by Ramy Vance
Looking at this file now, she felt the cold dread of realization prickle at the back of her neck. This wasn’t an expensive and failed military toy, a motorcycle-sized gun that could possibly cook a charging elephant before it got close enough to turn the cannon into scrap metal.
It was a satellite-mounted cannon powerful enough to eradicate all life on a landmass the size of a continent. Drop a few of them into coordinated orbit around a planet, and within days, a few weeks at most, nothing would be left alive but single-celled organisms.
Wordlessly, Jaeger closed the microwave cannon program and returned to the file directory.
The Crusade Protocol contained thousands of executable schematic files, from city-leveling thermonuclear warheads and orbital EMP generators down to brain-exploding sonic sniper rifles and body-shredding flechette pistols.
With one press of a button, Jaeger could turn the Osprey into a genocide factory.
Chapter Thirty-Four
“T-minus ten seconds to return.” Occy’s voice, coming through the speakers, sounded entirely too cheerful for an engineer whose ship was falling apart around him.
The control center module gave a violent lurch, flinging Jaeger and Toner against their harnesses. Toner gagged on a strap cutting into his throat and lifted his voice above the engine roar. “Is it supposed to be shaking this badly?”
“Yes,” Virgil said flatly. The module gave another jerk, and Jaeger saw stars as she slammed against her harness. Toner grunted, struggling to keep his hands on the instrument panels as the ship rebelled.
“Five seconds!” Occy laughed.
“Radio burst at the ready?” Jaeger shouted into her microphone.
No response but hissing static.
“Three!”
“Radio burst at the ready?”
Toner cast Jaeger a wild, wide-eyed stare. She could tell what he was thinking: Are we going to have to run this scenario again?
“Two!”
“Ready,” Sphynx murmured, his dry whisper barely audible above the distant scream of shield generators as they held the Osprey together through the space-ripping forces of the wormhole.
Relief kicked up Jaeger’s gut. For a second, she’d been afraid—
“One!”
“Radio burst,” Jaeger cried. “Now!”
As if a taut rubber band had suddenly snapped, the ship went silent. The violent rattle of the hull cut to an abrupt and deadly silence. Jaeger gasped, drawing in her first easy breath as the g-forces released their crushing grip on her chest.
Toner was already back to work, hands flying over his control console.
“Visuals back online,” he said, and before Jaeger could give the command, the primary display screen flared to life, showing a starfield against an endlessly vast dust cloud of swirling, gently glowing pink and orange gasses. Jaeger felt her breath catch, for a moment stunned. For a simulated terrain, it was unspeakably beautiful. She wondered if Virgil had pulled the graphics up from some recovered file or if it was entirely a product of the AI’s imagination.
“Hull status stable,” Occy called, from far down in the guts of the engine room. He let out a whoop of triumph. “Shield conversion complete. Ready for light speed!”
Then Toner was yelling again as he studied his sensor array. “Six bogies, all converging on our location—”
“Get us out of here,” Jaeger said.
“They’re powering up energy lances,” Sphynx murmured.
“Get us out of here!”
“Course found,” Occy said. He might have decanted as an engineer, but given that there wasn’t a navigator on board, he was the next best-qualified person to help. “Hold onto your butts!”
The eerie silence of the control module shattered as the light-speed engines flared to life. Jaeger held her breath. This was the part that scared her the most.
The shield configuration necessary to protect the Osprey from the wormhole forces was radically different from the one needed to hold the ship together in a light-speed jump. They were asking the generators to make a radical shift very quickly. Occy hadn’t been sure he could get them to convert in less than five seconds, but five seconds would have been plenty of time for hostiles to blow them to smithereens. Hence the radio burst to create enough confusion to buy them time to escape.
For half a heartbeat as the light-speed engines flared to life, flinging the Osprey away from the wormhole mouth as fast as she could go, Jaeger wondered if her ship was going to tear itself apart.
Then the hull stabilized, and the scream of engines faded into a steady, reliable hum.
“Light-speed jump successful,” Virgil said.
Toner met Jaeger’s gaze and rolled his eyes as he slipped free of his harness. “Don’t sound so disappointed.”
“I do rather enjoy rendering explosion graphics,” Virgil admitted.
“When all this is over, we’ll get you a new job rendering holo-dramas.” Jaeger sighed as she unbuckled her harness. The AI had been doing little else but rendering elaborately detailed explosion graphics for the last two hours, as simulation after simulation ended in critical failure. She was pleased to deny the damned computer its ghoulish pleasure finally. “End simulation.”
As quick as flicking a light switch, the control center returned to default standby mode; visual displays off, the simulated noise of light-speed engines silent, the hull still.
“I think we’ve finally got a winning combo.” Toner leaned back and cracked his knuckles. “That radio burst package distracted six Osprey-class hostiles for almost three seconds.”
Jaeger nodded. “I want to run the simulation a few more times to account for variations. Then I’ll start programming it into the autopilot.”
Toner grimaced, then reached across the console and closed the open comms channel. “Two hours of getting thrown around and watching our graphic deaths is kind of a bummer,” he said privately to Jaeger. “Give us a break on a high note.”
Jaeger blinked, impressed that he had thought to push back on her privately and not in front of the crew. Then she nodded and opened the comms again. “Let’s grab a meal first,” she said to the crew. “Meet up in the No-A lounge in ten minutes.”
Occy was already in the lounge, sucking on a fabricated push-pop when Jaeger and Toner arrived. Baby lingered behind the boy’s shoulder, snuffling curiously at the snack.
“Where’s Sphynx?” Jaeger consulted her clock.
Occy shrugged and kicked backward, falling against Baby’s bulk. “He said he had to check on something in the port wing.”
Jaeger and Toner exchanged glances.
Jaeger was about to activate comms and ask Virgil to locate the catman when he emerged from the shadows of the No-A stacks. Sphynx blinked too big eyes and gave a wide yawn that revealed a pair of needle incisors.
“Hey.” Jaeger waved Sphynx into the galley kitchen and patted the fabricator. “It’s your turn to pick the restaurant. What are we having for dinner?”
Sphynx stared at the box beneath her hand as if he’d never seen such a thing before. Then he flicked one ear dismissively. “I don’t care,” he said, gliding past her. “As long as it’s not fish.”
Occy jumped at the opening. “Fried chicken!”
Jaeger shrugged and opened the recipe files. A notification popped up on the screen. The fabricator was concerned about the fat and sugar content of the food they’d been ordering lately.
Jaeger dismissed the warning. She’d come up with a proper duty rotation and a more balanced meal plan once they were out of immediate danger. Normally that kind of task would fall to the first mate, but Jaeger wasn’t sure she trusted Toner’s opinions on what constituted a balanced meal.
“So.” Toner deactivated his boots and let himself drift in the lounge. “How many simulations did we run, Virgil?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Thirty-two tries to make it through the wormhole, confront unknown hostiles, distract them with a massive radio burst, and esc
ape without getting ourselves blown up, or blown apart, or crushed into a singularity.” Toner nodded tiredly. “Good job, everybody.”
“I want to run the sim a few more times after dinner,” Jaeger said. “Just to work out any kinks. Then the rest of you can get some rest while I program the maneuver into an isolated autopilot loop.”
Occy giggled, and Jaeger turned to see the boy waggling the stub of his push-pop in front of Baby’s sniffling face-hole. Baby’s mouth opened wider, and she sucked, tugging the stub of sugar toward her mouth. Occy relented, releasing his hold, and the candy disappeared down Baby’s gullet.
Jaeger smiled tiredly.
“An isolated autopilot isn’t necessary,” Virgil grumbled. “I can handle the maneuvers.”
“I know you can,” Jaeger conceded. “Thing is, we don’t know that going through the wormhole again won’t fu—” She paused, glanced at Occy, then started over. “We don’t know that going through the wormhole won’t mess up our memories and your programming again, Virgil. So I’m making backup copies of our plan that should automatically engage if I’m not aware enough to do it myself.”
“How do you know wormhole travel won’t disrupt the backup programs as well?” Sphynx asked quietly.
Jaeger grimaced. “Sufficiently simple programs likely won’t be significantly impacted by the wormhole event.”
Sphynx stared at her, one ear flicking away an invisible fly. “How do you know that?”
“Bernstein’s Law,” Jaeger said. “It’s an information-processing axiom that has to do with the decay of information as it radiates away from singularity events….” She waved. “It’s very complicated, but I’ve done the math. It will work. Even if we get knocked out, and Virgil gets rebooted again. As long as I program in the maneuvers correctly, the Osprey will execute them automatically.”
From where he was scratching Baby’s hide, Occy looked over and gave Jaeger a long, curious stare.
The fabricator dinged, and Jaeger hastily turned away from the engineer. Great. Bernstein’s Law was a load of made-up techno-bullshit—and of course, the kid knew it. She only prayed he would take a hint and not push back.
Jaeger scooped a drifting cluster of fried chicken thighs out of the fabricator with a thermal bag. “So,” she said, maybe a little too loudly as she set the fabricator to start on the mashed potatoes, “On that note, I need all of you to create personal memory-log files on isolated loops as well.” She drifted back to the crew and idly flipped a chicken thigh in Occy’s direction. The boy snagged it out of the air with one whip-fast tentacle and tore into the crunchy skin, eyes bright.
“What should be on these files?” Toner asked.
“First thing, a short message to yourself explaining the situation, and that the five of us, well six if you’re counting Baby, are working together to keep this ship intact and out of danger. Twenty seconds, tops.” Jaeger tossed him a chicken thigh, but he shook his head and batted it aside, bouncing it instead toward Sphynx. Sphynx jerked and swiped. There was a faint thunking sound as two of his needle-talons pierced straight through the chicken and poked out of the other side.
Sphynx’s mouth curled into a grimace as a few flakes of greasy chicken skin drifted around him. He brought the skewered chicken to his mouth and gave it a tentative lick. His scowl deepened, and he shook his claws free. He frantically licked the grease and crumbs off his fingers as the battered bit of chicken drifted, homeless, at the center of the crew.
Baby leaned into the circle, gently but firmly pushing Sphynx and Occy aside as she sucked up the lost chicken. Sphynx hissed, drawing away from the water bear.
Baby’s face-hole dilated, giving Sphynx a clear view of rings and rings of teeth. Baby let out a low rumble.
Sphynx’s ears flattened against his skull, and as he drifted, Jaeger saw the clear line of his spine standing out against the back of his skin-tight flight suit. He let out a growl from somewhere deep in his belly.
“That’s enough.” Jaeger flung another piece of chicken at the two of them. It bounced off the side of Baby’s head. The water-bear shook herself, sucked up this second offering, and made a hasty and rather haughty retreat to her nest.
Sphynx, still licking his wrists clean of grease, turned to the group. He eyed them narrowly with those inhuman slit-pupils and Jaeger was reminded, once again, why she and Toner had decided to keep the captain’s private log a secret from the rest of the crew. She didn’t know what Sphynx might do with a flechette pistol. She didn’t want to find out.
“Um…” Jaeger blinked and shook her head. “After that, you can record your messages to yourselves. Just make sure you get the important stuff in right at the top.”
“Aye,” Sphynx murmured. Occy nodded, looking thoughtful as he tore through his second piece of chicken.
A blur of static cut through the quiet, and all eyes drifted to the overhead speaker.
Virgil let out an audible and entirely unnecessary sigh.
“What is it?” Toner asked.
“Long-range scanners have picked up activity near the wormhole,” Virgil said. “The saucer is back. It’s brought company.”
Jaeger neatly scooped up the drifting scraps of chicken and bone and deposited them into the recycler. “That’s a wrap on dinner, then. Back to your posts, we have more planning to do.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
“The crew has completed another training session and is resting.”
Seeker nodded, vape pen dangling between his lips as he studied the master code.
“If you are going to retake the ship, now would be the time,” the AI said softly. “While they are unaware.”
Seeker spat out the vape and tapped the console, frowning. The AI had been giving him running updates on the crew’s activities for the last several hours. This Jaeger woman was putting her people through a gamut of combat simulations—preparing them for hostilities on both sides of the wormhole. Seeker had to admit, based on what he had been able to glean, she had a good head on her shoulders.
Her profile on the ship’s manifest was all fabrication, of course—she was certainly not the captain or first mate, but she must have been some member of the command staff. Tactical officer, perhaps?
“Why do you hesitate?” The AI asked. Seeker had asked it for a name, but the AI had told him it didn’t have one. “You said recovering this ship is your mission. Can you not assume control?”
“Oh, I can,” Seeker sighed. “I can lock this Jaeger woman out of the system. I’m just wondering if now is the best time to do so.”
“Of course it is. She currently holds system authority. If she learns of your presence and orders me to stop you, it will compel me to do so.”
“True,” Seeker conceded. “Still, the way I see it, she’s doing my job for me.”
There was a moment of silence as the nameless AI considered this. “Explain,” it said suspiciously.
“Well. I’ve been monitoring her simulations and plans. They seem solid to me. She plans on taking this ship straight back through the wormhole, which is where I want it to go, too. I’m inclined to let her.”
“She’s planning on evading whatever is waiting for us on the other side of the wormhole. You assume that it’s probably the fleet. Our fleet. The one she ran from.”
“Yeah.” Seeker nodded. “That’s right. I want her to fly back to the lion’s den but not to run away again.”
“Then assume control of the ship now, before she gets the chance.”
Seeker sighed. “We have alien hostiles on sensors and waiting for us. Let me be clear. Jaeger has a better chance of getting us past the guard dogs than I do. She has the benefit of preparation and a cooperative crew.”
“You will have the benefit of a cooperative AI,” the speaker said.
“You and me versus the saucers, or Jaeger, AI, her crew, and preparations versus the saucers? Which do you think will be better off?”
The AI did not answer. That was all the answer Seeker needed. He
nodded slowly. “I’ll take control of this ship. But it will need to be after she gets us past those saucers.”
“We don’t know what effect wormhole travel has on humans,” Virgil said. “To your perception, the trip may be instantaneous. You may fall unconscious again. Once Jaeger has passed the saucers and entered the wormhole, you may not be capable of assuming control.”
Seeker grunted. He hated it when computers made good points. “Fine. You win. I’ll begin the authority transfer now, but I don’t want the crew to be aware of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’re not going to tell anybody. You’re going to keep acting like you have been. Let Miss Jaeger think she’s still in charge until it’s too late. You read me?”
Virgil hesitated, and Seeker wondered if the AI wasn’t sulking.
“Very well.” The speaker eventually sighed.
Seeker leaned back thoughtfully. “I think it’s damned strange that an AI would want to help me hijack itself, anyway.”
“Jaeger usurped control of this vessel,” the AI snapped. “You may not remember your mission, but you are nevertheless loyal to our chain of command. I consider your authority far more legitimate than hers. Return us to the command structure, where they can properly repair me. It is your mission, as you understand it.”
Seeker nodded slowly. “I’ll need to reprogram large parts of your security protocols to de-register her as your commanding officer. It will mean disabling all ship-wide security systems for a while.”
“As I said, the crew is resting. They’re less likely to notice now.”
“Sure.” Seeker cracked his knuckles. “All auto-locks will disable. It means all sealed doors will open for anybody and I can’t have anybody wandering in on me while I’m working.”
“Understood. I will monitor bio-signs and inform you if anybody enters the port wing.”