An Unknown Variable
The Right Thing
Across the street, on a massive viewscreen appeared the visage of Da'an, about to deliver his next spiel of propaganda. Looking on the alien's face from inside the Skrill Development Center Eleanor fought the urge to give him a one-finger salute in front of the two Volunteers serving as security.
"People of Earth," he began, "It has been nearly a week since the Taelons were compelled to respond to the insurrectionists who forced our hands."
'Yeah, everyone knows it's our fault you guys bombed the crap out of us,' a sentiment Eleanor somehow managed to keep to herself.
"We have finally and decisively excised the remainders of the so-called Resistance who brought this unnecessary destruction upon you. Our battlecruisers have extinguished the last of the fires resulting from the forced intervention; efforts to clear the rubble in preparation for rebuilding are underway.
"With the blessings of the Synod and the support of the Volunteer corps, new governments are re-establishing order in many nations whose former leaders abandoned their constituents by siding with the Resistance malcontents," Apparently he did not deem it necessary to add most of these new governments were heads of criminal cartels or terrorist outfits just last week.
Da'an concluded with the expected admonition, "Finally we of the Taelons must insist that we took no joy in our recent actions, and plead that you not make it necessary for us to repeat them. There is room in this universe for Taelon and human."
Again, he had spoke as if humanity had brought the bombardments upon themselves and the Taelons had done Earth a favor. But the worst part was most of the survivors seemed to believe it. That very morning on the way to work Eleanor had seen street kids spray painting crude accusations of the Resistance 'starting the war'; at lunch she overheard one of the lugs behind her say recruitment for the Volunteers had actually risen. She tried to convince herself those new enlistees only did so to protect or provide for whatever family they had left but the silent argument rang hollow.
The broadcast over, Eleanor returned to her post. A voice reached her ear; she looked up toward one of the guards.
"Looks like you got some overtime," the soldier joked, "Our shift is almost over, you know how to lock the place up right?"
"Of course," she forced a smile. For a building containing an 'important resource', security at the center was surprisingly lax since the ground fighting had ended.
Eleanor had since learned that many other Taelon-human 'co-ventures' had also relaxed their guard somewhat. According to the guard she's just reassured, the need for increased security was no longer needed because people had seen the futility of taking up arms against their benevolent alien overlords- the war was over, the aliens had won.
'You keep telling yourselves that,' she mused. Waiting until ten minutes after the guards had left she accessed the building systems- and downloaded the virus sent to her global by those who'd reached out to her and others over the past year, the ones who'd given her new reason to hope- and a chance to help strike back.
From what the message accompanying the virus said it would tamper with the building's internal sensors, so that for brief moments nothing would be shown on them save for a short span between the blank spots, then erase itself. The brief span puzzled Eleanor, but she followed instructions. Once her 'overtime' work was ended, on the way home she sent back a signal to the source of the virus.
Back up on the moon Suresh received her signal and shouted, "Operation's a go!" Already Saberhagen, Hamill and Luka Ironside, another loyal warrior and early recruit in Saberhagen's cell donned and activated their masks and gloves. An adaptation of salvaged Jaridian tech, they enabled their wearers to take on the face and handprints of other humans- in this case known enforcers of one of the cartels the Taelons had now put in charge of whole nations. Saberhagen himself assumed the appearance of Declan Conners, one of the worst of the lot. Hamill grabbed the holographic projector needed for the operation and the three teleported themselves down into the heart of the Skrill development center.
Knowing they had little time they set about their task; removing what they'd came for and setting up the projector in its place before activating it. All the while they made sure to get 'their' handprints all over the place and looked mockingly into the camera lenses before the virus would knock them out again; when enough time had passed for that they teleported away with their prize.
Materializing back in their lunar hideout Saberhagen pulled off the mask to show his real face as the others of the cell gathered to greet him and his others. Stepping aside he gestured to the biocontainer- and the alien life form within.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Saberhagen announced, "Allow me to introduce the mother of all skrills." Okuda stepped forward and with Hamill and Ironside's help moved it to the space in the hideout set aside as her laboratory. Much of the cell looked on from a distance, oohing and aahing as they did so.
Creighton stayed away from the little mob but he observed them; then glanced at Saberhagen before looking down to his own wrist. He remembered being initially reluctant to have one of the creatures bonded to his wrist like the others, his brief encounter with the aliens from the stasis chambers had changed his mind.
Back on earth the next day a caregiver came to take fluid samples from the skrill queen- and discovered she'd been replaced with a hologram. Security footage from the previous night showed the ostensible perpetrators- though how they got in and out unnoticed so quickly was yet to be determined. Nevertheless, the criminals were apprehended by the Taelons and taken to the mothership immediately.
Da'an and T'than watched as Tate made the real Declan Conners scream with the miracle breakthrough in neural torture. Those thought to be accomplices of Conners were undergoing the same procedure in other cells.
Tate shot off the device for the moment and Conners pleaded, "You've got the wrong guy- I don't know anything about a stolen skrill queen!"
"Do not insult us with your lies!" Da'an spat, "We saw your faces in the footage, your handprints were found at the scene of the crime- yours and theirs!"
Tate reactivated the device for an agonizingly long five seconds, when he turned it back off Conners spat, "If I did steal what you think I did- do you really think I would- any of us would- be so stupid as to let you see our faces? To leave behind fingerprints?"
"I have always felt it impossible to overestimate the intelligence of human beings," T'than sardonically answered. He motioned for Tate and Da'an to speak to him away from Conners; as Tate followed an implant drone came forward to continue the torture.
"This is a problem," T'than redundantly stated, "The theft of the queen is bad enough but that they would attempt it in the first place shows their contempt for the hands that placed the crowns on their brows."
"It was foolish of the Synod to accept the word of criminals who profit at the expense of their own kind," Da'an spat, "We must recover the queen- and purge these degenerates- all of them- as an example to others!"
"Whoa there- don't you think you might be biting off more than you can chew?" As the two Taelons glared at Tate he swallowed than tried to explain himself, "Look I got no love for these crooks either- hell, it used to be my job to put them away- but the militias and warlords that also took your side rely on them for guns and ammo, you'd have to purge them too and you ain't got enough Volunteers to take on both."
It was true- despite overcoming the Resistance the Volunteer corps had suffered high casualties, and though many humans had signed up since the surrender it would take a considerable amount of time to train and indoctrinate them, the latter could be helped only so much by cyberviral implants.
Something occurred to T'than, he looked to Tate and asked, "These weapons they supply the warlords and militias with- how advanced are they?"
"A few energy weapons got on the streets before you had Doors acquire Hammerlin, but mostly they're armed with tried and true slugthrowers and grenades," Tate answered.
The alien smiled, "Then perhaps we should offer to equip them with superior firepower, so that they need no longer relay on the cartels. Then should they become a problem themselves we will remotely disable the energy weapons we supply them with and our Volunteers will have the advantage."
"Disable remotely- you can do that?" Tate asked; when the aliens looked at him incredulously he nodded, "Sorry, forgot who I was talking to. But even if they accept your ray guns they might still want to hold on to the primitive stuff – "
"In the days leading up to his assassination," Da'an interjected, "Zo'or was amassing a stockpile of gold for the influence on humanity its possession can bring- up to 3 trillion American dollars worth, I believe. Offer to exchange some of that gold for any -slugthrowers, as you call them- and explosives handed over."
Tate's jaw dropped at the numbers Da'an had stated, but he recomposed himself and nodded vigorously, "That might work- I'll get on it right away."
Tate left to do their will, T'than looked to Da'an, "Conners and his confederates- what shall we do with them?"
"It is obvious they will tell us nothing," Da'an seethed, "We should eject them into space like the refuse that they are."
This shocked T'than. He knew Zo'or's death had hardened Da'an toward humanity, but this was an extreme even for him- he started to wonder if he should be concerned.
Street walked in on Okuda as she monitored the skrill queen's life signs. Okuda saw her and smiling, waved her in closer.
As she approached Street looked nervously at the alien and asked, "So that's her- the mother of all skrills?"
Okuda nodded, "The Taelons had kept her in a state of continual pregnancy; fortunately, I convinced Saberhagen to ease her down from it," Okuda looked to both of Street's bare wrists, "If you'd like I can clone one for you…"
"Thanks but no thanks," Street did not relish the notion of an alien lifeform attached to her even if it could blow away any enemies she might one day have; wrinkling her brow she asked, "You know Stephen named the one on his arm after me?"
"That's not unusual," Dr. Okuda replied, "We all gave them names," at this she began to stroke the skrill bonded to her, "I call this one Kevin- doesn't he look like a Kevin?"
"Maybe an extremely squicky Kevin," Street remarked.
"Squicky?" Okuda frowned, "To acknowledge them as living beings instead of impersonal weapons? This skrill is nourished by our blood and in return offers a means of defense- these are more than mere symbionts, they're comrades."
At this point Okuda placed a vial of nutrient solution into a hyposyringe; opening the biocontainer she moved to inject the solution into the queen. In the process she unintentionally brushed 'Kevin' against the skrill queen- suddenly she dropped the syringe and fell to the floor screaming. When Street finally calmed the doctor and helped her to her feet Okuda said, "Gene has to know- he has to know…"
"A vision?" Saberhagen's tone was skeptical.
"More like a memory, I think," Okuda started to explain, "I think she tried to pass it onto Kevin and somehow ended up sharing it with me too." She described seeing the queen and others like her on a lush planet, until ships descending from the sky- ships which Saberhagen and the others now knew to be Taelon battlecrusiers- used some form of tractor beam to forcibly gather and remove them from their world.
"They were- are- a sentient race," Okuda stated, "And the Taelons abducted them en masse, altered them into the weapons they are now…"
"That," Saberhagen stated, "Is nothing we haven't known for some time now, yourself included, doctor."
"Well we have to make it right," Street started, "I mean there's got to be a way that we can send her back to – "
"Returning the queen to her planet of origin is out of the question," Saberhagen coldly stated, "We've learned that planet has since been lost to the Jaridians; we'd only be handing her over to another alien empire- assuming they didn't scorch the planet first and leave nothing to question- besides, I have plans for her here."
"Plans to farm her like they did," Street hissed.
"In case any of you have forgotten," Saberhagen intoned, "We are up against a foe whose bodies are nine-tenths energy. Bullets, blades and boots are useless against them, skrills are not."
"We don't need the queen for that," Okuda piped up, "We could get by fine with cloned symbionts and the energy weapons we've high jacked."
"This is not a democracy," Saberhagen growled, "We're keeping the queen should we need to hatch more skrills and that's the end of it." He started to walk away.
"I thought they were our comrades," Street said to his back, "Is this how we treat our comrades- hatch their offspring so we can use them as weapons? Is that how the noble fighters Stephen says you are act?"
Saberhagen stopped, clenched and unclenched his fists several times, then spun around to face her.
"All right then," he said "What would you have me do? Send her to the planet sized piece of charcoal she used to call home? Dump her in some forest on Earth where the mothership's sensors will detect her and they can abduct her all over again? YOU come up with another solution- you know where to find me!" He stormed off.
That afternoon Street picked at her tray of engineered lichen as Suresh sat across from her- the only one to do so since word spread that she'd argued with Saberhagen- suffice to say confronting the cell's fearless leader did not help her win friends.
"The Taelons still seem to think the queen was stolen by the cartels," Suresh informed her, "They've been hunting down their leaders, interrogating them, executing them when they don't hear the answers they want."
"Who are they replacing them with?" Street casually asked, though right now what puppet government replaced the current puppet government somewhere in South America was really the last thing on her mind.
"I don't know- they always seem to find some pushover bureaucrat under some rock somewhere," Suresh laughed to get her to laugh- it didn't work.
Seeing Street suddenly look nervous Suresh turned to see Hamill and Ironside approach- now he started to feel nervous too.
"We heard what you said to the boss man, J," Hamill started.
Street started to stand, Suresh held up both hands "We don't want trouble…"
"What trouble? We're with her on this," Ironside said.
Street's eyes shot wide, "You are?" she asked.
"Well yeah," Hamill raised his arm with the wrist pointed toward himself, "I mean, how can I look at Juliet here and say we used her queen as a weapon factory?"
"We talked it over," Ironside added, "And we think we might have a solution, but we'd need your help Suresh…"
Ten minutes later Hamill and Ironside made their case to a leery Saberhagen, Suresh at his post, Vosser Street and Creighton watching.
"We know the planet they came from is out," Hamill said, "But we figure there's got be other planets with plant and animal life if not what we'd call people- planets the Taelons might know about and have coordinates to – but might not think to look for her "
"It's possible- if they do exist they'd be in the mothership's data files," Vosser, the only one to have spent prolonged time aboard the mothership started, "But they'd make sure those can't be remotely accessed, and after Liam's sneak attack they'd be more alert for boarding actions- teleporting in and out would be noticed."
"Tipping off the Taelons to the fact that someone- anyone- has teleportation technology is not an option," Saberhagen insisted, "Teleportation is one of the few- if not the only- true advantage we have over them."
"And even if we got the coordinates to such a world," Creighton mentioned, "We've never determined if my teleportation technology has a finite range- if it does we could condemn the queen to materialize in deep space- if not disperse into her constituent atoms altogether."
"We thought about that," Ironside said, and we think we found a way around it- Suresh?"
Suresh worked on his console, on the viewscreen above appeared what looked like schematics for some device.
"Remember when the mothership was hijacked?" Suresh asked, "I mentioned they were still working on collapsible ID portals you could pack and carry? Well this is the info we need to make our own."
"We make two of them," Hamill elaborated on the rest of their plan, "One for the boarding party, in case they need to make a getaway. The other we rig like a smaller version of that magma cannon the Taelons used on the Jaridian fleet – "
"The one that accidentally created a wormhole that a Jaridian warship entered and almost reached Earth?" Saberhagen pointed out.
"Well it wouldn't be big enough for one of those to go through," Hamill countered.
Saberhagen glowered- this all sounded like a lot of potential risk for no reward- and dammit, he was the leader here, childish as it may sound.
And yet, somehow he sensed putting his foot down here would be a mistake; finally, he lowered his head, "All right- but I'm leading the boarding team - "he stared Street in the eye, "And we are going to have a talk about what 'not a democracy' means."
Two days later the portals were manufactured. They singled out a Volunteer patrol moving in on a Chilean druglord. Said patrol followed their quarry into a bunker whose walls blocked them from the mothership's sensors- and then Saberhagen, Ironside and Vosser emerged wearing their faces as well as duplicate Volunteer armour, having vaporized the bodies of the Volunteers and the druglord to cover their tracks.
Brought aboard the mothership, the militants in Volunteers' clothing moved out; ostensibly they were reporting to be debriefed, in actuality Saberhagen and Ironside followed Vosser's lead until she found a console from which she could access the information they sought.
Vosser accessed the right files, and began to download them into her global whilst Saberhagen and Ironside stood guard. A turbolift opened and to Saberhagen's horror Tate emerged and came forward. He kept calm, hoping he could mislead the man and avoid the kind of firefight that would bring the real Volunteers down on them.
"What's gong on here?" Tate suspiciously asked.
"Just sending our report through the console," Saberhagen bluffed, "Faster this way."
Tate nodded, then started to turn- then spun back around and slammed his fist into the side of Saberhagen's skull, knocking him to the floor. He raised the arm attached to his skrill toward Vosser, ready to vaporize her…
He never did- a red flash struck his cranium, his now headless body fell backward onto the floor. Saberhagen looked to see the energy rifle in Ironside's grip.
Alarms rang, and barriers of virtual glass came down on both sides of the corridor, "Warning, lethal weapons fire detected on board," a disembodied and coldly feminine voice sounded from nowhere.
Dropping his rifle Ironside drew an energy pistol in each hand, pointing them in opposite directions. Saberhagen rose to his feet; removing the collapsible portal from his back he hurried to set it up while saying, "Erika, you're running out of time…"
"I've got it!" she yelled. The download complete, she rushed to Saberhagen's side while Ironside started shooting down the Volunteers closing in from both sides through the virtual glass. Saberhagen saw two shots from opposite directions vaporize his fellow warrior as the portal activated.
As the useless virtual glass shut down the Volunteers rushed toward the portal; they'd gotten within two feet when a proximity detonator built into the device went off- the portal exploded, taking two Volunteers with it.
Emerging from one of the lesser used portals on Earth, Vosser and Saberhagen rushed down the steps into a nearby subway terminal. Bolting into a filthy men's room Vosser transmitted the information they'd gathered- at the cost of one of their own, Saberhagen couldn't help but think- to Street's global, she would use it to find a suitable place to send the queen. Once the transmission was complete the two teleported back to base.
Aboard the Mothership was chaos. A companion protector and two volunteers were dead and someone had managed to copy data from its systems, though the hacker had managed to cover her tracks as to what was duplicated. Da'an and T'than looked upon the shattered remnants of the portal. The collapsible devices were on the verge of being manufactured and released to the pubic shortly before Thompson's defeat but the Synod shut the project down prior to the bombardment- yet someone had managed to make their own, and from what appeared on internal sensors, had turned three Volunteers against them.
"Still think this is the work of the cartels?" T'than asked.
"Perhaps not," Da'an seethed, "No matter- whoever they are, we shall find them- there is nowhere on Earth they can hide from us."
In their lunar redoubt, Saberhagen and the rest of the cell waited silently but tensely. Finally, in a flash Hamill, Street and Okuda appeared, teleporting back from the abandoned tunnel works where they had planned to send the skrill queen home.
Saberhagen stared at Street, "You should know that Luka died so Erika and I could escape, miss Street- I hope you can at least tell me his loss was not in vain."
Street backed a step, hung her head, then looked to Okuda, who brought forth what at first looked like a deflated but bloody balloon- a second later Saberhagen realized it was the skrill queen's skin.
Creighton asked it first, "She molted?"
"Good a description as any," Okuda answered, her tone suggesting she was in shock, "Stephen opened the portal, I carried her to it, suddenly her skin broke open and she emerged, then flew through it as if she knew what was happening- she was beautiful."
Saberhagen looked to Hamill, "And the portal?"
"Rigged it to blow and teleported the remains to a junkyard near one if their friends in Somalia, just like you said to," Hamill answered.
Suresh heard this, and already he, also as Saberhagen had ordered, set about sending an 'anonymous' tip to the Taelons- hopefully this would direct the aliens' wrath to the warlords and away from their cell.
Street looked to the molted skin in Okuda's hands and asked, "What are you going to do with that?"
"Might I suggest preserving it for now?" Saberhagen said, "You might want to examine it more closely later on." Creighton looked at him suspiciously as did Okuda, but the latter merely nodded and carried the skrill skin to her laboratory.
That night Saberhagen watched as Okuda preformed some tests upon the molted skin of the skrill queen. She finally looked up at him and said "Yes, it should be all I need to grow more of them."
Saberhagen noticed the hesitancy in her voice, "But…"
"But doesn't this feel like we're going back on our word to Juliet?"
"How?" he argued, "That skin is no more a part of the skrill queen than discarded toenail clippings are still part of you- for all we know this could be the reason she molted in the first place- so we would still have something to use against her former captors."
Okuda didn't believe that for an instant and her glare said as much; Saberhagen's face hardened, "Remember the saying, 'all's fair in love and war'- we ARE at war. You can wrack your conscience over this when the Taelons are dead."
He turned and walked off.
