by Amy DuBoff
>>We’re going to be fine, Ava. With that new variable added to my model, we now have a ninety-nine point nine percent chance of success.<<
Ava frowned in her mind while she descended the stairway to the hangar deck. What about the other zero point one percent?
>>You’re a significant factor, my dear, but I’m still a scientist. Nothing is an absolute certainty.<<
All right, fair enough.
At the bottom of the stairs, Ava jogged the hundred meters to the base of the telescoping gangway that workers were putting in place to allow easier access to the Raven.
The hatch in the side of the ship opened, and Edwin poked his head out. “Wow, this is weird, docking fully inside another ship.” He spotted Ava. “Oh, hey!”
“Welcome aboard,” she greeted with a wave. The uneasiness in her stomach settled a little seeing a familiar face, but not enough to relax her again.
>>Want me to adjust your neurochemistry?<< Ruby offered.
Not now. Maybe some pre-op jitters will be good for me. I think I was starting to feel a little too invincible.
Samantha, Nick, and Major Widmore followed Edwin down the gangway. They took in the cavernous hangar with reserved wonder.
“Ma’am, you’re out of your mind,” Edwin said as he approached her.
“Missed you, too.” She smiled back. “I know this plan is a little out there, but that’s how we roll.”
“Aside from the part about you going in alone,” Nick replied, crossing his arms.
“I still don’t like it one bit,” Samantha added.
Behind them, Widmore cleared his throat. “I believe we have a briefing to attend?”
“Sorry, sir.” Edwin headed for the hangar exit on the deck level.
Ava fell into pace next to Widmore at the back of the group as they headed for the door. “Thank you for believing in me, sir,” she said.
“You really shouldn’t be thanking me. My endorsement of this plan doesn’t mean I like it. But, I respect any warrior who would volunteer to put their life on the line like this. We have a high bar for what constitutes the call of duty, but you’re exceeding even that.”
“I kind of have to. I’m the only one who can go in there.”
“You are, but that doesn’t change the courage required to rise to the occasion.”
“All in a day’s work, sir.” She smiled.
“You’re a fine officer, Ava. You’ll have a great future here in the FDG.”
Assuming I make it out of this alive.
The thought was intended to be private, but Ruby must have picked up on her shift in mood.
>>We’re going to do this, Ava. It’s scary, but it’s not impossible. We have the best people to help us succeed.<<
You’re right. We’ve got this.
Ava and Widmore caught up with the rest of the team, and she led them to the conference room where Kurtz was waiting to brief them.
The room was situated on the outer bulkhead of the ship, and an expansive window offered a terrifying view of the alien ship.
Edwin stopped in his tracks as soon as he saw it. “Holy fuck,” he whispered under his breath.
“Yeah, it’s big,” Ava whispered back.
“That’s an understatement.” Samantha shook her head. “It looks like a normal ship from here, but I know we’re nowhere close to it.”
“Please take your seats. You can gawk later,” Colonel Kurtz stated. He took the chair at the head of the table.
Ava quickly found her seat on the far side of the table, facing the door, leaving the side with the view out the window for her teammates. She’d already had her fill of looking at the enemy target.
“We’ve had a number of teams working on various components of this plan, and it’s time all the pieces come together,” the colonel began. “We are the core team. Ava will be inside the enemy ship, I’ll be in command of the Hellfire, and the rest of you will be on the Raven, hacking the alien ship.
“The plan is relatively straightforward. The Raven, being smaller and with stealth capabilities, will approach the enemy vessel and maintain active signal cancellation to prevent the Dyons from gaining control of the ship or crew. Ava will take a stealthed pod from the Raven and dock with the alien vessel. She will then proceed inside to plant a backdoor in the first node with ship-wide communication she can identify, which the team on the Raven will use to hack in and disable the alien ship’s defenses. The Hellfire will then use the Arti-Sun to destroy the target.
“Of course, executing the individual parts of that plan will be challenging. The purpose of this meeting is to identify and fill in the gaps in our tactics.”
When he concluded, Kurtz looked around the table. “This is an open discussion; please speak freely. The first matter for us to discuss is the point of ingress.” He brought up a holographic model of the alien sphere. “Ideas?”
“I think it needs to be near that collection of towers,” Ava said. “I’ve been over the model several times, and three potential access points have jumped out. The first is here.” She glided her finger across the touch-surface desktop to rotate and zoom the image, focusing on a shadowed area at the base of the central tower. “You can’t see it very well in this image, but there’s what looks like a hangar bay entrance here in the shadows. There’s a smaller doorway that I could bring the pod through.”
“Question.” Nick’s hand shot up. “Is there atmosphere in this thing? Are you going in an EVA suit or powered armor?”
“Uh…” Ava glanced at Kurtz and Widmore. “I was going to get to that later, but I think I need to go in some light body armor. There is an atmosphere inside, and it’s clean—no signs of nasty diseases floating around. The abilities I’ve been practicing with Ruby are better than what I could do in powered armor. It would just hold me back.”
“You intend to be in the Hochste state for this mission?” Kurtz asked.
“Not while I need to do precision work with my hands, of course, but movement will be a lot faster in that form.”
He nodded. “I suspected you’d suggest as much. Ruby will need to monitor your vitals for any sign of contagion, but there are distinct advantages to going in without a closed suit.”
“I’ll be on high alert,” Ruby acknowledged over the audible comms.
“So, not having a suit,” Ava continued, “I need a place to set down inside, or where I can get a seal. That first location I pointed out offers a direct way inside, but going into a massive hangar might not be the best approach.
“That’s why I identified this second option.” She rotated the image again, this time to a recess at the base of one of the outlying towers. “Each of these secondary towers offers direct access deeper into the ship, based on our scan data. This one, though, and the one opposite, also have corridors leading to the central tower. Twenty-three kilometers beneath that central tower is the chamber containing a node like we saw on Gidyon.”
“With the interface Luke’s team developed, you won’t have to go all the way down there,” Widmore interjected. “But finding a corridor that connects to the central node will almost certainly give you the right channel to tap into.”
She nodded. “Looking at those design specs is what gave me the idea. My initial thought was I needed to find the most direct route to physically get to the center, but that design should enable me to stay relatively close to the surface.”
“My concern with the entire plan is that we can’t fire until you’re clear from the alien ship after the equipment is in place,” Kurtz said. “We may not have a very long window between gaining access and when they figure out how to block us.”
“And the deeper I go, the longer it will take to get out. Yeah, I know.” Ava sighed. “That’s what led me to the third option.”
The colonel tilted his head. “Which is?”
“I take the pod in through one of the cylinders. The top is open to space, but the artificial gravity holds atmosphere inside at the bottom, just like on a planet. I
can take the pod down and be close to the core without having to worry about docking doors and all that. Being closer to the pod also means I could make a faster escape after the equipment is in place.”
“A quick exit is critical,” Kurtz stated. “I don’t like the idea of you being near so many of those ‘pits’, or ‘nests’—whatever they are—but the logistics of that location make the most sense.”
Ava inclined her head. “I agree, sir.”
“With the access point established, the only remaining preparation is testing the frequency generators for Ava’s suit and the hacking module. Any questions before we adjourn?” The colonel looked around the table.
“How long will it take us to get clear of the blast zone?” Widmore asked.
“Based on the planned holding distance from the alien ship and the Raven’s maximum acceleration, you will need a minimum of three minutes and twenty-seven seconds to clear the lethal range of the Arti-Sun blast,” Ruby replied over the comm.
The major nodded. “We’ll call it four minutes to be safe. We’ll need to time it just right, so the hack corresponds with the time we’re at a safe range.”
“That will be nearly impossible to plan, but we’ll do our best,” Samantha said.
“Any other thoughts?” Kurtz asked.
Edwin raised his hand. “After we beat these guys, do we get another party?”
See? Told you cake is an excellent motivational tool, Ava said to Ruby.
>>I stand corrected.<<
Kurtz chuckled. “I think we can arrange something. Dismissed,” he said to the attendees, but nodded toward Ava to indicate she should stay.
His eyes met hers as the last team member left the room. “I would be remiss in my command duties if I didn’t ask you one last time: are you sure about this?”
“Absolutely,” she replied without hesitation. “I trained for this. I’m ready.”
Kurtz rose from the table. “Very well. Let’s begin.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“You’re really going in only wearing that?” Nick asked while eyeing Ava’s light armor.
She grinned back. “Isn’t it stylish?”
“Fashion isn’t my reason for asking.”
Ballistic padding covered her torso, elbows, and knees, but the rest of her was completely exposed, aside from the minimal protection offered by her shipsuit. To freely transform between her Hochste and human states, though, the flexible attire was necessary.
Ava patted Nick on his shoulder. “I appreciate your concern, but there aren’t big scary guys with guns inside this ship. The dust particles won’t be able to get me with the charged suit skin, whether it’s powered armor or this stuff.”
“All the same, you’re bringing your sidearm,” Widmore said.
She smiled. “I’d never think of going anywhere without it.”
Samantha stood up from the console where she’d been working. “All right. Let’s give this a test run.” She shooed everyone away from Ava. “I apologize in advance if the intensity isn’t right.”
An electric shock ignited Ava’s skin. “Ow!”
The sensation of jabbing needles receded, but she still sensed a lingering charge.
“Whoopsy.” Samantha blushed. “Overdid it there a little.”
“I take it you weren’t trying to electrocute me.” Ava rubbed her hands along her forearms in an attempt to diminish the strange tingling sensation.
“The charge needs to be strong enough to flow through the entire suit, without being so strong as to do that,” Samantha replied. “Getting an even intensity across all zones is tricky.”
“Ever thought of starting low and ramping up?” Ava looked at her friend from under her brow.
“Yeah, well, if you’re so tough now, you can take it.” She smirked. “Let’s try this.”
Another charge tickled Ava’s skin, but it was more of a background hum.
“I can definitely tolerate this level,” she reported.
“Coverage looks good,” Nick observed from a station next to Samantha’s. “Let’s see how that plays with the module.”
The device they’d constructed for the remote hack was a black box the size of Ava’s two hands. A prong on one side would serve as a physical jack, which would offer a more secure connection than tapping in through the wireless network. To keep the ship from expelling the foreign device, its shell would be charged with the same frequency as Ava’s suit.
Unfortunately, they would have no assurances that the countermeasure worked until they were on board the ship.
Nick hooked the test equipment up to the device and powered it on, then returned to his computer.
“Charge looks to be evenly distributed and holding,” he reported from his station.
“Fingers crossed.” Samantha disconnected it, then handed the device to Ava for her to stow in her cross-body satchel.
“There’s also this,” Nick said, grabbing a similar-looking device from his desktop. It was half the size of the main module. “This is a signal booster, of sorts. You shouldn’t need it, but you can place it in a central location as a signal relay, if we’re unable to connect directly with the main device.”
“Got it.” Ava placed it in her bag next to the module. “Anything else?”
“Don’t die,” Edwin advised.
“My number one checklist item,” she said, miming the action of checking the item off an imaginary list in front of her.
“Then we’re all set,” Nick said with a smile, but she could see the worry in his eyes—in everyone’s eyes.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured them. “Back before you know it.”
Samantha ran over and gave her a hug. “Good luck.”
“Thanks. Let’s head out.”
They gathered their equipment and climbed aboard the Raven. Ava immediately headed to the pod she would be taking to the alien ship. From the cockpit, she watched Nick, Samantha, and Edwin set up a workstation in the bay using equipment appropriated from the Hellfire. Meanwhile, Widmore went to observe the activities from the bridge with Rod and Aleya.
Once she was situated in the pod, Ava watched a video feed from the Raven’s helm on a holographic overlay of the pod’s front viewport.
How are you doing with all this, Ruby?
>>Feeling as confident as I ever will. It’s times like this when it’s beneficial to not have the same emotional range as humans. I can be objective about the mission.<<
Ah, ‘the mission’! How far you’ve come in just a few weeks. Before, you were all about your science labs.
>>A new universe has been opened to me. I think being in your mind has made me a vicarious adrenaline junkie.<<
It is rather addictive.
The view on the holographic overlay changed from the belly of the Hellfire to a starscape. It swung around, and the alien ship came into view.
They sped toward it. At first, the ship didn’t appear to be getting much larger. As they neared, however, it rapidly filled the screen. Horizontal and vertical bands became more distinct. Though it had appeared to be relatively dull from a distance, there were actually tiny lights dotting the structure.
What kind of illumination is that? Are those windows?
>>No, I think it’s glowing,<< Ruby replied.
The same kind of bioluminescence as in the pits?
>>I believe so, but…<< Ruby uncharacteristically faded out. >>Given the distance we still are from the vessel, each of those points of light is a kilometer or more in diameter. I don’t know what they might be.<<
When the alien ship took up the entire viewport, the Raven dipped toward the southern pole.
“Comm check?” Nick said in Ava’s earpiece.
“Loud and clear, she replied.
“Confirmed,” Ruby added. >>And double-checked,<< she added as a non-spoken communication over the link.
You can relay my thoughts, right? Ava checked with her.
>>Yes, if you think something to me, I can pass it on.<<<
br />
That might be better than us talking out loud.
>>Agreed.<<
The Raven neared the southern pole, closing in on the location of one of the massive cylinders embedded in the alien ship.
“Thirty seconds until departure,” Widmore said over the comm. “May the stars be with you.”
“See you soon, sir.”
Ruby set a countdown clock on the pod’s HUD, and Ava took several slow, deep breaths.
At zero, the pod dropped from the Raven’s belly through the electrostatic shield. Once in the vacuum, the pod’s gravitic engines kicked in, and it sped toward the narrow entry to the alien ship at the top of the target cylinder.
Rather, it had appeared narrow from a distance. As the pod approached, the scale of the alien ship hit her full force. Tiny specks on holo models were now two-kilometer chasms, and the larger features were the size of continents.
How the fuck did they build this thing?
>>Like their other structures—they grew it,<< Ruby replied. >>They must have mined multiple worlds to make this one, given the uniformity of the elements. You can’t find these concentrations on one planet.<<
I can only hope they weren’t inhabited.
>>Best not to think about it. Focus on the fact that this ship won’t be able to hurt anyone else.<<
The end of the cylinder was a cap suspended two kilometers above the main surface of the ship. It had appeared dark inside from a distance, but Ava now saw a subtle blue glow coming from within.
Stars, I hear them!
Voices washed over her—the same cacophony she had experienced in her first telepathic attempt. Only, the song had changed. Curious and ethereal before, it was now dark and bent on destruction. The Dyons were hunting, and the Alaxar Trinary was their prey.
As the pod entered the ship, millions of minds turned their attention to Ava.
“You cannot hide from us,” they said. “Your ship is masked, but we see you.”
A chill gripped her chest. Fuck, Ruby, there are so many of them!
>>Don’t listen. They can’t touch you. Taunting is all they have.<<
“Such a waste of a mind. You think you can stop us, but there is nothing you can do,” they sneered.