A Learning Experience

by Christopher Nuttall

  The deck shook, snapping him back to reality. He was dimly aware of the neural interface retreating into the back of his mind as he looked around and realised that the next group of aliens charging at them were proving smarter. They were hurling grenade-like objects down the corridor ahead of their charge. He lifted the alien weapon, found the firing stud and pushed it, hard. The weapon had no recoil, just flashes of deadly light. He couldn't help wondering just what operating principles it used as he fired. Plasma? Laser? Directed energy? Or something unimagined by humans?

  He shook his head. There was no way to know.

  Or was there? He had the neural interface.

  “We’re going to have to fall back,” Charles shouted. An alien howled further down the corridor, then fell flat on his face. One of his fellows shot him in the back, then kept charging towards the human position. “We can't stay here!”

  “No, we can’t,” Steve agreed. But they had nowhere to go. Once they were back in the shuttlebay, they would be trapped ... “Unless ...”

  He accessed the interface again, watching with some alarm as the real world started to gray out around him. “What sort of access do I have?”

  “Complete,” the voice said.

  “All right,” Steve said. “Are there any measures we can take against life forms on this ship?”

  There was a pause. “All direct measures will exterminate all life forms,” the voice warned. “It would not be advisable.”

  Steve swore, mentally. “How can we remove the non-human life forms from this ship?”

  “Teleporters can remove non-human life forms from this ship,” the voice informed him. “Do you wish to use them?”

  “They have teleporters?” Steve said, out loud. “Why didn't they just beam us up from Earth?”

  “Unknown,” the voice stated.

  Steve gathered himself. Whatever he was talking to, it sounded more like a glorified user interface than a genuine AI. The wrong orders could easily get them killed along with their alien enemies. And he wasn't sure if the whole system was actually what it claimed to be too. What sort of idiot let a direct link to their computer nodes fall into enemy hands? But it wouldn't be the first time a primitive civilisation had purchased something without ever quite knowing how to use it.

  “I want you to teleport all non-human life forms into open space,” he ordered. He couldn’t resist the next word. “Energise.”

  “Teleport safety protocols need to be disengaged,” the voice informed him.

  “Disengage them,” Steve snapped.

  “Teleport safety protocols disengaged,” the voice said. “Teleport sequence activating ... now.”

  Steve looked up, just in time to see the horde of charging aliens dissolve into silver light and vanish. He felt his mouth drop open as he realised just what had happened ... and just how simple it had been to remove all of the aliens. And easy ...

  “The world just changed,” Charles said. He sounded as shocked as Steve felt. “What happened?”

  “One moment,” Steve said. He linked back into the neural interface. “Have all of the aliens been removed?”

  “Negative,” the voice said. “One alien remains.”

  “Then point us to his position,” Steve ordered.

  ***

  Cn!lss had had bare seconds to react when the teleporters had activated. He’d grabbed the terminal that was his badge of rank – and his curse, when the warriors were sharing lies about their glorious exploits – and activated its transmitter, praying desperately that the starship’s designers had been as paranoid about safety as they usually were. The signal had disrupted the teleport lock, preventing the teleporters from snatching him off the bridge and depositing him ... somewhere. None of the others on the bridge had been so lucky. The Subhorde Commander had been the first to vanish in silver light.

  What a shame, part of Cn!lss’s mind insisted. He’d hated his commander, even though he knew it could easily have been worse. But the human intruders, the humans who were clearly born warriors where the Hordesmen were brawlers, had not only managed to take control of the ship, they’d wiped out all but one of her crew. Would they be worse than the Hordesmen? Or would they see the value in keeping Cn!lss alive?

  He carefully pranced away from his console and waited, in the centre of the bridge. It took longer than he’d expected for the humans to appear, stepping through the hatch weapons in hand. Cn!lss couldn't help noticing that they held the captured weapons as if they knew how to use them, even though they wouldn't have even seen them until bare hours ago. The humans were true warriors, he realised now; they’d adapted far quicker than any of the Horde when they’d first been confronted with advanced technology.

  They were staggeringly ugly creatures, he decided, as the humans closed in on him. Two legs, soft pale skin, tiny little eyes ... and yet they’d managed to overwhelm seven Hordesmen in unarmed combat. Carefully, he raised his maniples, hoping they were civilised enough to take prisoners. The Horde rarely took prisoners. It was one of the reasons they were utterly unwelcome on most civilised worlds.

  One of the humans growled at him. It was several seconds before the translator provided a translation. “Keep your hands where we can see them.”

  Cn!lss obeyed, shaking. Human hands poked at his carapace – they were stronger than he’d realised – and carefully removed everything from his terminal to his badge of rank, such as it was. For a moment, he was convinced they were actually going to pull his shell apart, but they relaxed and let it go when they realised it was actually part of his body. The humans, it seemed, wore protective clothing at all times. But what else would one expect from born warriors?

  “If you cooperate, you will be treated decently,” one of the humans said, finally. “If you try to escape, you will be killed.”

  “I understand,” Cn!lss said, quickly. It was better than his treatment in the Horde. “I will cooperate.”

  “Good,” the human said. “But for the moment, we will put you in a small cabin and hold you there.”

  ***

  Steve looked around the bridge and knew that he’d been right, even before the neural interface had confirmed it. The aliens hadn't designed the ship themselves; hell, their consoles were clearly designed for a humanoid race, rather than a six-legged crab-like race from Hell. They must have found it more than a little uncomfortable, he decided, as he strode over to the central chair and looked down at it. That, at least, had been designed for the aliens. It looked absurdly like a throne suitable for a crab.

  He sniffed the air, experimentally. There was a faint stench of rotting meat in the air, but nothing else. As far as he could tell, the atmosphere was breathable, although he made a mental note to check that as soon as possible. And to explore the rest of the ship ... his ship. He found himself grinning as he realised what they’d done. They’d captured an interstellar starship and the way to the stars lay open, right in front of them.

  “Well,” Mongo said. “What do we do now?”

  Steve sighed. There was work to be done. “We research,” he said. They’d have to find several more neural interfaces, although he suspected they needed a rule that barred more than one or two people from using them at the same time. “And then we make plans.”

  Chapter Three

  Fnfian Horde Warcruiser Shadow Warrior

  Earth Orbit

  “You know, my mother used to believe that aliens would come one day and show us a whole new way to live,” Charles commented. “I never believed she was right.”

  Steve smiled as they made their way through one of the alien sleeping compartments. He’d been in barracks inhabited by ill-disciplined soldiers, American and foreign, but this was far worse. Great piles of meat and drink lay everywhere, creating a stench that would have to be dealt with sooner or later, while tiny creatures ran across the deck. They seemed to be crosses between crabs and cockroaches, Steve had decided, and they were as hard to kill as the latter. The entire ship would have to be fumigate
d before they did anything else. It was probably a breeding ground for disease.

  The ship itself, according to the neural interface, was four hundred metres long and designed to serve as a Warcruiser. Reading between the lines, Steve had a suspicion that the entire ship was outdated as far as the aliens who had built it were concerned, although the neural interface was a little vague on such matters. He hadn't been able to determine if he was asking the wrong questions or if the system was designed not to provide exact answers to such questions. If he’d been designing a system for primitive aliens, he would have been careful what he programmed it to do too.

  But it was clear that the aliens – the Hordesmen, the interface had called them – hadn't even had a vague idea of just what their ship could do. They reminded him of training missions to Arab countries, where no one dared admit ignorance, even if it was manifestly obvious they didn't have the slightest idea of what they were doing. Their weapons were clearly modified from weapons designed for other races, the advanced technology was partnered with a technology more primitive than any available on Earth and ... and they’d kidnapped a group of humans without even bothering to secure them. Such carelessness made little sense.

  They don’t have any real conception of technology, he decided, as he peered into another alien cabin. It was oddly barren, in some ways; there were no books, no electronic readers, no computers ... not even anything that resembled porn. The thought made him smile – did the aliens even have a concept of pornography? – but the cabins testified to an odd bleakness in their lives. Or a complete lack of concern from their superiors. He’d seen both in human societies around the globe.

  He pushed the thought to one side as he accessed the neural interface again. The aliens had placed their ship in high orbit, using a masking field to hide their presence from Earth’s defenders. Not that they’d had much reason to worry about Earth’s defenders, Steve had already concluded. They could simply have thrown rocks from a safe distance until humanity rolled over and surrendered. Their point defence could have shot down every ICBM on Earth without breaking a sweat. No, the whole alien operation simply made no sense. It was almost as if they’d wanted the humans to capture their ship.

  “We should probably talk to our new friend,” Kevin said, when Steve commented on his suspicions. “Do you think he’ll be open with us?”

  Steve shrugged, expressively. Humans showed a wide range of behaviours when taken prisoner, from defiance to outright collaboration. The alien – his name was a series of clicks and hisses that was beyond humanity’s ability to pronounce – seemed to tend towards the latter, but there was no way to be sure. All they could do was keep a sharp eye on him, then find somewhere to stick him well away from unknown technology. For all they knew, he had his own way of accessing the computer nodes even without a visible neural interface.

  “You can put together a list of questions for him,” he said, finally. “And we can corroborate what he says with what we pull out of the computer systems.”

  “Yeah,” Kevin said. “About that ... are you sure the connection is safe?”

  “It saved our asses,” Steve reminded him. The neural interface had insisted the process was safe, but – once again – it hadn't gone into details. “Does that mean you don’t want one for yourself?”

  “At least one of us shouldn't use one,” Kevin said, firmly. “Mongo has enough common sense to tell us when we’ve pushed it too far, I think.”

  Steve didn't bother to disagree as they worked their way into the next set of compartments, which were crammed with all sorts of pieces of technology. Almost all of them were completely unrecognisable, save for a handful of devices that looked like the silver box the unarmed alien had carried down on Earth. Two of them might be the alien versions of laptops, he decided, others might have been weapons or sex toys. Short of asking the interface, there was no way to know. The next compartment held a line of vehicles that looked like small, almost toy-like tanks. They looked too small for the aliens to use comfortably.

  “Maybe designed for another race,” Steve speculated. He linked into the neural interface and asked. “Yep, built for another race and stolen.”

  “Scavengers,” Charles said. “It might explain why they were so fucking careless.”

  Kevin paused, then rubbed his stomach. “Is there anywhere to get something to eat here?”

  “The alien food is classed as incompatible,” Steve discovered, querying the neural interface. “But the food processors can produce something suitable for human consumption.”

  “We’d better get back up there and find something,” Kevin said. “And then I think we need to start asking more questions.”

  “There’s a spare neural link up on the bridge,” Steve said. From what little the voice had said about itself, handing two or even several hundred users at once was well within its capabilities. “You might as well put it to use.”

  “Just be careful what you do,” Charles warned. “You don’t want to accidentally beam yourself out into space.”

  Steve nodded. The teleporter had dropped the aliens into open space and Earth’s gravity had done the rest, once the bodies were outside the craft’s as-yet unexplained drive field. By now, the remains of the alien crew had burned up in Earth’s atmosphere and vanished. Part of him regretted slaughtering so many without a second thought, the rest of him knew there had been no alternative. The aliens wouldn't have hesitated to kill their former captives, now they’d seen just what they could do.

  If all the aliens are like them, he thought, humanity will rule the galaxy in years.

  But he knew it wouldn't be that easy.

  They made their way back to the bridge and entered the dining hall. Every time he saw it, Steve was reminded of the depictions of Norsemen partying hard after a successful campaign of looting, raping and burning. They’d cleared away most of the mess – it seemed the aliens liked living in squalor – but it still disgusted him. He’d checked with the neural interface, only to discover that the cleaning robots had been removed, along with several automated maintenance systems. The sellers had clearly anticipated getting rich by selling spare parts and basic maintenance to the Hordesmen.

  He activated the neural link as he stopped in front of the food professor, a slot in the bulkhead that remained sealed until the food was ready. “Please produce something suitable for human consumption.”

  There was a long pause as the device hummed to itself. “You’d think they could produce matter directly from energy,” Kevin commented. “If they have teleporters, surely they could produce food and drink ...”

  “Or duplicate a living person,” Charles muttered. “I saw a Star Trek episode where someone was duplicated accidentally ...”

  Kevin snickered. “You’re a secret Star Trek fan?”

  “We ran out of Doctor Who episodes to watch,” Charles confessed. “And we had a lot of fun pointing out the problems ...”

  “A likely story,” Kevin said.

  Steve ignored them, concentrating on the neural interface. Most of the technobabble it produced was way above his head – it was suddenly harder to blame the aliens for being unaware of the potentials of their technology – but it seemed to be impossible to actually duplicate a person through teleport malfunctions. Furthermore, direct energy-to-matter conversion, while quite possible, was actually extremely uneconomical. It was far simpler to reprocess biomass to produce something humans could eat safely.

  “There won’t be any more of you running around,” he said, finally. “It doesn't seem to be possible.”

  “What a relief,” Kevin said, dryly.

  There was a ding from the food processor. The hatch opened, revealing a plate of steaming ... something. It looked rather like grey porridge. Steve eyed it doubtfully, then removed it from the processor and placed it on the table. There were no knives or forks, so he had to use his hands. It tasted of nothing, as far as he could tell. Just ... nothing at all.

  “We will have to bring s
ome proper food up here,” Kevin said, as he tasted the glop. “And a small horde of cleaners.”

  Steve nodded. “I’ll get you an interface,” he said. “And you can start asking questions.”

  He finished his share of the glop, then ordered the machine to make another portion and something suitable for one of the aliens. Mongo would be growing hungry too, as would their alien captive. Steve wished that he dared trust the alien enough to ask questions, but a long interrogation session would have to wait. Maybe Kevin – a trained interrogator, among other things – would be able to get more answers out of the computer network.

  Shaking his head, he walked back onto the bridge, found the second interface and took it back to Kevin. “There’s a stab of pain as it configures itself, then you’ll be fine,” he assured his brother. “And good luck.”

  Kevin nodded and placed the silver band on his head. “No pain,” he said, after a moment. “I guess you were the unlucky bastard who got the brunt of the reconfiguration.”