Dead Force Box Set

by S D Tanner

  “Judge, we have to move faster. The humanoid fleas can kill us.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  One handhold at a time he was getting closer to the door, but Judge was falling behind. Looking over his shoulder, he called, “I’m coming for you.”

  “Worry about your own ass.”

  He wasn’t going to do that, he never did. Judge was someone who had saved him more than once and he paid his debts. Kicking off from the locker he collided with squid-like fleas between the two lockers, sending them flying away from him. Clutching for a handhold he pulled himself into the wall of the locker. With Judge pulling himself toward him he unclipped his tether. Once they were joined he began using one handhold after the next to move across the lockers.

  Several humanoid fleas were copying his style of moving from one handhold to the next. With two only twenty feet away he had to move faster. Now he and Judge were tethered together, the humanoid fleas only had to catch one of them and the other would be thrown by the explosion. Rok and Hawk were in the doorway hanging onto the edge with one hand. They were using their free hand to slash at fleas around them. With every cut, another flea would roll away, leaking blood. They were now surrounded by so many fleas he couldn’t see the dome.

  “C’mon, we’ve gotta go!” Rok shouted.

  Although Rok was only worried about their immediate safety, it wasn’t only them that had to leave. The entire dome was an insult to humanity. Reaching the end of the lockers he kicked against it sharply so that his body propelled away. Hawk had tethered himself to the doorway, only now he gently kicked himself away from the platform and reached for him. With their hands stretched toward one another, their fingers finally touched and he grasped his hand.

  “Reel me in,” Hawk shouted.

  Rok was holding onto the doorway and he pulled at the tether with his free hand. He and Hawk continued to hold hands while he was reeled toward the door. Judge was tethered to him and he, too, began moving toward the door. Unable to control his movement, fat round blobs of blood were smearing across his face and spacesuit. Once the door was within his grasp he grabbed the edge. Turning slowly, he pulled on his tether so Judge could catch the edge of the door.

  “Jessica, close the door, but leave a one foot gap.”

  “What are you doing?” Judge asked.

  Now inside the doorway he raised the arm with the rifle attached. “Long range,” he ordered.

  “You’ll take out the dome,” Hawk said.

  “Jessica, get ready to slam the doors shut.”

  Just as he’d ordered, the doors closed until only a one foot gap remained open. Already a transparent tentacle was waving through the gap. “Fire on my order.”

  “This is risky, Tag,” Judge muttered.

  “The greater the risk, the higher the reward,” he replied. While he and Judge clung to the door with one hand their rifle arms pointed through the gap. “On my count.”

  More tentacles were weaving through the one foot gap making him sure he was doing the right thing. Every Ark was hell and he’d already destroyed one since he’d been woken. If the only way to stop the fleas from eating the sleepers was to destroy the ship, then he’d take this one down as well. Just as he was about to start the count he remembered why he was nicknamed Tag. One of his trainers had reported him for being antagonistic. Apparently, he was belligerent and didn’t take orders well. Perhaps that’s why he was no longer in uniform. The trainer’s astute observation had earned him the name Tag.

  True to his real colors, he smirked. “Three…two…one…fire!”

  As the doors slammed shut he kicked himself away from the wall. “Jessica, open the other door!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Brainpower

  Judge was leaning against the wall in the corridor with his feet stuck out in front of him. Spacesuits weren’t known to bend easily and for the first time since they’d woken Judge looked worn.

  Waggling his finger at him, Judge said, “I remember you now. You’re a pain in my ass, Tag.”

  Hawk was lying flat on his back staring at the ceiling. “Damn.”

  Where Judge and Hawk were refusing to move Rok was already unclipping his spacesuit. “You throw one hell of a party, Tag.”

  “What was going on in that dome?” Hawk asked.

  Where he could tell Hawk the facts about what they’d found he didn’t know the purpose. Lolo believed they were growing super lethal bacteria, but next to those lockers were the tiny squids he assumed were a younger version of the fleas. The adult fleas fed on the sleepers, which meant the Arks were being used as nurseries to grow an alien species. Where most of the pods on the Animax had been opened and the people were dead or dying, the Prognatus still had plenty of undisturbed sleepers. There was still a chance he could save the sleepers on the Prognatus. Finding the small squids inside the dome changed everything he knew about the Arks. Initially he’d assumed the fleas had infested the ship, but the Arks had been built for them. The sleepers hadn’t been sent into space to colonize another planet, they were a food source for the fleas. One realization led to another and he wondered why Jessica told them to eradicate the fleas. If she was only a computer uplink then she should already know the real purpose of the ship. If she wanted them to kill the fleas, then perhaps she was more than just a computer.

  “We need to talk to Jessica.”

  “I thought Joker was hacking her,” Judge replied.

  “I don’t think she’s just a computer. She has some degree of will, otherwise why would she want us to eradicate the fleas? They’re the reason the ship exists.”

  Judge began unclipping his spacesuit. “Good point.”

  Removing a bag from his chest, Hawk held it up by a strap. “What do you want me to do with these?”

  In the excitement of their escape from the dome he’d forgotten Hawk had taken the tubes from the first locker. “We need to give them to Lolo. She thinks they might be viruses, but they could be anything.”

  Leaving their spacesuits in the corridor to the dome they headed back to the Bridge. The findings inside the dome hadn’t changed his mission. Whether the fleas had deliberately been placed into the Arks or they’d arrived by accident, it didn’t change what he had to do. One way or another he had to clear the chamber of fleas, but he still didn’t know how he could. Given he and his squad weren’t entirely human it was unlikely the fleas could use them as a food source, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try to kill them. They’d certainly been trying to inside the dome. His loyalty was to the sleepers, which meant the fleas were his enemy too. Having a clear target sat well with him. An indisputable enemy, one he could kill without conscience, gave him the focus he’d been lacking.

  When they reached the Bridge, the lights were up and Lolo was sitting in the command chair. Rising to her feet and turning, she said, “What you did was very dangerous. Why did you destroy the dome? It could have taken the ship with it.”

  “I didn’t know you cared,” he replied vaguely while looking around the room for Joker. “Where’s Joker?”

  A door he didn’t know was there opened to his right. “In here, boss.”

  The ship was full of secrets, and behind a panel in the wall was a room where Jessica must have spent most of her time. She was standing with her back pressed against the wall, and it took him a moment to realize she was inside an alcove. The shallow indent formed an outline around her body and she was half recessed into the wall. Jessica’s usually blank expression was even more vacant. Her eyes were wide and her mouth hung slightly open. Beside her were banks of screens each displaying images he didn’t understand.

  Seeing the back of Joker’s head in front of the screens, he asked, “How’s it going?”

  “She’s not what I expected,” Joker replied, but he sounded pleased by the discovery. Spinning around in his chair to face him, he grinned like a man in love. “She’s not a robot, but she’s not a cyborg either.”

 
“I didn’t know there was anything in between.”

  “Neither did I.”

  Joker stood and walked across to Jessica. With her eyes wide open and the mouth slightly parted she resembled a rubberized doll. Her hands were flat against the wall inside the alcove and her feet were set a foot apart. The molded mounds that represented her breasts were rising and falling as if she were breathing.

  Joker gently ran the back of his hand down her cheek almost as if he regretted what he was about to tell him. “The main problem with artificial intelligence is emulating how the human mind works. The brain is a complicated organ. It uses power, stores memories, processes thoughts, and reacts to events. It needs fuel to fire the neurons in a logical sequence to bond with other neurons. It does this incredibly fast and those chain reactions represent thoughts and outcomes. The brain makes connections and exchanges information with other neurons. It does this every time you move or think about anything. Millions upon millions of connections are made every minute so you can think, breathe and move. The brain is like a superhighway moving data from one part of it to the next. One of its most important functions is to learn. The longer it’s been working, the more data it has stored, and therefore the better decisions it will make.”

  “Do robots have brains?”

  Allowing his hand to drop, Joker turned to face him. “She’s not a robot. The main problem we’ve had with artificial intelligence is the Brain Machine Interface known as the BMI. We need the BMI to exploit the brain’s electrical signals to control machinery. If you like, it’s a way of controlling the human brain to manage mechanical parts.”

  “Ok, so what is she?”

  “I think they wanted to preserve Jessica’s vast knowledge and experience to manage the ship, but control the basis of her decisions.”

  “They?” He asked raising his eyebrows.

  Joker shrugged. “Lunar Horizon or whatever.” Looking at Jessica again, he added, “Jessica still has a brain inside her head, but they’ve gotten the BMI working so it’s being controlled. Given she existed on the other ships, then there is only one real Jessica controlling all the others.”

  He walked across the room until he was opposite Jessica. “Is this one the master?”

  “I don’t know. For all I know Jessica’s brain is in a jar somewhere and she’s controlling the robot versions of herself.”

  “How did she control the Jessica’s on the other ships?”

  Shrugging again, Joker replied, “They were probably close enough to stay in comms, but that’s not the issue here. Jessica’s brain has been modified so she can be in multiple places at the same time. It allows her to make decisions that only a biological brain is capable of. If her brain is kept alive, and her bodies are robotic, she’ll keep functioning indefinitely. The real question is whether she’s in control of her decisions. I suspect she’s controlled by protocols set inside the BMI.”

  Joker didn’t sound happy about what he’d learned about Jessica. Although the idea her brain was living in a jar disgusted him, at least he understood how multiple versions of Jessica existed. It answered one of his questions, even if it was the least important. “Can you hack her?”

  “She’s not a computer so not in any traditional way.” When he looked confused, Joker added, “You’re missing the point. Jessica isn’t a computer. I might not know exactly where she is or what’s left of her, but her brain is alive somewhere. They modified her brain so she complies to the protocols needed by the ship, but the capacity for thought inside the human brain is almost limitless. Even with entrenched protocols her original personality, beliefs, memories and thoughts won’t be erased. The whole point of keeping her biological brain alive would have been for speed of processing, but as soon as they did that they would have kept much her personality intact.”

  Finally understanding what Joker’s was telling him, he closed his eyes, sighing as he did. They weren’t dealing with an infestation of fleas, but intelligent aliens. Lunar Horizon wasn’t the problem, it was mostly likely only a front for something else. Whatever had built the Arks and designed Jessica was much smarter than anyone he’d ever met. To them humans were a multi-purpose resource. They were using humans to feed their young and run their machines. If Mark was right, and the fleas evolved into something that looked human, then maybe they were running Lunar Horizon. If that were true then no one would know aliens had taken over Earth.

  Opening his eyes, he and Joker looked at one another. “We’re in a shitload of trouble.”

  Joker snorted. “Ya think?”

  “Can you reach the real Jessica?”

  “I’m trying. She’s in there, but the protocols limit her neural pathways. I’m trying to talk to the real person under the programming. We have to find a route to her original self.”

  “How sure are you that she’s in there?”

  “You already know she is.”

  Studying Jessica’s rubbery looking face, he felt the same sympathy Joker clearly had for her. The real Jessica understood what was being done to them, which meant she probably knew what had happened to her. She’d ordered him to eradicate the fleas and that wasn’t something the aliens would want. Jessica’s brain was trapped inside a machine, forced to help a species hell bent on using humans for their own ends. She was already dead and yet her brain lived on, forever attached to mechanical bodies. Even if he eradicated the fleas, Jessica would still be dead. There was something honorable about her determination to save the sleepers. She could never be alive again, but she was willing to save those that still were. Her commitment to the sleepers echoed his own. It was something they had in common.

  “There’s more,” Joker said. “The only thing that kills the brain is death of the body supporting it. Our brains live on for a short while after the body dies. It’s only when the brain is starved of oxygen that it shuts down.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Jessica’s brain could have been alive for centuries and, providing it’s powered, it’ll never die. Who knows how long they’ve held her prisoner.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Fool Me Once

  “What did he say?” Lolo asked as he walked out of the small room and onto the Bridge.

  “He’s making progress.”

  Lolo was sitting in a chair next to the banks of screens on the back wall. “You don’t seem happy about that.”

  Sitting on the chair next to hers, he asked, “What exactly is Lunar Horizon?”

  Lolo shrugged. “They’re a company, I guess. A big one.”

  “When did they start up?”

  “Before I was born.”

  “Who runs it?”

  “It has a board like every other company.” Frowning, she added, “The Chairman is a guy called Jeff King. No one knows much about him.”

  “Does Bart know him?”

  Lolo shook her head. “I doubt it. Lunar employs millions of people. Bart and Joe weren’t senior enough to know the top-level management.”

  “Do you think Bart or Joe knew about the viruses we found?”

  “Are you crazy?” She asked in disbelief. Pointing at the bag containing the tubes they’d found in the dome, she added, “If those tubes contain viruses, any viruses, then no one in their right mind would agree to be on this ship. Even the most harmless of viruses will mutate in space. You don’t know what the virus will become, but it’s more likely to do you harm than good.”

  Lifting the bag so it spun on the strap, he eyed it with interest. “They wouldn’t have had four virologists on board for no reason.”

  Flinching slightly, Lolo leaned back into her chair. “Be careful with that. You don’t know what’s in it.”

  Gently placing the bag onto the table next to their chairs, he said, “Tell me what you know about Lunar.”

  “They’ve been around for centuries and have subsidiaries in every industry sector. Some make robots. Others control communications. There are multiple research labs working in
pharmaceutical. They even have their own movie studio. But the backbone of their operations is the nuclear power.”

  “Are you sure it’s nuclear?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve no reason to think it isn’t. They distribute power globally through massive pipelines. We use it for everything from transport to our homes. If Lunar were to fail then the whole world would come to a halt.”

  “What about space travel?”

  “It’s a division.” Looking across the Bridge her brow wrinkled with a frown. “I must admit I didn’t know they were this advanced. I mean, there had been talk about space travel, but it was overridden when the virus broke out.”

  Although his memory was returning, he still couldn’t recall anything about Lunar Horizon or space travel. Nothing about the world Lolo described was familiar to him. He might have recognized Jessica, but he still didn’t know where he’d met her. According to Joker she could have been a brain in a jar for a long time, so who knew when they’d met or why. All he could remember was trusting her.

  “Why did Lunar release a virus?”

  “We don’t know for sure that they did, but if they didn’t then their huge supply of the vaccine was a remarkable coincidence.” Thoughtfully tapping the bag containing the tubes, she pursed her lips. “It makes me wonder if they released it, or perhaps they just took advantage of it.”

  Leaning back into his chair he tried to understand Lunar Horizon’s motive. If Earth was quietly being taken over by aliens why kill a third of the population? Mark believed the fleas would eventually adapt until they looked like their human hosts. If that were true then Lunar Horizon was probably already controlled by human-looking aliens. Why would an alien species take over Earth in such a discreet way? Why not wheel in the big guns and occupy the world? Their technology exceeded anything he’d ever seen on Earth. He doubted Earth could have put up much of a fight. Why were they breeding more flea-like aliens in space? If consuming human DNA meant they evolved to look human then the ones on the Arks were destined for Earth. Although he could see what the aliens were doing he didn’t understand the master plan, assuming they had one.