by John Lane
Then her image softened and reflected the attitude of his mother’s face behind it. “The tattoo is part of the story and the danger. Pay attention, Tommy. This is important.” Her image walked back to the sofas, but Tommy remained fixed on his mother’s true face as she spoke through her hologram. Her mouth never moved, but her head nodded and her posture changed to illustrate she was indeed the speaker. And her eyes reflected the emotions that her voice expressed.
“I found Christy among an extremist group. I had been treating families in a small village on a plantation planet. They came out of the hills to the clinic we’d set up and asked for a doctor. One of their party had been injured. I went. There was no injury. They knew exactly who I was and my background. They had Christy, and the only way I could see her was to develop a contagion for them. They had a hack that had tried one on several victims. Christy had been his latest test subject. She was dying slowly.”
Annie’s tears blended with the nutrient bath. She continued her story, “Their hack had a strain of virulent flu that killed if you were infected directly, but it was not contagious. And our current regimen of vaccinations made us resilient to infection. I changed that. I created a strain that did exactly what they wanted. I was forced to prove this on a couple from the village they had captured. It was a horror. I could do nothing. The poor woman died and had passed it on to her husband. I had also developed a treatment and vaccine for the virus. I saved the husband.” The memory of saving that man relieved some of her pain. “They gave me this tattoo to brand me as one of them.”
Annie pushed on desperate to tell her story. “Christy was still patient zed. She was still suffering from the original contagion. I infected myself and became a carrier. My strain moved much faster through a population. The husband and I spread the contagion though all the pirates in the camp. We, we…” she paused, “we killed them all.” Cocooned in her casket, Annie wrapped her own arms around herself for comfort.
“I made it to safety after we burned the bodies in the camp. The man- I never knew his name- stayed and walked off into the wilds. Our virus was for humanity. It couldn’t hurt the native life forms. But I was contagious. I made it to this med unit, sealed myself in the nutrient bath and contacted your father. He provided resources to create this first MOM, and I was installed before any staff. They never knew my true condition. No one could enter my cabin. Here, I’ve worked to reverse what I’ve done. If there were ever a breach in this casket, I believe the virus would spread and start killing in mere hours.”
She opened her arms now to Tommy and pressed against the casket wall, the closest touch she could have with her son. “Tommy, you’ve got to know…”
The power in Annie’s cabin shut down. It was cut off to the entire OR complex. With the power dead, the hatch to the cabin opened just a crack and emergency light from the corridor shown in. Backup batteries kicked on in the equipment around Annie’s cabin, including her med unit. A soft glow emanated from her nutrient bath now. With power restored, the cabin hatch locked shut once again. By then, she had gotten in.
“Hey, pretty boy. Fancy meeting you again.” The menacing voice of the Angel Reaper came from the darkness in a corner above the hatch. Tommy strained to find her in the darkness. He heard scraping of metal on metal. Tommy tried to follow it, instinctually placing himself between his mother and the threat. For just a moment, light from a medical display illuminated the pirate’s face and her grotesque spider body. Tommy lunged, but she jumped away out of the light. He tried to follow the sounds of her legs on the walls and ceiling.
Tommy crossed to the sofas again. “Boo!” She jumped out, flaying her legs at Tommy’s face. He ducked. She got a piece of his shoulder and sliced through his jumpsuit into his flesh. It bled. Tommy was sure that if she had wanted to, she could have killed him. Her attack on him was to distract him as she went for her real objective.
The Angel Reaper attached herself to a monitor panel in the floor next to Annie’s casket. She entered some control codes and attaching several of her fiber optic computer cables to parts of the panel that her knife sharp legs pried open. While she used her fake eye to monitor the panel, her real eye kept watch on Tommy. “No heroic moves, pretty boy, or I short out the dear Doctor’s life. It won’t take much.”
“Is that so. Alfred, are you there?” Tommy attempted to contact his partner.
“It’s no good. Dr. Doolittle has done a very fine job making sure no one can get in here, and nothing gets out unless she lets it,” the pirate sneered at him.
Tommy searched the cabin, desperate for a weapon when Annie’s avatar ran at the pirate with her surgical hand spinning wildly, scalpels extended. The Reaper used her own sharp legs to counter the blows that Annie tried to rain down on her. Although well intentioned, Annie was no match for the battle-hardened pirate. The Reaper hacked away gleefully at the avatar, cutting chunks of padding and circuits out of it. Annie tried to get at the fleshy parts of the pirate, but failed.
The distraction gave Tommy time to search the cabin more thoroughly. He found a cabinet opening for him and lights flashing to get his attention. A touch pad near the chemicals flashed the text, “Acid.” His mother could be very resourceful. He grabbed the flask labeled Sulfurous Acid - H2SO3 and waited for his chance to use it.
Angel Reaper had been toying with Annie’s avatar and with a flourish, shoved it away saying, “Well it’s been fun, but it only takes one cut.” With that the pirate turned to the panel where her real arm held up a cable. This she neatly snipped with two of her legs as Annie’s avatar took one last run at the pirate. It collapsed to the ground in a slow fall at Annie’s real feet in the nutrient bath.
It didn’t look like Tommy could get close enough with the flask of acid to hit the pirate on what was left of her human body where it would do the most good. Still, Tommy jumped, ducked and rolled to get closer to his mother’s casket and the pirate. “Shall we dance?” sang out the pirate abomination as she moved to block Tommy’s advance. She’s playing with me, thought Tommy as he feinted and pounced. If those nippers on her spider legs get ahold of me again I’m gone. He tucked and summersaulted behind a scanner table.
She jumped on the table as Tommy rolled under it. Coming up behind the table, he had his chance. Tommy smashed the flask against the right side of her skull. She screamed in fury and writhed on the tabletop, dripping blood, flesh and acid on the counter. Tommy backed away toward his mother when the pirate started laughing.
“Thanks for the bath pretty boy. I should have showered for our date.” Now the pirate hopped off the counter and advanced toward Tommy on its spider legs. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate the thought.” She backed Tommy toward his mother’s casket. He tripped on the monitor panel she had attached moments before. Tommy fell against the casket. She climbed up the casket, pinning Tommy’s arms and leering into his face.
This close to her, Tommy had no trouble seeing where the flask smashed and her flesh had burned away. On this side of her face, her skull and parts of her jaw had been replaced with metal and circuits. There was a ragged edge that cut diagonally across her face, not quite to her nose. Some human bone was exposed, but Tommy saw nanites cleaning and repairing both damaged circuits and human flesh as he watched.
She had one sharp pincher inches from his eyes. That’s when the entry panel next to the cabin hatch exploded, and the hatch rolled open. In charged Agnes and a humanoid avatar. Annie couldn’t have been in control of it, so Tommy knew it was Alfred. Agnes raised some strange cobbled together gadget and a burst of heat sliced past Tommy’s cheek. It also sliced off the pincher that was about to gouge out Tommy’s eyes.
The pirate let go of Tommy, and he fell to the floor under the low gravity setting of the OR. A welt rose on Tommy’s cheek where the blast had burned him, and his arms were cut up, but he could still fight. Alfred’s avatar rushed forward to check Tommy for any other injuries. Agnes kept her scalpel raised at the pirate while the whine of its capacitor charg
ing climbed higher. The pirate glared out the door as if expecting more.
“There’s no one’b coming. Your otb’her two’b esca’bees are down’b and maybe deab,” Agnes said with menace through her congestion. And she fired another blast from her scalpel taking off a piece of the pirate’s good arm. Now the pirate glared hatred at Agnes and made to attack. But as the scalpel recharged, Agnes raised it with deadly accuracy at the pirate’s head. Agnes stood firm between the pirate and Tommy lying on the ground with Alfred ready to back her up.
The pirate now smiled, realizing she had the advantage, but something in her face had changed. She glanced at the monitor panel again. Tommy took the moment to glance at his mother. She was trying to communicate something to him. Mouthing as she gestured to him.
“Well, times a wastin’. Wish I could stay and play some more pretty boy, but doc and me, we’ve got an appointment to keep, and the company at this party just went south.”
She punched one last sequence into the panel on Annie’s casket. With that, Annie’s casket folded into a slot in the ceiling where her cabin connected to the rest of the MOM. Half a metal cylinder slid down over the back of her casket and covering the cyber core equipment that kept her alive. Vapors floated down from this capsule. This was an ejection pod to save the MOMA in case of ship wide disaster. A ship could be replaced, but the surgeon was a scarce commodity on the Fringe.
As the cylinder folded over Annie’s whole cyber core, two things happened. The pirate skittered into a space at the base of the core. She was going along for the ride. The other was Annie. Although she couldn’t speak to Tommy, she signaled to him. Pointing to the sabotaged panel at Tommy’s feet she then mimicked cradling an imaginary baby in her arms. The last sight Tommy had of his mother she held up three fingers.
The cylinder sealed shut, and the entire capsule rose into the ceiling. In seconds, Tommy felt the vibration through the floor of a launch. The pirate had gotten what she came for. Tommy’s mother, Annie and the deadly contagion were now in terrorist hands. A new Fringe War may have just begun.
Chapter 8: Pirates Return
Tania was tired. She’d been in her new office more than forty-eight hours. It was almost the largest office in the complex, and it was hers. To be fair, she needed it. Tania used the full wall screen and had multiple files open on it right now. She sorted, organized and traced leads backward and forward. Scrutinizing Thomas Judson and his life, she followed strands of the Wars around data loops. Tania found dead ends and broke through them to find more dead ends.
Her mandate to monitor the information flow focused on one Postal Service courier captain and his cargo of packages. Right now, the data washed over her. She had played this game before at university. When she ran up against an apparent unsolvable problem, she let the lines of code scroll across the screen while she let her eyes go unfocused and her brain relax. Sometimes, often, things just jumped out of the data.
This time she found the unexpected….
*****
The ejected MOMA life pod moved away from the MOM ship under the inertia of its original booster. It reflected the stars in its polished silver surface. The familiar A/W drive ringed the nose of the projectile. Capable of maneuvering under impulse it could not reach any nearby systems under its own power.
Back in the MOMA cabin, Tommy turned toward the hatch. “We can catch them.”
The humanoid avatar that Alfred inhabited grabbed Tommy’s arms and held him in an unbreakable grip. Alfred’s voice whispered in Tommy’s earbud, “We can’t. I haven’t got sufficient communication with the MOM systems back yet. And that pirate is still aboard the escape pod with your mother. Don’t think that she won’t blow them both up if we make a threatening move.”
The avatar broadcast what Alfred said so Agnes heard. She crossed to Tommy putting a hand on his shoulder. “We’b will’b geth her back.”
Alfred released Tommy when he relaxed in the avatar’s arms. The emotional release of facing his mother, her revelations and losing her again took a toll. Tommy slid to the floor. He sat there stewing for several minutes. Both Alfred and Agnes gave him space to sort through his feelings. As Tommy sat there, a red light flashed on his face from the open panel next to him. He paid it no attention, but it caught Agnes’ eye.
“I can fix thisp,” she said wiping her nose on her sleeve.
“Why?” Tommy asked, his languor now broken. He watched as Agnes dug into the floor panel next to him.
“Tomby, your momb was desbp’erately trying’a…” Agnes stopped working to cough into her sleeve. When she recovered she continued, “…trying’a to get you’b to do some’bthing with this’b panel.” She reconnected wires and patched together several others that the pirate had cut. Agnes then pulled out dead circuit boards the pirate had destroyed with her pincers. As she cross-patched these dead boards to live boards, she uncovered beneath those dead boards a separate device wired into the panel. “What’bs that?”
As Tommy watched Alfred scanned what Agnes did. “Tommy, that looks like your media player.” Alfred did not remind Tommy that the media player was the primary storage for his programming code. Agnes gently removed it from the depths of the circuits dislodging none of the interface cabling that attached it to the panel. The screen activated and requested an access code.
Tommy took the media player from Agnes to examine. “My father made this. Just like mine.” He then tapped in the access code he had been using throughout the MOM to gain access. It beeped, and the screen read ‘Incorrect passcode. Three more tries.’ “Nothing,” Tommy said discouraged. “Any ideas?”
“What do you think,” Alfred inquired. “Your mother was pointing at the panel and miming something.”
“She’b was holding’b a baby and then three fingers?” Agnes interjected and coughed again. “Tom’by, did’b you have siblings?”
“Yes, two.” Tommy said puzzled.
“Birth da’bs!” Agnes looked at them both expectantly. When they did not pick up on her meaning she explained, “One of’b the most common pass codes in the galaxy is birth da’bs. Mothers use their kids’ birth da’bs for pass codes.” She concluded smugly. Tommy and Alfred now understood.
Tommy punched in his birthdate. The screen beeped and now read, ‘Incorrect passcode. Two more tries.’ “No good.”
“Your oldest brother, David, your sister, Christine. Tommy, your mother went out to find them.” Alfred suggested.
Tommy looked from the Alfred avatar to the media player. He thought for a moment and punched in a code for David’s birthday. Again the beep and the screen now read ‘Incorrect passcode. One more try.’ Tommy looked back at the Alfred avatar.
“That was the correct date, Tommy.” Alfred said to encourage Tommy. Tommy had no more ideas, so he punched in Christine’s birthday. The screen went blank as if dead. Tommy tossed it to the floor disappointed.
“Actually, you need all three birthdays, Thomas,” the voice of his mother came from all sides of the cabin. Once again, a hologram of his mother’s younger image appeared before them. “I am an Ai copy of Dr. Ann Judson. I am here to assist in any way I can. One moment while the interface completes.” The image froze for a fraction of a second.
“Thomas, your mother has left a message for you. I will initiate playback now if you please.” It acted like his mother in almost every way. It lacked a personal connection of the previous hologram. This image seemed more formal, stiff in its interactions. This was just a recorded program of his mother.
“Yes, please. Play the message,” Tommy requested.
With no apparent change in Annie’s image as she spoke, Tommy knew that his mother spoke and not the copy. “Thomas,” she paused, “Tommy, you’ve discovered the media player and the code to unlock it. This means I’m gone. Your father developed the storage device to process data on a quantum level. In some ways I am in this device. The interface has saved me up to just before I…” The Ai program reviewed its records and she continued, “wa
s taken. I am now entrusted to you. There is one more task I have to give you.” As she continued, the floor of the cabin split under the spot where her casket previously sat, and a hidden hatch opened. Another casket rose into position in the center of the chamber. “This is your sister, Christine. She is patient zed. She has the contagion I’ve fought so long to destroy. The media player holds not only me but all of my research.”
Annie’s strained voice broke, “I was close, so close. After almost eighteen years I could have revived her and given her back a life. Take care of her. I always loved all my children.” With that the hologram reverted back to the Ai. No longer his mother Annie, it behaved very close to the original.
Alfred reported, “I have repaired the internal communication systems. I now have access to both ships’ systems. We are as ready as we will ever be to leave.”
Tommy shifted gears. “Yes,” he turned and addressed the mother Ai. “Doctor, are you integrated enough to continue medical duties?”
“Yes, I can coordinate with Alfred and turn over all other ship’s functions to him,” the Ai responded.
Agnes had begun examining the casket as soon has it appeared from the floor. Now she noticed something that gave her a start. “Tomby, Alfred. Come look at this.” She indicated the manufacture’s mark. Zephyr INC manufactured the casket. Neither Tommy nor Alfred recognized the name. The galaxy was a big place with a lot of industries. “I reco’bnize this desi’bn and that name’b is very fam’biliar,” Agnes concluded.
