The group silently exited the elevator and made a right turn. From where they were, it was a direct shot down a single hallway to the bridge.
The camera in Beryl’s helmet suddenly flashed red with drones coming up.
There were dozens of them, absolutely littering the hallway between the elevator and the bridge.
It appeared someone knew anyone who tried to board their ship would head from the docking bay to the bridge.
Up front, the two men gave each other what seemed like an entirely unnecessary high five, considering the imminent shooting match, before opening fire.
In front of Beryl, Iris yelled at them to be careful with their shots, but her shouts either fell on deaf ears or were entirely ignored by the men, who opened up with the full power of their weapons.
In front of them, dozens of drones went up in small fireballs.
Beryl stood there, mesmerized by the little fireworks show. She hardly thought at all about the fact that what they were doing could, in theory, break something which could lead to all of their deaths.
As if they had planned it, the duo in front fell back, letting the husband-wife couple behind them move to the front to take a turn taking out drones. Like clockwork, the two of them worked together, taking out the drones methodically as the group slowly moved down the hallway.
Behind them, nothing came up, though Beryl and the others near the back were vigilant, expecting drones—or something worse—to show up at any moment.
It didn’t take long for them to reach the door to the bridge.
“Are you ready?” Iris asked the couple in the front. Their heads nodded in perfect unison, as if this was something they had been doing for years instead of for a few minutes.
The door to the bridge opened.
Behind it, two more Earth AI appeared, their weapons aimed at the invading force of Columbinians. Both of them got off two shots before the couple up front took them out. The AI exploded, sending sparks flying across the bridge. Those at the front of the group plowed through the falling sparks, moving to secure the now-unoccupied bridge. Beryl watched from near the door as they did, thinking it looked like something out of every police movie and television show from the 1990s and early 2000s.
In the window of the bridge that took up most of one of the room’s four walls, the sun of the Columbinian system shone as an orb in front of them. To the left, the edge of Columbina was partially visible as a blue arc in the sky. The only continent on Columbina wasn’t within their view; all Beryl could see was the ocean that covered most of the planet. Beryl had seen a similar scene many times when they lived above Columbina in preparation for settling their home. No matter how many times she saw it, though, Beryl never tired of this view.
The room secured, Iris headed straight for a control panel which looked like something out of a bad science fiction movie. Or rather, Beryl suddenly understood, it looked like something out of a history book. Iris quickly found what she was looking for, and plugged something into a portion of the panel, like she was recharging herself as she did every night in her own form of sleep.
Four of the Columbinians took up positions near the door, guarding against anything which might come through it. Everyone else, including Beryl, milled about, trying to figure out something to do that didn’t involve pressing buttons on the control panels to see what happened. Beryl watched Vlad examine the control panels, likely trying to figure out if he could fly this ship without Iris’s help.
Bored, Beryl wandered to where Iris was standing, focused on nothing but the plug which she had connected to the ship.
“How is it going?” Beryl asked
“Good. Very good. I’m super close to taking over this hunk of junk,” Iris said, looking at the control panel and not Beryl. “Seriously. I have no idea how this ship managed to travel out of Earth’s solar system, let alone this far. I’m slightly embarrassed I couldn’t figure out how to do this on Columbina. I think part of the reason why everything is taking so long is that I am overthinking everything. I am giving this Earth AI far more credit than it deserves.”
Beryl opened her mouth to say something, but suddenly Iris wasn’t listening.
“Shit.” Iris said. “Shit shit shit shit shit.”
“That doesn’t sound very good.” Everyone in the room other than the four people guarding the door against an enemy that hardly seemed to exist ran over to Iris. Even the four guarding the door turned so they were facing Iris more than they were facing the door through which their destruction could come at any moment.
“That’s because it’s not very good.” Iris pressed something on the control panel. The bridge was immediately plunged into darkness. Slowly, the hum of the ship died out, its systems shutting down entirely until the quiet that surrounded them was entire and enveloping in a way that life lived with machines all around rarely was.
“Not very good at all.”
“What is going on?” Beryl asked. She knew her words expressed the question everyone had on their minds.
“It looks like it’s time for Plan B.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“So, that was unexpected,” Iris said, looking at the dark control panel, now lit only by the light of the phones Beryl and the rest of the Columbinians were now shining on it.
It was not the sort of thing you wanted to hear when taking over an alien ship.
Or really, at any time.
The next time they stormed an alien ship, Beryl realized, they needed to make sure they at least brought a flashlight.
“What was unexpected?” Vlad asked.
“It seems the Earth AI was worried someone would try to shut down their systems in a hostile manner. When I tried to do so, I must have triggered something preventing a reboot. This thing is not coming back online without Plan B.”
“Plan B?” Beryl questioned, hoping that was the only letter of the alphabet they needed to get to.
“Yes. Someone is going to need to get to the ship AI’s actual control systems and memory, in case I can’t get this back online from here.” Iris paused for a second, as she did when she was trying to think of something that tasked her memory. It was never a good thing. “And that someone is going to have to get started on their way soon because, from my calculations, you humans are going to start feeling the effects of increasing carbon dioxide in about 30 minutes. And by then, this ship is going to be so cold it probably won’t matter.”
“I’ll go.” Vlad raised his hand as he volunteered.
“Me too,” Beryl added, without thinking.
A couple other people volunteered, but Iris seemed content with only sending Beryl and Vlad. “I want as few people as possible on this. I’m going to send the rest of you back to the Birds once Beryl and Vlad are on their way. If I can’t get this ship online, I want as few casualties as possible.”
Beryl’s body involuntarily shivered, even though it wasn’t cold enough on the ship yet to feel the decreasing temperature.
Iris gave Vlad and Beryl a quick—overly quick, it seemed to Beryl—briefing of what they needed to do. It seemed simple enough. Once they reached the core of the ship, where all the AI memory and computing power was stored, there would be—should be—a manual override for the ship’s systems. According to Iris, it would be very clear once they saw it, but even so, she sent each of them a picture of it from the ship’s memory.
“Don’t you have any drones there?” Beryl asked. It seemed to her they could at least have drones find the thing and send them to the right spot.
“Nope,” Iris replied, “it’s like the part of the ship where the humans are. It’s sealed off from the main parts of the ship completely. And you aren’t going to have any drones for yourself because they’re all otherwise occupied in the other groups’ attempts to take out as many as possible on the rest of the ship, and we’re going to need ours here to accompany the group back to the Birds.”
“Great.” The sarcasm in Vlad’s voice wasn’t lost on any of them.
“I told you, it’s going to be so obvious, you’re not going to need drones to find it.” Iris looked annoyed at Vlad. “I guarantee, if you flip the switch, the power will come back on. Once you do that, I can override everything, get the power back on, and bring the life supports systems back online. You guys have the easy job. If I had to describe even 1/100th of what I have to do, you’d all be dead from old age before I got there.”
“Now get your butts moving,” Iris said, finishing her short diatribe. “If you have any trouble, let me know and I will do what I can.”
Iris grabbed Beryl’s hand before they could leave. “Do you have everything?”
To everyone else, this would have sounded like a normal thing to say to someone headed off to do what she and Vlad were about to do. Only Beryl knew the real question.
Iris wanted to know if Beryl was ready to put Plan F into action.
“I do.”
Iris squeezed Beryl’s hand. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.” Beryl squeezed back.
Iris let go of Beryl’s hand, and she followed Vlad out of the bridge and down the hall.
What Beryl didn’t do was look back at Iris. She didn’t want to have to think that it would be the last time she saw Iris.
Beryl kept Vlad a few steps ahead of her. He was walking at something between a fast walk and a slow jog. She was tempted to tell him to run, but as the only light illuminating the ship was the light coming from their phones, moving at a slightly slower speed seemed prudent, especially with the ship’s AI still patrolling the halls. The two reached the elevator they had ridden up from the docking bay level, but without any power to the ship, no one would be taking any elevators.
“Ladies first,” Vlad said, opening the door to the staircase, leading down toward the level where the core, holding the computing power, sat.
“You’re so sweet.” Beryl headed through the door and started down the stairs quickly, their even heights making it easy to take them fast even in the near-darkness. Beryl refrained from making any further comment about Vlad having her go first so she would, once again, be the one who got shot.
Beryl counted the floors as they descended into the heart of the ship from the upper floor where they had been.
“Next door out,” Vlad commented. Beryl got to the door, thankful they hadn’t come across any drones. Despite this, she carefully placed her hand on the handle, opening it slowly and listening for anything on the other side which would indicate the presence of a drone.
She heard nothing and moved into a hallway which, in the low light, looked the same as the hallways they had moved through on the bridge and docking bay levels of the Earthlings’ ship.
Now in the lead, Beryl moved ahead of Vlad through the hallways, heading deeper and deeper into the ship. Still, though, no drones. It must have been the low light, interfering with whatever their motion sensors viewed as a threat or reason to activate. Beryl couldn’t even see if they were passing drones waiting to attack; the low light from their phones hardly illuminated the walls, let alone small objects trying to be inconspicuous in corners and near ceilings.
Beryl turned what was, from her memory of the ship plans, the last corner. One more door and they would be in the core.
“This has been surprisingly easy,” Vlad said.
“Famous last words,” Beryl replied.
As they approached the end of the hallway, Beryl could see the door did not look like any of the doors they had seen elsewhere on the ship.
“What in the world?” Beryl asked as the two approached the door. It was thick, like something they would have seen on a bank vault in old movies. Beryl tried the door handle. The door didn’t so much as budge when she pulled on it. Beryl tried pushing her shoulder against it as she turned the handle, with the same result.
Vlad came up next to her and examined the door. “Well, this is unexpected.”
“So much for easy.” Beryl shivered. Now that they weren’t moving through the hallways of the ship, she could feel the cold air beginning to seep through her armor.
“Do you have a plan?”
“Yup,” Beryl said. She turned to her phone. “Iris, how do we deal with this?”
“Deal with what? I can’t see anything from your phones in this light. I feel like I’ve been transported to the 20th century.” Iris’s voice emanated from Beryl’s phone, loud enough for both she and Vlad to hear.
“It’s a giant door. Like a bank vault from a movie.”
“A giant door? Like a bank vault?” Iris sounded as surprised by this development as Vlad and Beryl had been when they came across it.
“Exactly.”
“I have no idea. Have you tried shooting it?”
“I thought you said no shooting at anything other than drones.”
“Well, desperate times. I’m not getting this system rebooted from here. It’s either you guys or no one. And if you manage to blow up something that matters, well, you were probably screwed either way.”
“Thanks for that vote of confidence there,” Vlad pulled out his gun. “I think we should probably stand back for this one.”
Beryl did not object. She and Vlad moved backward down the hallway, in the direction they had come from. Both of them raised our guns and aimed at the door.
“On three?” Beryl asked.
“On three.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three!”
On three, both of them unloaded on what was clearly the door’s handle.
As soon as the bullets hit it, the door exploded. Beryl and Vlad plastered themselves against the walls of the ship without thinking, but even there, they were pelted with what Beryl knew were pieces of the door. For the second time that day, she was happy for her armor.
“I think that might have been overkill,” Vlad said when the shrapnel from the door stopped falling around them. “It was pretty cool, though.”
“Because when you’re minutes away from death, seeing cool shit is definitely a high priority,” Beryl said, even though she too was thinking about how cool and movie-like blowing up the door had been. “We’ve got a switch to find. As awesome as that was, I don’t want it to be the last thing I ever see.”
The two of them picked their way back through the hallway, which was now littered with the debris from the door explosion. On the other side of the door, the hallway opened up into a giant, circular room. As they passed into it, a cool breeze rushed over them.
Beryl tried to take comfort in the fact that the Earth AI must have already had this room cool, to keep the giant computers and servers they kept there from overheating. But even so, with the fading power and heat, Beryl could feel her fingers growing cold through her uniform’s utilitarian gloves.
It was an obvious reminder that they weren’t going to have much time to find the switch. If they wanted to save themselves and everyone on the ship, she and Vlad needed to find this switch Iris thought would be very obvious.
Vlad and Beryl slowly moved into the large room. Surely, the Earth AI had placed drones in this room, the center of their ability to function, to fly the ship, to exist.
Unless, Beryl thought, they never expected anyone to get this far.
In the dim light, Beryl couldn’t see the room’s ceiling, but the room was almost identical to the core on Hodios and V. Beryl had only visited the core a few times on those ships, but she had always been impressed by it, so much so that she had never forgotten what it looked like. Probably five stories tall, the room on this ship was dominated by a giant, sculpture-like structure rising up in the middle of the room. The structure must have been the servers, even though it looked nothing like Iris’s computing power, which didn’t take up half as much space. If they had been the same, they would have had some idea as to where the mysterious switch to put the ship back online was located.
Instead, Beryl realized, they were going to have to search for it.
With only the light from their phones t
o guide them.
And only a few minutes before they froze to death. Or the rise in carbon dioxide on the ship killed them.
Great. Beryl thought. No problem. We’ve got this.
More debris sat scattered through the core, left over from the door’s recent explosion. As they picked their way through the debris in the core, Beryl tried not to think about the fact that they could have destroyed something vital with that explosion.
Perhaps it had been a bit of overkill there with the door.
“Is everything OK?” Iris asked them through their phones.
“Sure,” Vlad replied. “We nearly blew the ship up getting into the core. You know, your normal day here in space.”
“You nearly blew the ship up?” Iris sounded worried. Apparently, she had other things going on and hadn’t watched the situation through their phones, which would have broadcast a video of the scene back to her.
“The key word in that sentence is ‘nearly.’”
“Great. Someday I will watch the video from it. I suspect both of you thoroughly enjoyed doing that,” Iris said, knowing them well. “Now that the fun and games are over, you guys have about four minutes to find that switch before things get truly cold in here. I suggest splitting up.”
Vlad and Beryl looked at each other and didn’t have to speak before heading in two different directions around the large, circular room. Whoever found the switch first could yell for the other one, but they could cover the ground much faster this way.
As soon as Beryl moved away from Vlad, Iris’s voice came through Beryl’s phone.
“Do I need to remind you that you have the most powerful type of explosive ever made by human or other intelligent hands in your backpack? Perhaps you shouldn’t be doing anything that could, you know, accidentally set it off.”
Oh, shit. Beryl thought. Plan F. She had been trying to forget about that. Apparently, she had been doing a good job at ignoring it.
“In my defense, at the time, we didn’t realize that door was going to blow up in such an impressive manner.”
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