Free Fort Liberty, Volume Two by M Orenda Page B

intelligence in an isolated cave environment? What’s the point? What the hell does this thing have to think about?”
    “Ho, look at him go,” Neilson quips. “Like we’ve been observing it for three decades, and we’ve never thought of asking that question? We have asked that question, Corporal, and Niri is the answer. She was designed to host it, communicate with it. She’s already sharing DNA with it. We built her to be the bridge. She can go where we can’t. She can understand what we can’t. What does it have to think about? Why do you think you’re here, sport?”
    Logan grimaces, glances at the surrounding desks. There are few technicians sitting behind holo screens, but they’re focused on the scrolling boxes of data, watching chemical signals flow, searching for alien dreams. No one seems to be listening to Nielson’s tirade of ego. There are no sympathetic glances, no understanding looks. This is normal.
    Nielson leans in closer. “This is history being made, right now. You’re one of the lucky ones. You’re a part of it. When you take her to exterior module, you’ll be the first---”
    “The what module?”
    The director raises two fingers, points them toward the clear airlock on the lower deck. Behind it, Logan can see the framework of an antechamber stocked with contamination suits, and bright yellow air bottles. Beyond it, a silvery corridor stretches out into the cave, a transparent hallway leading to a detached structure built out on the rock.
    “The exterior module,” Neilson says. “That’s where it all happens.”
    The detached structure sits in the semi-darkness outside, a fanciful, pagoda-like habitat of metal and glass, with two levels, and a curving roof, the morphing colors of the cave reflected in its windows.
    Logan scowls. “You’re putting her out there?”
    “It’s perfect, designed for everything she needs. The airlock opens to provide direct exposure to the cave and its microbial world. We call it the tea house, because it kind of looks like, well… it’s really very nice inside, and we can be with her all the time. You can’t see it from here, but it’s quite luxurious, like the temples where they’re trained. Meant to have that look.”
    “It looks like what it is.”
    “Oh c’mon,” Neilson says. “You’re taking this disturbed hero thing a bit far. It’s a palace compared to what she had Earthbound, and it’s far better quarters that what you’ve got, I’ll guarantee you that.”
    “For how long?”
    “What?”
    “How long is she supposed to be out there?”
    Neilson shrugs, like he knows, but he’s not going to say. “As long as she wants. We’ll see. We can bring her back in at any time. We did that with the others after we had discovered none were as compatible as we hoped. They were all re-tasked for their natural skill set, and most are still here, contributing to the scientific effort as engineers and such. Some of them can ‘hear’ a little, as we say. It’s not actually hearing, of course, but that’s the term for the extra sense they have, the chemical, sensory awareness of the colony’s communication. Niri may become like them, hearing a limited spectrum, or she may be the one who hears everything.”
    “In which case…”
    “She becomes the first true link between BIO227 and us.”
    “Brilliant,” Logan mutters. “And I go out to the module with her?”
    “If that’s what she wants.”
    “Meaning yes.”
    “I’ll get you a suit.”
    “Why do I need a suit if BIO227 can’t infect unmodified humans?”
    “You can’t breathe the air in the cave, corporal. Too much carbon dioxide, which flushes through from tiny crevice vents which open up in the warmth, and freeze shut in the cold, as if the whole thing is breathing. BIO227 consumes it, and there’s more oxygen and nitrogen here than on the surface, because some of the enzymes used by the colony do create those gases, but it’s still not in the right proportions.