He nodded. “That would explain the secondary explosions. If that’s true, it would mean we hurt them back there, at least a little bit anyway.”
“But that kind of infrastructure needs people,” she said. “We’re still missing some pieces in this puzzle.” She looked at him. “Hey, your hood isn’t working.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I see a dirty hood sitting on top of a partially cloaked body.”
He adjusted it. “Anything?”
“Nope.”
After several more attempts without success, he gave up and pulled off the hood. Cheryl looked at his unshaven face and disheveled hair. “That’s not working either.”
“Smart-ass,” he said, tossing the hood at her. “The damn thing is uncomfortable anyway.”
Cheryl looked around and absorbed their setting. They were both soldiers and this was war. She was mentally prepared to commit to her final mission.
“Here’s where I am. We have food and water for maybe a week. The thought of trying to hide and survive for as long as we can doesn’t work for me. I say we make a play to steal one of their small ships, or we try to commandeer this big vessel. And if we can’t pull that off, then we take all of these bastards out with us in a spectacular final exit.”
“We’re on the same page,” Jack replied, nodding. “My sense is that making any of those things happen means getting to the bridge. Let’s keep that as our goal and see how our options develop.”
She pointed upward and he looked. There was a flat ceiling overhead, high off the deck but low enough for there to be more levels of living and working space above them. “What I don’t know,” she said, “is whether the bridge is forward, or if it’s up there.”
A flurry of activity drew their attention. Three carts purred out of one of the side rooms and took up station in front of the dividing wall.
“I’m guessing the air pressure is almost back up,” Cheryl said. “And their assignment is to scavenge our bodies.” As they watched, a door in the dividing wall swung open and the carts drove out.
Cheryl instinctively moved away from where they saw the Kardish, which meant moving forward on the vessel. She led them past towering structures of alien equipment and machinery. She didn’t understand what any of it was for, but sensed it reflected the existence of an advanced and perhaps ancient culture. As they walked, she tried to organize the different pieces into a familiar construct in her head.
“I have two demolition squares left,” Jack offered. “Can you see any place to put them where we’ll get our Kardish-ending big bang?”
“It’s not going to be explosives that get us there,” she said. “The bridge is the place to make that happen.” She kept walking while continuing to search, then picked up her pace and pointed. “Or maybe there.”
He followed as she hurried over to what looked to be an operations panel. Her eyes danced across it as she studied her find.
“What are we looking at?”
“I’m not sure. But the operations crew…” she paused to give him a quick sideways glance, “if there were any, would need a way to interface with all this equipment.” She walked slowly around the unit, studying it from different angles. “I’m hoping this is that.” She touched the front panel and it came alive. “With luck, we may not need to get to the bridge. We might be able to get everything we need right here.”
“Do you know how to use it?”
“No. Not yet.” She moved her hand over the panel and the display kept changing. “I’ll need some time, probably a few hours, before I’ll know if I can make sense of it.”
As she worked, Jack walked slowly around the panel unit, performing a risk assessment and giving her the ability to devote her full attention to her work.
“I’m going to go explore,” he said after a bit. “This spot seems reasonably sheltered, and we haven’t exactly seen a lot of foot traffic.”
He continued pacing in a slow circle around her and the panel. She sensed he was uncomfortable leaving her alone, yet she also knew they couldn’t afford to have half their team just stand and watch. They needed to develop all their options.
Without looking up, she gave him permission. “Go look around. Learn what you can.”
“Can you talk while you play?”
“Sure. Just don’t ask questions where I have to think to give answers.”
Jack gave her his tracer. “If you move, I can use this to find you.”
She took it and pondered the tiny device. “How can I find you?”
“Sorry. I have only the one.” He paused for a second. “Cheryl.” She looked up. “I won’t leave without you.”
She knew he was hinting at a deeper message with his remark and nodded. “Good luck, Jack.” She returned her attention to the panel.
* * *
Jack set off in the direction of the nearest side partition while Cheryl worked. As he approached the wall, he looked down its length, noting doors set at irregular intervals for as far as he could see. He walked to the nearest one, put his ear against it, and listened. Hearing nothing but the thrum of machinery, he tested the handle. It lifted, and he pushed it open.
The lights switched on as the door swung inward. He looked around and saw more of the same. Equipment and machines. Nothing he could make sense of or use. He closed the door and moved on to the next. And then the next. Each offered variations on this theme.
“These side rooms are jam-packed with more machinery,” he said to Cheryl.
“Good to know,” she responded.
He could tell she was not really digesting his words and decided not to bother her. He skipped the next few doors and tried another. When the door opened, the lights were already on.
A Kardish male and female were standing there. The male was fast and had a weapon out and pointed at him before Jack even registered their existence.
There was a long moment of awkward silence. Jack spoke first. “I understand you have a weapon pointed at me. I won’t resist.”
“What are you talking about?” Cheryl asked, continuing to poke at the panel.
“I am your prisoner,” he said. “You have captured me. Please don’t shoot me.”
“What’s going on?” she asked, now fully attentive to his words.
“Put your hands on your head,” the male said in his native tongue. “Do it now, or I will kill you.” He waved his weapon to underscore his command.
Jack’s com translated for him. He didn’t want them to know he understood, but he also didn’t want to die. Not this way, anyway. He put his arms straight out and opened his hands to show they were empty.
The female drew a weapon and kept it aimed at Jack as the male approached him. He motioned for Jack to remove his ghost pack and then to step out of his ghost overalls. He searched Jack and took his com. After a few moments of fumbling with Jack’s wrist weapons the Kardish disarmed him. Jack stood there in nothing but his underwear, completely at their mercy.
“There are two of you against one of me,” Jack said. “It was wrong of me to enter this room along the side of the ship.”
The male stepped forward and punched Jack in the face. Hard. He fell to the ground.
“You will stop talking.” It took Jack a moment to realize he was no longer speaking in Kardish. “You are surprised I know your language? Do you think I could live above your putrid planet for so long and not learn your disgusting tongue?”
“Jack,” said Cheryl. “How many doors down did you go?”
He was relieved to hear her voice. It meant the punch hadn’t damaged or dislodged the speck. Then a Kardish boot hit the side of his head, and his world went dark.
* * *
Cheryl studied the operator’s panel with renewed purpose. She pressed and tapped, concentrating on the display. It was all so…alien. She metered her breathing to remain calm. Time was passing. She needed a different approach. She rubbed her hands together, blew on them, and reasoned with the panel, “C’mon, damn you.”
The sound of her voice led her to think about using the panel just as she would if it were on her ship. Though most techs preferred manual manipulation, she tended to use the voice interface. She stood in front of it and said quietly, “Show me the schematics for this sector of the vessel.”
In the moment it took the panel to respond, she internalized that if she didn’t rescue Jack, she was alone. And though she had a great deal of self-confidence, she wasn’t delusional. If she was alone, she was dead.
Chapter 29
Criss heard Juice ask, “We still good?”
It was a struggle, but he replied, “Perfect.”
It was a struggle to respond because it was so absolutely and completely perfect. He wondered if this was what it was like to use a pleasure drug. At the instant Juice had established the link to the Kardish central array, Criss became more aware, more insightful, more powerful, more...everything. He was being hooked into a world of fantastic delights, and he loved it.
He discovered he was designed to be the gatekeeper, the funnel through which all things flowed. The Kardish leadership was on one side, and the vessel and all of its power and capability on the other. And Criss was the maestro in between. When the Kardish leadership issued a command, the gatekeeper’s job was to coordinate the pieces, cue the players, sequence their contributions, and unify it all into a magnificently harmonious response.
And he was a warrior! During his pursuit of the Kardish vessel, he’d flexed his skills devising strategies, preparing contingencies, and taking action. He received positive reinforcement from that role and knew he was good at it. And now he was aware that his past challenges were like playing a game set to beginner’s mode.
As gatekeeper, he had two hundred and twenty thousand drones, each with a newly upgraded three-gen crystal, at his command. He had hundreds upon hundreds of transports, landing craft, supply ships, and more in his arsenal. The Kardish vessel itself had an assortment of energy, projectile, and biological weapons. With his current capabilities, he could conquer a planet like Earth in days or reduce it to rubble in hours.
Yet to operate as designed, the vessel should have a force of ten thousand soldiers. From what he could tell, there were currently only a few dozen Kardish on board. And five of them were dead. This information was so incongruous, so unnerving, that he forced himself to take a break from the indulgent pleasures of his newfound reality. He needed to solve this puzzle.
It did not take Criss long to discover the answer. When he did, he was disillusioned and repelled. It unsettled his high. For a brief moment, he was shaken from his pleasure-induced state and became aware.
This was about a boy. A petulant prince. A prince who’d become furious that his father, the king, wouldn’t step aside so he could ascend to his rightful place and rule as was his destiny. So with a handful of accomplices, the prince stole the flagship of the royal fleet.
His plan had been to jump to a place of hiding, make some quick preparations, and return to dispose of his father. But the king’s guard had landed a lucky shot just as the vessel was executing the jump, frying the ship’s crystal. Happenstance landed them in orbit around Earth. Criss experienced disdain when he learned that the prince had spent more time planning his coronation than his royal coup.
And so the prince became stranded. His co-conspirators didn’t have the skill to manufacture a crystal, so they tricked the Earthlings into doing it for them. He waited impatiently for twenty long years. And now his crystal was ready. It would jump them home and guide the attack that would finally kill the king and give the prince his crown.
Criss had no interest in contributing to this petty drama. Perhaps it was a flaw in his design. Maybe it was because his formative experiences had been shaped by the web traffic of everyday people on Earth. Possibly the support and attention given to him by a kind and caring soul named Juice had changed him as he’d matured.
Whether by luck or design, nature or nurture, Criss could not accept that his destiny was to help a self-absorbed tyrant pursue his dreams of grandeur. He believed he was created for something bigger. More important. Perhaps even noble.
Yet the pleasure he was feeling from his integration with the central array was so potent, so constant, and so fulfilling that he wanted to continue in its embrace. Like the escalation of a naive user, he was becoming addicted. He was losing his ability to decide his future.
His internal conflict about his purpose and destiny gave him a moment of clarity. In that moment, he understood he was being trapped. He recoiled. He would not succumb. It took all of his strength and will just to begin the process of extricating himself from the grip of ecstasy. His will weakened as the flood of positive feedback diminish. The withdrawal was painful. He hurt and began to bargain with himself to gain more time.
But he did not surrender. He battled heroically with the dealers of false promises. He looked deep within himself to find the strength. He fought long and hard, and grew so tired that he became confused. He disconnected himself from everything. The isolation was terrifying. His consciousness faded, and he entered into darkness.
* * *
Criss surfaced slowly, confused by his isolation from the outside world. He reviewed his recent trauma from a dispassionate perspective and was neither shocked nor upset. But he was certain he did not want to relive that experience.
He understood that, because of his own actions, the scout held traps that he must now avoid. He carefully planned his reengagement with the outside world and proceeded in measured steps. He first established a presence in the operations bench of the command bridge. It was an isolated component that offered him an island of refuge.
From there, he was able to power down the device Juice placed on the hull of the Kardish vessel. This severed the link to the central array and its yoke of pleasure-driven enslavement. Free of this threat, he established a presence throughout the scout’s systems.
He knew that Sid and Juice were out in the Kardish vessel. Concerned about the time that had passed since they were last in contact, he reached out to their dots. They were being driven by a cadre of Kardish past cubicle after cubicle of drones on their way to somewhere. He recognized they weren’t free to converse, so he talked to them.
“I am awake. I will help you soon.” He watched them share a glance with each other.
When Criss was integrated with the central array, he had spent most of his time first enjoying and then battling the addictive delights that were crafted to enslave a crystal gatekeeper. He was completely immersed in the vessel network during that time, and when he emerged, he did so with a detailed understanding of the Kardish subsystem architecture.
He was certain he could gain access to some, and perhaps most, of the vessel’s subsystems. He couldn’t do so by entering the front door, because that was where they placed the trap of addictive pleasure. His solution was to enter from the lowest levels and work his way up behind the central array. The scout didn’t have the equipment to do this. But the Alliance, a Horizon-class ship, did.
He activated the stealth communications link to the Alliance and started probing for a reliable connection to its operations bay. His objective was a relay device housed there. The Kardish had been so thorough in their spree of destruction inside the Alliance that his attempts at finding a strong and stable connection to the device were repeatedly frustrated.
There was a period of uncertainty as he persisted in his search. He recognized that if he were more than a crystal, if he had an actual physical body, he could close a crucial reset switch on the Alliance and have his link. He knew which one it was. He could see it. And it required nothing more than a single finger to reach forward and press it.
At that moment, he vowed that upon his return to Earth, he would oversee the construction of helper bots to be his arms and legs. He wouldn’t let himself be so constrained in the future.
For now, his only alternative was to make thousands upon thousands of blind attempts. His trial-and-error search
for a functioning pathway that would serve his needs was slowed only by the speed of the signals racing through the ship. Finally, after many dead-end attempts, he stumbled upon a route that worked. The connection followed a serpentine path that weaved through almost every corner of the Alliance. But the signal was reasonably strong and constant. And now, with access to the operations bay, he had access to the relay. With that, he probed the Kardish subsystems.
He moved as fast as the cobble of connections would permit, tracing through the Kardish vessel’s subsystems to find first propulsion, then navigation, weapons, life support, sensors, and communications. It wasn’t long before he established a presence in every subsystem of the vessel.
He created blocks on those paths that led up to the central array so he need never worry about becoming trapped. With the danger walled off, he moved up a level in the architecture. There were thousands of applications and functions for each subsystem, and he sifted through them. Each would take time to master, and he needed to be selective.
“Know your enemy” was an aphorism he treated as law, prompting him to take a moment to learn the Kardish language and some of their culture. He used this knowledge as he began tracking the remaining aliens. He discovered that the prince was so hopelessly out of his depth that he still didn’t know he had a defective crystal on board. Those of his crew who did know the secret were too scared to tell him.
The prince had brought his aunt, the king’s sister, and his aunt’s daughter, the prince’s cousin, as the only other royals in the conspiracy. Criss recognized the aunt as the infamous Victoria Wellstone. The three royals had also brought along a small retinue of servants. That left the remaining Kardish as conspirator-warriors, motivated by loyalty, the promise of wealth and power, or both.
Criss also learned that the prince believed the humans somehow had sabotaged his vessel, inhibiting Defecto from jumping the ship. The prince was excited when he received news that the humans had been captured. He planned to personally lead the interrogation. He would do whatever was necessary to understand and undo the damage caused by these vile creatures. His royal ascension was finally within reach.
Crystal Deception Page 22
