Spinward Fringe Broadcast 11

by Randolph Lalonde

  Everyone else was making sure that they had everything they needed in hand so they’d be ready when it came time to abandon ship. It would be a chaotic few minutes of action, but Minh-Chu didn’t allow himself to worry. Looking to the face of his friend, he didn’t see any concern there, either. He was looking over the plan again, most likely for the tenth time. “How are you holding up, Captain?” Minh-Chu asked

  “If I’m a Captain, I’m one who got himself stuck off-ship,” Jake said.

  “You finally gave Stephanie a chance at command for more than a shift at a time,” Minh-Chu said. “The Revenge made it out of danger, they’re fine. I believe we’ll be all right, too, even if we need to leave this thing behind.”

  “That probably irks you,” Jake said.

  “Not at all,” Minh-Chu said, running his finger along the edge of the console. “This ship always felt like an imperfect vessel that got us around by the skin of its teeth. As long as what we get into next has a good wormhole drive and takes us home, I’ll be happy.”

  “What do you think of this plan?” Jake asked.

  “It’s frantic, but I’m like the rest of the crew; I see a loose plan that’s built on more experience than I have. The leader makes me confident. No pressure.”

  Jake chuckled and nodded. “No pressure,” Jake said. “Remmy could handle this action though, I’m not exactly core to this working out.”

  “That’s why you divided us into two groups, it makes sense, like every other part of the plan.” Minh-Chu could tell they were about to start talking in circles, it was time to change topic. “Did you year that a restaurant called Mama Buu’s opened up in Haven Shore?”

  “What? No,” Jake said, excitement in his eyes.

  “My little sister, the youngest of us,” Minh-Chu said.

  “The loudest of you, “Jake said.

  “From what she says it’s the most popular spot on Tamber. She said she wouldn’t let me go off on my own adventure and have all the fun. She didn’t even want me to know she was there until she got herself set up on her own. She was always the most independent.”

  “Even more than me,” Minh-Chu said. “Now I’ll have to bring everyone I can to her place whenever I can so I can watch her being busy.”

  “Because she won’t want you to visit her socially while she’s at work,” Jake said.

  Minh-Chu chuckled. “Right, she wants everyone - especially me - to see how busy and important she is to the place, but she won’t have time to talk.”

  “The longer we’re away, the more reasons we find to get back home,” Jake said. Minh-Chu could see the weight on his heart.

  “I feel greedy about that,” Minh-Chu said. “My best friend has orchestrated things just right for us to have a big, dramatic heroes return. They’re going to think we’re returning on the Revenge, but instead they’ll get a story about how we were separated during a daring raid. They’ll expect us any moment in this heap, then we’ll appear late in a mysterious ship we captured from a system Carnie directed us to. It’ll be a story worth telling, and quite a celebration thanks to the path you guided us down.”

  “I’ll take the credit and the blame,” Jake said. “Don’t worry.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’ll be all credit. What we’re planning will cause some drama for the Order too. It might teach them a lesson, but I hope not.”

  “That’s the last thing we need; the Order learning from our tactics,” Jake said.

  “Ah, it won’t make a difference. Captain Valent comes at everything from odd angles, no one sees him coming unless he wants them to,” Minh-Chu said.

  “Maybe if you keep believing it, it’ll stay true,” Jake said. “But there might be a new Captain Valent before we know it.”

  “Alice, she’s doing well. Ayan had a few things to say about her when she sent me a hello. You have a nice family waiting for you - outnumbered by ladies - I know something about that if you ever need advice.”

  “I might take you up on that,” Jake said.

  Liara came through the hatch, closed it behind her and sat down quietly, checking the automation script she built with Jake. Only the first part of it was crucial to the plan, the rest would be a big bonus if the ship could still run the commands. “There are a lot of good things waiting for us,” Minh-Chu reiterated. “It’s good to talk about them. Everyone seems afraid to bring them up, as though it might bring bad luck. I enjoy thinking about a reunion with my sister, one of Ayan’s welcome back hugs, and having a quiet night with Ashley. We’ll all be meeting at my sister’s restaurant, the whole command staff and everyone else who can make it from the Revenge. She’ll panic when she sees a few hundred people at her door in uniform, and I’ll say; ‘Well, you told me to bring people to your restaurant!’ and she’ll tell me I’m a terrible brother or something before she gets back into the kitchen and starts whipping her people or her robots into a frenzy.”

  Liara chuckled to herself quietly.

  “You had better be there,” Minh-Chu said. “You’ve become so important to the crew that I sometimes wonder if you weren’t with us on the First Light, or from Jake’s Samson crew. You fit in like you’ve been here all along.”

  “Thank you, Commander,’ she said, surprised. “I’ll be there, even if it is just to see you and your sister go on.”

  “The food will be incredible too, don’t worry,” Minh-Chu said. “She has standards to meet.”

  “She was always a better cook,” Jake said.

  “Take that back,” Minh-Chu said, shaking his head.

  “Oh, you fed me more often, and I never had a reason to complain, but she was just a little better,” Jake said with a shrug.

  “Bah, I’ll take a turn in the kitchen and jog your memory. You’ll see,” Minh-Chu said.

  “If she’ll let you.”

  “You have a point.”

  Carnie came through the hatch in heavy combat armour and carefully slipped into the co-pilot’s seat. “This armour is more complicated than it looks. Not to put on, but once I got it on I started bumping into everything. I know it’s only about a centimetre thick, but I feel like I’m wearing a fat suit.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Minh-Chu said as he got to his feet. “My turn to get armoured up.”

  Thirty-Six

  Beyond Dreams

  * * *

  Alice was in a panic. No matter how far she stumbled in the darkness or how desperately she reached out, there were no walls to the landscape she found herself in. Anxiety from within made it worse. The Revenge was still missing along with her father, Minh-Chu, Ashley, Noah Lucas and so many more people she would love to meet.

  Revenge. There was an old saying about it; when you seek revenge you should dig two graves: one for your enemy and one for yourself. Was that how the ship was lost? Did her father give in to dark tendencies that Jason Everin warned her about? He warned that she should stay close to her father, be his moral compass, but she thought that he’d changed with the removal of his framework.

  Her framework was gone too, could that shift in them both change a future so much that the warning didn’t matter anymore? Where was the light? Where were the walls? What was the floor made of? It had to be a dream, a stress dream she was trying to wake up from.

  The ground fell away, she tried to scream and nothing came out. There was one sure way out of dreams. Deny the details. The darkness was a thing in her dream, a tangible beast that could become anything at any time. She closed her eyes. The fall, the gravity pulling her faster and faster downward into an endless blackness was just a fake sensation created by her mind. Alice crossed her arms and legs as though she was about to land in water.

  The air she was breathing wasn’t real either, but the impulse to fill her lungs definitely was. Alice held her breath. For some time the air whistled in her ears. Ignore it, she told herself. It’s not real.

  The air in her lungs grew stale. That might have been real. The urge to exhale and draw breath was real. Memories began
to fill her mind. Alice was staying in Ayan’s spare room so she could help watch little Laura. She’d just gotten the news that the Clever Dream Mark Two’s construction would take at least an extra day.

  The plan to include any part of the original Clever Dream, or Clever Dream Mark One, was scrapped. Lewis would be transplanted, but there was no point in trying to force one design into another. Ayan was able to sneak it into a smaller fabrication line, though, the Lorander Automatic Upgrade system would take care of enhancements. It would emerge in pristine condition. It would be hers, but Lewis would not be there. He’d be installed in the Mark Two. She was disappointed at the delay, but having the real, original Clever Dream repaired and returned to her made her happier than she thought it would. The Mark Two would belong to the military, as it should, and she would be named Lewis’ primary caretaker. There would be two Clever Dreams, and he would assist her whether she was using the Mark One or commanding the Mark Two for Haven Fleet.

  A very real sensation of pain surged through her, and she screamed, violently breaking the dark silence. Zarrix. She could remember Zarrix, the Edxian that commissioned the delivery of several Edxi eggs that had been tampered with. It was the evidence that an atrocity had been visited upon his people, and what he’d use to find his way back up into a higher caste. The memory of standing before him, his ragged frame looming over her as he ticked and muttered was intense. Even with visible physical damage, his exoskeletal frame bare in some places, he was an imposing beast. A species that no human should share the same air with. The clicking of his mouth’s inner mandibles and the scraping of his claws were in her ears again, as though he was standing right there in front of her.

  Another memory surged back, sending a sensation like pins and needles across the inside of her head.

  Bernice, her friendly face kissing her on the forehead when she was dying. No, not dying, simply ill with the Padaxin Fever. It was a horrible virus, caused her to excrete in every direction, and Alice was just getting used to being human. If the cure wasn’t administered she’d die of dehydration after weeks of suffering. They had so little. A borrowed hyperspace shuttle, a few credits, some blankets and enough food to get to planet hop to the nearest medical centre. Bernice cleaned up after her, risked getting sick herself, and when they arrived at the medical centre they traded the shuttle for the cure. It took a year for them to pay Valera Saint back for the shuttle, but Bernice never complained about it. There were so many memories of her, the kindly woman who took her on for the first few years of her life, performing the role of mother and physiotherapist. Alice wondered what would have happened if the woman hadn’t saved her from the Overlord. Would she be able to…?

  Then she was wrapped in another memory. The cold deck struck her in the face, then the shoulder, and she slid a little as her stasis fluid covered body was exposed to the cool air. It took a great deal of effort for her to look down the corridor where alarms blared and lights flashed. The original Jonas, Ayan and so many other people fled. Words wouldn’t come, but emotions unlike any she’d ever felt did. Unreasonable, unfettered emotions of loss and betrayal. They were abandoning her. Whether it was true, or intentional or not didn’t matter, it was simply how she felt as she watched them disappear around the corner.

  The next memory came like an electric shock at first, then she was inside it, living it. Boredom. A machine can be bored. Alice was remembering something entirely different. A state of being that was alien to her. Her existence was simple. Serve young Jonas Valent. Another application to join a Freeground Fleet Attack Squad headed for the All-Con home world was denied. He wanted to be a technician on the team, to leave his post as a minor ship engineer behind. She had to admit that the assignment he was on was boring, but if he kept serving, doing his duty well, he would advance over time. “Opportunities will come, Jonas,” Alice said to him. He pulled the sleeve of the trench coat that his father gave him up so he could see the command and control console she lived in. From his forearm her sensors could observe everything, it was an interesting existence with a constant - if not always fulfilling - flow of data.

  “I want to make a difference in this war,” Jonas said. “I need to be where the action is.”

  * * *

  The memory broke for a moment. It was as though a door was drawn to the side. Alice could feel the sensation of her legs running, her arms carried a heavy rifle.

  * * *

  The Alice living on young Jonas’ wrist spoke then. “There will always be another war, Jonas. No matter how brutal the lessons of the past are, no matter how precious humans say life is, you can always be sure that they’ll find a reason to fight each other. If they don’t find an opponent amongst themselves soon enough, you can trust xenophobia against a new or old alien species to provide a target. You will find your chance to be a war hero.”

  “What’s that?” asked a Freeground marine.

  * * *

  Again, Alice could feel her body doing something in the present. It wasn’t a memory. She was taking aim, firing heavy suppression rounds, reloading, firing again. Running...

  * * *

  “It’s just an AI I work with. Helps with the heavier math, bringing up schematics while I’m fixing something, gives me someone impartial to talk to when I need to make a decision.”

  “Impartial,” Alice the AI scoffed. “I have opinions, you know.”

  “I like her,” the marine said. “Any chance I could get a copy?”

  “She’s a little off spec, so I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

  “Ah, so you made so many modifications that you’re afraid Fleet might not approve of and if you copy it, they’ll see them.”

  “I am not an ‘it.’ I identify as a young, plucky but occasionally serious woman,” the Alice AI said indignantly.

  “Now I really wish I could have a copy,” said the marine.

  “If you find a spot for Jonas on your team next time you go down to All-Con Prime, then I’ll always be within earshot,” Alice said.

  “You want to be a field tech?” the marine asked him.

  “I want to get closer to the action, so, yeah,” Jonas said.

  “I’ll see what I can…” the marine’s response was interrupted. A flood of memories rushed back. All-Con Prime, watching Jonas mourn the loss of his parents, the years he spent in simulations, then the First Light. The back doors, memory caches and other systems of the Overlord were in her mind then, as though she was living in a schematic.

  The discovery of the Phoenix Program inside the Overlord’s memory before she transferred herself came up then. Somehow Alice could remember every detail, where they failed, their few successes and how that technology was merged with the framework system. The purpose of the Phoenix program was to develop the systems that would transplant one person’s memories and personality into a new human body that was not a clone. A secondary objective involved the translation of computer code into a format that could be written into a human brain.

  She felt the excitement of another living presence in her mind. It was reading memories that no one could find, searching through a hidden reservoir in her mind. The Phoenix program was what it was looking for, and it examined it closely. It felt as though someone was holding Alice very still while it pulled at memories like files folded into her personality.

  * * *

  That grip was firm, but she fought. The more she resisted, the more she felt the other being in her mind, the invading memory thief. Alice found she couldn’t close doors on it, the memories it was finding weren’t something she could see. Breaking free of it seemed possible, and as she bent her will to it, she could sense her own body again.

  * * *

  Alice felt her feet, her legs, the rest of her body. She was running down a hallway that looked like the Triton’s interior, but it was slimmer. Alice sealed doors as she went, putting layers of heavy metal between her and anyone who would come after her. Her rifle, the barrel still hot, was in her arms. She forced
her body to halt. “Get out of my head!” she screamed.

  ‘If I leave, then you’ll never find the rest of your memories. It takes a high level telepath to translate digital code stored in a human brain so a person can understand them. So a person can be whole again,’ it replied in her mind. She knew what it was; the Geist for the Citadel ship, the Exile.

  “Why do you want the Phoenix Program?” Alice asked, feeling the unknown entity wriggling around in her mind like an unwelcome parasite. The instant she asked the question, she knew the answer. It was in the things surface thoughts. “You want to implant yourself into Oz,” she said aloud.

  ‘One or the other will work, but first I need you to deactivate the mooring systems so I can escape. Haven Fleet soldiers disconnected me from the controls.’

  Alice hesitated, then a wave of memories overtook her. Planets, cities, towns her and Bernice visited, people they met, and the sensations of learning how to be human. For so long she wondered what it was like to be small, young, to be an unknowing child, but she’d had those experiences. It didn’t last as long as a normal childhood, and she didn’t have the experience of growing into a woman, but the rest was there. First steps, learning to speak, applying new knowledge and having social interactions that were awkward at first because she was so used to having Jonas to hide behind. It wasn’t the most normal childhood, but it was definitely enough.

  “Stop!” Alice said. She knew the Exile Geist was doing it, translating a digital block of memory that her mind couldn’t understand into memories that were compatible with her new grey matter.