Christopher Nuttall - A Learning Experience

He led the way back towards the bridge, seeming to find his way effortlessly through the alien corridors. Steve watched him carefully, wondering what else the alien system had done to him. Had it turned him into a spy? Or merely overloaded his head with data because it wasn’t bright enough to realise the danger?

“These guys” — he indicated the alien commander’s throne with his foot — “are scavengers.”

“I said that,” Steve objected.

“You were right,” Kevin agreed. He sat down on one of the uncomfortable chairs, then turned to face his brothers. “From what I have been able to determine, they literally know almost nothing about how their technology works; they didn’t build it, they can’t mend it and they certainly cannot duplicate it for themselves. They barely had fire when they were discovered by an elder race and brought into the galaxy.”

He shrugged. “They weren’t here to invade — at least, not yet,” he continued. “I think they wanted samples of humanity for their employers.”

Steve narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“This is where the speculation begins,” Kevin warned. “One race clearly took some humans from Earth years ago and turned them into slaves — no, cyborgs. Soldier cyborgs. These cyborgs have been hellishly effective. Our captors were employed, I suspect, to find humans who could be turned into other cyborgs.”

Mongo sucked in a breath, clearly remembering all the options for enhancing Kevin. “Do you think that was the fate they had in mind for us?”

“I believe so,” Kevin said. “Given enough samples of human DNA, they could simply clone as many human brains as they needed and then go on from there.”

He paused. “The problem is that, sooner or later, the other Hordesmen will realise this ship hasn’t reported back,” he explained. “And Earth might be targeted by their employers.”

“Shit,” Steve said. He looked down at his hands for a long moment, then back up at Kevin. “How long do we have?”

Kevin shrugged. “Unknown,” he said. “Travel time between star systems that don’t have gravity points…”

He stopped. “I…”

“ Kevin ,” Steve snapped. “What are you doing?”

“It’s weird,” Kevin said. He was hyperventilating between his words. “I didn’t know that and yet I did.”

He shook his head, brushing off their fears. “It might be a few months or it might be a year,” he said. “But we will run out of time.”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “And I think we need to decide what to do with our ship.”

“And our prisoner,” Mongo said.

“Lock him in one of the cabins, then deactivate the computer terminal,” Kevin said. “He’ll be safe enough for now.”

Once the alien prisoner was securely locked away, they gathered again on the bridge.

“This is the situation,” Steve said. “We have a starship, we have a surprising amount of technology… and we have a desperate need to move quickly to protect Earth. The question is simple. How do we proceed?”

“We could call the government,” Charles pointed out. “They’d be needed to get behind this and push.”

“Hell, no,” Steve said. The sheer force of his reaction surprised even him. “Do you really want to give this ship and all of its technology to the government ?”

Bitter memories welled up in his mind. He forced them down, savagely.

“There’s no way we can trust the current government to do the right thing,” he said. “The best we can hope for is that they will drop the ship into Area 51, give us all a pat on the ass and classify everything to the point where no one knows a thing about it. And then they will exploit it for petty political reasons while ignoring the looming threat from outer space.”

“Except for the fact there’s just four of us,” Charles said. “Five if you count the alien.”

“We have friends,” Steve reminded him. “Men and women who can be trusted to keep a secret and join us, people who would leap at the chance to escape the morass our country is becoming.”

“Or we could take over,” Kevin mused. “We have the technology to do it now.”

Steve shook his head. “I’m not interested in taking over the federal government,” he said, bitterly. “I’m interested in getting away from it. And in protecting my homeworld.”

He smiled, rapidly pulling together a plan. “We reach out to people we know and invite them to join us,” he said. “In the meantime, we start work on expanding our capabilities, unlocking the secrets of the alien technology and establishing a settlement on the moon.”

Kevin considered it. “We’ll need money,” he said. “Some of the tech would have to be sold.”

He paused. “You know we have four fabricators, right?”

Steve frowned. It had been mentioned, but he hadn’t had the time to follow up and work out what they actually did . He checked with the interface and discovered that they produced items according to saved specifications, provided enough raw materials were provided. That wouldn’t be a problem, he decided. All they had to do was start shovelling in material from the lunar surface.

“There are some limits,” Kevin said. “They cannot reproduce themselves, for example, nor can they produce certain kinds of technology. But there should be quite a few examples of tech we can sell… we’d just have to be very careful how we inserted it into Earth’s economic network. Something that appeared completely out of nowhere would raise eyebrows.”

“You’re in charge of finding something we can use,” Steve decided. “And of finding a way we can… insert our new technology without raising too many eyebrows.”

“There are thousands of possibilities,” Kevin offered. “I was going to suggest fusion power and computer technology. The former, in particular, should be very lucrative.”

“But would definitely attract government attention,” Charles said, softly. “Computer technology might pass under the radar for the moment.”

“Work on it,” Steve ordered. “What else do we need?”

“Food,” Mongo said, immediately. He snorted. “Food and human tech we can use on the moon.”

Steve gave Mongo a puzzled look, so he explained.

“The problem with getting into orbit is getting into orbit,” he said. “Getting something the size of the space shuttle into orbit costs a shitload of fuel. But we can bypass that problem with the shuttles we have, which will allow us to start using human technology on the moon without needing to place extra demands on our fabricators. Hell, we’ve had all the tech we needed to set up a lunar settlement for years. All we lacked was the ability to get there in the first place.”

“Fucking politicians,” Steve muttered.

“Tell me something,” Charles said. “Are we seriously considering setting up our own country ?”

“Yes,” Steve said.

He wondered, briefly, if his friend — a natural conservative — thought they were moving too fast. But time was of the essence. Quite apart from the alien threat, they needed to be well-established before secrecy slipped… and he knew, from bitter experience, that nothing remained secret indefinitely. Missing people would be noticed, strange new technology would be noticed… all in all, eventually someone would put the pieces together and realise the truth. And, at that point, there would be trouble.

The federal government hated it when people tried to move outside its sphere of control, no matter the reason. It was incapable of leaving people alone, even if they weren’t causing trouble or doing anything more than keeping themselves to themselves. And the technology Steve and his buddies had lucked into would reshape the world. The federal government would want it, very badly,