by Cam Daly
“Yes. And hurry.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk out loud to Kery with the driver listening, so he started typing out a text message on the Sneaker phone.
#
She was between subway tunnels to the south of the city when Shadow updated her with the Admiralty’s latest findings. “They figured out why the Craven missiles that we saw were different than before. They've already modified their ships and weapons to operate inside a decoherence field, without tanglecomms. The Admiralty prepared a combat simulation showing the ramifications.”
The simulation portrayed a small squad of Craven ships in a decoherence field attacking a much larger Fleet force. The defenders were slaughtered within seconds. Every ship in the Fleet relied on tanglecomms to connect all their internal systems together, to coordinate detection of enemies and control weapons. In a decoherence field, all of their mighty vessels were just collections of metal boxes with helpless crews inside. Waiting to die.
“We don’t know what it takes to generate the field. Thankfully the Observatory isn’t affected, since it is so small that it wasn’t built with internal tanglecomm control systems. The Admiralty is focusing its efforts right now on how to retrofit our most powerful ships with physical communication links between key systems, so that if there were an attack we would have some ability to respond.”
“What does that mean for the reinforcement fleet?”
Shadow answered the question even before she heard it. “As you can guess, that means the reinforcement fleet is cutting their gradient drives as quickly as possible. Once they are below light speed they will begin retrofit operations. They will probably have to cannibalize one or more ships, which will add days to their scheduled arrival.”
Keryapt knew the warships would be less capable after kilometers of cabling had been run through bulkheads that had never been designed with cuts or breaks. It couldn’t be helped. Without the changes, they would be easy prey for the new Craven weapons. “What about Horseplay? When will it be ready?”
She knew it would take several seconds for Shadow to reply through the Stopgap relay. Judging from the delay, the previously unmentioned vessel or satellite was somewhere around…two to three light seconds away. Twice the distance from the Earth to its Moon. It had direct tanglecomm connections to Fleet Four. “Stopgap was the original Observatory, wasn’t it?”
“The Admiralty is leading a crash redesign of Horseplay right now to eliminate tanglecomm dependency from the air supremacy remotes, which will probably delay deorbit and delivery to some time late tomorrow.” The stress of the situation was clear in Shadow’s voice.
No one could have expected a Labworld like Terra to be the location of the most important scientific advance of the past five thousand years, and for that advance to radically impact the ability of Fleet to investigate the source. All things considered, Keryapt was proud of how well Shadow was handling it.
Interestingly, the automated advisor had just gotten around to responding NO to the question about Stopgap. Whatever data source Ruut had been using didn’t include it.
“And you are correct about what Stopgap used to be. You have data on that coming in as well. For now though, you need to concentrate on searching for the decoherence field boundary.”
The next five minutes were a blur of rail yards, stations, tunnels and track. She had no real time data from the Observatory or her remotes, so she relied upon stored images to guide her decisions about when and where to leave the rails and which stations she could safely run through in the dark. On one long curved tunnel segment she even cut the grapplers in her feet for a few seconds and balanced into the high speed turn, surfing the rail.
It was a relief to just be able to focus on movement and balance for a few seconds, momentarily forgetting the events unfolding around her. The speed of her passage whipped her hair back and it felt good to let the heat from her brain spill out and away.
Maybe when all this was done, she could take her daughter somewhere and teach her to do it. How to ride and surf whatever material was available. It wouldn’t have been possible before she gave up her organic body to become a Shadow.
But then the questions would come, about her father or childhood or why her mother had disappeared for so long. Details that Kery couldn’t remember or wasn’t allowed to tell.
Her feet had started heating up from the sliding friction and she had to switch back to running. She was glad to leave the daydream behind.
When the next message came from Shadow, she almost expected a reprimand for the moment of inefficient travel but apparently it wasn’t a high enough priority. “We have detected gravitic signatures in the area of Dallas, Texas. Something big is moving around there, but we can’t tell exactly what or where without tanglecomms. The most interesting part is that VSE owns a computer server farm there at what used to be a particle accelerator. They purchased the site from a chemical company a few years ago. Your Hawk can keep searching for the boundary here, but we’re sending you to Dallas. Head towards the executive terminal at San Francisco International Airport - we will have a chartered jet readied in 15 minutes.”
Keryapt wished that Horseplay was ready, but she didn’t mind giving the Admiralty a couple of hours to figure out what was going on. A rest would do her some good. All she had to do was get to the airport.
“Oh, Shadow. I need the gear that Connor has. I’m going to have him meet me there.”
Then he could fly out to some safer locale, while she went off to war.
CHAPTER 9
“Keryapt, you can’t keep re-tasking the Observatory every time Connor’s phone loses network connection for ten seconds. He isn’t that important.”
A few seconds delay, long enough for them to talk over each other. “Shadow! Stop switching it back. I’ve seen the data you’re getting from Dallas. You aren’t spotting anything of interest there, and you’ll have a couple hours while I am in trans-.“
“The data is useful. If we don’t locate the decoherence emitter before you get there then you might as well be- stop that!”
“I’m less than a half second removed from the Observatory by laser link. You’re almost two seconds. It needs to be under my control. Don’t make me go to-”
“I will go to the Admiralty if you- oh, you think they will back you? After you used the graser for a blackout? You’re the Active, but don’t forget that I could remote control Horseplay from here if need be.”
“I didn’t have a lot of choices about the graser. Maybe if you had put together a better support package, I wouldn’t have had to- oh, I can’t wait to see you run a body that complex with a two second delay each way. You’ll pancake it within a minute. I need-“
“Enough! Ruut has volunteered to take control over the Observatory for now. Happy? Make your case to him.”
“Fine. Ruut’s in charge. I’ll be at the airport in five minutes.”
Keryapt was a little surprised the Admiralty hadn’t interrupted their discussion already. A hundred thousand years of combat strategy and technical possibility had been rendered obsolete by the decoherence field, so she expected them to be distracted. But their near complete silence made her more nervous than she would like to admit.
But that didn’t change her orders. The most anonymous way to reach the executive terminal at San Francisco International was via taxi, so she had taken one from the last stop of the BART subway system in Millbrae. The airport’s public terminals were all accessed via an undulating maze of bridges and roads from the nearby highway, but her destination was squeezed between the runways and San Francisco Bay itself. A two lane access road meandered along the bay shore past fuel tanks, shipping facilities and the local Coast Guard air station.
As Keryapt’s cab drove past, she spotted one of the Coast Guard’s white and red helicopters parked on the pad there. From its distinctively enclosed tail rotor she identified it as a Dolphin-class. If Shadow weren’t so busy she probably would have taken time to point out how ludicrous it was to
name aircraft after marine life.
The executive terminal itself was a single story structure flanked by two taller, boxy hangar buildings. On the tarmac behind them were the various private jets and helicopters which served the elite of the bay area. One of the jets had an engine already blooming bright with infrared, and she hoped it was hers. She paid the driver with cash, tipping enough to be generous but hopefully no more memorable than anyone else who traveled to an airport with no luggage.
Inside, a perky receptionist checked her ID and offered her coffee while her charter pilot finished his paperwork. She declined the drink and spent a few minutes researching the twin engine jet which would be hers for the next few hours. Her Dove remote should arrive just in time to catch a ride in the jet’s wheel well.
Shadow sounded much more calm when she next contacted Kery. “I wish we had more Actives who were quantum physicists. It’s been thirty minutes since the decoherence event and we still have no consensus on what is happening. They have a first pass at a mapping model, but it's very vague. It’s almost certain that you will lose tanglecomm connection with your Hawk remote as you approach Dallas. We’ve sent you a variety of alternative methods to communicate with the Observatory.”
Keryapt quickly glanced over the information before replying. She was operating at five times normal thought rate which meant the subjective delay for a message to travel to Shadow and a reply to come back was almost twenty seconds. “I commend you and the team on being so…thorough. I especially like the visible-from-orbit glyphs to trace on the ground for different circumstances. I'll make certain that I get the orientation correct if I have to use the one for ‘destroy everything in that direction’.”
“We thought you would appreciate them. Please be sure to note the assembly times on some of the options - the Factory is focused entirely on finishing Horseplay, so some of those would delay completion.”
“Believe me when I say that more than almost anything else, I want my brain in that body.“
The Observatory revealed that Connor’s cab was making its way along the access road, but it had been stopped briefly as another Dolphin class helicopter was wheeled from SFO’s main runways into the Coast Guard station. Apparently they didn’t take off and land directly on their helipads but were forced to approach like aircraft.
As she walked out of the executive terminal building to meet him, she realized that she hadn’t asked Connor to take his new ID and disguise elements from the pack. It wouldn’t do for the cab driver to see that exchange so he would probably have to come inside the building. She was annoyed with herself for overlooking that detail. As the cab turned off the access road she resolved to make this exchange as quick as possible.
The vehicle stopped just in front of her and the rear passenger door sprang open. Connor beamed at her as he got out of the cab. She held up a single finger to tell the driver that she wanted him to wait one minute as Connor came around the door towards her. His arms came up from his sides for a hug or caress of some kind, but she moved her hand to his chest to stop him. She didn’t want to turn this into a complicated interaction. He slowly lowered his arms and his shoulders slumped.
“Look, Connor. I just need a few things from the pack, and then you have to go.” She could feel his heart beating quickly and hoped that he wasn’t getting aroused again for some reason. “If I need to, I'll contact you through the Sneaker.” His gaze dropped to where her left hand touched his chest. He gently reached up with his right arm and closed his hand over hers.
“Kery, I…I don’t know how to say this…” He brought his left hand up towards her face.
Then time slowed. Contact alarms sounded. Connor’s green “friendly” outline changed to a strobing red and yellow.
Enemy/armed unknown, extreme threat.
Her combat system had ramped her to maximum processing rate.
The superimposed warning “Bio-ident mismatch” appeared over his torso. Whatever this thing in front of her was, it wasn’t Connor.
She leaned back and kicked up, smashing into his left arm with enough force to sever a human limb. The Connor-thing’s arm audibly cracked but kept coming. Simultaneously, its right hand closed on her left wrist faster and stronger than any organic muscle possibly could. It had her.
The pain from its grip was immense but her combat control system dampened the sensation immediately. It was the same size as Connor, slightly taller than her, and it tried to drag her closer so that its damaged arm could grab her.
She went for another kick, aiming for its torso, but its own leg came up to block at almost the same speed. This machine was exotech, not some human construct.
“Where's Connor?”
As if in response, the pain in her left arm increased dramatically. Intense heat radiated from the thing’s hands and the sleeves of Connor’s jacket - or a nearly perfect replica - blackened and crumbled. It was going to try to thermally overload the Interloper and shut down her brain.
Someone wanted her body intact.
They traded more punches and blocks before it finally responded in Connor’s voice to her question. “Why do you care?”
She went for its head, but it blocked again with its damaged arm.
Its face was still frozen in a human display of tender affection. Was the half second delay in its response a result of transmission time, or someone or something thinking at normal organic speeds? It lunged forward again, grapplers in its feet working as hard as hers to keep its footing. It went to grab at her head but she twisted 90 degrees backwards, then caught its broken arm in her free hand.
Their struggle resembled a dance now, each caught up in the others’ grip and not willing to let go. He tried to keep her close so that her legs couldn’t connect with a solid kick, she tried to pull him off balance. All sensation from her forearm was shut off. If this kept going then the damage to her left arm would be much more than skin deep.
They rolled along the side of the cab, shattering its windows on the passenger side. She used the magnetic grapplers in her foot to rip the rear door from its hinges, pivoted inhumanly and smashed its edge against his damaged arm. The door bent and shattered, but something in his arm failed as well. The heat level on that side dropped immediately.
She let go of that arm and ducked under it, aiming a punch for its torso. It jerked its leg up awkwardly to defend and her blow shattered whatever served as its knee.
It was defending the middle of its body in a way that gave her an advantage. There was something in there that couldn’t stand up to quick acceleration or significant damage. She played a hunch. “‘Why. That’s always the real question, isn’t it?’”
The heat radiating from the thing’s hand suddenly decreased. It maintained its grip on her left arm, but momentarily ceased applying force. When it next spoke, the voice was different. It sounded exactly like Senator Ormlan. “So, you figured us out, Keryapt. Connor is unharmed, and will be freed to leave with your intact cranial pod if you stop resisting and give us that body.”
It knew her real name, which she had only ever mentioned to the Craven. The Senator wasn’t Craven or Tumorish, but something else that would work with them. Or anyone else, if the situation demanded it. Something that would occupy the torso of a humanoid mech. Molu. A whole family of them were there inside the Connor-thing.
A message from Shadow finally made its way through tanglecomm and laser relay, a few seconds too late to be of much use. “It isn’t Connor! Get away from him!That thing doesn’t have his heart murmur! ”
She pushed Ormlan, forcing him to take an awkward step backwards. “You didn’t ask about the decoherence event, which means you’re responsible for it. Not the Craven. And you need an intact Fleet Active body, to make someone else think you aren’t responsible for whatever comes next.” She was jumping from one assumption to the next more quickly then her body could speak aloud at normal speed. “You can’t possibly take out all the Tumorish here with just this body.”
The ca
b driver took advantage of the lull in fighting and gunned the engine. Kery caught a momentary glimpse of Connor’s backpack on its rear seat as it roared back up the road it came from. The driver was panicking, so clearly he wasn’t part of the Molu team. Ormlan had somehow replaced Connor nearby and forced the driver to take him this last little distance. She commanded the Observatory to focus its search on the access road area, especially the Coast Guard heliport.
“There's a human proverb that says ‘In one night a running man can cut a thousand throats’.” He didn’t say it as a threat, just a statement. “We know your body can run very fast, Zess.”
Ormlan’s body was a Molu familycraft, an infiltration vehicle for a team of the diminutive aquatic aliens. In their native tongue, ‘family’ and ‘mission team’ were the same word. The torso would be a water-filled labyrinth of chambers, control systems and power plant. Weapons would be in the arms and legs, sensors in the head. Ormlan had taken quite a chance getting that close to her.
He must be desperate. “If you wanted dead Craven, you could have just given me their locations. But you don’t want me - Fleet - to know about whatever is there.”
Ormlan tried again to grab her with his damaged arm, but she knew his weakness now. He couldn’t allow her to hit his torso or else his crew would be hurt. She jumped up into a squat, planning a two-legged kick to his chest while using his own grip on her left arm to provide leverage.
He let go. Her kick sent her flying backwards more than it damaged him, but she landed on her feet and sprang towards him again. He was still stumbling, his damaged knee nearly buckling, and she laid into him.
He blocked a kick towards his chest with his good arm, and she grappled on to it. She flipped backwards, grappling the ground with her hands and forcing his arm straight. Her other foot smashed into his elbow, breaking that arm.
She lithely sprang back to her feet, right in his face. The heat was gone, three of his four limbs damaged extensively. He tried to bat at her with his broken arms, but she got a grip on his neck.