The Synchronicity War Part 4 (17 page)

"Gunslinger. I'll hand that one off to
you."

"Affirmative, Commander Kelly. This
VLA timeline matches our data perfectly so far."

"Very good. Let's hope she jumps soon."

The actual jump itself was observed several
minutes later. With confirmation that no Insectoids were left in this system,
Resolute micro-jumped as close as possible to the Sogas colony planet. Minutes
later, Kelly was sitting beside Wolfman's brain case in the specially equipped
shuttle that was on its way down to the planet. The normally spacious shuttle
was now crowded with a four man fire team of marines and their gear, Kelly,
Wolfman, an AI mobile unit, the RTC and a decontamination chamber that the
passengers would use before returning to the carrier. Kelly and the marines
wore combat armor over top of bio-hazard suits that had their own filtered air
supply. The trip down took almost 45 minutes before the shuttle entered the
planet's atmosphere. When the shuttle pilot announced that they were
approaching the colony site, Kelly unbuckled herself and moved forward to stand
in the flight deck just behind the pilot. Kelly, the pilot and co-pilot were
watching the screen with the zoomed in video image.

"At least we don't have to do this at
night," said the pilot. Turning to Kelly he asked, "Where do you want
me to set her down?"

"Before I decide that, I'd like us to
orbit the colony slowly at low altitude. Can do?"

"Can do," he answered. "I
have the controls, Iruku."

As the shuttle dropped lower and slowed,
they were able to make out more detail on the screen. The settlement was a
mess. Fires were still burning here and there from the aftereffects of the
fighting. Not a single building was intact. There were no bodies or at least
nothing recognizable as humanoid bodies. Not that Kelly was looking for them.
She was looking for a bug body and so far hadn't found one.

"Is that it?" asked the co-pilot
as he pointed to a black dot on the screen.

"We're still too far away to
tell," said Kelly.

"I'll bring her around. Iruku, see if
you can zoom the image in once I get her lined up," said the pilot. With
the shuttle now pointed in the direction of the mysterious dot, the co-pilot
played with the controls and the image zoomed in.

"Is that thing moving?" asked the
co-pilot. Kelly frowned. There did seem to be something moving. It soon became
obvious what that something was.

"It's just birds. Some kind of local
scavenger I would guess." Turning to the pilot Kelly said, "Can you
hover about 100 meters over it?"

The pilot shrugged. "Sure I can. I can
hover a lot lower than that if you want." He brought the shuttle down to
where they could easily see the bug corpse with their own eyes through the
shuttle windscreen. The lift engines were making enough noise to frighten off
the scavengers. Even at this distance, Kelly found the Bug frightening. When
the shuttle was in place, the pilot looked at Kelly. "Okay, now
what?"

Kelly looked at him with an amused expression.
He should have said 'now what, SIR?' but she decided to overlook his borderline
insubordination. She was certain that he wasn't trying to be insubordinate. He
was just being a cheeky bastard like most other shuttle pilots.

"Okay, put us down about ten meters
from the bug," she said. While the shuttle was gently dropping to the
ground, she went back and nodded to the marines. They unbuckled and gathered
their gear. While they were getting ready, Kelly unbuckled Wolfman's brain case
from the seat and carried it over to the mobile ground unit that Wolfman would
use to move around in. When the shuttle touched down, the marines went through
the decontamination chamber that also functioned as an airlock, keeping out the
local atmosphere and any harmful organisms it might contain. Wolfman's mobile
unit went next, with Kelly exiting last.

As she slowly walked over to the corpse,
she heard one of the marines say, "Damn, this thing smells awful. I think
I'll stand upwind of it."
He's right too,
she thought.
The
bio-filters don't block the smell, and this thing stinks to high heaven!

She tried to ignore the smell while she
took a close look at the corpse. Like its much smaller Earth cousins, the
Insectoid had three segments to its body. The middle section was the biggest
and contained the six legs and two arms. It was obvious that the arms weren't
just another pair of legs used to hold things. They were attached to the body
higher up and forward. Unlike the legs, which ended in what Kelly could only describe
as hooves, the arms ended with four digits that Kelly would have described as
two fingers with two opposing thumbs. The section at the back looked like it
might be some kind of stinger. Kelly shivered with fear at the thought of being
stung by this thing.

It was the head that shocked her the most.
The generally ovoid shape was covered with either hair or fur but it wasn't a
dense covering. Unlike Earth ants, which had two compound eyes, the Insectoid
had multiple individual eyes that allowed it to look forward, to either side
and above all at the same time. She guessed there would normally be eight eyes
but couldn’t be sure because part of the front had a hole, presumably caused by
whatever killed this Bug. From the position of the other eyes, Kelly surmised
that one of its eyes had been where the hole was now. Lower down she could see
that the mouth was partially open. Bending over to get a better look inside,
she saw what looked like very large, pointed teeth that reminded her of sharks'
teeth.

"Commander, take a look at this,"
said one of the marines.

He was pointing to the back of the bug's
head with his flechette gun. Kelly stepped over to get a better view and saw
something metallic at the base of the head where a short thick neck connected
the head to the body. It wasn't something the bug was wearing. The metal seemed
to be surgically attached to the head. In spite of her revulsion for this
thing, she carefully bent down and moved her head to within a few centimeters
of the metal object. She could now see what appeared to be smaller components.
The metal object wasn't just a solid piece of metal but rather a device of some
kind. She had a hunch this was something important.

Turning to the marine nearest to her, she
said, "Marine, I need to use your knife."

After the briefest of hesitations, the
marine reached carefully behind him. Pulling out a knife with a very shiny
blade, he carefully held it out to her.

"Careful how you handle that,
Commander. The edge on this knife is sharp enough and hard enough to cut your
hand off before you even realize you've accidentally done it."

Kelly had heard about this kind of knife
and took it from him VERY carefully. Once she had it firmly in her right hand,
she leaned forward and attempted to cut the organic matter around the device so
that she could pry the object loose. She felt almost no resistance as the knife
did its work. A quick look around confirmed that Wolfman was almost finished
setting up the RTC that had been attached to his mobile unit. The RTC was on a
tripod right in front of the head. Getting back to the job at hand, she tried
to pry the object loose, and to her surprise it was not that easy. After some
more digging with the pointed end of the knife, the object dropped to the
ground. With her gloved hand, she picked it up and looked at it. The side that
had been hidden inside the head had lots of very fine wires protruding from it.
She suspected that those wires were connected directly to this thing's brain.
Is
this how these things communicate?

Standing up and stepping back, she
carefully returned the knife. The marine looked at the black liquid dripping
from the blade with disgust. Kelly wondered how he would clean it without
hurting himself and decided not to watch him do it.

Turning to Wolfman's mobile unit, she said,
"Are you ready to begin, Wolfman?"

"Affirmative, Commander. I'm
activating the device now. This may take some time." While he was doing
that, there was something else that needed to be done.

"Kelly to shuttle pilot."

"Go ahead, Commander."

"Patch my implant link up to Resolute,
please," she said.

After several seconds she heard him say,
"Link to Resolute established, Commander."

"Gunslinger here, Commander Kelly. May
I assume that you wish to contact the Friendlies?"

"That's correct. I'll record a message to be transmitted."

"Understood. Begin your message,
Commander."

Kelly took a deep breath and said,
"Commander Kelly to Friendly ship. We have found an insectoid corpse. Do
you wish to bring your equipment down here, or should we attempt to bring part
of the body to you? Our shuttle does not have enough room to hold the entire
body. Please advise us of your wishes. We'll listen to your reply on this
frequency. End of message."

"Ready to transmit to the agreed upon
coordinates, Commander."

"Okay, send it, Gunslinger."

"Message has been transmitted,
Commander."

"How long until we can expect a
reply?"

"The minimum interval is eight point
nine minutes, Commander."

Kelly sighed. She was eager to get back to
the ship. This place gave her the creeps, and a cold wind was starting to blow.
The reply took almost 12 minutes to come back. The message could not have been
more terse.

[
Bring us the head
]

Kelly nodded. They were prepared for this
kind of contingency. She turned to the marine sergeant.

"Sergeant, we need to detach this head
from the rest of the body and take it back with us. There's a container in the
shuttle cargo hold that I think will be big enough. If you send two of your men
to get it while the third cuts the head loose, that will save time."

The marine sergeant's voice was carefully
neutral. "Yes, Ma'am. Kawasaki, since your knife is already covered with
crap, you might as well use it to cut the head loose. Tooley, you and Hopkins
get the container and make it snappy. No sense hanging around here any longer
than we have too."

Kelly smiled.
I think this place is
getting to you too, Sergeant.
She stepped over to Wolfman's mobile unit but
said nothing. She knew that Wolfman could see her via the unit's external video
opticals.

"I don't have any estimate of how much
longer this will take, Commander," said Wolfman without any prompting from
her.

"Will the decapitation affect the
results?"

"No," was the unusually curt
reply. Before she could say anything else, Wolfman suddenly said, "No
further analysis is possible, Commander. I have all the data that can be
obtained from this specimen."

Kelly was surprised by the unexpected
termination but decided to wait until they were back on Resolute before asking
why. She heard a sound like ripping cloth, and when she looked at the source,
she saw the bug head fall to the ground. The marine with the knife looked at it
and then very carefully wiped it on the fur covering the head. When he was satisfied
that it was as clean as he could make it, he laid the flat of the blade against
his forearm and very slowly gave it one final wipe against his uniform.

By this time the other two marines were
back with the container. The head was big and awkward enough to require all
four marines to lift it into the container. Once inside, the container handles
made it possible for two marines to carry it back to the shuttle. Wolfman's
mobile unit, with the RTC packed away, was followed by Kelly and the remaining
two marines.

Once safely decontaminated, the six of them
moved into the shuttle's forward section and buckled themselves in as the
shuttle took off to head back to Resolute. The carrier was already lined up for
the micro-jump needed to get to the rendezvous coordinates for the transfer to
the Friendlies. The transfer itself went off without a hitch. Once at the
rendezvous, the shuttle launched again, flew over to the Friendly ship and
entered its Hangar Bay. There the marines wearing their bio-suits again took
the container out and handed it over to Friendlies who were also wearing their
bio-suit equivalent. With the transfer complete, the shuttle went back to
Resolute where Kelly, Wolfman and the marines were finally able to disembark.
By this time, and to no one's surprise, the Friendly ship had jumped away. If
the Friendlies intended to keep their word about informing humans of what they
found, it would have to be at a later point.