"With all due respect, sir," Dr. Begum says, indignant, "the results we obtain thanks to your generosity will benefit all of humanity greatly. You'll be respected and remembered for this."
"I'm not interested in being remembered, doctor, I'm not going anywhere. Now tell me there's an immediate use in all this, or I'll shut you down."
Begum nods stiffly. "The Worker showed heightened neuronal activity after injection with the Cyans, and no signs of tissue deconstruction for reproductive purposes. The Protector and the Tender also show no signs of decomposition, but they've entered a catatonic state similar to hibernation, to preserve their energy for as yet unknown purposes."
"And this one?" Hurst nods at the rocking Klacker in the cage before him.
"This one's special." Begum smiles. "May I demonstrate?" She grabs an oxy-mask without waiting for an answer and gets a lab assistant to key her into the cage's decontamination and pressure-adjustment antechamber. She enters the cage and stands next to the Klacker, dressed in nothing but her white overall, dwarfed by the beast's monstrous size.
Begum grins in Hurst's general direction through the one-way mirror.
"We gave her synaptic stimulants." She shivers from the cold of the Mazan atmosphere recreated inside the cage, pointing at the creature an arm's length away. Then she reaches out and pets the beast's head with her naked hand, leaving streaks in the gooey substance it has smeared over itself. Hurst raises an eyebrow.
The Klacker stops its grooming and lowers its four front legs to the floor of the cage, standing now on all eight, its head level with Begum's chest, its antennae arching up over her head.
"She's docile," Begum says, her jaws clenched from the cold. "In fact, she's now receptive to commands—the first Dorylini ever. The Cyans did something to her brain that makes her respond to a certain type of synaptic stimuli with nearly no reservation. Took us a bit to find out which stimuli we can use, but the lab's AI narrowed it down eventually. It's like her instinctual, primal responses are annulled, and any signal coming in is unquestioned. Everything I suggest, it immediately accepts."
Begum wipes her hand off on the front of her overall, smearing the Klacker mucus all over herself. She taps something on her nacom, and issues a command: "Lay down."
The Klacker lowers its thorax and gaster to the ground, and leans its antennae backward over its body in a resting position.
Begum taps something on her nacom again. "Roll over."
Hurst leans forward as the monster rolls over obediently. The doctor grins proudly, until Hurst addresses her directly through her synet—overriding her security settings with his TMC emergency code—and relays a new order to her.
The doctor stares at the one-way mirror, shaking her head slightly, unsure what to do. Hurst repeats the order, and the doctor presses her lips tight, and nods. "Rip out your mandibles."
The Klacker latches on to its own mandibles with its front-most legs. It yanks both of them sideways and up with a loud crack, snapping the pivot joint open and tearing the muscles inside free. Gelatinous yellow blood oozes from the wounds, and the creature lets the useless appendages clatter to the floor.
Begum shakes from head to toe, staring at the mirror, waiting for Hurst to rescind his next order. He doesn't.
She swallows. "Eat them."
The creature complies without hesitation. It retrieves the discarded mandibles and opens its mouth—two chitinous labrum flaps disjointing to reveal two smaller, fleshy ones underneath—and starts to eat.
Hurst nods, smiling.
Begum exits the cage and is wrapped in a thermo-coat by an assistant. She detaches the oxy-mask from her face, her teeth chattering from the freezing cold.
"Satisfied?" She glares at Hurst.
"Very impressive."
"It does anything I order, as you can see." Begum rubs her hands along her arms to warm up. "This confirms my theory that the Cyans discriminate between hosts—they use the primitive ones as raw material to replicate themselves and turn the intelligent ones into remote controlled units. It's fascinating."
"You mean whoever created these Cyans can infect and remote control any intelligent creature?"
She shrugs. "We've only done tests on Dorylinae so far, but I believe it's likely, yes." Begum returns the thermo-coat to her assistant. "It's just that the Cyans don't seem to do anything with the Worker as yet. We can't be sure of their true function and purpose at this juncture; all we can do now is hypothesize and continue testing."
Hurst thinks back to the alien ship that appeared at the site of the Cyan carnage. He hates not having any information about it. What if they're involved in this? The probes he sent out after the attack found no trace of that ship. The AIs he tasked with the plotting of its most probable flight trajectories and destinations, and the subsequent deep-space imaging drones he dispatched, found nothing either. It couldn't have fled unnoticed without terrific camouflage capability. And ships with that ability don't flee. Not in his experience, anyway. He assumes it's still out there, watching. What if they planted that damn cluster of Cyans out there? What if they intend to attack humanity with it?
Hurst turns around and heads for the door. "Don't let that Klacker out of your sight. If it does anything dangerous, shoot it, and jettison the carcass into space. Otherwise, carry on with your tests."
17
San Gabriel looks as if two planet halves got pressed together wrong. An enormous mountain range surrounds the equator and pierces its thin, yellowish atmosphere, jerking left and right, up and down like a careless stitch.
The southern hemisphere is bathed in light by Epsilon Eridani's distant orange star. It has countless deep channels that run down from the mountain range to a large, yellow sea at the southern pole, while the northern hemisphere is mostly barren rock scarred by craters, gradually darkening toward the north.
The flexpad I got from Jade says the sea is mostly made of sulfuric and nitric acid, encrusted with a layer of thick permafrost. It's exploited for all it's worth in chemical resources by the industrial colony built near its shore. The mountain range around the equator is created by the gravitational pull of the planet's massive moon, Hades, that's about half the planet's diameter and almost an eighth its mass. San Gabriel has no plate tectonics, the protrusions and deformities all Hades' work.
We approach the planet from the south in a long-winding curve, and begin our descent into orbit. We're all gathered in a cockpit-briefing-lunch-room sort of thing, to go over the planned activities for the next couple of days. The pilot is sitting at an improvised computer terminal with eight displays and a projector, several ancient looking button-panels with flips and switches covered with a splatter of burn marks. He struggles to prepare for an atmosphere dive, his hands darting from one pad to the next. At least there are no windows in here, so I can't see us crash and burn. All I've got is the live feed on my flexpad, a compilation of all the feeds from the ship's outer sensors.
There's a row of strap-seats along each wall of our cockpit mockup, and people are fidgeting and whispering to each other. I sit on the large table that's bolted down in the middle of the room, balancing the flexpad on my knees.
How strange of Preston to come here. Cislunar space is under constant supervision from Hades, and there are many TMC posts planetside as well. He'd better have the heck of a support system down here, or we're fried.
As the piss-yellow seashore slides underneath our ship, I see a bump swell up on the planet's horizon, bulging out like a gas-filled blain.
"That's Erano," Jade says, leaning against the table next to me.
The dome is much bigger than I imagined, bigger than any of the colonies I've been to so far.
"Population twelve million," Jade says. "Capacity by design, seven."
"Seriously?"
"Uh-huh. Excessive immigration. That name will be a self-fulfilling prophecy if they don't earn themselves the necessary credits to expand pretty damn soon."
I frown at him. "What name?"
/>
"Erano means something like 'has been' in Terran Italian. When the colony was first mounted two centuries ago, it was called Siamo di Dio. A Christian hub, mostly Catholic. Pope Ecaterina The Third even flew out here to bless it. The Ticks renamed it about the same time they settled on its moon and called it Hades to mock them. Right after they killed Maican and took over the Wells. Didn't you read the files I gave you back on Spiron?"
"I didn't get around to them," I say with a shrug, but that's not fully true. I'm not used to reading actual text instead of mind-browsing raw information from my synet, and my slowness pisses me off.
"Not much Christianity left after the restructuring," Jade says with a wave of his hand. "Churches were turned into housing stock, and building new ones is forbidden. At least as long as the settlement's over-populated."
Now we're heading up toward the mountains. As we fly by the colony's bulge, I magnify the feed as much as I can. My data says the dome is maintained by a full decagon of Heaters. They're certainly casting the biggest plasma-net I've ever seen over the nine-hundred-square-clicks of city. Apparently it's the densest and thickest field of any colony world. The temporary dome back on Maza was a soap bubble compared to this.
I stare at the continuous plasma filament net that forms the structure of the dome field, and try to figure out how many tokamak generators it takes to keep even a single Heater functional. Must be a dozen. The Heaters are enormous, at least fifty meters high and half a click wide. They look like massive blocks of metal built at the periphery of the city, shooting continuous lighting across the artificial sky from rows upon rows of spikes protruding from their roofs.
Jade smiles at the flexpad. "It's strangely beautiful, isn't it?"
"It's strange alright."
I strain to make out more details through the sizzling haze of the dome, but we're already gaining distance.
Jade leans back to look at Preston. "Have you figured out where we're going to stay?"
"In D-Two, the tech-dev district," Preston says from behind me. "I've arranged quarters a block away from the Spoke to D-Three."
Jade whistles. "How did you manage that?"
"I have my ways. But housing's the least of our problems. It's access we need to worry about, most importantly communication. I haven't managed to find a way into Erano's grid just yet, since I can't make use of Miss Harber's talents anymore."
I turn to look at him, but he's busy with his nacom. Bray, however, isn't, and glares right back at me over Preston's shoulder.
"What?" I cock an eyebrow at him.
"I doubt Taryn's talent would do you any good, doc," he says. "After all, she can't just crash into Hades and stab the Commander, now can she?"
"No, but you're within reach."
"Bad temper; is that the talent everyone drones on about?"
"It works fine for me."
"Quiet," Preston snaps. "Thoughtless spacebrats, the lot of you. Bray, make sure everyone's prepped to debark as soon as we land. And you, Miss Hot-Shot, invest your energies in something more productive."
"Yes sir," I mock a TMC salute before busying myself with the flexpad.
We're approaching the mountains, flying along a thick tube jutting out of the dome. There's a bunch of smaller domes clustered at the base of the mountain range, looking like puzzles of hexagonal and pentagonal glass-sheets. They're connected by smaller tubes similar to the one we're flying over.
A docking platform is visible on the side of the cluster, covered in a bluish forcefield. The barren ground is riddled with caterpillar and tire marks and the distinctive pattern of six-legged maintenance drones.
These are the colony's ore mines—my flexpad informs me—the reason for its existence and the main source of its profits. Digging mines is the first thing the Trust does on a promising world, right after they wipe out all problematic life-forms. Once the mines start producing, a local government is appointed and the colonization begins. It continues to expand as long as the colony generates profit for the Trust and the Confederacy. When that's no longer possible, the colony is dismantled or abandoned, and the colonists are relocated—if they can afford it.
We're preparing to land in the cargo port. Preston's probably chosen it over the public port on the shore because there are fewer automatic personnel scanners to read people's synets back here. But there are considerably more guards to oversee the shipping.
I return to my room to prepare for debarking. My backpack reeks of vomit. The only thing untouched by my fugue meltdown is my old skinsuit, made from a nano-synthetic fiber that repels practically anything. I don the skinsuit and am in the midst of wrestling my hair into a bun when the pilot announces our landing over the intercom.
Not much later, we're all standing on the 'ship's' rampway, coughing as our lungs adjust to the cold, carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere of the cargo port dome. We've docked between an array of miner-droids that look like headless elephants, parked with their steel-clad behinds toward us, and a behemoth of a cargo ship that's currently being loaded with containers the size of small houses. I count at least thirty TMC officers swarming around it.
Preston leads us down to meet the five officers lined up before us, hands on their weapons. They're clad in TMC navy-blue and chrome skinsuits, wearing the San Gabriel orange stripes on their sleeves and ankles, and the TMC red star on their chests. A middle-aged man with a pitch-black goatee walks up to Preston, and checks him head to boot as he listens to what he's got to say. I can't make out their words over the cacophony of clunking metal and hissing hydraulics, but Preston seems to be in his element.
Bray stares at the plasma gun turrets on top of the cargo ship. Amelia stands next to him, and Franky almost holds on to his hand. Poor kid. Beside them are Bob & Rob, glumly facing the officers. Vik has a casual arm around Denise, and tries to look confident and inviolable, a feat that he of all people is pretty close to accomplishing. But the fingers of his other hand still twitch at his side. I can't blame any of them for feeling edgy. I'm all kinds of anxious myself.
The goateed officer bares a mouthful of pearly-whites, and shakes Preston's hand. The other officers allow us to pass, with Preston and Goatee in the lead, taking us between the port's storage containers and inspection posts.
The port is connected to the biggest mining dome in the cluster by a short tube. Once inside the dome, where the air is warmer but just as stuffy, we're taken to the main transport station. There's a building next to it emblazoned with 'Cargo Distribution & Administration Center' in dark red letters. It reminds me of Maza's storage hall, where the Ticks deposited the Dorylinae carcasses after 'interrogation.' Not a comforting sight in the least.
"Just how good are Preston's connections down here?" I whisper to Jade as we file into a neat queue to enter the Administration Center.
"Ah, he's not as much of a big shot as he'd like to be. He's only big in the underground. And by 'big' I mean self-important."
"Wouldn't another colony have been wiser?"
"One where he actually has to work for his credits?" Jade snorts.
"Aren't you even a little bit worried? What kind of friends are these, given where we are?"
"That's why it's best not to ask the doc about it."
"I don't like not knowing what I'm getting into."
"You didn't know when we flew out to the aliens, either," Jade says. "But you had no problem going all gung-ho on us."
"That didn't work out so well. And it's not the same."
"Why not?"
"I don't trust people."
"But you trust aliens?" He cocks an eyebrow at me, but decides to let it slide. "Let's try to have some fun while we're here, eh? Not worry so much."
"Won't be easy," I say. He groans, so I add, "I'll try. Promise." And I will, too. It's just not easy to unwind. Not with the constant sensation of someone else loose in my head.
We're led through a maze of crates and containers, canisters and storage units, and into a web of conveyor-belts tended by dozens
of workers and droids. The people are dressed in the same dark-brown overalls with orange wrist-stripes, and have that tired and waxy look on their faces I always associate with industrial colonists. I do my best to stick with the group and not make eye contact with anyone.
Goatee leads us into some sort of locker room, where we're told to change into worker overalls and get ready for transfer. As we each try to find something that fits I'm all eyes and ears. Preston and his local contact are huddled together off to the side, exchanging information.
"…no fixed locations in D-Two since the last riot wave," Goatee is saying in a hushed voice. "We've spread the assets so they can't be spotted. Keeps 'em guessing."
"Good." Preston smooths his wiry beard.
"We don't stay put... coordinated by the... much better, 'cause we don't know..."
The dropping of boots and zipping up of overalls, and the small talk surrounding me drowns out Preston and Goatee's conversation. Too bad. Something about their exchange makes me uneasy.
I look around idly, and notice Jade's injuries for the first time. His whole torso is peppered with scratches, scars, and bruises of various shades. He sees me staring, smiles briefly, and turns around. I zip up my overall.
Franky's hovering around Bray like a nervous child, always on the verge of saying something, but never quite opening his mouth. Bray seems detached, almost disinterested in the trip we're about to take. He scans the room and notices my scrutiny, but doesn't give me more than a fleeting glance.
Preston joins us. "We're taking the noon train. We'll arrive at the outer border of D-Three in about an hour, then make our way through it by industrial Maglev and enter D-Two near the top Rebreather. From there on out we'll go by foot. Shuttle transportation is not an option, since Miss Harber has no valid synet. Even the Maglev ride will be risky."
Amelia scowls at me. "Wonderful." She pulls her earrings out, takes off her bracelets and her three necklaces and drops them all into an aluminum mug, then sits on a plastic bench with an exasperated sigh.
The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1) Page 13
