by Mark Wandrey
“Terry, are you awake?”
“Yeah,” he said and slowly sat up. Everything looked...different. He could hear the quiet hum of fans or pumps, see the low lighting and shapes of inactive blocky robots, smell a slight ozone odor, feel the cool floor under him, taste an acid flavor of some kind, and sense available connections.
Wait, sense connections? He concentrated, and the familiar ID of his slate seemed to appear in his mind’s eye. He touched the connection, and the home menus of his slate appeared. In his mind. Another connection was “Operations Control.” He touched that one, and it was the same one he’d used his slate to access in the medical theater prior to approving the horror.
“Why can I see computers in my head?!” Colin asked.
“We all have pinplants,” Terry said.
“Why did you do this?” Katrina asked.
“Because the aliens are going to find this place and kill all of us anyway,” he admitted. “Do you want to let that happen and do nothing?”
“No,” she admitted. “I wanted to know what was about to happen, though.”
“I wasn’t sure myself until I did it,” he said.
Terry got to his feet. It was surprisingly easy. He didn’t feel any pain, discomfort, or disorientation. Considering that he’d just had a hole drilled into his brain, he found the lack of aftereffects more than a little disconcerting.
“Did they really drill holes in our heads?” Colin asked, echoing his thoughts.
“Didn’t you feel it?” Katrina asked.
“Sort of,” Colin said. “You’d think it would hurt more to have a hole drilled in your head.”
“I’ll never forget what red tastes like,” Katrina said and shuddered.
As he walked around, Terry remembered all his studies on pinplants as he’d researched the cetaceans’ models. There was a section on calibration, where the recipient was fed specific impulses and their responses monitored to be sure the nanoprobes were in the correct parts of the recipient’s brains. At the thought, complete 3D renderings of his brain appeared in his mind, including the thousands of microscopic filaments now woven throughout it. If this machine did it so easily, why aren’t they available on Earth yet? he wondered.
Remembering the cetaceans’ implants, he reached up to the side of his head and felt a tiny connection point behind his right ear, and another behind his left. They were much smaller than he expected, and he wondered why.
Combat Qualified Implant Includes Wireless Synaptic Terahertz Frequency Modulated Interface.
He blinked as he digested the statement. A complete user manual appeared in his mind to go with it. He absorbed the entire manual in less than a second.
“Holy crap,” he said.
“What?” Katrina asked.
“I just read a 2,000-page manual in a second.” He thought about how to interface his pinplants with a strange computer, and instantly knew how, where in the manual it was located, and word for word cross-indexed uses. “And I remember all of it.”
“Do the orcas have the ability, too?” she asked.
“They must,” he said, “though they don’t have these models.” The details on the orcas’ implants were shown to him, including updates the Caretaker had performed. The implants, while simple, were sufficient, so they weren’t replaced, merely augmented.
“How do you read manuals?” Colin asked.
Terry found his connection, linked their minds, and sent him the manual. “Just read it,” he said.
Colin was on his feet, standing a short distance away. He closed his eyes and his eyebrows wrinkled in concentration. Suddenly his eyes shot open and he blinked. “Oh, wow!”
“I know, right?” Terry said.
“I see,” Katrina said. “Found it and read it. This is a little like VR, except without stupid goggles."
“Yeah, kinda,” Terry agreed. “It’s 3D.” Like the weird programming, he thought. Like so many other things with the pinplants, one of those 3D programs appeared. Kut-Akee was the programming language. It didn’t translate, not even in the deeper understanding granted by the pinplants. He looked at the strange 3D program, and a tiny bit seemed to make sense.
“What do we do now?” Katrina asked, snapping him back to reality.
“The Caretaker says we’re free to act,” Colin said.
“Wait, Caretaker?”
“That’s the computer of this base,” Katrina said and made an expansive gesture around her.
Terry found the main connection again and linked with it. “Caretaker?”
“It talks!” Terry blurted.
“You just realized?” Katrina asked.
He was glad she didn’t hate him as much as he hated himself.
“Did you notice your leg?” Colin said and pointed.
Terry looked down at his left leg and gawked. Gone was the mechanical-looking prosthetic made by Doc’s people. It still wasn’t his leg, but it looked just like it. Perfectly molded, he suspected, from his right leg, it worked perfectly, and looked perfect except that it was a metallic tint of blue. He reached down and touched it. The skin felt like the same material as the dome. His drysuit had been cut and molded to seal where the artificial leg met his stump. They’re very efficient, he thought.
the Caretaker said in his mind.
“Will you do whatever I ask?” he said.
“Who gives command override?” Katrina asked. Terry hadn’t been aware that she was there in his mind with him. He thought about it and understood that she wasn’t, they were just on the same channel communicating with the Caretaker.
“This is frustrating,” Colin said, also on the channel.
“What did you do to the orcas?” Terry asked.
All three of them saw 3D images of the surgeries performed on the orcas, now KilSha, as well as alterations to their DNA! The Caretaker stated the KilSha were now Sapient Stage 6, which was the best alteration possible within the current generation.
“You uplifted them?” he asked.
“God, Terry,” Colin hissed aloud.
“I didn’t think it would change them,” he pleaded. “I thought it would arm them.”
“You just didn’t think,” Katrina said.
Terry sighed and nodded. “Are the orcas...the KilSha, okay?”
The back wall of the room split open again. All three stepped back, the memory of the flood of robots too fresh in their minds. There were no robots, just the moon pool a short distance away. It was crowded, with all the cetaceans sitting calmly on the surface. None of them were wearing their rebreathers, and when he looked, there was no sign of them either. The three walked outside, and the wall closed behind them.
“Are they alive?” Colin asked. A plume of water vapor and a Whoosh! from one of the orcas answered the question.
“Hello?” Terry called as they reached the edge of the water.
“Hello, Terry,” the closest KilSha answered. The English was perfect, and it brought goosebumps to his skin. English, without him needing a translator. For that matter, his translator was gone. “How are you?”
“We’re fine,” he said. “Moloko? How are you?”
“Yes, I am Moloko, and I am very fine!”
“I’m sorry they hurt you,” he said, stepping into the water enough to touch her side.
“Do not be sorry,” Kray said, gently pushing Moloko aside to come closer. “This is a great gift!”
“They cut on you and changed you in ways you don’t understa
nd,” he said.
“You do not understand. We asked them to do this when the Caretaker’s machines came for us. It needed to happen, and is why Shool brought us here. We understand,” he said, “we have the files in our pinplants. We can talk perfectly now! It was so hard for us to talk before, to make Humans understand us. Our language is much more different than you understand.”
Terry shook his head. It was disconcerting to have an orca talk to him like an adult Human. Gone was the stilted speech that had been more like talking to a child, or someone with a mental disability.
“We are happy to be KilSha!” All the newly-made KilSha bobbed their heads, and some blew misty plumes as if they were exclamation points. “You do not have to be Wardens anymore, now we can work with you as allies, friends.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Terry said. He glanced at Katrina, who was frowning; Colin was just slowly shaking his head. “I’m still sorry. I should have asked you.”
“We would have said yes,” Kray repeated.
“Like new brain, Terry!” Pōkole popped his head out and nipped at Terry’s hand. Terry stroked his side, and he felt a pinplant link from the baby orca with, he would swear, a hug emoticon?
“Hey, little guy,” Terry said.
“Pōkole like Terry! You make Pōkole have big smarts!”
The calf still sounded like a kid, but maybe a three- or four-year-old, not a one-year-old. The changes to the youngest member of the pod were the most profound and hinted at what was to come.
“’Sup, Terry?”
A bottlenose rocketed out of the water between Kray and Moloko, did a triple flip, and hit the water on the other side perfectly, not even touching either of the KilSha, who both looked back and gently shook their heads.
“We’re BotSha now!” All 18 of the former bottlenose dolphins stuck their heads out and jabbered about how awesome it was to be a BotSha. It was like being in the middle of a crazy internet chatroom full of gamers.
Terry sighed and sat down at the edge of the water. Doc’s going to kill me, he thought, then winced when he remembered they were all dead. The thought brought him to the present, and why he’d done what he did.
“You know all the wardens, I mean all the other Humans on Templemer are dead?” he asked the KilSha.
“We know,” Kray responded.
“Do you want to help me get even?”
“Terry,” Katrina hissed, “what are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting we kill the alien bastards.”
Collin set his jaw and nodded. Katrina frowned more, but slowly nodded, too.
The KilSha rolled partially onto his side and opened his mouth to show teeth no longer blunt white, but sharply pointed and glinting with a silvery alloy. “We want to help kill them.”
“Caretaker?”
“Is the equipment I requested ready?”
“Then let’s get to work.”
* * * * *
Chapter 16
Under Extractor, Planet Hoarfrost, Lupasha System, Coro Region, Tolo Arm
May 15th, 2038
Selroth unit commander Gloot was running out of patience. The operation was taking much longer than anticipated, and his company commander was threating repercussions.
“Find the cache and get it back here,” the company commander yelled over the commlink. “The Izlian representative could be here anytime, and we need to exit this entropy-cursed system before they arrive.”
Like everyone else in his company, Gloot hadn’t yet been born when some high-ranking Selroth leader had hatched the plan to falsify mineral yields on the planet’s extractors. It was an intriguing deception, one that had apparently worked on the gas bag Izlians. Though the water burned their skin, its volcanos belched vast quantities of valuable minerals and rare earths into the ocean.
The problem was, the original plotters hadn’t counted on it taking three centuries to yield results. That was so long nobody had remembered the plan even existed until some intelligence expert on their home world had received a cursory notification from the Izlians that they’d granted a lease to a race known as Humans to operate the abandoned mining colony. However, the notification triggered an old, highly-classified file.
Months had passed before the right people in the Selroth leadership were made aware of the situation. Panic ensued. Regardless of how long ago it was, should the Izlians discover the Selroth’s duplicitous dealings, the repercussions would be dire.
Gloot’s company was hastily moved to Karma, the next closest location an unattached merc company could go to without drawing attention. No sooner had they arrived than a coded signal came through on a courier from Lupasha. The dormant program running the extractor scheme had been triggered; the Humans had found the hidden stash.
The Humans were the newest mercenary race in the galaxy, which concerned the commander. With only two platoons of Selroth mercs, Gloot’s commander had decided additional firepower was warranted. The problem was, they needed mercs who were able to operate deep underwater, were good fighters, and could keep their mouths shut. The Xiq’tal fit the bill. Thus reinforced, they raced to Lupasha, and landed on the moon now named, for some strange reason, Hoarfrost.
“What is a hoarfrost?” the company commander had demanded.
“How am I to know?” Gloot had retorted. He’d never even seen a Human.
The Humans might be a merc race, but they weren’t terribly knowledgeable about war. With the Selroth forces restricted to firing on the planet below 10 miles by Union law, it could have been a tough landing, but since there weren’t any surface defenses, the Selroth landed, unloaded their submarines, and descended into the water.
The Xiq’tal had many advantages when operating in deep ocean environments. One of them was that they could equalize their internal pressure and dive very fast. They’d arrived at the habitat dome long before the Selroth’s submersibles could. One advantage the crustacea didn’t have was good tactical doctrine. They simply blew a hole in the dome and killed everyone inside.
Without the Humans, the Selroth didn’t know where the stash was, because the dome computers were wrecked. Even fixing and repressurizing the dome didn’t help. However, once inside, they found a distinct lack of bodies, and a missing submarine. Thus Gloot had spent the last several days in the miserable skin-itching water looking for the submarine and the Humans.
It turned out the Humans hadn’t been alone. They’d managed to domesticate some extremely large predatory marine mammals. They were formidable, but luckily possessed no arms or armor. Despite this, the Xiq’tal had only killed one of the smaller subspecies’ members while losing an entire platoon of their numbers. Gloot didn’t care about the losses; let the stupid crustacea absorb them.
They’d found the submarine and what was left of the extractor stash a few hours ago, along with a bunch of unarmed Humans. The pathetic bunch were huddled in the center of a cavern under the submarine, mewling piteously. Apparently several others were missing, having located another cavern. Gloot had scouts searching for them.
The Humans watched the small circle of Xiq’tal troopers who surrounded them. Their soft fleshy faces were covered in liquid leaking from their undersized eyes in some strange display. How these helpless creatures could live so far under the ice was a complete mystery. The waters at this depth felt cool to Gloot; they must be freezing to these beings. They were mostly hatchlings and pregnant females. Maybe only the males were mercs?
The only Human who seemed knowledgeable about the missing ones was an immature male. Two Xiq’tal were trying to interrogate him. They were taking turns asking questions and using their claws to nip off bits here and there. The pathetic thing kept losing consciousness, slowing the process. He was about to just tell the Xiq’tal to kill the Human when his radio came alive.
“Search team, contact
!”
“Report,” Gloot said.
“Humans in a lower tunnel. They’re armed—” The transmission cut off suddenly, and an explosion reverberated through the cavern seconds later.
“I guess the Humans have a few mercs after all,” Gloot said. “Prepare for battle.”
The two Xiq’tal tossed the mutilated Human aside and scooped up lasers designed for their kind. These troopers didn’t have weapons welded to their carapaces, like the heavy combat Xiq’tal or the huge King Crabs. Those were more like tanks than living beings. Gloot’s team armed weapons and he readied the laser carbine he carried.
Something raised out of the pool slightly, and a flurry of fire from the mercs met it. It dropped below the waves with deceptive speed. There was nothing for a long moment, then a huge metallic and glass shape rose out of the water.
Gloot had half a second to recognize one of the huge black and white marine mammals before he realized it was clad in combat armor. “Impossible,” he said. Robotically-controlled weapons on the armor moved, and Gloot dove for cover.
Powerful lasers raked the assembled mercs. Selroth troopers sought cover, while the Xiq’tal did what they always do; they charged. They charged right into death. Gloot only got a few momentary images of the marine mammal in its incredible powered armor, using precise fire from a pair of turret-mounted lasers to carve the Xiq’tal, and several of his own troopers, into bloody pieces, while avoiding the screaming Humans, sometimes by mere millimeters.
“Withdraw!” he yelled. “Whoever is alive, get out!” The damnable marine mammals didn’t have legs, at least. So he ran for his life.
He reached his submarine, which was docked to one of the extractor’s ports with the remainder of his command—nine troopers. He’d arrived with 25 and a squad of 10 Xiq’tal. Entropy, what had he stumbled into? The last man in closed the hatch and flooded the lock with sweet water, chemically balanced the way the Selroth liked it.
“Get us out of here!” he screamed at the pilot, who nodded his head, bubbles popping from his mouth to show the fear in his face.
