Transformation Protocol

by David M. Kelly

  I sensed rather than saw movement behind me and tried to get to my feet. As I turned, something bone-crunchingly hard punched into my back, like someone whipping a steel bar across my neck, and I fell. By instinct I kicked out, catching whoever it was several times with my feet, but my vision was fading. I rolled over, as a blurred shadowy figure jumped forward, and a series of blows smashed into my ribs. I brought my arms up to ward them off, but the attack continued until a final impact caught me just above the eye, and the lights went out.

  *

  I heard shouts around me, but my head was so full of mush I couldn't make out any of the words. Lights flashed in my eyes, and I turned away from their intensity. Nothing made any sense. My head felt like it had been removed, and my body like I'd been through a metal crusher—at least three times. My left hand was numb, despite the previous injury, and I wondered if I was waking up after an all-night bender. Maybe I'd dreamed about the mission. Perhaps Dollie hadn't divorced me after all? The pain was deeper than the worst hangover imaginable, though, and somehow I knew it was more physical.

  I wanted to roll over, but something, or perhaps someone, held me down. I felt a bed underneath me, but in my current state it felt more like I was lying on a slab of astrocrete.

  "Joe?" I didn't identify the voice as Logan's at first. In fact, trying to hear hurt, and the right side of my head felt like I was being attacked with a hammer drill.

  Someone was tugging on a piece of rubber attached to my torso, but my body's internal senses told me it must be my arm.

  "Can you hear me, Joe?"

  It was Logan again, but my answer was a wet mumble. It was similar to sleep paralysis, where your brain is awake but your body is still asleep, but more terrifying and infinitely more excruciating. I screamed but managed nothing but a choked gurgle. The harsh light hit my eyes again, and something momentarily sharp and cold stabbed my neck.

  Some of the pain faded, and I could make more sense of my surroundings. We were in the MedBay, which seemed as crowded as the Evil Banker on Twofer-Tuesdays, despite the fact we only had six people onboard. No, seven—I was still here, at least for the moment.

  "Everybody out!" That was Aurore, though she seemed to be screaming in my left ear. "Who do you need here, Sullivan?"

  "No one." A mixed rabble of voices surrounded me, but I couldn't make them out. "Okay, one person to give me a hand, but that's it."

  "That's me." Aurore said. "Everybody else, out. Including you, Logan."

  "But—"

  "Don't make me repeat myself." Aurore's tone was one I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of.

  The room grew calmer. The pain lessened, and my vision cleared enough to recognize people again. I pushed to sit up but couldn't.

  "Tell. Logan," I croaked out. "Tell. I was. Attacked."

  Aurore looked down into my eyes and stroked my forehead. "I know. But it..."

  She faded again, and I got the feeling I'd missed something. "Did you tell, Logan?"

  "He knows."

  "He's got several fractured ribs. Severe bruising on his spine." Sullivan sounded as though he was reading a prognosis from the script of When Good Surgery Goes Bad. "He's almost certainly suffering from a concussion, and there's damage to his right eye and ear."

  "Jesus." Aurore sounded shocked. "You people really screwed up."

  The MilSec team had attacked me? That seemed ridiculous, but I hadn't got a clear view of anything after being hit in the neck. There could have been more than one. I faded again momentarily.

  "...going to be okay?"

  "I can't be one hundred percent sure." Sullivan seemed to be pummeling my ribs, and I winced. "He's hurt but strong enough I think he should recover—with some help."

  I was going to offer to change places with him and see how strong he felt. My right eye was still blurry, but the left one had mostly cleared up. I managed to move my hand and grabbed Aurore's arm with all the strength of a swallowtail butterfly.

  "They've got a bomb," I grunted. "They've planted it somewhere. Gonna blow... the ship."

  "What?" Aurore sounded panicked, and I couldn't blame her. She obviously had no idea what they were planning.

  "I need to sedate him," Sullivan said. "His heart rate is dangerously high."

  "No. Listen. They have a bomb..." A thick fog melted through my skull and into my brain. "Bomb, it's going..."

  When I came around again, the room was quiet. The lighting was turned down to a dull glow that left the diagnostic lights above the bed the brightest points in the room. I looked at the displays, but they seemed abstract. I could see that the person being monitored was in bad shape, but I didn't connect it with me for several minutes.

  My vision hadn't fully cleared, and underneath the drug induced dullness I knew I was badly hurt. I couldn't move and also had a curious sense of weightlessness. I managed to turn my head and saw Logan slumped in a chair by the door. He looked asleep but had a heavy service pistol in his hand.

  I whispered his name, not wanting to startle him. His head came up, eyes bright and anxious.

  "Joe? Jesus, are you okay?" He stood and moved over to the bed.

  "Only slightly better than a dead man." I nodded at the pistol in his hand. "You hunting rabbits or here to put me out of my misery?"

  He clipped the gun to his belt. "Making sure nothing happens to you. Aurore said you talked about a bomb."

  I thought for several minutes. I hadn't seen a bomb—it could have been a figment of my paranoia. I couldn't imagine what else they'd want to sneak onboard, though. "They've got to be hiding something. Why else would they jump me like this?"

  Logan frowned. "What do you remember?"

  "I went to their special training room. I saw them taking stuff in yesterday and got suspicious. I was poking about, and one, or maybe several, of them came up behind me and put the boot in. They might have been using metal bars, though I couldn't swear to it. They're all Geneered so who knows? It felt like it though. Still does." My throat cracked. "Is there anything to drink? Water?"

  Logan handed me a squeezable bottle of pinkish something. "An electrolyte solution. It'll help your body heal and rebuild your strength."

  "Have you got those bastards locked up?"

  Logan frowned, his eyes narrowing. "Well, your attacker is."

  "Thank god for that. Who was it?"

  "You should see for yourself." He lifted one thick eyebrow. "Do you think you can move?"

  "I'm pretty hopped up on drugs and floaty. But I'm game to try."

  Logan pushed himself up using the edge of the bed, and I heard the familiar tearing sound as he pulled his feet from the carpet. Then his feet drifted up. "I killed the engines, so you wouldn't have to take the gravity. We're moving at a constant speed."

  "In that case, I can probably manage." I realized that was why I hadn't been able to move. I'd been strapped down for safety. "Unhook me, and I'm with you."

  "No way Rocket Ranger." Logan moved around the bed, and I heard several clicks as he unlatched the cushioned deck. "I'll take you there."

  He unfastened the other side and pulled the deck free with me on it, the platform now becoming a gurney. Logan punched the intercom button. "Keep the corridors clear. I'm taking him to the gym."

  He edged the bed through the door—awkward to do in ZeeGee. Then he dragged me down the corridor toward where I'd been attacked. Despite the drugs, I felt sweat break out as we approached.

  "You okay?" said Logan.

  I nodded slightly but it hurt, so I stopped and mumbled a yes.

  The door opened ahead of us, and Hernandez swam out, backing down the corridor so as not to block our path. He glanced at me, then his eyes darted away and his chin dropped, no doubt worried about the fall-out from one of his team attacking a civilian.

  Logan pulled me inside the compartment, spinning the gurney so I was upright, almost as though I were standing on the floor. We weren't the only ones there. At the far end of the room, Private Sullivan was
waiting. His eyes were as big as a pair of small asteroids, and his skin looked even paler than usual.

  Hernandez came in behind us, closed the door, and waited there.

  "Joe. I want you to meet your attacker."

  Logan gestured toward Sullivan, and my head spun. That was crazy. Why would their junior team member and MedTech attack me? And if he had, why had they let him treat me? And besides, Sullivan wasn't anywhere near as heavily Geneered as the others. I doubted he could have caused that much damage on his own, even catching me by surprise. Unless I was right, and he had used a metal bar.

  "Throw him out the airlock." I would have done it myself, except even the thought of moving hurt. "Do we know who he's working for?"

  I wasn't usually vindictive, but I was willing to make an exception. He'd been out to kill me and sabotage the mission. I didn't care who'd paid him to do it—better to let him die from a vacuum-induced low-calorie diet. I'd had enough of double-dealing traitors on the last trip.

  Sullivan opened his mouth a few times but didn't manage to say anything. Then he leaned over, and I noticed the case that had held the bomb. He flicked open the latches, popped up the lid, then reached inside before stepping back.

  A metal box rose from the case, lifting up on what looked like two metal struts. It unfolded upward again, and the support struts split, rotating around to lift the expanded box higher. The whole thing was shivering and vibrating as parts unfurled several times more, each time making it taller and wider. It looked like a mechanical refugee from a paranoiac nightmare as it glittered in the light.

  When it finished unraveling, it was about the size of a person but with too many limbs. Like a metal stick man crossed with a praying mantis and finished off with a nightmarish set of dentist's equipment. Sullivan pulled out a small box and pressed a control on it. The thing moved forward, demonstrating a number of threatening postures in between bouncing around the walls of the room, finally coming to a rest in front of me and sinking to one knee.

  "It's called BRUCE," Hernandez said. "Bi-pedal Responsive Unarmed Combat Educator."

  I looked from Hernandez to Logan to Sullivan. "You're telling me a robot kicked the crap out of me?"

  Chapter Seven

  Logan dragged me back to the MedBay and explained what must have happened. The robot was a new unit, designed to train the MilSec people in advanced unarmed combat techniques in both gravity fields as well as ZeeGee. Sullivan had set it up in test mode and forgotten to disarm it afterward. When I entered the training room it was still active, and I'd inadvertently triggered a session with it. The unit was programmed not to cause significant levels of damage, but it had been set to expect a Geneered opponent, not plain old Ballen of the spaceways.

  "Beaten up by a robot? That's pretty embarrassing," The bed felt like it had rocks in it, despite the ZeeGee. I was glad Dollie hadn't been around—she'd have laughed her ass off. Though these days, she'd more likely be cheering the robot on. "What's the outlook for me?"

  Logan sat, his face solemn. "According to Sullivan, you need several weeks of recovery time. He can pump you full of military-grade NanoBiotics—that'll cut the healing time down significantly. But you might wish you were dead from the side-effects."

  NanoBiotics rebuilt tissues from the inside out. They're insanely expensive, which was why they weren't in more widespread use, but MilSec liked to minimize operational downtime, so soldiers got them no questions asked. The NanoBiotics reproduced in response to the level of damage and self-terminated after a set amount of time. Then they were eliminated using the usual bodily functions—one of the lovely side-effects Logan was referring to.

  "Don't they cause mental issues in high doses?" I asked.

  "There are rumors to that effect." Logan laughed. "I'm not sure we'd notice the difference in your case."

  "Thanks. You're the guy who authorized my pilot's license, remember?"

  "Still think there's a bomb?"

  I hesitated. "Obviously not. But I couldn't imagine what else they might have been hiding."

  "Good, I can lock this cannon away again." He tapped the gun at his waist.

  I felt pretty stupid about the whole thing. "So what happens now? Are we going to test the CASTOR system?"

  Logan shook his head. "No way. We have no idea what high gravity might do to you. Even for short periods."

  I felt a mixture of relief and concern. "We need to get on with the mission."

  "And we will. As soon as Sullivan okays it."

  My groan bounced around the small ward. "So, the guy responsible for putting me here is going to make me well again? Maybe I should let the psychopathic robot finish me off. It would be a quicker death."

  "If that's what you want, I can arrange it." Logan chuckled. "Hell, I'll lock the door to the combat room myself once you're inside."

  "Has anyone ever told you your bedside manner sucks?"

  Logan shrugged. "What are friends for?"

  "I suppose he's in charge of the NanoBiotics?"

  Logan nodded.

  "Okay. Send him along to poison my system with his self-replicating goo. I don't want to stay in this hole any longer than necessary."

  When Sullivan came in, he avoided eye contact. "Mr. Twofeathers said you er... wanted the NanoBiotics."

  "Don't let him catch you calling him anything but Logan," I said. "What's the real story on the treatment? Are the side-effects that bad?"

  His eyes caught mine but edged away again. "I'd say they've been a little exaggerated to keep demand low. They're expensive."

  He was moving around the room like he'd rather be somewhere, anywhere, else and grabbed a packet from the storage cupboard, stripping away the shrink-wrap to reveal a translucent cartridge. It held a pale straw-colored liquid that reminded me of a urine sample, though I hoped I was wrong on that score.

  Sullivan pulled a short plastic Biojet injector from another cupboard and tried to load the cartridge into the gun. His hand shook, and the cartridge rattled against the injector's loading port.

  "You better settle down. Otherwise you'll end up shooting those things in my ass."

  "Sorry, I'm fresh out of basic MedTech training."

  Just what I needed. "How many people have you worked on before?"

  "Fifty-three. Simulated." He finally managed to load the cartridge. "You're my first live patient."

  I wondered if I might be his first dead one too. "Great."

  "The medication is delivered to the damage sites directly," he said. "Not to the er... backside."

  "That comforts me no end."

  He shuffled awkwardly over to the bed. "Look to your left."

  The look-away trick was supposed to lower the chance of the patient panicking, but I'd been through enough treatment in the past not to be bothered by it. Besides, I wasn't the nervous one here. "Let's get on with it."

  Sullivan pressed the gun to my ribs, and it hissed briefly as the medication was forced through my skin. I knew I'd have a raw spot there for a few days, but considering how beat up I was, it was doubtful I'd notice the extra discomfort.

  He repeated the treatments to my arm and the back of my shoulders before one final shot in my neck.

  "That's as near as I dare go to the brain," he explained, confirming some of the rumors of possible side-effects.

  I rolled onto my back, sucking air through my teeth as the soreness of my wounds melded with the injection pain. "How long till I notice anything?"

  "The first signs will hit in about five minutes." Sullivan popped the spent cartridge from the injector and pushed it into the waste disposal. "You'll feel a temperature rise at the wound sites. It'll get painful and itchy as the 'Biotics start rebuilding tissue."

  "Oh good... something to look forward to."

  "It'll calm down after about thirty minutes. Or at least you'll adjust to it."

  "You seem to know a lot for someone who's recently finished basic training."

  "I want to be a doctor." Sullivan scratched at his c
ropped blond hair. "I took lots of pre-med courses in college, but MilSec won't give me further training until I've done two years in the field."

  From the military's perspective, it made sense. Not everybody was cut out for medical work, and it was expensive training, so they wanted to get their pound of flesh before investing beyond the basics. "How come you didn't go straight to med school?"

  "Couldn't afford it, so I signed up to get qualified."

  That was a surprise. Tuition was usually paid for through social funding, as long as you had the grades to qualify, especially for medical and other essential service careers. "What did you do, get caught seducing the Dean's daughter?"

  He looked me in the eyes for the first time since he'd come in, and a rueful smile cracked his square face. "Wish that was the case. My parents are the problem."

  "They forced you into the military?"

  "Too rich." He shrugged. "And too tightfisted. I didn't qualify for funding, and they wouldn't help out."

  That had to be rough. I'd never known my parents, but most were plenty willing to help their kids if they could, particularly when it came to supporting them in developing a career. I'd have done the same if... My thoughts ground to a halt, and my stomach churned.

  Sullivan must have noticed my change of expression. "The 'Biotics kicking in?"

  "It's nothing." As I said it, the injection sites seemed to ignite, and I grunted. "Well, maybe..."

  "Whatever you do, don't scratch." Sullivan checked the monitor display above my head. "That can make the nanobots do stupid things, like grow out of control."

  "Thanks for the warning."

  "I'm sorry about what happened. It was a stupid mistake, leaving—"

  I held up my hand to stop him. "It happens. Just try not to make a habit out of it."

  A burning sensation bit deep into my tissues, and I gasped louder. "This is fun."