The Biofab War (7 page)

Detrelna moved fast. Even as a searing white light burst over the bridge, he was on his feet, squinting against the fierce glare, listening for one more alarm before he pulled the trigger.

When spots stopped dancing before their eyes, the Kronarins saw four very bewildered humans standing next to Navigation. The bridge Scotar detectors remained silent. “Hold fire,” ordered Detrelna. “They’re not transmutes. Identify yourselves!”

The oldest of the four, a big, white-haired man, fell to his knees, gasping. “Bob!” cried John.

He and Zahava knelt beside the professor as Kiroda called, “Medtech to the bridge.” Stripping off his field jacket, Greg bundled it under Bob’s head.

The reaction force burst in, Danir at their head. The sergeant seemed disappointed by the absence of Scotar.

“Get them off the bridge, Sergeant,” ordered Detrelna as a medtech brushed past him to tend McShane.

“Let me go!” snapped John as a commando grabbed his arm, trying to pull him away from Bob. Zahava rose, seeming to comply, then dropkicked Danir, only to have her arms pinioned.

“This is absurd,” Detrelna said, stepping past the doubled-over NCO. “Commandos, stand clear. Danir, you should be ashamed, sap-kicked like that.”

“Well?” he asked Qinil, the medtech.

The man looked up, putting away the med scanner. “Shock, minor stroke. Their heart and respiratory systems are slightly different from ours. A day or so in sick bay he’ll be fine.” Filling a hypo, he pantomimed injecting Bob, looking questioningly at the three other Terrans. They nodded.

“We’ve got to communicate,” said Detrelna. “Danir, without injuring yourself further, escort them to Briefing Room Three, Five Deck. Commander Kiroda, have Survey bring five translators there on the run.” As he spoke, McShane’s breathing eased and he fell asleep.

Reassured by Detrelna’s crude sign language that Bob was all right, the trio went reluctantly with the commandos. As they left, two crewmen arrived, wheeling a medcot.

“Where are we?” Zahava asked in a tiny voice as the lift angled down and across the ship.

“You’re asking me?” said John. “Wherever we are, though, how’d we get here? One instant we’re under Cape Cod, the next—zap!—we’re in this great gray metal womb.”

“My God! We’ve been captured by the space patrol,” said Greg. He glanced at the commandos. They were young and fit, hair cut short and wearing black uniforms. Strapped to their belts hung the long, wide-bore pistols the Terrans had been staring into, offset by thick-bladed knives that even in their sheaths looked deadly. “I hope we’re on the same side,” he added uneasily.

Exiting, the Terrans were hurried down a long, gray corridor, arriving shortly at an austere room: black metal table with matching straight-backed chairs and four blank gray walls.

Detrelna and Lawrona arrived a moment later. The latter took a double handful of small black boxes from a crewman, placing them on the table. Snapping one of them open, the Kronarin officer removed what looked like a tiny, one-piece hearing aid. Placing it in his right ear, he gestured for the Terrans to do the same. When they hesitated, Detrelna selected a box at random and imitated Lawrona’s action.

After they’d all adjusted their translators, the captain asked, “Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” they said.

“Do you know where you are?”

“No,” said John tersely. “Who are you?”

“I’m Captain Jaquel Detrelna, commanding the Kronarin Confederation starship
Implacable
. This is Commander Hanar Lawrona, my first officer.”

“Starship?” John said, a catch to his voice. “Can you prove it?”

Lawrona pushed a button and a wall opaqued into transparency. They stared gaping as the light of billions of stars filled the room. John looked down, eyes taking in the endless sweep of battlesteel, the bulging weapons turrets and instrument pods, all swathed in the shield’s blue shimmer.

“We’re closing on what we believe to be your home world,” said Detrelna, staving off questions.

Lawrona pressed another button. Space vanished, replaced by a close-up of an almost cloudless western hemisphere. “Is that your home planet?” asked the captain.

“That’s it,” John said. “Where are we?”

“We’re halfway between your home—what do you call it?”

“Terra.”

“We’re halfway between Terra and your system’s fourth world,” explained Detrelna.

“Mars,” provided Zahava.

“We’re decelerating, so it’ll be some hours before we’re within range.”

Lawrona set the wall back to space view.

“Range?” said Zahava with quiet alarm.

“Landing range,” smiled the captain. “We’ll land a scout craft and explore your point of origin, as traced by ship’s computer.”

“Just why did you bring us here, Captain, and how?” demanded John, still shaken—and angry.

“We did not bring you, sir. You were thrust upon us—we suspect by matter transport, a technology lost to us. And one we need very badly. We’re in your system to investigate a report of extant Imperial technology,” continued Detrelna, leaning back in his chair. Taking in their puzzled faces, he smiled. “I see I’m going too fast. Let’s begin with basics. You know our names. What are yours?”

John introduced himself and his friends, adding. “We’re tired, hungry, and more than a little confused.”

“Hunger’s easily solved,” said Lawrona, dialing up four steaming platters of food and equally hot cups of beverage from a wall unit. “And I hope we can resolve our mutual confusion,” he added.

“This is delicious,” said Zahava, digging into the hearty stew.

“As to our mutual confusion,” Detrelna said. The wall now displayed a three-dimensional star map: several score points of white light, scattered among three roughly equal colored zones—blue, green, and yellow.

“The Kronarin Republic as it was a decade ago. Three semiautonomous states, descendants of the strongest of the old Imperial sectors, united for trade and mutual defense.

“The Confederation as it is today.”

Half of the map now shone scarlet.

“Ten years ago we harbored the dangerous belief that we were alone,” said Lawrona, picking up the tale. “Our ancestors, whose Empire ranged this galaxy, found only fossils in their search for other sentient life. Then the Scotar swept in on us from the barren marches of space. The red is theirs by right of conquest,” he said bitterly.

“The Scotar,” added Detrelna, “are voracious, telepathic insectoids. Origin—unknown. History—unknown. Ultimate purpose—unknown. Scotar captives destroy themselves quickly and nastily—a bomb in the brain. All we really know is that they want us all either dead or their mind-wiped slaves.

“They are of at least two castes.” The map vanished, replaced by a six-legged insectoid standing erect on four long legs, its upper two limbs each splayed into four tapered tentacles. The tentacles were wrapped about a strange, long-barreled rifle. Bulbous red eyes and a pair of jutting, serrated mandibles lent the creature a hellish cast.

“Mean looking beastie,” said John, queasy at the sight.

“Warrior,” said the captain. “You can’t tell from the projection, but that horror’s my height, can outrun a man, live on nothing for weeks and will eat anything, including and especially humans.”

What looked like a large praying mantis now stood before them. “Command caste,” Lawrona explained. “Unlike the warrior, it has telepathic abilities. It can transport itself and its warriors great distances. It can assume human guise and adapt to human conventions—well enough to infiltrate the hierarchy of an entire planet.”

Lawrona turned away from the projection. “An ability initially and incorrectly defined as transmutation. The term stuck and has since become a noun. We first thought you were transmutes. When the Scotar attack, key people vanish, contradictory orders are given, and planetary defenses quickly fall. The red bulge extends further into the Confederation. That’s been the fate of scores of planets in the past ten years.”

“You say you’re here searching for the remains of your Empire’s technology,” said Zahava. “What sort of technology? And why?”

“Excuse me,” Detrelna said, reaching in front of his first officer. “We see enough of them in the flesh.” The Scotar disappeared replaced by the original star view. “We’re looking for an intact Imperial transporter web—they had them on all their Colonial Service bases. With it, we could overcome the Scotar’s telekinetic edge.”

“We look for anything, though,” said Lawrona. “The war’s turned us into galactic scavengers. This ship, for example, dates from the Fall—the fall of the Empire—five thousand years ago. She was found in a stasis cache beneath a gutted Imperial Fleet base. Much of her equipment is Imperial. These warsuits,” he continued, indicating the shiny, form-fitting jumpsuits he and the captain wore, “are Imperial. They’ll absorb all but the most concentrated blaster fire and double as hard vacuum suits. They were only recently found in a warehouse on Kronar, forgotten thousands of years ago. Today they took hostile fire for the first time since the Fall.”

“If they hadn’t, we would have,” Detrelna added.

“And these?” Greg tapped his earpiece.

“Imperial,” said Lawrona. “We’re not sure, but we think they send, receive and correlate thought patterns. We do know that they firmly instill the alien language in the wearer’s mind.” He paused, taking in their unbelieving faces.

“Oh, it’s true,” Detrelna affirmed. “In a few days you won’t need the translators.”

“I gather you plan on our company for a while, Captain?” asked John.

“For a few days, no more. Then we go our separate ways. Provided events don’t overtake us.”

“What events, Captain?” asked Greg.

“There are Scotar in your solar system—we’ve already been attacked. And why you’re still alive, I don’t know,” he added, catching their exchange of alarmed glances. “Their usual pattern would have been to purge your planet of you, then expropriate your resources, turn the survivors into mind-wiped slaves. Although, as Commander Lawrona told you, sometimes the Scotar will infiltrate a planet, toppling it from within even as their fleet attacks. Perhaps your world’s not quite ready for harvesting.”

John spoke into the silence. “Why do you need us at all, Captain?”

“The only technology we know of that could have punched a hole in our Class One Imperial shield and reassembled your atoms on my deck is an Imperial transport system. One directed by a Colonial Service computer—at least a POCSYM Three. We look to the origin of your trip here for that transporter.”

He continued as comprehension dawned on the Terrans’ faces. “We could blast in and find it, you know. We know where you were transported from and
Implacable
is more than a match for your planet’s combined defenses. “But”—he held up a hand as John’s face clouded angrily—“not only is it against our law, but human life is becoming a rarity in the universe. So I can’t—I won’t—demand. But I ask—will you help us?” His voice held a certain tenseness.

John scanned his friends’ faces, then turned back to Detrelna. “We’ll be happy to help in any way we can, Captain.”

“Thank you,” said Detrelna, relaxing and giving a slight bow.

“This was the start of our journey, sir,” Greg said. Removing the stele from his pocket he handed it to Detrelna. Borrowed from Bob, then forgotten in the excitement, it had been there since the Clam Shack.

“What do you call this language?” asked Lawrona, removing his translator to hear the Greg’s intonation.

“Egyptian.”

He nodded and replaced his earpiece. “We call it I’Goptak. It was a colonial language of the Empire—one of a family of hieroglyphic languages used to reestablish the tools of written communication among lost colonies sunken to barbarism.” Handing it back, he asked, “How did you come by it…cousin?

Zahava, John and Greg told their story. The Kronarin officers listened attentively, interrupting only to ask precise questions. When the Terrans had finished, the food was cold and the cups empty.

Lawrona collected the plates, dumping them down a disposer. “Sounds like you stumbled onto an at least partially functioning Imperial base,” he said, resuming his seat. “Maybe even a full Colonial Service planetary installation with defenses intact. Which,” he added thoughtfully, “would explain why a Scotar garrison isn’t now nestled among your rotting corpses.”

“But it wasn’t a very large place, just a few rooms,” protested Zahava.

“Oh, it need not have been,” said Detrelna. “If there is a transport system, it would girdle the planet. You could have been in just one station. We may assume the computer’s functioning, judging from the way you were forced into the transporter web.”

“Just before your arrival,” Lawrona said, “a Scotar assault unit teleported aboard from a satellite base orbiting the fourth planet. They and their base were destroyed, but not before they got off a distress call. Enemy reinforcements could be here in as little as a day. It’s vital we land and remove whatever equipment we can.”

“Vital to whom?” John frowned. “If the only thing preventing the Scotar from slaughtering billions of us is some ancient defense grid, you surely don’t plan to tamper with it?”

The captain looked him in the eye. “I hope it isn’t a question of choosing which of our peoples is to survive,” he said carefully. “I’ve already sent for reinforcements, but the Scotar forces are closer than our own. If we can recover the nexus of a transport system, my duty’s to take it home. We’ve already lost some fifteen billion people behind that red veil, and each day the Scotar press their attacks more boldly. Without that transporter, we fall. And then the day that ancient computer on your planet fails, or the Scotar find a way to best it, your people will join ours in death.

“In tactics and initiative, we’re superior,” he continued. “With the transporter, we can nullify the advantage the Scotar’s teleportation abilities give them. We’ll crush them. I hope the price of their defeat won’t be another planet—yours. But if it is, so be it. I’ll sacrifice Terra as readily as I would a Kronarin world.” Detrelna rose. “Commander Lawrona will show you to your quarters. Get some rest. We’ll be landing in six hours.”