Exploration (3 page)

A familiar voice filled the round room. It was the synthetic voice she associated with Captain Running Stream.

"Please be so good as to place an appropriate control collar on each of the others."

"No,"
Cat said calmly.

"Forgive me. I phrased the statement like a request. Understand me when I tell you it was not."

"No," Cat repeated.

"Perhaps I need to make myself clear."

Several dozen circuits, embedded in Cat's jumpsuit, activated. They emitted a microwave pulse that penetrated just deep enough through her skin to stimulate the nerve endings located there. Her nanites blocked the pain centers of her brain. At the same time her AI, which resided in her internal and fully cloaked Heshe encounter unit, calculated the probable effect on a normal human. It sent appropriate simulated responses to various parts of her body. Her muscles spasmed, and she crumpled to the ground in what looked to be complete agony.

The pain emitters stopped. Cat continued the ruse by gasping for breath. Ben reached down to help her up. His eyes were wide despite knowing about Cat's technological advantages.

"I trust I will have your cooperation now," Captain Running Stream continued.

"No,"
Cat said between clenched teeth. "I will not give you the ability to do this for others."

She began to remove her jumpsuit but the moment her hands touched the fastener her body was ravaged by another round of debilitating agony.
This time it did not stop after a moment.

"MAKE IT STOP!" Ben yelled while trying to hold her still.

"Then place the collars on the others," the voice said patiently, as if it were a parent talking to a slow child.

"OK, OK... I'm doing it!" Ben yelled over Cat's
very realistic screams. Ben quickly located the clasps on each of the collars and placed one each of the others. As he finished Cat's thrashing subsided.

"Let that be a lesson to you my cybernetic friend. Each of these others I can control directly. Should you disobey me your human friend will suffer
greatly. Do we understand each other?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry... what?"

"Ye
s…
Master."

Cat moved down the chow line with Ben at her side. Earlier in the day they had run into Sassi as they were marched down a hall between the Gym and medical. Sassi had indicated he would try to find them at the quarter day meal. The Modos fed them four times a day at exact quarter day increments.

Although they had been onboard the Modos ship for less than a week, their days had developed a pattern of sorts. They would endure a battery of physical endurance tests followed by a medical review. The Modos were efficient if nothing else. Cat was thankful for her AI, Cal. He kept close tabs on the plethora of fictitious biometric signatures her body supplied for the ever inquisitive Modos med-scanners.

"So," Ben said as he shuffled next to her. "Are you going to go with the grey gruel or the pink today?"

Cat smiled. "I was thinking of mixing the two today. After all, diversity is the spice of life."

He chuckled. "I respectfully disagree. The spice of life is cocoa, for surely there is no greater sign of the divine then the presence of chocolate in this universe!"

"And no surer sign we are in hell without it," Cat added.

"You're a cheerful bunch," a familiar voice said from behind them.

As one, the two turned to see Sassi.

The bird-like Ashkelon was preening his low-frequency antenna. There was a thin metallic band around the base. He was being extremely careful not to touch it.

"I take it that silver ring is your control collar."

Sassi chuckled. Until you've seen a giant, silky, moth-like bird laugh you haven't experienced the fullness of life. In the Ashkelon, a chuckle took the form of a head to tail fur ripple that rolled from one end to the other and back.

"OK, I bite," Ben said. "Why are you laughing?"

Sassi calmed down and continued out loud, "It is indeed, as you suspected, a control collar. I made the mistake of touching it once right after they put it on. The pain was debilitating."

"And the memory of this makes you laugh?"

"I believe the humans have a similar condition known as a 'Laughter Stress Response.'"

"Ah..." Ben said, although it was obvious he still didn't understand.

Cat grabbed her tray. The 'slave inductees' as their captors called them were given forty minutes for meal breaks. Despite her earlier conversation with Ben, the food supplied was actually very good. Various animal-based proteins as well as a wide selection of fruits and vegetables were provided. The gruel to which Ben referred to earlier was a slightly fruity synthetic vitamin and enzyme concoction that was specifically tailored to the physiological systems of each species, to aid in the digestion of these foodstuffs. They were the only required item for each of the inductees to consume.  The gruel was race specific, but each race had at least two flavor choices. It seemed their captors wanted them well fed.

For Cat, the gruel was superfluous because her Heshe nanites converted any available source material into whatever nutrient her body needed. The idea, however, was to not advertise her enhancements, so she obediently ate the required two teaspoons of gruel with each meal.

The three friends sat at a corner table in what passed for the Modos slave mess hall.

"They are certainly pushing us thru a wide variety of physical tests," Cat said as she chewed on a relatively decent pseudo-hamburger. She tried not to think about what creature might have been the source of the animal protein.

Sassi sipped at a glass of nectar and nibbled on a piece of something that looked like a blue frog leg.

"I think that may be about to change," the Ashkelon said.

Ben nodded for him to continue.

Sassi put the glass down and used a delicate forward pincer to brush the fur around his mouthpart clean.

"They started pulling people from my cohort out of the gym. When they came back, the word was they were given a series of puzzles to solve. Those that solved the puzzles were kept longer."

"Makes sense," Cat said. "Any organization like this would need to have some type of structure to include team leads, etc. It's important we do well on those aptitude tests."

To Ben, via her quantum link, she added '
It may be the only way we can get a chance to see through a viewport
.'

Sassi did not have a working quantum link, so she had no secure way to share this thought with him. Like all of the captives, he had an amulet that was the Modos tech equivalent of an encounter unit. It provided a very reasonable bidirectional translation. Cat was under no illusion, however, with regard to their privacy.

They had been on the ship for quite a while at this point, but neither Ben nor Cat had been allowed to see a local star pattern. This was disconcerting.

As per their orders, both Ben and Cat were in regular contact with the GCP via their FTL links. This was possible, it seemed, because the Modos did not have access to FTL communication and so they were not aware that Ben had this capability built into his cybernetic systems. Unfortunately without a star pattern for reference, neither Ben nor Cat could report their location. In addition, the nature of quantum entangled communications meant the signal, available to any encoded receiver instantly, could not be used to triangulate their location.

"Doing well on an aptitude test should be a piece of cake for the famous Hyper-field physicist Dr. Catherine Kimbridge," Ben said with a grin.

"And Sassi was a professional navigational computer before he became a communications officer. Calculating hyperfield jump coordinates in your head has got to be useful for something," Cat offered.

"So the only one of us we need to worry about is our resident puppy dog..." Sassi added as his fur resumed its undulation.  "Maybe they'll just want to see if they can teach him to fetch or roll over."

"I'll roll YOU over," Ben said in mock anger while raising two of his six legs to make-believe strike his friend.

A buzzer sounded, indicating that the meal period had ended.

A 'Bearephant' came into the mess hall.  A 'Bearephant' was a massive bear-like animal that had an elephant-like nose that could be used for delicate manipulation. As far as Cat could determine they were not especially intelligent in their own right. However, that is not where the story ended.

Riding on the animal's shoulder was a sapphire glass bubble that protected the head of a pinkish-grey aquatic quadruped that Cat knew to be their training master. Apparently, in Modos society a functional name like Running Stream was reserved for the upper echelons.

The Bearephant and Yhsif formed a sort of hybrid or symbiotic being. Two of the Modos tentacles extended out of ports in the sapphire dome and rested on the Bearephants temples. Cat's Heshe enhanced eyes could make out ultrafine nettles that seemed to penetrate the animal's skin at those points.

The sapphire domes were not always present. Many times a Modos would ride the Bearephant 'naked.' In these situations they tended to be grey. Cat suspected the grey riders were using some type of protective skin coating, not unlike a human using suntan lotion.  

The Modos supplied the brains while the Bearephant supplied land locomotion and dexterity. The crab suit Cat had seen when Running Stream first came aboard the shuttle was reserved, it seemed, for extra-vehicular travel. This particular symbiote simply went by the name Master Yhsif.

Immediately Cat and the rest of her slave cohort got up from their tables and made their way towards the training master. It had only taken a few experiences with the control collars for most of the cohort to learn that obedience was not optional. Cat knew that most went along with the program, albeit with the thought of escaping as soon as possible.

The other human in their group, Dexter McFarland, seemed to like pain, as he was forever pushing the envelope with their captors. Cat admired his spun
k—
if not his wisdo
m—
in provoking an enemy that currently had the upper hand (or tentacle as the case may be).

The inductees, as the Modos insisted on calling the captives, were divided into two groups. One group headed back to the gym. The other group, including Cat, Ben, and Sassi, were taken to a new room. Yhsif led them in but then left immediately.

Cat surveyed the room. Something approaching sixty computer consoles were evenly spaced in a large circle. As they entered the display on each of the terminals changed, and an image of each of them appeared on a screen. Cat walked over to the screen that held her image. Not knowing what to do, she reached out and touched it. She was rewarded with a mild shock. Immediately the image was replaced with another of the slaves... a Hopper.

Judging from the noises the others were making, it seemed Cat was not the only one receiving a shock.

She saw her image appear on the monitor next to hers. She reached out and touched it... the shock was stronger. Again the image disappeared. This time her face appeared on a screen two positions over.

Several of members of her cohort started screaming. They had refused to touch any screen after the first several shocks. Apparently non-participation was not an option. Cat had a sudden thought and rather than touching the screen with her face on it she moved over six positions and touched that screen. It went dark, but there was no accompanying shock.

"It's a prime number sequence!" Cat yelled. "Touch the next in the prime sequence and you'll be fine."

Ben and Sassi quickly complied, but, based on the eruption of polyglotal swearing coming from the others in the room, they were the only ones. Cat started helping others, and Ben and Sassi quickly followed suit.

As soon as all the screens had blanked the lights in the room brightened and Yhsif reentered the room.

"Inductees, assemble!"

Cat and the others grouped together in front of the Bearephant. Cat's Modos translator amulet echoed everything Yhsif said.

"Inductees 6, 9, and 4 stay here. The rest of you, report to physical testing."

Cat almost smiled. She was prisoner number six. Ben and Sassi were nine and four respectively.

When the others had exited the room, the Bearephant turned to face the three GCP officers.

"Please explain your performance."

Cat had to remind herself that she was speaking to the domed hump on the animal's shoulder. It was unnerving to speak with a creature and not look at its face.

"I'm not sure I understand the question."

Yhsif shuffled over to the nearest console.  The Bearephant reached out with its trunk to tap a screen.

"You solved the logic problem. Most inductees eventually do, but you solved it almost immediately. Your entire cohort solved it."

Cat smiled. "I have an advanced degree in a math intensive science. Sassi is a math prodigy from a race that excels at unassisted complex math. Ben has a cybernetic brain. It should be no surprise we could solve a simple prime number sequence."

Yhsif paused a moment to digest what she had said.

"You misunderstand me," he said finally.

The Bearephant waved its trunk in a manner that reminded Cat of a hand waving dismissively.

"You misunderstand me. All the defectives solved the problem. How?"

Cat raised an eyebrow. "Defectives?"

"My apologies, a translation error. The word I meant was 'Inductee.'"