Angry Jasper: Thirty-seven

Even more mysterious were the men who appeared, seemingly from nowhere. Their allegiance to Thomas began from the moment they first appeared among his so-called royal guard. They were men with no history and no past, and as dangerous if crossed as their leader. Perhaps more so, since their duty was blind, and not at all diverted or confused by their leader's politicking, nor any of the burdensome guilt humans laid the foundations of morality and ethics upon. Stranger still was the way the usually paranoid Thomas accepted them without question to his inner circle, while men of long reputation were purged or disappeared almost immediately.

The clock was ticking for Buzz and Kate. Really, it was ticking inside Buzz’ head. It sounded like a hollow tonk, tonk, tonk, like someone tapping a ladle against brass pot. Buzz ignored it the best he could. He just had to run the results on Thomas’ DNA once more.

He’d finished the first test about an hour before Kate left to marry Thomas. The results just seemed so absurd she wouldn’t have believed him anyway. She would have just told him to run the test again, so this was sort of like cutting out the middle man.

Buzz' methodology was, in both tests, beyond meticulous. IN FACT, IT WAS FLAWLESS! When the final test was complete Buzz sat on the edge of the bed staring at them, dumbfounded. He shook his head back and forth for the longest damn time, and wished he'd been programmed for laughter. Instead that need grew as a certain tension in his core.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a piston engine,” he remarked. Buzz forced himself to sort of hiccup, in an odd rattling sort of way. Tension sometimes heated his core and made him a bit gassy. It smelled a little like WD-40 and ozone, reminding him that barely sixty or so generations separated him from a Twenty-first century riding lawnmower.

Buzz was more than surprised by the results. These weren’t simply a cross-section of Thomas’ DNA. Buzz was looking at history. More than that, he was looking at perhaps the greatest discovery of mankind. Of that there could be no mistake.

Most of the genetic markers were consistent with hybrid DNA. It wasn’t altogether different from Human DNA, except some of the pieces were arranged just a little differently. After all, the difference between Humans and other so-called lower animals was essentially nothing. A matter of percentages that could be counted on one hand

Not that being a hybrid, or even part hybrid would be enough to exclude Thomas’ claims to royalty. Might well have been that a his mother, or an aunt or a grandparent had been a hybrid. Of course there was a time when a schoolyard taunt about one’s mother being a hybrid would have been enough to get a smart-ass busted in the chops. Not anymore, though, lots of decent folks had buffalo, mule, elephant, baboon or leopard in their blood.

At a glance Buzz might have guessed human/alligator hybrid. It was hard to tell for sure since those creatures had been extinct for the better part of two centuries. From what little Buzz knew for sure about genetics Human/Reptile hybrids had gone out of fashion decades ago. All too often offspring came out scaly, cold-blooded and unable to adapt well. A number of times mothers had nearly died giving birth to large eggs forming in the womb. It was the last three markers that Buzz found the most shocking. Two bore similarities to, ancient crustaceans, the forbearers of crabs and the like. The last was the marker of an arachnid; a spider, for crying out loud!

Buzz’ computer clicked loudly as he struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. Alligator was bad enough, but these markers seemed to indicate that he was part crab and part spider. If anyone had tried such a ghastly experiment it was unknown to Buzz. What he was seeing was, well, it was flippin’ impossible!

Buzz paced the room. The answer was more than he was ready to admit. There had to be another explanation, but he’d run the test twice and the results had been the same every damn time!

“E.T. phone home!” he said aloud.

So Thomas was an alien. It made perfect sense, and all the pieces of the puzzle fell quickly into place for Buzz. The rebellion was the only safe place he could slip into the solar system undetected. But for a hand full of isolated and forgettable Corporation run colonies, like Pluto’s Charon, or some rough and tumble outpost among Neptune’s rings, or Cygnus Prime, it would have been far too difficult to infiltrate the Corporation genetic security systems.

Kate had said he intended to sue for peace with Govenor Maury and come to terms. No doubt it was a ploy to surrender the planet in exchange for some position with in the Corporation council. That done he could bring in billions of his kind across the frontier.It was an invasion, that much Buzz was certain of, and Thomas was just the beginning. Buzz started for the door. He would have to find a way to warn Kate.