Friendly Fire

by Michelle Levigne

  M'kar had her father wrapped around her little finger. And when being "Po'pa's prize" didn't work, she had been known to knock him flat and bounce on his chest until he ran out of breath and finally listened. Genys had been present at several father-daughter wrestling matches. She and M’kar had met during Basic, and Dr. Jeyn and Ashrock considered her part of the family.

  "No need to ask the Poet Prime," Genys said now, looking down on the hive-like activity surrounding the Defender. She could barely recognize her ship, with all the new pods and bays and extensions being woven into the body of what had once been a medium-sized survey vessel. "She's still our lady, just with some new … luggage? Luggage and toys to haul around."

  "I was worried she'd end up looking like a fat water bird that couldn't even waddle down to the water's edge anymore," M'kar said. "She looks powerful. Even sleek. Jasper is going to be smoked when he sees they peeled off all that rainbow scarring over the shuttle bay."

  "Was. Past tense. Someone realized what they were looking at before they got to work burning and cutting it all away. I'm told they had to move to a lecture hall, with all the engineers who wanted to hear his team tell how they made those repairs and modified all those alien alloys to not blow us up the first time we activated the stellar drive."

  She shuddered, remembering that near-death experience, four Alliance Standard years ago. She had been promoted to Executive Officer after the previous Exo got permanently inebriated by unidentified alien bacteria, then tried to fly a shuttle out through the roof of the shuttle bay. He had been medically retired. Genys had spent her first five days as Exo without any sleep, coordinating the teams of engineers fighting to patch their beloved ship on the far side of a Tyers Chute and unable to call for help.

  "Okay, that should have soothed some of Jasper's feelings. He's really proud of that patch work. The last I knew he was about three levels closer to patenting that amalgam to make him and Treinna and Tress unbearably wealthy. Doesn't he need that patch to stay in place to prove his claims?"

  "It's in one piece … sitting in pride of place in some engineering museum in the lower levels of the station, from what I hear." She grinned when M'kar muttered something guttural in Nisandrian. "What?"

  "I heard about that museum. The nicest name they've got for it is something along the lines of 'Enlo shows great mercy to vacuum-brained indiferps who should have blown themselves inside out a dozen times already.' It's a mixture of multiple languages and condenses quite nicely."

  They laughed together, and for a few moments there was weary, comfortable silence. They watched the swarm of workers in space suits and drone craft surrounding their ship.

  "Why are we here, exactly? Something you don't want others to hear?" Genys asked.

  "That's part of it -- trying to clear my head enough to talk. Something about the energy fluxes and the absorption properties in the materials they're using." M'kar sighed, turned around and leaned back against the transparent curve. Genys had to fight down the urge to shout for her to stand up, or she would fall backwards into vacuum.

  "You mentioned critter-chatter. Problem?"

  "Like nothing I've ever sensed before. More aware than anything I've ever contacted." Again, her fingertips pressed against her temples. "They're aware. Like children."

  "There are laws against transporting sentient creatures off their homeworlds," Genys whispered.

  "The thing is, I'm not sure they can be called sentient. Not without calling up a lot of counselors and philosophers and the top minds on Le'anka. Off the top of my head -- and I wish I could take the top off, just to release the fizzing sensation -- my impression is that these minds are on the knife's edge of sentient, but they're kind of merged with Human minds, so they're taking on the … flavor? Aroma? Tint? I can't tell if the impression of sentience comes from the Human influence, or it's native in the critters."

  "Can you even call them critters if they're self-aware?"

  "Don't you go turning into a counselor on me." M'kar grinned and pushed off the invisible support behind her. "Whew. Should have come out here earlier for relief. You know what this reminds me of?"

  "Considering I don't know what kind of psionic noise you've been putting up with, nope."

  "It's like when we're on shore leave, and all the ship's children are shouting for you to come play with them. Your head is going in different directions because you want to hear what each one is saying, and you want to respond. And there's always this sense you missed something important."

  "Uh huh." Genys grinned, despite the twisting in her chest.

  The ship's command crew took turns helping with the education of the children, depending on their specialties. While M'kar's psionic gifts focused mostly on animals, she sensed when potential psionic Talent was about to burst into active life. Genys had demonstrated the ability to spot future officers and leaders. She hoped she wouldn't lose the title of Aunt Genys just because her captain's stars meant five times as much responsibility, and blame potential, on her shoulders.

  The communication grill in the ceiling strip over their heads let out a six-note warble to get attention. Then the locator bracelet all officers and crew had to wear when they were on the station glowed yellow and buzzed on Genys' wrist. M'kar frowned and held out her arm, showing her bracelet also glowing yellow.

  "Captain Arroyan of the Defender. Attention Captain Arroyan. Please report to Administrator Wexel's office." The synthetic voice sounded more mineral than unisex.

  "Acknowledged." Genys pressed the sides of the bracelet together at the connection bulge.

  "Lt. Talents Chief M'kar of the Defender," the computer voice began.

  "Acknowledged," M'kar said. "Same location as Captain Arroyan?"

  "Negative. Please contact Psi Specialist Dulit of the survey ship Corona. Specs downloading to your locator band now."

  "Acknowledged." She raised one eyebrow in question, then gestured for Genys to lead the way. "We've been here long enough for someone to get into a bar fight. Especially with all the indiferps spreading and adding to rumors." They passed through the airlock and into a station corridor.

  "True." Genys sighed. Such was a captain's lot. "Do you know Dulit?"

  "He’s part of Infrenx." M'kar shrugged. "Good luck." She ducked down an intersecting corridor before Genys could respond.

  There it was again, that flicker of pain in her eyes, at mention of her core training group at the Academy. Genys could only imagine the nightmares that M’kar would never share with others. She had access to the classified files on that near-disaster two years ago and knew what the members of Infrenx had gone through. They had saved the Academy, quite possibly all of Le’anka, and half of them had died. Genys respected her choice not to discuss that battle, but she had the awful suspicion that as M’kar’s commanding officer, she would have to confront her about it to help her heal. Someday.

  Down two more corridors and one more level to reach her destination. Genys held her breath as she stepped into the reception area of Administrator Wexel's office. M'kar was right, they were due for a clash between the Defender’s crew and the local indiferps. She saw no one, not even Wexel's irritatingly efficient and protocol-ruled assistant with a weaselish face. The type of person she expected to find out any day now was actually Gatesh. She was about to approach the closed door of the administrator's office when the door to a conference room on the far side of the reception area slid open.

  "Ah, good, thank you for coming so quickly, Captain." Wexel leaned out far enough for his glistening ebony head to be visible. He beckoned and retreated back out of sight.

  Genys stepped through the door. Her first glance was enough to estimate thirty people crammed into the conference room. Maybe a dozen were her crew, maybe ten were retrofit and upgrade engineers. The rest looked like civilians, maybe employees of the various restaurants, shops, and services provided by the station. Decker, the Defender's head of security, gestured with a tip of his head as Genys’s second look around t
he room put names to faces.

  "Please --" She stopped short when he stepped aside, revealing a rotund man dressed in a furry tunic and leggings. "Jorono Cynes?"

  "No, no, not at all," the little man jabbered in a fruity, mock-aristocratic voice. "Mistaken identity. I swear."

  "It's him all right," Wexel said. "Identification verified. We owe your crew for recognizing and apprehending him. They were quite adamant that he had to be stopped and his cargo impounded."

  "What is it this time, Cynes? Hooples or cherashires?" Genys wondered if someone had put Gatesh Green in her spicewater, and she was hallucinating all this.

  Please, Enlo, let this be a hallucination?

  "He brought hooples on my station. What was that about cherashires? Please tell me I heard wrong." Wexel looked like he wanted to melt through the chair and the deck plating.

  "You didn't hear wrong." She shuddered, thinking about rodents that had been genetically engineered, on purpose, to survive vacuum and extremes of temperature. No one, not even the Gatesh, were willing to accept responsibility for that particular nemesis to all space travel.

  Wexel's ebony skin turned to ashes. "Next you’ll tell me he's the one who genetically engineered those monstrosities?"

  "No, he just accidentally found the chromosomal key to unwind the DNA helix and allow three species to interbreed, to find something that would hunt down and eradicate cherashires." Genys thanked Decker with a nod when he pulled out a chair from the table for her.

  "But?"

  "Oh, you don't have time to hear all the 'buts' and addendums to that little money-making experiment."

  "Totally by accident," Cynes whimpered. "Can't do it again. All my notes, all my equipment, lost when the space station blew up."

  "That wasn't your equipment in the first place," Decker growled. "Genius here stumbled on a cache of Gatekeeper technology. Instead of turning it over to the Academy, he played with it. Broke it. And lost it."

  "Enlo was being merciful when the Ankuar blew up the station," Genys said.

  "Not merciful enough. He's still around, isn't he?"

  She muffled a chuckle into a snort and rubbed at her face until she could get her grin under control. This wasn't a time for amusement, though she did love to see Cynes sweat and squirm.

  "So what he came up with was hooples?" Wexel looked Cynes over, head to foot, his expression clearly saying he couldn't believe the pudgy little man's brain generated enough energy to move his body, much less managed to genetically engineer a new species.

  "Unfortunately. Even more unfortunately, they're able to reproduce. And they don't even hunt cherashires like they were meant to. They just kind of creep around, sucking up anything they touch. Organic and inorganic, somehow they find nourishment."

  "Useful for disposal of any kind of garbage." Cynes sat up a little taller for about three seconds. Then his you'll-forgive-me-because-I'm-adorable grin faded. The waterfall on his face increased output. "Still looking for what poisons them. Very sorry."

  "That little benefit backfired, too." Genys glared at Cynes, who seemed to shrink about three sizes in the space of ten seconds. "Depending on what they've been fed, hooples release certain addictive psychotropic gases."

  "At least you can wear gas masks to filter out the farts," one of her crew muttered. That earned grimaces and disgusted sounds from the station personnel.

  "Wait a moment. I'm lost." Wexel shook his head, as if he was trying to knock it back into synch with the conversation. "I saw the mechanical hooples. Those are bad enough." He shuddered, indicating he was among Cynes' latest victims. "Are you saying the live versions are on my station too?"

  "He shouldn’t be making the robot hooples." Genys wanted to curl up and cry. "We erased all his files and took all the prototypes and locked up the psychotic programmer working with him." The last encounter her ship had with Cynes and his hooples had been bad enough. Robotic and organic hooples, on one station?

  Please, Enlo, hasn't my crew been through enough already? It's bad enough we're the Nanny Ship now. Why Cynes on top of it?

  "Still making the robots," Decker said on a growl. "Even more addicting than the farting furballs."

  "How exactly do they work?" Wexel glared at Cynes. "The results, I already know. How do they work, and how do we stop them?"

  "They generate a frequency and a light show, in the ranges that Human eyes and ears can’t consciously register. It creates an addiction in the brain. You feel great, but you want to spend all your time playing with it."

  "The newest version of subliminal programming." One of the civilians held out a ball of neon yellow fur, with four sets of oversized mosquito wings and eight pairs of legs. Genys itched just looking at it. "We were just realizing what was happening to us when we saw your crew chasing him. Captain, do you know how to set us free?"

  "Is it turned off?" She didn't care that she was sweating. Her face felt cold enough, she had probably gone white.

  "Still looking for the data access code, but we've got one of Dr. Tahl's maskers running," Decker said.

  "Bless you." If she didn't think he would live up to his name with a good right hook, Genys might have kissed him.

  "Only works for this room. Everybody who got exposed is in here. I've got five of my men with earplugs and eye shields, searching the quarters of all these people, looking for their hooples. Hopefully before anyone else gets exposed and has to have one." Wexel shuddered. "Should they be wearing gasmasks, too?"

  "I only wanted to bring happiness to people in dire need of relaxation and companionship," Cynes whimpered.

  "Am I safe?" Genys barely waited for Decker's nod. "I'll round up the medical staff and release all our ship's logs dealing with Cynes. Sorry, Administrator, but you're going to be prisoner in here for a little bit longer."

  "As long as it isn't permanent." He tried to smile. "I knew it had to be dangerous. The moment I looked at the ugly thing, I wanted to cuddle it. Not natural at all."

  ~~~~~~

  M'kar stepped into the long corridor of Dock Three. The survey ship Corona was Sargo class, making it roughly a fourth of the original size of the Defender, with quarters for about one hundred people, and equipment and cargo bays taking up two-thirds of the ship's available space. It sat at the very last docking portal, farthest out from the station. The familiar lean, tall, white-haired figure of Garion Dulit paced in front of the closed iris of the portal. Through the semi-transparent walls of the dock, she could make out the long, flexible umbilical, leading out to the elongated egg of the Corona.

  "Infrenx," she called out, and held up her left hand with the tattoo of the infrenx on her palm, in greeting.

  Their class had been special, a grouping of anomalous Talents, needing the strongest mind to teach them. For their class focal image, Master Reydon had chosen the mythical infrenx, a bird born in fire, with healing power. When they were students, they thought their master had chosen the bird because one of their classmates could call up flame from thin air. They learned better more than two Standard years ago. During an impromptu reunion, they had needed to recreate their mind-circle and combine their Talents against a danger that infiltrated the Academy grounds. The survivors of the battle addressed each other as infrenx, to honor the fallen and renew their vows to each other.

  When they graduated from the Academy, they had all, in one way or another devoted their trained Talents to serving the Alliance. Most were dedicated to finding the other Human cultures scattered across the universe centuries ago by the Gatekeepers, or seeking out the Gatekeepers themselves. M'kar had joined the Fleet, serving in E&D. Other classmates had been diplomats, or served on the front lines in emergencies. Dulit signed on with the Corona, an independent survey ship. Usually privately funded, by corporations or scholarly organizations, survey ships were like E&D ships, seeking answers to the nagging, unanswered questions. The location of Core, the mythical Human homeworld. Which of the many disparate legends about the Diaspora were true? Or just who the
nethers did the Gatekeepers think they were, scattering Humans to dozens of unfriendly alien worlds with nothing but the most basic preparation, warning, or supplies? Why didn't they stick around to make sure all the seeded worlds and cultures survived? Perhaps even more important of all: Was there really an impending galaxy-destroying disaster, prompting the Diaspora? Or did someone miscalculate on a galactic scale?

  "Infrenx," Dulit called, stopping his pacing with a smile. He stayed there, hands behind his back, watching her come to him. "You look good. Still can't wrap my brain around a barbarian like you, handling all the rules and regs of the Fleet without going raving bonkers."

  When she was closer, his grin looked weary. He settled down on one of the benches bolted to the deck on either side of the portal iris. Still with his hands behind his back.

  "Uh huh. What kind of trouble are you in?"

  Chapter Two

  "Trying to avoid it. Ordinarily, something this big, I'd trust the captain's decisions, but this …" He glanced over his shoulder.

  The gesture was foolish. For one thing, they would have heard the iris groan and scrape open, so no one could sneak up on them. For another, a dozen security cameras could be watching Dulit right that moment. M'kar shivered a little. Dulit wasn't the melodramatic or paranoid type. The lines around his eyes, the gray smears in his cheeks, the slight rasp in his voice spelled out a man under strain. She knew he admired his captain greatly. What could make him go against any decision his captain made?

  Then she caught her breath and she knew. She held out her tattooed hand.

  "Exactly," Dulit whispered. He tugged down his collar, to reveal his matching tattoo, the flaming wings spread to embrace the dip in his collar bone.