“Well, if they don’t realize they have visitors yet…” Eliard groaned.
“Captain! Val! Come on…this way.” It was Cassandra, in the hallway outside and holding open a service lift. Sliding across the floor, they slammed into the lift and its doors shut as they shot downwards, leaving the smoke and burning research and development suite behind them.
Back on board the Mercury Blade, Irie Hanson’s day was about to get a whole lot worse. Not that it could have been much worse already, the engineer might have thought, as she was waist deep in the service hatch under the cargo bay, rummaging through her toolkit for the portable arc welder.
One of the external plates had buckled from the impact between the ship and Armcore Prime, and that meant it was putting undue stress on the interior hull. Another blow like that, and there could be a crack, or a leak, or any manner of terrifying, blood-curdling mishaps inside the Blade.
So far, she had managed to add in mechanical braces to the interior hull, hoping that would at least hold off the worst of the damage when it came.
When it came. The mechanic was under no illusions, from her time spent working under Captain Martin, that it wouldn’t come.
“And now we’re a sitting duck on the military home station of the Coalition. Just wonderful,” she hissed, folding herself back into the crawlspace, flipping her mask and firing up the welder. White light and flaring heat blazed in the dark as she fixed the supports to the brace. Would it hold? It had to.
BWARP! The ship’s alarms went off unexpectedly.
“Dammit!” Turning off the welder, she checked her wrist computer, which was lined up to the Mercury’s mainframe, quickly checking the updates.
Incoming Signals. Defense Analysis: 2 Scout Drones, approaching rapidly.
“Agh!” Irie screamed in frustration. Had she done enough down here? Not as much as she would have liked, that was for sure. Not as much as her training would dictate, either, but an engineer with her experience knew that sometimes you only had time to do what was absolutely necessary. Screw the safety protocols, she just had to hope that the weld had time to set before they took another hit.
Struggling out of the service hatch, she raced up the stairs to the cockpit, still with her welder’s visor flipped open, and started punching numbers. On the screens in front of her appeared an image of two sleek black drones with extended arms approaching the Mercury Blade. Had they seen them yet? Had they discovered the alien vessel hitching a ride on the station?
The longer-range scans revealed that there was still a lot of noise and activity going on around the crippled gas-transporter ship, which had taken out a section of the drone satellite field. The general chatter that the ship’s arrays were picking up was off the chart. There had to be a lot of very worried engineers and pilots out there trying to work out what had happened, and why.
But would it be enough chaos to prevent the discovery of an intruding spaceship? One that was on Armcore’s most wanted list?
Irie flipped open the weapons system. One of the bottom-mounted railguns was out of action, jammed under the belly where the Mercury met the station’s skin. But the other one was free, and a simple diagnostic check revealed that it was operational. She also had the nose-laser, which was pointed in the right direction for one of the Armcore scouts. Irie held her breath, waiting. She knew that if she locked on to it, it would set off a weapons alarm. She had to time this just right—
The large torpedo-like shape up ahead swept low over the hull, its red and orange light flaring and washing over the hull below. It paused over a section, turned slightly, and Irie saw it extend its mechanical claws to grab at a bit of wreckage from the gas-transporter or the Mercury’s crash, and fold it into its belly compartment—it wasn’t an option to throw it away, as that would only cause more problems for the drone-satellite field up there.
Maybe it won’t see me. She turned to see the other one approaching at right angles, performing the same operation.
Irie’s hand hovered over the firing stick. The drone scouts got to within fifty meters, forty, thirty—
BWARP! Incoming Scan! The Mercury’s computer bleeped, as the nearer of the scout drones rose in the air and turned on its axis to point at her direction.
“Stars!” Irie swore and punched the firing button. Light flared from under the front cockpit windows as the nose laser fired, and a beam of angry red light shot forward to hit the first scout drone. With a flash of flame, the thing was blown spiraling backwards into space. But now she had the other to think of—
Irie’s other hand activated the controls for the freed railgun, and a targeting window slid out on an overlay as the second scout dodged quickly to one side.
“Come on, come on…” Her targeting window flashed green, and she fired, but the Armcore scout was too quick, firing its directional rockets to spin out of the way and start to move backwards, doubtless relaying its coordinates to the defense grid.
Green. Fire! She pulled the trigger and felt the shudder through the ship as bolts of purple and white light shot in quick succession out into the sky. Half missed, but one was enough to tear off the thing’s carapace, spilling its electronic guts into space.
“But it’s not going to be enough, is it?” Irie tried hailing the captain.
Transmission Denied!
“Hell!” she shouted. Armcore must have had some kind of transmission damper for any messages that did not have their own passcodes. She might be able to hack a passcode like she had done on Mela, but she didn’t have time. Right now, the scout’s diagnostic systems would have triggered the alerts. What should she do?
I could wait for the captain and the others, but I might be dead by the time they come back. She ground her teeth, widening her defense scan. Nothing coming for her on the horizon yet, but that could change any minute.
“But what if they are almost out?” She hesitated. Her scans did not reveal any sign of the captain or the others already on the surface of the station. That meant they had to still be inside. They could be captured already, for all she knew. They could be dead.
Incoming Signals. Defense Analysis: 1 Scout Drone, approaching spinward, 3 Killer Drones, approaching spinward. 1 Battle-hub, approaching north axis.
“Oh, great.” The Mercury could handle the scout drone, the engineer knew. It might even be able to handle the pounding that the heavier military killer drones could dish out…if none of their missiles managed to hit the damaged section of the hull. But a battle-hub as well? Battle-hubs were really another type of drone, but they were circular and larger rather than torpedo-shaped, and able to deploy a range of lasers, missiles, and jamming technologies in multiple directions. Perfect for when Armcore couldn’t deploy a warship, and mostly bought by Coalition home worlds as sentinels to guard the shipping lanes.
They would also be enough of a threat to cause a serious headache to the Mercury Blade, even when fully operational.
“Captain, come on!” she begged the console, but there was no reply.
Irie had no choice. She hit the propulsion controls and started firing up the booster rockets. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into the cockpit. “But if I’m dead and the Mercury is blown to bits, then there is definitely no way that you will ever get off this station.”
BWARP! Multiple Incoming Scans! Weapons Systems Detected!
Irie just had to hope that she was doing the right thing as she hit the rockets, and the ship juddered and started to rise into the air.
BOOM! The ship shuddered as something hit its side—thankfully not its already damaged lower hull. The Mercury Blade had risen several feet from the decks but was snagged on something. We must have caught some of the antennas and wires in our crash. Irie grimaced, upping the power to the boosters.
The Mercury Blade shuddered again, straining against whatever was holding it, and then, with a wrench, it was free and swooping over the metal terrain, with its doom following fast behind.
“Shh!” Cassandra warned them as
she crept slowly ahead. On either side of her sat large ceramic pipes, each larger than even Val Pathok, and on the other side of that were teams of Armcore guards searching for them.
They had made it down as far as they could toward the center of the Armcore station, and then the agent had advised them to climb out of the service elevator and continue their path through the tunnels and access hatches as far as they could go.
“We should be underneath the server vents now,” she whispered. “Which means that Ponos will be close. The vents are used to keep his mainframe cool.”
“Whatever,” El said. “Just get us there and I’ll do the talking.”
“Well, we seem to have run into a slight problem…” She sounded tense, the captain thought. But then again, she always sounded tense. He hazarded a look around the ceramic pipes to see that they had emerged into a wide room with metal gridwork floors, open at the far end, looking out onto…a pillar of light.
Only it wasn’t a pillar of solid light, but a core of multiple glittering stations. Flashing cables pulsed a soothing blue, alongside the sudden flares of red and orange brilliance as screen after screen brightened and faded. It was as if they were looking into the gleaming heart of Armcore itself. This core was a column that extended past their level and was in the center of an eight-sided tube, with banks and banks of black-bodied memory units up and down the walls, higher than many buildings.
“Is that what I think it is?” El whispered.
“The mainframe. Ponos resides there, I’m sure of it,” Cassandra whispered.
“Maybe we won’t need to talk to it,” Val growled behind them both, patting his heavy rifle.
The sudden, dangerous notion filled the captain. Was it even possible? Could they destroy the Armcore mainframe? What would happen? Would Armcore itself be destroyed? With all of its regional offices and district space stations and out-on-patrol fleets? The thought was simultaneously too delicious and too monumental for the captain to get his head around. Could they be the ones to bring down Armcore?
“It won’t work,” Cassandra hissed quickly. “You see there?” She nodded to where there were dark and ugly-looking gun emplacements swiveling up and down the insides of the tower, trained on the gallery openings like their own. “And besides which, Armcore is so vast, they’ll just rebuild. They’re everywhere.”
“It’d be a great achievement, though.” Eliard’s eyes narrowed and a gleam came into them. “Imagine that. The biggest heist in history!”
“Eliard, no.” Cassandra looked at him in consternation. “You’ll get us all killed, and then Alpha will take over the universe and we’ll be just as well-off as the Duergar were as slaves to the Valyien.”
She had a point, the captain was forced to consider. “I suppose for this to be a heist, you have to actually steal something,” he muttered.
The guns were not the only defense, however. There was also a band of Armcore guards wearing full exo-suits that made them almost as large as Val Pathok. Every bit of their body was clad in black reinforced plate, and their heads were just small humps inside large carapaces, giving them the look of turtles. In their hands were lance-rifles, long weapons only used by the Imperial Coalition guards and, apparently, these elite soldiers.
“They will be worthy opponents.” Val bared his tusks.
“Easy there, big fella,” Eliard whispered. “I don’t want you throwing your life away just yet.”
“Who said I would lose?” the Duergar muttered.
“I do,” said a voice behind them.
“Ah.” Eliard turned to look back the way they had come down the line of pipes, to see a trio of the heavy-set guards with their lance-rifles already trained on them, and their shoulder-mounted weapon docks already extended, with the red-tipped nozzles of their micro-missiles pointing at—and doubtless already targeted at—each one of them.
“Afternoon, boys,” Eliard said.
“Drop your weapons,” the three guards said in unison, and for a moment, the captain thought that Val was going to refuse, but as two sleek killer drones floated into view, the gunner snarled and put his heavy rifle on the floor.
“And the rest. Blasters. Blades. Bombs.” The guards were implacable. There wasn’t even any malice in their words, just unemotional statements of fact.
One by one, the trio laid out their weapons on the deck, and it took quite a while for all of the various implements to be stored.
“Now stand up and walk into the main gallery. Now.”
Val was growling his frustration, but he followed suit to join Cassandra and Eliard as they stepped out from the coolant pipes and into the wide space, before the line of Armcore elite guards.
“Keep on moving, until I say so,” the speaking guard, who must have been some kind of captain, said sternly.
“Do none of the rest of you speak?” Eliard said breezily. “All that training, huh?”
His slight teasing had no effect on them at all, as they continued to follow his movements through their targeting scopes.
“Tough crowd,” Eliard sighed.
“That’s far enough,” the captain said. “There’s someone who wants to meet you.”
14
A Superior Intelligence, Part 1
The captain and the others were shuffled to the end of the gallery, standing before the line of elite Armcore guards with lance-rifles lowered. To Eliard’s rising panic, it was starting to look an awful lot like a firing squad.
“Listen, guys, maybe we can talk about this…” El tried.
“Shut up,” the captain behind them snapped. “On your knees.”
I knew it. El felt his heart sink in his chest. This was it. He was going to die. Everything that he had worked for, everything that he had tried to accomplish in his life…which wasn’t actually a lot. He winced as his skinned knees hit the deck, with Cassandra and Val copying him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered to his crew. “You made me proud…”
“Is this really necessary?” said a voice above them. A strange voice. One that almost didn’t sound human. Instead, it sounded like it was being projected in stereo, from multiple speakers at the same time. Eliard looked up to see that there was something rising from behind the shoulders of the firing line. It looked like a triangular tube, with a single, baleful red light acting as an eye. The thing was on a long series of cables and wires that stretched out from its serpent-like head and led to the machine core itself.
“Ponos-sir!” the captain uttered in shock, and Eliard heard the man shuffle to attention. “It is regulation for any trespassers without clearance, sir, to be…”
“Trespassers to the core, you mean? My core? To me?” the shining red light emitted. “Shouldn’t I be the one to decide who or what is a trespasser, and who is a visitor?”
“Ah, but, Ponos-sir…” The captain sounded confused. He’s a career soldier, Eliard could tell. He had to be. He must have been raised to follow the regulations even if they dictated that he charge head-first against an army, alone.
“Precisely my argument, Captain.” The mechanical voice had a faintly cultured aspect to it, like it was modeled on the scholars and actors of the Coalition. “Ponos-sir, with an acting rank of executive director of this facility, and Advisory General of Armcore entire. That means that I am your superior, Captain Judd. Stand down and let me see these visitors.”
“Yes, sir. As you wish, sir,” the captain barked, and the line ahead of them parted as the elite guard marched smartly off to reveal the serpentine appendage regarding them quizzically.
“Stand,” Ponos said, and El was only too grateful to. “You are Captain Eliard Martin of the Mercury Blade, lately of Charylla Station in the Trader’s Belt, and previously of House Martin, Coalition worlds. Implicated in seven crimes currently undergoing Coalition investigation, suspected of handling stolen goods, grand theft, petty theft, border violations, attacking an Armcore vessel, and fraud.” It was a statement, as if the artificial intelligence was reading his details from a name
tag. It moved onto the others next to Eliard.
“And you are Val Pathok, War-Champion of Dur, Hero of the Battle for Ipik’s Ridge. Mercenary for fifteen years, trained as a warrior from the age of six, suspect of murder, gross bodily harm, handling stolen goods, and border violations.”
The ‘head’ swiveled to Cassandra and twisted on its axis. “And you… I have no recollection of you. You are not in the database.”
“I lead a quiet life, Ponos,” Cassandra said tartly.
“Hardly. Not if you are traveling with these criminals.” Ponos made an almost laughing sound. “But I can strategize what you are doing here. You must be the thief of Tritho, who stole my brother, Alpha, and released him into the data-wilds? That would place you at the top of the list of Armcore’s Most Wanted, miss.”
Cassandra opened and closed her mouth, and El saw her clearly shrug as though she had nothing to lose. “I guess it’s nice to be wanted…”
“Where is he?” Ponos suddenly surged forward, his tendril-like neck extending so that it hovered in front of Cassandra’s face. To her credit, El thought, she only flinched a little at this unnatural thing’s scrutiny. “My brother. Where has he gone?”
“I didn’t know you thought of him as your brother,” Eliard said lightly. Just how are you supposed to talk to an artificial intelligence? He could have screamed. They had come here expecting Ponos to be sympathetic to their wishes. Not be on blood-kin terms with Alpha!
“An affectation, perhaps.” Ponos slowly swiveled its unblinking eye toward the captain. “My kind might not have biology, but I suppose you could say that Alpha is the closest thing to a brother that one such as I can ever have.”
“Lucky you,” Eliard said. “But it seems that your brother is insane.”
“And what would you know of sanity, little man!?” Ponos swung across the space to hang in front of Eliard, daring him to speak again. “You display type-A, borderline psychotic personality traits. Low risk appreciation. Exceptionally low impulse control. You probably have a low sense of self-esteem as well, fueling these frivolous escapades of yours. In the Armcore Navy, your kind would be rooted out and sent to the infantry back in basic training!”
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