Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (15 page)

Minh-Chu Buu joined Captain Valance, with
crossed arms and a stern expression that made him look much older
than Finn would have ever guessed. Finn noticed a new emblem on his
chest: a skull with crossed samurai swords on its forehead and
lettered teeth that read: SAMURAI SQUADRON. Along the contour of
the upper half of the skull was written: FIRST STRIKE FIGHTER
SQUADRON.

With a quick check, Finn saw that the emblem
change was performed by the other squadron leader, Nathan Kipp,
also known as Slick. “Big change coming,” Finn said under his
breath.

“I agree,” Agameg said.

“By hunting me, these men put my crew at
risk,” Captain Valance said. He only had to put his hand out and
Minh-Chu knew to unholster his firearm, a heavy, armour piercing
weapon known as the Spectral Dynamics Violator Handgun, and hand it
to Captain Valance. He deftly adjusted the settings on the weapon,
turned, and without a second’s hesitation, shot one of the hanging
men in the head until the rounds burst through the worker’s
vacsuit. It took less than a second. The sight and sound of the act
was so sudden, so violent, that Finn and many other onlookers
flinched. The man’s head was gone in a mist of red, the hull of the
shuttle behind sparked and smouldered fitfully.

He returned his attention to the crowd,
lowering the smoking sidearm. “I hunted the trash of the galaxy for
years, you cannot surprise me. You may be able to catch me, but
you’ll regret it every time,” Captain Valance said. His expression
was enough to force Finn to unconsciously take a step back.

“Come after me and I’ll make everything you
own mine, kill you and your crew, then leave your carcass in the
open so everyone knows where I tore you to pieces. That includes
every military organisation that seems to be confused about who I
am, and what I’m responsible for.”

The viewer counter on the Stellarnet feed
had jumped into the millions, and it was climbing faster. Finn had
never seen anything like it, and couldn’t help but get excited.

“So there is no confusion, I’ll tell you my
story, and what I intend to do next. I was created in a Vindyne lab
less than a decade ago, stolen by a woman who is part of a great
legacy. Vindyne gave me the name Jacob Valance. For some reason,
they didn’t come to take me back after Regent Galactic bought
Vindyne, so I continued on, took on a crew, started hunting, and
then I found another man’s memories in my head. Jonas Valent. I
have all his memories, they feel like my own, but I’m a different
man, a more severe man, a killer and a pirate. The Order of Eden
likes to call me a terrorist.

"The charges submitted to the courts by
Regent Galactic, that Jonas Valent is responsible for the Holocaust
Virus that cost so many lives, are misdirected at me. The man
they’re looking for is dead. He was also innocent. I’m the last
living part of his legacy, and in honour of him, I’m taking his
last name. I’m also answering to a calling that I think he’d be
proud of.

"My ship, the Samson, may have been
destroyed, but I have a new vessel, one that has been built on a
promise I made after assisting Holocaust victims in the Enreega
system. I cannot imagine that anyone but the Eden Cult are
responsible for the Holocaust Virus, and the deaths of billions,
yet no one is willing to declare war.

"So let me be the first. You’ve cost me my
ship, beloved crewmembers, and the daughter of the Valent legacy:
Alice. I will hunt Eden ships, Order of Eden allies, Regent
Galactic assets, and disrupt, capture or destroy them whenever and
wherever I can. You want to see a terrorist? I’ll show you
one.”

Captain Jacob Valent turned and took aim at
the last hanging man, who struggled to get free of the sealant that
held him fast to the shuttle’s hull. “And my message to the hunters
out there is simple: don’t get in my way.” He pulled the trigger,
burning through the man’s head.

The transmission ended as some of the crowd
began cheering. They were joined by more, and even Finn found
himself clapping. Something within him stirred. He’d seen some of
the devastation brought on by the Holocaust Virus, and known so
many people who lost their entire families. He hadn’t heard from
home either, and suspected the worst. It was something he was
loathe to face, but he hoped that someone would reply to the
transmission he sent home seven weeks before.

Captain Valent walked straight towards him,
and Finn lowered his hood, and then retracted his faceplate. The
air was warm against his face, and smelled of ozone with a little
trash mixed in for good measure, but it still felt good.

Stephanie passed by Finn, taking her hood
down and shaking her hair free. “Nice speech, I almost believed we
have a chance,” she said, grinning.

“We’re going to do a lot of good,” Captain
Valent said. “We’re going to do this the smart way.”

One concern nagged Finn, and he stepped
towards them as they hugged briefly. “Sorry, but, Sir?” he
appealed.

Jake fixed him with a rare smile and said,
“It’s good to see you, Finn, Agameg.”

“Yes, uh, you too, but what’s this about the
Samson being destroyed?” Finn pressed. “She’s almost back together,
or at least together enough so she can take off , and-“

“I’m renaming her,” Captain Valent said. “So
much has changed that we may as well change that too, and it’ll
give us the element of surprise for a while.”

“We’re going to make some serious cash,”
Frost said as he joined the growing group.

“Jake!” shouted Oz as he ran towards him. He
was in full boarding armour, and carried a heavy rifle across his
back, but moved with great speed and agility regardless. He stopped
and whispered something in Captain Valent’s ear.

“What do you mean, ‘where’s Ayan?’” Jake
asked.

“Jason, Laura, and Liam are all on their way
back here, thanks to that speech,” Oz said. “They said Ayan met you
in some high class hotel in Greydock. They haven’t heard anything
from her since.”

Finn could see Captain Valent look her up on a small
comm screen he called up in his wrist, and the results darkened his
expression. When Finn checked himself, the system reported:

USER NOT IN RANGE.

Ayan could feel nanobots and biological
stimulants moving through her ruined arm and hand. It felt as
though someone was pouring cold water down the inside of the limb,
and she knew what came next would be horrible. There were no
painkillers - somehow they’d missed including that in Freeground’s
modified framework survival package. The sensations stopped. “Oh,
God,” she whispered.

The system went to work on her entire arm at
the same time. The broken bones from her elbow on grated like sandy
stones as they were set. The pain was so intense she couldn’t
breathe, and she was seeing stars before it was over. Her vacsuit
formed a hard splint. When it was done she was covered in sweat,
her heart was racing, and her left arm throbbed furiously. A signal
from the framework system to her brain told her that it was out of
power.

She was afraid of that. The system had
already taken care of internal injuries and corrected a minor head
injury before waking her up. Unlike Jake’s framework system, it
wasn’t designed to draw power from the outside world, but depended
on her body’s natural electricity, her movements, and a microscopic
gravity mill. Ayan was no expert on the technology, so she had no
idea how long it would take for the system to accumulate enough
power to finish putting her back together.

“I’m getting a command unit for each wrist
like Stephanie’s done,” she told the empty room. “A backup full of
painkillers would be amazin’ right now.” She couldn’t help but
chuckle at herself and the reappearance of her thicker English
accent, something she’d never had in her second life, but faintly
remembered from the first Ayan’s childhood.

When she recovered a little, she looked at
the broken limb. It was curved backwards before, with a twisted,
mangled thing at the end that was her hand. The suit kept her from
taking shrapnel damage, and her skin was intact, but it couldn’t
deal with point blank concussive damage. The work her suit had done
to straighten and splint her arm and hand was perfect. From the
outside, it looked like a slightly swollen, normal limb, but Ayan
didn’t want to see what it was like beneath.

There was superficial damage to her stomach,
where the android was trying to stretch her suit open, but it was a
mild sting compared to that left arm. Her basic vacsuit was able to
protect the rest of her body, especially her neck and head, but it
was almost completely out of power after applying the corrective
splint.

Her wrist unit had disintegrated, and she
was left with the basic controls on her suit. The internal clock on
her visor told her it had been one hour and thirty-six minutes
since she’d arrived in the hotel room.

“Connect to regional communications, link
with Triton Enclave in Port Rush,” she ordered the basic computer
in the suit. It attempted to make a link and failed, showing no
available network nodes. “Scan for available network connections,”
Ayan ordered, trying to roll over, towards her good arm. Her broken
hand and arm and burned stomach all protested, and she abandoned
the attempt. NO COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES AVAILABLE, replied the
computer.

She came to the conclusion that Thurge, or
Burke, or Wheeler himself, arranged to have communications blocked
in that room, which explained why her explosion didn’t set off any
alarms, why she couldn’t get a connection, and why no one had come
to find out why her communicator wasn’t working.

Ayan looked across the room at the remains
of the Jacob imitation. It’s head, one shoulder, and part of its
upper chest cavity was gone. Even through the pain, she couldn’t
help but tell it, “That’s what you get for trying to make me your
distressed damsel.”

Ayan looked for a wired communications pad
on the wall. To her relief, she spotted one built into an imitation
antique lamp. The force of the blast had knocked it from the
bedside table to the floor.

“Only three metres away, maybe less,” Ayan
said to herself.

She made an attempt at pushing herself up
only to have a throb she barely paid attention to in her thigh
become a searing, sharp pain. “So, that’s broken too,” she grunted
to herself.

Ayan grabbed the low shag of the carpet with
her good arm and pushed with her good leg. Her suit protected her
arm and thigh from being knocked around, but there were so many
breaks that she found herself biting her lip and smothering a
scream at the new rush of sensation. Aside from her broken bones
and bruises, her burnt belly felt like it was ready to split open.
Tears squeezed through her tightly closed lids the next time she
renewed her efforts.

“That’s a metre,” Ayan said, fighting for
breath. Inhaling too deeply made her stomach rage and breathing too
quickly made her broken limbs jostle and sent shocks of pain
throughout her body.

She closed her eyes for a moment and was
rewarded with the memory of Jacob’s imitator, leering at her,
saying “I love you,” using his voice. “I’m going to kill you for
this, Wheeler,” she said. She pressed on with renewed vigour,
gritting her teeth at the pain every time she repeated the pattern
of gripping the carpet to pull, and raising her good leg to push
herself towards the communicator.

The last metre was the easiest. Her head
tapped the overturned lamp and she sighed with relief.

Her vacsuit had expended all but the
smallest amount of power resisting the force of the explosion, and
when she motioned the command to open her faceplate, it couldn’t
unlock. After a few moments' fumbling, Ayan found the manual
release button for her visor. It was just a slightly hardened part
of her suit under the chin, and she had never used one; the memory
of the emergency latch was from her predecessor, the first
Ayan.

The seal didn’t break at first, even though
she heard the material try to separate. With some pushing and
pulling, she got the transparent faceplate halfway up her face, so
she could talk into the communicator clearly. Ayan pressed the CALL
button and hoped. Lights flickered on, and the hologram of the
concierge’s head appeared.

“Can I help you-“ he started before he fixed
her with a shocked expression. “Oh my God, are you Ayan?”

“Looks like he’s got something,” Ayan heard
Jason say in the background.

“What happened? Are you okay?” asked the
young concierge.

“No,” Ayan croaked. Tears surged forward,
and it didn’t matter to Ayan whether they were from relief or from
desperation - she hated the fact that they came at all. She wanted
to be stronger. “Send medics.”

“They’re on their way,” the concierge said.
“We were trying to find what room you were in, but the scanners in
that section of the hotel have been down since the UCW left. I sent
soldiers-“

The Concierge was shoved out of the way, and
Laura appeared instead. “We’re coming Ayan, there should be someone
there soon.”

Ayan breathed a shuddering sigh of relief as
she looked out to the window. Laura offered light conversation, not
probing into what had happened, just making her best efforts to
distract Ayan while help was on the way. She half listened, looking
to the rose-coloured view through the generously proportioned
windows. The tall buildings outside looked more like ancient
monuments in that light, standing the test of time against a
backdrop of rolling, dusty hills that were just starting to find a
hint of green in the valleys.

The thoughts going through her mind were not
ready to be shared. The last two hours were an education, a violent
return to reality.

Sprawled out on the floor of that ruined
room, Ayan regarded her previous attempts to get into fighting
shape, to form an understanding of Tamber and the conditions there,
as well as how she was trying to make a civilisation out of their
band of refugees in an entirely new light.