by James Walker
“Last warning,” she announced. “You've got 60 seconds, then I'm tearing this place apart, whether you've evacuated or not.”
This time, all of the mechanics evacuated as quickly as they could manage. Once they were gone, Lambda unleashed a flurry of shots at every vehicle in the hangar, reducing billions of guilders worth of equipment to burning wreckage in a matter of seconds. Satisfied with the destruction, she took aim at the airlock and blew it open, then flew out of the hangar.
Outside the ship, Lambda reversed direction and began flying a circuitous route around the vessel's central hull. Ships of the Onyx Down's class had four point-defense systems for anti-air defense. She would not get far if she left those intact. In the chaos of her sudden hijacking, it would take a moment for the bridge to override the I.F.F. and register her craft as an enemy. That lag time would provide her with a brief window of opportunity to secure her escape.
One by one, the domes of the point-defense systems came into view; and one by one, she obliterated them with volleys from her rail guns. Soon, all four turrets were disabled. Now their only remaining armaments were the main batteries, totally unsuited to attacking a small, fast target. Satisfied with her work, Lambda set her Black Wind thrusters to maximum output and rocketed away from the Onyx Down.
The carrier's engines came alive as the vessel gave chase. Lambda was unconcerned. As powerful as the Onyx Down's engines were, they simply had too much mass to match the acceleration of an Arrow-3 outfitted with Black Wind attachments. It would only be a matter of time until she escaped their sensor range.
Her confidence fell as the sensors showed a smaller craft launching from the carrier. A moment later, their analysis of the silhouette and energy signature reported the bogey as a Spetum-class aerospace fighter-bomber, rapidly overtaking her position.
Lambda cursed her sloppiness and squeezed her wrist to inject herself with linkage fluid. Somehow, in the confusion of fire and debris filling the vast hangar, she had missed a craft. Worse, in her rush to disable the Onyx Down's anti-air capability and then escape from their sensor range, she had left the launch catapult intact, providing them a means to overtake her.
A flash warned Lambda of incoming fire and she rocketed to the side just in time to avoid a fusillade of azure particle beams. The Spetum careened past her at high speed and then began swinging around for another pass.
The pilot could be only one person. The commanding officers would know that sending anyone else against her would be suicide. She tried to open a transmission to the enemy craft.
“Attention enemy Spetum,” she said. “Omicron, is that you? Do you read me?”
“Yeah,” came the cold reply, Omicron's voice edged with razor sharpness. “I read you, traitor.”
Lambda's instrument panel warned of a weapons lock, then she tracked a pair of missiles bearing down on her. She responded by releasing a screen of chaff. The missiles got lost within the chaff and detonated, unleashing a cluster of warheads that engulfed the entire area in an array of powerful explosions. The ensuing burst of radiation temporarily overwhelmed Lambda's sensors, and Omicron's fighter disappeared from her readout.
“Omicron, listen to me,” she said desperately. “The Theran Union is not what you think it is. All of your memories are a fabricated product of the augmentation process. They erased our experiences of the Union's abuses and implanted fake memories to fill us with a sense of false loyalty.”
“As if I'd listen to the words of a traitor,” Omicron answered.
Omicron's signal reappeared behind Lambda and targeted her with another volley. Exploiting her enhanced reflexes and g-resistance to their fullest, she engaged in a series of rapid zig-zagging maneuvers, narrowly dodging the assault as deadly blue beams and red tracer rounds flew all around her. Then she rocketed to the side as Omicron's craft once again blazed past her and began a tight turn for another attack run.
“How could you do this to me?” Omicron's pained voice crackled through the speakers. “I trusted you. One of the few people in the world I've ever trusted, and you betrayed me. All for some insane delusion!”
“I haven't betrayed you, Omicron,” Lambda insisted. “It's the Union that's taken advantage of your trust. Think about it. If they're worthy of our loyalty, then why do they have to shackle us with programming that overrides our free will? Come with me, and you can be free of your bonds too.”
“Shut your fucking mouth, traitor.”
Omicron acquired a fresh lock and fired another missile. Lambda released another chaff screen and backed off as the multi-warhead detonated, filling her viewscreen with blazing lights. Then she gasped in surprise as the Spetum emerged from the center of the explosions, firing another barrage of slugs and particle beams. Despite Lambda's frantic dodge, one of the beams caught her left maneuvering column, blasting it to pieces.
“You refuse to listen to me, no matter what?” she cried. “Then you leave me no choice but to defend myself.”
She raised both of her rail guns and unleashed a rapid fusillade at the oncoming Spetum. Omicron propelled his craft to the side and made a tight evasive turn, avoiding her barrage with rapid corkscrew maneuvers. She acquired a target lock and unleashed a massive barrage of mini-missiles that fell upon the Spetum in a swarm. Omicron sent several of them off-course with a chaff screen, but there were so many that still more blazed past the chaff and arced toward his craft. A chain of brilliant explosions spread across Lambda's viewscreen. Her sensors flooded with static as the ensuing radiation burst once again overwhelmed her receivers.
“Did I get him?”
A particle beam lanced from the expanding blossom of fire, missing Lambda's craft by mere meters. The next instant, the Spetum emerged from the chain of explosions, damaged but still operational, and bore down on her at murderous speed.
“That's Chi strain,” she said ruefully. “As expected, you're a worthy opponent, Omicron.”
“Likewise,” came the unexpected reply. “Your skill is the one thing I acknowledge about you. Too bad you're a miserable traitor.”
Lambda and Omicron flew toward each other at maximum acceleration. Lambda shot her railguns at such a rapid rate of fire that the computer finally locked her weapons to prevent them from melting. At the same time, she weaved frantically back and forth to avoid the beams of azure death flashing around her, until finally one of them struck her left railgun, destroying it in an explosion that sent her careening off-course. As she fired the stabilizers to right herself, she saw Omicron's Spetum spin past, belching fire and sparks.
“You're not better than me,” came Omicron's furious voice. “You're not—”
The transmission broke off into static as the Spetum exploded in a silent ball of fire. Then the glow of the explosion faded, leaving behind only red-hot pieces of debris spinning off into the black void of space.
“Omicron.” Lambda's eyes filled with tears, which floated away and splashed against the inside of her visor. “You tried to be a friend, if only Spacy hadn't twisted you into something evil. I promise, I'll make them pay for what they did to both of us.”
She opened her visor, wiped the tears out of her eyes, then set her thrusters to maximum output and blasted away from the battle zone, leaving the Onyx Down and the wreckage of Omicron's fighter far behind.
48
Following a long rest in a storage closet hastily converted into temporary quarters, Vic received a summons from Pierson to report to the underwater hangar. He was able to find it by getting directions from passing Aqualung members and examining maps on the wall displays.
The hangar was an expansive chamber, most of its space occupied by a single vessel that resembled a cross between an 80-meter elongated arrowhead and a giant whale. An insignia of a crashing wave adorned the side of the vessel along with the name, S.L.C.S. Skyfish.
Guntar, Pierson, and Amos stood in front of the vessel. Assembled before them were Eliot, Cena, Esther, Astral, and several Aqualung personnel whom Vic d
id not recognize. Vic jogged up to the group and fell into line in front of the assembled officers.
As Vic's gaze drifted across the officers standing in front of him, his mind turned back to the confrontation with the man called Falsrain. Falsrain had implied that Pierson was actually Admiral Andre Maximillian, T.U. Spacy's famed Pirate Hunter. The fact that Pierson seemed to know Falsrain lent credence to the claims. Despite Pierson's esteemed status within SLIC, their records contained precious little information about his past. If he really was Admiral Maximillian, that would make him even more of a Theran pureblood than Vic. How to reconcile that with his lofty rhetoric about how spacers would lead humanity to a new and brighter phase of history? Vic was dying to ask him these and many other questions, but an appropriate time had yet to present itself.
“Now that everyone is here,” Amos said, “we can commence our briefing. The mission is simple. We will take the Skyfish to an asteroid settlement located in high orbit. There, we will infiltrate a Union research laboratory in search of information pertaining to Radiation Research Subject 778, also known as Astral. Once we have procured the information, we will return to base. That is all.”
Without further preamble, everyone present boarded the ship. Vic followed most of the others to the passenger compartment while the officers headed for the bridge. He sat next to Astral, who had been provided with an oversized SLIC uniform that hung loose on her thin frame, and helped her fasten her restraints.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Fine,” she answered.
“Looking sharp in that uniform,” he joked. “Thinking of becoming a soldier?”
“Only if that's what I was meant to do,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I just want to fulfill my purpose,” she said. “But I can't do that until I find out what it is.”
A screen at the front of the passenger compartment blinked on, showing a video feed of the hangar interior. Vents opened in the sides of the hangar and water began pouring in as an automated voice announced, “Hangar flooding in progress. All hands, stand by for launch.”
Soon, the water level rose above the vessel and the clear view of the hangar gave way to one obscured by undulating ribbons of green and blue. Once the hangar was completely flooded, the gigantic bay doors began sliding open.
“Everyone, strap yourselves in tight,” Amos's voice sounded over the intercom. “We're about to launch. The acceleration is going to be intense until we break through the atmosphere.”
*
The lights of a thousand stars shone together with the omnipresent face of Saris in the placid mirror of Inverted Sound. Then an enormous waterspout exploded from the center of the sound, sending out high waves that sped toward the shoreline. The piscine silhouette of the Skyfish erupted from the center of the waterspout and sped toward the sky, a virtual waterfall streaming from its hull.
Inverted Sound shrank to a dark finger with a smattering of lights on its southern shore, then diminished to a mere speck, and finally vanished altogether within the splotchy mass of Chalice's western continent as the Skyfish broke free of the moon's atmosphere. As the ocher-ringed world continued receding slowly into the distance, the ship turned to take it on an intercept course with Ajna Station.
*
The trip to Ajna Station took several hours. To help pass the time in the passenger compartment, Eliot took out his pocket computer and used its holographic projector to start a virtual game of cards. Cena, Esther, Vic, and even Astral unfastened their restraints and, with a few low-gravity navigational mishaps, crowded around Eliot's seat to join in. At first, Astral did poorly as she learned the rules, but before long she began winning the lion's share of the hands. Finally, after losing ten hands in a row, Eliot let out a cry of frustration.
“I'm pretty good at this game, you know,” he said. “Back on Port Osgow, me and some of the boys would get a game going every payday, and I'd walk away with a profit every time. It's not like I'm getting terrible hands, either.” He thrust an accusing finger at Astral. “I've heard the rumors about you. You're using the psycho waves from your third eye to see what cards everybody else has got, aren't you?”
Astral shook her head. “I can sense the Voice much more clearly now, but it's being quiet at the moment. It's a simple game of observation and probabilities. I'm just memorizing everybody's plays to calculate the odds of what hands they're holding, what cards are still in the deck, and so on.”
Eliot's jaw dropped. “You can do that in your head? When you just learned the rules today?”
Astral tilted her head and looked at Eliot in confusion. “Can't you?”
Cena laughed at Eliot. “Looks like you met your match today, Mr. Card Sharp.”
Eliot threw up his hands. “That's it. I'm done. No way I can win against a human supercomputer, unless it's by dumb luck.” Then a thoughtful look appeared on his face and his mouth spread into a devilish smile. “Wait a minute. With skills like that, she could compete in the pro circuit. If I could be her manager and take a share of the profits...”
“Hey, there.” Vic glared at Eliot. “What evil schemes are you trying to pull her into? Don't go dragging innocent young girls into your world of corruption.”
Eliot returned Vic's glare. “What are you, her guardian?”
“Looks like somebody has to be, with guys like you around,” Vic replied.
“Oh yeah?” Eliot said. “What if I cut you in for half?”
At that moment, the external feed flashed on, showing the dark outline of an asteroid. All thoughts of card games vanished from the passengers' minds as they turned to look at the giant rock floating silently through space.
“We've arrived,” Amos' voice announced. “Scans show that the asteroid has been hollowed out and riddled with artificial chambers, but there are no signs of movement. Looks like this place has been dead for a long time.”
Esther opened a line to the bridge. “So it's a deserted colony?” she asked. “Any sign of why it was abandoned?”
“No external indications,” Amos replied. “It's silent as a tomb. We'll circle the station a couple times to make sure we're alone, then we're going in. Better put on vac suits. The atmosphere might be toxic, if there's an atmosphere at all.”
“Or there could be radiation,” Vic added quietly.
49
The Skyfish circled the asteroid twice; then, seeing no signs of activity in the vicinity, it flew into the deserted dock. Since there was no power to operate the landing clamps, the ship matched its velocity to the asteroid's and hovered in the center of the dock. The boarding ramp swung open and most of the passengers came out in vacuum suits, with a handful staying behind to man the ship.
“No atmosphere here, obviously,” Esther said, her voice sounding hollow over the comm. “We'll see what it's like further inside.”
The group made their way to the airlock at the farthest end of the dock. With no power to operate it, Pierson had to use a magnetic lever to pry the door open. They maneuvered inside using the thrusters on their vac suits, then Pierson closed the door behind them before opening the second door. Inside, they found a slightly curved corridor stretching away in either direction into utter blackness. The lights on their suits provided the only illumination, carving lonely circles of light out of the omnipresent darkness.
“According to the readouts, there's still atmosphere in here,” Esther reported. “No harmful levels of any toxic compounds, but even so I recommend we stick to our oxygen tanks, just to be on the safe side.”
“Good idea,” Guntar replied.
The team proceeded down the corridor, guided by the lights on their vacuum suits. The first few minutes of exploration revealed only empty passages, but then a dark shape drifted toward them at the edge of their lights. They stopped and waited for the shape to draw near, turning end over end through the air. Finally, it resolved into a human silhouette; but as it came closer, they saw that it was hideously missha
pen, its body covered with gigantic tumors and extra, malformed appendages, its lopsided face twisted into an eternal scream of agony.
“Saris' Eyes,” Eliot exclaimed. “It's a Messenger. Is this place contaminated with repil radiation?”
“No, it's all right,” Esther assured him. “The radiation levels are normal for this altitude. Look, the dry air has mummified him. However he died, it happened a long time ago.”
“'Some of my siblings went berserk,'” Guntar whispered, almost to himself. “'I was the only survivor.'”
All gazes turned to Astral. Her red irises shone through the visor of her suit, her eyes wide with some unnamed emotion. The spell was broken by Esther pushing past the others to the front of the group.
“Whatcha doing, Doc?” Eliot asked.
Esther intercepted the mummified corpse, took out a scalpel, and began scraping one of its arms. “I'm taking a tissue sample for later analysis,” she replied. “Help me out here. I still can't use my broken arm.”
After pausing to collect a sample, the team continued deeper into the station, passing through a residential block, a commercial sector full of abandoned stores still packed with wares, and a park situated in a biodome, all of the plants long since withered away. Everywhere they went, they found more corpses, each the same as the first—mummified, their bodies twisted and malformed into grotesque monsters. Most of the dead wore civilian clothes, and included men, women, and children.
“When this station got hit, it happened fast,” Pierson observed. “It must have been one intense burst of repil radiation that saturated the entire colony. All of the residents were infected before anything could be done. As soon as Colonial Admin found out, they would have put the entire station under quarantine, leaving everyone inside to die.”
