MotherShip (12 page)

“Mother?” Kyle shouted angrily. He pointed accusingly at the optical viewer still watching them. “She's not our mother, she's not even alive. She's nothing!”

Becky began crying silently as she slid slowly down to the floor, as if all of her strength had left her.

Both men looked away in embarrassment, trying to ignore her tears.

Mother was not unaffected either, though not in a way a human could understand.

“We'll search to the end of time. I swear it,” Kyle said through clenched teeth. “All our power will be directed to destroying the T'kaan as we continue to search for survivors.”

“Perhaps...” Mother began.

“
Nobody
...wants your input anymore!” Kyle began pacing in a frenzy of overpowering emotions.

“Land us...
now!
” Kyle uttered the last word as an absolute command. “I'm going to prepare my fighter, anyone who wants to go with me can come on.”

Becky continued to cry silently while Jaric stared aimlessly at the floor.

“Fine!” Kyle shouted. “I'll go by myself!” He stormed through the door and disappeared beyond.

Mother observed him as he walked down her corridors, each turn he made bringing him into the view of another one of her optical viewers. But he deliberately looked away from them all. As he neared the hangar that housed the last five fighters she carried, she again tried to reason with him.

“Kyle, you are angry because...”

He glared at the optical viewer above him. “I hate you. I hate your cold logic. I hate your...perfect answers. But I tell you this,
machine!
” The last word was stated as the vilest of insults. Kyle screwed his eyes shut, fighting back his burning tears. “I'm going to make them pay for this. I'll make them pay...” He covered his face in a vain attempt to shield his tears.

“Or I'll die trying.”

Mother continued to watch as he reached his fighter and prepared it for launch. For the first time in her existence, she felt helpless at the events unfolding around her. Still, she obeyed Kyle as she entered the atmosphere of Kittim. A few minutes later, she landed.

As soon as her engines began powering down, Kyle ordered the sequence and the bay door opened. His fighter roared out into the wide-open sky.

“Jaric, Becky. You must go with him.”

Jaric shook his head, as if to rid himself of his overwhelming sadness. Then, with a ghost of a smile, he walked over to where Becky was still slumped on the floor, her back against the wall. He reached out to her.

“Let's go, Becky. Somebody's got to watch out for hothead.” A half-smile lit Jaric's face.

Becky closed her eyes tightly, but a moment later she forced a smile. She placed her hand in his as he helped her up. In a flash, they were tracing Kyle's steps.

Mother had already instructed Fixer2 to prep their fighters, so all they had to do was strap in and begin take-off sequences. Within minutes of Kyle's hasty departure, the two arrowhead-shaped fighters were roaring in hot pursuit of Kyle's now distant fighter.

Mother's latest scans for the enemy still came up empty. Now, for the sake of the child most damaged emotionally, she began her search patterns for any possible human survivors.

She already knew what the results would be, but she would do it for Kyle. Perhaps her prompt actions would show how much she did care.

Almost immediately her scans came upon the ruins of a once mighty research complex on the planet's surface, and so she lifted and began the several hundred-kilometer trip to investigate. Still, she felt strange—it was as though she could not gather enough processing power to concentrate on this seemingly simple task.

It was perhaps her extreme state of internal disarray which explained why she did not pick up the powered down enemy ships all waiting in ambush.

“Kyle, there's something else we're leaving out here. It's not just our decision on how we live,” Jaric's voice pleaded over the comm.

“What are you talking about? If Mo...” Kyle bit back the last word. “If the
machine
is right, we're it. So we decide how to do things now. And I say we are going to keep looking for survivors.”

Jaric sighed, still wrestling with the intense aura of loneliness that threatened to paralyze him again.

“Listen a minute to me, Kyle! Maybe Mother, well, maybe she's not our biological mother. But without her intelligence, her power, well, we'd have all been dead long ago. And...she is sentient. She has a right to her own life.” Jaric heard Kyle begin to break in, but he spoke faster. “We owe her, man. Even if she's not alive by human standards, well, she's alive where it counts. I think...”

“I've got targets.”

Becky's voice, strangely calm, jerked both men to their screens.

“I've got multiple targets from three directions.”

Kyle began punching buttons.
The T'kaan never fought like this. They had always used their superior numbers in overwhelming frontal attacks
...

“Kyle, form up with us!” Jaric shouted.

Kyle was already turning hard and pushing his engines, but he knew as he did it that he wouldn't make it to them in time. Over fifty ships were closing on Becky and Jaric, and there were that many more closing from two directions on his lone ship.

As he again banked hard toward the nearest grouping of enemy ships, he spoke into his comm.

“Send the distress call. I'm engaging the enemy here.”

Jaric and Becky complied, and then the T'kaan fighters were on them.

The three human fighters twisted and turned among the throngs of black ships as they attacked. Everywhere they turned, enemy fire met them. But the humans fought as though possessed—they fought to avenge the death of their race now. They screamed their primal fury as they pressed their trigger buttons over and over again.

T'kaan ships began to fall from the sky.

But the alien fire was taking its own toll.

Far away, Mother continued to obey the futile search as the distress call reached her.

She powered her engines on and was in flight milliseconds later. Quickly, she calculated how long it would take her to join the battle with her offspring as her sensors picked up the battle far away. She noted with concern that all three of the children's ships had taken hits, and worse, two had shield strengths below fifty percent. Her calculations finished with a sobering answer.

She would not make it to them in time, even at maximum speed.

She had failed.

But worst of all, she would never see her children again. Never communicate with them again. Never be with them again.

Even at maximum speed.

The answer was coldly mathematical. Kyle's words echoed again in her near-term memory—her logical answers, her machine solutions. Mother's processors burned with sudden super-activity as she pushed her sub-light engines to maximum power.

She roared just over the land surface for several long seconds, and then she did something that made no logical sense.

She pushed her engines past the red line.

It was not cold logic that caused her to do this. The readouts showed plainly that long-term, perhaps even permanent, damage was being done in those twin powerhouses of sub-light energy.

The engines began to scream and howl.

She continued to ignore the multiple alarms and warnings that vied for her attention and instead powered up her weapon's arrays. Her guns pushed their steely barrels outward through the opened doors, primed for battle.

Suddenly, she performed an action that defied all logic, all logic except that of a
real
Mother.

The mighty warship redirected all shield energy to either weapons or the engines.

No shields.

Mother would go in naked before the enemy guns. This would save a few precious seconds and get her to her children that much faster. Her guns would be primed to an enormous, hull-splitting level on their first firing.

It did not matter if her engines were permanently damaged. It did not matter if the horned ships pierced her armored hull. It did not matter if she ceased to exist.

Somewhere in the heart of all of her electronics, the near-term and long-term memory, amid all the sophisticated algorithms, Mother felt
something
... She felt something that burned all throughout her being. Something important, something beyond logic and answers.

If her children died today, then so would she.

But they would have to kill her first.

Mother came screaming like some primitive, rampaging beast over the wide grassy plains, her overheating engines roaring their fury and pain. The barrels of her guns swiveled in keen anticipation, her processors burned with her tactical options. Every other unneeded activity, including life support on all levels, had been turned off. In fact, she had even, for the first time ever, turned off some of her own unnecessary functionality.

Mother became something else.

She became
Flying Death
.

Her sensors saw Kyle's shields buckle as she neared the free-for-all, but her rear sensors were far down on her task priorities, so she did not note the large horned ship that was gaining on her from behind.

Kyle banked hard as he squeezed the triggers and saw pieces of the black ship spray off and then it began its final descent. He gritted his teeth as he felt his own ship shudder and saw smoke coil from his console.

Frantically, he banked hard to port and pulled up as he pushed the engines hard. But there were three of them behind him now, and two more were closing from above. He hit his comm.

“Becky! Jaric! I'm hit...got no shields. Make your break back to Mother!”

Jaric yelled victoriously as he nailed another ship and then banked to avoid two more diving on him. Looking quickly at his scope, he turned towards Kyle's ship and screamed into his comm.

“Hang on, Big K! I'm coming in!”

Becky felt her ship shudder from multiple hits and looked at her panel. Her shields were down to twenty percent, but she did not hesitate.

Pulling up hard, she cut her engines. The three T'kaan ships shot past her and right into her twin sights. Her blasters fired true, as one ship exploded and the other two sustained damage.

She turned to follow Jaric's fighter.

They took out two T'kaan on their first pass and then rose to divert the others diving onto Kyle's crippled ship. Kyle continued his dive, flying with one hand while he directed repairs with the other. He growled as his sensors showed four new ships coming at him from his left; he banked hard right and gunned his engines. They were his only defense at the moment.

Sweat dripped from his brow as he worked feverishly to get some, any, amount of shield power going again.

He froze at Becky's sudden shout of fear.

Her shields had just buckled as Jaric tried to fight off the six ships attacking them, with more waiting to dive in like so many horned vultures.

Even though he was in no shape to help, he turned his winged craft for them. And their enemy.

There were still just over seventy ships out of the original ninety-nine swirling in the air around the furious human fighters. It was only a matter of time until the final outcome.

The effect of Mother's sudden entrance was instantaneous.

Suddenly the aim from the horned ships was not as accurate as at the beginning of the fight. Mother's fearsome reputation preceded her. Somehow the human ships, fighting like beings possessed already, continued their twisting, turning deadliness as they saw her familiar shape finally show up on their scopes.

But the tense laughter of the humans was short lived.

“Where are your shields, Mother!?” Jaric shouted.

Mother turned her twelve main guns to twelve different targets. Her plan was simple—Go in with all guns firing. Destroy everything.

She was flying so fast that she shot past the outermost T'kaan patrol before they could react. Mother would take them on later—she wanted the ships attacking her children first.

The twelve guns spat death under her accurate aim, and because she had powered them above even the maximum strength they split the horned ships in two with her single hammer-blows.

Twelve fireballs lit the sky.

Her intense speed took her past a dozen more ships before she could power her guns back up again, but she kept all guns aimed forward at the ships still attacking her children.

The horned ships she had just passed quickly regained formation and turned to attack her.

Mother saw the one ship diving on Kyle, diving for the kill. She fired three shots in quick succession, crippling the ship while her other guns protected her other two offspring.

But still the ship dove for Kyle.

Mother again damaged her engines by braking and then reversing as she banked hard left and straight down. Still, she rammed the horned ship too hard as she
felt
some of her systems go deathly silent around the outer part of her hull where the fighter had impacted and immediately disintegrated.

She again shuddered as the ships following her began pounding her hull, sending fragments of metal into the air. Some of her internal systems malfunctioned and went off-line. She began to suddenly feel very strange, disoriented.

“They're hurting her!” Jaric dove at the ships attacking her. “Mother! Get your shields up.”

Becky, with only minimal shields herself, brought her guns to bear.

But the small Scout ships were like parasites around Mother, firing a constant hail of fire into her armored hull. Even though most of the damage was external, some of the blaster hits began piercing inside her inner hull. A large section of the ship went deathly silent as her main power grid went off-line, replaced by her sole backup.

“I've got him!” Becky shouted.

“I have experienced a major disruption in my power grid,” It was a bizarre voice, almost unrecognizable. But it was Mother. “My shields will not power up fully, they are compromised. I am routing functions to my repair. We must ...”

Mother stopped speaking as she began a rolling, twisting dive and routed power to her feeble rear shields as more of the horned ships dove upon her with their lances of blaster fire.