Dangerous Evolution (20 page)

“Time to die, Commander,” it said, then leaned in to push the
needle into my neck.

“You’re right about that motherfucker!”

A metallic glint flashed past my eyes, then Rroske fell back clutching
its chest; I saw a combat knife sticking out of the Sentient’s torso. Electrical
currents arched around the handle, then faded away as Rroske fiercely pulled
the object out and threw it. The Sentient fell over sideways, smashing its head
on the floor so violently that it bounced once before laying still. The needle fell
out of its hand and went skittering across the floor.

“Mendoza?”

I gasped when I saw her in the doorway of the storage room. She
was barely standing—barely breathing from what I could tell—but had managed to
take out Rroske from across the room.

“Yes sir,” she said proudly, then fell against the wall for
support. She started staggering towards us, inching her way along the wall.

“Nice throw, Ensign,” I said. I knew I needed to encourage her, keep
her engaged and conscious. She was still our only hope.

“I was aiming at his head sir,” she said with a smirk, then
faltered for a moment. I thought for sure she would fall over, but she regained
her balance and kept moving.

Making it to my bed, she pushed herself off the wall and fell
forward, landing hard across my chest. She moaned as her torso smashed into
mine, and I realized that the alien membrane across her stomach was the only
thing keeping her internal organs from being pushed out by the impact. I could
feel her perspiration soaking through my clothes.

With cold, clammy hands, she reached over and undid my wrist straps,
then slowly sagged down to lie flat on the ground—unconscious. As I reached
down to undo my ankle straps, I saw her entire body started spasming; her chest
rose jerkily, went rigid, then fell back to the floor.

“Get me out of these so I can help her!” Val pleaded.

 I ripped the last restraint off and leaped off the bed, running
over to Val’s side to free her. Mendoza was motionless; I didn’t think she was
breathing.

Val jumped down from the gurney and ran to her, while I sprinted
over to the field generator and tried to figure out the controls. They were
designed to interact with a Sentient’s electrical field, but while squatting on
still wobbly legs, Sa walked me through a bypass method.

When I finally managed to bring the shield down, Sa ran over to a
wall unit and grabbed some equipment, joining Val to treat Mendoza. Stinson and
I went over to observe, staying out of the way.

“How bad is it?” I asked, but looking at Mendoza’s inert,
colorless form; I already knew the answer.

Val shook her head before replying. “Bad. Doctor Sa, does that
contraption scan blood types?”

“It does.”

Sa waved the machine over Mendoza and Val, and then rose to scan
Stinson and myself. “The Commander will work. He’s not perfect, but this isn’t
a perfect situation.”

“You,” Val pointed at me, “Back on the gurney.”

I reluctantly returned to the medical bed I’d just escaped, pushing
the restraints aside to lay down voluntarily this time. Sa and Stinson lifted
Mendoza, gently placing her in the bed right next to me. Val positioned a
respirator over her mouth—adjusted the oxygen flow to maximum—then began
rifling through drawers in a supply pedestal until she found what she needed.

“Here you go,” she said, throwing what looked like an arm band to
Sa. The Sentient attached the device to my arm, then pulled out a thin, clear
hose from the cuff’s housing. Sa laid it across my chest, and then handed the
open end to Val. She attached it to a similar cuff she’d already placed on
Mendoza.

“This isn’t going to be pretty,” she said. “But we don’t have time
for pretty.”

“Wait,” I said. “What about the virus Rroske injected us with?
It’s in my blood now. Won’t it infect her?”

“No,” Val answered. “According to my scans, she hasn’t taken
Permalife yet, so there’s nothing for Rroske’s virus to corrupt.”

Sa hit a switch on my cuff, and I felt a slight pinch as the needle
inserted itself into my vein. Almost instantly, my blood began to fill the
clear tube; I watched as it crossed my chest, moved over the divide between the
two beds, and into Mendoza’s cuff.

“I can’t see anything through this membrane,” I heard Val complain.
“She’s bleeding internally somewhere, but I don’t dare open her up here.”

She looked over at the storage room—at the doorway where Mendoza
had launched her unlikely rescue. “Doctor Sa, I’ll keep an eye on this, would
you please prep the stasis chamber. We’ll have to put her back in.”

“I’m afraid you’re right, Doctor Evans.” The Sentient checked my
cuff again then went over to the storage room.

“How the hell did she get out of it?” I asked Val.

“I don’t know, but this is one determined young woman. She’s in
pretty rough shape, but I don’t doubt her will to live.”

Stinson took a position at the door, listening for any activity
outside. “I don’t think we will be missed anytime soon,” he said, then gestured
at the dead Sentient, still in the middle of the floor. “I think Dr. Rroske
over there kept to itself. In fact, with what it was up to, it probably needed
complete confidentiality.”

“Even so,” I said wearily, “we can’t stay here forever.”

Sa came out of the storage area looking glum. “The battery is dead.
Those idiots must have damaged it while transferring her to the
Na’ardeen
.
Either that, or there was a power spike during the attack on Del’s ship. As the
power gradually leaked out, the stasis subsided and she regained consciousness.
She must have experienced a tremendous amount of pain.”

I looked over at Mendoza, vowing to make sure she received every
promotion and commendation I could wrangle if we got back. If she survived…so
many ifs. But that girl was a true warrior and deserved nothing less. I was
starting to feel a little light headed. “Can you fix it?”

“No, regrettably it’s beyond repair. But I can plug it into a
stationary power outlet.”

“So if we leave this room, she will have to stay behind?”
If she
did,
I thought to myself,
we would damn sure be coming back for her.

“Leave?” Stinson said in disbelief, “And go where?”

“We need to find Ambassador Del,” I answered, “I have a plan.”

Sa looked confused, “I understand escaping the ship, Commander,
but I’m surprised you would risk yourself to take the ambassador with you.”

“I appreciate your confidence in me, Doctor Sa, but I don’t think
we can get off this ship. Not for long anyway. Even if we did manage to steal a
shuttle, how far do you think we’d get before they vaporized us?”

“Not far,” Sa conceded.

“I’ve seen the way you and Captain Thov treat the ambassador. Del
obviously commands respect in your society—even now. If we can find the cure for
the Sentient virus in Rroskes’ database, Ambassador Del might be able to
convince the captain that we are not responsible. And when I say we, I mean our
group here
and
humanity in general. We could stop this war before it
begins…if it hasn’t started already.”       

“Ambassador Del represented an entire planet in The Consensus, and
that gave it immense respect and power. But that planet is dead, Commander, along
with any real influence the ambassador had. At this point, I am afraid Del’s
title is merely a courtesy.”

“Even so,” I managed, “it’s our only chance.” I was getting tired,
and felt extremely weak; the blood transfusion and shock I’d received were
taking a heavy toll on my body.

“Doctor Sa,” Val said, sensing my difficulties, “I’m about to stop
the transfusion. Please plug in the stasis chamber so we can transfer her.”

“Right away,” Sa replied.

Val leaned over me, her face filling my field of vision. I could
feel her breath on my face as she reached out to disconnect the cuff. I fought
the urge to lean up and meet her lips.

Focus Commander Malik.
The blood loss was making me
loopy, I realized.

“So that’s your plan huh?” Val asked, backing away to discard the
cuff onto an empty wall shelf. 

“Yep,” I slurred. Then smiling, replied, “I never said it was a
good one.”

Chapter
Eight

Sa managed to scrounge up some food, albeit barely suitable for
human consumption, and we ate while the Sentient sorted through the files on Rroske’s
console. The doctor was the only one of us who could competently interface with
the computers, so I also tasked it with finding out where Del was being held.

I grimaced as I ate, nauseous from the blood transfusion and alien
food—conspiring to challenge my stomach. The yellow biscuits were rock hard and
looked like plastic, but they tasted like dirt—maybe
worse
than dirt. But
I knew that I had to eat, my body needed those nutrients to begin replacing the
blood I’d donated to Mendoza.

“You want to do what?” Stinson asked, still guarding the door.

“When Sa finds the door codes, I want to open the hatch, subdue
the guards, and drag them back inside. Then we can slip out to free Del, and
have him contact the captain to broker a deal—to convince Thov to give us an
opportunity to explain the truth.”

Stinson looked at me dubiously. “What kind of
deal
did you
have in mind?”

“One that saves our lives hopefully, and puts an end to
Human/Sentient hostilities.”

“I’ve found the door codes,” Sa interrupted, “
and
the ambassador.
Doctor Rroske was kind enough to leave the terminal active with no security
protocols in place.”

“I’m sure Rroske didn’t think
it
would be dying today,” I
said. “It was saving that honor for us.”

“Yes, well…I can open the door whenever you wish, but unfortunately
Ambassador Del is nowhere near our present location. In fact, Del is near the
Central Hub. I don’t see how we can possibly get that far through the ship
without being captured.”

“Leave that to me,” I said.

Val came out of the storage area shaking her head, “If we don’t
get her into surgery soon she is going to die. There is nothing more I can do
to stabilize her, and stasis just isn’t going to cut it.”

“What is soon?” I asked. “How long are we talking about?”

“Twenty four hours, give or take,” she said angrily. I could tell
she was tired, that she felt helpless and frustrated by her inability to heal
Mendoza. “Ben…we have to
do
something.”

“We will…right now.” I hopped off the medical bed; I wasn’t
feeling much better but there was no time for recovery. It was time to act.
Stiffening my shoulders, I adopted my command voice, attempting to project an
air of strength and surety. I had to reassure everyone that we were moving forward
and that everything would be fine.

“Val, I’d like you to rig up a few hypodermic needles—ones able to
drop a Sentient, quickly and quietly. Consult with Doctor Sa to formulate
something suitable for their physiology. She looked at me curiously, then
nodded her head and went to confer with the Sentient.

“Captain Stinson,” I continued, drawing his attention away from
the door, “you and I have our own little project to accomplish.”

I motioned him over, and he joined me in gathering an assortment
of objects from around the lab. Most of the items were mysterious to us, and we
could only guess at their intended purposes, but our choices were driven by
appearance, not functionality. When I briefly explained my plan to Stinson, he did
his job—pointing out all of the obvious faults and shortcomings—but when he
couldn’t come up with any better alternatives, we both resigned ourselves to
this course of action.

“Can’t we just take one off one of the guards?” he asked.

“From what I can see, they’re surgically attached—wired into the
body’s electrical field. It would take a long time to remove one and reinstall it.
Time we don’t have. Even then, it wouldn’t be functional without the other
implants boosting the body’s intrinsic electrical field.”

“Sa isn’t going to like this at all,” he offered, pointing at our
pile of wire and metal bits.

“What am I not going to like?” the Sentient asked over its
shoulder, still waving its hands over the work console. “Never mind, I’ve found
everything, Commander, and the access logs indicate that this is the only copy—Rroske
really was paranoid. All of its research is here, including the original viral agent,
and more importantly, the cure for it.”

“The actual cure, or a working version of Rroske’s Sentient evolution
virus?” I asked.

“Both. Rroske had ready access to the child, and was responsible
for the virus itself. The cure was a simple thing with all that developmental
knowledge. Since our capture, it had been using our research from Seveq to
fix
its silicon evolution virus. Everything works now, the good and the bad.”

I looked down at Rroske’s body, trying to fathom the arrogance and
hubris necessary to inflict such a horrible thing on its own people; to tamper
with their very existence. And there were even more of these Pure Way zealots
out there, of that I was sure. How long before one of them was tempted to try
again? The thought was sobering.