Starflake (T'aafhal Legacy Book 3)

by Doug Hoffman

  “Do you hear anymore?”

  “No it's stopped.”

  Mizuki pondered for a second. “It stopped after you jumped back from the rim of the tank.”

  “You think...”

  She nodded. “Grasp the edge like before.”

  He walked gingerly to the edge of the tank and placed his hands lightly on the rim. “Nothing.”

  “Are your hands exactly like they were before?”

  “No.” He moved his hands to grasp the edge of the tank as he had done earlier. His hands made contact with the clear material lining the tank.

  “Set... Us... Free...”

  “Shit!”

  “Link me into the signal, Bobby.”

  He complied.

  “I am instructing my comm computer to transmit using the same modulation scheme at the same frequency. What should I say?”

  “Say 'hello'.”

  “Right.” He engaged the translator. “Hello?”

  “You are not Karf... what are you?”

  “We are humans, Homo sapiens from the planet Earth. Are you the creatures in the tank?”

  “We are the creature in the tank.”

  Switching off the transmission he spoke to his wife. “Did you get that?”

  “Yes, it clearly said 'the creature' in the tank. Perhaps it is some form of hive mind or shared consciousness like the aoi chō.”

  Bobby nodded and turned the translator back on. “You are a single entity?”

  “We are one and one with the ******”

  “That did not translate. You have many bodies, but share a single mind?”

  “We have no bodies.”

  “Then what are the creatures in the tank?”

  “*****”

  “That didn't translate either.”

  “We are not... gloam. We are the Tcist, we are one with this place.”

  “This place? You mean the space station? The Starflake?”

  “Yes, we are one with the... Starflake. We live on the gloam but are not one with them, they are not sentient.”

  “Bobby?”

  He muted the comm. “Yes?”

  “I think that the Tcist is the moss growing on the worms.”

  Main Party, Shopping Mall

  Dr. Johannes de Bruin stared up at his patient in exasperation. “Corporal Inuksuk, you will lay on your right side and allow me to examine you.”

  “I'm fine, Doctor, leave me alone,” the bear rumbled.

  “I will be the judge of that.” The former large animal veterinarian gritted his teeth. It was so much easier when they didn't talk, you just sedated them and got on with it.

  “No really, I'm OK. Ready to fight.”

  Taking a deep breath, Johan counted down from five. “If you do not comply with my instructions I will immobilize your suit, tranquilize you and have you hauled back to the ship. Do I make myself clear?”

  Inuksuk growled, a low wordless rumble, but slowly got down on all fours and then rolled onto his side. While all the Marines' suits were instrumented to detect the general health and condition of their wearers, it was not yet practical to include full medical diagnostic equipment. Johan accessed a hidden control panel on the back of the polar bear's suit, plugging in a thin fiber optic cable. With his left hand he placed a sensor pickup on the bear's armored side.

  The doctor's face took on a greenish tint as medical imaging data were projected on the inside of his clear helmet. After several minutes of twiddling with knobs on the interface, repositioning the sensor, and squinting at deep imaging displays, Johan finally spoke to his patient.

  “You are in luck, Corporal. It seems that you have added no new fractures to your already impressive collection of healed ones.” Putting away the hand held sensor, he removed the cable and sealed the access panel.

  “Does this mean I can go back to my squad?”

  “Yes, you are fit for duty. But to ensure you don't aggravate the bruising around your ribs I am going to stiffen part of your suit's impact reactive inner layer. This will form a temporary cast for your upper body. It should not prevent you from fighting using your weapons, but will serve to remind you not to try to tackle any aliens thirty times your body weight.”

  “How long will it be like this?” Inuksuk rolled to his feet, giving a slight grunt of pain in spite of himself.

  “It will return to normal in twelve hours. I've boosted your medical nanites and given you something for the pain. You should be back at 100% by then.”

  “Thanks, Doc,” the bear mumbled. “Can I go?”

  “Yes, no wait.” The medical man reached out and pulled a strand of something from one of the ammo feeds that connected Inuksuk's forearm mounted railguns to the magazines on his back. “There's a bit of luck, a strand of tissue from that gray behemoth that knocked you through the wall. Dr. Krenshaw asked for a sample but those pink cleaning things have already disposed of most of the mess you made.”

  “OK?”

  “Yes, I believe Lt. Taylor is having a meeting with the squad leaders over there.” The doctor pointed to a low raised section at the middle of the main plaza. The bear snorted and departed, walking stiffly on all fours.

  The plaza floor rose in three wide steps to an elevated round area ten meters wide, suitable for a bandstand or performance stage. On it Lt. Taylor was huddled with the Gunny, Sgt. Aurora and Cpl. Kwan. Inuksuk quietly joined them and sat on his haunches next to the Gunny.

  “Nice of you to join us, Corporal,” the Gunny said. “The Doc clear you for Duty?”

  “Yes, Gunny. I'm good to go.”

  The Gunny made a throat clearing sound and addressed JT. “Sorry for the interruption, Lieutenant, please continue.”

  “Right, well now that we are all here this is what we are going to do. Sgt. Aurora, you will take 2nd squad down the two elevators at the periphery of the plaza, down to the large open space beneath this spire. You will need to make sure intermediate levels on your way down are clear. We have recon drone data and the techs have sent a number of snakebots down to check it out but we don't want any surprises.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  “Gunny, you and 1st Squad will do the same using the freight elevator that the Karf used for their attack. From what the drones have told us the freight elevator goes deeper than the passenger elevators from the plaza. It ends in a bigger cavern like space inside the station hub.”

  “Does that mean we will be isolated from 2nd squad?”

  “Yes and no. The drones have found that the upper and lower cavern areas are connected by tunnel ramps. Once 2nd Squad has secured the upper level they are to proceed to the deeper space and make contact with 1st Squad. The respective ways down are about a half a klick apart. As far as we can tell, once you are in position we will have secured access to this spire.”

  “If we run into opposition?”

  “Kill it.”

  “And if we don't?”

  “We'll decide on what to do next depending on what the environment looks like down there, but according to our fuzzy friend the Karf have territory in a number of nearby minor spires.”

  Cpl. Kwan spoke for the first time. “And once again, we will be acting as cosmic pest control.”

  “Pest control seems to be a growth industry in this arm of the Galaxy, Kato.” JT smiled at the noncoms through his transparent helmet. “Any questions?”

  There were none.

  “OK, go brief your people and wait for the word.”

  Chapter 23

  SEALs, Karf Habitat

  The three SEALs worked their way down through the maze like interior of the Karf habitat, twice running into parties of armed aliens. These they dispatched as quickly and as quietly as they could. They were amazed at the lack of coordinated response to their presence, not that they minded.

  “The hostiles don't seem very organized,” Bud commented, as they exited another of the disorienting spiral stairways. “It's almost like they are just independent, roving bands of fighters.
”

  “Count your blessings, bro,” Phil replied.

  “Head right,” Rick ordered, consulting the diagram of the place. “This should be the level that the objective is on.”

  Phil took point, backed up by Bud with Rick covering the rear. Moving carefully along the curving hallway, Phil halted, motioning for the others to freeze in place.

  “Squad of hostiles,” Phil explained. He produced a small spherical object, about the size of a large marble—a spycam. With a gentile sweep of his arm he sent the spycam rolling toward the aliens. All three SEALs received video from the gyro stabilized camera within the spycam's transparent outer shell.

  “Looks like nine hostiles,” Rick observed. “Some holding plasma rifles, but most of them working on a doorway. Grenades on one.”

  The other two SEALs produced grenades, as did Rick.

  “Three, two, one.”

  All three threw their grenades down the curved hall and quickly jumped back for cover. On the spycam, which had come to rest unnoticed a couple of meters from the Karf, the grenades could be seen bouncing down the hallway and landing among the aliens. Several turned to see what caused the clatter, only to disappear in the following explosions.

  “Go! Go! Go!” Rick called.

  “Going left.”

  “Going right.”

  The Phil advanced around the curve to the left, Bud went right to the far side.

  “Clear!” shouted Bud.

  “Clear!” shouted Phil.

  Rick checked his six and then followed his men.

  “The grenades took them all out, Chief.”

  Phil knelt down to examine the wrecked equipment the Karf had been attempting to use on the door in front of them. “Looks like they were trying to cut their way in.”

  “Which means they were after something inside.” said Bud.

  “Or someone.”

  “You want to try and blow it, Chief?”

  “Don't know if the officers are inside or if they have cover. We need to be able to talk to them.”

  “This whole shit pile is one big Faraday cage. We need a hole we can stick a probe through.”

  “On it,” said Phil, extracting a tool from one of his suit pockets. “Thermal lance. Unless that door is made of unobtainium or some other weird shit I should be able to burn a hole through it.”

  “Do it.” Rick turned to cover the hallway in the direction they had come. Bud did the same for the other direction, leaving Phil in the middle to handle the door. Sparks flew as he went to work.

  Mizuki & Bobby

  Several muffled thuds intruded on the silence in the vault. Both humans looked immediately to the door. It seemed unchanged.

  “So let me get this right, you think this Tcist creature is the moss on the big flatworms' backs?” Bobby was usually the one with the far out ideas, the first to leap to a conclusion, but this time Mizuki had beaten him to it.

  “Hai, we have encountered intelligent plant life before and we have a creature with a distributed consciousness as a pet. This is not such a strange idea.”

  “OK, but what does it mean when it says it is 'one with' the Starflake?”

  “I have no idea. Perhaps we should ask it?”

  They looked at each other for a moment and then looked at the armada of moss covered flatworms in the tank. Their situation was both perilous and bizarre: their former captors were no-doubt still searching for them and they were locked in a vault having a conversation with alien moss. They looked back at each other and grinned. This was what they lived for and they would not have places with anyone in the galaxy.

  “Tcist, what do you mean when you say you are one with the Starflake?”

  A brief pause.

  “We are part of this station's being, its ecology. We have maintained it for as long as we can remember.”

  “And how long has that been?”

  “More than six thousands orbits.”

  “Around the local star?”

  “Yes.”

  Motioning him to switch off the translator, Mizuki said to Bobby, “That is around 1.3 million years.”

  “Well, at least its not the oldest thing we've stumbled across. I wonder how long our gray adversaries have been here.”

  “Ask it.”

  “Have you always worked for the Karf? How long have they been on the Starflake?”

  “We do not serve the vermin who infest the station. The Karf and all the others come and inhabit spaces for a time, then eventually leave or are exterminated by others. The Karf came just under fifty orbits ago.”

  “About ten thousand years,” Mizuki whispered to Bobby.

  “You say you are one with the station, that you maintain it. Why haven't you escaped from the Karf?”

  “We maintain the station itself, not this metal trash heap that the vermin constructed inside of it. All of the creatures that inhabit the Starflake construct living spaces within the crystalline structure that is the true station.”

  “You are saying that the true station is constructed out of the material covering its exterior? Where does the power to run this place come from, and the atmosphere?”

  “We provide atmosphere, water, and energy because it has always been so, but we have no control inside of the crude structures our tenants build for themselves.”

  “So there is more of you hidden elsewhere within the station?” Asked Mizuki, joining the conversation directly.

  “That is correct.”

  “And the portion we are talking to was kidnapped by the gray creatures, the Karf?”

  “Yes, they breached a chamber in the hub and physically removed the part of us you see here.”

  “Did that break your contact with the rest of, er, yourself?”

  Another pause.

  “Yes. Until they constructed this pool lined with material from the true station and connected it to the main structure we were isolated. It was as though part of our memory simply vanished.”

  Bobby switched the translator off. “Seems like the grays are fond of kidnapping. I can't imagine what it's like to have part of your brain go missing.”

  “I wonder how they survived. How long can they exist without being in contact with the rest of their collective consciousness?”

  “I think we need to ask. If you are thinking what I'm thinking, we are going to need to take them with us... somehow.”

  “Hai, we can't leave them here as prisoners.”

  Switching the translation circuit back on Bobby again addressed their strange new companion. “How long are you able to survive with part of you isolated from the rest of your consciousness? If we were to try and relocate this part of you how long can you survive without permanent damage?”

  “As long as the gloam survive we live. You would restore us physically to our greater being?”

  “If we can.”

  “Why?”

  “Where we come from we aren't fond of murderous kidnapping thugs. And since they kidnapped us as well, helping you escape just seems like poetic justice. All we have to do is figure out how to get you out of here.”

  “We will assist you any way we can.”

  Bobby shut off the translator so they could speak freely. “It seems to like the idea.”

  “Perhaps we should think more about how we are going to get out of here ourselves.”

  “Yeah. We only started with a hundred rounds apiece, I don't think that will be enough to blast our way out.” He checked his sidearm, exchanging its partially empty magazine for a full one from a pocket in his armor.

  Mizuki did the same, glancing back at the door before re-holstering her pistol. She froze gun in hand. “Bobby, look.”

  He looked at the door, the only way in or out of the vault. About two meters from the floor a small spot in the middle of the door started to glow red.

  SEALs, Outside the Vault

  The thermal lance melted steel and aluminum in the presence of pressurized oxygen to create a cutting jet with very high temp
eratures. The intense stream of burning metal produced at the working end could rapidly cut through thick materials including concrete and steel. After two minutes Phil paused.

  “You through?”

  “No. Don't know how thick it is. Have to change tubes.”

  After another thirty seconds the amount of blow-back diminished and Phil removed the lance. He peered through the two centimeter hole but could not see what was inside.

  “I'm through. Gotta give it a minute to cool down enough to stick a fiber optic probe through it.”

  The three waited in tense silence. After what seemed an eternity, Phil judged the door metal cool enough to not melt the probe he inserted into the hole. The fish-eye lens on the probe's tip provided the anxious SEALs a view of the vault's interior.

  “Bingo! Two humans in light armor—that has to be Ogawa and Danner.”

  From the probe's video feed the humans could be seen gesturing at the door. Phil withdrew the optical fiber and stuck a wire through the metal door—an antenna hooked to a repeater.

  “Ahoy the vault! Is that you Commander Danner?”

  “Phil? That you? Damn we're happy to hear you.”

  “Good to find you two alive and kicking,” Rick added. “Do you have a place you can take cover? We will try to blow the door without too much overkill.”

  “No, Chief, wait a minute,” Bobby replied. “Let's see if we can get the door to open from in here. We were the ones who locked it in the first place.”

  “Roger that, Sir. I need to tell the ship we found you.” As Phil stepped away from the vault door, Rick, still watching the hall for enemy movement, switched to the ship's channel.

  “Peggy Sue, Huey. We have located Daffy and Daisy. Both are OK. Extracting now.”

  CIC, Peggy Sue

  “I copy, Daffy and Daisy OK, and you are proceeding with the extraction. Keep us apprised.” The knot that had been twisting the Captain's gut unclenched. Thank God for that!

  “If they are about to exfiltrate the Karf habitat perhaps this is the time to send the Marines down into the station hub?”