Dark Space Universe (Book 2): The Enemy Within

by Jasper T. Scott

  Abaddon drained his drink and walked up to the glass railing running around his rooftop terrace. The tropical blues and verdant greens of Summerside sprawled before him. Quaint little villages and towns pricked holes in the lengthening shadows as people turned on their lights. Unbeknown to them, all of this was now a part of the Farosien Empire and little more than a fresh mat for Abaddon to wipe his feet on.

  He smirked and tossed his empty cocktail glass over the railing. He watched it tumble to the ground, wondering absently if it might hit some blithe pedestrian on the head and temporarily end their meaningless existence. If it did, they might tie some saliva-coated fragment of the glass to him and bring him up on charges for manslaughter. Of course, with Judge Cleever in his pocket, it would be all too easy to have those charges overturned.

  If these humans only knew what their ruler was thinking... Abaddon supposed they might call him evil, but that was naive. One day humanity would have to grow up and learn what he had learned. They would uncover the great lie of Etherus and finally know the truth: there was no such thing as good and evil.

  Abaddon smiled. Someday they will learn the truth... and the truth shall set them free.

  * * *

  The Specter

  Lucien stood on the bridge of the Specter, gazing down on the brown fields and wrinkled black mountains of Mokar. Green-blue rivers snaked down from the mountains through dark brown canyons to what looked like an ocean. Bright blue and red growths of who-knew-what blotted and hedged the brown fields, making the entire planet look diseased with some kind of alien fungus.

  Lucien’s brow was furrowed all the way up to his shaven scalp. “Is the whole planet like this?”

  Katawa’s head turned. “I do not know. I have not been here before.”

  “Right,” Lucien said.

  “I can’t wait to get down there,” Addy put in.

  “I don’t know...” Garek said. “The Mokari are basically sentient birds of prey, right?”

  “Right,” Lucien said.

  “So what’s to stop them from thinking we’re their prey?”

  “They know the Faros are their masters,” Katawa replied. “They do not like the Faros, but they have a healthy respect for them.”

  “Have you met the Mokari before?” Garek asked.

  “Oh yes. They serve as private security and soldiers all over the Farosien Empire. The ones I have met are aggressive and forbidding, but they do as they are told. I am sure we won’t have any problems.”

  “Still,” Garek said. “If they’re the Faros’ slaves, what makes you think we’re going to get anywhere with them? They might feign ignorance when we ask them about the lost fleet.”

  “We must convince them to speak with us,” Katawa replied.

  Brak hissed. “They will speak with me. I do not appear as one of the blue ones, and I am a hunter like them.”

  “I’m starting to think you’ve got a point there, buddy,” Lucien replied. He turned and patted Katawa on one of his bony gray shoulders. “Take us down, K-man.”

  “K-man?” Katawa asked, as he broke orbit and began their descent toward the planet’s surface.

  “It’s a nickname,” Lucien explained.

  “A pejorative? Did I do something to offend you?”

  Lucien favored the little alien with a sympathetic frown. Katawa had spent so much of his life as a slave to the Faros, he was probably used to being belittled and insulted. “No, a nickname is something humans use as a way of establishing camaraderie and familiarity with one another.”

  “Oh, I see,” Katawa replied, blinking huge black eyes at him. “In that case, I will have to come up with a name for you.”

  “Sure,” Lucien replied. “I can give you a few suggestions.”

  “Such as?”

  “How about Mr. Magnificent. Mr. M. for short.”

  “Okay, Mr. M, I will call you this,” Katawa replied.

  Lucien smiled.

  “Hold on a second—” Addy said. “—he doesn’t get to pick his own nickname, especially not after he picked all of ours. He called me Triple S. One of those S’s stands for sexy, and since he’s my superior officer, it’s a blatant case of sexual harassment. If he weren’t so damn sexy himself, I might have pressed charges.”

  “I did not know this,” Katawa replied. “I will call you one who harasses his mates.”

  Lucien’s nose wrinkled. “That’s a mouthful.”

  “Forget the nicknames,” Garek said. “We have bigger issues to discuss—like what kind of atmosphere Mokar has, whether or not we’ll be using exosuits, and what exploring with a limited supply of air will mean for our goals on the surface.”

  Lucien nodded soberly. “True. Katawa, does Mokar have a safe and breathable atmosphere, or will we need to use our exosuits?”

  “No suits. The Mokari will expect the Faros to be able to walk around freely on their world, and they do not trust people who wear false skins.”

  Garek snorted. “That’s ironic, considering we’re actually wearing holoskins.”

  “They will be unable to detect the holograms,” Katawa replied. “The holoskin masks your scent and simulated that of a Faro. It will convince them.”

  “That’s what that stink is?” Garek demanded.

  “I don’t smell anything...” Lucien replied. He walked over to Garek and sniffed the air around him—only to pull back sharply. “Never mind.” Garek stunk of a sweet odor that reminded him vaguely of some of the medical herbs he’d smoked back in school.

  Lucien sniffed himself, but didn’t detect the same smell. “I can’t smell myself,” he said.

  “Mated Faros do not give off the odor. It is meant to attract a mate. Faro females find the scent irresistible.”

  “Great,” Garek said. “So I’m going to be fighting off bald blue witches with a stick wherever I go,”

  “Faro females are not magical,” Katawa objected, “but they will appreciate your concept of carnal discipline.”

  “No sticks, then. Got it,” Garek muttered.

  Addy whispered in his ear, “Maybe you could try that.”

  Lucien felt his cheeks warm, and cleared his throat, “Back to the issue of Mokar’s atmosphere. If we’re not expected to use suits, the air must be breathable and safe.”

  “It is breathable, yes, but it may be dangerous to humans,” Katawa said. “I will perform a scan of the atmosphere and develop the necessary inoculations and treatments for you with the fabricator in the med bay,” Katawa replied.

  “Just like that? Won’t it take too long?” Addy asked.

  “A few minutes. No more.”

  “That fast?”

  “Faro technology is far more advanced than what you are used to,” Katawa replied.

  Lucien marveled at that. Back in the Etherian Empire Paragon medics and bio-engineers took weeks to come up with treatments to allow human colonists to live on new worlds without pressure suits, and there were usually hundreds of them working together in each new colony.

  “Amazing...” he said, shaking his head. “What about gravity? How’s it compare to what you’ve set on the Specter?”

  The ship’s gravity felt lighter than human standard, but not uncomfortably so.

  “Sensors report Mokar’s gravity to be one point two times standard,” Katawa replied.

  “You mean your standard, which I’m assuming is what you’ve set the ship’s gravity to simulate?” Lucien asked.

  “Correct.”

  “So Mokar’s gravity is probably just a little less than our standard gravity,” Garek concluded.

  Lucien nodded. That helped to explain why they wouldn’t need exosuits. Close to standard gravity was a necessity for humans, because a planet’s gravity also determined how thick the atmosphere was. If the gravity were much less than standard, the air would be too thin to breathe.

  They rode the rest of the way down to Mokar in silence, watching as wisps of pinkish clouds swept up, and a peach-colored haze of atmosphere clouded
their view. A fiery glow wreathed the Specter’s viewports as friction between the air and their hull lit the planet’s atmosphere on fire.

  As their speed diminished, that fire subsided, and finer details of the surface appeared—the most notable of which were the swarms of black specks circling the brown plains below.

  Mokari? Lucien wondered.

  Katawa leveled out, and they saw a range of obsidian-black mountains soaring to one side. The jagged spires and cliffs were wreathed in pink clouds against a salmon sky. A bright red sun simmered above the horizon, to one side of those mountains, while its twin hung directly overhead as a dim, hazy orange ball of light. The separation of those suns likely meant that night would never truly fall on Mokar since shadows cast by one sun would be illuminated (at least partly) by the other.

  Katawa took them up to a sheer black cliff that must have plunged at least a kilometer straight down. A bright green river roared over that cliff to a darker emerald pool below. The pool was surrounded by some kind of blue and red vegetation.

  “Where are we going to land?” Lucien asked.

  Katawa flew on toward the cliff and raced over the top of the shimmering green waterfall. A broad, flat plateau opened up before them, and both banks of the river were speckled with strange brown mounds. Each mound varied significantly in size and shape from the next.

  Katawa slowed the ship and hovered down for a landing. As he did so, a pair of giant black shadows passed over them and swooped down to land beside one of the brown mounds. Those had to be the Mokari. They became mere specks beside the mound where they’d landed, and yet their shadows had been big enough that Lucien thought the Mokari had to be at least as large as humans.

  “This must be a Mokari village,” Addy said.

  Lucien watched as more black specks picked their way along the ground from mound to mound, while others took flight, and still others landed in a constant bustle of activity. He nodded slowly. The mounds appeared to be made of mud and grass, and their size relative to that of the Mokari suggested that each of them was a nest. The larger mounds were likely larger nests for bigger families.

  Katawa landed the Specter among the Mokari nests, some of which towered three and four stories high. Lucien marveled at how much work it must have taken for the Mokari to fly more than a kilometer up from the plains below, carrying that much mud and grass. They obviously didn’t have things like hover trucks to make the job easier.

  “It is time to prepare you for the surface,” Katawa said. “Please follow me to the med bay.”

  Once they arrived there, Katawa took blood samples from each of them while they sat waiting on rusty metal examination tables that had probably been gleaming silver when they were new. They’d probably also come with mattresses, Lucien reflected as he tried to shift his weight in some way that didn’t result in a stab of pain from his backside.

  “Interesting...” Katawa said.

  “What?” Lucien asked.

  “Your biology. It is extremely flawed... almost intentionally so. It is a credit to your species that you have done so well in spite of your shortcomings.”

  “Thanks,” Lucien replied dryly.

  Within just a few minutes, Katawa announced that he had finished testing their blood samples against air samples collected by intake vents in the ship’s hull. His analysis revealed over three hundred potential vulnerabilities. Most of those were threats from alien microbes and viruses, and that was probably just the tip of the iceberg.

  “What about water-borne microbes?” Lucien asked. “Or food-borne?”

  “I have found an easy way to immunize you against any biological hazards on Mokar—as well as any other alien planet you travel to in the future.”

  “And that is?” Addy asked.

  “A one-time injection of modified white blood cells from your own blood. Unlike your original cells, the engineered ones will be capable of reproducing on their own, and they will quickly populate your bodies to provide a second layer of defense against any biological threats you might encounter. In approximately forty-eight hours, you will never get sick again,” Katawa announced. He withdrew four vials from the fabricator and slotted them into syringes and hypodermic needles. Then he walked up to Garek with one of the needles.

  “You sure this is safe?” Garek asked as he held out his arm to receive the injection.

  “Oh yes.”

  “What happens if we get infected before forty-eight hours?” Lucien asked.

  “You may develop a few unpleasant symptoms,” Katawa replied. “To avoid this, I suggest you don’t drink the water, or eat any of the food.”

  Garek snorted. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

  “Why don’t we just wait until we’re immunized to leave the ship?” Lucien asked as he received his inoculation.

  “The Mokari are not a patient species,” Katawa replied as he moved on to give Addy her injection. “By now they will have our ship surrounded. If we keep them waiting, they may decide to push us off the cliff.”

  “They can do that?” Lucien asked.

  “They are very strong, yes,” Katawa said as he walked over to Brak and lifted the Gor’s shadow robes to give him an injection in his thigh.

  When Katawa was done, he went back to the fabricator and produced antihistamine tablets for them. He gave each of them a tablet, except for Brak, who apparently didn’t need one. Gors were direct evolutionary descendants of Etherians who’d been stranded in the ruins of their galaxy after the Great War, so their bodies were much hardier than humans, whose Etherian DNA had been diluted with a local species of primates from ancient Earth.

  “Take the pills now,” Katawa said, and pointed to a sink.

  Lucien and Addy both jumped down from their examination table to get some water, while Garek dry-swallowed his pill.

  “What is the concentration of different elements in the atmosphere?” Lucien asked, as he filled a cup with water and took his pill.

  “The air is breathable, but richer in carbon dioxide than you or I are used to,” Katawa replied.

  Lucien nodded along with that. Most alien species were carbon-based, and as a result, their body chemistries required both water and oxygen to function, so almost all of them had evolved on worlds with both readily available.

  Despite that encouraging fact, different planets had different concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide in their air, not to mention different levels of toxicity in the water. The water problem was easy to solve—bring their own supply from the Specter, but the air was more complicated. Paragons were all trained to recognize the symptoms of respiratory acidosis, which was the most common malady caused by exposure to ‘breathable’ alien atmospheres.

  Katawa walked over to a cold storage bin and withdrew five silver flasks with breather masks attached, one for each of them, including himself. He made a few adjustments to the flasks via holographic control panels, and then passed them out, keeping one for himself.

  “We’re supposed to wear these the whole time?” Addy asked, trying to figure out how to secure the mask, and accommodate the flask without its weight ripping the mask off her face.

  “No.” Katawa’s voice was muffled by his mask as he put it on. “You must inhale the contents. It will help your lungs to process the air and give you the appropriate concentration of gasses for your bodies,” Katawa replied.

  Lucien watched as Katawa depressed a silver button on the back of his flask and took a deep breath. The alien held his breath for a moment, then removed the flask and exhaled.

  They each mimicked Katawa, emptying their flasks.

  “How does it work?” Lucien asked while Katawa collected the empty flasks.

  “The particles will assemble a synthetic lung inside of your airways to filter the air.”

  “You mean a machine?” Garek asked.

  “A living machine,” Katawa corrected.

  “How’s it going to power itself?”

  “It is highly adaptive,” Katawa replied. “
The lung will feed off the glucose in your blood. It may make you hungrier than usual, but otherwise you shouldn’t notice that you have a new organ inside your bodies.”

  “It’s alive?” Addy asked. She looked like she was about to be sick.

  “It is not in any way autonomous or harmful. Do not be alarmed,” Katawa replied.

  Lucien nodded, quietly amazed by the Faros’ mastery of biotechnology. “Now what?”

  “Now, we go to meet the Mokari before we anger them any further.”

  They followed Katawa to the ship’s rear airlock. Before cycling the airlock, Katawa retrieved a shadow robe like Brak’s from a locker and pulled it over his head. The garment automatically shrank and adhered to his body until he became a shapeless shadow like Brak. Not even Katawa’s giant black eyes were visible through the garment, but Lucien assumed he must be able to see and breathe somehow. Brak had been wearing one of those robes ever since boarding the ship, and he hadn’t been stumbling all over because of it.

  Katawa began passing out translator bands, and Lucien realized he and Addy had left theirs in their quarters.

  “It does not matter. Use these for now,” Katawa said, and handed two of the bands to each of them.

  “Why two?” Addy asked.

  “So you can give the spares to the Mokari when you need to speak with them.”

  Lucien nodded and slipped one of the bands behind his head, above his ears. He put the other in one of the inner pockets of his robes.

  Katawa opened the airlock and ushered them inside. The door irised shut behind them.

  “Shouldn’t we bring weapons?” Garek asked.

  “Faros do not need weapons when dealing with previously-subjugated populations,” Katawa replied. “Their most effective weapon is fear, and it is far deadlier than any sword. Besides, I was unable to procure Farosien weapons for this trip.”

  “Great,” Garek muttered.

  The airlock cycled quickly, and Katawa explained that the Faros didn’t bother with decontamination procedures.

  Lucien was horrified. Maybe they didn’t care if they infected indigenous populations with deadly diseases, or maybe they weren’t carriers of such pathogens. Still, that didn’t mean they couldn’t transfer them from the worlds they visited, and there was plenty of ecological damage they could do by allowing biological contaminants to travel on their ships from one world to another. It was yet another example of the Faros’ careless disregard for all species besides their own.