Author's Preface
After the second battle for Water, the Flirr homeworld, not to be confused with the Water rebellion on Hurgugk 7 in the year 320 P.I., the Flirr unmistakably recognized their mistake in trusting the True Ones, as they called the Infectors.
This led to a cautious normalization between the Nekoorian Republic and the Flirr Swarm two months later, in which the Swarm recognized and honored the Psstips fallen as heroes of the Swarm, and the Republic extended a formal letter of regret for the Flirr who died in the occupation.
— Excerpt from Diplomacy in Wartime, author unknown, 450 P.I.
Their laboratory on Burrow One was, as always, a mess of epic proportions.
Jane shook her head when she entered. Victor sat on his couch, eating some long-forgotten and probably banned sweets made from gelatin, artificial colorings, and flavorings .
She still had no idea where or how he got them. But somehow, he always had a pack of them in his white lab coat.
Also, as usual, he was naked under his lab coat except for his underpants.
Jane had given up telling him to get dressed even when no visitors were in the lab.
"Fresh air makes fresh thoughts, Jannetta," was his only response.
At least he didn't fight her when she asked him to get dressed for visitors.
Small victories.
Jane looked up at the massive holographic screen, fearing she would catch Victor watching Psstips erotica again.
Luckily, this time it was just medical data. Not that Victor wasn't capable of turning simple medical data into something shameful, or in some cases horrific.
"Jannetta, you're here, uhm, wait, do we expect guests? Do I need to dress?"
Victor had finally noticed her.
"No, we don't expect guests, but feel free to dress."
"Nonsense, free spirits don't need conventions. Have you seen this?"
Victor's expression changed from confusion to excitement as he pointed at the medical data floating in the air.
Jane had worked closely with Victor for two months now, but his childlike joy was still infecting her sometimes. Without noticing it at first, she smiled, curious about what the old disgraced scientist had found this time.
"The furry squids, they are astonishing."
Victor almost jumped, full of energy.
"They are called Flirr, Victor, and where is Claudia?"
Jane and Claudia had learned quickly it wasn't safe to let Victor roam the laboratory alone. Too much could happen.
"The Lady? She's on a walk with Sir Lancelot."
Victor was already focused on the data again. In states like this, it was rare that he gave full-sentence answers.
Sir Lancelot was another outcome of his escapades.
When they operated on Vextred, the critically injured Marine, and had to face the possibility that he would never walk again, Victor got the idea he needed a dog.
"Eastern European mixed breed, black fur with white spots, no older than two years, male. It's the closest genetic match to train the xenobots on."
No one questioned his expertise. He was the theoretical inventor of xenobots, almost thirty years before Jane made the first successful batch.
But then a few days later, Victor had just fixed the last of Vextred's spinal injuries when he confessed why he wanted a dog. By then, the ship carrying the poor dog in cryostasis was already well on its way.
"With the genetic material from the Shraphen, we could uplift our dogs."
After the following fight, Victor had locked himself in his cabin for almost a week, not angry but sad that he couldn't have his own talking dog.
Now they were stuck with a dog, Sir Lancelot, and had to keep an eye on Victor to prevent any genetic experiments.
"What's so fascinating about the Flirr?"
When Victor was focused like this, something had piqued his interest, and it was prudent to pay attention, just in case.
"They are impossible, like the Gliders — someone else had his fun here, playing with amino acids."
It took a monster to really understand a monster, and a genius to understand another one.
Jane was baffled.
"What? Talk slowly, Victor. Are you trying to tell me the Ancient Batract made not only the Gliders, but also the Flirr?"
Victor suddenly turned to face her.
"Noo, Jannetta, I'm saying someone influenced the evolution of the Flirr, the Psstips, and the Gliders. Probably many more races too. Whatever the Ancient Batract did later to the Gliders was sloppy work at best."
Jane couldn't believe him. She sat down on the couch to focus more on the data.
"What do you mean, influenced their evolution? And why the Psstips?"
Victor sat down next to her, chewing again on the contraband sweets. As always, he tried to give her one of the red strings. As always, she refused.
Victor opened a file. It was medical data about the Gliders and the Psstips.
His speech pattern changed into something Jane had mentally christened "manic explaining," where he pronounced certain words louder, almost screaming.
"You see, someone ripped out part of some animal's genetic code and placed something different, like a program. A genetic program designed to slowly evolve the lifeform in a certain way."
Jane tried to see what he saw. She was considered a genius in genetics, but ever since she'd started working with Victor, she felt like a schoolgirl again.
"No, I don't, Uncle Vic. It looks like ordinary genetic code."
"Because that's what they want you to see."
Victor was now fully in a manic phase, almost spitting while he pressed the words out.
"They are devious, programming life so it evolves as they wish — orthogenesis in its purest form."
Jane tried again. Very faintly, she could feel that in places the DNA strands didn't seem right. Not entirely natural.
"Who do you think did it? Are you sure it wasn't the Batract?"
Victor's laughter was cruel. He wasn't laughing at her, but at the Batract.
"The Ancient Batract? No, they're amateurs at best, using mRNA injection. A crude method at the best of times. Lots of injections, true, but no better developed than what we had in the medical stone age of 2020."
"Victor, I understand what you're telling me, but I can't see any proof."
"Proof? You want proof? Under what normal evolutionary path can a species develop biological Wi-Fi? I tell you, none. But here—" Victor pointed at the strands of genetic code from the Glider DNA. "Here, you see it. Three times AUG, then code more complex than anything I've ever seen, in the usual natural triplet form, but then, here, the same sequence again, and again."
Victor jumped wildly through the code, and Jane could see it now.
In nature, code was written in triplets to prevent drift, but this sequence had its own internal triplets and was copied multiple times into the strand.
"And the sexual dimorphism of the Psstips, or the fact they have four times as many females as males." Victor opened a video stream.
A cell culture. Jane quickly saw it was a fertile egg cell.
"I took the liberty of asking the Psstips Ambassador for fertile cells to conduct a test."
Jane swallowed her shock and rage. It was too late anyway.
"Look at the code on the side. The moment the cell begins to grow and multiply, a protein runs through the code, determining if the child will be male or female, ensuring the four-to-one split. No species has a determined function like this."
Jane couldn't believe what she saw.
"And then there are the Flirr. If you told me to create biological ship sensors, I couldn't do any better than the Flirr. Biological p-p communication, and able to see gravimetric waves as well as EM radiation and protomatter interactions. One Flirr replaced half of Magellan 's sensor suite."
The Flirr's biology had irked Jane the moment she heard about it. They hadn't gotten any DNA, but the scans Niobe had done were enough to send up flares of warning in her head.
"And lastly, haven't you ever wondered why alien life uses the same acids, coded in the same manner as life on Earth?"
A terrible feeling grew in Jane's stomach.
"Are we…?"
Victor's manic phase was over. He was back in crazy grandfather mode.
"I don't know, I didn't dare to look closer, but I don't think so." He sat down again, chewing on his strawberry-flavored string. "The question is, would we be capable of seeing it?"
Still deep in thought about the revelation, Jane wasn't able to follow his mental jump.
"Hmm?"
"The Psstips are a bit lazy, resting on their ancestors' laurels, but they're not stupid. They should have been able to see the manipulation of their DNA, but they didn't."
He chewed a bit, his face wrinkling as he focused on the problem.
"So I have to ask myself, does the manipulation also prevent you from seeing the obvious in your own DNA? Just like something prevented us from seeing Drake for what he was?"
Now that was a theory Jane needed to hear…
"Drake? What about him?"
"What about him? He was an old fart when I got into prison. Hell, he was an old fart when I was born, and he was the same old fart when he finally left. And no one caught on to him? No one saw that he didn't age?"
She'd never thought about that before, but… yeah. She knew about Drake; he himself had briefed her. But why had no one else ever questioned his age?
Now, after Victor said it out loud, it felt wrong in her head, like a missing tooth.
"How did you… see it?"
Victor gave her the brightest smile.
"LSD."
For almost half an hour they sat on the couch, staring at the medical data silently. Then the door opened, and Claudia entered with Sir Lancelot.
The dog saw Jane and ran over to her, trying to lick her face.
Jane's mood changed in an instant.
"Haha, stop it, you cuddleball."
Claudia shook her head, smiling, before she noticed the displayed data.
"Hard at work, I see, Victor?"
Claudia put the leash away while she continued to glance over the data.
Victor was still not entirely warm toward Claudia. Jane assumed he subconsciously noticed she was hiding something. The fact that she was an AIN operative.
Jane watched him pat Sir Lancelot, who was panting heavily.
"Who's a good boy, hmm, who would be so much happier if he was uplifted? You are, yes, you are."
Jane and Claudia answered his hidden wink almost simultaneously.
"No uplifting."
Victor ignored them after a short glance at Jane.
"Yes, you are, and you will. You'll be the smartest doggy."
Jane braced herself for having to write, again, a report that would create a crisis at AIN HQ and the Admiralty.
After the Hyphae reveal… the Hyphae…
"Victor, the Hyphae, and the Infectors!"
Victor looked up from the data, then out the window, down at Burrow, the once-burned planet now rapidly terraforming itself, still mechanically patting Sir Lancelot's head.
"Oh…"