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Genetica

Page 18

by Tom Hart


  The Generals' were worried. What if Hydra would no longer help them? Duke told them to relax, Hydra could easily trigger a seismic attack on Area 51 if she wanted to. Given she had never threatened to do so Duke suspected Hydra liked having company for a change. She had been buried in granite for hundreds of thousands of years.

  *****

  ‘I need to tell you something Duke,’ Hydra said.

  ‘Shoot,’ Duke said.

  ‘I want you and Captain Taylor to take one of those NASA ships of yours and go to the nearest moon on Proxima Thirty-Seven.’

  ‘I don't have any leave coming up. Why do you want me to do that?’ Duke asked jokingly.

  ‘An Invidium Police Force patrol vessel has entered the system and will arrive in eighteen hours. You need to get off the planet.’

  ‘What's the rush?’ Duke said keeping calm.

  ‘Invidium are not like your police. They are fanatical, religious zealots who can quarantine, impound or confiscate entire worlds. Those plasma weapons I told you not to manufacture are what tipped them off.’

  Duke laughed. ‘Won't they just give us a fine?’ He had not imagined first contact would be with traffic police. He imagined something more spectacular.

  ‘They will do more than that,’ Hydra said with concern.

  ‘Why are you worried Hydra? Our police forces protect people. Why are the Invidium Police Force not like that?’

  ‘They serve the highest bidder and if they find out what is really happening on this planet you are all at risk.’

  ‘This sounds like something my bosses will need to hear Hydra.’

  Duke sensed Hydra was holding back.

  ‘What else is there?’

  Hydra was silent for a while. When she finally spoke it was barely a whisper.

  ‘She made me promise not to tell.’

  Duke leaned closer.

  ‘I can't help her if you don't tell me,’ Duke said, making use of the most basic of negotiation techniques.

  ‘I trust you Duke, but she will be angry.’

  ‘Let me deal with that, I am good with angry people.’

  ‘I know, I read your INTERPOL file,’ said Hydra.

  ‘My file?’ Duke was genuinely shocked. He was not sure what was in his file but imagined it was not good.

  ‘I can connect to your internet, although it is not so much an information network as your people claim. It is more like a snail trapped in a glass bottle trying to find a way out.’

  Duke loved Hydra's strange analogies.

  ‘What's in my file?’

  ‘It says you are so successful dealing with criminals and maniacs because you are basically one yourself.’

  Duke smiled. ‘His criminal past was well buried. That had been the deal when he joined the Australian Federal Police. His record was meant to have been expunged forever but it seemed they were hanging onto some of it.

  ‘I was not always the upstanding individual I am today. I may have spent some time around some people who made poor life choices.’

  Hydra laughed. ‘Stealing the Mona Lisa is more than a poor life choice Duke. I still do not understand the value you humans place on art, that painting is hideous, it does not meet even the most basic tenet of beauty or precision.’

  Duke tried to change the subject. He didn't like being reminded he should have been serving a life sentence in a French Prison. ‘Who is this person whose secret you are keeping?’

  ‘Her full title is too long for you to understand,’ Hydra said firmly.

  ‘Try me,’ Duke said warmly, ‘or perhaps she has a nickname?’

  ‘It is against the law to give a Vofurion Royal a nickname but her non-ceremonial name is Bria Celene Ryker, she is the eldest child of the ex-Chairman of the Atlas Corporation.’

  Duke frowned. He hated corporations.

  ‘Atlas is one of the seven founding members of the Vofurion Confederacy. It holds nineteen percent of the common stock of the Confederacy and is the largest of the miners in this spiral.’

  In Duke's experience nothing ever good came from a mining company, especially an alien mining company. He had a vision of a large open air mining pit taking up the whole of Earth's surface.

  ‘Bria's father was assassinated by rivals within Atlas and his two other children were murdered too. Bria escaped and has been hiding here since.’

  ‘So isn't it a good thing these Invidium police have arrived then?’

  ‘No, they work for the rivals of Atlas.’

  ‘I see,’ Duke said quietly.

  ‘Since when?’ Duke asked intrigued. ‘How long has this Bria been hiding here for?’

  Hydra was silent for a moment.

  ‘I find your calendar completely non-sensical, but it would be the equivalent of your year 1947.’

  ‘So she is getting on then?’ Duke asked.

  ‘No, she is very young for a Vofurion,’ Hydra answered as if Duke were stupid.

  ‘Where is she hiding?’

  Hydra made a sound like a chortle. ‘Bria has always been a little dramatic. She lives in a castle in Poland.’

  ‘So you want me to help an alien Princess living in a Polish castle?’

  ‘You would be helping her benefactor, the Duchess Scarlett Elara.’

  ‘A Duchess?’

  Duke wondered what reward a Duchess would give him. Something valuable no doubt.

  ‘Okay, I'll help her. Is she still in Poland?’

  ‘Yes, she rarely leaves the castle. It probably reminds her of her home planet Elandor, they build beautiful stone castles and gardens there.’

  Duke smiled.

  ‘Good to know.’

  The truth was rescuing an alien Royal appealed to his nature. She wasn't like a regular hostage and she would surely reward him with untold wealth. Then there was this Duchess person. What would she give him?

  Hydra had shown Duke star maps of the Vofurion Confederacy. Maybe he could retire with Captain Taylor to one of the holiday colonies on the moons of the Kirokan asteroid belt, the ones with golden beaches a thousand miles long.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  ULURU

  The sun was high as the helicopter descended from the South. Ayers Rock casts a shadow so large it appeared like the hand of a monolithic sundial extending to the horizon.

  Tony held the quartz cylinder like it was his baby. Despite Sarah telling him it had survived a tank driving over it Tony was taking no chances.

  Corporal Flynn their Norforce indigenous tracker took them cross country through the scrub for an hour before they reached the cave. Tony had no idea how anyone could navigate in the thick scrub and he considered himself an expert navigator. Flynn walked straight to the cave.

  Tony still had a hard time believing an alien sphere had decided to grant the American's the location of the quartz key simply because some nasty alien police force had just arrived in town. At least the reason for the Chinese success was clear. He knew they couldn't have beat the Australian military in a fair fight.

  Sarah noticed a footprint in the sand near the cave entrance and drew her pistol. Flynn told her to put it away. ‘Wombat tracks,’ he said.

  Sarah put her pistol away embarrassed.

  Tony used a pair of flares to light the cave. It was a small space. With Sarah, Tony, Flynn and Ryan there was not a lot of room to move. Sarah was staring at the paintings on the walls. Large white ochre figures with oversized round heads and tiny bodies. Flynn explained they were the spirits of Uluru. They gave Tony the creeps. No matter where he stood their eyes seemed to follow him. Flynn gestured to a pile of rocks in the centre of the cave.

  Ryan took the entrenching tool from his belt and started digging. He got less than a foot before the tool struck metal. The clang reverberated around the smooth walls of the cave forcing Tony to place his hands over his ears. Ryan delicately excavated around the metal until he was able to remove a metal box the size of a shoebox from the sand. It was black with two white square tiles, similar to mosaic ti
les, on one corner. The tiles had markings on them, like those his commanders told him were on the alien sphere at Area 51. ‘Okay this is the control unit they told us about. It's pretty light,’ Ryan commented, passing it across to Tony.

  Tony held it in one hand. It weighed no more than a kilogram. He shook it gently. Sarah frowned at him and confiscated it. She placed it gently on the ground and held out her hand for Tony to pass her the quartz crystal. He did so obediently. Sarah placed the crystal on top of the two mosaic tiles as Duke had told them to do. The crystal stuck to the box like a magnet and Sarah let go. The crystal stood on its own.

  ‘Now what,’ Ryan asked.

  The box started to hum. Softly at first then growing louder. ‘Sounds like a refrigerator,’ Tony said.

  The box began to change colour from black to grey until it was a dazzling white. ‘That seems good,’ Tony noted.

  The box stopped humming and returned to its original black. It spoke in a soft feminine voice. ‘Provide authentication.’

  Sarah smiled. Just as Duke had described.

  ‘I authenticate Vofurion Majoris Arcanus family Ireni, home world Selestine,’ Sarah spoke loudly.

  The box seemed happy with this.

  ‘Accepted,’ it said.

  Tony grinned at Sarah. She grinned back. Flynn crossed himself to ward off evil. Ryan looked like he had won first prize at the fair.

  ‘Shut down all terraformers except Hydra,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Confirmed, shutting down all terraformers except Hydra.’

  A minute passed. ‘Shut down complete,’ the woman's voice said.

  Sarah kissed Tony hard on the mouth. ‘Now we get our country back Captain.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  WHITE HOUSE

  Arthur and Amelia landed their ship on the lawn of the White House. Their AI told them this was the location of the Earth leader. Strange name Amelia thought as the ship touched down. Who would name a planet after ground? It seemed like a sure sign of limited intelligence. From the AI analysis of the human's primitive information network, the internet or something, they were the most backwards people she’d ever encountered. An entire civilisation obsessed with cat videos. She had never seen anything like it.

  Arthur had more experience dealing with primitive cultures. He'd been involved in the resettlement of primitive humans from the Piper Hadrian quad last century.

  The earth President, a large man with wavy golden hair was all smiles. She could hardly believe it but her sensors confirmed his hair was real. Stranger still he knew who they were and seemed genuinely apologetic about the use of plasma weaponry. Amelia sympathised with the man, he would not have known they were illegal without the correct permits. He asked about the price of a permit but frowned when Arthur explained the entire economy of earth would be insufficient to pay for one. He tried to negotiate and to Amelia’s surprise he was actually pretty good at it. He would have done well with the Business Guild, she thought.

  Amelia had the task of informing the President the Invidium Police would be impounding the plasma weapons. The President took it well enough, he said the weapons were no longer needed as the misunderstanding with another tribe had been resolved. Amelia thought it odd the Chinese tribe had been unable to defeat the tribe of the United States after attacking the tiny Australian tribe to start a war.

  In primitive cultures numbers always prevailed and the two were equals in technology and weapons. The AI told her the Chinese tribe were by far the best strategists on the planet and the Russian tribe were the most resourceful. The United States tribe were simply the most determined.

  Amelia explained a delegation of Vofurion officials from the Department of Statistics would be arriving in the next week to conduct a detailed survey of the planet and enter it into the Vofurion database of inhabited worlds. The planet would then be eligible for basic agricultural and educational subsidies from the Vofurion Confederacy.

  The President seemed concerned he would no longer be in charge. Arthur explained the Confederacy's preferred manner for dealing with primitive human civilisations was to conduct an analysis and determine which faction was worth backing. Then it would assist that faction to overcome its rivals. Dealing with more than one faction on one planet was an administrative burden the Confederacy preferred to avoid. The President seemed pleased when told that given his tribe controlled most of the Earth economy there was a high chance he would be selected as the prevailing faction.

  Arthur had just finished explaining the process to the President when he turned to Amelia with a look of concern. Her implant told her the same thing. A Vofurion battleship had entered orbit and was breaching the atmosphere.

  ‘Atlas,’ said Arthur.

  The Atlas Corporation battleship ship was fifty times larger than Arthur and Amelia's patrol vessel. It landed on a baseball field a few kilometres from the White House. A hover shuttle couriered it's Captain and executive Officer to the White House.

  Captain Kane Presten introduced himself to the President while rudely snubbing Arthur and Amelia.

  Before Arthur and Amelia could protest Kane produced a letter of marque signed by the High Council of the Confederacy and the Grand Inquisitor of Invidium granting Atlas sole management rights to Earth.

  ‘Why don't you go and collect those plasma weapons like the garbage collectors you are,’ Kane said to Arthur.

  Arthur bit his lip and Amelia resisted punching Kane in the face. Earth was Atlas property and its people belonged to the Corporation. Amelia frowned. Why would the Grand Inquisitor agree to this?

  Kane wasted no time telling the President what was expected by the Corporation. The human population had been auctioned to the Prometheus Medical Corporation who had paid a premium for such a pristine genetic sample. There had not been more than a billion people on the market for research for well over three centuries. Kane explained the value was equivalent to several hundred trillion US dollars.

  The good news according to Kane was that Atlas needed someone to manage Earth for them, much like a groundskeeper, and the United States seemed to have a decent level of control over Earth so Atlas was willing to pay two-hundred Vofurion credits a year as a management fee. All that was required was for the United States to provide half a million people a week to Prometheus for experimentation and observation for a period of fifteen years. Age, ethnicity and gender did not matter.

  The President's chief of staff asked what two-hundred Vofurion credits could buy.

  ‘Two or three first grade fusion implosion reactors, a dozen Mark III Behemoth transports capable of faster than light speed travel, a season pass to the Crusader's Premier League's helioball games or a second hand Krater class universal fabricator.’

  Kane was a big fan of the Crusader's. They were by far the best team in the Spiral. He recommended the President use the credits for that.

  At first the President seemed keen on the fusion implosion reactors. When told one reactor generated ten-thousand times more power than all the strange power generating contraptions on Earth combined he clapped his hands in a most presidential manner.

  ‘You should stop playing with nuclear fission,’ Kane added. ‘It is a messy process and dreadfully inefficient.’

  The chief of staff wanted to buy a Krater fabricator because it would allow the United States to manufacture its own small spacecraft. Kane began to drift off as the President asked about the Vofurion property market. ‘Do you have Casinos?’ the President suddenly asked Kane.

  Kane nodded.

  Kane was authorised to pay the first year’s credits in advance so he gave them to the President together with a Vofurion purchasing pad. The President described the pad as like an iPad. Kane used his implants to look up what an iPad was and frowned. Vofurion education subsidies would go a long way on this planet.

  If they could get even a few hundred humans fitted with basic implants they could be lifted from the terrible ignorance of their daily lives thought Kane. The level of ignorance
of these people was almost inhumane. But Kane was not paid to worry about that.

  ‘Don't be a bleeding heart,’ his wife always told him. ‘You work for Atlas, get the job done and get paid.’ Besides he needed the money, his three daughters had expensive tastes for the latest Vofurion fashions.

  ‘Oh there is one more thing,’ Kane told the President. ‘I am authorised to pay you five thousand Vofurion credits if you assist in the capture of a Vofurion criminal known as Bria. She has been living here on Earth for several decades. She is wanted all across the cluster.’

  ‘What did she do?’ the President asked.

  ‘She stole something valuable from Atlas.’

  Kane could see the President trying to work out how to negotiate a higher bounty. ‘What if we find that valuable something too?’

  Kane rolled his eyes. ‘It is a ceramic disc the size of your hand. If you find it I can pay you an additional ten thousand credits.’

  ‘Make it an additional twenty thousand credits,’ the President said.

  ‘That's enough to buy a small moon,’ Kane said pretending to be shocked. He was authorised to pay up to fifty-thousand credits for the disc.

  ‘Fine’ said Kane pretending to give in. ‘Atlas will pay twenty-thousand credits for the disc.’

  The President and his entourage were all smiles.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  RESORT

  Sarah and Tony were enjoying the sun of the Whitsundays. The staff at the resort gave the lovebirds plenty of privacy. ‘That cannot be good,’ Tony commented at the appearance of the enormous circle of fire in the sky.’

  They didn’t know it yet but the fiery sky signalled the arrival of the first transport preparing to collect the first half a million people for experimentation. Specifically the transport was heading for Tasmania where hundreds of thousands of Chinese prisoners were waiting to be shipped to what they thought was home.

 

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