by Frank Carey
###
"Report, Gunny. What are you detecting?"
"Two sets of life signs, neither of which I've ever seen before. The first set is active and mobile, about two dozen of them spread out about the ship. The other group consists of over 300 souls. The signals are concentrated in the port sphere.”
"Are the two groups mingling?" Kalana asked.
"No, ma'am. Several members of the first group came to a dead stop near where the tube connects with the port-side sphere... Wait a minute... They're moving off. We've got a new life form. It just entered the sphere. Sir, it's Reton."
King smiled. "I told you. Reton is resourceful. OK, now where the hell are our people?"
Mersa changed settings on her scanner, then frowned. She handed the unit to Kalana. "Doctor, I need a second opinion."
Now it was Kalana's turn to frown. She handed the unit to Murph. "Can you confirm these readings?"
Murph placed his hand on the unit, then closed his eyes. "Confirmed. Two of those odd life signs contain human signatures, but mixed with something else."
"The survey ship has a crew complement of 18 souls including Reton. Where the hell are the remaining 15?" He looked at Mersa. "Gunny, get the rats in there and perform a search of all spheres. Our goal is to find the survey ship and its remaining crew. Then we report our findings to the Queen."
"The rats are ready, sir," the sergeant said.
"Weapons up," King said. "Open the door, Gunny."
Mersa cycled the inner door. When it was open, she and Trent stepped inside while allowing the three rats to enter the corridor. Once inside, they sped off in different directions as they instituted a standard search plan of the ship. "Sergeant, let's go find the Ricerca."
"Marcus and Nana on point! Move out!" the basili sergeant ordered. The team headed out.
###
Reton looked around at the hundreds of stasis pods stretching out in front of him. "This sphere must be filled with tubes," he noted as he walked down the corridor. He heard a noise and stopped. He looked around and saw a pair of large eyes staring at him from between two tubes. "Maddy? Is that you?"
An AI in natural form stepped out and ran to him. Maddy, like Murph, Nova, and Parker, looked like a multicolored bush baby in their natural form, a form only a few League citizens have ever seen. "Reton!" she whispered while jumping up to give him hug. I thought you were dead. Those things..."
He smoothed her hair. "Those things think I am nothing more than a machine. They walk right past me and pay me no mind. How did you get here?"
"The Captain ordered me to hide in the derelict’s network.” She looked around. "What is this place?"
"These tubes are stasis chambers. They suspend aging for the people inside them. I'd say we're looking at a colony ship, and these are the colonists. Why aren't you still hiding in the network?"
"I was jonesing for a friendly face when you stepped inside."
He lit up his faceplate with his neon cartoon face and smiled at her. "Better?"
She nodded. "Much. What are we going to do?"
He knitted his cartoon eyebrows. "First things first, find our crew mates. Any ideas?"
"What about the colonists?"
"They're safe as long as we remember to seal the door. The creatures are having a difficult time getting past the door locks."
Maddy thought for a moment, then snapped her fingers. "The first officer has a heart monitor. She told me she has a congenital condition she hasn't gotten around to having fixed. The Ricerca's medical bed monitors her 24x7. I need access to a NetComm transceiver..."
Reton's chest opened to reveal his inner workings. Humming, he reached inside and extracted a small device. He closed up, then removed a spare battery from his belt which he attached to the device. A display on its face lit up as a virtual keyboard appeared above it. He handed it to Maddy and smiled. "Will this do? It's my internal communications node. It should have the frequency response you need, and I reprogrammed it to accept League Standard Commands."
"Don't you need this?" she asked as she carefully took it from him.
"It's a spare. A guy can't be too careful."
She laughed, then typed in a series of commands. An arrow appeared on the screen along with a series of numbers. "Well, at least she's still alive."
"That's a start. Do her life signs look normal?"
"They look fine... Why do you ask?" the AI asked as she squinted at the mechanoid.
He sighed and played back the video he took of Myriam on his visor. Maddy gasped. "What the hell is going on around here?"
"I don't know, but I'm going to find out. Ms. Maddy, what say we go find Commander Nadine Castle and the rest of the crew of the good ship Ricerca?"
"Let's. Um, one thing..."
"Fine. Hop on board. Just don't change the setting on the thermostat."
She reached up and kissed him on his face plate, then disappeared as she transferred into his internal network.
"All set?" he asked.
"Aye-firmative!" she said over his internal comm system.
He walked over to the wall and aimed his scanner at it. Seeing the corridor clear of creatures, he and Maddy exited the sphere while locking the door behind them.
CHAPTER FIVE
Team 1 made their way across the starboard sphere as the ratbots carried out their search functions while being monitored by the three AI members of the team. The team was walking down a long corridor which crossed the sphere on its diameter, a corridor which could have been running through any warehouse on any planet in the League.
"Yep," Colonel King said as the team checked their corners and watched their scanners as they made their way toward the center of the ship. "Colonists, and pretty well-equipped ones at that."
Around them were all the tools necessary to tame a planet. There were Earth movers, derricks, flyers, and conveyances of every description. There were racks of hand tools and crates which could contain anything from hand tools to seeds. They passed racks containing dozens of stasis chambers, each with some large life form inside. Other racks contained hundreds of stasis-stored embryos. "Well, Team, I think we may be back in Kansas," King noted.
"Ever been there, sir? Kansas, I mean," Kalana asked.
"Born and raised, Captain. Family has a farm there that has been growing crops for over 400 years."
"You were a farmer, sir?" Nana asked as she checked around a backhoe.
"Nope. I hate farming. I joined the Earth Space Marine Corp just to get the hell away from plants, animals, and especially hay. To this day, I get the shakes when I smell hay. What about you, Captain? Ever been to Kansas?"
"I did a tour at a hospital in Wichita. Spent a few weekends out on a horse ranch. I couldn't get enough of those beasts."
Glean smiled. "What's not to love?" he said as he batted his eyes. Wecks are descended from horse-like creatures. Mersa thwacked him. "Ow," he said.
"Wuss," she replied.
"Settle down, you two, or I'll turn this patrol around!"
"Yes, sir," they replied as they gave each other the look.
The three AIs in their Minotaur suits, brought up the rear, so they did not partake in the levity. Parker noticed that Murph was uncharacteristically silent as he watched for danger as they made their way down the corridor.
"Yoh, Murph, what's up?" she asked while glancing at her scanner.
"Sisters, turn control of your suits to daemons and meet me in the network," he said.
In an instant, the three were gathered in a virtual room overlooking a spectacular waterfall on a planet yet to be visited by any League species. "What's up, Murph?" Nova asked as she poured each of them a glass of wine.
He waved his multicolored hand and a screen appeared above the bar. On it was the life sign readout he had seen on Mersa's scanner. He waved his hand once more, and the readout split into two. Nova and Parker gasped. The left life sign was human, but the right one was something totally unexpected. It was their species. Another wa
ve repeated the exercise, but with the non-human trace. This time it was something else's and their life signs.
Parker sat down and drained her glass, then refilled it. "Shit!" was all she could say. "It's happening again."
"Wait a damn minute," Nova said. "How the hell are necrue life signs superimposed on another species'? I thought that was forbidden.
"What better way of keeping people from doing something stupid, than not telling them they can do it?" Parker said as she rubbed her glass across her mottled forehead. "This is what happened twenty-five years ago in Gweyr. One of our people took a job as an assassin and took over the body of the Prince of Gweyr. Gods help us if anyone finds out. Dammit, I'm too young to die!"
Murph looked at her. "Are you through?"
"Yeah, I'm through. So, what the hell are we going to do? This could affect every necrue in the League."
"Yes, it could, but I'm not going to risk the team's lives. We have to tell the colonel and the captain."
Nova grabbed the bottle and half-drained it before handing it to Murph who took a hit. "Come along, sisters, it's time to spill the beans."
Their absence unnoticed by the rest of the team, the three necrue returned to their horned bodies. Murph stepped up to the Colonel and Captain while Nova and Parker hung back, ostensibly to keep an eye on their six, but in reality, afraid of what was going to happen next.
"Colonel, I need to talk you and the captain before we proceed further."
The Colonel raised his fist. "Gunny! Defensive ring. Captain! Murph! With me, he said as he walked behind a tractor and out of earshot of the rest of the Team. Kalana and Murph followed.
"What's up, Sergeant?" King asked.
"Parker, Nova, and I belong to a species called the necrue. As I have revealed previously, we are not artificial intelligences."
"I remember," King said. "So, your species has a name. What does that have to do with this operation?"
Murph explained what his analysis of the life signs Mersa's scans had revealed.
"You can take over living organisms?" Kalana asked. "Like the selka were able to do?"
"The selka were undead spirits trying to find a way to another plane of existence. Necrue are living beings who can become non-corporeal in the same way the Alue and Immortals can. Only some of my people have genetic quirks which allow them to take over a living being."
"My sisters and I do not possess this errant gene, as most of my people don't. Only a few have it, and still fewer learn to use it. Sir, they require physical contact to merge. That's why we call them mergers."
"Murph, can the necrue get through our suits?"
"No, sir."
"You wouldn't happen to know who we're dealing with, would you?" Kalana asked.
"No. The quirk pops up in every generation. Sir, what I've told you could radically change the relationship my people have with the League."
"I agree. How are the ladies taking it?"
"Parker is angry, and Nova tried to get drunk on virtual wine. Suffice to say I removed the alcohol before she drank it."
"I report only to the Queen. She's smart, and she trusts you."
"Do you trust us, sir?"
"Yes. Captain?"
"Implicitly. Hell, you play ride-along in my brain."
"Thank you both. It means a lot to the three of us."
"Oh, do you still want us to call you AIs?"
He nodded. "At least for now."
"Let's get back to work, then," King said. He turned and headed back to where the team waited. Kalana followed, but stopped to change back to elf form just long enough to kiss Murph on the cheek. "Moron! Of course, I trust you," she said before returning to stryker form.
"Sorry," was all he could say as he followed her back to the team.
King assembled the troops. "People! I now have it on good authority that we're dealing with beings that can merge with a living being while taking over their body. Lucky for us, our suits will protect us, so button up if you encounter any unfamiliar people.”
CHAPTER SIX
Locked aboard the alien ship with his remaining crew, Captain Jonah Ceta, Commander of the Ricerca, watched his communications and science officers as they attempted a stealth hack of the alien ship's computer system. A series of lights came on followed by characters flowing across the terminal screen. "Jackpot, sir," Lt. Rosy McGuire, the science officer, said as she gave up her seat to the Senior Philologist and Cryptanalyst, Dr. Bob Yorker.
"Rosy, I want you and Nancy to monitor this terminal for any incursions by our hosts. Sam, you still got that quantum computer your wife gave you for Christmas?"
"Aye, sir," Lt. Murchison, the ships computer systems officer replied. "I'll hook it in the moment Bob gets a translation going."
"Good." The captain turned to the remaining members of his crew. "Look, I know you're all worried about Myriam and Sean, but we need to get ahead of this thing. I want observers at the doors. The rest of you fan out, and look for anything we could use to stop these things. Got it?"
"Aye, sir," they all replied before fanning out through the ship.
The captain took the first officer aside. "Nadine, how are you feeling? Do you want the Doc to look you over? You looked like you were in pain a few minutes ago."
"I'm fine, sir. I had an odd feeling, but it passed."
"What do you mean by odd?"
"It felt like my cardiac monitor had been accessed, that's all. Maybe it's the Ricerca's computer trying to re-establish its connection."
"You're sure your OK?"
"I'm fine, sir."
"OK, then I want you to help Bob and his team find a way to get into the computer’s data banks and find out what we’re dealing with. I'll work out here with the rest of the crew.”
"Yes, sir. Sir, Earth will send a rescue team, won’t they?"
"That's what I'm afraid of. After seeing what they did to Myriam and Joachim. God help the League if those creatures get access to one of our warships."
"Yes, sir," she said before leaving him to help the others.
###
Reton came around a corner and nearly ran into one of the alien creatures. Startled, it hesitated for only a moment, a moment long enough for Reton to land a left hook into the creature’s jaw. It folded like a cheap laptop. Reton grabbed it under its arms and dragged it into a nearby storeroom.
"So, what are we dealing with here?" he asked the unconscious creature. Like Myriam, it sported huge eyes and multicolored skin. It was as if it and her had merged with something. He took out his scanner and ran it over the unmoving form. "Interesting..." A hand reached down and took the device from him. Maddy had materialized next to him unnoticed until now. He saw the look on her face and got worried. "Are you OK?"
"No, no, no!" she said. That's when it dawned on him. The thing on the ground had eyes similar to Maddy's. He looked closer and saw it also had similar skin markings. Before he could say anything, she walked around him, grabbed the limp form and shook it.
"What the plark do you think you're doing. Come out of that body this instant or I swear I will tear you out myself"
The mottling and large eyes disappeared as a second AI appeared in the room with them. Maddy stood up, grabbed it, and threw it into the wall before launching into a stream of invectives which sounded very unladylike. Reton was glad he couldn't understand a word she said.
"Ummm, Maddy, maybe introductions are in order?"
She turned and gave the mechanoid a look so filled with anger that it triggered his defensive screens. He stood there, surrounded by a forcefield, yet still fearing for his life.
Her anger melted at the sight of her friend so afraid that he felt it necessary to hide behind a shield. She turned to the other Ai and took a deep breath. "Explain."
"You explain. What the hell were you staring at?"
Reton waved and said, "Helllooo! Mechanoid standing here!"
The AI's eyes went huge. "You're a machine! You can't be sapient!"
; "I AM A MECHANOID, AND I AM SAPIENT. Now, answer the lady's question or I'll lend her my quantum discombobulator pistol. She shoots you with that, and they'll be picking pieces of you out of the wall."
"My name is Kress. A species that calls itself the Noru found our containment chamber. They thought we were a weapon, and they were selling us to some terrorist. We took over the crew, but not before they connected to this ship and stranded us here.”
"What about the crew of the Ricerca?"
"We moved them to the first ship until we need them to replace any of our current bodies. The Captain of the Ricerca scrammed the engines before we could stop him, so we're trying to revive the big ship, so we can use it and its passengers."
"They're sapient beings. You can't just use them," Maddy reminded him.
"They are important only as vehicles. Nothing more..." He stopped when she slapped him.
"How dare you blaspheme like that. These are sapient beings. I should strap you to an exhaust port then run up the engine."
Kress swallowed hard. "Perhaps I misspoke?"
"Why were you in a containment chamber?"
"We were brought up on trumped-up..."
Maddy got angry again...
"Unlawful merging with sapient life forms, terrorism, gun running, blackmail, oh, and unpaid parking tickets."
"Who's your leader?"
"Tenshen..." He stopped when he saw the look in her eyes. "You know Tenshen?"
She stood there and seethed for a moment. "I know of Tenshen. His dossier is required reading at Peacekeeper Central Command. Reton, could you tell me the condition of the Noru on the floor," she asked quietly. Reton knelt next to the unconscious alien and ran the scanner over it. "Dead. But I didn't hit it that hard..."
"No, you didn't. If merged too long, the host consciousness is released. If the merged necrue leaves, the body dies." She looked at Kress. "You killed it."