The Negator, page 17
My eyes narrowed. What was she really trying to tell me?
Before I could ask, Alina sat and went rigid in her chair. The thousand-yard stare returned. She was mixing it up again in the Theron’s systems.
An hour passed, and nothing happened. Well, I got up, went to the can, had a bite to eat in the galley, and returned to the bridge.
“She hasn’t moved,” Gorrax said.
“What about bat an eyelash?” I asked.
The big Tokari shook his bearlike head.
I sat back at the pilot’s chair and used the neural interface. Through it, I caught glimpses of what she was experiencing. It was like swimming through an ocean of information. There were star charts from old stellar civilizations, advanced weapon specifications, and weird medical procedures. The Polarion database embedded in this scout ship struck me as rather incredible.
Alina kept searching, talking to the AI in its binary computer language.
I waited. Then my ring grew warm.
I looked through the interface again. I think Alina might have used my ring’s proximity to open special files.
Yup. I saw a particular cluster glowing.
Alina’s consciousness dove into them through the Wi-Fi connection. She almost seemed like a mermaid, if that made sense. It was weird, and I could almost hear her laughing—her consciousness, I mean.
“Kane,” Gorrax said.
I opened my eyes.
The big Tokari pointed at Alina.
She sat in her chair, looking normal again. “I found it,” she whispered.
“What?” I asked.
“A cloaking device,” she said. “An actual, functional cloaking device. I sensed it earlier. It’s old and hidden deep behind the spatial displacement field data.”
“How does it work?” I said.
She stood and typed at her console, pulling the schematics onto her display. “It won’t make us invisible. Instead, it will create a bubble around the ship. Light and other electromagnetic radiation will bend around us instead of bouncing off. To sensors, we wouldn’t be there.”
“Like water flowing around a rock,” I said.
She nodded.
“There’s a catch, though,” she said. “It will take enormous power to maintain the distortion.”
“So it’s not a cloak?” I asked.
“Distortion is more accurate,” she said, “but it will act like a cloak.”
“And…?” I said.
“According to projected power draw, we’ll only be able to run it for about 10 minutes before we drain the ship’s reserves.”
I checked on the enemy. The three quarantine ships were spreading into an intercept formation, their weapons powering up. We were moving fast through the star system as Alina had gone fishing. We didn’t have long to get ready.
“Better get it set up now,” I said.
“They haven’t contacted us yet,” Gorrax said.
“I noticed,” I said. “I think they’re done talking.”
“Yes,” Gorrax said. “You’re probably right.”
Alina had already activated ship systems that probably hadn’t been used in nineteen hundred years.
Through the interface plates, I felt the Theron’s power core surge. Alina was diverting energy from non-essential systems. Life support dropped to minimum, artificial gravity fluctuated, and even the lights dimmed.
The minutes ticked away as she readied the system. I had to help her, using my command codes to activate what she needed. Without the High Circle Polarion ring, I wouldn’t have been able to do this. My head hurt, but I kept unlocking ancient systems.
Gorrax cleared his throat.
I switched focus and used the sensors to check on the enemy ships. They were maneuvering into position.
“Are you ready yet?” I asked.
“Not quite,” Alina said.
I glanced at Gorrax.
Gorrax was at a console, looking highly worried. He turned to me.
“Enemy ships are targeting us,” Gorrax said. “I am detecting multiple weapon locks.”
I bared my teeth. This was it. We either pulled a rabbit out of the hat or ended our adventure here and now. Through the sensors, I saw that the quarantine ships’ weapons were glowing with pre-fire charge.
“I’m almost there,” Alina said. “I just need to… there. We’re ready.”
My hands were slick with sweat on the interface plates. We were screaming toward three warships, trusting in ancient technology we barely understood—well, maybe Alina did. I sure didn’t.
The enemy’s targeting lasers were painting our hull, marking us for destruction.
“Engage it now!” Alina shouted.
Oh, right, I had to do this. She had merely set it all up. I did so now.
In that second, the universe twisted.
Through the neural interface, I felt everything bend around the Theron. It turned out that the cloak—more precisely, the distortion field—drew power not just from our reactor, but from me. It did it through the ring, through my Polarion genetics, through whatever made me compatible with this alien technology.
It was like trying to hold my breath while running a marathon. Every second the cloak stayed active drained something vital from me.
“They seem to have lost lock,” Gorrax said. “We must have vanished from their sensors. It is working.”
I could see them adapting, the bastards. The quarantine ships spread wider, sweeping space with active sensor pulses. They must have known we were still coming. Physics demanded it. We couldn’t change course significantly at this velocity without killing ourselves with G-forces. That meant—
“I’m changing the vector by five degrees starboard,” I said, making the smallest adjustment I dared.
The enemy ships responded. They were good, even if they were just robots or automated systems. They must have been hunting for any distortion, any anomaly that would reveal us.
They opened fire with what the AI called graviton beams. That was different from the other quarantine ships. Maybe they weren’t messing around anymore.
The beams swept through our area like searchlights, and when one passed near, I felt it through the cloak. The competing distortions made my brain feel like it was being pulled apart.
Another graviton beam passed even closer, and the Theron shuddered. Warning lights flashed: hull stress, power fluctuations, and ‘dimensional membrane integrity.’ That didn’t sound good.
“Thirty seconds until we’re past them,” Alina said.
Each graviton beam that swept near was agony, like someone was reaching into my skull and stirring my brains with a fork. The ring on my finger was so hot it was burning, but I couldn’t let go of the interface plates.
We shot between two of the warships, missing by less than a kilometer. At our velocity, we crossed that distance in a heartbeat.
Then we were past, rocketing away into open space.
“Cloak failing,” I wheezed. “I can’t… hold it anymore.”
“Drop it,” Alina said. “We’re clear!”
I released the cloak, and the universe snapped back to normal.
I slumped in the pilot’s chair.
“There’s a contact!” Gorrax said. “One ship has launched drones.”
Through bleary eyes, I saw the drones—three, smaller and faster than the ones we’d faced before. They were built for pursuit, accelerating like crazy.
That was quite the feat when you think about it. The quarantine fleet ships had launched them. Those ships had been heading fast toward us. Now they accelerated rapidly away. That meant the drones had to first slow down, as it were, before they could accelerate at us. The margin gave us the time we needed. But it also showed how powerful the drone engines really were.
The pulse cannons came online, but aiming was like trying to thread a needle during an earthquake. My first shots went wide, energy bolts streaming past the lead drone.
“Come on,” I muttered, forcing my exhausted brain to calculate trajectories.
The second burst caught the lead drone center-mass. It exploded in a sphere of debris that the other two had to dodge around.
My vision was starting to tunnel, with darkness creeping in from the edges. But I kept firing. Another drone went down, its engines detonating in a brief flower of flame.
The last drone was close, too close. I could see its warhead beginning to glow as it armed itself for impact.
I fired everything we had—a continuous stream from the pulse cannons that drained our weapons capacitors to nothing. The drone disintegrated less than 10,000 meters from our hull.
“We’re clear,” Gorrax said. “No more pursuit.”
“Good,” I said. “Because I’m done.”
I tried to lift my hands from the interface plates, but I couldn’t do it. My vision went gray, then black.
The last thing I heard was Alina calling my name as I collapsed in the pilot’s chair, spent from maintaining the cloak. My body had nothing left to give.
I hoped nothing else would jump out at us, because I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it for awhile.
-42-
I woke up in the medical bay with a splitting headache. I figured we were in foldspace, as the familiar hum of the Manifold Drive told me we’d made it out of the quarantine system.
“Welcome back,” Alina said from beside my bed.
I turned my head, which was a mistake. The room spun for a few seconds before settling down. When my vision cleared, I saw her sitting in a chair she’d pulled close. She looked beautiful as always, but there was worry in her eyes.
“How long was I out?” I asked, my voice rougher than I liked.
“Six hours. Bill got us into foldspace while you were unconscious. We’re safe for now.”
“Where are we heading?”
“That’s the problem,” she said. “We’re in foldspace with no real destination. Just away from the quarantine fleet, if you know what I mean.”
I sat up slowly, waiting for the dizziness to pass. “We need to get to the Dreadstar.”
“I know.” She stood and helped me to my feet. “Come on, you need food. We should talk after what you went through.”
We made our way to the galley. My legs felt like rubber, but each step got easier.
In the galley, Alina set out a meal. Some kind of protein that might have been synthetic meat, vegetables that definitely came from the ship’s stores, and a mug of something hot that smelled like coffee but wasn’t quite coffee.
I ate while she watched, her fingers drumming on the table. She wore a blue jumpsuit that emphasized her curves, with her hair pulled back, revealing her neck. Even worried, she was stunning.
“We have the Negator,” she said, breaking the silence. “But how will you use it?”
“What do you mean?” I asked around a mouthful of synthetic meat.
“Getting aboard the Dreadstar will likely be hard. Remember how it went last time?”
I nodded. It had been a bear.
“Even reaching the Dreadstar will be difficult for a couple of reasons,” she said. “One, where in foldspace is it?”
I grunted. I’d already been thinking about that. “What’s the second problem, in your opinion?”
“Colonel Pendance nearly destroyed us before in the Antares System. The Ick might have sent other ships to hunt us.”
I swallowed and took a sip of the not-coffee. It was bitter but warm.
“And even if we get past any patrols and find the prison ship, the Dreadstar is massive,” Alina said. “Finding the Burnt Polarion aboard it in stasis, getting close enough to use the Negator without the Burnt Polarion waking up and using the Null Equation…” She shook her head. “It might be nearly impossible for us.”
“What’s your point?” I already knew all that. This was nothing new. We’d deal with it when we dealt with it.
“I wonder what Axion’s plan was?” Alina said, leaning forward. “He knew all this just as we did. He probably knew the problems even better than we do. He must have had a strategy for actually getting to the Burnt Polarion so he could use the Negator once he had it.”
That was an interesting point. I took another sip, wishing it were a real Americano. Axion had been full of plans. Thinking about real coffee must have unlocked my mind, as I thought of something then.
“You scanned Axion’s brain,” I said. “You found out about the Negator, but you said other things were hidden. Can you crack the code and find out what else he planned?”
Her eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea. And you’re right, most of the data-grab was encrypted or compressed oddly. With the ship’s AI and your ring, I might be able to finally decode it.”
“Let’s do it,” I said, pushing my plate away.
We went back to the bridge where Bill was monitoring our passage through foldspace. The old android looked up as we entered.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” Bill said. “We need a destination. Otherwise, we are simply drifting.”
“I’m working on it,” I said, settling into the pilot’s chair, although keeping my hands off the interface plates, at least for the moment.
Alina took her position at her console. “I need to reconnect to the Theron’s systems. Then I’ll need you on the interface plates, Kane, with the ring, so you can do whatever it is the ring does.”
“What, you want to do that now?” I said.
“Is it too soon?”
I saw how eager she was, and something in me didn’t want to disappoint. Maybe it was too soon, but maybe time was running out on the universe. Maybe it was time for me to stop drifting in more senses than one.
With a shrug, I pressed my hands against the interface plates. I expected it to hurt or make me groggy, but the connection felt smoother than ever.
I had an idea how she planned to do this and set things up with my neural net. Once done—
“Go for it,” I said.
She went rigid, with that thousand-yard stare returning. Through the neural link, I could see that she was diving into the stolen data from Axion’s digital mind. If you’re wondering, it was like being back in the Polarion game system aboard the Dreadstar.
Alina was good, a real pro, obviously knowing more about this stuff than I did. She went through layer after layer of encrypted files, each one protected by algorithms that would have no doubt taken Earth’s best supercomputers centuries to crack. But with the Theron’s AI and my ring providing the keys, she started making progress sooner than I would have expected.
I saw flashes of Axion’s memories, star charts of ancient trade routes, technical specifications for exotic weapons, and medical procedures for extending life far beyond natural limits. I’m not saying they made sense so I could do them tomorrow, just that I had an inkling what they were.
I didn’t have to concentrate much, just a few times when Alina needed the ring’s help or I had to override the ship’s AI, forcing it to help her. It did that most of the time on its own.
I went to the head, walked around so I wouldn’t get stiff, and then went back into the neural net to check. The third time I did that, Alina was eager to communicate with me.
“I found something,” she told me through the link.
I dove back in, like in a game system and saw that she’d uncovered a cluster of files marked with strange symbols. She opened them, glancing at me. I nodded. She grinned like a kid showing a new trick, revealing images of a moon orbiting a massive gas giant, maybe twice the size of Jupiter. Alina said the High Polarions had turned the moon into a fortress at the height of their power. The images showed vast chambers filled with technology, weapons, and something else.
“What is that?” I asked through the link.
“I’m not sure,” Alina said.
“Then why show me this?”
She highlighted corrupted or deliberately obscured records. Axion’s notes were cryptic concerning the moon and the object, full of references neither the AI nor Alina could translate.
“Whatever it is, Axion thought it was essential to his plans,” Alina said. “He kept coming back to this moon fortress in his planning, and always before facing the Burnt Polarion.”
I studied the secret thing. There was something odd about it, something very dangerous. There wasn’t a skull and crossed bones over it, but a High Polarion equivalent.
Alina kept digging into the files, but the deeper she went, the more fragmented the information became. We got glimpses. The fortress had been abandoned a long time, its location secret to others but not Axion. There were warnings, but whether the warnings were about automated defenses or something else was impossible to tell.
“Can you find out where the moon is?” I asked.
“The coordinates are here, and they’re encoded. I broke that, but the AI is having trouble with the stellar notation.”
Alina kept fiddling with the files, trying new things.
I got bored and took two more breaks.
By that time, Alina was looking bleak as she stood at her console. Maybe it was time for her to disengage and try again tomorrow.
“Kane,” she said. “You have to see this.”
I went back in, with my hands on the interface plates.
Well, what do you know? Alina had done it. The moon was 32 light-years from the quarantine fleet system.
“There’s more encryption,” Alina said through the link, sounding frustrated. “There are layers upon layers to this. It appears that Axion had some of the access codes to the moon, but I can’t tell if it’s to unlock defense systems or the secret device. I need more time to crack those files.”
“Great work,” I said.
“We need to know more.”
“That’s enough for this session.”
“No. If I—”
“That’s an order,” I said.
“You don’t understand. I—”
I used a power of the ring and ejected her consciousness from the Wi-Fi connection.
Real Alina gasped as she disconnected. She gave me a hard look that became woozy and disoriented. She sat with a thud and rubbed her temples.
“That was intense,” she said.
I gave her five minutes to pull it together.
