‘The ship, Legion? What happened?’ he asked in utter confusion. At the moment if anyone asked him his name, he firmly believed he would have trouble responding.
‘The AI which referred to itself as Legion is disabled Captain. At present I am working on a solution for the colonists which should help them make the transition away from such dedicated reliance upon an artificial being. The Martian ship is still present on the surface not too far from the colony buildings, the minimal effected damage to the drive system easily repairable and with a little more work, the devastation your evasive actions upon the bridge may also be fixed,’ she reported in a matter-of-fact tone.
‘You missed the bit about what happened to me,’ he prompted subtly. ‘I closed my eyes for a quick nap over there and end up …well somewhere else? Where are we exactly?’
Marcus stepped forwards, seeming quite eager to add his voice to the mix and clear up the confusion.
‘We’re on the Martian ship presently Captain, in their medical bay as Ezri thought it might present the best chance for your recovery after I discovered you in the drive section.’
‘Indeed,’ Ezri said. ‘Without Marcus’ intervention I doubt we would be enjoying this pleasant chat Captain. He was able to hook you up to the medical systems after carting you up here so that I was able to stabilise your vital signs and allow you a speedy recovery from the trauma inflicted upon you in your conflict.’
‘Thank you,’ Maddox said humbly to Marcus, nodding slightly as a smile crept onto his face. ‘I guess you saved my life then? What does it feel like to be a hero?’
Marcus quite visibly blushed and his gaze darted to the floor by his feet, as he had not considered himself in this light. He had just done what was the right thing to do as it occurred to him.
Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, Maddox smiled at his young friends slight embarrassment before glancing at both Marcus and then Ezri in turn, his concern growing for the absent face in the group.
‘Maia,’ he said cautiously. ‘What’s happened to Maia, and the Erstwhile? Last I saw she was pluming smoke whilst trying to lift up and away.’
‘Both accounted for Captain,’ Ezri reported to his sheer relief. ‘Whilst you were asleep we managed to establish contact with her through this vessel’s comm system. It would seem she has had her hands full with quite a few systems absorbing the brunt of the assault they experienced, but as the threat was over she made touchdown nearby with my assistance. I was able to download to my own body as opposed to existing purely within the computer system and return here to oversee your recovery. Maia has remained on board the Erstwhile as there is still some work to do over there but she will be joining us shortly .’
Maddox nodded, the relief quite evident upon his face.
‘Now Captain, please lie back down as I have to check for any adverse effects from your ordeal,’ Ezri instructed and raised her eyebrow at him, giving her delicate features a rather authoritative visage.
Without any words of complaint or resistance, Maddox returned his legs to the bed and settled back.
Once Maddox had been checked once more for any lingering effects of his ordeal aside from aches and bruises, Ezri and Marcus escorted him back over to the colony buildings. He noted that as they made their way through the corridors of the colony there were various colonists going about their routine tasks as he had witnessed on his first passage from confinement to the operations centre, almost as if the intervening period had not happened.
It was not without a good amount of relief and joy that Praia fell into step beside Maddox, lifting his spirits immensely that she was in good health an no more worse for wear after her ordeal at the hands of the Sentinel. After flashing her a big beaming smile he returned his attention to the other colonist they were passing in the corridor.
‘There’s a lot of work to do,’ explained Praia on noticing his curious glances as they passed individuals on their route. ‘We are making the preparations to leave here and make our return as we planned, but this time it is in the spirit of peace and friendship in the hope we can rejoin our families and make our contribution to the Earth.’
Before too long they found themselves in a circular chamber carved from the rock of the moon itself, seating arranged around tables and a bowl of hot soup present before Maddox which he regarded intently as thoughts flew through his mind, the voices of his companions registering but the words simply not being absorbed.
Marcus had been called away to the operations centre but Ezri and Praia were deep in discussion about how to upload the memory core of the colony mainframe to the Martian ship and make provisions for their journey. They were talking technical and most of the time that Ezri did this, Maddox tended to switch off anyway. However this time it was not due to lack of interest or understanding, but rather trying to organise his own thoughts and memories after having knocked on death’s door and run away. That thought evoked a mental imagery which amused him for a moment before his mind returned to the serious business of understanding what had happened.
He hardly noticed as Maia took a seat next to him with her own bowl of thick soup and tucked into it heartily.
As he stirred the thick soup in front of him, Maddox contemplated those last few moments before he had blanked out. He had already spoken to Ezri as they had traversed the distance from the Martian ship to the mess hall about the experience of the Erstwhile before she told him he was awake, and she had eluded to his mind finding the most safe and secure environment to place him into as he raised to consciousness, like a safety feature to ease a recovering person back to a normal pattern.
‘Legion was marooned over there on the ship,’ he enquired quietly as he retained his gaze on the surface of the soup while the spoon he was twirling made slight ripples in it. The other voices fell silent as they listened intently to him. ‘It seemed to be quite determined to see me off, almost obsessed I would say after it downloaded to that Sentinel to choke the life out of me personally. So what has happened to our maniacal friend? You said disabled, not destroyed.’
Marcus joined them at the table as Maddox was speaking, pulling his chair in and resting his elbows on the table, clasping his hands before his mouth but moving them slightly away when he spoke.
‘It has been dealt with Captain, thanks to your Ezri here. In fact it is down to her we were able to convince everyone on the correct course of action to cut the up-link after she uploaded to the ship to deal with the AI. She deserves most of the credit here.’ Marcus said quite openly and pleasantly. There was a joviality to his manner and optimism which made Maddox glance up at him and smile slightly, although he had to wince as he turned a little to quickly for his bruised ribs to appreciate.
‘Okay, credit where credit is due. You still put yourself at risk though Marcus, venturing to the drive room like that despite any potential threats and saving my bacon. So Ezri, what did you do with the AI?’
Ezri placed a dark grey cube on the table between them.
‘It is in here Captain. It is now a dormant storage media which essentially means he is frozen in time from the moment it entered and the power was severed. The Martian vessels of their naval fleet are quite prone to attacks from digital terrorists, as they declare them. Why bother firing weapons at a ship if you can simply upload a virus and take her down from the inside? They have the most potent and up to date virus detection software in the known solar system and that software takes particular umbrage at unverified programs running loose within the ship’s computer systems. It was this system by which the AI tried to deal with me but, well lets just say I am more versed in Martian programming technology that our malignant AI was. Quite simply, once I had determined the situation on my return to the ship, I released the virus hunters and co-ordinated their assault on the AI’s matrix,’ she explained as she gestured to the cube, ‘I presented Legion with a way out of it’s predicament and as I estimated and it took this option over the alternative of having the virus hunters attack it’s c
ode and erode it’s matrix.’
Maddox reached forward and picked up the cube, resting it up on the tips of his upturned fingers and turning it slightly to and fro as his brow furrowed in contemplation.
‘So everything the AI was is stored in this cube with no backups and no hint of it throughout the colony systems or the Martian ship’s computer?’
‘That is correct Captain, we have done detailed sweeps of the data store here on the colony and the active matrix for the AI has been confirmed as removed. That is the only place in which he now exists.’
‘Good,’ Maddox said with a sneer on his lips as he turned away from the table and rose to his feet, bringing the hand which held the cube up over his head and pausing only slightly before sweeping his arm down with all the force he could muster, letting go of the cube at the end of the arc and sending it into the rocky floor at high speed. The impact had the desired result, the cube shattering into many tiny shards which Maddox then stepped onto right his right boot and ground into the floor.
‘Oops, I dropped it,’ he remarked rather innocently with a shrug as he turned back to his seat at the table and sat to continue gently stirring his soup.
‘I was going to ask you what you wished to do with it,’ said Marcus as he glanced down at the irreparable bits of the cube on the floor.
‘Now you know my answer,’ Maddox replied and lifted his spoon, laden with a helping of the soup which he sipped at in delight that it actually tasted much better than it looked.
‘Legion is not getting a second chance.’
34 Return
After lengthy deliberation and discussion it had been decided by almost unanimous verdict that the colonists should proceed with their effort to return to Earth, but Maddox had his reservations about how they would be received and how they could re-integrate into lives which they had been torn from many years before. Not that he saw leaving them all out here as a viable option either, but his concern arose from the reception they may receive from the Martian corporation after they had rather publicly declared the colony ship lost and used that event and the more recent attacks to furnish their own agenda of eradicating resistance groups.
There would be a frenzy of ‘finger-pointing’ from the mass media, residents of the colonies in general and many questions being asked which would test the public relations department of the Aries Corporation to it’s limit. However they were to stage their return, it had to be public so as not easily covered up or played down.
It had been over two weeks since the deactivation of the AI, in which time not only had the colonists pulled together as more of a cohesive community to work towards their goal, but they had also lent assistance to Maddox and his small crew to continue repairs to the Erstwhile.
Ezri had been working in tandem with a few of the colonists to make adjustments to the Martian patrol ship computer to recognise their authority over the ship’s systems and prevent any unexpected and undesirable lock outs. Her abilities to bypass the security systems were remarked upon by Marcus, but simply dismissed as talents she had learnt under her previous employment in the service of the Mannheim family. She had indeed shared stories of her origins and the path undertaken to bring her into their midst, but Marcus still wondered if there was more to this unique program than she let on, or that she understood herself.
One bonus to their endeavours was to obtain control over the final three Sentinels which were on board and undamaged, putting them to work in a more peaceful role than their original design intended and have them perform a myriad of heavy lifting tasks, carrying and retaining a latent protective role installed within their on board subroutines so that the colonists would have some measure of protective element on return should it prove necessary.
Indeed, Ezri’s intimate expertise in Martian computer architecture and programming was of vital importance in integrating a more compact but effective version of the shared mind central hub within the Martian craft and making provision for it within the on board computer’s accepted parameters. Interface hubs were installed at various points throughout the ship itself and enabled the colonists to retain their interface ability whilst not being in direct control of the ship. Ezri decided that measure was one step too far for their purposes, but also wanted them to be able to extract the technology from the ship on their arrival in re-establishment of their community within the core.
In a move which surprised Maddox, more by the means in which he discovered her efforts rather than the actual outcome, Ezri utilised the more up to date core computer of the Martian vessel to create a duplicate of her own program which she modified to ensure was subservient to the colonists whilst retaining the knowledge and experience she possessed. There were certain omissions obviously, such as details of Ezri’s interactions with Phoenix and Maddox, but the end result was a fully functional and helpful duplicate. Maddox had been sat conversing with the duplicate on screen for quite a while before Ezri walked into the room and interrupted him, causing him to stare at the two of them. Ezri and the new duplicate, who was named Alyssa by young Praia as she liked the name, shared their own version of amusement at his dumbfounded confusion, then minor irritation at being the butt of what he termed a digital joke.
The scene was one of much effort in preparation for their departure, with both ships being readied for take off and the journey back through the belt and into the core.
During this time, as he worked on the hull of the Erstwhile in unison with Maia who seemed much more in her element than he had ever seen her previously, Maddox had been concocting his plan for how the ‘Children of Earth’ could return with amnesty from the acts committed in their name but also as a bonus to it all, land the Aries Corporation in hot water.
He had heard the computer’s words about some sort of secretive organisation existing upon Mars, but aside from the belief that one devious Martian would stab another in the back out of a lust for power and control, he could not believe that the Aries Corporation were simply a puppet front for some hidden agenda by another organisation.
After discussing his ideas with Marcus, who had been proposed by nearly all his peers as their duly elected leader and spokesperson on their return to Earth, both of them were in agreement as to how they should proceed.
Both vessels lifted from the surface of the moon, a tinge of worry and sorrow from some of the Martian patrol ship’s occupants at their departure as this was the place they knew as home. The place they felt secure amidst their small community. It was not without a certain amount of trepidation that they moved forward into rejoining a much bigger community back within the core worlds.
As they traversed the distance from the moon to the outer edge of the belt, Ezri made regular trips between the two vessels, digitally transmitting in nanoseconds between the two, to ensure that all the systems were operating at peak performance within the parameters she had predicted so that their moment of return was faultless. Her efforts were also to ensure that her counterpart Alyssa, was operating within acceptable parameters to facilitate the wishes and co-ordination of the colonists via the shared link.
Maddox kept referring to the new digital entity on the Martian ship as her ‘sister’, to which she tried to correct him by pointing out she was actually more of a clone than a sibling, but his persistence won through and Ezri relented, if nothing more than to quieten the Captain.
The moment which they had prepared for arrived as the signal strength to SOLnet increased with every moment that passed and, as they breached the outer edge of the belt passing into range of the most remote colony outpost, it was time for Maddox and Marcus’ jointly agreed scheme to be put into place.
Marcus opened the channel, predefined by Ezri to tap into the broad-wave frequency of the Martian naval communications network to ensure proper transmission throughout their established and robust communications network but on an unsecured frequency so that all receivers throughout the inner worlds could witness the broadcast.
‘To all the inhabitants of
the Core world colonies, outposts and vessels within range of this signal, this is a transmission from the Children of Earth. You will have heard the name used in conjunction with acts committed throughout your communities, however despite the popular myth which has been circulated these were enacted in our name without our consent or collusion,’ Marcus said as the image which was encoded along with the transmission remained blank for the moment. ‘You have seen a false image, which we now seek to rectify with all recipients of this transmission.’
The image resolved into the face of Marcus as he spoke, putting a human face upon the words and giving them an identity to which people could identify.
Marcus paused for a moment, partly to steel his nerves in preparation to deliver their request but also to allow his words to be considered properly.
‘We were taken from our homes and families, removed from our communities and in an unexpected turn of events found ourselves marooned far from our homes with no apparent source of return possible. In order to survive we forged our own community utilising the means we had at hand, however even then we were not without interference from elements within the core worlds who were the true perpetrators of the crimes for which we ourselves are now sought. We have done nothing more than fight to survive against the odds in the dream of one day returning home to our families, the day that is now upon us.’
Once again he paused but this time his nerves were the cause, the momentous significance of this moment and how these words would be received pervading his mind. He had to take a few deep breaths as he glanced about the bridge of the Martian ship to his peers who stood about him, all nodding in encouragement to urge him onward.
‘My name is Marcus, I speak for the Children of Earth and although what you hear now is just words outlining a set of circumstances, I am transmitting a prepared packet of evidence to those in authority for their deliberation. Proof of secretive contact between the corrupt AI which was present within our own colony and elements upon Mars, as well as logs and records from the colony ship on which we departed which expose the acts which took us so far away. It is our combined hope that we may return in peace, to be received with open arms back to the home we were removed from and that with time, we may re-integrate with society in a constructive role to help rebuild Earth. We will await contact before proceeding any further.’
Children Of Earth (Tales from the 23rd Century Book 1) Page 30
