by G. P. Eliot
He can control most of the engine functions from up here anyway, Serrano thought to himself. And as there had been no word from the Captain or any of the rest of the crew, then the Professor rather thought that he would need another set of hands up here, helping him manage all of the command consoles.
“One-hour-twenty,” Serrano blanched. He had never been tortured before, but he had seen the state of the Captain when they had recovered him. Ideally, that man shouldn’t even be running around down there–as the gene-therapies, as well as the bone- and flesh-restructuring stimulants that they had given him still had to take time to work, Serrano knew.
And that had been before we had outwitted the Jackal, the Professor considered. Just what new hells would he be waiting to visit upon Lory, as soon as all the sedatives and suppressants that they had given her wore off?
It made him shudder. But it also made him more determined to work harder.
“Communications console; run the sub-surface scan again,” Serrano pointed for the Cook-Engineer to hurry into position. Serrano had been trying to run between each available console and had given up when he realized just how advanced the Dalida was. Instead, he had divided the Bridge into Left and Right, with himself taking over all of the left-hand side consoles, and Cortez managing the right.
“We already did that,” Cortez said doubtfully. “I thought you said that the planet was running a jamming signal against us?”
“It was. But maybe it isn’t now!” Serrano said. He felt useless up here. What had the Captain told him? To always pay attention to the warning lights. To not get so lost inside his own head that he forgets the welfare of the crew. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
“Okay…” Cortez sounded doubtful, but his hands still moved through the holo controls and the comms console flickered with readings. Serrano held his breath for a moment. Maybe, just maybe…
“No joy. It comes out exactly the same reading as before,” Cortez sighed. “Either a read-out of a dead tectonic rocky planet, or a confusing picture of vegetation and electronic static,” he said.
“Just like last time,” Serrano agreed. And the three times before that. But it was better to be sure, right?
Their shuttle must have disintegrated in the acid lake by now, Serrano sweated. Had they even made it into the tunnels below?
What if they hadn’t?
What if all that he and Cortez were doing were waiting around for a pile of disintegrating skeletons to suddenly resurrect from the dead?
“No. Don’t think like that!” Serrano told himself and saw Cortez’s worried glance from across the Dalida’s Bridge as the man must have guessed what the Professor was thinking.
Think! Serrano berated himself. He was in one of the top six percentiles of functional intelligence in the entire Union–or so his own supervisors and testers had always claimed. Surely, he could come up with some way of helping the crew down there!
“The planet is running some sort of highly-evolved jamming technology,” Serrano posited.
“We know that…” Cortez pointed out unhelpfully. The Professor ignored him.
“Which means that our sensors cannot get an adequate, or worthwhile reading of what is happening, correct?” Serrano said. He didn’t wait for Cortez’s answer, either. “But even a jamming signal takes energy to produce, yes?” He drummed his long fingers on the surface of the flight console.
But then, the strange matrix of Serrano’s own neurons fired, and they made the lateral leap that he had been waiting for. “Instead of a directed or pinpoint scan of the surface, run a continuous monitoring of the telemetries above the surface!” Serrano said.
“But there doesn’t appear to be any transmitting equipment—” Cortez started to say.
“But there is the powerful power source that Hank’s personal A.I. found, didn’t she?” the Professor pointed out. “We know that has to produce electromagnetic radiation, even trace amounts. What I want you to do is to run a scan for changes to the background electromagnetic radiation–not a targeted scan at all!”
“So we will be able to infer if there are changes in certain locations!” Cortez’s engineering mind caught up with what the Professor was trying to say. “Of course. Like searching for black holes,” he said.
“Precisely,” Serrano laughed, but only because that was the very example that every science graduate was taught at the most junior level. Together, both men parroted the mantra of ‘discovery by falsification’ as it was called.
“If there is an object which your senses cannot detect, look instead for the effects that object has on its local environment!” they both called out at the same time, as Cortez immediately got to work.
“Calculating…” the Dalida’s computer said in its demure and relaxed tones. Serrano’s fingers only drummed out the faster as they waited.
“Calculation complete. Ongoing scan continuing…” the computer said, as Cortez threw the results up to the main overhead screen.
There was a topographical map of the planet, with areas of brighter and darker energy outputs in orange, red, or purple. It clearly showed some sort of structure that honeycombed the entire planet.
“Dear god. That’s huge,” Serrano said.
“Wait, I’m picking up something else…” Cortez magnified one particular area of the image, where a particular octagonal orange shape connected to another line of orange was flickering bright and dark. “Why is it flickering like that?” Cortez said.
“The power going off and on?” Serrano suggested. But then he realized. “It could be a sign from the Captain. That is where they are, that they need help…”
“Or,” Cortez’s hands were moving fast over the communications console, “it could be a message. I’m analyzing the flickering now…”
“Processing data. Comparing for repetitive patterns…” the Dalida’s computer stated.
And then it said something that neither the Professor nor the Engineer were expecting.
“Translated light patterns. It is an encoded message, targeted at the Dalida, issuer identification: IDA. Open message?” the ship’s computer said.
“Yes!” both men chorused at once.
“Serrano, Cortez; I need immediate access to the Dalida’s full processing capacity. The entire planet is a Union facility designed to provision and prepare the generation ship you are currently on, for its intended journey by the Elites,” Ida’s voice said over the main intercom.
“But the facility is run by a Union intelligence known as X-Apollon. It is too powerful. Even now it is currently attempting to digest my strategic data information. If my operating intelligence can be enhanced to a factor of x523.48, I believe that I will be strong enough to defeat it. My full command codes are hereby following this message…”
Serrano looked at Cortez with wide eyes and nodded seriously. In the same moment, both of their heads bowed as their hands started to blur over the holo controls of their consoles, deactivating all possible secondary and tertiary systems on the ship, and diverting the power to the Dalida’s main computers…
34
“Get back!” Hank shouted as the Skirmisher Drones launched themselves towards them.
No sooner had the Captain been the last man to drop from the open grill in the walls that two Skirmisher Drones emerged into the room. The only consolation was that the Apollon’s third Server Bank wasn’t large enough to have more than a few of the killer drones in at once.
Server Bank 3 was actually a large room, made small by the heavy complement of computational machinery packed into the walls and standing tall in secure frames. Hank saw stacks upon stacks of the oblong bricks of metal, whose lights flickered along their end as the Apollon must be processing the general facility maintenance as well as the Skirmisher Drone command functions, and even its own battle with Ida, Hank knew.
And from the all-round flickering display of lights everywhere, Hank could only guess that Ida was keeping it busy indeed.
But n
ot busy enough to stop these two, Hank held out one hand to keep Madigan and Steed back.
“I’ve seen them before. They eviscerate anything in their path!” Hank was shouting over the rising sound of the whine.
The skirmisher drones were tall and pencil thin, with white carapaces over their joints and body parts. Their ‘heads’ were little more than a cylinder of white metal, with sensing nodes affixed at every point of the compass. They stalked forward on two long servo-assisted legs, but it was their torsos that the Captain was most concerned with.
They were spinning, with four short arms whose hands were the gleam of silvered metal. The blades of the two ‘upper’ arms were straight, a good few inches longer, whereas the two ‘lower’ arms were shorter and closer to the body, and whose blades were shaped like cycles.
It was so you couldn’t duck the top set, Hank knew from experience. Even if you managed to avoid the buzz-saw of death that were the longer arms, then the smaller slicing sickles would soon gut you…
“Can-opener!” Madigan roared behind Hank, leaning from over his shoulder and firing his Piton-Launcher straight at the thing.
There was a sudden spark and a ping as the piton burst from the air against the first Skirmisher’s blades, to be sent ricocheting against the ceiling.
“You see?” Hank said, shoving the large man back down the alleyway between the server-shelves.
Which the Skirmisher Drone couldn’t fit down.
“Aha!” Hank heard Steed laugh a little hysterically from the back of their group.
“I wouldn’t be so confident yet—” Hank was starting to say, just as the Skirmisher Drone slowed its spinning torso to a dead stop, and then started to walk down the aisle with its four blades held out in front of it.
“Oh…” Steed’s next exclamation didn’t sound very happy or glorious at all, as he realized that now the first Skirmisher was using its two longer arms to stab outwards with its longer reach, and its two smaller arms to slash across the air. Just as dangerous as before, only now it could actually get to them.
And the first human in the line was Hank.
“Dammit!” the Captain fired his piton Launcher at the thing anyway–despite having recently told Madigan how useless the paltry weapon would be.
There was another ping as the quick-silver Drone batted the projectile out of the air.
“Back!” Steed was saying, and Hank felt the pressure of Madigan behind him suddenly give way as both men started to rush back down the aisle in front of the advancing creature.
“This way!” Steed shouted, who must clearly have been choosing the directions to take between one stack of servers and another, but Hank had no idea. He kept his eyes on the machine in front of him, wishing that he had some better weapon–or that his encounter suit wasn’t totally crushed and ragged beyond all repair.
Shielding, Hank suddenly thought as the thing was clanking down the aisles towards him. All around him were large plates of metal, right?
Moving quickly, he seized the nearest one and pulled. It was heavy, but it shifted from the shelf that contained it, before getting stuck on the connective wires that daisy-chained from one to the next.
The Skirmisher Drone was almost upon him, it was pulling back its first longer arm blade.
“Come on!” Hank yanked at the massive brick of metal, which came away from the wires with a spray of sparks and a fizz of dying electronics—
Just in time for the blades of the Skirmisher Drone to scrape along its galvanized, blue-steel outer casing where Hank’s head and heart would be.
“Dammit!” Hank moved and waivered the server in front of him, it was large enough so that it almost stretched the length of the aisle. He was pushed back by the force of the thing’s blows against the server’s outer shell.
“Captain!” Hank heard Madigan roar behind him, but he had no time to turn and look. He was too busy trying to fend off the thing’s attacks.
And then, Hank’s server broke apart in his hands as a long silver blade skewered it right through the middle, throwing the crystal bits of microprocessors and green circuit board all over him.
Oh crap. Hank looked directly up into the sensors of the Skirmisher Drone, as it bore down on him.
35
“Main ship servers diverted,” Serrano heard Cortez say, and saw the colored holograph on the screens overhead jump to an alarming orange.
That’s it, Serrano thought. All of the main reserves of power that the Dalida had were now been rerouted through to the small segment of command codes that Hank’s personal A.I. had given them.
“Monitor processing output,” Serrano announced, as his hands moved through the projected holo controls. The overhead lights of the Dalida’s Bridge flickered, and the Professor hoped that it wasn’t a sign of a glitch in his programming.
“Processor at 67% capacity… 82% capacity…” the ship’s automated voice announced.
“She’s hungry!” Cortez called out, meaning how much of the ship’s available computer power Ida was using up. This was bad news, Serrano knew. It meant that this A.I. Apollon that Ida was fighting was powerful. Extremely powerful.
“And no surprise,” Serrano saw as he looked down at the size of the planet below, overlaid with the radiation chart of the facility that wormed its way through the entire core. If the Apollon had all of that space to play with, and all of that energy to utilize, then it literally had a brain the size of a planet.
“93% capacity…” the Dalida’s automated voice called out. This time the lights glitched again, and the graphs on the overhead screens flickered with lines of static.
“97% capacity…”
“If we let her use 100% then the Dalida’s systems will crash!” Cortez announced. “I need processing power for the engines, the gravity generators, life-support, rocketry control—”
“Unsatisfactory!” Serrano swore–as best as the mild-mannered man was able to, anyway. He had to come up with a solution, and fast.
Ida is using the main computer servers. But there are still the auxiliary servers, the Professor knew.
“Diverting life-support, engine control and essential systems to auxiliary,” Serrano said, his hands moving swiftly to re-task all of those functions to the much-smaller capacitors in the auxiliary systems.
The Dalida gave a sudden lurch, and half of the Bridge lights went out as the Dalida went into emergency mode. There wasn’t enough power in the auxiliary servers to run the entire ship–but it brought them a little space in the main processors;
“Processor at 71% capacity…” the ship said as the usage graph jumped downward, and then started climbing all over again, as Ida had to use it all in her battle with the Apollon, far below them.
Which meant that Serrano had to make some choices.
“Disabling astro-navigation,” Serrano said.
“What? We’ll be flying blind!” Cortez said.
“Well, we’re not flying anywhere at the moment,” Serrano pointed out urgently. “And just so long as we keep the planet below us and not in front of us, we’ll be fine,” he said, and killed the memory-eating chunk of programs that worked to constantly coordinate their position in the skies.
“Processor at 69% capacity…”
“We need to keep the long-range sensors, and the targeting computers in case the crew need our help,” Serrano announced, going through the list of the available programs that he could stop, halt, or disable.
But with only two living biologicals on the entire generation, Serrano thought–did they really need full life-support systems?
“Limiting life support and climate controls to Bridge only,” he said, his finger hesitating for a moment before he punched the controls. It would mean that everywhere else in the Dalida would quickly become either too cold to support life, or too hot if the rooms were directly abutting the outer bulkheads. They would need full encounter suits to walk through their own ship–if they wanted to continue breathing oxygen, that is.
But Professor Serrano’s hands punched the holo controls anyway.
“Processor at 58% capacity…” the ship’s automated voice said. Serrano wondered if it sounded weaker, somehow a little more slurred than before.
“We’ve bought them some time, and Ida will be stronger,” Serrano said. “After this, the only thing left that we can is to start taking energy from the shields,” he said. Cortez threw him a worried look, but he nodded all the same. Both men were thinking the exact same thing, and both of their eyes said it: If that is what it would take to keep the rest of the crew alive, then they would do it.
In front of them, the ship’s power graph kept on climbing.
