Alien Alliance Box Set

by Chris Turner

  Dez nodded. “We may need more samples, sir. My experiments will run roughshod pretty soon.” With protective gloves, the engineer and one of his assistants transported the pod to a smaller glass case and hooked it up with wires and attempted to stimulate it to action with electric shock.

  Mathias intoned, “My hope is that we can backengineer a large enough neural net mimicking the alien intelligence’s behaviour which may help us design better robots in the future. Dez, our senior analyst, is confident. Any movement on that, Dez?”

  The engineer beamed. “We currently have two streams of innovation in motion: one by simulation, mimicking intelligent behaviour in software via neural nets, the other by direct implant, splicing biological elements with machine parts. Just as Hresh started with his device called Biogron. One way to train the network is to provoke it, sir, prod the intelligence under various situations. Like now, as I stimulate it with both forceps and electric current. We observe the results, see how it deals with benign and irritating stimuli and program the new synthetic to act accordingly, so the AI has a huge repository of ways to deal with tough situations.”

  Yul scowled. “It sounds like a shotgun approach to an impossible problem. What are you going to do, program every possible scenario?”

  “Not necessarily,” responded Dez. “We provide the synthetic with comprehensive classes of reactions weighted with highest priority, according to the ‘personality’ under which it is operating. An aggressive personality would respond to a stimulus with violence, a feral one utter carnage, whereas a diplomatic one would pause to weigh and analyze its options and negotiate.”

  Yul chose not to answer. It was interesting, but he didn’t like the idea of anything of flesh and blood being a complete cyborg. He didn’t trust synthetics like that brute Goss. But then he didn’t trust real men either—like Mathias, if he actually was human.

  The pod under the glass seemed to make cracking noises to some stress Dez currently applied and Yul drew back.

  Mathias squinted at him in amusement. “Are you that much afraid of it, Vrean?”

  Yul muttered a curse under his breath.

  “What’s that?”

  “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.”

  “From what Goss has told me,” Mathias said, “they’re just a bunch of charred plants. It was the Zikri’s horrors in the Mentera tanks that got the better of you.”

  Let the man believe what he wanted, thought Yul. He owed Mathias nothing. The bastard would get his just desserts when the time came. Slapping nanobot particles in his blood was the line drawn in the sand. For now, he’d appease the tyrant, answer their questions, appear to comply. Then he’d strike when they least expected it. He peered anxiously at the pod, glad that he was suited when he had handled the things.

  Dez continued to prod the pear-shaped shell with a metal fork, dangling his gloved hand through a flush, tight-sealed opening at the top of the case. The man grinned while he worked, making small whistling sounds with his mouth. The outer surface of the pod seemed to absorb the prods with stoic forbearance and change colour from green to yellow to deepening red.

  Mathias turned to Yul. “If what you say is true about this ‘hatched’ creature both you and Goss describe colourfully as a dragonfly, we hope to capture and use its adaptive qualities to drive our next line of cyborgs. So far, I haven’t seen anything ‘dragonflyish’.”

  Yul had not told Mathias about the remarkable adaptive power of the chameleon creature back in the Albatross. Let the sod find out for himself. If it morphed into something else—he did not want to be around.

  Yul frowned, his muscles tensing as the pod grew visibly larger. His brows rose with curiosity and unease. Crimson barbs sprouted like spikes, a means to protect itself from the foreign invasion and now, menacing, mottled spots of vivid colour undulated over its surface. It seemed to quiver with a super-charged energy as if on high alert to ward off some new threat.

  Dez mused aloud. “This is a second pod. The original seems to have split again in two. We’ve isolated the others in a separate container. Interesting and provocative, but not telling us much.”

  “Why split in two?” demanded Mathias.

  Dez shrugged. “Why not? Why change from green to yellow? A diversion, I believe. It increases its chance of survival. One pod may survive and the victim will go into fight-or-flight mode. A predator may go for one colour, leave the other alone. Let’s assume I’m the predator, one white-coated predator. The plant obfuscates its enemy. Clever. It’s a marvellous display of self preservation. Whatever the case, it’s absolutely compelling.”

  “Knock off the maudlin adjectives,” Mathias snorted.

  Yul gaped with impatience. “I still don’t see what fiddling around with alien plants has to do with building a new line of cyborgs?”

  Mathias’s eyes flashed in irritation. “It’s beyond your understanding, Vrean. I don’t really have time to explain it. I just wanted to show you the apparatus you’re to be looking for. Some mock-up of Hresh’s black box, a Biogron.”

  “Wait,” interjected Dez, “if he’s curious about the science and wants to know—” He pushed himself forward with importance, away from the protective screen of the case. “Our neural network is recording all the behaviours, successes and failures of the pod and creating a vast output matrix while firing neurons at will, the input being predicament, the output being solution. I must say, so far, the pod has been remarkably successful in evading minor attacks and absorbing stresses.”

  Yul stared blankly. “It’s gobbledegook to me.”

  Mathias’s patience was running thin. “What he’s saying, Vrean, is that we can create anything we want. Something you don’t understand. I have unlimited funds and resources. If an intrepid Cybernetics Corp explorer bot on, say, alien planet X is attacked, it goes into pod form, forms a protective dome, and when it is ingested say by some giant lizard, it morphs into an eagle-taloned dragon, ripping apart its attacker’s innards. I can program anything I want. Better yet, I can have the bot figure out what to do on its own. So, instead of a shape-changing alien species out in Timbuktu lying dormant, doing nothing, we can exploit and harness such a unique force for our own use in the lab and make a fortune.”

  Yul sneered, “As much as I dislike Goss, he’s more human-like and effective than what you intend to do with your defensive, passive pod.”

  “Goss has a complete human interface. He can pass as a human, but lacks an adaptive process like our Xeses’ friend. Lacks an arsenal of powers and the knowledge how to use them. I want to incorporate these adaptive features in our next wave of products. To specialized buyers, of course.”

  Yul flinched at this news, remembering the feral handiwork of the dragonfly. “How are you going to control such an entity?”

  “We have inhibitors in place—in software and hardware. That’s the least of our concerns.”

  “It’ll never work. The alien is too adaptable.”

  Mathias smirked.

  As much as he hated to admit it, Yul began to understand, yet he shuddered at the implications.

  Mathias gestured. “Imagine a whole army of these things powering the next generation of cyborgs.” Mathias gazed with rapture upon the pod, his eyes travelling to faraway worlds.

  Dez’s eyes gleamed no less intently. “We scanned and took bio samples of the pod, identified a liquid substance, various nucleotides and polymers inside, but unexpected ones too—sulphur-carbon and silicon-hydrogen, something vaguely resembling a foetus but as of yet of unknown make-up. As for fertilization—” He shook his head. “My guess is it seems to auto-fertilize upon stimulus from the environment. On its own, in a contained sphere, it lies dormant, so we have to subject it to stresses, like this one.” He zapped it with 50V of electricity and it bounced off the sand, rolling a few centimetres.

  Yul shook his head, not seeing any parallel. Was Dez some sort of wacko? Mathias too? A billionaire psycho? A quack who used electro-shock therapy on exotic plan
ts to make a name for himself like certain barbaric doctors out of Earth’s dim past?

  “Because it looked like an egg, it gave me an idea,” Dez said excitedly. “We put the second pod in a vat with some ants and an anaconda. The ants, well, they crawled over it and the pod reacted, oozing some foul yellow secretion that sent the ants retreating. I doubt the plant had secreted that stuff already, so it must have created it on the fly—miraculous... which tells us much.”

  “As for the snake, nothing has happened—yet. Betsy has just lain there, eyeing our subject without much interest. It’s typical behaviour. But wait... I am about to coat the pod with some bait, some chicken-egg yolk.” He reached in with his gloved hand through the protective screen and using a delicate brush-like tool, painted a yellow slime on the pod which rested on the sanded bottom immobile.

  The coiled snake uncoiled, darting its forked tongue in and out and poking its yellow and brown wedge-shaped head up curiously. In a flash, its mouth stretched wide, absorbed the egg in a single gulp. A vague lump passed down the snake’s glistening middle.

  Yul stared.

  “Look,” Dez cried. “Our pod is consumed. Oh, well, back to the drawing board.” His eyes glinted with a sick fascination.

  Mathias pointed. “Look, again.”

  The snake’s middle suddenly swelled, its fanged mouth opening in a contorted ‘O’.

  Yul drew back, horrified.

  The reptile writhed, then thrashed. Its tail whipped against the glass as if it were having a seizure.

  Dezmin gaped, breathing out a gasp of astonishment, sweat beading his flushed cheeks.

  Mathias’s jaw dropped.

  Dezmin’s young assistant hunched closer, pushing up his horn-rimmed glasses to better observe the phenomenon.

  The lump enlarged, then a writhing pulse rippled down the snake’s body. It ripped in two and a blood-gored shape tore out of the snake’s tail to flap about the bloody sand, flicking bits of flesh off its wings. Yul and the others moved back reflexively. What looked like a lizard’s body with six prehensile legs squirmed and flailed, its four wings fluttering in synchrony, propelling it forward to smash against the glass.

  Two quick successive strikes caused the glass to shatter and the assistant’s face blossomed with glass fragments. Caustic fluid dripped from his eyes and nose, which the moth-lizard spurted out of its proboscis. The faceless youth collapsed in a final scream of agony.

  Yul jerked away. So much for a neural network. He bolted for the exit, hearing the harsh ringing of an alarm. But Goss activated the pain dispenser and he fell writhing to his knees.

  Three security men secured him, hauled him to his feet, then dragged him out the exit.

  More poured in the doorway. Technicians scattered in confusion. Goss lifted a hand, gripping his blaster. The moth, winging about the room, shot acid right in the synthetic’s face as if recognizing an immediate foe. Goss leaped back, his burnt visage pooling liquid.

  Mathias stumbled for the exitway, cursing Goss and Dez. “Control your experiment! Lock the place down!”

  Mother of God, thought Yul, as the guards hauled him into the fire escape. Whatever the moth-lizard was, it seemed to absorb the qualities of whatever it morphed into, as had that thing in Regers’ tank. The alien lifeform drew on what was around it, in its environment, adapting like an artist’s imagination to some new stimulus or predicament.

  Mathias’s moth-plus-snake became a flying komodo dragon.

  Yul’s brain registered the fact in a flash of lucidity. It made sense! The essence of the pod was a moth, indigenous to Xeses. But upon coming in contact with something else, like the snake, it became some new hybrid horror, in this case, a winged lizard.

  The shrieks reached an apex as Mathias’s men died. Folly to have pushed the life form too far. Yul caught glimpses of the freak moth-lizard before he was pulled out of range of its sight. The thing spun out of control as stun fire caught it broadside and sent it thudding to the floor. It adapted. Jerking upright, like the sinister plants that had spawned it, it sent clicking sounds from its crazy, whirring wings. Those wings folded, then it fluttered uselessly on its black, prehensile legs, and scuttled across the tiles under men’s feet under the protection of an overturned table, dodging fire...

  * * *

  It was a distraught Mathias who stood before Yul in the debriefing room, an icy grimace pasted on his face. Two of his aides stood by, hard, lean-muscled men, one holding the star-shaped pain dispenser with twitching fingers, the other peering on with hostile glances.

  Yul took pleasure in Mathias’s discomfort and glared at him like a sullen wolf. “Having fun mopping up your mess? What of your new bug friend?”

  “You leave tomorrow for Namith,” Mathias grunted briskly. “Goss will take you there.”

  “Goss? Odd. He looked rather preoccupied of late.”

  Mathias waved a clenched fist. “Nothing our technicians can’t fix.”

  Yul glanced at his own injuries. Mathias waved that off too. “My team down in med bay will fix you up.”

  “The wonders of modern science.”

  “You are to spy on Hresh’s operation. Fill me in on any details I request. Sybcore Labs, he calls it. Sybcore is a blatant front. I suspect the embezzler has a secret operation running from there. Find out as much as you can. What’s Hresh doing there? Where are his real research labs? How is he funding his operation? It galls me to think he has used my resources to promote his own ends. My intelligence network reports nothing more.”

  “If he’s thwarted you thus far, he’ll continue to thwart you.”

  “If you’re caught, you reveal nothing of me. No link to tie you to me. I will deny your every claim. I accept no culpability for your mistakes. If you fail this recon mission, expect pain beyond your wildest dreams.”

  “Naturally,” said Yul through pursed lips.

  “We’ve traced Hresh’s supply ships going from Namith to remote worlds like Vegron in the Dim Zone. You’re going out again.”

  “No fucking way!”

  Mathias ignored the outburst. “Relax. I didn’t say out ‘there’, as in the Dim Zone specifically. Namith, for starters. That you survived the encounter with the Zikri is nothing less than extraordinary. Almost as extraordinary as the presence of these remarkable pods. We may have all we need for this operation, with that bulb you kindly donated to us. It has spawned other potentialities.”

  Yul jeered. “Why don’t you get Goss or one of your cyborgs to go down and play spy?”

  “Full synthetics are detectable by surveillance equipment. Minimal hybrids like yourself, do slip under the radar. Rarely are they on watch lists. We need trained muscle down there. Experienced men.” He watched Yul, eyeing him like a fresh fish. “A man like you.”

  A thousand thoughts raced through Yul’s mind. When would he be free of this man’s intrigue?

  “Hresh was experimenting with splicing alien biology into the mechnobot technology. We still have some of his original schematics before he turned traitor. We’ve been trying to implement some of his edgy science, as you saw—with marginal success. Hresh got wind of our little expedition out to Xeses. I think he had planned his own excursions to dredge up life out in the Dim Zone—which leads me to believe that at this moment he’s attempting nothing less than to mimic our own research here.”

  Yul chewed his lip with vengeance brewing in his heart.

  Mathias thought for some time. “I think it’s adequate recompense for the botched mission and the destruction of my ships.” he would have thought no differently if he were in Mathias’s shoes.

  Mathias gestured as he gazed out the window on the multicoloured lights of the darkening city. “Should you fail to report in...” Pain drove into Yul’s side as one of the marines thumbed a switch. Yul doubled over. He sagged, clutching at his gut. “I may have to send out regular pain reminders for you, just for the fun of it. I’ve a key code sequence to give you, that my hackers managed to flesh together. It�
�ll get you into the main installation at Sybcore; from there, you’re on your own. Use your imagination.”

  It was all too painfully clear for Yul.

  * * *

  Massaging his temples, Mathias spoke to Goss in his private chamber. He sighed. “Vrean’s a proud, sullen man. He may need some ‘coaxing’ on this job, I fear.”

  “Even with the implants?”

  “I’ve seen men like him,” affirmed Mathias, fingering his chin. “Rabid dogs, like crazed beasts they fight to the end, even if it kills them.”

  “I know the exact person you need—Miss Cloye.”

  “Is she good?”

  Goss grinned. “The best. Better, because I know her so well.”

  Mathias turned to him, his eyes glinting. “Summon her then. Orders are to terminate Vrean if he becomes unruly. Otherwise keep an eye on him and see that he does his job.”

  “Roger that.”

  Chapter 5

  Goss piloted the Prosaic, a light craft, toward the Pegasus station orbiting the world of Namith. He docked the ship in the designated bay near the passenger transhub then motioned to the craft’s exit hatch which would grant Yul entry to the heavily trafficked platform. The trip to the warehouse outside Paranith City was only a short jaunt.

  Yul blinked. “Aren’t you going to drop me off?”

  “Find your own way,” growled Goss. “I’m not your chauffeur. Here’s 200 credits to book passage to the city—added to your indenture.” He tossed four luminous coins to Yul. “Don’t screw this up. Remember the pain inducer. If it was me, I’d have killed you, Mathias be damned.”

  Yul ducked through the hatch to the passenger depot, his black bag of gear slung over a shoulder, and disappeared amidst the throng down the main moving conveyor. A wall of sound hit him and he turned to watch Goss’s ship’s thrusters flare and the ship head off back to Phallanor. Goss hadn’t taken him down directly because Mathias wanted nothing to do with him—or perhaps Goss was just being a prick. Yul’s back muscles stiffened.

  As the babel of human voices settled within his consciousness, he loosed a breath. How long had it been since he had been amongst a crowd of free people? The transfer boards lit up with names, the destinations to far and domestic worlds, Virgas, Proplian, Zane’s star—Pegasus station was a huge complex: a hub to many in the Geriah sector, of which it was the centre, named after its legendary explorer, Tond Geriah, the colonizer who had charted many of this sector’s suns and planets. Easier to launch crafts from this floating airport than from Namith, Yul thought, or neighbouring worlds. A way of avoiding the gravity and excess fuel needed to escape the planet. It was one of the newer innovations of this century.