“Someone is moving between our universe bubble and another somewhere ‘nearby’,” nodded Thomas affirmatively. “In fact, someone is deliberately, meticulously destroying entire stars inside the Wasteland so that they can generate enough energy to move ships and resources from another universe into ours. Maybe they themselves are refugees or they’re explorers like us or perhaps their universe is simply much, much older than ours and in the process of dying. Whatever the reason…” He held up his hands and shook his head. “Frankly, that’s what scares me at this point. What if they’re doing this for reasons other than the obvious things that we can think of?”
“Destroying entire stars is a pretty crude way of getting the job done,” said Kaufield cynically. “It’s not science in any sense of the way we would traditionally define it.” He laughed darkly at the whole matter and shook his head with complete disgust. “Joseph liked to play with electric toy cars when he was younger, but we didn’t use spent nuclear fuel rods to provide the electricity. Talk about overkill… whoever does this has no ethics of any kind and absolutely no respect for life or the health of an environment.”
“Think of the life that has been lost in the Wasteland over forty-six thousand years,” gasped Noah. “The colossal waste goes so far beyond anything even I have seen in my admittedly lengthy lifetime…”
Watching the Proteus alien carefully, Kaufield breathed a sigh of relief. He had been hoping that Noah was not holding out on them, that he had also not known what was truly going on in the Wasteland. It was quite clear by his reaction that he was as flabbergasted by Thomas’ unexpected revelations as everyone else. The four of them simply sat there for a few minutes, each alone with his own thoughts, mentally reviewing their shared conversation. “With respect,” Glen said suddenly, breaking the long silence. “I could have read this with the other Council members when you released your next progress report. Is there a specific reason that you asked me to come to this meeting and hear everything firsthand?”
“Yes,” nodded Kaufield. “We’re taking you off Sentinel duty, starting right now. Someone else will cover your shift and link to Adam while he is in the Wasteland. I need you to get up to orbit right away.”
“Why?”
“Because we may have to go into the Wasteland in force before all is said and done,” the President told him. “Everything that we need here on Tranquility has already been moved out of the Pathfinder. The telescopes from the observatory, the farms, the hardware… it’s all down here on the planet’s surface. I asked you here because someone has to supervise a major refit. I want you to go into orbit and lead the team that removes all four wings from her. Since we no longer need civilians on deck three or four, the CAS wand hardware can be moved into a protected, shielded area inside the ship.” His eyes met Glen’s and his meaning was plainly obvious. “Then I want your team to mount a set of rail guns on the outer hull and prepare the Pathfinder for possible combat operations… just in case we need to fly her into combat.”
Noah’s Mystery Transmission
Aboard the Yakiir warship…
Adam went completely silent, locking his feet in place upon seeing the hatch on the opposite side of the cargo bay open. Two men dressed in dark black Yakiir uniforms entered the large chamber. One of them was an older, tall man with graying hair accompanied by a younger, skinny man with shortly trimmed dark hair. The older man quite simply had to be the warship’s Captain, his uniform decorations were so many and so prominently displayed that there was little room left for doubt. The thin man was likely an officer as well; his uniform was decorated around the shoulders with extra green stripes that had not been present on the soldiers and personnel in the engine room. Both men appeared to be completely frustrated, and the persistent sound of explosions and gunfire behind them was noticeably louder until the Captain finished entering the bay and closed the hatch tightly. Wordlessly he turned to face the younger man, someone apparently angered to the point of hysteria.
“You have totally screwed me over,” the younger officer shouted angrily at his Captain. “My service aboard this ship is a courtesy and an honor, one you should be proud to embrace.” He gestured fiercely at the two missiles occupying most of the cargo chamber. “These weapons are a trust that is not to be taken lightly, but you have gone and done exactly that!”
“I did not implement the trap to capture an enemy vessel without your approval, Bok,” the Captain objected. “Those who were serving on the supply shuttle will be executed for their failure to retain control of it long enough for us to board the Zaketh cruiser. They should have done so as we left them plenty of armed men.”
Bok stood where he was, next to the hatch, his arms crossed indignantly and his face red with anger. “The failure is yours,” he shot back heatedly in response. “You promised me that your men were capable of capturing the enemy ship. Instead they have likely handed one of our best war cruisers, along with its irreplaceable cargo, over to a clan that will use them recklessly.” Exhaling with visible frustration, he unfolded his arms and held up a clenched fist. “Irreplaceable, I tell you.”
Cloaked behind his shield of invisibility, Adam struggled to interpret what exactly he was bearing witness to. The man called Bok appeared to be a junior officer in the process of chewing out his Captain, something generally unprecedented in military matters. And the Captain was getting noticeably rattled, sweating visibly and repeatedly fidgeting with his overly tight collar. Frustrated and eager for answers, he accessed the implant’s tactical database and evaluated its conclusions. The junior officer is likely some kind of intelligence operative masquerading as a normal crew member, was the highest ranked possibility. This allows the Captain to appear powerful to his crew and in control of the ship while the intelligence operative secretly calls all the shots from behind the scenes.
Seconds later, the Captain recovered some of his waning confidence. “Quashing weapons have been lost before, on many occasions,” he pointed out to the other Yakiir officer. “After the Zaketh threat is suppressed, we can loop back and rendezvous with the fleet and pick up two more.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, the Zaketh are in the process of suppressing you,” retorted Bok, glaring daggers at the Captain. “This is not a normal situation any longer, and you are not a normal Captain. My people are on a tight schedule now, and any delay angers them considerably.” He stabbed an index finger at the other man. “The Caucus leadership will not be pleased by this, I assure you.”
“This is what we will do,” the Captain suggested emphatically, his paling features betraying his growing fear of the other man. “My personal escape pod is a few decks below this one and it has its own small PTP drive. Our first duty is to get off this vessel while we still can. After that, we can return to Yakiir space, at which point I will personally vouch for you. I will tell everyone that this debacle was my call and is my fault…”
“The Caucus will hold me responsible,” countered Bok with equal intensity. “My people are also my enemies as there are those who hate me in the political spectrum. We ascend amongst ourselves by outperforming each other, not by allying ourselves with those who fail. To be caught in this type of embarrassing situation will finish not only you, but me as well. I cannot allow that to happen.”
“Please,” the Captain pleaded desperately. “Don’t be angry just because we lose a single battle. Wars are not won that way…”
[“Are you folks back home, by any chance, watching any of this?”] wondered Adam curiously, testing his thought transfer even as he continued to witness the heated exchange.
[“We’re hanging on every word,”] Dr. Simmons replied firmly. [“The Captain and Thomas just finished up a meeting with Noah and Glen. They’re all here, observing the entire affair.”]
[“My tactical database has suggested that the younger, thin guy is a decoy, only pretending to be a junior officer,”] he informed them. [“In reality, he’s probably some sort of intelligence agent.”]
Ad
am continued to watch the two men argue further, with the Captain swiftly becoming more and more desperate and the junior officer, Bok, growing even more outraged. His breath suddenly caught in his throat as Bok unexpectedly reached out and grabbed his Captain by the throat and then lifted him off the ground.
He’s lifting a larger man with only one hand?
Adam’s mind raced with new possibilities, and his thoughts drifted briefly back to memories of the genetically modified Brotherhood clones back on Earth. The Captain gasped for breath and struggled with obvious futility to break free of the smaller man. Bok, for his part, glared hatefully at the Yakiir commander and tightened his grip. The Captain instantly began coughing uncontrollably and gasping for breath, his feet kicking helplessly against empty air. Clearly, he was now in grave danger of suffocating. Adam stood where he was, shocked, watching the entire scene…
…which is why he was taken completely by surprise when Bok began to CHANGE.
The differences were very subtle at first – the color of Bok’s skin faded to a dull gray while his nose, mouth and jaw began to lengthen. They continued to elongate outward until they formed a lengthy, wedge-shaped snout. The eyes curled upward, irises turning orange and then merging with the white areas. The hair on Bok’s head vanished, retracting slowly back into his scalp. His normal-looking bronze skin hardened, gradually becoming thicker and tougher. Three horns sprouted suddenly from the top of its head, the center one extending to a point much longer than the others, all of them curving backward. Still clothed in a Yakiir uniform, the sight was more than a little unsettling.
Less than sixty seconds later, an unidentifiable alien creature stood in the exact spot where only a moment before a humanoid male had been. Its head looked more wolfish than cat-like, and when it opened the lengthy snout comprising all of its lower face and snarled with rage, two sharp rows of teeth were clearly visible. Corded muscles lined its neck, forearms and legs, plainly visible through a thick, gray reptilian hide and revealing just where its immense strength originated from. The Captain shrieked in response to the transformation, his efforts to escape from Bok’s grasp increasing noticeably. Kicking, screaming and shouting at the top of his lungs, he quite literally struggled for his very life.
[“Good Lord,”] Adam gasped, his thoughts jumping from one possibility to the next. The tactical database was no help this time… it refused to speculate on a situation that was now completely unprecedented without additional data. [“If Noah is indeed still with you guys, would you please ask him what in the HELL that thing is?”]
There was no response for quite some time, the silence telling him that the people back home in the Science Lab on Tranquility were just as baffled as he was. The surprises kept coming, unfortunately, as the strange alien creature lowered the Captain just far enough to open its snout and bite him on the neck. Blood sprayed against the nearest bulkhead, so much of it that Adam’s stomach churned with sudden nausea. The smell of death touched his nostrils almost instantly, this time without the acrid odor of burnt gunpowder to offset it. As blood continued to spill from the critically wounded Yakiir, Adam’s queasiness increased to the point where he nearly vomited right then and there. The creature released its dying victim, allowing it to fall to the deck plating before happily dropping down on all fours.
Then it hungrily began to feast.
[“Adam, we have NO idea what that thing is,”] Noah’s voice was suddenly in his mind, even though precisely how he managed to join the link remained – for the moment – unknown. [“Do not move… you are in as much danger as that Yakiir officer if you are discovered.”]
There had been plenty of adrenalin rushes since he had entered the Wasteland, but the unexpected presence of this creature was the first time that Adam felt real fear… a chilling reality that churned uncontrollably in his suddenly nauseated gut and literally raised the hairs on the back of his neck. It had been easy to control terror while the comforting thoughts and presence of others continually touched his mind and the technology that they had provided him with made him the strongest player on the field. The suddenness of this unexpected event was truly disturbing, and it granted him no time to collect his thoughts. The loud, snapping sound of bones cracking reached his ears. Whatever the alien’s constitution might be, it didn’t seem to care too much about how or what it ate. Pausing briefly, it tore an entire bloody limb from the corpse – Adam was too shocked to see specifically which – and tossed it casually aside before resuming its impromptu dinner.
So he did exactly as he had been told – he simply stood there, frozen in a corner of the cargo bay, unable to do anything except watch the alien creature devour the Yakiir soldier in a constant spray of fresh blood. The carnage continued for several minutes, and during its entirety he remained completely still and barely breathed at all. The sounds of battle still audible from the port side of the warship seemed to be moving closer to their location. Several times during its meal the alien paused just long enough to raise its head and listen, blood drizzling from its snout. Eventually, after it became convinced that the fighting remained far enough away for it to continue, it dropped its snout back into the carcass in front of it and resumed eating.
It wasn’t until his tactical database presented him with a potential opportunity that Adam stirred. Still watching the obscene blood feast taking place across the room, his thoughts became active and refocused. [“Thomas once told me that the implant adapts and reacts so well because it ‘reads’ information directly from my brain just like a wireless-capable computer reads data from a remote storage device,”] he informed those waiting and watching back home. [“I’m going to try and use the implant to do the same thing with this alien creature… who knows what the memories stored in its mind might tell us?”]
There was no response at first. Probably because they’re absolutely flabbergasted by my suggestion, he thought wryly. Finally, Noah’s presence touched his thoughts once more. [“That’s a bad idea Adam,”] came the expected response. [“We have no idea what kind of alien mind that is, and the implant’s abilities are never predictable. That’s why we’ve worked so hard to field test it on humans prior to making it available for widespread use.”]
He ‘heard’ the reply very clearly in his mind and – on the surface – understood the message. And yet the overpowering rush of emotion he was feeling made him somewhat susceptible to the tactical database’s suggestion. This IS an unprecedented opportunity that may never come again, he realized, hoping to capitalize on sheer luck once more, as he had with all of his previous successes. Joining the Zaketh, crashing the supply shuttle, taking the Yakiir warship’s engine room, exploring the rest of the ship by stealth – it had all paid off with the very results they were seeking, had it not? Before he could stop himself, he accessed the implant programming mentally and submitted a request that it read as much information as possible from the mind of the only other life form in the cargo bay.
The results were instantaneous.
A sudden rush of information pouring into his head caught him by complete surprise – particularly the speed with which it was retrieved and delivered. Momentarily shocked by a sudden jolt of pain in his head, he became horrified. Even though the data extracted from the alien mind was supposed to be stored in the implant’s database, he was still seeing flashes of its life and images of where it had been and how it had lived. He was also seeing the things that it had done throughout its life – and learning instantaneously what a complete and utter predatory killer it was. There was too much information flowing too quickly into his brain and yet, even while panicking for the first time on this mission, he still ended up instinctively doing the right thing.
He attempted to terminate the mental link before it could do him any permanent harm.
There was no response from his implant, and the thoughts retrieved by wireless theft continued to flow. Dread and trepidation clung to Adam like a second skin, clawing at him like a living thing, driving his anxiety and urgi
ng him to turn and run for his life. The sight and smells that he bore witness to remained overwhelming and, coupled with what he was doing, they seemed at first glance to be even more nightmarish. Human at heart and a complete stranger to this kind of naked, unrestrained brutality he gagged uncontrollably, emitting a retching sound before instantly catching himself and inhaling slowly. He avoided throwing up even though that impulse too remained only a heartbeat away, but the short, brief sound proved to be enough of a mistake. It proved to be just enough for the other’s sensitive hearing to detect his presence.
The alien raised its bloody snout instantly, crimson-hued eyes searching the room for signs of an intruder. Adam fell silent immediately and simply waited and watched, hoping that it would chalk his mistake off as just another minute sound in the raging, non-stop chaos of battle. Except that this sound had occurred within the room, giving him completely away! After listening patiently for nearly three entire minutes, the beast lowered its head and once again resumed attacking the Captain’s dead corpse. It was no longer feeding this time, but instead held up a crimson-colored right hand clutching bloody, internal organs. The creature moved its left arm under its clenched hand, allowing the dead man’s blood to shower its entire forearm. So much blood spilled, in fact, that long rivulets of it began to dribble onto and then off of its left arm before finally splattering onto the metallic deck flooring.
Noticing the lengthy, razor-sharp talons on its four-fingered claw of a hand, Adam realized suddenly just what it was that had inspired the infamous Yakiir logo. The image of it burned deeply into his memory, along with stolen alien memories that continued to flow through his brain. [“What? What is it doing?”] Adam’s mind screamed at him, automatically accessing his mental link to include the friends waiting for him back home. [“WHY is it doing that?”]
The Pathfinder Trilogy Page 49
