Slave Mind

by Rob Dearsley

  Oh crap. His heart hammering, Dannage yanked on the flight stick, surging the ship forward, knowing it was too late to get clear before that huge missile hit the bay. He could imagine the cries of alarm from the ground crew as the backwash from the engines sent crates tumbling.

  The Folly leapt forward. They just needed a couple of seconds to get clear of the bay.

  One of the fighters swung in, tracer fire streaming from its bow into the back of the missile. Dannage braced himself for the end, knowing the fighter’s weapons wouldn’t be able to take out the missile. The fighter accelerated, slamming into the back of the missile. Its engines blossoming into fire. The blast sent burning debris shooting toward the carrier and the open docking bay. Dannage did the only thing he could do and pushed the engines way up past the redline.

  ◊◊

  Arland ran onto the bridge, Hale and Vaughn close behind her.

  “What’s going on?” She demanded.

  Ambrose puffed his chest. “We are moving to engage the enemy.”

  “Stars, why? Why would you go on the offensive?”

  “We must hold them in the outer system this time,” he chided her.

  “Their weapons range is at least double yours, their ships are better armed, better armoured.”

  “If we press the attack while they are divided, we can overwhelm them with local firepower.”

  “What?” Ambrose was insane. It was the only logical answer.

  The ship rocked again.

  “Sir, missile impact, bay D2.”

  Oh, Stars, Dannage. Had followed her advice and run? Of course, he hadn’t. The stubborn git would have still be waiting for her. Damn that stubborn mule.

  She ran for the coms station.

  “Give me a com-line to the Folly,” she snapped.

  The officer obeyed on instinct, before realising she wasn’t his commanding officer. She snatched the headset off him.

  “Arland to the Folly. Captain? Sir? Folly, do you read me? Damn it.” Nothing.

  She pulled the headset off, throwing it back down on the console. Stars damn it, why did he have to be so stubborn?

  Another blast rocked the ship and she hung onto the coms console for support.

  “Admiral.” She looked over to where Ambrose directed his massacre. “We need to pull back. With the local defences, we might be able to hold.”

  “We can win this one.” He didn’t look away from his screens.

  “No, we can’t.” Arland dropped to sit with her back against the console. Dannage was gone, and the Pavel couldn't last. She would follow him soon enough.

  More blasts rocked the ship, the deck vibrating in time with the return fire. But it all felt very far away. Not real.

  Proximity alarms blared across the bridge, pulling Arland from her torpor. What the heck? She pushed herself up, looking from station to station, trying to get a handle on what was happening.

  There was a deafening roar and the bridge went dark. Consoles along one side erupted into flames. Confused shouts mingled with cries of pain. The electrical fires cast a flicking red light across the bridge, giving the impression of starless hells populated by daemons.

  Arland started, striking out as a hand landed on her shoulder.

  “Arland.” Vaughn's voice sounded right beside her ear. She could just make out his shadow. Arland breathed a sigh of relief, allowing the doctor and Hale to help her up. The deck rocked as more explosions racked the ship. A deep, metallic groaning filled the compartment, something more felt than heard. Arland recognised the sound. The ship’s spaceframe was deforming.

  “We need to get out of here.” She led the others toward the emergency ladders at the back of the bridge. It would be a long climb back down to the main body of the ship where the docking bays were.

  Emergency lights flickered to life as they reached the access hatch. Arland looked over her shoulder at the scene of utter devastation. The bridge was wrecked, damage control teams worked to put out the fires, medics attended to the wounded.

  “What do we do?” A young officer grabbed Arland by the shoulder, his rank insignia marked him as an ensign.

  “Where’s the Admiral?” She pried his fingers loose.

  “He’s been wounded.”

  “Abandon ship,” she said. “Contact the group and get them to pull back and rendezvous with the local defence force.” Then she turned, pulled the hatch open, and started climbing.

  It seemed like an eternity climbing down through the stuffy crawlways. The emergency lights provided dull illumination, highlighting the clouds of acrid smoke from burned out relays. But however bad she had it, Hale had it worse. Finally, caked in sweat and grime, Arland kicked the access hatch open and tumbled out into a darkened corridor. She scrubbed salty grime from her eyes with the sleeve of her top. There was a thump, followed by a sigh of relief from Hale. A beat later, Vaughn tumbled from the crawlway.

  Another buzzing groan vibrated through the deck alongside the dull thumps of nearby weapons fire. The ship was dying, breaking up. They had to get off.

  “Escape pods are this way.” Arland started toward the ship’s port side, the side facing away from the battle. She hoped there would be some left intact, and unused.

  In the twilight of the emergency lights, the trio went unnoticed among the panicked crew.

  “Hey, you?”

  Both women turned, moving to position Vaughn between them. The Marine was a big guy, but then she’d be hard-pressed to think of a Marine who wasn’t. His bulky armour made him look even bigger.

  Arland made a ‘Who, us?’ gesture.

  “Yeah, you three, don’t move.” He raised his gun and advanced toward them carefully.

  Beside her, Hale shifted slightly into a fighting stance. If he was halfway intelligent, that would scare him off. He continued to advance.

  “Now, now lady,” he said. “You’re going to be coming with me now.”

  “No.” Hale narrowed her eyes.

  He took another step forward. Hale lunged grabbing his gun and twisting it from his hands. He cried out in pain, stumbling backwards. Hale pressed forward, lashing out again, striking the Marine across the face. He fell, clutching his broken nose and swearing at them. Hale kicked him hard enough to send his now limp body bouncing off the wall.

  Vaughn froze, shocked at the sudden violence.

  Arland grabbed his arm. “Come on.”

  Hale said nothing, falling in behind them as they jogged onward.

  They reached the outer corridors. Rank upon rank of escape tubes faced them, most of them blank fronts, the pods themselves already launched. They ran down the corridor, looking for an unused escape pod. Nothing.

  There had to be one left, there just had to be. Arland didn’t know how else they could get off the dying ship.

  Hope fading fast, they sprinted along, Vaughn wheezing. More blasts rocked the ship around them and the emergency lights flickered. Stars, please let there be a way off.

  “There.” Hale pointed to a pod that was still in position.

  Despite her aching limbs, Arland put on a burst of speed. As her hand made contact with the cool metal, alarms sounded and the large tube disappeared into the wall, the blanking plate dropping into position. Damn it, they’d been lucky to find one. What were the odds of finding another?

  “Lieutenant.” Hale pointed to a second escape pod, the green lights on the launch frame gleaming like beacons. Hope swelled in her breast. Standing next to the pod, looking as unruffled as ever, was the Spook. He smiled at them and clambered into the tubular pod, pulling the hatch closed behind him.

  They pounded along the walkway. She knew it was already too late, it would only take him twenty seconds to trigger the launch sequence, and it would take them longer than that to reach the pod.

  Arland could already feel the victory turn to ashes in her mouth. There wasn’t going to be another pod; they wouldn’t be that lucky. Maybe if they could get to a docking bay they could find a ship. But the dock
ing bays were three decks up, and it would take them at least twenty minutes to reach them. She didn’t think the Pavel could last that long.

  Arland’s internal countdown hit zero when they were still five metres from the escape pod. She was already slowing, expecting the lights to turn red as the computer locked it down. Two metres left, just four paces.

  The lights were still green. Thank the Stars. They still had a chance.

  Hale yanked on the release lever, pulling the hatch open. She looked inside to find the Spook frantically working the launch controls.

  “Room for three more?” Hale said, shooting him a menacing smile.

  He cocked his head, as though listening to something. “That would have a detrimental effect on my chances of survival.”

  Hale reached for him. “I’ll give you a detrimental effect on your chances of survival.”

  He hammered the launch console.

  Hale winced and pulled back, her hands going to her head.

  “Hale, what is it?”

  She shook her head.

  The door started to close. Hale clutched her head, dropping to her knees. Vaughn rushed to her side, a hypo already in his hands. Arland lunged forward, trying to halt the descending hatch, but she was too slow. The lights turned red and the pod was catapulted away from them, the backwash knocking them both down.

  Damn.

  ◊◊

  Dannage fought the urge to shy away as flames rolled over the window. He could feel the heat beating against his skin, singeing the hairs on his arms. He kept hauling on the flight stick, pulling the Folly up and left.

  The light and heat of the fire was almost overwhelming. He screwed up his eyes and looked away. It felt like his face was charring. Then it was gone, nothing but the afterimage of the flames dancing across his retinas. Beyond that, he could see the starry blackness of space. He breathed a sigh of relief and slumped back in the chair.

  A Terran shell, the size of a family car, whizzed past, close enough to send the Folly tumbling in its magnetic wake.

  Lunging forward, he grabbed the swirling flight stick and pulled the Folly around. Below them, two mid-sized Terran ships were pummelling the Pavel, their weapons tearing great chunks from the beleaguered SDF carrier. As he watched, a Terran particle beam cut a long trench down the length of the Pavel. Secondary explosions rippled along the vessel, breaking her back. The ship twisted, compartments tearing open as the space frame started to deform and buckle where the damage put uneven pressure through its structure. This was how the big ships went out, literally tearing themselves apart.

  Why did Arland have to stay, damn it? Why? He felt a lump forming in the back of his throat. Sam, Arland. He was losing everyone he cared about.

  “Cap’n, we need to get clear.” Luc looked lost.

  “Half our damn crew is still down there.”

  “And we can’t do anything for them if we’re dead. You need to get clear of the battle.”

  The anger left Dannage as quickly as it came, and he pulled the Folly away from the battle and toward the main colonised worlds and their slipways. Behind them, the Terrans continued to pummel the carrier group into oblivion. No one could have survived that.

  In front of them, the local fleet – two hundred and fifty ships of various configurations, none of them as big as the Pavel – spread out into a crescent-shaped defensive wall. Little more than an eggshell protecting the inner planets. It would shatter easily enough when the Terrans had finished smashing the carrier group into dust, along with his friends.

  “Cap’n, we’re being asked to help evacuate the system.”

  Dannage could still see her face. He squeezed his eyes shut against it, but it just made the image clearer. Sam, his sister, his best friend, the only one who had stood by him through everything, slipping from his grip, falling away from him, getting torn apart. He couldn’t do it again, it would kill him. Stars, it would probably kill his whole ship. The hells with all of them.

  “No, find me an open slipway.”

  Luc didn’t reply. Instead, he turned and hit a couple of controls on the communications console.

  “—is Shuttle three five five, we’re over capacity. Requesting assistance clearing the deck.”

  “Titanite Id, we need more transports. We’ve got riots in the spaceports.”

  “We need more ships. This message goes out to anyone within range, we need help with a full system evacuation.”

  Dannage’s vision blurred. They were all going to die, there was nothing he could do to stop it. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it. This system would burn, just like Gypsum, and by all the Stars in the sky, he wasn’t going to stay to watch it happen. No, he wouldn’t stand idly by. He was damn well running. That was the end of it.

  “Turn that damn thing off,” he yelled, trying to drown out the pleas for help. It did nothing to assuage his guilt or his pain.

  He pulled the Folly around toward the nearest slipway, not caring where it went. Anywhere was better than here.

  ◊◊

  Arland looked out of the viewport of the slowly spinning shuttle. The Pavel buckled, ripping itself apart, fragments spinning off into space. The Terran ships kept firing, hammering anything sizeable into dust. The bulk of the Terran fleet, some hundred or so ships by her count, was now heading toward the stockade the local defence force had thrown together.

  After the escape pod had launched, she and the doctor had practically dragged Hale to a secondary docking bay. The decking bucked and twisted around them as the ship ripped apart. They’d finally gotten a break, finding a shuttle still in the bay.

  “Engines are shot.” Hale replaced the maintenance panel. It was amazing how fast the Terran had gotten used to their technology. “That last blast must have knocked them out. We’re drifting.”

  Arland didn’t look away from the window and the slowly receding wreckage of the Pavel. “At least we’re drifting in the right direction.”

  She heard Hale move across the small compartment to sit in one of the pilot’s chairs beneath the transparent curve of the cupola. After another minute, Arland turned away. The remainder of the carrier group, maybe half the ships, were harassing the Terran fleet as they started toward the inner planets. Hopefully, they would be mistaken for wreckage and left alone.

  The cockpit continued its pan until it faced in-system, toward the sullen red star of Titanite. It bathed the cockpit in its soft warm glow.

  Vaughn slumped against the bulkhead beside them, glasses in his hand. “Commander.”

  “Yes.” Hale’s voice was cautious, timid even.

  “What happened back at the escape pod?”

  “Voices, not the ship minds – something else. I heard it on Gypsum. It’s saner somehow.”

  “Like your ships before the X-ships turned them insane?” Arland asked.

  “No, they were never that…” She paused searching for the right word. “Human. I mean we gave them intellect, but not personality. They were meant to function more like an extension of our own minds.” She shook her head. “It’s hard to explain.”

  “I get it. Intelligent processing only,” Vaughn said.

  “Yeah.” Hale relaxed, as though a weight had been lifted. “These voices felt almost human, but not. They were colder, more analytical.”

  Arland couldn’t quite relax. Those Terran ships would be coming up on them soon. “I vaguely remember, back on Gypsum, it was like you knew what that Spook was going to say.”

  “I could feel it, more than words. It was like he was being pushed aside, controlled.”

  “The Binaries,” Vaughn said. “They must use subspace mind-to-mind coms. Most people think they’re some sort of computer program, artificial intelligence maybe. But something like that would need huge amounts of processing power.”

  Hale’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Artificial intelligence? We never got that far without using an actual mind, and you know how that ended.”

  Arland gave Vaughn a point
ed look. “Yes, we do.”

  “I couldn’t make out a lot of it, past the raving of the X-ship, but something about welcoming the new minds, assimilation, some sort of union.”

  “You don’t think the Binaries are uniting with the Terran ships? Welcoming them?”

  Hale looked at her, eyes wide as she thought through the implications. “But why?”

  That was the question, and if they could get out of this system alive, it was one she intended to answer.

  “Lieutenant, what happened between you and Admiral Ambrose?”

  Interlude Two

  - Augite III, Three years ago -

  Ipeer down the scope of the sniper rifle, scanning the silent, darkened compound. There’s no signs of life, no movement. I flick the thermal imaging on. The building is still dark, but now I can pick out the figures, four of them glowing red against the blue-black of the background. I can tell from their posture, that two of them are holding rifles. The other two are bent over. I guess they’re working on something at desk height. Scientists?

  I pan across to where I can see the assault team moving in from the west. The old factory should be abandoned, but we’ve received intelligence that they’ve set up a wet lab. The “they” in this case hasn’t been explained beyond labelling them as terrorists. But, I don’t see what run-of-the-mill terrorists would want with advanced computing systems. Still, my job is to provide surveillance and cover, not ask questions.

  “Arland, what do you see?” The mission commander’s voice comes from my earpiece.

  “I’ve got four men, two armed, two scientists.”

  I lie there in the damp grass, my dark clothes blending into the night, waiting for what I know is to come.

  “The mission is a go.” And there it is, the mission commander addressing us over the shared com-line.

  I watch the strike team move forward, stacking up against the side of the building, ready to breach.

  “First man is to your right, facing away from you,” I inform them.

  They breach the door, rushing in. Over the com, I can hear shouting, then the sharp snap of gunfire. The strike team scatters for cover as the man opens fire with his weapon. The muzzle starts to glow as it heats up. The strike team is returning fire, their own weapons warming.