Galaxy Dog

by Brett Fitzpatrick

  There was a disquieting presence. There was another like him, nearby, a rival. It was an overpowering feeling, but at the same time - the rational part of him realized - completely nuts. He decided it must be a side effect of the medication. He tried to push the feeling from his mind, but it wouldn't go away.

  Next time the robot that fed him came into the room, he found himself surreptitiously watching, looking for an avenue of escape.

  The door always opened without warning and the robot was inside with the door closed inside a couple of seconds. Kanta started mulling over whether that was time to dive from the bed and roll under the closing door. He thought it might be, and it would mean some action at last if he gave it a go.

  ***

  "Shivia," the space station computer said.

  "Yes, Reason," Shivia acknowledged, lifting her head from her researches on species hybridization.

  Nothing she found bore any resemblance to the effects she had been able to produce herself. Her results were more like cutting-edge research in nanotechnology than anything in the literature.

  "I'm sorry to disturb you," the computer continued, "but we have an escaped Z-human."

  "Show me the situation," Shivia ordered.

  Her desk screen sprang into life showing Kanta, thankfully now at least wearing a surgical gown, in the corridor outside his lab. He walked to the second secure lab and started sniffing at the edges of the door.

  "Fascinating," Shivia said.

  "Shall I send a containment team?" Reason asked.

  "Yes," Shivia said absently, "That may well be necessary, but they are not to be armed and they are not to be wearing power armor, just a simple hardened environment suit. I don't want my Z-human hurt."

  Shivia continued to watch Z-human 1 as he investigated the locked lab door.

  "Open the door to secure lab two," Shivia said.

  "The containment team has not yet arrived," Reason warned.

  "Just do it," Shivia said.

  On the screen, she saw Kanta take an involuntary step back as the large door slid unexpectedly up out of the way.

  After a moment's hesitation, he went into the lab. The view on Shivia's monitor changed to show him entering. Z-human 2 was dong his best to hide in the shadows of the lab, and his gray skin was becoming the same antiseptic white as the walls.

  Kanta saw him immediately and charged at him, driven by some terrible instinct. The man stopped cowering and came out to meet Kanta, and swiped at Kanta's face at the same moment as Kanta threw a punch. Kanta managed to duck in time, his opponent seemed slow and uncoordinated with the arm, and then Kanta saw why. The unfortunate's human arm had been removed and replaced with some alien monstrosity, with the elbow in slightly the wrong place and terminating in log claws.

  Kanta stepped inside the man's reach, but felt the claws digging into his back.

  "By the powers," Kanta yelled.

  He had to finish this quickly before his opponent did any more damage with his claws. He punched as quickly as he could, again and again, he smashed his head into his opponent's nose, he felt himself becoming wilder, losing his humanity, and then everything went dark.

  He came to later, not much later, he had a feeling not much time had passed but he also had the feeling that a lot had happened.

  He was in a secure ward, not his he suddenly realized, but very similar, except there was something wrong. The antiseptic white of the walls and the competent flashing lights of the displays were marred here and there by blood. And, he noticed, some of the more delicate medical technology was toppled and smashed. The bed was empty, and he was on the floor straddling something. He didn't dare look down to see what was between his legs.

  He had to force himself to lower his head, half knowing what he would see.

  He saw one of the other volunteers, his arm replaced by an alien claw and his skin gray, but the worst was the skull. The skull had been bashed in, and in Kanta's right hand was one of the rails intended to keep a patient from falling out of bed. He had obviously ripped it from its usual position - he had no idea how much strength that would require - and used it to brain this other unfortunate human. Another kid from the underclass, like him, just trying to get by.

  The nagging feeling of a nearby rival had gone. Kanta was immediately convinced that the drugs they had given him had driven him psychotic, along with turning him gray, it was the only explanation.

  Then a group of soldiers came into the lab, dressed in environment suits and swinging nightsticks. Kanta didn't have the will to resist them. He took his punishment. He deserved it.

  "What have they done to me?" he yelled, as the blows came raining down.

  Shivia leaned back from the monitor, her face a mask of shock.

  "What indeed?" she said, "What indeed?"

  ***

  Kanta was having more and more trouble thinking, he knew it. He wondered if the troopers who had returned him to his secure room had given him brain damage. Then, with a grim smile, he decided not to think about it. He felt the presence of more rivals, all around in the lab complex, and his immediate problem was how he was going to get to them and bash their brains out.

  He knew how to do it, of course, he just didn't know how he knew. A plan had appeared almost unbidden in his mind, a plan that took full advantage of his new powers, though he would have been unable to explain in words what these powers were, or how they operated. The first step was the feeding robot, so he would just have to be patient and wait for it to arrive. He had once hated just waiting, he had once been a man of action, but now lying in wait seemed to come naturally. His yellow eyes lit up when the feeding robot arrived, the door shutting much more quickly behind it now.

  He asked the robot for food. When the droid came over, he grabbed it by the left hand. He felt his hideous gray skin melt and flow over the hand, felt a weird crackling and popping sensation. When he let go of the robot's arm, only part of it remained. It had been stripped back to the struts and actuators, looking very similar to the human bones that the robot's structure was based on.

  An alarm started sounding in the background as he went calmly over to the door. The robot tried to stop him, but he smashed it to the floor.

  Chapter 19

  ––––––––

  A Buzzer appeared at the end of the corridor and Knave fired. Remembering how fast the Buzzer had been on them last time, he aimed for the Buzzer's legs, scoring some lucky shots and bringing it down. The massive metal beast behind it, an even larger Buzzer than usual, this one with an extra arm projecting from its torso, just below the usual four, was forced to go round its fallen comrade, opening it up to Knave's fire. He pummeled it to the ground with blaster bolts.

  "That's some pretty fancy shooting," Jay said.

  "It was luck," Knave said, "They could just have easily made it into the room, damaged and pissed off and ready for a fist fight. Do you know what chance a human has in a fist fight against a Buzzer?"

  "Nope," Jay said.

  "Zero," Knave informed him, matter-of-factly.

  Altia ran through his gun sights down the corridor towards the dead Buzzers, or hopefully dead.

  "What are you doing?" Knave yelled, "You crazy?"

  She pulled two Buzzer weapons from the creatures' arms and came running back, the heavy weapons dragging on the floor behind her. She shoved one in the direction of Jay and gathered the other up into her arms, turning it this way and that as she searched for some conformable way to hold the ungainly, alien weapon.

  She ended up with it clamped beneath her arm and resting on her hip, while she aimed with one hand, leaving the other to operate the surprisingly complex controls.

  "Why does a gun need so many buttons," she grumbled.

  "Just push the slider up to max and press the red stud when you want to kill something," Jay said.

  Altia fired down the corridor, again and again to get her aim and Jay followed suit.

  A Buzzer head appeared round the corner at the
end, and quickly ducked back into cover as all three fired at it.

  "I'm pretty sure nobody hit it," Knave said.

  "But we gave it a scare," Jay said.

  The three of them were able to lay down a very dense amount of fire with their weapons and the Buzzers seemed to have abandoned the idea of just running down the corridor. The Buzzers seemed content to pop out of cover, fire off a few shots and hide again, which was exactly what Knave, Altia and Jay were doing as well.

  "I guess they're biding their time," Knave said, "until they can find a route that brings them in behind us. Once they start coming down all these corridors at once, we'll be in trouble.

  Then Altia noticed something. There was a huge dark shape watching them from the other side of the striated ice. It bashed its head against the ice, once, twice, until cracks started to appear, radiating outwards from where it was bashing its head. She noticed its eyes most of all, they were fiery yellow and intense against the dark shadow of its head.

  Knave and Jay had noticed this new interruption now as well.

  "What is that?" Knave asked.

  "Shouldn’t the ice be thicker?" Jay asked.

  "The whole place should be filled with cyanide gas and be cold enough to freeze our eyeballs, but here we are not even wearing the helmets of our environment suits. This place just doesn't make sense, but an ancient alien AI just fixed it for us. The technology of this place is like magic," Altia said.

  A Buzzer had sneaked down the corridor while they were distracted and was now using its fallen comrades as a barricade. It was just one short charging run from making it into the room now, among them.

  All three fired at the sneaky Buzzer to try and make it keep its head down, to drive away all thoughts of making a run at them.

  "This situation is deteriorating rapidly," Knave said.

  "That's putting mildly," Altia said, trying to keep up a rapid rate of fire with the alien weapon as it jumped around in her grip.

  Then, at last, Rort spoke again.

  "I have computed an escape route," he said, "I am downloading the route into the memory of Jay."

  "I just got a data packet," the robot confirmed.

  "Goodbye," Rort said.

  The creature behind the ice convulsed its body, shouldering the ice and dislodging a giant chunk of the striated wall. The huge shard of ice fell into the room, bringing the terminal they had used to contact Rort with it, ripping the terminal out of the ice by its metal roots.

  "Goodbye," Altia said, softly.

  Frigid water was now leaking from the cracks in the ice and instantly turning to steam as it made contact with the heat of the chamber. The Buzzer had taken advantage of the distraction and charged into the room. All three targeted it and shot it down, but they were retreating now, walking backwards and shooting. Buzzer after Buzzer came skittering into the room, raising their weapons. There was no way Altia or Knave would survive massed fire, in just an environment suit, it was impossible, Knave knew that. Who knew what Jay's new alien body could take, but his aim was poor and he was having difficulty dealing with the weight of the Buzzer weapon, so Knave guessed the new body was no heavy-duty combat model. He articulated all these thoughts going through his mind at the speed of lightning with just two words.

  "Not good."

  He winced, instinctively glancing away from the certainty of oncoming death, but it didn't come. Instead the ice finally gave way. It came cascading down between them and the Buzzers, spewing frigid water that instantly turned to steam, obscuring vision, turning the Buzzers into indistinct forms seen through the fog, and then the creature emerged. A dark presence amid the steam, yellow eyes shining, between the two groups. If it twitched to the right it would be on them, but if it twitched to its left, it would be on the Buzzers. The creature swayed side to side for a very long fraction of a second. Then it went left, descending on the Buzzers among a hail of discharges as the Buzzers tried to fight it off with blaster bolts. The creature seemed unaffected, and then followed the sound of its teeth, though Knave wasn't sure if the sound was teeth, or a beak, or mandibles, as the creature crunched through the Buzzer armor.

  "They devolved," Altia said.

  "What?" Knave grunted.

  "This way," Jay yelled, in his alien voice.

  The creature reacted instantly to the voice, twitching alert. It turned to watch them as they ran, hesitated for a moment then came slithering after them. The Buzzers that had survived its savage lunge retreated away from it, firing at it as it went. The blaster bolts gouged lumps from the creature's hide and left long smoking track-line scars, but the creature didn't even slow down. It just released a blood-curdling roar, uncomfortably similar to Jay's new voice.

  "I left my helmet back there," Knave yelled.

  "Me too," Altia shouted.

  "That's too bad," Jay said, "Because it looks like our route takes us to the surface.

  ***

  At that moment, above them, the Buzzer swarm was going on alert. Their sensors had detected a disturbance in the surface of the gas giant, Phaeton 7. A small disturbance, but worrying. The commander of the Buzzer swarm was cautious by nature and suspected some kind of booby trap, left by those disgusting, squishy humans. He sent a single pod ship to investigate, a large and formidable vessel, but, ultimately, expendable.

  The pod ship started relaying images of the disturbance. It looked like one of the thousands of other megastorms in the upper layers of gas that made up the visible part of the planet's atmosphere. It looked perfectly normal, but the Buzzers assigned to astrogation and planetology, who were very reliable members of his council of invasion advisers assured him that their sensors told them the disturbance was not natural.

  Any force powerful enough to mess with the air currents of a gas giant and reconfigure them had to be investigated. The commander watched the pictures absently, it would normally have given up some time ago and passed the task on to an underling, but there was little else to do at that moment.

  The invasion had gone like clockwork. The horrible, organic humans with their throbbing veins right at the surface of their flabby bodies had been crushed, or rather squished, their proud navy battle group sent scuttling away with heavy losses. It had been most gratifying watching huge human frigates and battleships bursting like ripe cantaloupes under the Buzzer guns. The ground action had been swift and perfunctory, with a few reports of survivors being found and executed even now, but basically all the fighting was over. The commander had long ago handed responsibility for the Drifter complex over to the spawn of the scientist hives, strange creatures in the commander’s eyes, strange in comparison to the spawn of the warrior hives, but Buzzers just like him, and now the commander found itself at a bit of a loose end.

  The pod ship had sent out fighters and they were relaying pictures from a multitude of different angles now. One of the views was relaying pictures from down the eye of the storm, and even though the commander was no expert, just a simple warrior, he had seen a good share of gas-giant storms and this one looked to go unusually deep. He called an adviser, his best planetologist, to the command bridge of his flagship. In the minutes it took the scientist to arrive, the storm had gotten perceptibly deeper. The scientist entered and bowed low. Its body, bloated with delicate scientific instruments beneath its thin carapace, dwarfed the more compact and robust commander.

  "How deep does that storm go?" the commander asked.

  "Very deep," the scientist replied, "Down to the gas - liquid layer, where diamonds rain down on the planet's surface like sleet."

  "Could this be a human trap, trick, or weapon?"

  "We have seen nothing to suggest they have anything like this level of technology."

  "True," the commander mused, "All their advanced technology is stolen or reverse engineered from us. They are the most disgusting, hairy vermin."

  The commander paused, his scientist beside him, watching the storm on a giant view screen.

  "So what is going on here?" t
he commander asked.

  The scientist was quiet for a few seconds, communing with its fellow hive members. Then it spoke.

  "We believe it is Drifter technology. We have discovered a hidden layer of the complex, deeper than any yet mapped."

  "Go on," the commander said.

  "Reports are confused. There are problems with communications in the vicinity of large Drifter artifacts, but there might have been a first contact. The contact was carried out by warriors, hunting some human vermin that were scuttling around down there, and the first contact does not seem to have gone well."

  The commander laughed, a chittering sound like a distorted and metallic recording of locust wings.

  "We warriors were never good at first contacts."

  "Indeed."

  Then they both fell silent, as the sensors aboard the podship and the fighters it had deployed started to report a shape ascending through the eye of the storm. The form was very indistinct and could not be resolved yet, leaving information about size and shape a little hazy, but there was no doubt what color it was - Drifter bronze.

  "What is your assessment?" the commander asked.

  "We have seen nothing like this before," the scientist whispered, uncomfortably, "I can give you no guidance about what to do."

  The sensors suddenly started to get a better, less distorted, view of the ascending structure. At last an estimate of size became available.

  "It's small," the scientist said.

  "It's the size of a dreadnought," the commander corrected, "That is not small."

  “On a planetary scale, I meant.”

  Then a 3D representation of the shape of the structure appeared, based on what they could guess and extrapolate from the front view. It was an elegantly curved wedge of streamlined technology, tapering to the front and stubby at the rear. The commander was an expert in military spaceship design and recognized the purpose of the spaceship immediately.

  "I would guess that it's a versatile, fleet-action type warship," he said.