“You did forget!” Iris said. “Well, you need to place that thing somewhere in the core. It doesn’t matter where. A wall, a door, it doesn’t matter. You can just throw it on the floor if that’s your only option. And then find that switch and get us one step closer to getting off of this hunk of junk and not having to implement Plan F.”
“Got it.” To Beryl’s right, a plain wall looked like a great spot for the explosives—not that it mattered where she put them; if Iris set them off, it wouldn’t matter if she had thrown them in a toilet. This whole place would be going up in an explosion that would make the door look like a sparkler. Beryl swung her backpack around from her back, unzipped it, and pulled out what looked like some sort of giant battery pack from a hundred years ago. It was heavy—heavier than anything she had ever held of its size.
Beryl placed the battery-like pack on the wall, and somehow, it stuck. She wasn’t sure how, and she didn’t have time to think about it, either.
Right at that moment, Beryl had a switch to find so she would never have to think about that explosive and Plan F ever again.
Plan F in place, Beryl continued walking around the circular room, using her phone’s flashlight to inspect any surface that looked even remotely like it might have a switch on it. She moved as quickly as she could. Every sound she heard was amplified in the echoing room, each step noticeable in the silence of the dead ship.
Beryl thought she might be imagining things, but in addition to the ever-increasing cold, she felt like she might be having trouble breathing. Beryl hoped it was a function of her brain tricking her into thinking that, rather than the reality of the situation.
Not that it mattered. Beryl knew they would freeze to death long before they all took in too much CO2.
Not that either method of death sounded like a good way to go to Beryl. Perhaps she should hope they would have to resort to Plan F. At least that death would be quick and, in theory, painless.
Continuing around the circular room, nothing Beryl saw looked like a switch. Nothing even remotely resembled a switch.
Beryl ran her hand over the smooth surface of the servers, looking for something—anything—that might be what they were looking for.
Damn it, she thought, we can’t die here because we can’t find the on/off switch.
And then, Beryl’s hand found something. Something soft and human-like.
Not a switch.
Beryl screamed.
Chapter Thirty
“Jesus Christ, Beryl,” Vlad said. “It’s me.”
Vlad heard Beryl’s breath coming hard and fast, like she had climbed a dozen flights of stairs. He must have startled her, though in the quiet, he wondered how she hadn’t heard him.
“Did you see anything even remotely resembling a switch?” Vlad asked her. She shook her head no.
Over their phones, Iris jumped in. She must have been monitoring them and their progress. “Did you check the inner servers?”
Vlad looked at the dim outline of the servers in the middle of the room. To him, it didn’t seem like there was any way to get inside them. He was also getting a little frustrated that Iris didn’t seem to have any better idea of where these switches could be than they did.
“What inner servers? There’s no way in there.”
“There has to be,” Iris said. “Maybe not at eye level. Check above your heads. This Earth AI doesn’t trust anyone, but they have to be able to physically access the switch somehow, in case something like this happened.”
For a moment, Vlad wondered if the Earth AI could use a drone or something similar to do the job, but he kept his mouth shut. He knew, and he knew Beryl knew, that they were down to minutes left before the cold started to overtake them. Discussing the ability of a drone to do this job was not going to be helpful or productive.
“Split up again?” Beryl asked Vlad, who nodded his assent. Beryl headed back the way she had come, and Vlad went backward, retracing his previous steps with his phone held so its light shone above his head, looking for anything that resembled an opening.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Vlad was far enough around the room that debris from the door they had blown up had started appearing beneath his feet, crunching as he stepped on it.
And then, above his head, something.
Or, rather, nothing.
A hole. An opening in the servers.
“Beryl!” He yelled. “I found it!”
*
Beryl ran toward Vlad’s voice, nearly tripping over the debris in the room as she did.
They had really done a number on that door. It was a good thing she hadn’t remembered the explosive she had been carrying then.
The running briefly warmed her up in the growing cold, but she knew it was only temporary. As soon as she stopped moving, she would feel the cold again.
Beryl looked up when she got to where Vlad was standing, and she could see the opening. It was small—something like a large duct, but it was definitely large enough for a person to crawl through, so long as the person was not large. It was also well above Vlad’s head.
Beryl could see they had two immediate problems. First, the opening was too small for Vlad to get through. Or, at least, it was small enough that Beryl wasn’t sure he could get through. Second, there was no way for anyone to get up to the hole without a ladder or some outside help.
Beryl knew what they had to do—Vlad was going to have to lift her up.
“Do you think you can reach it?” Vlad asked, having seen the same problems Beryl had.
“Do I have an option?” Beryl said. Vlad crouched down without them having to discuss the matter any further. She climbed onto his shoulders, using the wall of the servers to help her balance as Vlad lifted her up.
They must have looked like the worst two cheerleaders in the known universe.
And they probably looked even worse when Beryl realized the opening was still over her head and out of her reach.
“I’m going to have to jump for it,” Beryl said to Vlad, more for her own benefit, to reassure herself that this was the right move for the situation.
“Well, you had better make it because if you miss it, I don’t think I can catch you when you come back down.”
“Great. Because you know what I need right now? Yet another thing to worry about.”
“How about you go on three? That at least gives me some warning you’re going.”
“OK.” Beryl took a deep breath. And another. “One.”
“Two.”
“Three,” Beryl said, taking the smallest leap she thought would still get her to the opening. Her fingers grasped the side of the hole, and she realized that no matter how bad of shape she had thought she was in before, now she truly realized how much she needed to start exercising on a more regular basis.
Beryl began pulling herself up, using her feet on the server’s face to try to get higher.
“Just a little more,” Vlad said from below her.
“Jesus, Vlad, do you think I don’t know that?” Beryl said. “You suck at this whole pep talk thing.”
“How about, you had better pull yourself up there because otherwise, the last thing I’m going to see in this lifetime is your butt.”
“You would probably like that,” Beryl said, using her last bit of extra strength to get her elbows up on to the ledge and the opening. With that done, pulling the rest of herself up was much easier.
After all, she couldn’t let the last thing Vlad ever saw in life be her butt. Particularly now, when she hadn’t been exercising. It could probably look a lot better with a little effort.
In the small, duct-like hole, the light from Beryl’s phone was more effective in lighting up the limited space. Beryl inched her way through the tunnel, looking for its end.
“Have you found anything yet?” Beryl heard Vlad’s voice from behind her.
“No,” Beryl replied, “And if you keep pestering me, I’m not going to find anything before we fre
eze to death on this shithole of a ship.”
Distracted, Beryl almost missed the end of the tunnel. She caught herself before she fell, but only barely. The end of the tunnel ended abruptly with a drop of a similar height to the one she had to climb up on the other side—the one she could only make with Vlad’s help.
“Shit!” Beryl said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Beryl replied to Vlad’s question. There was a lot wrong, but it wasn’t as if Vlad could be of any help to her. At this point, no one could. Not even Iris.
Beryl shined her phone’s light at the drop ahead of her.
There was no way she was going to drop the distance from the tunnel to the ground, head first. Beryl began to turn herself around. There wasn’t enough room to do so in the tunnel itself, so Beryl had to stick random body parts out of the end of the tunnel as she did so. It was not a quiet or graceful process.
“What the hell are you doing?” Vlad yelled at her. Apparently, he could hear her banging around the tunnel to get herself turned around.
“I’m trying to lie down to take a nap and getting comfortable,” Beryl yelled back. “I could really use one. It’s been a stressful couple of days.”
“So long as you find that switch first, you can stop and take as long a nap as you want.”
Beryl would have flipped Vlad off if she could have. Unfortunately, her hands were crushed between her body and the top of the tunnel as she tried to get the last of her body turned around.
Finally, with a squeak of her body armor against the tunnel, Beryl got herself turned around. She put her legs through the opening and dropped down, so her legs dangled as her hands held herself to the tunnel.
Beryl counted to three, held in her breath, and let herself go.
For what seemed like the longest second in the world, Beryl fell to the ground. With an oomph, she hit the ground and fell on to her rear, cushioning herself from the fall.
Beryl sat on the ground where she had fallen, making sure she wasn’t injured. Other than some bruises, nothing seemed injured. Using her phone, she illuminated the area into which she had fallen.
She was in a small room—or what looked like a small room—with a ladder lying on the ground near where she now sat. Beryl realized this was a good thing. When she had dropped into the room, she hadn’t really thought about how she would get out. Apparently, Beryl was not the first person who had been here and needed a boost to get out.
Most importantly, the light from her phone illuminated something on the opposite wall. Something unmistakable.
Switches.
Beryl stepped across the room and looked at the array of switches. There were three large ones on top, with about ten smaller ones below.
“Iris, I was under the distinct impression there would only be one switch here,” Beryl ran her fingers over the switches lightly, “could you tell me why I am looking at thirteen of them?”
“Yes, but you probably don’t want to hear about what they all might or might not do.”
“You’re correct on that front. Which one do I pull?”
“Are there three large ones?”
“Yes,” Beryl said, reassured that Iris apparently had some idea of what she would find there in the room, despite her failures to tell them earlier.
“Throw the one on the right.”
Beryl grabbed the switch and moved it upward, fully expecting to hear the servers around her immediately fire up.
Instead, nothing happened.
“I switched it.”
“Shit,” Iris said. Beryl shivered and breathed out, her breath hanging in the air with a cloud of vapor. Beryl watched the white wisp float into the air. She had read about seeing breath, but she had never experienced the phenomenon. Even in the dim light of the phone, Beryl thought it was beautiful.
Not so beautiful, though, that she wanted it to be the last thing she ever saw.
“You swearing is not reassuring.”
“Try the one on the left.”
Beryl threw the switch on the left.
Nothing.
Again.
“Third time’s the charm?” Iris commented, clearly guessing at what to do.
Beryl closed her eyes as she put her right hand on the switch. With her left, she touched the part of her armor under which her emerald sat, a slight bulge beneath the thin plates.
Beryl pushed the final switch upward.
Nothing.
Beryl wanted to cry.
They were all going to die.
And then, an electric hum.
It came from somewhere in the servers around Beryl. Little by little, more humming began, until the entire room around her was buzzing with the sound of computing power beyond her imagination firing up. Then, the dim lights overhead turned on, illuminating the tall room and the giant structures around her.
Beryl wanted to cheer, but she remembered there was one other thing.
If Iris couldn’t take over the AI as it rebooted, they were all in the same position as they had been before all of this started.
They might still need to resort to Plan F.
“Iris,” Beryl pled, “please tell me you’ve taken over the AI.”
In response, Iris’s voice boomed over what must have been the ship’s PA system, her familiar voice echoing around the chamber.
“Welcome to the newest ship in the Columbinian fleet.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Vlad accepted yet another enthusiastic hug from a member of one of the other teams on the Earthlings’ ship. He had never given or received so many hugs and high fives in such a short period of time as he had since he and Beryl had rejoined the rest of the Columbinians on the docking platform of the ship.
“What’s the final total for Team 2?” A voice shouted above the din of the group, asking Iris for the final numbers on the drones his team had shot down.
“Seventy-two,” Iris replied.
“And Team 3?” Vlad recognized the second voice as his sister, Alexis, even though he couldn’t see her in the crowd.
“Seventy-six.”
A cheer went up from the group representing Team 3, while those on Team 2 booed and started shouting excuses as to why their number was lower. Vlad was sure more than a few dollars changed hands as part of the final tally, although no one was bragging about that yet. Team 2, however, was already suggesting what sort of drinks should be bought for them when they got back to Columbina.
Iris didn’t give them long to celebrate, though.
“Everyone, we have one last thing to do up here.”
Vlad groaned inwardly, though a few people around him weren’t so circumspect as to keep the groans to themselves, probably thinking of their free drinks back on Columbina and not wanting the possibility of more trouble on the ship
Because they all knew that the task which was left was one that could be big trouble.
The upbeat mood among the group turned somber so quickly, it seemed to Vlad that he could almost feel the energy being sucked from the group.
After all, they weren’t solely conquering heroes, returning to Columbina for rounds of drinks and with no more fear of the enemy AI in the sky.
“Now that I have full access to this ship, I can tell you there are 102 humans on board.”
Several people in the gathered group gasped. One hundred people? None of the Columbinians needed to be told what this meant. It was unlikely a hundred people could sustain a healthy population on their own, especially if there were a large number of elderly or very young among them. The few hundred humans they had on every planet was a bare minimum in their minds. It was unlikely they were about to find a healthy population of people.
If anything went wrong, a hundred people could be wiped out in a matter of minutes or days or weeks. A small accident. A disease outbreak they couldn’t get under control fast enough. A shortage of food.
It also meant there was a good chance they were desperate. The sort of people who could do
something unexpected and rash.
“Where are they?” someone asked.
“They are being kept in the lower three levels of the ship.” A groan rose from more than a few people. If the lower levels of this ship were like Hodios—especially Hodios as originally constructed—those three levels were mostly small apartments, a mess of rooms and living spaces. On Hodios, they had been changed and customized dozens of times as people bought larger spaces and sold off or bartered unneeded space to those willing to pay for a larger living space. Either way, those levels were going to be a mess of rooms. If the Earthlings proved to be at all hostile, clearing out that part of the ship could be a disaster.
Vlad did the easy math. With only 102 people, it was not even an average of 35 per floor. Hodios had far more people than that on those floors, with others spread throughout the ship in various areas they had converted to living spaces from their originally-intended uses.
“On the plus side, we seem to have taken out the vast majority of the lone wolf drones, if the numbers I see here are correct. They were definitely concentrated in the areas the Earth AI thought anyone storming the ship would go.”
A few people made noises indicating their happiness at the situation, though as ineffective as the drones had turned out to be, it wasn’t much of an upside to their situation.
“I need some volunteers to go with me to the human quarters.” As soon as Iris spoke, almost every hand in the docking bay went up, though several people had apparently had enough of the fight and were conspicuously not volunteering. Ten names rolled out of Iris’s mouth, Vlad and Beryl among them. The only other one of his siblings included was Heming, and Vlad could hear him taunting those who hadn’t been chosen.
“Let’s get this over with,” Iris said. Vlad suspected, having full access to the Earthlings’ ship, Iris now knew more than she was telling them about what they would find. “Everyone suit up.”
The group replaced their helmets that had come off during their celebrations. Vlad wasn’t happy about doing so, but he could hear Beryl swearing about it as she put hers on and they moved back out of the docking bay.
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