The shot had missed the ship’s main reactor by the slimmest of margins, punching its way through a mostly unimportant section of the ship, but still causing the Zenith to suddenly stop accelerating; its main engines going dark as the ship started to drift.
The fighter bays on the carriers were still out of order and the Regent needed a long recharge time after each shot. But the remaining ships in the fleet were now opening fire on the Zenith, as they quickly regained control of their systems. The one saving grace was that Nexus had permanently disabled the nuclear warheads.
Drake was frantically working his interface as he brought up and examined the detailed damage information. He turned to the sisters and asked, “Can either of you still talk to Toby?”
“I can’t hear any of them,” Jude replied.
“Me neither,” Kade said as Zen ‘woke up’ from her slumber, looking confused.
Zen said in an agitated state, “What happened? I’ve lost my connection to the Zero Core.”
“The Zero Core?” Jude asked.
“It’s the master control Core, based on the standard Core technology, but infinitely more powerful. It’s also what houses the AI’s and Static’s consciousness,” Drake explained as he looked over the damage information with a puzzled look.
“So did that blast hit the Core?” Jude asked while looking at Zen.
“No, the Zero Core is not on-board the Zenith. It’s located deep in our own territory. We connect to it via a hyper-spatial link, allowing us to interact with it from pretty much anywhere in the galaxy,” Zen said.
“Why did we lose the connection?” Drake asked rhetorically as Kade could feel small vibrations through her chair and could see in the view-screen that the ship was being bombarded by enemy fire.
The fleet was beginning to surround the Zenith. The lighter ships continuing their assault as the heavier vessels were still bringing their guns to bear.
The Zenith’s advanced armour was holding for the moment, but there was no telling how long it would last under these conditions.
“We need to leave!” Kade said.
“I agree, but without an AI in charge of the ship we can’t do much of anything. Keep in mind the Zenith is a capital class ship. Without a master AI we would need a full crew complement to operate all the systems,” Drake said as he rushed his diagnostics.
“Can’t you do it Zen?” Jude asked.
Zen said, genuinely scared, “I don’t know, this has never happened before. Without access to my main consciousness I don’t know where to even begin.”
“Your what?” Kade asked as another beam from the Regent hit the stern of the Zenith, rocking the ship but failing to punch past the armour plating this time.
“Zen’s mind exists in both her body and the Zero Core, but right now she’s disconnected from the Core… and I can’t figure out why! What the hell is wrong?” Drake said, becoming increasingly agitated as the bombardment seemed to intensify. And then he saw it, the answer was staring him in the face. “CRUD!!” Drake shouted as he rapidly double checked his findings, hoping he was wrong.
“What?” Kade asked as she held Zen, trying to calm her down as her little body shook in fear.
“That damned beam cut right through one of the primary data interchanges and all the freaking backups failed to kick in because of instabilities in the power grid,” Drake said.
“Wait, Static and Nexus I understand, but Toby was reintegrated on this ship, right?” Jude asked.
“No. It looked that way but he was reintegrated by Nexus, so his consciousness is also housed in the Zero Core, same as Static. The real problem now is that I don’t know of any way to re-establish a link under these conditions,” Drake said.
The Zenith was receiving heavy fire and its armour plates were starting to buckle under the constant bombardment. Advanced as its armour was it would not last indefinitely.
Drake knew very well that without a master AI the Zenith could neither fight back nor run away, and the only other options were surrender or evacuation. But there was no way that Drake could ever surrender the Zenith, not in a million years.
The Icarus was still docked, making for a passable escape ship. But it wasn’t a particularly fast ship, had little armouring and no weapons to speak of. It would not be able to get away on its own.
The options were crap and his decision was clear. There was only one thing he could do in order to safeguard the lives of those he cared about.
Drake smiled gently at Zen as he leaned back, the sound of mechanical latches snapping into place filling the room as his silver harness anchored itself to the chair. He closed his eyes, causing Zen to jump away from Kade’s embrace and rush to his side with a horrified expression all over her face.
Zen shouted angrily, “NO! Don’t you dare!”
Concerned, Kade asked, “What? What’s he doing?”
Zen said in a panic, “He’s taking control of the Zenith! You can’t do this Drake; you know your body can’t handle the strain! You’ll die!!” She shouted, but Drake didn’t react at all to her pleading voice.
The Regent’s main gun was about to discharge again. It had been targeting the same point with every hit as it tried to cut through the Zenith’s thick armour and the aft section’s plating was at its breaking point. One more hit would see the beam cut clean through the main engines.
The beam began its discharge, rushing across space as Drake snapped opened his eyes, the Zenith’s main engines flaring up to full power and causing the beam to miss its mark.
The ship was mobile once again and Drake was manoeuvring it out of the area of engagement, but the fleet was still in full pursuit.
Kade looked on in shock as she saw that Drake was starting to bleed from his nose and ears, his body clearly suffering under the strain of controlling the ship.
“You need to leave,” Kade heard Drake’s voice in her mind, his body seemingly catatonic from the experience.
“What! Why?” Kade asked, not liking the idea of abandoning the ship one single bit.
“You three need to make your way to the Icarus.” Drake said in a sad tone as he fought back the pain, “As soon as you’re aboard I will launch the ship and you can get to safety while I cover your retreat.”
“Us three? Have you lost your mind! I’m not leaving!” Zen screamed in anger, infuriated that Drake would even consider putting her off the ship.
“I’m sorry Zen. I won’t be able to maintain control for much longer and I can’t guarantee I can save you if you stay with me. Kade, please take her with you,” Drake pleaded, though Kade was also defiant.
“There must be something we can do!” Kade said, hoping that there was a way to turn things around.
“There is… safeguard Zen and yourselves. Take the Icarus and head to Calder, the Council will protect you… they have to,” Drake said as the fleet re-entered weapons range and began bombarding the ship again.
The Sacrifice
“Don’t we have a say in this?” Jude asked, also displeased by Drake’s request.
“You can say whatever you want, as long as you say it from inside the Icarus as you fly away to safety,” Drake said as he fought back the pain while trying to outmanoeuvre the pursuing fleet.
“No!! I won’t…” Zen was saying as she suddenly lost consciousness.
Zen’s body became limp and nearly collapsed on the floor, the only thing between it and a hard crash to the deck being Kade’s quick reflexes.
Kade held her as she looked at Drake with questioning eyes, realising that he truly believed this was the only course of action left to him. Knowing that there was nothing she could say that would change his mind.
“I… very well,” Kade said with a heavy heart.
“I’m sorry Zen… Kade, hurry!” Drake pleaded.
“Don’t you dare die on us, you hear me!” Kade ordered as the sisters ran out of the bridge, carrying Zen with them as they headed to the Icarus.
“Ha ha… no promises,” Drak
e replied as his Core worked overtime to try and maintain his higher memory functions from degrading under the stress.
Drake could feel his body starting to go numb; he had already lost all sensation from his waist down. A clear sign that the merge was starting to take a heavy toll on his nervous system. But in his mind there was no choice, this had to be done. He could not allow the Union to get their hands on the Zenith’s technology, for if they ever mastered the Vortex drive then planet Calder would be within their reach. And the atrocities of the past could very well be repeated.
He debated with himself whether he should return fire on his attackers. It would be easy to destroy the Regent and the other large ships. One clear shot from the main gun would be all it would take, but that would waste precious energy without solving anything. It would only justify the Union’s actions. So he had opted instead to lead them in a merry chase around space.
Several of the smaller frigates had already been forced to disengage because they were starting to run low on fuel, but there was little chance of the larger ships backing off any time soon.
Drake knew he couldn’t keep this up forever, his body would simply not hold up under the strain. He knew that if the repair crews could not reconnect the ship to the Zero Core then he would soon be forced to make a choice between sacrificing his ship or his humanity, for he could not let the Zenith’s technologies fall into enemy hands.
Kade and Jude were almost to the Icarus as fire continued to rain down on the ship, causing the corridors to occasionally shake as sections of the outer armour were blasted away by the impacts.
Kade felt like a coward as she ran for her life while carrying Zen’s unconscious body. All the while wondering if there was truly nothing else she could have said or done and feeling guilty for having simply walked out on Drake. All she could do now was to try and safeguard their own lives and hope for the best.
The sisters turned a corner and ran into the bay, sprinting at full speed with the Icarus in sight.
The ship seemed different to Kade somehow, but right now she didn’t have the time to spend trying to figure out how, or why.
Kade could see two synthetic workers rushing out of the docking bay, looking as though they were running for their lives as she headed for her ship. It seemed curious that they would behave that way, but she didn’t really have the time to waste on that either. Ignoring the synthetics behaviour she ran up her ship’s embarkation ramp. The Icarus’s outer doors automatically closing behind them as Kade and Jude rushed for the bridge.
“About freaking time! Did you two stop to see the sights along the way or something?” Drake asked, but Kade was so out of breath she couldn’t tell if he was angry or just joking.
“The Zenith isn’t exactly a small ship you know!” Kade replied as she sat down in her chair; getting startled when a holographic display not unlike the ones in the Zenith’s bridge appeared in front of her.
“What the hell?” Kade said, calling Jude’s attention to the interface as well.
“Phoenix?” Jude asked as she looked over the information.
“Hold on to something, I’m launching the Icarus!” Drake said, causing the sisters to stare at each other in confusion and then at the bay doors.
“Huh Drake? The doors are still closed!” Kade shouted, hoping Drake was still lucid enough to know what he was doing.
“Say Kade… as a kid, did you enjoy roller-coasters?” Drake asked out of the blue.
“What? Sure I guess… why?” Kade said, seriously concerned as to why he would ask such a thing.
“Oh… no reason. Hang on to something, I’ve never actually tried doing this before,” Drake said and then the Zenith started picking up speed as it pitched up and started to roll. Causing the still moored Icarus to shake around inside the bay as the Zenith approached the optimum launch angle.
Kade and Jude wondered what was about to happen as the bay started being rocked by the sound of explosions. Numerous recovery drones were flaring up their engines to full power, applying overwhelming force against the doors as detonations traced their way around the frame and vaporised the interlocking pylons. The bay was flooded by yellow lights and sirens, warning the empty dock that the doorway’s structural integrity was beginning to fail under the intense pressure from the drones and the fully pressurised bay; cracks had already began appearing, causing almost countless jets of gas to develop across the surface, the streams turning white as the moisture in the air crystallised due to the cold vacuum of space. The gates were at their breaking point when the final set of interlocks was vaporised, the overwhelming force causing them to be violently blown from the ship with an almost explosive effect. The recovery drones self-destructing as they drifted into deep space.
Kade knew what was coming and focused on the controls, waiting for the right moment. This was a reckless move, but performing a normal launch during combat was impossible anyway. She knew that Drake was placing the Zenith’s body between them and the fleet, shielding them while they launched.
The gravity in the docking bay suddenly cut out as the moorings were released, throwing the Icarus clear of the Zenith’s docking bay and hurtling it uncontrollably into deep space, away from the battlefield.
Kade had managed to regain control of the Icarus, its engines flaring to life as the ship steadied itself. And in their view-screen the sisters could see the Zenith as it finished its manoeuvre.
The Zenith had done a full turn, seemingly intending to engage the inbound enemy fleet. And its massive engines were flaring up like a bright blue star as the ship started picking up speed.
And that was the moment when Zen woke up…
“…let you do this!” Zen said, completing her sentence from before as she started looking around her new surroundings, with a gradually increasing look of horror over her face.
Zen screamed, “NO!!” Staring at the screen showing her home getting further and further away with every passing second.
“Turn us around! Go back!!” Zen pleaded as Kade continued increasing the ship’s cruising speed.
“I’m sorry Zen, but I gave my word I would keep you safe,” Kade said with a pained expression, for nothing would please her more than turning the ship around and going back, but the Icarus had no weapons… there was nothing they could do to help.
It seemed strange to Kade that after all the years she had spent on board the Icarus she had never suspected the ship could have been built around another vessel. And it was only because of her Core that Kade was now able to see the full extent of her ship’s true capabilities. And one in particular gave her hope: a Vortex drive.
The drive had not been powered up in decades, so there was no guarantee that it would even work. And from the readouts in front of her Kade could see that once triggered the Icarus would have to divert 90% of the reactor’s output into the drive; leaving the ship virtually defenceless for the duration of the charge sequence. And that was a risk she was obviously not willing to take in the middle of a battlefield.
She pushed the Icarus to its uttermost limit. The engines stuck in a continuous burn cycle as the ship rapidly picked up speed in order to clear the battlefield. The old ship’s outermost frame creaked under the stress as integrity alarms flashed on Jude’s engineering console, which she now found really cumbersome to work with after having had a taste of the Shadow interfaces.
The sisters could see that the Zenith was doing its best to keep the fleet distracted, but a few of the interceptor frigates had broken away from the pack in order to chase down the Icarus… and they were closing rapidly.
On board the Zenith, the repair crews were still trying to restore the link to the Zero Core, but progress was slow and Drake was quickly becoming mentally exhausted. Finding it increasingly harder to remain focused as the conflict dragged on.
The Zenith was still on the defensive, keeping itself out of the effective strike range of the fleet’s heavy hitters as it goaded them along. With Drake still hoping he would be able
to extricate the Zenith from the battlefield before he was forced to take any lives. But this tactic was coming at a considerable cost to the ship’s outer armour, which was being chipped away by the relatively weak guns of the frigates.
Drake was starting to doze off as the stress overwhelmed him when he heard a distant voice. A voice from his past, one he hadn’t heard in almost 100 years. It was a woman’s voice, though she sounded much colder than he remembered, almost emotionless.
The woman shouted at Drake, telling him the Icarus was in danger, this causing him to snap to full attention and check on the Icarus, seeing that the ship was receiving fire from two interceptor frigates.
Zen, Kade and Jude were in danger, Drake thought as anger began overtaking his mind. His fury was growing by the second at the thought that this fleet was as cowardly as the one which had destroyed his family and friends all those years ago. All traces of compassion dissipating from his soul as the Zenith cut its main engines and fired its manoeuvring drives, causing the behemoth ship to spin violently around its centre of mass.
The violent manoeuvre had caused the attacking fleet to pause its onslaught, in order to try to understand what the enemy was doing. And then the Zenith suddenly started flooding all communications channels with the same message.
“100 years ago, bastards like you killed almost everyone I held dear. And now you’re planning to do it again. All this time and you cowards are still firing on innocents who can’t fight back! You want a war? I’ll give you a freaking war!!”
The message cut out, leaving everyone in the Sol system reeling from its contents.
On board the Regent, the crew was trying to find out what the Zenith was aiming at. But before they could finish calculating the attack vector the Zenith fired its main gun, utterly destroying one of the frigates which was firing on the Icarus and leaving what little remained of the other frigate spiralling out of control as secondary explosions finished the job.
The fleet saw an opening, the Zenith had stopped trying to evade their fire and the ships moved forward in order to press the advantage. But they weren’t ready for what happened next, as the Zenith began deploying its rapid fire point defence guns and particle beams started discharging against any ship unfortunate enough to be in firing range.
Shadow Core - The Legacy Page 24
