Warden's Fury

by Tony James Slater

  Which is probably why he’d stashed it underground for the last hundred years, she realised.

  Oops.

  She fired another salvo into the top portion of the tower. It was already coming apart, lurching like a drunkard as the stanchions and cables supporting it tore loose. Kyra’s latest payload of high-energy blasts slammed into upper levels, one of which housed the control room. She held the trigger down, piling shot after shot into the structure even as it disintegrated in a giant ball of flame.

  This time, the debris that rained down on them was noticeably smaller — and Kyra couldn’t be certain, but she thought some of the pieces were screaming. With a screech, the web of cables and walkways twisted free and collapsed. Some plunged into the abyss, some snapped back against the side of the shaft and hung there, chunks of smouldering wreckage dangling from them like fishing lures.

  Kyra waited until the air above them was free of obstructions. “Time to go?”

  Kreon’s voice contained a grim satisfaction. “Indeed.”

  The other ships followed Wayfinder up the shaft as Kyra pushed the throttle wide open. Roaring out into fresh air, she was momentarily blinded by the sun; it was mid-afternoon on the surface.

  What a morning, she thought, and not for the first time.

  The battle below was all but over. Only one pocket of resistance held out, and armies of black-clad soldiers were closing in from three sides. The cornered fighters were defending a series of smouldering ruins, with no clear escape route — it was immediately obvious their time was running out.

  Scanning for the best approach vector Kyra spotted shapes in the sky, little black silhouettes that meant other ships were headed their way. A ping from the nav console confirmed it.

  “You mentioned not seeing air support,” Kreon reminded her.

  “I didn’t! Doesn’t mean they haven’t got any!”

  She made a quick calculation. “Damn it! They’ll be on us if we stop. Ingumen, can you tell your guys in the freighters to land and collect those people? We’re gonna have to run interference up here.”

  She didn’t turn to watch as the resistance leader tapped commands into a wrist console. Setting up secure ship-to-ship comms hadn’t really been a priority on the ground, but it would have really made her life easier.

  Bringing the ship around, she lined up on the largest group of prison troops and let fly with a barrage of pulse-fire. She kept pouring on the heat as Wayfinder overshot their position, attracting a smattering of laser bolts from the ground. The strafing run sent soldiers leaping for cover in all directions, blasting great gouges in the landscape and showing them with debris. Kyra couldn’t help but smile at their sudden change in fortunes. She pulled hard on the control stem to curve back for another pass, but Wayfinder was ill-suited to this style of combat.

  Too fast, and too powerful, she thought. Not a terrible problem to have.

  With the ship coming around in a high arc, she was facing back towards the battle — and towards the oncoming ships, which had now resolved themselves into a quintet of patrol boats.

  Decent odds… if all of us were armed.

  Sadly, a few anti-personnel weapons aside, Wayfinder was the only ship in their group with any firepower. The other ships were scrambling away from the prison in a disorganised mob — hopefully a few of them would stop to collect passengers…

  Leaving her to take care of the bad guys.

  Good job I do this shit for a living!

  Not that Kreon actually bothered paying her.

  Taking a rough aim, she squeezed off a few rounds of pulse fire. Her best plan was to keep the opposing ships at arm’s length, where her potent guns would even the odds. She fired again, traversing left to right to spread the trajectory. All five ships would be much more manoeuvrable, and letting them all close at once was a good way to end up a smear on the landscape.

  Toggling the weapon options, Kyra sent a pair of micro-missiles blazing towards the centre of the ships’ formation. They hadn’t fired back yet, proving their tactical analysis agreed with hers.

  She got that sinking feeling in her stomach.

  They’re gonna rush us.

  Both micro-missiles winked out of existence a few seconds before impact. Tactical showed a spread of inbound missiles returning the favour. Kyra had to make a choice; five targets, flying in no discernible formation, and multiple weapon systems to choose from. One chance to make a strike before they closed to dogfight range—

  And the control stem sprang out of her hand.

  “Shit!” she grabbed for the stem, but it was fixed. “What the fu—”

  And without warning, the tactical display blossomed with data. The forward manoeuvring jets fired full blast, slamming on the brakes hard enough to throw her against her harness. Power spiked, and with a colossal shudder the rail guns fired. All engines died as their juice rerouted to the pulse cannons, firing a rapid sequence of short triple-bursts. Two missiles peeled out of each of the four pods, screaming off in different directions as Wayfinder began to nose downward, its forward momentum no longer enough to keep it aloft. Counter measures deployed in a spray, causing a series of explosions close enough to rattle the hull — and Wayfinder plunged groundwards at an alarming rate.

  “Kyra! What in Sydon’s Name—”

  “It’s not me! This crappy old ship is breaking down!”

  Wind whipped past, shaking the ship as her speed increased. They were in free-fall. She slammed the console in desperation, but the displays remained dim.

  “Shit! Come ON!”

  She was wrestling with the control stem when it sprang loose in her hands. “I’ve got it!” she yelled. She pushed forward, praying the engines would respond, and felt the kick of the drives firing up. “Yes! I’m back!”

  “Still. Going. Down!” The Warden pointed out through clenched teeth.

  It was true. A power dive was the only way she could think of to save them; keeping the ship’s nose aimed at bedrock, she threw every scrap of juice to the engines.

  Wayfinder leapt forward, the ant-like figures on the ground growing by the microsecond. No time to glance at the displays — Kyra had to eyeball it. At the last possible second she hauled back on the control stem, reaching out to slap a handful of switches before wrapping the stick in a two-handed death grip. The nose rose slowly, too slowly… they wouldn’t make it, they were too low— when the landing jets flared, jerking them upwards with such violence she was crushed into her seat. Spots swam in her vision and she tensed her muscles, an old pilot’s trick to keep from passing out. Her arms were shaking with the effort, but the view through the canopy was of air again. They’d achieved level flight, skimming close enough to the ground that a good hundred or so prison guards shit themselves and dropped to the dirt.

  Kyra gasped with relief and kept the pressure on the control stem, watching their nose rise smoothly to point back up…

  At the enemy.

  Shit! Where are they? Kyra scanned her instruments, frantically searching for a bead on their opponents. But there was nothing. The mid-range tactical painted two targets, both making best speed away from them in different directions. One was tumbling out of control, trailing a streak of smoke visible to the naked eye — the other was running for its life.

  But how?

  She glanced around the cockpit for clues. Kreon was breathing heavily, his grip on the console in front of him white-knuckled. Ingumen hadn’t said a word.

  “Guys? You okay?”

  Then she noticed the loop of cables leading inside Kreon’s trench coat. The backpack was lying open on the floor by his feet; to have stayed there, the contents must have been powerfully magnetised.

  “Loader?” she asked, suspicion creeping into her voice. “Did you just do something?”

  “Negative,” the talos drawled. “ALI made the necessary adjustments in line with her own calculations.”

  “ALI? You mean the AI from the prison? Can she reach this far?”

&nbs
p; “She cannot,” Loader replied. “But as I mentioned, I could not leave her there to be destroyed. She has already grown so much.”

  “What?” Kreon growled. “What did you do?”

  “Your transceiver gives me access to Wayfinder’s computer. It was powerful enough to download her entire program before we left the impound bay.”

  Kyra leaned over Kreon to get a better look at the bag. “She’s in there with you?”

  “Unfortunately not,” Loader replied. “ALI’s program is extremely complex. This vessel is not sufficient to accommodate both of us.”

  “Loader…” Kreon’s voice was dangerous. “What did you do?”

  “Apologies Lord Anakreon, but my options were extremely limited. There was only one computer system available with the capacity to store her. ALI now inhabits the Wayfinder.”

  22

  The two freighters landed either side of the embattled resistance position. Their thick hulls absorbed the damage while the few remaining fighters threw themselves aboard, and then they were off — counting an additional sixteen lives amongst their complement.

  Ingumen was adamant that they waste no more time, so the remaining prison soldiers were left to contemplate the ruins of their workplace.

  Burning hard for orbit, the miniature fleet split up to take different routes to their pre-arranged rendezvous. Kyra had a nasty turn when she saw shadows on her scope, and cranked up the sensitivity to discover not one but two Sanctuary-class battle stations bearing down on them. The immense spherical vessels shed sensor wavelengths to appear much smaller on instruments, but Kyra had lived aboard the Folly long enough to know a bit about their capabilities.

  And to have more than a healthy respect for their firepower.

  So it was with significant relief that she engaged the grav-drive, warping the space in front of them and skimming off across the galaxy.

  With the coordinates supplied by Ingumen entered into the Wayfinder’s computer, Kyra could finally relax. She released her harness and stretched, feeling her shoulders crack. A huge yawn came out of nowhere, taking her by surprise. She cast a critical eye over her jumpsuit, but needn’t have bothered; not much of the smooth black materiel was visible beneath the coating of blood. She didn’t dare touch her hair, let alone look in a mirror.

  In all of human history, no-one has ever needed a shower this badly.

  But there was one last chore she had to do, while it was still fresh in her mind. She keyed her display for tactical analysis, and scrolled back through the data feed to find the battle above the prison. She still didn’t understand exactly what had happened, and that irked her. She liked to win her fights with a calm head and a well-timed trick or two — not by flicking to autopilot and keeping her fingers crossed.

  But the tac-data scrolling across her console told an unbelievable tale. That initial salvo had won them the battle. Three of the five enemy ships had been destroyed in less than three seconds by a combination of rail guns and micro-missiles. Pulse fire had split the ships, distracting their pilots and diverting them directly into the path of the missiles — whilst simultaneously destroying most of the incoming missiles. The forth ship had taken critical damage in the explosion of one of its wingmen, causing the sole survivor of the incredibly brief battle to spin around and burn out of there at top speed.

  It was incredible. A masterpiece not just of tactical analysis, but of the power sequencing required to achieve it. Loss of the engines had been vital to power the pulse cannons, which would normally remain inactive for some time after the railguns were fired. No human pilot would ever have considered what ALI had — classifying propulsion as a non-essential system and letting them drop like a stone. Kyra sincerely hoped the survivability of such a drastic manoeuvre had also been a factor in ALI’s computation. Kyra had pulled it off… but she was hard pushed to think of another pilot who would have.

  That’s the problem with machines. They don’t account for how stupid humans are.

  Still, it was very interesting.

  But she couldn’t sit around relaxing all day. Not when Tristan was fighting for his life a few rooms away.

  Kreon escorted her back to the medial bay. At first she wondered at him, daring to leave Ingumen alone in the cockpit of his precious ship. Then she noticed the trailing wires had gone; Kreon had left Loader to keep an eye on things.

  And ALI… we’ve got an AI for every day of the week.

  Flying an untested, wilful, semi-sentient ship was certainly going to be a challenge. But it definitely had potential.

  Providing the ship didn’t keep trying to kill them.

  Tris was lying propped up by pillows, an armature extending over him to monitor his life-signs. He looked… much better, if she was honest. He’d been cut out of his new jumpsuit — Kyra shed a silent tear for its perfect tailoring — and hooked up to a variety of tubes and wires. The hole in his chest had been cleaned and covered, so that instead of looking at his innards, they were presented with a rather innocuous white bandage strapped around him. If Kyra hadn’t seen the damage first hand, she could almost imagine there was nothing more serious than a few bruises under there.

  Kreon tapped a few keys on the med-station, peering at a tiny screen set into the wall.

  “Is he…? Will he…?” Kyra couldn’t bring herself to finish a question.

  Kreon studied the display, frowning at whatever he was reading.

  “What? What is it?”

  “The boy will be fine,” Kreon said at last. “According to this, he should make a full recovery. While that damned AI was bouncing us all over the landscape, Tristan underwent emergency surgery. His left lung has been repaired with synthetic fibres and his sternum has been reconstructed in steel alloy. He required multiple transfusions, extensive tissue regeneration, and removal of an arterial blockage.”

  “Woah…” Kyra was impressed. “The medical talos took care of all that?”

  “Most of the procedures were completed before we engaged the patrol ships. Closing was performed just as we left the atmosphere.”

  “Oh, right? Good timing. I could really do without seeing inside him. Not that I’ve had any lunch to lose.” Her stomach grumbled, reminding her the truth of that — she hadn’t eaten since before Enneas had sealed them all into metal boxes. She moved closer to Tristan, running a finger over the smooth white plas-bandage holding him together. “This is incredible work, though. I thought he was gone for sure.”

  “This bay was state of the art when I had it installed.” Kreon’s eyes had taken on a faraway look. “Something Erekasten impressed upon me, back in the days of my apprenticeship. ‘You have great potential,’ he told me. ‘If you want to live long enough to fulfil it, buy the best medical bay you can afford.’ And so I did. This bay has saved my life on several occasions. Worth every credit…” he closed his eyes, a wistful look on his face. “But it was a substantial investment. It cost more than the railguns.”

  Kyra whistled, long and low. “I’m starting to see why you like this ship.”

  Kreon cracked a rare smile. “I had a feeling you would appreciate her eventually.”

  “What’s not to like? Fast as hell and armed to the teeth… I can look past a few miles on the clock.”

  “How kind of you.”

  Kyra ignored the sarcasm. “And that’s not a bad bit of kit to have,” she said, referring to the medical talos. “Kind of handy, in case we get into any scrapes.”

  Kreon turned to fix her with an inquisitive stare. “Scrapes? What kind of ‘scrapes’ do you envisage?”

  The ship’s comm bleeped, and Ingumen’s deep bass issued from the med-bay speakers. “The ship is dropping out of grav-drive for the next course correction. One of you needs to be here to authorise it.”

  Kyra gave Tris a last look. “I’ll go.”

  “No need,” Kreon said. “Ingumen has proved trustworthy enough to make a nav adjustment.” He looked off to one side, as he often did when using his transceiver, then
addressed the speaker. “Ingumen, I have authorised you on the computer. I am trusting you not to fly us into a star.”

  The rebel leader didn’t dignify that with a response.

  The ship vibrated slightly with the stress of deceleration, then all was still again.

  Kyra nodded at the self-inflicted wound Kreon’s trench coat was concealing. “You still in charge around here?”

  The Warden took a moment to grasp her meaning. “Ah. You refer to the hijacking of my prize starship by an unstable and potentially hostile artificial intelligence?”

  “Yeah… that.” She spread her hands. “Look, I barely got a scratch on her. You want to blame someone for that stunt back there, blame Loader.”

  “Loader rarely makes decisions that are not in our best interests.” Kreon sighed. “He merely evaluates situations based on alternative parameters.”

  Kyra raised an eyebrow at him. “You mean he doesn’t get all mushy about your family history?”

  Kreon glared at her, but there was no anger in it. “Precisely.”

  “I’ve got some pretty cool supporting evidence, if you want to hear it? I ran a tac-analysis of that battle on the way out. I don’t know how we’d have coped with those patrol boats close in, but ALI wiped them out before I had time to worry about it. Seriously, Kreon — she eliminated nine targets in quick succession, including missiles. She didn’t miss a single shot. There’s not a human pilot anywhere in the galaxy that can manage that, not even augmented ones.”

  “It was reckless in the extreme, killing our engines. She came close to killing us in the process.”

  Kyra shrugged. “A calculated risk, I guess. And if the rest of her calculations are anything to go by, it was a good one. I think if ALI learns to play nice, she could be a real asset. Remember how the Folly did against Demios’ fleet? Back when it had guns, I mean.”

  “You want to keep her?”

  “I don’t know.” Kyra stared wordlessly at the kid in the bed. She’d honestly never thought she’d see him alive again. “We’ve been cutting it pretty fine lately. Seems like we could use all the help we can get.”