Errant Contact

by T. Michael Ford

  “No, it won’t,” Kalaya asserted firmly as I became aware of a new sound, which slowly grew louder and louder. I could have sworn I heard bugles and drums, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed. The wolves were now staring nervously at the back wall and growling at it like it was about to attack them. “I would run if I was them.”

  Suddenly, a bank of piercing bright yellow lights illuminated the entire room as most of the back wall of the place disappeared in a tidal wave of crumbling destruction and martial music. Whatever it was, it looked like some kind of tank from a game designer's wet dream. It was massive and powerful to be sure; I could even hear the sound vibrations shaking the catwalk supports from across the auditorium. I watched as three of the wolves threw themselves at the apparition and were instantly disintegrated when they came into contact with the revolving yellow lasers that formed the forward drill assembly. No blood, no gore, just poof, they were gone in a small cloud of steam.

  After that entrance, gunshots didn’t seem to be that scary anymore. Kodo entered the room, stepping over the rubble that the machine’s tracks had created. Rapidfiring, he blasted away at the remaining wolf critters, but even as powerful as his weapon was, it still took four direct hits from it to take down even one of the wolves. He danced around them, working the action of the scattergun relentlessly. Finally, when it looked like two of them were going to charge Kodo, I realized that he had drawn their attention away from not only me but the frightening tank machine as well. It was the last mistake the creatures made as the treads rolled over them, and unlike the laser drill, these were not clean kills. A quick, angry bark sounded from one of the larger specimens, and the remainder of the pack peeled off and dashed through the gap in the wall in full retreat.

  My faithful drone buddy bobbed back into my field of vision and chortled lightly. “See, I told you you weren’t going to die here.”

  Unfortunately, I don’t think I heard the end of her remarks as my over-stressed systems shut down without my consent. Tunnel vision narrowed my sight to a pinprick, my hands slipped, and I dropped into darkness.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  Kodo

  “She going to be alright?” I asked Kalaya’s drone as she hovered protectively nearby when I carried Laree back down from the machine platform.

  “Not entirely sure, she doesn’t have implants that I can read like you do. She probably has some bone and muscle damage at least and is definitely in shock. I’ll look into it once you get her back to the Aurora.”

  I wasn’t an expert on human anatomy or anything, but I didn’t think she was supposed to shiver like she was doing. I supposed that was unintentional; she must not have had many near-death experiences. Regardless, she was very light and this wouldn’t be a problem.

  We made it back to the wyvern hanger where the others were waiting with no trouble and no sign of any wolves returning. Of course, being shadowed protectively by an eighty-ton tank probably lent itself to our increased security as well.

  “Thank God you both made it back,” Drik smiled with a heavy sigh of relief. Max ran up to us and looked his sister over. Seemingly satisfied that her injuries were, for the most part, non-fatal, he tried to take her from me. “I’ll take her,” he growled possessively. I let him; if he felt he could carry her all the way back to the ship, then I wouldn’t interfere. I handed her off to him, but her arm clung to mine for a brief moment before falling limp again. Without another word, he carried her as far away from me as he could without leaving our zone of security.

  I took a little time to wire up the wyvern correctly using the now active reactor from the one Kalaya was controlling to jumpstart the other four. Drik joined me to give a hand, and yet again, the old man surprised me. He might not know a thing about what he was doing, but he was good at copying my example to the letter and didn’t do a bad job of undoing the modifications we had cobbled together earlier.

  “Kodo, you have all our gratitude.” I looked over at him with a raised eyebrow. “He will never say it,” nodding at Max, “but he is thankful to you for saving his sister, just as I am. You risked your life for her when you didn’t have any real obligation to us. You are a man of integrity, and again, thank you.”

  I returned to work but talked as I did. “I brought you all down here to help me, so you’re my responsibility.”

  “I suppose that may be true, but we also agreed to come with you in exchange for shelter, without which, we would most likely be dog food by now.”

  No, these people were my responsibility now and I wouldn’t let any more innocent blood fall on my hands, even if that blood was human.

  Chapter 13

  Laree

  I woke up; I wasn’t sure what time it was, but my mouth felt pasty, like I was asleep for a very long time. It was pitch dark and I was back in the soft bed that I had spent last night in. The only point of reference to anything was a very faint blue glow coming from the other end of the room. Looking over, I was surprised to see Kalaya sitting comfortably in a chair. Her bright blue eyes were the source of the glow.

  “How long was I sleeping?” I groaned.

  “Just a second, trying to think of a naughty sleeping beauty joke…nope, can’t do it. Well, girlfriend, it’s been over a day. Quite the sleepyhead, huh?”

  “A day? The last thing I remember…oh, my God!...was hanging off a rail with those wolf things snapping at my feet, then beautiful music and an explosion.”

  “Yeah, tough day for everyone.” She shrugged. Getting up from her chair, she walked over to me with a sultry grace that I could never hope to copy. She had a genuine look of concern and caring on her face as she sat down on the edge of the bed next to me. “So how are you feeling?” she asked quietly, and I felt the tingle of her hand pass across my forehead.

  “I feel good.” Honestly, I was shocked at how good I felt, all things considered. The events of yesterday’s journey to the outside world were starting to register in my brain, the fear, the running, the fall. I should be sore in more places than I care to recall, but instead, I felt very relaxed, even limber. Well, as limber as one could be in bed under a large number of warm, thick blankets.

  “Excellent! My calibrations were, at least, close enough. Kodo will be relieved. Not having experience with human physiology, we had no idea you were injured as badly as you were until we returned to the Aurora. He blames himself for taking the time to start up the wyverns instead of rushing you back here. ” She turned her face away and I got the impression that she, too, was struggling with some foreign emotions.

  “Calibrations on what?” I questioned hoarsely, pulling myself into a sitting position with my back against the headboard. Kalaya smiled at me and pointed at a large glass of ice water on the table next to me, which I gratefully grabbed and began taking large sips. “Does this ship have a robot doctor or something?”

  “Yes, but I was talking about your nanites therapy.” Nanites? They injected me with nanites? I was starting to panic again. How could they have done this to me? Why did Max and Drik let them do this?

  “I’m detecting an increase in heart rate and stress levels. You feeling alright?” she asked politely.

  “Of course not!” I exploded. “You injected me with an army of robots without my permission! My God, how am I going to go on with my life like this? How do I know you’re not controlling me with them right now and I’m not some sort of puppet slave to one of your programs?” I was really starting to lose it, but she just sat there politely, only cringing slightly at that last part.

  Kalaya let me stew silently for a few more seconds, then shook her head cheerlessly. “First off, I have already removed the nanites that trouble you so,” she said, motioning to a small glass vial next to an injector. Inside was a gray liquid that seemed to follow my fingers when I moved them near it. “They are dialed into your DNA signature now so they will only work in your body and will do their best to get back to it. I will destroy them later for you.”

  “But why nanite
s?”

  “I’m sorry, but they were the only thing we could count on working in your body. We didn’t dare use our drugs on you untested and your small human medical kits were woefully inadequate for the injuries you had sustained. You had a concussion, a broken pelvis, and moderately severe intra-abdominal injuries. You might have ceased to live or been severely crippled if we had done nothing.”

  “But they’re safe? I’m not going to have any weird side effects or feel a sudden urge to terminate my shipmates or anything?”

  “First, the weird side effect is that you are probably healthier at this moment than you have ever been in your life. Nanites are the safest form of medical treatment we have. Second, the nanites cannot control you; in fact, with some practice, you could learn to control them. As far as wanting to terminate your shipmates, that desire, or lack of, has been left untouched by my little friends.”

  “So the mind control reference was a little over-the-top, huh?” I asked, ashamed.

  “Not as over-the-top as you thinking I would do something like that in the first place.”

  “I’m sorry, I truly am. You act so…alive that I forget what you are sometimes.”

  She was quiet for an unusual amount of time, at least for her. I was starting to think that I had deeply offended her and she was about to leave, but she just stood up. “Come on, Laree, I want to show you something.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “It will be fun, I promise.” Fun, huh? Not so sure I want anything to do with whatever a girl like Kalaya finds fun. But what the hell, why not? Besides, I still feel guilty about how rude I was to her about the nanites, and she did save my life more times than I can count.

  Getting out of the bed, I was surprised to find that I was somehow in a clean set of clothing, and not my own. Kalaya glanced over her shoulder at me as I looked myself over in dismay. “Don’t worry; I was the one who dressed you, not the boys.” She dressed me? How can she dress me if she can’t even touch me? She was already out of the room, so I guessed she wasn’t going to tell me that either.

  I caught up with her in the hall, which was strangely shaded and eerily quiet. I was even more surprised to find that Kalaya’s hologram didn’t light up the area like I thought it would. She stayed as solid looking as always with no indication that she wasn’t really there.

  “Where is everybody?” I asked as she led the way through more passageways.

  “Sleeping. It might not seem like it to you, but it’s the middle of the night right now. And before you ask, they are all fine and you can see them in the morning. It took too long to get them to go to sleep in the first place, especially Kodo, so I’m not going to wake them either. Although, now that I think about it, I still owe Maxwell some serious payback for shooting me in the face.”

  “He shot you?!?”

  “Several times, actually.” What the hell had gone wrong with that boy? I asked him to behave himself and he shoots my best friend? Ugh, I swear he acts like a two-year-old sometimes.

  “Kalaya, I’m sorry about my brother, he can be very hotheaded and doesn’t think before he acts.”

  She seemed pensive for a few more sections of passageway before finally asking, “Laree, would you say Max’s behavior is typical for human males of his age? Specifically, those attracted to the exploration fields or the military?”

  I was a little taken aback by this line of questioning. On one hand, my knee-jerk familial instincts prodded me to defend my brother, but on the other hand, the intelligent woman in me sensed that the meat of this question wasn’t about Max at all.

  “Well, on our ship, the Jeff, Max is pretty over-the-top behavior-wise. Most of us are too involved in research and scientific debate to go all troglodyte. I’ll let you in on a little secret. Please don’t tell anyone, but the only reason Max was even offered a job on our ship was that I made it a clause in my employment contract. I even had to take a deep cut in pay to make it happen, but our parents are dead and he has no one else to look after him.”

  “And the military?” Kalaya prompted gently.

  “I won’t lie to you; the mindset on our military ships is a lot closer to the Maxwell norm. In fact, if things had turned out differently, I think he would have done well in the space marines, God knows he could have benefited from the discipline. Why the sudden interest in our military?”

  She turned on her heels and searched my face with those luminescent azure eyes. “Laree, I know the Geoffrey Laird is not the only human vessel due back here in less than two weeks. You have a substantial warship group that shadows your research vessels.”

  I felt the color drain from my face as the realization of what that could mean suddenly dawned on me. To be honest, I rarely think about the military fleet much. Our ship, the Jeff, does its thing and they do theirs, we hardly even see them except on those rare occasions when we all return to port. If the fleet was to find out about the Aurora and its advanced technologies…! Before I could say a word, the hologram nodded, smiled sadly, and resumed her trek through the ship.

  She led the way up a flight of stairs that I hadn’t seen before and stopped in front of something that looked like one of those fancy glass elevators you see in expensive hotels. Stepping inside, she hit a button as the doors closed behind me, and then the elevator started moving…horizontally?

  “Umm...”

  “It’s a tram that will take us to the front of the ship.” My guide explained. Ah, right, of course…I knew that. I looked out the windows and down at the area that the tram passed over. The room was almost pitch black but a very long way down, I could see a myriad of lights that looked like laser welders and sparks, but why was the room so big?

  “What’s down there?”

  She clapped her hands and hundreds of suspended floodlights snapped on, flooding the massive cavern in bright light. The room, if it could even be called that, was covered in tech. The walls, ceiling, and floors had hundreds of robotic arms ranging in size from small to cranes that looked like they could pick up starships. Each had some kind of tool attached to the end of it. The sparks were coming from the conveyor lines that seemed to be in full production of…something. Why would they need production like this? This ship doesn’t need anything on this scale to repair itself, does it?

  “Kalaya, what is the purpose of this ship again?”

  She looked to be thinking about it hard for a second. “I guess the easiest description would be to build and build quickly.”

  “Build what?”

  She smiled brightly. “Anything we need.” She was so confident in her statement that there was no point in trying to argue what that meant. I could see with my own two eyes that she might be right. This assembly line looked like it stretched onward for miles, and if you have a manufacturing floor that large with that much automation, I guess it could build you anything, even starships.

  “But where do you get the raw materials? Are they stored on other decks?”

  “No, even a ship of this length and girth couldn’t carry more than a few days’ supply of ores and carbon, as well as some of the more exotic materials. We harvest materials.”

  The ride went on for several more minutes as I watched the factory below crank out finished man-sized robots every few minutes. Kalaya informed me that it only takes twenty-three minutes for a chunk of raw material just sitting on the pile to become a functional and completed robot. Apparently, two of the original wyverns were tasked with harvesting raw materials for the assembly line and two were excavating the ship. By tomorrow, that number would double and the day after, double again. The speed at which these machines produced was astounding.

  “Laree, I have another question, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure, Kalaya, what?” I asked absently, my eyes still fixed on the workings below.

  “It’s a bit awkward, so please don’t take this the wrong way. I have my own records of Terran civilization from before Kodo and I went to sleep, and I have the wealth of information that I
downloaded recently from the Jeff. I’m just curious; what happened?”

  “I don’t follow?”

  “As much as we may ridicule you, your civilization did go from early, powered aircraft to landing on your moon in less than a century. That is quite impressive. However, my analysis of your progress in the interim period since then is quite a bit less admirable. Yes, you have a crude working FTL drive now and are reaching to the stars, but most of that progress is very recent. Forgive me, but you should be more advanced than you are. Hell, even the vids I have been watching are mostly remakes of productions from centuries ago. It’s like you were frozen in time, too.”

  “I understand, and you are right. Some people call it the second dark ages, others just ‘the downturn.’” I shifted uncomfortably; I mean how often are you expected to justify the behavior of your entire race in polite conversation? “Essentially, our world reached a point where we were severely overpopulated and running out of natural resources. We fought amongst ourselves about everything; it appeared that we were our own worst enemy. The future of Homo sapiens looked pretty bleak. So perhaps your and the other alien races’ assessment of us wasn’t so off the mark…we were indeed idiots.

  “It took a long time and millions of lives lost to make a change. Oddly, the catalyst that brought us out of our funk was a man named Temo Sharma, the inventor of the Limit Point Continuum, our FTL drive. He theorized that if humans couldn’t live peacefully among themselves on our planet, then they should be given the opportunity to leave if they wished. He provided every government and corporation on Earth with the plans free of any charge or obligation.

  Suddenly groups that had been battling each other for thousands of years could pack up and be free of each other forever. There was one small catch, however; because of the downturn, there were precious few organizations with the resources to build a starship. These groups found they now had to work together to accomplish their goals. Begrudgingly, many of them decided it was in their best interest to work with old enemies for a few decades to reach the goal of freedom from each other. A strange thing happened during that period. In working together, they found that the divisive points that kept them enemies for so long became less important; and even less so to the new generations being born.”