“Heh, yeah. Dodged a bullet there. Come on. Let’s go blow some stuff up.”
Chapter 7
Lex tumbled out of the bowels of Coal and collapsed onto the ground. He vaguely remembered being told by Karter that Coal had been designed to be easily serviceable with period parts. If he made it back to the present intact, he was going to have a word with him about the proper definition of the word easily.
“How’d we do, Coal?” Lex asked, still sprawled on the floor.
After some time cramped up, there’s something to be said for the simple pleasure of sprawling anywhere.
“Processing… Internal diagnostics are green. I am fully functional in all critical travel parameters,” Coal said.
“Okay, good. And where are we on the… countdown?”
“Twelve hours, twenty-three minutes.”
“Okay. Where’s the money? These people earned it.”
“It is located in a locked compartment beneath the food supply. I have disengaged the lock.”
He pulled himself to his feet and rummaged through the compartment until he revealed the cases of neatly wrapped chips.
“Remind me again… are these appropriate to the era?”
“Yes. They were purchased at auction from a collector and verified by scan to be authentic.”
“Okay. Good. I know it’s weird, but I don’t want to be the reason behind one of those weird conspiracy theories… besides the tragedy of Triple S 77.”
“You seem less stressed. Is the fact of the tragedy more comfortable to you now?”
“Yeah. Still devastated, but I’m getting used to the devastation. Plus, it looks like we’re getting out of here before the hammer drops. If we’re lucky, I’ll be able to lie to myself about being responsible. Listen. I’m going to give this to the guard. How long will it take you to get your hands on the data?”
“I don’t have any—”
“Not your literal hands. How long will it take you to acquire the data?”
“How important is it that I acquire it?”
“Very important. And the faster the better.”
“It will take between forty-seven and fifty-three seconds.”
“Okay, good, so I’ll take—”
What he was planning to do quickly became irrelevant because the next thing that anyone heard was a very distinctive noise that most people never get to hear, due to it tending to happen in a vacuum. The sound was a ship’s grappling tether deploying. An actuated claw as long as Lex’s arm fired like a harpoon at the wall of the hangar, embedding itself in a panel labeled Primary Data Trunk. Secondary grippers peeled from the fingers of the claw and snaked through the hole the hook had punched in the panel. A screeching electronic wail filled the air. Shortly afterward it was eclipsed by the angry cries of both guards.
“Coal, no! What are you doing!?” Lex yelped.
“Physical network penetration is considerably faster and more reliable than wireless. Thirty-eight seconds remaining.”
“What the hell do you think you are doing!?” barked Bill, gun raised.
“I don’t know! Coal, stop it!”
“The damage is done, Lex. Let me finish. They are attempting to shut down and lock out this room’s communication. If I stop, I won’t be able to start again.”
“Take it out!” Dan barked.
Both guards opened fire. Lex dropped to the ground. Above him, Coal shifted to place herself between their weapons and where the grappler had struck, raising a partial shield and easily absorbing the bolts.
“Coal, was it not clear that discretion was called for?” Lex called out.
“You did not make that a requirement of the mission.”
“Didn’t you think it was a good idea?”
“I didn’t think the data acquisition was a good idea. Once we had committed to making a poor decision, the severity of the poor decision seemed irrelevant.”
“This is how it’s going to happen, Coal. This is how the ship is going to blow up. This is one of those stupid paradoxes. The one where things happened already. They’re going to blow their ship up shooting at me for trying to deliver their messages because their ship was going to blow up.”
“Unlikely. On-ship weapons are usually calibrated to have low yields to decrease the risk of hull rupture. Nine seconds.”
“There is no way this is going to end well, Coal.”
“We already knew that. However, three… two… one… data acquired.” She retracted the grappler and unified her shield. “We are ready to leave.”
“Seal the doors. Hard lock, exterior! Shields full. No one is leaving this ship!” Dan ordered.
Lex looked up to the doorway. The entire crew was present, all armed, all angry. The lights were cut, leaving the built-in flashlights on the weapons and the glow of her shields the only illumination.
“Coal,” he said quietly. “What would it take to leave the ship with the hatches secured and the shields active like they’ve described?”
“Lots of force.”
“Enough to blow up the ship?”
“Potentially.”
“Can’t you hack back into the system and override?”
“No. A failsafe triggered as soon as I penetrated. Now that I’ve disconnected, this section of the ship has been locked out of the network. I believe they have radio-shielded this room as well. Shall I apply the forceful solution?”
“No. Don’t do it. I’ll… I’ll handle it for now.” He began to very slowly climb to his feet, hands raised.
“What are you going to do?” Coal asked.
“I don’t know. But I sure as heck am not going to let this crew blow up ahead of schedule.”
“Hands behind your back!” Bill said. “Someone get in there and get that money. I want tools out. Figure how to get those shields down.”
“Coal. Whatever you do, keep them out, don’t do anything to hurt anybody, and leave the fusion device alone!” Lex ordered before the guards rushed to him and dragged him out of the hangar.
#
“Well… here we are again, Blueboy,” said Bill.
Lex was crammed into the huddle room. This time his hands were bound with cable ties.
“Anyone surprised?” Bill asked.
“Wishful thinking got the better of me,” Dan said.
“Greed and stupidity teamed up on it,” Bill said.
“Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you what’s going on,” Lex said.
“You don’t need to say what’s going on. We know what’s going on. It’s exactly what we thought was going to happen. You came to steal the data, and you stole the data,” Dan said.
“It’s not like that. I’m not going to sell it,” Lex said.
“Damn right you’re not. Because until the relay goes live again in a few days, no data is going to reach anybody for years from this location. We’re the primary ship for the convoy. We control all long-range communication. By hook or by crook, we’re cracking your system or nuking it to protect our data.”
“And we’re holding you here until the end of the mission. Then you’ll face justice for what you did.”
“I can’t… you can… look, I’ve got a job to do!”
“I didn’t realize how dutiful data pirates were.”
“This isn’t about stealing your data!” Lex barked. “It’s bigger than that!”
“Oh. We’re just part of a larger heist then?”
“No! The data isn’t part of it. Or it wasn’t supposed to be. That was just supposed to be an act of kindness.”
“Forgive me if I don’t thank you for attempting to poach our livelihood and bribe us for the privilege.”
“We’re keeping the chips by the way,” Bill said.
“Evidence. Probably just the case of thousands will do though,” Dan amended.
“It is absolutely crucial that I complete my mission,” Lex said.
“Oh, it’s a mission now. Not just a job? Fat chance, Blueboy.”
“Thi
s isn’t just your convoy at stake.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. What exactly is at stake?” Bill said.
“I can’t tell you.”
“You’re really not doing much for your case,” Dan said. “Luckily, we’ll be through your shields in a few minutes, and then it’s just a matter of spiking your data storage, and there’s no chance you’ll get what you came for.”
“About that,” said the woman, peeking her head inside.
“What?”
“We’ve been trying to sap the shield. We focused an EM scrambler on it. Nothing’s making a dent. Bruno on the engineering team thought his power meter was out of whack because the energy density on that field is something like three hundred percent what we expected it to be. That’s around twenty percent past the theoretical maximum apparently.”
“Have we considered that the meter might actually be on the fritz?” Bill suggested.
“He ran the diagnostic and confirmed with two other methods. This guy’s got some sort of experimental junk.”
“So he’s well funded. We know that already.”
“Yeah, so then we did a spectrum analysis on the communication between the ship and the helmet. It’s an unidentifiable protocol.”
“Presumably it would be encrypted.”
“Not unreadable, unidentifiable. We’re a communication ship, we should be able to at least identify any protocol in use. This is totally foreign. And then there’s the helmet itself. Bruno has no idea what this fabric around the neck is, but it’s nano-reactive. Plus, check out the time stamp on the HUD.” She tossed the helmet over. Dan looked at it. “Lower left corner,” she said.
“… The year is 2341. So he set his clock wrong.”
“This is all coming apart,” Lex said, squeezing his eyes shut.
She shrugged. “I’m not going to say this guy’s from the future, I’m just going to say it would explain a lot of unexplained stuff.”
“Magic elves would explain a lot of unexplained stuff too, but we’re not insane,” Bill said.
“There’s other stuff, too. Lots of it. The residual data traces from that penetration attack? Unidentifiable. Bruno says the—”
“Bruno got his degree with a 2.1 GPA. He’s not the final word in modern science,” Bill said. “But it does make me curious for some real answers.”
“Just let me go, please. What’ll it take for you to let me go?” Lex said.
“You’re not going anywhere!” Bill said. “We’re not set up for investigation and all that, but you’d better believe we’re going to have the head office keep us in the loop when the authorities get their hands on you.”
“We’re not going to survive that long!” Lex blurted.
Bill crossed his arms. He and the others glared at Lex.
“Is that a prediction or a statement of intent?” asked Dan. “Because either way, you’re dead wrong.”
“It’s all shot to hell,” Lex said. “I may as well lay it out. You won’t believe me anyway. The date is accurate. I am from the future. There’s a disaster set to basically wipe society from the cosmos in a few decades, but it’s solvable here and now. I was sent back to handle it, but we ran into someone else from the future, and he had different plans. He beat us up, but we escaped, and that’s when you found us. I need to get out of here right now and get back on with the mission because in a few hours your whole convoy is going to become a cautionary tale about the dangers of remaining isolated from communication.”
Dan blinked. “What about that load of crap was supposed to change our opinion of you?”
“You don’t need to believe me. In less than a day, you’ll all get a short and terrifying moment of realization that everything I said was true. Right before your ship is more or less vaporized.”
The group considered his words.
“I think I’ve had enough of him,” Bill said.
“Agreed,” said Dan. “You’re staying locked up, Blueboy. If you’re lucky we’ll feed you again. But don’t bother wasting your breath yelling for help or demanding better treatment, because thanks to the fuss you and that ship of yours kicked up, most of the crew is going to be working on patching up the damage and cracking your defenses. Lewis, the one dedicated security officer we’ve got, is going to be on guard at your door, and he sure as hell isn’t going to give a crap how comfortable you are.”
“I’ll probably just crank up the tunes so I don’t have to hear you piss and moan,” Lewis said.
“So get comfy, Blueboy. And consider that mission of yours failed,” Dan said.
He and his people cleared out. Lex struggled against his bonds for a few moments, prompting a satisfied grin from Lewis before he shut and secured the door.
It was tempting to just give in to the potent mix of anger, frustration, and fear that raged in his head. He’d lost count of how many times a few hours of screaming profanities seemed like the proper reaction to a given problem, but a near brush with asphyxia had a way of making one think twice about wasting breath.
“Okay, Lex,” he muttered to himself. “You’ve been in tougher spots than this. Kind of… maybe… Regardless, let’s see what we can do. Voice command… Voice command… Great. The microphone is on the helmet.”
He squirmed and tried to access the control panel on his forearm. The bindings secured his wrists together with his hands facing one another, which limited his mobility quite a bit, but the relative bulkiness of the back of his flight suit forced them to leave his hands in front of him. There was no hope of him actually being able to use the panel with his hand, but it was at least visible. He’d watched Squee do her thing often enough to know there was another option. He twisted his arms to the side and tried to tap the control panel with his nose. Getting into the proper position practically required him to dislocate his shoulder, but eventually he got the control panel to come up. The list of features packed into his suit was extensive, but the diagnostic told a worrisome story with its red and green indicators. Life support: missing component, offline. Communication: missing component, offline. Visual monitors: missing component, offline. It was remarkable just how many parts of a spacesuit required the helmet to function. A few systems were green, though, and one of them gave him hope. Kinetic capacitor: online, inactive (Charge: 0%).
Thirty seconds of graceless poking with his nose eventually flipped the status from “Inactive” to “Charging,” and he felt the suit around him become bizarrely still, like it was made of metal and bolted to the seat. He tried to rock back and forth. Each motion budged the outfit only slightly. The kinetic capacitor was one of the more unusual creations Karter had asked him to test over the time he’d known the inventor. Actually, that wasn’t true, it was probably near the bottom of the list of demented gadgetry, but when he’d first encountered the kinetic capacitor it had seemed awfully strange. Through means he had never even attempted to comprehend, the device was able to directly soak up kinetic energy and store it, then discharge it again in the form of motion. In prior missions he’d used it to store up energy for massively powerful punches and to interrupt a free fall. If he was lucky, he could store up enough motion to knock the door off its hinges. He had no clue what he would do after that, but not having a plan was no reason not to get one started.
Five minutes later, after his struggles had worked up a sweat, he fought his arms aside and looked at the panel. Charge: 1.3%. This was going to take a while…
#
Coal drifted in place within the docking bay, her repulsors taking the place of landing gear. They weren’t quite as solid as physical struts, but they kept her aloft and roughly stationary while her flickering shields kept her safe from harm. In the absence of any orders or a clear means to advance her mission without contradicting previous orders, she analyzed the input from her sensors. Six people, five males and one female if her scans were accurate, had assembled in the docking bay. One of them, an engineer the others called Bruno, carted out the latest in a series of increasingly powerful too
ls. She recalibrated a scanner and directed it at him. The resulting data suggested the device, which was a cutting torch, would be insufficient to penetrate her shields. The scan also revealed that Bruno was suffering from severe hypertension, arterial plaque buildup, and significant liver inflammation.
“Before you activate the cutting torch, Bruno, may I take this moment to suggest you adjust your eating habits. It seems like you’ve been overdoing it on fatty foods and alcohol,” she said.
Bruno gritted his teeth. A portly gentleman, he was currently displaying a very distinctive level of being disheveled. Hair formerly held in place with some manner of styling product had been worked loose. An otherwise immaculate jumpsuit sported a host of fresh stains and burns. Overall, he had the look of someone who normally took great care of his appearance but had suddenly been confronted with a very messy task.
“A vegan diet and a shift from alcohol to tea and water would greatly improve your arterial health,” Coal said.
“I wish this thing had a mute button,” Bruno muttered, his voice thick with an accent of indeterminate but vaguely Slavic origin.
“There is something odd about a ship that gives health advice while you are trying to destroy it,” Dan said, his arms crossed as he supervised efforts from the corner.
“You aren’t trying very hard to destroy me. If you were actually making progress, I’d fight back,” Coal said. “So unless you want to make me mad, cut it out.”
“Apparently in the ‘future’ people like their ships chatty,” said Bill as he eyed up the repairs to the damage done by Coal’s tether.
“That was an odd tone of voice,” Coal said. “My social algorithms were damaged. Can you please indicate if you have a speech impediment or if you were employing sarcasm?”
“Has this thing attempted to contact anyone? Do we know if it has its own relay or if it’s linked to ours somehow?” Dan asked.
“I haven’t tried to contact anyone. That would violate my mission parameters,” Coal replied.
“It is speaking truth about that,” Bruno said. “Only communication was between ship and helmet. Short range, and nothing gets through now that we are locked down.”
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