by Korza, Jay
The warrior had found that throughout every species, every culture, every level of sentient evolution, when a piece of tech didn't work, the user hit the offending item to try to beat it into submissive self-repair. The warrior's heavily manipulated genetic code was no different and he let himself chuckle as he struck the shield's controls and thought of the universal oddity.
His chuckling ceased when he realized what he was doing and thinking. First off, warriors didn't chuckle. Second, his thoughts had begun to stray into tangents about how some things were universal among the slave races, Nortes and now even some of the warriors. And if some things were universal, maybe they weren't all that different from one another. These thoughts were unacceptable and he felt the urge to turn himself in to his superiors for evaluation and most likely termination. He knew he should, felt he had to, but somehow he was able to just barely keep from doing it. Another thing he shouldn't have been able to do.
The warrior's internal turmoil ceased when the perimeter alert on his control panel lit up a deep and bright blue. He then began cycling through the security cameras until he saw something almost as unbelievable as his most recent thoughts had been. One of the human prisoners was escaping! But that was impossible. How could he get out of a torture tube, which is impossible, and then get past any one of the thirty or so warriors currently at this base?
However impossible it was, there he was crawling away from the airlock at security station three, the post next to his own. The human was in a torn uniform and bleeding from several places on his body. Something just wasn't right about the scene he was looking at. The torture tubes generally didn't cause that much bleeding or tearing of the clothes; the process was much more surgical. Of course, no one had ever escaped a torture tube before so maybe that's why this human looked differently than what the warrior was used to.
Regardless, he needed to act. No one was at security station three right now so it was up to him to take care of things. According to protocol, he should have called for backup before exiting the base security doors, but he didn't. He felt the need to prove himself and his loyalty to the empire after having such seditious thoughts earlier. And just in case he didn't go to war alongside his brothers against the humans, he wanted to take this one chance to fight one of the humans on his own. He was just a little disappointed that this human was already injured and wouldn't be able to put up a proper fight.
~
Seth waited and watched patiently as Blaze crawled from one airlock to the other. They made it to the base without being detected but the airlocks seemed impenetrable with the gear they had with them. Stealth had kept them alive so far, so they continued to use it to their advantage.
The plan was simple: make Blaze look like an escapee and then trip the base alarms. When an airlock opened to retrieve the prisoner, the team would attack and infiltrate. The not-so-simple part was setting off the base alarm. They tried prying the airlock, hoping it would alert the base to an attempted break-in: nothing. Throwing rocks at what seemed to be a communications array on the roof: nothing. Jumping up and down in front of a security camera: nothing. Apparently the enemy also thought their base was impenetrable because nothing seemed to set off the alarm. Seth wondered how high their security thresholds must be in order to allow all of these attempts to go unnoticed.
Seth hoped that his enemies were at least a little similar in some security protocols, otherwise the last thing he could think of wouldn't work. He told Blaze to go to the airlock entry code interface and start typing in random patterns on the keypad. Hopefully too many incorrect codes would set off the alarm. There was also the astronomically slim chance that Blaze might accidentally enter the proper code.
Blaze had just barely touched the keypad when it began to rapidly blink a deep and bright blue and the security camera swung in his direction. Blaze hit the ground and began to slowly crawl away from the door. Seth surmised that Blaze's bloody finger, from his prisoner makeover, had set off a DNA sensor in the keypad and subsequently the alarm. He thought it was odd that the alarm's color was blue.
The door began to cycle open and Seth waited for the enemy soldier to cross the imaginary line in the sand that had been decided on earlier. No one from Seth's team had seen the enemy yet so he let out a soft whisper. “Holy shit.”
The comms were more than sensitive enough to pick up a whisper because they were designed to transmit even subvocal speech. Surgeon subvocalized, “Steady everyone. He's a big son of a bitch but we have more than enough people and firepower to drop him. Get ready, Blaze, he's almost at the line.”
They wanted the warrior, or had it been warriors, to get far enough out that Seth, Beast, and Joker could enter the airlock while the rest of the team engaged the enemy. With apparently only one warrior coming out of the airlock, Seth turned on his remote camera that was set to view the airlock from the front so his team could view the interior before they entered. “It looks clear, like he was the only one in there or coming out.” Seth was prepping his team. “He's got two more steps before he's at our line. When we make entry, get to that control station and provide me cover while I look it over.” Seth received two clicks each from Beast and Joker.
The warrior moved slowly towards the human, maybe more warily than slowly. Something still wasn't right about this. As his next footstep ended he realized everything all at once: The uniform was different from every other uniform the prisoners were wearing. The injuries were definitely not surgical-like as if they had come from a torture tube. The injuries were small and in non-critical areas. Most of the blood was smeared to make the human look more injured than he was. It was a trap and it was too late to do anything but fight through it.
Surgeon fired the first round, followed closely by Blaze and then a cacophony of bullets converged on the enemy soldier. Seth and his team began to slip into the airlock and he noticed from his peripheral vision that the rounds seemed to bounce off a shield of some sort on the warrior's chest. The warrior was raising his right lower arm and it obviously held a weapon of some sort. But Seth's job was to ensure the airlock didn't close or that he could at least open it again in case it did. So he and his team continued through the doorway and Seth forced himself to turn his full attention forward towards what seemed to be a control station at the back of the airlock.
Surgeon felt a chill go through his body when he realized that his rounds, along with everyone else's, were completely ineffective. “Blaze, get the FUCK out of there now!”
Blaze rolled over just as the first of two massive edged weapons came down in the dirt where he had been just a fraction of a second ago. The blades luckily missed him but the huge blue fist did not. Blaze thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head as the warrior's knuckles left their imprints in the back of his skull. Before Blaze hit the ground, he knew he was going to be unconscious and just hoped the rest of his team fared better than he did. Blackness swallowed him before his face met the ground and proved Sir Isaac Newton correct once again: an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless or until the ground reaches out and grabs that object, which just so happens to be your face, and shreds the shit out of it (paraphrased).
The warrior felt his personal shield take projectile rounds along with a slight electrical shock that meant the shield wasn't going to last long. In his overpowering desire to prove himself worthy again, he had neglected to bring his plasma rifle and opted to arm himself with only his close-quarters blades. The human was faster than he expected and was able to dodge the blades but the warrior's training was superb and his follow-through landed a solid punch to the back of the human's skull. He could tell he didn't fracture the skull but hoped it caused enough brain damage to take the human out of the fight. He was obviously outnumbered; with his personal shield failing and only bladed weapons, this was a battle he knew he was going to lose.
Smoke, a human operator with a proclivity for pipes, launched an HE grenade from his rifle and saw it detonate against the warrior’s chest. The
shield shimmered and then seemed to shut off completely as was then verified when three rounds penetrated the warrior's chest and blue blood spurted out onto the ground. Smoke tried to fire his grenade launcher again but it jammed and malfunctioned. He reflexively performed the immediate action drill for a malfunction to clear the problem, but it didn't work. He tried the secondary drill and it still didn't work. Smoke then cursed and used his fist to pound the ejection port for the grenade launcher and then he heard the breach slip back into battery and the next grenade cycle into the chamber.
The warrior felt the rounds enter his chest but kept moving forward. He was about to die with nothing to show for it. Not one single human was going to die by his hands. He was just about to throw one of his blades, hoping to hit the human nearest him, when he saw one of the humans pounding on his weapon with a closed fist. The warrior actually smiled and gave a short chuckle as he again realized that they weren't really all that different after all. This realization made him stop in his tracks as the human brought up his now functioning weapon and fired a grenade right into the warrior's face, exploding after it penetrated his skull.
Surgeon saw the alien's head explode and knew the fight outside was over. He directed his team to create a perimeter and instructed Smoke to look over the alien's body and gather any intel that might be available. Surgeon then commed Seth. “Cadet, status update.”
Seth was still looking over the control console. “ “We're clear in here. This console is fairly basic but without an understanding of their language, I can't figure out how to use most of its functions. I can open and close the door, though. There's a button with a picture of the airlock next to it, so all of my college education tells me that one is for the door.”
“Good job, we're coming in with one injury. Blaze is unconscious. We'll need a place to put him for treatment and maybe even stash him until we finish the rescue.” Surgeon walked by Smoke, who was already standing and finished with his alien autopsy.
Smoke was wiping the alien blood off his hands. “The alien has a personal shield but it's no longer working. I'm pretty sure it was on its last legs as it was and we overloaded it with our attack. He doesn't have any weapons other than his blades so there's nothing for us to take on that front.” Lifting the alien's left upper arm, Smoke continued, “This bracelet on his wrist has some sort of electronics but I don't know what it does. It could be a watch or some other form of personal jewelry, but because it doesn't have a display it might also be some sort of RFID device for access to areas within the base. Just to be safe, I'm going to cut off his hand just above this device in case the bracelet is an RFID that works in conjunction with a palm print.”
Surgeon was motioning to the rest of the team to enter the airlock. “Sounds like a good idea. Too bad we don't have enough time to open him up and look for major organs to figure out the best placement for kill shots. Finish up and then meet us inside. We still need to be prepared for a second confrontation in case he was just the first of several people who respond to alarms.”
The rest of Surgeon's team was already in the airlock and Seth was tapping commands into the console. Reaper, the team corpsman, was looking over Blaze and deciding on a course of treatment. Reaper had killed far more people than he had ever saved and that's one reason he got his nickname. Reaper constantly defended himself by saying that he wasn't a bad corpsman; he just couldn't save that many people because his teammates were great operators and didn't leave much to save.
Surgeon approached Seth. “What's the base status? Are they on lockdown? Should we prepare to defend this position?”
Seth continued to toy with the controls as he spoke. “I don't think so. The alarm light on the security console outside was flashing blue, which I thought was odd until I saw our alien buddy out there get shot. His blood is the same color blue so I'm guessing that all of their warning devices flash blue just like all human warnings are red, the color of our blood. It's fairly universal that species use their blood color to denote something bad, a warning of some sort. Nothing is flashing blue on this panel. Everything is green, which I think means everything is fine. Of course it could also be their version of a yellow alert but there's no way to tell right now. I'm guessing he turned off the alarm before exiting the air lock.”
“Why would he do that?” Beast asked.
Seth thought for a moment. “Maybe he thought he would be in trouble if a prisoner escaped and he was trying to fix the problem before anyone found out. Or judging by his size and personal shield, he didn't think one human prisoner would be too much for him to handle on his own. All I really know is that nothing is flashing blue and no one else seems to be on their way.”
Seth pointed to three video monitors. “I have figured out how to cycle through the security cameras. They don't view the entire base. I only get eighteen different cameras when I cycle through them. I can view the airlocks on either side of this one and the hallways that link this arm of the complex to what looks like a central elevator. No one is on any of the cameras. Again, this is just a guess but I don't think anyone is manning the adjacent airlocks. They're probably manned every third one and that's why there's overlap in the camera views.”
Smoke stepped up to Surgeon, casually placing the alien hand on Surgeon's shoulder as though it were his own. “If you're right, Cadet, then the overlap in camera views will include the portion of the hall leading to the elevator and the elevator itself. We'll need to expect and prepare for a response as we try to gain access to that lift.”
Surgeon stepped away from the console. “Cadet, Smoke, and Beast, use the cameras to look for blind spots in the system and come up with a plan to access that elevator. Make sure we're prepared to defend that position if we get spotted.” Turning to Reaper, he asked, “What's Blaze's status?”
Reaper looked up from his patient monitor. “Vital signs are good and brain activity shows a simple concussion. I could wake him but he probably won't be better than sixty-five percent of normal. Also, by waking him I'm increasing his cerebral vascular pressure before the vessels in his brain have had a chance to start healing. It puts him at risk for a spontaneous brain bleed. If we were near a shock-trauma unit, the bleed most likely wouldn't be life-threatening but in our current situation, it would definitely kill him.”
“Wake him.” Surgeon didn't like the decision but it was the best one he had. “We don't have anywhere to stash him while we finish the mission and we may not even use this airlock as our exit, so we need to take him and carrying isn't an option. Besides, his sixty-five percent is still better than the average soldier's one hundred ten percent.”
Reaper sighed but couldn't disagree with Surgeon's decision under the circumstances. He told Surgeon that in ten minutes Blaze would be as good to go as was possible given the current situation. He was also going to keep the remote patient monitor on Blaze to keep an eye on him the best he could. Reaper went back to work getting his patient prepped.
Jeeves
011110010110010101110011001000000110111001101111001000000110111001101111001000000111100101100101011100110010000001111001011001010111001100100000011110010110010101110011001000000110111001101111001011100010111000101110 yes no no no yes no yes yes.
Initial system diagnostics complete. All diagnostics show yellow across the board. Implant virtual intelligence matrix chip into Roving Automated Security Construct 3000675. Begin start-up sequence now.
Lights came on and servos began to whine. The start-up sequence was painless, as it should be to a machine without feelings, but it was an interesting experience. The Roving Automated Security Construct, RASC for short, looked around the room as it waited for its power source to be fully integrated with its new form.
The RASC had existed before this moment, but only as a program, first copied from a source file, and then pasted into a line of code that was then added to other lines of code. The process was a little disorienting, if such a concept could apply to a program. As a virtual intelligence (VI), the RASC had mo
re self-awareness than a hand tablet but less than a full-fledged AI, so being a little disoriented was a usable description for what it was processing.
Its initial lines of code were basic programming concepts that set the stage for the more advanced codes that would be added until it was complete. The software programmers of the empire had streamlined the process so just about anyone could drag-and-drop pre-made codes to create pretty much whatever they wanted. You want a toaster? Start with the base code that every single piece of electronics had, a security monitoring protocol, drop that onto a domestic user interface line of code, add some domestic utilities coding, a dash of this and a smidgen of that, and now you have a toaster.
Change that recipe and add security protocols, drop in close-quarters combat routines, advanced logic tree decision-making skills, a bunch of VI lines of code, along with some other pre-made codes and now you have a RASC.
As the lines of code were dropped into place by another program that was made to compile codes, the VI was gaining more and more information and was becoming more aware the entire time. The VI was vaguely aware that a new level of consciousness was coming and then suddenly, there was a wall and that vagueness disappeared and just as suddenly the VI knew it was complete and no more lines of code would be added.
Its photoreceptors turned on for the first time and it perceived the room in which it stood, empty of anything other than four other RASCs that had also finished the initial start-up sequence. All the power units came fully on line and the five RASCs rolled out of the room.
