by S. T. Boston
“I understand,” Namtar said, nodding his head. “When the time comes, I would respectfully request that I be permitted to avenge my brother.”
“The deed will be yours, and yours alone,” Asmodeous agreed.
“I hate to interrupt, but we have just picked up a signal from an Arkkadian vessel, it's just entered Earth's atmosphere.
“Location,” barked Asmodeous urgently, spinning round to see Hawker's screen.
“One hundred thousand feet and descending over Northern France,” Hawker paused, his eyes tracking the green dot on his screen. Thirty thousand feet, Southern England.”
Namtar approached and studied the map display with interest as the craft settled itself down in Wiltshire. “This is very close to the location where we recovered Becker,” he said.
“Keep that craft tracked,” Asmodeous commanded. “As soon as they start heading this way you will notify me immediately.” A thin smile broke out on his face and he said, “It would seem that we may be having our other guests attend after all.”
* * *
Time does funny things in situations of extreme stress and anxiety, to Adam it seemed both an age, and far too soon, when Taulass finally punched the last few calculations into the main computer terminal of the Niribus, stood back and announced with a relieved breath, “I think we're ready.”
In all it had taken him just over twenty minutes to reprogram the manner in which the Taribium hull captured the energy from a wormhole and fed it back into the antimatter engines. Now it could tap into the Earth's own energy grid, virtually bypassing the engines and feed the power directly to the hub.
“It's not perfect,” he commented, as if berating himself. “I'm going to need ten percent power from the ship to top it up, that will cover both windows.”
“But that won't cause us any problems?” asked Adam as he tucked one of the Glocks into the back of his waist band. He held the other by his side, ready to use.
“As long as we all get back in the two return windows I've set, then no. If you miss the second one, I'm afraid you're stuck, to open a third will use too much power, power we don't have.”
“Well, we best not miss that second window,” Adam smiled, inside he didn't feel much like smiling at all. He watched Oriyanna check the Arkkadian weapons that she and Taulass were taking. It did look exactly like a gun, well, a mixture of a real gun and a plastic imitation one, it was a very light grey and completely smooth. Adam wasn't sure what substance it was made of, but when she'd passed it to him it had felt too light, not heavy and reassuring like an Earth weapon. He was confident, however, that it could do the job at hand.
Taulass worked quickly at his side of the terminal, what Adam had come to assume was come kind of home screen on the holo-display switched to a very realistic 3D image of a massive ship. It looked to be a greatly exaggerated version of the one they were in. It was a triangle, or almost. At the front the point was missing, but instead it squared off as if someone has chopped the nose off with a sharp knife, Adam recognised it from his dream and felt a chill run its way through his anxious body.
“This is Arkus 2,” Oriyanna announced, Taulass reached into the display and moved the ship around with his hand. He touched something on the body of the main cube and it changed to a schematic. “The ship is vast, but with this, and once we get aboard, the life support systems, we should know where we are going.” Taulass fiddled some more with the glowing blue block of the main computer. Adam could see he'd removed something, two somethings in fact. He handed one to Oriyanna and kept one back for himself. He unfolded the material and it formed a tablet PC sized handheld, made only of a clear glass-like substance that seemed capable of extreme flexibility. Oriyanna placed her palm onto the surface and a screen sprung to life. On the brightly lit display was a smaller, regular computer image of Arkus 2.
“We both have these portable screens with us, Adam. You and Oriyanna are going to need yours to find Sam, without the use of a map you could wander that ship for hours, not knowing where you are. I am going to use mine to copy Enola, as discussed earlier.” Taulass glanced from Adam to Oriyanna, and finally to Lucie. “As soon as the hub closes down the thirty minute countdown will begin to the first return window. After that closes the ten minute one will begin.” He pointed to a three-dimensional spinning globe in the corner of the holo-display. “If we don't come back you just select that with your hand, and that will manually activate the ship's program to return to Arkkadia.”
Lucie nodded uneasily, “I understand,” she said.
He switched his attention to Oriyanna and said, “Activate the hub.”
Oriyanna worked deftly for a few seconds before a gentle hum filled the small bridge. The hub glowed ever so slightly, it still looked to be just a regular arch but to look through it now was like peering through thick glass. Every now and then Adam thought he saw small, cotton-thin flashes of blue electricity in that glass-like surface.
“Hub is active,” Oriyanna said, looking up. “Fifteen seconds.”
Taulass wasted no time at all, he held his weapon out in a ready position, approached the glowing arch and vanished. Adam heard Lucie let out a gasp of surprise, as if a small part of her didn't really expect it to work. As Oriyanna went though he gave his sister a quick peck on the cheek, which made her eyes fill with tears.
“I'll see you soon, with Sam,” he said reassuringly, before turning and vanishing.
* * *
The transportation room aboard Arkus 2 in which they'd arrived was pitch black. It was in a lower part of the vessel, and one that had not been used for a long time. Instantly it was clear they were missing one vital piece of kit, a torch.
Adam stumbled from the hub, bumping into Oriyanna who was trying to bring the screen of her handheld to life. Taulass managed it first, the glow from his display almost lighting the entire pokey room.
“Well, no welcoming party,” he said uneasily, moving to the wall and finding a pressure pad to which he placed his thumb. The room lights flickered to life and Adam saw that on this vast ship a hub-room was just what this was, nothing else took up any space other than the glowing arch in the centre of the small ten by ten square. Just along from the pressure pad Taulass placed his hand into a small recess in the wall, this caused a door, which had been all but invisible not a second ago, to slide open.
The three of them filed out into a dark corridor, using the light from the handheld displays to navigate by. The air was chillingly cool and carried no scent whatsoever. The whole place felt desolate and abandoned.
“The nearest server room is four decks above, there are access stairs just along this passage,” Taulass said in a low voice. “Keep track of every turn, you might need to remember it later.”
“This ship has stairs?” asked Adam, not sure if he could believe that such a technical marvel could have something so antiquated on board.
“Yes, we don't want to risk using the elevators at the moment,” Taulass responded. He stopped at another small recess and opened another door. “This way,” he whispered.
The dark stairway seemed to have no end, and obviously reached from the very bottom of the ship to the very top. Adam couldn't even fathom just how far they plunged into the abyss below. Taulass had mentioned that the hub-room which they'd used was on a lower deck, but the dark stairs seemed to plunge on forever beneath them. Having climbed the four flights they exited into a lit passageway, all blinking in the bright lights. The addition of lighting caused Oriyanna to hold her hand up in a 'be very careful' fashion. It turned out that this passage was as empty as the one they'd been in not two minutes ago.
“I'm guessing they only have basic support systems turned on for the top half of the ship,” Taulass commented, as he ran his eyes over the screen on the handheld. “The decks below the hub-room were mainly used for cargo.” He halted by another hand sized recess in the wall, studied his handheld a second time and said, “This should be it – here.” As with the previous two doorways, Ta
ulass placed his hand into the opening in the wall and a door slid open. “Server room two,” he announced as they entered darkness once again. Before the door closed he located the pressure plate on the wall and turned the lights on.
The place looked like no server room that Adam had ever seen. Instead of housing banks of tall whirring machines, there were six of the solid-looking cubes, like the one aboard Niribus, only these were black, each rising like a pre-cast mould out of the floor to a height of around three feet.
“Our one cube has more power than all of these,” Oriyanna noted, as she saw the look on Adam's face. “This is very old tech now, although it is still highly functional.”
Taulass hurried to one of the cubes, bringing a holo-display to life by pressing his hand to its top surface. Unlike the rich high-definition one aboard the Niribus, this model looked more dated, the way an old 90s computer might look when compared to one running the latest operating system, the rich colours and realistic 3D imagery didn't look quite as convincing. Taulass quickly found the life support systems, and requested a report of where all personnel currently were on the ship. A second later he had it. Once again it was in the form of a three-dimensional image, he zoomed in on it, showing the frontal section of the craft, the crew on board showed up as green dots, all scattered about the few upper and forward decks.
“We are here,” Taulass noted, pointing to their three signals. “I hope that no one is monitoring this, or they will be wondering where the three extra guests have come from.”
“Do you think they are?” asked Adam.
“No, not for a second, I hope not anyway.” He paused, fixed his attention on the display and continued. “This is the bridge, there are five crew there. One of them will be Asmodeous.” He scanned down the ship, surprised at just how sparsely populated it was. “This ship can hold a couple of thousand, I know we never figured out how many Earth-Breed there were, but I'd wager he hasn't saved them all, only the ones that he could use to his advantage.”
“You sound surprised,” chuckled Oriyanna.
“Wait a second!” snapped Taulass, holding his hand up, as if to cut her off. “Look at this.” He pointed to a room one deck below the bridge, there was a single green dot inside, but outside in the corridor were two more green dots.
“Almost like there are two people standing guard,” Adam commented.
“My thoughts exactly,” agreed Taulass, nodding his head. “That has to be where they are holding Sam.” He checked the timer on his handheld screen. “Just twenty five minutes until the first window opens – go!”
Oriyanna copied the life support schematic to her handheld before grabbing Adam and heading for the door. “It's going to take us about five minutes to reach Sam,” Oriyanna said in a low voice as they rushed down yet another seemingly never ending passage. At the first turning Adam made a mental note of the direction in which they'd gone.
“This place is massive,” he noted, feeling relieved that they hadn't taken more turns than he could remember.
“I served on this ship thousands of years ago, before the war.”
“And you can remember the layout?”
“Not really,” she said, smiling nervously. “Bits and pieces, yes – it's this way.” She led them into another stairway, and once again it was as black as night. This time they climbed a further ten floors. Adam had always thought himself to be in reasonable shape, but by the time they broke out into another identical looking passageway he felt as if he'd run a marathon.
“How – much – further,” he said, gasping air in and realising with horror that the ship equated to a three-dimensional labyrinth.
“At the end, we take a left, then we should see the room they are holding him in. We must proceed with caution now, we are very close to the bridge.” Adam nodded his head in understanding. He visually checked that his Glock was in order. He hated guns, hated shooting, but he knew that he'd have no issue using it if needed.
Carefully, and at half the speed in which they'd navigated the lower levels of the ship they both arrived at the corner of the passage. Adam peered tentatively round, about fifty yards ahead were two stern faced men, and both toting handguns. Adam was in no doubt that Sam would have been able to tell him the exact make and model even from this distance. To Adam, though, all guns did the same thing, and the sight of these two was enough to know they'd likely found his friend. Now they just had to get to him out.
* * *
“No movement,” Hawker said, his eyes fixed to the mapping display.
“What the hell are they doing?” Asmodeous growled. “Why aren't they heading this way?”
“I can't answer that, sir. The ship hasn't moved since touching down.”
“I don't like it, not one bit!”
“Weather monitoring phase is now at fifty percent,” Hawker said, changing the subject, he couldn't afford such distractions at a time like this. Enola was busy, reading Earth's weather patterns and the potential forecast for the next five days. Once this stage was complete and the targeting phase initiated the world's superpowers would know that something was very wrong. For now, though, she was still undetectable.
“If that ship doesn't move before Enola is ready to launch, I want you to target a weapon to its location.”
“I can do that, but –“
“No buts,” Asmodeous snapped. “You will alter the targeting of one weapon to the location of that ship, is that clear?”
“Crystal,” Hawker grumbled. Enola was fully automated, her main program was running and needed no further input from him whatsoever. Messing with the targeting now just left more room for error.
* * *
Fifteen decks below, and almost half a mile away, Taulass remotely connected his handheld to the mainframe of Arkus 2. Swiftly he scanned though the ship's systems, trying to find the plug-in which allowed an Earth designed program to run in unison with the Arkkadian tech. It was buried deep, and a lesser programmer might not have seen it, but he did. A few screen changes later he was copying Enola's files across to his system. As the file copied he took a moment to get a grip of how it worked. The coding was complex and beautifully designed. Although deadly, as a fellow 'geek,' as he would have been known on Earth, he could appreciate the beauty and ingenious architecture that had gone into it.
On the face of it Enola was nothing more than a rootkit-style hack, although to say that wasn't really doing her justice. This was Rootkit hacking on a level that deserved an award, if they indeed gave them out for acts cyber-terrorism such as this. Where a standard rootkit hack would give the user access to the system it was targeting, Enola completely locked anyone else out, giving the hacker full control, not a massive deal on the face of it, but when you considered the systems it had its claws in it was.
To add to his dismay he had discovered that the program was well into its start-up phase. One of his screens was now a mirror of the one on the bridge, giving him a remote view of just what the operator was looking at, although from here he had no means of controlling it. It took him a moment or two to realise just what Enola was doing. It's reading the weather patterns, he thought in horror. Figuring out just where best to target the weapons. For the time being he was helpless to do anything about it.
As the files copied across, Taulass switched to the life support system screen, the two greens dots that represented Adam and Oriyanna were on the same deck as the room where he suspected Sam was being held. He watched, his heart thundering in his chest as they reached the corner of the passageway and paused.
* * *
Asmodeous paced the bridge of Arkus 2 in an uneasy fashion, the presence of the Arkkadian vessel in Southern England sitting uneasily in his gut. Why haven't they made their move? He thought to himself as he paced the length of the room and studied the holo-screen at which Benjamin Hawker had been station at for the past few hours. He stared for a few moments at the solid dot on the screen, there was something about the craft's location that didn't sit right. His
uneasy feeling grew as he noticed a small systems notification alert blinking away to itself in the top corner of the display. “What is that?” he asked, his voice laced with agitation.
“It came around ten minutes ago,” Hawker replied uninterestedly. “We get them through all the time, it is a big ass ship, sir, and she's a little old and creaky. Likely a life support fault or a power fault.”
“I need to see it,” Asmodeous snapped, leaning his weight onto the back of the chair. He watched as Hawker selected the tab, the systems notification was from the main power grid.
“It's showing a power surge in the…” Hawker paused and felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, and realised that this was one particular notification he should never have overlooked, “lower transportation room,” he finished, his voice sounding a little sheepish.
Asmodeous felt his body ignite in rage, he grabbed Hawker around the throat from behind and bellowed, “The reason that ship hasn't moved is because they are already on fucking board!” He lifted the Earth-Breed from his chair and resisted the urge to snap his wretched neck. Getting hold of himself he let go, causing the programmer to fall awkwardly back into the chair, where he clawed at his throat, coughing and spluttering.
Furiously Asmodeous whipped round to Namtar and shouted, “Take a team down to Sam Becker, that's where they will be heading. Do it NOW!”
* * *
In the server room, Taulass kept one eye on the two, now stationary dots, which represented Adam and Oriyanna, whilst watching the download of Enola impatiently on the screen of his handheld. Why aren't you moving? he thought. Three dots suddenly rushed out of the bridge and made their way down the long passage that led away from it. In dismay he watched as they dropped a deck and headed straight for the room where he suspected Sam was being held. They know, he thought. I don't know how they know, but they do. Taulass knew that if they'd figured out the ruse then it would only be a matter of time until they scanned the life support system, just as he was doing. In a flash they would be able to see just how many uninvited guests there were on board. With his mind racing at a thousand miles an hour he got into the life support systems program. In a few minutes they would come face-to-face with Adam and Oriyanna, and there was nothing he could do to warn them, coms hadn't been an option for fear of them being easily picked up. Taulass had only one option, he needed to stay hidden and cover his own arse. With speed he navigated his way deeper into the system's operating procedure, hoping to find a way to shut off the monitors in his part of the ship. There was still twelve minutes before he'd have all of Enola's files, then a further three before the return hub activated, it was going to be close, too close.
