Sedition

  A Fixit Adventure

  By Erik Schubach

  Copyright (c) 2020 by Erik Schubach

  Published by Erik Schubach

  P.O. Box 523

  Nine Mile Falls, WA 99026

  Cover Photo (c) 2020 Kris Cole / Depositphotos.com license

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, blog, or broadcast.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  FIRST EDITION

  Chapter 1 - Agri-Grid A1

  I heard Flower squealing outside of the maintenance bay of Agri-grid A1 here on Tau Ceti Prime. Her warbling alternating of high and low tones sounding suspicious like, "Fixit!"

  I looked from the tender we were working on in a repair bay to the door and cursed silently to myself. I told the weapon's tech who was assigned to learn how to maintain the harvesters and tenders which helped to supply food to the floating cities above, "Stay here... and don't touch anything! I'll be right back."

  Things have been hectic here since the Galactic Federation of Old Earth attempted to secretly wipe out our colony here in the Tau Ceti system because they simply suspected us of sedition. The sick irony of it all is that... they weren't wrong. Tau Ceti has been building a fleet to rise up against the oppressive system the government of Terra has used to keep all the human colonies in line with their thinking.

  My thoughts went to Ursula Prime. They had been talking about the totalitarian governance that the Galactic Federation had over the other star systems and were about to vote on independence when their entire star system had been taken out by a freak accident, a quantum fusion meltdown of their orbiting power generation station.

  Whispers on the solar winds were that it had actually been the covert Obsidian Pacification Force which the Galactic Federation has hidden from the member systems for generations. I had thought it to be just one of the spooky stories mom told me as a kid, an urban myth.

  I recently learned of Prime's Covert Sciences, which had this Dark Fleet of our own being built somewhere to defend against such draconian pacification here in the Tau Ceti system. Again, it was ironic that this fleet, though just a whisper on the wind, was what brought the Obsidian Pacification Force to our doorstep.

  They had no proof, only rumors, but it was enough for them to engineer our fate as another Ursula Prime. Only... we didn't fall. Their plan had been virtually flawless since, unknown to all of the inhabited systems, the Galactic Federation, who supplies all the control crystals to the various star systems, had embedded code buried so deep in the command subroutines that it was virtually undetectable unless you knew exactly what to look for.

  This code, when activated by the Obsidian Pacification Force, could take control over any system the crystals were integrated into. And worse, they embedded that same code into the Asimov inhibitor chips installed in every pinger and drone, effectively turning them into killing machines within their target's own star system. An army of assassins who were no longer limited by the three laws of robotics.

  They almost succeeded in wiping out our entire system with just one coded transmission from a cloaked vessel when we were at our most vulnerable. When all of our people were on-orbit in the floating cities that had navigated from the gravity wakes in the sky, where there is an equilibrium between the gravitic up-currents with the static gravity well of the planet, and into orbit during the superstorms of the Perihelion Pass.

  The mega-storms and planet quakes hit every thirty-four years when Prime was at its closet point in our orbit around our star. And the Galactic Federation knew this and waited patiently for the pass to begin, knowing that all personnel dirtside would be evacuated to the floating cities for Exodus, and everyone in the system would be together, on-orbit.

  I wonder how many years they had suspected us of building our fleet without military oversight from Old Earth. How many years had those crystal licking bootwaffles from the Obsidian Pacification Force been hiding in the system, just watching, knowing they were going to 'pacify' us when the Perihelion Pass began?

  I wonder what had happened to Terra over the centuries to turn it into this oppressive and totalitarian entity that ruled the other star systems by force. They had once been a great people of explorers and visionaries who reached out to the stars and made homes in so many planetary systems. Bright-eyed dreamers. Now they more resembled the worst of humanity, more along with the lines of the Nazi Empire of the twentieth century, or the Unified Pacific Consortium from the twenty-second century.

  I guess the old adage that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely is more prophetic than it would seem.

  The Galactic Federation hadn't anticipated that by a fluke, Tau Ceti Prime hadn't completely evacuated for this pass. I was stranded here in Agri-grid A1 with my pingers to ride out the mega-storms. And the pirates who have terrorized Prime for the past twenty-seven years were still hidden in their caverns.

  We were the monkey wrench in the machine they couldn't have anticipated. After repairing a damaged tumbril and making it space worthy again, my pinger, Glitch and I were able to intercept the cities before they crashed into the surface of Prime and effect an external bypass of the control systems for the people trapped inside.

  As I approached the door, voices were being raised and more of my pingers started adding their fervent squees to Flowers. Just great. What had the flanterskelling topsiders done now? I can't believe the lack of knowledge of the people I was supposed to train, to keep the food production running to feed the people in the floating cities. All the personnel from the surface of Prime, who used to maintain the Agri-Grids and the terraforming station... who the topsiders referred to derogatorily as dirters, were all vented out into space when the Galactic Federation's pacification routines were activated.

  Since nobody had wanted the dirters mingling with the others when they were all evacuated for the Perihelion Pass storms, they were assigned menial tasks like sewage maintenance in the bowels of the cities. So I am the lone surviving dirter who knows how to maintain the farms and livestock that will keep our surviving populace from starving to death.

  Unfortunately, the pingers and harvesters had all received the same activation codes and had destroyed much of the infrastructure until the deactivation overrides were finally sent from New Terra city. The only grid that survived intact was mine, Agri-Grid A1, because all of the pingers, harvesters, and tenders had had their Asimov inhibitor chips and control crystals either deactivated or destroyed by me and my mother before me when we 'woke' our pinger family and allowed their AIs to become self-aware.

  Once we got the crops replanted here in A1, we've been sending groups of my pingers to repair and replant the other Agri-Grids, while the Betweeners who used to pirate the skyways here, were sent out to round up all the livestock that the rogue pingers scattered outside of the sonic fences that kept the natural predators of Prime away. Large numbers of them were lost, but if our people stick to a low meat diet for the next couple of years, we should be able to replenish the numbers again.

  The Obsidian Pacification Force had almost inadvertently succeeded in wiping us out since our entire food production was brought to a virtual standstill. Even the two huge orbital agricultural domes had suffered one hundred percent loss of personnel and crops. The only thing that survived the almost absolute zero the domes reached, were all the seeds and genetic material that was in cryo-suspension.

  I swung open the small access door that was beside the closed, massive bay doors and stepped into a free for all. Men and women were wrestling with pingers who were all surrounding Flower and keeping guys with electric cattle prods away from Flower's potting table and her small flower garden.

  Glitchy had two men pinned to the ground with his grappler, as Wrongway was screaming and warbling as two men tried shocking him. Blip was just spinning in place, his grappler outstretched, creating a whirling wall the others were trying to duck under as they shouted, "Pinger A5-232, command override. Power down." or "Pinger A5-232, command override, institute Asimov protocols!" and "Pinger A5-232 reinitialize base programming and run core diagnostic protocols."

  I slapped one man on the back of the head. "Stop that." Then I whistled shrilly and everyone froze. I pointed around. "Turn those damn stunners off. Boys, stand down." Then I moved beside Flower who was vibrating with anger and asked incredulously, this being an almost daily occurrence, "What the hells is going on here?"

  They all started talking at once. And I held up a halting hand, feeling a headache coming on. I pointed at Flower and she, squeed out a series of highs and lows, and I found it sort of satisfying that I was getting to the point where I didn't need to count them anymore to understand their binary ad-hoc language my pingers have developed on their own since the cost of becoming self-aware was losing their vocal processor crystals to house some of their distributed consciousness.

  I snickered at her use of the derogatory term for humans that Glitch had come up with, "fle

shies" as she told me they were trying to steal her flowers.

  I turned to the loudest man. "Is this true?"

  He almost growled at me, "Is what true?"

  I sighed. "Everyone down here is supposed to be learning binary or using your iso-pads to translate when speaking with my pingers."

  "My pad is inside. We needed more space to lay out parts and came out to bring this table in to use. And this tin bucket went crazy. When we tried to reset it, the others attacked us."

  I ran my hand down across my face and said, not for the first time, "One, stop calling them tin cans, they are people and have names just like you do."

  "They're pingers. They're tools to be used, not people."

  I stepped up to the man, my nose almost in his chest as I looked up at the burly man. "You talk like that one more time and you're on the next tumbril heading to New Terra." I looked around. "That goes for all of you. Either you treat my pingers as equals or you're of no use to us down here. They are the only thing keeping our people from starving to death. Do I make myself clear?"

  There was a long delay before they started nodding slowly. I continued, "And this table? Nobody touches this table. It is Flower's, where she pots her flowers and tends her little flower bed here."

  I glared and Glitchy trundled up to beside me on his tracks his ocular port widened in a challenge to the others on his orb-shaped body. I poked his ocular port and accused, "You're supposed to be keeping the peace here, and I come out to find you pinning two Topsiders to the ground?"

  He tried to make excuses as he squeed, looking embarrassed, and I listened to a long diatribe of his version of events, nodding slowly. I sighed and said, "I know you boys overreact when Flower is involved, but really?"

  He made a motion that looked like a shrug. And the man said, "They attacked us, they're dangerous."

  I nodded. "They did, and they are, just like every human you know is. You apparently wouldn't take no for answer then started pulling out weapons or tried to shut them down when the boys tried to block you from taking the table. What would you do if someone pulled weapons on you? You're just lucky they are more humane than you as they could have torn you apart without a thought if they wanted."

  Then I looked around and said impatiently, "We are way behind and I'm needed at terraforming control then on orbit so everyone shake hands and let's get back to work."

  I tried so very hard not to grin in satisfaction as they all looked frustrated but shook hands with my pingers who looked just as put out. One day I'll just let them all kill each other, then maybe I'll get work done or at least a decent night's sleep.

  I sighed and headed back in, Blip following behind and he tipped over with an audible "blip" when his tread hit a hydro-seal laying just inside the door. I sighed heavily as I helped the clumsy pinger back to his treads as I grumbled while picking up the hydro-seal. "What is so hard about keeping the walk and tread spaces clear?" I'm basically a hoarder but keeping the walkways clear is sort of a no brainer, especially with easily distracted pingers like mine trundling around.

  I headed back over to the latest tech I was training again and had to close my eyes and count to ten before saying through my teeth. "Why did you pry that ceramic-gasket off before I could show you how to do it without damaging it as you did? We reuse everything we can down here planetside."

  The weapons-tech looked at me like I was being silly. "It's just a gasket. We'll just put a new one on when we reassemble the unit." The tender, Sid, rolled his ocular port far above us and his horn made a deep chuckling sound.

  I asked flatly, "You're right Jerome, so why don't you grab a new gasket and we can do that."

  He looked around, Blip started shaking in humor as the man looked at the racks of salvage which I and my pingers had pulled out of the junkyard near the grid's perimeter, the Boneyard. Then he pulled open various parts drawers in the repair bay as I leaned idly on one of Sid's huge wheels. He lowered the stalk of his ocular port to cover my eyes for me and I whispered, "Thanks, buddy."

  When the tech gave up after querying his iso-pad, he prompted me and Blip, "Where do you keep them?"

  I shrugged and said, "We don't. In all the wisdom of the resupply officers on New Terra, we get about ten percent of the new parts needed to keep the fleet of harvesters and tenders, not to mention all of my maintenance pingers, in good repair. Now we're going to have to see if we can't scavenge up a used one from the salvaged assemblies or just cut a new one from a sheet of scrap graphene since it isn't a high-pressure environment this particular assembly requires."

  He started to chuckle then his smile faltered when I just leaned there, arms crossed over my chest as I waited for the realization. "You're serious? But all these machines down here are what keep us alive."

  I nodded and said with a grand sweep of my arms as I pushed off of Sid's wheel. "Welcome to my world. The crystal lickers topside think it is ridiculous to divert resources into keeping us mere dirters well supplied. It is only when we start falling behind in our quotas that they take us seriously enough to send partial shipments of the most needed parts down to us."

  Then I noted he had replaced one of the power crystals in the assembly with a nearly full one. I sputtered as I moved over to remove it and dig out one from a bucket of burned-out crystals that had about a quarter charge left, "What are you doing? We have so few full crystals that we only use them in emergencies."

  I looked at Blip and pointed at the damaged gasket. "Blippy, can you fabricate a replacement out of that cracked graphene heat sink sheet out back and button this up to get Sid on his way? The big man is needed in A3, and it is a long drive."

  He squeed out what sounded suspicious like, "Aye, aye, Fixie."

  I sorted through the bucket to find a couple more partial burns for the next job, pocketing the full crystal so these entitled bootwaffles didn't waste it.

  Jerome rubbed his ebony chin with his hand as he summarized in disbelief, "So the most important department for the survival of the Tau Ceti system is not given the tools needed to even do proper maintenance of the machines here dirtside?"

  I nodded at him as he looked to be searching my eyes for any deceit, then he looked at the bucket like it was nothing but trash. "Not even power crystals?"

  Sighing, I shared, "Ideally each Agri-Grid is supposed to have no less than one hundred full crystals on hand at any given time. I'm lucky to get five or ten in a year down here."

  The weapons-tech grinned like he had caught me in a lie. "Impossible. You can't possibly do the maintenance you log every month with so few crystals."

  It was my turn to grin as I winged a thumb toward the door. "It is amazing what you can find in the junkyard of discarded tech the floating cities litter the grids with. We call it the boneyard. We salvage whatever used power and control crystals as well as any other parts we can there."

  A man called from the door, his baritone traveling well in the space, "Well maybe we can do something about that, little dirter."

  My eyes bulged at the mag-sled the unshaven man was pushing, which had what had to have been at least three hundred kilos of uncut ionized crystal eriodite, or ICE crystals. That'd be about two hundred and fifty usable kilos of power and control crystals once cut. That would be a lifetime of ICE dirtside!

  McGreery was the commander of the Betweeners, looking every inch the swashbuckling captain who saved my ass on-orbit when the Obsidian Pacification Force tumbril carrier decloaked and attacked me en route to save New Terra... not to mention the recent revelation that he is my girl, Vashon's father.

  He smirked as he came up to us with Glitch trundling along behind him. "Close your mouth Vega, you act as if you've never seen a shit-ton of ICE before. We just happened to have this sitting around in the mines, gathering dust, and I thought an enterprising young woman such as yourself might have a use for it."

  I squeaked, "I could kiss you, McGreery!" While I noted Jerome had instinctively reached for his hip where his weapon would have been if I allowed more than a stunner dirtside. Understandable, I guess, in the presence of the leader of the sky pirates. But I had our leader, Lady Peregrine, extend pardons of all past crimes for all Betweeners in exchange for the fuel donation to get me on-orbit to save the floating cities.

 

1 2 3 4 5