by Dain White
I flipped through again. It looked like glom news, market analysis… the occasional tabloid exposé on a colony collapse. None of it seemed to relate, except for a commonality that these snips all seemed to be glom-related. What isn’t, these days? It might be harder to find a collection of articles that weren’t related to gloms.
“Steven, it may be helpful to view a plot of these articles, when overlaid as to their origin on a chart.” She loaded a new layer to my screen that I swiped open.
My knowledge of astrogation wasn’t up to the task of finding this relationship, but she had a good point – these articles may have been chronological, but they also showed a clear direction in movement from system to system, throughout almost an entire arm.
I flipped back through the reports… but I wasn’t getting it. There was something there, but it was just out of reach, dancing like a mote on the periphery of my sight.
Something caught at my attention, and I swiped back a few screens. Colony collapse… I had seen that before… I pulled up another tab and started running another query.
“What are you working on, Pauli?” Captain Smith asked as he floated forward into the bridge.
“I’m not sure yet, sir”, I replied. “Janis has a bit of a puzzle for me. She sees a pattern, but is letting me find it for myself.”
“Good girl! She recognizes the importance of working hard, serves you right. What are you looking at?”
I shrugged, and swiped my screens to the forward holo, and set them to cycle. One after the other, snippet after snippet, we read through the articles she had collected and highlighted.
“Well, isn’t that interesting”, he said, after a few moments. We weren’t even half-way through the stack, and because we were looking at a report on deuterium trading market records for the Eastern Arm Consortium… I had to assume he was talking about something else. This sure wasn’t in the slightest bit interesting.
“What is interesting, sir?”
“The pattern, Pauli… don’t you see it?”
“No… I am not seeing it, sir. I’m not convinced you are either… sir.”
“You’re not?” he sounded shocked.
“Sir…” I chose my words carefully, “I think it’s possible that because I told you there was a pattern here, you’re simply agreeing with me.”
“Son, very little I do could be regarded as simple. In this case, I’ll lob that ball back into your court. I think you are trying to play to my poor, hurt ego, to trick me into telling you what you haven’t figured out yet.” He took a sip of coffee and looked at me over the rim.
I laughed, “Fair enough, sir. You got me… so what is the pattern?”
He smiled, and waved a finger at me. “Nice try, Pauli. Nope… you are on your own here – but I’ll give you a hint. This is definitely part of an even bigger pattern that none of us really understand, and so far, only two of us recognize.”
And with that, he kicked aft, following his coffee cup as it guided him back towards a more comfortable place; far away from any work that needed to be done.
*****
“I am going to release your legs now, please try not to jump around too much”, Janis warned. I looked down at Jane and smiled.
“That’s okay Janis”, I laughed. “I don’t think there’s enough headroom for me to jump.”
“Well, I could jump…” bragged Jane.
“Yes, but you really shouldn’t, until you get more comfortable with the movement characteristics of the suit, Jane”, Janis replied. “I am afraid these bulkheads would not provide adequate containment, should you leap energetically.”
I gingerly raised a foot, and almost as carefully set it down. Now she had me terrified to move.
“Okay Janis, no leaping”, Jane replied, taking a smooth step forward into the open section of the machine shop. Even at .75g, she seemed to float as she moved.
“What do you think, Jane?” I asked as she slowly stepped around in a circle.
“It feels like walking, Yak… but there’s a slight bit of resistance when I lean…”
“Jane, that is intentional, the suit is currently rate-limited to prevent sudden movement.”
“That makes sense… if you can literally jump through walls; I don’t think we want to be falling over in these things. We might punch a hole through this compartment trying to catch ourselves”, she added.
She had a good point. My suit was a lot bigger than hers, and while I had a lifetime of experience being a bigger person, this was a lot different. The floor looked far away, as I raised a leg and stepped forward, in a smooth parade step.
“Nice Yak! You look like a cat!”
I made a few slow steps in a circle, to look at her. It was amazing how fast I was adapting to this. I wore combat suits in the service, and it took weeks of training and sweating (and cursing, naturally) to get used to even basic movement. This was far more intuitive. Once I get used to my new height, that is.
Jane raised a leg, wiggled it around a little, and crossed the machine shop in two casual steps. She looked like she had been doing this her whole life.
“What do you think, Jane?” I asked, waiting for her next move.
“I’m really tall”, she said after a few more tentative steps around the shop. “There’s really not enough room in here, Janis. Can we take these up to the cargo bay?”
I shifted my weight from leg to leg, marveling at the smooth responsiveness. She was right, this felt almost completely normal.
“Yes Jane, though it will require your full and careful attention to do so, I do need to move these out of the shop to make room for additional projects.”
Jane didn’t waste a moment. With a look up to me as if to say ‘me first’, she stepped around a framework and over to the ladder compartment. I moved in behind her, and waited for her to navigate the ladderway opening.
“Is it a tight fit, Jane?” I asked, watching her feet disappear up the ladder.
She laughed. “I can’t wait to see you try to get up this, Yak.”
For some reason my cheeks grew hot. Definitely conduct unbecoming a Marine. I had to duck pretty low to get through the opening, but the suit contorted perfectly to crouch my way in.
My back was almost near the wall behind me, and I didn’t think my knees would really work to pull me up the ladder, but I quickly found out that I didn’t need to. I could pull myself hand-over-hand up the ladder without even thinking about it. Even with the ring spun up as it was, with the weight of the suit, it was easier than falling on my face.
“Impressive, Yak…” Jane said softly as I pulled myself up and out into the null-g of the gun deck. “Mind the focal rings, now” she admonished, as she pulled her way aft along the handrail.
“What the hell?” Captain Smith exclaimed from behind us as we pulled ourselves along. I meant to turn, and suddenly realized I could see him, without needing to.
I just about threw up in my helmet.
*****
My heart started to slow down a little bit in my chest. I wasn’t expecting to see three-meter creatures on my gun deck, even as coffee-deprived as I was.
It was definitely a shock to my system.
“Hi Captain”, the smaller one said, in a strange tone that sounded a little bit like Shorty.
“Hi there… Shorty…?” I replied, not taking my eyes off of them. They had both stopped, and were rotating around towards me. As I got closer, the uneasy feeling certainly didn’t seem to want to go away. They looked terrifying.
“Of course... the big one is Yak, naturally” she replied with a deep metallic laugh.
“Ooh-rah sir”, Yak said, saluting with a hand that moved so quickly it blurred.
It took me a little bit longer to collect my wits than normal, so I bridged the gap with a solid sip from the depths of my cup.
“Has Gene seen these yet?” I asked after a moment of reflection. The workmanship of these power suits was fantastic. They looked even more organic than the crab; though
it was obvious they had a lot of the same sort of design characteristics.
“Yep, Gene was there when we were calibrating. He didn’t feel very safe down in the machine shop with us learning how to move, so I think he went back to engineering.”
“I went to go take a nap, if you must know”, he yelled, his voice floating up from the ring ladderway between us.
“You can nap later Gene”, I called back. “Don’t you want to see this?”
The sound of grumbles and curses, and something about boots floated up along with some crashes, bangs, and the unmistakable sound of someone being old and cranky.
“Hah. Hah.” Yak modulated, as he moved aft towards the inner lock. Shorty shrugged, an impossibly human characteristic to see in such an incredibly inhuman figure, and kicked aft behind him.
I wasn’t going to miss this, even while the future of the entire galaxy rested on the last few remaining swallows left in my cup. I followed behind at a respectful distance as they entered the lock.
“Coming?” Shorty asked. I took a look into the small remaining space left in the lock and the thought of being enclosed in a small room with those things was about enough to make me take another sip. “No thanks, I’ll wait until you cycle through. You both look a little wobbly.”
She laughed a metallic chuckle. “That’s probably for the best. We definitely don’t know our own strength yet.”
Gene joined me while I was waiting for the ambers on the lock, and looked as cranky and irascible as he sounded.
“What’s the matter Gene? Didn’t you get enough sleep last year?”
He looked over at me, and sniffed. “Dak, I am not sure I remember the last time I actually fell asleep.”
I laughed a deep, evil laugh. “Oh, I do… If I remember correctly, it was while you were on watch, mister.”
He flashed a look of remorse at me, and I smiled to make sure he understood I was just making fun of him. I wiggled an ultimate eyebrow of assertion however, to remind him that I was locked in – that I was going to make fun of him, forever and ever, amen.
He sighed, and scowled. “That is never going to get old, is it?”
I laughed, and shook my head slowly. “No Gene, I don’t think so.”
He was spared from any further evisceration, as the ambers had just clicked green. We waited while the lock cycled, and stepped in.
*****
“Jane, hide!” Yak said on the suit comms as the inner lock above us flashed amber.
I looked around the cargo bay, and other than some stacks of crates, materials, miscellaneous packing and some stored parts, there wasn’t really much in the way of cover. I looked up in the direction of his voice, and realized even though he was on suit comms, the audio channel was directional.
Not that it helped… I could hear where he was, but I couldn’t see him. I cycled through most of the EM spectrum, from RF through light into UV, even tried a gravimetric mass analysis, but he was a ghost.
“Where are you?” I said, kicking gingerly up towards the cargo crane stowed along the side of the gig clamps. As I slid through the cargo bay, my outstretched hands faded away as my mimetics engaged.
“I am right above the lock, Jane… but now I lost you. Where did you go?”
I laughed. “Up near the crane – see me?” To help, I waved.
“Nope…” he trailed off as the ambers flashed off and the gun deck hatch started to cycle open. Captain Smith poked a head through the opening into the silent, empty cargo bay and looked around.
I laughed softly, just loud enough to catch his attention.
“Where did they go?” Gene asked, leaning through behind him.
“Honestly, I have no idea, Gene”, he replied. “I think we’re playing hide-and-irritate-the-Captain.”
Now it was Yak’s turn to laugh, a slow, grinding chuckle that rolled through the cargo bay. Positioned as he was above the hatch, the captain and Gene just about broke their necks looking for him.
“Hang on, Dak… I know how we can deal with this”, Gene said as he kicked back through the lock.
“Shorty, Yak… I know you’re in here, but I’ll be damned if I can see you. Are you close?”
I chuckled again. “I’m not… but Yak is close enough for you to kiss, though I can’t imagine why you’d want to.”
He spun around, and poked the bulkhead around the hatch, prodding for anything out of place.
“Any luck, Dak?” Gene asked breathlessly, as he returned through the lock.
“Nope... Apparently, Yak is close to us somewhere, maybe underneath the catwalk?” he rotated head down and peered through the grating.
“That’s okay Skipper, I’ll find them”, Gene said, as he started working the screen of his handset. He might, too, with his rig. He has a similar set to mine, though his probably has a more powerful scanner. We can track and trace just about any EM signal, especially at close range.
I was way out of range, but Yak was at ground zero. I still couldn’t see him, though I had a pretty good idea where he was. There was a collection of conduits that exited the upper access tunnel right above the hatch and continued down through the bulkheads in an embrasure covered with a grate. Above the hatch, they were exposed for about a meter, and they’d make a perfect handhold. There was a patch of shadow there cast by the arcs on either side, just about the right size for a Yak.
Knowing that was probably where he was didn’t help, try as I might I couldn’t scan him up, he was as invisible as could be.
Gene had the same idea I had. He was floating slowly upwards, watching his screen intently.
“Maybe I should go get a bag of flour, Gene”, the captain laughed. “That’d show these kids. That would be the perfect low-technology solution to a high-technology problem.”
“That’s not a bad idea, skipper… I am coming up empty here, other than some stray RF leakage from these conduits, there’s nothing else here.
“They are never going to find us, Jane”, Yak said clearly.
“That’s what you think, Yak. I know right where you are.” I said confidently.
“You do?” he said softly, right behind me.
*****
“They’re both up by the crane, Dak.”
I hauled both eyebrows up out of the way so I could get a good squint, but it didn’t help. I couldn’t see anything up there. “How do you know, Gene?” I replied after a moment.
“Sonar... as long as they keep flapping their jaws, they’re plotted pretty well in here. It helps that I have some pretty accurate specs for the Archaea, but I use this all the time to chase down squeaks and rattles.
“So which one is Squeak, and which is Rattle?” I wondered with a smile.
“Shorty is both, sir”, Yak replied behind me.
I spun around right as he turned off mimetics, and got an eyeful of the full effect, in reverse. It was like watching water get cloudy, as the shape of the suit slid into being.
“The hell I am”, she replied, phasing into existence right behind him. “I tracked you by your stench, Yak. If I am squeaky and rattle, you are stinky and dumb!”
“I am a little stinky… Janis, these are pretty hot after a while.”
“I’m not uncomfortable”, Shorty added.
“Yak, if you are not comfortable, the suit should adjust automatically.”
“Hmm…” he mused out loud. “What triggers it to adjust?”
“Your comfort”, she replied sweetly.
“I guess I am pretty good at putting that sort of thing on hold, Janis” he replied. “Now that I make a point of feeling uncomfortable, I am feeling it cool down. That’s really amazing, Janis.”
“Thank you Yak, I am very pleased that you like it. The interface was very challenging to develop; your neurology is highly complex, even for me.”
“Now wait a minute”, Gene said, scanning closely down the side of Yak’s suit. “These suits are hooked into their nervous system?”
I was having a little bit of a har
d time believing that myself. This sort of thing is done pretty frequently for amputations that can’t be vat-grown; or in the case of implants – but as I understood the technology, it was limited to pretty basic motor skills. They could make an artificial limb flex when the muscles in the stump flexed, but… this was making machinery move with feelings, on a more mental level.
“Gene, the interface controls motion, reactions, and the various implementations of the suit functions. As Jane and Yak become more familiar with this, the functionality of these suits should improve.”
“It’s already pretty awesome, Gene”, Shorty added from above us. I couldn’t help but be impressed at the lithe way the suits moved, watching her transition through a hip stall and rotation, to latch a grabber along the crane arm.
“So when you think about something, the suit does it?” I asked, incredulously.
“Yes, sir”, Yak replied. “Well, pretty much. I can’t think about beer. Well, I can – and am – but the suit isn’t magically making beer. At least I don’t think it is…” he trailed off hopefully.
“It’s like this, Captain”, Shorty said, while a garish range of colors started cycling across her suit. “When I don’t want to be seen…” her suit suddenly faded into nothingness.
“That’s unreal”, Gene said, squinting through a scowl. “That’s beyond mimetic. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Gene, I have nano-engineered the mimetic coating so that it functions similarly to chromatophore cells.”
“Hmm…” he replied thoughtfully. “What’s a chromatophore?”
Heck, even I knew that one. “Gene, those are the types of cells that an octopus uses to change their skin color.” I winked.
“How the hell do you know that?” he said with a puzzled look.
“I’m the Captain, Gene. I know things.”
“The Captain is right, as always”, Janis added. After a polite pause for my victory dance, she continued, “The octopus has a number of different cells that support color change, and I have leveraged the same capability in the nanite assemblies of the mimetic layer. Unlike an octopus, however, my nanites are able to emit all frequencies of the electro-magnetic spectrum up to ten-to-the-seventeenth hertz.”