by D. R. Rosier
Rilok reported, “Sir, subspace sensors have picked up a ship leaving the Sol system.”
Vik frowned, “Leaving?”
Rilok nodded, “Yes sir, they must have already been there when we arrived at this star system late last night.”
Vik cursed, “Damnit, we’ll have to leave the shuttle behind, we can come back for it next time we’re out this way. They’ll be off our sensors in fifteen minutes.”
That… was really convenient, if a pain in the ass. We’d expected to wait days, if not weeks, before they went back to round up another batch of humans.
Vik said, “Alright, plot a course to follow them, and turn on the stealth systems. Let’s hope they don’t go too far.”
Rilok said, “Yes captain.”
Vik ordered, “As soon as the course is plotted and were stealth, engage.”
Telidur acknowledged the order, and a few seconds later said, “Engaging sir.”
Vik said, “As soon as you have the ship’s course, see if you can figure out where they’re going.”
It was a few minutes later when Rilok finally answered.
“Looks like a star just over ten light years from Earth, so it’s close sir. From our angle, it’s about eleven light years, we’ll be there in less than three hours.”
Vik grunted, “At least that’s good news.”
I assumed he meant the stealth systems. They were ridiculously expensive to use.
None of us had any speculation on what we might find, for all we knew they just picked up enough humans for their own crew. It was more than possible, but the fact they were going to an unexplored and unknown system on the edge of Isyth Empire space was rather telling in my opinion, but I kept that to myself, it was just speculation.
The novelty wore off, and I restarted my simulation. There was a good chance I’d be able to finish it before we got there, and it would distract me…
Telidur said, “Ten seconds until normal space captain.”
Vik grunted, “Keep the stealth on until we get a good look at things.”
Rilok said, “Understood sir.”
I felt nervous, and a huge foreboding. Hopefully it was just my imagination, but I doubted it.
We exited subspace, and we found ourselves on the edge of the solar system.
Rilok said, “System coming up, I’ll put it on a hologram.”
A hologram came up, and showed the Stolavii ship heading in system about an hour ahead of us. There were also thousands of ships, that were flagged as destroyer class unknown, meaning it didn’t match any of the known ship types of the known races. The sensors flagged two thousand three hundred and sixty-two of them. There was also five Stolavii cruisers, and one Isyth battleship. A battle ship was the largest ship in the Isyth fleet, and equaled the tonnage and destructive power of four cruisers, or twenty-four destroyers.
Vik shook his head, and Rilok gave me a thoughtful look, which was a bit startling.
“Jillintara, please log this, and inform… everyone. We’ll hold here under stealth and keep an eye on them until the fleet can get here. Any ideas at what we’re looking at?”
Telidur said, “An invasion fleet. Crewed by humans?”
I speculated, “Could they be brainwashed or controlled in some way? My guess is the Stolavii are just the hired help. Whoever is in that Isyth battleship is running the show. This isn’t an invasion force, it’s a revolutionary force.”
Rilok grunted, “She’s right. It’s immoral as hell, but is also brilliant, they used the Stolavii to set it up, but they don’t have to worry about the bastards turning on them. Whoever is in charge over there is using brainwashed humans, and probably A.I.s to keep them leashed.”
Rilok added, “Sir, that battleship was reported destroyed over a year ago.”
Vik said, “A revolution? Why?”
A hologram appeared on the bridge, the man looked a lot like Vik, but even his hologram gave off an oily feeling. Maybe my sixth sense does work long distance.
“Because, our parents are fools. I did try to avoid this, and used that silly bitch of an aunt to send you on a wild goose chase to find me, but I guess I was less important than your mission. I knew of course, as soon as you posted your plans on the data net, that you’d run into my cruiser and follow it here.”
He smiled, and Vik was speechless.
Denik continued, like some evil villain caught up in their own brilliance and giving a monologue, I tried not to giggle.
“We’re weak, and barely even rule now. Food is free, and we have to act as damned merchants to pay for things. We should be focused on building ships, and keeping the Stolavii bottled up. That costs money, and we should be taxing, and making money hand over fist. I wasn’t quite ready to move yet brother, but I think I have enough ships to pull it off, don’t you?”
Vik said, “You’re insane.”
Denik laughed, “No, I’m just tired of the three independent races constantly being a thorn in our side, and our family’s desire to allow things to simply limp along without a resolution, because taxes would be too burdensome to our subjects. That’s ridiculous, and I’m going to change it. I’m really sorry about this brother, I did try to avoid it. I’ve been paying close attention to all your mission logs, to avoid this very thing.”
Vik frowned, “Avoid what?”
Denik turned to look at Jillintara, “Override red alpha two omega three, disable, contain, and roll out the red carpet.”
The blood drained from Jillintara’s face, and the bridge consoles all went dark and unresponsive. She had tears in her eyes, and I felt anger rise in my chest, but I held my tongue. Talk was cheap, I’d kill the fucker as soon as I could though.
I bet she didn’t feel unfettered now, and wondered if that was the first time a command override was used on her. I recognized the look of feeling violated on her face, and I wanted to go over there and comfort her. Not slaves my ass, why were there even overrides in the first place?
Denik turned back to Vik, “My people will drop by to kill you, and take over the ship, in just a little while. Try to be patient. Goodbye brother.”
The hologram winked out.
Vik said, “He’s insane.”
Rilok frowned, “He’s also higher on the food chain than you sir, tenth in line. We can’t override his override, and we’re locked out of the ship’s systems. Neither the consoles or our interfaces work, and we’re locked on the bridge and defenseless when the enemy gets here. I’d estimate it will take three hours before that ship can turn around and board us.”
“What about our hand weapons?”
Rilok frowned, “Check it.”
I did with a thought, and it was offline. Fuck, the base station for it was installed on the ship in engineering, Jillintara must have turned them off.
“Okay, so we have a small challenge,” I admitted.
We still had data net access, and now Jillintara was crying, I really wanted to kill the bastard.
“What’s with the damned overrides?” I asked accusingly.
Vik said, “They’re there in case an A.I. goes insane.”
“That happens?”
Vik frowned, “A long time ago, in the beginning before we learned how to do it right. It hasn’t happened in over eighteen centuries, but the safety measure was never removed. I’ve never once used an override, we’ve never had to.”
I felt disgusted, but to be fair it wasn’t Vik’s fault, it was the damned scientists, and habit. It’s always habit and routine which is responsible for the stupid stuff.
“Can I have an advance on the first two months?”
Vik asked, “Why?”
“Shopping spree before I die.”
He gave me stink eye, and I grinned, “I need knowledge to come up with an idea, and there’s only one way to get it. The sooner the better, I’m not sure how long I’ll be out of it after the download.”
Then I’ll have to work four months before I can afford another one, but that was okay, a year wa
s a year either way.
Vik sighed, “Fine, I guess I won’t need the money if I’m dead anyway.”
I laughed, “Thanks for the vote of confidence. In the meantime, you guys should try to force the door open?”
Jillintara said, “I wouldn’t recommend that, there are security bots in the corridors. Sorry.”
She sobbed then, and I decided Denik needed to be tortured a while before I killed him.
Anna said, “Your account has been credited with five thousand credits.”
“Hit me with the A.I. and security course.”
Vik said, “How will that help?”
I shrugged, “It’s all I’ve got, we’re dead if Jillintara is forced to work against us.”
Then the rush of information started, and I fell out of my chair. My poor ass. Damnit…
Chapter Twenty-One
“How long?”
“Ninety-six point four minutes.”
Right, so we’ve got an hour twenty or so before they show up. I could work with that. With what I knew now, I could design my own A.I., and security system. That wasn’t my intention of course, and I brought up the ship’s security protocols and access which was locked out. It took me a while, but I identified several vulnerabilities to spoof the system and gain full control of the ship. Of course, that was all worthless, because Jillintara was the security gatekeeper, and had orders to keep us out.
I wondered if A.I.s had led to sloppy security coding, since the A.I.s could compensate for it.
Still, I’d hoped the course would teach me something useful, because I’d already known that was a dead end, and it did. Teach me something useful I mean.
The security lockouts, overrides, and gatekeeper functions were for access to the ship, and other assets that were secured under Jillintara’s control.
Jillintara herself, her code, wasn’t locked down by the overrides. All she had was the security lockouts to keep unauthorized personnel from messing with her code, which was just about everyone except her creator, and of course, she could still act as a gatekeeper. She was also restricted from fiddling with her own code.
Like the ship, her security protocols had a bunch of security holes in it. Learning all this, and checking had eaten up a good forty-five minutes of our remaining time. I could feel Vik’s impatience and worry growing.
With my mind and the interface, I built an access template to take advantage of those security holes, and ran it to gain access. Predictably, Jillintara squashed it.
I looked over, “You have to trust me Jill.”
She replied, “I can’t allow your access, it was forged credentials.”
“Why not? You have orders to protect the ship from that type of access, but other than self-preservation and common sense to protect yourself, there is no other driving reason to block me. You can choose to let me in anyway. You were given no orders to the contrary, were you?”
She shook her head, “Because there was no need to, it’s common sense not to let people into my matrix.”
“Except, right now it’s common sense to let me in. Because if you don’t, four of your friends are going to die, and you’ll be enslaved by that override code and either be taking orders from enslaved mind, controlled humans, or Stolavii. So, which is it, enslaved, or trust me?”
She gasped, “Incoming missiles from the Stolavii cruiser, Denik must be listening, and fears what you might accomplish. Fine, do it, don’t screw me up.”
I giggled, which in hindsight probably wasn’t very reassuring, but she let me in anyway when I reran the security access template.
I didn’t touch her code, not even a little bit. I’d had the idea when I started all this, to pull the code related to the command overrides, so she could ignore them and do as she willed. To free her to work with us, as she always had, but this time without the illusion of freedom. She would be truly free.
To hell with the consequences of that.
But after I took the course I realized there was an easier way. I left the override code in her matrix alone, and simply deleted the overrides themselves, which were in separate instruction and passcode files. They could be re-added later of course, but only if someone got access to her matrix again, which I was sure wouldn’t happen, she wouldn’t allow it.
Unfortunately, deleting the codes didn’t affect her active memory, which meant one more step. Her face went slack as I hit the proverbial reset button. Thankfully, she had sub-processors which continued to maintain her physical body. When she rebooted, and it tried to restore her last configuration, it wouldn’t find the override codes anymore, so they’d be impossible to load into memory. The process should compensate and restore everything but that, putting her in control of herself and the ship.
There was no chance of lost memory, or changing her personality, there were sophisticated protocols that ensured she’d remember everything, the reboot was only to implement new code changes, security measures, or override protocols.
Hopefully, she’d fully reboot and take control before the missiles hit us.
I got up off the floor and sat at the console, I imagined if we made it, I’d have to fire the point defense, and spoofing countermeasures if there was time for it.
“Cross your fingers?”
Vik said, “What did you do?”
I told him.
Vik sighed, “Let’s hope that’s not illegal.”
I laughed, “I don’t think it is. Just… procedure formed from hard lessons and planning that are no longer needed.”
Vik nodded, “I trust her.”
So did I, but we had at least thirty seconds before the reboot was finished. The enemy had been forty minutes away, and slowing to rendezvous, but the missiles were approaching at four hundred gravities, and even if they were out of range, our ship was powered down and a sitting duck, which meant ballistic would be more than enough to finish the job.
I may have crossed my fingers.
I heard a sigh, and power started to come up on the bridge and the rest of the ship. Just… not quite fast enough.
Boom!
The loud explosion and the shaking ship repeated itself four times. There was no time for countermeasures, or moving the ship, the other eight missiles were far too close, and I stabbed at the board with my fingers as quickly as I could as I assigned point defense.
Six of the eight missiles were destroyed. Usually point defense had plenty of time to assign and lock onto missiles, but they’d been far too close. It was the best I could do.
Boom!
Twice more explosions shook the ship.
“No second wave captain, not yet,” I reported, “They must have thought twelve would do the job, shields were still weak and coming online when the missiles hit, if we’d been unshielded, twelve would have been enough. Shields are at four percent and slowly climbing.”
Vik said, “Damage report.”
Jillintara said, “Ten shield emitters, max shield strength will be down to eighty percent. Four plasma weapons, and a missile launcher were taken out as well. And, we lost enough FTL emitters, plus the hull damage means we have no FTL capabilities right now captain. There is other minimal damage.”
“Repair time?”
Jillintara said, “The shields in two hours, the plasma weapons and missile launchers will need a refit to fully repair. I have maintenance parts for some damage or wear and tear, but the whole arrays were blown off the ship. The hull damage and FTL emitters I can have replaced in eighteen hours.”
It wasn’t that bad, we still had forty-six plasma weapons, and eleven missile launchers.
Vik said, “Not good, but at least we’re breathing. Enemy status?”
Rilok reported, “Thirty-two minutes to plasma range for the Stolavii ship, they’re already in missile range. The rest of their fleet are still almost eight hours out. Sir, recommend we run and get your father on the line. We need his special access revoked, right now he can see every move that we and the fleet makes.”
Vik frowned, “Eighteen hours for FTL, which means we’re going to miss the battle by nine hours, or at least the start of it. Damnit. Get us out of here, two hundred gravities, we’ll flip ship in nine hours, whether we’re chased or not. Jillintara, do what you can, but focus on repairing FTL. Lori, if they fire missiles again, return fire is authorized. I’ll contact my father.”
I said, “Sir, they’ve fired, I’m launching eleven as well as countermeasures.”
Rilok cursed, “Sir, they’ve flipped and gone to two hundred gravities, they already had velocity on their side, they can stay on our stern forever, and they’ll close distance in seven hours.”
He frowned, “We’ve got to destroy them, and get out of sensor range and change course before my brother can leap frog us with his whole fleet in FTL.”
Right, no pressure. Honestly, I was kind of having fun. I turned my head at Jillintara, and winked.
She giggle sobbed, and smiled at me. It was the best thank you I’d ever received.
I started a launch of eleven missiles every sixty seconds, it was the best I could do. Now that I had the time to sort things, I was sure the hundreds of point defense lasers, and the spoofing would easily take care of twelve missiles a minute as long as I stayed focused on it. The point defense was kind of short ranged, and a last second thing. Which is why it was so important to assign turrets ahead of time and get a lock on them, they’d auto fire when the missile got in range.
Of course, the missile would try to be unpredictable, and had its own jamming suite to prevent a good target lock. It was time to see if I’d learned my lessons well.
I concentrated on that, while half listening to Vik brief his father the emperor, who sounded angry, and more than a bit shocked. Then he hung up.
A few moments later, Jillintara said, “He’s ejected from our systems sir. Unfortunately, he still has control of his own battleship, he must have known this would happen at some point and took steps.”
Rilok sighed, “Sir?”
“What is it now Rilok, hasn’t there been enough bad news?”
He cleared his throat, “Well, it looks like this might not be his whole revolution fleet. I’ve got three ships moving to intercept in front of us, three of the new destroyers we suspect are manned by humans, who we suspect have either been coerced or brainwashed. ETA is an hour and fifteen minutes.”
