by Chris Turner
Yul shook his head sadly. “The Zikri are a deal more violent than a few moronic thugs looking for trouble and excitement. You’re lucky the Zikri haven’t blown this hatch and dragged you away in their tanks,” shouted Yul.
Hresh shrugged. “You must have led them here, you idiot—despite your musculature and high test scores. These are the risks of doing business. I should have known.” He chewed his lip, but his eyes remained glued to the containing vessel.
The pod had cracked open to give birth to a large dragonfly with a mushroom-like body, not dissimilar to the dragonfly Yul had witnessed in the Orb. Frenzied, knife-edged wings now sheared off the puffball’s flesh like saws. The dragonfly smashed its eyeless face against the glass, but the shock-proof glass held, containing the creature’s repeated assaults.
“This is more important than any puny, insignificant attack on my complex,” Hresh affirmed. “Look at it!” he marvelled. “Incredible!” He stared at the indicator needle on a nearby device pointing off the scale. “This shows intelligence beyond any recorded species: immediate extermination of enemies while evolving into a hybrid to escape its cage. The discovery of the century. Do you realize—” He shook his head. “No, it’s impossible. I know what to do. I’ll put it through a battery of tests. Employ everything we’ve got. No more nuts and bolts and circuits and prosthetics, but a new breed of AI!” He danced a small jig.
Yul’s mouth worked. The man was insane. If he thought Mathias was off, this lab rat was degrees beyond.
Hresh gave curt orders to his tech team. A man plodded over to a crane and picked up the Biogron receptacle to insert it into the bowels of the armadillo avatar. Hresh directed him with a flushed face. “Now—a heart for a heart!”
Chapter 8
Hresh ordered the steel portal to the ‘obstacle course’ raised. He motioned the utility crane forward. The operator clamped forks on the shiny hide to drag the dino-armadillo hulk into the spacious chamber where Yul and Cloye had undergone their tests. The place seemed more massive than Yul remembered it, as if Hresh had changed its size and configuration. As the crane whirred closer, Yul pictured the dragonfly knocking against the Biogron’s glass container in its chest, fluttering about in confusion. Various members of Hresh’s science team drifted over to watch in silent curiosity. Meanwhile, the militiamen stood by, blasters on the ready, awaiting any further development. Several flashed eyes on the ceiling as more booms echoed.
The crane deposited the mechanical creature inside, backed up, and the doors slammed shut. Hresh and the others gathered around a terminal observing the beast inside, as it hunched on all fours in the dimly-lit room.
The blond security guard frowned. “The mechno’s unresponsive.”
“Give it time, Nonas,” Hresh purred. His lips curled upward as if he had complete confidence in his creation.
Yul recalled the improbability of the thing surviving in the glass case and he scowled. “How do you expect the alien pod to control whatever outer shell you’ve given it?”
Hresh steepled his fingers under his chin. He responded without looking at him. “The Biogron is the ultimate feedback loop. The hardware reports whatever impulse signal is sent from inside, to the outside, namely the outer shell. Vice versa, it forwards all stimuli from what’s on the outside to whatever’s inside. So, our dragonfly can move the avatar’s body as well as perceive what is happening outside its metallic body.”
Yul stared at the screen. “What about this obstacle course? Is it real, or some VR trick?”
Hresh sighed. “It’s a combination VR and ‘real’ robot test bench. To hammer test our new models for real-world application. Your questions are tiresome. Save them for later.”
Hresh’s communicator buzzed. “Gustav, talk to me.”
“Sir, not looking good. We’ve got enemies incoming in the air and they’re not going away. Two down, but two are hot. We smoked one, but they blasted a hole in the hangar’s dome. They mean to dock.”
Hresh’s left cheek twitched. “Stay on it, Gustav. Enforce emergency backups. Do your job.” He hung up.
Hresh frowned and worked his lip. He checked figures on a monitor, searching the inert hulk vainly for any signs of life.
Yul tilted his head in amazement. The man was either a nitwit or completely oblivious to the danger. Did he have some other line of defence? His ground forces, including Gustav and crew, were taking a beating.
“So you kill a few of them?” grunted Yul. “What then? You ignoring the army they’ll bring to avenge their losses?”
Hresh appeared not to hear and he flapped his hand at his assistant. “Arm the radon penetrators. And observe.”
A dozen crimson dots appeared from eyelets above and trained ruby energy lines down on the hulking monstrosity. Pulses of light streamed down from the eyelets to strike the plated back.
The titanium hide flashed red hot. It appeared to quiver.
“Just little love taps,” explained Hresh with a smile. “Up the juice, Ahmid.”
The technician paused, pushed a red, stiff lever. The laser-like fire increased in pulse and intensity. Heat waves and coils of smoke rose from the shiny back that seemed to jerk and twist now with spasmodic intensity.
Yul’s skin tingled. He knew what fury the creature was capable of when provoked.
The metal creaked and sizzled at the heat. More laser fire stabbed down from above.
The dino-armadillo thing, powered by the Biogron pod, leaped like a spider out of the line of fire. It formed a shield around its now luminous body. Barbs like arrows shot out from small orifices in its shell to pierce the laser weapons one by one, incapacitating them.
Hresh watched in stunned silence.
Yul looked over to see Cloye still squirming from the pain of her excision.
“Test #2...Fill the chamber, Ahmid. Bring in the aquamons!”
Massive sprays of fluid began to jet down from the ceiling, splashing the thing’s back. Hot metal sizzled. Before long the armadillo shape was covered mid-thigh in water which quickly swirled over its spiked hide. The camera switched to underwater filter viewing, the visual showing a sepia tint. Hresh’s mechnobots, four of them, shaped like giant pike, dropped down with a splash from a secret opening in the ceiling, swimming toward the armadillo. The mechnos’ beaked snouts glinted in the tinted light and lifted to reveal massive incisors which hooked on the armadillo’s limbs, two to a side.
Two more aquamons dropped into the water. That made six.
“Is that real, or VR?” demanded Cloye.
“This is quite real,” affirmed Hresh.
The aquamons flapped tails and shook their grouper-like heads back and forth like pack dogs, yanking at the metallic limbs.
Hresh’s creation curled into a ball, quivering much like it had in Hresh’s Biogron as a pod, earlier on when attacked by the puffballs. The mechnobot fish tugged at the intruder, threatening to pull the legs from its body.
Yul stared doubtfully, thinking again maybe Hresh had pushed his experiment too far.
An impossible thing happened!
The legs extended, slitted sideways, formed rounded paddles. With a forceful lunge, it propelled itself upward through the churning water, dragging the four predators with it.
Hresh’s lips parted. His creation was performing a miracle. It banked right and smashed its horn into one of the free-floating predators, ploughing it straight into the wall, crushing the mechno and sending electric sparks into the turbulent water.
“Brilliant! Amazing! The alien’s reaching out to its new hardware! It’s modifying what’s already there.”
The armadillo turned and crashed again into the other free-floating predator, mashing it into the wall. The mechnobot slid down in a sparking heap.
Forelegs and hindlegs flailed. The armadillo whipped off its aggressors, ridding itself of its perilous pests before it paddled forth and systematically annihilated them one by one.
Hresh grinned ear to ear, giving vent to a mad shou
t of glee. “I name you A13! My thirteenth attempt at a successful working miracle. On to test #3.”
Nonas tapped him on the shoulder. “Ah, sir. I don’t think there’s time for more tests.” He handed his employer the receiver. Hresh snarled and snatched it. “What?”
Gustav’s agitated voice rasped over the com. “Orbs, sir! They’ve stormed the hangar! I can’t hold them off much longer—” His voice cut out. The connection went dead.
Hresh stared for several seconds at the device, his lips curling as if struggling with a gnawing doubt. Then he briskly turned back to the monitor, clicking his tongue with annoyance.
“I told you—you’re in over your head, Hresh,” thundered Yul.
Thuds came from above. Plaster and metal cracked and crashed down. It was only a matter of time before the lab was breached.
Hresh mumbled, “Very well, open the containment door.”
His aide, Ahmid, stared. “But sir, it’s not properly tested yet.”
“All the more interesting for us.” Hresh’s face curled in a sinister grin.
Yul and Cloye watched in dismay as Ahmid’s fingers reached for the control. Sweat beaded Cloye’s feverish brow.
Before the gate slid up though, something large within smashed through the titanium and tore the metal apart with its forehorn. Water gushed out, flooding the lab in a deluge, swamping desks, tables, lab equipment and occupants. Yul felt the water swirling past his knees. A menacing shape lumbered out, robot eyes flashing on either side of a glistening horn, trained upon the humans before it.
Hresh’s mouth gaped. “How? The A13’s exoshell is not capable of force that strong!”
Cloye backed away through the water, bright fear showing in her eyes.
“Idiot!” growled Yul. “It somehow figured out how.”
“Impossible,” muttered Hresh. “My calculations show—”
“Your calculations mean nothing here!” cried Yul, shaking him like a doll. “You’ve bred a monster.”
The dino-armadillo loosed a low, guttural roar that filled the lab with spine-chilling fear that rocked metal walls and workstations, containers and glass beakers.
The thing advanced, eyes sighting on possible enemies. But not before it lurched toward Hresh’s security men.
In a panic, they lifted their weapons, locking through their sites on the Biogron casing at chest level—the vitals.
Yul cried, “Don’t shoot, you fools! I know these plant things! They attack only forms that threaten it. Don’t fire or show any aggression!”
Hresh gave a quick nod. His men stood down. The armadillo paused with wary reflection. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Hresh relaxed his dripping frame, pink fingers smoothing out his lab coat.
It should have been obvious from the pod’s ability to kill the mechnobots as easily as it had the puffballs that the thing was in defensive mode and an aggressive danger. But these men didn’t know what they were up against. Neither did Hresh.
But that might have been a good thing, Yul thought.
The main door to the lab curled outward in a melt of flames. A flood of lumo fire poured out of the smoking gap. Green trails belched forth, lashing at tables, benches, cutting into nearby human figures.
The scientists cried out, fell sprawling, noses to the water, as it began to gush out now that the door had been blasted. Yul ducked a spraying blast as hideous, human-size locust shapes streamed through. Nonas’s commandos opened fire, taking out the shoulder-high invaders that hopped through like large grasshoppers.
It all made sense now as Yul’s stunned mind gained full awareness. Zikri invaders came gliding in after the locusts, weaponless but wearing body armour on both chest and head. Glistening tentacles probed like octopi feelers. Yul knew that the tanks would soon be filled with human hosts and it made his skin crawl.
“Give me that,” he snarled, snatching his blaster back from Nonas.
Nonas trained his E1 on Yul.
“Give them their weapons!” cried Hresh. “They’re trained for combat.”
Nonas grunted, ordered his man to toss Cloye her compact E6.
Yul saw that the Mentera beams were not calculated to kill their human prey, just stun them. The lack of blood on the bodies slumped around him in the pooling water was evidence enough.
Yul quickly struggled for cover behind an overturned bench, dragging Cloye beside him.
Perceiving the armadillo shape looming monstrously as a threat, the clicking locusts opened fire, turning their green lumo fire into lethal, crimson blasts. Rays of destruction pelted the armadillo’s titanium hide, deflecting off it, the sheer force driving the creature back.
“No!” uttered Hresh, despaired.
“Happy now?” cried Yul.
Hresh crawled like a worm beside Yul. “Quick—duck into the obstacle course!”
Yul and Cloye wasted no time. They followed Hresh who dipped behind the hulking A13’s legs through the twisted gap into the dripping chamber. Others followed. Several of the scientists halted, doubting the strategy, and locust rays soon immobilized them. The rest ran shrieking for cover, only to be gunned downed by more locusts that quickly surrounded them. They hoisted the limp forms on their chitinous backs and shuttled them back through the exit. Hresh’s commandos, signalled by Nonas, did not hesitate, although half of them were already down by Mentera fire.
Only six of the scientists managed to get into the chamber before being stunned. Two of Nonas’s men yet lived.
Yul turned and blasted the locusts clacking after them. They needed to distract the enemy! Whatever Hresh was planning, it had better work.
Hresh led them past the ruined fishbots toward the end of the chamber, touching several buttons on a wall console. A door slid open. Yul caught ghosts of movement behind them, the smell of scorched metal.
The armadillo curled into a ball upon the enemy fire, shielding its horned head and stumps of limbs, its most vulnerable spots.
What the invaders did not realize was their barrage of fire was destroying the creature’s environment, the worst possible affront against the alien plant-turned-dragonfly. Its first call of duty was to protect its habitat. In a fit of rage, it sprang forward.
The armadillo crouched before its adversaries, arched its back and five foot spikes sprouted along its glistening hide, glinting like swords under the lab lights. Its eyes glittered like black pearls, sighting on its enemies. Strange insectoid whines echoed from beneath its tusked snout, as if the Biogron’s neural link were reaching out to the dragonfly’s speech centres.
Tucked into a ball, the thing rolled, a raging fiend, steamrolling Zikri and locusts that came to meet it. It stormed the lab, mowing down anything that moved, reaping a ghastly harvest of alien flesh. In that few seconds he could see that even encaged in its ghastly armature, the thing was adapting at an alarming rate, given almost unlimited power by Hresh’s mechno-wizardry.
Hresh beckoned them all down a hall through another door and into an adjoining chamber. Much like the previous room, it led the chittering Zikri and Mentera into a trap.
No sooner had he sealed the door shut when jets of water pounded on the trapped aliens. Yul peeked through the glass; he saw squids and locusts floundering in waist-high water, firing useless rounds off the fire-proof walls. The fishy mechnobots began dropping down on them with vicious intent. Behind thick steel walls, the screams and cries of the Zikri and Mentera went unheard.
Hresh pressed another button and entered a code into a wall console. They surged through an opening door. An alarm rang in the adjoining hall—the scuffle of feet, the burst of enemy fire, the booms and explosions of Zikri assaults echoing with it down the hall.
“What about that thing back there?” cried Cloye.
A crazed smirk passed over Hresh’s face. With haggard circles under his black eyes and his matted hair lying flat, he looked like a bedraggled racoon. They will not be able to withstand it. I would love to watch, but pressing business awaits...Hurry! T
o my ship.
Yul laughed. “They’ll blast your protégé to pieces.”
Hresh shook his head. “It has the adaptive intelligence of ten geniuses. The aliens may at best subdue it but with huge costs to themselves. Nonas, take the lead! Get us out of this rat-trap!”
“Where’s your ship?” growled Yul.
“The hangar, where else?”
Yul quivered in disbelief. “Didn’t you hear?” he grunted. “Your depot is toasted, compromised.”
That panicked the scientists, the four men and two women. One woman whimpered. Another man began to tremble, his eyes darting around the blood-strewn halls. “I don’t want to die,” he cried, “stuffed in a tank. Did you see those insectoids carrying them away?”
Hresh roared, “The only way out of here is by ship. They’re all out there for the taking, including the terraformers. Do you have any other ideas?”
Nonas stared, defying Yul or any other to contradict his employer. Yul kept his mouth shut. Creating more hysteria with these civilian-scientists was unwise. But surely rash stupidity was even worse. As of yet, he couldn’t think of any other plan, except engaging the attackers full on or hiding out in one of the labs like rats in a cellar.
They crept down the halls, Nonas leading with his two security men, weapons raised. Hresh followed with the other petrified scientists. Yul and Cloye took the rear, crouching, training blasters, scanning any cross corridors for unexpected activity.
One of the scientists cried out, “Even if you get us to a ship, Hresh, what’s to stop us from getting blown out of the sky by Zikri, if what Gustav said is true?”
Nonas flapped his hand for the woman to be silent.
The diversion was costly.
The rush came so quickly that none had time to react.
One minute an empty corridor, the next a door flying off its hinges, melted, and a wall of pincered flesh and slimy tentacled monsters surging against them. Nonas’s two security agents were taken down and dragged off in a writhing mass. The six cowering scientists were bowled over and engulfed in similar walls of flesh.
Yul batted aside tentacles, lifting his blaster. Reeking flesh swarmed before his face. Digits, claws, tentacles were everywhere in his line of sight, kicking, clawing, and coiling all about. He fought savagely to keep himself and Cloye from being overwhelmed by slimy tentacles and sharp claws. He jammed an elbow into a locust face, heard it crack, pivoting to spray rounds of blaster fire into an advancing wall of Zikri flesh. Then he ducked a wheeling slash, knelt and blasted the legs off three attacking Zikri, saving Nonas’s skin. But two more locusts were jamming in tight and Cloye whirled a round-house kick into the insects’ necks in a blur of motion. She blasted the others and jerked back to avoid being snatched by alien tentacles.