In the end, Ayia would prefer death.
The process of probing memories to trigger a specific brain wave was horrific, even for Alex. He had done plenty of interrogation in his time, using the normal physical techniques. He had also played plenty of mental games, but this went beyond even his techniques. The chemicals, hormones and electrical impulses used could tear up an individual’s mind. If they did survive the process, their life was reduced to a state of drool and piss. They would probably even keep her alive in case any new information was discovered.
So he infiltrated the small base, landing in it with the false supplier ID and found it thankfully lacking much security, if any. He planned to kidnap the girl and leave the base under normal circumstances. He wouldn’t need his thugs to attack after all. And then a whole different sort of thug attacked. Alex had some experience with the God is Near crusaders in the past. He had fought with some of them, and had fought against some of them. That hated enemies could band together under one banner was either amazing or lunacy. Alex had no religious affinities, so he tended to think of them as lunatics.
He was at his ship, loading up supplies to keep up with his persona when the hangar opened up and the huge corvette came slowly in. He checked in with the main control room to find out what was going on, and when he heard nothing, he knew something was wrong. He quickly run down the hallway toward the main control room. The two men running the entire base were in a panic, their systems hacked. They were unable to communicate with the rest of the base or call out for help. He watched from the video display as the white robed crusaders disembarked from their ship and knew that everything was up. He needed to get to the girl as soon as possible.
He left the control room and went to the end of the hallway, just out of sight of the door that led to the control room. As he had thought would happen, two crusaders reached the control room and he heard the four shots that had ended the poor men’s lives. He checked his hidden side arm, a Boras Design laser gun. It was still fully charged with at least twenty full shots. It was a lethal weapon of precision, quiet and efficiency. He snuck up to the control room again and peeked inside. The two crusaders were keeping an eye on the monitors, guiding the rest of the attack force through the base. There was no real security on the base, and without any real eyes, they stood no chance. Alex kicked a chair and both of the men spun around. A red flash fired twice, directly between the eyes of both men and they fell to the ground instantly. He walked up to them and saw just a small black spot where the laser had bored into their brains and come out the other side. One of the monitors was destroyed when the laser came out the other side. He now had eighteen shots. He quickly removed the clothes and armor of the man who was closest to his size. He hoped no one would recognize him in the chaos. He sat and brought up a few more monitors, scanning through them to find out where the girl was. He couldn’t find her visually, so he punched in her name, and found where her quarters were. They were next to one of the smaller hangars. He got up to go when he noticed a small figure running off from that same hangar. It appeared to be a small girl.
He tucked the two bodies into a side closet and ran back out of the control room back to the main hangar, just in time to see a smaller cadre of the crusaders going down the route to the smaller hangar. He fell in line with them and followed them.
The slaughter was too easy. Crusaders shot down nearly every one that put up any kind of resistance, and sometimes even those that didn’t. Alex pretended to fire and purposely missed. He refused to be a part of this senseless murder. Killing he was ok with, but not murder.
Once any kind of resistance was put down and all the surviving scientists were gathered, their leader, a Samuel Easton, began shouting out for someone. Alex ducked back into what appeared to be a mess hall and waited. He knew the room where the girl was quartered at and waited. If they left without her, he would go in after her. When she came out with the captain of the Midnight Oil, he waited and hoped they wouldn’t just kill her too. He came too far for this mission to fail.
And then the mech had torn through the wall. Alex recognized it immediately. It was a mining mech, an older model. He was used to mechs, having been in and fought with many of the larger military versions available. But he knew them to be slow unwieldy beasts. These machines reacted to the pilots movements with some lag. They served as battlefield tanks, and were usually used for cover and firepower. This mech though, was fast, reacting quickly, and began turning the crusader victory into a rout in the opposite direction. The machine was either a truly unique pilot or was being controlled by a fantastic AI.
The crusaders didn’t stand a chance. Their weaponry did nothing to the machine, which was armed with its plasma arc, usually used to weld and melt metals in underground mines, and other assorted tools which it was using to deadly efficiency. Alex saw the leader, Samuel, grab Ayia and drag her towards where he was. Finally things fell into place. He didn’t recognize Alex as anything but one of his crusaders, and when he turned his back to him, Alex clubbed him with the end of his rifle. He took Ayia by the left arm and when she began to struggle, he hit her across the temple, knocking her out. He quickly stabbed her with a powerful depressant, one that was enough to keep her out for a while. He slung her over his shoulder and sped down the hallway.
Speeding past the fleeing crusaders, many who turned to fight the mech, Alex heard the sickening sound of plasma turning flesh into atoms. The green mist was probably still hanging in the air. He reached his ship and the confusion there allowed him to go inside unnoticed. With the hangar still wide open, he brought his Scythe online and rose out, being careful not to run into a small walkway in the higher portions of the hangar. Once cleared, he pointed the ship up, set the ship to use 100% of his fuel, and sped up out of the planet’s surface.
He typed up a small communication to be sent back to the Consortium explaining what had happened. He clearly couldn’t return to Mars and needed further instructions. It would take him nearly a day to reach the outer edge of the Alioth system in order to jump and he knew the entire system would be alerted in just a few hours. He knew it was very likely he would be tracked and if any of Alioth’s or Devil’s Den’s security made it out to the edge first, he was most likely not going to escape with his ship and possibly his life. He hoped to have an answer back from the Consortium before he reached the edge. He would be safe up until then. But he would need to prepare himself for the consequences of the chaos that was thrust upon him.
3124 – Alioth, Devil’s Den
Kale sat at his seat, bringing the Midnight Oil online as quick as possible. Already, the small hangar doors above him were opening, some control having been restored to the base. Deespa sat behind him. She shifted her seat forward next to Kale to get access to one of the dashboards there and brought up one of the screens. She began typing commands into it. Kale took one look at her. He thought of telling her to stop, as he would to anyone he hadn’t asked to do that, but that girl had proved herself in the mech and there was something about her that made her think quicker than anyone else, so he just let her go at it.
Gheno came rushing in.
“What is going on? Where is Ayia?”
“They took her and we’re going after her,” Kale replied, not looking back at him. The ship was in complete sleep mode while the researchers were scanning and working on the ship. He had to run through every single diagnostic and check-in to make sure there wasn’t a system offline. He tapped the screen and watched the progress fill up as each software core checked itself followed by its hardware. Everything was coming in green.
“Who took her? Those guys in the white?”
“Not them,” Kale answered, although he already put them on the list of those who needed to be dealt with, “Someone else was here and took her. We’re tracking his ship.”
“What is she doing?” Gheno asked, pointing at Deespa, “and where did she go?”
She spun around and held out her hand. “My name is Deespa?”
Gheno stood there with a confused look. “You have a name now?” he asked looking at Deespa, and then he turned to look at Kale, “She has a name now?”
Kale watched the last two diagnostics return green. Everything was clear and he fired up the reactor, powering the ship and creating the field of gravity that moved the ship. The Midnight Oil began to move upwards out of the hangar. A small screen lit up and Kale tapped it, bringing the image of Oganno up. He was still in the main tower.
“Both ships are being tracked. That smaller ship was a supply ship that came in just a few hours after you arrived here, but it was a planned supply run. I'm having the men run IDs now. In either case it’s being tracked,” Oganno looked back as someone in the background spoke to him, “Well, that ship just changed IDs, so it’s hiding something. We already have ParSec on it. It’s just now reaching orbit, fast burn. We have two scopes on it now. We can visually track it for quite some time.”
Kale nodded.
“Listen Kale. ParSec has already been called and they are scrambling interceptors after both ships. I have word that two cruisers, Apex and Sumica are on call too.”
“They have Ayia. You know how ParSec is. They shoot first and ask questions later. I got to get to that ship first,” Kale said.
“You don’t even have any weapons on your ship,” Oganno pointed out.
“I will figure something out. In the meantime, I need information from you.”
“I will do what I can. The further you get away the more lag there will be.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
There was a pause in the conversation.
“Kale…”
“Listen, there is a lot going on here. We use your super jump hook and find an ancient Dominion ship with a girl inside who is, well, beyond ordinary. Next thing you know we are being attacked by religious fanatics, a criminal misfit who’s in love with Ayia, and who knows who else.”
“Those religious fanatics,” Oganno started, “We know them a little too well.”
“Go on.”
“Their whole premise is that this God of theirs isn’t human and they are going to find him far away from here. They have always wanted the first and most cutting edge technology when it comes to deep space exploration.”
“So they attack you for it? Don’t you guys eventually sell your tech?” Kale was confused.
“We do. Quickly too. The problem with that church though is that it is not that they have the technology available, but that they control it. Somehow those that chased you right before your jump knew what they saw and sold it to the highest bidder, or the craziest bidder.
We had dealings with them a few years ago when he developed some deep space scanning software and they tried to buy it from us. We said no, since it was to be an open market product and they wanted full rights. Then they tried to buy GorpSpace completely and when that failed, they tried a hostile takeover. We won our lawsuit against them and hadn’t heard much since, although we have thwarted a few attempts at espionage.”
“Corporate takeover is one thing, but attacking and killing people? Do they think they can get away with that?” Kale asked.
“They hold a lot of political sway, even on Earth and Coran. They have gotten away with a lot in the past. They hold very little sway here though. This was a bold move. Alioth may retaliate.”
Kale was glad he had the ship refueled as he watched the gauges for the hydrogen slowly tick down. He had more than enough to burn out of the planet’s gravity well but he was worried he would run out when he needed the fuel the most. Deepsa continued to type away at her screen. At times he would glance over but wouldn’t recognize what she was doing. Twenty minutes after launching, just as they broke out of the planet’s main gravity hold he asked Gheno to see if he knew what she was doing. He stood over her shoulder and started studying her code.
A green light blinked on the com screen. Kale hit the button and Oganno’s face appeared once again.
“Kale, that ship is still being tracked visually by scopes on the planet on stations. It’s even being tracked by ParSec’s main scope on Alioth. I have a likely jump point he is headed to.”
“Any luck on IDs,” Kale asked, reviewing the data was uploading to him.
“No, nothing yet. The Apex is already in route and is going to get there before the ship does. I have already let them know about the hostage.”
Kale allowed his computer to parse the data and input it into his navigation display. A 3d screen of the system emerged above his head, showing the route from Devil’s Den to the jumping point Ayia’s kidnapper was headed to. Time calculated in and he could keep up with him, and arrive about thirteen minutes after they did. The whole in system sling would take seventeen hours. A few more points of light appeared, showing the projected location of the other ship as well as the Apex. Alioth’s cruiser, which was coming from Alioth, was actually nearer in the system. Kale typed in the sling commands and waited for the power to build up. He sat his head back into the chair.
He had seventeen hours to figure out a way of saving Ayia, without any weapons.
“Kale,” Oganno’s voice again, “There are two minor modifications that still need to be done to your jump hook. Gheno, you need to get down into the reactor room and a couple of us here will walk you through getting everything ready. You will want to hurry though. In a few hours, the lag in communication between us is going to become unbearable.”
Gheno looked at Kale, who nodded his head, and the young boy went running out of the cabin. Kale saw the numbers come to one hundred percent, and he clicked the sling command. A small bubble of gravity formed in front of the ship, several times stronger than anything around the ship. The instant creation of gravity pulled the Midnight Oil directly into it at an incredibly high speed. The bubble then vanished and the momentum slung the ship out into the blackness of space. The small red and black planet vanished behind them.
Kale swung the chair around and reached out to Deespa.
“Ok, what are you doing?”
“You need to talk to me,” she said blankly, looking directly at Kale.
Kale squinted his eyes. “I really want that to make sense somehow.”
“You need to talk to me. My voices, my words. I can tell you how to do things better, faster, but I can’t talk to you with my mouth,” the young girl was trying hard to explain something to Kale.
Kale scratched his chin. “These are the words that let you do stuff like in the Mech?”
Deespa beamed. “Yes.”
“Are there two of you?”
“YES! You understand now. I think I understand now.”
“Were you talking to me on that old ship?” Kale probed.
“I don’t remember, but maybe?” Deespa shrugged her shoulders and continued typing into the screen, filling the screen with data faster than Kale could keep up.
“You know how crazy that sounds?”
“I think I'm starting to understand that too,” she said, a little less enthused than before.
Kale could see it. She was at the same time overwhelmed as she was completely capable. She was after all just a twelve year old, no matter how old she really was or how long she was in that pod.
“Can we save Ayia?”
“Yes!” she turned again, energetic once more, “I just can’t do it this way. The words and pictures come too fast.”
“Well,” Kale stopped. For nearly his entire adult life he had managed on his own. He relied on no one else unless it benefitted him. He resolved all of his problems alone. But he had never been in a situation like this. He knew he had grown fond of Ayia, no matter how much he teased her. He had grown far too comfortable to having her nearby, somewhere in the ship. He now had to rely on a girl he discovered on an ancient ship further out in space than anyone had ever gone. He had to take that next step and trust what he didn’t know or understand. It was dangerously close to religion.
“What do you need me to do?”
“I am making a door. I need you to help me open it,” she said, never looking up from the code she was inputting.
“A door?”
She nodded.
“You're going to have to get better at this.”
“Yes. Yes. I know. I need a way to talk to you more clearly, faster. I can’t do that with my mouth or my hands, so I have to open a door from me into your ship so that your ship can talk for me.”
“Ok,” Kale studied what she said for a moment, “that makes more sense now.”
She continued working on her code at a furious pace for nearly twenty more minutes. Kale made rounds between checking on her and checking on Gheno’s work on the jump hook. He hadn’t seen the reactor room since they had landed and found it a mess of wires. His shocked look was enough for Gheno.
“It’s ok Kale, everything is hooked up correctly. At some point we can tuck it all away.”
At least that is what Oganno had reassured them. The old man and some of his co-workers were uploading calibrating data to Gheno’s tablet and he was inputting everything into the reactors computer, one line at a time and then running the diagnostic every single time. Kale attempted to explain to Gheno what Deespa had told him about the door and wanting to talk and he appeared to understand right away.
“It’s the AI Kale. It IS inside of her. That door she’s talking about is a transcoding program most likely. Think of it as a translator. It’s going to interpret the AI in her head into code on the Midnight’s computer.”
“Figures you’d get it,” Kale glumly said.
Two hours later, Deespa called them both up from the reactor room. She was in the ‘Hall’, behind the pod.
“It’s ready.”
She instructed Gheno how to hook up the pod into one of the data ports for the ship.
“To do this, I must use your ship’s main computer. Do I have your permission to do so?” she asked Kale.
The Emperor's Daughter (Sentinel Series Book 1) Page 24