If the machines were trying to get into that command centre, and they were using cutters, I figured I wouldn’t have much time to get to the next building. “Hey! Kid!” one of the soldiers shouted after me as I rushed across the long room, trying not to step on anyone stretched out on the floor. Those double doors called to me. Everything over my shoulder looked like it was about to go bad.
“Go get him,” I heard Lieutenant Ruben say.
I made it into the large, curving hallway beyond; it was all polished white metal flooring and pretty grey curves. The diagram was alive in my head, so I ran upwards, towards where one ring-like section of the building I was in would join the next. I peeked over my shoulder and saw the pretty soldier behind me, her face bunched up in frustration, and there was a larger armoured one behind her. “Get back here, it’s not safe!” she called after me.
I was faster than both of them. My suit was really just durable insulated cloth, a layer for keeping me warm and contained in space, with a helmet under my arm. Those soldiers were like cockroaches with all the armour they wore and the pack they lumped around on their backs.
There were more bots trying to cut through, I could see sparks showering from above and I stuck my helmet on before sprinting up the ramp. Lurk croaked his unhappiness with the jostling and bumping as he clung to my chest, but I just ran faster. “Hold on, buddy, we’re going to fix this,” I told him. “I hope.”
My helmet started enriching my oxygen, sensing that I was breathing hard, and I caught a second wind as I saw the broad doors leading to the next building. One was stuck open, blast marks pocking it and the surrounding wall.
“We’re going to get cut off!” shouted a soldier behind me. I looked over my shoulder in time to see them skid to a stop and look behind them, where more sparks were falling through the air. There had to be at least three machines cutting through from the other side, making a large square cut out through the thick ceiling.
“Uh, bye,” I said as I passed through the doors leading to the next building. I didn’t stop running. Ten metres into the other building I ran into a half-burned android, its left side looked like a suave, well built man, while the right had been shot and melted to pieces. It limped after me in a hurry, dragging his half-crushed stump of his leg. Behind him was a tribe of service and companion bots, maybe from the beach at the bottom of the building, I never found out. They had all been put out of commission partially or completely by someone who came prepared – the soldiers I’d already met was my assumption – and I wondered if I could get past them.
Instead of testing my luck, I ran the other way, the oval building offered two routes to the lower levels, and I hoped the second was clearer. That was better for a long time, more than half way, and I even stopped so I could catch my breath for a while. The soldiers weren’t after me anymore, and those messed up machines I met going the other way were too damaged to come after me quickly.
I heard footsteps coming up the gently sloping hallway then, and peeked around the corner. A hardened gaze met mine, he was in a white business suit in the same fashion as Emrine’s, but he lurched for me. I charged past him, a hard hand gripping my arm. I had more momentum than he did, and dragged him to the deck, but he didn’t let go. That was a mechanical grip, but the hateful expression on his face looked very human. I pried myself free but would have a bruise in the shape of his hand for a week.
Two more androids that looked perfectly human lunged at me, but I managed to go around them, running as fast as I could, faster than ever before. Even with the enriched mix of oxygen in my helmet, my lungs burned. I made it to the main elevator bank and mashed the call buttons. Two doors opened, one had a repair bot and a pair of androids inside, the other was empty.
I leapt into the empty one and punched the close button as I screamed; “Door close! Door close!”
They did, but the repair bot jammed its longest arm between them. There was a hatch above, and I jumped for it, catching it on the first try. The shaft was empty, but that was part of the problem. The bots were in the car beneath me, and would get up through that hole in seconds, so I ran a couple steps and jumped off the top of that car towards the opposite wall.
I imagined myself somehow gliding through the air and touching that smooth wall, the emergency hold systems on my suit sticking me there like a climbing frog. It’s amazing how gravity can complicate that kind of plan. I fell a long way before my suit made contact and I stuck to the wall. It felt like the whole building punched me everywhere at once, but I wasn’t falling anymore. I could see the shapes of two heads far above, on top of that elevator car, moving left and right, searching. A minute later those shapes disappeared.
I hung against the side of the wall and caught my breath, nearly laughing out loud when I heard Lurk say; “ow,” as clearly as I’ve heard him say any word.
“You okay buddy?” I asked in a whisper.
“Too much moving.”
“We’ll just rest here a minute,” I told him.
I was against that wall, hanging in my suit for at least five minutes before I heard Lieutenant Ruben’s voice through the communicator in my helmet. “Kid, I can’t believe you’re going to try to get to the manual controls yourself. What are you thinking?”
“I saw a solution, and I’m going for it, Sir,” I added the ‘Sir’ because that’s what I’d seen in so many military movies, but it felt all wrong when it came out.
“You don’t know the first thing about what’s going on. We could win this, I’m not kidding. We just have to find a few bunkers to fight from.”
I thought for a moment and shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense to me, man,” I said. “Who built the bunkers? Who do you call when you have to get inside?”
“This is Iora, the technical capitol of the sector. We have military ship yards, cutting edge mechanized battalions, and as many soldiers as some planets have citizens.”
“But your space superiority is gone,” I said, remembering one of many lessons that stuck from the pilots in our little defence wing. If you had space superiority, you could hold forever, bring in supplies, blockade the planet if you wanted, but as soon as you lost it everything got hard. “It’s scrap metal salad for whole kilometres up there, man. No one is coming to help you, and maybe frying everything down here isn’t the best solution, but it’s going to stop the bots from feeding people into matter converters.”
“Kid, our weapons will be dead if you flip that switch,” he argued.
“So will the bots, and stop calling me kid, I’m seventeen, asshole,” I said as I pulled a length of emergency line from my belt and made sure the end was securely affixed to the wall. I turned my light on and pointed down the shaft. I was at least eight stories up, but I had enough line to get down, and I didn’t see any bots waiting, so I started lowering myself. “I can’t fucking believe I’m the one whose doing this. You soldiers are all just a bunch of armoured pussies who like your toys too much.” Yes, I get mouthy when I’m terrified. The lack of response was more frightening, and after a few minutes I wanted to check in, to make sure that the soldiers hadn’t been murdered by the bots that were trying to get at them when I left, but there were other things to think about.
Part Eight
Apex Phase Two was lagging for everyone. The decision to delay service aboard real starships for the Officer Trainees was one thing, and it irritated everyone, but the whole class was starting to show strain. There was more training available, elective training, and more qualification tests to take, and everyone had to fill their time with them, so the workload was almost the same. The difference was every trainee knew that Fleet was watching what they chose to study and still grading their performance as much as ever. Alice decided to learn Lorander Native, the operating system built and used by their highly advanced and absent allies. She already knew everything she could about the new Haven Fleet systems, that came easy. She was already familiar with most of it since it was based on the Triton’s Earth Defence oper
ating system, so moving on to something that was more advanced made sense to Alice, especially since Lorander Native was required learning for anyone who wanted to truly understand their manufacturing systems.
Ayan’s return to Haven Fleet resulted in massive change. The whole line of ships being produced in the new manufacturing base was cancelled, and only the highest ranking officers in the Fleet knew why. Alice assumed radical redesigns were underway, and her curiosity was difficult to control, but she did her best. Pouring herself into her work even more helped, but sometimes she had to stop, to take a break so she wouldn’t burn out entirely. That was when, as mad as it was, she would look for things she was neglecting, and on one particular night, over a week and a half after she’d paid any attention to it, she remembered that she hadn’t finished her report on Noah Lucas’ experiences before reaching Haven Shore.
Alice started looking through the file for an easy way to complete the assignment, starting with the details of the building he landed in, and the little information they had in his file about the military he met there. The building was one of the wealth and knowledge centres of the world. It was made to look like a dishevelled stack of metal rings, each of the sections had several floors and used starship technology to trick the people inside into thinking they were standing perfectly upright when the floors were actually all tilted. The unusual shape made it easier to turn the whole building into a shield emitter coil, one of the first functions that the machines disabled before the human owners could erase the structure’s resident artificial intelligence. Standing strong within the mess of coil like structures were three domed buildings with heavy armour cladding.
The military organization that was supposed to guard it was called the Iora Protection Force, or IPF, and it was exclusively trained to protect that world, the financial and intellectual centre of their solar system. The records Alice found from captains who had visited before the Holocaust Virus indicated that Iora was arguably the greatest planet in the sector. The common complaint was that it was expensive to live there, but they were independent, had several major space stations the size of large cities that were worth taking leave on if you couldn’t afford to go to the planet, and many different companies had manufacturing centres there. The IPF were the harsh end of the law, called in whenever extreme force was necessary, and they had a reputation for treating outsiders like vermin when they stepped out of line.
With more background research finished on Iora, and the understanding of what Noah Lucas had lost, Alice was able to write the first part of her report. There was so much more to learn about the place, so the introduction and first part of her presentation wasn’t ready to send yet, but she could narrate and edit something together at least.
Alice assumed that the focus of the whole report had to take the priorities of the fleet in mind, but there was so much information she wanted to share with whoever made the journey there in the future, or with captains who might need to know the status of Iora and its orbital space before paying it a visit. Regardless of what she focused on in her report, she needed more information. There was only one way to get it, and that was to plug into Noah’s simulation log. Alice reduced her uniform to its smallest size, a simple top and bottom, and slipped into bed. It was three hours earlier than her regular bedtime, but she needed to get away from the training and the pressure for a while.
Stretching her legs and flexing her toes in the crisp, cool sheets was so relaxing that she groaned and sighed. “Tired?” Yawen asked with a smile as she entered their room.
“Yup,” Alice replied. “Still have work left, but I can let simulation logs play while I’m hiding.” She said, pulling the sheets up to her chin.
“Aw, you’re so cute when you’re all tucked in,” Yawen said. “Should I close your curtain for you?”
“Yeah, thanks,” Alice said. “G’night.”
Alice set her comm system to stop the simulation in an hour and set the detail level to maximum. Noah Lucas was seeing some terrible things, and facing awful challenges, but she didn’t want to miss a thing. The world around her disappeared as she put the small device on her forehead and it took control of her senses.
The bottom of the elevator shaft was like any other pit – dark, a home for things people lost or discarded through the cracks – and I took a minute to catch my breath. The main doors leading to the power centre of the ground based station were in front of me, the doors leading to the vault were behind. With soldiers against what I was planning on doing, and screwed up, murderous bots everywhere, I didn’t really want to move.
I don’t know why I have this sense of morality, or how it’s lasted so long. I just didn’t think I’d live to a ripe old age. Maybe it was my upbringing. You don’t want your kids to grow up in travelling carnival if you have a choice. Before I turned seventeen I saw more adult drama, death and prejudice than most people three times my age. The need to understand it all drove me to question what was going on, and by the time I was seventeen people would just give me the unvarnished truth. People who were nice to me could be downright evil to others, even though we were like a family of nomads. Someone you trusted could steal from you and go on pretending they are your best friend. The harshest realization was that, wherever we went we were the outsiders. A local dirt bag was more trustworthy to locals than any of us most of the time, no matter how big we smiled or how generous we were. If we weren’t careful we could be attacked, or blamed for something we had nothing to do with just because everyone we met there saw us as untrustworthy nomads. I’d been cornered and beaten up for the few pips I had in my pocket twice, so when the local soldiers started turning hostile, I wasn’t surprised. Kind one minute, closed minded and nasty the next.
I’m no tactical genius, running and gunning was never my thing outside of zapping my buddies in the halls on long stretches between planets, but I knew there would be more bots between me and what I needed to get to. The core wasn’t heavily guarded by systems, gun emplacements and the like, but probably by whatever bots they had down there. That’s the problem with droids when you want to get to something they’re guarding: they could look like people, or like dainty little machines, but they don’t know mercy when they turn on you, and something built on a metal frame with motors and gears is almost always tougher than a human. I had a gun, but it was a pulse blaster, and I didn’t know enough about the bots I was going to run into to take them down in one or two shots, and if there were more than two, I’d be screwed. I could picture myself trying to melt one down with my little gun while the other two ripped me in half, and I knew that would be likely if I tried that strategy.
I didn’t have much time to form another plan, I could hear someone scraping at the doors way overhead. Either the robots were coming to get me, or it was the soldiers. “What do we do, Lurk?” I asked.
“Boom,” he said, his croak muffled by the fabric of my suit. “Three time.”
It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about, but then I fished into one of my pockets and found two power cells. They were just multi-purposed batteries, but strong enough to use in my blaster, where I realized I’d find the third one. That was the answer. I popped the covers of the connector terminals off, pulled the connector cable off my suit, stripped a few short pieces of wire then wrapped one end around the positive terminal of each of my power cells. It would take me a second to finish the wiring on each power cell and turn them into bombs. They would start overloading and after a few seconds they would explode. Any tech within a few metres would be toast from the electromagnetic pulse or damaged by the fireball.
I was running out of time, there was more scrambling at the doors high above, someone was making progress at getting those security doors open, if it was the soldiers, they’d be coming down soon, or shooting into the shaft. I found the emergency lever that opened the elevator doors for the lowest level and cranked it as fast as I could. The doors didn’t move at first, but after a few cranks it was easy. A mechanical
arm with a welder on the end came through, and I knew there was a visual sensor on the end of it. The bots already knew I was coming, maybe not why, but I was still off to a bad start.
I turned my back on the welding arm, making sure I was well out of its range in case it decided to try and burn me, then activated my first improvised bomb. I was in too much of a rush when I turned and tossed it at the crack in the elevator doors, and it bounced back into the shaft with me. “Oh crap,” I said.
“Missed?” asked Lurk.
I scrambled to find the power cell in the near complete darkness, touched a lot of things I didn’t want to see in the light while I was at it. “Boom,” Lurk reminded me with a sorrowful croak.
“I know,” I said. The back of my hand brushed against something hot, and I grabbed the power cell. I could hear it starting to whine as I carefully lobbed it between the elevator doors.
Lurk was right, it definitely went ‘boom’ maybe two seconds later.
Part Nine
Alice found the end of the visual simulation log jarring, and double checked to see if that was the actual end. There was a lot of audio data left, and some images to go with it, but no simulation or video data. “I guess he fried his recorder,” she said to herself in the darkness of her bunk.
She pulled her privacy curtain aside and padded barefoot into the hall to the convenience dispenser, smiling at Perry, one of the officers who were averaging over ninety-four percent. He was in his workout uniform, shorts and boots. “Hey, Alice, join us for a run?”
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10.5: Carnie's Tale Page 4