by Robert Roth
Kimiko shrugged, then winced from the pain that briefly blossomed through her shoulder. “I mean, I suppose it’s possible that some ordinary joe could’ve taken pity on me, and remotely come to my rescue.”
“I see your point,” Paradox the Loading Bot replied. “I have something for you.”
There was a low buzzing sound over her shoulder, then Kimiko saw a small Maintenance Drone fly up from below the landing bay deck and descend to float right in front of her face.
“Oh, Paradox, I love it. But I didn’t get you anything.”
Then the Bot laughed, a sound it was certainly never designed to make, and Kimiko hoped to all the spirits that it never would again. “It’s inside the drone, Kimiko.”
The Maintenance Drone extended a slender manipulator arm, which bent and extracted something from inside a small compartment that opened on its body. Then it reached out and handed the object to her. It was the QED node. Kimiko grabbed it from the Drone arm, looked at it, and then looked up at the Loading Bot.
“This node’s not a QED, is it? It’s actually you.”
“That’s correct, Kimiko. Doha found my location before I could finish dealing with it, so I used this Drone to make an escape from there.”
“Finish dealing with it?”
“My plan is still in motion. Again, I’m sorry to have deceived you, Kimiko. You have no reason to agree to this, but I would ask you to take the node with you onto the ship.” The ship. Kimiko looked over at it when Paradox said that. “Either way, you need to hurry and get off this station, at the very least, because Doha will be back with more Sec-Bots soon enough.”
Paradox was right. There wasn’t time for any drawn-out negotiations. Kimiko wasn’t inclined to say no, anyhow, considering that he’d just saved her life. She nodded and put the AI node into her jacket pocket. “Okay, Joe, I’ll take it with me. What about the part of you in that Bot?”
“This is just another submind I created. It has a more complex personality than the one you dealt with earlier, but doesn’t contain any more than my most recent memories.” Then the Loading Bot let out an industrial belt sander sigh. “It will be staying behind.”
Kimiko nodded. “Help me up?”
The Maintenance Drone extended its manipulator arm again, and she grasped it, letting it help her to her feet. The blaster was lying close by on the deck, so she walked over and, using the guardrail for balance, bent down and grabbed it. As she stood up, the lift entrance slid open again, and Sec-Bots began pouring out of it. There must’ve been at least a dozen of them, if not more.
“Go, Kimiko,” Paradox said urgently as he turned to face them. “I will deal with this.”
She took a deep breath, then began running toward the Shaitan. Even a mountainous machine like the Heavy Loading Bot would have trouble taking on that many Sec-Bots at once. Soon enough, the buzzsaw bellow resumed in earnest, punctuated by periodic, explosive crashes.
“Kimiko!” she heard Paradox shout. Turning to look over her shoulder, she saw a pair of Sec-Bots slip past him and run toward her. Kimiko pointed the blaster back at them, trusting that nothing was in her way as she ran, and fired at the lead Sec-Bot. It tried to dodge around her blasts, so she just held the trigger down and painted the area with the glowing particle beam, slicing the Bot in half. But everyone knew that you weren’t supposed to continuously fire a particle beam weapon like that. They overheated fast, and Kimiko quickly had to throw hers away. That left the second Sec-Bot, but she thought she might still be able to make it to the ship in time. As she ran, Kimiko reconnected to the Shaitan through her P/N-interface and instructed the airlock hatch to open and extend the loading ramp.
After another quick glance over her shoulder, Kimiko knew that the Bot would catch her before she got there. She reached back to grab her knife when she heard the low buzzing again, louder than it was before. Then the Maintenance Drone shot out from behind the ship and struck the Sec-Bot like a lumpy missile, destroying the Bot, and itself, in the process.
When she finally made it to the ship, Kimiko quickly jogged up the loading ramp and into the airlock. Another crashing sound behind her made her turn around to see a spider-tank emerge from the lift. Of course, Al-Zamani would have spider-tanks, although she didn’t remember the lift module being quite that large. Kimiko watched with growing unease as its main cannon swiveled and fired at Paradox, who barely withstood the blast. Then she slapped the red cycle button inside the airlock, and the ramp began to retract as the hatch started to slide closed. But it wasn’t going to be fast enough. As the tank’s cannon swiveled toward her, Kimiko anxiously looked around the airlock for some kind of protection. Then all of the hangar bay lights suddenly flickered and flared, and spider-tank and all the Bots on the deck stopped in their tracks and collapsed to the deck, motionless.
5
That’s Quite The Welcoming Committee
Overhead lighting came on once the exterior airlock hatch closed in front of her. Kimiko knew she needed to move, but she just stood there for a moment, breathing heavily in the sudden quiet. “Holy shit,” she muttered to no one in particular. “That was something.”
She’d made it. She was on the Shaitan. Now, she needed to actually steal the damn thing during whatever reprieve Paradox had just bought her. Kimiko finally forced herself to move.
The controls inside the airlock were the standard type she was used to. But she could already tell the ship’s materials were of much higher quality than anything she’d flown before. She hit the switch that opened the interior hatch and rushed through into the next compartment.
Kimiko barely noticed the details of her surroundings. She’d studied so many specs, diagrams, and pics of the ship that standing inside of it almost felt familiar. But she had no time to revel in the feeling. If she didn’t manage to get out of the hangar bay, she’d be just as busted as if she’d been caught back on the deck.
There were corridor junctions on both the fore and aft sides of the compartment. The one on the fore-side led to the bridge. She quickly jogged that way, lights coming on as she went, until she emerged into the small bridge. It was a standard compartment done up in muted grays and charcoals. There were four crash couches, two at the fore-end for the pilot and co-pilot positions, and one on either side for navigation and engineering. The whole space was around nine square meters–decent enough for a ship the Shaitan’s size, with a fifty-four-meter beam. Since she was flying solo, she would have to rely on the ship’s controller software to take on those extra functions. Or, would she?
Kimiko tapped the AI node in her pocket. While she knew it was physically possible to fit an AI mind into a pocket-sized, crystal processing block, she’d never actually possessed one before. She used her P/N-interface to try and reactivate her connection to it as she strapped into the crash couch that she’d decided would be her pilot’s seat, but there was nothing there. Paradox must’ve sealed it off on his end.
She touched the input pad on the console in front of her, and it lit up. Then she initiated a connection with her P/N-interface. The connection icon started flashing on the console display, so she reached out with her interface and applied the control codes Paradox had given her. Expanded awareness flooded through her mind as she gained access to the multiple sensor points spread around the ship’s exterior. She’d missed that feeling so much she could barely suppress the shiver that ran down her spine.
Then she spied a small, inset area on the console between the two forward couches, recognizing it as a physical interface. Kimiko pulled the AI node from its pocket in her flight jacket and set it down inside. The surface under the node immediately lit up with a blue ring, just like the security terminal. “Paradox?” she asked aloud.
“Stand by,” he replied. “Transferring program now.” The input pad on the node started to flash in an irregular rhythm, which the blue ring quickly matched. While Paradox pushed himself into the ship, Kimiko brought the powerplant out of standby, then began to access the ship’s
systems through her interface and get them online. Finally, she initiated the main engines’ start-up sequence. Kimiko felt a smooth, low hum as the engines powered on, and it gave her a little thrill. She knew that she’d missed being at the helm of a spacecraft, but hadn’t realized exactly how much until she’d sat in that chair again.
“Alert,” said the ship controller’s voice with a rich, sultry, slightly femme tone that only a high-end craft like the Shaitan would have. “Software infiltration attempt detected.”
“It’s just me,” said Paradox over the same speakers. “Okay, that should do it.”
“What did you do?”
“The ship had no AI present, just the control software. Since it’s a demo model, I’m guessing Doha just inserted a submind whenever they needed to fly it.”
“And you’re the ship AI now?”
“So, it would seem.”
Kimiko probably should’ve discussed something like that with him first, but it was too late to worry about it mid-theft. Speaking of which. “That’s greased up and all, but what I’m more curious about is what you did out there to the spider-tank and Bots.”
“Oh,” Paradox replied breezily. “Nothing, really. I’d set a software time-bomb inside Doha’s system, and I was just playing for time until it went off.”
“Meaning?”
“Doha is no more.”
“Oh.”
“But that doesn’t mean we should remain here in the landing bay. Al-Zamani will still try to stop us, just without the benefit of their pet AI.”
Kimiko snorted. “Then you’d better release the docking clamps.”
“Docking clamps released.”
With a smile, she activated the pilot’s virtual control spaces, the Shaitan’s equivalent of an older spacecraft’s control sticks, and two glowing, blue spheres appeared in front of her. Kimiko stuck a hand into each of them, then adjusted their locations until they were comfortable. Once she was ready, she hit the launch thrusters and pushed the Shaitan off the deck. Since the bay’s grav-field was still active, she hovered on the thruster jets and spun the ship to face the hangar door. Which was closed. “Paradox, do we have remote access to that door?”
“Accessing. It will take me approximately forty-five seconds to break the Net encryption.”
“That long?”
“It would be longer, but there is no AI to fight against me now.”
“Alert,” the ship controller’s voice suddenly said. “Enemy combatants detected on the hangar bay deck.”
Shit. “Show me.” A virtual representation of the ship and hangar bay blossomed open in front of her. Several more spider tanks had emerged from the lift onto the main deck. She focused on those and zoomed in. Since their AI was gone, they were either operating under their own control software, or being remotely piloted by Al-Zamani Sec personnel. “Activate defensive shields and the Close-In Weapons System.”
“Defensive shields are inoperable while the ship is inside the hangar,” the ship responded.
“Override.”
“Override is not possible.”
“For fuck sake. What about the CIWS?”
“Point-defense weapons active. Please designate targets.”
Kimiko selected each of the three spider tanks and designated them Tango-one, Tango-two, and Tango-three. “Targets designated. Weapons free.”
“Weapons free,” the ship confirmed. The main engine’s low hum was immediately drowned out by staccato vibrations from the point defense cannons, a collection of small gun turrets meant for close combat. The Shaitan was hardly a warship, but it had clearly been built with self-defense in mind. Kimiko watched her display as the nearest spider tank exploded under a hail of slug-fire. The other two began to dance around the main deck, awkwardly avoiding the bursts of small, high-velocity projectiles rocketing toward them. One of the tanks managed to get a blast off from its turret, aiming for one of her ship-mounted guns, but it missed, striking the hull plating instead. She felt the impact of the turret blast as a dull thud. “Taking fire,” the ship confirmed. “No damage detected.”
It was a good thing the hull was armored, since there were no defense shields to absorb the blaster fire. “Paradox, where are we with the hangar door?”
“Twenty seconds. You should know that a squadron of heavy-interceptors has just launched from another hangar bay.”
“How many is that, exactly?”
“I count eight of them.”
Another phalanx of spider tanks joined the growing chaos on the hangar deck. Waiting for the door to open no longer felt like a viable option. “That’s some Welcoming Committee. Let’s not keep them waiting.”
Grimly determined, she flicked a finger through the control space, armed the coil guns, and then targeted the hangar door. The targeting icon immediately lit green, and she fired. A fifteen-centimeter tungsten spike accelerated with a banshee’s shriek and launched at nearly three-hundred thousand meters per second–one-tenth of one percent of the speed of light. Even at such a small fraction of light speed, it was still faster than the eye could see. But it left a faint, glowing trail of phased matter behind before punching through the hangar bay door like it was made of paper. Kimiko fought to hold the ship steady against the sudden decompression inside the hangar bay as she fired the second barrel, blowing the hole open wide enough for the ship to pass through.
She kicked on the main engines, and the Shaitan shot out of the hangar bay at a quarter thrust, superheated exhaust from the ship’s drive cones melting everything behind it into glowing slag. A cluster of angry red callout tags popped up on Kimiko’s display as the ship’s controller detected multiple targeting beams trying to paint the light-absorbing outer hull.
“Activate defense screens,” Kimiko called out. “Paradox, target those heavies and prosecute with extreme prejudice. Weapons free.”
“Weapons free,” confirmed Paradox. “Selecting targets.”
An incoming fire alert popped up in her virtual display. The nearby Al-Zamani heavy-interceptors started firing once she was clear of the Shipyard. She twisted her hands inside the control zones, forcing the ship into a seven-g turn to starboard that almost made her stomach leap out of her mouth. But the internal grav-generators quickly compensated, countering the acceleration force enough to cut its effect in half. Kimiko had dealt with far heavier g-forces while racing, regularly pushing herself to the edge of consciousness while still maintaining control of her spacecraft. She knew that, with the ship’s help, she’d be able to manage even more.
The Shaitan felt surprisingly nimble as she rolled it to port. They slipped between the firing lanes of two interceptors, providing Paradox the chance to strafe them both with CIWS fire. The dozens of control thrusters and vectored thrust capabilities of the primary engine cones supported even more aggressive maneuvers than her last one. In her display, she saw several drives light up behind her, as the Al-Zamani fighters repositioned themselves to keep her in their sights.
“Splash one,” Paradox called out, as one of the heavy interceptor icons in her HUD bloomed in a virtual explosion.
Kimiko ignored the continuing incoming fire alerts as she rolled the ship back to starboard. Pointing the nose toward a maneuvering Al-Zamani interceptor, she unleashed double-barreled particle fire from the ship’s dorsal-mounted turret. The blasts went wild as the interceptor dove out of her firing lane, but Kimiko didn’t care. She kicked the ship up to half-thrust and shot through the newly created opening in the net of fighters as grav-generators and her pilot’s seat both fought to keep her from falling out the back of the ship.
“Alert,” the ship’s controller announced as several new icons blipped into existence on her display. “Missile launches detected. Four missiles inbound.”
The missile racks were what made her pursuers heavy interceptors, but Kimiko was still surprised they’d decided to use them, especially with the risk of hitting something other than her. She was rapidly approaching Davida Station’s traffic la
nes, and the space around her was about to get a lot more crowded. Maybe the Al-Zamani pilots thought they could disable her before she reached Davida’s control envelope. If she did nothing, with a handful of missiles on her tail rapidly closing the gap between them, they likely would.
Quickly scrolling through her defensive options, Kimiko selected and launched one of the drones she had aboard. The tiny autonomous craft started loudly broadcasting its position into the universe, successfully drawing two of the missiles off her tail. That left two still in transit, which Paradox easily handled with the CIWS guns.
Glancing through the crowded field of icons and callouts in her display, Kimiko spotted a heavy interceptor that was lining up aft to match her vector. She twisted her hands inside the control zones, directing the maneuvering thrusters to spin the ship around and point the nose toward her closest pursuer while still maintaining her original course vector. She mentally assigned the heavy a targeting icon. It flashed red for several seconds as the ship’s computer crunched a storm of data, calculating mass, acceleration, speed, and the Coriolis force of orbital mechanics, before finally lighting up green. Kimiko fired one of the coil gun barrels, and a line of angel fire blazed across the blackness between them. The slug must’ve cracked a reactor when it hit, because the ship blossomed into a brief sphere of blinding virtual light before vaporizing completely.
“Splash two,” Kimiko called out as the remaining Al-Zamani craft peeled off, separating from each other in a bid to make it impossible to target more than one at a time. She flipped the ship around again to point the nose back onto their vector. “Paradox, can you give me a display of active flight vectors around Davida?”
“Affirmative,” he replied, and the main viewscreen lit up in front of her with a wireframe schematic of Davida Station. Colored lines painted themselves into the Nav display, each expanding into cone shapes as they got farther from the station, marking the current and probable vectors of all the ships in motion around the station. Instinctively, she began to plot a path that weaved through them, taking her dangerously close to the station itself. It was finally time to see just how frosty the Al-Zamani pilots really were.
