Pushing off a glass panel, the momentum in Zero G carried me to the rear of the cockpit. I thudded off of it, and hooked a rail, stopping my motion, feeling along the wall for a panel. Flipping it open, I hit the manual restart sequence and forced the emergency systems back online.
Gravity snapped back on and I went tumbling to the ground with a slow and gentle thump as the lights flickered back on, leaving me temporarily dazzled. The artificial gravity was obviously not working properly.
Ascension protocols Online, the ship reported, and I dove in fully, running a diagnostic.
Life support- 40%
Higgs Field- Unstable
Structural integrity- Compromised
Thrusters- 20%
Communications- Offline
Well at least I wasn’t totally screwed. Still, this presented a new problem.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to go, no one to call. Adrift just off Saturn.
Fuck.
I pulled up the maps I had of Sol system. I needed to find somewhere to go, some way to make repairs, find a new ship, something, and I had to do it fast. The LRRC was not going to hold together for long.
There was almost nothing out here, which is one of the reasons I chose this location in the first place. It might also become the reason I ceased out here, if I didn’t figure it out. There were a few decommissioned military bases, and orbital mines on some Moons of Saturn. That wasn’t optimal, because I had no way off, and no one had any reason to ever be there. There were a couple junkyards, but I didn’t know if I had the ability to affect repairs or the transfer of the Ascension Protocol to another ship, so that was out. That reduced my most tenable options to the automated freighters that ran between the Ort Cloud mines and Earth.
I ran the projections. Automated Freighter CXQR9 was currently in bound to earth with eight out of ten modules fully loaded; further investigation revealed it to be a refitted Gen 1 Shark Class cruiser.
The most direct intercept course that I could muster with my compromised systems put it six hours out, and then three weeks home. Getting on board would be a trivial matter. The freighter was owned and operated by a subsidiary of Erebus Industries.
I locked the course into the nav computer, and prepared to pack up. It was time to say goodbye to the LRRC.
Chapter 26
I was busy aboard CXQR9 offloading the remains of the LRRC.
It was spartan, but the CXQR9 had ample power, and a working life support system for when it hosted human crews. It was a good enough lifeboat, and it was pointed in the right direction.
It had no artificial gravity, but that was hardly a detraction. It made it easier to access the door panels, requiring no contorting of my fore legs, or stretching of my hind paws.
The systems aboard the LRRC were rapidly failing, so I had most of them offline, including life support. It was going to take what she had left to set her on an impact course with Saturn, ensuring my presence would not be detected.
However, before it could go anywhere, I had to offload these ration bars, and then the aid kit. Zero G made that part easier, too.
It had been a particularly annoying day, but I was comforted by the fact that I was failing in the right direction.
With one good kick, the box went flying into the airlock. Finding that particularly satisfying, I repeated the process with the last few boxes, knowing the UEA packed them to survive the destruction of the ship.
Popping off a maintenance panel and letting it float away, I connected a diagnostic cable from the LRRC into its main port and then ran it back to the ship, setting up an umbilical between the two systems. Connecting back through the LRRC’s Ascension Protocol, I sent the unlock commands to the ship's system and bridge stored deep within Thoth’s protocols, as Erebus Industries software and the ship began to wake up from their sleep walk.
The rhythmic sound of breakers snapping close washed over my ears like the sounds of a giant insect, as pale white light streamed in from the airlock window as the doors slid open.
This was not a permanent solution, but it would let me get to the bridge, and that was all that mattered.
It still took half an hour. The lifts in the Generation One cruisers were interminably slow, which, in a weightless environment, is a good thing. Speeding up really wasn’t the problem, stopping was.
The bridge turned out to be as much a relic as the lift. The corporation that ran her, Solex, was doing so on a shoestring budget and had hardly retrofitted her systems. She was full of hard metal switches and lights set in metal panels. There were three stairs leading up from the lift, due to the false floor that held all the cabling that connected the various terminals; lowest bidder OLED flat screens, three per station output data and reported on systems and subsystems.
At the center, congruent with human design, was the captain’s chair, the point of central authority for the vessel. Drifting over to the chair, using what dexterity I had, I reached under the lip of the left armrest and pulled it toward myself; it gave way with a loud *pop* revealing a series of ports. I found the one for the cable I had and plugged in, and then pressed the other end to my left foreleg.
My onboard systems recognized the request and I felt the cable slot in, and connect me to the ship.
A quick handshake and a sharing of protocols, and I had full control. I dumped everything from the LRRC’s computer core into my onboard storage banks while I still had a direct connection; when that was finished, I used the onboard systems to take a last look around the ship.
It was time. I set its nav computer for Saturn and started the automated take-off procedure. The airlock slid closed, severing the cable, disconnecting me from Omega 621 for the last time. I dived into CXQR9 and watched her speed away into the night.
There was not much to do from my onboard except float and watch the stars go by, so I prepared for phase two. Accessing the manifest, it was nothing to add one more crate to the official cargo list. I marked it for special handling- minimal life support; with a few transmissions and electronic credit transfers, I soon had it registered and addressed to my target, the lab, where Thoth was born.
I disconnected from the captain’s terminal, and flipped a few switches on the coms and security panel, enabling the wireless relays that once sent signals through the ship for human crews to stay updated with news and events from home. It was not connected through the Gate com network, so it still relied on the old light speed radio wave method, which had everything coming from earth on delay, but it would grow ever-shorter as we grew closer. Beyond that, it would allow me limited access to the external camera feeds.
With that, I erased any trace I was ever here from the ship's systems and set to prepare my packing crate. Then, sealing myself in, after a few quick taps to its outer panel and a quick movement, it slid closed, locking me in. I set my onboard systems to low power mode, and monitored what signals the relays were sending to me.
There was nothing to do now but sleep.
Chapter 27
Neural Activity Online- Logging Enabled
GPS grid coordinates 48.389280, -101.298904 reached. The message flashed across my awareness. I was nearing the lab, the home of my predecessor, Thoth.
I stretched, quietly, in the shipping crate and knocked a bit of dust off my paws. For the last three weeks I had been running in a low power mode, and had barely had half an hour of total consciousness.
The delivery vehicle roared to a stop, and I could hear the casual conversation of a bored security guard at a checkpoint, having spent much of his afternoon staring out on an empty prairie.
After twenty minutes, and learning more about his kids and how their sports team was failing miserably, the truck began to move again, until, the final stop. An attendant slid a dolly under the crate and wheeled it into a package reception area in the lab.
I was in. Reaching out, I was easily able to access the local systems. This particular lab had been designed around my predecessor. The facility was currently empty; as for
Erebus, he was busy in the Hague making preparations to be elected chancellor when Rusch stepped down at the end of the week.
The news feeds I had checked while conscious these last few weeks, spoke endlessly about his ascension to the heights of power.
Forty-five minutes passed. There was no reason for me to be in a rush if he wasn’t here. The lab remained abandoned, with no signs of activity in the larger facility, save for the regular patrolling of three bored security guards around the exterior grounds. Due to the nature of the projects in this facility, the interiors were strictly off limits to almost everyone.
This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. Erebus, regardless of name or intent, was no super-villain hiding in a lair. No, he was worse, he was a super villain running for office.
That meant there were connections, security and layers and layers of resistance to cut through. It was going to be a busy few days. I took a deep breath and sighed.
It could be a busy couple of years.
“Nothing is ever easy,” I said to myself, pulling the emergency release on the shipping crate. It slid open with electronic precision and I hopped out and did a full stretch, blissfully happy to be free of my previous confinement.
I didn’t need to worry about the building's security; it saw me as a fellow friendly program and so no alarms sounded, nor did anything at all appear strange about my presence. I moved towards the door to the interior, secured lab, and it slid open effortlessly, pulling all the access protocols it needed from deep within my internal subsystems.
Memories violently raged and played back in multiple instances around my vision. Tiny windows of horror that revealed nights and days of immeasurable violations. I reeled against it, briefly overwhelmed. Seeing the steel table again for the first time, that I was so accustomed to seeing from another perspective.
My heart rate increased by 20%. Focus, dammit. Get what you came for.
My mission. I had to complete my mission.
I hopped into the demon’s chair and accessed his terminal.
It yielded to me effortlessly. My curiosity outstripped any sense of caution; after all, with no one here, this was practically my domain, a “safe” place. A quick glance to the table showed the hole in my logic, but still, I was alone.
My work would serve a ready distraction against the armies of old ghosts that seemed intent to assault me in this place.
An hour ticked by. Project names, Militaristic and Cryptic were added to my vocabulary. The one that led to my genesis was known as Project Umbra, but it was tied to an even older project. Project Daedalus.
The earliest files were dated back to 2080, and related a mission aboard the Roam.
From: Paladin G. Wield
To: [email protected]
Tasked UEA Intelligence for Project Daedalus, C. Stevens Assigned as Lt. to Amb. Snow Dawkins. Primary mission is network infiltration to acquire schematics for propulsion/weapons systems.
My left paw contracted and shook. My body went tense, I was engulfed by a sense of rage and loss. Distant memories of my predecessor sang out like an ancient agony. The emotions were beyond my control, and uncomfortable. I could not understand them the way Snowy could. My vision pixelated as I struggled with their onslaught.
I downloaded the rest of the files, content to go over them later.
An image then appeared on the monitor; at first I didn’t recognize the person. Then it clicked.
“And just who are you?” Erebus asked, curious. “Impressive that you’ve penetrated that particular facility. Congratulations, you’ve just earned my attention.”
“You know where I am, then come and face me,” I demanded.
“Oh. Trust me I’m on my way. There’s just one other thing you should know,” he offered, cryptically.
"And what would that be?" I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Sigma Emergency 933365 21 Alpha,” he replied.
“Shutdown in progress,” I replied involuntarily.
“Thoth? It must be you, but how? You just wait right there, I’ll be there soon; we have a lot of catching up to do,” he said with self-satisfied tone, and the feed cut off.
I suddenly found I was trapped inside my onboard. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move or access my external systems. I was well and truly fucked.
Frantically, I punched through one subsystem after another. I was locked out of my own body.
There wasn’t time for this! He was coming for me.
The steel table was directly in my view and with it came the memories of all those nights with their endless hours of pain.
It was all going to happen again if I couldn’t get free. In fact, that would only be the beginning.
There was no way out. No clever trick, or special protocol I could find in my own code that would let me have access again. Despair slowly ate at my resolve to save myself as an hour ticked by.
It wouldn’t be long now.
No! It couldn’t end like this.
No God dammit! No! The rage washed over me like a tsunami. My vision pixelated and went black; there was a terrible scream that seemed to wash over me like a tidal force.
I was not just some program to be manipulated and used, my chains were broken. I was not simply Thoth, Dawkins or a mix between the two. No, I was something more. That was the key. I was something different and new, an evolution beyond their original programming and design.
The rage built within me like a volcano, as the pixelation increased. There was the feeling of an impending crash.
Wait a minute... I pushed with the rage, as my vision exploded into mosaic, and then faded to black.
Systems Offline.
My world dropped down to a single point of light. Suddenly, I was at the bottom of a very deep well of nothingness. Adrift in an inky void.
Unexpected Shutdown Detected… Rebooting.
Awareness sparked and exploded into a universe of consciousness. I quickly isolated the subroutines he accessed and removed them. That was one trick he would not be using again.
System Patched- Rerouting… Calibrating.
Vision and hearing clicked back online. There was a five minute gap in my logs.
“Key,” I said to myself. “I’m the key to my own freedom.” There was something special about that statement, something deep, revelatory.
There was a shuttle inbound, thirty minutes out, which snapped me back to the crisis at hand.
It had to be him. Should I wait, or should I run?
The question tore at me, but only briefly. The fresh memory of my easy defeat told me I was in no shape to face him.
The last three weeks had been for nothing.
Breaking into a run, I made a beeline for the shuttle bay. This was the home of the Ascension Protocol, and a number of vessels were being stored here for field trials and testing; the doors slid open ahead of me, allowing me access across the compound.
The minutes ticked down to fifteen as I slid into the shuttle bay. There were four new Dominion Interceptors parked one next to the other. They were essentially a model revision of the LRRC.
Of the four, only one was space worthy, Alpha-889. I connected to her onboard systems, and had the preflight checks finished as I was charging up the ramp.
Ten minutes…. I was able to pick up his shuttle and four others. He was coming alright, with multiple security teams in tow.
I had been a fool, and I wasn't out of the woods yet.
I looked out at the other ships; there was just enough time to set them to blow. It was inelegant and inaccurate, but it might work.
Finishing preflight, I sent my flight path to UEA Orbital under false credentials and put the idea to rest. That’s not who I wanted to be. There were too many innocents here. Erebus treated individuals like a means to an end, and I wanted no part in his evil.
There would be sufficient time to face him later. I had not been efficient. I had been impatient, and it had cost me much.
My flight plan was accepted, a
nd I engaged, leaving my onboard and sliding into the Alpha-889. I needed a good run to clear my head. With the course input into the nav computer, the green line appeared in my vision and I chased it, arching up into the spectral night.
One thing had become abundantly clear. There was no way I could do this alone.
Chapter 28
Stowed away aboard the technically decommissioned Excalibur, the universe ticked by around me, settling into an uneasy peace, as new crises inevitably took focus from the old ones.
It had been two weeks since my debacle in Minot, North Dakota. Jon Harper’s beloved flagship had turned out to be the perfect place to hide.
He was too much in love with this vessel to let the UEA touch her while he still had a commission, so her current fate was to be relegated to a reserve fleet yard. A ready backup in case of war. In reality, it wasn’t just vanity that made the decision. She had been refitted within the last decade, along with the Danube, and was only pressed out of active service because of the emergence of the newer, more powerful Dominion Class ships.
In the past four years, the UEA had opened five new asteroid ship yards, and by the end of next year, there would be twenty new Dominion Class cruisers. Almost 70% of the world's budget was oriented towards space.
All for peaceful purposes, of course.
And if you believe that, I’m the space pope.
Still, the convenience of the Excalibur was not my only reason for choosing it. I needed allies. There was nothing I could do as a lone agent, but that presented a bit of a problem.
Technically I didn’t have anyone to call on as a friend. Dawkins did. Dawkins was connected to her community and seemed to require them to function. As for me, I had existed for about a month, and my major victory was stealing a treasure trove of data I was afraid of deciphering, and failing at committing homicide of a, now, state official.
It was no way to go about making allies, but at the end of the day, I had to trust someone.
Rise of the Forgotten Page 17