“It’s hopeless,” I said after we made it back into cover. “That assembly area went on for as far as the eye could see. It could take hours or days to work our way around.”
“We only face a small percentage of them so long as we are undiscovered,” Maauro said. “They have an immense space to search and they may believe we are still down in the engineering levels. But you are correct—we are making progress too slowly and the basic workers are being supplemented by more and more warriors. Any creative thoughts, Wrik?”
“You have a full schematic of the Artifact, right?”
“Yes, I raided it when I first interfaced with the Artifact’s systems.”
“Is there any way to get to a small ship? Maybe take a passage to the outside?”
“Unlikely,” she said. “The security encryption on ships will be vastly better than anything protecting the tubeways. Yet there is something to what you say. There are a number of passages from deep in the interior of the Artifact. They are both for dissipating waste heat and moving small ships and supplies. Even if we cannot get a ship to go out, we might be able to get the Stardust down here.”
“You’re kidding,” I said.
“I can see no alternative. If we get access to an Infestor ship I should be able to eventually crack the security but I cannot believe we will be unmolested by the enemy that long.
“Follow me,” she said. “We must find a safe place to call Jaelle from.”
We went down a second level. The further away we were from the battalions above, the better I felt. Now that we weren’t climbing every step, we made better time. Three hours later, Maauro pulled us into a side corridor, lit only by the glow she emitted from her eyes. We journeyed on into the darkened area. It was not quiet: metal groaned, creaked, and popped. Background noise on the Artifact, but now, in the absence of light, more noticeable and ominous. Fluid dripped and slimed the corridors, making our footing tricky. Another side corridor and then Maauro took us into a ventilation shaft. Finally she stopped at a wide platform with a control station. She placed some filaments in it and satisfied herself there was no danger.
Dusko and I sank to the platform next to her.
***
“Jaelle,” I send, “can you hear me?”
“Maauro! Thank the gods, Maauro. Where are you? Are you all right? Have you found Wrik?”
“Wrik is with me and uninjured, as is Dusko. We are deep within the Artifact, battling our way back to the surface. Enemy resistance is stiffening and we do not believe we can escape before my sabotage effort in the engine room takes effect. Are you still safe?”
“Yes,” Jaelle replies. “The ECM field you set up is working and the psionic alarm has not gone off, so it does not appear the Artifact is aware of me.
“What can I do to help you?”
“There is a channel near you, a cooling and exhaust vent that is also used for maneuvering small ships to hangars deep in the Artifact. The aperture is 300 meters wide, large enough for the Stardust to enter. Bring the ship down close to our level so we can escape by an airlock.”
“What! Maauro, I’m not Wrik. I can do basic piloting in deep space when there’s nothing to bang into. I can’t fly a starship in a tunnel.”
Wrik looks at me; his face is pinched with worry. “Maauro, can you fly it remotely?”
“Not and maintain the shields protecting us from detection and Infestor influence. I am also launching cyberattacks to keep the station AI off balance. Too much of my CPU capacity is already committed. But there is another way. Wrik, you must fly the ship.”
He stares at me. “How?”
“I can devote enough processing capability to serve as a form of remote-control. I will integrate with the ship systems. My right arm will serve as a directional control. My left will be your throttle. In my right eye I will give you a viewscreen. On my left I will broadcast the necessary flight instruments.”
I am greeted by stunned silence from all three biologicals. “It will work,” I assure them.
I sit down on the deck, folding my legs under me. I raise my arms and make the connections. “Jaelle, prepare the engine controls and ready yourself to fly on the course I indicate to the aperture. Stay as low as you dare. While I believe the AI is relatively crude compared to myself and is occupied with my own attacks and the Collector’s forces, we should take as little chance of your being detected as we can. If I register a weapon being locked on you, I will launch a cyber attack on it.”
I raise my arms in front of me. Wrik sits opposite, facing me, his legs braced on either side of my body. “Maauro,” he whispers, “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“You must, Wrik. You are our only chance. I cannot do it without you.”
He looks at my arms in disbelief.
“My limbs are now calculated to feel as much like your normal thruster and flight controls as can be. I will now link in my eyes as your flight instruments—”
“Good thing you have such big eyes.”
“Wrik, you say the sweetest things to a girl.”
His laugh rings raggedly off the bulkheads. Dusko winces.
“Wrik, give your weapon to Dusko. He can provide local security while we are immobile.”
The two men stare at each other for a few seconds, then Wrik hands him the weapon. Dusko flashes a cold smile. I fix my eye on him in warning and the smile vanishes.
“Maauro,” Wrik says, “put me through to Jaelle.”
“She can hear all we say. I am sorry I cannot give you both some privacy.”
“Oh, we’re kind used to having you between us,” Jaelle’s voice comes. “If you were a child, you’d be sleeping in the bed with us.”
“I am sorry—”
“I’m kidding, Maauro, mostly, anyway. We biologicals do that when we are scared to death. It’s ok.”
“Jaelle,” Wrik said.
“Good to hear your voice, Handsome. I’ve come a long way to get a glimpse of you.”
“I wish I could see you.”
“In a little while.”
“No, Jaelle. It’s too risky. This would be hard enough if I was in that control seat. I can’t take this risk with your life. I want you to get out of here.”
Dusko swears in the background. I continue to watch him. This is Wrik’s call and I will protest nothing.
“Would you do that in my place, Wrik?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Jaelle, I’ve run out on friends before. On my homeworld, I deserted friends and family.”
There was a pause. “So that’s what it was. Well, you’ve never run out on me. I know that you have been troubled by issues of honor and courage, but no one is pure. Everyone has made mistakes. What matters to me is what you have done since I’ve known you.
“In any event, I am not running. I’ll bring the ship to the tunnel. You fly me in, Wrik.”
“I can’t talk you out of this?” he says.
“Have you won an argument with me yet?”
He shakes his head ruefully. “See you in a while, Beautiful.”
“OK,” Wrik says, taking my arms. “Jaelle, take off low and slow. I’m going to use the time to practice this insanity. If there’s trouble at your end, Maauro will override you—”
“—What else is new?”
“—and put me in control.”
Chapter 30
I reached over to take Maauro’s hands, still struggling with the insanity of doing this. “Let’s run some simulations to see if this is even possible.”
She smiled her gentle smile. “Have courage, friend Wrik.” All animation fled her face. Her eyes widened to their furthest extent and their pacific green disappeared. In one eye I saw the viewscreen of the Stardust, in the other, a readout of engine systems. I noticed that as my eyes roved over
particular data, it increased in size. Of course, Maauro was optical tracking to tell what I was looking at.
“We are in sim mode,” Maauro said. Only her mouth moved; something a living being could not have managed. “Jaelle is taking off in the ship. I do not see any sign of an attack on her.”
“Logical,” Dusko said from where he kept watch on the long corridor. “Ship systems are only waking up now. They’d react to incoming threats, not something already here when they came on.”
The next few minutes were a nightmare of strain as I tried to make my brain grasp what my hands were doing. With Maauro’s’ eyes as instruments and her body, many times heavier than it appeared, both still and cool, it was gradually easier to relate to her as a control system. I even subdivided some control functions, using her fingers as stand-ins for the instruments, all the while fighting off hysterical laughter at the image of what we were doing. I felt like a primitive doing a dance to affect the rain.
A dull boom rolled through the tubeway. Dusko and I jumped.
“What was that?” Dusko snapped.
“Remember,” Maauro said, her voice slightly slower than usual with strain, “I am still battling the Artifact’s AI. I exploded a steam pipe by closing an outlet valve. It eliminated an Infestor recon force heading this way. Time grows short, Wrik. Jaelle is above the aperture.”
“Jaelle,” I called. “Ready?”
“No, but don’t let that stop you.”
“OK, my ship now.”
“You have control,” Maauro said.
I stared down the immense aperture that led deep into the Artifact’s interior. At three hundred meters wide, it should have felt comfortably large for a small ship like Stardust. Staring into the two-inch square that was Maauro’s eye, it looked tiny. I shifted forward to get closer to her face. Then, using only the smallest of forces, I started the ship down the opening.
“100 meters a minute,” Jaelle called out. “That’s too slow, Wrik.”
I goosed the forward motion up. Maauro’s arms gave the exact feedback of my controls and she was as solid on the deck as if welded there.
“Quit pacing,” I snarled over my shoulder at Dusko. Sweat was running down my ribs and my back ached from tension. The tube rolled on, level after level, seemingly endless. Only the ship’s prow lights shone in the darkness. I kept telling myself it was no worse than any of a hundred space dockings I’d made. A little voice in my head mocked me.
“We are passing other airlock and hangar areas,” Maauro said in her softest, soothing voice. “I was correct. The Artifact designer wanted to be able to arm and launch smaller ships from the relative safety of the interior.
“Only five more kilometers, Wrik. You are doing well. Please try to even out your breathing. You are transmitting a slight vibration to the controls that I cannot compensate for.”
I slowed my breathing, trying to go deep and regular. I lightened my grip on the controls. Over-control was as dangerous as under in these tight quarters.
“Four kilometers,” Maauro said.
I steered my way past some sort of tower that projected into the tunnel.
“Stop in five, four, three, two, one, now.” Maauro said. “We have reached closest approach.”
I brought the ship to a halt. And fell over on my back, my hands twitching and my back killing me from stress.
“Deploy the crab robots, Jaelle,” Maauro said. “Then wait for us as long as you can.” She stood, with none of the pain Dusko and I showed as we got to our feet.
“Jaelle is three kilometers that way.” Maauro pointed up and to the left.
“Let me guess,” Dusko said. “We climb”
“Won’t we have to pass through that assembly area?” I asked, falling in behind her.
“No, there is a pipe trunk and air vent near the edge. It will take us up through that level to the area adjacent to the tunnel.”
***
We moved up the trunk, scrambling awkwardly around bundled pipelines. Dusko and I struggled and panted from the climb. Maauro helped us as best she could. Finally we reached a walkway for work drones.
“Kinda cramped,” I gasped.
“Be grateful,” Maauro returned. “It’s too small for warriors.”
We both reached back for Dusko who collapsed on the steel decking when he got out. The climb had done in the wounded Dua-Denlenn.
“Let me see if there is something useful by the airlock. Remain alert.”
Maauro dashed off up the corridor. I sank against the far wall, laser held loosely in my hand, waiting for my breath to slow and my heart rate to return to normal.
Dusko’s color was bad and his chest heaved. I crawled over to him and pulled out my canteen.
He nodded, and after a second, drank from it.
“Not too much,” I said. “It’ll make you throw up.”
He handed me the canteen with a shaky hand. “Thanks.”
Maauro returned. “Fortune favors us. There are Infestor suits in the locker up there.”
“What good does that do us?” Dusko asked, struggling into a sitting position.
“It need only keep you alive for a minute as I take you across to Stardust. So long as they will close and hold air, they will serve.”
I reached up and Maauro helped me to my feet. Then we got Dusko up. We staggered and ran to the airlock.
“I want to minimize the chances of detection and reaction,” she said. “We will all three go together.”
We pulled the Infestor suits from the rack. Maauro inspected them and discarded two, switched parts on others till she had two workable suits.
The suits were far too large but as a bag holding air they worked. We weren’t tall enough to reach our heads into the misshapen helmets but we could see out of them from below the neck collar. Maauro sealed the suits and air hissed in. Both Dusko and I managed to stand on our own. She inspected us both and gave us a thumbs-up.
We crowded against the airlock hatchway and Maauro worked the controls, her hands moving too fast to see. Lights flashed and the door slipped open. Maauro thrust us both in, none too gently, sealing the inner hatch then turning to the outer. The door slid open and there, in the darkness, lit only by her running lights, lay Stardust. Her green and gold hull never looked more beautiful. Three crab robots stood on her hull, their weapons searching.
Maauro seized us both and leapt. The universe spun as we tumbled, unbalanced load that we were. I could see the vast tunnel with its mysterious ports and lights and the lovely sight of our ship alternating as each revolution brought us closer. I was almost too tired to feel anything.
A thin, red beam lanced by my helmet.
“What?” I yelled.
But there was no way for me to hear anything. As we rolled through another rotation, I saw Stardust’s laser return fire, its beam a thin, almost invisible sword of green light, powerful at this close range. Maauro’s face came into view of my narrow neck aperture. I could see she was firing back with her other hand, the one containing the flechettes. She’d either dropped Dusko or had her legs wrapped around him. Ship and android must have destroyed whatever had fired at us, as the beam did not lance back.
We hit against the side of the Stardust with a bone-jarring impact. I felt Maauro dragging us toward the stern. She had Dusko under her other arm. Her head was completely reversed, which made her look like her neck was broken. The ship’s main laser flared again, warding off some danger I could not see and lighting up the tunnel.
Then the main airlock yawned open before us. Maauro stuffed us both in before sliding in herself.
The dueling AG fields of the Artifact and Stardust made me dizzy for a second before Stardust’s won. The inner airlock slid open and we tumbled out to the deck.
Jaelle was there, her golden eyes wide with excitement as she worked on my suit. Behind her Ma
auro worked on Dusko’s. The seal broke and I was free. Suddenly I had my arms full of warm catgirl. Her lips pressed on mine and I kissed her back, holding to her hard but careful of her fangs. We were both crying and talking.
“Wrik,” Maauro said. “Forgive me but we need you on the bridge. I am still trying to ward off the Artifact’s AI. I cannot fly the ship too. I sent the crab robots inward to attack and create a diversion. I may convince the AI that we are moving inward to try and reach the core and explode it. It will use all its force to ward off that intrusion.”
I nodded. “Understood.”
Jaelle pulled me to my feet. We raced for the bridge, Dusko trailing us.
“How are we doing?” I gasped at Maauro.
“We have been detected by automatic systems, but I disrupted their communication with the main AI. Jaelle slagged the nearby guns and I have interrupted the circuitry for the remainder. The main AI has a localized idea of where we are and is trying to reestablish control. We must flee before it can send a boarding party or bring additional weapons online.”
“Keep it off balance, Kit-sister,” Jaelle said, “just a little longer.”
I leapt into my pilot seat. “Jaelle, stay on that laser.” I checked my instruments and fired the forward station-keeping retros, full on. The small units weren’t meant for this, but I didn’t dare spin the Stardust in the tight confines of the tunnel. We began moving backward. I corrected drift with the lightest touch of the controls and rerouted more fuel to the forward retros. The thrusters thrummed their way through the fuel as we recklessly accelerated.
“You’re going to melt those engines,” Dusko rasped. His blue eyes were bloodshot and I wondered if his suit had been hit and partly decompressed.
“Every second counts,” Maauro intervened. “I am losing my battle with the AI. It will gain both a lock and weapons control soon.”
My Outcast State (The Maauro Chronicles Book 1) Page 33
