First Contact

Chapter 524: Resurgence

Vuxten limped into the command center, looking around for the Duty Officer. He motioned at a Treana'ad behind the desk, one Staff Sergeant Nan'Tz.

"Where's Lieutenant Grentip?" Vuxten asked.

"He stepped out to grab us all some dinner, sir," the Treana'ad said. The com clinked and he grabbed it before the second chime. "Headquarters, First Telkan Marine Division, Staff Sergeant Nan'Tz speaking. How can I help you, sir, ma'am, both or neither?"

Vuxten waited for a moment as the Treana'ad Staff Duty NCO forwarded the call to the Bravo Company HHC barracks.

"Sorry about that, sir," the Treana'ad said. "It's been hectic tonight."

"I understand. Who's handling ground to orbit commo?" Vuxten asked.

"5th Signal Brigade. They're on the other side of base, though," the Treana'ad said. "Anything I can help with, sir?"

Vuxten nodded. "I need to put a call through to General NoDra'ak as well as Division Command and whoever's handling MEDCOM out here," he said.

The Treana'ad nodded. "General NoDra'ak and his command staff are actually ground-side, right here at this base," he said. "The MEDCOM Commander is at the base hospital."

Vuxten sighed, glanced at Casey, who was standing against the wall with a neutral expression. "I think you better put me through to the General first."

"Which one?" The Treana'ad asked, putting his hand on the comlink.

"General Vrawgarkwa, she's the current Division Commander," Vuxten said.

Nan'Tz motioned at the ring on the floor by the wall. "I'll shoot it over there, sir."

Vuxten moved over and stood in the ring, activating it with his implant. The security came online. Someone would be able to tell who he was, and that he was talking to someone, but not who and not intercept any data or listen in on the conversation.

He waited while Staff Sergeant Nan'Tz put through the call.

Vrawgarkwa answered, dressed in a PT uniform, her hair messed up. "Yes, Captain?"

"Ma'am, I've just come into possession of what I think may be critical data," Vuxten said.

Vrawgarkwa narrowed her eyes, then shook her head. "You've got a devil's slice of luck, Captain. Let's hear it."

Vuxten inhaled, then launched into it. "Currently, the SUDS inoperative and the cloning banks all keep locking up when we try to make any clones. I heard something about clone geneseed contamination," he said.

She nodded slowly.

"Lance Corporal Casey has a 'no cloning' profile," Vuxten said. "Before you discount it, hear me out. If Casey gets cloned on an unauthorized system, it blows out the cloning array. Sometimes not just the one used, but the entire base cloning array and the local SUDS node all slag down."

Vrawgarkwa rubbed her face and looked more intent. "Wait, isn't Casey the Novastar VII pilot? The Ringbreaker Class guy they dropped on planet when we first got here?"

"Right!" Vuxten said. "Everyone looks at that and says 'well, that's why the system slags down' but what if it's not?" Vuxten pointed at Casey, making it so Casey could hear him.

"Did you have to get cloned tissue or blood before you went Novastar?" he asked.

"No, sir," Casey said. "Not until I took a load of shrapnel to the chest."

Vuxten turned back to the General. "See, ma'am. They didn't try till after he went Novastar pilot. What if the problem isn't just the Novastar template, but his origins?"

The General made a motion and looked off to the side. She obviously scrolled through something then narrowed her eyes. "Casey. Home of Record: Rigel-5 dot Sierra Charlie."

Her eyes narrowed further. "SC? That's not one of the moons. Hang on," she made a few more scrolling motions. "His home of record is Rigel-5, his Point of Entry is one of the space stations orbiting the Harkgawarka moon. No address listed. No mother and father listed."

She made a humming noise, one of the musical sounds that a stressed or deep thinking Rigellian female often did.

"Ask him where he's really from. He's a Rigellian citizen, but I'm not seeing a place of birth or location of schooling, just that he tested and provided documentation of homeschool equivalency."

"He said he's something called 'Tabulan' when I asked," Vuxten said.

General Vrawgarkwa froze. Her protective clear inner eyelids clicked down and her lips firmed up and pressed together as she gave a sharp hiss.

"Are you sure he said Tabulan," she asked carefully.

Vuxten motioned again. "Casey, where did you say you were from? Exactly. Your birth people. A martial people, right?"

Casey nodded. "Blathmin Township, Bhaile-Prime, Tabula-929 System," Casey said. He gave a smile. "We're kind of a martial people. We're not part of the Confederacy. I haven't really thought of them too much in a long time."

Vuxten turned back to the General. "Did you get that."

She blinked her inner eyelids and nodded slowly. "Yes. Yes, I did," she leaned forward. "Are you anywhere near a creation engine of any class?"

Vuxten looked around. "No, ma'am. Well, there's a Class-I Nanoforge in the corner, basically a hard copy printer."

She nodded slowly. "All right. Good. Keep it that way."

Vuxten nodded. "I will. I think I know what's happening with the clone banks. Or at least, I've found something out that might point us in the right way. He said his people left Terra back when it was called Earth and haven't had any genetic modification."

She nodded slowly, still protecting her eyes.

"What if it isn't the Novastar impressions on his DNA? What if it's the fact he's got Old Earth DNA?" Vuxten said.

"Why would that do it?" the General asked.

"Can Terrans still throw lightning?" Vuxten asked.

She shook her head. "No."

"The Imperium guys could. They're all Old Terra DNA, and I've seen them throw lightning. They're psychic, big time psychics," Vuxten was talking rapidly now. "I've even heard that humans aren't supposed to be throwing lightning. I overheard that there was consideration of pulling Terrans off the battlefield till some kind of psychic suppression could be enabled after Terrans started showing psychic abilities during the initial Atrekna attacks on Hesstla."

The General frowned, then nodded. "OK."

"I checked. You can't run off an old style human. I looked up someone called Herman "Khan" Noonan-Melville and asked it I could run a VR or clone of him to ask him questions. I was informed that due to about eight pages of legal jargon that I couldn't because he would be considered dangerous," Vuxten said. "He's from just prior to the Glassing. I checked on a few famous Terrans after the Imperium Era, and I could run off VR versions, but nobody pre-Glassing."

The General nodded. "I'll alert Smokey 'No. You're onto something. There's data out of the First Battle for Hesstla that you don't know," she reached out and grabbed her adaptive camouflage top. "Clear a SCIF room with a Whiskey Clearance."

"Maybe the MEDCOM commander?" Vuxten suggestion.

"Among others," she said. "Read this. Decide what to tell Lance Corporal Casey. Then you make sure Casey can't access any creation engines and keep your eyes directly on him."

"Yes, ma'am."

"General Vrawgarkwa, out."

The call terminated.

The field wouldn't let Vuxten leave until he read the file. Sighing, he opened it up and looked at it. It was read-only, retinal-link only.

It was only two pages.

What he read made his blood run cold.

He deleted the file and counted to five before he let the security field drop.

"Fun call, sir?" Casey asked.

"Not really," Vuxten said. He moved over to Staff Sergeant Nan'Tz. "I need a Whiskey Clearance enabled SCIF cleared. Coffee, donuts, cigarettes, and some Liquid Hate."

"Yes, sir," the Treana'ad said.

"I'll be right back," Vuxten said. He motioned to Casey. "Come with me, Marine."

Casey grinned. "You know, technically, I'm not a Marine. I'm a soldier. Army."

Vuxten just nodded, pushing through the door.

Across the street was a large field used for morning PT (Physical Training) that was empty, big enough for a Battalion to hold PT or do a PT test in. Vuxten walked across the parking lot, across the street, and kept going until he was in the middle of the field. He looked around carefully.

The nearest vehicle was at least a hundred meters away. Nothing easily damaged. Local equivalent of grass with dirt underneath.

Casey walked up and looked around. "OK, sir, what's going on?"

"You're from Tabula-929," Vuxten said.

Casey nodded. "Yes."

"Have you ever been back?" Vuxten asked.

"Once. After my first ten years. I was exiled though," Casey said, his face tightening. "I'd accepted longevity treatments as part of my enlistment requirements. They exiled but didn't excommunicate me."

"You joined because of a woman? Suicidal?" Vuxten asked.

Casey shook his head. "No. I wasn't suicidal. It was just... everything was too small suddenly. We're an emotional people, it's part of our culture," he sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "It wasn't that long ago that we still did Carousel. Dead at 31."

He looked up. "I was in the militia already," Casey said. "I don't really think of it that often any more," he gave a sigh. "She had flawless blue eyes, hair so black it was almost blue. Her laugh brightened everything. She loved Old French poetry and British Empire epics and would read them in their original languages. She painted little ceramic figurines. She wanted to be a potter. We met in school."

Vuxten stayed still.

"We were young, we were in love, but the Genetic Pairing Council paired her up with someone else," he gave a sigh. "She was happy with him. They completed each other. I was happy for her, but I still felt lost and adrift without her. The Genetic Pairing Council Computer said there were no viable matching for me that year, try again next year, so I left."

He shook his head. "I took a junker out. Junkers showed up like once or twice a year and I got lucky. I was wandering around the old spaceport, which largely went unused for anything really, we were isolated and happy that way. When we got to Rigel-5, I discovered that as a Tabulan I had dual citizenship due to the Foundation Documents."

"And you joined Space Force," Vuxten guessed.

Casey nodded. "I needed somewhere to belong. I belonged back home, and I missed it. So I joined up."

"And you went back later?" Vuxten asked.

"Once. After my first enlistment was up. I did ten years, got a waiver for my other forty years of obligation, and went home," he sighed, made a fist, and looked at his forearm. "I'd taken longevity treatments. It was part of the benefits."

He relaxed his fist.

"I wasn't even allowed out of the space port. I got back on the junker and left, came back, signed back up and the rest is almost forgotten history," Casey said.

"Never went back?" Vuxten asked.

Casey shook his head. "Exile. I appealed it, they pointed out that my DNA was altered and I could no longer father children. It wasn't that I broke a religious tenet, it was that I broke a social tenet," he shrugged. "Water under the bridge, sir."

Vuxten waited a minute. "There's something you need to know. Something nobody told you because nobody knew to tell you," he paused. "It's classified data. If they don't want me sharing this, then they can file court martial charges on me and be damned with them."

Casey shook his head. "Sir, whatever it is, I doubt it's worth your career."

"It has to do with Tabula," Vuxten said.

"What? They joined the Confederacy?" Casey gave a slight snicker. "I can see the Blood Council bending to the Confederacy's Twelve Basic Rights."

"It's gone," Vuxten said, just ripping the bandage off.

Casey froze.

"Wiped out. Completely. Recon showed that the planet's dead. Barren. Just a few destroyed cities covered by shattered domes, dirt, and weeds. Not a single living being beyond bacteria and small water and soil based organisms," Vuxten said.

Casey clenched his fists. His eye began glowing amber.

"It looked like, to the recon team, that it was a Lanaktallan bioweapon attack," Vuxten said.

"Like the Talmonus Harmony," Casey said. Sparks popped off his fists and his eye glowed red. "All of them?"

Vuxten nodded. "I've seen a few datapics. It's bad."

"How long have you known?" Casey said. His voice was like rocks grinding together.

"I was just informed. Your home of record is listed as Rigel-5. Nobody knew you were from Tabula," Vuxten said. "The only reason I knew..."

"Is because I told you," Casey said. He closed his eye.

Vuxten could still a faint red glow, see the soft illumination of the human's eyes.

"That's why you brought me out here. To make sure I didn't break anything," Casey growled. "In case I lost control."

Vuxten shook his head. "No."

Casey opened his eye. "No?"

Vuxten pointed back at the HQ building. "There's Mantid and Lanaktallan and Tnvaru working in that building. All of them are sensitive to psychic emanations. To strong emotions. Yours are an emotional people, like mine, and I didn't want you to inadvertently cause a psychic injury to someone who was over sensitive and not protected by a psychic shield."

"You aren't protected, sir," Casey said, closing his eye.

"I stood next to Enraged Phillip when the guns were pounding and the Dwellerspawn screaming, with my broodcarriers beneath my feet. I've felt Bellona's cold touch upon my cheek," Vuxten patted the magac stubber at his waist. "I carry the weapon of Bahram the Persian Fury that I picked up when he had fallen and have been called Brother by Osiris of the Warsteel Flame. I carry an eight thousand year old weapon that cannot be left in an arm's room or else it affects the other weapons, that pulling the trigger causes spikes in the psychic shielding."

"But that is not why I am out here with one of my men," Vuxten reached out and touched Casey's arm. "I have no fear because I will stand with thee, together, before a malevolent universe," he quoted.

"I misjudged you, sir," Casey said. He gave a deep, hitching sigh. "All of them?"

"Yes," Vuxten said. "I'm sorry."

Casey looked up at the sky. At the clear, beautiful night. The core of the Milky Way galaxy shining, the illuminated nebula to the east, the dance of an aurora to the North. Pinpricks of warships in orbit and the twinkle of satellites.

"In the holos, it would be raining," Casey said.

Vuxten touched his implant. "Want me to call planetary weather control?"

Casey suddenly laughed and shook his head. "With our luck we'd get hit by lightning."

Vuxten waited for him to stop laughing. Then he waited quietly as Casey pulled a bottle of pills out of pocket, dry swallowed one, and put the pills back in his pocket.

"Will you be all right?" Vuxten asked. "Do you want to go talk to the chaplain?"

"Tomorrow. I'll go see her and Mental Health tomorrow," Casey said. "I'm hurting, but it's a phantom ache," he gave a chuckle. "My heart hurts. The cyberware says there's nothing wrong, but it hurts. Not my heart, not the one in my chest with the cyberware, but my heart heart."

"I get it," Vuxten said. He looked at where a staff car with a general's flag fluttering on the front was pulling into the headquarters. "Sometimes I remember Telkan how it was, before the Precursors, before the Dwellerspawn, and all I remember is the good things."

"How her eyes were a perfect, flawless, warm sapphire," Casey said softly.

"And how warm and safe it felt in bed with my wife and broodcarriers, when all our world was just that little apartment and each other."

-------------------

"That has got to be the most disconcerting thing I've seen in my life and I was infantry," Smokey 'No said, lighting a cigarette.

"You said it was an emergency," Trucker said from over by the sandwiches that had been set down by a Marine private. The entire back of his head was exposed warsteel, the plate removed to show complex electronics and cerebral tissue.

"You could have put the back of your head on," Smokey 'No said. "Chromium Christ on a pogostick, I can read your thoughts."

"Then don't look," Trucker said. He put the sandwich on the plate and sucked sauce off of one finger as he turned around.

"Oh God," Smokey 'No said. "That's even worse."

The synth-flesh had been peeled back from around Trucker's eyes and forehead and the heavy skull plating removed, exposing the internal systems as well as cerebral tissue for the frontal lobes. Trucker's nose was an open cavity with psuedo-tissue, his top peeled up over the top of his head, and NoDra'ak could see the human's upper mandible and teeth.

"I'm going to have nightmares," NoDra'ak said, puffing smoke rings from his footpads.

"Don't be such a sissy," Trucker said, moving over and sitting down. When he walked by Smokey 'No shook his head.

"At least you put on your uniform," the big Treana'ad said.

"Thought about coming here in the hospital gown and showing everyone my ass, but Doc Resists told me to put on my uniform," Trucker said, pulling out the chair and sitting down. "Plus the chair would be cold."

"Thank the Digital Omnimessiah for small favors," Smokey 'No said. He turned to the russet mantid doctor. "Thank you for coming."

"I'm banging my head against the wall anyway," she admitted. She lifted up a ball of water the size of a baseball and sipped at it, the magnetic system in the 'leaf' it was sitting on keeping surface tension. "Three days and I'm no closer to figuring out why he's got one green light."

"What about any other humans?" Smokey 'No asked.

"We have exactly four, counting the one that caused this meeting," Resists said. "The other two have green lights also, but as they are largely fully human, unlike General Trucker, I would have to do major surgery to get such easy access to their brains."

"What there is of it that doesn't go clank clank clank," Trucker shrugged. He reached up, fumbled for a second, and grabbed his upper lip.

"Oh God, don't," Smokey 'No said.

"Hang on," Resists said, getting up and moving next to Trucker. She slapped his hand. "Stop that, you'll rip your lip."

Vuxten and Casey walked in just as she pulled Trucker's face down, the missing plating causing sags and hollows in the skin.

"Wow," Vuxten said, his eyes wide. "Um... are we interrupting?"

Smokey 'No tensed slightly, glancing at Trucker, who didn't move, just held still as Resists adjusted the fit of his face.

"Nope," Trucker said. He lifted up the sandwich and took a bite.

"Just making sure that C-DAT doesn't spill chewed food everywhere or drool on the table," Smokey-No said. He gave a theatrical shudder. "How is that somehow worse?"

"Stop whining. You sound like an enlistedman pulling guard duty in the rain," Trucker mumbled around the mouthful of sandwich. He pointed at a chair. "Pull up a seat."

Vuxten grabbed Casey's arm, pulling him down and close.

"Can you behave yourself?" Vuxten asked. "I didn't know he was going to be here. Can you control yourself?"

Casey nodded. "I'm... numb. I hurt, but I can't really process it."

"Are you sure?" Vuxten asked, glancing twice at Trucker to prove a point.

"Peel's alive. Even if she wasn't, I have to forgive him, and right now," Casey shrugged. "I have to forgive the Lankys too," he sighed. "And myself. That one's going to take longer."

"All right, if you're sure," Vuxten said. "If nothing else, I expect you to maintain military discipline."

"I'm sure."

Holding onto Casey's sleeve, Vuxten moved around the table, then stopped and stared at the back of Trucker's head for a moment, his eyes wide.

"Can you read his thoughts?" Smokey 'No asked. He'd noticed that Casey and Trucker were militantly ignoring one another.

"Hey, mind your own business," Trucker said, then took another bite.

Vuxten shuddered and sat down. Casey waited till he was done, then sat down next to him right as the door opened and General Vrawgarkwa came in. The General went over, poured herself a cup of coffee, grabbed a donut out of the box that had the BobCo logo twinkling on it, then sat down.

"Eh, this is enough. Anyone else shows up, we'll catch them up to speed," Smokey 'No said. He pointed at each person, including the three SUDS and Clone Systems commanders, and introduced them, finishing with Casey.

"Our resident Ringbreaker," Colonel Rantle-221 said, nodding. Casey just shrugged.

"I informed him what happened to Tabula," Vuxten said.

Smokey 'No cocked his head. "I wasn't aware that information was cleared for general dissemination."

Casey shrugged, looking calm, but Vuxten saw him clench his fist hard enough a red spark popped out. Vuxten kicked him under the table and Casey relaxed his hand.

"The Lance Corporal's place of birth is Tabula-929," General Vrawgarkwa said. "He holds a dual birth citizenship with Rigel-5 due to some old treaties, so that was listed as his home of record."

"The Red Cross/Crescent should have been the one to break the news," Smokey 'No mused.

"I thought it was better coming from me," Vuxten said. He sat up slightly straighter. "As his Mental Health Sponsor as well as his friend, not to mention his superior officer in the Telkan Marine Corps and his Corps Sponsor, the duty fell upon me to inform him."

Smokey 'No gave a sigh. "Oh, relax, Captain. I'm not going to second guess the man on the ground," he looked around. "All right, let's hear this, General."

"I'll let the Captain explain it," General Vrawgarkwa said.

Vuxten launched into the whole thing, including how he knew, from conversation, that the old Imperium of Wrath and Imperium of Light couldn't be cloned or brought back by SUDS, how Casey having tissue cloned would blow out the SUDS array and local node, how the Novastar Program used native psychic abilities and amplified them for suit use, how the Crusade Troops, especially the NekoMarines, used psychic abilities.

He laid it all out, thinking quickly, categorizing it in his mind before laying it out.

"...with that, I'm of the belief that there's some kind of hardwired patch on our side to keep the SUDS system and the cloning system from running off old pre-Glassing or Glassing Era humans," Vuxten said. "I checked, and the LARP Systems for a few places don't have that, since they use pre-Glassing DNA for clones and the like, but those are also altered with a tag on the end of the DNA to let the system know it's a LARP regrow."

Resists sat there, watching, nodding. "It all fits," she said. She tapped the table and then tapped her bladearm against a control. The holoemitter in the middle lit up, showing a scan of a human brain. "This is the brain of a wounded Terran soldier on Hesstla. Now, this information is still being gone through, there's literally years of data that they accumulated that, due to time dilation effects, we have only had two years to examine."

The scan suddenly morphed.

"Right there is where the SUDS suddenly all went down," she said. "Soon afterwards, the cloning banks all slagged down. She pointed at Trucker. "The single green bar means that the integrity of his SUDS scan is good. The fact the 'transmit' and 'up to date' quiklights are flashing red means that something is still happening with the system."

"Do we know why?" Smokey 'No asked.

"No. Whatever it is, it hit all at once. There's rumors, rumors mind you, that someone is somehow fixing the backbone SUDS hardware," Resists said.

"I thought nobody knew where it was," Trucker said, breaking his silence. He hadn't said a word the entire time and had avoided looking at Casey, who had ignored him.

"We don't. Since the Glassing, it's been patches laid on patches to make the whole thing work," Resists said. "I never realized how fried out and cludgy the system was until I started to do a deep dive into information on it. Worse, it's almost as if the information has been deliberately suppressed."

"Makes sense," General Vrawgarkwa said. "That's always been humanity's biggest edge."

Vuxten barked a laugh.

General Vrawgarkwa turned to Vuxten. "You disagree, Captain?"

"I know I'm the new kid on the block, but I disagree," Vuxten said. He waved his hand at everyone at the table. "There's ten of us here. Two are human. The rest are all different xenospecies. That is humanity's biggest edge. The ability to bring different species together."

General Vrawgarkwa smiled. "That's something we debate at 1AM in the O-Club after a night of drinking, Captain," she looked at Smokey 'No. "You're buying."

Smokey 'No made a face.

"There's also the interlocks to prevent more than one copy of a person to exist at the same time," Resists said. "Which means the interlock and patch I'm looking for could be wrapped up in another patch."

"You're looking for old patches," Trucker said, his face wrinkling oddly. "Right after the system was up and running again."

"Makes sense," Resists said. She looked at Colonel Rantel-221. "We'll get our people together tomorrow morning."

"Sounds good," the Colonel said.

"That mean I can go back to the hospital and finish up?" Resists asked.

Smokey 'No nodded.

"What, something wrong with my good looks?" Trucker asked, smiling. It made his face bunch up strangely and his upper lip slid slightly over the nasal passage of his skull.

"Oh, God, stop that," Smokey 'No shuddered.