Star Force: Perquisition Page 9

  “How you doing?” Brad asked, his voice sounding a bit odd.

  “I’m fine…whoa.”

  “What?”

  “Everything sounds weird. I can…I don’t know how to explain this,” he said, looking down at his hands.

  “Take your time,” the medtech urged. “Tell us what you can but please remain inside the machine. You can remove your hands from the sphere now.”

  Prentha pulled them off and flexed his fingers, feeling a rush of adrenaline. “I can feel everything.”

  “Try to be more specific.”

  “I can feel what I’m looking at. Its dimensions. I can even feel what’s behind me. I can taste the air and smell…it’s like my nose just opened up. My hearing is like everything is super loud and distorted. Is this supposed to happen?”

  “I believe so. The data we’re getting from you now is promising, but for the next few weeks you’ll need to wear one of these biomonitors.”

  “Here, take this one,” Brad said, but didn’t move a muscle. A weird sensation prompted Prentha to turn around where he saw a tiny circular device floating in the air behind him.

  “Proximity sense confirmed,” the medtech noted.

  “It goes on your forehead,” Brad said, floating it over to him and attaching it with a telekinetic press. “It’ll transmit data back to our systems wherever you go within the city.”

  “You can step out now,” the medtech said as the other stepped forward and raised the mechanical arm. “Number 2 please.”

  “Ileen, you’re up.”

  Prentha passed the female Protovic on the way out, brushing arms with her and getting a huge emotional surge.

  “Whoa…you’re a lot hotter than before.”

  The trailblazer and medtech exchanged glances, but it was the medtech that spoke, more to himself than anyone else. “You’ve received a sensory package upgrade. Biologically speaking, sexual attraction is tied into one’s senses as a software add-on. This could have an effect on that.”

  “Do you mean we’re going to get more horny?” Ileen asked, stopping a step outside the machine.

  “A small possibility,” the medtech admitted. “This is probably just a reaction to the new senses. Give it some time to sink in and I think your sexuality will adjust accordingly. You might have a period of heightened incentive during the transition though.”

  “We’re not permitted to mate, right?”

  “Not for the foreseeable future, no,” Brad confirmed. “Prentha, think you can control yourself for a while?”

  The Protovic laughed. “I’m not that bad off, I’ve just never seen a girl look this way before. Use your Archon superpowers and see for yourself.”

  Brad was silent for a moment and Prentha didn’t feel anything different while he was, but that wasn’t news to him. It was well known amongst the Protovic that the Archon could read their minds, and they often made weird or rude thoughts when passing him just to test whether or not he was taking a peek inside, some of which he responded to in hilarious ways. His level of sarcasm was not to be underestimated, and rather than feel violated the Protovic had come to welcome him looking over their shoulder, so to speak. They had nothing to hide from him and resented anyone who did.

  “You’re right,” he said at last. “She is extremely hot.”

  “For real or an illusion?” Ileen asked, accepting the compliment with skepticism.

  “He’s got more information about you than before. As if you were looking at a colorless sensor feed and suddenly the color returned. You’re in ‘color’ now, as is everything else, so all the other chicks probably look just as hot.”

  “Thanks.”

  “When you’re finished with your transformation you two can stare at each other over in the corner,” the trailblazer offered, then glanced at the lead medtech. “I think we can confirm they’ve got spidey senses. How much so we’ll have to figure out through training, but Prentha can feel things in proximity. He didn’t react immediately though, so I don’t think this is on Pefbar level.”

  “It’s not,” the medtech said, looking at a monitor. “But it’s also more than that. There are upgrades to all of their existing senses plus the addition of the ‘proximity’ tissue. I’m not detecting any anomalies in the flash growth, so let’s get the other four through and start with the testing.”

  “You still up for this Ileen?” Brad asked.

  “I was until the ‘horny’ part. Promise me you’ll restrain me if I get the urge to jump one of these guys?”

  “I promise.”

  “Then I’m good to go,” she said, stepping inside the machine and placing her hands on the sphere. “Zap me.”

  “And?” Brad asked hours later in Vortison’s temporary office as he was pouring over the biomonitor data.

  The geneticist shook his head slowly. “I thought I understood this before, but reading code and seeing it implemented is considerably more different than I allowed. This is the first time I’ve ever dealt with a complete unknown. Every other code sequence I knew what it would be in physical form from previous experience or from database entries. Individual aspects always crop up leading to unexpected variations, but this is far beyond that.”

  “Is that your way of saying there’s a problem?”

  “Not with these 5, as far as I can see. My predictions as to what the other upgrades are are now suspect, because I didn’t get these right. What the big score will be is now in even more doubt if I can’t interpret the smaller bits of code correctly.”

  “How close are you to the other bits?”

  “Reds will be soon. My staff back on Earth are still working on it and are close to finalizing. I thought about delaying until we had both, but decided it was best to run this trial before risking the Reds. I’m glad there were no anomalies and they’re all unharmed, but my faith in my abilities had taken a serious hit in the foresight department.”

  “You’re still missing a variant anyway, so I never expected a complete picture.”

  “But I’ve been able to come to some conclusions, and not all the ones I informed you about previously. Now I have cause to second guess them all.”

  “Meaning the only way we’ll know for sure is to turn it on and see what happens?”

  “Yes…though it won’t turn on without our say so. The biomonitors are confirming that these five are not transmitting activation material. We were able to turn it off successfully. Hopefully that’s permanent, but only time will tell.”

  “Can we do the same for the Oranges?”

  “In theory yes, but I’d like some more time to study this case before we start widespread implementation of the genetic blocks.”

  “You’re blocking or removing the activation material?”

  “At this point deactivating so they’re not produced, but the mechanisms to produce them are still in their genome. I’m not close to being confident in our ability to strip them away entirely without side effects.”

  “Even more so now?”

  “The more data we get the better I’ll be able to make predictions, but right now my confidence in that department is lacking. These sensory upgrades are different than I expected, in multiple ways, and I’m not sure why yet.”

  “Different good or different bad?”

  “Nothing is bad as far as I can tell, it just works differently than I assumed…in some places. Others did come through more or less as expected. That is even more annoying, because if my method of prediction was flawed it should render them all incorrect. A partial success is more problematic.”

  “Ultimately I don’t need predictions, just results. And for the record, we don’t always predict lizard strategy correctly. They adapt well, and have caught us off guard on more than one occasion.”

  “Thank you, but I doubt you’re very happy when that happens.”

  “We don’t let it get to us. It’s a challenge and we just focus on working the problem in round 2…or 2,000 at this point.”

  “But you don’
t do the harm if you’re wrong, they do. Working with genetics is me risking other people’s bodies and lives on me being right.”

  “Try attacking a city and only shooting the bad guys.”

  “All the lizards are bad guys.”

  “We don’t only fight the lizards, and I’m still waiting for the day where we find a lizard that doesn’t want to fight us. If and when that happens how do you think we’ll feel about all the cities we’ve razed from orbit?”

  “Unknown strangers versus people I’m looking at face to face, though I suppose both situations hold unique perils. I just don’t want other people to pay for my mistakes.”

  “Same here.”

  10

  April 30, 3058

  Aphat System (Bsidd Region)

  Nym

  “What are you going to do?” Kyp asked Brad as they both stood in an observation post high above one of the larger advanced training centers on Nym where the ‘enhanced’ volunteers were going about a variety of training drills. It was little more than an elevated platform, but the windows were energy shields that only allowed light in and looked black to those on the outside. To the pair of trailblazers they had an open air perch to watch the calisthenics, sparring, and running drills across the park-like terrain, though the entire facility was indoors.

  “The Oranges already have their enhancement unlocked,” Brad reminded him.

  “Have any left this planet for Axius or elsewhere?”

  “Not yet, but when they do the females will spread it. Possibly beyond Star Force boundaries. These aren’t psionics, but they’re abilities that the general populations of the galaxy do not possess. I have the feeling that if we let this get out we could be grooming more powerful enemies than we already have.”

  “These timelocks are going to expire anyway.”

  “Eventually yes, but Vortison said they’re more than just a countdown. Experience factors in, with whatever this group of Oranges went through advancing their timetable. He thinks it’s skill related. Those that prove themselves worthy by some internal gage are shoved ahead on the path…or it might be a safety mechanism designed to insure that those who are opened to the big prize aren’t pond scum.”

  “The tests we did of the independent Protovic suggest it will be millennia before their timelocks expire, and they all seem to be on the same clock as far as we could tell.”

  “Did you tell the Chancellor?”

  Kyp nodded. “He wants to know what’s going on as much as we do.”

  “Does he want the upgrades?”

  “He’s worried about unknowns, but the sensory package is very appealing to them. Fear of what they might unlock had kept him from making a direct request. Right now he just wants information.”

  “I’m more worried about the Reds,” Brad admitted. “We handpicked the volunteers to make sure they were loyal, but their intelligence has spiked considerably. Give that to someone with less than adequate scruples and they could cause a lot of damage.”

  “How close are you to the others?”

  “Vortison is back on Earth working on it, though he’s complaining about the back and forth and even teased about setting up here permanently.”

  “So not long then?”

  “He’s close with the Aquas.”

  “You only have a handful of them anyway?”

  “Very few, and a lot of them are still in prison. We’ve got full maturia batches coming through the system now, thanks to some volunteer surrogates, so by the time Vortison figures it out we should be able to find at least a few viable candidates.”

  “Why the tinkering? All you really needed was a tissue sample.”

  “To chase the big prize, yeah, but I want uniformity in the maturia classes. The Oranges have had to have a different program and if we end up going that route with the others they’re all going to need to start out with peers.”

  “So you are thinking about unlocking the general population?”

  Brad cringed. “The Oranges aren’t so bad. They’re stronger than other Protovic but weaker than some of other races so it doesn’t stand out. Other than making them hard to sneak up on, having the sensory upgrades in the Purples doesn’t strike me as a bad idea across the board. It’s the others that worry me.”

  “How are the Oranges blending with the others post maturia?”

  “They have an advantage physically, but one that is matched with years of training in the others. Now that we’ve got sufficiently advanced veterans that supersede the Oranges coming out of the maturias it isn’t an issue, but before it was.”

  “You’re thinking it might be better to keep all the variants on the same page and only upgrade individuals?”

  “That or break them up into Clans.”

  Kyr raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “There’s a reason we don’t have Humans and Calavari training together, save for some special situations. If the Protovic variants differentiate enough it could cause rifts to form out of necessity, in which case it would be better to restructure this faction into subunits that worked closely with one another rather than trying to force a single system on the whole.”

  “And for that you’ll need a lot more aquas down the line?”

  “Call me sentimental, but I want them back with the others. Not just a few stragglers that managed to survive.”

  “I thought there was another reason,” Kyp said, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked down on a group of oranges running on one of the dirt trails and making decent time. “Normally we leave reproduction alone.”

  “I only got 612 to work with initially, all imprisoned for a lot of nastiness. To date two of them have reformed and joined the general population. The others came from their offspring and had to be mixed in with a Red maturia. That worked alright, but I hate the lack of color coordination.”

  “Ha. There’s the real reason, you OCD freak.”

  Brad smirked. “Haven’t heard that term in a long time. Glad we got rid of all those pseudomedical bitchings along with old Earth.”

  “No problems with the surrogates, I assume?”

  “Nah. Just a little egg swapping. When the Aquas’ numbers get high enough we won’t need it anymore and we’ll let the civilian population dictate the numbers.”

  “How serious are you about this Clan idea?”

  “I don’t know,” Brad admitted. “Part of me wants them to get the upgrades on the whole while another says to keep them restricted to an ‘earn only’ group. If the Oranges weren’t already unlocked I probably wouldn’t even be considering this, but right now I’m not sure which way to go.”

  “If we encounter other Protovic that are unlocked, then the choice is simple, right?”

  “Yeah it would be, but right now only the one group of Oranges is. Every other wayward colony is still timelocked.”

  “Have we found other Oranges?”

  “Just one, about a decade ago.”

  “Are any of them here?”

  Brad shook his head. “Nope. We did the meet and greet but they weren’t interested in sharing. If they were closer or in lesser numbers we’d take them by force, but right now it isn’t a good option.”

  Kyp looked at him quizzically. “Did I miss something?”

  “They’re out on the far side of Preema space and none too nice, about 200 billion of them spread across 4 star systems with a big ‘to conquer’ sticker on their foreheads. They’re not quite up to Veliquesh depravity but they’re bad enough. So no, none of them are here.”

  “Did we get a tissue sample from them?”

  “Yes, and they’re still timelocked as well.”

  “For how long?”

  “I’d have to check the records, but no one that we’ve found is close to upgrading. Why our Oranges already made it is still a mystery.”

  “How much of this have you told our allied Protovic?”

  “Nothing that I haven’t sent through you, though some of their observers here might have picked up somethi
ng from casual conversation. I don’t interact with them and they pretty much pretend to be furniture taking notes.”

  “Do they have different colored data tags?” Kyp joked.

  “I haven’t paid that close attention. Should I be? I’ve pretty much let them run under the radar.”

  “The Chancellor is trying to keep information away from the public as long as possible. He’s worried and uncertain about where all this is going. His mind is split between holing up and reaching out to the nearest colonies. The Shanplenix have offered a hand of friendship that he is cautious to accept. Right now they’re in wait and see mode.”

  “Worried about what exactly?”

  “Beyond the transformation? They don’t want to lose their cultural identity in a wash of newcomers, which is why their borders have been closed to Protovic immigration since we conquered the Veliquesh. They’ve got a good thing going with their empire right now and they don’t want to wreck it. If there is value to be gained from the others they know we’ll ferret it out, so they’re keying off of us even if they won’t admit it publically. I wouldn’t worry about their observers here, though I would keep an eye on the others you’ve let in.”

  “I already do. A group of Blues is getting kicked out next week. Those idiots just don’t know when to stop playing politics.”

  “Again? Why’d you let them back in?”

  “If I can get them to just sit and take notes like your buddies then some good may come of it. We’re still getting a steady flow of immigrants from them that are willing to go through indoctrination to get here, so I’d prefer to keep the lines of communication open. Their government observers will be sent back and they’ll have to wait another 10 years before they get another chance. I’ll keep playing the game until they learn if only to keep information going back to their population, from which we may get more immigration.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because for some reason they all feel like family. We still don’t know how they got spread out or how many of their colonies were killed off, but I hate the idea of people being prisoners of their own society and if I can keep the doors open to allow them to move freely I prefer to do so. We do the same with other races, and have for a long time.”