Starship Defender: Beyond Human Space

by Michael Keats

  “Is everything okay?” Kate asked him.

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “I was looking for the new acting captain. Losing an officer adds a pile of bureaucracy to my to-do list. I hate paperwork.” He tried to sound unworried and relaxed, but he was hiding something. Perhaps a sliver of guilt.

  “Come on, Harry,” Hightower told him. “You’re supposed to celebrate that Decaf’s gone. You aren’t supposed to be down until we get him back.”

  Harry gave him a sad smile. The way the lines marked on his face, the way he looked at both of them… he was so human that it was difficult to realize that he was just a machine. Even Hightower felt sorry for him and didn’t continue taunting him.

  What was done was done. There was no going back aside from attempting to save the others from General Dovrik’s ship.

  “Do you think he’s dead?” Harry asked without raising his gaze to meet hers.

  Kate nodded. There was no point in hiding it anymore.

  “I… I…” Harry said. “I’d planned to make something special for tonight after rescuing you, but I’m not in the mood anyway.” He walked out of the hangar with his back hunched and the expression of a ghost.

  “Ignore him,” Hightower said. “There’s something wrong with his circuits. Don’t feel bad for the commander. If he’s down, there’s nothing we can do about it. I’m guessing that the bastard’s still alive. I’ve seen him fight, and he can’t die such a dumb death.”

  Kate tried to smile, but if she forced another polite and fake smile, the tears would flow out of her eyes. The commander couldn’t be alive after using the DNA melder, but she wasn’t going to tell anyone else about it. Frateran tech had already caused enough problems amongst humans.

  One of the ensigns ran into the hangar. “Hostile Alpha is changing direction!” he shouted. “They’ve finally decided to stop fleeing and face us!”

  “Battle at last,” Hightower mumbled, and he hurried to get better equipment and weapons for the fight.

  “You’d better go to the bridge for this, ma’am,” the ensign told Kate. “Your knowledge of their ship might come handy.”

  So she wasn’t just going to face Dovrik; she was going to get a first-row seat to see everything before anyone else did. She hoped that the Defender was ready for the fight, but she’d helped design the ship. Humans stood no chances unless they were much better strategists than Dovrik. And she somehow doubted that human genetic upgrades were comparable to his.

  They were as doomed as the commander. They simply didn’t know it yet.

  Chapter 33: Kate

  The subcommander, the new acting captain, was younger than Commander O’Donnell and much less experienced. He lacked the spark of intelligence in his eyes and the spirit of taking risks. Commander O’Donnell’s impulsiveness was classic in naval officers, but the subcommander lacked his spirit.

  Admiral Graff would’ve been a good leader during a battle because of his prior experience. O’Donnell compensated his inexperience with intelligence and ambition. The subcommander didn’t compensate any of his defects with anything useful, so he simply stared at the screens on the bridge with a scared expression.

  Kate stood near a desk on the bridge. She had no chair like the officers and no screens like the engineers. The bridge wasn’t her place. She could only stand and watch, and perhaps answer questions about the Fraterans if someone asked them.

  Everyone assumed that they were attempting to save human scientists. None of them would pay attention to her or feel safe near her if they actually knew everything she was. Even the commander, who had heard about the DNA melder, would show grave reservations.

  “Reversing faster-than-light speed, sir,” one of the engineers said, tapping a few buttons on his screen.

  The ship decelerated and everyone felt a subtle push forward. The inertia dampening system did its job well enough and nobody ended up squashed against any walls.

  “Hostile Alpha is decreasing her speed too,” another engineer said. “Updating radar automatically to zoom in whenever they get closer. Getting dangerously close, sir.”

  The subcommander nodded. He was nothing but a scared child in a grown-up’s uniform. He remained standing instead of sitting. He stared at the men as if he truly knew what he was doing. He didn’t, and everyone with eyes on his head could see it.

  Naval and military hierarchies had always impressed Kate: even when someone wasn’t fit to command, everyone followed him and acted as though he were. It was a game they played, a charade, and it sometimes worked. The rest of the time, though, acting officers should’ve stood aside and avoided confrontation with the enemy.

  “They’ve almost reached zero-speed, sir,” another engineer said. She tapped something on her screen. “Direct confrontation will be unavoidable even if we try to run.”

  General Dovrik hadn’t had enough by killing O’Donnell and capturing all of Kate’s fellow refugees. Now he was going to destroy humanity’s best ship to make a point.

  The general was sometimes too emphatic with the points he made.

  Kate’s body still hurt from all the action she’d seen. She was a scientist and wasn’t used to so much physical activity. She rubbed her left arm, which hurt more than the rest of her body. It felt wet, somewhat sticky, and warm. She knew the feeling: she was bleeding.

  She looked at her arm and spotted a reasonably-sized wound on it. She hadn’t even noticed it before. She glanced around in case someone had seen it, but they hadn’t. She needed to cover her blue blood, or humans would never trust her.

  “Eew!” Harry covered his mouth with both hands and stepped back. “That’s… that’s… that’s…”

  “Shut up,” Kate murmured. Her eyes scanned the room, but the scientists were too worried with the enemy ship and too focused on their officer in command. None of them looked at her.

  “It’s disgusting,” Harry said. “What is it? It can’t be…” He stepped closer and inspected her arm. His eyes slowly changed from surprise to disgust.

  “Harry, you can’t tell,” Kate warned. “If you tell…”

  “What?” Harry murmured back. “You’ll eat my brains and pick your monstrous teeth with my bones? What am I supposed to do? Wait here while the aliens board our ship? They’ve created you to replace Dr. Thompson and infiltrate us. I’ve watched a thousand films about this, and it never ends well for the guys on Earth’s side.”

  He was raising his tone, but he wasn’t shouting yet.

  “It’s me, Harry,” she told him. “It’s been me all along. I’m just… different. The scientists who designed you are just like me.”

  Harry’s face acquired an unintelligible expression. “You can’t be serious. I’m…”

  “Based on Frateran tech,” she told him. “That’s why you’re decades ahead of all other human AIs. I need you to be quiet to help them. We can’t let General Dovrik win.”

  Harry hesitated and tried to think of something to complain about, but he remained silent.

  Now they needed to think of something before the general’s men attacked them.

  Chapter 34

  I woke up to an awful hangover, a constant buzz in my ears, and the feeling that I hadn’t seen the light of day for decades. My whole body hurt, even muscles and bones I didn’t know I had.

  At least I wasn’t dead yet. I opened my eyes and found myself staring into a strange and sober ceiling. It looked human enough, but it wasn’t.

  I was aboard Hostile Alpha.

  I groaned and sat up. The surgeon, Dr. Langley, was sitting a few feet away from my bed. It wasn’t actually a bed; it was closer to a strange and spongy mat that worked much better than most beds.

  “Welcome to the world of the living,” he said through gritted teeth. His hand held a blanket around his stomach, pressing it hard against his shirt. He’d probably been wounded at some point during the confrontations. The blanket covered his wounds, but I knew the way he clenched his jaw: he had an ugly wound, and he was trying to play th
e hero.

  He’d been abducted by the armored soldiers, so that made me a captive too. Damn them.

  I remembered how Dr. Thompson had attempted to flee the enemy ship and how Harry had decided to protect her instead of me. He’d have hopefully succeeded, but I had no way to know. I just knew that I’d expected to die with the technology that she’d given me to keep, and now I was trapped in some kind of cell.

  Know what? Losing consciousness during a fight sucked. I made a mental note never to fall unconscious in battle again. It only made things harder.

  “Have I missed anything?” I asked Dr. Langley. My body hurt, so it was still attached to my head.

  He shook his head slowly. “Dr. Thompson was here a while ago, but she’s managed to escape. I didn’t get to the hangars on time, so General Dovrik has shot me. I was wearing a shield and blocked his shot, so he’s decided to let me die slowly and painfully instead.” He shrugged. “The usual thing you can expect from these people, really.”

  “And whom are these people serving?” I almost didn’t dare to ask the question. I’d seen enough with the DNA melder to understand that we weren’t alone in the universe. Whatever this ship was, they knew about alien tech as much as us, or even more.

  The surgeon nodded slowly and told me that everything the doctor had mentioned was correct. There was an old alien race called the Fraterans which came from an ancient Earthen civilization. They reached space much sooner than any of their neighbors, and distant planets became their home. They lost contact with Earth until their world was close to collapsing.

  A group of alien refugees had gone to Earth, and that’s why scientists had managed to create the Defender. They hadn’t just based their designs on alien tech; they’d actually taken the tech from aliens.

  The story sounded just as insane as Dr. Thompsons, but hearing it twice made it somewhat more likely to be true.

  I told the doctor about the DNA melder that Dr. Thompson had given me. He said that scientists had found it aboard the alien ship and told me not to let our captors take it under any circumstance.

  “Actually,” I said, “that won’t be a problem. I’ve used it on me.”

  I produced the device and handed it to him. He stuck it onto his arm and pressed the button, but it didn’t have any charges left. He inspected me through raised eyebrows, stared at my hands and head, and finally pulled off the DNA melder and threw it back to me.

  “It must’ve misfired,” he said. “Doesn’t work like that on humans.”

  “It didn’t,” I said. I’d felt an electric shock, I’d felt lots of pain, and I’d fallen unconscious. I don’t faint even when I’m about to die, so I’d used the device on me and it had worked.

  The surgeon sighed and looked at the ceiling through half-closed eyes. He didn’t believe a word I was saying. “Then you’ll slowly change into a Frateran. It might take a few years and you’re too old for everything to be perfect, but you’ll change. Feeling your fingers long and bony already?” The right corner of his lip turned into a condescending smile.

  My hands were normal. My fingers were normal. It couldn’t be right; I couldn’t be turning into anything, could I? Inferior species were supposed to die when applying a superior DNA, and everyone had repeated a thousand times that the aliens were way beyond us in both tech and evolutionary matters.

  I stood up. My stomach hurt. I groaned in pain but checked that both my legs and arms moved properly. I was feeling fine, and I could move. At least it gave me the chance to test the entrance.

  The room wasn’t a typical brig cell; it looked more like an old-fashioned storeroom turned into a cell. It came with dark walls and ceilings, no windows to emulate light, and a couple of bluish lights on the ceiling to make sleeping even less pleasant.

  The entrance was a sliding door, but much more austere than the Defender’s. This one seemed made out of polymers that emulated wood. It was solid and sounded solid, so kicking it down wasn’t an option.

  “Don’t bother,” the surgeon said. “The door’s locked and secure. It uses the latest and more advanced security systems possible. You won’t get out unless someone opens it, and the only person on our side is now dead.”

  “Hey, I’m not that stupid. I’m a naval officer, but I’ve taken a few electronics classes too.”

  Why did men of science always resort to saying that they were smarter than everyone and that naval officers had no chances to solve anything? They got tiring after a while, you know?

  Opening a door couldn’t be that difficult. Engineers were impossible to lock up in the brig; they picked locks, disabled security systems, and walked out within minutes. It couldn’t be that hard to get out, even if it took us a couple of days.

  Dr. Langley chuckled condescendingly, then complained because his wound hurt.

  “If you’re not going to be helpful,” I said, “you can let me concentrate. I need to go back to my ship.”

  The doctor roared in laughter, then coughed and felt weakened. He waved with one hand in the air. “By all means, continue,” he said. “You won’t get anything done, but try, try again.”

  I ignored him and tried to inspect the door frame. There had to be a weakness somewhere, something I could exploit to open and get out. Most ship-building projects have limited budgets, so building crews need to hurry and don’t finish everything perfectly. There’s usually a problem somewhere.

  As for the doctor, I was tired of being considered an intellectual dwarf. I might not have devoted my life to science, but I wasn’t an idiot.

  “Who cares anymore?” the surgeon said. “I’m not picking fun on you, Commander. I’m just amused because you’re trying to survive against an enemy you know nothing about. You’re like a small ant that loses track of its companions and tries to escape a child with a magnifying glass. You’re facing Fraterans. This technology is centuries ahead of you. You won’t be able to find a failure.”

  “And you know that because you’ve studied Fraterans all your life,” I said sarcastically. I kept studying the door. It felt rough, with a quick layer of paint over it. Such an awful paint job couldn’t hide a perfectly finished door or wall. A friend of mine worked as a contractor, and I’d learned quite a bit about apparent versus real perfection. Nobody builds anything properly anymore. “All this Frateran stuff sounds like UFO sightings. Everyone’s seen them, but nobody knew about aliens until a couple of centuries ago.”

  “Are you truly this slow?” the surgeon asked.

  “Are you trying to pick a fight?” I replied. “I don’t like hitting men on the ground, but I can make an exception if you’re so desperate.”

  “How do you think that an alien ship can detect the best scientists on Earth, abduct them, and lock them up somewhere?” I hated whenever some genius scientist decided to show me how the world worked. I knew enough about the world already: stay in an enemy cell and you’re likely to die. I needed to get out.

  “Pure luck?” I said.

  “They are not human,” the doctor said flatly. “I am not human either. You have a DNA melding device, for goodness’ sake. You know that we have the tech to do so.”

  A DNA melding device that didn’t even work? It didn’t sound so advanced to me.

  “Sure,” I said absentmindedly. “You’re an alien. Congratulations.”

  I preferred not to argue. My fingers had found a small crack by the door: a weakness. I only needed to extend it further and get out before dinner time.

  The crack was actually hiding a strange cable. It didn’t have a classic plastic coating, so I wrapped my jacket’s sleeve around my fingers and pulled. Lining your uniform in plastic is a trick that officers use to make it easier to clean. I was already trapped in a room with a self-styled alien doctor as my sole companion. Considering his story, I might’ve been in a mental asylum.

  The sliding door clicked open, and I was now able to slide it open with my hands. I opened it a few inches and peeked outside. The hallway was empty.

 
Dr. Langley stared at me. His jaw was still dropped open.

  “What can you say about the dumb officer, huh?” I said.

  The surgeon shook his head slowly. “It’s just because your primitive mind considers simple approaches that no advanced mind would think of. It’s the equivalent of brute force.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said sarcastically. “But us humans consider ourselves smarter than animals and they don’t get out of their cages unless we want them to.”

  “Our scientists are too concerned about elevated matters,” the surgeon insisted. “Nobody’s able to think so simply anymore. This was luck. Pure and basic luck.”

  “Does that mean that you’re superior, or inferior?” I teased. I continued looking out of the door. Two armored soldiers walked past the room without stopping. I hid back inside and shut the door again. I was now able to get out, but I needed a weapon if I was to conquer the ship from within.

  The surgeon pushed himself up from the floor and continued pressing the blanket against his stomach. He limped to the door to join me.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked.

  “I’m going to stop you from messing up,” he said.

  “You can’t come if you’re wounded,” I said. “You’ll only make everything harder. We can’t run if you can barely walk.”

  “You need someone who knows Fraterans.”

  I did, but I didn’t need a repellent and arrogant doctor telling me everything I needed to do. If I’d wanted someone to tease me about all my mental limitations, I’d have invited Harry to join me.

  Chapter 35

  I didn’t want to take the doctor with me, and yet he limped after me all along. He wasn’t going to let me head out of the cell or out of the ship without taking him with me. I know I should’ve knocked him down unconscious, but I have a problem with hitting wounded or weakened men. Call me softie if you want, but I can’t help it.

  There had been a recent fire aboard the ship. The smell of burnt plastic and polymers was still fresh in the air, and smoke had blackened some walls and rooms. Some of the areas had been wiped out and sealed to avoid letting people into them. It had been a large conflict. These people took mutiny seriously.