Inherited War 1: Retribution (2 page)

2

“Did we get
him?  Someone tell me we got him.  If you rejects missed him, I am spacing each and every one of you idiots.  Almost twenty planetary orbits babysitting this hell- be-damned, backwater-planets kid, and he tries to throw himself off a gods-be-damned roof, making us expose ourselves to every asshole that happens to be looking!” Captain Feng was livid to say the least, and his bridge crew was scrambling to get him the answers he wanted.  The Captain was from a race of aliens called the Kerr that had evolved on a planet with slightly higher gravity than the planet he’d been orbiting for the last 20 years.  He was bipedal with almost tanned leather like skin and bony plates protruding over vital areas of his anatomy.  His musculature was so dense and he could feel the strength that he held. No other race had the pure raw untrained strength to match.

The
Kerr were the galaxies enforcers, mercenaries, and thugs.  Very rarely did they achieve positions of rank as had Captain Feng, but he had been with the organization for many years and had subdued most of his berserker tendencies, and replaced them with patience and thought, which was a rarity for his race.

“Cargo hold not reporting in yet
, Sir,” said the first mate. “But we definitely got the tractor lock on him before he fell too far.”

“
Captain to cargo hold. DO.  YOU. HAVE. HIM?”

“That’s affirmative
Sir, package is on board.” Came the voice from the other end of the comm unit.

“Bout damn time
, I expect you idiots to respond faster next time.  If I have to call down for a report again I’ll make you wish your mothers had eaten you at birth.  Now knock him out and get him to the med bay ASAP or your life won’t be worth spit and I’ll see how you lizard boys fare during unaided reentry. Captain out.”  The Captain was not happy and neither were the rest of his so-called crew.  The boss sent them out for the better part of twenty years and now the baby they are sitting almost ruins everything by trying to fly and failing.  He emitted a low growl and barked at the mate, “Get us into a low orbit and plot us a course into deep space so we can be alone with the science experiment for a while. And if you screw this up, you may as well just head down to lock number three cause that’s the last door your ever gonna use.”  The Captain was overly harsh on this crew for many reasons, the primary being they were all low level rejects from the bosses deep space opts crew.  And they acted like it…constantly.  Why the boss would spend so many hard credits on this science project, the ship to do it on, a Captain of his caliber, and then staff it with these idiots, he would never know.

He moved from his command chair to the exit tube
and keyed the call button for the lift.  He grabbed his jacket off the wall and stepped onto the lift. “Med Level,” he said.  The ship wasn’t that big, so a few moments later he stepped off into the antiseptic white hallways of the med bay facility of the ship.  This ship was one of a kind.  The med bay had been designed first and the rest of the ship had been built around it.  It was top notch all the way around. It had every medical device known in the galaxy. If the boss thought it could help get the job done, it was on the ship. The boss had even paid a fortune to buy one of the only ancient human AI’s still in the galaxy.  Yup, it was one of a kind all right and with a price tag to match. 

“Guards
,” he yelled down the hallway, “Get the Doc out of her cell and into the bay, and make it fast.”  He stepped into the decon shower that separated the main hall from the actual medical rooms.  It always left a bad taste in his mouth, he hated it.  The air tight doors opened and he stepped through to the main operating room.  He heard the decon shower activate and turned around to watch the Doc come thru the door. 

“Good evening
Captain, I hope nothing is amiss,” said Doctor Sky.  Dr. Sky was the beauty to Feng’s beast.  Evolved from felines on a low grav world, she was thin and tall, where Feng was short and wide.

“
Something’s always wrong on this ship.  The experiment is on his way up from cargo.  Be ready to knock him out and move on to the final phase.”

“Out of the question
,” said Dr. Sky “We agreed after the last genetic manipulations, two years ago, that we would wait until ten standard years had passed to do the last phase.  It has only been at the most, five.  The consequences of an early final genetic manipulation could very well kill the poor boy.”

“Doc
, need I remind you that I am in charge, and I am the one who has your precious family in the palm of my hand.  I will squeeze if I have to, to get you to work, and as always your family’s and your own life depend on him not dying.”

Dr.
Sky looked at the Kerr, she sighed and said “Yes, Captain.”

The rear hatch to the freight elevator
whirred open and the cargo bay workers pushed in the anti-grav stretcher bearing the small human male.

“Pathetic creature
.” said the Captain.  “Waste of time and credits this one is.  He can barely move himself around, let alone be the key to any great fortune.  I better get an explanation once this is over or I am gonna have some words with the boss man about wasting my time.”

“
It's all the genetic work he has had done on him,” said Dr. Sky.  “We don’t know what the end result will be, but so far he has degraded after each phase.  Except the last one.  We can hope this one will work and make him even stronger, if he lives through it of course.”

“It is your job to make it work Doctor and
I’ll leave you to it, but remember, your family’s lives are in your hands. Comm me the moment anything of significance happens.”  The Captain walked back out through the med bay doors and took the lift to his quarters; he had an important call to place and some ass to kiss if he wanted to salvage this op.

Arriving in his cabin
, the Captain hailed the bridge, “Mate” he said “I want the gravity drive spun up and all power routed to the array on the double. Also, I want no interruptions for the next few minutes.”  Feng sat back in his console chair, watching the red light start its slow progress from red (not ready), up to green (ready).  Another damn piece of equipment worth more than he would make in his lifetime.  A Stellar Com Mark 3.  The only comm gear in the galaxy capable of direct instantaneous transmission between any two points in this galaxy.  The damn thing took all the power from his engines to make it work, but the boss liked good news fast and bad news faster.  He was gonna have to tell the boss everything, and hope he agreed with his assessment and handling of the situations the damned experiment had forced him into.  Moments later the comm chimed green, the Kerr put his call through, and hoped his boss was in a good mood.

3

              Dr Sky spent a few moments looking at the patient deciding her course of action.  She was deciding on the treatment, and what else she could get away with putting into him, which would aide her when it was time for her to make her move.  She was no fool, she knew the chances of her surviving after she had finished the tasks here were about as slim as her family still being alive.  Organizations with this much money and clout didn’t make a habit of leaving any witnesses.  The Captain and crew call him “The Experiment”, but she secretly called him “The Savior.”  Because through him she may have the chance to escape whatever fate the Kerr had in store for her.  The savior lay still and frozen in the stasis field being created by the grav gurney.  Unmoving, not breathing.  For all intents and purposes, dead to the world, until she hit the switch to lower the field.  But she needed time. Time to compose herself and her thoughts because she only had one chance to say the right thing. What he needed to hear to make him fight to survive the next step of his evolution from Human to pure strain human.  She gracefully stalked forward, bent down, put her finger on the flashing indicator, and paused.  She moved her mouth next to his ear and depressed the button removing the field.   The savior jolted into motion screaming and blinking in confusion, she had only a moment, “I need you to live, you need fight for life. If you can do this, I can free you from the pain.  Only you can save us all.”  She depressed the plunger, injecting him with the sedative that would run through his veins for the next few weeks. While she slowly guided the bacteria carrying the gene splicer code throughout his body, she again whispered to him,  “I am sorry, you will feel no pain but I must keep your brain active and awake for the process to work.  I am told that time passes swiftly in this state, and patients remember little of their time in it.  You will wake in approximately fifteen of your days, and feel better than you have in your whole life.  What I destroyed in you the last few years, that made you weak, will be repaired and you will grow to be the perfect specimen of the ancient Pure Human Strain.  If you survive.”  She sighed to herself, and then turned to the med bot.  “I am ready to begin.”

“Ahh
, Captain, this is an unexpected and unscheduled call. I hope nothing is amiss.”  That was The Admiral, and he was wearing his dress whites. Feng must have interrupted something important if the Admiral was in his whites.  Damn it, he thought to himself.  “I am a busy man Mr. Feng and your silence is starting to annoy me.”

“Sorry
Sir, but I have a few developments to report that are, umm, quite unanticipated.”  Feng fidgeted in his seat.  This was the only being in the galaxy that made Feng nervous.  And nothing made a Kerr nervous. 

“Go on
Mr. Feng.”

“We have had two unexpected situations ari
se with the experiment Sir.  The first occurred six standard months ago when he joined his Earth nation’s military who, unfortunately, happens to be fighting two wars in two different areas at once.  I had no choice but to cut his military career short.”  Feng hesitated this was the touchy part of this debrief.  “He was being deployed to one of the war zones so I was forced to act.  I infiltrated my stealth ground asset and had him wound the experiment with a non-life threatening injury that would remove him from battle and the military.”

Silence filled the room like
thunder.  “So in order to save him, you hurt him? Is that correct?”

“Yes
Sir.”

“Hmm
, what did your man on the ground do?” asked the Admiral.

“He shot him in the legs, Sir.” said Feng. “But, I will add, that he made a full recovery within a few months and was discharged from the human army Sir, and with barely a limp to show for it.”

“And the second thing
Mr. Feng?”

“Apparently
he suffered a mental break after being released from the human med facility and he had to be extracted visibly, and forcefully, before causing, umm, permanent and irrevocable damage.  He attempted suicide, Sir. We had to grab him with the tractor unit and uncloak to get him inside. Exposure was minimal but likely someone saw us.  As the humans are technologically inferior this should pose no problems.  Unfortunately the time table has to be moved up and the Dr is currently starting the final phase of reconnecting his dormant pure strain genes.  The Dr is confident he will survive the process and be useable for what you need. Whatever that is.  We are currently cruising outbound to the grav limit and are awaiting your order for a rendezvous.”

“
Captain, I knew there was a reason I chose you for this mission.  I want you to head for the edge of the galactic disc and hold station there until the subject has undergone all procedures and is ready to be of use to me.  But be aware Captain, extreme caution must be maintained with regards to the experiment.  After he has had the full gene reconstruction, he will have the ability to control all ancient systems on board the ship.  To include the AI.  DO NOT allow him within physical contact range of any equipment at all.  And tell him nothing of why he is here, or even where ‘here’ is.  He is worth untold billions to me Captain and I plan on collecting. Now I must return to my affair at the capitol and will expect to hear from you again when the experiment is ready to be transferred to my possession.  Good evening, Captain.” 

With that
, the Admiral severed the connections and Feng sagged in his chair.  Fifteen more days he thought to himself. Fifteen days, then he could get rid of the human, the Dr, collect his pay, and retire to home world living the good life fighting in the arenas and bedding his mates.  “Bridge, I want a course set for the nearest edge of the galactic disc, reroute power from the array to engines, I want to be there yesterday.   Captain out.”  His next call was to the med bay.  “Doc, this is the Captain, I want the subject fully restrained at all times and I’m assigning around the clock guard on him.  He touches nothing or no one.  He is also to remain fully sedated until such time as you need him fully conscious.  This is not an option, it is an order. Captain out.”  Sleep, then get some food.  That sounded like a good plan.  A plan with no complications.  He flopped onto his bed, closed his eyes, and thought of the many mates his new fortunes would buy.

4

Being dead was the
oddest experience he had ever had.  He didn’t remember hitting the ground, any pain, or anything else. He had jumped from a goddamned thirty story building so he had to be dead, right?  But that voice he heard said he wasn’t, or wouldn’t be, if he fought to live.  He thought it was an angel when he opened his eyes there for a moment.  She was definitely other worldly and she reminded him of…well damn it, a cat in human form.  But why would an angel look like a cat and tell him the things she had told him.  If this was death it was overrated.  It felt like he was conscious in a dream, but there was no dream and he had the strangest feeling that his body should be spasming in agony right now, but he felt nothing.  He saw only emptiness.  He had no body, couldn’t move, and couldn’t talk.  He could think though, that was something.  Maybe he was stuck in some limbo or purgatory.  That’s what Father Asshole had said was waiting for him if he didn’t fly right and straighten himself out.  If this was eternity, this was gonna suck. Bad.  Real bad.

“
This is not eternity or death
.”  A voice? Said from somewhere? He couldn’t talk so he thought, “Who is there and how the hell can I hear you, if I don’t have ears?”

“
You are not hearing me, you are interpreting the information being released by the restructuring and reactivating of the dormant genes in your system.  I am the code placed in your species millennia ago by the First of humanity.  You will not remember much of what is released into your conscious because of the shock.  The sheer amount of knowledge would most likely kill you.  Along with all the knowledge we possessed, a code was implanted that when activated, released what’s called ancestral memory.  That, in combination with your subconscious, allows for a two way dialogue with me, the one who donated your specific strain of DNA.  Think of me as your ultimate grandfather.  Our time is short, I am altering how you perceive time so you will not realize how long this actually took.  This was not the plan we had in mind, your people were supposed to discover the dormant DNA in their systems on their own and reawaken it themselves.  But our hand has been forced by our esteemed Captain Feng.  I sense the doctor is almost done, and I must go, but remember the worst is yet to come.  You may not be ready yet to handle the final transformation, but the good doctor has cheated and you may survive yet.  I will come again when the time is right.  Be prepared to know and understand things foreign to you and have answers and information pop into your head at times.  Fight and be strong young Cole we all are counting on you
.” With that, the strange presence was gone.

“Wait
”
thought Cole frantically. “
Who are you?  What are you?  Come back please.”
But there was no response and Cole was left alone again. 
What in the hell is going on here?
Cole thought to himself. 
I have to be dead, this is some crazy shit.  No one ever relied on me for anything and this crap about ancient humans?
Cole didn’t believe in aliens.  No way was this happening to him.  God damn it he was supposed to be dead, not getting jerked around by his subconscious. 
I probably went insane, that’s it. I’m still at Walter Reed in the crazy tank, totally doped up and dead to the world, yeah that’s it, it had to be.  What else could it be really?  Aliens?  A message coded in my DNA from some ancient human’s? Yeah right.  Beam me up Scotty.

For the next few days Dr. Sky spent
every moment of the day and night hunched over the readouts guiding the bacteria that had been programmed to do the final reconnect of the savior’s DNA.  It was tiring and tedious work, but she had to be ready to kill any stray bacteria that wandered off course or started a tumor.  He was just too weak to fight the battles himself.  He had only 3 years of a fully working immune system and it just couldn’t keep up with the rigors his body was currently going through.  She had started over twenty years ago with the savior’s mother.  She had ensured that her offspring would contain the qualities that the Captain was looking for.  She had also warned them repeatedly that the young boy may not survive the procedures, and even if he did, he would be weak and sickly. She told them many times but their reply was always the same, “Make it work or you and your family die.”  And so she had.  For twenty years she had been locked on this ship, keeping that boy alive while putting him though hell.  She felt horrible for doing it, but when she closed her eyes at night all she saw were her sister and parents, and that picture of them in the cage.  Dirty, malnourished and begging her to do her job and save them.  She knew in her heart that they had to be dead, but there was always a chance, however slim, that she could actually save them.  Her knowledge of medicine, and her flat out refusal of the cut rate nurses they tried to foist off on her, had allowed her the chance to slightly alter and add to the final stage of the operation.  He was her secret weapon when it came down to her making it out alive.  She hoped…and if he could live through the final procedures.  She had added a few surprises to the bacteria packages they had given her to use. The strains had been easily modified to divert a few million individual bacteria to strengthen muscles, bone, cartilage, and tendons, as well as some to strengthen and refine his nervous system to increase movement speed.  It would take time but he would have almost unbelievable reflex action and coordination.  Time was a factor.  She didn’t know how long she had between the time that she was done, and when they would take him to use toward whatever purpose they had intended.  With the new orders she had received about not letting him touch anything, she suspected that she knew what they had found that needed an ancient human’s touch and DNA.  She had to hope she had the time to finish and stall them long enough, for him to regain strength so he could help her fight, if it came to that.

So many variables so little time. 
In two days she would have to start reconnecting his brain to the rest of his body so the bacteria could start the last phase of altering his brain make-up and chemistry.  He would be fully conscious for that part and she knew it was gonna be painful for him.  Damn, the bacteria had wandered and started a tumor. Her mind was wandering. She was going to have to corral the bacteria and take a few hours break to get some food and sleep.  Her people didn’t need much sleep, as a rule, but the constant stress of her work was wearing her down.  There, that was the last of the program’s bacteria.   She trusted the ones she cooked up and was not worried about leaving them to do their jobs with no supervision.  She stood up, placed her hands in the small of her back, and did a spine popping stretch.  She looked at the guard and said “I’m going to get some food and sleep, I will be back in a few hours, don’t disturb me unless any of the alarms on his monitor go off.”  She didn’t wait for a response, she turned and walked out through the decon chamber and then to her small private cabin.  She ordered up a light dinner, took a long hot shower, and went to bed, content she was doing everything she could to turn the situation more into her favor.