“That appears to be the case with the cylinders, yes, not so with the other space stations. Theta Team relays all their communiqués through me in addition to dialoguing with the Nautilus directly via their nanites.” He was about to explain more about how this process worked when he caught himself. She was the Nun; by definition, she knew more about Theta Team than they knew about themselves.
“Any idea what genetic modifications these extremophiles facilitated?” The nun asked.
“Yes. It seems the microbes are every bit as determined to colonize space. We believe, with their help, later generations of these rock people, as with the Kang, gained the ability to live outside these protective cylinder habitats.”
“That would explain the Kang Youth Rompus Room galaxy,” the nun muttered. “And their people’s ability to fight from their dragon ships as if exposure to space meant nothing. It’s quite possible the Kang followed an evolutionary trajectory not too dissimilar to these people.”
“If so, we may be able to ascertain how the dragon ships fly even in the absence of an atmosphere, flapping their wings as if they were still in a pressurized environment. The extremophiles of this cylinder world coordinate in hive minds to grant their hosts any number of abilities, flight and antigravity, among them, but once outside these enclosed habitats, we wouldn’t discount numerous other forms of propulsion. The dragon ships may flap their wings to make use, as with any living creature, of a circulatory and muscular-skeletal system, to get the cellular wastes of the extremophiles to where they can provide the thrust needed, in whatever form it’s needed. These dragon ships, what’s more, are likely less limited by what thrust traditional biochemicals, as we think of them, can provide than by what magic these extremophiles can work with their exotic material manufacture. We’re continuing to look into the full extent of their abilities. But evolution within this cylinder alone suggests an answer will be forthcoming on any and all forms of propulsion available to the dragon ships, and how to sabotage them with biological warfare targeted at the different extremophiles.”
In so much as it was possible to read the nun’s stern face, she appeared pleased by the news.
“Excellent,” she said, a bit off cue, and absent sounding, as if processing a lot more than what he was telling her. Possibly she was tapped into the other cylinder worlds and what was going on there. Theta Team operatives could only traffic so much information at once. Faster speeds and more bulk processing of larger chunks of data required uploading to Mother for proper handling. “I followed you here hoping you’d have good reason to come to this cylinder world before all the others. I see now that you did.”
“The Kang Dynasty hollowed out worlds,” Theseus continued, “turned into various renditions of Dracula’s castle—sorry, it was the closest Earth analogy that made any sense—are the same way. Every chamber in the castle is exposed to outer space.”
She didn’t ask him how he knew that, either assuming Theta Team already had people infiltrating one of the Kang castle worlds, or that Cassandra’s intel after doing reconnaissance work inside the Kang civilization, was just that complete.
“So, theoretically,” Theseus continued, “biological warfare undertaken against the dragon ships, if successful, should be equally effective against the castle worlds.”
“You have considered that these sealed artificial habitats breed the most vicious microbes?” the nun asked.
“Yes. We were wondering, too, if that was the evolutionary vector this civilization was exploring all along. They may have been determined to develop bodies that were immune to most any environment, including the vacuum of deep space.”
“If they can fight in virtually any milieu, then that’s a distinct advantage they have over us. And if the Kang evolved in a similar way, or simply got their hands on some of this biotech…”
“Yes,” Theseus said. “Our most advanced nano can keep us alive for short periods most anywhere, but sustained exposure… eventually even you, Cassandra, and Solo will cave. The Nautilus, too, for that matter. Her supersentience requires a fixed range of temperatures for maximum efficiency.”
“The inside of a sun? A black hole?”
Theseus realized the nun was pressing to see just how good these extremophiles were at adapting. “Maybe not as of the time they abandoned these microbe factories, which is what they really are. But now? Very possibly. We’re still analyzing.”
The nun took a deep breath. “If these microbes have imparted their hardiness to their hosts, they may be harder to kill than you imagine, if not close to impossible. Don’t let what seems like a huge leap forward turn into one step back. You will still have to find extremophiles less inclined to symbiosis than parasitism.”
“It makes sense for Theta Team to take the lead with all combat engagements from here on out,” Theseus offered. “We’ll last the longest in noxious environments, even in deep space. We can buy the rest of you the most time. It may be advisable to relocate the Nautilus to the eye of the tornado when battle starts in earnest. It can continue to send out probes to gather the intel you need from the deployed Theta Teams for your command decisions.”
“Leon keeps all his queens in play on his n-dimensional chessboard,” the nun replied. “He will not call them back behind the protective ranks of the bishops, knights, castles, and pawns. It’s not his style, and we queens would have it no other way.”
Theseus sighed. “Mother might be able to analyze the extremophiles in time, give Theta Team the same upgrades, so we can go anywhere the Kang can.”
“We may have no choice, long-term,” the nun replied. “Sonny’s people have found the jewel of the crown in the Dead Zone. I suppose it’s what they do. The telemetry on his commandeered space station the Lucky Streak is capable of tracking TGCs and TGEs across the universe, and it spies five. Many more that are merely galactic in scale. We don’t yet know how many of these we will come into conflict with, which ones can be counted on for allies, but one thing is for certain, we’ll all be worth more if we are truly all-terrain fighters—in the nextgen sense of the word.”
“Forgive me, but you’re not given to sermons. Is that your way of telling me not to wait for Mother to have the luxury of the computing time to throw at this problem, with everything else she has on her plate?”
“God helps those who help themselves,” the nun said dryly. “Mother will give you what help she can, but you may have to use Theta Team’s existing aptitudes to bootstrap the retrofits for yourselves.”
“Even if we succeed,” Theseus said, “it may not be enough. Our bodies were designed for alien worlds—not deep space. As such, they will still entail vulnerabilities that the likes of the Kang have long since evolved beyond.”
The nun considered the matter. “I will dialogue with the Nautili in the other timelines. One of them has got to have enough downtime to bioprint us new teams specialized for space battles—sans the protective shielding of ships. Looks like we’ll be adding a fourth type of Special Forces.”
“Get it done before this TGE shuts down your access to alternate timelines, and blocks not just the communications, but the beaming of any troops to us for reinforcements. I can only imagine the one reason they haven’t detected us so far is that the Dead Zone and the Kang Dynasty they consider to be barely worth their while to monitor.”
She nodded.
“What will we call these new Special Forces units?”
“Hell’s Angels.”
Theseus frowned. “I should have known better than to ask a nun. How about we go with Gamma Group? Though, Techa knows, gamma radiation will be the least of what they’re exposed to.”
The nun grunted. Her mind was already elsewhere.
Theseus nodded and bowed to her. He backed off, letting her continue her unique form of playing field marshal—teleporting from one site to another. She wasn’t one to waste time in resting mode or in combat mode, so Theseus was reasonably confident that she wasn’t merely beaming from one site to the next
at random. But whatever her criteria for prioritizing her way through unfolding crises, he had his own job to do, and so no more mental energy to throw at the problems facing the nun.
Theseus pulsed the signal to his people on this and the other Dead Zone habitats, with their new marching orders. The Dead Zone biotech was to be unraveled with the expressed purpose of finding vulnerabilities the Kang might be susceptible to.
He already knew they wouldn’t care to receive that news. They had not been trained to kill first and ask questions later, like the other Special Forces units.
NINETEEN
THE DEAD ZONE
THE CYLINDER WORLD PORUS
It had taken all of Cabbage Head’s strength to pry open the lids of the esophagi. His praying mantis-like body, a metal-polymer blend with a silicon base, was immensely strong, and just like the Praying Mantis on which he’d been modeled, capable of lightning-fast strikes. It had taken strike mode just to raise the lids, one after the other. As for his Cabbage Head, whose leaves peeled off and took to the air to explore the environment, each one a complete laboratory which could isolate various ecosystems and begin to analyze how they were put together… so far he hadn’t deployed it.
Now that the metal-stone caskets were all open, he stood back in awe, wondering what the hell this world was all about.
The nun was arriving.
Not a moment too soon.
How did she do that?
She had been designed to be dialed into Theta Team better than anyone else on the Nautilus, so that Leon and other teams could make the most out of the Theta Team operatives as assets. But as a librarian. Not as some kickass Jedi Knight with fighting prowess and mind-melding ability to match. Cabbage Head bowed to her as she descended that invisible staircase in the sky she’d materialized on.
She surveyed the coffins—so many cylinders with bizarre symbols engraved on them—the lids ripped open.
“Perfect,” the nun said.
“What are they?” Cabbage Head asked.
“The first of the space walkers.”
Cabbage Head nodded. “They do indeed seem adapted to live outside the protective womb of a world with its atmosphere. But I fail to understand how they died. My scanners show no aging process at all.” He was referring to the probes built into the outermost cabbage leaves of his head.
“They’re hibernating. Obsolete now, there’s not much need for them. It appears this race conquered mortality long before they conquered obsolescence.”
“Why did you sound so excited upon seeing them?” Cabbage Head asked.
“Gamma Group will be joining us soon—the Nautilus’s best guess as to the ideal space fighters. They will need something to test their mettle against. They may be able to learn enough from this obsolete model to take their game up a level. Assuming Theta Team can figure out how to awaken them when the time is right.”
“We’ll get on it,” he said.
Cabbage Head nodded, staring at the bodies held in stasis, thinking it over. “Does seem a bit callous. As sentient beings, they might have their own ideas about how to spend the rest of their lives.” He realized he was out of line. “I apologize.”
She paid him no mind. The thousands of bodies—along with their crypts—were already beaming out. “The Nautilus from one of the neighboring timelines that has agreed to come to our aid in this endeavor will keep them in tow via tractor beam until she’s ready to engage them.”
“Better hope they don’t engage themselves and take a can opener to the Nautilus.”
The nun snorted. “Glad I’m not the only one running worst case scenarios through their heads around here.”
The nun beamed herself out, off to Techa knows where next.
Cabbage Head, for his part, was glad to see her gone. More supersentient AI on legs than human, she creeped him out. The religious habit didn’t fool him one bit. AIs surely didn’t believe in God. The rest of her getup like the rest of her persona was pure theater—for whose benefit? Certainly not his.
His scanners had gone over her habit. Every inch of that garment was constructed of millions of layers of nanite hive minds. Theta only knew what each one was capable of creating on the fly for her. He had no doubt she could dispatch entire nanoscale armies singlehanded.
TWENTY
ABOARD THE NAUTILUS
CORIN’S AND DEWITT’S PRIVATE SUITE
“Come on, Corin, think.” She hammered on her keyboard hunt and peck fashion just hard enough to send a coded S.O.S. to her higher self. Techa knows, drawing a blank with Earth’s and the Nautilus’s survival at stake was some special kind of torture reserved for egomaniac scientists. She, not being of said variety, didn’t feel she deserved it. Staring bug-eyed at the screen was failing to elicit the necessary altered state of consciousness. If only she could charge the empty-headed space like a special kind of vacuum state for drawing in what she needed.
Mother came over the COMMS. “Corin, if you can just move the needle a little with the bioenhancements, it may well reduce my reliance on the bioprinters. There is a strong chance I will not be able to meet demands for clones at some point in the near future.”
Corin nodded. That at least gave her a way in. If she mutated the cells of the skin so that they readily reverted to stem cells during times of injury, and migrated quickly to where the tissue repair was needed…
Several hours later, she realized she was having trouble focusing her eyes, which was the only sign she had of time passing. For what it was worth, her mind was losing focus even faster. But perhaps, just perhaps, she’d done it. Mother could pile the wounded up in a corner with this latest retrofit, and left unattended, depending on how far gone they were, days or weeks later, they’d be back on line. These days, they fought wars where seconds made the difference, even nanoseconds, so it seemed like a piddling victory at best. But any clone Mother didn’t have to recycle meant less of a burden on her, and her bioprinters. And she and her Mars war god did work in multiple time horizons simultaneously.
Techa help them if it came down to this breakthrough making a difference.
TWENTY-ONE
SYNTHA TRANSGALACTIC CIVILIZATION
The Planet SOMA
OMEGA FORCE AND ALPHA UNIT, CLONE TEAM ONE
Omega Force and elements of Alpha Unit Clone Team One popped out of the hollowed out stone cavern, located in one of the Earth’s forbidden zones in the Atacama desert, into a world of unknown origin. A city, to be more precise.
“Look down,” Crumley said.
Leon, still a bit shell-shocked, was quite open to suggestion, unable to put up the least psychological resistance. He likely would have jumped if told. He gazed down at a city seemingly without end—and without much by way of gravity, considering how the citizens were getting about, jumping from level to level. The pedestrians’ jet boots kicked in at the final moment to tweak their trajectories as they hopped from one branch of the city to another. The magnetized soles of their shoes kept them anchored once docked. Logic dictated that some gravity was present; otherwise there would be no atmosphere, besides, a city this large would create its own gravity well. As to why Leon and his people weren’t just floating off, their bodies, relative to the locals must have been far denser, and thus far heavier.
Cassandra, not known for her diplomacy, grabbed the nearest transparent-ramp walker on their level by the arm. “Where are we?”
The tall, bearded figure took a beat to assess her and her party, and smiled. “Sol primitives. We love you guys! Forgive me, I’m Gando.”
“Excuse me, Sol primitives?” Ajax asked. “And for the record, I do the nasty putdowns around here.”
“Peoples whose civilizations haven’t spread beyond their solar system yet.” The old man, a good eight feet tall, reprised his smile, “and it wasn’t a put down. Our space archeologists—and the city is riddled with them—would kill for an audience with you. In response to the other question,” he turned toward Cassandra, “this is Syntha Transgalactic
, Soma City.”
“A TGE!” Skyhawk said. “Too cool.”
“More TGC,” the old man corrected. “A transgalactic empire suggests one ruler, or perhaps some kind of oligarchy, likely forced, with a top-down hierarchy.”
“And you speak our language because…?” Ajax said, not done being testy.
“The city AI reads your minds, translates your language on the fly for me, and performs whatever genetic modifications I need to speak your language. Not many in my case, as I’m humanoid, like you.”
“And just how big is this city?” Crumley asked, still unable to stop staring down at infinity.
“It’s about three times the size of your Earth,” the old man explained.
Crumley gulped.
“And the atmosphere, gravity?” Cronos asked. It wasn’t clear if he was asking as a soldier wanting to know how to adjust his sniper rifle settings, or as a tourist, or from a place of spiritual enthrallment.
“All configurable, and variable, depending on what level you’re on, and what humanoid variety you are.”
“Enough with the tourist shit,” Cassandra said, squeezing the old man’s arm. He flinched. “We’re at war with Kang Galactic.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but a Sol people going up against a Galactic Empire is suicide. Even a GC, which is a lot harder to provoke, and a lot more civil when engaged in such matters.”
“We have quite the death wish,” Crumley said, speaking sarcastically.
“And it’s not like we have any choice,” Leon said, noticing Patent’s Alpha Unit cadets couldn’t be bothered to pick the old man’s brain, not when they had their scanners, which by now they’d used to hack into the city AI. Cassandra could have done as much, if she could calm down enough first.
“We don’t know much about the Kang, I’m afraid,” the old man said, “besides their penchant for war games. None of the GCs or TGCs will risk sending probes into their region as that would just invite confrontation.”
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