“I cannot allow you to hurt father,” Said Cass Linn, her voice louder than before.
Silverman stepped away from the door. It was closing. He felt the impulse to jump through it and out back onto the mountainside. The moment came and went, just in a breath or two. He didn’t want to separate from Quinn. Besides, perhaps the inside of the ship was safer than the mountain. He hoped, at least.
“We’re not going to hurt him,” Quinn was saying, “He’s your father? He made you, you mean?”
“Both are correct,” Cass Linn replied without any kind of pause.
Quinn opened his mouth to speak, but he also reached over the top of Cass Linn towards Jann Linn’s face. He was surprised to find himself falling backwards and staggering across the room until he was lying on his back at Matt Silverman’s feet.
“My fault,” Quinn smiled as Silverman reached down to him, “She did tell me to stay back. I guess she really meant it.”
Matt helped him up. Both men gripped the other’s forearm. Quinn was heavier than he looked.
“You’re not hurt?”
“Fortunately, no. But that’ll teach me to ignore the warnings of a five foot tall robot called…”
“Cass Linn,” Matt finished Quinn’s sentence, “Yes, she warned you.”
“The ship’s moving. Can you feel it?”
Matt shook his head and took a deep breath to suppress the sudden surge of fear. He looked at the door, which was now firmly closed.
The robot had come to a rest to the right of the chair. Matt and Jim kept their distance for a few seconds, watching the scene before them. Neither man noticed that the door they had entered had now completely sealed closed. Then the ship moved and they exchanged looks. Quinn shrugged again. He put his fingers to his nose and then gestured towards Cass Linn’s father. Silverman nodded slowly.
“Father, I’m sorry,” The robot was saying. Its silvery fingers touched the old man’s arm gently.
Cass had no feeling in her fingertips. She’d never had feeling in her left hand, but her right arm came from a very sophisticated machine. The touch sensors in her precision hand had failed. She was relying on her remaining eye to judge where Jann Linn’s arm was. Her movements were difficult. The motors in her shoulders were damaged. Even her precision hand shook the more she tried to perform delicate actions. She struggled to touch her father but the slender fingers of her right hand stayed inches away from his cheek. Quinn had disappeared behind Matt and was looking at the strange pile of arms and legs and body parts. Matt was left standing alone, watching the pathetic robot as it reached wavily towards its dead creator.
“My father was an architect – I think,” Quinn said strangely.
Matt stared at him. Quinn was wearing a crazy, goofy expression. Cass Linn raised her father’s arm high, then she released it. The momentum knocked the robot to the ground and Jann Linn’s corpse slid off the chair on top of her. They lay there together, unmoving.
“This is…” Matt didn’t know how to finish the statement.
“Painful,” Quinn said, “We need to help.”
“I don’t fancy getting thrown around the room again,” Matt Silverman admitted, “But better me than you.”
Quinn grinned and nodded with mad enthusiasm. Matt thought that the old man looked like he was actually enjoying himself. Cass Linn’s systems had shut down again. The exertion of moving her arm had overloaded her damage sensors, sending a power surge that had caused her brain to shut down. She sensed the shutdown just as it was about to happen, but she wasn’t able to override the automatic systems in time. Hidden from sight, her automatic repair system made subtle, microscopic changes to the peripheral damaged area of her brain. Her shoulder was being repaired as Matt Silverman and Jim Quinn eased her body off of the thin, lollypop headed old man.
“Poor bugger,” Quinn remarked, “He’s dead. This robot’s heavy. Oops.”
Cass Linn’s right arm had fallen off. In his surprise, Quinn let go of the heavy machine. Silverman muttered a quiet obscenity as the robot landed on its glass domed head, which cracked and broke.
“Oops indeed,” Matt Silverman frowned, “If he wasn’t dead before then it just about finished him off I think.”
“Yes,” Quinn mused, seriously.
“Yes,” Matt pushed the robot to the side. It was heavier than it looked – even minus an arm. “How… did this thing manage to get itself into this ship?”
Quinn was checking the old man’s pulse. Then he was prising open the wrinkled, crinkled eyelids and squeezing the dead person’s cheeks.
“It’s an old man,” Quinn concluded, after some thought.
“Jann Linn,” The robot spoke, unmoving. Its voice was quiet and whistled slightly, but both men heard it clearly “My father.”
“Your father’s dead,” Quinn said.
Cass Linn’s cracked and shattered dome head tinkled as she tried to move. There was another power surge, but the new systems that she’d put in place prevented her from shutting down. The excess energy was rerouted to her reserve battery, topping up its charge.
“I understand dead,” Cass Linn said, eventually.
The fingers of her remaining arm moved. The burnt arm flexed and bent until the fingers of the hand could touch the broken head. More of the pieces of glass fell away. The weak looking legs quivered then kicked. The tub body rolled along the floor away from Jann Linn’s body. Silverman jumped over it as Cass rolled in his direction.
“Athletic,” Jim commented.
Silverman frowned on one side of his face, shrugging his shoulders.
“Watch out,” Jim said.
Cass was still rolling. Matt realised that the ship was pitching backwards. The mannequin arms and legs were tumbling everywhere.
“Power failure,” An electronic voice sounded, “Engine restart in progress. This is a warning.”
The voice belonged to Oss Linn. It was a loud, buzzing voice that lacked gender and emotion and any sense of a living, thinking thing. The engine systems of the old ship had shut down. Oss had been balancing the heat build-up in the engines with trying to keep the ship in the air. The cooling system had failed completely after the ship had reached an altitude of about fifty eight thousand feet. The ship had been falling for ten seconds before the inertial stabiliser powered down. It was now one and a half minutes away from smashing into the hard rock below.
The inertial stabiliser started to work again and the brief sensation of falling and near weightlessness faded fast. The robot Cass Linn had disappeared to the back of the compartment and had become buried amongst the various body parts there. Jim Quinn had hurt his knee as he’d lost his balance. His face was pained as he grinned uncertainly towards his new young friend. Matt Silverman smiled back. He was still staring towards the front of the control room, wondering where the strange voice had come from. Then, it spoke again.
“Attention. Four attempts to restart the engine have failed. Impact will occur in forty seconds.”
Silverman turned to look at Quinn. He saw the robot called Cass Linn, suddenly on its feet and staggering towards him.
“I didn’t realise that we’d taken off,” Quinn laughed quietly, his eyes bright once more, “Who the Hell’s been flying all his time?”
Cass Linn’s voice was loud, almost panicky, “Get out of my way! Please!”
The remains of her glass head fell away as she stumbled towards the front of the ship. Silverman dodged to the side as her head shattered on the hard floor. Her eye remained in place, a wobbly silver stalked ball on top of her barrel frame. Her legs looked like they might buckle as she crashed past Silverman and the still laughing older man.
“Dear God,” Quinn said, “What the Hell is that smell?”
Silverman frowned. He gestured towards the dead body on the ground.
“Right,” Quinn said, bemused, “The dead guy.”
“Ten seconds,” The strange metal voice sounded, “Cass, I don’t understand why you haven’t replied to me
using our ultralink. This way is so difficult for me.”
Cass Linn collided with the control chair, breaking it from its old and weakened mounting bolts. She reached out her right arm and grabbed the control console. Her body still fell to the floor as her right leg broke in two places and her left leg collapsed.
“I can’t,” Cass Linn said, “I have a lot of damaged systems. They keep going on and off. It’s confusing.”
“The ship is going to hit the ground in twenty five seconds,” Oss said, “Even if the engines restart now I’ve calculated that they won’t generate enough thrust in time to prevent impact. You should transfer to the laboratory if you can.”
Cass Linn could not see the control panel, but she remembered the configuration. After her last shut down the touch sensors on her fingers had been restored. Cass felt her way to the front of the ship.
The ship was falling like a dead weight through the smoke of the burning city. The pointed nose had initially pointed upwards towards the sky, but the air resistance had turned the stubby pencil shaped vessel around so that it now plummeted nose first.
“Ten seconds until impact,” Oss said, “Should we merge our programs before we are destroyed?”
“No,” Cass said quickly, “Trust me. It’s going to be alright.”
The ship was about five hundred metres from the ground when the forward array came to life. The front of the ship sparked with red, blue and orange flashes of energy. Then, a half second later, a swirling halo of cobalt blue energy appeared around the front of the ship. The energy field brightened to a white flash and then, just as the weathered blunt nose was about to smash into the mountainside, the old transport vessel vanished. For a brief moment the bright white energy vortex remained open, sucking in a handful of dirt and dust from the mountain. But then it was gone completely. No trace, no residual energy. And where the old transport vessel should have left a sizeable crater in the mountain there was only a momentary cracking of static electricity.
2195AD - USS Neil Armstrong.
USS Neil Armstrong carried twenty six S98 Predator multipurpose two seat fighters each armed with close range plasma Gatling guns and four bay mounted smart missiles. The Predator was a fast and powerful craft, each one more than a match for the Enrilean fighters. But the Enrilean fighters’ railguns gave the alien craft a greater combat advantage. CINCSPAC had not known about the Enrilean fighters – or the railguns, but the new information was already on its way towards the Jupiter listening post .
“Some of these birds have never fired live ammunition, sir.”
“I don’t want to hear shit like that, Mike,” John Cutter said, “I want to hear you tell me that you can get these ships out there so we’re not running into combat on our own. Jesus Christ, Mike, what the motherfucking good is it telling me that?”
Cutter had learned that eighteen of the Predators could be made ready in the few hours it would take Armstrong to reach the USS Drake incident site. More of the Enrilean fighters were converging on the ship – and the Enrilean warship Justice Six had just started moving towards the heavier Armstrong. Cutter reasoned that the alien ship would attack when it was within range – just like the USS Drake.
“Sorry John. We’ll do our best.”
“Really, yes, do,” Cutter pushed the lick of black hair back and out of his eyes, “Let’s get on with this.”
Cutter waited for the hangar overseer to open the grey metal door of the large briefing room, then he stepped through the opening. Michael DeGeorgio, the ship’s deck officer followed him.
There were forty two men and women inside the small space. Some were seated on the tiny grey folding seats that were scattered around. About a dozen or so of the men and three of the women were standing. They’d been waiting for over ten minutes for Cutter to make his way down from the bridge at the front of the quarter mile long ship. The room smelled of a mixture of sweat, Lieutenant Armando Assanti’s strong aftershave and the chief engineer’s illicit cigar smoke.
“Alright!” Cutter raised his voice as he squeezed into the room, “I’m not sure how much you all know already, so I’m going to start from the beginning. We’ve got a few hours before we reach the op point so there’ll be time for a question and answer session at the end if you still don’t think you’ve heard enough.”
There were a few coughs. DeGeorgio closed the door, standing close enough to Cutter that the younger man could smell the unfiltered cigarettes that DeGeorgio was careful not to be caught smoking. Everyone stared expectantly at the tall, dark haired and well-groomed second in command. Cutter drew a deep breath.
“Alright. Right now we’re located in what we know of as sector 980. This is an unexplored part of the galaxy about twenty eight thousand light years from Earth and two parsecs from the Joan Gallsin wormhole. Or, at least the exit point of Gallsin used to be two parsecs from here. It’s moved – somehow – to this new location smack dab in the middle of the Enrilean solar system.”
“Enrilean?” one of the fighter pilots said.
“That’s right. Enrileans. The star is known locally as Errilas. There are two populated worlds – Enrilea and Relathon – and they’re pretty pissed off with us. The passenger transport Spirit of the Future out of Seattle was lost during its passageway through Gallsin about thirty seven hours ago. We haven’t any information one way or another as to whether the ship met with some accident or was destroyed by our new alien friends, but we know that the USS Drake was attacked and destroyed by the ship we are approaching – the Enrilean ‘Justice 6’. And that’s 6 in roman numerals, people. Yep, not only do our new friends from across the stars speak English - they also use roman numerals.”
“English speaking. I heard that,” Lieutenant Marcus Connah said, pushing his thick plastic black rimmed glasses back from the bridge of his nose, “That doesn’t sound possible.”
“Impossible or not, it’s true. And before you ask – this has nothing to do with Haven,” Voices started to murmur but Cutter raised his hand to silence them, “And we have two planets with cities, roads, factories, radio stations and – presumably – millions of people. So whatever this we’re dealing with, its nothing like anything we’ve dealt with before. This isn’t some secret Earth colony, like you might have heard on the newsnet. These are old, established cultures of a new race of people. How they came to speak English remains a mystery.”
The room was quiet again as the pilots and InfoTech officers mulled over what had been said. Cutter pushed his black hair back from his temples.
“USS Drake was attacked without warning when it arrived here. The logs have been studied and we know that the aggressor – an alien craft called the Justice 6 – is heavily armed. Looks like Drake got a few good hits in before she went out of action. They’re moving towards us, but not at any kind of speed. Not yet, at least.
“We’ve also detected two waves of small fighters on their way to our position. They’re coming from the planet of Enrilea. These are the same type of craft that attacked us on our arrival here. In case you haven’t been informed, I can officially tell you now that these four ships were completely destroyed. “ Cutter paused to consider, “There wasn’t time for anything else. The attack occurred within minutes of our arrival here ah… the main weapons used by the fighters seems to be some kind of railgun system. I recommend you all take some time to look at the combat report. There’s a lot of useful information there, so get stuck into it.”
Again, it was Connah who raised his hand. Connah was “top gun” aboard the USS Neil Armstrong. He and Ameena Vorderman, the slim African American, had held the gold cup for both drone shooting and speed runs on their Predator. Connah was an excellent pilot with a rare skill that almost exceeded intuition itself. Vorderman, the shy girl with the bright smile, was the fastest and most accurate rear computer systems operator anyone had ever seen.
“So it’s war. We’re at war with… the Enrileans?”
Cutter shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. We’re stil
l figuring things out here as we go along. But we didn’t get a friendly reception – and neither did the USS Drake. We can assume that the passenger liner Spirit of the Future met a similar fate.”
“They seem trigger happy,” Vorderman said quietly. Several of the officers looking at her nodded quietly. “I’m assuming the Drake didn’t fire first.”
“That’s correct. The Drake was attacked without provocation, warning or communication of any kind. We know right now that the civilian population of the planet Relathon uses analogue radio. We have recordings from literally hundreds of stations on that planet. There seem to have been some from the planet Enrilea also, but not so many.”
“Sorry, sir, but the point to this is?”
“Communications reports that the Enrilean people haven’t replied to any of our transmissions. Of course, it’s unlikely that the fighters we took out would use radio to communicate. We’re sending transmissions towards the two populated planets, using the BURST system and ZADIO but we haven’t had any replies yet. It’s quite likely that the BURST and ZADIO transmissions won’t be heard, but our first radio transmissions should be reaching the Enrilean planet about now. It’ll take another twenty minutes for any radio reply to reach us – if they decide to reply.”
Beyond the Starport Adventure (Bullet Book 1) Page 32
