Starship Alchemon

by Christopher Hinz

  Faye jumped in. “That shouldn’t happen. June is treating Alexei directly. I’ve cut power and control cables to the clinician and every other automated system down here.” Her voice cracked. “And Rigel took care of the autobed.”

  Ericho wasn’t reassured. It was possible they’d overlooked something.

  “I still want you up on the bridge. How soon can Alexei be moved?”

  “Give us an hour,” June said.

  “Shoot for half that. And keep me updated.”

  He turned to Jonomy, who had the look of someone waiting to deliver more bad news.

  “Hit me with it.”

  “I believe the Alchemon has experienced its first Level One penetration. A series of subtle alterations have been made to NEL.”

  “What kind of alterations?”

  “Several of the output power modules have been decoupled. I am uncertain as to the reason. It matches no prototype templates for modifications to that system.” Jonomy paused. “At least none I have been able to access via GEL.”

  He didn’t need to add that the library was no longer reliable. Although GEL as a whole remained accessible, as did most systems under the creature’s control, there was no way to tell whether access to specific data was being blocked or the data rendered erroneous to further the creature’s manipulations.

  Ericho missed Rigel’s presence, not only as a friend but also as someone with valuable engineering expertise. The tech officer knew more about nucleonic engines than many NEL engineers. Rigel might have understood what the engine alterations portended, or at least have a viable theory. And Ericho would have felt more confident knowing Rigel was here, backing him up.

  “What about a Sentinel response to the engine alterations?”

  “As before, the alterations were not drastic enough to awaken the Sentinel. SEN again issued only a precursive alert.”

  “Suggestions?”

  “None at the moment.”

  Ericho caught his eye, seeking clues that Jonomy knew more than he was letting on, as when he’d secretly pressurized the airlock and sent the combo robot tumbling into the void. But the lytic gave no indication of concealed trickery. Instead, he looked as lost as Ericho felt.

  Jonomy, hyperaware of the reality of their predicament on the most fundamental level, knew more than any of them that control of the ship was spiraling inexorably into the creature’s hands.

  “All is not hopeless,” Jonomy said, sensing Ericho’s growing doubts. “The invader still needs to get past SEN. The Sentinel remains a formidable barrier.”

  But not formidable enough. Ericho didn’t dispute that the creature feared the Sentinel – or whatever passed for fear in that monstrous alien consciousness. Yet so far, it had outwitted them on every front. Doubtlessly it had a plan for overcoming SEN as well.

  That favorite starship adventure story from childhood again popped into his head. He found himself trying to recall just what the eponymous commander of Captain Clarke in the Quiets of Doom had done to save his crew and vessel. Like Ericho, Captain Clarke had been faced with losing it all. Yet somehow in the end he’d triumphed by means of that unorthodox salvation.

  Again, those words resonated. Unorthodox salvation. It seemed germane somehow to the Alchemon’s plight.

  The ludicrous nature of what he was doing hit home. As if recalling such things will save us.

  “Not likely,” he muttered, unleashing a bitter laugh. The utterance prompted a concerned look from Jonomy.

  Get it together, Ericho. No matter how hopeless their situation, he needed to continue functioning as a captain. The alternative was ugly: becoming like Hardy, spending what might be his final hours lost in a fantasy, perhaps reliving the excitement of a juvenile adventure story that had influenced him toward a career.

  Yet despite his efforts to sequester Captain Clarke from awareness and remain focused on their troubles, that phrase continued to demand attention.

  Unorthodox salvation.

  Those words were important somehow. And so was another idea, one that had occurred to him only moments ago when considering the problem of what to do about a dreamlounging Hardy.

  Being ejected from a fantasy.

  A frisson touched Ericho. His mind brought together those disparate elements. The fusion of the two concepts – unorthodox salvation and ejecting someone from a fantasy – seemed on the verge of springboarding him to some new form of understanding.

  And then a third clump of information melded into the mix. It was what LeaMarsa had said about her parents being bioresearchers specializing in mitochondrial DNA. His mind raced, on the trail of a connection that had been eluding him since the Homebound.

  In a blazing instant, the pieces of the puzzle snapped together.

  “Of course!” he exclaimed, almost leaping out of his chair. It all seemed so obvious.

  This time, his reaction prompted more than just a concerned look from Jonomy.

  “Captain, are you aware that you have been talking to yourself?”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” he said, forcing calm. He couldn’t risk alerting the creature that he may have just come up with a means to fight it.

  There was another reason for tempering his excitement. He’d put together a series of hunches and reached a conclusion. Yet that conclusion remained only a theory. Despite his gut telling him he was right, he needed proof before his theory could be upgraded to a viable plan.

  For the first time since their crisis had begun, he felt they had a chance. It was clear what he had to do next.

  “I’m going to medcenter to check on Alexei.”

  He powered his shieldsuit toward the port airseal, hoping Jonomy would accept the decision without protest.

  “Captain, I believe it is unwise for you to be off the bridge.”

  “I won’t be gone long.”

  “There is nothing you can accomplish in medcenter. I do not understand your rationale.”

  Jonomy had a bone and wouldn’t let go. Ericho struggled to come up with a convincing reason that wouldn’t make their eavesdropping enemy suspicious.

  “It’s possible we don’t have much time left,” he said as the airseal whipped open. “I just want to be with June, at least for a little while.”

  Jonomy’s eyes narrowed in disapproval. A captain putting his personal feelings above the good of the mission was inappropriate in normal circumstances. And with the ship in jeopardy things were far from normal. But right now Ericho didn’t care what the lytic thought of the lie, only that he accepted it.

  “Captain, I strongly suggest that you not vacate your duties for any longer than necessary.”

  “I’ll make it a quickie.” He was no expert on Helioteer slang, but he had a vague recollection that the phrase referred to a hurried sexual encounter.

  He stepped through the portal, pausing to glance back with what he hoped was a disarming smile. But a new sense of foreboding abruptly came over him.

  He had the strangest feeling this was the last time he’d ever see Jonomy.

  CHAPTER 35

  LeaMarsa couldn’t pin down the exact moment the natatorium started to blink.

  She’d been listening to the faint hum emanating from that makeshift wall of pups blocking the airseal while staring at the pool’s mirror-like surface. She must have entered a kind of dream state when a sharp noise broke the spell. It was one of the pups, quivering and making odd grating sounds. Obviously, some sort of malfunction.

  It was then that she realized that she was suffering a kind of malfunction as well. The entire room was blinking in and out of existence. For a few seconds, eyesight seemed normal. But then there would be a few moments where the contours of the natatorium disappeared and she found herself gazing into the countless stars of neurospace.

  Those ominous dark clusters now enshrouded half of the faux-stars. She sensed it wouldn’t be long before the entire realm of luminous dark succumbed to them – or had succumbed or would succumb. There was no longer any doubt th
at Baby Blue… the Quad… the Diar-Fahn – was responsible. The creature’s gradual resurgence into the physical universe was reawakening its powers in neurospace as well.

  The natatorium blinked back into view. At the portal, the malfunctioning pup exited, making way for a new arrival. The replacement pup assumed the vacated position.

  LeaMarsa sensed that the entire ship was nearly under the creature’s sway. Soon, the Alchemon’s final ramparts would fall.

  CHAPTER 36

  June looked surprised as Ericho motored his shieldsuit into the medcenter lobby.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Where’s Faye?”

  The crewdoc gestured to the closed door of the treatment room. “She’s keeping an eye on Alexei. We disengaged even the basic MED monitors. We’re back to practicing medicine like they did in the early Helio Age.”

  Ericho repeated the lie he’d told Jonomy, added some fresh wrinkles he’d come up with on his way down here.

  “We may not have much time left. I don’t want to waste precious hours doing useless things, trying to stop something that likely can’t be stopped.”

  She raised an eyebrow. He pressed on.

  “I want to make love to you.”

  Surprise graduated to astonishment. “You want to… right now?”

  “Can you think of a better time?”

  “Actually, yes I can. After we’ve gotten through this crisis.”

  “There’s a good chance that’s not going to happen. I want every moment to be precious for us from here on out. C’mon.”

  He took hold of her hand, dragged her toward her office.

  “Ericho! You’re acting crazy!”

  Rigel’s safepad was perched on the edge of her desk. Perfect. He slammed the door as they entered and locked it.

  “I don’t want any interruptions,” he said, picking up the safepad and smacking it onto the nearest wall.

  “I am genuinely flattered. Truly I am.” June’s words dripped with the sing-song tonal nuances used by therapists attempting to calm individuals suffering from delusions or psychotic breaks. “Remember, we’re both wearing shieldsuits for good reason. I don’t think it’s wise for us to remove them in order to gratify–”

  “Sex will have to wait,” he interrupted as the safepad’s reassuring hum filled the office. They could now talk without the creature eavesdropping.

  Gripping her shoulders, he shifted gears as tactfully as possible. “I really would like to make love to you. But right now, we have other priorities.”

  Confusion flashed across her face. “OK, Captain Solorzano. You’ve officially lost me.”

  “Remember when I asked you to look into what LeaMarsa said to me at the Homebound, about her parents being bioresearchers specializing in mitochondrial DNA?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you?”

  Still bewildered by his flip-flopping needs, she gave a wary nod.

  “You put together a file?”

  “Yes.”

  “When? This is critical.”

  “Not long after you asked me about it. Things got pretty crazy after Tomer’s suicide and frankly I forgot about it. Let me think… OK, it was right after his funeral.”

  He nodded in relief. She’d accomplished the task before the creature had gained control of the GEL and MED systems. If not, had it even permitted her to undertake such a search, the information gathered for the file likely would have been deleted or corrupted to prevent any chance of them uncovering the truth.

  “Where is the file?”

  She pointed to the wafer on her desk.

  “And the data is still discrete from MED and the network?”

  “Of course. My patient files are in there as well. I never let that information upload, not until I make my end-of-mission report when we’re back in lunar orbit.”

  Ericho was thankful she practiced such MED safeguards. Once such information was dumped into the Alchemon, it would be automatically relayed into the Inet-29 upon their return through the Quiets. June always gave herself the option of double-checking patient data before allowing it to join the permanent record. But right now, all that was important was that she hadn’t uploaded the file on LeaMarsa, which meant the creature didn’t know it existed.

  He huddled beside her as she opened the document. As he’d requested, it was comprehensive, with more than three hundred pages of data and written reports. He scanned the various subheadings. Some of the information was from LeaMarsa’s early years and included school summaries from teachers and guidance mentors as well as basic OTTO transcripts of the sort done on every Corporeal citizen. The majority of the file appeared to have originated from the psionic’s two-month stay at Jamal Labs.

  “Care to tell me what this is all about?” June asked.

  “I don’t believe we can beat this creature by fighting it directly. But there may be another way.”

  “OK, so what exactly are you looking for?”

  “First off, I’m trying to confirm a suspicion, that LeaMarsa is a genejob.”

  “I could have told you that. Of course, technically, if I had, it would have been a medical ethics violation.” She sighed. “I’ve been guilty of more than a few of those lately. Even when I put this file together for you, I included some privileged information, things that LeaMarsa only revealed during psych analysis. Frankly, I don’t even know why I did that.”

  “Maybe deep down you sensed it was important too.”

  “Maybe.” She navigated to the appropriate page and highlighted several paragraphs. “Right there.”

  Ericho scanned the information, which had come from a DNA analysis of LeaMarsa by the Jamal researchers. The results confirmed his initial suspicion and made the rest of his theory feasible.

  “Listen to this,” he said, reading aloud. “LeaMarsa de Host’s mitochondrial DNA was found to contain the genetic material of twenty-nine individuals. Those individuals have been genomically identified and confirmed as possessing high-order psionic abilities, divided among projectors, receptors and conveyors.”

  He faced June. “It had to have been her parents who injected that DNA into her embryo, right?”

  “I doubt it could have happened any other way. I believe they were trying to create a superluminal transhuman.”

  “I think they succeeded.”

  Sadness touched the crewdoc. “The poor girl. Most parents who undertake major genome manipulation do so for fairly benign reasons, or at least they rationalize that they’re benign. Still, the purpose is usually to give their offspring a better shot in life. But what LeaMarsa’s parents did, using their own child as a science experiment…” She shook her head. “It was immoral and downright cruel.”

  “No argument. And keep that in mind when you listen to this next part,” he said, quoting another passage of the Jamal report.

  “LeaMarsa frequently inflicts bodily harm on herself, including but not limited to episodes of self-flagellation. It is apparent that this is done not as a form of sexual masochism but as an analgesic for constraining a specific psychological torment of an unknown source and nature.”

  June shrugged. “I told you about that the other day. She calls it the reek. It’s a pain she’s fought against most of her life.”

  Ericho played devil’s advocate. He needed to eliminate the most obvious source of that pain to prove the validity of his theory.

  “Could this torment be caused by her parents not loving her unconditionally? That she was more important to them as a science experiment?”

  “No doubt there’s some truth in that. Certainly, cold parenting can produce a residue of lifelong primal pains. Still, my gut tells me that this reek has another origin, an incident or series of incidents that induced a far deeper level of distress. Something happened to her. Something very bad.”

  “And you said she’s never talked about it.”

  “All I know is that whatever the reek’s source, it scares the hell out of her. I believe she’d do
almost anything to be free of it. She possesses all the OTTO indicators of the classic misunderstood outsider. Her extreme psionic abilities set her apart socially from an early age. Her parents contributed to her isolation by constructing a home environment that stressed training her to apply those abilities.”

  “But they died when she was still a teen.”

  “Yes, at age thirteen. Still, in cases like these, where there’s extreme parental micromanagement in the earliest years, it’s common for the child to later suffer a range of neurotic and often self-destructive behaviors.”

  Another section of the report caught Ericho’s eye. “It says here that LeaMarsa suffers occasional losses of consciousness while still wide awake, a condition the researchers call psychic blackouts.” He turned to June with a questioning gaze.

  “As with the reek, I couldn’t get her to discuss this during our sessions. And I gather that no one else ever got her to open up about it either. However, I came across some studies done on other powerful psychics who suffer similar blackouts. And some of them have talked about it. They claim that during these blackouts, they literally journey to some sort of other dimension.”

  Ericho scanned the remainder of the Jamal report, looking for more information about the reek. But there was nothing further to either prove or disprove his theory. Certainly one or more of the researchers must have had the same suspicions and arrived at the same conclusion.

  A solution to that mystery was suddenly obvious.

  “They left it out on purpose,” he whispered.

  “Left what out?”

  “The source of LeaMarsa’s ‘psychological pains of an unknown source and nature.’ The Jamal researchers must have deleted it from their final report.”

  Had they included such an outlandish and unprovable theory, the researchers’ entire rigorous analysis of the psionic would have been tarnished. Besides that, they were Pannis employees. No matter how well trained in objective reasoning, they would have known that the ultimate purpose of examining LeaMarsa was to enable the mega to utilize her abilities. They’d adhered, perhaps unconsciously, to a fundamental precept of social research: conclusions tend to be biased toward the belief system of whatever organization, agency or individual is funding the research.