The Dark Defiance

by A. G. Claymore

  “They look the same.” Harry turned a blank expression her way. “So, what am I missing?”

  “The difference is in the organelles, the sub-cellular bodies that perform the functions of the cell.” She tapped the image of the Midgaard cell and the image enlarged to fill the screen. “At first, I thought they had more mitochondria than humans, but half of these bodies are something else entirely.”

  Harry steepled his fingers and looked over at a space on the counter between them. “Doc, let’s assume for the purposes of this discussion, that I only speak English.” He looked up at her, all innocent curiosity. “What are mitochondria?”

  “You’ve forgotten your ninth grade biology?” I suppose I wouldn’t know anything about metallurgy, but he could talk my ear off about it, given half a chance…

  “The only ninth grade biology I was interested in was sitting two rows in front of me.”

  She laughed. “Fair enough. Mitochondria are the refineries of the cells. Humans tend to have a couple thousand per cell, depending on the type of tissue, and they produce a fuel called adenosine triphosphate or ATP. ATP is the molecular currency of intracellular energy transfer.” She tapped the screen again and the magnification increased, showing a close-up of several bean-shaped organelles.

  “So those are mitochondria?”

  Jan dragged a finger around one of them, highlighting the small body. “This is a mitochondrion.” She highlighted a second, slightly different body. “This is something different. It resembles a mitochondrion in many ways; the cristae, the membranes, the approximate size, right down to having their own circular strand of DNA.” She touched a control on the bottom of the screen and a new slide came up, showing two strings of letters.

  “The one on the top is from Caul’s mitochondria.” She looked up at Harry. “I wouldn’t have been able to tell it came from an alien. It’s exactly how I would expect it to look if it were human.”

  “We already know there has to be a common origin.” Harry shrugged. “We’re looking for what makes them different, why they live so damn long.”

  Jan nodded. “This is why.” She pointed at the second strand. “This is from the mystery organelles and it’s completely different from mitochondrial DNA. Once I realized we had something new on our hands, I started isolating some of the compounds that they produce.”

  She brought up a list. “There’s a host of enzymes coming out of these little fellows, but the chief clue turned out to be this little beauty.” She highlighted the top item in the list.

  “What makes ‘telomerase’ the smoking gun?” Harry arched an inquisitive eyebrow.

  “It repairs the telomeres on our chromosomes.”

  “Ahh, of course.” The captain nodded in mock understanding. “So our chromosomes can call each other…”

  “Telomeres protect the genetic information in our chromosomes,” Jan explained patiently. “Each time a cell divides, the chromosomes lose a few base pairs from the end of each telomere. When they run out, the DNA starts to degrade and the cells begin to die off.”

  “So the telomerase extends the life of their genes? That’s why they live so long?”

  “Well, there has to be more to it than just telomerase.” She waved at the list. “There’s a whole cocktail of compounds coming out of these organelles. They must work in concert to maintain a balance. Telomerase can be a deadly enzyme: it allows cancerous cells to continue dividing. You don’t want to go mucking about with it unless you really know what you’re doing.”

  “Why are those things even in their cells?” Harry rotated away from the bench to face Jan. “If we’re so similar that we may even be genetically compatible, why this tiny but incredibly important difference?”

  Jan sighed. “We may never know. Many believe that mitochondria descended from some kind of protobacteria that established a symbiotic relationship with our own ancestors. These may have come from a similar background, but I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “mDNA typically codes for less than forty genes and we have one strand per mitochondrion.” She nodded at the tablet. “These organelles have sixty, circular chromosomes, compared to our one, and they each code for over a hundred genes. That’s one hell of a protobacterium.”

  “So, you’re saying they engineered their own longevity?”

  “I’m saying that someone engineered it. It may have been them; it may not.” She shivered. “Frankly, I think it’s too much of a coincidence that we both have mitochondria. I think someone put them in both species and the same someone put those mystery organelles in the Midgaard as well.”

  Harry got up, letting the stool swing back under the desk. He stood there, as though chewing on a new thought. “It’s possible that Odin and his people have hundreds of long-lived descendants living on Earth, isn’t it?”

  Jan sat there, frowning in concentration. “It’s probable that some descendants exist with these organelles but they would be limited to mothers of Midgaard origin. Mitochondria come from egg cells, not sperm so it’s a fair bet these mystery bodies are passed on the same way.” She nodded to herself. “A child of a Midgaard female and a Human male would likely live for thousands of years.”

  “I’m starting to wonder just how much influence they’ve had on our planet for the last couple thousand years.” Harry looked grim. “How much you want to bet they haven’t just been lying low all this time?”

  Ghela

  The Eye of Chovia

  Longer than recorded history, the great eye had watched over its two charges. It never blinked. It had seen the beginnings of Kholarii civilization, watched them fall to the Empire and observed the last of the empire’s ships depart to defend the core planets against vicious invaders.

  Watching, but never intervening, the sky god’s one eye was there when Internia was torn to pieces by a wayward wormhole. It observed impassively as large pieces of Internia’s corpse drifted down into the mists of Ghela. Despite the regular appearance and dissipation of thousands of other storms over the millennia, the storm known as the Great Eye of Chovia never faded. It was always there, in the southern temperate band of the gas giant’s atmosphere.

  And it was about to reveal its secrets.

  “We’re ready to enter the vortex,” the pilot announced. “Automated burn in three, two, one, zero…”

  Tommy’s head lurched to the left as the lighter’s engines kicked in. The strain increased as they were pushed into the edge of the giant eye. The craft began to buck wildly as they cut diagonally across the six-hundred-kilometer-per-hour slipstream of the massive, circular storm. He could see nothing but a red haze through the windows opposite his seat. “Why can’t we just come straight down on them?” he asked through his headset.

  “They’d see us coming,” Kobrak assured him. “Corelani was involved in this so they probably have some of those antique air-defense missiles that the empire left behind. I doubt they still work but,” he spread his hands with a cheerful grin, “why add any further risks to an already risky operation?” Now that they were committed to action, his mood had improved considerably.

  “Yes, this is so much safer,” Tommy answered drily as he was thrown upward against his harness before slamming back down onto the lighter’s portside bench. He pulled on the tightener strap with all his strength. I would’ve taken my chances with the bloody missiles. He looked up in alarm at a loud groaning sound. “What the hells was that?”

  The Bolsharii crewmen grinned at him. “That was just one of the mag-lift sponsons, wishing it wasn’t part of the ship.” Kobrak was strapping his UMP beneath his bench. “Unless you’ve forgotten, we’ve just entered one of the biggest storms in the galaxy. Ships don’t like storms. You should try to get some sleep.” He stuffed a pillow behind his head. “It’s a nine-hour ride to reach the center.”

  Nine hours? Tommy had been expecting a much shorter ride when he suggested the raid. And where the hell did he dig up that pillow? He knew there would be no sleep on this ride.<
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  He woke to an eerie calm. He had been dreaming again. He had seen a little girl, facing away from him at the edge of a Khulmet sidewalk. Somehow, he knew she was his daughter, and he was also certain of who her mother was. The wavy cascade of black hair was unmistakable but, just as he opened his mouth to call out to her, he realized that he didn’t know her name. He ran across the street to her but she disappeared into the crowd, dropping her doll on the concrete.

  Her bloodied doll.

  The ship rotated a few degrees.

  He gazed across at Kobrak who was eating some kind of reddish-orange fruit. Every time we meddle, someone gets hurt. He loosened his restraint harness and shifted around to restore circulation. Those Cerrans that rushed our ship didn’t have to die. Jim didn’t have to die. The Bolsharii across from him turned to look at a vid projection at the front of the cabin. If I ‘meddle’ with that bank manager, will we have a little girl and will something terrible happen to her? He thought of his own childhood and shuddered. He didn’t want to put any child through something like that.

  He turned his head. Their target was on the screen, a balloon-supported platform hanging in the dense gas of the eye’s center. The winds here were gentle breezes compared to the hull-rending slipstream around the eye’s outer edge. “Any sign they’re aware of us?”

  “None.” Kobrak’s snack sat, forgotten, in his hand. “It looks like Gelna knows his way around an interrogation; this is the right platform, all right.” He pointed at the lower part of the projection. “Look – that has to be the drop ship they told us about.”

  Hanging beneath the massive platform like a rusty fruit, the drop ship was roughly the size of their lighter but, instead of mag-lifters, it had four huge rocket motors mounted on its sponsons. The magnetic field was too unreliable if you ventured very far beneath the surface of the Great Eye.

  “Chovia’s sweet farts,” muttered one of the flight crew. “Is that the best they could do? I’ve seen better-looking ships go down the waste channel in my bathroom.” A murmur of agreement ran through the group.

  ‘Doubtless they were eager to be the first to get their hands on whatever is below us,” Kobrak cut through the rumbling. “It may be a piece of shit, and a poor one at that, but we’re going to steal it and see where it takes us.” He looked around the compartment at his companions, meeting the eye of each individual. “If we don’t pull this off, we’ll end up with a bloodbath back home. We’re in too deep to back out now.”

  The Völund

  On parabolic course for Earth

  Hal Samuel took off his ball cap and shook it to clear the water from the curved brim. The main cooling plants in the aft engineering section were fed by a maze of piping, snaking above him like a jungle canopy. The super-cooled liquid running through the lines condensed any water vapor from the surrounding air, dropping a steady rain on the perforated decking below. A haze of vapor flowed out from where the water came into contact with the steam lines at eye level.

  The water recyclers were working just fine. They reclaimed the rainwater and returned it to the freshwater reservoir. The steam lines, however, showed a pressure loss on the main panel and Hal had taken it upon himself to find the leak. Keira was too distraught over the death of her husband. He wasn’t going to bother her with this.

  Ordinarily, the ‘rain forest’ was Max’s domain, but the big man was in a bag in an emptied food freezer, along with Mike and four Midgaard intruders. As first engineering assistant, Hal elected to find the leak on his own. The steam lines bled off heat from the distortion reactors, carrying it to the ship’s power plant. A small leak wouldn’t interrupt electricity on the ship but Hal wasn’t the type to ignore any anomalies.

  Especially a leak in a high-pressure line. It could easily shear off an arm if you found it by accident.

  He moved along a bank of lines, waving a wooden broomstick over each one as he inched along. When the end of the stick got sliced off, you knew where the leak was. It was a low-tech way to search, but it was effective.

  He stopped again to shake the rain from his hat. He dragged his hand across his scalp to squeeze water from his hair and put the hat back on. He pulled the stick out from under his arm and was about to continue with his search when he saw a disturbance in the rain, twenty feet in front of him. The drops were changing direction in mid-air, just in front of the steam lines.

  There you are, you leaky little bastard! He waved the stick up and down as he quickly moved along the lines, not wanting to miss a second leak and lose his head in the process.

  He reached the leak and frowned. Usually, you could hear the leak when you got close enough. He waved the stick towards the disturbance in the rain.

  It didn’t shear off – it stopped moving.

  What the hell? The stick had hit something solid, but there was nothing there for it to hit. Hal couldn’t ignore the evidence, the stick was resting on something.

  Then the disturbance in the rain moved. Water sheeted across his face and he heard a soft, almost hissing noise. Something solid grated against the vertebrae of his neck. That’s no steam leak, he thought as his knees buckled, dropping him to the deck.

  He lay on his back, looking up at blood that hovered above him in the shape of a knife, but no knife was there. The rain washed it away, leaving nothing to see, and Hal’s focus shifted to a strange, hemispherical disturbance on the wall, running down through steam lines to the floor. The raindrops seemed to develop haloes as they fell through the space.

  What the hell is that? Hal’s last question was, in all probability, one of the most common final utterances throughout the universe.

  And then, though she didn’t know it yet, Sue DelCastro became first engineering assistant.

  Ghela

  The Eye of Chovia

  The platform itself was smaller than Tommy would have expected – no more than a hundred feet across. The massive gas envelope that supported it at this altitude was almost beyond notice. He had thought it was a large cloud on first seeing it. The small station was designed as a transfer point. Gas collected by the harvesters was brought here and pumped, through the station, into the ships that would carry it back to Kholarii orbit. A small crew maintained the structure and oversaw the transfers.

  They were looking at it through the open rear hatch of the lighter. Kale was lying on the floor, trying to look through the sights of the same heavy-calibre Barret rifle that they had used to such great effect when they stopped the attack on Kobrak’s home. His sealed helmet made it all but impossible.

  “This’d be a damn sight easier if I could use the armor-piercing, high-explosive rounds,” Kale grumbled over his headset. “Accuracy isn’t so important if your bullets go boom.”

  “We need them rushing to fix a hole,” Tommy answered, “not running away from a massive hull breach.” He jumped as he saw the flash, feeling the vibration of the weapon through the deck plates. There was very little sound at such a low gas density.

  Two rounds punched holes in the outer skin of the station. Twin plumes of gas and water crystals spewed from the wounds on the top level of the five-floor platform.

  “That should keep them busy for a while.” Kobrak’s voice was slightly louder than normal. “Move! Dock us now!”

  Tommy’s left foot slid back and he grabbed for one of the hanging straps as the lighter began to reverse towards the nearest docking platform. Intellectually, he knew the distance was closing rapidly but it still seemed to take ages. They finally came to a halt at one of the transfer quays on the second level. The team filed onto the narrow walkway and raced for the entry shield. As they approached it, a faint alarm could be heard through the thin atmosphere.

  Tommy pushed his way through the entry shield, the alarm growing louder as soon as his right foot breached the wall of energy and the sound could propagate up through the air inside his own suit. His helmet broke the surface, like a diver coming out of the water, and he could now clearly hear the alarm.

  W
here there’s sound, there’s air. He retracted his helmet and scanned the curving corridor in both directions. Clear so far…

  “This way.” Kobrak led them to the right. The transfer stations were an ancient design. Every miner knew the layout of every such platform. They came to a left-hand turn and Kobrak took it without a second’s hesitation. They quickly reached a central tube where the gravity of the gas giant was negated by special grav plating. Tools and small pieces of debris drifted aimlessly, bouncing off the curved walls.

  “Stupid bottom-feeders.” Kobrak looked over at Tommy. “These fornicating fools are a careless lot. That’s a sure way to get yourself killed, sooner or later.” He leaned in, looking up and down the shaft before moving back down the hall a few paces. “Looks clear; let’s get down to the drop ship before they finish patching the holes.” He jogged towards the edge and hopped just before reaching the end of the deck plating. The downward momentum he acquired before clearing the grav plating carried him down to a point on the far wall of the ten-foot-wide shaft that was roughly between floors. Pushing against the far wall with his right arm and foot, he gracefully turned to sail back and onto the floor of the hallway below.

  Tommy took a look at Kale. The big mercenary just shrugged. Together, they repeated Kobrak’s performance, hitting the far wall in roughly the same spot and turning to sail towards the lower hallway. Kobrak grinned as the two humans floated towards him. At the far end of the corridor, a guard in a grey uniform strolled past as he patrolled the circular walkway that ringed the outer edge of this level.

  Tommy held his breath as he approached the deck plating. The shadow on the circular walkway stopped shrinking. It began to grow longer again. He brought his UMP to his shoulder as his foot touched the floor. His body felt suddenly heavy as he staggered back onto the decking. He went down into a kneeling position as the guard rounded the corridor, a quizzical frown on his face.