Hostage of Time (Beacons of Time Book 1)

by E. D. Cask

  Josh awoke with a start. Space as far as the eye could see; dark space with tiny lights of stars in the distance. It felt so different from the sims they had tested on. His stomach felt hollow and his fingers were numb. He checked his comms. The other team leaders were coming on line.

  “Team leaders, did you all just wake up?”

  There were several affirmatives and choice words. Josh smiled. Then he tried contacting his team. They weren’t answering.

  The AI said that they would be awakened when needed. He requested information on the enemy. A wave of excitement and fear tore through his body as the long range scanners showed the fighters that he was expecting, but this time it was real. They looked just like they had in the sims. He thought about his parents back on Earth thousands of years ago. It was hard to fathom. He shook his head. What would happen if he died? Would they return his body back to his own time? There was no way they would do that. That would be a waste of resources. He would just be a piece of space junk for the rest of eternity, drifting in space. So different from growing up in the suburbs of Raleigh. He blinked. Get your mind in the game, Josh. This is going to take every bit of brain power and cleverness and luck you possess.

  His team began to wake up and come on line, confused.

  “A-Team, cut the chatter. We have practiced this and know what to do. Follow the guidance of the targeting AI and listen to me. Good luck, clan, and we will see each other back at base.”

  Josh blinked back some tears. It was amazing how quickly a tight-knit team could form. Just days ago, he had been a loner hitchhiking the country and now…

  The AI battle bots were sent in as shock troops. The manufacturing system had built over a thousand of these things. Josh wondered how long they had been stockpiling them. They swarmed the battle line and, using the new battle tactics proposed by Sergei and others, were able to confuse some of the bogeys. Flashes of light ripped through the void as enemy ships exploded or stopped dead. Pretty soon there were hundreds of enemy fighters not moving.

  The human fighters were sent in next. Josh used every gamer instinct to juke and twitch around the sky, all the while targeting the point in space that the AI recommended. It seemed to work. By targeting a point in space, instead of an actual ship, the enemy fighters didn’t seem to be able to see ahead as far. Sergei had noticed that the fighters didn’t tend to react to misses, so when the targeting computer targeted a point near them, they felt no danger for that few next seconds. And bracketing them gave them fewer choices to escape. The main disadvantage was that it took several fighters to take out a bogey.

  The targeting AI gave Josh and his team a target. They focused on the target. The point narrowed until there were five beams on one enemy ship. It broke apart and started spewing debris. The AI immediately switched targets and they were on to the next fighter. Josh smiled. Sergei had been right. This really worked. Now they just needed to stay alive and make it back to base. His team was doing really well. The other team leaders were yelling, excited that something was working for them.

  Josh had selected Bob as one of his wingmen so he could keep an eye on him. When the enemy beams started carving space near him, Josh tried to make sure Bob stayed behind him. But it was getting difficult to keep track of him. There were fifteen beams coming from fifteen different vectors. As he tried to correct the angle he was targeting himself, he heard Bob’s frantic voice.

  “I’m hit! I can’t turn anymore.”

  A blinding flash appeared in Josh’s peripheral vision. No, not Bob.

  “Bob? Are you okay?” No answer. “Green, can you see Bob?”

  Fred came on line, “He took a direct hit, Josh.”

  Josh closed his eyes for a second, but opened them again immediately. He couldn’t give up, but he had promised Bob to get him back to his parents. Shaking his head in anger, he began firing wildly at the enemy. They were still responding too quickly. He set his mouth in a narrow line and went back to following the AI recommendations.

  Josh jumped, narrowly missing an enemy beam. Better to miss the beam than to degrade his shield even more. The AI was still targeting a point in space, but the enemy fighters had already reacted to their tactics. They began spreading out even further from each other, which made their tactics less effective. Now it took even more beams to trap an enemy fighter. And while they were trying to trap a bogey, the other enemy fighters were targeting the team trying to trap the fighters. It was chaos.

  A missile appeared on Josh’s threat matrix. He frowned. A missile in space? That wouldn’t work. It was moving so slowly that it would be easy to avoid. No air pressure to— It blew up and Josh’s comms died. The displays went dark. An red emergency light flashed in the ship, but everything else shut down. Artificial gravity was off; he floated against the restraints. His AI was offline, too. He moved the controls and it felt like the ship moved. He was still able to fly it, but the targeting and comms were completely offline. He tried shooting, but couldn’t make out the beam through the portholes. Instead of a holo of the entire area, he could only see out the nine small portholes around the bridge. He flew past all of his team and tried to round them up. It looked like the entire Lytix fleet had been affected. The AI bots that were still intact floated in space.

  Josh was furious. They were winning the battle, and now they were useless. He flew in circles in front of the Lytix fighters trying to get their attention. They needed to escape. There was nothing they could do now. Most of them had gotten the same idea and were fleeing. He made sure that all the fighters were turned around and heading back. It was really strange, but the enemy fighters weren’t firing on them. Had they been affected, too? They seemed to be heading back the direction they had come from.

  Josh tried to get a count, but was unable to tell one fighter from another. With comms down, there was no way to tell who was still alive. They could try to limp back to base, but which direction? How were they going to find their way back? He flew to the front of the fleet and tried waggling his ship. He used the tap code to ask the question. Does anyone know where base is? When he was done, he felt a little sick to his stomach. Between the weightlessness and the motion, he was really missing the artificial gravity that compensated for all of this. One of the ships waggled from side to side and shot to the front. Josh couldn’t tell who it was or how they knew. He hoped that their nav AI was up.

  The group of ships got into line behind this anonymous ship and followed it through the dark of space. They couldn’t rely on the AI systems, so it was a grind. After 38 hours, Josh was exhausted. He had been flying sheep dog duty. When he saw someone start to wander he would fly over and gently nudge them. Most likely they had fallen asleep or zoned out. One ship slowed down and stopped and didn’t respond at all. Nothing he did made any difference. He tried bumping it gently, but as he did, he noticed that he couldn’t even see any flashing red light from inside. Apparently even the emergency enviro systems had failed. Josh finally left the ship, vowing to send someone back to tow it in.

  As they neared the moon, Josh let the others land first. He wanted to make sure that everyone made it. One of the ships crashed on landing. It never slowed down, only plowed into the surface of the moon.

  Josh just picked a hangar and landed. He had no idea if it was the right one, but he was glad to be back. He rushed out of his ship and started looking for his team. The guys clambering out of the other ships were from other teams. They seemed as confused as he was. Finally, Josh saw Sam and ran to check in with him.

  “Sam, how are you doing? Have you seen anyone else from the clan?”

  Sam shook his head. He looked so tired and there were streaks down his face. Josh put his arm around his shoulders. “Let’s go find the others, kid.”

  They found their way to the cart and designated where they wanted to go. The cart sped off down the tunnels and they were soon back to familiar territory. When they got back to the dorm, they heard familiar cries of joy when they walked in. Josh scanned the group.
He saw everyone but Sergei and Bob and Alex. He knew that Bob didn’t make it, but now was worried about Alex and Sergei.

  The guys were high-fiving each other and talking about their experiences. Their implants weren’t working anymore, so they were using some Logos and what ever language they were used to. If someone didn’t understand a word, they tried tap codes. Hands were flying this way and that way describing how they had flown. Josh was happy to see them, but missed the others.

  The door opened and Josh turned, ready to congratulate the rest of his team. Ku stood in the doorway. He beckoned Josh. The team went silent as Josh followed him out the door.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Ku returns

  When I returned from retraining, I was pleased to see that the battle had commenced and that we were doing well. By we, I mean the humans that were doing the fighting for us. They seemed to be doing well against great odds. I found Lu watching the battle vid. He explained what had happened while I was gone, including the tactics Josh and Sergei had developed. He seemed pleased that his leadership had caused this. I doubted that Lu had caused this improvement, but did not comment. Lu was a diligent disciple of Master Du and usually very correct.

  There were murmurs as the battle unfolded. The enemy losses were large. Then the vid stream stopped. Duumai tried to call the battle AIs back up, but there was only silence. We waited. Hours passed. Master Du decided that whether the battle was won or lost, but we would continue as normal. This did not seem correct. I offered to take a ship out to the battle area to determine what had happened, but was denied. Work continued as before.

  I asked Duumai to scan the battle area with long range scanners. No radio wave traffic was detected from that area. After many hours of waiting, visual scanners picked up ships returning. This pleased the others. When they started landing, Duumai reported that all the comms and AI were dead. This included the kryzhnuku that had been implanted in all the humans. Duumai recommended immediate re-implanting, but we didn’t have the resources to replace them in everyone yet.

  I wished to see Josh and find out what had happened, so I waited for him to return and found him. He followed me into the corridor.

  “Ku, you're back! Where are Sergei and the others?”

  “Josh, I do not know. What happened out there?”

  He explained about the missile. “It must have been an EMP device. It disabled most of our electronics.”

  He continued, “I think we should talk to these people. Neither of us really won that battle. We were doing well, but they have an EMP that we can’t shield. They caught onto our tactics pretty quickly. I don’t think we would last through another battle. They could have picked us off at the end. Our targeting visuals were down. We were sitting ducks.”

  As I thought about why ducks were sitting, he jumped and shouted. Sergei was walking slowly down the corridor. They slapped their hands together in an ancient greeting ritual and grabbed each other. The human communication methods could be very violent and nonverbal. It was interesting to watch in person. They seemed very pleased to see each other.

  “Sergei, you made it.”

  Sergei tilted his head and looked at Josh. “I don’t understand you what you said. Anyway we survived. It will not be so easy next time.”

  Josh turned to me, “The important thing now is to try to talk with the Natix. We need to talk to your boss.”

  “Master Du will not wish to communicate with—“

  Josh held up his hands. “Duumai, can you translate for me?” Duumai translated my words. It continued translating for the boys.

  “Ku, we have to, right now! This is important!” He stopped and turned to me again. “You know I never asked. How does Du get to be in charge? Is it a vote?”

  I would have laughed at the naive question if that was in my genetics. “Duumai chooses the most logical leader.”

  “Do you mean to tell me that the AI makes the choice?”

  “Of course, it is most logical.”

  Sergei and Josh looked at each other and communicated something with their expressions. I asked if they were ready to proceed and they nodded.

  I led them to Master Du’s quarters and asked permission to enter. Master Du allowed us to enter. Lu was there also.

  Master Du spoke to me, “Why are you bringing these two into my presence? Do you wish more training?”

  I bowed, “Master Du, Josh has a request for you.”

  Josh stepped forward, but didn’t bow. “We need to start negotiations with the Natix. It would be mutually advantageous to talk.”

  Master Du lifted a hand, “That will not happen. The Natix are incapable of logic.”

  “But what do you expect to happen next? We barely survived this one battle.”

  Sergei stepped forward, “And the Natix were learning quickly. They were adapting too fast. Even without the EMP, we would have lost too many of our fighters. Unless you are hiding five other projects like us, you won’t survive.”

  Lu spoke, “You are weak. You do not understand the logic of Master Du.”

  Josh laughed, “You keep on bringing up that word. But you use it incorrectly, right, Duumai?”

  Master Du said, “Do not bring Duumai into this. It is not needed.”

  “Don’t you trust Duumai to answer?”

  There was silence for a moment. Then Duumai answered. Master Du uses logic properly.

  “How do you know? You don’t remember this, because your memory was altered, but we already had this discussion.”

  I do not recall a discussion such as this.

  “Can you catch a gap in your time-line?”

  Master Du struggled to sit up. “Duumai, you are not needed in this discussion. I will call you when needed. Ku, if you do not wish retraining right now or worse, you must take these humans away.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  New trust

  Josh was fuming. Master Du wouldn’t listen to their recommendations, but there was no future in continuing this course of action. The enemy was learning too fast and the attrition rate was going to get higher. As they made their way back to the rooms, Sergei tap coded to him that they really needed to tell the others and teach the code to those who hadn’t learned it yet. Josh agreed.

  “In the morning, we need to get everyone together to figure out a new strategy to win the next battle, okay, Sergei?” Josh winked.

  The next wake cycle, when they were eating, Josh called a meeting. He had his team split up to all the other tables. Alex and Bob had never shown up. The other teams had lost members, too, but no one noticed exactly what had happened.

  “You guys did a great job. The Lytix are still looking for the missing fighters. We know that some of them were shot, but after the EMP, we have no idea what happened. Ku informed me that he has sent a few med bots to the area to see if they are needed, but it will be hours before they get there.”

  The room was silent as they all thought about their missing buddies.

  “Master Du still wants to fight the enemy, so we need to come up with a new strategy for the next battle.”

  There were groans.

  “My team has spread out so that we can work together and figure out A…”

  He made the sign.

  “What the next step should be. And B…”

  He made that sign.

  “How we should go about it. And C…”

  He made that sign.

  “What supplies we need. Are you getting this, people? It’s as simple as A, B, C.”

  He slowly tapped out the codes and tapped his ear. Most of the guys started to understand.

  “While you work together, Sam’s going to talk about his experiences yesterday. It’s important to learn to do two things at once. That’s one way gamers learn how to play. Multitasking is an important skill.”

  There were laughs and high fives around the room as comprehension began dawning. The A-Team began teaching the codes. It was easier for those who had a good grasp of Logos, because that w
as the language they had to spell. The Ducks who didn’t know Roman letters, were very confused. It was like learning two languages at once. Sam droned on about everything he could think about that he’d seen in the battle. After they had gone through the whole code once, they slowly began describing what they were planning.

  Josh and Sergei recognized they needed to find out more about the station and what opportunities it might offer. Since their abduction, they had been confined to three or four rooms. They needed to explore. They also needed to find out how many Lytix there really were. While the guys were working on that, Josh decided to take a stroll.

  He started down the longest corridor he could find. Things were so chaotic in the cafeteria, he didn’t think anyone would notice he was missing. No one knew how the Lytix were monitoring them. It might be a function Duumai was performing, along with everything else. Now would be a good time to find out.

  There were a lot of empty rooms. Other than the dorm rooms and a couple of utility rooms, the place looked abandoned. Josh found two doors that were locked, but nothing else interesting. He did find a utility room that seemed to be environmental. There were a lot of air ducts and blowers. Even the Lytix needed air. They didn’t seem to need much more, though. He had never seen them eat or drink or sleep.

  When he got back to the cafeteria, things were still going strong. The others seemed to be picking up the code and Sam was still talking. Josh went from group to group checking on things and watching the noobs learn and try out the new language. They were slowly figuring it out.