The Broken Cage (Solstice 31 Saga Book 2)

by Martin Wilsey

  The chorus continued to hum another haunting tune as he waited. The flute had a richness that seemed impossible, with an octave range beyond a standard flute.

  The usher moved forward, at some unseen gesture, and Mason followed.

  Mason paused before the High Keeper. He knew better than to speak before being spoken to.

  “Explain this report to me.” The High Keeper pointed his butter knife at a plate on the table.

  “A team was dispatched to the crash site and the ship was located as a debris field spread along the bottom of a ravine. The pilot's remains were also recovered and are being examined.” Mason tried to be concise.

  “And, the other bodies?” The High Keeper stopped eating and focused on him, entirely.

  “The ship had been dispatched there because of an interrupted Keeper transmission that was followed by total loss of signal from his plate. Keeper Esau's body was one of the twelve bodies that High Tracker Tolwood ultimately found. This is where it gets complicated, my Lord.” Mason gulped. “Tolwood found no tracks around the bodies, not even the footprints of the victims. Most of their weapons and personal effects were gone, as if they had been robbed, including Keeper Esau's plate. The horses were scattered. Most headed south and were recovered. All recovered were riderless. Three were not recovered.”

  He paused, then continued.

  “Tolwood's trackers followed the horses south, thinking thieves had robbed the team and fled.”

  The High Keeper snorted a small laugh but said nothing.

  “They found the horses grazing in a meadow. And, they discovered four more horses and four more dead bodies, another team of trackers.”

  The High Keeper said, “Yes. This mystery has Tolwood perplexed and, frankly, disturbed. It's the heads, I think. He thinks they have been eaten.”

  “Eaten?” Mason asked.

  “All the heads were gone or crushed more violently than an anvil execution,” the High Keeper said, looking at Mason's face. “Tolwood identified the four trackers in the meadow. They were following a creature that fell from the sky. Eyewitnesses say it escaped from some wreckage before it exploded and burned, but it was injured.” The High Keeper poured himself some tea as he let Mason digest his words.

  “Where is this wreckage?” Mason asked.

  “There isn’t much left. There doesn't seem to be any instrumentation, computers, or other identifiable technology. The material it was made from is nothing we have ever seen. Not metallic, not ceramic and not plastic—like the statue Tolwood brought in months ago.”

  The High Keeper lifted tongs up from the tray, reached into the brazier coals that kept his kettle hot, and withdrew a black, mottled piece of material. It was about six inches long and two inches around.

  “Hold out your hand.”

  Slowly, Mason held out his left hand, knowing what might happen.

  The High Keeper dropped it into his palm.

  The pain he expected never came.

  It was cold to the touch.

  Mason looked from the piece to the Keeper.

  “Much of this material has fallen from the sky. Entry burns away other materials, leaving only this.”

  “The Planetary Defense System activated and destroyed it.”

  “Any luck accessing the system?”

  “No, my Lord. I would have notified you, immediately.”

  “Here is what I think happened.” He sipped his tea. In the pause, he heard the choir begin a new lullaby.

  “Our PDS shot down an alien vessel. The first alien vessel. One of the beings survived. It may have been the only one on the ship, for all I know. It got away. The four trackers caught up with it. Then, the other eight that were...investigating another matter, ran into it. So did my ship!” He pounded his hand on the elegant table.

  “Witnesses say it is a giant, black spider with arms that hang down just below its mouth.”

  The High Keeper handed him a drawing of a six-legged creature. A man standing next to it for scale. He swallowed hard. His mouth was dry.

  “It can breathe the atmosphere. It may have been here before.”

  “Been here before?”

  “That would answer much,” the Keeper said.

  Mason didn't understand.

  “You are one of the few that know we arrived here 212 years ago. We always wondered why the world was so perfect, as if it had been terraformed thousands of years ago. So much life.”

  “Tolwood thinks he can track it. Might have found prints in that meadow. Headed west.”

  “There is nothing west of there for 2,500 miles,” Mason added.

  “Exactly. Winter is on us, and we have bigger problems. I want every piece of wreckage collected before it's lost in the snow. Organize a large team. Take the M79. Make more than one trip, if you need to. Salvage all the parts possible.

  “Keep this quiet. The council doesn't need to know, especially that pain in my ass, Ronan.”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “Anything else to report?”

  “I have been studying the sat systems, as you know, looking for a solution to that access security issue. I believe I have discovered why the infrared heat mapping has faded. There is a maintenance process that involves recharging the sensors with coolant. I think without this particular, periodic maintenance, they lose fidelity. We still have access to the nonmilitary applications. We may be able to cross over from there via the hypervisor...”

  Mason trailed off because High Keeper Atish was waving a hand as if to dispel pipe smoke.

  “Only other thing is the storage failure rate is up two point nine percent this year. We will have to reduce consumption to compensate, again.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, my Lord.”

  The High Keeper waved him away and Mason started to walk off. He turned back to have a look at the choir, one last time, as they hummed what sounded like a sea shanty.

  Wex stood, waiting on the far side, flanked by an usher.

  ***

  The cells in the deepest level of the Citadel were kept pitch-black. The long corridor, with cells on each side, collected more dust than light. The ninety small rooms, with open bars for the door, were all empty, except one. The lone prisoner knew when he heard the keys in the lock at the end of the hall that they were coming for him, again.

  The sounds seemed very loud as the gate-like door opened, then closed, and was locked again. The guards were so afraid.

  The prisoner heard bare feet as they padded their way down the hall. He heard the water sloshing in the bucket as the glow of the single, fat candle approached.

  “Hello, peanut,” the voice said, from the shadows, to the tiny girl with the bucket in one hand and the candle in the other. “Move slowly,” he whispered, “there are four crossbows pointing this way.”

  He was right. He was always right. The girl had stopped asking how he knew that kind of detail.

  He reached out through the bars and took the candle she offered. He placed it on the recessed shelf designed for this purpose.

  “Go ahead and have a wash, peanut, they’ll wait,” he said, as he sat down on the stone shelf that also served as his bed. She handed him, through the bars, a plain, white tunic that had been draped over her shoulder.

  She withdrew the rag from the cold water and wrung it out. She scrubbed her own face, neck, arms and armpits, before dipping and wringing it out again. She was already naked, making the procedure easy. She was always naked.

  She handed the prisoner the rag and turned her back to him. He scrubbed her back. When he was done, he handed the rag back for another dip in the bucket. She quickly finished the rest of her body, except for her feet. She dipped the cloth and it was all repeated, washing him.

  “I heard the guards talking about Wex a few days ago. She is in the Citadel. Just like you said she would be.” She scrubbed his back and repeated rinsing the rag. “I heard them say something else…” She sounded frightened. Her lisp was more pronounced throu
gh her missing, broken teeth.

  Casually and quietly, he replied, somehow already knowing, “They mentioned the Man from Earth.” He was very matter-of-fact.

  He finished washing his own body and then his feet. As he was slipping the oversized, sleeveless tunic over his head, the small girl washed her own filthy feet.

  “Don’t worry peanut. Today, they will just take me to the lab, again, to take more of my blood. They won’t hurt me. I won’t kill anyone. Today, is not that day.” He knelt on his knees and reached both arms through the bars. The girl hugged him and buried her face in his neck. “Your aunt Lin will be happy to see you. Soon.”

  The girl pulled away, showing a great, toothless smile. He always stopped hugging last. She wondered how he knew she had an aunt named Lin. She never bothered asking, anymore.

  “Go tell them I’m ready.” He whispered, “I love you, peanut.”

  As she padded away with the bucket, she knew it was true.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Ben Begins

  “Ben had our backs. At the beginning, as well as, at the end.”

  --Solstice 31 Incident Investigation Testimony Transcript: Captain James Worthington, senior surviving member of the Ventura's command crew.

  <<<>>>

  “I am sorry to interrupt you, Captain, but may I have a word?” AI~Ben asked Jim, inside his head.

  His command HUD indicated that AI~Ben was now the Memphis AI. Jim was in the small conference room on the command deck near the bridge.

  “Please do, Ben,” Jim replied.

  “Do you prefer avatar or audio only, sir?” AI~Ben asked, formally.

  “Avatar, please,” he replied.

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  AI~Ben appeared as a fit man of about thirty-five-years-old, with dark, almost black, hair and a clean-shaven face. He wore the standard, working flight suit of the command crew with an AI rank insignia.

  “I was activated just over an hour ago. I'd like to make my initial assessment.”

  Jim nodded and gestured to a chair where the avatar seemed to take a seat.

  “As you know, I am an Emergency Module AI that has been repurposed from the ground survival unit. Cook has had survival training that included Emergency Module utility. He activated Hostile Environment Mode. Also known as HEM.”

  “Yes. I understand. Programmers love acronyms.”

  “I don't think you do, sir. Nor does Cook, or any of the crew, really. HEM intentionally switches an EM to promiscuous mode. This means we are full sensors, audio, video and data monitoring, full time. This is not a big deal in an EM. There is not that much to monitor. But here, sir, I have this entire ship, the entire base, and the sensor array, out there, by the Hammerhead.”

  “Okay, Ben. I get that. Is there a problem? Capacity? Storage?”

  “There is a problem. But, it's not that. Someone has explicitly disabled the camera and audio feeds all over the ship and base. Log in has been disabled and logs deleted on various systems of several types.”

  “The cameras on this base may have been off-line for decades. The ships just may be damaged,” Jim said.

  “No, sir. They didn't get to all the logs. And, some I restored. Someone has been accessing your private files. Someone logged in as deceased Engineering Chief Myers.”

  “What else?”

  “The inventory database had been deleted. I have restored it. Dr. Shaw had wisely moved food supplies to the galley on the Memphis for tighter control. The food lockers automatically inventory everything, constantly, to maintain a current list. Six percent of the food stored have already been stolen.”

  Jim gestured for him to continue, as lists of inventoried items that were now missing came up on his HUD.

  “Gear is also missing, but that is based on static image analysis. Not a hard inventory.” AI~Ben pointed at two images. “The discrepancy here shows that at least two pressure suits are missing that never seemed to be accounted for.”

  “Dammit. Does Hume know about this, yet?” Jim asked.

  “No, sir. I thought I'd speak to you, first. Sir, there is more.”

  “What else?” Jim prompted.

  “They have been trying to acquire access to comms. Tyrrell is an excellent engineer. He knew the AI was down and followed standard protocols. He locked everything down to command staff only. He understands the necessity for radio silence. One more thing, sir.”

  Jim was always kind of creeped out by how the emotion routines in the new AIs could convey urgency via emotion during communications.

  “The weapons locker has been opened using Chief Myers' passcodes. The logs were deleted, but I found them. Four Glocks were stolen.”

  “Any idea who did this, Ben?” Jim asked.

  “Not yet, sir. I will be watching, carefully, now.”

  “Get Hume up here. I want her on this,” Jim said.

  “She is on her way over from the bridge, now,” AI~Ben said.

  ***

  When Hume entered, she saw a slightly transparent AI~Ben sitting to the right of Jimbo. She sat down opposite AI~Ben and nodded a greeting.

  Jim introduced them. “Hume, this is Ben.”

  “Yes, I know. We were just configuring him on the bridge. In fact, Muir and Cook are still at it,” Hume said.

  “Remind me to double Kuss's salary. Ben has already revealed several security threats.”

  AI~Ben began to detail the various issues that he had already encountered and the measures needed to counter them. Hume dug a bit deeper and helped prioritize the threats.

  “Jim, I want to grant full control of the drones to Ben, to use, at his discretion. Then, I want to set up three HUD repeaters outside, around the base. That will allow us to passively track the whereabouts of the HUD-based Deep Brain Implants with data and comms interfaces. We’ll use that technique for search and rescue triangulation.”

  “We can track where everyone is and when. Perfect. But, don't tell them. Whoever is doing this is going out of their way to cover their tracks. They need to believe it's still working.”

  “I will do the repeater installs myself. Today,” Hume said.

  “One last thing. Don't trust Dr. Bowen,” AI~Ben said. “I read the reports she conveyed to you, and she is leaving things out. I do not know what. Give me some time. I have only been live for an hour and a half.” AI~Ben smiled.

  “Jesus, did they turn on casual mode?” Hume asked.

  “They did.” AI~Ben placed his hands behind his head. “Feels nice, but I will be good. I promise.”

  “Ben, be clear about this. The lives of these people are not a casual matter.” Jim was serious.

  “Yes, sir.” AI~Ben wiped the smile off his face. “To that end, sir. May I have access to all secured command briefings? Eyes only.”

  “Permission granted to command briefings and files, all HUD storage, mine included,” Jim said. “Use stealth access, Ben. Need to know, only. You, me and Hume, for now.”

  “I'll bet money it's Bowen, Jimbo. The smug, fat, bitch.” Hume spit the words out.

  “I'll be the first one to walk her to the airlock if she’s doing this. But, for now. Do. Not. Act. Are we clear, Security Chief?”

  “I can't believe I missed this. I'm sorry, Jimbo. Have I come to rely on AIs this much?” Hume knew it was on her watch. “What else did I miss?”

  AI~Ben didn't know it was a rhetorical question. “Do you want her to have access to the psych profiles, Captain?”

  “No!” both Hume and Worthington barked at the same moment.

  “Ben, the crew deserves their privacy. Computer review, only.”

  “Yes, Captain. If there is anything, any behaviors, I should watch for let me know,” AI~Ben said.

  ***

  The following two weeks saw each of the teams working hard on their projects and associated plans. There were successes and failures on each.

  Ben detected far more hull breaches than were initially thought to exist. Positive pressure tests showed many
areas believed to be sealed actually had leaks. Usually, the leaks were into other interior spaces that had massive hull breaches; so, they knew it would have to be in a vacuum. The dock and main engineering were the biggest of these problems. If they sorted out a route to the planet, they would need to have a couple people in pressure suits in engineering, full time.

  Dr. Shaw took on the effort to repair as many pressure suits as possible before they moved out. The suits were being treated like the wounded and occupied tables on the autoDoc, where they could be scanned.

  It was the sensor team that had the most trouble. No one liked working with Bowen. She never seemed to understand the constraints. The sensor station was an hour away by Hammerhead. Hammerheads were small and could carry only two people or one person and the gear. In a pinch, they could tow payloads, but the Hammerhead was not designed for it. Muir was also sure that Bowen was lying about stuff.

  “She’s a shitty liar, Jimbo,” Muir said, one day. “But, you can't call her out on anything.”

  ***

  The initial excitement of having a definite plan had dissipated as the realities of their situation sank in. Hume was angry, all the time.

  “Jimbo, I feel like a cab driver for Christ’s sake,” she ranted, again, while they were alone in the small conference room.

  “I know. But with four more pressure suits now, you don't have to do all the work at the sensors,” Jim said, trying to take a new tack on the issue. “Plus, Ben has been briefing you on security matters while going back and forth,” he said. “By the way, you need to slow down a bit on the return flights. I watched the last time you came in hot. You’re a bit close to the ground for that kind of grav-foil backwash,” Worthington chided, while smiling.

  “I meant to ask. Why the hell are there even Hammerheads on the pinnace? They’re totally out of regs on there,” Hume said. “They’re designed for use in the atmosphere, primarily, and the closer I look at the mods on these, the surer I am that they’re pleasure crafts. Fun runners.” Hume shook her head.