by Cam Daly
“We can’t approach the system until we know what we are up against. Our squadron will decelerate and maintain a safe distance. It would be unwise to risk an engagement against that new type of missile.”
Keryapt nodded in agreement. “As soon as I can fabricate some more assets then I’ll be on the move. With any luck I can answer the question here before you even approach.”
Ruut was still looking at the physical communication flowchart. “Pardon me, Keryapt, but there is one post-coital step to properly complete the process with your new…hold on, getting the local terminology right…boyfriend.”
She glanced at Ruut’s display. “Oh, right. Pillow talk.”
There was a mumble from the gathered Captains.
Keryapt offered them a broad smile. “Excuse me for a moment.” She disappeared, leaving Shadow to explain.
INTERLUDE
“Broaalg, there was no other choice. If we hadn’t used the new missiles, the Vreen would have certainly escaped!”
The Tumorish near their master froze in place. His rage was so great that he vibrated, sending ripples of muddy water sloshing out of his command cradle.
An unfortunately raw Tumorish noticed the water and turned to ask about it. “Master, there is-“
Broaalg was on him in an instant, stabbing a clawed appendage through his chest. The hapless Tumorish didn’t voice a complaint as his rib cage was cracked open and his entrails were torn out. His body was flung to a far corner of the room.
“Do not recycle that one.” Their master’s pronouncement was so loud that it caused physical pain to his listeners, and they made no move to retrieve the yellow ichor spilling from the corpse’s skull.
Broaalg refocused his attention on the screen showing the delinquent ship commander. “As for you. You assured me that you could be trusted. Per our contract, this error will cost you forty thousand, on top of the three thousand for the missile itself. I assume you can issue payment immediately.”
The commander showed signs of cautious relief. “You aren’t going to invoke the penalty clause?”
“You did accomplish the primary task. The Vreen presence in this system is no more. As soon as the Meliarch near the innermost planet are eliminated, we will initiate the next phase. Once the testing is complete, then you will be eligible for the bonus.”
“The bonus…we await word of your success.”
Fool. His bonus was the tiniest fraction of what Broaalg would receive from High Command. They were preparing for mass production, an investment the likes of which he had never seen. He would be so rich that he could buy a position amongst them and still have millions of lifetimes left over.
The currency of the Craven was life. Years of life. Bankruptcy was to become worthless, a kill to be watched as sport. Broaalg had bet his last remaining years on this world, borrowed to hire the ships to defend it. And now he was so close to winning the gamble of a lifetime. Double or nothing.
“But what about the Fleet Active? Do you have the resources to defeat her?”
“She is in hiding, with no idea where I am. My forces surround her. At any moment I expect to receive word that she is dead.”
Broaalg cut the connection before the ship commander could see his fear. He had no idea where Keryapt Zess was, but very clear knowledge of what she had done. What she could do. Even now she was doubtlessly preparing to track him down.
“Master, we-“
Another Tumorish died without protest, crushed into muddy pulp for the crime of startling him.
It didn’t make him feel any better. She was probably planning her assault on his citadel this very moment.
CHAPTER 8
Connor gently toyed with her hair. Despite their energetic encounter, it looked the exact same as it had before. It had an odd way of springing back to the correct location after he moved it.
She watched him without offering explanation. He liked having her here with him in this quiet moment.
“Why me?”
Kery propped herself up on her elbows.
“Why you, what?”
He sat up, partially pulling the sheet off of her. She didn’t seem to notice. It could have made her seem more alien, to not care about what he could see, but it had the opposite effect. It felt more like they knew each other well and didn’t need to hide things.
“You know what I mean. You went to a lot of trouble to arrange that meeting at ESWAT.”
“We spotted you at the Dogpatch incident with recording gear on. We hoped that you might have information that could help us.”
“Oh - that’s it? That makes sense. What’s next?”
“Now we take showers and get dressed. I need to take care of a few things in this safe house, then I’m going to Dallas and you’re going somewhere far away.”
That wasn’t what he expected. “You’re leaving? But what about the Tumorish? What will stop them from eventually just taking over everyone?”
“Whatever the Craven are planning, it seems they don’t want to just destroy this world. The Tumorish are a tool. A world like yours has potential value, and the Craven here had to pay a fee to try to exploit it. It would cost him a lot more to let the Tumorish just go exponential and ruin the world.”
“So, an alien is renting our world, and has to pay extra if he trashes the place? That’s why he keeps the Tumorish in line?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“That’s so, so, so very messed up.”
“That’s the way things work for them. The good news is that we’ve been able to identify most of the men that we encountered earlier today, and they were all socially isolated individuals.”
“How is that good news?”
“They are being discreet. If they just converted an entire town to Tumorish, that would be a sign that their plan didn’t need to account for anyone being around to ask questions later. The Craven are only assembling a large enough force to accomplish specific tasks. Like go after you. Or me.”
“Are they anywhere else? If I go somewhere like Hawaii, will they be there?”
“Probably not. For now. We don’t know what to expect.”
He shuddered. “So this - coming after me, searching for you - is just the beginning? You must have weapons that can stop them.”
She was thoughtful for a few seconds, then replied in a quiet, serious voice that he didn’t like at all. “We could stop them, yes. But it wouldn’t save you.”
She stared off into the distance again, as she seemed to do when working with her “Shadow” and remote team. He had noticed that her body would make some little motion once in a while, like rubbing her nose or picking at lint, but suspected that was automatic.
“You seem distracted. Are you talking to your Shadow?”
She rose and started gathering clothing strewn about the room. “Yes. The control system in this body has complete control over what sensory input reaches my brain. When I need to meet with her, or anyone on the support team, I can switch to what we call the Planning Stage. It’s like one of your video game or augmented reality experiences, except it replaces all my senses.”
Connor was glad to talk about something other than the Tumorish. “The ‘Stage’ thing sounds better than real life. Why would you ever leave it?”
“Well, only Actives get bodies which can shut off external perception entirely. And it isn’t quite as ‘real’ as real life. You can tell when you are in a simulation like the Stage because of the small details. The feel of wind or clothes on your skin requires input from millions of sensory nerves, and simulations generally don’t waste computing time on that level of detail because non-Actives can’t appreciate them. Things tend to look and feel…flat. You’d be surprised by how easy it is to tell the difference.”
“It still sounds pretty nice. Being able to leave your body while it does boring stuff would be fantastic. Does your support team get jealous?” As he said it, he realized they might be watching and listening. Weird.
She gave him a
wry grin as if she was reading his mind. “I only give them direct access to my sensorium when it's needed for missions, and they are all busy right now. Shadow can choose to eavesdrop whenever she likes but I trust her completely. She picked the core of the team years ago when Mezerello, my predecessor, came here. I don’t really know them that well. To answer your question, though, there are sometimes issues. Being chosen to be an Active is a great honor, and some non-Actives resent that they aren’t.”
“So your Shadow was working with Mezerello for a long time. Is it weird that you are kinda taking her place? Like you have moved into her…Planning Stage…and keep finding her things?” He wasn’t sure that he totally understood how to talk about the world she was describing. His head ached like he was back in school, cramming for finals.
“The Planning Stage is set up for each individual who uses it. You have complete control…over…the…” She stopped, staring off into space again. Her eyes widened. She leapt over and kissed him. “You’re a genius.”
#
“Shadow - Connor just gave me an idea. What if Mez didn’t think she was really fighting me. What if she thought she was in a simulation?”
“What? How?”
“She was talking about how it was ‘one of yours’ or something. Play it back.”
Shadow replayed that portion of the Interloper’s recording of the fight against Mezerello. “Shadow! Is that you? Is this one of yours?” She looked to Keryapt for more explanation.
“Mez didn’t act like she was in a fight for her life. The way she used the grenade launcher was almost casual, like she was playing a game. She thought that it was a training simulation that you put together.”
“But how?”
“Someone - the Craven, we should assume - got her head after the Dragon took it. Maybe this was all set up in advance or maybe it was an opportunistic moment. They went straight down into the underground base then detonated AM to cover their tracks. Once power from her body was cut, her brain was inactive. They had as much time as they needed to reverse engineer the Intruder and put her in a simulation of their choosing. What if they somehow convinced her that she was actually rescued and supposed to work with ESWAT? Without tanglecomms she’d have to rely on whatever they said…”
Both women had been processing at high speed for the conversation. Kery’s automatic advisor finally seemed to catch up to them and flashed her a NO. She paused for a confused moment, trying to figure out which question it might be responding to.
Shadow was unaware of the advisor’s message and continued where her mother had left off. “And when they need her to fight for them, they degrade the signal coming from the body they gave her to the point that it feels like a simulation. That might work.”
“But that doesn’t explain how they'd know all the details of her mission and background there. It isn’t as if they could have been intercepting the tanglecomm traffic, and the Intruder stored all its sensory data in the torso. It would have been destroyed by the AM.”
“What if they pretended they were Fleet and it was some sort of post-combat memory check? Could she have given them enough to fool her and tell her that her mission had changed?”
Keryapt frowned. “I didn’t know her before this, but I can’t imagine that she was dim enough to fall for that.”
“That’s not a helpful comment. You know what it takes to qualify as a candidate for Activation-“
“I’m sorry. You’re right.” She was still distracted by the advisor response. “Can you run a simulation of the timing it would have taken to get her head far enough away? I need to deal with a few things before I leave.”
“Of course. I’ll have Ruut do it, unless he is still working on something for you.”
“Actually I do need him to work on something for me. Can you get someone else?”
“If you really need him. I hope this side project of yours is worth it.”
#
Connor felt awe as he watched her assemble what she had described as a communication harness. Her arms were a blur of constant motion, grabbing parts from bins and boxes on the kitchen counter then connecting them together. Her eyes were turned towards her task, but her mind was clearly uninvolved as she was carrying on a conversation with him without the slightest hint of distraction.
“This building was quite a find. It was designed to quarter the sexual partners of the bankers and businessmen who ran this financial district. There are concealed entrances for pedestrians and vehicles, the soundproofing is extremely thorough and the staff was wonderfully uncurious about all the packages and equipment that arrived yesterday. And they are very serious about privacy. Physical and electronic. There could be a Meliarch living in this building and I wouldn’t even know about it.”
He marveled at the juxtaposition of decades old mirror-clad decadence with cutting edge microfactory. A pair of machines in the bathroom were sucking milky fluid from a jacuzzi and assembling it into parts of a large rifle. “Can you make a weapon for me? A laser or something?” A stack of shells for at least a dozen drones filled the shower stall, awaiting installation of the boxed motors sitting in front of them.
Her response from the kitchen verged on the sardonic. “Oh, there are so many reasons. Because you would have no idea how to fight with one? Because your civilization hasn’t invented power cells dense enough for decent hand held energy weapons? Or because any enemy that required you to have a weapon like that could kill you before you had a chance to pull it out?”
He wandered back to her as she finished her work, examined it briefly then loaded it into a sleek black backpack.
“Fine, fine. If anything happens I'll hide like a frightened puppy and let you handle it.” He found a convenient pocket in his new jacket for the phone she had just assembled to replace his lost one. “So, a 3 second push of the top button on this ‘Sneaker’ phone and you'll be able to see and hear what is going on around me?”
“Yes, but it relies on your local wireless systems. If you are in range of any wireless network and I send it a certain signal, it will start transmitting as well. But that might give away your location so we aren’t going to just leave it on all the time.”
“This cat and mouse game with the other aliens - is that how you normally interact?” He realized that almost all the machines in the apartment were connected by wires to a single dull looking black box. It must be the ‘tanglecomm’ device that connected everything to her home base.
“Sometimes there is contact between visitors to Labworlds like yours, but usually we keep things quiet. Out where we live, we keep as much distance as possible between ourselves and the next civilization.” She walked around him briskly, picked up the pieces of the rifle then returned to the kitchen. He followed her and sat on the one unoccupied stool.
“That sounds…prudent.” He wondered if that explained her current attitude. He had known on a conscious level that their sexual encounter was just a means to a successful medical end, but a lifetime of movies and television had led him to believe that more was possible.
“I just need to do one more thing, then from here we go to the airport. While I do, check the disguise kit and make sure the instructions make sense.”
“When will I see you again?” He wanted to spend more time with her, and help her, not be sent far away as a weakness she needed to hide.
“If the Tumorish do catch you and convert you, they will know everything you do. It’s better if you don’t know my next steps. You’re only human, after all.” She had the body of the rifle motionless in one hand, but the other was a blur as she used some sort of tool to remove small bits of material.
“Believe me, I know.”
#
Shadow had a model built of the Dogpatch incident site and was mapping out where tunnels might have gone. “Do you always try this hard to drive away your mates? It would explain some things about dad.” There was no one else on the Stage with them.
“That’s-“ not fair? Incorrect? The
truth was that she didn’t remember.
Shadow looked over at Kery. “What? He told me that you haven’t seen him since your last mission.”
That’s because I don’t remember him. Or raising you, or your brothers. I’m a shell. An impostor. And if you keep asking these questions then you will figure that out.
Shadow stared at her, hoping for some sort of explanation.
“Can we just get through this mission first?” Then I can get away from you without you knowing the truth.
Kery was startled by the YES response from the advisor. Ruut had made some optimizations to speed it up. There was no way the system could predict the future, so it was just guessing an answer to her spoken question based on her previous mission record. But she felt a pang of guilt that she really wanted the positive response to indicate she wouldn’t have to tell Shadow everything.
Her daughter sighed heavily. “Your way, as usual. It’s always the Keryapt Zess way.” She expanded her work space. “There was a vertical shaft here…connecting to an old storm water drain…here. If they had it planned in advance, they could have transported the head to the bay…here…before the shockwave from the antimatter blast hit. I think the odds-“
#
BANG went something in Kery’s hand. Something tugged at the sleeve of Connor’s jacket.
In a blur of parts and supplies she was gone. No - she had stopped at the window. The broken rifle parts clattered to the floor, startling him again.
When he looked back, she was still staring towards the sky. Searching for something.
He realized his arm had been cut, not just his sleeve. “Ahh-ah-ah. Dammit. What-“
The wind of her passing buffeted him as she went out the apartment door, leaving a splintered hole where the knob had been. Gone.
“Kery?”
He could feel wetness inside his sleeve. He wiggled his fingers, grateful that they all worked. He headed after her, pressing on the ripped part of his jacket to stop the bleeding underneath.
From the sixth floor landing he could just barely hear the sound of the main entrance ricocheting off its doorstop. He took the elevator down, hoping that the drops of blood on the carpet would not be noticed.
