by Foxx Ballard
The bridge of Nemesis was circular, composed of dull-gray metal, with a couple of heavy doors to either side. Windows surrounded them and looked out into space in all directions, and the ceiling was like one huge observatory dome. It appeared like they were at the top of the ship looking out windows, but she knew where they were in reality. Military vessels kept the bridge buried deep within the armored confines of the vessel to protect the ‘indispensable’ personnel. The beautiful views were just camera composites, but it all looked real, to the point you would get vertigo if the ship rolled left or right, even though the bridge itself was already in a constant spinning cylinder that emulated gravity towards the floor. It was just, you couldn’t see it, so it didn’t affect you. But what you could see on the outside did. It was a strange sensation. Leucantis did her best not to think about it. She didn’t even have a stomach anymore, being electrically powered, but somehow vertigo could still nauseate her. Damn this nanite-replicated brain for being too accurate. You think they would have accounted for that in the package when they made her fully bionic.
The part of the bridge that she stood on was raised, the dais on which her chair rested being the highest point, representing the highest rank. To her right and left were seated the next two in command, one step down, and as she looked at each of them, her bionic eye automatically scanned their features and spit out their identity into her eye-HUD and the microphone in her ear, as it always did. They really needed an option to turn that off. Maybe in the next update, when the EYE-O-Dyne rep who read her email responded to her complaint in eight years.
Beyond them was the lowest level, the bridge floor. It held four holographic projectors for her Officers to report the various ship statuses: Engineering, Medical, Tactical and Science. Officers never attended the bridge directly and at the moment, the projectors didn’t show anyone.
To her left, Leucantis’s eye passed quickly over “Civilian Advisor Filick”, his white and black tiger-striped features never being much to her taste. Let alone him being a civilian on a military ship in such a high position. They should have never instituted the “Keep Military Accountable Act”. She gave Filick a snide smile, which he returned in kind, baring a fang. He didn’t like her much either. She was turning away from him when he spoke to her, so she forced herself to look back.
“Do you think having a couple droids and a biobot—” Her glare caused him to rethink his words. “—a fully enhanced human—are worth all this effort? They don’t have the means to leave the planet… and was it not us that shot them down?” he asked with seeming sincerity. She knew he wasn’t sincere though, he just didn’t like her. Any chance for him to throw out the ‘biobot’ comment…
She rubbed her metallic hands together as she thought. “We haven’t had something interesting happen since that Helium 2 mining ship rescue. How long ago was that Commander?”
Leucantis turned to look at her second in command, the ruggedly handsome Valkyrie, his bronze skin, sandy blond hair flowing in neat waves, three-day-old stubble on a strong jaw. Now this was a man worth looking at. His uniform always seemed stretched by his musculature underneath, like it was requisitioned to him one size too small. His wings, the same bronze as his skin, unfolded as he stood and then quickly tucked in tightly behind him. His chair had a much lower back than hers, to prevent interfering with his wings. Her Eye-HUD reported him as “Commander Gabriel, Tallus tribal-designation: Mark-Seven-Nine.”
“I am not your personal computer, Captain. It was before we embarked on this mission.” His throaty, deep voice was like a massage to her ears. He crossed his arms with a look of impatience. “And speaking of fuel, are you not using up our reserves with this search? I don’t wish to be trapped out here when it is time to return to Earth.” He relaxed his stance and his tone a bit. “Forgive me, Captain, it just seems excessive.”
“Well, if you two agree,” she said, looking back and forth between them. “Which you never do, then how can I say no. Call off the—”
A low buzz on the arm of her chair interrupted her, causing her to glance down and note that the flashing red light indicated a priority alert.
“Presence accepted.”
In the position of the Science Officer projector, a hologram appeared of an enormous Ramogran in a lab coat. He had a cybernetic eye, as most of the scientists did. It saved on needing a microscope. In his hands, he carried a glass steno-tablet.
“Captain, this is Xeno-Science Officer Paligrad,” he said, his voice deep and rumbling.
“I know who you are. Skip the formalities, Officer. Continue.” She actually liked Paligrad. It was rare for a Ramogran to ascend to such an intellectual position. It was funny that a creature so large and physically imposing could be so… meek.
“The readings we received from the enhanced human…”
“Go on.”
“Well… although it was just a preliminary scan…”
He paused again. She was starting to become annoyed. “Just spit it out, Paligrad, you’re holding up the bridge! What did you discover?”
“I’ve conferred with my colleagues. It’s unknown tech. Very advanced. Her brain is human, but the rest of her physiology—someone has paid a great deal to outfit her with the best bionics and integrated them in ways we’ve never seen. It wasn’t just simple nanite-cell-replacement.”
“You thought this was important enough to interrupt me on the bridge. We’ve seen some pretty fancy androids and implants in our time, so it could be just an adaptation. What is so special about this one?”
“See, we thought that as well, Captain, but this particular fully enhanced human has an internal super-dense core, the size of an atom, and her containment is emitting energy. Emitting energy! Not a lot, mind you, but the implications are staggering. Our current fusion drives only work on a very large scale. This, this is—revolutionary, Captain. It’s possible it’s a prototype and we just haven’t heard of it yet…”
“Thank you, Officer Paligrad, I recognize the significance of this.” She cut off the comm and Paligrad’s image disappeared. A small self-replenishing power source. It meant she wouldn’t need to charge anymore! No more being tethered to a power source. She could travel. Anywhere. For virtually any length of time. Powered weapons would have endless ammunition. The only discovery that rivaled this was when they invented the miniature fission devices, but that had disastrous consequences when their containment was breached, so they had been banned hundreds of years ago. Using her eye movements and blinking to make selections within the HUD, she submitted a commendation application for Paligrad and turned down her pleasure center voltage by 20%. She didn’t need any more distractions. And here she had been about to call off the search.
“You both caught that?” she asked her seconds-in-command.
There was an overlapping “Yes, Captain,” as they both responded at the same time.
“Launch all remaining atmospheric fighters and the undersea drones to assist with the search. We need that biobot…” Dammit, now she was doing it. “Alive and unharmed.” That woman… being on this planet was an Earth Collective offense, and meant she could be arrested, and deep-scanned. Since the Earth-Collective-Open-Tech-And-Reveal Act, all technology designs were to be shared openly throughout the Collective. Companies could still charge exorbitant prices, that was expected, but anyone could make anything. It had been the greatest act for advancing humans into the Fusion Age.
Advisor Filick turned towards her. He was fiddling with his tail, which she found distracting. “Are the droids accompanying the enhanced human of any consequence?”
Captain Leucantis glanced briefly at her feline subordinate. “I don’t think so…” but she was interrupted by Commander Gabriel, who was reading something off the display on the arm of his chair.
“Captain, it appears that the droids are fission-powered, and would cause extensive damage to the surrounding area if their containment or cooling systems were breached, which may or may not include the enhanced hum
an.”
“Point taken, Commander. Inform the squads to not engage, just locate and capture.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Rusty: River side, Meadow, Unknown land mass
By the morning, Rusty didn’t feel like he had rested at all. Well, his mind maybe, but not his body. He was still wrapped in Angel’s wings, and he was pondering whether or not he could get out of them without waking her when she woke up anyway.
He cringed a little when she lifted her head and looked down at him with that feverish look that belied her hunger, and he resolved his senses, tensing his muscles to prepare for the spasms. Last night probably had him addicted to her, and if he kept going, he didn’t think he would ever be able to have another partner.
She smiled and sighed, trying to relax. “I will do my best not to subject you to it until you’re ready. You always have the right to say no. Always.”
“Problem, I don’t want say no.” Rusty looked up at her apologetically.
“I know what you mean.” She closed her eyes, taking a few deep breaths to calm herself.
Rusty took that as a signal it was a good time to climb out of her arms and wings and have a look around. He closed his eyes and sniffed the air, and over the smells of last night’s ardor he detected the deer, they were still close by. The pollen from the grass in the meadow they were in and the nearby trees. Moist earth from the stream’s edge, and the worms and insects beneath. He dug a few earthworms out of the soft soil and munched on them while he continued to peruse the area. He detected something… reptilian, but it was blowing towards them with the wind, so it should be a distance away.
Angel took this time to wade a few steps into the stream and wash herself.
At the same time that he heard a squeal from the deer, and their small hooves bounding through the grass towards the trees, he heard a heavy tearing, as if the earth itself were being sundered. The reptilian scent was suddenly strong. How could it have closed that fast?
Angel! He said it mentally, not wanting to draw attention to them.
I hear it too. Stay hidden.
Angel leapt into the air and gave a shocked intake of breath. “Run for the trees, Rusty!” but instead of letting him do that, she must have changed her mind because she dove and scooped him up mid-flight without ever touching the ground.
As they soared into the air and she flapped a few times to take them higher, he looked down at an amazing creature. It had risen from the earth, larger than the meadow itself, so large that trees had grown on its back. It was narrow, for its size, and long. It almost appeared to be made of the earth, but the front eyestalks that emerged from the enormous tube of rock and soil were definitely animal. The eyes were huge and unblinking, and they gazed about in different directions. Rubbery tentacles snapped out, cracking like whips. Five of them, and just like that, the deer family that had been bouncing through the long grass, were yanked back into the cavernous maw. Aside from smelling like the earth, the creature was definitely reptilian, but reminded him more of a hermit crab, with all the land it had attached to itself.
Now he kind of wished he had eaten the deer.
“Rusty!” Angel barked from behind his head and squeezed him with her arms a little tighter.
Rusty laughed.
The stream had been disrupted, and was now flowing into the rut that had been created when the creature had risen, so as it lowered itself back into the earth, there was a loud splorch followed by many bubbling and splurting hisses as mud and water sprayed out the sides.
He could feel her wingbeats struggling to keep them aloft. “There,” he pointed. A rocky bluff overlooking the ocean. Surely, none of those creatures could burrow into solid rock.
Angel glided down quickly and, with a few strong flaps, halted their momentum just before they landed. She put him down, but her hands remained on his shoulders loosely, showing her relaxed familiarity with him. He liked it.
The sun was warm; the breeze was calm. They could see to the horizon north and south along the coast. This was the perfect place to build a signal fire and see if they could reunite with Lais, Jack and Synth-E-Uh.
Angel, as usual, already knew what he was up to. “You gather wood and materials for the fire. I’m going to dig up something edible. I’m famished.”
They both made sure not to venture far off the rocky bluff. The forest reached its edge, so everything they needed was close at hand, and there were even some round, dark-purple berries growing on low bushes around most of the trees. Rusty watched her gather a few handfuls while he was picking up twigs and pieces of wood, but she only sampled a few. Made sense, find out if they were poisonous before eating too many. She turned and winked at him when he thought it. It hadn’t escaped his attention that the other humanoids could not eat the same variety of food that he could.
There were a few palms along the cliff, clinging to what little sand there was that high up. Rusty was reminded of the woody fibers in the husks of the seeds that grew from these palms, so he scaled one easily and yanked down a nut the size of his head, tossing it to the sand below. Smashing it on a rock a few times split it open and revealed the mass of fibers that he could use as tinder. There were no rocks that would spark when smacked together, so Rusty grabbed a thin, straight stick and broke off a thick green branch from a blade-leaf tree. He pulled a large strip off of the branch to expose the pulpy green middle. By forcing the stick with two hands back and forth in the same narrow groove on the branch, he soon had a little touch of smoke. Tamping some of the fibers into the groove, he blew on it repeatedly. Within a minute, he had a flame, and it was easy enough from that point to just keep adding larger and larger pieces of tinder and wood.
“Where did you learn to do that, Rusty?” Angel asked, her attention showing genuine curiosity. She approached and set down her handfuls of foraged berries. She had piled them in curled leaves to make them easier to carry.
“Village I lived in, the one attacked. They do this way. You see my mind, you don’t remember?”
She smiled. “They are your memories. I didn’t live them, so they aren’t triggered like a memory for me. More like a play in a theater. It would take me a long time to rummage through them to find the point where you had that particular memory. If I sat and dug deep enough, I would likely uncover the answer, but since you’re here and it’s easier to ask…”
“Make sense.” He smiled back at her. “That funny though, me look through yours fast.”
“Yes, your ability to process information is amazing.”
He shrugged. He was just the way he was.
When the fire was burning well, and he had a layer of coals beneath it, he started piling on wetter deadwood and green branches with lots of leaves. The logs would spit and shoot sparks nearby, so he pulled up the sparse grass near the edge of the rocks and piled a little more sand there to prevent the fire from accidentally spreading.
The branches emitted loud spattering crackles for a few seconds each time he tossed new ones on, the blue-green sharp leaves wilting and curling in the flames. When it was a bonfire two paces across and he couldn’t stand to be near it, he stopped adding wood and watched as all the green, wet wood emitted thick plumes of gray smoke. Within a few minutes, the line of smoke was stretching up into the sky and, on a clear day like today, should have been visible as far as the eye could see.
As he sat watching Angel picking at the berries, deciding they were good enough to eat, he dug into the dead wood of a log beside him that he hadn’t yet added to the fire and ate the grubs and insects his pointed nails revealed. His accelerated metabolism required almost twice the food of the other races he had observed. He was always thankful his diet was so diverse. And delicious. Angel stuck her tongue out at him as he savored a grub.
“How long should we give them?” she asked. The question was a double-edged sword as he noted the mischievous smile forming at the corner of her mouth.
“On calm day, few hours when they see smoke, if they see smoke
.”
“So do we have time for…”
Rusty sighed, but he had a smile on his face. “Yes, have time.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lais: Cave, Unknown Mountain-side, Unknown land mass
The cave mouth was lit with sunlight, and the shadows of the searching ships flew by steadily now. Lais knew they hadn’t been detected yet, or they would have landed, but they were certainly persistent. The roar of passing jets was so common it was hard to count exactly how many were out there.
Jack appeared ready to head outside, but Synth-E-Uh held out a restraining arm, and whispered to him. “We can’t, Jack. You know where they’ll send us.”
He put his hands on one of the crates that were attached to Synth-E-Uh. “Maybe if we gave them a fission-powered blender, they could make their drinks right on the beach! That would make most humanoids happy, right? Right?” The hopeful emoji on his head monitor was back-lit, so was easily seen, but didn’t provide enough light to reveal their surroundings. Lais didn’t think it would matter if he turned a light on now, anyway. They were far back from the cave mouth. It was extremely unlikely someone would see the dim light if they were already outside in the sunlight.
Synth-E-Uh suddenly piped in. “They’ve discovered Angel and Rusty, they’re alive! At least it sure sounds like them.”
Overwhelming concern struck Lais, and hope at the same time. “You haven’t been communicating with the ships, have you?!” she blurted in a hoarse whisper. “After what I said about using wireless?!”
