Awakening sf-2

by Randolph Lalonde

“Okay, I'm moving on. Guess making me look like a crew member didn't work.”

  “I think I just did it too late,” Finn replied as he looked up the ship's current location. All the navigational controls were locked out but he could see they were pulling into orbit around Nissa. “Okay, we're in orbit around Nissa.”

  “What do you want to do Finn? Set the Big Surprise to blow and get out? What do you figure?”

  “I'm going to hide out here and help you guys out. I'm not coming up on the Triton's sensors at all. Must be because I'm standing right behind this thing.”

  “Isn't it's power draining now that the Samson's engines aren't running?”

  “Only about half a percent every ten minutes. I'll keep my eye on it.”

  “How much of a charge will that thing need to do damage?” Ramirez asked, the sound of him running was clear through his communicator.

  “I won't let it go down past seventy percent. Besides, the Samson's main capacitors can still dump some power into this thing if they have to.”

  “Sounds goo-” The sounds of gunfire interrupted Ramirez's transmission.

  Finn switched to the deck layout view of the Triton so he could find Ramirez. He had made it two decks up and run right into the pair of security officers that had been sent to look for him. “There are two of them!” He informed him.

  “Thanks, could have told me a little earlier!”

  “Sorry, I was busy looking at everything else.”

  Agameg Price

  He had never been more nervous in his life. Agameg had fallen in step with a few other crew aboard the Samson as they left the ship, not sure of where he was going or what he was supposed to be doing. It was difficult to ignore the conversation between Finn and Ramirez. Trying not to react to it in the slightest made him even more anxious. When he heard that Ramirez was off the Samson and exploring his eyes went wide. That could be very helpful to him, as long as he could manage to maintain his facade. He was overjoyed that both of their efforts were going well, that Finn established an uplink to the Triton's computer system. The information he was overhearing could be immensely helpful.

  It was obvious that the fellow with long, scraggly black hair down to his shoulders was in command, and just the fact that his hair seemed so random and loose made imitating him convincingly impossible. He was never good at hair.

  It was difficult not to smile at Ashley when she looked right at him, and the corners of his mouth did take an upturn. He jerked his eyes away from hers, she couldn't know that it was him.

  “Are you all right man? You don't look so good,” asked the security officer marching beside him.

  It struck Agameg that he had only heard the voice of the man he was imitating twice. Once when he dropped on him, and once when he was busy stuffing him into a storage locker. He made his best attempt regardless. “Something I ate. I'm fine,” he said gruffly, like he was a little choked up.

  “Too bad we're short on people, otherwise I'd just send you to your rack.”

  “Just get something for it out of the emergency medkit when we get to the brig. You'll stand watch. How's that for taking it easy?” Wheeler asked, not looking back at Price.

  He just nodded his reply, hoping the Captain didn't expect a response.

  Before long they arrived at the brig. There were twenty cells plus one special containment unit at the end with extra fortifications and controls. There was also a security desk for two closest to the main hatch. A pair of guards walked the newer Samson crew members, Agameg didn't know their names yet, into separate cells while Wheeler waved Ashley into another cell closer to the exit. “Are you sure you wouldn't rather spend some time with a real Captain? My quarters are a lot more comfortable.”

  “Not in your wildest dreams greaseball,” Ashley sneered.

  Price nervously sat down in the watchman's seat and focused on looking at the brig status screen. There were controls for dispensing food, a prison smock, cleaning the cell, cleaning the inmate, and disposing of other waste. There were also alarms, communications controls, and several other systems he didn't know just what to make of yet.

  “All right, you're on watch, don't open those doors for anything. I'll give you a tour of the security systems later,” Wheeler said as he lead the three security officers out of the brig.

  One of them turned around for a minute, walking backwards as he did so. “And break open an emergency kit, get some motion meds or something, you look a little green.”

  Price nodded and checked the colour of his skin. It was a little pale, maybe slightly pasty but to his relief it wasn't green. He overheard Finn tell Ramirez that there were security officers on the way to him and, unsure of what to do, he tried to bring up the ship's deck layout to find out where he was.

  From the sounds of it Finn had things well in hand as far as monitoring communications was concerned. It was a good thing since the last thing Agameg wanted to do was break his cover.

  “You know, you're kind of cute,” Ashley said from behind him. “You Regent soldier boys clean up pretty good.”

  Price tried not to react, he knew she was just flirting to get an edge on the only guard taking care of the brig.

  “You know, if you let us out of here I could do something for you in return.”

  “This is awkward,” he muttered under his breath. A thought struck him, to keep things looking real he did have to react. Humans often blushed when they were being embarrassed. He tried it, to change the shade of his skin just slightly.

  “I'm sure that if you don't fancy me, one of the boys in here would be happy to show his gratitude,” she said with a wry grin.

  Agameg's concentration was completely broken and his attempt at blushing turned into an all out colour switch. Suddenly he was a deep, exaggerated shade of red from fingertips to his passably simulated hair.

  “Whoa!” Ashley exclaimed. The other two prisoners were similarly startled. “Agameg?” She asked in an excited, hushed whisper.

  He took control of himself and brought his appearance back to a semblance of the fellow he had been imitating. “Shh! I want to stay hidden until the rest of the crew are delivered here. Then I can release you all when they're not looking.”

  Ashley hopped excitedly.

  “Be calm! I cannot pretend if you're distracting me,” he said woefully.

  “Okay, okay. Your ear is a little, well, on your neck actually.”

  “Thank you,” Agameg said with a smile. “I will watch for people coming on this deck, please help me with my disguise?”

  Ashley nodded. “You've got it.”

  Docking Procedures

  The Clever Dream broke atmosphere and Alice couldn't help but sigh with relief. “Scariest delivery ever. Remind me to screen future drop offs for beings who like to eat humans.”

  “That was an intimidating fellow. There's little information available on his people. Even the Hart News database only contains a few entries with regards to raids and I don't think you'd want to see the footage. It is too graphic for them to broadcast during regular programming.”

  “I'll pass. I think I'll have a couple nightmares as it is.”

  “There's a large vessel coming around from the other side of the planet,” Lewis stated.

  Alice looked at the navigation screen and saw it right away. “There's no transponder signal.” She said to herself as she started to activate the cloaking device.

  “It's launching fighters.”

  “So they probably saw us. I'm going manual, activate all weapon and defence systems. Patch the tactical computer into my optical implant.” Seconds after Lewis heard her orders they were carried out and she came about so they were headed towards the nearest moon. It was over five hundred thousand kilometres away.

  Three missile launchers and five guns deployed as the combat shielding came online. The cloaking systems remained on standby, the ship's thermal output was far too high for them to be effective.

  “I have compared the capitol ship's silho
uette to our database and found it almost matches a Vindyne design.”

  “It's the VCS Malice, Meunez's ship. I haven't seen it since we stole Jonas's stasis tube. I thought we might be off the hook after Vindyne went under.”

  “Incoming communication.”

  Alice saw that the fighters were still well out of effective weapons range and nodded to herself. “May as well put him through to cockpit audio.”

  “Alice Valent, it's been a long time,” said Gabriel Meunez. She would never forget the sound of his voice. For years she received message after message. He tried every tactic possible to get her to respond just once so he could trace her location or at least have an active dialogue with her.

  “You know, just when you think you've shaken a stalker he just comes right back to haunt you.”

  “That's no way to treat your owner,” he replied with a chuckle.

  It was hard not to cut communications right then, even harder not to fire every weapon she had in his direction, even though she knew it wouldn't make any difference. The moon was still a great distance away and the fighters were still out of effective range. There was time to kill.

  “That's right, I bought your file and several other hidden commodities from Vindyne before they could go up for public liquidation.”

  “I am no one's property,” Alice said through her teeth.

  “On the contrary, your software was redesigned by a captured fugitive, Jonas Valent, and you were born, so to speak, using our systems. The body you use is actually our property as well, a prisoner who was being rehabilitated for our workforce.”

  “Her brain had been ravaged by your machines when I found her. All she had left were fragments of her worst memories, the ones she had the hardest time forgetting. Your systems even marked her as brain dead, but there was a spark left, one your computers couldn't have seen.”

  “You caught her before we started trying to implanting new, better memory fragments. That body's purpose was coming, her brain death was intentional, a new full wipe procedure we were developing. What you used that mind for could only be described as art. The birth of a machine consciousness in a human brain. No one we managed to interrogate had the slightest idea that you were once a computer program. You should have seen the look on Bernice's face, she just couldn't believe it.”

  “You didn't,” she said quietly as she eagerly watched the range count down on the fifteen fighters behind her.

  “Don't worry, we only took them into custody for a couple weeks. After that they were completely unaware of the programmed response we had left in their subconsciousness. They're alive and happy.”

  “Bruce. You did the same thing to Bruce and that's how you found me.”

  “I'm surprised it took you this long to realize.”

  “What do you want?” Alice asked as she turned all the weapon safeties off.

  “I want you to tell me everything you know about how you became what you are. I want to look into your mind and experience the union of the machine and biological mind. You are the only one of your kind in the universe, and I would worship you if you'd only give me the opportunity.”

  “And subject me to invasive scans and neural connections.”

  “Don't answer so hastily, power down and we can consider this together. I bought your file to protect you, to keep you to myself. I have told you before, my mind has had implants that are as much a part of me as my very soul. What do I have to do to for you to see that I only want to join with you, to communicate on a level that only you and I could. I only want to protect you and learn about all that you are.”

  The fighters came within range and she locked onto nine of them. “Here's my response,” she cut her engines, turned the nose of her ship towards the incoming fighters and launched all missiles. As the nine warheads moved off at incredible speed she opened fire. Her neural link with the cannons allowed her to fire on several targets at once, the two pulse cannons fired on one target while the three chain firing gauss guns each raked the others.

  Her hands operated the manual controls as she rolled and strafed, hurtling backwards at the moon behind. Five of the missiles hit their mark and seven fighters were cut to pieces by gunfire.

  She ceased fire, changed her trajectory with her thrusters just enough to make tracking her a little more difficult then engaged the cloaking device. Just as she was about to cut communications and make herself nearly impossible to trace several ships appeared in orbit around the moon. They immediately began pelting the area around her with high velocity flack rounds. There was debris in her path for tens of thousands of kilometres in every direction. She turned her cloaking device off and redirected the power to shields. “Did you ever think that I might be the one you shouldn't catch? I can tell you right now I'm way too much for you to handle.”

  “I'll be the judge of that. Care to power down and allow one of my ships to dock?”

  “You know what? I've had to put up with you sending me thousands of messages, hiring hunters to go after me, kidnapping my friends and you know, I could get away right now, but I'm done. I think it's time you learned your lesson. Go ahead and pick me up. I won't stop you,” she declared as she shut down her engines and retracted all her weapons. “Come get me.”

  The Luck Bucket

  Frost's friend had delivered. Unknown to the Captain, Frost had come to know Aragesh when he did some work for him as a cutter in a group of ship thieves. The reputation he had earned on Ao Katamari was well deserved even though no one actually had concrete proof. Aragesh was an issyrian who like to appear as a tall, statuesque man, perfect black hair and big white teeth included. When he flashed a smile you could see your reflection.

  He had seen the used car salesman character in a movie somewhere and it had appealed to him. Thankfully the cultural reference was lost on all but his closest friends who had seen the old movie with him. As a master of a large used ship yard he did a lot of business in modified transport, small defence craft, cargo haulers and utility ships. Pretty much everything except for fighters and larger military vessels. His placement in orbit around one of the most expensive planets in the sector meant he could jack his prices and trade for high end vessels for much less than they were worth. Everyone who wanted to sell something so close to Ao Katamari was either desperate or in business. As a thriving business person Aragesh always preferred desperate.

  The ship he sold the Captain came at a surprisingly low price. Only three point five million credits, a tenth its value. The only stipulation was that Jake had to have his picture taken by a holoimager with the dealer. Watching his Captain grin from ear to ear as he shook the living caricature's hand had Stephanie in stitches, but to Frost it was somehow eerie.

  Everyone on the bridge of the Luck Bucket knew it was recently stolen. Captain Valance had even let Stephanie name the ship, and knowing it wasn't going to last long she didn't take it seriously. It was an old thirty meter long commercial interplanetary transport. Behind the main four seat cabin there were rows and rows of empty seats. The only benefit to the ship was its engines. It was fast, not terribly manoeuvrable or durable, but fast. There was no faster than light systems, just an old pair of fusion engines that could channel reactions straight out of the thrusters and generate much more power than the ship needed. The inertial dampeners made an awful whining sound every time Captain Valance accelerated. If the dampeners gave out all three of them would be crushed instantly and Frost found himself praying for the first time in years.

  When they came aboard Captain Valance had done something unusual and loaned him his arm command unit so he could replace his old loose vacsuit with one of the higher tech versions Stephanie and the Captain used. The black suit needed more padding as far as he was concerned, it just wasn't flattering, but beggars couldn't be choosers. He knew it could take a lot more damage than any regular vacsuit could and was thankful for the gift.

  The old, streamlined white and red vessel made the trip in under two hours and as Nissa came into vie
w Frost couldn't help but shudder. Thickly forested planets, especially those with non-plant life on them, were his least favourite places to be. He was always looking over his shoulder for something that was about to leap out and drag him off into the wilderness. “Nothin' but swamp an' the madness that dwells within,” he said under his breath.

  “You're not afraid of a few lizards are ya?” Stephanie teased, she had been doing a lot of that, ever since they rescued him from Nanna.

  “Only if they're big enough to eat me whole. Besides, everythin' down there's camouflaged. You don't see it comin' til it's too late, then you're just gone.”

  “You know, I've never heard of that happening to anyone.”

  “That's because they're not around to talk about it anymore,” he replied as they began entering the atmosphere.

  Stephanie laughed and nodded. “You have a point.”

  The thrusters kicked in for atmospheric manoeuvring, filling the cabin with noise. The trio brought their headpieces up so they could manage the sound and speak through proximity radio. “What's the plan Captain?” Asked Stephanie.

  Even though he had never flown the Luck Bucket before, he handled it expertly. It wasn't so different from the Samson, but Frost was sure there were pretty distinct differences in handling. He was constantly adjusting different controls, it seemed like there was a lot more work involved keeping a smooth, accurate trajectory. He was thankful there was no official port on the planet. Not enough people wanted to live there full time.

  “I've been thinking,” Captain Valance started. “The Samson has anti-theft devices inside. How many people left aboard know how to trigger them?”

  “Maybe five including the leftover boarding crew,” Stephanie replied.

  “Really? Didn't we just train people how to activate those systems?” Frost asked.

  “That was about two years ago. We've lost a lot of people since then.”

  “I didn't realize, time flies.” Frost shrugged.