Star Wolf (Shattered Galaxy)

by David G. Johnson

This drew a full on laugh from the jovial malmorph chief engineer. His mechanical glove hands continued working, but his gaze stayed focused on John. How, without the assistance of tactile senses, could Dub work without watching what he was doing? Could those glove hands actually transmit sensory data? It was a distraction from his purpose, but his analytical mind couldn’t help but toy with this enigma.

  “Tell you what, Doc,” Dub said, snapping John back to the moment. “I’ll grant permission to use me in your paper in exchange for a cut of the royalties when you publish it. It should be worth a laugh or two in a science rag somewhere.”

  John sighed as subtly as he dared, relieved that he had read Dub correctly. Given his own sardonic bent, maybe Dub was indeed his best shot at a friend around here.

  “I’ll give that some thought,” John replied. “Five percent tops though, since I’ll be doing all the work.”

  Dub laughed and glanced back down at the guts of the panel he was currently working on. The chief engineer frowned at something he saw there.

  “Speaking of work, Doc, how about you reach in that toolkit over there and hand me the portable voidspace thread calibrator. I knew I felt a shimmy that didn’t belong during that last jump. Danged kids have been tampering with my mix again. Every time we get a new engineering recruit, they fiddle with things, convinced their textbooks are to be followed like the word of God. Operations manual specs be spaced, I know how my bird flies best.”

  John scrunched his brow as he found the aforementioned box filled with an array of unfamiliar technical devices.

  “The portable whatsawhosit?”

  Dub shook his head and pointed with his chin.

  “That gray box that looks like an oversized communicator with an oscillator screen.”

  “Oh, why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” John quipped as he retrieved the device and placed it in Dub’s extended robotic glove hands.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  John found himself staring at Dub’s mechanical gloves. They perfectly mimicked the dexterous and delicate movements of human digits. It was like watching a living hand whose skin had been peeled away to leave only its bones, muscles and sinews.

  “Enjoying the show, Doc?” Dub quipped, snapping John out of his distracted trance.

  “I’m sorry, Dub. I’ve just never seen any tech like those glove hands before. Do they have tactile sensors?”

  “Eh, sort of,” Dub replied, raising one of the gloves away from the compartment he was working in and wiggling the robotic fingers. “I did put some biofeedback proximity sensors into the fingers, but couldn’t really do a full work-up. Had to keep things small and protected from external damage.”

  “Wow, that’s some seriously advanced stuff, at least tech level ten or eleven. Where did you get them?”

  Dub snorted and shook his head.

  “Hermit-worlders don’t have much tech-sense, huh?”

  “What do you mean?” John asked.

  “These are more like TL fourteen at least, and you haven’t seen anything like them before because they are one of a kind, or two of a kind I suppose since they’re a pair. I invented them.”

  John raised an eyebrow and bit back his instinct to call Dub out, wondering if the jocular chief engineer was razzing him again.

  “Really? That’s extraordinary,” was the response he finally settled on.

  “Don’t look so shocked, Doc. I’ve got a knack for toy making. Designing them wasn’t the problem. Building the things was the challenge. Malmorphsy made my actual hands way too large and cumbersome for most engineering work and definitely too awkward for building intricate mechanicals. I admit I had some help with the final assembly.”

  John’s face flushed red. He wanted to build trust with the chief engineer, but so far his no-holds-barred honesty hadn’t exactly endeared him to the rest of the crew. He had a feeling Dub was different, so just said what was on his mind.

  “I guess I never expected someone suffering from malmorphsy could accomplish something like this.”

  Dub sighed and looked up from his work long enough to frown in John’s direction.

  “Doc, you gotta stop using that phrase.”

  “What phrase?”

  “Suffering from malmorphsy. Look, I get it. A whole lot of malmorphs have it real bad, but if your wife spent her life researching malmorphsy, you ought to know that for most of us the condition gives and takes.”

  John scratched his head as he tried to recall the handful of live patients Elena had seen in their home after hours. Mostly she was a researcher and dealt with data only, but she did see a number of human malmorphs at her office on Tede. John had generally been too busy carousing and gambling to take much interest in her office work, but occasionally the situation required examinations in the evenings at their home. Unfortunately, in those early days when Elena was working with live patients, John was generally deep into his cups when he was home at all, so any details about individual patients were foggy at best.

  “To be honest, Dub, I never really dug deeply into Elena’s work. That was her thing. What do you mean when you say it gives and takes?”

  Dub finished calibrating whatever technical gizmo he had been working on. He closed the cover panel on the console and returned his tool to its box. He then released the mag-locks on an oversized, heavily reinforced chair in front of the control panel he had just repaired and glided it over next to John, taking a seat there and motioning for John to do likewise with another oversized chair at a neighboring engineering station. John obliged, noting how heavy these seats were even with the mag-locks disengaged. Given Dub’s size and weight, all the stations in engineering had been modified to accommodate him.

  “It’s like this,” Dub explained once John had sat down. “Malmorphs all have various degrees of physical deformities, some pretty severe. Truth be told, I’m pretty far down the normal end of the scale as far as that goes. I need these biomech gloves to do some parts of my job, but some malmorphs can’t function at all without major technological assistance. But the side effects the Daemi never anticipated when they made the original Hellfire bioweapon were the enhancements.”

  “Enhancements?” John said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yeah. Nobody has figured out all the determining factors yet. They seem to vary a lot by race and sometimes by individual. Fei tend to manifest greatly amplified psionic abilities at a cost of seriously debilitating physical impairments. Lubanians tend to gain enhanced physical abilities, mostly strength and stamina but often have impaired cognitive function. I’ve heard of Dractauri malmorphs that have lost almost all sense of pain, their bodies able to endure tremendous amounts of physical damage, but their lifespans are drastically shortened and their physical senses damaged.”

  “Dractauri?” John said shaking his head. “Sorry, Dub, you had me going for a minute, but I’m a history buff. Humaniti didn’t encounter the Dractauri refugees until almost seventy years after the end of the Demon War and the destruction of the Hellfire weapons.”

  “Well,” Dub said, his normally irrepressable grin fading for a moment, “here’s a little fact they don’t put in the history books. The psychotic Emperor Parvis, during his five-year reign of terror, came into possession of a cache of Hellfire weapons.”

  “That’s impossible,” John argued. “They were all destroyed during Operation Purge.”

  “Apparently crazy ran in his family. Parvis’s great-grandfather was in charge of one of the strike groups raiding Daemi production facilities and decided to seize a cache of the weapons rather than destroying them. During the Dractauri Confinement, Parvis had a number of them sent to the Tecfianed system in the Igses sector. That’s only a few parsecs from my homeworld. He used the Hellfire weapons as part of the torture of the Dractauri, to get them to reveal their advanced VS drive secrets and admit to being scouts for an invasion force preparing to go to war with Humaniti.”

  “That’s abominable!” John
replied.

  “That’s typical emperor Parvis, and these types of abuses were what ended the Parvis dynasty in five years and opened the door for the Halberans to rule from then until the Shattering.”

  John was aghast. How had such a thing happened without it becoming common knowledge?

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Most don’t. No-one ever seems to raise the question how we got Dractauri malmorphs. Most just assume the Daemi went beyond the borders of Humaniti and attacked them as well. I’m surprised though, if your wife had a malmorphsy research library, she surely would have come across Dractauri case studies.”

  “Elena’s work focused on humans for the most part.”

  “Ah, human malmorphs,” Dub said, his smile returning, “a subject near and dear to my heart. Humans often get enhanced cognitive abilities, becoming skill-based savants, but enduring a wide range of physical impairments in exchange.”

  “So you think that is the reason for your talent with building things?”

  “Pretty much. I actually hit the mutation jackpot. I’m physically functional and I got more than my fair share of enhanced strength too. I’ve got the muscle power of a trained and fit Lubanian. My size impairs my manual dexterity, which the gloves make up for, and I am not going to win any beauty contests anytime soon, but all in all I came out with a win, all things considered.”

  John stared in wonder at the huge mutated chief engineer. He would have to put in a lot of listening time to fully understand his new friend, but the past few minutes had given him more of an education on malmorphsy than his medical studies and life with Elena combined.

  “I guess I need to spend some time digging through Elena’s research,” John said. “I might have a considerable amount of misunderstanding that needs correction.”

  The change in Dub’s demeanor was palpable. His smile disappeared as his eyes widened.

  “So you have your wife’s data?”

  “Yes.”

  John was suddenly reminded of the reason for his visit to engineering. He pulled out the small pendant from around his neck, where he had hidden it beneath his shirt.

  “I have it right here,” John said, dangling the stylized datacube pendant like a pendulum before Dub’s eager gaze.

  “That necklace is your wife’s research?”

  “It’s a modified datacube. Elena had it designed it to look inconspicuous in a form she could keep with her as she went about her daily business. She would lock it up in our safe before we went to sleep. If Dawnstar hadn’t snatched us out of bed in the middle of the night, they’d have gotten this too.”

  “Lucky break, that,” Dub replied.

  John’s stomach tightened. He knew the engineering chief meant no offense, but to think anything about Elena’s abduction and death could be considered ‘lucky’ was absurd. Still, he seemed to be bonding with Dub, so he let the comment slide. No sense burning this newly built bridge over a slip of the tongue.

  “Yeah, I suppose,” John replied, trying hard to repress a frown. “Not sure they would have deduced what it was, but almost definitely it would have been destroyed or at least still been in their possession. So, do you think you could rig up something to read it?”

  “Sure, Doc,” Dub replied, pointing at a machine to John’s right. “Drop it in the scanner right there and push that blue button.”

  John saw a small attachment on the station from which he had liberated his chair. It looked similar to a medical sample analyzer. John placed the datacube into the fist-sized compartment and pushed the activation button. The machine whirred to life, emitting a web of yellow holographic lights that swept over the necklace. The lights blinked out after a few seconds, the device having completed its scan.

  “Okay, Doc, now I’ve got the specs on the cube. I should be able to put together a cradle that can dump the data in a few days. Will have to work on it in my spare time, though, unless the captain okays work time for it.”

  “No rush, Dub. I appreciated the help,” John answered, returning the pendant to its place around his neck and tucking it inside his shirt once again. “Captain says to keep knowledge that I have it on a need-to-know basis. Apparently there are a number of people with an unhealthy interest in this data.”

  “Gotcha, Doc,” Dub said with a wink. “My lips are sealed. Say, that modified cube pendant is a pretty nifty idea for keeping data close while disguising it.”

  “Yeah,” John laughed, “Voide and I recovered it from my home on Tede. Elena had a custom reader on our home data terminal, but I didn’t get a chance to download the data onto more conventional media before Voide burned my house down.”

  Dub laughed aloud and slapped his knee with his mechanical hand.

  “She burned down your house?”

  “Yeah, she did,” John said with a scowl.

  “Voide usually settles for a simple beat down or an occasional arrow to the knee to make her point. If she burned your house down, you must have really ticked her off.”

  John fought the urge to smile as he cocked his head to the side and cast a sideways glance at Dub.

  “Be honest with me, is it possible not to tick her off?”

  Dub chuckled and rubbed his chin with a mechanical hand before shaking his head.

  “Not that I’ve seen,” he concluded. “On edge is pretty much her default setting. She is good at what she does, though. Saved Cap’s bacon more than once.”

  Dub gently wiped a tear of laughter from the corner of his right eye with his mechanical appendage. John was once again drawn into fascination at how Dub had acclimated to this augmentation. As a doctor, John was familiar with mechanical prosthetics, but this was different. Dub’s actual hands were still attached and functional, albeit within the limits of their mutation. This was like adding an additional pair of limbs to a fully functioning body.

  “As fun as it is to reminisce about our psychotic security chief,” John remarked, “I am more interested in discussing your glove hands. The way they mimic human movement is astonishing.”

  Dub raised his appendages as if modeling them at a booth at a tech convention. His exaggerated poses, feining delicacy and grace, were comical given his uncomely physical appearance.

  “During the design phase,” Dub explained, ceasing his antics, “I used medical scans of human hands in operation to form the basis for my schematics. They tap into the nerves in my arm that normally would control my real hands. Electronically copying the signals to and from my brain allows me the same precise control you have over your hands. They are also braced and anchored to my arm bones so hold up under a great deal of stress without getting pulled off.”

  John noted how perfectly and dexterously the mechanical glove-hands mirrored genuine flesh-and-blood movements. Were they covered in a layer of artificial skin, they would be nearly indistinguishable from human hands.

  “So you just naturally adapted to their use?”

  John was startled as Dub let out a loud, sharp, “Hah!”

  “Not on your life, Doc,” Dub continued. “Took years to get used to these things. I had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer at first. After months of practice I finally mastered basic functionality. After that, I tweaked the interface for years before I got to the control I have over them today.”

  “What are they made of?”

  “Tempered indelium.”

  “Indelium?” John raised an eyebrow. “Indelium is hyper rare. How did you afford that much of it?”

  Dub paused for a second, nodding and glancing off at nothing in particular. It seemed as if he had slipped briefly into a daydream or distant memory. A slight glassiness came over his eyes.

  “That credit goes to Cap,” Dub said, emerging from his reverie.

  “Captain Hawkins?”

  “Yeah,” Dub replied with a slow nod. “I was part of the first crew he hired after he nabbed Star Wolf from that scoundrel Chadra. Soon after Voide joined the crew, she worked with some GalSec contacts to get us assigned to an
off-book mission taking down a smuggling operation in Igses sector. Word was there were smugglers sneaking tech and information across the coreward border to the Daemi.”

  “Mission accomplished, I suppose?” John asked.

  “Eh, sort of. Made a right mess of things for the smugglers anyway. All their identity data and location information we sent to GalSec. Anyhow, along the way we popped a corvette bound for Daemi space. In the hold were six bars of refined indelium, among other things.”

  John struggled to catch his breath. John was no stranger to wealth, but even at a rough calculation the value of six bars of refined indelium was staggering.

  “Six bars?”

  “Yep,” Dub confirmed. “We had permission from GalSec to seize any contraband we encountered, save for any TL12+ weaponry which had to turn in to GalSec. Molon gave me three bars of the indelium to temper into the parts I needed to craft these hands.”

  John shook his head in disbelief. This went beyond generosity, beyond altruism. Who was this Molon Hawkins? What possible motivation would a marauder captain have for such a disregard for profit? What kind of crew were on this ship that wouldn’t mutiny over such an act favoring a single crewman to the financial detriment of the rest of the crew. Something seriously did not add up here.

  “Dub, I’m sorry but out of all you have told me today, that story is the hardest to swallow. Six bars of refined indelium is worth more than Star Wolf.”

  “Yep,” Dub nodded, unwavering in his sincere demeanor.

  “And Molon just handed you half that haul, for no reason at all?”

  “Not for no reason,” Dub objected, a hint of annoyance creeping into his tone. “I had titanium and steel prototypes for the hands, but they were heavy and with my enhanced strength, I kept wrecking the things every time we got into a tussle and would have to build new ones. Molon reasoned that if I used tempered indelium, even I wouldn’t be able to break them. Hopefully these are the last pair I will ever need.”

  John always tried to see the best in people, but Molon was not even a Faithful. Had he heard a story like this about a renown Faithful leader or activist, it might have strained credulity but John granted it was possible. For an unbeliever to act so selflessly was beyond John’s comprehension.