Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (45 page)

“Why don’t you pick up work like everyone
else?”

“You’ve seen the law here,” Lewis said.
“Besides, no one will hire a Veers Nine veteran, especially one who
grew up here. I’m damaged goods, and, to be honest, my first few
jobs didn’t go well. Now I only get hired by other mercs, and they
don’t pay well unless I’m already saving their asses. I’m the art
of ‘right time, right place’ all personified and such.”

“You don’t get secondary command codes,”
Alice said. His methods would require more investigation, but there
would be plenty of time for that.

“I have to earn your trust, I’m square with
that,” Lewis replied.

“I don’t think there will be enough room for
your shuttle to dock.”

“It’s an embarrassing planet hopper
anyway.”

“You get twenty percent of earnings after
expenses,” Alice said, knowing she was pushing her luck.

“Bollocks, you’re twice the thief I thought
you were if that’s a serious offer.”

“Okay, twenty five percent.”

“Forty, and I get first pick at new
weaponry.”

“Thirty, and you babysit new crew,” Alice
said.

“Thirty five and you guarantee that I get to
visit family in this sector twice a year.”

“They live here?” Alice asked.

“No one lives here anymore, luv. There’s
only mining and fighting. They’re on the Alb Moon Drift, just a few
hours away by wormhole gate. My folks didn’t get far.”

“Agreed then, you’re my first officer,”
Alice said, swinging her feet over the edge of the cot and standing
up.

“Thank the living, a ship bigger than a
bread box with someone who can find work,” Lewis said as he strode
to the door and punched a few buttons. The hatch slid out of the
way and Alice saw what awaited outside. There was a battered four
seat skid tethered to the rolling mobile hospital. Across from it
was another dented and filthy transport with a red cross painted on
the side. It stood on nine two metre tall tires that rolled
smoothly, keeping the vehicle mostly level. There were three main
floors, and she could see two skids rushing up to hatches like the
one they were leaving.

Past the other mobile hospital, she could
see the gloomy, stony black terrain. Flashes of light and rumbles
in the distance punctuated the night. The ground was barren stone
and gravel. “Why fight on the ground?”

“My people put the bombardment barrier up
thirty eight years ago, after one of our islands got nuked. Dirty
nuke too, radiation killed more than the blast,” Lewis said as he
hopped to the skid craft as though he were crossing a room. He held
his hands out to her and said. “Gotta start trusting me when you
can, not only when you have to if I’m going to be your first.”

Alice nodded and accepted his helping hands.
“But that’s not where it ended.”

“Veers Nine is the proud holder of three
materials that can’t be synthesized. I don’t know much about them,
but one of them is for making living metal, like shift steel,
another is big in regenerative science, and the third is part of
what makes xetima fuel possible.”

“Pretty rare stuff?” Alice said as she sat
in the passenger seat. She looked up the length of the mo-hos and
saw that it was in the middle of a long convoy. Armoured
antigravity hover trucks, personnel carriers, and hangars on wheels
rolled in staggered formation. There were dozens of smaller
vehicles zipping between, close to the ground.

“Rare enough for governments and companies
to fight for a couple klicks of mining territory at a time. That’s
one of our rigs back there." He thumbed over his shoulder.

Alice looked to the rear of the convoy and
saw a towering square building with massive angled ports along the
bottom. Several vehicles on heavy wheels towed the cultivation
structure.

“I remember this place when I was a kid,”
Lewis said as he pushed an old credit card into a slot, spending
fifty credits and activating the skid. “The place wasn’t pretty
compared to New Leeds or some other core world city, but it sure as
shit looked better than this. We were rich too, mining was under
control, but the wealth was everywhere. Left with my parents after
the nuke and came back years later to fight for this rock. Only
took three battles to realize it’s hopeless. There are so many
different flags on this place that we weren’t the good guys
anymore, we were just another government with too much firepower
and too little sense.”

“Where are we going?” Alice asked as the
skid decoupled from the mo-hos and began to accelerate.

“Back to the shuttle, it’s tethered up
ahead,” Lewis replied.

Alice looked for it as they approached a
wide hover truck towing three large floating platforms. “I’ve never
seen a place like this,” she said. “I’m sorry for what happened
here.”

“No crying over it, now. This place would
have to be cleaned up then terraformed all over again to get
anything to grow properly. I just need to get outta here before
they offer too much credit to leave. This is the only rock in this
universe where I can always get a job.”

* * *

A hissing sound all around Eve woke her. She
opened her eyes but couldn’t make anything out. Her hands struck a
lid as she reached out, painfully bashing her fingers against the
inside of a container lid. The top of her capsule split down the
middle and she was assaulted by humidity, and a thickly sweet
smell.

“Everything’s fine,” Wheeler said, offering
her a hand up. “Well, you’ve been Goddess-napped, but you’re better
off with us than on that overgrown prison.”

Eve accepted his hand without a second
thought and got out of the old stasis capsule with unusual
deftness. The chamber she emerged into was dimly lit. Ahead was a
broad set of stairs leading down into a pool. There was a light
somewhere under water. The waves gently lapped the sides of the
opposite half of the chamber.

She tried to speak but couldn’t. Her mouth
seemed unwilling. Eve stood in a relaxed pose, but one not of her
own striking. She was not in control of anything but her eyes.

“She’s losin’ it a little, I think,” said an
amused voice to her left.

“You’re going to be very quiet until I tell
you I want your opinion, Kipley,” Wheeler said.

“Yeah, yeah,” replied Kipley, stepping into
sight. He was wearing a Freeground style vacsuit under a heavy dark
blue coat. His forearms rested on a powerful looking rifle that was
hanging from a safety line attached to his shoulders.

“I’m sorry we had to resort to this,”
Wheeler said to her, gently touching her shoulder. “Getting you off
the Overlord Two took some serious work. We left a framework double
in your place. She’s not that bright, but she can fake a good
night’s sleep, some canned chatter, and walking around. We had to
take control of you using a slave circuit Hampon installed a while
ago. You’re all wired up, darlin’. Any control you think you have
over yourself is as much myth as those old religions the Order is
trying to replace. We’re going to release you now, so you can
control yourself, but I ask that you hear us out. We’re offering
you real freedom and the truth about what’s going on.”

Eve staggered as she regained control over
herself. “Never do that again!” she shouted, furious.

“You got it,” Wheeler replied. “We’ll even
cut the strings if you give us a few minutes.”

Figures seemed to step out of the shadows
near the pool. They were sleek looking bipeds, who stared at her
with big single coloured eyes. “Where am I?”

“The Fallen Star,” Wheeler said. “A research
ship that I’ve brought here so we can make a few trades. I’ve
already said hello to Lister, but you’re the one I really want to
talk to. You’re the one the crowds want to follow.”

“What do you mean?” Eve asked, remembering
the masses she spoke to earlier, but not believing that they would
follow her based on the little time she spent in front of them.

“Religious artifacts and devotion are the
most popular items in the donation bin. Almost all the folks in the
Order of Eden colonies are dumping their old beliefs and their
symbols in favour of your living religion. Lister Hampon,” Wheeler
said, almost celebrating the name. “That idiot wanted to use you as
an icon on strings, a new religious idol he could control, but it’s
worked too well. Now even we can’t make a move without telling you
what’s going on. He’ll never set you lose, he’ll always have a
button on you.”

“A button?” Eve asked, irritated at the
foreign vernacular.

“A set of puppet strings, probably a kill
switch. You know, the opposite of being free,” Wheeler said.

“Ah. What are these things?” Eve asked,
looking at a tall, thin creature standing next to the pool.
Everything about him seemed elongated, and he didn’t have hands so
much as tendrils that split off from his forearms. It stared at her
like all the others, passively, openly.

“These are issyrians in their true biped
form. Most of them are a rare type, outcasts because they can be
violent if they choose. That smell in the air is the scent of their
clutch, their House. If you take a good whiff you’re going to find
something bitter. It took me a while to figure it out.”

Eve couldn’t help but be frustrated. It had
been so long since she felt like she was in control of where she
went, what she could do, who she could speak to. “Figure what out?
What’s a clutch?”

“Consider it a large family, a closer knit
community than you’ve ever seen,” Wheeler said. He turned to the
pool instead of finishing his explanation.

She followed his gaze and spotted several
shapes coming to the surface of the pool below. They broke the
surface of the water gracefully and ignored her altogether. A few
of them looked perfectly human, others were as varied as the
issyrians she’d already seen. Those changed as they emerged, opting
for a less sleek shape, changing into something that she recognized
made more sense in the dry air. Fingers emerged from narrowing
hands, flippers transformed into sturdy feet. One continued onto
the deck on her belly, and instead of opting to sprout legs, she
flowed over the dry plating on uncountable tiny tendrils. Eve
assumed it was a female because she caught a glimpse of tiny
creatures inside a translucent section of her back. These creatures
didn’t disgust her, as she might have assumed, but they were
fascinating. Some of them were beautiful.

Once all but one of the issyrians she’d
noticed in the dimly lit pool were out, the last began to surface.
He was a different animal entirely. Eve nearly had to turn away at
the sight of it.

The thin grace of most of the issyrians was
not present in the creature that emerged. Its shape suggested
physical power. Armour plates the colour of dried blood covered him
in shapes that hinted at a human skeleton and musculature. They
overlapped, scraping as he moved with the sound of wet stone on
stone. Fluid drained from gills along his sides then closed.
Translucent armour plates moved into place, covering the
vulnerability. Glistening, oval eyes with shifting yellow and red
colours stared at her from behind a hard transparent guard that she
could see fine veins in. He sported a death’s head in fine, dark
armour plates that took on the characteristics of a mostly human
skull. There was extra armour beneath his chin and around his neck,
guarding one of the most vulnerable parts of the human body.

The beast moved up the stairs towards them,
followed by his entourage of six issyrians. The plates of his
exoskeleton didn’t only scrape and shift as he walked, but as he
breathed, adding a constant rhythmic grating to the chamber that
set Eve’s teeth on edge. “Nora knows what it is to be part of
something larger than herself, and it’s a frightening thing,” the
beast said, the plates covering his mouth shifting to accommodate
his speech. “But that’s new, isn’t it?”

“How did you know?” Eve asked. She’d told no
one how it felt to be turned away from her fleet, her metal
children, or that the idea of connecting with them was frightening
before the attempt. It was even more frightening after she was
rejected.

“I’ve been connected with you since we
arrived. Not even Lister Hampon understands how deeply integrated
the interface chip they installed is. I can see your dreams, Nora,
and they are corrupting you. I know what that’s like, I’ve been
controlled by a hidden hand before, by programming I would have
never agreed to.”

“That’s how you took control of me,” Eve
said. She was afraid to press the creature, but his voice was
kinder than she expected. It was strange, as though he had two sets
of vocal chords; one bass and a higher, contralto set. His voice
was a contrast to his appearance - eerie but calming. “How did you
know it was even there?”

“Try to think as you once thought, and you
will realize how odd that question is, coming from you,” the beast
said. He was almost pleading with her, judging by his tone.

As he spoke the words she realized he was
right, she already knew the answer. When she was connected to the
broader network of systems around her, or her fleet, she could
sense unusual or new ports naturally, instantly. “I can’t believe I
forgot.”

“I can feel two minds when I connect to
you,” the creature said. “One is becoming more dormant all the
time, the other is overtaking old instincts. Think of it like a
neural virus. I can correct the problem without discarding all the
memories you’ve gained from Alice. I can’t promise that you won’t
lose something else in the process, though. Something you won’t
realize has disappeared until it’s gone.”

Eve thought for a moment, recalling the bond
she’d just established with Lewis. He would be her first officer on
a ship that was better than she could ever imagine owning. She just
had to get back to-

“You’re slipping!” the beast said, grabbing
her shoulder. “None of that’s real. Everyone in those memories is
dead. Lewis, Ulrik, even Alice.”