by Cam Daly
“I’m Susan Park. This is Rafael Sousa.” He clearly hadn’t been shaving for the last few days. “We work for VSE Research. How do we know you’re a friend? What danger are we in?”
There was only enough power to talk for a very short period, and Connor apparently hadn’t been in a position to explain things. She knew the two scientists had to be very smart and might have learned things that made them suspicious of their employer. “I’m not from your world. Neither are the people you work for. Right now there are two groups vying for control of the lab you’re in, the Craven and the Molu. Either group will kill you before they let you leave.”
Park glanced at Sousa, but he just stared slack jawed at the phone. She didn’t seem shocked by the news. “So DeVries is one of these ‘Tumorish’? We thought he didn’t seem right. He-“
Keryapt cut her off. “I’m sorry, but we literally have less than a minute. We’re pretty sure DeVries is human. His boss, Ormlan, is the alien.”
Sousa butted in. “Ormlan? The Senator who visited? He’s not-“
“Yes he is. I know this is confusing, but your lives and a lot more depend on you trusting me. Look. I need you to call me back after one hour and explain everything you can about the collider and exactly how you were making antimatter.” They both looked shocked that she knew. If she could get that information from them then it would be worth the extra time before shutting down the collider. “Connor, it seems that you have managed to get into the main collider building. Can you do more reconnaissance there before my next call?”
TAP.
“Good. You two hold on to the phone. I'll explain more to you in an hour. Keep yourself safe, act normal and hide this phone where you can get to it.” The lights started to dim. Her time was up.
#
Thankfully, none of the other scientists were in any sort of compromising position when Connor entered their rooms. They were almost all male, and mostly older than the trysting couple. He was surprised that there weren’t any surveillance devices monitoring them. Maybe the plan had never been for the scientists to live and work in this building?
It was the sort of question that Kery would probably have had an answer to, but he had no way of initiating contact with her now. His hidden earpiece would let him listen if he was near the phone, but he hadn’t tested the range on the device and suspected it wouldn’t even cover this building. As he went from room to room he strained for any indication that Broaalg had noticed his actions in Park and Sousa’s room, but none came.
Most of the scientists seemed somewhat resentful or fearful of him but a few asked what was going on. He repeated that they should prepare to leave on short notice. None of them had much more than the clothes they were wearing, and when he asked about research materials someone said they were in a VSE cloud server.
He felt bad about waking everyone without being able to explain what was really going on, but he couldn’t take more chances. He also couldn’t just ask anyone to go shut the collider down, since Broaalg might be watching. He needed to explore more.
And then there was the antimatter which Kery had mentioned, which was presumably stored around here as well. The detonation in San Francisco was caused by a very small amount of what they had manufactured here. Would it remain under control if the collider was shut off? He had so many questions for Kery but no way to reach her.
With all the scientists awake, he went to head down a level and rouse the technicians and other workers there. After that task was done he would feign hunger and try to retrieve the backpack with Kery’s head.
He started to pay extra attention to the emergency evacuation signs and instructions he passed. Those might come in handy soon.
#
A little less than an hour later, Keryapt was powered on again. Sousa and Park were both visible in the camera frame. “Connor, if you can hear me, click the earpiece.” Nothing. “Do you know where he is? Has anything happened?”
Park did the speaking for the pair again. “We haven’t seen him since he gave us the phone.”
The Tumorish could have taken him quietly, not even aware of her presence. She could be trapped here, not even knowing where her head was. Until the Craven found her. Or maybe they never would, and no one would ever activate her again. She would just be a chunk of inert pseudoceramic and would never see space or her family again. Maybe…
“Stop it.” She caught herself right at the edge of full blown panic. On the Planning Stage she looked away from the view of the two scientists. Clenched her fist and punched it through the display table. The vibration shuddered up her arms, through her body. It felt real. She felt real. She was real, even if impaired at the moment. Very impaired. But she was still herself, and Connor was still out there. She forced herself to believe that.
She refocused on the scientists. “Sorry about that. Go on.”
“Uhh - I was saying that we’ve been here in building 4 the past hour, getting things ready in case we need to leave quickly. Some of the others are afraid that something bad is about to happen and we weren’t sure what to tell them. Of course we didn’t mention you, or anything about aliens. We have to know the truth, though. Are you - or one of them - here to conquer Earth?” Park’s fear was clear from her tone.
Keryapt let out a snort of laughter. The humans hadn’t meant to be funny, but she couldn’t help herself. “Conquer it? To what end? At the speeds we can reach, stationary objects are easy targets. Planets can't be defended, so my people left them behind a long time ago. We live in space. Time is safety, and distance is time. So we never stop moving. We are the Fleet. We get our energy from stars, our resources from stray planets between systems.”
The two scientists didn’t respond. They just sat there blinking. Too much information, apparently.
“Okay, something simpler. Imagine this. Pick a country that's far from everything else and doesn’t affect global events. Say, Madagascar. Are your countries planning to conquer Madagascar?”
They shook their heads.
“Of course not. It’s very far away and they don’t have anything that you need. So maybe you have an embassy there. Or an ambassador. But imagine that there are millions of Madagascars. That's way too many to have ambassadors for all of them, but you monitor for certain key events, like the use of mass conversion weapons or antigravity fields. When those happen, you send someone undercover who reports back what happens next, so that you aren’t surprised. I’m that someone - the monitor for Earth. Make sense?”
They nodded. Park glanced around the small room they were in, checking that they weren’t in danger of being disturbed. She was processing this faster that Sousa was. “Why undercover?”
“We call places like this ‘Labworlds’. If you knew we were here and what we could do, you would expend all your resources to copy us. But that would make it nearly impossible for you to come up with anything different than what we already have, which is really what is valuable about you to us. You humans let a lot of your geniuses - your most precious resource - starve to death, or squander their time on useless things like egocapitalism. But some of you, like yourselves, have a chance to do something interesting. So someone like me is sent to get close to you and figure out how you came up with it.”
“Oh.”
“Now, back to my earlier analogy about Madagascar. Imagine that in a remote corner of Madagascar, some tribal medicine man figures out how to make a diamond as big as your hand.”
“We already know how to make diamonds.”
“Fine. A diamond which is also…a magnetic monopole.”
“There’s no such thing as a magnetic monopole!”
“Exactly!” From their reactions she knew that they understood what she was getting at. “You, Sousa, are that medicine man. The decoherence field that you created within the antimatter generation array, trying to improve the process that the Molu already had, is the magnetic monopole diamond. Your race’s understanding of quantum chronogravitics is the simplest possible interp
retation of how things really work. But because you didn’t know better, your intuitive leap into the unknown let you go in a direction that we had written off completely. And that's why I’m coming there. To rescue you.”
Sousa glanced at Park. “Rescue us. Not just me, right?”
Keryapt paused, and they noticed the delay. The average Fleet inhabitant was considerably more intelligent than the average human, but these two were exceptional. She had to keep that in mind while talking to them in real time. “I hope to protect all of you there. But you, Rafael Sousa, are my mission.”
“If Susan gets hurt, I won’t help you. Period. Understand?” He was emotionally emphatic about that. Park put a hand on his shoulder.
“I'll do everything in my power to protect her as well. But you need to understand there are worse things than dying, where the Tumorish are concerned.” She selected a couple of video segments from the Transbay Tower and queued them on the phone to watch. “After we hang up again, watch the top two videos on the phone to understand what they are capable of.”
“Okay. We will.”
“Now, we have one minute left for you to tell me about the set up of the collider. Then call me in another hour, or sooner if there is an emergency. And try to find Connor. If you can find someplace heavily shielded, our enemies might not be able to monitor him. Try to talk to him there.”
Sousa seemed very nervous, and his explanation of the physics involved was halting. He kept looking over at Park. He had barely explained the basics of his approach when the Planning Stage went dark again. Kery cursed as her brain lost power and shut down.
#
Things had changed back in the large loading bay of Building 5. The rest of the Tumorish were now geared for battle. Almost all of them had on black military-style helmets and carried an assortment of weapons as they continued their mundane tasks. Most had human weapons like assault rifles, but of the nearly two dozen there were a handful with more exotic hardware. He recognized a couple of the plasma arc weapons, but a few others had heavier looking twin-barreled guns. Several also had slender dart pistols like the one that Briggs had carried at the Transbay Tower. One hit from those and a normal human would be on a one way trip to become Tumorish.
Connor had been around SWAT teams before, so the presence of the heavier weapons was not especially disturbing. But the dart guns - so many of them, so casually carried - implied a menace that he found overwhelming. By the time he reached the break room where Keryapt’s head was hidden, his heart was pounding and he had to force himself not to run.
He hoped the room would be empty but there was one muscular Tumorish there with his back to the door, rifling through the piles of clothing. His helmet and rifle were on the table between them. He turned as Connor entered, revealing a shirt covered in what had to be blood. Connor recognized him from earlier - the tanned bouncer-type, Mason.
“What happened?” Connor’s voice sounded high and warbly to him. He hoped Mason didn’t notice.
“We converted their security force. One of them didn’t go quietly.” His smile was that of a predator who had enjoyed the hunt. “The rest of them are in there.” He jerked his head towards the closed door to the sleeping room as he unbuttoned his shirt. He was standing right next to the backpack with Keryapt’s head in it. The power cord which connected the communications harness to the wall socket was visible at one edge of the pile of clothes.
Mason, shirt now off, turned back towards the pile of clothing. Connor took a step towards the table and reached for the rifle with both hands. They were shaking, a crazy combination of fear and adrenaline making every move feel like he was made of metal. Or glass.
He lifted the heavy gun and turned towards the Tumorish. The trigger assembly was unusual - there was a trigger, but also extra buttons where his thumb rested. He was trying to figure out what they might be for when Mason plucked it right from his hands.
“Pyrotangler. Something the humans had been working on but shelved because of their concerns about the rules of war.” Another savage grin. War had no rules.
Mason turned the gun sideways for Connor to see more clearly. He easily held it up with one hand and used the other to point out details. “The top barrel fires a projectile of monoelastic goo. Range of 100 meters. The reservoir here holds enough material for twenty shots. That immobilizes your target.”
He pointed it at Connor. “Fhoomp. Now you’re trapped in the goo.”
Connor held very very still. The barrel looked huge.
“The bottom barrel is a microwave laser. This is the best part. They tuned the wavelength of the maser to match the goo’s vibrational frequency.” He turned and pointed the gun at the wall, depressed one of the thumb buttons.
A dark spot appeared and began producing smoke.
“The maser does very little on its own, but if your target has goo on them, up they go.” The smile was plastered on his face, but never reached his eyes. He stared at the weapon with a look approaching worship. “It is going to be glorious.”
A coldness took over Connor. His shakes abruptly stopped. His guilt over killing Martinez was gone. He was going to kill the thing calling itself Mason and every single Tumorish here. In the building. On Earth. If Kery gave him a way, he would kill all of them, everywhere.
Unaware, Mason put the pyrotangler back on the table and went back to the clothes. He was dangerously close to the backpack. Connor walked over to the Tumorish, grabbed the first thing that looked large enough and gave it to him. “The master wants everyone prepared. Get your gear back on and return to your post.”
“We are eternal!” Mason shrugged into the shirt, grabbed the gun and left. Connor waited a moment, then went to the door to the sleeping room. He had to see if there was anything he could do for the unwilling ‘converts’. He opened the door and entered as quietly as he could.
The overhead lights were off but he saw motionless bodies in a half dozen beds. He closed the door, steeled himself and flipped on the lights.
Each of the four men and two women were wearing VSE Security uniforms. Some had their boots on and one woman still wore a hat with the VSE logo. All of them had Tumorish dart needles sticking out of them. They had been hit in the face or chest in most cases, some several times. All were clearly paralyzed by the darts just as he had been.
He realized that one woman, the one without a hat, had her eyes open and was watching him. He walked over to her. The olive skin of her cheek was puffy and reddened around the pair of needles stuck there. He started to reach for them, to pull them out, then stopped. Stared into her eyes.
Her brain was already under attack by the alien infection. She was being eaten alive, right in front of him. How long would it take for someone to be converted by several needles? What if she remembered this after her conversion - would she report his unusual behavior? Mason, or whoever had done this, clearly left the needles in them on purpose. And Broaalg might be watching as well. He couldn’t forget that.
He couldn’t do anything to help them without Kery, and didn’t dare try to put them out of their misery with the headset on.
Slowly, agonizingly, he looked away.
Turned and walked to the door, shut the lights out, and left.
Closed the door.
He stood in the break room, staring off into space for a minute, not aware of anything around him. Then, while keeping his head and the camera pointed a different direction, he unplugged the communications harness and closed the backpack. Swung it over his shoulders.
He felt stiff. Inhuman. A detached part of him wondered if perhaps he was about to start screaming. One more wave of shakes came over him then and he barely made it to the sink before vomiting.
As he washed the vile mess down the drain, all he could think about was killing Tumorish. And their Craven master.
But he didn’t have the power to take them out himself. The only way to do that was to get Kery into Horseplay.
#
It took longer than Connor
expected to get back to building 4 and find an apparently unused room for the backpack. The loss of charging time would mean the next conversation with Kery would be shorter or delayed, but it couldn’t be helped. Building 1 and its contents terrified him.
Now he was back on the third floor, looking for Sousa and Park. He stopped a couple of the other scientists in the hallway and asked if they knew, which yielded the highly useful detail that their ID badge swipes were logged.
He pulled out the VSE tablet which had been shoved into his waist band for the past few hours and found the security services menu. Sure enough, it revealed that Sousa and Park had descended to subsurface level 2.
As he rode the elevator down, Broaalg contacted him again. “It is almost dawn. Do not leave Sousa’s side agaaaaaaain.”
He was unprepared for the size of the collider itself. The map he had been looking at showed three floors of offices and labs around a large open central space. He had forgotten that the collider beam path that he and Martinez had worked on earlier was located a good distance underground, and that the high energy beam that was involved in the “colliding” couldn’t make sharp turns.
The open space in the map of building 4 was actually above the main collider assembly, which was massive. It almost seemed like a NASA rocket had been sheathed in gold and wire, laid sideways in a deep hole and then building 4 had been built above it. Above him, a large powered crane slid across rails in the ceiling.
The collider emitted a constant resonating hum throughout the building which he had noticed earlier and then become accustomed to quickly. Down here it was much more obvious. He wasn’t sure if it was the sound throbbing through the air or some sort of static electricity effect, but he felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
One level above he could see a windowed control room which looked over the collider, but only one person was visible there from his angle. There were a few technicians working at various stations around the collider, but it took only a cursory study to figure out where Sousa and Park were.