Spinward Fringe Broadcast 11

by Randolph Lalonde

  “Got it,” Liara said. “This is now Haven Fleet’s new ship,” she jumped out of the Captain’s seat and rushed to the main communications station on the upper tier to the right. “I haven’t seen controls this old since I was a little girl,” she said. “My typing courses might actually come in handy.”

  Jake was already at the engineering station and saw that the reactor was still running, they had a century’s worth of fuel, give or take a decade, and he restored power to the bridge. “Nice work, everyone.”

  “We have two minutes,” Minh-Chu said as his tactical screen came up. “Start plotting a wormhole jump,” he told his co-pilot.

  “Plotting, but it might take a while with this computer system.”

  Jake took one of his command and control units off and pulled a data line. He connected it to the navigation panel and after a few commands it added its processing power to the console. “That should save us some time.”

  “Look at you with the expertise,” Minh-Chu said as he ran quick tests on the thrusters.

  “I spent time in Aucharian territory, and they had a lot of ships out there. Their technology was a bit outdated, but it didn’t break down often.”

  “Captain,” Finn addressed through his communicator. “Everything looks good back here. The bots did a good job restoring the ship. I’m glad we didn’t have to go head to head with her.”

  “Then we’re good to go?”

  “Wormhole generator isn’t top of the line, but it’ll do the trick and it’s charged,” he replied. “We’re good to go.”

  “Sir,” Liara said. “The base is completely empty, like you predicted. Its weapon and shield systems are online and ready. We also have control of two other patrol stations along with their nearby ships.”

  “They shouldn’t have assumed that, just because these things are infected with their virus, that they can be left on their own to add to their defences,” Jake said, joining Liara at the communications and programming stations. “You weren’t kidding, these are stone age.” He connected his data line to the control system and watched his modern interface appear over his arm holographically. He assigned the other corvette and the Aucharian destroyers nearby to seek and destroy the Order destroyers that were only a minute away. It only took two commands to do the same for the patrol station, which was better armed than all three of the destroyers combined and had heavy shielding. “They aren’t slowing down,” he chuckled under his breath. “Releasing the Pursuer,” he said.

  “All right, I’ll initiate its high speed scanning run,” Minh-Chu said. “If you’re right, it won’t last long. If you’re wrong - and I hope you are - we’re about to get some very pretty pictures of this solar system.”

  “Shields are up,” Finn reported from engineering. “These generators are just beastly! One of them is the size of the house I grew up in, and I think it says it was manufactured a hundred years before I was born.”

  “Are they good shields?” Jake asked, concentrating on starting a scan of the whole ship for bots that might not have been treated with the antivirus.

  “A little less than the Pursuer,” he said. “Not nearly as efficient, but the four fusion reactors down here will keep them topped up. Reserve capacitors are charging.”

  The Order of Eden destroyers started taking energy fire from dozens of the station’s guns, while the Corvette that charged moved in to fire from above. All three of them turned in different directions, desperate to slow their approach and get away from the heavy defences. “That’ll buy us a little time,” Jake said. “But not much.”

  “I have antimatter alerts on two of those Order destroyers,” Noah said as he watched a screen on his console. “Oh, and our wormhole course is plotted.”

  Jake looked at his tactical screen and saw that the Pursuer was burning its thrusters hard, running high energy scans to get as much data as it could before they had to leave it behind. “I have a feeling we don’t have time to wait. Get us out of here, Ronin,” Jake said, taking a seat at the console next to Liara’s. He looked to the science station and connected to the Pursuer’s feed.

  “Generating wormhole,” Minh-Chu said. “This went a lot better than I thought,” he said.

  “Now whose…” Jake was about to say; ‘Jinxing us,’ but what he saw coming in from the long range scanners aboard the Pursuer III stunned him to silence. In a distant orbit around Iora were three massive, bulbous green and black ships that looked like jagged skinned hive structures. The early data suggested that they were three by two point four kilometres measuring across the dorsal side, and half a kilometre thick. One ship measured larger - it had to be base class. The white hulled vessel had two long rectangular sections leading into a thinner, longer segment. It was an Order ship, but one he’d never seen before. At least two battle fleets worth of carriers, battlecruisers and all the smaller ships that accompanied them surrounded it. “There must be hundreds of them.”

  Jake heard Liara gasp and turned to see her staring at the main science station screen, covering her mouth with both hands, her eyes filled with horror.

  “Entering the wormhole,” Minh-Chu said.

  “Keep that entry point where it is for as long as you can,” Jake said. “We need more…” the feed from the Pursuer III failed for a second, started broadcasting again, flickered then went out completely. “Never mind,” Jake said. “We got everything we could.”

  “Yeah, man,” Noah exclaimed. “Three jumps and we’re home!”

  “Finn, how is everything holding up down there?” Jake asked. He gently took one of Liara’s hands and led it back to her console. “Launch Mary. I don’t care if it tracks back to us.”

  She wiped a tear away from her face and nodded. “Neither do I. It’ll take a day for the signal to get there.”

  “The wormhole drive is fine. We can make a hundred jumps,” Finn replied.

  “Mary’s on her way to Iora,” Liara whispered.

  “Good, thank you, Finn,” Jake said. “See if you can get us better compression on the next few jumps. We need to get home faster than planned.”

  “Everything all right, Captain?” Minh-Chu asked, turning in his seat. He saw the last tactical image from the Pursuer on the science station screen. “What is that?”

  “That’s an invasion fleet,” Jake said. “We might have bought ourselves some time, but one way or another, they’re headed home. We have to beat them there by as much time as we can.”

  Forty

  To Thine Own Self Be Wary

  * * *

  Alice raised her rifle, aiming at Oz’s feet but he swatted the barrel away before she got her suppression shot off. It would have been perfect, capturing his feet in a thick web that would affix him to the deck for hours. He moved to reach down towards her, not something an experienced hand-to-hand practitioner or soldier would do. The Geist was controlling him.

  Rolling out of his reach, she watched him move slowly. It was as though the Geist wasn’t used to tracking a target with human eyes. Then, in a series of motions that seemed pre-calculated, Oz rapidly turned towards her, ran full tilt and caught the under edge of the front of her helmet in one hand. She was off the deck, held up high, and he rushed towards an inner airlock door. A kick to his side got her free of his grip, she landed with a skid that ended when she struck the airlock.

  He came for her again. She waited. What she wanted to do was safe, but painful. Again, he lurched, reaching down towards her. “I’m sorry about this,” Alice said as she kicked his knee hard enough to force the outer armour to flex and impact his knee inside.

  He screamed, the armour kept him balanced on one leg as his other shin pointed in the wrong direction. “I can’t fight him anymore,” Oz said. It was him, it sounded like him, the words had his mannerisms behind it. “He tricked me into thinking he was imprisoned on the ship, forced to help Citadel. By the time I realized it, he found out about your first body, that you transferred from AI to human by probing my mind in my sleep. He brought
me here thinking I could become his vessel if he found a way to transfer.”

  “It’s all right,” Alice said. “Just focus on anger, or pain.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Oz said. “Pain meds are kicking in, the suit is about to…” his damaged knee was set back into place by the suit, nanobots went to work repairing the damage. Oz grimaced at the pain of it. “I can’t hold him off.”

  Alice opened the airlock door and pulled Oz inside with an unceremonious yank. “Sorry,” she said.

  “Good girl, this’ll do it,” Oz said as the door slid closed. “Someone’ll pick me…” His eyes glazed over. Geist was in control again, and Oz cocked his fist, getting ready to punch the inner door.

  “That’s not going to work,” Alice said as she entered the command to open the outer door. For a moment she thought the Geist may have learned to use Oz’s armour properly, affixing the boots to the deck, but then Oz slipped out into space. “Just you and me,” Alice said.

  The feeling of the Exile’s Geist feeling around her anger, looking for a soft spot returned. Alice took her rifle in hand and ran towards the tank. Two short hallways and a broken door later, she stood in front of the tank where he was kept. It was a bulbous, graceful looking creature. This one had slim eyes atop a rounded front, with dark fins along its sides for finer movement. Its broader body ended in a wide tail with spikes. Alice levelled her rifle at it and began turning the power all the way up. It was panicking. “No more thought or memory theft,” she said.

  “You will never be able to decode what’s left of the digital imprint on your mind without me. Your memories will be locked away forever in your own head.”

  “Don’t do it, Alice,” said Carl Anderson in her communications system. He appeared on her head’s up display, his broad features locked in a dire expression.”

  * * *

  “How could we do that to him?” Alice asked Bernice as they sped away from the Samson. “He’ll wake up alone, on an old ship that’s made to be crewed by at least five people.”

  “Have you ever known your father to be helpless?” Bernice asked, putting a hand on hers. Bernice’s hands were always soft.

  “No,” Alice said. “Maybe a little naive when he was younger, but never helpless,” Alice replied.

  “You said it yourself. We got him out, free and clear of Vindyne and the company that’s having all their things transported across the sectors. We’ll go spinward, he’ll go counter spin because that’s where he’ll find civilization and no one will chase after him.”

  “I know, but it feels like I’m abandoning him,” Alice muttered. “I am abandoning him. There’s no other way to put it. I’ll lose him in the crowd.”

  “We’re going to see him again, and I bet he’ll have found an amazing bunch of people. In fact, when we next see the Samson, I bet he’ll be saving us.”

  * * *

  Alice shook the other life, that long lost memory away. “I didn’t know it wasn’t the real Jonas!” she shouted, squeezing the trigger, blasting the transparent metal three times. A hot ring appeared there, and the rifle began to recharge. “If you get into my head again, I’ll make sure you boil in there!”

  “We have too much to learn from the Geist,” Anderson said with urgency. “Help is on the way.”

  “Keep them back, it’s going to take control of them,” Alice replied. “This has to…”

  * * *

  Alice was running between small ships. The landing field’s surface felt like hardened clay and made a hollow thump with every footfall. “Hurry! They know we’re here,” Lewis told her through the comm unit in her head. She looked up to a glimmer in the blue sky and focused in on it with her mechanical eye. It was an entire squadron of old Vindyne Interceptors. Too much for even the Clever Dream to take on. “They’re going to split us up,” Alice said.

  “What’s that? I couldn’t understand, there was static,” Lewis replied.

  “Lewis,” Alice said over her voice communicator. She was too emotional to use the brain bud. “Take off and get away. They want to capture me, but they’ll slag you if you get in the way.”

  “No!” Lewis said. “I’m not going to let you leave me like you left Bernice, or David, or any of the others.”

  The Clever Dream was in the sky in the next instant. Thrusters that weren’t made to be fired in an atmosphere flared for a second, accelerating the ship to a dangerous speed. The lower guns fired, toppling a ship to her left onto its side so Lewis could lower the Clever Dream enough to let her in. The forward ramp was down, and she jumped for it as soon as she could reach. “I was just trying to save you,” Alice said. “Better a ship alone than a pile of slag.”

  “I know I’m new, I know I’m just an artificial being, but I’ve seen you keep people out, leave them in the middle of the night. You say it’s for their protection, or the best thing for them, or whatever. You’re lying to yourself. They only want to know you, to…”

  * * *

  Alice returned to the present, grinding her teeth together. “I warned you.” She fired her rifles built up energy again, another three rounds, and the glowing spot on the transparent metal expanded. The Geist swam to the back of the tank, pressing against the doors there in the dark.

  “I’ll make a deal! You let me live and I’ll cooperate with your people, tell them everything. I’ll also translate all your memories from digital to biological code. You’ll remember everything!”

  “I can’t trust anything you put in my head,” Alice growled as she set her rifle to recharge at a dangerous rate. A command came through her armour’s signal receiver as she fired three more white-hot rounds. “God dammit! Don’t put me out! This thing can’t be allowed to survive!” She fought to cancel the order, feeling herself slipping into unconsciousness already.

  “I will restore your memories, Alice,” the Geist said. “Not because you couldn’t kill me, but because the artificial intelligence who put them there, who left them in digital code, did so because she wanted you to have a fresh start. I’ll make sure that’s not remotely possible.”

  Alice fell to her knees, the stasis medication someone in Haven Fleet ordered her suit to administer taking over. “Kill it,” she managed to say before she succumbed to a black sleep.

  Forty-One

  Mary

  * * *

  Dron was finally able to work on a project he’d been building for years. It arrived on the Glorious and remained in storage since, but thanks to his aide, Ensign Lancet, he was able to make time to unpack and examine it. The model occupied much of the table he had brought into the centre of his quarters

  From an ancient island rose concrete, steel and glass skyscrapers. Many of the cars in the tiny streets were yellow cabs. As he re-affixed a wire to a small terminal on one side of the base, windows lit up and the island came to life. Every window was a micro-display with its own programmed shadows and people. They moved about, every scene a piece of the period.

  A helicopter rose from one of the tower tops and buzzed above the skyscrapers, delivering tiny passengers to a hospital - their little gowns fluttering, gurney between them - and he smiled at the realization that the micro-androids still worked. The honking of horns and a screeching tyre drew his attention down.

  As he’d done so many times before when he was the Supervisor in the shipyards, he knelt down so he came eye level to the street and watched the tiny cars work their way through the inefficient traffic. With a ginger touch, he reached down that street with a narrow metal rod and rolled a car off the sidewalk back onto the road. The graphic of the taxi driver waved at him before joining the masses.

  A chime sounded, there was someone at his door. He sighed and stood up straight. “Come in,” he said as he retrieved his uniform jacket from the back of a chair.

  “Overlord,” Ensign Lancet addressed urgently. “Five supply posts have reached us using their fastest ships. A malicious artificial intelligence has infected thousands of systems. As ships report to supply depots,
they are being infected and disabled there.”

  Dron caught himself smiling and turned away. He didn’t foresee an attack from an artificial intelligence, not in his wildest dreams. It was a genuine surprise. “The report has been forwarded to me?”

  “It’s mostly bits and pieces of data,” Lancet replied. “The virus struck so quickly that most of the commanders only had time to send a few drives with their messengers along with a quick recording.”

  Dron faced his simulated metropolis, his back to Simon Lancet. He needed a moment to think. “Come here, Ensign,” he said.

  He silently obliged, walking in front of Dron and facing him.

  “Look at this,” Dron said, gesturing to the model. “I designed every imperfect millimetre of it based on images that survived from the era. What do you think?”

  “Well, I’ve seen these cars in period films. The buildings are amazing, but the design doesn’t seem to do much about problems with slow traffic. These little toy figures are very detailed. It’s a wonderful model. This place existed?”

  “You said you saw some period films?” Dron said. “Did you ever hear of Manhattan Island?”

  “Oh,” Lancet said. “Oooh,” he repeated, taking a closer look. “Okay, now I remember.”

  “I call this; ‘Before the Flood,’” Dron said proudly. “It isn’t exact, there’s no way it could be. Less than seventy years later, the water level around the island rose so much that it was abandoned after their economy collapsed. They hung on for twenty years or so, even after the great collapse, but when it never recovered and the new masters of that country abandoned them because they couldn’t afford to save the borough, that was the end. People moved on, businesses moved on, and the world began to forget. It must have seemed like an indomitable giant to them before the waters came. I’m sure there were people screaming; ‘get out! Get off the island before you lose everything!’ but how could anyone listen? How could such a beautiful, complex, grand and strong looking place be defeated by a little water? Its bones are still there. If you take a boat to its resting place you can still see the steel and stone skeleton under the water. Preservation efforts made sure it couldn’t all rot away, but someday you won’t be able to tell it was ever there.”