by M. D. Cooper
She squinted at him as if just realizing who he was, then looked at Petral. Her gaze shifted to the wall behind Andy. He watched her recognize Cal Kraft.
Brit was upright in an instant. She reached into her waistband at the small of her back and pulled out a straight knife with a double-edged blade.
“Brit!” Andy shouted. “Stop. He’s our prisoner.”
“Then this is going to be easy,” Brit growled, voice husky from sleep.
Andy took another step toward Brit so he was standing between the two medical bays. He held out a hand to stop her.
Brit shook her head, changing the knife from a throwing hold to a slashing grip. “He tried to kill our son,” she said.
Andy took another step, trying to decide how far he was willing to defend Kraft and the possibility that he might be able to help Tim, when the surgery doors slid open and a group of men and women in dirty shipsuits walked through, armed with a mix of handguns and rifles.
“Well,” Petral said, picking up her pistol off the surgery display. “The pirates have arrived.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
STELLAR DATE: 10.03.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: HMS Resolute Charity
REGION: Europa, Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
As more waves of small pirate craft approached the Resolute Charity, Lyssa realized to her dismay that the ship had an excellent long-range attack system that worked in concert with a powerful sensor array, yet lacked any real close attack support. Rings of point defense cannons forward, middle and just above the engines provided some cover but the smaller ships quickly overwhelmed her ability to stop the hoard.
Lyssa fired thrusters, on each side of the ship, initiating a spin. A rotating ship was much harder to dock with, and enemy weapons would have more difficulty tracking targets on the hull.
Her drones swooped and fired among the incoming ships, spitting beam fire, as Lyssa pushed her awareness out further through the Resolute Charity’s powerful transmission antennae. She managed to disable several ships by activating internal safety systems, even taking control of astrogation systems to send other craft into collisions.
Beyond the pirate craft attacking the Resolute Charity, nearly a hundred Heartbridge ships were pulling away from the morass of ships around the fueling stations, boosting to pursue their flagship.
Europa’s space traffic control NSAIs were issuing orders to ships at break-neck speed, trying to get ships into orderly lanes.
No one was listening. Local space around the moon had turned into absolute chaos. Just above the horizon, a fuel depot bloomed into spreading fire as a ship boosted too close to it and ignited a storage tank.
Her focus jumped from point to point inside the Resolute Charity, watching through Andy’s eyes, and then outward again to ship’s sensors and her drones. She found herself caught in a spinning dance where every move threatened to send the entire show into chaos. Somehow, she managed to keep dancing, spinning and leaping, feeling surprisingly exhilarated by test after test.
Small ships managed to board. Lyssa overrode airlocks, but several cut their way in or overrode the local circuitry. Once inside, she watched groups of scavengers come into contact with hallucinating Heartbridge crew, which led to firefights or yelling matches. Several groups of pirates succumbed to the atmosphere before realizing the danger, and also collapsed, laughing and rolling on the decks.
When Cara called, Lyssa realized she had another problem. She would need to keep a dock clear so Petral, Andy, Brit, and Harl could get off the ship. Finding a location that wasn’t already occupied by a scavenger ship proved harder than she expected. The forward point defense cannons had a wide dead zone that incoming ships continued to breach.
“Where are we going to dock?” Cara asked, desperation entering her voice.
“I’m working on it,” Lyssa said, coming in over Shuttle 26-11’s audible comms. “Don’t worry.”
“Why worry?” Sandra asked.
Was that a joke?
Sandra sounded slightly less unhinged than the last time Lyssa talked to her, but still not making real sense. Lyssa hoped they didn’t have to depend on the flighty AI to pilot the shuttle.
Lyssa checked on Diane, Fiona and David and found them still caught up in the simulation. As status reports reached her from other parts of the ship, showing more and more Heartbridge personnel reaching EV suits, while others seemed to be coming down from their mania, she realized she needed to make a decision about how to clear the ship. The hallucinogens weren’t lasting as long as they had hoped.
Lyssa suggested.
Lyssa said.
Lyssa activated the general alarm. On every deck, red and white lights started flashing, accompanied by a piercing alert klaxon.
Andy squeezed his hands to his ears. She forgot he hadn’t been wearing his helmet.
Throughout the ship, crew and scavengers grabbed at their ears and stumbled in the corridors. The change was immediate as people who had been highly intoxicated just minutes before struggled upright. In every room and corridor, lights on the walls and deck pointed toward the nearest emergency escape craft.
Lyssa switched the general alarm over to the external broadcast, sending out a public announcement that the Resolute Charity was about to lose bottle containment in its main engine and would soon succumb to a runaway fusion event.
Heartbridge ships that had been inbound fighting with the trailing edge of the pirates, now ceased their burns, holding back in case the Resolute Charity did, in fact, blow.
The first escape craft, a two-person pod near the lower engine maintenance sections, blasted away from the ship. More followed, increasing in number like popcorn bursting in a pan.
Lyssa laughed. It was amusing how fast humans reacted when they had fear, survival, and pain as motivators. She stopped herself, realizing such a thought was psychopathic.
“We’re ready to land, Lyssa,” Cara announced. “Adjusting spin with the Resolute Charity now. Do we need to be worried about the radiation warnings coming across the public net?”
Lyssa laughed. “Do they sound scary?”
“Well, yes. You can’t hear it?”
“Not the same way you can. I’m watching people in the ship respond to the alarms and they keep holding their ears and running around.”
“What about my mom and dad? Are they all right?”
“Your father has his helmet to block out the noise. Your mother and Petral seem to be gritting their teeth so it won’t bother them.”
“That means it does bother them.”
“Interesting.”
“Lyssa,” Fugia Wong broke in. “I just watched what looks like an attack drone destroy a light freighter. Do you know who’s doing that?”
“That’s me,” Lyssa said.
“You’re controlling all those attack drones?” Cara asked. “There are more than a hundred of them that I can pick up, but I think there are more.”
“Two hundred and seventy-one,” Lyssa said. “I bolstered my complement from the Resolute Charity’s bays. I’m clearing a flight path for you to the docking sleeve A-17, near the medical center where your parents are currently located
. I’m sending Sandra the plan.”
“I see it on my console now,” Cara said. Then she cried out in surprise, the sound followed by other shouts coming across the channel.
Lyssa watched the shuttle shoot upward, narrowly missing a light attack corsair that had just been hit by one of the drones. Cara rolled, righting the shuttle, and angled back toward the path Lyssa had sent her.
“Are you all right?” Lyssa asked. “I didn’t expect that to happen.”
“We’re all right,” Cara answered, obviously focused on her duties as pilot.
“Are you trying to kill us?” Fugia Wong demanded, voice overly loud. “You’re the AI. You’re supposed to be tracking all this stuff.”
“Do you have any idea of all the various systems I’m monitoring right now?” Lyssa said. “I just had this argument with Andy.”
“You had an argument with the captain?” Fugia asked, sounding interested. “Tell me more about that. Are you rebelling against your father?”
“He’s not my father,” Lyssa said.
“I thought Cara was your sister,” Fugia went on. “Seems like a reasonable assumption to me.”
Through the shuttle’s interior sensors, Lyssa saw Fugia grinning at May Walton. The way Cara was focused on the controls in front of her she looked so much like Andy that Lyssa found herself continuing to watch her, understanding finally what that expression meant. It was everything about Cara, both her physical appearance and the passion in her eyes. Lyssa saw Brit in the slant of her eyebrows, the seriousness of Cara’s expression, as if everything in her was present at that moment, centered on the shuttle’s controls. She was also doing a good job of ignoring Fugia, who sat next to her waving her hands and joking with May.
“The human brain is an assumption engine,” Sandra said. “It continuously makes assumptions about the world then determines if its assumptions were correct. Humans operate in an ambiguous world of their own creation. They only agree on reality.”
Fugia frowned. “What happened to you?” she asked.
“Sandra is hurting,” Lyssa said.
“Ambiguity is death,” Sandra said.
“I hate to break it to you,” Fugia said, “But all life is ambiguous. This instant you accept you have free will, you choose your reality.”
“Will you shut up?” Cara said tersely. “I’m trying to concentrate. You’re worse than Tim.”
“Well, excuse me,” Fugia said. She rolled her eyes at May. “Has her thirteenth birthday and just thinks she’s in charge. I told her father.”
“You should be in the clear from here,” Lyssa said.
“I keep thinking we’re clear,” Cara said, hands still tight on the console. “And then some other ship tries to ram us. It’s all moving so fast.” She leaned forward slightly.
“Is the dock clear?” Fugia asked Lyssa. “Are we going to have a welcoming party when we arrive?”
“The dock is currently clear,” Lyssa reported. “Most crew and invaders have made their way to escape vehicles throughout the ship.”
“Smart scavengers would have brought radiation suits,” Fugia said. “These Jovian scavs don’t have anything on a Cruithne crew.”
Lyssa received a positive control signal as Cara synced the shuttle’s spin with the Resolute Charity. From the shuttle’s perspective, the rotating surface of the Resolute Charity’s hull slowed to a stop, allowing Cara to make final thrust adjustments to the dock. As the shuttle came in, emergency craft continued to shoot away from the hospital ship, trailing propellant.
“I have a positive handshake,” Cara said.
“I confirm,” Lyssa said. “I’m going to tell your mom and dad now. They shouldn’t be more than ten minutes away.”
Cara pulled her hands away from the console and Lyssa watched her face relax with a satisfied smile.
“We have thwarted death,” Sandra said.
Fugia barked a laugh. “You’re all right, Sandra,” she said. “I’ve never met a pessimistic AI. I think I approve.”
With the shuttle successfully docked, Lyssa sent updates to Fran on the Sunny Skies and Andy in the medical section. She pulled the bulk of her drone fleet close to form a defensive pattern around the shuttle, in case anyone decided they wanted to exploit the evacuation message as Fugia had suggested.
Lyssa said.
Andy made an angry sound like he was biting back pain. Lyssa quickly checked him for wounds, then realized he was in a rage.
She was too occupied in other parts of the ship to put herself back in his perception.
CHAPTER FORTY
STELLAR DATE: 10.03.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: HMS Resolute Charity
REGION: Europa, Jupiter, Jovian Combine, OuterSol
Out of the corner of her eye, Brit watched the surgery cocoon containing the Heartbridge employee split open. Without her powered armor, she had been forced to take cover behind a workstation as a clearly insane pirate near the entrance fired a plasma splatter cannon into the room.
Petral was pinned down on the other side of the corridor, while Andy charged toward the phalanx of scavengers that had spread out to take cover at the end of the hallway. The splatter cannon was position near the doors to the ward, behind a reinforced section of bulkhead.
Andy took a kinetic round in the shoulder and a section of the power armor melted, making his non-firing arm useless.
‘Pirates’ probably wasn’t the best word for this group, who quickly proved themselves a hardened gang with military experience. They fell back to defensive positions and quickly moved to flank Andy, who was now in a vulnerable location. He fired smoke bursts from one of the suit’s thigh sections and moved with the concealment to a cubicle that offered slightly better cover, firing every three seconds or so to keep the attacker’s heads down.
When the surgery on the other side of the corridor moved, Brit shouted at Petral,
Petral growled in frustration and glanced at the space behind her. She looked across the corridor at Brit and shook her head.
Petral said.
Andy threw two grenades into a cubicle and blew a pirate out into the middle of the corridor. The woman lay screaming on the deck, a smashed leg pumping out blood. The gang’s fire lessened, no doubt trying to coordinate via Link to pull her to safety.
“Look,” Andy shouted through his helmet’s loudspeakers. “We don’t care about you and you don’t care about us. We’re trying to get off this ship and I imagine you’re trying to do the same thing. I’ll let you come out and get your friend and we’re leaving.”
“You think we’re going to trust you?” an angry voice rang out from the right side of the corridor. Brit raised her rifle to keep a bead on that area.
“I don’t care if you trust us or not,” Andy said. “I’ve got twenty more grenades where those came from. I can turn this whole section of the clinic into vacuum. But I’d rather leave.”
Andy told Brit.
“You think you scare us in that cheap-ass power armor?” one of the pirates yelled.
“I don’t have to scare you,” Andy said, “only kill you.”
Brit smirked, still appreciating Andy’s wit.
Brit demanded.
Petral snorted.
Brit didn’t wait for Andy’s answer. She lobbed a grenade with her rifle’s secondary trigger and dashed across the corridor when it hit. The pirates immediately opened fire again, leaving their bleeding comrade in the middle of the floor.
Brit moved around the back edge of the cocoon with the Heartbridge woman lying inside and found the open wall panel through which Kraft had escaped. The ceramic material still appeared seamless but now a door-sized section hung open, showing a dim metal corridor on the other side. It reminded her of the clinic back on Cruithne.