by In Churl Yo
“Charles?”
“She’s gone. Someone has piloted the drone ship out of its berth. If the saboteur has taken her and left the Gaia, our fates may have already been decided. Without access to a sample of the remedy, we’re as good as dead, and the entire human race will fall with us—extinct, lost into oblivion forever.”
# # #
Zoah’s eyes scanned the cockpit of the Syrinx, searching for a tool, a weapon, something she could use to her advantage, but there was nothing in reach.
“You really should give up,” Ogden said, as he floated upside-down beside her. “There’s nothing you can do. Everything that’s happening now was inevitable the moment my father founded the Ceres Corporation. As soon as I strap in and initiate the descent sequence, I’ll take my place in history.”
“You’re crazy. Delusional.”
“Careful, girl.”
She closed her eyes, tried to slow her breathing. If only she could think.
Ogden smiled, placed his mouth to her ear. Zoah could feel his breath on her skin and fought the urge to scream. “I’ve decided to take you into my confidence,” he whispered. “Shine a light upon my genius so that you might understand. You see, this was all part of my plan. The Kiters, Nox, my mother. I’ve known the truth about the blight and the Zombie Flu, the Gaia and all their machinations for years.”
Zoah shook her head. “More lies,” she said.
“I used your little hacker friends and that white-haired devil to get me to their ship so I could destroy it, kill everyone aboard who opposed me and steal this drone. It was a long game, you see. Years in the making. But it worked to perfection. They thought they were fooling me, using me to spread their deceit, when they were the fools all along, and today they’ll all be dead.”
Now it was Zoah’s turn to smile. She turned her head, looked Ogden in the eye and started to chuckle.
“You find me amusing? My story humorous?” he asked.
“Your story’s fiction.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Soon there will be no one left to dispute it, yourself included, and I will be free to shape the world as I see fit once I have saved all of mankind.”
“No one will believe you,” Zoah countered. “How could they? Everyone knows Theodore Ogden doesn’t get his hands dirty. You’re just a figurehead, and a lazy one at that. Why would anyone think you could make up such an elaborate plan, much less execute it? After all, you don’t do any of the real work that affects change, things that matter, like build microprocessors, grow tomatoes or… pilot a spacecraft.”
Zoah kicked the control panel in front of her, and sparks flew across the cockpit. The drone ship listed to starboard and began to fall from orbit, as the auto-pilot controls malfunctioned, sending them wayward.
“What have you done?!” the Ceres CEO spat as the Syrinx turned into a tailspin, throwing Ogden across the room into the ceiling, knocking him out cold, a crimson gash spreading fresh along his scalp.
Zoah’s body pressed hard against her harness, and her arms flailed about like rubber bands. She fought against the G-forces, the violent turbulence that shook the drone, and willed her hands to move in the direction she wanted. She activated the co-pilot station, stretched her fingers as far as she could and pressed the thruster control, which brought emergency retrorockets online, leveling the craft out of its roll into a more deliberate attitude.
The navigational display came to life, demanding Zoah’s attention. Flashing alerts indicated their reentry approach was off, which apparently was not a good thing. She was about to review her options when the cockpit window ignited with a white-hot glow and her stomach traveled into her throat. The ship began to shimmy, a loud roar emanating all around her.
The Syrinx was going down.
# # #
No sound travelled here, so Nox couldn’t hear his boots scuffling along the stone walkway, nor even the background hum of the artificial lighting overhead. He could only discern his own heart fighting for survival, accelerating its normal rhythm in a desperate attempt to pump any oxygen the organ could find through its circulatory system, pounding out hard, deafening staccato beats that overwhelmed his fading senses.
Once a possible place for meditation, communal gatherings or the occasional escapism, the arboretum was no longer any of these. Instead, the decompression had made the space cold, its trees stripped of all their leaves, its once vibrant setting now a dull, lifeless cavity on the Gaia’s C-ring.
Nox leaned against the bulkhead, felt along its surface with his fingers. He could no longer trust his eyes, both frozen shut and useless, but the man with white hair knew he was close. The instability was marked by cracks in the wall. The leak venting atmosphere sat at its center.
Time was the enemy, but he didn’t know how much he had left. Any part of the weakened area could collapse at any moment, causing a cascade of destruction affecting several adjoining compartments, each housing electrical panels, independent backup systems, volatile gases. Depending on its size, an explosion here could travel to either neighboring ring and from there cause widespread destruction to vital systems or primary structural components, rendering the Gaia unsalvageable. It would also terminate hundreds of lives onboard and any hope mankind had of surviving past the end of the world, none of which was lost on Nox, who continued to move methodically, agonizingly toward his objective.
He had been looking forward to their long journey. The white-haired man had considered it a kind of retirement cruise, akin to being sheriff in some small, quiet rural town, but that was an undeserved fantasy. Nox knew his past. It had been a long, distinguished career overshadowed by now redacted, classified dishonorable actions too many to count, each a wound healed over yet still raw inside, throbbing an inconsolable pain deep within him. Of course, he had been following the orders of desperate men, but in hindsight, now here at the end, such distinctions held little meaning.
Years ago, Charles had given him an opportunity at a kind of absolution, to work on the just side of history, and for a time Nox felt he was making things right again. For that, he would always be grateful to his friend, but no accomplishment would have ever been sufficient to erase the memory of all that he’d done—although some small part of him harbored hope that maybe today would be enough. Maybe today he’d find some peace.
Maybe.
Then there along his fingertips, Nox felt it: a small fracture. He patted the wall in desperation, following the blast pattern searching for a point of convergence, but he was getting tired, losing his focus far too easily. For a moment, he lost the small crevice he’d been tracking and panicked, only to reacquire it seconds later. The white-haired man tried to laugh but found pain in his face, down his throat. A convulsion gripped his body. Time was the enemy.
A second crack met the first, and then several others came together until he could discern a large collection of fissures. Nox passed his hand over them and felt a slight pressure differential caused by escaping air. He hoped this was the main point of the leak, but it no longer mattered. He had to act now before succumbing to the vacuum forming around him.
Two micro charges, placed two meters apart, should do it. Any closer and Nox ran the risk of having his body escape into space through a fist-sized hole—an experience he wouldn’t feel but wanted to avoid nonetheless. When he was satisfied, the man with white hair hobbled to a nearby bench and sat down, using the last of his energy, wanting nothing more than to settle in for a well-deserved afternoon nap in the park. He imagined couples taking a picnic. He saw children playing hide-and-seek among the arboretum’s greenery.
Nox closed his eyes, took in his last breath and pressed the detonator.
A moment later, it was done.
CHAPTER 36
The central Axis corridor was considered the Gaia’s main thoroughfare for obvious reasons, as it offered the only path available to every section of the ship. Some might have deemed such limitations a design flaw. Most engineers saw it as inherent, an obvious yet
necessary evil, to the functionality of a multi-ringed space-faring vessel. But the Axis was more than a mere highway. It was a spinal column connecting brain to body, housing vital network cabling, electrical grid systems, plumbing and environmental ductwork, which ran from the command center to main engineering and beyond. While massive habitats rotated around it to simulate gravity and great engines propelled it forward through space, the Axis stood firm as the Gaia’s center, the foundation around which everything else was built.
Milton had traveled almost its entire length and concluded that the stupid ship was too big and the Axis went on for way too long. Also, there weren’t enough nooks, crannies or turns in it to lose someone tailing you. As a result, Neema was still behind him, no doubt making sure he was headed in the right direction even though there was only one way for him to go: aft, toward the rear of the ship. Aft was where the engine room lay and, before it, the section housing the computer core, their destination.
“Why are we even bothering?” Milton asked. “We’re dead already. Even now I can feel my brain rotting away.”
“Your brain was rotten long before the flu got to it,” Neema joked. “Besides, Arsenal was one of us. That makes him our responsibility. You don’t want him to get away with what he’s done, do you?”
Milton didn’t and grunted a response that said as much.
“If we retake the main computer, there’s a chance we might survive this,” she continued. “If it helps, think of it like you’re writing code. You program one line at a time; you solve each problem one at a time. Our first hurdle is getting back control of the ship. For now, nothing else matters.”
“Right. Forget I’ve been mortally infected. I’ll just do that,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “Assuming by some miracle we do survive, beat Arsenal and find a cure, consider this my last mission for the Kiters, Neema. I’m done.”
Neema stopped in her tracks. “What did you say?”
“I’m hanging up my keyboard. After what happened during that so-called initiation, I really don’t know if I’m cut out to be one of you.” He turned around to face her.
“Don’t be so hasty,” she said. “Give it some time. We’ve all been through a lot lately.”
“You don’t understand. I lost something when I decided to pull that trigger and kill you. Now everything’s different. Changed.”
Neema placed her hand on Milton’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’ve never seen another one like you—a natural at proof theory, logic, math; a stone-cold coder. One day, you could put the rest of us to shame—myself included. I’d hate to lose you. You’d make a hell of a Kiter.”
He smiled, then shook his head. “I just want to take Arsenal down. Once that’s done, I’m done. Besides, none of this means anything if we can’t beat the flu. It’s all just talk.”
They traveled the rest of the way without another word. As they reached the threshold that would lead them out of the Axis into the rear section of the ship, a series of concussive thuds stopped them in their tracks. The sound had traveled from somewhere further up the ship and could have been explosions of some kind though not as loud or powerful as the previous two that crippled the Gaia. Milton looked at Neema, who shrugged her shoulders in response. After pausing a beat to see if anything else followed and gleaning nothing, they continued onward.
Like the rest of the ship, the computer core resided in another protected room on the Gaia, shielded from errant cosmic radiation, waves or signals that might interrupt the function of the delicate components that were housed within. The sea of servers that made up the core comprised all the processing power necessary to run and control the vessel’s many critical systems, more than any other supercomputer that came before it. Arsenal was no doubt hiding somewhere inside the maze of equipment awaiting their arrival, so Milton and Neema approached the room with care.
“Remember, Lightsea said the redundant control unit is somewhere near the power supply,” she whispered. “Find the back door and secure the system.”
“And what are you going to do?” he replied.
“Get reacquainted with an old friend.”
They separated as soon as they crossed the threshold into the core. The room hummed with electricity and felt warmer than the rest of the ship; drier, too. The environmental systems were working overtime to keep the room cool from the heat generated by the machines and their exaflops of calculations per second. Neema sought the main interface terminal, thinking that’s where Arsenal would be, and followed the core’s architecture, knowing it’s pipes and thick cabling would lead her to him.
Meanwhile, Milton ran. He had some ground to cover, as the power supply was on the far side of the room and up four flights of stairs. On the one hand, he felt lucky this entire section had artificial gravity plating, which allowed him to avoid the awkward low-G movements he’d had to improvise before as he traveled; on the other hand, Milton was already winded by the time he climbed the second stairwell.
“How’re you doing?” Neema asked via local com channel, keeping her voice low.
“Dandy. Has it occurred to you that Arsenal might want us here? He knows we’re the only ones who can beat him.”
She rounded a corner and stopped in her tracks. There behind a glass-walled side office stood Arsenal, working a virtual desktop. “Oh, I’m sure he does,” Neema replied. “But he’ll wish he hadn’t.”
Milton knew better than to question her when she sounded like that. Determination was not one of her lesser qualities. It’s how the Kiter movement got its start. It’s why they were here in the Gaia now. He didn’t envy Arsenal one bit, but neither did he feel sorry for him, as that guy deserved whatever punishment Neema saw fit to dish out. As much as Milton wished he could be there when it happened, he had his own job to do.
The core’s power supply included a series of transformers, rectifiers and filters channeling power from the ship’s fusion reactor, and while the servers didn’t require a great deal of energy, it did need to be steady, reliable and uninterrupted. Industrial surge protectors and backup battery systems insured this, while heat sinks embedded in the ship’s outer walls kept everything within their required operational temperature ranges. Milton heeded the warning signs and stayed well away from the caged area, not wanting to risk an accidental electrocution and make a bad day worse, and walked around to discover a nondescript door almost hiding in the back corner of the room.
An electronic lock that took several minutes to hack finally gave way and revealed an empty room, save for a single desk at its center. On top of the desk sat a shiny black disc. Milton looked around the room to make sure he wasn’t being punked.
“I knew you’d come. What took you so long?”
Arsenal, Milton thought. But where?
“I took the tour. Went to the spa,” Neema replied.
She left the com line open.
“I bet you’re wondering why,” Arsenal continued. “Why would one of your oldest and dearest turn on you?”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” she answered.
“All this time you thought I was helping you fight the man, trying to make things right again, but my reasons were never that deep. It wasn’t about the cause. It was about chaos.”
Keep him talking. Milton ran behind the desktop and raised his hands, activating the system’s virtual displays. This wasn’t just any old redundant control unit, as Lightsea knew but for some reason withheld, and this time Milton wasn’t in the Virt working on a simulated computer. This time he was at the controls of a bona fide quantum computer, and Milton was going to use every qubit of processing power it had to wrest back control of the ship.
“Things were so boring before you came around. Who knew a pandemic could bring that much order to the universe?” said Arsenal. “Everything was so controlled. Finite. Then you blew everything open.”
“Glad I could expand your worldview.”
“I mean it, Neema. You made things fun again.”
Milton brought
up the security feeds on his display and saw them in the core’s main terminal office. Neema was making her way around the station until she stood across from Arsenal unimpeded.
“You know, I tried sparing you. I sabotaged the elevators back at the rocket launch, but you just couldn’t accept defeat, could you?” Arsenal said. “That’s one of the reasons why I like you so much, which makes what I’m about to do so hard.”
“Well then, let me make it easy for you,” she replied, pulling a stun pistol from behind her back and leveling it at him.
Milton pumped his fist in celebration but sensed something was wrong the moment he saw Arsenal laughing back at her.
“Go ahead,” Arsenal barked. “Shoot.”
A pulsed light beam escaped the weapon’s barrel and traveled across the room in less than a second, bound straight for its target, which was the result one would expect after pulling the trigger. What one couldn’t foresee, what both Milton and Neema didn’t know, was that Arsenal wasn’t there. The shot sliced through his torso, causing his body to flicker, then blink out of existence, and disrupted the virtual projectors Arsenal had set up to fool them.
Neema had no time to recover from this revelation before electronic locks bolted into the office doors, sealing her in. A familiar face appeared outside. Arsenal waved to her through the glass wall, smiling and shrugging his shoulders. Then he pulled down his visor and began typing in commands on his cufflink. “It’s going to get a little uncomfortable in there,” he said to her. She heard circulation fans cease their rotations and knew her time was short. Neema attempted to access the computer core using the terminal station but was still locked out. She pounded the table in frustration. A digital thermometer already read 35 degrees Celsius, and the temperature inside the sealed room continued to rise.
Milton witnessed all of this and hurried to break into the system and regain control. The problem was that Arsenal was too good, and all the obvious methods for gaining entry had been sealed shut. If he was going to beat him, Milton wasn’t going to do it by outthinking him.