by Tobias Roote
A voice over the tannoy rang out over their heads.
“All pilots report to the nearest vacant ship, the techs are waiting to insert your AIs. Don’t give them any grief, your friends are getting hammered out there and need you back in the fight, pronto.” It clicked off.
Everyone ran to where they were being directed.
Jimmi directed Brenda to one of the techs to explain she needed her back-up loaded, then ran to the nearest Reaver that a tech was pointing at.
Another engineer took the cylinder from him and raced to the underside of the ship. Its insertion into a tube would shoot the AI into the heart of the ship to automatically connect to the on-board systems. Jimmi climbed the short stubby steps that led to his new cockpit and, noticing the lighter gravity this far from the deck, leaped effortlessly into the cocooned seat.
The tannoy belched again. “All hands, prepare for emergency station relocation. Hold all traffic outbound.”
“What’s going on?” Jimmi called down to the tech, they always knew what was up as it affected their workloads.
“We’re relocating the station..... something to do with protecting an exodus from Earth,” he answered, too harassed to realise that it was obviously putting the station in harm’s way.
Jimmi’s implant clicked.
Vasha: Hi Jimmi, what did I miss?
Jimmi: Haha! Nothing. Welcome back, Vash, do me a favour – well, two actually. Give me a status update on a pilot and her AI, Brenda and Calypso, and check why the station just jumped to a new location?”
Vasha: We’re being instructed to proceed to launch, I will check these while we continue with flight preps.
Jimmi: Good, I think it might be something to do with the ARKs and I need a new wingman while we’re out there. If Brenda is good to go, get her to join us.
Vasha: Confirmed. I have just spoken with Calypso, she will follow us out. We have orders from Arty.
Jimmi: I see, it hasn’t come through FO, what gives?
Flight Operations always controlled the movements of their wings, it was efficient and you knew it was coming from a centralised set of orders. Jimmi wasn’t one to buck normal protocols and was about to confirm with the FO, when Vasha stopped him.
Vasha: We’re ordered to run interference for the ARKs. One of them has had some kind of accident and their shields and cloaks are down.
Jimmi: Friggin’ hell, which one is it?
Vasha: ARK1, your father’s. They’re heading directly into the enemy fleet and have no defences. Arty is providing cover. We’re needed to cover them while Arty organises their escape.
Jimmi: Let’s get out there, what are we waiting for?
Vasha: Exactly so.
Vasha: We’re ordered to radio silence, I believe Arty is acting independently of Beta Station.
Jimmi: OK. Tell Arty, we’re ready to fly and tell him thanks. He knows how important this is to me.
Vasha: I agree. It’s done.
Instead of proceeding through the flight launch system which would put them under the guidance of the FO, they found themselves jumped directly into space and dark side to the sun and the approaching enemy.
It wasn’t difficult to find the ARK. The massive piece of real estate, the size of the asteroid, was tucking up to Alpha Station’s shadow.
“Geezuz, but that thing’s big!” Jimmi exclaimed. He’d never seen one before, and had only had a rough description of it from his father on one of their rare meet-ups.
Jimmi: Let’s get into this Vash. See if you can coax Arty into some backup, will you?
Vasha: Will do, Jimmi.
As they cruised between the two massive objects, Jimmi began to realise just how big a project his old man’s ARK was. There were supposedly twenty of them and although some were to be held back to help Earth regenerate, the main force were going to look for a new Earth, one the Nubl weren’t aware of. He was torn between going with him and staying and doing his duty. The SCN was his home and the people, his family. He couldn’t leave them behind knowing that he hadn’t at least tried to help them. He thought about his mother and stepfather, Lucas. They would be in the shelter now, safe from the lasers that were concentrating their fire on the cities.
He scanned the blue marble globe beneath him and could see the smoke from new scars ballooning high into the atmosphere as the enemy ships poured fire on the planet. There was nothing he could do there. The battle would be won or lost here, in space.
He had seen the size of the enemy fleet and knew it would be a struggle to the death. But he also knew that being right here, helping his father one last time, was the right thing to do, the right place to be. He wondered if he knew Jimmi was here.
***
Three enemy ships were almost upon him before he registered them, so fast had they come around Alpha Station. Luckily Vasha had been monitoring the approach via Arty’s systems, which they had piggybacked onto rather than Flight Control, who would immediately be asking why they were there and not with the newly formed up squadron.
His eyes focused on the first target. It hadn’t seen him on its sensors and he was in the shadow of the asteroid. Aiming for the rear-most ship, his plasma guns fired at the same time the nullifier confirmed its range. As the Shadowships shields went down the burst of fire ravaged it midships leaving a gaping hole, but it was still operational, not requiring any atmosphere for crew.
Concentrating hard, he swung past the target for another run. He realised he must be in a slightly newer model as its reaction time was giving him a tighter curve. He pulled back a little on the throttle and kicked a missile into its aft drive outlets, then spun off so he didn’t get caught in the blast.
Vasha was silent, the AI was busy correlating the targets as well as keeping them blind to FC. There were more enemy coming and the three he had to deal with would soon be six. He turned to see if his missile had gone up the enemy tubes just as it exploded.
“Gotcha!” he said, forgetting for a moment he was a ‘lone wolf’ on an unofficial mission and there was nobody on the internal comms.
“On your tail, bogeyman,” came an answer he wasn’t expecting.
Jimmi turned to see out the rear of the cockpit. Of course there was nothing to see - like him, she was using the shadows to remain invisible.
“Hi, Bren. How’s Calypso?” he asked, suddenly feeling brighter.
“He’s fine. Says to say hello to Vasha for him.”
“I’m going for numero dos. Follow me in, but hang back and slam a missile into the opening. We can finish it in one pass.”
“That’s a ten, Scorpion Leader,” she replied pulling up his handle and reminding him of his other wingmen, Flapjack and Tango. He felt guilty for not thinking about them before, but everything had so been hectic. And now Vasha couldn’t check, as the only comms they could use were via Arty. For the sake of the mission he would have to wait for news.
***
Pod noticed immediately when the weapons stopped firing, that Zeke was no longer on the ship.
Still in the midst of battle, the AI had to first extricate herself before attempting to work out what had just happened. She jumped to the edge of the battlefield where her defences could maintain themselves for the moment and began to search for him. She scanned local space, detecting his presence using the Alacite link they shared. Her uncertainty grew as the sense of his presence grew weaker, as if he was travelling away at high speed.
Unable to ascertain the means with which he had been jumped, she contacted Arty in the vain hope he had been involved or could read Zeke’s location.
Arty: No, I cannot sense Zeke anywhere, but I wouldn’t, only you and he share the same mutated Alacite.
Pod: Then, in all probability, he must have jumped himself.
Arty: You believe he has that capability?
Pod: Yes I do. The logs registered higher activity from his mutated cortex area via his implant about ten seconds before he vanished from the cockpit.
Arty: Ah! S
o, I was right. The Alacite ‘is’ the active component in Quantum Entanglement.
Pod: Yes, but only Alacite with mutated DNA.
Arty: Yes, and that’s an enigma for another day. However, I must use this opportunity to relate another matter. This will be my last relay. I have escaped the military governor so I’m jumping the ARK exodus to your drone’s location and will follow them before Pennington finds out and resumes control. There are forty thousand humans left on the station, but we are currently under heavy attack. It will not survive if he resumes his poorly executed plans.
Pod: I understand, Arty. I will find you wherever you end up. I must ensure Zeke is safe before I leave.
Arty: The humans here will lose.
Pod: Yes, time and numbers are not on their side.
Pod felt alone when the communication link severed sensing instantly the moment Arty jumped.
***
Arty had no intention of running from the battle, but when the attack suddenly concentrated on them and the enemy ships changed to new murderously efficient machines that thwarted all his defences. He knew that the asteroid’s weapons would not hold back the tide that was approaching.
Osbourne had built into him the ability to decide when to retreat and the criteria where it was possible to do so. In the face of insurmountable odds and with a large population of humans within the station’s protective barriers, he knew they needed to be protected. If humanity survived, Arty knew the advanced science and technology on the station would be needed and the knowledge he held in his massive archives would be essential.
Defences began to buckle. Shields which had been deemed powerful enough to withstand any level of attack began to strain as the generators, struggling to maintain power, started to stutter. The normally transparent defences, now insufficient to sustain the barrage, began to turn red from the heat of the lasers, darkening to black in places. The system was in danger of imminent failure.
When SCN ships began to rally to bolster the defences, getting cut down in the process, Arty knew there was no delaying the departure. He sent a message out to all ships to keep their distance that the station was jumping again, whilst also trying to wrestle with the remnants of the exodus of evacuee ships and transport them with him to safety.
He jumped Alpha Station leaving a stunned enemy behind and a few Reaver and Marauders that had been defending the station. In the absence of the station the enemy turned upon the remaining defenders, who were cut down and murdered before their eggs could send out distress signals. The enemy fleet proceeded towards their primary objective - Earth.
- 26 -
Jabath’s Folly
He was consulting with a g’Nar when out of the corner of his vision he noticed the Queen slump on her throne. He’d monitored the signs before and recognised the symptoms of her malaise coming on her. The periods were sometimes very short, others long. He realised that this was his chance, and needed to act quickly, while she was inactive.
He signalled his guards to attend him and set in motion the takeover plan he had been nurturing since returning from the early battles. He had many supporters now throughout the fleet, whose wills had been subsumed to his, releasing the subroutines to break the programming of the Queen. He now broadcast them to all of the g’Nar’s in the fleet. In seconds they would be his to command, so long as the Queen didn’t regain consciousness before he had finished her off. He could replace her without a leadership struggle - if he was quick.
Generally the Queen’s clones were engineered to be simple beings so they were inclined to take the side of the more dominant leader. This meant him keeping the upper-hand while he dealt with her defences to ensure they didn’t intervene.
His guards approached, each wielding a growing Shonkeel in place of a steel arm. By the time they reached the throne their traditional weapons were fully formed with blades as sharp as razors. In a practised and deliberate sweep each smote a limb from the Queen while she wallowed in her ill-timed stasis. Jabath meanwhile, approached from the front. It was traditional for the pretender to remove the head of his predecessor to officially take the crown.
As he raised his Shonkeel to smite it from her shoulders he heard a commotion behind him. “If it’s one of her loyal guards it’s too late,” he burbled to himself, as his arm carried through the fatal stroke. But, instead of completing the action he was pulled backwards, the action throwing him off balance, and sending him to the deck in an ungainly sprawl.
Before he could recover, the Queen regained her senses and upon seeing his guards around her, and him on the floor, immediately realised her predicament. She tried to move only to find her arms and legs had been severed. Had she been human it would have meant she would already be dead from blood loss, but with an android body, she was only finished if her head was removed, even then her memory and consciousness was protected within the armoured chest cavity and would need to be destroyed separately for the Queen to be unrecoverable.
“Jabath! You treacherous cur.” Her face contorted as she mentally summoned her Elite Guards who she’d had the presence of mind to keep close by, expecting deceit, but singularly unprepared for the speed with which it had come about.
At a command from Jabath, one of the compromised guards stepped forward to take off the Queen’s head himself, but before it could connect, a blurred figure leaped forward and with a single arm holding the Shonkeel from striking the Queen, struck the guard in the chest with such force it was thrown backwards into the other rebels sending them flying across the deck from the impact.
As the Elite Guards quickly surrounded the now vastly outnumbered conspirators, Jabath’s guards attempted to respond to the new threat, but were struck down where they stood, their Shonkeels removed with a single sweep of the Elite guards blades. The blurring figure continued to evade the attacks from both guards and rebels, unidentified in the chaos and viewed as a threat by all.
The Elite formed a phalanx around the Queen to protect her, two stepping out to disarm Jabath, who had been about to leap towards her in an attempt to remove her head and so stop the battle in its tracks. His especially lengthened sword arm lay on the deck twitching as the nanites attempted to reconnect the limb to his absent shoulder.
“Guards! remove this...... ‘w‘Pa’, and send it to the shredders,” she screamed, referring to him as the lowest form of worker. She was unable to do more than just indicate with her eyes who she was referring to....” and get my engineers up here immediately,” she added for good measure, looking down at her useless limbs lying on the deck of the bridge.
They turned to do her bidding, but from the floor a voice rang out. “Reset Protocols - Jabath Two,” Jabath ordered confidently as the Elite guards stepped towards him. They stopped in confusion as the hacked subroutines he’d sent to them did their work taking control of their minds.
They hesitated then turned back towards the Queen, their Shonkeels once again raised - this time to kill their Queen.
The blur appeared again and raced between them and came to a stop in front of the throne. It solidified into the figure of a human male who now looked menacingly at Jabath. “Halt, or I will destroy you all,” Zeke said with more confidence than he felt. He was outnumbered and he knew with this many his speed would not be enough.
He turned to the Queen, who immediately recognised him from her dreams.
“You! How can you be here?” she roared, as angry as she was scared. This dream apparition had actually somehow got onto her ship. Or was he not really there and she was still dreaming.
“Regain control of your guards - do it now, before It’s too late, or they will kill us both,” Zeke yelled at her trying to bring her to her senses before they were both lost.
Perhaps it was the familiarity of the alien in her midst, or the way he spoke to her, but the Queen instantly realized the truth of his words. Using her powerful mind to burn into one of her guards, she expertly tracked down the subroutine that was over-riding hers and worked to reset it b
ack to its original code. It proved easier than she expected, and now that she knew it was there, a subtle routine that had hidden in plain sight, she would be able to remove the others quickly. A glance at its source told her what she needed to know - it had been designed by one of her own engineers - a traitor in her midst. No, more than one - a conspiracy by those who knew intimately how her clones and workers were programmed.
The Queen discovered the cleverly altered routines. She deleted the offending code and reconstituted the prime directive to protect her, not Jabath. The guard was now hers again and it turned to face the others with its Shonkeel raised, ready to defend her. However, it was taking too long, she was running out of time. They had been pre-programmed with the altered routines and only activated when needed. Now, she had to alter each guard’s routines separately and it was going to take valuable seconds - seconds she knew she didn’t have.
Jabath hadn’t yet noticed the Queen’s effort to reprogram the guards loyalties. Instead, seeing the biological being in front of him, and underestimating the danger it represented, he barked orders to his new guards.
“Take that thing apart and dispose of it along with the remains of our once great Queen.”
Zeke saw the moment one of the guards switched sides as it halted and turned to the others. Seeing the Shonkeel arm that had belonged to the usurper still sitting on the deck, he picked it up and hefted it. It was heavy, but his strength managed it easily. He swung it to test its reach, then using his speed and agility, he began his attack.
Unlike the last time he had to fight a Shadow Warrior, this battle was his. Despite their numbers, Zeke working along side the other guard, despatched two each before another guard turned and decapitated the one next to it. Three of them against... the numbers were growing. The other assailant must be calling reinforcements. In addition, there were other forces loyal to both sides joining the melee. It was becoming impossible to know who was enemy and who was friend, even for the guards.
Zeke turned to the Queen who was concentrating on regaining control of rogue units. Engineers frantically worked to reattach her limbs using their skills plus nanites. The brief glance Zeke had was encouraging. She should be able to defend herself shortly.
