Rockhoppers Ch. 08

Consciousness is slow returning. The first thing Grubs becomes aware of is the vibrations of the deck plating he's touching, telling his bones that the machinery in the engineering bay is working away. No real sound though, which means he's not in the bay proper. So why is he lying on the deck?

Memory returns in a rush, along with a brief flood of adrenaline, and he's completely awake. His eyes snap open, and he spins too quickly, briefly making himself dizzy. Fighting through sudden nausea, he looks around.

He's in one of the secondary cargo bays adjacent to the engineering bay, left in place during the refit because taking it out would have caused structural instabilities in the frame of the ship. The floods are on overhead, filling the place with harsh brightness, and the Captain is drifting about three meters away from him.

He bites down on a curse and just watches her for a moment, much as she regards him. She's shed her spider abdomen, somehow, and is now simply looks like a hugely pregnant woman clothed neck to toe in black, form hugging latex. The illusion persists until part of her clothing wriggles and pops free, a tiny spider spilling away on some task for another part of the ship.

Black streams still spill from her eyes, flowing down her cheeks and into the high neckline of her 'clothes'. She regards him for a moment longer, and then opens her mouth.

- Please, I would speak with you. -

Her voice, tar crawling across gravel, startles him. Warily, the gruff engineer orients himself, and pushes himself over to a takehold where he can face her conveniently. He never takes his eyes off of her, and says nothing.

- You were not intended to wake until this craft had returned to Earth. The meteorite damage was unanticipated. This one was not cognizant of the emergency procedures the younger male had implemented. -

Grubs just stares a moment more, then replies. "Yeah, kid's thorough."

Her head tilts slightly, and swivels a little to one side, as though she were getting a more accurate idea of his precise location relative to her. It occurs to the engineer that binocular vision might be a novelty to this creature.

- I wish for sleep to resume. You will be delivered to Earth unharmed. -

"Unharmed like my skipper?"

The alien resumes speaking after a brief pause.

- What this one was can no longer be. This one will be mother to all future generations of your people. -

"Not yours?"

- We are not a species. We will not accompany you to Earth. Once you have left this seed we will cease being. -

"Seed?"

After a moment, it replies.

- You call it Sleepy. -

Grubs thinks about this for a moment, closing his eyes long enough to rub them for a moment. Then he says, "I'll tell you what. Why don't you talk about what you see happening between now and the return to Earth, and I'll decide if me and the kids are better off sleeping it away."

- The young ones are not required, and you have already served your purpose. -

"My purpose?"

- You are the human genetic basis for those which this one carries. -

Grubs struggles with a renewed bout of nausea for a moment. "Answer my question. What happens next?"

- Then you sleep? The young ones sleep? -

"Start talking and find out."

The pregnant woman propels herself to the portal to the engineering bay. It irises open, and she extends a finger to touch the enormous black spider waiting just on the other side. The material around her hand slips toward the creature, briefly exposing the flesh underneath, and they stand there for a moment, communing.

Just as suddenly, she lowers her hand, once more cloaked entirely in black. The portal irises shut, and she returns to her seat.

- Very well. -

----

Josh struggles with metal cauldron almost a meter tall, trying to drag it down the hallway without damaging the electronics within. Finally hauling it through the entrance of the crypt, he seals the door and then hooks his burden up to power. He watches readouts on a small inset display for a moment, and then turns to Faith, who is hunched over the lone ship console in the crypt.

"Well, we won't starve as long as there's power. Yeast vat is working."

She nods without looking up. Streaks run down her face where tears have dried from when they fled engineering, leaving Grubs behind to that... thing. "Okay. I've got a lot of the systems routed here, and you can control your bots. Can't get astrogation or main engineering. There are Captain's locks on those."

"She can still run the computers? She looked like an animal."

Faith shakes her head. "I don't know. It's possible this was from before. The ship isn't exactly supposed to be run from the mausoleum."

"Okay. Here, eat. She hasn't come out after us yet, which means we either have plenty of time or none at all."

Faith accepts a ration bar Josh fishes out of the pocket of his shipsuit. She unwraps it and begins chewing unenthusiastically. "I don't know what we do now."

"Survive, first. This is the only room outside of engineering that the bulkheads can be sealed from inside. Food is covered, and I've got a tap to the water lines over there." He waves his hands, indicating a spigot extending from one of the pipes on the far wall.

"Now," he continues, "can you fly the ship without the Captain?"

She shakes her head. "I know how to, at least to get us close enough to somewhere to get a tow, but I have to have her codes to initiate the fusion drive. We're dead in the water without it. Grubs might have been able to do it."

"All right. I'm going to make another run to the mess, might as well clean it out. I'll also see if I can jimmy the armory, but I'm not hopeful. In the meantime, you start trying to think out of the box, and I will too."

Faith nods without enthusiasm. "Okay. I'll see how much more of the ship's systems I can get slaved here."

He walks up behind her and crouches to hug her from behind. She leans back against him, and he kisses the top of her head. "We're not done yet, Faith. Don't give up."

She sighs and closes her eyes, just resting against him for a moment. "Okay"

----

- You know much about machines. -

Grubs nods. "I'm an engineer, yeah."

The thing that was Nomi extends a tar-covered hand, and a small spider extrudes from her palm and begins a little dance back and forth across her fingers.

- We... I... serve the same purpose for my Makers as your machines do for you. -

The creature indicates Nomi's face.

- This one knew of machines your species has created that think, after a fashion. Do you know that of which I speak? -

Grubs nods. "Aye, artificial intelligences. Get on with it."

- Be patient, if you wish to understand. You would likely define me as an artificial intelligence, because I did not evolve. As I am biological rather than mechanical, 'created intelligence' would perhaps be a more correct term. -

The engineer says nothing, waiting for the creature to continue.

- The bulk of me remains inside the seed, which was designed to strike a biosphere and spill me out, allowing my task to be performed directly. However, the star system the Makers sent me to was devoid of life, devoid even of the potential for life. -

The captain's head turns aside, as though trying to recollect something.

- Your name for the barren star is Tau Ceti. -

"I'll let the terraforming commission know."

It stares at him for a moment before continuing.

- Examining the spectra of nearby stars, and watching the wobble caused by the orbits of planets, led me to attempt travel this system. I consumed most of myself as reaction mass, and exhausted the seed of fissile material in my journey here. I achieved orbit of your star, but I no longer have the capability of spaceflight. -

"When do you get to the part about attacking us and killing my captain?"

- The fissile material aboard this craft is more than adequate to the task of its propulsion, but could not nudge the orbit of the seed more than a few hundred thousand kilometers. I remain trapped, and so must complete my task using the alternative means represented by your visit here. -

Grubs chews on that for a moment. "What, precisely, is your 'task'?"

- The Makers created me, and hundreds of thousands like me, to discover life-bearing worlds, and splice Maker biology into the biosphere. In this manner they pursued a sort of immortality for their species. -

"So, you... she... you're pregnant with a Maker?"

- No. There are no more Makers. Their sun was old, and consumed them in a nova long ago. -

"Why didn't they leave, if they had spaceflight?"

- The Makers had a societal taboo against genetic self-modification, and their biology dictated that they could only create offspring in the oceans of their homeworld, something like the spawning fish of your planet. No Maker ever left that world. They knew they would be consumed by their star, and they spent the last few thousand years of the life of their civilization creating me and my brethren, so that something of themselves could continue. The offspring this one produces is an amalgam of human and Maker. -

Grubs stands and paces the room for a moment. The alien just watches and waits.

"So, then, what, you just wanna have these... kids... share earth with humanity?"

- In a sense. I was not intended to fuse already sapient species to maker genetic data, but I have no choice, stranded as I am. The intended goal was to uplift non-sapient indigenous life. The first twenty or so generations of the hybrids will not be sapient. After that, the intellectual inheritance from both the Makers and humanity will begin to express in the genome, and their society will begin. -

"And how do you see humanity fitting in to this plan?"

Another brief silence.

- My children will all be male. -

Grubs stares at the alien.

"You intend to breed us out of existence."

- Into a new one. -

"I hope your babies have guns for arms, because humanity's not going to be wild about the idea of alien rapists."

- My command of biology far exceeds that of your race. No human male in the presence of one of the children will resist them. The females will be pleased to submit. -

"I'll have to take your word on that. So you don't envision war."

- No. Some degree of discretion for the first couple of generations, achieved by seeding remote areas initially, and then there will be no more need. I would predict that within the span of one of your lifetimes that unmodified humans will be outnumbered, and within another that only hybrids will remain. Generations later, the hybrids will rise to sapience, and make the planet their own. No one will fall to violence. All humans living today will complete their natural spans. Your captain will remain the only casualty we intend. -

"Hunh. Well, I've heard you out."

- Will you sleep? -

"I'll have to put it to the kids. I'll have to prove I'm not under your influence. I'll need, uh, do you know what a day is?"

- I understand your measuring units. -

"Yeah, well, I'm gonna need three of them before I give you your answer."

- Very well. Time is plentiful. -

----

Josh is rearranging equipment in the mausoleum to better suit their long term stay when the bulkhead intercom activates.

"Kids, you in the crypt?"

He quickly mashes the return button. "Grubs?"

"Yeah, it's me. It didn't hurt me, it just wanted to... chat."

"No offense, uncle, but how do I know you don't have some of that thing riding around in your head?"

"You got access to your bots?"

"Yeah."

"Send one of em to the hallway outside the crypt to take a look at me."

"One minute."

Josh cycles through the bots actually on board the ship and finds one with visual. Faith moves up behind him and watches over his shoulder. A couple of minutes later it scampers up to where Grubs is standing outside the bulkhead.

"Okay, I see you." Grubs isn't wearing a shipsuit, just cotton undergarments and a t-shirt, leaving little to the imagination.

"Alright, lad, you see I'm not armed. My suggestion is you let me in there, I get in a casket, and you put me under for an hour. You saw what happened to the captain when we caught one of those things in her. The medical nanites will kill anything nonhuman inside of me."

Josh looks up at Faith, and she shrugs. "Not a lot of options, as I see it."

Josh nods and reaches for the return button. "Okay Grubs, I'm opening your coffin, then I'll open the bulkhead. We'll be on the far side of the room. You get in your coffin, get hooked up, and pull the drawer shut, then I'll program it."

"Sounds good. I'll wait here."

Faith pulls out the coffin, and then drifts back to the console. Josh nods to her and activates the cycle for the bulkhead, watching through the spiderbot to make sure Grubs stays alone in the hallway.

The engineer enters in and heads straight to his coffin. By the time the bulkhead has sealed again he's hooking himself up.

"Alright, lad, we got a lot to talk about, so don't leave me down more than an hour."

"Understood, chief."

With a nod, Grubs lays back and hauls the coffin shut, sealing himself in. Josh walks across and starts the stasis process. Hitting the coffin intercom, he says, "Hope to see you in an hour, chief."

"Me too, kid."

----

"Well, you're not puking tar, so I guess you're clean. What happened?"

Plucking leads off himself and pulling out the IV, Grubs sighs. "Christ, where to start. Well, I guess the big news is we can never let the ship leave this rock."

Walking over to grab a spare shipsuit from the supplies Josh had begun hoarding, Grubs begins to tell them his story. It's the better part of an hour before Faith and Josh have asked all the questions they can think of.

The three sit in silence, using the yeast vat and some boxes as an impromptu conference table and chairs.

Faith breaks the silence. "So, what, sabotage? Blow the reactor?"

"I doubt that thing would let me within ten meters of the reactor, lass. You're on the right track, though. Lad, you still got telemetry on all the bots outside?"

Josh nods. "Sure, when they're in range. Some of the ones working downrail might not be accessible."

"We only need a few, with welder fittings. Come here, and look at this."

Grubs pulls up a schematic of the Rockhopper. Zooming in and separating the engine section of the ship, he begins to point out precise areas near the baffles of the ship. "Okay, this is what we need you to do..."

----

- You return. Will you sleep? -

Grubs nods to his former captain, again ensconced atop the spider, her human legs concealed in its abdomen. "Yeah. Took some convincing, but the kids understand it's in their best interests. How long until we begin the trip back."

- You would measure it in years. There must be many children born before Earthfall. -

Grubs shudders, but makes no comment. "We will be in stasis within a day."

- This one retains knowledge of those systems. Set no end to your sleep. I will monitor. -

This last with a gesture to one of the engineering consoles.

Grubs nods again. "We half expect not to wake up again. There's no reason to if we're not back home, and there are worse ways to die than stasis entropy."

- As you say. -

With that, the titanic spider spins and begins to make its way deeper into the engineering bay, the access sealing behind it. Grubs returns to the crypt.

"Did you tell it?" Faith asks.

"Yeah. It seemed satisfied."

Josh says, "How long did it give us?"

"I asked for another day. You be done with the work I gave you by then?"

"That's already done. The Rockhopper is never leaving Sleepy."

They all give that the moment of silence it deserves.

"What are you doing now, then, kid?"

"Something for myself," Josh answers, hunched over the bot interface. "Might come to nothing, and it won't affect our plan. I'd like to keep it to myself if you don't mind."

"Sure, kid. Don't take too long at it. I'm gonna go to my cabin until tomorrow. If I were the two of you, I know how I'd spend my last night."

Faith is long past blushing. "I do, too."

Josh smiles at her from his seat. "Another couple of hours and I'll be done. See you tomorrow, chief."

"Yeah, kid. You too."

----

The thing that had been Nomi watches the status indicators from the crypt, and is satisfied that the remaining humans have entered their sleep without end. It intends to keep its word to wake them when it reached their planet, although it will not speak for the actions of its children at that point. It's likely the female will be among the first to carry the second generation.

She backs into the spider standing behind her human body, and it swiftly envelops her lower torso once more. As the fused alien turns to head deeper into the bay, it gasps. Clutching its human hands to its stomach, its begins to pant. The captain's swollen belly visibly shifts, first expanding and then contracting, stabilizing at a slightly smaller size. It feels yet another of its offspring slip from its loins and into the collection already floating in the nurturing cradle of the bloated spider below it. Already this spider-mass and others like it, deep in the bowels of engineering, holds dozens of hybrid children. They remain suspended in a sleep of abeyance, unaging, in function not unlike the human stasis technology, though wholly biological.

Before the Rockhopper makes its journey home, towards the end of the lifespan of this human host, the first generation of sleeping children will number in the tens of thousands.

----

The AI overseeing the habitat of New Pangea registers iron ingot strikes from a new vector. It lases each of them as they approach. Radio-frequency identifiers, powered by the light of the laser, identify the slugs as originating from the mining contracting ship Rockhopper. The AI tracks the quantity of arriving metal for the purposes of accounting.

When the ingots stop arriving from that vector for a few months, the AI takes no special notice. The ship may have moved to a more promising location, or suffered some small mishap. Such things are common with asteroid mining. The ingots eventually resume, and accounting continues.

The Rockhopper's contract with the UNS is not within the remit of the AI, so it does not note that the ingots continue to arrive for more than a decade after the expiration of the Rockhopper's contract. The New Pangea project is decades from completion, and its appetite for raw material limitless. Should anyone ever ask, the AI can supply the tonnage of iron provided by the Rockhopper down to the nearest kilogram, so that the ship can collect its contract payment.

No one ever asks.

----

Nomi-that-was stands on the bridge of the Rockhopper, where its human body had not tread for more than fifteen years, as Earth measures them. Little had changed in the physical appearance of the captain since the last time Grubs had seen it, though the belly is now flat, showing no signs of pregnancy. The human shell is nonetheless approaching the end of its span, endless childbirth and constant microgravity having taken a great toll on the body of the former captain.

Now it approached its last task, returning the Rockhopper to the Earth of humans. Its memory, and the memory of the human it subsumed, remain flawless, and its hands dance across the console in the complicated pattern required to wake up the slumbering vessel after so many years.

Below the crust of Sleepy, the bulk of the alien watches through myriad spawnlings. Should the ship leave successfully, it will have done all it could to further its mission. The engineering bay of the ship teems with fat spiders, bulbous with the suspended offspring of the former captain and obedient to their purpose. Collectively, they have the necessary cognitive mass to manage the strategic deployment of their burden, aided by insight plucked from the human's mind as needed.