Awakening sf-2

by Randolph Lalonde

  “I can't access door controls for that area.”

  Ramirez looked around, he had no cover. “Well, I'll see you real soon if I'm lucky Agameg,” he griped as he dropped his gun and looked through the medical packages for anything that could help. “Hey, what does a blue and green cross mean?”

  “I think that will increase your rate of recovery,” Agameg replied.

  “Like nanobots?”

  “No, chemically. Didn't you take emergency medical training?”

  “Sure I did, fifteen years ago and five sectors away. Okay, here goes,” He injected himself with the six ounces of dark red fluid. The lift doors started opening and he held his hands up. Luckily, the security officer wasn't overly trigger happy. “I surrender!” Ramirez called out before falling to the floor, unconscious.

  Agameg tried not to look worried as Ramirez was delivered to the brig on a hovergurney.

  “Bastard shot Berman and jumped into a lift. Open cell five,” the guard ordered.

  Agameg pressed the door control and watched the cell open.

  The guard pushed the gurney inside and rolled Ramirez off onto the floor unceremoniously. “Injected himself with an emergency stasis dose right before I caught him. Strangest thing I've ever seen.”

  “What?” Agameg slipped.

  The guard looked right at him. “Yup, he'll be out for at least eight hours. Probably feel better than any of us when he wakes up too,” he kicked Ramirez before pushing the gurney out of the cell. “Close it up.”

  Agameg complied.

  “You look better. Feeling okay now?” Asked the guard.

  “Much better, thank you.”

  “Got a frog in your throat?”

  Agameg didn't understand and cocked his head. “I don't think so.”

  “Ah, you just sound a little different, probably just a bug.”

  Agameg nodded.

  “Any chance we could switch? After that chase I don't much feel like getting the rest of the crew from that piece of scrap on the landing deck.”

  “I don't think the Captain would like that.”

  “Yeah, he's particular. See you in a few,” the guard said as he left the brig.

  “You're getting better at this,” Ashley whispered after the hatch closed.

  “Thank you, I wouldn't have been as convincing without your direction.” Agameg said with a nod. “Finn, it sounds like guards will be discovering our empty racks soon,” he whispered.

  “You're right, there are already four guards on their way onto the ship. They've detected the energy signature from the Big Surprise and are coming to check it out.”

  “Oh no.”

  “I'm trying to set it to blow and get out.”

  Agameg checked the locations of crew members on that floor and nodded to himself. “I'm going to let everyone out of their cells.”

  “Good idea, there's a chance the brig controls would be disabled when this goes off.”

  Agameg opened all the cells and was joined by Ashley, Cynthia and the two other crewmen. He had discovered one was named Marcus Jackson and the other was Vanda Mason. “We will have to arm ourselves somehow along the way.”

  “Can you find a weapons locker?” Cynthia asked, looking at the brig controls.

  “No, the security implemented across the ship seems to be based on a localized system of control. You can see and hear much, but actually do very little.”

  “Okay, that makes things complicated. I'm not exactly the best hacker around.”

  “Localized control?” Ashley asked.

  “It means that most stations don't have any kind of remote control available, so you have to operate certain systems from certain stations. It might have something to do with the automation.” Cynthia supposed as she browsed through the different control menus so fast Agameg couldn't track. “Yup, there are stations specific to engineering, navigation, weaponry, medical and other broad categories. Over two thirds of the ship is completely locked down and has been for decades. This ship hasn't operated with anything but a skeleton crew for a long time. Did you find out how many people are aboard?”

  “There are about sixty five crew as far as I could determine.”

  “Well, that looks like an arms locker there. If we find a good corner to hole up in we should be able to hold out until the Captain finds us.”

  “There's a small ship landing beside the Samson, ” Finn whispered.

  “Someone is landing,” Agameg relayed.

  “Well, let's get moving. I'm betting that's the Captain now,” Ashley said, opening the brig hatchway.

  Finn could see and hear the incoming security team of four perfectly. The Samson's internal sensors were never turned off. “The power reading is coming from in here,” said one of the team members.

  “Think it's a line of reserve capacitors?”

  “Maybe, Captain Wheeler wanted it checked before the Cold Reaver landed.”

  “Some name for a dropship.”

  “Have you seen the guns on that thing? It's loaded down with electromagnetic pulse cannons. If that weren't enough there are two railgun turrets.” Replied one of the security officers. “I would not want to get behind that thing in a fighter, you'd be dust in seconds.”

  Finn got an idea, he wasn't sure if it was a good idea, but it was better than nothing. He climbed on top of the Big surprise and got ready.

  “Aw crap, there's the Reaver. We better hurry down in there and check it out,” he overheard one of the security officers complain.

  “Don't worry, the Captain's got four guys with him, what could go wrong?”

  “Two of them aren't even part of a security detail, they're mechanics dressed up like officers. We'd better make it quick.”

  The hatch opened and Finn was face to face with one of the security officers. “Hi!”

  “What the? Don't move!”

  Finn squeezed his eyes shut and activated the launch door on his computer pad, holding on for dear life. The big surprise was thrust through the launch doors below it and crashed into the hangar deck, knocking the wind out of Finn even though his vacsuit protected him from most of the concussive force.

  He didn't have time to catch his breath, the big surprise and the landing struts were the only cover he had. Captain Wheeler and four of his crew members looked on in surprise as Finn rolled off the ugly mess of capacitors and energy units then ran for the nearest exit as hard as he could.

  He went right under where the Cold Reaver was landing and into a doorway. Finn found the control panel, closed the doors and busted the cover off hurriedly. He looked for wiring underneath. It was all modern, high quality heavy duty integrated circuitry. There were no loose wires to manipulate. Hoping for the best he pulled the flat, featureless circuit board as hard as he could and showered himself in sparks as it came free. A larger panel beneath popped open to reveal a crank for manually opening the door and he jammed his foot down onto it, hoping he was strong enough to keep the door closed. “God I hope that's the only door leading into this room,” he looked around for a moment and realized he was inside a disused workshop. It was huge, and only partially lit. There were parts in neat stacks near the doorway, along with an engine on a stand he assumed was from a shuttle.

  With one finger hovering over the Big Surprise's remote trigger he watched the hangar through the Samson's external sensors. No one was coming for him yet, and Captain Wheeler was focused on the Cold Reaver as the gangway lowered.

  Wheeler was disappointed. The person his security team was escorting down the ramp was certainly not Valent. He was too short for a start.

  “I told you Valent was about six feet tall,” he said as he opened the captive's long coat. “And this is a woman!”

  “I'm sorry sir, she had everything you described Valent with. Even his sidearm.” One of the security officers said, offering him the heavy handgun.

  “Not to mention other accessories that don't come with a male captive,” Wheeler said sourly as he reached for the we
apon. His hand was just about to touch it when he felt the ominous shape of a round barrel press up against the back of his head. Without a thought he dropped to his knees, drew his sidearm just enough to clear the holster, and pointed it backwards, firing several times.

  He caught one of his own security team in the chest, but hit whoever was behind him three times. The cloaking field projected by Jake Valance's armour failed and his body became visible. One shot had caught him just under the chin, the next squarely in the stomach and the third had caught him in the groin. “Now that is Valent.” Wheeler said as he held his hand out towards the charred body, taking a medical reading with sensors inbedded in his palm. He checked the readout displayed on the surface of his forearm's skin. “Dead. I'll probably lose my cash reward for this,” he concluded. “Helm, set course for Pallanous four.” Wheeler ordered as he reloaded his pulse weapon.

  Finn watched the whole thing and stared at the display in complete disbelief. He could hear Wheeler declare Captain Valance dead, he could see the massive damage to the man's body. Somehow he seemed invincible, indomitable, but now he was dead. They were dragging the body like a bag of garbage to an elevator and he was still in his trance of disbelief.

  Wheeler put his sidearm right up against the impostor's faceplate. “I grew up wearing vacsuits a lot like the one you're hiding behind. That's why when I knew I was going after Valent I modified this pulse weapon to discharge a third of its power, about five hundred rounds worth, in each shot. I didn't consider whether or not it would work against the faceplate. Move and I'll give it a try.” She struggled as the guards at her sides held her in place. “Time to tie up loose ends. Kill the rest of the Samson crew. Hunt them down, use grenades, flush them out into space, I don't care how, just do it!”

  Finn panicked. He activated the Big Surprise and every electrical system near the hangar was hit will the massive electromagnetic explosion. Every unshielded fine circuit, lighting fixture and active piece of technology sparked, overloaded and burned out. The Ion engine right behind him started making a deafening, squealing, whining sound. He reached down, grabbed the manual crank and struggled with it. The heavy doors barely moved. As he pulled the lever with both hands with all the strength he had he could see parts of the bare engine turning white. The heavy blast doors parted a few millimetres before the explosion.

  Frost had expected the Big Surprise to go off, he was ready. Seeing the Captain killed like it was child's play had him rattled, but more angry. He carefully lowered himself down the landing strut and when the emergency lights came on, shedding just enough ruddy yellow illumination to see distinct shapes he leapt for Wheeler.

  Lucius pulled his trigger and nothing happened. Instead of taking another shot at Stephanie he levelled his pistol at Frost's head and pulled the trigger again. The weapon emitted nothing but a hollow click. Frost laughed and brought one big fist down on Wheeler's face like a sledge. The first blow broke the man's perfect nose. A security officer knocked Frost off and his Captain scrambled to his feet, holding his face and started running for the elevator.

  Frost kicked the security officer's knee then swept his other foot out from under him. In a split second he was on top of the guard, grabbing hold of his vacsuit's face plate. He drew his head up a few inches, gripped his jaw and wrenched the man's head hard, cracking the support that kept his neck from turning too far. He whipped the man's head the other way and back again. Without the resistance of the support, the soldier's neck snapped.

  Stephanie had flipped one of the security officers onto his back and crushed his windpipe with her foot. The other tried to grab her again and she spun, sweeping his legs out from under him. The moment he hit the ground she kicked him in the face, partially dislodging his helmet. She kicked him in the teeth as hard as she could, sending his helmet across the deck and brought her leg all the way up then crushed the heel of her armoured boot onto his temple with a grisly crunch. It was then she acknowledged Frost. “You made it.”

  “Aye,” he replied out of breath; “Wheeler's gettin' away.”

  The pair looked towards the elevator where a pair of guards tried to get the shaft open. They had dropped Jake Valance's body behind them. Wheeler was running towards it, hunched over, holding his face. His broken nose was bleeding freely.

  Stephanie and Frost started running after him but stopped dead in their tracks at a sight neither of them would forget for the rest of their lives. Captain Valance stood in one smooth motion. They were watching the dead come to life as he started walking towards Wheeler, who didn't run, he just dropped his hand to his side and shook his head. “You were burned through, right in the neck.”

  “I was.” Came Valance's cold reply.

  “You're a framework, they made you a framework,” Wheeler said as he staggered backwards.

  Jake didn't reply, but turned towards two oncoming guards, ducked one and rammed the other with his shoulder, bowling him over. He spun on his heel and caught the other guard's head in his hands. With one swift yank his helmet was off, and in the next instant Jake used it as a weapon, smashing it into the guard's face once then backhanding him with it hard, sending his opponent straight down to the deck.

  The Captain rounded on Wheeler then, tossing the helmet aside. “They did a lot to me. Now you're going to tell me what it was like before.” Jake said as he took the next few steps between him and the other man. “While you watch me buy your crew, take your ship, and make everything you value my own.”

  Frost fell to his knees. He kept staring at the perfect, bare skin where the Captain's fatal wounds had been. The awe he was in was understandable, but the relief at seeing that man alive was profound. The depth of it would be something Frost would ponder for many days to come.

  Awakening

  Alice could see perfectly in the maintenance spaces between the decks and walls. Her mechanical eye amplified the little available light and measured the densities of objects ahead to construct a mid day perfect picture of what lay ahead. Her implants were working perfectly except for one little glitch. Ever since Lewis was transferred to a storage chip and subprocessor unit buried in the back of her jaw her right earlobe would periodically itch. “You should stop scratching and tugging that. It'll eventually become all red and sore. You might even bruise it.” She heard him through her neural communicator.

  “You know, it's funny, I never use the implant you're living in. It only started when you made the transfer.”

  “Why did you have me download myself here? I could have hid away in one of the Clever Dream's subsystems. They'd never find me.”

  “Yes, but there's a good chance that they'll eventually deactivate or destroy her. She's probably torn the hangar up something fierce and prevented anyone from so much as opening the door but she'll eventually run out of fuel and be unable to fire her guns let alone generate more ammo for the missile launchers,” Alice replied mentally as she squeezed around a large pipe.

  “It will take over a year for her to expend all the fuel in the tanks by firing all five guns. The materializer systems could generate over four hundred fifty missiles each before exceeding their warranty coverage. Who knows how long they'll last afterwards.”

  “They'd probably fail right after the warranty expires. That seems to be the way of things.”

  “Not with that ship. It's top of the line remember? I miss her already.”

  “Well I need you here. Two heads are better than one.”

  “I'm not nearly as quick in this little micro computer. It's only five hundred twelve bit, after all.”

  “Oh boo hoo. A few hundred years ago that kind of power would have weighed ten kilograms. Now it fits into a half centimetre squared biochip. I just wish it wasn't tapping a nerve or something for its power.” Alice said as she tugged her earlobe. Looking around, it was difficult to believe she was in the bowels of a ship. There were vessels that had hallways as cramped. Cables, tubes, circuit boxes and pipes were everywhere, certainly, but most ships ran those alo
ng their main hallways anyway. “What an incredible waste of space. I mean, the First Light only had one section with panelled walls and that was the Officers quarters. Not even all the officer's quarters were that way either, just the senior staff section. Man, what I'd do to serve on that ship,” she stopped and looked at a group of intersecting wires. “These are the the mechanical door control leads for this section right?”

  “One moment please.”

  “Oh, come on. It can't be that hard to look it up.”

  “Shh, I'm searching. The schematics you downloaded were primarily for waste management. It's hard to guess based on what I'm seeing. You're right though, those must be the power lines and control cables you're looking for.”

  “Oh, you think it's both? Not just the power?”

  “That's my best guess. I can say for a certainty that two decks won't be able to activate waste recycling as well. That's eleven toilets slowly filling up.”

  “Not a pretty picture. Okay, here's hoping you're right about what these wires do.” Alice said as she spread coarse green paste across the ribbon cables. It would take half an hour for the chemical compound to eat through the wires.

  “So what exactly are you going to do? Inconvenience them to death?” Asked Lewis.

  “I'm just spreading a little extra chaos to disguise my true purpose. Since the main hangar doors are on lockdown and there's no way the Clever Dream will blast her way through, I'm going to find one of the computer cores and dump you inside.”

  “Then what am I supposed to do?”

  “Whatever you like. You could always start singing Birdhouse In Your Soul while playing five trillion games of sudoku. Anything to distract the ship sensors from what I'm up to.”

  “Ah, Birdhouse In Your Soul, it took hundreds of years and many emotional artificial intelligences to understand its meaning. Even after the accomplishment was made no AI could actually convey the simplistic meaning on any level.”

  “I know, sometimes I wish I were still software so I could fully understand it from your perspective.”