by A. K. DuBoff
“Seven will be within the next half-hour. It’s just that north polar one that got pushed back.”
“And what about Valta?”
“Half are complete, and I think the others will also be done in about two hours, as well.” Her brow knitted. “Why? I thought we had another two days before the ship gets here?”
“You do. And again, it should be disabled well before it ever reaches you. I wanted to make sure everything was proceeding according to plan.”
She shrugged. “About as close as anything ever does around here.”
“Good, thank you for the update. We’ll be in touch soon.”
As soon as the call was terminated, he leaned back in the chair and massaged the bridge of his nose. Will enough of the new shield be active in time?
He returned to the bridge, where Jason was waiting with a quizzical look.
“Find out what you needed to know?” he asked.
“Yes and no,” Kaen replied. “What do you know about planetary shields?”
“They… shield planets,” the Agent replied in a tone that sounded more like a question than a statement.
“I have a specific question, if you have a specialist on board.”
“Uther in engineering, sir,” Rianne chimed in. “We were in the same training cohort. He knows his stuff.”
“Thank you. Please open a comm channel to him,” Kaen requested.
“Open,” the comm tech acknowledged.
“Uther, what would it take to adjust the opacity of a planetary shield?” Kaen asked.
A slight smile touched the corners of Jason’s lips as he caught onto the plan.
“Not much, with our current models,” the engineer replied over the comm. “They’re configured to be able to account for star color spectrum so we can have green vegetation on worlds that otherwise wouldn’t support it.”
“How many of the nine generators need to be active to sustain a shield?”
“Depends on what you need it to do. For protection, all of them give the best defense. You could probably get away with five of the nine, if it’s only a matter of having a field up—to block some minor debris or tint the color.”
“Could you make it so people on the surface wouldn’t be able to see the sky?”
“Sure, with a little tweaking,” the engineer confirmed.
“Good. I have a project for you.”
— — —
Ellen frowned at her computer screen. “Strange.”
“What is it?” Trisha asked, looking up from the tablet she’d been working on in Ellen’s office.
For the past half-hour, they had been going over the final checklist items for the shield installations. All but the north polar station upgrades were complete, and Ellen was ready to call it a night. However, the latest message from the Guard threatened to prolong her already very long day.
“I just got a notice that they’re about to push a new software packet out to the shield system,” Ellen said. “It says it’s some sort of test protocol. We might experience some ‘visual disturbance’.”
“What does that mean?” Trisha scrunched up her nose.
“Beats me.” Ellen brushed her fingertips along her hairline. “I thought we were almost finished.”
“Sounds like there’s nothing for us to do with this, though. We can sit back and let the Empire do their thing.”
Ellen barked a laugh. “If only it was that simple! ‘Visual disturbance’ means people are going to notice. They’ll start asking questions about what’s causing it, then we’ll need to explain that we took tech from the Empire, and it’ll be a landslide from there.”
Trisha slumped. “Oh, I didn’t think about that part.”
“I didn’t spend too long in public relations, but what little exposure I did have demonstrated how quickly people will latch onto even the most minor issue. If it’s something bigger, we’ll have a major incident on our hands.”
“Trading one crisis for another.” Trisha sighed.
“Welcome to politics.”
“We should send out some preemptive alert,” Trisha suggested. “If we tell them that we made some shield upgrades, and will be testing out some things, maybe no one will question it if something unusual happens.”
“Now you’re thinking like a politician,” Ellen replied with a smile. “Why don’t you draft the communication, and I can review it to add a little extra spin in our favor?”
“Perfect. I’ll have you something shortly.”
As soon as the other woman was gone, Ellen reread the note from the Guard. So, there was an ulterior motive with that equipment installation, after all.
A looming physical threat may be one reality, but she suspected that this ‘visual disturbance’ was an effort to hide something they didn’t want citizens to see. Whatever they were covering up, now that the equipment was installed, she had no choice but to trust them.
CHAPTER 17
Kira eyed yet another dark passageway looming before her on the Trol ship.
Tensions had been running high as Kira raced through the alien vessel. Just when she felt like they were making progress, she’d realize that they’d gone in a huge circle.
The ship was changing around them. She didn’t know when it happened, but one minute a passage would be open to her, and the next it would be gone. While she kept trying to witness it happening to see if there might be a way to stop it, she had yet to be looking in the right place at the right time.
A small blessing, at least, was that the swarm of particles that had been following her when she first entered had finally dissipated. However, a dozen or so specs were still following her movements, perhaps to keep an eye on her. As long as they stayed away from her face, she could ignore them.
her AI replied,
That’s what I’m trying to do, but these fokers have other plans, she thought to herself.
The fact that even Jasmine was getting the AI-equivalent of anxious had Kira on edge. The mission was supposed to be straightforward: get in, install the tech, and get out. Now she couldn’t even chart a path to her destination. She wasn’t sure what was worse… that she didn’t know the way in, or that she had no idea how to get back out.
The mission comes first.
It was her mantra, and it was even more critical with the fate of her home system on the line—and every system the Trols may visit thereafter. Failure wasn’t an option.
Kira halted.
A hum filled Kira’s mind as Jasmine’s attention was drawn away from cancelling the environmental effects of the Trol ship. The whispers she’d first heard on their approach in the shuttle beckoned at the edge of her consciousness.
Kira’s heart dropped.
She ran through the mouth of the dark passage, the pool of illumination cast from the light on her suit dancing across the rippled surface. The oppressive quiet, aside from her own footfalls, and the rock-like material all around her gave the impression of being underground in a cave, rather than on a spaceship. Then again, when the ship was the size of a planet, maybe that distinction was meaningless.
The passage opened into a fifteen-meter-diameter cavern with an overhead twice the height of the previous chambers Kira had been inside. Rather than the two-direction fork she was used to seeing, there were three options in addition to the one she had entered from.
In her ‘keep moving’ efforts, she dashed across the open space, toward the leftmost passage.
The passage narrowed from three meters wide to two after the entry.
Kira stopped short at the lip of a steep ramp.
She skidded down the steep incline along the rippled rock. The frequency generator worked against her; with it keeping the rock from getting any traction on her, she had no friction to slow her down.
By the bottom of the three-story slide, she was going way too fast.
The bottom was in sight. She brought her knees to her chest and pivoted into a horizontal position, tucking her limbs in to roll as soon as she hit the stone floor. She braced for impact.
To her surprise, the slide deposited her on a squishy, fibrous floor similar to the covering on the bottom of the pit where they’d landed the shuttle.
She rose to her feet, unharmed.
She snapped her head around to look behind her. Orange glowing eyes were peering out of the shadows in every direction.
One of the creatures stepped into the pool of light radiating from her suit. Slinking forward on all fours, it was two meters long and stood as high as Kira’s chest at its shoulder. The skin was coarse, mimicking the texture of the stone walls, and its four orange eyes bore a similar glow to Kira’s own when she was in her Robus state. Its wide jaw was curled back into a menacing snarl, exposing ten-centimeter-long fangs.
Jasmine said.
Kira returned the weapon to its holster.
Adrenaline coursed through her, and she gave into her raw emotion. Silvery nanite claws extended from her own fingertips, and her teeth re-shaped into fangs as sharp and deadly as the ones around her. Shimmering, protective scales covered her exposed skin. She was ready for battle.
Kira dove for the lead creature, slashing her claws across its face. They sliced through the creature’s eyes, splattering blood across its rough skin.
The lead creature recoiled from Kira’s assault, snapping its jaws in a blind attempt to grab her hand.
Kira brought her arm around and raked her claws across its throat.
It yelped in momentary pain, then dropped to the ground, dark blood pouring from its wound.
Another snarl called Kira’s attention behind her to her left, and she dove to the side just in time to avoid another creature’s lunge for her.
Kira rolled to her back and skewered the second beast as it completed its charge for her. She hurled it to the side as a third joined the fight. The beast snapped at her, spraying spittle in her face as thick saliva oozed from its jowls.
It yelped with surprise, recoiling enough for Kira to slip out from under it.
She leaped to her feet and slid her claws down the side of its neck to bleed it out before it could attack again.
Two more vaulted toward her at the same time, one for her legs and another for her neck. She instinctually turned sideways, and the action of the assault around her crawled to slow motion.
Moving at the edge of the localized spatial distortion, she was able to twist her legs out of harm’s way, bringing up her right knee in a powerful thrust to knock the bottom creature off-balance so it would fall into the path of the top assailant.
Her time perception returned to its normal flow, and the two creatures collided with a yelp, just as she’d intended. She was about to finish them off while they were dazed, but searing pain radiated from her left calf.
Kira looked down to find that another creature had darted from the shadows to sink its teeth into her through the nanite scales.
I guess I’m not impervious.
She plunged her claws into the base of the creature’s skull, splattering blood across her face. Its jaws opened, and the lifeless form toppled to the side.
The two creatures who’d initially attacked her had regained their bearings and were rounding on her, while the one remaining beast she had yet to engage stalked her from behind.
Kira faked them out—taking one step forward as though to attack—but she slipped into super-speed just as she ducked, pivoting to go for the one behind her. She slid across the floor and drove her fingers into the creature’s chest as it lunged. The carcass continued forward on momentum, offering a shield for Kira. Tim
e perception returned to normal as she twisted back to her feet to face the two creatures charging her.
They leaped over the body without missing a step, their eyes fixed on their prey.
Kira listened to Jasmine without hesitation.
The creatures had already leaped, unable to change direction midair.
Time slowed down for Kira again as they passed overhead. She brought her hands up and plunged her claws into their sternums, opening them up the entire length of their bellies as they passed overhead. Blood and innards spilled over her in a hideous, dark red wave.
The bodies collapsed on the ground behind her.
Cautiously, Kira rose to her feet, wincing as she put weight on her injured leg.
Jasmine replied.
Kira looked down at her wound.
The puncture wounds from the fangs were deep, but the rest of the damage was superficial. With her upgraded med-nano, the injury wouldn’t take long to heal.
She blocked out the carnage around her to assess the layout of the new level. It was a mirror of the chamber she’d been in before the passage leading to the ramp—fifteen meters across, with a total of four passageways, one of which was the ramp.
Kira ran forward as best she could on the injured leg, trying to favor it so it would heal faster.
The middle passage was three meters wide, identical to the other corridors she’d encountered on the strange alien vessel. It extended for nearly one hundred meters before fanning out into a larger cavern with a wave-like rock tower at its center.
Kira asked the AI.
Kira wiped the blood from her hands as best as she could on the outer thighs of her pants, then she reached into her carrying bag to retrieve the signal booster her team had given her.
