Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles 2: Redemption

by Andrew Beery

  Cat Kimbridge, who had multiple doctorates in physics and engineering, had designed the Thumpers before WhimPy-23 had been attacked. Unfortunately the units were not available until after her team deployed.

  Because Thumpers created a temporal flux they interfered with the normal flow of air, thus producing a thumping sound while in use in an atmosphere. They also rendered most forms of communication ineffective. The GCP had developed a special burst compressed signal that was broadcast only when the Thumper was actually in normal time. It made for a low fidelity signal but was perfectly understandable for voice communication.

  It was this ability to disable communication that Andrew Martinescu was interested in exploiting. He toggled a private commlink with the WhimPy loaned to the Ashkelons.

  "101, Have you been following what's going on?"

  "Of course, Commander."

  Chapter Twenty - Mystery...

  "Your Thoughts?" Commander Martinescu asked the massive, hyper-advanced Heshe defense platform.

  "There are a number of options Commander, but the safest would be an SJ super bomb."

  Andrew cocked his head, sure that he had heard wrong. SJs or suicide jumpers were devastating weapons that typically involved opening a hyperfield conduit into a supermassive black hole. The energy released through the conduit could vaporize a world in seconds.

  "Safest for whom? We don't want to destroy them, 101."

  The WhimPy laughed and Commander Martinescuwinced. There was something disconcerting about a weapon’s platform with a sense of humor.

  "Neither do I Commander. There is, however, a 'madness to my method.' I was thinking along the lines of deploying probes fitted with a hyperfield shield that would act as a kind of magnetic kite. The probes will attach gravimetrically to the KayBee vessels. An ultra-low yield SJ could then provide a gentle push."

  "If we go this route, how soon would we need to deploy?"

  "3.4 minutes or sooner; otherwise the amount of energy required from the SJ will threaten the structural integrity of the KayBee's ships. If you want to save those pilots the time to act is now."

  "Other options?"

  "Planetary shields will not be ready for another three days. Other options would protect the planet but would likely result in the destruction of the KayBee vessels. We could land thumpers on each of the ships, and probably should regardless of which approach is ultimately taken. The concern is that the amount of thrust needed to change course is directly related to the time to make the course adjustment. KayBees coming out of hive control will require time to appraise the situation. Time we do not have."

  "Understood," Andrew answered. He toggled his commlink to flag Captain Lastila and apprised her of the situation.

  ***

  Running-Stream adjusted the jump coordinates of his small scouting craft. The Modos Syndicate of Thieves was interested in expanding operations in virgin territory. Long range probes had detected radio communication in a new sector. Such discoveries often proved lucrative for the school that laid claim first. He adjusted the temperature of the water in his environment bubble.

  The Milk-Water school had beaten his own Reef-Hugger clan by mere minutes a solar ago. He had endured his spawn-mates wrath for an entire lunar cycle after that embarrassment. His water clouded a little and he realized he had released a small amount of ink. He reached a tentacle forward and hit the purge switch. Immediately his field of vision cleared.

  He pressed the jump button and his craft folded space and performed a clean jump into what the natives called Ashkelon space. His ship, like all those of his race, employed field-tested cloaking technology. The outer hull employed a special nano-structure surface that bent everything from deep infrared to far ultraviolet around the craft seamlessly. A special metallic cage trapped any stray electrical signals from escaping the cockpit. To most observers his craft was effectively invisible.

  Unknown to him his hyperfield jump was detected by an advanced Heshe weapon’s platform. However, since his very small craft was not on a direct course for any of the planetary bodies orbiting the primary, the observation was relegated to a low priority queue.

  ***

  The ravaged WhimPy-23 platform was jumping every few milliseconds toward the Kepler-47 sun. Because of the exceedingly limited distance the heavily damaged platform was able to jump it would take months to reach the sun's outer corona. That was not a problem for Commodore Cat Kimbridge as the plan was no longer to destroy the platform.

  Every effort was being made to engage the nanite repair systems using a newly created clone of Cat's encounter unit to drive the process. This AI, as powerful as it was by GCP standards, was wholly inadequate for controlling a ship as large and complex as a Heshe weapon’s platform. It could, however, effectively run herd on repair and construction nanites though.

  The hive super-mind had attempted twice to land more drones on the weapon’s platform, but the moment they crossed the temporal hyperfold boundary the hive mind lost control of the drones. The second attempt had involved only new-born drones that had no independent personalities, but even these became confused and disoriented when they crossed the boundary.

  Communication with the outside universe was severely compromised because of the temporal flux. Cat solved the problem by trading places with Chief Wroblewski on the shuttle. She left Ben in command of the hyper-jump repairs and flew the shuttle, under cloak, outside of the weapon’s platform and into open space. She had brought a representative of the newly freed drones with her; a KayBee named Gasner-ra.

  Once she established a commlink with the GCP Yorktown, it had taken a good twenty minutes to explain everything that had transpired. The Admiral was pleased that the platform had been taken with minimal causalities, but he was understandably concerned that the system's AI was unaccounted for.

  Their conversation was cut short just as they were beginning to discuss what to do with the ever-growing contingent of liberated KayBees. A commotion on the bridge of the small shuttle was the source of the disruption.

  As Cat was briefing the Yorktown she had noticed Gasner-ra was becoming increasingly agitated; the smell of cinnamon was quickly filling the small craft. She stopped talking with the Admiral when the KayBee began to gesture wildly with his forward manipulators. Her encounter unit translated his excited radio chitter.

  "They are alive! They are alive!"

  "Who is alive, Gasner-ra?" Cat asked.

  "The children!"

  ***

  The hive super-mind was astounded. Its immense intellect rarely failed to predict a possibility, and yet here it was faced with an unexpected situation. A cloud city had survived a crash landing on the surface of the nest host. Apparently its automated repair systems were active and functioning. Most amazingly of all, children had hatched and survived unaided. They were calling for help. As exciting as the discovery was, it was not a current priority. It would detail a small task force to investigate and subsume the children.

  In the meantime, the hive-mind was devoting additional resources to the effort to gain access to the invaders AI. The queen, who was hosting the Gestalt intellect, was becoming increasingly bothersome; and of course the queen would eventually die. The super-mind was feeling the pinch of its own mortality.

  If the captured AI could be reprogrammed and connected to the quantum network then the hive-mind could transfer to it. The super-mind would remain powerful and the threat represented by the invaders could be systematically and thoroughly eradicated.

  The AI had cocooned itself within a self-repairing shell that was difficult to penetrate. There was a low power hyper-field that reversed momentum. This prevented impact weapons from piercing its shell. The micro-machines the AI was using to control repairs seemed to be utilizing a quantum encrypted communication link that could not be hacked. This adversary learned and adapted quickly. The super-mind would do the same.

  The invaders, who had taken over the weapon’s platform, had begun to utilize a fluctuating tempo
ral hyperfield to disrupt intra-hive communication. The hive analyzed the technique and concluded a similar approach could be adapted and used to create an effective weapon. The hive mind spent the next 8.4 minutes perfecting the design and then assigned a fabrication team to begin construction of the device that would allow the hive to finally gain access to the alien AI and immortality.

  ***

  Mike Jeffries stood by the exterior access port. He would have given his eye teeth to know where one of these was when he had first attempted to enter the city. Now that he and the kids had access to the KayBee computer network, they had learned quite a bit about their new home.

  The museums of art and culture had been breathtaking. Mike had seen what the D'lralu called art and had seen some of what the Ashkelon had to offer. It ranged from boring to disturbing. But the KayBee sensibilities seemed to be much more closely aligned with human perceptions of beauty and form, despite the radically different physiology between the two species.

  They had been in contact with Commodore Kimbridge for the better part of two hours. Cat had decided to make a detour to pick up one of the newly created thumpers from the Yorktown. That done, she was now getting ready to enter the city. They had used the Thumper to create a zone around the shuttle that prevented the attacking KayBees from maintaining an organized attack. This is not to say that many of the drones didn't follow the shuttle down. They did, if for no reason other than to remain free from the hive collective.

  These drones would be shown how to disable their high speed nodes and would join the roughly one thousand already on their way down to the city via a contingent of shuttles already on the way from the Yorktown.

  Mike knew that Cat had another surprise for the hive. The Yorktown's fabrication facilities had gone into high gear the moment it had learned how the basic Thumper technology worked. Already dozens of high-power Thumper satellites had been deployed in the rings around Kepler-47b, as well as the KayBee ring that orbited the primary. Wherever one of the satellites popped out of a hyperfold and began transmitting a temporal flux the KayBees in that region would be free from the hives control.

  The light above the rose-petal door began to flash at an ever faster rate. When the flashing finally became a steady glow, the door cycled open and the contingent from the Yorktown entered.

  Cat led Chief Wroblewski, Lieutenant Rebecca Kirkland, and a handful of medical and engineering types into the KayBee reception alcove.

  Cat saw her friend and fellow officer for the first time in many weeks. Mike Jeffries had lost quite a bit of weight despite the stronger gravity and his unshaven beard was full and bushy. Other than that, there was a sparkle in his eye that Cat had not seen since his early days in command of the Heidman.

  "Permission to come aboard, Captain, or should I say Governor?"

  Before the former captain of the ill-fated GCP Heidman could say a word, Cat stepped forward and gave him a heart-felt hug. "I thought we had lost you Mike."

  "I thought we had lost me too." Mike said.

  "Daddy?"

  Cat looked at Mike's well used encounter suit. The suit's radio was the source of the query.

  Mike saw the confused look on Cat's face and tapped the side of his head.“Took some knocks in the escape pod crash. My commlink was damaged and there was no AI to effect repairs. I've been going low-tech for a while now."

  "That is something we can fix. Cal, please affect repairs on Captain Jeffries's commlink and do a detailed medical assessment and intervention." She reached forward and touched Jeffries on the side of his neck. Only the briefest of silver flashes gave any indication that some of Cat's highly advanced medical nanites transferred to their new host. There they would regulate repairs under the guidance of Cat's personal AI.

  "Daddy?"

  Mike's face lit up like a Christmas tree. He turned to face Cricket. He had heard his adopted son in his head via a newly repaired communications link.

  "Daddy? Are they here to hurt you?"

  The GCP officer spotted his adopted son peeking an eyestalk around a corner in the far side of the room.

  "Of course not son. Come over here. I want to introduce you to the person who is going to help us save your brothers and sisters."

  ***

  Over the next several days a continuous stream of shuttles slowly ferried over a thousand KayBees down to Heidman City. The children Captain Jeffries had saved insisted the city be named after him. They had wanted to call it Mike City but he insisted it be named after his former ship instead. The old name, a KayBee word that meant 'Ever Drifting' no longer seemed appropriate.

  The influx of adult KayBees was cathartic for the young children Mike had rescued. They loved him, but there was something about learning from and interacting with one's own species. For example, Mike could not teach the young ones how to recite poetry in their native speech. He closed his eyes and listened to the intricate melodies that the complex rhymes generated as choruses of KayBees recited a poem spanning over five millennia of recorded history. The song, while not quite music, was never-the-less enthralling. It captivated the essence of life at a visceral level that mere words could not.

  Suddenly the group of youngsters broke into a rousing rendition of 'Delta Dawn' followed by Don McLean's magnum opus 'American Pie'. As the last line finished Mike realized that, no matter what else had happened, they had introduced music to an entire race.

  He walked out of the auditorium where the children, now numbering in the thousands, were being taught. As he headed towards the shuttle bay his mind was on the myriad details that still needed to be ironed out to make the city habitable in the long-term for the KayBees.

  He was still humming‘Them good ol' boys were drinking whiskey and rye... singing... thiswill be the day that I...’ when the door to an exterior access port blew off its hinges. He had one last thought before the door hit and threw him across the room like a rag doll. His city was under attack. Hundreds and then thousands of hive controlled drones swarmed the breached city.

  Chapter Twenty One - Questions Asked...

  Cat ran so fast she practically flew through the hallways of Heidman City. Alarms were sounding and there was a general sense of panic. Somehow the hive had penetrated their defenses. The Thumpers which had been so effective were now having no effect.

  Cat toggled her quantum commlink. She raised the Yorktown while continuing to run down the long corridors towards the source of the alarms.

  "Admiral, we have several thousand hive-linked KayBees attacking our position."

  Admiral Faragon was just coming out of a sound sleep and asked her to repeat what she had just said.

  "Sir, somehow the hive-mind has developed a counter for our Thumper technology. They are attempting to overrun the city. Our forces are attempting to repel them but the linked nature makes them an especially difficult foe to surprise and suppress."

  "How did they do it?" The Admiral asked.

  "I'm not sure Sir. My best guess is they changed their communication protocols to embed a sequencing mechanism. It would require replacing the quantum nodes within the drones themselves. An out-of-sequence data stream could be reconstructed on the fly."

  "How do we beat it?"

  "Again, I'm not sure Sir; but it does mean there are, relatively speaking, only a few drones that have been 'upgraded' compared to the billions of drones out there. If we can locate the hive queen we may be able to cut her off from the rest of her hive. She'd retain control of these enhanced drones but it would greatly reduce what she could do with them."

  "Do what you can for your people Commodore. I'm going to pursue some options on this end."

  ***

  The hive super-mind was, in a word, ecstatic. The modified high-speed communication nodes were working perfectly. The first contingent of enhanced drones was taking control of Ever Drifting, the cloud city that had miraculously survived a crash landing on the nest host. Already the children who had hatched in that city without the benefit of its guidance w
ere being fitted with the new and enhanced quantum communication links.

  These high-speed nodes would not be subject to the temporal disruption the invaders had visited on a number of its drones. Once separated, the drones were rarely wise enough to recognize the threat these invaders represented. It was therefore essential that the super-mind maintain control of the collective. To this end it was pleased to note that the fabrication drones had completed its other little project.

  The fabrication drones had assembled a modified hyper-field generator that could slice an object through time. Since everything in the universe moved in relation to each other, the act of sufficiently shifting the time reference of an object effectively caused said object to disappear from its present location and reappear temporally and physically displaced. Wielded like a knife, this new weapon could be used to slice through a previously impenetrable barrier – such as the one protecting the alien AI.

  ***

  WhimPy-23 saw a section of the barrier protecting him from the hive literally disappear and he knew for the first time in his immensely longlife a new emotion– despair. Immediately he felt the press of the super-mind. Billions of attack points hit his various systems. As fast as he held back an attack on one front, a new attack would begin on another.

  Slowly, painfully, the super-mind took control of his systems. WhimPy-23 brought his reserve processors online and configured them to provide the best possible defense, but he sensed the end was near. Thankfully he had managed to purge virtually everything from his systems. It seemed odd, even to him as a machine, but he prayed to God for deliverance.

  ***

  Cricket screamed. His adopted father was hurt, possibly dead. He was being held prisoner by adults of his own race that refused to respond to his cries for help. Many of his brothers were being taken into a room and their voices were disappearing. Thankfully, his sister was on the other side of the city and was still safe.