by Chris Turner
Regers whistled through his teeth. “Ain’t that pretty? Guess Xares is our #1 destination then. And when were you planning to tell me all this, Dez?”
Dez ignored the threat in Regers’ eyes. “Since you’ve helped me secure this mechno which is worth a bit of money to us, I’m giving you this tidbit for free. I’d ask, in return, that you bring Vrean in alive. We didn’t leave on amicable terms. He’ll know what happened to Mathias and the others—him and his crew led by his cyber-ghoul captain-bodyguard, Goss. Like it or not, I can’t run this company without the help of that bastard Mathias.”
“You’re too modest, Dez. Not a problem. Happy to help out. I’d go into the bowels of hell to get back my old dear ‘friend’ Yul.”
“No doubt.”
Deakes gave a strangled cry and grabbed at Regers’ arm. “Now hold on. Are you loco, Regers? We’re talking about flying off to a nowhere zone and taking on an enemy fleet, not just some day trip to some abandoned planet in The Dim Zone.”
“Let go of me, Deakes, unless you want a metal knuckle dental job.”
Deakes backed off. Jennings stood silent.
“We’re going to The Dim Zone, whether you like it or not, bug fleet or not, then we’re gonna spend our reward money, ie Dez’s money, in as flamboyant a manner as possible. On booze, broads, flashy casinos, high-risk bets, everything under the sun. It’ll be a lark, like Mekeroid on steroids.”
Deakes grumbled. Jennings’ fist worked, his other hand clenching tight.
“What’s the matter, Jiminy?” asked Regers. “Got a bee in your bonnet?”
“No,” said Jennings, “I don’t know this Yul fellow from Adam, yet he seems a decent enough fellow tipping off the NOA. Not to mention the insanity of us flying off again into the zone of those brutes.”
Regers gusted out a sigh. “No wonder you were stuck in that bug tank with no hope of escape. You’re a pansy ass. Gotta break you of that habit.”
“Come on, this way,” said Dez. On a signal, one of the guards prodded Regers along.
Regers’ mood did not improve as they mounted some steps, passed through various electronic fields and check points with red-eye scanners then piled into a small elevator. They dropped more floors and exited into a concrete command booth about thirty feet square, furnished with a load of high tech equipment and four engineers: two men, two women who sat around a luminous circular holo display offering a panoramic view of a war-torn street in startling clarity. The four scientists, headsets circling ears, tapped fingers on holo keypads. Regers was unaware this was the same command booth that Dez had attended earlier, inviting the colonel to witness a demo.
Artificial yellow lights mimicked a daytime solar glow from the domed ceiling. Regers’ eyes roved over a ruined parkland to the right of the bombed out street. At its edge, about twelve feet off the ground, hovered two vertical-standing, coffin-shaped mechnos like that back on Remus, but considerably smaller. “What the fuck is this?”
“In this demonstration,” Dez began, ignoring Regers’ crude outburst, “we pit one enemy against the other. The mechno armatures you see before you are deliberately made smaller than those of Hresh’s. That’s a sealed war room, ten feet thick of hypertilized titanium. We can watch their interactions from this sealed command booth as they cannot break out and cause mischief here.” He signaled to the holoview. Jennings’ eyes opened wide, clearly daunted but impressed. The holoview zoomed in to enhance details.
Regers stared down upon the scene with undisguised amazement. He hadn’t realized Dez was running such a high-end operation. That the scientist had rigged something up of this caliber this quickly was a testament to his expertise and resolve. Obviously the man and his team of eggheads had been working non-stop days and nights on the project.
The two mechnos lifted higher into the air, alerted by some stimulus. A scavenging bird?
“Each mechno has been infused with a Xesian moth,” Dez continued, “an insect similar to the feral dragonfly that assaulted us on Remus. Both are live specimens contained in protective titanium shells, as you can see. Some have been bred and formed into quasi moths and butterflies. We have a dozen so far in secure vaults.”
Jennings pawed at his brow. “You kidding? You deliberately spawned these monsters? Do you like flirting with death?”
“I think not. They’re an asset to be used by those who can harness their power.”
Jennings shook his head in disapproval and shock.
“These creatures drive the armature of Hresh’s cutting-edge, experimental technology. My team of researchers enclosed them within these apparatuses where they perceive each other as a protector of their common habitat. At no time in our experimentation has any moth displayed hostility to the others, a good sign.
“We’ve simulated war conditions similar to real life—notice the bombed street and ravaged parkland. We’ve even gone so far as to inject forms of indigenous fauna into the environment, like those turkey vultures, rats and wandering hyenas to make the moths feel more at home.”
Regers noted a fresh-water creek to the left and a foul, brown-colored one that ran up the middle with bloated bodies of various animals Dez had mentioned. Shell-pitted air cars littered the banks, hoods and wheels missing, hydraulic arms of cranes smashed, mangled backhoe scoops, rusted engines; lengths of metal siding and slabs of concrete lay strewn among the weeds and the rubble, and out into the street.
“Ah, you marvel at the contrasting conditions of the streams. The polluted stream serves as a reminder to the moths how fragile their ecosystem is, something to fight for, if need be. The creatures need some sort of fresh water supply to hydrolyze the fat in their food, similar to the dragonfly on Remus which was able to synthesize ozone from the atmosphere. Don’t ask me how. The thing’s makeup is completely beyond our knowledge base. One of the moths’ only weaknesses, as our scientists have determined, is its susceptibility to poisoning, like from that polluted stream.”
“You sure like to hear yourself talk, Dez. Why you telling us all this?”
“The first test will be against a land foe…two rivals actually…competing for water and space.”
Deakes turned to Dez and hissed in a hollow voice, “What you got going here? You plan to sic metal moth on bloodsucker cricket? Bug on bug.” He laughed at his own joke.
Dez blinked with a far off look. “No joke, Deakes. There’s more to your statement than you think. The Xesian insects seek comfort like a security blanket in their metal shields, as does a snail in its shell. They excel with their armor. Outperform all our other mechno models.”
Regers gave a caustic snort. “Don’t know about you, Dez, but I’ve no intention of piss-assing around talking about bugs all day. We’re on a program here to pillage and burn, hunt down a fink.”
“Not going to be anything left to pillage, Regers, if those squids and their allies get their way. Unless we do something about them.”
“Says who?” sneered Regers. “Why’s everybody trying to be such a god-damn hero?” He threw up his hands. “You want to spend the rest of your days stuck in a bug tank or squeezed to shit by skulking squids? Go right ahead.” He turned to stalk off, but the guard kept him at bay with his E1.
A heavy metal door slid open on the side wall to reveal two cages of nearly-identical beasts pacing behind the outer bars. Massive, hairy, four-legged creatures, behemoths in their own right, with razor-sharp fangs like the saber-toothed tiger. Each harbored white matted fur like the polar bear, spread thick along hide and limbs but sporting a long, muscular trunk, like a prehistoric elephant’s protruding from the fanged snout. Regers guessed this was useful for bashing obstinate predators, projectiles, trees or any other impediments.
The iron bars lifted. The first brute was released into the test ground. It loped in sidling fashion, massive head swinging from side to side toward the creek. The beast halted on three legs, lifting one to sniff at the air. A minute later, the other creature lumbered forth, released from its cage. It
approached warily and assessed its rival. The mechnobots veered in, hovering above the ground to study the two intruders, at this time evincing only curiosity. The wall slab slid back, cutting the beasts off from their cages.
“What the hell are those things?” demanded Deakes, his eyes watering.
“The test subjects are ursilars,” said Dez, “a cross between an ice age cave bear and mastodon, both whose DNA we dug up in old paleolithic sites in remote glacial areas on Earth. Extremely territorial, violent and deadly. You would not want to be in there with them, Deakes. It’s unlikely that even your blaster could take out one before it charged you and ripped you to shreds. No predator alive today can take down an ursilar, nor would any in its day, except maybe one of its own kind. That’s why we have two to make the arena more interesting.” Dez gave a dry chuckle. “Needless to say it cost us mega yols to bio-generate these beasts, cross their DNA in effective ways and incubate those that you see before you.”
Jennings opened his mouth to say something but Dez waved him off. “Not now, Jennings. Just watch.” The CEO’s voice achieved a pitch of higher intensity.
The first ursilar paused from its crouch at the creek, lapping up the fresh water. Turning, it gave a low growl. The two beasts circled each other.
Dez cackled in triumph. “Both are alpha males. Yet one has the aggressive edge. See! The blood-matted fur on the other’s pelt is fresh and the area behind its ears and back of the neck, is even fresher.”
The ursilars sprang at each other, rearing on their hind legs. They batted and swatted at each other with killing force, such that Jennings went rigid in response to the clarity of the video feed. Claws distended and curled to rend fur and flesh, as each sought out necks and vulnerable bellies.
The mechnos glided in within a few feet to observe the altercation as soon as the beasts’ struggles brought them dangerously close to the fresh water stream. The weaker one’s left hind foot sloshed in the shallows. A stimulus.
Dez sprang up on the balls of his feet. “The moths perceive a threat to their small, stable environment! Watch! If the one beast kills the other, its blood may contaminate the water supply. Maybe even drag the other’s grimy, matted fur in deeper.”
Mechno #1 swooped in with impressive speed to bash the lead beast out of the water. The beast rolled and lurched up on its hind legs then swatted out a clawed paw at the mechno. Mechno #2 bunted the other beast to keep it clear from the water. The ursilar, thus challenged, gnashed its fangs and roared as the mechno countered by extending a robot arm to clamp on the raging beast’s forepaw and drag it up the shore. The beast went berserk, its six-inch claws tearing at the titanium armor.
To no effect. It gnashed and swatted until it began to tire. After a while it realized the futility of its efforts. The mechno released the ursilar. It tucked tail between its legs and lumbered off among the ruins to hide behind a pile of twisted metal in the bombed-out street.
The mechno left it alone. As long as the beast didn’t venture near the water, it remained neutral. But the other beast was not compliant. It ran beneath the hovering mechnos, rearing on its hind legs, swatting upward and roaring at the top of its lungs. The second mechno reached out and dragged it by a hind claw far up in the air, then let it fall from a fifty-foot height where it thunked on its head, snapping vertebrae and front limbs.
Dez rubbed his jaw in speculative wonder. “Very interesting. Cooperation, and success in less than two minutes. Remarkable. I’ll pass this holo footage onto my behavior analyst experts for processing.” He spoke into a recorder disc pinned to his white lab coat. “Mechno #1 kills its aggressor while leaving the other alone. Both mechnos exhibited mutual cooperation though visual and auditory cues. Though there never appears to be any signals transmitted between the two. Again, remarkable. Perhaps a psychic link between the species? Not impossible. We may never know.”
One of the engineers gasped. “Sir!”
Dez’s eyes flicked back to the holo view. “Wait now…this is unexpected.”
Mechno #2 had detected the cowering ursilar rustling among the metal and concrete rubble and moved to accost the survivor. Was it evincing second thoughts? Dez, perhaps worried about the cost in securing more ursilars for testing, grabbed the nearest assistant by the arm.
“Recovery operation! Code yellow and evasive security restraints!” Dez cried.
A white-faced engineer touched some buttons on the virtual holo pad. Within moments the two mechnos became docile and descended to the ground, placid as picked plums.
“What did you do?” exclaimed Regers.
“Initiated emergency measures.”
Dez signaled to another operator. A grey-haired woman touched another holo tab which lifted the containment wall and the ursilar hastily scurried back to the safety of its cage. The mechnos, still not fully recovered from their daze, zigzagged up into the air.
“We figured out a way to semi-sedate them,” said Dez. “We pipe calming soporific into their air mixture. But that may not be effective too much longer. They keep adapting and resisting our manipulations. Like just yesterday, the mechno on the right, driven by a moth with greyer tinge on its wings, dropped behind the ruins of a communication tower as a way to avoid our cameras during a key moment. To this day we have no idea what it was up to back there.”
Regers grunted. “Go figure.” Secretly, he was amused at the degree to which Dez got excited over every piece of trivia related to these bugs.
“As I mentioned, we’ve managed to breed more dragonflies. Actually, they are more quasi-moths than dragonflies. Each brood is a unique variation. Never the same batch. Possibly an adaptive survival trait. What do you think?”
“Not much. A bunch of bully bugs dressed up in metal suits beating on innocent prehistoric beasts,” growled Regers.
Jennings had nothing to say.
Dez frowned, his mood one of detachment. “From time to time I allow lay people like you to witness the experiments. Sometimes these observers offer valuable insights, most often not. My motives for showing you this simulation are twofold: scientific curiosity and recording a gut reaction. Your visual cues and body language are being recorded by hidden cameras as an extra layer of data for my research team—” He cleared his throat. “The irony of this demonstration is complex and part of the reason I called you to witness this. As you know, these are Lepidoptera spawned from the plant pods you and your friend Yul harvested from Xeses in The Dim Zone.”
“How could I forget?” snarled Regers. “I only wish Yul was down in that arena—and that I had been present to deliver the pods myself, to stuff them down your throat, rather than being stuffed myself in a bug tank on an alien moon.” He peered with loathing at Dez. “No thanks to the indifference of you and your lunatic boss, Mathias.”
Dez winced and looked away. “We made copies as best we could, Regers, of the hardware and inner workings of the armature we brought back from Hresh’s installation. You’ve been paid handsomely for your efforts—so quit complaining. The armature houses a ‘brain’, or containment tank—‘Bio-Imagron’ as Hresh called this quintessence of the technology.”
“What the hell is that?”
Dez gave a nervous chuckle. “The interface between alien and machine. In the case of the mechnobot and dragonfly, the ‘Imagron’ is like a vault-like container, positioned in the mechno’s center. The one you saw on Remus was ruptured. The subject, the dragonfly, the ‘Bio’ in Bio-Imagron, could slip in and out at will. To devastating effect. I’m not sure what Hresh had planned, but he wanted to keep the beast contained in the vault, not fly free…to make it a slave that he could use to his advantage to control the outer mechnobot. The alien’s feral intelligence and natural instinct for survival could guide the advanced hardware in case of attack. Its predatorial instinct could be used to drive the AI circuits and outwit unruly enemies such as a Mentera flagship. Quite ingenious, if you ask me—the ultimate military application. As much as I dislike the man, it’s a testament to H
resh’s near genius and creative imagination. According to his last notes left at Cyber Corp, his prototype was successful. After he fled the company with the crucial design plans, he continued his research of the Bio-Imagron on his own, down in The Dim Zone.
“My kind of man, an enterprising thief.”
Dez wrinkled his nose. “Oddly, the ‘Imagron’ was still functioning, despite the rupture, though Hresh’s model clearly stipulated that the alien be entombed in the sealed chamber indefinitely.”
“You’re repeating yourself, Dez. Sign of old age?”
Dez gnashed his teeth. “Onward to test #2.”
“What this time? A rhino and dinosaur mix?”
“Test 2 is another containment scenario. To test cooperation, pecking order, degree of feral aptitude, fight or flight tendencies, and other adaptive mechanisms.”
Both Regers and Jennings flinched in bleary-eyed resignation.
Dez paged somebody on his communicator and pointed a finger as a short, stocky man walked into the room. “This is Jessel Vrand, one of our senior remote mechno drone operators. Vrand is contracted from NOA.”
Regers peered at him closely through critical eyes. Military brush-cut, marine-trained, if he ever saw one. With no words spoken or expression revealed, the man fitted his fingers around the holo controls floating in midair before him. The dome of a ceiling in the test chamber opened to inject a new mechno into the mix, larger, but of similar quality and design like the others.
“Vrand will operate this mechnobot, a shielded, impregnable hulk, similar to the other two. The mechno, I dub MXTR. It will test the mettle and ingenuity of Xesian insects so that we can pattern their behavior.”
Down the mechno glided, a shape not dissimilar to the upright slab-shaped molar from Remus, only more intimidating. The others paused, their anti-grav units keeping them a dozen feet above the clear water stream. Vrand’s mechno jerked forward into the first mechno’s path. MXTR’s questing external arm prodded this more docile one while hovering over its turf. Alien mechno-moth #1 did nothing, but waited in curiosity for the intruder to make the next move. Vrand propelled his charge ever closer. Without warning, mechno #1 lashed out its robot appendage to bash MXTR aside. The move did nothing except knock Vrand’s drone vehicle backward. Vrand unleashed robot fire on the aggressive mechno’s armature. Bright rays deflected off the gleaming titanium. Vrand got MXTR out of the way. He worked the controls with aggressive intent and smashed the hulk forth to bring mechno #1 down into the water. Now a show of flagrant aggression, this act at last brought its twin, the more dominant mechno #2, surging in to defend its habitat.