Isonation

by In Churl Yo

  The quantum computer was the key.

  Maybe that’s why Lightsea had kept it secret. It was obvious Arsenal knew nothing of its existence, otherwise he would have secured it as well. For one thing, the quantum computer was fast—while traditional computers worked by translating zeros and ones, quantum counterparts could think in zeros and ones simultaneously, offering many more computations by a wide exponential.

  They were also powerful. The single desktop Milton was using could replace the entire contents of the server room, controlling the Gaia’s systems alone with ease. In many ways, the quantum computer was far beyond the capabilities of the ship’s existing computer core, but Milton knew how people feared change. The crew wasn’t ready to hand over the daily operations of mankind’s most sophisticated vessel to a single device the size of toaster. After today, maybe they’d change their minds.

  Milton set the quantum computer to a simple task: crack Arsenal’s password. As fast as its processors worked, the solution was only a matter of time. However, each of the core’s subsystems would require their own unique access codes as well, so still not a simple, straightforward task by any means.

  “Hang in there, Neema,” Milton whispered over the com. He kept their channel private so Arsenal couldn’t hear them. “I’m trying to get back control of the environmental systems.”

  “No,” she replied, already sweating profusely, the heat sapping all of Neema’s energy. “Give me…main computer control.”

  “That’ll take way too long. You won’t make it.”

  “I’ll make it. Just…do it.” Neema was reminded of the first time she set out on an impossible task all those years ago, only it was Arsenal in her ear. There wasn’t much she enjoyed about that experience either, except the result, of course. Neema prayed for a similar conclusion today.

  Milton watched his brute force attack send trillions of possible alphanumeric combinations at the core’s administrative subroutines. He tried willing the codes out into the open, but they remained hidden, locked inside their secure digital vault.

  “The flu,” Neema croaked, her voice dry and thin. “You’ll die…too.”

  Arsenal smiled. “You think I’m that stupid? I took the last of the cure right after I blew up the lab just so I could have the satisfaction of watching you die in person. It’ll be nice not to have to look over my shoulder anymore once I know you’re gone. The rest of the Kiters are a joke, a bunch of lame noobs. They can’t stop me without you. I’m too good!”

  “Lightsea…will…”

  “You don’t get it. Everyone’s as good as dead. The only person with the cure now is Ogden, and he’s already left the ship. As soon as we’re done here, I’m headed back to Earth to help him create his ‘new world order’ by destroying what’s left of this one, by unleashing chaos back into the world. It’ll be awesome. You can’t beat us. No one can.”

  “How…long…Ogden?”

  “You want to know how long I’ve been secretly colluding with the enemy? Well, here’s the thing: It’s been a while. Years, even. Does that hurt your feelings?”

  Neema leaned against the desktop, ready to collapse. She’d done what she could to keep him distracted. With any luck, Milton would soon regain control and somehow find a way to take…

  “Hey, Neema,” Milton whispered. “You’re in.”

  She typed a single line of code. A plan formulated.

  Neema reset her footing, stood tall, then typed another line.

  The world stopped with nothing in it except for the terminal station’s virtual display, far light pixels forming numbers and letters in an ambient suspension right at eye level. Each keystroke empowered Neema, bringing a clarity and purpose with it. Her code was more than just a language she spoke, it was her solemn word, her way of life. For Neema, coding was codex, the program and the programmer’s statute, a polysemy that described both doer and deed. Everything she’d worked hard for, everything she believed, was right there on the screen. Her code was her code. Both would save her.

  Neema typed another line.

  “What are you doing?” Arsenal asked. “How did you get back into the system?” He clawed at his cufflink, searching for an answer. “Whatever you’re trying to do, it’s too late. You’re almost cooked!”

  Now her fingers were a blur, dancing across the keyboard. Neema wrote on instinct, her mind empty of distraction, a predator casting through the Gaia’s computer core out into the global network looking to ensnare its prey. The program tracked a unique address around the world to its location, studied the target’s hardware for any weakness it could find and, once analyzed, it pounced, going for the kill. No longer would Neema be content simply seeking out the truth. Now she would defend it.

  Arsenal’s visor stopped transmitting.

  “What the hell?” he said, tapping his temple to reactivate the display. Then his cufflink began heating up, searing hot against his skin. “No, no, no! Stop! Stop it!” He couldn’t release the device from his arm, as the mechanism remained locked in place. Arsenal tried punching at it with his fist, but the cuff would not let go its grip. Soon flashes of light radiated out from his wrist, discharging a dozen amperes of current through the hardware, stark blue lightning spreading to his visor, seizing Arsenal’s motor functions and knocking him across the room.

  “Oh, wow,” Milton said, his eyes glued to the display. “I didn’t…I didn’t… How the hell did you do that, Neema?” When she didn’t respond, he turned the camera around and saw her lying on the floor unresponsive. He panicked. “Please don’t die. Just a few seconds more…”

  The quantum desktop cracked the remaining lockouts, and Milton accessed the environmental controls, turning the fans and heatsinks on, dropping the temperature inside the main terminal station back to normal. “We got the ship back, Neema,” he said through the com. “Can you hear me?”

  “Roger, roger,” said Elsif, establishing contact from the command bridge. “We hear you, Milton.”

  “Elsif! Thank God…”

  “Where’s Neema?” Baller asked.

  “Neema needs help!” he replied. “She’s unconscious in the core.”

  Voices in the background squawked with intensity as arrangements were made. “They’re sending a team now,” said Baller. “What about Arsenal?”

  Milton recalled the hacker’s recent demise. “Toast. The Kiter Five might want to find a replacement for him if you guys are attached to that name.”

  “Well, maybe we already have,” Tifa teased.

  “Definitely,” a weak voice responded.

  “Neema?” Milton called out. “Neema, are you okay?”

  “Not yet,” she answered, “Getting there.”

  “Help is coming, luv,” Baller said. “Best just to take it easy.”

  “We’re…the Kiter Five,” Neema replied. “We don’t…do easy. Right, Milton?”

  Milton smiled. He placed his hands high in the air, then lowered them, deactivating the virtual display and putting the quantum desktop back to sleep.

  “You’re the boss,” he said, a newfound fire in his eyes. The Zombie Flu still had its terrible hold on them, the antidote gone in the wind. Even so, Milton felt good about their chances. “We’ll just take the problems as they come, one at a time. Together. Kiters, one and all.”

  CHAPTER 37

  The Syrinx’s angle of descent was off by a few scant degrees, enough to turn a controlled entry from textbook to total disaster if it wasn’t corrected in time. Too steep and atmospheric friction would overcome the ship’s thermal protection system, causing her to break up; too shallow and the ship would turn into a slow cooker, compromising its heat shield or other vital systems. Neither was optimal. Odds were good either would end in catastrophic failure. The Syrinx was outside its safe-entry corridor, tracking higher than its nominal target value, which meant it was coming in steep. Once the ship reached hypersonic velocities, there would be no turning back and little left to be done, and with each second that passe
d, gravity’s pull was strengthening, causing the vessel to fall even faster.

  Zoah cared about none of this.

  Instead she sat forward in the co-pilot’s chair to get a better look at the controls in front of her, hoping to decipher the readouts and buttons at a glance so she could find a way to turn the ship around and get back to her friends and family as soon as possible—that was foremost on her mind. Reentering the Earth’s atmosphere was the last thing she wanted to do, safe or not.

  Zoah’s self-taught training on the stealth ship was of little help to her now, as the Syrinx’s panels looked way more complicated and less intuitive. She might as well have been reading Greek, although maybe her Latin studies would’ve at least given her some insight with that.

  Heelo could have taken over and piloted her to safety, if only she hadn’t left him behind on the Gaia with the rest of her things. Zoah was really missing her little friend right now.

  Well, there was nothing to it but to do it, as her dad would say.

  With the auto pilot trashed, Zoah had little choice. The first thing she had to do was stop the ship from falling. It took a giant multi-stage rocket to get her into orbit the first time, and she doubted there would be another on the ground just waiting there for her to use. Zoah studied each display one at a time, searching for anything that looked like main engine control.

  Meanwhile, the Syrinx shook, and the walls rattled around her. The windshield had been bathed in a bright orange light, the view obscured by atmospheric particles dragging across the ship, igniting and heating the exterior to temperatures greater than 1,000 degrees Celsius. Zoah tried hard to ignore all of it, but the ship felt like it was coming apart around her.

  Her eyes fell to a readout near the bottom of the center controls, where Zoah saw meters for fuel consumption and navigational vectors. Main engine ignition and operation came next, and she prayed before activating the twin-fueled rocket, hoping there was enough gas left for another burn.

  The Syrinx hung in the air for what felt like hours before the engine lit and arrested their fall. The ship jerked forward, and Zoah slid back into her seat, watching the view outside as the firestorm abated and an inky star field returned. She had only a moment to smile before a deafening thud came from the rear of the ship, sending it spinning into space.

  Now what? Zoah jabbed at the thruster buttons. It took her a second to figure out which one countered the Syrinx’s turn, and the effort left her dizzy. She closed her eyes until the rotations ceased, but when she opened them again, everything in the cockpit was dark.

  “Not good,” she said aloud. “Not good at all!”

  Ogden’s body had been thrown about the rear of the cabin during all of this, and now he had managed to float up next to her, looking quite battered and bruised. She offered him a slight push back in the direction he came from, then set out to find the emergency systems.

  Zoah released her harness and pushed herself forward.

  Under different circumstances, she’d be elated—zero-G was everything she’d hoped it’d be. But Zoah needed to get the power back on, and playing Superman by flying around with her fist in the air would be wrong. Fun, but wrong.

  She drifted over to the operations station and found a closed panel marked “Batteries”. Inside, a blinking red switch, once engaged, transferred stored power from the ship’s backup energy cells, bringing lights and panels back in gray power-saving mode. Zoah looked for status indicators for all the primary systems and hated what she found.

  The Syrinx was pretty much dead. The rough descent through the atmosphere damaged the propulsion system enough that once the main engine was engaged, an instability led to an explosion, crippling the ship. Zoah wasn’t going to be flying back to the Gaia, or anywhere else for that matter. Thruster fuel had all bled out too, no doubt the result of a ruptured line somewhere.

  Worse news: The batteries would only last so long—a few hours at the most if she were going to maintain life support, which she kind of needed.

  Time to call in the cavalry.

  The radio worked, so there was still that. Zoah picked a random frequency, then cleared her throat before hitting the transmitter button. “Hello? This is Zoah Lightsea. I’m trying to reach my father, Dr. Lightsea, or anyone else on the Gaia.”

  Tinny static. She turned the dial, then tried again.

  “This is Zoah Lightsea to anyone out there. Please respond.”

  “Zoah, it’s Dad,” Dr. Lightsea’s voice declared from the com speaker. “How are you broadcasting on this channel? Where are you? Over.”

  “On a drone ship, somewhere in orbit. Ogden kidnapped me, but I’m safe now. Um, over.”

  More static emanated from the speaker, as Zoah imagined the heated conversation her father was having with his staff while she waited for a response.

  “Z, this is important. There’s a plaque somewhere on the wall. Official-looking. It should have the name of the ship you’re on written in big letters. Over.”

  Zoah looked around the cockpit and found the inscribed metal plate on the wall. “It says Syrinx. Over.”

  “That’s good, Z. Very good. Where’s Ogden now? What’s the operational status of the Syrinx? Over.”

  “Ogden’s unconscious. The ship’s engines are down. There was an explosion. I’m running on emergency backup batteries only. Over.”

  Her situation sounded worse when she said it aloud. Zoah hoped her father had a plan, because she was out of ideas and the cockpit was already starting to get cold fast.

  “Hi, honey,” a new voice spoke, making Zoah smile as soon as she recognized her mom on the line. “I’m afraid something’s happened on the Gaia. Ogden sabotaged…”

  “The explosion. I remember. Sorry, over."

  “It’s worse than that, I’m afraid,” Madeline said.

  “What do mean by worse, mom?”

  “A second detonation compromised one of our labs. Destroyed everything. In the process, the virus was released into the Gaia’s environmental systems, infecting everyone aboard. We have it, honey. All of us have the Zombie Flu.”

  Fear gripped Zoah’s face. Ogden was telling the truth. Even now she couldn’t believe it, despite hearing the words in her own mother’s voice.

  “There’s some good news,” Dr. Lightsea said. “The Syrinx is carrying antidote.”

  “That’s beyond good news. That’s amazing,” Zoah replied.

  “We’ve used this channel to establish a telemetry link with your ship. Looks like damage to several systems might put the serum in jeopardy. You’re going to have to do a little creative engineering to keep it safe, Z.”

  “Just point me in the right direction.”

  “I’ll talk you through it,” Madeline offered. “The work shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “In the meantime, we’re prepping another shuttle to rendezvous with you,” Dr. Lightsea said. “Your ship is in a decaying orbit, but it looks like there’s enough time to get you. We’ll make it through this. I promise.”

  Zoah was grateful to hear their voices, to not feel so alone. Having stuff to do helped keep her mind off the fact that everyone she knew and loved might die soon if she failed.

  Her first task was to retrieve the ship’s tool kit and begin removing some of the protective wall plating from the rear cargo area, exposing the inner housing where no small amount of wiring and cabling lay intertwined throughout. “What a mess,” she exclaimed.

  “Look for a big elbow pipe. Follow it down until you see a cluster of micro-transformers,” Madeline said.

  “Got it.”

  “Now rip them all out.”

  Zoah hesitated, then took a deep breath and started yanking. “Tell me again what we’re doing?”

  “Well, the cure is susceptible to extreme temps, which do a good job of degrading potency and effectiveness by changing the morphology and structure of the adsorbent.”

  “You sound like my advanced microbiology professor.”

  Madeline l
aughed. “I’m glad you were paying attention. Remember when your teachers would tell you, ‘this information could save your life one day’?”

  “Ha! Dr. Shinn would be doing cartwheels by now.”

  “Against an agent like the Zombie Flu, such affected medicine would work about as well as a couple of baby aspirin. Extreme heat or cold exposure ruins it completely. We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen by creating a stable, protected environment for it.”

  “We’re going to hotwire a new containment unit,” Zoah said.

  “Alright, yes. You could say that.”

  “We should hurry then. It’s getting colder.”

  “About that,” Dr. Lightsea joined in. “We’ve been talking and think once you’ve completed the delicate work, you should find a spare EVA suit and put it on. Even without a proper flight jumper underneath to regulate your body temperature, it should still provide you some protection.”

  “Will do, Dad.”

  “Back to work, honey,” Madeline said. “You need to unscrew the cable behind those transformers and pull it from the wall…”

  A half hour later, Zoah was in the cockpit floating in front of a jerry-rigged, duct-taped environmental unit attached to a biological storage cabinet, holding the ends of two live wires, one in each hand. With her helmet locked down and EVA suit sealed, she felt protected, ready for whatever came next.

  Except that she wasn’t.

  The plan was for Zoah to connect one of two backup batteries to the contraption, allow it to draw direct power from the cell since the ship’s grid was damaged in the explosion. She’d followed her parents’ instructions to the letter, cannibalized both a capacitor and voltage regulator to create a circuit that wouldn’t overpower the equipment. All that remained for her was to close the loop by attaching the wires in her hands to their respective terminals, only that didn’t happen.