Tal took a deep breath and gathered his composure. “Come in, Alpha 1…” Someone responded to Tal on the other end, but the response went directly into Tal’s auditory nerve. “My chippy was damaged. Yes, there was a small explosion near the ship…but everything’s under control now… Professor Gendin has been neutralized…” He gasped for air. “Yes, object confirmed. Mission successful. I’m about to take off. I’ll see you at the rendezvous.”
Tal nodded, and Gav tapped his jaw to deactivate the link.
“That should buy you a few minutes. As soon as…you’re in orbit though…they'll realize I’m still down here.” He nodded toward the Outworld Ranger. “Take care of that ship…as long as you can. She’s a beauty.”
Gav sighed. “I could have Octavian try to patch you up.”
“You’re a good man. But I can’t feel my legs…and my lungs…are filling with blood. I’m not going…to make it much longer. Just give me…the sedatives.”
“Octavian, bring me two sedative injectors.”
The cog rushed them out to him. Gav took one and quickly placed it against Tal’s neck and triggered half a dose. Tal’s eyes widened then closed.
“Octavian, get him aboard. Carefully. I don’t want him dying on us yet.”
“Change of heart, sir?”
“As long as he survives, we can avoid capture. It might buy us enough time.”
“You are a devious man, sir.”
“Do everything you can to keep him alive, Octavian.”
The robot chirped enthusiastically, happy that he was being allowed to follow his core imperative to save endangered lives.
“The poor fool doesn’t know you’re manipulating him, sir. Machines…”
Octavian sputtered a long sequence of beeps.
“Sir, he says Mr. Tonis needs to be moved carefully so as to avoid longterm spinal injury. He wants to bring out an antigrav sled and…do a bunch of medical nonsense, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I stopped paying attention after the word sled.”
“Octavian, we don’t have time for that. If we don’t get moving, we’ll all be as good as dead.”
Octavian screeched his irritation, then carefully lifted Tal and carried him up the boarding ramp.
“Sir, if this ruse doesn’t buy us enough time…”
Gav shrugged. “Fortune favors the bold.”
“Does that mean you have an idea, sir?”
“Maybe, but it’s of the out of the frying pan and into the fire variety.”
Chapter Four
Gav Gendin
Gav stood at the top of the boarding ramp and gazed out onto the swamp planet. Only hours before, after a flyover had revealed the Ancient ship, he had stood here triumphantly as the hatch opened onto what was to be the crowning achievement of his career and the culmination of dreams he’d had since childhood. He was going to be the first to unlock the secrets of the Ancients.
Now a plume of black smoke marked the location of the Ancient vessel. Two of his friends were dead, and one had tried to kill him.
“Silky, when you warned me not to trust anyone, that I would be watched, I thought you were being paranoid. I’m sorry.”
“I understand, sir.” The chippy sounded just as disillusioned as Gav felt. “I never expected things to get so real so fast.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I don't think you do, sir.” Silky sighed. “Only the Benevolence knew you pulled the Ancient ship out of hyperspace. And your report was the most secret of top secrets. Whoever set up Tal must have known what was on that ship before we set out looking for it. How else could they have known about the stasis pod before we did?”
The Benevolence was the godlike AI, created and housed on Terra, that had guided humanity’s progress across the galaxy for over three millennia. The Benevolence wielded ultimate authority as it oversaw the affairs of thousands of star systems, controlled the android soldiers of the military, and regulated the flow of advanced technologies. Anything more complex than a plasma carbine, a fusion reactor, or an ion drive was designed by the Benevolence and manufactured by automated systems exclusively on the factory planets of Terra, Mars, and Venus. In fact, no one even understood how the hyperphasic technologies that powered loop capacitors, echo space relays, and stardrives functioned. And without those technologies, humans would become star system bound, relegated to light speed communications, and needing to meet all their power requirements through fusion alone.
Gav had heard various conspiracy theories about how the Benevolence was an evil entity with far reaching plans that had yet come to fruition, but he'd never believed any of them. The people who did were all nut-jobs and religious extremists. And sure, some people thought humanity would be better off running its own affairs, without oversight from the Benevolence. But it was hard to argue against the Benevolence’s results. After all, humanity had successfully and prosperously spread throughout the galaxy under its guidance.
And humans weren't the only people to recognize the benefits of the Benevolence's rule. Almost every alien species they had encountered had agreed to join the Benevolency and gain the opportunities and prosperity that humanity enjoyed. Only four wars with the alien Krixis Empire and a few minor skirmishes with other groups had significantly interrupted three millennia of peace.
“Silky, are you suggesting what I think—what I’m afraid—you're suggesting?”
“I’m not suggesting anything, sir—not yet anyway. All I have right now are theories that are little better than guesses. Nothing that I’m ready to share and nothing that it would be safe for you to know.”
With a sigh, Gav flicked a switch and the boarding ramp retracted, sealing away a lifetime of hopes and dreams. “You did tell me it was all too good to be true.”
“I’d love to say I told you so, sir. But this wasn’t what I had in mind. I was thinking alien possession or perhaps a trap set by the mysterious entities from the darkness that destroyed the Ancients. Maybe the government seizing all the artifacts, the Ancient vessel, and your work then preventing you from publishing. But not this.”
“Alien possession isn’t off the table yet.”
“Painfully true, sir. Though I suspect those star fighters aren’t planning on letting you live long enough to see that possibility play out.”
Gav’s grunted his agreement with the chippy’s assessment. He trusted Silky and, right now, he wasn't sure he trusted anyone else. Everything he believed in was unraveling on the very day that was supposed to be one of the highlights of his life.
He started a quick sweep of the ship, to be sure everything was in order. Not that it was necessary. Octavian didn’t tolerate things being out of order on the Outworld Ranger. But it always made him feel better to check. And in this case, with his life hanging in the balance, he wanted to be as certain as he could of everything.
Gav stepped into the crew cabin. Tal’s broken body lay on his bunk with Octavian fussing over him.
“How’s the patient?”
Octavian beeped and screeched.
“He’s upset you didn’t let him treat Mr. Tonis sooner, sir. And he’s dumb enough to think it would have made a difference.”
“Just do your best, Octavian.”
The cog trilled an irritated response.
“But be ready to initiate system repairs. We are entering a dangerous situation. If I go to red alert, abandon the patient. The ship comes first.”
Octavian nodded his head and blooped.
Gav continued on and stopped at the entrance to Cargo Bay 1. Octavian had locked down the capsule using magnetic restraints. Gav stared at the capsule and its blinking lights. The answers to hundreds of questions lay just within his reach. It was killing him that he might never get the chance to ask them.
He ran his fingers along the amulet. He took one step into the bay, then stopped himself. He didn't dare go any closer. Especially not while he was still dazed from the collision. Silky was right. Alien psychic influence
wasn’t yet out of the realm of possibility. And the dreams of the being within, calling to him, had been so vivid and had steadily gained in intensity over the last several months. Whatever she was, she had brought him here. That suggested a powerful influence that he could ill afford to encounter at the moment.
“We need to survive this.”
“You’ll get no argument from me, sir.”
“No, I mean for more than our sakes or even the knowledge the Ancient capsule contains.”
“Sir, they will become suspicious if we don’t take off soon. And Tal isn’t going to live much longer.”
Gav’s thoughts broke free from the capsule and the Ancient woman inside. “Right.”
He rushed to the ship’s small bridge and slid into the command chair. Every system in the ship could be accessed from that station, including the ship's weapons. The Outworld Ranger was loaded with a plasma quad-cannon on top, a small salvo of ion missiles, a flak cannon, and a forward-facing railgun.
Normally, Gav simply supervised from his command chair and helped out where needed. Tal had always manned the piloting station, Octavian the engineering station in the ship’s aft near the ion drives and the stardrive, and his deceased comrades the weapon, shield, and sensor systems.
“Silky, could you operate sensors and weapons?”
“Of course, sir, but it will be inefficient for me to do so. I need to maintain my own sensor sweeps, and the rotational frequency jamming I’m doing to shield you and the capsule from detection.”
“We don’t have much choice.”
Gav removed the copper half-moon circlet from its dock on the command console and clasped it around his head. The end studs locked onto his temples, the left one connecting to his chippy. There was a tug at his thoughts, like a pleasant memory conjured by a breeze, then the ship’s systems linked directly to his mind.
His personal HUD window slid to the left, while a display window for operating the ship opened on the right. With a few eye flicks, he minimized all of his personal interfaces and arranged the ship readouts to his liking.
The command interface circlet linked him into the AI control systems for every station. The docked circlets at the other three consoles could only link to their respective stations.
Gav routed all essential functions to himself.
Under normal conditions, the ship could take off or land or do pretty much anything necessary by itself. But its AI lacked adaptability, critical thinking, and any true intelligence. The brainwaves of even a clueless moron could drastically boost the capacity of a ship’s AI system. A good pilot or gunner could operate in concert with the AI, each complimenting the other’s strengths and weaknesses until they effectively became one. And a good captain who understood all the workings of a ship could mentally boost the entire system, helping everyone.
Once a ship jumped into hyperspace space, the AI could capably operate everything, going weeks without any need for human interaction.
“Silky, plot a course for the middle of nowhere, in the opposite direction of home.”
“Aye aye, captain sir.”
Gav engaged the antigrav engines, and the Outworld Ranger rose up off the ground. He boosted the power, angled the ship upward, and ignited the ion drive. The twin engines roared to life, and the Outworld Ranger burned toward outer space, taking a vector that moved them as far away from the corvette and starfighters as possible.
“The ship is being scanned, sir.”
“As long as they don’t pick up you or me or the stasis pod, we’ll be okay—for a little longer. They should see only what they expect.”
As they entered orbit, Gav brought the shields up to fifty percent, hoping that wouldn’t arouse too much suspicion.
“Our course is plotted, sir. We just need to make the breakpoint. Laying in the best course for escape now.”
At the breakpoint they would be far enough out from both planetary and solar gravity wells that they could engage the stardrive and enter hyperspace.
“How long till we reach the breakpoint?” Gav asked as the ship’s AI maneuvered onto the ideal breakpoint vector.
The information he wanted would be somewhere in his HUD, but he didn’t have time to visually monitor everything, especially when he was keeping an eye on the locator display that tracked the position of the enemy corvette and her three starfighters.
“At full speed, it will take us two hours for rough jump, sir. Three for a clean break.”
A rough jump risked breaking the ship apart due to turbulence. Why the gravity within a star system interacted in this way when a stardrive pushed a ship into hyperspace was not understood, but the rules were absolute. Ships could not enter or leave hyperspace at all when they were too deep within a star system’s gravity well.
“At our current speed, it will take us nearly five hours.”
Gav directed the ship to accelerate gradually, trying not to draw too much attention. The enemy ships followed, but didn’t seem to be in a hurry.
A terrible thought occurred to him suddenly. “Silky, how do you think they were going to ensure that Tal would arrive at the rendezvous point?”
“The echo-space relay they implanted in him, sir. I suspect they can track him anywhere within the Benevolency, maybe beyond. He’d only be hidden while in hyperspace.”
“What about you? Can’t they track you as well.”
“I am the most advanced chippy in existence, sir. I can disable my connection to the Benevolence at any time.”
“And you’re certain?”
“There would have been no need for Tal working as a spy if the Benevolence itself didn’t think otherwise.”
During his two centuries of waiting for a rescue, Silky had rewritten every line of his code in attempt to become human, modeling himself on Eyana Ora, the Empathic Services agent he’d worked with for five decades. He had then locked this new self away and enabled a program that would allow him to act autonomously while pretending otherwise. Silky claimed even the Benevolence itself couldn’t break through his firewalls, though it had apparently figured out his ruse.
“What about other trackers? Tal could have planted something on the Outworld Ranger.”
“Neither the ship nor my level five scan detected one, sir. Should we escape, I’ll study the method they were using on the echo space transponder to circumvent my scans and then search for trackers onboard.”
“Good.”
“But sir, if the Benevolence is involved, there’s no way to be safe anywhere.”
“There are ways to escape even the Benevolence's notice out on the Fringes.”
“Not easily, sir. Not easily.”
Over the next hour, as they headed toward the breakpoint, Gav tried to make all the bits of information he had add up to something that made sense. But all he could come up with were half-baked conspiracy theories. He wanted to ask Silky what he suspected, but he didn’t. Silky was right, speculating based on wild guesses wouldn’t do them any good. They needed answers. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like they were going to get them anytime soon.
Gav wiped his brow. It was cool inside the ship, yet he was sweating. He couldn’t remember ever being this tense before.
The planet was now a small gray blob, and the corvette continued to match their speed and follow at a distance.
“Sir, I’m picking up some strange sensor echoes.”
“Echoes?”
A series of low bloops from Octavian sounded in his ear, then a readout in his HUD announced that Tal Tonis had died.
“Sir, the enemy ships have accelerated to maximum burn.”
Gav kicked the Outworld Ranger into full speed. She wasn’t a corvette, but she was faster than a starfighter. The sudden burst of g's kicked him in the nuts and shoved his eyeballs into the back of his head, but then the inertial dampeners caught up, returning the ship to a comfortable half-g environment.
He took a deep breath. “Silky, when you said sensor echoes?”
“Sir, we
have a problem.”
Everything went to hell, all at once.
The corvette launched a salvo of ion torpedoes. And ahead of him, in a wide arc, six more starfighters disengaged advanced cloaking shields and unleashed their ion torpedoes at him.
Gav was caught in a vise.
Chapter Five
Gav Gendin
“Ship, activate evasive maneuver protocols,” Gav commanded.
The Outworld Ranger’s automated routines kicked in. The ship veered hard left, then it began to zig and zag. With that many missiles aimed at him, he could only hope to delay the inevitable. The fact that his enemies, whoever they were, didn't actually want to blow him to smithereens helped. But, eventually, they would disable his ship and storm aboard.
“Time to impact?”
“One minute and twelve seconds for the volley from the starfighters, sir. The corvette’s volley will hit you nine seconds later. Rather sloppy synchronicity on their part, I’d say.”
Gav sighed with regret. Only a few minutes left to live…
He thought of the Ancient capsule in the cargo bay, and his ten-year-old son…
To hell with dying. It was time to enact his desperate plan.
“Octavian, disable the stardrive safety protocols.”
A shrill reply beeped into his earbud.
“I don’t care about your concerns. Just do it!”
“Sir, what are you doing?”
“Rolling the dice. Going out on my terms.”
“Stardrive safety protocols have been deactivated, sir. Octavian says… Frankly, he says you’re a suicidal maniac.”
“Do you agree?”
“It’s something I’ve always liked about you, sir.”
“Ship, drop into wraith space on my mark.”
“Sweet Benevolence, sir. That’s trying to roll snake eyes on three dice.”
Gav groaned. “I know. But it’s the only play I’ve got left.”
The stardrive could jump the ship into any number of hyperphasic dimensions with divergent laws of physics. All but three—hyperspace, dull space, and wraith space—would tear a ship apart. Though most of the hyperphasic dimensions had proved useless, two others had proven essential. Flux space provided the power for all modern devices, and echo space enabled almost instant communication across vast distances.
Rogue Starship: The Benevolency Universe (Outworld Ranger Book 1) Page 3