Gravity begins to fail onboard the Delta Icon as the rotation of the habitation ring diminishes and ultimately ceases. This causes me and the two dead guards to start to float in the room along with drops and pools of their blood. One of the guards drifts close enough that I am able to use my foot to pull him to the table. It’s not easy and it’s awkward, this takes a few attempts, but I manage to get him positioned so I can take the shackle keycard off him and release my restraints. The door to the room would normally be biometrically sealed but the seals are lifted because the emergency power is activated and is the only thing giving me light and air to breathe, so the door is open.
What I need is to quickly find Jo and get our asses to an EEV (emergency evacuation vessel), and hope we can get down to the planet in one piece. The holding cell isn’t far, it took me a few minutes to escape and now the ship appears to be empty, aside from the dead troopers drifting here and there, but the emergency alert is still pulsating over the intercom. Smoke drifts through the corridors from a fire somewhere and electrical conduits are sparking from system failures.
After searching a bit, I find the brig and the holding cell where they put Jo, floating in the cell and not moving, “you alright, Jo, are you damaged?”
To my relief, Jo looks at me, “It was significant g-forces, and I sustained minor damage, I am 96% functional. Had I been a human, I calculate an 83.7% chance of sustaining a fatal injury. The door unlocked when the general evacuation was ordered, but there is no access panel inside of this holding cell to activate the door, for obvious reasons.”
What Jo doesn’t say is that they had only one backup copy of their consciousness, as is permitted by law, but its location is registered and was already seized by the Hunter-Seekers and is onboard the ship. Meaning, if their body was destroyed, and the ship destroyed, they are dead forever, and not coming back in a new body. It's forbidden for any Sentient or human to have more than one copy of their consciousness as a backup at any one time, this is especially enforced for Sentients. This is a safeguard to prevent a rogue Sentient from growing out of control too fast. And the main reason the law is in place for humans is because the human mind/consciousness can be hijacked by a rogue Sentient. It would be extremely difficult for a Sentient to put its consciousness inside a human brain, but it’s not impossible; it would require significant data compression and even then, substantial data packets would likely be lost in the process.
Since I am in microgravity, I pull myself over to the access panel and release Jo, the door slides open only a few centimeters and stops, making a grinding noise. Slipping my fingers in the gap, I try to pull the door open, then Jo tries to help me, it doesn’t budge.
“It is likely jammed from the bulkhead twisting slightly, thus creating too much torque on the door glides, I do not believe you and I can generate nearly enough Newtons to overcome the torque,” Jo states calmly, and academically.
“I have an idea,” I say as I grab the keycard off the dead guard. This is the brig, and the armory is right here as well, and I figure the overrides for the armory locks disengaged when the evacuation was ordered, I hope. Smoke is getting worse out in the corridor and small zero-G fires are burning, fire looks and behaves very differently in zero-G. Good news, my guess was right, I access the armory, find a big-ass heavy-assault rifle as the ship creaks and groans from metals and alloys being stressed beyond their capabilities. We are starting to graze the upper atmosphere of Blasted Land, she’s burning up. Time is running out.
Jo wraps themself in the blanket and the sleeping mat in the room, then I blast the door, obliterating the door and the frame. Even though the situation doesn’t look good, and I don’t know how we are going to survive, I can’t help but to marvel over the firepower of the rifle, “wow, what an amazing weapon, and disturbing, because that was the low setting.”
We work our way to the nearest EEV, following the signs posted, and when we get there, it’s gone. So, I find a system access council and I ask the ship’s damn computer, “where is the nearest EEV?”
“All functional EEV’s have been utilized, you will have to await a rescue vehicle, but this course is not recommended,” the ship’s AI says.
I ask the machine, “ok, how long until a rescue ship arrives?”
“The closest rescue vessel will not intersect the Delta Icon in time to save it or the remaining occupants, I recommend you find an alternate evacuation method.”
"Okay, you goddamn machine, what would that fuckin’ be?!”
“There is a Gen26 Starfighter training craft in the mechanical bay, undergoing a systems diagnostics inspection. It seats two people for training purposes. With the initiation of the general evacuation order, I am authorized to give you access. I have activated the onboard AI to assist you in operating the craft, as you are neither trained nor qualified to operate the most advanced tactical starfighter ever made. I recommend you hurry. You have nine minutes or less until the gravitational forces either break the ship apart or kill you, or both, but you might suffocate from the buildup of CO2 and carbon monoxide before such time, because the life-support systems are failing. The Delta Icon has sustained catastrophic damage, but I will light the path for you until I can no longer maintain control of the ship’s internal systems.”
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We work our way through the ship and the flickering lights to the mechanical bay, it’s getting harder and harder for me to breathe, the air is literally choking me.
After a few minutes we reach the bay, we get in the starfighter when the AI speaks to us again. “The Ajax Hammer has dropped out of Photonic Speed, she is 5000 meters off our starboard bow, but I do not believe the flagship of the RCF is here for a rescue mission.”
As we strap ourselves in, I ask, “oh, why is that?”
“Because she is locking on to us with its weapon systems and targeting the EEVs as well.”
“Oh, my Lord, they are about to commit an abhorrent war crime,” says Jo.
The Delta Icon AI speaks to us one last time, “I hand you over to the starfighter’s AI, call sign, ‘Sundown,’ good luck.”
So, as I start to get dizzy from the bad air, I shout, “ok Sundown, let’s go, now, skip the system diagnostics, there is no time, go, go!” As I close the cockpit hatch.
“Very well, you are now the commander of this craft, but weapon systems are not authorized; however, I am permitted to authorize access under extreme circumstances, seeing how the bay is blocked with debris, I give you weapons access, clear the way, sir,” she says to me.
The high-powered guns blow a hole through the debris and the very haul of the Delta Icon, and we rocket out at about nine Gs as the Ajax Hammer opens fire on the wreck of the Delta Icon and the escaping EEV’s. They kill hundreds of people in seconds, it’s a massacre.
“Sir, the Ajax Hammer has launched four Gen25 tactical fighters on intercept course, I recommend evasive maneuvers and you should engage, I authorize full weapons access,” Sundown says to me. The Sundown AI shoots down two inbound missiles. “The starfighter squad knows they can’t shoot us down at a distance, so they are initiating a space dogfight, I believe. Although this is a superior starfighter, you are not wearing a high-G flight suit and you don’t have any cyber-mods for this, they do, and they are more than a match under these conditions. If you permit me access, I can tune your outdated mods for maximum starfighter efficiency, it’s not much but it’s better than nothing, sir.”
“Granted, and if i pass out from high-G maneuvering, take control, keep us alive,” then I feel her re-tune my implants, the vertigo feel of space goes away and my senses become focused on three-dimensional awareness and alertness, my reflexes have been accelerated as well.
Sundown replies, “I will do my best, sir, but I am no match against four starfighters with cybernetically enhanced pilots employing their combined efforts and abilities into a force multiplying factor. Non-linear thinking and tactics will be required to be victorious in this engagement. I sent a message to the Ajax Hammer that there are non-combatants on board, but no response, probably because they detect our weapon systems are online.”
High-energy particle beams fire at us, but they can’t get target-lock because of the Ladar scrambling technology of our ship’s defenses, this makes the fight a line-of-sight-only engagement. I bring us in hot and fast through re-entry, punching a fiery hole through the very air, nearly burning off our shielding. This makes the enemy starfighters back off some, but the G-forces are so high that I start to blackout, but my re-tuned cyber mods keep me up.
A supersonic boom echoes across the sky over Thunderbird, shattering the early morning quiet as we pass over at hyper-sonic speeds. We come in so fast that I nearly crash into the tops of the tallest buildings. The shockwave generated has so much energy that it blows the communications tower off the closest building, but I take it right through the main boulevard cracking the windows on the buildings for ten city blocks because pulling up now would kill me from the g-forces. Jo gives silent prayers, not sure if it’s for us or for the people that might have just been killed or injured from the shockwave.
One of the lead enemy starfighters was trying to keep up with me and loses control and crashes in the streets below, obliterating on impact. In less than a few seconds we clear the city and I fly straight into a narrow canyon at blistering speeds. Warnings pop up of target-lock attempts from the three remaining starfighters behind me.
“I can’t keep this up. Sundown, analyze this maneuver I am thinking, synchronize the flight controls to match the behavior of a speeder-bike as best you can, and charge particle cannons to maximum, you hear?” I say as I barely avoid one disastrous collision after another.
“Analyzing… ready, it is my assessment that with your reflexes, intuition and 3-D spatial sense, you would be a good candidate for a starfighter pilot, but this maneuver is not recommended, sir,” she says to me.
“Not that reverse-drop?” begs Jo.
“Fuck yeah!” I rotate the Sundown into a controlled table-top spin, aiming my forward weapons straight at the oncoming starfighters and in one continuous beam as we spin, the ship’s weapons fire in a circle, carving two of the enemy fighters in half and blowing the sides of the canyon down on top of the remaining one. This generates so much G-forces that if I didn’t have a cybernetic spine, it would have broken my neck, but I still black out. Jo being an android, can take the G-forces without injury. My last thought is that I hope the ship’s AI can regain control of the spin before we crash.