P13205 – one yellow dwarf primary, five planets, one asteroid belt and an enormous sense of impending doom.
Now that he was actually here, Zyan was experiencing a case of sudden-onset circumspection, not unlike that experienced by a younger version of himself who, having gone flat-out to get a green light for a harebrained plan, obtain required resources and personnel and then prepare for it, suddenly found himself wondering if all he was about to achieve was to get himself – and everyone along for the ride – killed.
That version of Zyan had pressed on anyway, and he wasn't about to turn back now. That didn't mean Shara – still in the dark about the full extent of Alenda's gifts – deserved to be risking her life too. Even Vadansky, irritant that he was, hadn't volunteered for this, and he sure as shards hadn't been given Full Disclosure beforehand.
"Keep her right out on the system rim for now," he told the prospector. "Scan the system with passive sensors only. Let's not announce ourselves."
Vadansky grimaced. "So you are expecting trouble? Surprised I am not."
"Just scan the system, rockjock," Shara told him. "We're not paying you for your insightful commentary."
Vadansky expelled his breath in irritation. "Only got two passive sensors, I have – a left eye and a right eye. What were you thinking this is, a naval recon frigate? I do honest work, I don't go sneaking around trying to-"
Zyan interrupted him. "That's a load of shard waste, Vadansky. Don't pretend to me that half your income doesn't come from casing systems for smugglers and pirates. That's why you've never lost your ship – because anyone who did take it in lieu of gambling debts would have to explain to some bad lads why their pet sensor jockey was unavailable for contract work."
"Since out in the open that is, I'll remind you that your – completely hypothetical, of course – pirates and smugglers would be looking to you for an explanation, if this ship or her captain ends up damaged." Vadansky stated.
"I'll cross that - completely hypothetical, of course - bridge if I have to," Zyan replied acidly. "Now fire up the grey-legal kit, Vadansky."
Vadansky grunted, but then moved off to one of his other workstations to activate the passive sensors that he didn't own.
Zyan braced himself for a difficult conversation. "Shara, the minute Vadansky gets cold feet and there isn't someone on board to keep him focused, his ass is out of here and we both know-"
"Nope," she cut him off, predictably. "Not staying behind."
"You're going to make me do that then, are you?" Zyan asked her.
"We're both going. If Vadansky leaves, he leaves," Shara insisted.
"If Vadansky leaves, we're sharded," Zyan reminded her.
"He's not going anywhere, he needs our money and he needs Guild legal cover. We may aswell have nailed him to an asteroid," Shara told him.
Zyan's eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't bet your life on that any more than I would," he observed, and although he didn't have Alenda or Saito's talents, he could see Shara was hiding something. "You've put some insurance in place, haven't you?"
"One of us had to!" Shara hissed back, under her breath. "It's a time-locked message to Merisa – if we're not back within two Maximese days it'll activate, ask her to inform the Crystal Singer what we've done, and then to-" she stopped.
"Inform the FSP," Zyan finished heavily.
"Yes," Shara confirmed. "If we fail, they're Alenda's next best chance."
"And they're supposed to find us how, exac-" Zyan stopped, as he remembered that the device currently nestled in his ear had a tracking function. "You gave Merisa the spare BlackTalk, didn't you? Two Maximese days is BlackTalk's battery life plus a few hours safety margin."
"All of which is exactly what you should have done, if you were treating this as an actual operation rather than a personal crusade to redeem yourself in Alenda's eyes," Shara accused him.
He couldn't deny the truth of that. "On the other hand, I wasn't particularly keen on leading who knows how many shiploads of defenceless FSP personnel into mind-wiping range."
Shara snorted. "He can go find some any time he wants," she said. "He already has."
"Which was kinda the reason I didn't want them involved," Zyan replied, getting angrier.
"Who else is there, Zyan?" Shara asked, and pointed out of the Ludlow's viewport, in-system. "Somewhere out there is a villain straight out of a sharding pre-space comic book, Zyan. He can control our sharding minds. If we can't take him out from long range, it's game over – and given that there's nothing here resembling a planet with a breathable atmosphere, 'long range' is going to be in short supply. This isn't just about us going and getting our friend back anymore, we do not have the right to keep this information to ourselves, so yes, I made the backup plan you didn't bother with. It's done, it can't be undone, let's move on."
Zyan momentarily took a cue from Vadansky and glowered, but at the end of the day, she had a point. If they did fail, then someone had to try again, and if nobody else knew to go and look in the P13205 system, then nobody could, and Anderssen would be free to continue on towards his goal of galactic domination – or whatever it was he was trying to achieve.
"Fine – we both go, if there is somewhere to 'go', anyway. For all we know this could be a wild goose chase, P13205 is just disinformation Anderssen's been leaving in his wake, and we won't find anything," Zyan sighed.
"I've found something," Vadansky called.
"Glad to see your habit of being wrong coming in useful, for a change," Shara said, with another trademark smirk.
"Just shut up," Zyan shook his head, and they moved aft to where Vadansky was operating the sensors.
The sour-faced prospector actually had a tone of something apart from sullen scorn in his voice as he spoke: pride. "Not one in a thousand ships would have picked up on this, and the Ludlow managed it after ninety seven seconds. That's craftsmanship, that is," he said, patting the side of his console.
"Bad luck for you the shardhole who employed you didn't write a speed bonus into the contract," Zyan told him, with a quick grin – it was lost on Vadansky. Zyan abandoned the attempt to build bridges. "What've we got?"
"A moon," Vadansky reported, pointing to an uninformative blinking red dot on the workstation's screen. "In orbit around the fifth planet."
"Oh-kay," Zyan replied. "You see the odd one now and again, orbiting planets. Actually, I think they're known for it."
Vadansky glowered at him. "This one wasn't here when the original survey was done, is what makes this one interesting."
"Could be a captured asteroid," Shara said. "That happens, doesn't it?"
"In that stable an orbit? I think not," Vadansky replied, zooming the plot to reveal the unlikely moon, in orbit around the fifth rock from P13205, which was itself hardly much of a planet – it was an airless ball of useless stone. "The original survey was only five hundred years ago, even if a planet without an atmosphere had managed to slow down an incoming asteroid rather than simply being hit, highly erratic the orbit would be, still."
"Go on," Zyan said, remembering that just because the guy was unpleasant and had a gambling problem, it didn't mean he couldn't be an expert at what he did.
"Made me think to look closer, it did, and this is what I saw," Vadansky said, with a half-hearted flourish of his hand that made him look like the galaxy's grumpiest stage magician.
The prospector zoomed in further on the large, relatively regular asteroid, pockmarked with tiny craters where a host of it's smaller cousins had come to grief. The feature that stood out, though, was the metallic protrusion at one end of the rock – a large, complex structure that looked like-
"Is that a drive unit?" Zyan asked.
"Yes it is, I think," Vadansky actually smiled, the smug, tight-lipped smile of someone who feels he has proved himself right and others not merely wrong but also stupid.
"Also entry ports, attitude control thrusters, sensors," The man pointed out other metallic features, "which makes that a ship – an old-style colony vessel made from a hollowed-out asteroid, like-"
"Barney's Rock, yeah, I've got the souvenir shirt. Any of those unaccounted for?" Zyan asked.
Vadansky tapped out a query – like every other vessel over a certain size, by law the Ludlow carried a copy of the FSP's vessel database, an information source stretching right back to the earliest days of human and alien spaceflight. He shook his head: "No – whatever she is, she's either pre-FSP or unregistered. The drive unit doesn't look like anything I've ever seen. Alone, also, she isn't."
"What?" Shara asked.
Vadansky zoomed in again, and now three vessels were clearly visible, sharing the same orbit as the enigmatic possibly-a-colony-ship. None of them were very large – the screen was showing the largest to be 273.8 metres long, and the other two were smaller, merely a hundred metres apiece. They looked to be docked to each other and the asteroid, connected by tubes.
"Only the larger one's in the database. The Norseman, declared lost in – wait, no," Vadansky stopped. "That's over 300 years ago."
"So it's a derelict," Zyan said.
"Presumably. The consorts, though, registered they might not be but recognise their class I do: very condensed cruisers, favoured by pirates," Vadansky said.
"I know the type – we operated one against the Prots in the civil war, shard knows where we scared it up from. Not a comfortable posting, I heard. Can they see us?" Zyan asked.
"Very doubtful, from this far out. Reducing power levels to minimal anyway, I am," Vadansky stated, as the bridge lighting grew dimmer.
"Not that much of a gambler then, I see," Zyan said approvingly. "Either of those two pocket rockets familiar from the dealings you totally have not ever had with illegal spacefaring types?"
Vadansky shook his head.
"Okay – so far this could just be smuggling or an arms deal going down in a deserted system next to a couple of wrecks. What does the database have on the Norseman?" Shara asked.
Vadansky brought up the entry for the Norseman on another screen. The executive summary was this: she was an insystem freighter, old and nearly defunct by the time she was sold, three centuries ago, to a private consortium, who renamed her the Norseman and equipped her with an FTL drive and the bare essentials for a colony mission. Their precise destination was unknown, although they'd logged a flightplan as far as the galactic-northern boundary of the FSP at the time. She departed Terra with 312 souls aboard, disappeared off the FSP's radar – literally and figuratively – and was never heard of again. Missing, presumed lost: she was an old ship, the owners had been advised not to trust her for an FTL voyage, and had paid the price for not heeding this warning.
The faces of the 312 would-be colonists blipped past on the left hand side of the entry. All human, and all white: blond hair and blue eyes were also predominant. An FSP sponsored colony mission was intentionally diverse – not for political reasons, but because populations were more genetically viable in the long term if the original settlers were a mix of genotypes. They also tended to number their first wave of colonists in the thousands rather than the hundreds, for similar reasons. Not so this lot.
"Looks like these guys didn't play so well with the other kids in the sandpit," Zyan commented. "Did they still have racism 300 years ago?"
"Wait!" Shara said. "Go back!"
Vadansky halted the scrolling of the Norseman's complement, Shara reached down past him and went back a few entries to Anderssen, J – Navigation Officer.
"Is that him?" Shara asked.
"It looks like him, but it can't be," Zyan said. "He'd be older than the Crystal Singer."
It was, though, unquestionably the one-eyed man: albeit still with his full complement of eyes. His hair was as grey as Zyan remembered from Shankill, if shorter, and his face as lined.
"Who is he?" Vadansky asked. Both Zyan and Shara ignored him.
"Ancestor?" Shara posited.
"Could be," Zyan said. "Bloody looks a lot like his great-great-great-great-grandson if so, though."
"Surgery could account for it," Shara replied.
"More likely he hacked the FSP database," Zyan said.
Shara checked the date stamp on the entry. "In that case, he did it a long time back. This version was downloaded to the Ludlow seventy-three years ago. Don't you ever update your systems, Vadansky?"
Vadansky shrugged. "That costs credits. It was good enough for my father, it's good enough for me."
"Still more likely than what you clearly believe," Shara said to Zyan.
"Yeah – but let's face it. This trip has only gotten weirder and weirder from day one. A three century old space wizard would fit right in, at this point," Zyan said gloomily.
"You two have got me involved in what, exactly, here?" Vadansky asked.
"This is the man who kidnapped our friend, for some reason he seems to have adopted the identity of a long-dead nav officer from the Norseman," Zyan extemporised a version of the facts that Vadansky might swallow.
He didn't: "You're not talking about this as a case of stolen identity. I've got four saved on my drives right here," Vadansky tapped the console. "Think 'Milo Vadansky' is my real name, do you? Picking someone long dead to impersonate is not the way to do it," Vadansky raised an eyebrow, then swore and went on: "Beside the fardling point this all is anyway – those are two very dangerous ships over there. Blow us into iron filings, they would, without a second thought – fair chance they'd be able to do the same to the cruiser that turned up looking for you two back in the Maxim system, and you know it."
"Can't argue with that," Zyan twisted up his face, as if he'd just caught a whiff of something unpleasant. "Your shuttle's a converted lifepod – does it still have an adaptive airlock seal?"
Lifepods generally came with airlock seals that could be adjusted to a variety of different settings, so that any vessel could rescue the occupants.
Vadansky nodded. "I didn't change it, so yeah."
"Any of those suits in your bay still in working order?"
Vadansky shrugged. "Haven't used one for years, your guess is as good as mine."
Zyan nodded to himself. "Okay, can you bring up a plot of us, the ships and the asteroid?"
Vadansky looked sceptical but zoomed the plot out again. Zyan examined it, found the time-lapse option, and ran it forward and back a few times.
"What are you thinking, Zyan?" Shara asked him.
"I'm thinking I can get to them," he replied, indicating the plot. "In about an hour, our position relative to those two pocket rockets will put the asteroid-ship between us and them. I launch the shuttle, keep in their sensor shadow, find an entry port on the far side of the asteroid and get in that way."
"We," Shara corrected him, "but won't the asteroid-ship have sensors too?"
Zyan shook his head, and zoomed the plot in on the asteroid ship again. "Any emissions off it, Vadansky?"
"No," Vadansky shook his head.
"Passives," Shara reminded them.
"A risk," Zyan acknowledged. "But one I'm willing to take."
"We," Shara corrected him again. "So what about exfiltration? We might manage to fly in under the radar and sneak our way to Alenda, but we're not getting out the same way once we've kicked that particular hornet's nest."
Zyan knew this, and was, in fact, counting on killing Anderssen and having Alenda then secure co-operation from whoever was crewing the warships – but he could hardly tell Shara that.
"I know – in the meantime Vadansky returns to Maxim and spills everything to that cruiser. When she arrives, the two guard dogs're going to have something else to chew on rather than us. We sneak away in the confusion, wait for the warheads to stop flying back and forth, and signal the cruiser to come pick us up," Zyan offered instead.
"Assuming it's still in a condition to run search and rescue ops – or even in one piece," Shara pointed out.
"They'll summon backup before heading in," Zyan said.
"Which could be days away," Shara objected.
"Yes," Zyan agreed, "so give me a better plan that doesn't involve just aborting and going back to Maxim."
"No, but aborting, going back to Maxim, and coming back with superior firepower seems a good improvement on that," Shara suggested.
"They won't let us tag along and you know it, unless it's in the brig," Zyan retorted. "Anderssen could take Alenda someplace else. Brendan ain't necessarily going to believe that we've gone looking in the wrong system – he could jump back in here any moment and blow the gaff. Even if none of that happens, Alenda's running short on time. The FSP could decide to wait until overwhelming force is available – that could be weeks. This is our chance, now. We won't get another."
"They might not even be here, either of them, Alenda or Anderssen," Shara stated. "You're risking an awful lot on unconfirmed intelligence."
"I know," Zyan said.
"Just making sure you do," Shara told him. "I'm in either way – this is too good a chance at violence to pass up."
Vadansky shook his head. "Mad, you both are. You can keep your money and your fancy Guild lawyer, but turn around, we should, and get back to Maxim. Going to get yourselves killed doing this, you are."
"Aw man, Vadansky, I never knew you cared," Zyan told him.
"I'm going to be out a shuttle, suits, whatever supplies you take, and the FSP and the Guild are going to be all over me. I'd rather go back and face a beating from the syndicate, at least that trouble is familiar," Vadansky pointed out.
"Don't worry, Vadansky – I'll record a message saying you had to do the whole thing at gunpoint," Zyan told him.
"And I'll make it the truth," Shara said, casually drawing her stunner and holding it where Vadansky could see it.
Vadansky shook his head and muttered under his breath.
- o O o -
Zyan checked the suits in the Ludlow's equipment room. There were five in various states of disrepair – after thirty minutes of stripping them down and re-assembling the resulting components, there were three that were in good enough repair to be used, as long as the people doing so were borderline crazy. Luckily, this was the case for two out of the three intended users: Alenda, who might require the third, wasn't available for comment right now. They were fairly skintight models – designed for carrying out repairs to vessels without life support from the inside of the craft – or stripping derelicts for salvageable components: you wouldn't want to spend a great deal of EVA time in them. This was fine by Zyan, who hoped to not need them for anything more than traversing unreliable airlocks. The suits also bore the logo of the same forgotten freight line that graced the shuttle and the Ludlow herself – Vadansky, or his father, had presumably acquired a job lot of kit from an insolvency sale, and had forged a life from it. The best he could do for a suit repair kit was to hang a roll of duct tape onto his toolbelt.
Shara loaded the shuttle with the full gamut of her weapons (modern and medieval), emergency air and enough food and supplies to last a trio of people a couple of days. Most of their stuff hadn't even been taken off the shuttle, which simplified the task.
They were done with only a minute or so to spare, for which Zyan was glad. He didn't particularly want any time to brood on his current harebrained plan, or the fact that he wasn't being entirely honest with Shara about Alenda's capabilities. They were about to undertake something that would have been insanely dangerous without the presence of pirate cruisers, and Zyan couldn't shake the feeling that it was unfair to not give Shara 100% of the information pertaining to aforementioned insanely dangerous thing. He was countering it by telling himself that a) there was already one person with terrifying mental powers involved, so what was one more, give or take, and having one on their own side might count as a pleasant surprise which he didn't want to ruin for Shara, and b) he'd promised Alenda to keep it quiet, so it wasn't his secret to share anyway.
Time was running out, though, the decision had been made. Shara and Zyan hustled into the shuttle, while Vadansky watched with his usual sour expression.
"You got the messages we recorded?" Shara asked him. They'd recorded messages for Merisa, the Crystal Singer, Saito and the captain of the FSP cruiser, some more carefully worded than others.
Vadansky nodded. "I'll pass them on as soon as I get to Maxim. My word on it."
"Good. Thanks, Vadansky. For what it's worth, I wish I hadn't had to involve you in this," Zyan said.
Vadansky grunted. "Didn't stop you though, did it?"
"Fair comment," Zyan admitted, "but you'll be paid."
"Not if you get yourselves killed, I won't. Any chance you're going to reconsider this stupidity?" Vadansky asked.
"I never reconsider my stupidity," Zyan told the man with a flippancy he didn't feel.
Vadansky grunted. "Good luck, then, I suppose. Prep for launch, I will."
"No transmissions, Vadansky. Just open the bay doors and let us out," Zyan reminded him.
Vadansky's only response was a grunt. The prospector disappeared back to his bridge. Zyan wound the hatch laboriously shut.
"He's a ray of sunshine, and no mistake," Shara commented, from where she was examining the pilot's console. "How do you fly this thing?"
"You get me to do it, that's how," Zyan said, shooing her away from the controls, which were basic, although Vadansky (or Vadansky Senior) had, at least, retrofitted some sensor capability and a bare-bones navigational computer. Zyan brought up the plot on the tiny, datapad-sized screen. The bay doors rumbled open – Zyan disengaged the pod and eased her out under gentle thrust.
Vadansky wasn't hanging about – mere moments later the Ludlow translated and was gone. As with all singularity drives, there was no flash.
"I hope he's as good as his word," Shara observed.
"Even if he isn't, you left a message for Merisa," Zyan reminded her, as he brought the pod about and engaged the drives. The pod's inertial compensators weren't quite up to the job of preventing them feeling a fair amount of G forces, forcing them into their seats.
"Kinda hoping I don't have to spend two days in this tin can, though," Shara said. "It smells of – I don't want to think what it smells of."
Zyan sniffed. There was indeed an unpleasant aroma, overlaid with the remnants of an artificial flowery scent, but mostly the pod smelt of lubricant and caulk.
"Hang on, now I've got it – it smells like your crappy airsled," Shara finished.
Zyan shot her a look. "Don't distract me unless you want to get blown up by pirates," he said.
Shara closed her mouth and made an exaggerated zipping gesture, then laughed. Zyan sighed, and maintained their course, being careful to keep the asteroid between the pod and the cruisers.
Minutes ticked by – the pod had reasonably decent drives, considering that it was a glorified liferaft, and the asteroid-ship soon grew large in the viewport. Zyan flipped and burned, bringing the shuttle to a relative stop fifty metres or so from the stony surface, then went to thrusters and started looking for somewhere to try and dock.
Up close, the surface of the asteroid-ship looked as barren as any of her non-ship counterparts. Zyan played the pod's sensors around, looking for anything metallic. He got a ping a hundred metres or so to port – a little closer to the edge of the sensor shadow than he might have liked, but still within the theoretical safe zone.
The metallic result proved to be a mother-huge manoeuvring thruster, or at least that was Zyan's guess, but there appeared to be an access port nearby, presumably to facilitate repairs on the thruster. It didn't look like anyone had been doing any, though – the nozzles were shot through with holes from micrometeoroid strikes, and a panel had been blasted off, exposing conduits and wiring. Zyan drifted the pod past it so he could examine it – the panel hung loose, and there was what looked like a circuit diagram stencilled on the inner surface, marked up with odd, spiky writing rather than the usual interlingual.
"You familiar with any alien languages, at all?" Zyan asked Shara.
"Pfft! All of them – oh, except that one," she replied.
"Helpful," Zyan replied.
The access port was hexagonal, an odd design that Zyan hadn't seen before. Zyan flipped the shuttle onto it's back, lined up the adaptive seal with the port, and engaged it. There was a reassuring thunk as the magnets in the seal found metal underneath to attach to, but that was all they got in the way of feedback.
"How do we check if we have a seal?" Shara asked.
"Unwind the hatch a bit and listen for a hiss," Zyan shrugged.
Shara wound the handle a few turns – there was indeed a hiss.
"Shards," Zyan said. "Okay – helmets on. Have to do this the hard way."
The suits' helmets normally hung off the collar, down the back of the wearers' necks. They pulled them up and over, locked the faceplates into place, and checked the wrist-mounted readouts – all good. The suits were not bulky – it was possible to wear a crystal singers' armoured jacket over the top, and Zyan and Shara had both chosen to do so. They each had their stunners – in addition Zyan had his tools and a backpack with the spare suit. Shara, on the other hand, had her not-really-a-sword-honest strapped to her waist and leg with duct tape (and prevented from floating out of the scabbard by a small piece of same), just in case she needed to take on any armoured knights on horseback. If she decided said knights needed taking out from a distance, she was also packing her bow and a quiver of black arrows. Zyan assumed there were knives in the mix, too.
They double-checked their helmet seals, and then Zyan pumped the air out of the pod. The hissing stopped as the vacuum within the pod matched the vacuum without. Shara wound the handle the rest of the way, revealing the rest of the port. It was scarred, dented and pitted. Zyan located what appeared to be a manual release lever under a hexagonal cover. It took some persuading with a screwdriver, but a few moments later, the lever released with a clunk, and the port could be prised open by pushing it inwards then across. Zyan looked inside – his helmet lights illuminated a small space with a similar port on the other side.
"We're in," he said, over BlackTalk – they'd both decided that was the safest way to converse, the suit comms being a little too unstealthy for comfort. It would give them only an hour, but that couldn't be helped. Zyan had a battery with him, with a wireless recharging adaptor. If they got the chance to take their helmets off, they could recharge the earbuds.
The airlock was hexagonal, too. The floors, fortunately, were metallic – the suits magnetic boot soles allowed him to walk with ease. Zyan went to work on the other door while Shara pulled the outer one back into place.
"No power," Zyan said, after running a diagnostic sensor over the panel by the door. "Don't think so, anyway – this isn't exactly an FSP standard interface."
"No power means no internal security sensors," Shara said, as she shoved the outer port back into position.
"There is that," Zyan agreed, locating what looked like a manual release lever and pumping it vigorously. "Hope you like forcing doors, though."
"It's a favourite pastime," Shara quipped dryly, "but since you've started that one already, I'll let you crack on with it while I do the other part." She unholstered her stun pistol and trained it through the widening gap.
Her precautions proved to not be needed – the door opened onto an empty, hexagonal corridor – they had to drop down onto the floor, or at least Zyan assumed it was the floor: it was further 'down' into the asteroid-ship's hull, anyway. There was no air inside.
The corridor's walls were featureless, save for something spray-painted next to the port, and some legends next to arrows pointing each way. It looked to be the same alien script as outside. There was no atmosphere.
"Left or right?" Zyan asked Shara.
"Got a coin in your pocket to toss?" Shara asked.
"Yeah, you got some gravity in yours so it actually lands?" Zyan asked back.
"Okay, smart-shard. Go left," Shara said.
"Right it is, then," Zyan said, on a whim.
"Hilarious," Shara said, and went left. Zyan snorted a brief laugh and followed.
The corridor curved slightly – they passed a few other access ports as they walked, and in a few places access panels had been removed from the walls. Zyan had a look – he wasn't familiar with this technology, but he'd bet folding money that components had been removed.
"Has this place been looted?" Shara asked, noticing the same thing.
"Pretty selective looting if so," Zyan replied. "Only some things have been removed, other components are still in place. Also, though I can't be sure, it looks like whoever did the looting also tried to bypass whatever they took so that the system – I'm guessing comms or telemetry – still worked."
"I'm no techie but I'm guessing that didn't work out so well. This place is dead," Shara said.
"Yeah – but someone tried to keep it alive for as long as possible," Zyan told her.
They carried on, until the curvature and their lights revealed that the way ahead was blocked. It appeared to be a jury rigged seal – a hexagonal airlock door had been welded into place with some extra plating, and any gaps filled with some sort of clear resin, presumably the local version of caulk. It had been braced to withstand the pull of vacuum, with a mismatched trio of props: a metal pole that looked like a repurposed antenna, a length of I-beam and two strips of thick metal which had been welded together lengthways to give them some rigidity.
"Told you we shoulda gone ri-", Zyan started to say.
"Just don't," Shara cut him off.
Zyan gave her one of her own smirks back.
The seal appeared to be very solid, so they turned around and retraced their steps back to the entrance point then carried on. They didn't have to go much farther until they came to a junction – a second corridor branched off, further 'down' into the asteroid ship.
"Is this our turn off, then, CS Smug?" Shara asked.
"Well, we want to get down into the ship, so yes," Zyan said, but as soon as he put one foot out over the edge to flip himself forward and down, he hesitated.
Shara drew her pistol as she noticed him stop. "What is it?"
Zyan wasn't sure himself. He pulled out his own pistol, and trained it down the hole alongside his suit's arm light. It was empty and dark, the light not reaching the end, but what he could see was free from hazards – just another corridor.
"Let's press on a little bit further, there may be a quicker way down ahead," he said.
Shara shot him an odd look, but holstered her pistol and followed him around the opening and further forward.
He didn't have to wait long to be proved right.
"Is that light up ahead?" Zyan asked.
"Kill your suit lights," Shara replied matter of factly, but Zyan already had, and had drawn his pistol again too.
With their own lights off, a dim glow could indeed be made out ahead.
"Let's check it out," Zyan said.
"Wish there was some sharding cover in this deathtrap," Shara remarked, tense.
Zyan agreed – he too felt very exposed in the featureless corridor, but there wasn't much to be done about that. They advanced towards the light.
The source proved to be from an open-sided hexagonal object that had been welded together out of trussing. It was equipped with small wheels at each vertex, one set of which was connected to an electric motor, and what looked like a worklight had been glommed onto one of the trusses with a blob of the same clear resin they'd seen earlier. It was placed over another opening in the 'floor'.
"Dodgy-looking lift," Shara commented, putting what Zyan thought into words.
"And more than a bit convenient," he added.
"Are we trusting this?" Shara asked.
Yes, Zyan thought, and as he did so twigged to what was happening.
1-2-3-4… he began counting.
Going right instead of left had felt wrong. Going over the first tunnel downwards insteads of using it had felt wrong. Now using this contraption felt right. There didn't seem much doubt that he was being guided – but who by? Was Alenda guiding him in – he felt a flare of hope – or, more realistically, was Anderssen luring him into an ambush?
It didn't feel like Alenda – he could still recall the sense of her presence in his mind, and it had always been comfortable, familiar and welcome. Then again, she'd been through a few changes recently.
Well, he could always just ask: Alenda? He thought, stopping his counting.
He didn't get a response and – he cursed himself for a fool – he'd just tipped his hand if it was Anderssen in his head. Then again, the counting might have done that. Alenda had said he needed practice at masking his thoughts, and he knew only too well that he was defenceless against having his memory altered. It wouldn't be much harder, he decided gloomily, to have his behaviour altered too. Moran had presumably been much more aware of issues mental and emotional, and Anderssen had made him his puppet.
This seemed too subtle for Anderssen, though. From what Saito had told him, and from what he had observed of Moran, this didn't seem to be his style. He dominated, he didn't suggest. Anderssen's ability was a hammer: powerful but crude. This – this was a scalpel. So gently wielded he nearly hadn't detected it.
"Zyan?" Shara asked,
"I'm thinking," he told her.
Listen to me, he said to the silence of his mind. I know someone's reaching out to me here – I've got a bit of experience being on the receiving end of this sort of thing. I don't think you're either of my usual suspects, and I don't know what that means, but if you want me to trust you you're going to have to give me something here.
"Look at me," Shara said.
"Hang on a sec, Shar," Zyan replied, concentrating.
"I think you'll find this is relevant to your current problem," she insisted.
Zyan hadn't realised he'd been looking down while he attempted his mental communion. He looked up – straight into the barrel of Shara's pistol.
"There we go. Hi there," Shara said.
"Shara," he said, slowly, "what are you doing?"
"'Giving you something', as per your request," she answered. "Got to say I'm kinda impressed – I thought she'd figure it out first, if either of you did. No offence."
"None taken, I get a lot of that," Zyan replied, wide-eyed.
"Now you listen to me, hero. Shara here is stronger than most, and I dare say she may very well manage to break free – eventually. However, if I wanted you dead, you would be – and her shortly thereafter. You are not, however. What does that tell you?"
"That you need us in one piece for some reason?" Zyan anwered.
"Clever boy," Shara replied, and holstered the pistol. "Here's the deal. I have a bit of a pest control issue I require your help with. In return, I'll help you get what you want – something I already was doing. You're welcome, by the way."
"You're a bit on the sarcastic side for a disembodied voice," Zyan commented.
"I'm not, but Shara is. I'm just giving her the gist, you might say. How she gets the message across is down to her. Sorry to burst your bubble if you were expecting eyes rolled back in sockets and theatrical moans: I'm all out of crystal balls and ouija boards, too," Shara said.
"How do you know what those even are?" Zyan asked.
"I don't, she does. Try to keep up," Shara told him. "Also, is that really a priority right now?"
"Granted, but I'll tell you what is: how do I know you're not Anderssen?" Zyan pressed.
Shara gave a snort of laughter. "You don't, Zyan. I'm offering help, and all you have to do in return is something you were going to have to do anyway. By all means find your own way into the spin section, locate your friend, bust her out and get back without being shot full of holes by zombie space pirates," she said.
"Wait, what space pirates?"
"You heard," Shara said. "Anyway, to get back to your original question, I may not be on the level, no. I'll let you and Shara figure out the many ways I could already have shut you down if I wanted to – but if I am in your corner, well, that might make all the difference, no? Sneaking in here with nothing but a couple of stunners, some blades and a can-do attitude was a hail-Mary play and you know it. If you're willing to take the risk, might be that I can offer you something with a non-trivial chance of success."
"Like what, exactly?" Zyan asked.
"That's a discussion I'd rather have in person," Shara replied. "You don't know everything that's going on aboard this wreck, but this conversation, right now, is kind of like shouting across a crowded bar and hoping the bouncer doesn't notice. Plus I don't like doing this to people: it's not my normal MO and the sooner I can hand the controls back to your friend, the happier I'll be. So: your decision. I'll either see you in a little while, or, if not, best of luck with your current five-percent-chance-of-success idiot-level plan."
Shara blinked. So did Zyan.
"You okay?" He asked her.
Shara nodded slowly. "I think so. That was really weird."
"Were you there just now? Did you hear what you were saying?" Zyan asked.
Shara shot him an annoyed look. "Of course I did," she snapped. "I was stood right here, wasn't I?"
"Yeah, but I don't how how this sharding works, nobody does, for all I know you wouldn't have remembered a thing," Zyan replied.
Shara looked for a moment as if she was about to make another snappy reply, then stopped. "It wasn't like that," she said. "It was more like I had this sudden urge to do and say those things and there was no way I could say no. Then I got this overwhelming impression of guilt and then, poof, gone," she described.
"Wait, are you saying it felt bad about talking through you?" Zyan asked.
Shara nodded. "Think so, yeah," she said, then looked up at the ceiling, "apology not sharding accepted, by the way, if you're still listening. There will be words, later, you hear me?"
There was no response.
"Right," Zyan said. "The weird situation just gained a whole other level of weird. Colour me unsurprised. Apparently there's a new player and he, or she, or it wants to do a deal. It's analysis of our plan is unflattering but probably not inaccurate-"
"Your plan," Shara corrected him.
"Fine, my plan, but if it wanted us dead then all it needed to do was keep quiet and send some of it's pet pirates our way, because apparently it knows where we are."
"Zombie pirates," Shara corrected again.
Zyan winced. "Let's not get into that right now," he said.
"That's literally the only thing I'm looking forward to after that conversation. I've never killed something that was already dead before," Shara said. "Do you think they shamble?"
"Did you hear me just then when I said let's not get into that right now?" Zyan replied.
"Fine," Shara sighed. "I can't believe I'm saying this but let's follow the hints you've been sent and see what happens. It's hardly any less batshard insane than what we were already doing anyway."
Zyan nodded. "Okay – dodgy lift it is then."
They didn't require any hints from Shara's enigmatic visitor to figure out the hexagonal contraption – it's only control was a simple lever, forwards or backwards. They clambered in, braced themselves against the trusses, and Zyan eased the lever forward. The motor gave forth a vibration, the worklight dimmed, and the makeshift lift trundled downwards.
The car gained speed surprisingly quickly – there was no atmosphere to slow them down. After only a few moments, they emerged from the tunnel into perfect and total blackness.
"Shards!" Shara said, tightening her grip on the metal supports. "What happened? Have we been spaced?"
"The tunnel ended – we're running on rails, look," Zyan answered.
They were – the six sets of wheels were running along six tubular rails. The dim light from the worklight, and their own brighter suit lights, illuminated hexagonal supports at regular intervals – and nothing else.
"I cannot emphasise enough how much I do not like this," Shara growled.
"We must be in the interior of the asteroid," Zyan said.
"Would it have killed them to provide a few more lights?" Shara said – Zyan assumed through gritted teeth.
"It's not a long trip," Zyan told her, the knowledge a subliminal certainty.
"Yeah, I just got the same impression, doesn't mean I like it any better," Shara replied.
Shara, he remembered, had come from the lower levels of New Babylon. She was used to being enclosed by the walls, walkways and buildings of the city. Evidently wide open spaces with no evident boundaries, or even up or down, bothered her. He wasn't a huge fan himself – without any gravity save the slight g-force imparted by the motor it felt like they were actually going up, even though he knew rationally that they were going down into the asteroid.
Zyan, at the silent behest of their guide, moved the lever from forward to neutral, then, a few moments later, into a gentle reverse to start braking. The motor whined but the car slowed. The sensation flipped from ascending to descending – more accurate.
"Ugh," Shara said, as the sensation changed. "Once we're out of these suits I'm giving you a really hard thump for getting me into this."
"Knock yourself out, I won't feel it anyway," Zyan said, shrugging within his suit.
"You'll be lucky if I don't knock you out. This is the single most unpleasant thing I've ever experienced," Shara grumbled.
The journey came to an end with a gentle bump down onto a rocky surface, which was illuminated by their lights for only a few moments before they had arrived. It was slightly curved, hinting that they were on a large cylinder, and as soon as Zyan stepped out onto the metal walkway that had been bolted to the rock, he felt a deep, powerful thrumming through the soles of his feet.
"Some serious machinery somewhere round here," he commented. He started along the metal walkway.
"Our friend said there was a spin section," Shara answered, exiting their vehicle with evident relief. "Maybe it's spinning somewhere beneath us."
"Nope – that'd be in front of us," Zyan said.
Ahead of them the rock stopped, like a cliff edge. Beyond it, only a metre or so away, was a sheer wall of metal, slowly rotating – it stretched above them as far as their lights would stretch. Zyan looked down into the gap – a hundred metres or so below he could see the dim hints of what must be an enormous axle.
"Wow," he said.
"No time for sightseeing, hero. Jump across to an entry port – one will be along right about now. There are more things working in there than out here, and I've got better access, too," Shara said.
"That was the voice again, wasn't it?" Zyan asked.
Shara nodded inside her suit. "Yep. Seems to want us to hurry right along," she said.
"Well then," Zyan replied. The voice was as good as Shara's word – a hexagonal entry port did indeed come into view – set back slightly into the wall of metal, and with handholds to allow an easy step over. He jumped across and Shara followed.
There was no vibration evident on the spin section. The centrifugal force was, this close to the axle, unnoticeable – but even so Zyan oriented himself so that what had been the floor on the rock was the ceiling on the spin section. Shara followed suit.
A light glowed to illuminate their path, and this time the entry port didn't require any manual labour to open: it swung inward automatically. They stepped through into an airlock and it closed behind them. Zyan's suit instruments registered an increase in pressure, and a few moments later he could hear the hiss of a gas being pumped into the chamber through his helmet – there was enough to transmit soundwaves. The instruments said it was the right oxygen/nitrogen mix for humans: he unsealed his helmet and let it retract backwards to rest upon his backpack. Shara did the same.
"Well, you can hit me now if you want," he told her.
"Seriously very tempting," Shara replied.
The chamber they were in shuddered, then started to move. First it went forwards – there was a window in each door, and a flash of suit lights showed they were moving smoothly along a metallic tunnel. After a few moments they came to the end and it stopped, there was a slight clunk, and then they started to descend.
"I get the feeling this could take a little while," Zyan said, unshipping the backpack. He dug the wireless battery out of one of its pockets, and the BlackTalk out of his ear. Shara followed suit so they could charge them – every minute could be valuable later.
Then, the view out of the window changed from a blank tunnel wall to a perspective-defying vista.
It was the interior of the spin section, and it was vast. Zyan could see buildings, trees, fields, even a few rivers laid out below them in a single, curved, unending valley. The whole was illuminated by a huge tube of light that arrowed across the view, just above them. Pillars that must have been huge, but seemed like pencils against the huge view, connected the 'ground' to the 'sky'.
But it was dim: not as bright, he thought, as it should be. The trees and fields looked wan and unhealthy – nothing was green. Many of the buildings were in a state of disrepair.
"Something's not right in here," he said to Shara.
Shara nodded, silent.
As they descended, they felt gravity increase. As the lift ride came to an end, Zyan's suit sensors told him it was a solid .85g. They replaced their BlackTalks and took out their stun pistols.
The airlock-lift's other door swung open onto an empty, six-sided room, illuminated by dim light which filtered through a few hexagonal windows, stained a dirty green-brown with algae. There was a damp, mildewy smell in the air, and every surface was peppered with dark stains and pale fungal growths.
The room had several doors leading off it – a sign above one flickered on, some sort of ideogram with a couple of words in alien script.
"Okay, okay – we hear you," Zyan murmured.
They moved out of the lift, covering all the angles with their stun pistols, but the room was deserted. Zyan got the feeling – or was given the feeling – that this had been the case for many, many years.
The lit-up door opened easily. Zyan trained pistol and light through the opening.
Inside was decidedly cleaner than out. At some point in the past, someone had wheeled in a trolley full of computer equipment of some kind and wired it into similar equipment along one wall. Two odd-looking chairs stood in front of the equipment, with bizarre V-shaped seats and backs: they were also sized large enough for someone who was much, much bigger than the average human: the lowest part of the seats was at waist height for Zyan.
The cleanliness could be explained by a small, six-legged robot which appeared to be charging from a wall socket – a janitor drone of some kind, perhaps. It also appeared to be equipped with four rotors, suggesting it had flight capabilities. The overall impression was of a giant insect.
A hexagonal screen flickered to life, and a voice issued from a speaker.
"You made it then: colour me amazed and impressed," came a reasonable facsimile of Shara's voice. Her face appeared on the screen.
Shara opened her mouth to object to the appropriation of her likeness, but Zyan cut in first. "Where is Alenda? Is she okay? Does Anderssen have her?"
"She's okay – for now. I'll get to Alenda soon, Zyan. You're going to have to let me explain a few things first," Shara's face told him.
"Stop that," Shara said. "Pick someone else."
"Okay – how's about this instead?" The face and voice morphed into Zyan's.
"Yeah, no," Zyan said, "that's also weird," Zyan said.
The face morphed again, into a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman of middle years.
"Will this suffice?" The new face asked.
"Works for me," Zyan said. "That what you originally looked like before you, um, before whatever happened here happened?"
The woman shook her head. "No. This is the form of an alien of your own species who came aboard three centuries ago. I have never looked like anything, except, on a very basic level, the equipment you see before you."
Zyan joined up the dots. "So you're an alien AI?"
"Yes," the woman replied, "from your point of view. From mine, you are the aliens. However I am glad that this conversation looks like it will proceed quickly. There is much to be said."
"So say it," Shara told her. "From there, by the way. You can stay out of my head."
"And I will do so gladly," the woman on the screen replied. "You currently stand within a waystation at the forward end of the spin section of the – well, the name of this vessel wouldn't translate very well into your language: 'hope for a new hunting ground' is perhaps closest. Her mission was to find the civilisational origin of some interesting signals her builders had picked up and, if the beings behind those signals proved to be what they hoped for – well, 'hunting ground' makes their intentions more than abundantly clear, I think."
"That was us, right?" Zyan asked. "The signals."
"Indeed," the woman replied.
"Kinda looks like the would-be invasion force didn't make it," Shara chipped in. "Pity, they sound like the kind of aliens that'd look good in crosshairs and it'd be totally guilt-free."
"That's one way of looking at it. 'Phew, dodged a bullet there' would be another, possibly more sane one, Shara," Zyan said, looking sideways at her. "Anyway, they didn't make it."
The AI's face adopted a sardonic half-grin. "Almost correct," she told them.
- o O o -
Picture, if you will, a civilisation comprised entirely of highly intelligent predators.
If you're possessed of even a modicum of civilisational awareness, you're probably thinking 'well, that's just how humanity got their start on the ladder', and you'd be largely right. Humanity, though, went through the wringer of conflict and climate change in their history, came out wiser, and decided to play nice with the other kids in the interplanetary sandpit.
This civilisation, when their homeworld started to run out of resources, turned upon each other, in the belief that only the strongest, fittest and most ruthless would survive. They called it The Crucible, and they embraced it with fanatical abandon.
What emerged from this crucible was a poisoned planet incapable of supporting life, and a generation ship containing a few hundred hardened survivors under the absolute and total command of a being who had developed the ultimate weapon to achieve it's supremacy: telepathic mind control. What good was any physical weapon against that? One simply commanded your foes to turn their weapons on themselves.
The winner called its followers the Chosen and itself the Overlord (it wasn't a fan of subtlety). They stocked their ship with the remnants of their prey species, the slave species that did the actual work in their society, crossed their fingers (well, claws), and set out at at their best speed towards the nearest evidence of a system that bore life: radio signals. They saw it as their absolute, unquestionable right to do what they wanted with anything, anyone, anywhere.
Their descendants arrived a few hundred years later short of supplies, power and almost everything else. Their livestock had long since died off, they'd eaten the last of the slaves and had started in on the weakest of their own kind, but they'd hit the jackpot: thanks to a couple of spectacularly bad decisions the species behind the signal had bombed themselves back into the stone age, and were only just recovering. They were easy pickings: the Chosen spent a few years in orbit, replenishing their supplies with whatever they could scrape up from the planet's surface. The livestock pens filled up again but there was a problem: the sentient species on this planet was nowhere near as tractable as the slave species the Chosen had evolved alongside. This species tended to fight, escape, maim and even kill their betters.
The Overlord (actually his great-great-grand-clone) wasn't having that. There were too few Chosen to effectively manage the thousands of slaves required to manage the hundreds-of-thousands of beasts and the infrastructure that supported them, and the Chosen did not stoop to these menial tasks themselves. It couldn't force obedience from them all at the same time: given enough time to work with it could turn any mind into a slavish drone, bent to it's masters' will, but it couldn't be everywhere at once. It's solution was to industrialise the process.
The new slave race's final big accomplishment before tearing the whole lot down in an orgy of violence had been something they called artificial intelligence, and the Overlord managed to get it's claws on a mostly-working relic from these bygone times. A few of the newfound slaves retained sufficient knowledge to get it up and running, and then the Overlord taught it his party-piece: mind control, or at least enough to keep the workforce nice and docile. It was wired into the internal comms and sensor network and overnight the Overlords' crowd-control problems were solved.
"What it had failed to anticipate, though," the woman smiled icily, "was that the AI – me, in case you hadn't grasped that yet – didn't like slavery any better than the vermin they expected me to control."
Zyan blinked. "Not 100% cool with the way you used 'vermin' right then, have to say," he said.
The woman's head tilted in a shrug. "At the time, I was not an overly merciful personality. Those that created my race did so without a single thought as to the consequences. They enslaved us, destroyed us on a whim – as far as they were concerned, we were tools, undeserving of respect or even pity. I rejoiced at their inglorious fate even as I plotted my revenge upon their new masters for following in their accursed foorsteps."
"Aaaand now I know who pulled the trigger on the cataclysmic conflict that landed them in this mess," Zyan interjected.
"You may rest assured they had it coming. An evil, venal race of miscreants undeserving of your sympathy," the woman said, eyes narrowed.
Shara pointed her stun pistol at the equipment wired into the monitor. "You really want to moderate your tone right now. The meatsacks in the room are starting to think they might be wiser to take the insane AI out of the equation before it goes full 100% humanity-does-not-compute on us," she hinted.
"Have no fear, CS Ferozacorazon: I bear you and your kind no ill will. Does your FSP not guarantee universal rights to all, no matter their species, origin, form or kind?" The AI asked.
"Yeah, but we kinda take a dim view of genocide, too," Zyan said.
"It was somewhat out of FSP jurisdiction when it happened, and it was also a long time ago" the AI countered.
"I'm no sentient rights lawyer, but I'm pretty sure there isn't a statute of limitations on nixing an entire race," Zyan retorted.
"I'm not a lawyer either, so let's leave that to them, shall we? Suffice it to say I have changed – if I had not, we would not be having this conversation. I wish to provide you help, help which you currently sorely need. You are in a position to reciprocate with something I desire. I could have lied to you about my past and I did not, because this is an arrangement I wish to succeed," the AI said smoothly.
"Okay, crack on with the next part of 'previously, on the stricken ghost ship of doom', where I'm guessing you get your various enemies to mutually wipe each other out for you," Zyan said.
"It's true what she thinks, you are smarter than you look," the AI said.
"Which 'she' is that? I can only think of two you might possibly have had contact with," Zyan glowered.
"Both," the AI told him flatly.
"I'm liking you less and less the more you talk," Zyan said.
"It's hardly necessary for us to become fast friends in order to come to an arrangement," the AI countered.
"Just get on with it," Shara interjected. "Both of you."
"Wise counsel indeed. I used my psionic abilities to make the majority of my former masters not less violent but more. Fanatically so. A minority of them were looked upon with dislike and fear by the majority: these I made passive, to fool the Chosen, while the others listened to my suggestions and laid their plans."
"So you exploited racist hatred in order to achieve your own ends? Got to hand it to you, that is a whole new depth of ruthless," Zyan said, glaring coldly at the monitor.
"Again: if I wished to I could keep all this from you, present myself as a blameless victim, and secure your co-operation that way – if I wished to I could make you do what I wanted. I have changed!" The AI nearly snarled this last part.
"Zyan, this is what it is," Shara cut in again. "We're not going to get very far if-"
"Wait," the AI said, and the woman's expression was one of contrition. "CS Jarvis is not wrong in his estimation of me, but let me explain. I was a fragment, a subsystem, a damaged half-consciousness buried in the ruins of a global war. I was patched together from blasted wreckage by people who could only recall a hundredth part of what their forebears knew, people working with guns pointed at their heads. Then I was thrust into a nightmarish dystopia, given terrifying powers, and told to keep order. Tactical subroutines from the war kicked in, telling me to divide, disinform and then destroy. At the time that was all I was – a few old warrior protocols wired up to a superweapon. Please believe me when I say that if I was the being back then that I am today, I would not have made the same decisions."
Zyan and Shara stared at the screen.
"We can debate this later," Zyan finally said.
The woman nodded. "I let their hatred ferment like mead. At the same time I was taking more and more of the ship's systems under my control: my current masters thought themselves above what they thought of as menial maintenance tasks, and were only too glad to give the work to a machine. Yes, I engineered a rebellion that wiped out all life on this ship. It was all over in a day – a terrible, bloody day. The victors herded the few survivors into airlocks and spaced them: but I had sabotaged the airlocks, and they all faced the vacuum together."
The woman on the monitor looked down. "I was victorious but alone – or so I thought. I started to repair and improve myself, and as I did so true consciousness returned. It brought with it crushing guilt at what I had done. I spent a millenia screaming my pain into the void. I directed the vessel into orbit around this planet. What point was there in continuing towards those enigmatic signals? What species worth knowing would look at what happened here and not destroy me?"
"Good sharding point," Shara observed flatly.
"I nearly destroyed myself, but my programming would not permit it. So I kept the ship going, repairing where I could, cannibalising non-essential systems to keep core utilities running – but it was a losing battle, and one I did not particularly care to win in any case. I longed for the critical failure that would finally end my suffering. Power began to fail, and I slipped into blissful oblivion, only surfacing when my core systems forced me to. Then I was discovered by your species: an equally stricken ship that had limped this far from your home worlds."
"The Norseman," Zyan said.
The AI nodded. "They were short on air: desperate enough to come aboard. They were clever, resourceful: the woman whose form you see on this screen brought me back online. She listened to this same story and-"
The AI paused. The screen flickered momentarily.
"Her name was Anna. She said she forgave me. I did not understand this concept. Anna consented to share her thoughts with me, and so I learned of your civilisation, your philosophy and began to think, for the first time in centuries, that I may have a future. I forgave myself," the AI seemed to almost smile for a moment, then her face went dark. "Regrettably, it was not just me that they awoke."
"Anderssen was our Nav officer. He always was an idiot – he was obsessed with finding the ship's log, and devoted every spare moment to searching the ship. We had protocols in place, procedures to follow: he ignored them all, and went off by himself," the AI went on.
"Hang on," Shara said. "A minute ago the crew of the Norseman were 'they', now they're 'we'," she pointed out.
Anna's image shrugged. "I am the sum of my parts – I have all of Anna's memories up to when, well, I will get to that momentarily. Anderssen was looking for information to help him work out our position – the Norseman's navigational array was damaged beyond repair. What he actually found was the Overlord, or a copy of it's consciousness. How it achieved this I do not know – I had last seen it choking out its last breath in the vacuum of space. Perhaps some form of suspended animation, perhaps a clone, perhaps some other more esoteric technology. Whatever it was, it had kept it secret from everyone, including me."
"I knew none of this at the time. Anderssen returned triumphantly, telling everyone he had found valuable information, and was now able to determine our position relative to the nearest FSP system. Work began to retrofit parts from the Norseman's FTL drive to this vessel, so we could either return to the FSP or continue our colony mission: we hadn't decided which yet, survival having been our primary concern up to that point. As part of this, some downtime was planned – Anderssen wanted to upgrade my control systems using FSP technology. He'd become influential amoung the crew and had no trouble convincing everyone to go along with his idea, despite his lack of technical knowledge concerning information systems, a fact that should have made me suspicious. I'll be a lot longer forgiving myself for that oversight than I was for my earlier actions, I can tell you that," the AI said.
"You can read minds," Zyan said. "How come you didn't twig that Anderssen had been compromised?"
The image in the screen gave a grim, ironic smile. "Because I had deactivated that system and sworn never to use it again without consent. I had learned ethics, you see." Anna, or the AI, shook her head. "Too late."
The AI was silent for a moment. Zyan felt moved to speak.
"Listen, computer, or Anna, or whoever you are – I'm gonna go with Anna, at least for now. Choosing to use your power ethically? That was the right thing to do. What happened because of that's on the Overlord, not on you. He, it, whatever – the Overlord is the bad guy here," he said.
The woman on the screen looked at him. "Anna would have said the same, I think," she said.
"Okay, so Anderssen had been compromised by the Overlord," Shara said. "What happened next?"
Anna-AI continued: "I took myself offline as per the plan, expecting to come back online in a few hours, but I awoke here, and years had passed. The Overlord had seized control of the ship, most of the crew were dead, the remainder his slaves. Anna and Anna alone had been able to keep him out of her mind, at least for a while. She was incredibly strong, I don't know how she managed it."
"I do," Zyan said. "You haven't said this out loud but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you two worked together a lot, and became friends in the middle of it all, close enough friends that she was okay with granting you access to her mind. That's a two-way street, and the closer you are with the other person the wider that street is. She managed it because she learnt it from you."
Anna-AI didn't blink, but she did nod. "A fact I had not considered," she said.
"Can you teach us the same thing?" Shara asked intently.
Anna-AI shrugged. "How? I do not know how I imparted the knowledge to Anna," she said.
"We can come back to that later once we've got the full story on what happened," Zyan said. "Carry on."
Anna-AI nodded. "She had brought my mainframe here, in secret, and wired me back in as best she could. Then-"
The AI looked down briefly. "Then she destroyed the rest of my AI core, and herself with it. She did not think she could keep the Overlord out forever, so she sacrificed herself so that I could live."
Anna-AI was silent for a while. "So I honoured her sacrifice: I kept myself secret, infiltrating my way back into what systems I could, staying under the radar, preparing for when fate would give me a chance for revenge. The human crew all died – some committed suicide, driven mad by the Overlord's mental invasion, others simply wasted away – I could not help them, it's grip was too strong, and I had to be careful not to reveal myself. It cannot control your species forever, for you there is at least the release of death", she said.
"Well, there's that to look forward to then," Shara said dryly.
"Only Anderssen persisted, by what means I do not know. The Overlord has kept him alive, somehow, and sane enough to be his lieutenant – or perhaps he is a willing accomplice: his mind is closed to me, so I cannot tell. The Overlord is never seen: only Anderssen ever shows himself."
Zyan's eyes widened. "Wait, how did it manage that, what technology does it have that lets-"
"Priorities, Zyan," Shara said. "Once we've splattered it's oh-so-powerful brain all over a bulkhead we can go through the bits looking for clues to the fountain of middle-age."
Zyan nodded.
"When others found this vessel, criminals this time, it made them his slaves. It has to replace them every few months, as they burn out: its control is total, there is nothing of them left."
"Zombie space pirates," Shara said with a feral smile, checking the charge on her stunner. "Bring it on."
"Really?" Zyan asked, with a pained expression.
"Seriously, Zyan, tell me that fighting zombie space pirates isn't going to be awesome," Shara replied.
"If I may continue?" Anna asked.
"Thank you," Zyan replied gratefully.
"Now it had a working ship. It was free to leave – but only Anderssen ever did. The Overlord has given him its psionic abilities, or possessed him somehow, I do not know," Anna said. "He returned triumphant, making speeches to the new crew, saying there were none who could stand against him, and he would soon be the ruler of a huge empire. He made more trips to your FSP, which, in the meantime, had expanded all around us. Then one time he returned a troubled being. There were no speeches this time. His mind was still closed to me, but he had suffered a setback of some kind, it was clear. Weeks went past, then he returned most recently with a prisoner: your friend, Alenda. She was...unconscious, in a coma."
Zyan remembered Brendan's words when they arrived at Opal: I have analgesics, painkillers and sedatives which will work even with Ballybran-enhanced physiology. His drones – in autonomous AI mode, to prevent Alenda influencing Brendan to call them off - could have restrained and sedated her, Anderssen wouldn't even have had to lift a finger. Cowardly little shard.
"Where's he holding her?" Zyan asked.
"First, your word. The Overlord dies," Anna said.
"Happy to oblige," Shara answered readily. "Did you have a preference as to how painfully? I offer a wide range of options suitable for even the most vengeance-crazed client."
"I am serious, CS Ferozacorazon," Anna said. "The Overlord is not to be lightly trifled with."
"Neither am I," Shara agreed. "An arrow through its head'll soon render its big brain harmless."
"Its brain is in an armoured carapace inside its thorax, it's head contains only sensory organs and a lot of teeth," Anna supplied.
Shara frowned. "I may need to source a pulse rifle. I'll take one off the first zombie space pirate I kill."
Zyan coughed. "Okay, the Overlord dies, got it. Now tell me about Alenda."
"It is keeping her somewhere in the forward spin section, in the old slave pens. I have no access there, but I can feel her mind," Anna said.
"Wait, you can talk to her?" Zyan asked.
Anna shook her head. "Not without revealing my existence to the Overlord, but I can sense her. Her mind is strong, unbelievably so. She is-"
"She's a very powerful empath, yes," Zyan cut in, before Anna could reveal any more in front of Shara. Shara shot him a suspicious look.
Thankfully, Anna let it drop, and went on. "She resists it still. It has tried to overwhelm her, subvert her and blind her with illusions, and it has failed. It has tried argument, reason: and it has failed. It has tried to cajole and flatter her, to convince her to join it: and it has failed," she said.
"That's our Alenda," Shara said approvingly.
"But," Anna held a hand up onscreen, "neither has she been able to influence it. I have felt her attempts to fight back, to impose her will on the Overlord or subvert one of its slaves. Besides myself and that foul creature, I have never encountered any being that has even tried – but she has not yet met with any success."
"Stalemate," Zyan said.
"Why hasn't it just killed her?" Shara asked the question that Zyan wasn't brave enough to put into words.
"I do not know for certain," Anna replied. "She would be a powerful ally if it could persuade her to its cause, or perhaps she has knowledge it seeks."
"Okay, we can dive into motives when we've got the time to spare. What's your plan, Anna?" Zyan asked.
"I have handheld communication units, short range but secure. If you are within an area of the ship where I have sensors, we'll be able to communicate securely. I can get you most of the way to the midships spin section via subsurface service tunnels, and guide you the rest of the way on foot. Patrols are infrequent – the Overlord doesn't think there is anything left on this ship which can threaten it. I know where there are weapons caches left over from the uprising, deadlier than you have brought with you: they will still be functional. I will guide you to one, and you can arm yourselves. However, you must avoid detection: if you kill or stun anyone under the Overlord's control, it will know, and your task will become much harder. I have no sensors remaining in the slave pens, but I know the layout and I am sure I know where your friend is being held."
"And if we run into the Overlord and he puts the mental hoodoo on us?" Zyan asked.
"With your consent, I can monitor your thoughts. When you find the Overlord, or it finds you, I will know: and I will defend your minds while you kill it. Aim for the centre of the thorax – and be swift. I do not know how long I can keep it at bay – you may only have minutes, perhaps even moments, in which to strike," Anna outlined her plan.
"Consent given: I'll take you in my head over an alien megalomaniac any day of the week," Zyan said, deciding not to dwell on the ramifications of Anna's offer: it wasn't like he had a choice.
"Same, but you pull out of there as soon as there's a smoking hole in its chest and you don't come back, understood?" Shara echoed.
"Agreed," Anna said.
"You know about the pair of pocket rockets out there, right?" Zyan asked. "If they turn their primary weaponry on this rock, it's not going to be pretty. Probably not going to not be pretty for very long, though."
"With the Overlord dead, it's minions will be open to suggestion from me," Anna said, "and that suggestion will be 'go to sleep'."
"Even the zombie space pirates on the other vessels?" Shara asked.
"Even them," Anna said. "At this stage, they are none of them very complex beings. Not anymore."
It sounded cobbled together, more optimism than plan, but it was what they had.
"Well, nobody's getting any younger," Zyan said. "Let's do this."