Alpha Rises

by James David Victor

  “Let’s go get some, Captain,” the Duergar growled.

  Out of the shell of the ship climbed three figures, small against the backdrop of Prime. Wearing their bubble-like visors, they swam through the vacuum, wearing their tight-fitting encounter suits as they drifted down to the bronze and steel-colored shell below. First came the captain, and behind him was Cassandra, and then, last of all, came the large shadow blotting out the stars that was Val Pathok. Despite the captain’s insistence, he had even brought the Judge with him, his personal meson rifle that would have been a cannon in anyone else’s hands.

  “Remember this is a discrete job,” El whispered through the visor’s communications, hearing a grunt from the Duergar in response. El wasn’t sure that counted as an agreement or not, but he would take it.

  They moved past a strange landscape of outlet pipes and bulkheads, blocky sections that rose from the floor and were marked with functional, industrial insignia. Antenna and dishes stood like thickets, flashing a baleful red.

  “Cass? You got the schematics?” the captain hissed.

  “Sending through now,” her voice sounded pinched over the communicators, just like her face did, El thought as he saw her pale and ghost-like visage behind her own plexi-crystal.

  There was a muted beep and lights appeared over the inside of Eliard’s visor, a projected schematic overlay which he could turn and manipulate by flicking his eyes one way or another.

  “It says here that we’re over the logistics bay, whatever that is.” Eliard checked the map. “Have we got the access codes?”

  “Yes. Some,” Cassandra said. “Archival could only get a few, though. Here, this way is the nearest entrance port.”

  It’s true that you can’t hear anything in space, but to compensate for that, most suits had an in-built sensor array that pinged at the nearest movement, and right now, El’s peripheral vision was flaring with rapidly expanding and fading orange circles.

  “We got incoming, nine o’clock!” El turned.

  “What?” Val growled.

  “On your left!” The captain had already seen what it was, however—a heavy bubble of a drone in sleek black, with two long mechanical arms extended and a red scanning light that swept over the hull.

  “It’s a repair drone. It’ll be looking for what caused the damage to their shell!” El said, raising his blaster.

  THAP! A dull pressure-wave of energy shook the captain before he could get a solid target on the drone, as a glowing purple and white bolt shot from over his shoulder, bursting against one of the thing’s shoulders and dismembering an arm, sending it spinning to one side into a nest of antennas.

  “Hm. Not used to working in zero-G,” the gunner said, readjusting his sight to take another shot.

  “Captain?” Cassandra on the suit communicator, sounding worried. “Won’t it cause alarm if their repair drones start getting blown up?”

  “It’ll cause more alarm if they scan and find a foreign vessel crash-landed onto their shell,” El replied. The space beyond the hull of Prime was a mess, anyway. The container ship might have finally stopped rolling, but there was debris all around, flaring as it tumbled toward Prime or against the other satellite drones of the grid.

  THAP! Val’s next shot blasted the thing as it was trying to untangle itself from the wires. It exploded into a bright ball of fire.

  “We’ll just have to hope that they think this is wreckage,” El said, before opening a link to Irie. “Hanson? How are you doing with the repairs? I have to warn you, you’re going to have Armcore drones swarming over you before long.”

  “Then I guess you’d better get in and out of there quickly, right, Captain? Irie out,” the engineer replied tartly before clicking off.

  She’ll get it done, the captain thought. He had never met a mechanic as good as she was. “Which way to the entrance?”

  “Twenty meters ahead,” Cassandra said, bounding over the nearest bulkhead and sliding across the bronze metal toward a large circular well. “Got it. Transmitting access code.” her hands flicked over her wrist communicator. There was a tremor and a hiss of gases from the circular port beside her as the round hatch lifted out of the metal.

  Here we go, then… Eliard said a quick prayer to any disreputable gods who might be listening and hopped over the side.

  Once inside, El found himself floating down a service tunnel, ladders on one side of the metal wall, to what looked to be the bulkhead of a decompression chamber below. Cassandra followed him, gliding down through the vacuum as gracefully as she had been when she was swimming, and then the distant starlight was eclipsed by the large shadow of Val Pathok as he lumbered over the edge.

  Eliard’s boots clanked on the bulkhead and he could only hope that there weren’t any workers on the other side. Maybe they’ll think that it’s just more debris from the container ship outside, he thought.

  “Hatch closing,” Cassandra announced as the circular metal hissed to a close above them, plunging them into the dim glow of their visor lights. Eliard checked his blaster pistol. Full charge still. He prayed he wouldn’t have to use it. What the hell am I doing. Breaking into Armcore Prime. I must be mad, he thought one more time as the service shaft they were in suddenly filled with the roar of air, and he felt the pull of gravity on his stomach and legs. The automatic pressure had readjusted, and he tapped at his suit controls for his visor to open with a smooth hum. Ah. That feels better, he thought, fighting off a slight feeling of claustrophobia. He wondered at the irony of that, as he had committed his life to flying around in a metal box through the emptiness of space.

  But no time for anxieties, as Cassandra was already kneeling at the hatchway below, flicking the small console buttons on her wrist to transmit the codes that they had been given by House Archival. A light set into the hatch flashed green and the mechanical bolts slid back, as Val heaved on the wheel to haul the hatchway open.

  “Now!” Eliard pointed his blaster into the hole that was revealed, but there were no angry Armcore soldiers waiting for them here. Instead, he found himself looking at a low gantry inside a semi-circular tunnel, stretching off into the body of the station. In-set lights glowed a dull sodium-yellow, and the place ticked and hissed with the sounds of hidden pipes.

  “That way leads to the mainframe.” Cassandra pointed in one of the only two available directions, and, with no better plan, El hopped inside and started crawling along the gantry.

  12

  Interlude III: Alpha

  BWARP! The clipper-scout was flushed with red emergency lights, and Captain Farlow’s ears were filled with the sound of sirens. The ship was in trouble, and what was worse, Farlow was now certain that he couldn’t trust Specialist Merik.

  “Specialist, what’s that you have there?” he barked at the man, seeing him return with a bulky item made of metal and wires.

  “One of the plasma cores from the warp engine. I’ve wired it so that it will explode with a simple transmission signal,” the specialist said, ignoring the captain’s glare as he turned to the table to finish his work.

  “Who told you to remove one of the warp cores!?” Farlow said, feeling faintly astounded by the man’s arrogance.

  “Special Protocol Three-One-Four. Check your orders, Captain,” Merik said tersely, without even a glimmer of the respect that he was supposed to give his commanding officer.

  “You will halt what you are doing until I do!” he snapped, and this time, the specialist did in fact stop, but only to lean over the device and look annoyed at the interruption.

  Captain Farlow hit the buttons on his wrist computer, cycling through the mission directives that he had been given. There wasn’t a lot, to be honest. He had been dispatched with the amazingly vague sentiment of ‘search and gather intelligence,’ which he knew could mean anything from collecting live samples and prisoners to just returning with data scans. It was a go-slow operation. He gritted his teeth. He had known that from the start. The sort of vague mission parameters t
hat meant that no matter what he achieved, his superiors—in this case, Senior Tomas himself—could find an excuse to further punish him.

  But now, right at the end of his mission directives, there was an ‘upgraded’ set of rules that had been activated. But by what?

  “This mission has broken, Captain.” The Specialist seemed to read his mind. “And that means my confidential protocols have been activated. Three-One-Four: Use all measures to destroy the target, which is what I am doing.”

  “How are we going to jump out of here?” Reus the pilot said, his face pale with worry. The captain didn’t blame him for being worried, as there was a lot to be worried about. Their ship was just slightly better than crippled, and that meant that they had very limited options of how to get out of this mess. Outside the cockpit windows, he could see the slowly shifting walls of the vast trash containers on all sides. They were deep in the heart of this refuse-belt, and so far, they hadn’t encountered any more malicious hacking attempts by the strange machine that hovered above Sebopol.

  “We can still jump on one core,” Farlow said dismissively to the pilot. He had no time for weak men. “Which is something that I presume the specialist here knows already, which is why he only dismantled one?”

  Merik gave a tight smile that did not appear friendly at all and turned back to his work.

  Yes, they would still be able to jump, the captain knew, but it would be far more dangerous. They wouldn’t be able to travel very far, and their engine would take a considerably longer time to cycle up and recover afterwards. If they were attacked by any bandit or mercenary—or Alpha itself—they would just be sitting ducks.

  But Farlow also had to weigh that possibility against the devastating power that a properly primed warp core could do. Warp cores were based on Valyien technology, a synthesis of exotic elements and equations that not even the brightest minds fully understood. From what little the captain did know, it was that they ripped holes through the fabric of time and space. Relying on the sub-quantum field, they managed to create gravitational wells that were so tight and focused that they warped and charged subatomic space and bent it to their will.

  A bomb made out of a warp core would release that power to create a cascade effect. It could destroy entire space stations or take out a war cruiser.

  But would it be powerful enough to take out that machine-god that they had seen on the drone’s surveillance cameras? Farlow didn’t know. No one knew. That thing was big, after all. As large as one of Armcore war cruisers already? And it had appeared to be growing moment by moment.

  The clipper-scout shook as its erratic systems struggled to regain control from the damage done by the hacked signal that Alpha had sent. Farlow, Gunner Lupik, Pilot Reus, and Specialist Merik clutched the tables, chairs, and walls for the nearest supports.

  “We can’t trust a drone to carry it,” Farlow stated. They had all seen the way that the machine had taken over their previous drones just by assaulting them with code.

  “And we also cannot fly this ship to deliver it,” the specialist said with a nod. The same threat from Alpha had almost disabled their entire ship, when the Alpha virus had piggybacked onto the drone that had returned to the ship. “We cannot trust any machine to do this.” The specialist finished his work with a tiny handheld welder and stepped back, a look of pride on his face.

  “It has to be one of us,” Reus said with even more worry. “Someone has to go out there in an encounter suit and try to get their hands on that thing.” Farlow saw the realization, and then the new fear crossed his face as the man quickly added, “But I’m the pilot. You need me to get us out of here.”

  “I’ve been trained on how to fly,” the specialist pointed out cruelly.

  Of all the people that I want to send out there against the thing, then it would be Specialist Merik, Farlow thought cynically.

  “I’ll do it.” Gunner Lupik said gravely, looking at the captain with her hazel-grey eyes. “Reus is the pilot. You’re the captain. Merik here is…” She frowned. “Whatever it is he is.” She shrugged. “I’m the gunner, and that thing is a weapon. Unless we’re going to engage the thing in direct combat, then I am pretty superfluous here. Plus, I’ve had space operations training.”

  “We’ve all had that training, Soldier,” Farlow hissed back. Not her. Not the only one here that I like.

  “Make your choice, Captain.” Merik smiled coldly. Farlow wasn’t even sure if he could trust that man out there with a powerful bomb and secret orders.

  “I’m the logical choice, Captain. I don’t mind. This is for Armcore. These are orders.” Her eyes flickered for a moment with doubt. “No matter where they come from.”

  “Thank you, Lupik, but no. I need you here as a cool head. And there is a long journey back to Prime, which may require your skills on the gun ports. I will do it. I am the officer in charge,” Farlow said gruffly. It was the only choice that the man could make. It was so natural to state the words that it wasn’t a choice at all, really. Back before he had been demoted, and even when he had been a four-star general, Farlow had never gotten used to asking his men to do things that he wouldn’t do himself. It was one of the things that separated the old guard of the Armcore military from the younger snakes. Like the Specialist Merik here, he thought.

  “But, Captain, it’ll be a suicide mission!” Lupik said.

  Probably. He thought about floating out there alone with just the primed warp core in his hands and the thrum of his suit’s directional rockets. Whatever Alpha was building, it was so vast that it could squash him like a bug. Would he even have enough energy in his suit to get out of the radius of the bomb blast?

  But this is what I signed up for. His hands moved unconsciously to the weathered Armcore badge on his suit. Even if he was taking orders from unwise leaders like Tomas, he was still an Armcore man. He would do this for his crew, no matter what they thought of him. That was what a real leader did.

  “Give me the device, Specialist.” Farlow started to take off all his weapons from the suit. Make it lighter, faster. His training started to kick in.

  “You are a brave man, Captain,” Specialist Merik said as he handed Farlow the heavy device, but he said it in such a way that Farlow didn’t know if it was a compliment or an insult.

  “Hmph,” Farlow grunted. He attached the core to the front carry on his chest as Merik pushed the small transmitter into his hands as well. It was a simple device. Just press ‘send’ and then the thing would blow.

  “Here.” Lupik loaded up two extra energy cells onto his utility belt. It still might not be enough to fly all the way out there and back, but it was all that they had.

  “Reus, bring up the coordinates there.” Farlow checked the distance he would have to travel, made a brief mental calculation.

  “Lupik? I place you in acting command,” Farlow started to say.

  “Actually, sir, you can’t do that. A specialist outranks a gunner,” Merik pointed out. “As soon as you leave this ship, I will be in acting command until we deliver the ship to the nearest Armcore unit.”

  It was almost enough to make Farlow reconsider his actions. Could he trust Merik in charge of these two? Of course not, but then again, he didn’t think that Merik would throw his own life away along with the rest. But Farlow still bared his teeth at the man, earning a disapproving sneer in return.

  “Then here are my orders, Specialist. You are to wait until I have reached the target location, and then you are to begin cycling the singular warp core that we have. I will try to return before you jump, but if anything happens to me, or I am gone longer than eight minutes, then you are to full-burn out of this belt and initiate warp travel as soon as you are clear, agreed?”

  “We can’t leave you here, Captain,” Lupik said.

  “Those are the man’s orders, Gunner,” Merik said sternly. “The captain is only ensuring that the most people survive, after all, aren’t you?”

  Farlow didn’t answer the man but nodded at
Reus and Lupik and moved to the hatchway. “Prepare decompression chamber!” He barked the traditional cry and stepped into the small round room, closing the seal behind him.

  It was white and grey in there…and quiet. On the far side was the petal-porthole with three red lights over it. He prepared himself by the jump pad and tensed as the red lights flashed once, then one turned green, the second turned green, and then the third.

  The doors opened with a hiss of escaping gases, and the captain, who had once been a general, shot out of the clipper-scout like a cannonball.

  He was traveling too fast. The brass-colored wall of the nearest trash container was approaching too quickly. It had been a long time since he’d had to do emergency combat movements in an encounter suit, but he knew what to do. He had done it plenty of times before. Pushing one arm out to change his rotation, his feet swung out below him, and he fired the small propulsion rockets attached to his ankles. He turned his rocket-like propulsion into an arc that swept him up the container wall, before grazing it with a shoulder and tumbling up it.

  “Urk!” he gasped, not out of pain because the large suit had absorbed all the shocks, but from the sudden dizzying change of perspective. His acceleration was slowed, his suit was undamaged, and he managed to grab onto an external bulkhead to stop himself.

  Phew. Swinging around, he saw his vulture-like ship far below him, listing to one side as it hung between two walls of containers. Small sensor lights glittered under its belly and in its nosecone. He wondered if they would make it out of there alive.

  Because I probably won’t, he thought, raising one hand to tap at his collar and activate the internal tracking computer. A green vector arrow appeared on the inside of his visor, marking the way over the top of the container to the next. That way led to his target. He bunched his knees and kicked, then activated the rockets to give his flight speed. The container flashed underneath him, and he was surrounded by the familiar vision he had seen through the surveillance drone’s cameras. Monolithic metal containers on all sides as large as buildings, containing acres of humanity’s trash. It was clear why Alpha had chosen this site in the end, the captain saw. It was like a sweetshop of components.