A. I. Uprising (Valyien Book 4) Page 10

  “Sensors.” Irie couldn’t resist activating one of the Mercury’s rear cameras to see the result of their actions.

  Ponos’s calculations had paid off. The silver Dyson ring had already vanished around the other side of the habitat, but its other half was already flashing into view, and even without experience, it was clear to the engineer’s eyes that something was off. It was moving slower than before, and she could see that it wasn’t the smooth line or perfectly-machined metal that it had been before. Instead, it was out of shape, and she watched as there was a sudden sheet of white fire behind it as it scraped along the top of the crystal-glass dome.

  “Hells!” the engineer shouted. “I didn’t want it to break the habitat!” Had Ponos lied to her? Did Ponos even care if hundreds of thousands of people died?

  But this edge of the Dyson ring flashed over the side just as it had done before, and the crystal-glass sphere of the habitat remained uncracked. Which was far better than what you could say for the contents of the sphere habitat, as the gravity of Wlewyn started to behave very strangely indeed.

  All-Systems Warning! Localized Gravitational Anomalies Reported! The Mercury’s newsfeed blared. Irie didn’t have time to zero in on the surface of the habitat, but she imagined that right now, there would be drones falling out of the sky, as well as people rising into it. Computer systems would be glitching, while radio and data waves would be cutting out as the gravitational pulses created by the external Dyson ring acted erratically.

  How many people have I doomed? Irie thought, biting her lip as she completed the next stage of the plan, arriving at the underside of the habitat to a different world entirely.

  The downside of Welwyn was like the reverse of the bright, scenic hills and river valleys of Welwyn’s “topside.” Irie saw a landscape (oddly above her, as she realized that it was mounted to form the floor of Welwyn’s topside habitat) that was industrial and inhuman. There were vast highways and rivers of pipe-work, their sides discolored and stained by whatever reclamation processes and chemicals they used. Next to these sat corrugated grids of concrete or metal buildings, some domed like power stations, others square and with gantry-style bridges spanning between them. The lights looked yellow and gridded in the distance. She saw the turning blades of vast rotors and turbines, and not one green thing in sight.

  There was also their destination, a transport hub that looked like a spike of a tower that swept through the crystal-glass outer dome into the habitat itself. It made the entirety of Welwyn look like a rounded sweet on a stick.

  That spike, Irie knew, was also the major transport hub for trade and industry. Ponos had said that, if we had performed these actions right, then there would be a 38% chance that the transport hub would be in full evacuation procedures, she recalled, angling the Mercury straight towards the tower needle and increasing the burn to the boosters. As she drew closer, she could see the effects of the Dyson ring’s twisted and malformed trajectory. The “sky” of the industrial landscape was now starting to fill with speckles of black and ochre detritus, like dirt—only it wasn’t just dirt. They were fountains of materials from the downside that were suddenly thrown from their locations by the regional variations in local gravity. She spotted geysers of pipes and tubes and even stranger mechanical implements, erupting all across the city.

  “And somewhere in that mess is the captain,” Irie had a brief moment to think, just as the Mercury’s guidance computers blared.

  Warning! Incoming Vessel! Multiple Incoming Vessels!

  Instinctively, the woman flinched, expecting them to be the approach of Welwyn’s mercenary-Armcore attack fighters. That was the only sort of incoming hazard that the Mercury regularly had on their sensors, apart from the odd asteroid.

  But when she looked out of the cockpit windows, she saw instead that she was looking at a fast-expanding cloud of actual tankers, tugs, and haulage boats—each one obeying the internal evacuation order that their actions had activated.

  “Yes!” Irie shouted as she pulled on the ship’s wheel to avoid the first, and then had to throw them violently to the other side to avoid the incoming next. Ponos had been right, the transport hub gateways had been opened, and the energy fields lightened to allow free passage out of the habitat.

  Which also means that there is free passage in, as well. She grinned. Only it wasn’t unimpeded.

  The Mercury dodged and darted between the oncoming lights of first one tanker and then another as they tried to navigate the river of fleeing traders. Irie’s earlier enthusiasm, and even her surprise and her fear at all of the recent events, evaporated into a terrified one-pointed concentration as she dodged first one way and then another, only to be thrown almost headlong into the flight of a smaller clipper vessel with solar sails extended on three sides.

  “Argggh!” Irie shouted as she hung onto the ship’s wheel, just managing to scrape and tear one of the solar sails from the clipper and scoring a deep scratch along the underside of the Mercury thanks to the sail’s supports.

  Irie knew that she was nowhere near the pilot that Eliard was. She had seen their pirate captain do incredible things with this bird, flying through asteroid fields that no one should be able to fly through. Irie was only a passing good flier, but she had one of the most maneuverable boats that she had ever had the privilege of working on. The Mercury Blade turned and swerved and angled through the tight gaps, responding to every one of Irie’s suggestions.

  However, even the great abilities of the Mercury Blade ex-racing yacht and the passable skills of Irie Hanson the engineer and mechanic were not enough to allow them to escape completely unscathed.

  Warning! Impact Starboard Side. Damage Analysis: Outer Hull compromised. Outer Hull Section 4a integrity estimated at 58%

  Warning! Impact Port Thruster. Damage Analysis: Port-rear thruster suffered catastrophic damage. No contact with component. 15% deviation in piloting calculations…

  As far as Irie guessed, that was the computer’s polite way of saying that she had managed to tear one of the rear port thrusters directly from its housing as they had bounced along the belly of an escaping carrier. She was only thankful that, for one, the captain wasn’t here to be able to see how she was handling his boat, and secondly that Val’s twin meson railguns underneath hadn’t suffered a similar fate, as then the Duergar would be incandescently angry.

  Not that I know if I am ever going to see the captain again, she considered as she narrowly avoided another cargo container, and finally pulled clear of the press. Ahead of her were the gates of the transport spike, glittering fields of energy shaking and rippling as they dispatched the fretful ships.

  Irie saw a clear run, and she went for it. The Mercury zipped into one of the open corners of the field, and was inside.

  13

  Interlude IV: The Message

  Even operating on all-black channels and protocols, the vast shape of the Endurance was hard to miss when it jumped into the system surrounding Armcore Prime. It was hard to miss, as its shape was that of a large, tubular cruiser, but that didn’t mean that it was the largest vessel in these parts.

  Armcore Prime was a designation rather than a name. No world existed here, no habitat, but in this region of space that was kept carefully scrubbed from all of the official star maps, there was the largest collection of military vessels in the entire Imperial Coalition. It was here, in this system, that the military contractors of Armcore had built their hub: a metal sphere of interlocking octagonal plates, the size of a small planetoid. Extending outside of it was another open sphere, but this time made of distant satellites, which would operate an intense energy field at all times.

  That was, until recently.

  “I’d heard that something had happened, but…” The section manager was looking at her unofficial and undesignated home in barely-controlled horror. In the eight cardinal directions around Armcore, there should have been parked the various stationary fleets, from and to which would be ferried soldiers, sai
lors, officers, and equipment. Armcore Prime was also the re-loading and re-equipping hub of the Armcore vessels before they were shipped off to active service or sold to the various Imperial houses.

  What the section manager saw right now, however, was that these stationary ‘yards’ of different vessels—usually grouped into size or battle group—were disparate and only partially in existence. An awful lot weren’t here, and she had never seen Armcore Prime with such a scant level of protection. What was worse, there appeared to be some sort of major reconstruction work at play here on the outer defense grid and the metal planetoid of Prime itself. Her eyes tracked the busy thruster burns of small repair drones as they swarmed over Prime like worker bees, as well as the ‘stars’ of metal that were being towed into place in the outer grid. It was a mess, and it made Armcore Prime look weak, defenseless almost.

  “Were we attacked?” she asked of no one in particular. Her crew in front of her wouldn’t know, as they had been with her studying the Alpha-vessel. The section manager reached for the communications switch, just as a black-gloved hand firmly flicked it off and she looked up to see the Specialist Merik standing at her side, keeping his finger on the communications switch of her control screen.

  I wish he wouldn’t creep up on me like that!

  “It depends on who you ask,” Merik stated. “I would advise that you make no mention to any staff or over any channels of our…guest.” The section manager saw the flicker of uncertainty in the specialist’s eyes. So, he is scared of something, at least. Something to do with that Captain Farlowe. But what?

  “Is this about that electronic virus you keep threatening me about?” the section manager asked impassively. She knew that it wasn’t, from the way he seemed urgent to stop her from talking to Armcore Prime—but not from communicating with Prime. After all, the Endurance had already sent any number of coded messages back to Prime, just as they had already sent a lot of telemetry readings to and from the Armcore navigational satellites—all a necessary part of jumping into a busy little system and requesting docking access.

  But Specialist Merik stopped me from talking about the mission, personally. Why? And, she realized, the man still had not answered her earlier question.

  “Where we attacked, then? Is that what caused all of this damage?” She knew that there was no way that this could have been an asteroid strike, as Armcore was surrounded with some of the best sensors in the universe and acted to eradicate any projected, calculated, or rogue asteroids or meteors light-years before they would even become a problem.

  “Official records state that it was accident,” Specialist Merik stated evenly. “A gas tanker suffered a catastrophic thruster malfunction, neatly catapulting it into the security grid.” He then added in a slightly lower tone, “That is the result of the investigation that Ponos conducted.”

  “Well, Ponos isn’t going to get it wrong, is he?” the section manager scoffed. Everyone knew that the resident machine intelligence of Armcore was one of the most exacting and particular artificial intelligences of all time. It was designed to strategize how best to kill people, after all—and how to make Armcore great.

  “No. Ponos never makes mistakes,” the Specialist said with only the barest sigh, turning back to the overhead screens. “All the same, I have my orders to escort Farlowe to the CEO himself, and for there to be no unnecessary contact between Farlowe and any other Armcore system or personnel.”

  “Does that include me and my crew?” the section manager asked dryly.

  “Of course.” The specialist didn’t skip a beat. “But, sadly for the case of subterfuge, the Endurance and thus the commanding officer were necessary for the retrieval and transport. So I have told you everything that I can about everything that I am able to.”

  Able to or willing to? the Section manager thought. There is, after all, a lot of difference between the two.

  “We will be docking shortly.” Specialist Merik pointed to one of the smaller fleet of service drones that was even now flying towards them as the Endurance slowed to a stop. The drones attached themselves to the various key portholes scattered all over the surface of the sleek vessel, and into them were allowed to disembark such crewmembers who had been given permission.

  Which was only one, technically: Specialist Merik.

  The section manager accompanied him however, partly to make sure that she saw him leave her boat, she told herself, but also because she was still intrigued to study this strange Captain Farlowe. She waited in the viewing corridor, on another side of thickened black crystal-glass, as Specialist Merik walked the corridor to the distant bulkhead, to step through to the other side and the waiting drone transporter. Then after a moment, Captain Farlowe followed.

  This was all highly irregular for a suspected spy and saboteur, she thought. He had no guards with him, nor weapons trained on him. He walked calmly and steadily as if this was his choice and no one else’s, and when he got to the place in the glass directly opposite the section manager, he paused, turned to look straight at her through the one-way mirror, and nodded as if to thank her for her hospitality.

  He gives me the creeps, the woman thought as she returned the nod, and Captain Farlowe continued down the passageway and followed Specialist Merik into the drone transport. There was the slightest shudder, and she knew that they had finally disengaged from the Endurance and she was rid of the pair of them.

  What was that all about? The section manager wasted no time in finding out. She made her way straight from the viewing corridor through the narrow and secretive corridors of the Endurance to the isolated interrogation room where Captain Farlowe had been held. “Activate Computer,” she called, and there was a hum as the lights flared once, twice, and then a chime from her wrist computer. “Good to have you back,” she said to the Endurance mainframe. It was not a machine intelligence at all, but had been programmed with ergonomic responses to its human operators.

  “Give me a full scan and analysis of this area,” she called, holding her wrist out as she conducted a visual inspection of the area. Not that she expected to find much here. From all accounts, the captain had done little more than just sit there, eerily looking up whenever someone came into the viewing room on the other side of the glass. Suspiciously, and maybe with a touch of paranoia, she glanced at the black glass and could see nothing on the other side. How had he done it? She made a mental note that she must remember to get Biological Division involved. She half-expected to even see Specialist Merik somehow miraculously super-imposed on the other side of the glass. He was a creepy drekker, she thought, even for an intelligence operative. Almost idly, she wondered at his story. Had he trained as she had—rising through both basic and military training before showing an aptitude for…quiet work?

  The woman brushed aside the concerns. She would never know, not fully. That was how Senior Tomas liked to keep things, after all. He liked to compartmentalize all of the various divisions within his father’s company so that no one ever knew more than their mission parameters.

  Given her role, the section manager understood the fears and necessity of this, but sometimes, on missions approaching the weirdness of this one, she could have wept with frustration for some more inter-departmental access.

  Still, this was where she was, and she knew that the Endurance was ideally equipped with its own miniature departments designed to cope with any situation. She had “quiet work” scouts and operatives that she could send in to war-torn areas. She had her biological department, experts on analyzing and concocting whole new areas, her computer scientists, industrial engineers, and even a small team of earth scientists. The Endurance was designed to be capable of self-sufficiency.

  The room that the captain had stayed in was blank, just as it was intended to be. A metal desk molded into the metal floor, a small form-plastic chair, the window, and the door that she had swept through. That was it.

  Analysis Results Complete! Her wrist computer chimed with the voice of the Endurance mainfram
e.

  The section manager scanned through the list of the ship’s scans, ignoring all of the ones that read ‘normal’ and instead concentrated on any that appeared to deviate from the carefully-managed interior systems of the war cruiser.

  Electro-Magnetic Analysis: Enhanced ion charge, up approx. 23%

  Biological Analysis: Low carbon-dioxide apparent, down approx. 50%

  Those two alone appeared to be odd. Did the strange captain not breathe anymore? And how could his presumably human body create an ion charge? But it was none of these results that made her truly concerned. That came from the thermal analysis and spatial-survey scans, which she knew were a continuous sweep of the room by cameras able to detect tiny variations in heat and airflow.

  A snapshot was shown on her screen of the glass mirror, and it didn’t make sense. Two lines of apparent writing, perfectly formed, but all jumbled up. They exhibited just a slight variation in heat signature, as if they had been burned onto the glass.

  Impossible. And yet, that is what I am looking at. The section manager lifted her head to regard the mirror, only to see that it appeared blank and un-smudged to the naked eye.

  “Is it a code? And if so, who was it delivered to?” she asked the room out loud.

  Can You Clarify Your Question, Ma’am? the Endurance mainframe on her wrist chimed. She ignored it. There could only be one person that any strange message be sent to, wasn’t there? And that person was now accompanying the Captain Farlowe on the drone transporter straight to the heart of Armcore Prime. Specialist Merik.

  She looked at the jumbled letters again, imagining the way that Farlowe must have written the on the glass, for the specialist to read. “Oh!” The realization hit her at once, and she flipped the image into hologram mode and reversed it. The words had been written on the glass for the viewer, and she could now see two sentences that Farlowe must have written backwards in his own strange eyes.