Merkiaari Wars Series: Books 1-3

by Mark E. Cooper

  Liz was making a lot of assumptions, but it was hard not to agree. Surely the hardest part was over. With the backup file in hand, the mission was already a success assuming they managed to get off world. Now they knew Sebastian was active...

  “Liz,” Gina thought furiously. “If Sebastian is awake—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, can’t you just ask him where he is?”

  Liz’s eyes widened for a moment, but then narrowed. “Maybe.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “Only maybe?”

  Liz nodded. “I’ll have to think about it. A lot depends upon how accessible he was before the war.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, all the A.Is that exist today will only talk to the Council, but back before the war they were more accessible. I don’t know if Sebastian will respond to strangers.”

  “You’re kidding,” Gina said flatly. “He’s been alone all this time and you think he might ignore us?”

  Liz shrugged. “Not saying he will, just that he might. Look, he was the colonial administrator. Maybe he had protocols to follow like only responding to government officials.”

  “But they’re all dead! What sense does it make for him to follow a protocol like that?”

  “None, but he’s a computer, Gina. Computers follow rules.”

  “Even A.Is?”

  “Even so. They’re intelligent machines with vast capacities and intellect, but they’re still machines. They were designed to have only limited freewill. For example, there is always at least one Human being who can countermand anything a particular A.I does. It’s a safety measure. In Sebastian’s case I would guess that person would have been Kushiel’s president. Just a guess. Also, I happen to know the president here swore his oath before Sebastian. Sebastian is the custodian of Kushiel’s constitution, which means he’s obliged not to follow unconstitutional orders even from his own president.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of power in an A.I’s hands.”

  Liz nodded.

  “So we could find him and he might ignore us. Even if we entered his centrum?”

  Liz nodded. “Even if.”

  Gina’s stomach rumbled.

  “You’re hungry. Let me get your two admirers back in here to carry you, and I’ll fix your steak. We have time to find Sebastian. No point in borrowing trouble. For all we know, he’ll be happy to see us.”

  Gina nodded. She was starving.

  Her bearers carried her out of the restroom and helped make her comfortable in the server room. Liz was as good as her word and provided food and coffee. There were many envious eyes watching as she ate. She didn’t tell them it tasted funny, and slightly unpleasant. The air tainted it, or maybe messed with her taste buds. She ate it all anyway.

  While she was eating, attention shifted to the lash up being prepared at the door. A committee had come up with a design for the temporary airlock, and now work was beginning using salvaged materials. Gina watched as one of the engineers removed the door from the men’s restroom and carried it to the work site. The engineers were building a new wall roughly 2metres inside the room from the existing wall, using partitions from the offices she and Eric had investigated earlier. It looked like a patchwork, but she noted they were careful to seal every joint, fill every gap, with expanding foam. They had plenty of the aerosols left over from the dome construction. With the wall up, the restroom door was fitted. The work took a couple of hours. The last part was the most complicated. It consisted of linking all the spare PLSS units for the suits together, and connecting them to the new airlock through a hole drilled in the wall. Foam was used to glue and seal the connection before switching them all on. The effect was to filter the air in the airlock as if it was just a big suit. Anyone entering it from outside would have to wait inside with both doors shut until the air was clean enough to enter the server room.

  The inner door was left open for the first few hours with the PLSS units running. Gina let them know when the air in the server room became breathable, and everyone celebrated. They kept their suits on for warmth, but took off their helmets to celebrate with a hot meal and strong coffee. Gina accepted a second steak dinner, and Liz said her face looked better for it afterwards.

  “Liar,” Gina said with a smile. Her IMS hadn’t started work on it yet. Diagnostics reported it was still working on her spine. “Legs first, Liz. I need to keep watch out there. If I’m not mobile in another hour, I want to be carried outside and left with my rifle and ammo.”

  Liz would have argued, but at that moment Gina’s right leg twitched and spasmed. She clutched it and grimaced. It felt like she had cramp in the thigh muscle, but it faded quickly. She tried to flex her knee, but nothing happened. Still, that spasm was the first movement she’d had from either leg. She decided to take it as a good sign.

  She endured more twitches and cramps through that hour, but before she could demand to be taken outside, her legs finally came back online. She didn’t feel a sudden difference in her legs. Sensation had returned long before and the cramping had become less frequent in the second half of the hour, but a report informed her of new IMS priorities.

  >_ Diagnostics: Communications offline, TacNet offline. Unit fit for duty.

  >_ IMS: Repairs in progress.

  Gina stood, and grinned as everyone applauded. She performed a few jumping jacks. “Behold this medical miracle!”

  They laughed.

  She finished her latest cup of coffee and grabbed her rifle and helmet. She shrugged into the straps of her PLSS and settled it onto her back before heading for the door checking the hose connection to the helmet. Liz caught her arm before she could close the inner door, and Gina paused.

  “Be careful this time,” Liz said.

  “Hey, it’s me! I’m always careful.”

  “Be. Careful,” Liz said again very seriously.

  She sobered and nodded. She squeezed her friend’s shoulder briefly before closing the inner door and putting on her helmet. She opened the outer door, exited, and shut the door firmly behind her.

  She paused for a moment considering options. She needed to defend this door, but sitting at the bottom of a hole didn’t appeal. The bad guys could just drop a crate of grenades on her or something. Also, her sensors were a great advantage, but not down here. She needed to be up top. She ran up the stairs and emerged into bright sunlight. The crane would make a good OP (Observation Point) but it was too obvious. The bad guys might hit it just because it was there. No, she would use the ruins opposite. There were enough walls left to give cover, and she would have a clear view of the stairs.

  Plan made, she implemented it. As she hunkered down to wait and watch, she wondered how Eric was doing. She checked sensors and queried diagnostics, but nothing had changed. Her comm was still out.

  Archer’s Gift, Kushiel

  “Any word?” Leon asked and Haliwell nodded. “Let’s have it.”

  “All dead but the shuttle is undamaged. Looks like our people started loading but got jumped.”

  Leon nodded. “Tell them to grab what they can and beat feet. I’m taking us down. Give them the coordinates of the first target and have them fly there to meet us.”

  “I think we should hit that other site first, captain.”

  He shook his head. “What for? There’s nothing we need there, and they can’t leave the surface.”

  “Witnesses...”

  He waved that argument away impatiently. “They’re only witnesses if they know something. What do they know? Nothing. Besides, they can’t survive down there for long. They’re alone. They only have the supplies they took or those we leave them... tell our people to destroy anything they can’t take.”

  Haliwell turned and did that, but he wasn’t finished arguing his point. “We don’t know for sure that their ship didn’t get a report down to them. They might be able to identify the ship.”

  “I don’t want to take a year collecting what we came for, and we only have the two shuttles. I
need them doing their jobs, not attacking a bunch of helpless castaways that are as good as dead already! Damn it, man, you do want to get paid don’t you? We need to get what we came for before someone puts us and this ship on a defaulters list!”

  The kind of defaulters list he was talking about would have every pirate, raider, and shoot first mercenary company, gunning for them. Those kinds of lists weren’t about recovering money; they were all about setting examples. The kind of examples that consisted of derelict ships blown open to vacuum and crewed by corpses.

  Haliwell’s jaw muscles bunched, but he didn’t say anything. He turned back to monitoring his station, but Leon knew this subject would come back up. Haliwell was becoming a problem, but then so were others in the crew. Many of them looked to Haliwell and not their captain for orders, but so far they hadn’t pushed things beyond a lack of respect for his authority and a few muttered insults barely audible. The four dead men were Haliwell’s cronies, and Leon was glad they were dead. They’d been some of the worst examples. Undisciplined animals.

  Leon needed Haliwell and his men for now. He couldn’t crew a ship the size of Archer without them, but as soon as he could, he would pay them off and jettison them at the next port. He would pay his debts, hire a new crew, and forever more stick to legitimate trading in the core. No more risky adventures in the border zone. He was done with chasing quick profit and fortune in the shadows.

  “Take us down,” he said.

  “Aye, captain,” the helmsman acknowledged, and Archer’s Gift plunged into Kushiel’s atmosphere.

  * * *

  20 ~ Dagger Thrust

  Aboard Archers Gift, Kushiel

  >_ Sensors: Hostiles detected.

  >_ Close archive file #0000063577982-3996-SL

  It took Eric a few moments to notice his sensor alert had tripped. A few seconds to realise it wasn’t part of the memory file he had been lost within. He glanced around seeing darkness. Read the data again and interrogated his logs and sensors. Right. The crate on the raider’s shuttle. Kushiel. A mission to complete. He stroked his rifle and watched his sensors real time now.

  Another shuttle had landed and red icons prowled carefully around. Eight hostiles. Eric watched them scout the domes and find the bodies. He wondered briefly if they would bury their friends, but of course not. They were more interested in the loot they could take. Within just a few minutes, they started filling the shuttle they had arrived in and the shuttle he occupied. He let them have their way. He was impatient to kill them and move on, but he needed them for a short time. He wanted their ship, and they would cough it up. Oh yes, they would take him in and he would end their existence shortly thereafter.

  The banging about near his crate gave him pause. Were they going to unload? Surely, they would just put more palettes in and lift. He waited and had to steady himself when they moved his crate, but they weren’t unloading him. They were making more room by shuffling things around. That was fine, though he hoped he wasn’t completely boxed in when they finally did unload him.

  It took them over an hour to steal what they wanted. The shuttles took off and he settled back for the trip, but they surprised him when instead of leaving they circled around and blasted all three domes. The shuttles weren’t gunships, but they did have railguns. Missiles were expensive, but railgun rounds cost next to nothing. The raiders didn’t conserve ammo. He was linked into the shuttle’s sensors and external cameras to watch the show. They shredded the domes as if they were some loathsome insect and the shuttle’s guns were bug sprayers. The power plant exploded, the dome erupting in fire. The other two domes had little that would burn, but they collapsed, and that seemed to satisfy. One last lazy circle and they flew off leaving nothing worth salvaging behind them.

  Eric wondered about it. There had been plenty of stuff to steal at the base, but they had blown it all away as if it were nothing. The reason had to be orders. The shuttle crews wouldn’t have fired for fun. Therefore, they had done so to deny the base and supplies to others. That was important. It meant the raiders did not plan to attack alpha site. At least, that was his assumption and it made perfect sense. The raiders planned to maroon them without supplies. A way to kill all the witnesses without risk. A good plan. A safe plan. A plan created by a thinker, not one created by a rash man. Eric would have preferred otherwise.

  The journey progressed. He didn’t know where they were going, but they weren’t boosting for orbit. That was a disappointment. He wanted to get aboard their ship. He tried to use the shuttle’s sensor data to figure out where they were going, but there were too many possibilities. He briefly considered tapping into the navigational computer, but decided against it. Really, the risk of detection was minor but it was there. Besides, what was he going to do with the data? Nothing. So he watched and waited to see what would happen.

  Time ticked slowly by.

  His destination was a surprise. The raiders had landed their ship! It was no longer in orbit. Why do that? He didn’t know and decided that he didn’t care after a few seconds of thought. This was good news. With the ship grounded he wouldn’t have to concern himself with pesky things like... oh, breathing vacuum. The ship being on the ground probably meant most of the crew would be working outside. Probably. Why else land? It must be because the salvage operation was a big task that needed manpower and perhaps using shuttles would take too long. Whatever the reason, it was more than fine with him when the shuttles entered the ship’s docking bay.

  He was ready to get to work.

  Ready he might be, but he had to wait for the enemy to unload the shuttles and clear the bay. He counted time as the crew went about its business, and braced himself when it was his crate they unloaded. He used the time to scan his surroundings.

  Computer: initiate full spectrum security scan. Range out to 200 metres.

  >_ Sensors: full spectrum sweep in progress.

  The raiders worked on, diligently moving boxes and palettes quickly out of the shuttles. His crate was one of the bigger ones. They chose to store it in one of the cargo holds first and then pile everything else on top. Dasher class ships like this one were designed for short hauls. Legitimate users earned a living transporting goods between a planet’s surface and the stations orbiting those planets. They did have foldspace drives—marketing would have had an impossible job selling the things without them—but they were underpowered. They were slow in foldspace, but made up for it in normal space. They needed power to boost cargo out of the gravity well. Multiple holds, big ones for ships that could enter an atmosphere and land, were just one of the selling points that had made the Dasher class cargo ships so popular at the turn of the century. Newer models had since superseded them, but all that had done was strengthen the used ship market. They were a popular choice out in the border zone where money was tight, and of course there were other uses for fast ships with the ability to land. Raiders loved them.

  Eric busied himself reading the results of his security sweep. It didn’t make for good reading. The ship had a larger crew than he had expected. Gina had killed four and eight had come calling upon the base to find their buddies. That was twelve. A ship this size didn’t need many more than that to run efficiently, yet he counted over twenty moving about and his sweep didn’t cover the area outside the ship. Because he was a big believer in pessimism—pessimism had never killed anyone, but optimism often did—he decided to double the number to forty plus hostiles. That was pushing even his abilities, and he considered going directly for the bridge. He could use the ship’s more powerful transmitters to contact Gina. Together they could handle it. He fighting on the inside, Gina hammering them on the outside. Yes, together they could take the ship even from so many, but that meant leaving Liz and her people uncovered. Not something he would have considered just yesterday, but he had the file now. The mission had changed to getting it back to Snakeholme not protecting civilians who would all die anyway if he failed to take the ship.

  A stealthy attack would be
best. A dagger thrust to the bridge, a call to Gina, and then a short victorious war to claim a way off this snowball. With luck, the civilians would survive and all would be well. It was a vague plan at best, but he deemed it viable. As always, the devil was in the details. His route to the bridge, the opposition he was likely to encounter, counters from the raiders, and any number of things needed to be factored in. If the raiders raised the alarm he could find himself in trouble. All it would take was one sensible man on the bridge sealing it, and he would be screwed. The hypothetical crewman could call all the crew in from outside to surround and overwhelm him, and he with no way to contact Gina for aid.

  Eric frowned as he worked the problem using sensors and old database entries to map the interior of the ship. He hadn’t ever had this precise scenario occur before. Surprising really. Going through the motions and following his programming, had been his existence for decades. It sometimes felt as if everything he did was just a variation of a theme. Scenario A occurs and respond with scenario B... all is programming.

  He shook his head at his distraction and concentrated on the problem at hand. His database had most of what he needed. This wasn’t his first time on the Dasher class of ship. Had he ever been crew on one of them?

  Working...

  Eric sighed and scowled into the dark. Damn literalist computers anyway. Couldn’t he even think a rhetorical question without interruption now? Obviously not. He let the blasted thing run its search and busied himself building an ops plan.

  So, he was in cargo hold three, the closest to the boat bay. Made sense. No one wanted to shift cargo further than they needed to. The enemy had simply shoved everything they’d stolen into the first available space. That was fine, but it made his job that tiniest bit more tricky. He had been stored in a busy part of the ship. The raiders were constantly in and out of the bay heading outside to do whatever, and coming back in to unload cargo or fetch things. He didn’t need someone spotting him so early in the plan. Hopefully no one at all would spot him until Gina came on scene, but he couldn’t guarantee that. The best he could do was minimise the risk of discovery, and that meant not using the ship’s decks to reach his objective. It had to be the service ways then.