by M. D. Cooper
Crash didn’t say anything about her use of ‘our’ when referring to Shara. He also didn’t want to get into Ngoba’s thoughts about chaos where Fugia clearly saw coincidence. He needed Fugia’s help, and didn’t want her relationship with Ngoba to clog things up.
Fugia went quiet. In the background, Crash heard Ngoba and Kirre arguing about how to evade the incoming missiles. If he heard them correctly, they had less than a minute to impact.
He didn’t trust that Psion would honor the legality of the registry ping, but it was the only shot they had at the moment. As the information went out into the storm around them, the seconds ticked down on Kirre’s console tracking the proximity of the incoming missiles.
Crash was tempted to slow his perception of time, but he didn’t want to experience death any slower than necessary if the missiles did hit the ship. He watched the counter tick down, aware that Fugia was listening from behind him.
Kirre let out a hoot equal parts joy and relief. “That’s it!” she shouted. She looked at Crash and clapped with appreciation. “Our little buddy saved us again. That guy is worth his weight in whatever the hell expensive stuff we could find.” She pointed at him and then clapped again, frantic from stress.
Ngoba nodded with the same appreciation he always showed toward Crash.
On his Link, Crash sent the update to Fugia that they were still alive. He knew it was too easy, and Psion would be following the self-destruct command with some form of verification process that, if it wasn’t answered, would still result in their destruction.
Fugia said.
Crash redirected her attention to Shara.
Fugia said.
Fugia sent a mental yawn, indicating that she was studying the information with new eyes. Crash felt her presence in the ship’s network. For several milliseconds, Fugia pored over the security system holding Shara in place.
From the other side of the command deck, Kirre growled.
Fugia gave a sarcastic laugh.
Through the ship’s scanners, he saw a small wing of strangely shaped drones on an approach vector. The unit was probed briefly by Jovians, then released when they shifted into an obvious attack pattern. The Jovians might not waste resources on destroying the Hesperia Nevada, but they weren’t going to bother protecting the ship either. They would be on their own—defending themselves against Psion.
“Do we risk trying to play the part one more time?” Ngoba asked. “If we beg the Jovians for help, it’s going to be that much harder to get away from them.”
“I think I could act like Heartbridge, if I had to,” Kirre said. “We don’t have much to lose at this point.”
“We need a back story,” Ngoba said. “Something that at least makes enough sense to get them off our asses for five minutes.”
“Humanitarian mission,” Kirre said. “It’s easy. We were down there trying to help civilians. Got caught up in the ground combat, and didn’t see anything but to get the hell out of there.”
“Why didn’t we call for help before?”
“Liability,” Kirre said. She was sweating. “Corporate board didn’t want to broadcast we were here. They wouldn’t let us say anything, until we finally broke protocol. I’m done listening to those assholes.”
Ngoba grinned. “Sounds good to me. Let’s see if that bullshit works on them.”
Kirre opened a comms channel and started shouting a made-up name for the Heartbridge captain and the name Fugia had reprogrammed into the registry: the HMS Cooling Bandage.
“Really now?” Ngoba said, looking at Crash. “That’s a terrible fucking name. It’s perfect Heartbridge.”
At first, the Jovian’s ignored Kirre’s transmissions. She redoubled her frantic requests for assistance.
Finally, an audio transmission responded, “HMS Cooling Bandage, this is JCS Defense-in-Depth. You are in an active combat zone. You need to get the hell out of here while you still can. We’ve chosen not to waste any weapons on you, but that’s all we can promise right now. We are not in a position to help you.”
Kirre rolled her eyes, then checked the proximity of the inbound Psion drones. They had two minutes.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “I know you’re human, like me. You’ve got to feel some kind of empathy. You’re better than those demon AIs coming to tear us apart. We came here to help people. We can help you if you need us.”
There was no answer from the Jovian.
Fugia hummed to herself as she studied the shackle. Crash watched her work, only able to pick up the side-scatter from her Link activity. She blazed through various databases in search of the token that would unlock the system. Fugia’s philosophy was that there was very little creativity in security. Brute force, while it might be slow, would ultimately find the answer to almost any security system built by lazy humans.
Fugia gasped.
Crash had a sensation of her sitting back. If she had been physically present, she would’ve been rubbing her temples.
Fugia’s Link connection wavered and for a second Crash thought he had lost her.
She returned with a tighter signal. She stopped herself.
Crash bobbed his head.
she said.
GROUND ATTACK
STELLAR DATE: 03.28.3011 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Emerson Sharp Communications Station
REGION: Vesta, Terran Hegemony, InnerSol
The new sense of space in the dark was immediately disorienting. Ty moved to the left wall and felt with his free hand as he walked.
If Amstrad had been telling the truth, it would be the first room on the left. Finding the autodoc didn’t change the fact that it didn’t have any power. He would have to use the manual override on the door again, get Manny inside, then grope in the dark for syringes of stabilization meds that he hoped would be there.
He ran through the necessary tasks as he counted steps in the corridor. At twenty, his glove caught the edge of the door. It was open. Ty stood in the dark listening for a while, then turned and went in through the doorway.
In the middle of the room, his thighs bumped into a couch. Amstrad had been telling the truth.
Ty felt at the edges of the couch, then laid Manny out and adjusted his helmet. He raised his friend’s legs again by manipulating the leg supports.
Once he had Manny in position, he went to the wall cabinets and started fsearching among the storage spaces. He couldn’t feel anything with his gloves on, so he pulled his right glove off and probed among the freezing supplies.
He was halfway through one wall when a bright trail of pixels crossed his HUD. Ty froze. The suit seemed to be overcoming whatever had attacked its systems. After a series of sparkling displays, his HUD rebooted and ran a diagnostic check.
In another minute, his faceplate showed its regular diagnostics, including his own status update. The tool Ty was most grateful for now was the headlamp on top of his helmet.
He activated the lamp, and looked around the medbay with a feeling of limitless gratitude. The room was as he expected, showing the standard autodoc couch, with a status display above Manny’s head.
On the walls around them stood the work cabinets that Ty had already explored with his fingers. He immediately went to the storage section marked with stabilization syringes and found a full complement of what he needed.
He selected a syringe, verified its contents—which were standard Heartbridge issue—and carried it over to Manny. It took ten minutes to activate the auto syringe and place it in the necessary location against Manny’s thigh. Once the injections were done, Ty rested against the cabinet wall and waited.
Manny’s breathing remained shallow and steady. Using a local Link connection to Manny’s EV suit, Ty directed Manny’s suit to perform full scan. He was able to reboot the secondary system and then waited as the status display updated.
Manny was suffering from internal bleeding. His kidneys had ruptured, and he had several broken ribs from where the drone had crushed his torso. The injuries were completely unnecessary.
Despite the update, the stabilization drugs would at least keep Manny alive long enough for Ty to either locate a power source or leave the bunker and send a transmission back to the transfer point. He sat in the dark weighing his options.
He also didn’t like the idea of having left Amstrad alone to try and break free from his bonds. Ty didn’t need another enemy in the dark.
In the end, he decided he would have to leave Manny in the surgery, and make his way back up to report their status. He had no way of knowing where the power source was located, or if he could even fix it. He couldn’t carry Manny all over the station. He had to focus on the task that would support their mission.
“I’ll be back for you, bud,” he said. “You hang tight.”
Out in the corridor, Ty found the manual override for the med bay doors and sealed the room. If Amstrad came this way, he would have to fight the manual override just as Ty had.
With the light, Ty was able to work much faster. He left the medbay and went back to Amstrad’s bunker. He found the hacker on the floor exactly where Ty had left him, crying to himself in the dark. The man turned his face and looked at Ty with brown, wet eyes.
“You can’t leave me here,” Amstrad said. “You can’t leave me here in the dark to die.”
“I was gone barely an hour,” Ty said. “Are you already cracking up?”
“It doesn’t matter how long you were gone. I won’t die in the dark. I’d rather you just ended me now.
“That’s not for me to decide,” Ty said.
He knelt over Amstrad to check his bonds. As far as he could see, the man hadn’t even tried to get free.
Around them, the consoles were still dark, with no sign of any backup power. Ty’s headlamp fell across the silver cylinders on the workbench and he debated leaving them, then decided he’d worry about the seeds when he returned.
“Stay put,” he told Amstrad.
“Don’t leave me!” the man shouted miserably.
Out in the corridor, Ty broke into a jog, his magboots clicking heavily on the deck. In a few minutes, he had passed back through the main blast doors, up the stairs, and found himself in the access corridor that would take him back out to the ledge where they had first entered the building. He didn’t forget about the turret, which might still be operating on separate power.
At the exterior door, however, he paused. His HUD was picking up vibrations from the surface. He moved closer to the exterior door to listen, feeling them in his chest now. Psion bombardment had to be close.
Stay here and get bombed or get outside and get bombed. . . Ty thought grimly. He had to get a signal out to headquarters.
He took two minutes to operate the locking mechanism and when the doors did finally start to slide apart, Ty was met by a line of white light.
A battle raged on the edge of the crater. Waves of bombardment lit the sky. What should have been black and dotted with stars was white with red edges. Something was burning.
The only things that could burn on Vesta had been built by humans, and they were burning. Clouds of dust billowed on the horizon, lit within from explosions that quickly went dark as fuel was consumed.
Ty took stock of the situation, checked the status of his suit communications system, then activated his extraction transponder.
The update blinked in his HUD as he waited for the communications handshake and the eventual response. None came.
Raising his helmet to look at the raging sky, Ty switched to a tracking mode. The HUD quickly highlighted the nearby celestial bodies, and any large craft in orbit around Vesta or Ceres. Thousands of ships crowded the sky.
There were at least five main groups arrayed above Vesta. The only reason to array a force like that was if ground attackers had already taken positions on the surface. Ty’s first thought was Psion, but then he had to ask himself why the SAI would want Vesta.
Humanity had much stronger reasons.
Amstrad’s words came back to haunt him. What if he had somehow become caught up in an attempt to start a war between the AIs and humanity? What if he was just one of many small teams sent to Vesta to seize and destroy equipment and facilities in an attempt to goad Sol Alliance forces into fighting back?
While he didn’t
want to believe it, he had no idea what else might be happening.
Ty timed the explosions to gauge distance. He quickly had a topographic map in his mind showing an estimate of which facilities were under attack. There was a heavy-metals refinery fifty kilometers north of the communications station, and based on the sonic patterns, that was the area under bombardment. As he observed, the seismic activity shifted closer.
In another five minutes, the map showed a second facility under attack. It was simple math to determine the path of the oncoming enemy. The communications array was directly in the bombing path.
He had to return to the bunker or find help on the surface. The problem was that he and Manny had strict orders to maintain radio silence throughout the operation, and he had already activated his secure emergency transponder. It seemed apparent now that Mars wasn’t coming to their aid.
Ty watched for another five minutes, verifying his estimate of the oncoming attack. He reentered the building.
Jogging down the maintenance corridor, he took the stairs two at a time, until he reached the bunker. Ty paused, realizing there were more stairs going down. If there was a battery bank as Amstrad had said, he needed to find it and activate an override to power the facility.
Now that his suit was active, Caprise could pull up Amstrad’s database of schematics for the facility. Or at least the basic schematics they had been able to draw as they moved through before finding Amstrad. If the design followed standard protocol, power backups would be located in separate sections of the lower levels. Ty would need to reach each section and power cycle the batteries.
He checked his chronometer, then took off down the stairs in search of the battery banks. In another hour, he located what he thought was the main power junction. The vibrations had reached the lowest levels of the facility now. Based on his estimates, he had maybe another thirty minutes before bombs fell on the satellite dish.
He found himself in a control room, trying to make sense of the equipment that lay dead around the room. Eventually, after checking every cabinet, he opened one marked for medical response and found the override switch in its back wall.
