The Infinity Brigade #3, Stone Breaker

by Andrew Beery

  I escorted my lady back to the promenade that we had visited a few weeks prior. I had gone back to my original battle plan. It might not have been right… but I was asking the lady to marry me… this was who I was. My proposal would fly or fall on its own merits.

  As we arrived at the table I had reserved for us, I pulled out the chair as any gentleman would for a lady. When she had seated herself, I made to move to my chair, but instead I knelt on one knee and held out a small velvet box.

  “Doctor Janice Pulaski, chief medical officer of the GCP Yorktown, would you do me the great privilege and honor of becoming my wife?”

  She looked at me with a tear in her eye and a grin on her face. “What if I were to say no,” she asked in a voice that I knew meant she was kidding.

  “Well,” I said rubbing my chin in thought, “that would be problematic because I cannot imagine life without you… so I’m sure I would die of a broken heart… at which point I would be resurrected by the bio-generators and the process would begin again. It would be a horrible waste of resources and exceeding painful for me.”

  “Then I suppose I should say yes… since I cannot imagine life without you.”

  I had previously prevailed upon Admiral Kimbridge, Captain Kirkland, JJ Hammond and of course, Fred to meet us at the Yorktown’s chapel. I was pleased to see the Captain, who was an ordained Christian Pastor in his own right, had chosen to wear his clerical collar. My mother had always wanted me to be married in the Church. I’m sure wherever she was… she was smiling.

  Chapter 22: Zero-Zero-Zero-Zero-One…

  Our honeymoon was a short one. The Admiral had graciously offered me and my blushing bride a two-day leave. As we were preparing for a major battle that would define the fate of humanity and a number of other races… I felt that was excessive.

  But, Janice had other ideas. We were one of those odd couples who stilled carried out the old tradition of saving ourselves for our spouses. She grabbed my hand and forcibly escorted me to our new married crew quarters. She then proceeded to show me what we were fighting for. She can be very persuasive.

  There was one upside to my enforced downtime… let me rephrase that… there were a number of upsides… but only one of which I’m going to detail here.

  I had a sudden insight as to how we might successfully deal with the approaching Fabricator armada. Unfortunately, it would require Admiral Kimbridge to sign off on it. That was going to be a problem.

  ***

  Three hours later, my bride at my side, I presented my brilliant, if half-baked, idea to the Admiral and her command staff. Her reaction was pretty much what I had expected. The nice thing about successfully anticipating problems is that you can plan proper contingencies.

  In my life, I had become a master of the first – anticipating problems. I struggled somewhat with the second – that would be the ‘proper contingency’ part. That said, my new wife must have served to inspire me.

  I offered my, even less-baked, counter proposal. My hope was she would see the second and go for the first. So much for hope.

  “So, you want to allow yourself to be captured… by the Fabricator Flagship… in the hopes of getting to talk to Zero-One?” Admiral Kimbridge said dryly.

  Cat turned to Janice. “And you are OK with this?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “But he’s going to find a way to do it anyway… so why not help him?”

  I smiled. That’s my girl!

  Cat sighed and leaned back in her chair. She looked at Commander Ben and then Captain Kirkland. They both nodded. She sighed again. Heavier this time… and toggled a comm-link on the smart table in front of her as she stood up.

  “Engineering”

  “Commander Thais, I have a small job for you.”

  I love it when a plan comes together.

  ***

  The fully cloaked Defiant emerged from a hyperfield conduit three-point-eight AU from the Fabricator fleet. Based on the intel Fred and the captured Fabricator Processing Unit Core had been able to tell us… the Fabricator fleet would not be able to detect a hyperfield emergence. That said, there was every possibility that FTL linked sensor buoys would be deployed as a sensor blanket over the fleet.

  That seemed to be confirmed when six smaller ships popped out of hyperspace in our general vicinity a few moments later. The six ships began a thorough and complete active sensor scan of the area.

  There was a good chance that our cloak would not survive such a scan, but just to make sure, I had had our chief engineer create a small intermittent EM leak that was sure to be detected.

  Moments later the Defiant’s comm system lit up like a Christmas tree. I’ve always liked Christmas. The sense of anticipation was half the fun. This was no different.

  “Unidentified vessel. You will not be harmed. Our mission is peaceful. We require your cooperation. Prepare to be boarded.” The voice had the same metallic ring to it that Processing Unit Two-One-Eight-Eight had had.

  “Decloak the ship,” I ordered. “Open a two-way visual channel.”

  “Greetings Fabricator fleet. I am Commander Anthony Stone of the Galactic Coalition of Planets. I come bearing gifts and I seek an audience with the Processing Unit designated Zero-One.”

  “You are a Human?”

  “You betcha! Born and bred – one hundred percent… give or take a little… full-blooded human. I’m the real deal. So how about that face-to-face with the head cheese?”

  “Humans have been designated for eradication because of contamination. A conversation will not be possible. The process will be painless.”

  “Now see,” I said. “That’s where you and I will have to agree to disagree. I take issue with this whole eradication thing. Besides,” I said with a twinkle in my eye. “Don’t ya wana know about the surprise I brought for you?”

  “You referred to gifts… not surprises,” the metallic voice replied.

  “Same difference,” I said cheerfully. “Here is surprise number one.” I held up the data core from Processing Unit Zero-One-Six.

  “Surprise number two is your Primary Crew Interface Module for Processing Unit Two-One-Eight-Eight is on board my ship and wants to come home.”

  “Eradication will begin in thirty seconds.”

  “Really! That’s where you want to go with this? What about the gifts I’ve brought?”

  “There is a phrase used among your people. It has little meaning for us, but I will share it with you now. Thank you. Your gifts will be received by the Primary after your ship has been sterilized.”

  “Now hold on…”

  “Procedure beginning now.”

  Now, I wish to state for the record that Plan A did not involve me and my entire team dying. Unfortunately, Cat Kimbridge had gone with Plan B. The Defiant was bathed in an intense gamma radiation field. I was pleased that the Fabricators had not been lying. The process was painless. I died instantly.

  ***

  I opened my eyes slowly. This was the most dangerous part of my plan… especially since waking from a regeneration cycle was not the most level-headed time in a man’s life. I could see several other pods beginning to open in the Defiant’s bio-generation bay. If everything went according to plan, there would be sixty of us waking up in the next few minutes.

  The question was, where was the Defiant? Had I planted enough seeds to get us where we needed to be?

  I heard a groan off to my left. The lighting in the bay was deliberately kept to minimal levels to reduce the risk of detection. In fact, the entire bay was behind some of the best passive sensor shielding the GCP could produce. Special Heshe nanites embedded in the walls reflected any sensor beams hitting them back in such a way as to simulate a large empty hanger.

  The groan came from Corporal MaTok. James Peters had yet to stir. JJ already had his feet on the ground off to my right. Nanite specialists Ronda McDurn and Shelly Stone (no relation) were next to him. Of course, we were all naked and cold. The bio-generation pods had washed the matura
tion gel off our bodies by the time we awoke… but they could not dress us. Fortunately, Marines were used to operating in such conditions and things like modesty had long fallen by the wayside.

  I was relieved to see Commander Ben First was standing by the door with a Mark IX Marine rifle charged and ready to defend those of us who were just waking up. As he was a fully synthetic being, he had not been harmed by the gamma ray burst that had cooked our previous bodies.

  I pulled a fresh uniform from the drawer under my med-bed. A few moments later I was ready to go. Peters was the last to emerge. MaTok had stood by his pod protectively. I’m not sure who he was protecting Peters from, but I wasn’t about to challenge him. A two hundred-kilogram, bio-enhanced Ashtoreth Gator was no one to mess with.

  Those two had come a long way. Peters was finally becoming the Marine I knew he could be. That he had inspired such loyalty in a Marine that had every right to dislike him was a testimony to that. I suspected I would be giving Peters his Officer Butter Bars back in the near future.

  Ben had confirmed that the Fabricators had taken the bait and we were now on board the Fabricator flagship.

  “OK, gang. Suit up. Once we exit these doors in our Starks, we are cloaked and quiet. Line-of-sight or FTL comms only. Our goal is the primary data core. But we disrupt as many internal systems as we can. The enemy has some very advanced technology. Our advantages are surprise and possibly our enhanced Heshe construction nanites. Everybody clear?”

  When we were all in our armor, I took McDurn, Peters and MaTok. The rest went with Commander First. The idea was to exit the Defiant unseen and start working our way through the ship. Our Starks were equipped with swarms of ENO, microscopic surveillance drones that could help us map out an unknown area, but I was reluctant to use them as there was the potential that they would be discovered.

  We ran into a problem almost immediately. It seemed the Defiant had been pulled into a construction bay. Fabricator technology had been developed in a galaxy that was metal deficient. That meant a lot of Fabricator systems were based on carbon-based electronics. Metals were used but only in the most exotic components.

  It seemed the Defiant was destined to become critical components for a whole host of new baby Fabricator ships.

  The problem we ran into was that our ship was completely surrounded by construction robots preparing to tear it apart. If we opened a hatch to make our way out it would be seen. If we waited for the disassembly robots to begin the process of pulling the ship apart enough to create an egress for us… we would lose the advantage of speed. Again, speed and surprise were force multipliers. I was reluctant to give either of them up.

  All we could do at first was watch for an opportunity. I saw one of the worker-bots start moving towards the ship. I have a plan… it wasn’t a good plan… but it was a plan none-the-less.

  “Everybody, lock down your magnetic boots. Things are about to get a little bumpy.”

  The moment the worker-bot’s diamond-edge claw began to clamp down on a section of the Defiant’s hull I punched the lateral thrusters. The Defiant suddenly flew ten meters in the opposite direct – just far enough to hit the bots on that side. As soon as the Defiant collided with those worker-bots, I jinxed the thrusters again in the other direction… this time continuing until we hit the far wall.

  I wasn’t sure how the Fabricator’s AI would respond. I was hoping it would determine the Defiant’s movements were part of an automated self-defense program. We used the distraction to partially open a bay door near the point of the last impact. We had our egress!

  Our Stark suits had state-of-the-art camouflage systems. Unfortunately, those systems were designed to hide a Marine from a set of Mark-One organic optics. The Fabricator ship was entirely automated. We had no way of knowing how effective our cloaking technology was going to be.

  It turns out… they didn’t work very well at all.

  Chapter 23: The Chase…

  I took Alpha team across the bay towards a door that was the farthest from the current position of the Defiant. Ben took Beta through the mangled door I had opened for him by crashing the Defiant into it. I’d like to state for the record, that after having provided this polite service for my comrade in arms… I did not even get a simple ‘Thank You.’

  Halfway across the floor I knew I had a problem. Seven of the worker-bots had dropped what they were doing and advanced on our position. My group and I dodged to the right. The bots took a second but then followed us on an intercept course.

  I wasn’t sure how they were following us but clearly, they were.

  “OK, guys… it looks like we are going to have to do this the hard way. MaTok, you’re with McDurn. She’s the mission so keep her safe. Peters you’re with me. We need to make some noise.”

  At that point the big Ashtoreth picked up McDurn, Stark suit and all, and ran like a tailback in American-style football. It was a simple solution. I hoped McDurn was OK with it because there sure wasn’t a lot she could do about it. I’ve got to give that big gator credit. He was far faster than the rest of us.

  Peters and I unlimbered our Intimidators. These were nuclear-pumped laser rifles that were especially effective against darker targets. Since most Fabricator tech was based on carbon in one form or another… and since most forms (diamonds being the biggest exception) were black… they worked really well!

  I decloaked and instructed Peters to do the same. The bots coming at us didn’t seem to be armed with anything other than some really nasty-looking diamond-edged claws and plasma welders. I’m sure either one would prove seriously inconvenient should they actually manage to get ahold of us. My plan was to try to avoid that.

  Peters took the first shot. The Intimidators did the job they were designed for. The worker-bots had no shielding. Our weapons-grade lasers cut through them like a toy knife through butter. There was only on problem. They just kept coming.

  The physics behind all of this was really quite simple. Living things were essentially a lot of plumbing. You poke a hole in the plumbing and bad things happen across the entire system.

  Bots, especially ones based on electrically actuated servos, were a different beastie altogether. You poke a hole in a bot and you might hit a wire that stops a single actuator from opening and closing but the rest of the system tends to continue operating.

  “Sweep back and forth,” I yelled while dodging a bot that was getting too close.

  That worked better. It still took a while to take these guys down. A bot minus its legs and claws can still look at you mean… but looks can’t kill.

  Peters got clipped on the arm. His Stark sealed the breach and flooded his system with both medical nanites and pain suppressors. He’d be using only one wing for a few minutes, but he would be find.

  I saw more bots, including some of my old Gator Armor friends entering through a large bay door. My guess was the troops had been mobilized and we were going to have to skedaddle. The armored bots would be a lot more difficult to deal with.

  The good news was that Fabricator ships had little to no experience with armed boarders. The bad news was they were quick learners.

  I saw on my tac-vid that McDurn was inserting some of our very friendly nanites into a control interface in a corridor about six hundred yards from our position. Normally this type of nanite would replicate quickly and rapidly overwhelm a system they were trying to subvert and take over.

  Sadly, this was not a normal situation. Heshe-human hybrid nanites needed various metals to work with. These metals were present in the Fabricator ships but in far lower concentrations than what was normal. What that meant was our little guys were going to take a little longer that then would normally.

  Fortunately, this was the type of problem that could be anticipated so we compensated by deploying several orders of magnitude more nanites then we would have normally. In addition, we had brought Shelly and Ronda with us. They knew how to get the most out of the little buggers.

  Of course, our bigg
est ace in the hole were the surprises we had brought for Zero-One. I hoped he enjoyed them.

  She was just finishing as we caught up to her.

  “OK, guys. We have a welcoming party on the way. Reengage your cloaks. I don’t know that they helped much but it seemed like it took the bad guys a moment to track us.”

  We started racing down a corridor that could have been a clone of any of the other Fabricator ships that we had been on. Of course, I knew that was an illusion because this ship was about a hundred times bigger than the others. That fact alone was why I needed Fred to be successful in his part of our little plan.

  Of course, whatever we could do, it seemed the enemy could do it better. As we raced around a bend in the corridor we spotted a group of gator-bots shimmering into existence. We did a quick about-face and started back the way we had come. We didn’t get a hundred meters before more gator-bots shimmered out of thin air. This was getting old.

  I reversed direction again and deliberately crashed into a closed door that we had just passed. Apparently, it wasn’t intended to withstand such abuse. It shattered, leaving pieces of carbon-fiber all over the place. I suspected the local PCIM would be busy for a while cleaning up our mess.

  “Find a wall and hug it,” I said. “I’m playing a hunch. Don’t move a muscle once you find your spot. They may only be able to see us when we move.”

  Not thirty seconds later six gator-bots entered the room. The lead bot moved to the exact center of the room and slowly rotated around 360 degrees.

  I gotta tell ya… having a gator-bot stare you in the face, even for just a moment, from less than four meters away… and not move a muscle… it’s an interesting exercise in self-control.

  At some unseen signal, the rest of the bots entered the room and proceeded to a door leading to, presumably, another room. Once our room was cleared, we exited out the shattered door we came in.

  Over the course of the next thirty minutes we played this game two more times. I knew at some point Zero-One would connect the dots and we would be forced to get more creative. The problem was… the environment didn’t lend itself to creativity. I was really counting on Fred.