Nepenthe Rising (Stars in Shadow Book 1)

by John Triptych

  “So no activity at the rendezvous site? I say we go and pick up the kids while the two big bastards keep jawing at each other,” Strand said.

  “I don’t like it,” Creull said. “My senses say it’s a trap. I vote we let this go.”

  “I agree with the commander,” Viniimn said. “Too risky.”

  “Well, I’m going over to the damned nebula to get my surviving teammates back with or without any of you,” Strand said.

  The captain held up his hand. “We do this the traditional way. We brief the crew and call for a general vote. Simple majority wins.”

  Puteri Sin couldn’t help but smile to herself as she made her way through the access hatch and into the maintenance corridor at the bottom end of the habitat deck. They were going to rescue Duncan and Maeve! She heard the captain’s briefing over the ship’s com-link network and listened intently to Strand’s impassioned speech, all the while ignoring Creull’s succeeding doubts and protests. She didn’t hesitate to input a yes on her console, and every spacer did the same when the time to vote was announced. The spacers might be on the lowest rung when it came to the ladder of command, but they held a dominant power of their own within the Nepenthe’s peculiar democracy.

  She went over the holographic readings on her wrist smartcom a second time just to make sure all the information was correct. Puteri had never debated a true AI before, and she wanted to make sure all the data she gathered was factual.

  The gravity at the lower end of the extended habitat wheel was light, and she bounced forward with springing steps. She had been looking for Zeno, since the synthetic was proving to be elusive, and Sappho’s glitches was particularly troublesome in trying to locate any member of the crew. Viniimn wanted to do a clean security wipe-down on all systems before they got to the rendezvous point as a precaution, but the spacers outvoted him on that too, compelling the Nepenthe to head directly towards the nebula rendezvous first.

  She had guessed he would be at one of the interface nodes, and time had proved her right. Puteri found the synthetic man standing inside one of the access corridors leading towards Sappho’s main core systems.

  “Zeno, I wanted to bring this report over to you,” Puteri said. “I tried to access your com-link, but there wasn’t any response.”

  The synthetic turned his head in her direction. “I’m running tests on Sappho’s systems to try and locate the cause of the glitches, and turned off com-link access to this section. What is it?”

  Puteri bit her lip. “Well, I know I wasn’t supposed to do this since everybody else is prepping up to make sure the ship is ready for the jump, but something’s bothering me.”

  Zeno disengaged his fingers from the interface and stared at her. “You need to explain.”

  “Well, the relayed message we got from Duncan and Maeve telling us to meet them at the rendezvous,” Puteri said. “I think it got altered somehow.”

  “Are you saying it’s not authentic?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure what it is. I ran a partial analysis on it and even though it’s the right code, I don’t think Duncan sent it.”

  Zeno narrowed his eyes. “What makes you say that?”

  “Just a hunch,” Puteri said. “Everything about it looks fine, but knowing Duncan … I don’t think he would have sent it this way.”

  “Hauk was a recent recruit,” Zeno said. “What makes you think you know him that well already?”

  Puteri shrugged. “Yeah, I know he’s new and all, but I got to know him pretty good. Whenever he had a question that Sappho couldn’t answer, he always came to me.”

  “Alright,” Zeno said. “Tell me why you think the message could have been faked.”

  Puteri held up her left forearm and activated a holographic display with her smartcom. “Right here it gives out the message authentication, followed by the coordinates on the star charts. Duncan had a habit of getting a star’s ascension and declination mixed up—I had to correct him every time—and also his calculations would be a little off; he’s not very good in astro-mathematics.”

  “But the message did give us the rendezvous point, right?”

  “It did,” Puteri said, “but unlike Duncan’s bad habit, the message got the coordinates aligned perfectly.”

  “Perhaps he learned from his mistakes or got the coordinates from the star charts of whatever ship he was able to commandeer,” Zeno said. “I don’t see any particular worry about this.”

  “Yeah, the code is what authenticates it, since only the strike team and Sappho knew the right combination,” Puteri said. “Yet something’s just not right.”

  Zeno tilted his head up. “I wish I had this organic sentient trait of instincts or gut feelings. It seems I will always fail to understand such things and how they equate to decision making.”

  “I know it’s a hunch, but I’ve a suspicion it’s part of a plan made by somebody else,” Puteri said. “Since the code is authentic, I started thinking about it in a different sense.”

  “And what is your conclusion?”

  “It had to be someone with access to Sappho’s classified codes,” Puteri said. “I didn’t trust Dr. Hayer since she tried to kill Maeve before, so I figured she must have sent the code since she was part of the strike team on Horizon.”

  Zeno placed his hands on his hips. “But you aren’t convinced?”

  “Not since I read Lieutenant Strand’s debriefing,” Puteri said. “If Dhara is dead, then it couldn’t have been her. The only other possibility is…”

  “Is what?”

  Puteri shrugged. All she had was pure speculation, without a shred of proof. “Well, it’s a long shot, but maybe someone on this ship wrote the message and sent it on a roundabout relay until it got back to us.”

  Zeno said nothing as he merely continued to stare intently into her eyes.

  Puteri’s eyebrows shot up. No, it couldn’t be. Sappho’s malfunctions and the possible reasons for it exploded like a supernova inside her brain. A hidden virus … with true AI capabilities infecting the entire ship, it had to be! “We need to tell Viniimn about—”

  Zeno covered the short distance between them in less than two seconds. The synthetic man’s right hand clamped down on her neck.

  Puteri tried to struggle, using all her strength to pry away his hand from choking her, but it wasn’t enough. The pain in her throat made it hard to breathe, and she was starting to black out. “Wait … stop.”

  Zeno continued his relentless constraint. Puteri was now on her knees, the strength in her arms fading away. A few more seconds and she would be dead.

  Just as the synthetic was about to finish his deed, his head got knocked sideways when Benno Holmes struck him from behind with the butt of his plasma welder.

  “Leave her alone,” Benno said. He had been doing some manual maintenance work on a nearby section since the network glitches had affected the automated repair system. The youth heard snippets of their conversation, and he watched in surprise when Zeno attacked her. He was part of the crew now, and he would fight anyone who got in between them.

  The blow to his head temporarily distracted the synthetic, and Zeno withdrew his hand from Puteri’s throat. He turned around to face his adversary while Benno activated the plasma welder and thrust it against his abdomen. The synthetic was faster, and he shifted sideways while grabbing Benno’s lead forearm, twisting it with inhuman force and breaking the youth’s wrist.

  Benno cried out as Zeno closed in and slapped the burning torch from his grasp. The youth had time to turn his head, and yelled out at the still-dazed Puteri as she lay on the floor nearby. “Run!”

  Zeno grabbed the youth’s thick chin and twisted it, breaking his neck. Benno tipped over towards the ground in slow motion due to the light gravity, and began to convulse before finally becoming still. Zeno bent over and deactivated the torch as he died.

  Puteri could hardly breathe as she got to her knees and began crawling away. She let out a soft moan when Zeno got hold
of her long hair and pulled it back so hard it fractured her neck bone. He finished it by choking off her airway, waiting for a few minutes until she finally stopped moving.

  29 Ambush at Mystic Mountain

  A complex expanse with bright and dark masses of ionized gas and dust, the Carina Region was one of the largest nebula clusters in the entire galaxy. Starships operating within its domain would have reduced sensor detection due to the interference, and their magnetic plasma radiators would tend to dissipate if they ventured into the thicker nebulosity concentrations, completely hampering any journey to and from the nearby star systems.

  The Nepenthe headed towards the Mystic Mountain Region using two-gee acceleration. The pirate ship had jumped in several hours before from one of the outlying shadow zones, and was making her way towards the rendezvous point. The area was so named because the thick formations of ionized dust and gas resembled the tall pillars of mountain peaks when first seen from Earth. Measuring three light-years in height, the Mystic Mountains contained distinct nebulosity patches of nascent stars firing off jets of gas that interacted with the surrounding clouds, making it a good hiding place for ships.

  Inside the Nepenthe’s battlesphere, newly promoted Spacer Sergeant Oana Florescu sat on the pilot’s chair while checking the sensor readouts in front of her. “Still nothing on sensors or com-links, Captain.”

  Captain Lucien Dangard continued to slouch on the high-backed command chair in the center of the armored bridge. “How long until we begin to skirt the base of the mountain?”

  “Another two hours at present acceleration, sir,” Oana said.

  “I wouldn’t fret too much about it,” Dangard said. “This whole region messes up everyone’s sensors. We won’t detect another ship until we get close.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This your first time piloting the ship, Sergeant?”

  “It is, sir,” Oana said. “I’ve been waiting for this opportunity ever since I got recruited.”

  Dangard gave a short chuckle. “Well, don’t get too overeager. It’s mostly boring.”

  Commander Creull sat near the side of the room and let out a low growl while fiddling with her console.

  Dangard turned in her direction. “Problem, Commander?”

  “Several crewmembers were supposed to check in already,” Creull said. “But with Sappho constantly having to reset her systems, I can’t get an accurate personnel count.”

  Dangard turned his head again, this time looking up at the synthetic embedded in the other side of the battlesphere. “Zeno, what’s the status on Sappho?”

  “She’s still having problems with the com-links; it’s affecting her entire network,” Zeno said. “I’m currently linked up to help isolate her essential functions, but it looks like it might be a virus of some kind.”

  Dangard frowned. “A virus? Doesn’t Sappho have anti-virus suites to handle such an occurrence?”

  “She does,” Zeno said. “Yet this virus is somehow elusive. So far she’s unable to detect where it is and can only react when a particular system gets infected.”

  Dangard frowned. “This will not do. You need to find this thing and eradicate it.”

  “It might help if I go over to Sappho’s core node and interface with her from there,” Zeno said. “I’m getting some interference even at the command link over here.”

  “Go,” Dangard said. “Get this done right away.”

  As Zeno detached himself from the wall and floated towards the inner airlock, Creull waited until the synthetic closed the hatch behind him before she started talking. “Captain, I suspect something is very wrong with him.”

  Dangard gave her an incredulous look. “Who? Zeno?”

  “Yes,” Creull said. “He’s been acting strangely. Puteri was working on something and now I haven’t been able to contact her for the past few hours since we made the jump into this area.”

  “Puteri Sin, our intel analyst? What was she working on?”

  “She mentioned something to me about having some suspicions about the message we got from Duncan Hauk to meet them here,” Creull said. “I told her she only had an hour to work on it and give me the results, but she failed to report in. I’ve tried her by com-link, but due to our problems with Sappho I’m unable to locate her.”

  Dangard rubbed his grizzled chin. “I can handle things over here. Go find her.”

  While the bridge of the USNS cruiser Wyvern didn’t have the internal gyros and shock absorbers of the enemy pirate ship, her command and control room was as deeply embedded within the center of the vessel as her enemy counterpart’s. Unlike the Nepenthe, the crew manning the Wyvern’s bridge was fully staffed, and they had no problems with their shipboard AI.

  The com officer tilted her head back. “Commander, remote sensor drone sixty-six reports faint contact at extreme range. I’m forwarding the last and expected coordinates to your console, sir.”

  Fleet Commander Duc “Duke” Tran nodded. “Has the enemy reacted in any way?”

  “No, sir, we’re running relay pings timed to the discharge of gas from the nearby star,” the com officer said. “We’ll be able to get our messages through to the rest of the fleet, but there will be a delay.”

  “That’s okay,” Tran said. “If they haven’t detected us yet then we still have the element of surprise.” He inputted a new course using his console. “Contact the other cruisers and order them to proceed towards these respective coordinates upon my command. They are not to open fire or engage their drives until I give the signal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tran turned towards his weapons officer. “Can we open up with the lancers first at those coordinates?”

  The weapons officer checked the readings on his console. “Yes, sir. We can deploy about a quarter of the missiles because the other remote drone launchers are too far away, but this ought to be more than enough.”

  Tran leaned back on his chair, a look of supreme confidence etched on his face. The intel was excellent, and he had those filthy pirates right where he wanted them to be. “Good, this will be a historic day. We’re about to do what no other Union or Concordance task force has ever done. We will defeat the Nepenthe. Sound the alert and go to battle stations.”

  For the sixth time in less than twenty-four hours, Creull stopped by Puteri Sin’s tiny quarters before proceeding back towards the Nepenthe’s security module. She had expected the young intel analyst to show up in her usual haunts, but it seemed Puteri was missing.

  Creull emitted a low, frustrated growl while heading down another corridor on her way towards the engineering deck. I’ve been through these places several times already and I still can’t find her. Where could she be?

  A gnawing suspicion began to manifest in her mind, overriding her primal instincts. If Puteri had been working on the received message, then who would she ask about it?

  The ship’s executive officer turned and made a beeline towards the AI network module in the null gravity section of the Nepenthe. Creull opened the hatch and floated inside. Chief Engineer Viniimn was there, using his cyber-harness to plug into Sappho’s interface node.

  “What’s the status?” Creull asked.

  “No viral infection in life support, main power, cooling, and weapons, so I’ve managed to isolate those sections,” Viniimn said. “The main problem seems to be in com-link and sensors. I’m trying to repair the latter first, but it’s proving to be troublesome. I think a few more hours of work at least.”

  Creull narrowed her eyes while her tentacle whiskers began to curl up. “How do you think Sappho could have gotten infected like this?”

  “Hard to tell since it looks like the virus embedded itself in various components first before it activated,” Viniimn said. “This could have been timed to explode years ago or just recently. We’ve no way of knowing at this point since we can’t even detect it until it starts screwing with Sappho’s systems. Even Zeno is stumped, and he normally figures this stuff out right away.�
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  “I’m beginning to suspect Zeno might have something to do with it,” Creull said.

  Viniimn turned towards her and flicked out his tongue. “Zeno? But why? He doesn’t even joke around.”

  “I don’t know,” Creull said. “But he began exhibiting strange behavior after the mission to Azusa Station.”

  Viniimn thought about it for a minute. “You could be right. He did interface directly with the Institute’s database on that station. But Zeno has his own internal anti-viral systems; he surely would have dealt with it the moment it tried to infect him.”

  “Unless it’s something he failed to detect too,” Creull said. “Perhaps the virus was waiting for him and entered his system while he downloaded the files, then spread over to Sappho when he got back here.”

  “I’ve known no virus which could possibly do that,” Viniimn said. “These types of malware are simple executables that replicate themselves and are pre-programmed to damage systems and databases, that’s all. Not unless … no, it can’t be.”

  “What can’t be?”

  “I did an AI engineering thesis on the Singularity Wars back during my educational days on my homeworld,” Viniimn said. “One particular record told of true AIs that were neither synthetics nor were they classified as networks.”

  “A third type of sentient AI?”

  Viniimn nodded. “Yes, a true AI in the form of a virus. It exhibits the characteristics of a typical malware, but it gains intelligence as it infects more networks. This sentient being can even take control of other AIs.”

  Creull bared her teeth, a sign of both anger and surprise. “But that’s illegal! Every true AI has signed and abided by the treaties set forth after the war.”

  “It’s the only explanation that makes sense,” Viniimn said.