Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework

by Randolph Lalonde

  “Did you,” Nora hesitated awkwardly. “Fornicate with him?” she asked quietly.

  Alice recoiled at the thought. “No! Wow, that would have been so weird. He played the ‘old soldier’ part too well, and I guess that’s not my thing, and I don’t think he was too interested in that kind of thing with me, either. He never made it obvious if he did.”

  “What happened after that?”

  “We showed up at Ulrik’s estate,” Alice paused a moment. “Did you learn about his place? What the job was about?”

  “Yes, the Amber Heart,” Nora replied.

  “Right, that hunk of old sap from Earth. We touched down on the platform and had a hundred barrels on us in a second.” Alice took a moment to close her eyes. The memory of that platform, the cool wind against her face, and the surprise at seeing dozens of house soldiers pointing weapons at them was too clear. She could even remember the smell of the forest below. The recollection of the next moment was almost enough to bring tears to her eyes. “He was such a proud idiot,” she said to herself.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind,” Alice said, regaining her composure. “Ulrik comes out smiling and Lewis quick-draws on him. I’ve never seen anyone as fast. Cybernetics helped; it turns out Lewis’ whole right half had been replaced. Probably because of some injury on Veers Nine. There wasn’t enough of Ulrik left to put back together. Lewis was using a tri-shot modification on his sidearm, so it fired hot enough to burn a few strands of my hair just because I was standing beside him. He got all three shots off before the guards killed him. I caught a couple of rounds too, but it was minor, just crossfire.”

  “Why?” Nora asked. “He had to know he would be killed, surrounded by guards.”

  “Territory,” Alice said. “One of Ulrik’s companies was on Veers Nine, fighting for a share, and Lewis’ job was to dismantle his operation however he could. He decided that killing the man at the top was the last chance he had since Ulrik had already caught on.”

  “How did you get out?”

  “Well, I woke up in a room a lot different from this. Big windows, fresh flowers on the bedside table. One of Ulrik’s wives, Rada was her name, told me that I didn’t come up when they ran a check on known enemies, and I finished my mission, so she gave me my reward after I told her where she could find Amber, the wife that stole the Amber Heart. When I powered on my new ship, it asked me two questions: what the ship was called, and what I would name my new artificial intelligence.”

  “So you named it Lewis,” Nora said.

  “I named it Lewis,” Alice nodded. “Can I get out of here now? Feeling a little claustrophobic right now.”

  “Thank you, Alice,” Nora said, tears welling up. “You helped me feel human again. I don’t remember much of you, just the dreams, so you don’t have to worry, but you at least brought my humanity back.”

  Alice stood, trying to look like she cared more about Nora’s apparent breakthrough, and she received a heartfelt hug as her reward. “I’m sure you would have found it eventually, I mean, it can’t go far, right?”

  “I’ll miss you,” Nora repeated. “This’ll be the last time I see you.”

  The door opened and Alice followed Nora out. The transparent wall beyond her cell was difficult to see through, but she made out roughly man-shaped creatures swimming, tending to what looked like clusters of heavy bubbles. She jumped as an issyrian swam right for her and bumped the wall playfully. “Wow,” Alice said. “Never seen that before.” It smiled at her, pressing its webbed hands against the transparent plating between them. It was away with a push, disappearing into the dark depths.

  “That’s all you’ll be seeing, sorry,” said a soldier as he put a bag over her head and cinched it under her chin. Another guard tied her hands, then her feet with great expertise.

  “Okay, this is going to make walking around really interesting, and the trip to the shuttle really slow,” Alice said. She yelped as strong arms picked her up and put her on the bed of a cart or hard gurney. “Oh, this kind of trip never ends well, see ya!” Alice said as she did her best to roll off.

  Hands caught her easily, and restraints were pressed across her chest, waist, and knees. “A girl’s gotta try,” she sighed.

  Alice made sporadic attempts at breaking the restraints as she was pushed swiftly down hallways. She assumed they were using a hover cart, because there were no bumps or squeaking wheels. They were running quickly, judging from the pounding of their boots on the deck. She heard heavy doors and hatches opening, closing and felt herself go down a ramp.

  The cart came to a sudden stop and her restraints were hastily removed. “Gabriel Meunez is on his way to the Rega Gain system with an invasion fleet,” one of the soldiers said to her. Their headgear made it difficult to determine if it was a woman or man speaking, or it could have been an issyrian under that armour, Alice couldn’t guess. “We are sending you there, so you can warn them. Don’t interfere with the autopilot, or you could disrupt the combined wormhole and hyperdrive systems.”

  The guards picked her up, there were at least eight hands on her. “Like hell! I don’t want to run into that freak. As soon as I unlock the computer I’m heading in the opposite direction.”

  “Your ship, Jacob Valent, and all his friends are there, on the Tamber moon,” the guard explained. She was roughly tossed through the air, and she landed head and right shoulder first. The vacsuit, and her new, sturdier body, helped with the blow, but it was no less awkward.

  Alice pulled the bag off her head in time to see the narrow gangway raising, almost closed. “Why didn’t you say so? And, hey! You got his name wrong! It’s Jacob Valance! You guys should know, you bought the company that made the copy!” The engines fired, rumbling the interior of the shuttle.

  It was well lit. The interior was in pristine condition. There were shoulder racks recessed into the sides of the cabin, enough to support sixteen. It looked like the seats pulled out into beds, and overhead there were bunks that would lower for even more. “Okay, it looks like Freeground’s deluxe model shuttle. Maybe there are some new features?” she said to herself as she got to her feet and started opening compartments. “Fully equipped,” she muttered as she opened a gun cabinet and saw brand new, high-powered weaponry. Another compartment revealed heavy armour; it looked like a Freeground design, but every suit was heavier, more advanced than she’d ever seen. The compartments seemed endless.

  “Toys, toys, and more toys. Enough for a whole squad of heavy stealthers,” she said as she rummaged. “Ooh!” she shouted as she found one of the food compartments under a bench. “So hungry.” She ripped one open and pocketed two more before heading for the cockpit. “Let’s see if you open.” Alice tried the door and made a celebratory sound around a mouthful of vanilla meal bar. Dropping herself into the pilot’s seat she took a look at the control panel and immediately saw the engraving along the edge that read: SUNSPIRE SHUTTLE IX

  “Well, I’m sure there’s a story there,” she said. Alice looked through the transparent portions of the hull around her and her mouth dropped open as she saw the Overlord II looming nearby. There were hundreds of large ships everywhere, every one of them armed to the teeth. A chill ran down her spine and she was frozen for several seconds. “Wow, am I ever not supposed to be here!” she said in a half choked voice, dropping out of the chair and rolling behind it. “Time to go little shuttle, all your toys and food won’t help me one bit against that big bad blast from my past.” She peeked around the bucket seat then looked over the console, and saw that the wormhole generator was ninety seven percent charged. “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she said, looking to the communications station. There were twenty-four urgent hails waiting and counting. There was nothing she could do but watch the wormhole generator charge up, and when it hit one hundred percent she looked at the scanning screen and pressed the projection button. An image of a wormhole appeared as the generator system projected it and she cheered. As the shuttle entered the wormhole and accelera
ted, she danced behind the seats. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Rega Gain, here I come!”

  Chapter 39

  Orders On Faith

  “That was a beautiful christening,” Oz told Ayan from the main engineering console on the bridge. The evidence of an intense firefight was all around, even though the surfaces had been cleaned, and the bodies removed. Fixing burned out consoles and spots of molten metal were repairs, and the Carthans didn’t spend any time restoring the Triton. They just cleaned it and forced the claimants of the ship to pay for the ‘service’ before they could fly away. It was still a strange notion to Ayan.

  Oz’s comm unit was directly wired into the panel behind the Engineering interface, and a set of holographic Sol Defence style interfaces surrounded him. “I wish I could have been there.”

  Ayan had changed back into her regular Triton uniform, but hadn’t bothered with the extreme environment overlay. “I know, but we’re all short on time.” She watched him sort through repairs and examine different parts of the ship for a moment before she continued. “You haven’t been acknowledging my messages.”

  “I listened the first time,” Oz said. “I’m not leaving the Triton. I sent non-essential staff off, and kept eight.”

  “What are you and eight crewmembers going to do here?” Ayan asked.

  “We can keep purifying the lines, reversing the effects of the poison in the biological circuitry. We already have propulsion control and one main thruster working. We can move if we have to.”

  “Oz,” Ayan said. “You’re going to die on this ship if you don’t leave tonight.”

  That gave her old friend pause, and he finally looked up from his work. “What?”

  Ayan looked over her shoulder to make sure no one else was on the bridge before explaining. There was no sign of her guards, Jason, or Liam, who insisted on accompanying her. “I connected with the Victory Machine today, what our old friends from Vindyne have been using to build the Order of Eden.”

  “Which old friends?” Oz asked.

  “Lister Hampon, General Collins, and even Wheeler is involved somehow. I think he’s trying to play both sides. Some of what I saw in the machine was just images in the peripheral, it wasn’t always direct.”

  “How are two of Vindyne’s most wanted involved?” Oz asked.

  “Collins is dead, someone named Meunez killed him, but not before Collins could unleash the Holocaust Virus on the galaxy,” Ayan explained.

  “Collins is behind that?” Oz asked. “Why? Why would he kill billions of people? Just to reserve more space and resources for Regent Galactic?”

  “No, there was some kind of larger plan to focus the population in certain areas of the Milky Way. They were following instructions laid out by the Victory Machine to shape the galaxy in such a way so most of humanity would survive whatever’s coming. They overdid it, and now the Order of Eden is more powerful than intended, in complete control of Regent Galactic, their worlds, and everything they own.” Ayan cocked her head for a moment as she realized some of what she was saying was beyond what she thought she learned from the Victory Machine. It had told her more than she’d realized; there were details from the Order of Eden and Regent Galactic that she didn’t remember hearing, but she knew they came from the Victory Machine.

  “What’s wrong?” Oz asked.

  “Nothing, just turning over stones in my head, finding extra information.” Ayan shook her head and stepped towards him. “You have to leave this ship, and the Triton has to hide.”

  “This could be a trick,” Oz said. “How do you know that Hampon, or the Order, or whoever, isn’t trying to lead us into the open?”

  “It was Roman,” Ayan said. “Roman was the Victory Machine’s oracle.”

  “From Mount Elbrus? I thought he was killed when the explosion hit.”

  “No, the Victory Machine can make high powered wormholes called crush gates. That’s how it deals with accumulated temporal radiation. Roman’s last conscious act was to pass on important visions and information. One key part of that was the need to defend our corner of Port Rush, and you have to be there. The attack starts tomorrow morning. A colonization ship called the Leviathan will be here, and the Carthans will have their hands full. There will be a ground battle, and we can’t afford to lose.”

  “I believe her,” a calm male voice said from Oz’s comm unit. “There are records of the Leviathan, and it is more than a colony ship. It’s an invasion platform.”

  “So you’re saying that I’ll survive if I follow you down to the planet, and start setting up a defence?” Oz said.

  “Who’s that?” Ayan asked.

  “Oh, that’s the Triton,” Oz said. “Triton, this is Ayan. Ayan, this is Triton.”

  “Hello,” Ayan said.

  “Good to meet you,” the Triton said.

  “To answer your question,” Ayan continued, “the Victory Machine said that your death was certain if you stayed here, and I think the destruction of the Triton is a sure thing, too. If you come back down with me, neither are certain. Right now the Triton is a liability.” Ayan looked to Oz’s comm unit and said, “Sorry.”

  “No, I agree,” the Triton responded. “I’d rather not, but it’s true. I can’t fight, and I’m barely mobile.”

  “I can’t leave,” Oz said. “You don’t understand what it’s like. I know what the Triton’s existence is like, how being this disabled feels.”

  “You must leave,” the Triton said. “I have a record of the Victory Machine, it was made on Earth, and while the records aren’t detailed, Sol Defence warns that direct, short term predictions are rarely wrong. I don’t want to watch my captain die, Oz.”

  “You can’t cloak, and someone has to be aboard in case something goes wrong,” Oz retorted.

  “I can pilot myself. It’s tedious, but I’m capable, and there are large mining facilities in the Jensen Belt, on the edge of the solar system. I can hide amongst the stations there; their mass and shapes will mask my hull profile. If that doesn’t work, I’ll hide in a tunnelled-out asteroid. With my systems powered down, this ship will look like an old hulk. That’s if they can find me at all.”

  “What else does your database tell you about the Victory Machine?” Oz asked. “Why are you having such an easy time believing everything she’s saying?”

  “I’ve been listening to her, performing my own calculations, and everything Commander Rice is saying is highly likely. Prudence demands you follow her orders,” Triton replied.

  Oz thought for a moment, leaning on the console. Ayan had never seen him look so weary, but as he paused it seemed he gained twenty years before her eyes in mannerism alone. “I want to take non-essential supplies, and a few things we left aboard that I didn’t know about before.”

  “Whatever you like,” Ayan replied.

  “Take everything you need to keep your people alive, Oz,” replied Triton. “I don’t need combat suits, weaponry, or anything else made to serve humanoids. I’ll be in hiding until you need me.”

  “Get people and ships up here,” Oz told Ayan. “Anyone who can load cargo and anything that can carry it back to Tamber. There’s a reserve armoury and emergency survival equipment aboard that we didn’t know about because it was hidden in the Botanical Gallery. We’re going to need it.”

  “Oz, I wish I came with better news,” Ayan said.

  “I know, it’s fine. We’ll do what we have to until this is over,” he replied. “Just give me a minute alone here.”

  “All right,” Ayan said. “I’ll take the first trip back with supplies and bring people back.”

  Within half an hour it seemed everyone who could operate a loader suit was fitting everything they could into shuttles. Ayan only assisted for the first two hours until Oz relieved her. “I should have been easier to convince,” he told her as they watched a line of loader suits running high-impact crates filled with emergency survival supplies across the main hangar. Paula was in her glory, shrilly and urgently guiding landing craft and
deck crews.

  “I understand,” Ayan said. “Your report said the Triton’s computer is telepathic at close range.” She was careful not to call the creature at the heart of the ship anything other than a computer. Oz suggested as much to protect it. “I can’t imagine what it’s like to connect to something like that.”

  “I think you’re one of the few people who can,” Oz said. “I know you’re different from the Ayan I knew, and I’ll be honest, I like you more. Putting that aside for a moment, you have a whole set of memories that are second hand, and you can recall what it was like to be the other Ayan. What the Triton shared with me was so detailed, so intimate, that I feel like I know him just as well. I was connected to Ashley too, but not in the same way, and we don’t have the same…” Oz trailed off, searching for the right word.

  “Chemistry?” Ayan answered.

  “That’s not the word I would have chosen, but it’ll do,” Oz said. “I’m going to miss him every minute I’m gone. I’m sure you go through the same thing with Jake.”

  Ayan sighed and looked away. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she said. “But no, it’s not the same. Since he came out of hiding it’s been hard. Not just because of Wheeler’s android, it’s not that at all. It’s like I can’t fit with him like we did before. He’s changed, or I’ve changed, and we’ve gone through this cycle where we fight, I end it by going too far, then I apologize or something and we start over.”

  “How many times since he’s come back?” Oz asked.

  “Twice,” Ayan said. “It’s been less than a week, and it’s happened twice.”

  “I’ve seen that before, don’t think it applies here though,” Oz said.

  “Why don’t you tell me about it, just in case you’re spot on?” Ayan replied.

  Oz punched new directions into his comm unit, showing the loading teams to the hidden armoury in the Botanical Gallery. “Well, Triton says moving the stuff from the armoury into a shuttle is child’s play, so I’ve got a minute.”