Exile: Arc

by Jack Lance

  “We’re not going to the weather station?” Faye asked.

  “We’re not getting out of this solar system in that station. They’ll cut us down in seconds. This is the only way possible for us.”

  “And you can fly it?” she asked.

  Farnon paused, which was something she didn’t like, then said “I guess we’ll see.”

  Farnon took the shuttle around the side of the gigantic block that made up the main fuselage, and searched along the miles of it's length for a docking bay.

  They flew under an old, slightly weathered sign telling its name.

  “Indus Lynx.” Farnon said, and smiled at Faye. “My house now.”

  “My house!” she said jokingly and put a mock claw on his shoulder.

  In a lighter mood, Farnon took the ship under the Indus Lynx and found a number of bright holes with inward flowing landing lights around them.

  Farnon flew to the nearest then slowed and raised the ship up into the landing chamber.

  The inside of the ship was as worn as the outside, but it's white-plastic embalmed channels and terminals had been well maintained. It had been designed for large scale troop transport, but not like the mercenaries that had been brought in the rickety buckets they’d seen outside. These troops would have been highly skilled and focused Shadow Agents, the kind of pawns that could only be supplanted by creatures such as the Sheriffs they had encountered earlier.

  And now it was theirs, and Farnon took the ship down into one of its bays, and then lowered the ramp at the rear.

  Faye patted Farnon’s shoulder and said “All abroad.”

  Faye left and then Farnon watched through the reflection in the front windscreen as they all skipped down the ramp excitedly. Three people remained seated, and had remained fully cloaked the whole time.

  He turned slowly and walked past them, seeing that some of the others had barely removed their cloaks either.

  “All aboard now.” he said apprehensively, and not knowing why.

  He walked down the ramp and out across the stone floor of the docking hall, close to the gap in the floor to space, covered over by a blue haze of an air-pocket-field.

  Noticing some of them skipping around close to it he yelled “Keep away from there! I’m not sure if it’s permeable!”

  “Whatcha mean?” one of the women, Willow he thought her name was, said ignorantly.

  “I mean you might fall through and freeze to death.” Farnon gritted. “Okay everyone, we need to get to the ships bridge. Everyone make your way to the teleporter!”

  They all walked to the closest pad at the edge of the hall, and Farnon noticed the three others come from the shuttle to join them. They were still wearing the cloaks but were fiddling with them now as if they were about to take them off.

  “Come along!” Farnon said and began to concentrate of getting the group through the teleporter’s space rips.

  They went through in small groups, with Randall and Thom’s gang going first to check that it was safe.

  “It’s beautiful up here.” Randall said over the ship’s com link on the wall.

  After a pause they began ferrying more of them through, with the three shrouded men last with Port and his wife.

  “This is so freaky awesome!” Minuet said and Port Farnon hugged her and smiled as the view around them blurred and morphed into the view across a broad bridge.

  The bridge was mainly dark with a low, grated ceiling that expanded up into a tall viewing auditorium at the outside walls. The windows to space were tall and rectangular leaning outward at the top, with nine of them standing along the outer wall of the bridge. The main control panels were located at the base of the windows, and along the back of the auditorium space. Other specialist control consoles were dotted around the low space at the back, including a holographic navicom table.

  Farnon noted all of this as he walked through to the auditorium across the dark scarlet carpeting.

  “Just look at this!” Faye clapped her hands at Bethany who stood by her lesbian partner, with her hands over her mouth looking out into space.

  “We are free!” Minuet said as she limply reached to hug Farnon.

  “We need to keep our voices low for a while!” Farnon said to them all over her shoulder. “Soon they will be scanning every molecule of this solar system for us, and they will hear us if we don’t calm ourselves.”

  Minuet stepped back and flicked her hair, grinning at him in a slightly crazy way. Farnon smiled back for a moment before composing himself.

  “Okay we need to get this ship activated.” Farnon said, then looked up at an orb affixed to the ceiling of the auditorium. “Ship? We are your crew! Acknowledge!”

  “You are not my crew. You are unauthorized personnel.” it said, as coloured lights danced within the orb.

  Willow Derwent pointed at the lights and said “Is that like…”

  “Yes.” Farnon said dismissively, then carried on. “Override! We are your new crew. Acknowledge!”

  “Override codes required.” it said in it's soothing elderly masculine voice.

  “Override codes… Alpha One Gamma Gamma Epsilon Alpha Eleven.” Farnon said, then apprehensively added “Acknowledge?”

  There was a pause and then the computer said “I am Synclair. Command.”

  Farnon smiled slowly, and the others followed.

  “So that’s it?” Thom said. “How does Bailey know all this anyway?”

  “I have no idea.” Farnon said, and walked beside them at the windows. “Those codes are about as high security as they come. If they’d been the wrong codes it would have tripped the alarms.”

  “And we’d be caught.” Randall said grimly.

  “No. We’d be dead. The ship would have killed us.”

  Faye gestured at the orb in the ceiling and said “Nice computer!”

  “Synclair!” Farnon said, sitting back against the wood rim of the panels. “Listen to all wavebands for a transmission coming from that weather station.”

  “Compliance.” it said.

  “Encrypt and block all signals from the source. Make sure nobody else can listen in.”

  “Understood.” it said.

  ”Wait again?” Randall asked.

  ”We have no choice.” Farnon said leaning forward over the panels, and looking out at the vessels moving around in the space over the planet.

  Behind them Nash, Barron and Dane took off their shrouds, and stood watching the others from the shadows at the back.

  Francine walked past them holding her baby and Nash stepped toward her and said “Franky.”

  She looked and squinted at him through the dark.

  “Is that you, Nash?” she whispered, and glanced at the others at the front area, in the light. “What do you think you’re doing here?”

  “I should ask you the same thing.” he said coldly. “You were betraying me.”

  “Oh look around. I betrayed you. I played you from the start. Bailey had me keep an eye on you while they got the plan set up.”

  “No.” he waved a finger at her. “We were talking about marriage. About love.”

  Francine sighed, and bobbed her baby a little to settle it. She glanced at the others who still hadn’t realized what was going on.

  “I never loved you, Nash. Get that on board.” she shook her head, looking away from him. “We aren’t friends. We ain’t nothing.”

  “Oh so Aaron Bailey’s your friend?” he hissed at her, and behind him Bethany saw them all and walked down to the others. “What kind of friends I wonder.”

  “Look up there.” Bethany said, stepping behind the others as they looked out from the bridge.

  “What do you want me to say?” Francine said to Nash, quieting her voice so that the others couldn’t hear. “You want to hear that I fucked him? Yes, I fucked him.”

  Nash recoiled and squinted at her while grabbing his face. The others filled the back space behind him and the other two stowaways.

  Dane and Barron
turned to look at them apologetically, while Nash kept staring at Francine.

  Randall rubbed his hand through his hair and said “Well this complicates things doesn’t it?”

  Far below at the citadels, Arc had ridden across the living floor back to the teleport pad. Jayne hugged him, still naked on the back of the bike. They rode up to the top of the teleport pyramid and then Arc laid the bike on its side there, and he and Jayne stood on the glowing pad.

  They teleported down to a mostly empty floor of the citadel very clearly marked by a huge sign reading “Boiler Room” which was a slang catchall name by technicians for a place acting as the hub of all robotics, networking, AI, mechanics and anything else that worked behind the scenes to keep life-colonies functioning.

  Arc left the bike lying on the purple tele-pad, and walked from it and over to one of a number of tall arched doorways. Wendall Jayne followed him, still naked and covered in grease from the refrigerator gas.

  Arc stopped at the door and glanced at the plaque on the wall declaring the foundation for the citadel colony, and a small photograph of the original guard colonists below cheering at the camera.

  They walked forward into a long chamber with various computer banks ticking over on either side. They were separated into strips with each acting as a console into a specific colony operation.

  Arc didn’t have time to study each and every one of them although his mind yearned to learn every nuance of their systems.

  “Look for the cloaking field.” Arc said quietly as they slowly stepped forward over the wood weave floor.

  “Here.” Wendall said, as her eyes found a monitor graphic illustrating the lid-shaped field that covered the citadel zone.

  Arc walked to it and analysed the data on the half-hologram screen, and the various keyboards and consoles beneath. He began re-coding the cloaking devices program, so to bypass all previous programs that had been running for centuries, and shut them down on both sides of the mirage.

  Wendall walked away toward the window. She stood at the window naked and looked out over the fake landscape.

  She smiled slightly and said “So that’s Lantis.”

  “Hey wait!” they heard a strangled voice from behind them at the tele-pad.

  The short fur covered man that Arc had seen on the ground floor came running in and joined him at the console. A woman slowly followed, looking them over curiously. She had a crazy stretched expression, but it seemed the only deformity of hers was an extremely large, claw like hand. She clicked her large nails gently against one another like a nervous habit.

  “What are you doing here?” the short man said amiably, referring to the cloaking device console.

  Arc watched the girl walking by them, apparently more interested in Jayne than the men.

  He turned back to the console and continued to reprogram it, and said “Well I’m changing your core software. We are escaping from Narcosia and need to de-cloak the citadels so that the emergency services will know where to go. Otherwise they might pass right by here and leave you here to die.”

  “You’re doing this for us?” he squeaked and patted his side affectionately. “You are a very nice person.”

  The woman stalked up to Jayne beside the window and looked at her up and down.

  “Here, take this.” she said and took off the long see through black shawl she was wearing.

  “Oh, no. Err. Well, alright.” Jayne said and took it.

  The strange woman held her good hand up to her and said “Wait here. I’ll get you some more clothes.”

  “Jayne!” Arc said sharply, and threw her the pistol. “Keep an eye on her.”

  Jayne caught it as it flew at her in the room, and then looked at it momentarily.

  The strange woman walked past Jayne to a side door leading through to another room filled with thousands of shelves holding what would be millions of boxes.

  Jayne followed sheepishly while aiming the gun at the floor. She watched the woman run amongst them and blow the dust away from one of the damp card boxes.

  “What is all this?” Jayne asked, with a bad feeling growing in her gut.

  The woman brought the box over and placed it at her feet, then tipped it over and pulled the contents out over the floor.

  “The people from the prisons. We keep their belongings here. It’s ours now. But you’re so pretty, you can have these if you like.”

  Jayne watched as the girl held up a pair of ladies jeans that looked like they would roughly fit her, and so she took them and put them on. The strange girl kicked the head of a plastic child’s doll away, and Jayne watched it roll away through the shelves.

  She turned and grinned demonically at her, as if she knew exactly what she was doing.

  “Thanks.” she said into her peculiar grin.

  “Now we can fight.” she said, maintaining that same strange gritted grin.

  The girl swung the back of the claw up and struck the side of Jayne’s face hard. At first Jayne thought she might lose consciousness but seemed to swim back to the world. She stepped slowly away from the girl toward the door, and could hear Arc’s key strokes tapping away.

  The strange girl stalked toward her grinning like a wild thing, and Jayne realized the situation was without hope. Jayne lifted the gun and shot the girl in the forehead, kicking her slightly off her feet and down onto her back.

  Arc looked at Jayne standing in the doorway on hearing the gunshot, then seeing she was fine continued entering the commands.

  The short guy ran over beside Jayne and began groaning.

  He walked over to the girl and began stroking her tummy, that Jayne saw was still moving as if she were still breathing. She decided there must have been some mistake.

  “That’s it.” Arc said and Jayne could hear a low whirring all around the room.

  Arc skipped over to the window and Jayne joined him, happily handing him the gun.

  They looked out as the meadow scene slowly twisted and dissolved, revealing the cold snow-scape of Narcosia beyond, and the mountains of the rim far to the distance.

  The sleet had turned to rain, which now fell in a huge curtain into the citadel zone.

  Below them there were screams from the escorts and they both looked down. Sadly they watched them pile into the long shuttle and take it up and out over the dark land outside.

  There were flashes from out in the darkness and small rockets flew up and impacted on the side of the shuttle. The fire from the explosions lit up the ground below and they could see far to the left and right brigades of Earth soldiers marching across the basin, and about to reach the citadel zone.

  Suddenly the heletank dropped into view, filling the wide windows. It shone its beams over them furiously since it was all it was permitted to do while they were within the building.

  Beyond it, the burning shuttle leaned on its side then crashed down into the snow as the troops did their best to run aside.

  “They’ll tear us apart.” Jayne said. “I take it you’ve got a plan for all this? You’ve always got a plan, right?”

  Arc walked past her, gesturing for her to follow, and said “Well, that’s right. But we need to get up on the roof.”

  Jayne took one last look at the heletank then followed Arc to the tele-pad. Arc lifted the huge bike up and mounted it.

  “Hop on.” Arc said and Jayne got on the back.

  The pad glowed purple all around them and a moment later they were at a pad just below the roof of the citadel. There were old chains hanging down and cluttering the fringes of the pad and through the rest of the broad top room of the tower.

  Arc rode forward carefully in the low ceilinged room, and finding a door in a stairwell enclosure marked as the exit to the roof, shot carefully at the locks. With the thin door hanging open he rode through and up a short flight of steps and emerged onto the tarmacked roof. The wind and rainfall washed over them as they looked around at the high and low features on the topside of the citadel.

  The dark cloud
s were flowing close by above them now, almost completely blocking out the sky, and the air was uncomfortably thin. It was early but still dark and so the Narcosia sun was only just about to rise.

  The majority of the ambience came from milky, coloured lanterns that were dotted here and there across the rooftop. Beyond the worming mechanics housed all around, marking the edge of the roof were tiny spinning red lights, encircling the perimeter of the citadel, atop the fencing there.

  The rains were coming thick and fast from the clouds, pelting them and the roof around. Already they were soaked to the skin, but now, so far along it didn’t seem to matter.

  Then the heletank rose up behind them and nodded forward to give chase. Seeing this, Arc kicked at the bike and sped in the opposite direction.

  The heletank ploughed in and out of the cloud banks above as it made to catch up, and began firing its array of chain guns. Bullets rained around the bike, but Arc maneuvered so to dodge the aim, weaving around bare cabling and electrical boxes that had been thickly tarmacked in.

  As the heletank flew close and level to them, Arc handed Jayne the pistol over his shoulder.

  “Get it.” Arc shouted, coughing slightly in the thin air.

  Jayne aimed as best she could as Arc jumped and dropped over the various wiry features on the citadel roof. She began firing at the lights of the heletank, which seemed to take heed and turned away as if searching for cover, not that there was any need, which was something the heletank would realize shortly.

  Arc took the bike more slowly down a ramp to a broad ditch in the roof that itself lead out to the fences at the edge. The fencing was reinforced by diagonal supports, and it was clear now that the spinning red laser light dotted along it was intended to blind and deter those going near the edge. The bike stopped at the bottom of the ramp, and Arc turned the bike on its side and leaned low to use the surrounding features as a temporary cover.

  In the distance there was the red glow all across the mountains of the morning light shining through a long crack in the clouds. The cloud above was thick and still flickered with lightning, and there was the deep smell of the rain in the air signifying the end of the storm.