Hawk_Hand of the Machine

by Van Allen Plexico

  “What are you doing?” demanded the ship, its voice as filled with emotion as Hawk had yet heard it. “Stop that immediately! Replace that component! It is a vital portion of my interstellar communications array!”

  “Exactly,” Falcon whispered, as he traced the connections of the various tiny components on the circuit boards. Then, before Hawk could stop him, he raised the entire panel over his head and brought it sharply down onto the deck, shattering it.

  “NOOOO!” screamed the ship.

  Hawk had his pistol out and was leveling it at Falcon’s chest.

  Falcon looked up from the ruins of the communications array to the weapon trained at him, and then to Hawk’s face. He met the man’s gaze with a grim calmness and laughed again.

  “You’re welcome,” he said.

  6: Raven

  Raven was floating in a serene, dreamless state when she suddenly became aware of a droning, buzzing sound that was intruding into her consciousness. Slowly, slowly she responded, climbing upward toward the light—and then with a start she came awake.

  She was lying back in the cushioned seat of her ship’s cockpit. Sweat trailed down from her forehead into her hair.

  Her reflexes kicked in. She sat up. Her green eyes flashed about.

  A blue light on the console in front of her was flashing, and the noise that had brought her back to reality, she understood then, was warning her about the hyperdrive. It was shutting down—and the alarm meant that it was shutting down prematurely. Either some component within the engine was failing…or it was being affected by an outside force.

  She leaned forward, reaching out and tapping commands onto the forward console. Data streamed across the holographic display that hovered a few inches in front of her. She struggled to sift through it, making sense of what she was being shown.

  She exhaled slowly, annoyed by the confusing set of readings she was receiving. All of the diagnostic programs indicated that the hyperdrive engine was functioning perfectly. And yet, here she was, back in normal space. It was bizarre—as if something was suppressing the engines’ effects and dragging the ship out of the Above.

  Before declaring the situation to be entirely influenced by outside forces, however—which raised a whole new set of potential problems—she decided to inspect the engine herself. She pulled herself out of the seat and started for the rear of the vessel.

  As she moved, she winced at the soreness still evident in her muscles, and regretted that her sleep had been interrupted; the accelerated healing her suit and her ship could provide during such times was too valuable to squander.

  She had been trying to piece together her old, implanted memories before she had fallen asleep, to little avail. Deep meditation had brought her to what felt like the precipice of revelation, but each time she felt she could at least sense the outlines of her previous self’s memories, something pulled her back. It was infuriating—and the more emotional she became over it, the harder it was to maintain the meditative state. Finally she had given up and simply dozed off.

  “Ship,” she called out as she pulled off her gloves and ran her bare fingertips over the smooth gray access panels. “Still no contact with the Machine, or with any other Hands?”

  “Negative. Subspace communications are not functioning.”

  She clicked the first panel open, then frowned.

  “The channels are jammed? Or the equipment itself is not functioning?”

  “Unknown. All systems report active, but I am entirely unable to access subspace.”

  Again, puzzling but at least consistent. The hyperdrive worked by opening a portal into a higher level of reality—the Above, as it was called—where great reserves of energies could be harnessed to propel a ship far beyond the speed of light. Conversely, the communications system worked by directing a signal through a lower level, the Below, where time moved at a much faster rate. Thus a signal traveling great distances in the Below could re-emerge at a point far across the galaxy with hardly any time having elapsed in our reality. Ships could travel through the Below as well; until the development of engines that would work in the Above, that had been for many centuries the primary means of interstellar transportation. But it was extremely unpleasant for the passengers and crew, who had to freeze themselves and endure a centuries-long voyage through that dimension, waiting to re-emerge in normal space only a short time after they had departed.

  The upshot was that both hyperspace travel and subspace communication required the ship to be able to open a portal into the Above or the Below. At the moment, it seemed her ship—for all the indications otherwise—was simply not able to do so.

  “Scan this sector and fix our current position,” she called out as she worked. “Locate any Machine or Hand bases nearby.”

  A few minutes later she had removed several access panels and pulled most of the drive components from their housings. While not a certified hyperdrive engineer by any means, she’d been injected with enough knowledge of the systems to at least diagnose the most obvious and likely problems. She squinted down at the crystalline boards, studying the circuits and connections. As she’d expected, nothing seemed amiss.

  “No bases in the immediate vicinity,” the ship’s voice informed her then.

  Having replaced the gray panels over the access ports, she returned to the cockpit and perched on the forward edge of the seat. She touched a series of controls to dismiss the holographic display and then stared out through the viewport at the velvet blackness surrounding her, thinking. She was drifting motionless in space. Readouts indicated the sublight engines were in perfect shape—but of course they said the same about the hyperdrive and the communications system.

  “Give me control,” she ordered the ship.

  The Aether connection meshed her mind with the ship’s systems. Visualizing a joystick control extended upward from the control panel, she gripped it. Now she could execute tight maneuvers on her own. She activated the engines and the ship leapt forward, then responded with precision to her tiniest movements. She swooped and spun and barrel-rolled, dancing the small, triangular ship through the void with an almost preternatural deftness.

  “No problems there,” she said to herself as she settled the ship into a smooth, slow glide. Yet still the blue light flashed, indicating no hyperspace capability.

  She leaned back in the cushioned seat, closing her eyes and fighting to suppress the growing level of frustration that was building up in the pit of her stomach.

  “Ship. Full diagnostic. Discover what is wrong with the blasted hyperdrive.”

  A long pause, and then the smooth voice replied, “The hyperdrive is functional and undamaged.”

  “Then why, for pity’s sake, are we just sitting here, dead in space?”

  “Unknown. All evidence indicates that the hyperspace/ subspace effect is being suppressed in this immediate vicinity by an outside force or agent.”

  “How in the name of the Machine is that even possible?”

  “Unknown.”

  She cursed.

  Seconds ticked by.

  “Are there any inhabited planets within immediate range?”

  “Negative.”

  She cursed again, louder.

  What to do? Several scenarios presented themselves, but none seemed particularly desirable—especially with no Hand base nearby. One option was that she could aim the ship in the direction of the nearest base and then seal herself in the medical coffin, letting it freeze her until she arrived, or until a friendly ship encountered her. It could take decades—centuries—at least. And meanwhile, she would be completely cut off from whatever was happening with these new attackers. And perhaps vulnerable to them, too.

  It was all simply intolerable. She’d been awoken into this body just in time to encounter some new menace and battle a phalanx of them, and now she was trapped like a fly in amber and could do nothing—couldn’t travel, couldn’t even communicate with anyone else in the galaxy. Intolerable!

  I
n fact, if the Machine still existed, it might even write her off entirely and awaken a new Raven. What would such a thing mean for her, once she finally made it back to civilization? Would she be cast out as a redundancy—a superfluous duplicate? Would she be destroyed?

  She was lying still in the pilot’s seat, ruminating over all of this, when the alarm wailed again.

  She sat up, her heart thumping. “Now what?”

  “A hyper-portal is opening directly in front of us.”

  She gazed out through the viewport and her face twisted with confusion. There, just ahead, floated a shimmering blue circle. The ship was headed directly for it.

  “But—I thought we’d determined that wasn’t possible here.”

  “Correct,” the ship replied. “I am still unable to create a portal myself.”

  “Then what—who—?”

  The blue circle leapt toward her ship with a startling suddenness.

  “Evasive!” she cried.

  Before either she or her ship could react, the blue circle engulfed them.

  Reality went away for a time.

  7: Hawk

  The big cyborg tossed the ruined crystalline circuit board to the deck. His human eye moved from it up to Hawk’s face. He stood there, waiting, almost challenging Hawk to take some sort of action in response.

  But Hawk was too stunned and confused to so much as move. That was understandable. Of all that he’d learned since his awakening in the besieged base, two things stood out as most important: that he was a member of a group of agents—Hands—who worked together against the enemies of Man, and that a Hand’s ship was his most valuable support system and source of information.

  And yet what he had just witnessed flew all in the face of those two facts. Falcon had intentionally damaged Hawk’s ship—and then told him, “You’re welcome!” Hawk was dumbfounded and couldn’t manage to speak for several moments.

  The ship, however, found its voice, and its outrage, much more quickly.

  “What is the meaning of this, Falcon?” it demanded loudly. “You have damaged my subspace communications array!”

  Falcon snorted.

  “You are apparently as ignorant as your brain-damaged charge, here,” the big man called out to the ship’s intelligence. Then he turned to confront the very confused man in blue. “I’m going to go ahead and assume—at least for now—that you truly are a Hawk,” he said. “That being the case, it had to have been a colossal error for you to be brought back into existence at all.” He laughed sharply. “But here you are,” he continued, “and as such—as a Hawk—you have absolutely no business trying to communicate with the Machine, whether it’s still out there or not.” He looked around menacingly. “Nor does your ship.”

  Hawk’s face reflected deep confusion. “Why exactly not?”

  Falcon looked as if he were about to answer, then hesitated. “Believe me,” he said, his brown human eye meeting Hawk’s almost black ones, “you’re much better off this way.” He stepped back and shook his bald, partly metallic head. “You do not want the Machine to know where you are right now. Or, honestly, any of the other Hands.”

  “Believe you? Why should I believe you?” Hawk moved around to block Falcon as the bulkier man sought to pass in the confined space of the main cabin. “From what I understand, we all—all three of us, counting the ship—were more or less created by the Machine, and we all work for it.”

  Falcon stared down at the gray deck at his feet for a moment. Then he looked up at Hawk, and both his human and mechanical eyes seemed to be burning with fiery intensity.

  “That’s the problem,” he growled at Hawk. “Or part of it, anyway.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “And I can’t say everything I’d like,” Falcon snapped back, looking up at the ceiling, then all around the cabin. “At least, not for the moment.”

  Hawk frowned at this but did not reply. It was obvious that something—the ship itself?—was constraining Falcon’s ability to explain himself. He considered this for a few seconds, while Falcon succeeded in moving past him and leaning into the cockpit area.

  “Ship,” Hawk said loudly before Falcon could cause any further mischief. “Are you able to shut off your monitoring of our conversation for a brief time?”

  The ship said nothing at first, though whether this was because it did not in fact know the answer immediately, or because it was reluctant to admit it, Hawk couldn’t tell.

  “I can,” it said at last, in an almost petulant tone. “But why should I?”

  “I have matters to discuss with my brother Hand,” he replied, even as Falcon eyed him strangely. “Matters I’d prefer kept between the two of us, at least for now.”

  “Between the two of you? But—I am not certain that I should allow—”

  “Allow?” Hawk repeated incredulously. “You serve the Machine, do you not? And after the Machine, you serve me. That is what I have learned, and remembered, thus far.”

  “…Yes, that is true,” the ship said, its voice now definitely petulant.

  Hawk touched an unassigned control square on the forward console. “Then transfer that function to this control. I will turn off your hearing now, and turn it back on shortly.”

  “…Very well.”

  Hawk pressed the square.

  “Ship. Can you hear me?”

  Silence.

  “Ship! I order you to answer me if you can hear me.”

  Silence.

  Hawk nodded and glanced up at Falcon, who looked on dubiously.

  “Nice. But—you trust this ship?” Falcon asked.

  “Less than I did two minutes ago,” Hawk answered. “But—why did you rip the comm system out?”

  “As I said, you do not need to be trying to communicate with the Machine right now—if ever. And your ship definitely needs to be kept quiet.” He hesitated, then snorted softly. “Not that the Machine is listening anymore, of course. Just a precaution. You never know when it might decide to wake up and start paying attention to us all again.”

  Hawk was attempting to take all of this in.

  “I said I didn’t trust my ship,” he told the big man across from him, “but of course I don’t trust you, either.”

  Falcon snorted his distinctive laugh.

  “I should hope not. You don’t even know me yet.” He rubbed his rough chin. “And if I had been nearly any other Hand, you’d probably be dead by now.”

  Hawk just stared at him.

  “And what, precisely, am I supposed to take from that statement?” he asked at last.

  “Nothing but fact. If the Machine knew you existed right now—if any of your brother or sister Hands knew another Hawk had been awoken and even now traveled the highways and byways of this galaxy, they would surely have no compunctions whatsoever about terminating you.”

  Hawk peered back at his new guest, eyes narrow.

  “And will you tell me why that should be?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Not just yet. It’s a somewhat…sensitive topic.” Falcon looked around the cabin somewhat nervously. “I need to get a feel for things first. For how things stand.”

  Hawk appeared to be considering this. Then he nodded. He dropped back into one of the cabin seats, arms crossed in front of him, and regarded the big man, at last having the opportunity to take the measure of him.

  “Alright. For now. So—can you at least tell me why you’d want to help me? Why you prevented my ship from trying to contact the Machine?”

  “It’s simple, really,” the cyborg answered, slowly lowering his heavy bulk into the seat across the cabin. “Because the ship is a slave to the Machine. It follows a compulsion to attempt to contact our mechanical master. As do we.”

  “We?”

  “Of course,” Falcon replied instantly. Then his eyes narrowed and he studied Hawk. “You feel it, don’t you? In the Aether? That constant, nagging sense that you have to talk to the thing—you have to try your be
st to find a way to establish a communications link to it?”

  Hawk shook his head. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” He stared back at Falcon. “You experience this, then?”

  “Constantly. Incessantly. And it grows worse the more time that passes since the last time I was able to speak with it.”

  Hawk nodded slowly. “And how long ago was that?”

  “A thousand years.”

  Hawk nearly laughed, then realized the big man was serious.

  “A thousand years? It hasn’t replied to you in that long?”

  Falcon shook his head. “Obviously, something has gone wrong somewhere.”

  “Apparently so.”

  Falcon scratched at the human portion of the top of his head distractedly.

  “So you can imagine that it’s more or less driving me insane,” he added. “I don’t really want to talk to the Machine. Not anymore. But between the implanted compulsion and my own natural curiosity—wondering just what has happened to it, to silence it this way—I can’t help but keep trying to open a connection. Unsuccessfully.”

  Hawk absorbed what Falcon was saying, seated there in the cabin of his ship. The big cyborg seemed honest enough, and really had no reason to lie, as far as Hawk could tell. Even so, something was still bothering him.

  “So,” Hawk asked after a few seconds, “why do you suppose I don’t feel this compulsion to try to communicate with the Machine?”

  Falcon shrugged. “Your ship said you have a problem with your connection to the Aether—the hyperspace network we use to communicate with one another, control our vessels, and so on. In your particular case, that may have turned out to be quite a blessing.” He leaned in closer. “Tell me about your awakening.”

  Somewhat reluctantly, Hawk recounted the story—his earliest memories.

  “You’re free of the compulsion, it sounds like to me,” Falcon concluded after Hawk had quickly outlined the story, “because you got disconnected too early. While they were still programming you with everything a Hawk needs to know. Something must’ve gone haywire and messed up the part of your brain that receives the signal—and the compulsion to connect that comes along with it.” Falcon rubbed his stubbly chin. “If that’s the case, your awakening couldn’t have been very pleasant, if my guessing is close to accurate.”