Charger the Soldier (40 page)

"I'll never forget, even if it was
thirty-five years ago," Eve said. "I was terrified."

Along with forty-five of their Maven friends,
they had managed to slip aboard the transport ship without
triggering any alarms. While the others were exploring the rest of
the ship, she and Elvin went forward to the bridge. Elvin had
looked around, nervously at first but, hearing no alarms, started
fiddling with the control panel.

"We need to start this thing and get out of
here before they find us," he shouted, desperation underlining
every word. He'd banged his fists in frustration on the housing.
This random act of violence suddenly sent out a high-pitched
frequency, which seemed to emanate from the entire outer surface of
the alien craft. Within a few moments, his friend monitoring the
base for them called.

"I can't see any movement on the base now,"
he'd said. "Absolutely zilch. Maybe that high-pitched tone rendered
all the scientists and military personnel unconscious."

Eve had asked, "Was that supposed to
happen?"

Elvin said, "God, I don't know. I hope I
didn't kill them. Do you remember how that engineer managed to
start this thing?"

She moved past her boyfriend and placed her
small hand into a slot on the panel. The craft surged to life.

"Okay, great. I will go tell the others we're
leaving," Elvin had said, as he moved from the central hub, known
as the pit, into the cargo hold. The ship had been the only alien
craft captured intact during the Mahoud-Earth war and a low
priority item for the invaders. It was just a simple supply ship,
programmed to do only one task: travel between Earth and a distant
planet in the galaxy.

It had been a glorified dump truck, Eve
thought, traveling back and forth to the resource planet. The
onboard Taskers, biomechanical drones programmed to carry out
assigned tasks, piloted the ship and collected the supplies the
aliens needed. But, dump truck or not, it had brought them safely
to that same resource planet.

They called the planet New Eden, for it had
allowed them to escape their servitude to General Harris, who had
attempted to create a horrific super-super-soldier by combining DNA
from saber-toothed tigers, apes, and humans. The planet felt like
an Eden, too, compared to the war-torn Earth they'd left behind.
Now they were building their own world, with every intention that
it remain peaceful.

She remembered how startled they'd been after
lift-off to discover Taskers still aboard the craft. But the
drones, with no messages reaching them from the aliens, had
remained dormant until some weeks into the trip, when Nigel learned
how to activate them.

Eve reached out and took Elvin's hand. "It's
been years and I'm still doing this."

"Me too," he said, and squeezed her hand. The
pressure sensors in their limbs were extremely sensitive and finely
calibrated. "I guess it's part of the pattern, part of being
human."

They never regretted coming here, though it
hadn't been easy. Their group was brilliant and privy to everything
the scientists knew since they were an integral part of computer
programs designed to understand and deconstruct alien technology.
Test tube Albert Einsteins, Eve thought, all of them. The name the
scientists had picked for them, Maven, was apt. And all of them
were in agreement that Earth was no place for them. They had stored
food and clothing, oxygen and computers, tools and other essentials
they felt they needed to start life over again, living in peace on
a new world.

"We had plenty of problems before we got
here, though," Elvin said, apparently following her train of
thought.

It had hardly been an epic adventure. Several
Mavens died en route; some from disease and some from careless
actions. Thus the journey had turned out to be less of a noble trek
to paradise than a typical human ship of fools setting out to take
a new land. The travel time had been grossly underestimated, so the
journey through space used more of the craft's resources than
anticipated. They gained more speed by placing the ship in stasis
and using drones as a means of increasing resources. But, a trip
calculated at three months had taken them almost a year to complete
and, with no way to control the vessel, supplies were depleted
quickly.

"I know," Eve replied, "but it wasn't all
bad. We did learn a lot."

They had planned for enough food and water to
last the group for at least a year on the new world, which they
hoped would be enough time to find edible food. However, a year in
space with only a three-month supply of oxygen meant that water had
to be used for conversion into breathable air. They gradually
learned the methods and technology of the craft they lived in,
which was their one shining accomplishment. Nigel made the
breakthrough in the fourth month of travel. He figured out how to
make the ship create a paste that could be ingested for food. A few
days later, the fact that beds were available was discovered by
somebody stumbling into a button placed low on a wall. This let a
flat surface slide across the floor, creating a bed.

One single room aboard ship was used for
waste disposal, and later they discovered it was a source for
recycling, as the waste was deconstructed and converted into food
and breathable air. The smell the conversion produced was another
thing entirely, much like burning truck tires mixed with concrete
dust. So it was not surprising, after so many months of travel,
that the smell of fresh air on the new world made several of the
kids vomit. But the air was wonderfully breathable. The sun was a
small red dwarf, and strange plants grew in abundance everywhere.
It seemed that they had truly discovered an Eden.

Elvin said, "No, it wasn't all bad the first
few years, though I still miss some of those guys we lost on the
trip."

Only thirty-eight of the original group
survived to reach their new home world, but these few were just as
determined to create a better world as when they first set out.
After a few months, permanent structures had been created by
Taskers reprogrammed to new commands. New Taskers were created by
taking apart the supply ship for raw materials. The discovery of
edible foods and a good source of fresh water aided them in
creating a town, complete with schools and parks with
fountains.

The first fourteen years had been really
good. They accomplished much, including having many children,
enough to fill that first school.

Then the cicadas hit.

Eve could remember the terror that swept
through her friends as billions of the insects emerged from the
ground and darkened the sky, filling the air with their shrill
crying. They sought trenches where they could lay eggs and find
fluid for food. For those purposes, they found human skin every bit
as appealing as tree branches.

Some of the Mavens found shelter inside
buildings until the onslaught was over, but those who didn't make
it into a shelter died. Later research revealed that while trees
recovered from cicada attacks, though often scarred, the cicadas
carried a bacteria fatal to humans.

Again, it was Nigel who had found an answer.
In a brave experiment, he took one of the sick Mavens, a man close
to death, and partially conjoined him with one of the Taskers.
These Tasker robots were infinitely complex and biomechanical in
design, perfect as host bodies for humans to merge with.

The experiment had been a success. Deep in a
cave, far from curious eyes, Elvin and Eve watched as Nigel
activated the Tasker containing the consciousness of the sick man.
He seemed awake and cognizant.

"How do you feel?" Nigel asked.

"You three don't look the way you're supposed
to. No wait, it's my vision. I'm seeing things differently. Oh, now
I understand. I can see you in the infra-red spectrum, and now in
the ultraviolet," replied Sheldon. Only hours before, Sheldon was
lying on his death bed, almost comatose, only moments from
succumbing to the bacteria infecting his body.

"No, the question I'm asking, Sheldon, is how
do you feel?" Nigel repeated.

"I don't feel sick or in pain, if that's what
you mean," replied Sheldon as he twisted his new mechanical limbs
in several directions, trying to get an understanding of how this
new body worked.

"Look, Sheldon, read my lips, how are you
feeling?" Nigel spoke slowly.

For a moment Sheldon had no answer, then he
realized what Nigel wanted. "I have no feeling. I feel nothing, no
sense of touch at all."

"I think he was too far gone to save," Nigel
said to Elvin and Eve. "He should be able to feel. The pressure
sensors in these mechanoids are quite remarkable."

Elvin sighed. "I'm afraid you're right. The
bacteria must have reached his brain."

"But do you think we should proceed with this
experiment?" Nigel asked. "We'd have to give up a lot of what it
means to be human."

"I don't see that we have much choice." Elvin
took Eve's hand. "We'll still have our brains and that's the only
real difference between us and other living beings. Do you agree,
Eve?"

She had nodded.

"Start the conversion process," Elvin said.
"Those who don't want to be converted will have to be put in stasis
for their own safety. And about Sheldon..."

But Sheldon was lifeless and his Tasker body
dormant. Nigel flicked a switch on the control panel.

Elvin, Eve, and six of their friends had been
the first to be given Tasker bodies. The control of existence on
New Eden shifted to their hands.

Eve remembered being both fascinated and
revolted by the idea of being combined with a Tasker. They didn't
look like humans, being a mix of alien biology and mechanical
constructs, similar to a cross between a spider and a bat. They had
multiple limbs for motion and dexterity, mechanical wing structures
that operated like a hummingbird's wings, and a head without eyes.
They used hearing for guidance, as well as sensors, cameras for
sight, and radio frequencies for speech.

The eight original Taskers found in the ship
were vibrant blue in color. These eight were redesigned to be
merged with the elders of the original Maven group. The Taskers
made from the supply ship materials, larger and less colorful, were
merged with the Mavens most learned in science, medicine and
engineering. The remaining eight Mavens decided to go into stasis
and await some other solution to the toxic effects of the cicada
bacteria.

On Earth, the Mavens had been bred to fill a
role in problem-solving the alien space craft, not in the art of
survival. However, the Great Eight, as the eight elders became
known, soon realized that their blended bodies were stronger,
faster, and better at dealing with all things on their new
world.

Eve glanced down at the 'hand' holding
Elvin's. Her revulsion had long since evaporated, replaced by a
welcome strength and contentment. She might eventually even forget
how it felt to have flesh touching flesh in affection.

>>>

Years passed and the colony flourished,
expanding to cover the planet, roughly the size of Earth's moon.
Millions of inhabitants were cloned from the eight Mavens in stasis
and were now biomechanical drones answering to the Great Eight.
Each city was led by one of the twelve constructs, all loyal and
devoted to the betterment of New Eden. The vast resources of this
world, so long plundered by the so-called alien invaders of the
past, were now plundered again by the brilliant children of
Earth.

The tragedy of losing their children to the
cicada scourge meant that all hope vanished of a democracy for
humans, except for the Great Eight and the twelve constructs. For
the Taskers, the biomechanical drones, their life of blind
servitude would continue until technology improved enough to
provide them with fully competent human brains.

Then everything changed. One day late in the
year 2090, a ship from Earth entered the orbit of this small world
and sent a landing party to make contact.

The meeting went badly. The conversion of the
Mavens to biomechanical constructs had come with a serious
departure from the human form. The lack of eyes and a mouth was the
most obvious, but the many limbs were nearly as shocking. Speech
between individuals was done through radio frequencies, as the
Taskers were never designed to express language. Over time,
conversations had evolved into a series of efficient binary bursts
of information. No one regretted the loss of eyes because the
Tasker form made more efficient use of light through the infrared
and ultraviolet bands. But, to the landing party from Earth, the
Taskers were completely unrecognizable as human.

As the small landing craft flew over the
cities of New Eden, several large Taskers flew up to greet it,
forming ranks around the craft and guiding it to the main building
of the Great Eight, which was covered with thick, green, ivy-like
vegetation. The craft landed in a big open area before the
building. Many of the city's inhabitants rushed to the site to get
a glimpse of these visitors and soon the small craft found itself
surrounded by curious onlookers.

The humans remained in the ship for some
time, not sure if leaving the vessel was a wise idea. Finally, the
occupants of the ship decided that since they hadn't been attacked
so far, they would venture forth in hopes of discovering what had
happened to the kids from Earth.

Three humans in encounter suits left the
craft and cautiously walked toward the building, watched closely by
the remaining crew members huddled in the main window of the ship.
Elvin and Eve came down the long steps from the main building. They
were highly decorated and colorful as befitted regal leaders of
this new world. The Earth leader began communicating in English to
Elvin, asking if the Mavens had landed here in the distant
past.