Stephen Berry - The Biofab War

Reassured by D'Trelna's crude sign language that Bob would be all right, the trio went reluctantly with the commandos. As they left, two crewmen arrived, wheeling a medcart.

"Where are we?" Zahava asked in a tiny voice as the lift angled down and across the ship.

"You're asking me?" said John nervously. "Wherever we are, though, how'd we get here? One instant we're under Cape Cod, the next-zap!-we're in this great gray metal womb."

"And who are these guys," asked Greg, "the lost space patrol?" He glanced at the four commandos. Stringently obeying D'Trelna's order, they stood to one side of the big lift. Young, in top shape, wearing brown lightweight tunics with matching trousers, short haircuts and big black bdts on which were bolstered the long, wide-bore pistols the Terrans had been staring into on the bridge, the troopers looked very much like a space patrol.

Exiting, the trio were hurried down a long gray corridor, arriving shortly at an austere room: black metal table with matching straight-backed chairs and four blank, gray walls.

D'Trelna and L'Wrona arrived a moment later. The latter took a double handful of small, black boxes from a crewman, placing them on the table.

Snapping one of them open, the K'Ronarin officer removed what looked like a tiny, one-piece hearing aid. Placing it in his right ear, he gestured for the Terrans to do the same. When they hesitated, D'Trelna selected a box at random and imitated L'Wrona's action.

After they'd all adjusted their translators, the Captain asked, "Can you understand me?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where you are?"

"No," said John tersely. "Who are you?"

"I am Captain J'Quel D'Trelna, commanding the K'Ronarin Confederation starcruiser Implacable. This is Commander H'Nar L'Wrona, my Executive Officer."

"Starcruiser?" John asked, a catch to his voice. "Can you prove it?"

L'Wrona pushed a button. A wall opaqued into transparency. They stared, gasping, as the light of a billion billion stars flooded the room.

"We're closing on what we believe tp be your home world," said D'Trelna, staving off a barrage of questions.

L'Wrona pressed another button. Space vanished, replaced by a close-up of an almost cloudless Western Hemisphere. "Is that your home planet?" asked the Captain.

"That's it," John said. "Where are we?"

"We're halfway between your home-what do you call it?"

"Terra."

"We're halfway between Terra and your system's fourth world," explained D'Trelna. "We're decelerating, so it'll be some hours before we're within range."

L'Wrona switched the wall back to space view.

"Range?" said Zahava with quiet alarm.

"I'm sorry," the Captain apologized. "A poorly chosen word. Landing range. We intend to land a scout craft and explore your specific point of origin, as traced by ship's computer."

"Just why did you bring us here, Captain, and how?" demanded John, his face pale and angry.

"We did not bring you, sir. You were thrust upon us-we suspect by matter transport, a technology lost to us. And one we need very badly.

"We're in your system to investigate a report of extant Imperial technology," continued D'Trelna, leaning back in his chair. Taking in their puzzled faces, he smiled.

"I see I'm going too fast. Let's begin with basics. You know our names. What are yours?"

John introduced his friends, adding, "We're tired, hungry and more than a little confused."

"I can take care of the first and second items," said L'Wrona, dialing up four steaming platters of food and equally hot cups of beverage from a wall unit. "And I hope we can resolve our mutual confusion," he said, placing the food before Implacable''s guests and resuming his seat.

"This is delicious," enthused Zahava, digging into meaty stew.

"As to 'mutual confusion,'" D'Trelna said. The wall now displayed a three-dimensional star map: several score points of white light, scattered among three roughly equal colored zones-blue, green and yellow.

"The Confederation of K'Ronarin Republics as it was a decade ago. Three semiautonomous states, descendants of the strongest of the old Imperial sectors, united for trading and mutual defense.

"The Confederation as it is today."

Half of the map now shone scarlet.

"Ten years ago we harbored the dangerous belief that we were alone in the galaxy," said L'Wrona, picking up the tale. "Our ancestors, whose Empire charted half our galaxy, found only fossils in their search for other sentient life.

"Then the S'Cotar swept in on us from the barren marches of space. The red is theirs by right of conquest." His tone was bitter.

"The S'Cotar," added D'Trelna, "are a voracious, telepathic insectoid. Origin-unknown. History-unknown. Ultimate purpose-unknown. Captives destroy themselves quickly and nastily-a bomb in the brain.

"We do know, however, that they consist of two castes."

The map vanished, replaced by a six-legged insectoid. It stood erect on four long legs, its upper two limbs each splayed into four tapered tentacles. The tentacles were firmly wrapped about a strange, long-barreled rifle. Bulbous red eyes and a pair of jutting, serrated mandibles lent the creature a hellish cast. John suppressed a shudder.

"Warrior," said the Captain. "You can't tell from the projection, but that little beauty stands six feet tall, can outrun a man, can live on nothing for weeks and will eat anything, including and especially humans."

What looked like a large praying mantis now stood before them. "Command caste," L'Wrona explained. "Unlike the warrior, it has telepathic abilities. It can transport itself and a number of warriors over vast distances. It can assume human guise and adapt to human conventions-well enough to infiltrate the hierarchy of an entire planet."

L'Wrona turned away from the projection. "An ability, by the way, initially and incorrectly defined as transmutation. The term stuck and has since become a noun. We first thought you were transmutes.

"When the S'Cotar attack, key people vanish, contradictory orders are given and planetary defenses quickly fall. The red bulge extends further into the Confederation. That's been the fate of twenty-three planets in the past ten years."

"You say you're here searching for the remains of your Empire's technology," said Zahava. "What sort of technology? And why?"

"Excuse me," D’Trelna said, reaching in front of his XO. "Something more pleasant, I think." The S'Cotar disappeared, replaced by the original star view.

"We're looking for an intact Imperial transporter web- they had them on all their Colonial Service bases. With it, we could overcome the S'Cotar's telekinetic edge."

"We look for anything, though," said L'Wrona. "The war's turned us into galactic scavengers. This ship, for example, dates from the Fall-the fall of the Empire-five thousand years ago. She was found in a stasis cache beneath a gutted Imperial fleetbase. Much of her equipment is Imperial.

"These warsuits," he continued, indicating the shiny, form-fitting jumpsuits he and the Captain wore, "are Imperial. They'll absorb all but the most concentrated blaster fire and double as hard vacuum suits. They were only recently found in an automated warehouse on K'Ronar, misrouted there centuries ago and forgotten. Today they took hostile fire for the first time in five thousand years."

"If they hadn't, we would have," D’Trelna said. "You'd have arrived during my funeral." He smiled humorlessly.

"And these?" Greg tapped his earpiece.

"Imperial," said L'Wrona. "We're not sure, but we think they send, receive and correlate thought patterns. We do know that they firmly instill the alien language in the wearer's mind." He paused, taking in their unbelieving faces.

"Oh, it's true," D’Trelna affirmed. "In a few days you won't need the translators."