Conflict!

by Dale Moorhouse

  “Tuxedo, they are using disruptors to burn holes through the wall between you. It looks like they are burning not quite all the way through but thinning the wall over a large area roughly two metres tall by fifty metres wide. I think they are going to try to open one large hatch and come through on a wide front.”

  “Thanks, Jase, I can see where they are now, and we have a little surprise cooked up for them. We are welding patches over some of the areas they have thinned down so it won’t be quite so easy as they think. The patches won’t hold them long but will give us time to hit them with some anti-personnel weapons our warm lizard friends cooked up. I think Terrans refer to them as Claymores.”

  “I didn’t know you had those, Tux. Those things are nasty and should give the drones quite a surprise.”

  “I hope so, Shit! Here they come, stand by!”

  He kept me patched in on his implant while I monitored the battle on the screen showing the repair shop. The drones didn’t catch on at first why the wall they weakened wouldn’t just fall down, but as they piled up behind it, it started to creak and groan and then the patches Tuxedo’s warriors had welded on give way, starting at one end of the wall like a massive door. This forced the drones to start funnelling through right into a series of exploding Claymores that were more powerful than anything ever used on Terra. When the smoke cleared, there were less than a hundred drones left standing when Tuxedo set off two EMP mines, and the rest fell to the deck.

  Tuxedo’s warriors moved quickly from drone to drone disconnecting power supplies on intact drones and using disruptors to burn the brains of those too damaged to be useful. A few of the severely injured drones managed to use their disruptors before they could be disarmed and his warriors took some casualties before all the drones were neutralized.

  The forces under Centurion McFarrel moved in to help when the Squid guide over-rode the locks on the hatches leading to the hangar. His warriors were a little disappointed they didn’t get to fight, but there was little grumbling as they went about the clean-up. Some of Thermopylae’s crew showed up with floating litters carrying rolls of fine copper mesh in which to wrap the few captured drones. They quickly wrapped and carted a half dozen drones to Thermopylae before returning for more. When they were done, there were almost two dozen drones to hand over to Rusty, and his researchers and they were all leader class with the extra hidden cores.

  “I would never have believed it possible to defeat the drones with your tactics had I not seen it myself,” Boss allowed. “We have been conditioned by them over time to consider them undefeatable physically. We are not strong of body, so we bided our time searching for other means to free ourselves until just a few hashhash ago when we discovered an exploit in their operating system allowing us to subvert the common drones to our cause.”

  Long Arm interjected, “He meant kilocycles when you heard hashhash. We are going to have to spend some time teaching them to speak modern Squidish.”

  “Thanks, Long Arm. Continue Boss, I want to hear more detail on how your revolt succeeded.”

  Boss continued, “We had to experiment with a few of the drones to find the right combination of changes that would let us control them while not tipping off the leader class that anything was amiss. We changed just a few at a time, and as we did, we also changed their programming to allow us more sway when giving orders. Each time a group of ships came in for repairs or resupply, we would disable the leaders and feed them to the matter converters and replace them with our reprogrammed drones. We also equipped a large number of our drones with explosives in their bodies and had them infiltrate the other members of our trio.

  “When enough of them were in key areas of the trio members we had them self destruct. It took some planning to schedule all of the swarm members to be aboard their motherships before the destruct signal was sent out. As it was, we almost failed when instead of exploding one of the trios survived. We dispatched several thousand of our bomb equipped drones to ‘help’ repair the damage and tried again. This time we were successful and the second trio member blew to pieces.

  “By now the remaining leaders were suspicious and started rounding up Squids and limiting our access to certain parts of the ship, but our drones kept up the work, disabling and destroying leaders as they came in on their ships. When there were less than a thousand leaders left we had our drones capture and disable them, placing them in the spaces you found them in. Unfortunately, a few of the leaders were somehow able to recover and began reviving and repairing their disabled associates. Then we found you, invited you aboard and hoped for the best.”

  “Why did the leader class drones keep you alive, Boss?” I ask.

  “I honestly don’t know,” it replied. “We suspect it was for those odd times when their artificial intelligence wasn’t quite up to dealing with something new they encountered. There were several occasions they would bring us out of stasis to help analyse a problem and then they would put us back down again. This went on for thousands of kilocycles before we were able to remain free long enough to subvert the first worker drones. The leaders revived us for the last time a few kilocycles before we were able to destroy the other trio members. Since then, some of us have died and were not able to bud our replacements before doing so. As we approached that point, our younger companions placed us in stasis to be revived when we were some place, where we have the right conditions to reproduce. So much memory and experience have been lost to us now, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.”

  “If we could get them back to our mothership or our Ark we could help them with that,” Long Arm told me. “Despite the trouble and death they have caused, the history and knowledge they possess would be valuable to add to our own. It may even help us prevent whatever it was that caused them to split away from us, to begin with. Any tragedy that can be avoided is usually a good thing.”

  “Boss, who is flying all of your ships now?” I ask.

  “We have our drones flying them. We hope to build fixed semi-autonomous entities into each ship along with a scuttling mechanism to prevent them from trying to take over again,” it answered.

  “Livid and Blue Point are on their way here,” Long Arm reported. “They will speak with all of the Squids presently awake and will advise you of the best course concerning them. It may take a while, and it will be just advice—you will ultimately have to make the decision.”

  “Thanks, Long Arm. Please ask Livid to find out what has to be done to update this ship to FTL. I would like to neutralize all of the drones and recycle all of the ships aboard to construct more carriers and fighters. I would also like to know if it is practical to build more ships of this type. To make a long story short, I need to know everything there is to know about this ship and its capabilities. Right now, I just don’t know enough to make any decisions about it.”

  “I will do that young Jase. The Squids aboard all seem to be more than willing to help, they assure me the drones are all under control. If it helps ease your mind, most of the ships now in the hangars are not flyable since there are so few drones left to crew them. The only flight crews left are those in the Swift Fang clones, those are returning aboard as we speak.”

  “Good,” I said, “I think I’d like to return to Thermopylae now, is there a Squid available who can guide me?”

  “I can guide you, Jase,” I heard over my implant. I looked down to see Serena, who had been silent all this time. I told Long Arm, “Never mind the Squid guide. Serena remembers the way back, she will take me.”

  “Let’s head back to Thermopylae now sweetheart. I’m sorry, you have been so quiet and unobtrusive I forgot you were here.”

  She replied, “I don’t speak unless I have something to say. I’m still processing all that has happened here in the last few decas, and I’m nervous around all of these strangers. I don’t know any of these Squids except Long Arm, and the drones scare me.”

  She reached up and gently pulled at my glove with one forepaw, “Let’s go home.”


  It took another twenty or so centas before we reached the hatch leading out into the hangar where Thermopylae was resting in her cradle. On the way, Serena just sat on the deck of the lift and leaned against me. “Would you like to go exploring with Tuxedo and me tomorrow? While we are aboard, I want to see as much of this thing as I can. We can share a hard-suit.”

  “I’d like that, Jase. With you and Tuxedo and a few of his warriors, it should be fun, and I do love to explore.”

  15

  SERENA CAME BOUNDING INTO OUR quarters the next morning chattering all the way. “Come on, Jase! Let’s go check this thing out!”

  “You are worse than a kid at Christmas time, Serena; can I at least clean up a little and get breakfast? Where have you been, anyway?”

  “I was with Tuxedo and Ginger. Ginger came in this morning, she has Tiger stationed about two klicks out from the hatch where we entered the hangar spaces. She and Tuxedo rounded up a bunch of warriors, instead of using hard-suits they want to wear their armour and use Elsies. They want to have extra mobility when we get out to check things of interest,” she told me as I quickly washed up and got into my armour. She had to be especially excited because she seldom vocalized any more—after many cycles of silence, she was chattering like a monkey.

  As soon as I’d checked all my gear, she dragged out her armour, and I held it for her while she got in. As soon as it sealed up, she went through her equipment check and started out the door heading for the mess. I almost had to run to keep up. The cook made scones this morning, and I grabbed a couple of nice hot ones off the serving tray, filled a vacuum bottle with hot tea and then headed for the small hangar where the Elsies were kept.

  When I arrived, there were two Elsies prepped for the expedition and Tuxedo beckoned me toward the one he was riding in. He gave me a quick slap on the shoulder and pointed to the left seat while he scrambled into the right. The command position on all Confederation craft is the right seat, something that makes our pilots who are former marines happy as well as former helo pilots.

  Riding in the left seat gave me a good view and an opportunity for some stick time, so I can keep my ratings. Missy, Ginger and Shadow were sitting on the benches behind us with Serena, and our security team had the benches at the rear of the Elsie. Our Elsie was configured to carry a platoon of warriors while our escort was a gunship carrying two oversized plasma cannons, one mounted on each side just below the large hatches on her sides. The gunships can only carry five crew and passengers—the rest of the space aboard is eaten up by the colossal power supplies the cannons need. I’d seen these guns in action and figured if we weren’t safe with this gunship as an escort we were definitely in the wrong neighbourhood.

  As soon as our hatches closed, Tuxedo gave us atmosphere, and our helmets retracted. The other Elsie did the same as we took off and started our exploration.

  Tuxedo took us “up” about a kilometre above the hangar deck, and we started our survey. Another kilometre above us was another deck, and before we flew under it, we looked up and saw deck after deck above that and what appeared to be more hangars. We flew for a deca over row upon row of the enormous harvester ships before we came to another large shaft and stopped. Tuxedo scanned the entire space, and when we looked up, we saw a large hatch like the one we brought our ships through only this one is closed. “How far have we come?” I asked.

  “About a nine hundred klicks” Tuxedo responded. “I calculate the diameter of this ship to be about thirty-two hundred kilometres and the core to be about three thousand. I’m going to fly up to the hatch and count the decks. There is no guarantee the spacing between decks will be consistent, but it will give us an idea of how many ships this thing can hold.”

  As we moved up the shaft, we counted ninety-nine decks, a quick calculation told me if each deck is pure ship space this vessel could hold close to two million ships of harvester size. As we approached the hatch, we saw it dilate open, and Tuxedo took us through and resumed his heading. We came to another hatch about a thousand klicks later, and when we hovered over it, it dilated open, and we dropped in, descending fifty decks before resuming our circumnavigation. The first thing we noticed was this deck was populated with the smaller planet Breaker/sorter-Class of ships we’d seen in action. As we flew over one of the breaker ships I noticed its cannon tracking us. “Tux, that ship ahead and to the right is tracking us with its gun.”

  “Yes, I see that. I’m going to pay it a visit, hang on everybody!”

  We dropped so fast it took a tick for my stomach to catch up and just as it did Tuxedo stopped our Elsie just as quickly. We were now almost on the deck, and as soon as we touched down, he flipped on the magnetic grapples and opened the hatches. He had recovered most of our air on the way down, forcing our helmets to deploy, but the hatches still popped open with enough force to slam them against their stops. We tumbled out, and Tuxedo and our security detail scrambled for the hatch on the breaker/sorter ship.

  I entered the ship just in time to see Tuxedo blast the arms and legs off a drone that was standing at the controls of the cannon used to split planets apart. I ordered one of the detail to go back to the Elsie and grab a sheet of the fine copper mesh I saw rolled up under their bench. When he got back, he and one of his team-mates rolled the drone up and carted it back to the Elsie where they secured it to one of the landing skids.

  “Tuxedo, did you notice the status of the panel for the gun? It looks to me like the drone was going to fire it at us—the cannon is charged, primed and the safety is unlocked.”

  “Yes, I saw that, Jase. Good catch seeing the movement. A couple of ticks later and we probably wouldn’t be standing here. It seems that some of the leader class has evaded capture. We will need to have a chat with Boss when we get back. I wonder how many more are lurking around out there and if we have a little duplicity going on. Bleed the charge and lock it down. Then let us get out of here.”

  “It's disarmed now and locked,” I confirmed. “Let’s go.”

  As we were climbing out of the hatch Serena scrambled over me, a small pod on the armour between her shoulders opened up, and a disruptor deployed. A faint bluish beam formed and a drone drifted slowly toward the deck, one of its appendages burned off and a hole through the upper sphere of its body where the brain should reside. She slowly dropped to the deck, and as soon as her feet touched, she scurried over to the fallen drone. She picked an object off the deck and stuck it to a pad on the chest of her armour before coming back to me. It was a disruptor like the ones we saw the drones we had destroyed earlier assembling. “I can hear more of these things around here. Somehow they have been able to hide from Boss—maybe. We need to get some teams in here to root out the rest of the leadership class.”

  “Serena, how many can you hear and can you tell what they are saying?”

  “I hear two more nearby and they are talking to others out of my hearing. The two nearby are in the ship two over from this one in that direction,” Serena answered, pointing towards the ship with a forepaw.

  Two of our security squad headed that way and Shadow went with them, her disruptor deployed and the sharp molecular edged claws of her armour clicking on the deck leaving small gouges with each step. A centa later she was back, and the two squad members were carrying two drone torsos with them. Their team-mates rolled them up in copper mesh and stashed them with the other drones we’d captured.

  One of them said, “I sure wouldn’t want to be her target. I didn’t know a lynx could move that fast or be that deadly, Ser. The lock to their ship opened, and she had their arms and legs off in less than a tick. She also lanced through their domes and tore out their antennae before they had a chance to warn the others they were speaking to.”

  “Well done, Shadow,” I told her as she sat on the deck by Serena. “Tuxedo, let’s get out of here and head back to our ship. Comm Livid and the rest and ask them to bring Boss and his bunch onboard ASAP. We need to have a long conversation before things really go i
n the crapper.”

  “Done, Jase. I also told them to brain burn every drone they saw on the way back to Thermopylae, starting with those on the bridge.”

  Missy said, “I’ve had my bridge crew relay a message to headquarters via Tiger requesting five Cohorts of warriors be ferried here as quickly as possible. The acknowledgement said they should be here with a carrier fleet in less than a cycle. There is value in keeping this ship if we can, so I want as many warriors and all of the lynxes here as well as any cats who want to volunteer. The cats can double up in the warriors' armour for life support and protection, and they can hear the drone transmissions as well as the lynxes. I’m proposing two-warrior teams with either a cat or a lynx to assist in the search. I also recommend we round up all of the drones we can before the search starts. We can have a few cats monitor them for the transmission signatures of hidden cores.”

  “Good thinking, Missy, I concur. Now, let’s back to Thermopylae.”

  On the trip back I asked that each of the large hatches is placed under observation by at least a pair of bombers armed with cracker-2s and we received an acknowledgement from Tiger two centas later that each hatch was guarded and the watch will be rotated every one and half decas. They also deployed our full complement of Swift Fangs except for Righteous Claws which was available to me as a courier. Claws had just completed a major refit and now had the latest gravitics, engines and weaponry as well as some quantum communicators I could use for messages to Mother of Glory and Mother of Peril.

  Just after lunch the next cycle our carrier flotilla showed up with a hundred Mammoth-Class carriers as well as their supply train and a couple of hundred Swift Fangs configured as destroyers. Johnny saw fit to double the number of warriors and sent every trained cat he could find. He had so many volunteers he was able to send all the experienced cats, we had more than enough to assist our two-warrior teams.

  We chose to search the ships and eliminate them as potential hiding places at the same time starting with the outermost deck first. The first forty or so decks went with no sign of any leader class drones although we found a few thousand worker class drones hiding out on those decks. The drones were rounded up, deactivated and placed in storage with an oxy/nitrogen atmosphere so they could be monitored by the cats who were all trained to listen for RF emissions with characteristics unique to leader class drones or those with the hidden cores. Things didn’t go as quietly when we got to the forty-eighth deck where we found a nest of well-armed leader class who insisted on going down hard.