Errant Contact

by T. Michael Ford

  “Let’s go,” he said hoarsely. I said my brief goodbyes to my shipmates and my brother, who still was none too happy about the whole situation.

  “Hang on a minute, everyone,” Kalaya said brightly. “I almost forgot, a little something to keep our admiral entertained while we sort all this out.” The display showing the bridge of the human flagship enlarged and the volume intensified.

  To my eyes, it still didn’t look like anyone there had a clue we were watching them. Everything seemed normal as the crew went about their tasks at their stations. Kittson had just signed something on a datapad brought to him by a female ensign when emergency klaxons suddenly began blaring and lights began flashing. An automated voice came over their bridge speakers.

  “Reactor containment failure! Abandon ship! All hands to life pods! Abandon ship!

  “What the…?” Kittson screeched, wildly casting about as the bridge crew looked at each other in bewilderment. A few of them even rose to their feet as if to leave. “Belay that alarm! And sit down!”

  The communication officer leaned back from her console in frustration. “I’m sorry, Admiral, but I can’t even isolate where it's coming from! The threat board from engineering is pulsating green, red and yellow at random intervals!”

  “More of that witch’s tricks!”

  The crewman manning the tactical station piped up, “Admiral, we are seeing life pod releases from the Andonov, the Durante, and the Robinson, and those are just the cruisers!” He paused for a few seconds and then added, “Additional drops from the destroyers, corvettes, and auxiliary craft as well. Every ship in the fleet must be affected!”

  “Fleet-wide communication!” Kittson snapped. “This is Admiral Kittson! Ignore the abandon ship order! It’s a trick!”

  “I can’t establish communications with any of the other ships, Admiral! Com appears to be down throughout the fleet. We’ve gone black!”

  “More life pods departing! Including ten from this vessel!”

  Kittson launched himself up out of his chair and grabbed the arm of the nearest ensign. “I don’t care if you have to put someone in an EVA suit on the hull with semaphores! I want this stopped before we don’t have any crew left to man the ships! What the hell is that?”

  His gaze fell on a display board, and Kalaya obligingly transferred the view so we were party to what Kittson and his staff were seeing. A familiar cartoon rodent dressed in baggy pants, a t-shirt, and a billed cap happily skipped out into the middle of the screen. He smiled roguishly, spun around, bent over, and dropped his drawers to expose his furry hamster ass. He wiggled comically for a few seconds and then pulled himself back together, fired off a jaunty salute to the Admiral and strutted off the screen.

  “Kalaya, you didn’t!” Drik snickered loudly.

  “Well, technically it was the hamster,” she corrected with a proud smile. “That should keep the fleet off our backs for a while, but it does nothing to alleviate the situation down here.”

  Kodo just sighed and looked to the heavens for assistance. Finding none, he sighed and grabbed my elbow, guiding me to the door.

  The Kalaya we had been talking to fell in alongside me and whispered, “It will be just like old times, Laree!” She grinned, but I could see sorrow in her eyes as she continued to watch Kodo’s back as he headed off the bridge. Yeah, old times, at least, I have armor this time….

  The door slid open and Kodo entered the hallway on full alert with his weapon at the ready. I gasped as I was greeted by a hell of a lot more guns than I expected, but Kodo didn’t seem worried. Lining the hall on both sides were rows of heavy-walled drones that I had never encountered before. Roughly humanoid; that is, if humans had no legs or heads. Each sported four thick arms that looked like they could pick up an orbital shuttle. Integrated into the upper arms were weapons tubes; the lower arms were simple manipulation hands. The base seemed to be a mongrel arraignment of part leg, part track that could swivel to become either as needed. Each also had a canister of some kind strapped to its back. Flamethrowers?

  “I hope these guys are on our side,” I muttered, peering around Kodo’s bulk.

  “They are; these are heavy police drones. They can both take and deliver a lot of damage.”

  “Good, they can go first!”

  “They will to some degree; however, I have a limited number of them and I need to leave some behind to guard our friends. Listen up!” she shouted at the formations. “Squad One, guard the bridge; Squads Two and Three, with us! The remainder of you, move to your rally points and push the intruders off my ship!”

  “By your command, my Queen!” Forty eerie metallic voices responded in exactly the same tone. Eight formed up behind us and the rest scattered to perform their assigned tasks; some retreating to guard our friends, some boarding elevators to parts unknown.

  “Let the games begin,” Kalaya whispered to no one in particular.

  “Indeed,” Kodo growled as he flipped the charging handle on his weapon. It snapped back with an ominous click. The noises behind us told me the drones were readying weapons as well. “Stay close to me, Laree; I guess it’s time to see what this little army can do.”

  We made our way down the escalator platform to the tram docking ramp. I was just about to board when Kodo gently held his massive arm out, blocking me. “I think not, Laree; they have already made it to the other end of the tram run and will see us coming. One well-placed satchel charge is all it would take.”

  I peered up the tunnel through the tramcar’s front window and saw only the tube. As I squinted, it seemed my suit’s faceplate upped the magnification as if I was looking through binoculars. I still couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “How do you know?” I asked, still straining to see. His only response was to tap the side of his helmet meaningfully. He reached into the tramcar and pushed a button to send it on its way back toward the center of the ship. I looked at Kalaya, “Do you see anything?”

  “Of course; I see everything on the Aurora. However, he didn’t get the info from me. That suit he’s wearing is chock full of high-tech police gear that I know next to nothing about.”

  “Huh? You built it!”

  “From a recipe,” Kalaya countered. “Why would I clutter my gorgeous head with a lot of information that I likely would never need? I’m a production girl, remember; well, that and a psychologist, interior decorator, general trouble maker, and social commentator.”

  “Don’t forget ship’s captain,” I teased.

  “That, too.” She sighed, watching Kodo, who seemed inordinately interested in staring down the now empty tram tunnel. “You’re lucky that I was destined to stay on the Aurora after we established the colony.”

  “How so?”

  “My interface with the ship systems is over-the-top extensive. Mostly thanks to that handsome mute in front of us; too bad that suit hides so much. Anyway, as I was saying…”

  Suddenly a fiery gout of flame lit up the tram tube. It was at the far end of the tunnel, but the explosion raced over the tracks toward our position. Normally, I would have dived for cover. In fact, I tried to do that, but I remained frozen in place. The fireball fizzled out a few hundred feet from our location with a last poof of smoke and dust debris.

  “What just happened to me?” I asked on the verge of panic. “I locked up and couldn’t move!”

  “You can move just fine,” Kodo said, taking a few steps back toward us. “The suit and your dominant nanites were just acting to limit your involuntary reactions. They calculated that the fireball would not reach us so it kept you from expending the effort to dodge. If your brain consciously intended for you to move, say to grab a weapon, you would have been free to act.”

  “You keep differentiating between Kodo’s nanites and normal nanites…are they that different?”

  “Like night and day, girlfriend,” Kalaya nodded. “But that’s the thing about nanites; they are constantly updating themselves with better versions. The ones in your body are second only
to Kodo’s own, and they are doing everything in their power to maximize the suit’s potential. Unfortunately, we don’t have time to go through a full training session so you will just have to trust them.”

  Great, now I have to put my life in the hands of miniature robots I can’t even see!

  We followed Kodo down a service shaft until it opened up on a glass-enclosed platform that jutted out over the production floor far below. Off in the dark distance, I could still make out a small fire burning along the length of the tram tube.

  “Breach the glass,” Kodo called out to the police robots following us. Two drones immediately pulled up to the glass and used their extendable arms to each place a pair of devices on the window. Red lines of cohesive light flared up and connected the four objects in a perfect rectangle. With a flash, the pane was just gone – no explosion, no shards, just vanished. The drones retrieved the devices and backed away to allow us access.

  “Down we go,” Kodo breathed.

  “What? To the production floor? It’s like four hundred feet down!”

  “Yup. Come on, we need to pick up the pace, it’s a long way on foot to the engines.” With that, he leaped through the window and disappeared into the darkness.

  “He just jumped! C’mon, these suits aren’t that damn good!”

  “No, but our repulsor technology is. You saw him do something similar once before, Laree.” Kalaya smiled. “He likes that kind of thing…think of it as nerd skydiving.”

  “I think it’s insane!”

  “I think it’s incredibly hot!”

  “You would,” I muttered, moving to peer over the side to the floor below. Surprisingly, my vision seemed to shift and dismiss the darkness. I could clearly see Kodo with his gun out in the ready position motioning for me to join him. “So how do we get down?”

  “Funny you should ask…” she smirked.

  Something hit me hard in the rump! Hard enough, in fact, that suddenly I found myself pushed through the opening with a sickening sensation of flailing arms and a fast drop in altitude! I spun as I plunged and got a good look at the drone that booted me out the window as well as a cheerful Kalaya waving goodbye.

  I screamed ineffectually into my helmet for what seemed like an eternity as another twist oriented me to see the factory floor rushing up to greet me. Seconds before turning into Laree splatter, I slowed and stopped, suspended three feet or so above the steel flooring. Moving their own accord, my feet brushed the floor as I turned upright, finally establishing a firm link to the ground an instant later.

  Kalaya, of course, just appeared next to me, still grinning. “Now wasn’t that a blast?”

  “Oh, if I could only slap you right now!” I hissed. I felt something grab my arm and Kodo dragged me to the side. An instant later, the security drones started dropping heavily to the factory floor right where I had been standing.”

  “Enough chatting, we have company and lots of it,” Kodo said seriously. I looked where he was pointing and saw space marines repelling from the ruined tramway tube down to the floor we were standing on; oh joy!

  Kodo silently motioned for us to form up and follow him through the lines of machinery. Two of our drones rolled ahead of us as we moved up. The remainder branched off and started down the wide production lanes to our right and left. We jogged effortlessly like this for a long way and I could tell the suit was augmenting my physical strength and endurance immensely. We had traversed perhaps half the distance down the long factory line when things started to heat up. My hearing registered chatter from the soldiers up ahead and my helmet’s display began showing me the red icons denoting nearby hostiles.

  Just as my eyes snapped back to my forward vision, I saw a flash of smoke and movement. The two drones ahead of us were engulfed in flame from another explosion like the one we had seen in the tram tube. Amazingly, they just shrugged off the damage and continued to plod forward. Kodo rose up suddenly from his crouch and squeezed off two shots from his rifle. Red bolts speared out from its muzzle and struck something several hundred feet away. The level of chatter from the marines rose immensely, and I had no doubt that two of their comrades were down for good.

  The drones patrolling the lanes on either side of us opened up with their strange electrical-based weapons. The only reason for that to occur would be if the enemy was waiting to spring a trap. Even I know traps are bad news. After another fifty meters or so, Kodo suddenly stepped back and pushed me down and to the side. I ended up beneath the webbing of a large conveyor device just as a barrage of bullets ripped through the spot where we had been walking and sparks flew off the machinery above my head. Kodo had hit the ground rolling as soon as he pushed me, and now he bounded up on one knee and returned fire. My HUD noted two more red icons fading to non-existence.

  Kalaya joined me in my hiding spot. “Well, this is quite intense, huh?”

  “You don’t say?”

  “Might I suggest you ready your weapons?”

  “Why? Kodo and the drones seem to have this covered; I’ll just be in the way.” A burst of heavy fire hammered the conveyor’s caisson wheels just inches from my head and shards of molten metal pinged off my helmet face. “Scratch that, weapons might be a good idea!” I drew the pistols from my holsters and sent a silent thank you to Elleen as I moved the safeties to the fire position. It felt disconcerting to have a gun in each hand; I felt I could barely handle one much less two. Having only handled guns at amusement park stands, this didn’t bode well.

  “We need to move,” Kalaya urged. “Come this way.” She faded out most of her hologram so she was nearly transparent. “You don’t need me attracting attention but don’t worry; I won’t leave you, Laree.” We cautiously retreated in a wide loop into an area that the other drone squad had already swept. Ducking under some kind of a metal lathe device, she stopped me and I saw a hand materialize out of thin air and point down. “Pop open that access panel.” I looked down with my enhanced vision and there among the corkscrew-shaped shreds of metal and grease that covered the floor was the faint outline of a door. Holstering my guns, I brushed some of the crud away and felt around for the ringlet that I knew would probably be there. My fingers finally caught hold of something and I pulled up the door, levering it to one side. Below was a dark hole, some sort of machine service crawlspace I assumed. It was probably used to service the underside of the lines and lubricate the machines up and down the entire length of the floor.

  “Eww.”

  “Yeah, have fun in there,” Kalaya whispered in my ear in a ghostly fashion.

  “What? You’re not coming?”

  “Are you joking? It's seriously filthy down there! Besides, no holographic emitters in the service tunnel…sorry. But this shortcut will bypass a lot of the fighting; I’ll see you on the other end.”

  I took one last furtive glance around to make sure I wasn’t being observed. The sound of gunfire was almost constant now. Sighing, I slid down and lowered the door over my head. It was pretty much hands and knees through two inches of grease slime as far as my helmet could see. The only thing that broke up the monotony was the occasional need to shimmy down and crawl around protrusions in the way. Occasionally, motor oil from somewhere above dripped on my visor and ran down like black honey. Great, now how am I ever to get clean again. I tried wiping off one of the drips and only managed to smear it worse, just peachy! I lost track of time; between the slow crawling and the adrenaline rush instilled by people shooting at me, I had no idea how long I had been down there.

  A half mile? A mile? I just kept moving. Finally, I heard a friendly voice from somewhere above me.

  “Ok, you can come out now, Laree.” I looked up and could see the outline of another door. A quick push and slide to the side and the unfamiliar shine of real lighting hit me in the face. I felt like a mole coming up out of the ground for the first time in days.

  Kalaya’s smiling face peered down at me. “Wow, you look like dog crap, I’ll make a note to have the drones clean down t
here more often.”

  “Ya think?” I groaned, levering myself up out of the hole. “Very funny, Kalaya! I’m a mess.” I was covered in slime and filth and probably smelled terrible to boot, but at least I didn’t see any of the spiders she was talking about earlier. She shook her head and touched my visor with her finger. Almost as if someone took a squeegee to a pane of dirty glass, the dirt and accumulated crud cascaded off me. It started with my head and went all the way to my boots. Suddenly, I was as clean as when I first put the suit on.

  “Nanite-imbedded armor is pretty low maintenance, Laree. Now shhh, we are somewhat behind the action now.”

  As we were under another machine, I had to stick my head out a bit to see back to where I had started. My vision magnified everything as I concentrated on the spot where I had gone down into the tunnel. A readout informed me that it was a mere 530 feet away…really? It seemed much farther. A movement caught my eye; about thirty feet ahead and on the other side of the piece of machinery I crouched behind were three armored soldiers. Two of them lay prone on the floor with rockets propped on their shoulders, while a third, probably an officer, was on one knee behind them. He waved a pistol around and growled directions at the other two. It sounded like their group and another nearby felt they had Kodo boxed in tight up ahead of them.

  Instinctively, I reached down and slid the two pistols from my holsters, thumbing off the safeties. My HUD showed me that I needed to be in the manufacturing lane directly to the left, and to get there I would have to sneak past the group I was watching. Of course, Kalaya was nowhere to be seen nor available to give any advice. Cautiously, I stepped out from my concealment, hoping they wouldn’t look behind them. Crab-walking slowly, I almost made it…

  The officer chose that exact moment to glance back. Well-trained as all marines are, he didn’t waste time thinking about his decision; he just raised his sidearm and fired! I felt a stirring in the force that circulated in my blood and gear and a sudden rush to strengthen a spot near my sternum. Before I could consciously react, a robotic arm from the assembly line lashed out and struck the man with what I could only imagine was extreme force. His crushed body flew across two lanes of machines and hit the far wall with a resounding crack. The bullet struck me in the chest, but it felt like no more than a playful punch from my brother as it didn’t even rock me backward.