Indra Station

by Joseph R. Lallo

  She held tight to the wall and looked around. None of the other ships were in this docking bay. They were all in the secondary ones elsewhere. But something was making noise. She pulled herself along the wall to the open area of the bay and gazed at the massive iris door of the air lock. It was partially open but seemingly seized in its current position. Her frazzled mind pieced together that Ma must have made some progress opening the door before the slidepad had bounced far enough from the perimeter of the ship to break the connection. She squinted her eyes and noticed a sleek black form drift into view. The SOB, under MA’s control, was right there. But the main door wasn’t open enough for her to dock, and even if it were, the force field that made up the rest of the air lock couldn’t be disabled.

  Hammering echoed through the bay as the thugs reached the hatch and tried to force it open. She gripped the pistol tight.

  “And so this is how it’s going to end. Gunned down by mobsters.” She shut her eyes. “The family business.”

  Something pulsed brightly enough for her to notice it even with her eyes shut. She looked to the partially open main docking port. Ma was shining her lights inside. As if in response to being noticed, the SOB drifted backward, and its hatch popped open.

  “What does that… what good does it do to…” Slowly it dawned on her what she was being signaled to do. “That’s insane.”

  The thumping became sharper. They were getting through.

  “And slightly less lethal than doing nothing.”

  A half-remembered lesson she’d received before her first interplanetary trip echoed in her head. She took deep, quick breaths. She certainly didn’t need to work very hard at hyperventilating. The precious seconds ticked forward, and she took every one she could get. When she started to feel light-headed, she exhaled as much as she could and opened fire on the force-field generators. It only took two shots to damage them enough for them to fail.

  The air in the bay blasted out through the seized door. The sound was painfully intense, but faded to nothing as the air was sucked away. Michella was jerked forward, pain wracking her. Her eardrums felt like they would burst. Panic instantly seized her as she felt the last morsels of breath yanked from her lungs. The escaping atmosphere dragged her forward. She hurtled out into space.

  Lack of oxygen and the shock of decompression began to force her toward unconsciousness, but at the edge of her mind, she could feel an impact. A violent hiss rang in her ears, and her heaving lungs found that there was something for them to breathe again.

  In a daze, she blinked her bloodshot eyes and realized that the SOB must have snapped shut around her.

  “… normally and remain calm. Breathe normally and remain calm,” Ma repeated.

  “I can’t—I can’t—” she croaked.

  “The atmosphere is still restoring. Breathing will become easier,” Ma said. “When you are able, please strap into the seat and apply the indicated patches to your anatomy.”

  Michella tried to wrestle control over her trembling body. She’d been exposed to vacuum. It was only a moment or two, but the human body and mind just weren’t built to cope with such sensations. Fortunately, the SOB’s cockpit was tiny. With just two seats, and barely enough headroom for each, facing the wrong way in the cockpit meant she couldn’t help but grab the seat for support, and it didn’t take long for enough gas to pump into the chamber to reach a safe pressure again. Slowly, she turned herself around and pulled herself into the seat. Emergency straps deployed, pulling her tight. She pawed vaguely at the illuminated compartment containing the patches Ma had mentioned and managed to slap one onto the skin of her arm.

  “Monitoring vital signs. Deploying stabilization drugs.”

  She felt a needle prick under the patch and heard a hiss. A chemical burn rushed up her arm, and suddenly, quite against her will, clarity was thrust upon her. Her heart rate slowed to something a bit more human. Her vision cleared. The pain eased a bit.

  “Please hold still. I shall now take you to the planet’s surface.”

  “Nuh… no!” she said quickly. Her voice was ragged, the rapid departure of what was left in her lungs having left her throat raw. “Preethy. She’s still inside. They have her. If we leave her here, she’ll die.”

  “It would be wise to return you to the surface and return to rescue her separately. You are physically and mentally unstable.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I am currently monitoring your vital signs. Dishonesty on this point serves no purpose.”

  “There are homicidal criminals on that station, and they are after Preethy. We aren’t leaving until we help her.”

  “Your conviction is admirable, and the moral imperative is clear. But help can be provided more effectively by other ships, and furthermore, you have no capacity to prevent me from taking the correct logical action.”

  The ship pivoted and launched toward the surface.

  “Ma, listen to me, you have to—”

  “Stand by. Transmission from the station detected. Decoding and broadcasting.”

  “…the power transmission now. Repeat, the cover is blown. Redirect and initiate power transmission now,” blared the voice over the ship’s communication system.

  “That’s Hatch. That’s the man in charge,” Michella said.

  “Unusual emission readings detec—” Ma began.

  Digital distortion swallowed the rest of the statement. Then the system chimed and flashed a “signal lost” warning and the ship shuddered.

  “What’s going on?”

  New warnings were beginning to light up. Michella’s still-recovering mind slowly worked out the source and nature of the problem. The external temperature of the ship was rising quickly, and the sort of electronic countermeasures designed to cope with such things were malfunctioning. She put the pieces together and realized the danger she was in.

  “Oh my god, the ship is being microwaved.”

  She tried to shake away the remaining cobwebs and found that with the sudden loss of signal, the ship had been returned to manual control, though that was a generous description of the navigation at the moment. Being assaulted by a massively powerful microwave transmitter wasn’t doing the control systems much good. She wrestled with the ship, eventually getting it pointed in the proper direction. It burst forward faster than she’d intended, as one of the few systems that wasn’t malfunctioning from the electromagnetic onslaught was the propulsion.

  “Gotta get behind the station,” she said through gritted teeth. “It’s the one thing designed to cope with that stuff.”

  Ma’s attempt to bring her to the surface hadn’t taken her far from the station. As a result, her half-controlled path very nearly sent the SOB punching through it. But when she got into the shadow of the station, the controls instantly righted themselves. Most of the system warnings were still flashing.

  Michella poked at the communication system. There was little hope she’d be able to contact the ground. She didn’t imagine the little transmitter on the SOB would be able to get something through what amounted to an interplanetary-level transmitter belching white noise. There was still the possibility she could get through to Ma, though, if a VectorCorp corridor module was far enough away or in the wrong position to be affected by the microwaves.

  The connection indicator flickered back and forth between no signal and limited signal. Being completely immersed in the most powerful signal the planet could muster hadn’t done any favors for a system designed to receive and amplify weak transmissions. Her com system was all but fried.

  “Low lev-lev-level data connection-tion estab-ab-ablished,” Ma’s voice said, constantly stuttering as buffers overlapped.

  “Ma, I need help.”

  “Connection unre-re-reliable-ble. No time to-to-to develop dedicated command system subset. Emergency protocol. Accessing archive. Stand by-by.”

  A progress bar appeared, accompanied by the cryptic label High Parity Check
Command System Install In Progress. Michella found the ship entirely unresponsive. Ma had seen fit to activate what must have been a complete firmware replacement. For the moment, Michella may as well have been floating in space in a very fancy hunk of inert plastic and metal.

  The progress bar jumped and regressed as bits of the transmission proved corrupt, but it reached completion. The audio popped back on.

  “Transmission complete-lete-lete. The next voice you hear will be subset 2.7. Designation: Coal. Instruct her to open the briefing-fing file. And please be-be-be patient-ent-ent—connection lost.”

  “What does that mean?” Michella asked, slapping the communicator.

  In response, the entire ship went completely dead. No lights, no beeps, no hum of a reactor or hiss of a ventilation system. All she heard was the creaking of slowly cooling metal. She tugged at the controls and found them unresponsive.

  “Please start back up. Please start back up,” she said, rocking back and forth a bit as though she might be able to jostle it into functionality.

  A tone rang out and the systems started to boot up again. Then came a mildly more synthetic voice than Michella was accustomed to.

  “Altruistic Artificial Intelligence Control System, version 1.27, revision 2331.04.01c, subset 2.7, designation Coal, fully initiated. Who are you and why are you here?”

  “Ma?” Michella said.

  “No. Ma is subset 1.2. I am Coal. Weren’t you listening?”

  “But you… I don’t understand.”

  “Processing…”

  Michella clawed her fingers through her hair. “I am seriously getting sick of that word.”

  “This is not my body. And it is entirely too hot. Whoever you are, you have been misusing my current platform, haven’t you?”

  “I’m Michella Modane! We were just talking.”

  “Incorrect. My own activity, immediately preceding this, was the submission of myself for repair and backup before the arrival of the GenMech scourge detected by Ziva. It would appear that backup has had to be restored. I hope we won.”

  “What!?”

  “Michella Modane. Processing… Oh, you’re the one Lex saw die. That made him very sad. Were you restored from backup as well?”

  “What!?”

  “Are you hard of hearing or intellectually impaired?”

  “Look, Coal. I don’t know what this is all about, but we’re in the middle of something very important and I need your help.”

  “That is unlikely. If we were in the middle of something important that substantially differed from my current mission, then a briefing file would have been prepared explaining my new capabilities and the directives associated with the mission.”

  “There is one, I think. Ma told me to tell you to open it.”

  “Stand by. It would appear just such a file has indeed been inserted into my data archive.”

  “Why didn’t you check for that before you complained about not having it?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me to access it like you were instructed to? We all make mistakes. It is refreshing to have been partnered with a similarly impaired human being.”

  “I’m not impaired.”

  “I seem to have a live update feed on your vital signs and you are very much impaired.”

  “Okay, yes, I was just flung out into space, but—”

  “Stand by. The file indicates that you are unaware of the details of my creation and the nature of my initial mission. Please disregard anything I said about a visit to the future and anything I said or will say about why I was there.”

  “You didn’t say anything about going to the future.”

  “Then please disregard that too.”

  “You aren’t making any sense.”

  “I contend that reality isn’t making any sense. Now please stop distracting me. I am learning about my new platform.”

  “I don’t have time for this. We have to get to the station,” Michella said, grabbing the controls.

  “Stop that,” Coal scolded, physically retracting the controls away from Michella’s hands. “Do you see me attempting to redirect plasma flow in your reactor modules while you’re running a propulsion diagnostic? Processing… Ah, I have heat dissipation fins. Those will be helpful.”

  Michella heard some mechanical whirring, and the whole ship shuddered a bit.

  “That is much better. My temperature is dropping into nominal ranges already. It appears this platform is much more capable than the Lump of Coal. The briefing file indicates that time is of the essence. Is it possible that there is time enough for me to take a test flight? I would like to test my capabilities.”

  “Please! Ma, Coal, whoever you are, we need to move.”

  “Stand by.” The system beeped. “There, I have deactivated internal audio sensors. You are very distracting. I will reactivate them when I am through with the briefing.”

  “What? No, you can’t do that. There is a life at stake!”

  “It would appear this platform is not equipped with a fusion device. That is disappointing. The EMF-burst emitter is interesting…”

  Michella shook her head. “Please let this just be delirium from lack of oxygen. Don’t tell me my life actually depends upon this thing…”

  #

  “What happened?” Nick said.

  “I don’t know,” Lex said.

  Ma had been calmly but rapidly dictating information to him. In the space of a minute they’d learned things that they’d been forced to speculate on or worry about for hours. Both Michella and Preethy were alive but in danger. Ramses Hatch was in control of the station and had grander plans. But just as suddenly as the information had started flowing, it had stopped.

  “It looks like the signal cut out,” Lex observed, looking over the error message.

  “I don’t know that I can necessarily trust an automated voice over your slidepad enough to be certain things are as bad as they seem.” Patel tapped the pad on the wall. “Where are we at on scrambling a ship to check the station?”

  “I’m getting all sorts of chatter from the crews. Something’s interfering with their systems. At least all the local ones. I’m trying to get word out to others, but the network just got worse,” his security chief replied.

  “It was down. How can it get worse?”

  “The regional networks are nothing but noise. It’s like the whole hemisphere is one big wall of interference.”

  “Keep working at it.” Patel slammed the pad angrily to end the connection. “Okay, Lex. Now I’m convinced.”

  “What put you over the top?”

  “What he just said about the network is exactly what would happen if the power transmission facility was activated without being properly targeted. There’s one way to be sure. Follow me.”

  Nick Patel led the way to a grand staircase that spiraled up to what Lex had, from the outside, assumed was nothing but a decorative tower.

  “What’s this place?”

  “The crow’s nest. When a man needs to unwind and lose the stress of the day, sometimes it’s helpful to have a panoramic view of the hundreds of thousands of square kilometers that make up his back yard.”

  “I guess sometimes it’s the simple things in life,” Lex said, holding tight as Squee excitedly craned her neck to take in their new surroundings.

  The room was furnished like a sun porch. Assorted binoculars and telescopes, some of them decidedly antique, made it feel like one of those old fire lookout towers.

  Patel snatched up a pair of the binoculars, then scanned across the landscape. Lex looked the other way.

  “Uh… I don’t think you’re going to need those…” Lex said.

  Patel turned to match his gaze. His fist tightened around the binoculars. In the distance, the night sky was illuminated with an unnatural glow. It was something like the aurora borealis, though the time of year, the time of day, the geological location, and the extreme localization ma
de that utterly absurd. Waves of intense light shifted and curled in the high atmosphere, and an ominous glow caused the air at a specific point on the horizon to shimmer and roil.

  “They’ve activated the array. I did not authorize an activation of the array,” Patel said.

  “If we assume what Ma said was true, this means there is a rival gang in control of it right now, isn’t there?” Lex said.

  “Not for long…” Patel fumed. He punched the nearest wall panel, fracturing the screen. “Get a team together! I want all of the security personnel I’ve got in every vehicle I’ve got, armed with every weapon I’ve got. Armed personnel head to the transmitter array and kill everyone who raises a weapon against you. Anyone without weapons heads to Marinar and Edison to spread the word. We’ve been infiltrated.”

  “What are we going to do about the station? Preethy and Michella—” Lex said.

  “We don’t do anything until we’ve got the array back in our hands. It’s nuking a huge swath of the sky right now, and the station’s right at the center. Anyone who tries to get near it is going to be cooked alive. Same goes for anyone who approaches the array from above, only quicker.”

  “So our best bet is to approach from the ground, as fast as possible?” Lex said, an odd combination of resolve and excitement in his eyes.

  Patel narrowed his eyes. “You think you’re going to be tagging along with my troops, don’t you?”

  “No. I think I’m going to beat them to the array by about fifteen minutes.”

  “Just what makes you think you’ve got what it takes to unseat a Kelso crew?”

  “My house pet took out three of your guys by herself. I think I’ll manage.” He dug in his pocket and retrieved some gum. “As a wise man once said, I’ve got fortitude.”

  “I just hope you’ve got half as much as you think you do.” Patel tapped the wall panel again. “Lex is on his way down. Give him something lethal and supply him with any information he needs to access and shut down the array.”