Chapter Twenty-one

[68847] Frederik

Unknown

Frederik was cold and numb as he looked at the cooling exterior of the Grayson spacecraft on the ink display. Stunned, he watched blankly as the nebula from a nuclear detonation dispersed and faded from view. Across the hull were twisted alien forms, unmoving and partially melted from the sudden flux of x-rays and neutrons. Caught and destroyed in the radioactive backwash from a nuclear shaped explosive.

“Pol tsow zloy-zloy,”^{[123][Di Lingua]: Shit fucking madness. ↑} his curse muffled by the gauze in his mouth. “Kpata-kpata bin tsow.”^{[124][Di Lingua]: Totally fucked. ↑}

Non-human technology, and possibly life, reached out to humanity, and humans obliterated it. As a witness to a crime of a cosmic scale, he felt complicit. Amid his confusion, shame, and anger, a deep resolve took shape. He would survive.

Grayson Services Group had made very little effort to hide what they were from Frederik and the survivors of Ergo. Yet, their ability to operate in the Spanning Worlds was only possible because the people did not know what they were doing.

Io and Frederik had nothing Grayson Services Group wanted, not really, so why were they alive? They were tools to be used against Vis, but someday that would no longer be necessary—and what then? He didn’t know how, but he knew he would survive and that it would not be through the largesse of Grayson Services Group.

One light above the acceleration flats blinked at him, brightly, distractingly, so he turned his head, but the dot followed his view. An afterimage, he thought, but there was something different about the quality of the dot’s motion. It maintained its structure as it moved.

His eyebrow raised, he plucked the dot out of the air with his hand. There was a tingle of haptic feedback from his EAR and the blue dot expanded into a large EAR window covered in a seal code. It was a request for a sealed and encrypted message, meant for him. He grabbed at his left wrist to verify his seal from his bracelet. Only then did he realize it was gone.

He felt naked, exposed, and vulnerable. Yet, even without his seal, the code dissolved, and a chat window blossomed open in the center of his field of vision. Unhinged in this moment, he was certain he was delirious from his ordeal. A sealed chat couldn’t open like that, not without both parties using a seal. Had Grayson spoofed his biometric signature and stolen his identity?

[Vis]: Look up.

Frederik turned to look at Vis. Io grabbed his hand. He looked at her, and she chinned up to the ceiling.

[Io]: Be subtle old man!

Don’t be so obvious and give away that we’re on an EAR network.

He froze, looked up at the ceiling as Vis had originally asked. There, gecko gripped to the ceiling, was the strange prototype computer that had caused this whole mess, apparently. Fiber optic cables and power feeds dangled from the computer and connected it to one of the acceleration flats.

[Frederik]: What’s going on?

[Vis]: They don’t know they powered up the prototype.

But I was able to create a private network just for us.

[Io]: Haha.

They’re going to ask you to use it, huh?

[Vis]: Most likely.

We don’t have much time before they ask me to turn it on and use it themselves.

[Frederik]: This is…a lot….

What are those things?

In the halls.

[Io]: Aliens, F.

Like I said, they nuked them.

First contact with another species and humanity blew them up.

[Vis]: Their craft looked a lot like that derelict we found in Mu Herculis.

[Frederik]: I am sorry.

[Io]: For what?

[Frederik]: I never really believed you about the aliens, Vis.

It was too…strange.

Frederik glanced over at Vis. She looked angry. Then he heard her sigh.

[Vis]: …Look, it doesn’t matter.

You believe me now?

[Frederik]: Hard not to…did you see those things outside?

In the halls?

[Io]: We saw them.

[Vis]: Whatever they are, they’re deadly, they’re everywhere in the halls and air systems, and they’re flooding everything outside this storm cellar with jamming.

[Frederik]: How did this happen?

Frederik jolted in his flat—a strange reflex in microgravity—as Ninya Blanca slammed into the wall millimeters from his face. Thud thud. The gecko grip was loud right next to his ears.

“Johnson, Morales! Get that fucking thing plugged into the Martian and powered up,” Ninya Blanca looked down at Vis from the wall. “You got us into this mess. Time to get us out!”

At Ninya Blanca’s direction, her crew gecko gripped additional equipment to the prototype on the ceiling of the storm cellar, ran fiber optic cables to two of the sunken flats, and then back to Vis.

“You,” Ninya Blanca pointed at Vis. “Morales is going to give you audio, video, text. Orders. You will seal what we send you and only what we send you. You will send what you have sealed to Johnson over there. He will hash your seals. If we find the hash of your output is invalid, you will do it again. If a second hash fails, well…,” Ninya Blanca looked down at Frederik with a cruel smile that made him shiver and want to flee. “They are leverage. You will not fuck with us, or they will pay the price. Got it?”

“Understood,” Vis said through her grimace.

Two armed Grayson guards floated over, uncomfortably gecko gripped in front of Frederik and Io as Ninya Blanca floated off around the bend of the storm cellar’s central pillar. A message flickered over his EAR.

[Io]: We need to do something.

Frederik folded his hands, looked at his feet, and did his best to not react as he sent messages across their illicit EAR network.

[Frederik]: Vis? What can we get away with?

[Vis]: Hold on…need to concentrate.

They’re already sending me things to seal.

Looks like outgoing communications.

[Io]: They’re probably checking the hashes of any message she sends.

Input, seal, output, hash the output to verify its mathematically consistent with the input.

[Frederik]: They can do that? Without decrypting it?

[Io]: Core feature of the seal system.

Easy to check if a sealed message is correct.

Don’t need the original seal.

They’re just exploiting that to monitor Vis.

[Frederik]: Got it.

I don’t think they have noticed our EAR network.

[Io]: Not yet.

[Frederik]: Most of the controls in here seem hard-wired.

The rest have to be EAR accessible, right?

[Io]: The storm cellar walls are probably too thick to make connections outside.

[Frederik]: Maybe they do what we do on Ergo.

Hard points on the outside route through the comms panel on the inside.

It’s almost seamless, unless the comms panel is destroyed or sabotaged.

[Io]: I don’t know how military craft operate, F.

Wish Taliya was here.

[Frederik]: I assume they have more access controls and permissions, but they must still use EAR.

And with Vis’s help we can break those.

[Io]: Vis said something about jamming.

[Vis]: I think I can use the prototype to filter it.

But I have to be careful.

And there are a lot of EAR network connections.

[Frederik]: Got it.

[Io]: What are you thinking, F?

Pull another storm cellar coup against our Grayson captors?

Like we did on Ergo?

Frederik inspected his surroundings studiously. Two armed guards immediately in front of him and Io. Four or so crew in sunken acceleration flats. Two more armed crew near the hatchway and, of course, Ninya Blanca. When they had re-taken Control on Ergo, they had outnumbered their captors by over two to one, and in the storm cellar they had outnumbered them five to one.

[Frederik]: Too many of them this time.

We need to level the odds.

And the only unknown I see here is if we can slowly take control of command systems.

[Io]: F, we’re not hackers.

[Frederik]: We don’t need to be!

We can cut through seals.

Io reached out and squeezed Frederik’s hand.

[Io]: You know me, I like action.

I just don’t want to lose you.

[Frederik]: I know.

But they’re going to kill us if we stay here.

In an hour or in a month.

It’s going to happen.

[Io]: I know.

We’ve seen too much.

Still seems risky.

[Vis]: Not as risky as you might think.

They don’t know how long it should take to crack a seal.

If I double the time to output a message, who is to tell them it’s too long?

They will have no idea I am breaking their seals, too.

[Frederik]: Anchuan shiyong.^{[125][Di Lingua]: Be careful/good luck. ↑}

They are slippery and suspicious.

[Vis]: Believe me, I know.

But I am only adding a minute or two to my work.

They won’t notice.

So let me poke around these EAR networks and see what we can find.

[Io]: Oke.

And in the meantime?

[Frederik]: Soak up whatever information we can while they let us.

Around them, in the storm cellar, were many ink displays. These streams from the interior hallways of the spacecraft were for the crew, but there had been no efforts to hide them from Frederik, Io, and Vis. Frederik and Io watched and listened carefully as they waited for Vis to send any updates.

Angry metallic forms rolled and floated and flittered through halls with no discernible pattern or purpose—unless they encountered Grayson Services Group. Grayson was almost always the aggressor and only encountered the alien forms while laying ambushes against the seemingly defensive alien metal storms.

Each time, the alien things reacted moments before an ambush or ran into the amassing Grayson forces before their ambush was ready. Grayson always seemed to fire first, yet they never came out of the encounters on top. At best, Grayson only secured pyrrhic victories.

Despite the lack of obvious arms or armor, it became clear to Frederik that many of the aliens carried powerful lasers. They were likely intended to be medium range laser cutting tools, though this was just his guess from how often people survived encounters, but he did not have any hard data. Against human bodies and armor, these tools were enough to slice, disembowel, and decapitate Grayson soldiers in disturbing, unnatural ways with millimeter precision. It was not a sweet revenge against Frederik’s captors, instead he was watching a deeply disturbing waste of human life.

[Io]: Their spacecraft is destroyed. Why are they still fighting?

[Frederik]: The aliens?

[Io]: Ye.

He looked over at Io. She smiled and gave his hand a squeeze. She looked disgusted and afraid. Exactly as he felt, too. Human bodies cut apart like pieces of machines, without apparent hesitation and an almost preternatural ability to predict when and where a trap was being laid. Grayson Services Group stood little chance, and the terrible consequences were deeply upsetting to see. Some victims survived, but with fewer limbs or terrible, cauterized wounds that cut all the way through their bodies.

[Frederik]: All I have seen are the same hallways.

Is that all this spacecraft is?

Frederik asked, changing the subject.

[Io]: Well, it is ERR–AL capable.

She tapped the circular column behind them with the back of her head to emphasize the point she was making in the text.

[Io]: A few hundred meters long, twenty to thirty decks.

They have a docking bay.

Just a handful of decks above us.

[Frederik]: A medbay too.

[Io]: This storm cellar.

[Frederik]: Haven’t seen an engineering section.

[Io]: Or an armory.

[Frederik]: Or a mess.

Haven’t seen crew cabins.

[Io]: Ye, a lot is missing from the streams.

Hmm.

[Vis]: They only have streams from hard-wired cameras.

And they’re being cut sporadically.

Jamming is still preventing them from accessing their EAR router.

[Io]: Vis!

Hao fa?^{[126][Di Lingua]: Hey! ↑}

[Vis]: I got a firewall setup.

Got a few CBits cutting through the noise out there.

Everything not on a hardline connects to our EAR network now.

Not theirs.

They’ll just think the signal noise is keeping them locked out.

Go ahead, see what you can find out there.

Frederik discreetly flicked the chat window on his EAR, pulled open an external connection through Vis’s firewall. He then feigned a yawn and waved open information windows and exterior stream displays.

He was being held captive on UNPSV Delightful Death—which he thought was a fitting name for the demonic demeanor of Ninya Blanca. UNPSV meant it was legally armed and armored, though surely its payload of nuclear thermal lances was still illegal. Delightful Death had twenty-seven decks, and he could see most of them.

[Io]: Holy shit.

There are a lot of those metal things onboard still.

It was hard to count them directly, as they moved between the gently spiraling hallways that ran from fore to aft of the Delightful Death. And they were also everywhere in the large air, water, and power ducts that acted as a counterbalance to the open hallway. Delightful Death had an alien infestation.

Not all the alien things were in motion, and Frederik could get a close look at them for the first time. Each alien thing had a solid, glowing core that was close to two meters long and one, maybe one and a quarter, meters wide. This core appeared to be mostly solid and cylindrical, while everything else about their bodies was more fluid and less definite in form. Their tendrils could extend out to three or four meters or more, but it wasn’t clear. When not stationary, they moved so quickly in a flowing motion like they were swimming through microgravity. It was almost graceful and beautiful, like a school of silvery squids in shallow water.

There appeared to be fewer aliens in the upper decks, close to the nose cone of the conical warcraft, and forward of the docking bay. That also was where most of the Grayson survivors had collected, seeking refuge in the circular decks with a similar layout to the storm cellar.

There were two docking bays on the Delightful Death. One had no sign of aliens, and in the other a strange gray ellipsoid had smashed through the bay doors, and it seemed to be infested with aliens. That docking bay looked melted, twisted, damaged and burned, but most of the alien forms were alive and mobile.

[Frederik]: Think I found where they boarded.

[Io]: That docking bay?

Definitely.

In the heart of the Grayson spacecraft, near the stellarator that was both the power source and main engine, the aliens were at their most densely collected. Here, they had interlocked and collected and coalesced into new emergent forms centered on a strange, deep black egg-shaped artifact.

[Frederik]: What is that thing?

[Vis]: I think it’s a CTCC.

Like the prototype I am using.

Only far more powerful.

[Io]: Why do you think that?

[Vis]: Educated guess.

I used a program that Mimo had set up already to get that distress signal out.

[Io]: Mimo?

[Vis]: He built the prototype.

Peter Jakande.

He was my colleague and friend.

[Frederik]: What happened to him?

[Vis]: I…don’t know.

[Frederik]: Binu.^{[127][Di Lingua]: Sorry. ↑}

[Vis]: It’s oke.

I bring it up because he must have gotten paranoid when writing his programs.

People looking for this distress signal won’t see it, but autonomous systems will.

They kick that anomaly around any decentralized information hubs in range.

Then it gets bumped into higher order systems for being an anomaly.

Those systems see the features making it a distress code but are agnostic about origin.

And then they alert the region’s emergency authority.

At least in theory.

[Io]: Sounds ideal if you’re being coerced into using the computer.

[Vis]: Exactly.

[Frederik]: Oke, but how was that going to help us with orbital control?

[Vis]: What do you mean?

[Frederik]: Well, you sent that distress call out to get us help, right?

Was anyone going to find it?

[Vis]: Probably not.

[Frederik]: So how did Grayson get permission to burn our way?

[Vis]: Does that matter now?

[Frederik]: Not really, I supposed.

[Io]: I bet Kirk reached out.

Made a distress call so Delightful Death could justify burning to get us.

[Vis]: Again, does that matter now?

[Frederik]: No. I guess not.

[Vis]: At any rate, I don’t think the program was finished.

That’s why I don’t think it worked.

I don’t think anyone got our signal.

Except them.

The aliens.

And then they gidizipped right into the EZ.

[Io]: Pol tsow.^{[128][Di Lingua]: Shit fuck. ↑}

[Vis]: Ye.

So, they have the theoretical understanding to make a CTCC.

They’d need that to push the boundaries of the exclusion zone the way they did.

And they got here so soon after we were captured.

I think they recognized what caused the signal.

Came here to find who created it.

Took some time to backtrack it, plus the unfinished program meant it bounced around.

[Io]: Hmm.

[Vis]: I also think that explains why Grayson hasn’t stopped fighting for control.

[Frederik]: I noticed the aliens seem reactive, not proactive.

[Vis]: Ye.

I noticed that too.

Grayson wants that computer.

Otherwise, why stay here?

They have everything they want and clearly can take out the aliens if they wanted.

[Frederik]: As long as they are willing to sacrifice the Delightful Death and use nuclear weapons.

[Io]: That…at least that makes a sort of sense.

They don’t put a high value on human life.

[Vis]: Ye.

Cooperative Defense is very upset at them.

But they are having me send out official after-action reports like it’s a special operation.

Condoned by Cooperative Defense, of course.

[Frederik]: And Cooperative Defense is buying that juany juye?

[Vis]: I don’t know.

The validity of the seals seems convincing enough.

[Io]: What now?

[Frederik]: Can’t we just take control?

Through the fusion drive’s transponder?

[Vis]: It will take a few hours to set up.

But.

I think so.

[Io]: What are you thinking, F?

[Frederik]: We can take this spacecraft wherever we want, blame it on the aliens.

They’re in the stellarator, they have that fancy computer, they could hack the transponder.

Move it, bump it, spin it whenever we need a distraction.

[Io]: And where would we take it?

[Frederik]: Vas.

We can take it to Vas.

There’s three propcans in one of the docking bays.

Frederik scratched at his elbow, using the motion to grab onto one of the video streams, and gently nudging it to Io and Vis.

[Frederik]: If we can get out of here, out of this storm cellar, we can take down their security.

Get to Vas.

Get to the propcans and leave this place behind.

Lock it up tight after we leave.

[Vis]: And then what?

[Frederik]: We can take the arroyo.

Go anywhere we want.

[Vis]: What’s that?
[Io]: It’s a network of gray market smugglers his Hives run.

Tolerated by Cooperative Defense because it’s mostly moving food and farmers.

[Frederik]: Reductive, but close enough.

[Vis]: How do we get out of here, though?

That seems like the hardest part of this plan.

[Frederik]: Can you access the storm cellar doors?

[Vis]: Not directly.

[Io]: We need someone on the outside, F.

[Frederik]: Any autos on this spacecraft?

Maybe we can get them to open it from the outside?

[Vis]: Not sure, but I haven’t seen any.

Need to ping around the network more.

[Io]: Wait what’s this?

Io rubbed her nose back and forth, throwing stream windows to both Vis and Frederik. The video was low light and low resolution, which made it hard to see any detail, but it was easy to tell it was the inside of a propcan with vertical acceleration flats. Someone had taken refuge in the propcan, strapping themselves into an acceleration flat to avoid the chaos in the hallways. Frederik squinted, trying to understand what he was looking at. It was Betty Blue.

[Frederik]: Nawa oh!^{[129][Di Lingua]: Woah! ↑}

She was in an armored Grayson biosuit, helmet off, and her arm on her chest bound up in a gray medical weave and attached to her chest plate like a microgravity sling for a broken arm. Her lips were moving like she was speaking.

[Frederik]: Is she talking to someone?

Can we get the audio from inside the propcan?

[Vis]: Hold on.

There you go.

With a crackle, the audio from the EAR network tickled the small device implanted near his auditory nerve and allowed him to listen in to whatever device they had illicitly cracked into and streamed. It oscillated and warbled like a distant, distorted radio transmission, but Betty Blue was speaking to someone.

“—if it gets desperate enough, they will crack open that storm cellar. Either let the rest of their survivors in or cut loses and run.”

And although Betty Blue was alone, someone responded.

“They’ve already suffered over sixty percent casualties by my estimates. Whatever it is they want from the engineering section, they’re willing to sacrifice everything for it.”

[Io]: Holy fuck.

Is that?

[Frederik]: It’s Omolara.

Can we turn the camera?

Where is she?

I don’t see her.

Betty Blue jerked her body, reached for a weapon. A wave of anger, fear, and then confusion flashed across her face. She was alert, nervous, and suddenly tense.

[Betty Blue]: Who is this?

[Vis]: It’s me Vis.

[Omolara]: Seal verified.

It’s her.

[Io]: Or else Grayson has the prototype and you’re fucked, anyway.

[Frederik]: Io!

[Betty Blue]: Are you all alright?

Are you all in the storm cellar?

[Vis]: Ye.

We’re oke for now.

[Io]: We’re all in the storm cellar.

Right next to each other.

We can see you.

[Frederik]: Omolara?

Where are you?

What happened to you?

[Omolara]: Ergo went on a full main engine burn.

Couldn’t catch up.

Decided to hide and wait.

It’s harder to hide if they know I am lurking, so I couldn’t let you know I was alive.

When Grayson picked you up, I hitched a ride on their propcan.

Stay hidden, make opportunities for escape.

Did not expect this.

[Frederik]: You can just hide like that?

In plain sight?

No auto security found you?

[Omolara]: You have seen some of my Shade’s capabilities in action.

But recent events have made it much easier to stay below their radar.

[Frederik]: Oke.

We have a plan.

I think we can get out of here.