by Greg Curtis
“I promise I won't put anything back in the wrong place! Probably!” Carm added the last with a smile which threatened to turn up the corners of his mouth. Some days he wondered if the ship's endless tirade of insults and put downs was actually its way of trying to keep him sane. But that seemed a little dark side.
“Is that supposed to be funny?” The ship clearly didn't see anything amusing in it. “Because any mistake could get us killed. Something you'd know if you were made of decent circuits instead of organic mush!”
“Ohh, you say the sweetest things…” Perhaps it was the exhaustion speaking, but Carm was almost finding their arguments amusing lately. “Now let’s carry on and get this tub flying again.”
“Tub?!” the ship raised its voice, apparently scandalised. “You, a walking organic defect, are calling me a tub?!”
“Hey, if the landing strut fits!” Carm carried on down the corridor laughing, especially when the ship started blasting him while simultaneously bemoaning its fate in being stuck with him. After everything that had gone wrong lately, being abused by the ship actually felt like a good thing.
Maybe he really had gone dark side.
Chapter Six
An observer outside the room might have said after seeing the red faced man holding the floor, that the meeting was going badly. They would have been wrong. Annalisse, sitting in with her colleagues, would have called it what it truly was – a disaster.
After ten days of investigation they had no more than they’d had at the start. And as expert after expert filled them in on what they'd found, that was becoming more and more obvious. Mr. X, as they were officially calling the guilty party, had covered his tracks well. Everything they had led nowhere.
The order to scrap policebot XC173 had been found and quickly been shown to be a counterfeit. It wasn't even a good fake. The data trail around it was obvious to forensics. But while they now knew the order had been a fraud, what was eluding them was where it had come from, how it had got into their system and who had sent it.
As for the policebot itself, they'd found half a dozen points in its previous week where it could have been reprogrammed. But without the bot itself, there was no way of knowing who had done it, how or when. The cover-up had been complete.
Then there was the android Doctor Simons. The technicians had identified it as a type 23 BLS model – one of the most sophisticated available. The specs were staggering, the price tag astronomical. It would have cost two million credits just for a basic model, putting it out of reach of all but the wealthiest. The company which made them produced over a thousand each year, and kept detailed production records: however, not a single one had ever been made with Doctor Simon's face.
Someone had altered it, but the number of people on Aquaria with the skill and the resources to do that was vanishingly small. To add to their problems, just a shade under eight thousand of the units had been built, and they were all accounted for. The company had been scrupulous in providing the records, only too eager to cooperate. They’d even retrieved records for those which had been destroyed.
Billingsgate Lucius Scientific Industries was insisting that the analysis was wrong, that it couldn't possibly be one of their machines. They were threatening lawsuit after lawsuit if the ALEB so much as hinted otherwise. But that was as predictable as the sunrise. What else would a company do?
As for back tracking the android to its point of origin, that had been completely pointless. There had been a brief, five minute glitch in all the city's power in one block and when it returned the android had been there pushing its trolley towards a floater hire company. The power had been off just long enough for someone to drop the machine and its bomb off undetected.
Then there was the device itself. The Navy were all over that, but thus far all they'd come up with was that it wasn't from the Nightingale. It was too focused for that – whatever that meant.
Their investigation had been spaced. All jumps led to precisely nowhere.
Unfortunately as bad as all these things were, none of them were on the meeting’s agenda. Instead the only thing her bosses seemed to care about was the leak.
Annalisse sighed quietly. Just when things had already been going so badly, they had to have a leak. Not a slow trickle, but a flood of information about the case. The ALEB had been publicly embarrassed – yet again.
Someone had hacked into their databases and had publicly dumped everything about the case on the channels. Now the media was abuzz with speculation about policebots gone rogue, androids on the terrorist warpath, and of course ironically enough the police database being hacked – twice. The rest of the mesh was worse. Someone was making fools of them.
Annalisse could have lived with that. She welcomed the fact that the doctor was no longer a suspect – it spared his family some pain even if the ALEB now had to officially apologise to them for not having told them sooner. They’d lost a son, their house had been burnt down a couple of nights before, and Doctor Simons’ office had gone up in flames the night before that. Citizen reporters had been hounding the family night and day. They could use a break. But suddenly she was considered the prime suspect in the leak because she'd expressed those views.
She’d been polygraphed, her voice stress-analysed, her communications monitored and her daily movements audited. And it wasn't even lunch time!
For her part she suspected that the source was actually the bomber. She couldn't prove it, but it was a major cybercrime, involving hacking the police's databases. And what were the odds that two such highly skilled people would do the same thing within a week or so? It was also very clever – set the police chasing their own tails when they were supposed to be investigating the crime. But when she'd mentioned the theory to her Captain, he'd exploded. She'd never seen a man turn so red before. He'd almost matched the colour of the carpet.
Here though in the meeting room, he didn't match at all. The carpet was a threadbare brown matting which looked more like dead moss. The rest of the room was the same, at least in terms of decrepitude. Everything was old and worn out. The only items that got replaced were the lights when they failed. And the cleaning bots were only in once a week. Even the ducting for the air rattled.
Complaining about it would do no good though. There simply were no more credits, and what few they had were spent on staff and front line equipment like bots.
So she sat quietly in her little corner at the back of the room watching her immediate superior waving his arms about and yelling at them all for their incompetence. Her part in the blaming ritual was over for the moment. She hoped. Captain Dalbraith might look like a genetically-engineered tomato in a hopper, but he still had a brain when it came to finding people to shout at.
Every so often she looked out the partition’s window to the main part of the station and envied the other officers going about their duties. Their work might be routine, even boring, but it was better than hers just then.
Thankfully she knew the meeting was nearly over. Her boss usually only had the energy for an hour or so of this. And he was very nearly at his end.
But it wasn't over – not by a long shot.
Her first clue that something was wrong was when the Captain suddenly screamed, half a second before his chest caught fire and he fell to the floor.
Annalisse stared at him in shock, trying to make sense of what had happened. The man had burst into flame in front of her. Then a second officer screamed and caught fire, her confusion turning into terror. The windows exploded, showering them all in toughened clear plastic, someone yelled “laser” and she understood – just as the room erupted into complete chaos.
Someone was shooting at them!
Fire burst from the walls and smoke billowed into the room. People yelled and ran in all directions, looking for cover. Weapons were drawn as it dawned on them they were under attack. Everyone was shouting while trying to work out who was doing the shooting. But because lasers were silent and the beams were invisible
unless you were looking directly at them you wouldn’t be able to pinpoint them. Flames sprouted everywhere. And they had no idea what to hide behind.
They were sitting ducks!
Amidst all the chaos, Annalisse suddenly realised that the shooter had to be inside the station. The wall behind her was on fire and riddled with holes but the external wall had only scorch marks. Whoever was shooting at them was inside. Communicating that to the rest was impossible.
“Thirteen!” she yelled, knowing that the bot at least would hear her through the tiny transceiver in her collar. “The shooter's in the station! Identify him and apprehend!” At that moment another blast came streaming through the wall, setting the ceiling alight causing people to yell out.
But when another blast cut through she knew Thirteen wasn't doing what she wanted. She had to do something else.
Frightened, worried that a laser blast could hit her, she risked peeking above a solid part of broken wall to the main office beyond. And when she did, the shock froze her to the spot.
The shooter was a policebot! It was standing in the middle of the main room with its weapon raised, casually firing into the meeting room. Meanwhile officers all around it were shooting at it with their own weapons, but having little effect.
Stranger still, the other bots were doing nothing. Not even Thirteen. It took her a moment to realise why. They had no protocols for arresting one. Not one had the slightest idea of what to do.
“It's behind us! In the station!” she yelled at the others to make herself heard over the din, and a few appeared to hear her. Some at least stopped focusing on the external wall and instead looked into the office. She was certain they wouldn’t be able to see anything of the murderous bot, as the smoke in there was already far too thick. Perhaps they’d be able to see the beams passing through the clouds though.
How many were down? She could make out a few bodies but didn't know how many were taking cover, or how many were dead or injured.
“Tables!”
Someone yelled it out, and Annalisse reacted immediately. It was their only hope she knew. On her hands and knees she crawled to the meeting tables in the middle of the room and flipped them over to act as barricades. They weren't heavy and hadn't been designed to take laser blasts, but with enough of them she thought they might stop a few beams along with the waist high wall in front.
Quickly others joined her and some moments later half a dozen tables had been being pushed into position. The partition wall was failing by then, and laser beams were coming straight through it. If those who had been hit survived, it would only be because the wall had absorbed much of the blasts’ energy. Soon, though, the tables themselves caught fire and she realised they had a new problem – they could burn to death in an inferno, trapped in a room with the only exit blocked by the rogue bot.
That reminded her – why hadn't the fire alarms gone off? Why weren't they being drenched with water? It might help. But even knowing that, there was nothing she could do lying flat on her belly behind the makeshift barricade. By all the sharding stars she couldn't even fire back as her own weapon was sitting in her desk’s drawer! How sharding clever was that?!
Just then Annalisse an idea came to her which might just save them.
“Thirteen, protect us. Stand between the shooter and us!” That it could do she knew because it still had a duty to protect its partner. Plus it was heavily armoured. It would be a long time before even the more powerful weapon could harm it.
The tactic worked. Thirteen ran into action, finally freed from its indecision. And when it had found its place between them and the bot, it stood there taking the blasts and Annalisse breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe for the moment. Maybe longer, as the bot's laser had to be running low on charge.
Annalisse could breathe again. Now they just had to get out of this burning room before they burnt or choked to death.
“With me! And grab the wounded!” She repeated to herself several times but eventually people heard her. They even took notice that she was both standing up, and not being shot at. And then one by one they fled the room, dashing through the open doorway, and diving for the floor beyond. With adrenaline pumping she followed, not even caring that the door frame was on fire.
After getting out she quickly realised there was more to do. She needed to put on some body armour, grab her gun, and destroy the damned bot. She scurried for her desk on her hands and knees, and grabbed what she needed. She kept thinking that she should have been wearing armour right from the start. An attack had always been a possibility.
By the time she'd made it back the rogue bot was in a bad way. There were nearly a dozen officers with their lasers trained on it and they were finally taking a toll on the huge machine. Its armour was glowing red hot and melting in places. One of its arms was hanging uselessly. It was still firing into the chest of Thirteen though, aiming for the now empty meeting room.
Thirteen was taking a hammering too. Its chest plate was also red hot and had melted in places. But it wouldn't be stopped from doing its duty – it had been given an order to protect them.
It won’t be for much longer Annalisse promised it, taking aim at the back of the rogue bot's head and squeezing the trigger. Thirty seconds later the bot's head exploded. The heavy metal plate had given way and the lasers had found its delicate circuitry inside.
That stopped the machine, and relief almost overwhelmed her when it finally froze. It hadn’t been destroyed though and it probably wasn't even that badly damaged. Its central processor wasn't in its head – but most of its sense organs were. It could neither see nor hear them, meaning it couldn't find its targets. And it had had targets.
Its targets had been specific – she was sure of that. Just as she was convinced that it hadn’t been a coincidence that her boss had been the first to fall. He was leading the team hunting down the bomber. This was the unknown suspect striking back. It was his modus operandi – reprogram a bot or an android to do his bidding. He was the kind who liked to plan and strike from a distance, avoiding any direct involvement. The chances were that he'd also turned off the sprinklers.
He'd attempted to murder his opposition. That shocked her. On a world where there were less than five hundred murders a year, most of them by mesh heads and those whose brain cells had been fried by DDs, a terrorist had actually tried to murder the police. That was beyond dark side. It was so far beyond dark side that she wasn't sure there was even a word for how crazy it was. Of one other thing she was sure – he would try again.
Annalisse was saved from having to worry about that when the medical teams arrived. The bodies were stretchered away, some of them still alive hopefully, but many certainly dead. Police normally didn't wear their body armour inside the station. Crews with fire suppressors went into action, putting out the fires. And then, in a moment of bitter irony, the sprinkler system came on. Turning everything into chaos and forcing them to leave.
She stepped out of the station and into the street where the media had already set up and was recording events. Annalisse had to wonder where this was going to end. They were being toyed with by a very clever and dangerous enemy, and they still had no idea who he was.
The galaxy had just turned upside down. Stars were now orbiting planets. Moons were sitting on the ground. And now the criminals were hunting the police.
Chapter Seven
It was a difficult time for Carm. He was glad to be back on the bridge in the captain’s chair. It felt right, especially after spending much of his time fixing the ship along with the service bots. He was getting quite tired of having to crawl through endless conduits hunting for malfunctioning equipment.
The Nightingale had been designed for a crew of eight, but of that number several would be asleep and the rest would be busy elsewhere. There were only five work stations, one of which was the captain's chair, with the remainder spread out in two short rows before him. Without any crew it wasn't much of a view.
>
On a military ship there would be more stations. At the least there would be a weapons station. But no ship in the Commonwealth was armed other than the naval vessels – that was the stuff of holo dramas.
To the front of the four work stations was a holo display covering the entire eight metre width of the bridge and extended four metres back. But Carm’s favourite part of the bridge was the porthole. Ships normally didn't have windows– they were considered an unnecessary feature because holos displayed everything you wanted to see. The very front of the Nightingale's bridge was a massive porthole however.
Usually nothing could be seen through it, covered as it was by a section of hull. But every so often, when he was feeling bored or nostalgic, he would open the hull panels so he could stand and stare into space. Seeing the vast panorama of the universe laid out before him spoke to his soul. It made him feel at once both insignificant and a master of the cosmos.
When he did so the ship would lecture him at length about his foolishness. The porthole was only there for when the ship was docked so that a little natural light would fill the bridge and give a view of the space-port. But what did the ship know? It had no sense of wonder.
He wasn't going to do that today though – this was the day they would test the translation drive. He needed the hull’s full shielding for the jump.
Carm was nervous, more so than he'd ever been before. A good part of him was wondering if they should cancel the whole thing and take another systems check. They’d already done so from stem to stern a dozen times or more – everything had been green by green.
But they had to jump. Even though it appeared he had time – endless time – it wasn't really on his side. It was the only way he could ever hope to get home. He’d done this a hundred times before, but for the first time he was scared. He'd never jumped in a broken, hastily repaired ship before. He wasn't a machine and he didn't want to die. But neither could he stay.