Interzeit: A Space Opera (6 page)

“Time is of the essence, if more attacks are on the way then we may already be too late. Please allow some questions, survivor testimony could mean the difference between life and death for millions.”

Tenorisa, whispers in a low voice, conversing with Nol, eventually he nods in agreement.

“Mr. Nol agrees to a small round of questioning.” She says,

“Thank you young man,” The Lunar Delegate bows, “In your opinion did the terrorists and their vehicles bear any resemblance to any group that you know of?”

Nol shakes his head, “They were generic looking…I’m not sure if they were anything more than autopiloted drone.”

“Drones, you say?” He continu
es, “Already we learn something, you have good reason to believe this I assume?”

“Yes, before the…core breach, Skyking destroyed the midsection of one of the mechs, any pilot would have been killed instantly, yet the thing kept functioning. Also…just…just the way it all happened, very coordinated, objective, careless
for life in a way that...well I don’t know
.”

“I must object to continuing this line of questioning,” Deacon stands, “This is getting into conjecture, we should reserve judgment for the forensic technologist
s
.”

“No further questions then
.
” The lunar representative conceded,

He bowed, returning to his seat solemnly.

“
Does any other representative wish to question Mr.
Nol
?”
Tenorisa
asks

The chamber is silent, empty, and sterile, purged of all unethereal feelings, death and life blurred and mixed together, its false boundaries temporarily removed. A small moment of lucidity in the illusion, they all contemplate together in the graveyard.

Nol is comforted,
then
wheeled away. Pale, weak, he is returned from once he came, his agony, his purgatory of rehabilitation and despair.

The meeting has the general appearance of breaking up. The trained eye shows a different
story
howeve
r. The public elements disperse.
T
he delegates, the senators, the earthly minor beings, priests, and priestess to the old religion of statecraft and democracy
disappear
.

Leaving behind
Polystratus
to investigate his own leads, the right
combinations of people are found
to be
leaving in a very roundabout way. With some secrecy it is revealed that they are
heading into a certain
tea garden.

It has a small artificial brook, drizzling lazily on the far end, several soft mats and cushions are strewn about. Holograms of animals long dead chirp and frolic in a slow beat. The long beats of animals, unworried by time or death, content to be
,
to graze their refracting mouths of light through grass they can never chew.

“You’re not welcome here Prince.” Deacon grumbles from the inner chamber.

Septis paces back and forth, “We must discuss these intelligence reports. I find it hard to
that there is nothing
actionable within them
.”

“We must wait and see…”Deacon answers.

“Yes, you just happen to be waiting with a delegate from the TST, the major faction of the asteroid belt. Perhaps with the fortune of two such great powers, a plan forward might emerge.”’

“This is a private ma-“

“Oh let him stay Minister,
Kuipterra
ns are stubborn in this way. They have a second sense for machination.” The woman in the blue shawl
insists
.

“Very well,” he relented, “This is Lady Yuriko of Ceres.”

Septis bows in an emotional
ly
void formality. “Thank you Lady,”

He
quickly returns to the matter at hand, “The
talk of automated war mechs
was hard to hear in the meeting. Perhaps I was unable to hear it over the sacrosanct grieving and rabble rousing.”

“Suspicious of emotion I see,” Deacon retorts, “How very compassionate.”

“It is true,” Yuriko says, “We are trying to
treat this matter delicately. There is a
colony close to the antipole of Ceres in the belt, far away from Ti
anShanTech’s normal operations.

T
here have been companies focused on automating the robotic warframe idea. Not that it takes much to accomplish, rather the stigma of Terrestrials tends to discourage it.

The very reason for this taboo is as we see here.
If it becomes a
n
outcry then
we will seem guilty or like collaborators, but this is not so.
TST and her client colonies automate, it is what we do,
and that’s
why we need to get to the colony first.
The other
factions
will not
understand, as such it would be poor judgment to leave this matter to be unearthed by the cabinet.”

Septis has a seat, “I understand your wish for secrecy Lady Yuriko. We should all dispatch agents to this Colony, and observe how this technology is being applied, we must act, time is of the essence,
and others
may wish to tie up these loose ends.”

Yuriko and Deacon smile, “You’re a bit late on that Prince,” Deacon says,

“Indeed,” Yuriko says, “TST has the only remaining Mech from the
unified war
. While this may
soon
change, we h
ave taken the initiative. Tiger
West
was already being repaired in the G324 section of the Ast
e
roid Belt. We have given word, and soon a group of agents escorted by it will visit
Vesta
Minor
.”

“So you see Prince,” Deacon patronizes, “Everything is well in hand,”

The Prince stands nodding in agreement. “Thank you for having me.” He bows again,

“I will take my personal retinue and oversee this op
eration
.
Please keep me updated with any new information, it’s important that we work together to bring this travesty to a swift end
!
”

The Minister is visibly contemptuous of this decision, and Lady Yuriko shows little reaction, her bemused blasé veneer thick and strong. Perhaps
a
indication of something, perhaps this was
nothing more than
their standard persona
e
for negotiations.

He contacts
Polystratus
through his
i
onics
, but there is no response from the other side.
He tries several more times, failing. Mechanical error was
unlikely,
ra
ther a rare impulsive streak in
his comrade was likely at work. Whenever
Polystratus
found something of interest, he hunted it down like a hound, allowing nothing to interfere.
Frustrated,
Septis
heads for the ship, hailing
Xuna
,
he gives the order to prepare for departure.

“Is
Polystratus
with you?” He asks hesitantly,

“No sir,” she says, “Wandered off again?”

His silence reveals him,

“You should chip him sir,” she smiles mischievously.

Trying to sleep, an annoying
buzzing resounds, continually it hums, echoing
.
Resistant eyes open into
thin portals
. The out of focus vision reports blue blur flashes dancing in the rhythm of the high pitch noise. Her sleeping straps release and she rolls weightlessly through the room.

Her hand snatches the alarm bead out of the air
,
silencing it. She bumps into the curved smooth shell of her sleeping globe. The lights flutter on in the sphere, her unfastened possessions drifting through the room.

She pulls
a
fur jacket over her underwear and jumps up to
the
exit. Her thin form breaks the plane of
a
laser, and the door politely moves aside. She drifts through the hall, eventually reaching the control room.

Her robotic anthrion is
networking
at the subspace terminal. It’s on an anthrion communication hub, symbols and number
s
scroll across the scr
een in an endless pouring water
fall
of
condensed information.

“Is everything on schedule Basil?” She mumbles.

It turns its head, “Yes Master Liang, we’re expecting contact with the TST Engineering Corp in nine minutes.”

Its chest eject
s a nutripack in her direction.

“What of
‘
ather
and mother?” She asks while eating,

“Ah yes,” Basil’s eyes light up, “They
are well, still enjoying their
retirement to the fullest, I’m happy to say. There will be a festival across Ceres later in the
timetable,
their anthrion anticipates th
at they will attend
.”

She responds with a low energy hmm, and flits through the briefing from the TST Consulate on Earth, reviewing any details she might have missed. Basil replaces her empty nutr
ipack with a small tea pack. It is
warm to the touch, direct source
with
genetically boosted caffeine content.

The engineering corp ship comes in on the short range sensors, and she abandons her jacket for her pilot’s uniform. She slips into the gray blue jumpsuit, its smart contours curve around her body and close with its autozip action.

She adjusts the electrode patches her back, then grabs her helmet out of its holder. Basil handles the standard communication verifications and digital handshakes to confirm identities with the Engineering Corp.

Their large flotilla drifts to a
slow crawl, banking around gently.
The starboard side comes to a stop, facing her small spherical belt drifter. The
flotilla’s
shield array lowers, and the docking terminal telescopes outward.

The connection is made, and a loud hiss echoes throughout the ship as the pathway is pressurized.

“Let’s go Basil,” She says.

It complies. Basil detaches from the control dock. Its arms and legs fold in and then split, its torso performs a similar act, and it shifts into a
n
insect like form. Its many legs help pull it along the unusual surfaces of the zero gravity environment.

They enter the connection terminal, she grabs the bar on the travel belt, and it pulls her through the long hallway. While drifting, Basil connects onto the electrodes along her suit, forming an ionic array across her body.

She feels her body getting heavier as the belt pulls them closer. Her legs sink slowly and skim the floor. A few meters from the airlock they enter the gravity field, a
nd walk the rest of the way in half
G.

The hairs on her arm stood on end as she adjusted
to the electric charge in the field
. The airlock access was approved, and she entered through the triple redundant entrance. She is greeted by two security officers, multivelocity coilguns strapped to the sides.

“The
c
aptain is waiting for you in the
h
angar
,
P
ilot Liang.”
One says,

They escorted her down the over
ly
bright corridor. The surfaces finished with light plastic like sheens, white light surfaces covered in “calming” holographic images that slide weightlessly along the surfaces in a pattern that she found frenetic at best.

The hangar was
steel angular
pragmatism.
Giant and open, t
he show boating nature of
the C
orp was impossible to fully deny.

She saw Tiger West standing there, shining
and pristine with all new armor
.
Grey,
and blue
armor plates surround it,
branch
ing
off
like
tree limbs
,
forming
even
large deflector plates. It seems engineering had upgr
aded them. She was surprised that the
large deflectors could
even
stand unsupported.

Captain
Xang
met her eye, standing beside the mech’s cockpit scaffold. She wal
ked around the scaffolding
to meet him. He had a slow burn smile, one that started in the eyes, working gently to the creases of his dimples, un
til just as you arrive he seemed
to be on the verge of laughing.

“
Lei
!”
He cheers, “Recovering well I hope
!
”

“Mm,” she nods,

“So happy to hear that, your friend
h
as recovered in a similar fashion,” He flicks his hand at the mech proudly.

“I see
Xang
,
you must have
had your techs working overtime.”

He smiled, and gave a small lecture on the importance of opportunity that she had heard countless times.

“The Martians are our best clients, our nitrogen and water shipments are crucial to their terraforming process, and our economy. Should the
trading on the
orbital cycles cease flowing, we would find our position in the inner system to be much more ten
u
ous.”

Afterwards, they reviewed
her assignment for a final time
, and left
Lei
to her task.

Basil detaches from her as they enter the cockpit. It crawls with its spidery legs into his port on the back corner, and networks in.
Lei
walks
to the pilot’s chair in the center. It clicks and whirs as it connects to her suit’s sensor
s, the final safety capsule forms slowly around her.

“Standard
launch
Basil,” She says sealing on her helmet.

“Pre-launch diagnostics complete, systems ready, beginning core start up.”

The hangar is evacuated, and begins its own protocols. The scaffolds fold in and retract into the wall, leaving behind little but the large cube-like room itself.

“Core ready?”
She asks,

“Ready.” Basil answers,

Lei
clicks
on her channel, “Tiger West to hangar crew, ready for launch.”

“Hangar crew to Tiger west, opening doors now, lucky travels.”

The thick doors crawl open. The air in the room is pulled away violently as everything is decompressed.

“Launching…” Basil confirms.

Tiger West ju
mps into a rocket boost,
flying
in the airstream outwards. The light of the hangar is replaced with the total eclipse of space. The controls light
up,
and the HUD of
Lei
’s screen sends tracing
pulses outwards, mapping color and light onto nearby space junk.

“Takes us to the rendezvous point Basil, nice and steady.” She
says
,

It complies, and Tiger West begins boo
sting its way through the thin
space junk
. It soon clears any debris,
the mech’s primary rockets come online and they speed ahead.

TianShan
Tech
,
w
as a con
glomerate of operations in
Mid-Earth space,
and
heavily reliant on automation. Space, the open vacuum was simply not a hospitable place for humans to be, so workers and drones were designed for most
of the actual
roles of mining and resource extraction.

The
unified war,
however
,
had a ban on automated robots for fear of it losing its importance and emotional weight with the
interspace
system at large. Over time this led to a general tab
oo on automated mechs in general
. When
TST
was first able to afford the construction of their own war mech, it was rejected several times due the lack of human pilot, and so called “remote piloting”.

Eventually the solution was found to have a human pilot and a highly sop
histicated computational
anthrion
both pilot it. The tactic was anything but uncontroversial,
yet it
blurred the boundaries between the rules sufficiently enough to gain membership into the games.

Basil, who was as old as the original Tiger West had been upgraded over time. Able to ha
ndle most of the simple tasks
of piloting in a completely automated way, it would run things that were not connected to
Lei
’s neural reflexive controls.

It opened up to deep space soon enough.
Tiger
West
picks up an ever-increasing amount of momentum, detectable only through the sophisticate
d
measurements of the mech’s sensors. Deep space was an empty place. In the heart of the void,
Lei
knew too well, that you can find many things. They would meet up with the Martian convoy soon enough, but until then, it was total isolation. A kind of alone that is complete, with the presence of Basil excluded, she was vacuum sealed into her own miniature pocket world, a bubble of existence.

Lei
launches
her simulator
to escape the empty void. Her heads up display changes over completely, the inky sea vanish
es
under a series of bright lights. A city of bright orange blocks emerges out of the light. An urban simulation, she drills fighting another Mech.

She has only set foot on Earth for the tournament. The Executive Corp allows her to practice on Ceres
, but it is a poor substitute. The
atmosphere,
and the gravity were very
precise. After her defeat this year she was determined to overcome her weakness. She plows through a building, the wireframe opponents fires a large rifle. She raises her main shield, a small disc in Tiger West’s hand.

It whirs to life, the perimeter expands, and the disc creates a solid field, tripling in circumference. The disc intercepts the machine gun fire with ease. The bullets clatter against the electric field
fruitlessly
.

She hurls it, decapitating the other mech,
then
with a
wrist
flick
,
i
t flies back on
a
chain.

TST
would only allow her to compete again a few more times, three if she was lucky.
Lei
had been ensured by her trusted contacts that she was a guaranteed shoo in for the next game, but contingencies were being drawn against her.

“
Let them,
”
she thought. Every challenge to her status as a pilot was defeated. Everyone except…

Her mind wanders back to her fight against Maxelus Calatian. Now that he was dead, no one would stand in her way. They had fought along the sea of tranquility. The moon dust was drifting everywhere, blasted up from the fighting.
They locked
up
, the
electroshield
and the energy blade struggling inbetween the two of their war mechs.

Maxelus slip
ped
a leg under the shield. Tystrophanes’
s knee glows, energy collecting
there. It discharges a beam, blowing
a large hole through Tiger West.

Lei
felt
the leg go dead in the control matrix. Tystrophanes gain
ed
the upper
hand, and pushes Tiger West
.
Lei
struggles but is force
d
down onto one leg, struggling to stay off her back.