The Biofab War

by Stephen Ames Berry

The KGB officer cleared his throat. "I am authorized to tell you that the radiation traces still in that cave, and at the other sites, are very similar to the residue from our own particle beam testing."

  My God! thought Bill. Whatever the hell's going on must have scared the Presidium down to its toenails for that to come out. Before he could ask what other sites, Tuckman continued.

  "Some years after the war, an SS officer sold us a map, a very odd map captured by a mortally wounded Abwehr officer during that raid. It sketched the world as we knew it, except for the Antarctic, which was shown without its ice covering. The accuracy of that was only confirmed in the late 1950's by satellite photogammetry. The map's lettering was in a language or code NSA's been unable to crack. It was impregnated into a thin, pliable, highly durable polymer that continues to defy analysis.

  "Also on the map, scattered over the globe, are two hundred and fifty-eight red Xs, usually along the coast or well inland. Although it's a very large scale map, one of the marks is plainly on the south coast of France. Proceeding logically, we began the task of finding the other sites. As the French site was underground, we assumed the others would be. We thought we'd gotten lucky after a few months—a cave in Oregon. But like the French site, whatever had been there was destroyed. Just fused lumps of metal congealed on the floor. A small place, really, just a few tunnels hollowed out of bedrock, a cleverly concealed entrance. Analysis of the metal showed the presence of alloys unknown to us—alloys not composed of any known elements."

  "Excuse me, sir," said Flannigan. "Did you say no known elements?"

  The Director nodded, pausing to sip coffee. "Operations were stepped up.

  "The Soviets got their map the same time we did. It was a copy, sold them by the same ex-SS."

  "There is no such thing as an ex-SS," said Bakunin.

  "Anyway, the Soviets did not begin looking until shortly after we found another site in Montana and lost our team—also to particle beam fire. Shortly after that, the KGB very quickly found a site near Batumi, on the Black Sea. They lost their team, too.

  "That was ten years ago. Since then there's been close cooperation on this between myself and General Branovsky, Head of the Second Chief Directorate. Characteristically, the Soviets consider this a problem of internal security, so Second Directorate's in charge. As it was first thought a foreign intelligence matter for the U.S., I was given the assignment, initially reporting to then-Director Mr. Dulles. Currently I report to the President's National Security Advisor, Jose Montanoya.

  "Colonel Bakunin was in Washington to discuss progress with me when your call came, Bill. We drew certain conclusions and here we are.

  "Floor's now open for discussion."

  His men looked to him, waiting. Sutherland voiced it for all of them. "You're talking about an ... outside force, sir, aren't you? Something with a technology way ahead of ours. Something keenly interested in finding those sites and preventing us from finding them?"

  "Little green gremlins," said the Director. "That's what President MacDonald calls them. Lord knows, he may be right."

  "If teams have been wiped out," Bill asked, "why aren't we going in with an armored division?"

  "Armored divisions attract attention, Bill. And they're no protection against little green gremlins with, how to say, blasters?

  "There was a movie some years ago, The Andromeda Strain. Everyone see it?" Sutherland was surprised when Bakunin nodded with the rest. "You'll recall, then, that when something lethal and alien falls from the skies, the team sent in after it was considered expendable. We're expendable, gentlemen. But then that's always gone with the territory, hasn't it?" He poured more coffee.

  It was a long while before anything but the steady throbbing of the jets broke the silence.

  Chapter 7

  "The shield is fully operational, Captain," said N'Trol. Wiry, middle-aged, with the deep-seamed tan that comes from a lot of years hullside, the Engineer had come to the bridge to make his report. He looked tired.

  D'Trelna grinned—a smug little grin. "Thank you, Mr. N'Trol. Care for a fata?" The Engineer nodded. "Sit, sit." The Captain waved to the empty flag-officer's station at his rear, swiveling about as N'Trol sat. D'Trelna handed him the steaming cup that appeared atop the chair arm, dialing up another for himself.

  "You've done a great job, Engineer. My compliments to you and your staff." N'Trol nodded, acknowledging with an all but imperceptible smile as he sipped the t'ata. "We no longer have to worry about S'Cotar flitting aboard. I'm not aware of anything but massed fusion or missile fire having ever penetrated a Class One Imperial Shield."

  "True, sir. A telekinetic beam scatters against a shield like sand against a wall." He finished the drink. "With your permission, sir, I'd like to get some sleep."

  "With my blessing. Go."

  As N'Trol left, D'Trelna turned back around. "Time to planet three, Mr. K'Raoda?"

  "Shield penetrated!" L'Sura cried. Alarms hooted as he pointed midway between Navigation and Weapons. "Life forms materializing... there!"

  "Shipwide," snapped the Captain. "Intruders on bridge. Controls to auxiliary. Reaction force to bridge. Battlestations! Battlestations!" The battle klaxon joined the security alarms.

  D’Trelna moved fast. Even as a searing white light burst over the bridge, he was on his feet, squinting against the fierce glare, listening for one more alarm before he pulled the trigger.

  When spots stopped dancing before their eyes, the K'Ronarins saw four very bewildered humans standing next to Navigation. The bridge S'Cotar detectors remained silent.

  "Hold fire," ordered D’Trelna. "They're not transmutes.

  "Identify yourselves!"

  The oldest of the four, a big, white-haired man, fell to his knees, gasping. "Bob!" cried John. He and Zahava knelt beside the professor as K'Raoda called, "Medtech to the bridge." Stripping off his field jacket, Greg bundled it under Bob's head.

  The reaction force burst in, D'Nir at their head. The sergeant looked disappointed at the absence of S'Cotar.

  "Get them off the bridge, Sergeant," said D'Trelna as a medtech brushed past him to tend McShane.

  "Let go of me," snapped Harrison as a commando grabbed his arm, trying to pull him away from Bob. Zahava rose, seeming to comply, then drop-kicked D'Nir, only to have her arms pinioned.

  "This is absurd," D'Trelna said, stepping down from the command tier and past the doubled-over NCO. "Commandos, stand clear. D'Nir, you should be ashamed of yourself, sap-kicked like that.

  "Well?" he asked Q'Nil, the medtech.

  The man looked up, putting away the diagnoster. "Shock, minor stroke. Their heart and respiratory systems seem slightly different from ours. A while in sick bay and he should be fine." Filling a hypo, he pantomimed injecting Bob, looking questioningly at the three other Terrans. They nodded.

  "We've got to communicate," said D'Trelna. "D'Nir, very calmly, without injuring yourself further, escort the two men and the woman to Briefing Room Three, Five Deck. K'Raoda, have Survey bring five cerebral translators there on the run." As he spoke, McShane's breathing eased and he slept.

  * * * *

  Reassured by D'Trelna's crude sign language that Bob would be all right, the trio went reluctantly with the commandos. As they left, two crewmen arrived, wheeling a medcart.

  "Where are we?" Zahava asked in a tiny voice as the lift angled down and across the ship.

  "You're asking me?" said John nervously. "Wherever we are, though, how'd we get here? One instant we're under Cape Cod, the next—zap!—we're in this great gray metal womb."

  "And who are these guys," asked Greg, "the lost space patrol?" He glanced at the four commandos. Stringently obeying D'Trelna's order, they stood to one side of the big lift. Young, in top shape, wearing brown lightweight tunics with matching trousers, short haircuts and big black bdts on which were bolstered the long, wide-bore pistols the Terrans had been staring into on the bridge, the troopers looked very much like a space patrol.

 
Exiting, the trio were hurried down a long gray corridor, arriving shortly at an austere room: black metal table with matching straight-backed chairs and four blank, gray walls.

  D'Trelna and L'Wrona arrived a moment later. The latter took a double handful of small, black boxes from a crewman, placing them on the table.

  Snapping one of them open, the K'Ronarin officer removed what looked like a tiny, one-piece hearing aid. Placing it in his right ear, he gestured for the Terrans to do the same. When they hesitated, D'Trelna selected a box at random and imitated L'Wrona's action.

  After they'd all adjusted their translators, the Captain asked, "Can you understand me?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know where you are?"

  "No," said John tersely. "Who are you?"

  "I am Captain J'Quel D'Trelna, commanding the K'Ronarin Confederation starcruiser Implacable. This is Commander H'Nar L'Wrona, my Executive Officer."

  "Starcruiser?" John asked, a catch to his voice. "Can you prove it?"

  L'Wrona pushed a button. A wall opaqued into transparency. They stared, gasping, as the light of a billion billion stars flooded the room.

  "We're closing on what we believe tp be your home world," said D'Trelna, staving off a barrage of questions.

  L'Wrona pressed another button. Space vanished, replaced by a close-up of an almost cloudless Western Hemisphere. "Is that your home planet?" asked the Captain.

  "That's it," John said. "Where are we?"

  "We're halfway between your home—what do you call it?"

  "Terra."

  "We're halfway between Terra and your system's fourth world," explained D'Trelna. "We're decelerating, so it'll be some hours before we're within range."

  L'Wrona switched the wall back to space view.

  "Range?" said Zahava with quiet alarm.

  "I'm sorry," the Captain apologized. "A poorly chosen word. Landing range. We intend to land a scout craft and explore your specific point of origin, as traced by ship's computer."

  "Just why did you bring us here, Captain, and how?" demanded John, his face pale and angry.

  "We did not bring you, sir. You were thrust upon us—we suspect by matter transport, a technology lost to us. And one we need very badly.

  "We're in your system to investigate a report of extant Imperial technology," continued D'Trelna, leaning back in his chair. Taking in their puzzled faces, he smiled.

  "I see I'm going too fast. Let's begin with basics. You know our names. What are yours?"

  John introduced his friends, adding, "We're tired, hungry and more than a little confused."

  "I can take care of the first and second items," said L'Wrona, dialing up four steaming platters of food and equally hot cups of beverage from a wall unit. "And I hope we can resolve our mutual confusion," he said, placing the food before Implacable''s guests and resuming his seat.

  "This is delicious," enthused Zahava, digging into meaty stew.

  "As to 'mutual confusion,'" D'Trelna said. The wall now displayed a three-dimensional star map: several score points of white light, scattered among three roughly equal colored zones—blue, green and yellow.

  "The Confederation of K'Ronarin Republics as it was a decade ago. Three semiautonomous states, descendants of the strongest of the old Imperial sectors, united for trading and mutual defense.

  "The Confederation as it is today."

  Half of the map now shone scarlet.

  "Ten years ago we harbored the dangerous belief that we were alone in the galaxy," said L'Wrona, picking up the tale. "Our ancestors, whose Empire charted half our galaxy, found only fossils in their search for other sentient life.

  "Then the S'Cotar swept in on us from the barren marches of space. The red is theirs by right of conquest." His tone was bitter.

  "The S'Cotar," added D'Trelna, "are a voracious, telepathic insectoid. Origin—unknown. History—unknown. Ultimate purpose—unknown. Captives destroy themselves quickly and nastily—a bomb in the brain.

  "We do know, however, that they consist of two castes."

  The map vanished, replaced by a six-legged insectoid. It stood erect on four long legs, its upper two limbs each splayed into four tapered tentacles. The tentacles were firmly wrapped about a strange, long-barreled rifle. Bulbous red eyes and a pair of jutting, serrated mandibles lent the creature a hellish cast. John suppressed a shudder.

  "Warrior," said the Captain. "You can't tell from the projection, but that little beauty stands six feet tall, can outrun a man, can live on nothing for weeks and will eat anything, including and especially humans."

  What looked like a large praying mantis now stood before them. "Command caste," L'Wrona explained. "Unlike the warrior, it has telepathic abilities. It can transport itself and a number of warriors over vast distances. It can assume human guise and adapt to human conventions—well enough to infiltrate the hierarchy of an entire planet."

  L'Wrona turned away from the projection. "An ability, by the way, initially and incorrectly defined as transmutation. The term stuck and has since become a noun. We first thought you were transmutes.

  "When the S'Cotar attack, key people vanish, contradictory orders are given and planetary defenses quickly fall. The red bulge extends further into the Confederation. That's been the fate of twenty-three planets in the past ten years."

  "You say you're here searching for the remains of your Empire's technology," said Zahava. "What sort of technology? And why?"

  "Excuse me," D’Trelna said, reaching in front of his XO. "Something more pleasant, I think." The S'Cotar disappeared, replaced by the original star view.

  "We're looking for an intact Imperial transporter web— they had them on all their Colonial Service bases. With it, we could overcome the S'Cotar's telekinetic edge."

  "We look for anything, though," said L'Wrona. "The war's turned us into galactic scavengers. This ship, for example, dates from the Fall—the fall of the Empire—five thousand years ago. She was found in a stasis cache beneath a gutted Imperial fleetbase. Much of her equipment is Imperial.

  "These warsuits," he continued, indicating the shiny, form-fitting jumpsuits he and the Captain wore, "are Imperial. They'll absorb all but the most concentrated blaster fire and double as hard vacuum suits. They were only recently found in an automated warehouse on K'Ronar, misrouted there centuries ago and forgotten. Today they took hostile fire for the first time in five thousand years."

  "If they hadn't, we would have," D’Trelna said. "You'd have arrived during my funeral." He smiled humorlessly.

  "And these?" Greg tapped his earpiece.

  "Imperial," said L'Wrona. "We're not sure, but we think they send, receive and correlate thought patterns. We do know that they firmly instill the alien language in the wearer's mind." He paused, taking in their unbelieving faces.

  "Oh, it's true," D’Trelna affirmed. "In a few days you won't need the translators."

  "I gather you plan on our company for a while, then, Captain?" asked John.

  D’Trelna smiled. "You listen well, Mr. Harrison. Yes, for a few days, no more. Then, I hope, we can all go our separate ways. Provided events don't overtake us."

  "What events, Captain?" asked Greg.

  "There are S'Cotar in this solar system—we've already been attacked. And why you're still alive, I don't know," he added, catching their exchange of alarmed glances. "Their usual pattern would have been to purge your planet of you, then expropriate your resources. Although, as Commander L'Wrona told you, sometimes the S'Cotar will infiltrate a planet, toppling it from within even as their fleet attacks. What happens then isn't known—not one of our scouts has ever made it back."

  John spoke into the silence. "Why do you need us at all, Captain?"

  "The only technology we know," replied the officer, "that could have punched a hole in our Class-One Imperial shield and reassembled your atoms on my deck is an Imperial transport system. One directed by a Colonial Service computer—at least a POCSYM Three. Therefore, I look to the origin of your
trip here to find that badly needed transporter.''

  He paused as comprehension dawned on the Terrans' faces, then continued slowly, deliberately. "We could just blast in and find it, you know. We'll have your point of origin by now and Implacable is more than a match for your planet's combined defenses.

  "But"—he held up a hand as John's face clouded angrily— "not only is it against our law, but human life is becoming a rarity in the universe. So I can't, won't, demand. I ask. Will you help us?" His voice held a certain tenseness.

  John scanned his friends' faces, then turned back to D’Trelna. "We'll be happy to help in any way we can, Captain."

  "Thank you," said D’Trelna, relaxing with a slight bow.

  "This was the start of our journey, sir," Greg said. Removing the stele from his pocket he handed it to D’Trelna. Borrowed from Bob, then forgotten in the excitement, it had been there since the Clam Shack.

  "What do you call this language?" the XO asked, removing his translator to hear the intonation.

  "Egyptian."

  Smiling, he nodded and replaced his earpiece. "We call it I'Gopta. It was a colonial language of the Empire—one of a family of hieroglyphic languages used to reestablish the tools of written communication among lost colonies sunken to barbarism."

  Handing it back, he asked, "How did you come by it?"

  Succinctly as possible, Zahava, John and Greg told the story. The K'Ronarin officers listened attentively, interrupting only to ask sharp, precise questions. When the Terrans had finished, the food was cold and the cups empty.

  L'Wrona collected the plates, dumping them down a disposer. "Sounds like you stumbled onto an at least partially functioning Imperial base," he said, resuming his seat. "Maybe even a full Colonial Service planetary installation with defenses intact.

  "Which," he added thoughtfully, "would explain why a S'Cotar garrison isn't now nestled among your rotting corpses."

  "But it wasn't a very large place, just a few rooms," protested Zahava.

  "Oh, it need not have been," said D’Trelna. "If there is a transport system, it would girdle the planet. You could have been in just one station. We may assume the computer's functioning, judging from the way you were forced into the transporter web."