40
Spotting the station’s command deck was one thing. Getting in there, quite another, when shifting dimensions played havoc with time, distance and space. The orbital station seemed to warp and unfold, so that V47 Pilot was one moment inside a vast metal sphere and then… with a tremendous creaking and groaning eversion… thrust completely outside. The entire structure was somehow pulled through itself and reversed. The sudden change forced Pilot to sink clamps into a wavering bulkhead, pulling Raine tight against him, as he did his best to hang on.
Now they stood on the surface of an infinite tractoid, a sort of negative sphere. The station looked like two trumpets placed bell to bell, studded with open compartments and pulsing machinery, crested by bristling combs of wire and conduits. His survival suit engaged automatically when gravity shifted from underfoot to sideways, pulling them off course like an amusement-deck's rotating floor.
Pilot kept moving, using rocket-clamps to haul himself along, or firing boot-jets and leaping. Extra-dimensional space roiled and streamed like a queasy mix of wild paint colors, just overhead. Stars were Dopplered into spirals or donuts, glowing in more than the usual hues. Glimmr rotated like a cloudy spindle nearby, its north and south poles become needles that faded away to infinity. Still banded with color and light, though, surrounded by zipping, turned-inside-out spacecraft.
Using that sudden influx of manna, V47 Pilot kept his own interior where it belonged, shielding Raine and the miniature aliens, too. Progress was patchy. He could look, concentrate and then be at the spot he was focused on… unless the station reverted to normal, locking them back in a closed compartment, entombed in just three flat dimensions. Then, he could only move physically or by burning more manna to port himself.
They were getting closer, though.
Raine experimented with sending, as his donated circuitry spread, branched and meshed itself with her wetware. She grew wide-eyed, pointing everywhere at once and claiming one of his drones. Her perceptions were changing. New colors, distant sounds and deep scanning abilities were suddenly available, making the little empress bounce up and down in his arms.
“Pilot!” she crowed. “There’s so much! I didn’t know about any of this, before! You never told me!”
Then, of course, Right-Left-Top-Flip and Red-Blue-Gamma clamored for cyborg parts of their own, pulsing and flashing in unison until Pilot infected the aliens just to shut them up. (Right. Glad everyone else was having a good time; trusting that Pilot was in total control of the situation, when death was just one bad decision away, the whole time.)
Two passages on, the orbital station everted again with a series of squid-like jerks. Pilot, Raine and the alien ambassadors rode out this change in a hatch-threshold. Their passageway opened out as OS1012 rippled and flowed all around them. The cramped maintenance corridor rolled itself into an infinite pipeline, studded and spiked and lashing with structures and wires. Nothing at all like his internal map, but there, about three layers of lacy, unfolded station above, floated the command deck; nearly the top in a series of widening concentric rings.
Pilot sent two of his drones up to scout around for possible trouble. They didn’t have much to report, at first. Most of the station’s assets and robots were too busy watching out for attacking draug to hunt for a lone intruder, but Pilot stayed out of sight, anyhow. He said,
“Majesty, keep as quiet and still as you can. Use those new senses to scout your surroundings and shield your mind against hacking, like this.” (A large burst of data and antiviral software flowed from his core to hers, at that.) “Next, concentrate on producing armor. Set your new circuits to absorb manna and build whatever you need with it.”
He had started along the pipeline, weaving his way through all of the bristling obstacles that were normally pent between bulkheads or under the deck. Now they projected in every direction, somehow still functioning.
“Oooh! I want armor like yours, Pilot!” she exclaimed, her voice starting out as a high-pitched squeal, then dropping down to a whisper. “Except mine will have glitter and polka-dots and power-up gems!” Which… right.
“I’m sure that your armor will be very beautiful, Majesty,” he said, hoping for “useful”, as well. “Now, hold tight. I need to switch passages at the intersection.”
Not as straightforward as it sounded, because the corridors met without passing through each other, while the rippling blobs of guards and robots seemed to be everywhere.
Dodging, ducking and weaving, he came to that busy… it looked like a slithering knot tied out of four solid cubes… crossroads. The passage he needed was up, left and kata. Had to be reached by reflecting himself and the others slantwise through space, past a series of unfolded hatchways that chattered like teeth.
The entire crew was alert for trespass, but mostly couldn’t see him, whereas he saw them as writhing, pulsing and organ-shot jellyfish. He passed dozens of flesh-and-mechanical zephyrs that split or turned into rings in his presence, seeming not to feel him go by. Very strange.
Pilot finally reached the command deck level, then paused to examine and share the drones’ video feed. So far, so good. Just a dark and airless, everted compartment filled with drifting wires and stretched, waving lights. There was a spiky silhouette at the far end that might be OVR-Lord’s hardware and memory crystals.
“This is it,” Pilot sent/ said to Raine, indicating that well-guarded deck. “There will be defensive countermeasures, Majesty. You must be prepared to defend yourself if I am incapacitated.”
She nodded excitedly, having covered herself with glittery, polka-dot armor on their way over.
“I’m ready, Pilot, and so are my guards!”
Indeed, the small aliens just about rattled with plating and weaponry, now. Right-Left-Top-Flip seemed to be constructing a battle-mech, which… wasn’t a bad idea, at all. But the empress had started to speak again, saying,
“You’d better be careful in there, Pilot. I order you not to get hurt. If you’re injured, I’ll be mad, and if you are killed, I will never speak to you again, ever, no matter how many times you’re decanted!”
She lost her composure, then, throwing both arms around his neck to squeeze tight, whispering,
“Please, please, please… just don’t get hurt, Pilot. You have to stay safe!”
“I promise to do my best, Majesty,” he replied, hugging her back. “But you are the one who matters. The one who must put things right again.”
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
He scanned the surrounding decks and found a loader by one of the air locks. Meant to shift cargo, it would do to as a very small mech, in a pinch. He summoned the robot in segments, using its parts to craft a wearable battle-suit. Added,
“I hope that you will forgive me in time, if I get a few scrapes on my paint job, Majesty.”
“Don’t joke. It isn’t funny, and you’re not allowed to joke, Pilot. I’m serious!” She really was. He could tell, because her shiny pink helmet displayed a ferocious scowl.
He tapped its crest with an armored forefinger, causing the helmet’s scowl-face to put out its tongue. Before slipping into the command deck, Pilot did two further things. He completed his armored mech-suit (half freight loader, half stolen hodgepodge, with a few surprises thrown in). He also pulled V47’s cartridge out of its fey pocket, uploading Vee into the newly formed mech.
His AI linked in and meshed again, was brought up to speed by examining data and video files. Then,
‘The orbital station is on high alert, alt-Pilot. Querying Pilot: run a distraction sim, spoofing a cyber-attack to the main guidance system?’
“Sounds good, Vee,” he replied, feeling whole again. “Pull Foryu out of memory, as well. We’ll need someone on the outside, ready to hack a way in or arrange retreat, if things get ugly.”
‘Command received. Command processed. Command accepted. Done, alt-Pilot.’
And it was. Light flashed, and then Foryu stood on the everted pipeline beside them, just one leap away from that airless and silent command deck. Pilot raised his faceplate to look at his companion with physical eyes, while data flowed back and forth between them.
“About time,” she remarked, armoring up to the edges of her beautiful, odd-eyed face. “I’m not much of a companion if I get filed away whenever you’re nervous, Pilot.”
…which seemed like the ideal time for a change of subject. Pilot made a series of very quick introductions (mostly just handshake protocol, with a few comments thrown in about the ambassadors). He was very glad when Raine and Foryu connected right away.
“You’re a girl! You’re like me!” cried the young empress, happily. “Hi-I’m-Raine! We’re taking over the Two-Hundred Worlds, and you can help! Then you can be my other best friend. I already have five including Pinky and Sylph, but six is better than five because no one gets left behind when there’s six.”
Foryu looked startled at first, then enchanted. She bowed low, saying,
“Your Majesty, it will be my honor to be your best friend. I’ll study all the relevant files on secrets, sleepovers and fingernail painting.” Then, turning her attention back to Pilot, “Don’t do anything foolish in there.”
“Exactly! That’s what I told him, too!” chirped Raine. He wanted to hold them both close… or maybe just run. Did neither. Resealed his helmet instead, after touching each of their exposed faces. Brushed flesh-to-flesh, promising again what he maybe couldn’t deliver: himself, safe, sound and whole.
He was only a messenger. The real V47 Pilot was still… Ah. That was a thought. Pilot took the masters’ refuge-sphere out of its pocket and handed it over to Foryu, saying,
“We’re going in, now. Her Majesty will eject OVR-Lord’s cartridge from its podium, shifting command of the station to her. This sphere contains all the masters, Foryu… as well as my progenitor, the original Pilot. If our plan goes wrong, use the refuge-sphere to bargain with, or as a threat.”
Foryu took and pocketed that dark metal orb, looking uneasy.
“Let’s call that a last resort and plan never to get there, Pilot. I am your companion. It is my programmed nature to care for you… but I think that I would have done so, anyhow.” She leaned forward then, making Raine squirm.
“Ewww. Yuck, I think. If you kiss him, I’m going to throw up.”
Then V47 cut in, saying,
‘I sense a very powerful incoming transmission, alt-Pilot,’
Indeed, they could see it, disturbing space and time like a massive wavefront, headed precisely their way.
“Aye, that,” he replied, pushing emotion as far away as his hormones would flow. “Monitor closely, Vee. It may be the draug resistance, coming after their leader.” (Whom he’d meshed with Ace to get both problems out of his over-stressed bandwidth.)
It was time to go. Helmets were locked and sealed. Final data exchanged. Then Pilot reflected them across the space between their passageway and the command deck, reversing himself and Raine and those two ferociously posturing aliens. (It was tough to recall which side his heart had been on originally... and didn’t matter much, now.)
They appeared in a soundless void-bubble speared by flaring red lights. The deck curved away at their feet, vibrating with sudden alarms. Unfolded machines and tangled wires were everywhere. Three tall bio-vats hovered ten feet away, inside-out. Their spiraling glass was surrounded by mucky fluid studded with tattered bits of pale flesh. All that remained of the station’s original command crew, Pilot guessed. Empty seats, unheeded warning lights and dusty instrumentation completed the sense of desertion.
“Ick,” breathed/ sent Raine. “I did. I threw up, for real. Let’s hurry up, Pilot. I don’t like this place.”
“Me either, Majesty,” he admitted.
There was a spray of tall, greenish-white crystals near the command deck’s far end. The rhomboid gems flickered with data, receiving a constant stream of digitized persons and things from somewhere very far off. Part of OVR-Lord, the crystals had overheated, locked up in Rogue Flight’s malign calculation loop. Which… yeah. One less problem. Looking further, Pilot saw a disassembled fretwork of circuits, plating and wires. A stack of memory chips seemed to boil and shift in its center.
“That is the cartridge, Majesty,” whispered/ sent Pilot, through their link. “We must…”
He never finished the statement, because they came under sudden and violent attack. Internal countermeasures burst into existence all around them, looking like mechanical fireworks, soundless and swift.
“Throw me!” Raine shouted over their helmet-link. “Pilot, throw me at the goal, like in Challenge Ball!” She uploaded a game through his heads-up display, giving Pilot the sudden ability to “pitch”.
Right. V47 Pilot nodded assent. He could throw Raine and get her there faster than he would have done trying to fight and maneuver at the same time. She scrunched herself into a ball, tucking up arms and legs and sealing her armor to make herself aerodynamic. Pilot lifted the girl, lined up his shot and then hurled her overhand, aiming for that jumble of glowing crystals and wires.
Next, he turned and unloaded both shoulder cannons at the commanders’ vat, drawing all the attention and fire he could. Fetid sludge and glass blasted out of the shattered containers, spraying and wobbling and smearing lenses all over the deck. Then, Pilot pulled out and ignited his stolen energy-blade, writing a sigil with the other hand to hopefully…
There. The station reverted to normal all at once, as Pilot used up the last shred of his powerful manna-surge. The compartment snapped shut around them. Now, with eyes-above from the drones, Pilot could not be ambushed, and nothing behind him was hidden.
He fought in the total silence of vacuum, blocking particle beams with his shielding, turning missiles inert with fast-coded “spells”. A stream of depleted uranium bullets stitched holes in the metal deck at his feet, chewing their way toward Pilot. The guns were positioned above him, so Pilot engaged his boot jets to rise, flip and land out of range. He came down closer to Raine, who had halted her own flight with boot and palm repulsers, unfolding like a small and glittery polka-dot flower.
Something lanced past his head, nearly cracking Pilot’s face plate. A shard of black ice, launched by one of those swooping countermeasures. There were ten of them, looking like pulsing dark mines. Like the masters’ refuge, covered in spikes and a sawtooth array of weapons.
Pilot caught the ice-shard with his armored spell-hand. Slashed a counter measure in half with his sword… took a strike meant for his head on one shoulder, causing a spray of sparks and blood. Hurled the black ice at another defender that was working its way behind him.
‘Pilot,’ sent V47. ‘The incoming transmission is hostile. I am attempting to block its entry, but…’
“You cannot,” hissed a sudden cold and staticky voice, as light flared and then died. “This is my world, and I am its only god.”
Pilot refocused his drone and helmet cams. Scanned in all frequencies, staring as something shaped itself out of OVR-Lord’s hijacked crystal array. Not draug dissidents, or anything else he’d encountered before. The invader was roughly female. Tall and void-black, except for two blazing green eyes in a bone-white mask. She towered alongside OVR-Lord’s podium, wrapped in fear, clothed in midnight, having absorbed the station's AI.
Worse, she had Raine by the throat, spindly fingers clutched tight around the dangling, kicking girl’s neck.
“Drop your weapons,” hissed that sparking electronic goddess. “Or I shall gut her from hip to skull, an inch at a time. Your decision… asset.”