Wings of Earth- Season One

by Eric Michael Craig

  “Obviously your liner did,” he said, spinning in the opposite direction. Tash was almost completely suited although it looked like none of the augment parts were even close to the right size. She threw herself forward and twisted to get her body pried loose.

  Taking inventory of their situation, he turned toward where Angel was working on Toby’s boyfriend. She rocked back on her heels and looked up at him, shaking her head. Glancing at the mission commander who couldn’t see her in the dark, she slid a finger across her throat. He’s not going to make it.

  “I think we’re all losing this one,” he muttered.

  He turned and looked back toward the door to the hallway and squared his shoulders, determined not to go out without taking a pound of alien ass with him. Angel stood up and stepped up beside him while Nuko took the other side.

  “This is going to get ugly,” he said, glancing at both of them.

  “But it’s been a good ride,” Angel whispered.

  “Too soon,” Nuko said.

  To the side he heard Rene grunting and straining to get Sandi out of the autovalet. Tash was helping and the two of them were prying furiously at it.

  The door rattled several times before four hands broke through the wall on one side of the frame. With a guttural roar it exploded outward taking shards of frame and metal with it. Two male Ut’arans bounced through the opening and stopped, lowering their arrow throwers and staring wide-eyed at the three of them in the middle of the room.

  A female with long flowing hair stepped through behind them. Both of the males took a step to the side and she walked into the room with a wakat behind her. “Marat akUt’ar?” one said, offering his left hand to her, palm forward but with his fingers down. “Oo’aka at’ah echa pra’keet.”

  “Mo’oh ke’esha.” She reached out and turned his hand over so that it faced up and bumped it with her right palm.

  “She’s in charge,” the captain whispered, remembering what Dr. Ansari had explained.

  Her head snapped in his direction. “Ta’raht shee Marat akUt’ar?”

  Behind him, from where he still knelt on the floor Toby translated, “Of tribe is shiny man?”

  Tribe of the shiny man? Ethan thought. Glancing around he understood. The heat from their PSE made them glow in his night vision, and the Ut’arans see in the dark. In infrared.

  She’s seen people in exosuits before.

  “We are of the shiny man tribe,” he said. “Marat akUt’ar?”

  Looking down at the floor, she held out her left hand, palm forward.

  Now what?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kaycee watched the internal security optics as Dr. Forrester followed Ammo through the interconnect corridor with Quinn following behind. They stopped at the entrance to the main lounge of the mid-deck and Ammo turned to face him. “I’m sorry Doc, but Quinn says this might be unpleasant.”

  “What’s going on—” His eyes bulged as the handler twisted both arms behind his back and held them with one hand while he slapped the modified cervical collar around his neck with the other. He cinched the latch closed and tapped the button.

  Forrester collapsed to his knees and made a strange gurgling sound as the stun wand circuitry jolted him with what was probably more charge that it took to scramble his implant.

  “I thought you said it would sting, not liquefy him,” Kaycee said from where she stood out of sight in the MedBay door.

  “Yah, oops,” he said, shrugging. “It might be a little high.

  Ammo dropped in front of him to see if he was still alert enough to register her presence. His eyes rolled in her direction. “Do you know where you are Dr. Forrester?” she asked.

  His head snapped up and down several times as he gasped for air. He obviously couldn’t talk.

  “Can you turn it down?” She looked up at Quinn, almost pleading on the doctor’s behalf.

  “I’d have to shut it off for a couple seconds to do it,” he said. “Whoever’s on the other end of his implant might grab control.”

  “We’ve got to be able to talk to him,” Kaycee said.

  The handler knelt behind him and knocked Forrester flat down on his face with a gentle nudge. Tapping the button on the collar, he set his knee in the middle of his back to hold him pinned to the floor. He slid his finger up under the unit and fumbled around for a couple seconds before he hit the switch again.

  This time when the unit powered up the doctor only gasped. He struggled to pull his hands under him and push himself backup onto his knees. Reaching up, he tried to grab at the collar but Quinn swatted his hand away.

  “Leave it alone,” Ammo said. “We’re trying to help.”

  “Marti, can you tell if it interrupted the signal?” Kaycee said.

  Forrester turned in her direction, but Ammo reached up to grab his chin to hold his head in place. She jerked her hand back. “Eyes on me,” she whispered.

  “I am unable to detect RF from his implant,” it reported, “However that does not mean the device is not broadcasting in some unknown manner.”

  “We’ll have to risk it,” Kaycee said, walking out to join them on the deck. “Dr. Forrester, are you alright?”

  He shook his head. “What the hell are you doing to me?”

  “We wanted to cut you off from your implant,” she said. “I need to talk to you and I don’t want our conversation being overheard.”

  “Implant?” he asked, looking confused. He reached up toward the collar and Quinn smacked his hand down again. “That’s a commlink.” He tried to glare at the handler but it came out looking weak and helpless.

  “I’m afraid it might be much more than that,” she said. “I’d like to get you in a diagnostic bed, so we can take a look at it and get you to answer some questions for us.”

  She reached out to help him up.

  “Careful he bites,” Ammo warned.

  Quinn bent over, grabbing him around the waist and set him on his feet. “Only if you grab him gently. A hard contact keeps it from sparking you.”

  “We need to hurry,” Kaycee said, spinning to head back to the MedBay.

  “I thought you were injured,” Forrester said as the handler led him by his arm after her.

  “We had to get you here,” she said, stepping to the side as Quinn picked the doctor up and strapped him down onto the diagnostic bed. “I need to know what’s going on with the Ut’arans.”

  “Nothing is going on with them,” he said.

  She swung the diagnostic imager over his head and pulled the screen in front of her. The unit powered up and she watched as the data began to coalesce into an image.

  “I know that’s not true,” she said. “I came to your office to ask you about Marcus Elarah.

  He looked confused. “When?”

  “The day we got here,” she said.

  He shook his head like he genuinely didn’t remember.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Marcus is Ut’aran, isn’t he?”

  “Of course not,” he said.

  “Then explain this.” She grabbed a thinpad that contained the scan of the guard and held it up where he could see the display.

  “Marcus let you take a scan of him?”

  She shook her head. “That’s a native isn’t it?”

  He looked at the screen for several seconds before he clamped his eyes and his mouth closed.

  “He’s also got an implant, doesn’t he?” she challenged.

  Again, she got no response.

  “You use those implants to control their behavior, don’t you?” Quinn asked.

  “That’s an Alphatron Inbit 3650, isn’t it,” she said. “You just received 300 of them.”

  “We’ve used implants to track migration patterns of the natives,” he said, opening his eyes again. “It’s a little controversial, but it helps develop a better understanding …” his voice trailed off as he apparently realized she wasn’t buying it.

  “We know what you can do with an AIT implant,
” she said. “You might use them as tracking devices, but you can also use them to implant knowledge and control behavior.”

  “It’s just a tracking device,” he said.

  “Then why have you implanted them in natives working here on the station?” Ammo asked.

  “There are no Ut’arans on the station,” he insisted.

  “Really?” Kaycee leaned over him and glared. “Then explain where I got that scan?”

  “It’s not Marcus?” he asked, his voice sounding strange, almost like he was pleading for something.

  “It was one of the security people stationed outside our airlock several hours ago,” she said, tossing the thinpad to Ammo. “But thank you for confirming that Marcus is a native too.”

  “I think I need to just quit talking and let you draw your own conclusions,” Forrester said, staring up at the bottom of the scanner head.

  “I’m trying to give you a chance to explain what’s going on here,” she said. “The conclusion I’m leaning toward is most definitely not one you want to be a party to.”

  “And that is?” He didn’t look at her.

  “Let’s talk about something else first,” she said, pulling the scanner back and swinging it out of the way. “When did you get your implant?”

  “I’ve had it for a long time,” he said. “Almost as long as I’ve had my surgical arm controller implant.”

  “How long?”

  “A long time.” His eyes flashed in a moment of confused agony and he blinked several times. “Why?”

  “Before you took your posting here?” she prodded.

  He closed his eyes and nodded. “It’s just a sub-vocal commlink.”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s more than that.” She turned the screen so he could see it. “If I’m not mistaken that’s an AIT 3650 isn’t it?”

  The color drained from his face and he nodded.

  “Who did it?”

  “I don’t remember. It was before I got here... I think.” He’d started sweating and closed his eyes.

  “Doesn’t that strike you as funny that you can’t remember?” she asked.

  “Some patients have… post surgical… memory lapse?” He struggled to find a logical reason. Obviously, there wasn’t one he liked within his limited number of potential options.

  “Or the memory was overwritten,” she offered. “With an AIT 3650, new memories can be uploaded.”

  “That’s preposterous,” he said, weakly.

  “I’ve seen it done,” Quinn said from the doorway. “They did that as part of a prisoner rehab program on Earth.”

  “I don’t know how it works, but I assume it’s like a localized BES scan, but backwards,” Kaycee said. “Your implant has three modules. One on the C-2, one on the C-3, and another one carved into a hollow in the occipital bone. There’s also an array of nanowires inserted along your spinal column and into your brain. Does this sound at all familiar?”

  “Yes. It’s the same design as the ones I’ve implanted,” he said.

  “Now we’re getting to the truth,” she said, glancing over at Ammo who was watching the chrono over the bed. “So, let’s revisit why you have natives with implants working as labor here in the station.”

  He let out a slow breath. “As far as I know they’re all accidents of culture contamination.”

  “Culture contamination?” Quinn asked.

  “We’ve been here more than forty years,” he said. “In that much time, we’ve had more than a few instances where a native Ut’aran ended up exposed to something that would have affected their culture.”

  “When that happens, you bring them up here and implant them,” Kaycee offered.

  He nodded.

  “Do you also wipe out their memories of home?” Quinn asked.

  “I didn’t like the idea either, but it’s better than just killing them,” he said.

  “So, you overwrite their memories?” she asked.

  “We give them new skills. That might replace some of their previous knowledge,” he said. “It wasn’t my idea to do this. I’ve only been here for ten years. It’s been happening a lot longer than that, and before… it was a lot less… surgical.”

  “But why do you have an implant?” Kaycee asked, glancing up at the screen again.

  “I didn’t know I did until you showed me,” he said. “I thought my comm implant was getting old and causing me pain sometimes. There’s nobody else here with the skillset to check it over, so I just put up with it. Most days I don’t have a problem.”

  “Until a nosy ship doctor shows up and asks questions,” Kaycee said. She would have felt sorry for him, but she couldn’t absolve him of responsibility.

  “How many Ut’arans have you implanted?” Ammo asked.

  “I don’t know. I only remember a few,” he said.

  “There were at least fifty doing hard labor in the container by my count,” Quinn said.

  “If what you say is true, I don’t know if I can trust my memory,” he said, looking up at the screen and shrugging.

  “Who’s behind this program?” Quinn asked.

  “The only one I know who is aware of it is Brad Parker,” he said. “He’s been here longer than anyone else.”

  “It’s easy enough to spot a native so there have to be others who know,” Kaycee said. “For frak sake, everyone who’s seen a native Ut’aran should be able to pick them out. We’ve been here two-and-a-half days and can spot them.”

  He shook his head. “You may be right, but I can’t think beyond what they might have overwritten. I just don’t know.”

  “Do you know if there’s any way to override an implant?” she asked.

  “You intend to cut them loose?” he gasped. “Even a few of them might be unstoppable.”

  “I don’t know what we intend to do, but I have to explore the options,” she said. “Can it be done?”

  “Not easily,” he said. “The brainstem tie in would take hours. The commlink is in the C-3 module, the upload data buffer is in the occipital unit, and the C-2 is the… the failsafe.”

  “He means the kill switch,” Quinn said.

  “You’ve only got fifteen minutes before he has to get back out there, or they’ll be sending a squad of mini-brutes in,” Ammo said.

  “You can sever the connections to my failsafe in a couple minutes,” Forrester said. “If you disable it, I can fight back. It has no independent transceiver and won’t work alone. At least then I have a chance.”

  “How do you know you can fight it?” Kaycee asked.

  “We’ve had a couple patients successfully resist,” he said. “Without the pain side of the implant, it’s hard to condition the responses and the patient becomes uncontrollable.”

  “Won’t someone just hook you backup?” she offered.

  “I’m the only qualified neuro-surgeon on the station,” he said. “Other than you.”

  She made her decision even though she wasn’t sure she could explain why. “Quinn, untie him and flip him over.”

  “You’re sure you want to do that?” he asked. “What about his memories of what he’s seen in here?”

  “If I don’t give them a reason to suspect anything funny happened in here, they won’t probe me,” he said.

  “Eventually, it will happen.” Ammo shook her head but stepped up to help roll him over, anyway.

  “You all should be gone before it comes to that,” he said. “I don’t like where this whole program might be going, and I swear I will do everything in my power to help you shut it down.”

  “Why should we believe you?” the handler asked as he uncinched the restraints.

  “C-2,” he said. “They’ve got a knife to my spine literally. Knowing what we’ve done here, there’s no way they’ll ever let me walk away. My only hope is to take them down first.”

  “Who are they?” Ammo asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s got to be well above Parker’s air supply,” he said. “But at this point I’m the only one who
can find that out.”

  Twelve minutes later, they’d given Dr. Forrester a dose of a mild psychotropic to confuse him, and Kaycee lay on the table with a surgical seal around her head. Hopefully, it would give him enough of a mnemonic image to cue a false recollection to cling to if his implant tried to dig.

  Quinn and Ammo held the doctor by both arms as he wobbled on his feet. “Thank you for your help,” he whispered. “I’m ready.”

  Quinn jerked the collar off his neck and flung it on the counter where it would be out of sight.

  “Thank you, Doctor. You’ve saved her life,” Ammo said, driving the false memory deeper into his mind. It wouldn’t be much of a shield, but it was the best they could do in the short time they had.

  “If you’ll follow me, we need to get you back before Parker comes looking for you,” the handler said.

  “Of course, you’re right,” he said, turning to follow Quinn out the door. Ammo fell in behind them, shutting the lights off in the MedBay so that Kaycee could open her eyes and get the surgical hardware off.

  She swung the screen around to watch them escort Forrester back while she peeled the skullcap and sensor lines off her head.

  “I did not want to interrupt while you were involved in your procedure doctor,” Marti said, “but there is a problem on the planet.”

  “What?” she said.

  “I have lost contact with my automech body,” it said.

  “That’s an engineering issue isn’t it?” she asked, watching as the optic feed showed Parker and Dr. Ansari trotting across the catwalk in the cargo container. A group of security guards followed them.

  “Perhaps, but I do not believe so,” Marti said.

  “Stand by,” she said, sliding her finger along the edge of the screen to bring the sound up. “Quinn you’ve got a wall of trouble coming across the container.”

  “Copy now be quiet,” he said, glancing up at the optic behind him in the airlock. He palmed the door mechanism open just as the party arrived.

  “Where’s the patient?” Parker asked, looking shocked that they didn’t have her with them.

  “I got her stabilized, so there’s no need to transport her,” Forrester said.