by A. K. DuBoff
“Yes, Captain Ramsey?” Admiral Leeds’ tone expressed mild displeasure—clearly he thought Ramsey’s part in the process had passed.
“Sir, respectfully, I don’t think that’s an invasion force of Pluhron offspring.”
“And why is that, Captain?”
“Sir, those eggs are nearly six feet long. They’re far too big for children.”
“With all due respect, Captain Ramsey,” the Intelligence Minister said, his voice dripping condescension like melted butter. “We do not know how large Pluhrons are when they hatch. They might be fully developed.”
“No, sir, but we do know they lose their intelligence whenever they go into their mating season, and that loss continues until they’ve raised their children.”
“You’re point, Captain?”
“If the females aboard that ship laid those eggs, they’d be incapable of holding talks with us about who owns the Earth right now. Not to mention all the robots we saw aboard their ship—caretakers brought along to help out while they go through their long mating cycle.”
The soft chuckles and whispered conversations that had broken out about the chamber died at Ramsey’s words. The Intelligence Minister looked like someone had slugged him in the gut.
Gabrielle smiled, nodding slowly, her green eyes bright with interest.
“If the eggs aren’t offspring, then what are they?” Admiral Leeds leaned forward, likewise curious.
“Simple,” Ramsey said. “They’re the males.”
—
Location: Earth Orbit/Sol System
Infiltrating the Dominance was far easier than Ramsey would have guessed. He had expected extreme surveillance measures set in place on the Pluhrons’ flagship, which was true, but Admiral Leeds’ covert teams had found a loophole in the aliens’ security. Though they could easily detect a highly energized object moving at incredible speed, like a missile fired from Earth or the Moon, their automated radar systems tended to ignore slower objects like space debris that wasn’t on a collision course with their ship. Using hydrazine gas propellant, usually reserved for minute orbital course corrections, Ramsey and Gabrielle maneuvered the Silver Sparrow to within a few hundred meters of the mile-long alien craft by continually tacking across their intended line of bearing. While tedious and time consuming—the trick took nearly four hours versus a few scant minutes required by conventional thrust—they eventually found themselves scrambling through an access port on the ship’s underbelly.
They entered a narrow space that appeared far less finished than the corridor’s Mezzrel had shown them on Ramsey’s first trip to the Dominance. Maintenance panels and odd-shaped interface ports stuck out from the walls every few feet.
Gabrielle unfolded a set of blueprints rendered on ultra-thin paper. She held them up while Ramsey illuminated them with a flashlight from his CCW.
“We’re one floor below the egg chamber.” She pointed to an access hatch a few feet down the corridor. “Thank God Pluhrons use ladders.”
“Makes sense, walls are too close for wings.”
Ramsey climbed up, careful to make as little noise as possible. The access hatch opened easily enough when he turned its latch, admitting a frigid stream of super cold air to pour down on his face. He popped his head through the opening and spotted a Pluhron pacing away from him next to an impossibly long bank of freezers filled to capacity with eggs. The unit, made of steel painted blue and gold, reminded him of a supermarket cooler meant to keep TV dinners frozen for display.
Moving with all stealth, Ramsey climbed into the ice-cold chamber, his breath steaming. Gabrielle followed, her gaze locked on the retreating alien insect. Soundlessly, Ramsey drew his T-11 and pointed at the Pluhron.
Gabrielle, the ranking officer on this mission, nodded her agreement.
Ramsey’s shot burned through the alien’s carapace at the base of the neck half an inch below its armored head. Until that moment, he hadn’t known if the guard was biological or a robot like those Mezzrel had brought to their meeting. He didn’t enjoy killing. It came with the job, of course, but taking a life felt like a sin against his work as an exo-diplomat. A weight lifted off him when sparks flew from the now decapitated Pluhron’s throat.
“You were right about the robots,” Gabrielle said.
“Let’s hope I’m right about these eggs, as well.” Ramsey stood to survey the cold storage unit. It seemed to go on forever. No more Pluhrons, robotic or otherwise, stood in sight, though more might show up any moment. He motioned toward a small room overlooking the bay. “That must be the control room Leeds’ teams marked on our schematics.”
“I’ll go to work there.” Gabrielle hoisted the portable mainframe computer she had lugged from the Sparrow. “See what you can do about these guys, but stick to the plan. No wanton destruction.”
“Hey, I came up with the plan.”
“I know. That’s what worries me.”
Ramsey searched for any sort of controls on the storage units, but found only smooth surfaces. He keyed his mic. “Nothing out here.”
Gabrielle, who stood silhouetted in the small control room, nodded. “I think I’ve patched into their computer banks. It’s taking the circuits a moment to warm up. Ah, got it! I’m sending a general shut down command to all refrigeration units, but this is going to take a while, probably three to four hours.”
“That’s too long.” Ramsey drew his T-11.
“Clifton, whatever you’re doing, I order you to stop.”
Ramsey set the laser to its widest diffusion and squeezed the trigger. With the gun’s energy spread this far, it couldn’t produce a beam of light. Instead, a cone of invisible photons spewed from it to heat the air like the galaxy’s most powerful hair dryer. He tracked it back and forth across the eggs and smiled in disgusted satisfaction as the beings inside began to wiggle. The resulting stench smelled of rancid caviar.
In mere seconds, the first male Pluhron sliced through the flesh-like outer membrane of its egg to rise on unsteady legs. It unfurled its slime-covered wings and stretched its body. Unlike the females of its species, the male’s exoskeleton was an electric blue matched with black that covered it in jagged, symmetrical patterns. It stood a hair under six feet tall and moved with the sort of torpid slowness a human displays upon waking after a long sleep. But Ramsey got the feeling the newly hatched male wouldn’t remain slow for long. He backed away as more than a dozen more hatched. They clambered down to the floor, some on his side, some on Gabrielle’s.
“Clifton, if we survive this, I’m having you committed.”
“What are you worried about?” Ramsey shuffled back from the growing crowd of increasingly spry males to heat up another section of eggs. “These guys aren’t interested in us. They’re looking for some gals to chat up.”
Gabrielle stepped out of the control room onto a short landing overlooking the nursery. She had drawn her own pistol. “Think for one second. Sure, these fellas want to find girls, but what do you think natural-born breeding machines need if they’re supposed to gin up the next generation?”
Ramsey stopped firing his laser and took a longer look at the aliens crowding their birth chamber. The ones who had first emerged stared back at him, their mandibles glistening.
“Food?”
“Yep.”
Ramsey cursed.
Wings buzzing like a motorcycle engine, one of the nearest male Pluhrons launched itself at him, all four arms extended. He just had time to dive out of the way before it swooped through the spot where he had been standing. Ramsey tucked into a roll, adjusting his T-11 back to the kill setting as he moved, and came up firing. He missed the retreating attacker’s thorax, but managed to slice off two of its wings as it soared upward. Handicapped beyond its ability to fly, the creature smacked the crowded floor with a sickening thud.
More laser fire erupted behind Ramsey. He spun to find Gabrielle fending off no fewer than six of the insensate beasts. While she dispatched one with a head shot, two more
flung themselves at her.
“No!” Ramsey jumped onto the refrigeration unit and ran across it, his boots splashing through pools of slime left after hatching. He didn’t notice. His first shot took out the alien nearest Gabrielle, but his second merely nicked the other one’s back armor before it managed to swipe at her.
She screamed in pain as the Pluhron’s chitin-covered fingers sank into her arm. Blood flew, drawing more of the males to the melee. Gabrielle scrambled back, tried to open the control room door, but fell away when her attacker took another vicious swipe at her ribs.
Running with all haste, Ramsey batted Pluhrons aside like so many bowling pins until he got a clear shot at Gabrielle’s assailant. Growling through his teeth, he squeezed the trigger to saw off the thing’s head. He took out two more with one beam to gain the stairs and reach Gabrielle’s side. He spun about, laser continually sizzling the air, but despaired at the number of hungry breeders pushing and shoving one another to reach the humans. Even with perfect precision, he wouldn’t be able to take out all of them fast enough to stop the mob. He and Gabrielle were doomed.
“You don’t have to kill them all,” Gabrielle said through a jaw clenched in pain. “Calvary’s coming.”
Ramsey didn’t have time to look at her, but he managed to lift an eyebrow. “What cavalry?”
Before Gabrielle could answer, a set of doors at the far end of the bay slid open to admit several dozen yellow females accompanied by a handful of their robotic servants. As quickly as they had entered, the tide of females shuddered, clicked, and buzzed to a stop, Mezzrel at their fore. She held two laser pistols, but appeared too stunned to use them. Her robotic cohorts, however, kept moving, headed toward the humans.
Taking an immense gamble, Ramsey spun to fire at one of the robot Pluhrons. If this idea failed, the males would be on him in seconds. Blue laser light pierced the robot’s thorax, sending up a plume of smoke and sparks. The males, distracted by the noise, followed Ramsey’s wayward shot and, as a group, froze in place. Though Pluhron multifaceted eyes couldn’t widen, Ramsey could have sworn every one of them goggled at the sight they found across the room. Their meal forgotten, first one then the entire group emitted an ear-shattering keening as they took to the air, darting toward the females like comets.
Some of the females ran, Mezzrel included, but most sprang to meet their male counterparts in a dance older than stars.
“Can you walk?” Ramsey holstered his T-11 and knelt to scoop Gabrielle into his arms before she could even answer.
“Maybe a little, but it hurts.” She clung to him, the familiar warmth of her embrace giving him strength.
Ignoring the increasingly desperate sounds emanating from the other side of the room, Ramsey hustled Gabrielle to the access door they had used earlier. She cried out several times before Ramsey managed to lower her to the next floor, but cursed him when he tried to beg off. He followed after her, and breathed a sigh of sweet relief the instant he locked the panel behind them.
Once aboard the Silver Sparrow, Ramsey made to tend her wounds, but she batted him toward the pilot’s chair.
“We need to move. We haven’t much time.”
“Why not?” Ramsey asked as he strapped her into the co-pilot’s chair—she refused to lay in the ship’s med couch despite her injuries. “I think the Pluhrons are a little too busy right now to fool with us.”
“I planted a command in their computer banks. This ship—their entire fleet—will be underway in...” Gabrielle checked her CCW, “Five minutes. We need to hurry.”
Without the need for stealth, Ramsey kicked the Sparrow to its highest non-Planck Divide speed, rocketing away from the Pluhron fleet. Sooner than he would have liked, the Dominance’s main engines fired, sending a blast of heat and charged particles across the Sparrow’s nose, making it exceedingly hard to maintain course.
Green light flared around the Dominance’s hull as it charged away from Earth, its subordinate ships in tow. Like a flight of arrows fired into a night-dark sea, the Pluhron ships disappeared into the Planck Divide.
Ramsey, unable to hide his smile, turned to Gabrielle. “Where did you send them?”
Her return smile looked more like a snarl. “Nowhere.”
“What do you—” Ramsey felt his eyes go wide. “You mean, they’re going to be flying through the Planck Divide forever?”
“Not forever, just until they come out of their mating fugue in a century or two.”
Ramsey started to laugh, but was interrupted when Gabrielle slid out of her belts to kiss him. He returned it wholeheartedly, careful of her wounds.
“How about that med couch now?” he asked once she broke contact.
“Yes, please.” She wrapped her arms about his neck so he could lift her. “And when I’m healed up, maybe we’ll see about a mating fugue of our own.”
Ramsey liked that idea.
THE END
— — —
About the Author
David Alan Jones is a veteran of the United States Air Force, where he served as an Arabic linguist. A 2016 Writers of the Future silver honorable mention recipient, David’s writing spans the science fiction, military sci-fi, fantasy, and urban fantasy genres. He is a martial artist, a husband, and a father of three. David’s day job involves programming computers for Uncle Sam.
To learn more about David Alan Jones’s writing, visit:
www.facebook.com/author.davidalanjones
INTEGRATION
A Cadicle Universe Short Story
by A.K. DuBoff
Shadows and light played in Jason Sietinen’s mind, illuminating branches of thought, which stretched into fractals of infinite variations. He floated in a sea of possibilities, unaware of any world beyond the darkness and light around him. His reality could be anything he imagined.
Where was I before this?
His sense of peace quavered. Floating like that… he was disconnected from himself. He’d been somewhere else a moment before, but now he was free in the sea of possibilities, waiting to be drawn by the current.
I came here for something…
His purpose eluded him. At the back of his consciousness, he knew he was forgetting something. Something important. There was a reason he’d opened his mind, but drifting without direction certainly wasn’t it.
This isn’t right!
Jason fought to orient himself. He was lost in the sea of light, floating without any sense of time or place to ground him. He’d allowed his mind to journey outside his corporeal form on many occasions, but something about this experience was different. It was almost like he was trapped inside himself.
Where am—
A high-pitched whine swelled around him, drowning out even his own thoughts. The luminous ribbons radiating through the darkness began to vibrate, growing brighter with each oscillation. He dissolved into the light.
—
“What’s on your mind?”
Jason’s awareness snapped back to the lounge on the TSS transport ship and his fellow Agent companion. “Sorry, I was thinking about why we’re here.”
Agent Curtis Jaconis chuckled, relaxing further into the plush seat next to Jason. “Contemplating existence is some pretty heady philosophy for this early in the day, isn’t it?”
Jason rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”
Curtis turned his attention out the viewport to the ethereal light of subspace outside, still smiling at his own joke. “This mission is a strange one, yes. Why in the stars are two TSS Agents going to negotiate with a bunch of tech heads?”
“Yeah, that’s part of it,” Jason replied. Moreover, why do I have a chaperone? The mission had to be a test. Jason just couldn’t decide what insight his father might hope to glean from the exercise—and why. He’d thought he was beyond needing to prove himself. Going to negotiate with the leaders of one of the few Taran worlds to embrace extensive cybernetic enhancements was well outside Jason’s usual assignment scope. To be accompanied by an
other Agent was even stranger.
“This isn’t about your capabilities, Jason,” Curtis said. Though he hadn’t been privy to Jason’s private ruminations, it didn’t take much guesswork to infer what had been left unsaid. “He trusts you. I mean, stars! He’s had you take out the Conquest alone. Multiple times.”
Jason raised an eyebrow, not sure that temporary command of the TSS’ flagship had much bearing on the present situation. “Then why, with all respect, are you here?”
“Because you look like you could still be a teenager, and we want the Lynaedans to take us seriously.”
The older man’s candor caught Jason by surprise; apparently the deference most officers showed him didn’t extend to his father’s closest friends. “I’m not that much younger than most new Agents.”
Curtis chuckled. “Jason, you’ve been living in a bubble with the TSS and High Dynasties. Out in the border worlds, the Sietinen name doesn’t carry the same weight.”
Jason swallowed an instinctive retort and allowed the words to sink in. He couldn’t deny that he’d led a life privileged by birthright. Though he’d spent his first sixteen years on Earth, unaware of his dynastic lineage, the years since he’d been brought into the fold of the Taran Empire had been comparatively easy. With his father the TSS High Commander and his grandfather the Head of the influential Sietinen Dynasty, Jason had wanted for nothing. He always told himself that he’d earned his place as a TSS Agent—had worked as hard as his fellow trainees—but there’d never been a question of his qualifications. No matter what he did on his own, he was Wil Sietinen’s son.
It was a given he’d be powerful. He was expected to be a leader. The career highlights that would typically mark someone as an exceptional Agent were merely Jason’s baseline, from incredible telekinetic feats to winning over his peers. Despite his accomplishments, he’d never been properly challenged.
A mission like this, though, was different. On Lynaeda, technology held a higher value than inherited telekinetic and telepathic abilities. The Taran High Dynasties and their governance were a nuisance rather than a position to be revered. Despite his pedigree, Jason would be no higher than a commoner in their eyes. For once, he wouldn’t have a home turf advantage.