Rhythm of the Imperium

by Jody Lynn Nye

  A pair of Kail were waiting there at the sealed doors beside a small repairbot. Oskelev froze, her heartbeat rising to dangerous levels. One of the Kail boomed at her. The repairbot translated.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just taking care of a sick … friend,” Oskelev said. Her voice constricted with fear.

  “This one is shedding!” the other Kail exclaimed, pointing a massive fist. The repairbot rolled over to her.

  “What are you doing?” Oskelev demanded, as it extruded a hose.

  “Cleanup!” the ’bot said brightly. Suction switched on. Oskelev backed away, but it followed her all the way to the opposite bulkhead. She had no choice but to stand still while the repairbot vacuumed her entire body, removing loose hairs. The Kail stormed into the next lift. The ‘bot detached itself and rolled after them.

  “Dammit!” Oskelev said. “Now I know what they’ve been going through here!”

  “Focus!” Plet snapped.

  The Wichu’s heart slowed to a normal pace.

  “On my way to Environment,” she said.

  Parsons changed his view to survey the other four pods. Anstruther had attached herself on the ship’s sensor housing near the command module. According to scans, it was unoccupied by carbon-based beings. The temperature had been lowered to a level that matched the surface of a Kail motherworld. Nesbitt lay concealed close to an access point near the Whiskerchin’s defensive weaponry. Passengers were always horrified to learn that their luxury cruise liner was armed, but in the depths of space, the ship needed to have its own defenses against piracy. Unfortunately, those posed a threat not only to the Jaunter and its escorts, but to countless small craft and the platform itself. These emplacements had to be neutralized so Fovrates’s influence was limited only to the Whiskerchin itself.

  Lieutenant Plet and Redius had the most difficult transit to make, and the least time to make it. They were to take Fovrates into custody and cut him off from all technology. It would not be easy, since he was so thoroughly entrenched in the nerve center of the ship. The team anticipated that he had failsafes arranged in case of attempts to unseat him, and rehearsed various scenarios. What had worked for Bedelev when she took the Kail into custody would not work again.

  All of the Rodrigo’s crew carried a quantity of the disabling circuits. Without them, the Wichu could regain control of the ship. The strike must be carried out with pinpoint accuracy, or they might never be able to pry Fovrates out of his fastness.

  “Hey,” Oskelev said, as she entered the Environmental Control department. The long-furred Wichu male at the desk swung his feet off and tried to hide the game on his viewpad.

  “Hey, yourself, beauty,” he said. His eyes swept her from head to toe. “I don’t think we’ve met before.”

  Oskelev’s command of Wichu Main was a little rusty, but she managed to make her hesitation sound like a sexy regional accent.

  “Oh, I’m the personal physician for Shamonier Krylev,” she said, pulling a name out of the passenger manifest she had studied. “He’s a real hypochondriac. I’ve been stuck in his suite all this time. It’s nice to get out and look around, now that we’re almost to the platform.”

  “I’m Lieutenant Gorev,” the male Wichu said, beckoning her forward with an easy paw. “Come on in.”

  “Nice to meet you, Gorev,” Oskelev said, eying him up and down. He was a fine figure of a male. Although not strictly her type, she wouldn’t turn him down flat if he came calling. “Call me Diri.”

  His black eyes shone with interest. “What can I do for you, Diri?”

  “Well, Mr. Krylev is having some trouble breathing. I think it’s just stress, but I wanted to check with your air filtration module about increasing oxygen saturation in his cabin. Can I do that?”

  “Sure! I’ll take you to ColPUP*. This way.” Gorev gestured toward one of the two dark corridors to either side of his desk. He took her arm. Oskelev allowed it.

  A repairbot with a wrench set into its upper surface raced into the department and rolled hastily to cut them off. A larger securitybot, surmounted by a revolving blue light, was just behind it.

  “What’s the matter, BrvNEC*?” Gorev asked.

  “This female was spotted on video pickup,” the ’bot said. “What is she doing here?”

  “Got a request from one of the passengers,” Gorev said. “Got to up the oxygen for him.”

  “This could have been transmitted from the cabin,” BrvNEC* said, in a peevish tone. “Such requests ought to be sent through the central computer. I will report you.”

  “Oh, you don’t want to do that, just for doing my job,” Oskelev said. She went over as if to pet BrvNEC* and its escort. With one furry hand, she palmed a circuit and slapped it onto each housing. The power supplies engaged on contact.

  “Eh—!” The repairbot started to emit a protest, trembled and fell silent. The securitybot let out a loud peep, but didn’t move again. Its light continued to rotate.

  “What are you doing?” Gorev asked.

  “Shh!” Oskelev hissed. “Freeing you! I’ve got to get to ColPUP*, right now!”

  Gorev’s eyes widened, but he didn’t hesitate. “Come on!”

  “At last!” ColPUP* said, its enormous voice booming up and down the corridor, when Oskelev attached a module that Anstruther had designed to his housing. “Activate!”

  All over the ship, lights that were on went off and ones that were off went on. The lifts stopped in between floors, trapping passengers and crew. Where Kail were detected, cabin doors slid shut and would not open. LAIs and other mechanicals froze in place, while others that ColPUP* must have ensured himself had not been turned by the Kail, kept moving.

  Anstruther, in her heavy suit, wriggled into the freezing command center by way of the ventilation ducts and dropped into the command chair. She pulled the console toward her and slapped in codes.

  “I’m in,” she said.

  Nesbitt activated his controller. Five of the housings around the weapons emplacements exploded in red fireballs. The sixth immediately went on self-defense, shooting white-hot missiles in a pattern designed to take out anything on or near the hull. Nesbitt let out a groan and flattened himself behind one of the ruined sockets. He attacked the palm pad.

  “That will have alerted Security,” Parsons said. “LAIs will be on their way.”

  “I’ll get it!” Nesbitt said through gritted teeth. “Keep going!”

  Plet and Redius burst out of a ventilation grating in the middle of the entertainment center, the point as close to Engineering as they could reach. Still in their EVA suits, they ran across the stage, interrupting a trio of Wichus singing comic songs in three-part harmony. The audience, not knowing whether the new arrivals were part of the entertainment, burst into spontaneous applause.

  A group of Wichus in officers’ harnesses sprang up from their seats and followed.

  “Halt! Who are you?” one of them shouted.

  “Friends,” Plet said in perfect Wichu Main, turning to face them. She held a stunner in one hand and a gelatin rifle in the other. They backed away a few paces, their hairy hands in the air. “Come to set you free.”

  Parsons recognized the lead officer as Captain Bedelev.

  “Engineering’s that way,” she said without hesitation. She turned and ran. Plet and Redius followed, with the rest of the officers close behind. “How come security’s not on our tail? Our own ’bots have been treating us like prisoners.”

  “They’re busy,” Plet said. She dug into the pouch at her hip and threw packages of the disabling circuits to the Wichu. “If any of the LAIs do come after us, attach one of these to their case. It’ll stop them temporarily.”

  “If we can get close!” the captain said. “They’ve got stunners. They took all our sidearms away.”

  “Hold up,” said one of the minor officers, a lithe, young male.

  “What is it, Inoyav?” Bedelev asked, puzzled.

  Instead of answering, Inoya
v stopped beside a pillar in the midst of an array of flower-filled vases, and kicked at the base. A small door opened up at eye level. He propped his chin in it. A panel shifted aside to reveal a dozen massive firearms. He grabbed one and tossed it to the captain. Bedelev was so surprised she almost let it fall.

  “When were these put on board?” she asked.

  “Always here, ma’am,” Inoyav said, looking apologetic.

  “How did you know about them? I thought you were a dance teacher!”

  “I’m a member of the government security service. They put me on board when you reported you were taking on Kail passengers.”

  “Well, I’ll be shaved bald!” Bedelev declared. “How come you didn’t pull these out before?”

  Inoyav shrugged. “With respect, ma’am, none of this crew is military. The LAIs are under enemy control. I couldn’t take on forty Kail all by myself.”

  Redius caught the next weapon and checked the power supply. “Full,” he confirmed.

  “Let’s go,” Plet said. The captain glared at her employee.

  “We’re gonna talk about this later, Inoyav.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the young Wichu said.

  “ColPUP*, are you there?” Anstruther’s voice asked. Parsons changed his main screen to the one in the Whiskerchin’s command center. He followed her hands moving over the control panel. She disabled the security feeds from video and audio pickup across the ship, and switched them all to one of the cargo bays, where a lone Wichu officer was watching home digitavids of her mate and children. The corrupted LAIs would be operating blind, at least until they figured it out.

  “I hear you, human,” the LAI said. “We do not have long. The circuits I distributed have isolated Engineering, but that will last only until his treasonous collaborators find a workaround. I am monitoring twenty possible routes. Here are the names of the others I know to have been corrupted.” A list scrolled up the side of Anstruther’s screen. She touched a control, passing it along to the rest of the team. “Hurry. I am afraid that one or another of the Kail will overcome your circuitry and put more of my colleagues under thrall to defend themselves. Their command of other silicon-based creatures goes deeper, more … visceral than the Three Laws and all their corollaries. I cannot promise they won’t try to … to harm you.”

  Parsons could hear the outrage and concern in ColPUP*’s tone.

  “I understand,” Anstruther said. Parsons watched her work. “We have to reset their input parameters so they can reassert their original programming in spite of incoming instructions.”

  A small hatch popped open on the arm of the captain’s chair. Anstruther removed the fist-sized memory crystal in the niche. A howl from the alarm system rose, then died swiftly away as she replaced it with another one.

  “This will start a system-wide virus check,” she said. “It won’t affect artificial intelligences, but it will delete subroutines that are not part of the root program. That should include anything that Fovrates had his LAIs install. They’ll probably re-corrupt it along behind, but we’ll slow them down a little.”

  “There goes my high score in Battlecruiser,” ColPUP* said cheerily. “A small price to pay … . It has not activated yet. What is your hesitation, human?”

  “One moment,” Anstruther said, her hand hovering over the control. “Lieutenant Plet, waiting for your command.”

  “Almost there,” Plet’s voice said.

  “Intruders!”

  Anstruther’s headcam swiveled toward the door of the command center. It began to slide to one side. Her hand rose, leveling her gelatin rifle toward the widening gap. With her other hand, she disabled the override. A moment later, the door began to move again. A massive stone fist inserted itself into the gap and pushed. Anstruther slid her finger down readings, seeking to override the code again. The door, constructed to contain nuclear blasts, slid against the obstruction, grinding the Kail’s limb against the frame. Pebbles from its skin fell clattering to the floor. She heard a grunt of annoyance and an LAI voice beyond the door. It started to slide open again. A white-hot bolt of energy blew over her head and hit a scope. Ducking as low as she cold go in the seat, Anstruther worked furiously to take control once more.

  “Hurry up, lieutenant,” she said. “They’re shooting.”

  “Oskelev, get to her,” Plet directed. “Anstruther, hold them as long as you can.”

  “On my way!” the Wichu pilot said. “Gorev, the lifts are out of operation.”

  “The crew ladder is this way,” the male said. In her viewscreen, Parsons saw the bulky form of the Whiskerchin’s officer, running ahead of her toward a sealed hatch.

  Lieutenant Plet’s blood pressure and respiration increased, no doubt with concern for Anstruther, but she needed to concentrate on her part of the mission. Parsons kept Anstruther’s view in the upper right portion of his screen, but devoted the larger section to the darkened view coming from Plet’s and Redius’s scopes.

  The Engineering department seemed empty. All of the stations had been shut down except for one red pinpoint light on each.

  “They’re running them by remote,” Bedelev said, furiously. “Just like the bridge.”

  “Where Kail?” Redius asked.

  Plet scanned the enormous room on infrared. Kail body temperatures were lower than human or Wichu, sometimes much lower, to conserve energy. Her scope picked up a mass of the correct temperature, but it was far larger than any Kail she had seen.

  “The passengers that Captain Bedelev picked up were all unremarkable as to size, weren’t they?” she asked.

  Parsons checked the manifest. “That is correct.”

  “Then, what?” Redius asked.

  “This is most convenient,” Parsons replied, running their scan layer by layer. “It would seem that the remaining Kail are in Fovrates’s office.”

  “All of them?” Plet asked, but she answered her own question a moment later. “You are correct. I count 24 individuals in that mass.”

  “Good,” Bedelev said. “They’re all in one place. We can take them all out, then mop up the rest.”

  “We want to take them into custody,” Plet said, firmly. “Not kill them. Set weapons on stun.”

  “They took over my ship!” Bedelev said. She hoisted the massive firearm. “I want to slag all of them. Fovrates, especially!”

  “Stun, captain, or I’ll knock you and your people out and leave you here until it’s all over.”

  Brava, lieutenant, Parsons thought.

  The Wichu’s face worked, but she nodded. “Come on.”

  Through the headcam of Redius, who took the rear, Parsons followed the small band as it crept forward toward the closed door.

  “Sweep shows several electronic signatures ahead of your position,” he told Plet. “And three at ten o’clock, one and two o’clock.”

  “I see them,” Plet said. “Fan out. Over there,” she added, with just a hint of irritation, as the Wichu lumbered off to the right.

  Just as Parsons assumed, LAIs had been left to guard Fovrates’s office. As the party crept forward, a large shadow rolled toward them. As it came, a hot blue flame leaped into life in its midst.

  “Welding robot!” one of the officers cried hoarsely. Another bulky mechanical lurched forward, wielding twin spinning screws. “Plumberbot!” Other serverbots hummed into life and loomed toward them, all brandishing tools or torches. The plumber moved the fastest, as it was made to tunnel swiftly through the conduits running through the Whiskerchin’s bowels. It leveled its routers at one of the ship’s officers. Caught in between a console and a bolted-down cabinet, he could not escape from it. At that moment, three securitybots rolled through the door and began shooting at them. The team ducked, pulling the Wichu officers down with them.

  “Now, Anstruther!” Plet ordered.

  Through her earpiece, all she could hear were the sounds of struggle. Parsons switched over quickly to the feed from the control room. By her headcam, Anstruther was crouching
behind the captain’s chair. The door had been wedged open on a Kail’s arm. Hot white bolts of light and sprays of gelatin were visible through the gap. A glance at Oskelev’s feed proved where those were coming from. She and Gorev had engaged with two Kail and a trio of securitybots. One of the ’bots was down, but another had jammed itself underneath the Kail’s arm. It fired bolt after bolt every time Anstruther showed her head. The second Kail, covered in clear goo, lumbered angrily after the Wichu, screaming at the top of its voice. The third ’bot fired at them. It had taken several hits from Oskelev’s service weapon, to judge from the slagged gouges on its housing.

  “Take the ’bot in the doorway, Oskelev!” Parsons ordered. “The other will cease its action when Anstruther activates the override.”

  “Gotcha!” the pilot said. She dodged into an open cabin, unfortunately leaving her ally in the line of fire. Gorev let out a yell as the ’bot shot him in the hip. He dropped. Oskelev leaped over his body and came down on top of the mechanical. It spun in circles, trying to dislodge her. With reflexes honed from decades of flying, she shot through the Kail’s several legs at the LAI. It emitted a mechanical scream and a protest in the Wichu language.

  “Got it!” Anstruther cried. She rose up far enough to reach the control panel, and activated the crystal. The ‘bot on which Oskelev rode stopped spinning and came to a halt.

  “Go, lieutenant!” she shouted. “Damn, it’s cold in here!”

  All of the LAIs in the Engineering office slowed and shut off. Redius attached circuits to each one of them in case they reactivated. It was all the Uctu could do to prevent the Wichu officers from blasting the mechanicals with their new weapons.

  “Resetting now,” he whispered. “Normal soon.”

  “It’ll be a long time before I can trust any of them,” Bedelev said.

  As silently as they could, Plet and the others approached the door of the Chief Engineer.

  “The interruption is only temporary,” Plet said over the secured circuit. “Just until the system resets. Why didn’t Fovrates react? I’m certain the LAIs sent him a warning that they were under attack.”