by David Edward
The etherreals could communicate through the localhub or, like now, communicate peer to peer. It was a direct data packet exchange model and could work over short- and mid-range distances.
After the quick exchange, X7 moved deeper into the ship to find the commhub.
Logan stood on the inside of the ramp inventorying the equipment. Much of the mining technology was the same today as it had been a few thousand cycles ago. What was in the cargo hold could still be used and had been protected from the environment well enough to still be operational.
What was more interesting was that it did not appear that the process to deploy the equipment had started before the ship was abandoned.
He also noticed that the equipment was pre-ether. It did not have any commhub infrastructure with which to attach itself to the ether.
The rest of the interior cargo hold looked old. The layout was familiar, and you could see the evolution of ship design between this ship as a starting place and the Thorik of today. There were hundreds of small improvements in the Thorik design that made this ship look awkward by comparison.
Logan made his way to the rear of the cargo hold, where he knew the ammunition depot would be. The door was bolted shut from the outside. He reached over to it and allowed the strength of his combat suit to twist the lock and pull it off.
He turned on the two forward-facing light sources attached to his helmet. They cut into the dark interior, showing a lot of dust and dirt in the air.
Pushing the door fully open, he peered into the ammunition room.
It was completely stocked.
Logan marveled at the equipment in here. This ship had been pre-ether and pre-resolution.
Back in those days, the entire luminary circle was at war with each other, constantly fighting over clan possession of luminary resources and habitable areas.
The quality of the armaments here showed what a brutal time that had been. Logan often scoffed at the great resolution. Not when he was attached to the ether, no, but when he was on his private frequency. But the sheer power and brutality on display here was humbling.
“Sir,” X7’s voice outloaded into his headset, startling him, “I have reached the commhub. I could send you visual feeds, but I believe you would be better served to see the area firsthand.”
Logan closed the ammunition room door, restoring the broken lock so the door would remain closed, and headed into the hallway.
He walked past the digger quarters, just like on the Thorik. Curiosity got the better of him, and he decided to investigate the quarters before meeting X7 in the commhub.
The area was large, with living areas and recreational areas. The diggers had to work hard. They also had lots of entertainment and activities, so they never got bored. It was tough work that was highly rewarded.
The quarters here showed the only signs Logan had seen of any type of struggle or conflict.
Most of the recreational equipment had been smashed. There was scoring on the walls from light arms fire. The doors to the personal living quarters were kicked in, and it looked like diggers had been pulled out of them; various items in the doorways left trails from the inside to the outside.
X7’s voice exploded in Logan’s headset again.
“Sir.”
“X7, I am investigating the digger quarters. There are signs of a struggle. It looks to me like they were pulled out of the area. By whom or what, there is no trace.”
There was a short pause, then X7 replied, “That is interesting, sir. Different from what you will find here in the commhub.”
Logan outloaded affirmative and that he was on his way.
He left the diggers' quarters and walked the rest of the way. On the Thorik, there was a gently sloping ramp from the first level to the second. Here there was no ramp but instead a ladder.
He climbed the ladder and could see light coming from the commhub room, X7’s light sources.
“I’m on the second level, X7. Approaching the commhub now.”
X7 slowly backed out of the commhub so Logan could see him.
As Logan approached, X7 stood to the side of the door.
The inside of the commhub room was destroyed. Where the digger quarters showed signs of a struggle and some light arms fire, the commhub was decimated.
Blood thousands of cycles old could still be seen sprayed onto the walls and what was left of the equipment. There were seven skeletons in the room in a row on the floor, each with a large hole in the back of their skull.
The only possible conclusion was that they had been subdued and executed from behind with a hand shooter. It looked like the old physical projectile model shooters had been used.
It was a gruesome scene.
“X7, this looks horrific,” Logan said, trying to recover from the horrors the scene portrayed.
“Yessir,” X7 said back. He noticed that none of his internal chatter was present. His processors seemed to be busy crossloading the datagrams he was collecting to try and make sense of them.
Logan turned away from the scene and looked at X7. “So, the diggers were abducted, and the command staff was executed.” He was trying to get his head around what had happened. Thinking.
“I am not seeing any signs of etherreals. Wait, as old as this ship is, it would have been androids. They came before etherreals. Before the ether. Where would they be, in a hold here on the command level?” It was basically a question to X7.
“It would have been some of the last generations of androids, sir, given the ship's age. Yes, they would be in a hold on the command level,” X7 outloaded in vocal, attempting to answer both inquiries.
Etherreals were the natural evolution of robotics science. The next step after androids. The primary difference was that while androids could access the ether through the fabric, they could not choose to integrate their core processing into the ether. Etherreals, on the other hand, could work independently of the ether just like an android but could also attach to the ether and expand their crossloading capabilities by huge orders of magnitude.
Etherreals were also unique entities. Androids were unique in their experiences and programming, but the same android model, given the same experiences, would undergo the same learnings and changes. While etherreals may be the same model, the same experiences may not lead to the same learnings and changes. Etherreals could be different.
Case in point, X7 was clearly insane, where E7 was not. However, they had close to the same experiences that, had they been androids, there would be very few differences between them.
Logan thought for a few more moments. “Go ahead and localstore the position of this ship and any other ones that have been reported as pre-ether. I have a feeling we may need to know where they are.” He was going to finish the statement, but suddenly, Odessa’s voice burst into their headsets.
She was yelling, almost screaming, “The Thorik is under attack! Logan, X7, we need you back here now!”
Moving quickly, Logan and X7 sprinted to the ladder to the first level. “X7, have the E2s go into the ship armory, and each take two hand cannons and as much ammunition as they can carry. You and I will grab the concussion mortars and a couple ammo belts.”
X7 outloaded the command to the E2s.
He was internally surprised Logan was able to plan this quickly. He crossloaded his internal demerits sheet and moved Logan’s exploration of the ship before coming up to the commhub from the “idiot” column to the “emulate” column.
When they reached the rear of the cargo hold, the E2s were ready.
Logan and X7 quickly grabbed the ordinance and activated their quick-flight belts. As they were running out of the back of the ship, Logan yelled, “X7, you and the E2s get there as fast as you can! Don’t wait for my acceleration. Go! I will be right behind you.”
With that, the etherreals flashed away, accelerating at the maximum speed the magnetic belts would allow.
There was a boom as they broke the sound barrier very close to the ship's exterior
.
Logan leaped into the air using the belt and accelerated as fast as he could. The etherreals would be back at the Thorik in just a few moments. It would take him a few dozen micro cycles.
Not a long time, but long enough.
The mortar held three shells at a time. He had twenty-four shells across the two ammo belts he had grabbed from the ancient armory.
As Logan loaded the mortar, he opened a channel to Odessa on their private frequency. Instead of her voice, his helmet was filled with screeching static. He shut the channel off. Almost immediately, he saw a projectile coming his way from the direction of the Thorik.
It was far enough out that he could maneuver to avoid it with little effort. He attempted to reach X7 on the general frequency and was met with the same screeching static. As he shut that channel down, he saw another projectile heading his way. This one was targeted much better, and it took some real effort to avoid it.
He realized that this meant whoever was attacking the Thorik was using their own localhub against them. They had penetrated the ship and apparently had tied in their weapons systems.
He turned his fabric emitter off.
The ship was lost if they were using the localhub against the ship’s captain.
As he raced to the plateau, the first thing Logan saw was smoke. It was silhouetted against the afternoon luminary. Dark black smoke against the light blue sky. There was a strong wind, and as the smoke reached the top of the troposphere, you could see it being sheared off from the wind at the higher elevations.
Logan did not want to use his sensors as they would automatically reach out to the Thorik’s localhub upon activation.
When he was within visual distance and had started decelerating, he could see there was a second ship that had landed near the rear entryway of the Thorik. It was a small mean-looking craft with a lot of armaments. It was still on the ground, and X7 and the three E2s that had the hand cannons were firing a barrage over the ship in an effort to keep it from taking off.
It had the name engraved on the side: Montus.
They clearly had decided to delay the ship, not destroy it. If the digger room on the ancient craft was still the model, it was possible they were trying to save the diggers from capture. The reasons why could come later.
X4 and a squad of seven E2s were down and out near the rear position they had established. It looked like a bombardment of concussion ordinances were used when the attacking force first appeared.
A surprise attack.
Logan got his first look at the attackers as he neared X7’s airborne position.
They did not look familiar.
While they were humanoid, unlike the etherreals, they were not designed to mimic the shape of bios.
They stood a third higher than an X7 model and were nothing but synthetic inner-skeleton and exoskeleton combined. Their heads had a circle where the eyes should be going around horizontally in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree arch. This suggested they could see in all directions at the same time.
Their limbs similarly did not have a facing; they could rotate around independently of the direction they were moving in or facing. While skeletal, their frames looked heavy and cruel.
There was a group of three units locked in hand-to-hand combat with two squads of E2 units. The E2s were slowly losing the competition.
Another group of three were positioned below X7, firing ordinances into his group. Fortunately, they had smartly remained in the air. X7 and the E2s were working to dodge the projectiles while continuing to suppress the ship from taking off.
There was other activity, but Logan did not wait to analyze it. He immediately started firing mortar rounds into the group below X7. He fired the three-chambered rounds as fast as he could.
It was a devastating volley.
The ordinance fire stopped, and as the dirt that had been kicked up cleared, there was nothing but a large crater left in the ground where the attackers had been standing.
Logan reloaded the mortar and switched it out for his heavy shooter as he continued to decelerate and landed on the ground at a run. He had located Odessa on the far side of the compound. She and E7 were standing toe-to-toe with a contingent of the attackers.
Odessa, it appeared, was trying to advance and gain entry to the Montus ramp. The last of the diggers were being dragged up the ramp that was defended by six of the attacking automatons.
She was fighting what looked like a losing battle. There were maybe a dozen E2s down on the ground in various states of collapse, having lost their collective fight with the attackers.
Logan began firing his heavy shooter at the enemies Odessa was fighting. He was an excellent shot and was confident even though they were in such close range to his crew members.
The impact from the heavy shooter had some effect. He was aiming for the head, and upon impact, the bolt jerked the head back, and the machine seemed stunned for a micro cycle. It was all Odessa needed to use her bracings to land a killing blow.
However, there were more automatons coming down the ramp; it was clear this was going to be a losing battle. Just the sheer numbers made an offensive strategy to save the diggers difficult.
A wave of automatons stormed down the ramp and pushed Odessa and E7 out of the way so it could close.
At the top of the ramp, Odessa caught a glimpse of a larger figure in full battle armor. Menacing. Waiting for her should she breach the entryway, pacing back and forth with pent-up energy.
X7’s suppression had stopped as his team was out of ammunition.
The Montus rose using what sounded like frequency drives and shot up and out of range, heading to go over the mountain peak that separated the Thorik site from the off-limits area.
Frequency drives used sound to push against gravity in the same way the magnetic drives did, only using sound waves instead of gravity waves. The energy to power frequency drives was lower than magnetic drives, but frequency drives were slow, unable to break the sound barrier given that sound was their primary propulsion mechanism.
There were still a dozen or so automatons fighting on the ground, now stranded. Logan switched back to the mortar and fired another round of munitions into any group that was far enough away from X7’s team or Odessa’s team.
Odessa opened her helmet and gave a hand signal to everyone to head to the far side of the plateau. It was a frantic gesture. She was yelling something, but the noise from the frequency drives still hung in the air. Then Logan also saw it. There were several projectiles from the back of the Montus as it accelerated that were heading for them.
Logan, Odessa, X7, and E7 shot airborne, and the three remaining E2s that were with X7 accelerated as fast as they could out of the blast zone.
There were impacts near the rear of the ship and into the heart of the mining equipment, destroying the deployed equipment and damaging the rear of the Thorik.
Dirt, rock, and mining equipment filled the air. Logan gave a signal for everyone to follow him. He wanted to get far away before the airborne debris cleared.
They shot off at an extremely low elevation at the highest acceleration Logan and Odessa could handle, just skimming above the ground where they could. Both were careful not to break the sound barrier or give themselves away.
Marooned
All fabric comms had been disabled.
They raced in the direction of the planet's lower pole, flying until the landscape changed from mountainous to flat land, ensuring they were sufficiently far away.
Logan signaled to everyone to land.
Once on the ground, he yelled, “Odessa, are you okay? Are you hurt?”
She looked at him and quickly back in the direction they had flown from. “I’m okay, but Logan, they took the diggers! We have to save them!” She was agitated, and her adrenaline was still flowing from the fight. She then thought for another second before asking, “Where did you and X7 get the heavy ordinance? It saved the day…well, almost saved the day, I guess.”
During the flight, X7 had been crossloading and moved several of Logan's characteristics from the “idiot” to “emulate” category. He was impressed with Logan's quick and decisive decision-making during the fight, even if they had ultimately needed to retreat.
“Ma’am,” X7 spoke up, “when we investigated one of the old ships the scouts identified, we found it to be ancient. However, the ship was intact and its armory stocked with old but effective pre-resolution weapons.” X7 held up the mortar he had taken and then gestured to the dual-hand cannons each of the E2s was holding.
Odessa looked from X7 to the weaponry. “There were hundreds of ships, but we can’t reconnect to the Thorik’s hub now to find them.”
Logan responded, “X7 localstored the location of all of the ships built without a fabric connection. Pre-ether.” He glanced from Odessa to X7.
“There are twelve, ma’am,” X7 said. “I suspect all are in the same usable condition as the one we investigated. I have their coordinates.”
The luminary was setting. Long rays from it were visible against the flat brown and yellow landscape. The wind was blowing at a good clip, and there was enough dirt and dust in the air for the luminary’s rays to be visible all the way from the cloudless sky to where they touched the ground. It would be dark within micro cycles.
“It is going to be a long uncomfortable night,” Logan said. “Odessa and I are going to need to sleep some. I believe we are safe here, but this location is exposed to the elements, and there is no defensible position.”
They all surveyed the area. In their flight, they had simply headed away as fast as they could. It was not a strategic retreat.
Odessa looked at Logan. “Let's send the E2s out to scout for a place we can hole up. Not just for tonight but for the next couple of luminary cycles if we need to.”
Logan nodded to X7, who gave the order. The E2s shot out in three directions.
“Keep them low and under the sound barrier X7,” Logan said to him.
X7 nodded in the affirmative, getting used to the audio and physical communication system as the only available one from his normal outloads. He could still go peer-to-peer with the E2s and with E7 as needed.
