by William Wood
“That’s a good name for them,” Calvin said.
“That big machine in the room where we found the fragments,” Astra said, suddenly realizing. “Hold on a second, this reminds me of something. Oh yeah, one of our scientists hypothesized that it might be possible to transform human consciousness into robot bodies.”
“Why were the Alerians researching that technology?” Dev asked. “Were they bored?”
“No,” Astra said testily. “But when you’re faced with the extinction of your race, and you’re out of options, you have to stop thinking like a scientist and more like a lasermagnet; sorry, no offense.”
“So the rows of robots in that room we saw through the dark glass,” Dev said. “Were waiting for humans to be transferred into them.”
“It all makes sense now,” Astra said. “And it does answer a few questions about the Goremog. Specifically why there aren’t many flesh and blood Goremog people; they’ve turned themselves into robots. Wow, think of the advantages. They would live longer, and not be effected by radiation or harsh environments.”
“What about the disadvantages,” Calvin said. “No emotion. What kind of life?”
“Maybe they didn’t see that as a disadvantage,” Astra said. “Anyway, are you sure they don’t have emotions? Petori sounded like himself to me.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Calvin said. “And that’s what the Alerians were thinking about doing too.”
“Maybe at one time,” Astra said. “But that research never went anywhere.”
“So what’s the problem then?” Wexton asked. “Petori and Freks are robots, right? Can’t you just connect them to a power source?”
“No, that’s not possible,” Astra answered firmly. “You have to understand; Goremog power systems are not compatible with ours. For one thing, they are very hostile; aggressively so. If I plugged them into our grid, their programming, even if it’s dormant, would invade our system and shred it system by system. They do that on purpose, to prevent their enemies from breaking into their computers. So you see, I’m sorry, there’s no way to help them.”
“You have to try something,” Dev cried. “We can’t just let them die.”
“Look, I’m trying to tell you,” Astra said in a softer tone. “They’re already dead. These are now just two powerless Gorebots.”
“How can you be so sure?” Wexton asked. “What if their personalities were stored on a computer storage thing, what do you call it?”
“Data bank,” Dev said.
“Yeah right, that,” Wexton insisted. “On one of those. What if more than just their personalities is protected. Do you really want to leave them, even if there’s a slight chance?”
Calvin looked at Astra, but didn’t say anything. “I don’t know,” Astra admitted. “I suppose it’s possible.”
Nobody spoke for another moment. Calvin looked at the robots lying on the floor and tried to imagine Petori and Freks really were in there, somewhere.
Astra exhaled loudly. “All right,” she said. “Let’s put them in storage for now. Who knows, we might find a way to save them later, though I highly doubt it.”
“Thank you,” Wexton said. “For not giving up on them.”
“You’re welcome,” Astra said. “We’ve lost too many people already.”
“In case you forgot,” Calvin said. “We still have one more fragment to pick up. Let’s find it so we can get out of this graveyard.” That was one thing they all agreed on.
They quickly removed their space suits and left the cleanup for the equipment droids. After they took off their space suits, Calvin and Astra returned to the bridge. Dev and Wexton put anti-gravity devices on Petori and Freks and took them to a storage room next to the Science Lab.
Calvin felt tired and his legs were sore as he walked onto the bridge. A spasm of pain jolted his back as he sat down in his seat. It lasted only a moment. He reversed the engines, and gently moved Azure Frost back away from the wreck. Calvin pushed the throttle forward gradually.
“Anything happen while we were gone?” Calvin asked.
“No, Master Calvin,” Ion said. “The scanner is clear.”
“Well that’s good,” Calvin said. He was very happy to be back on the Frost; out of the Goremog ship, but the sense of dread he’d been feeling all day had not diminished. He knew it wouldn’t until they jumped back into hyperspace.
The next fragment wasn’t far away. The scanner took them right to it. Calvin stopped Azure Frost very close to it. Astra displayed it on the main monitor. When Calvin saw it on the screen, his heart sunk. It looked like the others, but possibly even more damaged; if that was possible. Calvin looked over at Astra, who had a very worried expression on her face.
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “I don’t know how I’m going to repair it, especially since I don’t even know what it is or what it does.” She rubbed her temples.
“You look tired,” Calvin said.
“I am, and I have a headache. I haven’t had enough water today. Once we get the last fragment on board, and get back into hyperspace, let’s go get something to eat.”
“I like the way you think.”
Ion stood. “I will go secure the fragment,” he said.
“I’ll go with you,” Astra said. The two of them left the bridge.
Calvin sat back and made himself comfortable. He knew it was going to take a little while to secure the fragment. He felt drowsy, and sleep tugged at him. He wanted to close his eyes and rest, but he didn’t dare to, knowing they were in the middle of a dangerous area. Who knew how many ships were out there, swarming with robots making repairs? They could get underway at any minute. But for the moment, the scanner was clear and it was quiet. The gentle hum from the idle engines, and the soft beeping of the various computers lulled him into the area between sleep and wakefulness.
Calvin’s momentary feeling of relief was interrupted when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye, a red flashing button on the short range sensors.
“What now?” Calvin said out loud to nobody. He enlarged the image and stared at it. The computer revealed groups of multi-covered wavy lines and fast moving batches of data moving way too quickly to see clearly, so he slowed it down. It had symbols and numbers that didn’t make any sense to him; he’d never seen anything like it before.
He didn’t have to wait as long as he thought he would. When the last piece was on board, Calvin plotted a course to take them out of the debris field. He was feeling good about things. They had the sixth segment on board; it was damaged, but he felt confident that Astra would be able to fix it. To confirm his fears, Astra called up to tell him they were ready to go.
“There’s no way,” Astra said. “I don’t know how I’m gonna fix this. I’m going to stay down here for a while and see what I can do.”
“That’s fine,” Calvin said. “But can you come up to the bridge for a second? I need you to look at something.”
“Sure, I’ll be right up.” She arrived a few minutes later. Ion was with her.
“Is everything all right, sir?” Ion asked.
“The sensors are picking up a strange signal. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Ion sat down at the main computer, Astra stood behind him.
“It’s a communication signal,” Ion said. “It’s encrypted. It’s going to take a while to decrypt it.”
“Where is it coming from?” Calvin asked.
“I can’t tell. It’s close though, somewhere in the debris field.”
“What do you think it is, a call for help maybe?” Calvin asked.
“That’s possible, but I won’t know until I decrypt it.”
“It’s more than just a signal, look at the pattern,” Astra said. “I’ve seen this before, or something like it. It’s a dampening field. Ion, check the hyper-drive engines.” Calvin quickly checked them too.
“They’re offline,” Calvin said.
“Yes, they are,” Ion agreed.
“Something out there is generating a subspace field that is blocking our hyperdrive engines,” Astra said.
“Who, the Goremog?” Calvin asked.
“I don’t know,” Astra said. “Either them, or the No’Rath.”
Calvin looked at Astra. She looked tired and was just sitting in her seat staring at the screen. Someone had to make a decision. He was tired too, but felt like he wanted to get out and stretch his legs. What he really wanted was fresh air, and there was none of that around. There was only one way to get a little freedom.
“I have an idea,” Calvin said. “I’ll go find the source. The Frost is too big to maneuver through the debris field quickly. I can take a fighter out there. I’ll be invisible, and I can look for whatever is emitting the signal. Dev, Wexton and Nils can man the turrets, and you can back me up. When I find it, I’ll destroy it and we get out of here.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Ion said. “We have what we came for. We should leave now and head for the next segment.”
“I know, but what if it’s an enemy ship out there?” Calvin said. “We should know if we’re being tracked. Besides, we don’t know how big the anti-hyper-drive field is. What if we can’t get out of it?”
“We’ll be able to get out of it,” Astra said. “Unless of course it’s on a ship and it follows us, but it would have to see us to be able to do that.”
“They may have detected our tractor beam,” Ion said. “It’s possible that whoever is out there already knows we are here, and might be moving towards us right now.” Perfect, that would be perfect, Calvin thought. Survive all that and get caught leaving the field. No.
“That’s a perfect reason for me to get out there.” With that, Calvin stood up. He sensed a moment of indecision, and decided to take advantage of it.
“Get the guys in the turrets, and keep an eye on the bridge while I’m gone.” He wanted to leave before they tried to talk him out of it, but to his surprise, Astra stood also and grabbed him. She held on to him tightly.
“Be careful,” she said sternly, looking into his eyes. Then her expression softened. “Remember how tricky minefields can be. That’s a mine field out there, everything can hurt you.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said.
“You better be back by dinner.”
“I will,” he smiled. “I love you!”
“I love you too,” she kissed him on the cheek.
He jogged down to the shuttle bay. The anticipation of flying through space in the small, agile fighter was the ultimate freedom, like driving a car by himself for the first time except that car was a Lightning Three hover jet.
Calvin had the process down so well he could probably have done it in his sleep. He did a quick preflight, started the engines, closed the canopy and opened the shuttle bay doors. He quickly glanced at the status board. Shields, engines, cloaking device, life support, navigation, computer core; everything looked good.
The feeling never wore off. He felt a wave of exhilaration as he punched the engines and the fighter slid out into space. Compared to the Frost, the fighter was light and nimble, and quickly and easily made its way through the debris field. He was having such a good time that he forgot he was supposed to be looking for an enemy ship, or something else that might be generating a signal.
When he checked the sensors, he noticed they were trying to do the same thing as the ones on the Frost; catalog every tiny piece of metal floating around. Instead of downloading the already completed scan from Azure Frost, he filtered out everything else except for space ship sized objects, thinking that would be able to advance his search considerably.
After making the adjustments, he couldn’t see where the signal was coming from, there were too many ships in the debris field and the signal could be coming from any one of them.
‘Be patient,’ he told himself. ‘Let the sensors work a little longer.’ Then he noticed something. As he moved around the debris field, depending on where he went, the strength of the signal rose and fell. That was everything he needed. As long as the signal was getting stronger, he was going in the right direction. So he kept a close eye on the screen, and also on the way ahead to avoid a collision with an object.
At first, it worked quite well. That is, until he clipped some debris with his left wing. There was a loud bang, and part of the wing was sheared clean off. The lights in the cockpit flickered and then stabilized. At first Calvin didn’t realize what had happened. He looked around, and that’s when he saw the wing. Sparks were flying out of the missing section.
“Calvin!” Astra said loudly. “We can see you! Your cloak isn’t working!”
“I wonder what else is damaged,” Calvin said grimly. Five minutes out in space and he’d lost his biggest advantage. He could have kicked himself. The computer screens flashed again.
“I think my computer is damaged.” He turned, and headed back towards the Frost.
“Calvin, there’s an energy surge close to you. Get out of there!” Calvin knew he was visible, and if there was an enemy ship out there the last thing he should do is lead it back to the Frost, so he turned forty-five degrees and headed away from the Frost. It was a good thing, too, because just at that moment, a massive energy beam sliced through the debris field. The area he had just occupied was disintegrated.
At least the sensors were still working. He decided to glance at it quickly and focus more on where he was going. He would need all of his flying skills now. There was a warship behind him, along with two smaller ships. Fighters! The sensors told him it was a Goremog ship, a Corvette. Calvin dove and turned back towards the Frost. He pushed the throttle forward, moving faster than he should in the debris field but he needed to get away from the Corvette’s beam weapon. The fighters stayed with him, blasting the area around him with laser fire.
Calvin twisted and turned; several shots from the enemy fighters splashed against his rear shields. His fighter was equipped with rearfiring missiles, but it was taking longer than it should for him to get a missile lock. He looked down at his scanner and the weapons console to see what was causing the delay. He almost collided with a small halfdisintegrated space ship; he veered away at the last second, narrowly missing it but relatively sure he might have scraped it.
A loud beeping sounded, a red light flashed on the screen. He had a missile lock! He quickly pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.
“What?” He shouted. He pulled back hard on the stick, quickly inverting and getting behind one of the fighters.
“OK, missiles won’t work, let’s try lasers.” He squeezed off a few shots. The first two were too far in front of it; he was leading the target too much. He pulled back slightly and the next two hit it dead on.
The fighter turned back and forth, as if it couldn’t decide what to do. Calvin poured the fire on it, some hitting, and some missing.
Just as he saw small pieces of metal flying off of the fighter, he felt himself being hit from behind. He also noticed his shields were down. Calvin fought the urge to panic, and increased his speed to get away from the ship behind him, and kept firing on the fighter in front of him. The fighter exploded in a big red ball of flames that was quickly extinguished by the vacuum of space. Calvin veered away.
He shouted triumphantly and turned his attention to the other one. The other fighter had turned away, and was now approaching him for a distance. Calvin fired a few shots, and dodged several incoming lances of bright red energy. The other fighter didn’t back down. It seemed content to play chicken, or see who could get the most accurate shot the quickest. What the enemy pilot didn’t realize was that Calvin’s fighter was much more agile, and he was a better pilot. It was a short fight. Calvin was able to avoid getting hit by the incoming shots and managed to get in several direct hits. The enemy fighter exploded; parts flew in all directions.
“Got him!” Calvin shouted.
“Good job,” Astra said. Calvin looked around. What was the Corvette doing? He checked his sensors
. The Corvette was half way through the field and moving away.
“Astra, what’s the Corvette doing?”
“It looks like it’s running away,” she said. “Calvin, it scanned you!”
An icy ball formed in the pit of his stomach. If the Corvette got away, the Goremog would know where they were, and if they had been quietly watching the whole time, they might actually know what they were doing. Calvin turned to follow, and increased speed.
“I can’t let it get away,” Calvin said, determined. The answer didn’t come back right away.
“Calvin, what can you do?” She asked. “Your shields are offline, you can’t fire missiles, and your computer is damaged. Are you going to attack a Corvette with lasers?”
“Yeah. If it gets away it will report seeing us. More will come looking for us.”
“I know,” Astra said. “That’s a real possibility, but I have a feeling they’ve already reported you. You could be killed!”
“I’m better than they are,” Calvin said confidently. Behind him, the Frost turned in his direction.
“We’re coming to help,” Astra said. “Our shields and cloak are at full strength. Our turrets are manned, and missiles are ready. I’m jamming the Corvette’s signal, so it won’t be able to talk anymore.”
“You better hurry,” Calvin said. “The ship is fast. It’s going to reach the edge of the debris field before I can get to it.”
Calvin pushed his fighter forward as fast as he dared, but he wasn’t fast enough. The Corvette jumped to hyperspace as soon as it emerged from the debris field.
“It’s gone,” he said sadly. “What does that mean? Are we in trouble?”
“Just come back,” Astra said. “We can figure that out later. We need to get out of here too.”
“On my way.” When he got back to the Frost, the shuttle bay doors were already open. He slowly and carefully glided into the bay and set down as gently as possible. The canopy opened with a soft hum; a sound that he loved. Two repair robots entered the bay and waited. After he climbed out, the robots walked around the fighter and chatted back and forth. Then they moved the fighter to a special repair bay and immediately got to work.