by J. S. Morin
“Alert. Nanobot infestation. All personnel not assigned to eradication squads report to escape pods immediately. Repeat, all personnel not assigned to eradication squads report to escape pods immediately. This is not a drill.”
“Trust me,” Carl said. “It’s a drill.”
# # #
Captain Dominguez sat in her throne-like chair on the bridge of the Bradbury and fumed. “Get Wizard Levinson up here to protect the bridge. I want four-man teams with any scanners that can detect these electronic vermin and a wizard each. I need all other personnel except for the scanning crews and bridge officers off this ship. Shuttles, escape pods, I don’t care how. We need to spread out and minimize the damage. And I want that Captain Malcolm up here at once!”
Dominguez pounded a fist on the chair’s arm. This Malcolm was going to pay. The timing was just too convenient. That miserable hunk of metal had been aboard less than twenty minutes when the outbreak was first reported. If he was lucky, Malcolm was just a victim in this himself and the pirates who attacked him were to blame. She wouldn’t have put it past Zammos to lay an ambush that would expose Harmony Bay’s involvement in the Disputed Zone. She’d walked them right into it. Someone was going to pay for all this, and it wasn’t going to be her.
“Petrov, what are you still doing here?” she demanded.
The security chief looked up from his station. “Sir, we’re unable to locate Captain Malcolm. The security team that went with the medics hasn’t reported in.”
“Then use internal scanners…” Sometimes Captain Dominguez felt as if she had to do everything herself. She stalked around to look over the Lieutenant Commander’s shoulder.
“That’s just it,” Petrov said, pointing to a line of dead readouts. “We don’t have any internal scanner readings. Someone’s cut the feed.”
Though it was muted on the bridge, the klaxons’ warning seeped through the bridge doors. Through the front window of the ship, a line of escape pods floated past, tiny thrusters glowing as they evacuated to a safe distance from the infested Bradbury. “The work of the nanobots?”
“Impossible to say. The med bay didn’t have any viable specimens to test their functionality.”
Something wasn’t adding up. Where was Captain Malcolm? Why were nanobots going after personnel and specific ship systems at once? How many different types of nanobots had been brought aboard her ship? If this was a Zammos plot, it was a thorough one. They weren’t exposing the Bradbury; they were tearing it apart from the inside.
“Sir!” Ensign Brennan shouted. “Our two shuttles just came under fire. Minimal damage, but engines are down on both.”
Dominguez whirled to face the communications officer. “What fired on them?”
“We have a light freighter broadcasting no ID. It’s on an intercept course. Appears to have been using the planet’s second moon as cover from our initial scans.”
“Open fire.”
“Sir, gunnery stations are unmanned. They were part of the evac.”
“Then set gunnery control to automated. I don’t want that ship boarding us.”
It seemed ludicrous. No ship that size should have posed a threat to the Bradbury. But as she watched its progress on the tactical monitor, Captain Dominguez stared in disbelief. The pilot, whoever he was, dodged incoming fire faster than the computer-controlled servos could adjust their aim. The ship was coming in too fast. It was on a course to ram them. Even as Dominguez braced for the impact of a suicide attack, she caught a good look at the incoming vessel.
She recognized that ship. It was the Mobius.
# # #
Amy yawned, trying to force herself awake after an afternoon of staring blankly at a comm panel. Her sign came when the escape pods floated into scanner range. After that, reflex had taken over.
Piloting a ship against human opponents involved split-second decision-making, an intuitive understanding of what the opposing pilot or gunner was trying to do, and the sort of subconscious reactions that only years of experience could build. Flying against an automated targeting system was just a matter of steering around predetermined points in space where terajoule bolts of plasma would be whizzing past. Just an obstacle course. Not even a very hard one.
Amy found herself wishing she’d thought to bring to a pint of coffee from the kitchen before settling in, but a last-second trip to the washroom was the last thing she needed before riding to the rescue as the key cog in the plan. Instead, she found herself in want of a shot of adrenaline to wake her up.
One of the plasma bolts from the Bradbury came within a meter of the cockpit.
“When you said we were better off without shields, I thought you were crazy,” Roddy shouted over the comm from the gunnery turret. “But I at least thought you had a plan.”
“Sorry, just needed a little jolt to get me going,” Amy replied. “Won’t come that close again.”
“You did that on purpose?”
“Oh, quit your whining and clip the wings off those shuttles.”
“This station wasn’t built for laaku.”
“Well, someone didn’t think through this part of the plan. If you want to switch places and fly…”
“No!”
Amy smirked. Mort couldn’t work a holo-projector, let alone operate a turret. Archie couldn’t squeeze a trigger if it meant risking human lives. That left two laaku, and Roddy was taller than Shoni by three centimeters. He was that much closer to reaching the rotation pedals and seeing through the heads-up display at the same time.
Between incoming fire from the Bradbury, Amy kept their course as smooth as possible, allowing Roddy to line up his shots. If the pilots of those shuttles knew what was good for them, they wouldn’t get fancy with their evasive maneuvers. The last thing anyone wanted was for Roddy to miss the engines and vent the crew cabin of a shuttle to vacuum.
Fortunately for everyone involved, Roddy had the reflexes and fourth-dimension anticipation to disable both shuttlecraft in short order. All that was left was to park.
According to the Harmony Bay corporate logistics office literature, the Mobius was too large a ship to land in the Bradbury’s main hangar. They should dock. According to the blueprint measurements, the Mobius would fit through the hangar bay door with nearly half a meter to spare.
“Hang on tight, everyone,” Amy announced over the shipwide comm. “We’re going in.”
With the defensive armaments of the Bradbury, Amy had to maintain velocity or become a sitting duck. They’d be within 500 meters before dropping inside the firing arcs of the automated guns. She lined them up with the hangar, maintaining evasive maneuvers until the last possible second. Then she made a final adjustment and used the attitude adjustment thrusters to swing the ship 180 degrees. It was the same trick Carl had used in the Silde Slims races but with a ship fifty times the mass.
As the Mobius threaded the needle through the hangar bay door, the main engines scattered crates and maintenance tools with supersonic force. The far wall of the hangar blacked with superheated ion wash. The landing gear hit with a shriek of grating meal.
“Welcome to the Harmony Bay vessel Bradbury. The local time is 1837 hours. Please remain on board until the cargo bay door has completely opened. We hope you have enjoyed your flight on Mobius Starways.”
# # #
There was a general evacuation in progress. That was all part of the plan. What Esper hadn’t counted on was her role in the containment efforts. As the chief wizard’s assistant, she had been assigned three scanner techs to escort and protect from the oogie-boogie science monsters that were too small to see. If Shoni hadn’t assured her that there really were such things as nanobots, Esper wouldn’t have believed that grown men and women could be so scared of them. It was like being afraid of Santa Claus, mutation beams, or tax refunds. While being various degrees of scary or benign, the fact that none of them existed made the distinction moot.
“This station’s clean,” Bert said, flicking a switch on his scanne
r and straightening. Leo helped him up from beneath the Tachyon Studies workstation.
Ashley tapped a few times on her datapad. “So far, so good. Just ten more rooms to check on this deck.”
Leo shook his head at Esper. “You seem awfully calm about this. Aren’t you worried about the nanobots?”
Esper blinked. She’d let her thoughts wander to the other moving parts of the plan. Where was the signal that the Mobius crew had all gotten aboard? “Sorry. I was just communing telepathically with Wizard Bellamy.”
Ashley tilted her datapad to check it from all angles. “Nothing’s happened to my tech.”
“Mental magic is far more subtle than most. Wizard Bellamy is just a big baby about the tech around here being hypersensitive.”
“We do a lot of crucially important science.”
Esper snorted against her better judgment. Crucial science was an oxymoron, even if these scientific minions couldn’t see it. The whole Peractorum colony was proof of that. They just liked science. They wanted more of it. It made their dreary, ignorant little lives feel safer and more controlled. Heaven forbid they find their certainty in the universe beyond science’s narrow horizon.
“Let’s just keep moving,” Esper said with a forced smile.
They were just outside the Applied Cryptozoology lab when the announcement over the loudspeakers changed. Captain Dominguez came on. “Cease nanobot sweep. All remaining personnel, arm yourselves and prepare to repel boarders.”
Bert dropped his scanner. The techs looked around at one another.
“Us?” Leo asked.
“I haven’t ever fired a blaster,” Ashley protested.
“It’s all right,” Esper assured them calmly. She held out a hand. “If you’ll just accompany me to supply room 402…” It was just down the corridor: a small tool and cleaning warehouse the size of a cheap bedroom on a starliner. She ushered the three techs inside. “Now, if you all just stay here, I promise none of you will come to any harm.”
“But what about the captain’s orders?” Bert asked.
Ashley glanced past Esper into the corridor. “How can you guarantee our safety? Are you going to go fight the boarders with magic?”
Esper sighed. “No. I’m actually one of them. But that doesn’t mean you’re in any danger.”
She closed them in, watching the shock on their faces with an amused smirk. Then Esper plunged her hand through the metal where the door and wall met. The lights in the corridor went out, and the only illumination for a moment was the glow of molten metal where her hand had fused the door shut.
It was time to find the others.
# # #
Yomin was ready to shoot the security klaxon. Every time she passed by one of the strobing, honking nodes spouting its dire warnings at unsafe decibel levels, her trigger finger itched. But the damn things were doing most of the work on this job, herding scientists and minor ship functionaries off the Bradbury like no mercenary strike team could ever hope to. So Yomin kept the safety of her purloined blaster engaged. If all went according to plan, both sides would think she was with them and there wouldn’t be a need to fire. But to maintain that illusion she at least had to look like she was prepared to defend against the boarders.
With most of the ship’s personnel either in life pods or flitting away on shuttles, there was hardly anyone left to worry about the integrity of the ship’s systems. A nanobot infestation was something that couldn’t be fought by mechanics or studied under a nano-scanner—not while the murderous invisible menace was still active, at least. Without a wizard to protect her or a scanner capable of identifying the threat, Yomin’s presence on the ship appeared foolhardy. But it wasn’t the imaginary threat she needed to worry about.
Creeping down corridors, Yomin heard a sweep team approaching from the intersection ahead. She hit the nearest door panel and ducked inside a lab. She found herself inside the Genetic Botany lab. The lights were on emergency dimming, casting the photosynthetic stimulus lamps in eerie shadows. It made her wish she hadn’t read the nameplate to know where she was. Half the labs on this ship were dedicated to studying things that set the nerves in her teeth raw.
She held her breath, listening at the door as the footsteps came closer. A visual sweep of the room confirmed that she was boxed in, with nothing more than a supply closet for an exit. Yomin would be damned if she’d get discovered cowering in a supply closet. Better to take her chances than hope anyone finding her was stupid enough to overlook the one hiding spot in the room.
The footsteps, quiet and slow, stopped outside the door. Yomin squeezed her eyes shut and ran through a litany of every curse she could think of and a few she made up on the spot. They must have heard the door. It wasn’t astral cartography… and this ship had an Astral Cartography department. Scanners strong enough to pick up nanobots would have no trouble tracing the carbon dioxide from her breathing, not to mention all the other faint biological traces left in the air. And if they’d run a DNA screen on the samples, they’d be calling through the door to let her know they were friendly.
Yomin weighed her options, but the door opened before she had a plan in place. Three blasters aimed at her in an instant. She dropped hers and threw her hands in the air. “Don’t shoot!”
The blasters lowered. A security officer gave her a grim scowl. “Why aren’t you on medical evac?”
Yomin remembered the blood, which the medics had been too panicked to fully cleanse from her skin. “Got turned around. Still not feeling 100 percent. Figured if I was stuck here, I’d better grab a gun.”
The security officer picked up Yomin’s blaster and handed it to her but didn’t let go. “You ever fire one of these before?”
“Hello? Earth Navy. I learned at Annapolis.” Yomin pulled the weapon free of the security guard’s grip, flicking the safety to the live-fire position to emphasize her point. She switched it off again immediately so she didn’t spook them.
The scanner tech holstered his weapon and took out his nano-scale scanner. “You’d better stick with us. I can detect the infestation.”
“And I can snuff the vermin out,” one of the ship’s wizards said. Yomin knew the man’s name but struggled to place him. Brennar? Ulfric? It was one of the two, but she’d barely paid attention to Esper’s descriptions of her new colleagues.
“We’ve got bigger problems right now,” the security officer said. “There may or may not still be live nanobots on this ship, but we just had a freighter force its way into the main hangar. Stick close, stay in cover, and for God’s sake, keep your weapon hot.” He reached over and turned off the safety on Yomin’s blaster once again.
Yomin nodded and fell in behind the group as they set off toward the hangar. Once they were all thoroughly fixated on the corridor in front of them, she used the hem of her shirt to muffle the controls on the blaster as she selected the stun setting.
Wizard Whatshisname went down first, and Yomin had three more shots fired off before any of the armed men overcame their confusion and brought a weapon to bear on her. All four hit the ground in a heap. The wizard twitched, so she shot him twice more in a sudden panic.
Once her heart stopped racing, Yomin collected a pile of blasters and took away the scanner. Rummaging in the security officer’s belt pockets, she found an array of flexible-length binders and zipped their wrists together. Then, one by one, she dragged them into the supply closet in Genetic Botany. The slick, glossy floors of the Bradbury were meticulously cleaned, making the task far less strenuous than she’d feared. With the four of them dumped inside and rolled into a fleshy, undignified pile, she put her finger to the door control.
“Sorry about this.”
She fired off four more shots, stunning them all anew in case anyone was in danger of coming to their senses. Then she shut them inside.
# # #
Carl had studied the map of the Bradbury. It was as good as his, now, and he felt a proprietary duty to know his way around it. But the meter-wide hologra
phic Bradbury he’d studied looked nothing like the rats’ maze of identical halls and intersections contained within the actual hull. Much as he wanted to blame the discrepancy on a corporate propaganda effort, he knew he was just no good with maps. Even Carl Who Is Good With Maps couldn’t sell him on the propaganda theory.
In any event, Carl hadn’t let the ship’s bizarre layout deter him from plunging headlong toward the bridge. If there was going to be a shakeup in command, he wanted to be there first hand when it happened. If Mort got there ahead of him, Carl would be left gloating in the dark over a pile of ashes. Carl would get them all to surrender. This was a corporate crew, not soldiers or zealots. Checkmate. Go home. Find a new job. That all sounded a lot better than trading blaster shots at close range.
Just as Carl was cutting through the Xenophysiology Department, a door opened at the far end. A four-man team—or more precisely two men and two women—gaped at him momentarily before bringing their blasters up, ready to fire. That fraction of a second was hesitation enough for Carl to dive headlong behind a crate made of reinforced plastic. Thin lances of red plasma whizzed by overhead. The crate shuddered as a shot slammed into it. Carl fought to keep his cool, taking deep fast breaths instead of the shallow panting his lungs and adrenal glands advocated.
He’d only gotten a quick look at the blasters, but they had a SlyTek look to them. These were shipboard weapons. You could fire ten or fifteen times at the same spot in the hull without them breaching. It explained why a few centimeters of plastic had held up like a duracrete bunker in the initial salvo.
Carl poked his blaster around the side of the crate and squeezed off a few blind shots. “Listen up,” he shouted from his makeshift cover. “I’m firing stun blasts. If you boys and girls play nice, no one needs to get hurt today.”
A single shot buzzed past. “Toss the weapon and put up your hands where I can see them.”
“I’m not alone.” Carl picked a spot on the opposite side of the crate and snuck off another shot.
There was a muted argument at the doorway. As best Carl could eavesdrop, it was in regard to rushing Carl and accepting the fact that one or two of them would get stunned. He took the chance to dig out his comm. “Mobius, this is Carl. Hey, I seem to have taken a wrong turn.”