Hallowed Nebula

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “Unfortunately, Flight Lieutenant, you are correct,” EVE said. “The reboot alone will take approximately five minutes to complete. Our estimated time of impact is in two minutes. We will not have control of the Kepler by then.”

  The ethereal refineries. Foster didn’t know a whole lot about them, other than Radiance drilled temporary rifts into aether space to extract dark energy, and then refine it as an energy source for their nation. The refineries were built near ethereal fissures in space, and according to the holo screen EVE created, the Kepler was about to fly directly into it.

  She lost track of how long her body had been under never-ending stress, drenched with terror induced sweat.

  “Odelea,” Foster said over the comm line. “You’re the expert on these refineries, what happens if we fall into the fissure?”

  “I don’t know,” Odelea’s voice replied. “We sent probes in, and they ceased operating. We never attempted sending ships in.”

  At thirty seconds to impact, Foster faced away from the holo screen displaying external camera footage of the small glowing rift in space with an orbiting space station next to it, the refinery.

  “All hands,” Foster said as the Johannes Kepler approached ethereal fissure. “Brace for—”

  A flash of light prevented Foster from finishing. Traveling at full FTL speeds, the Johannes Kepler plugged into the ethereal fissure and ceased to exist.

  28 Rivera

  Central Foyer

  Spaceport, Eiri Orbit, Luminous System

  November 2, 2118, 11:46 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Rivera hated violence more than Hashmedai hated sunlight. Her earliest memories were full of violence, back when Imperial forces invaded Earth and made a push into the Philippines, her home country, when Earth was still split into nations.

  As much as she tried to scrub her mind of it, she did try violence once. During the Imperial invasion, her family insisted she kept a pistol on her for protection. One day, while searching for supplies, a lone and limping Hashmedai approached her muttering words, at the time, she couldn’t understand. She shot them dead.

  Upon closer inspection the Hashmedai woman she killed wasn’t a fighter, she was an Imperial engineer that survived when a small Imperial corvette had crashed. The Hashmedai woman was unarmed and worked to maintain a ship, she posed no threat to her. Turns out the words the Hashmedai woman was muttering was the Hashmedai word for ‘water.’ The woman Rivera shot was begging for water.

  Rivera wouldn’t be surprised if the pistol she used was still sitting at the bottom of the lake she threw it in. The lake the Hashmedai woman was crawling to.

  After that, Rivera spent countless nights begging her family and friends not to take up arms against the Hashmedai. Countless nights begging captured Hashmedai warriors who were taken by disorganized human fighters not to be violent if she secretly let them escape.

  The war was tit for tat in her eyes. The Empire attacked Earth because of the assassination of an heir to the Imperial throne, which at the time was believed to be a result of humans. As for humanity? They fought back because they were unenlightened. Someone hits you, you hit them back. If they hit you again in response, then you do the same.

  Radiance didn’t help. They told Earth that the Hashmedai were evil, not because it was true, but because Radiance was in the middle of a genocidal war with the Empire and was open to the idea of another species wanting to wipe them out.

  There weren’t enough people in the young eyes of Rivera wanting to throw down their weapons, say sorry and walk away, offering peace to end the killing on both sides. Thousands of years of genocide in the name of religion made Radiance want to encourage Earth to hate the Empire on the same level they did. Thousands of years of being on the receiving end of genocide filled the hearts of the Hashmedai with hate and rage, making them lash out at everyone. Thousands of years of humans killing humans made them ready to leap into a fight the second aggression was shown.

  “Let’s go!”

  Penelope yanked on Rivera’s shoulder, pulling her out from the memories of her past at the same time. When Rivera got to her feet and stood with Penelope, the gunmen that stood ready to attack lay dead in a pool of blood. Her time-traveling mind didn’t notice the Maraschino hacker use the rifle to take the gunmen down, or the elaborate hacks she used to force the computer in their rifles to switch on its safety, right as they went to pull the trigger.

  The duo continued to flee from the chaos around them, past wounded Radiance civilians and rangers. They left the central areas, running through the halls that would eventually take them to the airlock the Kepler was supposed to be docked at. A vicious gun battle prompted them to stop and take cover in a connecting hallway. The passageway to the Kepler was blocked with dozens of cloaked men and women fighting a lone target.

  Fear told the two that the Kepler wasn’t an option. They ran through a different set of connecting halls, seeking another way off the spaceport. Every airlock they found either had no connecting ship, or armed men trying to get inside the ship still docked at it. They needed to find a ship still docked but free of attackers. The spaceport’s ops station would hold the location of that in their computers.

  Ops was long abandoned when the two arrived, it made Penelope lower her rifle and rip off the wig she had on. Her natural long silver Hashmedai hair was free. It shined nicely when the bright lights above hit it. The shades covering her red eyes kept them protected.

  “Now what?” Rivera asked.

  Penelope snapped her fingers. Two holo screens appeared full of computer code that allowed her to hack into the computer station she stood at. “Help me find a ship that hasn’t left yet,” Penelope said after she gained access.

  Four computer screens flashed on, Rivera ran to one of them interacting with its functions. “Even if we find one, I doubt they’ll let us board it.”

  “Well if you pick up a gun, and we both ask real nice, maybe.”

  The windows peering out into space and the emerald orb of Eiri flashed rapidly with light. The two saw swarms of drones move away from the spaceport, discharging a barrage of rounds at a target close by.

  “Oh, bugger,” Penelope said, checking her hacked computer. “Someone activated the defense drones.”

  Rivera brought up a three-dimensional holographic map of the station, it made a full rotation every ten seconds. Its rotating appearance led her to the location of the drone’s target. She made a worrying cringe.

  “It’s the Kepler,” she said, holding back the emotions that wanted to escape from her lips. “They’re still docked. If they can’t break free . . .”

  “They’re dead, you can’t use shields when docked,” Penelope said. “And those gunmen racing toward its airlock can’t be good either . . .”

  Rivera strode to another computer, typing away furiously, searching for the commands to release the Kepler. “Help me find the release command!”

  “That won’t save the Kepler,” Penelope said, pointing at her screen. “Someone here manually instructed the drones to attack the Kepler. We stop the signal, we save the Kepler.”

  “And where are those people controlling the drones?” Rivera continued searching the computer’s contents. “Faster for us to get the Kepler free, we’re in the right place to do it!”

  “And where would they go?” Penelope said. “The drones will chase, and they’re too close for a safe FTL jump.”

  “Still better than looking for people in a location we don’t even know.”

  The hacker behind Rivera hissed like the Hashmedai she was. She pushed a holo screen to Rivera. It showed a cutaway section of the station with a number of flashing red dots, most of them traveling to the bottom layer of the spaceport.

  “Those red dots are them,” Penelope said. “That explains why we didn’t find many coming up here. They were making their way down there to control the drones and prevent the rangers from taking control back. Help me take them out, if I can get close to the drone’s
primary computer, I could issue abort codes and save the Kepler.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we find a ship fast before they call their friends.” Penelope rearmed herself with the rifle, making her way to an elevator. “Of course, if you don’t join me and pick up a bloody gun, we can’t save anyone.”

  Penelope’s plan, while viable with her hacking powers, still would see a number of hostiles get killed just to get down to the drone control room, with Rivera being forced to participate in that. And then fleeing it? It would see more violence as they made their way to a ship to escape.

  There had to be another way, one that wouldn’t force Rivera to fight. If Penelope was going to kill them all, fine, but Rivera would have no part in pulling any triggers. And judging by the number of hostiles, Penelope wasn’t going to last long without support.

  “There has to be another way,” Rivera said.

  “You have a better plan?”

  “Yes! Release the Kepler first, and then we disable the drones with support from the rangers.”

  “That’s not a plan. That’s a desire to get them killed with the time wasted! Both you and I know the rangers won’t follow us.”

  She waved Penelope’s words off. The release command for the Kepler was here somewhere. She just had to find it, and quick. After that, they could come up with another plan to deal with the drones. There were still lots of rangers aboard. If they could somehow get them to trust the Hashmedai hacker and her, they could do this. And Rivera wouldn’t have to fight.

  “Rivera, are you listening to me at all?

  She wasn’t. Rivera was focused on her virtual vision, and it displayed her HNI’s diagnostic window using the remote HNI help tools from the computer she was on. Penelope’s hack into her HNI was brief and it showed. Penelope found a means to shut it off, thus keeping Sarpanit silent.

  Rivera hesitated while she watched a screen appear over her sight. It asked her to confirm if she wanted to reboot her HNI and undo Penelope’s lockdown of it. She selected the confirm button.

  When it rebooted, Sarpanit made her presence felt.

  “Ugh,” she heard Sarpanit growl in her head.

  “Listen to me,” Rivera said to Sarpanit. “Your followers are about to kill us, and possibly destroy our means to get off the spaceport.”

  “Lies.”

  She linked her HNI into the projection Penelope gave Rivera, showing the location of the cultists having taken control of the drone control room. “Don’t believe me? Look at this. They’re using the spaceport’s drones to attack the Kepler.”

  “Let them.”

  “That ship is the fastest in the galaxy,” Rivera explained. “You want to stop the Draconians from reaching the nebula, right? That’s our fastest means there, period. If it’s gone, you run the risk of them getting there before us. We need to get on that ship, and it needs to be in one piece. So, please use your computing, and help me find the lockout for it so they can break free before the drones destroy it.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Do something,” Rivera said out loud. “Anything!”

  “Who are you talking to?” Penelope said, and moved to Rivera having realized something was up.

  Rivera kept her face low, buried in the various floating computer screens ahead of her, hoping Penelope wouldn’t catch on. Penelope had the power to hack into almost anything, including her HNI. Penelope had the power to end her plan.

  “Oh! For fuck sakes!” Penelope yelled.

  She felt her HNI lag, Penelope had hacked it, and no doubt realized the secret exchange Rivera and the AI Goddess within it were having.

  “Quickly,” Rivera softly said to Sarpanit. “Quickly, before she locks out my HNI again.”

  A screen instantly flashed with a progress bar that moved from left to right in four seconds. A notification appeared on the screen informing Rivera that the docking clamps to the Kepler had been removed. She took the time to make a quick transmission now that her HNI was active again informing Odelea of the details and not to come back for them, at least, not yet.

  Rivera had grabbed Penelope at that point. Sarpanit took total control of Rivera’s bodily functions, forcing her to wrap her hands around the Hashmedai girl’s neck, and then squeeze hard.

  “Now . . .” Sarpanit said, forcing Rivera’s gaze to look down at Penelope. “Kill her.”

  Rivera was using violence. But it wasn’t her choice to do so. She screamed internally, watching helplessly as Penelope fell to her knees, gasping for the air Sarpanit didn’t want her to have. She begged for Sarpanit to stop making her do it. It ignored her.

  A holo screen appeared before the two, it was Penelope’s doing. On the screen, an animated cherry danced and gave Rivera two middle fingers.

  Rivera’s HNI started to go haywire.

  She screamed, holding her head while the feeling of millions of flaming swords poked her brain. Rivera blacked out before Penelope’s feet.

  Space Ferry

  Approaching Interstellar Space, Luminous System

  November 2, 2118, 17:18 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Rivera’s eyes opened. She saw white and polished floors, walls, and ceilings. Her hair waved about as if she were underwater, she was floating. There was no weight to her body that had been drifting about in the room for hours. How many hours she was out, she didn’t know, her HNI was offline and her wrist terminal was packed away in her bag that floated below her.

  She was on a ship, that much she could tell, and it wasn’t because of the weightlessness. It was also the hum of the engines not far from her, the air recyclers groaning, and the stars of space moving from a nearby window. When she felt confident enough to move without her head aching, she flipped her body about to grab her bag, and then brushed her wild floating hair away from her face.

  “Morning,” Penelope called out to her. Turning around she saw Penelope sit at the forward helm control. “Feeling better?”

  Rivera rubbed her forehead. “Still hurts a bit. You?”

  “Peachy.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry about—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it, love. I know that AI possessed you when it took control. She’s still in there if that’s what you’re worried about. Don’t worry though; I coded a harder lockout in your HNI. You won’t be able to access it unless I say so.”

  “You’re holding my HNI hostage now?”

  “Pretty sure your HNI was holding you hostage, love.”

  Penelope drifted to Rivera, offering her a silver thermos reflecting the bright ceiling lights from above. “Tea?” Rivera took it pulling its wide straw into her dry mouth. She didn’t care that it was a warm beverage. “It was the only tea I could find from Earth in the storage room. Earl Grey.”

  Rivera took a sip of tea and pushed it away from her lips when it scorched the inside of her mouth. “It’s hot!”

  The two drifted to the forward helm. Rivera had to back away when Penelope’s floating locks of silver hair tickled her nose. “I dragged you aboard after you blacked out from my hack,” Penelope said, handing her a holo screen map of the galaxy. “We’re on a course to Takarius, the Javnis homeworld.”

  Rivera looked away from the galaxy map hologram and back at the hacker turned pilot, though, she probably hacked the computers to follow her commands. “Why?” she asked her.

  “While you were out, I took the liberty to poke around inside your HNI,” Penelope said. “You should have told me you had the memories of Marduk’s wife fused with the AI of an old EVE construct.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “No need to share it with me. We’ve been en route for a few hours now. Had plenty of time to view the log files, well, the ones that weren’t locked out.”

  “You know what Sarpanit knows, then?”

  It was hopeful news. Sarpanit not only had encrypted data about Tiamat and the Draconians found at Sirius but knew what happened to the Carl Sagan during its disappearance. If Penelope was the master hacke
r Rivera hoped, maybe, just maybe she’d be the one to shed light on the sixty-eight-year-old mystery.

  “Only what you know,” Penelope revealed, much to Rivera’s dismay. “As I said, many files were locked. I’m guessing those were from the Carl Sagan’s purged databanks. In time, I could crack the encryption, but that will require your HNI to be active and the AI in it. Too much of a risk right now. If you can get it to cooperate, however . . .”

  Rivera took another sip of the tea, and then floated into a seat next to Penelope. She looked at the stars moving by via the windshield. “So much for reaching the Kepler.”

  “Didn’t have a choice, Eiri’s orbit was turning into a warzone. Not as bad as when the dragons arrived, but . . . there were a lot of bodies adrift in space by the time we made it out. Those Marduk cultists are maniacs, which is why I opted to leave the system right away.”

  “Why didn’t you take us back to the wormhole?”

  Penelope cupped her hand, and a projection popped into existence floating above it. “Managed to decrypt this file.” Rivera looked at the projection closely. It was a map of a group of islands on some planet. “It’s a region on the Javnis homeworld. According to this, there’s something buried in an undersea valley.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t know, the Javnis was the second race to join the Union, all Lyonria structures on their world had long been explored and documented. Clearly, something was missed. Sarpanit was studying this data closely after your run-in with the monolith under Bagdad.”

  Rivera stopped herself from asking how she knew of that. Penelope had total access to her HNI and that included her recent memories it recorded. It made her wonder how many lies Sarpanit had told her after that encounter. Rivera reacting to the monolith, the location of the nebula, and now ruins on the Javnis homeworld. Sarpanit stored secrets in her.

  “Bunch of ancient structures were found on Earth recently,” Rivera said. “They were undiscovered until the dragon attacks. I wonder if these ruins on the Javnis world are the same.”