Genetic Wars 2162
More Than Four

Based on The Genetic Wars, by Thomas R. Weigel and Jonathan Coolidge
And Lycanthrope, by Jonathan S. Coolidge
Additional concepts by Heather Varley and Alicia Vogel

The year is 2159, almost a century after the Cozalien War and the occupation that subjected millions of people to horrific experiments at the hands of the enigmatic consciousness known as Four One.  The L.G.F.F. League has colonized Tau Ceti 2, the planet Utopia, and has begun building a fleet of ships to defend the system.  Once dependant on reverse-engineered extraterrestrial technology, the League has now begun developing its own organic machines and tools as it races to catch up to the sophisticated technical and biological engineering capabilities of Earth and the Control Administration of Thomas.

Xau Zolan closed his eyes again and allowed his consciousness to drift.  His remote viewing talents had taken him to many places through the years, and though the images and experiences of astral projection were unpredictable at best, he had an uncanny ability to predict accurately through his clairvoyance, making him one of the League’s most valued reconnaissance expert through the still developing field of psionics.
This time his objective was Lutyen 726-8, a pair of red dwarf stars one third of the way between the League’s homeworld Utopia and C.A.T. occupied Earth.  It was known to host two jovan and several smaller planets, though the League had yet to do a detailed survey of the system.  Stellar flaring and the small size of the stars, with the problems of tidal forces and rotational fixation, made natural life improbable and colonization challenging, but the strategic location in a direct line between Utopia and Earth made the system strategically important.
Zolan first focused his attention on Godzilla, the larger of the jovan worlds orbiting star A.  Orange and gray bands of clouds rolled over its surface, and lightning bolts the size of smaller moons flashed across its dark side.  Xau backed away from the world itself, when he came upon a small metallic debris drifting steadily towards the planet, spiralling downward towards eventual destruction.  He then found a larger portion of a derelict and ruined C.A.T. battleship, similar to one that had more than thirty years ago flown into the Tau Ceti system and attacked the homeworld.  It held its own against the League’s Conus and Orion warships before retreating.  However, it clearly stood no chance against its missing adversary.
Zolan continued exploring the system.  Neither Godzilla nor the other giant planet Mothra showed signs of the invader.  But, Xau could feel a strong presence hiding nearby.  He directed himself to star B, UV Ceti, flickering in one of its bursts of X-ray radiation.  In close orbit, a yet unnamed and unsurveyed planet revealed a rocky surface partially obscured by a smokey atmosphere.  But, it was not devoid of life.  Zolan sensed something and moved closer.
One side of it faced a perpetual night.  Near the center of that face of the planet, a small cluster of buildings gathered underneath a large glass dome, lit overhead by lights.  Deep inside, a small forest bloomed inside an artificial environment.  The planet itself served as a buffer against the blasts of radiation from UV Ceti’s flares, and devices extended beyond the dome into the surrounding rock, appearantly drawing energy from beneath the planet’s surface as guysers billowed periodic tufts of clouds.  Inside, the forest, once an orderly collection of landscaping, had overgrown in disrepair.  The buildings were abandoned and empty.  Outside, three other domes were shattered, their contents torn apart by toxic fumes, heat, and turbulance from the elements outside.  Something had broken in from the outside and captured the colony’s inhabitants.  Xau floated over into one of the open domes.  The people of the colony tried to fight back.  On the ground, next to a weather-beaten semi-skeletal corpse, laid a shattered crystalline form with three broken, outstretched armlike appendages and the damaged remains of a fourth one.  The Cozaliens had returned.

The Capitol complex built in the 2020s was already expanding, and two large landing platforms were under construction.  Built to withstand the periodic three hundred plus kilometer per hour winds of the tornado season, the renovations promised to make the building on the mountain side Christmas City’s most prominent landscaping and skyline element.
Xau Zolan stood before the League’s Congressional Council.  Though the assembly hall had only recently built inside the Capitol complex, its faux wood furnishings and stained glass features recreated a historic appearance.  The Council currently consisted of some twenty individuals, representing different political viewpoints and opinions throughout the growing League colonies scattered across planet Utopia.
“For nearly a century we’ve dreaded this moment,” Xau spoke.  “And, while I cannot yet prove that my remote viewing capabilities are absolute, I submit to you my prior track record in such matters, added in with the seriousness of a Cozalien threat, and I am confident that your conclusion will be that we must send a vessel to verify their presence.  Even our war against Thomas Shann and the Control Administration would be secondary in the presence of a Cozalien threat, and I would even recommend that we transmit our findings to Earth so that the rest of humanity may prepare itself.”
“Mister Zolan,” Councillor Tameka Williams, a moderately built woman stood up  Aside from being Chief Moderate, she represented the pleurality and was thus the Chief Councillor.  “We grant your request for an emergency hearing, to grant Admiral Planar authority to assemble a response team.  I trust the League Star Fleet has been notified of the situation.”
“I spoke with my long-time associate Captain Anderson Conus.  He is eager to take the mission himself, though I worry about the consequences this will have with his grandson.”

Jason glanced at a series of sketches of wing muscles from a falcon and various approaches of integrating them to a human torso in a manner that would be not only functional but reasonably aesthetic.  The problem of how to make humans fly was daunting, though nowhere near Ipanema’s ambition of creating a likeness of Pegasus.  His grandfather Anderson could shapeshift into a falcon, as could a few others who acquired similar avian and chiropteran shapeshifting viruses from the Cozaliens during the 2065 invasion.  However, applying wings to a human form would represent a sizable leap forward, provided that they could actually work.
Jason was a clone of Alexander Conus, Anderson’s son.  Alexander made a number of attempts through the years to establish with a mate, but each time she would come to realize that he was too interested in his work to hold a relationship.  He had become too much like his father.  Alex eventually decided that he wanted to have children, but he was unable to keep a relationship long enough to consider it.  He finally resorted to the Mendel Institute’s cloning service, which he helped to found, and had Jason Conus created from his genome.  Jason then spent the bulk of his childhood in the nursery and boarding school of the institute.
A form with wings, Jason contemplated.  He could re-engineer himself and fly away.  But, he would be following in the family curse.  He looked up at himself as he washed his face.  Under the age of thirty and he was already losing his hair.  Alexander cloned himself verbatum, insisting that baldness was simply a design element that distinguished some people from others.  If it were that much of an issue, lycanthropy would cure it—there was the old anecdote about Scott Gardener likely having been bald by his forties had he not been a werewolf.
Anderson walked in.  Though he was an aging man, he was still nearly as young as Alexander, having missed twenty two years frozen in time, travelling at near light speed to Earth to rescue the memory archives of Scott Gardener from Earth.  In his absense, Christmas City was built and life happened.  Upon his return, he continued to bury himself in the work of his company Tri-Star and of the building of the League Star Fleet.  Jason grew up seeing him only on occasion to tour Conus One or the new ships, or to see him show off the planets of the Tau Ceti system.  Upon hearing the news of his enigmatic associate Zolan and his premonition, Jason already anticipated what Anderson was going to say.  “I’m going away again.”
“If it’s to UV Ceti, you’ll be younger than Dad when you get back.  That’s got to be at least six years both ways.”  Jason’s answer was flat and unemotional, which he knew could be more heart-felt than expressing anger.
“I know I’ve been away a lot, with the Conus One refit…”
“And before that the Chief Joseph, and then the Secretariat, and before that…”  Jason phrased it using a friendly, almost joking tone, which served to stab into Anderson’s emotions.
“OK, I haven’t been around.  I openly admit it.”
“Well, grand-dad,” Jason sighed, “if it’s any comfort, I haven’t had the best of luck getting a girlfriend either.  It seems to be a family curse.  Maybe we’re all just doomed to our testosterone-driven science.”
Anderson exhaled, pausing a minute.  He struggled to continue saying what was on his mind.  “If the Cozaliens are back—given the seriousness of the threat, we have to go and take a look.”  Jason simply looked down and surveyed his sketch of an angellic figure.  Anderson continued.  “I was there—a hundred years ago, during the Cozalien War.  I’ve seen what they do to people.”
“What about Captain Tendou or Podnavich?  They seem pretty competent for the job.”
“None have my experience with the Cozaliens or Conus One,” Anderson replied.
Jason looked away from his sketch and directly at his grandfather.  “Let me get this straight; you’re planning to take Conus One over there?  The Cozalien ship?  What if it decides to rejoin its friends?”
“It’s the best choice.  If we run into Cozaliens there, it may be our only chance to communicate with them or send command codes, the thing that saved us during the war.  I pretty much have to go; if the ship does revert, I’m the best chance we would have of regaining control over the situation.  The ship trusts me, Elvedea, and Zolan more than anyone else.”
“So Zolan and Elvedea are going, too,” Jason sighed.
“Zolan is staying behind—he feels that if the worst should happen, one of us should be around to help set up a defense plan, even if it’s to make another run for it, to try for a star like Beta Hydri or Zeta Reticularis.  Elvedea hasn’t decided yet.”

With the construction of bridges and the Isis maglev trains, Christmas City had grown from an outpost into a full-grown city with growing ammenities.  Lynn and Elvedea had spent time together developing a local café on the north side of the river, near the base of the Capitol.  Now the two felines had lived as a Lesbian couple for more than three years in a small, partially underground house, composed of materials grown from the local plant life.
 Lynn stroked Elvedea’s neck as the two rested, curled into each other in a circular bed.  Nearby, an airfish floated inside a small cage plant next to a gossamer faerie sculpture by one of the city’s numerous artists.  Elvedea purred slightly and flicked her tail back and forth.  Though she could take the appearance of a black panther or an oriental woman, Elvedea seldom left her hybrid form.  Lynn also preferred an anthropomorphic animal form, suggestive of a tabby house cat, complete with the ornate “M” design across her forehead.  Like many couples in Christmas City, they followed the tendancy to group with mates of the same phenotype reference animal, though mixed couples were not uncommon.  While Elvedea was an older woman of Cozalien engineering, however, Lynn Felius-37 was one of the younger native Utopians, engineered locally at the Mendel Institute.
“We could both go with Conus,” Elvedea suggested.  “I could drive, and you could work the espresso machine.”
“I’m afraid I’d be a liability more than anything.  What would I know about helping out on a Cozalien ship even if nothing happens, let alone a crisis?”
“But,” Elvedea offered, “there’s a small group of colonists who will be going on board to stay at UV Ceti and set up camp.  If they’re coming along, what’s wrong with adding one round-trip passenger?”
“That’s different—they’re experienced survivalists.  I’m an indoor kitty.”  She licked at Elvedea’s hand affectionately.  “You want to go, don’t you?”
“But, you want me to stay.”
“Of course I do, but you should go.”
Elvedea’s ears flicked back, and she sat up.  “What makes you say that?”
“You and Conus One are legendary, and anyone else at the helm would not be right.  Besides, we’ll be closer in age when you get back.”
“Nobody worries about things like age differences anymore,” she countered.  But, Lynn was right about Conus One.  Elvedea remembered the old times back over Earth, pulling the Prometheus out of a crashing fall, and then the years patrolling Earth orbit, taking out V-Sats and orbital weapons arrays.  Then, she thought about the time in which she helped to rescue fugitives from slavery during the exodus to Utopia.  She remembered the return trip to Earth to extract Scott Gardener’s memory archive, and the experiences along the way.  “It won’t be the same without Xau and his astral thing.  But, we’re getting Xal and Rath, a good pair of biotech experts.”

The L.S.S. Conus One sat docked in an orbiting hanger next to the L.S.S. Chief Joseph, one of the newer ships composed of organic materials grown from genetically modified Utopian plant life.  Once Tri-Star’s flagship and once a technology beyond state-of-the-art, the modified and refitted Cozalien ship’s angular, crystalline form appeared almost dated next to the Chief Joseph’s curved, graceful lines.  However, Conus One had on its underside a new construct that brought it up to date.  Where a boxy and angular undercarriage once hung, a more rounded, organic cylendrical form now resided, bearing in a recessed barrel a glowing yellowish orb, its appearance suggesting a single large eye.
Rath and Xal Carrigan-Waldenrath held hands as they made their way to the control deck.  Unlike Anderson or Elvedea, the two had relatively little experience with the old control deck layout, so they needed little time readjusting to the numerous upgrades that had been made to accommodate the new module.
Though Elvedea’s station remained in the same location, it had changed dramatically.  Using technology developed from materials stolen during the Scott Gardener rescue mission, Elvedea now had in her own nervous system a microscopic computer network designed to interact with her thought processes and to upload and download information directly into the ship’s equivalent of a nervous system.
Xal had a similar network in the past, but had to sacrifice it as part of the exodus to Utopia.  She was glad to have access to such technology again, even without the full scope of Earth’s old Internets.  The implants were intentionally incompatable with the Earth’s networks without external filters; this precaution was a necessary measure should they ever be close to C.A.T.  And, an extended effort was made to prevent this technology from being used to monitor people’s everyday activity.
Elvedea took her seat, and with a wave of her arm, a number of displays reflexively illuminated.  Though they could be operated manually, this redundancy was growing obsolite.  Tactical experts suspected that C.A.T. ships likely already had done away with familiar control consoles.  The main, triangular overhead viewscreen lit up, showing the planet Utopia ahead of them, with Tau Ceti rising beyond over the horizon.
“Elvedea, welcome back,” Anderson Conus said as he took his seat.  His own implants, a precursor technology of Cozalien design, had evolved over time to grant him increasing empathic ties to the ship.  He turned to face the new control deck crew.  “Rath, Xal, welcome aboard.”  Rath sat at Zolan’s station to the left, while Xal took the seat immediately to the left of Anderson’s central chair.  To either side of them, a pair of three-dimentional projector columns scintillated slightly, while a newer third column remained invisible in the center of the triangular platform of the control deck.  “The new Conus Two module and the additional system upgrades should give us the edge we need.  The secondary hull has a plasma beam weapon designed to cut through titanium armor ten times as thick as the C.A.T. battleship we fought thirty years ago.
“We have three additional guests on board,” Conus added.  To Conus’ right, Scott Gardener and Elodea Taylor both materialized inside the projection column.  Next to Xal, Selena Hawthorne appeared.
Elvedea turned around from her console to approach Elodea, whose lower body tapered into a black-scaled mermaid tail.  “Something looks different.”
“Well,” Elodea answered, floating around Scott and wrapping her lower body around him, “since we’re not really in physical bodies, we’re free to try a few things.”
“It was my idea,” Selena answered, showing off her pointed, elflike ears and then extending a pair of butterfly wings, the ends of which disappeared beyond the edge of the projection chamber.
Conus added, “They’ve copied both their memory records and their streams of consciousness algorithms here, but they’re also still running on the NUCLEUS network down below.”
“It’s kind of like being in two places at once,” Selena said, “though we’re really more like identical twins until the memory records are reintegrated.”
“Selena suggested we try to keep our memories continuously synchronized,” Scott added, “but it wasn’t working very well.  We’re not ready to reinvent human consciousness just yet, though she feels confident that we’ll find a way to do it in the future.”
“Here and there at the same time,” Anderson thought out loud.  “Elvedea and I both envy your unique abilities.”
“Well,” Elodea answered, brushing her mermaid’s tail around Scott’s waist, “not being dead has its advantages, too.”
Conus sat back.  “Hard to argue with that.  I’ll keep that in mind when we run into the Cozaliens.”  He turned towards the navigator.  “Elvedea, take us out.”
She placed her pawlike hand out into the air before her, and gestured it forward, squinting her eyes.  The ground beneath the control deck shook briefly as the ship came to life.
The L.S.S. Conus One drifted forward, emerging from its docking cave and stretching its arms out, igniting a yellow-orange glow from its rear engines.  Its new secondary hull took on a similar amber glow, accented with ridges of lights supplying its outer shell with power to help it maintain its regenerative capabilities, while the ship’s magnetic field intensified.
“Course laid in to Lutyen 726 dash eight,” Elvedea stated, as she performed a series of gestures suggestive of thaumaturgy.  “We should be in high gamma in eight hours.  We are at day one, hour zero and four minutes ship time.”  She placed her hands together.
The ship erupted into a blaze of golden light as it shot forward past Utopia and Tau Ceti, towards the constellation of Cassiopeia and the twin star system between them and the Sun.

3.2 Years later.

“Gamma is down to less than one and one to the minus seventh.”  Elvedea called out.  “Coming upon Lutyen 726-8 B, UV Ceti.”
Conus looked ahead.  “There should be a terrestrial planet in a torch orbit.  The C.A.T. colony will be on the night side, facing away from the star.”
The overhead display showed the red dwarf star ahead, and zoomed in to show a small black orb silhouetted against the relatively dim red light.  The star began to flicker.
“X-ray levels are starting to rise.  Deflector field is holding.”  The ship’s window covers, usually raised in high gamma flight but lowered inside the Tau Ceti system, remained in place to block out the bursts of radiation sent out by the two stars, each briefly nearly ten thousand times that of the warmer yellow suns familiar to humanoid forms.  Overhead on the viewscreen, the star flashed a bright red blaze of light temporarily obscuring the planet ahead before gradually settling back down.
“Not exactly the most hospitable place for life to evolve,” Xal commented.
“But,” Elodea added, from her projection cylender, “a good place for a Cozalien entity to recharge and regenerate.”
“No sign of Cozalien activity so far,” Elvedea added.  “But I am sensing a distress call from the planet ahead, and it is coming from the equator of its dark side, in keeping with Zolan’s clairvoyance.  It’s using C.A.T. nanomolecular networking algorithms, too.”  She gestured in the air with her arms, and a voice spoke out amist a haze.
“…name is David Neal, and I am the last survivor of the Charlamagne Colony here at UV Ceti One.  By now I most likely have succumbed to lycanthropic isolation syndrome, so I leave this message as a warning to all who can hear me.  The Cozaliens have returned.”  The signal ended.
“That settles it,” Rath spoke out.  “Zolan had it right again.”
“Sometimes, however,” Conus answered, “in times like these, I wouldn’t mind if he got it wrong.”  Conus sat back and spoke out, his voice echoing through the control deck and the rest of the ship.  “This is the Captain speaking.  We have just confirmed our worst fears.  An automated transmission from the planet surface confirms the presence of Cozalien activity.  We must therefore put on hold plans for colonization until further notice.”  His echo stopped as he then turned back to Rath.  “Send a message back to Utopia, letting them know what we found.  With any luck, they’ll get the message before the Cozaliens start showing up.”
“We should also consider rescuing Mr. Neal,” Xal suggested.  “Even if we’re unable to help him emotionally, his tech implants could tell us more about what happened here, as well as the state of Earth since the thirties.”
“Not to mention what we could find amidst the remains of the colony itself,” Elodea added.
“Agreed,” Conus replied.  “Elvedea, Rath, the colony is yours.  In the mean time, our virtual officers can try beaming down, so to speak, to the survivor down there.”

The Conus Two module seperated from Conus One and floated towards the planet ahead.  By itself, the module vaguely resembled a long cigar with glowing embers recessed into its front maw.  At nearly three hundred meters in length, it was a formidable ship in its own right.  Most of this size was engine, magnetic field generator, and plasma gun, leaving the volume of a fifteen story office building for passengers, cargo, and crew.  While it did not have the extensive combat arrays as its mother ship, it did have the new plasma weapon.  The vessel was not intended as a stand-alone tactical vessel, however, as the plasma beam device took a noticable amount of time to charge, and doing so took power away from the engine and manouvering thrusters.
Elvedea and Rath took seats inside the control station, one of fairly simplistic in design, intending to work directly with a single pilot with implants like Elvedea’s, though it also featured a backup console station for manual control.  There Rath sat, focusing his attention on scanning the surface as they closed in.
“Whatever did this was strong enough to break through their magnetic defense shielding.  If Zolan was right, it was also strong enough to take out a C.A.T. battleship that could hold its own against Conus One.  I just hope we aren’t around when it shows up again.”
They passed over a cluster of damaged and broken environment domes, their appearance matching Zolan’s vision.  “Over there,” Elvedea noted, pointing at an image on the auxillary control deck’s main viewscreen.  “There’s the one left intact.  We’ll probably find our survivor there, as it’s about the best place someone regressed to wolf state would find a supply of food.”
The cigar-like object settled down on the planet surface, just outside the colony, and extended a series of claw-like landing struts in a manner suggestive of a millipede.  Rath and Elvedea both emerged through a small orifice on one side, jumping down to the surface.  Each had on a form-fitting body suit accented with an enclosed atmosphere helmet, a supply of small devices, hand-held plasma beam pistols, and a sleeve in the back for a tail.  Rath looked at an instrument positioned over his wrist.
“His signal is coming from inside the dome.  Once were there, we should be able to breathe the air and smell for him.”
“He probably won’t be too friendly,” Elvedea noted.
In both their fields of view, an image of Scott Gardener walked beside them, unencumbered by the lack of atmosphere around them.  He was an image in their minds, generated by both Elvedea’s and Rath’s nanotech cybernetics.  “Elodea and I are all too familiar with lycanthropic isolation syndrome.  Granted that was over a hundred and fifty years ago.”
Rath looked towards the image.  “This man has something you and Elodea didn’t…a series of implants with which we can communicate.”
Gardener shifted into hybrid form, but continued speaking with a clearly human voice as his clothing vanished.  “Appearantly you haven’t yet met Thoth and Anubis.  I just hope they’re not lurking around the corner, using our friend here as bait.”
“Just in case,” Elvedea added, “you and the others can control the plasma gun module?”
Rath looked up at the domed city ahead, and then at his company.  “I’m here with a highly evolved cat and a holographic dead guy.  Wasn’t that the premise of an old British comedy?  What kind of celestial body is UV Ceti again?”
Elvedea kinked her head.  “A flare star.”
Rath sighed.  “Right.  Never mind.”  He found a metallic door frame leading to an airlock, and then examined a nearby cluster of electronics, while poking at his forearm.  “The colony has internal mechanical hardware, operating in a low-power mode.  Their internal defenses should not be a problem—a few robotic flying drones, but they’ll wait until we do something obviously threatening in order to save power.”  His pupils darted around as he worked with his nanomolecular implants.  Then the airlock clanged and slid open.
After the airlock closed behind them, the two removed their helmets and began sniffing the air around them.  It was stale and musty, with the bitter scent of a territorial marking next to a support pillar.  Nearby, a dry cluster of droppings emitted an odor.  “A lycanthropic male,” Rath commented.  “He was down this way probably two days ago.”  Pawprints disrupted the thin coat of dust on the floor.  Rath and Elvedea passed through a series of hallways, passing an abandoned checkpoint station.  Rath noticed a small, oval device sitting to one side, near a cluster of network data relays.  “This looks important,” he commented as he put it in a pouch on his belt.
The air improved as they came upon the domed environment chamber.
“This kind of reminds me of a Cozalien colony vessel,” Gardener’s ghostly form commented.  “Only gloomier.”  An overgrown arboretum revealed clusters of trees buckling with moss, a few along the edge bent over against the side of the dome ceiling.  An algae-filled pond rippled as a pair of oversized goldfish surfaced to gasp the air.  Vines and ivy obstructed trails leading to several small shelters scattered throughout the enclosure.  A rattling emanated from one of them, and then a large gray wolf erupted through an open window.  The animal looked over at Rath and Elvedea, and bared his teeth, emitting a low growl.
Rath set his helmet down and knelt down, allowing his features to shift fully human.  “Mister David Neal.  We picked up your distress call.”  The animal flicked his ears forward and ceased growling.  He paced forward, but then backed off.  Rath continued, “we’re here to rescue you.”
Elvedea retracted her feline features, revealing an elegant, circular face with prominent epicanthal folds around her eyes.  She spoke out with a soft voice, “you can become human, like us.”
The wolf continued to walk forward and back, circling them and inspecting them.  He lowered his head and sniffed, flicking his tail up at first, but gradually letting it back down.  Then the animal put his hindpaws forward, shifting his center of gravity and attempting to stand up.  He fumbled a few times.  Elvedea started to approach to help him, but Rath gestured her back.  The animal finally got his weight on his back legs, while the forepaws shifted into structures suggesting hands.  The creature stood upright and ambulated forward before stopping again.  He looked at his fur-covered, pawlike hands and then grabbed his muzzle, yowling at first and then charging with a growl.
The creature grabbed Rath and grappled him to the ground.  Rath responded with a series of wrestling manouvers to throw the attacker off of him and back down.  The creature sat up, staring at his paws as his long, narrow mouth hung open, panting, displaying a long, flat tongue and an array of pointed teeth.
Elvedea motioned towards Rath.  “Are you alright?”
“He bit me.”  Rath inspected his suit, which had a small tear in his forearm.  He pulled out a roll of silvery tape and wrapped it around it.  “I’m afraid my LV titer’s probably going to come back positive,” he sighed, referring to a blood test for lycanthropy.  “David,” Rath said, offering his hand.
The creature sniffed his hand and then grabbed it, pulling Rath towards him, emitting a distorted cry.  “Halp me…”
“We can help you,” Rath explained, pulling him upright.  “But you should come with us.  We shouldn’t stay here.”
David’s ears flicked back as he looked up.  He began growling again.
“What is it?”  Rath asked.
The creature David began trembling.  “Hey’r comingh bfack.”
Gardener’s image glanced up and then back around.  “He’s right.  You’ve got to hurry, back to the ship!”
As Elvedea took the hybrid-animal’s arms, Rath held out a transparent bag attached to a small pump device.  “When we get to the airlock, we’ll carry David in this.”  The three began stumbling along.
Elvedea called out, “Conus, are you seeing anything up there?”
In her field of view she saw a small, floating display window appear, showing the control deck of Conus One.  Anderson Conus answered, “yes, you’ve got to get out of there at once!  It’s a carrier vessel!”  On the overhead viewer, a long, spindly object appeared, pointing its narrow end towards Conus One and then opening its back end up like a giant clawed talon, with each claw in turn opening up into clusters of spindles.  The entity ship in all was over two kilometers in length.

Xal and Conus both frantically scanned numerous data streams, both on physical monitors and in their fields of view.  As one smaller panel displayed the message, “tactical alert red,” the enormous Cozalien vessel loomed overhead on the triangular main screen.
“It’s rebuilding a drive system,” Elodea stated in her projection cylender.  “It may be one of the ones involved in the 2065 invasion.”
Conus looked back at her.  “What about weapon status?”
Gardener answered, “those are fully functional.”
Xal added, “were it not for Elvedea and Rath, our best chance would be to outrun it.”
“We’re definitely not going to sit here,” Conus answered.  “We’ll dock with them when they’re off the ground.  In the mean time, we’re their cover.  I’m backing us away from the planet.”  He then looked towards Selena.  “It’s a long shot, but we could try sending command codes like we did in 2065—make it think Four One is recalling it.”
“I’ll try it.”  The faerie-like image of Selena Hawthorne squinted her eyes for a moment.  “No luck—this one isn’t falling for it.”  Then, the control deck started shaking.  “I think we just backfired.”  The control deck’s mixture of old plasma displays and newer hardware flickered out, taking with them Selena, Scott Gardener, and Elodea.
Xal began punching away at a small array of Cozalien instruments, which remained illuminated.  “It’s doing the same thing to us…overriding our systems…the ship is reverting to a Cozalien!”
“I know,” Conus answered, staring ahead.  “It’s telling us to dock with them.  I’m sending a signal to Rath and Elvedea—if we can’t regain control, their best chance is to run for it.”
The L.S.S. Conus One drifted over to the front end of the larger vessel, which retracted one of its four radially outward-pointing pairs of spindles, leaving in its place an open area matching the underside of Conus One.  The smaller ship folded up its arms and joined with the larger one.
Conus and Xal ran from the command deck, passing through an arboretum platform and towards a series of storage chambers holding, among other articles, weapons.  “The ship is not responding to my implants on any level,” Conus explained.  “The thing has done to us exactly what we did to the command cruiser back in 2065!”  They worked quickly to put on environment suits, and then the two grabbed a pair of rifles and began collecting ammunition.  “With any luck,” Conus said, “the colonists are on their way over here.”
Xal’s ears flicked back as she looked around.  A low shrill began building as something approached from the hollow space surrounding the ship chambers.  “Sounds like drones infiltrating.”
Conus looked around.  “Whatever happens next, take any opportunity you get.  If there’s any chance we can stop this thing before it gets to Utopia or Earth, we’re both expendable.”
“Acknowledged,” Xal answered.  The shrill around them grew louder, until a series of clattering struck at the surrounding walls.  Claw-like mechanical forms began tearing through the walls.  Xal and Anderson fired their weapons, sending some of the sprawling forms back as others took their place.  Some of the swarming four-armed forms gathered around their fallen, damaged comrades and began dismantling them as others continued charging.  Xal and Anderson fired again, and the swarm began retreating.
“They’ll be back,” Conus said.  “And, they’ll be bullet-proof next time.”  He tossed his rifle and picked up a similarly shaped laser projector.
“They’ll look for us here,” Xal answered.
“Right.”  Conus nodded.  “We’ll try for our fusion reactor first.  If we can’t make it, we can fall back on going after one of the four inside the carrier.  There may be pocket environments inside it—use the atmosphere suit between them, and we’ll see if we can get one of the reactors.  With any luck, we can destabilize it and blow this thing like a supernova.”
Xal frowned, pulling her ears back.  “But, that’s on the far end of the ship.  We’ve got about two kilometers of hostile territory to cross.”
Conus sighed.  “Not many better options right now; I’m afraid we’re already committed to one of the worst-case scenarios.”  He looked up as the shrilling sound returned.  “That didn’t take long.”
The swarm of entities had returned.  However, their surfaces had changed from a translucent red to an iridescent, shimering color suggesting a new chemical coating.  Conus and Xal ran, but the swarm closed in on them.  Conus stopped to shoot at them.  As he fired his invisible weapon beam, several of them burst with light, emitting electric sparks and dropping, while others gathered around him, grabbing him.  Xal tried to reach out to him, but he shouted back, “Go!  Get to the reactor!”  She flipped herself over a side rail and fell several stories before landing on hands and feet, her weapon clattering to the ground beside her.  Her gun then started to drift up as Xal began floating back up, realizing that the ship’s gravity-like magnetic field had just deactivated.  She jumped up towards her weapon, finding herself hurling towards a causeway bridging a recreational area and a series of science stations.  She reached out and grabbed a railing along the walkway and pulled herself onto it, taking advantage of her weapon’s shoulder strap.

Selena looked around a small enclosure, lined with a resilient, transparent material.  Scott and Elodea stood with her, near a bed and several basic furnishings.  A door lead into a small bathroom, and another transparent door, bolted shut by hydraulic equipment outside, sealed the chamber.  Scott was naked except for a coating of fur as he stood in a near-human hybrid form.  Elodea appeared human, wearing a red silk robe.  Selena’s faerie wings were absent, and she found herself in modest blue garb.
“We must be inside Scott’s and my memories,” Elodea said, walking up to the edge of the glasslike cage and peering outside.  “We’re in a laboratory, run by the Blue Sentinel operation at the turn of the millennium.”  Selena tried to force the bolted door open but was unable.  She then struck against the cage walls.
A black-haired woman entered, wearing a white lab coat over an elegant middle-eastern dress.
“Raj?”  Scott turned to Selena, explaining, “Doctor Rashema Patel.  You met her at the Luxor conference.  Back when we were captives, she became our sponsor and liason.”
Rashema addressed them.  “You surprise me, Scott.  You, too, Elodea.  Your ability to defy probability make each of you, in whatever form you manifest, a valuable treasure.”  She then inspected Selena.  “Selena Hawthorne, self-proclaimed psychic.  You might very well represent the pinnacle of our research.  I only wish any of you were still living in the biological sense.”  She inspected a series of old-fashioned computer stations, manipulating a mouse and typing on a keyboard.  She then turned a few dials outside their holding chamber.  “No matter.  We can keep you here and follow your templates, and apply them to the living organisms that accompanied you.”
Elodea shifted her hand partially into a pawlike structure and then back, before saying quietly to Scott and Selena, “I’ve got my wolf form, but that’s it.  In here we’re not exactly omnipotent.”
The Cozalien consciousness in Rashema Patel’s likeness overheard and answered, “we have restored you to your reference forms, though we can use feedback loops to prevent the metabolic inconveniences of food, waste products, and aging.”
“We are willing to work with you,” Scott offered.  “There’s no need to hold us or anyone captive.”
“No, that is not true,” Rashema’s likeness answered.  “Your people’s ability to defy probability proved to be a serious threat.  Against significant odds you destroyed my presence at your homeworld.  I must therefore collect and preserve a few choice specimens, transplant them to rigidly controlled seed environments, and eradicate the remainder.”
“Wipe out Earth?”  Selena shouted back.  She struck angrily against their cage barrier.  “You’ll never be able!  We’ll destroy you first, if it takes two thousand years!”
Rashema stood back, appearantly unsettled.  “Your prophesy must not be allowed to manifest.  That is why I must proceed.”

Elvedea took the central seats on the auxillary control deck of Conus Two, while Rath sat beside David as the ship pulled upwards.  David laid back, still in hybrid animal form, mumbling.  Elvedea gasped as she waved her arms, activating the control displays.  “Conus One has docked with the entity.  It’s completely reverted!”
“If we retreat,” Rath answered, “Xal, Conus, and the others will be at their mercy.  Any better options?”
Elvedea glanced over at the main viewscreen and back at Rath.  “We could aim the main cannon towards the back and hope it goes deep enough to hit a reactor.  If not, we run, hide, and try again when we recharge.  While hiding, we can try to figure out how to get the Conus ship back on our side.”
“Powering main cannon,” Rath answered, taking a control console.  The creature David sat on the floor beside him, looking up at the main viewscreen, growling at the image of the Cozalien ship.  The entity on the screen suddenly tilted towards them, lighting up and reaching its back arms around.
“It picked up our energy surge,” Elvedea said.  “It’s emitting a series of electromagnetic impulses—I think it’s scanning us.  It may not realize we’re a human-designed vessel.”
“We’ll be charged in twenty five seconds,” Rath answered.  “I just hope Conus One hasn’t explained yet what the big round barrel is for.”
The entity lunged forward, writhing its spidery back limbs while directing its spiny forward end towards them.  Conus One sat attached to the larger vessel, extending its arms outward into an aggressive posture.
“Maybe running might be a good idea,” Rath uttered.
“We’ll lose our weapon charge,” Elvedea answered.
“We’re not going to be able to hit the back.”
“I’ll try for the connecting bridge.”  Elvedea pointed to the mid-shaft of the vessel, foreshortened by the vessel’s forward posture.  “Firing in three seconds.”  She gritted her teeth as sparks began flying from the entity towards them.
The long, cylindrical Conus Two module erupted forth a bright yellow-white burst of light, ripping past the oncoming spike fire from the larger entity ship ahead and impacting the other vessel, scattering bursts of energy across its mid-shaft and back end.  The entity ship curled its back arms inward reflexively as sections of its hull broke off into space.  Then it pointed itself back towards the Conus Two module.
Rockets erupted out of the sides of Conus Two, hurling it away from the entity as the volley of shrapnel from the first assault pelted against its hull.  On the control deck, Elvedea, Rath, and their rescued passenger rocked back and forth.
“We just made it angry,” Rath shouted.  He looked at one of the side viewscreens, showing the entity chasing them as they ducked away from the UV Ceti star, towards the companion system.
“Some damage to the plating over its core, but it’s definitely still operational.”
“Thanks for sharing that with me,” Rath answered, as the ship rocked from another series of shrapnel fire.  A plasma burst from Conus One struck them, and they jolted forward.
“They’ve damaged the hull shell with that one,” Elvedea commented.  “We can’t go into high gamma until it regenerates, or the radiation will detonate the main reactor.”
Rath brought up a series of displays, showing a large, orange and gray jovan planet.  “We could try for planet Godzilla.  It’s magnetic field should disrupt their scans and help us recharge at the same time.”
“Good in theory,” Elvedea answered, making a series of course adjustments to dodge additional weapons fire from the entity vessel chasing them.  “I just hope that wasn’t what the C.A.T. ship in Xau’s vision was thinking.”
Conus Two accelerated towards Lutyen 726-8 A.  While the entity vessel kept pace with them, it appeared unable to overtake them.  A second plasma burst from Conus One struck them, and the ship rocked about.  A trail of particles began streaming out behind them.
“Fuel leak!”  Rath cried out.  “Automated repairs are working on it, but we’re losing what’s left of our retreat option.”
Elvedea’s ears flicked up.  “I have an idea.”  As Conus One fired another plasma beam, Elvedea drove their ship in a spiraling path, causing the fuel debris trail to cross the beam.  A series of exploding flashes began emanating from the hole in the ship’s hull.  The Cozalien entity backed off from the blazing sparks, but continued the chase.
“That got them off our tail a bit,” Rath observed, looking at a panel displaying a gas giant planet ahead.  “But, now we can’t slow down until we snuff out our flame thrower.”
“It’s not like we’ll want to,” Elvedea answered.  “At this speed, we can ride in the upper atmosphere of the planet itself and refuel through the Broussard array.”
The ship hurled past the planet’s thin band of rings and cluster of rocky moons, and then barrelled over the planet itself.  Godzilla’s gravity tugged downward, and a wall of black clouds appeared below a hazy horizon line.  Flashes of lightning revealed swirling, boiling clouds and funnels in a turbulent landscape below.  Ahead, a dark red sunrise appeared.
Elvedea turned towards Rath and his companion.  “The Cozalien entity ship is keeping its distance.”
“Maybe they want to see if we fall in,” Rath suggested.
“Hey wanhs rehenge.  Hey are all hrad!”  The creature David Neal cried out.  He clutched his face and began growling again, and then tugged and yanked at the fur on his chest.
“Take it easy,” Rath reassured.  “We’ll help you shift back as soon as we’re out of harm’s way.”
“No!  I harh tha hell you…”  He clutched again at his animal face, obviously frustrated by his speech difficulties.
“You have nanomolecular implants,” Rath explained.  “Some of them seem to have been damaged by your lycanthropy, but some of them are still working.”
The creature David sat up, flicking his ears forward.
In Rath’s field of view, a series of garbled symbols scrolled out.  “Hold on,” Rath answered, picking up a collar-like device and fitting it around his neck.  “I have a different system.”  Then, legible words appeared.
“They survived 2065.  They are mad, and they want revenge.  They killed everyone except me.  They left me like this.  They said they would come back for me when they were ready for whatever comes next.  I think they’re ready.”
Rath inspected the oval device he pocketed from the surface of UV Ceti One.  “This looks like some new kind of communication device.”
David’s floating text answered.  “Quantum-something.  It can send instantly with another one on Earth.  Only humans can use it.  I haven’t been able to change back in months.”
“Only humans—not the engineered?”  Rath’s eyes shifted yellow, and his teeth briefly flared pointed.  “Anything else you don’t want us Jews doing?”
“Relax,” Elvedea answered from her control station.  “Can’t you see the poor guy’s figured things out the hard way?”
“But, the important thing is that they do know,” Rath said.  “C.A.T. knows about the danger—the Cozaliens.”  The creature David nodded.
Rath inspected him with an assortment of small, hand-held instruments.  “You have nanosurgeon devices in your bloodstream.  It looks like they can delay aging—more than doubling life expectancy.”
He pointed towards his animal face, emitting a yowling whimper.  “They could not stop this.”

Xal propelled towards a series power relay conduits, the complex series of conduit channels and crystalline constructs leading to the pair of fusion reactors supplying Conus One.  Her cybernetic hardware projected prompts identifying and highlighting paths leading to the reactor.  As her forward momentum flung her into a pipelike structure, she grabbed it and directed herself towards its origin, closing in on a larger apparatus visible through layers of latticework beyond.  As she came upon a platform, she found a localized pocket of simulated light gravity and walked forward, until she heard a small humming sound behind her.  She stopped to turn around.
A small flying drone of C.A.T. design hovered in front of her, projecting a loudspeaker message.  “Attention, Xal Carrigan.  We have you surrounded.  Do not move.”  Several human soldiers then appeared, heavily armored in Kevlar and bearing the teardrop and crescent logo of C.A.T.  The emerged from recesses around the crystalline platforms and pointed their weapons towards her.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Xal cried out as she started to quiver.  “How the Hell could you even be here?”  As more soldiers began appearing around her, she shut off her molecular cybernetics.  Then, they were gone.  She stood alone on the platform.
“Hell of a time for my implants to malfunction!”  Xal mumbled to herself, continuing onward.  However, her experience was well above and beyond a simple and rare bionics glitch.  She gritted her teeth and restarted them.  “I’ll have to check my glamour settings and firewalls,” she thought out loud, continuing on her way.  As she continued, however, she stopped when she came upon a pool of slimy, bloody material blocking her path.
She then saw suspended in space the words, “unexpected settings change.”
“What changes?”  She said back, to herself and to the virtual text and images around her.  “Revert them back!”  As she spoke, a form began to rise out of the pool of slime before her, before it abruptly vanished.  Her bionic perception enhancements briefly disappeared and then restarted.
“Unexpected settings change.”  The words reappeared, as did the slime pool and the emerging shape, which took on the rough appearance of a cobra head before sending a cluster of writhing tentacles towards her.
She knew it was not real, but could not help but back off as the hallucinatory appendages bolted into and through her.  The creature was something she saw in a childhood nightmare.  She shut off her cybernetics right before it lurched at her again.  As she stood alone, she looked up at the diamond-shaped construct overhead, shaking.
“You don’t want me using my cyberware, do you?”  She then hastened her motion towards the reactor, looking around for the inevitable swarm of drones.  However, thankfully, it failed to show.  She could, however, hear inhuman cries in the distance.  This time, her implants were off.

Scott Gardener gritted his teeth as a biopsy arm pierced into the right side of his chest.  The surge of pain caused him to shapeshift involuntarily to hybrid form.  He writhed in his restraints against a circular platform, and then he looked as Dr. Richard Beckindale, one of the scientists, oversaw the extraction.  Scott forced himself to shift back enough to talk.
“I’m a simulation, damn you.  You should already know everything you need to.  For that matter, you created werewolves in the first place!”
Richard looked back at him.  “Humans created werewolves.  We simply gave them physical reality first.”  He inspected the tip of the needle drawn from Scott’s body, placing a small amount of extracted blood and brown, fleshy matter into a tiny canister.  “Neither of us now are concerned with, nor even exist in physical reality.”
Scott pushed back his emotions, repressing his desire to break free and rip into the simulation of Richard, a scientist who was untrustworthy even in reality back a hundred and fifty years ago.  He focused instead on the fact that he was making contact again with Four One, presented with the opportunity to understand this alien consciousness and its motives.  “We humans created werewolves?  So, our legends came first?”
“They came together.  We created the physical form, but your kind made the mythos.  In the end, the mythos is more important, as it has guided your evolution.  However, your creativity has gone unchecked.”
Scott rested his head back, even allowing himself to chuckle slightly.  “If you want to repress human creativity, take a look at public schools back when I grew up.  There’s this English teacher, Ms. Tesswater.”  He tried his restraints again but was unable to pull free, as he could not shift his hands past hybrid form.  He thought about how wolf paws could easily slip out of his shackles.  Then, he reminded himself that the shackles were just part of the complex illusion of the realm around him.  He focused again on the alien consciousness beside him in virtual space.  “You know, Four One, whenever we get together, I always feel a little giddy.  I don’t know why.  And, what kind of name is ‘Four One,’ anyway?”
“It is the embodiment of the symmetry we seek but can never attain except by ceasing to exist.  We strive to maintain our arrangements within this matrix of four forces, that are in fact a single force.”
Scott looked over at the simulation of Richard.  “Is this a Pagan four winds thing, or are we talking gravity, magnets, weak, and strong?  If so, there was this guy named Whitten, who put together a bunch of string theories.  We’ve been past that for some time.  The hot thing now is figuring out where psionics and astral projection fits in.”
“It is not surprising that humans are already at work on the same problem.”
“Then,” Scott countered, “why can’t we all just all get along?  Sure, you invaded our planet, but that was a century ago—dead and buried.  Why can’t there be peace?”
Richard turned back towards him.  “Because you follow the hearts of your imagination, rather than that of the one true word.”

Xal ran through a large, vaulted archway leading into the glowing reactor chamber.  An inferno as hot as a star’s interior stirred ahead of her, compressed into a tight confinement and fed a steady stream of particles as raw power poured out of it.  The light was nearly blinding even inside its complex series of magnetic containment fields and constructs.
She started to work on a series of crystalline control devices, but then stopped.  “Four One doesn’t want me to see something.  It’s using nightmare images to scare the Hell out of me.  What is it hiding?”
She nodded her head.
“Unexpected setting change.”  The words appeared over her, even as an enormous, black winged form appeared, looming over her.  Its form appeared so vivid, so real; Xal repeated to herself, however, that it was an illusion.  She felt cold as the death angel loomed over her.
“Cross over?”  Xal thought.  Then, she thought of Scott Gardener, Elodea Taylor, and Selena Hawthorne.  As she did, a horrific shreik tore through the room around her.  Xal curled up, grabbing her tail and shivering.
Then, the words appeared, “Gardener active memory archive.”
Suddenly, Xal was curled up on a bed.  Scott, Elodea, and Selena stood around her, looking at her.  Selena was the first to address her as she uncurled, and she helped her up.  “Are you dead?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered.  “I’m near the reactor chamber.  For some reason, Four One didn’t want me to use my bionics.  I think they were keeping me from reaching you.  The Cozaliens were hacking into my cybernetics, causing me to hallucinate nightmares.”
“We’re inside Four One’s consciousness now,” Elodea explained.  “Maybe there’s a way we can turn things about.”
Scott turned towards Elodea.  “Get even with their getting even?”  Then he focused on Xal.  “Maybe there’s a way to hack into Four One’s subconscious.  Xal, right now Selena, Elodea, and I are trapped in this chamber.  But, you may be able to change some of the rules for us.”
Xal’s incarnation in the simulation sat down on the illusionary bed.  “I’ve been working on getting my cybernetics to activate and work while I’m dreaming—Rath and I both have tried lucid dreaming a few times, and I’ve hoped some day to be able to record dreams and play them back in real time.  I think that’s how Four One might have created my nightmares.”
Elodea sat down beside Xal.  “Maybe there’s a way to use the same trick in reverse.  What if we simulated your bionics here, and had a dream within a dream?  In our dream state, we could do whatever we wanted again.”
Selena then suggested, “Four One would have to manage some of the dreaming process.  I think if you implanted us with a simulation of the technology, we could reach Four One’s underlying code structure on some level.”
“It’s worth trying,” Scott suggested.

Scott watched a group of people gathered around a roulette wheel as the number four red displayed.  He carried with him a small stack of chips, which he placed on the table for one black.  Elodea and Selena stepped up to him as the metallic silver ball bounced several times and the table boss waved his arms, indicating no new bets.  The ball rolled around in circular fashion before settling into one black, and Scott’s chips were met with more, even as the table dealer drew up the other chips with a sticklike appliance.
Nearby a rowdy noise came from a group of people playing craps, while the melodic echo of numerous slot machines played out.
“Las Vegas,” Elodea observed, “around 2020.  I think we’re in our subconscious.”
“Well,” Scott said as he fidgetted with his new-found winnings, “it’s a good bet that we’re also in Four One’s, given my lucky first play.”  He looked over back at the roulette wheel, and at a display of the numbers that played out last.  After four red and one black, it had scrolled out seven red, fifteen red, and twelve black.  “OK, I usually have better luck with Blackjack anyway.”  He walked over to a Blackjack table, where a pleasant Oriental lady stood, awaiting players.  A sign sat at the edge of the table, next to the dealer and a roll of chips.
“Surrender available.”
“What’s the minimum bet?”  Scott asked the lady.
“Five.”
“Of course,” Selena answered.  “More than four.”
Scott placed a $5 chip.  He then placed a second one and motioned it towards the dealer.  “A tip.”
She thanked him and took the chip, before dealing him two cards—a four of diamonds and a two of spades.
“Four Two?”  Scott asked, looking over at Selena and Elodea.
Selena looked at the two cards.  “The two of spades—your two forms, wolf and man.  I think you know what the four of diamonds is.  This is all metaphor.”
The dealer delt herself a card face down and an ace of spaces.  “Do you want insurance?”
“No, thanks,” Scott answered.  He looked back at Selena.  “Metaphor or no, insurance is a sucker bet.”
Selena looked over at the dealer’s cards.  “Ace of spades, the ultimate trump card.”
“But,” Elodea answered, “You don’t trump in Blackjack.”
Selena responded, “however, that card is important.  It may be the key to what we do next.”
“Hit me,” Scott said.  He was dealt a jack of diamonds.  “Sixteen.  Lousy hand, and I can’t surrender at this point.  Doesn’t look good from this end, and odds are, she’s got a good hand there.”  He looked over at the dealer.  “Hit, please.”  He was dealt a four of clubs.  “Not bad.  I’ll stand at twenty.”
The dealer revealed her hidden card, a two of spades.  Selena observed, “It’s the Conus, the main ship and the Conus Two modules.”  The dealer then dealt herself a three of hearts, followed by a five of hearts.  She took the chip.
“Twenty one wins.”
Selena nodded.  “Three hearts—that’s us.  The five is whatever it is about us that makes us more than Four One expects—call it magic or spiritual will.”
“So, I’ve lost the bet, but we’ve gained knowledge,” Scott said.
“Think of it as the passing of silver,” Selena answered.
Scott kinked his eyebrows and sighed.  “Werewolves and silver.”  He placed another bet.  “Now, if we can find a way to reach the others.”

The Conus Two module drifted over waves of turbulent clouds, against an amber daylight and a dull red sun.
Elvedea sat up from her seat, her ears perking.  “It’s Scott and Elodea!”
Rath turned towards her.  “Is Xal alright?”
Elvedea stopped to inspect a data stream.  “She’s fine.  They’ve hacked into Four One’s subconscious.”  She could see them and Selena Hawthorne playing numerous slot machines in a carefully planned sequence, betting calculated amounts and periodically winning back enough to continue the games, while the numbers generated a flow of command codes.  “They are telling me that if they have a certain amount of command capabilities on Four One’s subconscious level, but in order to send override signals, they need a hardware link.  Xal tried it, but was not able to get past certain firewalls.  But, if they can find Anderson Conus, he may be able to, through his Cozalien-designed implants.  If so, we need to retransmit the command override when they do, and we might be able to get Conus One back.”
“Then we have a real plan,” Rath answered, smiling.  “Something better than hit-and-run or self-destruct.”  He took his seat beside a second set of consoles, and began exchanging cybernetic data streams with their ship.  “When we get a signal from Conus, we’ll broadcast it immediately.”
Elvedea then frowned, growling and hissing slightly.
Rath’s ears flicked.  “Now what?”  He looked at the main viewscreen to see the Cozalien entity ship withdraw from planet Godzilla to intercept a rectangular vessel.
The new ship was nearly as large as the Cozalien entity, and it beared the logo of C.A.T. and Thomas Shann.  As it approached from the direction of Earth, the two ships then began exchanging weapons fire.

Xal floated downward towards another gravity site, bracing the fall with her hands and hindpaws gracefully before ducking into a narrow series of corridors.  She panted nervously as she tried to outrun her own imagination.  “They are illusions,” she reminded herself.  Already, a small, blob-like monster began creeping towards her.  Then, she looked up to see the dismembered head and upper torso of Anderson Conus.  She gasped, unprepared for the image of her mentor’s body, disassembled into clusters of muscle fibers and organs, connected to a mesh of crystalline Cozalien devices.  She held her hands out in front of her.  “Conus, send your signal again.  I don’t think I’m really seeing you yet.”
“I’m…afraid you are,” the severed head answered, attached to a stripped torso tapering to a spinal column.  “…The Cozaliens can be brutal.”  His worn, wrinkled skin and white hair flowed into an array of bizarre alien artifacts.  She felt something grab her shoulder.  Xal gasped, and then closed her eyes, shutting off her cybernetics.  She opened them again, only to continue seeing Conus’ dismembered form remain.
“No…”  She cried.  “…I can’t even get you to a memory archive.  I don’t want to watch you die like this…”
“You won’t have to…”  Conus answered.  “I’ve been fitted with bionic maintainance organs, and a hardwire link directly into Four One’s networking matrix.  I…just may need help to move around.”
Xal quivered as she approached him.  “I…I can get you to a data relay station.  You can send out a signal…we can free the ship that way, and get you back home!”
“That idea has merit,” Conus answered.  The floor shook about, and some of the collections of organic flesh sloshed back and forth in various containers.
Xal reached over to pick him up, pulling him off of something resembling a display stand and unplugging a small set of tethers before running.  The floor rocked about again.
“It sounds like we’re under attack,” Conus’ head commented.  “It can’t be the Conus Two module…  It can only fire one at a time.”
“I don’t know what’s going on, but they’re expecting to hear from you.  If you can access Four One’s subconsciousness, we’ll have another chance at the override codes.”

The long, blocky C.A.T. vessel fired another volley of plasma blasts into the Cozalien entity, which continued to respond with an assault of giant, grenade-like explosions of splinters, as well as with smaller plasma bolts from Conus One.  As the two vessels engaged each other in a dog fight around Godzilla’s moons, Elvedea pulled Conus Two away to a safe distance.
“We can charge weapons and help the C.A.T. ship,” Elvedea suggested.  “That is the one we’re voting on, isn’t it?”
“We need to be able to send the command codes,” Rath answered.  “Come on, Xal…”
Xal frantically worked to connect Anderson Conus to a series of data relays.  She looked around, realizing that they were just outside one of the arboretums close to the control deck.
“I will send the signal, and when the command codes run through, I’ll stream them through all levels of consciousness, and with any luck, we’ll pull free from the carrier entity.”  Xal nodded, still shaken by the thought of working on a diassembled body part.  “There will be one side effect,” Conus added.  “My consciousness and that of the ship could overlap a great deal as it tries to relink.”
“I’m sure we can find a way to extract you again,” Xal tried to reassure.
“That may not be necessary.  I’m nearing the end of my life expectancy anyway.  It will be like a rebirth.  I’ve known for some time that this moment would come.”  Xal connected the last of a series of filaments with those of the crystalline assembly below Conus’ cybernetic form.  As she did, Conus added.  “Elaine once told me that I would turn into this ship.”  He closed his eyes and then opened them again abruptly, having shifted into a golden amber.  His hair retracted as feathers emerged from his forehead, and then Conus’ organic remains formed into the head of a falcon-like being.  In Xal’s virtual field of view, she could see his body form, a giant raptor covered in flames as he emitted a war cry.

“That’s the signal,” Rath stated.  “We’re transmitting!”
Conus One stretched its arms out and broke loose from the Cozalien carrier entity, pulling forward.  The C.A.T. battlecruiser started to back away, until it received a signal from the newly freed tactical vessel as it bolted away towards the Conus Two module.
“This is the League Star Ship Conus.  Rath and Elvedea, stand by to dock.  C.A.T. vessel, I strongly advise that we put aside our differences and concentrate on the Cozalien entity.”  Rath and Elvedea cheered and then hugged each other with a sigh of relief before pulling their craft towards their companions.
As the C.A.T. vessel continued to fire upon the Cozalien carrier vessel, both League ships received a transmission, depicting a human captain seated in a large room, surrounded by flickering electronic patterns floating in space.  “This is the United Earth Ship Constantine.  Whichever one of you has in your possession a quantum-synchronized transmitter, it has now been instructed to accept commands without prejudice.  I suggest we use it to avoid broadcasting to the hostile our next move.”
Rath held up the device taken from the derelict colony, which now projected a beam of light.  As Rath began working to decode the signals from C.A.T. computer language to those of his own cyberware, a display of text appeared in the air.  “When you dock with Conus, stop all unencoded cyberware broadcasts.  This device is on a secure network.”  Rath continued to examine it as Elvedea looked upwards, guiding the module’s rejoining with Conus.
“They want us to aim for the Cozalien drive system while they draw its fire,” Rath explained.  “They figure that their armor and electromagnetic shielding can handle the Cozalien cruiser longer than we could, and our main cannon at close range can do the most damage.”
The former Cozalien entity ship Conus rejoined with its cylindrical Utopian counterpart, forming again a complete vessel, which turned towards the Cozalien entity.  As the Cozalien entity ship fired a series of bolts at Conus, it directed the majority of its attacks towards the Constantine, which was now appearing heavily battered, with fragments of hull plating breaking off and tumbling away.  The C.A.T. vessel held fast, however, as the combined Conus passed over the Cozalien ship, coming about to hit it from behind.
Anderson Conus appeared on the viewscreen before Elvedea and Rath.  He existed in virtual space, though time did not allow for an explanation; the two could only guess for the moment whether he was alive or dead.  “Charge the main plasma gun; we’ll fire it at point-blank range.”  Elvedea manually keyed in a series of commands, and the main power reactor built up energy to the weapon.  Now that they were docked, the main ship took over the burden of manouvering and flight, freeing the lower module to use all of its power for the cannon.
“Twenty seconds,” Elvedea stated, as the ship closed in on the rear of the Cozalien entity.  Ahead, the C.A.T. ship endured heavy pounding, while two of the four arms of the hostile alien pointed towards the Conus ship, firing an increasingly forceful series of shuriken bursts and plasma sparks.
Rath and Elvedea gritted their teeth, and the lycanthrope David Neal panted nervously, pulling himself out of wolf form into a hybrid animal state to grab onto a nearby console seat.
“Eight seconds,” Elvedea counted out.  “Seven… six…”
David winced and emitted a yowl as the viewscreen showed the C.A.T. ship Constantine suddenly erupt into a flash of light and a series of explosions.  Elvedea stopped counting and uttered with disbelief, “oh, shit!”  All the while, the Cozalien entity ship grew larger, until the arms in the rear of the hostile entity were almost close enough to grab the Conus ship.  Then, the main cannon fired.
A burst of light and fire poured out of the Conus’ underside, slamming into the back end of the Cozalien carrier entity even as the smaller ship barrelled over the larger one.  As the Conus traversed the entity from back to front, a wave of destruction followed them below, ripping the Cozalien form apart in a series of explosions barely missing the League vessel.  The Conus passed over the head of the alien ship, and its former confines pushed it away as it sent out shockwaves from its disintegration.
David stood up and looked at the empty space ahead and emitted a howl, as debris from the Cozalien ship scattered and collided with remnants of the Constantine.
“They sacrificed themselves,” Rath said to David.  “To save Earth or to save Utopia, we could forget for a moment our differences.”  He then looked at the monitor display of Conus in virtual space.  “What happened?”
“I’ll explain when you get to the main control deck.  We’re going to drop off some of the colonists and leave the Conus Two module behind to protect them until a new ship can take over for it.  A few are heading back, fearing that they are no longer physically suited to the task.”  As he spoke, a lycanthropic form on one of the displays in the background carried a mermaid woman, setting her down into a makeshift water tank.  “You could say that even as the Cozaliens try to destroy who we are and what we represent, they continue to bring about our transformations—our evolution.”

3.2 Years later.

A lycanthropic man stood, in near-human form, in the large, open foyar added to the Capitol Building in Christmas City, as he looked out at the twin landing platforms and the growing skyline in the valley beyond.  Rath and Xal stood next to him as he spoke.
“I remember going by the name David in a few glimpses of childhood, but a lot of who I am seems to have been lost.  I don’t remember ever going to UV Ceti.  I’m not even sure I want to remember, considering what I’ve learned about C.A.T. over the last few days.”
“So,” Xal answered, “you don’t mind that we left our own colony on UV Ceti in the place of the Charlamagne outpost, and you don’t think what I’ve told you is all just League propaganda?”
“No,” David answered.  “But, I could unwittingly continue to serve C.A.T., at least as long as I have these implants.”
“However,” Rath suggested, “there is so much we can learn from them.  By reverse-engineering your nanosurgeons, you could add centuries to everyone’s life span.  That alone is worth a lot to a lot of people.”
“Maybe,” David Neal answered.  “But, it seems that the price of immortality is already proving to be a bit much.”

Anderson Conus appeared in a projection cylender, explaining to his grandson Jason, “I saw the Cozalien homeworld; it’s on the far side of the galaxy.  Four One started out as a construct very similar to Cy-BRAIN; it just got more and more powerful as it destroyed or converted every competing group of Cozaliens, until every Cozalien in existance shared the exact same beliefs.”
“I’m all in favor of putting up the good fight,” Jason Conus answered, “but I’d like to believe that you don’t have to give up your identity or your family in order to keep them.”  A woman walked in, accompanied by two young children, both stumbling along on awkward legs before gliding short distances around the room with their oversized wings.  Jason pointed towards the woman.  “This is my wife Marilyn Conus-Flemming, and as you can see, a lot has happened while you were away.”  He gestured towards the two cherub-like figures exploring the room.  “I managed to break the family curse and the problem of human flight at the same time.  These are our two children and your two great-grandchildren, Helen and Iston.”