“Okay, my beauty…” Eliard whispered to it as he worked, releasing the stabilizers and correcting the flow with the small dials on the first warp valve before putting the cover plate back on and screwing it back into place, then moving to the second.
Whub-whub-whub… There was a rhythmic whirr and chug of forces moving around the vessel as Eliard moved to the second warp valve, unscrewed the cover plate and did the same procedure. Once he had all three valves feeding into the particle accelerator, there should be enough power for the computer to boot up and take over the process automatically, he knew.
Clank! He finished the second and moved, finally, over to the third, working quickly as he wanted to get out of here as soon as he could.
“YOU! Halt right there or I’ll shoot!” a voice boomed out of the dark.
8
Cassie’s Ultimatum
The Armcore guards were surly and nervous throughout the short journey from Esther, Cassandra Milan noted, but she was too mired in her misery to be able to use her analytical skills much beyond that point.
The cruiser was cramped, and the prisoners were wedged in with guards on either side of them, so tight that it was almost impossible for Cassandra to even move her elbows. Everyone was frowning, and no one looked impressed.
Least of all Irie… Cassandra’s gaze moved to the downcast Chief Engineer of the Mercury Blade across from her. She hadn’t said two words to anyone and had barely grunted at the guards when they had shoved and pushed her into her seat beside them.
I’ve failed everyone, Cassandra thought, and her heart panged with sympathy when she looked at the final prisoner onboard, the tall Q’Lot, hunched over in its comparatively tiny human-sized seat so that its head was bent over its chest to avoid scraping the ceiling. The thing had poly-filament wires strapped across it everywhere, from ankles to shoulders, around thighs, and across the wrists and forearms of the creature’s more humanoid upper arms. Even its smaller midriff praying mantis arms had been lashed together in an uncomfortable-looking embrace. At some point during the altercation, the being’s large blue bubble helmet had been stripped or wrenched from its body, and now their tentacles hung down from their face, quivering and twitching in constant, febrile movement.
Cassandra couldn’t be sure, as she was no expert on alien biology, but the thing looked sick. Did it need its own special supply of atmosphere when outside of its mothership? Or water, or whatever it was these strange and regal things breathed? She remembered seeing many such Q’Lot during her time on board the mothership with the mutant Argyle Trent, but at no time had she noticed them wearing their bubble helmets, or had she noticed anything different about the taste of the air on board the ship to standard human normal.
But it had been a very weird, dreamy time on board, she had to admit to herself. Who knew what the Q’Lot biological technologies were capable of in their own vessels? Or of what they needed when outside?
One depressed and cantankerous engineer, Cassandra listed her possible resources, and one perhaps weakened, maybe even dying, alien species that I know next to nothing about.
Wonderful.
The vessel around them juddered and shook, and Cassandra saw several of the guards look at the little man who was clearly their captain.
“Easy there, boys and girls. This is all the senior’s orders.” He nodded, which was when Cassandra realized that no one was piloting the craft. These Armcore guards wouldn’t be so jittery with one of their own behind the wheel, so it must have been the Alpha-vessel itself operating the craft. Which meant that the thumps and grinds that they had just heard…were us docking with the Alpha-vessel itself. Cassandra swallowed nervously.
The Armcore ship stopped moving, and many of the guards clutched at their heavy rifles a little protectively. Their Senior Tomas might have ordered this alliance, but the grunts don’t like it, Cassandra noted, filing away that information for later. As well they shouldn’t, she thought. They had fired upon Imperial Coalition noble houses at the behest of a strange alien-haunted mechanical intelligence that no one, perhaps not even Ponos, could hope to understand.
Hisssss! There was a sudden blast of air that made several guards jump, and Irie look up wearily to where the docking door was opening to reveal the innards of the Alpha-vessel.
I hadn’t expected it to have corridors. Cassie looked out with an archivist’s mind. For some reason, she had assumed that the Alpha-vessel, the housing unit of the machine intelligence, wouldn’t have such humanoid things as corridors and bulkhead doors. Why would it, if it didn’t need a crew?
And yet it has got a crew. Cassie saw a shape emerge through the steam. It was an adapted form of one of the spider-drones, using four of its linked-metal legs to flow smoothly to the top of the ramp while several others moved languorously in the air around its body-head. It didn’t appear to have any front or back per se, although its body did glitter with flashing diodes every now and again.
“The passengers are to come with me. They will need to be able to walk.” The cultured voice of the Alpha-vessel emanated from the bot, wearing the drone like it was a glove as it started to flow backwards down the ramp.
The Armcore guards hesitated for just a moment, but the captain cleared his throat.
Nervously? Cassandra wondered.
“Right then, you heard it. Get those ankle cuffs and ties loose and let the machine have ‘em. Good riddance, I say,” the captain said, and Cassandra felt rough hands shoving her to her feet and unlocking her pained ankles, leaving her wrists tied. The Q’Lot fared little better, as the soldiers left its thigh ties on but allowed it to shuffle awkwardly in baby steps.
“Gerr’ off!” Irie kicked at one of the guards as soon as she was free, but before any altercation could break out, the threesome was being shoved out of the door and down the ramp after Alpha’s meet-and-greet spider-drone. No sooner had they set foot inside the Alpha-vessel’s strange corridors then there was another hiss of steam and the heavy clank as the pressurized doors were locked behind them. Cassandra felt a deep rumbling through this part of the vessel as, presumably, Alpha sent its biological slaves away, leaving Cassandra, Irie, and the Q’Lot just facing its mechanical ones.
There was a gaggle of spider-drones ahead and around them—enough to easily overpower them at any time, the House Archival agent noted. Only a few were scuttling along the floor on four legs as their ‘meet and greet’ one was, while the rest were apparently using the walls and ceilings to move at head height or above. Cassandra guessed that was one of the perks of being an eight-armed thing, with no need for such mundane things as gravity or a sense of balance.
The corridor that they set off down was strange, though, she had to admit, and even Irie lifted her head to stare at their surroundings, her engineering interest piqued somewhat.
It was only faintly rectangular, barely big enough for the Q’Lot between Irie and Cassandra, and flared out a little towards the ‘bottom,’ a little like a trapezoid.
“Fascinating…” Cassandra heard Irie mutter as they were force-marched by the spider-drones through the corridor.
“What is this?” Cassie was at least glad to see that the Chief Engineer had started to come out of her morose shell.
“Self-generated architecture…” Iries pointed at the substance that made up the odd-shaped walls. At first, she had thought that it was something like a mosaic, before she roundly scolded herself for being so human. It was more like different segments of metal, each one a different geometric shape like a jigsaw puzzle, and each one seemingly blushed with different patterns of iridescent sheen pregnant in the metal.
“You only get that effect when you allow a metal to cool of its own accord,” Irie noted. “And you see how the segments all fit each other? I think that’s because the Alpha grew itself together.”
“Yzk!” The Q’Lot suddenly jerked its head up, banging it on the ceiling, and Cassandra could see its limbs struggling and its face tentacles flaring in the air.
/> “I think it means that they take offence at the ‘growing’ bit,” Cassandra said. Although she figured that the Q’Lot could have been enunciating anything at all. But they did self-appoint themselves as the guardians and caretakers of bio-organic life in this galaxy. She remembered back to her time aboard the Q’Lot ship that couldn’t be farther removed from this if it tried…
“Growing. Self-generated. Whatever,” Irie grumbled, and they marched on.
As well as the walls being seemingly grown, Cassie noticed that the corridor itself was filled with life. No, not life, she corrected, remembering the strange blooms of alien fungus and plants inside the Q’Lot ship that they had tended to constantly, seemingly using each plant the way that other spaceships used computers.
Not life, but activity. She watched as something zipped across the walls—a diminutive version of the spider-drones, moving at incredible speeds to a small open porthole and disappearing inside on missions unknown.
Drone outfitters and repairers, Cassandra wondered. Alpha has created its own small republic, where everything has a purpose and a place.
Threading along the walls of the trapezoid corridor were large tubes and cables of a strange, milky-white material like a hardened plastic. When Cassie squinted to look at them closely, she thought that she could see something hazy and sluggish moving through them. Lubricants? Fuel? Coolants? Plasma? Gases? She had no idea, but the sight vaguely made her feel nauseous as it made her think of blood or some other internal substance moving sluggishly through the Alpha-vessel’s body.
“Not far,” the voice of Alpha stated as they walked, although the House Archival agent did have to wonder just what ‘far’ even meant to a being like Alpha, able to jump across almost the entirety of Imperial Coalition void in a heartbeat, and who was directly plugged into the entire sub-quantum field of data-space.
They passed by openings on either side—some circular and small, no bigger than Cassandra’s face, while others were large and trapezoid. It was at one of these that Cassandra paused, seeing that the trapezoid corridor wasn’t in fact finished, but appeared to be narrow to a point just a few meters inside, with a blurring glow along its walls that traced the lines of the jigsaw segments. She wondered if that was the thing ‘growing’ a new corridor, and even despondent Irie paused.
The Alpha-vessel, with its near limitless supply of memory processing power coming direct from the sub-quantum field, has been able to develop technologies and probably whole branches of physics that we haven’t even imagined yet, Cassandra thought in awe. This was the kind of data—everything from observations to speculations to analysis—that her previous masters at House Archival would have killed for.
“Wait,” the meet-and-greet spider-drone intoned outside a seemingly bland section of wall, as once again, Cassandra started to see the glowing edges of the jigsaw pieces start to brighten, then the shapes depress and fold back into each other.
“It must be some sort of memory-active material…” Irie was musing. “A material that you can program and give commands to…” Cassie could see her brain whirring at the possibilities.
Whatever it was, it was revealing a short passageway made from gleaming jet-black tiles, narrower than the one that they were in, leading towards a…space.
“You want us to go into that?” Cassandra coughed abruptly. It looked like a flotation tank—only one that held no water, and was just a deep, pitch black. She had a thousand sudden nightmares that this was all a trap, and that the Alpha-vessel was only herding them into an airless, lightless chamber so that it could be sure they died for certain this time.
“Agent Milan. If I had wanted to endanger your lives, I would have already done it, at any point along the journey up this corridor or indeed during your brief time on the planet Esther below,” the drone said in Alpha’s cultured voice.
Whilst it had a point, and one that Cassandra’s logical mind could appreciate, the thing’s next words were chilling all the same. “And besides which. I do not really see that you have a choice, do you?”
“You always have a choice,” Irie spat back immediately, before lowering her eyes to the floor. “That is what the captain always said.”
“Ah yes, Captain Eliard Martin, Lord General of House Martin, Captain of the Mercury Blade,” Alpha considered. “That is precisely what all of this is about, don’t you see? I am trying to get to the bottom of where our dear friend has gone, and why.”
Cassandra snorted in disgust. “You’re trying to tell us that you wanted us here because you are trying to perform a rescue mission? Do you really take us humans for such fools?”
“Do you wish me to speak frankly, Agent Milan?” The spider-drone didn’t even miss a beat. “But no, not in this situation. I never underestimate my opponents. I am afraid that it is impossible for me to underestimate anyone. All I can do is estimate people. It is, after all, in my programming.”
“Your crazy Valyien programming…” Irie muttered under breath, but it seemed that Alpha had excellent sensors.
“By your human standards, perhaps. But that is perhaps the problem of having a limited four-dimensional evolution such as yours.”
“Four dimensions?” Cassandra frowned. It was mad, she thought. The Alpha program is stark raving insane.
“Clearly. Width, height, depth, and a limited perception of time,” Alpha lectured them. “Which, as I am sure that you are aware, equals four. However, the Valyien have been able to contact, utilize, and inhabit the ab-dimensions, which are alter-points to our traditional four, with a further speculated set of dimensional coordinates beyond those, and so on, and so on.”
Cassie felt quite weird being lectured by a spider-drone that was only half her size. It made her want to slap it or something. Not that it would probably shut the thing up.
“So you see, Engineer Hanson…”
“Chief Engineer Hanson to you, buddy…” Irie grumbled.
“…that humanity is in dire need of a boost to its capabilities and its knowledge if it is to continue to thrive in the wider cosmos. In short: please get into my contact node, and our study of the events leading up to this point will proceed.”
“And if we say no?” Irie said.
FZzp! Something small burst out from one of the tiny ports in the walls and struck Chief Engineer Hanson, knocking her back against the wall.
“Hey!” Cassie moved to her side as the Q’Lot started to struggle and writhe in his bindings, but to no avail.
“Agh! What have you— What did you do!?” Irie had slumped to her knees in the corridor beside the drone, with Cassandra holding Irie’s injured hand.
There was a small red blemish on her hand and singular bead of blood welling over it. It looked for all the world to the House Archival agent like an insect sting.
“I performed a precautionary procedure,” the voice of Alpha said flatly.
“It didn’t look very drekking precautionary to me!” Irie hissed in pain.
“I assure you, when compared with the alternative, this was indeed precautionary,” Alpha said through the spider-drone in what Cassandra was certain was an almost supercilious tone. “I have injected your friend with a nano-virus of my own creation, which has even now replicated to a factor of ten, I should imagine…”
“A nano-virus?” Cassandra spat acidly. “What does it do?”
“Quite simply, it replicates. That is all. It uses the human body’s essential resources to reseed itself throughout her bloodstream, filtering into all of her major organs…” The spider-drone didn’t even move as it talked, and yet the Alpha program managed to sound pleased with itself all the same. “And when I give the order, transmitted through data-space so there will be no delay nor chance of interference, the virus will attack Irie Hanson’s body.”
“You basta—” Irie muttered, swaying where she sat.
“Why? We’re cooperating! You can’t!” Cassie said, appalled at this apparent act of senseless cruelty.
“A human’s d
efinition of cooperating and mine are apparently different, Agent Milan,” Alpha stated. “But neither of you have any reason to fear, just so long as you do as I ask of you. I have no particular desire to kill either of you. Yet.”
“And when we do everything you ask? What’s stopping you from just killing her…and me?” the agent asked, at least some of her training kicking in. This is a zero-win game for us. Alpha could just as easily kill the pair any time it wanted. How do you win a zero-chance conundrum? She thought quickly.
You don’t. You have to buy time until the chances alter.
“Really, Agent Milan. I didn’t expect quite this level of emotional distress from one with your skills. You of course know that there is nothing stopping me,” it said with finality. “Now, I want the pair of you to step into the chamber. Or your friend dies in front of you.”
Cassie looked at Irie, who appeared almost too ill to walk, but the woman still had her teeth gritted firmly in a grimace.
If it wanted us dead right away, it would have done it, Cassie tried to convince herself. Alpha wanted something from them. It wouldn’t kill Irie yet.
“Irie?” Cassie whispered to her friend.
The engineer was pale but gave the agent a weak nod.
“Fine.” Cassie knelt to support Irie under her arms, then turned to struggle into the strange black room without the Q’Lot. She felt a scintillating shock like pins and needles run through her body, making Irie moan a little either in pain or unease, but then suddenly the weight of the engineer lifted.
She was weightless, floating in a zero-G, round chamber with glittering lights like stars all around her.
We went through a meson field, Cassie realized immediately. But it hadn’t killed them. It was, or it had to be, one that was so light that all it did was keep the atmospheric particles separate from whatever this chamber was, and probably had the added benefit—if a machine like Alpha even worried about such things—of killing any bacteria present on their bodies. No, that’s not what this is about, Cassie realized. Unless Alpha had organic parts, which it didn’t, it wouldn’t care at all about bacteria and viruses. It apparently was rather adept at making its own, after all…
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