As soon as drone 3 was back in the shield of metal buildings, the alien scanning stopped, halted by its own camouflage. The third drone sped on, thumping off the trash containers on its desperate flight home.
In the final screens from drone 3, it showed the clipper-scout that was also its mother appear in the distance, as it gratefully rolled and wobbled back to its own birthing hub…
“What the hell was that!?” Reus exclaimed from the cockpit in alarm. Behind him, in the central cargo and crew area, his look of alarm was mirrored in the face of Gunner Lupik, but not the other two, surprisingly.
The captain-who-was-once-a-general was too old to be surprised any more by what the universe had to throw at him. Not that what he had just witnessed through the drone’s onboard cameras wasn’t shocking, surreal, and unnatural, but it was also something real, which was the small crutch that he held onto. Whatever that thing is, it has a body, and if it has a body, we can damage it, he thought. Just not with anything on board this little tin-can, he added disparagingly about the miniscule ship that he had been tasked with by Senior Tomas. If I had my old battle cruiser? Then we’d have a fight! he thought ruefully. He might even be able to kill that thing if he still had his old command. Another reason why Senior Tomas needed to learn to listen to his older officers. Need to work with the machine around him.
If we can get a battle group here double-time, we might be able to nip this whole thing in the bud! he thought with real hope…and a little regret that he probably wouldn’t be the one to do it.
Beside him, and for whatever reason, the captain noted that the Specialist Merik had not been surprised at all. Maybe he was mad, or maybe all shock and fear had been programmed out of him by the Armcore Specialist Training Program.
Either way, Farlow now had some intel on what was going on in there. Alpha is building something. But what? A body? A super-station?
“We have the drone secure?” Farlow asked.
“Yes, sir.” The specialist checked his console. “Returned and stowed in its hub.”
“Then I think our work here is done,” Farlow commented, feeling only slightly sad that he didn’t get a chance to lead an away mission as he had hoped. Stop being prideful, he told himself. Wear your badge. The mission required him to get intel on the target and report back, which was what he would do. “Turn us around, Pilot, and get us to a safe warping distance—”
FZZAP! It was precisely at that point that all the lights in the clipper ship flickered, and the large overhead screen burst into a firework of sparks.
“What the—” Farlow was jumping back as the ship started to list to one side. Red emergency lights flushed on, filling the room with a hellish, baleful glow.
“Pilot! Report! The captain grabbed onto the Gunner Lupik’s hand to stop her from falling to the floor. He noted that Specialist Merik was still clinging onto his console, furiously typing as if possessed.
“All systems reset, Captain-sir! Navigation’s down! Propulsion’s coming back online… Oh no.” The captain saw the pilot’s face go a deathly white.
“What is it?”
“Weapons system offline,” he said.
“What was it? Were we hit by something?” Farlow shouted. Do we have the engine power to jump? Where are the escape pods? His military mind started racing.
“No damage reported, Captain-sir. I–I don’t understand what happened!” Reus was starting to panic.
“I know.” The specialist had abandoned his console and was half falling, half jumping down the tipped-over side of the clipper-scout and toward the equipment lockers. “It was the drone. It’s downloaded some kind of backdoor between our system and that thing out there…”
“Alpha,” Farlow whispered in horror as he realized what had happened. He had read the reports on the creation of Alpha, back when he still had four stars on his lapel. The Alpha AI was the most advanced machine intelligence in existence, even before it had been melded to that Valyien thing. Now what could it do? It could certainly reprogram a crappy X3 drone or three, he thought. Alpha was too smart to not have planned this out several hundred moves ahead of their squishy biological brains, the captain reasoned. Alpha must have infected drone 3 with a specially cooked-up virus and had allowed the cameras to show that it had somehow miraculously escaped…but it never had. Alpha has a backdoor into this ship. It will only be a few seconds before that thing has complete control over it…
How do you beat a strategist that has studied every major conflict and analyzed your every move, the captain thought.
“Specialist? What are you doing?” He turned to see Merik unpacking the lockers.
“Warp engine, Captain. Our only chance is to jump out of here, now.”
Maybe, the captain thought. But wouldn’t Alpha already know that was precisely what we were going to do?
“Jettison the drone. That’s an order,” he commanded the specialist.
“Captain-sir, there isn’t time…”
“Then make time, dammit! I am still your commanding officer, Specialist!” he snapped. And if Alpha has already seen what we are going to do, then we need to do something unexpected…
With a glare, Merik climbed back up to his console and punched at the keys. “Done. Can we get out of here now, please, Captain-sir?”
“Pilot? Is propulsion back up yet?” Farlow ignored him.
“Aye, sir. But only rockets. The warp engine is still cycling.” Reus sounded frantic.
“Good. Full burst on the rear rockets.” Farlow was climbing hand over hand up the cargo hall and to the cockpit.
“What!?”
“You heard me! I want full burn. Park us inside that metal shield, now!” Farlow snapped. “It dampens all signal controls, doesn’t it? Including the control signal coming from Alpha! That will give us time to reboot the ship’s systems and repair.”
None of his crew looked as though they appreciated traveling nearer to whatever that mechanical god-thing was, but Farlow still had a touch of his old authority in his voice, and Reus hit the propulsion rockets to make the clipper-scout surge forward, toward the unknown.
10
Jumpers
The container units crackled with warp energy, a glow like a sun’s glare, although there were no large stars in this section of space. Suddenly, the light melded, mutated, and with a feeling like an explosion-wave underwater, the containers blipped out of existence.
This was a common occurrence here in the Lashar System, itself a fairly broad and barren space between the neighboring systems of Andis and Kuvalla. Only a few rocky planetoids and slow orbit asteroids passed through. That and the hundreds of thousands of container ships.
Lashar System was especially chosen for this purpose, as a transit site in the same way that you might find a monorail station or a starport hub on any of the Coalition home worlds nearby. Lashar was safely inside the confines of Coalition of space—secure from pirates and enemy raids—but also empty enough that large amounts of warp jumps could be performed without any associated hazard of gravitational waves or unintended accidents. The many mega-conglomerate companies of the Coalition had been using this space for a hundred years or more, and there was a steady string of container ships spread out like pearls on an invisible thread, weaving their way through.
It was also where the Andis gas-harvester had been destined, there to birth its own container ships from its metallic womb and pump them out into the line toward their destination.
“You found it?” the tense Captain Eliard muttered to the tense Cassandra beside him.
“Yeah. That one.” The blonde woman looked up from her cramped console beside the ship’s wheel. The cockpit was designed for the Mercury’s original purpose as a luxury racer, and not as a serviceable transport.
El followed Cassandra’s pointed finger out of the cockpit windows, to see the large steel box with the under-slung booster rockets, circular warp engines, and tiny personnel cab at the front making it look like some kind of horrible qu
een bug, pregnant with its offspring. What the captain knew it really was pregnant with, however, was stellar gases from the harvester.
“And you’re sure? I don’t want to end up at Earth now, right?” Eliard said through his clenched teeth. Cassandra could tell that he was already living on his very last nerve and there was a rather ugly vein popping from the side of his temple. It was from being there, this deep inside Coalition space—the very place she knew that he had fled from many years ago to live the life of a smuggler and a pirate, stealing the Mercury Blade along the way. That would be enough to put him into a lifetime isolation cube somewhere in Coalition space, but now that they were also wanted by Armcore for the theft of Armcore property, the House Archival Agent knew that they were probably all set for a firing squad somewhere on some terrible desert planet.
Yeah, it’s pretty clear why he’s tense, Cassandra thought.
The agent, however, had no such sign of stress about her. As a member of one of the Coalition noble houses, she was used to spending time moving through Coalition space, and even moving through it with a degree of comfort. It wasn’t the luxurious upbringing that calmed her nerves, though. It was the fact that she had been trained from an early age to be an agent—one of the emissaries of the Coalition Noble Houses who ‘did their work abroad,’ as the saying went. In other words, she had learned how to sneak in and out of situations, to steal documents, and to whisper the right words to the right people at precisely the wrong moments. She did so with professional ease.
“Then let’s do it.” El nodded, easing off on the Mercury’s thrusters so that the ship started to drift out of the matched trajectory with the harvester. They were still confident that their signals wouldn’t be measurable against the warp engines that were firing every few seconds, but the captain didn’t want to take any chances.
Cassandra felt her stomach lurch a little as the captain let the Mercury fall just slightly out into space. The ship moved gracefully, like a slow-motion dancer.
THRUM. A tap of the captain’s hands on the ship’s wheel and one of the rear booster rockets burned for just a fraction of a second, righting them, and then a second, slightly longer burn propelled them toward their target.
The arrow-like wedge of the Mercury drifted forward on minimal controls, all radio and telemetry chatter silenced, underneath the line of container ships. It was masterful flying, Cassandra had to recognize, but she also knew that this wasn’t going to be the difficult part of the whole operation.
The Mercury slid forward effortlessly, another touch of the rear left-hand side booster and it spiraled perfectly out of the view of the personnel cab and ducked under the next container ship, the one that Cassandra had identified as going to Armcore Prime.
Now this was where things were really going to get difficult, the agent thought.
“Everyone strapped in?” El called over the ship radio. Val Pathok grunted a yes from behind him, already sitting on one of the matched gunner-control chairs, and there was a crackle of static as Irie said, “No, I’m waiting on your commands, dimwit.”
“Ha-ha,” El drawled, as Cassandra had to suppress a snigger. She had never seen a crew as dysfunctional as this one. Half the time, the captain was barely in control of his engineer and his gunner, and most of the rest of the time, they were outright arguing with him. Were all rogue crew like this, or was she just on one of the worst ones?
But somehow, it works, she had the time to think as the captain matched their forward propulsion to perfectly echo the gas-container above. Would any other crew from the Trader’s Belt have defied Mela security, blasted a hole out of the platform, and returned for their captain? One who hadn’t actually managed to get them any credits or loot for a long time?
Cassandra rather doubted that. She wondered if any other crew would have stuck with their captain now that they were the most wanted celebrities in all of known space. No, almost certainly not. But Val Pathok and Irie Hanson did, and why was that? Was it as Irie had said earlier, that this gave her the opportunity for revenge? What of the Duergar? What axe did he want to grind with the military-industrial complex—other than the idea that they were a ‘worthy opponent.’ But House Archival was the scholars of Coalition space, and their analysis and erudition was legendary throughout humanity. From Cassandra’s own studies, she would hazard a guess that the glue that held this little team together was exactly the same as what drove it apart. Malfunction. Recklessness. Defiance. The very things that made them unable to fit into Coalition society—or any other structure or organization, really—meant that they were perfect for each other.
Or at least she hoped, because what was coming up next was a challenge that not even the most deadpan agents or the strongest marines would rush into.
“Just two left,” Cassandra whispered, as the third container ship ahead of them warped out in a ripple of energy. The captain nodded and flicked on the communicator.
“Irie. Set up the coordinates for Armcore Prime,” the captain said.
“Aye, aye,” the words came back. The coordinates for metal station-world of Armcore Prime was no secret. Who would be fool enough to launch an attack on the leading supplier of arms and armaments to the Coalition?
They would be, Cassandra thought once again of this rebellious, ragtag crew, before amending it. We would be.
“Coordinates set,” Irie announced.
Whumpf. The second container ship jumped. One more in line.
“Right, I’m running an open scan on warp signatures,” El stated, mostly for the benefit of Irie, Cassandra noted. On her screens at his side, she could see the sensor screens suddenly wash with energy, almost whiting out the entire array as they were this near to the jump point.
“As soon as the ship above us starts to cycle up, I want us matching their jump signature, got that?” the captain said.
“Aye, but, Captain? You forget the relative engine sizes.” Irie pointed out. “They’re hauling a couple hundred more tons than we are, our engines will cycle faster than that.”
“Can you adjust, so that we jump at exactly the same time?” El said. Although he was an excellent flier and a passable space navigator, Cassandra could tell that the gaps in his knowledge were precisely the parts that he relied on Irie to fill.
“I can, but there will be feedback. Two warp engines kicking simultaneously?” Hanson sounded dubious. “The overload on the physical stresses could tear us both apart.”
El hissed in annoyance. “We’re committed now, Hanson. Solve it. I have faith in you.”
“‘Course you do.” To her credit, she didn’t argue, but presumably got on with the job.
Whumpf. The last container ship ahead flared white, and then they were alone at the front of the queue. Their warp sensors were white once again, slowly gaining color as the signature faded.
A moment later, Irie’s voice returned. “I’ve got a solution. We’ll cycle our own jump one-step out of sync with the container ship, and if I can time it right, then we can ride the event-wave just behind them. Like throwing a rock behind a wave, giving it more force, not conflicting with it.”
“Whatever you say, Hanson. Just get it done.” El’s eyes were fixed on the warp sensor.
Casandra glanced out ahead. The shifting of the stars had melded back to normal and were just stopping to waver as the old warp signature faded into sub-quantum levels. The agent imagined that the personnel above them would be even now looking at their own sensors, making their calculations.
The sensors started to flare a dull white line, growing larger and fatter by the moment. “It’s starting,” the captain hissed.
“Wait, wait…” Irie said.
The sensor reading reached half the screen, and wilder, more erratic lines of color pulsed out from the middle. The container ship’s warp engine was cycling hard and fast—and now Cassandra could feel it in her guts too—a premonition of wrongness, of dimensions and geography and space folding and refolding into each other in a way that her
human brain wouldn’t allow.
“Cycling warp engine,” Irie stated, and the Mercury juddered with the kick of spectral energies. Cassandra could feel the weirdness lengthen and deepen, her perspective started to shift, as if one part of her brain, a normally dormant, silent partner, was trying to tell her something important…
The warp sensor was now almost completely white, and the Mercury was shaking with the energies and forces washing against its hull from the container ship above.
“This had better be right…” El said, and Cassandra had the sudden, oblique sense of déjà vu as she appeared to hear the words in stereo. Warp effects could be like that, convincing you that you’re in a dream, or experiencing two places at once, or even stranger realities…
“NOW!” Irie shouted, just as the sensors reached their maximum and the space outside the window was a sliding, surreal mess of light.
Whu-WHUMPF!
The double-kick of two warp engines tearing apart reality, a fraction of a second out of step with each other.
In the cockpit, Cassandra felt herself become impossibly small, and the entire universe opened inside her mind. And then with a jerk, they were back in normal three-dimensional space.
“Are we here? Did we make it?” the agent breathed.
“Waiting for system reboot…” El said, staggering slightly as he held onto the wheel. Every console screen was a haze of color and flaring light as they tried to recalibrate toward the nearest satellites and drones, seeking coordinates, seeking confirmation that they hadn’t left an important part of their ship elsewhere in the spaces underneath the stars…
FZZT! “Location Acquired: Armcore System, Armcore Prime,” the computer said in its tiny, electronic voice, and Cassandra joined the captain in an excited whoop.
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