CHAPTER 5

ANGELIQUE

WHY ARE THEY LEAVING?

Back on the orbiting platform, Angelique had watched her clone and the clones of all the others enter the aliens’ spacecraft.

It had been about an hour since they entered the aliens’ vessel, and all she could do was watch. It was painful, and multiple times one of the others suggested changing their playback speed. But Angelique wasn’t that interested in manipulating time like that. Racing forward in time might make things feel faster. But what it also did was make the team sloppy. If anything, she felt like they should slow down time.

They needed to be spending every moment monitoring and tracking the aliens’ ship. Studying it, trying to anticipate what was happening.

Back on Earth, whenever two different cultures met each other, usually only one of them survived in the long term. She hoped this would be different, but also didn’t want to take any risks.

A few moments after the alien ship closed its doors it started to move. It was slow at first, but Angelique was getting a little worried because it looked like they were starting to throttle their engines up to full.

“Are they moving away from us?” Angelique asked.

Ariana stood next to one of the control panels and opened her eyes. “They’ve been moving away from us for quite a while now. And if our sensors are correct, I believe their engines are beginning to ramp up to full power.”

Atlas, who was swimming in a mountain of paper at this point, asked, “What does full power mean?”

Angelique shook her head at the old man in disappointment. If it wasn’t for Ariana’s augments, Atlas would probably be the smartest person in the room. But he was still clutching onto old ways of doing things—the way he used to do things when he was a flesh and blood human. Maybe it was all those years traveling alone, or maybe he was too stubborn to get with the times. Regardless, whatever it was that made him so adamant on working with printed copies of documents was slowing him down.

He was a simulated human. Consuming vast amounts of data quickly was easy to him.

But then again, most of the technology currently in use on the orbiting platform was from him. He had invented or built most of it. So maybe there was merit in the way he did things. But just not in this moment, when speed was the most important. When he had years to toil away on something, then yes, printouts might work. But right now speed was the key. She made a mental note to focus her questions to Ariana rather than ask Atlas for anything at this point in time.

After reading the report that Ariana had just sent through, Angelique replied to Atlas’s question, a touch of annoyance in her voice, which she realized wasn’t pointed at Atlas, but was caused by the fact the alien was about to leave the system with her sister. Her Ange’s Angel. “It means we might not be able to stop them from leaving.” She looked toward Ariana. “Do you know how fast those engines can move?”

“I don’t have any data on that,” Ariana said before pausing. “Looking at the shape of it, I believe it’s a bigger, more powerful version of the engines we left Mars in.”

Angelique walked over toward Ariana. “Are you saying it’s similar tech to our old engines, and nothing like mine?”

Ariana nodded.

“So mine is faster. They can’t outrun us.”

“That’s not the problem,” Ariana said. “We have nothing that can slow them down. And we don’t know which weapons they possess.”

Angelique considered that information for a moment. “They don’t know which weapons we have. Ariana, tell me as much as you can about that ship. How many aliens are in it?”

Without a moment’s hesitation, she replied, “I can see they’re broadcasting using technology similar to the Starnet.”

Angelique looked at her with a puzzled look on her face. “How do you know that? Shouldn’t the Starnet be a tight-beam communication method? The signal only moves in a straight line, like a laser light.”

“You are correct. In theory the Starnet doesn’t give out any noticeable signatures. But space is not empty; there are still a lot of random particles of light racing around us. And every now and then, one of those stray particles hits one of the entangled Starnet particles toward us here. It happens frequently enough that when you know what to look for, you can see it. I’ve been monitoring for it ever since we got here. I only just built up enough data to tell you this with confidence.”

“Is it like when shining a laser light through fog or mist? It becomes visible?”

“Correct. The other thing I can tell you is I’m not seeing much of a difference in technology between our Starnet and the one this alien is using. It’s almost as if they just copied Atlas.”

“How confident in that are you?” Atlas asked.

“Reasonably. The bit rate at which entangled particles are being sent is almost identical.”

Angelique was about to ask whether it meant the aliens were simply copying their technology and whether it was a sign they weren’t as technologically advanced as they first thought when she realized she needed to get back at the task at hand: rescuing the others. After she completed that mission, she could spend the time understanding this alien a lot more.

Angelique looked at Ship. “Can you give Ariana access to our offensive weaponry? Specifically in section alpha of our spacecraft.”

She hoped Ship understood that she only wanted to give Ariana access to those specific weapons. She didn’t want to give her complete access like she did to Atlas, as she didn’t know her well enough. The part that made her less trusting was Ariana was actively trying to hack her way into her computer systems. Her Lex had already informed her of the hack attempts.

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Angelique looked at Ariana. “I take it my tractor beam isn’t powerful enough to hold that alien spacecraft in place?”

Ariana shook her head. “And looking at the way it works, I don’t think we’d want to get that close to it to test.”

“Okay,” Angelique said. “I have a weapon in my arsenal, code name Energy Zap. It basically pulls power out of things. Based on the output of energy from those engines”—she pointed at the escaping alien vessel out the window—“can we pull all the energy out of that engine? Stop them from moving?”

“Maybe for a little while. But again, there’s probably a fusion reactor on that ship. We wouldn’t be able to absorb all the energy it’s producing for that long.”

“At least we’ll slow it down. Give us a bit more time to think.” Angelique noticed Peter hadn’t said anything in quite a while. Instinctually she looked over to him as she thought this.

Noticing her gaze, Peter spoke. “I’m in an information vacuum. I don’t know the full capabilities of your ship. Nor do I have any experience using the technology we have on this ship. I’m not being quiet because I disagree. I’m being quiet because I don’t have all the information, and asking a lot of questions will just slow everyone down. A good leader knows when others should control a situation. This is a time-sensitive situation, so you’re in control.”

Angelique was about to give the order to fire the Energy Zap at the aliens’ ship when Atlas jumped up and down holding a stack of papers. She noticed that he was moving faster than normal—he had obviously just changed his playback speed and was returning to real time.

“I don’t think there’s anyone in that spacecraft,” Atlas said. “I think it’s being remotely controlled in real time through a Starnet connection.”

“Well then, we need to destroy it. Let’s attack them. Let’s destroy their Starnet,” Angelique said as she saw several nods around the room.

“Before we do that,” Peter said, raising his hands for the team to quiet down. “Atlas, you know how the Starnet works. Is there an easier way to shutting it down, without going in guns blazing?”

“Hmm.” Atlas considered that for a moment. “I know the bubble around Juniper ruined the coherence of entangled particles. Maybe I could build something that does something similar …”

“Atlas, delegate,” Peter said. “Use the team you have here.”

Angelique was glad Peter had jumped in right then. She was impressed with the fact he put his ego aside and let her run this show. He was right to believe out of the two of them she had the most knowledge on what her spacecraft was capable of. And in this time-sensitive situation, there was no point in slowing things down. But she still liked how Peter added a subtle guiding hand. Especially with Atlas, who was prone to solving things himself. She still had a lot to learn from Peter.

“Can you share the designs for the bubble with Ariana?” Atlas asked, looking at Angelique, who nodded.

“We have one on my ship,” Angelique added helpfully. “We call it a stealthfield. It’s a defensive tool for avoiding active sensor pulses.”

“Great,” Atlas continued. “Ariana, you’ll be much faster than me at this. We need to reconfigure the radius of the device so it shoots a bubble of interference outward rather than surrounding this ship.”

Ariana nodded and closed her eyes.

“Ship, let’s get ready to move as soon as we’re ready to fire this weapon,” Angelique said while the others worked.

They hadn’t moved once since the others had left in the eleph-ANT. What they wanted the alien to believe was that they had all left the ship empty. Their trump card was that they’d only sent copies of themselves to the ship. So as soon as they started their engines again, the alien would know something was up.

It wasn’t too long before Ariana opened her eyes again. “Can I get access to your onboard fabricators to start building what I need? It’s just a small part.”

Angelique nodded, and Ship gave her access.

The team didn’t have to wait too long before the changes to the stealthfield were completed. It would allow Angelique’s Ship to shoot out an ever-expanding bubble of interference. And as it moved out and washed over the aliens’ ship it would untangle all the particles associated with the Starnet, essentially cutting the aliens’ connection to the spacecraft—that is, if Atlas was correct and it was devoid of life.

The only consolation was that using this as a weapon would mean they weren’t really firing anything deadly at the aliens. So if there was life in the ship, they weren’t going to hurt any of them.

As soon as it was ready, Angelique asked for confirmation on the details. “How close do we have to be for this to work?”

“Too close. We probably need to be only a few kilometers out,” Atlas said, reading numbers from a piece of paper. “But the closer the better.”

That wasn’t ideal since she had no idea which weapons the alien possessed. “Ship, get us there quickly.”

Everyone felt a tangible lurch as the spacecraft started to maneuver forward quickly. Ship had plotted out a course and was moving toward it quickly.

Almost as soon as the alien registered them moving, laser weapons were fired. Arching toward them.

One tore right through the orbiting platform that, moments before, they were all sitting in. It was as if a guillotine had just cut right through it. The amount of energy used in that pulse was enormous. It not only cut through it, but tore a blazing hole right through the region of the ship that usually housed the team’s matrices.

That was a worry because the alien knew their technology extremely well. It knew exactly where to fire.

Another wreaking laser shot through the area of space where Angelique’s ship had just been.

Luckily, she had earlier told Ship to do evasive maneuvers, adding randomness and unpredictability to their approach. As long as the alien couldn’t guess where they were, they’d be safe.

Ship had pulled all additional power away from the others, so they couldn’t slow down time to think through ramifications. As soon as they started the attacking journey toward the aliens’ spacecraft, they were in the hands of the Ship of Angelique.

Thankfully he knew what he was doing. It wasn’t his first rodeo. Back when Angelique had only colonized two planets, the security council had mandated that Ship learn combat flying. He was put through training and exercises that up until now he had never used in a real-world situation.

Now it was all paying off.

Ship zigzagged, not from side to side, but in all directions. Moving this way and that. Changing his speed. Even backtracking a little. All in an attempt to keep the aliens guessing where they were about to be.

It was working; several times, they were almost ripped apart by an incoming laser that would have destroyed them.

At first it was easy for Ship to keep up because the alien was actively trying to predict where they were going to be. And all Ship had to do was dodge. But the aliens were clever. They began firing all their lasers in a random search pattern, adding randomness to their attack patterns in the hope a stray attack would hit Angelique’s Ship.

That was when the room got a bit nervous, since the team could no longer predict where the weapon was coming from and probability said the longer this battle went on for, the more likely it was that they would be hit.

“We’re in range,” Ship called out through the speakers.

Angelique slammed her hand down on the big red button in front of her screen.

The room went dark, and the hapticgraphic engines switched off as energy on the ship was rerouted to the weapon. The engines cut off, and the ship drifted for a few seconds.

The stealthfield spread out like a wave crashing along a beach. Angelique could tell it was a lot more powerful than the standard one in use around her ship. A slight distortion could be seen, even from the view port. It continued to move, almost like a pressure wave out in space. Like the initial change in pressure from a bomb going off, it moved outward and left a visible mark in the space it had just been through, redshifting some light and blueshifting others.

It washed over the aliens’ spacecraft.

And then the laser weapons firing at them stopped.

“Are we safe?” Hezekiah asked. Angelique noticed a visible dent in the chair he had been gripping.

“Not sure,” Angelique replied. “But let’s keep the evasive maneuvers happening in case this is a trap.”