Bloodlines

by Richard Fox

  A group of ten met him in the middle of the platform. The alien at the front of the group held up a hand, the barrel of a gun it held pointed straight at Jared. Two Netherguard stepped forward, lowering their halberds. Jared stopped them with a small gesture. They stepped back, striking the deck with the spiked ends of their weapons.

  The alien’s black leather jacket had seen better days, and his boots looked like they would fall apart at any moment. He wore a single gold stud in one nostril, his black hair pulled back into a mess of a ponytail. Jared had never seen an Ultari in the flesh and blood before. The Netherguard were an echo of them, the aliens’ deep set eyes, high foreheads, slick hair, and a slight mound for nose with exposed nostrils could have them pass for human at a distance. That all were over six and a half feet tall and carried themselves like brawlers made Jared wonder if the entire race was warlike, or if the station had sent thugs to greet them.

  “That’s far enough,” the lead Ultari said, eyes flicking to the Netherguard as they formed up in a line on either side of Jared. “Who are you and what’s your business here? Speak quickly before I decide to end you right here and now.”

  With his faceplate down, Jared’s voice came out digitized. “Are you the commander of this station?”

  The Ultari laughed, as did his companions. Several of the outlying guards chuckled, shaking their heads. He let the laugher continue for several seconds, before waving a hand through the air, silencing his compatriots.

  “The Founders don’t waste time playing games,” he said, canting his head to the side. “I am Pousal; I am the security commander for this station.”

  “No games, Pousal,” Jared said. “I come as emissary to the true Emperor. Your disrespect here will not be forgotten.”

  The alien gave a mock shudder. “Respect? You speak of respect while hiding behind a mask?”

  The faceplate hissed as it unsealed and lifted out of place. His skin tingled as the visor pulled away from his skin.

  Several Ultari spat at the sight of his face. “Zeis filth. You dare to come here.”

  “I am not a Zeis,” Jared said, stepping forward. “I am the Herald of the one true Emperor. You will receive his glory, or you will die.”

  Pousal stepped forward. “I see no Emperor here. I see only a Zeis with death wish. Leave now and I will not kill you.”

  “We aren’t going anywhere,” Jared said.

  The four Ultari behind Pousal stepped up next to him, readying their weapons. The Ultari looked from his compatriots back to Jared. “You see? My friends don’t like you either. Your time is running short, Zeis. Leave now, before they lose patience.”

  “Unworthy!” Emperor Kyrios’s deep, mechanical voice echoed across the platform.

  Jared turned as Kyrios and his two captains descended the shuttle’s ramp, their tall, razor-edged bodies glinting in the defused sunlight. The Ultari shuffled uncomfortably as the trio approached, the Emperor’s staff clinking against the deck. Jared had been with the Triumvirate for so long, that he’d forgotten just how imposing the three massive machine bodies could be.

  Jared stepped to the side, allowing the Triumvirate space.

  “Have I been gone so long you have forgotten your place, servant?”

  Pousal looked to his gang for support, then turned back to Kyrios, obviously flustered. He swallowed, gathering his courage, and lifted his chin at the Emperor. “What is this? You think showing us some kind of Regulos droids is some kind of joke? I am going to feed you to my getall fish.”

  “So much you have forgotten,” Kyrios said, his tone almost remorseful. “Your distrust and skepticism are well noted, servant. In our current form, recognition of your true gods is difficult. I understand this, which is the only reason my guard has not yet destroyed you.”

  Pousal shifted again, obviously wanting to be anywhere but here.

  “Have you forgotten the words of your Ancestors?” Kyrios continued. “I am the return that was promised. The Triumvirate has returned to claim vengeance on the unfaithful and unholy. Do you not see?” He made a sweeping motion with his free hand, indicating his metal form and those of the Arch Duke and Prince.

  “I forgive your heresy. The Abominations destroyed our bodies, but it couldn’t destroy our souls. We will sing our vengeance and lay waste to their acolytes. The true Ultari Empire is at hand, servant. You will submit and rejoice.”

  Kyrios spread his arms wide, his voice booming. “You will rejoice.” His eyes burned red, thin trails of vapor curling into the air. His presence was tremendous, even Jared felt it. “You will rejoice and fear.”

  “I don’t…” Pousal broke off, turning and pushing his way through the group of Ultari, running for a door at the end of the platform.

  Jared waved at his guard and four Netherguard leapt into action, sprinting forward on thin, powerful legs. Two cut off Pousal’s escape, holding him at the point of their halberds. One of the outlying Ultari raised his rifle, shouting. A Netherguard to Jared’s right turned, lowered his halberd, and sent a brilliant bolt of energy into the alien’s chest, turning the Ultari into so much red mist.

  Immediately, the remaining Ultari dropped their weapons, raising their hands as high as they could manage.

  Pousal dropped to his knees and pressed his face into the deck. “Please! Don’t kill me!”

  Jared stepped forward. “You will submit.”

  “Yes! I’ll submit. I’m sorry, please!” Pousal lifted his chin, baring his throat, arms to his sides.

  Kyrios stepped past Jared. The Ultari spread apart, allowing him to pass, and he stopped in front of the prostrating Ultari. The Emperor reached down and touched a claw-tipped finger to Pousal’s neck. “You will serve. Does this station still have its arena?”

  Pousal nodded quickly.

  “Bring your leaders to me,” the Emperor said. “I will receive them there.”

  Chapter 7

  The survivor looked a lot less menacing with his dark, demon-looking armor off. In fact, he looked downright pitiful.

  Carson stood behind a transparent screen, watching the alien sleep. The male Ultari lay on a hospital bed, covered by a white sheet, hooked up to a number of monitors and sensors. Wide straps secured its arms to the bed rails. A doctor was checking the biometric data on one of the displays at the head of the bed, notating the information on his data pad.

  After his brief struggle on the SI ship, the Ultari had offered no resistance at all, hadn’t as much as opened an eye since they’d returned to Terra Nova. Whether or not he would wake up at all was a point of general contention among the medical staff.

  The doctor finished collecting his data and left the small room, ducking through a curtain to Carson’s left.

  “Oh, Chief Carson,” the doctor looked up, surprised. His name was embroidered in blue lettering on his white jacket’s breast: Dr. Alan Chu. “I didn’t know you were standing there.”

  “I didn't mean to scare you,” Carson said.

  “Not at all. My wife tells me I need to pay attention more to my surroundings. What with a potential hostile alien in my ward.”

  “Smart woman.”

  The doctor nodded. “Indeed. What can I do for you, Chief?”

  Carson nodded through the screen at the unconscious alien. “Is he going to make it?”

  Chu pursed his lips. “I'd like to tell you yes, but honestly, I don't know. I really don't know enough about the alien physiology to make a medically informed diagnosis. I'd rather not even be treating him based on secondhand information, not to say the other doctors don't know what they're talking about, but let's be honest, it's not like they were given access to top medical equipment on Negev. I hate to say it, but we’re really working off of best guesses here.”

  “Yeah,” Carson said, crossing her arms. “I’m familiar with the process.”

  “I will say, however, the data does suggest the patient will survive. The primary heart has been functioning at a constant level since his arrival, which sugge
sts it's operating in its normal capacity. What's interesting is the secondary heart, which only seems to pump every so often. It's definitely supporting the cardiovascular system in some way, but in this state, it's hard to say how the second heart benefits the body. My guess is that in times of increased stress and physical activity, the second heart kicks in to provide additional blood flow to keep the body working harder for a prolonged amount of time.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

  “The other interesting thing is…” The doctor paused, rifling through his pockets for his data pad. Finding it, he tapped through several files before finding the one he wanted. “Here, look at this. Now if that isn't the strangest thing to note about the species, I don't know what is.”

  Carson looked at the tablet, frowning, trying to identify what she was looking at. The black-and-white x-ray showed what she thought was a spinal cord, but all the other white lines and dark spaces on the image told her nothing.

  “You see?” Chu asked, an expectant look on his face, like Carson should know automatically what he was showing her.

  She shook her head. “Sorry, Doc.”

  “The nervous system does not connect through the spinal column to the rest of the body. And not only that…” He swiped through several more pages, bringing a list of words that Carson wasn’t going to even try to pronounce. “Its brain is full of bacteria. In amounts almost equal to what’s in its digestive system. Such an inversion would be fatal for humans. But they don’t appear to have any negative effects on any of the patient’s systems. And come here, look at this.”

  Chu motioned for Carson to follow him, pulling the curtain aside, stepping back into the room.

  Carson started to object, then reluctantly followed. “Honestly, Doc, it's okay…”

  The doctor pulled back the sheet, revealing the alien’s naked torso, its smoke-grey skin covered in jagged scars and bullet wounds. Despite having no interest in the medical physiology of the alien, Carson was impressed by the Ultari's musculature. Its upper body and arms, though slender, were covered with bulging muscles.

  “Looks like he's been through a lot,” Chu said. He pointed to a particular scar on the alien’s abdomen. “That's a medical scar, too clean to be any kind of battle wound. He's had some type of surgery; however, we couldn't find any evidence of that in our deep scans. And not only that, but this—”

  The Ultari's eyes snapped open. It jerked upright, pulling wires taut, snapping several others. Carson jumped back, stepping into the curtain. Chu let off a high-pitched yelp.

  The alien’s eyes flicked to the doctor and it let out a guttural roar. It jerked an arm up, ripping right out of the restraint, and grabbed the doctor's jacket. He yanked Chu over the bed and into a bank of monitoring equipment. Chu collided with several of the screens, knocking them over before he came to a sudden stop against the wall. He flopped against the floor and rolled onto his back, moaning.

  An alarm sounded as the alien struggled against the restraint on his other arm.

  Carson shook herself free of the curtain and lunged forward, grabbing the alien’s free arm and trying to wrestle it away from the restraint.

  “Stay down!” Carson said through gritted teeth, pushing with all her strength.

  The Ultari pulled his arm free and backhanded Carson across the face. Stars burst across her vision and she stumbled back and fell to the ground. The back of Carson's skull bounced off the floor, disorienting her further.

  The alien ripped its other arm free pushed himself out of the bed, the sheet falling free, revealing the alien’s body naked but for a pair of flimsy white hospital shorts. It looked at the doctor, who was struggling to extricate himself from a collection of power cords and wires on the far side of the bed.

  The alien took an unsteady step toward the door, one arm held tight against its flank.

  Carson shook the cobwebs from her mind and got her feet under her. She got a running start and jumped onto the Ultari’s back. His flesh felt red hot through her uniform as she wrapped her arms around his neck. She pushed his head down as he tottered forward and the front of his skull hit the door as the two left the hospital room.

  The Ultari flailed back, trying to strike Carson. She held on for dear life, trying to find just where she had to squeeze on the cordlike muscle that made up its neck to manage a proper choke.

  Several nurses in the hallway screamed as Carson and the alien grappled. The alien grunted what Carson assumed were expletives and backed quickly toward the wall, intent on smashing Carson.

  She twisted around and lifted her feet up, catching them against the wall and pushing off with all her might. She stopped the Ultari’s backward momentum, her legs on fire as she fought against being crushed like a can beneath an iron-shod boot.

  “Help!” Carson shouted as the Ultari whipped an elbow around and caught her in the ribs. She lost her footing and found herself spinning as the Ultari turned around again. Her boots whacked a food cart and sent trays of steaming food crashing across the hallway.

  Behind her, someone yelled, “Hold on!”

  “You think?” Carson pulled herself tighter against the Ultari’s back.

  A militia guard that had been posted in the clinic appeared, gauss pistol in hand. Carson saw hesitation on the man’s face as he tried to get a clean shot while the Ultari thrashed from side to side as it sought to dislodge Carson.

  “The legs!” Carson shouted. “Shoot the legs!”

  The Ultari froze, its gaze locked on the militiaman, and charged with a roar.

  Carson bounced against the Ultari as it ran.

  The militiaman sidestepped the charging Ultari and shot a kick into the alien’s crotch.

  Carson heard a sharp intake of breath and the alien went to its knees. Its skin flushed purple and it let out a low groan.

  “Move!” Dr. Chu shouted.

  Carson slid off the Ultari and Chu stabbed an injector into the alien’s back. Chu jumped back as the Ultari swiped at him. The Ultari got to one foot and looked at the doctor, eyes filled with hate and nostril slits flaring.

  A computer monitor smashed against the side of the alien’s face. It wavered for a moment, then went down like a puppet with its strings cut.

  Carson froze, holding the dented monitor over her head, then slowly let it drop to the floor, never taking her eyes off the Ultari. It lay on its chest, breathing shallow, but alive, though at that moment, Carson thought she would’ve preferred the thing to be dead. “That’s one tough son of a bitch, Doc. What’d you shoot it with?”

  “Enough sedative to put a horse on its ass.”

  Carson shook her head. “I think we found out what that second heart is for.”

  The militiaman spoke quickly into a mic attached to his uniform.

  “Got handcuffs and chains coming,” he said.

  “You went for his balls?” Carson asked.

  “Saw them bouncing in his skivvies, figured they looked vulnerable,” he said with a shrug.

  “I’ll talk to the governor about getting you transferred. This guy sees you again and I don’t think he’ll like you,” Carson said.

  “Kicking a guy in the huevos will do that. Don’t care what species you are.”

  ****

  Nunez touched the glass separating him and the cybernetic Ultari head they’d recovered from the dying ship over Negev with a finger and shivered. “God, that’s so creepy.”

  Moretti stood next to him, shaking his head. “It’s just a head.”

  “A head in a box! Plugged into your science stuff. You don’t find that the least bit creepy? I feel like it’s about to wake up and tell me I just made his shit list.”

  “It’s just a head,” the medic repeated, not taking his eyes away from the alien. Several wires and sensor leads had been attached to the various points along the skull and face. Monitors surrounded the small table in the middle of room, displaying medical and technical data gathered from the embedded sensors. “A head with Ultari data
crystals incorporated into its brain.”

  They stood in the middle of Terra Nova’s main research laboratory, surrounded by humming computers, glowing holo-displays, and lab techs moving back and forth between them. The scientists had been working around the clock to get the skull loaded into the containment chamber and hooked up to their computers. Moretti was no scientist, but the buzz around the lab seemed positive.

  As they watched, a message panel flashed on one of the display screens and the Ultari’s eyes blinked.

  “The hell!” Nunez shouted, jumping back. “Did you see that? What the hell was that?”

  Before Moretti could answer, one of the technicians peered over one of the terminals, a sheepish grin on his face.

  “Ah, sorry about that, my friends,” the man said in a thick German accent.

  “What the…did you see that?” Nunez asked through deep, focused breaths. “Its eyes… they blinked.”

  “Ya, and it’s a good thing too, otherwise, I would have had to run a diagnostic on the entire system and that would set me back several hours. The electro stimulators took almost thirty minutes to calibrate.”

  Moretti wiped the grin from his face and asked, “Have you made any progress, Doctor Schneider?”

  Doctor Detrick Schneider grinned, stepping around his terminal and Moretti heard Nunez give a quite groan. The man was a tall, lean with messy white hair and angled jaw.

  “Ah, I’m glad you asked that,” Schneider said. “Yes, some. We’ve had the specimen scanned and quarantined, for obvious reasons, and we’ve been running scans of its biology since it was brought on board the Valiant. So far, Project Diamond is moving along steadily, considering we have almost no knowledge of Ultari physiology. Not to mention that my true talent lies in positronic and cybernetic systems, not bio-mechanical synchronous communication interface systems.”