Tides of the Continuum 1: Making History (13 page)

At the senior staff debriefing, Peter Ambrose reported, “It’s very similar to those used in the mining facilities, scattered throughout asteroid belts, for long range communication.” He continued, “The compound on the skins of the invisible ships was made off world. We’re not sure where. It’s rather toxic, deadly if consumed. That's why we vaporized the debris in the reactor exhaust. We couldn’t afford to lose anyone from accidental contact.”

Dr. Cruz began, “Everyone from the Legion who was hurt in the fight has been treated and deemed fit for duty. There were however two casualties; neither had family onboard, or on Earth. They will be missed and mourned.”

“You never see much of the aftermath of a battle in the movies,” observed Aurora.

“That’s because it isn’t interesting enough to sell tickets,” replied Peter. “People on earth only care about the shocking sections of fighting and romance and horror. The little fiddly-bits in between them usually get skipped over with a song and video montage of people working and smiling at each other. You never see any technicians filling out inventory forms, just handing out rifles.”

“Bitter about your job?” asked Aurora teasingly.

“No,” answered Peter as he leaned back in his chair in the conference room. “Just telling the truth.
Those movie writers have it right when they think that people only care about the excitement. I mean, what was the last movie you watched where you just followed a normal person while they lived their normal day in front of you? The answer is: there hasn't even been three dozen of those made since the invention of the moving picture. And they're right not to make anymore because anything they spent on a film like that would be a waste. No one would pay money to go see it. Humans already have enough mediocrity in their own lives. The thing they go to the theaters to see is the explosions, the romance, the humor. Certainly not the mundane or run-of-the-mill average days.”

19

The repairs were accomplished rather quickly. Aurora had expected to see hundreds of men and women fixing wall panels, and using futuristic tools to accomplish difficult tasks. That’s how it had been on the big screen. In reality, entire sections of rooms and halls were uncoupled from their supports and replaced with new sections, while the old ones were ferried through the maglev tunnels to repair facilities, to be fixed and stored for future use. It was a very effective form of recycling.

Aurora had been assigned to learn from a repair team. They were slightly sarcastic at times, but all in all, the job got done in miraculous time. Her detail was to check the vacuum seals on the entire set of airlock docking chambers in their section. For safety’s sake, they wore E.V.A. suits, in case the test failed. The team had to go into the chambers, working in pairs, and take simultaneous readings. If all went as planned, the information would correspond, and the team would move to the next area. It was during one of these tests that Aurora and another fellow were assigned to go into the next pressure chamber. The door was closed, and hermetically locked on the ship’s side. The heavy, emergency lockdown bracing was retracted from the bay side door, and Aurora and Lieutenant Hues scanned the room.

The pressure started to diminish slowly. Aurora reported, “I’m reading a drop in air pressure. Confirm the drop, Hues.”

Her partner, Lieutenant Hues checked his tools carefully, and then answered. “Confirmed. I show a ten-kilopascal per minute drop. I’ll check the door.”

He moved toward the door, resetting his scanner to search for the leak. “Found it, about ten centimeters down from the top, on the open side.” He continued to move his device slowly down the crack, when he found something else. “Look at this. It appears as if the lock has been stressed from the outside. It’s out of alignment by thirteen millimeters. It looks as if the outer handle got hooked on a passing ship…or maybe an android was pulling on it.”

He turned to Aurora, a look of fear in his eyes. His hands shook lightly as he fumbled with the scanner and he started to wobble. Aurora took him by the shoulders, attempting to calm him. “Hey, look at me! All the bad robots were accounted for, remember? There were only five of them. Don’t worry.”

As she said the words, he calmed slightly. The speaker in her ear was now the only way to hear him, as the air in the room was almost completely gone. His breathing slowed to semi-normal levels, and he could now stand on his own. They were in the midst of preparing a request for the air to be replaced, so they could go to the next chamber, when they stopped dead in their tracks. They heard something, a noise made by neither human. It must have been resonating through the walls, floor, and in turn through their suits. It was a sound like metal on metal. First, they heard scratching, then hammering, and then nothing. They looked at each other confusedly, then back at the door.

“You sure all of the bad bots were accounted for?” Hues whispered.

Silence blanketed the room
for a few seconds, and then the hammering came back. It was definitely not random sound; it came as three impacts in three sets. Then silence again. Hues moved to a terminal, and called up a view of the outside of the door. What they saw frightened both of them. The screen displayed a tactical android of unknown design. The hands and arms were badly scratched, probably from the action of beating on the door. It had worn away the shiny coating on its arms.

Aurora shouted into her microphone, “Central, Major Julia Travers! Six androids landed in the bay, not five! There’s still one onboard! We need immediate assistance.”

She waited for the response. When it came, it didn’t sound like she would have hoped. The response was automated. “All personnel must leave sections hereafter named...”

As the voice rattled off a list of numbers, Aurora waited for the welcome voice of her temporary supervisor. Then it came. “Aurora, I’ve been told that a few tactical teams will be at your position in a few minutes. Can you hang on until then?”

“Judging on the dents this guy is making on the other side of the door, I don’t think it will last any longer than one minute, give or take. I’ll have to take matters into my own hands, I guess. I’ll get back to you on how things work out.” And before Major Travers could respond, “Aurora out,” cut the link.

Lieutenant Hues huddled on the floor
as he watched the screen. Aurora felt alone, with no one to aid her. She had an idea, “Athena, pump the pressure in this chamber up to five atmospheres. We need to knock our uninvited friend off guard.”

“Compliant,” came her response.

As she requested, the pressure in the room rose to five times the normal setting. She leaned down to tether her inept companion to a railing, preparing for her next maneuver. She went to another link point, and did the same with her own safety cord, securing her body from unwanted movement. When she thought she was ready, she spoke into her comlink. “Athena, open the lock on the bay side door.” She held firmly to the railing, in anticipation of the impending explosion.

Silently, the door unlocked,
releasing the trapped air into the vacuous launching bay. The door opened extremely fast for its weight, slamming full speed into the tactical unit’s torso. It flew for a hundred feet, before landing on the floor and skidding to a halt. Dazed for only a second, it regained its mind, and continued its assault.

The force of the pull had ripped Aurora from her railing, the cable being snapped like a thread
. In an instant of terror, she tried to grab the top of the doorframe, only changing her trajectory, from out, to out and up. She cleared the artificial gravity field, and continued flying through the space above the many ships in the bay. It was a second before the artificial soldier saw what had happened, but using some skill in jumping, he launched himself toward her. He had small thrusters on his feet, making course corrections, as he went.

Aurora felt the impact of the ceiling of the enormous bay throughout her entire body. It felt like she had fallen from a second story window, onto a flat metal plate. She heard a crack as she hit, probably from some of her ribs,
and pain shot through her back. She had very little time to react, before the android would reach her. Not having the use of thrusters made things harder for her. She pushed off from the ceiling, aiming for a large vessel beneath her. As she passed the android, he reached out to grab her, but only caught empty space. She was a few feet from the ship, when he hit the ceiling, and made a following jump. “Athena, help me!” Aurora shouted, as she hit the hull of the ship. She found another railing and grabbed it with all four limbs, hugging it close.

“I’m here, child. Hold on,” came the response.

The ship she was hugging, lifted from the deck plates, and moved away from the assassin. It hit the floor, and executed another jump, this time trying to catch the fleeing ship.

“Aurora, I’m going to accelerate. Get ready.”

She found the frayed end of her tether, and quickly tied a bowline knot to the railing. No sooner had she done so, than the ship did indeed speed up. Aurora guessed she was cruising at close to three hundred miles per hour, when they cleared the outer door to the launching bay. They were followed by the menace, with no deviation. He flew like a sort of evil superhero, with his arms stretched in front of him.

The artificial soldier didn’t know or didn’t care that he was also followed by a small starfighter, which had him square in its sights. Athena was nervous about giving the order to fire, because of the fragile passenger on the pursued vessel’s skin. Giving one final warning, Athena told Aurora of her plan. The human tightened her hold on the railing as the ship she was piggybacking made a sharp nosedive. For a second, Aurora
sped away from the line of danger, providing just enough time for the tailing gunship to open fire.

The blast shredded the intruder. His mechanical parts fragmented into tiny pieces and floated into
, the void of space, his burial grounds. The fighter assumed escort position for Aurora, and the two crafts made for the safety of the Legion, as fast as was plausible, with a tender package attached firmly to the outside of the one.

Upon arrival back at the bay, Athena parked th
e sloop right near an airlock. By the time they were ready to land, other ships had moved out of the area, to afford them a close enough spot to the door. Carefully, Aurora unbuckled the cable spool from her suit, and crawled down the side of the hull. She felt the gravity start to take hold of her, but from her excitement, she was weak, and didn’t care to slow her descent. She fell into the waiting arms of Drokk, who carried her into the airlock.

The bay side door sealed and the pressure equalized. The other door opened, letting in a dozen men and women, including a medical officer, and a tactical group. The team, she had been assigned to work with, also stood by to get any information they could. There wasn’t much, but
they did clarify that the android originated with the insurgent team that Gracchus had sent. It appeared that when the others were destroyed, he went into hiding until the smoke cleared, and he could continue his mission. Unfortunately for him, his remains were now scattered throughout a very large section of outer space, as the incident took place while the Legion was still traveling at almost a thousand miles per second.

In stark contrast to the android's night in the cold of space,
Aurora passed the night very soundly. Her dreams were not very strange, as far as dreams go. She envisioned she was in charge of a large commune inhabited entirely by green dwarves. They called her their queen and bathed her in strawberry ice cream. Then a giant anteater came and slurped them all up with its tongue. It was then that she realized the dwarves were all ants and were actually trying to prepare her to be eaten by their real queen who looked surprisingly like the actress Sharon Stone. So in the end the anteater saved her and she walked home to…her quarters onboard the Legion? Was it possible that she had decided, however unconsciously, to consider the futuristic accommodations of a starship as her home? If so then she was preparing herself for a cruel twist of fate, the kind that usually ended good things in her life.

The next morning, the Colonel came to visit her, at
about half past nine. He was more of a friend now than she used to think him. When they had first met only a few weeks before, he was a nerdy student at a small community college. She had considered herself no more than just a regular woman at the same college. The reason Ms. DeMarco
introduced them in the first place was because Aurora didn’t like to simply concede the argument to anyone who appeared wrong in her eyes. As her mentor, it had taken Lincoln Smyth a few days to get Aurora Dane to even smile at him. It was only after she felt one hundred percent sure he wasn’t Dr. DeMarco’s spy, that she trusted him.

He had grown in her eyes to become more than just her friend. Now he was a friend to the entire ship not to mention the entire planet Earth and every other freedom-loving world in the cosmos. Silently Aurora wondered just how many times Lincoln had fulfilled his duty and saved the world from certain doom. His features didn’t show it whatever the number. He had no battle scars, but Aurora now knew of the pain with which he struggled deep within his heart.

Oh, how she desired to be a part of this ship’s story. She needed to be a part of it. Once tasting freedom, true freedom, she couldn’t stand the thought of returning to the life she’d had on Earth. There was nothing for her there, only a heartless town with a faceless school. In her heart, though, she knew that it was not her decision to stay or go. That right belonged to the man who brought her there in the first place, the man Lincoln Smyth, who just stepped in front of her.

“I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for sending you to endure that. I know you didn’t deserve it. We didn’t know about the other android or it would have been taken care of by now.” He walked over to the couch and sat down.

The look in his eyes was one of pure remorse, one that Aurora couldn’t refuse. She nodded acceptance of his apology, then bowed her head for the statement she was expecting. It came.

“Well, you should probably pack your things, now. I’ll be taking you back to Earth in a few hours. Make sure you don’t forget anything. You can’t just call us and ask us to bring lost items back down to Earth for you. That would be considered misuse of resources.”

He left her room, to prepare his ship for his absence. There were places to go, things to do, people to see, and talk to. After all, he was in command of just over ten thousand lives and over a hundred thousand androids. She expected him to be quite busier than he was.

The time she spent packing was minimal. Why prolong the agony, she thought. When she felt lon
ely, she called for one of the nannies to keep her company. A few minutes later one arrived with a small dish of chocolate cookies and a thermos of milk. “May I come in?” She asked.

Aurora caught her breath again. The voice was one she usually heard from the ceiling, not from someone’s lips. “Sure, why not. They’re not my quarters, anyway.” She sniffed and wiped a tear away from her eye.

The nanny leaned forward and took her in a gentle embrace. But as carefully as she could move, Aurora still winced in pain as her tender ribs were touched. Silently Aurora told herself that this would be the last time she would see this nice cyborg. In her heart she wished this person had raised her instead of foster care. They let go and shared the snack in relative quiet excepting a funny story about Lincoln when he was new onboard the ship.