Ghost Station (The Wandering Engineer) (58 page)

“Initializing
program. Admiral...”

“Use
the damn nanites. We're going to do this before we get to the station,” Irons
ordered, picking up a gauntlet and putting it on.

The
three AI consulted for a microsecond on the best course of action. Finally they
agreed and initiated the program.

What
Irons was doing was bonding the armor to his suit and making changes to it
through the use of his nanites. He picked up the generator and strapped it on
and then plugged into the shuttle. He could feel power from the shuttle flowing
into the generator, recharging it.

“You
are going to be crude admiral.”

He
flexed his left gauntlet. “Crude and powerful. Just as long as it does the
job,” he agreed grimly.

“Oh
I'd say so. Walking tank compared to the unarmored Dilgarth,” Sprite said
dryly. “Overkill.”

“Their
loss,” Irons said with a growl. He kept bolting parts on. “My gain. Besides
they have numbers on their side. If they come at me enough it could get
interesting. In fact I'm going to look forward to it,” he snarled with a feral
smile.

“So
what is the plan?” she asked. “I assume there is one,” she said dryly.

“We
go in to a different docking port as close to central admin as we can; we
neutralize any resistance and then secure the admin controls. If anyone gets in
my way they become a wet stain,” Irons said coldly as the generator whined.

“A
marine plan,” Sprite replied.

“Whatever
works,” Irons replied firmly as he plugged cables in. “If I had a battle
cruiser or a fleet I'd use that. If I had a platoon of marines I'd use them. I
don't. You use the tools you've got,” he said working. “KISS.”

While
he was taking Proteus had applied the Ironman one mods to the armor pieces the
admiral had attached to his suit and integrated them into the suit itself. By
pulling material from the armor and suit the AI could wire them together.

“Admiral,
please access the replicator. I need more raw material and additional nanites.
Be advised that I will drain the tank of nanites,” Proteus asked.

“I
don't give a shit, so sure,” Irons said, walking over and lifting the lid of
the replicator. “Drain the whole damn thing. We'll make more.” He watched a blue
stream of nanites go in and then out. They were like ants. To a normal human
they wouldn't have been seen at all of course. He could feel the suit coming
alive around him. Good.

He
blasted his way into the station. There wasn't any finesse about it, he just
found a nice view port as close to the center as he could and rammed the
shuttle in. The shuttle's shields shrugged off the debris, letting anything
knocked loose to drift off into the black void. He'd briefly considered docking
but had thought about it over the last two minutes and decided on this
approach. This way no one could fracking play games with him. He was through
playing games.

He
climbed out of the shuttle and moved fast as things drifted around him. He
blasted through the closed apartment door and kept going.

When
he ran into a significant obstacle he used plasma weapons and or breaching
charges to blow a hole and then walked in or through the mess as the atmosphere
rushed out into the void. His energy shields shrugged off the shrapnel. This
simple and direct strategy isolated him from the Dilgarth and other hostiles
while clearing a path and safeguarding his shuttle behind him. But it forced
him to create an airlock when he wanted to be in an atmospheric room. There is
no point blowing the entire station, he just wanted to keep the fleas and ticks
off his back for as long as possible.

He
still ran into resistance, at first from people or Dilgarth he assumed, then
from the station itself. Hatches were closing and locking ahead of him. Some of
it is because of the hull breach, but most likely he tripped some sort of
security system. Something or someone was throwing roadblocks at him now.

Any
resistance was put down hard and fast. “Isn't this well, a little overkill for
you admiral?” Sprite asked as a plasma bolt tore a bot apart. The organic
sentients had been cowed by his display and quickly quit the area. Now whoever
was trying to stop him had started using bots.

“Overkill?
No, I think it's about right,” Irons snarled. “Got a problem with me defending
myself all of a sudden commander?” he asked, blowing an alien away with a
shotgun blast from the armored gauntlet on his left arm. He'd seen the damn
raptor on his HUD hiding behind a crate. You'd think the Dilgarth would have
realized by now that going up against him at all was a losing battle.
Apparently this was a different pack or something.

“Since
I'm in the body in question, no not really,” Sprite said. “But I do question
your mindset and your motives. And your plan well... stinks. It needs work. It
isn't
you
admiral.”

“Simple,
direct, and to the point. The best plans sometimes are. Rule one of an engineer
Sprite, if it doesn't work, use a hammer. If it still doesn't work your not
using a big enough hammer,” he said slamming a gauntlet fist into an armored
door. The shock of the impact made a loud thunderous bang. Puffs of dirt and
dust danced around the door. It vibrated and dented but held. Three more hits
and it still held. He stepped back and kicked it. Hard. The door crumpled
inward. He used his hands to wedge them in and then pull the door halves apart
far enough so he could climb in.

“You
aren't even bothering to hack the doors admiral?” Sprite asked. He was in an
anteroom less than two hundred meters from central admin and the computer core
now. He looked around, scanning with his energy enhanced senses. Or cores he
thought reading the reports as they came in, he wasn't really sure what he was
going to find in the other room. It was Faraday shielded for some reason.

“Just
getting some mad out Commander,” Irons said. Most of the resistance had faded.
He still had the occasional suicidal alien or bot, but they were now passing
the word that crossing him was a terminal decision.

“Admiral...
it's not their fault things are they way they are...”

“Oh
no?” He looked up furious. “Whose fault is it? Can you tell me that?
Mine
?
I was asleep damn it. I did what I could. I damn well know I couldn't have done
anything in stasis. No, you ain't layin that on me. So, whose fault is it
commander?”

“I
think you have the answer for yourself.”

“You're
damn right I do. The people,” he snarled. His nostrils dilated in rage. He
turned and paced for a moment. “You think I don't see it? They could have done
something afterward. Anything. You think they just what? All died out? All the
people who know how things work? How to fix them? Build others? Yeah we used replicators
but we had other technology! You can't wipe out a civilization completely?
Spirit of space knows we've tried it on ourselves often enough! What the frack
were they doing? No one taught their kids what to do??? No theory, no
foundation! It's like apathy set in and no one gives a damn anymore! Oh well,
we can't fix it, might as well just live with it. Oh well, someone else will
come along and save us.” He threw his hands up in mock disgust.

“And
look at me, running around trying to save them like some stupid hero. Do I get
any thanks? Precious little! Usually it's a kick in the teeth and a go along we
don't want you interfering with us anymore! Remember Pyrax? Hell, Destiny?
Kiev? And here we are on a fracked up station. And damn it is a
fracked
up station. And why is that?” he demanded sarcastically throwing his hands up
in the air.

“The
people trying to kill us
had
parents. Those parents could have done
something about the fracken situation. It's instinctive of most parents, to
want the next generation to have it
better
than they did. To make it
easier on them. They did nothing!” he screamed, bellowing it out and balling
his fists. He lashed out and smashed a cabinet into ruin. “Not a
damn
thing! They
let
this station die around them a little at a time. They
let it die! They left their kids to wallow in the dark, to play Lord of the
flies! What the hell was wrong with them???!”

“Sometimes
I ask that question myself,” a new voice asked behind him. Irons turned, angry.
He was now angry with himself for not noticing the new person. Then the lack of
a heat signature on his HUD made him pause.

The
man was there, a woman was hiding behind him. He realized at once it was a
holographic projection. They were both dressed in formal green business suits.
Their images glowed slightly in the dark. “We obviously screwed up. We know.
I've known for centuries. Spirit of space I've known. And yes, I could have
done something about it. I didn't. That's on me.” His eyes closed for a long
moment. The woman reached out and tucked her hand into his and gave it a
squeeze.

“You
are an AI?” Irons asked. That didn't feel right. They reeked of old, of age and
something else. Ancient. Ancient and lost.

“No.
I'm a cyber,” the man said. He looked in his prime but there was something about
his eyes. Something old. Old and tired. His image was ghost like, ethereal. The
projector was barely functional. There was also something about the image that
was off, the details weren't there. There were no folds, no creases in the
virtual cloth; the hair was more like a hair helmet. That was odd.

“My
wife and I have been in this station net trying to keep it together for the
past seven hundred years. Until you showed up we had given up trying to do
anything beyond staying alive.”

“Worried
I'll shut it all down?” Irons asked. He was near the admin complex it would be
dead easy for him. All he needed to do is get in there and he could purge the
entire system and take control with his implants. The cybers added a new
complexity to the already convoluted situation.

He
wasn't on board with cybers. Oh he jacked in to a system of course, but to
permanently jack in? To give up your body to become a meat AI? Living in a
cyber world? Dependent on a machine to keep him alive? That argument always had
him going in circles. To be a spacer you had to be dependent on a computer to
manage your habitat. And he was a cyborg; he had to have artificial implants to
stay alive... but to do it like that? Give up a sense of touch, taste, smell...
all physical contact with your friends and family? Give up eating a steak? Sure
a virtual one tasted okay... but it still wasn't the same. He couldn't wrap his
head around that sort of dedication or insanity whichever it was. He was just
glad that the military had never allowed it. At least not in wide spread
practice.

“It's
a thought. And sometimes I think you should. We deserve it. We've just sat
here. Trying to...” he shook his head. His image wavered.

The
pair talked with Irons for several minutes. Eventually they introduced themselves,
Sid Berkheart and Emily Berkheart. They were permanently hooked up to the
station's computer net. They were old, very old and barely sane he realized.
There were eighteen sane cybers and three sane AI in the system. They relied on
the solar panels for power. There were about a hundred or more other people on
the station divided into three tribes and about sixty surviving Dilgarth.

The
cybers have built their own virtual world when the station had been in its
prime. They had retreated into it during the fall, only venturing out when they
had to do something. Some have gone insane over the years. Four cybers and one
smart AI were insane and homicidal. Two other cybers had retreated from the
others, they no longer communicated with them. The smart AI is rampant, usually
sulking and it only became active to defend the insane cybers when they were in
trouble.

“Lovely,”
Sprite said. “That explains the lock out.”

“No,
we thought you were him,” Sid said tiredly. Apparently the first time they had
docked the other cybers had been slow in noticing their arrival. It wasn't
until the admiral had fired off his plasma weapon did they know that something
interesting was going on in the real world. When they had escaped the cybers
had retreated into renewed apathy. That was until he'd barged in and torn the
place apart. Now the cybers were terrified of him.

“Oh.”

None
of the remaining sane cybers were programmers. The husband and wife talking
with him were human resource managers. They had managed to slice off parts of
the net from the insane cybers and AI. The AI Draco was an engineering AI; it
had been responsible for a lot of the day to day managing of the stations
systems so it had control of most of the station. Fortunately it seemed to
ignore them as long as they stayed in their virtual world. That had forced them
into a sort of isolation which had deepened their depression and paranoia.

The
other cybers had been a different story. A large part of the damage and
destruction in the station had been at their hands. They had tormented the
survivors in the station, haunting them and killing any that they could. The
station was falling apart faster now, past the point of sustainability for the
net.

“Why
didn't you send a bot in and kill them? Just walk in and smash their feeding
tubes?” Irons demanded when he heard the story. It was enough to turn his
stomach. The insane cybers had been allowed the run of the net for too long,
killing hundreds of people over the years. Cyber serial killers. They had to be
stopped.