Vortex Part 6 (1)

Vortex Part 6

"Darling, I've discovered something very interesting." Tya stared first at the monitor and then at me.

"What's going on?"

"It's not three chips, but four. Without the tomography I wouldn't have discovered it at all, but even so it was very difficult because it's a neural chip."

I could only remember having two chips implanted: the Battlemorph chip and the one that kept me alive.

"Don't remove it yet, only that red one over there. That's the one Luzifer implanted in me; then you may untie me."

A-Tya deactivated the red chip and carefully removed it, then threw it onto the floor and crushed it underfoot. Once she untied me, I first walked over to the remains of Master One and touched them. The genetic structure of Master One appeared before my eyes, and I was quite amazed. Instead of the normal four types of genes, he had five.

I integrated the genes into my cells and then turned to the corpse of Mephisto. Since the Ectomorph was now dead, the genetic camouflage no longer functioned, and I could see everything clearly. The Ectomorphs were based on carbon instead of protein, which made them dependent on our life energy. Unfortunately, I couldn't apply the genes at the moment because my skull was open and my accelerated metabolism would leave unpleasant stains on the walls; aside from that, the radiation was still blocking my cell division.

Suddenly A-Tya called out to me:

"Varlon, take a look at this."

I ran over to her immediately and asked:

"What did you find?"

"This neural chip is clearly of Zer origin, as the characters reveal, but at the same time its technology is more advanced than I would have expected."

I looked at it all on the computer screen. This chip was at least two thousand years ahead of our Zer technology; such complex structures were impossible to manufacture with our equipment. But then I remembered.

The legacy of the time-traveling Zer! When I found it back then, the computer SPECTRON had transformed me; perhaps it implanted the chip in me, but what function did it have?

"Tya, is this chip switched on?"

"No, if I interpret the symbols correctly, the switch is set to OFF. Dare we turn it on?"

The risk was too great for me; I didn't want to take it before the Ectomorphs disappeared from Earth.

"No! Leave it switched off for now. The laser scalpel has cut out all my contaminated areas; I'll soon be able to close the wounds, but first I have a score to settle with the Ectomorphs, and I need to get Selina out of there."

"Who is Selina?" A-Tya asked jealously.

"Do you remember what I told you about Tero, my sister? Selina is her daughter."

"Are you sure? Tero is stationed on Ikarus; how could she have a daughter here?"

Tya was mistaken. I remembered that Tero had disappeared, but on the other hand, that memory felt as though someone had merely told it to me. On the other hand, I remembered Ikarus, the research station, and that Tero had something to do with it.

When the alarm sirens started wailing on top of everything, it all became too much for me. On the monitor appeared: ORBITAL EYE Alarm.

"What is that?"

Master Two sat down in front of the terminals and immediately requested more information. The 3D display switched on and showed the map of the solar system. The only differences compared to the Helios system were that here one planet was apparently flying through space as mere chunks of rock, and that Neptune's moons had gone independent.

The map zoomed into the Uranus region until a giant spaceship became visible. I recognized the insignia immediately: they were slightly modified markings of the Sekraner, but the ship was by no means built by them, and its speed was also a bit too high for Sekran technology. The ship would be here in a few hours. We seemed to be getting reinforcements.

The Ectomorphs also seemed to finally notice it. They launched all their ships except for the one damaged one and cloaked themselves to slip away safely. Our situation was no longer hopeless, but the Ectomorphs would return.

"A-Tya, please activate the chip!"

My wife was surprised that I decided so quickly to try it. After all, I didn't believe that a Zer would wish for my death. I was always well-liked—except by the Ectomorphs.

Tya finally activated the chip. An electrical pulse shot through my body, then another, far stronger one. I thought my brain would burn up, but every cell in my body adopted a strange genetic structure that was so complex I couldn't categorize it; no living being known to me possessed such a structure. Then the chip began pumping data into my brain so fast that I passed out.

Luzifer entered Selina's cell and said:

"Varlon has already killed a resistance fighter and a traitor, but now he has freed himself from my chip. If we're lucky, my plan will still succeed nonetheless."

Selina looked up through her disheveled hair and asked:

"Was I believable?"

"My little one, you were outstanding, and if Varlon doesn't want to free you from here, I'm no longer the villain. You know what you have to do?"

"Of course, but are we really doing the right thing?"

"Don't question it, just do it! Varlon is the villain here to us. We must destroy him."

"Yes, I understand that, but do we really have to kill A-Kara too? She's still just a child."

"Wrong, because remote analysis shows that she is fifteen years old. Just kill her!"

Selina wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, then sat down in the corner of the cell and said:

"I don't like doing it, but if you command it, Father, I will kill her."

Luzifer stood up and vanished from the room, leaving behind Selina, who began to ponder why she had been cloned from Varlon's cells just to seal his doom.

I slowly woke up again. My skull was still pounding, but then I noticed that it was still open. The neurochips were practically exposed to the open air, so I quickly healed the wound and stood up. A-Tya turned to me and cried out:

"You're finally awake! I already thought it had killed you."

"Nothing kills me that easily, I'm almost immortal."

"It's precisely that ALMOST that worries me."

I knew that I had almost kicked the bucket this time, but the chip was indeed something special and contained the blueprints for a new kind of weapon: the Biodispersor, which was specially designed for use against Ectomorphs.

I immediately sat down with the soldering iron and began making the necessary modifications to my dispersor.

Thanks to my new genetic structure, I could finally do something with Mephisto's genes as well. In a flash, I transformed into Mephisto; everyone present in the room was almost scared to death.

I slowly crept up to the Ectomorph shipwreck. It wasn't hard to get inside, as all the guards genuinely took me for one of their own. Relying on memory, I found the cell block fairly quickly, as well as the cell where I had been held captive. The guard opened the cell and I stepped inside. Selina stood up and shouted:

"I want nothing to do with you, so leave me alone!"

Once the door was locked again, I immediately transformed back and whispered:

"It's me, don't worry, I'm getting you out of here right now."

"But how did you do that? I want to be able to transform too."

"I'll explain the transformation to you later; you'll have this ability too when you grow up. I'm sending you to my wife now and will quickly kill off the remaining Ectomorphs," I explained and began programming the coordinates into my wormhole expander, but Selina held onto my hand and said:

"If you killed them all, you would be just as bad as they are."

I was glad that, despite all her bad experiences, the little girl still had a good heart; humans called such a thing a good soul. Just as I finished the programming and was sending Selina through the wormhole, the door opened again and Luzifer stood before me.

"You pest of an insect, I should have killed you when I had the chance; now I'll finish the job."

He drew a laser weapon and fired right through me. Such a thing couldn't harm me, but Luzifer felt better right away.

"Luzifer, if you don't know how to kill someone like me, then just leave it be." I vanished through the wormhole and deactivated it.

The Orbital Eye now supplied us with more precise data about the ship from Sekra, which would land in a few minutes.

I was right: the national insignia of Sekra was only crudely painted on; the propulsion and the shape were unfamiliar to me and did not correspond to any race from the parts of the galaxy explored by the Zer.

The sensors of ORBITAL EYE clearly indicated that there were life forms on board, the number of which could not be determined. Selina, Kara, and Tya sat spellbound in front of the screen, staring mesmerized at the data being displayed about this magnificent ship. Tya finally asked me:

"Is it a trick, or is it truly one of our own?"

"I'm not clear on that yet; let's wait the few minutes until the ship lands. Sekran hospitality is well known to me, which is why I'd better not go on board myself."

Kara laughed, because her mother had told her what happened back then on Malkor when I arrived, and frankly speaking, I still laugh about it today.

The ship flew past ORBITAL EYE so that I could read the Sekran letters on its hull: HOFFNUNG.

The HOFFNUNG landed next to the still-immobile ship of the Ectomorphs, yet it did not make a hostile impression. I transported myself near it and took a closer look. No visible armament suggested that it was either a research or a colony ship. The material it was made of looked and felt like a ceramic composite, clearly more resistant than anything we Zer had ever invented. Despite the flight through the 2,000-degree hot atmospheric layers, the surface wasn't even lukewarm. The entire disc-shaped ship had

...no elevations or depressions on its surface. The lights radiating from the surface shone in all spectral colors from blue in the outer areas to red in the inner ones, without gradations. The ship hovered a few centimeters above the ground, then the underside deformed slightly and formed three landing legs. Finally, an entrance formed together with a matching catwalk, and several cat-people emerged from the giant ship.

I crossed my arms and called out:

"Welcome to Earth, Sekrans."

There were whole families of cat-people from all clans of Sekra, well, almost the whole families actually, as there were no young men among them, only women, children, and old men.

I went aboard and asked the first Sekran I saw:

"Old man, tell me what this is all about?"

A-Tya and A-Kara came through another wormhole and saw the frightened faces of the cat-people, but finally one of the women recognized that Kara was also a cat-person and said:

"She is one of us!" All eyes turned to our daughter.

"So what's going on? Are we going to talk or stand here until Judgment Day?"

A young man, apparently the only one in the entire crew, came out of the crowd and just made a hand gesture; immediately the floor shaped itself into two chairs and a table, then he said:

"Have a seat!" He also sat down across from me and asked:

"Impressed? Human!"

"First off, I'm not human, so don't insult me, and secondly, I'm curious where you got this toy."

"This toy flew right into our lap, but seriously, it crashed on our world, and since we found no crew, we had to figure out how to pilot this ship ourselves. That was the only way we could bring some of our families to safety."

I looked around and discovered that inside the ship there were still thousands of cryo-sleep chambers in which cat-people were sleeping.

"Safety? From what?" I asked.

"Shortly before this ship was sent to us from the sky, a terrible war began on our planet. The humans began attacking us with nuclear weapons; within a few hours they destroyed our five largest cities. We have no nuclear weapons, so our only choice was to evacuate at least some of us, and the ship brought us here."

"If the humans are a problem, maybe I can help you and sic the Ectomorphs on them."

"What?"

"I'm one of the best Genomorphs, if not the best, and I can transform into any other life form. In a parallel universe I've already brought peace to your planet once."

"We don't want peace! For five hundred years the humans have been attacking us over and over for no reason, we want to get rid of them!"

"Alright, I'll negotiate with Luzifer, wait here." I stood up and walked down. Master Four asked:

"Did I hear that right? You want to negotiate with Luzifer so he wipes out the humans on their planet?"

"Do you want him to clean up around here instead? You see what happened after he stayed on Earth with his horde for just a few hours. Twenty percent of the world's population is gone, he almost conquered several planets in the parallel universe, and before that he had already seized world domination, so it's much better if he annoys those idiotic Agarians. If you knew them, you'd agree with me."

"But that's immoral!"

"Do you know what's really immoral? In the previous century, large tobacco companies sold cigarettes with the government's consent, even though everyone knew they were carcinogenic."

"Yes, I know about that, they were sold for the very purpose of reducing the number of pension claimants. That was a terrible time, but since the Revolution! in 2003, cigarette sales were placed under the narcotics act, and since drug trafficking was made punishable by death, the problem essentially solved itself, until Skytology changed this law."

I turned around and called out as loudly as I could for Luzifer in the direction of the Ectomorphs' ship. My time for negotiations was limited, because the other Ectomorph ships startled by the HOFFNUNG would soon return and complete their work of destruction once they realized the HOFFNUNG posed no danger to them.

Sure enough, the hatch opened again and Luzifer came toward me furiously. Even from a distance I could see he was practically boiling with rage; when he got closer he yelled:

"Varlon, before you came, everything was fine, I despise you to the core, and then you have the nerve to call me? Have you completely lost your mind?"

"Luzifer, shut your trap already and listen to me, I'm offering you half a planet, and that's still better than a whole planet with me as your adversary."

"Well, you've got my interest, keep talking."

"What do you think of planet Malkor?"

The Sekran chimed in and said:

"Melcon!"

"Alright, Melcon then!" I corrected myself, remembering that planets had different names in different universes, like Earth instead of Terra Prime, or Sun instead of Helios.

Luzifer thought for a moment and then asked:

"And you definitely won't get in my way when I harvest the humans from there?"

"You have my word!"

"Alright, Melcon wasn't due for another fifty years, but with you as an opponent it would be pointless. But don't think I'm giving up on Earth, I'll be back!"

Luzifer turned around and walked back to his ship, his expression a bit sour, but he too was pleased with the outcome of the negotiations.