by David Smith
‘Or if you want to be really difficult to find’ interrupted Ramon Ruiz.
ASBeau nodded and continued. ‘It looks like there was a structure above that level at some point as the regolith there has clearly been disturbed. Our best guess is that there was some kind of docking complex during construction of the facility, but they decided for reasons of safety . . . or secrecy . . . to do away with it.’
‘So the only way in or out is by transporter?’ asked Hollins.
‘Looks that way. We’ve been looking for signs of inhibitor systems, but haven’t found anything so we think we could transport in if we need to.’
‘Ok. Thanks ASBeau. What else have we got?’
O’Mara cleared her throat. ‘We got the scouts to bury a couple of adapted seismographs looking at other frequencies. We’ve been able to use them to build up a 3D map of movements and activity within the complex.’
She overlaid this data on ASBeau’s layout diagram. ‘As you can see, most of the activity is restricted to levels four, five and six. The patterns indicate that seven and eight are probably storage, while nine and ten are machinery and ancillary spaces. One, two and three are accommodation and the data for activity there indicates the facility operates on a two-shift basis, with primary research being conducted in a single day shift of about ten hours.’
Her brow wrinkled. ‘The only place that doesn’t seem to apply is on floor six, where it seems that there is a degree of activity all of the time. Six is the one with that big extra space on one side. It seems that someone or something is living there round the clock. The team thinks that may be some kind of holding area for test animals and the like.’
She paused for a second before adding ‘One little oddity: Crewman Gupta was studying the star at the heart of the system when she detected a huge surge in neutrinos. That was odd in itself, but when she checked it out, the source was the planet, not the star. Since then, she’s recorded surges in particulate and exotic radiations on several occasions, all emanating from far below the surface. It seems they have some kind of high-energy physics lab down there.’
Hollins raised an eyebrow. ‘What has that got to do with medicine?’
O’Mara shrugged ‘Buggered if I know. But someone down there is certainly making some big bangs for some reason.’
Hollins thought it over. There was no illegal activity implicit in such things, but it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up: there was definitely something strange going on down there. He turned his attention to other matters. ‘What about comms and data?’
Lieutenant Jasmine Sato was there to represent the Engineers. ‘I’ve been working on that with Lieutenant Shearer and Park Si Yung. The outgoing data stream is heavily encrypted, but we’ve got through the basic encryption to find big streams of data. The scientists tell us it’s almost exclusively genetic coding sequences, although we don’t know what their significance is. We know that there’s something in the area that they’re transmitting to because we found hand-shake signals coming back the other way to acknowledge the reception of the data. That may not sound much, but Park reckons he might be able to write a small virus that could piggy-back on the hand-shake and allow us to hack into their system.’
Hollins nodded. ‘What about Chowdhury?’
Doctor Mengele took a deep breath and Hollins heard the faintest rasp of tight latex underwear stretching over skin. ‘Crewman Chowdhury has just been transported down. I was denied access to the facility, but Crewman Kanesh has taken a full report of our findings and treatment to date. I’ve had very little feedback, but my counterpart down on the facility, Doctor Hardaker, seems competent.’
‘Ok team. Where do we go from here?’
Ruiz was first to speak. ‘Although it goes against the grain, I think we should risk a clandestine operation. I think a small away team could access the labs and find out what sort of research they’re doing. Even if we don’t get enough to warrant a full-scale intervention by ourselves, we might at least persuade the FMC to visit them.’
Hollins nodded ‘I’m inclined to agree. We’ll need some specialist skills though. We have to assume that the labs are secure, so we’ll need to hack their access systems.’
Ruiz nodded. ‘I’ve already thought about that. It’s not that long ago we broke into a secure Sha T’Al compound and kidnapped their First Minister. I can’t see the security down there is going to be any tougher.’
‘So we just beam in and snoop around?’
ASBeau nodded. ‘Hell yeah! As long as we steer clear of level six, I reckon we could have the run of levels four and five for about four hours overnight.’
Hollins nodded and mulled it over. ‘Ok. ASBeau, Ruiz, put a team together and build up a mission plan. If we’re going to do this, we have to do it while Chowdhury is still being treated. If we hang around after, they’ll get suspicious. O’Mara, work on Kanesh. She’ll be the only member of our team to see inside the complex before we go. Find out anything you can about layout, working times and security measures, but keep it discreet. I’m not sure how much I trust her in this instance; she may be compromised by her own history and her relationship with Professor Jang. Either way, I’d rather she didn’t know what we’re planning.’
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Chowdhury was wheeled away, with a half dozen medical personnel fussing around her as Kanesh looked on anxiously. ‘Will she be ok?’
Jang smiled and gently squeezed Shruthi’s arm. ‘I’m sure she’ll make a full recovery. These people are the best of the best and despite what the Director said, they’ll do everything they can for her.’
‘How will you keep the Director at bay?’
‘Oh don’t worry about her. She won’t come up here. She spends most of her day down in the pens on Level 6.’
‘The pens?’
Jang blushed and realised she’d said something she shouldn’t have, but didn’t compound her mistake.
She didn’t need to. Shruthi knew where Jang’s research was leading and it was obvious that Level 6 was where the sensitive and controversial aspects of the work was being done. ‘So how did you get around the issue of maturing the clones?’
Jang was about to reply but thought better of it. She clearly wanted to tell Kanesh, but was just as clearly conflicted about the matter. Eventually, her love for her ex won out.
She looked around nervously to make sure she wouldn’t be over-heard before saying ‘That’s why we’re out here. Some barking mad archaeologist came across a piece of alien technology that he knew would be valuable. He didn’t have the knowledge or expertise to develop it himself, so he sent his dodgy contacts details of the artefacts and eventually the Director got wind of them. She recognised the potential for our work and before we knew it the whole facility was moved out here, lock, stock and barrel.’
Shruthi nodded. That was pretty much as she’d expected and didn’t really need to ask the next question that popped into her head. ‘Is it legal?’
Jang looked uneasy. ‘In truth? I don’t know. The Director said the facility was moved here to give us complete commercial secrecy of the technology, but by staying at the point where the technology was found we’ve avoid having to import alien technology into the Federation. Importing it would have created a lot of attention and if the authorities had taken a dim view we cold have lost the right to use the tech. Instead, we’re out here pretending to be a medical technology development centre. We’ve patented a couple of pieces of the alien technology just to keep up the pretence, but the really advanced stuff we’re keeping under wraps to support the main project.’
‘And you’ve succeded?’ she asked, already seeing the answer on Jang’s face.
Jang was still reluctant to go further and looked really nervous ‘The Director would kill me if I said anything, Shruthi. Literally. She’s really . . . focused.’
Shruthi nodded and did her best to look disappointed.
Jang saw this and her shoulders slumped, but suddenly she brigh
tened and said ‘Would you like to see some of the alien tech?’
Kanesh nodded and Jang led her out into the corridor. They walked along through several security doors where Jang had to have her iris scanned to gain access before finally coming to the end of the corridor.
Jang had her iris scanned one more time and the door slid aside to reveal a large laboratory. Inside, Kanesh was immediately struck by the obvious difference between the Federation built structure and the alien technology that had been found here.
A row of eight plinths lay on one side of the room, each topped with a clear cover, and connected into the adjacent wall with a huge plethora of pipes, cables and tubes. The plinths were made of smooth burnished metal and inscribed in many places with some form of alien symbol language.
Jang led her past these and over to what appeared to be a transporter pad where she stopped. Her voice had an almost reverential tone as she explained ‘This is an advanced cloning device. Apparently there was a race in this area that described themselves as The Host. They’d lost the ability to breed naturally at some stage and turned to cloning to propagate their race.’
Kanesh looked at the device. Three metal discs sat evenly spaced within a larger circle. This larger circle was some kind of translucent white material and within it she could see glowing, pulsating lights tumbling about like trapped animals trying to escape from a cage.
A similar disc in the ceiling was joined the the one on the floor by a broad column at the back of the unit. This column was made from the same metal as the smaller discs, but was etched with a large number of alien symbols. Several small hatches in the sides of the column had been opened and thick bundles of cables and pipework spilled out, connecting the device to power and data services in the wall of the room. As well as a bank of massive computers the room was full of tanks of strange, organic-looking fluids that were made all the more eerie for the subdued lighting that illuminated them.
Jang continued. ‘This was the final piece in the jigsaw for our project. We figure that the host used it to replicate a target subject, but the device has the ability to edit structures as it rebuilds. We assume The Host used it to remove congenital defects, but by using massive computing power to provide a stream of DNA data rather than scanning a target body . . . ‘
She fell silent, realising she was straying into territory the Director had strictly prohibited.
‘ . . . you were able to build a body to an exact DNA template’ concluded Kanesh.
There was a deep and awkward silence as both women understood the implications for their field of research.
Kanesh couldn’t see how this was anything other than completely illegal, but had already served her sentence for being part of the project. ‘I think I’ve seen enough. Can we get out of here please? This place gives me the creeps.’
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Ramon Ruiz assembled his team in the Transporter room. They’d synchronised to the clock of the research facility on the planet below and were waiting for the wee small hours of the morning, when they’d attempt to investigate the mysterious goings-on.
As well as himself, he’d had to select a few of his team on account of their particular skills, which were often omitted from their official biographical data.
His first selection had been Lana Modric. Modric was a member of the navigation team, but in her previous career had been a professional cat burglar. She’d joined Tiger to escape a somewhat murky past and took pride in the fact that she could beat any security system.
It was her suggestion to transport down into a broom closet on Level 5 of the facility. She’d gone through plans that Park Si Yung had stolen of the facilities layout and quickly worked out that this was where the security systems vulnerability lay.
From here, she could find and access an innocuous looking wall panel beyond which lay the data-feeds for the security cameras of this level. Once opened the second member of Ruiz’ team took over.
Ruiz had through about bringing Park, their Alpha Nerd, along for the mission, but his nervousness could be problematic. Instead, he took Petty Officer Prince Okocha, a Nigerian from Chief Money’s supply team. Okocha had been a professional hacker and scammer before joining Tiger and aside from Park was probably the ships best hacker. He made short work of accessing the security systems from the data-feed cables and locking the cameras into a five minute loop to enable them to enter the main corridor on Level 5.
The broom closet was unlocked but Modric had to override the iris-scanning lock on each secure room they accessed without activating any alarms. She managed this with amazing ease and Ruiz made a mental note to check the security systems aboard Tiger when he got back.
At each room, his other team members would assess the compartment. He’d brought Lieutenant-Commander Aisling O’Mara as their best all-round scientist, and while she was undoubtedly a brilliant scientist, she wasn’t really cut out to be a burglar.
‘Wow! Look at all this gear!’ she whooped in delight as she ran into the first lab. She banged and thumped around the space, lifting things up and thumping them back down carelessly in her excitement while the rest of the team urged her to be quiet.
Ruiz had to prevent her from starting up a rare and expensive neutrino accelerator system and followed her round the room like the parent of a child with ADHD, nervously trying to stop her from pressing buttons or touching anything that might give them away.
O’Mara had brought Moon Seong-ran from her E&E team. Moon was a micro-biologist and geneticist and immediately recognised much of the equipment. Unlike O’Mara she was calm, focused and able to remain objective. She took images of the lab and gave a commentary to Ruiz. ‘They’ve got everything I’d expect to see in a top-notch genetic lab. There’s also a lot of computing and chem-lab kit which would indicate they’re doing a lot of work down at DNA level. There are splicers and replicators which are cutting edge tools, but there’s nothing here that’s actually illegal.’
Ruiz nodded. He was aware that Moon was an authority on what was and wasn’t legal: like Kanesh, she’d fallen foul of the Federations strict laws on genetic experimentation and served a sentence at a correctional facility. She still experimented on a small scale in her spare time and was currently working on one of the ‘Holy Grails’ of genetic experimentation: creating a fly that could recognise the open part of a window.
‘Ok people, let’s move on.’ Ruiz led them out and down the corridor, examining one room after another. As they went, he got little sense out O’Mara, but from what Moon was saying there seemed to be a divergence of research at the facility. Several of the labs had nothing to do with genetics, but specialised in high-energy physics. This was outside Moon’s field of expertise, but Ruiz harboured a suspicion that these labs were involved in producing technology for weapons.
They’d found the facility’s main computer core on one side of the corridor and Ruiz set Okocha to work trying to hack into the deeper vaults of the computers memory while Moon and O’Mara moved on to the next room. They’d reached the end of the corridor and as Modric opened the last door, Ruiz immediately spotted the difference.
It was another lab, but in here much of the equipment looked distinctly alien. Before he could say anything O’Mara bounded in gleefully, making a bee-line for a strange metallic column at the edge of an illuminated platform.
In her puppy-like excitement, she missed the fact that the platform was raised slightly and she tripped over its edge. She stumbled forward, her feet landing on one of the circular metal discs just as she threw her hand out to steady herself on the metal column.
As soon as she did, the whole space between the platform and the matching disc overhead fluoresced, glowing with an eerie blue-white light. The column lit up too, hundreds of alien symbols on its surface becoming obvious as they too glowed bright, electric blue.
All except one.
The symbol which O’Mara’s hand had landed on was shining brighter than all the rest, pulsating from blue to
a vivid green.
‘Uh, guys? I can’t move’ said O’Mara quietly.
The rest of the team instinctively skirted around the platform and hurried to examine the column.
‘Is it some kind of transporter?’ asked Ruiz, mostly to himself. He examined the strange symbols shining through the burnished metal of the column. The pulsating symbol under O’Mara’s hand was odd. It appeared like curved stick-figure of a man, with an arrow pointing towards a pair of figures identical to the first.
Ruiz was no expert in linguistics, but he had a nasty feeling he didn’t need to be to understand such a symbol. ‘Now O’Mara, I don’t want you to panic . . . ‘
A strange voice floated out across the room seeming to emanate from the pulsing light around O’Mara. Ruiz looked up. ‘Did someone catch that??’
Modric was alert ‘Yes, got a recording, trying to run it through the universal translator now . . . ‘
There was an agonising wait as the Tiger’s computer tried to find a match in its linguistic database.
Modric nodded, ‘It’s a dead language, attributed to an extinct species known as The Host. Only fragments of the language were reported by USS Magellan twenty years ago. Computers best translation is, um, “Quick-copy function selected. Have a nice day”.’
Oh shit, thought Ruiz, but before he could do anything, the pulsing light of the platforms grew brighter and was accompanied by a rising whine that soon became a shriek.
‘Uh, guys? I’m getting a bit worried . . . ‘ shouted O’Mara, but before anyone could react the shriek became deafening and the light blinding.
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Hollins was on the Bridge waiting patiently when Ruiz’ call came in.
‘Six to beam up? I thought your away team was five strong?’
There was clear subtext of embarrassment in Ruiz’ uncertain reply. ‘Uh . . . yeah.’