2.
The Hell Within
March 15, 2199
The small, hard-faced woman with the graying black braids responded to the call to the EDF headquarters with her usual perfunctory, professional manner. Emotionless, Dr. Riroroko listened to the strange debriefing: the alien woman found dead on the planet Mars, her hand gripping a message capsule. The Rapa Nui woman was the only xenobiologist that had both a medical degree and the proper clearances; she alone would perform the autopsy, under the most secure of conditions. She gave the usual toneless, dry acknowledgement of her orders; no one had any way of discerning that this coldly-skilled woman carried equal measures of rage and torment within.
Every night for the past seventeen years, Dr. Riroroko had awakened with the afterimage of the burning of her homeland imprinted behind her eyes. Every day, she had gone through the motions: when the medical degree she earned with honors did not eat enough time, she returned to school to add a specialty in xenobiology. There was only one thing she wanted more than to understand the aliens that had reduced the sum of her people to one bitter woman.
And that one thing was revenge.
As she strode to the secure morgue and suited up, the doctor's mind went into overdrive. An alien woman from an advanced race—one clearly familiar with the bleak evil of the Gamilons—was a resource that could be turned to her advantage, dead or alive. A scheme had taken shape in Dr. Riroroko's mind.
The corpse was being held in a Biosafety Level IV laboratory; it was unknown what kind of pathogens the alien female might be carrying. With Earth's entire biosphere irradiated and fragile, the intergalactic version of a simple common cold could be catastrophic. No chances were being taken. Dr. Riroroko suited up and activated her controlled air source and went through the initial decontamination process; neither did they want Terran microbes possibly causing cross-contamination. She then went across from the 'gray zone' into the Level IV laboratory.
She was alone. So classified was this autopsy that no observers could be permitted. The information would be top secret, eyes-only and ultraclassified. It was the perfect opportunity for this healer gone sour to set a plan in motion, a series of events that would shake worlds, systems… galaxies.
With exquisite care, Dr. Riroroko began to record her initial findings. First, she took extensive photographs of the fragile-looking alien woman, still body-bagged and clad in the magenta gown in which she had been found. She had no diener—no assistant—so she alone would be responsible for handling, cleaning and moving the body. As she worked, her dry voice recorded her findings on a datatube hanging beneath her suit, just beside her right jaw.
She removed the woman from the bodybag with the help of a non-AI robotic assistant—the only assistance she was permitted. She noted the type and position of clothing on the corpse before cutting it free and exposing the delicate, pallid flesh of this woman, whose message had cost her life. Dr. Riroroko felt no pity or gratitude for the sacrifice; all she saw before her was flesh, and in it, the physical manifestation of her scheme. She took samples of hair, nails and skin from the dead woman and then moved the body to the scale to weigh it. The corpse had been tall and very slender; this information was duly noted along with all other physical details—such as the cyanosis of her lips and the tiny, purplish petechial hemorrhages around and within the woman's eyes.
She then placed a rubber brick called a body block under the dead woman's back. This caused the lifeless limbs and head to fall back, pressing the chest out and forward; the initial cuts of the prospecting knife were done most easily in this position. Smoothly, she lifted the shielded prosecting laser and made a deep Y-shaped cut extending to the pubic bone, meeting at the breastbone. Only the slightest bleeding was evident; gravity had already pooled the woman's blood downward.
She dared not use a bone saw to fully open the chest cavity; such a process would create potentially-infective bone dust to aerosolize—a risk, even in a Level IV environment. She used a laser cutter to slice carefully through the ribs at either side of the chest cavity, lifting breastbone and ribs as a unit. She set the chestplate aside and continued the internal examination. She found nothing unusual, to her surprise; the female appeared to be as human as she herself—just complete in her perfection. The examination of the brain and pelvic organs proved equally unremarkable.
The lack of any unusual procedure made the autopsy go smoothly and quickly, even in the hyper-disciplined confines of Level IV. There was but one deviation from procedure.
One of the dead woman's ovaries would not be cremated with the rest of the remains. Dr. Riroroko had plans for it.