Race to Terra (Book 10 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  Then, once he was fully healed, she’d return him to the planet. He’d wake up suddenly healed of all his injuries.

  She had no idea how he was going to interpret that, and frankly, she didn’t care. One way or the other, they’d be leaving Pandora in the next few days. The odds of any of them ever seeing the man again were vanishingly small.

  At her orders, the pinnace hovered over the dark city. It was still before dawn, so there weren’t many people up. An excellent time of the morning to go hunting.

  The buildings inside the kingdom’s capital were mostly constructed of wood and stone. Those were easy building materials to gather and use for what amounted to a medieval society.

  The durability of the buildings also allowed the pinnace to lower its ramp onto the rooftop.

  It only had to hover for a few moments as Angela and the marines hopped out onto the peak. It then silently lifted into the air, closed its ramp, and began circling higher to await them calling for pickup.

  The three-story building had no roof access, but that wasn’t going to deter Angela. She’d already spotted their entry point on the back of the building. Someone had failed to close the shutters on one of the top-floor windows.

  The corporal in charge of her team quickly attached a line to a heavy chimney and tested it. He nodded at Angela.

  “Looks good, Major,” he said quietly. “We should only go down one at a time, just to be on the safe side.”

  Like any good commander, she allowed her marines to precede her in and then followed. Once they were inside the hallway on the top floor, they began a room by room search, looking for their quarry.

  The building provided room and board for itinerant workers, so the conditions were crowded and there was a lot of snoring going on. Each room they looked into was packed with Pandorans sleeping on large spreads of cheap bedding.

  That complicated the task of locating the one person they were really interested in, but it didn’t make it impossible. The man’s injuries meant he had one hand that was heavily bandaged. He was also human, so he’d stand out.

  Her scouts found him at the end of the hall, saving her from having to search the other two floors. Unfortunately, he was on the far side of a group of sleeping Pandorans. That made access to him without waking the others impossible.

  Thankfully, that was a problem she could solve. She quietly drew her stunner, set it to wide beam, and shot everyone in the room. With the diffused effects, the people inside would be asleep for roughly half an hour and wake up with a headache. She was sorry for that, but it couldn’t be helped.

  Thankfully, stunners had less effect on Pandorans than humans. The time it was effective for was roughly half as long, and the headache was less significant.

  Two of her marines extracted their target and carried him back the way they’d come. Inside five minutes, they’d retreated to the roof and were back aboard the pinnace, heading for Audacious.

  They secured the prisoner in one of the marine drop harnesses, and Angela stunned him again with a full beam to be certain he’d be out long enough for the medical procedure to take place and for him to be returned to Pandora.

  She wasn’t convinced that this man would feel differently toward Princess Kelsey after this, but one never knew. It would make her boss happy, and that was good enough for Angela.

  Once this was done, she could begin the final process of getting Persephone ready to scout Archibald. One way or the other, she knew that task would land in her lap before very much longer, and frankly, she was itching to get started.

  7

  Kelsey rubbed her temples tiredly and stared at the wall of her cabin. Trying to make any sense from even the limited information about the AIs Mertz had brought with them on this mission made her brain hurt. She just wasn’t a technical person.

  In a way, she was grateful that the man hadn’t brought the complete technical specifications, because she knew that she didn’t have a chance of understanding them.

  Of course, he’d insisted that only the other version of her had that kind of detailed information. If he was to be believed, she’d stolen it from the Rebel Empire but hadn’t gotten it home yet.

  Hell, that sounded like this universe’s version of her, so she’d even grant the man was probably telling her the truth.

  Yet she was going to be the one responsible for repairing the damaged AI in a few days. If she didn’t get a handle on what she needed to do, they were all going to die.

  Fielding had been cagey, but she’d bet money that he intended to personally accompany them. The Bastard… Mertz… was absolutely correct in his assessment that the man was up to something.

  The more she compared Fielding to the Mertz from her universe, the more similarities she saw in the way they behaved and treated others. Ironically, that only highlighted how little like her Mertz the one from this universe behaved.

  She respected Scott Roche and had considered what he’d advised her to do a few nights ago, but she genuinely liked these people, other than Mertz. She wasn’t sure that she could betray them, even if that was the price for saving the lives of her people back home.

  Kelsey hoped it never came to that. The odds of her being able to escape with the key and Mertz, or the override from the vaults below the Imperial Palace on Terra, were even lower than her being able to carry off the mission with the AI.

  If anyone was going to be able to repair the AI, it was going to have to be Austin Darrah. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, she needed to do what she could to support him in that task.

  With that thought in mind, she began wandering the corridors, searching for the young man. To her shock, she covered the entire destroyer, with the exceptions of private quarters, without locating him. He didn’t answer the door to his own cabin, so she doubted he was in there.

  Where could he be hiding?

  Then she remembered that she could use her implants to locate him. She instructed the ship’s computer to tell her his location, and it responded that he was not aboard the ship.

  That response made her blink. That was impossible. It wasn’t as if he could just get off.

  She queried the computer about Mertz’s location. It responded that he was no longer aboard the destroyer as well.

  Frustrated, she headed for engineering. That was where Mertz frequented, so if anyone knew where he was now, they’d likely be there.

  She found the lieutenant commander in charge of engineering overseeing maintenance on some piece of equipment. He rose to his feet and nodded politely to her.

  “Highness, what can I do for you?”

  “Commander… O’Halloran, isn’t it? I’m looking for Jared Mertz or Austin Darrah. The ship’s computer doesn’t seem to think they’re aboard. By any chance, do you know where they are?”

  He nodded, led her to a maintenance hatch, and opened it. Somewhat nonplussed, she went inside.

  Expecting to find a basic maintenance tube, she was surprised to find a concealed work area. Austin was looking over a piece of equipment on a makeshift table while Mertz looked on.

  Mertz looked over at her and nodded. “Princess Kelsey.”

  She gestured toward the table. “What is this and why are you working on it in here? And why didn’t the computer know where you were?”

  “We’re in a shielded area,” he said. “This is an FTL com, and it seems to be malfunctioning. Commander O’Halloran can’t seem to isolate the fault, so I’m giving Austin a shot.”

  That statement caused both of her eyebrows to shoot up. “No offense to Austin, but isn’t this kind of a secret?”

  The young Rebel Empire noble grinned at her. “It seems I’ve been brought into the inner circle. Okay, probably not the inner circle. Maybe a middle circle.”

  He turned his attention toward Mertz. “As far as I can tell, none of these parts is malfunctioning. Each and every one of them passes a self-check, and as Commander O’Halloran indicated, he even swapped out the offending part with a different
unit, and it still behaves in exactly the same way.”

  “So you’re saying this is external influence of some kind,” Mertz said. “While I’m certainly not well versed in the theory behind this equipment, someone who is has assured me that that wasn’t possible.”

  The young hardware enthusiast shrugged. “What can I tell you? Some of the most amazing breakthroughs in science take place when someone takes something that isn’t possible and does it anyway.

  “I’m absolutely not saying that this is an attempt at communication. I don’t know enough about it to be certain. All I can state with any certainty is that the equipment is functioning as designed.

  “Perhaps we’re traveling through a section of space where a nearby star is sending out pulses of radiation that we can’t detect clearly that somehow affects this one quantum connection. I can certainly keep thinking about what’s going on, but I don’t think any further examination by me is going to reveal a secret at the moment.”

  Mertz nodded. “That might actually be for the best, now that I think about it. When something has me stumped, the answer will usually come when I’m busy doing something completely unrelated, straight out of the blue.”

  He focused his attention on Kelsey. “You came looking for us, Highness. What can we do for you?”

  She grimaced. “I’ve reached the end of my rope trying to get a handle on repairing the AI. I understand that I’m supposed to take the lead in that particular charade, but honestly, we all know that Austin is going to do the work. I just have to figure out a way to look like I’m leading when I’m really following.

  “Has Fielding told us who’s going on this mission other than Austin, myself, and either you or Olivia?”

  Mertz shrugged. “She confronted him, but he didn’t give her any more information. I think it’s a safe bet that he’s going along with you. If you feel more comfortable, I’m certainly okay with sending Olivia. It’s your call.”

  Kelsey hated being so biased, but if she had the choice of picking between Olivia and Mertz, she picked the other woman in a heartbeat. She just didn’t trust Mertz, even though she probably should.

  She opened her mouth to say something to that effect, but the piece of equipment that the two men had been examining chose that moment to turn itself off.

  Austin blinked down at the communication device. “Well, that’s new.”

  Talbot watched Ralph Halstead work on his computer, which was attached to the FTL com, feeling more than a bit conflicted. Everything was set up in Carl’s lab, and the other researchers were watching the proceedings with interest.

  “Are you sure this is the best idea?” he asked Kelsey softly. The two of them were leaning back against the bulkhead and watching from a short distance away.

  His wife nodded. “Fiona checked him. When he says that he’s not going to betray us, I believe him.”

  “But why is he helping us?”

  “Bottom line? He’s bored.”

  “Bored?” Talbot asked, hearing the doubt in his own tone. “That’s not a good long-term motivator.”

  His wife grinned at him. “It is if you’ve been doing the same thing for your aunt for years. She, by the way, spectacularly failed her lie detector test. There’s no way we’re going to be able to trust her with any secrets.

  “We’ll end up sending her back to the new Terran Empire permanently once we have a way to get there. Her husband, too. And sadly, their cats. I need a pet. You’re not allergic to cats, are you?”

  “Don’t try to change the subject,” he said firmly. “Our young friend is an industrial spy. A hacker. The moment someone offers him enough money or a chance to scamper off and sell what he knows about us, he’s going to vanish.”

  “Not according to Fiona,” Kelsey said smugly. “She’s fully vetted his story about not really being that interested in stealing things for a living. Like you said, he’s a hacker. He likes getting into places that he’s not supposed to be and doing things that he’s not supposed to be doing, but it’s not the money that drives him. It’s the thrill of the chase, so to speak.

  “When he found out that we had the code used for the sentient AIs, he said he’d sell his soul to work on something like that. What you see before you is a programmer committed to his art. Unlike his aunt or the criminal syndicates that she was working for, we can offer him something they can’t. A true challenge and a purpose in his life.”

  Talbot wasn’t convinced, but it was ultimately Kelsey’s call.

  “All right,” he said, throwing up his hands. “You win. What exactly are you hoping he can do with the FTL com? Hasn’t Carl already gone over the software with a fine-toothed comb? After all, he wrote it.”

  “Carl is a genius, but he knows his limitations. He’s something of a generalist. Ralph Halstead has devoted his life to coding and hacking. If anyone can get into the guts of an FTL com at a distance, it’s going to be him.”

  “I think I found something,” Ralph said, excitement in his tone. “Take a look at this, Carl.”

  Talbot strode forward to stand beside the two of them, and Kelsey joined him, listening in to their hushed discussion. Doctor Jacqueline Parker, the former head of the Dresden orbital’s secret research team, also moved closer.

  The hacker pointed to a line of text on the screen in front of him. “Look at this line right here. If I can get access to this module, I could shut off the unit remotely.”

  Carl read what was on the screen and slowly nodded. “It’s not much of a vulnerability, but you’re right. The question is, how do you get into that module from the receiver section of the com?”

  “We can trigger a response from the other com whenever we send a status query,” Ralph said. “If I send some additional code I’ve put together along with that query, the other unit is going to read it.”

  “How do you make the remote device actually execute the additional code in the manner that you want?” Parker asked softly.

  Halstead turned and grinned at her. “I’ve got a library of code snippets that work on various Imperial systems. Sometimes they’re useful and sometimes they’re just a curiosity. Various groups that I’ve associated with over the years have compiled them just in case they proved useful in a future hack.

  “When Carl built the FTL com, he used as many off-the-shelf components as possible. What I’m looking to do is cause a cascade failure inside the other com that ends up triggering a hard shutdown. The actual language and code that I use to make that happen is somewhat irrelevant. What matters is the end result.”

  “And you’re certain that sending this command will cause a series of failures that results in the other unit turning off?” Kelsey asked.

  Ralph nodded. “Pretty damned sure. Unfortunately, that’s all it’s going to do. It’s not going to make any modifications to the other side that would allow us to initiate communications with them or signal a direct link request. Someone’s going to have to notice that the unit is off and dig into the error codes to find my message.”

  “And what is your message?” Carl asked.

  “Just a couple of words. Buried inside the error message they’ll see is going to be a line of plain text that says, ‘This is Kelsey.’ That pretty much used up the leeway I had in affecting the error message. Carl hardwired how long the error message can be.

  “If that doesn’t get their attention, we can always try again once they turn it back on and send a different message, but this seems like a good start to me.”

  “How will we know that they’ve read it?” Talbot asked.

  The hacker shrugged. “We won’t. When they power the unit back up, we’ll be able to ping it for a status again. That’ll mean that they’ve noticed that it was off.

  “Under the best of circumstances, we’re going to have to assume that whoever is examining the equipment isn’t going to find the first message, or the second, or even the third. We may have to do this a dozen times before someone figures out what we’re doing.

&nbs
p; “In any case, it’s better than what we’ve been doing. Glitching that one component isn’t getting us anywhere. We need to up our game.”

  Kelsey turned to him. “What do you think, Talbot?”

  He considered how the young man might actually be trying to sabotage the other unit but ended up discarding the idea. He just didn’t see what Halstead could gain by doing so.

  “We should try,” he eventually said.

  His wife gestured toward the hacker. “Do it.”

  That made Talbot grin. When Kelsey made a decision, she didn’t spend her time dithering. She balanced the options, picked one, and forged ahead. That was one of the things he loved about her.

  Halstead tapped on his keyboard and hit the enter key. “Signal sent. Now we sit back and keep testing to see if they turn the other unit back on. If no one’s looking at it, that could take hours or even days.

  “I have this unit set up to continue sending connection and status requests every ten seconds. It’ll send us a notification as soon as someone over there figures out the machine is down and powers it back up.”

  Halstead’s computer beeped. He frowned and leaned forward. “Well, that’s unexpected. It’s back up.”

  “Are we even sure it went down?” Carl asked. “It’s possible that your hack failed.”

  Halstead almost sneered, in a relatively friendly way. “Please. My hack worked. There has to have been somebody sitting right on top of the damned thing.”

  Talbot pursed his lips. If so, that was good news. Excellent news, in fact. It meant that they might once again be in contact with Admiral Mertz, and he could advise them on what to do.

  They’d still have to find their own way back to the New Terran Empire, but at least they could give him a status update.

  The communications speed would be far too slow—based on what Carl’s experimentation had determined—to give the admiral any of the information that they’d stolen. It wasn’t even fast enough to utilize video.