Series: "Technically" Sentient

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 21

[A/N: Hey y’all! Just in case you’re not on the Discord yet – Amph is in the middle of his college Capstone course, and the one class – just the one he told me about – is an additional 20hrs/wk of work. big yikes. So TS is moving to a twice-per month schedule, but the chapters are longer!
In fact, here’s a new, long chapter right now!]

Darren sat, calm, collected, and quiet, waiting for whatever came next. A particularly morbid and darkly humored part of him was hoping for execution by death-ray, considering how much everything hurt. There wasn’t a mirror in the interrogation room with him, but he didn’t need one to know he looked like death warmed over. He wasn’t sure how many days it had been since his space-adventure-romp had started, but it had been pretty much a miserable experience from the moment he left the side of the highway in Ohio. Between the abuse by Cas, the abuse by alien thugs, the abuse by law enforcement, and the abuse by  presumably different law enforcement that was probably analogous to the FBI, he was having a decidedly bad time.

So, he leaned back in his metal chair, let his eyes wander across the featureless, slate gray cell he’d been thrown in, and tried to decide if bum-rushing the next person to open the door was the right call or not. He’d actually had pretty good luck with using brute force to solve his problems recently.

The minutes continued to drag on, and he tapped his foot idly, but stopped when a lance of pain shot through his knee. As he massaged the joint, the imperative to “use your words” imparted by his mother seemed to have been soundly bad advice. Every time he’d tried talking he was either electrocuted, shot, or bludgeoned. He wasn’t really sure he could blame his mother for that though, as it had certainly helped him get along while he was on earth. Maybe it was time he come up with different adages and sage advice now that he was an extra-solar cowboy.

He chuckled, and grinned to himself, but stopped when the swollen mess that was the right side of his face began to throb slightly harder from the exertion. Solar cowboy, maybe, but definitely not in a state to be throwing punches. For the third time. If he was being honest with himself the entire thing in the cargo bay was just sort of a gut response. There was a deafening sound, then a brilliant light . . . frankly he had to admit he’d just panicked and lashed out as best he could.

One of the wall panels slid away, revealing that it wasn’t a wall panel, it was actually a door. He temporarily revisited his plan to try and rush the first one in the room, but abandoned it quickly as a tall, female shark-humanoid with a tail appeared. If he’d bothered to look away, he’d be doing a double take, as he couldn’t quite believe his eyes. He’d seen the body armor of the people who dropped him in this little isolation room, and it looked like a futuristic, modular, composite body armor. Flexible, light, and durable, but still designed with a sense of economy and austerity. He wasn’t a military genius or anything, it just looked . . . like it was high-tech and good-stuff.

This was decidedly none of those things. This was snug, sleek, shiny, and bordering on sensuous with a militant theme. It might have started life as a military uniform, but had acquired just a little too much gloss to be leather, and so many buckles and belts had been added to it one could easily construe that the tailor responsible had a fetish for them. By whatever gods one prayed to in space, the hat was possibly the worst part. It was an absurdity of it’s own. She was wearing a peaked cap so shiny it hurt to look at in the pale light of the room, and as he squinted to get a better view he found what appeared to be a gold shark-maw embossed in relief on both sides of the headband. A miniature trench coat was draped around her shoulders, clearly too small to be buttoned shut around her not insubstantial bust, but still long enough to be disrupted and flapped about by her the movements of her tail.

He’d been mentally preparing himself for interrogation, judgment, execution, even one particularly silly idea where they pressed him into service as some kind of royal marine, but this . . . he was left nearly speechless. Nearly.

A barely restrained snort escaped his lips, followed by faint muttering, “One riding crop away from a gestapo-dominatrix shark . . . absolutely have to be fucking with me here.” He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, gritting his teeth against the distinct discomfort of doing so.

“What did you just call me?” Her tone was indignant, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

———————— 5 Minutes Earlier ————————

Amonna had finally dug up the file on the “Human” that had made so much trouble in the hangar bay. The paperwork hadn’t been completed because of . . . well because there had been no one alive to finish it, but the drafts recovered from a department workstation by the salvage and burial team had painted an ugly picture in broad strokes. “Technically Sentient,” violent offender, likes to sleep and intimidate witnesses- that last part had been deleted, but was still recovered by the data forensics AI.

He was a tough customer, no doubt. He lived through the destruction of the station, had shown a willingness to kill at the drop of a hat. Her boots clicked quietly and steadily, the echo bouncing down the long, desolate corridors. That steady tempo dropped to silence as she reached the cursory medical report. His skeleton was some kind of exotic meta-material, made of a calcium ion lattice and filled with vascular elements.  If she ever fractured a bone in her own cartilaginous skeleton, it would take years to heal naturally, if it ever did at all. His bones? She could see the remodeling from where the KP weapon strikes had caused micro-fractures. His body had grown stronger in the places he’d been shot.

She could see where his soft tissue had been damaged, ruptured blood vessels hemorrhaging internally . . . specialized elements in his blood had blocked the damaged vessels off, sealed them, and prepped them for healing. Her eyes practically bulged out of her head. “Nine seconds!?” She read the file aloud. It had taken nine seconds for his internal wounds to begin to clot. A secondary, open circulatory system was recapturing the lost vitae and filtering of bacterial contaminants . . . useful, if it had been an open wound. She could see where he’d sustained additional injuries to the head and face. Fractures in the skull, a concussion, damage to his brain from repeated KP impacts to his cranium. His teeth had all been removed . . . and put back in with some kind of adhesive . . . that his body was currently digesting.

She looked up from the file in her hands to the door of the interrogation room. She wondered briefly if she wanted to walk into a room with a creature like this. She’d always had the advantage of a predatory heritage. Claws. Self replenishing serrated teeth. Fast-twitch muscle fibers evolutionarily cultivated for delivering a single, killing blow. These things had always been enough to cow every prisoner she’d interviewed into compliance, or at the very least kept them from trying to start a fight. Hell, she’d had the same problem in a few relationships as well. Amonna scanned the document one more time, noting everything from its auxiliary blood supply organ to the shear thickening ballistic impact gel cushion around its brain. She very much doubted that this thing was afraid of her, or afraid of anything really. She remembered it’s cold expression, and intense eyes leering at her from the armored ridges of its orbital sockets. It made her shiver.

It was strange, how much he was her antithesis. Incredibly durable terminator to her glass-cannon physiology. There was no doubt he was a predator, but his lack of jaw muscle development indicated that it hadn’t been the primary means of delivering a killing blow for some time now, if it ever had been. She ran a finger absently along the powerful masseter muscles of her own mandible, a stark contrast to his. Her skeleton, flexible but durable, would buckle permanently under the weight one of his slender upper limbs could bear. The gravity well this thing developed in to necessitate such a power to weight ratio must have been staggering when compared to the near weightless history of her aquatic origins.

She was caught somewhere between wonder and fear, as she stared a thousand yards through the doorway before her.

She was intelligent. It was dumb. She was amphibious. It was terrestrial. She ate a limited diet of amino rich protein substances. It ate . . . everything. She was female. It was male.

She shook her head sharply, side to side, as if trying to dislodge the thought from the space between her ears, before taking a deep breath. “You’ve got this. Your security detail is watching via the camera feeds, he’s been badly injured three different times now, and even he can see that resisting is useless now.” She adjusted her hat, set it at what she thought was a more aggressive, more authoritative angle, and keyed the pad to open the door to this prisoner “Darren.”

The several centimeter thick detention door slid open with a soft hiss of pneumatics, and she stepped through into the uncomfortably bright cell. She successfully stifled an involuntary squeak of surprise as his eyes bored into hers from below a split and bloodied brow. It didn’t flinch as she took a position opposite it, looming above it by a good two feet, which only confirmed her suspicions that this creature would be immune to any kind of threat or intimidation.

“One riding crop away from a gestapo-dominatrix shark . . . absolutely have to be fucking with me here.” It’s translator weakly coughed out something that vaguely resembled that, but her military grade equipment had translated his words in a flash, and contextualized their meaning in her subconscious.

A riding crop was clearly a goad used to drive beasts of burden. The gestapo, judging by contextual clues, was assumed to be some kind of policing body, assumed derogatory term based on inflection. It struggled with the term “dominatrix” and found no equivalent term. As best it could approximate, a dominatrix was a was “dominant female sex-worker” but elaborated that there was a complex cultural undertone that could not be conveyed effectively without further explanation or procession.

“What did you just call me?” Amonna was flabbergasted, and more than a little offended. She put her hands on her hips, and scowled at him. She’d been ready for . . . well she’d been ready to be attacked physically, not verbally. He called her a whore! As the intense scowl formed on her face, much to her hastily concealed surprise, a look of embarrassment formed on his.

“I . . . ah . . . I meant . . . whew boy.” Darren coughed into his hand, split knuckled still glistening with clotted blood. “Err, I didn’t think that’d get translated . . . or if it did I thought you’d get the idiot-ified version that everyone else got.” She glared at him as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “The, you know, translator-” he tapped the polymer collar he’d been fitted with, “-kinda sucks. Usually doesn’t spit out more than a few words loosely resembling what I said. Sorry.”

Her brow furrowed more, and he looked away, sheepishly. Externally, she was harsh, pitiless, and focused. Internally, she was dizzy with the realization that he was capable of being shamed. Shame was a complex emotion, only felt by highly social and intelligent species. A violation of the social norm had occurred by him, and she had called him out on it.

She tried to keep her gaze steady on him, unflinching and stern to hide the fact that she needed a few moments to completely rethink her approach to this interrogation.

He was clearly intelligent, so that had been either a carefully cultivated lie, or simply a lack of accurate assessment. Given the reliability of AI in her recent career, she was more inclined to believe the latter than the former. She had just shamed him into momentary submission, which still seemed far fetched even as she watched him squirm in his seat. That shame meant that he interpreted her as existing within the boundaries of his social peers, not predators or prey. He had just called her some kind of sex worker, but that didn’t accurately translate as simply a prostitute, so that meant that her state of . . .

Her brain crashed a little. Sex worker. Peer. Shame.

The pack hunting terminator beast with a bulletproof living-stone skeleton and a healing factor considered her a peer. A peer that would be considered for sexual partnership.

Darren spoke up again, hesitantly, while Amonna’s brain struggled to come to grips with the implications she’d lined up for herself.

“Hey, I’m . . . well I guess I’m sorry about calling you the gestapo. That’s . . . it’s just your outfit is a little . . . well it looks like . . .” Darren coughed awkwardly in his hand. “It just looks like you see Nazi’s wearing in movies and stuff, and you’re arresting me and all, I know it was a shitty thing to say. I mean, I get that it’s probably some kind of space-cop thing but my life hasn’t exactly been going so great recently and I’m a little . . .” He rambled off a bit, aimlessly, before sighing heavily. “You’re just trying to do your job, and I’m probably some kind of illegal alien. In . . . in space. Let’s just get the interview or interrogation or whatever you want to call this over with.” Physically, he was looking away from the shark-morph’s intense gaze. Mentally, he was trying not to think about whether or not this was affecting the ‘death ray execution behind the chemical shed’ odds. “Umm, so, yeah sorry about that.” He mumbled, while pointedly examining the ceiling.

Amonna’s eyes narrowed, and she crossed her arms across her chest, subtly accentuating her newfound “interrogation assets.” At least, she hoped that it was her chest, and not something weird like her nostril diameter. Maybe small, watertight nostrils were incredibly sensuous for this species, she had no way of knowing if the secondary sexual characteristics her culture found desirable were the same as the ones his culture found desirable. With considerable distress in regard to her ego, she realized that it was entirely possible this creature before her was attracted to her more masculine characteristics, such as height and muscle mass.

Amonna blinked as his words sank in. “Wait, gestapo?” Her tone was quizzical, and there was a moments delay as his translator struggled to bridge the linguistic gap between the two of them. “Oh, no, that was accurate. I am leading a secret police investigation into the destruction of Waystation LS-49.”

They both blinked in surprise, as clearly the communication issues weren’t entirely cleared up by the translator. “Gestapo is fine. Well, not fine, but you’ve actually got quite a few reasons to be upset with the entire situation, and a disparaging comment about your treatment at the hands of law enforcement isn’t entirely unwarranted. Although, if you’d complied, you could have avoided most of your misfortune.” Amonna instructed him sharply, hoping to play her way into a “friendly” posture with this human, Darren.

She shifted slightly, tracking his gaze . . . and found that it was flickering between her chest, tail, face, and waist with frequency that she rather hopefully meant her approach to information extraction was working.

Truth be told, Darren was trying to figure out which part of her gear held the death ray that was going to be used to kill him, now that he was certain he was going to be exterminated by a Nazi Space Shark.

“So Darren, was it?” She tried to turn on the charm. Something she’d never . . . ever had to do before.

To Darren’s ears, her words were laced with something like a salacious venom. He didn’t know what a cat toying with a trapped bird sounded like, but he had the eminent feeling that before this was all said and done she might just be chewing his head off and batting his body around the porch as a way to amuse herself. He swallowed hard. “Yes. Y-yes ma’am.” He clarified.

Amonna watched as his pupils shrank sharply. That was, again, a characteristic of focus and sexual attraction in Zylach! A good sign, in her mind. She wondered, hoped really, that maybe there was some kind of convergent evolution in place that would allow her to exploit his body language intuitively. He was using honorifics, no less. Clearly, utilizing whatever sway she held over this brutish creature by means of her appearance was the ideal path forward. She smiled, in an earnest display of happiness. “Well Darren, I just have a few questions about who you are, where you came from, what you were doing on Waystation LS-49, and we can wrap this up and move on to more pleasant things, yes?” She hoped he was clever enough to pick up on the inflection cue she’d placed on “pleasant,” but not so clever to as to really think through the implications of that.

Darren, struggling not to recoil as she bared her rows of serrated teeth at him, set his jaw firmly and nodded, even though it hurt to do both. He was going to give her all of the detail he could muster, because the way she said “pleasant” gave him the willies, and he was hoping it would buy him time. To do what, he wasn’t certain, but he’d tell her everything she wanted to know and more.

Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything to hide to begin with.

—————————— Several Hours Later ——————————

Amonna had come to three significant conclusions.

One: The human had nothing to do with the destruction of Waystation LS-49, knowingly or otherwise.

Two: The C.A.S.I.I. unit they had down in the fabrication shop was very, very dangerous, and the true threat out of everything.

Three: Contrary to everything the human had suggested, their society was matriarchal. Why else would there be all the subtle fear signals mixed in with the clear interest he was showing?

She swam another lap in her over-sized sleep-tank, enjoying the cool feeling of the briny water across her gills and through her throat. It helped to clear her mind, and focus more clearly on how to effectively utilize this information. She’d moved the human to a more spacious and comfortable berth, adjacent to her own. An entirely appropriate and innocuous decision that was made with no regard to his apparent interest in her. It was simply a matter of security and convenience. The vessel was more than a kilometer long . . . what if she had followup questions around, say, dinnertime? She could conveniently ask him questions while they both consumed dinner. It would lower his guard, and might even trigger some of the basic pack-bonding that was so common in social predators like him. And like herself.

In regards to the C.A.S.I.I. unit, she’d placed it under a tight watch and physically separated the processing core from the zero-point power supply. The technicians in engineering had been having a field day with the thing, claiming that it was utilizing some exotic, never before discovered system architecture that completely subverted normal thinking on how AI should be constructed. The Chief of Engineering had a very colorful analogy for describing it. The discussion had been long and tedious, but she understood the frantic intensity of his final summary.

“An AI is like a storm. Conventional architecture demands that we build a shell around the storm to keep it contained and flowing in directions we can handle. The . . . monstrosity . . . that is this AI architecture, was built in inside out. Conventionally, we watch the outer edge of the storm to catch the outputs of quantum functions, but here the observable boundary exists in the heart of the storm. We cannot see the storms heart, nor can we see its edge, we can only receive outputs to inputs we’re not sure how it’s taking measure of or passing back to us. This system exists as an impossibility that we shouldn’t be able to observe, as if the entire device is being forcibly held in a state of superposition. This requires either the perfect knowledge of a god, or such a profound understanding of quantum mechanics that I can only think the designer was born of a quantum realm, not from one of conventional physics. The fact that this exists violates several well accepted laws as it is!”

It had all seemed rather alarmist and unprofessional to her, and the fact that she had to order him at gunpoint not to destroy the device didn’t help any. They eventually settled on a compromise. Disassembly and quarantine. When the universe didn’t unfold like he threatened it would if they took the power supply out, she decided it was safe enough to just leave unplugged.

She let out a watery sigh in her aquatic habitat as her wrist computer beeped softly. An incoming message, encrypted, and for her eyes only.

She paused, sinking to the bottom of the tank slowly as she read it.

“Coryphaeus Distress Signal detected, faint but functional security codes transmitted. Suspect damaged transceiver, as two way communication seems impossible at present. Requesting permission to move to conduct rescue operations, given absence of standing orders. -Admiral Chase”

A literal bubble of amusement escaped her lips as she grinned. She’d almost forgotten the petty jabs of the Admiral. Having to request permission for something like this must have chafed her pride. Amonna didn’t hesitate to authorize the expedition though, there was no way she was going to let her own pride stand in the way of saving lives.

“Permission granted Admiral.”

Categories
Technically Sentient Stories

“Technically” Sentient: Chapter 22

Ikor closed his eyes, ignoring the incessant stream of data being blasted at him through the integrated heads up display of his helmet. He focused on the subtle things, the tug of gravity at his stomach, the deck vibrations caused by the Outrider’s thrusters, and the tightness of his armor around his chest. It wasn’t his first time being pulled from dead asleep to full combat readiness, and it wasn’t the first time he’d volunteered for a zero-reconnaissance, zero-intelligence rescue operation. In fact, there wasn’t anyone on the Outrider that considered this a first, or even unusual. The ship and his comrades both were well seasoned veterans, and while the ship still bore the bright, coppery color of it’s penetration shielding, the weary bones told a story much longer than the fresh glint of the hull would suggest.

Outrider, a catch-all designation for the class of vessel customized by commando and honor guard units, put together ad hoc whenever special missions arose. This one started life as a communications probe. It had been subsequently gutted, refitted with an oversize engine, clad in a twin layer of copper and tungsten alloy superconductor plates, and packed with as much firepower and communications equipment as would fit after all of that. It had a harsh, angular shape, like the delta tip of a spear meant for a titan, and in many ways it was. Ikor and his fellows would be the first to set foot on the slowly spinning dead asteroid, or more specifically in the dead asteroid, as their craft burrowed through the surface of it, superheated copper trapped in a fluctuating magnetic field cutting through the nickel-iron alloy like a hot knife through butter. The briefing had been, well, brief. Get on the ship, enter the asteroid, find the source of the transmission, wait for further orders. Simple. In theory.

The Outrider shook him in his harness, and his eyes snapped open. He scanned the readouts, checking everything from his squad-mates vital signs to the crude radar array built into the outrider. There was a dull impact as the vessel shook again, the maneuvering thrusters firing sporadically to guide them through an unseen debris field. His eyes narrowed, something this obvious should have been easy to avoid. He didn’t like it, but he knew it wouldn’t threaten the mission success chance. Anything big enough to damage the ship they could dodge, and anything too small to see coming they could shrug off, but it was a bad omen. This should have been easy to detect. This shouldn’t have been an issue to begin with. There was another impact, and the communication channel back to command went dead as an external communications relay was obliterated by a chunk of iron the size of a baseball traveling at 4000 meters per second. The backup relay kicked in moments later, operating flawlessly, and he let out an internal sigh of relief.


He scanned the motionless, midnight black helmets of his squad mates, who were all likely thinking something similar to him. There were only six of them in the pod, but with how heavily armed and armored they were . . . that wouldn’t be a problem. Their armor was self contained, bio-integrative, pressurized, had reactive elements and with powered muscle assist spindles running through it provided freedom and ease of movement even in high gravity terrestrial conditions. Each of them had auto-correcting equilibrium implants for fighting in zero-g or fluctuating gravity, joint replacements for controlling weapon recoil, nanotube bone reinforcement, and a hormone control node implanted on the right side of each of their hind-brains. Without putting too fine a point on it, they were about as much hardware as they were “natural,” and all of the hardware was aimed at making them more efficient, effective, and durable soldiers.

He set his jaw as he remembered the thing he’d watched throw around his people like rag dolls. It had been head and shoulders taller than them, and took hits like they were using foam training weapons for pre-modification recruits. Fear was something that had become a part of his life as a commando. There was fear of explosive decompression, fear of being gunned down by hypervelocity armor-piercing flechette, fear of just being in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . but he had never felt that primal kind of fear where something that was prey looked at something that was a predator. All of his weapons, all his armor, all that training and technology just didn’t matter in the face of that bellowing mountain of muscle and rage. They just kept hitting it and hitting it, but nothing seemed to stop it, or even slow it down. He’d never voice it, but when the Captain of the Honor Guard had saddled up on scene, and dusted the thing handily, he didn’t feel pride in his commander, or even awe for his martial skill, he just felt relief. It didn’t feel like a victory against that thing, just survival.

The command channel in his helmet chimed to life. “30 seconds to surface impact. Brace, and prepare to disembark.”

The calm, clear orders of General Vrang pushed such thoughts aside. He was being sentimental, getting distracted. He needed to focus, just on the mission, and nothing else. The asteroid seemed to be largely porous, with preliminary scans indicating a series of ordered chambers running through it roughly 200 meters beneath the surface. They should make entry very near the source of the signal, but those measurements were bound to have drift caused by what appeared to be a substantial layer of conductive metallic elements. Using their armor mounted microthrusters and mag-boots, they’d maneuver to the source of the distress beacon, mapping tunnels as they went, and then establish a more powerful long range communications array that could penetrate the damping effects of the conductive layer.

There was a dull crackle and a surge of heat as the liquid copper shell engaged, boring through dozens of meters of solid rock in seconds. Ironically, there was less turbulence digging through the asteroid than approaching it, Ikor mused silently. He quietly checked over his weapon. A sleek hybrid of several different weapon systems, he’d had it primed and ready since the hangar incident . . . as a sort of safety blanket. There was a standard Kinetic Pulse rifle nested down the length of the gun, perfect for use on standard soft targets, but around it was built a three prong, overdriven Microwave Beam Emitter. While the Kinetic Pulse weapon would pulverize flesh and shatter bone at considerable distance and at prodigious rates of fire, the Microwave Beam Emitter would flash-boil, ignite, or just outright incinerate anything that got within its range. Under that, he’d mounted a smooth bore AP-Flechette cannon, for when not even fire would kill it. There was enough firepower in his hands to bring down the Outrider, and he was almost certain it would be enough to stop a human dead in its tracks.

He really didn’t want to have to test that theory though.

The faint rumbling came to a stop, but the static interference from the asteroid made communications from General Vrang impossible now. Ikor switched to short range communications, no point in wasting energy cell life on the long range transmitter if it couldn’t get through. “You all know what to do, keep chatter to a minimum.” He received 5 affirmative crackles. A single click of the transmitter to let him know he had been heard. The seconds drug on in silence as the hull cooled, creaking and popping as it did so. Finally, their restraint harnesses automatically disengaged, and they were free to float about the cabin, though there was barely enough room for all six of them in it. The rear hatch slid open quietly, and while he had expected there to be a gust of air as the ship depressurized, he was surprised no such event occurred. Internally his brow furrowed, and he intuitively fired the thrusters on his boots, propelling him out and into the still faintly glowing tunnel they’d carved on their way in. His weapon was at his shoulder, and as he drifted away from the Outrider, he saw a multitude of half breached or completely bisected tunnels in their ships wake. “Kal, Vers, with me.” Two crackles of response met his order, and without bothering to check if they were behind him, he drifted up to the first opening.

He’d had a few guesses as to what they’d find, of course. He’d been expecting the polished alloy of a military installation, or the rough rock of a mining operation, or the long abandoned and shoddily constructed scrap-station used by illegal salvager’s and pirates . . . but he never would have guessed this. He gently drifted forward into the smooth, almost polished stone of the corridor. The lamps mounted on either side of his helmet cast bright light across the dark, but somehow glossy surface of the rock. The twin pools of light swept side to side as he scanned the strangely organic curves of buttressing and cross bridging, the almost rib like constructions arching the span of the tunnel. He flicked the safety on his weapon off, before guiding himself down to the flatter, more open portion of the tunnel and engaged his magnetic boots with a dull thump.

Ikor’s eyes flickered across his HUD one more time, checking to see what his suits sensors were making of the place. Gamma radiation? Nominal. EM transmissions? Virtually absent. Atmospheric pressure? Roughly three quarters standard.

“Specialist Vers, get me an atmospheric reading.” He glanced over his shoulder just in time to see her take a knee, and activate her forearm mounted diagnostic suite.

“Trace thorium, silica dust, oxygen, point-seven-seven atmospheres, and a large amount of water. I’m getting . . . unidentified carbon compounds, likely biologically complex macromolecules.” Her tone was firm, authoritative, but ended in a subtle uptick that was the hallmark of curiosity.

“Breathable?” Ikor crackled with a single raised eyebrow.

“In a pinch, affirmative. I wouldn’t until I can identify what the biological compound is though.” She shrugged. The gesture was barely noticeable considering how much gear she had on, but Ikor picked up on it.

He took a few tentative steps forward, scanning the long and subtly curving corridor with broad sweeps of his rifle. “Well, get me a line on that emergency beacon, and figure it out as we move.”

He took a few more careful steps forward before suddenly stumbling, barely able to catch himself as he felt his entire body suddenly get heavier.

“Sergeant?” Both of his squad mates moved forward sharply to cover him before he could wave them off.

“It’s nothing, just an artificial gravity field . . . must be malfunctioning, otherwise we’d have hit it on the way in.” He disengaged his magnetic boots, and took another few steps forward. “Strong too, we must be close to the source.”

The two affirmative clicks weren’t quite enough to put him at ease, but the navigational marker on his HUD was. 200 meters ahead, more or less. “Hopefully in this tunnel.” It was difficult to judge because of the unusual curve, but . . . if they were lucky. “Sitrep on the Outrider?” There was a pause. Perfectly normal, as they were likely making a visual inspection to ensure the integrity of the craft, but something about the place put Ikor on edge. He wondered if he still had the jitters from the hangar, but the thought was interrupted by a static crackle. “Outrider appears fully operational, tunnel integrity is sound. Status is green across the board.”

He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Good, that was good . . .

“100 meters front, do you have eyes on the source?” The communications link to Vers crackled, like there was some signal distortion, considering she was a half step behind him that shouldn’t have been-

Ikor glanced over his shoulder, and did a double take. Vers was gone. He spun on his heel, and Corporal Kal, his second in command, was clearly searching for her as well. “Vers, what is your location, I repeat, what is your location?” He quickly pinged his Friend-or-Foe system, stomach dropping like a stone as only 4 responses came up.

“I’m . . . “ The static was worse, much worse now. Kal pulled a monofiber cable off his belt and looped it through a carabiner on Ikor’s belt, slapping his commander on the shoulder to physically affirm he was still there. “I’m getting movement on my scope, how the hell did- CONTACT FRONT!” The high pitched report of Kinetic Pulse weapons fire echoed down the long corridor, and both Ikor and Kal took off at a dead sprint towards it. Their boots thudded against the dark gray, glassy floor, a faint mist slowly rising higher and thicker as they ran closer to the source of the sound and hopefully Vers. Kal spooled out a little slack, one hand on the security line, the other on his rifle as he tried to keep pace with Ikor, the years of training and drilling and instinctive combat response keeping them moving with a purpose, even in this bewildering scenario. “KP IS INEFFECTIVE, SWITCHING TO FLECHETTE!” The loud booming of the under-slung smooth-bore seemed close, but they still couldn’t see anyone. The panic and desperation in her voice was clear. “IT’S IN THE MIST! STAY OUT OF THE-” There was a crunching sound that turned Ikor’s stomach. He didn’t stop to imagine what caused it before flicking his Microwave Beam Emitter to maximum charge, and waving it around like a torch in the darkness. The faint mist turned to clear steam, and for a moment he caught a glimpse of something.

It was just a glimpse, just a hint, it was almost the same color as the mists, almost the same texture as the stone . . . but different. Wrong. Impossible.

But there wasn’t time to think about it. There wasn’t time to stop and wonder if what he saw was even real. He didn’t break stride, and neither did Kal. They had to get to Vers. Burning a way through the mists that aggressively coalesced behind them, they kept advancing. Vers Friend-or-Foe tag was visible on his HUD, but her vitals were flatlined.

That’s when he heard it. Coughing, faint, but there. The mists had begun to thin from the opaque wall of white to just traces of vapor coiling about their boots, and there was Vers, helmet in one hand, standing with her back to both Kal and Ikor.

“Vers, come in!” Ikor barked into their shared com channel, but received only silence. Switching to an external speaker, he barked out again. “Vers, answer me, I need a sitrep!”

She didn’t move, but her head tilted back just a few degrees. “I’m . . . I’m all right, Ikor.” She sounded . . . tired. “It’s alright. I think . . . I think it’s over.”

Kal was frantically sweeping his sectors, weapon at the ready. “With all due respect specialist, what the fuck?” Kal’s external speaker coughed into the dim mist as Ikor’s helmet lights swept over Ver’s armor. Scratched, battered, but otherwise intact, she didn’t appear to be wounded at first glance. Ikor kept his sights trained on her. “Vers . . . gimmie a sitrep, Vers.”

Vers, to her credit, took a few steps away, before leaning against the smooth wall of the tunnel. With a heavy sigh, she slid down to a seated position. Blood was flowing freely from her nose and ears, even one of her eyes was leaking a stream of bright red vitae from the corner. “This is gonna sound fucked up guys . . . but . . . uhh . . .” She scratched her head with her free hand, setting her clearly shattered helmet on her knee. That must have been the crunching sound he’d heard, Ikor mused silently.

His suppositions were interrupted as, with abject horror, Ikor watched something slither inside her suit. It was thin, long, but powerful, and his stomach turned as he could see the body-tight under layer of her combat suit bulge and ripple as it worked its way up her leg, across her abdomen, and around to her back. “ . . . Vers what the fuck was that?”

His tone was a half whisper, and his hands were shaking slightly as he trained his sights on her forehead, priming a flechette round in the under barrel smooth-bore.

“I get it, no like . . . really I get it. But we’re wrong. Every . . . everything we’ve been taught, everything we’ve fought for is a lie.” Her head dropped, and she shivered as something flashed across the side of her neck. “I don’t even know where to start, actually.”

She stood again, an expression of mixed consternation and frustration on her face. “No matter what I tell you . . . you’re probably just going to blow my head off. Because that’s exactly what makes sense to do. That’s exactly what I would do. I guess . . . I’m not even gonna say don’t fight it. Because . . . well, that’s what you’d expect me to say right now.”

Every fiber of his being was screaming at Ikor that this wasn’t Vers, this was something . . . something different. But the mannerisms were the same, the body language, the posture . . . some part of whatever was in front of him still was. “I guess I’d say it doesn’t . . . it doesn’t hurt? I mean you feel kinda dumb afterward, but it doesn’t hurt.”

An alarm sounded as something breached the boot of his suit, and he snapped his rifle down, firing at the space between his feet. He was rewarded with a spatter of gray gore, and a high pitched squealing sound, but he could already feel it . . . writhing inside him. His leg went numb, and it buckled as he lost all control of it. It didn’t hurt. That much was true. He could feel pressure though. Inside his muscles, across his bones as it swam through his flesh. He thought it would be a struggle, perhaps with some terrifying mental presence as his body was stripped from him. But it wasn’t. It was more like remembering something from a long time ago. Like where he left a set of keys, or an old song. He could feel its thin tendrils as they penetrated his skull, merging with his nervous system seamlessly. He expected something about it to terrify him, or at least hurt, but there was nothing of the sort. It was just . . . an awkward realization. The Coryphaeus, the Core Worlds . . . all of it was founded on pretty obvious lies, now that he could see the truth. It made sense, even. Even with that, he was still himself. All his memories, his aspirations, the pride he took in his career and his squad mates . . . even his penchant for capsaicin seasoned foods. Just, that, and bigger picture, the real plan. The way forward. It was . . . kind of staggering in scale, really. The whole galaxy, maybe even more. It was a lot to take in, or at least it would be if it didn’t feel like he’d always known it.

“You . . . were right, Vers. I do feel a little dumb.” He looked over to see Kal struggling to yank the gray tendril out of the neck seal of his suit, but after a moment of struggling, he too stopped.

Vers chuckled, the kind of good humored laugh one has when they’ve been made the butt of a practical but harmless joke. “Yeah . . . kinda glad that we got it figured out though, you know? Even if it was against our will. Glad you didn’t pop my head off . . . was actually really worried that was gonna happen.”

Ikor felt a moment of embarrassment. He was really ready to kill Vers out of fear. Fear of something he just didn’t understand, and out of dedication to a cause that would sacrifice him without a second thought. “Yeah . . . I do feel guilty about that.” He pushed himself to his feet, walking over to help Kel up as well. The creature from the hangar, the human, as he now understood, was never their enemy. He was just another piece on the board. He smiled to himself. It was freeing, to realize that the human he had been so frightened of was really on their side all along.

“Well, I’m glad you at least feel guilty about it.” She gave him a halfhearted, if a bit awkward smirk. All seemed so foolish now. “So, Sergeant, how are we going to pass on the uhh . . . “ Vers waved her hand around, thin gray tendrils erupting from her fingertips.

Ikor rolled his shoulders, and he felt it settle somewhere in the small of his back. “We’ll finish setting up the long range communication beacon, tell command the truth about it being a decoy, and then head back to the Outrider. We’ll pass it on once the harnesses have locked them in place.” Vers and Kal both nodded. “Well, let’s get to it then. Transcendence doesn’t happen on it’s own, you know?” That got a laugh from both Vers and Kal, as they all set off down the familiar tunnel once again.