by K J Heritage
And I don’t care.
My only concern now is to collapse the hyperspace array without Ariadne getting in the way. And if she couldn’t stop herself killing Drex, she could still kill me.
A sudden spike of warning from Ariadne, and a port below vents a gas of some kind. It freezes instantly into a jet of frozen particles. An attempt to sandblast my skinsuit and knock me into space. I have just enough time to twist myself out of the way.
Ariadne is trying to help me, I realise. Something she couldn’t do for Drex, which means I have an advantage…
The glowing legs of the Snag Array stretch over a hundred feet away from the bulbous fuselage. Their tips disappearing in and out of existence as they ride the hyperspace wake. Eerily silent. Beautiful—if I cared about such things. I concentrate on the now. Ariadne will have more surprises for me along the way if I attempt to crawl along the outer hull. There is only one thing for it—to ride the Wake.
The Snag Array pushes Ariadne forwards, like the prow of an ancient water ship, creating a sizable wake around herself. If I were to jump away from the ship, the wake would pick me up and fling me out behind her, my body ripped apart by the same eddies and currents I successfully navigated to get aboard.
I will need some way to stop myself from being ‘washed away’. Drex had the same idea. He tried to latch himself onto the fuselage using the umbilicals. Self-deploying tethers found outside the airlock and at regular points along the ship’s skin. But something went wrong. Did Ariadne deliberately untether him, so that he fell into the wake? It seems a likely possibility.
I will need another way to anchor myself. But how? The only option is to roll the dice and hope I can grab a hold onto one of the leg stanchions as I fly past them. At this point, I can’t see any other option.
Damn!
Another warning from Ariadne. A section of the outer fuselage—an inspection hatch the size of a sewer grate—is blasted outwards. It gets caught by the wake and flies straight at me. I flatten myself on the hull and it misses by inches. I want to thank Ariadne, but her mind is still too powerful, too disjointed and confused. Psychologically damaged beyond repair.
I shake my head, pushing Ariadne away. Whatever I have to do, I have to do it now. I’m about to take my chances and jump untethered into the wake when I notice pipes and wires spilling from the recently blasted, open hatch in Ariadne’s fuselage. I crawl quickly over to it, ripping the tubes and wiring free and tying them to my wrists and ankles, spreading out from me like roots in a zero-grav hydroponics bay. Giving me a way of latching on to the Snag Array.
Another section of the fuselage is blown, and again Ariadne warns me. I let the debris fly past and launch myself behind it, trailing wires, tubes and flexi-pipes like the tentacles of some strange space creature. I’m floating roughly ten feet above the ship, but the wake is pushing me higher. I can’t afford to get too far away, otherwise I’ll sail straight past the array and into the hyperspace field—like what happened to poor Drex. I do the only thing I can do. An emergency procedure. I command the suit’s nanofibres to vent a small amount of air, before quickly closing again, a burst of gas pushing me downwards. The legs of the vast Snag Array fly towards me at speed and, with a gasp of terror, I realise I’m still too high. I vent more air, but it’s hopeless.
I’m going to sail right past the array and into the hyperspace wake!
A trailing wire on my ankle snags on one of the upturned stanchions and I’m suddenly floundering, twisting and turning—like a fish on the end of a line. I quickly grab a hold of the wire and reel myself in, inches away from the Hyperspace field that would rip me into so many disparate atoms.
I goddamn made it!
I take a few moments to curb the frantic beating of my heart and orientate myself, spotting the control node on the central leg. I use the burn torch to cut myself free of the entangled wires and pull myself through a series of tight connecting struts until I’m hovering over the small boxlike structure. I use the burn torch a second time to create a small opening, and thrust the can of sealant deeply inside, programming it to deploy in thirty seconds.
I pull myself back along the central leg towards the ship. If I’m successful, and the legs retract, Ariadne will smoothly enter normal space. And I need to be as close to the ship as possible.
Twenty seconds. Ten. Five. Four, three, two, one…
The node explodes silently behind me, and I feel a stab of emotion akin to sorrow from Ariadne. She was aiding me, and yet I sense she didn’t want to be stopped.
Did she want to die?
I have little time to ponder. The legs begin to retract, folding in on themselves. I’m hit from behind by a collapsing strut, it knocks me forwards, slamming me into the fuselage. I scrabble to find a handhold, but it’s too late. The hyperspace field collapses and I’m spun backwards, forwards and inside out before smashing face-first into a wall of blackness.
“WELCOME BACK, buddy!”
I open my eyes.
Strategist Stranng is standing above me, his eyes glinting. “Seems like you only went and goddamn did it.”
I’m lying on a bunk in the ship’s tiny, but functional medibay, Shereena looking down at me with concern, her face full of apology. She wants to speak but can’t seem to find the words. She betrayed me and is full of guilt and sorrow. It radiates from her in massive waves until I realise those emotions are not coming from Shereena, but from Ariadne.
“How is he?” Stranng says.
Shereena tilts her head to one side. “Beat up, bruised, and still emaciated. But he’s okay.”
“What happened?” I croak at Stranng.
The Strategist ignores me.
“Speak to me! That’s a goddamn order!”
“Talking of orders,” he says, rather too pleased with himself. “I’ve recently been informed that your rank as a member of the Secondary Executive has been unfortunately rescinded by the Company. Seems like they wanted me back in charge, and I’m not about to argue with them. Which means you don’t tell me what to do ever again, you get me?”
I take in the information with an annoyed nod of my head. “How did I get here? The last thing I remember is disabling the Snag Array.”
“You sure saved the day,” Stranng replies. “I was itching to blow you outta hyperspace, you sure cut it close. But you did it. Demoted or not, that’s quite an achievement.”
“But how?”
“We picked you up floating alongside the Ariadne,” Stranng replies.
“What in space were you doing outside the ship when you re-entered normal space?” Shereena asks me. “We thought you hadn’t made it. That was very lucky.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” I snap back at her. “What about the others?”
“The survivors are being ferried back as we speak,” Stranng barks. “Three people out of a contingent of forty-three ain’t a good percentage. The Ariadne was in total shutdown when the rescue crew boarded her. All systems dead. I’ve been ordered to leave her out there until a specialist team turns up. Which suits me down to the ground.”
“Her systems are dead?” I feel for Ariadne again. She’s still there, although I sense something else. A desperate desire for freedom. For escape. And something else. Something dark and threatening.
“Dead as space,” Stranng answers. “What the hell happened over there?”
“I’ll put it all in my report,” I reply. “Not that the Company will give a damn. But we have more important concerns. You need to take me to the bridge, now!”
“Didn’t you hear me? You’re not my superior any more. You don’t tell me what to do. Quite the damn opposite! Hell, I might even decide to throw you out of the airlock again, just for old times’ sake.”
“Listen, Stranng, there are enemy battleships out there waiting for Ariadne to turn up. They were to rendezvous with Professor Chandrasekhar. He was behind what happened aboard and was planning to defect.”
“Enemy battleships? Shit!”
<
br /> “Yeah. And Ariadne is not as dead as you think. I can still sense her mind. She could pose a danger to this ship.”
“What?”
“She’s an empath like me. You need me Stranng. Now are you gonna take me to the bridge or what?”
Stranng stares at me with his piggy eyes and makes the intelligent decision. “Okay. Come with me.”
I slide off the bunk, pausing only to swap a few quiet words with Shereena.
“You two can make up later,” Stranng barks at me.
The command crew jumps to attention as we enter the bridge. The sense of loyalty to their commander is cloying, as is their intense dislike. I wish I could block their feelings, but I need my empathic abilities to listen to Ariadne.
I glance up at the bridge-wide screen that stretches from floor to ceiling, like one enormous window, and see her hanging in space. Without her hyperspace array deployed, Ariadne is nothing more than an elegantly shaped blob. At this distance, she is no longer the invasive force in my mind she once was. I feel a sense of guilt from her—betrayal, self-loathing and pain. And behind those emotions? A dangerous and unpredictable sense of desolation.
“You say that bioship isn’t as dead as we think?” Stranng says, looking at me. “Tactical, get our weapons online and ready. I don’t want to be—”
“Multiple incoming void-points opening, sir,” the woman on the navcom replies.
Stranng juts his fat head towards the screen as five ships appear.
“Warship class, sir,” the woman continues, a wobble in her voice. “Enemy designation.”
“Shit! Seems like you were right,” Stranng says to me with a grim smile. “Patch me in to them.”
The woman operating the navcom nods. Stranng draws breath to speak, no doubt to warn the enemy ships that they are in Company territory. His words are cut off by a series of bridge alarms.
“The lead ship is powering weapons, sir,” says a white-faced tactical officer. “She’s putting herself between us and the Ariadne.”
“Get us out of here, Stranng!” I say. “We’re done for.”
“I can’t,” he replies. “I have direct orders to protect the Ariadne until support ships arrive.
“There’s no way to do that now!”
“My orders are to—”
“Fuck your orders! We’re out classed and out-matched. The Company ain’t worth dying for!”
Stranng shakes his head. “Enemy ship,” he begins in his familiar belligerent tone. “You are in Company space. Stand down and leave our territory immediately.”
More alarms.
“We’re being targeted, sir,” says the tactical officer, his voice trembling. “Multiple locks.”
“Evasive manoeuvres, now!” Stranng orders as the ship’s engines thunder into life. “Fire everything we’ve got.”
The bridge is rocked by the thrum and thud of our ship’s mag-rail cannons and lasers. The dampening field kicks in a few seconds later to protect the crew from the sudden increase in grav as the ship lurches.
I keep my eye on the screen that now shows a tactical display. The lead battleship still has a target lock. We’ll be blown into dust in moments.
A stab of anger mixed with intense hatred.
It’s coming from Ariadne and so strong that I’m forced to close my mind to it again.
“The Ariadne has come back online, sir,” the girl on the navcom says. “All her systems are powering up.”
The lead enemy battleship blooms into a hole of white light. Behind it is Ariadne, her mag-rails already slamming into the second ship that also explodes into a blinding star. The three other ships converge on the Ariadne, concentrating their fire upon her. Three against one is odds no ship can win against, and yet Ariadne survives, flitting this way and that. A third ship is destroyed and then a fourth. The fifth ship’s Snag Array begins to glow, trying to escape, but it doesn’t have the time and disintegrates in a hail of laser and mag-rail fire.
“Who the hell is flying that ship?” Stranng spits, sweat dripping from his face.
“No one,” I reply. “It’s a bioship, remember? The Cereb, Ariadne, is back in full control.”
“Shit! Thank space the enemy didn’t get their hands on her,” Stranng says in relief. A relief that also washes over the bridge crew. “That ship is a goddamn marvel!”
I can’t help but agree with Stranng. If the professor needed a demonstration of his work, of what a Cereb was able to achieve against regular battle computers, this was it. The man was a genius, if not insane. Except that all is not well with his creation. The anger coming from Ariadne abruptly changes back to one of unremitting desolation. An emotion now stronger than all others put together. It floods through me like hard radiation, crashing into my molecules and smashing them apart.
And this time, I let Ariadne flow through me. I could never have done this while I was aboard her. I was too close to the bright beacon of her Skilled mind. I’m suddenly overcome with the same desolation that inhabits her. She is full of grief. Grief at what she was forced to do, killing the crew she had grown to love. Forced into that murder by her father who she had grown to despise. And another emotion. Kindredness.
She recognises me for what I am.
Not the same but similar. This is why she stopped Stranng’s ship from being destroyed.
I am her brother…
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Stranng barks.
I come back to myself, aware of tears streaming down my face. Not my tears, but Ariadne’s, and in that moment, I know what she is about to do.
“Ariadne is powering her weapons again, sir,” the tactical officer says.
“Stand down, Ariadne!” Stranng orders, fear stretching at the edges of his voice. “Can she hear me, can that damn ship hear me?”
“She won’t harm us,” I say. “I can guarantee you that!”
“We haven’t got a chance anyway,” Stranng says. “Fire everything we’ve got!”
Don’t do it, Ariadne!
The words scream out of my mind directly towards the Cereb.
I’m an empath, which allows me to feel what others are feeling, to understand them at an intimate level. But to never talk to them, or another Skilled, mind to mind. And yet Ariadne somehow hears my words and replies to them.
I must! Ariadne broadcasts into my thoughts.
The voice leaves me as suddenly as it arrived. Ariadne does not want to harm me or this ship, she simply wants to die. And already it is too late.
I open my eyes to see Ariadne on the screen, multiple points along her rounded hull explode under the fire from our ship’s mag-rails and lasers. They combine to create more explosions until her engine core is exposed and she is blown into a bright shining star of dust and debris.
“VATIC!”
I open my eye to see Hewlis standing over me. I sit up and find myself back in the medic bay. Rooba lies on the bed next to me, a medical pad attached atop her peculiarly-shaped head. I automatically search for Ariadne. But she’s gone. My mind probing the hole she has left in my consciousness like a tongue searching for a missing tooth.
“What am I doing here?” I croak, rubbing at my head.
“A couple of medics dumped you on a bunk a few minutes ago,” Hewlis says, sitting down on a chair. “You were out like a light.”
“Where’s Shereena?”
“Shereena?” Rooba says. “The Triple Bar Patron?”
I nod. “You noticed that too, huh?”
“The first thing I always notice is rank. Don’t forget, I’m a Jen.” Rooba’s long-lashed eyes flick to the thick, heavy door. “A Patron acting as a ship’s medic? She must’ve pissed off someone high up in the Company.”
“Where is she?” I repeat.
“She left with Xev to go see Stranng. He managed to convince the MPs to get a message to him. I think he wanted to explain how he personally caught a Neo-Dawn terrorist.”
“And you didn’t go with them? It’s unlike the Jen to miss a
n opportunity for advancement.”
“The medic wouldn’t let me. Something about the concussion I received when that Giri creature tried to bash my head in. And besides, it was you who got us out of that mess, not him.”
“I hope Shereena has been looking after you both properly?”
“She sure has,” Rooba replies. “Gave us all a proper physical and a whole series of shots.”
I wince at the memory of my harsh extraction from hypersleep and the many injections I was subjected to. “She is a medic at the top of her game. And very thorough.”
“And… very sexy,” Rooba replies.
I also remember Shereena’s betrayal. Drugging me to allow Stranng to send me over to the Ariadne. “You should pursue her. She’s just your type. You’d get along like a house on fire.”
“What was all the commotion?” Hewlis asks. “I’m guessing with all that mag-rail and laser fire, there was some kind of ship-to-ship altercation?” He looks worn out.
“Those enemy ships of Chandrasekhar’s turned up,” I reply.
“They did?” The engineer says, his eyes widening.
“Ariadne attacked them, destroying them all.”
He whistles.
“And then she attacked this ship,” I continue.
Hewlis furrows his bushy eyebrows. “Then why aren’t we destroyed?”
I shake my head. “You heard the professor. Ariadne wasn’t the ship we thought she was. He was controlling her, making her do things she didn’t want to do. Trapped. In the end, she took back control and took her own life. Call it assisted suicide.”
And good riddance!” Hewlis replies. “Some things shouldn’t be allowed to live.”
“You never were a fan of Ariadne, were you?”
“Like I said, there was a bad feeling aboard her. And after what went down over there, I wasn’t proved wrong.”
“Is it true you’ve been demoted?” Rooba asks me.
“Yeah.”
A wave of disappointment emanates from the Jen. I guess she was lining up her ambitions on the back of a member of the Secondary Executive named Vatic.