by Aaron Frale
The UPE expanded in several ways. The first was simply a matter of claim. Humans always had this need to expand. If they found an uninhabited world hospitable to life, they’d claim it, colonize it, and call it their own. Some were independent worlds, some were official UPE settlements, and others were independents with a resource too valuable to stay independent very long. Which led to the other ways the UPE grew: through conquest, whether it was military, economic, or technological. If they could buy the world, they would. If they couldn’t buy it, then they would make the world a slave to their technology. Give them something only humans could provide, thus encouraging them to join the UPE.
Military conquest always seemed to come in the form of trumped up reasons to take over a territory. The UPE would never invade outright. They would always spin a story about why the people of the UPE should vote for military action. Her home world of Nigramoto was a prime example of the UPE’s best storytelling. The humans claimed that the Shusharshian Collective had enslaved her people when the reality was that the human and Shusharshian ships showed up at almost the same time, fighting for the world that wasn’t theirs to fight over.
According to her mother and other villagers who were alive at the time of the war, Nigramoto didn’t have many dealings with aliens. There were a few scientists from both the Shusharian and human governments, but they studied nature, geology, and other things about the world. The scientists were peaceful, and life didn’t change all that much until a geologist discovered why their world seemed to have a much higher gravity than worlds similar in size.
Even though most of the humans believed they were saving the Nigramotoians from the Shusharians, the reality was that the human government created a propaganda campaign to make the public feel like they were doing the right thing. From a Teristaque perspective, they thought they were saving Nigramoto and preserving the way of life of the local people because that’s what their leaders wanted them to believe.
That’s why even though Hayden was a soldier and a member of the feared Teristaque army, most of the crew accepted him; standing up against the crimes of his people is what put him into prison in the first place. And from what Hayden said of a man named Sarge, it sounded as if he was standing up for his belief system, too. However, Kal didn’t know what to think about Sarge.
When Sarge first betrayed her, the first human she ever met, she wanted desperately to forgive him because he was like the father she never had. Now that she knew that she was half human, the analogy of father she never had was truer than she could imagine. Her time in the woods with Sarge building a cabin and teaching him survival skills for her planet were good memories. He had come when she needed a friend.
However, the fact of the matter was that he took advantage of her ignorance and gave her the tracking device that had been surgically implanted in his body. It was a device that he knew full well would bring a brutal Teristaque Enforcer squad to tear apart her village. He might not have known that Makiuarnek was a madman who would slaughter the entire village when his search for Sarge came to a dead end, but the truth was evident much later. After she had broken free from prison and had time to think and reflect, Kal came to the conclusion that her heart didn’t want her to make. Sarge had a hand in the death of her people.
She did not hate him like she did Makiuarnek. However, she did feel a deep sense of betrayal. For a person to show her so much kindness, and teach her so much about the outside world, she feared the inevitable confrontation with Sarge, more so than even Makiuarnek. At least with Makiuarnek, it was simple; she would kill him. With Sarge, she had no idea what she would do if they crossed paths again. One thing was for sure. She couldn’t go to her home world anytime soon. It was the most protected planet in the Teristaque Empire, and she was on the human’s shit list, as Hayden would call it. And depending on Maker’s research, she might move up the human shit list. It was no use worrying until Maker gave her an answer. She turned off her display, and without a word to Hayden, she left the bridge and went to bed.
_______
Maker beckoned Kal to a corner of Lab 2. The Scitronite was equipped with three state of the art labs. Lab 1 was a medical and biology laboratory with various equipment designed for xenobiology study. Lab 2 was for physics and other physical sciences like chemistry and geology. The third involved many view screens and a domed roof. It was the astrophysics lab designed for analyzing all the phenomena a space-faring science vessel could want.
The previous owner, Dr. Feslerk, didn’t use lab 2 and 3 all that much, but lab 1 was full of the latest machines and evidence of his twisted quest for immortality. Maker spent most of his time in Lab 2, so it had all the hallmarks of a scatter-brained genius. The equipment was cluttered about as Maker rarely put things away. There were samples he had collected from every planet. Even the dwarf planet they raided recently had a sample resting on the table. Grannork was irritated by his behavior, but Maker’s passion for study never seemed to interfere with the crew, so he let him do his thing.
Having a science person on board was useful. Whereas Kal wouldn’t know what to do with the machines or even how to begin decrypting the data of the drive, there seemed to be no end to the highly technical skills he possessed. She was pretty sure he’d had several lifetimes to study just about everything considering his physical state of near-immortality.
While she didn’t know Maker’s true age, she was sure that the Quadhelix people lived for very long times. He had the ability to fuse body parts of other species to himself. If an organ or a body part failed, he could simply attach a new one. His current face was a human male with one green eye, one blue, and short brown hair. The rest of him was all body parts he had received from Dr. Feslerk. A while back, he told her that the only original part of his body was his brain. He said that Quadhelixes try to avoid changing heads as much as possible, that a brain transplant has risks and is a very painful process. When they have a new head, they have to learn all their motor control all over again. He compared it to an adult with the motor skills of an infant. If they kept the same head, new limbs are much easier to learn than whole bodies.
Since the brain was the only part of a Quadhelix that could die, they were very much mortal like every other biological entity. Destroying the brain was the only way to put one down. Since their brains aged, they were subject to all sorts of madness and insanity when their minds began to break down. Because they could wear any person’s body, true age was hard to ascertain, and most of the Quadhelixes didn’t remember because they lived for so long. Maker told this to Kal because Quadhelixes very rarely died of natural causes and he didn’t want to go out like most of his species on a lunatic rampage. He wanted a friend to do the job for him.
“Do you expect to be going crazy anytime soon?” Kal had asked.
Maker laughed and replied, “Oh no, no. I don’t know my true age. Dr. Feslerk’s experiments scrambled my memory. I don’t remember much of the past. Only snippets. Sometimes it comes back in dreams.”
“So why are you so good at science?”
“Why are you such a good shot?” Maker said. Which was true; in addition to taking charge, Kal had discovered a hidden talent for firearms. Her aim topped everyone in the crew, so much that no one wanted to play video games with her, as she would annihilate anyone in her path.
“I don’t know. I just am,” she said.
“I’m pretty sure I studied science. I’ll read one of Dr. Feslerk’s textbooks about a concept completely new to me, but there will be a moment where the information floods back like it’s been hidden there all along. If I ever put the crew at risk, you’ll need to do it. You’ll need to kill me.”
“Hopefully, that won’t happen in my lifetime.”
“I don’t know when it will happen. Quadhelixes rarely know when they start losing their mental facilities. Most of them will still believe they are rational beings, even if they are living in a completely irrational delusion. That is why most of my species are loners. Not only d
o we outlive our friends, but we can hurt them when it is our time to pass into the next realm.”
Two months or so after the death conversation, she found herself in his lab again, although under very different circumstances. She was anxious to see his analysis of the Teristaque machines. He had one of the chips in a Petri dish, and a hologram of the device floated above it. The hologram spun around and around giving a three-dimensional representation of it. Maker expanded the view until he enlarged several filaments coming from the device that looked like tiny tentacles.
“What you’re looking at is a neural interface that connects to the subject’s brain. It burrows like a worm to connect with several key areas. The device is quite harmless and won’t cause any permanent damage. However, it will imbue the wearer of the device with a symbiotic connection to a vessel. With the implant, you’ll be able to control all of the ships systems, access sensor data, fire weapons, engage the drive, and do just about anything you need the ship to do.
“The most ingenious part is that the sensor data, weapon scopes, etc. are all connected to your eyes. That extra-long filament right there snakes all the way to your eyeball and can superimpose ship systems data within your field of view. If you want to look out of the front window, there is no need to put it on a screen. You can think about it, and it will appear as if it were happening in front of you. Any data will appear in your vision. Computer readouts will display with your thought, even the display of a person you’re talking to on the com channel will be in your head. Any visual and audio data from the ships computer system is piped directly into your brain.
“With the captain and senior officer implants, you’ll have access to the entire ship’s systems. There are crew implants that will only allow access to specific systems.”
“Seems like a harsh way to promote somebody, burrowing into your brain every time you get a new job,” Kal remarked.
“That’s the ingenious part about the technology,” Maker said. “It’s completely interchangeable with nothing more than an injection. You place the machine in a benign solution, inject it into the bloodstream, and the device will install itself in a day or so. Want to promote a crew member and give them a different device? Easy! Inject the new one and it will find the old one and destroy it. The leftovers from the old device will pass harmlessly in the person’s natural waste removal system, and the new one will install itself. The best part is that it’s completely harmless, aside from the pinch of the shot.”
“So what ship is it supposed to control?” Kal said.
“That’s the part I don’t know yet,” Maker pulled out the data storage unit they had retrieved with the implants. “The encryption on this unit is pretty hard to beat. I don’t have any realistic idea of when I’ll be able to decode it. It could be days, could be centuries if I have to brute force my way in. All the information I have today, I gleaned from studying the implants themselves.”
“So we have the controls to a spaceship that could be hidden away at the heart of the Teristaque Empire on Earth for all we know. Can it be used for other ships?”
“No, the technology is far too advanced. I’d have to spend a long time just figuring out what hardware a ship needs to interface with the implants.”
“Great, so their resale value is nil.”
“Oh no no. I think they are far too valuable to sell.”
“So what are you suggesting we do with them?” Kal was afraid to ask as if she already knew the answer.
“I think we should install one of them in a member of the crew.”
“No.”
“I have good reason to believe that if we install it on one of us, we will be able to access the ship systems.”
“But isn’t there a range on them?”
“Probably for some ship systems, sure. But I imagine there is some part of the ship that’s connected to the galactic network. Perhaps we can learn about its location if we…”
“How do we know it won’t fry our brains? It could be genetically coded to humans. We did find it on a crate destined for a Teristaque ship.”
“I’ve been studying them for at least three weeks now, trust me when I say they are species neutral. They are designed to adapt to whoever gets the injection. I don’t think I need to extol the virtues of a Teristaque prototype.”
“You think we can steal it?”
“We stole this one. While I do like the science capability of this vessel, a science ship gives us a distinct disadvantage in our line of work.”
“But we aren’t just talking about an upgrade. Considering the technology, these connect to an advanced military prototype. Aren’t you worried that it wouldn’t have any science labs?”
“I can bring equipment from this ship to make up for any lack, even if this equipment doesn’t have the thought-controlled interface. I’m also sure there is cold storage for my extra limbs.”
“It sounds like you are ready to move in.”
“You know it’s the right call, Captain.”
“We’ll put it to the crew.”
“I would expect nothing less. Thank you for hearing me out, Captain.”
She nodded and left the lab. Kal was beginning to wonder if she’d regret her democratic method of making decisions.
3
The crew gathered around the mess hall table. The Scitronite wasn’t known for its comfort as the hard metal table matched the hard metal chairs. Grannork sat on a mismatched bench because the human-sized chairs were much too small for him. The crew mingled and talked with each other. There were about a dozen crew in all that had escaped from the prison. They were all from a very mixed amount of species, so the chairs were uncomfortable for everyone. Even Hayden, the only one hundred percent human on board, said they made his ass sore if he sat on them for too long, so no one complained.
They only gathered in the mess hall to eat and to talk about important mission information. It was the only place in the entire ship big enough for everybody, and Kal wanted to make sure everyone was present before she began the discussion. Seayolar was the last to arrive. He sat down at a seat next to Kal. Most of the crew never sat next to her at the table, so she got use to sitting at the head of it. It wasn’t out of any dislike, but as soon as she became captain, an invisible boundary appeared between her and the crew. If she walked into the room and the crew wasn’t working, they would start looking busy. They tried to impress her, even went to her for advice, but rarely as a friend.
As a captain, there was a distance between her and the crew. At first, she was worried about the distance the crew had put between themselves and her. After many talks with Haath-Nlo, she was beginning to understand that it was normal. As a leader, she was in a different category. They would not confide everything to her. They needed someone to praise when everything went right and someone to blame when things went wrong. Lucky for her, things had been going right so far.
She couldn’t help but feel a deep sense of nervous energy in the pit of her stomach. The current discussion terrified her. She wasn’t quite sure why. They had planned heists before. They had even stolen from the Teristaques before. She didn’t hesitate when Hayden suggested a plan for robbing the Tricore vessel. After her village was slaughtered, and she masterminded her escape from prison, fear didn’t overwhelm her like it did in the past. It was there every time she went on a mission, but it was manageable and controllable. When most of the crew would show visible signs of being nervous, Kal was always rock solid. However, today was different, and she wasn’t sure if it was dread or excitement.
“I’m sure you all know why we are gathered here today,” Kal said. She then launched into a description of her conversation with Maker. She left a lot of the technical details to him.
“So you can see that they are quite harmless.” Maker said.
“How do we know they won’t transmit our coordinates to the Teristaque?” Seayolar said.
Rys nodded in agreement. Rys was a triple-eyed humanoid with two claws like an Earth c
rab. Even though the claws look like they were not useful for human designed interfaces, he was an expert at controlling the crane in the cargo bay. He had a delicate touch and was good with remote controlled devices. Whenever they launched a probe, she would call on Rys to pilot the thing. However, he was always worried about physical confrontation, so he never left the ship much. In fact, some even said he didn’t fire a single round in their prison break and had just tagged along with the group, though he claimed that was not true.
Regardless of what role a person had in their prison break, being a part of Kal’s crew was a chance to start over. On their first day as a crew together, she gave them what would later be called The Speech. When they were a part of her crew, they were not judged for their past but by their present actions. Why they were in the Teristaque prison was irrelevant. What mattered was what they did now, and if what they did would endanger the crew in anyway, Kal would personally press the button on the airlock herself. She hadn’t had to do it yet.
“We don’t,” Kal said. “But if what Maker is telling us is true, then the person with the implant is the one in control of it. One of us will need to get the injection to locate and pilot the ship during the heist. However, if we are successful, then we will all need injections.”
“I’ll do it,” Hayden said.
“No, I can’t risk any of you. I’ll get the injection.”
“Look, I know you want to be the noble captain that takes all the risks, but the fact of the matter is that I’m disposable. You’re not.”
“He does have a point,” Grannork added. “Another crewman can run movie night.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Hayden snorted. “Anyway, you can always get another pilot. Hell, half the people here can do it with a little training. However, this ship will fall apart without you.”