Then what was wrong? Why did he feel like he was doing the wrong thing? It didn’t help the way that Irie was casting him shady looks, and that Val Pathok seemed to be almost ignoring him. Eliard could always tell when the Duergar was ignoring him, because he seemed to get about three times bigger and suddenly very difficult to move around.
“And then what happens? How are you going to use it against Alpha?” Irie asked stubbornly.
“Is that really any of your concern, Miss Hanson?” the drone said as the door pinged and hissed open.
Ready… Eliard tensed, one hand twitching over his holster. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Ponos, but he just wasn’t sure whether trust was a thing that you could apply to a machine intelligence anyway.
Instead, though, it was just another corridor, ending in a large frosted glass octagonal door.
“This way, please.” Ponos slid forward, its directional light illuminating the signs of biological warnings, first aid kits, and safety drills.
Eliard felt Val Pathok tense beside him, and he knew that the Duergar was thinking the same thing. Was this floating wind mobile going to poison them? Kill them? Intoxicate them? There was almost no limit to what an artificial intelligence as sophisticated as Ponos could do on its home turf.
“Really. If I had wanted to execute you, I could have had gas pumped into the elevator.” The flying drone appeared to read their thoughts, or their body language, at least. “You have nothing to fear from me. I have everything to achieve my goals, just so long as you comply.”
The captain felt that knot of hot, angry pain only grow stronger in the center of his chest. Maybe it was the drone’s use of the term ‘comply’ or maybe it was the way that its mechanoid voice sounded so self-assured and arrogant of its success.
“Fine,” Eliard snapped, stopping in front of the frosted glass door and planting his feet. “I give up,” he grunted at Irie and Val, whose looks of disgust had been replaced with a look of hope. “I’m not going any further, nor handing over this thing until I know what you’re doing with it and how you’re going to avenge the death of our friend, Cass.”
“Well done, Captain,” Irie muttered.
The drone merely turned back to face them, hovering silently in the air before eventually saying, “Such theatrics, Captain. You see why I choose to have as few forms of biological life on my ship as possible? You are entirely ruled by your hormones.”
“I want to know, you flying salt shaker.”
“Revenge is a concept that is beyond me, I am afraid. I merely wish to ensure the success of my mission, which is protecting Armcore. However, that does not mean that I do not have a functional understanding of the biological drive for revenge. Would you not consider thwarting Alpha’s plans to be a satisfactory testament to the loss of your companion?”
“We want it destroyed,” Irie said flatly.
“I suppose that I do not have to point out to you the logical fallacy in blaming Alpha for whatever happened on board the Adiba Research Station?” Ponos’s next words were ill-advised, as the captain reacted with a growl, bringing up his blaster and shooting the thing straight between the sensor-eyes.
THUNK! The drone careened backward, trailing sparks and bits of internal circuitry as it hit the glass door and fell to the ground with a dull, lifeless thud. Eliard could feel his chest rising and falling with a tight, hot fury.
“It was your fault we were there, Ponos,” he shouted at the dead drone, and at the ship around him, uncaring if the artificial intelligence could hear him or not. “You were the one who held us at ransom to go there and fetch this bloody Device for you. It’s your fault she’s dead.”
“Then let me recompense you for your struggles,” Ponos’s exact same voice said as the glass octagonal door folded back into the bulkhead, revealing a mecha unlike any that the captain or even Irie had ever seen.
For one thing, it was humanoid, or rather, it was far more humanoid than either Babe Ruth or any other mecha that Irie was aware of. Standing at a little over nine feet tall, it was even taller than Val Pathok was, but was nowhere near as wide. It was, if anything, slim and slender and looked like a mannequin, but whose entire humanoid egg of a head ended in a large circular camera lens. It was disconcerting to look at, as it appeared to always be examining you with that giant eye.
The rest of its body was modeled on a human’s, albeit with fluted, shiny-black plastic covers, between which were the suggestions of black rubber tubes and wires. As it took a few loping steps toward them, there was the slight hum of servos, but not the usual hiss and steam of a powerful battle mecha, and it moved fluidly and gracefully. It was almost like meeting an unexpected and new alien race, the captain thought.
“I see you’ve given up the tractor,” the captain sneered at it, referring to the strange eye-on-tracks that they had seen in Armcore Prime.
“I choose to interpret that as a compliment, Captain, not that one of my capabilities needs them. For your information, I have many available forms and none of them host my full matrix. Here.” It held out its long-fingered, immaculately sculpted hand, and the plastic of its palm opened like a lotus flower, sliding out single rectangle of gleaming gold.
“A credit note, capacity gold, coded with the agreed sum of ten million credits. This will entitle you to purchase any Armcore service or equipment up to that price.”
Eliard bit his lips, feeling the hot and dark feeling roll in him. He wanted the money—that was what he was here for, after all—but he also wanted revenge. If only he could figure out who against. Ponos? For sending the Mercury on that mission?
But who was to blame for her death, really? Eliard could almost hear the gruff, austere voice of his father say in the back of his mind. You were too brash. Too reckless. Why didn’t you look after your crew?
“Give it here.” Eliard reached for the gold card, just to have the Ponos-droid’s hand snap shut on the prize in a fraction of a second.
“First, Eliard, I want the Device.” Ponos stepped aside and waved a hand to gesture the crew into the lab.
“Fine.” The captain ignored Irie and Val’s grumbles as he stalked ahead into the medical facility, to find it gleaming with surgical chrome and glass. It was like the sort of laboratory you might see in a dream, with bright lights glaring off curved and anonymous surfaces, while intricate white-plastic machines rotated and hovered and hummed in mysterious tasks. But where the captain was supposed to go was obvious. While everything else in this facility seemed to be designed for robot and drone comfort, in the centre was a tall-backed, black-leather chair with straps at the wrists and ankles.
“I guess you want me on that, right?” He still held the Device in one hand in its bone-shell-like scepter form. “I don’t see why I can’t just give this thing to you.”
“No, you don’t.” Ponos ignored his question and walked to stand behind the chair, tapping the leather with its featureless fingers.
The captain grumbled and mumbled, but still sat in the chair. “I still have the biggest Duergar you’ve ever seen standing over there, Ponos, so don’t think for a second that if anything happens to me, he won’t dismantle that new body of yours.”
“I don’t doubt it, Captain. And, while your threats are meaningless to one such as me, I appreciate your need to state them. Please, do not be alarmed,” Ponos put his hands on the captain’s shoulders and gently, but very firmly, shoved him into the seat. “This procedure may hurt, I suppose, but it is necessary.”
“What procedure!?” Irie burst out. “What are you going to do to him?”
“We’ve already lost one crewmate, we won’t lose another,” Val growled.
“Your loyalty is inspiring to us all,” Ponos said smoothly as the automated cuffs locked into position around the captain’s ankles and one wrist, leaving the hand which clutched the Device-scepter free.
“The Q’Lot are a strange species,” the robot straightened up and informed them. “Although biological, and in that they share
commonality with all carbon-based lifeforms, it is their technology which is the most baffling to the Imperial Coalition.”
“Get on with it, tin can,” the captain muttered under his breath.
“It has often been my view that humanity took the preferential path, of course, as it led to my own creation, but there is something to be said for the route that the Q’Lot took. Humanity, and from what we understand, to some extent, the Valyien too, developed their technology along mechanical tool-use. Two sticks made a fire, a wheel could be added to an axle to make a cart, and fuel can be added to an engine to produce thrust, and so on. Eventually, humanity led to the creation of thinking machines, tools that could design other tools, I suppose you might say…”
“Getting bored, Ponos…” Eliard continued to berate the lecturing mannequin.
Ponos ignored him. “However, that approach has always led to a fatal design flaw in humanity’s approach: the interface between user biology and the strategic precision of the machine-tools.” Ponos raised a slender arm, and one of the floating white-plastic machines, rounded like an egg, settled effortlessly into its hand.
“You yourself, Captain, are a wonderful example of this right now.”
“I am so thankful to be of service…” Eliard said grumpily.
“Your anger and hormonal imbalance is impairing your ability to use this situation. Your need as a biological organism to act on chemical-intuitive needs is running at odds with the needs of the moment.”
“Like hell it is…”
“The Q’Lot, however, apparently took a very different approach with their technology, which is overwhelmingly organic.” Ponos continued to lecture as he brought the rounded device forward, toward the Device held tightly in Eliard’s fist. “From what Armcore has managed to assess, we believe that they grow their technology, from their ships to their weapons, and presumably their clothes and feeding requirements. Perhaps the Q’Lot were once a machine civilization like your good selves, but whatever their history was, now they appear to be an entirely organic culture.””
“What has this got to do with us, and me sitting like a fool in this chair?” Eliard asked tersely.
“What I mean to suggest, Captain Martin, is that the Q’Lot is their technology and their technology is the Q’Lot. It is hard to ascertain where something stops being a member of the species and becomes inanimate.” Ponos’s answer was equally unobscured.
“Are you trying to tell me that I’ve been carrying around, what, a Q’Lot pet?” The captain waved the Device around.
“Perhaps that is the best way for you to think about it, but I prefer the analogy of a symbiotic virus. You have been infected by the Device, Captain Martin, just as you have infected it.”
Eliard thought back to the blade that he had managed to turn it into to cut away the blue-scale virus, or how he could vary the Device’s strength and blast merely with his instincts. “Just take it off me, will you? It’s fine. I don’t even want the thing!” The captain was starting to feel a little disturbed by what the creature was saying.
“I am afraid that I cannot ‘just take the Device from you,’ as you so eloquently put it. Wish that I could. The Q’Lot Device has bonded to your DNA, and so now I need to take a sample of your DNA in order to help create an environment that it thinks is you.”
“You what now?” Eliard frowned.
“I have to clone some of your tissue, Captain Martin, and graft it onto a purpose-built framework.”
“You want to what? Clone me? You’re going to recreate another Eliard Martin to go do your errands for you?” The captain jerked his hand away.
“Believe me, Captain Martin, I have no intention of recreating you entirely. You are far too hormonal for my purposes. I merely mean an organic superstructure to form the framework for the weapon.” Ponos reached forward and seized the captain’s arm, easily pushing it back against the armrest while the mecha’s other hand lowered the medical instrument to wave it slowly over the captain’s fist, Device, and forearm. There was a wash of pale blue light from the instrument to the captain’s bare skin, and Eliard felt a stinging sensation.
“Ach. What is that?” he said.
“A prototype. Radiological testing sensors stimulate and extract genetic information…” Ponos started to say as the Device in the captain’s hand also reacted to the ‘radiological sensor.’ The captain felt the pain instantly turn off as the Device unfolded and grew along his arm in the blink of an eye, meaning that the entirety of his forearm was now an elaborate shell of green and blue material, with the bone-like shards flexing obscenely at the end where his fist should have been.
“Please, try to relax, Captain…” Ponos continued, as the glow from the medical unit got stronger.
“I am relaxed!” Eliard sounded anything but.
In response to the wave of energy, the Device shimmered a wave of color like a deep-sea creature used bio-luminescent lights and, if anything, it grew bigger, this time extending root-like blue-green tendrils over the captain’s elbow and up his arm.
“Hey! What’s it doing? It’s never done that before…” The captain tried to pull away, but he was strapped down. It reminded him of the serum, and of the effect that it had on the scientist Argyle Trent. “Whatever you’re doing to it, stop it! You’re making it angry!” he hissed.
Ponos stepped back and regarded the egg-like white mechanical unit, reading its findings in a way that the biologicals couldn’t decipher. “The Device is refusing to give up your DNA signature, Captain Martin, and is defying my scanner’s attempts to disentangle its neurological structure from your own.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Eliard said.
“It means that I cannot remove it from you,” Ponos stated.
“You’re not going to cut my arm off either,” Eliard shouted across the medical bay as Ponos brought back another of the white-egg like medical devices, to try a different set of frequencies and tests.
“It would be useless of me to do so even if I wanted to, Captain.” Ponos managed to sound a little weary at the suggestion. “Even if I removed your entire torso and arm, I would not be able to find a way to match your body’s alien DNA to human DNA. I need the crossover point, Captain, the place where the two systems, alien and human, interact with each other.”
“What are you trying to tell me, that I’m not even human anymore? That I’m going to turn into one of those things?” Eliard shuddered. The Device now looked as though his entire arm had been morphed into a giant pincer, glistening and shell-like. Small fronds of tentacles had sprouted in odd clusters, like limpets.
“No. The Device seems to want to return to its previous dormant state when it is not threatened. But it will only operate with the addition of your body now. Even were you to hand me the inert form of the Device, it would not respond to me.” Ponos paused. “Fascinating. Each Q’Lot item must in some way be grown for and out of its host.”
“I’m glad that you’re finding this so instructional, because you still owe me ten million credits,” Eliard said.
“Just as you owe me this Device, Captain.” Ponos finally put away the final medical examiner and turned back to the mutated captain.
“What do you want me to do? Look at it!” Eliard said.
“You will not receive one cent of Imperial money until that Device is secured in my control,” Ponos said genially. “However, I am willing to offer you a negotiated settlement.”
Eliard glared.
“If you are able to control the Device, then I will give you one million credits now as a down payment for your services, using the Device against Alpha, on missions that I have devised,” Ponos said.
“And what about the rest of the money?” Eliard said instinctively.
“Payment in part upon completion,” Ponos stated. “Weaken Alpha enough so that I can terminate him, and you will have your money as well as the Device, and be free to go.”
Eliard gritted his teeth. What option did he have? Walk
away without anything to show for the death of Cassandra? Apart from a weird, mutated arm that was bonded to his DNA?
“And if I just get up and walk out anyway, taking this Device with me?”
The camera-lens on Ponos’s eye sharpened into a tight focus on the captain. “You could, but all that you would be doing would be prolonging the inevitable. Eventually, Alpha will hunt you down, and you will be forced to use the Device against Alpha anyway. At least this way, you get paid, and you get the benefit of both my Alpha-blocking scrambling technologies, as well as my superior strategic planning.”
“Superior…” Eliard shook his head, looking at Val and Irie. He couldn’t make this decision alone. Ponos was asking them to be frontline weapons in the war against the hybrid Valyien intelligence.
“Do it, Captain.” Irie nodded. “Cass wanted to destroy that Alpha thing. This way, we can.”
“It would be a worthy battle,” Val agreed.
And a profitable one, too, the captain thought with a groan, before nodding. “Fine. Point us at Alpha, and we’ll kill it for you.”
Epilogue: Stranded
Light.
Light washing through the darkness, starting gently at first, and then growing brighter until it consumed everything else before it, becoming brilliant and dazzling.
“Ugh.” A groan, and the woman realized that her mouth was full of something dry and choking. The form on the table wretched and coughed, gagging on the substance that fell from her mouth like slivers of bark and dust.
As soon as Cassandra Milan moved, her body felt resistance, but it broke easily into plates of similar dry, desiccated fragments that slid from her body to the floor to smash into powder. Blue-scale. It had formed plates of material over her body in a protective, suffocating blanket, or a cocoon.
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