by Isaac Stone
“I hope Ash knows what he’s doing,” Theo spoke up.
“He knows what he’s doing,” Kris added. “Ash built this whole company out of nothing and he’s gone further than anyone else I know. I’ll stand by him.”
“I told you it will take time to recreate Barbara Ann,” Haddo was arguing with Ash in the small room. “She was special. The corporation made a vessel in her that was built to accept the force of Babalon. Do you have any idea how dangerous that operation was? It took a lot to bring the power across from the other side. No, I guess you wouldn’t. What did that poster call me? ‘A wanted necromancer’. I wish it was so simple to earn a living by resurrecting the dead, but it’s not. It takes months of preparation to bring someone back to the land of the living and you have to have the right artificial body. That was the real reason the corporation brought the android program into being: they were looking for a way to entrap souls that had left this reality and moved onward. Didn’t work too well.” He folded his arms across his chest.
“How long will it take once we reach the android factory?” Ash demanded. “I would expect that place will have just what you need.” Ash blocked the room exit.
“Hard to say,” Haddo replied. “I need a special model to bring her back. She won’t be the same, you have to understand this. Barbara Ann was a special creation and they only made one of her. I might be able to adapt one of the other types since they’re coming out of the growth tanks all the time. Won’t be easy, but I’ll try.”
“See that you do,” Ash replied. “I don’t see us completing this mission without Barbara Ann. She was the only reason we made it through Inferno and Purgatory. That gas mining plant is already here and I have no idea how we’re going to get inside it to take out the beacon.”
“I might be able to help you in that aspect,” Haddo informed him.
“Is there something else I need to know about?” Ash questioned. “Haddo, you are a constant source of surprises.” The air inside the room smelled of exhaustion and sweat.
“I have some ways to eliminate the beacon without you having to leave the ship,” he told him. “There are some…items…with me I can use to remove it and you won’t have to endanger your crew.
“And I suppose I’ll have to leave you along for six hours and let you work your hoodoo powers.”
“That will not be necessary,” Haddo informed him. “What I have with me can be used from this very room. As a matter of fact, I would prefer doing it here because I don’t like interruptions when I summon these beings.” Haddo reached inside his coat and withdrew a flat object.
He laid it on the table in front of them and polished the surface with his sleeve. Ash leaned over to look at the object and saw it to be a round metal disc engraved with mystical symbols. He watched as Haddo adjusted the location of the disc and reached back into his coat.
Ready for a gun, Ash relaxed when he saw the strange man pull out a clear crystal mounted into a stand. It wasn’t much larger than a thumb, but Haddo gave it great care. He sat the small object over the engraved metal disc and looked down through the crystal. Satisfied, Haddo looked up at Ash.
“I don’t like using this thing under such crude circumstances,” he told him, “but I suppose there is no choice in the matter.”
“What the hell is that thing?” Ash demanded.
“A replica of the original seer stone and tablet that John Dee used to communicate with the angels from beyond the void. It’s not as powerful as the original, but I feel it will work for what I need. Now please do us all a favor and block the door. I don’t want to be interrupted. This should only take a few minutes.”
Ash walked over to the door and glanced back at his crew who were in the middle of the control room. Their eyes were fixed on the diagram of the gas mining plant as it came up into visual range. He was pleased to see they allowed him to have the little conference with Haddo. Funny how things were about to turn out. He turned back to see what Haddo was up to with the seer stone and tablet.
Haddo starred into the crystal on the stand and moved it over the tablet. He appeared in the middle of a deep concentration, as if he wanted to find something very important. Ash couldn’t figure out how the two objects would be of any help. If something useful came out of what Haddo was doing, so be it. He seemed to find what he wanted and a look of relief appeared on his face.
“Finally,” he muttered and seated down behind the table. Haddo placed both hands on either side of the tablet.
From out of his throat emerged a low monotonous chant. Haddo possessed a baritone voice that rumbled across the table and through the room. From where he stood, Ash couldn’t see the sounds affecting his crew, who were still engrossed in the diagram of the gas mining plant. Haddo continued to chant in his low voice. Ash couldn’t recognize the language, but it seemed familiar. He watched Haddo continued with his chants and soon he noted a pattern emerge from them. The sounds filled the room and Haddo leaned back, his eyes focused on nothing in particular.
The whole thing seemed to be a waste of time to Ash. All it seemed Haddo did was to make a few passes and moan in his strange dialogue. The words began to reach a crescendo and Ash noticed the light in the room change. At first, he thought it was a problem in the power supply, but he felt a presence around him. It seemed that people had slipped into the room with them, even though one glance showed only his crew still outside the room.
Ash tried to locate the presence, but it always seemed to be outside his view. He watched the chanting of Haddo die down and reach a low point. Soon, Haddo was no longer speaking. He was in a bowed position in front of the tablet. He held this position for a few minutes then looked up. Ash could feel the presence leave, but he still had no idea what just transpired in the room.
Haddo turned and looked at him. “It’s done,” he informed Ash. “The beacon will not trouble us again. In a few minutes it will be out of commission and the corporation will have to step up their time table if they haven’t figured out what we’ve done.”
The next minute, Ash noticed Haddo stare at the wall in front of him and frown. “You were supposed to go as well,” he said to the wall. “Now go help the others or I’ll….”
“Hey, Ash,” a voice said behind him. It belonged to Kris, “Viktor just informed us that beacon thing went out. Guess we don’t have to….” He turned around in time to see the blood run from Kris’ face as something terrified her. She fell to the floor.
Haddo advanced to the center of the room and starred at a space next to the door. “I said go!” He yelled at the empty space. He then said a few words in the strange tongue used earlier.
By now, everyone had run to Kris. Ash had one of her wrists in his hand and checked her pulse. It was still there, she seemed to have suffered some kind of shock. Costa and Jack helped her back up. In a few minutes, she had regained consciousness.
“Are you alright?” Theo was the first to ask her. She regained her senses and looked at everyone.
“There was something at the door,” she mumbled. “It looked at me right before it left. It had a terrible look on its face and then I lost control. Did anyone see it?”
“You want us to search for it?” Costa asked Ash. “Wouldn’t surprise me if all kinds of weird shit are wandering around this ship. I thought the place was haunted from the first time we stepped into it.”
“You can look,” Haddo called from the back of the room, “but you won’t find anything. It’s gone and won’t be back. Now you know, my dear Ash, why I didn’t want any of your crew back here when I finished my operations. It’s not a good idea to get in the way. But don’t worry; they’ll return to where I summoned them since the beacon is out.” Ash noticed the objects were gone from the table.
“Beacon is definitely out,” Makulah called from the space below the screen. “At least Viktor isn’t showing it in operation. You think the screen might be messed up?”
“No,” Haddo informed them all, “it’s gone. What I summoned up t
ook it out permanently with no collateral damage. It’s a shame no other operation can run so smoothly, even if our young friend here was frightened. She’ll be fine in a bit. Try to forget what you saw, dear.”
“If you took that beacon out with whatever beasties you called up,” Ash spoke to Haddo. “Why didn’t you do the same thing to the Mercury one? And why do we have to travel around the system if you can do it at a distance? Why did we need to leave Mercury?”
“I need a clear visual of what I want done before I can summon these things,” Haddo explained. “And I can’t do it very often. They want things in trade, and the cost is steep. I was owed a few favors and called them in. From here on out the cost would be very nearly too much to bear.”
4
The loss of Barbara Ann hit Ash hard in many ways. He’d grown attached to her in the brief amount of time they had together after she was brought over from the pirate ship. The pirates had hijacked an ore freighter. The one Team Omega was supposed to rescue. Barbara Ann was discovered by the pirates when they were going through the cargo manifest in search of more loot. They mistook her for a pleasure android and thought she would be useful on the long trip back to their base. Barbara Ann was taken out of the storage unit, activated and told to service the entire crew.
At which point she killed every one of them. With her bare hands.
When the gunship Thelema arrived at the scene of the hijacked ore freighter, they received a message from the ship as to how no survivors were on board, save one: the person who was transmitting to them. They were ready to dock with the ore freighter when Barbara Ann emerged from the incapacitated ship and floated over to the gunship Thelema, sans any kind of environmental suit. It was at this point they realized she was more than human.
At that moment, the corporation contacted Ash’s crew and made them a huge offer to capture the notorious war criminal Simon Haddo who had fled to the Infinity research station. The petite and beautiful android Barbara Ann helped them penetrated into the ruins of the research station in pursuit of Haddo. What they found inside implicated the corporation in crimes against humanity. However, they wanted to capture Haddo first. The crew wanted paid before taking any actions. Barbara Ann helped them follow Haddo to the Purgatory fortress where they penetrated the levels to the starship Paradiso.
It was Barbara Ann who convinced them to believe Haddo’s story. Haddo claimed he was framed for crimes he didn’t commit, yet now he’d all but done exactly that. The corporation did this because he knew about their plans to take control of humanity through the cheap power packs handed out across the system. It was Barbara Ann who managed to hold off the attack of the mercs on the starship. Barbara Ann was destroyed when multiple plasma bolts hit her at the same time.
Artificial human, homunculus designed to house the spirit of Babalon, whatever she was, Ash could not forget her. They’d had a brief moment together inside the fortress and she’d awakened something he’d tried hard to suppress over the years of work. It took a lot out of him to be a private security mercenary. Ash knew Haddo could bring Barbara Ann back in some form and was willing to do almost anything to get her back.
He thought about her long red hair and the poised way she carried herself. She seemed to know everything and yet had a tenderness to her that couldn’t be artificial.
If Haddo could bring her back somehow, Ash was determined to make him do it. Inside his heart, he didn’t think life would have meaning without her. All of this over a synth, he laughed to himself darkly, what a strange life it had turned out to be.
“Would you like me to try the jump drive now?” Viktor asked Ash as the Paradiso pulled away from the planet Venus. “The drive is fully operational at this point.” This was a shock to everyone.
“I was given to understand the jump drive hasn’t been tested,” Ash spoke to the AI. “Why wasn’t I informed of this earlier?” He was in the main control room with the rest of the crew. Haddo was somewhere else inside the ship.
“The jump drive needed time to calibrate,” Viktor, informed him. “Paradiso was built with the jump drive installed, but never tested. I was able to calibrate and test it during the journey between Mercury and Venus.” Viktor waited for a response in his floating head version.
“You mean you tested this drive while we were inside the ship and never told us?” Ash demanded. “I thought I was in charge of this mission.”
“I was able to test the drive out by using it externally,” Viktor explained. “No one was affected by the process at all. The drive worked better than expected and I would like your permission to use it to shorten our trip to Earth, where the next beacon is located. This will save a lot of time on the mission.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Theo spoke up. “I don’t look forward to another boring trip from one planet to another. With the corporation trying to get these beacons up and connected, we need to reach them as soon as we can.”
“You know they’ve already found a way to speed up the process,” Jack pointed out. “They won’t rest because they have to know we’re headed after them.”
“What do the rest of you think?” Ash asked his crew. “I don’t want to put us at risk without feedback from all of you.” He waited for a response.
“I vote to try it,” Makulah said. “I’ve read about these things for years. We’ll be the first ship to actually use one. We’ll go down in the history books as the people who stopped the beacons and used the first jump drive.”
“I’m in,” Costa spoke up. “Let’s do this thing and get there before the corporation controls everyone.”
“Are there any long term effects from being inside a jump drive?” Kris asked. “I want to know before we start bending space. I don’t want to be scrambled as well. No sense in being a test animal.”
“None have been observed,” Viktor spoke.
Kris hesitated. “Okay, let’s get there the quick way.”
“Take us to Old Earth, Viktor,” Ash instructed.
There was a sense of unease and then the universe disappeared.
It only happened for a microsecond, but inside that time, Ash felt that he’d journeyed to the heart of the galaxy and back. He felt many presences; similar to the one he’d noted when Haddo did his summoning. But they stayed away, afraid of something.
Then the Paradiso came back into the universe and Earth was directly in front of them.
“That was quick,” Ash commented. “Viktor, how much time has elapsed since we jumped from our previous location near Venus?”
The floating head reappeared. “Two seconds outside the jump zone,” it told him. “Internal time was five microseconds. Do you need any more information on the objective?”
“I would like to know the precise location of the next beacon. It will be important as we have to decide about how to go about destroying it.”
“Going to really suck if it’s on the surface,” Costa added. “I don’t want to speculate how the governments will react to use blasting something off the planet.”
“Beacon three is in a commercial orbital station in use as a freight shipping point,” Viktor announced. “I have an exact location of it. The beacon is deep inside the station near the life support systems. I can furnish you with a complete diagram and a description of what it resembles.” An image of an orbital station appeared overhead. This one appeared to be of a much older design than the gas mining operation.
“What just happened?” a voice thundered from one of the corridors. It was Haddo who entered the main control room with an angry look on his face. “I was in my quarters and then I felt a shift. I need to be kept in the loop when you do these things, Viktor.” He stopped and wheezed.
“I was merely following Ash’s instructions,” Viktor responded. “You can ask him.”
“I authorized Viktor to use the jump drive on the ship to take us to Earth orbit,” Ash explained. “It saved time and appears to have been a safe operation. Did you have any complications from it?”
“No,” I didn’t,” Haddo thundered. “But there are things you need to inform me about. Such as the use of this drive. There are plenty of forces that hide in the corners of this reality and wait for unfortunates to stumble across them. I felt a whole swarm of them outside the circles of time, but they dared not enter. Like predators not sure if we are prey or another predator. I’m afraid they know about us now, so you need to let me make some preparations before we do the next jump.”
The commercial orbital station they faced was used to store freight as it was shipped to and from the deep gravity well that was Old Earth. Most of the population still on the surface was descendant from the people who didn’t want to leave the planet, so people from the other colonies staffed the orbital ships and freight transport systems that ringed Earth. A few mass drivers were used to hurl cargo to orbital speeds, but nothing that had a human inside it. Most of the goods sent to Earth coasted down on shuttles. They were boosted up to orbit by the same methods. Launch and landing were accomplished on islands in the oceans where ships took the freight to and from the population areas. It was an effective method to move things around the planet.
“So how do we take this one out?” Costa asked. “It’s inside another orbital station where people are involved. Even if there weren’t people inside it, I don’t think anyone would be happy if we blasted an important transport hub out of the sky.”
“What about Haddo and his methods?” Kris asked. “It worked the last time.”
“It will be a long time before I can get the angelic help again,” Haddo explained, “as I may have said earlier. They owed me a few favors and I called them in. I don’t like to be in their debt, it never works out. What happened to Kris would most certainly happen again, and next time I might not have the strength to stop it. It will be a long time before I can take out a beacon again with my abilities and allies.”