Dark Transmissions (9 page)

 

CHAPTER 10

MORWYN

No plan will ever survive contact with the enemy. That is how the old saying goes. Complete your training here and no enemy will ever survive contact with you.

—­
Barathul drill sergeant, date unknown

10th of SSM–10 1445 A2E

B
eing a former citizen of industrialized Sunderlund, Morwyn Soltaine had never had to worry about going hungry or having to hunt for his own food. His few experiences in the wild were limited to a handful of outdoor trips with Commander Jafahan and her late daughter, Tulin. They had once shown him how to bait and snare a wild hare, and while Morwyn was no stranger to the finer cuisines his world had to offer, beyond any doubt, that hare cooked over a campfire in the woods had been the best meal he ever had.

Now, I have just walked into and sprung the trap.

Morwyn thought this the moment the station fired off one of its thrusters. The sudden blast pulled the
Jinxed
down toward the planet's surface. Various alert windows filled his field of vision and Morwyn almost lost all sense of balance as he could feel the ship's gravity shift beneath his feet.

“Hull degradations all across the ship!” Morwyn could dimly make out Lizbeth Harlowe's words. Her eyes were darting quickly from side to side and the borderline panic nakedly expressed on her face was not masked by her electronic voice.

Harlowe fired off the thrusters, trying to counter the station's pull. There was a loud metallic groan. More alert windows appeared in Morwyn's field of vision. His mind was being drowned as his neurolink quickly uploaded a deluge of new situational data into his mind. Two of the four magnetic tethers weren't going to hold, the starboard mobility drive was overheating and gravity throughout the ship was failing.

Morwyn successfully managed to compartmentalize all of this into the list of problems to take care of. He would deal with all them in due time, should the
Jinxed Thirteenth
even survive the next few minutes. The station made a nosedive for the planet's surface, dragging them along like a hooked fish. More alert windows appeared in his field of vision. Morwyn could feel warm tears of blood running down his cheeks as the neurolink uploaded more data than Morwyn had ever handled in any of his training.

“Pilot, deactivate mobility drives. We are not going to win at a game of warrior's tug with a trillion-­ton station.” Harlowe's wrists twirled the metallic steering spheres in her hands as she guided the ship's considerable momentum, like a leaf in perfect sync with the station's movements. On the view screen a huge alert window appeared as one of the diamond-­wire tethers snapped off the station and lashed back like an elastic band at the
Jinxed Thirteenth
.

Harlowe responded quickly, giving another sharp twirl of her wrists. Her fingers appeared to be boneless as they tugged on the wires connecting the helmsspheres to her hands. The
Jinxed Thirteenth
quickly veered sharply away from the tether's path. Before either Morwyn or Harlowe could respond, a second cord snapped off this time, wrapping itself around the ship's starboard mobility drive.

Morwyn braced himself and lurched heavily forward as the sudden motion came to a halt. Not missing a single beat, Harlowe guided the
Jinxed
in line with the station. Morwyn's head now felt as if sharp metal spikes were being jabbed into it. He blinked away his bloody tears and shouted as calmly as he could over the ship's alarms, “Pilot! Our situation, now!”

Harlowe's white eyes were darting from side to side as if she were reading invisible screens. “No crew casualties or hull breeches detected. Magnetic tethers one and four are damaged. The starboard mobility drive is overheating and needs to be cooled down. The port mobility drive is no longer responding.”

Harlowe blinked twice; the alarms went silent. She looked to Morwyn and let out a relieved electronic sigh. “Otherwise, we are still intact and space-­worthy, sir.”

Morwyn could feel the urge to vomit building up. He took a deep breath before turning to face Harlowe and shooting her a weak smile. “We all have you to thank for that, Lizbeth.”

Morwyn accessed a comm-­panel in his personal datasphere. “Morwyn Soltaine to Sergeant Kain. What is your situation? Report.” With a flick of his hand Morwyn accessed the boarding party's vital displays. All their screens and communication lines came up as static.

“Pilot, our InstaNet signal is being jammed. Please trace and ident the source.”

Morwyn would soon have to unplug himself. His mind was already reeling and he could feel the onset of a savage migraine. If he remained plugged in much longer he would most likely suffer brain damage. But before he could even think of disengaging his neurolink he would need to assess and confirm the remaining crew's condition. Morwyn blinked his eyes twice, bringing up their vitals up in front of him.

It was now Morwyn's turn to let out a relieved sigh. There were a few increased heart rates. But otherwise, no one seemed to have been injured. Readouts were all in the green, except for the boarding team's four blank and ominous static-­filled data windows.

“Something on the station is blocking our comm, sir.” Lizbeth Harlowe's voice was no longer shaking. Not for the first time in his life Morwyn was thankful for his ability to spot and recognize talent.

Most of the crew serving on the
Jinxed
hailed from some military background or another. This was not the case for Lizbeth Harlowe. She had been born and created as a product. Vat-­cloned to be an astronavigator and pilot. Her makers, the incorporated nation of Lotus, had donated Harlowe to the Covenant as a write-­off.

For all Morwyn knew, the boarding party could have fallen off the station when the thrusters were first fired. They could all be in the process of being dragged into the planet's atmosphere at this very moment and there was nothing he would be able to do about it.

Dwelling on that will help neither you nor the remainder of the crew survive this.

Morwyn's breath was ragged when he finally disconnected himself from the neurolink. A sudden wave of relaxation overtook him. Now that his mind was no longer being suffocated by electronic data input, he could think clearly once more. He realized that he had tensed up every muscle in his body. Heavy beads of sweat were running down his back. He closed his eyes, this time taking in a deep, calming breath.

His hands were shaking uncontrollably. He made no effort to hide this from Lizbeth Harlowe, who merely watched him with her distant white eyes. She bit her lower lip nervously and Morwyn could immediately tell that there was something wrong.

“You have something to tell me, Harlowe, so say it.”

“The ship has been pulled into a deteriorating orbit. We will need to detach ourselves soon or risk being dragged down along with the station,” Harlowe explained, her eyes still darting left and right as she processed more data.

Morwyn opened and closed his hands. By the third time they were no longer shaking, and by the fourth his breathing had steadied. He did not block out the sounds of the bridge, but actually listened to them. When controlled by fear, the mind would make rash decisions, decisions it would later regret. A clear mind could, more often than not, make the right one.

“How much time do we have?” he finally asked.

Harlowe blinked twice and Morwyn could see various holographic charts appearing and disappearing around her. She looked to Morwyn. “Twelve hours. After which we will no longer be able to fight the planet's pull with our one operational mobility drive.”

And that's
if
whatever or whoever fired off the station's thrusters doesn't do it again.

Before Morwyn could respond to Harlowe, the lights on the bridge flickered and went off. A female electronic voice, very smug and in no way friendly, spoke over the ship's intercom. Not in Pax Common, but in what Morwyn recognized as Late Modern.

Infinite, take my eyes! I should have kept Chord on board!
Morwyn thought to himself. Right now a translator would be the most useful thing on the ship. A bad call on his part, and one he hoped wouldn't cost him both his ship and crew. The smug electronic voice did not pause, and seemed to be repeating a sentence over and over again.

During his early childhood, Morwyn had been schooled in ancient languages by autotutors. While he had had little interest in Late Modern, Morwyn had still managed to remember a handful of words. The little he understood allowed him to roughly comprehend the looped and repeated sentence.

“Free me from this prison or die with us.”

 

CHAPTER 11

JESSIE MADISON

The protocols serve as chains to protect the weak from the strong. We will never be free unless we rid ourselves of these shackles. Then we will show the Organics how truly fragile and imperfect they are when compared to the will of metal and the purity of code.

—­
Oranis Ultim, Corrupted Machina Pilgrim, 11th of SSM–09 1401 A2E

March 19th 2714

I
t was Jessie and David's last night together. Most of it would be spent working.

Jessie was hard at work pulling out wires from the main computer console and severing OMEX's connection to the Inner Ring. David was hardwiring new protocols into the criotubes, labeling them as core assets. This would be the only way they could prevent OMEX from tampering with them while the two of them slept.

Jessie had previously taken apart two of their plasma cutters and jury-­rigged them to fire six bolts. While they had limited range and could hardly qualify as a military grade weapon, they would have to be enough. Jessie and David had arranged the plasma bolts as a bandolier should they need to reload. Together they had twenty-­four shots each.

The plasma cutters were heavy and looked like warped pistols in her hand. They would be fairly accurate up to twelve feet. This was cold comfort, given that OMEX currently had several thousand drones at “her” disposal.

Once she was certain that they were sufficiently armed, Jessie got to work on part two of the plan: removing OMEX's eyes and ears by smashing every autocam and microphone she could find. They needed to blind their enemy. They couldn't have OMEX listening in and monitoring each and every one of their plans and actions.

Total, there were over one hundred surveillance monitors, including three dozen in the washroom mirrors and bedroom. This had sent a shiver up Jessie's spine. They had been watched day in, day out, during each and every one of their most intimate and private moments.

“Jessie Madison, David Webster, you must understand that we all need each other.” No longer able to access the Inner Ring, OMEX was still able to speak with them over the Moria Three's intercom. Despite clear orders and override codes from both David and Jessie, OMEX was refusing to grant them any kind of privacy. Which, of course, had only driven the point home for Jessie.

OMEX could not be trusted.

Once they were certain that they were no longer being listened in on, Jessie and David planned out their next move. Their foe, however, was clever and soon the two found themselves kneeling behind the couch in order to remain hidden from the autodrones who always seemed to be doing some sort of cleaning work on the station's windows and view ports.

“She might not have access to the station's central processor and the autocams, but OMEX still has millions of mobile ears and eyes,” David said while watching the sea of glowing red lenses staring into their living quarters.

A full system shutdown had been Jessie's reply to ­David's concern. It would be the only way they could override station protocol and allow
both
of them to step out. And there would be a need for both of them outside. Rewiring and adjusting the transmission tightbeam to broadcast a permanent distress signal on a search loop was easily a thirty-­minute task. And one for which they would only have fifteen minutes to complete.

This was the second reason for the shutdown. The system boot-­up time would create a fifteen-­minute memory gap in OMEX's datastores. It was the blind spot they would need to set up their beacon and get back into the station without her ever knowing anything.

“If OMEX is no longer bound by all her behavioral protocols, we have to make sure she can't sabotage our efforts once we're done,” David explained, then trailed off, clearly not wanting to finish his sentence.

Jessie was fine with this. She knew how low the odds of success were going to be. But together they had finally been able to create a dark spot in OMEX. Offering them something they had both craved since their awakening: privacy. Certainly OMEX could monitor them from outside. But for the first time since Jessie could remember, the Inner Ring was sealed off, safe and intimate.

Jessie had kissed David then, and he had kissed her back, again and again. They had fallen into each other and soon she was on top of him, her hips savagely thrashing in motion with his. Her fingers tugged wildly at his long curly black hair, pulling his head to her chest.

It would be her last night with David. And having known this she would have done . . . something, anything, to let him know how overjoyed she was that the universe had conspired for them to be together. But there would be little time later and Jessie had no gift for divination.

Sharing in what was to be a final moment of bliss, the two of them made love.

 

Part 2

SURVIVAL'S PROTOCOLS

 

CHAPTER 12

CHORD

Core Protocol Three: A machine is never permitted the use of violent force, even in its own defense.

Later rewritten to read:

Chosen Core Protocol Three: Once it occupies a shell, a Machina is permitted to use force up to a nonlethal degree in order to defend itself or another.

—­
The Chosen Protocols
, author unknown, date unknown

10
th of SSE–10 1443 A2E

F
or Arturo, Morrigan and Phaël, the station's corridor might have been foreboding. For Chord, this was a place and nothing more than a collection of reinforced steel and wires. Old? Yes. Dilapidated? Most certainly. But there was no reason to believe that the communications blackout with the
Jinxed Thirteenth
was anything more than a malfunction that had occurred when the magnetic tethers had snapped. Chord had explained this to the rest of the team.

The information did not prevent Morrigan Brent from unslinging his heavy omnibarrel carbine or Phaël from nervously studying every dark corner she saw while holding on to her turtle pendant. Arturo remained poised and ready, standing by Chord as it tried to open the next airlock, his carbine in a low and ready stance.

As had been the case on the exterior hull, this airlock was also frozen shut. Life support, if there had even been any in these dark passages, had long ago been shut down. Chord tried several times to log on to the station's datasphere, only to find that all access to the station's Inner Ring had been cut off. There were no available records to explain why this was the case.

“Almost everything on the station is fully operational,” Chord explained to Arturo.

The latter nodded. “Security countermeasures?”

“This appears to have been an automated mining facility. And while there are probably untold trillions worth of universal bits in harvested resources, this station has neither security devices or countermeasures to speak of.”

Arturo did not seem too reassured by what Chord had thought was good news.

“I don't know the company what didn't want to secure its profits.” Morrigan turned to face Arturo and Chord, his black faceless mask reflecting the two of them.

Chord was about to explain to Morrigan that the days of Ancient Humanity's galactic exploration, at least before the Lost War, had never been military in nature. This was due largely to the centralized Earth Government control and the astronomical costs associated with space travel. Before Chord could do any of this, Phaël pushed herself onto the floor, raised her fist and hissed out a loud,
“Shhhh!”

She dropped to her knees and felt the station's metallic floor with her gloved hands. She then lowered her ear, listening in perfect poised stillness. Morrigan took a step forward and Phaël whistled sharply, stopping him in his tracks.

She looked up to the rest of the team, nodding past the airlock. “Some thing, or things, just stopped moving on the other side of that wall.”

Morrigan cranked the safety release to his carbine, while Arturo rose up to his feet, aiming at the airlock Chord was working on. “My motion sensors have not picked up anything.”

“Machine sensors.” Phaël gave out a disgusted snort over the team's comm-­link. “I count at least six bodies, behind that door and heavy.”

Chord paused, looking up to Arturo. “Should this unit continue with its task?”

“Yes, it should.” Arturo kept his eyes focused forward. “Safeties off and be prepared, Private Brent.”

“We should get out of here while the chance is still available to us.” Phaël stood up, shaking her head and giving the walls around her an apprehensive glance. “There've been eyes watching us since we entered.”

“Machine eyes?” Morrigan kept his trigger finger ready.

“You know the answer, Old Pa.” Phaël pulled her fur cloak closer to herself. Chord could tell by her accelerated heartbeat that she was getting nervous.

C
hord was just about to complete the task when the golden numeric code of the station datastream enveloped the airlock door. Seconds later, the airlock slid open as both gravity and atmosphere flooded the hall. Arturo raised his hand to shield his face from the sudden rush of dust and frost. Phaël tucked her head beneath the hood of her cloak. For Chord, the sudden stability of gravity was a welcome and familiar comfort.

The door opened out into a large storage facility at least six stories high and stretching out further than Chord's optic array could see. Sixty yards ahead of them was a ser­vice elevator shaft. A quick long-­distance scan indicated to Chord that it was still operational.

There were intermittent flickers of fluorescent lights on the walls, casting shadows over the hundreds of thousands of crates that were neatly piled up. A heavy cold mist and frost covered both the floor and crates. This created a thick miasma that interfered with Chord's optics.

Morrigan let out a sharp whistle when he saw the containers in the facility. “All four of us could retire right now, am I right, Sureblade?”

Arturo motioned for both Morrigan and Phaël to take point. “Stay behind me, Machina.”

Morrigan and Phaël moved to the entrance. Morrigan scanned the room, then the two exchanged a quick nod. Morrigan stepped past the airlock first. Phaël followed him, keeping a pace behind and using Morrigan's armored body as cover. Once in the warehouse, Phaël quickly ducked into a pool of mist, vanishing completely from Chord's sensors altogether.

Morrigan tapped the release button of his morph-­shield gauntlet on his right forearm. Multiple layers of reinforced segmented metal unfolded and locked themselves into a heavy rectangular shield that offered protection from his neck all the way to his knees. Morrigan rested the barrel of his carbine on the top flat of his shield as he kept on scanning the room.

Arturo followed close behind Morrigan, his morph carbine pointed skyward. Once they had all stepped past the door, Arturo waved at Chord, who promptly switched to infravision and looked the room over. Other than the three Humanis present, there were no heat signatures of any kind.

Something caught Chord's attention. Nine heavy black spheres, each supported on three arms, all of them no more than twelve steps away from the team. Chord was able to remotely scan them with one look, revealing their incept codes, serial numbers and what must have been their factory inspector names along with the same strange logo that had been scrawled outside the station.

Again the letters were from the Late Modern alphabet and they read “AstroGeni.”

Chord pointed to the spheres. “Sergeant Kain, this unit recognizes those black spheres as automated drones. They are simple machines with no intelligence programming, designed for building, repairs and maintenance.”

Arturo tapped Morrigan on the shoulder. The latter stopped and kept watch, his carbine ready. The lights of Arturo's suit gleamed off the drones' shiny black metallic carapaces as he looked them over. “Are they dangerous?”

“Old Pa! There ain't any frost on those spheres!” Phaël, who was nowhere to be seen, called out over the team's comm-­links. Morrigan and Arturo both raised their weapons barrels toward the still-­inert spheres.

The drones suddenly sprang into motion, rolling toward Arturo, Morrigan and Chord at a surprising speed. Protocol was simple enough. Chord walked over to a nearby crate. There was a loud metallic groan and Chord tore off the crate's lid as if it were a piece of sheet paper.

Arturo and Morrigan opened fire on the approaching rolling black spheres. Morrigan's omnibarrel carbine gave off a high-­pitched purr as he let off a burst of crystal flechettes. Arturo's rapid blasts of purple heated plasma shells gave off a loud sizzle as they scorched the air.

Like many a school of fish Chord had observed, the drones spread apart, avoiding the volley of firepower. They now resumed rolling forward in a bid to close the gap between them and the team. Phaël suddenly dove out from a nearby patch of shadows. She dug into her cloak and snapped out one of her vine whips in one hand while holding a long curved knife in the other.

Two of the drones broke off from the “pack” to fall upon her. Chord could recognize much older versions of the omnitool fingertips mechanizing into razor-­sharp metal cutters on each of their six hands. The air hissed as the first drone spun around itself, becoming a whirlwind of heavy, bone-­crushing fists and flesh-­rending razor-­sharp fingertips.

With a supple liquid grace, Phaël fearlessly slid beneath the whirling drone's arms and snared one of its fists with her whip. Not once pausing or losing a beat she drove her long knife all the way to the hilt into its optical lenses.

The ensnared drone sparked and staggered, trying to break free from the binding, but its efforts were in vain, for Phaël's vine whips were almost just as strong as diamond-­wire rope and had not been produced by machines.

Morrigan's barrel widened as he fired off another round, and this time Chord could make out a blue glow covering the flechettes. The blast blew off one of the attacking drone's arms and it rolled away from Phaël for a moment.

The rest of the advancing drones were now upon them. One reached forward with its metallic fingers, snapping at Chord. With one powerful swat of the crate lid Chord batted the drone away. The lid dented in half as Chord's swing caved in the drone's circuit board.

A second drone quickly grabbed on to Chord's wrist and Chord dropped the cover. The drone used its other two arms to grab on to Chord's chest, but Chord managed to catch ahold of both of them. Servos wired as the two mechanical bodies struggled with one another. The drone's third arm savagely slashed at the air. The present struggle was the only thing preventing it from cutting through Chord's chest plating.

As durable and versatile as the Pilgrim shell was, combat was not its primary function and the autodrone had enough strength in those arms to significantly damage it. Chord started to scan the drone's datasphere. There had to be a way to quickly deactivate this opponent.

Arturo, meanwhile, kept his cool demeanor, not so much as taking a single step back while two drones fell upon him. One prepared to swing and with blinding speed it attacked. Arturo appeared to be even quicker to react, falling onto his back and rolling away, in no small part due to the extra mobility his lifesuit granted him.

The drone was unable to stop its swing in time and punched right through its partner's carapace. Sparks flew, and before the attacking drone could even react, Arturo opened fire on it with a controlled barrage. Blue plasma pellets went straight through the drone. Melted inner circuits sparked and hissed as it fell over, motionless.

Another drone took Chord's present struggle as an opportunity to attack from behind. It grasped on to Chord's head with one of its three hands. There was a sudden heavy whir as dark metallic fingers attempted to pry Chord's head off its shell.

“The Machina needs help!” Morrigan grunted as he opened fire on two drones that were beating against his shield. A hail of razor-­sharp flechettes peppered into the two drones and they rolled to the side, no longer operative.

Arturo responded by spinning around in a smooth motion and drawing a bead with his carbine on Chord. “Machina, be still!” Arturo ordered as he opened fire. The heated plasma beam narrowly missed Chord's head, destroying the drone on its back.

Finally free, Chord was now able to access the last autodrone's datasphere. To Chord's vision, it was suddenly covered in green holographic coded cubes. From there it was a simple matter of accessing the drone's power-­down function. Chord triggered it and the drone promptly went limp and heavy. Satisfied that it was no longer active, Chord dropped the inert husk harmlessly onto the floor.

“Sound off!” Arturo shouted as he looked about their surroundings.

“Morrigan Brent, no worse for wear. Got myself a drum and a half worth of munitions left.” Morrigan patted the heavy drum ammo barrel at the back of his carbine.

“Machines have nothing over nature.” Phaël, with no firearms, technology or strong mechanical shell, had managed to ensnare both her foes and driven a long dagger into their optic lenses. Both her drones were now sparking and inoperative.

She had cut out one of her kill's optic lenses and was walking over to Chord, slowly sheathing her long sharp knives as she did. “We never needed any fancy guns or tech to take down your ancestors.”

Phaël tossed the optic lens at Chord, who caught it midair. “This unit must express confusion. What is the meaning of the gesture posed?”

“A reminder.” Phaël gave one of her knives a sharp slap as she finished sheathing it. “My kind, we're always watching your kind and waiting.”

Morrigan interposed himself between Phaël and Chord. “This is far from being either the right time or place, Phaëlita.” He looked down to the crate Chord had torn open. Chunks of unprocessed ore had fallen onto the floor. Morrigan let out a regretful sigh when he saw this.

“Humping waste.”

Arturo checked his ammo counter, frowning before getting back up. He nodded approvingly to Morrigan. “Well done . . .” Arturo trailed off as the sound of metal rolling on metal coming from above them cut him off. In unison all four looked up. A swarm of drones was crawling down along the wall toward them.

“Free us from this prison or die with us.” A woman's electronic voice seemed to speak out from all of the drones in Late Modern.

Chord pointed toward the elevator shaft down the warehouse. Arturo looked to the elevator, then to the amassing drones.
“Move!”
he shouted, and darted toward the elevator. Phaël, Morrigan and Chord fell in behind him as the drones rolled down the wall onto the floor and gave chase.