Star Force: Revision (SF78) Read online

  “Can you combine the activation keys in samples?”

  “Yes and I intend to, but I already know they’re designed for a full organism. They won’t unspool in a few isolated cells. Whoever designed this is brilliant…perhaps a bit twisted, for that poison is not a good sign, but the coding is so complicated and dense I think it’d give the V’kit’no’sat some trouble analyzing.”

  “Will this new race have the poison?”

  Vortison sighed. “Guess work at this point, but I think each ability is a stepping stone to the new race. How each one is modified is a bit more readily readable, and I have confirmed that the poison glands will continue to exist after transformation, but their form will alter. I can’t give specifics, but I can tell you they won’t go away and they won’t stay the same. As for gaining the other 7 abilities I would guess so, but I am not sure how. I can tell you that the final version is identical for all of them. They will all become the same, exact race. Clones actually, for they’ll all have the same genetic code until they start breeding offspring.”

  “Still egg sacks?”

  “No clue. That hasn’t been high on my digging priority list.”

  Brad put his hands on his hips, looking at the floor for the moment. “Alright, let’s get the White volunteers upgraded first and worry about the rest later. And an antidote to that poison would be nice to come by.”

  “Already on my to-do list.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” Kip said, kicking another chair away from the one he was sitting on in Brad’s office. “So we either get some poor bastard to try it or we never know what the hell is going on.”

  “We’re not trying it, even if someone does volunteer,” Brad said firmly. “At least not until we have a way of undoing it.”

  “And if we can’t find one?”

  “We’re not sacrificing anyone to chance on this.”

  “There’s got to be another way. Vortison has the full code now, can’t he read it given enough time?”

  “He says yes, but there are some things we’ll only learn by watching it happen and studying the results…on a person. He says tissue samples won’t cut it.”

  “By any chance is this ‘new’ race in the database?”

  Brad stiffened slightly. “We don’t have their genetic code, unpacked anyway, to run a search for, but that’s a good question. What if this is an old race that wanted to hide itself?”

  “So they created another as carriers of their true genetic code?”

  “Plausible, though very grandiose.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” Kip muttered.

  “Or it could be some Frankenstein creation never before seen.”

  “Going by the rumors, the first seems more likely.”

  “Ok, let’s work the piece of this that we can. We’d already decided that we weren’t going to suppress the variant upgrades, and find a way to work them into this faction…”

  “And out the window that goes.”

  “Do we even know of any race…check that, any talking race that has poison?”

  “Not that we’ve encountered, but I think there’s probably a few in the database.”

  “Say we find some of them, or a Yellow that’s unlocked…what do we do?”

  “We can relock the Yellow, right?”

  “Undo it, yes. But what about another race? You and I can kill just about anyone within two seconds if we chose, so saying the ability to poison someone is more lethal isn’t accurate. Do we ban it? And if we do how is that fair?”

  “Compartmentalize,” Kip said, referencing the problem at hand. “Focus Star Force only.”

  “Well that’s easy enough. No one in Star Force gets poison.”

  “And if there’s a race we take as a ward, or one that wants to join that has it?”

  “We engineer it out of them.”

  “Good. That part’s settled anyway. Now, do we let non-Star Force races roam our territory with that ability?”

  “Ugh,” Brad said, leaning back in his chair and looking at the ceiling. “I guess we have to.”

  “We don’t have to do anything.”

  “Kill someone with a lachar or with a poison needle…you’re in trouble with us either way, it’s just the type of weapon used that differs.”

  “We don’t let a lot of weapons into our colonies,” Kip reminded him.

  “Ok, here’s a scenario. Say we got a weak race whose only defense is a poison bite. Now, one of them is getting beat up and security isn’t there. Does he have to take the beating and potentially die, or can he defend himself with the poison, knowing that one bite will kill his attackers?”

  “Ouch.”

  “Exactly.”

  “If it’s Star Force we can deal with that. If it’s an outsider…he’s got to be able to defend himself.”

  “Agreed, but killing someone for punching you in the face isn’t acceptable.”

  “Telling someone they have to take the abuse to protect their attacker is also unacceptable.”

  “If this is inside Star Force territory…ah hell, that doesn’t matter. When you’re under the gun you use whatever you have to survive. No holds barred. That’s not the way we fight, but I’m not going to begrudge someone else for doing what they had to do when they weren’t in the wrong.”

  “So,” Kip said, throwing another wrinkle at him, “if you’ve got some dumb Calavari picking on Mr. Poison and he doesn’t know the guy has poison and he tries to beat him up anyway, it’s fair to kill him in self-defense when he was just ruffing Mr. Poison up and not going to take it any further? He’s in the wrong, but should he have to die for that?”

  “No, but he did bring it on himself.”

  “What if Mr. Poison deserved an ass kicking?”

  “Wear armor when you’re doing it,” Brad quipped.

  Kip smiled. “Good point.”

  “Alright, alright. We’ve been down this road with the telepathy. The galaxy isn’t a safe place and we’re just going to have to face the threats as they materialize. Just because someone has the ability to do bad things doesn’t mean they will, nor should they be punished or confined because of it. We’re not going to use poison because we don’t fight that way and none of the rest of Star Force will either, but if someone else has it then we’re just going to have to deal with them as is.”

  “So the dumb brute just gets killed for picking the wrong sucker to bully?”

  “Life is a mine field. We can’t safe them all.”

  “And if Mr. Poison decides to pick a fight?”

  “If his only weapon is the poison, then that’s an automatic no. If he can only fight by killing, then he doesn’t get to fight unless he is under attack.”

  “Ok, so no mandatory genetic alterations unless someone wants to join Star Force?”

  “Agreed.”

  “But travelers can still come and go with it?”

  “That’s something we’re just going to have to deal with, like the telepaths.”

  “Fine. So then we don’t need a separate maturia for the Yellows?”

  “Crap. Blues too.”

  “Well, we can either have advanced groups and non-advanced groups, or we can find a way to give those that don’t have any some copies.”

  “Colors still won’t matter.”

  “Is that important?”

  “Aesthetically, kind of,” Brad admitted. “Everything needs to fit a master plan, and right now we’re just tearing more holes in the one we thought we’d worked out.”

  “Ok, let’s work this from the other direction. Do we need Protovic subdivision? Really? Or are we just trying to make what we have fit?”

  “They’re already different, once unlocked.”

  “So what if we just relock them all, then they’re on the same playing field no matter what their color.”

  “For future offspring, sure. But we’re not forcing changes on the people already here.”

  “You miss my point. Do we need 8 different types of Protovic?�
�

  “I’m worried that if we tried to give them all the abilities that would be too much for civies.”

  “I’m kind of curious to see what would happen there, but you’re probably right. The upgrades need to be earned, but for the Oranges and Pinks it’s default right now.”

  “I sense you have a suggestion. Make it. That’s why I brought you here.”

  “Why can’t we alter their colors?”

  “To do what…oh.”

  “Exactly.”

  “We’ll still have a couple left over…or one, if we keep one as mundane.”

  “Maybe we’ll find something in the master code to keep later…although, we might want to keep the Orange enhancement default to give them a head start. Maybe even the Red.”

  “No, not the Red. Keep that as earned. Orange…you might be right. That leaves us with 2 extras again.”

  “It can be a skill mark, or we might just not use them at all. It’s just window dressing.”

  “But cool window dressing, and I feel like it needs to matter…aside from its original purpose.”

  “Jedi apprentice bands were different colors,” Kip offered. “This can be a transitional process getting to full ‘adult’ status and make it whatever we choose. Those who want to go civie will just be stuck with whatever color they ditched the path at.”

  “Whoa…wait a second. I think you just had a good idea.”

  “Oh? What was it?”

  “Non-traditional maturia. A very long one. If you leave you go civie. If you stay you advance up the ranks until you hit ‘Final Form.’”

  “Bingo,” Kip said, throwing his hands up in the air like goalposts. “Final Form, that’s genius.”

  “And just what we need. We just need to know if and when Vortison can make it happen.”

  “So anything we learn from the coding packet will be extra?”

  Brad nodded. “We need to get the Protovic squared away sooner rather than later. We can’t wait to see if we find a way of accessing that data.”

  “And if we do we can always incorporate it into the later Ultra Maturia levels?”

  “‘Ultra’ it is, and yes. I think we’ve got our base now, we just need to get it established and build on it.”

  “That means relocking the Pinks’ offspring, for starters.”

  “Until we get the ability to shut them all off and share them, we’re going to be in learning mode. We have a plan now, but I think we’ll learn a lot once the Pink younglings start working their way through the standard maturia. None of us were telepathic at birth.”

  “So we take it slow, but we do have a direction to head towards?”

  “I think we do, and I don’t think Davis will argue.”

  “No, I don’t think he will. This is actually better, if Vortison can work his magic on it. But that still leaves the big question in play, and how do we go about dealing with it.”

  “We’ll sit on that one for now. Hopefully something Vortison digs up will give us another option to play with.”

  “My money still says someone has to go through with it.”

  “My gut says the same thing, but we’ve got to have contingency plans in place if it eventually comes to that, and right now we’ve got no hold on that genie once we let it out of the bottle.”

  8

  July 5, 3069

  Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

  Nym

  “You ready?”

  Memma nodded. “All I have to do is stand still, right?”

  “And let the machine do the work, yes, but it’ll be your body that’s being altered. No clue what that will feel like after it’s done.”

  “How long will I need to stay that way?”

  Brad glanced at Vortison, who was standing behind the controls of the medical station. “If something bad happens we can reverse it immediately, but a few hours of study would be preferable. I’ll have you back into your current form inside of 3 hours, though there will be a loss of strength. I suspect it will be negligible, but there will be some restructuring of the muscle tissue and new growths are always weaker than seasoned tissue.”

  “Sure you want to take the hit?” Brad asked.

  “If it’s what you need, then yes,” the blue-skinned Protovic answered.

  “And given this is the first time we’ve tried this, there are no guarantees about anything.”

  “I understand. Let’s do this before I change my mind.”

  Brad shook his head. “Not good enough.”

  Memma blew out a slow breath. “Sorry, just a phrase. I’m good to go, I just don’t like gambling. But if you think you can do this and it’ll give you what you need, then I’m willing to take the chance.”

  “Better,” Brad said with a nod. “Step inside.”

  Memma turned around and walked inside the chamber as another medtech sealed him in with a single bar across the entryway. “Put your hands on the sphere please and keep them there,” he said as he took a single step back from the device.

  “How much is this going to hurt? I may not maintain contact if I flinch.”

  “You will feel nothing during the transition,” Vortison assured him. “You’ll be numbed up.”

  “Won’t I fall over?”

  “No, you won’t. The machine will keep you more or less as you are now. All you need to do is maintain contact until you lose the feeling in your hands. After that just stand still and wait it out. There will be a considerable amount of tissue changes happening, so try not to freak out…but do tell us of any problems once you regain the ability to speak.”

  “Ok,” he said, not fully understand how he was going to stay standing but he placed his glowing blue/green hands on the sphere as directed and looked ahead and slightly to the left at his patron trailblazer. “Do it.”

  “You heard the man,” Brad echoed as Vortison began to press buttons. He saw Memma go a bit stiff, then his eyes rolled shut. “Is he unconscious?”

  “Yes, I don’t want him awake for this.”

  “You could have told him that.”

  “Better to be on the safe side,” Vortison said as the glowing skin on the Protovic suddenly went dark. “This process is designed to take weeks and we’re speeding it up to a few minutes. Developing poison glands is one thing, but this is far different,” he said as the smooth parts of Memma’s skin began to pucker and split open, but without any blood loss, for they were growing callous-like patches to fill in the gaps.

  “How much mass is he gaining?”

  “Quite a bit, but his skeletal system isn’t altering. He’ll have an extra layer to his normal dimensions, but otherwise he should remain about the same volume.”

  “His shoes?”

  Vortison frowned. “Damn it, I forgot.”

  “Will my Lachka bother the machine?”

  “Shouldn’t.”

  “I’ll get them then,” Brad said, loosening then pulling them off him one foot at a time as he lifted a leg up off the floor. His feet were already expanding, and as he removed the second shoe he saw his toes begin melding into one another. “He’s losing his toes?”

  “Apparently so. I didn’t see that coming, but it makes sense. His entire surface is becoming hardened and small digits would be troublesome to maneuver.”

  “What about his hands?”

  “They should be the thinnest, and it doesn’t look like they’re melding together.”

  “What about his eyelids?”

  “I’m curious about that too. So far they seem unaffected…no, wait, now they’re forming. Looks like a second flap above that can lower in place. Double lids, actually. One armored one not.”

  “He’s turning into a tank,” Brad said as the flash growth fed by the biomatter in the machine continued.

  “Those patches are of varying densities, but some are the equivalent of low level armor. I don’t know how he’s going to move though. I’m curious to see how they solved the problem.”

  “You can undo this if he locks up, right?�
��

  “Same method, only in reverse. It’s the telepathy that I’m still having trouble reversing.”

  “What about the Reds?”

  “There is no reversing that unless you want to wipe their memories in the process.”

  “I thought you said it was possible?”

  “Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for them, it’s not an add-on like your Sav. That alone would be damn hard to reverse, given how integrated it has become into the rest of you, but the Reds’ upgrade takes their existing components and alters them. I can’t change them back without killing their functionality. They’d basically have to reset to defaults, assuming they survived the process. I could do it with the hardware alone, but the software they’re currently using would be incompatible with the lesser processors and I’m not sure exactly what would happen. It would be bad, I’d wager, plus we still don’t know how a person’s core is bound to their body, so that’s one area I’m not going to mess with if I don’t have to. Growing a bigger brain is one thing, forcing one to recede is fraught with problems.”

  “What does that mean for the big transformation?”

  “If it’s a knowledge upload like I suspect, that won’t be an issue…if we’re upgrading an unlocked Red. Anyone else and we’re in the same boat.”

  “Because we’d be back to brain shrinkage again?”

  “Essentially yes, technically no.”

  “And you need the bigger brain to handle the extra knowledge?”

  “Still unsure about that one. Hoping that these experiments will let me glean a bit more about their transformation code, but we’re still years away from the big prize,” he said as Memma went through his final changes and a grid-like network of crevices across his body began to glow blue, but with the rest of him being the same exoskeletal black, though those patches were now gone and replaced by the same lumpy material spread over his entire body.

  “Damn, he did get ugly,” Brad said with a cringe. “You sure we need to wake him up?”

  “Your call, but I’d prefer to get conscious data from him…as well as his perspective.”