Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles 7: Renegades (11 page)

The rate at which
WhimPy
was able to subsume systems filled him with complete confidence that he would ultimately gain full control of the Uruk weapons
platform. That said, the real question was whether or not this task could be accomplished before the
Alpha
AI was able to destroy the human’s home world.

Chapter 13: Ashtoreth…

Cat looked out the shuttle’s window. Commander Dickerson, who had resumed command of DE1, had made a discovery that he wanted to show Cat in person. From Cat’s vantage point she could see could see several of the High Orbitals the GCP had placed in orbit around the Hupenstanii home.

With JD’s help Cat had been able to convince the commanders of each of those platforms to accept her authority in the system. It helped that Dickerson had been able to provide proof as to the nefarious activities that had been taking place on High Orbital 1. Fortunately none of the other stations had a BioOps contingent stationed on their facility. Cat did not know what she would have done if they had had to face a number of those super strength replicants. 

Sergeant Stone stood next to her. He was still recovering from his unassisted spacewalk. Some neurological damage had occurred within his spine that the medical nanites were having a hard time fixing correctly. It was obvious to anyone who knew him that he was in constant pain and had trouble walking without a limp.

It worried Cat to see him like this. With the modern miracles that medical nanites represented it was easy to forget that they were not perfect and that humans and the end of the day were still quite vulnerable.

“What do you think our new friend has to show us?” Stone asked Cat while nodding his chin towards the station everyone had started calling DE1.

Cat leaned up closer to the window. “It’s something to do with what the BioOps team was up to. That section of the station had always been off limits to everyone but the BioOps team.”

Cat turned to face her friend. The way he was standing seemed to favor his right leg. “You going to be OK?”

The Sergeant stood up straight. The effort caused the briefest of twinge of pain to cross his eyes but he did not allow it to propagate to the rest of his face.

“Fit as a fiddle,” he said with a false bluster. “Doc says there may be some residual nerve damage… something the medical bots can’t figure out. Seems I have a defective template and the nats don’t know how to fix me yet.” He leaned closer to the Admiral and said in a conspiratorial voice, “Personally I think the Doc has the hots for me and can’t bear the thought a med bay without me in it.”

Cat smiled. “I’m sure that’s it sergeant!”

The shuttle bumped slightly as it docked with DE1.

JD met the Admiral with a crisp salute as she and the Sergeant exited their small craft.

“Welcome aboard Admiral. I trust your trip today was more comfortable than your last visit.”

Cat returned the salute and shook the man’s hand. In a very short period of time he had transformed from a
burnt out
,
sorry excuse for an officer
… to a man with a mission… a man intent resurrecting not just his career but the honor and dignity of the GCP. What Cat found refreshing was that she, although technically a rogue officer, was responsible for setting this man straight.

“I understand you have something to show us?” Cat prompted.

“Indeed Admiral,” JD said as he led Cat and Sergeant Stone towards the central turbolift. “Once we decided we needed to know what the BioOps team was doing, I had my engineering team cut a new hatch into their isolated quarters. I didn’t want to risk overriding the security codes on the main entrance for fear they would be tied to some type of self-destruct or data-dump system.”

“A wise move I suspect,” Cat said as they exited the lift. Cat could see an engineering team a short way down the corridor. They were working on installing a security screen that sealed a gaping hole cut in one of the interior walls of the corridor.

“It turns out it was,” the Commander agreed. He ushered them over towards where the team was working. Power cables draped across the floor as the engineering team installed and tested the new containment screen.

As they stepped through the opening Cat could see what had the Commander concerned. The equipment in the room they entered was completely unfamiliar to her. Even the labels on the various control surfaces bore absolutely no resemblance to anything she could remember seeing.

“What in heck is all of this?” Sergeant Stone said as he looked at what appeared to be a status chamber adorned with an unimaginable number of cables and pipes. There was a six foot rectangular display mounted on the side of the chamber. It was undulating with various shades of deep red and lavender.

Commander Dickerson stepped up to the machine in question. “That, Sergeant in the million dollar question. We can’t read any of the writing and none of our equipment will interface with anything we have found so far.”

“Are the other rooms like this one?” Cat asked.

“Five of them are almost identical. Two more have strange equipment but not the same as we are seeing in here. Everything else looks like it could have been shipped in from Earth.”

“Let me guess,” Cat said. “The rooms that look normal are the ones closest to the primary entrance.”

“And that’s why you’re the Admiral,” JD said with a grin. “Whoever these people were, and I’m beginning to question whether or not they were people – at least of the human variety – they wanted to make darn sure no one discovered their secrets. To my knowledge in the entire history of the facility no one ever got into these suites… except them.”

“And despite that they were prepared with ‘cover rooms’ should the need arise,” Sergeant Stone added. “The real question has to be ‘Who were they?’”

“No,” Cat said softly. “The real questions are ‘Why were they here and what were they up to?’”

JD stepped forward and placed a hand on one of the strange status chamber-like devices. “When my guys ran their first sensor sweep they detected organic residue in several of these pods. It had a very specific DNA signature.”

“Let me guess,” Cat said. “The DNA matched what you have on file for Admiral Bud Faragon but with some unusual modifications to some of the alleles – some of which code for additional ATP generation.”

JD looked at her for several seconds before answering. “How in the hell did you know that?”

“Simple actually. All of the replicants looked to be physical duplicates of Admiral Faragon but their strength and speed far and away exceed what an unenhanced human should be capable of… even with nanites augmentation. They would need extra energy to fuel that speed and strength… thus the additional ATP which is our body’s primary mitochondrial energy source.”

“OK, I’ll buy that Admiral. Any thoughts as to why so many duplicates of the same man?”

Cat walked around the room staring at the various machines. She signaled her internal AI
Cal
to link with
Yorky
. She wanted a recording and analysis of everything her eyes were seeing. She paused to look at some of the writing on the control surfaces.

Cal do you recognize any of these symbols?

The Heshe encounter unit responded immediately.
This writing is from a race of very advanced aggressive bipeds known to both the Uruk and Heshe as the Ashtoreth
.

Cal, superimpose a real-time translation in my field of vision
.

Immediately the purpose of each of the control surfaces became clear and Cat had a far better understanding of what they were facing.

Turning back towards the station’s commander, she answered his earlier question. “According to my Heshe database, we are dealing with an aggressive foe called the Ashtoreth. These controls are labeled in their script. We know from our earlier conversation with one of the replicants that they had planned on replacing Admiral Faragon. The only reason you would need multiple copies is if you were planning for the eventuality of losing one or more of them.”

She walked across the room to look at a computer screen which, thanks to her AI, she could now read.

“I think,” Cat said, “that the Ashtoreth are working to subvert the GCP from the inside. I suspect the Faragon replicants are just one set of many that may be out there… And if I’m right, this station and everyone one on it is in real danger.”

***

F1 fingered the throttle control of his attack fighter. The squadron he was leading was barely three minutes from reaching their desired jump velocity. Each fighter carried a fusion payload that could easily overload the target’s defenses. What he did not know was the capabilities of the renegade
GCP Yorktown
.

His task was, with extreme prejudice, to erase from the memories of all concerned, any evidence that the Ashtoreth had been involved in the affairs of the Galactic Coalition. His people’s years of careful planning and work had not yet come to fruition. It would be a shame to have to move before they were completely ready.

“Taskforce,” F1 barked, “Prepare to engage jump fields. Beta wing under the command of F3 is to swarm the High Orbitals and destroy them. Everyone one else is to engage the Yorktown and any support ships they may have gathered. With any luck they will not be expecting us and this will be an easy cleansing. Once their defenses are dealt with we will proceed to sterilize the planet. Our experiment is over – we have learned all we are going to from these test subjects.”

F1 looked at his countdown timer. He had ten seconds to go. He rested his hand on the jump field switch. He interlocks were all in place. His entire squadron would jump in sync with his ship. The timer hit zero. He pressed the button and the universe became a swirling mass of violet for the briefest of seconds. Then the stars reappeared… but something was wrong.

F1 checked his sensors. They were a full five light minutes from their anticipated arrival point. Somehow they had overshot their destination. He was at a loss to explain it. The end result was they were going to lose their element of surprise.

He gritted his teeth. So be it. They would still overwhelm the enemy. His creators had been subjugating servant races since before the first Hupenstanii had drawn breath. There was a natural order in the universe and his people sat at the head of it. No one could stand up to the might that was Ashtoreth!

***

Cat sat in her Admiral’s chair on the Bridge of the GCP
Yorktown
. Captain Ken Kirkland was in his command chair. Cat watched as her friend expertly managed the affairs of the ship as she prepared for the coming confrontation. She had begun to question whether or not she had misread the situation. Her analysis of the situation caused her to conclude that the forces behind the creation of the Faragon replicants, as well as the genetic manipulation of the Hupenstanii race, would want to suppress the knowledge of their activities within the greater Coalition. This almost certainly take the form of an attack… an attempt on their part to sanitize the situation.

Earlier Cat had ordered the other ships in her taskforce to jump into the Hupenstanii system and assume defensive positions around the planet. The
Exeter
and
Mador
were in polar orbits while the Captain Purohit’s
Relentless
flew in an orbit that kept her just within visual range of both the
Yorktown
and
High Orbital One
.

The attack, when it finally came, was sudden. It had taken over a week for the invaders to make their move and although it was intended to be a surprise attack Cat felt confident that the surprise was on the attackers and not their intended quarry.

Cat had Commander Thais scatter a number of hyperfield resonators in a wide orbit around the planet. They were tied into the FTL communication systems of each of the ships in her taskforce. If her ships tried to engage their jump drives they would temporarily deactivate the resonators. Anybody else attempting to jump into or out of the space immediately surrounding the Hupenstanii home was in for a rude surprise. The resonators would disrupt their ability to create a hyperfield jump point in the desired location.

“We have twenty jump points attempting to form right on top of us!” Commander Ben yelled from his First Officer’s station.

“How is our surprise working” Ken said calmly.

“Yorky adjusted the modulation so the jump points have been shifted about 54 million kilometers sunward. It’s going to be toasty five light minutes closer to the sun,” Ben answered with a grin.

Cat toggled her ship-to-ship comms. “Gentlemen, it looks like this party has started. Remember we want a prisoner if we can get one. We are operating from a position of ignorance and that is not a place I like to be. Admiral Kimbridge Out.”

“The ships are vectoring in on a straight line at just over 0.2c,” Ben reported.

“Any transmissions Ziggy?” Cat asked.

Lieutenant Zimmerman shook his head. “Negative Admiral. If they are talking it’s on a channel we can’t receive.”

“Very well,” Cat acknowledged. “Let’s see if they are open to talking with us.” She nodded to Ken. “Captain Kirkland will you do the honors?”

The
Yorktown’s
captain flipped a toggle on the arm of his command chair. “Attention approaching ships. The space around this planet is under the protection of the
Yorktown
Taskforce. Please shut down your engines and state your intent.”

He sat back in his chair to await their reaction. After a few seconds he looked over at Ziggy. “Did they receive that signal?”