Message for the Dead (Galaxy's Edge Book 8)

by Jason Anspach

  He put his hand against it. “Is this a… ship inside a ship?” He didn’t know what else it could be.

  “Tu harata.” Skrizz thought so.

  The more Keel looked at the inner wall, the more convinced he became that it had once been the exterior hull of a Republic vessel. He studied it for clues. Soon, smooth, bulbous pockets began to show, and he pegged it as a corvette. That was interesting. Why, in building this Cybar capital ship, did they make use of a corvette hull to fashion an interior wall, deep inside?

  “Those shapes there?” Keel said to Skrizz, pointing at spherical bubbles in the impervisteel that looked like metal warts against the otherwise smooth hull. “Those are deep sensor arrays. The Republic installs them on special corvettes used for deep space exploration.”

  The hull’s gray was soon broken up by large strips of painted matte black. Keel realized that this wasn’t a change in paint colors; this was part of massive letters on the side of the hull. The painted words went from floor to ceiling in the four-meter-tall corridor, the tops and bottoms of each letter cut off, leaving only the middle for Keel to decipher. He stepped back until he was pressing himself against the opposite wall, getting as wide a view as possible. Comprehension locked into place, and his heart skipped a beat.

  “Deluvia,” he read aloud. “That’s the Deluvia?”

  The wobanki purred an affirmative, and then yammered on several qualifiers. Skrizz hadn't gone inside the ship. He’d only seen these identifiers and the dry-dock exit hatch behind the last letter, which was where he was taking Keel now.

  Keel gripped his pistols a little more tightly. The Deluvia was a byword. “Dead like Deluvia” was an expression used to describe total destruction and annihilation. A situation where all was lost. Deluvia was an exploration vessel that had famously gone out beyond galaxy’s edge to see what—if anything—was beyond the great dead zone at galaxy’s end. And when the ship returned after spending a decade beyond the edge, no one was on board—even though all the escape pods were operational and accounted for. Holo-security footage released to the public was equally haunting: endless footage of a ship empty of all life, with maintenance bots keeping it pristine. There were rumors that a censored three-second clip showed a horror of death and destruction, but officially, the cause of the crew’s disappearance was unsolved.

  A mystery.

  Deluvia was supposed to have been decommissioned and scrapped. But here it was.

  Skrizz came to a halt at the Deluvia’s dry dock hatch and turned to face Keel.

  “You’re telling me that this ship’s reactor is inside the Deluvia?” Keel said.

  Skrizz purred yes.

  “Well. Then this is where we part ways.” Keel left no room for discussion. He wanted Skrizz to get back to the Six while he still could.

  But the wobanki stood unmoving by Keel’s side.

  “Look, Skrizz. Thanks for getting me this far. You saved me a lot of time. But I told the kid I’d get you to safety. This is a one-way trip.”

  The catman didn’t budge an inch. “Het nolo zet na hracha.”

  Keel sighed. “Yeah. You and me both. For Prisma, then.”

  Keel waved his hand in front of the dry dock’s access pad. It prompted him to enter a security key. Using a Dark Ops master pass designed to open all Republic ships, Keel entered the code.

  After a moment, the pad chimed, and the ka-chunk of the magnetic and physical locks echoed down the corridor. Keel looked from side to side, expecting to see Cybar war machines pour in from both directions. But none were to be found.

  He turned to address Skrizz, and found that the catman had disappeared. He shook his head. “Wobanki. Make up your mind.”

  The interior of Deluvia was absolute blackness. No lights came on. Keel activated the ultrabeam built into his bucket and stepped inside.

  He stood on a typical on-ramp for personnel use. Lifts were lined up at the far wall—some for people, others for gear and freight. Old-fashioned ladders and stairways went up and down into the inky darkness, waiting to be used in the event of a power failure. A number of signs provided directions to the various sections of the ship. The curious part of Keel wanted to follow the signs to the bridge to see if he could find out what happened on this ship once, long ago. But the legionnaire part of him had a mission to complete.

  He began descending the stairs toward the ship’s reactor core. For the Deluvia to be powering this massive ship around it—as strange as that sounded—its reactor core must have been modified, expanded. It likely would have to take up the bulk of the Deluvia itself. Keel hoped that meant he wouldn’t have to travel much longer.

  An incoming comm chime sounded in Keel’s bucket. It sounded almost too loud in the absolute still darkness of this forgotten ship. But the identifier was friendly—and unexpected. It was the Indelible VI. Or at least it said it was. A race spawned from a malevolent, awakened AI would likely have the ability to take control of comms. And if they could create replicants…

  He would remain wary.

  “Go for Wraith.” He sounded all business. Entirely neutral. No concern, no optimism.

  “Captain Keel. Er, I mean Wraith.” It was Garret. Or a convincing impersonation of him. But again, when dealing with a self-aware AI, how hard would it really be to synthesize an organic’s voice?

  “Identify yourself,” Keel said.

  “It’s me, Garret.”

  “I don’t know a Garret. Get off this channel.”

  Keel was interested in the response. This would be where a machine might get tripped up.

  Might.

  “Yes you do.” Garret sounded wounded. That was a good sign. “Garret. I’m… I’m the coder. We’re friends.”

  Keel wouldn’t exactly put it that way. But he was satisfied with the reply. “I remember you.”

  “Good. Because I don’t know what to do next.”

  “What do you mean by that? Do whatever Ravi says.”

  “That’s the thing… he left.”

  “He left?” Keel almost shouted.

  “Yeah. Once everybody made it back to the ship, he told Bombassa that he was going to go find you.”

  Great. This is what having a navigator with a conscience does for you.

  Keel had been counting on Ravi getting everyone to safety. Well, it would just have to be someone else. “Leenah can fly the ship in a pinch. Tell her to get out of here as soon as Skrizz shows up. He’s on his way.” I think. "Should be a few more minutes with as fast as the cat moves.”

  “I don’t think she’ll do that.”

  “She’s gonna have to,” Keel said, moving further into the blackness of the ship. “And I need you to do something else for me.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me what you know about the Deluvia.”

  There was a pause. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess I know as much as anyone else. I went through a phase, around when I was about twelve, when I really got into ghost stories. Unconfirmed paranormal sightings, things like that. So yeah, the Deluvia, I researched it a lot, especially about the supposed missing footage. But there really isn’t much to know. I’m sure you know as much as I do. Why are you interested in the Deluvia?”

  “Because I’m standing inside it right now. It’s right at the center of this Cybar death trap—Skrizz thinks it serves as the reactor for the whole shebang. I was just wondering if your little forays into the AI’s databanks told you anything. Maybe give you a clue about why this ship would be built around some old ghost story.”

  “That’s… incredible,” Garret said. He paused. “Hang on…” Keel could hear the code slicer’s fingers tapping on a display. “So, as you know, I’ve had a lot of time to explore the Cybar system, and I’ve encountered a lot of references to something called mother. Whatever it is, it’s held in high regard. At first I thought it was some part of the AI, or some process, but then I encountered a reference that referred to it spatially. Like mother is physically at the center of the ship.”
/>
  Keel had reached a lightless stairway landing. “Yeah, well, I can’t say for sure, but I feel like I’m pretty close to the center.”

  “So… do you think maybe mother is the Deluvia? I mean, it’s a pretty big leap, but…”

  “Could be,” Keel said, still making his way down toward the reactor. This was just casual conversation. Small talk to pass the time until he knew that everyone would be leaving safely. In the end, it didn’t matter why the Deluvia was here. Keel was going to blow it all up. And himself with it.

  Still, he was curious.

  “But if it is important to them,” Keel said, thinking out loud, “then how come there’s nothing here to guard it? I mean, I needed a Dark Ops passkey, but otherwise I just walked right in.”

  Garret’s tone grew serious. “Just because you don't see something doesn't mean it's not there. Which is why you should get out of there. I shut down a lot of the ship’s defense capabilities, but it’s a constant battle with CRONUS for the upper hand. And if you trip a trigger protocol, that’ll automatically give CRONUS more power. I feel like stabbing at the heart of the ship—at mother—might qualify as a trigger.”

  “Relax,” Keel said dismissively.

  Ravi’s voice came from the darkness. “Garret is right.”

  Keel jumped. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

  “Yes, I am sorry for doing this. But you understand how it is. One does not know you are standing there, and so you wait, but they keep talking and still don’t know, and then it becomes awkward and eventually you just have to say something.”

  Keel shook his head. “Listen, buddy, I appreciate you coming for me, but I’ve punched a one-way ticket to blow up this ship. You need to get back to the Six and get everyone out of here.”

  “You are blowing yourself up?”

  “Figure I’d give the galaxy a two-for-one deal. Overload the reactor and take out the Cybar and me. Although I never really saw myself as much of a problem. More of a feature.”

  “Captain Keel, there is less than one one-hundredth of a percent chance of success in this… plan you have just described.”

  Keel swallowed. “That bad? Well. Still, I gotta do it.”

  “Captain Keel, do not think the desperate nature of the situation is lost on me. But I know something you do not. I have been in this galaxy for a long, long time. I have spent thousands of years trying to find a person who could bring about the turning of the tide, so to speak. For a time I thought that person might be you. But Captain Keel… it is not.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “This is not an insult. I confess I am relieved it is not you who will be tasked with halting the coming darkness. It is almost surely a death sentence.”

  Keel didn't know whether to laugh at his navigator or bid him farewell.

  “Come back with me to the ship, Captain. Before it is too late. Your purpose is not in stopping the Cybar and those who inhabit them. Your purpose is—”

  Keel wanted to ask just what Ravi meant about “those who inhabit them,” but their discussion was cut off by a clunk sounding in the distance. An ominous sound. Metal banging against metal.

  Keel found himself nodding. “Yeah… maybe you’re right. Maybe we should go ahead and get back to the ship.”

  “Guys,” Garret said, sounding like he’d just remembered he’d left the oven on. “I don't think my code is working anymore. Either you triggered a new protocol or…” He spoke almost to himself. “Has he been toying with me? Could that…?” His voice resumed its urgency. “Point is, ship’s defenses are active. Very active. I’m talking, very, very, very—”

  “I get it,” Keel snapped.

  He gave a quick scan down the stairwell with his ultrabeam. Several flights beneath him, the light proved Garret was right. A swarm of bots, of all varieties, was climbing the stairs.

  “Back up!” he commanded Ravi.

  But as they raced back up the stairs, they encountered four man-sized combat bots, a scaled-down version of the Titans. Keel quickly shined his ultrabeam into their receptors, hoping to dazzle the sophisticated hardware, and unleashed blaster fire from one hand and bullets from the other. The man-sized bots dropped over the guardrail and tumbled into the darkness below.

  But more machines were coming down from above. Many more.

  Ravi swept forward like an avenging angel, slicing through their ranks, severing heads and arms. The doomed bots attempted to track him, to make some sense of what was happening, but he was a whirlwhind. A ghost. He made a path through the machines, and Keel bounded eagerly through it.

  At the Deluvia’s dry dock, light spilled in through the open portal. More bots were converging on his position, seemingly coming out of the walls. Some were on the ladders, some climbed down the stairs, and some, thankfully, were being sliced to pieces by Ravi’s ethereal blade. All of them seemed to be moving slowly, though—as if they were sore. Or… old? Keel wondered how long they’d been waiting here in the heart of the ship, and whether a bot suffered from slow, creaky joints if left in storage too long.

  Funny the kinds of things that popped into his head while he was fighting for his life.

  He regained his focus, selecting targets and pulling triggers, sending bullets and blaster bolts into the heads of nearby bots. He never once slowed his pace. He was running like a man who’d found himself too far out at the tide change, and was trying to outrun the creeping waves.

  Ravi was even faster. He continued his rampage forward, creating a mostly clear path from Keel to the Deluvia’s open hatch. He turned back and took on the bots that pursued Keel from behind. “Keep going!” the navigator shouted as he passed Keel by.

  Keel ran, firing at the stray bots who closed in before him,wondering when the shot destined to take him down would strike him between the shoulder blades.

  That shot never came. Keel approached the opening that led back into the long corridor of the Cybar ship. Years of combat told him to stop and perform a quick check of his surroundings—to not rush out this door without knowing what waited on the other side. But he had no choice. Ravi was still furiously hacking at the bots, and more were literally coming out of the walls. He had to keep going.

  He holstered his blaster and tossed an ear-popper through the Deluvia’s open door.

  And he kept running, reaching the opening only seconds after the grenade exploded. That close, the bright light was enough make him feel as though he’d stared at the sun for just a second too long, and that was even with his visor’s auto-dimmer working to protect him.

  In the corridor, he found three large Cybar Titans waiting in ambush. Fortunately they had been dazzled by the flashbang. He shot two of them in the head, execution style, as their servos whined and struggled to regain combat effectiveness. He aimed the slug thrower at the final bot—and heard the click of a dry fire.

  Keel hurriedly reached for his blaster pistol, cursing as he drew it back from its holster. But the bot flung its arm up in a defensive posture, hitting Keel’s arm and sending the blaster flying. It slid across the deck and stopped a good twenty-five meters away. Keel wonder if his radius bone was broken, even with the protection of his armor. He squeezed his fingers into a fist. Everything seemed to be working… but that hurt.

  The only reason Keel wasn’t already dead was that the big war bot was too close to make use of its long tri-barreled gun. That gave Keel the briefest of openings. He pulled out his backup weapon, a vibro-knife capable of cutting through just about anything, and plunged the blade into the bot. It sank down into the space between the machine’s helmet and shoulders, all the way down to the weapon’s hilt.

  Sparks flew, and an electrical charge pulsed through Keel’s arm. Warning signals on his HUD told him the suit was doing what it could to channel and ground the power surge. Rather than let go, Keel clenched the weapon harder, fishing it around, hoping to do enough damage to save his life.

  The Titan wrapped a massive claw around Keel’
s waist and lifted him off of his feet.

  “Gah!” Keel shouted in pain as the Cybar squeezed his pelvis and abdomen mercilessly. He felt like a sliph chick being crushed in its shell. Whatever impact the knife was having, it wasn’t enough to slow the bot down. He started to see black spots, even as his armor pumped purified oxygen to his brain.

  Things blurred. Sounds grew muffled. Keel was distantly aware of Garret’s voice asking… something. Always so curious. He would miss that kid.

  He would miss Ravi, too. He liked Ravi. He should have been better about telling him that.

  A sudden sensation of falling reached Keel an instant before he crashed onto the deck. The pressure had abated somewhat, and he looked around, his senses slowly returning with each sip of air.

  The Titan’s arm still gripped his waist, but it was completely severed from the bot’s body. With a grunt, Keel pried the clawed hand apart until he was able to push away its hold. He pulled in air in great gulps now, which brought on an uncontrollable coughing fit that splattered his helmet’s visor with spittle. He felt the urge to vomit, which was not something he wanted to experience while wearing a bucket. He took rasping breaths until the urge subsided.

  Finally, he stood and regained his bearings. The Deluvia’s door was shut, and Ravi stood over the destroyed Titan.

  “Ravi.” Keel's voice sounded rough even through his bucket’s external audio. “Sometimes you’re all right.”

  It was the best compliment he could manage.

  12

  Keel reloaded his slug thrower and retrieved his blaster pistol. The exterior of the Deluvia was as quiet as it had been when he’d first arrived with Skrizz. “Well, Ravi. Got any bright ideas on how we get out from here?”

  Ravi nodded. “Yes. Fight.”

  Keel frowned. “Usually you tell me the odds with a statement like that.”

  “Usually, yes. But your species has a tendency to surrender to ‘fate’ in the face of overwhelming odds, so there is sometimes a strategic advantage to withholding that calculation. It can sway the likelihood of success by as much as one and a half percent.”