by M. D. Cooper
Usef had bowled right past said avoidance and seemed to be making fun of Amavia’s former names…or something.
“OK, OK, everyone,” Amavia looked around the bridge. “I’m not made of glass. Both Ylonda and Amanda have already suffered plenty over the years under Usef’s brand of humor.”
“It wasn’t exactly humor,” Usef said, his smile undiminished. “When I look at you, I can still see Ylonda. And I can see Amanda. Neither of them are gone in my eyes. I just thought you’d like to know that.”
“Why Usef, that’s swee—” Amavia began, but Usef cut her off.
“And I especially don’t want you to think you can get out of being needled over any past transgressions because you’re a ‘new person’.”
“Ohhhh.” Iris shook her head in amazement. “So close, yet so far. What are you playing at, Usef?”
The Marine colonel leant back in his chair and cast Amavia a sidelong look. “Hard to get.”
Cheeky turned back around in her seat. “And on thaaaat note, I’m gonna go back to bitching about this shitty dust ring we have to go around.”
“Why around?” Edgar asked from the station near the rear where he’d been silently observing the goings on. “I would have thought your stealth tech could get you through something like our dust ring without too much risk.”
“We’re in a hurry,” Jessica said. “We’d ionize too much of the dust. The AST might not see it, but you never know, they could have seeded sensor drones out here. We’re just going to try to at least get in with as little chance of detection as possible.”
“What about getting out?” Edgar pressed.
Jessica glanced at Iris. “With Thompson there…?”
“It was, for a while,” Edgar confirmed. “But then Aldebaran was made the capital of the League of Sentients, and many of them left—something that was also hastened by the Hegemony taking all the systems around here. Pretty much any AI with means got out.”
“From what I could see, a lot of humans were OK with that,” Iris said. “Seems like they wanted things to go back to how they were before.”
“Yeah.” Edgar heaved a sigh. “A lot more humans than I’d expected seemed to like the idea of the AIs leaving. I suppose it makes sense. It takes more than just a couple decades to really change the fabric of a society.”
“I know it’s not much consolation, but we’ve seen a lot worse when it comes to the treatment of AIs.” The words rang hollow even as Jessica said them, and she wished she hadn’t. In her experience nothing productive ever came from comparing misery.
Luckily, Edgar didn’t seem to take offense. “I know, I’ve been to a lot of them. Still, you can’t blame me for hoping we’d make paradise, can you?”
“Not in the least,” Jessica replied.
Her gaze slid to the forward holodisplay and she looked over the route Cheeky had chosen. “Looks like we’ll pass close to one of the comm relays that Thompson’s people hacked. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to tightbeam a message to Thompson to let him know we’re coming.”
“You sure?” Iris asked. “I can’t shake a feeling that he’s gonna turn us over to the AST for whatever price is on our heads.”
“You too?” Cheeky asked. “I’ve been worrying about the same thing. Stars…and here I felt bad about it.”
Jessica tapped her chin with a finger. “Well, I kinda expect someone to double cross us. We’ll reach out and set up a fake meet—see what shakes loose.”
“Ohhhh.” Iris grinned and nodded emphatically. “I like where your head’s at. Make sure everything’s on the up and up.”
“OK.” Jessica steepled her fingers. “Everyone be quiet while I record this. Dude’s gonna lose his mind to find out that I’m the captain.”
THE HAWK
STELLAR DATE: 05.03.8948 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: West Warrens, Chittering Hawk Station
REGION: Virginis System, AST Space
Roy—who Jinx still preferred to think of as Trip—gave her a sidelong glance.
Jinx looked up that word ‘alacrity’, finding it meant something along the lines of prompt enthusiasm. Glancing at Thompson’s perennially sour features, she could understand why Roy would come to that conclusion.
Roy’s voice sounded almost desperate, and Jinx imagined that a part of that desperation was due to his increasing worry over his shipmates—minus Kally.
Captain Yarran had been killed by the Heegs almost right away, but there had been four other crewmembers on the bridge with him, and so far as Thompson’s people could determine they were in holding, not dead.
He never said it, but Jinx knew Roy wanted to rescue those people as much as the AIs. She wanted to rescue them too—after all, the Garrulous Brooke’s crew were the ones who had rescued her. Though she’d had her doubts more than once that said rescue had drastically improved her lot in life, the fact that she was now living her life had begun to take on more meaning for Jinx.
I am my own person, and I can control my own destiny—at least a bit.
As they waited, she continued to scan the platform and the rest of the maglev station, noting that it even had a coating of moss growing in some of the dimly lit corners.
Jinx looked up the conditions required for moss to grow and found that it needed moisture in the air. Sure enough, she spied a leaking pipe in a corner that had caused a pool to form on the tile.
Thompson had indicated that the group from Sabrina would be approaching along the maglev tunnel from the left. He hadn’t gotten into much detail about the message they’d sent, but he hadn’t seemed pleased. Jinx hadn’t picked up on it very well, but Trip—Roy—had explained the significance of Thompson’s recent eye twitches and long sighs.
She wished that so much of human communication wasn’t made via body language, but it seemed to work well for them. Granted, she also had very little experience with how AIs communicated—other than with Malachi, who had taught her in the expanse on the ship, and the few liberated AIs she’d chatted with before being moved to her frame.
Is that how these other AIs will communicate? In expanses? Will they consider the rescue of us a useful expenditure of their efforts?
Jinx had to believe they would. If not, why would they have come to Chittering Hawk?
No one else was moving or saying anything, and Jinx returned to scanning the old station with the poor optics on her frame. Skeez had given her some moderate upgrades, but from her research she knew they were still far below what was available.
Still, the secondary infrared sensors provided a useful overlay—not that it currently revealed anything standard optics didn’t.
“Damn,” Thompson muttered. “We’re ten minutes past the arrival time. I don’t like this.”
“Are you sure they can dock without the Heegs noticing them?” Camilla asked, the doubt in her voice evident to even Jinx.
Thompson nodded. “Yeah, they have the tech for it. Of course, they have the tech to be in here right now, watching us, and we wouldn’t see a damned thing.”
At his words, two of the guards glanced around the empty maglev station, their shifting boots sending echoes cascading through the space and down the tunnels.
Then a sound came from th
e right-hand track that Jinx didn’t think was one of the echoes.
The big blond man must have picked up on it as well, because he gave a small gesture and two of the guards moved right, angling toward the edge of the platform.
A smile formed on Roy’s lips.
Jinx considered that. It was logical for him to suggest that she hide, but at the same time she didn’t want to take cover when everyone else was working to protect her interests—or at least somewhat protect her interests.
She surveyed the platform again, this time thinking of it as though it were a battlespace. Not quite a three-dimensional space, more like two and half dimensions. There was an x-axis, but no overlapping vertical positions.
OK, she thought while taking in the west side of the track where another platform also lay. It’s like a wargame. Enemy fleets can approach from directly ahead, or along the track on either side. The edge of the platform is like a thick dust belt that can be hidden behind, and the four pillars on the far side are moons. Same as the four pillars behind us. We’re also backed up against a planet’s gravity well. If we fall back, it’s like retreating around the planet. Sorta.
Jinx knew that if she were managing her ship’s position in a battle where you couldn’t see the enemy, but you knew their potential approach vectors, she would immediately deploy sensor drones and retreat behind a moon.
Carefully, she edged to the side and placed the bulk of her frame behind a pillar. She had replenished her own supply of drones, courtesy of Skeez—who seemed to like having her around—but she held onto them, instead reaching out through the network Thompson had established with his guards and tapping the feeds from his drones.
She wasn’t sure if that was something he’d like, but she knew in battle it was important to share intel and get a clear view of where the engagement was taking place.
With the feeds tapped, a much more comprehensive view of the maglev platform appeared. There were drones in all the corners, and two down by the tracks, maintaining a view of each tunnel. Another was moving down the tunnel where the suspicious sound had come from.
The drone was small, but had a wide spectrum scan giving a view from infrared all the way up to ultraviolet. So far as Jinx could tell, it wasn’t picking anything up, but then Jinx realized that didn’t make sense.
Down the left tunnel, there were IR emissions matching those of small mammals, but to the right there were none. It seemed strange that one tunnel would have the things—rats, Jinx found as she quickly referenced the likely sources of the IR—while the other did not.
There was an angle that the drone was not covering with its full sensor spread: the upper left of the tunnel. Jinx wondered who was controlling the drone and why they weren’t panning the thing to get a full scan of that angle.
Without giving it further thought, she took control of the drone and swept it to the left, revealing a slight IR silhouette. Seconds later, a heat bloom burst on the drone’s sensors.
The sound was tremendous, but Jinx filtered it out, using the drone feeds to assess the damage.
Roy had been thrown several meters, but was still breathing. Camilla was nearby, blood running from a gash across her forehead. Thompson had been knocked on his back, but was already scrambling to his feet, weapon held ready.
One of the guards was nowhere to be seen, and another was prone on the deck with a girder spearing his right side.
At the right side of the platform, the two guards who had been on the move rushed to cover near the bulkhead, ready to fire on whatever came out of the tunnel.
Jinx found that his knee was bent at an unusual angle and she wondered how much the injury would limit his mobility.
As she considered that development, weapons fire erupted from the right-hand tunnel, and Thompson backpedaled, taking cover behind a pillar. Then she saw him reach out and pull Camilla back into the relative cover of the pillar.
Without considering the wisdom of the move, Jinx rushed to Roy’s side and pulled him back as well, setting him on the deck behind the far-left pillar.
He moaned and grunted as she moved him, but didn’t protest. Once he was as safe as she could make him, Jinx moved back to where he’d fallen and picked up his rifle.
Unlike her pulse pistol, it fired projectiles and small rail-accelerated pellets. They didn’t get up any significant speed, but a hail of them should have enough energy to penetrate a bulkhead.
While she’d moved Roy, Thompson and the two remaining guards had begun firing into the tunnel. Jinx was certain they weren’t hitting anything, but she imagined the shots were only intended to hold the enemy at bay.
That was a foreign concept to her. In space combat you only expended energy or munitions if you had a clear shot. Either the target was in range, or they weren’t.
Granted, in space combat, jinking was similar to cover, so often shots fired at a jinking ship would miss. Perhaps that was the analogy she could use in this case.
Return fire began to come from the tunnel, and Thompson ducked back behind his pillar, then crouched to fire from near the base of the pillar before standing and firing from the opposite side.
Intresting. More ground-combat jinking. I can do that too. Except I’m still not going to fire if it won’t hit.
Though Jinx’s mobile frame was utilitarian and ugly, it was made for labor, and thus overbuilt. Skeez had also placed an additional ablative covering on her core housing, making her feel far safer than she had before.
She gauged the direction of the shots coming from the tunnel and calculated the shooters’ locations, overlaying that information with the images she had of the tunnel’s interior. She determined there were three enemies. Two were down on the floor of the tunnel, firing from behind support struts, and one was up near the roof. That one was probably perched on a beam and was the one who had fired the rocket.
Jinx glanced at her friend who had pulled himself up against the far left pillar.
The man shook his head.
His response was good enough for Jinx, and she waited for another volley of fire to come from the tunnel, further confirming the enemy’s positions, and then ran across toward the tracks, leaping across to the platform at the far side.
At the zenith of her trajectory, she fired fifteen rail pellets at the enemy atop the beam.
Then she was on the far side of the tracks, rushing to the closest pillar.
Jinx was about to move into a position where she could get a clear firing angle on the enemy when the drone feeds caught new movement.
Two enemies were approaching through the entrance on the west side of the tracks—which was only six meters to her left. She moved around the pillar, but that exposed her to fire from the tunnel.
A quick assessment of her situation told Jinx that she was exposed to fire from two directions and the best solution was to neutralize one group of attackers. The ones down the tunnel were too far away for a clear shot, but the new enemies were not.
She shifted back into a position providing cover from the enemies down the tunnel, but al
so exposed her to the newcomers. Not giving them the opportunity to capitalize on their new target, she opened fire with her rifle and pulse pistol, riving one enemy’s torso while pushing the other back with pulse blasts.
Jinx didn’t slow her advance. She moved into the passage and swung her arm at the human’s face, crushing its skull. A quick glance revealed that the other attacker was dead, and she swept her gaze down the passage, confirming it empty before moving back out onto the platform.
Thompson barked a laugh.
Despite his jovial tone, Jinx was well aware that the volume of weapons fire from the tunnel had increased. She tracked sources and determined that at least ten people were down there now, and they were advancing.
Jinx sent an affirmative response, and then watched the enemy weapons fire, looking for a pattern that would give her enough time to leap back across the tracks without getting a limb shot off.
Damn…they’re overlapping their fire too well. I’m going to get hit no matter wha—
Her thoughts were disrupted by a heavy ka-thug ka-thug ka-thug.
Rail pellets streaked out of the tunnel, but not at the defenders. The flew straight down the track, drawing bits of armor and human flesh with them as they sped past.
The high-velocity pellets continued to tear through the space for another five seconds, and then the sound disappeared, replaced only with the creaks and groans of a maglev station that had just taken a pounding.
The air was misted with smoke and a red haze of human insides, which was slowly drifting to the deck. After a moment it began to shift and through that obscuring film came two figures.
Jinx was amazed they made no sound, considering that each person dwarfed Thompson. When they reached the platform, one of the men—Jinx was certain they were male by their size alone—leapt up easily and removed his helmet.