It’s hard not to imagine that there are eyes lurking in dark, open doors just out of sight. The scanners can see more inside of the ship thanks to the hull’s shielding, but they don’t see half of what they normally would. It wouldn’t take much to hide from us, watch us go by from behind a piece of equipment that was left on. We pass through a pair of shielded doors the crew left wide open and I get a glimpse at the main reactor control room. In that moment I can see the status displays indicate the ship is sitting at full power thanks to passive collectors on the hull. They must be pulling juice from the magnetic fields outside. I let it distract me for just a second, almost long enough for me to miss Omira slowing right down. There’s something different about the colour of the liquid. The reactor room and the corridor we pass into beyond has black and brown swirls.
“Oh no,” Remmy says as we catch up to Omira.
I see them then, three issyrian corpses, or what’s left of them. Something chewed away most of their bodies, leaving thin, almost wispy tangles of cartilage and spiky spines. “Did you know them?” I ask as I watch Omira gently touch one of their soft, cartilage skulls.
“I knew all of them,” she answers coldly. “They flooded this part of the ship as quickly as they could, according to records.”
“Probably to keep whatever did that away from them,” Mary said. “Any idea what it could have been?”
Omira worked at the station for a moment, navigating the holographic file menu as if it wasn’t distorted by the liquid suspending her over it. A flickering image of a six limbed, shelled insect appeared with several paragraphs of what I assume are research logs. The image stabilizes and I can finally make the terminal’s projection out clearly. “Specimen oh-three ninety eight,” I read aloud. “Is that image life sized?”
“No, they stand about half a metre tall when they’re down on all six legs, about a metre and a half when they’re on their hind legs. The human scientists called them land piranha.”
“What’s a piranha?” Remmy asked.
“Fish that can strip a human of flesh in seconds if you’re unlucky enough to be swimming near a school of them,” Omira answered. “They’re kept as pets, and sometimes used to keep specific artificial habitats clear of other organisms.”
“Why would you keep something like that alive and on board?” Remmy asked, pointing at the predator’s image. “Couldn’t you study them dead?”
“There was a team studying their behaviour before the ship had to shut down,” Omira answered as she looked over her shoulder at Remmy. “They have to be alive for that.”
“Goddamned scientists. I guess these are some kind of edxian babies or something too, right?”
“No, they’re a jungle insect found on brood worlds. The children left there like cracking their shells and eating them alive.”
“Remind me to download a map of brood worlds,” Mary says. “So I can keep as many light years between me and them as possible.”
We move on. I make sure I’m right beside Omira as we pass through the dimly lit corridors. The liquid is clearer thanks to the environmental systems purifiers, and it isn’t long before I see our destination. It’s an old vault door like I’ve seen in period films from a couple centuries ago - when the right kind of metal could be trusted to keep intruders out if it was thick enough. “How many people were left aboard?”
“Seven issyrians,” she replies. “Six of whom are accounted for.”
“Dead,” I say.
“Yes,” Omira replies.
“I’m sorry,”
“For what?” Omira asks as we slow to a halt in front of the round, three metre wide vault door.
“They were members of the crew, thought you might know them.”
“Yes,” Omira says. “But everyone who remained behind only did so because they weren’t smart enough to leave.”
Remmy and Mary come to a halt behind us, and I notice they’ve pulled me into a private proximity radio channel, excluding Omira. “Everything is off here,” Remmy says in a rush. “The chemistry of this stuff, the cumulative data on Omira’s vitals, this ship, nothing is exactly what it should be.”
I glance at Omira, who must know there is a private conversation happening behind her, but is paying attention to the vault’s security interface, ignoring us. I turn to Remmy. “Start at the beginning,” I tell him. “What’s wrong with the water?”
“This isn’t water, it’s more like a gel, but that part is normal,” he replies. “Near the bodies we saw back there I picked up evidence that the issyrians weren’t the only things that died in the area. Something else, something with a total different chemical makeup from the issyrians bled there.”
“Okay, so the issyrians got a chance to fight back,” Mary replied.
“No, way too much blood evidence was left over in the fluid. Forensic software couldn’t re-enact what happened specifically, things were stirred up too much, but it was clear on one thing: something or someone dragged those land piranha corpses out of there.”
I think for a minute. There’s no telling what Omira is hiding, and I’m starting to get the feeling that sending her aboard the Fallen Star alone would not only have been safer for my people, but the only reasonable decision on the table. I rest my hand on my pistol and look to Mary, who takes the cue, holstering her pistol in favour of unslinging the rifle on her back. “Okay, let’s move on to your next point, Remmy.”
He hesitates a moment, maybe finding the opposite of reassurance in the fact that I’m taking him seriously. “Omira’s vitals work on a pre-programmed response,” he starts, whispering despite the fact that there is no way Omira can hear what we’re saying over a private channel. “At first there was no way to tell, but I’ve left my passive scanning software running since we left the Sunspire, and after collecting enough data she’s the anomaly. When she should get excited her pulmonary and cardiac responses elevate by exact degrees, same thing when she’s at rest, when you’ve had arguments with her, it’s like it’s all pre-programmed.”
“Highly disciplined people or people with systemic regulation can have the same symptoms,” I reply.
“I’ve seen that before,” Mary agrees. “But Omira is different. I looked over Remmy’s numbers and was about to tell him he’s paranoid, but then I crossed it with our deception tracker: she shows no physical signs of lying, or even that she’s holding something back from us. Not once, not since we met her.”
I didn’t have to make a conclusion aloud, we all knew Omira had made an art of holding information back. I opened a general channel. “How long until we’re inside?” I asked Omira.
“The airlock beyond this chamber door is filling up so we can transit to an air atmosphere without flooding the secure research area. It will be another two minutes, you and your team can continue discussing all the reasons why this ship makes you nervous.”
I don’t bother denying her accusation, instead I ask her about what I’m pretty sure Remmy’s next concern is. “I was wondering about that, why is this ship so well armoured?”
“This is an exploration vessel, and it was built before combat shielding was common. The hull had to have many layers of different types of armour so it could survive near contact with solar phenomena and other types of intense stellar energy. Basically, it had to be able to hold up against anything a manoeuvring field couldn’t repel.”
“Internally. The floor plan of the ship so far suggests there are at least two more airlocks like this one,” I tell her, pointing at the vault door. “My guess is that this ship is segmented. Not only that, but there’s a full hangar on the port side. This ship is made for extended missions off ship, and to handle quick craft retrieval.”
“It is an exploration vessel,” Omira replies.
“I’ve seen schematics for research vessels, they have compartmentalized labs, but there is actual heavy armour here. The hangars also tell me that it wouldn’t take much to turn this into a small carrier. What were you people doing?”
“I wasn’t one of the researchers,” she tells me, turning her attention back to the vault. “Get your nerves under control and stop your people from chattering please.”
It takes all my training to keep my temper in check. What helps in that moment is the desire to get my hands on a huge find inside that vault so I can trade it for my team’s freedom. “How far inside that vault is what we’re looking for?”
“One level up, about thirty metres in,” she tells me flatly.
“We’re going to move fast Omira, no sight seeing,” I say.
“Agreed.” The outer lock door opens and we swish inside. It closes, leaving us in a small, ghostly lit chamber as the liquid drains out and the air pressure equalizes with the inside of the vault.
“This is what intelligence is like, Clark,” Remmy says. “The higher ups only give us the information they think we need to get the job done.”
“And we don’t get to talk about how many people we lost or how fucked up what the people we work for were doing when it’s all over,” Mary adds on a private channel. “We better walk out of here with something big. I want out.”
I nod, but stay focused on the mission. Long range plans aren’t on my mind right now.
Part 3 - The Vault
This was a laboratory. In the near-blindingly bright light we discover that it’s become a slaughter house. Black and dark blue blood is spattered across the white and grey walls. The deck plating is scarred and pitted with signs that something with enough strength to dent metal won a fight here.
“Looks like we missed the action,” Mary says, looking around, her rifle tracking with her eye line.
“I just threw up a little,” Remmy replies. “You’d think ration bars tasting the same coming up as they do going down would be a good thing, but it really isn’t.”
“It’s this way,” Omira says.
“Are we going to try and figure out what happened at all?” I ask her. “This doesn’t match up with the expectations you set for this mission.”
Omira stops and looks at me coolly. “You can’t put this mission on pause like one of your simulations.”
“I’ve been on more boarding missions than you could imagine,” I tell her. “And my experience, my instincts are telling me to turn this around and get my people back to the planet. Even better, I’m thinking we should take a loss here and get back to the Sunspire.”
“That wouldn’t benefit anyone,” Omira says.
“Better to go back empty handed and alive than not at all,” I reply. “There’s way too much blood here for three or four issyrians.”
“It’s not issyrian blood either,” Remmy says. “Scans as those beetle-piranha things and something else.”
Mary takes point as we make our way up a claustrophobically narrow spiraling ramp, and I start feeling like I’m forgetting something. No matter what I do, how hard I concentrate as I retrace my steps, I can’t remember what it could be. The walls are still smeared with blood, the non-slip red and blue checkered floor is streaked with drag marks. “How long ago did this happen, Remmy? Get a reading.”
“I’ve already got one, started analyzing a few minutes ago because our forensic software lags like a one legged man on these old hand scanners. Looking at the preliminary results, I can tell you that these things were dragged up, not down.”
“That’s what I wanted to know,” I answer, eying the way behind. I wish someone would turn out the lights, somehow the stark white medical lights are showing me too much. The stains tell a violent story.
“Door opening,” Mary announces above me.
“We’re entering the vault proper, on the level above,” Omira tells us.
“Contact, three p-beetles,” Mary whispers into her proximity radio.
“Good nickname,” Remmy says. “They notice you?”
“No,” Mary replies.
Remmy sees over the lip of the ramp into the next chamber before I do and reels as though someone sucker punched him from the left. Before he can think too much about whatever’s up there I get him thinking about his job. “What’s on that scanner’s live screen? Describe it to me.”
He fumbles for a moment but gets down to business before long. Before I get to see whatever has him rattled. “Massive energy drain. It’s keeping the lights down, coming from two frameworks.”
I get my head above the deck and see the p-beetles first. They are three quarters of a metre long, with split, segmented torsos covered in black and dark blue-green carapaces. The two halves come together at the base of an upper segment bristling with serrated appendages. The head glistens in the faint light, a collection of eyes, pincers and mandibles.
Somehow the p-beetles broke two large stasis containers. In the flickering half light I can make out one nearly skeletal corpse hanging within. There is another on the floor, three beetles are feeding ravenously, biting deep, ripping flesh from bone with jerks of their heads. Their twelve legs strain and scramble against the deck as they fight for leverage so the chunks of rend flesh can be bigger. I make eye contact and immediately wish it were only a corpse.
A very human twitching mouth and wide eyes stare at me as a framework copy of Jonas Valent suffers through the feeding, alive, regenerating as the p-beetles feast. A strangled cry croaks from his throat as one of the creatures yanks a section of bowel free. The stub beneath his shoulder twitches to move an arm that hasn’t regenerated. His efforts are reduced to a momentary squirming in a pool of old gore. With one leg half eaten, and his arms missing, there’s not much he can do.
“That’s the power drain, frameworks that are regenerating while these things feed on them,” Mary concludes.
“Yeah,” Remmy says. “There’s another deeper in.”
I can’t watch this. My thumb turns the safety on my rifle off, and I take aim at the Jonas framework’s head. Shooting him in the head will end his suffering until the framework regenerates and his personality is reloaded.
“Don’t!” Omira says in a harsh whisper. “If they’re busy feeding on these we can get by with minimal interference.”
“I can’t stand by and-”
“These models were never programmed, I doubt they even know what’s going on,” she says.
I lower my rifle as one of the p-beetles whips its head towards the framework’s face and begins eating with renewed verve. Those framework eyes told a story of suffering, but I have to turn away. Strategically Omira couldn’t be more right. I have to think that if Jonas Valent was here he’d do the same thing. The rest of this chamber is huge, it looks much bigger than it did on the schematics. There are at least dozens of other stasis tubes, mostly intact from what I can tell in the failing light.
“Remmy, is our way clear because of what’s going on?” I ask.
“Yeah, there’s about fifteen p-beetles in another corner around a framework in the opposite corner. It’s hard to get a good count because it looks like they’re fighting over, um,” he hesitated. “Food on the other side. Three more p-beetles are just wandering around, but I think we can get around them if we stick to the larboard side.”
We don’t disturb the feeders in front of us, don’t save that framework suffering a hellish eternal cycle of regeneration and consumption. It doesn’t feel right. None of it does.
I look at Omira, she’s unaffected. I can’t help but think that she’s either a butcher who has seen worse or doesn’t have the emotional tool set to even comprehend what we just saw. Mary makes eye contact as we round a row of four metre tall containment tubes. Her expression is a wary one, she’s nervous, a bad sign.
Closer to the mid-larboard side of the chamber I start seeing computer terminals. They’re ancient, but still running diagnostics on copies of Jonas Valent, Lucius Wheeler and three other specimens I’ve never seen. Some of them are being slowly programmed with memories, others are in full stasis, while a few more are getting raw code burned into their brains. As I’m turning away I see a readout of a containment unit that simply reads; ALIC
E, and something urges me to stop.
Remmy notices and looks as well. “Wait, this isn’t like anything I learned about neural programming,” he whispers. “They’re working this through in layers, trying to apply an intact artificial intelligence on different physical versions of her brain without adapting the software.”
“Why is that weird?” Mary asks.
“They’re trying to adapt the brain to the viral version of Alice instead of adapting the software to the grey matter,” Remmy replies. “It shouldn’t work.”
“But it did, that’s how Alice got free,” I tell him. No one knows for sure, no one ever got close enough to confirm that. It’s still a scientific fantasy that some people like to believe, however. I guess some humans just want to think that we are brilliant enough as a race to write software that’s good enough to run on God’s hardware.
“Yeah, I’d love a first hand scan of her,” he looked a little deeper and nodded to himself. “Wait, there is translation software here, but it’s old Vindyne stuff.” Remmy looks around for a moment then to Omira. “That’s what this is, Vindyne neural rehabilitation research carried on past its prime, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t why we’re here, we have to move on,” she replies.
“You’re just continuing it using frameworks, but why?” Remmy asks.
“You’ll find your answers up ahead.”
Remmy looks back at the terminal and flinches at the sight of something, I can’t tell what it is because it’s in a swimming holographic sea of code, but it’s got him alarmed. “Wait, new root found?” He says, alarmed. “This time stamp matches our boarding op, what the hell?”
Omira rushes towards him, trying to get to the terminal before he can read more. Mary steps in her way and handily trips her off her feet. Our guide doesn’t have a chance to try to get back up before Mary’s boot is firmly planted on her chest. “We have to move on!” Omira hisses.
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