Starship Alchemon

by Christopher Hinz

  No, he could only be paranoid about one crewmember at a time.

  The thought inspired a grim chuckle as he reached the bridge airseal. The door failed to open at his approach as it should have. He tabbed the manual control.

  No response.

  He activated his mike. “Jonomy, I’m right outside. There seems to be an issue with the door.”

  “Yes, captain, I am aware of the problem. Both entry points to the bridge are presently impaired. Unfortunately, IAC registers no troubles.”

  “Why am I not surprised? Still, it must be obvious to you that we’re having a problem.”

  “Of course. I have initiated feedback loops in an attempt to get IAC to acknowledge the malfunction. However, that does not seem to be working. I will attempt another series of steps to bypass IAC’s control. Those steps should bring cognizance to the affected system.”

  “I don’t care if the system’s cognizant. I just want the goddamn door open.”

  “Understood.”

  Most of the Alchemon’s airseals had overrides on both sides. But because the bridge was considered a secure area, it was an exception to that rule. Normally, its airseals could be opened manually only from within.

  “Why don’t you just disconnect from the umbilical and do it yourself?” Ericho suggested. And resolve the very issue he’d come here to address.

  There was a long pause. “I do not think that such an action would be wise.”

  “Really? It would only take you a few seconds.”

  “Due to the extraordinary nature of the troubles we have been experiencing, I believe it is vital that I remain connected at all times.”

  He knows what we’re up to. He’s not going to allow us on the bridge. Ericho restrained an urge to pound on the door.

  Jonomy’s voice rose sharply. “Rigel is on an approach to the starboard airseal. He is garbed in a shieldsuit and unresponsive to my queries.”

  “Maybe there’s a problem with the atmospherics at his location,” Ericho suggested, trying to buy Rigel time by faking confusion.

  “EHO indicates no such problem.” Jonomy hesitated. “Captain, is there an issue here to which I remain unaware?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A corridor scanner reveals a bulge in Rigel’s utility belt that suggests he is carrying the other Higgs cutter. The device appears to have been deliberately hidden. Also, if my judgment of facial expressions is of any value, Rigel is exhibiting grim determination enhanced by barely restrained anger.”

  “Maybe he’s worried about having to cut through malfunctioning airseals.”

  There was another lengthy pause. Then…

  “Captain, am I in some sort of danger?”

  Ericho dropped the charade. “Jonomy, listen carefully. If that door doesn’t open when Rigel arrives, he will burn through it with the Higgs.”

  “Inadvisable. Such an action likely would awaken the Sentinel, which may interpret the action as an assault on the bridge. A warrior pup would likely be dispatched.”

  “True enough. But Rigel would be on the bridge by the time the pup arrived. He already would have taken drastic action against you should you refuse to unlink.”

  Ericho detected a whiff of resignation. “You have concluded that I am the cause of these malfunctions.”

  “Call it a working theory supported by strong evidence.”

  “Understood. However, you have arrived at an erroneous understanding of our problems. I am not the one responsible.”

  “Open the door, Jonomy.”

  To Ericho’s surprise, the airseal whisked open. He leaped through the portal, not waiting for an explanation.

  Jonomy sat on the far side of the bridge, the umbilical curling over his shoulder and snaking across the floor to its connection at the base of the HOD. His eyes were pinched shut, indicating deep interfacing. A hint of worry played at the edges of his mouth.

  “Unlink,” Ericho ordered, moving toward his command chair.

  Jonomy’s eyes flashed open. “You must believe me, I had nothing to do with the airseal problem. Additionally, I did not open the door just now.”

  “Unlink, Jonomy. Then we’ll talk.”

  “There is a subtle and deep deception at work here, a shrewd intelligence that is attempting to convince you that I am the cause of our troubles.”

  Ericho tried another approach. “You’ve been umbilically connected more than thirty hours. That puts you in the danger zone regarding neurological health.”

  “I remain functional.”

  “You need a break. You even look tired.” Ericho wasn’t making that part up. Jonomy had bags under his eyes. His shoulders drooped and he was scrunched awkwardly in the chair.

  The starboard airseal whisked open. Rigel stormed in. Boots cracked against the deck and shieldsuit motors hummed, disrupting the bridge’s tranquility. His right glove gripped the Higgs cutter. He raised it in a threatening manner.

  “Last chance,” Ericho warned. “Unlink.”

  “If I do, we could suffer a terrible fate.”

  “Quit stalling,” Rigel growled, aiming the cutter at the umbilical. “I swear, I’ll cut the damn thing.”

  “Our only chance for survival is for you to listen to what I have to say. Please hear me out. After that, should you believe I am being untruthful, you can always follow your original intentions.”

  “You’ve got twenty seconds,” Ericho said, wary that Jonomy was stalling for time in the hope that the Sentinel would be awakened. He reached his command chair and toggled through the wafer, looking for any signs that a warrior pup had been activated.

  Nothing suspicious jumped out at him. Then again, Jonomy might be masking a Sentinel alert and manipulating readout data.

  Still, the odds were with them that such was not the case. The extraordinary nature of their situation – a captain and a tech officer at odds with the ship’s lytic – likely would give the Sentinel pause. SEN was smart enough to realize that it couldn’t know with certainty which side was acting in the best interests of the Alchemon and its mission. In all probability it would take a wait-and-see attitude, not responding until the situation achieved clarity.

  At least that’s what Ericho hoped. He kept a wary eye on the airseals in case his theory was wrong and a warrior pup was about to burst through with carnage in mind.

  “Captain, you must believe me. I am trying to combat the real threat here. The Alchemon has been invaded. We are being rapidly and systematically assaulted by a highly intelligent alien lifeform.”

  “You’re saying the creature is responsible for what’s happening.”

  “Correct. It is attacking us through our own systems. My presence in the network is enabling me to monitor and circumvent many aspects of this ongoing assault.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I cannot, although I can show you a great deal of circumstantial evidence. But ultimately, you must take my word for it. But know this. The invader wants me out of the network. It has engineered a clever series of malfunctions to cast doubt in your minds by painting me as the villain. Ideally, it wants you to sever the umbilical and cause me permanent damage, thus assuring that I can never again link to the ship.

  “It caused the various troubles in the containment. It made Alexei’s suit go berserk in a way that threw suspicion on me. It created what I now am certain was a mirage – the mystery ship – initially to direct your fears and uncertainties about what was happening away from the Alchemon, and later to discredit me by making the vessel vanish at an opportune moment.”

  “The ship is gone?”

  “Only moments ago. Again, an attempt to escalate your suspicions by casting blame on me for its abrupt disappearance.”

  Ericho scowled. “So you knew there was never a ship out there?”

  “I suspected.”

  “Then why not tell us? Not just about the mirage but all of this?”

  “The opportunity never presented itself. By the time I became aware of what w
as happening, I could not find a safe way of apprising you of the situation without unlinking.”

  “Could’ve passed a goddamn note,” Rigel growled.

  “I could not take the chance of making the invader suspicious of me. And even unlinking momentarily may have enabled it to lock me out. I have been playing a cat-and-mouse game with it within the network. Until now, I have kept my suspicions discrete from the information flowing through the neural connection.”

  “A load of crap,” Rigel said, taking a menacing step closer to the lytic. One touch of the trigger and the umbilical would be severed.

  “I am speaking the truth,” Jonomy said, meeting the tech officer’s glare. “Answer me this, Rigel. What sort of lifeform did you discover on Sycamore? How do you account for an ancient organism on such a barren world, a planet tortured by ferocious storms and exotic energy transformations? Tell me exactly what it is that you think we brought aboard the Alchemon?”

  “Got a hunch you’re about to tell us.”

  “Indeed. I have a theory that encompasses what we know. I believe that Sycamore was more than just a random home to this creature, what Lieutenant Donner referred to as the Quad. For lack of a better analogy, I believe the planet has been serving as a maximum-security prison and Bouncy Blue as a kind of organic confinement cell. The Quad was some terrible predatory thing being kept down there because it was too dangerous to be kept anywhere else.

  “Long ago, well before the rise of intelligent life on Earth, an advanced civilization must have been at war with this creature. Unable to destroy their enemy, they did the next best thing. They crafted a unique prison and devolved the creature into a less threatening form, an embryonic state of existence. They incarcerated it within Bouncy Blue and banished it to Sycamore.”

  Jonomy’s theory filled in various pieces of the puzzle but Ericho remained skeptical. Rigel could be right and the lytic’s tale just the latest move in some clever game, twisting the interpretation of facts to hide his own insanity.

  “The imprisonment was meant to be permanent. Sycamore, far from the galactic core, likely was chosen for its barrenness and for those fierce storms, factors making it unlikely to attract the interest of later spacefaring civilizations.

  “The jailers even may have created the Sycom strain and left it behind as a biological early-warning system, a way of monitoring any problems with their sophisticated jail cell. Should Bouncy Blue eventually become free of the rock due to millennia of erosion and the Quad possibly gain a means to escape, the spread of the bacteria across the planet’s surface might be monitored from a distance and alert the jailers. They could then return to Sycamore and refortify their prison.

  “But for whatever reason, that never happened. And then, eons later, humans achieved starflight. We discovered the bacteria and, unaware it was possibly a warning system, enabled the Quad to achieve its freedom. Psychically empowered by proximity to LeaMarsa, it was able to generate the energy storm that freed Bouncy Blue from the rock. That storm also initiated a growth spurt. What must have been a tiny embryonic organism, something so tiny that Faye initially overlooked it, was able to instantaneously advance to its next developmental incarnation, a fetal state.

  “Once the creature was away from the inhibiting energy patterns of Sycamore’s disruptive ecosphere, which likely functioned to limit its abilities, I believe it began reacquiring many of its former powers.”

  “Like its ability to defy gravity,” Ericho said.

  “Yes. And more importantly, an incredible psionic prowess that enabled it, through LeaMarsa, to impact the rest of us. I believe she has been functioning not only as a psionic conveyor but as a kind of superluminal amplifier, enabling the Quad to attack our subconscious minds in various ways. Perhaps this process has been going on even before we reached Sycamore, perhaps even before the Alchemon set out. Through her, the creature may even have initiated the chain of events that led to the lieutenant entering the containment lab and taking his own life, and in doing so freeing the creature from its penultimate cage.”

  “Penultimate cage?” Ericho quizzed.

  “The containment is now its final prison. Although the creature can invade many of our systems, while trapped down there I believe that some of its powers remain in check due to superluminal intensity diminishing with distance. If it escapes, it not only will be in closer proximity to the bulk of the network, it could well reach an adult developmental stage and come into possession of additional unknown abilities.”

  Rigel remained suspicious. “I get that it might have taken over the link robot to be its midwife, help it get born. But why take over the warrior pup?”

  “It likely perceived the pup as a potential threat. Clearly, it is able to project superluminal signals into our systems, I suspect using a methodology similar to the way SEN functions. The heightened speed of those impulses allows the creature to overwhelm systems, even ones as sophisticated as ours. In some ways, we might think of the Quad as an organic Sentinel.”

  Ericho was beginning to accept Jonomy’s theory. It seemed to make more sense than the idea of a crazed lytic. Still, he wasn’t ready to let down his guard. Jonomy’s whole explanation could still be a clever sham.

  “What about Alexei and the link robot? Why interfere with our attempt to vacuum the containment when that’s precisely what the creature ultimately made happen?”

  “I suspect that at the time Alexei was guiding the robot, for some reason the Quad was not ready for the purge. I am at a loss for more specifics.”

  “Why wouldn’t it just take control of the entire containment system?” Rigel wondered. “Why psionically manipulate the lieutenant through LeaMarsa to cause the melt?”

  “Even when using its superluminal capabilities to invade and overwhelm a system, the Alchemon’s command hierarchy remains a challenge. Robotics and Probes is a Level Four system, more easily circumvented than the containment, which is Level Two.

  “But there can be no doubt that the creature is working its way up the hierarchy. It already has penetrated several Level Three systems, including hydroponics and the primary genesis complex.”

  Ericho still found it hard to believe in such an omnipotent creature. Yet it was equally difficult imagining Jonomy’s explanation as the product of insanity.

  “There is something else. It has expended inordinate effort accessing data clusters within GEL.”

  “Makes sense it would want to learn everything it could about us,” Ericho said. “Search for weaknesses.”

  “Yes, but its interest has been much more specific. It has scanned numerous files, many of them quite obscure, relating to population growth and human expansion throughout the galaxy.” Jonomy paused. “I fear that this specialized interest does not bode well.”

  Ericho’s lingering doubts were nearly laid to rest. He couldn’t have listed every reason why he believed the lytic but there was a cumulative impact to Jonomy’s version of events. Nevertheless, one aspect still begged for an explanation.

  Rigel beat him to the punch. “What you’re saying makes some sense. But how do you explain the fact you’re becoming a dreamlounge junkie?”

  Jonomy betrayed rare surprise. “June told you.”

  “Hell yes, she told us.”

  “I admit I have a problem.”

  “Ya think?”

  “I am not immune to this psionic bombardment. But because of my altered prefrontal cortex, I possess an ability not shared by the rest of you. I can compartmentalize the resultant emotional torments and confine them to specific temporal lobe regions, thus preventing them from influencing behavior. However, I must periodically expunge this storehouse of torments, and have found the best method of mitigation is via the diversions offered by the dreamlounge.”

  Ericho translated. “You channel your craziness into sex fantasies so that you can maintain normal functioning.”

  “Succinctly put.”

  Rigel didn’t look satisfied with the explanation. But Ericho had hea
rd enough.

  “Put away the Higgs,” he ordered.

  “You buying this crap?”

  “I am. And I think you are too.” And the universe have mercy on us if we’re wrong.

  Rigel still looked suspicious. But he lowered and sheathed the weapon.

  Ericho turned to Jonomy. “We still need to know what the creature’s doing down there. Did you reprogram that pup to respond only to your commands?”

  “I was about to launch it when you and Rigel arrived.”

  “Do it.”

  Jonomy nodded and blinked rapidly. “The pup has exited airlock three.”

  In the HOD, imagery from the pup’s forward camera eyes appeared. It drifted aft along the ship’s jagged exterior, a mass of structures, channels and protuberances. Electrogs on its outer skin maintained the robot at a level distance of fifteen centimeters above the hull but also restricted its speed. The pup floated toward the stern with agonizing slowness.

  “One minute, fifty seconds until it reaches the containment chute.”

  The intercom came to life. It was June, wondering what was happening. Ericho provided her and Faye with a quick update. He sensed the crewdoc’s relief when he explained that Jonomy wasn’t the cause of their troubles.

  He wished he could feel equally comforted. They may well have stood a better chance against a crazed lytic than the threat represented by the creature.

  “You’ve been sending regular updates to the Corporeal?” Ericho asked.

  “At standard intervals,” Jonomy said. “However, I could not include my suspicions about the creature without alerting it that I was aware of its plotting.”

  “A moot point as of now. Better transmit immediately.”

  Established colony worlds utilized Quiets repeaters to maintain continuous contact. The Lalande 21185 system didn’t enjoy that expensive luxury, which meant that any updates were limited by the speed of light and wouldn’t reach the solar system for more than eight years. But in the event of a worst-case scenario – the Alchemon not making it back – humanity had to be warned.

  Jonomy’s eyes fluttered as he carried out the command. He frowned.

  “The creature is interfering with our external telemetry interface, inhibiting all outgoing communications. Transmission was unsuccessful.”