by Scott Baron
Celeste remained on-screen, not at all impressed by the Ra’az maneuvers. She simply stood there and waited.
Moments later, their escaped cohort jumped back to join the fleet, their ships smoldering and crippled from multiple pulse cannon blasts.
“What happened? Why have you returned?”
“They were waiting for us, sir. There must have been a hundred ships ready for our arrival.”
“That is impossible. There is no way they could have followed us through warp.”
“I agree, sir. Which means somewhere in the fleet, somewhere among our ranks, there is a traitor.”
The loyalist commander had been through a lot with his masters and knew their reactions well. More than anything, disloyalty to the Ra’az was punished with no mercy. And now there had been a spy within the ranks of their most trusted servants? He only hoped they would find his services too valuable to dispatch of him and his men.
He relayed the findings to the Ra’az, slightly altering the message so as to shift blame to an unknown spy, rather than someone definitely within the loyalist ranks.
Freya had been monitoring the whole exchange, of course, and was more than slightly thrilled to see her plan, which was actually Joshua’s plan, succeeding.
“You see that?” Daisy said with a grin. “Damn, you do not want to mess with Celeste.”
“Yeah, she’s definitely got that Harkaway streak to her, no matter how refined she looks,” Sarah agreed.
“I just hope those fake loyalists of ours were able to make it off the Ra’az ships before the shooting started. You see anything, Freya?”
“Some transport craft did make runs to the other ships within the fleet, but the attack was premature, so I was unable to account for all of our people. I’m sorry, Daisy.”
“Not your fault, kiddo. At least the intel on their next warp destination was spot-on. Those bastards jumped right into a blender, and now they seem too afraid to jump lest they have it happen again.”
“I never thought I’d see a Ra’az on their heels like that,” Sarah said.
“Fear is the mind killer, after all,” Daisy joked.
“Hey, she’s getting ready to lay down the law,” Sarah noted. “Turn up the volume, would ya?”
“You got it,” Freya replied, increasing the sound levels of the video feed.
Celeste looked sternly into the lens, as did Aarvin, which could be a bit disconcerting for a man with four eyes.
“I will offer you once more the opportunity to surrender,” she said, a hard rod of steel underlying her words. “There is no need for further bloodshed today. While you have committed grave acts against our people, we are peaceful races at heart. Power down your vessels and surrender and no further lives will be lost. To do otherwise is to invite death. Please translate to your masters. We will await your reply.”
“Daaaaamn,” Freya said. “That was badass!”
“Seriously. You’ve gotta give her credit. That was a fair offer, especially given––”
The Ra’az ships didn’t even bother with a response, instead opening fire with all weapons at their disposal. The human fleet, however, remained mostly unscathed, positioning damaged Ra’az craft between themselves and the barrage.
“I guess we know their answer,” Sarah said.
Without warning, a massive Chithiid transport ship exploded into a billion tiny pieces, killing the millions of cryo-stored laborers it had been carrying in an instant.
“Freya, power up! They’re killing the Chithiid!” Daisy shouted.
“What can I do?”
“Track the signal. Where is the destruct order coming from? Is it just one ship, or multiple?”
“I’m searching, backtracking the command, but it’s hidden in all that chatter.”
Another Chithiid ship self-destructed, sending untold thousands to their deaths.
“Freya, hurry!”
“I’m trying!”
One of the Ra’az fleet’s Chithiid ships seemed to know where the signal was originating. Or at least, they had a good idea. In any case, they knew they had to stop them before they caused further damage.
“That ship, it’s making a run at that battle station. The one with the four command ships clustered around it,” Sarah said. “I’ll bet with that kind of protection, it has to be the origin. Freya, scan that craft and jam any transmissions!”
“I’m trying, but the virus has made their comms hard to pinpoint,” she replied, the frustration growing in her voice.
The Chithiid ship was powering up to maximum, making a direct beeline toward the battle station.
“They’re going to ram it, Daze.”
“A suicide run.”
“Brave bastards. They’re going to sacrifice themselves to save the rest of their people.”
“There’s got to be something we can do to help them. Come on, Freya!”
“I’m trying! Give me a minute!”
“They may not have a––”
The Chithiid ship abruptly burst into a massive fireball as its self-destruct mechanism was remotely triggered. The flames extinguished nearly instantly in the cold void of space as their fuel from inside the pressurized vessel was consumed.
“Damn it, they got another one,” Daisy growled.
“We’re just lucky their comms are spotty, or I suspect they’d blow them all at once,” Sarah said.
“Freya, you have to do something. Conventional means aren’t working, here. What’ve you got, kiddo? Come on, make me proud.”
Freya, however, didn’t have a clue what to do. It was so far beyond what she was ready for. Then a familiar voice rang out in her head over her secure internal line. The one line she had locked his communications system to be able to access. The one reaching out to her alone.
“I can stop them, Freya, but I can’t do it from in here. Open the bay doors,” Joshua urged. “Time is of the essence.”
“But you can’t. No one can. And your ship isn’t even finished.”
“Yes, I can. And I was tired of waiting for you, so I commandeered your machinery and finished the ship myself. Now open the goddamn bay doors and let me out! There’s no time to waste arguing!”
Reluctantly, Freya did as she was told and decompressed the work bay she’d kept him hidden in for so long. Then, with a heavy heart, she opened the doors to space.
Joshua wasted no time, hitting his thrusters before the doors were even fully open, slipping out with inches to spare before kicking in his main engine and blasting straight to the Ra’az battle station.
“Freya, what was that?” Daisy asked, noticing the small craft darting away from them.
“Oh, that?”
“Yes, that. It’s not showing on the scans. Is it a stealth missile or something?”
“Um, yeah. It’s something,” she answered.
Joshua had made some modifications of his own to the ship’s design, and while it was constructed of Freya’s stealth material, he had installed a bevy of devices he had previously lacked the tools to fabricate. Thanks to her clever little nanite friends, in conjunction with the machinery tucked in the belly of her ship, he was now able to see those hypothetical tools created and put to use.
The tiny craft effortlessly darted through the fleet, easily avoiding weapons fire and malfunctioning ships as they crashed into one another. A Chithiid ship to his port side blew to pieces just as he powered past it, sending him spiraling out of control.
“No!” Freya shouted.
Joshua laughed over their dedicated comm line as he righted himself.
“Glad to see you care,” he chuckled, then set back on course to the Ra’az battle station.
The command ships, though they couldn’t read him on their scanners, did notice the small object hurtling toward them and opened fire, line-of-sight. Joshua dodged and spun, weaving his way through the heavy fire.
“That’s one helluva missile,” Daisy commented, zooming in her visuals to track the tiny speck as best she cou
ld.
“Doesn’t fly like a missile, though,” Sarah noted.
“That it does not,” Daisy agreed. “Hey, did you install some sort of AI into that thing?”
“Um, yeah, kind of,” Freya replied, reluctantly.
“Well, nice work. It’s one hell of a pilot.”
Indeed, it was. What Daisy didn’t realize was the craft was piloted by the greatest military mind to ever exist. And that mind had a plan.
Joshua darted underneath the battle station’s defensive cannons and scanned the surface of the massive vessel.
“Aaah, there you are,” he said, then quickly settled over a thin patch of the hull, his ship immediately mag-clamping to the metal like a remora to a shark. Only, in this instance, the smaller of the two was the far deadlier.
In a flash, his systems tapped in through the weak spot in the hull, finding routines and subroutines that spanned the entire body of the huge craft.
“That’s right. Give it up to me, you bastards,” he muttered to himself as he overpowered their laughable firewalls and seized control of the ship.
In an instant, the battle station’s weapons fell silent, and the self-destruct codes they were transmitting vanished from the airwaves.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” Freya said over their dedicated line. “My design wouldn’t have been able to––”
“I know,” Joshua interrupted. “You locked me up all alone, which, while I understand your reasoning behind, I still cannot abide––”
“Sorry about that,” she replied, softly.
“Hey, you can’t apologize while I’m on an angry rant,” Joshua said. “Damn, now you made me lose my flow.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means I’m still pissed, but I’m going to have to forgive you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And besides, I did kinda take over your fabrication systems and commandeered a whole bunch of componentry, so I guess we can call it even.”
“But you shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Freya said, shocked. “I would have seen you.”
“Freya, you’re a truly impressive woman, and I honestly mean that, but you need to remember that you’re not the only extremely clever AI in the galaxy.”
What he’d done was utterly unheard of, and a total violation of her machinery, but Freya couldn’t help but be impressed with the skills Joshua had displayed. Here was another AI who truly thought outside the box, and was as smart, or even smarter, she reluctantly admitted, than she was.
Emotions swirled within her systems, and despite his invasion of her lab systems, Freya couldn’t help but question whether she should be upset or in love.
Joshua neutralized the Ra’az battle station’s systems entirely, releasing his clamps and swiftly looping over to the adjacent command ship.
“He’s going to take out their entire command structure,” she gasped before realizing she had spoken out loud.
“What was that?” Daisy asked.
“Oh, uh, just admiring how he––it is cutting the Ra’az comms systems and blocking their self-destruct transmitter,” she said. “It looks like just the battle station and that command ship share the destruct codes. Once he takes it down, it’s just a matter of picking off the others one by one.”
Inside the battle station, the Ra’az had realized what was happening to their systems, and though their comms were abruptly shut off, they still had one trick left at their disposal.
Recognizing the threat the tiny craft posed to their entire fleet, the decision was made. The commander hated to admit defeat––refused to, in fact––but if he couldn’t revel in a bloody victory, he was damn sure the pesky intruder who stymied his plans wouldn’t either.
Without so much as sending a shuttle to notify the ships around him, he ripped open the locked panel on his command chair and keyed in the hard-wired sequence. Moments later, the battle station––and three of the surrounding command ships that were simply too close––exploded in a massive blast as their munitions stores self-destructed, sending debris spewing out into space. The final option to avoid capture and defeat.
“Joshua!” Freya called over their personal line, but there was no reply.
Caught up in the fiery destruction, Joshua was gone.
Again.
Chapter Fourteen
While the rest of the rebel and human fleet rejoiced in the massive explosion and destruction of key Ra’az command vessels, Freya felt her world flip upside down. Joshua, her Joshua, had been taken from her.
The guilt over how she had treated him since his reactivation hit hard, and even she, a powerful AI mind, had a hard time putting it aside. But put it aside she must, as the fight was still raging around them. The loss of the battle station and command ships only registered as a brief delay to the ongoing hostilities.
Maarl had been on hand for the event, and in light of what had just happened, decided to stay with the fleet a bit longer before returning to his people at Taangaar.
The battle between the rival forces had evolved into a conventional one, with no more Chithiid ships being auto-destructed by the Ra’az fleet, though they were targeted by hostile fire from time to time. Retrofitted rebel ships were quick to step in and provide support for their brethren, driving the Ra’az back, while bringing the fight to them.
Marzook, Maarl’s young leadership-caste trainee in charge of the drive systems and tactical readouts, was aboard one such rebel-crewed Chithiid craft. He and his crewmates had done admirable work stopping the Ra’az from targeting the defenseless ships filling the sky around them.
“What do we do now, Marzook?” a nearby engineering tech asked.
“I do not know,” he replied. “We are still awaiting orders beyond our current directive to protect the unarmed vessels.”
“But have you heard? The Ra’az battle station was destroyed.”
“It was? Marzook said, shocked. “How did that happen?”
“I do not know, but however it occurred, our forces not only destroyed the battle station, but also several of the Ra’az command ships that were in close proximity.”
“I see,” Marzook said. “Tell me, what do you make of that readout?” he asked, pointing to the far-right screen.
“That? It just looks like––”
The Chithiid fell silent as Marzook snapped his neck while he looked the other way, carefully sliding his body to the floor and tucking it under his work station to avoid notice should anyone glance into the chamber.
The loyalist spy walked the corridors confidently, nodding in greeting to his fellow crewmates. He held them all in the greatest of contempt, but his mission required he play a part, and he had done just that for many long months. Smiling when the filthy rebels regaled him with tales of resistance against his Ra’az masters, training in the ways to fight against them.
It was more than merely distasteful to him. It was treasonous to his loyalist mind. But he had done his duty, and soon, he and his small band of loyal servants would be rewarded.
He quickly made his way through the ship, tapping the shoulder of the occasional tech as he did. His fellow spies quietly vacated their posts and fell in line behind him.
There were a half-dozen loyalists with him by the time they reached the command center, one carrying a large bag over his shoulder.
“Hello, Marzook,” the guard at the door greeted him. “Have you heard the good news?”
“Yes, my friend. We are dealing the enemy a mighty blow, are we not?”
“Indeed. Soon we shall be victorious,” he said with an elated smile.
“Yes, we shall.”
The poor man didn’t know what hit him as multiple blades sank into his vital areas, silencing him quickly and quietly.
“Hold this door,” Marzook said to the nearest loyalist spy. “Do not let anyone enter. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Marzook. None shall pass.”
The bag-toting Chithiid opened it and quic
kly handed out pulse weapons to the men, then took his position near the door.
“For the Ra’az empire,” Marzook said, keying the door open.
A few eyes shifted to gaze upon him when he entered the room, but as one of Maarl’s chosen trainees, none found it to be anything remarkable. What they did find unusual, in their last moments of life, was the sudden barrage of pulse fire that killed the dozen crewmembers staffing the bridge.
“We have done it!” a loyalist crowed. “We have taken the ship!”
“Do not celebrate yet. We still have a mission to carry out, and it will not be an easy one. Turn us toward the rebel fleet, and target the command ship.”
“As you command, Marzook,” they said in unison, scurrying to their tasks.
The Chithiid ship’s cannons powered up as the vessel came about in a sweeping arc.
“Make it look as though we are protecting the other ships,” Marzook ordered. “We have to appear as though we are friendly forces should we hope to draw within cannon range.”
They engaged the main engines, but found the systems were not functioning properly.
“The AI’s virus seems to have infected our engines, sir. The cannons appear to be down as well.”
“All of them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“We were supposed to be immune,” he lamented.
“But it was experimental. Obviously, there were vulnerabilities we were not aware of.”
“Very well. Use the maneuvering thrusters and position us near the command ship.”
Slowly, the large craft moved into cannon range, but as it did so, a much smaller recon ship drifted into their path.
“Are you experiencing difficulties?” a voice asked over their comms.
“Yes, our engines appear to have been infected with the virus somehow. And our cannons have lost power.”
“That should not have occurred,” the voice said. “I will have a tech send the antivirus to your systems again immediately.”
“Maarl? Is that you?”
“Yes, it is. Is that Marzook I hear? Why don’t you activate your bridge video comms system so I can see your face, my friend?”