by M. D. Cooper
A console that looked like the original control center for the main satellite dish filled a whole wall of the room. Several workstations sat in front of it, their displays dark.
As Ty tried to make sense of the various control systems, one of the consoles came to life. The screen, which had been black, glowed at the edges and several lines of text scrolled down its face.
“Well, hey there,” Amstrad shouted. He crossed the room with obvious excitement. Ignoring the chair, he leaned over the console to tap feverishly on its control inputs. When the screen had filled with a mosaic of images, he finally dropped into the chair and brought a holodisplay to life in front of him.
He stuck his fingers in the middle of the holodisplay and manipulated bits of light. As he worked, he mumbled to himself, and Ty could only make out certain words. A phrase that he thought he understood was: Damn Weapon Born.
“God damn Weapon Born, God damn. God damn. Weapon Born. Weapon Born think they can do whatever they want. Think they run Sol. I’ll clean them up. Might tie the queen up and make her tell me what she knows. She’s got the whole database. The whole Psion database. Fugia didn’t want to give it to me. I might take it out of her.”
Ty’s mouth tasted like dust. He wasn’t sure how much time passed as Amstrad worked feverishly at the console, but eventually the main dish came to life. In a few flashes of motion, Amstrad ran around the room checking additional consoles, coming to a stop at the one that seemed to control the silver cylinders.
With a shout of joy, Amstrad typed feverishly on the keyboard in front of the cylinder console and then threw himself into a chair with his arms in the air, fists clenched, shouting in triumph.
“I did it. I did! I can’t believe it.” He turned, pointing at Ty with a huge grin on his face.
“Did what?” Ty asked, still barely able to speak.
“I caught me a Weapon Born,” Amstrad said. He grinned like a shark.
ACTIONS ON ENTRY
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Equatorial Junk Yard
REGION: Vesta, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
The corridors were all strangely clean. Crash floated along behind the human crew, resting on cool strips of conduit along the walls before kicking off again, wings spread. He wondered how the parrots had managed to keep everything so tidy without the help of an NSAI, and then they met two small drones moving slowly down the corridor cleaning as they went.
At the sight of the drones, Grichs immediately raised a fist and brought his rifle to his shoulder, sighting in as the rest of them took up defensive positions along the corridor.
As soon as it became clear the drones were merely custodial, with no offensive capability, Ngoba laughed heartily and slapped Grichs on the shoulder. “Good watching out, my friend,” he said. “You never know when a sweeping drone will attack your face.”
The soldier gave him a dirty look and lowered his rifle. “You know very well they could have attacked us,” he said.
“Of course, they could,” Kirre said.
Grichs nodded toward the slowly moving drones. “They could still try to attack us. They could have grenades mounted on their shells, wired to detonate on remote. They could release poison gas. They could emit sonic waves that rupture our eardrums. They could burn our feet off with radiation.”
“Hold on now,” Parva said. “You couldn’t fit an emitter in that thing.”
“I’m just saying,” Grichs said. “Don’t tell me you can’t find multiple ways to kill someone with a cleaning drone. I know, I’ve been in prison.”
“You saw someone use a cleaning drone to commit murder in prison?”
Grichs nodded. “Yes, I did. Cut the guys face clean off. You’d think a squeegee was only good for clearing spills, but it will do terrible things to your nose at high speed.”
Ngoba bit a knuckle to stop himself from laughing. He waved a gloved hand to get them moving down the corridor again. “Come on now,” he said. “We’ve got a job to do. We don’t know how far away those explosions were.”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea of how far away they were,” Kirre said. “We’ve got maybe twenty minutes. That hasn’t changed.”
“Hey,” Parva said. “What about the Enfield score? You aren’t trying to pull a bait-and-switch here, are you, Starl?”
“Worry about what’s in front of you,” Ngoba said. “We get the parrots, then we move to the Enfield site.”
They passed what had been crew quarters, now stripped and empty. Crash perched on a door and studied the bare room, feeling like something had been taken from him.
He continued to experience the juxtaposition of old memories combined with the strange variations in gravity that tugged at his muscle memory. Back when the Hesperia Nevada had been floating burns in space, these rotating crew sections would have had mostly normal gravity. Now, everything was at Vesta-normal, which was barely any gravity at all.
When they reached the command deck, Crash floated past Grichs to land on the headrest of the empty commander’s seat. It was from here that he had controlled all the command systems of the Hesperia Nevada.
He reached out now and pulled all the various systems into his mind. The ship extended from his body, like a suit of power armor. He felt the engines, the network systems, and every internal sensor throughout the ship. Even the communication array offered a look far away from Vesta, expanding the reach of his physical eyes. Crash blinked and bobbed his head, loving the familiar feeling of being one with the ship. He had forgotten how wonderful it was. The power and possibility of sitting here was something he had traded for the safety of a home.
What if he moved all the birds back onto the Hesperia Nevada? What if they took the ship to Cruithne and transplanted everyone from the fountain here, and charted a course for anywhere else in Sol?
No, no. He couldn’t do that. Ships needed fuel. Birds needed food. There was no way he could pretend they would survive out on their own without some form of cooperation with humans.
It was the same train of thought he’d been following for months now. Partnership was the only way they would survive.
Crash looked back at the humans and realized they’d entered the room behind him. They had been watching him as he closed his eyes to experience the ship.
Crash asked.
Ngoba shrugged.
Ngoba grinned.
Crash sent a laugh over the Link, although he still wasn’t sure what the statement meant exactly. He would have to mull it over on the trip back to Cruithne.
He checked the aviaries, finding the various bio sources still in a slowed state. Nothing had changed since his conversation with Silver.
That was good news, but it also didn’t tell them how much time they had. They would need to reach the aviaries and find a way to either get the parrots off the ship, or get the ship off Vesta.
He wanted to get the ship off Vesta.
He realized that was all he wanted.
Ngoba rubbed his chin.
Kirre went to the pilot’s console to run her own diagnostics on the ship’s systems
. Over the Link, she corroborated Crash’s earlier assessment.
The Hesperia Nevada had no real offensive capability. It had the upgraded hull that would defend against space-based debris, but nothing capable of protecting them from projectiles. The ship was not a fast mover. It would have to leave Vesta slowly and steadily, passing directly through the combat zone.
Crash’s heart sank as he understood taking the Hesperia Nevada off Vesta was suicide. At least for now.
Ngoba looked from Crash to Kirre.
Kirre raised her eyebrows.
Everyone stared at Ngoba.
Kirre’s mouth dropped open.
Crash said, not sure if he could do it.
Kirre slapped the console.
Behind Ngoba, Parva cursed and stepped into the doorway.
Ngoba just smiled and hooked his thumbs in his utility harness. He tilted his head in what Crash thought was a very parrot-like expression.
“Now, now, Caitlin,” Ngoba said aloud, his voice soothing. “Why are you going to get all angry now? I invited you on this score, didn’t I? Doesn’t that show a little bit of trust on my part?”
“I don’t give a shit if you trust me or not,” Parva spat. “I don’t have to trust you. I followed you this far, and you’ve demonstrated you’re a crazy person. I’m taking my out while I can get it.”
Ngoba glanced upward. “What makes you think you’ve got any better chance of getting through that battle up there?”
“Everything I said about the Hesperia Nevada applies to the shuttle,” Kirre said.
“We got down here, didn’t we?” Parva asked. “I thought hitting the Enfield lab was a good plan. I’ve still got the coordinates. I can follow through with that. That also gives us more time. Whatever’s happening on the ground will be a thousand kilometers away.”
Parva looked at Grichs. “I’ll go alone,” she said, “or you can come too. What do you want to do?”
Grichs stood with a terrified expression. He shifted his gaze between Crash, Kirre, and Ngoba.
Crash sensed a change in the temperature in the room and realized the soldier was crying. His suit had adjusted to the change in internal humidity.
“Damn it,” Grichs told Parva. “I’m going with you. I always loved all those birds at Night Park, and I love Crash. More than anybody. But I’m not going to die on this ship.”
He looked at Crash, switching to Link.
Crash bobbed his head and spread his wings. “I love you too!” he squawked aloud.
“Oh, stars!” Grichs said, sniffling. He turned quickly and followed Parva through the doorway. The sound of their boots clicking receded as they disappeared.
Ngoba shook his head and then laughed. He crossed the command deck to the sensor control console, activating the external array. He looked at Kirre. “You still have remote control of the shuttle?” he asked.
“Yep,” Kirre said. “I’ve got the security tokens.”
“Excellent work. We let them disengage, then once they’ve got a separate flight plan, you take control and send them out ahead of us to run interference.”
“That seems pretty cold, boss,” Kirre said.
“Hey,” Ngoba said. “We could operate the shuttle remotely, with or without them in it. They chose to get in it. Didn’t I say that once we invited a little chaos into the plan, opportunities would present themselves? Case in point. Now, I like Crash’s offer of hacking a JC ship, but I also suggest we throw on a few more layers of deception. I think our next job is to hack our registry. This thing looks something like a Heartbridge clinic ship, so let’s play that part. Once we’re inside the Jovian perimeter, we move to their rear support area and go from there.”
Kirre frowned as she thought through the plan for herself. “We can’t hide our origin, but we can hope they don’t look too hard.”
Ngoba returned to the captain’s console and activated the display. He ran through the navigation systems to lay in a flight plan.
Crash perched on the headrest behind Ngoba’s head, watching as the path took shape inside the ship’s computers.
“I’ve got shuttle separation,” Kirre said.
“Excellent. Check my work.”
Kirre reviewed his flight plan and nodded. “Looks good.”
Ngoba pointed at Kirre. “Let’s do it,” he said.
Tapping several activation icons on her console, Kirre brought the Hesperia Nevada to life. The engines came online as the deuterium bottle provided a status update. The adjustment thrusters showed green, ready to lift them out of Vesta’s weak gravity well.
“I’m ready to fly, boss,” Kirre said.
“Then make it so, my friend.”
In the holotank in the middle of the command deck, a model of the surface took shape showing the scrapyard with the Hesperia Nevada in its center, surrounded by other ships in various states of disassembly.
The shuttle still floated to one side of the larger ship, looking like a pigeon trying to snuggle a turkey. At the upper edges of the holodisplay, the ghosts of other ships floated in and out of the periphery, reminding them there was still a battle above. Vibrations in the deck also indicated the closing presence of ground forces.
“Here we go,” Kirre said. She activated the flight plan to take them off the surface.
In the second after Kirre started the exit sequence, Crash experienced a lightning stab of pain more intense than anything he’d ever felt.
His brain seemed lit by fire, crackling with electricity right down the center of his
skull. He felt like he was being torn in half.
He was trying to make sense of what was happening, when something like an iron grip closed around his thoughts, and squeezed out the light.
CAGES
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Emerson Sharp Communications Station
REGION: Vesta, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
The name ‘Weapon Born’ sent a wave of disgust through Ty. All he knew of the strange form of sentient AIs was that they were made by copying children. The technique had been outlawed at least fifty years in the past, as far as he knew, but that hadn’t stopped nearly a thousand of them from having been discovered throughout Sol in various research sites.
Of course, everyone in Sol knew Lyssa; the Weapon Born ambassador to the Terran assembly was the focal point for hostility between the Psion AIs and humanity. As far as Ty knew, Lyssa was caught up in the endless relations between the two hostile factions. She had come to represent Cold War.
Amstrad was tittering to himself with obvious joy. He clapped, kicking his feet out like a little kid. “I did it! I did it. I copied the Weapon Born.”
He scooted quickly to peer into the console’s display, which was showing the status of the first silver cylinder mounted beside it.
All Ty could see from where he was held by the drone was a series of flashing icons. Amstrad paused to stare at the cylinder—still shaking his head in what looked like disbelief—then cracked his knuckles, rolled his shoulders, and bent to the console to focus on what became several hours of data entry.
From where he hung, held by the drone, Ty could only guess at what Amstrad was up to. He couldn’t see the screen, and besides, he wasn’t a programmer.
Based on what Amstrad had just accomplished—which was copying some carrier signal using the satellite array—Ty guessed the man would be transferring the data to any number of secure storage sites. Just based on all the evidence around them, it was safe to assume Amstrad was a hoarder, of data and any number of other oddities.