Ally or Alien: A Sci-Fi Novel (18 page)

There was no vitriol in his voice. He pronounced each word like a bored news anchor.

"The life form has broken through the dome shield and is setting course on our Farsight facility."

Bellrock was about to drop his load. This sounded like one twisted gag, but Newtype rarely joked, especially not Vaxxy. eLoom released an affirmative sigh.

"It is true. My guess is that the corrupted arm which attacked us connected with its core unit out in the crater. It must have transferred the coordinates of our location."

Murphy's law in action.

Whatever could go wrong, will go wrong.

The fury rode through Bellrock's veins.

"You said the dome shield was impenetrable." 

eVax frowned but his voice stayed cool.

"Based on our experiences so far. We have never dealt with an organism of the biomorph's caliber. Its behavior is unpredictable."

Blah blah blah. 

These Newtype were not nearly as competent as their Earth-based fans believed. Bellrock wished he had some kind of camera device to show their cluelessness back home. 

"Show me. I want to see that thing with my own eyes."

The two took Bellrock to the situation room where only one droid operator remained active. He lay diagonally on a cabled chair that connected with the ground and updated the footage on the giant Tri-D holo-projection.

Bellrock squeezed his eyes and tried to recognize what kind of abomination unleashed before his eyes. The former 'installation' had morphed into some kind of mechanoid walker with four limbs—probably parts taken from the ship wreckage. They each propelled the colossus forward. 

Warning—alien monster robot marching over the desolate Martian surface.

Straight out of the crater cocoon. 

"Now tell me this isn't real."

"Unfortunately, it is."

Bellrock wasted a second glance at the monstrosity. Since the biomorph could only manipulate and morph available tech, how the hell did it grew the mech legs?

"Where's the mech body coming from?"

eVax nudged eLoom.

"Tell him."

"Each explorer-type ship comes with an attached droid bay. We use them for onboard construction and reconnaissance operations."

She pointed at the Tri-D projection. The creature looked like the end boss of a VR game, stomping forward with its massive ship body.

"The biomorph seems to have assimilated the BLDR-22 chassis which is a medium-sized mech bot. Its a standard issue automaton every mid-sized science vessel carries onboard."

Bellrock swallowed. 

Hard.

"And you tell me that now?"

eLoom's sharp mouth wrinkles downed.

"I'm sorry, but the structure remained static up until now. We thought we had it successfully contained."

"Well, you didn't."

That damn metal beast took the best tech from the ship wreckage and left the trash in the crater. 

It was surreal.

"Do not worry," eLoom said, which the captain hated by now. 

"Based on our calculations, it will take at least one and a half sols to reach our base. We will have evacuated everyone by then."

But Bellrock worried.

Big time. 

He had seen what a single, corrupted cybernetic arm could do. And now a mech walker version targeting a high-tech facility? A nightmare in the making. Bellrock suppressed his urge to blurt it out.

"Tell me you have a plan to prevent this thing from reaching this base."

"Evacuation," the Newtype said in unison.

The exact answer he didn't want to hear.

"I mean a more offensive measure like artillery assault or airstrikes."

eLoom stepped forward and opened her palm. Her voice sounded soft and pleasant—Bellrock believed she used some kind of subliminal frequencies to calm him down.

"Military measures should always be the last option. Destruction has never lead to sustainable results."

"Tell that to the biomorph."

Boom.

Even the two 'omniscient' Newtype didn't know how to reply to that. After an awkward pause, she added,

"We will answer with adequate actions when the time is right."

Yeah, well, he doubted that, but he was still a guest on their soil, so he had to abide by their rules.

"What about my partner?"

eLoom guided him back into the repair station where eKazumi was busy supervising the tree bionic arms repairing the heavily-injured scientist. Bellrock choked a bit when he saw his pal resting inside the transparent cylinder.

Dr. Rao looked like a water corpse. 

Pale and bloated.

The next words squeezed out Bellrock's tightened throat. 

"Is he going to make it?"

eKazumi nodded.

"Your friend is stable, but the injuries are grave. In fact, I had to take his DNA samples to replace two of his vital organs."

She pointed toward curved machines attached to the nearby walls.

"These are organ printers. They are creating a replacement liver and spleen as we speak."

Bellrock saw eLoom putting eVax inside the neighboring hull. Its three arms extracted from the pod and worked their tech magic on him. Probably fixing all the hull damage Bellrock blessed him with.

His eyes rejoiced with his partner's body.

"How many hours will it take ?"

She paused for an accurate assessment.

"It could take up to 20 hours of local Martian time."

Bad, bad news.

Bellrock's face squeezed.

"That is getting dangerously close to the timeframe where the freak show arrives."

eLoom joined them.

"Your friend is in critical condition."

"Tell me about it. Can't we just take him onboard a shuttle? You must have some kind of mobile aid."

eKazumi shook her head.

"He is too fragile for that. I stopped his bleeding but he needs to stay low. Even a minor concussion could lead to severe injuries. Let me at least transplant the new organs before we carry him to another spot. Every other measure can lead to his imminent death."

She looked up from her monitor.

"And unlike us, he will stay dead forever. And that is a very long time."

"No shit."

Feeling helpless, part II.

All Bellrock could do was standing around like a stupid civilian watching his partner hovering near death. Nothing was going as planned.

eLoom patted his shoulder.

"Do not lose hope. You and your friend will reach the ringstation in safety. I can not promise it, but I assume a 95% probability."

"I don't care about your numbers. You can't put a digit on a human life."

Silence ripe with electricity sparked the air. 

eLoom winked at her asset.

"Focus on keeping Dr. Rao stable and worry about the repairs that can make him transportation-ready. Update me as soon as he is ready to board."

"I will do that."

eKazumi seemed pleased. 

Almost cheerful when treating his buddy.

Was she enjoying his demise?

No, not even Newtype could be that despicable. Maybe she enjoyed being of use to the greater good. Unlike eVax and eLoom, the asset seemed to belong to a lower rank, even though the Newtype didn't have classes. Maybe she was an older model or had to work her way up the value chain again. Bellrock had once heard that when Newtype wasted resources or screwed up, they were charged with low-level directives to regain their standing in the collective. Basically the liberal version of a prison.

eLoom said,

"Captain Bellrock, I think it is better for you to leave this station. There is nothing you can do now—remember he is in good hands. eKazumi is the most capable asset I have ever used."

"Thank you," eKazumi said without looking up from her visual feed.

Maybe she was right, but Bellrock couldn't just leave. The motto 'No man left behind' still rang true on lost planets.

"I won't go without my partner. I know it's hard for your kind to understand, but on Earth, we call that comaradarie."

He focused on the well-chiseled features of eLoom's face. The Newtype either couldn't mime micro-gestures or was impartial about using them.

"Now for the reason why we took this long-ass flight to your colony..."

45

He produced an ancient but reliable sixteen terabyte datastick from his holster.

"With the information you gave me, I've written a detailed report about the biomorph. I want you to send the entire footage we have acquired so far to the AC sat network."

eLoom bowed and accepted the datastick with her elegant fingers.

"That was the agreement, after all. We will transfer the data to the Exec which will send it through our intergalactic comm relays, all the way to the nearest AC satellite."

eVax was about to grab the stick from her hand when Bellrock squeezed his arm.

"No, I want her to send it. Nothing personal, but given our troubled history, our trust is on the fragile side."

As expected, the Newtype didn't seem to mind at all.

"Very well."

Now something weird happened. eLoom plugged the stick into a socket of her skin-tight tech tunic and smiled again.

"It is done. The report is uploaded and now travels through our sats."

Bellrock swallowed.

Impressive, but scary. 

Her body seemed to be a PAN—a Personal Area Network which worked like a server connected to the entire Newtype collective.

"How long will it take?"

"11 minutes and 43 seconds till it reaches one of your AC satellites."

The first good news since Bellrock stepped on this goddamn planet. He hoped that back on Earth, Taurus McCloud would react to the footage in an appropriate matter. After all, everything the Secretary of Space Defense had feared about the biomorph was true—it was a relentless, amoral creature that destroyed or worse—assimilated—everything in its path. And now he received the proof that would even sway the do-gooders on the opposite political spectrum. Bellrock rolled his eyes back to the Tri-D projection which glowed in hyper resolution. The biomorph walker with the BLDR-22 body pounded the Martian surface with its make-shift legs. Despite its artificial appearance, the mech monster did remind him of crawling insects back home. 

Maybe a four-legged spider with metal fetish. 

Jeez.

That comparison made the biomorph even uglier.

eLoom joined the captain's side and widened her eyes. Bellrock recognized a faint smile on her flawless face. Her blue eyes rolled toward him and beamed. 

"Despite everything that happened, it is quite a beautiful creature, no?"

"It's a killing machine that looks like a failed cross between an Anime mech walker and a trash pile. Nothing pretty about that."

She giggled. 

Bellrock frowned.

"What is it?"

"Oh nothing, well, you know, there is this perpetual Newtype joke about humans always thinking in military terms. It is a problematic stereotype about your race, but for better or worse, it comes true when you speak."

The captain averted his glance from the Tri-D projection.

"That is indeed problematic," Bellrock said, "I had no idea Newtype could tell jokes."

She looked at him and leveled her smile. Her blue orbs pierced through the dimly-lit situation room.

"Over a decade after the war, and you still can not accept we want peace?"

"It's hard to believe when you killed thousands of our people with your advanced technology."

He paused and uttered the words always meant for his private mind.

"I have lost many great men because of your kind. Proud folks that wanted to defend their families and were abysmally butchered by your energy weapons and droid assaults."

eLoom closed her eyes and moved near him. It almost looked as if she felt a genuine concern for his revelation, or maybe she just played the part to elicit sympathy. Either way, the atmosphere in the situation room changed. Only the humming of the nearby machines prevented a perfect silence. eLoom shifted her weight from the left to the right foot and bowed her head.

"Do you know why we separated from Earth?"

It was revelation time. Bellrock perked his ears and shut up, for once.

No matter what rubbish reason she was going to utter, he simply enjoyed listening to her perfectly-pitched voice.

“Your race destroyed the environment to thrive. That was understandable, given your primitive technology and your regressive social structures. But with the advent of nanotech and advancements in planetary travels, mankind had created an opportunity to shake off its dirty past—a new chance to change the approach."

She paused.

"But mankind did not change. Instead, it abused their hi-tech and repeated the same parasitic behavior of exploiting the environment for personal gain. Humans simply moved their destructive expansion from the global to the galactic level."

Bellrock cringed inside.

"Is that how you see us—as parasites?"

eLoom's voice softened; it was never hostile in the first place.

"I do not mean it in an insulting way, believe me, Bellrock. You see, we have reached the technological level where we can expand without destroying—simply by minimizing our resource consumption and correcting our harmful ways through self-regulation."

Bellrock closed his eyes. 'Correcting harmful ways' sounded positive, but in reality it meant building a society where individual needs were eliminated for a drone existence enslaved to some kind of centralized control.

Still, the captain from Earth listened on. 

eLoom let it all out.

"We Newtype simply want to live in harmony with the universe. After all, you and me, we are all stardust and thus children of the cosmos, no?"

It was time for Bellrock to step in.

"It sounds romantic, eLoom, but the universe is not that fluffy place full of magic and unicorns. Space radiation causes cancer, the zero gravity atrophies our bones and muscles. Humans without protection die within 30 seconds when exposed to the dark void. Truth is, the universe is an amoral battleground where Darwin's laws reign. Right now, supernovas explode, black holes suck up planets while entire star systems cease to exist."