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Kahraman Base, Planet Hoarfrost, Lupasha System, Coro Region, Tolo Arm
May 14th, 2038
“What do we do?” Katrina asked.
“We have to do something,” Colin agreed.
Terry stared at the armory display. Hundreds of guns, they just needed to be made usable. Could he and his two friends take on all the alien mercs? The answer was almost certainly no. With advanced weaponry, maybe they could kill a whole bunch of them. Everyone else was probably dead. They were it.
He glanced at his two friends, who were having an animated argument about what to do, momentarily forgetting Terry was there as well. He leaned over and tapped the armory display. It pulsed blue.
“Configure To Match Candidate”
He touched the beam weapons, then reached over and touched land mammals. Both pulsed yellow.
“Define Combat Environment—2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 ”
He stared at the highlighted 3, 5 and 6. It had said the land mammals, he and his friends, were potentially for those biomes. He knew biome likely meant environment, and as the cetaceans were biome 3, that must be water. Humans were already good for 2 and 4. What did those mean? Air and...something else. He needed guns that worked underwater, or anywhere else. He clicked 2, 3 and 4.
“Candidate Biome Adaptation Required—Proceed | Artificial Adaptation”
Biome adaptation made him nervous. However, artificial didn’t sound bad. He clicked it.
“Candidate Interface Necessary—Proceed”
There wasn’t a second option on this one, so he clicked.
“Initiate | Additional Action.”
His eyes moved to the cetaceans. Without thinking it through, he clicked additional action, then all three categories, and clicked on the cetaceans. The options were more varied there. He took all the highest actions he could and accepted as fast as possible.
“What are you doing?” Katrina asked, finally realizing Terry was doing something.
“Getting even,” he said.
“No,” she said, “you don’t...”
“Initiate | Additional Action”
“Terry!” Colin yelled. Terry pushed initiate.
Immediately the back wall of the building began to come alive. Hidden panels opened and began to configure into all manner of tables and supports. The blocky structures he’d thought were fixed to the floor fairly exploded into mobile machines sporting all manner of arms. One grabbed Katrina, who screamed in alarm.
“Hey,” Terry said, fear making him jump away from the workstation and back away.
Katrina struggled and got an arm free. Instantly a robotic tentacle shot in and jabbed her in the arm. She screamed and began to go limp.
“Stop it,” Terry said and drew his laser pistol. “I just said give us guns!” But another robot had grabbed him, and several arms secured his arms and legs, while another snatched the pistol away. “Colin, run!” But his friend stood in stunned surprise as he, too, was snatched by still another robot. Suddenly half the wall split open, and several of the columns/robots came out of the opening, which, Terry realized, was only a few meters from the water.
Spider robots were everywhere, climbing up his legs and swarming into the building. Outside, still more were skittering toward the water. He could see one of the bottlenoses standing on its tail, looking in his direction. He opened his mouth to scream a warning and felt an icy sting in his arm.
Terry, to his horror, never lost consciousness. Not even when he was placed on a table, and he felt a machine begin to drill into his skull. He could only think of the dead creatures in the dormitory and silently scream in pain. There were no words for the feeling, as something entered his skull.
What followed was a short eternity of unintelligible feelings, emotions, and sensations as the alien machines inserted probes into his cerebellum. For a moment, he was sure he had an extra arm, then he could smell colors, and then taste numerical formula. He wanted to scream but was beyond the ability to use his own body in the way he wanted to.
Eventually he was carried by a big, blocky robot and stood against a wall facing the open side of the room. He expected to simply fall over and smash his face on the floor, but instead found himself standing perfectly still and balanced. He couldn’t even move his eyes.
An army of spider robots arrived carrying first one, then more bottlenoses. He couldn’t control his body, yet tears rolled down his cheeks as he watched the robots place them in shallow pools that hadn’t been there before, and the blocky robots began to insert needles into the dolphins’ bodies. Like him, they were still awake, their eyes open as probes were inserted into their skulls.
Other robots removed the helmets that held the rebreathers that allowed them to stay underwater for weeks at a time. The equipment was discarded in a pile, like so much junk. Then incisions were made in their sides, and pieces of technology were inserted. Terry couldn’t see what, only that the incisions didn’t seem to bleed.
The bottlenoses were moved through quickly, operated on, then taken away several at a time. Eventually, as far as Terry could tell, all of them were moved through. Then the first orca was moved in. Despite the despair he was feeling, he was also amazed that the alien robots had created carefully constructed harnesses to avoid injuring the huge cetaceans, who had never been meant to be unsupported on land, even in Hoarfrost’s lower gravity.
Where the bottlenoses were worked on three at a time, the orcas were individual jobs, requiring a vast number of spider robots, as well as all of the big blocky robots. Terry tried to close his eyes, but he couldn’t. Like the bottlenoses, their rebreather helmets were removed, and bloodless surgery used to insert equipment into their bodies. He was forced to watch as each of the nine adult orcas were brought in for surgery, then removed back to the moon pool. At last, Pōkole was brought in.
Please no, he mentally screamed, but to no avail. The orca calf was subjected to the same procedure as the adults, though he needed much less of the robot’s assistance or time. Then it was all over. The pools and equipment used to support the cetaceans were reabsorbed by the building, the wall went away, and the blocky robots went back to being columns attached to the floor. Not a single drop of blood remained. It was as if nothing had happened.
* * *
Terry must have slept, though he had no memory of it. He went from having no control of his body, standing in the corner of the operating room of horrors, watching the robots cutting up his friends, to lying on the floor and blinking up at the dim lighting.
“Terry, are you awake?”
“Yeah,” he said and slowly sat up. Everything looked...different. He could hear the quiet hum of fans or pumps, see the low lighting and shapes of inactive blocky robots, smell a slight ozone odor, feel the cool floor under him, taste an acid flavor of some kind, and sense available connections.
Wait, sense connections? He concentrated, and the familiar ID of his slate seemed to appear in his mind’s eye. He touched the connection, and the home menus of his slate appeared. In his mind. Another connection was “Operations Control.” He touched that one, and it was the same one he’d used his slate to access in the medical theater prior to approving the horror.
“Why can I see computers in my head?!” Colin asked.
“We all have pinplants,” Terry said.
“Why did you do this?” Katrina asked.
“Because the aliens are going to find this place and kill all of us anyway,” he admitted. “Do you want to let that happen and do nothing?”
“No,” she admitted. “I wanted to know what was about to happen, though.”
“I wasn’t sure myself until I did it,” he said.
Terry got to his feet. It was surprisingly easy. He didn’t feel any pain, discomfort, or disorientation. Considering that he’d just had a hole drilled into his brain, he found the lack of aftereffects more than a little disconcerting.
“Did they really drill holes in our heads?” Colin asked, echoing his thoughts.
“Didn’t you feel it?” Katrina asked.
“Sort of,” Colin said. “You’d think it would hurt more to have a hole drilled in your head.”
“I’ll never forget what red tastes like,” Katrina said and shuddered.
As he walked around, Terry remembered all his studies on pinplants as he’d researched the cetaceans’ models. There was a section on calibration, where the recipient was fed specific impulses and their responses monitored to be sure the nanoprobes were in the correct parts of the recipient’s brains. At the thought, complete 3D renderings of his brain appeared in his mind, including the thousands of microscopic filaments now woven throughout it. If this machine did it so easily, why aren’t they available on Earth yet? he wondered.
Remembering the cetaceans’ implants, he reached up to the side of his head and felt a tiny connection point behind his right ear, and another behind his left. They were much smaller than he expected, and he wondered why.
Combat Qualified Implant Includes Wireless Synaptic Terahertz Frequency Modulated Interface.
He blinked as he digested the statement. A complete user manual appeared in his mind to go with it. He absorbed the entire manual in less than a second.
“Holy crap,” he said.
“What?” Katrina asked.
“I just read a 2,000-page manual in a second.” He thought about how to interface his pinplants with a strange computer, and instantly knew how, where in the manual it was located, and word for word cross-indexed uses. “And I remember all of it.”
“Do the orcas have the ability, too?” she asked.
“They must,” he said, “though they don’t have these models.” The details on the orcas’ implants were shown to him, including updates the Caretaker had performed. The implants, while simple, were sufficient, so they weren’t replaced, merely augmented.
“How do you read manuals?” Colin asked.
Terry found his connection, linked their minds, and sent him the manual. “Just read it,” he said.
Colin was on his feet, standing a short distance away. He closed his eyes and his eyebrows wrinkled in concentration. Suddenly his eyes shot open and he blinked. “Oh, wow!”
“I know, right?” Terry said.
“I see,” Katrina said. “Found it and read it. This is a little like VR, except without stupid goggles."
“Yeah, kinda,” Terry agreed. “It’s 3D.” Like the weird programming, he thought. Like so many other things with the pinplants, one of those 3D programs appeared. Kut-Akee was the programming language. It didn’t translate, not even in the deeper understanding granted by the pinplants. He looked at the strange 3D program, and a tiny bit seemed to make sense.
“What do we do now?” Katrina asked, snapping him back to reality.
“The Caretaker says we’re free to act,” Colin said.
“Wait, Caretaker?”
“That’s the computer of this base,” Katrina said and made an expansive gesture around her.
Terry found the main connection again and linked with it. “Caretaker?”
<What do you require?>
“It talks!” Terry blurted.
“You just realized?” Katrina asked.
He was glad she didn’t hate him as much as he hated himself.
“Did you notice your leg?” Colin said and pointed.
Terry looked down at his left leg and gawked. Gone was the mechanical-looking prosthetic made by Doc’s people. It still wasn’t his leg, but it looked just like it. Perfectly molded, he suspected, from his right leg, it worked perfectly, and looked perfect except that it was a metallic tint of blue. He reached down and touched it. The skin felt like the same material as the dome. His drysuit had been cut and molded to seal where the artificial leg met his stump. They’re very efficient, he thought.
<I am waiting,> the Caretaker said in his mind.
“Will you do whatever I ask?” he said.
<Within programmed parameters, absent command override.>
“Who gives command override?” Katrina asked. Terry hadn’t been aware that she was there in his mind with him. He thought about it and understood that she wasn’t, they were just on the same channel communicating with the Caretaker.
<Information beyond your authority.>
“This is frustrating,” Colin said, also on the channel.
<Irrelevant. What do you require?>
“What did you do to the orcas?” Terry asked.
<Candidate species orca, now designated candidate KilSha upon consulting with candidate, as per protocol. Actions per operator Terry include as follows:>
All three of them saw 3D images of the surgeries performed on the orcas, now KilSha, as well as alterations to their DNA! The Caretaker stated the KilSha were now Sapient Stage 6, which was the best alteration possible within the current generation.
“You uplifted them?” he asked.
<Indexing operator language...term ‘Uplift’ acceptable analogy and is indexed within database. KilSha partially uplifted and adapted as requested.>
“God, Terry,” Colin hissed aloud.
“I didn’t think it would change them,” he pleaded. “I thought it would arm them.”
“You just didn’t think,” Katrina said.
Terry sighed and nodded. “Are the orcas...the KilSha, okay?”
The back wall of the room split open again. All three stepped back, the memory of the flood of robots too fresh in their minds. There were no robots, just the moon pool a short distance away. It was crowded, with all the cetaceans sitting calmly on the surface. None of them were wearing their rebreathers, and when he looked, there was no sign of them either. The three walked outside, and the wall closed behind them.
“Are they alive?” Colin asked. A plume of water vapor and a Whoosh! from one of the orcas answered the question.
“Hello?” Terry called as they reached the edge of the water.
“Hello, Terry,” the closest KilSha answered. The English was perfect, and it brought goosebumps to his skin. English, without him needing a translator. For that matter, his translator was gone. “How are you?”
“We’re fine,” he said. “Moloko? How are you?”
“Yes, I am Moloko, and I am very fine!”
“I’m sorry they hurt you,” he said, stepping into the water enough to touch her side.
“Do not be sorry,” Kray said, gently pushing Moloko aside to come closer. “This is a great gift!”
“They cut on you and changed you in ways you don’t understand,” he said.
“You do not understand. We asked them to do this when the Caretaker’s machines came for us. It needed to happen, and is why Shool brought us here. We understand,” he said, “we have the files in our pinplants. We can talk perfectly now! It was so hard for us to talk before, to make Humans understand us. Our language is much more different than you understand.”
Terry shook his head. It was disconcerting to have an orca talk to him like an adult Human. Gone was the stilted speech that had been more like talking to a child, or someone with a mental disability.
“We are happy to be KilSha!” All the newly-made KilSha bobbed their heads, and some blew misty plumes as if they were exclamation points. “You do not have to be Wardens anymore, now we can work with you as allies, friends.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Terry said. He glanced at Katrina, who was frowning; Colin was just slowly shaking his head. “I’m still sorry. I should have asked you.”
“We would have said yes,” Kray repeated.
“Like new brain, Terry!” Pōkole popped his head out and nipped at Terry’s hand. Terry stroked his side, and he felt a pinplant link from the baby orca with, he would swear, a hug emoticon?
“Hey, little guy,” Terry said.
“Pōkole like Terry! You make Pōkole have big smarts!”
The calf still sounded like a kid, but maybe a three- or four-year-old, not a one-year-old. The changes to the youngest member of the pod were the most profound and hinted at what was to come.
“’Sup, Terry?”
A bottlenose rocketed out of the water between Kray and Moloko, did a triple flip, and hit the water on the other side perfectly, not even touching either of the KilSha, who both looked back and gently shook their heads.
“We’re BotSha now!” All 18 of the former bottlenose dolphins stuck their heads out and jabbered about how awesome it was to be a BotSha. It was like being in the middle of a crazy internet chatroom full of gamers.
Terry sighed and sat down at the edge of the water. Doc’s going to kill me, he thought, then winced when he remembered they were all dead. The thought brought him to the present, and why he’d done what he did.
“You know all the wardens, I mean all the other Humans on Templemer are dead?” he asked the KilSha.
“We know,” Kray responded.
“Do you want to help me get even?”
“Terry,” Katrina hissed, “what are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting we kill the alien bastards.”
Collin set his jaw and nodded. Katrina frowned more, but slowly nodded, too.
The KilSha rolled partially onto his side and opened his mouth to show teeth no longer blunt white, but sharply pointed and glinting with a silvery alloy. “We want to help kill them.”
“Caretaker?”
<Still waiting.> It somehow managed to sound impatient.
“Is the equipment I requested ready?”
<Manufactory is 89% completed on weapons, standing by to begin armor fabrication.>
“Then let’s get to work.”
* * * * *
