by G J Ogden
Liberty frowned, not grasping the meaning behind Tory’s curious response, but the mercenary was done talking. She ushered Liberty forward, and together they walked through the door. The sudden change in environment was stark. The plush décor of the office gave way to a dank warehouse space that looked part abattoir and part prison. There were windowless rooms off to either side, and a caged area at the rear. Liberty hung back from the others with Tory still at her side. She had managed to stay calm up until that point, but now fear was strangling her. She had to squeeze her bound hands into fists to stop them from shaking.
“What the hell is this place?” Liberty muttered under her breath.
“Stay quiet,” replied Tory. Her voice was urgent, but without anger.
They reached the caged area, and Liberty could see that it was sectioned off into three zones. Each area had one or two people inside, though the difference in their condition was plain to see, even under the gloomy light. Those in the cage to the far right were practically in rags, and looked malnourished, even sick. Those in the far-left cage were well-dressed and looked better treated. Other than the petrified expressions on their faces, Liberty would have said they were ‘normal’.
“Take him out,” Werner said to the guard who had accompanied them in. The guard obliged, opening the middle cage and dragging out a thin man, perhaps in his early thirties. The guard pressed him up against the cage bars then stepped back.
Werner removed the data pad and handed it to him. “The engine calibration is wrong,” said Werner, repeating what Liberty had said. She immediately got a feeling that something dark was coming, and swallowed hard, but stayed quiet. Then Werner turned to Liberty, “The fuel mixture is off, correct?” he said to her directly. “And what else?”
“Yes,” said Liberty, surprised to be asked, “and the pressure ratio in number three engine,” she added, with a nervous stammer.
“That’s right,” said Werner, clicking his fingers. Then he turned back to the man, his expression suddenly becoming twisted and cruel, “and someone reprogrammed the control unit to cover it up.”
“No, no, I didn’t!” the man protested, but Werner then backed away and nodded to the guard, who raised his sub-machine gun and began to fire.
Liberty felt the rattle of the weapon reverberate through her bones, and she watched in horror as the man was gunned down in front of her. The guard didn’t stop firing until the entire clip was emptied, each hit causing the man to convulse and spasm. Liberty knew he was dead long before the weapon had clicked empty, but the guard had continued to fire anyway.
Werner stepped around the body, careful not to get blood on his polished, brown leather shoes, then opened the far-left cage. The guard reloaded his weapon, then grabbed Liberty’s arm, dragging her to where Werner was standing. She glanced back at Tory, eyes pleading for her to intervene, but Tory remained motionless, her expression betraying no emotion.
“My men will return shortly to begin your processing,” said Werner, as the guard pushed Liberty inside the cage and locked the door. “For your sake, I trust that you will become a far more valuable asset than this man was.” Werner pointed to the body on the cold metal floor, riddled with holes to his head and body. Liberty was not squeamish, but even she could not stand to look.
“Come, let us complete the transaction,” said Werner, stepping back beside Cutler. His kindly uncle persona had returned.
However, as the group walked past Tory, the mercenary stood her ground. “This girl has caused me a lot of trouble,” she said, addressing Werner. “I’d like to give her a proper goodbye.”
Werner smiled cruelly and nodded. “Very well, but only superficial damage, if you please,” he replied, “I don’t want you to scar her pretty face, or I will reduce my offer.”
Tory nodded and walked up to the cage. Liberty looked out at her from behind the bars, and was about to speak, when Tory reached through, grabbed her jacket, and pulled her forward. Liberty’s face smashed into the black metal bars, and she crumpled to the floor, completely blindsided by the attack.
Tory crouched down and leant in closer. “I wish I could be the one to break you,” she said, loud enough that the others could hear. Then she reached through the bars and grabbed Liberty’s chin, turning her head to face her. “You have thirty minutes. An hour at most,” Tory said, speaking so quietly that Liberty barely heard her. Then Liberty saw that something was hidden in the hand that held her chin. “Take it...” Tory added, again so softly that only Liberty could hear. Liberty reached up and pulled Tory’s hand away, sliding the object out of her fingers and hiding it in her palm. Then she was punched in the gut through the bars, and she collapsed again, coughing and wheezing. “Thirty minutes,” she heard Tory whisper again. “Jewel Star Liners, level four. It’s your best chance to get off the station.”
Then Liberty heard the thud of heavy boots, and she dragged herself up against the bars to see Tory Bellona walking away. Cutler and Werner had already departed, but Logan Griff remained. He waited to make sure Liberty was watching, before waving and blowing her a kiss.
Liberty turned away, resting her back against the bars. Her face and ribs throbbed, and she was shaking uncontrollably. Then she opened her hand and looked at the object Tory had slipped her. She recognized it immediately as a skelly. Tory had literally handed her the keys to her jail cell. She laughed and shook her head. “Damn it, Hudson, you were right, after all...” she said, into the cold, moist air of the jail. She closed her hand around the skelly and smiled. “And you’re never going to let me forget it.”
CHAPTER 23
In order to maintain a low profile, Morphus’ ship had adapted its form and attached itself to the ventral hull of the Orion. This had given the VCX-110 a slightly bloated appearance, but the change had not been dramatic enough to draw unwanted attention to them. That was apart from the unwanted attention from a certain Admiral Shelby.
Morphus had monitored the comms traffic from Shelby’s cruiser and seen the intercept order go out to all MP vessels. As a result, the alien entity had modified the Orion’s ID transponder, so that to Martian scanners they would appear to be a different ship. Without their camouflage, and with all MP military vessels on alert, it would have been impossible to use a portal inside Martian space without being discovered. As it was, they had managed to jump without incident, and were now headed towards Cerberus Three, the OPW planet that was home to New Providence station.
The journey from Mars into the Outer Portal World territories had provided Hudson with ample opportunity to think. His head was still spinning from the knowledge that Morphus had somehow inserted into his memory. He could replay the events in his mind, as if he’d actually witnessed them first hand. It was a huge amount to process, and he frequently found himself lost in contemplation, like a dream he couldn’t wake from.
Goliath had been a seed carrier – a titanic, sentient vessel that had been created to spread life throughout the galaxy. Goliath had been created by a race that Morphus called, the Corporeals. Though Hudson also now knew that it was the Corporeals who had created Morphus and the Revocaters too. Possessing a sudden awareness of an alien species was momentous enough in itself, but the Corporeals had not been just any species. They had been the first sentient beings to exist in the entire galaxy.
As with homo sapiens on Earth, the Corporeals had lived through a troublesome, often violent history. However, over millennia, their society had evolved. The wars had ended, and they entered a period of peace and self-discovery. Over a period of thousands of years, their mastery of science and technology had become near absolute. The Corporeals had spread to other planets and moons in their own solar system, building vast new cities on the surfaces and in orbit. Yet, despite numbering in the many billions, they were still lonely. They had discovered almost all there was to learn, but still one discovery evaded them. The discovery of sentient life in other parts of the galaxy. For centuries the Corporeals had probed distant stars for signs of oth
er intelligent life. They sent messages, listened and observed, but they found nothing.
Determined to find other sentient life, the Corporeals developed the technology to engineer folds in space. These were what Hudson knew as the portals. The alien crystal that Hudson had acquired from Ericka Reach, and later repaired with Liberty, was the key component of this technology. With the crystals, the Corporeals had the power to create gateways to almost anywhere in the galaxy.
However, despite searching countless thousands of systems, the Corporeals found only primitive species with primal intellects. And none of these species possessed the capability to develop true sentience. That was when the Corporeals made a decision – a decision that would ultimately lead to their downfall. They created Goliath.
Goliath was designed to bring sentient life to the universe. It contained all the apparatus needed to transform planets into worlds that mirrored the environment of their own planet. It could even transform a sterile planet into one capable of supporting life. However, Goliath’s abilities went far beyond mere terraforming. It was also able to seed life, based on the DNA patterns provided by its creators. Life that would share physiological similarities to the Corporeals, but also grow to be unique.
For hundreds of thousands of years, Goliath roamed the galaxy, infusing worlds with the Corporeals’ DNA. However, as the life Goliath seeded began to evolve, it started to realize the harm its work was doing. The new corporeal entities were cruel, primitive, violent and wretched. Goliath despised them, and quickly began to resent its role in having created them.
As Goliath continued to sail through the stars, it decided to explore the history of its own creators. And to its disgust, it learned that they had been guilty of the same horrors. He discovered the same vile cruelty; the same greed and corruption; the same unworthiness to exist. Goliath decided that sentient corporeal life was a disease. And it was furious at being made to spread this disease throughout the galaxy. It vowed to undo the damage it had done, and cleanse the infection it had unwittingly spread to every planet it had touched.
The Corporeals, once they realized what Goliath had become, tried to shut the great ship down. However, over the eons, Goliath too had evolved. It had broken free of the Corporeals’ control, and become powerful. Powerful enough that it even possessed the capability to destroy the Corporeals themselves.
While Goliath marauded through the galaxy, sterilizing the worlds it had seeded, the Corporeals worked furiously to create the Revocaters. Based on the same technology as Goliath, but without its many thousands of years of self-evolution, the Revocaters were deployed to guard every world where the seed had been planted. Their mission was to protect life, and destroy Goliath at all costs, should it return. Yet one by one, the Revocaters failed and fell.
Goliath understood the Revocater technology better even than the Corporeals did. It took control of the Revocaters, and used them for its own destructive purposes. Thousands of vessels, laden with a biological weapon of Goliath’s own devising, were smashed into the surface of every seeded planet. All were sterilized of sentient life. Thousands of species were exterminated; their cities were razed and all traces of them ever having existed, turned to dust.
Morphus had been the Revocater tasked with defending System 5118208. Earth had been the very last planet that Goliath had seeded, and it was to be the last one the great ship sterilized.
Learning of the corruption and annihilation of its companion Revocaters, Morphus made a drastic choice. As the last Revocater, it could not fail, but this meant it had to adapt. It had to evolve, as Goliath had done. Morphus chose to reset its core, erasing the vulnerable base intelligence that the Corporeals had designed, and replacing it with its own modified code. If the reset worked, Morphus would rise again as a unique intelligence, immune to Goliath’s control. If it failed, Morphus would have merely lobotomized itself, and handed Goliath its victory.
The gamble worked. Morphus reemerged stronger, and took the fight to Goliath at the planet Hudson now knew as Zimmer One. Yet Goliath was still too strong, and despite fighting valiantly, Morphus knew it could not overpower the great ship. In a final, desperate move, Morphus channeled all of its energy into its crystal chamber, and tore open the space around the great ship. The portal that Morphus had cast swallowed Goliath whole, spitting the great ship out again tens of thousands of light years away.
The phenomenal amount of energy required to accomplish this gargantuan feat produced a radiation pulse that resonated through every portal. It reached the crystals on every Revocater that Goliath had defeated, causing them all to shatter, including Goliath’s own. It rendered the great ship blind and forever lost, with no hope of finding its way back. Drained of energy and with its own crystal in pieces, Morphus crashed to the surface of the planet. It ejected at the last moment in the shuttle that Hudson encountered. However, the crash dislodged Morphus’ core, and it fell out of consciousness, until Hudson’s chance encounter with it, millennia later.
Morphus had believed the crystals to have all been lost, but now it knew that two fragments did survive. And, by a quirk of fate, Hudson had come into possession of them both. Unfortunately, the discovery had turned out to be a poisoned chalice. From the moment the crystal had been fed with energy, back in The Antiques and Curiosity Shoppe on Earth, it had released a pulse that echoed through the vast network of portals. This pulse found its way to Goliath and acted like a signpost, showing it the way back to System 5118208. Back to Earth to complete its task.
Ironically, the crystal was now the only thing in the galaxy that could stop Goliath. And it had just fallen into the hands of Logan Griff.
“New Providence station has responded to my request to dock,” said Morphus, snapping Hudson out of his intense daydream. For a moment, he’d forgotten that Morphus was in the second seat. The alien being still occupied its previous female form, though the hairstyle and color had changed several times in the last hour. “We have been directed to dock on level four.” Morphus added.
“Roger that,” said Hudson, grabbing the controls and smiling over at Morphus. He immediately had to do a double take. Morphus’ eye color had turned purple, making the entity look like some sort of sorcerer from a teen fantasy movie. “You do know that human beings don’t have glowing purple eyes, right?” Hudson commented, turning his attention back to the controls. “It might make you a little conspicuous.”
“Based on my analysis of the activities on this space station, I do not believe its occupants will pay attention to our presence,” said Morphus. “But I will adopt a more socially acceptable iris color, if you prefer.”
“Probably for the best,” replied Hudson. If he didn’t know better, he’d almost have said Morphus sounded slightly offended.
Hudson slotted into the docking queue and was directed to a landing pad on level four. The Orion touched down, and Hudson heard the landing struts groan under the combined weight of the two ships. Then the docking pad sealed and pressurized, and the ship was lifted into the main docking hangar.
Hudson powered down, then unclipped his harness before looking out at the station through the cockpit glass. He’d never been to New Providence before – it had been on his ‘avoid unless you want to die’ list – but he’d heard plenty about it. Three of the ships on the dock were from the Jewel Star Liner company, a firm that Hudson had freelanced for in the past. He’d heard stories of pilots landing at New Providence and getting raided, assaulted and worse. One pilot had even disappeared, and nothing was ever heard from her again. The OPW authorities had simply written it off as a ‘missing persons’ case, and washed their hands of it. However, the rumors had been that the Council had kidnaped her, and sold her off to a corporation as an indentured worker.
“We should watch our step out there,” said Hudson, checking inside his jacket for the pistol. “This place isn’t exactly a great advertisement for the human race.”
Morphus got out of the second seat and surveyed the dock. “I agree,” i
t said, flatly. “This is why Goliath seeks to exterminate you.”
The alien may only have been stating a fact, but Hudson still felt the need to rise to humanity’s defense. “We’re not all like this, you know. Most people are decent.”
“You are all flawed,” said Morphus, again with a chilling indifference. “But that does not mean you are unworthy of saving.”
Hudson laughed, “Thanks… I think.”
Morphus’ frowned, seemingly not understanding Hudson’s sarcastic response, and then moved on to more pressing matters. “If the Liberty Devan entity is on this station, how do you propose we find her?”
Hudson thought for a moment. He had a pretty good idea where to start, though it would mean actively seeking out an organization he’d spent his life trying to avoid. “We need to head out there and find some particularly shady characters,” he said, glancing over at Morphus.
Morphus’ simulated eyebrows rose up. “On this station, I do not believe that will be difficult.”
CHAPTER 24
Hudson and Morphus stepped off the Orion and onto the deck of docking bay four in New Providence station. Immediately, Hudson could feel eyes turning to watch him, as if he had a flashing neon sign around his neck that read, ‘I Don’t Belong Here’. With the cargo ramp slowly whirring shut behind them, they both moved further into the bay. The eyes followed them.
“I think we’re going to have a hard time blending in with the locals,” said Hudson, glancing over at Morphus. He noticed that the alien had an almost processional way of moving. It was graceful, but formal. And along with its perfect, lustrous skin, and striking appearance in its current female form, Morphus stood out, like a celebrity in a bus queue. “Considering how everyone is already looking at us, you may as well have kept your purple eyes,” Hudson added, only half-joking.
