Starship Alchemon

by Christopher Hinz

  “He is, as far as I know. The clinician detached his drainage tubes and IV lines. The autobed motored itself out of here with Alexei still on it.”

  Ericho grimaced. This had to be the work of the creature. “If MED’s been compromised, it’s penetrated as high as Level Two.”

  Faye paled. “What does it want with Alexei?”

  “And where the hell’s it taking him?” Rigel added.

  Ericho turned to Jonomy. But something was wrong. His eyes were shut as if he was communing with the ship. Yet his posture was odd. He was slumped forward, his arms crisscrossed and hugging his chest.

  In the HOD, the image of the combo robot making its way toward airlock three disintegrated into savage flickers.

  Ericho realized what had happened. Lunging from his chair, he raced through the malfunctioning sphere, the shortest path to the lytic. He grabbed Jonomy by the shoulders and violently shook him.

  “Wake up!”

  Jonomy’s eyes flashed open.

  “I am sorry, captain. I experienced a brief sleep event.”

  He blinked rapidly, a lytic’s way of clearing his head. When the rapid eye movement ended, relief crossed Jonomy’s face.

  “Network status remains stable. The invader was unable to take advantage of the brief interruption.”

  This time, Ericho thought. But if it happened again…

  “You need to separate from the umbilical and close your eyes,” June urged from the monitor. “Even a fifteen-minute nap would be restorative.”

  “In fifteen minutes we may no longer have a ship for me to return to.” Jonomy stiffened, as if forcing himself to remain alert. “I am scanning for the autobed.”

  “How long can Alexei survive away from medcenter?” Faye asked.

  “Not long,” June said, “not without those tubes and IVs. Thirty minutes, forty-five tops. Beyond that, his system will go into shock.”

  “No locational feedback from IBD and ICO,” the lytic reported. “Those Level Four systems are now being neutralized shipwide. We can no longer determine the whereabouts of any crewmember. Also, the cameras and contamination monitors that Alexei left in the natatorium have stopped functioning.”

  Ericho accepted the news with a grim nod. If MED had been attacked and overrun, it likely wouldn’t be long before the external airseals were lost to their control as well. That meant the creature would be able to enter the main part of the Alchemon.

  Whatever plan Jonomy and Rigel were keeping between themselves, he hoped it came to fruition soon. In the meantime…

  “Rigel, I need you to look for Alexei. When you find him, disable that autobed and get him up here any way you can.”

  The tech officer nodded and donned his helmet.

  “I’m coming with you,” Faye said.

  “All right, but not like that,” Ericho said, gesturing to a floor cabinet that stored a quartet of emergency shieldsuits. “From now on, anyone who leaves the bridge wears one.”

  Rigel dragged out one of the compacted suits, rotated the expansion tab. As compressed airjets blossomed the suit to its full size, the tech officer began airgapping the separate helmet, disabling transceivers and related circuitry to prevent remote tampering by the creature.

  “What if we lose com?” Faye asked, donning the suit while Rigel continued working on the helmet.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” the tech officer said. “I’ve switched to a direct RF channel. It doesn’t route through the network. The downside is that I need to keep the bandwidth ultra-narrow. That means no video, audio only. Still, we should be able to keep talking to one another and with the bridge.”

  “Stick together,” Ericho instructed. “If you lose contact with us, continue searching until you find Alexei. And if you come across Hardy and LeaMarsa, try to convince them to come up here as well.”

  Rigel finished modifying the helmet and handed it to Faye. She donned it and the two of them exited. Ericho returned his attention to the crewdoc.

  “With MED compromised, you’re no longer safe down there.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “No arguments, June. I want you up here. Gather whatever supplies you need to treat and stabilize Alexei once we find him. And get into a shieldsuit.” He paused. “Any chance you know how to do those suit modifications for airgapping?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  “I can talk her through it,” Rigel said over the intercom.

  Ericho returned his attention to the HOD. The combo robot had reached airlock three. It halted beside the entrance and extended its three arms toward the manual opening mechanism adjacent to the lock. But by Jonomy sealing the external airseals, the handle refused to wind.

  “It is stymied for the moment,” Jonomy said. “It has yet to gain control of EAC.”

  Only a matter of time, Ericho thought, imagining the creature’s superluminals flooding their systems, penetrating ever higher in the Alchemon’s hierarchy.

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?” he asked, aware that desperation had crept into his voice.

  “Not unless the invader makes some gross mistake,” Jonomy replied.

  In the HOD, the combo robot moved, centered itself directly over the hatch. Ericho had the impression it was studying the problem, perhaps considering other ways of opening the airlock rather than waiting to overwhelm EAC.

  “It has just made that mistake,” Jonomy announced with a hint of triumph.

  The hinged airseal snapped violently open, slammed the combo robot with enough force to break the electrogs grip on the hull. The machine tumbled away from the Alchemon.

  Ericho understood in a flash what Jonomy had done. By drastically increasing the airlock’s internal pressure and then opening the hatch at the right moment, the explosive discharge had knocked the robot off the ship and into the void.

  “My apologies for not revealing my intentions,” Jonomy said. “I could not risk doing so with the invader presumably eavesdropping.”

  “No apologies necessary,” Ericho said, acknowledging the first sense of relief he’d felt in days.

  But the feeling was short-lived. In the HOD, the pup’s jets fired. A series of synchronized thrusts halted the combo robot’s wild tumbling.

  “The robot has stabilized its position,” Jonomy said. “It is holding at one hundred and twenty meters off the port hull.”

  The jets fired again, this time in unison. The robot propelled itself back toward the ship.

  “Do something,” Ericho urged.

  “This move was anticipated.”

  A faint high-pitched squeal echoed across the bridge. It was followed by a swift breeze and an odd sensation that one side of Ericho’s body was momentarily heavier.

  He knew what those events signified. The squeal was a unique reverberation through the hull caused by dozens of the Alchemon’s maneuvering thrusters igniting in unison. The breeze and heaviness sensation was a side effect of that simultaneous discharge as the ship’s geonic stabilizers attempted to adjust to an unanticipated directional change.

  “We are moving away from the combo robot,” Jonomy said. “Our lateral acceleration will keep us at a safe distance. The robot’s fuel supply will expire in twenty seconds. Inertia will keep it in our gravitational field for a time but eventually it will drift away.”

  The combo robot stopped firing its jets. The creature must have performed the same computations, realized that basic physics were against it and a return to the ship impossible.

  “It is conserving the remainder of its fuel,” Jonomy said. “But that tactic will not help. It will be unable to close the gap.”

  “Good work. Now turn the ship, a ninety degree axial change. Put the robot at our stern.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “A full-power blast with all four engines.”

  “Incinerate the little prick!” Rigel barked over the intercom.

  At such close range, firing Bono, Beyoncé, Mick and Celine in unison would output more than enough e
nergy to do the job.

  Jonomy hesitated. “That action would use a significant amount of our nucleonic fuel reserves.”

  “I don’t care,” Ericho said. “I want that thing burned to a crisp.”

  “Given the invader’s capacity for surviving extremely hostile environments, even such thermal distress may not result in its demise.”

  “Maybe not. But that doesn’t apply to the combo robot.”

  The machine would be reduced to a liquefied mass. Even if the creature could withstand a temperature spike of thirty thousand degrees Kelvin from being caught in the wake of four nucleonic engines and subsequently survive in a vacuum, perhaps by devolving back into its earlier embryonic state, it would be stranded out here, far from Earth and the settled planets.

  Jonomy closed his eyes to carry out the task. But immediately, the high-pitched whine of a SEN alert filled the bridge.

  “What now?” Ericho wondered.

  “My attempt to turn the ship is threatening to awaken the Sentinel. I have had to rescind the instruction.”

  The alarm went silent.

  “What’s the problem?” Ericho demanded. “Why is SEN reacting to a navigational change?”

  “A safety issue. SOP has been sabotaged.”

  Ericho grimaced. Secondary operating power was the reserve battery banks. It was the second Level Two system after MED that apparently had been compromised.

  “The sabotage was performed in such a subtle way that standard trouble warnings were not transmitted. I only learned of it through SEN, and only then as a precursive alert, which means it did not rise to the level of full Sentinel activation. With SOP nonfunctional, we are reliant on Level One primary operating power.”

  “But POP isn’t affected, right?”

  “Correct. However, the Alchemon is programmed to treat the loss of such an important backup system like SOP as a critical event. In this case, the network has automatically defaulted to its most restrictive energy-conservation mode. When I tried to override that programming, the Sentinel was alerted.”

  “You’re saying there’s no way for us to turn the ship?”

  “NAV remains functional for priority operations. However, according to the ship’s logic, using the engines to incinerate a robotic entity does not rise to that standard.”

  Not for the first time in his career, Ericho longed for a master switch he could throw that would return full control of a vessel to its captain. As a kid he’d read stories from a time when brave mariners sailed Earth’s oceans without so much as the simplest nanoprocessor to rely on. Artificial intelligences certainly were necessary to carry out the complex tasks of contemporary starflight. But the downside to that control was that it allowed the Alchemon to be manipulated by a shrewd enemy.

  Jonomy yawned.

  “That’s it, you’ve got to take a break,” Ericho ordered. “You need to unlink.”

  “I cannot take the chance.”

  “Fifteen minutes,” June urged from the monitor. She was still in medcenter, in the process of donning a shieldsuit. But she paused long enough to adopt her sternest physician’s face and launch into a lecture.

  “Jonomy, you’ve probably been slipping in and out of microsleep without even realizing it. Are you aware of what happened to the lytic on the Bountiful Nomad?”

  “I am.”

  “Then you must realize that you could cause us as many problems as the creature. You’re probably not even aware of how much your functioning has degraded, how much less alert you are.”

  Ericho drove the point home. “Sooner or later you’re going to overlook something important, make a critical mistake. We have a better chance of coming through this if you’re at a hundred percent.”

  “The invader could gain a tactical advantage during my absence.”

  “Right now it’s trapped outside the ship with no way to get back in. The only way that changes is if it starts taking over Level One systems. But then it has to confront the Sentinel. Either way, I think we can risk your being unlinked for a brief period.”

  “You need a break,” June insisted. “Do it!”

  Jonomy yawned again. But this one was followed by a grimace of self-realization. “Point taken.”

  He blinked his eyes erratically, part of his unique withdrawal routine. Grasping the end of the umbilical, he twisted it. The cable snapped from its recep, exposing a depression in the lytic’s forehead. A pewter-colored metallic disk slid into place to cover the opening.

  Jonomy stood and did a quick stretching routine. “Wake me in thirteen minutes.”

  “The manual says fifteen,” June countered.

  “That is an average. I know my own metabolism. Thirteen minutes is all I need to return to full functionality.”

  As Jonomy continued to stretch, Ericho noted something odd. The lytic was staring intently at the umbilical, as if unable to divert his attention from the device that linked him to the uber mind of the Alchemon. Ericho had heard of rare cases where lytics connected for long stretches suffered withdrawal symptoms similar to those endured by habitual drug users.

  But Jonomy was made of sterner stuff. Turning away from the umbilical, he lay on the deck near the HOD and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Captain, in my absence you will need to monitor all systems. The creature is physically distanced but its superluminal ability to attack us likely remains unencumbered.”

  “Enough stalling,” June said. “Go to sleep.”

  Jonomy gave the metallic forehead disk a series of erratic taps with his finger. The taps were meaningful, Ericho knew. Lytics had personalized cryptograms that they used to access specific cerebral areas. Jonomy had just triggered an autosleep mode and instructed his internal timeclock to rouse him in thirteen minutes.

  His eyes fell shut. A fleshy curtain eerily slithered down across the disk like a third eye closing.

  Rigel came over the intercom. “Faye and I are almost finished sweeping updeck. No sign of anyone. We’re heading down. I planted sensors at the elevators in case the autobed, Hardy or LeaMarsa double back on us. The sensors are linked directly to my suit.”

  “Any problem with stubborn doors?”

  By now, all the internal airseals were likely under the creature’s control. It could hinder their search by not permitting them to open.

  “Not so far,” Rigel said. “But if one of them fails to cooperate, I’ll cut through.”

  Ericho wondered if Rigel’s threat was the reason that the creature, presumably eavesdropping and knowing their every move in advance, wasn’t interfering with the search. But the more he considered the possibility, the more doubtful it sounded. For reasons unknown, the creature either wanted the ship to remain accessible or simply didn’t care if they were able to move around at will.

  “Keep me updated. Bridge out.”

  He activated a shipwide status report and watched pages of data stream across a set of wall monitors. All critical systems remained green. Occasionally, he looked away from the monitors to check the image in the HOD. The combo robot, still in thrall to the Alchemon’s geonic field, exuded innocence, belying the threat it continued to pose.

  CHAPTER 27

  LeaMarsa sat scrunched against the wall near the natatorium airseal. The white mists continued to swirl around her. Her clothes, drenched from the steaming environment, clung to her flesh. She’d made several more attempts to open the door and contact the bridge, all to no avail.

  Her thoughts again turned to a solution to the predicament that was her life, the path chosen by the lieutenant. If she killed herself, her psychic torments and the threat of the reek would end.

  But I don’t want to die.

  She was hit by a fresh wave of anger at her parents, who had so callously manipulated her genome to advance their ambitions. The rage blossomed, threatening to become something raw and uncontrollable.

  That she could not allow. On that path the reek waited in ambush.

  An immense frustration settled ov
er her. She was physically trapped in this steambath of an environment. She couldn’t express the full range of her emotions without unleashing the reek. A bevy of forces seemed to hem her in from all sides, eliminating all viable options.

  She recalled her original reason for coming to the natatorium, to ease tensions by going for a swim. No way was she diving into that unsavory mess. But there was an alternative – the exercise machines, their frameworks of handles, springs, pedals and pumps dimly visible in the white fog.

  She made her way to the nearest mechanical octopi. A holo logo formed above it as she approached, the letters I and A encased in a sphere. The exercise machines were manufactured by one of the oldest of the megas, Infinite Amazons.

  A welcome screen offered an array of workout choices. She selected a simple bench-press program to be performed while jogging on an inclined treadmill. Positioning her feet and lowering the weight handles, she reached for the activator button.

  A draft touched the back of her neck. She whirled around.

  The natatorium door had opened. Drifting silently through the portal was an autobed bearing a patient, Alexei. He was cloaked in a white sheet, his head swaddled in bandages. A mask covered his mouth and nose, the sacs pulsing as he drew shallow breaths.

  LeaMarsa was so startled that she didn’t even think to dash for the open door behind the autobed. The idea proved moot anyway. The airseal immediately snapped shut.

  Alexei floated past her, looking strangely peaceful. She wondered how he’d been injured and what other significant events had occurred since her entrapment.

  She followed the autobed through the fog. It reached the edge of the pool and kept right on going. Jets on its underside created tiny whorls on the polluted surface as it floated out over the liquid.

  The bed reached the middle of the pool, halted above one of the spots resembling an oil slick. A rectangular depression formed on the gleaming surface, slightly larger than the bed’s dimensions. Seemingly in defiance of physical laws, the water didn’t flood in from all sides. Instead, the rectangular hole grew deeper.

  LeaMarsa recalled an elementary school class, a virtual teacher showing them snippets of life in the Helio Age, including a graveyard burial. The teacher had explained that prior to the modern technique of deceased loved ones being reconstituted into mementos, interment had been a means of body disposal.