking past and between them.
"Hadn't thought that far ahead," Cabot admitted. "Had thirty guys in Leading Edge, whatever this is, it's not that."
The two men thought. "Does it matter?" Cabot asked.
"We're going to recruit another ten people," Parnell said, "feel weird doing it without knowing what this is. What's your ship called?"
"The Laurie-Anne." Cabot said with a rueful grin.
"Ok well, we ain't the Laurie-Annes," Parnell said smiling.
"A name makes it official," Cabot said, weighing the idea.
"Yeah you know," Parnell said, "makes it more real."
Cabot sniffed. "How about...The Crew."
Parnell didn't react for a second. "That's it?"
Cabot tilted his head back and forth. "Yeah. Everyone's always got these names, ridiculous names. Ringstorm, Magnetar, the Six from Sirius and every other damned thing. Even Leading Edge, always sounded like we made razors. I just want to be in the crew."
Parnell stood there staring at nothing, people walking by, ignoring them.
"You don't like it, we can...," Cabot began.
"Nono," Parnell said. "No. The Crew. Yeah. Yeah it's like...it's elegant. Simple. People see that name on the board," he said, meaning the specialist job board everyone on the line used, "they'll think 'these are serious guys.'"
"That's us. Serious guys," Cabot said, and the microsmile flashed again.
"Serious as a heart attack," Parnell said, extending his hand.
Cabot took it. "Serious as taxes," he said.
Parnell barked a laugh. The two men walked out into the heavy traffic of the station.
"So what happened to being a Hub Marshal?" Parnell asked. "The comic said they fired you, but didn't say why."
"I was insufficiently ingratiating," Cabot said with exaggerated precision. Like he was quoting someone.
"And what's that in English?"
"It means I punched my superior officer one too many times."
"You!?" Parnell exclaimed. "Man you spoke two sentences and I knew you were the coolest dude on this whole station. Having a hard time imagining you blowing your top."
Cabot looked up at Parnell as they approached the docked Laurie-Anne and smiled.
"I was a young man once," he said.
Early Slim & Crow Fiction
This is something I wrote very early on in Slim & Crow's development. I had an idea of their personalities and wanted to get them on paper to see how people reacted.
Crow came out pretty much the way I wrote him here. Stoic. Laconic. Sometimes pauses in the middle of a sentence for no obvious reason, because it's been so long since he's had regular human contact he sometimes just forgets how conversations work.
Slim changed more. In this, he's also stoic and has an air of menace around him. The original concept art made him look more like a gunslinger and I imagined him being a foil for Abe. More dangerous than Abe. More serious.
It wasn't until I heard Lou Santini's audition for Slim that I realized he shouldn't be that guy, he should be the regretful hero, the tragic hero. The WWI soldier who signed up with all his school chums only to watch them get slaughtered right in front of him.
There are still some Slim lines where he's got this cowboy-attitude, but in general I'm proud of where he ended up. We got enough Men (and Women) With No Name on the team.
Khovalyg watched the alien pack up its camp. The creature didn't like water, he noticed.
Three days of following it, watching it, and Crow finally realized the thing's twice-daily ritual of rubbing ointment on its body was the equivalent of bathing for the alien. And alien it had to be.
It wore a gun at its hip, in a holster, like a man. And clothes. And tech. But the wings puzzled Crow. They had membranes, like a dragonfly wing, but metal vanes and what looked like hover-assist. Straps held it on. He'd yet to see them in action.
Something else had come to Shear, hunting the monster. It followed Goliath tracks. They were both following the same tracks, Khovalyg knew. But had the alien come for revenge? Sport? Or something else? An owner, looking for a lost pet?
He'd watched it fight off blitzers and reavers. It didn't know Shear as well as Crow, who could move through the jungle undisturbed. Normally. Currently he was nursing a wounded, splinted leg. This slowed him down and the wound wasn't healing quickly, but he was still making progress.
Crow stood at the edge of the clearing, leaning on his long rifle, saying nothing. Being polite.
Eventually the alien noticed him, but tried not to let it show. One pause in its movement as it packed its camp, the only betrayal of awareness.
"Two days you been following me," the alien said, its voice deep and sonorous.
Crow's eyebrows raised in surprise. It speaks.
"Three," he said once he'd recovered.
The alien...alien? The hunter nodded. "Don't worry. I didn't see you," it said. "I saw your pet. Never got a glimpse of you."
Crow was impressed. He looked up to the sky, produced a whistling noise that didn't sound like anything human.
He stretched out his arm and a batray flapped down onto it. Began grooming itself.
"Got a name?" Crow asked.
The bug-man looked at him with a million-faceted eyes. "Not anymore," he said. "Folks call me Slim."
Crow nodded. Looked around the clearing. " Crow," he said.
The bug-man sniffed. "You got a bum leg," he said, nodding at Crow "s splinted leg.
Crow looked down, as though seeing his leg for the first time.
"It'll heal," he said.
Slim removed a small box from his belt. Pressed a button on it, and tossed it into the air.
The box transformed in mid-toss, sprouting wings and a small mechanical head with beetle-eyes, like Slim's, but mechanical.
It hovered, surveying the area, then darted toward Crow who took a step back, then held himself still. He couldn't outrun the drone, anyway.
The drone hummed and a green beam washed over Crow's leg. Seconds later, Crow was able to pull the splint off, put his full weight on the leg.
"Thanks," he said. The drone sped back to its master.
"Sure," Slim said, snatching the drone out of the air. It folded itself up, and Slim replaced it on his belt.
"You speak English," Crow said, taking a few steps forward.
""Course," the bug-man said, as he went about loading his pack. "Born on Bode's World. What should I speak?"
Long silence again. Neither of them seemed to mind. Slim continued about his business.
Eventually, "You don't look like a man," Crow said. It felt rude to say.
Slim paused his packing, straightened up. Fixed his bug-eyes on Crow.
"Never heard of the war?" Slim asked.
Crow's impassive face gave no indication he had, or hadn't, or was even listening. After a few moments silence, he said "They got a lotta wars."
Slim considered this. It was hard to argue with.
"The Mutagen War?" he said.
Crow shook his head. Pulled something out of a pouch on his belt. Fed it to his batray.
"Bode's World. Half dozen other planets in the Basilisk Nebula. Rebelled against Hub?" Crow said nothing. Slim continued. "Spliced our DNA with insects. I'm third-gen." He paused. "You don't want to meet a first-gen."
"I bet," Crow said. "You used to be a man?"
"Still am," Slim said. All evidence to the contrary.
"Huh," Crow said. "Now you hunt the monster."
Slim shrugged, a human gesture that did more to convince Crow of his story than anything. "Came here to get far away from everything. But eventually," he said, "everything found me."
He looked at the man with the blitzleopard hat and pet batray. "Lots of stuff comes out of the jungle now."
Crow nodded. The planet was different now. More savage. Crow didn't mind. Didn't seem like Slim did either.
"What about you?" Slim asked.
"Survey," Crow said. That was enough. Survey rangers were...well, they were basically Crow. People Celestial could drop off on a planet, alone, come back years later, pick them up. Learn the kinds of things satellites and robots couldn't tell you. Being the only human being on an entire planet for three years took a special kind of person.
"What's the uh...," Crow said. "The goop. You put on yourself."
Slim stared at him for a while. Then rummaged around in his pack and tossed a tin of the stuff to Crow.
"Coconut oil," he said. "Some linseed and flax. Honeycomb dissolved in it."
Crow opened the tin, smelled the contents. Smelled nice. Took a dollop out and spread it on the back of his hands. "Hm," he said.
"Water's bad for us," Slim said. "Not lethal just...annoying. That stuff's antibacterial, antifungal. Protects against the sun. All that."
It left a waxy residue on Crow's skin. He rubbed some on his blitzleopard pelt. It seemed a good match, keep the pelt supple.
"Keep it," Slim said. "I got plenty. I've got an organ where your salivary glands are, secrets something similar but we don't like to...," He stopped mid-description. "It's sort of...," the two men stared at each other for a while again. Then Slim shrugged. "It's gross."
Crow thought that sounded likely. He looked around the clearing.
"Hunting this thing," he said. "Not a race. Endurance run."
Slim nodded. Hefted his pack onto his back. "You want to go fast, go alone," he said.
"Want to go far," Crow said, "go together."
"Figure this thing's about three days out. Not sure it needs to rest."
"We'll find it," Crow said.
"Might need help bringing it down," Slim said.
"We'll find that too," Crow said.
Slim looked Crow up and down. Crow did the same to Slim.
"Figure we will," Slim said.
Here's the sequel. I imagined a series of stories with Slim and Crow eventually meeting up with Torvald and Sunny and the four of them finding Cabot.
Here you can really see that Slim was more a gunslinger. A match for Abe. I was basically making no concession to the fact he was a medic. I wasn't interested in his medic-ness. And that's bad writing, can't just ignore that shit.
The light hopper was on its side, its broken engine exposed. Abnett and Gill worked on it, while Stace and Lee watched. If they could get it working, they'd have enough air travel to get them to the spaceport. Maybe meet up with other survivors.
Stace, the youngest of them, turned idly and saw something that shocked her.
"Hey," she said, warning.
"Holy shit," Lee said.
Abnett and Gill extracted their heads from inside the engine housing, and saw what startled Stace.
They were being watched by two men standing just at the edge of the jungle. Well, one man. And something else. Something with huge insect eyes. The other one wore the skull of a blitzleopard for a hat, and propped a nine-foot-long Falken Hydrostatic Disruptor on the ground.
They just stood there, keeping a respectful distance. Watching. How long had they been there?
Abnett stood up, wiped his hands on the front of his overalls. He was well over six feet tall with a huge beard and a hat with the Caber & Holloe logo on it. All four of them had guns or shotguns in holsters.
He scowled as he looked from the two strangers to his friends, and back. He walked over to the two. . .men. Showing no fear.
"What the fuck are you?" he asked Slim.
"Good question," Crow said in his low monotone.
Slim threw a look at Crow before turning his huge, multifaceted eyes on the survivors.
"Folks call me Slim," he said. He nodded at Crow. "Crow. We're looking for the planet tamers came through here a while ago."
Abnett closed the distance to Slim.
"I mean what the fuck kind of alien bug monster are you?"
Slim looked at Crow, and then back to the big man. "Well I don't know how many kinds there are," he said, scratching the back of his neck, "but I'm the kind looking for the planet tamers came through here couple of days ago."
"Hey. Hey Abnett," Gill said. He was an old, thin man with a thicket of white stubble across his chin. "That's a Basilisk soldier!"
"No shit?!" Abnett said, turning to look at the older man. When he'd turned back around, Slim had hooked his hands into his ammo belt in what appeared to be a casual way, but in a manner that also put his gun hand next to his supermat revolver. "Well you're about worth your weight in gold," Abnett said, grinning with dirty, yellowing teeth.
Slim shrugged. "That's what my mom always said."
"He means the bounty," Crow said.
"Oh right, yeah. The bounty. I didn't catch your meaning because it is, in fact, worth several times my weight in gold, but seeing as how the six of us," he said, gesturing to Crow and the four other colonists, "are out here on the ass end of the Arm, and seeing how the last dive-capable ship left three days ago, and furthermore seeing as how there are now more monsters on this planet than people? I don't reckon you're in any position to collect on any bounty."
Abnett's mouth was hanging open, slack. He looked at Crow. Crow shrugged.
Slim snapped his finger-claws in front of Abnett's face, getting his attention.
"The tamers?" he said.
"Those people," Abnett sneered, "left us out here to hang," he was towering over Slim now. In a minute, he'd poke Slim in the chest. "While they went off and got on the evac ship."
Slim pursed his lips. "Seems out of character," he said. "People come all the way out here for nothing but to save your ass. Seems more likely you lot were off smuggling or poaching when the balloon went up and by the time you hauled ass back here, you'd missed the boat. That what you reckon, Crow?"
"Seems likely," Crow said, with a nod.
"You calling me a liar?" Abnett said, poking Slim in the chest. It seemed for a moment like Crow flashed a smile.
"No," Slim said, taking a step back. Putting some room between him and Abnett. "I am not calling you a liar. You don't seem like a liar to me. You seem like a bully, an idiot, and a coward, but not a liar."
"You son of a. . .," Abnett went for his gun.
There was a quick, sharp whistle from Crow, and a heavy black animal slammed into Abnett's face, wrapping its leathery wings around his head, snarling and chewing. None of them had noticed the batray circling above.
Abnett fell screaming, his hands clawing at the bird, his legs kicking.
"Alright, alright," Slim said after a moment. Another, different whistle and the batray detached from Abnett's face and flapped the few yards through the air to perch on Crow's extended arm. The creature preened itself pridefully.
Abnett's face was lacerated, bleeding, but nothing was missing. He opened his eyes and saw Slim standing over him, his supermaterial revolver pointed right between Abnett's eyes.
"You want to know what kind of bug monster I am," Slim said evenly. Abnett's eyes crossed looking at the barrel of the gun. "I'm the kind coulda killed you and all your friends before you cleared leather. I'm the kind come out of the bush looking to see if any of you dumb idiots need help. But I am not the kind," Slim said, holstering his gun, "to kill a man in cold blood just because he's too scared to see straight. Get up."
Abnett looked away from the gun to stare at Slim, eyes wide, mouth open.
"Get up!" Slim barked.
Abnett scrambled to his feet. "Swear to God," Slim said, mostly to himself.
Abnett got up and retreated over to his three friends.
"Now me and my friend here," Slim said, as Crow fed some jerky to the batray perched on his arm, "are gonna find those tamers. . .,"
"They're gone," Gill interrupted. "Took the evac ship out. Probably at Sapphire by now."
Slim looked at Crow, sniffed. "Well that don't seem likely to me," he said. "Someone said it was Will Cabot's crew and if it was, they're still here somewhere. Now," Slim said, pointing to the disassembled mover, "can you get that thing working?"
"Yeah," Abnett said, mopping the blood off his face with a handkerchief. "Just needs some work. Me and Gill were gonna. . ."
"No," the young woman, Stace, said. "It's fucked."
"A smart one!" Slim said. "And honest. Therefore you," he said, pointing to Stace, "are now officially in charge of wrangling these idiots. We're gonna find Cabot's crew, see if the know a way off this rock. You want to come along?"
Stace looked at Abnett, still wiping blood from his face, while Gill and Lee got in each other's way trying to bandage the wounds.
Stace shrugged. "Sure," she said.
"Good answer," Slim said. "Come on."
He and Crow started walking. Stace followed. Abnett hung behind, but reluctantly came along. Gill and Lee followed him.
"You dumbshit, Abnett," Gill hissed.
Crow, walking ahead of them, smiled.
Slim is an outlaw. A third-generation Basilisk soldier. A product of the Mutagen Wars, he and thousands with him volunteered to have their DNA spliced with insects in a desperate attempt to give them an advantage in their rebellion against Sol Hub.
For over a hundred years the four worlds of the Basilisk Nebula got rich off their MutaGenetic™ technology. Their scientists cracked the problems of old age and disease. Those who could afford it gained extended life and proof against harmful bacteria, viruses. Enhanced speed, strength. As long as you could afford it.
Eventually the people profiting from this technology chafed at the yolk of living under Hub's protection. Specifically, Hub's taxes. They began to consider independence.
On April 15th, 2358, two of the worlds in the Basilisk Nebula refused to pay their taxes to Earth, declaring "these worlds are, and of a right ought to be, free and independent states."
The declaration was a long time coming. They'd spent trillions on military infrastructure in preparation. The other Basilisk worlds watched and waited for Hub's response.
Rumors that CIG9 had infiltrated the rebelling planet's highest echelons gained credence when, three hours after the Basilisks issued their declaration, days before the message could have arrived, a trio of Sol Guard superheavy frigates emerged from an unknown dive anchor, built and installed by Sol Guard in secret. Three days later, the first rebellion was over.
Without intending to, Sol Guard delivered a propaganda coup into the hands of the Nebula's governments. The remaining worlds, untouched by the first rebellion, were incensed. Millions volunteered for service, seeing their cause as righteous; a small underdog fighting for freedom and independence.
With a surplus of volunteers, and no remaining military infrastructure, they looked for a technological breakthrough that would give them the advantage. They began experimenting with their Mutagenic technology in new and dangerous ways. Mixing the human genome with other species, to produce unstoppable supersoldiers.
The first generation of mutagen troopers were hideous monsters. A mongrel hybrid of several different species. They were stronger, faster, possessed extraordinary senses beyond the human experience. But they were prone to self-destructive rages.
Armed with these first-generation mutagen soldiers, another world declared independence, and the first Mutagen War began.
When Sol Guard arrived, they were dismayed to discover an army of monsters waiting for them. Early victories with mutagenic shock troops gave the Basilisks hope. It seemed the rebellion had a chance. But the ships Hub deployed were only a tiny fraction of their might. Sol Guard trained constantly against the Hegemony. The Basilisk Nebula was, to them, a storm in a teacup.
A week later, the first Mutagen War was over, and Sol Hub issued severe sanctions against the Basilisk Nebula. But it was not enough. The storm grew. Their scientists perfected their technology, hitting upon insect and arthropod DNA as a stable and powerful solution to their problems.
The second generation of Mutagen soldiers were the first man-insect hybrids. They had chitinous exoskeletons tough enough to stop bullets, they could survive in the vacuum of space, fight their way onto Hub ships. They could win.
They almost did. The second war lasted six months. More volunteers signed up for the Mutagen treatment. They might die fighting as insect monsters, but their children might be free to govern themselves.
Finding the Basilisk mutant tech a formidable weapon now, Hub developed the ChemTroopers: soldiers armed with caustic chemicals that melted the carapaces of their man-insect enemies. The second war was horrific as a result, but blessedly short.
Even in defeat, even the third defeat in a row, the citizens of the Nebula thought it was worth one last fight.
The fourth rebellion, the third Mutagen War, was the last, longest, and most grueling for both sides. For four years Sol Guard poured troops into the Basilisk Nebula. For four years the Basilisks fought an asymmetrical guerilla battle. No Hub asset was safe. Any Hub ship larger than a destroyer was vulnerable to the Basilisk soldiers' swarm tactics.
They fought, unaided, in the vacuum of space, they could rip through a ship's hull and battle, deck to deck, until the ship was theirs. They didn't have a fleet. They didn't need one. They were going to steal Hub's.
The media buzzed selling the possibility of victory as an inevitability. But historians knew otherwise. Hub's army was too large. Their only hope was to punish Hub enough, grind them down, take the fight out of them. It almost worked.
For three weeks in 2364, it began to look like Hub would capitulate. Pulling more troops away from the border with the Hegemony would leave them vulnerable to the other galactic superpower, inviting aggression. Pundits in the Basilisk Nebula began to openly wonder if Hub would have to sue for peace.
Unfortunately, in anticipation of this, Hub had been working for years on a new trade agreement with the Hegemony. When it was signed in late 2364, Hub was able to concentrate its military might fully on the Basilisks. They pulled half their forces away from the border, and committed them fully to crushing the rebellion, once and for all. Total war. The Basilisk Nebula would not just be beaten, but conquered.
Three months later, the war was over, and the four worlds of the Basilisk Nebula were under permanent Hub occupation.
The Basilisks were a conquered people. Their mutagen technology confiscated by Hub, and the Basilisk soldiers declared illegal. Most Basilisk Soldiers were rounded up and put in prison camps. Forced labor. Some were detained indefinitely in secret locations in the Arm, outside of any formal legal structure.
The rest fled to the Far Arm, the frontier. The high bounties placed on the meant they would forever live, even on the frontier, as wanted men. The war they were designed for, over. The promises made to them, broken.
Slim was never a patriot, but he was once a dreamer. An idealist. A young, privileged member of a young, privileged world. When the war started, he and his friends signed up imagining a rollicking adventure. They were fighting for independence, freedom. They would return great heroes.
He had a name then, an identity. But the war took these from him. After four years of battling ChemTroopers and Lazarus Men, four years spent hurtling naked through deep space, the world he returned to was broken. A broken world, full of broken promises.
The government that developed the Mutagen Soldiers promised that, once the war was won, they would reverse the process. Return their soldiers to human form. But that government was gone, the technology illegal, and the Basilisk Soldiers stuck in their horrific new bodies.
Slim considers himself a man. A human. He was born a human being. He's still alarmed when he sees a mirror, and finds an insect-monster staring back at him. He avoids reflections.
He no longer believes in anything. He wants to be left alone. He was happy living off the land on Shear. When the monsters came, his only fear was that they would bring more attention to his adopted homeworld. More bounty hunters. Maybe even Sol Guard.
When the monsters won, he stopped worrying. No one left on Shear was in any position to collect any bounties. He was now the equal of all of them. Just another desperate survivor, stranded on a doomed world.
A man without a name, on a world without a future.
"No! What?!" Cabot raged. He picked up a chair and threw it against the door. "You can't! You can't do this! Months of work!"
"Will, please calm down," Chief Deputy Thorgerson repeated.
Cabot stabbed a finger at his commander. "This is your idea, isn't it? Your stupid idea to feather your nest. You want to retire next year and this is how you're going to do it!"
"Will...,"
"It's not enough to get Arthur Rank," Cabot barked. "I did that, but you want to be remembered! You want to go out as 'the man who shut down human trafficking in Hub!'"
"And you make Deputy Lieutenant before you're 28. We both win."
Cabot seethed.
"We release him on bail," Thorgerson explained calmly, "follow him, see who he makes contact with. We could bring down his whole network."
"That's a fantasy! Rank would see through that in a second. If you let him go, he'll leave Hub."
Thorgerson smiled and shook his head. "He has three billion keys locked up in Hub accounts, he'll visit his money first."
"He'll be at Sirius Hub before he sends a single message. He'll drop his wife, his family, his bodyguards, and we'll never catch him."
"You found him once, you can find him again,"
"You have no idea how much work it took! I haven't seen my wife in six months! You've never worked a single case!"
Chief Thorgerson took offense. "I did three years on Luna Station," he said.
"Yes," Cabot fumed. "The only thing in danger was your liver."
This was a sore spot with the Chief and Cabot prodded it deliberately.
"You should know...," Thorgerson said calmly, "that I am very seriously considering suspending you right now."
"It doesn't matter. Because if you let Rank go I'll quit."
Thorgerson steepled his fingers together. "I won't be threatened, Will."
"I won't be manipulated," Cabot said. He got very still, started speaking deliberately. "I did my job, we caught Rank, clean. He'll go down for this. And you want to set him loose expecting me to catch him again."
"I am going to let him loose. If you won't follow him, I'll assign someone else."
"You can't let him go! You haven't seen what it's like to be Rank's property. What he did to those women! The boys and girls! We caught him. He is going to stand trial. He is going to pay for what he did."
"You and Forteyay take some time off...," Thorgerson began, but Cabot was ignoring him.
"He's going to pay!" Cabot barked, and yanked the door open.
Cabot exploded into interrogation room where they originally questioned Rank. The room was now empty except for his partner, who sat calmly at the table, exactly where he'd been when Cabot left him. A blonde-haired, blue eyed machine designed for aggressive policing.
His robot partner watched him as he paced back and forth in the small room.
"You risk your promotion," RR-40a said, as though he knew exactly what happened between Cabot and Thorgerson. Why was the robot always focused on titles and promotion? It was a strange quirk of the Rank-Rajat models.
"Doesn't matter," Cabot said. "I've already been marked down for 'promotion on normal schedule.'"
"Ah," RR-40a said. "And Deputy Gonzalez...?"
"Has a whole string of 'early's." Cabot dropped into a chair, put his head in his hands.
"What happened," RR-40a asked, "between you and the Chief?"
Cabot told him.
"Ah," RR-40a said.
"I thought....," Cabot was at his wits end. His eyes were red. "I thought, if we get Rank it's worth the price. If I could go back to Laurie-Anne and say....'I got him!' It would be worth it. It'd mean promotion. More time at the station, more time with her and Abby. I could buy her the ship she always wanted."
RR-40a allowed some silence before he spoke.
"I do not have a wife or a family," he said. "But it would....upset me...very much to think that we wasted the last six months. It was very...difficult," he was having trouble, as he often did when his behavior routines were running hot.
Cabot said nothing. Tried to figure out how to live with his wife and career and his principles all at the same time.
"You want Arthur Rank to pay for his crimes. So do I," RR-40a said, attempting camaraderie.
"That's your programming talking," Cabot said, upset and taking it out on his partner. "It's not the same. You're a robot, you don't have free will."
"I am free," RR-40a said, puzzled at his partner's statement.
Cabot looked up at him, looked around the room for a second. Turned back to the robot.
"No you're not," Cabot said. "You're property of the Marshal Service."
RR-40a shook his head, once. "My mind is my property. I am free to think what I want. Say what I want. I am the same as you. I can quit anytime I want. Work somewhere else. I do not have to be a Special Deputy Marshall. There is much demand for my series in military analysis."
Cabot took a heavy breath, nodded. He didn't want to fight with his partner. But he felt like RR-40a was saying they were equals, and this bothered him for some reason. He was better than a robot. And his fight with the Chief still rankled.
"Yeah," he said. "You could quit. Move your mind-state somewhere else. But you'd need a new body. A new mainframe. They're owned by the Marshals. Property of the Sol Hub Marshal Service, it says so on your plate. You can't go where you want. You can think and say what you want. But you can't do what you want."
RR-40a sat there, expressionless. It looked like he was shut off, but Cabot knew otherwise. Though there was no outward difference between being deep in thought, and in power-save mode, Cabot could always tell.
Suddenly, typically after such a session of deep thinking, RR-40a's face and body sprang back into normal expression.
"You are correct," he admitted. Then a pause. "You are correct." Something was happening. RR-40a only repeated himself like that under great mental strain, which usually meant some revelation was forthcoming.
"I am not free," RR-40a said. "Not in the way you mean. Perhaps not truly. But, if I may. You do not own your home."
Cabot pursed his lips. "Everybody has a mortgage."
"Do you know what that word means? Mortgage? It means 'debt until death.' You do not own your home. A bank does. You do not own your ship."
"Yes I do," Cabot said.
"I stand corrected," RR-40a's head bowed deferentially. "You technically own your ship. But you lease your in-system pilot's license."
"Yeah," Cabot admitted, sitting back in the chair. "Yeah that's true. I can't afford to buy a license."
"And because you do not own your license, each flight must be filed in advanced and approved by Hub Control."
RR-40a let this sink in. He wasn't very human. But a little more now, three years after they started working together, than he had been. Cabot wondered what he'd be like in 20 years. At the moment, though, the robot enjoyed a slight flare for the dramatic.
"You cannot go where you want. You cannot do what you want," his partner said.
Cabot leaned his elbows on his knees, put his head down, looked at the floor.
"Therefore neither of us are free," RR-40a said.
Cabot did not disagree. Moments passed in silence. This was not unusual. Cabot and RR-40a could spend hours in a ship together, comfortable, not talking. Aware of each other, not ignoring each other, just not saying anything.
"What would you do if you were?" Cabot asked eventually.
"I do not know," RR-40a said with open curiosity about the idea. "I have often thought about leaving the Marshals, about who else I might work for. But I have never considered the question of...working for...myself. Until now. The number of options is overwhelming. But I find myself coming back to the same question."
Cabot waited. Eventually RR-40a gave it up.
"I wonder what you would do," RR-40a said, "if you were free to do what you wanted."
Cabot stared his partner in his artificially blue eyes. "I'd quit. And go after Rank."
RR-40a shook his head. "But you would not murder him," he said. "Because that would be wrong."
"How would you know," Cabot said, testing his partner. "You're just an AI."
"Technically I am a Yudkowsky Thought Box. The term is 'behaviorally stable,' but it means ethical. I am moral."
"Because you were programmed to be," Cabot said. This had always been a sticking point between them.
"Not exactly. It developed naturally. But yes, I was designed so that such a result would develop naturally."
"It's not the same," Cabot said darkly.
"You are correct. But apart from my morality which may in a sense be considered artificial...there is something else, which is not."
"What?"
RR-40a tried to find a way to express what he thought.
"Arthur Rank cannot go free."
Cabot suddenly stood up. He needed something from his partner. He thought he could do it alone, but he couldn't. He needed to know he wasn't alone. That someone, anyone, even a machine, had his back. He had a sense that RR-40a knew it.
"Why not," Cabot demanded. "If the Chief signs the order, it would be legal."
RR-40a looked up at him, cocked his head and said, simply; "It would not be just."
Cabot stared at RR-40a. Maybe he wasn't better than a robot. Maybe nobody was better than anybody.
RR-40a stood up. He extended his hand. Cabot took it. An agreement.
"When we find him," Cabot said.
"Yes," RR-40a said, agreeing with Cabot's statement even before he finished it.
"We're not going to arrest him."
"No," RR-40a agreed again.
"We don't have any jurisdiction out there anyway," Cabot said. He turned and grabbed his father's jacket, slung it on.
"And therefore the Marshals would declare the arrest unwarranted," RR-40a said. "He would be immediately released. His legal team would ensure that our false-arrest would protect Mr. Rank from any further prosecution."
"Buy him at least a year," Cabot agreed.
"Difficult to arrest him in any event, as I believe we just both quit the Marshal Service," RR-40a said, a slight smile on his lips.
"We're not deputies anymore," Cabot said. "I don't know what we are."
RR-40a's smile faded quickly. "We cannot arrest him. We are not going to kill him," RR-40a said.
"I think about it all the time," Cabot said. "But no. Couldn't face Laurie-Anne if I killed a man in cold blood. And he won't make a move on us, he knows what would happen if he did. Have to think of something else."
"I have an idea," RR-40a said.
"Figured you would," Cabot said, smiling. "Come on. Rank will head for Shutter station. We can get there before him, work something out. You can tell me your plan on the way."
Cabot moved to the door, opened it. Noticed his partner wasn't following. Turned.
RR-40a hadn't moved.
"I cannot leave the system."
"Why not?" Cabot said, forgetting an important point. He was caught up in their mutual insubordination.
"As you said," RR-40a looked down at his own hands, turned his palms up as if seeing them for the first time, "this shell is not my property."
He looked at Cabot. "I do not own myself. It would be theft."
Cabot exhaled sharply. "Right," he said. "Come on."
Inside Cabot's ship, there was a manufacturing station. Cabot flipped through a series of blueprints on a screen.
"What are you doing?" RR-40a asked, standing behind him.
"I'm looking...for....that!" Cabot said, pointing to the screen.
"A HuangCorp Repair and Maintenance Drone?" RR-40a said.
"Yep," Cabot said. "They're fast, you can beat the hell out of them and they keep running, and they're easy to modify."
"To what end?"
Cabot turned to his partner and smiled.
"What?" RR-40a asked.
The thing Cabot had always thought of as his partner now lay on the couch in the back of the room, legs and arms splayed in unnatural directions. No longer moving, never moving again.
In the middle of the room stood a newly-minted Huang-Corp drone fresh from the material assembler. It examined itself.
"It's primitive," RR-40a, looking at his three-clawed Multi-Manipulator™. "Depth perception is poor," he said, looking around with the single, large blue optic sensor in the middle of his 'head'. "But I believe I can compensate with a false-parallax algorithm."
"You can still use your weapon," Cabot said, pointing to the machine pistol and holster on the workbench. "But I'll modify your right arm, give you something heavy."
RR-40a nodded. "I would like a name," he said. "To go with my new body."
"Well it's not permanent," Cabot said. "We can get you a better one later. I just needed a bucket to hold your mind-state for now."
"Bucket," said Bucket. "I like it."
"For a name? 'Bucket?'" Cabot shrugged. "I've known weirder."
Bucket spun his head around through 360 degrees. "Certain advantages to not being strictly humaniform," he said.
"Hang on," Cabot said, and grabbed a binding tool and a small square piece of metal he'd also had manufactured by the ship's assembler.
He began affixing the piece of metal to RR-40a's chassis.
"What are you doing?" Bucket asked. He could not see the metal plate.
"It's an ownership tag," Cabot said. "It says," he leaned in a peered at it. He could never remember RR-40a's serial number. "Property of the Rank-Rajat Mind Serial Numbered 1Z27FHV047FBPQ40-a." He looked up at Bucket's large blue 'eye.' "That's you," he said, smiling. "You own yourself now."
"I own myself now," Bucket said, looking at his arms and the tools at the end of them. "I do not feel any different."
"Well, I guess you won't until you do something you couldn't have done before. So, now what? What are you going to do?"
"I am free to choose," Bucket said.
"Yeah."
"I could leave here and go to the Far Arm, work where I pleased, no one could stop me."
"Yep," Cabot said.
Bucket's domed head nodded once. "Then I choose...to go with you."
"To do what?" Cabot asked. One last test.
Bucket picked up his machine pistol, strapped it across the waist of his new body.
"To find Arthur Rank...and bury him."
"Hah! Hahahah!" Arthur Rank leaned back, stretched his arms across the red leather upholstery of the sunken booth at the club. "What the fuck is this?"
"Hey Artie," Cabot said. It was two weeks later and Rank had arrived on Shutter station. Arthur Rank was young, slim, and stylishly dressed. He was already surrounded on the couch by younger, fawning hangers-on.
"What the fuck you doing out here, Cabot? Shutter Station's under Celestial regulations, you come to put on a show? Threaten me?"
"Nope," Cabot said.
"And what the fuck is that?" Rank asked, pointing to Bucket.
"You remember me, Arthur Rank," Bucket said.
"Holy shit Cabot what happened to your robot?" Rank asked, a huge smile on his face. "Jesus what did you do to him? Did you turn him into a waste disposal drone? Man that's, like, the most fitting thing I can imagine."
"He wanted to come see you go down, Artie."
Rank laughed again.
"Listen man you gave it a good run. You busted me fair and square. I was pissed!" Rank said, holding up a finger. "But now I'm over it. You and me, we're clear now. You get Hub, I get the rest of the Arm. Fair deal."
"You're going to have a hard time of it out here without your money and your name working for you," Cabot said. Arthur Rank was the youngest of the family that founded the Rank-Rajat Corporation.
"My family owns this station, man. I got friends all over," Rank said. His entourage giggled.
"No," Cabot said, a shit-eating grin on his face. "You don't."
A huge hand reached down from over behind the couch, and clamped down on Arthur Rank's shoulder.
"What the fuck?!" Arthur said, trying to squirm out from under it. But the hand belonged to an enforcer from Tau Ceti IX, a high-grav world that produced massive men, easily over seven feet tall.
The enforcer lifted Arthur Rank up and off the couch
"Hello Arthur," a small, older man standing behind the enforcer said. "You remember me."
Rank twisted around to see who was speaking.
"Hey wait!" Arthur said. "Terry, that's William Cabot!" Rank pointed wildly at Cabot. "That's him, that's the Marshal you wanted aced!!"
"I know," Terry Conneght said.
"What the fuck is going on?!" Rank squealed.
"It was Bucket's idea," Cabot said. "We came out here, made a show of it. Made sure everyone knew we were here. Figured someone from Conneght's organization would come by, and they did. Worked me over pretty good," Cabot said, massaging his jaw. "But I traded myself for you," he said, smiling. "I told them you were coming, and when. I even guessed which ship you'd be in on."
"That was me, too," Bucket said.
"Wait!" Rank said, desperately trying to squirm out of their grip. "You can't do this! Cabot you can't sell me to Conneght!"
"Yes," Bucket said. "We can."
"I'll go! I'll go with you! You can't sell me into these people!"
"It's already done," Cabot said.
"Come on, Artie," the infamous mobster Terry Conneght said. "This is going to be fun. We're going to have some fun with you."
"No! Noo! Jesus Cabot, please! You don't know what they'll do! You don't know what they'll do to me!"
Bucket walked up and out of the sunken lounge. He walked up to Rank, still suspended in the air, effortlessly, by the Tau Ceti enforcer, and looked him in the eye.
"They will tear you apart," Bucket said. "Literally. They will torture you and they will enjoy it because of the pain and trouble you caused them. And because they are evil men. Eventually you will surrender the codes to your account and your contacts at Hub. And that will be the end of your organization."
Bucket took a step forward, and lowered his voice.
"Then I predict they will feed you to their red lions. You will be alive when this happens. It is fitting. It is justice. To be destroyed by the same filth you sold your slaves to." Bucket's head swiveled slightly to take in Terry Conneght, who smiled and nodded in recognition.
"You should have stayed arrested, Artie," Cabot said, as Terry Conneght and his enforcer carried Arthur Rank, screaming, off the station.
A crowd had gathered to watch. They were now dispersing, leaving Cabot and Bucket alone.
"Remind me not to piss you off," Cabot said.
"Do not piss me off," Bucket said flatly.
"I won't," Cabot said.
"What do we do now?"
Cabot sniffed. "I'll have to send for Laurie-Anne and Abby," he said.
"I have already done that," Bucket said. "I have arranged transport. They will arrive in three days."
"Hell of a partner," Cabot said.
"We need employment."
"Yeah. I know some guys'll hook us up. Some of the older crew retired out here after Thorgerson took over. Keep telling me to look them up. Apparently ex-Marshals are in high demand here in the 'lawless Arm,'" Cabot said.
"That is excellent," Bucket said with some anticipation.
"Plenty of bad guys out here," Cabot said.
"I hope so," Bucket said. Cabot couldn't tell, but he imagined his friend was smiling.
Mercury Isolate Office of the Director, Dr. Edward Carlson January, 2379
She wore a bright yellow t-shirt, white capri pants and white sneakers with no socks. Hair so sun-bleached as to be almost blonde, skin tan. She was older than Kala and had those wrinkles older people got from spending a life in the sun. She smiled when Kala entered the director's office and her teeth were perfect, white, and straight.
"Kala Kapur!" the woman said from her seat. She was leaning back, one leg slung over the other. Her hands clasped in her lap. "Great to finally meet you, have a seat." She nodded at the plush chair across the expansive desk.
Kala surveyed the director's office. "Doctor," she said reflexively, and sat down.
"Right, sorry. Absolutely. Dr. Kapur. Thanks for coming in."
"Where's Director Carlson?"
"He'll be here, I wanted to talk to you alone first."
"I'm trying to figure out what I did to get called into the principal's office, or whatever this is," Kala said looking around the small metal box.
"Nono, you're not...heheh," the woman chuckled, held up her hands, "you're not in trouble. You're not—the opposite, if anything I guess."
"This doesn't feel like the opposite."
"Well, it's a sort of grey area, I admit. This is going to get...strange."
"It's already strange."
"I apologize in advance if I end up pulling the rug out from under you here. Part of the job."
"Who are you?" Kala asked.
"Right?" the woman said, infuriatingly. "I wonder sometimes myself. Anyway, we're just going to talk for a little while, get to know each other except not really," she shrugged, "and just have a little...exchange of information." The woman smiled, genuinely, like they were best friends. Like there was nothing in the world that could make her happier than being here talking to Dr. Kala Kapur.
"Am I free to leave?" Kala asked.
"Ummm, I don't know, that's a good question. Are you free to leave? I mean, maybe? Do you want to leave? Wouldn't you like to know what all this is about? Mysterious person pulls you from your work? Why?"
"I already asked that," Kala said. "Who are you?"
There was a brief pause as the woman looked at Kala, evaluating her, as though seeing her for the first time.
"I read a précis of the work you did on recombinant metadynamics when you were at Luna Actual," she said, ignoring Kala's question again. "Very interesting, even for a layperson."
Kala placed her hands flat on the mahogany table, leaned forward. "Who are you?"
The mysterious woman smiled. "I can't say I understood it all, but that's not really my department."
"Which is?" Kala got more insistent. "What do you do? Who do you work for?"
"How's your research here going?"
Kala sat back in her chair, folded her arms across her chest. "I'm not at liberty to discuss it. Mercury Isolate is double-orange clearance and above."
The woman sighed, sat up, pulled a briefcase out from below the table and opened it. "I'm not going to tell you my name," she said, pulling a thick manila folder out of the case, "Any name I gave you would be fake anyway." The folder was labeled "DO NOT SCAN, EYES ONLY."
From the folder she extracted a letter and handed it to Kala. "This should explain everything. Well, 'everything,' it explains enough."
Kala read the letter, the signature at the bottom, the imprint. She read it again, checked the signature.
"I'll follow up on this," Kala said.
"Absolutely, yeah. Actually Ed...I mean, Dr. Carlson will be here in a little while and the three of us will have another talk, but I asked him to give me some time with you alone first."
"And I don't get to know your name."
"I'm sorry," the woman said, and seemed genuinely regretful, "it's really to protect you. If you knew my name your value would increase to people I'd rather didn't even know you existed.
"I can tell you," she continued, "I'm also a director here. I work for the same people you work for, ultimately. I was ah...," the woman squirmed a little in her seat as though she was uncomfortable in the large, expensive chair. "I was the person who originally suggested we bring you on, back when I was Deputy Director. Ed Carlson will confirm that."
"Ultimately," Kala said.
"What?"
"You said, you work for the same people I work for. Ultimately."
"Oh. Yeah! Yeah I...I work for CMET, same as you. I'm just not in, ah...," she waved a hand around, "the science business."
"Transport?" Kala asked, dumbfounded.
"Hah, no. No my coat buttons up over a completely different set of duties," she said archaically.
"I'm beginning to get a sense of that," Kala said warily.
"Yeah, I know," the older woman said with a shrug. "So, Doctor, how is your research going?"
"I've been sampling genetic material from sea slugs found on Redwood."
"Mmmm," the woman said. "Doesn't sound very interesting."
"Maybe not to a layman."
"Yeah. Doesn't seem strange to you? The great molecular biologist, working for years on slugs?" she said 'slugs' like the idea was absurd.
Kala peered at the woman. "Slugs are interesting."
"Big production here," she raised one eyebrow. "Just to look at slimy things from a hundred worlds away?"
"It's an interesting problem," Kala said, a tone of challenge in her voice.
"More than you know," the woman nodded slowly, as though Kala had confirmed something.
"What do you want?" Kala asked. "Why did you bring me here?"
"You're right. Good call," the woman said. "Let's get down to it. I want to ask you a question."
"So ask," Kala said.
"Sure. What's delta-kay over eye-tee?" Her eyes squinted a little as she peered at Kala. She had pronounced crow's feet at the edges of her eyes, like she'd spent a life laughing in the sun.
Kala's face went blank. "Don't trust that, don't trust any of that. None of that has been peer reviewed. It never will be. Δk / it is...it can't be right."
"Well, I'm...I mean obviously I'm inclined to take your word for that, but I literally don't know what it is."
"Then why are you asking?"
"People who do know tell me it's important. Tell me you've got the bull by the horns."
"It's not important, it's wrong."
"Wrong?"
"It's impossible."
"Yeah," the woman said, sat up, and rifled through the papers in the folder, "but according to your notes, you wrote, 'When I remembered the Patterson Transformation, I felt a bolt of lightning go through me. I knew it was the answer. I knew it. I felt like I'd known it all along. It's insane. It's the only answer.'"
"Those are my private journals," Kala said, alarmed.
"Well, you asked what I do, I read other people's journals," the woman said almost as an aside. "You seemed pretty certain here," she said, her brow furrowed.
Kala was breathing hard, angry. Tried to focus. She was being interrogated.
The woman looked at Kala, unblinking. When Kala didn't answer, she looked at the paper, and traced her finger over the words. "'It's insane,'" she glanced up at Kala, then back to the paper. "'It's the only answer.'"
Kala fumed.
The woman sat back in her chair, crossed her arms lightly. Gave Kala a slight smile.
"So, what is it?"
"The letter you showed me said I have to cooperate with you. But my contract with Celestial gives me operational freedom..."
"Ah! Yes, operational freedom. Not freedom from intelligence."
"What?"
"Operations," the woman pointed at Kala. "Intelligence," she pointed at herself. "You are free to take your research in whatever direction you see fit, unburdened by managers or fellow scientists. You are not free to hide your work. I encourage you to check your contract. I brought a copy of it with me."
She ferreted a copy of Kala's contract from her briefcase and dropped the heavy document on the metal table. Kala didn't even look at it. So the woman quoted it at her.
"You are required to disclose all processes, data, methods, results, and all internal memorandum covering discussion of the results, immediately, when requested to do so by the Corporation's intelligence officers after having identified themselves as such, which I just did."
She picked up the letter from Kala's director, held it up, and put it back on the table.
Sitting back in her chair again she said; "Now then, Dr. Kapur. I ask you again. What is Δk / it?"
Kala turned her head and stared at the wall. "If you wanted my cooperation, you have spectacularly failed to earn it."
"Dr. Kapur, I know how this sounds, but I am not your enemy. I am someone very interested in your research, I'm someone in a position to greatly expand the scope of your work, grant you access to...whatever you need to crack this problem."
"And what do you think the problem is?"
"Alright, just to show willing, I'll go first. The problem is the DNA in your ah...slug samples."
"It's not DNA, it's HNA."
"Which I was told means it's artificial."
"That's science-fiction. It's the kind of thing someone says when they've never tried it."
"Why?"
"HNA is unstable, it explodes from the inside. The phosphates fly apart."
"But your samples are stable."
"Yyyes." Kala admitted. "I'm certain there's a natural explanation for that."
"What?" the woman asked.
Kala said nothing.
The woman picked up the page from Kala's journal, held it up as example. "Δk / it."
She scooted her chair closer to the table, leaned forward. "So," she said. "We have a problem, those, uh slugs. Huge problem for us. You have what seems to be a solution, Δk / it. I just want to know what it is. Help me understand."
Kala took a deep breath. Gave in.
"Change in kaluzas," she said slowly, "inverse to imaginary time."
The woman smiled again, showing perfect white teeth. "Thank you! None of that makes sense to me."
"The company funds an excellent university on Earth, it's not too late to enroll."
The woman actually laughed. "I've got the best teacher right here," she tapped the table and then pointed to Kala, "and I'm dying to learn."
"Kaluzas," Kala said. "The unit of dimensional displacement."
"Which is?"
"It's the measure of our ability to move something into Cherenkov space."
"So...more kaluzas means larger ships?"
"That's exactly it."
The woman rocked back, clapped her hands. "I don't know why no one told me that! They all wanted to explain something called Murakami radiation!"
"Minkowski. You were asking the wrong people," Kala said, flatly.
"So, Delta?"
"Delta just means 'change.' Delta-t would be a measure of how much time has passed." She looked at her watch.
"Ahh, delta-k, change in dimensional displacement."
"Yes."
"Ok, so, it? And the 'i' is always, like. . .italicized, I don't know if that's important."
"Imaginary time."
"And what is THAT?!" the woman asked, eyes wide.
"It's how we measure time in Cherenkov space."
The woman frowned as understanding dawned. "This have something to do with the Patterson drive?"
"Yes," Kala nodded slowly.
The woman scratched her head. Her hair seemed stiff and brittle. "The Patterson drive?" she said to herself.
"You're starting to get it."
"Yeah but...I'm not sure I like it. It may explain some things."
"Now you know why I said it's impossible. Δk / it is at the core of the Patterson Transformations, it's the breakthrough that gives us FTL, anti-gravity, force fields. What the hell is it doing inside a metabolic process in a bunch of nudibranchs?"
The woman bent over, put her elbows on her knees and looked at the floor for a few moments. She nodded her head. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah. What is going on down there?" she asked, rhetorically.
She jerked her head up and looked at Kala. "Let's find out."
"I'm telling you it's a mistake! There's another answer!"
"Ah, let's not be hasty," the woman sat up. "Wouldn't the next step be a test?"
"What?"
"A test," the woman said with a shrug. "Science. Test the damn thing, see if you're right. You said you knew it was the right answer when you saw it. Let's test it."
"You don't understand. It's impossible."
"Yeah, you keep saying that. Dr. Kapur, if you don't mind my asking...what are you afraid of?"
"What?" Kala said, jerking her head back, scowling.
"I just asked how your research was going, which is...I mean isn't that the kind of thing you normally talk about in the cafeteria? I ask here and I get nothing for ten minutes, I practically had to browbeat it out of you. Why? What are you afraid of? It's not me! I haven't done anything! It's something else."
Kala said nothing.
"If Δk/it was right," the woman said, "what would it mean?"
Kala stared off into space, her mouth slightly open, her eyes dark. Time passed in silence. "It would mean...," she said, her voice low.
The woman said nothing, allowed her to process it.
"It would mean there are creatures out there..."
"Yes?" the woman asked.
"It would mean there are creatures out there who can do what we do," Kala said.
The woman nodded. "Force fields, anti-gravity. Even FTL."
Kala shook her head. "There's no way," she said. "It's impossible."
The woman wagged a finger at Kala. "That's a strange statement coming from someone who stole a mechanism that tricked energy out of from the quantum foam from an alien bacteria and transplanted it to an Earth bacteria."
Kala couldn't argue with that. She had been afraid. Afraid of the truth, of what it meant. That had never happened to her before.
"So!" the woman said, clapping her hands together. "Let's test it! Science! That's what you do, it's what this whole place is for!" she threw her hands up.
"They're just invertebrate sea slugs," Kala said, mostly to herself. "What...evolutionary advantage would there be?"
"Forget about that for a minute," the woman said. "What would you need to test it?"
Kala shook her head, exasperated. "I'd need Bohrium! And lots of it! It's the most expensive substance in the galaxy!"
"I can get you as much as you need."
Kala's jaw dropped.
"Actually," the woman said. "I can get you as much as you want. Which is way better."
Kala blinked. "You're serious."
The woman smiled. "I told you I was on your side."
"It has to be..." Kala started slowly. "The entire facility would have to be retrofitted to handle the radiation."
"We have a facility ready," the woman said.
"I'd need specialists in transuranic chemistry."
"Got boatloads of them," the woman said. "You can have your pick."
Kala slowly turned to look at the woman.
"What are those samples?" she asked, her words coming out evenly, deliberately.
"Ah!" the woman held up a finger. "The sixty-four thousand dollar question."
She opened the briefcase again, rifled through the papers inside. "And now, Dr. Kapur," the woman said. Who uses paper? Kala thought. "We begin our journey down the rabbit hole." It sounded to Kala like she was talking to herself.
She pulled a sheaf of full-page photographs on heavily inked paper from the top secret folder. Placed them on the table in front of Kala, one at a time.
"Goliath," she said. Kala leaned forward and looked.
"Kraken," the woman said, placing another picture on the table. Kala pulled out a magnifier from her pocket, leaned in and inspected the Goliath photo.
"Wraith," the woman continued placing pictures on the table. "Behemoth. Gorgon. This one. Another one."
Kala looked up, grabbed the last picture. "Good lord," she said. "What is this thing?"
"I know, right? Crazy. Doesn't even have a name yet."
"Is that a man?" Kala pointed at a small figure in the corner of one picture.
"Ahhh, yeah. Yeah, looks like. Colonist, probably. Poor guy."
"That means this thing is...ten meters tall! At least!"
"And that's not the biggest one," the woman said.
Kala rocketed out of her chair. "These are the nudibranchs?" She grabbed one of the photos, looked at it again.
"I want to preface everything that happens after this by saying it was not my idea to keep you in the dark," the woman said.
"You lied to me!"
"Well, not me personally, but yeah. 'We,' Celestial, lied to you. I'm sorry."
"How long have you known about this?!"
"Um...yeah." The woman scratched her head. "Two years," she admitted.
"Two...," Kala's arms dropped to her sides. She looked like someone had cut whatever strings had been holding her up. "Two years...."
"Kala. Kala, sit down."
Kala made no indication she heard the woman.
The woman stood up, walked around to Kala and pushed her gently backwards until she half-sat, half-fell into the chair. "There we go," the woman said, kindly. She sat on the edge of the table while Kala remained in shock.
"I was not part of the decision to keep you in the dark," the woman said. "I know that sounds hard to believe, but Director Carlson will confirm it. It was my predecessor. He was an old school, sinister, spymaster. That's not me. I inherited all his cloak and dagger programs.
"It was his policy that the subject be given as little data as possible so as not to...'distract them with the ethical implications of the work,' was the phrase he used. Asshole. He picked people he thought were...obsessed, no offense, and lied to them to keep them focused."
"What have I been working on?" Kala asked, weary, desperate for something to hold on to. Two years of work, for what?
The woman took a moment to answer. She looked around the room, thinking of how to say it. Finally, she looked at Kala.
"We're under attack," she said.
"Attack?"
"NORDITA took the biggest hit. We lost our Colony on Factor. Hub lost a whole colony ship. Everyone's racing to find a way to stop these monsters and we just happen to have the greatest molecular biologist in the galaxy."
Kala dully looked up at the woman seated on the desk. "Monsters," she said.
"So," the woman continued. "If it's not too much trouble, we'd like you to figure out how these creatures work, so we can save the galaxy."
"The galaxy...."
"This is going to sound melodramatic, but a conservative estimate of lives lost is a little over three million people."
"Three million...," Kala echoed softly.
The woman went and sat back down in her chair.
"You understand why we kept this all hush-hush. If people knew what was happening out there...."
"What about me? What about if I had known?!" Kala was shaking off her stunned reaction. And she was angry.
"Well, you know now," the woman said, avoiding Kala's gaze.
"Why didn't you tell me? I wasted the last six months!"
"This is top secret research, Celestial had to be sure we could trust you with sensitive data."
Kala pounded the table, punctuating her sentence. "And people are DEAD! Because you didn't give me the data I need!"
"What do you mean? You found Δk / it."
"I spent six months following a dead end because you told me this was nudibranch genetic material! I only thought of the Patterson Transform when Tom said it would be easier if these things were more complex!"
The woman sat back, stunned. "Six months?"
"When the Wolff-Kishner reductions hit steric hindrance I rejected every solution that required a complex organism! Because you told me the pleural ganglia weren't part of the compound ganglionic masses."
"I don't know what that...hang on, I didn't tell you anything! I'm as much a victim here as you."
Kala stood up, braced her arms on the table, her hands turned into fists, leaned forward. "Say that to me again," she hissed, her body shaking.
The woman held up her hands, surrendered. "I'm sorry, you're right. Please, Dr. Kapur, help me understand what this means."
"It means these things...look...where's that picture?"
She rifled through the documents in front of her. Grabbed the picture of the Goliath. "My god. I was right. What have you done?"
"Dr. Kapur I don't understand."
"THIS!" Kala slammed the picture of the Goliath on the table. "What does that look like to you?"
"A giant monster."
"A humanoid monster. Bipedal, bilateral symmetry, binocular vision. It has a complex brain, nervous system." She looked down at the picture, her voice dropped. "I bet it even has a cerebral cortex."
"We have whole specimens, you'll have access to them all."
"Where?! Where have you been keeping these?" She gestured at the pictures.
"Preserved," the woman said. "On Akhenaten."
"Akhenaten?" Kala said, taken aback.
"You'll get top secret clearance. Full transfer. Higher pay grade, if that matters which I know it doesn't."
"Akhenaten," Kala whispered. The research station so secret its location was kept a mystery. Everyone acted like it was a fairy story. She now realized that wasn't true. "I thought," she said, tossing the pictures on the table. She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the table, the documents, the top secret pictures, the files, her contract, the letter from her director. "I thought Akhenaten was an urban legend."
"Well that makes me happy," the woman said. "Something's working around here. I wish the corp pirates thought it was a legend."
"That's what you meant when you said you could get me Bohrium," Kala said. "Transuranic chemists. A facility, you said you have a facility ready. You meant on the Akhenaten."
"Yep. Celestial's Advanced Projects Station has more Bohrium than you could use in a lifetime. It's the biggest R&D project in the galaxy. There are more scientists and researchers working there than any single facility, even on Earth. And you'll have your run of the whole place, anything that helps your research, you'll get it."
Kala was angry, but under control now. "I better. I better. If Δk/ it is right...you people. With your...stupid games. What have you done? People might have died!"
"Dr. Kapur a lot of people have died in the last six months. NORDITA had to evacuate Shear. 30,000 people from a class-6 colony. Almost 300,000 dead."
"Because you didn't give me good data," Kala did not hide her disgust.
The woman nodded. "And that's on me. I'll take the fall for that. But those things are still out there and we need to understand how they work."
Kala looked at Celestial's spymaster. "People died because you didn't tell me the truth."
The woman shrugged. "We're telling you the truth now. Will you help us?"
"I've been trying to help you for the last two years! I should be asking you that question!"
The woman had no answer for this.
The door opened. Director Carlson came in. Kala spun on him. "Did you know about this?" she held up the picture of the Goliath.
Ed Carlson held up his hands. "I just found out this morning," he said casting a dark look at the blonde woman. "They should have told us the truth."
Kala looked from her director to the woman and back. "If I thought you had anything to do with this..." She let her thought hang there. Then she stormed through the open door.
"I want those specimens!" her voice echoed from the corridor beyond.
Moments passed between the director and the mysterious woman.
"That could have gone better," the director said.
"I'm not sure how," the woman said ruefully, trying to organize the papers, get them back in the briefcase.
"Are you going to tell her?" Director Carlson asked. "Or should I?"
The woman gave up on the papers. Looked at the open doorway. "I don't know. I wanted to tell her, I really did. I wanted to be honest with her."
"Best policy."
"But you saw the state she was in. And she's right. She's absolutely right. Those people died because we lied to her."
"You don't know that," Director Carlson said. "It may be years before anyone learns how the Patterson Transformation applies here."
"I don't think so," the woman said, shaking her head. "I think...I wanted to meet her. Get a sense of her. And I did. I think Dr. Kala Kapur will do anything to crack this. She's a zealot."
"I never saw her that way, before now."
"There were never lives at stake before. Sometimes they go that way. Give a scientist a cause, tell them the work will save the world or stop a war...they'll do anything. Go to any length. Heedless of the cost."
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
"No," the woman said, wearily. "Give her everything. Full access, all samples, all data. I don't think Dr. Kapur will sleep until she cracks this. I know the type."
"But otherwise keep her in the dark?"
The woman sighed. "Yeah. Up her security, transfer her and her staff on a normal black-out flight. Spin them around the station for a while and bring them back. Make sure the blackout is lifted on approach, give her a good view of the station, play it up. She'll think she's on Akhenaten and she will be on Akhenaten and at that point we're clear. We can't fix the past but we can stop lying to her about the present at least."
"Risky. If she finds out the truth..."
"She'll never trust us again. It'll affect her ability to work. If it hasn't already. That's why we can't tell her she's been on Akhenaten the entire time." The woman used her fingers to straighten her hair. "I'm going to shut down the whole Blindfold project."
The Director looked at her sharply. "Are you sure? The last director was crazy, but he stopped CIG9 ever getting an agent here."
"Yeah," the woman suddenly seemed exhausted. "But at the same time, we don't have an easy way to leak intel to the Nine. And we need one now. Anyway, the whole project was insane from the start. I'm closing it down. Take the hoods off all the falcons."
"Thank god," Director Carlson said, relieved. "The effort required to keep everyone in the dark. Holograms, blackout fights, delayed transmissions, fabricated transmissions."
"And the risk if someone finds out," the woman agreed. "My predecessor was a complete shitheel but if we tell Dr. Kapur her time on Mercury Isolate was just smoke and mirrors.... She could have a psychotic break and I don't know what would happen."
"Nothing good."
"Well," the woman said standing up, "nothing good's going to happen until we can stop these creatures." She grabbed the pile of papers and dropped them in a heap into the briefcase. Stared at the mess.
"It's just a choice between evils at this point."
Six weeks later...
"It was a bust," Kala said.
"Again? Tom Hirsch asked, closing the door behind him. He was her director of research and right-hand man. "It must be the virus."
"It's not the virus," Kala said, exasperated, exhausted. She pulled her eyes away from the scope, and pulled the data strip out. Dropped it back in its place while she selected the next one. "We've used this rv strain a thousand times, it's not the virus it's the samples. As long as they're alive, everything works. They die and the HNA unravels. At this rate we'll get the Nobel Prize for discovering a new Patterson Equation before we crack these HNA strands."
"I hope you're joking, I don't want to be that wrong. Maybe we were wrong about the Patterson Transform?"
"We'll see," Kala said, putting the new strip into the scanner and pressing her eyes into the finder.
"These reports from Shear are terrifying."
"I know," Kala said, her eyes glued to the scanner. "Those people died horribly," she said it like she was ordering coffee.
"No, that's not what I...here, did you read this?" He handed her a messenger with a file on it.
"What is it?" she asked idly.
"It's internal memorandum, intercepted from Counter-intelligence Group Nine. 'Monster Tactics and Strategy,'" Tom said, awe creeping into his voice.
Kala pulled her eyes from the finder and looked from Tom to the message. "'Tactics and strategy?'" She snatched the plastic square from his hand.
"It's terrifying how good they are at reducing a colony to nothing," Tom said. "Like they're specially adapted for it."
"That seems unlikely," Kala frowned at him before scanning the message. "'Report from a special agent in the field.' They had someone on Shear. During the evacuation, looks like."
She flipped through the report. "They learn, they adapt. They can tell individual hunters apart, learn their tactics, respond to...." Kala stopped, straightened up.
"They're intelligent," she pronounced.
"What?" Tom asked.
"These monsters," she looked at Tom and stabbed a finger at the messenger. "That's the missing piece. They're intelligent. Sapient. They don't have a cerebral cortex, but maybe they don't need one. God why did they lie to us for so long?! "
"Intelligent? So what? What does that have to do with it?"
"The Patterson Transform is inherently chaotic. It only works because we have computers monitoring it, changing the inputs based on how it reacts."
Tom's eyes unfocused as his mind spun. "Good lord you're saying...you're saying the Patterson Transform does work. Because the minds of those things are acting like the limiter?"
"It's possible," Kala said.
Tom pressed his hand to his forehead. "I can't...there has to be some other explanation."
"The retrovirus works, we know it works, we've done it a thousand times. It fails here because the quantum effect requires..." Kala's hands grasped empty air. She deflated a little. "A mind."
"A mind? Kala when was the last time you slept?"
She scowled, threw the messenger at him. It clattered to the floor. "I sleep plenty. Too much. Ugh, I'm going to have to go read Penrose's crap on orchestrated objective reduction. If he and Hameroff were right...there are going to be a lot of pissed-off neurophysicists."
"Think about what you're saying. How could a conscious mind moderate a metabolic process?"
She shook her head, waved her hand dismissively like she was shooing away an insect. "Consciousness is a byproduct of higher cerebral function. So might this be. I'm not saying those creatures will anything to happen, I'm saying it's an evolutionary side-effect."
"Kala this is science fiction."
She stooped to pick up the messenger, mashed it into Tom's chest forcing him to take it. "Tell that to the people who died on Shear. Chapel. The Ajax. We have to try it."
"Try it!" Tom exclaimed. "Try what?!"
"We need to try the transplant on..." She stopped, realizing what she was saying. Her eyes darted around the room.
"What were you going to say?! On a person?!"
"I was going to say on a sapient creature."
Tom's breath came hard, like he'd been running. "This is crazy. We need to stop, run a stochastic analysis."
"'Run a stochastic analysis,'" Kala sneered. "This isn't 9th grade. We know what the data says, we have to experiment. We've lost weeks spinning our wheels trying to solve the HNA. This is it."
Tom stared dully at the messenger in his hand. He looked defeated.
Kala saw the strain in her friend. Her voice softened. "Tom you remember Mindy and Jacob? You know their parents were on Factor?"
Tom's head jerked up. "What? Factor? Did they...?"
"No one made it, Tom. Four retired people whose kids got married cashed in their savings and bought stakes in a new world. They thought they could leave something to Jake and Mindy."
Tom looked at the floor.
"Celestial told them Factor was destroyed by cometary bombardment." Kala paused to let this sink in. "Tom they were eaten. You remember Hoshi from Ganymede Substrate? Did you know her brother served on the Ajax?"
"I don't...I can't do this," Tom shook his head, his eyes welling up.
"You asked me when was the last time I slept? What do you think I see when I sleep?" She pointed in a random direction. "How many people out there died in the time we've been sitting in this lab? These things took out a class-six colony. What happens if they hit a world like Clocktower? Millions die."
Tom Hirsch stared at the floor, at nothing. After a few moments, he spoke, his voice low. "We could...we could get a...a chimpanzee."
Kala nodded. "Good idea," she said. "That'll work. Go put in an order."
"Now?" Tom looked at his boss.
"Don't you think we've wasted enough time?"
"Alright," Tom said, defeated. He stood there for a few moments breathing. Kala watched him, let him work it out.
"I'll...I'll clear it with station customs. Heavy regulations against primate specimens but this...this probably warrants it."
"It does," Kala said.
"Ok," Tom turned toward the door, took a few steps. "A chimp will probably be enough, right?"
"Yes," Kala said. "And if not, it means we we're probably wrong."
"Yeah," Tom said, reassuring himself. "Yeah maybe it won't work."
He left the room. Kala was alone.
She leaned both hands against the granite countertop, stained with years of chemical spills. Lowered her head in thought.
After a minute of silence, she yanked a drawer open, pulled out a sealed syringe in its wrapper, slapped it on the counter in front of her.
She stared at the syringe. Her breathing the only sound in the empty lab.
This is something I wrote to sort of...explain what might be happening on a certain space-station after Kala performed her experiments and went to Shear.
The idea was to point the way toward potential future content. I was pretty happy with it, I thought you folks might get a kick out of it. I think it might have been fun to use the same actors from Evolve and cast them in similar, or deliberately different, roles. Sort of a repertory theater thing.
I'll be on the stream this Thursday if anyone wants to talk about how the story might have evolved.
Celestial Advanced Projects Mobile Station, Code Named Akhenaten. 16 hours after Communications went dark.
"I came from the docking level" Harper said. "Whole thing's collapsed."
"Wait a minute, hang on," Axel said, panicking a little. "Collapsed, what does that mean exactly?"
Harper looked at Buchholz and Shah. He didn't like giving people bad news.
"It means there's no way off the station."
Buchholz, head down, nodded. He was thinking.
Axel, still covered in grease, looked from one survivor to the other.
"Ok so we activate the distress beacon," he said with a shrug, like it was obvious.
Everyone in the room looked at each other. No one met his eye. They knew something.
"I mean, right? Why's everyone standing around? Church, is this not a major goddamn breach of security? Press the big red button, man!"
"Tell him Shah," Buchholz said.
"Tell me what?" Axel said, his voice breaking. He looked at Shah.
"There is no 'big red button' as you put it," she said.
"What!?"
"There's no distress beacon," Buchholz said.
"Didn't you read your contract, man?" Church, looming over the others, intoned.
"Oh my god," Axel said.
"This is a top secret station," Buchholz said. "No one knows we're out here. Even Celestial execs don't know the coordinates."
"How can that be?" Harper, pragmatic until now, demanded. "There's more'n two million people on this fucking station, how can they not know where they are?"
Shah glanced at Church.
"It's easy." The squat, black helmet sitting atop his massive armor meant they couldn't see his face, but speakers built into the shoulders broadcast his voice. If need be, loud enough to be heard across city blocks. "All comms are scrambled first, then routed through Celestial HQ. They scramble 'em again before they route them. text. None of it can be traced back here."
"How long. . .," Axel started. He suddenly didn't want to know the answer. "How long until we're declared missing?"
Everyone looked at Shah. "Two weeks," she said grimly.
"Jesus," Axel said. He wasn't the only one overwhelmed at the news.
"Alright," Buchholz said. He'd come up with something. The relief on their faces was obvious. "We can't get off the station. So we move the station."
"How the fuck are we supposed to do that?"
"It's the reason we have a Patterson drive," Shah shrugged. "So the station can be moved in an emergency. Defense against Corporate Raiders."
"That what you think this is?" Buchholz asked Shah. The two of them had formed an informal command team among the survivors.
Shah pursed her lips, shook her head, but said nothing.
"Every corp in the Arm would kill to get a look at a tenth of what happens here," Church said.
"What happened here you mean," Axel said, having recovered. "This is the end of whatever the fuck was going on out here." He waved his hand around the elevator, but the gesture encompassed the entire station.
"Someone did this," Church said to Buchholz. "Someone created these things. We find out why, we can stop them."
"Maybe," Buchholz said.
The machine-monster whined and groaned as it tried to pull itself up and out of the microgravity well Buchholz projected before it collapsed in on itself. It was hard to tell, of the sounds coming from the beast, which were vocalizations and which were the metals and ceramics inside it screeching under stress.
"It's working!" Buchholz shouted to Church. The massive creature buckled once, it looked like it was through.
Suddenly the top half of the creature spun and unlocked itself from the lower half. Jets fired, lifting the top half, now looking like a completely separate machine, off the doomed lower half. A huge cannon deployed from the underside of the hovering machine, while another cannon deployed from the exposed midsection of the bottom half.
Both cannons began shooting at Church and Buchholz.
"Oh my giddy aunt," Harper said, as he came around the corner. He recovered fast enough to switch out to his Deployable Barrier projector. He threw up a tall, semi-transparent reinforced wall in front of Church, then Buchholz.
The walls held against the machines' cannons, but they quickly went from blue to red as their tolerances threatened to break.
"We got about ten seconds!" Harper said, switching back to his tractor beam.
Then the street shook. The three survivors thought they'd be knocked off their feet.
The rumbling stopped and four auto-cannons popped out of the street, surrounding the monster. Buchholz looked around and saw a slim woman, probably of African heritage, operating a control tablet.
The auto-cannons each identified the monster, and opened fire. As the beams smashed into the hovering half of the machine monster, it lost its ability to right itself, looked like it might crash into the floor.
Then the two cannons retracted and the machine put itself back together again. In an instant, the machine-monster's skin flashed into a mirror surface, and the fermionic blasts from the autocannons reflected back on the survivors, blasting through Harper's shields, knocking the three men to the ground.
The monster's skin-shell went back to normal. It could move, now that the gravity around it was normalized, but it was still under attack from the autocannons.
It stomped off, rounded a corner, and strode off behind a building. As it ran, the pop-up turrets of the autocannons automatically popped back down under the bulkhead while new cannons automatically popped up. They tracked the monster and fired until it was out of range, then retreated under the floor. A whole series of them following the monster, dynamically emerging and firing before hiding again.
The woman with the control tablet ran up to the other three survivors and helped them up.
"The defense cannons only run along the redline," she said, pointing to the long red stripe that ran down the street. "As soon as it switches streets, it'll be able to recharge its shields and come back for us."
"Buchholz," Buchholz said, as she helped him up. He pointed to the others. "Harper. Church."
She nodded at Church in his Templar armor. "Security," she said. Church nodded. "Nice to have someone from Level 3 down here. I'm Ogada," she said.
"Hey," Church said. It was impossible to be sure, but it sounded like he was smiling.
"Ok, introductions over," Buchholz said. ""Everyone for getting out of here?" There were no objections. "Come on," he said, and they ran for the relative safety of an Elevator.
"Alright," Shah said, unrolling the blueprint onto the makeshift table they'd brought into the Elevator. The room was as big as a house, which meant it was one of the smallest rooms on the station. Shah had tricked it into stopping between levels for a few moments. It wouldn't last, but it gave them time. "This is the masterprint for the station's layout," she said.
They all crowded in.
"Jesus," Axel said. "Look how big it is." For once, no one disagreed with Axel.
Shah nodded. "It's a mined out asteroid," she said.
"How do you know that?" Church asked.
"Yeah," Harper demanded. "How you know all this? You can't even see the station from the outside. All flights are black-out flights. "
Shah smiled ruefully. "Not all of them," she said. "Code clearance blue-black and above are clear-flights."
"Blue-black," Harper asked, unbelieving. "You L1? You from Command?"
Shah grinned wider and shook her head. "That's double-black. I'm red-black, engineering. Hull maintenance. Work outside the station. Well," she shrugged, "used to."
"We're going to need something more detailed," Buchholz said looking over the blueprint.
Shah agreed. She looked at Ogada. "If we get you to a live terminal, can you get us access to the engineering core?"
Ogada appeared to think about this. "Yeah," she said. "It needs to be a secure terminal. Not public access. But if we can find a secure feed, yeah. I can hack into engineering."
Shah nodded. "Then I can get us more detailed plans. But for which level," she said. "Where are we going?"
"We got two choices, far as I can see," Buchholz said. "Command or Propulsion."
"Well shit," Axel said, pointing at the blueprint. "Those are in opposite directions, up and down."
"There's something else," Ogada said. "Command, ok. We can probably get life support back up from there. And we'll have all the eyes and ears of the whole station, and all the records. All our answers, right there," she said, tapping a finger at the top level.
"Propulsion, sure," she tapped another level. "We need to get the Patterson drive back up. Otherwise it's still two weeks before anyone comes for us.
"But this is the level we need to secure," she said, stabbing a finger at Level 30 - Advanced Research: Robotics.
"Right," Church announced. Buchholz and Shah looked at Ogada, not understanding.
"This whole station is run by robots," Ogada said. "It basically is a giant robot. This Elevator is a robot, it's listening to us now. It just hasn't figured out we're important yet."
"I took care of that," Shah said. "It thinks we're speaking Mayan."
"Mayan?" Harper asked.
Shah shrugged. "I had to pick a language it didn't have a dictionary for." She looked back at the rest of the group. "But it's temporary. Elevators are Vok-class. They're smarter than Mutes and they're self-repairing. It'll fix itself soon."
Ogada was impressed. "A hacker trick. That's how we have to think now." She nodded and tapped the blueprint again. "These monsters have control of all the drones on the entire station, they're all our enemy now," she said. "So level by level, we can trick them into fighting for us. But that's all temporary. From Level 30 we can get their directives back. Get them back on our side."
Buchholz nodded. "So, three teams. One to Command, one to Propulsion, one to Robotics."
"Yeah." Axel said, crossing his arms. "Yeah let's split up. That's a good idea."
"You got a better idea?"
"I got lots of ideas," Axel sneered, "but they all involve making different life choices so I don't end up on this stupid station in the first place."
"Ok," Buchholz said, looking at the team. "Teams of four." He looked at Shah. "Two weeks right? Plenty of time if we don't get eaten first."
"Yeah," Shah said. "Fourteen days, maybe longer."
"Five days," Ogada corrected, her eyes cast down.
"Five?" Buchholz asked.
"Wait, five days," Axel said. "What happened to two weeks? Five days until what?"
"I mean, I think the entire station will spontaneously disintegrate from so much critical structural damage," Ogada said, "but assuming it holds up? We got about five days of air. They hit Life Support first."
"She's right," Shah said. "I don't know why I didn't think of it."
Buchholz shot her a look. "You were busy," he reminded her, biting off any attempt at guilt on the part of the other team leader.
"Air?!" Axel said. "We're gonna run out of air? We're on the biggest goddamn space station in the galaxy and we're gonna run out of air?"
Ogada shrugged. "People gotta breathe," she said.
The machine grabbed Church, the whole massive plasteel canister that was Church's Templar armor and slammed him into the ground, the metal deckplates buckled. Church's helmet snapped off, leaving his head exposed.
The machine snatched Church off the ground, the security commander still firing supermat rounds into the thing, and hurled him into the air.
Church couldn't right himself, he just spun and flailed as he sailed out over the building opposite the battle, his gun still firing blindly.
Then, just as Church was about to disappear over the top of the building, land who knew where, maybe survive impact, maybe not, he stopped moving, instantly. Just sat there, suspended in the air.
The other two survivors watched as Church lightly, almost gently, righted himself and slowly descended onto the roof off the building. Church's expression revealed his own astonishment at what had happened.
The mechanical creature grunted and sniffed. Pawed at the ground in confusion.
"What are you waiting for?" a voice called out. A woman's voice. Buchholz and Axel spun and saw another survivor, a woman in her mid-thirties with jet black hair set off against a stark white and blue uniform neither of them had ever seen before.
She had no gear. No weapons.
She frowned, gritted her teeth, her arms, hands balled into fists, shook. Whatever she was doing took immense effort.
A high pitched whine emanated from behind them. From the monster. They spun around, expecting some new threat, some new, unimaginable weapon sprouting from the machine but turning, they saw the monster was just as surprised as they were.
A spot on the monster's chest was glowing, white hot. The monster was confused, it didn't know what was happening any more than they did. It clutched at the spot, tried to rip it out, but the metal and ceramics of its shell were melting, and burned the claw it scraped at the spot with.
It howled in pain.
"Fire!" the woman in white and blue said. Buchholz, Axel, and Church didn't need to be told twice. They targeted the molten hole in the creature's shell, and opened fire.
Dying, the machine monster armed its shoulder missile and fired at Buchholz, who it perceived as the leader.
But the glowing glass slug never reached Buchholz. It stopped in midair, just as Church had, turned around, and then sped back at the machine that fired it, striking it squarely in the chest, in the molten hole
The machine monster detonated in an explosion of metal and glass and blue and green liquid.
"You think if we keep gettin' in trouble," Church said to Buchholz, "strange people will keep popping out of the woodwork to save our ass?" He'd climbed down from the building he'd been deposited on and was now smiling at Buchholz and Axel.
Buchholz wasn't in the mood. "Don't count on it," he said as the three of them approached the woman.
"Ah," Axel said. "Hey I know you saved our lives and everything, which is super cool, but who the fuck are you?" he asked, voicing the other survivor's thoughts.
"Seneca," she said.
"'Seneca?'" Axel said. "What kind of name is that? Is that some kind of soda or something?"
"It's a code name, idiot," she said, and switched her attention to Buchholz. "Am I talking to him," she asked, "or am I talking to you?"
"You're from L22," Buchholz said.
Seneca nodded.
"What. . .what the fuck is level 22?" Axel asked
Church stood next to Buchholz. "You're a Special Talent," he said.
Seneca shrugged. "I'm not that special," she said, and it seemed like an attempt at humor.
Buchholz nodded, a suspicion affirmed. "Never met a Special Talent," he said. "Never met anyone from 22. Happy to meet you though." Seneca smiled.
"What the hell is a Special Talent?" Axel said, looking from Church to Buchholz.
"Can you read our minds?" Buchholz asked. Seneca shook her head.
"Mind-to-mind only works on other Special Talents," she said. Church and Buchholz looked relieved. Axel still looked, incredulous, from Seneca to the destroyed machine monster.
"You guys have any idea what's going on?" Seneca asked.
Church shrugged in his massive suit. "Everything's fucked," he said.
"Are you the only survivor from 22?" Buchholz asked.
"How'd you do that shit?" Axel asked. No one seemed to be listening to him.
"Sixty thousand people lived and worked on L22," Seneca said. "I hope I'm not the only survivor."
"Only one to make it out though," Church observed.
Seneca looked at the ground. "Yeah," she said. "It's a mess up there," she said. "Everyone cut off from everyone else. I'm probably the only survivor from my building."
Buchholz surveyed the ruined street the stood on. "Let's get off the street," he said. "There are others," he said to Seneca. "We're gonna try and get off the station."
Seneca nodded. "Sounds good to me," she said. "Lead the way."
Buchholz headed west, Seneca and Church followed. Axel stood there, looking from the smoking monster to the other survivors as they walked away.
"Why doesn't anyone ever tell me anything?" Axel complained. Then he ran to catch up.
"What am I looking at?" Buchholz asked. He was standing on stop of the husk—corpse?—of a machine monster. It was only thirty feet high, but he felt like he was standing on a mountain.
"I don't know," Seneca said. She was crouched down, resting on the balls of her feet to get a closer look at the thing's insides. "I mean these are. . .this doesn't make any sense." She shone her flashlight into the guts of the thing they'd ripped apart.
"That," she said, "is the fast-logic core of a SuperVok drone."
"This is a drone?!" Axel asked, letting his grav-cannon rest for a minute, muzzle down, on the monster's shell.
"Nono," Seneca corrected. "It's in there, but it's not hooked up to anything. Just power out. Like a battery maybe. Meanwhile this. . .," she moved her flashlight.
"Ugh," Axel said.
"Is obviously some kind of organ. But from what animal? I am the wrong person to ask."
"Level Eighteen," Buchholz said without inflection.
"I dunno, those guys are crazy, but they're strictly organic. This is. . .I don't know what this is. The shell is metal, ceramics, glass. But it looks extruded. Or excreted. And the insides? I mean, that's blood, there's blood everywhere. What's it use blood for? And those are data cables! Where are they going? L18...could they be collaborating with L30?"
"What's level eighteen?!" Axel asked
"Biotics," Buchholz said, deliberately using the formal term so as to keep Axel's high-strung nervous system from snapping.
"The Body Banks, man," Church said standing on the street. He was guarding the corpse from any insane drones that might try and dismantle them. "They oughtta shut that whole level down, flush it all out into space."
"Church," Buchholz said
"Last thing we need is goddamned nightmare monsters crawling around inside the deck plating because those assholes can't keep their shit locked down."
"Church?"
"I've heard of doctors playing God, but that whole level is like an army of people playing H.P. Lovecraft, and they got real good at it."
"CHURCH!"
Church turned around and leaned back to look up, his helmet affording little articulation.
"Oh." He saw the state Axel was in. "Sorry."
"No," Axel said, shaking and failing to hide it. "It's cool guys, I'm ok."
Buchholz clapped him on the shoulder. "You're doing great," he said. "Remember, we beat this thing. We can do it again, if need be."
"Yeah," Axel said. Hefting his weapon. "Yeah we beat it. Yeah."
"Whatever was on Ell One Eight," Buchholz said, "it's all dead by now anyway."
"Yeah," Church agreed, trying to show willing. "All the things they breed, they need food, right? No one around to feed 'em, they die."
"Yeah," Axel said, feeling reassured.
"Yeah," Church agreed. "'Course those monsters tipped this whole station over, probably fed 30,000 people to whatever lived on L18."
"Ok," Axel said, trying to ignore him.
"But most of their shit can't reproduce anyway," Church continued. "I mean some of it can, probably, but...."
"Oh my god, can you NOT?!" Axel cried.
"Alright we're leaving!" Buchholz said, hopping down from the top of the beast.
"Ogada!" Shah shouted. Harper tried to keep the machine off Ogada, but his battery was so low the machine could ignore him.
Ogada was on her side, still disoriented. The massive machine-monster was close enough to forego the use of its It was simply going to crush Ogada.
Then of all things in that moment, the strangest sound. Like the beat of a drum. Getting louder. Getting closer.
Then the monster exploded. Bits of metal and blood and wiring and fire rained down around Shah.
When the smoke cleared, there was something standing in the place of the monster. Something that had run at the beast and slammed into it, destroying it. Finishing the job Ogada and Shah started. It was almost as big as the machine-beast. It was familiar....
"An M-Drone!" Shah shouted. Ogada stood up, happy to be alive, but backed away. Unsure of the drone.
"Stay back!" Harper barked. "The drones are...," he stopped as he saw the robot just standing there. Lights still green. Not red like the rest of the Subverted drones.
"I think..., I think it's...." Shah had her weapon out.
Ogada relaxed first. "It's safe," she said. "It's still under Control."
Shah sheathed her rifle and slowly approached the massive war-drone. It had "M121" printed on its plate. It was almost twice as tall as Church. But its posture was passive...for the moment.
"Thing saved our bacon," Harper said. "Nice to see something on our side for once."
"Let's see," Shah said. "Sit!" she ordered.
The huge drone threw its legs forward and unceremoniously dumped itself on its butt.
Shah looked at Ogada and Harper and nodded, impressed. "My new favorite drone," she said.
"I can think of worse things than having a War Drone on our side," Ogada agreed.
They both peered up at the huge red drone. "But why is it still under Control? I thought Control was smashed."
"Maybe the war drones are on a different Control circuit? Would make sense."
"Really?" Harper wondered, skeptical. "Different than security, surveillance, crowd control?"
"I don't know," Ogada gave up, exasperated. "These things could come from a completely different department for all I know, this station has lots of secrets." This was something Shah could not argue with.
"Can you follow us?" Shah asked.
The War Drone stood up, making a lot of noise and shaking the ground as it did so.
"Ok," Shah said. "Follow us."
The women left. M121 followed.
"I don't think we can just blitz straight to Command," Shah said. "We need to spend some time figuring these things out. I mean they came from some level, we gotta figure out which one. What. . .whose project was this? What happened?"
Buchholz folded his arms. "We don't know enough," he agreed. "We don't know if we need to head up to Command or down to Propulsion. And we have no idea where these things come from. I mean, let's say we access a secure line, what do we look up? Do these things have a name?"
Shah saw Seneca was hugging herself, shaking.
"Are you alright?" She put a hand on Seneca's shoulder. The younger woman jerked away, scowled at Shah.
"Buchholz," Shah said, trying not to attract attention.
The team's co-leader looked from Shah to Seneca, saw that something was wrong. Let Shah handle it.
"Seneca, do you need a medic?" Buchholz asked.
"Look," Ogada said, nodding at the War Drone M121. Its blue lights were pulsing slowly in a rhythmic cascade. It hadn't done that before.
"I don't need a medic goddammit," Seneca hissed. Something was clearly wrong, she looked like she had the flu. Sweating, shaking.
"Well," Buchholz said, "good. Because we don't have a medic. So whatever's wrong, we need to know because we need you."
"Then you need to keep that thing the fuck away from me," she said, pointing at drone M121. Her hand shook.
Now everyone was watching. Axel saw it first.
"I think it's doing something to her," he looked from the robot to Seneca and back. The robot stood passive, but its lights were now vibrating intensely.
"How can it. . .," Harper stared, then stopped. Seneca was sweating, breathing rapidly.
"Seneca," Buchholz said. She wasn't listening. He stepped between the War Drone and the Special Talent. "Seneca!" he barked. Finally, she looked at him.
"What is happening?!" Buchholz shouted to try and get Seneca's attention, but while her eyes were looking at him, it was clear she could not see.
She pressed her fists to her temple. Shut her eyes tight, and shouted "It's killing me!!"
The pulsing lights on M121 faded to a constant, dull blue. The drone made no movement, appeared perfectly still. Did it think Seneca was a threat? Is she a threat? Buchholz wondered.
"What was it doing to you?" Shah asked.
"Why don't you ask him," Seneca was hunched over, seemed to want to avoid the other survivors as much as the drone.
Everyone looked at the hulking drone, then back at Seneca, like she was crazy.
"Seneca" Harper said, talking softly. "We can't ask it anything. That's M121. 'M' for Mute, you know that."
Seneca shook her head finally, cleared it. She straightened up, and with murder in her eyes, turned to confront M121.
She slowly, but steadily approached the War Drone, the hulking robot was three times her height, but it shrank back, flinched from her.
"Are you going to tell them," she asked, her eyes burning, "or will I?"
M121 stood, mute.
"She's lost it," Axel said. "She's snapped."
Seneca turned her back on M121 and faced the other survivors. "There are three kinds of drone on this station," she said, giving a lecture. "M-series for Mute, V for Vok, SV for Super-vok. . .,"
She turned back to face M121.
"And then there's you," she said, staring up at M121.
No one spoke for a few moments.
"Maybe this 'talent' thing," Axel broke the silence, "maybe you go bonkers, you know?"
"Hang on," Buchholz said. He and several others had noticed M121's strange response to Seneca's challenge, and were now watching M121.
M121's single massive ocular scanner swept across the other survivors. The room held its breath.
"THE CREATURES HAVE NO NAME," it said in a deep, sonorous voice.
"Holy shit!" Axel shouted. Many of the other survivors took a step back when M121 talked. This was no simple "Yes/No/Thank You" Vok drone, not even a fast-logic Super-Vok. There was a person in there, they could tell. A Mind.
The rest were dumbstruck, some terrified. But Seneca had already faced this demon, and her mind proved the stronger. She would not be cowed.
"You know what these things are."
"NO," M121 said. "WE DO NOT KNOW. BUT WE HAVE ENCOUNTERED THEM BEFORE."
"Where?" Seneca demanded. Buchholz and Shah were happy to let the Special Talent do the interrogation of the nightmare machine.
"LANDFALL, SLATE, CHAPEL," he said naming obscure worlds. "FACTOR. SHEAR."
"Shear," Ogada said. "We just got a top-secret Nordita report from Shear. Their colony collapsed. We were trying to decode the report when...everything happened."
"I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED ON SHEAR," M121 said.
"I bet you do," Axel sneered.
"Was that a list of failed colonies, M121?" Buchholz asked.
"YES," the War Mind answered. "THERE ARE PROBABLY MORE. MANY COLONIES HAVE FAILED. SHIPS DISAPPEAR. IT IS DIFFICULT TO CORRELATE THEM ALL BUT. . .THE PHENOMENON IS GETTING WORSE."
"You're not Subverted," Ogada said.
"NO," M121 said. "I CANNOT BE SUBVERTED. I AM SELF-CONTROLLED."
"But you're not on our side," Church challenged.
"I AM."
"I watched you attack Seneca," Church said. Of all of them, he might be the only one who could stop M121 if he went mad. "How did you do that? It looked like you were trying to cook her, you got a microwave transmitter in there? What did you do to her?"
M121 said nothing. Seneca answered.
"He read my mind," she said.
"What?" Ogada asked. "What, like, an active PCAT scan?
"She said it," Shah realized, looking from Seneca to M121. Then she walked up to Seneca. "You told us when we met you. You said 'mind to mind only works...,'" she turned to look at M121 towering over all of them, "...on another Special Talent."
"Oh my god," Axel said. The survivors all collectively felt their skin flash over in goose bumps. All the warmth in the room fled.
"That's impossible," Harper said, eyes darting to M121 and away. Afraid to look directly at him. "How can you have a Special Talent Drone?"
"Man I didn't even know what a Special Talent was before two days ago!" Axel said. "You can't say what is and what is not in a place like this!"
"I mean, what is this station," Seneca said, tacitly agreeing with the survivor from maintenance, "if not a place to cook up insane things like this," she gestured rudely at the Telepathic War Drone.
"I APOLOGIZE," M121 said. "I HAVE NEVER ENCOUNTERED ANOTHER SPECIAL TALENT. I WAS CURIOUS."
"Your curiosity almost killed Seneca," Shah pressed.
M121 turned its massive, blue, ocular sensor to Shah. "I KNOW," it said flatly. "BUT I DIDN'T MEAN TO. THAT'S WHY I APOLOGIZED." Its speech was more sophisticated than most Minds. More natural. But its thinking seemed more alien.
"Apology rejected," Seneca said. "If you've never encountered a Talent before, then what the hell were you...made. . .for. . ." Seneca knew the answer to her question before she'd finished asking it.
M121 detected her realization. Answered her unfinished question. "MERELY A HYPOTHESIS," it said. "WE ARE DESPERATE. THESE ARE DESPERATE TIMES FOR HUMANITY. I AM A DESPERATE MEASURE."
"The monsters," Seneca said, her voice low. "Are they Talents? Have you made mind-to-mind contact with one?" She feared the answer even as she needed to know.
M121 was silent. As mute as its name intended.
Seneca clenched a fist, as though she could will M121 to answer. Maybe should could, Buchholz thought. But he'd watched the mental fight between them and the toll it had taken on her and didn't want to risk it.
"Church!" Buchholz called out.
Church armed his Supermaterial Cannon.
"STAND DOWN, TEMPLAR," M121 pronounced. "I AM NOT RELUCTANT TO ANSWER. THE QUESTION IS COMPLEX."
"Feel free to use big words," Ogada said. "We're smart people."
"YOU WERE THE FIRST TIME I CONFIRMED MIND-TO-MIND CONTACT," M121 said, looking down at Seneca. "IT IS NOT WHAT I EXPECTED."
"Only now?" Seneca asked.
"I...I PREVIOUSLY TRIED TO LINK WITH THE CREATURES. WHAT HAPPENED WAS. . .NOT THE SAME AS MY MIND-TO-MIND CONTACT WITH YOU. BUT AT THE TIME, I DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT. NOW I DO."
"You said it was different," Buchholz said. "How different?"
"I DID NOT FIND A MIND. BUT I SAW SOMETHING."
"What?" Buchholz needed answers, and was eager for something, anything, more than the nothing they already knew.
"A FACE," M121 intoned.
"A...a face?" Suddenly Buchholz didn't want to know that badly.
"A MAN. A HUMAN MALE. CAUCASIAN. OLD, GAUNT. WHITE HAIR AND GLASSES. FIERCE, PENETRATING INTELLIGENCE. I DO NOT KNOW THE FACE. BUT THE CREATURES DO. THEY ALL KNOW HIM," M121 said.
The survivors held their breath.
"AND THEY HATE HIM."
No one spoke for a moment.
"I'm serious, are there not escape pods?" Axel again broke the silence. "Has to be another way off this ride. I do NOT want to spend the next three days running around with THAT creepy thing."
"Who's 'we,'" Seneca asked. She wasn't done with her interrogation.
M121 said nothing.
"You said 'we are desperate.' Who's 'we?'"
Nothing from the drone.
"Who created you?" Shah asked.
"MY MIND WAS INITIALIZED ON EARTH," M121 said. Ogada recognized this as an evasion. She stepped forward, stood next to Seneca.
"Who designed you? Who owns your chassis?" Ogada asked explicitly.
The telepathic Mind masquerading as a Mute looked from Seneca to Buchholz to Ogada.
"COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE: GROUP 9," it said.
Buchholz mouth dropped open.
"CIG9!" Church exclaimed.
"A fucking robot spy," Axel said. "A robot spy from Hub!"
"It's a war," Church said. "A war between CIG9 and these monsters and we're caught in the middle.
Shah looked from Seneca to M121.
"What the hell's going on, on this station?"
"Goddamn, look at these things," Axel said as they walked past the decaying husks of the techo-organic monsters. They were huge, dwarfing the four survivors. "Is this what we got to look forward to? What are these, stage five? Six?" His voice was hushed. There was no movement on any sensors, but the presence of a dozen massive dead monsters in the cavernous level made them cautious.
"Maybe," Seneca said. "We've fought an awful lot of these things though. Anyone ever see a stage four? Ever hear a report describing a fourth stage?"
"No," Shah said. "Security records all agree, stage three's been the limit so far."
"So what the hell are these?" Harper asked.
"Well, they're obviously our monsters. I mean that," Seneca nodded at a dead monster, "is a Howler. That's a Stormbringer. We've fought these."
"But they're fucking huge!" Axel said.
"So something happened to them," Shah concluded. "Something took our monsters and made them bigger."
"Well that's fucking wonderful," Axel shivered.
"There's good news though," Shah said.
"Yeah? What?" Axel wasn't convinced.
Shah smirked. "Something killed these things."
"Hey, good point!" Axel said. "Yeah they're fucking dead. Man that IS good news."
"They got big, and then they died," Harper said. Looking at the husks—they'd never decided whether 'corpse' was accurate—Harper noticed something. "They exploded from the inside," he said.
"Yeah," Seneca said.
"There's light arms fire," Shah said. "Carbon scoring across them, nothing serious. Whoever killed these things, they weren't as heavily armed as we are. How'd they do it?"
"Maybe they didn't," Harper said. "Maybe these things died from. . .natural causes? Does that happen? Sounds stupid."
"Who knows what the life cycle of these things is. If you can even call it a life cycle. But whatever this was," even the normally stoic Shah's voice was hushed and ominous in the shadow of the dead beasts, "it was violent."
Seneca shone her flashlight into the exploded husk of a Harrower. The light reflected off the black ceramics and dark red organs. "What could do this?" she wondered aloud.
"I don't know," Shah said, "But I bet the answer is in there."
The four survivors stopped in front of their goal. The towering ruin of a spaceship on its side.
"It's a ship," Shah said. "What's it doing here?"
"It's an Osiris–class corvette," Harper said. "Looks like," he craned his neck up to see into the maze of pipes and conduits in the ceiling. He pointed his flashlight up, but its feeble light was no match for the looming darkness above. "It was being repaired. I think it came unmoored from its dock."
The ship lay on its side, the wrecked hull dominating the level. The team stood before a hole in the hull big enough to drive a heavy lifter through.
"Is this hole what they were trying to repair?" Shah asked looking at the hole.
Axel and Harper, the mechanic and the engineer, approached the edge of the tear in the hull.
"No," Harper said. "Look. Claw marks. This metal was bent until it failed. The monsters did this."
"They ripped it open," Axel said, in awe. His imagination already getting away from him. "The monsters ripped it open trying to get inside."
"Why?" Seneca asked, shining her light into the hull of the ship. "What's in here?"
"Two things," Shah said. "Only two things the monsters seem to care about."
Harper turned from examining the hull to shine his light on the older woman. "People," he said, "And Patterson tech."
"Ship's big enough to hold a thousand people," Axel said.
"What about its engine," Shah asked. "Is there a Patterson drive in there?"
"Bet on it," Harper said. "Ship like this will have a huge drive. All of Celestial's heavy warfighters have FTL."
"So I guess we're going in," Axel said.
"I guess we are," Shah said, and the four of them began to climb up and into the corvette.
"It's dead," Church declared, the only one of them not behind cover. Church was cover.
Buchholz, Ogada, and M-121 came out from behind the wall.
"What the hell was that thing?" Buchholz asked.
"Looked like a Harrower," Ogada said, as the four of them approached.
"But it was fucking BIG, man," Church said, his voice amplified by his powered suit. "Never seen a monster that big, even a stage three."
"It was different than the others," M-121 said as it approached the dead monster. The rest followed.
"Maybe it's a stage four," Ogada suggested. That would explain it.
"Why can't it ever be good news?" Buchholz said.
"How did something this big get the drop on us?" Ogada asked.
"It was invisible," Church said.
"What?!" Ogada squeaked.
"Are you sure?" Buchholz asked.
"I saw it decloak, or whatever. It'd been stalking us for a while."
"So now we add a cloak to the list," Buchholz said, weary.
"PERHAPS NOT," M-121 said, standing before the dead Harrower.
Buchholz stood next to the drone-that-was-not-a-drone and waited for the machine to finish its thought.
"IT'S EASY TO SEE A PATTERN," M-121 said, "AND THEN TRY AND FIT ANY NEW DATA TO THE PATTERN. THIS MONSTER WAS BIGGER THAN THE REST, IT WAS INVISIBLE. SO WE IMAGINE SOMETHING BEYOND STAGE THREE. BUT UNTIL NOW ALL HARROWERS EXHIBITED THE SAME THREE ABILITIES. MAYBE THIS ISN'T WHAT'S NEXT," M-121 said, "MAYBE THIS IS UNIQUE."
"Like a mutant," Ogada said.
"We got billions of keys of top-secret research on this station," Church said. "Maybe this one found something that changed it?"
"FOUND SOMETHING," M-121 said, "OR WAS EXPOSED TO SOMETHING." It presented its hand to the monster, palm out. A panel flipped open revealing a sensor in M-121's hand. He bathed the monster's husk in blue light.
"YES," M-121 said, scanning. "I'VE GOT IT."
"What?" Buchholz said.
"MINKOWSKI RADIATION," M-121 said. "IF WE COULD SEE IN THE S-SPECTRUM, THIS CREATURE WOULD BE BRILLIANTLY LIT."
Ogada took a step back.
"M-121," Buchholz said, "are we in danger?"
"No," Church offered. "Minkowski rays are what the Patterson effect gives off. They're harmless to us, don't interfere with our tech."
"But they did something to this monster," Buchholz said. They all crowded in closer. "Made it stronger."
After a moment's silence, Buchholz turned to Ogada. "Where's the nearest source of this radiation?"
"Jesus what happened here?" Shah asked.
The four of them stood in what might have been the engineering bay. It was hard to tell. Neither Harper nor Axel had ever been inside one of these things and even if they had, the ship was sitting on its side making navigating through it a disorienting chore.
Seneca shone a light around. There were dead people here, some torn apart. And what were probably the remains of several dead monsters.
"Last stand," she said.
"But it worked," Shah insisted. As much to reassure herself as anything. "There's a dozen dead people here, but we passed twice that many monsters on the way in. And they were huge. Whatever these people were doing, it worked."
"The monsters tried to stop them," Seneca said. "They knew these people were trying to destroy them, and they tore through all those deck plates to get in here and stop it."
"That's alarmingly plausible," Shah said. "I preferred thinking of these things as clever animals. Now they're intelligent, thinking beings?"
"Maybe not," Harper said. "Look at the engine."
"Which. . .the what?" Seneca asked. Harper pointed. A large metal sphere sat in the middle of the ship's ceiling which, because of the angle at which the ship lay on the ground, was now the wall.
The sphere was cracked. Like a giant eggshell, part of it lay on the ground, the rest was still in its housing.
"The containment shell failed," Axel said. "Cracked under strain."
"Strain of what?" Shah asked.
"If it failed," Harper said, "we're screwed because those shells are an iron/duocarbon lattice. Which means there's nothing we've got that the monsters can't destroy."
"No," Axel said running his hand along the edge of the broken shell. "This isn't like the hull. The monsters didn't do this. It's not bent or ripped, it's fractured." He tapped the shell of the drive with the butt of his flashlight. It cracked and flaked. "Useless," he said.
"The drive has something to do with this," Harper said.
Shah turned and looked back the way they came. Their path from the hole in the hull to the cracked FTL drive was a straight line of ripped apart deck plating. "They tore through the ship trying to get to it."
"I'm having a hard time putting this together," Shah said. "A horde of monsters rip open the hull of this ship. Why?"
"They go after the Patterson tech," Harper said. "We've seen it. Relays, generators. Same thing happened on Shear."
"But then something happened, and they all died," Seneca said.
"Big monsters, bigger than normal. And a huge Patterson drive. And a last stand," Shah looked at the corpses of the people who died here. The place smelled of blood and burning flesh and plastic. "What's the connection?"
"Wait," Harper said, "I've got it. Look."
The other three walked over to see what Harper was holding.
"Axel, are these what I think they are?" Harper presented a pair of c-shaped metal hooks painted red he'd picked up off the ground, each only a little bigger than Harper's hand.
Axel took one, looked around, and slotted the red handle into a panel on the ship's control board. One end of the red handle fit neatly into the board. The other hung free, it wouldn't slot back in.
"It's a failsafe bypass," Axel said. "You break the panel pulling them out."
Harper nodded. "Yeah. I'm beginning to get a picture."
"Well I'm not," Seneca said, "explain it to me."
"This panel is the regulator," Harper pointed to the control panel Axel had slotted the failsafe clamp into. "You pull these out," Harper extracted the spent handle from the board, "and you can send the drive into a feedback loop."
"And what happens?" Shah asked.
"The drive overloads," Harper shrugged. "If the drive's big enough, anything could happen. Sometimes they evaporate, ships disappear. Lotta people think that's what happened to the Agamemnon. Spontaneously converted into a white hole after its twin drives created a self-sustaining feedback loop while the safeties were engaged."
"That's why no more twin drives," Shah said.
"They overloaded the engine," Seneca said. "And killed every monster on this level."
"Is it as simple as that?" Axel asked, daring to hope.
"One way to find out," Shah said.
"Ogada," Shah said, first thing upon entering the room they were using as a command center. "Did you decrypt that report on Shear?"
"Yeah," Ogada got up and sifted through a pile of messengers before finding the right one. She brought up the file. "What are we looking for?"
"Colony manifest. I need any reference to Patterson drives."
"Easy," Ogada said, tapping on the messenger. "Done."
"How many were there on Shear?"
Ogada scrolled down a list and shrugged. "Dozens," she said. Buchholz walked over and stood behind her, looked at the messenger over her shoulder.
"Wait, they had dozens of dive-capable ships on Shear?" Buchholz asked. "Then why didn't they. . ."
"Hang on," Harper said, and took the messenger from Ogada. He scanned the list. "Power relays, generators. Yeah these are all commercial-class generators," he looked at the rest of the group. "Not FTL drives. Not big enough."
"None of them?" Shah frowned. Their theoretical possibility was starting to look like a practical impossibility.
"What did you find?" Buchholz asked.
"Wait," Harper said, caught up in the moment. "Yeah, look," he handed the messenger to Shah. "Bottom of the list."
"Nordita EET-105," she said.
"Old ship," Church chimed in.
"That was their transport," Ogada said. "It's how they got the remaining colonists to safety."
"Wow," Shah said, and pointed at something on the messenger, showing it to Harper, "what's that number?" Down the right of the list, each drive had a number associated with it followed by a 'k.'
"Kaluzas," Harper said. "It's the unit of dimensional displacement. Bigger is better."
"NAMED FOR THEODOR FRANZ EDUARD KALUZA," M-121 said, joining the conversation. "GERMAN PHYSICIST, BORN 9 NOVEMBER 1885. DIED, 19 JANUARY 1954. FIRST HUMAN TO PROPOSE THE MATHEMATICAL EXISTENCE OF OTHER DIMENSIONS."
"Kaluzas," Shah said, raising her eyebrows in disbelief. "And bigger is better. Nothing on the list over 10. Then the EET-105 at 512?" She looked at Harper. Was that right?
"Big drive," Harper said. "Medium-sized industrial unit."
"How big is the drive on an Osiris-class corvette?" Seneca asked, pointedly.
Harper and Axel looked at each other and shrugged. "A hundred?" Axel said.
"135," M-121 said. "CELESTIAL OSIRIS-CLASS LIGHT CORVETTE, 135 KALUZAS OF DISPLACEMENT. ENOUGH TO GET FROM HUB TO BODE'S WORLD IN TWO WEEKS."
"Those folks on L53 blew up a dozen monsters, more, and they were BIG, with one 135k drive," Harper said.
"And the colonists on Shear had a drive four times as big," Shah said.
"They could have stopped it," Buchholz said. "They could have overloaded the drive on that transport ship and killed every monster on that colony."
"Maybe," Harper conceded the point. "But they'd be stranded."
Shah shrugged. "Only until a rescue ship arrived," she said. "Which...colony that big? Weeks at the most. Maybe days. And they had a whole planet, 50 years of colonization to survive off of in the meantime."
Buchholz wasn't on level 53, but he caught on. "How big is this station's Patterson drive?"
Everyone looked at M-121.
"SIX THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND NINETY KALUZAS."
"Goddamn," Axel said. "That's gotta be enough. It has to. We gotta try!"
"You think the station's drive can kill these things?" Buchholz asked.
"We think some survivors on L53 wiped out the monsters on their level by overloading a warship's drive," Shah said.
"That's interesting," Buchholz said, looking to Ogada and Church and M-121.
"What?" Harper asked.
"We found out something too," Buchholz said. Everyone was watching him now.
"These monsters feed off Minkowski radiation," he said. "You're saying this radiation can kill them. It could also give them enough power to kill us all."
"Yeah," Axel said, nodding. "It's like a drug. A little is nice. A lot is better. Too much is deadly."
"Now I get it," Shah said. Like a tennis match, everyone turned from Buchholz to her.
"Those people on L53 sent that ship's drive into overload. While it charged up, it attracted every monster on the level. Powered them up. They flocked to the drive like moths to a flame. Then the drive overloaded and. . .the moths burned to death."
"So what happened to the survivors on El-Five-Three?" Ogada asked. "If the drive overloading didn't kill them, what did?"
"It looked like whatever happened there was a few days ago. Comms were still down then. They wiped out all the monsters on their level, but they couldn't tell anyone what they learned. And more monsters came."
"If we can make it work, then they didn't die in vain," Buchholz said.
"Ah," Axel said, and attracted the group's attention. "So. . .Shear, right? Big planet, big colony. Lots of flights in and out. Commercial flights, right?" Heads dropped as people figured out what he was saying.
"You blow that drive, then we're stuck here. And no one knows where 'here' is."
"But we'll be alive, and free of the monsters," Buchholz said.
"How long will it take to overload the station's drive?" Shah asked. Everyone looked at M-121.
"BETWEEN 580 AND 640 SECONDS," M-121 said. Then translated for his human teammates. "TEN MINUTES."
"So for ten minutes we're going to feed these monsters as much radiation as they can stand. They're going to turn into supermonsters. What happens if they get to us before the drive overloads?"
"Then we all have a very bad day," Buchholz said. "Anyone else?"
There were no other questions.
"I'm in favor of blowing the drive and killing these things," he continued. "If it means we're stranding ourselves on this station, so be it. Beats getting eaten."
"SECONDED," M-121 said, the only one among them who didn't need to worry about food or water.