Fan Fiction ❯ Aliens: Genocide ❯ Under Control ( Chapter 3 )

Aliens: Genocide

By: bsmart

 

Disclaimer: Why the hell am I writing this? Nobody reads them and they have no legal weight. It's a complete waste of time and bandwidth and yet I'm still typing. I'm going to take a shot in the dark and rate this fic R, violence and language, the good stuff.

 

“…” Normal Speech

`…' Thought

 

Chapter Three: Under Control

 

"I've got movement Sarge!"

 

Zombie and his platoon were already charging out of the command center before the private at the other end of the signal even began to say "Sarge". Zombie only knew that the squad who was reporting contact was on the west end of the floor; he figured that the commotion would point out exactly where they were.

 

Zombie had just finished cocking his rifle when he ran head long into a squad of Marines who were pouring into the hallway from some sort of lab. The marines took little note of the four Pathfinders as they followed a pair of their own down the hall. The two marines in the lead had a set of hand held scanners out and they were sweeping the glowing blue instruments back and forth, looking for something.

 

"Sergeant, report," Zombie barked when he saw the suit with the appropriate bars on its pauldron.

 

The face shield of the trooper in question snapped open at an unseen command revealing the ruddy-faced sergeant inside with the remains of a cigar clamped between his teeth. "We got movement, one of my boys heard something and one of the scanners picked up on it to."

 

"So why aren't you zeroing in on it?"

 

The sergeant's eyes narrowed. "The sensors are fubar, we can't track anything and we can barely get hit at all. There's some kind of field interfering with them."

 

The scanners were slowly pacing back and forth in the hall while their squad mates crouched around them awaiting their verdict.

 

"Whoever built this place didn't want anyone snooping around where they shouldn't be," Red offered.

 

The scanner at the north end of the hall paused for a moment, freezing in place. One of his fingers slowly and cautiously made its way to his instrument and started to adjust some of the settings. Several long moments later Zombie heard a hushed "Got something" issue forth from the speaker in the squad leader's helmet.

 

With a silence not expected from twelve tons of walking metal the marines moved up to their scanner. "Up there, six meters, ceiling." The scanner reported, even though you could scream inside one of those suits and not be heard so long as the visor was closed the man still stayed silent, a natural reflex for someone on the hunt.

 

Who or whatever they were tracking was directly above a door that led to a room on the exterior of the building.

 

"What's in that room?" Zombie asked.

 

"Store room, we already cleared it," the sergeant responded.

 

"Let me."

 

The sergeant scowled at Zombie but didn't move to stop him.

 

The marines were lined up against each side of the hallway, seeking what cover they could find amidst the framing and debris strewn about. All of them had their weapons trained on the section of ceiling the scanners had pointed out. The scanners themselves crouched on opposite sides of the hallway closer to their target than anyone. Both of them were still trying to adjust their instruments.

 

Zombie and Snakes stopped beside the scanner on the right while Tingirl and Red stopped on the left. The shear size of the armored trooper beside him made Zombie feel like a small child, he just came up to the upper arm of the marine, no higher. 'This must be how kids feel.' "Any luck?"

 

A faint click signaled the trooper's activation of his external speakers. "No, this damn jamming field has everything screwed, I can't get a fix. Whatever it is is our size and warm, that's the best I can do."

 

"Then cover us."

 

"Sir?"

 

Zombie paid the corporal no mind as he slipped silently up to the doorway. The ceiling of the halls was just a facade, thin sheets of grating looking material that were only meant to hide all the ugly piping and wiring overhead, dozens of broken panels littered every hallway in the building.

 

"You ready," Zombie whispered as quietly as possible.

 

Snakes just nodded her head.

 

Zombie glanced back down the dead end hall and jerked a thumb up at the ceiling, several nods answered him back.

 

Zombie shouldered his autorifle and picked up a piece of thick plastic tubing out of the cluttered mess lining the floor. He stood up and grasped one end of the tubing in both hands. Snakes quietly counted, "One.....two....three!" On three Zombie jammed the piece of tube up into the ceiling panel as hard as he could.

 

With nothing holding it in the panel just fell as soon as one corner of it was lifted up spilling a black thrashing mass onto Zombie.

 

"Check fire!" Red yelled as the panel fell.

 

All the wind was shoved out of Zombie's lungs as a black thrashing mass slammed down onto him. Something hard and sharp raked his face before he managed to get a boot under whatever it was at shove it into the far wall. His chest heaved as he drew in a ragged breath and tried to re-inflate his lungs, the warm sticky trickle across his cheek told him that whatever it was that had gotten a hold of his face didn't want to let go."

 

"Lanii, yamtey! Ehius ehius! Elicnama ah yelbi nkomia pelinor savo sahtay, SAHTAY!" A high-pitched singsong voice cried.

 

Pulling a red-coated finger away from his cheek Zombie looked over at his attacker. His first impression was that the girl was tall, not that this was anything new to Zombie, it seemed to him that every non-Ankari sentient he met had at least a head on him. His second was that she had a lot of hair.

 

The girl did indeed have a lot of hair, a lot of pitch-black shiny hair. She had pulled it up into a ragnartail on the back of her head and Zombie guessed that it would probably fall past her waist if she had been standing up, rather than stuffed back into a corner pleading, he assumed, for her life.

 

"Anybody get that?" One of the troopers asked.

 

"Illiama, negatso lute? Ahmata galets ticlay, sahtay!"

 

The girl's panicked face was that of a china doll's, near perfect symmetry, absolutely smooth, and very pale. If not for the grease and dirt that covered it it might have been beautiful. Her eyes were more drawn out than an Ankari's coming to a point on the sides of her face rather than the usual roundness, and her ears were much longer and pointing back and up. Zombie though he saw a hint of incisors the next time she cried, "Sahtay!?"

 

"Medic, report to my position," the squad leader barked into his comm system.

 

"Anybody know what the hell 'sahtay' means?" Red asked.

 

The girl continued to try to drive herself deeper into the corner she was in.

 

"No clue, but I think it's Kizikan," Tingirl replied.

 

The Kizikan girl's eyes darted between Red and Tingirl.

 

"Sahtay? Mmmee...help...me help, ME HELP! SAHTAY!"

 

Levkil's voice came clearly across the comms, "A medic is on route, report sergeant."

 

"The contact appears to be a Kizikan female sir, maybe a couple of hundred, a thousand on the outside. I don't think she was here willingly."

 

Based off the girl's clothes Zombie agreed. A pair of khaki cargo pants and a small white tank top were all she was wearing but both were ripped and torn in countless places with stains all over them, some of which he suspected were blood. It looked like she hadn't gotten a change of clothes in months.

 

"Once the medic arrives resume your sweep. Sergeant Delaat?"

 

"Yeah?"

 

The lieutenant's voice came back tinged with annoyance. "Return to the command center with the girl."

 

"Yes sir."

 

A faint skittering was heard in the distance, like someone in cleats was walking on ferrocrete.

"What was that?" a trooper asked.

 

Whatever it had been they didn't hear it again as the girl went white and began to scream incoherently. "Yanatikno salertah ma lepga ni! Cryyteg nomosal ma nenea mel! Sahtay! Melnorni ahala no netsukio yerlah!"

 

"You think you can handle her?" the ruddy squad leader asked.

 

The girl continued to sit and scream.

 

"She ain't trying to go nowhere so yeah."

 

"Third squad, move out!"

 

The girl was still screaming when the medic arrived.

 

"What's wrong with her?" the trooper asked. A small red triangle on his pauldron identified him as a platoon medic.

 

"Isn't that what you're supposed to tell us?" Red sneered.

 

Zombie ignored her. "We don't know, we thought we heard something and then she just went crazy."

 

The medic nodded and started to approach the girl. "Hey, calm down...it's ok...you're safe," the trooper reassured her as he approached.

 

Apparently the girl had been oblivious of the troopers approach, she didn't even acknowledge his presence until one oh his black boots landed on the deck in front of her feet. Her eyes darted up to gaze at the medic and she immediately lunged forward trying to get by him. "Nemala tyr! Nemala lamiana!"

 

She didn't make it far, backed into a corner, wedged between a frame rail and two walls and with the medic taking up all the room in front of her there was nowhere for her to go as she hit the troopers chest, not that she stopped trying.

 

The medic's movements were gentle but there was still a tremendous amount of power behind them. The girl thrashed and screamed but she couldn't break free of his grasp and his calming words fell on deaf ears. "Kizikan right?" he asked as he pushed her back into her corner.

 

"We think," Zombie yelled over the girl who had given up trying to say anything and was now just howling.

 

The next time she rushed the medic he was ready for her. She tried to shove him backwards but he just wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close, there was a hiss and then the girl collapsed like a rag doll against the medic with only his arm holding her up. "She should be out for a while, is it alright if I go ahead and take her back to the command center?"

 

"Let's go," Zombie said.

 

***************

 

"A little malnutrition and a lot of cuts and bruises, and I took care of those, but that's not what's interesting. Take a look at this," the medic held up his scanner. "Look at the way her blood vessels are constricted, look at the heart tissue, she's been under an incredible amount of stress."

 

"She was screaming her head off when we found her," Red said.

 

"That's not it, this is constant stress, I'm talking weeks, maybe months of nonstop stress. It's like she's been in combat for weeks on end with no rest."

 

"Ok, she's been stressed out, why?" Zombie asked.

 

The small break room where they were was crowded so some of them had to stand on their toes or peek around the edges to see. The room had only been meant to hold three bunk beds, one on each wall then a door, and nothing more. It sat right off the command center so that the command crew could catch a nap during long shifts or crises. The medic pulled back the edge of the sheet and uncovered the girl's right hip. "I don't know, but I'm willing to bet it has something to do with this." On the girl's hip was a mass of scar tissue, like someone had thrown paint against her leg and let it drip down, leaving her otherwise flawless skin marred.

 

"What is that?" Snakes asked.

 

"A burn," the medic declared, "and I think it was probably acid from the dripping."

 

"An acid burn?"

 

"Wonderful," Levkil said from his position at the foot of the bed. "But can anyone tell me why a Kizikan woman is crawling around a Vaygr base on a Dral world?"

 

No one answered.

 

"How long before she's up?"

 

The blonde haired medic thought about it before he answered, "Probably about three hours, I gave her a pretty heavy dose of anesthetic."

 

"If she's not up in two I want you to wake her up, we need to know what happened here." With that the Lieutenant forced his way through the pathfinders and his own sergeant and out the room, everyone else followed.

 

The command center had been transformed in the last two hours, the cups and debris left by the room's last crew had been tossed in a big pile by the entry way and all the manuals and reading materials were piled on the display table while a chubby analyst looked them over. Two more of the analysts were working away at a pair of computer terminals and the last of them was sitting at what was assumed to be the commanders desk while conversing with a hologram hovering right over the desk. The hologram itself was of a woman who while quite shapely was rather featureless, her body being made up of the constantly shifting swirl of a data stream. Having no need to stand the hologram's legs were simply hanging down in front of her like some ethereal ballerina.

 

"Any progress Dex?" LevKil asked the analyst at the commander's desk.

 

"We're through four code levels so far but there's close to fifty levels in total."

 

The holograph hovering over the table spoke up, her voice a strange but pleasant amalgamation of wind chimes and static. "We'd be farther along if this moron hadn't removed all my hacking and translation subroutines except for the Dral ones."

 

"Kioko I thought we'd need the extra space for analysis."

 

The hologram spun in the air like a fairy to regard her partner/controller, "They took up a lousy thirty five teraquads!"

 

LevKil cut off the tech's riposte with wave of his hand. "How is this affecting the data retrieval?"

 

The tech started to answer but his blue and purple partner cut him off. "The mainframe of this complex isn't Dral, it's a Vaygr design with some Binar equipment added on afterwards, pretty standard Dral holomatrix for data storage but a crappy Binar quantum comp for access to it and control. Since I don't have my Dral or my Binar hacking, translation, or interface routines I have to relearn and optimize it as I go. Every time I crack a level I refine my programming and go after the next one."

 

"Why can't you just go for the high level right away? All you've gotten so far are office supply requisitions and the menu for the cafeteria."

 

This time the tech fielded LevKil's question. "They use a recursive fractal algorithm to encode their data, each iteration of the code gets continuously more complex, and as you go deeper it gets more complex faster. If she just tried to crack the fiftieth level code right off the bat it would take foreve...."

 

"Three point seven one nine times ten to the thirty second years, give or take a decade," Kioko clarified.

 

"What she said, to get it. If we go through layer by layer we'll get there much faster."

 

"Six point four three eight times ten to the forth seconds, give or take."

 

LevKil nodded, it was going to take about seventeen hours and that would still be ahead of schedule. "Very well, I want to be kept updated on anything of interest you find."

 

"Aye sir," the tech replied.

 

"You might find this interesting," Kioko butted in.

 

"Shouldn't you be cracking the encryption?" lieutenant LevKil asked.

 

"Because of interface and translation delay I can only devote thirty one point two percent of my processing power to the task of decryption at any time, I'm using the rest of my cycles to cross reference and analyze the data that has been decoded. Now do you wanna know this or not?"

 

LevKil looked annoyed at being talked down to by a hologram but if an analysis team from Military Intelligence was using her like this then she was most likely sentient, though still a civilian. He bid her continue with a nod.

 

"The population of this station peaked approximately three years ago at roughly three thousand individuals, it's been declining ever since. The minimum occurred one week ago, two hundred and thirty."

 

"How do you know this?"

 

"Food requisitions," she said obviously very satisfied with herself.

 

LevKil gave the tech and his hologram a respectful nod, "Keep it up."

 

Zombie and his platoon were leaning against a bank of monitors that faced the display table when the radio crackled again.

 

"Lieutenant, we're getting ready to enter the tunnel now."

 

LevKil reached over and manipulated a few controls on the display table as the blank table suddenly came to life with the images from several troopers' helmet scanners. A few button pushes later and LevKil had each one displaying a different spectrum. Zombie had to give it to the Lieutenant, while he initially came off as a prick the young officer at least seemed to know his shit, though a pathfinder would have just meshed all the spectra together into one display.

 

"Proceed Sergeant Zamal."

 

On the screen the darkened tunnel stretched out into infinity, far away, nearly lost in the distance was the small bluish purple speck of the main lines but the line that ran down the left hand side of the tunnel was dark.

 

"Power line's dead," Zamal reported. "Cold." One of the soldiers looked over at the wall and the spinning image stopped on a group of scratches and pick marks. "Lots of those markings from inside are down here, they're on every wall." The camera panned up. "Even the ceiling." The troopers advanced on in silence, scanning their surroundings but finding nothing but a dark tunnel full of equally dark and empty lines.

 

"There's some evidence of weapon's fire, scorch marks, a stray round might have taken out the line." Zamal observed. "There's also so melted areas...I don't know why but it looks like something just melted out sections of the wall and floor, there's some damage to the line but nothing to take it out of commission."

 

"The girl's leg," Tingirl said, "the medic said it looked like an acid burn."

 

LevKil considered her a moment then went back to his displays, Zombie edged a little closer to the table.

 

"I'm not seei....wait a minute." The darkness on the screens didn't appear to change until you realized that that's all there was, no more tunnel, no more line, just darkness. For several moments the line was quiet and then the squad sergeant's voice returned. "Sir we're about at the branch to the comm relay and we've found an anomaly." As the grunts in the tunnel got closer to the anomaly it became clearer. The walls of the tunnel were covered in a thick layer of soot and ash, black as night. The floor and walls of the tunnel dropped away into infinity and the power line was ripped apart, ballooned out like it had over inflated and popped. "It looks like the line lost containment sir, I'm seeing a big chasm here, looks like the line blew and the plasma just ate out a cavern here, looks to be a good ten meters deep, maybe fifty long. I can see the line on the other side and it's energized, looks like the interlocks on that side worked but I think every bit of the plasma in this end got vented."

 

"So much for repairing it," Zombie said.

 

The display swung to the right and far out along the wall of the new cavern another tunnel end could be seen where the power line used to branch off to the comm system. "Sir I'd have to say that until we can get a repair crew in here the line is a total loss."

 

LevKil considered this for a moment before giving new orders. "Roger sergeant, set up a remote probe and return to..."

 

"What was that?"

 

The troopers voice was unexpected, so far the squad had kept quite and let their sergeant do the talking, to here one of the troopers say something had caught everyone off guard.

 

"Shut up Lema, this is an open comm."

 

"Sarge I saw something in the tunnel, elecscan."

 

The display that belonged to Zamal spun around to consider the far tunnel to the main lines. "How the hell could you see anything down there in elecscan with all that line interference?"

 

With all the troopers facing that direction Zamal's objection was reasonable, the other tunnel was hazy in elecscan from the stray emissions from the still energized line. "I swear I saw something sir."

 

"Anyone else see anything? Try all modes."

 

A chorus of negatives answered back.

 

"All right, set up the scanner and let's get out of here." The displays were a blur as the troopers set about their tasks but one kept watching the tunnel.

 

"There it is again!"

 

The sergeant's reflexes were superb and Zombie managed to see a flash of bright white amidst the sea of purple static. "Control, did you catch that?"

 

LevKil's hands were a blur as he called up the last five seconds of both Zamal and Lema's feeds. He froze both when a smear of white was just visible in the frame. "Roger Sergeant."

 

The troopers in the command center as well as the pathfinders and the analysts all worked their way a little closer to the displays, trying to catch a peek at what was so interesting.

 

"First and Third, up here, Second section keep on that scanner. Orders Control?"

 

"Hold your position," LevKil told them.

 

"Roger."

 

Moments drug into seconds, seconds into minutes as they waited to see if the sensor apparition would return but it didn't. "Might have been magnetic cavitation, maybe a surge in the line," said Sergeant Frost who had been silent in this until now.

 

"Maybe," LevKil conceded. "But I don't like it. Mr. Dex?"

 

The tech and his hologram both looked at the Lieutenant. "Yes sir?"

 

Kioko answered for him. "I'm through the seventh level and I have internal sensors, I can't shut down the dampening fields around the labs but I can see where everyone is."

 

"Good, keep an eye on that scanner's feed and if it sees anything or anything happens to the door into that tunnel I want alarms going off all over the place."

 

"Got it."

 

"Sergeant Zamal, fall back to the main building and seal up that door behind you."

 

"Aye sir."

 

"Chief hack a section to guard that tunnel entrance and the generator. We need to clear this building completely before we go running off to have a look at the rest of this place."

 

"Yes sir," Sergeant Frost replied.

 

"Well this is interesting," Dex said from his station. Everyone turned towards him expecting something more but he didn't even look up. It wasn't until Kioko waved a nonexistent foot in front of his face that he realized he had everyone's attention.

 

"Care to elaborate?" Zombie asked.

 

"Well it looks like someone tried to wipe the mainframe's memory."

 

"Tried?" Frost asked.

 

"Yes sir, whoever it is bombed everything not hardwired into the interface, that's why it's so hard for Kioko to interact with the comp."

 

"What's this mean for data retrieval?" LevKil asked, unless they got some answers about what this station did then their mission would be a bust.

 

"It's fine, it'll just take a while. Like I said they tried to wipe the core, but they failed. It's a holocore, you can't wipe it clean without a total destabilization and realignment cycle. Whoever tried to kill the core just tried to eliminate the last matrices where the data was laid down. We may have lost a little rez on some of the records but for the most part they're intact. If this had been an automated system they would have just physically destroyed the core. Whoever did this did not know his way around a computer."

 

"Eighth level down, general controls released," Kioko reported. Throughout the base the sound of doors shutting and locking could be heard. "I don't have the high security stuff but I have most low level controls now."

 

LevKil cracked a small smile. "Looks like we may be getting this under control."

 

=====================================

 

Author's Notes

 

Acknowledgements:

 

The usual, Lighthawk, Warpwizard, psianogen.

 

Notes:

 

1) Haha, like it's ever under control.

 

Feedback: bsmartfanfic@yahoo.com

 

For updates and just my general bitching: http://www.livejournal.com/~bsmart

 

You don't need to tell me I suck, I'm well aware of that.