Star Force: Perquisition (10 page)

“Thanks.”

“When you’re finished with your transformation you two
can stare at each other over in the corner,” the trailblazer offered, then
glanced at the lead medtech. “I think we can confirm they’ve got
spidey
senses. How much so we’ll have to figure out through
training, but
Prentha
can feel things in proximity.
He didn’t react immediately though, so I don’t think this is on Pefbar level.”

“It’s not,” the medtech said, looking at a monitor.
“But it’s also more than that. There are upgrades to all of their existing
senses plus the addition of the ‘proximity’ tissue. I’m not detecting any
anomalies in the flash growth, so let’s get the other four through and start
with the testing.”

“You still up for this
Ileen
?”
Brad asked.

“I was until the ‘horny’ part. Promise me you’ll
restrain me if I get the urge to jump one of these guys?”

“I promise.”

“Then I’m good to go,” she said, stepping inside the
machine and placing her hands on the sphere. “Zap me.”

“And?” Brad asked hours later in
Vortison’s
temporary office as he was pouring over the biomonitor data.

The geneticist shook his head slowly. “I thought I
understood this before, but reading code and seeing it implemented is
considerably more different than I allowed. This is the first time I’ve ever
dealt with a complete unknown. Every other code sequence I knew what it would be
in physical form from previous experience or from database entries. Individual
aspects always crop up leading to unexpected variations, but this is far beyond
that.”

“Is that your way of saying there’s a problem?”

“Not with these 5, as far as I can see. My predictions
as to what the other upgrades are
are
now suspect,
because I didn’t get these right. What the big score will be is now in even
more doubt if I can’t interpret the smaller bits of code correctly.”

“How close are you to the other bits?”

“Reds will be soon. My staff back on Earth are still
working on it and are close to finalizing. I thought about delaying until we
had both, but decided it was best to run this trial before risking the Reds. I’m
glad there were no anomalies and they’re all unharmed, but my faith in my
abilities had taken a serious hit in the foresight department.”

“You’re still missing a variant anyway, so I never
expected a complete picture.”

“But I’ve been able to come to some conclusions, and
not all the ones I informed you about previously. Now I have cause to second
guess them all.”

“Meaning the only way we’ll know for sure is to turn
it on and see what happens?”

“Yes…though it won’t turn on without our say so. The
biomonitors are confirming that these five are not transmitting activation
material. We were able to turn it off successfully. Hopefully that’s permanent,
but only time will tell.”

“Can we do the same for the Oranges?”

“In theory yes, but I’d like some more time to study
this case before we start widespread implementation of the genetic blocks.”

“You’re blocking or removing the activation material?”

“At this point deactivating so they’re not produced,
but the mechanisms to produce them are still in their genome. I’m not close to
being confident in our ability to strip them away entirely without side
effects.”

“Even more so now?”

“The more data we get the better I’ll be able to make
predictions, but right now my confidence in that department is lacking. These
sensory upgrades are different than I expected, in multiple ways, and I’m not
sure why yet.”

“Different good or different bad?”

“Nothing is bad as far as I can tell, it just works
differently than I assumed…in some places. Others did come through more or less
as expected. That is even more annoying, because if my method of prediction was
flawed it should render them all incorrect. A partial success is more
problematic.”

“Ultimately I don’t need predictions, just results.
And for the record, we don’t always predict lizard strategy correctly. They
adapt well, and have caught us off guard on more than one occasion.”

“Thank you, but I doubt you’re very happy when that
happens.”

“We don’t let it get to us. It’s a challenge and we
just focus on working the problem in round 2…or 2,000 at this point.”

“But you don’t do the harm if you’re wrong, they do.
Working with genetics is me risking other people’s bodies and lives on me being
right.”

“Try attacking a city and only shooting the bad guys.”

“All the lizards are bad guys.”

“We don’t only fight the lizards, and I’m still
waiting for the day where we find a lizard that doesn’t want to fight us. If
and when that happens how
do you
think we’ll feel
about all the cities we’ve razed from orbit?”

“Unknown strangers versus people I’m looking at face
to face, though I suppose both situations hold unique perils. I just don’t want
other people to pay for my mistakes.”

“Same here.”

10

April 30, 3058

Aphat
System (Bsidd
Region)

Nym

“What are you going to do?”
Kyp
asked Brad as they both stood in an observation post high above one of the
larger advanced training centers on
Nym
where the
‘enhanced’ volunteers were going about a variety of training drills. It was
little more than an elevated platform, but the windows were energy shields that
only allowed light in and looked black to those on the outside. To the pair of
trailblazers they had an open air perch to watch the calisthenics, sparring,
and running drills across the park-like terrain, though the entire facility was
indoors.

“The Oranges already have their enhancement unlocked,”
Brad reminded him.

“Have any left this planet for Axius or elsewhere?”

“Not yet, but when they do the females will spread it.
Possibly beyond Star Force boundaries. These aren’t psionics, but they’re
abilities that the general populations of the galaxy do not possess. I have the
feeling that if we let this get out we could be grooming more powerful enemies
than we already have.”

“These
timelocks
are going
to expire anyway.”

“Eventually yes, but Vortison said they’re more than
just a countdown. Experience factors in, with whatever this group of Oranges
went through advancing their timetable. He thinks
it’s
skill related. Those that prove themselves worthy by some internal gage are
shoved ahead on the path…or it might be a safety mechanism designed to insure
that those who are opened to the big prize aren’t pond scum.”

“The tests we did of the independent Protovic suggest
it will be millennia before their
timelocks
expire,
and they all seem to be on the same clock as far as we could tell.”

“Did you tell the Chancellor?”

Kyp
nodded. “He wants to
know what’s going on as much as we do.”

“Does he want the upgrades?”

“He’s worried about unknowns, but the sensory package
is very appealing to them. Fear of what they might unlock had kept him from
making a direct request. Right now he just wants information.”

“I’m more worried about the Reds,” Brad admitted. “We
handpicked the volunteers to make sure they were loyal, but their intelligence
has spiked considerably. Give that to someone with less than adequate scruples
and they could cause a lot of damage.”

“How close are you to the others?”

“Vortison is back on Earth working on it, though he’s
complaining about the back and forth and even teased about setting up here
permanently.”

“So not long then?”

“He’s close with the
Aquas
.”

“You only have a handful of them anyway?”

“Very few, and a lot of them are still in prison.
We’ve got full maturia batches coming through the system now, thanks to some
volunteer surrogates, so by the time Vortison figures it out we should be able
to find at least a few viable candidates.”

“Why the tinkering? All you really needed was a tissue
sample.”

“To chase the big prize, yeah, but I want uniformity
in the maturia classes. The Oranges have had to have a different program and if
we end up going that route with the others they’re all going to need to start
out with peers.”

“So you are thinking about unlocking the general
population?”

Brad cringed. “The Oranges aren’t so bad. They’re
stronger than other Protovic but weaker than some of other races so it doesn’t
stand out. Other than making them hard to sneak up on, having the sensory
upgrades in the Purples doesn’t strike me as a bad idea across the board. It’s
the others that worry me.”

“How are the Oranges blending with the others post
maturia?”

“They have an advantage physically, but one that is
matched with years of training in the others. Now that we’ve got sufficiently
advanced veterans that supersede the Oranges coming out of the maturias it
isn’t an issue, but before it was.”

“You’re thinking it might be better to keep all the
variants on the same page and only upgrade individuals?”

“That or break them up into Clans.”

Kyr
raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“There’s a reason we don’t have Humans and Calavari
training together, save for some special situations. If the Protovic variants
differentiate enough it could cause rifts to form out of necessity, in which
case it would be better to restructure this faction into subunits that worked
closely with one another rather than trying to force a single system on the
whole.”

“And for that you’ll need a lot more
aquas
down the line?”

“Call me sentimental, but I want them back with the
others. Not just a few stragglers that managed to survive.”

“I thought there was another reason,”
Kyp
said, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked
down on a group of oranges running on one of the dirt trails and making decent
time. “Normally we leave reproduction alone.”

“I only got 612 to work with initially, all imprisoned
for a lot of nastiness. To date two of them have reformed and joined the
general population. The others came from their offspring and had to be mixed in
with a Red maturia. That worked alright, but I hate the lack of color
coordination.”

“Ha. There’s the real reason, you OCD freak.”

Brad smirked. “Haven’t heard that term in a long time.
Glad we got rid of all those
pseudomedical
bitchings
along with old Earth.”

“No problems with the surrogates, I assume?”

“Nah. Just a little egg swapping. When the
Aquas
’ numbers get high enough we won’t need it anymore and
we’ll let the civilian population dictate the numbers.”

“How serious are you about this Clan idea?”

“I don’t know,” Brad admitted. “Part of me wants them
to get the upgrades on the whole while another says to keep them restricted to
an ‘earn only’ group. If the Oranges weren’t already unlocked I probably
wouldn’t even be considering this, but right now I’m not sure which way to go.”

“If we encounter other Protovic that are unlocked,
then the choice is simple, right?”

“Yeah it would be, but right now only the one group of
Oranges is. Every other wayward colony is still
timelocked
.”

“Have we found other Oranges?”

“Just one, about a decade ago.”

“Are any of them here?”

Brad shook his head. “Nope. We did the meet and greet
but they weren’t interested in sharing. If they were closer or in lesser
numbers we’d take them by force, but right now it isn’t a good option.”

Kyp
looked at him
quizzically. “Did I miss something?”

“They’re out on the far side of Preema space and none
too nice, about 200 billion of them spread across 4 star systems with a big ‘to
conquer’ sticker on their foreheads. They’re not quite up to Veliquesh
depravity but they’re bad enough. So no, none of them are here.”

“Did we get a tissue sample from them?”

“Yes, and they’re still
timelocked
as well.”

“For how long?”

“I’d have to check the records, but no one that we’ve
found is close to upgrading. Why our Oranges already made it is still a
mystery.”

“How much of this have you told our allied Protovic?”

“Nothing that I haven’t sent through you, though some
of their observers here might have picked up something from casual
conversation. I don’t interact with them and they pretty much pretend to be
furniture taking notes.”

“Do they have different colored data tags?”
Kyp
joked.

“I haven’t paid that close attention. Should I be?
I’ve pretty much let them run under the radar.”

“The Chancellor is trying to keep information away
from the public as long as possible. He’s worried and uncertain about where all
this is going. His mind is split between holing up and reaching out to the
nearest colonies. The Shanplenix have offered a hand of friendship that he is
cautious to accept. Right now they’re in wait and see mode.”

“Worried about what exactly?”

“Beyond the transformation? They don’t want to lose
their cultural identity in a wash of newcomers, which is why their borders have
been closed to Protovic immigration since we conquered the Veliquesh. They’ve
got a good thing going with their empire right now and they don’t want to wreck
it. If there is value to be gained from the others they know we’ll ferret it
out, so they’re keying off of us even if they won’t admit it publically. I
wouldn’t worry about their observers here, though I would keep an eye on the
others you’ve let in.”

“I already do. A group of Blues is getting kicked out
next week. Those idiots just don’t know when to stop playing politics.”

“Again? Why’d you let them back in?”

“If I can get them to just sit and take notes like
your buddies then some good may come of it. We’re still getting a steady flow
of immigrants from them that are willing to go through indoctrination to get
here, so I’d prefer to keep the lines of communication open. Their government
observers will be sent back and they’ll have to wait another 10 years before
they get another chance. I’ll keep playing the game until they learn if only to
keep information going back to their population, from which we may get more
immigration.”

“Why do you care?”

“Because for some reason they all feel like family. We
still don’t know how they got spread out or how many of their colonies were
killed off, but I hate the idea of people being prisoners of their own society
and if I can keep the doors open to allow them to move freely I prefer to do
so. We do the same with other races, and have for a long time.”

“We’ve also told a lot of races where to shove it,”
Kyp
added.

“Something else is going on with the Protovic, and
until we figure out what it is I don’t like cutting any of them off. The more
that are here learning from us the better.”

“Is that why you let the Chancellor’s
observers
camp out?”

“I know they’re not joining us, but they’re allies and
just next door anyway. We can look after them if needed.”

“You’re going to need a second star system soon if you
keep growing like this.”

“We’ve got plenty to choose from, but right now I want
everyone here where I can monitor them. I’d rather not have to bring in Human
Monarchs and right now I don’t have any Protovic Administrators that I feel are
up to the promotion yet. They’re still keying off me and my staff and we need
to keep it that way until we sort out all these changes. Once we get our
identity stabilized we can branch out, but right now we’re still in a lot of
flux.”

“Is that why you wanted me here?”

“I need a fresh set of eyes on the problem. I keep
feeling like I’m missing something right in front of me.”

“Well, from what I can tell of your elite class
they’ve got a decent skillset. They’re obviously still
newbs
,
but they’re showing isolated strengths beyond what we typically see in Humans.”

“That lopsided nature has made creating training
programs for them a bit tricky.”

“How similar are the Purples to Pefbar?”

“A poor comparison, but they do have a light perimeter
sense in their cocktail. Low level energy field that varies from half a meter
up to about 4 when they’re focusing on it. More like a
spidey
sense than Pefbar.”

“So your notes said. And the rest of the ‘cocktail?’”

“Ask a Knight.”

“Just an increase in the rest of their senses.”

“Yes, but there seems to be some tie-in. When combined
they seem to accumulate into a very vivid image, based off the mind reads I’ve
done.”

“Nightvision?”

“Better than us, not quite up to Knight
level
. Pitch black they can’t see any more than us…save for
the fact that they glow.”

“A double-edged sword there. Apparently it can be very
annoying, according to some of the stories I’ve heard. The full body garb our
allies wear isn’t just a fashion trend, but a practical necessity that they
developed after several problems they had.”

“Such as?”

“I was told a story of attacks where the civilians
were hunted down even when they fled because they couldn’t hide their glow. Add
in pursuit, and especially ambush, are all but impossible when your head is a
lightbulb. Their glow became a cultural liability, so they just adopted the
practice of hiding it completely when in public. That’s been relaxed some after
seeing our Axius Protovic roam with free skin, but it’s still a sign of worry with
them more than prudence. That pesky survival imperative again.”

“How did the Chancellor take that revelation?”

“That was one bit I did not share with him.”

“Any particular reason?”

“They’ve got enough to take in as is. Telling them
they’re puppets that some ancient power is pulling the strings of isn’t going
to help their mindset right now.”

“A bit harsh. We have genetic imperatives too.”

“Ours are natural…as far as I know.”

“I doubt the V’kit’no’sat would approve of tinkering
in that aspect. If needed it would scream inferiority.”

“Yeah, well, the idea that we might have some Clone
Wars era inhibitor chips woven into our DNA has crossed my mind more than once.
Our medtechs haven’t found anything, but you never know.”

“Honestly, that thought had never occurred to me,”
Brad admitted.

“I don’t think there’s anything there or we’d have
found it by now, either in genetic analysis or in the database records. But
sometimes you
gotta
wonder what’s all programmed into
us. The Zak’de’ron hid coding from the rest of the V’kit’no’sat concerning Tier
4 psionics and battlemeld, so who knows what else they slid in there.”