“Warning: repeated use of phase two training will inevitably result in neural damage to the human unit currently undergoing remedial training. Once sufficient damage has been sustained, high value target will no longer be eligible for upgraded status and will instead be recycled to harvest base materials,” the Overseer spoke almost robotically as it recited this new information. “Please remember to answer the following question with an unambiguous yes or no response. Admiral Montagne: in order to spread and increase Harmony throughout the known universe, you have been granted the wonderful opportunity to become a slave within the Harmony through Conformity. If you accept your new role within the universe, you will be granted the designation AO4769. At this time do you accept your new designation, Admiral Montagne?” While the droid was speaking, I regained my senses and only slowly recovered control of my body.
At that point, I made a rapid reevaluation of my current situation. Little as I wanted to give this Overseer the satisfaction of so much as a response—let alone anything resembling help—I liked the idea of repeated use of the neural whip even less. Not to say that I was ever going to help it, but at that point I was more than willing to try a deception. If I could just keep it talking I would have more time and as they say where there is life there is hope. Hope for what…maybe a quick death? I wasn’t sure. But what I was sure of was that I wanted nothing more to do with torture.
“As the leader of this fleet, I possess a lot of privileged information. Maybe we could cut a deal,” I hazarded quickly.
“Ambiguity once again detected within the answer portion of this question and answer period. Also, of the four known states of human interaction—anger, bargaining, despair and acceptance—the state of ‘bargaining’ has been detected. However, as previously stated: yes or no answers are preferred. In order to reduce ambiguity levels in future conversations, remedial training will once again be required,” the Overseer said, now sounding almost kindly. “Warrior unit Gama-Xray339: you are instructed to initiate phase two of the required remedial obedience training.” And, once again, my world exploded into the writhing, helpless agony known only to those who have been under the neural lash.
Not willing to become a slave, when I recovered I once again attempted to cut a deal—and once again remedial torture was ordered, and was administered by the Warrior Droid Gama-Xray339.
Thus began a vicious cycle of ‘training,’ as Overseer XZCT951 repeatedly asked me to become a slave and then tortured me when I refused to give it the answer it wanted.
At one point it even stopped to administer a neural competency test, which it seemed more than a little surprised to find that I had passed.
“High value target Admiral Montagne shows increased neurological fortitude above the human norm. Despite repeated use of phase two, remedial obedience training, neural degradation remains insufficient to warrant recycling,” observed the Droid, and then it once again asked me if I was ready to become its slave.
“I-I…what was the question again?” I wavered. I was more than willing to die, but the idea of anymore torture—part of a vicious cycle that would inevitably end with me as a brain-dead husk, good for nothing but to be thrown into the waste recycler—was just about more than I could tolerate. To my mind, anyone in the future who tried to tell me that torture was a useless tool at extracting useful information from unwilling subjects would be in danger of being immediately shot in the head, because if all this droid had wanted at this very moment was the access codes to the Phoenix, I would have handed them over to it…probably.
Just about anything to get the torture to stop, I would have considered. It was even to the point where I was seriously considering giving the droid the answer it wanted and saying I’d become its slave. After all, I reasoned to myself, I could always change my mind later when a chance at freedom arose…
I opened my mouth to do just that when I started to have a delusion that I was about to be rescued. “I can’t get an exact fix on his position, but the ship’s tracking system insists he has to be somewhere in this general area,” said a human voice from relatively close by.
“Be ready for anything; this area is crawling with droids,” said someone who sounded an awful lot like Gants.
Then, all around me, droid warriors crouched and several of them transformed almost instantaneously, resulting in their previously-humanoid appearance being replaced by one of a wheel set on its edge, and those wheel-shaped droids started to roll forward. That was the moment I realized that this might be something other than just another delusion.
“Ambush!” I shouted at the top of my lungs—which, considering a voice hoarse from screaming and a body weak and wracked with pain from repeated use of shock prods and neural whips, wasn’t nearly as strong as I would have liked.
“It’s the Admiral!” Gants exclaimed right before the first of the droid warriors rolled round the corner. A hailstorm of fire crisscrossing the corner erupted as both sides cut loose against each other.
“High value target must not be reacquired by human units; termination is now authorized,” the Oversee said regretfully, and then broke out into a series of beeps and whistles.
The firing around the corner increased exponentially, and as the Overseer turned away from me, Gamma-Xray339 pivoted toward me and brought the built-in weapons on its arms to bear.
A split second later, a grenade bounced off the wall and landed on the chest plate of my armor. The familiar, high-pitched whine indicated it was moments from going off.
“I’ll see you in Hades!” I snarled, glaring at the warrior droid moments before the grenade exploded with a flash of blinding, blue light.
Chapter 51: Teetering on the Edge
“I still say this is a mistake!” protested Princess-Cadet Bethany Tilday, Ambassador of the Assembly for Sector 24 and, at that particular moment, the unwilling representative of the Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet. “Your people will gain nothing from entering this battle. Can’t you see that the human fleet has already lost!?”
“Who can tell what has happened within the jammer field until more data has been obtained?” Bottletop IIV replied and, from the way he was holding himself, Bethany figured he was feeling some unease as he answered her question.
“Jammer field!?? We’re already well within the jammer field and still there’s been nothing to see except empty space,” the Princess-Cadet reminded the droid. “Listen. I know you are having second thoughts about this entire mission…so why do you hesitate?” she asked.
Bottletop IIV sighed. “Despite your vigorous verbal attacks on the very group you were sent to represent, I fear there is nothing you or I could do to sway the situation at this point. The War Department is currently in power,” the droid Chairman informed her, trying to sound upbeat.
“What do you mean ‘the War Department is now in power;’ was there some kind of military coup?” Bethany demanded witheringly. “I’ve been trapped aboard this giant constructor ship you call home for more than a month, and in that time you’ve debated everything—including an intensive two day discussion on whether to replace the lighting with florescent bulbs, or to switch over to exclusively infrared lighting! How can you try to simply tell me, ‘oops, oh, so sad, there’s nothing you can do because the military has taken over’?”
Chairman Bottletop gave her a long-suffering look. “Although Sentient Assembly strives to be democratic in all things, multiple catastrophic defeats over the course of several decades have taught us one unpalatable truth: there must be a singularity of purpose and unity of command during battle. So while the members of the Assembly must always have the right to freely assemble, freely move about, and freely inspect everything—up to and including the current actions of the War Department, even to the point of casting votes during battle—nothing will take effect until afterwards.”
“What do you mean ‘afterwards’?” Bethany fumed. She couldn’t stand the thought that, despite her very best efforts to sabotage the negotiations—negotiations she was only participat
ing in thanks to her cousin, Jason—she was still there, risking her life. If anything, she thought that her repeated arguments to not help her cousins’ hobby horse Multi-Sector Patrol Fleet seemed to have the opposite effect.
Which was simply infuriating.
Still, despite her best last-ditch effort to throw a spike in the wheels, she had still done her best to give away as many concessions to the Droids for their ‘help’ as she could reasonably get away with in the ‘provisional document’ she had insisted they draft—while of course keeping her own signature as far away from it as humanly possible. If Jason wanted to send her to the Droids for help, he was going to bleed for it but, at the same time, there was no way she was going down with the ship! This was all on him; all she was doing was trying to survive, not sell out the human race!
“Ah, here we are now,” the droid Chairman said, sounding enthusiastic.
“What’s going on?” Bethany asked peering at the small screen that showed the droid fleet.
“We have encountered several stragglers from the main human fleet, including MSP warships engaged with Harmony forces. We are moving to engage,” Bottletop informed her. “For the next thirty eight hours, all of our lives rest in the hands of your Admiral and Supreme Commander Q, of the Sentient Assembly.”
Turning back to the screen, Bethany held her breath. She just knew this was going to end badly.
Chapter 52: Surprise Reinforcements
The ship shuddered underneath him.
“That didn’t feel good,” Druid muttered and then looked over at Engineering watch-stander, “report! Are we still combat effective?” he demanded.
“Sickbay itself still has pressure, but the rest of that deck is open to vacuum,” replied the Engineering Officer. “We have multiple crewmembers cut off from the rest of the ship; without life-support systems reestablished to those areas, the air will go bad and there will be losses.”
“Bad as it is, that doesn’t affect our combat power appreciably,” Druid rebuked the engineer. “What I need to know is: can we still fight.”
“We’re down to half of our port broadside and less than a fourth on the starboard,” cut in the Tactical Officer. “So we still have the lasers to fight with, but reports from the gun deck are that morale is wavering. I don’t know how much more damage the men can take before they break.”
“They’ll take as much as they have to,” Druid said shortly. He took a short breath and turned to the Helmsman, “Just keep us on course for the Forge. Our only hope now is to link up with its defenses; if we can get there then maybe we can fight them off.” He was, of course, referring to the two enemy Battleships currently tearing his own warship apart.
“Aye aye, sir,” replied his bridge officer sounding tense.
The Commodore couldn’t blame them. They had fought their hearts out—and against an overwhelming number of enemy battleships—under his command, but now the Parliamentary Power was starting to show her damage…no, not just show her damage; the old bird was on her last legs, and so was her crew. Most of them were so green they still had sap on their hands, and the others—the shell-shocked survivors of lost battles against the droids—were only kept to their posts by the certain knowledge of what they would face at the hands of the droids. But, eventually, every person found their breaking point, and Druid could feel that his ship and crew had very nearly reached it.
“Contact!” shrilled the Sensor Officer. “Multiple contacts on bearing one-five down plane twenty degrees and coming on fast.”
“Tactical, who are they?” the Commodore barked, needing to know who it was that had just joined the party. While he prayed it was reinforcements from the rest of the grand fleet or MSP forces, he feared the worst.
“Whatever she is…she’s huge,” reported Sensors, sounding worried, “and she’s not like anything I’ve seen before.”
“Enemy ship is launching small craft…there must be hundreds of them,” reported the Tactical Officer, then his face paled and he turned to Druid, “identification just in, Commodore. The computer reports an 80% match: those ships fit machine construction profiles. They’re Droid, sir.”
“I’m getting a general surrender demand on all channels, sir,” reported Communication Officer Hendricks from his position in the communications pit.
Druid fell back in his chair and placed his head in his hands. Rubbing his face with his hands, he looked back up at the enemy super ship—a vessel at least three times the size of his own Battleship, the Parliamentary Power—and the continuous stream of gunboats, fighters, and armed shuttles pouring out of it. A quick tally of the newly-arrived force’s numbers caused his breath to whoosh out of him.
“Communications…ask them for terms, and tell Engineering it’s time to prepare to strike our fusion generators,” the Commodore said, feeling the weight of defeat heavy on his shoulders and threatening to break him. He had followed the young man—endearingly called the Little Admiral by those that knew him longest, his original crew—into a battle against hopeless odds because he had taken a vow to protect humanity and asked to join his fleet.
But the battle was clearly lost, and the Admiral’s own ship, the Furious Phoenix, was no longer fighting. He wasn’t about to sacrifice his crew’s lives for a hopeless cause, much less for any one man’s naked ambitions. It was better to live to fight another day.
They had done what they could, and it was clear that sacrificing themselves wasn’t going to do anything to change the ultimate outcome of this battle. Now it was time to face reality and—
“I’m receiving a document from the new Droid ships now, Commodore,” Hendricks reported.
“What do they say?” Druid asked into the growing silence.
“It…it seems to be the draft of some kind of Mutual Defense peace treaty, sir?” the Communication’s Officer said sounding bewildered.
“Enemy ships are now firing on each other!” shouted the Lieutenant in charge of the tactical pit. “It’s the newcomers, Commodore—the new Droids are attacking Battleship #1!”
“What!?” Druid exclaimed, wondering if he was about to have a heart attack and then shot out of his chair.
“The new droid super ship is firing on the Battleship #1, and her small craft are making a concerted attack run on the side weakened by the suicide run of that lander that was destroyed earlier,” the Officer said with rising excitement.
“Commodore,” yelled Com-Officer Hendricks, “I’ve got new droids on the line. They say they’re with the United Sentients Assembly and they’re demanding to speak with Admiral Montagne to confirm the agreement!”
Druid blinked rapidly. Like a puncher who had taken one too many hits in too short a period, he could feel himself wavering as he tried to absorb the new situation he found himself in while trying to plot a course through it. Droids were fighting against other droids because the Admiral had made some kind of deal with them?
“You tell them that the Admiral’s ship is currently engaged in heavy fighting and he can’t talk right now,” Commodore Druid said after a moment. Then, feeling that something more decisive was called for he added, “However, you can also inform them that we are more than willing to coordinate a joint effort against those Harmony-controlled Battleships! Tactical: focus all fire on Battleship #1 in support of these new droids and make sure not to hit any of our new…allies,” he finished with a slightly sour taste in his mouth at the term ‘allies’ as applied to any artificial force.
“On it, Commodore,” Officer Hendricks replied.
As the Commodore watched, a combination of the Power’s remaining lasers, the droid super-ship’s weaponry, and the nearly two hundred smaller craft belonging to his new droid ‘allies’ slowly knocked down Battleship #1’s damaged shields.
“Droid gunboats are taking heavy fire,” reported Tactical.
“I’m reading fewer than half of the gunboats survived that attack pass on their shields,” chimed in Sensors.
“Droid fighter craft are making a
n attack run…they’re shooting through the holes in the enemy’s shields and aiming for their turbo-lasers!” cried Tactical in desperate hope that was all too clear by his tone.
“Give them whatever help we can,” Druid said urgently.
Whispering started to swirl around the bridge as the crew collectively felt a renewed surge of hope.
“The Little Admiral’s done it again!” the crew down in the pits started saying.
“Belay that nonsense and work your posts; we’re not out of this yet,” Druid barked.
The crew started to settle and, while he watched, the Commodore saw the new droid Fleet finish tearing through the enemy Battleship’s shields and slash into her hull.
“Modified shuttles are identified as suspected droid troop transports, due to lack of attack weaponry and heavy shields, are now making a high speed attack run on the Battleship #1,” reported Tactical.
“Battleship #3 is moving to support #1!” yelled Sensors.
“Troop shuttles are taking heavy fire from both battleships,” reported Tactical.
“Droid Supership is beginning to pull away; she’s putting distance between herself and the two Harmony battleships,” reported Sensors.
“What about the Sentient Assembly small-craft?” Druid demanded anxiously.
“Still continuing to attack Battleship #1,” Tactical reported, “there’s no sign they’re pulling out.”
Druid looked back and forth between the supersized droid ship and the Harmony battleships, knowing that something was off. It took him a moment to identify it.
“Tactical, the lasers on the super-ship look a little lighter than I would have expected. What’s their estimated throw weight?” the Commodore asked as droid small craft lined up for a close-in attack run. The surviving gunboats were leading the way and taking incredible damage as they launched missiles, fired their lasers one last time, and then the shattered remnants pulled away.
Admiral Invincible (A Spineward Sectors Novel: Book 7) Page 35
