The Awakening (The Hyperscape Project Book 1) (7 page)

Nick interrupted
her. “What would happen if a Quantonium pellet hit something at high speed?”

“It would only
make a small reaction, not enough to hurt anything.”

“Damn.... Is
there a way to transform the pellet into plasma on impact?”

Arya stared down
at the dismantled weapon as she answered. “With the added energy of impact, it
may be possible to use….” What Nick was postulating finally coalesced in Arya’s
mind. “Ah, I see. That may work.” She quickly turned back toward the center of
the Bridge where Karg and the Captain were discussing their plans. “Captain, we
may have something.”

Argos turned
toward her. “Go on.”

“Sir, I could
modify our pulse weapons to fire Quantonium pellets coated with Corminium 80.
The range would be limited though.”

Argos lowered
his gaze to the floor as he considered the proposal. “That may actually work.
The Corminium would add the extra kick needed for a plasma reaction. It would
get through the shield and then react on impact with the armor. Good work,
Arya.”

“Actually, it
was his idea, Sir.” She turned toward Nick.

Captain Argos
looked past Arya at Nick. “If we get through this, I guess we’ll owe you. But
don’t forget it was your ship they traced here.” His gaze shifted to Arya. “Get
to work. They’ll be here soon.” Argos then glanced at the four-armed hulk of an
alien. “Karg, give them a hand. But if they fail, you know what to do.”

“Yes, Sir,” Karg
replied. As he turned to leave, he motioned to Arya. “Come on. We have to get
to storage section twelve.”

“But section
twelve is near Bay Two.” Arya sounded concerned.

Nick called out
from the rear of the group as they headed for the tube doors. “Uh…aren’t the
Mok’tu in Bay Two?”

Without breaking
his stride, Karg called back, “The supplies we need are in a room across from
Bay Two.”

Going down and
kicking some Mok’tu butt was alright with Nick, but the team had no effective
weapons yet. What were they going to do if they ran into the Mok’tu before they
were ready? “Hey, why is it
we
don’t have shields?” Nick asked.

Arya looked back
over her shoulder. Nick could tell by her expression that he’d asked a stupid
question.  

Having arrived
at the tubes, Karg opened the tube doors and pushed his bulk inside.  Nick
and Arya followed, cramming themselves in alongside the beast.

“Only Tac Squads
have shields,” Arya explained. “And nobody has ever killed or captured a Tac
Squad member. Anyone that ever got that close to them didn’t survive. We have
tried to replicate the tech, but so far we have failed. The power requirements
are enormous. Not to mention its adverse effects on living tissue.”

“Wait! Did you
just say that no one has ever killed one of these things? Never? Not even
once?” Nick was astonished.  

Arya stared back
at Nick. Without her saying a word he knew she was dead serious. The situation
was bad and getting worse by the minute. Nick stood in silence, not sure if he
wanted to know anything more. Perhaps confronting the Tac Squad was a bad idea,
after all.

“Me and my big
mouth,” he muttered.

Nick’s knees
buckled as the tube stopped on deck six. The doors zipped open and Nick was
pushed out as Karg squeezed out of the tube. Nick reluctantly followed the
others as they trudged down the corridor toward their fate. He wasn’t so sure
he could make the impossible possible this time around, but if he could…if he
lived….  Damn, there were a lot of
if
s rolling around his
head. 

Nick lagged
behind the two. Keeping up with the alien’s superior speed was proving
difficult. Karg suddenly slowed down and crept up to a corner in the hallway.
The beast didn’t make a single sound. Even the floor remained still as Karg’s
feet softly met the ground with each step. How the massive beast could suddenly
be so stealthy was beyond Nick’s comprehension.

Karg turned and
pointed to a door directly across the intersecting corridor. Hunched down to
avoid notice, he slowly stepped out into the adjoining passageway, waving for
the others to follow him across.

Nick peered
around the corner. The hangar bay was only several yards down the hall. He
could see straight into the open doorway. Inside, two Mok’tu stood guard over
the module, their legs hidden from view by a few crates stacked in the way. The
sight of the Mok’tu in person was a whole lot different than watching them on
the vid-display. In the vid they looked as though they were wearing armor, but
at this distance they appeared to be more like robots than armor clad aliens.
Nick froze for a moment, worried they might spot him.

Apparently
annoyed by his hesitation, Arya grabbed Nick’s wrist and pulled him across the
hall and into the supply room. Karg was already busy opening some sturdy
containers at the back of the room. The beast carefully removed a metallic bar
from one container and set it on top of a crate. Reaching over to a shelf, he
grabbed a peculiar looking device out of a box and plopped it down next to the
metal bar.

Meanwhile, Arya
combed the room in search of something.

“What are you
looking for?” Nick asked.

“Tarodine fluid.
It’s a green liquid in a short cylinder.”

After a few
minutes of going through boxes of stuff totally foreign to him, Nick found one
that held numerous tubes of green liquid. An odd aroma wafted from the box,
confronting his nostrils with its unusual scent. The contents smelled like a
blend of wintergreen and motor oil. “Is this it?” he said, holding up a
cylinder.

“That’s it.
Bring it over here.” She took the cylinder from Nick and tossed it over to
Karg.

After quickly
emptying another container onto the floor, Karg placed the gathered supplies
into it.

With everything
they needed packed in the box, Arya eased up to the door and peered out. “Okay,
come on, we need to get to the lab.”

Nick followed
close behind her as they crossed the corridor. Carrying the container of
supplies, Karg tip-toed along behind them.

Clink…clink…clunk….
The odd sound coming from behind them gave Nick a hefty dose of
adrenaline.  They all turned in unison to see a round device rolling into
the corridor. The blinking light on the small orb warned of impending danger.
Nick spun around and forced Arya further down the hall. “Run!”

“Plasma
grenade!” Karg turned and ran, scooping up Nick and Arya in his two free arms
as he raced down the corridor.

Boom!
The
blast erupted behind them, knocking Karg forward off his feet. Hot plasma flew
down the corridor toward them. With one arm around Nick, one around Arya and
two bracing his fall, Karg landed on the floor and slid several yards before
coming to a stop. He let go of his two passengers at the same time the box of
supplies he’d dropped tumbled haphazardly down the corridor in front of him.
Glowing edges of red-hot plasma rolled around Karg as the explosion dissipated.
Beneath his chest lay his two companions, untouched by the blast.

Nick had landed
on top of Arya, and the two lay sandwiched together nose to nose on the floor
beneath Karg. He stared at Arya, half shocked by the explosion and half
mesmerized by her eyes. Which one’s heart raced more, he wasn’t sure. He felt
like a school boy, suddenly flung face to face with his biggest crush.

“You can get up
now,” she said softly. Nick’s hesitation caused a smile to spread across her
face.

“Oh, um, right,
just making sure you’re okay.” He rolled over onto the floor. Karg was still on
his knees hunched over them. As Nick looked up at him, a slight wisp of smoke
rose off Karg’s shoulder. “Thanks, Karg.”

Karg nodded
slightly.

Arya spotted the
smoke coming off of Karg. “You okay, Karg?” she said in a concerned voice.

“Yeah, a little
singed, but alright.” He stood up and turned to look at his back. His clothes
were burnt halfway off, leaving all four of his shoulder blades exposed.

“Good thing
you’re Rakozian,” Arya said as she studied his back.

“Yeah, they’ll
have to try harder than that to take me out.”

After gathering
up their box of supplies and heading down the corridor as fast as they could,
the team finally arrived at the brightly lit lab. All sorts of high tech
equipment filled the clean, white room. Consoles and apparatuses lined the
walls and a row of work tables filled the middle of the room. An isolation
chamber stood ominously at the far end. Karg placed the box of things they had
collected onto a table in the center of the room. Arya removed the items one by
one and placed them in a neat row on the table. 

 “Karg, can
you set up the electron depositor?” Arya asked as she handed him the cylinder
of green liquid.

Karg took the
tarodine fluid and grabbed the metal bar from the table. “Right away.” He
turned and started configuring some sort of machine that stood against the wall
of the lab.

Nick needed to
find out more about the enemy he was about to face. “So, who are these Mok’tu
anyway?”

Arya led him
over to one of the consoles. Without touching it, an image displayed on the
screen. “These are the Mok’tu.”

Nick looked at
the display for a moment then back at Arya. “But…how did the console know to
bring up a Mok’tu on the display? You didn’t tell it to, you didn’t even touch
it.”

Arya sighed and
turned to Nick. He had such a look of bewilderment on his face. Arya took one
look at Nick’s face and a grin erupted on hers. She couldn’t help but let out a
giggle. Even with the severity of the situation at hand, she just couldn’t hold
back the laugh.

“What’s so
funny?” Nick said, looking even more confounded.

“Nothing,” she
answered, letting out another giggle. “I’m sorry, you’re just so cute, in an
odd sort of way.”

More confused
than ever, Nick didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or take her remark as a
compliment.

Arya attempted
to contain her amusement at Nick’s ignorance. “I’m sorry, I know this is all
new to you. You see, the nanites, as you call them, send data, only short
range, to other nanites and to certain equipment. In our ships, it allows us to
give commands without taking our eyes off our target. I sent the command to
show this file, by thinking it. Among other things, nanites also send the
language data they learn to others. That is how I understand you. After they
learned your brain and language, that data was transferred to my nanites.”

“So they receive
information too?”

“Yes, but for
security, they are limited to receiving only certain data, like language
files.”

The logic and
technical skill of it was impressive, but it still frightened Nick a little. It
was all he could do to shake the thought of those rogue nanites on Earth. “So
tell me about these Mok’tu.”

“What little we
know of them has been collected from regular Mok’tu that were killed, and from
the salvaged data records of ships that the Dragorans had destroyed. But the
Tac Squads are a lot tougher than regular Mok’tu. They’re more heavily armored
and have shields. We know even less about them because no one has ever killed
or captured one. What we
do
know is the Mok’tu have redundant systems,
so if they get damaged, they can continue to fight.”

“Systems? What
do you mean systems?”

Arya looked over
her shoulder at Karg, who was busy preparing the ammo.

Karg just
grinned and cocked his head, as if he knew what Arya was thinking. “I still
remember my reaction at the site of the first dead Mok’tu I came across.”

“Mok’tu are
Biomechanoids,” Arya said.

“Biomechanoid?
You mean living machines?”

“Not exactly.”
She looked back at the screen. “The only biological part is the brain. They
grow their young in artificial pods. Then remove the brain at birth age and
place it into a mechanoid body. The machine body contains redundant systems to
maintain the brain. Their method is highly efficient. With only a need to
supply the brain with nutrients, they can extend their lifespan many times its
normal length.”

“That’s
horrible.” Nick was disgusted by the mere thought of it.

“There is more.
They have effectively cut off the perception of pain. Their robotic parts can
sense if they touch something or get shot, and then they react or act
accordingly, but their brain doesn’t register pain. We feel pain so that we stop
before our bodies get damaged. It’s a self defense mechanism. But they do not
need the sensory perception of pain. If they get a damaged limb, they just keep
fighting. They have been known to remove a limb from one of their dead to
replace their own inoperable one. They will even pull off their own crippled
limb to use as a weapon. Unlike us, Mok’tu will gladly sacrifice a limb if it
gives them a tactical advantage. They can also go for long periods without
breathing air. They are intelligent, strong, resilient, ruthless and one hetek
of an enemy.”

Nick’s body
suddenly felt too heavy to maintain a standing position.  Overwhelmed by
the bizarre situation he found himself in, he sat down heavily on the nearest
object that would support his weight. This was really seeming more and more
like a dream.  A really long, really bad dream.  Just when he thought
he had a handle on this new, alien world, it got weirder. Not just weirder, but
more dangerous than he could have ever imagined. They were facing an invincible
enemy, one that wanted to steal his module and presumably rip his head off.

Ignoring his
weak moment, Arya continued.  “So, aim for the head. I don’t know how many
shots it’ll take, but hopefully these new rounds will burn through the armor.
If not, the heat may be enough to damage the brain inside.”

“Right, aim for
the head. Always aim for the head,” Nick muttered, still dazed. “Shit. What
have I gotten myself into this time?”