Metamorph: The Outbounder Chronicles

by Chris Reher

  Laryn grinned. “Does Ryle know we’re having this conversation?”

  “No.”

  “So why are we having it. I’m a Pendra agent.”

  “Are you sure?” Jex said. Before she found a reply to that, he continued. “The Nefer has docked to the laser array. Nolan will exit to couple the ship to its tow gate.”

  “We’ll continue this little chat later, Jex,” Laryn promised, or perhaps threatened. She flattened her hand onto the access panel, even as she patted her pocket for Ryle’s lockpicking tape, unsure if the lockdown would keep her out of the secure area.

  It didn’t. She heard the hiss and clack of the airlock and then the door swished aside. The small vestibule was empty and she crossed it to peer into the corridor beyond. “Tell Ryle I’m in.”

  She saw no one in either direction although a red caution strip ran along the length of the hall. Here, too, the sound of the ventilation system had ceased but she heard voices to her left, in the clinic. They were not happy voices and she turned away from them to jog to the Cog lab entrance.

  “Tom?” she called when she entered the facility. “Doctor Calek? Is anybody here?”

  After a moment, a woman peered around a corner, looking frightened and surprised. One of the doctors, Laryn thought, although not one she had worked with before today. She seemed upset.

  “Is Tom here?” she asked, aware that she probably looked frightful in her disheveled outfit soaked at knees and elbows, ruffled hair and oversize jacket. “I need his help.”

  Doctor Calek stepped around the woman. “Laryn, how did you get down here? Have you been here all this time?”

  “No. I got through the tube. Come with me.” She strode past him to one of the learning labs, not waiting to see if he kept up.

  “What? Why? What’s going on?”

  “This isn’t a drill,” she said. “The Kalons are trying to take the station. They’ve already shut down ventilation. Trying to suffocate us, I guess.” She lowered her voice as she half-turned to him. “I need to access the system.”

  He followed her into the lab where she dropped her air supply pack and jacket. “CogSys? How’s this going to help anything? Why are they taking the station?”

  She draped Ryle’s jacket over the end of the bench, making sure to spread the back panel for better reception. “There’s no time, Tom. Fire this thing up. I need the files on the photonic transporter, the current position of the inbound fleet, and the schematics for the life support system.”

  “What? I don’t have access to that!” His eyes widened when he saw the gun on her belt.

  “Let me worry about that.” She gestured at his control console. “Come on. Get me in there.”

  He blinked nervously but turned to his input panels. “I don’t… um…” he continued to mutter to himself as she reclined on the sleeper and settled her head into the infuser. “This is very irregular.”

  “Yeah.” She tapped her com unit. “Are you ready?”

  “I am, Laryn,” Jex replied.

  “Huh?” Tom said. “Who are you talking to?”

  “One of the admins on the upper deck,” she lied, surprised at how easily that came to her. “He’s locked up but he’s going to get us access.”

  “Oh,” he said. “All right.”

  As before, the lab’s ANN subsystem recognized her by the neural appliance. Just as another system, in some other corner of this hive of a station, had recognized a metamorph’s altered brain and responded, unthinking and uncaring. She breathed deeply, willing herself to relax. “I’m in,” she said.

  “A moment, please,” Jex said.

  She waited. Whatever he was doing took place unheard and unnoticed by her brain. Likely, he was transmitting something to her appliance and from there to CogSys.

  The hypnotic display before her activated to lull her into the state of mind needed for the memory transfer. The incoming information, coded into the stimuli needed for her to form her own memories, flooded her mind and she closed her eyes. It began with the files for the photonic transport, easily absorbed, and then she learned about the station’s complex network that kept the air moving and the gravity stable. She realized that Jex had made his way past the initial layers of security protocols and into the station’s most sensitive data storage, tied directly to CogSys. She wondered, dimly, if he would help himself to more of the classified information there to add to his already illegal store of secrets.

  Drifting, she pondered the fact that she currently violated Pendra’s strictest regulations. And she needed more than raw information. She was about to direct a JX.6 to breech the tightly fettered administrative network that operated the station. Of what was he capable once released? And how much did she trust Ryle? Did he still need the agent who now knew far too much about the Nefer’s AI? The sudden realization that Jex had the means to utterly annihilate her brain made her gasp.

  She raised her hand to signal Tom, perhaps to stop this insane attempt to regain any sort of control of the station.

  That’s when the lights went out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ryle hovered on the bridge, frowning at the errant laser platter displayed on the viewscreen as Jex edged the Nefer closer. Gradually, the ship settled over the docking port belly-first, now perpendicular to the platform that supported the array.

  “Report conditions, Jex,” he said, steadying himself with one hand on the back of his chair. They had cut the Nefer’s gravity to avoid further tug on the platter which did not have a gravity rod assemblage. It existed only to fire its photon lasers into the incoming fleet’s sails to slow the ships and allow them to approach the station under their own power.

  Without the guidance system tying it to the station, its single targeting beam pointed visible light out into space, hitting things they may never learn about. Briefly, he wondered if some remote civilization might some day notice the beam and spend the next hundred years speculating over its purpose and origin.

  He looked up at another screen showing the entire platter including the long tethers collecting solar energy for the array’s tremendous output. They still functioned but no doubt haphazardly as the platform spun lazily in space. Was there even enough energy to slow the inbound?

  “Other than the inactive receiver, the station is fully functional,” Jex said. “The lasers will begin to fire in three kilo-seconds.”

  Ryle felt the gentle nudge when the Nefer made contact with the platform lock. “Start towing it back to the vicinity of where it’s supposed to be right now.” He pushed himself from the chair and floated to the door of the bridge. He passed Toji who sat strapped into his chair, wringing his hands. “You can stay on the bridge,” he said. “And try to relax. This isn’t your fault.”

  Toji tore his gaze from the screen. “If only we had gone to your people with our suspicions,” he said. “We could have…” he gestured. “I wish I could help now.”

  “You already did,” Ryle said. He put a hand on Toji’s shoulder, both as a friendly touch and to propel himself out of the door. “Jex, how’s Laryn doing?”

  “We have accessed CogSys,” Jex reported. “I am looking for the files for the platform.”

  “Hail Azah.”

  After a moment, they heard Azah’s breathless voice. “We’re in the lower engineering hold. The access to the life support system is locked. And I mean the control room doors are, not just the programs. We cleared out four Kalons. Found three more techs. Dead. Father is safe, by the way.”

  “Can you make your way to the Cog labs? The conduit is accessible, more or less. I’m worried about Laryn. The guard she took with her didn’t make it.”

  “She is safe for now,” Jex said.

  “I’ll try,” Azah said and closed their com link.

  Ryle floated into the exit chamber where Nolan waited.

  “Ready, boss?”

  Ryle nodded and took a gun from him. They had both dressed in EV suits although Jex had assured them that pressure and ai
r on the platter were acceptable. Leaving the hood dangling from his shoulder, he hefted a small oxygen supply onto his back and signaled Jex to open the Nefer’s hatch.

  “She’s a big girl,” Nolan said.

  Ryle had been about to shove himself through the portal. “Huh?” he said, startled.

  “Laryn,” Nolan said. “She can handle herself. We all saw that.”

  “I know she can,” Ryle said dismissively. He didn’t look at Nolan.

  “Just thought I’d mention it,” Nolan said. “In case you were worried, I mean.”

  “I’m not worried!” Ryle said and pushed off, into the platter’s entry lock. But he did worry, which struck him as peculiar. He never worried about his wardens – they weren’t his problem – and lost no sleep over Azah’s or Nolan’s ability to take care of themselves. It hadn’t taken him long to discover the iron core under Laryn’s layers of perfumed finery, either. No matter how pampered by Pendra, she was every bit as independent and resourceful as Azah. And yet, she hovered in the back of his mind like something precious he had forgotten to secure for launch.

  “Of course you’re not,” Nolan said, tapping at a control panel on the wall.

  The door ahead of them opened and they floated through it, guns in hand. The circular space curved around a wide central column housing the transformers for the laser array. Nolan checked a data sheet attached to his bulky sleeve for a schematic of the platter. “Should be over there,” he said, pointing toward a curved and inactive console. The steady hum from the storage coils pressed into their ears but the station itself brooded in silence. “Why is it so dark in here? Not like they’ve got a shortage of power.”

  Ryle moved ahead to drift around the core, seeing no one hidden among the workstations and the small comforts that made the place livable for whoever was stationed here. He inspected a couple of sleeping bags, a food dispenser, an entertainment system. A narrow band of windows kept the claustrophobia at bay. The air quality here was better than in some areas of the station, he thought.

  “Shouldn’t someone be here to keep an eye on things?” Nolan said, hooking his legs around a rail designed to keep the operators at their station. “There’s less than an hour before this thing needs to light up. They should have an engineer up here.”

  Ryle looked up when a shadow moved between himself and the window. He recoiled before realizing he was not braced against anything and ended up flailing for a handhold. “They do,” he said, pulling himself back to where Nolan had powered up the workstation. “Or they did.”

  Nolan looked up, then past Ryle to see the body floating beneath the low ceiling. He turned to aim his weapon into the dim recesses of the control room.

  The rasping call of the metamorphs sounded as if below them and then a Kalon rose up from a serviceway in the floor. Its long arms reached for supports to thrust its legs up and forward, ramming both feet into Nolan’s chest. The engineer flew backwards to crash into a bank of storage units.

  Ryle aimed and shot at the Kalon, sure that the noise they had heard had emitted from more than one of the aliens. He spun in the air, over a bin of spare focusing lenses, still firing at the Kalon who sank back into the power storage. Ryle backed away, looking from one side of the central core to the other, waiting for another assailant. He did not wait long. The Kalon swung around the core, firing a conventional laser weapon. Something next to Ryle began to hiss and then pop and he hoped it wasn’t anything involving the pressure levels of the platter. The Kalon hissed something and lurched to the left when Nolan’s aim hit his thigh. Ryle, too, fired, until the metamorph hung motionless in the air.

  “Nolie!” Ryle heaved himself to where Nolan hung in the air, gasping for breath. “You okay?”

  Nolan nodded, coughing. “Bastard got me in the ribs.”

  “Anything broken? How’s the head?”

  “No idea. Ask me when I’m standing again. What the hell were they doing out here? They have no use for the array.”

  “None we know of. Who knows what they can do with it.” Ryle helped Nolan back to the workstation. “Jex!”

  “I’m sorry, Ryle. The Kalons must have been shielded by the interference around the inverters. I did not detect them during my scan.”

  Ryle peered down into the power storage modules, seeing only the body of the first Kalon drifting there. He shot it again, just to make sure it was dead. Or maybe in payment for Nolan’s bruises. “I think those round weapons they use are useless in zero G,” he said. “Let’s make a note of that.”

  Nolan held his arm across his midriff as he bent over the console. He traced a finger over the indicators that had come to life, nodding to himself. He looked up at the overhead reports. “The laser array is ready to engage. They’ve not damaged it.” With a few more taps, he added the program that deciphered the Kalon’s jamming signals. “Open for acquisition,” he said. “How’s the warden doing?”

  “Jex?” Ryle said “How are things coming with the guidance system?”

  “We have access,” Jex said. “There is further disturbance aboard the station. Power has been cut to several non-essential modules and there are no lights other than emergency backups.”

  Nolan frowned. “Why the hell would they bother with that?”

  “I am investigating. Laryn is ready to initialize the guidance system. It will send the precise coordinates to the platter and escort it into place.”

  “How far out are we?” Ryle said.

  “We are nearly at the intended coordinates.”

  “Good, I want to get back on the station.” Ryle watched Nolan bring the navigation system online and prepare for the signal from Pendra station.

  “It’s calibrating,” he said, sensing Ryle’s impatience. He hesitated before he spoke. “I need to stay here. This thing doesn’t run itself. I’ll have to re-calibrate once the Nefer releases the platter.”

  “Can you do this?”

  “I think so, if I can tap Jex for information if I need to. Just do me a favor and space those two, will you?” He tipped his chin toward the smoldering Kalon floating in the room. “Giving me the creeps.”

  They set to work, first zipping the dead engineer into one of the sleeping bags on the other side of the control space, and then dragging the weightless bodies of the Kalons into one of the other docking ports. The platter wobbled momentarily when the exit chamber depressurized and took the aliens outside with a glittering huff of air.

  Ryle pulled himself along a wall to the Nefer’s lock. He paused there to turn back to his engineer. Not just his engineer, but his friend for many years. Nolan’s face seemed pale in the dim light and he breathed in shallow gasps, probably because of a cracked rib or two. “I’ll be back for you,” he said. “With a proper station master. Don’t fall asleep on the job.”

  Nolan grinned at the reminder of the time when he had done just that. “That extra bed looks darn comfy,” he said.

  “Ryle,” Jex said. “We are being hailed by Captain Cay, aboard her outbounder.”

  Ryle nodded to Nolan and slid into the Nefer’s airlock. “Get her on screen.” He locked the hatch and dove toward the bridge. “Disengage the platter and head back to the station.”

  Toji still sat in his chair, rigid with anxiety, when Ryle entered. “I was worried. Your… your computer isn’t speaking to me. Where is Nolan?”

  “He’ll stay with the array.” Ryle tugged himself into his restraints. “Back to the station, Jex. And be nice to Toji.”

  “He calls me ‘computer’,” Jex said.

  “It’s what you are. Can we please all get along? And let’s have some gravity.” Ryle tapped his controls to open a com channel to another of Shelody’s outbounder vessels. “Jadie, what’s going on?”

  A woman appeared on one of the forward screens. Usually, the broad face half-hidden under a mop of blond hair had a saucy smile for the captain of the Nefer, but there was no hint of that now. “You want to see this, Ryle,” she said. “Colsan sent a feed of som
ething coming around the Well from Ophet. Awfully close trajectory if you ask me. Forwarding.”

  Ryle’s brows drew together when he saw the image of something so shapeless that at first it appeared to be a cloud of some sort. The video sharpened and zoomed onto the object but that didn’t make it any clearer, other than the fact that it was solid. And yet there was something about the mass that reminded him of other recent discoveries. The pale exterior gave no sign of being made of metal and the design itself seemed oddly organic.

  “That’s a Br’ll ship,” he said, more to Toji than to Jadie.

  “Huh? A what? That’s a ship?” Colsan cut into their transmission. “Looks like fucking garlic. That’s got Kalons on it?”

  “Yeah,” Ryle said. “Who else is out there now?”

  “One of Pendra’s cutters, and Griffin’s Persephone just got here. Are we taking this thing out? They’re too close to the Well to target and moving slow. Rumors say Kalons don’t have balls, but that pilot has a pair. We’ll have to let them get out here.”

  Ryle pondered the information on the screen. “Listen. They have some odd shield properties that Azah called slippery, whatever that meant. My JX is sending you maneuver specs to ram them. If you coordinate with the other two you should be able to bounce them past the horizon.”

  “Don’t joke me, Tanner.”

  “I’m not. Their shields are allergic to ours. The strategy worked for us earlier. Just follow the instructions.” He didn’t add the fact that the earlier ship had been considerably smaller. But, for all his loathsomeness, Colsan and his AI had pulled off trickier stunts and Ryle had faith in the man’s abilities. He was less sure of whoever was piloting the Pendra vessel trailing behind him.

  “There be nothing you can do that I can’t do better, Tanner,” Colsan scoffed.

  “I’m counting on it.” Ryle winked at Toji. “Jadie, stand by in case Colsan’s just showing off. Load everything you’ve got. Do not let them get near the station. Pendra’s shielding is about as solid as Shelody’s handshake.”

  “Nolan has reached the correct coordinates for the platter,” Jex reported. “He is waiting for acquisition.”