Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  The video was from a fixed camera, showing a blank concrete room, in the center of which stood a darker green Ygnaza in a red-and-blue singlet. Its wrists were zip-tied in pairs, and those zip ties were zip-tied to each other. It was a kludge, but the restraints had been designed for humans. My dad paced behind the camera, his voice recognizable in the unedited clip. All of the little stalks within the Ygnaza's eye sacs followed his motion, but the alien was otherwise still.

  "Identify yourself for the record," Dad said.

  "I am *glug* Factor Aqu-ke, *glug* head of this trading post. *glug*," the alien said, its speech impaired by a vocal sac which would not fully inflate due to a scar.

  "How are you able to speak English?"

  "It is a small matter, *glug*, for Ygnaza to mimic the vocalizations of lesser *glug* species." Though Aqu-ke had answered the question, it kept speaking. "We use this talent *glug* to facilitate commerce among the stars *glug*."

  "Is that what you think you were doing here?"

  "There were buyers, *glug* there were sellers, *glug* we facilitated the exchange. *glug*"

  "Why slaves? Your technology is advanced enough to preclude the use of manual laborers."

  "It is natural for the advanced *glug* to own the less sophisticated. *glug* You do so yourselves. *glug* And humans are fashionable decor *glug* in the civilized worlds of late. *glug*"

  "Pets? You're taking people to sell as fashionable pets?"

  "There is a buyer, there is a seller, *glug*. I care not what transpires at the end. *glug*"

  "Slavery is illegal, the people you bought from are criminals."

  Aqu-ke warbled something. "You might as well *glug* legislate against gravity. *glug* Servitude is the natural state of being. *glug* Little wonder you are still a backwater. *glug*"

  "Freedom is the natural state of being," Dad said.

  Aqu-ke warbled again. I guessed it was an Ygnaza laugh. "Only conquerors are free. *glug* Even you are a servant of your betters. *glug*"

  "I can walk away whenever I choose."

  "I have seen the evidence of your world. *glug* You cannot escape their thrall. *glug* Even one mighty as I *glug* still serve my Lord Captain. *glug* Your willful ignorance is... *glug* amusing." Aqu-ke's gaze went to the camera. "Zsh-ya will not *glug* take your insults lightly. *glug*"

  "Who is 'Zsh-ya'?" Aqu-ke looked back to where Dad stood, but said nothing more. As the video ended, I found myself asking the same question. In the same folder on the Fund network was another video "Zsh-ya ultimatum." I played it.

  A text banner saying "just received" crossed the bottom as a mass of static resolved itself. In the background was a honeycomb of windows through which was visible the moon, large and rather close. In the foreground, perched upon a mauve stone dais carved in complex geometric forms was an Ygnaza. He wore a yellow singlet and had slightly greener than yellow skin. Set into a mass of ragged scar tissue where his left eye sack would be was a faceted metal implant that shone like a gem. His left forelimb had been replaced with a metal prosthetic whose two fingers and two thumbs mirrored the limb that was left behind.

  "Humans," it said, the vocal sacs inflating and deflating as it spoke. "I am the Lord Captain Zsh-ya, and your attacks on my trading post have not gone unnoticed. Nor will your seizure of my subjects be ignored." Zsh-ya notably spoke without letting the vocal sacs fully collapse, avoiding the "glug" sound I'd heard from the other Ygnaza. "As you have rejected the idea of peaceful commerce, you will cower before brute strength. Even your science will tell you that a vessel in control of a planet's gravity well can wreak devastation with simple kinetic bombardment. I do not think I need to demonstrate quite yet. You will return to me my subjects you have taken, and you will pay restitution for the insult."

  "You will deliver up two thousand of your subjects, young, healthy, for me to do with as I please. A list of the body forms and coloration will be provided. You have one revolution of your satellite to comply. Should you fail to do so, the initial bombardment will kill two million of your number. After a second revolution of non-compliance, the bombardment will kill twenty million. A third, two hundred million. After the forth, two billion. At that point, the devastation will be such that the only hope of survival for your species will be to submit to servitude and be transported. Any attempt to cross me will count as a revolution of non-compliance and will result in immediate bombardment."

  "I am familiar with your technology and know that you have nothing which could reach my vessel without being shot down. Two thousand is a small price to pay for peace."

  Part 24

  Walls clearly meant nothing to Neutrino, as he glided in through reinforced concrete. But then again, his namesake passed through normal matter just as easily. The way he floated through the air in the garage waiting for our reaction to his presence exuded an arrogance that immediately got on my nerves. I wanted to hit the guy, but aside from being on the Fund board, he'd demonstrated enough power and experience to wipe the floor with half the team.

  "Is there a reason you stopped by?" I asked.

  "Indeed," Neutrino said. "In light of your recent actions, the board has decided that Torquespiral has been too lax in his oversight of your team and appointed me to replace him."

  "He never actually explained what his role within the team was, or claimed to have a role."

  "The team is a company whose sole shareholder is the Community Fund. Team Leader is chief of operations and chosen by the membership. Executive oversight is exercised by the board representative. It is my job to ensure that our investment is not wasted."

  "So you showed up in hero garb to hover in our garage?" I asked.

  "I was getting a feel for the temporary base of operations."

  "If you'd knocked, we'd have let you in." He stared at me, the white space where the eyes of his mask should have been providing no insight to his reaction. "You don't get out much, do you?"

  "Says the child who hasn't even left this country, let alone the planet."

  "If there's something we can do for you, just tell us what it is."

  "You can show me your training plan, and your schema for correcting the security flaws which permitted Nikki Greeler to ambush your team." I hesitated. Neutrino shook his head. "You don't have any, do you?"

  "With the start of the academic year..."

  "This is why I do not understand the decision to make the age for a class-three license the same as for a driver's license."

  "How old were you when you started?"

  "Does it matter?" Neutrino asked.

  "It might."

  "Twenty-two, and that was wartime. A research mishap triggered this transformation. The Navy drafted me to fight the Japanese. Their bio-weapons program had produced some rather large weapons, capable of destroying fleets. My first engagement was stopping one of their Project Kaiju creations from sinking Midway." His tone of voice had changed as he remembered his glory days. "Taking down the beast wasn't enough, because its fall created a tidal wave that nearly knocked out the island's facilities anyway. That wasn't the last of them. The Japanese were convinced that a perfected Daikaiju could help them close the powers gap with the United States and fight us to a standstill. The atom bomb took them by surprise, and they thought it was one of us at first. When they found out mere bombers could deliver such devastation, that's when the fight went out of them."

  "You look young for your age."

  "A visual artifact, I assure you. Not indicative of my actual age." Going though the math, he had to be in his nineties, give or take. By appearance, I wouldn't have put him older than sixty. "What were we talking about?"

  "You were about to lecture me about time management and how my homework is impeding the development of the team. I don't have enough hours in the day to cover academics, the training regimen, and reviewing o
ur security."

  "Why do you think you have to do it all yourself? Cohesion and morale will improve if you make use of your team's talents. If they feel they have a stake and a purpose, it stops being a job and becomes a calling. Delegate these things."

  "I could probably have Icerazor handle the security review. The training... I'm not sure if anyone is particularly suited to work on it."

  "But you just admitted you don't have the time."

  "What do other teams do?"

  "They don't have high-schoolers as team leaders."

  "I walked right into that one."

  "Perhaps we can tap into some of the available talent outside the team. Though, resources are strained with the operation against Zsh-ya." Neutrino stopped, realizing he'd started into information that wasn't supposed to be distributed.

  "I figured they'd take action rather than hand people over."

  "I'm waiting for the inevitable call out of retirement to try to catch falling rocks," Neutrino said. "They have yet to get through a crisis of this scale without knocking on my door."

  It was one of those surreal moments of synchroneity that his comment was followed by a knocking on the garage door. I went to the camera monitors. Seeing what was outside caused my head to tilt and my jaw to drop. Two white-clad Omicron bots stood there. One carried a box in one hand and knocked with the other. The second carried a limp body. "I would say that the only good security now would be relocation." The bot knocked again.

  "Let's see what they have to say." Neutrino opened the garage door. The one carrying the body rolled it down the ramp, leaving a trail of blood on the concrete. When she rolled to a stop at the base of the ramp, Nikki Greeler moaned. The bot with the box held it in front of itself and pushed a button. An eight-inch-tall hologram of Doctor Omicron appeared over the box.

  "This is a recorded message," Omicron said. "Your persistent 'frenemy' here," Omicron made air quotes around the word as he spoke, "was quite informative after her will was broken. However, at this time, I wish to call a truce to make an offer. For the last month, I've put my work for the Final Star on hold to address an altogether different problem. I happen to live on this rock that these aliens propose to bombard from orbit, and I've worked out a way to save a substantial portion of it. If you're interested in bargaining, check the bot's pocket for meeting details." With a sizzle, the box melted, taking the bot's hands with it.

  "A ruse? A trap? Or an honest invitation?" Neutrino mused. I checked the robot's pocket, finding a manila envelope. "Either way, first we call an ambulance for Ms. Greeler here."

  It was decided that Neutrino, Jack, Jennifer, Nora and I would go to Omicron's meeting point. The rest of the team would wait in reserve in case it turned out to be a trap. It was the remains of a marina, long since abandoned due to the corrosive waste in the river water. Only the stone retaining wall separating the artificial lagoon from the river remained relatively intact. The marina clubhouse was a decrepit, boarded-up structure on the verge of collapsing in on itself. A few ancient fliers fluttered in the nighttime breeze.

  Omicron's security was out in force. It looked to me like a battalion of bots backed up by a company of cultists were crawling over the marina looking for signs of duplicity on our part. All were armed to the teeth and the cultists looked jittery. Their loose, flowing robes contrasted the stiff coats adorning the bots. We glided in, Jennifer focused exclusively on the task of maintaining a flying disc large enough to hold three people. Neutrino and Jack took the patented "hero glide" approach. The cultists raised their weapons, but held their fire. Jennifer's focus broke along with the disc a few feet over the ground, sending us tumbling the short distance. We weren't hurt, but it ruined the grandeur of our entrance.

  A familiar looking chestnut-haired cultist stepped forward. "Uh, Doctor Omicron wishes to know if you intend to deal in good faith."

  "We will hear his offer," Neutrino said.

  "Actually, he wants assurance that you will let us leave if you reject it."

  "We cannot give such assurances," Neutrino said. "He should endeavor to make a compelling offer instead of placing preconditions on the negotiations."

  The cultist raised a hand to his earpiece. "He says he can live with that." A few moments later, a bubble of water rose in the marina, cresting over a nimbus of shadow and a bubble of red static. Inside the bubble, Omicron stood. Raising into the air, he floated forward, stopping just in front of us. Omicron reached inside his coat and adjusted something.

  "First I rate sidekicks, then heroes, now living legends," Omicron said, "I'm moving up in the world."

  "You came here to bargain," Neutrino said, "Start talking."

  "Most of you are familiar with my force bubbles." He reached out and tapped the inside of the one he was in, generating no sound. "When I heard the Lord Captain's threat, I began working to improve them. I've developed a form of increased magnitude and amplitude suitable for protecting, say, a city. It's a rather large device, and I've only been able to assemble one, but that one I will give free of charge to New Port Arthur. Mostly to cover my own head. The plans, I can provide to the world community so that they might build their own city-shields."

  "With days left?" I asked.

  "I might be a genius, but I am not a miracle worker. I only started on it a month ago."

  "What do you want for these plans?" Neutrino asked.

  "Complete immunity for any crimes I may have committed in the past whether currently known or not. And an annual stipend of a million dollars, index-linked to inflation." He raised a finger, "Tax free. This is less than what I might make selling devices individually, but you've already highlighted the time crunch."

  "And if we decide to reverse engineer your New Port Arthur device instead?"

  "That would take years," Omicron said. "We don't have that kind of time."

  "So in exchange for a solution we can't even implement before the first deadline, you get to walk away scot-free from crimes against humanity with a hefty pension."

  "You can complete it well before the second deadline. It's suboptimal, but preferable to being subject to bullying by every tinpot space captain who comes along."

  "How about this," Neutrino said, "We take you into custody, and if Lord Captain Zsh-ya is able to carry out his first bombardment threat, we take you up on your offer."

  "Unacceptable!" Omicron said. Neutrino reached out his hands and wrapped his tethers around Omicron's force bubble. The cultists and the robots opened fire. A golden wall of psychic energy shielded me from the oncoming bullets. I smiled at Jennifer, and she returned a curt nod. Nora raced out and began disarming foot soldiers, dumping the arms in the marina. Jack, true to his idiom, flew straight into the hail of gunfire and crushed the barrels of the cultists' guns with his hands. The chestnut-haired cultist smirked in a way one usually doesn't when that happens. With a single punch, he sent Jack flying backwards into the clubhouse, tearing a hole in the wall and caving in part of the roof.

  "Oh, yeah," Omicron said, "And the latest batch of mutagen proved more successful."

  The chestnut-haired cultist and two others began to warp, their bodies tearing out of the white robes and gaining mass. Wings, claws, horns and scales erupted from their skin as their spines appeared to rip free, forming a back ridge and a long, thrashing tail. Their necks and faces elongated, taking on the classic draconic cast. Their hides were the color of their hair, chestnut, black and blond. Roaring in unison, they belched fire at Neutrino. The black-clad hero flew backwards, redirecting his energy to cover himself against the inferno. Freed from its tethers, Omicron's force bubble floated back towards the river.

  "Reserve team, engage," I said. "Focus on taking down the Final Star dragons. Blue, keep disarming the rank and file. Apexa, try to take the heat off Neutrino." I ran towards the clubhouse to check on Jack. Before I got
there, he exploded from the rubble, flying high, then crashing down upon Omicron's bubble. The impact sent the bubble smashing into the aged asphalt, crushing a small crater in it about three feet wide. Jennifer conjured up a pillar of force, swinging it into the blond dragon's head like a sledgehammer, knocking him into the chestnut dragon. The blond dragon shook its head in a daze, but the chestnut dragon leapt over its fellow to snap at Jennifer. She wedged a construct in between his jaws before they could clamp down. It was a humanoid figure, holding them open... a replica Icerazor.

  I smirked at this and found a cultist to punch, not wanting to be left out of the fray. It seemed rather insignificant in contrast to the brawl going on at the heart of the battle. I felt almost a spectator as Neutrino punched the black dragon's forehead, driving its jaw into the pavement mere feet from me. "You haven't got the bite of a Daikaiju," Neutrino said. The cultist-dragon tried to rise up, but another punch sent him into unconsciousness. "I'm losing my touch," Neutrino said. The blond dragon's teeth clamped down on the aged hero, but Neutrino merely looked miffed. A moment later, the dragon's jaws snapped closed completely, and Neutrino rose out of his head, unscathed.