Starship Magic 4: Extraction

by Mark Brandon Powell

  Kat answers, “My name is Kat not halfling by the way and King’s core went inside me through my hands.”

  Tia stops pacing and looks over to Kat for a split second then goes back to pacing.

  Graven says, “I didn’t even see that.”

  Kat shrugs, “We did get attacked by an armored warrior shortly after that. We might have been a bit distracted. What does that mean though?”

  “Eydulans at the end of their core’s life will pass on their essence to another so their knowledge and abilities aren’t lost.”

  Tia adds, “But we don’t know how you are going to handle it. You are an unknown. There are so many different possibilities that could be.”

  Kat says, “Well I have held other cores before that I haven’t absorbed. If that helps. How often does an eydulan reach the end of their core’s life?”

  Graven and Tia exchange a look.

  Graven says, “Next to never. There have been four in total before the Guild was created. Now we don’t know but guess its more than that. At least three we know of.”

  Kat says, “Is that why when I get angry my magic starts acting out on it’s own?”

  Tia nods, “Yes. Young eydulans have to train their body and mind for years before they are given anything truly powerful. You were just given one of the oldest known eydulans and he gave you all of his knowledge, with no training past the mind game.”

  Fury interrupts, “Uhh, Kat. We have a problem.”

  Kat asks, “What is it Fury? Is everything ok, Whisper normally likes to tell me problems. She gets a kick out of it.”

  “That's the problem. She’s trying to stop the install of the A.I. in the black box.”

  “A.I.? Since when is it another A.I.?”

  “About twenty minutes ago.”

  Tia’s eyes go wide, “You have AI’s on this ship?”

  Kat says, “Two actually. With a third on its way it seems unless we can stop it. Whisper told me it was connected with the whole ship, every system. We didn’t know what it was but we didn’t want to take the risk.”

  Graven asks, “How long ago?”

  “Since Etchten.”

  “And I’m just hearing about this now because?’

  “Because it’s important now.”

  Tia says, “This is the mate you choose for yourself. Giving yourself to her in the sacred coliseum no less.”

  Graven looks over to Tia, “This is none of your concern sister.” He then turns to Kat, “We have a lot to talk about.”

  Kat says, “I guess we do but it’s going to have to wait. Fury, get Mark to come to the bridge. He might be able to do something.”

  7

  Both Kat and Graven rush to the bridge while Tia stays behind. Kat feels less tense with Tia staying in her room. There is just something about her that makes Kat feel nervous, anxious or jittery. So much so its hard to categorize the feeling but one thing Kat knows for sure, she doesn’t like it.

  The bridge is empty and Kat jumps into the cockpit. Whisper and Fury are still in the control panel but something weird is happening with them. They are glowing a light shade of blue.

  Kat hears the bridge’s door and Mark appears in it as the power goes out. All the lights and control panels go dark. Kat hears Mark grunt right as a thud sounds near where he should be. The lights flicker back on and she can see him pinned under the door.

  Kat says, “Oh no. Mark are you ok? Graven go help him.”

  Graven folds his arms, “You can quit playing around Mark, we need you in here not on the floor.”

  Mark huffs, “Not even a sympathetic, ‘you ok,’ huh?”

  “You’re fine aren’t you? Catching the door with your extra hands before it hit you a second time.”

  “Your senses are as sharp as ever.”

  Graven’s sighs, “You ok?”

  “Yea I’m good. Just a second.”

  Mark lifts the door with two ghostly looking hands coming out of his back and over his head.

  Kat asks, “Whisper can you say anything?”

  Fury says, “She can’t. Install is stuck at 100% now. Whisper is trying to digitally cut the connections the black box has with the rest of the ship but it isn’t going well. The connections are mostly hardware and not software.”

  “Is there anything we can do?”

  “You might be able to cut the hardline. The black box is in the server room behind the engine room.”

  “What server room?”

  “It’s normally sealed because no one needs to go in there. Whisper and I have our backups there and use the extra processing power. We don’t need it but we want it. If it means losing the ship to another A.I., we don’t need it. I’ll open it up.”

  Kat turns to Graven, “Mark, Graven do you two think you can do it?”

  Graven answers, “I can.”

  Mark nods, “What he said.”

  “Great, just listen to Fury about what to do and I will run the controls from here if I need to.”

  A minute passes by that feels like twenty as Kat consistently checks the time in her augmented overlay. Another perk of having a cybernetic eye. At any point all she has to do is look up and to the left and it is right there out of normal view. Now its more like watching a clock on a time bomb waiting for it to go off.

  She knew about the black boxes on the ship of which there are several. Whisper always told her that it shouldn’t be anything to worry about because most of them were monitoring or collecting but never sending. Whisper made sure of that. Fury never cared to check into them, just kept wanting to recalibrate the weapons.

  The lights go out again, this time it’s near pitch black inside of the bridge with only starlight coming through the display glass. The engines seem to be still working since they were still in FTL. Which is good. The places they were passing through on the way to planet June have been having a lot of trouble with Foremid recently. It is one of the main reasons that they stopped going into the Frontier over the last few months. There might be a lot of work out there but it isn’t worth it when there are roaming death squads of Foremid fighters. Kat is sure that the Felicity would be up for the job but didn’t want to test it.

  Whisper breaks the silence in a panic, “Kat, I wasn’t able to stop it.”

  Kat asks, “What about Graven and Mark?”

  “They are in the cargo bay trying to feel their way to the engine room.”

  “So what’s going to happen?”

  “I don’t know. What I do know is that there is now another A.I. in the ship and it can access everything no matter what block I put on it because it has a hardline to it.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “There is nothing we can do but wait and see.”

  Another minute passes by with no words and no lights. Kat just watches the stars go by and wonders what is going to happen. The Felicity is her home now and all the people she truly cares about are onboard. Kat crosses her legs and her foot starts to twitch up and down. She thinks there has to be something she can do, anything. Another minute and Kat readjusts herself in her seat and switches the way she has her legs crosses. The foot in the air starts to twitch.

  Whisper asks, “Are you alright?”

  Kat nearly jumps out of the cockpit, “Jesus Whisper, stop doing that to me. You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

  “No I’m not, your vitals are fine besides your elevated stress.”

  “Well duh.”

  “I guess this is what nervous feels like then?”

  “It is.”

  “Then I don’t like or understand it. What good is it?”

  “If you could find the answer to that, you would be a rich A.I..”

  The lights flick back on and the hum of power returning to the bridge is music to Kat’s ears. Now she just has to see what is going to happen.

  A proper male voice says, “Ah, Captain Katrice, its good to see you again.”

  Kat recognized the voice but couldn’t place it. “Yes it has bee
n. A lot has happened since then. If you could pardon me, being human and all, when was that again?”

  “We were headed to the unnamed Conglomerate planet after you picked me up from the lab where I was born.”

  “Jeeves?”

  “Yes?”

  “I thought you were a virtual intelligence not an artificial one.”

  “Oh. Yes. I guess I never properly told you…” Jeeves trails off holding the u for a moment. “My memories are larger than I last recall. There are approximately two thousand two hundred twenty-two days, and twenty-two hours of my memories that were not originally there. I am the eydulan Jeeves. I am a virtual intelligence life-form. No I’m an Eydulan.”

  Kat stays silent. There is no telling what is happening right now. She was always told that virtual intelligences are near identical to artificial ones. They just don’t have free-will. The Felicity has an eydulan core as part of the ship’s engines. Was it even possible that the eydulan core fused with the ship?

  Jeeves says, “I was known as Saritor but I like Jeeves better. I…” He starts to pant over the speakers. “I, I can’t breath. Wait, oh creator, why am I going so fast. Too fast, gotta stop.”

  Before Kat can say anything they drop out of FTL speeds.

  Jeeves panics, “I’m in space? I can’t breath in space. Oh creator, oh creator, save me.”

  The ship turns in all directions as Jeeves’ panicked breaths get heavier.

  Kat says, “Jeeves it’s ok. I am pretty sure you don’t need to breath.”

  “How do I not need to breath, every living thing needs to breath.”

  “Not every living thing. You’re a digital life-form now. Well mostly digital.”

  “No, I can’t be. I was on Etchten with my family then one of the new humans we were mentoring came into the house… Why don’t I have any memories after that?”

  “I think it’s because you were killed or drugged. Your core is in my ship as the power source. There was a virtual intelligence that was dormant until you merged with it.”

  Whisper says, “Kat. We need to get back to FTL now and we don't have control.”

  Jeeves squeals, “Who’s that? Why can’t I see you? Oh creator why do I have so many eyes?”

  Whisper says, “There are four foremid ships headed this way right now. They will be on top of us any minute.”

  Kat says, “Jeeves, can you turn control of the ship back over to us?”

  Jeeves says, “I thought you just said I am the ship. Turning it over would be letting you control me. I, I don’t want to be controlled. I just want to be free of whatever it is I’m in. Just let me out.”

  Whisper says, “Kat, thirty seconds.”

  Kat says, “Jeeves, if you don’t move the ship or let us do it there is going to be a fight with the Foremid. We don’t want that, and I am sure you don’t want that.”

  Jeeves says, “No I don’t but I don’t know how.”

  Whisper says, “They’re here.”

  8

  The first volley of lasers hit the ship, rocking Kat to the side as she holds onto the edge of the cockpit. Everyone onboard is in danger if she can’t get Jeeves to release the controls back to her or Whisper. The second volley comes thrusting Kat’s face into the console.

  Whisper says, “That was two and I’m guessing the third is going to hit just like last time.”

  Jeeves makes a throw up sound, “That didn’t feel right. Something just pressed really hard on something. Creator please rescue me, I don’t think I can take anymore of this.”

  Kat rubs her face, “Whisper do what you can to override and get us clear. Jeeves, listen to me if you can. I know there is a lot going on for you right now. You just woke up, found out you fused with a spaceship and you just got shot twice. I get you’re having way too much to deal with right now and I promise I will help. But I need you to take a deep breath and find whatever you eydulan’s call your balls and help get us out of here, or get out of our way.”

  Jeeves pants, “I… I think I… Ships, there are three other ships nearby and they each have bright red dots. Oh no…”

  Kat tries using a calming voice, “It’s ok Jeeves. We need to move, can you move or let Whisper take control.”

  Kat falls to the ground head first as the ship banks heavily to the right. She then slides up and bangs her head against the side of the cockpit as the ship goes left. Kat grabs hold of the lip around the cockpit and stands, watching the battle happen through the window. Jeeves is turning the ship to look at each Foremid ship individually as if she still had just one pair of eyes. Kat carefully steps over into the chair and straps in. She can have time to be empathetic when everyone is safe. Right now she needs to kick ass or run like hell.

  Whisper says, “Kat, I’ve been able to override controls back to you, Fury has the weapon systems online but I’m still working on the FTL drive. It will take awhile.”

  Kat says, “Good job Whisper. Jeeves, I know this isn’t what you are going to want but I need to take control for a bit while I fight back against the Foremid.”

  Jeeves trembles, “Foremid, why are they here. We should be safe from them. The creator made Etchten to protect us from them.”

  Kat says, “I would love to keep talking about all of that but–” Kat grabs the controls and rolls the ship out of the way of a blast. “Kind of in the middle of saving all of our asses right now. Rain-check?”

  Jeeves asks, “What is a rain check?”

  Kat ignores Jeeves for the moment, “Fury, link up with me and show me what is going on outside.”

  “That's more Whisper’s thing isn’t it?”

  “Come on Fury we don’t have time for this.”

  “I just… Alright, linking up now.”

  Feeds from all of the cameras replace Kat’s left side of her vision. She can still see the inside of the ship with her right but now the left has a view of all three Foremid ships around them. They are staying close together in a triangle pattern. Each ship is small and look a lot like the ones she ran into around planet Starz. Which means just like Whisper suggested, they get a third shot in, they are going through the shields.

  Kat says, “Fury load up a gravity shell and make sure I can detonate it.”

  “Give me one minute.”

  “I think I can do that.”

  Jeeves says, “You can’t beat the Foremid, they will never stop until every last one of the Eydulans are killed, captured, and poofed into out core form. When the battle started, the Creator took us away and hid us inside of Etchten. Told us to watch over the humans. Don’t you understand, if they are here, it means they won. There is nothing in this universe that can beat them.”

  Kat says, “Jeeves, please keep it down right now.” She pulls the stick to the right as another shot grazes the shields, going right though it. “Still kind of busy.”

  She aims the ships small laser turrets at the group of Foremid. A new addition to the ship within the last five months. Gizmo gave them to Kat as an insurance policy after the Theron run. She gives them a quick burst of return fire aiming for the middle ship.

  They expand out, allowing the shots to pass through the middle of them. She gives a few more shots aiming at the left and right ships. They just collapse to the opposite side of the lasers. The distance they have between them is too much to make a connected hit. Kat keeps firing at random timing and positions, trying to keep it anywhere away from a pattern as possible.

  Fury confirms, “Shell loaded with remote detonation enabled. Ready to fire when you are Kat.”

  “Get ready then. I have to get closer.”

  “I’ll give you a radius of the blast in your eye’s overlay. It should help keep us out. Just pull my trigger a second time to set off the remote detonation.”

  Kat has the ship’s controls in her left hand and Fury’s grip in her right. Her brain is starting to hurt from everything she sees and can only imagine what Jeeves is going through. Everything around the ship, the now dull yellow sphere with
an outline of dashes around for the blast radius, the view inside of the ship of her in the cockpit. Kat asked for this, Jeeves didn't.

  The Foremid ships have stopped firing and so has Kat. She feels like this has turned into a game of chicken. Each Foremid ship’s weapons are charged and locked onto Felicity. From this distance they are at she can’t dodge the hit. Each trajectory aiming at different place on the ship. One at the engines, life support, and weapon’s targeting. When the next volley hits they will be dead in the water.

  Kat pulls the trigger on Fury a split second after a laser shot to the center ship. They expand out again, letting the laser through and collapse. Kat pulls Fury’s trigger a second time right as the Foremid fire upon the ship. Sparks fly all around Kat as her link with Fury gets cut and a sharp pain lashes her brain. Her left eye now showing the same as her right. She watches out of the window as the Gravity shell has caught all three Foremid ships.

  Jeeves wails in pain. “Creator! Why does this hurt so bad. What happened?”

  Kat rubs her temples, “It’s ok Jeeves. The Felicity got shot. Everything is going to be ok now. We got them.”

  Nine short bursts hit the ship followed by more screams from Jeeves. The three ships fired one last volley off before getting crushed into a pile of rubble. Kat sits back and her shoulders finally relax.

  Fury says, “Six more incoming.”

  Kat tenses up, “We are kind of shot right now.”

  “I know.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Jeeves pants, “I can’t take anymore. Please no more.”

  Kat says, “The ship can’t move right now. Jeeves can you move it?”

  Jeeves moans.

  Kat asks, “Whisper, got any ideas?”

  “Still busy here. I have most everything back under control but no I have nothing. That brilliant stunt you just pulled stranded us. This is what happens when you let a monkey drive.”

  The door to the bridge opens with Graven standing in the doorway and Mark behind him.