The cybrid and his human colleagues went to get an explanation.
As if warned by a sixth sense, Vassili turned toward them and watched them approach.
Torg scrutinized him: brown-haired, barely thirty years old, probably good-looking by human standards. He was elegantly dressed and exuded all of the arrogance that youth and professional success could confer.
The cybrid couldn’t help but compare him to Laorcq, whom he had come to respect: the veteran, who was a bit older, wore a simple suit and had his hair cut short. Unlike the businessman’s carefully sculpted features, he confidently sported a scar on his temple, and his gray eyes seemed incapable of hiding his feelings.
When they came face to face, Torg saw immediately that the two men detested each other on sight.
Apparently, Alrine had also noticed this detail. She sped up and stepped in front of Laorcq, taking a position next to the table occupied by Vassili. She introduced herself, explained the reason for their presence, and added, “Deïna Volke was so worried about your sudden disappearance… And now we find you sitting in a café.”
He shrugged to show his lack of concern.
“I don’t remember what happened. I went to my apartment, and then suddenly I woke up about fifteen blocks from here. I must have been attacked and paralyzed. In any case, everything of value was stolen, except for my navcom, fortunately.”
Torg decided that Vassili was mocking the policewoman.
She continued without acknowledging the provocation. “There must have been a reason for the kidnapping. You can’t just go back to your everyday life so easily. I don’t think it was a financially motivated crime. Isn’t there anyone who has a reason to want to hurt you?”
Vassili gave her a sideways glance and declared in an annoyed tone, “Actually, yes. Competitors, colleagues, and others. I work for an important consortium: in a position like mine, risk is part of the job.”
With these words, he rose and started to circle around Torg and the two humans. Apparently struck by a sudden thought, he asked the cybrid, “Speaking of which, where’s that pretty girl, the one with the flowers tattooed on her hands and arms?”
Before he could answer, Laorcq said dryly, “Why do you care?”
The tall, brown-haired man smiled at him mockingly and walked away without speaking another word. A look of frustration appeared on the scarred man’s face, and Alrine sighed.
“He was deliberately provoking you, and you fell right into his trap.”
Torg thought the two men had been engaged in some sort of ritual. Earthlings are really complicated sometimes. Why didn’t Laorcq just hit him?
For his part, he was satisfied: the chore had been taken care of more quickly than expected. His mood rose another notch when he saw a visual signal on his navcom. Jazz had just sent a message.
“Mallory will be back on-board the Sirgan in three hours. Get your asses back here!”
He relayed this message to the humans immediately.
Before leaving the café, Alrine asked him to wait. She opened a video conference line that she shared with Torg and Laorcq.
“I’m calling Deïna to let her know Vassili is safe and sound.”
Once her image appeared, the guide expressed her relief before babbling an apology for dragging them on a wild goose chase.
“I feel so stupid! If I hadn’t been so afraid that he’d been abducted, we wouldn’t have been captured by the Orcants.”
“Don’t worry about it,” the policewoman reassured her. “Since they were after us, they would have taken any opportunity. I’m more worried about your client. How long have you been working for him?”
“Three weeks,” Deïna replied.
To Torg’s surprise, Alrine decided to trust Deïna. “He’s hiding something. Probably nothing important, but his connection to the Vohrn ambassador is a problem. Jarvik isn’t all there, and his colleagues are concerned about him.” The policewoman shifted the holographic projection above her navcom. “I just sent you contact information for me and my colleagues. If you hear or see anything…”
“I’ll keep you in the loop,” the guide assured them. “I owe you that.”
Before ending the call, Alrine thanked her and reminded her to be careful: there was still a slight chance that Vassili could be working with the Orcants who had held them prisoner.
They headed toward one of the orbital elevators. The crowd was incredibly thick. Getting to their seats in the comfortable cabin took longer than the ascent itself. Once on the ring, they would take the loop to the sector where the Sirgan was docked.
After a long rant about Solicor’s unbridled overpopulation and urbanization, Torg was happy to return to the Sirgan’s cramped but calm interior. While the two humans sat down in the galley, the cybrid went to take a nap in the cockpit.
When Mallory finally arrived in the aeroglider, the smell of good food was wafting through the transport ship’s corridor, and Torg was asleep in the co-pilot’s seat. When he moved, the chair groaned as if to protest its unreasonable burden.
The red aero slid into the Sirgan’s hold, and Mallory emerged after pressurization. She immediately picked up the appetizing odor.
“Jazz? Is Laorcq here?” she asked, recalling the veteran’s gift for transforming space rations into delicious meals.
“Yes, in the kitchen, with Alrine,” the Natural Intelligence replied over the on-board speakers. “Torg is torturing the co-pilot’s seat with his fat backside…”
She smiled broadly, and her tattoos bloomed in a multitude of red roses: the crew was all present and accounted for, and a meal and rest were on the horizon! She couldn’t ask for anything more.
Everyone met in the galley, where Mallory learned that Alrine and Deïna had been kidnapped by Orcants and then rescued. For her part, she recounted her adventures on Volda. Jazz took the opportunity to protest.
“You never listen! Risking your life in the shipyard wasn’t bad enough? You had to do it again a few hours later!”
Laorcq and Torg didn’t have to be asked to take the Natural Intelligence’s side. A wave of fatigue suddenly crashed over the pilot. She didn’t have the energy to contradict them, and she left the table after a somewhat strained promise not to continue pursuing every single lead without more careful consideration.
For the first time since the Sirgan arrived in the system, Mallory could rest.
She fell asleep immediately and awoke in fine form.
She had just pushed back the sheets when Jazz’s voice rang out in her cabin.
“Captain! There’s total panic on Solicor! The aliens with the big bug eyes want to declare war on the Gibrals. According to them, the cyclopes destroyed thousands of Xilf larvae…”
VIII
GAME
BARELY dressed, Mallory hurtled down the Sirgan’s passageway. Arriving at Alrine and Laorcq’s cabin, she pounded on both doors with her fist and shouted: “Wake up! We’ve got problems on Solicor!”
She burst into the cockpit and threw herself into her seat. Jazz took the initiative to display the images broadcast by the planet’s various news channels on the on-board navcom.
The pilot saw Xilfs and Gibrals engaging in bare-knuckled brawls. In the background, journalists from other species speculated about how things could have gone from a tense situation to an all-out battle in so little time.
None of it helped her understand what was happening.
“Jazz, you said something about Xilf larvae…”
“Oh yeah! I forgot you don’t know. The Xilfs and the Gibrals are linked by symbiosis. In the process of paving Solicor, they came close to extinction. The Gibrals destroyed the Xilfs’ immune systems, and the Xilfs have no place safe to hatch their larvae anymore. The cyclopes survive thanks to “nilac,” a substance produced naturally by our bug-eyed friends. In exchange, the female Gibrals take care of Xilf offspring in their ventral pouches, like kangaroos…”
“Surrogate mothers?”
“That sums
it up, yes…”
Mallory’s forehead wrinkled. On her arms, the roses of her sensitive tattoos closed, becoming buds, and brambles sprouted around them.
“And they started killing the larvae all of a sudden?”
“I know – it doesn’t make any sense.”
Laorcq and Alrine arrived in the cockpit, followed soon after by Torg. They hadn’t missed much of the conversation between Mallory and the Natural Intelligence. The scarred man was forced to sit in the co-pilot’s seat so that everyone could fit in the small space. He brushed his old steel watch with his hand, activating the built-in navcom.
“I’m sending you contact info for our Xilf friend Frrrj. Let’s hope he can tell us more.”
Mallory called him immediately. An image of the alien appeared above the instrument panel. He took a moment to see who was contacting him and then declared: “Humans… I wonder why I bothered asking for your assistance. You’ve been useless to me. Civil war is on the verge of exploding even sooner than I feared. What do you want?”
Mallory turned her dark eyes toward Laorcq, making it clear that he should deal with this bad-tempered alien.
“It might not be too late,” he began. “Thanks to the Vohrn, we can limit the damage, but we need specific information, not the torrent of stupidity flowing from the television.”
Frrrj’s ocular globes wiggled. “The Vohrn? I already told you: their ambassador is the cause of the insanity that has overtaken some of the Gibrals! If more come to Aldebaran, the situation will only deteriorate!”
Laorcq latched onto the clue dropped by the alien. “Why ‘some’? And what exactly is going on?”
This time, all of the Xilf’s limbs trembled, and his six pincers clacked repeatedly. “Rather than delivering our children to Gibral females to incubate them in their pouches, the managers of the nursery in sector 534 deactivated the stasis chambers. Other Gibrals intervened, but a thousand larvae perished.”
A heavy silence fell over the Sirgan’s cockpit. Mallory felt a lump of sadness form in her throat as she thought about the lives that had been senselessly destroyed. It’s no surprise that the Xilfs are ready to begin a destructive conflict.
Like her, the rest of the crew looked uncomfortable.
Frrrj seemed to calm down a bit, or at least he stopped trembling. “Three of the culprits have fled. If they aren’t found quickly and punished mercilessly for their crime, my people will not be able to contain their fury for long. It will be all-out war.”
Before Laorcq could add a word, the Xilf ended the communication.
Mallory fell back into her chair. “Well then, at least we know what’s happening now,” she sighed.
Alrine stepped forward as far as she could, given the narrowness of the cockpit and Torg’s imposing frame. She put an elbow on each of the seats and declared, “I see one thread connecting all of this: people are suddenly going mad and behaving aberrantly. First Jarvik, then the Gibrals, and finally Cole Vassili.”
At the mention of the man she had met at the Vohrn embassy, Mallory felt a slight jolt. The policewoman either didn’t notice or pretended not to. “Even the Orcants whose kidnapped me and Deina didn’t seem quite right…”
Mallory’s forehead wrinkled. “What’s your theory? An illness that makes people crazy? Poison?”
“They seem deranged to us, but from another perspective, their actions might be perfectly justified.”
Laorcq understood where Alrine was going. “When everything that’s happening leads to war, it means that conflict will lead to someone’s profit.”
“Wait!” the pilot interrupted. “You think they’re being manipulated somehow?”
Over the ship’s loudspeakers, Jazz’s voice spoke, laced with irony. “With a remote control implanted in their brains, maybe?”
Realizing that the idea wasn’t so farfetched, or at least contained the seeds of a valid theory, Mallory exclaimed: “We should examine the Orcants’ bodies!”
“That’s why we gave them to the Xilfs,” the policewoman informed her. “With everything that’s happened, I just hope they didn’t leave them in a corner to rot.”
While everyone headed toward the airlock and prepared to leave the ship, the Natural Intelligence added: “Oh! I have something else to tell you. A Vohrn cruiser is now two light-hours away from this system.”
Mallory, who was just about to open the lock, stopped short. “Is Hanosk on board?” she asked.
“Yes. Giving him a quick update would be a good idea, wouldn’t it?”
Mallory was dying to know what had been revealed by the examination of the Orcants that Torg and the Xilfs had defeated, but she had to keep her employer up to date on events. With the vague feeling that she was taking the opportunity to monopolize Laorcq, she declared, “Okay. Alrine, you’re the only one who can request an emergency autopsy. Take Torg with you; given the situation, it’s safer that way. We’ll meet up with you.”
The policewoman and the cybrid left, and the others returned to the cockpit. They established communications with the Vohrn cruiser without difficulty.
An alien covered with from head to toe with anthracite scales appeared on the navcom’s display. Hanosk’s appearance never failed to throw the humans off-balance. His wide shoulders sat on top of a tall torso, along which hung slender, muscular arms. At first glance, like the typical Vohrn, he seemed headless.
As usual, Hanosk greeted his two agents formally. “Captain Mallory Sajean. Commander Laorcq Adrinov.”
They described the complex situation on Solicor and its potential ramifications. Searching through the icons on her navcom, the pilot accessed the aeroglider’s black box. She sent the alien pictures of the unusual ship. To their great surprise, the Vohrn leader admitted it was unfamiliar to him as well. He quickly made a decision concerning the investigation. “Relieve Ambassador Jarvik of his duties and bring him to me. I’d prefer not to enter the Aldebaran system under these circumstances; I don’t want to provoke a diplomatic incident. You will be provided with the necessary credentials.”
Mallory and Laorcq wasted no time leaving the Sirgan. While the orbital elevator brought them back to the city-planet’s surface, the pilot admitted, “I’m not too keen to confront Jarvik barehanded. If he goes berserk…”
The tall scarred man reassured her. “I have what we need at the hotel. Alrine got handguns for us.”
Alrine this, Alrine that, and here I thought we were close. Unbelievable! Mallory thought with a hint of annoyance.
The doors opened onto an agitated crowd. Gibrals and Xilfs were nowhere to be seen, but many other species seemed to be running around like headless chickens, overcome by panic.
Returning to more practical considerations, the pilot declared, “Let’s get what we need to defend ourselves and head to the embassy. It’s already chaotic here, so we’d better not give Jarvik any more time.”
With these words, they advanced through the crowd, barely avoiding being crushed several times, including once by a monstrous alien with green fur who looked like a cross between a gorilla and an elephant.
It was no better on the lower levels. Here, the crowd’s behavior was more measured, but the narrowness of some of the corridors slowed the humans’ progress. After a stop at Laorcq and Alrine’s hotel for weapons, they set out again. Each of them now carried a holstered pistol under their jackets. They were relieved to arrive at one of the antigrav tunnels that sank through the city’s entrails. They reached the floor where the embassy was located and walked to the building in question without seeing many other people.
Mallory recognized the double sliding door and its biometric locking system, noting in passing that it had been repaired since Torg forced it open during the Xilfs’ attack.
Hanosk had kept his promise: they now had credentials that allowed them to override Jarvik’s orders to the embassy’s Artificial Intelligence. It identified the pilot and opened the door.
The panels slid aside, revealing an interior bathed i
n shadow. While Laorcq and Mallory’s vision adjusted, an angular shape jerked and stretched an arm out towards them. The sound of a barrage of gunfire suddenly tore through the street noise.
Vassili was lying on his bed, twiddling a piece of metal. About half an inch thick, it folded and twisted with disconcerting ease in his hands.
By all accounts, the changes induced by the ktol had endowed him with strength far beyond that of a mere Earthling. His senses were also sharper, and he had an unbelievably detailed understanding of his own body. Little by little, he was learning to control the smallest organs the way he moved his finger. Through trial and error, he managed to change his body temperature and to simulate joy, anger, fear, and even desire. A short laugh escaped his lips: although so little of his humanity remained, he felt more alive than ever… He reveled in the superiority conferred by his new abilities.
Bored of playing with the metal fragment, he rose and put it on the desk sitting in a corner of the large room. He stood for a moment in front of the furniture, then decided to open one of the drawers. The ktol was nestled there, a sphere with sharp, off-white spikes. He picked it up between his thumb and index finger to examine it more closely. Thanks to his improved sight, he could make out tiny barbs on the ends of each needle and a delicate network of channels filled with pulsing translucid liquid.
He turned his hand slightly, and the object wedged itself into the hollow of his palm. Spikes bit into flesh, drawing his consciousness out of his body and transporting to the strange world with the colossal ruins.
The immense city of stone was bathed in red light. The planet’s star had sunk halfway below the horizon, and a procession of five irregular moons arced through the purple sky.
Vassili realized that he knew the world’s name: Nalcoxa. His memory held information transmitted by the ktol. It rose to the surface of his mind as required by the modified human’s needs and perceptions.
Without surprise, he realized that the Primordial was standing next to him. The monstrous alien’s name came to him spontaneously: Axaqateq.
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