The Kenval Incident

by Philippe Mercurio

  Mallory approached with long strides: might as well not waste time when taking care of a chore. Behind the window of the security booth, she picked out the guard’s face. “Okay, let’s do this,” she sighed.

  She pulled sharply on her blouse to pop a button. Her already deep neckline transformed into the Grand Canyon. She waved at the man and crossed the threshold into the monitoring station. Looking intimidated, she stepped up to the console provided for visitors.

  For Mallory, who had a strong personality, the conversation that followed was a real bravura performance. The guard initiated the hostilities.

  “What can I do for you, miss?” he asked, struggling mightily not to scrutinize her curves.

  “I need your help,” she explained, simpering. “Otherwise, I’m afraid I’ll have to spend the night on the street.”

  He’d have to be a diehard homosexual to not take such obvious bait, she thought. To press her advantage, she continued, “I forgot the key card for my apartment and the copy is inside. I’m such an idiot! I’m new to the city and I don’t know anyone who’ll take me in…”

  It was time for a silly little smile. Extremely difficult for the captain of the Sirgan, but she managed honorably. Picking up the scent of opportunity, Mr. Security insisted, “I am really sorry, miss. Your authorization is only valid during the day. You have to understand, I can’t let you in. At night, the building is under high surveillance!”

  Mallory didn’t have to be asked twice to play his game. She leaned on the counter that separated them. Defeated in advance, the man admired her overflowing chest. She continued to play the little new girl, hoping that her high-tech push-up bra wouldn’t betray her at this critical stage.

  Hardly two minutes later, the guard carefully recorded a fake address in his navcom, and Mallory entered the concrete cube. She headed straight for Lanca’s office.

  Once inside, she pulled off her wig. Gritting her teeth, she ripped off the synthetic skin that hid her tattoos. She also took off her clothes and the stiletto heels that were killing her feet. To conclude, she threw the annoying bra into a corner. She replaced it with one that was more her size, which she had been careful to bring with her.

  From the backpack Laorcq had given her, she took out the revolver and the tube containing the combat suit.

  Just as she was about to activate it, she realized she was being watched. A janitor had just opened the door to the small room and was now staring open-mouthed at what he saw.

  Instinctively, she grabbed her weapon and pulled the trigger, aiming by guesswork. The mass of gelatin shot out of the pistol and sent the poor man into a wall, knocking him unconscious.

  A wave of remorse washed over Mallory: cleaning Idernax’s offices must not be particularly interesting, and then being shot on top of it added insult to injury.

  Disregarding her state of mind, she activated the protective suit. While the blue envelope covered her with an illusory feeling of invincibility, she said to herself, “A simple, hastily executed plan to break into a megalomaniac’s lab. I’m sure everything will go off without a hitch!”

  XXIII

  HACKING

  SITTING in front of the surveillance monitors, the guard imagined himself at home with the new girl. A raging concert of Klaxons roused him from his reverie. Annoyed, he scanned the screens. He stopped on a picture transmitted by an external camera: a curvy red aeroglider was zigzagging around in the street.

  Looking like he was drunk, the driver swerved to avoid a car coming in the other direction. Its antigravity system abruptly cut off, and the vehicle landed noisily in front of the main entrance, scratching the marble pavers.

  Astonished, the sentry saw a big guy with a scar on his temple get out. The man staggered to the wall of the building and leaned against it with both hands. Spasms shook him briefly, and then he retraced his steps. He went to sit on the hood of the flying car, arms dangling and head hanging so low that his chin touched his chest.

  Recovering from his surprise, the guard burst out onto the landing and reproached the intruder. “Where you do you think you are? Clear out before I give you a thrashing!” he roared in his biggest voice.

  Hoping that the voluptuous blond would come out to admire him in action, he put his hand on the drunkard’s shoulder, who seemed about to throw up on the pavers.

  The sentry experienced a moment of doubt: the lush was solidly built. To reassure himself, he noted that the guy was too sloshed to pose a problem.

  Returning to his main concern, he glanced inside the cubic building and asked himself, “What if I wait until the girl comes back out so I can take care of this guy in front of her?”

  An uppercut struck his lower jaw, thrown by the so-called drunkard, interrupting the flow of his thoughts abruptly. The shock smashed the guard’s teeth against each other. With a look of incomprehension on his face, he tipped over backward. His head hit the ground violently, where he remained prone and unconscious.

  Without missing a beat, Laorcq got back into the aeroglider and set off the electromagnetic pulse transmitter installed on board. In the middle of the city, the effect was drastic. Not only was the Idernax building plunged into darkness, but a sudden calm crept over the entire neighborhood.

  For a moment, everything seemed suspended. Cars continued on their paths, holograms in shop windows quivered one last time, street lights dimmed slightly. This was followed by collisions between the drivers who hadn’t realized that the navigation AIs were no longer responding. Fights ensued. Without artificial light, the street was transformed into a concrete canyon at the bottom of which an outstanding brawl was underway. The dense traffic added to the mess.

  “Complete chaos—even better than expected,” Laorcq observed.

  In the back of the vehicle, Torg hadn’t missed any of the spectacle, but he didn’t share the scarred man’s enthusiasm. With a worried tone, he said, “The panic won’t last. Mallory might not make it out in time.”

  Laorcq looked at the clock and discovered that his navcom was among the victims of the magnetic pulse. He estimated the amount of time that had passed since the pilot had gone into the building, “Four or five minutes. She should be on her way to the data center. It’s too soon to worry,” he reassured Torg, giving off the unpleasant impression that he was lying.

  In the labyrinth of dark corridors, Mallory ran breathlessly. The place’s unusual architecture forced her to make a number of detours. The Vohrn firefly followed her like a big domesticated bumblebee, lighting her way.

  At an intersection, she found herself face-to-face with one of the guards. Thinking she was a colleague, he turned in the direction of the light. Instead, he found an intruder charging at him at top speed, covered from head to toe with a strange blue substance.

  The sentry drew his weapon. Revolver already in hand, Mallory beat him to it. Slammed by the gelatinous ball, he flew back several yards, unconscious and with three ribs broken. The pilot’s weapon fired liquid spheres at about three thousand feet per second. This velocity made them feel like a block of wood upon impact.

  Continuing her incursion, she then slid down five floors of the emergency staircases. She emerged in front of the airlock separating the offices from the research area. She took a moment to catch her breath and adjusted the revolver to maximum power. When she fired, the thick steel plate twisted with a plaintive creak, but did not give way.

  Mallory fired again, keeping her finger down on the trigger. A barrage shot out of the weapon. She blasted through both the first and second panels.

  She stepped through the gutted airlock carefully and discovered that her salvo had projected the large metal panels through the room, demolishing rows of delicate instruments.

  “Fantastic! What finesse!” she said ironically.

  After a final shattered door, she arrived in the highly restricted area. Half hidden by the penumbra devouring the walls, the scientific devices morphed into monsters of iron and ceramic.

  In the center, und
er Plexiglas bubbles, lay the carcasses of the mutant victims of Omsyn. Most had been carefully dissected. Mallory noted that tissue samples had been taken from muscles, skin, and bone.

  Fluid oozed from the cadavers. Under the trembling light from the firefly, they gleamed with a macabre radiance. The scent of rotting flesh floated in the air, poorly masked by an odor of disinfectant. Without the little diodes and the purring of the analytical robots, the place would seem less like a lab and more like a slaughterhouse concealed deep in a bunker.

  A bit further on, behind a transparent partition, Mallory found two stainless steel plates. On one of them lay a Vohrn whose torso had been opened and sutured closed in several places. When the beam of light touched his body, he reacted violently.

  Her nerves taut, she felt her finger contract on the trigger of her weapon. The spherical projectile pulverized the glass between her and the alien. Ironically, the shackles holding him to the operating table saved the latter. If he had risen even a few inches, he would have been hit head on.

  “Shit!” she swore. Then, controlling herself, she apologized, “Umm, I mean… Sorry, the gun went off by itself. You scared me.”

  The alien let out a series of unintelligible sounds and strained against his bonds again.

  “Okay, I understand, calm down…” replied Mallory, accompanying her words with gestures intended to reassure him.

  She carefully stepped over the edge of the broken pane of glass and moved to free the Vohrn. She realized he was dying.

  While she undid the straps holding him down, he pointed insistently at a piece of metallic furniture nearby. Aware both of her deadline and her obligation toward the alien, she searched the drawers, unearthing a translator box just like the one Hanosk used, which she hung quickly on the extraterrestrial’s rostrum.

  “Me Nanesil. You warn people mine. Danger and death. Idernax to rebuild Omsyn against us. You unknown?”

  Despite the poorly adjusted interpreter, his fear and urgency were tangible. Caught off guard, Mallory put a hand where a shoulder would be on a human, hoping that Nanesil would understand this typically Earth-style gesture of comfort.

  “My name is Mallory Sajean. I am here because of this. Don’t worry. I work for Hanosk, maybe you know him?”

  “Unsure. Don’t think so…” the sentence was interrupted by a wheeze. “To give proof mine informed.”

  Mallory felt an icy shiver run down her spine, because she knew exactly what he was getting at. She hurriedly added, “Look, he gave me Vohrn equipment: the firefly and a storer.”

  With as much conviction as possible, she pointed at the first and showed him the second. It wasn’t enough.

  “Need contact. Objects can be stolen.”

  Mallory looked at him sadly: And? What are you going to do about it in your condition?

  She shifted her hand to the container for the bulletproof suit attached along her thigh. Two quick presses on the tube activated the standby mode. The thick blue membrane partially retracted to bare the pilot’s arms and face.

  Nanesil removed the translator from his rostrum. The organ’s scaly skin receded to expose a mass of pink flesh. Before Mallory could move, the Vohrn grabbed her right wrist and pulled her toward him.

  Despite her apprehension, she let it happen with a note of self-derision. Surrounded by monstrous cadavers, I’m about to plunge my fingers into an extraterrestrial’s body. Ship’s pilot is a job with lots of surprises!

  At the beginning, she had the impression she was touching a bit of damp cartilage. Then, a wave of warmth flowed through her. It advanced through her palm and along the length of her arm, then diffused into her head. Suddenly, a swift pain took the same path, like a spurt of liquid fire, toward her brain. Her body capitulated: she lost consciousness.

  When she woke, panic flooded her: how long had she been out?

  “Not more than a minute.”

  The Vohrn, once again wearing the translator, had anticipated her question. Not surprisingly, since he had just read her mind like an open book.

  Vaguely nauseous, she rose with difficulty and reactivated her suit. The “introductions” over, Mallory wanted to take control of the situation again. “We have to hurry, I’m running late.”

  She moved to help Nanesil stand up, but he pushed her back coldly.

  “No. Me condemned. Trust you. I know your mission now. Continue alone.”

  “Certainly not! If Hanosk finds out I left you behind…”

  “He’ll understand. I wrote it in you.”

  “I’m not sure…”

  She interrupted herself and blurted out, “Huh? You did what?”

  The alien didn’t reply. He violently drove an object into his abdomen and froze. Mallory was caught off guard. Strangely, the explanation seemed to come to her: a prisoner for months, Nanesil knew exactly where each instrument was stored. While she was passed out, he had used the last of his strength to get hold of a syringe and to fill it with a substance that was lethal to Vohrns. She realized that she couldn’t have known. In addition to the message sent to his people, he had transmitted his intentions.

  Her questions about the Vohrns’ strange capabilities set aside, she climbed back out through the broken pane of glass and continued toward the heart of the building.

  Mallory finally arrived at the data center. The vast cube of steel formed a sturdy vault. On the floor, metallic grills exposed hundreds of cables. They were laid out on several levels organized in geometric paths. Separated at regular intervals, tall thin squared-off columns rose toward the ceiling. Filled with liquid, they emitted a white glow and waves of heat.

  “You’d think this was a sauna! I understand why the door opens if the ventilation system cuts off…”

  Looking carefully, she noted that the wires converged toward one of the luminous pillars. She remembered Laorcq’s instructions:

  “After a shutdown, the main controller will systematically verify data integrity. Inserted between the cables and the standard connector, the storer will record everything as it happens.”

  She lifted one of the grills and hurried to install it. This accessory, provided by the Vohrns, stored information in millions of DNA-like structures. Although small enough to fit in her hand, it could hold the equivalent of a decade’s worth of scientific research.

  One last problem remained: during the time it would take to copy the files, a source of energy was needed to supply the data center.

  Hoping the alien device would be effective, Mallory activated the microgenerator. According to Laorcq, it just had to be connected to any part of the electrical circuit. It would then supply the center for about ten minutes. She found a socket in a corner of the room and connected the gadget, adjusted to maximum.

  In a fraction of a second, the elements it contained mixed together. The chemical reaction engendered a five-thousand-degree inferno, instantly converted into electricity. However, its case barely got warm, further proof of the reptilian extraterrestrials’ technical prowess.

  The place came back to life: lights, ventilation, and then the alarm sirens activated. As soon as the temperature dropped, the armored door closed with a dull slam, followed by the dry sound of the lock.

  Worried, Mallory looked at the storer. It was going too slowly for her taste.

  “Faster, faster! For pity’s sake.” she encouraged it.

  After a period of time that seemed infinite to her, the digital leech changed color. The black turned green: the copying process was complete. Mallory grabbed it and went to get the generator.

  Just as she was about to disconnect it, she noticed something that didn’t make sense: it was drained, but the fans and the lights were still on! She disconnected it, her heart in her mouth. Confirming her fear, nothing happened: no ventilation cut-off, so no heat, and especially…

  “No opening of the freaking armored door!” she shouted angrily.

  She had no idea what might have happened, but the result was the same. She was trapped in a big
safe. Stubbornly, she tried to break the lock with her weapon, emptying the charger in vain. She tried to calm herself: she had to find a solution. Laorcq and the Vohrns were counting on her!

  She thought about the ventilation duct, but that wouldn’t work. Even if she found a way to get past the fan blades, she didn’t know where it went. Nevertheless, she glanced at it, thinking: if she climbed this column and pressed against that one… Yes, it was possible. On the other hand, the next step wouldn’t be easy.

  She completely deactivated her bulletproof suit, which retracted back into its tube. She put the storage device down in a corner.

  Stripped to her underwear and holding the receptacle for the combat suit between her teeth, she climbed one of the luminous pillars like a rope. Contact with the smooth, burning-hot surface was barely tolerable. Progressing laboriously, she tried not to worry about the solidity of the materials used for storing the data.

  When her chin reached the top, she used her arms to pull herself up. With her right leg stretched out, she put her foot on the summit of the closest column. Thanks to this extra support, she freed her hand. She then took the metal cylinder out of her mouth.

  She felt ridiculous executing these gymnastic moves while almost nude. She encouraged herself by remembering that it was for a good cause.

  In a last effort punctuated by a groan, she stretched her body to reach the ceiling and touched the grill over the fan with the tube. With her muscles frozen and her balance precarious, she deployed the suit. As she hoped, it covered the vent and prevented the air from circulating. The temperature began to rise immediately.