43 Days to Oblivion

by J. D. Oppenheim

  “This gonna work?”

  “We’re gonna get some face time with Filcher. What he does is up to him.” And then Jolo held up the scrambler to his face mask. “Persephony, Marine 4. The ship is clear. I have one prisoner, a man claiming to be Federation Captain Barthelme. He wants to meet Commander Filcher.”

  “Security will escort the prisoner to holding.”

  “Roger that, Persephony. Prisoner is threatening to blow his ship if he doesn’t see Filcher.” There was a long pause and after awhile Jolo thought the comm link had dropped, but then she came back: “Marine 2, please confirm prisoner has a black mechanical right arm.” Jolo smiled behind his Fed facemask. Filcher wanted proof it was Barth. They were in.

  “Roger, Persephony. Prisoner has a black mech arm.”

  Filcher strode into the quarantine room of the Persephony with a security detail, four men in black armor with Fed rifles. Jolo and Greeley, hidden in their Fed blue battle gear, stood on either side of Barthelme, their captive, who had slunk down to the floor. Earlier, Jolo had yelled at one of the grunt deck scrubbers to bring some water, and a nurse came right before Filcher.

  When Filcher entered Barthelme stood and saluted. “Commander Filcher,” he said. “Good to see you.”

  Filcher just stared at him, took a deep breath. “You look like shit. I’m sorry you got shipped out. It’s Admiral now.”

  “Shipped out? Is that what you call it? It’s bad enough they send you to hell, but no one—no one even lifted a finger.”

  “I made some calls,” said Filcher. “Come, lets talk. And you need a chair.” He called for a hover chair, then looked up at Greeley and Jolo. “You two report to the infirmary. You know the protocol.”

  “Commander, I’d appreciate it if these two marines could come along as well,” said Barthelme.

  Filcher tapped on his comm link. “Computer, locate the away team members,” he said. Jolo glanced at Greeley, the big man was scanning for an exit. Jolo shook his head slightly: No. If Greeley ran, they’d shoot him.

  “Away team members 1 and 3 are in the infirmary. 2 and 4 have been flagged for bio-authentication errors,” came the computer’s reply. Instantly the security detail surrounded Jolo and Greeley.

  For a split second Jolo thought to fight, but instead he put his rifle on the floor, and thankfully, so did Greeley.

  Jolo took off his helmet. “Filcher.” And the Admiral stared at Jolo with hard, tired eyes, and then his face softened, a flash of recognition. “We need your help,” Jolo said. “The attack on Duval is real. Barthelme is no criminal. Neither am I.” He stepped toward the his former number two and the guards pushed him back.

  “You’re all three criminals,” said Filcher. “Where are my marines?”

  “On our ship. In the med bay,” said Barth.

  The admiral shook his head in disgust. “Pirates. You guys got balls, I’ll give you that. But damn if you ain’t stupid. Throw them all in the brig,” said Filcher with a wave of his hand, and he walked away.

  Two days later Barth and Jolo were brought in front of the admiral. Both prisoners wore neck rings and handcuffs.

  “Now I’ve got to decide what to do with these idiots,” said Filcher to his security detail. “Leave the pirates here. Wait outside.” Three left, black armor reflecting the lights on the ceiling. Clean and polished, thought Jolo. Not a scratch. Green.

  The team leader of the sec detail was older. He wore the armor from years back that Jolo remembered, small dents from head to toe and dull spots where the suit had been repaired. The man raised his face shield so he could look Filcher in the eye. He wasn’t supposed to leave the commander with prisoners. Filcher’s voice went cold, “Leave.”

  Filcher pressed a button on his console once the marine had gone. “Millicent. I want ears off in my office starting now. And don’t give me shit about the audio records. Dump today’s files and find a creative way to explain it away.”

  “Sorry about those,” said Filch, gesturing at his neck. “Appearances.” Jolo’s hate for his old number two had eclipsed even his hate for the whole Fed. This was a mistake, and he was going to escape, or better yet, kill Filch. He glared at the admiral.

  “It’s good to see you,” said Filch. “The old crew back together again.”

  “Never would’ve known by the last two days,” said Jolo. He suddenly had an urge to put his hands around Filch’s throat. He jumped forward but hit an invisible wall in front of the admiral’s desk. Electricity raced through Jolo’s body starting at his neck. He fell to his knees.

  “Please,” said Filch. “You’ve got to stay put. Please sit down.” Filcher took a pull from his flask and then slid it to Barth. The old engineer took a long drink and handed it to Jolo. “Easy now,” said Filch. “Let’s talk.” Jolo tossed the flask back to Filch. It slid across his desk, knocked off a small, alacyte gunboat model and hit the floor. Filch reached to pick it up.

  Jolo glared at him, wishing he had his gun, wishing they’d never come. They wouldn’t listen. This is what happens when you get mixed up with the Fed, he thought.

  Barth leaned back in his chair and told the story of Jolo Vargas and Duval. He held nothing back: his mistrust of the Fed government, how he believed the BG were still a threat. How the BG were going to destroy Duval and Barc. How Jolo had pulled him from an ice harvester. All the while Filcher had his feet up on his desk. He’d take a pull from the flask then slide it back to Barth.

  Barth finished with “…and now the BG are going to destroy Duval.”

  The admiral put his feet down on the floor, “I know.”

  “Then you’ll help?” said Jolo.

  Filcher hesitated, fingered the large brass buttons on his uniform. Jolo remembered him doing the same thing, standing on the bridge of the Jessica, when he was captain and Filch was second. Filch looked up with a strained face. “No.”

  Jolo instinctively jumped up again, then remembered the neck collar and held his ground.

  “You were always ready to pull the trigger, weren’t you, Captain? Always ready to dive in head first and to hell with regulations, to hell with protocol—common sense!” yelled Filch.

  “At least I fought for the Fed, just like Barth. I don’t remember everything but enough is coming back now. I never trusted you, did I? And now we know who you are. A snake!”

  “No!” said Filch. “I do what’s best for the people always. I always have.”

  “By supporting the unholy alliance with the worms?” said Barth.

  “Barth, you were a fool to stand against it. Why do you think they shipped you off?”

  “And what about when the Fed were gonna send me off to die on a prison planet? You did nothing!” said Jolo.

  “Of course. See, that’s what you two warriors don’t get. There are times when the best course of action is to stand down. But all you know is fight. The alliance would have suffered with Captain Vargas. The military would have risen up again. I’m sorry, Jolo, if that is really who you are. I’m sorry they had no need of you. But it was the best thing at that time. One man steps aside so peace could prevail.”

  “You call destroying Duval peace?” said Jolo.

  “I call it survival. We can’t win. Deep down you know that. But you’d rather run into a brick wall and take everyone down with you. If you fight more humans will die and the black bas—,” he paused here then lowered his voice, “they could wipe us all out. If we stand down they’re gonna let some of us live. Come with me and live. I’m trying to save as many as possible.”

  “You’re just saving yourself,” said Jolo. He stood up and gripped the collar around his neck with both hands. “Then at least let us go back and fight. Coming here was a waste of time. And what kind of life do you think the worms are gonna give you? You think they’re gonna just let you live happily on some beautiful oxygen-rich core world? I imagine it’ll be more like Sotec. You’ll have barely enough to survive and you’ll forget what it was to feel warmth on your face. I’m sure th
ey’ll arrange plenty of work for you.”

  “It won’t be like that,” said Filch defensively.

  “You ain’t seen a prison planet, have you?” said Barth.

  “Once you watch a BG bot pick up a living human and literally throw him into a trash chute to be recycled, you tend to underestimate who you’re up against,” said Jolo. “You figure out quick they don’t give two squirts of piss for your life. For humanity.”

  “It’s not like that. I’ve fought them for years during the war,” said Filch.

  “Yeah, but we were in the Jessica,” said Jolo, “fighting against other space craft. And we won more often than not. We rarely left that boat, rarely got on the ground. There was a kind of honor in those battles. May the best ship win. But down on the ground the BG are killing women, children, whole planets. You lose sight of that in your office here with pictures on the wall of your glory days and young girls bringing you coffee.”

  “But you can’t win,” said Filch.

  “They got more boats, bigger guns, and a bunch of crazy blond assassins,” said Jolo. “But I’d rather die fighting than be you. Your death will be slow. Some cold ass rock with barely enough to eat. Always a BG bot nearby to cut you down if you get any ideas. Yeah, you can have all that you want.” By then Jolo had sat down again and for the first time he felt calm. His direction was clear. He’d finally seen what he didn’t want to become. He took the flask from Barth and drained it, tossed it back to Filch. This time it landed on the desk.

  Filch stood up and pressed a button on his console. “I’m going to save you,” said Filcher. “You’ll thank me later.” The security detail came in and grabbed Jolo and Barthelme. Two of the shiny armored marines jerked Jolo up off the ground roughly and Jolo started to yell at them but realized he couldn’t speak. He shot a glance at Barth and the old engineer looked tired. Jolo stared into the old man’s bright blue eyes. We’re going to get out of here, thought Jolo. And then we’re going to fight.

  Silana, Part II

  Duval

  9 days left

  The synthetic humanoid called Silana sat on the smooth concrete floor of the cell and checked the transponder logs. Every 1.7 seconds an encoded signal tried to reach the BG cruiser in orbit above Duval. But all connection attempts had failed. Merthon had held her captive for exactly 13 days and the log file in her mind was up to 660,709 entries. Each one the same: SIFSURBG 138.387.114.297 conn fail [soft connection reset. Attempting recon…]

  She scanned through the half a million entries a thousand lines at a time, searching for a moment where a connection locked, then timed out. She was underground, surrounded by concrete and there were signal interceptors scanning her transponder, trying to steal any messages that might get through. If she were topside this wouldn’t be an issue. But down here was different. Down here the signal couldn’t reach the cruiser.

  There. She stopped at line 439,924. SIFSURBG 138.387.114.297 conn success 17:39:24. But then four seconds later, before any data could be transmitted, the connection was gone again. What happened in that four second window? She replayed the video of those four seconds and she was lying on the floor of the cell, sedated, and the door was open.

  She sat down again. All she had to do was get a signal up and they’d come for the target. Just one little human, she thought. He had been a captain once, and then he’d been modified by the creator, but still seemed a waste of time. Retrieving the creator would be a bonus. The Emperor would be pleased with her, with all of the Silanas. If only she could get the message beacon out.

  She placed her hands on the cold, smooth wall, sent a small pulse out through the layers of concrete, rock and dirt and waited. An image appeared in her mind, an interpretation of the waves reflected back through her fingers: concrete composed of shale, sand and pebbles a good twenty centimeters thick with steel reinforcement rods crisscrossed throughout, finally giving way to clay, calcium carbonate and a heavy dose of iron-oxide compounds which made the soil look red. She continued to probe. Was there a crack along the wall, a weak spot she could use?

  Time was running out. Her power cell was at 32% and sending pulse charges through rock would drain her and then she’d automatically kick into sleep mode and only the creator would know she wasn’t dead. She sent one last pulse into the wall near the hinges of the thick steel door, and there, alongside the hinge, was a hairline crack in the concrete. It wasn’t much but it was something.

  She leaned back against the wall and looked up, the med bot hovered quietly in the corner. If she attacked the little bot would stun her with an energy blast and force her to restart, which took about 3.42 seconds, giving the creator just enough time to shoot a pathogen dart into her system, then wait an hour, then zap her again and then take a sample, then start the process over. There was no logic. Why would the creator perform tests? The Vellosian made us, he knows how to kill us. None of these experiments would kill a Silana or a Jaylen, who were nearly identical physically yet with different programming. He was searching for something. Probing. What was he looking for?

  She stared for a moment at the round medbot, hovering in the corner almost silent. She ran a pattern recognition scan on the shape and size and found a match instantly. Fed issue, Starwell Medi-bot, made on Carnus in the core worlds. She pulled the data file from her long-term memory. The bot had the usual specs: alacyte shell, super fine glass optics, surgical grade components, though it was too small to move a humanoid patient. This one was used for surgical procedures, mainly. Probably stolen from a Fed ship. Humans hurt each other, kill each other, steal from one another. She looked down at the stump of her arm. Even the creator. And a sensation came over her at that moment and she wondered if it was sadness. She wasn’t programmed for sadness. They are all animals. But not us. She wanted to connect again to the network, to hear the other Silanas. We are one.

  And there, stored in her long-term memory, buried in the spec sheet for the Starwell Medi-bot was the charge time after pulse fire or lazer cut: 5.78 seconds.

  2.38 seconds. That was the window, the time after she woke up yet before the bot could fire again. She stood up and took a step towards the bot. She needed to be as close as possible. Another step, and the bot rose to the corner of the ceiling, she could feel it charging. She jumped and tried to swat it with her one good hand. She knew she wouldn’t touch it, but that wasn’t the point. The dumb little bot did as it was supposed to do and hit her with a small pulse charge. She fell to the ground.

  The bot started recharging immediately. 3.42 seconds later Silana’s eyes popped open and she jumped up again and slapped the bot against the concrete wall while it was still recharging, before it could hit her again with an energy blast. The shell was made of a thin layer of light and tough alacyte, but not strong enough to withstand Silana’s blow. The Starwell bot fell to the floor and Silana picked it up and threw it on the ground as hard as she could. It cracked in half like an egg and spilled its guts, wires and smoke and small shiny bits.

  She started ripping out components, everything connected via thin fibers. Under the retractable surgical arm she found what she was looking for: the laser. It was painfully small. She’d never have thought of it if it hadn’t taken her arm off. She only hoped it was big enough.

  Through the tiny window on the door all she could see was the hall that led down to the storage area the old man used as his private junk yard. She couldn’t see if anyone was in the lab. So she focused on a shiny, round bowl on the shelf, which gave her a stretched and distorted mirror image of the lab. She stared at the still picture, waiting for movement, a hint that the creator was working. But nothing. So she aimed the laser at the hairline crack near the lower hinge and slowly cut into the wall. She grabbed part of the bot’s arm and used it to pry away bits of concrete.

  After twenty minutes there was a pile of fine sand and pebbles at her feet and a hole in the wall leading to a thick, brown metal hinge. The door was alacyte and she knew she couldn’t make a dent in it, but the
part of the hinge that was sunk into the concrete was iron. She aimed the tiny laser at the old piece of metal it went from brown to orange, then cherry red. Soon red molten iron dripped on top of the pile of sand, smoke rising toward the intake vents on the ceiling. Suddenly, the top of the door moved slightly, dust falling down onto the ground as the lower hinge gave way and the door shifted a few millimeters flush against the jamb.

  Silana stopped and stared at the reflection of the lab in the bowl. Still no Vellosian, just blue tanks and a hover bot minding the water, both elongated and surreal. She put the laser down for a moment to cool and checked her power level: 28%. She wondered if the little laser had enough juice to take out the upper hinge. She pushed against the lower part of the door with her good hand and more dust fell down but the door didn’t budge. Yet.

  Certain Things We’d Love to Know

  Duval

  8 days left

  Merthon sat up in the dark and rubbed his temples, his face wet with sweat. His tiny cot one level above the lab was damp. His beautiful synthetic girls that he had originally designed to be domestic help for the core planets, the ones warped by the BG, had tormented him all night in his dreams. Red, pulsating daggers throbbed and jabbed inside his head. There was a loud blast that had awoken him and he didn’t know if it was the synth girls running riot in his mind or something else. Something real.

  Morning would not come for hours but the problem still burned inside him. Jamis left him a door, an escape, a way to crush a large part of the Bakanhe Grana force. But time was running out and answers to a question such as this required a lab. Creating another lab in the midst of a war, on the run, a refugee from yet another destroyed planet, would be difficult.

  He slipped on his tunic and the clumsy boots he wore that almost fit his thin, Vellosian feet, and wound his way up the spiral stairs that led to the kitchen. He made tea in the dark, then took the lift topside. Sometimes he liked to see the stars in the quiet, before all hell broke loose. Evacuation had finally taken the fore. Fighting the BG, taking down towers, had been a distraction from reality. But the facts of their situation had settled in and taken root in their hearts. It was time to say goodbye.