Something was moving out there in space, and it looked big.
There were two ways to notice movement in space. First, and most obvious, was the visibility of matched lights attached to the exterior of any spaceship. These could be landing lights or the more general guidance lights at prominent places which aided in navigating any space-based port.
The other way of noticing movement in space was when stars suddenly blinked out, to be replaced by nothing but sheer darkness. That meant that there was something big coming your way—big enough to block out the stars, but still too far away to make out their own guidance light array.
Well, either that or the ship doesn’t want to be seen, the captain thought as he noticed a large swathe of stars blink out as a long, oblong shape cut across his vision.
It was joined at the base to another oblong, running at an angle to it, and then another similarly attached after that. In the end, the total structure formed a kind of elongated W.
Which is the shape of an Armcore Battle Cruiser, Eliard thought in dismay. Now that he had recognized it, his eyes started to make sense of the shape that was beginning to cartwheel across their vision—it wasn’t cartwheeling, the captain had to remind himself, the Mercury was—and he saw the distant glint of metals, windows, and the suggestion of shapes. If he wasn’t mistaken, he could also make out the frilled edges of each of the apex and points of the elongated W, which he knew from previous experience were actually gun turrets, making the battle cruiser able to fire when completely surrounded. There was almost nowhere that you could fly toward or away from an Armcore battle cruiser that didn’t also mean that you weren’t directly lined up with one of its weapon hubs.
What was worse was that battle cruisers were also usually accompanied and carrying an entire naval battle group of Armcore single-pilot fighters, as well as drone missiles and battle hubs, each capable of tearing a pretty big hole through them if they decided to attack.
But this cruiser ahead of them, approaching the orbit of Shambar the desert world below, was not disgorging tens of fighters and war-robots against them. If anything, it appeared to be doing nothing more than sliding silently and carefully through space, as quietly and as stealthily as possible.
“Are you Alpha?” Eliard whispered into his emergency oxygen visor, wondering if this was the real reason how Alpha had been able to seize control of their boat so easily, and the drilling platforms below so efficiently.
Clunk. Another mechanical shudder ran through the Mercury Blade, and for a terrible moment the captain thought that maybe they had hit something, but he realized his error when suddenly the control boards in the cockpit started lighting up, the essential life support services flashing red before stabilizing to orange, and then to green, and then the navigation console did the same, and the engine controls, the sensors, and finally the weapons systems.
Behind him, Eliard could hear the hiss of oxygen being released back into the ship as the ship went into a high-routine maintenance mode. A dozen alarms were starting to flare across the consoles in front of the captain.
“…can you hear me? Captain?” It was Irie’s voice on the radio communicator.
“Loud and clear, Irie. Well done. A full system reboot?”
“No, a system reset. A reboot would just re-install whatever code Alpha was using to hack into the Blade, but I figured that it didn’t have time to rewrite the BIOS framework underneath the Mercury’s codeware.”
“Once again, I have absolutely no clue what you just said,” Eliard said.
“Then maybe read the manual. I mean that this boat is uninfected with Alpha, but I can’t promise for how long…” she said.
Warning! Lower than average oxygen allowance per active crew member!
Warning! Sensors down!
Action Taken: Sensors rebooting…
The command and control screens blared at Eliard in a strange, mangled robotic voice that he had hoped never to hear from again. It was the robotic equivalent of a human Imperial General.
His father, in fact, who had used his own voice as the template for the ship computer’s voice when he had commissioned the Blade to be built in the first place.
“And oh, yeah…” Irie’s voice came back. “You’re going to get a lot of those warnings as the system tries to sort itself out again. All of the little patches and fixes that I’ve added over the years will have to be reupdated. And we’ve lost the jangly alarm codes that were my favorite.”
“And it looks like we’ve lost the voice-wipe that I did on my dad.” Eliard scowled as the robotic version of his father told him that he really needed to sort out the minimal damage to his hull, and that there was an unrecognized weapons system attached to the underside of their hull.
“My railguns!” Val wailed, hitting the targeting controls on his seat in alarm.
“We have to re-install them, Val. It’s no big deal…” Irie’s voice floated over the ship’s speakers.
“Well actually, Irie…” The Captain saw the ship’s sensors finally wake up and suddenly break into full alarm mode as they detected the super-massive battle cruiser hanging outside.
KAWAOWAOWOW—
“What the hell is that!?” Irie was shouting.
“Ah, it looks like we’ve got company….” Eliard hit the sensor scan.
Sensor Sweep Results: Armcore Vessel approaching on a predicted rendezvous course. Class: Battle Cruiser. Designation: Unknown. Defense Analysis: Extremely Dangerous. 28 Weapons Ports defined in the Heavy Class, a further 34 Weapons Ports defined in the Light to Medium Class. At least a further 22 Weapons Hubs that cannot be identified by this computer.
Eliard tried not to hear the note of reproach in his robot-father’s voice.
“Captain!” Irie was shouting, and Val was roaring in frustration as he ransacked the hold units, searching for the input codes that would re-install the meson railguns.
“But at least we’ve got our engines. How long until warp, Irie?” Eliard’s eyes were fixed on the cruiser.
“About an hour and twenty minutes, Captain.” Her voice was stubborn.
“WHAT!?”
“I told you that you wouldn’t like my solution, but it did get Alpha out of our computer, right?” They could hear the engineer shouting as distant clanks and swearing also came across the communicator from her end.
“Yeah, but I didn’t know that would make my ship useless anyway!” Eliard called, hitting the thrusters to turn them around and start to fire in the first direction that was away from the cruiser. The Mercury started to turn, the desert orb of Shambar sliding into view underneath them, as their sensors flashed.
Incoming Message! Sender: Armcore Battle Cruiser. Accept/Reject?
“They’ll only blow us out of the sky if we refuse, anyway…” Eliard kept their heading and their rockets firing but nodded wearily. “Accept,” he called out.
17
Attached
“You know what, I am getting really fed up with talking to robots.” Eliard grimaced as the main screen ahead of him flashed as the incoming message came in—a stylized graphic of a red eye in a triangle.
“Ponos,” the captain said. “What a pleasure it is to see that you returned my call.”
“Your actions have been highly unwise, even for a human, Captain Martin,” the Armcore machine-intelligence stated.
“And I have really missed having super-intelligences pretend to know more about me than I do,” Eliard drawled.
Behind them, the Armcore cruiser had caught up to their position in a matter of minutes, and now, even though the Mercury was still burning its boosters as fast as they could fire, they were being dwarfed by its shadow. The captain could now see the crenulations and architecture of the external hull, the slit-window portholes sliding over them like angry, squinting eyes.
“I’m afraid it is unavoidable, Captain Martin,” Ponos replied dryly.
“Was that a joke, Ponos? Are you capable of making jokes?” The captain cut their booste
r speed to match up with the Cruiser. What was the point of wasting their energy, anyway?
“I have a full syntactical database, Captain, so yes, I am able to make ‘jokes’ as you call them. Really, they are time-sensitive appraisals of cause and effect.”
“Ah no, it seems I was wrong. You tin cans really can’t make jokes,” Eliard said. He thought if there was any good to come out of this, then perhaps it was good that Ponos hadn’t decided to fire on them.
“I am sending docking coordinates to your ship, and we shall convene further when you are aboard,” Ponos stated.
Information Packet Received! Docking platform 17C requesting synchronization…
“Who says I want to see you, Ponos? I’m still waiting on your offer,” the captain said, his gloved hands gripping the wheel. He wondered when the warp cores would have cycled up. Would they be strong enough to jump out of range of the cruiser before Ponos got a chance to fire on them?
“It is unwise to discuss our business arrangement any further over data-space. I think you understand why,” Ponos returned.
“Payment, toaster.” Eliard gritted his teeth. But he knew that the thing was right. Any amount of time that they spent out here, awash with data-space signals, just gave Alpha more time to try and target them with its hacking signals.
“And anyway…what’s to say that I’ll be any safer inside your bird than my own?” he pointed out. “Alpha could just as easily hack you, if everything it says is true about its galaxy-spanning intelligence.”
“True. But Alpha has not directly tested its capabilities against another of its kind,” Ponos replied. “There are…precautions that I am able to take that Alpha might be unaware of.”
“Such as?”
“Really, Captain. Please refer to my earlier comment about the inadvisability of talking over data-space channels.” Ponos sounded, if anything, pretty weary.
“I have no great desire to be on board a warship full of guns and drones and flying knives when Alpha takes over. At least the worst thing it can do here on the Mercury is make sure that our food processor goes on the blink,” Eliard said. “What about the payment, Ponos?”
“I cannot guarantee that Alpha will not be able to take over this vessel, but I can report with eighty-three percent accuracy that we expect to retain individual control over all systems. Good enough, Captain?”
“Eighty-three percent, huh? If only the other seventeen percent wasn’t full of screaming and dying.” Eliard said, licking his lips nervously.
“Captain…” It was Irie on the communicator. “I think you should take him up on the offer. I’m patching all of the firewalls and code scramblers that I can, but it’s only a matter of time, if Alpha wants to take over the boat again…”
“I get it, Irie!” he snapped. “I’m negotiating, for crying out loud!” Why could his crew not leave him to do what he did best, which was con people out of killing them, and taking their money? “Payment, Ponos!”
“I am willing to give ten million Imperial Coalition credits for the Device,” Ponos said. “Able to be wired direct to any account that you name instantaneously.”
“If Alpha doesn’t get there first, right?” Eliard said. “It’s got to be hard cash, Ponos. C’mon, is this your first rodeo?”
“I see that you have made an ancient Earth reference. Ha. I still do not feel that now is the appropriate time for humor, Captain. Especially with Alpha somewhere at large in data-space,” Ponos said. “However, I can certainly find the equivalent of fifty thousand Imperial Credits on board, and with the freedom to choose that amount of hardware or resources at my disposal up to the final tally.”
Eliard blinked. Ten million credits in military hardware seemed like a whole lot more than just a line of zeroes in a digital account. Especially as all digital accounts were now subject to the mercy and whims of an alien super-intelligence. He could afford a mecha. He could afford a whole cohort of mechas. Not that he had anywhere to put them.
But it was a start. He accepted the docking synchronization request and watched as a line of landing code swam across his screen, interfacing with the Mercury’s own navigational computer as the experimental fighter-racer cut its forward power and slowly turned toward docking port 17C.
It was like docking with a spaceport, the captain thought as they slid past a wall of antennae, sensors, dishes, and gun ports with snub-tubed noses, burnt with the exhaust of all the munitions fired. But it was still a little different from other Armcore vessels that the captain had been near. It had far less lights on, for a start. None of the usual warning and guidance floodlights were mounted on its hull, only smaller, dimmer lights clearly used for close flight procedures with smaller vessels, like the Mercury.
It also had next to no markings on its hull, where usually Armcore proudly displayed both its colors and its almost circular logo with a militarist star and giant ‘A.’ Instead, the cruiser appeared to have both hull and ports that were encased in a dull, matte dark grey color. No chrome, no glossy or shiny surfaces—even the windows were narrow lines crisscrossed with reinforced bars. All designed to not reflect light.
“I’d bet my hat that this is some kind of stealth cruiser,” the captain said with a slight touch of awe. He’d heard about them, of course, but had never seen them or expected to—which was kind of the point, he guessed. But he was still amazed that Armcore had a fleet of super stealthy ships that could travel almost undetected across space thanks to their ahead of the curve scrambling and blocking technology.
“Captain? There’s something weird happening to the sensor array,” Irie called down the line, as if to prove his point. When the captain pulled up the diagnostics on his view screen, he saw that there was indeed something wrong.
Insufficient Data to Complete Scan, the robot-version of his father’s voice informed him. The captain toggled a few of the controls to display a more detailed reading of the situation, and he saw a list of the available sensors that the Mercury Blade used as routine: thermal, electronic, RF, EMF, and more. On each of them, there were warning alerts displayed. Each of the signals was scrambled, breaking down into chaotic jumbles of data that could either mean that they were in the middle of null space or hovering in front of a city. The readings changed every few seconds and made it impossible for the Mercury’s computers to conclude anything other than ‘malfunction.’
For a wild moment, he wondered if this was the Valyien-intelligence of Alpha trying to break into their servers again, before he realized that Alpha wasn’t the culprit. All the rest of the computer systems on board the Blade were fine, everything from armaments to life support working perfectly well. Even the sensor arrays were working perfectly, really, but they were reading far too many and far too little sources of information in far too small a time, he guessed. He was almost certain that this was the rumored stealth technology that Armcore had access to.
But did it scramble Alpha’s intrusion, or just hide them? he thought as the Mercury locked onto one slowly-opening octagonal port, extending landing arms that locked perfectly in place underneath the Mercury’s wing-fins and starting to pull it closer, into the darkness of their lair.
The cockpit windows flushed black with shadow as they were pulled through a short tunnel before emerging into the blinking, bright brilliance of a busy hangar bay, with several of the automated mechanical arms moving the smaller Armcore attack fighters from one location to another, stacking them as if they were bullets in a gun.
The hangar bay was large and organized like a large oval with the mechanical arms stacking the various ships and cargo units around the outer wall. Eliard could see different metal balconies, where a few human workers moved back and forth, but was surprised at how few humans were there.
“But then again, does CEO Tomas know what Ponos is doing?” Eliard wondered aloud as they were slid into their own position, and a gangway extended itself automatically to meet with them. “Boots on the floor, people!” Eliard called, turning to find Val alr
eady by the main bay doors, Judge in hand.
“I’m not sure they’ll let you keep that.” The captain offered him a blaster pistol instead, which looked like a child’s toy in the Duergar’s massive grip. Val Pathok growled, and Eliard didn’t blame him.
A second later, Irie appeared, wearing her encounter suit and her engineer’s visor, but apparently unarmed. “I reckon we’re probably a bit outgunned anyway.” She shrugged, to which the captain could only agree.
The hangar bay door opened, revealing the gangway leading to a distant balcony, and hovering over it was a sleek black drone with the encrustations of sensor nodes on its ‘front’ as well as the red triangle and eye symbol of Ponos himself.
“Greetings again, Captain, Engineer, Gunner.” A pause, as the sleek egg-like shape bobbed in the air. “Ah, I see that you are missing the Agent Cassandra of House Archival? I take it that this was through misadventure, and not that she has decided to return to her house?” the robot said, without a trace of tact or gentility in its harsh voice.
Irie’s eyes swung to the captain, whose jaw had suddenly clenched and she could see his fists doing the same. “She’s gone,” the mechanic heard him say in a final tone, clearly not wishing to discuss it any further, and, for a wonder, the drone form of Ponos did not press the issue.
“Please, ladies and gentlemen, follow me.” Ponos turned in the air—which was a total affectation, the captain realized, as the drone could move in any direction at any time—but the crew of the Mercury Blade followed its lead and marched out into the Armcore stealth cruiser.
“This your home away from home, is it?” Eliard muttered angrily as they left the hangar and found themselves in one of the adjoining metal corridors. Other drones moved through the passages; some small and egg-shaped like Ponos was, while others chugged slowly via tracks on the floor, and others were darting and smaller. They didn’t see any humans, and the captain began to wonder if this place was mostly robotic versions of Ponos.
Valyien Boxed Set 1 Page 33
