Delta Anomaly

by Rick Barba

  Detective Bogenn sighed. “It’s worse than that.” He looked at Uhura, then at Kirk. “You’re both new to the city, correct?”

  Uhura and Kirk both nodded.

  “So you’ve never heard of the Doctor?” said Bogenn.

  Kirk shook his head no, but Uhura frowned in concentration. After a second, she said, “Wasn’t there a serial killer in San Francisco that they called the Doctor? Like, twenty years ago or something?”

  “That’s right,” said Bogenn.

  “And you think this is the same guy?” she asked.

  “Without a doubt,” he said.

  Detective Bogenn gave them a quick rundown of the case history. Eighteen years ago, during the dense summer fogs of 2237, a string of seven disturbing murders rattled San Francisco like a series of aftershocks. The killer was dubbed the Doctor because each victim was found intact—no trauma, no incisions—yet missing entire internal organs, as if they’d been surgically removed. The Doctor struck only on foggy nights. Nobody ever saw him. After the last murder in August of that year, the killings stopped. The Doctor never struck again.

  “But he’s back now,” said Bogenn.

  “How do you know?” asked Uhura.

  Bogenn brought up the medical examiner’s report.

  “Postmortem scans show the Orion woman missing two organs,” he said. “Yet not a mark on her body, anywhere.” He turned to Admiral Tullsey. “Your Cadet Gaila is a lucky girl.”

  “I guess we have Mr. Kirk to thank for that,” said the admiral.

  “And Braxim, sir,” said Kirk. “The attacker didn’t really back off until Braxxy showed up, yelling about calling for help.”

  Now Bogenn smiled. It looked more like a grimace, but he was clearly pleased about something. He turned to Uhura.

  “That leads us to the reason you’re here, Cadet,” he said.

  “I was wondering about that, Detective,” said Uhura carefully.

  Detective Bogenn stood up.

  “Listen, I’ve been in Homicide eighteen years,” he said. “Started back in thirty-seven. Yeah, the Doctor was my first case. What a way to start, right? I was a junior-grade detective then. The old guys, the veterans, they all said they’d never seen a case with so little physical evidence. No witnesses, no prints, no residues, no scent for the dogs, not so much as a shoe scuff at any of the scenes. Nothing. Just the bodies, lying there, organ-farmed.”

  Now Bogenn turned to Kirk. “But by sheer dumb luck, we’ve got something on the bastard now.”

  He tapped a button on his electronic notepad and held it up.

  An audio recording played. It was Braxim’s voice shouting out: “I called the police!” That was followed by a pause . . . and then came the sound of a deep, chilling, inhuman-sounding voice. It spoke a phrase that sounded clear and precise . . . and yet also entirely unintelligible.

  “This was pulled from our police emergency data bank,” explained Bogenn.

  “That sounds like an old-fashioned robotic voice,” said Uhura.

  “Yes,” said Detective Bogenn. “We think it’s a voice filter mask, although unlike any we’ve heard before.”

  “Can I hear it again?” she asked.

  “Of course,” said Bogenn. “But first, listen to this. The second attack occurred just fifty-three minutes later, outside a gallery in the Soma District. The Orion woman managed to call for help too. Unfortunately, she didn’t have rescuers like your friend did. But she left us this.”

  A second recording played. Kirk and Uhura listened to a few disturbing seconds of gasping breath, then a strange, metallic humming. After that, the same voice resonated in a deep bass register, speaking a somewhat different phrase but equally unintelligible. And then . . . silence.

  Uhura said, “When you really listen, it sounds like multiple voices speaking in unison.”

  Bogenn nodded. “We noticed that as well. We think that’s an effect rendered by a voice-filter mask,” he said. “These masks are very popular with criminals these days. The good ones totally deconstruct voice patterns in ways that make it impossible to find matches in our VOX database.”

  Now Admiral Tullsey looked at Uhura and said, “Does that language sound familiar to you, Cadet?”

  Uhura asked for a playback, and Bogenn obliged. She listened with intense concentration, blinking her eyes rapidly.

  After the recordings ended, she said, “Fascinating.”

  “How so?” asked Bogenn.

  “It’s no language I know,” she replied. “But something in the phrasing sounds oddly familiar.”

  Admiral Tullsey said, “Since last night, this recording has been analyzed by the SFPD, the FBI, the United Earth Security Agency, and three interplanetary intelligence organizations. So far, nobody can make sense of it. So now it’s in our hands.” The admiral opened a dossier on his desk. “We’re the best at alien languages. And according to Cadet Uhura’s instructor, she is the most gifted xenolinguistic analyst in Starfleet.”

  Kirk looked at Uhura, impressed. Not bad for a first-year cadet.

  Detective Bogenn handed Uhura a data stick. “Anything you can tell us about this would help,” he says.

  “I’ll do what I can, Detective,” said Uhura.

  “Your instructor couldn’t say enough good things about you,” added Bogenn.

  Now Uhura looked oddly uneasy.

  Kirk decided to intervene. “Uh, you mentioned organ-farming, Detective,” he said. “Do you think that’s what this guy’s doing? Harvesting and selling organs?”

  “Maybe,” said Bogenn. “But then the question would be, how is he extracting them? Like I said—no incisions in the body. No trauma. Just empty cavities where the organs used to be.”

  “Wow,” said Kirk. “That’s just . . . gross.”

  “Yeah, it is,” said Bogenn.

  The meeting ended with Kirk, at Bogenn’s request, presenting a thorough recollection of his encounter with the Doctor.

  Later, as they left the commandant’s office together, Kirk leaned close to Uhura and whispered, “Teacher’s pet.”

  Uhura blushed a bright red.

  “Shut up, Kirk,” she said.

  She’s so cute when she’s embarrassed, Kirk thought.

  McCoy glanced around the pathology lab.

  A truly impressive brain trust was gathering here, and growing by the hour. At the whiteboard, a Nobel Prize winner from Starfleet Academy’s biotechnology lab named Dr. Dat Nguyen was chatting with Dr. Reyjik. Nguyen was drawing diagrams that looked like a child’s scribbling to McCoy. Dr. Nguyen had done groundbreaking work on plasmids, viral vectors, and horizontal gene transfer . . . topics that McCoy knew absolutely nothing about. At least Dr. Reyjik seemed to know what Nguyen was talking about.

  Meanwhile, the left eye socket of Dr. Wallace Marston, one of the Federation’s leading experts in alien life-forms, was glued to the quantum microscope’s viewing piece. His eyeglasses were pushed up onto his huge, shiny forehead in classic scientist-geek fashion. A very large man with a naturally booming voice, Marston was known to speak his mind in tactless outbursts that intimidated colleagues. McCoy liked him.

  “I hesitate to call this an organism,” boomed Dr. Marston.

  Dr. Nguyen stepped toward the microscope at the head of the class.

  He said, “Actually, I tend to agree with you, Wally.”

  Marston adjusted the scope settings. “Granted, this substance seems to be alive . . . in a sense. But there is no recognizable organic structure in the individual cell units, or whatever they are. Not like any I’ve ever seen, anyway.”

  “They certainly move in a highly organized manner,” said Dr. Nguyen.

  “Like a flock of birds.” Dr. Marston nodded. “Or better yet, bees. As if there’s a controlling hive mind.”

  “But look at that amazing structure!” said Dr. Nguyen, almost bouncing like an excited kid. “Each one is a perfect twelve-sided polyhedron, yet less than half a micron in diameter.”

  Across t
he room, Dr. Reyjik began to root around in a neatly divided specimen drawer.

  “Gentlemen,” he called out. “I would like to try something.”

  He pulled out a small vial of fluid. Then he approached the microscope.

  “We have a fairly large sample of the alien substance—whatever it is—in the microcontainment chamber,” he said. “I’m going to dock another chamber and split the sample in half. Then I’ll introduce a unicellular intruder to one chamber.” He held up the vial. “A good old-fashioned amoeba proteus.”

  “Excellent!” said Dr. Marston, rubbing his hands together.

  “Most exciting,” said Dr. Nguyen, his head bobbing in agreement.

  McCoy tried not to laugh at their nerdish enthusiasm as Dr. Reyjik prepared the specimen. The pathologist flicked a switch and a big viewscreen lowered from the ceiling. Inside the microscope’s viewer, a microcamera began to record the image and project it onto the screen.

  “Okay, inserting the monster now,” said Reyjik.

  All four doctors turned to watch the big screen. The amoeba was indeed a monster by comparison—at more than two hundred microns wide, it was four hundred times bigger than each of the tiny alien bits. Reyjik had to zoom back the view so the full amoeba could be seen on-screen. All of the creature’s organelles could be studied clearly in the remarkable quantum field view. As the big organism pushed out a pseudopod (a blobby sort of arm) toward the swarm of polyhedral bits, the particles began to swirl in a lazy cloud around the big guy.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said Dr. Marston in his foghorn of a voice.

  “It’ll try to eat them, right?” asked McCoy. “I mean, like, suck them in and ingest them.”

  “Oh, most certainly,” said Dr. Reyjik.

  For a few seconds, that appeared to be exactly what was happening. The amoeba would extend toward a cluster of bits and engulf them into its jellylike interior. But very quickly, the situation changed.

  The scientists’ facial expressions changed as quickly as the state of affairs in the sample chamber.

  “Good . . . lord!” exclaimed Dr. Nguyen.

  As if triggered by a flipped switch, the alien bits suddenly burst into a roiling frenzy. They seemed to be replicating rapidly too; within seconds, the entire screen was blackened by particles. The foglike swirl was so thick that it blocked any view of the big amoeba. And then—again, as if suddenly switched off—the wild blur of motion ceased. And there was the amoeba.

  McCoy took a step toward the screen. “Those things are attached to every bit of it,” he said.

  Dr. Reyjik stared in awe. “It’s completely coated!”

  Reyjik zoomed in the view for a closer look. As he did so, the amoeba began to pulsate. Moments later it exploded. McCoy knew the event he viewed was microscopic, but it truly looked like a bomb detonation.

  “The amoeba is gone!” cried Dr. Nguyen.

  “Unbelievable!” boomed Dr. Marston.

  But the craziness wasn’t over yet. For a few seconds the black bits drifted apart like dissipating smoke. Then the outward movement stopped, and the particles slowly began to drift back together.

  In less than a minute they had recreated the shape of the amoeba.

  McCoy stared in amazement.

  “Those crazy things were smeared on my patient’s neck,” he murmured. “My god, some of them were inside her.”

  Then came one last surprise. The black particles lightened in color, then became translucent. Inside, the stunned viewers could see every organelle of the original amoeba, perfectly recreated.

  “My god, they learned its shape and structure,” said Dr. Marston in a hushed voice.

  “Perhaps its function, too,” added Dr. Nguyen.

  “Yes,” said McCoy. “And they killed it in the process.”

  CH.5.12

  Stalked

  Uhura, eager to help in any way she could with the investigation, wasted no time in getting started. Within thirty minutes of the meeting in Admiral Tullsey’s office, she was in the Academy’s xenolinguistics lab running language recognition scans on the emergency recordings.

  “Computer,” she said, speaking distinctly to the console panel in the lab’s sound booth. “Run module Tella-dot-zero-one on both samples.”

  “Acknowledged,” responded the console.

  This routine would scan both recordings of the voice for any known strands or fragments of the primary Tellarite language dialect. The computer’s quantum drive began to hum.

  Earlier, Uhura had re-listened to the killer’s “words” a number of times. As spoken phrases, they remained odd and unrecognizable. But something in them tapped at her memory. She had a large personal database of knowledge. Language was Uhura’s lifelong passion; she’d first tinkered with language recognition software when she was twelve. These particular modules that she ran on the emergency recordings were her own custom programs.

  “No matches found,” reported the console.

  “Log the result in the master chart,” said Uhura as she typed notes.

  “Result logged,” said the console.

  “Please run subroutine Tella-dot-zero-two with the same samples,” said Uhura.

  “Acknowledged,” replied the console.

  She’d grown up speaking English and two Eurasian languages plus two separate Swahili dialects. Uhura had always loved the music of spoken words, the way different languages across the galactic quadrant constructed similar and familiar sounds to express the same things. It amazed her that gusts of air—exhaled from lungs, oscillating the vocal cords, shaped by throat, tongue, lips, and jaw into vibrations of sound—could convey such a stunningly complex range of meaning. Thus she loved not just the words themselves, but the way they were spoken.

  “No matches found,” reported the console.

  “Log the result, please.”

  “Result logged.”

  Uhura lowered her head. A long night likely lay ahead. Normally she enjoyed immersing herself in her work. But tonight she felt an immense loneliness. She knew this project was hitting close to home.

  She glanced at the data stick from Detective Bogenn inserted in the computer console.

  A killer’s voice, she thought.

  Then she heard the lab’s exterior door open and close.

  Uhura swiveled her chair toward the door of the sound booth. The lab, like all campus buildings, was highly secure. But as she heard footsteps approach, she tensed and stood up to face the door. When the booth door whooshed open and she saw who it was, she felt so relieved she almost laughed.

  “I hope I didn’t burden you with my recommendation, Cadet,” said the figure in the doorway.

  “No, sir,” said Uhura, smiling. “I was . . . I am . . . honored.”

  Her instructor nodded. “Good,” he said. “You were, of course, the only logical choice.”

  “Really?” said Uhura in a slightly teasing voice. “You mean you didn’t just pull my name out of a hat?”

  He looked confused. “That wouldn’t be logical.”

  Uhura sighed, sat back down, and swiveled back to face the console. Then she said, “Would you like to review my findings?”

  Uhura’s instructor stepped up behind her. He placed one hand on the back of her chair and leaned in close.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Uhura nodded, warmth spreading inside her at his closeness. “Computer,” she said, “please bring up the results log for Commander Spock.”

  “Acknowledged,” said the computer.

  Kirk’s favorite low-key off-campus hangout was Brewsky’s.

  Just a ten-minute walk from the Academy’s campus, Brewsky’s was a classic San Francisco Beat-era coffeehouse at the corner of Union and Fillmore. Kirk liked the smoky espresso and the low-key jazz. He really liked the laid-back baristas in their short skirts and black berets. Holiday lights were strung up year round. Something about that relaxed him. It eased the stress of being a fleet officer candidate at the most demanding school in the
known galaxy.

  The night was clear and the west winds had died down, keeping the fog offshore. But on the way to Brewsky’s, Kirk still glanced down every alley he passed, and he eyed a huge hooded alien leaning against a LiquiLED light box. On a whim, Kirk decided to see if he spoke using a voice filter mask.

  “Hey pal, I’m lost,” he said to the towering creature. “Is Fisherman’s Wharf that way?” He pointed up Russian Hill in the wrong direction.

  The cowed head turned slowly toward Kirk. Then the fellow reached up and slid off the hood. It was a dour, wrinkle-faced Hupyrian.

  “Oh, sorry, man,” said Kirk. Hupyrians were a servant race that typically swore a vow of silence. They spoke only to their Ferengi masters.

  The Hupyrian pointed toward the bay.

  “Thanks. You have a good night, sir,” said Kirk. He clapped the big fellow on the arm and continued down Union Street.

  At Brewsky’s, Kirk stepped to the counter.

  “Triple espresso,” he said.

  The girl behind the counter was new. She looked at him and said, “Triple espresso what?”

  Kirk eyed her. She wore a name tag: HANNAH.

  “Please?” he added, flashing a smile.

  She turned to measure out beans and scoop them into the grinder.

  Kirk watched her work for a second, enjoying the view. Her hair was dyed blue and hung all the way down to her waist. She was dressed in classic beatnik style: tight black turtleneck, a very mini black miniskirt, and black boots. Her bright blue eyes had an exotic curve under the sexy fringe of her bangs, and suddenly they were looking right at him.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  “No,” said Kirk.

  “Okay.” She stared straight at him until he shrugged and started toward his favorite table in the corner.

  “I’ll be right over there, Hannah,” he called over his shoulder.

  “How do you know my name?” she asked.

  “Your name tag,” said Kirk. He pointed at it. “See? There it is.”

  She looked down at it and blushed. “Right,” she said.

  “When you wear a name tag, Hannah, it gives people the legal right to call you by your name,” said Kirk, his confidence boosted by her telltale blush.