Lokians 1: Beyond the End of the World (35 page)

“
Sure…sure,” Nandesrikahl remarked
between bits of laughter. “All we need is to translate it into
binary. Then, your programmers can build their own version from the
ground up. Astonishing….”

****

Nandesrikahl spent countless hours speaking
into a recording device. The numbers one and zero poured from his
mouth. He collected data until his throat was raw, but when he was
done, he passed it on to programmers.

The following days were spent building a helm
for Day, writing code, and toying around with some weapons. Since
there was little for Swain to do outside of supervising, he had
visited his old friends on the Explorer, where he handled a brand
new photon rifle, one he had visualized for the captain. It was
bulky, but light, had four, revolving barrels, each containing a
lens, which allowed for an endless stream of photon blasts; it was
a photon, machine gun.

He, DeReaux, Fitzpatrick, and O’Hara ran off
into the woods to test it out. All manners of chirps, whistles, and
rustling warbled through the trees. The captain tried out his new
toy, searing right through trunks, and unfortunately, setting them
ablaze. Swain suggested firing at boulders instead.

They had a riot. No one spoke two words about
the Lokians; their upcoming fight seemed a thing of science
fiction, and the odds were stacked against them. Rather than being
mired in negativity, they enjoyed their time together, shooting
through stone, chasing after scaly birds, watching lizards with
shells climb golden trees; it was magnificent.

****

The time had come. Thewlian programmers
devised a basic, operating code allowing Day to link with the alien
through the newly fashioned helm. For safety reasons, the helm was
built outside the vessel, and cables ran from the chair and helmet
to the thing’s innards. After careful consideration, and words of
confidence provided by O’Hara, she took her seat, and holding her
breath, she established a connection with local servers.

It took a long time to translate the Lokian
codes into binary—Nandy was none too pleased—but when their
combined efforts came to fruition, they created a hybrid program to
fully access the alien’s systems, including the subspace drives. As
it turned out, how they functioned was irrelevant. What was
important was her ability to control them.

Rounds of applause clamored throughout the
hangar. Swain praised God. Then, O’Hara called everyone
together.

“
Alright, we’ve come this far, and
that’s great, but we still have a problem. We don’t know where to
go or how to navigate subspace.”

“
I’ve spent some time scanning Lokian
data. There are bits of messages relayed to and from the ship,” Day
said. “The ship received orders from multiple programs from a
solitary source. I think it’s the Lokian in charge…the
queen.”

“
Does that mean you know where to go,”
O’Hara asked.

“
It means I don’t have to. I can tell
the ship to take us back to its point of origin,” she replied,
gravely.

“
Stellar work, Day,” the admiral
said.

O’Hara glanced at everyone. They looked
ready, determined. The agents nodded to him. Lay even patted him on
the back.

“
Is there anything else we should do,”
he asked

“
We’re pretty much all set to go, son,”
Lay answered. “In the meantime, I’ll be keeping lines open with the
Carrier. We’re still not sure about the Yvlekesh, but things are
looking good here.”

“
Sir?”

“
Humans and Thewls have Eon covered;
you go give those Lokian assholes a taste of their own
medicine.”

“
Copy that, Sir,” O’Hara
chuckled.

He saluted, and the admiral returned the
gesture. With a final glance to those in the hangar, he took a deep
breath, exhaled, widened his eyes, and motioned for the engineers
to open the Lokian. Less than an hour later, the helm was
integrated into the vessel.

“
Alright, you guys ready?” Everyone
nodded. “Let’s climb in that thing,” O’Hara commanded.

Chapter Twenty Six

The alien’s interior was surprisingly barren.
Apart from the rich, brown walls and bony framework, the ship
looked like a ship. Swain and the Thewls had worked diligently to
forge a familiar atmosphere. It lacked niceties, though. There were
no crew quarters, no mess hall, no tech lab, or bridge.

The reasoning wasn’t just a concern over time
or resources, but the fact that there was no guarantee the ship was
coming back. For all intents and purposes, O’Hara’s men were on a
suicide run. As they stood inside a partitioned, storage room
spanning the length of a football field, dual-system lockouts
engaged in the event of a hull breach. Hisses followed by
clanks
rang ominously. The captain’s mind played on the
image of a coffin sealed shut.

“
Hm,” he groaned.

“
What is it,” Day asked.

“
Nothing…it’s just so….”

“
Ascetic,” Adams asked.

“
Sure…anyway, Day, would you take the
helm?”

“
Copy.” Once settled, she broke the
silence. “I found data archives with some details about their
world.”

“
Thank you, Day. Now, if you don’t
mind,” O’Hara interjected.

She sighed at his dismissive attitude, but
removed her headgear to listen. The captain stood before everyone
with his hands at parade rest. His eyes hardened before he
spoke.

“
First and foremost, I’m honored to be
accompanied by this brave crew. You’ve all gone above and beyond
what’s asked of you. The truth is….

“
Well…the truth is that we’re going
into subspace to travel to the Lokian home world. Our mission is to
find the queen and destroy her. You know, we started this mission
on an alien craft without comprehending the horrors that lied in
wait, and oddly enough, we’re ending the mission in a very similar
fashion.

“
Sadly, there are friends who should be
here, but they’ve given everything for the cause. Martinez,
Zakowski, Imes, Becker, and several Thewls…countless lives gone in
the blink of an eye; for them, we must put this mission—the fate of
our world—before ourselves, and know, not fear, that we may fall as
well, but not until we’ve succeeded. Failure now is bigger than the
end of the world…it’s beyond the end of the world…it’s the end of
all intelligent life in this galaxy….”

Furrowed brows, stoic faces, and deep breaths
resonated. Adams and Franklin traded glances. DeReaux smiled.
O’Hara smiled, too. He took one, good, hard look at the crew.

“
Phoenix Crew, can I get a hoorah?” the
captain screamed.

The crew resounded with a booming
hoorah
in return.

“
I said, what’s that? Can I get a
hoorah?” Again, the crew fired back,
hoorah
! O’Hara’s smiled
melted away, then. “Alright, as far as the plan goes,” he started,
but gave one of Lay’s patented, long inhalations. “We kept the
original Lokian programming embedded in our own runtimes in order
to hide that we’re using a rogue ship. Hopefully, this lets us
blend in.

“
Remember, we are one ship amidst
billions of enemies. Any foul up, and we’re dead. Day, bring up the
screen.”

On the bridge’s wall, a screen glowed. They
turned to find it displaying a 3-D layout of the Lokian home world
as provided by data within local servers.

“
Lokians don’t dock the way we do. They
organize like pieces of a program. Data is shared via their
satellite uplink,” Day explained.

The image spun, revealing an odd mass. The
labeling indicated where vessels docked and registered. The captain
weighed the possibilities as he observed the image. Something
clicked in his brain; they were not only a hive; they were a
digital hive.

“
The plan is to show up with
information of a new civilization ripe for harvesting,” he started.
“Obviously, it’s false information, but it’ll entice them to send
out a scouting party…we believe.” Swain and the agents nodded.
“While they scramble, their systems will detect an anomaly within
our vessel. If I’m right, and let’s pray that I am, the Lokians
will order us to a physical docking in order to flush the memory
core and re-establish programming.”

“
Similar to re-installing an OS on a
computer with a virus,” Swain added.

“
Right, this is our opportunity to
leave the ship and enter the Lokian’s system core. Day’s data shows
it here,” O’Hara said, pointing to a darkened, round opening in the
flashing, 3-D display, “like an enormous hangar where they store
everything including the physical equipment they need to do
whatever it is that they do. Now, we move down this path.” By
sliding his finger over the screen, the image spun. “At this
juncture, we need to drop explosives on a time delay; I am hoping
to make it back to the ship after all. Once on the ship, we haul
ass out, and try to get back to standard space.” Adams stepped
forward. “Yes?”

“
Sir, we have some very special
explosives.”

“
Heh, very special, very dangerous, we
obtained some anti-matter particles from Admiral Yew. A miniature
AMRMC ought to wipe the Lokians out of existence,” Franklin
added.

“
Nice,” Fitzpatrick
exclaimed.

“
Yeah,” O’Hara remarked.

DeReaux stepped forward next and spoke. “Once
we enter on foot, won’t we be detected?”

Nodding, O’Hara admitted that was a very real
possibility. “I’m betting we’ll have to fight security forces.
Think of them as antibodies; they’ll know a foreign substance is
present, and they will try to eliminate us.”

“
With what?” Fitzpatrick
barked.

“
I don’t know,” he shook his head.
“Regardless, this ship’s archives show internal defenses are
minimal. The enemy is designed to believe there is no way to enter
the core without being Lokian, which means access will be simple if
we get past docking procedures, but once inside, we gotta’ go, go ,
go.”

“
Designed by whom?” DeReaux
interrupted.

“
By the Lokians,” Swain
said.

DeReaux said it didn’t make any sense; that
they designed themselves. He and Swain then got into an argument.
The agents reprimanded them, but O’Hara laughed.

“
Okay…what about the queen,”
Fitzpatrick asked.

“
The memory core is the queen. She’s a
series of programs contained in a physical shell. The blast should
sever connections with her minions, making them both blind and
disorganized, which hopefully disables everything. These things
don’t survive independently; they can’t; they don’t know how to
move, where to go, how to eat, where to recharge–”

“
What if we’re detected immediately?”
Nandesrikahl interrupted.

“
We integrated a stealth system similar
to the traveler ship. By the way, I heard we named that thing,”
O’Hara said.

“
Yeah, we settled on
Mittins
,”
Day replied.

The captain winced, shaking his head in mock
disappointment.

“
But if we are detected?” Nandesrikahl
pried.

“
Then, we have to overload the subspace
drive and destroy it there,” O’Hara responded.

“
Which will kill us,” Swain interjected
and pointed with his left index finger for drama.

The captain shrugged, “Well, I mean,
regardless, it’ll kill the queen and save the galaxy,” O’Hara said,
unable to hold back a smile.

“
Oh, okay this is funny,” Fitzpatrick
inquired as she raised her hands to her sides.

“
Well…maybe not
haha
funny….”

The agents shook their heads, exchanged a
glance, and smiled.

“
Is there a way to drop the subspace
drive, maybe, and set it on a time delay to explode so we can avoid
danger,” Fitzpatrick asked in a leading fashion.

“
No,” Swain said. “Without the drive,
we can’t leave subspace. Even at F.T.L. travel we might survive the
blast, but we’ll be marooned.”

“
So we
could
drop it,” DeReaux
countered.

“
But we’d still be dead,” Swain
chortled.

“
What about a second drive? A back up
or something,” Fitzpatrick probed further.

“
No, not without a second, Lokian ship.
Even if we captured another, we have no way of piloting it. Day is
the only one who can do it,” O’Hara snipped. “I need you guys to
understand, this could very well be a one way trip.”

Silence hung in the air for a moment.
Abruptly, Fitzpatrick exploded into a belly laugh. The joke was
lost on everyone.

“
They’ve all been suicide runs, man,”
she said. “Fuck it. Let’s do it!”

“
Real quick,” DeReaux started. “What if
their ships attack us? Like, what if the queen calls for back up
while we’re docked?”

“
We’ll just have to use the F.T.L. or
some other crazy scheme that’ll get us killed in the process,”
O’Hara replied, nonchalantly.

“
Oh, this is rich,” Nandesrikahl
remarked.

“
We have a fighting chance,” Franklin
said.

“
That’s something,” Adams
added.

“
More than we’ve had lately,” Day
agreed.