by John Lane
Sutton was mostly right. They were immediately challenged. “Who are you?” an older pirate asked.
“We’ve been clearing up the routing circuits to trace the problem.” Sutton answered. The old pirate brought up a scanner to Tania’s tattoo. She apparently checked out. Then he turned to scan Sutton’s. She turned to drop her pants and kneed him in the face as he bent to inspect her tattoo. She then pulled out a small goo gun and gooed the remainder of the crew in the room.
Tania locked down the main hatch and the tunnel hatch. “We may not have much time,” she informed the Admiral. “And this isn’t the central control.” Tania referred to a flow chart she brought up on a large screen to one side of the room. “She is.” Tania pointed to a wall of windows that looked down on a clean white room. The room appeared empty except for a single medical chair. That was occupied.
“What is that, a sculpture?” Sutton asked as she gazed into the clean room. A metallic woman in a pirate uniform occupied the chair. She didn’t move, but her eyes appeared to glow and pulse with energy. “Is that a robot?”
“No, Admiral.” Tania moved to another console. “These appear to be brain wave patterns. And this diagram indicates that there are data leads going through the chair into her head. She has a human brain, mostly.” Tania typed in a command to clear up the visual data and showed Sutton a schematic of the head. Most of it was organic, but some portions had been replaced with biomechanical interface elements. The diagram key read “Cassiopeia.”
“Can you disrupt the data feeds from here?” Sutton asked.
“I think I can feed false data, but I don’t believe the main data flows through these consoles. The data goes to her first. These are just repeater systems,” Tania spoke with authority. Data was her expertise and information systems were her playground. She did what she could to control, delay, mislead and disrupt the data.
“She’s squirming in her chair.” Sutton said, fascinated by the figure below her. Cassiopeia’s eyes dimmed, and the lids opened. Sutton still saw the person behind those eyes, and she wasn’t happy. Hoping that her goo would slow down this silver woman, she ran to a hatch that joined the clean room from the control room. Inside a metal balcony overlooked Cassie’s chair. Sutton took her stance, aimed and fired.
*****
The smirk never left Cassie’s face, even when she panicked about losing control of the environmental systems. Then the power fluctuations began to hit in random systems throughout the facility. These minor systems she shunted to lower level programs. But when so much went wrong at once, Cassie put the pieces together. They were being attacked from the inside.
She focused on the Postal Service ship in the middle of their field. It all seemed to begin when it landed. Someone kept her busy dealing with these minor systems as a distraction. She checked, and yes, there was a disruption of the function. The line of caskets had stopped, and a heating problem erupted in the silo. Her records showed a technician had already arrived. She tried to pull up his records and found no matching facial recognition ID for this pirate. Cassie accessed the video feeds only to find them iced over or fog blocking the view. This was not acceptable.
Once her data started to clear up, she calmed down and focused on the attack. But it was still very odd data. Then she double checked her records. All of her data was exactly the same as it had been for two hours. Even the time stamps on files were copied. She was being tricked. She turned over her monitoring systems to automatic subroutines and closed her link.
Cassie opened her eyes. The first and almost last thing she saw was unbelievable to her. She recognized Admiral Sutton on the balcony over her, taking aim and firing.
Goo balls hit her chest and face. The chest shot was of no consequence as she had wisely taken Brutus’ orders and wore a standard combat jumpsuit. Her suit dissipated the goo charge. The shot in the face should have shorted out her systems. But now that she had a battle ready body, it only slowed her down. Her mind was clear, just her visual and audio receptors were dazed.
She flipped out of her chair and slipped under it. It wasn’t much cover, but it gave her time to recover from the attack. She drew her weapon. Not meant to incapacitate, her small fully automatic pistol shot lead. Good old-fashioned bullets. She really didn’t care if she punched holes clean through the walls of the shelter. They could all suffocate for all she cared. Her attackers and her pirates could all die together.
A second infiltrator emerged from the monitor room hatch. “Here! Take this.” The new infiltrator handed Sutton a needle gun and carried one of her own, taken from Cassie’s staff. Cassie fumed at the thought of being shot at with her own weapons. Where were her guards? She wondered. “Aim for the eyes,” the second woman said.
Cassie knew she couldn’t stay under the chair. This new girl was bright. She made her way along the balcony that circled the clean room to get a better angle and trap Cassie. Sutton circled the other direction. The room only had the chair as any kind of cover. She cut loose with a round of automatic fire from her gun.
Sutton ducked as the bullets passed over her and lodged in the wall above her head. “That’s insane,” Sutton yelled. “You’ll blow holes in the exterior walls and open us up to vacuum.” Cassie leapt for the stairs that led up to the balcony and Sutton’s position.
As she angled through the air under the low gravity, she felt needles from the other’s weapon rip through her blouse. They shredded her clothing but bounced off her body.
Cassie rotated her body to return fire, to be met with an additional volley of needles from both her enemies. She fought to protect the only vulnerable part of her body, her eyes. But it was too little, a needle caught one of her eyeballs before she could close her lids. She crashed into the stair, crushing it and imbedding into the wall.
They approached from different directions to inspect her damage. She tossed away a piece of railing and step to pull herself out of the debris. “That wasn’t nice at all. And I have…, had such pretty eyes,” Cassie complained. All over her silver head tiny hatches rotated and a sensor grid appeared. Cassie could see in all directions and in more than just the visible spectrum of light. She still had control over her environment, too. She killed the lights.
Chapter 18: Fall of the Ogre
There wasn’t much cover in the ballroom. Alfred, Prime and Beta, crept cautiously through the arched doorway leading down several long steps to the dance floor. Advancing with their backs to each other, Prime held his sabre out in en guard while Beta kept his pistol raised. Beta supported the gun in his good hand while he braced it with the stump of his other arm, cut off just below the wrist.
They both sighted down their weapons and kept their ears open, ready for an attack. The Alfreds reached the center of the dance floor when a renaissance quartet started playing a madrigal from the raised dais at the far end of the room. They were opaque and ghostly. As the melody picked up, ghostly dancers appeared and began to swirl around the two substantial figures in the center.
Beta said, “I’ve seen this in an amusement park ride.”
“Me too, but this isn’t amusing. It’s a distraction,” Prime observed. Alfred took a swipe at a passing couple. His blade passed completely through them. They danced on undisturbed. “These are unused subroutines. Just bits of data that haven’t been deleted.”
They made their way to the edge of the dance floor. Large open windows let in the cool night air and were guarded by decorative suits of armor. Prime and Beta continued to scan the room watching for signs of Brutus as Jasper, but there was no musketeer present.
They worked their way around the edge of the room. As they passed the last window, the blade of a broad sword dropped toward Beta’s head. He raised his gun to fire but could only meet the blade with the metal of his gun. The momentum of the blade knocked the gun from his hand.
Alfred Prime and Beta switched places so Prime could engage the knight with his sabre. It was a smaller and quicker weapon with which Alfred should be able
to defeat the armored figure attacking them. Instead, they were beaten back by the knight daftly wielding the broadsword.
As they were driven back along the row of windows, Beta relieved another knight of his shield. “Catch,” he shouted and tossed it to Alfred Prime. Beta then took the remaining broadsword for himself and turned to attack.
With both Alfreds now armed, they held their ground. They pressed their advantage of superior numbers, driving the knight down to the dance floor. Alfred Prime, using the shield as a ram, knocked the knight to the floor. Since they already ignored any rules of engagement, he kicked the helmet off the knight. Beta was about to strike when they were confronted, not with the face of Jasper Zephyr, but Caesar Zephyr.
That moment of hesitation gave Caesar Brutus time to roll away from Beta’s hacking blade and regain his stance. The music grew louder and crescendoed. Caesar let out a blood chilling war cry and ran at Beta, ignoring Alfred Prime. With only a single hand to hold the broadsword, Beta did the best he could to block the oncoming attack, but his grasp of the blade was awkward at best. With a single swipe of his sword, Caesar lopped off Beta’s head. His body dissolved as his head hit the floor and rolled toward the windows.
The momentum of his charge carried Caesar across the room. Alfred Prime dropped his sabre and ran to his copy’s head. He fell to his knees. Alfred Prime embraced the head of his copy, cradling it in his free arm.
“Sorry, brother,” Beta whispered.
“We’re good,” Alfred consoled. They knew that the dissolving body represented lost data from the copy’s experience. But, they hadn’t been separated that long, and the head contained the most recent, most important information. Alfred had to get out of Brutus’ core processor and at least to the level playing field of the network before he could download Beta’s data.
That’s when he saw the bridges outside the windows. In this representative construct, they had to be the interfaces to the network. If he could get on to the bridge, he could escape the blocks that Brutus placed on him.
Alfred found he had changed to a pike man, his shield replaced with the pole and spearhead. The change wasn’t his idea. He tucked Beta under his tunic, and he ran for a bridge.
“Now that’s a better outfit for your station, my good foe,” Brutus, wearing Caesar’s face, commented as he stepped to block Alfred’s way. He brought his broad sword down where Alfred’s head was a moment before. Alfred dodged to one side and avoided getting his head and thus his code cleaved in two.
“Think, Alfred, think,” he mumbled. “You’ve got no armor, a pike against a broad sword and it takes two hands to wield. You’ve only got one hand free. It’s also wood against metal.”
“Bowling,” the muffled voice of Beta said from beneath his tunic.
“Bowling? Yes!”
By now Caesar Brutus regained his offensive stance. With his feet planted wide and his blade held high over a shoulder once again he started his swing. Alfred, expecting the attack, pulled Beta’s head out of his tunic and began a charge at Brutus. As he approached, he rolled Beta’s head between Brutus’ legs. Catching the blade on the spearhead of his pike, Alfred pivoted to deflect the blow. Being able to grasp his pike in both hands, he followed through with the pole of his pike tripping Brutus off balance. Brutus fell hard on his back.
Alfred had a chance to drive his pike into Caesar Brutus’ face or cross the bridge and interface with his Beta copy. Instead Alfred dropped his pike and ran. Once he stepped on the bridge, he felt more control and changed back into his ship suit. As he ran, he scooped up Beta’s head. He stepped off the other side of the bridge to the road.
“Thank you for your service, brother,” Alfred said, cradling Beta’s face in his hands.
“Isn’t that kind of formal?” Beta quipped.
“Sure it is. Just getting into the whole knight in shining armor thing,” Alfred smiled back.
“Okay then. I pass on my life and my knowledge.” Beta shared his data and dissolved back into Alfred’s code.
Alfred chose knowledge over murder. It would still come to that, but he had been on Brutus’ home ground and at a disadvantage. Now he stood to face his opponent across the bridge, which was more common ground.
What faced him was not the knight. Standing across the bridge was a Roman General with short sword, shield, and helmet. The face he wore was Cassius Brutus.
“Nice to meet you face to face,” Alfred said.
“I show you my true face, my core face, so you know that a mere security program has defeated a haughty artificial being.” Brutus spat this out and spat on the ground in derision.
“Sure, I can do that,” Alfred replied. And he stood on the opposite side of the bridge, now clothed in furs and leather straps. He carried a double bladed battleax and a wooden shield. He was a barbarian. “Appropriate I think. After all, who defeated Rome?” A flash of lightning struck the castle, and a crash of thunder rolled across the sky. Alfred smiled as the blue white intensity flashed across his face. He knew where that was coming from in the virtual reality. The castle behind Brutus was crumbling and caught fire.
His main code faced the warrior before him. They both let out a battle cry as they ran to meet each other in the center of the bridge.
*****
“Where there is an Alpha there is an Omega. The galaxy is inside out and upside down. That makes me the Alpha,” she had said. Tommy thought, it’s a puzzle. It’s another puzzle she’s given me. He had been wrapped up in his own pain. Seeing his mother at all was painful. Right now, Tommy had to get past that pain and solve another puzzle.
His mother used to send him puzzles. His father would help, but they were for Tommy to unravel. Each one was designed to teach something. Often they were scientific. Sometimes the puzzle was an ethical issue. Tommy used to love them and looked forward to the next postal delivery from his mother. It was as close as he would ever get to feeling loved by the mother who left him. So many puzzles he solved. But the one puzzle for which he’d never gotten a resolution was why his mother abandoned him.
Focus Tommy. He turned away from his mother’s casket. You’ve survived this long by using that brain of yours, he thought. Then Tommy realized that brain of his had been trained to solve problems. He was trained to solve puzzles. His mother gave him, perhaps the only gift she could.
“Inside out and upside down,” he mumbled. “Up is down. And in is out.” Then pieces fell into place. They were being monitored by the Brutus code or some subroutine of it. He must respond with caution. It had a literal understanding, so the puzzle was code. Tommy adopted the code to communicate and understand his mother.
“Okay Mother. I won’t believe a word you say. It’s all an inside out lie.” Tommy began to understand. “I will stop you from spreading your vile plague across the galaxy.” He turned back to her. “Don’t bother to help me. I don’t trust anything you say.”
Annie opened her eyes from inside her casket. A smile spread across her lips. He’d gotten her puzzle. She was proud of him. “Please, don’t let those vats along the wall freeze. It will destroy the virus.” Meaning since you’re not the Alpha, the patient zed, you’re the Omega, the antivirus for the plague, and I’ve got to preserve those vats to spread the cure across the galaxy. And freezing won’t kill the virus. Very clever mother, Tommy thought.
Tommy looked around the silo with new understanding. She planned on freezing the virus in a pirate body or just a hibernation casket would preserve it for transport. The Reapers were cooking the virus from his mother’s blood and spreading the disease by infecting their own disciples. Instead, Annie had tricked Brutus into spreading a vaccine protecting the galaxy’s population from the virus.
Tommy inspected the readouts from the control console on his mother’s casket. She was drained. She really couldn’t give any more. The store of vaccine in the vats should be enough to inoculate several populated settlements and let them grow their own.
Tommy adjusted the cooling units on t
he vats to freeze the vaccine. Next, he checked the inventory of caskets to discover that three million were already processed and loaded back aboard the ships. Some of those ships had launched. Of those, less than one hundred thousand had pirates hibernating in them with their tattoo interfaces ready to spread an accompanying cyber virus. There was a pirate with each shipment.
Now he had to save his mother. Tommy examined all the readouts and tubes running in and out of his mother. “Wow,” he thought. “Where do I begin? I’m a trained engineer, not a medical doctor.” He knew that he would have to maintain her oxygen supply. That was easy, but which tube contained nutrients and which one did he need to shut down to stop the bloodsucking machines from draining her life?
“Mother, no games now. I’ve got to save you and you’ve got to help me.” Tommy pressed his forehead against the lid of her casket, and with his arms spread hugging the thing, he pleaded, “Please, Mother. Help me save you.”
Annie slept. The effort was draining her energy. Her eyes fluttered open. She smiled up at her son. Her voice came from the casket. “You need to shut down the flow of medication in a certain order. This will take time as my body adjusts.” She instructed, “First shut down the erythropoietin. It increases blood production. Watch the levels. When the indicators show my blood viscosity is normal, shut down the blood thinners.”
“Okay shut down thickener, then thinner.” Tommy accessed the medical console of the casket and did as he was told. “Got it. Now what?”
“Now we wait to see if she lives,” a strangely familiar voice came through Tommy’s earbud.
“Alfred Beta?” Tommy queried. “Alfred Prime, is that you?”
“No, Thomas.” The voice was similar to Alfred and should be. It was deeper and sounded heavier. “I’m your father.” And then it chuckled. “I’ve always wanted to use that line.”