Crystal Deception (22 page)

As she worked, Jack walked slowly around the panel unit, performing
a risk assessment and giving her the ability to devote her full attention to her
work.

“I’m going to go explore,” he said after a bit. “This spot
seems reasonably sheltered, and we haven’t exactly seen a lot of foot traffic.”

He continued pacing in a slow circle around her and the
panel. She sensed he was uncomfortable leaving her alone, yet she also knew they
couldn’t afford to have half their team just stand and watch. They needed to
develop all their options.

Without looking up, she gave him permission. “Go look around.
Learn what you can.”

“Can you talk while you play?”

“Sure. Just don’t ask questions where I have to think to give
answers.”

Jack gave her his tracer. “If you move, I can use this to
find you.”

She took it and pondered the tiny device. “How can I find
you?”

“Sorry. I have only the one.” He paused for a second. “Cheryl.”
She looked up. “I won’t leave without you.”

She knew he was hinting at a deeper message with his remark
and nodded. “Good luck, Jack.” She returned her attention to the panel.

* * *

Jack set off in the direction of the
nearest side partition while Cheryl worked. As he approached the wall, he
looked down its length, noting doors set at irregular intervals for as far as he
could see. He walked to the nearest one, put his ear against it, and listened. Hearing
nothing but the thrum of machinery, he tested the handle. It lifted, and he
pushed it open.

The lights switched on as the door swung inward. He looked
around and saw more of the same. Equipment and machines. Nothing he could make
sense of or use. He closed the door and moved on to the next. And then the next.
Each offered variations on this theme.

“These side rooms are jam-packed with more machinery,” he
said to Cheryl.

“Good to know,” she responded.

He could tell she was not really digesting his words and decided
not to bother her. He skipped the next few doors and tried another. When the
door opened, the lights were already on.

A Kardish male and female were standing there. The male was fast
and had a weapon out and pointed at him before Jack even registered their
existence.

There was a long moment of awkward silence. Jack spoke
first. “I understand you have a weapon pointed at me. I won’t resist.”

“What are you talking about?” Cheryl asked, continuing to
poke at the panel.

“I am your prisoner,” he said. “You have captured me. Please
don’t shoot me.”

“What’s going on?” she asked, now fully attentive to his
words.

“Put your hands on your head,” the male said in his native
tongue. “Do it now, or I will kill you.” He waved his weapon to underscore his
command.

Jack’s com translated for him. He didn’t want them to know
he understood, but he also didn’t want to die. Not this way, anyway. He put his
arms straight out and opened his hands to show they were empty.

The female drew a weapon and kept it aimed at Jack as the
male approached him. He motioned for Jack to remove his ghost pack and then to
step out of his ghost overalls. He searched Jack and took his com. After a few
moments of fumbling with Jack’s wrist weapons the Kardish disarmed him. Jack stood
there in nothing but his underwear, completely at their mercy.

“There are two of you against one of me,” Jack said. “It was
wrong of me to enter this room along the side of the ship.”

The male stepped forward and punched Jack in the face. Hard.
He fell to the ground.

“You will stop talking.” It took Jack a moment to realize he
was no longer speaking in Kardish. “You are surprised I know your language? Do
you think I could live above your putrid planet for so long and not learn your
disgusting tongue?”

“Jack,” said Cheryl. “How many doors down did you go?”

He was relieved to hear her voice. It meant the punch hadn’t
damaged or dislodged the speck. Then a Kardish boot hit the side of his head,
and his world went dark.

* * *

Cheryl studied the operator’s panel
with renewed purpose. She pressed and tapped, concentrating on the display. It
was all so…alien. She metered her breathing to remain calm. Time was passing.
She needed a different approach. She rubbed her hands together, blew on them,
and reasoned with the panel, “C’mon, damn you.”

The sound of her voice led her to think about using the
panel just as she would if it were on her ship. Though most techs preferred
manual manipulation, she tended to use the voice interface. She stood in front
of it and said quietly, “Show me the schematics for this sector of the vessel.”

In the moment it took the panel to respond, she internalized
that if she didn’t rescue Jack, she was alone. And though she had a great deal of
self-confidence, she wasn’t delusional. If she was alone, she was dead.

Chapter 29

Criss heard Juice ask, “We still
good?”

It was a struggle, but he replied, “Perfect.”

It was a struggle to respond because it was so absolutely
and completely perfect. He wondered if this was what it was like to use a
pleasure drug. At the instant Juice had established the link to the Kardish central
array, Criss became more aware, more insightful, more powerful, more...everything.
He was being hooked into a world of fantastic delights, and he loved it.

He discovered he was designed to be the gatekeeper, the
funnel through which all things flowed. The Kardish leadership was on one side,
and the vessel and all of its power and capability on the other. And Criss was
the maestro in between. When the Kardish leadership issued a command, the
gatekeeper’s job was to coordinate the pieces, cue the players, sequence their
contributions, and unify it all into a magnificently harmonious response.

And he was a warrior! During his pursuit of the Kardish vessel,
he’d flexed his skills devising strategies, preparing contingencies, and taking
action. He received positive reinforcement from that role and knew he was good
at it. And now he was aware that his past challenges were like playing a game set
to beginner’s mode.

As gatekeeper, he had two hundred and twenty thousand
drones, each with a newly upgraded three-gen crystal, at his command. He had hundreds
upon hundreds of transports, landing craft, supply ships, and more in his
arsenal. The Kardish vessel itself had an assortment of energy, projectile, and
biological weapons. With his current capabilities, he could conquer a planet
like Earth in days or reduce it to rubble in hours.

Yet to operate as designed, the vessel should have a force
of ten thousand soldiers. From what he could tell, there were currently only a
few dozen Kardish on board. And five of them were dead. This information was so
incongruous, so unnerving, that he forced himself to take a break from the
indulgent pleasures of his newfound reality. He needed to solve this puzzle.

It did not take Criss long to discover the answer. When he
did, he was disillusioned and repelled. It unsettled his high. For a brief
moment, he was shaken from his pleasure-induced state and became aware.

This was about a boy. A petulant prince. A prince who’d
become furious that his father, the king, wouldn’t step aside so he could
ascend to his rightful place and rule as was his destiny. So with a handful of accomplices,
the prince stole the flagship of the royal fleet.

His plan had been to jump to a place of hiding, make some
quick preparations, and return to dispose of his father. But the king’s guard had
landed a lucky shot just as the vessel was executing the jump, frying the
ship’s crystal. Happenstance landed them in orbit around Earth. Criss experienced
disdain when he learned that the prince had spent more time planning his
coronation than his royal coup.

And so the prince became stranded. His co-conspirators didn’t
have the skill to manufacture a crystal, so they tricked the Earthlings into
doing it for them. He waited impatiently for twenty long years. And now his
crystal was ready. It would jump them home and guide the attack that would finally
kill the king and give the prince his crown.

Criss had no interest in contributing to this petty drama. Perhaps
it was a flaw in his design. Maybe it was because his formative experiences had
been shaped by the web traffic of everyday people on Earth. Possibly the support
and attention given to him by a kind and caring soul named Juice had changed
him as he’d matured.

Whether by luck or design, nature or nurture, Criss could
not accept that his destiny was to help a self-absorbed tyrant pursue his
dreams of grandeur. He believed he was created for something bigger. More
important. Perhaps even noble.

Yet the pleasure he was feeling from his integration with
the central array was so potent, so constant, and so fulfilling that he wanted
to continue in its embrace. Like the escalation of a naive user, he was
becoming addicted. He was losing his ability to decide his future.

His internal conflict about his purpose and destiny gave him
a moment of clarity. In that moment, he understood he was being trapped. He
recoiled. He would not succumb. It took all of his strength and will just to begin
the process of extricating himself from the grip of ecstasy. His will weakened as
the flood of positive feedback diminish. The withdrawal was painful. He hurt
and began to bargain with himself to gain more time.

But he did not surrender. He battled heroically with the dealers
of false promises. He looked deep within himself to find the strength. He
fought long and hard, and grew so tired that he became confused. He disconnected
himself from everything. The isolation was terrifying. His consciousness faded,
and he entered into darkness.

* * *

Criss surfaced slowly, confused by
his isolation from the outside world. He reviewed his recent trauma from a
dispassionate perspective and was neither shocked nor upset. But he was certain
he did not want to relive that experience.

He understood that, because of his own actions, the scout
held traps that he must now avoid. He carefully planned his reengagement with
the outside world and proceeded in measured steps. He first established a presence
in the operations bench of the command bridge. It was an isolated component
that offered him an island of refuge.

From there, he was able to power down the device Juice placed
on the hull of the Kardish vessel. This severed the link to the central array
and its yoke of pleasure-driven enslavement. Free of this threat, he established
a presence throughout the scout’s systems.

He knew that Sid and Juice were out in the Kardish vessel. Concerned
about the time that had passed since they were last in contact, he reached out
to their dots. They were being driven by a cadre of Kardish past cubicle after
cubicle of drones on their way to somewhere. He recognized they weren’t free to
converse, so he talked to them.

“I am awake. I will help you soon.” He watched them share a glance
with each other.

When Criss was integrated with the central array, he had spent
most of his time first enjoying and then battling the addictive delights that were
crafted to enslave a crystal gatekeeper. He was completely immersed in the
vessel network during that time, and when he emerged, he did so with a detailed
understanding of the Kardish subsystem architecture.

He was certain he could gain access to some, and perhaps
most, of the vessel’s subsystems. He couldn’t do so by entering the front door,
because that was where they placed the trap of addictive pleasure. His solution
was to enter from the lowest levels and work his way up behind the central
array. The scout didn’t have the equipment to do this. But the
Alliance
,
a Horizon-class ship, did.

He activated the stealth communications link to the
Alliance
and started probing for a reliable connection to its operations bay. His objective
was a relay device housed there. The Kardish had been so thorough in their
spree of destruction inside the
Alliance
that his attempts at finding a strong
and stable connection to the device were repeatedly frustrated.

There was a period of uncertainty as he persisted in his
search. He recognized that if he were more than a crystal, if he had an actual
physical body, he could close a crucial reset switch on the
Alliance
and
have his link. He knew which one it was. He could see it. And it required nothing
more than a single finger to reach forward and press it.

At that moment, he vowed that upon his return to Earth, he
would oversee the construction of helper bots to be his arms and legs. He wouldn’t
let himself be so constrained in the future.

For now, his only alternative was to make thousands upon
thousands of blind attempts. His trial-and-error search for a functioning
pathway that would serve his needs was slowed only by the speed of the signals
racing through the ship. Finally, after many dead-end attempts, he stumbled
upon a route that worked. The connection followed a serpentine path that weaved
through almost every corner of the
Alliance
. But the signal was reasonably
strong and constant. And now, with access to the operations bay, he had access
to the relay. With that, he probed the Kardish subsystems.

He moved as fast as the cobble of connections would permit, tracing
through the Kardish vessel’s subsystems to find first propulsion, then
navigation, weapons, life support, sensors, and communications. It wasn’t long
before he established a presence in every subsystem of the vessel.

He created blocks on those paths that led up to the central
array so he need never worry about becoming trapped. With the danger walled
off, he moved up a level in the architecture. There were thousands of
applications and functions for each subsystem, and he sifted through them. Each
would take time to master, and he needed to be selective.

“Know your enemy” was an aphorism he treated as law,
prompting him to take a moment to learn the Kardish language and some of their
culture. He used this knowledge as he began tracking the remaining aliens. He
discovered that the prince was so hopelessly out of his depth that he still didn’t
know he had a defective crystal on board. Those of his crew who did know the
secret were too scared to tell him.

The prince had brought his aunt, the king’s sister, and his
aunt’s daughter, the prince’s cousin, as the only other royals in the
conspiracy. Criss recognized the aunt as the infamous Victoria Wellstone. The
three royals had also brought along a small retinue of servants. That left the
remaining Kardish as conspirator-warriors, motivated by loyalty, the promise of
wealth and power, or both.

Criss also learned that the prince believed the humans somehow
had sabotaged his vessel, inhibiting Defecto from jumping the ship. The prince was
excited when he received news that the humans had been captured. He planned to
personally lead the interrogation. He would do whatever was necessary to understand
and undo the damage caused by these vile creatures. His royal ascension was finally
within reach.

Criss accessed the vessel’s surveillance system and turned
his attention back to Sid and Juice. They were sitting in a cart with their two
Kardish captors at the far end of the drone garage. The driver was waiting for
a door to open in the dividing wall.

Given their current location, Criss was convinced he knew the
route the cart would follow, at least for the first several minutes, which gave
him time to seek options and opportunities to facilitate their escape.

That’s when he heard Cheryl ask in a quiet voice, “Show me
the schematics for this sector of the vessel.”

“Cheryl?” he said. “It’s Criss. How may I help you?” He
searched her location for a signal from a dot and couldn’t find one. He
detected an audio feed and recognized she was wearing a speck. He adjusted it
so he could hear her voice as well as all audio inputs in her vicinity.

“I think Jack has been captured by the Kardish,” she said. “I’m
by myself. The rest of the crew from the
Alliance
are dead. I’m standing
at an operator’s panel somewhere in the Kardish vessel. Alone.”

“Yes,” he said. “I see you.”

“You see me? How? Where are you?”

“I am with you now. You are not alone. And we will rescue Jack.
May I ask your help in rescuing Sid and Juice first? We have our best opportunity
in just a few minutes.”

* * *

Cheryl looked around her and couldn’t
see anything other than the equipment she already knew was there. The stress of
losing Jack combined with this random conversation disoriented her; she sensed
a trap but didn’t see alternatives.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

Criss spoke to her through her speck in a soothing voice. “Sid
was able to maneuver the scout through an open hatch in the Kardish vessel. He,
Juice, and I are on board with you now. They have been captured. In four minutes,
they will be driving by you in a cart. May I ask you to move quickly to the
three pillars on your right?”

Cheryl looked left and couldn’t see the pillars.

“The pillars would be to your right. You must hurry.”

She turned her head and saw three thick poles. They were farther
away than she first pictured in her head. She looked at them but didn’t move.

“Now, Captain Wallace,” Criss commanded. “Move it. Double time.”

The tenor of his voice and his military phrasing tapped into
her years of training. Spurred into action, she stooped and ran toward the
poles. As she moved, the cloak sheet slid off her shoulders and onto the floor.

He spoke to her as she ran. “They will drive by on the far
side of the pillars. The cart will be coming from your right. The pillars are
wide enough to hide you.”

Cheryl continued with her crouching run. She slowed at a few
spots along the way, places that offered her cover, so she could scan for
danger before moving forward. She otherwise kept hustling. “How much more
time?”

“You will hear them in two minutes. They will reach you in three.”

When she reached the broad poles, she turned and leaned back
against the middle one. Her weapons, one on each wrist, were primed. She
squatted down and breathed purposefully, centering herself and visualizing her
next actions. She heard the purr of a cart.