The Shift, Part Six

If you’re new to the series, you can catch up on parts 1-5 using the landing page link I’ve listed below!

the SHIFT

GDF techs hauled in dozens of 12,000 lumen work-lights and set them up throughout the ship. The inner walls stretched hundreds of feet into the air before curving into darkness. With the space illuminated we counted at least 45 of the bizarre, long-limbed beings that were embedded in the wall. And that was just in that first sector. The techs took to calling them Stretchy’s. I thought that was too cute of a name, especially after they squealed when the lights were turned on. It was not a “fun” squeal.

The Stretchies were interesting though, in a gross way—blotchy, pale yellow with whip like appendages that flagellated in the air like sea anemones. They also were sentient, or from what I could tell they were. Their writhing appendages withdrew as you passed, almost like they were doing the wave. I started to get a soft spot for them, they seemed conscientious.

The rest of the ship was no less interesting but definitely more gruesome. I wandered the walkways, taking note of every corner, pocket, and divot. My feet squelched against the thin, wet membrane that coated the floors. The coarse throaty yells of GDF techs faded as I passed, the sound waves absorbed by the undulating walls and ceilings. I grew ill as I went, even had to hurl a few times when I was out of eye-sight. I came to another segment of the wall that had been opened. Gerat stood there, poking one of the sinewy, pulsing limbs that crisscrossed the walls. The limb recoiled and the Stretchy squealed.

“Don’t,” I half gagged half yelled.

Gerat paused briefly before poking it anyways.

My body knotted in anguish at the squeal that resulted.

“For fuck’s sake, Gerat,” I said, unable to keep the desperation out of my voice.

Gerat’s eyes were opened wide to swallow every last bit of pain emanating from the creatures embedded in the walls.

“Gerat,” I said, my voice going flat, my vision flickering.

He turned

“Stop. Touching. It.”

He whipped his hand away, his smile turned ingratiating.

“My apologies Professeur. You were the one to call me here,” he said, implicating me in his sadism.

He was right. I knew he’d be like a child in front of a button. Good thing I was there to stop him.

I considered what to do with them. I knew what was needed. But my breath caught and my stomach churned at the thought of our shared experience.

I prayed a few times to be put out of my misery, and it never happened.

“Cut them down. Take them to my lab,” I said to the tech waiting with an acetylene torch. “Alive,” I added in a tone that brokered no argument.

“Leave one for me. I wish to… study it as well,” said Gerat.

The image of him vivisecting it alive and subsequently eating it forced its way into my mind as I walked away. I dry heaved.

---

I sighed as the last Stretchy spilled pale, blue blood from its torn appendages.

“We did what we could do,” said the GDF Doctor wiping his hands.

“Did we?” I asked. I looked at the poor thing and couldn’t help but see pain on its eyeless face. I sat down by the metal table it was laid on.

“At least we freed it from the ship,” said the Doctor.

“Yeah,” I said lamely. But I wanted more. I had thought I could communicate with it, like I did with the Veel. From the way they were harnessed to the ship, they were vital infrastructure, and as such they had to be controllable. And there was a good chance the Veel controlled them the same way they controlled me.

It was a principle of bioengineering—if there’s a way to manipulate a system, you apply it to all systems with similar characteristics.

“What are we missing, Doc,” I asked. “Just from prelim analysis, we have at least four physiological systems in common… why can’t I communicate with it.”

“I work with humans, Frank,” he said with a shrug. “How should I know. And call me Alec. Doc sounds too much like a character from an Old Western.”

“Sure thing Doc,” I said. He sighed and turned to walk away.

I sat with a knot in my stomach as he walked away. The Stretchy writhed in its death throes. Then it slapped me.

The slimy tentacle-like appendage slid down my face like a snail and it sat up, looking at me with the short, flat appendage that must’ve been its face.

More of its appendages grabbed onto me and pulled me in. It brought me close enough to smell its sulfurous blood then it ripped open its abdomen, or thorax, or whatever, to show a glowing sac of blue goo.

All very scientific, I know, but we didn’t know what to call it at that time.

Something floated in the goo, it was solid, pyramidal, and was the source of the light. The Stretchies limbs cascaded over the sac, the tips slapping where the object floated, as if pointing to it.

I heard static in my head, like an out-of-range walkie-talkie.

<<At…..AtA….. DAt…..>>

The thing shuddered and convulsed, like it was coughing.

<<dA…tA>>

Then it fell limp and the glow faded.

“Doc!” I yelled.

“What?” his voice came from a distance.

“C’mere, bring a scalpel,” I said.

“What the…” he said when he got to the table.

“Cut here,” I said pointing to the sac.

He did and releasing a plume of gas that stunk like a geothermic geyser.

The Doc retched and I thrust my hand into the goo. The synthetic flesh of my hand melted off with a hiss, leaving the three-dimensional crystal pyramid clutched between two cybernetic fingers.

The Doc wiped his mouth. “What is it?” he asked.

“I dunno…” I murmured while inspecting it. Then, as if responding to the intensity of my gaze, my vision zoomed in and I could see gold inlays that formed circuitry.

“Damn,” I said.

“What is it?” The Doc repeated.

“I still don’t know,” I said irritably. “Repetitively asking doesn’t all of a sudden reveal the mysteries of an alien technology.”

“We should tell Gerat,” said the Doc.

I grimaced. “Yeah, you’re right.”

---

Two days later Gerat had a bevy of tech nerds and hackers in a room that would have smelled of B.O. and Doritos if it weren’t for us living in a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Instead it just smelled like B.O. But where they lacked in hygiene they made up with a helluva work ethic.

I got the call they’d bypassed the encryption. Gerat was there already, standing in front of a screen filled with alien script.

I realized now what the alien was saying… Data.

“Do you read Veel?” I asked Gerat.

He turned to me and scowled. “No but you do, Professeur. What does it say?”

I tussled with the remaining Veel inside me until it translated the data. I routed it to my optical array. My breath caught

“It’s not what I expected,” I said studying the steady stream of information. “It’s a database of nearly everything we could’ve hoped for—schematics for ships and weapons, information on their home world, the strength of their forces, and more. I’m still processing it.”

“It is odd such information was so… easily obtained.” Gerat was right to be skeptical. But the Veel likely didn’t expect to reach another species nearly as advanced as them. Our interstellar travel tech was premature but otherwise we were on par.

I nodded, still engrossed by the data stream. “They probably didn’t one of the Stretchies to offer it’s Jewel.”

“Jewel?”

“What I call the storage organ it showed me. They also probably didn’t expect us to be nearly as technologically advanced as they are. A jewel is basically a hard drive.”

Johannsen arrived in time to hear my last remark. “Did we crack it?” he asked.

“Yup,” I said.

“How did we do it?”

The lead tech stood up and cleared his throat. “Actually, we have extensive experience in decoding all matter complex binary and non-binary systems, and I am somewhat of an expert in nonrational Orgonian—”

“Oh shit,” I interrupted. “Johannsen, do we have a way to download data from my neural interface?”

The tech blinked once and stood awkwardly for a moment, looking between me and Johannsen before he slowly lowered himself to sit behind his station.

“Err… yes.”

“Good,” I said already moving out of the room. “You’re all gonna want to see this.”

---

I summarized what I had learned while we followed Johannsen to his lab.

“I was partially correct about the beings we discovered—they are an enslaved race outfitted with tech to perform various tasks, chiefly navigation and ship operations, but they also had an evolved organ used for data storage, kind of like their version of DNA.”

“Is that what the pyramid was?” asked the Doc. “Some sort of hard drive?”

I smiled, “Oh it is so much more than that.”

“See, those beings are called Limlest. Which, from what I gather is more of a descriptor than the name of a race.”

Johannsen opened his mouth. “Don’t ask,” I interrupted. “I don’t understand it either. In short, the Veel are as fucked up as I had thought—the Limlest and the Veel originally co-existed without overlap until a Veel Overlord discovered that the Limlest were a collective as well, though through different mechanisms.”

“Veel Overlords?” Asked Gerat.

I nodded. “One of a number of functionally distinct classes in Veel society. Think a version of yourself.”

Gerat smiled. No doubt trying on the title Overlord and liking it.

“Anyways, that sick son of a bitch Overlord decided to find out what made the Limlest tick and the rest was history. They discovered the organ that served as the collective memory of the Limlest and hijacked it to become, like Johannsen said, a hard drive of sorts. But they also discovered the bioelectronic nature of the organ and that they could be connected in series kind of like neurons, to form a super-brain that could coordinate and navigate better than any one Limlest on it’s own and even the Veel collective as a whole.”

“A biological super-computer,” suggested Johannsen.

“Yup, and one that continued to adapt and evolve. Light speed travel followed shortly after and, boom, in a space of a hundred or so years they bypassed Stage 2 and became a Stage 3 species.”

I noticed that Gerat was quiet, his face drawn in concentration.

“The Limlest are a vulnerable, enslaved species, Gerat, just like I was,” I said in an attempt to appeal to what humanity remained in him. Then added, just to be safe, “Plus they are limited to Veel ships and infrastructure on their home world. Those we had access to are dead.”

“That is a shame,” said Gerat.

“Oh absolutely, I’m heartbroken,” I said with an overabundance of insincerity.

“It sounds like what information they carried is relatively useless then,” said Johannsen.

“I haven’t gotten to the good part… well it’s also the bad part,” I said as we arrived to his lab. “You know those classes I mentioned?”

They all nodded.

“There are more than a dozen, most are support castes or specialized to perform essential functions, almost like professions. Among those is a warrior caste, and they are big, big, scary fuckers.”

It took about 20 minutes for Johannsen to hook me up to a console that could process and generate images from data I transferred over.

The first image I showed was one of the Warrior caste. I got the reaction I expected. One of the lab techs even whimpered when I spun the 3D rendering to show it off.

“Meet the Veel’cra. Don’t they look kinda like velociraptors?”

Everyone nodded. Someone gulped.

“You said that’s just one of the warrior types?”

“Yup,” I said a little too enthusiastically.

Gerat glared at me. “Do you wish for our kind to be exterminated.”

“No,” I lied. “I’m just glad to know what we’re up against.”

Johannsen motioned to the screen, “How will we compete with something like that?”

“I don’t know, but we have about a month to figure it out,” I said.

“Why a month?” Gerat asked.

“Because that’s when the fleet will arrive.”

Gerat looked at me blankly.

“Is that long enough?” asked the Doc.

I laughed maniacally. “Fuck no. But it’s better than nothing.”

A Weather Tech ran into the lab at that moment and stopped at attention, sweating profusely. He saluted and said, “Commandant Gerat.”

“What is it,” Gerat asked.

“The shift has worsened.”

“Quoi?” asked Gerat, switching into French.

The Weather Tech swallowed hard. “Another 5 degrees… the freeze is spreading to our location.”

This was not what we needed. We needed time to prepare and the space and equipment the GBF base provided would give us the best shot at coming up with a way to combat the Veel when their main fleet arrived. They had gambled on placing it in this exact spot, but their calculations were right, this was the only temperate zone on Earth at this point. With this additional shift, we were at risk of being either frozen or being fried.

“How much time do we have?” asked Gerat.

“A week… maybe two,” said the Weather Tech nervously.

Gerat paused, thinking.

“What are your orders Commandant?” Asked the weather tech.

We all looked at Gerat but he turned to me.

“I have a new proposition for you, Professeur.”

“I’m not eating a human,” I said quickly and smiled. At this point I needed the distraction and my go to joke always made me laugh.

“No…” he said. “If you want to starve yourself, it’s your choice.”

The French have never had a good sense of humor. I sighed and asked, “Then what?”

He paused, started to speak, then stopped. Whatever he was going to say, he didn’t like it. But he gathered himself after a time, and looked at me with grim determination in his eyes. Then he said, “If you get us out of this, Professeur… I will be in your debt. We all will. And I will do anything that you ask.” There was no sign of the cruel irony that I’d become accustomed to in his tone, there was only desperation. “I will even give you control over the Gens D’Armes Federation, if that is what you wish.”

“No more cannibalism?” I asked.

He sighed. “No more cannibalism. We will all turn vegetarian.”

“Damn, Gerat, that’s quite the deal,” I said.

“So you accept?” he said with a hopeful note in his voice.

My first thought was “Hell no,” but then it struck me—I knew the Veel better than anyone. If we had a chance at fighting them, it was through the intel I could gather. And if we didn’t win, I held the keys to interstellar travel. But more than anything, I’d be able to end cannibalism, at least officially.

That decided it, I thought. I was the only one capable of leading humanity through this and it was my best shot at redemption.

“I accept,” I said. “But I have a few conditions.”

Gerat looked at me with relief. “Of course… And they are?”

“Get out a pen and paper, we’ll be here a while.”