Redemption Protocol (Contact)

by Mike Freeman

  The Vice Commander nodded with due gravity.

  “So noted, Comrade Admiral. When do we evacuate?”

  “Immediately.”

  “Should we inform General Forge of our decision?”

  The glittering nebula rippled and seethed like a living organism.

  “I see no need to interfere with General Forge’s tactical battle management. It is critical that the alien Scepter remains in a known location. Besides, no commander better understands the need for sacrifice than our dear General Forge.”

  241.

  Weaver leaned back against the curving surface of the alien ship. Its odd depressions and counterintuitive shapes felt utterly foreign. She felt like she was inhabiting the heart and lungs of a metallic predator. The ship structure snaked around her in a series of swooping arches adorned with sleek pipes and conduits.

  Curving down each side of her elliptical central area were six crystalline towers. Each tower was oddly segmented and disjointed with their strata running in different directions as if the blocks that comprised their sparkling structure had been dropped at random. Thousands of fine needles protruded from each tower. It looked like if she swept her hand over them they’d break off like ice crystals. She didn't try.

  What the hell am I doing here, she thought. This would be the craziest thing she'd ever done – assuming she actually tried to do it. Even crazier than her weekend away with Toly 'The Skull' Maryin, lead singer of the Bojangel Murderers. And that weekend had been pretty crazy. Then again if she'd put a foot wrong that weekend then a river of energy wouldn’t have incinerated her brain and burned her eyes out. She compared her weekend with Toly to the last forty eight hours. Maybe it hadn't been so crazy after all.

  She shook her head. She'd felt so confident when she'd walked out of the cabin to enter the library. She'd still felt brave when she’d crossed the library and come down the steps to the ship. It was inside the ship that things had felt a little different. A little different in the sense of the absolute diametric opposite.

  She looked at the symbols by the plinth that indicated the power level. The progression of difficulty wasn't linear – as the rows went higher the difficulty increased geometrically. Her previous highest access level was two thousand. And here she was, looking at the glyphs for the power level of the ship. It was unbelievable, over nine thousand.

  She was used to playing it safe. She liked to keep a large margin of error. She'd worked through the levels progressively. She’d nearly died at two thousand. To increase by five times in one go was crazy. Insane. She laughed at the stupidity of what she was considering. If she couldn't do it then it was two dead people instead of one.

  'There's no point in trying if you're dead,' Havoc had said to her.

  She gazed around.

  Assessing.

  Deciding.

  The access panel glinted at her. It was a gate. A transformation function. Whatever came out would be different from what went in, one way or another.

  In this exact spot Kemensky's head had burned like a Roman candle.

  She was better than Kemensky.

  But was she that much better?

  She sighed. She was just so scared. She didn't want to die. That was what it kept coming back to. She wasn't a hero. Havoc had a reckless bravery – he seemed to define courage. He understood the risks and did things anyway. He could function in that world. She couldn't even begin to imagine it. She was impulsive, she knew that, but not with life threatening risks. That was just stupid. And she wasn't stupid.

  She shook her head. This wasn't just crazy. It was madness. And it was completely unjustifiable.

  She wouldn't do it.

  She sat back.

  She thought about what Fournier had said. His rasping voice, abrupt and breathless. Her inspiration, now a broken house with the wind blowing through it. Fournier had sounded lucid when he'd spoken though, shutting up everyone else.

  “You were born to fly that ship.”

  She didn't trust herself.

  But did she trust Fournier?

  She thought of Havoc turning to her father, the two men dying together.

  'What would you have said to her, if you could?'

  'I'd say don't spend your whole life regretting what you could have done but didn't. Just do it.'

  242.

  Havoc blew through the hull plate in four places. He fired two explosive rounds in anticipation of the ship’s defensive reaction as he thrust forward. Inside the vessel, two autoturrets lifted out of the floor and were obliterated by his preemptive strike. He lased the wall at the far end of the corridor, calibrated the distance, and fired another explosive round. It detonated a meter short of the wall. The ORC drone lurking round the corner was blown apart.

  Havoc was already rolling sideways, launching a stream of micromissiles as he threaded toward the far side of the vessel. His micromissiles swarmed through the ship like angry hornets, seeking out Forge and his network of passive sensors and active defenses. Micromissiles detonated along the ship and there were more hull breeches. A signal pierced through the blizzard of electromagnetic interference. Its source was unmistakable.

  “Hello, Son.”

  Havoc’s fury was implacable.

  “It's your time, old man.”

  “It's our time, Havoc. It's always a time for warriors.”

  Havoc burst out of the far side of the ship into space. The glow at the front of the vessel was spectacular. Heavy ship weapons fired from the bow at point blank range. The Diss cloud churned brilliantly. Furious patterns rippled across its surface. The light generated by the Diss was incredible – it was evident that the Relentless wouldn’t last long. No matter, Havoc thought. He should have time. He poured kinetics into the funnel shaped section of hull that extended away from his position, then jackknifed and jetted back into the ship.

  “You're no warrior, Forge. A warrior doesn't stand by and do nothing while my family burn.”

  Havoc burst through the bottom of the vessel. He saw the flotilla of ORC shuttles abandoning ship. He wondered if Forge knew. He fired a salvo of micromissiles targeted in a bracelet pattern to clear the way for his advance to the next ship section. His sensor fusion detected an ORC drone launching a barrage and he looped back, threading through a rupture in the hull.

  The plating in front of him vanished and he tumbled sideways, crashing through an inner wall. His electronic warfare package focused interference as he scrambled to interdict any follow up and get a lock on the drone. His battlespace showed the ORC drone’s strike was a probabilistic spread, directional micronukes detonated from further away to minimize his chance of interception.

  He answered with a remise, redoubling his attack along the same line. His bracelet of micromissiles reached their destination and detonated together, taking out a sixty degree arc of the hull ahead of him. Pressurized gas erupted into space. He tried to pinpoint the position of the drone as Forge spoke in his ear.

  “I did what was right, Son. I did what was necessary. I was the only one strong enough to make those choices.”

  Havoc launched a salvo of micromissiles at the glimmer of a probabilistic target offered by Forge’s transmission and jetted in their wake.

  “By claiming to save everyone, you save no one, Forge. There’s always a greater good for bastards like you. You lost sight of the value of a single human life.”

  Havoc’s microdrones detected the ORC drone moving laterally and he spun, launching a spoke pattern of micromissiles directly away from the ship on parabolic arcs.

  Forge’s voice was scathing.

  “That's rich coming from you, Son. The Butcher of Jemlevi.”

  Havoc’s microdrones weaved through the hull ahead of him as he advanced. His micromissiles turned at the apex of their flight and streaked back toward the hull.

  He jetted through the scorching flare of an oxygen fire and emerged to see the Diss swarming brilliantly over the bow. A geyser erupted from the side of the ship as he el
iminated Forge’s last drone. He fired a grid of kinetics to bracket Forge's position.

  There was a brilliant flash from the front of the ship as the Diss annihilated the bow. A mighty wave rolled along the spine of the vessel. The structure couldn't handle the stress and the ship ruptured into three sections. Havoc spun away as he scanned the battlespace to assess his proximity to Forge.

  He was almost certain that he and Forge were together on the middle section. Perfect. He could almost taste the kill.

  “You failed everyone you ever touched, Forge. And now you're going to pay.”

  The solar system turned to daylight for an instant as the structural integrity of the ship’s antimatter impulse drive failed and it imploded in a fail safe self-detonation. Havoc was grateful to be inside the smoldering hulk as the flash burn melted the hull plates. The span of wreckage he was on sputtered with gas and flame like a dying animal guttering in the snow.

  Forge was out there, somewhere.

  “I didn’t fail my people, Son. My people failed me.”

  243.

  Abstract shapes spiraled past Weaver as she spun and rotated into a series of torsional infinities. Shapes rolled away from her, visualized from a stream of mathematical sequences.

  She braced herself. It was the most terrifying, exhilarating thing she'd ever done. She fell, screaming, toward the abstract space that would define her ability to survive. The light plunging inward from each side intensified, divided and interleaved as it closed in on her.

  She thought about Fournier, telling her to do what human beings were gifted at. How he’d solved the meta-sequences.

  We have billions of years of practice at metaphor, it's our strength.

  She had to make it work. No more time to think now. Just time to be.

  The waves rushed at her, an energy tsunami, their intensity rising to consume her. She followed a meta-sequence that spun off solutions to thirty two concurrent, interdependent sequences as a natural derivative of its elegant structure. They barreled toward her. She was about to be overcome. Metaphor. She reached inside herself. She was startled, almost embarrassed, by her first attempt.

  She was a ballet dancer, spinning and leaping. She sprung, reached another island, a platform of solution stability in abstract space; she leaped again, a smaller island, she spun and launched once more. Sequences streamed past her; decoded, translated and transformed from open, infinite possibility. The geometry expanded her mind. A final leap, a final island, curling tightly into a ball, spinning, accelerating, transformational dynamics in flux as she burst upward, reaching for height. A new direction. She needed a new metaphor.

  She burst into flight, an eagle, soaring, riding waves in fourteen dimensions of solution space. A matrix of impossible functions stretched out before her and she lifted, rising beyond it. Complex numbers streamed past her, trivially simple, as her energy levels soared. To the side of her, she became conscious that one of the crystalline towers had just exploded into a column of pure energy.

  A momentary lull. She felt the potential of the ship in her hands. The power of the sequences continued to rise, over and above her. She couldn't control it. It was too much. The eagle blazed as she was thrust into the sun. She tried to contain the power, harness it. She was a net at its limit, being stretched, breaking apart. The brightness grew, hurting her. She was losing control. Puzzles spun across her mind as her focus fragmented. Her holistic vision crumbled away. There was so much energy. It was too much. She tried to channel it but the force pressed her back and away, bearing down on her. Waves bulged outward, clawing at her, tearing at her as if she were trying to smother a bear with a blanket. Gaps in her field appeared. She balanced on the edge of catastrophe. Metaphor. Don't try to control it. Metaphor.

  She was water, dulling the shocks, absorbing them, moving with them. She didn't need to control anything, she just needed to ride the wave. Use what you want, ignore what you don't need. The column of water rose underneath her. Infinite fractal geometries raced past. She felt herself lifting, floating, flying. She flew up into a space that embodied a probabilistic function. The sequences sliced at her, cutting her mind, bounding her, compressing her, closing her down, trapping her in a point.

  She was a galloping horse, bounding forward, searching for the sequence that would take her through this building intensity. She accelerated, energy flaring from her hooves of fire. Find the sequence. Find the way. Follow the one path you believe in and commit.

  The possible permutations shrank and dwindled. Bridges collapsed and options vanished, containing her. The balance shifted against her. She was left with one possibility. Focus. There is no alternative. She solved it, stretched it out, found another form. Desperately close to the edge now.

  Another step. She twisted it, translated it, transposed it into a solution.

  Another form. She strained, reached inside, pulling herself inside out. Another step forward.

  Another space. Gravity crushed her. It was so hard. She concentrated, straining forward. She pushed against a mountain. The intensity was intractable. Failure beckoned her. Just give in. Just let go.

  An answer came from inside her. She saw the truth of it, so clear. Her momentum built. She catapulted forward, unstoppable. The terms exploded outward like a fractal flower, trillions of new combinations opening in front of her. Enlightenment. A new level. Insight. She gasped. She was music. She was mathematics.

  She was physics.

  Her awareness rolled outward. The crystalline towers flared into life around her, twelve solid columns of stunning light. Pure Weavrian energy. Tears poured from her eyes. So much power at her disposal.

  She didn't see the ship exploding upward impossibly fast, hurtling through the atmosphere.

  244.

  Havoc slashed down with his filament blade. He sliced through an interior wall and ducked into a service corridor. He fired a salvo of micromissiles as he jetted alongside a composite strut then jinked left. His micromissiles tracked to target before suddenly veering off course, subverted by Forge’s countermeasures.

  Havoc slowed. There wasn't much ship left. It was his time. He could feel the tempo slowing as he closed in for the kill.

  He burst through another wall as Forge dropped back. Four ship sections left. He picked up a hazy image of Forge. Forge didn’t have enough microdrones left to blind his sensor network.

  “We're both going down here, Son.”

  “You are.”

  Forge raised the Scepter above his head.

  “And you, Son. They want this. I think your girlfriend tricked me.”

  The gaping maw of the Diss loomed over them. The Diss scintillated furiously as a trillion motes wrapped around their fragment of the ORC vessel.

  “I'll kill you, Forge. It's enough. I don't care after that.”

  “I thrive on your hate, Son. I thrived on hate my whole life.”

  “Why are you never fucking sorry?”

  “Because God gave me a plan and I'm following it. The only bad part is I hadn't finished.”

  “You’ll meet your God soon enough.”

  “Your hate sustains me, Son. It's food for my soul, to feel your pain.”

  Havoc focused his electronic warfare package on Forge, disrupting Forge’s systems as he advanced toward him. He wanted to see the look in the bastard’s eyes when he killed him. He didn’t care if he was letting emotion get in the way.

  Two sections left. The ship fragment spun through space. The view beyond Forge was filled by the pulsating cloud. He kept an eye on the Diss. It was going to be close. Forge pointed at the cloud.

  “They're coming, Son.”

  “They won't get you.”

  Forge laughed as he backed away.

  “That would be the ultimate failure for you, wouldn’t it, Son? If I die and it wasn't you that killed me.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Havoc floated with his back against a bulkhead. One ship section left and they were both on it. Forge stood at the far end. His
last stand.

  This was it.

  Destiny, then oblivion.

  > Havoc?

  He couldn’t believe it.

  > Weaver?

  > You need to escape right now, Havoc. I targeted the Diss on the Scepter.

  > I'm not coming, Weaver.

  > This hate leads nowhere.

  > This hate is who I am, Weaver. It's all I am.

  > Have the courage to live, Havoc. Anyone can die.

  > I have to do this.

  > It's your choice.

  > It's not a choice, for me.

  > The Diss will kill you.

  > I want him dead, Weaver!

  > You think you'll be free of him just because he's dead?

  Havoc stopped. His face screwed up in pain.

  “Where are you, Son?”

  > It's him or me, Havoc. You can’t have both.

  Havoc looked through the shattered beams of the ship. Forge raised the Scepter, taunting him onward.

  “I'm here, Havoc!”

  > Your future or your past, Havoc.

  The incandescent Diss seethed overhead, throwing shadows like black paint across the broken hull.

  > You have to choose.

  ~ ~ ~

  Forge fired at him. The kinetic struck the hull next to him, sparking and bouncing away. Havoc barely registered the shot. He was lost in time.

  He was lost.

  Forge stood at the end of the burned out hull, his face consumed with hate. Havoc stared at Forge. He still hadn't moved.