Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework

by Randolph Lalonde

  Ronin and Joboy’s fighters strafed left and right above and below the Warlord, unloading their missiles on the enemy corvette’s fighter screen. Between the pair, it looked like they were launching dozens of flares at the ships, but Jake knew they were deadly seeker micro-missiles. One well placed hit could disable a fighter, three would destroy it, and the number Ronin and his wingman launched would decimate their enemies if they struck.

  The enemy fighters broke away, heading towards the atmosphere in hopes of burning the missiles up as they attempted re-entry. That left the corvette, which was still moving to block them, or at least damage the Warlord severely on its way into the atmosphere. The mines burst, spilling their missiles forth as the Warlord fired her torpedo tubes. “Old weapons,” Captain Valent said as he watched the hail of fire rain down on the corvette, “but real firepower.”

  The corvette burst in a dozen places as her hull broke up and the Warlord passed by, leaving the remains to burn up in the atmosphere behind. Jake checked the status of Minh and Joyboy and was surprised to see their shields regenerating, their weapons cooling, and the pilots in fine condition. The only problem the pair had was their ammunition levels. They were almost down to only their energy weapons.

  Captain Valent gripped the edge of his armrests, wishing they could enter the atmosphere faster. He scanned the area ahead and below.

  Port Rush City proper had been decimated and was overrun by framework soldiers. He narrowed his scan and linked up to the Sunspire’s readings only to discover tens of thousands of the regenerating soldiers. Many of them were on their way towards the shanty port, where some ships showed signs that there were still crews aboard, trying to power them up. Human survivors took shelter wherever they could.

  “Finn, is the Big Surprise ready?” he asked.

  “Yes, but in this atmosphere we’re talking about an effective radius of seventy three kilometres.”

  “We’re hitting Port Rush, it’s lost,” Jake said, looking at the number of troop pods the Order had in the city; there were ninety eight. “It’s the only thing that will make all those frameworks human enough to kill.”

  “Aye, it’s ready. I’m climbing down to set the target,” Finn replied. After a moment he asked: “So, framework systems can be fried by an EMP?”

  “I’m betting that one powerful enough would do the trick. We’ll be blasting all their gear out of commission if I’m wrong.”

  “Not bad, either way,” Finn said.

  “Drop it behind the Spaceport in relation to our camp, that ought to keep the blast away from our settlement down there.”

  “They’ll have about nine klicks buffer zone,” Frost said, looking at his tactical screen.

  “Good enough,” Jake said. “Kadri, warn-“

  “Warning the Triton settlement it’s coming on an encrypted channel,” Kadri said. “We have a tactical update from them and a scout named Alice.”

  “Alice?” Jake said, immediately putting the thought that it could somehow be his daughter out of his mind. It wasn’t possible; he’d watched her pass away. Jason’s message told him she was alive somehow, but he guarded against hope.

  Her location was marked on the tactical map of the surface. Alice had been gunned down near a large, octagonal escape ship. Her Freeground issue command and control unit reported that her injuries were beyond lethal - they were malicious. The structure she’d scanned was five levels deep, and had dug until it had high banks of earth all around it. He checked the scan of the Leviathan and saw a void in the side of the ship that matched. There were several other voids the same shape, but the record from her command and control unit reported that she’d seen Lister Hampon there, and killed Gabriel Meunez with prejudice.

  The Warlord rocked as an anti-air burst struck the left side of the ship. “Take us down low, Ashley,” Jake said.

  “Look ahead for anti-air and obstructions, and highlight them on my view,” Ashley told her navigator as she guided the Warlord into a spinning, weaving dive towards the fresh-water ocean near Port Rush. She manoeuvred the Warlord so close to the water that the engines threw a violent wake of liquid and steam behind it.

  Ronin and Joyboy flew in formation just ahead. They were joined by several Triton fighters as they crossed over onto the shore. “My scans are showing anti-air turrets on top of some of the drop pods behind the city wall,” Ronin reported. “I’m getting set to drop my last seekers on a few, marking other targets.”

  “I see it, Ronin,” answered Slick. “Stay low, keep your flight paths jagged as we approach, time to test our inertial dampeners.”

  Ashley piloted the ship only metres away from the tops of buildings and wrecked ships. The steam and water wake transformed into one of fire and dust. She didn’t avoid the enemy troops on the ground either, but made sure she was close enough to cause chaos and death as they passed. The Uriel and Ramiel fighters rained down energy and slug fire as they passed over enemy encampments. They passed the tall wall dividing the Port Rush shanty port from Port Rush City proper. “Fighters, get clear after your first run. Your ships won’t repel an EMP this powerful,” said Captain Valent.

  The fighters zigged and zagged abruptly from left to right, testing the tolerances of their ships and pushing beyond normal gravitational force tolerances without killing their pilots thanks to inertial dampener systems. The ships fired dozens of small missiles that screamed towards the drop pods and exploded. The squadron hit nine targets and peeled off.

  The Warlord’s remaining beam turret cut across several enemy encampments and fired at a few anti-air positions as they swept past the tops of broken skyscrapers. The port building came into view, and Ashley dove for it.

  Anti-air cannons struck the bottom of the hull along with small-arms fire, taxing their shields heavily, draining them to three percent before Ashley pulled up and had the ship in the perfect position to drop their payload. “Drop it, Finn!” Captain Valent ordered.

  “It’s away!” announced Finn.

  The Big Surprise, a collection of energy storage devices wrapped around an old, massive electromagnetic bomb, dropped from its hiding place, behind emergency access doors. An alarm sounded, alerting Ashley to a large change in mass, and Jake silenced it, knowing that she was aware of the shift and would adjust.

  One of the main thruster pods was struck by heavy anti-air energy fire without the protection of shields. The twin thruster overheated and shut down instead of exploding. Ashley and her navigator were busy frantically compensating as she guided the ship one handed.

  The sound of the inertial dampeners straining to compensate for Ashley forcing the Warlords remaining three twin thruster pods to full maximum tolerances filled the bridge with an ominous hum. In seconds they were over water, and the tactical readouts on the bridge marked the entire city and mountain behind it as being struck by a massive electromagnetic pulse. Captain Valent focused in on the Triton encampment and was relieved to see that they were untouched. Only a tiny fraction of the shanty port beyond the wall of Port City Proper was affected.

  “Marking our next target,” Captain Valent said, highlighting the crater made by the Leviathan’s escape ship. He couldn’t help but watch as the green dot designating Alice’s corpse failed to move from its resting place near the edge of the crater. “Stephanie, get all your marines ready. We’re storming that underground complex,” Captain Valent ordered through his comm.

  “There are a lot of troops down there,” Frost said. “We’ve got two mines ready, they could drop, burst, then carpet bomb the area.”

  Captain Valent stared at the green dot on the map. It couldn’t be her, but there was a feeling, an irrational hope that he couldn’t shut down.

  “Taking small arms fire, a couple of small surface-to-air hits, but nothing big,” Frost announced. “Coming up on the target.”

  Jake took a deep breath and said: “Mark their mustering point and any exposed systems as targets, I’ll drop with our marines while the ground’s still hot.”
He was starting to stand and leave the bridge when the green dot moved.

  * * *

  “Sometimes we have to leave a life behind to save another,” Jason Everin said. Alice was standing beside him in a port café. The transparent wall they stood beside overlooked the freshwater ocean on Tamber. “You won’t understand how important this is for a long time, Alice, but I need to ask that you do that for your father, Jacob. His journey will be difficult, and you’re the only one who can help him remain alive inside.”

  “Alive inside,” Alice said. “That’s hard, that’s heavy.”

  Medium-sized haulers, gunships, and fighters flew by, and Alice could see many landing platforms moving in and out of the centre of the structure they were standing in. “Where is this? When did this happen?”

  “This hasn’t come to be yet,” Jason Everin said. “I’m engaging a part of your brain as it’s being rebuilt. I’m reaching out to you in my near future, and we’re building this memory together with the Victory Machine.”

  “So I’m regenerating, remembering this thing that just got plopped into my head while all my bits are being rebuilt, but you had to make a future call to bring all this together.”

  Jason Everin smiled. He was wearing the uniform of an intelligence trainee, and he looked as he did on the First Light, younger and quick to smile. “I’m going to tell you something that you have to remember for the rest of your life, and that could be a very long time.”

  “Lay it on me, I’ve got a great memory when it works,” Alice said.

  “Your father will always love you more than anyone, and no matter how dark the circumstances, a reminder the you’re his daughter will always lighten his burden. You’re going to get into trouble, he’s going to be infuriating sometimes, but he will always love you. Your life resembles his in more ways than you know, and his, yours. I’m not talking about your origin as an artificial intelligence, or as a woman before now, or his time as Jonas. Your current incarnations are different, and they will be filled with adventure and terror. You will save him by loving him in return.”

  “I do,” Alice replied. “More than ever.”

  “Release the Clever Dream and all the artefacts of your past, become a part of his life, because that sacrifice will reward you more than anything else in the end,” Jason Everin said.

  “Couldn’t he jump aboard the Clever Dream? It’s a great ship, I mean-“ she trailed off as she watched Jason’s disapproval grow. “No, huh?”

  “No,” Jason replied.

  “Adventure?”

  “More than you can imagine, but at a cost,” Jason said.

  “What kind of cost are we talking here?”

  “The necessary kind, but few sacrifices will be meaningless, if that’s any consolation.”

  “But, adventure,” Alice said with a cheeky, sidelong look.

  “Adventure,” Jason agreed.

  “When do I start?” Alice asked.

  “Right now. Your framework systems just surged. You’re already whole,” Jason said. “Best of luck.”

  * * *

  “It’s just not that easy to kill a version three,” Alice said as she felt the last of her body surge back into being. Regenerating was different the second time. She was aware that her body stored up energy and quietly repaired damage to her fabrication systems before repairing and reviving her all at once.

  She wrapped her legs around the nearest soldier’s knees and tripped him with a jerk. His weapon was in her hand the next moment, and she sprayed the squad ordered to guard her with weapons’ fire.

  “I told you we had to shoot her up again!” shouted one soldier to another as a pair ran for their lives.

  Alice wanted to rage on, to press the fight, but thousands of soldiers were mustering around the top of the installation. She grabbed her pack, ignored the few things that fell out, and sprinted for the edge of the crater.

  Energy bolts lit the shaded area, turning spots of gravel to glowing char. All the command and control units she wore were destroyed; she had no idea what was waiting for her past the massive upturned slab of concrete jutting out of the earth she was running for.

  She rolled behind it and blasted a pair of frameworks, one of which shot her twice, only slightly singing her first layer of skin on her hip and shoulder. The framework soldiers would regenerate quickly, but she knew she had at least a thirty second head start.

  Alice ran into the forest of wreckage, highly conscious of her shredded vacsuits. She needed more protection, going on completely armour-free wasn’t an option. The sound of large pops behind her prompted her to zag and dodge behind a large pillar. Her instincts proved right, as a pair of explosions flashed behind her, sending a wave of heat outward that was so harsh she could feel it around the corner. “Something like that really will kill me, I can’t regenerate if I get slagged.”

  She pressed on, putting distance between her and the large crater base. Alice enjoyed the challenge of moving through wreckage and rubble and did so well, but she was becoming weary of the jeopardy. A nagging desire to find a place near the shoreline, where there was less for the frameworks to fight for, and settle in for a rest was growing.

  A roar overhead prompted her to look up just in time to catch a glimpse of the Warlord sweeping by overhead. “Hey, Dad!” she shouted.

  She heard two percussive sounds that reminded her of metal bars striking each other, only much louder, and the Warlord dropped two metre wide, barrel-like mines that exploded into hundreds of finger-length missiles that screamed through the air into the crater. Fire and thunder filled the sky above the crater, and she watched the Warlord bank, slow down, and return to the site even as it burned.

  “I should have asked Jason if I get another XO-99. Some extra firepower would be awesome right now,” Alice said as she squeezed through a jumble of cargo containers. She stopped as soon as she was through the tangle of big metal crates, listening to the popping sounds of rounds striking the pile behind her. A loud creak warned her that it was about to collapse, and she moved out of the way, cringing.

  A framework soldier climbing through the crush of crates made eye contact with her a moment before the cargo pile collapsed, sending dust and debris in all directions. When the mess was finished falling in on the frameworks trying to follow her while firing from the inside, she asked herself, “Why do I get the feeling I’m headed in the wrong direction?” Alice pulled two command and control units out of her pack and slapped them onto her wrists. She connected with them effortlessly as they powered on and looked at the tactical map.

  There were two framework soldiers still chasing her, coming around the corner only metres away. Alice pulled a rifle free of the pack and leaned out from behind cover firing her rifle on its highest setting. The stock was hot to the touch after a few seconds, but it served its deadly purpose. The frameworks wouldn’t be standing up for at least a minute. The weapon had been damaged, and couldn’t be trusted.

  Alice pulled her old vacsuits off and sprayed a fresh, dark rust coloured one on. “Sure it can’t protect me from too much, but it’s better than trying to run across a battlefield naked,” she said to herself as she pulled a pair of blade shooters from the pack and loaded up on ammunition.

  “I’m coming, Dad,” Alice said, opening a channel to him. She broke cover and started running back towards the crater, firing both her weapons at the incoming framework soldiers, forcing them back. “I’ve got a few friends, too.”

  “We’ll be ready,” he replied.

  Alice slid down a broad culvert and rolled out of the bottom, firing a spray of suppressive fire, catching a framework in the neck and head by pure luck. She thought of what fact she could send him to prove that she really was his daughter and remembered the perfect thing. It wasn’t a phrase at all, it was how she felt right before she died on the Triton, right before she decided to let go and use her father’s memory to upload herself to a Regent Galactic communications node and figure out how she could fight the war in h
er own way. There was a unique feeling as she reached out to him and began to upload her packaged consciousness.

  Her comm unit’s screen garbled as she used it to reach out to him, and send that same feeling in his direction. “You know it’s me, right? You’ve gotta recognize me now,” she said when she was sure she’d done her best.

  The silence on the channel was enough to drive her to distraction by the time he replied: “I do. I’m coming.”

  “Nah,” Alice said as she took an energy bolt in the shoulder and whirled to riddle her assailant with explosive blade shots. “I can make the last ninety metres. You just get ready to storm the castle.”

  Alice’s tactical scanner spotted four more frameworks moving so they could flank her as she ran for the crater. She was just starting to plan an approach when a stream of explosive rounds rained down from above on one of the enemy positions, obliterating them and their cover.

  A Ramiel fighter dove and swerved overhead, breaking from several Uriel fighters headed towards the crater. “This is Tempest of the Skyguard,” a female voice announced over her comm, “I’m your cover.”

  “I think I love you,” Alice said as she sprinted towards the crater.

  The Ramiel fighter came in for another pass and ripped the landscape out from under the other pair of frameworks lying in wait for Alice with a mini-missile.

  Chapter 53

  The Walls

  Oz let the smouldering Triton rifle drop behind him from atop the decimated hover truck he knelt on. The charging chamber and barrel were both white hot, warped thanks to over seventy three minutes of near constant firing. He accepted another from a runner. “How are our rounds coming?” he asked as he let loose at a group of four framework soldiers moving to join a larger mass who had taken refuge behind an overturned transport.

  The barrage made the frameworks hesitate a little, stepping back from the first one whose legs were mangled by Oz’s careful shooting. He fired a burst at each of their heads and spread their skull matter across the ground beside them. “That’ll take a minute to recover from,” he said.