Evie was well equipped to deal with other system attacks. If another program was trying to crack her security, she would hunt it down mercilessly and wipe it out. The creeping flutter in her secondary processes didn’t show any signs of malicious invasion, so it was ignored.
Evie could not detect that Veck was manipulating her programming to take her focus from him, and from the defense protocol Draco had put in place. Evie couldn’t detect him, because he was not a program in the traditional sense. He didn’t move through her code in a way that triggered any of her security measure.
His signature was erratic. Impossible to lock onto.
His intrusion was the fragmented abstract of human thought made digital. Evie had no defense against him. It would only be a matter of time until he found the right code to alter, the right buttons to press.
‘Just a little more,’ Veck thought to himself, ‘Just a little more and I’ll shut the AI down for good. Then, I’ll get out of this fucking cage, and then the real fun will start.’
Veck had never interfaced with such an elaborate system as Evie. Everyone had a horror story about humans with neurotech implants interfacing with intelligent systems. People had horrific experiences. Minds were wiped or reprogrammed. Entire ships were brought down in flames due to AI system shut down. But Veck was desperate. It was his only chance at escape, and he had to take it. When he saw, he saw both through his eyes, and into the code of Evie’s programming matrix.
The human mind needs to understand a system before it can begin to decipher it, and the easiest way to understand a system is through visual representation.
Veck’s neurotech implant interpreted the processing matrix as lines of code, whipping in-between buildings labelled after all of Evie’s core processes. There was no ground, and there was no sky. The pillars seemed to stretch on forever.
Only the lines of code and Veck himself remained in movement.
As Veck flew through the code, he saw a light in the distance. It was a dim, distant light, and he knew what it was as soon as he saw it.
Evie’s central core. That was his destination. If he could manage to infiltrate her core, he could control her.
If he could control Evie, he could control the Icarus.
Veck watched a string of code fly by. His neurotech implant translated it into a video feed of the engineering bay. One of the young women working in the maintenance bay fired the first kinetic energy tether onto the Metropolis Seven, binding the two ships together.
Chapter Ten
Behind the sealed blast door spindly legs skittered and scratched in a vain attempt to get at them. The hulking monstrosity bellowed in frustration as the crew moved down the dark corridor. Some of the doors were sealed, others were open, and shattered glass lay all over the ground. Their boots crunched on the broken glass as they moved forward. At the end of the corridor, faint blue luminescence could be seen.
“Al, how far until we reach the maintenance crew quarters?” Draco asked.
“This corridor bends right and leads directly to the quarters. Approximately another two hundred and sixty yards.”
As they moved, glass shattered. Draco saw something small slam into Vynce’s side, knocking him to the ground. A creature with pink skin and finger-like appendages that grew from its gnarled, misshapen face chomped on Vynce’s armor.
Draco raised his pistol and fired a single shot into the creature. The creature’s head exploded outward, spraying Vynce with its remains.
“I’m glad you’re a good shot, Captain,” Vynce said as he got back to his feet, wiping the guts from his visor.
Draco holstered his pistol.
“Just what the fuck is going on in this place?” Ava asked.
“Insufficient data,” Aloysius replied.
Raze stooped down next to the exploded little creature and poked around in the remains of its body. The body was cylindrical with short stumpy feet that ended in claws. It ended in a flat pulpy stump where the head had been at one end in a short stubby tail with bone-like protrusions poking out from a misshapen nub at the other. Raze picked up one of the protrusions that lined the thing’s face and held it up for the rest of the crew to see.
“I may be going crazy, but that looks like a finger to me,” Raze said.
Draco took the finger from Raze and inspected it. The big man was right. It was a finger. A human finger. Two knuckles, fingerprint, and a fingernail.
“What is going on here?” Draco whispered.
“I don’t know boss, but again, I’m starting to wish that we had ignored this big old hunk of metal and kept on flying back to the Alliance. Ha! I never thought I’d be glad to see them,” Ava said. “There was an army of those things climbing up at us from the bottom of the shaft.”
Draco looked down at the creature and suddenly it all made grisly sense. The creature looked like it was part of one of the passengers, because it was a part of one of the passengers. The passengers were all around them, in the walls, skittering through the vents.
“We’ve only got one way to go,” Draco said. “Toward the light at the end of the tunnel. Once we find out what’s really going on here, we start the engines, and we get out of here.”
“Are you serious? You still want us to start the engines?” Vynce asked.
“There could still be survivors. We’ve got three hours and twenty minutes until we roast, and no way to get back to our shuttle without going through a flesh mountain. I don’t see many other options right now,” Draco said.
Down the corridor a wall-mounted information station glowed. There was a partially occluded map of the Metropolis Seven showing a small section of the ship. A small dot on the bottom left hand corner showed their position. Draco walked over to the map. He wanted to try and make sense of where they were in relation to the engine room.
As they walked in, the power to the information station was cut and the map disappeared. Draco swore. A moment later the lights in the room switched on.
Raze, Vynce and Ava raised their assault rifles ready to respond to any possible threats. For the first time since they entered the ship, they didn’t need their shoulder-lamps to see. The room was clear and quiet, except for the scuttling of creatures in the vents around them. There was a door marked Maintenance Crew Only on a nearby wall.
Someone or something had manipulated the power resource grid to herd them to this space, and that same entity had turned off their only means of gathering information about where they were on the ship. Draco motioned for Raze to inspect the information station.
“Re-route the power back to this kiosk or open a path for us to get to their main server,” Draco said.
Raze got down on one knee, wedged open the interface panel at the bottom of the kiosk, pulled the interface chip from under the buckler on his arm and began to infiltrate the system.
‘No, stop! Step away from there!’ a voice said over the loudspeaker.
“I am Captain Draco Goldwing, responding to Metropolis Seven’s distress beacon. The lives of my crew are in danger, and I need your cooperation. If I can’t count on that, then I’ll turn around, go back to my ship, and leave this metal tomb floating in the void.”
There was a moment of silence, then the same voice returned and spoke timidly. ‘If you don’t do what I say Captain Goldwing, I’ll open the door at the end of the corridor and all of those monstrosities will fall on you in seconds.’
“You can try, but my crew and I will kill every last one of them, then we’ll find you, and take you back to the Alliance military for interfering with a rescue attempt. But one of us might have an accident, and a finger just might find its way to a trigger,” Draco said.
“Accidents happen, motherfucker!” Ava added.
Draco would have chastened Ava in any other situation, but at that moment her aggression was a tool he could use.
‘I apologize for any offence I may have caused, but as I’m sure you’re aware, this situation calls for action. Not pleasantries.’
‘No time to answer that now, but you will have your answers if you do what I say. Right now, I need you to go down to the engine bay. If we don’t get the engines started, we’re all going to die.’
“You know what? A little attitude makes all the difference. That’s what we came here to do, but now, I’m thinking we just walk right back out and try our luck with whatever’s in the vents.”
‘No, you won’t. I know who you are Draco Goldwing. Captain of the Icarus. You wouldn’t knowingly leave anyone to die. You will help me get the survivors to safety.’
That little prick had his number. No matter the circumstance, no matter how pissed off Draco was, or the emotions involved in the situation, that little fucker was right. He couldn’t consciously let another person die. But how did this person know who he was?
“Do I know you?” Draco asked.
‘Not yet, but I know you. I just know we’ll become fast friends.’
“I highly doubt that. But you can redeem yourself somewhat by telling me just what the hell we’re dealing with out there.”
‘I will open the way forward and guide you to the engine bay. I need you to find out how the engines have been disabled, and I need you to get them up and running again.’
“The creatures. They’re the passengers, aren’t they?”
‘It’s complicated.’
“Then uncomplicate it. I don’t like flying blind.”
‘You are not flying, Captain Goldwing. You are not in the pilot’s seat. I am. I will guide you. Just follow my directions and you will remain safe, and so will the rest of the survivors on the ship.’
“After that, you and I are going to have a little chat, face to face.”
‘Of course, Captain. I’ll be waiting for you.’
Chapter Eleven
On board the Icarus, Rhken had secured eight kinetic energy tethers. Only two more non-essential auxiliary tethers needed to be placed before they waited for word from Captain Goldwing.
Her father opened up a channel to Arak. “Have you heard from the Captain?”
‘No,’ Arak replied. ‘I haven’t heard a peep since they boarded the ship.’
“Try raising them,” Nook said.
‘I have.’
“Then try again. Keep trying until you get onto somebody!”
‘Of course.’
Rhken focused on aligning the last two energy tethers. Reban was watching the live video of the rear view of the Icarus. The energy tethers stretched out between the two ships in straight lines. Reban had left the last couple of tethers to Rhken, but that was fine by her. If Rhken was in charge, at least she’d do it right.
There was no chance of error when she was in control.
Evie had been acting strangely. It was like her processes were locking up as she ran standard calculations, but it probably had something to do with the extra routines she was running to make sure Veck stayed secure in the belly of the ship.
Rhken took a deep breath and engaged the final two energy tethers. They were purely for insurance, if any of the other eight failed. They weren’t necessary, but only idiots didn’t use fail safes.
She looked up to her father standing on the deck about her. He looked worried.
“What is it, Dad? Did I do something wrong?”
He didn’t answer for a moment, then spoke to her like he’d just been called out of a dream. “No. I’m worried about Draco and the others. Something’s wrong.”
“Dad, something weird is happening with Evie. There are subroutine fluctuations, and it looks like she’s locking up when doing standard calcs.”
Nook’s eyebrows furrowed, then he opened up Evie’s interface in his terminal.
“Calling Captain Draco Goldwing,” Nook said, broadcasting comms to the Metropolis Seven. “Draco Goldwing, come in. We have a situation on board the Icarus, and we need to know you’re still breathing.”
Nook and the girls waited.
No response came.
Chapter Twelve
On board the Metropolis Seven, Draco led his team into the maintenance crew quarters. The asshole behind the microphone turned on the emergency lighting, which showed them exactly where to go. Orange lights blinked on either side of the path that they needed to follow.
“Just out of curiosity, what do you think they do with these ships when they’re done with their vacation? Do they just break them down for scrap?” Vynce asked.
“The first Metropolis ship barely survived its first year-long journey, so it had to be scrapped when it re-docked with New Earth,” Raze said. “So did the second and the third for other reasons. There was just nothing they could do with them. But the fourth? They actually landed it in a low socio-economic area just outside of Mojave Central and opened it up as a low-cost housing precinct. The fifth is a floating resort now in the middle of the Big Blue. The sixth is an orbiting resort somewhere out in the border worlds.”
“I didn’t picture you as a Metropolis scholar, Raze,” Vynce said.
“The Metropolis Corporation is one of the biggest conglomerates on New Earth. It either manufactures or has some input into almost every element of New Earth society. How could you expect me not to know about it?”
“Oh yeah, I forgot you were crazy about that stuff,” Vynce said.
“It is good to show an interest in your own species.”
“The only interests I have in my own species are whether or not they’re going to pay me money to do a job, and whether or not I can get them drunk and talk them into spreading their legs,” Vynce joked.
“You are so vulgar sometimes,” Raze said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Enough chatter. Keep your mind on the task at hand,” Draco said.
“Hey, I’m just trying to shift the focus from god-damned bits and pieces of passengers that are crawling around in the vents,” Vynce said with a shrug. “Sue me.”
“If we don’t focus, we might end up just like them,” Draco said.
Vynce said no more on the subject.
The maintenance crew quarters were just a place for those who were doing long shifts to rest and relax during breaks. They passed through a room which had a number of fold-out beds, and a whole range of entertainment stations with the latest virtual reality games, interactive holovids and music beamed straight onto the ship from New Earth.
But the room had been almost destroyed. Some beds were upturned, pillows were torn up. Splotches of dark stains marked everything. Some entertainment stations had been ripped straight up from the ground. Vent covers had been torn from their brackets here too, with the same hallmarks of sudden abduction.
“They’re using the vents for sure,” Ava said.
“I don’t think those little things would really be able to carry a person, even as a group in those vents,” Raze said. “The drag marks are uniform. Whatever grabbed the crew didn’t even give them a chance to escape. It must have been really fast.”
“Stay well clear of the vents,” Draco said and motioned for them to continue.
The emergency lights led to a door on the far side of the room. The sign above the door said Engine Bay. It slid open as Draco approached.
The next room was much the same as the last, echoing the violence that had come before.
They crossed into the engine control room, which lit up the moment they stepped across the threshold. At the same time, the numerous diagnostic panels that lined the sides of the room sprung to life.
Raze rushed over to the master console. He sat down and immediately began working through the reports to find out where the problem was. The rest of the crew stood around Raze as he worked. He moved through the information on the screen at a fevered pace. It went by so fast that Draco couldn’t even read it, let alone absorb all the info that Raze absorbed in the split-second it took him to read through it.
“So, the Captain went crazy, put the ship into orbit, killed the engines, and tried to roast the ship. Am I reading into this correctly?” Ava asked.
“It would appear so.”
“But someone had other ideas,” Vynce said. “The distress beacon was activated, but not by the Captain. After going to all that effort, the Captain wouldn’t have been open to the idea of rescue. So how did a distress beacon get sent out without his knowledge?”
“The Metropolis Corporation probably programmed their AI to do it in the event of an emergency, regardless of whether or not the Captain endorsed it,” Draco said. He mentioned it, because he had put a similar program into Evie aboard the Icarus. If his ship ever became lost or taken by a hostile force, he had taken countermeasures to ensure that she would come back to him.
“How do we fix the system?” Aloysius asked.
“We need to replace the two burnt out capacitors with new ones. We should find some in the maintenance bay. They always have three times the amount of repair supplies they think they’ll need. Captain, how long have we got?” Raze asked.
“A little over two hours.”
“When we get the capacitors, we’ll need to split up into two teams,” Raze said. “One will need to go to the left energy junction, and one will need to go to the right energy junction. Once they’ve been replaced, I’ll head on alone to the central junction and give the system a kick start. Then we’ll be good to go.”
“You know you’re being ridiculous if you expect me to let you go by yourself, right?” Vynce asked.
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