by C. G. Hatton
He ignored Sebastian and moved up front to the bridge. “Where is it?”
The pilot flashed up a chart. “According to your coordinates, it should be on the dark side of that moon, there.”
Nothing was showing up and Spectre was one of the best spook ships they had. If there was something there, they should have been able to detect it.
Knowing Elliott, that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything there.
“Go close enough to get a visual,” he muttered, not liking anything about this.
The pilot nodded and took them in.
There was an orbital there. Shielded, stealthed like nothing they’d seen before. Like it was totally inert.
“Where’s the Duck?” NG muttered.
There was no sign of it but Elliott connected through the ship. “Go on in. I’ll see you there. You need to deactivate the security grid before we can use the keys. I’m sure that won’t be a problem for you, will it? Don’t take your time. The Earth Navy just moved its entire Ninth and Eleventh fleets into the Between. I take it you would rather be there before the confrontation kicks into outright war? Let’s not wipe out all our assets before we face the Bhenykhn, shall we?”
“He’s a dick,” LC muttered.
Duncan shook his head with a wry smile. “Yeah, bud, he probably heard that.”
They walked out into a docking area circling a central core. There was minimal life support, enough so they didn’t need to wear suits, cold thin air poor enough to be uncomfortable. There were no life signs, low energy emissions as if it was on standby.
NG pulled his jacket around him. He’d taken Hilyer, leaving the others on Spectre, refusing Duncan’s suggestion to take a security contingent with him. He’d been stubborn, saying, “If there’s no problem, we’ll be fine. If there is a problem, it won’t make any difference whether you’re here or with us.”
Hil was twitchy from the minute the airlock door opened.
“What’s wrong?”
Hil shrugged. “Doesn’t feel right.”
“Nothing about this has felt right. Let’s just get it done.”
There was a small control room, sparse, nothing to indicate it had been occupied for any length of time, the kind of place a maintenance team might visit on a schedule but it was apparent that no one had been here for a long time.
NG took a seat and leaned over the console. “I’ll race you for it.”
Hil laughed. “Are there points on offer?”
“Loser gets the beers.”
They hooked in by remote and worked fast. It was an old system, sophisticated for its time, multi-layered, traps with double if not triple trips on them and an automated failsafe they had to bypass which from the look of it would have initiated a total lockdown, shut down of life support and activation of blast doors that would have trapped them in here to die. But Elliott was right, none of it was a problem until they got to the heart of the system and accessed the security grid.
He sat back, glancing at Hil who was pulling back at the same time.
“It’s some kind of nullifier,” the kid said.
NG nodded. He’d used enough of them before and Hil had used one on Genoa so they were both familiar enough with the base technology to be certain.
“The whole station is just a massive AI nullifier,” Hil said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you? Any AI wouldn’t just get shut down, it would get deleted if it got within a thousand kilometres of this place and the off switch is inside the field. Is that why the Duck can’t get close? LC always said the Duck has an AI.”
“Elliott has the last key.”
“What do we do?”
There wasn’t much they could do except shut it down. Or walk away.
“Did you see anything in there about the weapon?” he said.
Hil shook his head. “What do we do?” he said again.
‘You shut it down, you get the weapon and you get back to the real fight, Nikolai.’
“We shut it down,” he said and went back in.
They watched the energy output of the station diminish even further and gave the go ahead to Elliott to bring in the Duck.
It didn’t take long but it was still damned cold on there to be standing around waiting. Hilyer got bored and went off to recce the orbital. NG waited, stamping his feet and pacing to keep warm.
Eventually, the airlock cycled and Elliott walked out. “Well done,” he said. “Now, where are the keys?”
‘Be careful here, Nikolai…’
“We have them,” NG said. “Where’s the weapon? What do we need to do?”
Elliott smiled. “We need to release the controls.”
He gestured towards a corridor and NG followed him around the ring towards a line of doors.
It was only the light footsteps behind them that gave Hilyer away. And the way Elliott stopped, snapping his head around, the smile dropping as Hil walked up, almost a scowl crossing his thin face.
NG glanced round.
Hil looked puzzled, frowning, looking from him to Elliott and cursing suddenly, sending, “Shit, NG, this is…” taking two steps away, drawing his gun and aiming it at Elliott.
The connection cut abruptly.
“He’s the fucking AI,” Hil said out loud, too loud. “NG, don’t…”
The kid folded, dropped to the floor.
NG drew his own gun, no idea what was going on. He felt a sudden change in temperature, a drop in the oxygen levels. He could feel the gravity increasing, an oppressive pressure that was building fast.
“This doesn’t have to get nasty,” Elliott was saying.
It was hard to breathe. The gun felt like it weighed a ton. Elliott had pulled this trick before, he knew that from LC’s debrief. He felt the increase in AG accelerate, threw a bolt of massive force at the skinny tech guy and moved. Fast. He shoved Elliott even as the guy was falling back and they fell through a door into normal gravity, NG ending up standing over the bastard, aiming the gun between his eyes.
“Impressive,” Elliott said from the floor. “I had a feeling you could do that. Nice to see it in action first-hand.”
NG didn’t react. “Who are you?” he said.
“Where are the keys?”
“Elliott, I want to know what’s going on here.”
Elliott smirked. “What I want to know is who is Sebastian.”
This time, the increase in gravity was so fast he was on the floor before he could twitch. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move and all he could do was watch Elliott get to his feet, kick away the gun and stand over him.
The pressure was still increasing, a cold darkness closing in. “Don’t fight me, Nikolai,” he heard as he felt himself blacking out. “You will lose…”
Chapter 28
“How did Elliott know of Sebastian?”
The question echoed. Accusing.
He didn’t know. He wasn’t omnipotent and Nikolai hadn’t been careless. In fact, he had been reticent in revealing his other side to anyone but those that encountered Sebastian directly.
The question was more, how did Elliott know so much? It was difficult for these others of his race to comprehend the humans. One such as Elliott? Almost impossible. He considered his response. “All it would have taken is a word spoken out loud, a thought transmitted through an implant. Understand that Elliott is not like any other. The Seven are unlike any you have ever encountered, or probably ever will encounter. They think in a different way, on a different level, they feel, if that word can even be applied to them, in a way that neither we nor the humans that created them will ever be able to comprehend.”
•
He woke with a gasp and a curse, eyes snapping open to bright light. His heart was pounding. He picked himself up from the floor, feeling like he’d gone another ten rounds with Pen Halligan, and looked around. He was in a damned cage, no door, no locks, in the centre of what looked like an empty hangar.
‘Let me see,’ Sebastian rumbled deep inside, ‘what do
es this remind us of, Nikolai…?’
He still had all his weapons.
Hilyer was lying on the floor of another cage, motionless, didn’t even look like he was breathing.
NG walked forward and took hold of the bars, gripping the cold metal and trying to figure out if he could break it, melt it or something.
“Elliott,” he shouted. It was icy cold, his breath frosting in the chill air.
There were footsteps, the tech guy walking in, smiling. “You try to break out of there, Nikolai, you try anything, and you’re back on the floor… and I promise you, it will be worse next time.”
NG shook his head slightly, something occurring to him. “You sent the tip off to Ballack. You told them who I was and where I was going to be. Why, Elliott? We trusted you.”
The smile dropped. “No you didn’t,” he said. “I had to do something. How else were we going to get access to Zang’s vault, Nikolai? We needed that key. You didn’t let me down. Now tell me, who is Sebastian?”
He didn’t reply, didn’t react, hard not to think he’d been taken as an absolute fool.
“I will find out,” Elliott said simply. “It’s just a shame Zachary there didn’t keep his mouth shut. We could have worked together, Nikolai. I wanted to work with you. Now? How can we? Where are the keys?”
“You’re not inspiring me to hand them over to you.”
Elliott wasn’t impressed. He shook his head. “There’d be no need for this if you’d just brought the keys with you, Nikolai. Don’t play games with me.” He opened a link to the others. “Luka, bring the keys out here.”
‘NG, what do we do?’ the kid thought.
He could feel the oxygen getting low again. ‘Leave, bug out, get the hell away from here.’
He fell to his knees.
‘Can’t do,’ LC thought back. ‘Nothing is responding.’
“Luka, don’t be stupid,” Elliott was saying. “Bring out the keys or I’ll just come on board your ship and take them.”
NG raised his eyes. “Who the fuck are you, Elliott?”
The guy looked down at him. “You really want to know?” He spread his arms. “Welcome to Pandora, Nikolai. I’m the one evil they didn’t manage to lock up in this damn box.”
The gravity increased with no warning. The floor was cold and hard as he hit it.
Elliott knelt by his side. “I won’t hurt you, Nikolai. But understand, I need to do this.”
He watched the guy stand, easily, as the AG pinning him to the floor increased. Elliott walked away, unhindered. And there was nothing he could do.
‘Wake up, Nikolai. Wake up or we are going to die.’
He was cold. Limbs like lead.
‘Well done. We fight off an alien invasion and you blithely hand over the keys of the kingdom to a psychotic AI.’
He was still pinned, oxygen levels so low he was suffocating.
He struggled to rise, fighting the fatigue. A hand tugged at his shoulder, pulling him up.
He blinked open eyes that felt like they were full of grit and squirmed away from the light. The cage was gone as if it had never existed. It was Duncan, hoisting him up and off the floor.
“I knew something was wrong,” he mumbled.
“We all knew Elliott was hinky,” the big marine said. “C’mon, stand up, I’ve gotta get Hilyer.”
He managed to stand but he couldn’t move. The high gravity was draining. He didn’t have the strength to twitch.
‘Find some,’ Sebastian hissed.
“Is he alive?” he said, even the echo of his voice jarring inside his head.
“I dunno,” Duncan grunted, “but we need to get the hell out of here or none of us will be.”
NG dragged himself to Hil and helped the big man pull the kid out to the doorway. They fell in a heap back in normal gravity out in the dock area. He sucked in oxygen, making his head spin. He reached a hand to Hil’s chest. The kid was breathing but only just.
“Shit,” he mumbled. He looked up at Duncan. “Did you hear any of that? Is Elliott gone? What the hell is Pandora?”
“LC’s trying to hack in.”
“Did Elliott get the keys?”
Duncan nodded. “He accessed the AG on the ship, knocked us all on our asses.”
NG stood up. “Get Hil back there. I’m going to see if I can get in.”
He ran around the ring, breaking open doors as he went, and finding nothing other than empty echoing hangars until he came up against a door he couldn’t bust open so easily. He had to concentrate, finding the sweetspot before he could break the lock, and sidestepping another security net that was designed to send the whole place into lockdown.
He pushed the door open and stepped into a control room. There was a bank of panels set around a central core.
The Senson engaged. “I’m in,” LC sent.
“Yep, me too. What the hell is this place?”
It was cold to the point of sterile, a stench of burning wire heavy in the chill air. Most of the screens were smashed. He wiped a hand across a couple of them. Nothing.
“Project Pandora,” LC sent. “What is that?”
NG walked around the pillar. There were seven distinct panels, each with an engraved centrepiece. “Corporate,” he said, stroking a finger over an elaborate Aries motif. It was the only panel that was undamaged.
“Whatever they were storing here,” LC sent, “Elliott took it.”
“All six of them,” NG murmured.
“I can’t work out what it was,” the kid said, “but, NG, there’s another vault. It doesn’t look like Elliott accessed it. It wasn’t opened with the keys.”
“Where?”
He ran out and followed the directions as LC talked him through. It was deeper inside the station, at the base of the core. He slid more than climbed down the ladder and turned to face a massive steel door.
“How do I get in?” he sent.
“Give me a minute.”
It didn’t take that long before the door swung inwards with a hiss of releasing chill air.
A light came on as he walked in, nothing in there but sheer walls on all sides.
“Wait a sec,” LC sent. “There’s a bioscan check. Shit.” There was a pause then, “Okay go.”
NG walked forward.
“Put your hand flat against the centre of the far wall.”
He could guess that LC was bypassing the inputs. He did as instructed, half expecting the door to slam closed behind him.
It didn’t.
A panel in the wall shimmered and dissolved.
There was a small silver cube suspended, floating, in the centre of the inset chamber beyond.
“What is it?” Duncan sent.
“I don’t know.” He hesitated to reach in, trying to sense if there were any more traps.
“Why…?” LC started to say then cursed. “Shit, NG, get out of there. Get back here. There’s a countdown… Shit. NG, I can’t stop it.”
‘Get out of there,’ Duncan cut in.
NG glanced around. “How long?”
“Three minutes.”
He grabbed the block and ran.
He sat opposite Itomara in his old office on the Alsatia. He felt like an interloper, an outsider amongst the hustle and bustle of the cruiser, some kind of outcast returned from exile who no longer appreciated the minutiae of life here, the state of affairs with which everyone else was so preoccupied. He didn’t belong here any more.
‘We never did,’ Sebastian whispered.
The old man picked up the cube, shaking his head.
There was nothing in his mind that recognised it, nothing that had sparked at mention of Project Pandora, the seven keys, Elliott.
“Why,” Itomara said, “do you think I should know of this artefact?”
NG picked up his tea. Evelyn had sent in a jug, so no ceremony but Itomara hadn’t shown any sign of feeling slighted. He took a sip. There was plenty of sugar in it so maybe she wasn’t so pissed at him. “It was crea
ted by the Order for the corporations,” he said. “There was one key Elliott didn’t need.”
The man was astute. “Aries. Trust me when I say I know nothing of this. My forefathers maybe but nothing was handed down to me.” He gave a small smile. “You can read my mind. Know this to be true.”
NG rubbed at his eye. He had ways to know for sure but he had no need to suspect otherwise.
He watched as Itomara put down the cube and picked up his own cup with a slight nod. “And now he has the weapon?”
“If it is a weapon.”
The cube was engraved with ornate characters.
‘Nolite relinquere omnem spem.’
Hilarious.
“Aries looks to profit significantly from current events,” he said carefully.
“We have always sought gain from the misery of others.” Itomara raised his eyes from the teacup. “Isn’t that what you say of the Order? Isn’t that why you have been fighting us so ferociously, NG?”
It wasn’t so much that Itomara’s mind was shielded, only another telepath would be able to do that. It was more that his thought processes were so controlled, he was almost impossible to read. He was very good. It was tough to determine truth from lie.
‘He is lying. Be careful here, Nikolai,’ Sebastian whispered.
‘Can you see any deeper?’
‘If you want me to kill him…’
The old man’s expression was unfathomable.
The Senson engaged as they stared at each other, even though he’d ordered no interruptions. Tagged urgent.
He allowed access.
“The Seven,” Badger sent. “The Man has it all here. Elliott is one of the Seven. We might have just really screwed up, NG. Seven sentient AIs capable of planetary-scale destruction. Way beyond anything we have now. The project was terminated. They were all insane, uncontrollable. The AI cores were locked in a box until someone could figure out how to control them.”