Starcrasher (Shades Space Opera Book 1)

by Rock Forsberg

  ‘That was fun, but all fun things must end,’ Vorlar said. ‘Everyone else is here, but where is our dear friend, Mr Bounty?’

  Evie shrugged. Aino shook her head.

  ‘Well, I do know,’ Vorlar said, holding up his index finger and pointing it down. ‘He’s locked deep in your hole, and as we speak, my men are on their way to fetch him. Game over. I owe my thanks to Captain Parkes for setting this up.’

  ‘Sir,’ Eddie replied with a salute.

  ‘Wait a minute, what the—?’ Evie turned to Eddie and eyed him with disgust. ‘You work for him?’

  Eddie did not say anything. He just stood there with a blank and unfocused stare.

  ‘What is this?’ Henning asked, as if sharing Evie’s confusion.

  Vorlar chuckled. ‘Captain Parkes here did the right thing. In a moment, you will all join your one-handed mechanic in my ship.’

  Berossus? One-handed? ‘What have you done to him?’ Evie burst out.

  ‘We had to contain him after he attacked us in his rage—’

  ‘You cut his arm off?’ Evie shouted. The soldiers tightened their grip on her arms, the pain shooting up to her shoulder.

  Vorlar nodded. ‘He did become quite a monster.’

  ‘You’re the monster!’ she cried through the pain and teary eyes. She could not believe Berossus would act like that; he was one of the most tranquil people Evie knew. No doubt this man had given him good reason. Regardless, they were all caught. The mission was over. Evie stopped fighting against the soldiers, and it eased her pain, if only a little.

  Vorlar raised his chin up and said, ‘Shove these renegades to the brig, and bring the girl to me.’ He turned around and walked back to Jill, who was sitting stoically in the robotic chair.

  Evie turned to Eddie, who still stood placid by her side. ‘Thanks for everything, rat,’ she said with disgust. ‘What’s wrong with you? Who are you?’

  ‘I… I trapped him…’ he muttered, staring down at his palms. They were shaking. His face was pale.

  ‘I have no idea what is wrong with you,’ Evie said, and shook her head. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do.’

  Before Eddie could say anything, the soldiers pulled Evie away – another painful pull on her shoulder – and started dragging everyone towards the stairway leading up towards their ship.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  TREDD TRIED to pry the door open, but it was shut tight. There were no controls, nothing he could use. Eddie had locked the door from the outside and left. What happened? Why did he do it? How can I get out? Questions were abundant, but answers were nonexistent.

  He turned around. A long row of capsules extended in front of him, and above them more rows, at least five, all with human-sized capsules attached to heavy rails, and connected to each other with cables and wires. It was like a huge system of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of interconnected nodes.

  Tredd went up to a capsule and peered in. He gasped as he saw a person inside. It was one thing seeing someone sleeping there – imagining the hundreds of capsules – but more disturbing was that it was a girl with a striking resemblance to Aino. He could have said it was her, but he knew she was with the others. However, she did look like Aino, and the girl who ran away when he found Eddie. He said something about copies…

  Tredd went down to the next capsule. The same white-skinned girl, or a girl with very similar features, slept there too. He picked up a small birthmark by the left side of her nose. He went to the next one, and peered in. This one had the same birthmark on exactly the same spot.

  Hundreds of copies of Aino? He wanted to put Henning on the spot to explain, but right now it was impossible.

  He walked along the aisle between the capsules until he came to the end. A dark grey wall rose up some fifteen metres, but no doors, windows, or even a single visible hole for ventilation was visible; a dead end.

  Tredd turned around and started heading back to the door. He wondered about the purpose of this room. Why would they have these copies? He also wondered whether they were real or if they were androids. There was no way to tell. It had to be Henning’s doing. Whatever this place was, he needed to get out.

  Just as he reached the other end of the aisle, the door Eddie had shut opened.

  Aino – or perhaps another copy with the same eerie white skin, pink eyes and pointy nose – peered inside. When she saw Tredd, she quickly looked away, but stayed.

  ‘Hello,’ Tredd said, trying to sound friendly, but probably failing and ending up sounding weird.

  ‘Hello,’ she responded.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Tredd tried.

  She took hold of the door and looked up at him like he was a soldier short of a squad. ‘Aino.’

  Tredd winced. ‘Yes, but you are not the Aino I know, are you?’

  She leaned against the doorframe and stared at him with the same detached expression. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked.

  Tredd wanted to repeat his question, but decided to reply to her to keep the conversation going. ‘I was trapped by someone I thought I was rescuing.’

  ‘Eddie.’

  So she did know. This was becoming even more confusing. ‘Are you Aino, or are you not?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and peeked behind her shoulder, like she had heard something. Perhaps the soldiers were on to them? Then, without a word, she darted off, her running steps clanking on the metal flooring.

  ‘Hey, wait!’ Tredd shouted, and ran after her. He passed through the control room, and stepped into the dark corridor.

  Tredd looked around, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. The only sound was a light hum, probably from the air-conditioning systems. Even the sounds of the battle above had ceased. He had to get back to the command centre to understand the status, what this place really was, and if they knew anything about Eddie. His behaviour bothered him deeply, making him tense.

  At a corner, he heard noises and stopped to listen. Rather than the girl, it sounded like a group of soldiers not minding their steps. They should be better than that, Tredd thought, and started moving ahead quicker.

  In a few moments he reached the stairway he had come from. He peeked up, and could see a bunch of soldiers on the floor above him. To reach the command centre, he had to get past them.

  Using his time-lapse would have been easy, but he wanted to avoid it unless it was necessary. He could not recharge on the go, and it was likely he would soon run into a worse situation than this. He decided to wait for a few seconds. Perhaps they would move.

  A slow minute passed, and the soldiers stayed. Tredd overheard them talk.

  ‘No, no, no, this chick is different,’ said a man with a nasal voice.

  ‘Like the one you thought was from Baar, but in reality was a Huidrian androgyne?’ someone else said, after which a group of about five burst into laughter.

  These guys were unprofessional, not Spec Ops. Perhaps Vorlar had inflated his numbers with some random soldiers. Even so, Tredd would never have let his troops act like this in the enemy territory.

  Someone tapped on Tredd’s arm.

  He started. A thought of himself being like a sitting duck blasted through his mind, but he was quick to turn around and grab the guy by his arm.

  It wasn’t a guy. It was Aino. Tredd let go of her arm, and for a moment he just stared at her. ‘The way is blocked… You wouldn’t know a shortcut to the command centre, would you?’

  ‘Come this way,’ she said, and started moving towards darkness. Tredd was surprised by the instant positive answer. He just hoped that the girl, copy, or whatever it was, knew where she was going. He started following her through the green corridor. Catching up he said, ‘Hey, you’re Aino, right?’

  ‘Yep, that’s me,’ she said, without a hint of concern.

  ‘You remember my name?’

  ‘Of course.’ She gave him a sideways glance as they walked along. ‘Why do you ask this?’

  ‘I’m just curious… What’s my name?’

  Sh
e walked forward, and did not say a word for a while. Then she stopped, and turned. ‘Tredd Bounty. What’s wrong?’

  ‘But you came from one of those capsules, didn’t you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Where did you meet me then?’

  ‘You saved one of us from that man.’

  ‘If you have been in the capsule, how do you know?’

  She looked like a ghost in her white dress, gleaming under the green lights against the dark background. ‘We are many bodies, yes, but we are one.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I am Aino as much as any one of my bodies is. We are like multiple processors acting as one system.’

  Tredd thought about it. He got what she was saying, but had trouble fathoming how it would work. Though he didn’t understand how the foodalator worked either, but it did. Living in Spit City had made him numb to weirdness – the more you had it, the more you needed for it to impress you – but even Spit City didn’t have anything like this. She was something of a hive mind. ‘Why did she not tell me about it?’ Tredd thought out aloud.

  ‘The primary instance misses some information,’ Aino said.

  ‘Huh?’

  Aino shrugged. ‘Perhaps Father has erased it.’

  Henning. Of course, that would make sense. The girl is completely oblivious to the fact that she’s running a hive mind. Tredd scratched his head and said, ‘How did you get out of the capsule?’

  ‘I don’t know. It just opened right after I got consciousness.’

  ‘Do you know what the other bodies are up to?’

  ‘Everyone, except the primary one, is hooked in to the system, unconscious—’

  ‘But what about Aino… the primary one?’ Tredd asked. He wanted to know the status of what was happening above them. He had been down for too long.

  She tilted her head to the side, and said, ‘I only have her memories, I can’t live the other body.’

  ‘So let me get this straight,’ Tredd started, but then he heard sounds behind them. He glanced around the corner.

  A crowd of white-clad people, dozens of them, men and women, from children to the elderly, scurried towards them. They were citizens of Avalon. One of them, a boy perhaps a few years older than Aino, stopped when he saw them, flustered. ‘Why are you here? You should walk, not run, to your designated evacuation station.’

  ‘Just about to,’ Tredd said, and the boy replied with quick thumbs up before catching up with his group. ‘We should move.’

  ‘To the command centre? Follow me,’ Aino said, and they started walking again, this time quicker.

  ‘So,’ Tredd said, ‘you don’t know what’s going on with the Aino upstairs, but you know what she knows?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Memories take time to form, you know. She has good memories of you, but she has been under a great deal of stress. And Father… I feel worried about him.’

  Walking through a corridor similar to every other in this maze, gazing at the signs on the wall, Tredd suddenly realised where they were. ‘It’s here!’ he said, dashing up to the door to the command centre.

  INSIDE THE COMMAND CENTRE, the operations commenced as before, but this time he could see from the screens that all of the robots were down, and the fighting above the surface had ceased. The staff were still busy doing things on their stations, but as they entered, everyone turned around to look, as if they were the navy. Tredd found it amusing that they had these highly sophisticated defence mechanisms, but when it came to this level, they were defenceless as chicks in a henhouse.

  Tredd scanned the room, but could not see Evie or the copy of Aino he had left with her. Henning had gone too, and Eddie… Well, Eddie wasn’t there either. A blonde lady in white approached him. Tredd noticed she wore the same kind of a fan-shaped emblem as Henning.

  ‘I am Skyla,’ she said, a little blush on her round cheeks below a distinctive hairline that went up on a steep slope from long in the front to very short in the back. ‘I’m sorry. About your friends—’

  ‘Where are they?’

  Skyla looked down at the copy of Aino by Tredd’s side, a flustered expression on her face. She turned back to Tredd. ‘I see you know about them… The primary Aino-instance, the one you’re looking for, left with Henning and your friends—’

  ‘Was Eddie with them?’

  ‘He was not, but he is now.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  She stared Tredd in the eye for a few silent seconds. Her eyes were pale blue, with clear dark definition, and her eyelashes were long. ‘We have been tracking them. I think you should see this.’

  Tredd and Aino – or an instance of Aino, still a perplexing proposition for him – followed Skyla to the centre console. Aino leaned against it as Skyla pointed up to a large screen. There was a map of sorts and some small dots, but Tredd couldn’t understand what was going on.

  ‘The attackers are closing in on us, so we don’t have much time. See, this is us here. Here is the Garden, and these lines are the evacuation shafts; pretty much all civilians have evacuated, some are still on their way, here,’ Skyla said. The screen highlighted in perfect synchronisation what she was talking about. ‘However, the problem is here.’ The screen zoomed out and then back in on one of the lines connected to the main facility.

  ‘An evacuation shaft?’ Tredd asked.

  ‘A bullet capsule. Henning took the primary Aino-instance and your friends to the satellite pad.’

  The screen showed a lot of dots of various colours and sizes, some moving, some still, on a background of vectors and planes. ‘What is going on?’

  Skyla gulped. ‘An invasion…’

  The navy had intercepted them. The dots were their soldiers. ‘How did they get there?’

  She leaned against the desk with both palms. ‘Seems that Captain Parkes was working for the vice admiral; he revealed their plans, and the navy got there first.’

  Tredd shook his head. It couldn’t have been. Not Eddie. ‘I don’t believe it.’

  ‘We’ve been watching this unfold,’ Skyla said, and pointed up, where the screen started showing video. They stood as a group by a violet Bruiser – Aino, Eddie, Evie, and Henning – surrounded by Vorlar’s soldiers. Vorlar was standing further away. Then he saw her.

  Jill was sitting on a robotic chair, away from the others, silent, still, and so alone. Tredd could not bear watching. Nor did he have to wait for the soldiers to infiltrate the command centre. ‘I have to get there.’

  Skyla took Tredd by the arm. She turned to the Aino-instance by their side. ‘Could you please excuse us for a few minutes?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, and skipped over to the railing.

  Tredd started to understand why Aino had behaved like she had. He let Skyla escort him past the desks, by a static wall of acoustic elements.

  Skyla explained what Henning had said when they left. ‘I know you’ve been to the brain room. All Aino-instances remain connected to the system, and any one of them can be deactivated at any time.’

  Tredd touched the wall, surprised it was soft. ‘Even the one with Vorlar?’

  Skyla nodded. ‘She too is connected via the others.’

  ‘What about the ones in the pods?’ He squeezed one of the brick-like elements between his fingers.

  ‘They’re connected but inactive.’ Skyla looked at Tredd’s hand, a hint of disapproval in her blue eyes.

  He let go of the wall. ‘But add to the brain power of the collective?’

  She touched her hair by her ear. ‘Yes, but only the active ones can use it. Now that there are two, they are splitting it. Both of them have 127 nodes at their disposal.’

  Tredd thought about what this meant, and the possibilities it could bring about. Perhaps we could deactivate the Aino-instance with Vorlar, and take the one here as a new primary instance. He realised that would still leave the warehouse full of Aino-instances for the navy. They would quickly deduce what was going on, and force Avalonians to operate the ware
house for them. There has to be a better way.

  Another option was to destroy the 255 Aino-instances and leave only one true Aino alive. She would become a normal girl, removed of her curse, as she wanted, and Tredd did too. But how could I kill over two hundred girls? Even if there was a way, he did not want to do it, not anymore. He felt an urge to protect all life, including every one of the Aino-instances.

  The third option was to activate every Aino-instance, each reducing the power of Aino, until every Aino was just a normal girl. That would leave more than two hundred copies of the same girl running around beneath Avalon. He thought about the potential implications, but none of those were as bad as the idea of all of them dead. Releasing the copies from the grid would remove Aino’s curse without bloodshed. ‘Mr Bounty?’ Skyla asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, I was lost in thought. If I understood correctly, we should activate every one of them.’

  Skyla ran her index finger up and down her jawline, thinking. ‘It would dilute the power, and having those identical girls going around… but yes, we could do it. Why?’

  Depleted of energy, she’s already helpless. Tredd recalled Aino telling him she wanted to be just a normal girl, and besides, without her powers, she would be worthless for Vice Admiral Block. ‘The only way to protect her – to protect all of them – and to keep the navy from exploiting her gift, is to make them normal. That’s what she wants.’

  ‘I can see your point. However, we are just about to enter code black.’ Skyla turned to face the command centre.

  Black? ‘Self-destruct?’

  Eyes closed, she nodded.

  ‘Then there’s all the more reason. Will they evacuate?’

  She looked down and touched the fan-shaped badge on her chest. She pressed against it and said, ‘They are very smart.’

  ‘I’m sure they are,’ Tredd said. There was no time to waste. ‘Let’s get them moving.’

  She darted to a blonde young man at a desk. They had a short exchange, and as Tredd came by, she said, ‘All Aino-instances have been released. For wrong or right, there they go.’

  The map on one of the screens above had turned into a live video feed of the capsule-laden warehouse where Eddie had locked Tredd in just a short time ago. The capsules steamed warm air, and light lit the swarm of Aino-instances in white with a green tint. They emerged from their capsules and began to walk fast, in unison, every one of them with the same purposeful but calm expression. The warehouse emptied in less than a minute, and the screen split into a live feed from several cameras placed in the maze of corridors. The Aino-instances filled the passages, now speaking with each other and forming groups. Tredd could only guess how they understood themselves and the world, but observing them, he saw they acted just like any group of people in Avalon, and without a hint of panic, moved swiftly through the corridors.