HAB 12 (Scrapyard Ship) (21 page)

“Can’t we simply phase-shift into the control hub from here?”

“Yes, but we may phase-shift into equipment we need to use … damage things to the point it effects our mission,” Ricket replied.

“How much time will you need, once we breech the control hub?” Jason asked.

“I believe I can accomplish what needs to be done in less than four minutes.”

Orion stepped closer to Jason, pushing Billy out of the way. “As you know, Captain, our energy weapons are less than effective against drones. Suggest we set our multi-guns for rail munitions—at least until we run out.”

“Got that, everyone?” Jason asked, accessing and adjusting settings on his own HUD multi-gun menu.

“Also, Cap,” Billy said, pushing Orion back out of the way and exchanging friendly smiles, “Did you notice there’s another life form here? I mean other than Craing, rhino or human?”

“What are they, Ricket?” Jason asked. He looked at the multiple icons showing up on his HUD display. “Whatever they are, there’s quite a few of them.”

Ricket stood quietly for a moment, contemplating his own HUD readings. “I have no idea.”

“Fine. Billy and I will take point; Orion, Ricket and Stands in Storm, you bring up the rear.” Jason signaled to Billy and they headed off down the corridor. Almost immediately they started to slip and lose their footing. Stands in Storm fell on his backside—everything shook. A white powdery substance, like flour, billowed into the air. They stopped. Jason looked at the bottoms of his boots. They were caked with the stuff.

“What is this?” Billy asked no one in particular.

“Silicon waste,” Ricket said, bent over and examining what lay on the floor.

“Waste?”

No one had time to comment, as multiple six-foot-tall, ball-like creatures rolled directly toward them from opposite directions.

“Pill bugs! Big f-ing pill bugs!” Billy said aloud. As if on cue, the first of the white crustaceans unfurled and stood on two legs, almost humanlike in its stance. Hundreds of expanding and contracting curved segments twitched along the back of its torso and legs. Its head was also humanlike. More of that same white powdery substance seeped from in-between its constantly twitching segments.

Other pill-bug creatures, three in front and three behind, rolled to a stop and unfurled to a stance as the first one had. The closest one spoke. It sounded like gibberish to Jason. This was typical of the Craing, who’d used rhino warriors and Serapins to do their fighting and now, apparently, were using these bug things. It didn’t seem particularly dangerous until a wet substance squirted from a gland at its abdomen area. The liquid streamed forward and hit Jason directly in the chest. The outer layer of his battle suit hissed and spattered. Black smoke rose up in small spirals. Looking down, Jason saw a smoldering, six-inch crater had been etched several inches below his chin. He dove to his left, seeing another stream arching through the air. That one, angled a bit higher, caught Stands in Storm in his right shoulder. A pink misty cloud blossomed and hung in the air. Flesh, muscle, and tendons started to disintegrate—leaving only exposed bones where his shoulder and upper arm had been connected. Now, with nothing to hold it in place, Stands in Storm’s left arm fell to the floor.

Chapter 25

Billy was the first to return fire. His multi-gun burst took the creature’s head clean off at its segmented shoulder area. As the creature died, it slowly contracted back into a ball.

The other pill bugs attacked in force—streams of liquid flew through the air from multiple directions. Within seconds, the acid-like liquid was taking its toll on their battle suits. Jason felt a white hot flash of pain below his left knee. Looking down, he saw that his suit had been completely worn away. Returning fire, Jason and his team advanced. The creatures began to wrap their segments tightly around themselves—creating their own version of an exoskeleton battle suit. Using short bursts to conserve ammunition, both Jason and Billy fired forward while Orion concentrated her fire on the creatures moving up behind. With each burst of rail-gun munitions, large sections of the bugs’ exoskeleton segments exploded into dust—revealing their inner soft body-tissue beneath.

Jason fired double bursts, the second shot mortally wounding them. He noticed Ricket was in the fight as well, shooting forward several bursts, then turning to help Orion destroy the bugs at their rear. Jason stumbled over Stands in Storm’s legs. He was dead. His body was almost completely liquefied; even his bones looked small and insignificant. As the last of the pill bugs died and reflexively contracted back into balls, the team continued forward.

An alarm klaxon had started at some point, but Jason couldn’t remember when. They reached another expansive compartment holding ten security hover drones. The room was square; one wall had floor to ceiling windows. The drones held their position in a straight line several feet in front of the windows. This time prepared, with time to react, both Jason and Billy phase-shifted right behind them. At point blank range, their multi-guns made quick work of four drones. Their shielding and metal housings quickly failed under the barrage of close-range fire. Like a tag team, once Billy and Jason phase-shifted away, Orion phase-shifted in from the other side, keeping up the attack. In minutes, all ten drones were destroyed and lay smoldering on the floor.

“This way,” Ricket said, jumping over one of the drones and entering a door along the glass wall. They followed him and were surprised to see the room busy with many Craing workers. Jason and his team pointed their weapons and ushered them to stay back. Ricket hurried through the middle of the group. Wide-eyed and open mouthed, they moved aside. He rushed to one particular terminal and gestured for the worker to get out of his seat.

“We’re at the sub-station’s hub, I take it?” Jason asked.

“Yes.” Ricket’s fingers flew over an odd-shaped data entry device.

Jason took in the room. Completely circular, with floor to ceiling windows all around, it looked surprisingly modern compared to what he’d seen of the rest of the facility. Large displays encircled the room; each showed one of the eight planets in the solar system. The largest display hung directly above Ricket. There, on what looked to be a video image, showed all eight planets orbiting their red giant sun, each slowly rotating in a counterclockwise spin. An icon hovered a distance away from each of the planets, directly below what would be their southernmost poles.

Ricket must have done something: a blue vector line stemming from the southern pole of each of the planets was now connected to the eight outlying icons below the other planets. From those, more vector lines converged together to a distant point further out in space.

Ricket continued to speak while he worked. “What you are looking at are the eight planets of the Craing worlds. Those eight icons hovering below each planet make up the array subsystem. They are basically large mirrors. The array subsystem tracks the location of not only its own lasers, but those on the other planets as well. They work as a unit, and together they concentrate the beams of all these lasers to a singular point in space—subsequently creating their unified wormhole. There are seven lasers active at any one time. The eighth one shuts down in a set rotation for purposes of maintenance, cooling, repairs and that sort of thing. What makes any kind of sabotage difficult is the redundancy aspect. Every laser sub-station has a room identical to this one. Anything I do here, that deviates from the norm, will trigger this station to be excluded from the Loop.”

Billy and Orion had taken up positions in front of the windows, while Jason leaned in close to Ricket’s shoulder.

“How do we get around that?” Jason asked. “That seems like it would be an insurmountable problem.”

“It is, actually. There is no way to alter their code or to jail-break it, as you would say.”

“So what are you doing then? That obviously hasn’t stopped you.”

“I’m starting over. I noticed their core software allows for periodic soft-updates. In effect, I’ll be replacing one version with a whole new one. I’m writing just enough new code to keep the sub-stations and array operational, but that’s about it. It only needs to operate for several minutes. Enough time to cycle on and off each of the lasers, upload the latest version, and power back on.”

“So how does that help us?” Jason asked, looking back at the window where more security hover drones were lining up.

“When they cycle back on, four of them will no longer be positioning their individual mirrors in the direction of that central point in space. They have been assigned a new set of coordinates. These mirror arrays will now target a sub-station on one of the neighbor planets.”

“Not just one, but four sub-stations will be destroyed?”

“That is correct.”

“Where is Halimar in this scenario?” Jason asked.

“Last, of course, although we will need to make haste to evacuate this facility.” Ricket turned to face Jason, no longer keying in information.

“We’ve got a lot of company out there,” Orion said. “In addition to security hover drones, there’s more pill-bug guys, as well as armed Craing soldiers.”

Jason was hailed.

“Go for Captain.”

“Captain, I guess you could say the shit’s hit the fan,” Rizzo said, sounding out of breath. “We’ve had to pull back; there’s two battle cruisers hovering above the sub-station and one is on the ground. Armed combatants are filing into the facility from multiple sides.”

“Where exactly are you now, Rizzo?”

“We’ve found cover in a barn-like structure—about ten miles away, Cap.”

“Hang tight there—looks like we’re almost finished here.”

“Cap,” Billy said, pointing to another monitor. They were looking at video footage of the outside of the facility. A red banner with bold symbols scrolled across the bottom of the screen.

Ricket said, “That’s local news footage, the equivalent of your CNN.”

The feed changed to what looked like overhead security footage of the inside of a facility.

“That’s us!” Orion exclaimed. The announcer was talking excitedly and the video had zoomed in on Ricket sitting at the workstation.

“What is he saying?” Jason asked.

“They’re reporting that after analysis of the security footage, they’ve definitively concluded it’s Emperor Reechet—that their emperor has returned. Apparently, this is causing quite a stir…”

Jason continued to watch Ricket, his head turned upward toward the display. Time and time again his loyalty had been put to the test. At some level, wouldn’t he have mixed feelings? This is—
was—
his home wasn’t it? Will there come a time when he chooses Craing over human? There was still so much Jason didn’t know about his father’s relationship with this part alien, part mechanical being. What had inspired Ricket’s seemingly unfaltering allegiance to him fifteen years ago?

The news feed had changed again, this time showing open space and a group of small vessels.

“What’s the announcer saying?” Jason asked excitedly.

Ricket said, “The Emperor’s Guard are minutes from leaving Craing space. They’ve held up temporarily.”

“Because you’re here?” Jason asked.

“That’s a possibility. Me being here has complicated things. Under normal circumstances, their directive is to stay with their charge, the emperor. Leaving the star system would violate that. High Priest Lom’s successor and his brethren without doubt would want the fleet to continue on to Earth. Now that my presence here among the Craing worlds is public knowledge, they have a dilemma,” Ricket said.

“It seems to me we have an opportunity here. If you’re up for it. I mean, as far as the populace is concerned, you are their emperor, yes?”

“Yes. Their perception is that I am Emperor Reechet.”

“Why not give them their marching orders? You … we … may not have an opportunity like this again,” Jason said, wondering if he was crossing the line into an area with which Ricket would be uncomfortable.

The room had gone quiet. Billy and Orion, as well as the Craing lab workers, had their full attention on Ricket. He looked directly at one of the workers and spoke in their native language. Flustered at first, the worker stuttered, hemmed and hawed, then nodded agreeably.

“What did you ask him?” Jason asked.

“If their security system records audio as well as video.”

“… And?”

“Yes, it does,” Ricket replied.

“You don’t have to do this. It’s not for me to tell you to do this,” Jason said.

Ricket got up from his chair and stood beneath the security camera. He began speaking in his native tongue. In unison, the workers in the room fell to their knees with their heads bowed. On the other side of the glass wall, the Craing there did the same. Ricket continued to speak softly but with determination. Jason had no idea what he was saying. The news feed was now live and showing Ricket addressing the Craing populace. It was uncanny how similar this was to a typical Earth news report, even down to multiple video-feed windows being displayed. They showed what appeared to be the reactions from other locations, other Craing worlds. Jason imagined thousands, millions of Craings had stopped in their tracks. The feeds kept changing. Crowd after crowd, all on their knees, heads bowed. Mesmerized, they saw that their emperor had returned and was addressing them. With his palms up, Ricket gestured to the camera for everyone to rise up. Jason watched the Craing workers in the room, their faces expressing a mixture of fear and astonishment. Whatever Ricket was saying blew their minds—and one by one they stood. They looked to Ricket and then to one another. Astonishment had turned to something else. An expression on the Craings’ faces Jason had come to recognize: They were smiling—some were laughing. The feeds from around the star system reflected the same response. The populace was now on their feet. Cheers and clenched fists were raised in triumph. Then the feeds all went black. The news bulletins went quiet.

“What the hell did you say?” Jason asked, bewildered.

There was that same expression. Jason wondered if he’d ever seen Ricket smile before.