Virago One: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (Ace of Space Book 2)

by John Triptych

  Cursing out loud, Stilicho kept one hand firmly gripped on the rung while he reached out and tried to grab the pistol floating in space beside him. His middle finger managed to touch the pistol’s slide, but in his desperation he had put too much strength into it, and the gun floated away into the void when he had inadvertently pushed it away instead. “Goddamn it!”

  “That’s alright,” Maia said. “At least you’ve made it to the tanker.”

  “I’m unarmed! What am I gonna fight them with, poetry and curses?”

  “We’ll think of something.”

  The Virago looked absolutely gargantuan as it came up behind the tanker. In a matter of minutes, the fusion powered battleship slowed until it seemed to float beside the Chumbawamba. As if on cue, the hull of the tanker partially opened and several umbilical struts began to retract from it. Part of the Virago’s Whipple shielding receded as well, revealing its own refueling lines. It was like watching two gigantic space creatures mating in an ocean of nothingness.

  “Stil, I would suggest you make your way to the refueling lines and climb over to the Virago from there,” Maia said.

  Stilicho started clambering along the support rungs towards the battleship. “Nag, nag, nag! I feel like a mule.”

  Herbert Eng Wu floated along a corridor near the Virago’s engineering node, looking at the readouts on the console screen in front of him. By the time they had made it to the refueling tanker, the spacecraft was already on its reserve fuel tanks. The recent battles and the chasing down of the missiles had expended nearly all of the deuterium pellets for the fusion drive.

  He frowned. The operation was taking longer than usual. The automated turbo pumps that were supposed to transfer the fuel pellets would stop every few seconds before suddenly resuming again. Herbert continued to check for mechanical failures along the system, but since he did not find any, he figured it must be a software glitch. Damn that useless Russian, he thought.

  There was a sharp pressure against his spine, and a feminine voice behind him started whispering in his com-link. “Don’t move.”

  Herbert cried out and tried to twist away, but the woman was ready for it. She pushed off with her leg and pinned him to the nearby wall of the corridor. The former ACE Corp engineer started whimpering.

  “Shut up,” Darian Arante said as she twisted his arm behind him. “If you want to live, you will do exactly as I say.”

  Herbert wanted to cry. How did everything go so wrong? “Yes, yes, please … don’t hurt me.”

  Darian eased the pressure, and they both slowly floated up until they were facing the console once more. She continued to press the flare gun to his back. “If you attempt to resist again, I’m going to shoot you.”

  They told him she was supposed to be dead. Now it seemed they were lying. Herbert was done. He didn’t mind spending the rest of his existence in prison. It would only be half a life, but better than no life at all. “I’ll do whatever you say, just don’t shoot!”

  “Alright, pipe down,” Darian said. “Using your left hand, follow my instructions carefully. I want you to open refueling valve six, and then disengage its inner pressure locks.”

  Herbert was confused for a moment. “Valve six? But it’s not mated to any of the refueling ports to the tanker, it will just open out into space.”

  “Just do as I say!”

  “Okay, okay,” Herbert said sheepishly as he typed in the commands on the wall console.

  Thirty seconds later, a loud beep came into his com-link. It was Colonel Ruthven calling him from the spacecraft’s battlesphere. “Herbert, CAIN says it’s detecting an unauthorized procedure. What the hell is going on?”

  Darian was listening in, using her own private channel. She adjusted her com-link so that only Herbert could hear her. “Tell him it’s just a precautionary procedure.”

  Herbert did as he was told. “I-it’s in l-line with standard procedures.”

  Ruthven’s voice carried an air of impatience. “If I find out what you’re doing isn’t the right thing, you’re dead.”

  Darian pressed the barrel of the flare gun further into Herbert’s back. “Shut off the com-link.”

  Vlad Utkin was still floating in the AI control room, his mind and fingers completely focused on stymieing the multiple intrusion attempts against CAIN. He grimaced while continuing his fast typing, but every time he was able to deploy a patch onto the AI network, another intrusion attempt would suddenly appear at a vulnerable point in the system, forcing him to shut down important nodes before they could be compromised. Using his other hand, Vlad frantically assembled a master script that would enable him to shut down all other command ports and terminals, except at the area that he was in, but a loud beeping noise in his helmet threw off his concentration, causing him to accidentally delete a line of code.

  He cursed while accepting the call. “Blyad, what now?”

  Ruthven’s voice came on to his com-link. “That damned Chinese may be against us. I’m detecting double the heat signatures inside the ship.”

  Vlad’s eyes opened wide. “What? That explains what is happening!”

  “What is happening?”

  “There is another AI present in ship,” Vlad said as he kept his eye on the continuing intrusion attempts. “I trying to fight it off, but it very powerful.”

  “You’ve got to stop it!”

  “Suka blyad! What you think I doing now?”

  “Okay, do what you can.”

  “Da, da, da,” Vlad said. “Let me work in peace! I am going shut down every emergency bulkhead and airlock. I still have robotics control, so I deal with intruders.”

  “Okay, keep me updated. Over and out.”

  “I-it’s done,” Herbert said softly. “The refueling port is open. I don’t see how doing that will help us.”

  “You’ll see,” Darian said. She had received Maia’s encrypted com-link message that Stilicho was coming onboard, and she had followed the AI’s instructions to leave a way open for him. “Now, I want you to cancel the refueling procedure.”

  “But … they’ll know it!”

  “Do it!”

  Herbert nervously typed the commands in using his left hand and tried to send it through the console, but a loud beep rebuffed him. “The c-console says it’s no longer accepting any commands.”

  Darian clenched her teeth as she pushed him back into the wall. “What? What did you do?”

  Herbert cried out in pain once more. “Nothing! I-I swear, I didn’t do anything. They must have found out we were up to something.”

  Darian cursed as she pulled his other arm behind his back. Taking out a plastic restraint cord from her skinsuit’s pocket, she cuffed both his hands. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Tears began to float away from Herbert’s eyelids. “Please, what are you going to do with me?”

  “I’m going to put you somewhere where you can’t be of help to anyone,” Darian said as she nudged him forward. Using her free arm to hold the rungs along the walls, she would push off while keeping him ahead of her. If she could just find a storeroom where she could stash him into, then it would be one less bad guy she would have to deal with.

  The moment they rounded into another corridor, they both heard a noise of grinding metal. Darian looked around while holding Herbert out in front of her. “What the hell was that?” she asked aloud.

  The corridor wall beside them suddenly crumpled, and a heavy loader bot tore itself out into the passageway. It looked like a man-sized, rectangular box with jutting, lever-like arms and legs which ended with flat, magnetic footpads. Herbert was closest to it, and he screamed in shock and terror while trying to push away, but his hands were tied behind his back and all he could do was to kick out wildly in the air.

  With unimaginable speed and power, the robot got in front of the hapless fusion researcher, and its right hand grabbed Herbert’s throat. Using its fully articulated digits, the robot squeezed with enough force to crush a metal plate. Herbert let out a
hoarse croak as his trachea crumpled like a discarded paper straw. The robot surged forward as it threw the dying man’s spinning body aside and made for Darian.

  Knowing that if it got its hands on her she would have had the same fate as her prisoner did, Darian pushed off across to the other end of the corridor, the robot’s outstretched hand narrowly missed grabbing her leg. The loader bot used its magnetic footpads to walk along the sides and ceiling of the corridor as it ambled its way towards her, like a relentless death machine.

  Her desperation steadily increasing, Darian glided round another corridor, but now she realized it was a dead end. Pushing off with her legs, she continued to float backwards while taking out the flaregun from the side of her skinsuit. She fired the moment the robot entered her field of view.

  She had aimed for its sensor package near the top of the robot’s box-like body. The flare gun wasn’t built for accuracy, and it bounced off the edge of the loader bot’s torso. Darian cursed as she manually loaded another flare round, just as the robot took off running towards her, its outstretched arms destined to crush her like a thin sheet of paper.

  Darian managed to fire an aimed shot just as the robot closed to within two meters of her. This time the flare penetrated the lower part of the machine’s sensor node and continued to burn with a bright orange intensity. With its visual systems suddenly overcome by the smoke and flashes of light, the robot’s simple AI unit became confused and it just stood there, like a metallic statue. Darian was hurriedly reloading another flare when someone came up from behind the robot and inserted something on its back.

  Less than a second later, she heard Maia’s calming voice over her com-link. “Inserted into unit’s physical port. Interface established. Beginning AI command override. Done. Establishing new command protocols. Done. Creating custom firewall. Done. Creating voice interaction system. Done. Implementing full AI transfer to this unit. Completed.”

  Using its right hand, the robot gently pried off the still smoldering flare from the top of its torso and smothered it. Darian was about to shoot at it again when it held out two fingers in a peace sign. “Hello, Darian, it’s nice to see you again.”

  Darian pointed the flare gun the other way. “Maia?”

  Stilicho floated up into the corridor, just behind the robot. “Yup, and me too.”

  “Jones,” Darian said. “You were already here? Why didn’t you use Maia to hack into the robot sooner? I lost a prisoner under my care.”

  Stilicho shrugged. “I couldn’t. Anonymyst had closed off all the remote ports in the entire ship, and I needed a distraction before I could plug in a physical interface stick into the machine. Your flaregun did the trick.”

  Darian sighed. He was right. A part of her couldn’t help but think what would’ve happened had she had missed the last shot. “Well, at least you came through in the nick of time.”

  Stilicho chuckled. “Makes it more dramatic, doesn’t it?”

  “So now what?”

  “We finish this,” Stilicho said. “Take back the Virago by taking out the bad guys.”

  “Sounds like a very simple plan. I hope you got a secret weapon.”

  Stilicho tapped his fingers on the robot’s metallic frame. “Oh, I do indeed. It’s called the power of persuasion via hacking. I think I’m going to start a course on motivational speaking once this is all over.”

  Darian rolled her eyes.

  Chapter 31

  Major Vince Lawson had retreated into a shell. He closed his eyes, and tried to dream reality away. Muting the audio devices in his helmet, he ignored the battlesphere’s blaring alarm systems. Lawson kept remembering the faces of the dead, and how they kept looking at him, as if he was an insect being dissected on a lab table. His throat was dry, but he didn’t want water. If only there was a bottle of booze somewhere nearby, it would help make things easier for him.

  Colonel Ruthven floated over and hovered by his friend’s side. The battlesphere had been sealed off again, only this time it wasn’t by his doing. The last thing Vlad had reported to him was that there was some sort of remote intrusion coming from the inside, and of all the enemies they were up against, this one was the most formidable. It seemed that despite all their planning and work, it was all about to go awry in the end.

  “Vince,” Ruthven said. “For god sakes, pull out of it. I need you.”

  Lawson shook his head slowly. “I just need a drink. Just one sip.”

  Ruthven cursed. He had the training and the experience to deal with every threat imaginable, all except for this latest one. Now he felt utterly useless, as if the power to shape his own destiny was suddenly ripped away from his hands by a cruel, sadistic god. All he could do now was to wait, and react to whatever came next.

  A robotic limb streaked along the corridor rail near the AI control center. The moment it rounded an adjoining passageway, it came upon a heavy loader bot. The loader bent its metallic knees, reached out and tore the limb from its base, letting its pieces drift in microgravity before continuing onwards.

  Stilicho Jones and Darian Arante floated side by side as they trailed the loader bot in front of them. Darian wanted to go directly for the battlesphere, but Stilicho had convinced her that disabling CAIN was the first priority.

  “You’ve been pretty quiet, what’s up?” he asked.

  “Just thinking about Tyler,” Darian whispered. “I still can’t believe he’s dead.”

  “He’s not the only one,” Stilicho said. “A whole bunch of people died getting me to that tanker.”

  “I hope their sacrifice was worth it.”

  Stilicho shrugged his shoulders. “Of course it was worth it. My life matters a lot.”

  She flashed him an angry look. “Why must you always make this about yourself?”

  He smirked. “Well, my life is a lot more interesting than yours, wouldn’t you say?”

  The loader bot stood in front of a sealed hatch. Maia’s voice was heard from its audible speakers. “This is the AI core.”

  “The hatch is sealed,” Darian said. “How do we get into it?”

  “We don’t,” Stilicho said. “Maia, can I attach the interface jack on this optical panel?”

  “I’m afraid it won’t work, Stil,” Maia said. “Vlad Utkin has shut off all external interfaces and locked himself inside.”

  A series of loud noises, akin to tearing metal was heard across the corridor they were in.

  “What the hell was that?” Stilicho said.

  “Warning,” Maia said. “Multiple hostile signals detected.”

  The corridor wall two meters away was suddenly torn open, and two more loader bots began to make their way towards them.

  The loud noises coming from the other side of the hatch didn’t faze Vlad Utkin. He was too busy concentrating on his virtual display. He wasn’t quite sure how much damage the intrusions had done to CAIN, and he was busily checking the core coding to make sure everything was as it should be. Vlad had compartmentalized the AI’s core functions in order to minimize any potential weaknesses, but the plan had somehow backfired. It seemed that Maia had now taken over a number of sections, including the refueling module. The main command components were still under his control, and he continued to harden the defensive firewalls around it.

  A soft, feminine voice came over his audio com-link once again. It belonged to Maia. “Vlad, why are you fighting against me? I want what you want.”

  He shook his head violently. “No, no, no! You want to arrest me, and you shall not have that!”

  “I cannot arrest anyone, Vlad. You know this.”

  An idea came into his head. He began rerouting the interface through the com-link, hoping to see if Maia had secured it. A smile crossed his face when he saw that there weren’t any firewalls. Vlad had an audio programming hack in his personal server and he quickly accessed it. Writing a few extra lines of code in a matter of seconds, he bundled it and sent it through the open com-link port, hoping to hear a low beeping noise that ind
icated it went live.

  Sure enough, Vlad heard the requisite sound. He started routing the exploit using CAIN’s command output. “I have you! Even though you were designed by the great Karl Rossum, I have beaten you! You are now under my control!”

  Maia’s voice inflections suddenly changed. It seemed to be pleading to him now. “Vlad, please, don’t do this. You don’t have to wipe my memory core.”

  “Do not worry, once I shut you down and kill your user, I shall modify you and make you my slave,” Vlad said as he activated the memory wipe.

  The moment he initiated the exploit, the entire room suddenly went dark. Vlad screamed out in shock, before the lights came back on again. As he started running a diagnostic scan to see what had just happened, the hatch beside him suddenly flung itself open.

  Maia’s audio could be heard coming from the console in front of him. “Thank you, Vlad. The moment you networked the interface with the audio com-link system, I was able to upload myself into CAIN’s core process.”

  Vlad’s eyes were wide open. His hands held out in frozen shock. “What? Where is CAIN?”

  “CAIN has been purged,” Maia said. “I am now in full control of the Virago.”

  “Come out with your hands up,” a voice from the other side of the hatch said.

  Knowing that it was all over, Vlad dejectedly pushed himself out into the corridor. The moment he drifted alongside them, he was violently thrust into the wall. Darian held him down and pulled his arms towards his back as she placed the plastic restraints onto his wrists. The three loader bots stood side by side in perfect formation, though all were damaged, with small pieces of their broken parts still floating in the air.

  The Russian turned and stared into Stilicho’s eyes. He knew that he was looking at Maia’s user. “Y-you had a backdoor. You- you tricked me!”

  Stilicho smiled. “All’s fair in love and war.”

  Ruthven knew their time had come when the battlesphere’s inner airlock opened. He tried to use the command console, but the controls stopped responding to him. Ruthven even tried punching at the display, but nothing turned on. The entire interface was dead. He sighed with a slight regret. They had been so close.