Trail of Evil

by Travis S. Taylor

  Done, sir.

  Put Sehera in the loop if she has Pamela with her.

  I’ll patch it to her suit comms.

  Good girl.

  “Thank you, nurse.” Moore nodded gruffly and removed his helmet. He tossed it over his shoulder in standard AEM fashion.

  “XO to Captain!”

  “Moore here. Go, Firestorm.”

  “Sir, we’re losing systems all across the bow of the ship, and it’s spreading like wildfire. I’ve dispatched Marines and techs but we need a new plan,” the XO explained.

  “Stay on top of it, Sally!” Moore thought for a second while doing his best to listen to the activity in the operating room.

  “Her heart is ruptured and less than thirty percent intact. It will have to be replaced. Prepare the printer with her stemcell ink . . .” the voice of a doctor said in the background.

  “Alexander!” Sehera rushed to his side and grasped him in an armored hug. “I can’t stand this.”

  “She’s a soldier, Sehera. Comes with the job. She’ll make it.” Sehera looked at him as if she had a retort to that, but she must have thought better of it. She knew when situations were bigger than family discussions.

  “Are we safe?” Sehera asked him.

  “I don’t know. The bots are on the ship everywhere and are growing faster than we can contain them.” Moore multitasked simulations that Abigail ran through his mindview while he talked with his wife and the bridge, and listened to the doctors doing their best to save his daughter’s life.

  “CHENG to Captain.”

  “Moore here. Go, Joe.”

  “Sir, the bots are doing something to the hyperdrive. At first I thought they were trying to blow it up but now I’m not sure,” Buckley replied.

  “I need more than that, CHENG. What do you think they are doing?”

  When it rains, it pours, Moore thought.

  Yes, sir, Abigail agreed.

  “I, uh, think they are about to turn the projector on and hyperdrive us somewhere. And by the energy buildup, it’s not anywhere around here.” Moore didn’t like the uncertainty in Buckley’s voice.

  “Shut it down, Joe! Shut it down!”

  “Shut it down!” Joe screamed over the humming noise coming from the hyperdrive projector control system.

  “It’s not responding, sir!” one of the engineering techs replied.

  “Everybody on me!” Joe said, not sure what to do next. The full complement of the engineering team and the supporting seamen and firemen and fireman apprentices converged on him as he made his way to the center of the room. He’d been in this situation in reverse. He’d had the problem of getting power to the projector but never the problem of too much power. He stood underneath the four-meter-in-diameter pink and purple swirling tube that ran the length of a major portion of the ship. The swirling motion of the plasma inside and the Cerenkov radiation was brighter than usual and color-shifted even further into the violet than he’d ever seen.

  “Come on, girl,” he said as he reached up with his hands and tapped the bottom of the conduit to the projector tube affectionately. Then he addressed his team with a somewhat wacky idea. Hell, it wasn’t that wacky—he’d actually done it before, twice. Well, the last time he’d done it was a simulation. The time before that time he did what he had in mind, it worked, but—and there was always a “but” in these situations—it had nearly killed him and his first Engineer’s Mate. And that was years ago. The engine room had been rebuilt several times since then.

  “Listen up, everyone. We haven’t got but a few minutes, maybe, before those damned bots jaunt us through space to who knows where. I have an idea what to do but I don’t know if it will work or not.”

  “Oh shit, no, Joe!” Keri replied. “A Buckley Maneuver won’t work in reverse.”

  “Why not? We just overload the conduit between the tube and the power source and burn the conduit out. That way the projector can’t get power to it,” Joe responded. “We’re going to pull a cable from that power coupling on the jaunt drive projector here,” he pointed at the now infamous Buckley Junction. “Tie it around the junction housing and then drag it to both exit doors just like we’ve done before and then over here to the power unit for Aux Prop. The overload should blow out the conduit just before the Aux Prop junction. Now tell me a better solution and I’d be glad to implement it.” It was déjà vu all over again.

  “Well, sir,” one of the firemen interrupted, “I’m not an engineer but this is a warship. Why don’t we just get a Marine down here to blow the conduit up or something?”

  “Sorry, fireman, that won’t work. We’re too close to the tube here and it would just arc across—” Benjamin started but Buckley interrupted her.

  “Goddamned right! We can’t do it here, but we could do it further down the line!” Buckley pulled schematics of the power flow up into everyone’s DTM ship view and started pulling away layers and zooming into the hyperdrive systems.

  “Look, right here. We can blow out this fifty-meter piece of conduit here and it should do. It is likely to be a hell of a bang but we won’t be slung off into space to who knows where.”

  “The Warlords are heavily engaged in that location, sir.” One of the crew pointed out the Blue force tracker dots one deck up from that location.

  “Hmm.” Joe looked over it again. “Anybody have any other thoughts on this?”

  “Joe, it will work. We should amp up the SIFs all around the area to minimize damage to the rest of the ship,” Benjamin replied.

  “We do it then,” Joe ordered her. “CHENG to General Warboys.”

  Chapter 16

  November 7, 2406 AD

  27 Light-years from the Sol System

  Monday, 5:25 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  “Let me get this straight, Cheng, you WANT me to blow up the power conduits of our supercarrier?” General Warboys asked the chief engineer in disbelief.

  “Yes, sir! If you don’t, and soon, the bots will have complete control of the hyperdrive, and they are ramping it up to jaunt us off to somewhere in deep space,” Buckley replied over the tac-net.

  “Right here is all that has to go, right?” Warboys highlighted the conduit image in their mutually shared DTM view. The direct-to-mind link lit up as the general thought about it.

  “That’s the one!” Buckley approved. “My guess is that you have about ten minutes before the hyperdrive kicks in.”

  “Understood, CHENG. Warboys out.” Mason keyed the com to the Warlord’s tac-net channel. “Listen up, Warlords! We have a new objective. Two through Four are to form up around me and keep those goddamned bots off of me. Five through Ten, form up on them and keep those goddamned bots off them!”

  “Roger that, sir!” resounded from the team across the net.

  “Sir, what is our objective?” Two asked.

  “We have nine minutes and forty-six seconds to blow out the main hyperdrive energy conduit two decks over and one down. It is right in the thick of bot country, so stay alert!”

  Warboys rolled his tank over into hover mode and put all power to his forward structural integrity fields. The angular momentum and g-loading forced him to grunt back his breakfast and swallow some bile. The taste was just the way he liked it.

  The battlescape view of the ship formed around him in a three-dimensional ball in his DTM mindview. The tanks behind him were painted blue, and there were hundreds of blue ground-pounder dots scattered about the periphery of the bot-controlled decks of the ship. As best he could tell, the Warlords were driving a phalanx through the line of bots and there were no humans in harm’s way.

  “Alright, Warlords, this is why they pay us the big bucks. Fox!” He grunted as he voice-activated and fired a missile with the open impact detonation command. The missile squealed out from atop the tank, leaving a blue ion trail in the ship’s atmosphere, and then tore into the bulkhead at the end of the corridor. The hangar corridor was over five meters high and almost as wide, but ended at a
man-sized hatch. The missile expanded that with a bright orange-and-white erupting plasma ball that threw red-hot glowing shards of bulkhead and deckplate in every direction. “Guns, guns, guns!” Mason followed up. The Warlords’ chatter started to pick up as the bots realized that the tankheads were attacking and penetrating the line.

  “They’re jamming the QMs and RF, Warlords. Go to IR and eyeballs!” Warboys warned just as he released another missile, this one with the electro-optical/IR sensor package. “Fox Two!”

  “Guns, guns, guns! Roger that, One!” Warlord Three responded. “I’m getting lots of motion track and acoustic pinging from the deckplate. Watch for them bursting through beneath and above us!”

  “I have a track algorithm on the bastards,” Warlord Five said. “They are amassing thirty-seven meters off our two o’clock, thirty degrees South Pole!”

  “Seven! Your three-nine line is eaten up! Watch it.”

  “Guns, guns, guns. North Pole Two!”

  “I got ’em, Four. Fox Two!”

  Mason put the hammer down and pounded his hovertank through the opening. The tank slammed into the jagged metal edges the missile had left at the hatchway. The impact slung him forward into his harness but his suit dampened the impact. Mason jiggled the stick in pitch, yaw, and roll and squirmed the hole out to be a little bigger than tank size. He then slammed the throttle forward, totally destroying what was left of what his mindview told him was a janitorial closet. The bulkhead gave way to the brunt of the tank and screeched against the structural integrity fields. Flashes of ionizing metal splattered in every direction as Mason protruded into another corridor that the DTM mindview labeled as the outer pressurized corridor. There were energy and plumbing conduits along the outer wall running in every direction. But the one he needed was a deck below.

  “They’re bursting through the ceiling, One!” Mason was warned by one of his men. He could see the corridor ceiling above him and aftward about twenty meters open up like a vortex, and bots began to pour from the event horizon.

  “I got ’em, One,” Warlord Two replied. “Fox Two!”

  “Get over here and help me out, Four!” Warlord Two ordered.

  “Stay with ’em, Warlords!” Mason shouted. He toggled the controls to bot-mode. His tank flipped upward and rolled over into a giant metal behemoth that came clanking down right fist first against the deck. Mason slammed his fists into the deck several times before he decided that wasn’t going to break through the deck plating fast enough. He bounced upward and flattened himself out for his back to slam against the corridor ceiling as he let loose another missile.

  “SIFs on torso max! Fox!” Warboys shouted. The missile screeched out from his shoulder mount and exploded into the deck just fifteen meters below him. The SIF generators whined against the explosion that surrounded him, and flashes of ionizing debris engulfed his bot-mode tank.

  As the force of the explosion subsided Mason pitched over headfirst and fell through the opening in the deck. He came to rest on his feet, staring ahead into thousands of bots in every direction. But most importantly, the hyperdrive power conduit was twenty meters ahead and running through the outer hull wall.

  “I’ve got optical lock on the objective! Fox Two!” Warboys fired. The missile trailed outward at the conduit, but almost immediately several bots sacrificed themselves into the missile, detonating it early. “Shit!”

  The blast toppled Warboys over backwards and he was almost instantly overtaken by bots like a swarm of bees, killer ants, and cockroaches on a half-eaten donut. Mason rolled over to his hands and knees and forced the bot-mode tank to its feet, all the while whirling, kicking, and swinging his arms to free himself.

  “I got it, One!” Warlord Two dropped in beside him, punching away several of the bots and then going to guns. “Guns, guns, guns.”

  “Forget me! Go for the objective.” Warboys fired again. “Fox Two!”

  “Roger that, One.” Warlord Two replied. “Fox Two!”

  “Got your back, sir!” Warlords Three and Four dropped into position, stomping and slinging bots in every direction.

  “Fox Two!” Three commanded.

  “Fox Two!” Four added.

  The four missiles spun out into the bulkhead. Two of them were detonated by self-sacrificing bots, but the resulting explosion opened the way for the other two that hit dead-on center of the fifty-meter section of high-power hyperdrive energy conduit.

  “Bull’s-eye!” Four shouted.

  The missiles created an explosion that was typical of the warheads. At first there was the orange-and-white firestorm, but as soon as the conduit SIFs failed, the millions of terajoules of energy were released in a fraction of a second, blasting out a section of the ship the size of a football field. The resulting concussive wave shattered bots in every direction and forced a wall of flames and plasma forward and aftward for several hundred meters. Warlords One, Two, Three, and Four were blown out of the ship at the same time.

  Warning—excessive spin rate, Mason’s bitching Betty chimed at him.

  “No shit! Tank mode!” He toggled the controls and the wildly spinning bot transfigured into a spinning tank. Just like an ice skater pulling in his arms to increase his spin rate, the same thing happened to his tank. It spun faster. But in tank-mode the vehicle could handle the extreme angular acceleration.

  The control system fired the hover controls to slow the spin rate until the g-forces inside the tank registered microgravity. Mason felt his stomach lurch a bit but he quickly adjusted as his suit pumped stims and anti-nausea meds into his system.

  “Warlord One to CHENG!”

  “CHENG here.”

  “Buckley, you’re gonna need a shitload of duct tape.”

  “Roger that, General.” Buckley replied. “The hyperdrive is offline!”

  “Warlords,” Mason took a breath, “objective obtained. You can go back to killing bots now.”

  Chapter 17

  November 7, 2406 AD

  29 Light-years from the Sol System

  Monday, 5:25 PM, Expeditionary Mission Standard Time

  DeathRay sat down in the captain’s chair and looked out the viewport of the bridge. He could see the bow of several of the fleet ships in the periphery of the viewport, but mostly he could see the bright blue star and the accretion disc debris all about them. It was a hell of a hiding place for a fleet of warships.

  Nancy stood just in front of him, hacking commands into the helm console. As far as Jack could tell, the fleet of ships were abandoned in place with no bot crews. The few bots they had encountered in the teleport pad room must have been leftover sentries. Or maybe they were repair or maintenance bots that Nancy had just managed to piss off. And to top it off, the ships appeared to have been designed for human crews. The phrase “what the fuck” never seemed more appropriate to DeathRay than at that very moment.

  “Looks like the hangar bays are full of Separatist-derived fighters and tanks, Jack.” Nancy told him. “This is a complete fleet sans crew. And I mean it is loaded for bear.”

  “So, Copernicus was building up his army out here in the middle of nowhere? For what purpose? This is just too weird.” DeathRay didn’t like weird. He liked straightforward and to the point. He liked having an objective and then going to kill that objective and getting on to the next Goddamned objective. He really just fucking hated weird.

  “There is more,” Nancy said as she continued to tap at the console. The clackity, clacking echoed in the extremely quiet and empty ship. The lighting came up to normal as she tapped away.

  “Well?” Jack hated the suspense almost as much as he hated weird. “More what?”

  “The ships are keyed to human access. I don’t mean a specific human. I mean to human DNA. They aren’t locked to us.” Nancy turned to Jack and raised an eyebrow. “Allison didn’t have to hack them at all. They’re here for the taking.”

  “Maybe Copernicus just didn’t expect anybody could get out here to them?” Jack asked. “You�
��d at least think he’d have hidden the keys above the sun visor.”

  “No keys needed. I think we’re so remote, maybe, that is the security system in itself. These ships are nearly two decades old as best I can tell. At that time it would have taken years for anybody to reach them. Unless you were connected through a QMT system that nobody knew existed yet, you couldn’t get here.” Nancy explained. “It’s probable that Elle Ahmi was the only human ever out here.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Jack replied. “Who built these things? And who built the city and the QMT pad that brought us here?”

  “I dunno, but maybe it was all made by bots.” Nancy looked up at her husband. “So that’s that. We have full control of the ship now.”

  “Okay, great. We just found a fleet of free warships with a full contingent of fighter mecha. Now what?” Jack wasn’t sure what the next move was, but he considered that it was time to get back to the Madira. “We should get back to the Madira and let the general figure this out.”

  “Agreed. Above our paygrades, especially since I’m retired and just along as a civilian consultant.” Nancy looked seriously at her husband, knowing full well that nobody believed that line or, for that matter, truly understood her role aboard the Sienna Madira. Jack didn’t worry about it. Moore had invited her, and she was his wife. For a brief moment Jack let himself get lost in her smile. After all, in the immediate moment there was nothing doing its best to shoot, claw, cut, bite, or kill them.

  “How far are we from the teleportation facility that brought us here?” Jack asked. “Any way to get a fix on where we are?”

  “Yes. It’s all in the log. We are at a star about two light-years away from there. At max jaunt speed of these ships I’m guessing we’re a month away,” she said.

  “I was afraid of that. So we snap back then?” Jack asked.

  “Well, I wasn’t finished. I said at max jaunt speed it would take a month.” Nancy paused briefly. Jack could tell she was giving him time to play catch-up but he wasn’t sure what it was he had to catch up on.