by Lee Bond
Mayin bit her lip again. Information from the AI systems was finally trickling in, and the news was discouraging; contrary to what she'd been hoping, Devlish and his crew had been in the area for at least two hours, giving them not only enough time to scoop up whatever had come through the shield but to also charge their black hole engines up to full capacity.
Not only could they inconvenience her if they chose, they could also leave the area and be anywhere else in Trinityspace long before she could even begin tracking their steps.
The Shriven considered the Emperor's orders. The man coming from Latelyspace needed to be killed at all costs, and -naturally- the surest way to accomplish that goal was face to face, which was why she'd been hoping to arrive on the scene alone.
That was off the table. Devlish had clearly scavenged something from the area and there wasn't nearly enough debris to suggest to Mayin's acute senses that the escape attempt had ended in failure, meaning one of two things.
One, whoever or whatever was inside the vessel that'd come through was dead already, which was fine. To a point. Ensuring death became the mandate under those circumstances, though.
Two, whoever or whatever had managed to escape the systemic prison was alive and was either not communicating with Devlish and crew or was communicating with the crew of the Erudite Bastard and was offering them whatever it took to remain alive.
Either option was terrible, but the various permutations of option two nagged at Mayin's comfort levels precisely like her mother, who refused to believe that her daughter had changed so significantly.
The Shriven snapped the commlines off.
"Untenable." Mayin said aloud to herself, already deciding on a course of action. It wasn’t the best, but for right now, there wasn’t anything else she could do.
***
"What in the hell is she doing?" Devlish demanded hotly. "Is she showing us her fucking ass right now?"
Rikka -a tiny homunculus of a man, literally no taller than two feet and with a brain made of silicon and wires- looked up from his handmade VDU terminals and watched the mangled sensor-ship Whispering Pines wobble slowly in place. "I don't think so. A Naval officer wouldn’t do something like that, I don't think. At least not to anyone below or above her rank."
Devlish thumped his VDU with a gauntleted hand, ringed bracelets chiming gently. The display wavered for a second. "No, Rikka, she's showing us her ass all right. She sure as fuck ain't ready to jump. Not for hours yet."
Ergatz -a wraith-like figure shrouded in shadowy chameleon gear- trained a few of their heavy broadside cannons on the much smaller ship. "She's here for a reason, Cap, and we know what that is."
Devlish nodded absentmindedly, looking through a smaller VDU down into their cargo hold. There, in the very center of the mostly empty space, was one of the old Army spherical escape pods. It'd definitely seen better days, and small wonder, given that it had, for all intents and purposes, managed to shoot through the Shield Wall. Somehow. They'd run as many tests on it as possible, but they'd been kitted up for conflict resolution, not search and rescue. The few tests to show any results at all indicated that there might be someone in there, but the analytical breakdown was too inconclusive for Devlish's likings.
Just as they didn't have the proper equipment to scan the spherical escape pod properly, neither did they really have the kind of tools required to cut the damn thing open safely; they had lasers and other cutting-type weapons aboard, but the reality was, they hadn't been designed for precision.
They'd been designed for fucking shit up. And Devlish wanted to know what was inside the pod, so very badly.
Ergatz spoke up, drawing Devlish out of his thoughts. "She ain't showing us her ass, Cap, but I do think she's getting ready to do something pretty fucking stupid."
Rikka snorted. "Already thought of that and dismissed it. There's absolutely no reason for her to ..."
"What in the goddamn shit are you two talking about and why was anything dismissed without it being run by me?" Devlish spun around in his captain's chair and glared at Rikka and Ergatz until they both started shifting uncomfortably.
"Ergatz thinks she's getting ready to eject one of her black engine cores." Rikka started hunting through his data files in search of the experimental methods those cores could be put to, certain he'd read it before. "But that's beyond stupid."
"It ain't." Ergatz replied firmly. "She's here for something, right? She's in one of those hard-core Naval listening posts. Got scanners and sensors powerful enough to see all kinds of stuff, just like that there apocalyptic storm. Hadda be seen on this side, especially if our prize came through, right? Which means, you ask me and maybe Rikka can back me up, she was lookin’ this way and the moment something started popping, she started jumping. No time to prepare, either, because she doesn't have any kind of weapons designed to overload our shields and her gear won't keep her safe for long. She can't jump out, she can't defend herself, she can't hurt us. Unless she ejects a primed black hole engine core and we get hit in the wrong spot."
Rikka scratched the tiny little patch of hair he had on the back of his skull, then pulled on it for good measure. The things Ergatz was saying made all kinds of sense, except they didn’t really make any kind of sense at all. His highly illegal Cordon-derived implants pulsed and flared, sending brilliant sheathes of light through his eyes as the inorganic portions of his mind –most of his brain was now silicon, thanks to the aggressive implant- tried processing the impossible conundrum.
“Ergatz is right about her presence here.” Rikka admitted that one quickly enough. “We’re millions of miles away from the main cluster of activity, and there aren’t any patrols for this area thanks to Trinity. She had to be looking this way, or looking for something incredibly specific. Specific enough to imply foreknowledge of whatever event spawned that mother of a storm.” Rikka jerked his miniscule thumb towards all the monitors carrying the event live. “So either there was collusion prior to the Shield Wall going up or after. But that doesn’t…”
“All I really give a flying fuck about right now, you two assholes,” Devlish pointed a long grimy fingernail at the monitors where Whispering Pines floated, assfirst, in their direction, “is whether or not that bitch can do us any lasting harm.”
Ergatz was a shimmering motion of half-seen images as his hands flew across the keyboard. He wished he was down on a planet somewhere, staring at someone through a scope instead of up in the command center with weird little Rikka and aggressively insane Devlish. He had the smarts to be there, but didn’t … didn’t like it. “Based on the size of ship she’s got, she either has the Mark II or III stage black hole engines. I’m leaning more towards II than the III because of the damage her vessel sustained during transit. A III would’ve been able to include the sensor arrays into the envelope. While we’re packing a VI, complete with full backup generators if something goes wrong.”
“You’re welcome for that, by the way.” Rikka said smugly, curling his tiny little feet underneath him. “Took a lot of careful hacking to get that done, and to hide the evidence.”
Devlish ran two fingernails through his gruff beard, considering what the two idiots were telling him and what he’d already decided about this so-called Mayin Chisolm.
One, she wasn’t nearly as smart as she thought she was, even if she deserved to be on that Navy ship; she was basing all of her current decisions on the fact that she believed they’d be packing a IV unit, as per regulations.
Now, prior to owning a ship with black hole engines and gravnetic shield generators, Devlish would’ve been the first to admit that he wasn’t necessarily the brightest star in the Universe, but after coming into contact with those two amazing bits of tech, well, it felt like he’d found his niche. He had a real good feel for the heavy numbers and strange concepts, and he knew that her teeny-tiny little II wouldn’t do much more than make their good old ship formerly known as just The Bastard hiccup before causing her some serious, serious troubl
e.
The second thing he knew about Mayin and this situation was that they were gonna come out all the way on the top with this one; they were gonna capture that EuroJapanese bitch and they were gonna haul her before Kaptan Innit for some good old-fashioned impromptu justice, oh yes they were. And why, they all knew Kaptan well enough to know that the lumbering ex-Heavy Elite would look the other way about any booty or loot that might’ve accidentally fallen through the aperture, right? Especially in light of the fact that they’d all know that there was a point in the Shield Wall that had –at one point- been breached.
Toss that over to Trinity, and hell if Devlish wasn’t certain that they’d all get themselves some kind of major field promotions.
“All righty ho, boys.” Devlish thumbed the comm button that linked the captain’s chair to the storage bay where the rest of his crew were trying their damnedest to get through the resilient HEP armor to see what lay inside. “We gonna capture this little bitch here, boys, girls and various its’ that are currently under my tutelage. She can’t jump out, she’s likely to begin ejecting one of her black hole cores at us, which might cause us a little turbulence, so please make sure all your food and drink are stored nice and tightly. Once she’s down to one engine, it’ll take a lot less time to charge, and we can’t have her bouncing out of here, even if she only gets a light year or two out of the leap, so please, when we board, don’t fuck around sightseeing first thing? Once we get the girl, we can plunder that sweet, sweet Navy ship for hours.”
“Dibs on the spheres.” Rikka whispered across the comms. He hadn’t been able to lay his hands on any spheres since before coming back across The Cordon with his new implants, and he was eager as hell to see if he could do anything with them.
“Dibs on any spare optics.” Ergatz announced from deep within his chameleon hood; the damned thing was alien tech through and through, but he loved wearing it all the time, which meant always replacing burned out optics. Always.
Devlish squinted at the main monitor. Yep. The ass was opening up wide. Just like he knew it would. “Brace for impact. Ergatz, prep for fire once her payload is out the way. Jam a fusillade of cripple missiles right up her pooter, if you please.”
“Roger.”
Devlish rubbed his hands together. With this fucking awkward as fuck war keeping everyone in place with nothing to do, a traitor capable of locating the disturbance –either through Intel or collusion- was going to hot things right the fuck up.
And they, the Erudite Bastards, were going to be right in the middle of it.
It was about fucking time.
“Here it comes! Everyone hold on tight!”
***
Mayin looked over her calculations once more, this time with the kind of critical eye only a Shriven could muster. Seventy-two percent survival.
It was more than enough. The data buoy strapped to the side of the hastily refurbished stasis chamber/escape pod was full of encrypted information concerning what she’d discovered and her very specific orders from the Emperor-for-Life Himself; if she failed in her mission –currently one of survival- any ordinary person finding her reprogrammed buoy would find nothing but some dry information about extreme black hole engine cascade failure and that would be that.
But that same information would –as per military regulations- be uploaded to the buoy system in and around the Latelian solar system, at which time, it would encounter Shriven engrammatic programs extremely similar to the avatar style of code in use by the Latelians. At that point, the entire package would be swept away from the buoy system and uploaded into the nearest Shriven’s personal computers and a new soldier would be conscripted into this most important mission.
This unknown person would contact one of the Emperor’s minions back on Old Earth to apprise him of the situation and then begin the immediate project of securing whatever was inside the belly of the Erudite Bastard for dissection if dead, and assassination if alive.
“Seventy-two percent is more than enough, though.” Mayin was confident of her chances. It was risky as hell, and while risk wasn’t something that a Shriven engaged in very often, there were times when the cut and dried, black and white statistical view of the Universe that came from being Shriven simply didn’t work.
Mayin hated it. Hated being ‘less’ Shriven than others. It was why she was one of the Emperor’s operatives and not one of His ambassadors. ‘Less Shriven’ implied she hadn’t done as well as others during her tour of redemption, that there were classes or castes to the entire race solely loyal to the Emperor.
“But I,” Mayin announced stridently as she lugged another one of the stasis chambers over to the one she’d chosen for herself, “am doing things for the Emperor that no one else could. I am better than the ambassadors. No one sees me coming. No one knows I’m even in the room unless I want them to. I can’t see one of them doing this, thinking of this idea. They’d still be on comm, trying to convince that fool Devlish to let the pod go.”
Aided by the heavy lifter, Mayin dropped the armor-plated stasis chamber on it’s side, angling it so that the weighty lid fell across one side of her soon-to-be handmade escape pod. Providing a little more protection, it –and the other one to follow quickly- might bump survivability up to an even ninety percent.
And that was a golden number for Mayin.
“Computers. Are we ready?” Mayin’s voice rang loud and clear in the quiet chamber.
“Stage one complete.” The AI mind replied quickly.
“Run it by me.”
“Projected reapplication of gravnetically generated shields will commence once the secondary black hole engine core has been released from containment. Parameters suggested by you are wholly viable to within .01 mm. It is highly unlikely the restructuring will be noticed.”
Shrewdly, Mayin didn’t let the AI go with that answer. “How unlikely?” she demanded as she walked the heavy lifter back towards the remaining stasis chamber. “Give me percentages, not emotive language.”
“One moment.” The AI chimed the tone that literally meant ‘a moment in time until I am capable of rendering a proper answer’. It followed a few seconds later. “Statistically, less than five percent.”
“I’ll allow it.” Mayin angled the grappler on the lifter towards the other chamber and grabbed hold of it deftly. “Stage two?”
“Reprogramming the gravnetic shield generators to follow black hole engine criteria has never been attempted before.” The AI mind’s neutral voice carried with it undertones of concern and worry. “Though technically feasible, transforming the output of stable gravnetic shield generators from deflective to reactive carries with it an inordinate amount of risk.”
“To whom?” Mayin demanded as she maneuvered the lifter towards her destination. “To me or to them?”
“Uncertain. All theoretical simulations I am capable of performing come up with a null resolution. I regret that I lack the computational ability to crunch these numbers for you more specifically, but at this moment, I cannot guarantee your overall survivability.”
“What happened to the seventy-two percent success rate?” Mayin heard the anger in her voice and wondered for a second if something untoward was happening to her. She’d never heard of a Shriven losing their … Shriveness before. She didn’t even think it was possible.
That being said, the moment she was safe, she would begin exploring the boundaries of her own self to see if there was anything happening, and if it could be stopped.
“Predicated upon your own models.”
Mayin made a contemplative face. “So. Seventy-two percent survival based upon my automatic presumption that reactive gravnetic shields would work against the partially powered primary black hole core? And what if it fails?”
“There are two possibilities.” The AI paused, then resumed. “First possibility, the reactive shields overcompensate and collapse, crushing everything inside, forming a brief but deadly quasar. This destructive force would naturally envelope
Erudite Bastard and destroy everything inside. The resultant release of their black hole engines and contained matter would overload the quasar, causing an even greater explosion. Death is certain for everyone.”
“Mission complete.” Mayin nodded. Acceptable terms. “And the second?”
“Second is trickier in terms of overall success. Second precludes that the reactive shields do in fact generate an engine field similar to the ones produced by standardized black hole engines. Whispering Pines is, in fact, launched away from this location at hyper-relativistic speeds, more or less in the direction you’ve chosen. Success in this instance meaning arrival at the end point alive.”
“I am assuming, then…” Mayin carefully loaded the remaining stasis chamber onto the other side of her intended pod, leaving nothing but a sliver of the door accessible from the outside. She was slender, she could fit inside no problem. “That your unspoken ‘degrees of efficacy’ in the second possibility depend on the combined and wholly variable strike point of the primary core, it’s velocity at the time of impact, and the status of the reactive shields at the moment of impact?”
“Correct. As the shields will be reactive when they are brought back online, the entire exterior field will be reacting to the matter of Whispering Pines most closely to the shield. I do not think a level 10 AI would be able to properly calculate the variables. I am sorry that all I can give you is a best guess scenario, Mayin Chisolm. Unspoken in this second, and infinitely more variable, possibility is collateral damage to the Bastard, which ranges from complete annihilation to nothing at all.”
