Alien Alliance Box Set

by Chris Turner

  “Seal it!” cried Star. Usk put his shoulder to the door, grabbed the inner ring and tightened it securely. They slumped down, slowing their breathing, waiting for the locusts.

  “Douse the lamp,” Miko hissed at Laren.

  They crouched in the inky darkness, waiting. Usk’s pincers flexed and twitched. Hearing the blood pound in his ears, Miko squinted about wildly, as did his peers. Silence. Muted bangings came from beyond the door. The odd trilling of a laser. In the oppressive gloom, Miko felt he was in a chamber that had been sealed for aeons.

  An echoing clink smote the thick silence, as if a lock had turned in the door. Miko whirled about, weapon drawn, but discerned no cause for the sound.

  A dim green glow appeared further within. Straining his eyes, Miko imagined every sort of worst-case scenario, his heart beating like a jackhammer. The glow stabilized. A barely perceptible hum permeated the air. What new horror waited?

  He discerned electrical components, tall white cabinets, crystal holo coils hanging from the ceiling, a series of screens, projectors scattered within. A clinical ambience hung about this unsettling place.

  Star touched his arm. Miko blinked in curiosity, not having heard her approach. Usk and Laren huddled nearby. At the far end of the chamber another silver door with a similar ring glinted. An exit?

  Cautiously, they crept closer to the light. A low panel lay by the side wall—flat, tilted on a shallow angle, flecked with incomprehensible symbols. Behind appeared a long glass window which gave a glimpse into a room with cobwebbed, misty substance, as if frozen in time. Vertical tubes ran up the side wall and across the ceiling. They were like organ pipes, with fine wires, like blue fibre optics, dangling down from them, glistening in the hypnotic glow, sparkling as if with eerie life. Miko frowned. For the life of him, he could not guess what this chamber was. Some sort of command centre? It did not have the look of either Zikri or locust design, from all that he had seen of both cultures.

  Laren crept up beside him. Miko mustered enough courage to reach out a finger to touch the panel. A strange ping rang out in the murk.

  Star’s eyes widened.

  A substanceless figure coalesced from behind the glass. A disembodied voice spoke. “Greetings. I see you have discovered me...”

  A chill ran through their bones. Old, ancient tones echoed in the air and Miko peered around wildly looking for their source. In the luminous glow, Usk’s features were cast in a macabre light.

  Miko wondered if the figure’s speech broadcast in all required languages simultaneously, as Usk chittered back a response as soon as the words had been spoken. A universal language modulator? Some form of Unispeak? How could such be engineered?

  The face was neither male nor female: elongated, expressionless, with hollow eyes and hairless hooded skull, emerging from before the organ pipes like a ghost from the ages past. The body: an androgynous, slim-hipped one, garbed in a thin colourless robe, yet tall with short forelimbs and long bare feet with four hairy toes of some giant, primitive ape.

  “I hope my form is pleasing to you?”

  Miko wondered how anything could be less so.

  Star gurgled something incoherent.

  “Come forward, guests. Enter, if you please...” A hand lifted, a claw-like one, puffy with bluish-white flesh, the disturbing face morphing into something of a ghastly smile.

  “What—are you?” gasped Miko with a mixture of awe and dismay. He reached out a hand to touch the plasmic cloud, green and gold, that shimmered through the glass to settle before them. His fingers passed right through.

  “Suffice it to say,” said the creature, “I could be a great brain floating in a vat somewhere on a nameless planet light years away—or maybe I could be a figment of your imagination. Call me ‘G’ or ‘Genetrix’, if you like. Some have called me ‘Master’, although the title is a tad pretentious.” A deep, otherworldly chuckle issued from the sound source, which Miko and the others had not yet located. The muffled sound seemed to come from all around, as if they were underwater.

  Miko, Usk and Star retreated a step, suits swishing, uncertain how to respond.

  A cylindrical object rose from a billowing cloud near the figure’s arm and its long-clawed hand reached out to touch a glowing panel appearing on its flat top.

  A kaleidoscope blur of data and pictures suddenly revolved in the cloud mist. Miko saw locusts teeming in crowded laboratories, in tunnels and cages, snippets of unspeakably violent nature: locusts striking locusts, pincers snapping off limbs, warring figures of unknown races, fighting, tearing teeth. Creatures plunged headfirst into tanks filled with water. Locusts engaged in ghoulish intravenous feedings. The scenes switched in vivid detail to long-limbed beings performing fiendish experiments on unclassifiable lifeforms, primitive locusts and Zikri in sinks and tubs.

  The thing that was the Genetrix lifted a grotesque hand and the images came less frequently, then faded from view.

  The images had stirred Usk, for the luminous glow lit up his face in a fearsome rictus. Star’s face too went ghostly pale.

  “I hope these phantom images will help you understand. Your unasked questions make my sense centres quiver.”

  Laren gasped, “Why show us all this repulsiveness? Are you friend or foe?”

  “Forgive my manners. You are—?”

  “Laren,” he croaked. “And this is Star, Miko and Usk.”

  “Excellent. I’m grateful you have discovered my hideaway. For a while, I was contemplating whether I would pull my own plug should I spend the rest of my days floating in limbo, rather than wait till my power cells burned out.”

  Miko grunted. “You still haven’t told us precisely what you are.”

  “The Genetrix as I have said. A robot, neural intelligence. In my aeons of darkness, I pondered the question, is it possible to create a universe where goodness prevails and the primitive and barbaric languishes?”

  The AI indulged in a hollow laugh. A malformed claw-finger pointed to the warships from near space that appeared on the holo screen. The vaguely anthropomorphic figure formed something of a condescending smirk on its face. “What a jejune concept.”

  Laren took a short breath. “I don’t—”

  “Understand?” the AI gave a tolerant sigh. “A primordial hatching ground, this planet, a birth soup of life. When our scientists conducted our experiments millions of years ago, we had no idea all that would come of them. What they have become now, these Zikri and locusts, I cannot begin to guess. But those warships out there give me some indication.”

  Miko’s brain reeled.

  “Once we were known as the Cuyrne. But we evolved far beyond the corporeal limitations of those brain-based, fleshy creatures who experimented on far worlds.”

  “What do you mean? You’re telling us nothing,” said Miko.

  “In essence, I am long dead and you are witnessing only an artificial facsimile of the real me. For all intents and purposes, I am a true and convincing copy of what I once was. Sadly, I’m devoid of a soul. Only clever electronics sustain the illusion of my personality as a thinking, interactive being.” The image shimmered. “It’s intriguing technology.”

  “Impossible,” sputtered Laren. “AI is not that advanced. Robots can fire lasers, repair machines, nothing more. Boxes of circuits, lifeless non-entities is all they are.”

  “Perhaps in your age. But what of ages past?”

  A croak caught in Laren’s throat. Miko blinked, a dim sense of dread stirring in the pit of his stomach.

  “The locusts were close to the oldest creatures of this universe. Look,” The Genetrix motioned to the revolving display of locust-like birthlings teeming in some primeval swamps on a primordial planet. “After the basic pathogens, viruses and bacteria appeared as the first life forms on budding worlds, we ensured that the locusts were next to emerge.”

  “Bollocks! I refuse to believe such an unfounded genesis myth,” quavered Star, shaking her head back and forth.

  “Humbling,
but true. Not so nice, knowing you were not the priority.”

  The holocast rolled on, showing Zikri now in tanks. Humans following, struggling, thrashing in communal vats.

  Miko stared up in dismay. The holo projection continued to flash violent scenes across the ceiling as glimpses of more recent hostilities merged with the slaughter. They flickered at barely comprehensible viewing speeds—of Orbs bringing Jakru ships down from the sky to the terrapod stations on Kraetoria, and the manufacturing of ships, disassemblings, backengineering the pirated technology. Locust vessel after locust vessel brought cargo holds full of humans and other races for their tanks.

  “You see, it is not so farfetched,” said G. A master-slave relationship that goes on for aeons, until all matter, higher or lower, melds back into the space that birthed it.”

  Miko croaked in horror. “To what end?” He gaped at the screens, then his eyes darted to the doors, both entrance and exit, wanting to be free from this alien hell.

  The creature stared, with an expression of pity on its face then a brutal coldness that went beyond imagining. “It is the design.”

  “What do you mean, ‘design’?” Star wailed. “Godawful tanks are still tanks, you brute! Turn the holocast off!”

  The creature stared at her in bemusement. “Alas, a passionate, yet impulsive creature. Most delightful. But the tanks... They’re the most interesting part of the process. You see, the anthropomorphic races, humans included, were really an ironic accident. This planet was supposed to be a closed experiment, a private birthing pool, but an early form of the Mentera broke their restraints and captured one of our birthing labs, raiding the vats of primitive Zikri we had recently seeded. These early prototypes swam gracefully in their birthing liquid.”

  It paused, brushing at its shoulder. “The locusts incapacitated the lab overseers, which at that time were mere machines. The vats with their potent spawn, the Zikri, gave the locusts fiendish ideas of creating a constant food source. The smarter insects ‘borrowed’ the idea and refined it, developed the intravenous feeding tanks you seem to know something about. The Zikri fought back against the locust enslavement, and I’m guessing became the war-mongers they are, the pirate masters of the age. They perfected their craft in their hijacking exploits and burgeoning industry of ship-making.”

  “So what is this chamber then?” demanded Laren, his forehead dripping in sweat.

  “A command console, and record-keeping monitoring station. The rest of the complex: sealed up and camouflaged. Here we conducted experiments on the alien races. We created hybrids of locusts and Zikri, neither like the ones you know. The residing Master failed to destroy this chamber before the locust takeover. Now the Masters are long dead. This chamber never fell into Mentera or Zikri hands when the planetoid became theirs. That would have been—unfortunate.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll leave that for you to ponder.”

  “So just on a whim you created this?” asked Miko. “I don’t get why you created the Mentera.”

  The AI shrugged. “A bet. A simple bet, among others like me. We wanted to see if the basic quintessence of life was goodness—or darkness. We created these races out of sheer scientific curiosity; we infused a proto-specimen sample of raw matter plus charged energy with primitive intelligence, to see how the progeny would fare against one another—if they would coexist and interact.”

  Miko shook his head. “You created monsters.”

  The Genetrix gave a sad exhalation. “All the horrors and genocides, the atrocities you witnessed on worlds far and near, from the tyranny of the Zikri to the parasitism of the Mentera, all started here. On and on it went, spreading via starships to distant worlds. I am the sad loser of the bet, for I favoured that the races would be compassionate. Time spins on, but I fail to see any shift in the order of things since the first viruses attacked the protozoa of the primordial oceans...since the first feral fishes swam in schools amongst the dark channels and the swirling eddies of prehistoric worlds to crawl onto dry land, giving way to the ferocious reptiles with their teeth and claws—which soon took to the air, feathered and as scavenging and marauding birds. Then to the land beasts that roved unchecked, for ages, on your planet Earth, and infinite other planets.

  “We tried splicing genes of less violent species, like your rabbits and deer, but our experience was surprisingly dissatisfying. When the Mentera took the station, our experiments were curtailed. We went to other worlds to construct laboratories, and we discovered, despite our efforts, that evolution took its more sinister course: bearing violent fruits, even worse than Mentera and Zikri, which we promptly destroyed.”

  Laren shook his head angrily. “Don’t you feel culpable for this cesspool of evolution you created?”

  “I am ageless. I have transcended conscience. I look and blink with amused curiosity at what is here today. Three indomitable races: human, Zikri, locust. All at war, their armadas hovering in the sky like rabid beasts ready to feed on one another.

  “Aye, a strange irony. You humans deemed yourselves superior to all other life forms—superior to the locusts, the Zikri, and engaged too in countless destructive wars, though you would deny the truth of it.” The AI’s accusation hung uncomfortably in the air, though uttered with no sarcasm or heat.

  A metallic zing came at the door. All had forgotten about the menace on the other side, in light of the thing’s revelations.

  Miko jerked around. “Shit, we can’t wait here any longer.”

  “Wait!” Laren held up a hand, a desperate gleam in his eye. “You say you created the Zikri and locusts on a whim. Did you create humans too on a similar whim?”

  The creature of memory paused. “What would you be willing to do, to know the answer, human?”

  Miko blurted impatiently, “Nothing, we just want to get out of here and survive the day!”

  Laren would not be daunted. “Answer, G! If you created the Mentera, then who created you?”

  “Locusts are trying to kill us. Shall we go?” cried Miko.

  The being emitted a cold, lifeless sound. “The question you ask is a prickly one... I will remind you that the universe has no beginning or end. There is no ‘creator’ as you would think it. Any creator prompts the question, ‘Who created that creator?’ I always was. Life always existed in potential form. Material life just needed the proper spur to spark its manifestation. That impetus exists all around us, as it exists in your head and heart right now. I morphed into various forms over the ages, so far in the past that black holes have eaten their memories. I appeared to die, and then to be reborn into something new.”

  Miko flapped his hands around in frustration. “Enough! These riddles are useless.” He turned anxious eyes to the battered door which bulged inward upon another forceful impact.

  Miko, Star and Usk ran to the opposite door, twisting the shiny steel ring. But it gave not a millimetre. Star wailed, “It’s jammed.”

  “Show us a way out!” Miko’s fingers curled on his stun gun.

  “Ah, I feel your frustration, human. Impractical purposelessness haunts your psyche. So many aeons have passed where I contemplated these very questions. Coming to no satisfactory conclusion, I eventually gave it up, and resorted to amusing myself with one project after another, including those on your own world.”

  The creature straightened its sinuous shoulders. “But I digress. The time has come for you to act and I fear the part you play in this pressing drama has only begun. The locusts come...”

  Thuds pounded insistently at the door. The tortured metal still clung mulishly intact, but claws were curling around the edges and laser fire was sizzling holes in cabinets and components.

  “Perhaps now, my duty will be done and these foolish, filthy creatures will destroy this place forever. But if not—a favour I ask. Arm the detonator with these codes, destroy this place, and I will in return show you an exit.”

  Miko glanced suspiciously at the ten digit number that flashed on the cloud display
. “Why not arm it yourself?” He stared at the console’s keypad, then trained his stunner on the horde soon to charge through the widening gap.

  “Alas, the pioneers programmed these systems to disallow AI from initiating self-destruct sequences without a physical being present. As you are doomed anyways, I give you this chance.”

  “What if we refuse?” huffed Laren.

  “Then you will die.”

  Miko cursed. If they armed the detonator and the AI double crossed them... He twisted anew at the portal’s shiny steel ring, but it lay stubbornly unresponsive.

  Star moaned. Usk glared at the androgynous apparition that floated in the mist before them, grotesquely rendered, strangely omniscient. Usk’s red eyes flashed toward the buckling door, weapon gripped.

  “Only I hold the key.” The thing’s expression remained impassive.

  Stifling a curse, Miko tapped in the numbers on the console.

  “Are you crazy?” Laren slapped Miko’s hands away. “How can you trust this thing?—”

  Miko flung off Laren’s pawing grip.

  Laren turned angrily to the AI. “Tell us your role in humans’ origin!”

  “Enter the code.”

  Laren shrieked, his face suffused in crimson. His mind seemed to have snapped and he emptied ray after ray into the thing’s ethereal form.

  The Genetrix remained whole, a coy smile on its owl-like face. “You’d better hurry. They’re coming.”

  Miko jabbed the sequence into the panel while Laren fumed and the door sagged on its hinges, exploding in a ringing clangour.

  “Exit by the side chamber,” said the creature. “Enter this last sequence—” a shimmering number flashed across the cloud display “—You have twenty seconds.”

  “You miserable—” hissed Laren.

  Miko desperately punched in the release code. Within seconds, the locusts streamed through, garbed in airtight skin suits, wielding lumo-weapons in their pincers. Miko and Usk wrenched the released door open and Star and Laren staggered through. Usk turned and fired blasts at the clacking mob, mowing down the first wave.