Theogony 1: Janissaries (10 page)

“So,” said Calvin, “how exactly is this going to work?” The
first shipment of heavy metals had arrived the day before, and it was time for
the first group to get implanted. The first five people chosen to receive
implants were Calvin, Night, Bullseye, Ryan and Top. Captain James Deutch was also
supposed to have been in the first group, but had not been able to get away for
the day. Steropes had picked them up at Ryan’s house in a shuttle and had
brought them up to the spaceship on the moon, where they were waiting in the
squadron’s ready room. He had space suits for all of the men, but wouldn’t say
where they had come from.

“One at a time,” said Steropes, “you will be taken to the
3426890’s
med bay.”

“Wait a second,” interrupted Bullseye. “What is the 3426...whatever
it was?”

“That’s this ship,” answered Calvin. He looked at Steropes.
“Not everyone has your memory for numbers. I thought we were going to rename it
the
Vella Gulf
?”

“It is all right with us,” replied Steropes, “as long as the
Japanese in the group do not mind. After all, they lost three ships in the
Battle of Vella Gulf.”

“Well, none of us can remember that number,” said Calvin,
“and the Japanese don’t care. It’s more important what
this
ship does,
not what happened 75 years ago.

“OK,” said Steropes, “
Vella Gulf
it is.”

“Where did this ship come from?” asked Bullseye. “I mean, who
made it?”

“This ship was built by the Eldive,” replied Calvin, “a race
of avian warriors. The Drakuls destroyed their home world in a surprise attack,
which killed all of their females. The Eldive didn’t allow them in combat, so
they were all there on the planet. The males went crazy with despair and killed
themselves. With nothing to lose, they used kamikaze attacks to wipe out the bigger
Drakul fleet. The Psiclopes had another janissary race that was supposed to
have mopped up the remaining Drakuls, although we now think that they may have
missed some. Regardless, the Eldive no longer exist, so they won’t be coming
back for it.”

 “On the good side,” added Calvin, “the bridge of the ship
and all of the crew spaces are larger than what they would be for a similarly
crewed human vessel, as the Eldive were avian and needed room to stretch their
wings. We should have plenty of space.”

“One at a time,” said Steropes, picking up where he left
off, “you will be taken up to the med bay. We have to do it one at a time
because there is only one medibot in the infirmary that is qualified to do the
implant procedure. You’re lucky that this is a cruiser. Anything smaller
wouldn’t have had a medibot qualified to do implants.”

“Is this a big ship?” interrupted Bullseye.

“It is a medium-sized ship about 1,300 feet long,” replied
Steropes. “Destroyers, frigates and the like are smaller. Battlecruisers,
battleships and dreadnoughts are bigger.” He paused. “Do you want to know about
the procedure?” he asked.

“Sorry,” said Bullseye. “Yes, please go ahead. I’m just a
little nervous is all.”

“The first procedure will go slower than the rest,” Steropes
continued, “as the medibot will have to familiarize itself with human anatomy.
That should take about 15 minutes. The first person should take about an hour
to complete, the rest about 45 minutes each.”

“I will go first,” announced Calvin, “followed by Bullseye, Night,
Master Chief and Top. I’m ready whenever you are.”

“Follow me, then,” said Steropes.

Calvin followed him out of the ready room. The Eldive vessel
had the same ‘navy’ feeling as every other ship he had been on. The only
difference was that everything seemed wider, due to the Eldive physiology. As
Calvin walked, it suddenly dawned on him that he was walking around on an alien
space ship. The
first
person
ever to walk around on an alien
ship. It was darn cool. There was something unexpected, though.

“Steropes, we’re on the moon, right?” Calvin asked. When
Steropes nodded, Calvin asked, “Shouldn’t the gravity be a whole lot less?”

“It would,” said Steropes, “if the artificial gravity
failed. I have it set to simulate earth-normal, which is pretty close to our home
planet’s gravity.”

“What else can you tell me about this ship?” asked Calvin,
needing something else to think about.

“Well, as you already know,” Steropes lectured, “the
3426
…the
Vella Gulf
is a heavy cruiser-sized vessel. The ship masses nearly 202,100
tons and is about 400 meters long and 60 meters wide. Captain Deutch will be
well pleased with this command, as it has 9 missile mounts and ten grasers on
each broadside, as well as three missile mounts and three grasers both fore and
aft as chase armament.”

“Grasers?” asked Calvin.

“Gamma ray lasers,” explained Steropes. “They are more
powerful than a normal laser.”

“Thanks,” said Calvin. “It sounds like a powerful ship,
although I don’t really have any frame of reference to base a comparison on.”
He looked around. “It’s certainly big enough,” he continued. “I’m already
lost.”

They went down a level via a narrow staircase equivalent to
the ‘ladders’ on U.S. Navy vessels. “The Eldives didn’t use these stairs,” said
Steropes, indicating a three-meter wide hole that was roped off next to the
stairs. “They would use that hole and simply step off and fly to the next
level. The stairs are only here for visitors.”

After another 30 seconds, they came to a stop in front of a
door. Steropes walked up to it, and it parted for them. The room inside
screamed ‘medical facility’ to Calvin in a sterile, white and stainless steel
manner. The room was square, about 25 feet to a side, with doors leading off
from the center of every wall. Four beds lined both sides of the room; all were
empty and did not appear to have been used recently. Steropes led him through
the door on the right to find a smaller, 15 foot square room with two beds and
what he guessed was the medibot. It looked like a six-foot tall shiny metal
cigar on wheels…if cigars had four arms that ended in syringes and things that
looked like rotary saws. His blood pressure spiked another 30 points just at
the sight of it.

“Welcome,” it said in a flat, metallic voice. “Please lie
down on one of the beds. We will get started shortly.” The medibot sounded very
much like the GLaDOS computer from Portal 3, one of Calvin’s Playstation 5
games.

“Like it?” asked Steropes. “I programmed its voice to sound
like what you would expect, to help put you at ease.”

Calvin wasn’t sure what would have put him at ease at the
moment, but having it sound like a computer that freaked out and nerve gassed
all of the people in its facility probably
wasn’t
what he would have
chosen. He doubted that it mattered much what the medibot sounded like. He was
on an alien vessel and about to have a robot operate on him and put things
inside his head that no human had ever had before. The medibot was going to do
all sorts of things to his physiology that he was told, secondhand, would make
him better at what he did. He had no idea what the recovery time would be or
how much it would hurt. He didn’t even know if he was supposed to be awake for
the process. The bottom line was that a robot of unknown skill was going to
conduct an invasive surgical procedure on his head and body that he knew
nothing about. He wasn’t destined to feel comfortable about the procedure, regardless.
But having the medibot sound like the computer that killed all of the
scientists in its lab definitely did
not
help his mental processes. “I’m
not sure it would have mattered,” said Calvin, “but thanks for the thought.”

The medibot stopped in front of Steropes. “You may leave,”
it said.

“Good luck!” said Steropes, leaving the room. “I’ll see you
when it’s over.”

“Thanks,” Calvin called as the door shut behind Steropes.
Looking at the robot, he asked, “How…ummm…how is this going to work? Will it
hurt much?”

“Just relax and lie back,” said the medibot. “Everything
will be all right. As far as the procedure goes, I will first conduct a scan on
you, since you are the first of your kind in 3,000 years that I have operated
on, and then I will perform the implant procedure. Even though you are the
first new Terran to receive the implants, I expect a 98% chance of successful
implantation, based on historical data implanting new species.”

“What about the other two percent?” asked Calvin.

“Most species have defense mechanisms to prevent foreign
intrusion into their bodies,” said the medibot. “Some of these can be
quite…aggressive…and will actually terminate the host, rather than allow the
implants to remain. I do not expect that to be the case with you, but you never
know.”

Calvin had heard of people rejecting things like artificial
hearts, but had never heard of anything quite that severe. Still…“Is that it?”

“Oh, no,” said the medibot. “There is a host of other
complications that could arise, leading to either the termination of the
patient or the failure of the devices. I do not forecast a suboptimal outcome in
your case, however.”

“Umm…OK, I guess,” said Calvin. “When are we going to
start?”

“The scan has been going on since you entered the room,”
replied the medibot. “Did you know that your body is full of things that don’t
work, things that work poorly and things that are just unneeded? I estimate
that you have over 100 trillion bacteria in you, and those are just the
good
ones. My system shows that bacteria cells outnumber human cells in your body by
a ratio of ten to 1. Ack! You are an infection just waiting to happen! Why did
Steropes allow you in my facility?” A mist began spraying out of a number of
places in the wall, filling the room and covering everything within it. The
medibot continued, “Chance of successful implantation has been lowered to 97.2%
due to risk of possible uncontrolled infection.”

Calvin coughed as the mist swallowed him up. He couldn’t
tell if it was the mist in his eyes, but he would have sworn the robot actually
shuddered.

“OK,” said the medibot several seconds later. “I am ready to
proceed. Rather than give you implants, I think you might be better served by
getting rid of that bacteria infested shell and taking the cyborg package. I
can easily transplant your brain into a cyborg shell for you, if you’d like.”

“No, thanks,” replied Calvin with a small shudder of his
own. He had a thought. “I would like the warrior package, though, if I could
get it.”

“Warrior, huh?” asked the medibot. “You don’t look like much
of a warrior to me. Your vision is not very good, you are overweight, and your
muscles are partly atrophied, to say nothing about your poor reflexes. Are you
really a warrior, or just trying to jack up an insurance settlement?”

“Ow,” said Calvin. “That’s not very nice. I really
am
a warrior. I am the commanding officer for both a special forces platoon and a
space fighter squadron.”

“Oh, a commanding officer,” replied the medibot. “That would
explain the excess padding on your posterior region. You should get out and exercise
more. I will do what I can, but I want you to remember that I didn’t have a lot
to work with.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Calvin. “When do we star…”

Calvin opened his eyes to find that the medibot had left.
Everything was weird. The room seemed sharper somehow; all of the angles were
crisper. Gravity seemed lighter. Calvin wondered if Steropes had lowered the
ship’s internal gravity. Recognizing he had fallen asleep before the operation
could start, he swung his legs off the bed and pushed himself up. The gravity
must
have been lowered, he thought, as he picked himself off the floor. He had
thrown himself halfway across the room.

Gingerly, he stood up. As he brushed off the flight suit, he
noticed that it had somehow become baggier in the stomach and tighter in the
chest. Weird, he thought. Then he saw himself in the mirror and realized that
the operation was not in the future. It was already complete. And
holy crap
was it a success! He looked
good
, even if he did say so himself.

His palms itched. Rolling up the right sleeve of his flight
suit, he saw that there was some sort of jack that had been implanted into his palm.
Rolling up his left sleeve, he saw that another jack had been installed in his
left palm. “What the fu...” he started to say, and then realized that the jacks
were how he was supposed to connect with his equipment, whether that was a gun,
a combat suit...or even his space fighter. OK. This was cool.

As he turned from the mirror, the medibot rolled back into
the room. “I’m surprised,” it droned. “You actually look good.”

“Thanks…I guess,” said Calvin. “How long was I out? I can’t
even see the scars.”

“P’sha,” said the medibot, sounding very human, “You were
out for 45 minutes. Of course there are no scars. What do you think I am? A
Mark 38? My nanobots are the best!” It turned to leave. “Scars! P’SHA!” It
started rolling out of the room.

“Hey!” said Calvin. “How do I find my way out?”

“Use your implants!” replied the medibot. “Duh!” The door
closed behind him.

“How do I do that?” Calvin asked the door. There was no
answer. I can figure this out, he thought. “Implants on!” he commanded. Nothing
happened. “Turn on!” Nothing happened. “Hmm.”

The door opened, and Steropes walked in. He took one look at
Calvin and said, “I guess you figured out that the medibot can do more than implants.
Did you get the Warrior Package or is that the Rock Star Body?”

“It’s the Warrior Package,” answered Calvin. “Is there a
problem with that?”

“Not with me,” Steropes replied, “but Arges will be mad.
It’s the whole ‘unified planetary government’ thing with him again. Personally,
I think it’s good. Any advantage you can get versus the Drakuls is a good
thing. The only question will be if we have enough supplies to give everyone
the package. I know we were low in gadolinium, which is used in your radiation
shielding because of its high
neutron
absorption rate.”