Provider Prime: Alien Legacy

by John Vassar

  ‘I am aware of the situation. You may return to the Control Centre, you will not be required to assist.’

  Wade stood, open mouthed. Thorne had closed the connection.

  Everything is under control? And that voice… the way it sounded had nothing to do with SE coms distortion this time.

  What the fuck was happening around here?

  Thorne halted outside the main portal to the Med Lab. Brought to his senses by the comlink from Wade, he had accessed the Sentinel’s memory core and retraced his actions from the time he had lost consciousness in the Transit car until now. He made another adjustment to the core modules, but time was still on his side. There was enough flexibility in the project timelines to regain full control between intellect and machine. First, matters had to be set right here on T-1.

  Thorne crossed the vestibule and stepped into Steinberg’s laboratory. It was forty metres deep and half as wide, lined with medicom tables which were standard, and a variety of artificial limbs which were not. As if Steinberg was taunting him with this display. Thorne made a conscious effort to suppress his anger. He had not yet decided on the nature of the human’s death and did not want it to become an act of spontaneous barbarity. Steinberg was at the far end of the room, leaning over a patient. The Sentinel’s vision zoomed, identifying Julius Moreno. Mitchell’s female companion was restrained on the adjacent table.

  Steinberg straightened at the sound of the approaching autom. Still concentrating on his work on Moreno, he smiled and said, ‘So… at last, you did it. Against all my advice, you’ve gone ahead and condemned yourself to a slow and unnecessary death.’

  The Sentinel stopped a few metres short. Steinberg turned and nodded at the sight of the enormous autom. ‘Are you happy now? Now that you’ve proved your point to me?’

  There was no response from the machine. Steinberg walked around the huge autom, looking it up and down. ‘I knew you’d choose something military. All that talk of a more natural-looking vessel, I knew it was all bluff. You must have power. To feel as though you are in control. Well, my friend, enjoy it while you can.’ The scientist walked back to the medicom table and opened his arms wide over his latest subject. ‘This is where the answer lies. This is the future!’

  Both of Julius Moreno’s arms had now been removed at the shoulder in addition to the lower limbs. His mouth and jaw were encased in metal but he was still conscious and looked up at his tormentor with terrified eyes. Steinberg continued, ‘I know, I know… it’s not a pleasant sight at the moment. He looks like an old teddy bear with his arms and legs pulled off, no? But this work is necessary. Do you still not understand me, Thorne? I am developing techniques here that allow the individual to see that they do not need to be constrained by frail, human flesh. I can make them so much better.’

  The artificial tone of the Sentinel’s response surprised Steinberg for a moment. He had never heard a military-grade autom speak before.

  ‘You have disobeyed my specific orders. You have diverted vital resources to continue with these pointless experiments.’

  ‘Pointless? No, no, my friend, it is you who have been misguided all these years. Look at you now, hmm? What are you? Your mind is not your own any more, it is just a replica! A digitised copy! How can that be called living?’

  The Sentinel took a step forward. ‘My intellect has been transferred in its entirety. Everything that I am is here. Every thought, every memory, every engram. Free from entropy. Free from decay. For as long as I choose it to be.’

  Steinberg laughed and shook his head. ‘Do you know what you sound like? A rich, old man who dreams of being eternal. Centuries ago, fools just like you used to freeze themselves in preparation for the day when all disease was conquered. Did you know that? And you are no different from them. No different at all. What has become of you, Roderick Thorne? The young genius. Nothing more than a walking computer after all…’

  The chilling reply was not a rebuke, but a statement of fact. ‘You have no concept of who you are dealing with. This pitiful world will become the property of Vis’haan. The human race, like yourself and like your so-called work, will be an irrelevance.’

  Thorne moved towards the rogue scientist and the Sentinel’s right arm flashed out.

  He had decided on the nature of Steinberg’s termination.

  31

  Victor Wade edged closer to the portal, un-slinging the laser rifle. He pressed his back against the adjacent wall. He was sweating now, in fear as much as exertion. He had disobeyed Thorne in coming here, but he couldn’t allow common sense to override common decency. Thorne’s brush-off was bullshit. Greaseball and the girl were in real danger, Steinberg too.

  He could hear conversation inside the Med Lab. First Steinberg, his accent recognisable even at this distance, followed by an artificial voice that sounded like the one in his last comlink conversation. Wade took a nervous breath and twisted his head around into the portal. He saw the giant autom standing in front of Steinberg, who was speaking again. He couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the scientist sounded calm, as if the autom was an old friend. To their right, he saw the girl worker on a medicom table. Wade ducked back and wiped the perspiration off his face. This was the first time he had seen inside Steinberg’s laboratory. He had been told from the beginning of his tenure that this section, like the assembly area, was off-limits and out of his security jurisdiction. So, what had he just seen? Steinberg did not seem to be in any kind of distress. He could have been right about the girl being ill when she’d arrived. Had he over-reacted? Maybe Thorne did have this beast under control and-

  The scream impelled Wade to whirl round into the room. From his fighting days, he knew the sound all too well – this was a man’s scream, and it was a man in agony. The autom had gripped Steinberg by the throat and raised him off the floor. Wade watched it carry him over to the lab wall where what looked like metal arms and legs were suspended in anti-grav casings. Unable to stop himself, Wade inched closer and raised the laser rifle to waist level. He could hear the machine clearly now.

  ‘-faith in the weakness of human tissue. You will end your days in the same way you have treated your own kind. With no mercy.’ The autom pinned Steinberg against the wall. His eyes were bulging and his hands clawed at the pincers. Wade looked past them and saw that the girl was awake, but restrained, with what looked like a healer pad on her forehead. She mouthed ‘help me’ at him. The autom was preoccupied with Steinberg and Wade backed around it. The girl was shaking now. He tried to remove the restraining bands, but there was no apparent way of unlocking them. He set the laser rifle to its lowest rating, held the girl’s wrists to one side and burned through each one at its base. He helped her off the table, then heard Steinberg cry out, ‘No, Thorne, please…’

  The autom had pulled one of the gleaming, prosthetic arms from its container. It pushed the base of the limb through the scientist’s left shoulder and deep into the wall. The noise of splintering bone almost made Wade retch. Steinberg gave a gurgling half-scream and lost consciousness. The autom took another and thrust that into the other side of Steinberg’s twitching torso. The girl’s fingernails were digging into Wade’s shoulders, but he didn’t notice. Lying on the adjacent table, he had just seen something else from a nightmare. He recognised the tear-sodden slits that were Julius Moreno’s eyes. His mouth was covered by what looked like a purpose-built metal frame with a mesh screen. His body was held down with metal bands and fluid-filled tubes protruded from the stumps of his limbs. There was no way he could be freed in time.

  Another crash from the wall shook Victor Wade back to reality. He knew there were two other portals in this section. He was a decent security manager and it was his job to know. To his left was their way out, a portal that led to corridor M-16 and the Transit node that would take them to safety. Moreno was a lost cause. Wade grabbed the girl round the waist and lifted her bodily through the portal before setting her down and giving a simple instruction. ‘Run.’

&n
bsp; Behind them echoed the sound of flesh being ripped by metal. Then there was silence, of a sort. Broken only by the steady drip of blood on plastic and the stifled sobs of Julius Moreno as he watched the Sentinel turn towards him.

  32

  Lee Mitchell guided the Snipe towards the southern rim of the nameless sub-crater that was home to Cytec T-1. He had given Tsiolkovsky a wide berth and kept his course slow and steady. T-13 may be tracking him, but a small scout craft would raise an alarm only if Charlis had alerted them first. So far, his luck had held. The SenANNs’ twelve-minute deadline had passed some time ago. Mitchell couldn’t figure out why it had taken so long for Charlis to receive Westlake’s information, but was grateful for the breathing space.

  Once below Tsiolkovsky, he swung the Snipe around to the north again, crossing the main crater rim and hugging the surface for the last leg. He left the Snipe to land itself and wondered if Hirayama’s finest had been rescued by now. When this was over, he owed Gem Telson an apology and Dunny a drink. Not forgetting a right hook for Dr Samuel J Westlake.

  In the airlock, Mitchell replaced the cam-suit helmet and set active mission status. The inside of the suit stank from his exertions over the previous few days but everything was still working. Jake Dunne had been right. It had saved his life - at least enough of it for the nanites to finish patching him up. The Snipe’s outer hatch opened and he dropped two metres to land on the powdered surface. In front of him, the side of the baby crater sloped upwards to thirty metres, giving decent visual cover for the Snipe. Still a novice in the low grav, it took Mitchell a few minutes to bounce his way up and reach the top of the crater ridge. He looked around, puzzled. T-1 should be directly ahead but he could see no structure of any kind. Right on cue, the SenANNs returned.

  ‘Agent Charlis has confirmed with Delere Secos that he has abandoned the search for the three persons of interest at Cytec Assembly Plant T-13. He has also sent a Level 10 message to the High Council of the World Alliance. As stated before, We are unable to access message content at this security level.’

  Unable or unwilling? “He made no reference to my having survived his attack?”

  ‘As far as We are aware, Lee Mitchell.’

  “Word from Hirayama must have reached him by now… Can you trace the original message from Westlake once it reached FedStat?”

  ‘The message was relayed to FedStat headquarters from their Populus liaison division. From there, Delere Secos were informed along with two other security divisions.’

  “And the High Council?”

  ‘The message contents were not forwarded to the High Council. It appears that Delere Secos upgraded the information to Level 10 and quarantined it from this point.’

  Mitchell mentally punched the air. Devlin must have intercepted the message and prevented it from reaching Charlis!

  ‘We sense that you are elated. We do not understand why.’

  “It feels like I’ve finally been given a break.”

  ‘If We understand the colloquialism, Lee Mitchell, then We, too, are elated.’

  “I need further assistance. Cytec Assembly Plant T-1, if it’s here at all, is cloaked. I’ll need detailed intel on the facility to gain entry. Can you access Populus planning records from the time it was first constructed?”

  ‘The original schematics are now at your disposal.’

  Finding it awkward to walk and concentrate on a 3D inside his brain at the same time, Mitchell stopped to examined the plans. Cytec’s proposal file showed a subterranean assembly area with a docking bay for incoming raw materials. Above ground, there was a domice complex with recreational and eating areas, plus control facilities and offices, many of which were over thirty metres tall. The whole thing covered a surface area of just under five square kilometres – a lot of building to keep under wraps using cam circuitry. In his haste to get to T-1, had he botched the co-ordinates and landed at the wrong crater?

  ‘You are at the correct location, Lee Mitchell. We predict that what remains of Cytec Assembly Plant T-1 is underground. We predict that all original buildings on the surface have been destroyed.’

  “You mean demolished and removed?”

  ‘Negative. We mean destroyed. Look again at the composition of the top layer of the crater around the given coordinates. Your scan shows minute quantities of vapourised alloys and composites not native to this planetoid, suggesting that a fabricated structure has been subjected to an energy weapon.’

  Mitchell did look again. His scanner display was on the default general setting. Cursing his stupidity, he isolated a small section of the surface and set the unit for spectrographic analysis. The SenANNs were right on the money. He increased sensitivity to metal alloy and the foundations of the original buildings showed up as clear as day. He let out a low whistle. “Okay, I’m impressed. And the underground sections?”

  ‘We predict that these areas are intact. We also predict that they are being cloaked with some form of Chameleon circuitry. However, the readings you have taken show a slight increase in ambient temperature radiating outwards from the boundaries of the complex. This suggests that the region below the surface is not protected in its entirety.’

  Energy radiating out from the bottom of the structure? Just possible... The power drain to throw a cam cloak over an area of this size must be enormous. Mitchell felt like hugging his invisible mentors. “Thank you for your assistance. I am elated.”

  ‘As are We, Lee Mitchell. Our union is proving to be beneficial to all. However, We must report, that Agent Charlis has now left Cytec Assembly Plant T-13’

  “So much for my break. I assume his skimmer is cloaked?”

  ‘Affirmative.’

  “Where is he headed?”

  ‘The current vector of his craft would suggest Hirayama-Y Survey Base.’

  Perhaps Charlis had traced the survey base back to Autogen’s possession. Whatever the reason, Mitchells’ ruse would be discovered once Hirayama’s personnel were interrogated.

  “Please keep me informed on Agent Charlis’s whereabouts.”

  ‘We will, Lee Mitchell.’

  He looked at the expanse of dusty nothingness ahead. He wondered how he was going to penetrate T-1, but he did have a few things in his favour.

  His cam-suit, a DS decoder and the assistance of the SenANNs.

  Mitchell started down the crater rim. Three minutes later, a bright flash on the horizon startled him. He lost his footing and skidded on his side down the slope, sending up a shower of dust. As per the training manual, he lay still and carried out a complete systems and pressure check on the suit. Apart from his injured pride, everything checked out. He picked himself up and looked back to where the flash had been, away to his left. There was now an ominous white glow and a perfectly-shaped balloon fanning upwards and outwards. He recognised the detonation type from his DS ordnance training. He had never been this close to one and the explosion was too far distant to use the cam-suit scanner, but he knew.

  It was a contained-yield fission device.

  Launched from a cruiser as a missile or seeker bomb, a CYF was a nuke in a can designed to limit collateral damage to a few kilometres’ radius.

  Lee Mitchell’s stomach crawled as he checked his relative position. He was looking back in the same direction as he had just come from in the Snipe.

  Back towards Hirayama-Y survey base.

  33

  Thirty-five thousand kilometres above Earth, Nathaniel Devlin ran his hand over the surface of the antique desk. It looked and felt like nothing else and had been his one nod to extravagance after taking over as Director of Delere Secos. Manufacturing with real timber had been banned since the Great Famine and there were perhaps half a dozen pieces like it outside museums and private collections. As he waited for the comlink from Lomonosov, he wondered if he would ever sit behind it again - or if not, whether he would remain alive long enough to miss it. He prayed not.

  Science officer Bhanerjee had visited his office but he could not
remember when or what they had discussed. Devlin’s memory had always been excellent. Something was preventing him from remembering, as if the act itself were forbidden. From a general report distributed to all senior DS personnel, he was aware that Bhanerjee was now dead, the evidence suggesting that the young man had committed suicide. He knew that this was improbable, but found himself unable to initiate any kind of investigation. This action, too, seemed forbidden and he had concluded that something fundamental had changed inside him. Now, he was certain.

  He was not alone.

  There was another presence within, a persona with a higher purpose, something that would not allow him to function as a rational human being. When this unseen power was in control, he became a man with no conscience, a man that hungered to serve, a man that was not Nathaniel Devlin. In the last hour, he had watched this other self do terrible things. Treasonable, wicked things that he deserved to die for. The watching was the worst part.

  Watching and not having the will to resist.

  For much of the time since Bhanerjee’s visit, he had been forced to do nothing but wait. Devlin found himself assailed by a persistent, disgusting desire to surrender to the thing that masqueraded as him. When Thorne made contact, his self-will became paralysed. He was aware of his surroundings but powerless to influence his own actions. The new persona was in control. It existed to serve Roderick Deucalion Thorne.

  To obey his orders without question.

  His first act of betrayal had been to advise Thorne that Mitchell had survived the Euro-2 incident. His master’s reaction was understandable and the new Devlin had listened with concern. Having received new instructions, he had then contacted Agent Charlis and revealed Mitchell’s precise location. He expected the termination order to be completed without incident. The inhuman part of Devlin was complicit, acknowledging that Mitchell’s death was necessary in the scheme of things. The human side knew that he was allied to something fundamentally evil. And that in itself, such knowledge was useless.