Synchronicity Trilogy Omnibus

by Michael McCloskey

  “This is by direct order of Captain Lin?” Feng verified. The man nodded.

  “Yes, sir. Straight from the Captain.”

  “Okay, you heard him. Head for the pods,” Feng said. “As fast as you can without falling. We don’t need any broken bones.”

  Everyone herded toward the nearest pods. Feng realized that somewhere on the ship, men would be left behind. Without links, the captain couldn’t notify the whole crew. And the Ascending Dragon itself would be lost.

  He had his orders though, didn’t he?

  Feng halted in the corridor and grabbed onto a structural column.

  “Can anyone see any services? Is anyone’s link working at all?” he yelled. Men scattered about the corridor shook their heads.

  “I can see a few services,” a man said.

  Feng carefully stomped over toward the man who had spoken. He met a grizzled soldier, an enlisted man. Feng saw that the man’s head was in a foam bandage. A bit of blood had seeped through on the side, staining the yellow material of the bandage.

  “What happened to your head?” Feng asked.

  “Injured on Grand China station, sir. I got a new link put in. It’s brand new.”

  Feng nodded. “Maybe that’s why it’s still functioning. Come with me.”

  The man nodded. Feng staggered off toward the drive bay. They were breathing heavily by the time they made it. Feng’s legs were burning from the exertion. Feng manually opened a thick lock door to get inside.

  A man was clutching to a rail nearby, furiously working at the manual control station.

  “You there! Why aren’t the manual controls responding? Is the drive stuck?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know, sir. Some of the manuals are working, but the critical ones I need are frozen.”

  “We’re going to try to shut the drive down. This man’s link is working!”

  The man at the control station nodded furiously. “Yes! The link might work. It might.”

  Feng turned to the enlisted man.

  “Can you interface with the drive? Does it have any services up?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it does. A hell of a lot of them.”

  “Find shutdown. Emergency shutdown. Or power down. Anything.”

  The man nodded. “It’s complicated,” he said. “Damn, I wish I could understand it better. But I’m not authorized to do anything here anyway.”

  “Listen, soldier, I’m going to give you an override code. Li Feng: Fu wu chong zhi huo bu dan xing.”

  The man nodded. His eyes were clenched tightly shut.

  “I have the authority now. I’m trying to shut it off.”

  “You want the ignition laser duty cycle,” called the other man. “Ignition duty cycle to zero.”

  The enlisted man frowned. Sweat ran down his face in the dim emergency lights.

  “I see it,” he said, then their weight left them. Feng floated up from the floor. All three men took deep breaths and relaxed.

  “Excellent job, soldier,” Feng said. “You’ve saved the ship. I have no more orders; only a request.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Put in a good word for me at my court martial?”

  “I’d be honored, sir.”

  Twelve

  When the locker opened, Xinmei stared at the barrels of three submachine guns. She figured they would be loaded with soft antipersonnel rounds to avoid damaging the bulkheads of the ship. Her nose hurt enough that it might be nice to die. Until she thought of Feng. He would never give up.

  I will never see him again.

  Tears started to stream down her face. The men dragged her out of the locker. She breathed raggedly through her mouth.

  “Looks like you seen better days, Chink,” one of them growled at her. Her face and hands were covered in dried blood.

  The men marched her to the airlock. For a second she thought they might eject her into space. But she saw the ship had been mated with another vessel. She looked for any sign of the size of the other ship, but there were no window ports in the connection chamber.

  She stepped through a heavy lock door into the other ship. The walls were metal with a few manual lock controls. There was no decoration. Probably a military ship, she thought. They stepped through the lock into a drab gray corridor.

  “Take a left,” the man behind her ordered. She moved to her left. No doubt she headed toward a holding cell.

  I have nothing to lose.

  Any moment now, Mr. Adrastus, wherever he was, would remember to tell them she had a link. They’d be smart enough to realize that if she had a hidden link, that meant it was probably dangerous.

  Then she would be interrogated as a spy. She wondered if they would torture her like she tortured those men on the shuttle. Or worse.

  They came into a small room with several small metal doors along one wall. It had to be a brig. It hadn’t been a long walk; Xinmei thought they must be inside a relatively small transport vessel. Still, there was no chance of her defeating these men in physical combat. So it came down to her yin xing ji.

  She isolated the link of the man closest to her. Her link immediately masqueraded as the man’s link. Authentication occurred frequently, so she didn’t have much time. She saw the holding cells ahead had a link suppressor, so she configured it to disable UNSF links given to the enlisted men. Apparently the cells could hold the soldiers’ own misbehaving members as well as their enemies.

  She wanted to do more, but the man she’d mimicked was low ranked. He didn’t have authority to affect many ship systems. She felt doubt she could get far this way.

  One step at a time.

  Her link started to search for vulnerabilities in the systems around her. It knew of a few ways to get around Western security, even military security, but it wouldn’t work if the ship had been updated to remove the problems.

  Whatever tricks I’ve got left, it’s time to use them all.

  They tossed her in the cell.

  “The suppressor isn’t working,” a man said.

  “Jesus, what a piece of shit,” the other one said.

  “She ain’t got any link anyway.”

  “You don’t know that. She’s a fuckin’ spy. Who knows what she got?”

  “Better check with the commander.”

  “Yeah.”

  Xinmei located a gas system that could flood the whole brig with stun gas. Just what she needed. It seemed likely that using it would raise an alarm but she was desperate.

  “The company man says she’s got a link. So I’m sending Franco over to take a look. We need that suppressor working.”

  The men closed the door to the holding cell. She could hear them chatting outside as they waited for their friend.

  Xinmei wanted to wait for Franco’s arrival, but she couldn’t risk wasting time since her link wouldn’t work like this indefinitely. She took a few deep breaths and released the gas.

  Xinmei unlocked the door and leaped out of her cell. The two men were already dropping, incapacitated.

  She grabbed one submachine gun and tossed all the other weapons she could find on them in the corner. As she worked she tried to flush the air, but her link had been presented with a security challenge. She passed it on to the isolated link and played man-in-the-middle, but it didn’t work. The number and type of commands she’d given didn’t match up with the record on the other link, which was part of the challenge. It didn’t surprise her. She was on a military ship now.

  Xinmei stepped out of the brig to take a breath. She heard someone approaching from down the corridor. She danced quickly to the side, hiding behind a jag in the passageway. She heard Franco or whoever it was open the door and go inside. Then she ran up and got behind them.

  “What the hell?” said the new arrival, looking upon the sleeping men.

  Xinmei put her submachine gun snout in his back. Her link managed to convince the weapon that she was its real owner. The true link remained isolated by her own yin xing ji.

  “Go to
escape capsule. Now!” she said in English. She isolated their links with her own, keeping them from sending warnings.

  “Just who in the hell do you think—”

  The man started to turn around. Xinmei pushed him away, then shot him. A three round burst erupted from the weapon with a single pull of the trigger.

  The man fell forward, grunting in pain. His skinsuit had saved his life. Xinmei saw he was an officer. The other two men were already starting to awaken. Her brief burst of gas hadn’t lasted long.

  “Next one in your head,” she said, shifting her weapon slightly. “March! One, two. One, two!”

  The men stared at her, sizing her up. For a moment she thought perhaps she had miscalculated. Were there enough of them to take her?

  “You want fight instead? Okay, I start...”

  “Okay bitch. We’re getting into the capsule,” said the officer.

  She marched them back into the corridor. The man started to go back the way he’d arrived.

  “No! To capsule,” she repeated. He was heading deeper into the ship, so he had to be deceiving her. He turned and they went the other direction. She had no way of knowing if they really went toward the capsule, but her correction had probably fooled him into thinking she knew where the capsule really was.

  They arrived at a lock.

  “Go! Now!” she urged. Any minute now, men would show up behind her, drawn by the sounds of gunfire in the brig. If they hadn’t heard it directly, no doubt the ship would notify someone of the weapons fire sound signatures. Even simple shopping malls back home had such measures, so no doubt a military ship would have that, and more.

  The men went inside.

  “I give ten seconds to launch,” Xinmei told them from the hatchway. “Otherwise, you dead.” She closed the hatch and ran back down the corridor to the zigzag. She fell against the wall and peeked around the corner. No one approached yet. She wondered if the men in the capsule would launch. Probably not. She could cover the entrance from her position, though. More likely they would manage to use the pod to communicate with the others and tell them the problem was a single female prisoner.

  Xinmei waited. She had a weapon, but remained trapped on an enemy ship. There would be no hope of taking the vessel over now that they’d been warned of her presence. She could have been more patient, but once they had turned on the suppressor she would have been even worse off.

  My life went so wrong, she thought. Will they tell Feng what happened to me? Or will he just think I left him? I should never have hesitated to accept him. I was just enjoying the chase. I toyed with him.

  She watched the corridor for a long time. Her thoughts remained dark. Her link said that three hours had gone by. They had to know she was there. There was probably even a camera on her now in the corridor.

  All they have to do is sleep in shifts and keep me awake until I can’t function anymore, she thought. Or find some gas grenades. A stalemate now is to their advantage in the long run. I’m going to have to take an escape module myself. But they’ll no doubt just double back and intercept, but it’ll cost them time and money, at least. Unless they decide to let me drift until I suffocate...

  Something was happening outside the ship. Her heart accelerated. Were they flanking her by moving outside the ship? But they’d have to open a hatch first. She hadn’t seen any hatch. Had she paid enough attention? It just didn’t matter. She had to watch both directions anyway, in case the men in the escape pod hadn’t left and they decided to come back inside.

  There might even be weapons in the escape pod, she realized. This is so hopeless. Maybe I should just charge them and make them shoot me. Better to be dead than stay a prisoner forever.

  More sounds came, and she felt light acceleration. Something was going on with the shuttle. Xinmei wondered if they were docking with a station or a capital ship. Perhaps they had decided to get help? But she was only one against a dozen or more.

  “Lay down your weapons,” a broadcast came to her link. “Surrender yourselves and no one will get hurt.”

  Surrender yourselves? The others must have left. They don’t know for sure that it’s only me.

  She gripped her firearm tightly and pushed her back into the wall. She peeked around the edge again, but the corridor into the center of the ship was empty.

  She heard noises. Another hour wore by. At first each noise had been a threat. Now she felt tired. Each noise became a lullaby. Her adrenaline had been drained by recent events.

  What is taking them so long? Am I missing something? Maybe it was a skeleton crew. What if there are only two or three people left on board?

  The thought brought her to her feet. She had miscalculated something. Things were going better than they should be. That meant she needed to act.

  She heard a door open down the corridor, towards the middle of the ship. She bolted back to full alert and aimed her weapon around the corner. She tried to release a burst down the corridor but nothing happened.

  Her weapon had been remotely disabled. She tried to hack into it with her yin xing ji. Her link worked on it, but there was no immediate success and she didn’t hold hope for much progress.

  My gun is useless.

  “Surrender! You have no hope of escape!” came an order. Xinmei realized the command was in English but the accent was Chinese.

  “Wo zhong guo ren!!!” she yelled. I’m Chinese!

  She tossed her weapon around the corner and into the hallway. She stretched her hands forward so they were exposed.

  Please don’t blow my hands off...

  “I’m Chinese!” she repeated.

  “Come out. Come out and if you’re Chinese my men will hold their fire,” a man called back in Mandarin.

  Xinmei stepped out. Chinese men stood in the corridor with weapons pointed at her.

  It wasn’t a trick. They really are Chinese!

  The men advanced and secured her weapon. One of them was an officer. She wobbled a bit and leaned against the wall.

  “She’s beat up,” said the officer. “Get a medic ready. I’m taking her off this ship.”

  The officer escorted her to the lock and into the attached ship.

  “Thanks for rescuing me,” Xinmei said.

  “From what I understand, we should be thanking you. The information about the spinner ship was invaluable. You’re aboard the Martial Dragon now,” he said. “We’ve seized the transport. Its crew are now our prisoners.”

  Thirteen

  Xinmei’s eyes fluttered open. She floated on a fuzzy cloud of half-worn-off painkillers. The room was small and white, with two beds. The bed across from her was empty. She looked around.

  Suddenly Feng was there. She blinked. Feng stood right next to her.

  Tears dropped from her eyes. Xinmei laughed and wiped them away.

  “Please, relax, just rest,” Feng urged her, taking her hand in his. “The doctor said you’ll be fine.”

  “How long can you stay?”

  “Only a few hours. But we’re both alive, and you’re finally off the out-of-contact list.”

  “I am? I guess that makes sense. I’m no longer...”

  “You’re no longer a spy on a Western space station! I’m very proud of you, Xinmei,” Feng said.

  Xinmei smiled. She squeezed his hand. She looked at him in his uniform. It had all the standard accoutrements of a formal uniform, but a small medal caught her eye, pinned to his chest.

  “What did you do for that one?”

  “Nothing much,” Feng said. “A problem with our ship’s drive that I helped out with.”

  “You? Unlikely,” Xinmei said. “It’s not your specialty.”

  “Well my commanders appreciated it,” he said. “Although I disobeyed orders to do it,” he continued more quietly.

  “You? Really? I rubbed off on you. Did we get the ship?” she asked.

  “No. It left just before the UNSF blew up Synchronicity to keep us from it,” Feng said. “But we know a lot, thanks to you, I
suspect.”

  “There were others beside me,” she said. “What about the things? The spinners?”

  “I think they’re all dead. All the ones that came in that ship. But I wonder, will there be more?”

  “I wondered that too.”

  “One more thing,” Feng said.

  “Yes?”

  “The doctor said to remind you that you can freely connect your link to the network.”

  Xinmei laughed. She activated her link’s external protocols. Immediately the room’s nurse services appeared. She could ask for water, drugs, and food. Feng’s link came up in her PV.

  She laughed again. The list of services from Feng included “marriage license finalization”. It was keyed to one individual: Sun Xinmei.

  “It’s encrypted,” Feng said.

  “I think I can handle that,” she said.

  Book III: Ingenious

  Talent does what it can; Genius does what it must.

  —Edward Bulwer-Lytton

  Zero

  A beautiful blue planet hurtled through endless darkness. The light of a yellow star warmed the outer layers of its vast cloudy atmosphere, filtering ever deeper, growing ever feebler as the density steadily increased. The air surrounding the planet grew thicker layer after layer, finally blurring the lines between gas and liquid. At the center lay an iron-deficient core: this planet was notably less dense than most.

  Countless simple creatures of the planet enjoyed the wide open sky and the star’s warmth. Tiny floaters with semi-transparent bodies rotated about, collecting food from the kilometer-long vines that grew in long ropy clusters floating in the sky. Slightly larger round creatures with long, thin legs and small wing membranes jumped about after the floaters. The jumpers had gaping mouths and single wide eyes to lead them to their food. Vast tentacled plants caught and ate what they could, propelled up and down through the layers on massive gasbags.