Metamorph: The Outbounder Chronicles

by Chris Reher

  Laryn watched him tuck in a strap and then straighten again to adjust her visor. It was probably not entirely necessary, but she sensed that he was well used to preparing for things that might lurk in dark places. There was also something reassuring not only about his concern for her safety, but also, she had to admit, in his physical presence so close to her. She caught his eyes and fancied, for a moment, that he felt that, too.

  To pull herself out of that mood, she pointed at her head, then his ear. “Jex?” she whispered.

  He wagged his hand in the air in a vague gesture. “Barely.” Then he turned to Toji. After a moment’s hesitation, he removed a sidearm from a holster on his thigh and held it out to the Kalon.

  Laryn’s first thought was of Pendra rules that prohibited Kalons from accessing weapons. But then it struck her as almost absurd to leave Toji unarmed down here. Besides, right now Pendra Station seemed a long way away. It was Azah who gave Ryle an angry glare, but she said nothing. Toji took the gun from Ryle, a little timidly, but then nodded and gripped it correctly, copying the others.

  The little convoy set in motion again, moving slowly this time and pausing to scan the spaces ahead. Uncounted minutes later, Ryle stopped his crawler when a jagged gap in the stone wall allowed a sliver of light to creep into the tunnel.

  The others waited while he slid from his vehicle and crept forward. “A cavern below here,” he confirmed, whispering into his com unit. He disappeared for a moment, leaving the others to wait anxiously in their crawlers.

  “Ryle?” Azah said, just as he returned.

  “I’m here. There’s a slope down into the cave. I think the crawlers can make it, but it’ll leave us exposed. Azah, stay up here and cover us. We’ll go take a look.”

  Laryn half expected Azah to object, but she said nothing as she opened the crawler’s carapace.

  “I’ll stay up here with her,” Denzloe said. “I’m a good shot.”

  This time Azah scowled, possibly over the prospect of having to share a crawler with the man to follow the others to the bottom of the cavern. Laryn grinned and was surprised when Azah returned the smile with a theatrical roll of her eyes. “The things I put up with…” she grumbled and climbed out of the vehicle.

  Laryn took her place at the makeshift helm of the crawler and nudged it forward, then back again to get a feel of the controls. Ryle had moved toward the opening in the rock, followed by Azah and Denzloe. Taking a breath, she fell in line, glad that she was able to better see the uneven ground before her in the growing light.

  A stone ridge jutted out and sloped steeply down to their left, toward the floor of the massive cave. Above them, a part of the ceiling had collapsed, allowing murky daylight to reach the ground in dusty beams. Towering stalagmites crowded the cavern, creating far too many blind spots and cavities where someone might lie in wait for them.

  “Wait till we’re down,” Ryle said to Azah. “Then we’ll cover you. These crawlers will be hard to spot if we move slowly. Careful. There’s a lot of loose debris.”

  Laryn wondered, just for a moment, what might have possessed her to agree to the outbounder mission at all. She could have taken an assignment aboard one of the transporters that ferried the migrants from the station to Terrica. Help prepare the Humans for their new environment. Things like that, all very safe and unlikely to result in stalking aliens in near-darkness just to prove to some woman she had never met before that she wasn’t a princess. Was she trying to impress Ryle as well? Had she reverted, somehow, to the bratty twelve-year old bent on showing her brothers what she was made of?

  She shook her head to focus her concentration on the descent, keeping her eyes on Ryle’s crawler just ahead of her. Gravel scattered but it remained surefooted and steady. It seemed to take years before they reached level ground and moved into the shelter of a wall of stalagmites to leave the vehicles.

  “Stay in the shadows,” Ryle whispered.

  She nodded and followed him as he crept along the perimeter of the cave, frequently looking up to where Azah crouched on the ledge in case she spotted movement among the structures. Toji followed, bent low. They listened to sounds that might tell of someone, or something, lurking in the dark, but only the crunch of gravel under their feet disturbed the silence.

  “Look!” Laryn pointed ahead when several hunched shapes appeared out of the gloom.

  The spaces here among the stalagmites had been filled in by the tough, grayish substance they had seen aboard the Harla. Uneven and ropy-looking in places, it had been molded to create spherical shapes that, given the door-like openings, seemed to be shelters. There was no other sign of habitation here. No fire pits, no tools or equipment scattered around, no sign that people had lived here. Only the smoother paths in the loose gravel showed the traffic pattern of many feet from one structure to another.

  “This stuff looks familiar,” Ryle said. “Like those round things on the moon, but bigger. He tapped his com. “Stay up there for now, Azah. We found habitats or something. Place looks deserted but cover us while we check this out.”

  “Got it.”

  Ryle sidled around to the arched opening on one of the Kalon-made structures and quickly looked inside. He shook his head and moved past it. Taking a look for herself, Laryn saw that it was empty.

  The one next to it wasn’t. Here they found two Br’ll chrysalis, abandoned and possibly dead, and a pile of cast-off casings from one or two that had lived. A third building contained just the shells. She tapped the curving wall of the chamber and found it hard, like plastic, and as uneven as if it had been sprayed in a liquid state. Like the ropes of hardened material they had found on the Human bodies aboard the Harla.

  “Over there!” Ryle moved stealthily to a larger dome among the stalagmites where a dim glow seeped from the door opening. A mechanical hum reached their ears.

  He looked up at Azah who waved a signal that all was well before he ducked into the building ahead of Laryn and Toji. They found a single, oblong room, but here the gray material had been used to build low tables, or perhaps beds. No one reclined on them now but above each hung a globe from which thin strands of reddish rope ran along the wall and to the humming mechanism near another exit.

  Laryn looked up at the rope. “That power pack is clearly one of ours. If those are power cables I have no idea how they managed to interface with our stuff.”

  Toji touched a hesitant finger to trace a fractal pattern up along the curved wall. The lines and patches glowed softly to provide a source of light here.

  Laryn held up her scanner. “Lichen, sort of,” she concluded. “Maybe engineered to glow like that.”

  Ryle cursed, barely audible, when he walked past the last of the tables.

  Someone sprawled on the floor there, unmoving and clearly Human. “Dead,” Ryle pronounced after looking for signs of life. “Not long.”

  “That’s the chief mate of the Harla,” Laryn said in a near whisper. She looked around for something with which to cover him, but there wasn’t so much as a rag here. Perhaps guessing her thoughts, Toji lifted the body off the ground to take him to the table farthest from where they stood. He did this without visible effort although, even in this gravity, the man’s body seemed substantial.

  Ryle examined the power pack and then followed another, more conventional, cable to a familiar shape nearby. He ran his hand over the top of the sturdy case, the sort used to transport delicate equipment. It took only a few minutes for him to force it open and shine a light inside. “Well, now we know where the AI is,” he said, reading the markings on the device. “Harla.”

  “But they left it behind,” Toji said. “Is it not valuable?”

  “Not without its master.” Laryn nodded toward the dead man. “I’m guessing the captain is dead, too. Without them, the AI is useless, wiped out when the telemetry stopped.”

  “Yeah,” Ryle said after running his hand over the device. “Dead cold. What the hell were they doing with the AI down here? It’s just the pro
cessor. No guts, no database, no network.”

  Laryn turned to inspect one of the globes hanging over the tables. Walking around it, she found a transparent circle and peered inside. A bewildering array of tubes, fluid-filled bulbs, and what looked eerily like pincers and scalpels, all cleverly magnified by the viewport’s material, lined the interior. “This looks surgical,” she said.

  Ryle stepped out of the chamber to look for an assuring wave from Azah and then returned to give the table an experimental shake. Finding it solid, he hopped onto it to lie down beneath the globe. Although the table seemed made for something of Kalon size, the globe now hung over his head. He pointed at its bottom. “There’s a sphincter on this thing.”

  Laryn almost laughed out loud. “What? Where?” She bent to see the gathered circle of flexible material designed to tighten around a patient’s neck.

  “Good enough for me,” Ryle said and sat up again. “I’m not sticking my head in there.” He began to sift through some equally puzzling tools scattered on another table.

  “Why would they operate on a Kalon’s head, Toji?” Laryn said. “Your face isn’t surgically altered, is it?”

  He came to where she stood and peered into the device. “No. Not that I recall.”

  She frowned. “Well, we know they’re not doing brain surgery down here. What with your brain not being all in your head, I mean. I wish we could take one of these with us. I’m dying to figure out what it does. Or how it works.”

  Ryle whistled softly, drawing their attention. “Will you look at that.” He turned to hold up a familiar shape. She recognized the gray container with its rounded lid before he showed her the Pendra logo emblazoned on it. “Must be the box Iko had.”

  Laryn moved around the table to peer into the case when he opened it. The interior padding had shaped itself around four small vials although they looked empty now and had been carelessly tossed back without regard of the slots. He nudged them back into place, turning them so that their markings showed.

  “What are those?” Toji said.

  Laryn read the digits on each vial. “Those are KRNL codes,” she said.

  “KRNL? Isn’t that the device you carry in your head? For identification?”

  She nodded. “And the one on Ryle’s back. Hidden in his tattoo. But those digits there mean they belong to a neural interface, like mine.”

  “Neural?” Ryle looked at the globe suspended over the table behind her. “The kind you need brain surgery for?”

  Laryn gasped. “But they don’t have…” She looked up at Toji, then shook her head in disbelief. “They made Kalons with brains? The kind that can use these chips?”

  Toji lifted a hand to cover his mouth, a gesture that seemed Human. “But why? What use is it to them?”

  Ryle held up one of the vials, empty now except for the liquid that once protected the appliance from contamination. “These aren’t just lying around some place where Kalons can get at them. Aren’t your spares super secure?”

  She nodded. “Of course. Double-blind code and under lock and key in the clinic somewhere. Nowhere near where civilians are allowed. They wouldn’t scribble the actual ID of the carrier on the vial. I don’t think they’re even kept in vials.”

  Ryle put the box back on the table. “Do you have written language, Toji?”

  “No. Some of us use yours. We haven’t needed to develop any. Not the Kalons, anyway. I don’t know about the Br’ll. Why?”

  Ryle’s eyes moved from the spherical surgery, along the cables, to find the dead AI and its equally dead master. “Only two possibilities here,” he said. “Either someone gave these to Iko, or he took them from their owners.”

  Laryn spun to face him. “No one would just give these to anybody. I know you see conspiracies around every corner, but I’m not going to entertain that thought, Captain. And it’s not likely that Kalons were doing brain surgery, or whatever this is, on Pendra Station.”

  He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, and then shifted to Toji. “No, they were not.”

  She squinted at him as his meaning became clear. “You think they murdered four people to get these chips?”

  “I do.”

  Toji emitted a weak, high-pitched exclamation before covering his mouth again, this time with both hands.

  “You were right, Toji,” Ryle said. “This is a lab. They brought the Harla here on purpose. But not to learn how Humans dress for dinner. They needed an AI, and they needed brains to figure out how to talk to one.”

  “For what reason?” Toji exclaimed.

  “They’re after our AIs,” Laryn said, watching Ryle nod in agreement. “If they developed a brain that can carry these devices, they can gain access to our ships, even the Artificial Neural Network aboard Pendra Station. Security, Admin, Engineering, all depending on whose chips they are. If they can mimic a Human body, ANN will recognize them by their implant. If they got their hands on the right KRNLs, they’ll have access to anything they want.” She joined Ryle by the arched opening of the alien surgical lab. “I’m afraid this time I have to insist that we return to Pendra Station immediately, Captain.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right, Agent,” he said with a crooked grin. “And we better hurry.”

  “There is someone outside!” Toji pointed to the sensitive aural pads on his forehead as he scanned the cave for something. Or listened. “Kalons coming this way.”

  They now all heard a hissing sound, like water through a narrow pipe, punctuated by something mechanical.

  “What are they saying?” Laryn said.

  “They’re not saying anything,” Toji said. “It’s a sound made when we’re stressed. That could be anything. Pain, fear, even just working very hard.” He pointed to the left of the cave, where Azah would not be able to see from her post on the ledge.

  Gun in hand, Ryle edged to the door to look outside. “I don’t want to get trapped in here,” he said, motioning Laryn to move ahead of him. “Let’s take cover over there.” He turned back to Toji. His expression changed to one of surprise and a fair bit of amusement.

  Toji had shed his mantle and now stood entirely undressed before them, holding only his gun. In the bleary light, the long, powerful limbs seemed made for combat. The skin over his chest and abdomen folded and overlapped like deeply tanned leather plates.

  “Um…” Laryn began but then, remembering that his people didn’t actually have gender, realized there probably wasn’t any need for the Kalons to be clothed at all, except for decorative purposes. Or maybe if things got chilly. She wondered if all of them were naked aboard Pendra when no Humans were around to be offended by such breach of tradition.

  Toji pointed at his discarded mantle. “It gets in the way,” he said and stepped outside. Ryle and Laryn followed to hear Azah’s shrill whistle pierce the silence of the cavern. Laryn looked up to see her, half-hidden behind a rock, gesturing to their left. Almost at once, part of another boulder beside her exploded in a shower of shards.

  “Kalons!” Ryle shoved Laryn into the cover of the stone pillars.

  At least a half dozen of the metamorphs, unclothed like Toji, scrambled through the rock formations toward them. Their rasping vocals and ear-shattering shrieks echoed through the stone chamber, disguising their true number. Something punched into the side of the dome shelter behind them to shatter it as if with a giant’s fist.

  “What the hell are they using? Sonics?” Ryle rose to fire his laser weapon, equipped with a tracer, toward the advancing Kalons. One of them loped toward them and he took him down with a precisely placed burst. Toji also took up the fight, aiming inexpertly but adding to the show of force. “Insane weaponry and no fighting skills. Lovely.”

  The Kalons circled the perimeter more cautiously now as if realizing that these were not the poorly-armed Harla survivors that had found their way into their lair. Azah, from her vantage point, stabbed her volleys into their midst. Two fell to her aim. Then another shot from below pulverized the rock that was sh
ielding her.

  Ryle ducked just before the Kalon weapon slammed into the cave wall behind them, shaking smaller stalactites loose from their grip on the ceiling. Laryn yelped when a shard of rock cut into her arm, slicing no further than the layer of nanofibers that protected her.

  Toji crouched beside them. “There are more of them.” He touched his forehead. “I can detect their… their signals. The sounds we make. They are together, that way.”

  “I wonder how many there are,” Ryle said, his eyes on Laryn’s arm. “You all right?”

  She nodded, shaking it to get rid of the numb feeling.

  Ryle peered over his cover again to fire in the direction Toji had pointed out. “I want one of those guns they’re using,” he said.

  Laryn ducked when a sound like a crack of lightning reached them. The stone ledge where Azah and Denzloe had taken cover disintegrated, showering debris to the cave floor. She stared in disbelief as Denzloe started to slide. Azah lunged for him but he fell, flailing wildly, to the bottom of the cave and she began to slide after him with a cascade of splintered stone. Ryle’s fingers dug painfully into Laryn’s arm when Azah grasped for a jagged outcropping, hanging free as her feet sought support on the stone wall. A shot from a Kalon weapon blasted more dust and stone into the air.

  Ryle exhaled forcefully, relieved, when she heaved herself up and rolled away from the edge. He tapped the com tab on his collar. “Azah, get out of here. We won’t make it back up there now.”

  Her dark, dust-streaked face peered down at them. “There has to be another way up,” she said, her voice broken and bleared by static.

  “Get out,” Ryle said. “You still have a crawler. Get back to the Nefer and take her up and around to this side of the ridge. This fresh air has to come from somewhere. We’ll try to make our way there. If you see something looking even remotely like a ship, take it out. I think the Kalons are heading back to the station to make trouble there.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”