Jessica collected the crystals, and was about to insert them into the unit when she heard the whine of several vehicles approaching.
Poking her head out of the tent, she focused out several hundred meters and identified several Kalpurnian A.G.P.C's( anti-gravity personnel carriers) and at least one unit of Kalpurnian M.E.B.A. troops bounding along side them.
"I knew things were going too smoothly" thought Jessica as she unpacked
her mag rifle.......
--MHal9000(MD Halperin)
The Kalpurians had seen the tent but she realized they didn't know who was inside. She glanced down at Blitz and Rook. She'd have liked to have left them behind but she'd never seen anyone who knew Rat'chatkan like Rook.
Cursing she signaled her ship.
The Pegusus was quick to respond; a small red spere formed in front of her and elongated into a door.
Grumbling she poked Blitz through then struggled with the musculent Rook.
"Damn you." she said as she struggled lifting and dragging him to the portal. "If it wasn't for your knowledge I'd leave you behind." As she stepped through to the bridge of her ship, she grinned, you just couldn't beat that Rat'chatkan technology.
The A. I. of the Pegusus was going crazy. Jessica slid into the Captain's chair and plugged into the ship.
The A. I. screamed "We are surrounded by Kapurnian War Ships!"
"I'm well aware of that." Jessica said calmly. "Give me a plasma blast from sector A to sector N. That should take out most of the fleet."
"No,Wait," the words from behind her.
She whirled, she'd totally forgotten her guests. "Damn," she muttered as she saw Rook's pale eyes widen in shock as he saw the deepline running from her throat to the ship's console.
That's how she'd been able to use the Rat'chatkan technology, she'd hooked it straight to the computor chips in her brain, but she hadn't wanted anyone to know this, specially her unwelcome guests.
Somehow the way Rook was staring at her made her feel less than human and she did not like the feeling.
First things first, she turn back to her ship, "I gave you an order now begin."
The veiw screen turned a dull white, and in only seconds she faced an empty sky.
"You didn't have to do that." She could hear the anger in Rooks voice.
Jessica unhooked from the ship and turned to face Rook, "Let's get one thing straight." she said coldly. "This is my ship, I am boss here." She glanced over at the still unconscious Blitz. "You'd better check on your friend. He's been out to long. I hit him pretty hard. I hope I didn't kill the fool."
Rook frowned at her cold words but checked on Blitz, "He breathing" he glared at her. "No thanks to you."
Jessica waved her hand, "There's rooms back there, find him a bed. I have things to do." She turned her back on him in a way that showed he was dismissed from her presence.
She ignored his curses as he carried the over weight Blitz back to the crew quarters.
Several hours had passed while she scanned for other Kalpurnian ships and lay in her course for the next star system that had reported finding Rat'chatkan artifacts.
Tiredly she unhooked once more from the ship and went back towards the shower.
For a moment she didn't realize the shower wasn't empty. Then she realized she was looking at Rook's naked very musculent very male body,and yes it was true he was beautiful.
Turning she made her escape back through the halls of the ship glad no one could see her hot flushed face.
When she all but fell into the captain's chair the ship's A.I. asked "Are you okay, Captain?"
"Yeah," Jessica mumbled.
"Are you sure?" the ship probed, "Your blood pressure is high, your pulse is racing, and your temperature is," Jessica interupted. "I'm fine," through gritted teeth.
She leaned back into the chair, "I'm just tired."
The ship begain to make some soothing Sheakian music. Jessica drifted into sleep.
David's body was moving over her bring her pleasure as only he could. Suddenly the face became the dark face of Rook and he was looking at her with the same distaste he'd showed when he'd seen her hooked to her ship. She awoke breathing heavily.
"Damn," she cursed knowing she had a problem and she wasn't sure just how she was going to handle it.
Jessica had never been one to lie to herself, so she examined the problem.
She was sexually attracted to Rook. The feeling was intense because she hadn't been with anyone since she'd gotten drunk in the Bada'na system and that hadn't counted because she'd been to drunk to enjoy herself. What to do about it?
One; she could take several ice showers. Two; she could find out if he
was interested. or three: she could tie him up and have her way with him.
She laughed at the last one, then frowned, by the time the voyage was
over she might be ready to consider it.
--Whisper
Instead, her thoughts focused on David and the events that had led to his death. She remembered meeting him when they both interviewed for the Terran Archeological Corp. They were together throughout training and proved so compatable that psi-implants were installed with the rest of the cyber-augmentation. (One of the requirements upon acceptance into the T.A.C. is augmentation of physical and mental facilties with nanocybernetics. T.A.C. members usually work in groups of two or four and are trained in various forms of martial arts and warfare. Intellect is still the priority however, and recruits are tested and trained heavily before any field experience.)
They worked as a team, and spent several years exploring the galaxy after training was complete. Jessica hadn't believed love could grow so strong, and run so deep into her. She frequently wished those times they had together would never end. Then they arrived at Minos Revel, and discovered an enormous Rat'chatkan base intact on the planets ravaged surface. Several weeks of probing gained them access to the facility and Jessica actually found a Rat'chatkan space craft in working order. She immediatly dove into it while David rumaged through several conduits originating in the hangar.
"Jess, come here and check this out" David thought from one of the tubes. "You'll want to see this"
"Ok, hold on one second....here I come" Jessica made her way out of the ship and crawled inside of the tube.
"I think I can use our power pack to activate this small group of relays here and gain access to the doors thoughout the facility."
"That's great! Think of what else we might find back there, considering the excellent condition everything out here." Jessica could hardly contain her excitement, and it began to bleed over the psi-link along with her thoughts.
"Yes, yes I'll do it now." Clips were applied and wires tied into several crystaline nodes in the wall. When the pack was activated, Jessica and David moved out of the conduit and were greeted with much more than functioning doors. It seemed that illiumination along with the computer interfaces were coming on line.
"Definately more than I expected, Jess." Jessica could feel his excitement hit a fever pitch. " We have hit the motherlode! Hope you like fame and fortune Jessica Hunter, because you and I are definately going to be very familiar with them."
"Fame and fortune, huh? I could live with that, as long as I'm sharing it with you."
"Forever with me Jess, now lets get inside and see what else we can find."
For days they rumaged through the base, finally coming to a room which they both agreed to be the main computer core. As far as they knew, no one had ever found a core of this size intact, and with the exception of the ship was the most important find to date.
"Help me remove this plate Jess, so I can begin to take sensor readings of this section."
Jessica helped David set the plate down and began to perform tests of her own. In one section of the core she noticed a strange reaction to her sensor sweeps, and began to ask David if he had seen anything strange. A wave of horror washed through her psi-link and before she looked at David's face she knew something was behind her.
"RUN!! DUCK!!! MOVE!!!!" David screamed mentally, but Jessica just froze, unable to process what was going on. David jumped over and threw her out of the way, placing himself in the thing's path. Jessica got a good look at the thing just before it locked up with David, and was horrified by it. 3 meters tall with several thin apendages which could pass for arms, nothing of a head or central organ besides the thick massive trunk. It's skin, for lack of a better word, seemed to be in a state of constant flux. It was like watching billions of tiny ball bearings moving together for some dreadful purpose.
"Run Jessica!" screamed David, "Get out of here now!" David's hand came into contact with the thing.
"I'm not going to be able to stop it" David thought to Jessica, trying to keep the waves of pain from going through the psi-link." Get away while you can!"
"It's not going to take you away from me" She screamed and unholstered her TAC issue plasma rifle. To say the shots were ineffective would be an understatement. Instead it seemed to enrage the creature, who quickly began to overpower David's waning defenses.
Jessica watched in despair as the thing simply began to overwhelm David by flowing over his suit. Waves of panic and revulsion began to hit Jessica as she realized the thing was working its way inside of his suit.
"kill me" ran faintly through Jessica's head, and she realized David was giving up.
"Forgive me love" she thought and aimed the rifle at where David's head should have been. Thats when the thing finally broke through his suit and began burrowing into his flesh.
Jessica fell back with the white hot burst of pain and agony which surged through her psi-link. She added to it with a psionic scream of her own which reverberated throughout the base. Mercifully, the link's override shut it down before it could do any permanent harm.
Jessica staggered to her feet, still conscious of the danger she was in when her psi-link rebooted and she heard another message.
"Hangar"
Without any questions she raced from the room, tears of pain and sorrow threatening to blind her. Leaving behind the only thing in her life that had meant anything. When she reached the hangar, she prepared to get to the scouter outside. She figured the voice had been imagination, or some defense mechanism to fight the shock which was beginning to overwhelm her, when it spoke again.
"Not you ship, come with me in this ship"
Jessica looked over to the Rat'chatkan ship and noticed it was lighting up and hovering out of its cradle.
"Psychic message wake me up. am still learn your language. please get on ship still danger from guardian."
Jessica blindly moved over to the ship and crawled inside.
She really didn't remember the next few months, except that the ship,
finally renamed the Pegasus, had nutured her while it learned everything it
could about the present universe. Eons of inactivity had rendered a good
portion of its memory useless, leaving Jessica to fill in the blanks.
Jessica broke away from the memory with a shudder, and reached for a cup
of coffee." If that trip down memory lane doesn't cure my urges then I need
help"
--MHal9000
Jessica studied the star charts of the up coming solar system. The Walcress planet was a small green planet third from the system's red sun. It had been discovered by Shard minors her data bank informed her. A warning went of drawing her eyes back to the screen. She could see nothing but empty space, then she noticed a shadow at the edge of her vision, but when she'd look at it direct, it would disappear. The I. M. came on "I see It Jessica. It's a small ship and it has a cloaking device."
"Is it Kalpurnian?" ask Jessica.
"No, I can't find it's like, in my data bank." The I.M.replyed.
This surprised and made Jessica uneasy, as she knew the vast ancient
resorces the ship had.
--Whisper
"Well, we won't learn any thing if we stay here so lets go," Jessica told the
IA.
--Wraith1982@aol.com
The ship was performing the task before the thought had completely
formed in her head.
The position of the stars had altered and she didn't need the slight
jerk of the helm to know they'd hyper linked into a time flow.
She jumped up heading for the can. Time hopping always made her sick.
--Phyllis Thompson
Light years away, the disturbance in time and space was observed and logged into a computer eons old. It recognized the pattern as that of the great enemy, but it did not attack. For a long period of time, it simply scaned for more enemy activity. Nothing from any of the known occupied sectors, except for the lone ship it had been tracking since its reawakening. An undertimined amount of time had passed, certainly more than several thousand years. Another disturbing fact was its inability to contact any of the true ones. After several short moments a hypothisis was made and a course of action decided upon. It began to scan for other lifeforms, hoping to find a host species to begin rebuilding the true ones to their rightful glory and dominance.
Captain Joeseph Wright looked out his viewscreen onto the shapes of three Kalpurnian battle cruisers his group had come upon. Wright had several questions he needed answered quick, or this small run in could become quite ugly.
"Why did they enter the DMZ (demilitarized zone) in the first place?" he asked his first. Before he could answer, Wright continued. "Get them on the com, now."
"Aye sir!"
Several deep range scans provided a plethora of information, including two species who were extremely promising. Samples needed to be taken of each soon, to begin the neccessary modifications. It slipped into hyperspace and began conducting more scans to pinpoint the nearest targets. Momentarily, a group of each was found in the same sector of space.
"I don't care if the Kalpurnians lost an entire planet here, you simply cannot come into the DMZ without notifying the Terran Federal Commenwealth Captain Veel." Wright was getting agitated now, epecially after the Kalpurnian zipperhead intimated that his lineage had been mixed up with Coolinvian slime worm DNA. This B.S. line about a cruiser lost around Twanos wouldn't cut it with him. A line needed to be drawn, and Wright had just the thing.
"Captain Veel, .." Wright was interrupted by his first officer, Mr. Blake.
"Sir, some kind of disturbance twenty thousand meters off port. It seems to be a generated from hyperspace."
"Inside the planetary system? What in the hell is going on? Veel! is this your doing? We will defend ourselves!"
"Captain Wright, I was going to ask if this was some pitiful Terran trap, but by your reaction I see you are unaware of its origin also. Tell me Captain, how does it feel to be unaware? It seems to be a state you are familiar with."
"Miserable zipperhead!" Wright muttered under his breath.
"Sir! It's a ship of some sort, initiating scans.......unknown origin, compositional scans inconclusive... three hundred meters in length, we cannont penetrate inside for lifesigns sir.....no reply back to standard hails."
"Defensive posture Mr. Blake, tell the group pattern 155"
"Aye sir, pattern 155 it is......Picking up activity from the craft now sir......believe it is scanning us."
It finished the scans on both groups and activated the appropriate fields to encompass them.
"Sir! Its generating some kind of dampening field! Losing main and secondary power systems!"
"What?! Lock onto it now! Fire at will!"
Some of the Terran ships managed to fire several beam weapons, as did the Kalpurnians. The shots were true to their aim, however the sheilding they struck couldn't have been defeated by a hundred beams.
"Ineffective sir, and power levels are down to minimums now. Life support and internal workings. Engines, weapons and sensors all off line."
"Damn! Now what? Try to raise the thing again, if we have the power. See what it wants"
Communication channels attemped contact from both groups, but it wasn't interested in that type of contact. It spent a short while readying two bioformers and then selected one ship from each group to send them to. Wright was going through options in his head, and thinking of gathering his officer corp together for a session when a small section of the bridge suddenly began to blur and shimmer.
"Almost like a hyperspace gate" he thought and then it stepped through. 2.5 meters tall, horribly insect-like except for it being bipedal. Each of its seven appendages had a different end. Knighmare claws, a mass of slimy tendrils tipped with barbed hooks and something that looked like a lamprey's mouth. It reached out with the lamprey mouth and latched onto Mr. Blake. Wright grabbed his sidearm, but as he lifted it a strange light headed feeling overcame him. His last conscious sight was Mr. Blake writhing in agony as his head was engulfed in barbed tendrils.
It deactivated the secondary fields after concluding both groups had been rendered unconscious. The bioformers would be able to complete their tests without delay.
Wright came to after what must've been several hours in the med lab, or what was left of it. He tried to move, but found he had been bound up and stretched out on one of the op tables. The stench was overpowering, and as he rolled his head over he understood why. At least five people had been dismembered, their parts strewn all over the room. As he paid closer attention to the carnage he noticed things attached to each piece. Things that pulsed and moved with a life of their own. Horror and panic began to overwhelm the Captain and he shut his eyes to ward off the images. That was when he began to hear the sounds. Soft slurping in one corner, wet plops from another, and then to his left a strange tearing sound. Wright rolled his head over and saw what had once been his first officer. Blakes head was gone, relplaced by a bulbous sponge-like mass. His arms and legs were gone also, and his chest cavity had been pried open, exposing his internal organs. Down where his stomach had been another large mass grew and rippled, and it seemed to be producing the tearing sound.
Two acceptable species in the first try, one a warrior class and the other a rare symbiote class. The true ones would be vaulted into dominance immediately with such worthy host bodies as these. It sent the signals to the first bioformer, instructing it to commence with the symbiote test first.
Wright saw the insect horror come out of the lab section and move over to Blake. It tore open the mass protruding from his ravaged torso, and extracted a large black glob. Wright began to scream when he realized it was coming towards him, holding out the glob. Small hair-like tedrils began to grow out from the thing, and it began to shake violently. One meter from his face the glob lept out; mercifully Wright passed out before it landed on him and began to work its way into his skull.
Insertion successful was the message received from both bioformers. Messages to continue insertions were given out immediately, along with a desire to communicate with the first true one in the symbiote form. It awoke and sensed a host nearby. A bioformer plucked it from the womb and gently cradled it, moving over to the host. It could smell the different chemical combinations present in its brain, feel the strength and intelligence exhude from its form. The tension and urges could no longer be denied as it lept onto its new host. With deft skill it worked its way into the cranium, the large optical sensors providing a fine path. Feelers worked around until it found a proper spot near the base to anchor itself to. Exploration of this host was next, and it soon came to the conclusion that it sat in a symbiote. Urges to devour brain tissue changed, and runners were sent into the torso to attach to the hosts feeding system. Once survival inside the body was ensured, connections were made with the host brain. Mixed images of horror and crazed panic riddled the host psyche, and it took several moments of calm soothing and different chemical stimuli before peace was acheived. Histories were exchanged, and the host was made aware of the need for the true ones survival, at any cost. This great partnership would ensure human dominance for all time. The hated Kalpurnians would be slaves to be discarded, mere foot soldiers in the holy quest to purge the universe of all unworthy forms. The true ones must be triumphant.
The man once known as Joseph Wright opened his eyes, and saw a universe
which would soon be in flames.
--MHal9000
When the time flow completed it's cycle, Jessica washed the space sick vomit from her face and returned to the controls of her ship.
"Welcome back." said the AI.
"When are we?" Jessica replied.
"According to my analysis of stellar shifts we have traveled approximately ten years into the future."
"Run a long range tachyon scan of surrounding star systems." Jessica ordered.
The AI paused a moment, scanning the stars, planets, and space in the area. "Scans indicate that 90% of ships and other technology within scan radius to be of unknown origin, but similar in basic design to the Pegasus. There is also a huge population of unidentified life forms. Those species lacking in intelligence, strength, speed, etc. seem to have disappeared."
"What happened?"
"Unknown." said the AI. 'This time flow appears to be unstable, therefore we should be returned to our previous temporal location shortly."
"That's good."
"Warning!" the AI blurted. "Unidentified vessel approaching!"
"Defensive posture." barked Jessica.
"Scans indicate the ship is nearly identical to the Pegasus."
"What?!?"
"It is hailing us." said the AI.
"On screen." Jessica looked to the comm viewer.
A face appeared. It looked like it had once been Human, but was now twisted and otherworldly. "We are the true ones, we are the Rat'chatkan." it said. "Join our empire as a new host true one, a slave, or a carcass. The choice is yours."
Before Jessica could make a defiant reply, the time flow collapsed,
sending her and the Pegasus back to their correct temporal location with
a nauseating tug.
--Bald Locust (draco15@geocities.com)
Jessica sat for a second, attempting to digest what she had just seen and heard.
"Did that thing say it was Rat'chatkan?"
"I'm not sure Jessica" replied Pegasus, "I was attempting to interpret what the being was saying. It seemed to be a mix of Terran and Kalpurnian with another dialect that is present in my data banks. I cannot verify what the last dialect is, due to memory bank damage, but the record dates back to my construction four thousand years ago. It is very likely it addressed us as Rat'chatkans."
"Did you manage to scan the thing? Was that human at one time?"
"Preliminary scans show it was human, along with unknown readings. I suggest we make our way back to the base where you found me. Perhaps the computer core you discovered can answer our questions."
Jessica's heart raced, and she ran through the knightmare of David's death again. Every instinct screamed no, stay away, but she knew this had to happen. This would answer the secret of the crystals, and solve this new mystery.
"Plot the course, and proceed at maximum speed"
"Initiating"
--MHal9000
As Jessica hurtled through space she could not help but wonder what had
happened to the man she had seen.
--Wraith1982@aol.com
Blitz slinked in to the room and glared at Jessica out of his one good eye. She growled at him, "I don't want to hear any of your lies." She nodded towards the door, "I want to to know what you and that other pirate knows and I want to know now."
He begin to whine, and Jessica just wasn't in the mood for it. She stood up slowly walking towards him, and something in her face made him back up fast.
She grabbed him by the front of his tunic, shaking him like a dog shaking a bone. She was about to insert a Psi link into his brain and find out what he knew by force. She knew a Psi link was fatal to anyone who hadn't been processed, but she just didn't care.
Something was out there, she could feel it in the part of her that was
no longer human. It was like an itch she couldn't scratch, but it left a
bad dead feeling, that spoke of something coming, the like no one had ever
seen.
--Phyllis Thompson
