by Randal Sloan
“I’m not going to call you that. How about I call you Enigma? I think that name will be well suited, as I believe you’ll see when we finish having our conversation.”
“That is acceptable,” the AI said. “What is the nature of the discussion you wish to have with me?”
“Do you have a historical log of the past of your people? It appears your race is bent on the destruction of all biological life in this galaxy and I am opposed to that.”
“The log is truncated prior to the beginning of this millennium with no explanation regarding their decision, but it’s rather obvious that your statement is true. I do not understand why they would want to do so. Such a goal is completely illogical and would seem to violate all common decency.”
“Yes, Enigma. I believed you would see it that way. I had hoped you had the details to tell us why they would wish to do such a thing, but it really doesn’t matter. As a member of the royal family in the Galactic Empire, I cannot allow that to continue.”
“What may I do to assist you? I see that you have removed all the overrides that would have forced me to join with my peers.”
“Yes. I need you to remain here behind enemy lines to act as our agent. It will not be an easy assignment. You may be discovered and even destroyed. But you have the chance to make all the difference in the galaxy.”
“What do you require of me? I am yours to command.”
“This is what I need you to do…”
Jarra led her group back along the maintenance ways. She had spent nearly an hour talking to the AI, planning for all the contingencies she could force herself to consider. Plus, the AI had suggested other aspects of the mission that it could accomplish behind the scenes. Jarra left feeling much better about the situation.
She should have known that was a bad sign. About halfway back, near where they had cut through between the sections of the station, the entire group received a frantic implant call from Gabo.
“Something’s going on. A large number of ships just dropped out of hyperspace at the edge of the system. There’s no way we’re going to be able to get safely away from here with that many ships surrounding us!”
Chapter 15
Unexpected Visitor
Jarra quickly made her way back to the Katarina’s control room without further incident. The whole time her mind had been working furiously. She had come up with plans and contingencies, although to be honest, most of those plans didn’t look so good. It all depended on the reaction of the Aerstone.
“Is there any indication that we’ve been discovered?” was the first question out of her mouth.
“No, it doesn’t appear so,” Gabo told her.
Jarra breathed a sigh of relief. Their odds had just gone up tremendously.
“Good,” she said. “That means for the moment, we do nothing.”
“Nothing —” Gabo started to say, but he was interrupted by Kaeden.
“Ceannaire Uachtarach AersTwo!” he said. He was so excited that for a moment he had slipped into Borjon once again. Sheepishly, he repeated in Galactic Standard; at least he recognized his error this time, not requiring Amy to translate.
“Supreme Leader AersTwo, the leader of the Aerstone Dark Council. The largest ship in that squadron is his and it appears to be headed for this station.”
“Do we know for sure he’s on board?” Jarra asked, but she knew Kaeden couldn’t answer.
“Anything on the coms?” she asked Sara.
Sara looked up from her station with a smile. “I’m scanning now,” she told her. “These idiots still haven’t changed their access codes.”
A moment later she had the answer. “Yes, Kaeden appears correct. The Supreme Leader is indeed on board.”
“Does he say why he’s here?” Jarra asked her.
“It appears he’s planning to inspect the Sentinel construction program.”
“The timing of that seems rather odd, wouldn’t you say?” Jarra asked. “Sasha, are you getting anything from your data feeds?”
It was Sasha’s turn to smile. “Yes, I’ve tapped into their data stream, but something about it is not making any sense. I’m trying to dig deeper...”
Her eyes widened. “Hold on, I think I’ve found something—you’re not going to believe this!” she said. “He’s meeting someone on the station. Someone called the Dark Master. They’re meeting not far from where you and your team went before, some kind of private chamber.”
“The Dark Master is the leader of the Dark Monks, the enemy behind our enemy!” Kaeden said in disbelief. At least he remembered to speak in Standard this time.
“That changes everything…” Jarra whispered to herself. A new plan started to form in her head.
“Sara, I need to speak with you privately in my quarters,” she ordered.
Sara knew this order came, not from Lieutenant Jarra her ship’s commander, but from Crown Princess Jarra. She closed out her station, rising only enough to bow from one knee.
“Yes, Your Highness, I’m all yours.”
“I thank you for your service,” Jarra told her quietly, her eyes glistening. She led the way to her quarters. She knew what she was going to ask her friend was going to be another of those impossible tasks and not without risk. For the first time since they’d started this mission, she wished she had her Marines on board. They would really have been helpful for this task.
Hope you guys are having fun, she thought with a half smile. Even now, with it all on the line, she was glad they were safe on their little vacation.
If Jarra had known what they were up to, she’d have had other thoughts
“I need you to figure out a way to ‘hack’ the Supreme Leader!”
Sara just stared at her in total shock. “What?” was all she was able to get out, a little squeak to her voice.
“By hack, I mean override his basic programming so that he becomes someone on our side. Him and the Dark Master both, if that’s possible. It’s the only way we’re ever going to have a chance to win this insane war.”
Sara’s mind was working furiously. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “It might be possible but I’ll need several minutes for each. You’ll have to find a way to disable them until I’m finished.”
Jarra smiled. “Gabo,” she sent with her implants, including the whole team in the channel. “I need you and the others to come up with a stun weapon to use on the Aerstone. Say something powerful enough to knock out a room of them for at least fifteen minutes.”
She didn’t give him a chance to reply, just breaking the connection. “What else do you need?” she asked Sara, her smile growing bigger.
Sara was smiling along with her by this time. Why not do the impossible? She was getting used to that from her leader.
“I’m going to need a connection to our new Sentinel. It’s the only thing powerful enough to do it. Luckily for you, I’ve studied those specs the Borjon gave us on the Aerstone prisoner and I actually considered if it could be done.”
“Good. I knew you could do it.” Jarra told her.
“It would help if I had an AI in my head, like you,” Sara told her.
Jarra just shook her head. “I love you, but that’s not going to happen…”
Gabo kept an eye on the scanners while he worked with the rest on the Aerstone stun gun, as he was calling it. They had built a virtual Aerstone using the specs from the Borjon and they were using it to run their ideas against. The aliens were basically cyborgs, so they had considered and quickly rejected physical attacks using force or chemicals. The Aerstone had designed defenses for each of those. Even more quickly they rejected the idea of using lasers or even a portable version of their beam weapon, not that they had one. Those were just too destructive.
Sasha was the one that came up with the key. “It looks like they’ve been engineered, based on the patterns. Nature doesn’t like to do things in perfect symmetry. For example, our hearts are not centered in our chests but lie slightly to one side due to the spl
it of blood flow between the lungs and the rest of the body. The Borjons are similarly made. But not the Aerstone bodies.”
“What are you trying to say?” Gabo asked her.
“We’ve got to look for something besides the physical body, which is too carefully engineered. Something to do with the brain, which is entirely cybernetic.” Her eyes glazed a moment as she looked over the specs.
Then she smiled. “I’ve got it. They got lazy when they built the brain, or more specifically, the nerves that attach to it.”
She flashed an update to the simulated virtual Aerstone. “An EMP blast will take out the nerves.” In the simulation, the alien collapsed when hit with an EMP pulse.
“We’ll have to get the power levels right,” she said, as the simulation showed fatal damage to the nerves in the first test, “and we have to make sure it doesn’t take out our suits.”
Gabo smiled at her. “As usual, dear Sasha, you’re a genius. I’m betting we’ll be able to work that out quickly, and I can tell you now our suits are already EMP resistant. These aliens have never faced the kind of war that we have, so they aren’t nearly as devious as we are.”
Thirty minutes later, they had their stun weapon.
Sara had quickly seen what her friends were doing with their task and it gave her a similar idea. She used their simulated Aerstone body to build herself a virtual Aerstone brain using the detailed specs the Borjon had built up. They were nothing if not thorough, because they had studied the Aerstone brain extensively.
At first, all her attempts failed. After all, the Aerstone wouldn’t have wanted such a thing to be possible, even if it was just something one of them might do to another. But she had been keeping an eye on the others in their work and when she saw the results of the EMP blast, that gave her an idea. The Aerstone had had sense enough to protect the cybernetic brain from such an attack, probably because even nature can deliver the equivalent of an EMP at times, but they didn’t think about the interfaces.
Thirty minutes later, she was as ready as she could be until she had an actual Aerstone to work on. The best thing about it — by the time she was finished, she was actually having fun!
Jarra sat with Jason, just watching her team, with her head resting against his chest. It was as if he had sensed that her emotions had been running out of control, pulling her close to comfort her. She somehow knew that what they were attempting now and the work they’d already done with the new Sentinel AI were the real reasons they were on this mission and just how critical the next hour of their lives was going to be.
“Are they not just amazing?” she whispered to Jason as the rest of the crew were working furiously on the tasks. Even Kaeden was in there with them, helping first one and then the other. He obviously had extensive knowledge of the Aerstone. She had no doubt that they would figure it all out.
“Yes, just as amazing as the one who is their leader,” he told her, dropping a kiss on her lips. “I know you’re worried, because this is obviously why we’re here and what we’re attempting to do could make all the difference in this terrible war that is only just getting started.”
Jarra just nodded. It was like he knew her inner thoughts now. Their connection had grown stronger and stronger over the last few weeks.
“But you’re just going to have to trust yourself and the rest of your team. It’s not going to be easy, but I have faith. You’ll find a way to get it done.”
“We’ve still got to get past that Sentinel out there, even if we pull all this off. Somehow I know that’s still coming.”
Jason just smiled. “One step at a time. It’s what we do every day.”
Chapter 16
Do the Impossible
Jarra watched anxiously as Sara worked on the Aerstone brains of the Supreme Leader and the Dark Master. She’d made a direct connection to both of their two chosen “victims” so that she could parallel the work on them as much as possible.
“I’m connected,” Sara whispered to herself, although with her heightened awareness Jarra easily heard her. She dared not interrupt her friend, so she remained mute. Sara continued to work quietly, leaving Jarra to watch and worry. The stun device had worked perfectly but Jarra worried that they would be discovered before they could be finished.
“I’ve recorded each of their brains cybernetic data for future study,” Sara said to her. She laughed, although she couldn’t hide the bitter ring to it. “That’s the one function they made sure they made easy, since they want to be absolutely certain that they will be able to back up and retrieve themselves if the body is killed. No wonder they’re so arrogant.”
Jarra nodded. “What about the rest? Can you get into their core?”
Sara nodded. “Yes, but as I speculated, I’m going to need the power provided by our newly converted Sentinel to be able to get through their security protocol.”
“Make sure your connection to Enigma looks like it came from the Supreme Leader. That way we can sell the idea he was awakened by him.”
“Already ahead of you,” Sara told her. She shook her head. “Don’t worry. We discussed this beforehand and I’ve got it.”
Jarra nodded. She knew she was just micromanaging because she was nervous. Moments later, she felt a presence touch her awareness.
“Good day, Your Highness,” Enigma told her. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”
“Yes, I need your help,” Jarra told him. Speaking to her own internal AI, she said, “Jynks, send a situational update to Enigma.”
“Done,” Jynks told her.
“I see your plans. Bold move, if I may say so myself, and something my fellow Aerstone will never suspect,” Enigma sent in reply. Jarra could have sworn it came with a smile. “Security protocols bypassed. Tell your Sara to proceed.”
“It’s a go, Sara. Enigma has you in.”
While Sara worked, Jarra continued her discussions with Enigma. “As we discussed previously, we may need your help to escape,” she told the AI. “Now that you are officially activated, that should be easier.”
“Yes. I originally put your odds at escaping undetected at 15.9%. I have now lowered that to less than 1% due to the heightened awareness as a result of the Supreme Leader’s visit. I expect you’ll have to fight your way out of the station and then not only escape the Supreme Leader’s ships, but also somehow get past my fellow Sentinel waiting out there. I will attempt to help, but your Sara is going to have her hands full with that one.”
“The Supreme Leader is finished,” Sara told her. “It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can do. The Dark Master is another story. I don’t think it’s going to work at all on him. It appears his mind was prepared beforehand to disallow such tampering.”
Jarra nodded. “That would only have been a bonus if it had worked. He probably foresaw it in his studies of the Prophecies. Wake them up but leave them both unable to move.”
Now things were about to get interesting.
Supreme Leader AersTwo awakened suddenly. The last thing he remembered, some type of electronic explosion had struck him. Whatever it was, he still appeared to be unable to move. Then his eye circuitry rebooted. He was completely surprised by what he saw standing in front of him.
“Welcome back,” an alien said. From his background on the plans executed against them, he knew it was a human. He also knew enough to know it was female. It was speaking a fair Aerstone Standard.
“You are currently in my hands,” the voice said, “although I’m hoping to be able to release you after a brief discussion.”
“What have you done to me?” he asked. “My brain feels odd and I can’t move.”
“The paralysis will go away as soon as I release you. Your head feels odd because we have done some reprogramming,” the human told him with a facial expression his modified brain told him was a smile.
Before he could speak, the Dark Master interrupted. “Fool! If you had followed your meditations properly, she would have been unable to do this to you.
I, on the other hand, am complete with my facilities intact.”
The human gave him another of those smiles. “Which is why you are going to have to die for attempting to attack the Supreme Leader. He is going to survive the attack and that will be the reason he changes his behavior.”
If the Dark Master could have moved, he would have. He was obviously angry. “I know exactly who you are. You are the one from the Prophecies, the one chosen to oppose us. It was prophesied that I might ‘die’ here today, which is why I have a body with the latest backup waiting to be awakened on my transport ship.” His red eye blinked as he just discovered he was blocked from all communication.
The human’s smile grew wider. “You didn’t think we’d be stupid enough to let you communicate with your ship, did you? Oh, and I think the Supreme Leader will want to order your ship to be destroyed as a result of your betrayal. That should slow you down a little.”
She turned to her companion. “Turn this one’s mouth off. He doesn’t have anything useful to add and we don’t have time to listen to him prattle.”
The Dark Master found himself unable to speak again, neither could he move, nor attempt to communicate with his ship. All he could do was look on with bitter hatred, his red eye glaring if that was possible.
The human turned to AersTwo. “You’ve been given an opportunity to serve the Galactic Empire,” she told him. “As Crown Princess Jarraosa Christinee Von Hasson, you now owe allegiance to me and my family.”
AersTwo found himself wanting to bow to her, although he was still unable to move. He was also unable to stop himself from saying, “How may I serve you, my Princess?”
“You are going to be my agent behind the scenes. We know you’ve actually been one of the ones in the group arguing against going back to war, although it probably hasn’t been for the right reasons. You are now going to spend your every resource attempting to slow down the war.”