Metamorph: The Outbounder Chronicles

by Chris Reher

  “Life support?” Ryle asked.

  “Negative.”

  Laryn worked with the console, wishing she could do this without her gloves. “There are some files here,” she said. “Can you access them, Jex?”

  “Yes, Agent Ash.”

  “Could be transponder logs,” Ryle said. “Download whatever is most recent. Since they left the Hub.”

  “This is a distress signal,” Jex said. “But the logs are not here.”

  “What do you mean?” Ryle said. “Did they get erased? Corrupted?”

  “I can restore erased data. I mean there is nothing there. The loggers were either turned off or the system failed.”

  “Is that even possible? What about the maintenance records? Systems, damn weather reports. This is the com station. There has to be something here.”

  “Nothing.”

  “What is the content of the distress signal, Jex?” Laryn asked.

  “What you probably expect,” he replied. “They entered the wrong filament and emerged here, badly damaged, and had no choice but to land on this moon.”

  “Captain,” Toji said, sounding hesitant. “Is it even possible to enter a wrong filament? They do not shift and they do not change direction, so close to the Hub, is that not so?”

  Ryle nodded. “They move but not fast enough to worry about in our lifetime. You’d have to be very inept to end up here. The root of the Terrica filament isn’t even close to the one leading here. Are you sure about this, Jex?”

  “I am merely reporting on the content of the transmission. Would you like to analyze it yourself?”

  Azah snickered, like the others detecting the slight peevishness of Jex’s tone.

  “I’ll take a look when we’re back aboard the Nefer,” Ryle said. “What else is on there?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary. They broadcasted the signal via real space, of course, so it hasn’t reached Pendra Station yet. The transmitter shut down three years ago.”

  “Why the hell would they do that?” Azah said.

  “Maybe they like it here,” Nolan said from his station aboard the Nefer.

  “Did you even notice the corpses lying around here?” she shot back.

  “Azah’s got a point,” Ryle said. “Even if the planet down there is as habitable as it seems, they wouldn’t stop trying to contact Pendra. That’s just protocol.”

  “Jex,” Laryn said. “Is it possible the signal was turned off around the time these people died?”

  “Quite. I’ve calculated the likely rate of decomposition of those bodies in this atmosphere and these events seem to coincide.”

  Azah stepped out of the small control room and shone her light up and down the deserted corridor. “Something ugly happened here, that’s for sure. Those people we found were probably left behind to look after the wreck when everyone else went to the surface. Then someone killed them and turned off the signal.”

  “That’d explain why there’s still a shuttle up here,” Ryle said. “They expected to rejoin the others.”

  “Is it possible,” Laryn said, not sure how to phrase her thought. “That this has to do with the planet? I mean, finding a habitable world is big news. It’s worth fortunes, like Nolan said earlier. Maybe… uh…”

  “Maybe an outbounder came along this way and wanted to do away with the migrants so they can claim the planet?” Ryle said, sounding amused. “And leave all this evidence of evil-mongering? Don’t worry, Mediary, we’re not that heinous.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply…” she said. “Well, yes, I did. I’ve seen people do exactly this if it means getting what they want.”

  He nodded. “I suppose. But let’s not assume the worst just yet.”

  “Then what’s the alternative?” Azah said. “Who’d do such a thing? And why?”

  “And where are they now?” Laryn said. “Did they go home again?”

  “Did they go to the surface, too?” Nolan added what all of them were thinking.

  “Let’s keep looking around,” Ryle said. “And let’s not speculate till we know more.” He seemed to reconsider this and added, “Jex, broaden your scans to scan for ships in the region. Just make sure you stay dark to the planet for now.”

  Azah gestured to Laryn and Toji to follow her further along the corridor. Ryle walked at the rear, which Laryn found comforting.

  “There should be a substation up ahead,” Laryn said after they had taken a few turns through the labyrinth of the ship’s service areas. “There. That panel.”

  Azah slid the door aside and reached for a manual lever. An alarm warbled something, realized that it did not have the power for a full restore and fell silent again. Dim strips of light now glowed above them, showing the way although their pallid illumination seemed to make the dead corridors even more unsettling.

  “What’s that?” Laryn said and reached for the sound controls of her suit. “That buzzing sound.”

  “I hear it, too,” Azah said. “Started when I powered this up. From over there.”

  The others followed her into a high-ceilinged room lined with workstations. Equipment hung suspended from the walls or rose from the floor but here, too, much of it had been removed, leaving only the power ports behind. Cabinets below the work counters stood open and empty, like dark mouths gaping in the gloom.

  “The med lab,” Laryn said. “I guess they took the movable gear and supplies to the surface.”

  “They left this thing, though,” Ryle said when his light played over a workbench at the rear of the room. “Whatever this is.”

  The others approached the odd structure as if expecting it to leap up and bite them. The humped shape of pale, yellow-gray material took up much of the counter space near the infirmary door. Although uneven and lacking in symmetry, some protuberances and angled edges jutting from it suggested tooling. So did the smooth surface, marked on one side with a pattern or perhaps symbols. Several transparent spheres were set into the front, like viewports. A similar shape crouched on the floor near the wall. Two long, irregular tubes led up from it, across the ceiling, and down to the device on the counter.

  “What the…” Nolan said through their com system. “Get a look at it.”

  Ryle and Laryn edged closer, cautiously. His light picked out glittering particles as it moved over the translucent surface.

  “Looks almost organic,” he said.

  “Isn’t, though.” Laryn peered into her hand-held scanner. “Not totally, anyway. Silicone, aluminum, calcium.” She tried to look through the small windows and, when she saw only blackness inside, held her sensor close to the opening. “Jex?”

  “One moment.”

  Ryle poked the mound with a finger and found it solid. “Some sort of equipment, maybe. Or storage.”

  “Not made by us, that’s for sure,” Laryn said, searching her updated memory. “I have no information on anything even close to this. It certainly isn’t on the Harla’s inventory lists.”

  “It is a mechanism of remarkable complexity,” Jex said. “I’m detecting synthetic DNA, possibly for data storage. Not entirely unknown to us, but we don’t use it in this context.”

  “What context?” Ryle asked.

  “I am still working on an analysis. But the interior is a sterile environment, suggesting a medical purpose. Or quarantine.”

  “Food production, maybe.” Azah grinned at Ryle. “Looks expensive, whatever it is. I’ll file pictures for our claim. If this was done after the crew abandoned the Harla, it’s ours.”

  “You’re all heart, Azah,” Nolan said.

  Laryn looked up to see Toji move toward a translucent door beside the counter. The sound they had noticed in the hallway seemed to emit from there. A feeble source of light beckoned them and she followed, leaving Azah with her newfound treasure. For a moment, the Kalon’s long, alien fingers were sharply outlined against the backlit pane, looking like something out of a dark tale of fiction, as he pushed the door aside.

  “What the…” she whis
pered when she peered around him and into the infirmary. “Ryle, come see.” She removed one of the lights from her arm and placed it on a shelf next to the door, illuminating the room.

  Ryle entered the space behind her. “Damn,” he said, as awed by what he saw as Laryn was.

  “That don’t look Human,” Nolan said, glued to his video displays aboard the Nefer.

  “You don’t say.” Ryle raised his arm to stop Toji from walking further into the room, but the Kalon paid no attention. “Azah, you want to see this.”

  Toji turned in a full circle to gaze over the rows of benches filling the large space. Here, too, bodies stretched out, although these bore no resemblance to Humans and had been arranged with care. Of various sizes, none much larger than a child, the creatures seemed little more than six-legged, giant slugs colored in mottled shades of green and brown. Their short appendages looked scarcely large and strong enough to support them while walking or crawling or whatever these aliens might do to get around. Deep furrows and wrinkles networked their freeze-dried skin.

  Azah’s soft curse hissed over the speakers in their suits when she came in and saw the peculiar sight before them.

  “I was just thinking that,” Ryle said. He hovered a hand over one of the bodies to scan it. “They are dead. Frozen. No life signs. Looks like a larva. Are these insects?”

  “We have no appropriate classification for this,” Jex said. “Please scan the larger individuals for analysis.”

  Laryn followed Ryle to a row of benches that held bodies encased in some sort of carapace. If they also had six legs, they were drawn close, obscured by the oblong casing. Hesitantly, she reached out to poke at one with her gloved hand. It gave, but only reluctantly, like thick leather armor the color of dark amber.

  “If this is new, we won’t just be rich, we’ll be damn famous,” Azah said as Ryle passed his scanner over the cocoon for Jex’s analysis. “We haven’t spotted a new sentient species since Antica.”

  “This one isn’t as friendly,” Laryn said. “If they’re the ones that killed those people.”

  “Who else would do that?” Azah said.

  “Ryle,” Jex said. “I believe I have information about this species in my database.”

  “Oh?” Ryle looked up. “Like what?”

  Laryn watched curiously as an unheard conversation followed between Ryle and Jex. Whatever the AI had to say brought an expression of surprise to the captain’s face, little obscured by his fogged visor. A slow grin followed.

  “What is it, Ryle?” Azah said, also watching this. “What’s going on, Jex?”

  Ryle finally nodded. “Go ahead, Jex.”

  Jex switched his com band to include all of them. “The individuals you have found here are a species known as Br’ll. Your people have met them before.”

  “Br… Brull. Brill?” Azah tried the unfamiliar word.

  “Br’ll are not invertebrates, even though these pupae may suggest that. Your people classified them as metamorphs. They do not reproduce as you do, but go through a series of phases to reach adulthood.”

  “Huh?” Azah said. “What’s a metamorph? Like a frog or butterfly or something?”

  “Not precisely, but close. The small specimens do resemble a larva. At that stage they are little more than bundles of stem cells whose purpose is to grow as rapidly as possible. They then develop this protective shell to undergo the change to adulthood.”

  “So this is a nursery, kinda?” Nolan said. “Are you sure they’re dead? Not just in stasis or metamophorphosizing or whatever?”

  “Dead,” Jex said. “None of the readings I’ve received indicate anything but slow desiccation. There is no sign of metabolism, which should be extremely active at this point.”

  “I wonder why they died,” Laryn said. “Jex, can you tell if they were killed like those Humans were?”

  “It does not appear so. Likely, these just didn’t survive the transformation. It doesn’t matter. These are birthed in large numbers and are insignificant until they transform. They can even be used as food.”

  Ryle chuckled when he saw the expression on Azah’s face. “Let’s not judge by our standards.”

  “What happens to those who survive?” Laryn, the first to recover from that revelation, asked.

  “It’s an interesting process,” Jex said, for once sounding animated and even eager to share his knowledge of the creatures. “And very efficient. The infants are produced by adult breeders and cared for by the group. It is irrelevant who birthed them. Once they withdraw into their cocoon, they are joined by two, sometimes three, of the adults. It is then that parental DNA is transferred to them, eventually replacing all genes. It’s the reason that their immune system is weak at this stage. What genes are expressed is an amazing process of selection based on what is needed. Will they be workers? Breeders? Will they need some other quality?”

  “How do they accomplish this?” Ryle said.

  “Agent Ash,” Jex said. “Please magnify the pale ridge between the upper two shell plates of that specimen.”

  Curious, Laryn bent over the Br’ll on the table and engaged the camera on her visor. “This? I see tiny apertures or something where those plates meet.”

  “This matches the information in my database,” Jex said. “A retrovirus is transferred by the adults during the latest stage. It transports the RNA and then the young take it from there. That’s when they take on their final physical shape, inside this armor. The shell is then discarded.”

  “Virus?” Azah said.

  “It has very little effect on your species,” Jex said. “You are quite safe.”

  “I think we’ll ramp up the decon scope when we get back, anyway,” she said, sounding unconvinced.

  “I’ll sample these,” Laryn said, digging into a pocket for the kit that was part of the baggy EV suits they all wore. It contained a fine laser scalpel, sterile sample vials, and solution. “We’ll need to preserve that virus, anyway. I don’t like the sound of it at all.”

  Toji tried to lift the edge of the Br’ll’s armor plate, which did not yield. “A remarkable species.”

  “This Br’ll has not yet fully transformed,” Jex continued his lecture. “At the conclusion of the process, the adolescent once again links to adult Br’ll. It draws on the mature neural patterns to create copies for itself. I suppose you might call it telepathy, but it’s a fundamentally biological process. In that way the new metamorphs gain their parents’ experiences and knowledge, also personality. They are then fully adult.”

  “Clever,” Ryle said. He winced when Laryn found a soft spot on the creature’s neck and began to cut through the carapace. “No need for educating the young.”

  “We have similar processes,” Laryn said, pointing at her head. “We’ve been using accelerated learning for a long time now. Although we need our computers and brain enhancements to absorb information faster than evolution meant us to.”

  “Yes, the end results of this species’ methods and your own are very similar,” Jex said. “The new adults are not clones of the original. They receive these impressions from any adult that joins with them, taking some from each. Often a newly formed Br’ll is deliberately exposed to certain individuals to obtain specific genetic and neural material.”

  “So what are they doing here?” Ryle said. “On a stranded ship belonging to Humans.”

  “I’m wondering that, too,” Laryn said as she capped the first of her vials. “There is no record of any alien species aboard the Harla. Nothing in the passenger lists or cargo manifests that describes any of this.” She moved to one of the small, immature Br’ll to take another sample. Her laser slid into its body as if into soft clay.

  “They may not have been aboard at all, at first,” Jex said. “I’ve analyzed the debris outside the ship. Among the waste are numerous discarded Br’ll carapaces. Those also date back three years. We may speculate that the Br’ll breeding here began after most of the Humans left.”

  “Hmm.” Ryl
e peered closely into where, presumably, the Br’ll face would be, perhaps hoping to get a glimpse of it through the cloudy substance that covered the creature. “There is no alien ship here. So what you’re saying is that the Humans went down to the surface and then these Br’ll came, killed the remaining ones, made babies, and then left again?”

  “I’m not saying that,” Jex replied. “You are inferring.”

  “Maybe they were lost here, too,” Laryn said. “Arriving after the Harla.”

  “Right,” Azah scoffed. “What are the odds of that?”

  “Would you like me to calculate?” Jex inquired. “Or was your question rhetorical?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Your tone, Azah.”

  “That was also a rhetorical question, Jex.”

  “Understood.”

  “Those smaller ones could have been smuggled aboard for some reason,” Azah said. “Maybe someone wanted to start a giant bug collection on Terrica and it got out of hand.”

  Toji shifted his eyes to her and Laryn thought she read some emotion on that leathery face. It was not a pleasant one. “This is obviously an ancient and very specialized species, he said. “To call them bugs is to do them great disservice.”

  “So can I ask something,” Nolan said. “Why doesn’t anybody know about these? What do they look like when they’re done baking? Why haven’t we seen them around?”

  Ryle turned to Laryn, regarding her for a long moment, as if deciding something before he spoke. “The Br’ll were here before us,” he said. “At the Hub, I mean. Before Humans discovered it. They interacted…” He watched Toji place his hand on the lifeless Br’ll, but not to poke it as the others had done. There was something thoughtful, even gentle in that touch. “Well, maybe more than interacted. Our people obviously captured and studied them. But the creatures disappeared shortly after that.”

  “Disappeared how?” Azah said.

  Ryle shrugged. “No idea. Do you have anything more, Jex?”

  “I do not. It is noted that the Br’ll disappeared from the sector by 21-50. When the construction of Pendra Station began.”