by G. P. Eliot
“Hit it!” Hank shouted, and Lory did, firing everything in a controlled burst, directing them straight up.
The Lordstar rose on the plume of its own rocketry, to quickly turn over to impulse power as soon as they were clear of the semi-destroyed base. On the viewing screens in front of them all, Lory could see four giant areas of churned and blackened earth where the Union’s weapons had hit. The base itself was partially swamped and destroyed, and even as she watched, she saw tiny shuttles rising into the air just as they had, and racing off across the planet’s surface as the last of the Confederate forces attempted to flee.
“Professor you’ve got the co-ordinates for this Message Center of yours?” Hank was saying.
In one of the side chairs, the ‘science’ chair, Lory thought it was called, the Professor was only just managing to strap himself into the X-harness and looking nervously at the tactical screen filled with angry red triangles.
“Uh, yes, yes Captain, I believe I do…”
“Lory? I want us to go to warp as soon as we’re clear of the planet, you got that?” Hank said harshly. “I don’t want to give the Jackal any time to send his goons after us…”
“Already prepping warp engines, boss,” Lory said, requesting more power from engineering as Hank, behind her, turned them towards the tiny gap in the Union defenses, and the Lordstar charged upwards into the skies…
3
“Sir–we have a wanted vessel reaching escape velocity from the planet below!” called out the career lieutenant a few chairs down from where the Jackal orchestrated the complete destruction of the Confederate forces.
“What? On screen–now!” the Jackal turned his attention from the battle and his own apparently hijacked Union ships to see the unmistakable–and quite frankly, ridiculous–form of the Lordstar breaking the canopy of the planet’s atmosphere, and already starting to glitter as it accrued warp plasma to itself.
“They’re powering their FTL drive, sir!” the same man said.
“I can see that, you idiot!” the Jackal snarled. “Don’t just sit there–fire at them!”
In response, his borrowed tactical team quickly started zeroing their tactical computers in on the Lordstar as its own Faster-Than-Light engines burned an intense glow.
“Fire! Now, damn you all, fire everything you’ve got!” The Jackal was almost hopping with fury and rage. Why did it take so long for everyone else to get things done? He was much better off alone, just like always…
“Firing!” the tactical team called, and the Union Hydra released salvo after salvo of missiles at the escaping Lordstar.
The Jackal watched the tiny attack vectors spearing to meet his enemies craft head-on. It would be obliterated in seconds…
Only the Lordstar was no longer there. It had jumped to warp in the seconds before the missiles had struck, and now the Jackal was watching them explode harmlessly as their thinner casings could not withstand the pressures of entry into the planet’s atmosphere.
“Rargh!” the Jackal exploded, moving as fast as a striking viper to snatch at the career lieutenant from his chair with just one cybernetically-enhanced hand, and flinging him across the bridge in a fit of pique.
“Ah!” the man gave a squeal as his body thudded on the floor and skidded into the wall, where the Jackal at least heard something break. The man wasn’t dead, but at least he wouldn’t be in front-line service for a while.
“Ready the Pequod,” the Jackal was already turning, abandoning the bridge. “And alert the Wolverines.” He called. “I know exactly where the criminals are going, and I intend to greet them!”
“But, but sir–the battle? The hijacked ships?” One of his tactical officers said.
“Sort it out yourselves, Command restored to the Acting General.” The Jackal growled at them as the door hissed open and he was already running down the metal corridor to the Hold, where his own, precious Pequod would be waiting for him, along with its staff of trained, elite Union killers–the Wolverines.
The Jackal had no qualms about abandoning the battle to the rest of the Union forces. He had only assumed Acting Command as he was the one who had the lead on the mission here. He had been tasked with protecting the Message and bringing the dangerous fugitive Alan Serrano to Union justice.
In fact, now that the Jackal knew that he was once more a free agent again–no longer constrained with listening to the inane ramblings of career lieutenants, for example–he felt infinitely better.
The Lordstar had managed to evade his clutches once more–and as infuriating as that was–the Jackal also felt himself grin as he ran.
This was turning into a proper challenge, he thought. It was going to be so delicious when he finally got face to face with that meddlesome Captain Snider again.
He was going to make that traitor pay.
4
“There she is,” the Professor breathed as he looked up at the tiny white and grey dot that was barely bigger than the glimmer of stars around it.
Which were moving.
“Ah, Professor?” Hank said. “Anything you care to inform us about this research facility of yours?” The Lordstar had jumped just as the Captain had ordered and had hurtled through the chaos of warp to arrive on the far outskirts of a tiny planetoid.
“It’s an ice world. No name, just a designation: X3-2e. It was an ingenious idea to site the facility here, it has to be said, as the nano-architecture of the computers and memory servers always function better at lower temperatures of course, so the processing power is unbelievably fast, in fact on a record day the transfer rate reaches—”
“Just the facts please, Professor,” the Captain sounded tired and irritated to Serrano’s ears.
Probably because he lost his whiskey, the man thought. What he never understood was why Snider always insisted on telling him to ‘stick to the facts’–what he had been about to tell were the facts! It just wasn’t the sorts of facts that the Captain wanted to hear, that’s all…
“X3-2e is where we worked on the Message. The Union has a network of underground bunkers under the planetoid’s ice-mantle, with large radio satellites on the surface,” Serrano said. “And those moving lights you see are the A.Is satellite sensor grid…”
“An A.I. sensor grid!?” The Captain burst out. “You mean to tell me that they’ve already registered our arrival?”
“Oh, highly likely,” Serrano opined. But the Professor didn’t see anything to particularly worry about. “But X3-2e is a designated science zone, all of the satellites are searching for extra-solar signals, not ship movements,” Did the Captain not understand anything about filtering systems? Serrano thought. “It means that we’ll just be ignored, more than likely…”
“More than likely can still get us killed, Professor…” Serrano heard the man who was their ad-hoc leader say. The Professor sighed. Sometimes, he wished there was another academic on board…
But there was, wasn’t there? Serrano realized. “Excuse me, sir… but didn’t Mr. Cortez suggest that he might have some proficiency with coding systems?”
“If you mean; is he a bit of a whiz at computers, then yeah, I think so…” Hank called up Malcolm Cortez to the Bridge of the Lordstar, where he appeared some five minutes later, still wearing the white apron that was his other job on board the boat.
“I found some goujons in Mansoor’s kitchen! We’ll be feasting tonight,” Cortez was saying happily as the door buzzed and he hurried in. Although his face did suddenly look a little perturbed… “Hang on a minute… How long does chicken keep in a chiller…?” Serrano made a mental note not to eat the chicken goujons when they would eventually be offered to him.
“Artificial Intelligence? What class is it?” Cortez’s bumbling personality fell away, and instead, everyone was amazed as he took to one of the ‘science’ consoles and his greasy fingers started clacking away at the data screen in rapid succession.
“Of course, the Lordstar doesn’t have a direct-link data upload on it, b
ut I can reroute subspace transmitters to ping a backdoor request…”
“Urgh,” Serrano heard the Captain groan. “God save me from tech-speak…”
“It’s a science A.I. I think…” Serrano said, earning a nod from the engineer-cook, and apparent genius computer programmer beside him.
“Ah yes, not a defense or a military A.I., I can see it only has three firewalls, and no pet trojan codes….” Cortez was saying.
Even the Professor had no idea what Cortez was saying, but when he looked over the man’s shoulder he saw on the screen a strange diagram. There were multiple tiny, advancing green lines to three large red curves, and, as Serrano watched, the tiny green lines hit the first red wall, blinked once, twice, and then faded entirely.
“Is that good news?” Serrano said.
“Not at all, but I’ve sent a self-replicating worm to probe the first firewall and–aha!”
On the screen in front of them one of the tiny lines had entered the first red wall, and the entire wall flashed red, red, and then green as Cortez’s code overtook it.
“Estimated time of arrival, Cortez…” Hank said, and Serrano could see the man’s eyes sweep the tactical map around them, as he was probably searching for Union patrol ships heading their way. Luckily, there were none, and it only took a few moments for Cortez’s code to breach the second wall as well. “And now for the…”
“Attention, pleasure-craft designation: Lordstar.” A smooth male voice erupted from their speakers.
“Black Holes!” Hank jumped, and the Professor heard Lory hiss.
“This is the Union Intelligence known as X3. I have scanned your ship and I can see from your manifest that you are operated by a certain captain named Mansoor...”
Serrano shared a worried look with the others. This ship once belonged to the egomaniacal, psychopathic Mansoor–before Hank had stolen it.
“I wish to speak to him immediately regarding a security breach emanating from his vessel—”
“X3, this is Union General, uh, Billinsgate…” Beside him, Serrano heard Cortez suddenly say in a high, somewhat nervous voice. The cook-coder was hurriedly typing commands into the data screen in front of him.
“I do not have a General Billinsgate on my official register of authorized persons. Please state your clearance code, sir…”
“My clearance code? How dare you!” Cortez cleared his throat as he worked, whispering “Come on, come on…!”
“I am a high-ranking Union General, I’ll have you know–and you are nothing but a service intelligence! I demand that you stand down all defensive procedures, immediately.” Cortez was sweating now, not a very pretty sight.
“I am afraid, sir, that I will need your clearance code before I am permitted to…SCHZT!” The line suddenly clicked off and was replaced by the hum of static.
“What did you do?” Serrano looked up at the man, who appeared just as puzzled as he was.
“I did it! I damn well did it!” Cortez was clapping his hands.
“Er… what did you do, Cortez?” Hank was saying.
“Look!” Cortez stepped away from the screen, and Serrano saw that all three of the A.I. X3’s firewalls had gone down, and the green lines had now reached the far side of the screen. It looked to the Professor a little like one of those strange sports diagrams that he never could fully understand. “My worms managed to re-program the A.I.’s internal register, giving us complete access to the facility!” Cortez looked giddy at the success, as if he had never thought that even he would be able to do it.
A cook should never talk about his worms, Serrano considered.
“Then what are we waiting for?” the Captain as saying. “I want the Lordstar landing on that moon, asap!”
Blip! The screen behind Cortez suddenly flashed again, and Serrano and the others could all hear Cortez’s loud “Ah. Oh no.”
The first firewall line was starting to flash and turn from the friendly green to a warning orange. “Uhm, everyone? It sort of looks like maybe the X3 A.I. had an internal reboot option…” Cortez mumbled. “The doors and defense protocols will take a while to get back on line, but we have about, uh, fifteen minutes before the facility is in total secure lock-down mode again…”
Serrano saw Hank’s face visibly flush with stress before he turned to look at him, “Quick. What’s our point of entry, Prof?”
“Well, ah…” Serrano ‘threw’ up an enhanced map of the surface onto the main viewing screen, where he showed the Captain the main bunker entrance. “This is the front door, so to speak, but behind that…”
The Professor related everything that he knew; he remembered the double-metal doors and the large service elevator on the other side of them that shot down some hundred meters or so to the super-cold core of the planetoid, and from there to the research facility. “But the Message Center itself is an even more secure suite of rooms…”
The Message Center was, after all, the most highly-prized secret of the entire Union. When Serrano had worked here, he remembered that his final approach was down a long metal corridor under the watchful eye of cameras and automated gun emplacements, and even through three blast doors, staffed with Union guards. When he passed through each one he would be searched, prodded, his credentials checked and scanned for any electronic, radio- or chemical- compounds that might endanger the research…
“How long will it take us to get down to that passage?” Hank said.
Serrano gulped. He had never timed it, but he was sure that it must have been over ten minutes, right?
“Looks like we’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way…” Hank undid his X-harness as he stood up, and started fixing on his soldier suit.
“Maybe not,” Lory surprised Serrano and the rest of them, “there’s the emergency evacuation chute,” she said.
The what? No one had ever told Serrano about that when he worked there!
“It heads poleward from the research facility generator rooms, and links up to the Message Center. It was how I was going to infiltrate it…” Lory said–and Serrano thought that the woman sounded just a tiny bit sheepish about having to share her infiltration secrets.
“Suit up,” Serrano heard Hank say, and his heart fell when he heard the next line, “and that means you too, Professor. You and Lory know the place, I want you inside.”
Oh, wonderful, Professor Alan Serrano thought rather dryly.
5
Gee, the Professor wasn’t joking, was he? Hank Snider thought as he surveyed the large blast doors of the X3 research facility. They jutted out from a giant mound of ice and rock, made of dark-grey metal. Hank thought that they looked like the gates to hell.
“Suit check,” Hank called out, and there was a scroll of dim blue light over his face from his own Heads-Up-Display inside his helmet.
Soldier Suit: ACTIVE
Designation: ALPHA-LEAD Cpt. Snider
Team: Cox, Serrano, Madigan, Steed, Cortez.
Environmental Protection: ON. SCANS ACTIVE.
Alpha-Channel Comms: ON. CONNECTED.
“Excellent,” Hank murmured into the constricted space of the large, bulky exo-suit that he wore. All the other members of his team wore variants of the same sort of suit, but, he was the only one who had the real deal. It was almost like his old set of metal and leathers back when he worked for the Union, but a few generations out of date.
It doesn’t have micro-rocketry, for example, Hank thought dismally. Or an internal flak system. And–much to his annoyance–it wasn’t pre-loaded with battle-stims as the Union suits would be.
“Hey sailor—” said a sultry woman’s voice in his ear. It was Ida, Hank’s personal A.I. “How you doing?”
Ah, Ida-baby, Hank thought with a small sigh. She was one of the few perks of being an ex-special forces captain. He had spent years upgrading her and giving her the perfect personality to work with for a rogue like him, and had even managed to smuggle her data-self out of there when he was fired.
“
I’m doing just peachy, Ida. I’m going to need you on my shoulder for this…” Hank said as he walked forward to the still-open blast doors. It was dark inside. As dark as the grave.
“Of course, boss,” Ida said with a cat-like purr. “That’s why I auto-loaded after all. And in answer to your previous question–you used up all your suit stimms a month ago.”
She knows me so well… Hank thought a little ruefully. Perhaps too well, as Ida had been the cause of several break-ups with biological women over Hank’s short life already.
“Well, I guess that means I need you all the more then, doesn’t it, doll?” Hank whispered. It felt good, comforting, to have someone right beside his ear who always and without fail had his back.
