“I’ve found the skill memory implanters,” he told the others as he came back into the hangar.
Five of the hypergliders had been opened. Wilson was sitting in the cockpit of one, his hands resting on the console i-spots. Below and behind him the wing buds flexed as if something inside them wanted to be birthed.
“Well done,” Wilson said.
“Not quite. There’s a slight problem. The humidity back there is even worse than in here. It’s screwed up some of the array connections. I’m really only happy with one of the systems. You’ll have to go one at a time. I’ll settle Oscar in first.”
“Okay,” Wilson said.
Oscar’s stony expression was unreadable.
“How’s it going out here?” Adam asked.
“We’re running through the preflight checklists,” Oscar told Adam quietly. “So far all five seem operational.”
Anna walked past, hauling a thick superconductor cable that she plugged into a socket on the second hyperglider. “They’re going to need charging before we take them out. The secondary power supply is okay, but they can’t fly on that. We need the main cells charged; the electromuscle and plyplastic have a lot of work to do.”
“I think the town generator was in the first building we came past,” Adam said. “Oh, and we need to leave soonest. The drive to Stakeout Canyon from here normally takes a good six hours. Then we have to plant the tether anchors.”
Wilson stood up in the cockpit. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
“We need tether cables for the hypergliders as well,” Anna said. “They must be around here somewhere.”
“You two sort that out,” Adam said. “I’ll get Oscar up to speed on the joys of hypergliding.”
“There’s plenty to go around,” Anna said. She was grinning as she gestured around the hangar. “Fancy joining us?”
“Not at my age and weight, thank you.”
Wilson clambered down out of the cockpit. He zipped up the front of his fleece. “Keep an eye on the checklists for me, please.”
“Will do,” Adam promised.
Oscar looked along the row of couches in the rear room. One of them had its array activated; green LEDs were shining on the front of the unit. He gave a snort of disgust. “Water damage my ass!”
“We still need them to get the hyperglider ready for you.”
“This is wrong. The odds are completely against me getting up there intact.”
“So tell me which one of them is the Starflyer agent?”
“Oh, fuck.”
“Exactly. Lie back on the couch.”
Oscar did as he was told. He rested his wrists on the i-spots. “Interfaced,” he said.
Adam’s virtual vision confirmed the connection. He told his e-butler to initiate the program. Plyplastic cushioning flowed over Oscar’s wrists.
“The induction prep phase will last about a minute,” he said, reading from the menu. “Implantation is eight minutes.”
“And integrity review is another minute,” Oscar said. “Yes, thank you. I went through this enough times when I was with the CST exploratory division. The junk we needed to know for that…”
“Relax please,” Adam said dryly. He moved his virtual hands across the icons, initiating the induction preparation phase.
Oscar’s eyes were already closed. Now his face began a series of minute twitches to accompany the REM.
Adam went back into the hangar. Two of the hypergliders were still running through their checklists. No problems had been red-flagged.
He was peering into the cockpit of one when he heard a sound behind him. Lifted his head to see who it was. “Oh, couldn’t you—”
The slim harmonic blade was rammed into the base of his skull, angled perfectly to slice up into his brain.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The quantumbuster would not load into its launch tube. There was nothing Ozzie or the SIsubroutine could do to make the fat missile slide out of its magazine rack into the tube. Not one goddamn thing. He’d tried every trick he could think of. Forcing power into the electromuscle handling arms. That just made them spasm and flash up burnout overload warnings in his virtual vision. Getting the SIsubroutine to review the code for the whole magazine management program. Its analysis proved that the software was effective. Running diagnostic after diagnostic on the physical mechanism. The scrutiny showed every component was fully functional.
It still didn’t work.
Ozzie let out a furious snarl. There was a dark pressure inside his head that was growing with each passing hour. He’d never known frustration like it. To have got to this point only to be blocked by some kind of glitch was the kind of irony that only a truly badass god would practice.
There is a logical reason why this machine does not work; therefore I will find the fault.
When he looked around his virtual vision at the appallingly complex architecture of the launch mechanism all he could think to do was beat his virtual fists against it. His inability to concentrate wasn’t helped by lack of food. Two days now. He hadn’t slept much during that time, either.
There was an unexpected yet familiar rustling sound in the cabin that drew Ozzie’s attention back through the virtual structure. On the right-hand couch Mark was floating a couple of centimeters above the cushioning with his back toward Ozzie. The rustling came again.
“Yo, Mark what’s…Hey. Wait a goddamn minute! Is that CHOCOLATE?”
Mark rotated lazily, his cheeks bulging as he munched away contentedly. One hand held the torn and crumpled wrappings of a Cadbury’s milk chocolate bar. He peeled the purple foil away from the last four squares and popped them defiantly into his mouth.
“You bastard!” an outraged Ozzie yelled. “I’m like fucking starving here and you’ve had a secret supply of food all along.”
“Lunch box,” Mark mumbled through his clogged mouth. “Mine.”
“We’re in this together! Son of a bitch, where’s your humanity? The only thing I’ve had in the last two days is water. And we both know where that comes from.”
Mark finished the chocolate with a big swallow. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did you forget to steal sandwiches from the kindergarten before you kidnapped me on a hijacked starship?”
“This is my ship! I paid for half of it.”
“Fine, so just open the TD channel and explain that to Nigel Sheldon.”
Ozzie wanted to thump the arrays in front of him. “What the fuck were you in an earlier life, a lawyer?”
“You’ve killed me!” Mark bellowed back. “What in that twisted-up piece of wreckage you call a brain made you think I’d be grateful? Please, I’m interested. Do tell.”
“If you’d actually close your mouth and listen to me then maybe your low-achiever IQ could just get a handle on what I’m telling you.”
“At least I’ve got an IQ larger than my shoe size.”
“Dickhead!”
“Wanker!” Mark tossed the empty wrapper at Ozzie. “Oh, and traitor, too.”
“I am not a fucking Starflyer agent. Man, why will no one ever pay attention to me?”
“Was that another rhetorical question from the giddy heights of your intellect?”
“I am not a violent person, but if you don’t stop that right now I swear I am going to kick your ass through the cabin wall.”
“Would that be the insults or the shouting I’m to stop?”
Ozzie clenched his fists. Ready to—Just about going to—“Jeez! How did you ever get through our personnel screening program? Nobody in this galaxy could stand working next to you. You are the most goddamn irritating person I have ever met.”
“Was it your charm which impressed Giselle? Or did she just feel sorry for you because of your hairstyle?”
Ozzie’s hand automatically went up to pat at his hair that was floating around like an agitated jellyfish in the cabin’s freefall environment. “This is fashionable, man,” he said in an icy voice.
“Where?”
Mar
k sounded so genuinely curious it threw Ozzie’s thought processes, preventing him from coming out with a reply. Besides…“Look, we’re getting off track here, man. I’ve apologized like thirty billion times for what happened back there in the dock. I never meant for you to be dragged along.”
“How do you think my kids will cope without me? They’re both under ten, for Christ’s sake. You’ve taken me from them to die alone in interstellar space, and now the Commonwealth is going to lose the war because of your treachery. They’ll have to take flight on the lifeboats. Chased across the galaxy by an alien fiend never knowing if they’ve truly escaped while the rest of their species is systematically hunted down and wiped out. Don’t you have children? Try to remember your feelings for them from before it took over your mind.”
“I am not a fucking Starflyer agent!” Ozzie screamed. He took a moment to calm down. When he glanced over at Mark, he saw a smug grin on the man’s face. “All right, put your superior logical IQ to work on this: What’s the point in me stealing the Charybdis?”
“Is that a Starflyer joke?”
“I’m serious. We’re going to get to Dyson Alpha, what? Six hours before Nigel arrives and turns their star nova. So what exactly is this Starflyer agent going to achieve with that? Is six hours enough time for MorningLightMountain to build a fleet of frigates like this? Tell me, come on, you’re the frigging expert on assembling these babies. Can it be done in six hours?”
“I’m not playing this game.”
“Scared I’m right?”
“You’re such a child.”
The kind of willpower that could only arise from living for three hundred sixty years managed to keep Ozzie’s voice calm and clear. “I am Ozzie Fernandez Isaac; I built the first wormhole generator and I was a midwife to the Commonwealth society that you and your children enjoy. Even if you really believe that part of me is buried under Starflyer conditioning it is still entitled to some respect. And Ozzie Fernandez Isaac is pretty fucking sure that you cannot duplicate this frigate in six hours.”
Mark sighed with reluctance. “No, you can’t.”
“Thank you. And if you can’t do that, you can’t figure out a nova bomb either.”
“You might get a handle on the principles.”
“You might indeed. Good point. The physics is all derivative of existing theories, so yes. You understand how the theory works, like knowing e-equals-m-c-squared is what makes an atom bomb work, not that it tells you how to build one. But you have the notion, and then half an hour later you get to see one in action as good old Nigel turns your star into an expanding sphere of ultra-hard radiation and plasma. So I repeat: What’s the point?”
“MorningLightMountain has other outposts.”
“Which are currently being targeted by the remaining frigates in the firewall operation.” Ozzie took a breath. He was almost in pain from the way Mark was slowly mellowing. “Nigel is going to commit genocide on behalf of our species, and the terrible thing is most of us are going to be cheering him on. We’ll still be alive; well, whoopee-do on that front, but the human race will no longer have a soul. That dies along with MorningLightMountain. Mark, this flight is the only chance we have to retain our humanity. It is hugely risky. Crazy even: I admit that. I’m gambling my life on it because I have that right, and once again I apologize for making you personally part of that gamble. The thing is this is such a gamble that Nigel is totally opposed to it, and I even respect him for that. These are very frightening times, Mark. But I cannot let this tiny little chance slip away from us. I have to try and get the barrier generator up and running again.”
“I see that, sure, but…”
“If I’m a traitor, it doesn’t matter because the human race will survive thanks to Nigel and the ships following us. But, man, think on this: if I’m not a traitor and we reestablish the barrier, then we win, too, and win the right way. Isn’t that worth something to you? Anything?”
The answer was a long time coming; and when Mark did finally speak the words sounded like they were being ripped out painfully. “I dunno. This restarting the generator idea, it sounds like a long shot.”
“Longest in human history. That’s why I’m the one doing it. Come on, dude, you don’t think anybody with a grain of sense is gonna be busting his balls like this, do you?”
“Guess not.” There was the faintest grin on Mark’s face.
“My man.” Ozzie put his hand out for a high-five. Mark stared at it mystified. “Okay,” Ozzie said. “So, like please tell me how I get the quantumbuster launch mechanism to work? Goddamn, it’s been killing me.”
“You mean you couldn’t launch the missile anyway?”
“No,” Ozzie admitted.
There was another long pause, then Mark gave a confident chuckle. “Well well. That makes me captain, doesn’t it?”
“What?”
“Okay, maybe not captain. We split the duty. You keep control of the drive. Give me control of the missiles.”
“What?”
“I can fix the launch mechanism, but if you want me to do it, you first have to give me fire authority.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“If you take us to the Dark Fortress and find a target inside it, I’ll launch a quantumbuster at it, and I’ll even cheer it on. If you try to deliver this ship and its technology to MorningLightMountain I blow us up. That’s the deal. You trust me, don’t you?”
“Son of a bitch. How close are you to Nigel, a genetic doppelgänger?”
“Do you want your chance at the barrier generator or not?”
Ozzie couldn’t see a way out. “Have you found a solution to the launch system problem?” he asked the SIsubroutine.
“No. According to my analysis routines the system should function. It does not. This is a paradox beyond available processing power to resolve.”
“All right, Mark, you can have access to the weapons systems.”
“You mean control of the weapons systems.”
“Whatever, yeah.” Ozzie’s virtual hands moved across symbols, granting Mark access to the weapons. He watched Mark establish connections into the network, then encrypt the whole weapons section.
“Can you break that?” he asked the SIsubroutine.
“No. It would require more processing power than the ship possesses.”
“Figures,” Ozzie muttered. Data was flowing out of the magazine mechanism control arrays to Mark’s insert.
“What’s that?” Mark queried.
“Just figuring out how you’re going to fix the launcher.”
“It was at an angle.”
“Excuse me?” Ozzie’s virtual vision followed a few small files Mark was now downloading into the array governing the electromuscle arms.
“Everyone thinks electromuscle segments are the same,” Mark said. “They’re not. Two identical lengths nearly always have different traction ratings. It’s down to minor instabilities in the manufacturing processes. Some batches come out weak, some strong, so the producers always build in a five percent traction overcapacity. That means they have to be balanced, especially in cases like this when you’ve got a missile being gripped by seven different arms. There, see? When they latched on to the missile in the magazine at different strengths they were actually tilting it.”
“Uh huh,” Ozzie said weakly.
“No wonder it wouldn’t slide into the launch tube, it was at a hell of a slant. There we go, that fix should recalibrate and equalize the traction. I wrote it years ago to balance the hoist arms on a friend’s tow truck.”
Ozzie’s virtual vision showed the quantumbuster missile slide into the launch tube amid a flood of green symbols. “Son of a bitch.” A patch for a tow truck! “It works.”
Mark gave him a slightly apologetic grin. “It’s what I do.”
The timer in Ozzie’s virtual vision had counted off forty-two seconds since Mark took command of the weapons. Two days smashing my head against a rock and I got nowhere; and I’m s
upposed to be a fucking genius. “Mark, thank you, man. You do realize we’ll have to go through with the flight into the Dark Fortress now?”
“Yeah, I know. But my survival chances haven’t been terribly high for a while now, have they?”
“I guess not. Uh, is there any of that lunch box left?”
“No. But there’s all the meals in the emergency survival lockers. They taste quite good, actually.”
Ozzie smiled. It was a good way of preventing the stressed whimper rushing out of his throat.
***
Oscar came out of the memory implant the way he shook off his nightly bad dream. Head rocking from side to side, trying to rise up off the couch, not quite certain where he was and what was real. He was sure his hand was still closed around a joystick while long flexible white wings curved up on either side of him as the wind raged outside. He blinked against the strong light, making out blurred figures standing at the end of the couch. Faces came into focus.
Something wrong.
Jamas and Kieran looked both scared and angry, never a good combination especially as they had their ion carbines jabbed into Wilson and Anna. Wilson’s emotions were under complete control, allowing him to put out just the right amount of tolerant dismay. Anna was quietly furious, her OCtattoos flexing in and out of visibility like a carnivore’s fangs in the prelude to a kill. If Kieran’s carbine muzzle ever slipped away from her ribs he’d probably wind up very dead very fast. By the look of him, he knew that, too.
“What’s happened?” Oscar asked. The feeling of flying was smoothing out, leaving him with a bad headache.
“Adam’s dead,” Wilson said flatly.
“And one of you Starflyer fucks killed him,” Kieran shouted; the carbine was shoved harder into Anna’s side.
The falling sensation returned to Oscar’s limbs with a rush. He gave Wilson a dumbfounded stare. “No.”
“You were here in the hangar with him,” Jamas said.
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