Christopher Nuttall: A Learning Experience

Steve nodded. The teleporter had dropped the aliens into open space and Earth’s gravity had done the rest, once the bodies were outside the craft’s as-yet unexplained drive field. By now, the remains of the alien crew had burned up in Earth’s atmosphere and vanished. Part of him regretted slaughtering so many without a second thought, the rest of him knew there had been no alternative. The aliens wouldn’t have hesitated to kill their former captives, now they’d seen just what they could do.

If all the aliens are like them , he thought, humanity will rule the galaxy in years .

But he knew it wouldn’t be that easy.

They made their way back to the bridge and entered the dining hall. Every time he saw it, Steve was reminded of the depictions of Norsemen partying hard after a successful campaign of looting, raping and burning. They’d cleared away most of the mess — it seemed the aliens liked living in squalor — but it still disgusted him. He’d checked with the neural interface, only to discover that the cleaning robots had been removed, along with several automated maintenance systems. The sellers had clearly anticipated getting rich by selling spare parts and basic maintenance to the Hordesmen.

He activated the neural link as he stopped in front of the food professor, a slot in the bulkhead that remained sealed until the food was ready. “Please produce something suitable for human consumption.”

There was a long pause as the device hummed to itself. “You’d think they could produce matter directly from energy,” Kevin commented. “If they have teleporters, surely they could produce food and drink…”

“Or duplicate a living person,” Charles muttered. “I saw a Star Trek episode where someone was duplicated accidentally…”

Kevin snickered. “ You’re a secret Star Trek fan?”

“We ran out of Doctor Who episodes to watch,” Charles confessed. “And we had a lot of fun pointing out the problems…”

“A likely story,” Kevin said.

Steve ignored them, concentrating on the neural interface. Most of the technobabble it produced was way above his head — it was suddenly harder to blame the aliens for being unaware of the potentials of their technology — but it seemed to be impossible to actually duplicate a person through teleport malfunctions. Furthermore, direct energy-to-matter conversion, while quite possible, was actually extremely uneconomical. It was far simpler to reprocess biomass to produce something humans could eat safely.

“There won’t be any more of you running around,” he said, finally. “It doesn’t seem to be possible.”

“What a relief,” Kevin said, dryly.

There was a ding from the food processor. The hatch opened, revealing a plate of steaming… something . It looked rather like grey porridge. Steve eyed it doubtfully, then removed it from the processor and placed it on the table. There were no knives or forks, so he had to use his hands. It tasted of nothing, as far as he could tell. Just… nothing at all.

“We will have to bring some proper food up here,” Kevin said, as he tasted the glop. “And a small horde of cleaners.”

Steve nodded. “I’ll get you an interface,” he said. “And you can start asking questions.”

He finished his share of the glop, then ordered the machine to make another portion and something suitable for one of the aliens. Mongo would be growing hungry too, as would their alien captive. Steve wished that he dared trust the alien enough to ask questions, but a long interrogation session would have to wait. Maybe Kevin — a trained interrogator, among other things — would be able to get more answers out of the computer network.

Shaking his head, he walked back onto the bridge, found the second interface and took it back to Kevin. “There’s a stab of pain as it configures itself, then you’ll be fine,” he assured his brother. “And good luck.”

Kevin nodded and placed the silver band on his head. “No pain,” he said, after a moment. “I guess you were the unlucky bastard who got the brunt of the reconfiguration.”

“So it would seem,” Steve said. He picked up the food and headed for the hatch. “Charles, keep an eye on him.”

“Yes, sir,” Charles said.

Mongo was, as Steve had expected, glad to be fed. “When are we going to get some more people up here?”

“Good question,” Steve said. Their wives and families, naturally, but who else? And what could they do, in the long term, with such a starship? “As soon as possible, I think.”

“Just teleport them up,” Mongo suggested. “Mariko would love it.”

“Go do it to Jayne first,” Steve countered. His partner wouldn’t love being taken by surprise. “I dare you.”

Mongo shrugged, then conceded the point.

Kevin was in heaven.

None of his family had been dumb. They’d been homeschooled by their parents and found, when they were finally tested against children from the state-run schools, that they were far in advance of their peers. Their mother had been a stern taskmistress, watching her children like hawks while they were studying and enforcing quiet where necessary. But Kevin had always been more intellectual than his siblings, even though the very word was a swear word in the mouth of their father. He’d wanted to know and know and know…

The neural interface was brilliant . From what Steve had said, he’d accessed only the very basic level. Kevin was swimming in data. It flowed into his mind, each file opening itself in front of his eyes and entering his mind. He couldn’t help comparing it to surfing the internet, only the data was far more complete than anything he’d seen online. And even a random thought was enough to activate search algorithms that assisted him in his search for raw information.

But there were very definite limits to what he could access, he discovered. The data files were brimming with information on what the starship — it was called Shadow Warrior — could do, but they weren’t very specific on how it actually worked . There was an FTL drive that seemed to bend local space around it, as far as he could determine, yet the theory was completely isolated from the technology that made it work. It might as well be black boxes, he realised, as he made another mental note. The designers had sealed the technology to prevent it being duplicated.

The thought discharged another torrent of data into his mind. Steve had been right, he realised; the Hordesmen were nothing more than scavengers. They’d barely entered the Bronze Age, if that, when they’d been discovered by older, more advanced races, and introduced to the surrounding galaxy. Some of them had been taken as slaves, others had been serving as mercenaries… none of them had built a significant galactic power base of their own. As far as the Galactics were concerned, the Hordesmen weren’t even a minor headache. They were just gnats to be swatted aside when they got too irritating to tolerate for a moment longer.

But what did they want from Earth?

There were no answers in the databanks, he realised slowly. The Hordesmen had never bothered to keep logs, either because they were too primitive to care or because they’d worried about the security of their systems. There was nothing to show why they’d come to Earth or why they’d adopted such an absurd strategy for abducting humans. Hell, maybe they had been interested in anal probing after all. Given how little data there was in the computers, it was as good a theory as any.

Not that it matters , he told himself. If they decided they wanted to invade Earth, they could .