“Don’t get your heads blown off,” the admiral said.
“We’ll try to keep them on our shoulders,” I said. I gestured at the marines and we headed to the next group of armored soldiers.
We weren’t going to defeat them easily, so we turned it into a game of tag: we shot everything we had at them, ran out and hoped that they’d follow us. Several of us repeated the same strategy to guide them to one of the concealed shuttles. A marine boarded a shuttle and we opened the gates to decompress the whole deck.
I turned on the cameras to check for survivors on the decompressed deck. Some of the armored soldiers had flown out of the ship, and the others were too busy trying not to lose grip on whatever they were holding.
Harry chuckled and pointed at one of them. “Don’t want to fall into the endless void, do we?”
The armored soldier reached his boots and turned something on. His boots clung to the floor and he raised a fist to break one of the elevators open. His fist broke through the door, and he ripped the metal as if it were made of paper.
“He isn’t supposed to do that,” Harry said.
I led men to the elevator to wait for the armored soldier to get to us. It was time to test our stolen weapons on him.
The armored soldier’s boots clanked on the walls of the elevator as he climbed up. He was getting closer. We had nothing to do against him if their own weapons didn’t defeat them. We were going to try anyway.
“Want me to take care of this one, sir?” Hightower offered. “You might be needed on the bridge.”
This wasn’t a matter of fleeing; I had nowhere to hide if they continued sweeping the ship. I shook my head.
“Want to get all credit for the fight, Hightower?” I said.
“Sure do, sir,” he said with a broad grin.
Hightower and the other marines were nervous, just like me, but they channeled their tension by taunting and challenging each other.
“Ready, lads,” I said.
The armored soldier opened the doors and we emptied everything we had onto him. Our bullets bounced back, but the weapon I’d stolen pierced his armor. He fell back, and Hightower finished him off with the other weapon.
One of the marines grabbed a third weapon. We were slowly arming ourselves.
“Not bad, huh?” I said.
“Not bad at all, sir,” Hightower replied with a broad grin on his face. “Next time, try to pant less when you’re running. Makes you easy to hear from the other end of the ship.”
“Shut up, Hightower,” I said. “They smell you before they hear me. Where’s our next casualty?”
Harry was deep in thought. He looked up, confused. “I hadn’t seen those guys,” he said. “I’m sorry, O’Donnell. I promise they weren’t there before.”
“Security to the bridge!” Admiral Graff shouted through the intercom. “Security to the―” He fell silent.
I waved at my ear to reply. “What’s going on?” I asked.
No response.
Harry shook his head slowly. He didn’t need to tell me that Admiral Graff had fallen. “They must’ve been cloaked,” he said. “I’ve seen them only a second before.”
Chapter 10
Cloaked soldiers? Nobody had ever managed to create perfect cloaking systems for people. Ships and planes based their cloaking devices on trickery and distance from radars, but short-range detection systems always saw through cloaking. The Defender had enough internal detectors to track anyone and anything that moved, even if they tried to hide.
I ran towards the bridge in case we still had survivors. The marines followed me.
We got to the bridge too late. All the crewmen on the bridge had fallen. There was no sign of the armored soldiers.
Admiral Graff lay on the floor with a large wound in his abdomen and another on his shoulder. He’d fallen facing the enemy. There was too much blood around him, but he remained alive. Only barely.
I knelt by him and told him not to speak.
“Giving orders to your betters, are you?” He chuckled and coughed, spitting blood with his weak attempt to talk. “Makes me feel alive again.”
“Surgeon! Get a surgeon now!” I said.
“The surgeon’s gone,” Harry said slowly. “No trace of him.”
“Get me another doctor, then,” I said, “or a nurse.”
“Most of sick bay’s disappeared without a trace. The rest are dead. A bunch of scientists are gone too.” Harry spoke slowly and with caution. “I promise I didn’t―”
I knew. He was coded to be annoying, but the crew was his main priority. He was no traitor.
“Take the admiral to a freezer,” I said, standing up.
The thermochamber, or freezer, reduced the metabolic rate and the outflow of blood. It didn’t stop anyone from dying or bleeding out, but it gave us several extra hours or even days to save him. It was part of our stolen alien tech, but we’d already used it in hospitals.
“Scan the ship for intruders,” I told Harry.
Harry waved in the air to show a holographic map of our current deck. It was empty aside from us. Nearby decks were equally empty, aside from some of our men. Only our crew remained aboard the Defender.
This gave me an awful feeling.
“Show me the enemy ship,” I told Harry.
He did, and the ship was leaving, just like it had arrived.
Half of our civilian contractors hadn’t disappeared voluntarily. The ship had come to steal our best scientists, and now we were left with a broken Defender and an enemy that had access to better tech than we’d ever had.
“Commander.” Harry had never addressed me by my rank before. It was serious. “We’re getting word from Earth. UFO sightings and unstoppable armored soldiers. Nobody’s seen the hostile ships on the radars. And…”
“Let me guess,” I said. “Disappearing scientists?”
Harry nodded. “Everyone linked to the Defender, and a few extras.”
This was no accident.
We had no real doctors left, and wounded men only had some hope if they got to the nearest space station for treatment.
“Place our wounded in freezers and put them in shuttles,” I said. “Send them off to the nearest hospital.”
Harry hesitated, but finally added, “Dr. Thompson is gone too.”
As expected. All our scientists were gone, and we had no way to build another Defender unless we got them back.
I was going to chase after that unidentified ship, I was going to get our scientists back, and I was going to eliminate all armored soldiers that stood between me and our scientists.
I didn’t care if they were more powerful than us.
Chapter 11: Kate
Kate woke up to the classic cold shiver after a bad stasis injection. She hated falling unconscious whenever something happened, and she always ended up abducted by governments, spies, or Fraterans. She couldn’t be so unlucky.
She looked around the room. She wasn’t aboard the Defender. She recognized the sober style of the dark brown floor and neutral green walls, and the smell of clean and artificial air that never smelled quite right. She was aboard a Frateran ship.
She had no news of the Defender or her crew. They could be alive, or they could be dead. The Frateran Armors had boarded the Defender and intercepted her before she’d reached an escape shuttle like John had told her to do. They’d forced her into a shuttle and placed her in stasis. She didn’t remember anything else. She could’ve slept for hours, months, or years.
For some reason, she doubted that she’d been there for too long. Someone had been after her and her kind. This wasn’t a social visit.
She stood up and rubbed her arms to try to get out of the stasis cold. The room wasn’t too large, but it had a bed in it and some sweat-absorbing stickers on a shelf. Sweat stickers were designed to absorb sweat and other toxins from the body, even from regions that didn’t have any stickers nearby. One sticker allowed anyone to spend a whole day without showering and without need
ing a shower. They were apt for the human physique, too, so she put one on. At least she wouldn’t smell bad while she remained aboard the ship. Nothing worse than smelling on your way out; it makes you less likely to escape unnoticed.
The room’s sliding door had its security systems turned on. She placed her thumb on a small device to the right of the door, the control mechanism.
Nothing.
The door didn’t recognize her DNA as adequate, so it didn’t open or let her communicate with anyone outside. This was a classic procedure aboard Frateran ships: her people were civilized enough to keep their prisoners alive and with all comforts. Generally, people from noble Frateran families were allowed to roam the ship on parole. Kate’s family wasn’t good enough for the ship’s captain. Or perhaps she wasn’t Frateran enough after her genetic modifications.
Either way, she was locked in the room with nothing to keep her company and no way out… unless she broke out.
She’d played with locked doors aboard spaceships before she’d even learned to run. She ran her hand down the sliding door frame to look for a door covering with concealed cables. She’d only have to pull them to force the door open.
Bingo!
The cables were visible. She reached the first of them. Zap! It shocked the tip of her fingers. The doors were protected. She tried again. Zap! The shock was stronger this time.
There was no point in trying again. She was locked until someone opened the door from outside. And she had nothing to ensure her release once the door opened.
Chapter 12: Kate
The door slid open and three Fraterans entered. One of them, tall and with a fierce gaze, stepped in first. Two smaller and stouter men followed after him. One of them had a half-open mouth framed by a square jaw. The other had empty and unquestioning eyes, but his muscles spoke for him.
“Well, well, well,” the taller man said in standard Frateran. “What do we have here?”
Kate hadn’t heard the language for years, and it now sounded guttural and artificial. She didn’t know if her new appearance would allow her to pronounce the 256 vowel sounds, not to mention the subtle differences between jah and jaeh and some of their false friends. She didn’t want anyone to think that she spoke of cans of worms if she was actually speaking of politics. There were quite a few similarities between both, but the overall message can get lost if one accidentally speaks figuratively.
Despite general similarities between Fraterans and humans, they looked different enough to be scary to normal humans. They were humanoid, with much larger eyes than the average human, subtly tanned skin, usually dark hair, and long and bony fingers. Body size, musculature and weight were generally determined by the person’s family and caste.
These three men belonged to one of the lower castes; mere military grunts. They’d been genetically upgraded to make them stronger and with faster reflexes than a normal Frateran, but less prone to questioning orders. Their critical minds and intelligence had not only been limited by their genes; they had also been educated not to question anything. Not even if they were sent to a certain death.
The trio had arrived as a welcome party. They needed to know that she was alive and awake by the time their higher-up decided to question her.
The leader introduced himself as Cadern, and the other two were Geor and Fredler. Geor, the dumber-looking one, sent shivers down Kate’s spine. Someone had gone too far in the genetic modifications to make him dumber, and he couldn’t simultaneously stand up straight and think.
No military grunt like these men ever worked independently, so they were following someone’s orders. It was useless to speak to them or to argue. They would never reason or let her out. She had to escalate the matter, and they were the quickest way to do so.
“Has your master sent you to greet me?” Kate asked in Frateran. “Tell him I’m alive.”
Cadern, the taller man, smiled subtly at her words but ignored her rusty pronunciation. “We can see that,” he said. “But everything at its time. Have you eaten anything?”
What were they planning to do? Treat her like a guest and pamper her with Frateran delicatessen? They seemed civilized enough. That was always a bad sign. Fraterans were generally duplicitous in nature, but the grunts were direct and obvious and very predictable. Someone had sent them for something, and it couldn’t be good.
Geor, the shorter and more muscular man with a half-open and dumb-looking mouth stared at her and made a gesture that emulated a smile. Geneticists sometimes went overboard and exceeded themselves when adapting Frateran genes to make them more suitable for the simpler tasks. This man lacked superior brain functions, and his empty eyes made his expressions more difficult to read.
Kate hadn’t gone home for decades; she’d almost grown up on Earth. She’d expected to feel nostalgia once she saw Fraterans again, but she didn’t. Fratera had continued along the lines that she and her family had always despised. They continued creating genetic aberrations, playing God, and acting as if they ruled the universe. They actually did rule most of the known universe, but that was no reason to act so arrogant.
Fraterans weren’t completely innocent for the problems their civilization now faced. They had exceeded their own planet’s ability to cope with their species, they’d consumed many of their natural resources and destroyed the rest. Nations had fought one another to control the few areas still compatible with healthy living. Nobody had ever stopped to think about the future.
The future had now arrived, and the population boom from prior generations had stopped too radically. Couples had stopped having children because nobody wanted to bring new souls to a dying world, and plagues and biological weapons had wiped out many of their young. No species can ever live without multiplying itself or having children, and so Fratera had been doomed for a long time.
Once the problem had been unsolvable, a military leader had considered himself worthy of saving the world and getting all praise for it. General Dovrik had seized control of many key locations in Fratera shortly before she and the other refugees had left. He had considered Kate’s parents traitors, and their genetic experiments had been banned. She’d face a trial for treason, but she had been sentenced beforehand.
The three men offered to switch to speaking in English, and she accepted. They weren’t technically speaking the language; they’d simply implanted several translation chips into their brains which allowed them to speak a language that they’d never learned. Upper-class Frateran citizens rarely resorted to knowledge implants because they limited the brain’s learning power. Nobody cared if the grunts didn’t learn anything useful. Their function was clear in society, whether they liked it or not.
Geor, the dumber man, nodded emphatically. “The naval uniform suits you,” he said. “And the looks. Makes you look less… snobbish.” He licked his lips purposefully. He didn’t realize that genetically degraded grunts weren’t supposed to look at genetically upgraded citizens.
Wow. Kate had never thought of herself as an elitist, but she was thinking like one. But what was she supposed to do? The man couldn’t even shut his mouth to look less dumb. His brain probably limited his reading abilities too.
She was almost thinking like John, and she’d always disliked his snobbery. She’d turned into a snob herself.
The taller man slapped the grunt’s chest and said, “Stop looking at her like that! She looks human, that’s all.”
“And can we look human too?” Geor asked. “I think I’d like to wear one of those uniforms.”
Fredler, the third grunt, nodded. “They’re nice, but they look colder than ours.”
Cadern slapped both of their chests. “Focus, will you?” he said. He turned to her and glared at both of the other grunts in case they dared to question his authority. They didn’t, so he continued. “Excuse them,” he said. “We’ve come here to greet you and to inform you of your delicate situation.”
Really?
“I’m locked in a small room aboard a Frateran ship,�
�� Kate said sarcastically. “I hadn’t guessed that my situation was delicate. In fact, I was about to call room service to order some breakfast. Do you have any caviar?”
Geor glanced at Cadern. “She’s hungry, boss,” he said. “Why don’t we bring her something to eat? We don’t have any caviar, but we can get something equivalent, can’t we? Something that reminds her of human food.”
Cadern ignored him and focused on Kate. “This isn’t the time to joke, Elietas.”
Elietas. It technically meant Miss, but it was only used with people from important families in Fratera. It was generally used to address someone respectfully and to offer one’s services, but rarely used with captives. The man was using it sarcastically because of Kate’s origins, but also because she’d betrayed their country.
She didn’t care. The grunts couldn’t harm her, and they weren’t going to provide any useful information to her.
She rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you go back to your master and tell him to shove his threats wherever they fit. He won’t get anything useful from me, and it’s useless to keep me here. He can either kill me or let me go.” She stood in front of them and crossed her arms defiantly. Hopefully, they’d take her before their boss.
Darkness flashed on Cadern’s face, but he quickly controlled it. He must’ve come from one or two steps higher in the social ladder than his companions. His genes and brain weren’t as limited as the other two’s. This came with a whole new set of ego problems.
Showing his anger was his first mistake: ego problems can be exploited.
“You’re held captive aboard General Dovrik’s ship,” Cadern said. “By Decree number 287.4, subsection 5, you are required to surrender all information you know about the human race and about the illegal and morally questionable genetic experiments performed on you. You have the right to dictate your knowledge, write it down yourself, or undergo a memory-enhancing process, free of charge.”
Decree Number 287.4? This decree was reserved to conspiracies aiming to overthrow the government. She was neither a conspirator nor a traitor; she’d simply attempted to live amongst humans and open doors for other Fraterans to follow suit.
Starship Defender: Beyond Human Space Page 7
