Shadow Core - The Legacy (30 page)

Meanwhile, the Regent, the pride and joy of the Solarian Union, had been reduced to a multi mega ton paperweight; a sight which Static found strangely appealing as he observed the now disorganised crews through their own security systems, as they worked to restore the ship's systems.

The immediate threat had been prevented, though Static still found it hard to believe that there was anyone alive dumb enough to consider using such despicable weapons in this day and age. Then again, he had never been very good at understanding the military mind-set.

Static cursed their luck. If that last probe had arrived just one minute earlier then all of this could have been avoided, but there was no point in dwelling on what 'could have been'. At least the defence platform was now permanently out of commission.

Its power was impressive, Static thought.

The beam cohesion wasn't great and the stabilisation engines obviously needed a lot of work, but the design itself was almost as good as that of a genuine Goliath platform and this worried him.

This loss would probably not deter the Union. They would eventually build a new platform and refine the design, but that was an issue for another time.

Right now the current situation was almost ideal, Static thought as he swiped his hand across his consoles' interface, wiping all the information from the screen. The display quickly filling up again with data streams as Nexus kept the fleet's capabilities in check.

Meanwhile, on the bridge of the Regent...

“Sir, engineering reports we have navigation systems back online, we've also restored partial sensors: short range only,” Ashlyn reported.

“What's the status of the fleet?” The Admiral demanded to know; afraid that the fleet was being decimated around them.

“As far as our sensors can see... the fleet has sustained no damage. The enemy is not attacking.” Ashlyn said.

“What about our weapons? How long before they're restored?” The Captain asked as he reviewed engineering's report on the systems hack.

“All fire control systems are still out of commission Sir. As soon as our technicians manage to restore partial control the systems are disabled again just as quickly as the first time,” Ashlyn reported.

“I don't understand this. We are being made to look like complete amateurs by this one single ship! There is no way the Regent should be so vulnerable. We have redundancies in place to allow us to remain 70% combat effective even if we lose our central computer.” The Captain shouted in frustration, “So why can't we fire the damned guns?”

“The central computer is locking the fire controls and we can't gain access to the computer room in order to shut it down. All of the emergency bulkheads in that section have been sealed shut,” Ashlyn said.  

“Tell the crews this is not the time for finesse. Have them cut the control lines if they have to, just give me back control of our weapons!” The Captain ordered.

Tactically, the enemy was making little sense to the Captain of the Regent. The enemy had jumped directly in front of the fleet, a normally suicidal move by just about everyone's book but this had given it the ability to disarm the fleet. It was an overwhelming advantage, so why was the enemy just sitting there, he wondered.

The Captain's eyes widened as he suddenly realised he was overlooking one tactical possibility. The enemy had been sitting in the system for months, probably gathering intelligence and now it had a direct link into the Regent's computer banks and all the secrets stored within. They were being bled for information.

Back in the tactical virtual environment...

Static had finished going over the records of the Regent and had found nothing even remotely relevant on Nova's location. In fact there was no mention of her at all in any document. There was also very little information about the 'Defender' platform, what little there was indicating that the project had been ongoing for a few decades but had only made any significant headway in the last few years.

Nothing else seemed even remotely interesting; it was just a lot of military operation reports which made for some excruciatingly boring reading.

This fleet, like most military units, was just a pawn in the grander game, controlled by someone else up the hierarchy. There was no useful information here.

Just as Static felt as though he was about to pass out from sheer boredom, something caught his attention. It was a communications file, the content of which was completely uninteresting, but the file itself had the same digital signature as the files which had been sent to him almost 6 months ago.

Static performed a new search on the Regent's computer system. He was now looking for anything that had come from the same source and what he found was troubling. The same signature was present over almost countless files, all of which had utterly insignificant contents. They were all low priority communications which had been issued from different departments of the Union's military. There was no common source.

“What does this mean?” Static asked rhetorically.

“What does what mean?” Toby asked as he stood there with arms crossed, having nothing else to do.

“This is the same signature on the information I received, the information which brought us to this system in the first place,” Static said.

“Why did you come here anyway?” Toby asked.

“The information I got said that the ship which had taken Nova had not been destroyed in the battle; that if we came here we would be able to find a clue as to her current location. We scanned every metre of this sector down to the smallest detail and found nothing. Then the Icarus showed up, bringing you to us, so I thought you had somehow found a way to call us in,” Static said as he looked at Toby with a confused expression.

Toby said with a concerned look, “Nope, wasn't me. You think someone is playing you?”

“Someone that knew you had found Nova? Someone that knew how to send a message all the way to the Zero Core? And what frequency and encryption protocol to use. Someone that could manipulate the Solarian Intelligence Service to make them stall the fleet and bring Kade to this ship, literally carrying you straight to me?  Someone who is doing the Union's military secretarial work by pushing all of these low level reports around their systems? Who?” Static asked, completely stumped.  

“Don't ask me, I've been dead for almost 8 years now. I'm not exactly 'up' on current events. But if the message was routed to the Zero Core then it would have to be someone intimately familiar with our technology. And he or she, would have to be very well informed if they had the current encryption protocols. Don't they still change at least once a year?”

Static said with a worried look, “They do. There's no way an outsider could have gotten their hands on that kind of information.”

“So... who did you annoy this time?” Toby asked.

“What?” Static replied, somewhat confused.

“If I had to guess, I'd say someone wants you dead. Exhibit B is right there,” Toby said as he pointed at the fleet hanging right in front of the Zenith. And then said, “We kind of blew up exhibit A.”

“That can't be it. The message was sent to the Zero Core. Whoever sent it must know that destroying the Zenith wouldn't harm me,” Static said.

“You little bastard! We can hear you, you know!!” Drake said.

“Sorry! I meant in a physical sense. I have no body left to kill. If someone wanted me dead they would have to destroy the Zero Core itself. Destroying the Zenith wouldn't accomplish that. And even if it did, neither the platform nor the fleet would be up to the job,” Static said and then tried comparing the signature against the strange warning message Nexus had received.

“They match! Whoever brought us here is the same person that warned us against the nukes, so they're not trying to destroy us. But then what...” Static paused as he tried to put the pieces of the puzzle together, but there was still something missing.

Static asked with a suspicious look, “Toby, you said that during the battle you lost track of the ship and ended up amnesic for your efforts. So how did you find Nova's location after all that time?”

“Well... technically, Jude found her,” Toby said.

“What?” Static asked with a stunned expression.

“She hacked her way into the GAIA network core a while back and that's where she found her,” Toby said.

“Found her? The GAIA network? Are you freaking kidding me?” Static nearly screamed, “They built the damned thing around Nova's matrix?”

“That's the theory. Jude gave me a pretty good description of what she had seen when she hacked in. But according to her, what she found was not a sentient AI. It had no free will and was shackled with enough security layers to restrict all but the most basic of behaviours. I tried to follow up on the information, but my body was starting to fail me by then. All I ever managed to get was bits and pieces of information, but it all seems to fit. GAIA is Nova,” Toby said.

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“All I had was little more than speculation. Nexus was double checking my findings before we acted on them. And then, all of this crap happened,” Toby said as he pointed at the fleet.

And almost as if by some kind of warped divine intervention, at the exact moment that Toby pointed at the fleet the Zenith's sensors started registering explosions inside the Regent.

“That wasn't me... I swear!” Toby said with a sheepish look, weirded out at the timing of it all.

Nexus screamed, “We need to leave, now!!”

“What's wrong?” Static asked, worried about the panic in her voice.

“The crew of the Regent has destroyed the control lines to the ship's main guns. They will be able to fire the thing manually. I can't stop them anymore. At this range even the Zenith's armour won't be enough!”

Toby didn't wait for orders, quickly uncrossing his arms and extending them forward as status screens flashed before his palms at an absurd rate. The Zenith immediately fired its manoeuvring engines, causing the ship to quickly spin around its centre of mass as it engaged the main engines to full power.

The Regent's main gun fired, sending a yellow plasma beam into the flank of the Zenith that punched clear through the ship's heavy armour.

The shot had missed the ship's main reactor by the slimmest of margins, punching its way through a mostly unimportant section of the ship, but still causing the Zenith to suddenly stop accelerating; its main engines going dark as the ship started to drift.

The fighter bays on the carriers were still out of order and the Regent needed a long recharge time after each shot. But the remaining ships in the fleet were now opening fire on the Zenith, as they quickly regained control of their systems. The one saving grace was that Nexus had permanently disabled the nuclear warheads.

Drake was frantically working his interface as he brought up and examined the detailed damage information. He turned to the sisters and asked, “Can either of you still talk to Toby?”

“I can't hear any of them,” Jude replied.

“Me neither,” Kade said as Zen 'woke up' from her slumber, looking confused.

Zen said in an agitated state, “What happened? I've lost my connection to the Zero Core.”

“The Zero Core?” Jude asked.

“It's the master control Core, based on the standard Core technology, but infinitely more powerful. It's also what houses the AI's and Static's consciousness,” Drake explained as he looked over the damage information with a puzzled look.

“So did that blast hit the Core?” Jude asked while looking at Zen.

“No, the Zero Core is not on-board the Zenith. It's located deep in our own territory. We connect to it via a hyper-spatial link, allowing us to interact with it from pretty much anywhere in the galaxy,” Zen said.

“Why did we lose the connection?” Drake asked rhetorically as Kade could feel small vibrations through her chair and could see in the view-screen that the ship was being bombarded by enemy fire.

The fleet was beginning to surround the Zenith. The lighter ships continuing their assault as the heavier vessels were still bringing their guns to bear.

The Zenith's advanced armour was holding for the moment, but there was no telling how long it would last under these conditions.

“We need to leave!” Kade said.

“I agree, but without an AI in charge of the ship we can't do much of anything. Keep in mind the Zenith is a capital class ship. Without a master AI we would need a full crew complement to operate all the systems,” Drake said as he rushed his diagnostics.

“Can't you do it Zen?” Jude asked.

Zen said, genuinely scared, “I don't know, this has never happened before. Without access to my main consciousness I don't know where to even begin.”

“Your what?” Kade asked as another beam from the Regent hit the stern of the Zenith, rocking the ship but failing to punch past the armour plating this time.

“Zen's mind exists in both her body and the Zero Core, but right now she's disconnected from the Core... and I can't figure out why! What the hell is wrong?” Drake said, becoming increasingly agitated as the bombardment seemed to intensify. And then he saw it, the answer was staring him in the face. “CRUD!!” Drake shouted as he rapidly double checked his findings, hoping he was wrong.  

“What?” Kade asked as she held Zen, trying to calm her down as her little body shook in fear.

“That damned beam cut right through one of the primary data interchanges and all the freaking backups failed to kick in because of instabilities in the power grid,” Drake said.

“Wait, Static and Nexus I understand, but Toby was reintegrated on this ship, right?” Jude asked.

“No. It looked that way but he was reintegrated by Nexus, so his consciousness is also housed in the Zero Core, same as Static. The real problem now is that I don't know of any way to re-establish a link under these conditions,” Drake said.

The Zenith was receiving heavy fire and its armour plates were starting to buckle under the constant bombardment. Advanced as its armour was it would not last indefinitely.