Volume 2: Gamma-17, Chapter 2.2

Turns out, I did have a little more work to do; I thought since I was flying by the seat of my pants in regards to commanding Eve during our investigation it would be a

winging it

kind of job, but bureaucracy prevails, and the mission commanders forced me to write out a report on Evie’s behaviors and how I commanded her. They also wanted me to read up on mission safety protocols and add my own protocols regarding how I’d handle Evie down planet-side.

I hung out in the cafeteria in one of the lounge chairs that faced some viewing windows as I ate a little synthesized pizza while finalizing the safety protocols on my work tablet—a small white rectangle that projected a holographic screen, more sci-fi magic.

“Look at you working all hard.” A musical voice called.

I turned to see Doctor Tillia heading my way with a tray full of some synthesized alien meat that looked like a blue steak and strange root vegetables. I gestured to the seat beside me, and she sat down. “You know, all this reporting is pretty far outside of my wheelhouse; back on earth I never did anything like this.”

“What did you do back on earth?”

I set my tablet down and settled into my chair, “I was a firefighter-paramedic—do they have those out in space?”

Tillia tilted her head to the side, “We have combat medics, if that’s the same thing. But what is a firefighter? Another combat role?”

I chuckled and shook my head, “No, nothing like that. As the name indicates, we would go fight fires—suppress them and manage the scene and all that.”

Tillia smiled in understanding, “Ah, earth lacked the technological advancements to prevent or counter emergencies via an automated workforce.”

“Robots?”

She nodded, “Yes, specially designed for structured tasks—like fire prevention or suppression. Most manual labor is performed by an automated workforce across Imperial space; I’m sure you’ve noticed the maintenance robots in passing through the hallways.”

“Here and there. Back on earth we were just starting to get to the point people were complaining about robots stealing their jobs. Is that a problem in the Empire?”

Tillia shook her head, “Not at all; with such a diversity of planets and races across the Empire, people are free to pursue any career path you might imagine. Robots are an enhancement to our lives—they certainly don’t detract from it.” She leaned forward, “For example, the crewmembers of

The Radiance

are specialists and technicians who perform tasks either beyond what a robot could perform, or they maintain the robot itself. Yes, jobs have been eliminated that most people would consider beneath them—meant for robots. But the existence of an automated workforce has created even more jobs—maintenance or management positions.” She leaned back and held out a hand towards me, “Plus, thanks to the Empire’s prosperity, people are free to follow more artistic careers; a person might be considered an amateur on their own planet, so all they need to do is find the right planet with the right audience, and with an Empire spanning thousands of systems, they would easily find a profitable clientele if they just keep searching.”

That was certainly good to hear; if they let me retire from this gig once the mission was complete, I could probably just take my earth art through the Empire and find the right audience. As the only human in the Empire so far, I would probably be a rare commodity. But that was only once the mission was done, and

if

they let us go—would they let Evie, the dangerous Predazoan free? That could be a whole mess itself; there was no way I’d let them just lock her up at some deep space black-site, never to see the light of day again. I’d take her and escape and leave Empire space and be a fugitive for the rest of my life before I let that happen.

“Then how’d you end up a research doctor on some crazy secretive, fringe science project? If Imperial Citizens are free to choose their careers, why’d you choose this one?”

Doctor Tillia leaned back and crossed her legs, causing her skirt to ride up a little higher, revealing quite a bit of her sexy red thighs, “Research and development across all technologies is one of the most common career paths through the Empire; people born on their home planets always eager to head out to space to discover what all the aliens have created—and wanting to expand upon it.”

“A competitive spirit?”

She smirked and shrugged, “Sort of—not in a bad way like I’m trying to win out over other peoples’ accomplishments. More like we just want to work together to help expand what the Empire has and what it can do.”

I leaned back and crossed my arms, “And that turned into creating the most dangerous lifeform in the universe?”

Official source is Nove1Fire.net

She laughed at that and waved my words off, “We didn’t set out to create the most dangerous lifeform—at least

I

didn’t. I know you were told how the Predazoans could potentially terraform planets; that advancement alone was worth researching.”

I nodded along, remembering how the researchers told me what all benevolent advancements the Predazoans might have offered—but I didn’t believe for one second that’s where it all stopped. I was sure the military aspect was the driving force behind the entire project—especially now knowing the Predazoans could destroy entire planets.

“So how’d you end up on

The Radiance

, cleaning up the mess?”

“I was at a satellite site when the Predazoans destroyed the research planetoid and escaped; I was working on cellular data compiling and genome dissection when they transferred me here. Most of the main research team was killed when NX-947b exploded, so they had to put in the B team to clean up the mess—maybe just the C team even, that’s all that’s left.” She explained.

“All the Predazoan researchers are on

The Radiance

now? No other work being performed on satellite sites?”

She shook her head, “No, there’re still some thinktanks out there, but they’re mostly skeleton crews at this point, working off recorded data. We’re the ones with physical genetic material to experiment with, and hopefully we’ll be getting more once we start finding the other Predazoans—either by capturing live subjects, or at the very least able to research their cells after they’re killed.”

“Which outcome is preferrable? Will they endanger our lives in the hopes we can capture the Predazoans alive?”

Tillia laughed, “Obviously our lives are going to be endangered either way—they

are

the most dangerous lifeforms in the universe after all. But the research team has no delusions; the Predazoans are far too great a threat to pull any punches. There will be a single attempt at containment, and if that fails, the lethal option is next.”

That was a little surprising to hear; from all the alien movies back on earth, the human government was always making dumb decisions to take the aliens alive, and it always caused a massive shit-storm that would lead to the alien killing everyone and then escaping before the hero would take a stand and rebel against his government to stop the alien menace. Here, they weren’t willing to throw away crew lives to recapture the Predazoans. Was that because the Empire wasn’t as evil as the human government? Maybe the Empire wasn’t concerned because they could just clone/create more eventually once the mess was cleared up. Or maybe it was because they already had one in containment, Eve, so they didn’t need any others.

A thought crossed my mind amidst my musings, “Hey, what do you think of Evie?”

I could see on Tillia’s face the shift had taken her by surprise, “What do you mean?”

“You’re afraid of her, right?”

She smiled apologetically, “Sorry Adam, but I’ve seen what the Predazoans are capable of; I don’t fully understand how you

aren’t

afraid of her.”

“Honestly, there’s a little part of me that’s scared of her—what all she can do. But I still trust her completely—I know she’ll never hurt me.”

Tillia looked around—as though worried someone might overhear—then leaned forward, “But

how

can you be completely sure? What if you make some mistake and she gets mad and

literally

bites your head off before she could even think about the consequences? I see how gentle she is with you—how much you care about each other. But I also see her limited communication skills, and what if that’s enough to cause some horrible accident—unable to explain why something happened, and she reacts with her destructive Predazoan instinct?”

“Let me ask you this; if you still think she’s such a danger, why even risk using her as an asset in finding the other Predazoans? Why trust the bond I’ve established with her?”

Doctor Tillia looked away, as though ashamed, “To put it bluntly, we’re

desperate

; we created and then unleased the greatest threat the universe has seen in known history—21 of them! We’re putting our faith in you, but we do so believing you might be killed any time you enter her containment cell. We try to hide it, but most of us on the research team feel no small amount of guilt for the responsibility we’ve placed on you—the danger.”

That cleared up a few things for me; I’d felt like most of the researchers bent over backwards to make me comfortable—give me freedom and any earth comfort I might ask of them. Turns out it was because they all saw me as some dead man walking, just a single misunderstanding away from getting killed by Evie.

In response, I just laughed—and Tillia’s expression turned angry. She leaned forward and swatted after my knee, “It’s not funny! Some of us don’t even think you fully understood the consequences of joining this mission in the first place.”

“Why, cause I’m some dumb human from an underdeveloped world?” I asked brightly.

Her expression showed she clearly didn’t like my response, “Adam that’s not it at all, no one thinks of you like that—you’re a valuable member of the team.”

“Then so is Evie, and I think you lot should start acting like it.” I pressed.

Tillia was silent for a time—she’d hardly touched her food while we talked, and now she just nudged at it with her utensils.

“I think she gets jealous over you—possessive even. I’ve noticed how her eyes track us when we enter the containment cell. Kianna has been working up another behavioral report on that specifically; she believes Eve gets especially jealous when the female researchers are in the cell with you.”

I snorted at that, “Oh that’s ridiculous, I don’t think Evie even fully understands genders.” I paused, realizing something I’d heard over and over until now, but never put it all together, “Are all the Predazoans female?”

Tillia quirked up an eyebrow, “Well yeah; during their development, the Predazoans always start off female, and no matter how we tried to alter them, we could never change their chromosomal makeup to make them male.” She shrugged, “We don’t know if that’s because maybe only female ancient Predazoans ever existed, or if we simply don’t have the technological capabilities to alter their chromosomes to change their gender. But from the original Prime-00 we created and all the clones afterwards, they were all female.”

“‘So how do you know they’re all female, have someone go around the park and look up all the dinosaurs’ skirts?’” I asked in my terrible Jeff Goldblum impersonation.

She clearly didn’t get my hilarious reference (seriously, I needed to bring more aliens to earth movie night) and just shook her head, “It’s their chromosomes; unique to the Predazoan, they have the equivalent of the human XX chromosome that makes them female. In every individual cell, regardless what biomass they assimilate, that never changes.”

“No wonder they’re all so dangerous…” I said under my breath, earning a scoff and a laugh and another swat at my knee from Tillia.

She let out a content sigh, “How do you do that? Brush off all the fear and danger with jokes?”

I half-shrugged, “Human self-defense mechanism.”

“Well, I have to say I very much like what all I know of the humans so far.” She looked up at me from under her long, dark eyelashes, “The only human I’ve met isn’t so bad either.”

I smiled brightly, “How would you like to come to earth movie night?”

Tillia’s responding smile was twice as bright, “It’s a date.”

***

Unfortunately, the date with Doctor Tillia would have to wait.

The Radiance

was opening a warp channel and heading through void space, which meant it was time to finalize our plans and reports before we arrived at Entana.

Going through void space was a really unique experience; tons of earth media talked about travelling at lightspeed, hyperspace, or activating warp drives. The actual way it worked here was a little different; the course had to be planned in advance, and then when there was an entrance and exit point established, a warp channel would open. The warp channel would lead the ship into void space, which was basically the fourth dimension—time, I guess. So basically, we were travelling beyond the third dimension to go from point A to point B while skipping nearly everything in the middle, all the while through dilated time. Here’s where it got weird; while travelling through void space or the fourth dimension or whatever, we all experienced time as normal, but it didn’t affect us the same way—like cellular degeneration, or straight-up aging didn’t happen while travelling through void space. Weirdly enough, it was almost a way to extend a person’s life, by going through the dilated time stream. However, people couldn’t just live in void space, as it would start effecting our cells in other, horribly corrupting ways—like even worse than the movie Event Horizon. No ship was ever to travel through void space for longer than a cycle at a time, but since distance was more relative, usually jumps across space sectors only took a couple of days each.

The entire time we travelled through void space made my body feel weird—awake and asleep at the same time, floating above the ground but also feeling weighted down, and a constant feeling of motion even when I wasn’t moving. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant, but it was definitely an unusual sensation that was hard to explain. Some people took meds to tolerate it—like with motion sickness—and a lot more people used the sleep pods while travelling through void space to help with sleeping or keep a regular schedule.

Didn’t seem to bother Evie at all; she just spent a great deal of time practicing her somersaults.

I was heading to another briefing when Doctor Zyno caught up with me and slapped a companionable hand on my back, “Man, hard to believe this is your first time in void space.”

“Is that good?”

He smiled, “Taking it like a champ. Either humans are quite resilient, or it’s just you. Most people can’t even move without puking the first time through.”

“Growing up I used to go to Cedar Point every summer; this isn’t even as bad as a roller coaster.”

Having absolutely no idea what I was talking about, he just laughed and steered me into the command center. We made our way to the top row and sat next to the smiling Tillia as usual.

“Nearly late with Zyno; are you learning his bad habits?”

“Sorry, they keep kicking back the safety protocols I’ve written for Eve. It’s like none of my reports are good enough for these eggheads. I was trying to finish up before heading out.”

Up front were the usual suspects; Commander Durgo, Captain Seash, the nearly silent Captain Quinna, and then Doctors Gorgam, Wit and Kianna.

Doctor Gorgam leaned forward, “Let’s begin the briefing.” He turned to Commander Durgo, “Commander, I believe you have some grievances you’d like to share.”

The commander nodded, then tapped at his console, and a large hologram of scrolling words flashed before us. I felt my stomach squeeze up as I recognized the words from my half-dozen rejected safety protocols. “We’re here to establish proper safety protocols for asset Alpha-03. So far, Specialty Resource Agent Adam hasn’t been able to establish any secure safety protocols for the mission ahead; conditions and contingencies are waved away with a mere suggestion such outcomes won’t come to pass with little more than a ‘

just trust me

’ at this point.”

“What would you have me do? There isn’t exactly a manual for this shit!” I snapped.

All eyes turned to me, but I didn’t flinch. Back on earth, there’d been times as a medic I was working on a dying patient while the family stood around screaming at me to save them—this wasn’t even as bad as that.

“There are lives at stake here, Agent Adam. We’re concerned you aren’t taking your position seriously.” Captain Seash said calmly.

“Adam is right, there isn’t a manual on commanding a Predazoan. There’s little more we can do except trust his judgment here.” Doctor Kianna defended me.

“We see how he plays around with the organism, watching earth entertainment and doing

cartwheels

—treating her like a pet! Does the human even realize how dangerous this mission will be?” Commander Durgo countered.

“Then what do you suggest? No security protocol in the universe could prepare us all for every eventuality with a Predazoan involved.” Tillia said beside me.

“Plus, he controls the failsafe, and it’s locked to his heartrate; so long as he stays with Alpha—with

Eve

, he’ll be able to control her.” Zyno added.

It was nice having alien friends.

“We do not believe Alpha-03 is ready to fully go planet-side, not yet.” Captain Seash said.

There were angry mutterings amongst the researchers, but it seemed like a lot of the marines agreed. They probably wouldn’t feel safe fighting alongside a Predazoan—they didn’t know her like the researchers did, how Eve would behave for me.

“Then what the fuck am I even

doing

here?” I demanded.

Gorgam held his hands up to reign in the peace, “Agent Adam, we’ve talked a little about this, and we believe we have a solution—provided you can…

reason

with Alpha-03.”

I leaned back in my seat and crossed my arms, “What?”

Wit tapped at his console, and the hologram changed to show Eve in her regular kindergartner form, “We suggest we leave Alpha-03’s biomass core aboard

The Radiance

, only taking a small, scout biomass we keep locked within a portable containment unit.” The hologram showed a small mass removed from Eve and placed in a box; the scout biomass looked like her first form, the black tentacle orb the size of a softball, “This way she can remain hidden, while also controlling where she goes—no chance of wandering off doing cartwheels.”

“How will she even be an asset locked in such a container?” Tillia asked.

“Yeah, and why even send me down there at that point? Anyone could carry around a box like that.” I added.

“Box or not, she still won’t listen to anyone else.” Kianna said.

I scoffed at that, “Doubt she’ll listen to me, stuffed in a box like that.”

Doctor Gorgam shook his head, “Her biomass core will remain on

The Radiance

—she can even watch TV while you’re down planet-side. Remember, all her cells have their own little brains in her hivemind—it’d be no different than when you put your hand in a glove.”

I shook my head slowly, “She’s still not going to like it. I believe she was even looking forward to going down to the planet with us.”

“And a small part of her still is.” Kianna reasoned.

“This is only a temporary measure; we fully realize her help will be drastically limited like this, so we first want to see how she responds being down on the planet contained as she is; will she cooperate, will she follow your commands, will she behave on

The Radiance

when you’re not on it?” Captain Seash listed off, “This are questions we need answered while we establish the proper safety protocols.”

“Depending how she reacts, she might very well end up free to walk around on the planet with you in just a few cycles—you’ll need to tell her that, offer the reward for good behavior.” Kianna told me.

Knowing damn well I wasn’t going to win any argument, I just let out a tired sigh and leaned back in my chair, “Fine, I’ll tell her the new plan. But when she proves how well she behaves, I expect you all to relent these stupid safety protocols.”

Commander Durgo fixed me with a harsh glare with his four red eyes, “I was there when NX-947b was destroyed, Agent Adam. If it was up to me, Alpha-03 would have already been decommissioned, quickly followed by orbital sweeps across the Empire to erase every trace of those abominations. The fact we’re even entertaining this idea is, to me, absolutely ludicrous.”