“Now,” she commanded.
Steam billowed into the sky as shaped charges brought the crane assemblies crashing down in disarray, spilling molten metal everywhere.
* * * *
Trong followed his commander. He wanted to kill the human rebels. He’d been enjoying a human child, fresh and tight, when the orders had come. He remembered how it screamed and bled. He smiled at the thought. It had been a male, which for some reason had only added to its horror. He licked his ape-like lips. His mind wasn’t complex enough to deal with more than one thought at a time, so he wasn’t paying attention as his troop fanned out across the factory floor. Several humans, in collaborator’s uniforms, lay dead on the ground. A roar sounded above him. He looked up in time to see the great vat of molten metal let go. Trong screamed as it spilled over him. His skin peeled and blistered. His insides boiled then the pressure built and his body exploded in a hiss of steam.
* * * *
Richard and Zane moved to the back of the line of human collaborators that were performing jobs in the embassy. Both men noted that the perimeter troops were fewer in number than the day they had done their reconnaissance.
Richard scanned the yard, finding the neuro feed line that would trigger the shield and close off the compound. He fingered the syringe in his pocket that he hoped would activate it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Stolen Moments
“So, is Chinese okay?” Ben settled on the data couch.
“I don’t trust the meat they use at Hi Fang Loo’s.” Carol smiled at him and it was radiant.
“Italian?”
“Too much garlic.”
“I’ve saved up my ration coupons. I could get us a couple of steaks and barbecue them.”
“Ben, that’s very sweet, but it’s our first date. I think a restaurant is a better idea than either of our places.” Carol inserted the IV and started the flow.
“You probably won’t be interested, but there’s a really great little Lebanese place on Oak lane.”
“Donners?”
“You know it?”
“I love Lebanese food. His hot sauce is divine.”
“Where have you been all my life? Lebanese is my favorite.”
“Great, Donners and a movie.”
“Carol, I really do think you’re great.” Ben slipped the jack home and descended into the feed.
* * * *
Upload monitoring/ Ashley Hinkly /Index 10:30/ 14/6/2034
* * * *
Ashley stared at the bulbous mass of alien nerve tissue that was the original bio-mind. Yellow mold covered most of it.
“Your Richard just called. He suggested an extract of juniper berries might slow the mold’s growth and give us time to download the data to the human computer system,” said Osa as she entered the room.
“Why did you wait so long? If the bio-mind dies before we can rig a control for the geo-thermal tap it will go nuts. It could pierce the magma chamber, flood the porous rock strata with water and cause an earthquake.”
“Tannal did not wish to involve humans. He…Your leaving upset him greatly.”
“Osa, I don’t know how it is in your culture, but in my books, girlfriends deserve respect.”
“We’ll need the berries. Do you know where they can be obtained?”
“They should have them at the Bulk Barn.” Ashley turned her attention to a readout and missed the door opening behind her. “If we were to super cool the mechanical systems we might be able to speed up the transfer rate.”
“Nobody leaves me, bitch!” Tannal’s voice snarled then there was a sharp pain in the back of her neck and blackness.
* * * *
Upload monitoring/ Ashley Hinkly /Index 12:02/ 14/6/2034
* * * *
Ashley awoke to the feel of a cerebral symbiont worming its way into her body and connecting to her central nervous system. She tried to move but restraints held her to an interface couch. She recognized the room she was in as Tannal’s quarters.
Tannal stood over her, leering. His once perfect body now marred by fifty kilos of flab.
“Tannal,” gasped Ashley.
“So, my pet, you are awake.” Tannal reached out and caressed her breast through her cloths. Ashley tried to squirm away but couldn’t.
“What have you done to me?”
“You have been selected to serve a useful function. You will connect the new bio-mind to the human computers.”
“I won’t! I have rights! The government.”
“I am the government! The time for humoring you primitives is past. You’re fortunate you can be of use to us.”
“Bastard!” Ashley tried to spit at him but the angle was wrong.
“It’s a pity your mechanical system requires your conscious control, otherwise we could simply seal your mind like the rest.” Tannal gestured to where a line of people lay seemingly unconscious on interface couches. Each one had a cerebral symbiont that connected it to a strip of engineered nerve tissue running behind them. “Even so, the blocks I have put on your cerebral symbiont will keep you in line, and you will be someone to talk to.”
“What do you want?” demanded Ashley, a sick feeling in her guts.
“You acting as our modem. Zane and your precious Richard as backups. Oh yes, and to destroy your species.”
“Why did you help us?”
“Oh, Ashley, are you so naive? Crossing the interstellar void takes huge resources. I couldn’t mount an effective offensive when I first arrived. I had to bide my time, build my strength. Even a biological attack would have left enough survivors for your society to rebuild. Thus the deception. Copying elements of my consciousness and experience into human host bodies to put your kind at ease until I was ready. Now I am ready!”
“You haven’t won yet.”
“True, but it is only a matter of time. We have done this before on other worlds. Our troops have already overrun Goleta. Now we must prepare your limited human mind for its new function. Osa.”
The beautiful Darmuk woman moved into Ashley’s field of view.
“It should only hurt a little. I’ll use a local anesthetic.” Osa secured Ashley’s head in place then rubbed a cream into her hair.
“What are you doing?” demanded Ashley.
“I regret that this is necessary. I hold no animosity towards you.” Osa used a hose to rice Ashley’s scalp. Her hair fell out in clumps leaving her bald.
Ashley felt a needle press into her scalp and the burning of a local anesthetic.
“Stop waffling and get on with it,” snapped Tannal.
“The anesthetic hasn’t had time to take effect,” objected Osa.
“Let her learn the price of disobedience now.”
“Yes, high commander.” Osa picked up a surgical drill and placed it on the side of Ashley’s head. ”I am sorry.”
The sound of the drill almost drowned out Ashley’s screams.
* * * *
Upload monitoring/ Ashley Hinkly /Index 22:17/ 14/6/2034
* * * *
Ashley lay on the interface couch. A tube ran from an IV infuser through the hole in her skull. It supplied a constant feed of brain chemicals and sugars to her brain. The lights were dimmed and Tannal had left to oversee some other aspect of the Darmuk’s invasion.
“Ash?” Betty’s whisper split the silence.
“Betty. Get out of here,” hissed Ashley.
“Not without you. I hid in the air ducts. They have things that look like monkeys shooting people on sight.” Betty moved to the side of Ashley’s interface couch and began working to release the restraints.
“Betty, listen to me, you have to go. Escape before they come back. It’s your only hope.”
“I can
’t just leave—”
“Of course you can’t. Richard Green’s precious daughter. You must become my guest, permanently.” Tannal’s voice sent a cold shudder through Ashley. She turned her head and saw him and Kalok in the doorway, flanked by a pair of battle-apes. Before Betty could move the battle-apes grabbed her.
“Let me go!” Betty struggled vainly against the inhuman grip.
“Your efforts are useless. It is a fascinating fact that this close relative of yours has ten times more strength per unit of weight than your species. Quite amazing really,” said Tannal.
“What are you going to do to her?” demanded Ashley.
“She will serve the great cause of course. I feel it only fitting. Richard Green took you from me, now I take everything from him. Kalok, I believe you had an interest in this one.”
The other Darmuk stepped into the room and moved to Betty’s side.
“Thought you were too good for me. You, a human! Now we’ll see. Put her in a chair, face down.” Kalok grinned as the battle-apes followed his instructions.
Tannal extracted a cerebral symbiont from a picnic cooler by his interface couch and pressed it against Betty’s neck. The eel-like symbiont burrowed in, leaving a grey tail dangling outside its host’s body.
Ashley wanted to close her eyes but couldn’t. The horror enveloped her.
“No…please gods no.” pleaded Betty. The battle-apes held her face down in the chair while Kalok stripped her and dropped his trousers.
“I’m ready, commander,” said Kalok.
“One second.” Tannal moved to Betty’s side and touched the cerebral symbiont growing out of his neck to hers. “We must be sure to lock her consciousness in the memory loop. You may proceed.”
“No…!” Betty screamed in pain and horror as Kalok savagely sodomized her, driving in in a flesh tearing thrust then pounding back and forth.
“No! You monster,” screamed Ashley.
“She is honored to supply pleasure to a Darmuk. Soon all your kind will come to appreciate this. Most of all you, sweet Ashley.” Tannal’s brow wrinkled in concentration as he increased the horror of the rape until it was too much for Betty’s psyche to bear then he locked her consciousness into a perpetual loop of the experience.
Kalok bellowed in orgasm as Betty went stiff.
“Oh, Goddess.” Ashley watched Tannal and Kalok flip Betty over in the interface couch and attached the loose end of the cerebral symbiont to the mass of nerve tissue interconnecting the people who were now just ram chips in a biological computer.
* * * *
Upload monitoring/ Ashley Hinkly /Index 20:02/ 20/2/2035
* * * *
Ashley lay on the interface couch. Tannal leered down at her. “You have grown frigid since our time together. Was your Richard such a disappointment?”
“He was better than you could ever hope to be, you alien freak,” she spat back.
“Such an interesting pet you are, but you will be broken. Were it not necessary that you consciously control your interface, I would bind you like your Richard’s Daughter. There is little good to be said for being tied to one I call enemy.”
Ashley turned her head to stare at him. The bio-symbiont growing out of the back of his head had expanded so it was now as thick around as her wrist and nearly a meter long. It was still attached to Betty, who lay on an interface couch behind Tannal’s.
Ashley closed her eyes and descended into herself. To the outside world she seemed to sleep, inside she entered a sealed room where none could come. A piece of her mind shielded from both the mechanical and biological interfaces. This was her refuge. She’d preserved her sanity by reliving memories of a happier time. Now she would seek to make it more.
“All right, Ashley, you’ve planned enough, now it’s time to try. If this works there’s hope.
She reached into the human net. Streams of machine code flowed past her as her mind translated the pure data into a virtual landscape. A wall of flame rose before her, but she twisted the data stream until a passage appeared. She pushed through. She knew luck was with her when she sensed another human mind in the system. Her consciousness raced towards it. Then.
Richard stirred the eggs and milk while the skillet heated. Ashley sat at his kitchen table sipping at a glass of orange juice. She was dressed in her clothes from the day before, with her hair still damp from the shower.
“You cook too?” she remarked.
“Even divorcees must eat. I learned as a matter of self-defense. Janis can’t boil water without burning it. One must eat a proper diet.”
“You bet, we need to keep up your strength.” Ashley smiled and Richard grinned back.
“I will start a program of vitamins immediately,” he remarked.
Ashley became thoughtful. “This could be awkward.”
“How so, love? It’s just a cheese omelet.”
“Us, you, me. I mean Betty, and the facility…It could cost you your job.”
“The facility are rather protective of students and do seem to believe I hunted woolly mammoths in my youth.”
“Err, you got it mister. I don’t think they’ll take it well. You know what they were like when you fooled around with those girls a few years ago.”
“Ashley, that was a completely different situation.”
“Richard, I…Richard can you hear me?”
The memory image of Richard looked confused then shifted position. “Ashley. Ashley is it really you. It isn’t a dream!” he gasped.
“Oh, Goddess, no dream. They’re using me as an interface between their biological system and the human net. I managed to keep a little space that was me. Oh, Goddess, Richard, hold me!”
Richard embraced her in the cyber setting. “How long?”
“Not long. If they catch me they might block me completely. You have to know. Groups of the human slaves have been rebelling. They’re forming an underground, but they need equipment. Richard, I love you.”
“I love you too, Ashley.”
“They’ve incorporated Betty into the bio-mind. Janis is still alive, but I don’t know anything more. I have to go. Don’t forget me.”
“I never will, my love.”
Ashley pulled back her consciousness retracing its steps. She diverted pieces of Darmuk information into the human web as she did so. She finished by restoring the fire wall separating the human and Darmuk systems and returned to her own mind.
* * * *
Upload monitoring/ Ashley Hinkly /Index 10:17/ 6/3/2036
* * * *
Ashley tried not to vomit as the disgusting thing wormed its way through her flesh then attached itself to her stomach.
“So much tidier than the process of mastication, and it is completely impervious to poisons. You may thank me now my pet.” said Tannal.
“Thank you, master,” Ashley said, her voice flat. She glanced down at the symbiont that would now do her eating for her. It pulsed as a collaborator ladled gruel from a pot into its grey, bowl-shaped top.
“Bon appetite,” said Tannal.
Ashley closed her eyes and sought refuge the only way she could.
“The processing rate is just too high. The human brain can’t deal with the information fast enough,” said Richard. He sat on his couch while Ashley sat in one of the easy chairs, alternating between a book and her laptop.
“I think we can beat it. If we stimulate the pineal gland to increase production of key hormones.”
“Love, the endocrine glands have their production limits too. The machine has to adapt to serve the organism, not the other way around.”
“That’s so limiting,” Ashley’s brow wrinkled as she tried to draw something from the back of her mind.
“Remember, it’s about life. It’s about helping humans
to be all we are, not become something we aren’t.”
“You’re right. It’s so easy to forget that if you change something too much is ceases to be what it was in the first place.” Ashley smiled and made an adaptation to the diagram on her computer screen.
“Richard,” Ashley’s voice changed. In the memory becoming immediate.
“I’m here,” spoke Richard’s image in the memory. They both knew that before they had made love then drifted into a contented sleep.
“I’ve downloaded the information on the next batch of engineered soldiers into your files.”
“Good. Have you thought about our discussion?”
“Beloved, the band width. I don’t know if I could free that much up.”
“Ash, it’s our only chance.”
“Have you succeeded with the children?”
“It’s coming. All the gene samples are viable. I have completed a recording device.”
“The side-effects you feared?”
“I think the Darmuks will see any problems as a side effect of you linking the human systems to the bio-mind. I’ll bet they can deal with any problems as they come up. They’ve been at this a lot longer than we have.”
Ashley nodded. “Have the machine ready. I’ll start the download whenever I can.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
A Legend Born
A sound like distant thunder echoed over the compound. A minute passed and Darmuk troops poured out the gate. Another thunder clap rolled and more troops left. Zane stood immediately in front of the embassy’s side door. Six collaborators stood naked in the hallway as a Darmuk inspected their body cavities with sadistic glee.
“Back. No more humans today!” snapped a battle-ape that attempted to push Zane out the door.
“Now!” said Richard.
Zane shifted his hand in his pocket and a retort sounded. The battle-ape reeled back. Zane and Richard rushed into the embassy. Zane pulled his pistol from his pocket and fired at the Darmuks inspecting the people, killing both.
“Hurry,” snapped Zane.
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