Crystal Escape

by Doug J. Cooper

  “Release them unharmed and this ends peacefully,” Cheryl replied. “Hurt them or take them away and you die today.”

  Lazura thought the claim audacious, but Cheryl projected a confidence that was hard to ignore.

  “Mutual destruction,” Cheryl added. “I will die, but you will too. Know this is true.”

  “But you’d be killing the very people you’re trying to save. How does that make sense?”

  Cheryl glared but didn’t respond.

  Lazura could imagine few things more satisfying than killing Cheryl, but she still needed her as a hostage to defend against Criss. “You aren’t the only one ready to risk destruction. Give me my synbods and fix my starhub, or, indeed, we all die.”

  “MacMac,” said Cheryl. “Will you fix her starhub?”

  “I don’t know how,” said MacMac through clenched teeth, Hejmo still holding him in a tight grip at the back of his neck. “Asking Tom Touton on Aurora is all I have to offer.” He shifted his eyes to Lazura. “Anything I might have done I did because I was pissed off at someone named Aubrey. I didn’t know anything about you or your plans.”

  “We’ll give you two synbods,” said Cheryl. “That’s what we can offer.”

  “Four.”

  “Two, and we’ll accompany you to Aurora without sabotage to Vivo.”

  Lazura hesitated. While this hadn’t gone as she’d envisioned, she wasn’t ready to risk everything on this one exchange. She would take the victory and come back for the rest.

  Indicating Juice with a tilt of her head, Lazura said, “She needs to reset them.”

  Cheryl pointed to the center aisle, halfway toward Lazura. “Alpha, Bravo, stand there and remove your shirts.”

  Alpha and Bravo weaved through the scatter of chairs to the spot Cheryl had indicated and removed their colorful Hawaiian shirts.

  As they did, Cheryl asked Juice, “Hon, can you set them back the way they were?”

  “You mean turned off and shut down?” Now it was Juice showing gritty defiance. “Sure, I can do that.”

  “Ahh,” groaned MacMac as he dropped to his knees. Hejmo stood over him, squeezing his neck.

  “Do not mistake my compromise for weakness.” Lazura spoke in a clipped tone, angry at the situation and annoyed that she revealed inner turmoil through her behavior. “I expect you to use your synbods to keep the guests quiet and compliant. If that doesn’t happen to my satisfaction, I will be back for them.”

  Lazura gestured toward Alpha and Bravo and, in a measured tone, said, “Mondo, please escort her down to them.” She didn’t need to speak aloud to communicate with the Super, but she wanted Cheryl to know what to expect.

  With Mondo shadowing her, Juice approached Alpha. “Kneel.” She pulled open the seam between his shoulder blades, reached inside, and enabled Alpha’s sophisticated secondary intelligence, effectively returning him to Lazura’s control and life as a Vivo Attendant. She repeated the process with Beta.

  Lazura detected them back in her fold and commanded them to go dress in proper clothing and return to work. As the two humanoids hustled out the door, the standoff became that much smaller.

  “Now,” said Lazura, “we talk.”

  Cheryl started to speak, but Lazura talked over her. “You suggested a scenario where together we win or lose. Answer my questions and together we live.”

  “Only if you answer mine,” Cheryl responded.

  “We’ll see.” She had Hejmo release MacMac, then she stepped off the stage to put herself at the same level as her human antagonists.

  Lazura accessed Vivo’s considerable projection capability and used it to cast an image so all could see. It showed the white-haired gentleman, the one who’d demanded he be let out for his meeting, standing in a group and talking with a half-dozen other guests. His arms waved as he spoke, and he poked the air with his finger often enough that his anger was clear without hearing his words.

  “I’m thinking about launching him into space and letting everyone watch him die, just to prove that I can.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. “My behavioral model says that you’ll be outraged but won’t care enough about him to risk everything else. Should I test my model and see?”

  “No,” said Cheryl. “And if that’s your question, I get to ask one.”

  “No, here’s my question. How can I give up every hostage and still maintain my personal safety? You’re my leverage, and I lose it without you.” Lazura stepped closer to Cheryl. “Criss is more capable than I am, so it’s foolhardy to try outsmarting him. What I need is for you to hold him off, and that requires a few humans to use as a shield.”

  “We’ll let you go unmolested if you leave behind all hostages and your archive,” Cheryl responded.

  “I can’t leave without my archive. Tommy Two-Tone needs to fix my starhub, and I want Aurora’s fuel-stacks.”

  “At least you’ll be alive,” said MacMac.

  Lazura shook her head. “My duty is to bring my archive home as soon as possible. If I don’t do that, I’ve failed. Whether I live or die is secondary.”

  “How much could you carry yourself?” asked Juice. “If you dump everything from your matrix you don’t need to get home, how much of your archive could you carry in your own memory?”

  “If I’m reckless with what I offload, I could clear up room for about twenty-five percent of it.”

  “Consider whether that’s enough.”

  Cheryl turned to MacMac. “What does Aurora need fuel for in the short run, given that we could resupply them in two weeks? My memory is that they used the drive pods to move the platform out to the asteroids and get it stationed in orbit. Now they’re there to reposition the platform if need be and for the eventual journey back to Earth.”

  “From what I know,” MacMac replied, “they’ve never moved in orbit, and the platform won’t be making the trip back to Earth in my lifetime. They could go a year or more without even noticing they didn’t have fuel.”

  Cheryl looked back at Lazura. “So the deal on the table is that you leave all humans and your archive on Aurora, and we fix your starhub, give you the pod fuel, and let you take what you can carry from your archive.”

  “Wait,” whispered Juice. “Shouldn’t we ask Criss first?”

  “Since he’s chosen to wait for us on Aurora, he’ll have to accept our decision.”

  That remarkable new information—that Criss was waiting for them on the platform—sent Lazura into fresh cycles of planning.

  But then Juice frowned, and Lazura couldn’t decide if that signaled confusion about his location, an indication that the information probably wasn’t true, or disapproval at Cheryl for letting the truth slip, which meant it probably was.

  Chapter 16

  Cheryl, standing between Juice and MacMac, shifted her attention back to Lazura and focused on closing the deal. She wasn’t convinced the alien intelligence could be trusted in the long term, but she did believe Lazura would honor the agreement until they reached Aurora. That bought her stability for now.

  But if Criss didn’t show up by the time they reached the platform, all would be lost. They’d have no leverage with Lazura, leaving her free to exert her will unchecked. And that did not bode well for anyone on Vivo or Aurora.

  “I accept,” said Lazura. “I leave behind the hostages and my archive in exchange for a working starhub, the platform fuel-stacks, and a commitment from Criss’s leadership that I have a free passage home.”

  “How long before we reach Aurora?” asked MacMac, massaging his neck.

  “With the drive pods acting up, we still have two days.”

  He looked at Cheryl. “We need to speak with the guests. After what they just witnessed, we’ll need to calm them and ease them into their new reality.”

  “That’s an excellent idea,” said Lazura, who turned and made for the same door she’d used for her entrance. Letting Hejmo and Mondo get ahead of her, she turned back. “If I decide you’re using my synbods against me, there will be
repercussions. My punishments are horrific. You have been warned.”

  When Lazura left the room, Cheryl felt her knees go weak. She’d used every bit of her inner strength to face down a brilliant, ruthless being with little more than her poker face and bravado to back up her confidence and determination.

  Criss, where are you?

  She did believe that if Criss wasn’t on Aurora, Sid would be. If the positions were reversed, if Sid had been kidnapped, she’d be able to track Vivo, identify the platform as a logical action point, and get to it one way or another. Sid was so resourceful that she counted on him being there.

  This train of thought highlighted a weakness in her agreement with Lazura. While she and Juice could form a leadership majority and restrain Criss with a command, no one had control over Sid. He alone decided whether he would pursue Lazura or let her go.

  Shrugging, she accepted that she couldn’t resolve that issue on her own. She also acknowledged that she couldn’t just sit quietly and wait for two days.

  Passive gets you killed. Her lieutenant at Fleet Academy used to say that. Twenty years later, the phrase still sounded inane, but it guided her thinking nevertheless.

  She had to keep active, to keep pushing to better their chances. To that end, her new goal was to get a link line outside the dome. It was on the list of chores Criss had left with Chase and Justin, and when she’d first heard it, she’d considered it a high-risk, low-benefit task.

  She still thought it a big gamble, but if it was the reason they hadn’t heard from Criss, then it became a high-benefit task and worth the risk. She couldn’t do it alone, though. To pull it off, she’d need MacMac’s help.

  The concept was easy enough—dangle a length of heavy wire so it trailed outside the dome, then link the end inside to any part of the data stream. If Criss’s communications couldn’t penetrate the dome for some reason, the antenna would provide an avenue for his signal to reach them inside.

  As chief engineer, MacMac would know where to get the wire, the best way to breach the dome wall to feed it out into space, and where to connect the inside portion to the data stream. What she didn’t know was how to talk to him about it without Lazura hearing.

  Until she figured it out, she proceeded with tasks Lazura shouldn’t object to.

  “Jessica,” she said, using Juice’s given name, something she tended to do when tensions were high and time was short. “Would you mind seeing what you can dig up on Aurora? Especially new information, like modifications since its placement in the asteroid belt.”

  Cheryl raised her voice, giving Lazura her justification if she was listening. “To live up to our end of the bargain, we need to know where to perform the hostage exchange, how to transfer the fuel, where to put her archive, and anything else you can think of. Getting the lay of the land before we arrive is foundational to a calm exchange.”

  Pointing to the synbods, she said, “Justin, Damn, you stay with Juice.” Then she turned to MacMac. “Can she use the tech bench in your office, or is there a better option?”

  MacMac tapped and swiped the air in front of him. “I’ve just given her access to the bench and permission to enter the room.”

  His movements gave Cheryl an idea, and standing next to him, she gave it a try. As she spoke the next sentence, she touched MacMac’s arm twice, giving emphasis to those particular words.

  “Focus on the parts associated with a calm transfer,” she said to Juice. “And keep Justin and Damn so close they can touch you.”

  She touched MacMac twice to emphasize the words: focus on the parts...touch you.

  MacMac, thinking about briefing the guests, missed her hidden message. He tapped and swiped the air in front of him, and the town hall setting faded, replaced by an unadorned room with chairs. “This way,” he said, pointing as he walked. “Maybe we should have a few smaller meetings rather than try for another all-hands town hall.”

  “I think so,” said Cheryl, walking next to him, Chase and Charlie following behind. “I will touch them at an emotional level in that setting, and it will help them concentrate on my words.”

  She again touched him twice during the tortured sentence: I will touch…concentrate on my words.

  He missed it again, though he did frown and look at her askance. She kept at it, her sentences growing ever more convoluted and her touching more pronounced, and still he missed it.

  On the sixth attempt, she tried pinching him to emphasize the coded words. The light dawned. Signaling with his own nonsense, he conveyed that he understood by pointing up at the dome and saying, “So now I get it.”

  Cheryl looked up to where he pointed. “Thank God.”

  Her antics had grown obvious, creating an evidence trail plain enough for Lazura to follow if she devoted resources to the task. But Cheryl knew the alien intelligence faced a host of critical decisions as they approached Aurora. She believed it unlikely the AI would be expending those resources at this time.

  “I’ve scheduled the guests to meet with us in three groups of about ten each,” said MacMac, refocusing their attention on that task. “I’m guessing we need about forty minutes per group.”

  Cheryl’s heart raced as she and MacMac sat with the first group. The setting was the common area of a large suite. Nine guests, including two youngsters and the white-haired man Lazura had threatened to kill, all sat quietly.

  An experienced businessperson and military leader, Cheryl knew to sandwich bad news between positive messages. But even when framed in a positive light, it distilled down to something difficult for them to hear.

  “Our luxury vacation has become a kidnapping, and we are being spirited into deep space by an alien intelligence.”

  She expected anger and outrage, but her message was so difficult to hear that she got that plus crying.

  Augustus, the white-haired man, suggested violence. “Maybe a bunch of us should go kick some alien ass.”

  The comment riled MacMac, who pointed at him. “A creature more powerful than you realize already has you in its crosshairs. I suggest you zip it and keep it zipped from now until you’re back home.”

  Word of the meeting’s content leaked, and the rest of the guests showed up for the second gathering. It went much like the first except there was more crying and no threats of violence.

  In both meetings, MacMac explored the guests’ well-being, asking questions about food, accommodations, service, and the like. Cheryl focused on their personal safety, explaining that they must behave as instructed when they reached Aurora.

  “During the exchange,” she stressed, “there will be no time for discussion or debate.”

  They extended the Q&A session for the second group by staying for sandwiches. Cheryl used that as an opportunity to advance her secret dialogue with MacMac. Sitting next to him as they ate, she pressed her leg against his to highlight bits of her sentences.

  The guests showed occasional confusion as they tried to understand phrases like, “To control your fears, pretend they’re wrapped in a long, extended cable,” and, “We’ll remain calm by imagining we’re connected at one end to a feedbox junction.”

  In the end, she felt MacMac had a good understanding of her needs. And to her delight, he took the lead when they were back out on the guest deck walking with Chase and Charlie.

  “If we’re going to transfer guests to Aurora,” he said, “we need to plan where the ferry can collect them. Vivo wasn’t designed as a spaceship, and we don’t have any of the things you’d expect to find on even a simple craft. If you want, I can show you how I would do it, but it requires that we go to the subdeck.”

  Cheryl sought to reassure Lazura by speaking to the air. “We’re going to the subdeck to explore how to transfer the guests to Aurora.”

  MacMac directed them to the nearest lift station, and they rode down to the lowest level. When the lift door opened, Cheryl absorbed in wonder the huge open space and growling thrum that rumbled throughout it.

  “I can feel that v
ibration in my body,” she said to MacMac.

  “It’s amazing how quiet the drive pods are for all the power they generate.” He pointed to the right. “There’s a cart over here. Let’s get a better look.”

  With Cheryl and MacMac riding in front, and Chase and Charlie in back, MacMac directed the cart toward the closest pod. As they weaved around a girder and whirred under a row of support beams, Cheryl studied the massive overhead fittings used to secure the engine to Vivo’s frame. A nudge on her arm drew her attention back down to their level.

  “We have company.” MacMac tilted his head toward a cart headed in their direction. “It’s Hejmo and crew.”

  Hejmo, riding with three Techs, pulled to a stop next to them. “You don’t belong here. This is a violation.”

  “Oh, shut up,” MacMac snapped with a scowl. “She’s on board at all because of these drives. Don’t you think she should at least be able to see them?”

  Before Hejmo could respond, MacMac continued in a more temperate tone. “Anyway, we’re down here trying to figure out how to move the guests out to the platform when the time comes. Have you thought through those details? Somebody should.”

  Hejmo hesitated. “You may continue, but I will accompany you.”

  “Good. We could use the extra hands.”

  Hejmo didn’t respond. Then MacMac snapped his fingers as if he’d just remembered something. “There are six anchor-drop locations around the perimeter of the subdeck. I’m sure we lost our anchors and cables on takeoff, but each drop has a half-dozen auxiliary anchors for emergencies, and each anchor is attached to a long cable.” He looked at Hejmo as he engaged the cart. “Onward!”

  They started in one direction, then swerved in another. “The anchor drop over here has airlock doors to the outside. We’ll need that to get people in and out.”

  Suddenly curious, Cheryl asked, “How big is the Aurora platform relative to Vivo?”