“Thank you, Doctor,” Captain Valent said as the communication ended. He checked the message from Jason and discovered a picture of a young woman with brown-red hair. A caption said: “Your daughter has been reborn, watch over her.” He took a closer look and recognized similarities from the hologram Alice once was as well as the woman she became. “Get me down there as soon as you see a break in the fighter screen,” Jake said. “We have work to do on Tamber.”
Chapter 50
The Crater
“So, who’s this operative we have in the field?” Oz said, rushing to the strategy table in the middle of the bunker.
“She says she’s Alice, but I really don’t know,” Ayan replied. She brought up the woman’s status and an outlined image of her casually jogging down an abandoned alley with her XO-99 rifle over her shoulder. She was cloaked, and safe for the time being. “This isn’t the Alice I heard about, as far as I know. Not even Lewis will talk to her.”
“That’s strange,” Oz said, watching the taller woman in Freeground Sentinel Armour make good time towards one of the larger pods near the wall. The intelligence flowing from her passive scanners was high enough resolution to map three kilometres in each direction. She passed by framework soldiers who were dressed in basic armour, carrying rifles like they were no concern. She was cloaked, but her manner was brash. She wasn’t making the slightest effort to stay out of sight.
“Lewis says her thought patterns are too different to be recognized as Alice, and he reads her as an adolescent,” Ayan said.
“All right, that makes sense,” Oz replied. He checked the Clever Dream’s ownership details and nodded. “There’s a maturity rating attached to the Clever Dream; if she doesn’t read two fifteen on whatever this Holmes Scale is, then the ship AI can’t interact with her unless she’s programmed into the ship’s crew manifest by an adult.”
“Right, you won’t want a sixteen year old in command of an armed ship,” Ayan replied. “How are things out there?”
“We’re drawing some attention, but so far we’re slowing them down by sniping them in the head. It takes a couple of minutes for them to regenerate and reprogram as far as we can tell. We’re worried about two sites out there, pods that are sitting upright nearby. It looks like they’re building something on top of them.”
Ayan looked at the holographic map on the table, then looked to Oz. “You sent her to one.”
“She asked for a target from me directly,” Oz replied with a shrug. “I told her to investigate, not to engage.”
“From the looks of it she’s-“ Ayan stopped at the sight of a new contact registering in orbit. “That’s the Sunspire,” she said, suppressing excitement. “Other ships are registering as well.”
They watched the new contact screen populate with battleships like the BSF Lexington, BSF Brighton, BSF Legacy, and several others. Two massive carriers, the BSF Shrike and BSF Argus appeared followed by the LCF Challenger. “That’s a whole lot of British firepower backed by a Lorander ship,” Oz said. “I guess we know what the Sunspire was up to.”
“We have communication with the Sunspire,” said one of the communications officers, a young man who filled the same position on the Triton.
“Let’s have it,” Ayan said.
Doctor Carl Anderson’s head and shoulders appeared in front of them. “Ayan, Oz, glad to see you’re still in one piece.”
“It is so good to see you,” Ayan said. “You couldn’t know.”
“I can guess. I wish we had time to visit, but we’re going after the Leviathan’s battle group directly. We’ve found what we think is Jacob Valance’s new ship, the Warlord. Can you confirm?”
“Yes, that’s his new ship,” Ayan replied.
“Good, we’re going to assist and do our best to get him down to the planet. He might be able to survive the trip with our cover. I wish I could offer you soldiers from our group, but we’re gearing up for a boarding action. I’m sending you a data packet that you’ll want to look at right away. Oz will have the encryption key, it’s the last updated code from his command.”
“I’ve got that,” Oz replied. “Thank you.”
“Again, good to see you. We’ll tie this up out here so we can have a proper visit by sundown,” Doctor Anderson said.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Ayan said.
The transmission broke up and within seconds the channel turned red, indicating that it was being blocked. The data packet got through, however, and Oz opened it with his code.
Specifications for ammunition types and grenades made to kill framework beings flooded the table’s holo-grid. “Send this to the machine shop, and make this ammo priority one,” Oz told the nearest communications officer.
“EMP enhanced explosive rounds,” Ayan said. “It’s going to take a while to make these, we should use our last two industrial materializers.”
“One’s ready to go, it might have an hour making ammo this dense,” Liam Grady said. “The other was just repaired, I don’t know how durable it is.”
“We have to arm ourselves properly,” Ayan said. “Do it, get as many rounds out of them as you can,” she told Oz.
“Um, guys?” asked Alice through the tactical comm. “They’ve got major construction going on here, and there’s a detection field that’s making my stealth system’s alarms go off. I’m going to have to do this the hard way.”
“Don’t do anything, there’s no point in you mounting a solo offensive,” Ayan said. “You’ll just get yourself killed.”
* * *
“Can I get a new operator? You’re all full of negativity,” Alice said as she climbed higher up on the side of the old hauler ship that had been brutalized when the troop pod struck nearby. She took a look around from her higher vantage point and immediately wished she could help several crews who where trying to fend off framework soldiers.
“Listen, I don’t know if you’re the real Alice, or what’s going on, but I want to have the chance to find out in person. You don’t have to impress anyone, you don’t have to prove anything, I’m sure we can figure it all out if you just come in. We’ll try to make a gap so you can get through the shield without exposing the settlement,” Ayan replied.
Firefights dotted Alice’s near vicinity and beyond as ship crews fought frameworks for control of their landing sites and others simply tried to get from one place to another. The skies were eerily still; most of the ships that could leave did so in the minutes that followed the appearance of the Skyguard Navnet. Most of the ships still on the ground were empty, disabled, or defending something important. Port Rush was a ghost town, for the most part.
In the distance she could see the tracers from the Triton Compound, firing at drop pods as they fell. A blur above their relatively small patch of the shanty port told her that their energy shield was still up. Other ships used their shields for defence and fired at incoming pods as well, but no one else was as prepared or well armed as the former Triton crew. “Trust me, getting behind a big shield and wagging my jaw at someone until they believe I’m who I am sounds better than picking a fight with an army of regenerating thugs, but someone’s got to put a crimp in their plans. Actually, I kinda like the idea of a fight. Talk is getting boring.”
“Just hold on, we’ll figure something out,” Ayan said. “Maybe we can take care of that from here, a quick fighter strike.”
“Nope, they’ve got turrets in range, no need to risk a pilot and a ship,” Alice said.
Alice settled into her perch so she could get a better look at the crater and the large drop pod in the centre. “My tactical counter marks twenty soldiers and one commander. I see a mount for the top of that drop pod and it looks tall enough so it can reach above the nearest ship,” she said over her comm. “And I see acceleration rails.”
Alice turned and looked for three soldiers she’d seen earlier and spotted them carrying heavy chunks of metal. Other frameworks guarded their passage, forming a safe path to a refuse lot a hundred metres awa
y.
Her attention was drawn back to the landing pod, where four more frameworks emerged from cases, put on a lightly armoured uniform, took a rifle from the rack, and marched outward to stop at the edge of the crater. They were perimeter guards, and the longer she waited, the more there would be. “They’re setting up a junk gun,” Alice said.
“What?” Ayan replied. “Don’t do anything, we’ll think it through here. We just got specifications for framework killer rounds, we’ll be able to fight them soon.”
“Yeah, the anti-bot rounds work just fine, already tried a few shots. That’s why I’m cloaked. I put a few of those things down and they all seemed to notice.”
“I saw that, and it’s going to happen again if you-“
“Sorry, they’ll be able to break your shield down if they finish this gun,” Alice replied, “can’t let that happen.” She blocked Ayan on Crewcast, so anyone but her could communicate with her.
She rolled back and let herself drop behind a broken hatch for cover. After a quick look around, she de-cloaked and detached her pack. After a moment of digging, she found a fist-sized demolition charge and several clips of anti-bot rounds designed to kill Eden Fleet machines. She loaded the charge into her rifle and changed the clips in her weapons.
An alarm sounded in her helmet as her HUD brought up a navigational alert window that highlighted a Carthan ship descending on a course leading to a location within ten kilometres of her location. Alice reactivated her cloaking systems, slung her rifle and jumped down off the side of the ship. She landed running. “Unblock user – Ayan Rice the Second,” she told her communications device. “Hi, you see the trouble I do?”
“Yes, can you find cover?” Ayan asked.
Alice glanced at the falling mass of mangled metal in the sky then back to her surroundings. The barriers dividing the landing slips from each other and the roads between were flimsy at best, made from found materials. All the ships nearby were sealed. “There’s nothing,” she said, more panic in her tone than she expected to hear. Alice looked to the crater surrounding the drop pod as she ran around the corner. There was a road going right past it, a tall barrier to her left and nothing close enough ahead or behind that could offer cover. “What’s on the other side of this barrier?”
“An empty slip,” Ayan said. “Just find anything bigger than yourself and try to get under it. If you can find a dip, or a culvert to jump into, that would be best.”
“I see a dip,” she said, unslinging her rifle as she redirected her run towards the drop pod crater.
“That’s not an option!” Ayan said.
“Tell my dad I love him,” Alice said, “and that kicking ass runs in the family.” She pulled three slim grenades from her pocket and switched her armour’s field generators from stealth to shield mode. Framework soldiers who were hurriedly working at securing their small crater base spotted her immediately, and she leapt high from the edge of the crater, launching herself forward and well over their heads.
Alice armed the first grenade and tossed it towards the sentry guards. Her HUD targeting assistant found her rifle’s first victim and she opened fire, hitting with one shot out of the burst. The round exploded inside the framework soldier, rending him through the middle.
The other grenades were tossed at the drop pod and fell into the equipment rack. Her suit sent a signal to them and they exploded, damaging the equipment materializer and sending broken hardware across the crater. She rolled onto her feet firing the particle acceleration pulse portion of her rifle at a group of four frameworks, disabling them as the high energy bursts ripped through their necks and chests.
With a thought her armour knew to send a signal to her rifle to switch back to anti-Eden bot rounds, and she sent bursts into every framework she could see. A grasping arm slipped across her energy shields and she turned to fire several bursts into the recycler system, reducing it to shreds of scrap metal.
Rounds caught her from the right and left. Her shields read twelve percent, and she rolled to her left, taking shelter behind the drop pod. Alice came up on her feet and blasted a crowd of frameworks within two metres of her, hoping that the Eden-bot buster rounds would do the trick. They would be disabled, thanks to the grievous wounds she was inflicting, but not for more than a few minutes at best.
Alice returned fire at several frameworks that shot at her from the edge of the crater and caught sight of the Carthan carrier as it disappeared over the lip of the crater. She fired a pair of grenades from her rifle at the three frameworks she could see and ducked down into the fetal position. “This is gonna hurt,” she said as her armour reported her shields were down to three percent.
The ground quaked violently, battering her armour. She could hear the world around her breaking.
Chapter 51
Target Zero
The bridge of the Triton had been evacuated under protest from the crew. The main security doors behind Alice filled the large hatch and sealed. Someone had to remain at the main controls, and Jake had left her in charge. Alice knew she was going to die, but it was only so her crew could win the day for once.
The crew of the Triton had been beaten in so many different ways, individually and together. Refugees, survivors, but never the victors. Someone had to show them how to win, and she would, even if it cost her her life.
Alice awoke sputtering and gasping, aware that she was just recalling her sacrifice aboard the Triton. “Dying’s got to be the worst,” she said, her voice sounding strange, higher. She was buried past her waist in rough dirt and debris. “Oh, God, this sucks.” The sound of something scrabbling in the gravel silenced her. Nothing was coming up on her HUD, so she removed her helmet in time to see a framework bending down only a couple of metres away to pick up his rifle.
She squirmed to get out of the hole, pumping her legs in the loose gravel and pushing as hard as she could with her hands. The armoured vacsuit she wore under the armour was still operational, and she couldn’t have been more thankful for that as the framework fired a burst at her, hitting her in the chest twice. The vacsuit held up, but it wouldn’t repel him forever.
She picked up her helmet, which had a gaping hole in one side, and tossed it at the soldier right before he opened fire again. Her legs came free, and she fell backwards, drawing her sidearm and firing white hot micro-blades into him from his neck to his forehead.
His head was ruined from within as the little electrified projectiles popped behind his face and inside his neck. He fell limp.
“So much for my spiffy armour,” she said. The new HUD in her secondary armoured vacsuit calibrated and she looked at all the red marks around her on the tactical map. Alice pulled the last of the ruined armour plates off and looked around. Her pack peeked out from the loose dirt beside a star cruiser resting on its side. She rushed to it and pulled it free. There was one Freeground D9 rifle still attached and to her relief it checked out fine.
Her tactical monitor warned her of three frameworks regenerating behind her, and she whirled to face the nearest. It stood on new legs, its left arm still regenerating from a stump near the shoulder. “Surrender, you will be treated fairly,” it said.
“Funny, I didn’t think you guys were big on talk,” she said, taking aim at its head. “How’s this for an answer?” she fired and missed as it dropped to the ground and rolled.
“You little,” she said as she opened up with the rifle and caught the regenerating arm first, followed by its chest then the side of its head. The electromagnetically enhanced rounds burned for a second before bursting, only a little more dramatically than her sidearm’s ammunition did. He fought to get away from her with his working arm; his legs weren’t moving. The arm that was regenerating stopped. “EMP rounds, huh?” she said. “That’s what makes you guys twitch and die?” She drilled a short burst into his head and smiled. “Easy enough.”
The framework’s regeneration began again, so slow she almost couldn’t make it out through the blood pumping from the stum
p. Another framework stirred in the dirt, buried up to its chest, laying on its face. She stepped over to it with her rifle raised. “Please, mercy,” it begged. “The Order will remember.”
Alice stopped and regarded the soldier as he turned his head awkwardly to look up at her. She looked into its blue eyes and saw a man, someone she would think was simply human if she ran into him on a busy street. “Please,” he repeated.
“You don’t move,” she said. “You just stay there and be quiet.”
He shifted in the dirt and her tactical system highlighted an intact rifle under his right armpit. It was hiding its weapon from her. “Mistake,” she said, raising her weapon and firing into the side of his head.
With a steady gait, Alice walked around the corner where two unarmed frameworks were getting on their feet. The first lunged at her. She dodged aside and shot him in the back of the head. The second ran for cover but she caught him in the leg before he made it. She turned the rifle’s field generator up and watched as the next electromagnetically charged rounds she fired tore his head off.
Her tactical display showed that she’d cleared the immediate perimeter, so she took the time to retrieve her pack and affix it to her back. The muscle enhancement in her vacsuit adjusted, and she hopped up onto the hull of the nearest starship and ran up the side, staying low.
The shockwave had changed the landscape entirely. The forest in the distance, past the Port Rush shanty port opposite the city proper, was flattened. The kilometre wide junk fire she’d seen before was out. The Port Rush shanty port itself was a jumble of smaller ships that had been tossed away from the epicentre, larger ships that had taken extreme damage, and leaning or collapsed landing platforms. She was almost afraid to see what happened to the Triton settlement, which was between her and Port Rush City, but checked anyway.
Her tactical system didn’t read any trace of a shield, but their tiny rectangle in relation to the rest of the sprawling port was an oasis, showing some of the only clear ground for kilometres. The quiet was disturbed as an energy round sparked on the hull near her. Her tactical system showed her the origin point. She didn’t bother firing back, but slid down the side of the overturned hull instead, settling in under cover.
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework Page 52
