Project Starfighter

by Stephen J Sweeney

  “How? How the hell can you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Phoebe said. “But I think it’s possible my sister can do it, too.”

  “Your sister?” Sid asked, his eyes growing wide. “You have a sister?”

  “Yes? Why are you acting like that’s weird?” Phoebe asked. “Her name’s Ursula. She’s my twin.”

  Sid’s jaw went slack.

  “Sid?” Chris asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Come to the bridge,” Sid said, striding from the cargo hold. “I have a hunch I want to share.”

  ~

  “I was always crap with machines when I was younger,” Phoebe said. “It seemed that I would only need to look at one to make it short out. I lost a lot of office jobs that way. Any time I put my finger on a computer keyboard or a screen, I would end up costing the company a few hundred credits. Not a good thing, really.”

  “But one day you learned to control it, right?” Sid asked, handing Phoebe a cup of coffee.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Sort of. I can suppress it, so that I can be around electronics without blowing stuff up. I only found out about doing that in the last month or so. I mean, I could do it before that but wasn’t fully aware of what was happening. If any WEAPCO drones or bots came near me, and I wanted to be left alone, I would just think it, and they would ignore me.

  “I found out I could control them when a couple of war bots were chasing me. I was cornered and only wished that I could persuade one of them to destroy the other and leave me be. I was looking straight at it as I thought it, and that’s exactly what it did. I thought it had malfunctioned, but then it started following me. I found I could make it do whatever I wanted. Well, almost. As soon as I decided to get away from it, it started to come after me again.”

  “Let me guess – you need to concentrate hard on something like this?” Chris asked.

  “Yes,” Phoebe sipped at her coffee. “I have to keep myself focused on the individual or the group, if I want them to keep doing what I ask them. It’s sort of like an override. I’ve even managed to make it permanent in one or two cases.”

  “What’s your limit?” Sid asked. “You had about twenty or so fighters next to you out there.”

  “To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure,” Phoebe said, blowing a little on the coffee to cool it down. “To begin with, I was only able to control a single war bot, and had to work hard at that. If I took my mind off things for even a moment, it would regain control of itself. It got easier, though. I was soon able to direct them as though it was second nature. I would practice on them when they came after me, sometimes turning them on one another, and at other times making them short out. It was fun for a while, the whole, ‘Oh look, here’s another dumb bot, what a nuisance’, but then WEAPCO started sending more of them after me.”

  “You don’t belong to a mercenary group or anything, do you?” Sid asked.

  Phoebe shook her head. “No, never have.”

  “And you’re not actually a pilot, either, are you?”

  Phoebe once again shook her head. Both she and Sid were smiling.

  “I didn’t think so,” Sid said.

  “Sorry, what?” Chris asked, not understanding.

  Phoebe grinned. “I’m telling the ship what to do. That’s a Valkyrie, a medium-class WEAPCO starfighter. Most of them have been retired, since the navy don’t have much use for a pilot, given that they’re driven by AIs. I managed to convince some of the drones searching for me to lead me to the ship, and then I took control of it. At that point, I decided to experiment with my gift and see what I could do. I felt something snap as I pushed my will onto it, and then it never recovered. The fighter is mine, it will always do whatever I want.”

  “So, it’s basically a zombie machine that you’re ordering around?”

  “Essentially.”

  Chris nodded, mulling a few things over.

  “Chris, don’t even think about getting her to do that to Athena!” Sid said.

  “Chris!” Phoebe said, looking at him, horrified. “How could you? She’s alive! I felt her when we talked!”

  Chris threw up his hands. Not this again. “Whatever you say. Anyway, look – you said that you can only exercise control over these things if you concentrate on it. What about the fighters outside and the ones in the bays? Should we be bothered by them?”

  “They’re under the control of the Dodger at the moment,” Sid said. “Which is under the control of Athena. It’s possible that they could be overridden at some point, though, so we need to be careful. WEAPCO could theoretically cut in between the freighter and Athena, and take back both of them at once. Or worse – they could tell them to self-destruct.”

  “We’ll have to watch out for that, then,” Chris said. He looked back at Phoebe. “So, this is something you’ve always been able to do?”

  “Always, from what I understand,” Phoebe nodded.

  “You weren’t part of some secret experiment when you were little or something? Your parents didn’t do anything to you at all?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Phoebe said, putting down her cup, standing and starting to pace. “But I never knew my parents; I’m an orphan. I guess it’s possible that something might have happened to me before I was put into care. Who knows, maybe my parents were mad scientists.”

  Sid rubbed his chin. “Hmm. You know, I believe it might be something else altogether.”

  “What are you thinking, Sid?” Chris asked.

  Sid was silent for a time, as if thinking of how to phrase what he was about to say. “I think you’ve found a way to unlock some latent psionic power. I know, I know,” Sid said, as Chris started to speak. “That all sounds like a load of mystical mumbo jumbo, but it actually makes sense.”

  “Exactly how, Sid?” Chris couldn’t help but scowl. Sid was a smart guy, but now he sounded as if he was allowing himself to be railroaded by a load of paranormal claptrap. Chris hoped that the computer hacker wasn’t about to suggest they go searching for pieces of an ancient amulet, in a far flung, unexplored star system, to unite them during a planetary alignment, so as to bring about the defeat of a greedy, corrupt company.

  “I’ll show you,” Sid answered Chris, moving to the bridge’s main control console and tapping some instructions into it.

  A projection sprang up in the middle of the bridge, the image of a man. He was dressed casually, was about six feet tall and ... quite ordinary looking.

  “Who is that?” Chris asked.

  “William Benedict,” Sid said.

  “For real?” Chris asked, standing. He moved closer to the projection, walking around it, and inspecting every aspect of the man. He felt oddly ambivalent. Here was a legend; the only person in history who had ever single-handedly stood up to WEAPCO – and nearly succeeded. Yet ... he was so ordinary-looking. Chris wasn’t sure why he had expected something more, someone god-like. He stepped back as detailed information of the man started to appear on the right-hand side of the projection.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” Chris turned to Sid, a little irritated that he would withhold something like this from him. “Why didn’t you tell me that he was real?”

  “I’m sorry,” Sid said. “I ... I thought it might lead us on some sort of wild goose chase. Remember how back in Spirit Hugo told us that heroes are often just made up? Simply legends created to empower a nation’s people? Well, I thought that the same might be true of Benedict. And even when I found his details in the ship’s databanks, I wanted to make sure who it was.”

  “And what convinced you?” Chris asked, starting to read over the man’s profile.

  “Phoebe did,” Sid said, nodding to the woman.

  “Me?” Phoebe asked. “How?”

  “Wait a minute,” Chris interrupted. “This isn’t William Benedict. This is a man named Leo Benedict.” He pointed to the details on the projection. “You have got the wrong guy, Sid.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Sid said. “Yes, yo
u’re right. That is the wrong man.” He turned and tapped away at the bridge console, pulling up a second projection next to the first. “This is William Benedict. Leo is his brother. His twin brother.”

  Chris’ eyes widened as he looked from Leo, to William, and finally to Phoebe. “They’re both twins.”

  Phoebe appeared baffled. “Sid ...” she started.

  “As I said,” Sid said, “latent psionic powers. Phoebe, were you and your sister ever asked if you were telepathic?”

  “All the time,” Phoebe chuckled, without humour. “It’s part of the bane of being an identical twin. People always assume that because you look alike, you can share thoughts and feelings. They ask whether or not you know what the other is thinking, and if you share the pain when one of you gets hurt. That sort of crap.”

  “Get slapped a lot at school, eh?” Chris asked, facetiously.

  “All the bloody time,” Phoebe said, huffing and folding her arms. “They’d go and asked Ursula if she felt the slap, and then do it to her, to see if I felt it!”

  Sid nodded. “Chris, I know this is a long shot, and might sound utterly ludicrous, but I think this might be how Benedict was able to attack WEAPCO. Like Phoebe, he was able to take control of a set of drones and bots, and use them to build an army.”

  Chris thought about it for a time, before shaking his head. “I’m not sure. Phoebe wasn’t able to control more than about twenty or thirty of those fighters at a time, and even then, could only direct about half of those. That’s a far cry from the fleet William Benedict was said to have commanded.”

  “I imagine that he had had more time to become proficient,” Sid said. “If everything else about Benedict’s story is to be believed, he was in command of several hundred drones and starfighters when he reached Murdar.”

  “Do you think he was controlling all of them, simultaneously?” Phoebe asked. “I don’t think I could do that. The level of concentration would be mind-blowing.”

  “If it were me, I would delegate the duties to drones and manage them in groups,” Sid said. “Or filter them down using some kind of spatial partitioning system. Or something like that, anyway. It was how I used to play strategy games, involving lots of units – split them into groups and treat them as a single entity.”

  Phoebe’s expression turned to one of surprise and amusement. “You know, I never thought of doing that.”

  “In the heat of the moment, it can be difficult to think straight. Your mind is focused on all kinds of other things – mostly how to stay alive,” Sid said.

  Chris examined the two projections once more. Other than their clothes, the two men appeared to be identical. He saw the ship’s records detailed the Benedicts as having died well over a year apart. But other than their names and parts of their personal histories, the two men were exactly the same. Their faces were so similar that Chris doubted whether even their mother had been able to tell them apart. Their height, eye and hair colour, were identical. Their weight – how had WEAPCO got hold of that? he wondered – was only slightly different, William weighing a fraction more than Leo.

  “Who would have thought,” he said quietly to himself. “WEAPCO is scared of two people who look and dress the same. If this power thing of yours is true, then you’re their one weakness,” he added, looking at Phoebe.

  Phoebe suddenly looked horrified. “Ursula!”

  “Where is your sister now?” Chris asked. “Wait,” he interrupted before she could answer, “it was you who left the advert on the message board in Spirit, wasn’t it?”

  “That was a mistake,” Phoebe said, looking down at her feet. “It led WEAPCO right to me. I wasn’t thinking straight. So, do you think that WEAPCO are exterminating twins?”

  “Can’t be,” Chris said. “That would be next to impossible. There must be tens of millions of twins alive in the galaxy. They could never get them all without someone noticing.”

  “They don’t want all twins,” Sid said. “Only identical ones.”

  “Even so ...” Chris said. He thought for a moment. Did he know many other twins? Was Phoebe the first identical twin he had ever met? No, of course she wasn’t. He had seen others. He recalled two pairs having frequented the Italian restaurant where he had once worked.

  “I think they’re targeting them once it is revealed that they have unlocked their latent abilities, and that they have become strong enough to pose a threat,” Sid fielded. “I don’t imagine that every set of identical twins ever born can do this. Only some, and it’s those that WEAPCO are after.”

  “Phoebe, we need to find your sister. Where is she?” Chris repeated.

  “I don’t know,” Phoebe said. “She vanished three months ago and I haven’t been able to get in touch with her. It’s unusual for her to just disappear like that. We’re normally very close.”

  “WEAPCO must already have her,” Chris said. “If she’s anything like you, then they must’ve recognised her as a threat.”

  “You don’t suppose they’ve ...?” Phoebe asked. She looked as though she was about to burst into tears.

  “In all honesty, something tells me no,” Sid said. “Knowing WEAPCO, if they have her then they will want to keep her alive, so that you come and rescue her.”

  “If they’re waiting for us to come and rescue her, then that’s precisely what we should do,” Chris said. “All we need to do is find out where she is, and we can go get her.”

  “As simple as that, eh?” Sid said, sceptically. “She could be being held deep in the heart of WEAPCO-controlled space, perhaps even on Earth itself. If that’s the case, we’re not getting anywhere near her.”

  Phoebe looked crushed by Sid’s words. The man seemed to be accepting defeat before they had even started.

  “We’ll just have to see. Let’s not presume anything just yet,” Chris said. “It could be that she’s actually back in Spirit. First things first – we need to find a reliable source that will point us in her direction. Sid, find out what the Dodger’s databanks have to say, while I go talk to Athena. She knew a few things about the Grand Vizier and the Duke of Wellington, so she might be privy to some other details.”

  “Maybe the fighters I brought in will know?” Phoebe suggested.

  “Hmm, I’m guessing it will be the same story as the war bots,” Chris said, looking to Sid, who nodded.

  “The drone we caught at the mercenaries’ base was the most useful,” Sid said.

  “A drone would be useful, you say?” Phoebe asked. “I think I brought one in.”

  “Really? Where is it?” Sid asked.

  “Down in the hold, with the fighters. I told it to go on standby.”

  “This could actually prove easier than we first thought,” Chris said. “Athena would probably be able to get the information out of it in a matter of seconds, and without making it blow itself to kingdom come. Let’s go take a look.”

  ~

  The drone was known as XS-0551821. It had been assigned the task of finding Phoebe Lexx and bringing her back to a holding facility in the Murdar system, where Phoebe’s twin sister, Ursula, was being held.

  “What are they doing to her?” Phoebe asked Athena. Athena was projecting her Greek goddess persona again, dressed in the same white Grecian robe. “Is Ursula hurt?”

  “It doesn’t know,” Athena said, referring to the drone.

  “What do they want with her?” Chris asked. “Are they going to kill her? Are they integrating her into some system or other?”

  “I’m sorry, but I have no idea,” Athena said, shaking her head. “The drone can only tell me its mission parameters, which involve finding and capturing Phoebe, and bringing her back to the Zetaman Facility.”

  “Hmm, sounds like WEAPCO have restricted things a great deal more since the last time,” Chris said. “We got a hell of a lot out of the one that told us about mission 3412.” He rubbed his chin. The stubble there was thickening; he hadn’t had time to shave recently. He would do so soon enough. He didn’t want
a beard, it remained him too much of Krass Tyler. He wondered momentarily what had become of the leader of the Wolf Pack. Had they all died out there in Spirit?

  “What can you tell us about the facility?” Chris asked Athena.

  “It can hold up to one thousand and twenty-four subjects, and is run and monitored twenty-four seven by a large number of drones.”

  “Defences?”

  “Mobile ray cannons and rocket emplacements, as well as several light and medium-class starfighters,” Athena said.

  “Numbers?” Chris asked.

  “According to the drone, there are currently thirty-eight mobile turrets, equipped with dual particle beams, fourteen Talons, eight Mirages and four Tomcats. This being Murdar, it is well within hop range of WEAPCO naval shipyards.”

  Chris swore. “So, we can’t just blast our way inside in the Firefly, then?”

  “I would strongly advise against it,” Athena said. “For my sake, as well as your own.”

  Chris fell silent for a time, contemplating. He was aware that Athena, Phoebe, and Sid were watching him, waiting for him to make a call. He didn’t have much of a clue right now. The Firefly might permit him to timeslip, but even that had its limits. To their name they had the Firefly, a Valkyrie, the Manx – more of a transport vessel with a moderate amount of customisation, than a fully fledged military craft – the freighter, and around twenty or so WEAPCO Talons. With those, they could probably take on the fighters around the facility, but the mobile turrets would blow them to pieces with ease. And that said nothing about who or what they might find once they actually got inside the facility.

  “I need time to think,” Chris said. “Sorry,” he added to Phoebe. “I do want to rescue your sister, but we need a plan. We might have been able to down a WEAPCO corvette without too many problems, but ultimately we will need to get into that facility, which means beating its defences.”