The Cassini Mission

by Rob Colton

  I got out of bed and used the head and cleaned myself up, then pulled my underwear and uniform back on. Man, what I wouldn’t do for a clean uniform right now. Hell, I’d settle for a pair of fresh briefs. With a sigh, I pushed my comm-link into my ear and headed back to Ops.

  Kane, Green, Villanova and Razix were all standing with each other, gathered around one of the displays. They looked less intimidating without their armor suits, but I could feel an uneasy tension coming from all of them.

  I walked up and stood next to Kane. He pulled me closer to him, then put a hand on my back to keep me in place.

  “Your bitch is gonna be a problem,” Villanova said to Green.

  Green shrugged. “I just wore his ass out. He’ll be out of commission for a while longer.”

  The four Marines snickered.

  “Where’s Yates?” I asked.

  Kane tipped his head to the side, motioning towards the far wall. Yates was slumped against the metal bulkhead, dead asleep. He looked so damn young, almost angelic. Certainly way too young to be caught up in this mess.

  “I offered to share my bed, but he said no.” Villanova said it like he was shocked that anyone would turn him down.

  “Maybe he doesn’t want to be treated like a piece of meat,” I countered.

  “Well, excuse me. I left the candles and my dance shoes back on the ship.”

  I ignored him and turned back to Kane. “How’s Kenji?”

  “He’s in one of the back rooms, still asleep. All right. Let’s get back to the reason we’re here.”

  “I’m fucking starved,” Green said. Villanova and Razix nodded in agreement. “But the food packs were destroyed with the shuttlepod.”

  I was feeling hungry myself. “I’ll check the galley. They gotta have something there we can eat.”

  Kane opened his mouth to protest, but instead decided on, “Keep your comm-link open.” He reached over and activated the security display so he could track my location.

  I nodded and unlocked the door. I gazed over my shoulder and saw that Kane had returned to talking with his comrades, but he kept looking up at the security display.

  It felt comforting knowing he was watching me, making sure I was okay. After exiting Ops, I turned down the hall and headed towards the galley. Except for the emergency lights, it was dark and eerily quiet so I picked up the pace. I pushed through the galley’s double doors and went back into the kitchen.

  I found the pantry was still stocked with a ton of pre-packed military rations and a good amount of non-perishable food. Looking in the walk-in freezer, I found some chicken breasts and steaks, which was like a gold mine. Thankfully the emergency power systems still kept the freezer going. I grabbed enough meat for the big men plus me, Bradley, and Yates.

  “Hey.”

  At the sound of the unexpected voice, I jumped about a mile into the air and dropped the frozen packages all over the floor. I spun around and found Yates standing there yawning. His brown hair still stuck up in the back from where he had been leaning against the wall.

  “Yates! You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Sorry,” he said with another yawn. He rolled his neck to each side and stretched. “You know how to cook?” He bent down to help me pick the sealed packages up off the floor.

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  The young ensign smirked. “I’ll take care of it, Lieutenant. Make some coffee, will ya?”

  “Great. Thanks, Yates.”

  “You can call me Brian.”

  “Sure, Brian. Call me Aron.”

  As I helped Yates cook, we made small talk, nothing serious. I already knew he was young, so I wasn’t surprised when he told me he was only twenty-one years old. The Cassini was his first assignment, and this was his first off-ship mission. He’d graduated from the Naval Academy less than a year ago.

  Jesus. Did I look that young when I was fresh out of the Academy? Probably younger, I thought with a snort.

  “Aron, can you check the pantry for some bread mix or dehydrated potatoes? We’re gonna need some carbs for energy.”

  I found a large container of potato mix and within thirty minutes we had a fairly balanced meal prepared. Given what we had to work with, it was practically a feast.

  The Marines came in just as we got the food onto one of the tables. “Look who’s up,” Kane said.

  Kenji came around Kane and gave me a tired grin. “Hey, Aron.”

  I gave my friend a quick hug, then checked his head. The scar on his temple looked red and angry. “You feeling all right? We have some Antibac. I don’t want you to get an infection.”

  “Yeah, I feel okay. Hungry though.”

  “We made a feast.”

  Everyone sat down at one of the tables and quickly scarfed down their food. The mood was somber and no one spoke. Only the sound of forks scraping the tin plates filled the room.

  “Thanks, Ensign. Aron,” Kane said to Yates and me as he stood up. “Okay. We got four of those cyborgs to deal with in the causeway connecting the bunker and the lab. Once we dispatch with them, we go right for the lab. If the researchers are still alive, that’s where they’ll be. If there are any robots, hopefully our modified weapons will take them put. I want to get in and get out. Everyone be suited up and ready to go in fifteen minutes.”

  I used the bathroom and cleaned up and then met Kane by the blast doors that led to the causeway to the research lab. He was studying the building schematics on his pad.

  I leaned against the wall and anxiously tapped my finger on the butt of the phase pistol holstered to my belt.

  Kane moved next to me. “Don’t be nervous. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.” I titled my head up to him and drew in a breath when I saw the earnest expression on his face. His hand moved to the back of my neck, lightly squeezing as he pulled my head closer. He leaned his head down until his forehead rested on me. “I mean it, Aron. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  I smiled. “Doing your duty and protecting the labbie?”

  “I’m doing my duty, but I’m not protecting a labbie. I’m protecting what’s mine.”

  I blinked a couple of times and nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak. Even though my head told me that it was just his “engineering” taking over, his declaration still moved me. But it wasn’t the time or place for an emotional outburst. I moved closer and pushed up onto my toes and pressed my lips against his. He kissed me back and then gave me a tight hug.

  Chapter 12

  A few minutes later and everyone had assembled, including Kenji.

  I took Kenji aside. “Are you sure you’re up to this? You just woke up.”

  Kenji gave me a lopsided grin. “I can’t stay cooped up in here while you guys are working.”

  I reluctantly agreed. If it was me, I would do the same. “Okay, but promise me you’ll take it easy.”

  “Don’t worry, Aron. I can handle it.”

  “Green,” Kane called out. “You’re on point. Villanova, take the rear. When Bradley opens the door, we got four of these fucking cyborgs to take out.” He turned to Kenji. “If you feel sick, lightheaded, anything, then pull back.”

  Kenji nodded his agreement and we got into formation. I drew my pistol and lined up behind Kane. Bradley looked back and at Kane’s nod, he pressed his hand to the security scanner.

  “Commander Bradley Brimley; access granted.”

  The door hissed and slid open with a clank. We quickly advanced into the covered causeway and immediately fired at the cyborgs. The modified weapons made a huge difference. The Marines took three of them out quickly and efficiently until they were nothing but steaming piles of smoldering metal.

  Razix advanced on the last cyborg, who was standing guard in front of the lab doors, firing upon us relentlessly with its particle weapon.

  I ducked behind a bulkhead, trying to stay out of the line of fire, keeping Kenji behind me.

  While the others attempted to distract and draw its attenti
on with weapons fire, Razix advanced fearlessly.

  The firing mechanism of Raz’s rifle jammed but he quickly adapted, slamming the butt of the rifle up against the cyborg’s head. Undeterred, the cyborg pushed forward and slammed his metal fist into Razix’s chest, going straight through his armor. The sound of shearing metal and the Regulan’s breast bone shattering echoed through the causeway.

  Razix gasped and let out a final breath and slumped to the ground.

  Jesus.

  “Raz!” Kane yelled. Kane took the cyborg’s head off with two blasts of his rifle.

  I ran up to Razix and knelt by his side. Pressing my fingers against his red skin, I felt for a pulse. Not finding one, I pulled out my comPad and did a quick scan. We had lost another member of the team.

  Kane cursed under his breath, ground his teeth together and looked at everyone in turn. “Everyone else okay?”

  Once we all acknowledged him, we got into position at the doors that led into the colony lab. We had a job to do. We would have to mourn our lost team members later.

  When Kane gave Bradley the go with a tip of his chin, Bradley pressed his hand to the scanner outside the lab. “Commander Bradley Brimley; access granted.”

  The lab doors opened and Bradley stepped aside and the lights flickered on.

  When Green stepped into the lab, red lights began flashing and a klaxon blared. Over the sound of the screaming sirens, the computer announced “Security alert; Corporal William Green; unauthorized access.”

  As we filed into the lab, the computer scanned each of our microchips. “Security alert; Corporal Kane Robertson; unauthorized access.”

  Kane turned to Bradley. “Shut that fucking thing off!”

  Bradley hurried to one of the lab workstations and pressed his hand on the security panel. He spoke to the computer, “Security Override. Commander Bradley Brimley. Authorization Beta-Beta-Four-Zero-Seven.”

  The klaxon silenced and the red lights turned off. It was suddenly quiet. Too quiet.

  Looking around, I expected something to jump out and start shooting.

  I shook my nerves off and pulled out my pad and did a scan of the building. Now that we were inside the lab, we were able to bypass the shielding and run scans with our equipment.

  “Okay. That door over on the right leads to what looks like a set of offices. The door on the left is a bathroom, locker room, and shower. Straight ahead is the secondary lab. The main lab is the largest space, located beyond that at the rear of the building.”

  “Check the offices first,” Kane ordered.

  Kane got into position at the door and pulled it open. Green slid in front of the door with his rifle aimed forward.

  “Shit,” Green muttered. “We got one of the labbies here.”

  One of the researchers was lying face down on the ground. I hurried over to his side and squatted down. He was deathly pale. His eyes were bulging from their sockets and his tongue hung swollen out of his mouth. Though I knew that he was already dead, I scanned him with my comPad to determine why. “It looks like he suffocated,” I said as I skimmed the medical data.

  Green kicked open the first office. “There’s another one in here.”

  Villanova kicked open the second office. “Two more labbies in here.”

  “Another two in the last office. That’s five. There’s still seven more labbies somewhere. Plus the three support crew and two security.”

  I looked over the information on my screen. “This section was flooded with poison gas. It’s been cleared now.”

  “An accident, you think?” Yates asked. He was looking a little green.

  “Doubt it,” Kane said. “At least not completely.”

  “It might have been a security measure,” Kenji added. “The question is why would they have triggered it?”

  We followed Green back out and around to the locker room.

  Kane pushed open the door and Green stepped in, rifle ready.

  “Christ!” he shouted as turned away and coughed.

  I covered my mouth and gagged at the sight before me. One of researchers lay on the shower floor. His gut was ripped open and spilling out. A huge stream of blood led towards the shower drain. Another researcher and one of the security guards also lay on the floor dead, much the same way as the others in the offices.

  Yates ran into one of the bathroom stalls and retched.

  Villanova, seemingly unaffected, kicked the body of the burly security officer with his boot. The corpse turned and fell onto its back. “Union Navy Security,” he scoffed under his breath. “I think they were trying to help this poor bastard when the place got gassed.” He jerked his head towards the gutted researcher in the shower.

  I agreed with his assessment of the situation. However, I needed to know exactly what happened to that ‘poor bastard.’

  I cleared my throat and stepped forward, trying to control my nerves and concentrate on doing my job. My hands were shaking as I tapped my screen. Kane moved behind me and put a hand on my back. Just having him close made me feel calmer and I gave him an appreciative smile.

  I scanned the researcher and the system outlined the researcher’s body and began to display data on the screen. “This was McDonald, James A,” I said.

  “The Assistant Director,” Bradley noted. “Second in command of the lab.”

  “Jesus,” I said as the data scrolled across my screen. The outline of the gut wound pulsed orange. A callout expanded from it and text began to scroll. “His skin and muscle was eaten away by an acid of some sort.” I tapped the screen and brought up the chemical composition. The chemical formula appeared on the screen with a rotating three-dimensional molecular model. Unfortunately, I recognized it immediately. “It’s a concentrated, synthetic version of the acid produced by a Zosman lizard. The lizard spits it into its prey’s face and blinds it.”

  “You created the synth version, didn’t you?” Kane asked.

  Grimacing, I nodded. “Its primary use is for cleaning the insides of garbage scowls and waste tanks. I don’t know what they were doing with it here or how it would have gotten on the lab tech.”

  “They bastardized it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right. Let’s keep moving.”

  Ensign Yates sided next to me as we exited the locker room. “You okay, Brian?” I whispered to him.

  He was still trembling a bit, but he nodded. “I’m okay. I just never saw a dead body gutted open like that before,” he whispered back.

  Kane, Yates, Kenji, Bradley, Villanova and I followed Green into the secondary lab. Two more researchers lay suffocated on the floor, both of them blue in pallor. One died clawing at his neck, his eyes bulging.

  Judging by the equipment, they appeared to be studying and dissecting various animal species.

  “Nobody touch nothing,” Kane ordered.

  I recognized most of the animals in the room as species that were part of my various research projects. It made me sick to my stomach to know my work was being bastardized this way, as Kane put it. I did this work to make things better for mankind and all of the citizens of the Galactic Planetary Union. I didn’t do it so that it could be used in creating illegal killing machines.

  “This is familiar,” I said looking around the lab. “It looks a lot like my lab back at UR.”

  I tapped one of the computer panels and the hanging e-glass display came alive.

  “I said don’t touch,” Kane snapped. He walked up to me and looked at the screen in surprise. “Hey. That’s you,” he said as he pointed at the screen. On the screen’s right side was a still of one of my video logs, showing my face speaking into the camera. A text transcript of the log entry was displayed underneath.

  “How did they get this?” I asked no one in particular. “This is a personal log entry on the Zosman reptilian acid.”

  Looking through the file system, I tapped on a document that had been accessed multiple times.

  An image of an embryo appeared on the screen a
long with a data file. “Gametes from host Subject H-2 were combined with Subject D-2 DNA,” I read aloud. “DNA from Subject D-2 familial bloodline is able to aggressively alter human host DNA. Subsequent combined genetic material is ripe for splicing.”

  I looked over at Kane. What they were doing was highly illegal, explicitly outlawed by Union law. Treaties had been signed with other galactic governments and the Union was expected to abide by these treaties. I had a very bad feeling about this mission.

  Kenji stood next to me, reading through the data on the screen. “Jesus… This is against so many laws and treaties, I don’t know how they even got this off the ground.”

  “What does all this mean?” Kane asked. “In English.”

  “They combined human and alien cells in an incubator,” I answered. “They used the result of that, uh, union to perform genetic experiments.”

  “What the fuck?”

  Kenji added, “Something about the combined DNA allows them to graft on other biological modifications. And we’re not talking tweaks, either. It’s like your GEM enhancements times a thousand. This is how they are able to implant the biological organs into those sentry robots.”

  Wondering if there was a subject H-1, I executed a system-wide search. After several moments, the computer responded with an error message. All data files regarding subject H-1/D-1 had been deleted. Original specimens and samples were destroyed.

  My research did not include humanoid or sentient subjects. I was so damned relieved this gross injustice was not part of my work.

  I looked back at the file and browsed through the data, when something else caught my eye. “This DNA profile looks familiar…” I continued to scan the characteristics of subject D-2, when it dawned on me what species it was.

  Before I could voice my realization, Kenji said matter-of-factly, “Subject D-2 is Degan.”

  “Oh my God.” As the ramifications of what I found hit me, I grabbed the edges of the console to keep from slumping to the floor. My heart skipped and my stomach lurched up into my throat. “This is all my fault.”

  Kane was immediately at my side and he helped me get myself upright. “What’s wrong?”