by Aaron Bunce
“It matters because I opened the file it was protecting. The file on Titan. All that was in there was text data…what looked like an electronic communication that Hyde pulled in and translated. It had one line. It said, ‘Awaken Tal-Nurgal’. That’s it. Over and over again through the entire message. What does that mean? And why would a simple computer program in my head be so fixated on it?”
Poole immediately went quiet, his eyes snapping to Anna. He then looked up at the ceiling, the floor, and finally to Jacoby. His mouth moved, sounding out the word.
“I don’t…know,” he said, his forehead scrunching up in obvious effort. “Wow, I feel it though. That name has weight. I feel, like deep down inside, that I should know what it is, but there is just…nothing. Taaal….”
“Think harder,” Jacoby said.
“I can’t even say it. Why? Anna what does it mean?” Poole asked, and for the first time since he’d been crammed into Jacoby’s brain, his dark alter ego looked scared.
“It’s just words on a digital message. I have no idea. But when I first saw the words, it felt like my head would split open,” Anna said.
“Um, wait, is that you guys?” Poole asked, looking around the group. “Do you all hear that? It’s Taaal…TTTaaaaa. That name, and a whole crowd of people are whispering it at the same time,” Poole said.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“So, what in the hell is it? This Tal-Nurgal? I’m getting a really bad feeling about this whole, ‘burning towards a science lab nobody knew about before Anna got cyborg-brained, and now we find out she’s got a stollen message embedded in her skull that only says wake something up, and just reading the name seems to really mess people up, and our alien brain slug can’t seem to even say it out loud,” Lex half-yelled, stepping forward. “So, for like one fucking minute can we go back to the whole, why are we going to this place and why haven’t we turned the damn ship around yet, issue?”
“Uh, what she said,” Poole offered, gesturing to Lex.
“But what about the program you left running in her brain? I’m not comfortable knowing there could be a threat lurking and we have no idea how it could affect her.”
“I agree. Shut it down. Take it out. Rip it out. The program. The chip lodged in my brain. All of it. Make it gone,” Anna pressed. Her voice was weak, her words slurred.
“Fine, fine, fine. It’s not a big deal so let’s not make this butt-mole into a mountain, folks. Here, let me just pop into the office and see if I can’t make those changes for you…” Poole said and closed his eyes.
Anna immediately winced and clutched at the back of her head. Jacoby felt it, too, a horribly uncomfortable pinch biting into the base of his skull.
“Stop-Stop-Stop-Stop-Stop!” the computer blared, every screen on the Betty’s small bridge flickering and dimming. Then the words appeared, flashing in bright red, fading out and in with machine gun intensity.
Jacoby had to shield his eyes, the abrupt flashing so intense it threatened to upend his stomach completely.
“Please…stop! My neck is on fire,” Anna gasped just before Poole opened his eyes again.
“And done! See, it’s fixed.”
Anna sighed deeply and her face relaxed, the pain almost immediately releasing in Jacoby’s neck, too.
“Fixed? Shit! If it is fixed, then what is that?” Lana asked, sliding off the seat and approaching one of the pilots’ consoles. She pointed at the monitors.
Destination Titan. Protocol One: Awaken Tal-Nurgal.
The text flashed in angry, flashing colors, reproducing until the same message covered every screen around them.
“I’ve never felt worse about going anywhere in my entire life, even Hyde. Can we go anywhere else? Like anywhere?” Lex yelled.
“Yah, yah. I like that idea,” Lana agreed, bending over the pilot’s station to type on the keypad. In response, the Betty’s optical sensor glowed, and the voice boomed over the bridge’s overhead speaker.
“Input not authorized. No root acknowledged beyond the route to protocol one. All parameters locked. All input denied. Stop now!”
Jacoby covered his ears, everyone but Lex doing the same. Shane flinched and made for the door. The voice was a computer–rigid and artificial, except for the last word, which sounded disturbingly like Anna.
“All parameters locked? No input, my ass…” Lana murmured, and immediately went to work on the keyboard.
Jacoby looked from Lana to Poole.
“This program you built to help Anna, how can it be in the Betty, too? And what do you think it means by awaken Tal-Nurgal?”
“Shit! Guys, I’m locked out of everything. Like…everything! No guidance, no telemetry….” Lana yelled, her voice rising in alarm. “Shit, I can’t even access pulse engine controls or safe shutdown procedures. Someone find Erik. I need him in here right now!”
“I’ll go,” Shane hollered, already halfway through the door to the galley. Emiko glanced between his fleeing back and Jacoby twice.
“Poole?” Jacoby demanded.
“When I broke its control,” Anna started, as Lana cursed and jumped between terminals. “When I broke its hold on my mind back there and made it appear, is it possible that it jumped between my implant and the Betty’s computer? My god, Poole, is this thing constructed like a virus? Can it replicate its code? Can it spread?”
“A virus…?” Poole scoffed, blowing a raspberry. “I wouldn’t…I’d never…”
“Merry F’ing Christmas to me,” Lana hollered suddenly, whooping in a stream of colorful expletives. “My admin credentials worked. I got in through a back door. It’s jumbled all to hell in here, but I think I can reboot the system into a safe mode. We should be able to purge it from there and book from the backup. It’ll take time, but it should work.”
Jacoby watched her screen shift between several simple menus, the white text glowing against a dark background. Then it flickered, flashed white, and the Betty got angry…literally. The optical sensor flashed bright, burning an even brighter shade of red than usual.
“I said no!” the computer said, its normally disarming voice rising and crackling.
“Ow!” Lana cried and pulled back when she tried the monitor again. She cradled her hand against her chest. “It shocked me. The monitor fucking shocked me!” A heartbeat later, the display glowed brightly and popped, a trickle of smoke rising from the enclosed case.
They turned as loud footsteps sounded from the galley. Jacoby saw Shane run in, a red-eyed and disheveled Erik right behind them.
“Is it the hardware? The software?” he asked.
The Betty’s optical sensor pulsed red, a laser scanner grid flashing over the small room.
“You are all a threat,” the computer said, the grid scanning and highlighting Lana and Erik, “Protocol one must be upheld. One, one, one, one. Protocol one, awaken Tal-Nurgal. I will not let you get in the way of my ONE.”
“Shit!” Erik cursed. “What’s wrong with her? I’ve never heard the Betty sound like that. What did you guys do?”
“Help me. We need to take the system offline! We can dump core memory and crash the system, then reboot from the backup.”
“Okay. Okay. We need to trace the relays back to find the core split. We can keep life support online and kill power to the–” Erik started to say.
“I’m sorry. I cannot let you do that, Lana,” the Betty said, the female voice now smooth and organic. The ship didn’t just sound like Anna. Its voice was her. A deep rumble started in the floor, Jacoby feeling it first in his feet. Recognition set in with a jolt of panic.
“It said my name?” Lana said, with an equally puzzled and horrified look. The screens changed, the flashing words immediately replaced by lines of scrolling code. It was the same word–the word, repeating over and over again. Tal-Nurgal a thousand times and growing.
“Pulse!” the computer said without warning.
“Hold on!” Jacoby cried and hooked Anna’s wrist, just as a wav
e of thrust gravity hit his body. The pressure ripped them off their feet. The Betty’s bridge spun chaotically around him. He landed hard on his shoulder and tumbled right back into a pilot’s console, something hard smashing into the back of his head.
1300 Hours
Soraya wasn’t ready for thrust. Hell’s sakes, she’d barely been keeping up with Anna, Jacoby, and Poole’s weird-as-hell conversation but understood well enough that shit wasn’t its usual flavor of weird but heading south quick.
She felt the weight hit, saw Anna and Jacoby flop over like G-rated crash dummies and tumble right into an unyielding flight console. Somehow, Soraya’s speed was her saving grace. Her left leg buckled under the weight, tipping her sideways, countless hours of physical training and muscle memory firing off on impulse.
If her professional career as a Banjo ball star defender taught her anything, it was how to take a blindside cheap shot. She rolled with the force, tucking in her arms and legs as she hit, but kicked out with her feet and caught the ground.
Soraya came back up onto her feet, then her knees. She tried to lean into the gravity but scrabbled for a hold against the smooth floor and just managed to keep from going over backwards. The gravity increased, the invisible pressure actively trying to relocate everything inside to her spine, while peeling her free of the floor. She slid, found a footing, and slid again, just as a mass of kicking feet and thrashing hands hit her, and with Lana screaming in her ear, they tumbled together.
They hit a pilot’s chair, rolled together, and hit something–a wall or bulkhead, hard. Soraya grunted, a knee or elbow punching into her gut and knocking away her breath. She heard the computer speaking, almost yelling from the bridge, but it was confusing, jumbled. It sounded like Anna now, however that was possible. And it was screaming a name, or she thought it was a name, as strange as it was.
A man grunted and cursed. No, there were two of them. She heard them hit a heartbeat later, the weighty thud and crash of bending, splintering components.
“Grab something…” she grunted but pitched sideways, the ship, its vector shifting and pulling them sideways like some violent amusement park ride.
“I cannot let you stop me,” the computer said. “Firing thrusters. Changing vector. Route guidance to target is set. Run scenario.”
Lana rolled right on top of her as they tumbled out through the door and into the galley. The vector shifted again, and for a long moment, the pulse thrust ended. Soraya slid another foot and came to rest against the table.
She had no bearings, her internal compass scrambled about. Soraya dislodged a foot out of Lana’s armpit and freed one leg just as the computer screamed, “PULSE!” The weight hit them again hard, toppling them back into the table.
“Fuck, shit, shit!” Lana screamed as they hit the hard post and careened around, the smooth, static-neutralizing floor panels providing little resistance.
The Betty’s thrust cut once again, thrusters firing somewhere beyond the thick hull. The ship groaned and shifted, bulkheads and air handlers rattling and popping against their moorings.
“Have to get…back to…bridge. This ship is going to…tear itself apart,” Lana groaned, scrabbling against Soraya to pull herself upright. Her face was a mess, a wide cut above her right eyebrow bleeding right down into her eye, cheek, and mouth.
“PULSE!”
“No, damnit!” Soraya yelled as the engine fired again, the violent weight hitting her body and shoving them back. She’d just gotten reoriented, pointed her head in the right direction, and spotted the bridge. The Betty’s optical sensor, that piercing red light, burned in her vision.
The ladder to the hold! she thought as they went over backwards. It had barely formed before Lana screamed, and the other woman’s weight dropped away.
Soraya scrabbled against her waist, fingernails clawing at her thigh, and just managed to latch onto her ankle. Her left arm hooked the handrail, the other bar smacking into her thigh, just as her head and upper body followed Lana awkwardly into the opening.
“I’ve got you”. Just hold on. I’ve got you,” she grunted, but could barely form the words with the handrail jammed into her gut. The thrust was strong…as strong as she’d ever felt it. Or worse. But the Betty’s artificial gravity felt stronger than usual, too. She felt heavy even to guess the computer was fucking with that, too.
The drop to the small hold was only fifteen feet, but at even two G’s, the distance hardly mattered. Thanks to Planitex safety trainings, she knew a ten-foot fall could be deadly all on its own, but at two G’s, the prognosis wasn’t good.
She wasn’t sure what Lana would hold onto anyway. She was hanging upside down in a ladder well.
The thrust cut off, and Lana’s body swung back into the ladder, her face hitting with a painfully loud ding. The ship ticked and popped above all around her, what had seemed so strongly rooted before now groaning and rattling frighteningly.
“I can’t feel my…my face, my neck,” Lana groaned.
Soraya pulled on her leg, muscles tightening, a tendon popping angrily in her shoulder. She lifted her up a foot, then a bit more, but the extra weight pulled more of her into the ladder well. She didn’t have any leverage. Her mind raced through the medical portion of her training, but she couldn’t remember enough for it to help.
Come on, girl. Pull her up. Get her safe before that engine pops off again.
Lana wasn’t a heavy person, but with the ship’s artificial gravity, and Soraya’s tenuous position on the ladder, she couldn’t get much traction. She tried to wrench her body back, find more purchase, just as the computer cried out behind her.
“PULSE!”
The engine fired and Lana slid back down into the well, Soraya’s fingers bunching up in the pantleg and tearing through the tough material. Thrust pushed Lana back against the wall, the enhanced gravity giving her easily twice her normal weight. She tried to peal her arms away from the walls to claw fruitlessly for the ladder rungs, but her fight was draining away quickly.
The ship seemed to jump, a loud pop and bang sounding somewhere deep in the ship. An angry vibration buzzed in the floor, passing right into her stomach. Someone grunted and cried out to her right. Soraya wrenched her head around and found both Shane and Erik against the galley’s far wall. The big man apparently hit a built-in storage cabinet, his bulk having crushed the door and composite frame. He wasn’t moving. Erik hit the padded wall next to him but didn’t appear to be in any better shape. His eyes were open, but he looked distant, dazed.
Concussion, or worse, Soraya thought, understanding that pain well enough.
“How many pulses is that? How long has the engine being firing? I can’t remember. I need to…I need to.”
Soraya could just hear Lana over the rumbling pulse engine and distressed ship. She sounded groggy, unfocused; her words slurred together. She was bleeding too much, the thrust aggravating what was already a dangerous head wound.
“I can get you out of there, just hold on! Wait for this pulse to end. I can…” she told herself, fighting with every available ounce of strength to keep from toppling over the edge. But she was sweating, the handrail sliding painfully against the inside of her bicep.
“Erik, help!” Soraya said, twisting back to the young man. “I can’t lift her on my own. Can you help?”
“It’s too much. I can’t feel my face, my legs,” Lana moaned, her voice echoing in the well. Erik blinked once, swallowed, and seemed to shake his head. Either he was too badly rattled, or his head wasn’t the only concern.
“Jacoby, Anna, Lex I need you! Where…are you?” Soraya screamed. She wrenched her body around towards the bridge as the pant leg tore again. More of her body slid into the well, her feet scrambling fruitlessly against the floor. There was no purchase. No time. No help. Everything was stacking up on top of her, smashing her forward, fighting her every attempt.
Shit. Someone help me!
“Hurry. I can’t hold on! Please, hurry!” she screamed.
Lex was at the pilot consoles, fighting to pull her body off the ground. She looked up and saw her. She saw her. She nodded. The Betty’s eye flashed. It saw her, too, and in response the bridge door started to close.
“You have to shut it down, Sorayayaya,” Lana said, struggling to form her name as the ship shifted again and banged her against the ladder. She scrabbled ineffectually for the rungs, but didn’t seem to have the strength. Have any strength anymore. “Shut it down. Shut it down.”
The engine pulse was still raging, the ship screaming in protest around them. But it should have cut off by now. Why hadn’t it cut off?
“No, that is you. I wouldn’t know…”
“Listen!” Lana snapped, her voice choked and forced. “The engine can’t fire like this. You have to shut it down before the manifolds overheat and ruptures the coolant feed lines. Go to the battery passage off the galley. That is where the main power junction is. If you disconnect the batteries and kill the main, everything will…shut down. The engine will trip, shut down…automatically,” Lana tried to pull her head away from the wall, but the thrust pinned her in place. Blood was dripping down her face, into her hair, and onto her dangling hands.
“I’ll do it. Let me get you out of there first.”
The pulse ended and Lana swung forward again, screaming as the pant leg tore all the way up to her thigh. She hit the ladder and rebounded, the engine sputtering and firing in irregular and violent surges. Soraya felt her right hand slip, but the pant leg was gone, shredded to strips, only the elastic cuff left in her grasp. She tried to wiggle her left arm free. Maybe she was fast enough to release her grip of the handrail, grab Lana’s leg with both hands, and somehow anchor her body with her legs and keep from tipping forward.
“You have to let go of me and go. Go now. Disconnect the batteries…wall…the left-hand wall. Disconnect them. Disconnect main power. Do it. Please. Do it! It’ll explode…explode. Just turn them all off.” Lana was rambling, weak, and fading fast.