by M. E. Thorne
“Like what?” Gnasher, like the rest of us, had come around and been drawn into the discussion.
“Since the wars, our birth-rate has plummeted by over fifty percent,” Sabra stated, frowning deeply. “Our research indicates that it is due to a genophage, an artificial virus, that was deployed during the wars. It was meant to destabilize and weaken planets over generations. “
I felt ill, “Why would someone do that?”
“Imagine defeating an enemy by preventing them from even being born?" Sabra was clearly as disturbed by the idea as we were. “My best guess is that one of the corporations deployed it against their enemies but kept some kind of protection or antidote for themselves. Either they died out during the wars, or their protection didn’t work as well as they assumed it would. Unless we find a way to reverse this process, the SADB estimates that humanity will go extinct in another two hundred years”
Chapter 11
We all sat quietly after that, the thought slowly sinking in. Even Marcella seemed shocked by the idea.
“You think the antidote for the genophage was in Nakamura-Ghosi Genetics?” Spinny asked, breaking the uneasy silence.
“No,” Sabra shook her head. “We’re not even sure an antidote even exists, honestly. The SADB was interested in the lab because of the research they were doing in genetic engineering. Specifically, increasing fertility and reproductive capabilities.”
“I never heard of that,” Spinny said.
“Neither had I,” Marcella added.
“The records we recovered off-world indicated that Nakamura-Ghosi was still in the early stages of their research when the war ended,” Sabra stated. “But even preliminary findings could be invaluable to our cause.”
“I argued we should inform the State about the lab, and work together with them to find it as quickly as possible, but I was overruled. Several months ago, Syndicate leadership officially placed a man named Keith Valash in charge of SADB operations here on El Finito. He had been an unofficial fixer here for years, a xenophobic and underhanded man.” She shivered. “I hated him.”
“What was his job?” I asked.
“Whatever needed to be done,” she answered. “The SADB would task him with what they considered critical jobs, retrieving technology or data they believed was vital to our overall mission. Or,” she added more darkly, “if they needed some kind of leverage over a member of the State, he would get it. Blackmail material essentially.”
“Sounds like a crook,” Gnasher commented.
“Basically,” Sabra agreed, “but he was effective. Regardless, everyone stationed at the embassy hated him. We treated him as nothing more than a rabid dog on a short leash. I still don’t understand why the Central Committee put him in charge of the Nakamura-Ghosi Genetics project.”
“He feared the State would locate the lab before us and hide its secrets. We knew your population has problems with fertility and birth-rates, though not as severe as our own. When he learned a local crime ring had found information about the lab and was launching an expedition, he decided to act.”
I tried to share a guilty look with Gloria, but she seemed utterly unfazed by the unintended accusation.
“I tried to stop him and to contact the Central Committee, but Valash launched an armed coup and overtook the embassy,” Sabra said. “His soldiers seized control, shut down all off-world communication, and arrested the staff members that were in opposition.”
“I’ve been locked up for weeks,” she continued. “I was only allowed out to help Valash, verifying the records and data he found as part of his search. When I wasn’t trapped in my room, I was led around at gunpoint, the threat of violence keeping me in line.”
Gloria guessed, “And when he found the lab he forced you to go along?”
“I’m the SADB’s leading expert on corporate data storage and recovery,” Sabra’s hands twisted in her lap. “He needed me there to verify anything he found.”
Explains why she didn’t have a gun, I thought, and why she practically threw herself at us to escape.
“How did Valash find the lab’s location though?” I was very curious about that.
“Bribery,” Sabra answered plainly. “He had a huge network of corrupt and compromised State members under his thumb. He offered credits, contraband, and favors to low-level functionaries that worked for your government. And once he got someone to bend the rules once, extortion and blackmail were his favorite tools to keep them in line.”
I overheard Gloria talking to herself. “Seems like a solid plan when building an illegal intelligence network.”
Sabra didn’t hear her. “One of the compromised State functionaries provided a copy of the same data the crime ring used to launch their expedition.”
“Damn traitors,” Gloria cursed, ruffling her wings.
“That’s how we were able to move about so freely as well,” Sabra nodded. “In the last few weeks, Valash paid massive bribes to certain State’s soldiers. I doubt an honest person would allow Syndicate members to move heavy mining equipment into The Stacks and begin digging.”
Spinny swayed, looking troubled. “So what are you going to do now?”
“My goal remains the same,” Sabra stated stubbornly. “I need to contact the Central Committee and report Valash. Even the most hawkish members of our leadership cannot openly condone his actions. He’s gone too far. They’ll be forced to recall him, and try to make amends for the damage he’s caused.”
“We need to head back as well,” Spinny said. “The State must be informed of this man’s actions and the corruption within their ranks.”
“We need to tell the Bluehorns too,” Gloria added.
We all gave her uneasy glances.
“What?” she objected. “We paid for this whole thing!”
That led to an awkward conversation, where we were forced to admit to Sabra that we were the crime ring expedition that the SADB had been so worried about. She was skeptical at first, but Spinny was eloquent enough in explaining our reasoning and motives that we were able to convince her we weren’t all crooks.
“You should travel to my colony,” Marcella announced, surprising us. “There’s an elevator my siblings and I used when we retreated from the more populous areas. As long as the machinery still works, it should get you closer to the Metrocomplex.”
“That’s wonderful, thank you!” Gnasher cheered.
The Panacea nodded. “You still need more rest. It’s a long trip to the colony.”
I woke up a couple of hours later and was happy to see I wasn’t sporting a raging hardon like the last time.
Gloria was still asleep, hanging with her rucksack protectively held to her chest. I didn’t see Marcella. The others were gathered together in a corner of the cave.
After stretching out and working out a kink in my stiff shoulders, I walked over to join them. They were carefully going through the waterlogged materials we had salvaged from the lab.
Sabra was peeling apart soggy stacks of paper, laying each page out individually on the rocky floor so they could dry. I was disheartened to see most of them were completely illegible, the ink streaked and blotted.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she told me, as I peeked over her shoulder. “Normally, when we recover paper and printed material from a site, they’re heavily damaged. Even if they look like trash now, once they dry we can run them through a computerized scanner. Specialized software can then recreate the original writing.”
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“It’s the least I can do after the SADB caused all this destruction in the first place." She laid out another sheet, gently tugging out any wrinkles.
Gnasher was using her claws to pry apart ruined tablets, with Sabra occasionally offering advice or suggestions. Once she got the devices open, Gnasher pulled out the storage drives and laid them aside.
“Are they waterproof?" I asked as I watched them work.
“Water-resistant, not waterproof,”
Sabra squinted as she inspected one of the drives. “These are solid-state drives, all the data is stored in a crystal matrix. Provided the seals are intact and the crystals aren’t damaged, we should still be able to retrieve the information they contain.”
Spinny, who was bundling up the materials, looked much more at ease than she had earlier. I was happy for her, I knew the data meant a lot to her personally.
Pulling out the tablet Gloria had provided me, I saw the screen was shattered and moisture had seeped in under the plastic. It wouldn’t turn on either. I handed it over to Gnasher, hoping that the drive could be salvaged and the pictures I had taken could be saved.
Marcella came back, her arms loaded with several thin, mossy mats. She split the stacks with Spinny, and the two of them began layering the soggy papers between the sheets.
“These mats have been treated to draw out moisture,” the slug-woman explained. “They should help dry out the papers as we travel.”
“Thank you, again,” Spinny said heartfully.
Marcella slowly blinked, then nodded, her expression still unreadable.
With everything packed up, we woke up Gloria and made ready to leave.
Marcella took the lead, while Spinny and Gnasher brought up the rear. The shelter had some preserved food and water in portable containers. We carried what we could with us.
“Are you really okay to walk?” Gloria was clearly concerned about Spinny’s missing limbs.
“We’ll be fine,” the Arachne assured her.
“I’m here to support her,” Gnasher said, one hand wrapped around her girlfriend’s waist.
“The route I’ve selected is the easiest to traverse,” Marcella provided. “While not optimal for distance, it should not be too difficult.”
We had lost most of our lanterns and all our sniffers during our flight from the labs. Marcella provided moss lights and she assured us there wouldn’t be anything particularly hazardous on our trip.
“I will be observant of anything that might endanger the group,” she assured us as she led us along a downward sloping path.
“If it’s not rude to ask, how do your abilities work?” Sabra questioned, as she trailed the Panacea.
As the only baseline human, she had the worst night vision and often found herself tripping and stumbling over the uneven ground. She stuck close to Marcella as she talked. “As a historian focused on the Corporate era, I find your capabilities fascinating -- and a bit frightening.”
Marcella’s mouth crept up into a semblance of a smile. “We can sample and analyze almost anything we come into contact with, from blood to steel. From there, we can break it down and identify its composition.”
“From birth onward, my kin and I were trained in a variety of fields, including chemistry and biology. Using this knowledge, we can diagnose most medical ailments, or run complex chemical analysis to determine the nature of an object.”
“Fascinating,” Sabra replied, seemingly making mental notes on everything the Panacea was saying.
“Our bodies were specifically engineered with over two hundred artificial glands and organs. They grant us the ability to synthesize a huge variety of chemicals and compounds.” Marcella continued, becoming even more talkative, “We can administer these to our subjects, store them for later use, or pass the formula on to our kin.”
The two continued to animatedly chat, the topic quickly becoming too complex and esoteric for me to follow.
Spinny chuckled. “The Panacea were always the most scientifically-minded members of our little refugee community. They wouldn’t say ten words when five would suffice but start talking about chemistry and they’d chat with you for hours on end.”
The tunnels were remarkably even and smooth, with flat floors and gently curved walls.
“These were carved by the corporations as part of their war,” Spinny told me when I paused to run a hand over a section of the wall. “They used genetically engineered war machines to carve and dissolve these tunnels, trying to undermine their opponent’s strongholds.”
“Giant slugs,” Marcella explained.
“What happened to them?" I had a sudden vision of a massive, pale body rushing down the tunnel at us with an acid-frothing maw.
“They’re extinct,” Spinny answered. “They were mindless creatures, unable to feed or care for themselves. Once the corporations died, many of their creations swiftly followed.”
“A true loss,” Marcella noted.
I was not convinced that I could share that sentiment.
“Can you tell us more about the Corporation Wars?”
We were resting after a few hours of walking. Spinny looked a bit taxed, but otherwise, we were doing well and making steady progress according to Marcella. She had suggested we take a break before the next section, which would force us to climb down a vertical descent.
“I feel kind of ignorant,” I admitted to Sabra. “I’m a delver, I loot old corporate sites and search for the things they left behind, but now I realize I don’t know that much about them.”
“I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself,” Spinny said, putting down a bottle of water. “For El Finito, the corporations aren’t just some long-lost titans. They formed the world around us and the bodies we inhabit. Their existence still dictates our lives today. They were our gods, and nothing makes people more uncomfortable than dead gods.”
“Gods. That’s a good way to think about them,” Sabra murmured. She looked back at me, “How much do you know about the Corporation Wars Era?
“Assume we know nothing,” Gnasher suggested. “Spinny and Marcella have a lot of first-hand knowledge since they lived through the war, but the rest of us are pretty much in the dark.”
“Alright then,” Sabra closed her eyes and rested her head against the tunnel wall. “The corporations represented the largest, most powerful organizations in recorded history. Almost all of them originated either on our home world, Earth, or our home system, Sol. This made them hundreds of years old by the time open conflict broke out between them.”
“There were thousands of different corporations, focused on just as many industries, like exploration, mining, manufacturing, and information technology. Their rivalries, alliances, betrayals, and downfalls are the thing of Arthurian legend. For the sake of simplicity, I can state that all of them fell under the influence of the four major players; Nakamura-Ghosi, Honormark, Tsar Shang Industries, and the Alvarez Collective.”
“We call them the Corporation Wars, but in reality, they were a series of conflicts, both hot and cold, that spanned centuries.”
Gloria appeared confused. “Cold wars?”
“Espionage, sabotage, and assassinations,” Spinny provided.
“During their earlier conflicts, the corporations were obsessed with maintaining profit and making money, they wanted to avoid any large scale conflicts that could disrupt trade and commerce. It wasn’t until much later that they abandoned logic and reason for wholesale destruction and death.”
“Starting around the beginning of the twenty-third century, the corporations began spreading their influence across the Milky Way galaxy. The Sol system’s resources had been depleted, and overpopulation was a major concern. Humanity had simply run out of the means and space needed to grow.”
“Using newly developed faster-than-light technology, they went out and discovered new worlds for humanity. Over the next two hundred years, they truly became powers and dominions, ruling over vast empires with quintillions of employee-citizens.”