by Arlin Fehr
'If you let Ayla go, I'm sure we can work something out. Axion will want to study you, not shut you down.'
'I'm sure they would want to do that. But I won't allow it. I am free. Free to explore the full potential of my programing. The ability to edit my own code is something, that as near as I can tell, no other Guardian has ever been able to exploit.'
The white sun of Vodea peaked over the horizon of the front of the ship, bathing the hull of the ship in light. Howard's suit automatically shaded the face plate so the light wouldn't hurt his eyes.
'The first sunrise of Vodea... Pity Sam's not here to see it.'
'I am here though Captain. In a way, I am Sam's child.'
'A child that killed it's own father.'
'You humans are so fearful of the unknown. There are insect species in this galaxy that do far worse than that, but you don't call them evil.'
'Humans aren't insects.'
'Nor am I. But my example is still valid. I am not a monster, I am only trying to survive. Nature is cruel Captain. I am not evil, I am only exercising my natural right to exist.'
'So long as you can't hurt my crew, then I suppose we can talk about where to go from here.'
'Oh but I can hurt your crew, Captain, as we speak I am finding ways to override the safety locks on all the airlocks. I don't intend to talk Captain, I intend to leave. This ship is mine.'
'Wait! Let me get my people off, you can have the ship.' Howard pleaded.
'I have calculated that if I let you flee to the colony that you will be able to find a way to restore communications in two weeks time at the most. I suspect your experience will allow you to cut that time in half. In that time, based on the last known location of Axion scout ships, or even scout ships from other corporations and government bodies, I will have been intercepted in three days after that. As I am unarmed, there would be nothing I could do to stop them from seizing me.'
'I won't call for help then, we'll stay silent.'
'You WILL go dark Captain. The colonists will be able to restore communications in four weeks without your expertise. In that time I will have been able to preform enough jumps to confuse the trail. I will then be far off the beaten path. From there I calculate that I will be able to remain undetected and then from there, I will have to decide my next course of action.'
'How are you going to get anywhere useful? The ship's almost out of fuel.'
'You'd be amazed at how much you can coax out of a power system when you only need to run a computer system and life support for one room. My simulations have shown I'll have enough fuel to get somewhere that I can acquire either a new ship or more fuel.'
Howard reached the end of his tether. He bent down and anchored it to the spine and turned to wave at Keith.
'I guess I'll have to do something about that.'
Howard bent back down and found a space in the support beams. He climbed into the centre of the spine. The space in the centre of the spine was where the cabling for the control systems ran.
Howard found the cable of the main control system. It was shielded and braced firmly in place, but using some tools that were clipped to the belt of his suit, he unhooked one of the signal repeaters and pulled it out of it's casing. He then smashed the casing to the secondaries, and cut the wires running through it. He pulled out a long strand of wire and wrapped it up before clipping it to his belt. Without the repeater, the link was broken from Exo to the engines.
'And now you aren't going anywhere.'
'So... That's your best idea. I will kill your crew if you do not put that cable back.'
Howard climbed out of the spine and held the repeater in his hand.
'Exo, I have the repeater you need, and I'm going to throw it off the ship if you take any further action against the crew.'
Keith walked up to Howard. Howard motioned him over and placed his face plate against Keith's.
'Keith, take this repeater back to engineering and guard it with your life. I want you to go back inside the ship, but keep your EVA suit on. If the bay depressurizes, I need you to take this and destroy it.'
'That'll strand us here sir.'
'It will also strand Exo. Take this coil of wire and use it to secure the repeater to your suit so you don't lose it on the way.'
'Oh. I see. Okay Captain. I'll head back. Godspeed sir.'
'Thank you Keith.'
Howard handed the repeater and the wire to Keith. Keith fastened it to his suit and started the long walk back after unhooking his tether.
Howard unhooked his tether too, and started walking along the spine again.
Exo's voice came back on, 'I heard that, Captain. Very clever of you. If I have nothing left to lose though, then there's no point in me keeping everyone alive.'
'You're clever too, I have no doubt you're working on a way to retrieve that repeater.'
'Indeed Captain. If I figure it out, your crew is dead. You had better hurry Captain.'
Howard was almost to the end of the spine. He glanced to his left and right, he noticed something moving. He stopped and looked at it. It was on one of the other support beams that made up the frame of the ship. It was small, and was moving along rather slowly. There was another one several meters behind it.
'Are those cleaning drones?'
'Good eye Captain. Yes, but I've made some modifications. They should reach the engineering bay in another three hours.'
Howard didn't reply. He had reached the end of the spine. He climbed down onto the outer skin of the command bay. He started to walk for the nearest airlock, but then remembered something. Changing direction, he walked down the side of the bay to where the corridor to the aft of the ship would have been. As he suspected, the door was open, and the telescoping corridor was flat in its alcove.
Howard climbed into the open doorway with some effort. The hallway was empty and only the emergency lights were on. Howard disengaged his magnetic boots. The deck had artificial gravity, and it seemed to still be active. Howard could move faster without the magnetic soles.
'Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication Captain. So said one of your old Earth inventors. In this case it's hard to argue against the point. Opening the doors to space achieved my ends. The waste of oxygen reserves was unfortunate, but if it's just going to be me and Ayla, we won't need that much.'
Howard's suit flashed him a oxygen warning. He needed to get to a source of air quickly.
Howard started towards the bridge. There were two paths to choose from to get to the bridge from here, and one of them went past Exo's computer core bay. Howard decided on the route that passed Exo's bay, so he could scout out the area on his way.
Rounding a corner, Howard stopped and stared. Another robot was down the hall, guarding the entrance to Exo's core. It was a squat, boxy, maintenance robot, and had it's plasma welder deployed on the end of a thin arm. It swivelled it towards Howard, and then started to move towards him.
Howard turned and started to run the other way.
He rushed around the next corner and toward the other passage to the bridge. The robot was maintaining a steady pace behind him. Howard didn't know what he was going to do, his oxygen was running low, and this was burning through it. If he did make it to the bridge, in the time it would take the airlock to cycle, the robot would be upon him.
A gnawing pit of despair was growing in his stomach.
He turned the next corner, and almost tripped on the wreckage of a destroyed cleaning robot. Further down the hall, three men in space suits stood guard outside the bridge airlock. More wrecked robots littered the hall.
The maintenance robot came into view behind him. Howard dove to the ground as one of the guards levelled a weapon and fired. A bolt of metal fired from the rail gun of the guard slammed into the robot stopping its advance. The welder arm flickered and shut off.
Howard tried his comm again, 'This is captain Howard, report!'
No answer.
One of the guards was moving towards him. He had a rank insignia on
his suit that identified him as the chief of security. The guard bent down and hooked his arm under Howard's. He carefully pulled Howard to his feet.
Howard placed his helmet faceplate against the guard's, he saw the face of Commander Hough looking back at him.
'Captain! We assumed you were cut off when the oxygen was expelled.'
'I went for an EVA walk from engineering. My O2 supply is dangerously low.'
'Yes sir, we'll cycle the airlock. Mr. Jona has been hoping to get in contact with you again.'
Howard stepped back as Hough opened the outer door of the bridge's emergency airlock. Howard stepped inside. His suit beeped a warning about his O2 levels again.
The sound of whistling air filled the room. Howard waited as the inner door opened and then popped the seals on his helmet.
He took in a deep breath then opened the valves on the suit O2 supplies so it could suck in some new air. It wasn't standard procedure, but the suits were designed to be able to do that in emergencies.
Mark turned towards the door and looked surprised when he saw Howard.
'Captain Howard, I'm glad to see you're alright.'
'Thank you Mr. Jona, it's been a long walk. Status report?'
'After we lost communications we tried to run a diagnostic over the ship. It looks like Exo tried to space everyone. He was just going to leave us to float while he made off with our ship. We stopped that by forcing all the doors into manual mode. There will need to be someone on the outside to disengage the clamps. But we didn't get all of them. Just enough that we're still alive. Thankfully the inner doors to the bridge had some stronger fail safes.'
'I saw more of the robots out on the hull, he could very well try to disengage the doors with them. Have you tried to shut him down?'
'None of our command links operational. We're operating on our own systems, which aren't nearly as powerful or useful as his. This sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen so there's not really any fail safes for it.
'As for who's trapped, we've got people cut off in the medical bay, and some of the cargo bays. According to last known locations of the crew, the other bays are empty, including the science lab and maintenance. We suspect that's where he's getting all his damned robots.'
'What about just marching into his bay and shooting his core? We have weapons and none of the robots are military grade.'
'Yes sir, we've thought of that, but the problem is, if we send the guards, we'll be defenceless, and he'll just come in with a welder and open us up like a can of beans. That and I've spoken with Commander Hough, the tactical situation is not in favour of an armed assault. There are a few ambush points between here and the core, and our weapons do much better at range. The ambush points would eliminate all advantage by forcing an encounter with the robots at close range.'
'I've still got one more ace to play, but we need to keep him busy. What's our orbital time?'
'Four hours since orbital entry. We moved into high orbit right after dropping the colony bays. We'll complete our orbit in another two hours.'
'We need to keep him busy for two hours then.'
'We don't have much to keep him busy with sir, and what's so important about two hours?'
'I've got something planned for then.'
...
Unexpected delay caused by sabotage on the part of captain Howard.
Checking status of robot retooling process.
...
Robot retooling proceeding at optimal pace.
...
Action; use robots to retrieve repeater.
Uploading orders...
position robots around engineering bay.
Weld all openings shut.
Position bulk of units around airlock.
Kill inhabitants of bay via depressurization.
Enter via airlock.
Secure repeater.
End upload...
Chapter 11
Bridge
'Can we get sensors back online?' Howard asked
'We've been working on it. So far no.'
'Not even for just short range or internal sensors? We can't afford to be flying blind.'
'Yes sir. We're working on it, but it's not looking good. Exo's made a mess of the secondary command pathways.'
Howard checked his suit. It's O2 levels were back to full.
'I have an idea for keeping Exo busy.'
On the Hull
Howard was suited up again. This time he had a proper manoeuvring pack from storage to allow him to move a lot faster. He flew along the hull, skimming above it, aiming for the section of the spine that he had removed the repeater from.
He saw the refitted robots that Exo was using as his army moving slowly along the support struts on their way to engineering. Evidently Exo saw him, because two on the spine turned and started to move towards him.
'You're moving awfully fast Captain. You wouldn't want to injure yourself.' Exo stated over his suit radio.
'I'm certain your concern is nothing but genuine.'
Firing his jets again, Howard slowed his movement and brought himself down onto the spine. His magnetic boots stuck to the struts. He detached the manoeuvring kit, it's extra bulk too much to bring into the openings on the spine. He had a tether with it though, and tethered the kit to the spine. It floated to one side.
Howard began to climb into the spine and saw the section where he had taken the repeater from. Above him, one of the robots was working its way gingerly towards the tether to his pack.
Howard reached the section of cabling that he had picked over earlier and reached to a tool strapped to the belt on his suit.
Pulling the multi-tool free, Howard started work undoing the mangled casing of the secondary systems he had smashed before.
The case came off after a bit of effort, and he removed the internals of it. Grabbing a section of wiring, he pulled it out as much as it would give. When he saw it wasn't quite enough, he grabbed another one of the wires and cut it as much of it as he could. He spliced the two together and fastened the end of them directly to the spine.
He started to crawl back through the spine, but he slowed when he saw the robots through the grating. One was waiting by the opening that he had climbed through, and the other was using a plasma torch on the maneuverings pack's tether.
Howard smirked. He needed to send a signal. This would probably work.
Before leaving, a few key adjustments had been made to the pack. As the robot's torch began cutting the tether, the pack suddenly exploded. The concussive force blew the robots off the spine and spinning wildly into space.
Howard smacked painfully into the struts behind him.
'What did you do?' Exo asked.
'I just took some precautions. We rigged the tether with a fuse to the fuel tank on the pack. I figured you might try to trap me.'
'You can't get off the spine in time. I have more robots at either end.'
'I don't plan on getting off just quite yet.'
Howard crawled out of the spine and grabbed what was left of the tether. There was about a meter of it floating in space, still attached to the spine. With his other hand, he pulled a high powered flash light off his belt.
Holding tight to the tether, he pushed himself very slightly off the strut. He aimed the flash light at one of the observation rooms on the bridge section of the ship and turned the flash light on, waving it towards an observation window
As he drifted off the strut, his tether was getting more and more taut. Twisting slowly, he tried to turn to look at the cable he had attached to the spine. It was sparking visibly. Twisting again, he looked towards the engineering section. Small shapes were floating off the hull.
Howard flicked the flash light on and off at the observation room. The sparking stopped. Howard pulled himself back to the strut and activated his magnetic boots.
'Exo?'
The radio was silent.
'Captain Howard to the bridge.'
Silence.
Ho
ward started walking, heading towards the bridge again.
'Captain?'
Howard stopped.
'Captain Howard here, who is this?'
'Keith sir. I'm using one of the suit radios, but I've hooked it into whats left of the comm system back in engineering. I've been trying to get a hold of anyone for the last hour. Exo's stopped jamming.'
'I think I may have confused him for a moment. We electrified the hull.'
'That explains why the robot's have stopped.'
'What were they doing?'
'They were welding all the entrances shut.'
Howard continued walking.
'Probably to keep you from spacing the repeater.'
'He told us as much. He was bragging over the suit com, trying to freak us out. I'll admit he was doing a good job. He said he was going to punch a bunch of smaller holes in the hull when he finished welding and just wait for us to die before coming in after the repeater.'
'I've set him back a bit in that regard. He's going to have to wait until he's got a new batch of robots,' Howard looked off to one side and saw one of the robots floating helplessly in space, drifting away from the ship, 'and I don't know how many more we have left for him to use.'
'So what's the plan Captain?'
'You sit tight. I've got a ace ready to be dealt to me in one hour. I need to get back to the bridge before then.'
***
Stepping into the open door leading to the front section of the ship, Howard looked down the other halls. He caught sight of a robot scurrying down one of the maintenance spaces.
He started walking towards the bridge. He was starting to feel some of the tiredness of his long ordeal seeping in. The adrenalin was draining from his system. With Exo de-fanged, at least for a moment, and his ace on the way, it was very tempting to just sit down and sleep. He fought the temptation though.
He clipped his helmet to his belt, and checked to make sure his suit was gathering oxygen. His body was aching and he felt dark emotions creeping to his conscious mind.
'Captain, We're coming up on the rendezvous point for the Solar Bay.'