Syn-En: Registration (3 page)

Production of what? And why would these extraterrestrial freaks care if people registered as sentients? But deep down, she knew why. The Skaperians had used Earth as a Petri dish to find a cure from the Surlat strain. Ninety percent of all life on the planet had become extinct in less than two years.

If one species viewed humans as lab rats, another would just as easily see her family and friends as slaves.

Her hands formed fists.

Once she had Bei and the Syn-En fleet at her back, she planned to introduce ET to a little thing called Karma.

Elf glanced back into the room, stared at her position.

She held her breath.

Elvis did as well.

“I shall blow it up with my new weapon, then return to salvage the pieces. Unless…” Scorpio paused on the threshold of the engine room. “Unless, you give me one of the new humans. I would like to test it against my skills.”

Elf patted Scorpio’s segmented shoulder. “Profit over pleasure, Groat. Profit over pleasure.”

God, they were hideous. When their footsteps retreated, Nell relaxed. Feeling returned to her fingers in a rush of tingles. 

The
Icarus
shuddered around her, then the ship issued a warning. “Air pressure alert.”

The fatheads hadn’t bothered sealing the punctured hull.

Bulkheads dropped down and clanged against the floor.

Nell pushed against Elvis. “Move.”

“I do not think it is wise to move just yet, Nell Stafford.” Despite his words, Elvis shifted the grate over, rolled off her and onto the deck. “They are still too close for my comfort and could easily re-board.”

Could they? Elvis had sensed the aliens before the ship did. Perhaps another ten second delay wouldn’t hurt. Nell stretched her arms and legs under the safety of the fusion reactor. “We have to get this ship moving before they blow it and us up.”

“I do not think you have any technical weapons to harm their ship.” The Amarook crooked his finger and flashed a green light inside her head.

“As much as I want to, we can’t attack them. Bei, Rome and Keyes are on their ship.” Wrapping her hands around the rail, she squeezed between the cylindrical reactor and the deck. The rough floor grabbed at her clothes, scraped her skin. That was going to leave a mark. Of course, dead left a bigger mark. “I’m going to honor my ancestors by running and hiding.”

Elvis’s nails clicked as he loped for the safe room. “We do not know if the crystalline coating will make the
Icarus
appear to have vanished.”

“Guess we’re going to find out.” Her muscles ached and a groan slipped past her lips as she stumbled after the wolf-like creature. Sardines should feel lucky they were dead before being packed in those tiny cans.

The Amarook disappeared into the room. By the time she slipped inside the over-sized closet, he was in his harness, had the keyboard down and the screens in front of him stuffed with data.

Throwing herself into the spare chair, she strapped in then opened a cabinet embedded in the wall. Wrapping one hand around the joystick, she moved it to the right then the left. Inertial dampeners prevented her from feeling the motion, but the starry image on the screen in front of her tilted this way and then that. “How long do you think we have?”

“Not long.”

Her grip tightened. “What kind of answer is that?”

She wanted a clock counting down. Bei would answer to the millisecond.

“It has been a century since my kind went to space.” Elvis’s ears twitched. “And the ships were much more advanced.”

“Well excuse me.” A red blob appeared on the left of her screen. She aimed for it. Just like in those video games her nephews like to play. Easy.

“Aren’t you supposed to avoid the red things on the screen?”

“Yep.” Holding her tongue between her teeth, she kept the course steady. Hopefully the doofus aliens will think the collision course was natural. “When I say so, I need you to hit the red button on your left.”

Elvis’s blue eyes widened and the black feathers on his head stood on end. “That will eject the fusion reactor!”

“Exactly.” Red was bad. Bei had color coded everything so in the event of an emergency, she could pilot the ship. “And it’ll explode, too. We’re going for a Hollywood ending.”

Good guys get away; Bad guys are fooled.

“Won’t we need the Helium-3 to power our engines, maintain life support and keep us hidden?”

“Oh. Um.” There was that little snag. She glanced at his screen. Bei had said something…
Think, think, think.
“Right. Open those pathways.” She tapped the screen. Green flooded the tube. “The
Icarus
has reserve tanks, one for each engine, for just such an occasion. Fill ‘em up, then let’s dump that puppy.”

Elvis hunkered down in his seat. “I do not dump puppies.”

“I meant the reactor. Dump the reactor.” Sheesh, he was awfully moody. Small wonder the Amarook males didn’t go into battle. Anxiety made them irritable. That was far worse than her nonstop commentary.

“You should have said that, then.” The ship shuddered. Red patches filled Elvis’s screen. “I believe they are firing.”

The joystick bucked in her hand. She clamped down with two to maintain her course. “What’s it doing?”

“The weapon appears to be cutting us into pieces.”

“That’s not right. Where are the phasers and torpedoes? And the shields are supposed to be dropping in increments.” Geez, how was Hollywood supposed to get them out of this if the aliens never saw the movies?

“The magnetic shields are ineffective but are fully charged.”

“Thanks a lot.” Nearing the asteroid, danger flashed in bright letters on her screen. Bei’s doing, no doubt. She sniffed back her tears and blinked to clear her vision. She’d rescue him. Removing one hand from the joystick, she set her finger over the cloaking switch. “Ready to eject the reactor?”

Elvis wrapped his tail tightly around his hind end. “Ready.”

“Now!” One. Two. Three.

A burst of light flashed on the screen.

She flicked the switch. Nothing changed. Yanking on the stick, she steered away from the asteroid. “Did it work?”

“How—”

The blast wave slammed into them. Ripped the joystick out of her grip. The ship flipped head over heels. Faster and faster.

Nell vomited.

It hit Elvis on the side, speckled his fur in chunks of gray regurgitated rations.

She reached for the controls. Sparks sprayed from the connections. “That can’t be good.”

Her fingers brushed the side of the joystick and it careened over. Connected by a few wires, it whapped against the wall.

Elvis clawed at the keyboard.

The ship stopped spinning.

Her head slammed against the seat and the straps cut into her chest and thighs. “What did you do?”

“Autopilot. You were not the only one Beijing York trained.”

The program engaged, and the screen in front of her gradually changed. Fuel levels appeared. Dotted lines carved up space. Damage assessed. Then a course was set.

Her stomach condensed into a hard ball and fell to her feet. “Oh, no. No, no, no! We’re heading straight for Erwar.”  

Chapter 3

Systems coming online.
Bei winced at the soft feminine voice inside his head. Eyes closed, he waited. Every circuit in his body felt as if it had been touched by a live wire.

One with excess amperage.  

How had an electromagnetic pulse knocked him out?

His upgrades should have rerouted the surges to his central power supply. At least that’s what the Skaperians had claimed. Either the feather-headed extraterrestrials were treacherous allies, or they used outdated technology.

Green lights flared inside Bei’s head — visual, audio, and touch sensors switched on. The sensitivity levels had his nerves bubbling in acid. He quickly dialed them down then sorted through the information.

Six humanoids in the room, plus two Syn-En.

Eight biosigns but not the one he craved. Not Nell’s.

His heart mule-kicked in his chest and he picked up an alarm. Six months in his human wife’s company had affected his control. He released a serotonin cocktail and calmed his body’s reaction, but not his mind. Where was she? What had ET done to her?

Sensors indicated Keyes and Rome rebooted on his right, judging by their low-level energy readings.

Opening his eyes, Bei stared into a bright light. He dimmed his optical receptors. If ET thought to get the better of him through bright lights, they’d soon learn the error of their ways. He lifted his hand. It rose two centimeters before slamming back against his metal bed. Damn. He lay on a magnetic gurney. The strength of which ebbed and flowed with Bei’s movements.

He was stuck. For now.

“Ahh, good.” A soft voice purred. Shadows moved beyond the bright light. “You are awake.”

Bei turned his head toward the sound. “Where am I?”

A lithe figure sauntered into view. Long, pale green hair swirled around a heart-shaped face. A turquoise tunic molded to a muscular chest.

Must be a male, given the lack of overt secondary sexual characteristics. Bei enhanced his sensors to scan the musculature, underlying bone structure, and organ weaknesses and send the data to the Combat Information Center for identification.

Link not found. Searching for new entry into mainframe
.

Damn. He’d have to wait until his cerebral interface could hack into their system to gain information.

Avarice glinted in ET’s slanted emerald eyes. “Are the rest of humans like you?”

Bei blanked his features. Syn-Ens didn’t provide information to their captors. “Where am I?”

ET stroked his pointy chin. “A glitch in your programming perhaps?”

A second alien, this one with white hair, shuffled forward. “We are having trouble translating their binary code, but there seems to be no physical problem.”

The embroidery on this one’s tunic lacked the intricacy of the first male’s. Perhaps this indicated rank. Or vanity. Or a hundred other things. Bei checked his link with the Combat Information Center, still off-line. What had happened to his ship?

And Nell?

Without either one close by, escape became more difficult, but not impossible. Nell would probably have come up with a handful of ways by now, all taken from early twenty-first century movie plots. His lips quirked. And she’d be talking about it nonstop until he calmed her down.

“It smiled.” The white ET backed away.

Bei locked his facial muscles in a neutral expression. He would never allow the hostile ETs to use his emotions against him.

The green ET stroked Bei’s hair. “Yes, they seem almost human, don’t they?”

Bei was human, dammit. A synthetically-enhanced human, true, and those upgrades would allow him to escape. “Where am I?”

Let them think he had a glitch. Once his men awoke, he could use that to his advantage. Especially, since the failsafe phrase was completely appropriate.

“The other two are responding.”

Bei turned his head. What little remained of his stomach formed a hard knot in his gut.

Keyes’s torso and head lay on a metal operating table between Bei and Rome. Two more white-haired aliens pulled and squashed her arms and legs in a rectangular stress tester. Keyes’ chest cavity was splayed open, like pinned butterfly wings, while a peach-haired ET probed her insides.

Keyes’s brown eyes blinked open. When she spied the invasion, her head reared back and her pelvis tried to curl. The magnetic table made the motion look like a tremor. “Wh—”

“Where am I?” Bei spoke over her.

She turned her head and faced him. Panic scrunched her features before they smoothed out. “Where am I?”

As her commanding officer, she trusted him. Bei wouldn’t let her down. Not with her and her baby’s life at stake.

“Leave her alone!” On the other side of Keyes, Rome came fully awake. Metal thumped and wheels squeaked. “Get away from her!”

Rome bucked and thrashed, fighting the magnetic bonds holding him prisoner. His blond head slammed against the table before they both tipped over. Dropping Keyes’ limbs on the space near Keyes’s body, the two whities rushed to Rome’s side.

Bei gritted his teeth. Thanks to that little outburst, he would have to modify his plan. He had to rein in his security chief before they lost one of their few advantages. “Where am I?”

He enunciated each word, loudly.

Rome stilled. “Wh—Where am I?”

Good. His men understood. Now for phase two. Bei just needed an opportunity to instigate it. He hoped his captors were as cocky as they appeared.

“Ah, they are as emotional as the creatures they are patterned after.” Greenie smoothed his long hair behind his pointy ears.

“Worried your stink wouldn’t work?” Out of the darkness lumbered another alien, a far different species than the others.

And a bigger threat. Bei scanned him. Instead of smooth skin, a black exoskeleton covered his four arms and two legs. Since Bei’s sensors detected bones under a muscular layer, the exoskeleton must be synthetic armor, like an insect’s. Permanently attached armor, whose only weakness seemed to be at the joints.

Bug-ugly’s compound eyes glistened in the bright light.

Obviously, Bei wasn’t the only one assessing an opponent. A single touch would give him a better idea of how his own upgrades would compare in battle. He just had to lure Bug-ugly closer. A staring contest should do it. Bei locked his gaze on ET and switched off his blinking program.

“Of course I wasn’t worried, Groat.” Greenie squared his shoulders before spreading his arms wide. “This represents the best of both worlds——emotional and programmable.”

Chemical weapon detected.
Bei’s vision darkened. He identified the compound - oxytocin. No way would he bond with the ugly alien. He injected blocking agents to prevent the chemical from affecting his human brain.

“They cannot help but want to please me.”

“Or they’ll please whoever their programming tells them to.” Groat’s nictitating lenses turned his insect eyes a milky white when he blinked. He cracked the knuckles of the four fingers on his upper right hand.