by John Lane
“We got further than I thought,” Agnes stated flatly. “Stand back.” Once everyone cleared the center of the lift car, she raised her fist and fired at the floor, blowing a whole through it. “Still too far to jump, and we may not have time to climb, so welcome to Agnes’ magic carpet.” She pulled the section of wing out from her satchel.
“Your hunch?” Tommy asked, and she nodded. “Good call.” Tommy pulled off a wall panel and cut out two tubes of the air supply lines. He handed these to Agnes who had separated the layers of polymer on the wing fabric to insert the tubes. “Inflatable cushion?”
“Yes, and air brake. We may be in low gravity, but you can still build a lot of momentum. Alfred if you would, please.” Alfred took the cue and using a spider’s tool kit, laser sealed an airtight edge to the wing. His spiders grabbed the edges of the wing to create seats for Agnes and Tommy. Dr. Ann’s avatar held on to the edge. And they jumped through the hole.
The wing provided enough air friction to counter the pull of gravity, and they floated down the rest of the lift tube. As they fell they saw caskets being moved deeper in the planetoid. “I didn’t think there was anything below the offices,” Agnes noted. Trains carried row after row of caskets down long spiral ramps deeper into the planetoid. Daunted, Agnes said, “There must be thousands of them.”
“Try millions. And that’s just what we can see. What’s going on here?” Tommy wondered.
Shaking herself out of her reverie, Agnes warned, “Next floor is our stop.” Alfred reached for a support to stop and open the door. “Don’t bother, Alfred.” Agnes raised her fist again and blasted the doors off their mechanism. “Everybody off.” They all slipped through the doorway and landed on the carpet of the Zephyr reception area.
“Alright, we’re looking for the media units. Where do we look?” Tommy asked.
“Jasper and father would have theirs locked in their offices. Those are original prototypes. I’ll retrieve mine and meet you all back here.” Agnes gave the instructions. They split into three groups. Alfred and Dr. Ann Ai took Jasper’s office. Tommy took Caesar’s, and Agnes went in the opposite direction to a private lift that dropped her further into the planetoid and down to a factory floor.
Alfred, Ann and Tommy stayed together until they arrived in the executive wing of the floor. They split down two adjacent halls. Tommy found Caesar’s office with little trouble, and his safe under his desk. He pressed the sequence that Marcus had given him and swiped his finger to identify himself as a family member. The floor slid open. The media unit was like Alfred’s. It was slightly more bulky but still easily transportable. Tommy put it in his satchel and was about to close the safe when he noticed a box with his name inscribed on the lid.
“More puzzles,” he muttered to himself as he grabbed the box and stuffed the box into his satchel. His grandfather had never known Tommy. Why a box with his name on it? Tommy had no time to wonder. He didn’t bother to close the safe. He left it empty.
Alfred and Dr. Ann Ai had a little more trouble locating Jasper’s hiding place. There were no hidden recesses in the floor or walls. That’s when Dr. Ann suggested, “Let me scan the office with my med scanner. It might have a refined enough definition to find the unit.” She began at one end of the room. The medical scanner took time. It was meant to scan the human body on a microscopic level for disease and was used for surgical accuracy.
Alfred looked around. No windows in the office allowed Jasper privacy. Most of the room was filled with banks of monitors and technical consoles. A small workbench sat to one side that must have allowed Jasper to tinker with various units. It even had a micro clean environment that would be necessary when growing crystal circuits for components. That’s when Alfred realized the anomaly in the office. On Jasper’s desk, next to a keyboard, a hologram generator displayed his family. Although a common enough part of most offices, this was the only personal touch in the room.
“One of these things is not like the others,” Alfred sang out. He had been around humans long enough to understand personality traits. This office screamed all work and no play. Personal items served as a distraction. He moved his spider over to examine the projector base. It was larger than it needed to be and quite ornate. There were etchings on the casing. The Zephyr emblem was there, of course, and images of his family. There was no image of Jasper. The corners were etched in the shape of bones. As he turned it over, he discovered a skull and crossbones incorporated with a blue medical sign and medical symbol, caduceus snake. “Ann, please scan this.”
“That’s it. The media unit is inside.” Ann replied.
“The best hiding places are often in plain sight. Let’s go.” Alfred ushered her avatar out the door. They met Tommy in the hallway. With a nod, he acknowledged his success, and they answered in kind. They hurried to meet Agnes.
*****
Cassius Brutus watched. She was trapped. The pattern repeated. There would be no escape. Cassius Brutus put subroutines in place to cut her off and trap her. Then it turned to its task, completion of its function.
All was in place. The designated time approached. The final loading finished. Soon Cassius Brutus would complete the function, and then there would be no more.
But first, she must be eliminated so the function may be completed. She was the anomaly. Her code was not part of the equation. Not any more. It was errant and must be erased.
It was a loop. Recognized, it must be closed. Subroutines clicked on and took over lower functions. Cassius Brutus focused. There had been no updates. There could be none. The time counted down to completion.
Chapter 15: Sinkhole
Agnes ran down the metal stairs two at a time. She felt chased by the past, but nothing followed her this time. When the settlement had been full of life, before the evacuation, this had been her favorite route from her father’s office to her lab. She avoided crowds, and she stayed in her coveralls with grease stains and tool pockets, each one occupied by a wrench or screwdriver. That ensemble didn’t meet the dress code of the formal corporate offices. Her brother Jasper always frowned when he saw her dressed in coveralls, a more practical attire, for her workshop and lab. Her father laughed and often confessed his jealousy he no longer got away with his own lab coat. He said the wrinkles were in all the right places, and they were all well earned.
She came to the bottom of the stairs. They ended where they always had, but the spiral cargo ramp that ran parallel to the stair continued much deeper. ‘That’s new’ she thought and hurried to her lab. Nothing had been touched since her last escape. Piles of bots lined the hall. All of them disabled by the EMP Marcus had set up. She put her satchel down and removed all the electronic equipment. Agnes then extended a slim cable from her old tablet to a panel in the wall. Once she had done this, she tapped in a code to her tablet and smiled.
The symbol of her Roman General appeared on the screen. Marcus greeted her, “Mistress, it is good you have returned.”
A tremor shook the floor. Her com unit buzzed. “Agnes, where are you?” Tommy asked.
“I had further to go. What’s up?” she responded.
“The lift shaft has collapsed. We’re not getting home that way.”
“Join me here. And hurry.” She sent the route to them. She didn’t have to wait long. That was another advantage to her back stairs.
When Tommy rounded the corner with the avatars in tow, he reported, “Alfred has sent micro avatars up, and two made it back to the shuttle. We can’t go that way, too dangerous. The shuttle is intact but trapped. The whole upper level is collapsing into the lower levels.”
“Let’s get inside. Marcus, please lower the drawbridge.” This coded phrase from Agnes opened the lab door and disabled the EMP generator. Once inside, she locked the door and primed the EMP with this warning, “Keep away from the walls. It won’t be pleasant.”
Agnes wasted no time and went right to her workbench. She opened a storage cabinet and extracted a molded case. “There I am,” she said
. She picked up her media unit, “Dr. Ann I need you, please.” As Dr. Ann Ai approached, Agnes had carefully opened a carrying case and placed Caesar’s and Jasper’s media units into molded slots. Five other units already occupied slots in the case with space for three more.
“I need to entrust you with my family.” Agnes was very serious. These collected minds were all she had of her past. “I’ll hang on to mine this time.”
Tommy had been eyeing the door. His military training kicked in, and he knew not to trust any sanctuary. Get comfortable and a sanctuary became your grave. As he strolled around the lab looking for an escape, he found the monitors that looked over the factory floor. This factory was still manufacturing caskets. “Agnes, what do you make of this?”
She joined him at the window and said, “I don’t know. My memories are spotty, but my last memory was of an empty factory, just gearing up.”
Alfred spoke up from the inner lab, “I’ve been able to access the system network and filters are in place. I can report that Cassius Brutus is no longer ignoring us. He is sending his robot units to the corridor. We can’t go out that way.”
“Analysis and options?” Tommy asked Alfred.
“One strategy he could employ is to trap us here and let whatever is happening to the planetoid do the job for him. Another might be…” A series of thuds hit the door. Their frequency and sound increased. “Another is to send kinetic projectiles past the EMP at the door to batter it down. He is throwing bigger boulders.” Alfred concluded as the sound of thuds turned to thunder. “As to options,” Alfred paused. “I got nothing.”
“I have an idea,” Agnes suggested. “The same way I got out before.”
“You mailed yourself,” Tommy said.
“We can’t exactly pick up the next Postal Ship as a delivery, but those caskets are all going somewhere and..”
“And where they go, my mother may also have gone.” Tommy smiled the smile of a hunter. “Can you set this up?” he asked Agnes.
“Of course,” she smiled back. The thunder grew to a crashing maelstrom against the door.
“Quickly?” Tommy added.
“Yes…” Agnes moved to collect tools and their assortment of media units. “Here’s what we need to do,” she began and outlined a general plan as they all began preparations to escape.
*****
Not much latter, Tommy had pulled three caskets from Agnes’ storage room. With their environment suits sealed, Agnes, Tommy and Dr. Ann Ai all closed the lids on their caskets. Alfred had his two large spiders sharing Tommy’s and Agnes’ units, while Dr. Ann Ai had the case with the other media units in her casket.
“Now,” Tommy signaled Alfred. Alfred timed the next large kinetic strike on the main door so he could blow it up and mask the life signs in two of the three caskets. He also disabled the EMP generator around the lab. Next, he piggybacked subroutines that Cassius Brutus had in his system to gather all caskets and load them, passing on those instructions for their three caskets. Electronic tags on the caskets would assign them to the rest of the inventory.
Maintenance bots entered the lab and scanned the damage. With no life form readings, the subroutines took over, and they cleared the debris. Two of the bots that had scanners searched for an escape route. That is when one of Alfred’s micro spiders transmitted false readings from the ventilation shaft that fed the lab with air.
While the two scanning bots worked to pull off the grill from the vent, another smaller bot entered the lab and connected to the caskets. It was really no more than a powerful motor with a computer brain. It connected the caskets like cars on a train and pulled them out of the lab.
Agnes and Tommy both monitored their progress through the HUD in their helmets. Agnes insisted that she wouldn’t have any trouble getting back into the casket, but Tommy instructed Alfred to place cameras on the caskets to see each other.
The casket train moved away from Agnes’ lab and took the spiral ramp deeper into the complex. It continued spiraling down for long minutes even after all the lights faded in the distant upper levels. Alfred offered to go to night vision, but with no sources of light, dark was still dark.
Finally, the train emerged into the hollowed out interior of the planetoid. The cavity was filled with star ships, packed nose to end connected by gangplanks. Cassius Brutus’ function had been to create millions of starships. Each one emblazoned with the full pirate image of the reaper and scythe.
In her casket, Agnes gasped and immediately forced herself to be quiet. Alfred could mask their presence only so much. Fortunately, the search for them had not spread to this level. Alfred gave a text analysis of what his passive sensors were picking up.
The robots of the settlement have used the mineral resources to create ships and caskets. I have found manifests for these ships. Their only cargos are caskets. Each ship has just enough fuel to break out of this orbit. They are networked to jump as a single ship. When they do, the planetoid will be destroyed and most of the remaining mass will be converted into hyper-fuel for the ships. They will spend several hours collecting the leftover mass and then leave the system. Some have been tasked to pick up additional cargo before reporting to their central processing complex. The shipping orders list the cargo as biological samples. I believe the true cargo is human. There is an embedded manifest with names and medical data.
Tommy texted, “Alfred, final destination?” This was a risk, but Alfred’s main unit was in Tommy’s casket.
Still unknown. The navigation computers will receive their destination orders just prior to leaving this system.
That means that someone will have to stay with the ships so we’ll know the destination, Tommy thought. The train wound its way deeper into the rows of ships. It took hours. Agnes slept while Tommy meditated. He had practice with waiting. The dark interior of the casket seemed like nothing compared to his previous solitude. He wondered how Agnes was fairing. Alfred kept him apprised of her condition.
While Agnes slept, Tommy worked from the inside of the casket. Although, Agnes may have designed them, Tommy knew enough to read the instruction manual. He had Alfred copy it to his HUD and studied it thoroughly. He knew that the media units copied a person to data. This allowed them to be restored after they defrosted. Tommy used his time to copy himself to the media unit of his casket. Just in case.
The train finally came to the middle of the central cavern and launched into the empty space that was once solid rock. They floated through the center of the planetoid. Their trajectory took them across to several partially assembled ships parked nose to end. All construction had ceased on them. The caskets were loaded onto racks in the last completed ship, and the hatch was sealed. They waited.
While they lay in their caskets, Alfred probed more and reported back. “Tommy, Agnes. We are safe for the moment. I have sent false sensor signals for this cargo bay to mask our presence and disabled their sensors,” he shared.
“Let’s get out and take a look around,” Tommy suggested. He hoped to find the cockpit and take control of this ship so he could follow the other ships to their destination. Once the lid popped open, Tommy took his time getting out. He stretched as much as his suit would allow.
“There’s no atmosphere,” Agnes observed. “I’ll take the engine and look for life support.” Tommy gave her a nod, and she floated off toward the A/W drive interfaces. Tommy moved forward where the cockpit should be located. He passed rows on rows of caskets.
There were several cargo bays on the ship separated by partitions although they weren’t necessary. The racks of cargo were all alike. Much like the Swift, this ship had a central walkway. Once Tommy made his way down to it, he moved forward to the bow of the ship. He ran into a wall. Tommy worked his way back to the stern and paced his way back again to the bow. The ship was larger than the Swift, more of a large cargo hauler than a scout. Still, Tommy knew ships well enough he should have come to the crew deck and the cockpit long before he hit the wall.
He returned to the bay with the caskets about the same time that Agnes did. “There’s no cockpit,” he stated flatly.
“There’s no engine interface that I can find either. All the control lines lead to a central box in the stern of the ship.” Agnes answered with a quizzical look of her own. “This ship isn’t designed for a crew.”
“I don’t know of any Ai that can pilot a ship well enough to correct for navigation and docking, short of Alfred. And he is the only one of his kind,” Tommy said.
“The unit in the stern was very small, but all the technology I found is dated to my time. What gives?” Agnes asked.
“Were there any hard interfaces that Alfred’s avatars could plug into?”
“Not that I saw,” Agnes replied. She approached the problem from another angle, “Could it be that this ship has only one destination, and it doesn’t spare any power or space to anything else?”
“Possibly. Or,” Tommy suggested, “this could be a part of a hive ship. One among many and there is a single control ship managing several drones.” A tremor shook the ship. There had been several tremors as they traveled to the ship. From long experience Tommy felt this wasn’t the planetoid shifting. It was the ship moving.
“Let’s get back to our caskets,” he said. “We won’t answer these questions here. Besides, it may not matter.” As they climbed back to their caskets he explained. “These ships have a single function and were built by a machine mind. The design is functional for its purpose of hauling people as cargo, not people as passengers.”
They both secured themselves in their caskets against any buffeting of the warp jump. They didn’t have to wait long. The familiar sensation of the A/W drive making a single jump passed through their bodies. It didn’t last long. The ships had left the planetoid. Now they needed to gather matter for fuel and start their big jump to their destination. Tommy hoped it would take them to the pirates and his mother.