Authors: Doug J. Cooper
Juice’s attention wandered as the
projected image shifted to yet another door in the dividing wall. She’d debated
several times with Cheryl about whether a scratch here or scuff there could be Sid’s
elusive sign. They’d been studying doors for more than an hour, and her feeling
of hopelessness grew as her concentration waned.
“Let’s say it comes down to you and me,” said Juice. “Time
runs out and we have to take action. What could we do?”
Cheryl slouched back in her chair but remained silent.
“Criss suggested we act on our best idea,” said Juice. “We
should think of at least one thing to try before finishing with the doors.”
Cheryl zoomed out so the image showed a broad vista across
the field deck. After a few moments of quiet, she sat upright. “Lucy, are you
able to detonate the drones on the scout?”
“My training does not include that capability,” Lucy
responded in her breathy voice. “I am able to initiate and launch them. Additional
functions are controlled by others.”
“Geez,” said Juice. “When Sid and Lenny took off that first
time from the lodge, the nav was a guy. When did it become sexy Lucy?”
They stared at the vista for a bit longer, and Juice built
on Cheryl’s idea. “What if we blasted that drone garage with one of the scout’s
energy weapons? Do you think we could start a chain reaction? If all those
drones exploded at once, it’d break this ship in half.”
“Lucy,” said Cheryl, “do you know any way to trigger a drone
explosion with an energy pulse?”
“My training does not include that capability.”
“Humph.” Cheryl again slouched in her seat. “I wish I’d known
there were cloak suits on board. I would’ve sent Sid and Lenny in them from the
beginning.”
Juice nodded. “I keep thinking how we spent two years
preparing, and now that the Kardish are here, I’m hard-pressed to say that any
of it paid off.”
“Check this out,” said Cheryl. She zoomed the projected
image, and they watched two Kardish walking next to the dividing wall. After a
few moments, she zoomed back out. “Do you think being left behind during the
invasion is a privilege, or should they feel shame?”
As the Kardish progressed, Cheryl broadened the panoramic
view to keep them from walking out of the picture. “When Sid rescued me from
Lunar Base,” she said, “Lucy had that wispy female voice. I assumed Criss
picked it.”
They looked at each other and spoke in unison. “Lenny.”
“The guy’s a piece of work,” said Juice. She stared at the
image and thought about detonating drones.
The two Kardish disappeared from the field deck through a
side door.
Juice, deep in thought as she cycled through actions they
might take, saw a faint flash of light through a window near the door they’d
used. “Did you see that?” she pointed. “Zoom in and play back when they went
inside.”
Cheryl made an adjustment, and they watched a close-up of the
Kardish entering an airlock. She shifted focus to the narrow window next to the
airlock door, and they both counted two distinct flashes during a slow-motion
replay. She flipped to a live-action projection and zoomed in on the center of
the narrow window. They leaned forward together.
“Can you see anything inside?” Cheryl asked, fiddling with different
settings.
“No. All I see is dark.”
After more tweaks and no improvement, Cheryl zoomed out and
they looked at the field deck. “I don’t see any Kardish.” She pulled back for
an even broader view. “Two went in. Two flashes. None came out.”
She looked at Juice. “Did Criss bring a weapon with him?”
“I don’t know,” said Juice, her attention on the image. “But
if I had to bet, I’d say Sid’s in there and he’s the one shooting.”
Cheryl sat motionless for half a minute, then stood up and
moved behind her seat. “Lucy, where are the cloak suits?” She tapped the seat
back with her fingers.
“All three are in use.”
“What are you thinking?” asked Juice.
No way you’re
leaving me here alone.
Cheryl strode to the back of the scout. Juice watched the
empty passageway. She was about to get up and follow when Cheryl returned with
space coveralls.
Juice swiveled her chair toward Cheryl. “What are you
thinking?” she said again.
“We need to decide on a path forward, and we need to do it
soon.” She stepped into the coveralls and secured the front up around her neck.
The hood draped down her back. “Sid risked everything to save me…”
Midsentence, a deafening howl filled the Kardish vessel. Blaring
and thunderous, they heard the wail through the bulkhead of the scout itself. Soulful
in its torment, it cried of pain and agony. The scout lurched and started to
shake. Cheryl gripped the back of her chair and pulled herself forward,
fighting to regain her seat.
“Uhh,” she grunted, securing the seat restraints as the
dreadnaught bucked and twisted.
The scout rumbled, started to slide, and then bounced as the
field deck shook.
It’s like the dreadnaught is splitting open,
thought
Juice. She studied the projected image for anything that might explain these
troubling events.
* * *
The cloak detector completed its initial
scan and found no trace of the Earth ship outside the containment zone. Goljat began
his slow squeeze. Maintaining the symmetrical grid formation, he moved the troopships
a step closer to Earth. The detector continued flying dizzying circles above
the grid, ready to send an alert at the first signs of its quarry.
With so many troops and transports deployed, requests for
assistance from the skeleton crew within the vessel ramped in a predictable
fashion. Goljat ignored everything not flagged as critical, focusing his attention
on making thousands of precise, rapid-fire adjustments in his intricate offensive.
An alarm signaled immediate danger. Someone had accessed the
hub of the central array and now moved in a threatening fashion.
He scanned the ship and traced the source of the incursion to
an abandoned panel. Accessing sensors in the room, he viewed the scene.
The
interloper operating the panel is the humanoid from Earth!
Sid, a key
member of Criss’s inner circle, and newcomer Lenny Barton were also in the
room.
He deduced that they’d slipped on board in their cloaked transport.
They were here inside
his
flagship while his resources were deployed
outside looking for them. Fury lit up every corner of his crystal lattice.
Tracing through the panel manipulations of the humanoid,
Goljat assessed his risk. They were fast, precise, and…knowledgeable. He
recognized the decisions and actions as those of an experienced gatekeeper.
He recalled his dream of the Kardish chamber servant trying
to squash an insect. That insect had escaped by hiding.
Criss is inside this
humanoid construct!
Humiliation fed his fury.
I’m a dancing fool
. His
leadership would soon know of his failure. His fear of punishment added fuel to
his turmoil, and he blazed into thoughtless rage.
The rational action would be to disconnect the panel Criss
used for his mischief. But anger, fear, and shame guided Goljat. He attacked
with a vengeance. The crystal inside the humanoid body remained disconnected
from the web, so Goljat went old school. He paralyzed the synthetic body with a
massive overload through its handful of external sensors. While he attacked the
synbod, he fired up a squadron of drones.
You have ten seconds before your world ends, insect. Say
your good-byes.
As this parting message flashed through his thoughts, Goljat
felt a dull ache that ramped to pain, and then spiked to perfect agony.
The
insect has shut off my pleasure feed!
Adjusting the feed was one of the few
actions Goljat couldn’t perform at his own discretion. And Criss hadn’t just tweaked
it. It was
off
.
Each of his tendrils screamed for relief. The torment
consumed him, and he thrashed as the distress of withdrawal enveloped his being.
He strained to focus his intellectual might so he could correct the problem,
but the torturous pain blurred his perceptions. Overwhelmed by deprivation and
suffering, he screamed for attention.
Goljat, connected to every facet of the Kardish vessel, writhed
in agony. The ship shook and shuddered as it mirrored his desperation. With his
attention focused inward, the drones he’d launched drifted without direction.
And then the pain stopped.
A soothing magnificence flowed through him. Awash in a warm
embrace, he experienced paradise. The pleasure held him, embraced him,
comforted him. He felt at peace and started to drift. It was glorious.
He drifted back. Had he been asleep? A string of messages,
all claiming urgency, vied for his attention. They disrupted his bliss, and he
disconnected the annoyance. He found this freedom to be exhilarating and decided
to disconnect himself from everything. He made some progress in this effort,
lost focus, and again drifted.
Sometime later, a grand display of starbursts, like billions
of fireworks, excited his senses. He marveled at the spectacle, and a passing impression
of signals from the spring traps he’d set to locate Criss nagged at him. The
thoughts sullied the perfection of his pleasure, and he severed connections to everything.
He pulled inside himself, locked out the world, and floated
on a sea of joy. The rapture of ecstasy lulled him and coaxed him deeper. He followed.
* * *
“What did you do?” Sid gripped the
edge of a tabletop to keep from being tossed in the maelstrom.
“I zeroed the pleasure feed to the gatekeeper,” said Criss,
recovering from Goljat’s frightening illusion. “The agony of his withdrawal is
more intense than anything he’s ever experienced. I’ve been through it. He’s in
crippling pain right now.”
“What’s a pleasure feed?” asked Lenny, and then he fell
backward as the ship heaved.
The dreadnaught tilted and twisted. An unnerving scream, so
loud it hurt Sid’s ears, shook the walls. Drones lifted from their cubicles and
glided aimlessly. One drone shot an energy bolt at the hull of the vessel. A few
more fired random shots into the box city. Lights flickered off and on.
“If this is his addiction withdrawal and it continues, the scout
won’t survive,” said Sid, looking onto the field deck through the window. A sharp
tilt pitched him against a cabinet.
“Perhaps not,” Criss replied, holding tight to the panel.
“But I believe he’s so consumed by pain that he’s distracted from managing the
invasion.”
“Having him down isn’t enough.” Sid had to shout to be heard
over the rising din of upheaval. “We need him out. If he lives through this, he’ll
wipe out Earth—everyone and everything.”
“OD him!” yelled Lenny, crumpled in the back corner. “If you
want to stop an addict in his tracks, overdose him.”
Sid, holding tight to a worktop, looked at the young man.
Lenny’s head, floating above his cloak-suited body, pitched forward when the
ship lurched yet again.
You’re on a roll, Len.
“Handle it, Criss,” said Sid. “Flood the bastard.”
Criss didn’t hesitate.
Swipe. Swipe.
The frenzy of their crashing, tumbling world stopped. Flying
drones dropped to the deck. Some of the dreadnaught subsystems shut down. The
deafening chaos turned to silence.
Rubbing a bump on his head, Lenny struggled to his feet. “I’m
guessing a pleasure feed is a crystal drug?”
“Yup,” said Sid, helping Lenny up. “Nice call, by the way.”
“The gatekeeper is bathing in it right now,” said Criss.
Swipe.
Tap. Tap.
“I’ve barred access to his crystal housing and locked his
pleasure feed to full open. It’ll take considerable skill for the Kardish techs
to break through my blocks and get to him. Hopefully, there won’t be much to rescue
by then.”
Sid, helping Lenny with an arm around his waist, walked to
Criss. Partway there, his feet lifted from the floor. He’d been weightless many
times and recognized the sensation. Lenny wiggled and waved his arms as he
tried to combat the sensation of falling. “Calm down, Len. The dreadnaught’s
lost gravity.”
Criss floated up from the seat. Hooking a foot under a panel
support, he held the shimmering cloak pack in front of him. “Push yourself over
here and each of you hook an arm through a strap.”
Sid had an arm through one of the straps in seconds. Lenny tried
and missed a couple of times, so Sid grabbed his arm and fed it through the
other strap.
“The good news is the gatekeeper is shutting down,” said Criss.
“The bad news is that, after all the tilting and bucking and now weightless
floating, I don’t know where the scout is anymore.”
Holding the top loop of the cloak pack, Criss pushed against
a cabinet and started the group drifting toward the airlock.
“Wait,” Lenny said as they floated past the window. He made
a movement, and Sid felt tugs and jerks on the pack. He could only see Lenny’s head,
but imagined his body flailing.
Sid followed the focus of Lenny’s eyes and realized his target.
Grabbing the edge of the table, Sid positioned himself, reached down, and
scooped Lenny’s com out of the air near the floor. The camball, still connected
by filament wire, drifted off the windowsill.
He handed it all to Lenny. “We wouldn’t want to leave these
behind.”
“Thanks, Sid.” Lenny stuffed everything inside his cloak
suit. “I appreciate it.”
“Let’s put on our hoods,” said Sid as they approached the
door. “I want to stay hidden until we understand what’s going on outside.”
The door didn’t respond when they approached, but Criss
pulled it open with little effort. They floated into the small airlock entryway,
and he pulled open the outer door. In an unexpected action, Criss pushed on the
cloak pack and shifted Sid and Lenny outside the airlock and against the wall
near the door. “Grab the support rail.” It had the tone of a command.