Changing of the Guard (A Galaxy Unknown - Book 11)

by Thomas DePrima

  "Is it morning for you, Commander? According to my internal chronometer it's quite late in the Denubbewa daily cycle. You haven't visited me since I was moved to this new— room."

  Taking a tiny recorder from her pocket, she activated it and then said, "I've been very busy so I've been unable to come before now."

  "Have you? I've had nothing to do. I'm beginning to feel very useless. If not for the monitor and the instructional vids, I think I would have gone crazy by now. For so many annuals I have wished for just a little peace and quiet. And now that I have it, I long to again hear the voices in my head. Any voices."

  "You can hear our electronic communications, can't you?"

  "That stopped soon after our last conversation. I thought you might have stopped it when you learned I could hear them."

  "We're still using our electronic communications. That's very strange. Do you suppose it has something to do with being isolated from the other cyborgs?"

  "I don't know. It's never happened before."

  "Could it be related to bodily requirements? When our species doesn't get the right nourishment, parts of our body begin to shut down. If the shortage persists long enough, we can die. Is there anything you need?"

  "Nothing, as long as I'm plugged in each night if I haven't been prepared for long-term storage."

  "Your brain is biological. It must require sustenance of some sort."

  "I suppose it gets all it needs while we're being recharged. I never thought about it before, but this mechanical body must produce whatever my brain requires from the power unit."

  "That's interesting. How long do the cyborg bodies last?"

  "As long as replacement parts are available, they seem to go on indefinitely."

  "But your biological brain must die at some point."

  "I've never observed any cyborg dying, other than during conflict."

  "That's interesting. You know, I'd love to hear about your home planet."

  "Would you? Then I shall tell you. It's been a very long time since I've talked about it, but I dream about it occasionally."

  "You dream?"

  "Of course. Don't you?"

  "Yes. But I thought you might have lost that ability when they took your brain from your biological body."

  "I retained all of my thoughts and memories, even when the Denubbewa were trying to erase them. I believe I've mentioned that all Elobians are taught how to enter a deep state of conscious withdrawal when they're very young. I guess it's what you call being in a trance. We become detached from everything around us and view everything as if it's happening to someone else. It enabled us to protect our memories from being overwritten."

  "I see. You were going to tell me about your world before I interrupted."

  "Yes. Let's see. Where should I start?"

  "Describe it to me."

  "I shall describe it as it was before the Denubbewa arrived. It's no longer beautiful, and I don't like thinking about it that way."

  "You told me that the Denubbewa invaded your world a millennium ago. Were you born before they destroyed the beauty of your world?"

  "Yes, I was."

  "How long does your species live?"

  "In our corporeal form, my people lived about two hundred of your annuals."

  "So your personal longevity is owed to the cyborg body?"

  "Yes. As I've said, I've never known a cyborg to die of natural causes."

  "And you would give up an incredibly long life to return to a biological body?"

  "I would give up an eternity in this form to live just one more annual as I was before the Denubbewa did this to me."

  "I see. So tell me how your world appeared before the Denubbewa arrived."

  Over the next two hours, Sywasock described his home planet in great detail. He talked about the house where he was raised, his parents, his siblings, and his other relatives. He also talked about family vacations to distant places. His love for his home world was evident from the wonderful images he painted verbally. Christa could envision the mountains, seas, fauna, and flora.

  "Your planet sounds marvelous, Sywasock," Christa said when he'd finished. "I wish I could visit it."

  "It's gone, Captain. My homeland lives on only in my mind and the minds of my countrymen. The planet is still there, but no one who knew it previously would ever recognize it. When I was transported up to a Denubbewa warship, I could see that my world had been reduced to enormous piles of dirt and rubble as the planet was pillaged for its natural resources. Neither I nor anyone else could do anything to stop it."

  "I feel very sad for you."

  "Thank you, Captain."

  "You must really hate the Denubbewa."

  "Yes and no."

  "No?"

  "Most of the Denubbewa are mindless automatons doing whatever they were ordered to do without ever knowing why they're doing it or even what they're doing in some cases while performing programmed tasks. It's difficult to hate other beings who are being controlled like that."

  "Yes. I see. Um, exactly how did you avoid doing the evil deeds you were ordered to do?"

  "I didn't. Not completely. I did my share of despicable things when to refuse meant death. And as much as I didn't want to live, neither did I want to die. That probably sounds unreasonable."

  "No, I think I understand."

  "All I have lived for is to escape from the Denubbewa with as many of my former countrymen as I could find and reestablish our species."

  "And how exactly do you intend to do that?"

  "Every Elobian with whom I could make contact is on the ship you discovered. We were trying to make it as far from here as possible. We know we'll probably never see a new homeland, but we believed we could reestablish our species in a biological form that could procreate and send them on their way to a distant galaxy."

  "And how do you intend to become biologically corporeal again so you can procreate?"

  "A number of the Elobians with me were once brilliant doctors, scientists, and engineers. I'm hoping that with a few cells removed from the brain of each Elobian, we can incubate new countrymen. We'll then teach them everything we know and everything we've learned while we've been prisoners of the Denubbewa."

  "You believe you can create a new Elobian from a few cells?"

  "We do. A body like ours is simply a collection of chemicals in the right proportions. With the medical equipment on the Denubbewa ship, we believe we can clone our race with enough diversity to avoid the problems of inbreeding."

  "Were you involved in any of the Denubbewa warfare?"

  "Yes."

  "You must have some horrible memories."

  "We do. We hope never to see the like of it again."

  "And you know how to use the medical equipment aboard the Denubbewa ship?"

  "I know how to repair it. Others know how to operate it."

  "Did you complete your education before the Denubbewa arrived on your planet?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "And you had begun your career?"

  "Yes."

  "What was your occupation?"

  "I taught advanced eugenics at an institute of higher education."

  "I suspected you were highly intelligent. What was your role as a Denubbewa slave?"

  "At first I was simply a repair drone working in the engineering section. Eventually, they came to believe I was trustworthy and, in time, I was advanced to senior repair technician and given all responsibility for the repair of drones that had been injured or that were malfunctioning. That's how I was able to make contact with so many Elobians. They were sent to me because they appeared to be malfunctioning, but the other repair technicians were unable to find any problem. I worked with them and taught them how to fool their supervisors. Over time, I established a kind of— resistance movement."

  "You already knew Amer before we brought you on board, didn't you?"

  "Uh— what makes you ask that?"

  "You picked it up much too quickly and accurately for
someone who had never heard it before."

  "I thought I had you fooled."

  "I'm not a drone supervisor. We're a bit harder to fool."

  "While I served as a senior repair technician over many annuals, I gained the trust of the supervising drone in engineering. When the Denubbewa first entered G.A. space, the ships began intercepting messages from transmissions between freight-haulers. I was given the messages and ordered to translate them. I had access to all materials related to the Amer and Uthlaran languages, so I've been studying your language diligently since then. I applied myself because I believed it might come in handy one day if my people ever got a chance to break away from the Denubbewa while we were still in G.A. space. So what now? Do you kill me for not being truthful?"

  "No. You'll only be harmed if you try to escape or if you harm someone aboard my ship. If your story's true, you're very valuable. And if it's true, we'll help you realize your dream of a new planet for your people and even help you create new biological bodies from Elobian brain cells. We might even be able to go one step further."

  "Further?"

  "I can't promise this, but what if, in exchange for full cooperation, we were able to put your brain into an Elobian body created from your own DNA?"

  "That's not possible."

  "No?"

  "No."

  "What if I was to tell you that I was not born but created by a machine to be a duplicate of my sister. It's not a secret. Everyone aboard this ship and in our part of the galaxy knows it."

  "You're a clone?"

  "Yes."

  "Grown from an egg produced from DNA? That wouldn't allow me to occupy the new body."

  "Mere clones are produced as newborns, with no memories of the host. I was reproduced exactly as you see me now, with all the education and memories my sister had when she was copied."

  "And that same technology can be used to put me into a manufactured biological body just like the one I had before the Denubbewa did this to me and my fellow Elobians?"

  "As I said, I cannot promise anything. I'm a senior military officer, not a xenobiologist. I was cloned from a healthy, intact original. You would have to be— assembled— from two separate biological components—your brain and a manufactured body. And once your new body was functioning properly, and you'd agreed that you were whole again, your present brain would be terminated. You see, we have very strict rules about cloning, so there can't be more than one of you, or anyone else."

  "But there's more than one of you. The original was not— terminated."

  "That's true. Seventy-nine duplicates were made before the process was halted. As a result of our creation, a new law was passed. It's now illegal to create duplicates, and even cloning is forbidden on many planets. But the seventy-nine who had already been made were allowed to live, as were the originals. I have a bit of pull with the senior military people who can make construction of a biological body happen, if it's possible with your species, but only one of you can live. And we can't reproduce an entire population of Elobians for you, as much as I wish we could. But to earn the new body, you would have to give up everything you know about the Denubbewa. And I do mean everything. Full cooperation and disclosure. Nothing held back. No falsehoods or half-truths."

  "You have it, Captain. Everything I know is yours."

  "How did the ship you were in get to the location where we discovered it?"

  "We flew it there. By the time we reached that point, the pilot hadn't had a recharge in days. We thought that since we couldn't be picked up on sensors, we were safe from discovery. We were wrong, obviously. Anyway, the pilot shut everything down and we prepared for a recharge. When I was unplugged and saw your soldiers standing over us, I expected to be destroyed on the spot, then and there. But instead of destroying me, they brought me to this ship. I began to believe that I might not be killed outright and that I might be able to make a deal for my freedom and that of my countrymen. So I began to play along."

  "You remember everything the Denubbewa taught you?"

  "I do. We all do."

  "Is there a self-destruct mechanism aboard your ship?"

  "Every ship has a self-destruct mechanism."

  "And your pilot knows how to disable it completely?"

  "I suppose so. I've never asked him."

  "I'll be blunt. You understand that we want all the secrets of the Denubbewa ship and everything else you know about the Denubbewa. That information will be worth the effort of trying to create a new body for you with your memories intact. At the very least, we can produce newborn clones of your species from you and each of your countrymen. Additionally, if you cooperate fully, I promise we'll find you a suitable unoccupied planet where you can build a new home that's protected by the G.A. Space Command or give you a ship you can use for your intergalactic journey."

  "And you have the authority to make such a deal?"

  "No, but my sister does."

  "The biological sister from whom you were cloned."

  "Yes."

  "Well, that makes sense. If you're going to clone someone, you certainly don't start at the bottom of the gene pool."

  "Is that a yes?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay. Once we get back to our base at Quesann, the experts will be in to question you. If you hold anything back or get cagey with details, all promises I've made will be null and void."

  "Quesann? In Region Two?"

  "Yes."

  "It will take many, many annuals to get there, Captain."

  "We're taking a shortcut through a wormhole."

  "The Denubbewa have determined that wormholes are a myth. There's no such thing."

  "That just goes to show that the Denubbewa don't know everything. We're actually going to surf several wormholes and glide into Quesann in thirty-one of our days."

  "What about my ship and countrymen?"

  "They're coming also. We're dragging what used to be your ship to Quesann. The ship has been confiscated as an enemy weapon of war and is now the property of Space Command."

  "How am I going to get to another galaxy if I don't have a ship?"

  "You'll be given a ship to complete your journey after our people are satisfied with your truthfulness and your information. But it won't be a Denubbewa warship. Perhaps it will be a small, single-hull freighter filled with whatever food and water you need for the journey. If you wish to go beyond our borders, we'll take you through our extensive labyrinth of wormholes to any place along the edge of our space that doesn't border the territory of another nation and leave you. We'll also give stasis beds to you and each of your biological countrymen that will suspend you just as you are while you cross the vast expanse of space between galaxies."

  "You will just let us go free?"

  "We are not conquerors. We are a free nation. Our military is only charged with protecting our people and preserving the peace. Where we have absorbed the territory of other nations, it was only done after they first attacked us and made it clear they would never stop attacking us unless we absorbed their territory and policed it as we did our own. We currently have common borders with six other nations and we will never attempt to conquer any of them unless they first attack us. All we want is to live in peace, but races like the Denubbewa envy what we have and want it for themselves. We will defend our territory to the last breath of the last military person, and if necessary, to the last breath of every civilian.

  "We've met the Denubbewa in battle a number of times. When the initial contact was made, we weren't expecting an attack. The Denubbewa ship attacked and destroyed our ship before our people understood that the Denubbewa have declared war on all other species in the galaxy. The same was true with our second contact. The Denubbewa ship was able to destroy our ship because we still didn't know we were at war and didn't take the proper safeguards. When two of our ships failed to report, we began to search for them. That's when we learned there was an invasion taking place. Since then, we haven't lost any more military vessels, and at
every encounter the Denubbewa ship, or ships, were completely destroyed. When we're finished, there won't be a single Denubbewa ship left in G.A. space."

  "The Denubbewa have learned how powerful you are and are using your own technology against you now. They have some, but they want it all because you're so powerful. No one has ever been able to seriously challenge them. You're more powerful, by a factor of ten, than any other force they've faced. They believe that once they conquer you, no one can ever stand in their way again. They will never quit trying to destroy you."

  "Wonderful."

  "You want them to keep attacking you?"

  "We welcome it. It saves us from having to track them down. When a ship or fleet comes at us, we destroy that ship or fleet and then lie in wait for the next attack group. The Denubbewa may have learned some of our secrets, but we have many more—many that no one outside our senior military circles even suspect."

  "Such as?"

  "I can't tell you. I really shouldn't even have mentioned our extensive network of wormholes. But a lot of non-military people already suspect they exist because they aren't able to understand how we can travel from one end of our vast territory to the other in just a couple of months."

  "But I thought travel through theoretical wormholes was supposed to be near instantaneous."

  "It is. But the entrances and exits are not always near one another. So we first jump into a wormhole and pop out the other side. Then we may have to travel for days or even weeks to get to the next wormhole entry point."

  "But surely your civilians would know about them also."

  "No, they don't. You see, you need to emit a special subspace beam to open a natural wormhole. We learned about it quite accidentally while testing our ordnance teleportation device."

  "The Denubbewa know about that one. They know it's the only way you could have destroyed so many motherships and warships when you'd never had a ship within billions of kilometers of those destroyed ships."

  "Yes, military secrets can only remain secret for so long. Once you start using your new equipment, the other side starts to develop a profile of the weapon. Then it's only a matter of time before they know enough to start developing their own. We know we can't keep the wormholes and the ordnance teleportation device secret forever, which is why the greatest minds in the G.A. continue to develop new weapons and search for other natural phenomena we can exploit."