Talisman of Earth

by A. S. Deller

  Sior kept looking at the Krell’s cold eyes for a long moment, before saying meekly, “And if I refuse?”

  “There is no refusal,” Sekrel shuddered in a wheezing laugh. He then turned his chair around and waved for the guard to take Sior away, and said, “You work for me, Preceptor, or I dine on you. That is all.”

  Preceptor Herci was taken to a new accommodation on the star dock, given new clothing and fresh, hot food. Without wanting to, he slept better that night than he had for a long time. In the morning, the guard arrived again, this time bringing with him two Pernet kits, Zera and Meor. They were unrelated, both in their teens, and had been selected based on scientific aptitude assessments that Grand Krell Sekrel had given to all of the children in the Vekks village.

  Both were rather bashful at first, but soon they opened up under Sior’s patient tutelage. Neither knew the fates of their families. While Meor held on to some hope that his parents could still be out there, on some other ship or colony, Zera adamantly refused to put any faith in such fantasies. There had once been twelve billion Pernet spread across their home planet and numerous colony worlds and space stations. It was unlikely that even a million of their species still remained alive in the galaxy.

  Trying his best to keep their minds of off the horrors of the war, Sior helped the two delve deeply into their learning. Before long, they were ready to assist him in his assignments for Sekrel.

  Little did Sior know that the Krell’s work would lead to a trap within a trap. Every night since the laboratory fiasco in his merkek cell on the lek essel, Sior wished the Vaglons had left him in that building to die in the explosion.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Well over two hours had passed, and Rhodes turned to walk down a passageway, still in his SES. Rax called after him, “Commander, where are you going?”

  “To check on things. You’re in charge while I’m gone,” said Rhodes without looking back.

  Captain Lancer’s voice pinged him over his comm link as he strode down the corridor, “Commander, get your team in the air lock. We’re ready to do this.”

  Rhodes replied, “What’s changed?”

  “Nothing on your end. But we’ve had to change Gulliver’s role quite a bit.”

  As Lancer hurriedly explained, Rhodes was flabbergasted by the amount of work that had been done behind the scenes.

  Petty Officer 3rd Class Mukesh Patel and a small crew had built a robust storage tank to Gulliver’s specifications, while Senior Nuclear Tech Jana Haley and Senior Electrical Tech Carlos Williams rerouted all of the Talisman’s autonomic functions. Meanwhile, Dr. Weller split Gulliver’s AI Core away from the ship. When the tank was ready, Gulliver was transferred over to it, and it was attached to the Talisman’s largest robotic all-terrain drone. This entire assemblage was sealed into an oversize opaque cargo bag and taken to air lock B, two decks below and aft from Rhodes’ position.

  “Okay team, listen up. We’re going out in three minutes. This is it,” Rhodes said as he put his helmet back on.

  “Finally. Time to take it to them!” Greg Hu whooped.

  In Engineering, Weller returned and sat back down at her station next to Chief Falken. A thin film of perspiration coated Kyra’s forehead, and Falken caught her eye with an understanding nod. “We’re not going to be getting him back, are we?” Asked the Chief.

  Kyra shook her head, “No. But he’s right. There’s no other way. And we can’t keep sitting here. The Alliance will want us to disembark sooner or later.”

  Lt. Carly Ming supervised the crew at air lock B as a tangle of Petty Officers and other junior enlisted starmen filled the compartment with body bags filled with scrap harvested from the Valgon scoutship that sat idle in the shuttle bay. In the middle of the airlock sat a particularly large bag, which contained Gulliver’s entire physical being. Ming looked at it and felt a slight pang of regret. She had come to know and even like the Talisman’s AI Core over the years. Even though she knew he had been diagnosed as pre-aberrant and was therefore a potential liability, Carly was still going to miss the old boy. She pinged to the Captain, “Sir, air lock B is prepped. We’re pulling out and closing the hatch in thirty seconds.”

  “Copy that,” returned Lancer’s voice. “Stand by to release on my signal.”

  Inside the black cargo bag, the DNA and quantum matrix of Gulliver’s “brain” sat inside a heavy, insulated storage tank, connected via data conduits to the Talisman’s survey drone. Gulliver was disembodied, but still functional. He actually was in control of the drone, but that wouldn’t get him where he wanted to go.

  His stratagem had been carefully calculated. The AI knew that if he remained on the Talisman that he would be taken offline permanently, at least until the ship’s eventual (hopeful) return to League space. So Gulliver would need to find some other way to make for his ultimate destination:

  The Malign homeworld. The Nucleus.

  To get there, he would need an FTL warpship that operated under his control. To get a ship and control it, he would need to leave the Talisman in as complete a fashion as possible.

  Separation from the Talisman had not been as traumatic as he suspected. Perhaps his nascent aberrance had something to do with it, preventing him from experiencing the event in as emotional a context as other AIs would. When Dr. Weller had performed the final operation, Gulliver registered it as little more than a slight glitch. The Talisman was there, and then it was not.

  Gulliver knew it was all for the best of the crew, of the Talisman, of the League. He had to move on, and so did they. He would make sure of it.

  On the bridge, Lancer spoke to Lt. Assif, “Open the channel.”

  He played a hand over his holo display and nodded a “go-ahead” to the Captain. She spoke, “Lek essel command, this is Keevaks 149. We are opening air locks B and D to release the contaminated bodies of the Terran crew.”

  The lek attendant heard her voice in Valgon, and answered, ”Confirmed. You are cleared to do so.”

  “Commander Rhodes, Lt. Ming, open your hatches,” Captain Lancer ordered over the comms. “And may we be victorious.”

  Outside, air locks B and D of the Talisman slid open silently. Out of the D hatch floated dozens of body bags, packed with jumbles wiring and scrap metal, along with the large black cargo bag containing Gulliver’s storage tank / drone combination. As the first of the faux-dead bodies drifted by, Gray Rhodes and his team exited air lock B in their EVA-outfitted SESs. Following their practiced route, the team stepped across the hull at as fast a pace as possible in their magnetic boots. The human crew members clutched their tespers to their chests while Rax trundled along with his iddik railgun.

  The last of the body bags sailed past the strike team, some of them tumbling as they bumped against the Talisman’s hull. Rhodes pinged his starmen, “Keep up the pace, forty meters to go.” The group made their way single file around the underbelly of the ship: Rhodes, followed by Greg Hu, Arno Jecky, Alisa Nunez, Rasheed Chang, and Lt. Rax at the rear. In just two minutes the bottom of the docking platform, to which the Talisman was attached via air lock C, swung into view.

  Kyra Weller’s voice pinged to the members of the strike team, “We have a local area map pieced together from the data Gulliver collected through Sora—-sorry, Kithsora’s senses. Sending that through to your HUDs now.”

  Rhodes’ dark brown eyes filled with the crimson red reflection of the map, a blueprint formed from all of the sights, sounds and vibrations Kithsora had seen on his way through the lek. “Looks like the access hatch under the platform will take us right into the deck underneath the Pernet’s position and half a klik from Kithsora,” Rhodes commed to his team.

  Rasheed Chang said, “Their Malign AI core is half a klik in the other direction. That’s lucky.”

  “Still some real distance to cover. And we’ll need to be ready to sprint back to air lock C as soon as Gulliver has enough command over the station to power the wormhole,” said Nunez.

  “That�
�s where this comes in,” Chang said, patting a package strapped around his waist. “As soon as we get this extractor hooked up to the core we’re going to be drawing its attentuion from Gulliver’s attack.”

  “We hope so,” Rax said gruffly.

  Two kilometers distant, Gulliver’s cargo bag made contact with a Malign patrol cruiser docked in the first ring of platforms around the lek’s ‘donut hole’. The instant the bag brushed along the glistening black hull, Gulliver triggered the drone’s legs and sampling claws to rip through the sack. They scrabbled for purchase as Gulliver kept on scraping along the alien hull. At last, one of the claws managed to grapple a sensor unit that extended from the craft’s stern. Gulliver immediately had the drone pulled him tight against the Malign hull. The drone’s sample drill, designed by Keneks and capable of grinding through almost any known material, went to work boring a hole into the ship’s skin.

  Knowing that the strike team would stand little chance without him being able to interfere with the lek’s operations, Gulliver pushed the drill to its limits.

  Inside the lek, Krell Skeer marched back and forth in his quarters. The chamber of a merkek krell was much downgraded from that of a lek’s krell. He was jealous enough to kill the krell who had taken his place in the lek master’s throne, but Grand Krell Ekskell would likely not tolerate any more mischief from him. Besides, Skeer doubted that he would even be capable of walking right up to some other krell and challenging him to a duel. He had never done such a thing before, despite the opportunity presenting itself more than once. Surely that was one of the reasons his brother Reksek thought lesser of him. Skeer would gladly sneak up behind someone and slide an eeskel dagger between the plates of their thorax and tail. The Valgon’s mandibles ground with pleasure at the thought of launching an eeskel up and out through the mouthparts of the krell who was now sleeping comfortably in the same ammonia pool that Skeer himself once enjoyed.

  Enough dwelling on the mistakes I’ve made, he thought. The truth was, Skeer was actually in a somewhat better position to further his personal goals. As master of the merkek, all of the prisoners were at his disposal. It just so happened that those included the Pernet who had helped the Alliance work on devising a human-killing pathogen, and an Althorian who knew a lot about humans. There had to be some way that he could use them to his advantage. On that note, Skeer left his murky quarters and walked back toward the merkek. Let’s see how the disgusting Althorian is doing now, he thought.

  One deck below, Rhodes and the strike team cut their way into one of the station’s power distribution shafts through an access panel. As soon as they had all crawled inside, Rax sealed the opening with an emergency patching foam.

  “That should hold for thirty minutes, at least,” the Kenek grunted.

  “Not long,” Jecky said. “It’ll have to be long enough.”

  “Hustle, people. Unless Gulliver gets the level of control we need, as soon as we breach the hatch into the station the Alliance is going to know we’re here. And I’m not going to put a lot of stock into our very iffy AI core,” Rhodes said as he stalked forward through the tunnels.

  Aboard the Talisman, Captain Reina Lancer gazed out over her bridge crew.

  Lt. Lille Altzen sat completely still and focused at the helm. She had withdrawn noticeably since the pilot David Ayler’s death on LM-32f, but she seemed to be keeping her emotions in check. Lancer felt proud of her. In some ways, Altzen reminded Lancer of herself, and she wondered if some of that pride was a matter of self-association. An inkling of vicarious excitement did creep in whenever Lancer saw other crew members engaging in romantic affairs. Such thoughts only served to enforce that the pride she held onto for Altzen might be little more than wish fulfillment. Lancer only hoped that Altzen would come out of her experiences a stronger person. Reina felt that she had.

  Lieutenants Assif and Carly Ming continued to monitor all local non-extradimensional communications, keeping their ears open for signs that the Alliance was aware of the Talisman’s grand deception. As soon as they saw it, Ming would inform Dr. Weller and Chief Falken, and they would activate the ship’s defenses.

  The Captain cringed when she thought of that. It would happen, and it could happen at any time. When it did, that was when the real race would begin.

  Infinitus keep us strong, Reina Lancer prayed.

  In Engineering, Weller and Falken could do little but wait. The success of the mission rested in the hands of Rhodes and his EVA team, and in Gulliver’s attempt to get into the lek’s systems. Falken paced among the holo stations, her crew members following her graceful but tense movements out of the corners of their eyes.

  Mukesh looked over at Jana Haley and could see that Falken’s pacing was getting to her. Finally, Haley just snapped, “Chief! Please stop doing that! Sir.”

  Falken took a single stride, moving almost halfway across the compartment, and bent over Haley’s shoulder. “You can tap your finger or shake a leg up and down, if you like, Senior Petty Officer Haley. However, I am going to keep walking.”

  When Falken moved away, Carlos Williams leaned toward Haley and said, “It’s all about the breathing. Get up and do a few jumping jacks, you might feel better.”

  “Advice on handling stress from you, Williams? I don’t think so,” Haley shot back.

  “What do you mean by that?” Carlos replied, suddenly thinking that maybe the Chief told everyone about his ‘issues’.

  “Everyone knows how you can’t even keep yourself together when more than one sensor is down at a time,” Haley added matter-of-factly.

  Williams nodded in agreement, relieved that she was just cracking wise about his sometimes overblown temper.

  At her holo station, Kyra Weller tried to blank out the muffled conversations among the engineering crew while she kept going through the plans step-by-step in her head. A single misstep could spell disaster. Keeping her mind clear of distractions was the only way she knew how to stay in tune with the timetable. Without Gulliver to both parse vast amounts of data and run simulations, Kyra was relying on her science team and the Talisman’s pre-AI systems to both keep the ship protected and to get them through the wormhole when the moment arrived.

  When she separated Gulliver from the AI Center, the Talisman went from being a smartship to a “dumbship”. If they had been back in Earthspace and needed to replace an aberrant AI, it would only be a matter of days before they would be outfitted with a new one. Out there, once Gulliver was gone, the Talisman would be without an AI for months and possibly years. The toll it would take on the crew and the ship’s resources might be enormous, not to mention the lack of sheer computing power.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  The EVA strike team waited at the hatch in the power distribution tunnel. It had been almost five minutes, and still no word from Gulliver that he had infiltrated the lek’s systems.

  “Nunez, you’re up,” Rhodes said.

  Alisa pulled one of her timed explosive packs from an armored pouch on her SES and gave it a little kiss through her faceplate. “Do your thing, my precious little firework,” she said, flattening it against the hatch.

  The team scrambled back down the tunnel and stopped around a corner. “In eight,” came Nunez’s voice.

  “We go fast, Nunez and I left, the rest right to the Malign core,” Rhodes said.

  “Five...”

  “We’ll get the prisoners, you get the info and send the commands to open the wormhole,” Rhodes looked right at Rax, and the big guy knew how much his Commander really needed him. That ‘info’ could include the location of his family. If they were still alive, anyway.

  “Two...”

  “Stay sharp,” ordered Rhodes.

  The hatch exploded, but the force of the blast wasn’t enough to blow it outward. The heavy metal door spun sideways and tore down the tunnel toward the team, sucked in as the vacuum of the tunnel filled itself with wretched atmosphere from within the lek.

  Hu peeked around the corner too
soon, and saw the hatch screeching right at him. “Oh shit!” Hu yelped, yanking his head out of the way just as the hatch slammed past him and buried itself halfway into tunnel wall.

  “Nice moves, Chief!” Jecky laughed.

  “Stow it, Arno!” Hu grumbled.

  “That’s enough, you two. We have a job to do. Let’s move out,” Rhodes said, already hustling toward the opening.

  When the strike team exited, they split into two groups: Rhodes and Nunez turned one way, toward the merkek, while Rax, Hu, Jecky and Chang headed the other direction, toward the Malign AI core.

  Dr. Kyra Weller’s voice pinged everyone in a somber voice, “I’m sorry, but Gulliver isn’t inside yet. The Alliance likely knows you’re there.”

  “You heard her,” said Rhodes to his teams, “We’re going to have company. Watch your sixes.”

  On the Talisman’s bridge, Captain Lancer griped to Weller over her comm link, “How could Gulliver not have known he wouldn’t be in the lek’s system?”

  Kyra, sitting in Engineering, shook her head miserably, “It’s possible his calculations were off by seconds. There are a lot of variables.”

  “He was off by minutes.”

  Carly Ming, on the Bridge, spun around in her chair, eyes alight, “Gulliver’s in now! He just sent the confirmation over one of the lek’s channels!”

  “Hopefully it’s not too late,” said the Captain. “Doctor Weller, Chief Falken, you know what to do.”