Metamorph: The Outbounder Chronicles

by Chris Reher

  The sewer wasn’t a sewer at all, but an access lid on the floor of the plaza’s pseudo-cobbles designed to look like a storm drain. It actually led to the lower levels and, eventually, to engineering. Although restricted to maintenance staff, it suffered frequent break-ins by the more adventurous residents bent on sneaking into forbidden areas.

  She got past the lock and sternly worded warning label by pressing her thumb to its sensor. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am an engineer,” she said, looking around before slipping into the dark opening. A few rungs embedded in the conduit helped her down and she soon dropped to the floor below.

  Tall racks crowded this space, connected by long loops of tubing. The sound of dripping water and the rich smell of growing things told her she had arrived in the station’s hydroponics facility. Some of the pipes fed into the ceiling to circulate water into the plaza’s greenery, others led to the transparent greenhouse tubes along the outside wall of the station. The growing lights had gone out, leaving only the emergency beacons to show the way.

  “Jex,” she whispered.

  “I’m here,” he said, calm as always. “Ryle can hear you, too.”

  “Good,” she said. She listened for movement in the dark and heard nothing. “I just don’t want to be alone right now.”

  “You are not, Ryle says. But speak only when you must. Avoid broadcasting your position. I will monitor your location for Kalon sounds.”

  She stole along the shelving of edible greens to look for another opening in the floor, this time truly a drain, leading down to the water recycling plant. She found it after a short but frantic search among the produce bins. This one was unlocked and she slid into it, this time having to drop a short distance into a shallow catch basin. She winced when cold water seeped into her boots.

  A maze of corridors that few people ever saw led her, at last, to the entrance into the main engineering chamber. Her freshly appropriated credential got her past the lock to engineering without alarm.

  “I’m in,” she whispered and crept through the warren of machinery and conduits that drew from the power plant and recyclers below this level to keep them all alive here on the station. The whirrs, thumps and hums vibrating through the chamber felt weirdly reassuring. She ducked back when she saw something move.

  “Kalons down here!” she whispered over the cacophony made by her heart beating its way out of her chest. Forcing herself into breathing evenly, she peered out from the shadows to watch the metamorph stalk past a distribution hub and then along a ramp leading to an upper level, away from where she hid. Most of that part of the chamber consisted of an incomprehensible tangle of pipes, conduits, catwalks and support structures.

  She sidled around something that seemed to be under pressure and tiptoed up an engineer’s ladder to slip into the main control room. It lay in darkness, like the rest of the station, except for the emergency strips near the floor and ceiling. Monitors and work consoles beckoned in shiny, well-maintained splendor. She stayed well away from the transparent wall overlooking the main chamber as she scuttled over to the console governing the maintenance functions of the station.

  She waved her hand to startle ANN-E’s standby indicators into action, and an overhead screen activated. The AI emitted a scan of Laryn’s KRNL implant.

  “Hello, Agent Laryn Ash. You may proceed.”

  “Shhh,” Laryn said. “We don’t need to chat, Annie.”

  The system switched to visual and tactile interface without comment. It wasn’t likely that ANN-E came equipped with a social protocol.

  Laryn pushed open a cabinet door below the operator console and withdrew one of the portable control panels. She tested it and found it fully charged and interfacing with ANN-E. “Go standby, Annie,” she whispered. “Roving maintenance check.”

  The console darkened again and the monitor switched off. Laryn crept to the glass wall. The Kalon she had seen earlier, or maybe it was another, still paced around on the catwalk. What did he hope to accomplish up there? She ducked out of the control booth and into a connecting staff lounge. Another catwalk led from there to the processor stacks. The interference would obscure her bio readings as well as, hopefully, the transmitters in Ryle’s jacket.

  Laryn squeezed herself into a gap, drew up her legs and tucked her gun between them. She angled the hand-held interface device to hide its mellow gleam and accessed the AI without speaking. She tapped her way through places in the system she’d never dreamed to have to access and, after a while, found the electrical systems. It didn’t take much to activate the lights for the main components of the station, leaving this chamber in the dark, and then power up the life support systems on all levels. Something nearby roared into action. She left the lockdown in place except for personnel with a higher than Level Three security clearance. Any armed staff locked in their private accommodations would now be free to join the defense against the invaders.

  “Laryn,” Jex said. “Ryle said ‘atta girl’. I am not familiar with the term.”

  She grinned. “Chauvinistic, but I’ll take it. It’ll be a while before the fans kick in, but I think we did it. I’m going to try to get into Security from here. That should get us the com back.”

  “Stay hidden,” Jex said. “We’re coming to get you. They might try to shut things down again. We need to find the Kalons with the neural interfaces.”

  “I’ll stay ahead of them.” Laryn nodded to herself and returned to her work on the control panel. Several attention-getting indicators still had something to say and she drilled further into the system to look for irregularities. The Annex was back in business, the docks were secure, and yet ANN-E was busy with things of a very high security level, when the systems should just be running their regular operations.

  She frowned. “Annie,” she whispered.

  “Yes, Agent Ash?”

  “Why are we slowing down?” She verified the station’s slow track in its orbit around the Well. The station itself had no drive, but thrusters kept it in place and at the correct velocity. “Why has the station changed course?”

  “It is part of the requested protocol. All systems are functioning normally.”

  “What protocol?”

  “Station decommission, Stage Ten of final disposal.”

  Laryn stared at the panel, slack-jawed and unable to quite fit this information into her head. “What did you say? On screen.” She looked at the images and text that insisted on showing her what she wanted desperately to have misunderstood.

  “Ryle,” she whispered.

  “We’re on our way. Sort of.”

  “We have a problem,” she said. She drew her legs closer to her body and shut her eyes.

  “I’m not sure we need more of those. The second Kalon ship ran. The Roucho ships went after it, but it’s too fast for any of us. I think we might have overestimated their weapons.”

  Laryn had heard none of that. “The station has moved out of its orbit, Ryle. It’s heading for the Well!”

  A stunned silence followed her words.

  “Ryle? Did you hear me?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Can you tell how it got off course?”

  “Yeah…” she said and then realized no sound had actually passed her parched lips. She cleared her throat. “Yes. ANN-E thinks the station is being decommissioned.”

  He cursed.

  “That protocol is one of the final steps in the decommission process,” Jex said. “Once anything of value is salvaged, and the crew is removed, the station is designed to tip into the Well to be destroyed. I assume the shutdown of the life support systems was part of that. It’s an efficient process.”

  “Can this run out of order?” Laryn said. “Even if ANN-E gets confused, would ANN not stop her?”

  “I do not know. This is not a program that can just launch on its own. It requires both Engineering and Security.”

  “How do we stop it?” Laryn tapped her screen. “Annie, abort disposal protocol. Return the station to optimum traje
ctory.”

  “I’m sorry, Agent Ash. I need Level Five security confirmation to amend this operation.”

  “The station is not abandoned! There are Humans aboard still. Evacuation is not complete.”

  “Please contact your Level Five supervisor for override authorization.”

  “You are going to kill us!”

  “I understand.”

  Laryn cursed, wishing for even a snippet of Jex’s suspect programming to get through this AI’s lack of intelligence.

  “We need to find someone high up in Security,” she said to Ryle and Jex. “Director Vercy, one of the admins, maybe.”

  “They could be anywhere,” Ryle said. “They’d be in engineering by now if they were able. Or available,” he added. “We have to assume they were taken out first by the Kalons.”

  “Why are they doing this, Ryle?” she said, perfectly aware that he had no answer for her. “I thought the Kalons want the station. Why destroy it?”

  “Wish I knew,” Ryle said. “Maybe they made a mistake. The chip gives them access to the AI; it doesn’t teach them how the station works. We need to stop those thrusters, Laryn. If we get much closer to the horizon, the station will start feeling its gravity.”

  “How long to the horizon?”

  “We’ll be in trouble long before that. The gravity rods are at full power still. The station’s going to shake itself apart. I’m guessing that’s why the Annex separated.”

  “So can we power the rods down? Buy some time?”

  “Perhaps. See if you can—”

  Laryn shrank back when something slammed down on the console in her hand, shattering it and sending the pieces across the metal floor. She cried out in pain and fear when a powerful hand gripped her shoulder to pull her to her feet.

  “Laryn!” she heard Ryle shout before the Kalon grasped her com unit and tore it from her collar. He slammed her against the processor stack, sending a metallic boom through the chamber. She gripped the unyielding wrist when he pinned her there with a fist around her neck.

  Another Kalon came into her quickly-fading field of vision.

  “Iko,” she choked, recognizing the metamorph.

  He gestured something and she was dropped to the floor, coughing and gasping air.

  “Agent Ash. I hadn’t expected to find you here. This is very fortunate.”

  She looked up. “What is,” she managed to croak.

  He grasped her arm and pulled her up as if she were weightless. “You snooping around here. I see you managed to gain access to this AI, perhaps others. You will help us.”

  “Did you know the station is going to break apart? We don’t have very long. We have to stop this.”

  “You do. We don’t. We have no need for the station any longer. We have other plans.” He dragged her back to the main engineering control room. She stumbled along the way which didn’t slow him even a little. He shoved her into the dim room, toward the console. Another Kalon was seated there now and the display screens were active.

  She rubbed her neck. “What plans? You’ll die, too, if we get much closer to the Well.”

  “Yes, that is the plan. You are so very intelligent.”

  “Not a very good plan, then. What do you want from me?”

  He gestured to the control panel. “Someone, and I suppose it was you, has re-initialized the transporter array. You therefore have access to Engineering. Disengage it again.”

  “Don’t you know how?” she asked with a look at the other Kalon.

  “No. It’s not the sort of mechanism your people shared with us. It was enough to interrupt the com signal between it and the station to shut the guidance system down. It seems that the platform has become immune to our scrambling frequency.” He pointed to a work station. “Take it offline again.”

  “Or what?” Laryn said, surprising herself with her sullen tone.

  Iko went to the door and looked outside. A moment later, another of his kinsmen came in, shoving someone ahead of him. He flung the woman to the ground in front of Laryn, and when she turned over, in obvious pain, it was Azah who blinked up at her.

  “Azah!” Laryn crouched beside her. The woman’s forehead and cheek glistened with blood and she gripped her arm as if it might be broken or dislocated. Azah flinched when Laryn touched her shoulder, unable to assess her injuries in the inadequate light.

  She glared at Iko, speechless.

  “The platter, or a slow death for this Human,” Iko said. “Not that it matters. We will die along with everyone else on this station. But I think it matters to you. Will you watch a slow death for this woman, and then suffer the same fate, or will you shut down the platter and die quickly? There is little time left for us. I think perhaps the first option is the most entertaining.”

  “You’re a monster!” Laryn spat.

  “That’s how they made me,” he replied. “Not like my fine friend Toji. Did he prevail against the beasts of that planet?”

  “He’s not your friend, and he’s not your kind,” Laryn said. She wiped a smear of blood from Azah’s lip and then stood up to approach the console.

  “Laryn,” Azah moaned. “Don’t.”

  Laryn looked at the Kalon still watching nothing of particular interest on the monitors. Did he even know what he was doing? “I can not get the platter back on my own,” she said.

  Iko cocked his head.

  “I got it back online with our AI’s help. The one on the Nefer. The guidance system ops are too complex for me. Mathematics is not my strong suit.” She avoided Azah’s eyes as she gestured at her com unit in Iko’s hand. “I need that back to contact Jex.”

  Some conversation seemed to take place among the Kalons. One of them, the one who had captured her earlier, stood over Azah and put his splayed foot over her neck before Iko tossed the unit back to Laryn.

  She activated it. “Jex? Are you receiving?”

  “I am here,” he said.

  “We have been asked to take the transporter array offline. Perhaps you can assist me again.”

  Her nails dug into her palm behind her back as she waited for him to say something unbecoming of a JX.9 or, worse, for Ryle to break into their conversation.

  “Of course, Agent Ash,” he said. “You will need to access ANN-E again.”

  She looked to Iko, who nodded. The other Kalon moved aside to allow her to station herself in front of the sensor.

  “You promise you’ll leave her be?” she said, nodding to Azah.

  “On my word of honor as a Kalon,” he said, setting her nerves on edge with his mocking tone.

  Laryn waved her hand across the sensor beam to alert ANN-E. She was still logged into the system but that didn’t seem to have occurred to the Kalons. “Watch and learn,” she said, pretending swagger in the face of death while actually speaking to Jex. “The trick is to stay physically connected to the AI. It’ll let you get around the complicated stuff.”

  The Kalon beside her peered up at the screen, puzzled.

  Laryn waited for ANN-E to scan her KRNL but did not move away from the beam. “Jex, I think we went around the overflow equalizer and right at the manual controls,” she said, making things up and hoping no one else here caught on to that.

  “Yes, Agent,” Jex said.

  “We need to enter those 12-digit numbers to reset the guidance protocol. That’ll flatten the P3. Can you do that? Flatten the P3s again?”

  “Yes, accessing laser array.”

  “How long does this take?” Iko said, sounding irritated for the first time.

  “That platter is one of the main reasons this station exists,” she said. “You can’t just turn it on and off again like a light switch.”

  She felt a ray of hope light the room when Jex, rooting through ANN-E’s database with Laryn’s clearance, found what she was looking for. The display before her changed as columns of numbers appeared. Each corresponded to an interlink unit or the more sophisticated neural interface chips assigned to certain station personne
l.

  A strange, blank sensation turned her stomach into an empty hollow. She worked her way through the list, eliminating KRNLs that weren’t designed for neural interface, then the codes used by medical personnel and the Pendra pilots. That left a disheartening number of chips belonging to engineers, some administrators, and high-level security operatives that had access to ANN-E’s top priorities. All without name, listed in no order she was able to recognize, and not identified by the AI to which they linked. Any of these could now be inside the head of a Kalon.

  She breathed deeply, ignoring Iko’s restlessness, shutting out all else. She remembered their explorations of the Kalon cave on Torren. The strange brain surgery lab and Ryle’s amusing discovery of the seal on the surgical device. Yes, now she saw him holding the box with the empty vials toward her. She took note of its rounded lid and then of his slightly dirty finger pushing the tubes back into place. There were the numbers. She tilted her head to recall those numbers, seeing them as clearly as she had back then, if only for a few seconds.

  She opened her eyes just enough to see the panel displaying the chip IDs. If she chose the wrong one, some innocent brain would receive the kill switch she hoped Jex had ready. It would use the P3 wave isolated by the KRNL to create a destructive feedback from which there was no recovery. One of these was her own number, she realized, wondering why she had never bothered to find out what it was. With peculiar serenity, she moved her finger and chose one of the numbers. Then another. She shifted to another column and selected two more.

  “Now,” she said.

  The Kalon beside her recoiled from the console with a shriek that stabbed into her ears like a needle. His wheeled stool careened back and he fell over Azah, still on the floor, and collided with the Kalon holding her down with his foot. Azah screamed in pain.

  Iko turned on Laryn, his eyes bulging with fury.

  “Oh, was that one of your chip brains that just blew up?” she said. “Feedback can be nasty if you don’t know what you’re doing. Which I don’t.”

  He lunged toward her when the transparent wall overlooking the facilities shattered into a million shards and rained down upon them all. The shower of safety glass brought with it another Kalon but it took only a moment for Laryn to recognize Toji. He pulled the Kalon engineer away from Azah and flung him out of the broken window.